 Last Meeting
December 1986
Every year in the month of December, Adyar used to wear a
festive look coinciding with the birthday of the great contemporary philosopher J.
Krishnamoorthy (affectionately called Krishna Ji) and the annual conference of
Theosophical Society. Every year the event was marked with a series of lectures to be
delivered by the philosopher.
During December 1986, Krishna Ji had scheduled to deliver
10 talks in Madras. He had not been keeping well for sometime. He was suffering from
cancer and as he arrived in Madras he took a turn for the worse. He was expected to leave
his body soon after reaching California.
In these circumstances his visits to other parts of India
were cancelled and the number of his talks in Madras was reduced to four. These were to be
the very last public appearances of the great philosopher in India and there was a great
scramble to come to these four talks. These talks were also very significant from the
point of his philosophy. In four days he was likely to go over the sum total of all what
he had said during his entire life.
 I attended all the four talks. On the last day, the atmosphere was charged with
emotion. The audience were already in a state of mourning as many of them including me
were not to see him again after that day.
Very appropriately he chose to speak about death. In a way,
he was saying goodbye to us, goodbye to Vasant Vihar, goodbye to India and to the world.
While I was sitting and listening, I saw an elderly man
rushing in. He collapsed next to me on the ground. He was crying and wailing. "Have I
missed everything? I am coming from Tiruchi, my bus came late."
I assured him that he had not missed too much and I would
tell him later what was spoken before.
The reality of his final departure had dawned on people and
they wanted to hang on to every precious word he said and spend every precious moment in
his company.
He spoke most pleasantly about ‘death’. When he
finished there was total silence. No one moved. Nobody got up to leave. About a ten
thousand strong crowd kept sitting on the ground of Vasant Vihar. He understood the mood
of the people and said, "should we sit down together for a while." The crowd
nodded their heads. The next ten minutes everyone sat in silence taking in every iota of
his presence, internalising him, absorbing him, drinking in his words and basking in his
aura.
Meanwhile, I watched what he was doing. He raised his eyes
and started looking at Vasant Vihar from end to end. He looked at every building, every
window, each tree, each branch, each bird, every leaf and perhaps at every blade of grass.
I could see he had a soft corner for Vasant Vihar and he was giving it a last affectionate
glance.
The moment he got up the people started wailing and crying,
falling on the ground, fainting. This was the final exit of the Master and they were all
besides themselves.
I saw Radhika (Director of Rishi Valley School) crying like
a baby. The entire crowd walked behind him till he entered the building and the door was
closed behind him.
The curtains were thus drawn on the greatest contemporary
Indian philosopher about whom Time Magazine wrote a cover story in 1935 titled, the Guru
who demolished all Gurus. He left for his heavenly abode peacefully in California after a
few days.
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