1916, throughout this year both boys worked hard to pass their entrance examinations. Nitya had little difficulty, but K's hope were dwindling. Both Oxford and Cambridge were out of the question. In addition to his academic weakness, it must have been difficult for conservative universities to consider accepting an Indian boy who had been trumpeted around the world as the coming Messiah!
K was hardly typical of the sort of child usually drawn into the TS cricle. Scrawny, vacant and humourless, he was invariably outshone by his younger brother Nitya. He possessed an innate personal magnetism, not of a warm physical variety, but none the less emotive in its austeristy, and inclined to inspire veneration. Observers throughout his life noted its effect, and labelled it in a number of ways, most frequently "benediction". As far as CWL is concerned, the most important attribute K possessed was emptiness, which offered opportunity to conduct the crowning experiment: a blank sheet, apparently without a will of his own, pliable and passive, perfect material to be shaped and programmed.
Speaking of himself in the third person as he often did, K himself recounted that: "And this boy, neither worsip, nor flattery, nor crowds --- nothing seemed to touch him. So – he was vague, moronic, perhaps that's not the word, but enough to describe a boy who was absolutely vacant. He would tell everybody: "I will do whatever you want." That used to be his favorite phrase.
Two years later acceptance to University of London was extended to Nitya but not K, who then spent additional 8 months yet to only find himself in another desperate failure. Nearly half century later during one of his taped interviews, again, K referred to himself in the third person: "He did fairly well in school as long as he was left alone, but the moment he had to pass an examination, he couldn't put a thing on paper. He would go to the examination hall and look at the clock and blank. Nothing happened."
K's apparent lack of intellect became the source of some embarrassing qestions from OSE members. In defence of her protégé, Besant always could refer to the intuitive faculty rather than book-learning intellect; and CWL had for years been declaring that spiritually superior individuals are "ever looking upwards" rather than focussing on material achievement.
K and Nitya
K and CWL