In
Search Of Paul
Brunton
Paul
Brunton, thinking of a refreshing cup of tea, stepped through
the doorway of his adobe hut out in the scrub brush near the sacred
hill of Arunachalam, South India. As if in slow motion he watched
his foot come down inches from the flushed hood of a cobra. Neither
panicked. But they both froze, Brunton’s brown eyes locked into
the pure oynx eyes of the reptile. Brunton was a mystic adventurer/writer
from Britain, whose masters included an American spiritualist,
an Englishman Buddhist abbot, a Hindu aristocrat and now Ramana
Maharshi, the stratospheric sage of Arunachalam. The cobra was
a symbol of the mystic power of kundalini. However, that wasn’t
what Brunton was thinking about as he broke off the frightening
communion with the cobra and backstepped awkwardly into the brush.
An advanced disciple of Maharshi came along and actually petted
the cobra, before it slithered off.
This
scene is from Brunton’s A Search in Secret India, the page-turning
chronicle of Brunton’s scouring of India for yogis with supernatural
abilities or presences. A Search was first published in London
in 1934, skyrocketed to popularity and has since sold 250,000
copies worldwide. Along with Autobiography of a Yogi and Christopher
Isherwood’s Ramakrishna and His Disciples, it continues to be
one of the most inviting, exciting gateways to the mystical Hindu
environment. A Search was Brunton’s first book, written after
two years of ranging across India with a supply of pens, notepads,
a typewriter, Kodak camera and a video camcorder-like mind when
he was 32 year old. His search ended personally and narratively
at the sun-andadvaita furnace of Ramana Maharshi’s ashram.
A
neurochemical of nomadic wandering filtered into his blood at
this turn in his life. Even in A Search, Brunton describes his
surreal encounter with an alabaster pale, reclusive Brahmin astrologer
in Benares who fingers numerous crinkly charts and softly says,
“The world will become your home. You shall travel far and wide,
yet always you will carry a pen and do your writing work.” Brunton
wrote that at the time he couldn’t measure such prophecies. But
he did end up roaming the musical roads across Asia and the Middle
East and writing thirteen books till 1952. These included A Hermit
in the Himalayas and The Secret Path, which in 1990 was put in
audio cassette form by actor Christopher Reeves of Superman movie
fame.
After
1952 he dropped out of published writing and recorded bursts of
flash insight on napkins, envelopes, any odd scrap handy on his
walks and later recrafted those into private journals. At a special
horseshoe-shaped desk in his home in Switzerland he kept up streams
of correspondence with inquirers and close students, for by the
60’s he, the seeker, had become to many the sought-after master,
though he heartily discouraged such a relationship. In a night
vision in 1963 a supernova erupted in his psyche, what he knew
as final enlightenment. It was intensely private and he only told
his son and student, Kenneth Thurston Hurst, about it in 1979,
two years before his death. Hurst recalls in his biographical
book on his father (Paul Brunton, A Personal View), the 80-year-old’s
words: “My own final illumination happened in 1963. There was
this bomblike explosion of consciousness, as if my head had split
open. It happened during the night in a state between sleeping
and waking, and led to deepening of the stillness: there was no
need to meditate. The verse in the Bhagavad Gita which mentions
that to the Knower the day is as night and the night is as day
became literally true, and remains so. It came of itself and I
realized the Divine had always been with me and in me.”
In
his winter years Brunton had aged into a philosopher’s handsomeness,
a kind of Celtic sage with currents of compassion in wide open
eyes, a short white beard and fine onion-paper skin. He died on
July 27, 1981 in Vivey, Switzerland his son listened to a death
rattle thrice, then a sigh of release.
Brunton
wasn’t born Paul Brunton. In a London suburb in 1898 he was born
as Raphael Hurst. Trained in the metaphysical art of positive
thinking and timing, he chose a new name for himself when he wrote
A Search in Secret India. It was his first book, a time of new
career navigation. His choice was Brunton Paul, a concoction he
thought elegant. But his typesetter thought it was backwards and
in a gesture of undisclosed helpfulness reversed it to Paul Brunton.
Ten thousand copies rolled off the presses and Raphael Hurst chuckled
at the karmic inversion - and happily accepted it. To his friends
and students he became PB, a trimmed down appellation that reflected
his trim mustache and innate modesty. To judge Brunton solely
by his book A Secret would be misleading. In real life he was
a far more spiritual man than Brunton the mystically curious journalist
and occasionally annoyingly skeptic of A Search. True, he was
both seeker and scientific literate. But his narration in A Search
seems an exaggerated guise to create credibility in book of yogic
transhuman testimony that also meets scientific prove-it, how-does-this-work
scrutiny. He shrewdly noted the Hindu’s tendency to accept any
claim as true. Years later Brunton humorously remarked that as
his books ascended into higher strata of philosophy his audience
shrunk proportionately.
His
mother and younger brother died when he was a little boy. By age
sixteen Brunton had reached his full height a short man, which
he was slightly self conscious of, but with a high forehead. He
habitually noted mystically advanced people’s precipitous forehead.
And by age sixteen he was seriously meditating - indeed he was
almost a doppelganger to the youthful Ramana Maharshi, 18 years
his senior, who underwent a transformative samadhi at age 17.
Brunton records in his private journal, “Before I reached the
threshold of manhood and after six months of unwavering daily
practice of meditation and eighteen months of burning aspiration
for the Spiritual Self, I underwent a series of mystical ecstasies.
During them I attained a kind of elementary consciousness of it...It
was certainly the most blissful time I had ever had until then.
I saw how transient and how shallow was earthly pleasure by comparison
with the real happiness to be found in this deeper Self.”
The
ecstasies retreated after several weeks, but the afterglow left
a refinement in his nerve system lasting for several years. By
his own intentions he may not have lived into future years. He
resolved in his teenage diary, “Commit suicide a fortnight hence.”
The sooty, caustic vibrations of London so bothered him he resolved
that the only solution available to a young spiritual seeker was
a swift exit from Earth. Apparently, moving to more congenial
environs wasn’t a realistic option.
In
what would be a good Dickens plot, plans were set. And questions
bubbled up. What would happen to him at death’s door? Curiosity
carried him to the British Museum Library where the reference
librarian steered him to the shelves in spiritualism subjects.
A stack of books on the astral worlds hefted in his hands, he
went home and read. And read. More books checked out. Two weeks
sped by and he noted the suicide better be postponed. With newfound
knowledge of the realities of reincarnation and astral existence,
the idea of suicide died.
Brunton
formed a Bohemian parlor society of spiritual seekers, attended
London Theosophical Society meetings and joined the Spiritualist
Society of Great Britain. He found as a tributary of his meditations
that occult powers were eddying into his consciousness. When Brunton
learned that a well-known public speaker was practicing black
magic, he attended the next lecture. When the address began, Brunton
psychically cut the light power. When the power was switched on
again, he projected such a force it blew the light bulbs into
shards. Fascinated, he plunged headlong into these waters, but
an inner message flung him to shore: either continue the sidetrack
of psychism or the central path of spiritual realization. He agonized,
but chose the more important path to Self. The powers subsided,
though he kept an intuitive sensitivity aglow.
His
son Kenneth recounts how he brought his fiancČ to meet his father
for dinner in a restaurant to secure his blessings for marriage.
Brunton sat in withdrawn, stony silence the whole time, leaving
the son exasperated. Brunton later explained it was necessary
to become absorbed in his Higher Self requiring a meditative
stillness - to feel out the prospects for the union. His feeling:
not a good match. A while later the girl left Kenneth for another
man.
Brunton’s
own marriage came with a flickering karma of divorce. Three years
after his son was born, Brunton’s wife came to him and said she
had fallen in love with Leonard Gill, a fellow member of the Bohemian
spiritualist circle. Without hesitation, and perhaps sensing some
kind of providential release, he offered a divorce. He was amicable
with his wife and Gill for life. Celibate bachelorhood suited
him well from then on. And this, in large measure, contributed
to his magnetism in later life.
Three
times a day, as reliable as the old West’s pony express teams,
Brunton sat for meditation. And he was a strict vegetarian, for
health, conscience and spiritual refinement reasons. His favorite
dishes were rice-and-curries from India, which as A Secret tells
in the opening chapter Brunton was introduced to by the mysterious
“rajah” of London. Brunton eventually learned to cook curry like
a Madras master.
Not
surprisingly, Brunton’s vocations orbited around publishing, either
selling or writing. He sold books door-to-door, managed Foyles,
then the largest bookstore in the world, and was half owner of
a bookstore near the British Museum. It was at this bookstore
that the turbaned and very urbane “rajah” one of Brunton’s three
gurus walked in and invited Brunton to a dinner that would change
his life. Brunton never identifies the rajah by name even in his
private journals. Years earlier a charismatic American painter
named Thurston entered the bookshop and also suggested a dinner
engagement. Thurston served as mystic mentor to Brunton for three
years. Brunton wrote of him, “He was a phenomenally gifted clairvoyant
and adept in the better sense who passed through the world quietly,
unobserved but unforgettable by those he helped.” Thurston predicted
Brunton would uncover and widely broadcast ancient mysteries.
It is the rajah who casts the first spell of enchantment with
India’s yogis over Brunton. He even tells him he will definitely
go one day. Brunton then and there is ready to book ship passage
to Bombay. It is years though before he voyages to India and meets
a stone-like yogi, the Shankarachariya, Ramana Maharshi, a swami
who consumes poison and many others. Success, the magazine, got
in the way.
To
be continued in the January 1992 edition.
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