On Gerald Heard

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by Derek Bok

Gerald was one of my mother’s British friends, who often visited our Laurel Canyon house.[i] He was a man of many talents. An excellent draftsman, he would sit with me when I fell ill with pneumonia and draw pictures of all kinds of things from sailing ships to the Bay of Naples. He could also tell wonderful ghost stories in a most dramatic manner. I can still recall sitting with my brother and sister one evening at dusk while he related “The Monkey’s Paw.” At a climactic moment in the story, he suddenly clutched my knee, sending me into paroxysms of fear.

Gerald wrote a number of books on vast topics such as Pain, Sex and Time along with eight mystery novels and one children’s book. His major works on the human condition were not easy to read. One of his books, The Human Venture, offered guidance for individuals posing the question with which the book begins: “What is the meaning of the present world situation?” To make sense of it all, we must work to enhance our inborn human potential: “In attempting psychological exercises man can demonstrate that it is possible to change conduct, character, and consciousness.” 

Gerald’s greatest gift was as a lecturer, for which he was in great demand. He would speak on large subjects, drawing on his remarkable breadth of knowledge and a mesmerizing eloquence. In all my years in academic life, I have never heard anyone who could equal him.

During my senior year in high school, at the urging of my mother, I visited him once a week in his house in Santa Monica to talk for an hour or more. Although he would speak of many subjects with an impressive command of detail, he would always stress the importance of freeing oneself from worldly ambitions and dependence on material things. He never explicitly urged me to follow this path toward some hoped-for enlightenment. Yet I could tell that he would be delighted if I chose to devote my life to that goal. To a boy like me, however, full of energy and with so much to be explored and enjoyed, a life of contemplation seemed entirely out of the question.

An additional contribution by Sissela Bok, from notes:

Gerald took great interest in Derek’s development as he grew up. In a letter to Derek’s mother Peggy (Margaret Kiskadden)[ii], he wrote of having had “a wonderful time with our D. I am increasingly amazed. I have told him it will be the best thing for me if I can do anything for him & that I’d rather be of help in that way to a person like him than attempt any other kind of work.” And when Peggy told him that Derek had informed his Stanford fraternity brothers that he would resign if they rejected a pledge because he was a Jew, Gerald wrote her that he had “written to Derek to say that if he thought I could be of any use to him in his work I’d, naturally, be very pleased. I think it is remarkable that our D.B., who is able to judge so adequately the pleasures of university life, should still feel that he must miss a large part of them if the uses of that life aren’t equal.”

Derek Bok served as the 25th president of Harvard University, from 1971 to 1991, as well Harvard’s acting president from 2006 to 2007. Professor Bok graduated from Harvard Law School and was chosen to serve as its dean from 1968 to 1971. During his long and distinguished career, Professor Bok has written or co-written more than a dozen influential books, mostly on education. Derek Bok is married to Sissela Bok. Read more about him in this article.

[i] According to Sissela Bok, Heard’s visits took place around 1936–7 [March 2025]. Derek Bok was born in 1930, so he would have been six or seven years old.

[ii] According to Sissela Bok, the letter from Gerald Heard to Peggy Kiskadden would have been written around 1950 [March 2025].