Theos-Talk Archives (February 2002 Message tt00003)

Garrett's book is regrettably out of print. It is a
full length book, but it would be nice if someone put
the whole thing on the Internet.

It should also be said that nothing that happened post
1891 can reasonably be blamed on Blavatsky, including
the unseemly power struggles and phony mahatma letters
that came from Judge and his two spirit mediums.

--- bri_mue <bri_mue@yahoo.com> wrote:
> In 1929 the Theosophical Society entered its longest
> lasting crisis 
> wenn Krishnamurti dissolved the Order of the Star
> and abdicated his 
> position as the World Teacher. In The Dissolution of
> the Order of the 
> Star, he rejected all attempts to organize
> spirituality, arguing 
> that "Truth is a pathless land .... Truth, being
> limitless.... cannot 
> be organised; nor should any organisation be formed
> to lead or to 
> coerce people along any particular path." His goal,
> he claimed, was 
> not to found a new religion, but to set men
> free-from all religions, 
> all philosophies, and all fears."
> 
> As William Kingsland put it, "the youth who was
> boomed and 
> advertised for years as the great Avatar, and to
> whom credulous 
> believers gave homage on their knees in London
> drawing-rooms and 
> elsewhere, has now entirely repudiated the whole
> business."
> Krishnamurti's decision threw the TS into chaos.
> Some Lodge members 
> recalled returning from holiday to discover that the
> lodge officials 
> had resigned, the lodge rooms become deserted, and
> the Liberal 
> Catholic Oratory been dismantled, all virtually
> overnight. 
> Some members continued to support the TS out of
> devotion to Annie 
> Besant and Charles Leadbeater. But in 1933 Besant
> died, and 
> Leadbeater died a few months later in 1934. George
> Arundale succeeded 
> Besant as president of the TS and explained it as
> "straight 
> Theosophy." Meaning that is what we get regularly
> showerred on us on 
> theos-talk by Dallas and "the compiler".
> 
> In referrence to my posting yesterday about the
> re-inventions of the 
> TS whose teachings weren't at all wenn it started in
> 1875 then what 
> is was now, I received a back channel mailing asking
> me to expand 
> more on the re-invention of Theosophy in England
> after Blavatsky had 
> moved and died there.
> 
> Interesting that is of course exactly the time where
> the quote of 
> HPB herself is from that I ended my previous posting
> with:
> 
> "Every such attempt as the Theosophical Society has
> hitherto ended in 
> failure, because, sooner or later, it has
> degenerated into a sect, 
> set up hard-and-fast dogmas of its own, and so lost
> by imperceptible 
> degrees that vitality which living truth alone can
> impart...If, then, 
> they [future Theosophists] cannot be freed from such
> inherent bias, 
> or at least taught to recognize it instantly and so
> avoid being led 
> away by it, the result can only be that the Society
> will drift off 
> onto some sandbank or other, and there remain a
> stranded carcass to 
> moulder and die." (HPB, Key to Theosophy, p. 305.)
> 
> Basicly at the end of Blavatsky's life in England as
> I described in 
> an earlier postings there was a self-consciously
> "gentlemanly" 
> variant of theosophy that develloped, which
> emphasized above all 
> theosophy's rational, scolarly, and scientific
> character whereby it 
> was neither.
> 
> Mead's efforts to remake the English society in his
> own image 
> however, received a severe setback in r894, when the
> Westminster 
> Gazette published a series of articles by Edmund
> Garrett exposing 
> what Garrett described as "theosophistry", in the
> TS. Quickly issued 
> in book form as Isis Very Mucb Unveiled, the Story
> of the Great 
> Mabatma Hoax, Garrett's articles turned what had
> been a private 
> scandal within the TS into a highly public one.
> The scandal had been brewing for some time. When
> Blavatsky died, 
> Besant had been expected to succeed her as Outer
> Head of the Esoteric 
> Section (the Masters were assumed to be the Inner
> Heads). At the 
> center of the controversy lay a new series of
> letters from the 
> Mahatmas, which had been received since Blavatsky's
> death, and which 
> many members believed had been forged by William
> Quan Judge. Shortly 
> after HPB died, while both judge and Besant were in
> London, Annie 
> Besant received "precipitated" letters from the
> Masters stating 
> that "Judge's plan is right" and urging her to cede
> control of the ES 
> to judge. As a result, Besant agreed to share the
> Outer Headship with 
> him. Accusations surfaced at Adyar that judge had
> forged the new 
> Mahatma Letters, and he was offered a choice between
> resignation or 
> full investigation. The charges against judge,
> however, became 
> entangled with the question of the existence of the
> Mahatmas from 
> whom he claimed to have received his instructions.
> To preserve the 
> society's neutrality on the question of the
> existence of the Masters, 
> the charges were dropped."
> 
> In August 1891 Annie Besant, in her heavily
> publicized farewell 
> address to the National Secular Society at the Hall
> of Science, had 
> staked her reputation on the existence of the
> Mahatmas and the 
> authenticity of their letters:
> 
> You have known me in this hall for sixteen and a
> half years. 
> (Cheers.) You have never known me to tell a lie to
> you ("No, never," 
> and loud cheers.) My worst public enemy has never
> cast a slur upon my 
> integrity. ("Never," and cheers.) I tell you that
> since Mclme. 
> Blavatsky left I have had letters in the same
> handwriting as the 
> letters which she received. (Sensation.) Unless you
> think dead 
> persons can write, surely that is a remarkable feat.
> You are 
> surprised; I do not ask you to believe me; but I
> tell you it Is so.
> 
> Garrett insisted that Besant, by virtue of her
> public claims on 
> behalf of the society and its teachings, most
> notably this 
> announcement at the Hall of Science, had constituted
> herself as 
> a "professional Honest Person" whose credentials
> should be subject to 
> public examination."
> 
> In Besant's closing statement in her lecture at the
> Hall of 
> Science,"Why I Became a Theosophist," she claimed
> that an imperious 
> necessity forces me to speak the truth, as I see it,
> whether the 
> speech please or displease, whether it bring praise
> or blame. That 
> one loyalty to Truth I must keep stainless, whatever
> friendships fail 
> me or human ties be broken. She may lead me into the
> wilderness, yet 
> I must follow her, she may strip me of all love, yet
> I must pursue 
> her; though she slay me, yet will I trust in her;
> and I ask no other 
> epitaph on my tomb but "SHE TRIED TO FOLLOW TRUTH." 
> 
> Her changes of allegiance, which her critics might
> otherwise construe 
> as feminine inconstancy, Besant represented as
> "loyalty to Truth," 
> here allegorized as feminine. As a woman with a
> public reputation to 
> defend, Besant used the conventional personification
> of Truth as 
> female as her license to speak. Her status as a
> "professional Honest 
> Person," as Garrett put it, was thus crucial to her
> negotiation of 
> 
=== message truncated ===


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