The King and I – Centenary Tribute 2

“Why don’t you sit down and have a drink with me?”

“I’d love to, Master”, I replied as I poured myself a drink and sat next to him.

“Yes, but why do I have to ask?” He choked slightly. “Then I am completely alone”.

The starkness of this remark resonated within me. There was I, staying with him at his residence in Santa Barbara, and he had to invite me to join him. What he wanted from me in that instance was not polite respectfulness, with the distance that can bring, but the warmth of friendship and love.

The three-stage journey of the disciple

For me, the disciple’s journey falls into three stages.

1) First you have to find your Master and learn how to follow him.

2) As you progress to the next stage, you begin to move beyond just following and you really start to love him.

3) And then comes the most important stage of all, when you assist him in his mission – and, if you are fortunate enough to be in a position to do so, help him personally too.

An unpredictable Master

We all got it wrong sometimes and, with a Master as enigmatic as Dr King, it was a mug’s game predicting exactly how he would react at any given moment. Conversations could turn on a dime from hilarious repartee to strict admonishments and much between. The default position was to eagerly listen and occasionally interject as he spoke with his trademark authority and knowledge on a range of topics from the cosmic to the commonplace to the comical. But that could change when he would become the most attentive of listeners; or when he wished to be regaled with a choice selection of anecdotes and assorted yarns – not always for the first time!

An attentive listener

“Give me some of your great logic, boy,” he exhorted teasingly as we sat together in the dining room at Aetherius House in London after lunch one day. As instructed, I held forth for what must have been at least ten minutes about goodness knows what, until it was clearly enough. I will never know what the purpose of that conversation was, except that it was certainly not for the benefit of his education!

On another occasion at a hotel in Carlisle, he came into the bedroom which I was sharing with John Holder, after dinner one evening. He sat down on a simple wooden chair and asked me to tell him how things were going in The Aetherius Society in Nigeria, something in which he always had a very deep interest. I gave what amounted to an uninterrupted dissertation for a considerable time as he registered expressions of interest and approval. When he seemed satisfied he said ‘goodnight’ to us both and retired to his room. Once again, I never knew exactly why he picked that time to ask for such a report – especially since we were on our way to Scotland the following morning for a very important Cosmic Mission – but that was the nature of the man and Master who was a habitué of the unexpected.

An unexpected initiation

Dr King in The Aetherius Temple in Los Angeles prior to a blessing ceremony.

Such was the occasion he chose to initiate his dear wife, Monique, and myself into an ancient mantra of great power. We had not prepared ourselves with fasting and japa, nor had we contemplated silently in the Temple for several hours beforehand. We had, in fact, been watching a film on television with him in his sitting room in Los Angeles. Afterwards he turned the television off and without warning or apparent preparation proceeded to impart the sacred Sanskrit words to us. There was no grand pronouncement nor a requirement for us to kneel in his presence, but as he spoke, I could not help but notice a tear rolling down the side of his cheek.

Terrible aloneness

Dr King sits alone pensively.

The loneliness he must have experienced can only be guessed at. The Master Jesus spoke with devastating poignancy in ‘The Twelve Blessings’ about the Planetary Ones living upon Earth: “who, day by day, suffer the unspeakable hell of terrible aloneness, in order to give you their hearts.” And the Venusian Master of love would really know – from first-hand experience.

An alien psychology

Dr King delivers an address in Los Angeles.

The evolutionary chasm between Dr King and even his closest friends and disciples was unquantifiable, and yet it fell to some of us to at least try to bridge it and thereby lessen the sense of isolation he must have felt living as a god among humans. His searing words in the brilliant address ‘The Men who won Operation Karmalight for you’ delivered on February 24th, 1978, illustrate how alien his psychological make-up was and he knew it. Talking about how the Three Adepts behaved after this great victorious battle in the lower astral realms of Earth, sometimes called “the hells”, he said:

They knew when they came back home from the wars that it was finished, as far as you were concerned, but not as far as they are [sic] concerned, and they still retained this balance. I, myself, in my own little way, have said more than once… ‘when this is all over, that’s it for me you can forget The Aetherius Society, you’ll never see sight of me, I’m just going to go out and have a good time’. That was one of the biggest lies I have ever told. I didn’t do it and, ladies and gentlemen, let me be honest with you, I’ve looked at myself in the mirror and I have condemned myself for not doing it. I said, ‘what the hell is the matter with you, King? Why don’t you go and kick over the traces?’ I must be as alien as those other people [the Adepts]…

As the medium who received the Transmissions throughout the sixteen months of Operation Karmalight he was on stand-by for 24 hours a day. He had tried to think as an ordinary human being would about what he would do afterwards, but his psychology was completely different. He carried on, just as he always had done, in his mission for the world as a whole, which included running The Aetherius Society. He blamed himself for not being more like us, but the truth is that we should be more like him – it is for us to move in his direction.

Just for a moment

Dr King at his desk in Santa Barbara where he sometimes received mental transmissions.

On another occasion in Santa Barbara, he had just performed the unimaginable feat of receiving a Mental Transmission from the greatest Masters resident in our world, the Protectors of the Ineffable Flame of the Logos of Terra. He walked slowly down the corridor from his office and sat in his armchair, fatigued and seemingly deflated at having to “return” from such elevated company. This time I did not leave him alone but sat down next to him. There was silence as I wondered whether or not I should “break the ice”.

After about a minute, I made a statement that can only be described as preposterous – not in terms of its validity but because it came from so unqualified a source as myself. “It is rare”, I proffered, “in the annals of occult history for such intelligences as these to use this method of communication with anyone in a terrestrial body”. I knew how ridiculous it was for me to opine on such a matter to a master as advanced as he – it was not as if he needed my untutored speculation. But he looked up and glanced in my direction. And then he nodded in agreement and started to talk about it. It was as though he felt just for a moment that he was not alone – and that, for me, was all that mattered.
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