stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

... TO A NUNNERY 293
trees that bend low with the burden of ripening fruits; it is
the barren tree that lifts its head high in an empty boast.
Given that glowing evaluation, however, descriptions of Burbank’s
character which go contrary to what one might expect from
a “humble, modest saint” become very relevant. Thus:
Conflicting with the independence conferred by his selfesteem
was his love of approval by others. Though he would
do nothing dishonest to earn such approval (for that would
have brought self-condemnation), he eagerly accepted it as
no more than his due. “There are striking instances,” says
[fellow horticulturalist and writer George] Shull, “in which
the combination of these two dominant traits produces one
instant the most profound modesty and the next instant almost
blatant self-praise” (Dreyer, 1975).
Indeed, by 1908, Burbank had come to the immodest conclusion
that, having surpassed Darwin in the number of plants he had
raised, he was “therefore”
“the greatest authority on plant life that had ever lived.”
This being the case, he felt that he was better qualified than
anyone else to pronounce on the subject of evolution (Dreyer,
1975).
On that same subject, however: Burbank believed in the inheritance
of only acquired traits, and was himself actually regarded
by the Soviet quack geneticist Lysenko as being one of “the best
biologists.” Notwithstanding that unfortunate association with
such an unscientific protégé of Stalin, Shull (in Dreyer, 1975) offered
this opinion of Luther’s claims in general:
[Burbank] had an “exaggeration coefficient” of about ten ...
all his figures should be divided by this number to get an approximation
of the truth.
So it goes when one is the “Einstein of horticulture,” of the
species exaggeratus wilberus—although Einstein himself, unlike
others we have seen, had far too great a devotion to truth to ever
countenance such egregious departure from the facts, in his own
character.