Page 193 - JOURNAL OF THE KRISHNAMURTI SCHOOLS

Ridiculous the waste sad time
Stretching before and after.
—TS Eliot, Burnt Norton

There is an old Irish story. In ancient days a certain clan was beset
by a wasting sickness. It was not only physical but the very souls
of the people were afflicted. A young man was tasked with finding
the solution. He was told by the wise old woman that he had to go
to the other world and drink from the waters of the well. This well
is the source of all wells and of all rivers, visible and invisible. The
difficulty was he didn’t know the way. He couldn’t see the road to
the otherworld. There is no path, no way to that country.
He didn’t have the eye to see. Our hero dreamt of a young
woman, hair black like a raven’s wing, lips blood red, face white as
snow. In the dream she gives him a silver branch. He awakes hold-
ing the branch. But it vanishes in the morning light. He knows that
is what he needs to enter the otherworld. Neither fact-finding mis-
sion nor scientific analysis will help our friend, only a change in
the seer himself and the eye that sees. He needs the silver branch,
silver branch seeing.
Thus began his long journey to recover the silver branch. A
sea voyage and a sea change, a dangerous voyage not unlike
Ulysses, ‘the man of twists and turns’, returning home, who relied
on the navigator’s skill, perceptive subtlety, acute listening and
watching.
Now Krishnamurti might say to our hero, as he has said
to us:

We are entering upon an uncharted sea, and each one has to be
his own captain, pilot and sailor. He has to be everything himself.
There is no guide, and that is the beauty of existence. If you have
companions and guides, you never take the journey alone, therefore
you are not taking the journey at all. The journey is a process of

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