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Sarah Masters reviews the audio series

Truth Is a Pathless Land

Truth is a Pathless Land highlights the essential teachings of Jiddu Krishnamurti in a compelling 2½ hour audio session.

Krishnamurti, who passed away in 1986, continues to be widely regarded as a powerful spiritual teacher. He traveled the world espousing the core belief that individuals can transform themselves through self-knowledge, by being aware of their thoughts and feelings in daily life.

He was born in 1895 into a family of Brahmins who lived about 150 miles north of Madras, India. He was raised from the age of 13 by leaders of the international Theosophical Society called The Order of the Star. Theosophists built the organization around Krishnamurti after selecting him as what they called “the vehicle for the return of Christ.”

Interestingly, as a young adult Krishnamurti disavowed this destiny and also dissolved the Order of the Star. In his departing speech to the Theosophists, he maintained “…that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect… Truth, being limitless, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead people along any particular path...A belief is purely an individual matter.”

For nearly 60 years, from 1929 until his death, Krishnamurti, during his travels, engaged with people from all walks of life. The author of many books, Krishnamurti spoke with religious leaders, professors, writers, psychologists and scientists of all faiths and, at the age of 90, he addressed the United Nations on the subjects of peace and awareness. He was awarded the UN Peace Medal two years before his death.

Krishnamurti maintained that truth is arrived at through concerted inquiry into one’s own experiences and through “watching closely whatever is occurring.” A world of peace and love, a new society, can emerge only through a radical change in the individual, according to this spiritual teacher. Krishnamurti urged listeners to be, rather than to become.

Chaplains may find particularly useful Krishnamurti’s discussion of how to mend the “broken parts of ourselves and society.” His final message was a very positive one. The pursuit of self-knowledge, he said, is not a solitary venture, but can be achieved only “in the mirror of relationship” to people, to nature, to things and to self. He believed that as individuals come to understand the content of their own consciousness, they will discover that their individual consciousness “is common to humanity.”

Completed: 2003
Running Time: 2½ Hours
Publisher: Sounds True

If you are interested in purchasing this audio series, you can do so at www.hartleyfoundation.org. Just click on “Sacred Sounds” on the homepage for more information. The cost of the series is $24.95.

Sarah Masters is the Managing Director of the Hartley Film Foundation, a non-profit foundation dedicated to cultivation, support, production and distribution of the best documentaries and audio meditations on world religions, spirituality, ethics and well-being.

Book Review

Sister Margaret Theresa Oettinger, O.P., reviews

A Balm for Gilead

As we all can attest to the intensity and fullness of our daily lives as chaplains, Father/Doctor Sulmasy reminds us that physicians and other healthcare professionals also “inhabit multiple spheres of discourse, and spirituality touches them all.” In A Balm for Gilead, Father Sulmasy shares his unique journey, integrating his personal spirituality with his medical vocation.

Put another way, he brings his humanity and compassion to us all, whatever our specific role in the healthcare field.

Father/Doctor Sulmasy should be invited to teach at our medical schools to engage our new physicians and guide them in the early days of their vocation. Indeed Father/Doctor Sulmasy brings great empathy to our medical practitioners who entered medicine with great purity of purpose, but have been diminished by the need to survive in their practices by dealing with the bureaucracies of insurance companies, the AMA and the like. Indeed he proposes a four-step program to enable doctors to renew themselves to the nobility of their profession.

Even though this book is smoothly written, I found myself going back to certain sections to ponder further on several themes. The reading became more of a meditation than an intellectual evaluation of the book.

The writing is clear and well organized. I was thoroughly engaged with the book and would heartily recommend it to anyone. It’s a “mini-retreat” for all of us who spend our days running up and down hallways. It’s a book that I will “gift” to my fellow healthcare professionals, and I will keep a copy of it next to my computer to pull out and read a few pages during challenging times.

My only suggestion is that I think the words from the African American spiritual should be printed on the front cover:

“There is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.”

Those few lines say it simply, say it completely.

Sulmasy, Daniel P. A Balm for Gilead, Georgetown University Press:Washington, DC (2006), pp 154.

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