The Order of the Round Table
The Order of the Round Table was instrumental in the success of the school. Most students attended, and performances helped to raise funds. Lodges like Oamaru had an Order of the Round Table whom sent regular donations of money to assist the school and students.
Wrote one admirer:
“On Thursday, August 4th, the members of the Order of the Round Table gave a successful performance in aid of Vasanta Garden School. Everybody present greatly enjoyed the carefully prepared and ingenuous programme which the young folk had arranged. One very small page sang a solo, while others entertained us with recitations and musical items. The play and the sketches were sparkling with humour and showed a great delicacy and depth of interpretation. We were all sorry when the evening came to a close and hope that the members of the Round Table will again entertain us at some future date."
From the ‘Theosophy in New Zealand’ magazine August 1932
Please look at The Torch Magazine for some interesting material that has been collected pertaining to the school and its students.
Group Photograph taken on the occasion of Mr Krishnammurti's visit to Auckland in 1934
Wrote one admirer:
“On Thursday, August 4th, the members of the Order of the Round Table gave a successful performance in aid of Vasanta Garden School. Everybody present greatly enjoyed the carefully prepared and ingenuous programme which the young folk had arranged. One very small page sang a solo, while others entertained us with recitations and musical items. The play and the sketches were sparkling with humour and showed a great delicacy and depth of interpretation. We were all sorry when the evening came to a close and hope that the members of the Round Table will again entertain us at some future date."
From the ‘Theosophy in New Zealand’ magazine August 1932
Please look at The Torch Magazine for some interesting material that has been collected pertaining to the school and its students.
Group Photograph taken on the occasion of Mr Krishnammurti's visit to Auckland in 1934
What New Zealand Stands For: An Address to the Round Table by Joy Hanlon.
I would like to speak to you to-night not only as young Theosophists, but as New Zealanders. Our ideal is to live the life of the ego, at least a life where distinctions of nationality do not enter as prejudices, but the practice of this ideal does not mean disregarding the country of our birth. From out of the joys and sorrows of many incarnations spent in all parts of the world, with the period of assimilation between lives, there emerges a tolerance and understanding of other countries that may make us tend to disregard the claims of our own. In endeavouring to be just to other nations there is a danger of our being unjust to New Zealand. We have been born into the country; a beautiful land, for a purpose we cannot hope to fathom until we come to love it; and to consecrate our lives to the unfoldment of a New Zealand national consciousness. As generations succeed each other the external and mystical conditions of these islands will inevitably produce a distinctive type of human being, a peculiar literature and art, and probably an original philosophy. These things will only come slowly, as we ordinarily measure time, but it is possible for us; who know something of the future to manage our lives that we may anticipate that future and, even in this incarnation, make our personalities types of what New Zealanders will be in centuries yet to come.
It is required of us to not only be spiritual, to develop our minds and purify our emotions; these things must be observed by all men, no matter where born, who aspire to saintliness. It is necessary that we should seek to understand this country of our birth, not only our ccontrymen, but the country itself, the earth, the forests; mountains, rivers and seas, and listen to the heart-beat of our country, Just as no man is exactly like any other man, so no land is exactly like any other land, in either outer appearance or internal significance. To meditate on our country is to enter into its inner consciousness and to do this continually, and to work for it, to become finally an archetypal New Zealander, intellectually and spiritually.
Our claim to be New Zealanders cannot rest securely on the lone fact that our bodies have been born in New Zealand. If we live only on the surface, obtaining from New Zealand only that which we could quite as well obtain from any other country; then we are not New Zealanders; but if we allow our country to work upon us in such a way as no other country can, then we can say, with some truth, that we are the legitimate sons and daughters of this ancient land.
Our aim, then, should be to understand New Zealand and then to interpret it, so that eventually all New Zealanders will know their country as not only a place to exist in, but as a part of themselves.
Our interpretations will vary according to our temperaments. Music, painting, literature, and other modes of expression, will provide a channel to communicate the inspiration that will surely come to us if we seek to understand our native land.
The first thing is to examine ourselves, to find out what our special qualification for this work is - the work it must be remembered of the Great White Brotherhood - and then give special attention to the development of that faculty, although such development should not be at the expense of our spiritual life. The trouble with most of us is that we have a smattering of a number of good things to which we give attention as the mood dictates, but never develop special ability in any one of them. We may be able to comment on a limited number of operas, discuss the lives of composers and philosophers and criticise their works and systems, but we have not the genius that can compose a symphony, create a sound philosophical structure, or paint a word picture of life that will live forever. "We are not great enough for that, we are not geniuses", you will say. That is true, but we could be if we thought only of the Plan, and sacrificed the moods of the personality to the development of our special faculty; thus making our contribution to the new race the greatest possible Inwardly we are geniuses, but our personalities are incapable of expressing that genius, more through lack of training than because of insurmountable difficulties. Those who desire to further the work of the Great Ones must take themselves in hand and train themselves, and then go and seek this mystic New Zealand, remembering that its relation to the physical island we know is as the soul to the body.
"If you ask me how we understand Theosophical duty practically and in view of karma, I may answer you that our duty is to drink without a murmur; to the last drop, whatever contents the cup of life may have in store for us." H. P. Blavatsky.
Date Unknown (Joy Hanlon was a student in 1936)
The Letter below is dated October 10th 1919 requesting permission to use a tennis court at Vasanta College.