Reflections on PB

Paul Cash has played a major role in the Foundation’s efforts to bring forth and share with many people the spiritual writings that PB left to us. Paul served PB during PB’s final months on Earth and was blessed in many ways including being one of three people tasked and trained by PB to edit into publishable form what became the sixteen volumes of The Notebooks of Paul Brunton. In the following essay, Paul shares intimate details of one effect that PB’s rare presence had on him.

Ed McKeown’s “Grace Notes” is an essay written after the six months he spent assisting PB reflecting on the prayers PB would offer before meals.  Ed was the first ‘butler’ to arrive at PB’s doorstep from Wisdom’s Goldenrod in the lattermost years of PB’s life.

Avery Solomon writes about his meeting with His Holiness Shankaracharya of Kanchipuram. It was this teacher who had encouraged PB to meet Ramana Maharshi, and this story is described in A Search in Secret India. In A Visit to Shankaracharya, Avery shares personal moments and something special that the Shankara said about PB.

In the 1930s PB asked permission to visit the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. He was allowed on the condition that he would write nothing on Sri Aurobindo: the Ashram did not want publicity. Knowing his own ability to make the Ashram popular in the world’s eyes, he was greatly amazed at the restriction put on him, but he has stuck to the order throughout his life and confined himself in his books to making general statements of his admiration for Sri Aurobindo with no view to popularization or propaganda. During his stay in the Ashram he became very friendly with Amal Kiran alias K. D. Sethna and the letters between them also contain PB’s reflections on some of the doctrinal ideas of Sri Aurobindo.

In “Reflections on Paul Brunton,” Paul Cash describes something of the time he spent with PB during the last five months of PB’s life. Paul also recounts some insightful conversations that he had with PB. Paul Cash is the owner of Larson Publications and co-editor of PB’s posthumous writings; he is also a long-time student of Anthony Damiani’s.

I vividly remember how, more than a quarter of a century ago, his Search in Secret India held me spellbound for weeks and months.  I read it over and over again.  The world it portrayed—of holy men and sages—seemed strangely familiar to me.

“A Healing Meditation” tells the story about a meeting with PB and is taken from a sermon that Dr. Roy Burkhart gave the year he met PB. Dr. Roy Burkhart was a charismatic, mystical pastor of the First Community Church in Columbus, Ohio. He inspired many individuals in the Columbus PB Group and in the community that he served.  PB was guided to seek out Dr. Burkhart and meet with him in 1950.

Sri Ganesan is the great nephew of Ramana Maharshi and former President of the Ramana Ashram & Editor of Mountain Path.