Bart on the Importance of Leadbeater's birthdate: 1847 versus 1854
Jul 26, 2004 08:48 PM
by Daniel H. Caldwell
Bart,
You wrote:
============================================
Why is the exact date of birth for Leadbeater
so important?
===============================================
I'm sure Gregory Tillett can answer your
question more fully than I can, but I will
give you one example to ponder on.
Note well what C.W. Leadbeater wrote in
his book THE MASTERS AND THE PATH.
===============================================
Madame Blavatsky has often told us how she met
the Master Morya in Hyde Park, London, in the
year 1851, when He came over with a number of
other Indian Princes to attend the first great
International Exhibition. Strangely enough, I
myself, then a little child of four, saw Him also,
all unknowing. I can remember being taken to see
a gorgeous procession, in which among many other
wonders came a party of richly-dressed Indian
horsemen. Magnificent horsemen they were, riding
steeds as fine, I suppose, as any in the world, and
it was only natural that my childish eyes were
fixed upon them in great delight, and that they
were perhaps to me the finest exhibit of that
marvellous and fairy-like show. And even as I
watched them pass, as I stood holding my father' s
hand, one of the tallest of those heroes fixed me
with gleaming black eyes, which half-frightened
me, and yet at the same time filled me somehow
with indescribable happiness and exaltation. He
passed with the others and I saw Him no more, yet
often the vision of that flashing eye returned
to my childish memory.
Of course, l knew nothing then of who He was, and I should never have
identified Him had it not been for a gracious remark which He made to
me many years afterwards. Speaking one day in His presence of the
earlier days of the Society I happened to say that the first time I
had had the privilege of seeing Him in materialized form was on a
certain occasion when He came into Madame Blavatsky' s room at Adyar,
for the purpose of giving her strength and issuing certain
directions. He Himself, who was engaged in conversation with some
other Adepts, turned sharply upon me and said: "No, that was not
the first time. You had seen me before then in my physical body. Do
you not remember, as a tiny child, watching the Indian horsemen ride
past in Hyde Park, and did you not see how even then I singled you
out?" I remembered instantly, of course, and said "Oh, Master, was
that you? But I ought to have known it." I do not mention this
incident among the occasions when I have met and spoken with a
Master, both parties to the interview being in the physical body,
because I did not at the time know that great horseman to be the
Master, and because the evidence of so small a child might well be
doubted or discounted.
=====================================================
Bart, notice that Leadbeater said the year he saw the
Master Morya in London was 1851.
He even relates that he was "a little child of four."
Do the math.
1851 - 4 = 1847
Notice also that Leadbeater said he later had a personal
talk with Master Morya in which the Master
himself confirmed the incident of 1851. I quote
again the conversation between Morya and Leadbeater:
===================================================
[Morya said to Leadbeater:]
"No, that was not the first time. You had seen me before then in my
physical body. Do you not remember, as a tiny child, watching the
Indian horsemen ride past in Hyde Park, and did you not see how even
then I singled you out?"
I remembered instantly, of course, and said "Oh, Master, was that
you? But I ought to have known it."
===================================================
But if Leadbeater was actually born in 1854, he could not
have been a "little child of four" in 1851.
The Master said: "Do you not remember...."
But how could Leadbeater remember this 1851 event
if he was not born until 1854?
I will let you ponder on the implications. And feel
free to share them with your Theos-Talk audience.
Daniel
http://hpb.cc
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