High City

Ojai, Calif., is quite often the scene of strange goings on (TIME, May 21); never has it been the scene of a queerer ceremony than that which graced the summit of one of its hills on a mild evening last week.

Jiddu Krishnamurti (TIME, Sept. 6, 1926, May 9, 1927) far from the flats of India where he had been born, far from the paunchy side of famed 80-year-old Dr. Annie Besant who had raised him to be "a new world leader," was standing upon the hilltop, chanting a Vedic hymn; he carried a flaming torch which, with a graceful stoop, he applied to a pile of carefully prepared faggots. The faggots went up in a cloud of smoke and flame; Krish-namurti's disciples, of whom a thousand sat upon the slope of the hill, drew a breath of wonder-and listened while their leader spoke to them in a soft voice.

The occasion was the opening of the first Camp Conference of the Order of the Star. The thousand or more disciples who were present at the faggot burning included persons from every state in the U. S. as well as residents of India, Australia, England, Russia, South America.