Category: 9-My own journey

Credit where credit is due

Credit where credit is due

“Ojai”… I see an ad from the Krishnamurti Center on the U.S. West Coast. I have probably mentioned that my two foremost sources of inspiration — not only for what they actually said and have written, but as individuals, almost as “archetypes” for two different kinds of spiritualities — have been the Danish mystic Martinus Thomsen and the Theosophical apostate Jiddu Krishnamurti.

And I’ve had the universe on my side, it seems 🙂

The first time I was going to visit the Martinus Center in Zealand, Denmark, early summer -84, I started hitchhiking in Stockholm in the morning. And got to that center far out in the countryside the very same night. A combination of strange circumstances, it was like a wave of helpfulness.

In the spring of ’90, I was sitting on a Greyhound bus along the coast of California, glanzing through the window. Suddenly saw a sign for an exit road that had such a familiar name: “Ojai.” I knew Krishnamurti had lived in a place called that. I thought it was in India? I guess I catched a bus back just to check. And so I ended up at that center, too.

In both cases, however, I came three or four years too late to meet the founders themselves.

It’s as if every type of spirituality has its possible despecies. Esotericism, like Martinus, then one tend to become far too fond of the answers, “the thought system”. Such systems which there are several similar ones of. But that you has been able to find that one that is superior to the others, etc. And that other kind of spirituality, of which Krishnamurti is a representative? My impression is that the approach can get too aggressive and cross-confident, in its own way. Adherents of Krishnamurti can sometimes behave as spirituality’s equivalent of those organisation fighting against pseudoscience and alternative medicine, etc. (“Vetenskap och Folkbildning” and “Humanisterna”, in Sweden.)

I don’t know how to get their respective teachings together, Martinus and Krishnamurti? Or, in a broader sense: Western Esotericism and Non-duality. When I was more active, I fantasized about how the two might be seen as a kind of “epoxy” solution. Like a two-component glue. They each had an angle. It could not be expressed through the same person. Together, though they were a guarantor that one would not become too cocky, one-sided, fundamentalistic.

Am I a supporter of any of these men today? I guess that’s a matter of definition. Krishnamurti, for example? If someone were to scan my brain – if possible – and see which individuals had made a big impression, whose words and quotes had kind of built up my inner world, then it would say “Jiddu Krishnamurti” on a lot. (Others may in a similar fashion have been nourished by other philosophers, then one would find their names, of course.)

So, I would like to honor him by calling me a supporter. (I’ve barely read a line of him since I was twenty-five, though, but it matters less.) Credit where credit is due.

Then I don’t know if maybe Krishnamurti towards the end got a little too grumpy, like some of his contemporary adepts, too? A long life and having to answer a lot of questions that didn’t reflect what really interested him, along with age, maybe made him tired… He went a little on a routine.

But still, his story about the devil and a friend of his who were out walking, which he included in the speech 1929 when he dissolved the Star of the East, is a really bright light. Like a psychospiritual equation, a magical spell:

“You may remember the story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, “What did that man pick up?” “He picked up a piece of truth,” said the devil. “That’s a very bad business for you, then,” said his friend. “Oh, not at all,” the devil replied, “I’m going to let him organize it.”

To be yourself?

To be yourself?

Reminded of how much I wrestled with that admonition of “be yourself”, like in my late teens-early adult years (o pretty long I think). I just couldn’t understand what was meant! That it was something desirable, which was talked about, was called upon, so much I understood, but I was clueless.

It is normal in your teens at least, the search for identity, trying out who to be? My dilemma probably went a little deeper. Had to do with the fact that I ended up with older people in environments celebrating high, refined ideals of how to be, so early, I think.

Where my spiritual journey began

Where my spiritual journey began

This is where my spiritual journey began. In fact, exactly 40 years ago. In the middle of christmas shopping in ’81. A man in a busty parkas and a far too big a hat, with a basket on his arm, called out to me who was out to buy presents for my family.

The ad appeared in the FB feed just now & I visited the website. It must be some subdivision of the Hare Krisna movement in Sweden? The books look exactly like then! I bought/got the titles from him, and for many years they followed me along when i moved, and they stood on every bookshelves. I don’t think I’ve ever read them tough…

So, most of all, it was the conversation with him that sparked something inside me. We stood there in the cold for an hour or more. Ethical, moral issues. I was at an impressionable, searching age. Shortly thereafter, I became a vegetarian, etc.

Then followed a few years of what you might well call “sect tourism”, a curiously flickering, snooping around. Like a birdwatcher who ticks off exotic specimens in his list. (Occasionally I went and ate at their restaurant, Govindas, at Fridhemsplan in Stockholm & it is now only a few years since it closed, so it was situated there for a long time.)

Think of the Hare Krishna movement with some warmth actually. Then they can be as much of a cult as they want.

I never got to Mount Athos

I never got to Mount Athos

Snowy Monastery of Saint Gregory: The Monks Play Snowball Fight Like Little Children and Enjoy the Snow

The Holy Monastery of Saint Gregory is located on the SW side of the Athos Peninsula, built on a rock at a height of 30 m from the sea. It is one of the 20 monasteries of Mount Athos state and one of the 6 rock monasteries that were rebuilt and renovated on the rocks to have natural protection from pirates.

https://www.greecehighdefinition.com/blog/snowy-monastery-of-saint-gregory

D and I talk about what it was like in high school, how you can feel then, bad, etc. I really wasn’t in the best condition. But I wasn’t depressed. I kind of went a different way.

In the summer of ’85, I had dropped out, definitely. I went on a pilgrimage through Europe. The destination of the trip was the monk sanctuary mount Athos. I don’t know what my plans were, I just wanted to see the place. But the ferry that went there didn’t want to let me on board because I was too young. So spent the evening with a tricky unhappy Dutchman at his tent, I remember.

I saw that trip anyway. Le Corbusier’s magnificent chapel in Ronchamp! Lourdes is one of those places of pilgrimage on the border between France and Spain. Paris, of course. Talked to a guy on a train who was going to enlist in the Foreign Legion, to get away from his criminal life. From the police too, perhaps.

Findhorn Gardens in England. Stonehenge. Holy Island and Iona. Loch Ness, a damp, enchanted evening. Met some American who went there every vacation, stayed in a hotel, and after breakfast he took the car to a parking lot with good views to look for the beast. London, sure, but I don’t remember.

A memorable trip. But sometimes I wonder what I could have done for myself as a teenager, if I had met him today.

Life goes on

Life goes on

This picture was taken by my father 30 years ago. He was about as old as I am today. When he were in town he came by my job. I don’t think he ever really understood what I was doing. And I was too young and confused to care, or to realize that I cared.

Now dad’s gone. The year before E arrived. Dad’s birthday was this weekend, the little guy’s tomorrow. I became a father myself. At least today I know how good he was, my dad.

Thinking about this is like standing in an existentially damn cross-drag. Enigmatic, sad, and feeling strangely happy at the same time.

No wonder people have become religious.

Meeting with the Space Brothers

Meeting with the Space Brothers

I had just been thinking about my spiritual search and what context I had actually been in. And I had noted that it was not direct sects, but more things that could be described as disorganized, or possibly semi-organized, alternative spirituality.

But then I read a recent post on the author Håkan Blomqvist’s blog, about the history of the UFO movement in Sweden. And his meeting in the early 70’s with a certain Sten Lindgren, alleged “contact person” for extraterrestrial civilizations, as well as representative of the “InterGalactic Federation”, IGF. Or simply the “Space Brothers”

And then I know at least once (there are a few more) when I touched on – and felt the strong gravity from – what must be described as a “sect” with a clear leader.

“On November 21, 1970 Kjell Jonsson and I went by train to Stockholm where we were picked up by Sten Lindgren and his co-worker Bjarne Håkansson. We were taken to Sten Lindgren’s apartement at Lidingö. Arriving at our destination we were soon made aware of that this was no ordinary Swedish home…”

For me, it happened in the late 80’s, at least fifteen years after the meeting Håkan Blomqvist tells about. I was just over twenty and working in a kind of alternative bookstore at the time. A man who introduced himself as Sten Lindgren started talking to me over the counter, and soon invited me to a meeting at his home on Lidingö.

And I went there. It was a surreal, but of course also exciting, evening that sometimes came to mind. Like now. As I remember, most participants that evening were more familiar with and already sympathetic to Lindgren, his ideas and sensations.

The strongest memory of the evening was how he explained to us that the moment we sat there in his sofa group, “reconnaissance discs”, i.e. a kind of UFO drone, hovered outside the windows and watched us. And that we wouldn’t be surprised if they followed us from a distance when we left the house. Previous visitors had testified to this.

Here is a longer article, also by Håkan Blomqvist, about the phenomenon of Sten Lindgren.