Theos-Talk Archives (April 2005 Message tt01171)

Apl 19 2005

Dear Perry:

I am taking the liberty (rap me on the knuckles if I need it) in sending you
an historical (brief ?) account of the differences between HPB and "Neo"
THEOSOPHY as Annie Besant and CWL altered it.

I don't know if you have this, but I checked it out thoroughly and fund it
correct.

Alice CLEATHER one of HPB's direct pupils wrote A GREAT BETRAYAL in protest
of those changes. I also have the text of that, if you want it.

Best wishes,

Dallas
=============================

THEOSOPHY OR NEOTHEOSOPHY?
compiled by
Margaret Thomas

(Member of the Theosophical
Society, Scotland, Wales and
England, 1912-24)

Section 1. Differences in Teaching

Section 11. Immorality in the Theosophical Society

Section 111. The Case Against Anne Besant


To H.P.B. and W.Q.J.

In Their Cause, which is the Cause of true Theosophists the World Over
The Theosophical Society is dead. But there are many Theosophists in it who
are yet alive. Not knowing the history of the years since 1803-4 that led to
its downfall, and not realizing the wide divergence between Theosophy and
the present-day versions, they may go the way of the Society unless
something be done to prevent it. It is because an opportunity must be given
the earnest student to see the differences between the teachings of
Theosophy as re-stated in the 19th century by H.P.B. and those given today;
it is because an opportunity must be given the true seeker to know
previously obscured facts concerning the great wrong that brought about the
Society’s eclipse, that this work of compilation has been undertaken. Those
who prefer blind belief to knowledge will have no interest in these pages.
But those who seek to know will study them, using the references to find out
the facts for themselves and be satisfied whether they are not truths that
are here presented.

[NOTE:
This is section I. “not in columns opposite each other” but stacked instead
for user friendly material.]


SECTION I.

DIFFERENCES IN TEACHING

The book is written in all sincerity. It is meant to do even justice,
and to speak the truth alike without malice or prejudice. But it shows
neither mercy for enthroned error, nor reverence for usurped authority. It
demands for a spoliated past, that credit for its achievements which has
been too long withheld. It calls for a restitution of borrowed robes, and
the vindication of calumniated but glorious reputations………TRUTH, high-seated
upon its rock of adamant, is alone eternal and supreme." Preface to
Isis Unveiled, I, p. v.


"I dread the appearance in print of our philosophy as expounded by Mr. H
(ume). He makes of us Agnostics!! We do not believe in God because so far,
we have no proof, etc. This is preposterously ridiculous; if he publishes
what I read, I will have H.P.B. or Djual Kool deny the whole thing; as I
cannot permit our sacred philosophy to be so disfigured. He says that people
will not accept the whole truth; that unless we humour them with a hope that
there may be a “loving Father and creator of ALL heaven” our philosophywill
be rejected a priori. In such a case the less such idiots hear of our
doctrines the better for both. If they do not want the whole truth and
nothing but the truth, they are welcome. But never will they find us - - (at
any rate) - - compromising with and pandering to public prejudices."
Mahatma Letters pp. 304-5


"THE WISE MAN COURTS TRUTH; THE FOOL, FLATTERY."

" However it may be, let rather our ranks be made thinner, than the
Theosophical Society go on being made a spectacle to the world through the
exaggerations of some fanatics, and the attempts of various charlatans to
profit by a ready-made programme. These, by disfiguring and adapting
Occultism to their own filthy and immoral ends, bring disgrace upon the
whole movement. Some writer remarked that if one would know the enemy
against whom he has to guard himself the most, the looking-glass will give
him the best likeness of his face. This is quite true. If the first object
of our Society be not to study one’s own self, but to find fault with all
except that self, then, indeed, the T.S. is doomed to become – and it
already has in certain centers – a Society for mutual admiration…."
“On Pseudo-Theosophy”, Lucifer, March, 1889

"Theosophy is the accumulated wisdom of the ages. Mark well that it is
no fancy of one or several isolated individuals. Its uninterrupted record
extends over thousands of generations of seers. It was only formulated after
traditions from exalted beings, passed on age by age, had been tested and
verified by the independent visions of great adepts, themselves checked and
rechecked by other adepts and by centuries of experiences, during something
like eighteen million years."	(See Secret Doctrine, 1. pp. 272-3).

[NOTE: All references to page numbers in H.P.B's works are to first
editions or Theosophy Company (Los Angeles) reprints, other editions being
expurgated and therefore re-paged.]

2.

"Any teaching that fits in with this Ancient Wisdom is truly Theosophy.
It must stand or fall by the test of comparison with all that has gone
before. Earnest students of today, by comparative religion and comparative
philosophy, can trace an unbroken line of dovetailed teaching within the
last five thousand years from Krishna, Buddha, Confucius and Loa Tse,
Pythagoras and Plato, Jeshu (or Jesus), Aplionius of Tyana, the Alexandrian
School, teachers of the 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th centuries to the 19th
century when Madame H.P. Blavatsky once more restated part of the aeon-old
truths for the western world."
(See Key to Theosophy, p. 243)



By the Master’s test, as by their words, H.P.B. stands, one of a long
line of Messengers, acceptable because of the other links in the chain
before her. She herself followed the Occult Law and substantiated statements
in the “Secret Doctrine”, and her other works, by historic, archeological
and scientific data, showing the teaching rooted in earlier systems of
theosophic thought. It is obviously futile, therefore, to talk of improving
and expanding the philosophy given out by her. Can later-day soi disant
Theosophical teachers stand this same test? You are invited to judge for
yourself:


THE TEACHING ON LOGOS OR DEITY OR GOD

We say and affirm that that motion – the universal perpetual motion
which never ceases, never slackens nor increases its speed not even during
the interludes between the pralayas or “night of Brahma” but goes on like a
mill set in motion, whether it has anything to grind or not…we say this
perpetual motion is the only eternal and uncreated Deity we are able to
recognize. To regard God as an intelligent spirit, and accept at the same
time his absolute immateriality is to conceive of a nonentity, a blank void;
to regard God as a Being, an Ego and to place his intelligence under a
bushel for some mysterious reason is the most consummate nonsense; to endow
him with intelligence in the face of blind brutal Evil is to make of him a
fiend – a most rascally God. A being however gigantic, occupying space and
having length, breadth and thickness is most certainly a Mosaic deity.
Mahatma Letters ps. 138-9

We have in the Logos of our solar system as near an approach to a
personal (or rather, perhaps, individual) God as any reasonable man can
desire, for of Him is true everything good that has even been predicated of
a personal deity. We cannot ascribe to Him partiality, injustice, jealousy,
cruelty; those who desire these attributes in their deity must go elsewhere.
But so far as His system is concerned He possesses omniscience,
omnipresence, omnipotence; the love, the power, the wisdom, the glory, all
are there in fullest measure. Yet He is a mighty individual – a trinity in
unity, and God in very truth, though removed by we know not how many stages
from the Absolute, the Un-

3.

knowable, before which even solar systems are but as specks of cosmic dust.
The sun is His chief manifestation on the physical plane, and that may help
us a little to realize some of His qualities, and to see how everything
comes from Him…..I myself who speak to you have once seen Him in a form
which is not the form o f His system. This is something which utterly
transcends all ordinary experience which has nothing to do with any of the
lower planes. The thing became possible for me only through a very daring
experiment – the utter blending for a moment of two distinct rays or types,
so that by means of this blending a level could for a moment be touched
enormously higher than any to which either of the egos concerned could have
attained alone. He exists far above His system; he sits upon it as a lotus
throne. He is as it were apotheosis of humanity, yet infinitely greater than
humanity.
C.W. Leadbeater, The Inner Life, 1. ps. 143-46


1. The Secret Doctrine teaches no Atheism except in the Hindu sense of
the word nastika or the rejection of idols, including every anthropomorphic
god.

2. It admits a Logos or a collective “Creator” of the Universe; a
Demiurgos – in the sense implied when one speaks of an “Architect” asthe
“Creator” of an edifice, whereas that Architect has never touched one stone
of it, but, while furnishing the plan, left all the manual labour to the
masons; in our case the plan was furnished by the Ideation of the Universe,
and the constructive labour was left to the Hosts of intelligent Powers and
Forces. But that Demiurgos is no personal deity, -i.e. and imperfect
extra-cosmic god, - but only the aggregate of the Dhyan-Chohans and the
other forces."	Secret Doctrine, 1. ps.279-80

“The Logos..This highest consciousness ”, answer the Occultists, “is
only a synthetic unit in the world of the manifested Logos – or on the plane
of illusion; for it is the sum total of Dhyan Chohanic
consciousnesses…..Iswara or Logos is Spirit; or , as Occultism explains, it
is a compound unity of manifested living Spirits, the parent source and
nursery of all the mundane and terrestrial monads, plus their divine
reflections which emanate from, and return into, the Logos, each in the
culmination of its time.” Secret Doctrine, 1 p. 573

"When we speak of the Deity and make it identical, hence coeval, with
Nature, the eternal and uncreate nature is meant and not your aggregate or
flitting shadows and finite unrealities. We leave it to the hymn makers to
call the visible earth or heaven, God’ s throne, and our earth of mud His
footstool. Our DEITY is neither in a paradise, nor in a particular tree,
building, or mountain; it is everywhere, in every atom of the visible as of
the invisible Cosmos, in, over, and around every invisible atom and
divisible molecule; for IT is the mysterious power of evolution and
involution, the omnipresent, omnipotent and even omniscient creative
potentiality."	Key to Theosophy, p. 49

"Man, the individual, evolving soul, is in truth in the image of his
Maker, and what He is in His fullness now, that man will be some day. Hence
it is that, by a certain development of faculties latent in the human
consciousness, men can touch even now the fringe, as it were, of the
Consciousness of the LOGOS, and so, with Him, see the past as happening even
now."
C. Jinarajadasa, First Principles of Theosophy, p. 29
 
“…in this music temple…he is bearing his share in a concert which comes
from all the worlds of the system, and these streams from all the worlds
make somehow the mighty twelve-stringed lyre upon which the LOGOS Himself
plays as He sits upon the Lotus of His system. It is impossible to put this
into words; but the writer has seen it, and knows that it is true. He hears,
He responds, and He Himself plays upon His system. Thus for the first time
we have one brief glimpse of the stupendous life which He lives among the
other LOGOI who are His peers. Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater,
“Man: Whence, How and Whither, p. 378

4.

ON RELIGION

"I will point out the greatest, the chief cause of nearly two-thirds of
the evils that pursue humanity ever since that cause became a power. It is
religion under whatever form and in whatever nation. It is the sacerdotal
caste, the priesthood and the churches."	Mahatma Letters, p. 57

Ignorance created Gods and cunning took advantage of opportunity. Look
at India and Look at Christendom and Islam, at Judaism and Fetichism. It is
priestly imposture that rendered these Gods so terrible to man, it is
religion that makes of him the selfish bigot, the fanatic that hates all
mankind out of his own sect without rendering him any better or more moral
for it. It is belief in God and Gods that makes two-thirds of humanity the
slaves of a handful of those who deceive them under the false pretence of
saying them….The Irish, Italian and Slavonian peasant will starve himself
and see his family starving and naked to feed and clothe his padre and pope.
For two thousand years India groaned under the weight of caste, Brahmins
alone feeding on the fat of the land and today the followers of Christ and
those Mahomet are cutting each other’s throats in the names of and for the
greater glory of their respective myths. Remember the sum of human misery
will never be diminished unto that day when the better portion of humanity
destroys in the name of Truth, morality, and universal charity, the altars
of these false gods.
Mahatma Letters, p. 58

The Bible, from Genesis to Revelations, is but a series of historical
records of the great struggle between white and black Magic, between the
Adepts of the right path, the Prophets, and those of the left, the Levites,
the clergy of the brutal masses….That there were two schools of Magic,
and the orthodox Levites did not belong to the holy one, is shown in the
words pronounced by the dying Jacob.
Secret Doctrine, 11. p. 211

The struggle of Bel and then of Merodach, the Sun God, with Tiamat, the
Sea and its Dragon, a “war” which ended in the defeat of the latter, has
purely cosmic and geological meaning as well as an historical one.
It is a page torn out of the History of the Secret and Sacred
Sciences, their evolution, growth and DEATH – for the profane masses. It
relates ….to the as systematic persecution of the Prophets of the
Right Path by those of the Left. The latter, having inaugurated the
birth and evolution of the sacerdotal castes, have finally led the
world into all these exoteric religions, invented to satisfy the
depraved tastes of the “hoi polloi” and the ignorant for ritualistic pomp
and the materialization of the ever immaterial and Unknowable Principle.
 
Secret Doctrine, 11. p. 503

5.

THEOSOPHY. As the origin and basis of all religions, it cannot be the
antagonist of any; it is indeed their purifier, revealing the valuable inner
meaning of much that has become mischievous in its external presentation by
the perverseness of ignorance and the accretions of superstitution; but it
recognizes and defends itself in each, and seeks in each to unveil its
hidden wisdom. No man in becoming a Theosophist need cease to be a
Christian, a Buddhist, a Hindu; he will but acquire a deeper insight into
his own faith.
Annie Besant, Ancient Wisdom, p. 5

If he is on God’s side he is one of us, and it does not matter in the
least whether he calls himself a Hindu, or a Buddhist, a Christian or a
Muhammadan…
J. Krishnamurti, At The Feet of the Master. p. 8

What is the object of religions?
They are given to the world by men wiser than the masses of the people
on whom they are bestowed, and are intended to quicken human evolution….all
the types need religion, so that each may reach upward to a life higher than
that which he is leading….Religions seek to evolve the moral and
intellectual nature to unfold itself.
Annie Besant, Esoteric Christianity, ps. 3 and 4

H.P.B. to Ms. Besant

But, it is quite correct to say that “having for long done the will
(i.e. put in practice the first of the Theosophical principles) she is now
beginning to know of the doctrine”. But this doctrine, let us hope, will
never lead her to make again “her communion at a Christian altar” (Italics
ours), in other words to renounce the whole and the absolute for the part
and finite…This Christianity per se cannot, in the nature of things, offer
-- neither for that matter, can any other so-called religion – as it now
stands; for all unduly exaggerate the personality of their Founders,
Christianity more than others, as it makes Jesus every God of 3 every God
and of his brother teachers in Christ (or CHRISTOS), false prophets. We
speak here of modern church Christianity, not of the mystic religion of
Christos, the LOGOS, the Western aspect of the one religious philosophy
which can bind all men together as brothers.
Lucifer,
Vol. IV, 1889, ps. 448 and 9

“Founders” of Religion

According to this view, the Founders of the great religions are members
of the one Brotherhood ……..As Theosophy of old gave birth to religions,so
in modern times does it justify and defend them.
Annie Besant, Ancient Wisdom, ps. 3 and 5 

..the Guardians of humanity… From time to time, one of them comes forth
into the world of men, as a great religious teacher, to carry on the
task of spreading a new form of the Eternal Verities, a form suitable to a
new race of civilisation. Their ranks include all the greatest Prophets of
the Faiths of the world, and while a religion lives one of these great Ones
is ever at its head, watching over it as His special charge.
Annie Besant, The Maters, p. 79

Gautama is qualified the “Divine Teacher” and at the same time “God’s
messenger”!!….Buddha has now become the messenger of one, whom He, Sania
K’houtchoo, the precious wisdom, has dethroned 2,500 years back, by
unveiling the Tabernacle and showing its emptiness.
Mahatma Letters, ps. 281-2
But we must resume the thread of our narrative with Buddha. Neither he
nor Jesus ever wrote one word of their doctrines.
Isis Unveiled, 11. p. 559
Our examination of the multitudinous religious faiths that mankind,
early and late, have professed, most assuredly indicates that they have all
been derived from one primitive source….Combined,

6.

their aggregate represents one eternal truth, separate, they are but shades
of human error and the signs of imperfection.
Isis Unveiled, 11. p 639

On Jesus and the Christ Principle
…let these unfortunate, deluded Christians know that the real Christ of
every Christian is the Vach , the “mystical Voice,” while the man – Joshu
was but a mortal like any of us an adept more by his inherent purity and
ignorance of real Evil, than by what he had learned with his initiated
Rabbis and the already (at that period) fast degenerating Egyptian
Hierophants and priests.
Mahatma Letters, p. 344

..neither knew the other John the Baptist never having heard of Jesus
who is a spiritual abstraction and no living man of that epoch.
Mahatma Letters, p. 415

Take Paul, read the little of original that is left of him in the
writings attributed to this brave, honest, sincere man, and see whether any
one can find a word therein to show that Paul meant by the word Christ
anything more than the abstract ideal of the personal divinity indwelling in
man. For, Paul, Christ is not a person but an embodied idea. “If any manis
in Christ he is a new creation, “ he is reborn, as after initiation, for the
Lord is spirit – the spirit of man. Paul was the only one of the apostles
who had understood the secret ideas underlying the teachings of Jesus,
although he had never met him. But Paul had been initiated himself; and,
bent upon inaugurating a new and broad reform, one embracing the whole of
humanity, he sincerely set his own doctrines far above the wisdom of the
ages, above the ancient Mysteries and final revelation to the epoptae. As
Professor A. Wilder well proves in a series of able articles, it was not
Jesus, but Paul who was the real founder of Christianity.
Isis Unveiled, p. 574

Again, in these researches into the remote past we have frequently found
the disciple Jesus, who in Palestine had the privilege of yielding up His
body to the Christ. As a result of that act He received the incarnation of
Apollonius of Tyana….the one who was once the disciple Jesus stands ready
especially to guide the various activities of the Christian Churches.
C.A. Leadbeater, The Inner Life, ps. 19 and 20

I believe with many of the early Christians, that the World Teacher,
named by them the Christ, assumed at the stage of the Gospel story called
the Baptism, the body of a disciple, Jesus, to carry on his earthly work at
that time. 
Annie Besant, interviewed Jan. 13, 1926 by the Associated Pres of India

The historical Christ, then, is a glorious Being belonging to the great
spiritual hierarchy that guides the spiritual evolution of humanity, who
used for some three years the human body of the disciple Jesus….That mighty
One who had used the body of Jesus as His vehicle and whose guardian care
extends over the whole spiritual evolution of the fifth race of humanity
gave into the strong hands of the holy disciple who had surrendered to Him
his body the care of the infant Church. Perfecting his human evolution Jesus
became one of the Masters of Wisdom, and took Christianity under His charge,
ever seeking to guide it to the right lines, to protect, to guard and
nourish it.
Annie Besant, Esoteric Christianity, ps. 140-42

7.

Do they affirm that Jesus gave himself as a voluntary sacrifice? On the
contrary there is not a word to sustain the idea. They make it clear that he
would rather have lived to continue what he considered his mission, and that
he died because he could not help it, and only when betrayed ….When,
finally, he saw that his time had come, he succumbed to the inevitable. But
see him in the garden, on the Mount of Olives, writhing in agony until “his
sweat was, as it were, great drops of blood”, praying with fervid
supplication that the cup might be removed from hi; exhausted by his
struggle to such a degree that an angel from heaven had to come and
strengthen him; and say if the picture is that of a self-immolating hostage
and martyr. Isis Unveiled, ll. p. 545

If we do not accept Jesus as God, we revere him as a man. Such a
feeling honors him more than if we were to attribute to him the powers and
personality of the Supreme, and credit him at the same time with having
played a useless comedy with mankind, as, after, all, his mission proves
scarcely less than a complete failure; 2,000 years have passed, and
Christians do not reckon one-fifth part of the population of the globe, nor
is Christianity likely to progress any better in the future.
Isis Unveiled, ll. p. 530

Churches and Priests

The ever unknowable and incognizable Karana alone, the Causeless Cause
of all causes, should have its shrine and altar on the holy and ever
untrodden ground of our heart – invisible, intangible, unmentioned, save
through “the still small voice” of our spiritual consciousness. Those who
worship before it, ought to do so in the silence and the sanctified solitude
of their Souls; making their spirit the sole mediator between them and the
Universal Spirit, their good actions the only priests, and their sinful
intentions the only visible and objective sacrificial victims to the
Presence.
Secret Doctrine, l. p. 280

If both Church and priest could but pass out of the sight of the world
as easily as their names do now from the eye of our reader, it would be a
happy day for humanity. New York and London might then soon become as moral
as a heathen city unoccupied by Christians; Paris be cleaner than the
ancient Sodom.
Isis Unveiled, ll. p. 586


We have seen how the man Jesus, the Hebrew disciple, laid down His body
in glad surrender that a higher Life might descend and become embodied in
the form he thus willingly sacrificed and how by that act he became a Christ
of full stature to be the Guardian of Christianity ……triumphing over death.
Annie Besant, Esoteric Christianity, p. 217

“Let us pray.
Guide us, O Almighty Father, in all our doings, and from Thy heavenly
throne send down Thy holy Angel to be with Thy people who have met together
to serve and to worship Thee. Through Christ our Lord. The phrase “Let us
pray” is a signal given by the celebrant to the people when he is about to
say a prayer, and it is therefore time for them to kneel……for a considerable
time there was no written liturgy, and each celebrant filled in
extemporaneously the outline of the ceremony as given by the Christ. That
Christ did give such an outline is certain from clairvoyant investigation.
C.W. Leadbeater, Science of the Sacraments, p. 471

The clergy exist for the benefit of the world; they are intended to act
as channels for the distribution of God’s grace…. In him also is vestedthe
power to bless and to offer the sacrifice of the Holy Eucharist. The
strength which the priest brings down is not for himself, but for the flock
which is committed to his care… So there are two aspects of ordination the
gift of the Holy Ghost which provides the key to the reservoir and the
personal link of the Christ Himself with His Minister. The former of these
is the official connection which enables a priest, for example, to
consecrate the Host and to dispense absolution and blessing.
C. W. Leadbeater, Science of the Sacraments, ps. 301 and 309

Good news comes from Australia…The three movements there, which I
commended to the special service of our members – the Educational, the
Co-Masonic and the Old Catholic Church – are growing beyond expectation….A
church, one of the old landmarks of Sydney, a fine looking pile in stone,
which has the outside appearance of a cathedral has been purchased for the
Old Catholic Church.
Annie Beasnt, The Theosophist, October 1918

8.

“Absolution” and “Confession” through “Apostolic Succession”

An outcry has just been made in England over the discovery that
Anglican priests are largely introducing auricular confession and granting
absolution after enforcing penances……. The bishop, questioned, points to
Matthew xvi, 19, for the source of his authority to bind and loose on earth
those who are to be blessed or damned in heaven; and to the apostolic
succession for proof of its transmission from Simon Barjona to himself.. The
present volumes have been written to small purpose if they have not shown, 


1. that Jesus, the Christ-God is a myth concocted two
centures after the real Hebrew Jesus died;
        
2. that, therefore, he never had any authority to give Peter, or
any one else, plenary power;
     
3. that even if he had given such authority, the word
Petra (rock) refereed to the revealed truths of the Petroma, no to him who
thrice denied him; and that besides, the apostolic succession is a gross and
palpable fraud.

4. that the Gospel according to Matthew is a fabrication
based upon a holly different manuscript.
Isis Unveiled, ll. p. 644


Among students of Church history widely divergent views are held about
the origin of Holy Orders. The Roman Church has always maintained that the
three Orders (bishop, priest and deacon) were instituted by Christ Himself
and that the first bishops were consecrated by the apostles. Presbyterians
and others, not themselves possessing the apostolic succession, contend that
in the earliest times bishop and presbyters were synonymous terms….
Clairvoyant investigation into those early periods absolutely confirms the
contention of the Roman Church….. They know that there has been no break in
the apostolic succession.
C.W. Leadbeater, Science of the Sacraments, ps. 282 and 286

But let no one suppose that the public absolution given to the whole
flock is in any way less effective than private absolution, if the desire
for rectification on the part of the wrongdoer is equally earnest and
sincere….In the Liberal Catholic Church auricular confession is entirely
optional, and its frequent and systematic practice is not encouraged, since
it is felt that under such conditions the detailed confession is apt to
become a matter of routine, and its spiritual value in the life of the
individual thereby defeated. For all ordinary purposes the general
confession in the Holy Eucharist should suffice.
C.W. Leadbeater, Science of the Sacraments, p. 84

9.

Vicarious Atonement

None the less, as we look backwards over the effects produced by this
doctrine (The Atonement) we find that belief in it, even in its legal – and
to us crude exoteric – form, is connected with some of the noblest examples
of Christian manhood and womanhood have drawn from it their strength, their
inspiration, and their comfort. It would be unjust not to recognize this
fact. And whenever we come upon that fact, and to endeavor to understand it.
For if this doctrine contained nothing more than is seen in it by its
assailants inside and outside the Churches, if it were in its true meaning
as repellent to the conscience and the intellect as it is found to be by
many thoughtful Christians, then it could not possibly have exercised over
the minds and hearts of men a compelling fascination, nor could it have been
the root of heroic self surrenders, or touching and pathetic examples of
self-sacrifice in the service of men.
Annie Besant, Esoteric Christianity, ps. 199-200

The Seven Sacraments of Christianity cover the whole of life, from the
welcome of Baptism to the farewell of Extreme Unction. They were established
by Occultists, by men who knew the invisible worlds; and the materials used,
the words spoken, the signs made, were all deliberately chosen and arranged
with a view to bringing about certain results.
Annie Besant, Esoteric Christianity, ps. 327-8

That (Co-Masonry) again bringing back the occult use of ceremonial, is
to many nonreligious people a veritable religion, and prepares them to
understand the value of ceremonies, a preparation, as every Occultist will
see, for the coming changes……..
Annie Besant, Adyar Bulletin, March 1920 p. 74



We have often wondered at the extraordinary ideas of God and His
justice that seem to be honestly held by those Christians who blindly rely
upon the clergy for their religion, and never upon their own reason. How
strangely illogical is this doctrine of the Atonement. We propose to discuss
it with the Christians from the Buddhistic stand-point, and show at once by
what a series of sophistries, directed toward the one object of tightening
the ecclesiastical yoke upon the popular neck, its acceptance as a divine
command has been finally effected; also, that it has proved one of the most
pernicious and demoralizing of doctrines………….But if we step outsidethe
little circle of creed and consider the universe as a whole balanced by the
exquisite adjustment of parts, how all sound logic, how the faintest
glimmering sense of Justice revolts against this Vicarious Atonement.
Isis Unveiled, ll. p. 542

The Sacraments

With the races of our Fifth Race it became in symbology the sacr’, and
in Hebrew n’cabvaj of the first formed races.
Footnote: See that suggestive work “The Source of Measures” where the author
explains the real meaning of the word “sacr’” from which “sacred”,
“sacrament”, are derived, which have now become synonyms of “holiness”
through purely phallic!
Secret Doctrine, Proem, l. p. 5

On Ceremonial
Practical theurgy or “ceremonial magic” so often resorted to in their
exorcisms by the Roman Catholic clergy, was discarded by the
Theosophists….When ignorant of the true meaning of the esoteric divine
symbols of Nature, man is apt to miscalculate the powers of his soul, and,
instead of communing spiritually and mentally with the higher celestial
beings, the good spirits (the gods of the theurgists of the Platonic
school), he will unconsciously call forth the evil, dark powers

10.

which lurk around humanity, the undying, grim creations of human crimes and
vices, and thus fall from theurgia (white magic) into goetia (or black
magic, sorcery)……Purity of deed and thought can alone raise us to an
intercourse “with the gods” and attain for us the goal we desire. 
Five Years of Theosophy – “What is Theosophy?” p. 440

The Suras, who win their intellectual independence, fight the Suras who
are devoid thereof, who are shown as passing their lives in profitless
ceremonial worship based on blind faith……..
Secret Doctrine, ll, p. 93

The ceremonies of each (great religion) interest me profoundly, and I
have studied them all with keen pleasure, and can take part in any of them
with full earnestness and sympathy.
Annie Besant, Adyar Bulletin, March 1920, ps. 69-70

The “Coming” Messiah or Lord Maitreya or World Teacher

There is slowly growing up in Europe, silently but steadily, with its
strongest center perhaps in Holland, but with its members scattered in other
European countries, the little known movement called the Old Catholic with
the ancient ritual, with unchallenged Orders, yet holding itself aloof from
the Papal Obedience. This is a living Christian Church which will grow and
multiply as the years go on, and which has a great future before it small as
it yet is. It is likely to become the future Church of Christendom ‘when He
comes!
Annie Besant, The Theosophist, Editorial, October, 1916

The great purpose of this drawing together is to prepare the way for the
coming of the new Messiah, or, as we should say in Theosophical circles, the
next advent of the Lord Maitreya, as a great spiritual teacher, bringing a
new religion. The time is rapidly approaching when this shall be launched –
a teaching which shall unify the other religions, and compared with them
shall stand upon a broader basis and keep its purity longer.
C. W. Leadbeater, “The Inner Life,” l. p. 231

Far from our thoughts may it ever be to erect a new hierarchy for the
future oppression of a priest-ridden world.
Mahatma Letters, p. 407

And now, when so many of your sisters have died; and others still are
dying, while the few of the old survivors, now in their second infancy, wait
but for their Messiah – the sixth race – to resurrect to a new life and
start anew with the coming stronger along the path of a new cycle.
Mahatma Letters, p. 150

The spirit of “ King Messiah is, therefore, shown as washing his
garments in the wine from above, from the creation of the world. And King
Messiah is the EGO purified by washing his garments (i.e., his personalities
in re-birth), in the wine from above or BUDDHI…… Noah also plants a vineyard
– the allegorical hotbed of future humanity….

11.

Seven vines are procreated – which seven vines are our Seven Races with
their seven Saviours or Buddhas.
Key to Theosophy, p. 147

MAITREYA is the secret name of the Fifth Buddha, and the Kalki Avatar of
the Brahmins – the last MESSIAH who will come at the culmination of the
Great Cycle
Secret Doctrine, l. 384

He will appear as Maitreya Buddha, the last of the Avatars and Buddhas,
in the seventh Race. Only it is not in the Kali yug, our present
terrifically materialistic age of Darkness, the “Black Age”, that a new
Saviour of Humanity can ever appear.
Secret Doctrine, l. 470

No Master of Wisdom from the East will himself appear or send anyone to
Europe or America…. until the year 1975.
H.P.B. Prelimnary Memorandum see Theosophy, l. 455

Cosmogony
Believing in seven planes of Kosmic being and states of Consciousness, with
regard to the Universe or the Macro cosm, we stop at the fourth plane,
finding it impossible to go with any degree of certainty beyond.
Key to Theosophy, p. 69

See Diagram, Secret Doctrine, l. p. 200 on four Cosmic planes (after
reading the note on the preceding page “The reader is reminded that Kosmos
often means in our Stanzas only our own Solar System, not the infinite
Universe”), to which footnote reads: “These are the four planes of Cosmic
consciousness, the three higher p lanes being inaccessible to human
intellect as developed at present”.
Secret Doctrine, l. ps. 199-200

And now I have to give to you, by command of the King, I have to give to
you His message, and some of the messages of the Lord Maitreya and His great
Brothers…..so that what I am saying, as to matter of announcement, is
definitely at the command of the King whom I serve…….our hope is ……..that
very many from the Theosophical and the Star organizations and the growing
Co-Masonry and the great fellowship of teachers may recognize their Lord
when He comes, so that we may keep Him with us for many years, and not make
his own world impossible for Him save in seclusion as was done on His last
coming. 
Annie Besant, Theosophist, November, 1925 ps. 150 and 160

As to the approaching advent of the Christ and the work which He has to
do, you cannot do better than read Mrs. Besant’s book on The Changing World.
The time of His advent is not far distant, and the very body which He will
take is even already born among us.
C. W. Leadbeater, The Inner Life, l. ps. 30-1

We have thus the seven planes of a universe, a solar system, which as we see
by this brief description, may be regarded as making up three groups:
i. Aid ) l. The Field of Logic
ii. Anupadaka ) manifestation only
iii.*Atmic ) ll. The field of super-
iv. Buddhic ) normal human
v. Mental ) evol ution
vi. Emotional ) lll. The field of elemental,
vii. Physical ) mineral, vegetable,
) animal and normal
) human evolution
Annie Besant, A Study in Consciousness, ps. 3 and 4

12.

Atman or Atma*

The Atman or seventh principle ridded of its mayavic distinction from
its Universal Source – which becomes the object of perception for, and by
the individuality centered in Buddhi, the sixth principle…..Nor is it “the
Spirit of Buddhas present in Church”, but the omnipresent Universal Spirit
in the temple of nature – in one case; and the seventh Principle – the Atman
in the temple – man – in the other.
Mahatma Letters, ps. 343-4

First of all, Spirit (in the sense of the Absolute, and therefore,
indivisible ALL) or Atma.
Key to Theosophy, p. 93

Nebular Theory

The nebulae exist; yet the nebular theory is wrong. A nebula exists in a
state of entireelemental dissociation. It is gaseous and – something else
besides, which can hardly be connected with gases, as known to physical
science; and it is self luminous. But that is all …we may, we maintain,
define our position with regard to the modern nebular theory and its evident
incorrectness, by simply pointing out facts diametrically opposed to it in
its present form.
Secret Doctrine, l. ps. 588 and 591

Therefore do they (the Adepts) say that the great men of science of the
West, knowing nothing or next to nothing either about cometary matter,
centrifugal and centripetal forces, the nature of the nebulae, or the
physical constitution of the sun, stars, or even the moon, are imprudent to
speak so confidently as they do about the “central mass of the sun” whirling
out into space planets, comets, and what-not. Our humble opinion being
wanted, we maintain: that it evolutes out, but the life principle, the soul
of these bodies, giving and receiving it back in our little solar system, as
the “Universal Life-giver”, the ONE LIFE gives and receives it in the
Infinitude and Eternity……
Five Years of Theosophy, ps. 250-51
“Do the Adepts Deny the Nebular Theory?”


The fifth plane, the nirvanic, is the plane of the highest human aspect
of the God within us, and this aspect is named by Theosophists Atma, or the
Self. It is the plane of pure existence, of divine powers in their fullest
manifestation in our fivefold universe – what lies beyond on the sixth and
seventh planes is hidden in the unimaginable light of God Annie Besant,
Ancient Wisdom, p. 168

Eventually, there comes a point at which He sends through it a kind of
electrical shock, which precipitates it into a lower condition of matter, so
that instead of being a mere aggregation of atoms it becomes definitely a
combination of the, usually a mass of glowing hydrogen. Here we have the
nebular stage, through which various systems in our universe are at this
moment passing. As our nebula revolved round its axis it gradually cooled,
contracted and flattened down, so that eventually it became rather a huge
revolving disc than a sphere. Presently, fissures appeared in this disc and
it broke into rings, presenting somewhat the appearance of the planet Saturn
an its surroundings, but on a gigantic scale. At the chosen point in each of
these rings a subsidiary vortex was set up, and gradually much of the matter
of the ring was gathered into this. The concussion of the fragments
generated an amount of heat which reduced them to a gaseous condition and
thus formed a huge glowing ball, which gradually, as it cooled, condensed
into a planet.
C.W. Leadbeater, The Inner Life, ll. ps. 269-70

Let us consider first the great nebula in Orion. It is a chaotic mass of
matter in an intensely heated condition, millions and millions of miles in
diameter……The probable change, its next step, we can construct in
imagination as

13.

we look at the nebula in Canes Venatici. The nebula now has taken on a
spiral motion. It revolves, and its matter tends to aggregate round a
nucleus. In course of time, the spherical mass will flatten; as it
contracts, ring after ring of matter will break off from the cooling central
nucleus. As millions of years pass, these rings of matter too will break;
each will aggregate round some nucleus, and instead of a ring we shall have
a planet, retaining the original motion of the nebula, and revolving now
round a central sun. Or it may be that, without breaking into rings, the
nebula will throw off, as it whirls, outlying parts of itself, which then
condense and become the planets; but in either process, the original chaotic
nebula will have become an orderly solar system, with a central sun and
planets circling round it like the solar system in which we live.
C. Jinarajadasa, First Principles of Theosophy, ps. 5 and 6


Formation of Earth Chain

Again, in the Seventh Round on the Lunar chain, when Class 7, the last,
quits Globe A, that Globe, instead of falling asleep, as it had done in
previous Rounds, begins to die (to go into its planetary pralaya) and in
dying it transfers successively, as just said, its “principles” or life
elements and energy, etc., one after the other to a new “laya centre”, which
commences the formation of Globe A. of the Earth Chain. A similar process
takes place for each of the globes of the “lunar chain” one after the
other, each forming a fresh globe of the “earth chain”…. But Globe A.of the
lunar chain is not fully “dead” till the first Monads of the first class
have passed from Globe G. or Z. the last of the “lunar chain”, into the
Nirvana which awaits them between the two chains; and similarly for all the
other Globes as stated, each giving birth to the corresponding globe of the
“earth chain”. Further, when Globe A. of the new chain is ready, the first
class of Hierarchy of Monads from the Lunar chain incarnate upon it in the
lowest kingdom, and so on successively.
Secret Doctrine, l. ps. 171-2


Globe A. of the terrene Chain began to form as the life wave left Globe
A. of the lunar chain. The Spirit of a globe, when its life is over, takes a
new incarnation, and, as it were, transfers the life with himself to the
corresponding globe of the next Chain. The inhabitants, after leaving the
Chain, have long to wait ere their new home is ready for them, but the
preparation of that home begins when the Spirit of the first globe leaves it
and it becomes a dead body, while he enters on a new cycle of life and a new
globe begins to form around him. Molecules are built up under the direction
of Devas, humanity not being at all involved. The Spirit of a globe is
probably on the line of this class of Devas, and members of it perform the
work of building globes all through the system. A great wave of life from
the LOGOS builds up atoms in a system by the intermediary of such a Deva,
then molecules are built, then cells and so on. Living creatures are like
parasites on the surface of the Spirit of the earth …..Our physical Earth
was formed when the inhabitants left Globe D. of the Moon Chain …..but our
Earth could not go

14.

far in its formation till its congener, Globe D. of the lunar chain, the
Moon, had died. Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater,
Man: Whence, How and Whither, ps. 60-2


Now, the life impulse reaches “A” or rather that which is destined to
become “A” and which so far is but cosmic dust. A centre is formed in the
nebulous matter of the condensation of the solar dust decimated through
space and a series of three involutions invisible to the eye of flesh occur
in succession viz. three kingdoms of elementals or nature forces are
evoluted: in other words the animal soul of the future globe is formed; or
as a Kabalist will express it, the gnomes, the salamanders and the undines
are created. The correspondence between a motherglobe and her child-man may
be thus worked out. Both have their seven principles. In the Globe, the
elementals (of which there are in all seven species) for (a) a gross body,
(b) her fluidic double (linga shariram), (c) the life principle (jiva); (d)
her fourth principle kama rupa is formed by her creative impulse working
from centre to circumference; (e) her fifth principle (animal soul or Manas
physical intelligence) is embodied in the vegetable (in germ) and animal
kingdoms; (f) her sixth principle (or spiritual soul buddhi) is man, (g) and
her seventh principle (atma) is in a film of spiritualized akasa that
surrounds her.
Mahatma Letters, p. 94

Mars-Mercury Teachings
Go to your fortepiano and execute upon the lower register of keys the
seven notes of the lower octave up and down. B egin pianipiano: crescendo
from the first key and having struck fortissimo on the last lower note go
back diminuendo getting out of your last note a hardly perceptible sound
“morendo pianissimi” ….The first and last notes will represent to youthe
first and last spheres, in the cycle of evolution and highest! The one you
strike once is our planet...
Mahatma Letters, p. 76

Our Globe as taught from the first, is at the bottom of the arc of
descent, where the matter of our perception exhibits itself in its grossest
form….Hence it only stands to reason that the globes which overshadow our
Earth must be on different and superior planes.
Letter from the Master quoted in Secret Doctrine, l. p. 166

There are ten schemes of evolution at present existing in our solar
system, but only seven of them are at the stage where they have planets in
the physical world. These are: 1….; 2….; 3, that of the Earth, Mars and
Mercury, which has three visible planets, because it is in its fourth
incarnation…..
C.W. Leadbeater, Textbook of Theosophy, p. 124

..our Earth Chain, or terrene Chain, is the fourth in succession, and
has therefore three of its seven globes in physical manifestation, its third
globe, C, being what is called the planet Mars, and its fifth globe E. what
is called the planet Mercury.
Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater, Man: Whence, How and Whither, p. 7.

15.

It is quite correct that Mars is in a state of obscuration at present,
and Mercury just beginning to get out of it….. Again, both (Mars and
Mercury) are septenary chains, as independent of the Earth’s sidereal lords
and superiors as you are independent of the ‘principles’ of Daumling (Tom
humb).
Letter from the Master quoted in Secret Doctrine, l. p. 165

Principles of Man
(1) Spirit
(2) Soul  
Vehicle of Spirit    
-----------------------------------------
(3) Mind
(4) Animal  
Soul
Upadhi of Mind    
___________________________
(6) Astral (5) Life 
Body   
Upadhi of Life    
___________________________
The Upadhi of all the 6
Princ.

_____________________________
(7) Physical
Body
*Or as usually named after the manner of
Esoteric Buddhism and others
1. Atma
2. Buddhi (or Spiritual Soul)
3. Manas (Human Soul)
4. Kama Rupa (Vehicle of Desires
and
Passions)
5. Linga Sarira
6. Prana
7. Sthula Sarira
Secret Doctrine, l. 153
Key to Theosophy, pls. 70-1 with footnote in latter:

“We include Atma among the human “principles” in order not to create
additional confusion. In reality it is no ‘human’ but the universal absolute
principle of which Buddhi, the Soul-Spirit, is the carrier.”

i. Adi
ii. Anupadaka
iii. Atma
iv. Buddhi
v. Manas
vi. Kama
vii. Sthula
 
Annie Besant, A Study in consciousness,
 
p. 64, as published in the third edition of 1918

Principles Life Forms
Atma. Spirit Atma
Buddhi Spiritual Soul Bliss-Body
Higher Manas) Human Causal Body
Lower Manas) Soul Mental Body
Kama. Animal Soul Astral Body
Linga Sharira Etheric Double
Sthula Sharira Dense Body
Annie Besant, Ancient Wisdom, ps. 176-7
published in 1897

The President has now decided upon a set of names for the planes so for
the future these will be used instead of those previously employed. A table
of them is given below for reference

16.

New Names Old Names
Divine World Adi
Monadic Anupadaka
Spiritual Atmic or
Nirvanic
Intuitional Buddhic
Mental Mental
Emotional or Astral Astral
Physical Physical
C. W. Leadbeater, A Textbook of Theosophy,
Third Edition, 1918 p. 41

These vehicles, being composed of matter modified by the action of the
Planetary Logos of the Chain to which they belong, cannot respond to the
vibrations of matter differently modified; and the student must be able to
use his atmic body before he can contact the Universal Memory beyond the
limits of his own Chain.
Annie Besant, A Study in Consciousness, p. 291

….since the Ego in the causal body gives the fundamental tone or
temperament for the incarnation, we may think of the Ego and his three lower
vehicles as forming a chord of temperamental tones, the Chord of the Man.
But the individuality in the causal body is only a partial representation of
all his qualities; behind his Higher Manas or Abstract Mind exists the
Buddhi, the Divine Intuition and behind that, the
Atma or the indomitable Spirit of God in man. But the Atma, Buddhi and Manas
are themselves reflections of still higher attributes of the Monad, “the Son
in the bosom of the Father.” The fundamental note of the Life of the LOGOS
gives the dominant tone for the Monad, and the three attributes of the Monad
, on the Adi Anupadaka and the higher Nirvanic planes, make the “Chord of
the Monad”.
C. Jinarajadasa, First Principles of Theosophy, p. 110


The “principles”, as already said, save the body, the life and the
astral eidolon, all of which disperse at death, are simple aspects and
states of consciousness ……..
Key to Theosophy, p. 77

Occultism teaches that physical man is one, but the thinking man
septenary, thinking, acting, feeling, and living on seven different states
of being or planes of consciousness (italics ours), and that for all these
states and planes the permanent Ego (not the false personality) has a
distinct set of senses.
Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge, p. 73

Atma – as Seventh Principle of Man “Remember that there is within man
no abiding principle” – which sentence I find followed by a remark of yours
“How about the sixth and seventh principles?” To this I answer, neitherAtma
nor Buddhi ever were within man – Mahatma Letters, p. 455

First of all, Spirit (in the sense of the Absolute, and therefore,
indivisible ALL), or Atma. As this can neither be located nor limited in
philosophy, being simply that which IS in Eternity, and which cannot be
absent from even the tiniest geometrical or mathematical point of the
universe of matters or substance, it ought not to be called in truth. a
“human” principle at all. Rather, and at best, it is in Metaphysics, that
point in space which the human Monad and its vehicle man occupy for the
period of every life.
Key to Theosophy, p. 93

17.


Causal Body
For it is the Buddhi-Manas which is called the Causal Body (the United
5th and 6th Principles) and which is Consciousness, that connects it with
every personality it inhabits on earth.
**********
Speaking of Manas, the “Causal body” we may call it – when connecting it
with the Buddhic radiance – the “HIGHER EGO”, never the “Higher Self”.
Key to Theosophy, ps. 95 and 136

Astral Body (or Linga Sharira in Theosophy)
( “ Kama Rupa NeoTheosophy)
Why, she confounds “Soul and Spirit”, refuses to discriminate between
the animal and the spiritual Egos the Jiv-atma (or Linga Sharir) and the
Kama Rupa (or Atma Rupa), two as different things as body and mind, and –
mind and thought are.
Mahatma Letters, p. 46

The ego dwells in a causal body, and when he takes upon himself in
addition a mental and an astral body, the operation involves the actual
entangling of a portion of the matter of those lower astral and mental
types.
C. W. Leadbeater, The Inner Life, l, p. 419

When the Thinker has consumed in the mental body all the fruits
belonging to it of his earthly life, he shakes it off and dwells
unencumbered in his own place. All the mental faculties which express
themselves on the lower levels are drawn within the causal body – with the
germs of the passional life that were drawn into the mental body when it
left the astral shell to disintegrate in Kamaloka – and these become latent
for a time, lying within the causal body, forces which remain concealed for
lack of material in which to manifest. The mental body, the last of the
temporary vestures of the true man disintegrates, and its materials return
to the general matter of the mental plane, whence they were drawn when the
Thinker last descended into incarnation. Thus the causal body alone remains,
the receptacle and treasure house of all that has been assimilated from the
life that is over.
Annie Besant, Ancient Wisdom, p. 146

Once again, there begins the process of involution, and now of the Ego
who lives in the causal body. When the Ego descends into incarnation, he
undergoes limitation planes by plane, as he makes successively the mental,
astral and physical bodies.
C. Jinarajadasa, “First Principles of Theosophy, p. 196

The desire nature of the astral body provides a delicate instrument of
cognition. Evil begins when the desire elemental dominates and dispossesses
for the time the Ego. A natural desire then becomes a craving and the astral
body gets out of control. When a man loses his temper, so that for the time
he is not showing a soul’s attributes, but

18.

those of a wild beast, he has for the time reverted to an early stage of
evolution, dragged thereto by the astral body which he cannot control. What
we have to understand is that we are not the habits of the desire elemental
of the astral body, but are to search, for our soul’s purpose, such
aptitudes in it as are useful for us.
C. Jinarajadasa, First Principles of Theosophy, p. 105


Monad
“Having for Father, Spirit which is Life (the endless Circle or
Parabrahm) and for Mother the Great Deep, which is Substance (Prakriti in
its undifferentiated condition) Adonai possesses the potency of both and
wields the dual powers of all things.” We would say triple, but in the sense
as given this will do. Pythagoras had a reason for never using the finite
useless figure 2, and for altogether discarding it. The One can, when
manifesting, become only 3. The unmanifest when a simple duality remains
passive and concealed. The dual monad (the 7th and 6th principles) has in
order to manifest itself as a logos the “Kwan-shai-yin” to first becomea
triad
(7th, 6th and half of the 5th).
Mahatma Letters, p. 347

While the man is what we call alive and awake on the physical earth he
is limited by his physical body, for he uses the astral and mental bodies
only as bridges to connect himself with his lowest vehicle. One of the
limitations of the physical body is that it quickly becomes fatigued and
needs periodical rest. Each night the man leaves it to sleep and withdraws
into his astral vehicle, which does not become fatigued and therefore needs
no rest. During this sleep of the physical body the man is free to move
about in the astral world.
C. W. Leadbeater, Textbook of Theosophy p. 61

Now, this specialization of Jack out of the dog-Group Soul is due, not
only to the higher vibrations sent towards him from Jack’s master, mistress
and friends, but also to the fact that a Monad, “a fragment of Divinity ”,
is seeking to form an Ego or Soul in order to begin his human experiences.
This Monad long ago attached to itself an atom of each of the planes as a
centre on each plane, as an “earnest” sent in advance with a view to his
future work….When the “permanent atoms” find themselves in touch witha
highly specialized part of the animal Group Soul, like the “soul of Jack”,
then the Monad sends down from his high plane certain influences…..the soul
of Jack as the result of the stronger and more divine radiations from the
Monad, breaks off from the Group Soul…..
C. Jinarajadasa, First Principles of Theosophy p. 122

19.

In short, as the spiritual Monad is One, Universal, Boundless and
Impartite, whose rays, nevertheless, form what we, in our ignorance, call
the “individual Monads” of men, so the Mineral Monad – being at the opposite
point of the circle – is also One – and from it proceed the countless
physical atoms which Science is beginning to regard as individualised……..As
the Monads are uncompounded things, as correctly defined by Leibnitz, it is
the spiritual essence which vivifies them in their degrees of
differentiation, which properly constitutes the Monad - - not the atomic
aggregation which is only the vehicle and the substance through which thrill
the lower and the higher degrees of intelligence.
Secret Doctrine, l. ps. 177-8-9


Meanwhile, it may be said in passing, the everflowing stream of life
from the Logos supplies new Monads of form on the higher levels, so that the
evolution proceeds continuously, and as the more-evolved Monads incarnate in
the lower worlds their place is taken by the newly emerged Monads in the
higher.
Annie Besant, Ancient Wisdom, p. 186

It would be very misleading to imagine a Monad as a separate Entity
trailing its slow way in a distinct path through the lower Kingdoms, and
after an incalculable series of transformations flowering into a human
being; in short, that the Monad of a Humboldt dates back to the Monad of an
atom of horneblende.
Secret Doctrine, l. p. 178

The evolution of matter is a rearrangement; the evolution of life is an
unlocking and an unfoldment. In the first cell of living matter, in some
incomprehensible fashion, are Shakespeare and Beethoven. Nature may need
millions of years to re-arrange the substance. “Selecting” age after age,
till the proper aggregation is found, and Shakespeare and Beethoven can come
from her bosom to be the protagonists in one scene of her drama. Yet all the
while, throughout the millions of years, the life held them both
mysteriously within itself……….Within each cell He resides in His fullness;
under His guidance, at the proper times, Shakespeare and Beethoven step
forth and we call it evolution.
C. Jinarajadasa, First Principles of Theosophy p. 17

The nature-spirits constitute an evolution apart, quite distinct at this
stage from that of humanity ……. We know that, after that individuality has
been attained, the unfolding of humanity carries us gradually to the steps
of the Path, and then onward and upward to Adeptship and to the glorious
possibilities which lie beyond. This is our line of development, but we must
not make the mistake of thinking of it as the only line….The nature spirits,
for example, neither have been nor ever will be members of a humanity such
as ours.
C. W. Leadbeater, The Hidden Side of Things, l. ps. 116-7

The Goal of Evolution – MAN
The whole Kosmos is guided, controlled and animated by almost endless
series of Hierarchies of Sentient Beings, each having a mission to perform,
and who - - whether we give to them one name or another, and call them
Dhyan- Chohans or Angels - - are “messengers” in the same sense only that
they are the agents of Karmic and Cosmic Laws. They vary infinitely in their
respective degrees of consciousness and intelligence and to call them all
pure Spirits without any earthly alloy “which time is wont to prey upon” is

20.

only to indulge in poetical fancy. For each of these Beings either was or
prepares to become, a man, if not in the present, then in a past or a coming
cycle (Manvantara). They are perfected, when not incipient, men…… In sober
truth, as just shown, every “spirit” socalled is either a disembodied or a
future man. From the highest Archangel (Dhyan Chohan) down to the last
conscious “Builder” (the inferior class of Spiritual Entities), all such are
men, having lived aeons ago, in other Manvantaras, on this or other spheres;
so the inferior, semiintelligent, and non-intelligent Elementals – are all
future men.
Secret Doctrine l, ps. 275-5-7

There are several parallel streams of evolving life, each mostly
independent of the others in its development. Two of these streams are those
of Humanity and of a parallel stream called the evolution of Devas or
Angels. As already mentioned, human life has its earlier stages of animal,
vegetable, mineral and elemental life. From the same mineral life, however,
the life diverges into another channel, through stages of vegetable forms,
animal forms, then forms of “naturespirits”, or the fairies of tradition,
into Angels or Devas ……One stream builds organisms living in water, while
three use forms living on land. Only one of the six streams leads into
humanity; the other five pass into the parallel evolution of the Devas.
C. Jinarajadasa, First Principles of Theosophy, ps. 17-19

Thus by their repeated plant-reincarnations the monadic group-souls in
the vegetable kingdom evolve, until those that ensoul the highest members of
the kingdom are ready for the next step. This step carries them into the
animal kingdom, and here they slowly evolve in their physical and astral
vehicles a very distinct personality ……..The monadic group-soul incarnates
in a decreasing number of forms as it gradually approaches the point at
which complete individualization will be reached ……..At last the decreasing
number of forms animated by a monadic group-soul comes down to unity, and it
animates a succession of single forms – a condition differing from human
reincarnation only by the absence of Manas, with its causal and mental
bodies. The mental matter brought down by the monadic group-soul begins to
be susceptible to impacts from the mental plane, and the animal is then
ready to receive the third great outpouring of the life of the LOGOS – the
tabernacle is ready for the reception of the human Monad. …..Doubtless, in
the course of aeons of evolution, the upwardly evolving Monad of form might
have unfolded Manas by progressive growth, but both in the human race in the
past, and in the animals of the present, such has not been the course of
Nature. When the house was ready the tenant was sent down; from the higher
planes of being the atmic life descended, veiling itself in Buddhi, as a
golden thread; and its third aspect, Manas, showing itself in the higher
levels of the formless world of the mental plane, germinal Manas within the
form was fructified, and the embryonic causal body was formed by the union.
This is the individualization of the spirit, the incasing of it in form,
and this spirit incased in the causal body is the soul, the individual, the
real man. …. Further, this outpoured life reaches the evolving forms not
directly but by intermediaries. The human race having attained the point of
receptivity, certain great Ones, called Sons of Mind, cast into men the
monadic spark of Atma-Buddhi-Manas.
Annie Besant, Ancient Wisdom, 190-4

21.

Teaching on Lower Kingdoms vs.“Group Souls”
Man was the store-house, so to speak, of all the seeds of life for
this Round, vegetable and animal alike……Having appeared at the very
beginning, and at the head of sentient and conscious life, man (astral, or
the “Soul” for the Zohar, repeating the archaic teaching, distinctly says
that “the real man is the Soul, and his material frame no part of him”)man
became the living and animal UNIT, from which the “castoff clothes”
determined the shape of every life and animal in this Round. Thus, he
“created” for ages the insects, reptiles, birds, and animals, unconsciously
to himself, from his remains and relics from the Third and the Fourth
Rounds.
Secret Doctrine, ll. 290

The Monad is a drop out of the shoreless Ocean beyond, or, to be
correct, within the plane of primeval differentiation. It is divine in its
higher and human in its lower conditions… and a monad it remains at all
times, save in the Nirvanic state, under whatever conditions, or whatever
external forms…. the MONAD has, dur- ing the cycle of its incarnations, to
reflect in itself every root-form of each kingdom. Therefore, the Kabalists
say correctly that “MAN becomes a stone, a plant, an animal, a man, a
Spirit, and finally God…But by “MAN” the divine Monad is meant, and not the
thinking Entity, much less his physical body….It is correct to say that the
man of this Manvantara, i.e., during the three preceding Rounds, has passed
through all the kingdoms of nature. That he was a stone, a plant, an
animal.” But (a) these stones, plants, and animals were the prototypes, the
filmy presentments of those of the Fourth Round; and (b) even those at the
beginning of the Fourth Round were the astral shadows of the present, as the
Occultists express it. ….Thus the astral prototypes of the lower beings of
the animal kingdom of the Fourth Round, which preceded (the chhayas of) Men,
were consolidated, though still very ethereal sheaths of the still more
ethereal forms of models produced at the close of the Third Round on Globe
D. “Produced from the residue of the substance matter; from dead bodies of
men and (other extinct) animals of the wheel before”, or the previous Third
Round – as Stanza 24 tells us. Hence, while the nondescript “animals”that
preceded the astral man at the beginning of this life-cycle on our Earth
were still, so to speak, the progeny of the man of the Third Round, the
mammalians of this Round owe their existence, in a great measure, to man
again. Moreover, the “ancestor” of the present anthropoid animal, the ape,
is the direct production of the yet mindless Man, who desecrated his human
dignity by putting himself physically on the level of the animal.
Secret Doctrine, ll. 186-7

…..the Manasaputras, the Sons of Wisdom who informed the mindless man,
and endowed him with his mind (manas).
Secret Doctrine, ll. 608

Conditions during Sleep (“Invisible Helpers”)
Q. Is the apparent objectivity in a dream really objective or
subjective?
A. If it is admitted to be apparent, then of course, it is subjective.
The question should rather be, to whom or what are the pictures or
representations in dreams either objective ore subjective? The physical man,
the dreamer, all he sees with his eyes shut, and in or through his mind is
of course subjective. But to the Seer within the physical dreamer, that
Seer himself bring subjective to our material senses, all he sees is as
objective as he is himself to himself and others like himself.
Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge, p. 73

22.

While the man is what we call alive and awake on the physical earth he
is limited by his physical body, for he uses the astral and mental bodies
only as bridges to connect himself with his lowest vehicle. One of the
limitations of the physical body is that it quickly becomes fatigued and
needs periodi cal rest. Each night the man leaves it to sleep, and withdraws
into his astral vehicle, which does not become fatigued and therefore needs
no sleep. During this sleep of the physical body the man is free to move
about in the astral world; but the extent to which he does this depends upon
his development…. The educated man is generally able to travel in his astral
vehicle wherever he will, and has much more consciousness in the astral
world…… 
C.W. Leadbeater, Textbook of Theosophy,
See also Annie Besant, p. 61 Ancient Wisdom, p. 77

Q. What is the condition of the Linga Sarira (astral body), or plastic
body during dreams?
A. The condition of the Plastic form is tosleep with its body, unless
projected by some powerful desire generated in the higher Manas. In dreams
it plays no active part, but on the contrary is entirely passive, being the
involuntary half-sleepy witness of the experiences through which the higher
principles are passing. 
Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge, p. 76

Mind is a name given to the sum of the states of Consciousness grouped
under Thought, Will and Feeling. During deep sleep, ideation ceases on the
physical plane, and memory is in abeyance; thus for the time-being “Mind is
not” because the organ, through which the Ego manifests ideation and memory
on the material plane, has temporarily ceased to function.. …our “Ego is
latent (in us) at the time of sushupti, sleep”..
Secret Doctrine, l. ps. 38 and 429

*The three states of consciousness, which are Jagrat, the waking; Svapna,
the dreaming; and Sushupti, the deep sleeping state.
Voice of the Silence, footnote p. 6

The vast importance of the work which They are doing, and the enormous
amount of it, makes it obviously impossible that They should take up
personal work with individuals. In the cases where such work has to be done
it is always delegated to pupils…The work of the invisible helpers on the
astral plane would simply not be done unless there were pupils at the stage
where that is the best work can do….. For those who are acting as invisible
helpers on the astral plane there are no separate levels; it is all one. In
India the idea of service on the astral plane is not so widely known as in
the West…. (!!Italics ours)
C.W. Leadbeater, Inner Life, l. ps. 37-8 and 566

The dead can see us, but it is our astral body that they see;
consequently they are at once aware of our emotions, but not necessarily of
the details of our physical condition. They know whether we are happy ore
miserable…. The dead man carries on with him his affections and hatreds; he
knows his old friends when he meets them, and he also forms new friendships
among new companions whom he meets for the first time on the astral plane.
C.W. Leadbeater, Inner Life, l. p. 83

After Death Conditions
 
Kamaloka
In Kama Loka those who retain their remembrance will not enjoy it at the
supreme hour of recollection - -Those who know they are dead in their
physical bodies – can only be either adepts or – sorcerers; and these two
are the exceptions to the general rule.
Mahatma Letters, p. 128

The good and pure sleep a quiet blissful sleep, full of happy visions of
earth-life and have no consciousness of being already for ever beyond that
life. 

Every just disembodied four-fold entity

23.

whether it dies a natural or violent death, from suicide or accident,
mentally sane or insane, young or old, good, bad or indifferent, loses at
the instant of death all recollections, it is mentally – annihilated; it
sleeps its akashic sleep in the Kama-loka. This state lasts from a few hours
(rarely less), days, weeks, month: -sometimes to several years. All this
according to the entity, to its mental status at the moment of death, to the
character of its death, etc. that remembrance will return slowly and
gradually toward the end of its gestition (to the entity or Ego), still more
slowly but far more imperfectly and incompletely to the shell, and fully to
the Ego at the moment of its entrance into Deva Chain.
Mahatma Letters, ps. 123 and 186-7

When an average man or woman reaches Kamaloka, the spiritual
Intelligence is clothed with a desire body, which posesses considerable
vigour and vitality; the lower Manas, closely interwoven with Kama during
the earth –life just ended, having lived much in the enjoyment of objectsof
sense and in the pleasures of the emotions cannot quickly disentangle itself
from the web of its own weaving, and return to its Parent Mind, the source
of its own being. Hence a considerable delay in the world of transition, in
Kamaloka, while the desires wear out and fade away to a point at which they
can no longer detain the Soul with their clinging arms. As said, during the
period that the Immortal Triad and Kama remain together in Kamaloka,
communications between the disembodied entities on earth is possible. 
Annie Besant, Death – And After, ps. 34-5


Enq. In no case, then, do you admit the possibility of the
communication of the living with the disembodied spirit?
Theo. Yes, there is a case, and even two exceptions to the rule. The
first exception is during the few days that follow immediately the death of
a person and before the spirit?
Theo. Yes, there is a case, and even two exceptions to the rule. The
first exception is during the few days that follow immediately the death of
a person and before the Ego passes into the Devachanic state. ….The spirit
is dazed after death and falls very soon into what we call "predevachanic
unconsciousness. ” 
The second exception is found in the Nirmanakayas adept, or Saint…….They
have no material body, as they have left it behind.
Key to Theosophy, p. 118

In the Kama Loka (semi physical sphere) dwell the shells, the victims
and suicides; and this sphere is divided into innumerable regions and
sub-regions corresponding to the mental states of the comers at their hour
of death. This is the glorious “summer land” of the Spiritualists, to whose
horizons is limited the vision of their best seers – vision imperfect and
deceptive because untrained and non-guided by Alaya Vynyana (hidden
knowledge).
Mahatma Letters, ps. 198-9

The average person passing into the heavenlife, for example tends to
float at a considerable distance above the surface of the earth, although on
the other hand some of such men are drawn to our level. Still, broadly
speaking the inhabitants of the heaven-world may be thought of as living in
a sphere or ring or zone round the earth. What Spiritualists call the
summer-land extends many miles above our heads…..
C.W. Leadbeater, Inner Life, l. p. 355

Devachan

..All the greatest plans of moral reform, of intellectual and spiritual
research into abstract Many men arrive in the astral world in utter
ignorance of its conditions, not realizing at firstthat they are dead, and
when they do realize it fearing the fate that may be in store for the,
because of false and wicked theological teaching.

own preparation, living. if not quite what one would call a conscious
existence, at least a dream of such realistic vividness that nothing of the
life-realities could ever match it.
Mahatma Letters, p. 191

24.

When the astral life is over, the man dies to that world in turn, and
awakens in the mental principles of nature, all the divine aspirations,
would, in devachan come to fruition, and theabstract entity previously known
as the great Chancellor would occupy itself in this inner world of its
world…..His mental body is by no means fully developed; only those parts of
it are really in action to their fullest extent which he has used in this
altruistic manner. When a feeling of such utter joy in living that he needs
for the time nothing but just to live. Such bliss is of the essence of life
in all the higher worlds of the system. Even astral life has possibilities
of happiness far greater than anything that we can know in the dense body;
but the heaven-life in the mental world is out of all proportion more
blissful than the astral.
C.W. Leadbeater, Textbook of Theosophy, ps. 88-9

Enq. But what is Devachan?
Theo. The “land of gods” literally; a condition, a state of mental
bliss. Philosophically a mental condition analogous to, but far more vivid
and real than, the most vivid dream. It is the state after death of most
mortals.
Key to Theosophy, p, 78

You postulate an intercourse of entities in devachan which applies only
to the mutual relationship of physical existence. Two sympathetic souls
will each work out its own devachanic sensations making the other a sharer
in its subjective bliss, but yet each is dissociated from the other as
regards actual mutual intercourse. For what companionship could there be
between two subjective entities which are not even as material as that
ethereal body-shadow – the Mayavi rupa?
Mahatma Letters, p. 198

And with regard to the true communion, that of soul with soul? That is
closer, nearer, dearer than anything we know here, for, as we have seen,
there is no barrier on the mental plane between soul and soul; exactly in
proportion to the reality of soul-life in us is the reality of soulcommunion
there; and the mental image of our friend is our own creation; his form as
we knew and loved it; and his soul breathes through that form to ours just
to the extent that his soul and ours can throb in sympathetic vibration.
Annie Besant, Ancient Wisdom, p. 143

A mother from a savage tribe is not less happy than a mother from a
regal palace, with her lost child in her arms; and although as actual Egos,
children prematurely dying before the perfection of their septenary Entity
do not find their way to DevaChan, yet all the same the mother’s loving
fancy finds her children Say – it is but a dream, but after all what is
objective life itself but a panorama of vivid unrealities? The pleasures
realized by a Red Indian in his “happy hunting ground” in that Land of
Dreams is not less intense than the ecstasy felt by a connoisseur who passes
aeons in the wrapt delight of listening to Divine Symphonies by imaginary
angelic choirs and orchestras. there, without once missing what her heart
yearns for. Mahatma Letters, p. 103

The fifth subdivision of Kamaloka offers many new characteristics….Here
are situated all the materialized heavens which play so large a part in
popular religion all the world over. The happy hunting-grounds of the Red
Indian……….
Annie Besant, Ancient Wisdom, p. 100

25.

Skandhas OR “ Permanent Atoms”?

.. Karma is the guiding power, and Trishna (in Pali Tanha) the thirst or
desire to sentiently live he awakens again after the second death, his first
sense is one of indescribable bliss and vitality –actions, which, out of the
old Skandhas produce the new groups that form the new being and control the
nature of birth itself …..The “old being” is the sole-parent - - father and
mother at once - - of the “new being”. It is the former who is the creator
and fashioner, of the latter, in reality; and far more so in plain truth,
than any father in flesh. And once that you have well mastered the meaning
of Skandhas you will see what I mean. It is the group of Skandhas, that
form and constitute the physical and mental individuality we call man (or
any being). This group consists (in the exoteric teaching) of five Skandhas,
namely Rupa - - the material properties or attributes; Yedana - -
sensations; Sanna – abstract ideas; Sankhara - - tendencies both physical
and mental; and Vinnana - - mental powers, and amplifications of the fourth
- -meaning the mental, physical and moral predispositions. We add to them
two more, the nature and names of which you may learn hereafter. Suffice
for the present to let you know that they are connected with and productive
of Sakkayaditthi, the “heresy or delusion of individuality” and of Attavada
“the doctrine of Self”, both of which (in the case of the fifth principle
the soul) lead to the Maya of heresy and belief in the efficacy of vain
rites and ceremonies in prayers and intercession… …they (the Skandhas) are
ever and ceaselessly at work in preparing the abstract mould, the
“privation” of the future new being.
Mahatma Letters, ps.. 111 and 112


A physical impact of any kind will cause vibrations corresponding to its
own in the - -the proximate force or energy – resultant of human ( or
animal) physical body it contacts….whether local or general; they will reach
the permanent physical atom….. All the results of physical experiences
remain stored up in this permanent atom, as powers of vibrating …..The
physical body disintegrates at death; its particles scatter, all carrying
with them the result of the experiences through which they have passed….But
the physical permanent atom remains….The permanent astral atom bears exactly
the same relation to the astral body as that borne by the physical permanent
atom to the physical body. 
At the end of the life in kamalokapurgatory- - the golden life-web
withdraws from the astral body, leaving it to disintegrate, as its physical
comrade had previously done, and enwraps the astral permanent atom for its
long sleep. A similar relation is borne to the mental body by the permanent
mental particle during physical, astral and mental life. 
Annie Besant, Study in consciousness, ps. 97-8 and 105


Enq. What becomes of the other, the lower Skandhas of the personality,
after the death of the body? Are they quite destroyed? 
Theo. They are and yet they are not – a fresh metaphysical and occult
mystery for you. They are destroyed as the working stock in hand of the
personality; they remain as Karmic effects, as germs, hanging in the
atmosphere of the terrestrial plane, ready to come to life, as so many
avenging fiends to attach themselves to the new personality of the Ego when
it reincarnates.
Key to Theosophy, p. 120-1


A questioner sometimes asks: How can these permanent atoms be stored up
within the causal body without losing their physical, astral and mental
natures, since the causal body exists on a higher plane, where the physical,
as physical, cannot be? Such a querent is forgetting for a moment that all
the planes are interpenetrating ……..Te triad forms a minute particle within
the causal body; each constituent part of it belongs to its own plane but,
as the planes have meeting points everywhere, no difficulty arises in the
necessary juxtaposition.
Annie Besant, Study in Consciousness, ps. 107-8

26.

Sleeping Atoms

Life is ever present in the atom or matter, whether organic or inorganic
– a difference that the occultist do not accept. Their doctrine is that life
is as much present in the inorganic as in the organic matter; when life
energy is active in the atom, that atom is organic; when dormant or latent,
then the atom is inorganic…. The “Jiva” or life-principle which animates
man, beast, plant, and even a mineral, certainly is a form of force
indestructible”…. Were it to become - - we will not say absent, for this is
impossible, since it is omni-present - - but for one single instant
inactive, say in a stone, the particles of the latter would lose instantly
their cohesive property and disintegrate as suddenly though the force would
still remain in each of its particles, but in a dormant state. Then the
continuation of the definition, which states that when this indestructible
force is “disconnected with one set of atoms, it becomes attracted
immediately by others”, does not imply that it abandons entirely the first
set, but only that it transfers its vis viva, or living power - - the energy
of motion - - to another set. But because it manifest itself in the next set
as what is called kinetic energy, it does not follow that the first set is
deprived of it altogether; for it is still in it as potential energy, or
life latent….we regard and call, in our occult phraseology, those atoms that
are moved by kinetic energy as “life atoms”, while those that are for the
time being passive, containing but imperceptible potential energy, we call
“sleeping atoms”.
Five Years of Theosophy, ps. 535-6 (“Transmigration of Life Atoms”)

The physical body disintegrates at death; its particles scatter, all
carrying with them the result of the experiences through which they have
passed - - as indeed all particles of our bodies are ever doing day by day,
in their ceaseless dyings out of one body and ceasless birthings into
another. But the physical permanent atom remains; it is the only atom that
has passed through all the experiences of the ever-changing conglomerations
we call our body, and it has acquired all the results of all those
experiences. Wrapped in its golden cocoon, it sleeps through the long years
during which the Jivatma that owns it is living through other experiences in
other worlds. By these it remains unaffected, being incapable of responding
to them and it sleeps through its long night in undisturbed repose.*
“*H.P. Blavatsky throws out a hint as to these ‘sleeping atoms’. See The
Secret Doctrine, ll. 710” (!! H.P.B. certainly does throw out a hint but
note the complete passage in the opposite column from which the footnote,
referred to was taken and compare them - - - Compilers)
Annie Besant, Study in Consciousness, p. 98

Memory

There are five Skandhas or attributes in the Buddhist teachings: Rupa
(form or body) material qualities; Vedanna, sensation; Sanna, abstract
ideas; Samkhara, tendencies of mind; Vinnana, mental powers. Of these we are
formed; by them we are conscious of existence; and through them communicate
with the world about us.
Enq. What do you mean by Skahdhas?
Theo. Just what I said: “attributes” among
which is memory……. Because memory is included within the Skandhas, and the
Skandhas having changed with the new existence, a cular existence develops
Key to Theosophy, ps. 100-101

When functioning in this physical world he remembers by means of his m
ental body; but since that is a new one assumed only for this birth, it
naturally cannot contain the memory of previous births in which it had no
part.
C.W. Leadbeater, Textbook of Theosophy, p. 44

The memory of the cells, or of groups of cells, perishes at death, and
cannot be said to be recoverable as such. Where then is Memory preserved?
The brief answer is Memory is not a memory, the record of that parti-
faculty and is not preserved; it does not inhere in consciousness as a
capacity, nor is any memory of events stored up in the individual
consciousness. Every event is a present fact in the universe-consciousness,
in the consciousness of LOGOS. …..All “memories” are recoverable, because
all possibilities of image-producing vibrations are within the consciousness
of the LOGOS.
Annie Besant, Study in Consciousness, ps. 277-8

27.

Occultists AND Facts

It was H. P. B., who, acting under the orders
of Atrya (one whom you do not know) was the
first to explain in the

It was H. P. B., who, acting under the orders of Atrya (one whom you do
not know) was the first to explain in the Spiritualist the difference there
was between psyche and nous, nefesh and ruach - - Soul and Spirit. She had
to bring the whole arsenal of proofs with her, quotations from Paul and
Plato, from Plutarch and James, etc. before the Spiritualists admitted that
the theosophists were right. It was then that she was ordered to write Isis
just a year after the Society had been founded.
Mahatma Letters, p. 289

She (H.P.B.) often in her humility, buttresses her own true statements
with a mass of rubbish from inferior writers picked up haphazard; on minor
points she often speaks hastily and carelessly; and further, she confuses
her teachings with excessive digressions……
Annie Besant, Theosophical Review, August, 1899.

And to show you how exact a science is occultism let me tell you that
the means we avail ourselves of are all laid down for us in a code as old as
humanity to the minutest detail. Mahatma Letters, p. 144

The Secret Doctrine

The Secret Doctrine will explain many things, set to right more than on
perplexed student.
Mahatma Letters, p. 357

I have also noted your thoughts about the Secret Doctrine. Be assured
that what she has not annotated from scientific and other works, we have
given or suggested to her. Every mistake or erroneous notion, corrected and
explained by her from the works of other Theosop hists was corrected by me
or under my instructions. It is a more valuable work than its predecessor,
an epitome of occult truths that will make it a source of information and
instruction for the earnest student for long years to come. 
Letters from the Masters of the Wisdom, p. 54

Dr. Weller Van Hook has a very useful article in our present number, to
which I draw the attention of our readers. As I have said in the Bulletin
for February: “It is marked by the strong common sense, freedom of thought,
tolerance and open-eyed loyalty, which are so characteristic of the writer.”
(Italics ours)
Annie Besant, The Theosophist, March, 1922 p. 530

They, as they step aside, as did Madame Blavatsky, leave their authority
to appointed leaders who carry on the work under the original Power that
caused the organization to come intoexistence. To realize this is to find a
new respect for the Heads of the movement, and a new tolerance of their
doings. It is to recognize that there is no need to sustain a movement back
to the teachings of H.P.B. Our present leaders suffice for the hour.. Weller
Van Hook, (Italics our)
The Theosophist, March, 1922, ps. 549-50


28.

The same will be said of the Secret Archaic Doctrine, when proofs are
given of its undeniable existence and records. But it will take centuries
before much more is given from it….since the SECRET DOCTRINE is not a
treatise, or a series of vague theories, but contains all that can be given
out to the world in this century.
Secret Doctrine, l. xxxviii

Great “Beings”

Orientalists and their Dictionaries tell us that the term “Manu” is
from the root Man “to think”; hence “the thinking man”. But, esoterically,
every Manu, as an anthro-morphised patron of his special cycle (or Round),
is but the personified idea of the “Though Divine”; (as the Hermetic
“Pymander”); each of the Manus, therefore, being the special god, the
creator and fashioner of all that appears during his own respective cycle or
Manvantara. Fohat runs the Manus’ (or Dhyan Chohans’) errands, and causes
the ideal prototypes to expand from within without….
Secret Doctrine, l. p. 63.

It is from IT that issues the great unseen Logos, who evolves all the
other logoi, the primeval MANU who gives being to the other Manus, who
emanate the universe and all in it collectively, and who represent in their
aggregate the manifested LOGOS.
Secret Doctrine, ll. p. 310

Manu is the synthesis perhaps of the Manasa and he is a single
consciousness in the same sense that while all the different cells of which
the human body is composed are different and varying consciousness there is
still a unit, which
is the man. But this unit, so to say, is not single consciousness; it is a
reflection of thousands and millions of consciousness which a man has
absorbed.
But Manu is not really an individuality it is the whole of mankind. You
may say that Manu is a generic name for the Pitris, the progenitors of
mankind.
Transactions of the Blavatsky Lodge, p. 100


We have not quarrel with the “Back to Blavatsky” movement ……Illwould we
have profited by her teachings, were we only to have marked time in
knowledge since she left us on the physical plane thirty years ago. I may,
however, say that whenever my Brother Leadbeater or myself have come across
anything which seemed to conflict with anything she had written, we examined
our observation with minute care, and tested our own “discoveries” by her
statements.
Annie Besant, The Theosophist, March, 1922 p. 595

The Manu, or temporal leader, is practically an autocratic monarch who
arranges everything connected with the physical plane life of the new race,
and endeavors to make it as perfect an expression as possible of the idea
which the LOGOS has set before Him for realisation.
C.W. Leadbeater, Inner Life, l. p. 15

The Root Manu of the terrene Chain, Vaivasvata who directs the whole
order of its evolution, is a mighty Being from the fourth Chain of the Venus
Scheme…. A Root Manu of a Chain must achieve the level fixed for the Chain
or Chains on which He is human, and become one of its Lords; then He becomes
the Manu of a Race; then a Pratyeka Buddha; then a Lord of the World; then
the Root Manu, then the Seed Manu of a Round, and only then the Root Manu of
a Chain.
Annie Besant and C.W. Leadbeater,
Man: Whence, How and Whither, p. 78

The Adept of the First Ray who takes the seventh Initiation usually
enters there-after upon the arduous duties of the Manu of a Root Race on a
globe. His term of office begins with the slow gathering of the egos who are
going to work under Him at the commencement of the new race, and through all
the successive subraces as they appear one by one. 
During the hundreds of thousands of years of the history of a Root Race,
He directs the building of variant after variant of the sub-races and
Himself incarnates in each sub-race to set the form for it.
C. Jinarajadasa, First Principles of Theosophy, p. 209

29.

Pratyeka Buddhas are those Bodhisattvas who strive after and often reach
the Dharmakaya robe after a series of lives. Caring nothing for the woes of
mankind or to help it, but only for their own bliss, they enter Nirvana and
– disappear from the sight and the hearts of men. In Northern Buddhism a
“Pratyeka Buddha” is a synonym of spiritual Selfishness.
Voice of the Silence, p. 44

When the life-wave shall pass from Earth to Mercury, it is these Three
who shall become in turn Lords of Mercury, and guide all evolution on that
globe. They are known in Buddhism as Pratyeka Buddhas, the “solitary
Buddhas”; for They do not teach…..But They stand at the level of the Buddha,
though Theirs is not the role of the World-Teacher. Hence the curiously
misleading description in popular Buddhism of Them as “solitary” or
“selfish” Buddhas.
C. Jinarajadasa, First Principles of Theosophy, p. 208

Comte St. Germain. No wonder you find it cloudy, for it was never meant
for the uninitiated reader. Eliphas studied from the Rosicrucian MSS. (now
reduced to three copies in Europe). These expound our eastern doctrines from
the teachings of Rosencrauz, who, upon his return from Asia dressed them up
in a semi-Christian garb intended as a shield for his pupils against
clerical revenge. One must have the key to it and that key is a science per
se Rosencrauz taught orally. Saint Germain recorded the doctrines in figures
and his only exciphered MS. remained with his staunch friend and patron the
benevolent German Prince from whose house and in whose presence he made his
last exit - - Home.
Mahatma Letters, p. 280

The last survivor of the Royal House of Rakoczi, known as the Comte de
S. Germain in the history of the eighteenth century; as Bacon in the
seventeenth; as Robertus the monk in the sixteenth; as Hunyadi Janos in the
fifteenth; as Christian Rosencrouz in the fourteenth – to take a few of his
incarnations – was disciple through these laborious lives and now has
achieved Masterhood, the ‘Hungarian Adept’ of The Occult World, and known to
some of us in that Hungarian body……. They live in different countries…..the
Master Rakoczi in Hungary but traveling much….
Annie Besant, The Masters, ps. 75-6 1918 Krotona Edition

(1) An adept – the highest as the lowest – is one only during the
exercise of his occult powers.
(2) Whenever these powers are needed, the sovereign will unlock the door
to the inner man – (the adept) who can merge and act freely but on
condition that his jailor – the outer man will be either completely or
partially paralyzed – as the case may require; viz: either (a) mentally and
physically; (b) mentally – but not physically; (c) physically but not
entirely mentally; (d) neither, but with an akasic film interposed between
the outer and the inner man …….no adept can be supposed to keep his will in
constant tension and the inner man in full function, when there is no
immediate necessity for it. When the inner man rests the adept becomes an
ordinary man, limited to his physical senses and the functions of his
physical brain. Habit sharpens the intuitions of the latter, yet is unable
to make them supersensuous. The inner adept is ever ready, ever on the
alert, and that suffices for our purposes. At moments of rest then, his
faculties are at rest also.
Mahatma Letters, p. 180


An accepted pupil is taken into his Master’s consciousness to so great
an extent that whatever he sees or hears is within the knowledge of his
Master – not that the Master necessarily sees or hears it at the same moment
(though that often happens) but that it lies within the Master’s memory
exactly as it does within the memory of the pupil. Whatever the pupil feels
or thinks is within the astral and mental bodies of his Master ……….If, for
example, the pupil is writing a letter or giving a lecture, the Master is
subconsciously aware of that fact, and may at any moment throw into the mind
of the pupil a sentence to be included……..
C.W. Leadbeater, Inner Life, l. ps. 44-5 and 49-50

Just in the same way the Great White Brotherhood has nothing to do with
the relations between the Master and His pupil; that is a matter solely for
the private consideration of the Master himself.
C.W. Leadbeater, Inner Life, l. p. 54
 
A Master is a term applied by Theosophists to denote certain human
beings, who have completed their human evolution, have attained human
perfection, have nothing more to learn so far as our part of the solar
system is concerned
……..
Annie Besant, The Masters, p. 68 Krotona Edition of 1918

I tell you, my dear friend, that I am far less free to do as I like than
you are in the matter of the Pioneer. None of us but the highest Chutuktus
are their full Masters.
Mahatma Letters, p. 113

…a high adept whose powers are not in the Chohan’s chancery sequestered
by Him to prevent him from squandering them upon the unworthy objects of his
personal predilections
…..
Mahatma Letters, p. 181
(2) But if a first-fifth round man devoted himself to occultism and
became an adept, would he escape further earthly incarnations?
(2) No; if we except Buddha – a sixth round being…Yet even he escaped
further reincarnations but on this earth; and, when the last of the sixth
round men of the third ring is gone out of this earth, the Great Teacher
will have to get reincarnated on the next planet.
Mahatma Letters, p. 117

..having become a full adept (which unhappily I am not) I arrest the
hand of death at will, and when finally obliged to submit to it, my
knowledge of the secrets of nature put me in a position to retain my
consciousness and distinct perceptions of Self as an object to my own
reflective consciousness and cognition; and thus avoiding all such
dismemberments of principles, that as a rule take place after the physical
death of average humanity, I remain as Koot Hoomi in my Ego throughout the
whole series of births and lives across the seven worlds and Arupa-lokas
until finally I land again on this earth among the fifth race men of the
full fifth Round beings. I would have been, in such a case - - “immortal”
for an inconceivable (to you) long period, embracing many milliards of
years. And yet am “I” truly

30.

immortal for all that? Unless I make the same efforts as I do now to secure
for myself another such furlough from Nature’s Law, Koot Hoomi will vanish
and my become a Mr. Smith or an innocent Babu when his leave expires. 
Mahatma Letters, ps. 129-30 

And this weary round of birth upon birth must be ever and ever run
through, until the being reaches the end of the seventh round, or-attains in
the interim the wisdom of an Arhat, then that of a Buddha and thus gets
relieved for a round or two…..
Mahatma Letters, p. 196


The HOW and WHY of True Occult Study

As our London opponent truly remarks: these subjects (metaphysical) are
only partly for understanding. A higher faculty belonging to the higher life
must see, - - and it is truly impossible to force it upon one’s
understanding - - merely in words. One must see with his spiritual eye, hear
with his Dharmakayic ear, feel with the sensations of his Ashta-vijnyana
(spiritual “I”) before he can comprehend this doctrine fully; otherwiseit
may but increase one’s discomfort, and add to his knowledge very little.
Mahatma Letters, p. 200

There is one general law of vision (physical and mental or spiritual)
but there is a qualifying special law proving that all vision must be
determined by the quality or grade of man’s spirit and soul, and also by the
ability to translate divers qualities of waves or astral light into
consciousness. 
Mahatma Letters, p. 255

As we do not “require a passive mind” but on the contrary are seeking
for those most active, which can put two and two together once that they are
on the right scent, we will, if you please, drop the subject. Let your mind
work out the problem for itself……
Thus, little by little, the now incomprehensible will become the
self-evident; and many a sentence of mystic meaning, will shine yet before
your Soul-eye, like a transparency illuminating the darkness of your mind.
Such is the course of gradual progress.
Mahatma Letters, p. 277

On close observation, you will find that it was never the intention of
the Occultists really to conceal what they have been writing from the

32.

earnest determined students, but rather to lock up their information for
safety’s sake, in a secure safe box, the key to which is – intuition.
The degree of diligence and zeal with which the hidden meaning is sought by
the students, is generally the test - - how far he is entitled to the
possession of the so buried treas ure.
Mahatma Letters, p. 279


H. P. B.
You can never know her as we do, therefore - - none of you will ever be
able to judge her impartially or correctly. You see the surface of things;
and what you would term “virtue” holding but to appearances, we - - judge
but after having fathomed the object of its profoundest depth, and generally
leave the appearances to take care of themselves. In your opinion H.P.B. s,
at best, for those who like her despite herself - - a quaint, strange woman,
a psychological riddle: impulsive and kindhearted, yet not free from the
vice of untruth. We on the other hand, under the garb of eccentricity and
folly - -we find a profounder wisdom in her inner Self than you will ever
find yourselves able to perceive. In the superficial details of her homely,
hard-working common-place daily life and affairs, you discern but
unpracticality, womanly impulses, often absurdity and folly; we, on the
contrary, light daily upon traits of her inner nature the most delicate and
refined, and which would cost an uninitiated psychologist years of constant
and keen observation, and many an hour of close analysis and efforts to draw
out of the depth of that most subtle of mysteries - -human - - one of her
most complicated machines, - - H.P.B.’s mind - - and thus learn to know her
true inner Self.
Mahatma Letters, p. 314

Finally, in bringing this Section to a close, a challenge is issued to
any and every student of Theosophy to produce contradictory teachings as
between Masters’ letters (whether published in The Mahatma Letters or The
Occult World or the little Adyar book, Letters from the Masters of the
Wisdom) and the writings of H.P.B., similar to those that have been shown to
exist between the Masters’ and H. P. B. on the one hand and Mr.
Leadbeater’s, Mrs.. Besant’s and Mr. Jinarajadasa’s on the other. It would
be extraordinary that the entire perversion of the real teaching, of

33.

which these examples are the merest indication, should have gone unperceived
by the vast majority of members of the Theosophical Society were it not for
the explanation: They do not know what Theosophy is. They have not in them
that knowledge of the great truths which forms the criterion, the only true
standard, by which they may judge all else. Without the vision of the true
that which looks like the true is bound to produce its glamour with the
inevitable results. The motto of the Theosophical Society is that there is
no religion higher than truth and the search for it has to be pursued
irrespective of likes and dislikes. Most people do not want truth. They only
desire the learning that suits them and makes them happy as their
personalities regard happiness. They fall into the easy trap of belief
because they have not that inward determination to seek and to know, no
matter what the effort may cost in time and labour and sacrifice.

Those words of H. P. B. ‘s leap to the mind of the real student at every
turn of the way:
To the mentally lazy or obtuse, Theosophy must remain a riddle; for in the
world mental as in the world spiritual each man must progress by his own
efforts. The writer cannot do the reader’s thinking for him, nor would the
latter be any the better off if such vicarious thought were possible.

Preface to the Key to Theosophy.
Instead, there has been “the gradual descent of ….. teaching into
so-called simplicity so that the most ignorant might be able to grasp it.”
“Everyone who carefully studies the phenomena presented will admit that men
of strong intellect have been driven out …. by the crudity of the religious
ideas set before them, the contradictions in the authoritative teachings,
the views as to God, man and the universe that no trained intelligence could
possible admit.” Mrs. Besant can sum it up in regard to Christianity and its
“moral degradation” but is unable to make application when the same process
is obviously at work in Theosophy.

Theosophy has no relationship, companionship or comradeship with
falsehoods. Compromise with them is not tolerance. As illustrated again and
again in the case of H.P.B., Theosophy must fight to the bitter end against
falsehood and sham. It

34.

can be charitable and tolerant towards wrongdoers or committers of mistakes
and blunders and sins or criminals but it can neither be charitable nor
tolerant towards sin or crime or mistake or blunder. Between purity and
impurity there is no compromise. Those who assert that there can be, attempt
to excuse themselves by passing off lack of courage as “brotherliness” .
Where work for the Cause of Theosophy is hindered or spoiled, it becomes a
duty to stand firm and fats for TRUTH.

Our duty is not to believe but to seek and know, remembering that our
convictions are but the result of past experiences which have to be checked
by the established convictions of the synthesis of science, religion and
philosophy that is available. IN ORDER TO KNOW, Theosophy must be studied,
It can only be – in the various letters of the Masters that are now open to
us and in the pages from their Messenger who recorded it again for the
Western World in the last quarter of the 19th century. That person alone,
permeated through and through by this study, with the wisdom that gives the
real standard, can judge whether truth is to be found in so-called
expansions of Theosophical teachings. Finally, it has to be remembered that
the study which brings knowledge includes application of the principles.
Theosophy is an uttermost necessity in daily life and not a luxury for
leisure moments.

35.

SECTION 11

IMMORALITY IN THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY
…this was and has been no secret for thousands of years, Fasting,
meditation, chastity of thought, word, and deed…..government of the animal
passions and impulses…..have been published as the means since the days of
Plato and Iamblichus in the West, and since the far earlier times of our
Indian Rishis.
Mahatma Letters, p. 283

“The undefiled Lanoo (disciple, chela) need fear no danger; he who keeps
himself not in purity (who is not chaste) will receive no help from the
‘deva eye’”
Secret Commentary quoted in the Secret Doctrine, ll. p. 295

…the practice of moral and physical purity, and of certain austerities,
develops the vital power of self-illumination. 
Isis Unveiled, l. p. 18

At periodic intervals from the first revel ation of trouble in 1906
right up to the present day, there have been certain dark periods in the
life of the Theosophical Society connected with the moral character of Mr.
C. W. Leadbeater and later with that of some of his protégés in the society
and especially the Liberal Catholic Church. They pertain to his sex
teachings to boys – there are other sinister inferences. He stands self
convicted of onanism, teaching practices that are universally condemned. Nor
can he take refuge in the statement that he has learned them from his
“occult” sources. Writing to Mrs. Besant on June 30th., 1906, from Harrogate
he said:
My opinion in the matter, which so many think so wrong, was formed long
before Theosophical days, and before I know anything about all these inner
matters. I did not even originate it, for it came to me first through
ecclesiastical channels. (Italics ours) From Exhibits in the Narayaniah vs.
Mrs. Besant Case
Madras High Court, March and April, 1913

This was reiterated in another letter to Mrs. Besant, dated September
11th, 1906, from Harrogate complaining of her changed attitude toward him:
So I do not quite understand the reason of the sudden change. Nor do I
quite see why you write as though I were still persistently teaching these
doctrines, though I have repeatedly said that I am willing to defer to your
opinion. You know I never for a moment suggested that the Masters dictated
or approved of such teaching. (Italics ours)
 
Another exhibit as above

36.

Similar statements are made before the Committee called by Colonel
Olcott on Wednesday, May 16th., 1906, representing the English, American and
French Sections of the Theosophical Society:
Leadbeater: ………..you are probably not aware that one at least of the
great Church organizations for young men deals with the matter in the same
manner.
Mead: Do you deliberately say this?
Leadbeater: Yes.
Mead and Burnett: What is its name?
Leadbeater: I am not free to give this. I heard of the matter first
through it. (Italics ours)
Mead: Mr. Leadbeater states that there is an organization of the Church
of England which teaches self abuse!
Olcott: Is it a seminary for young priests or a school?
Leadbeater: It is not in a school but I must not give definite
indications.
…………..
Mead: This last statement of Mr. Leadbeater’s is one of the most
extraordinary things I have ever heard. It is incredible that there is an
organization of the Church of England which teaches masturbation as a
preventative against unchastity. I ask what is the name of this
organization.
Leadbeater: I certainly should not tell.
…………..
Leadbeater: I decline to prove it in any manner.
(From First Section, verbatim
stenographic report of the Proceedings)
Is Mr. Leadbeater a man from whom genuine spiritual teachings can come?
Again judgment is left to each individual for himself. Incidentally, the
barest presentation of the case involves people intimately connected with
his life and of them, too, must every person form his own opinion. The
documents quoted from tell their own story:

1906

Mrs. Dennis, writing to Mrs. Besant from Chicago, January 25th., 1906 –
Mr. Leadbeater having left the United States in 1905 – says in part:

I have suddenly learned the cause of the ______ boy’s bitter hatred and
contempt for Mr. Leadbeater, of which I spoke to you in London and which
cause he had at that time refused to reveal. It is not, as I had supposed, a
childish and personal grievance, but as you will see from the charges and
evidence formulated below, was the result of morally criminal acts on the
part of Mr. Leadbeater himself. Before he was allowed to go to ______ with
Mr. Leadbeat er, Mr. Leadbeater had told the parents of this boy that his
first effort in training boys was a frank talk on the sex question with
careful instruction to them of the necessity for an absolutely pure and
virgin life. He stated that he liked to gain their confidence while they
were very young and before they had erred through ignorance. He wished to
inform them before even a first offense, which he said was fatal, so
absolute must be their virginity. This was the understanding between Mr.
Leadbeater and the boy’s parents in arranging

37.

for his travels with him, and in connection with which the following charges
are made against Mr. Leadbeater:

The Charges

First, that he is teaching young boys given into his care habits of self
abuse and demoralizing personal practices.

Second, that he does this with deliberate intent, and under the guise of
occult training or with the
promise of the increase of physical manhood.

Third, that he has demanded, at least in one case, promises of the
utmost secrecy.

The testimony given by the mother of one boy
“He was nearly fourteen years of age when the occurrence took place
while traveling with Mr. Leadbeater; and on his return he met my enquiries
as to the cause of the hatred which had obviously grown up between himself
and Mr. L. with the statement: ‘ Mother, I shall never tell you, but if you
knew what I know, and had heard and seen the things I have seen and heard,
you would not wonder.’ Later rebukes for his antagonism again brought out
the words: ‘Mother, you do not know all’. This attitude of secrecy was
maintained for several years with an increased contempt shown at every
mention of Mr. L.’s name. A few months ago rumours reached me of charges of
immoral sexual practices by Mr. L. with boys having been made in India and
the same having been suspected in England. When he was again questioned he
testified that Mr. L. had taught him to practice self-abuse. When asked what
reasons he gave for teaching him such practices he said ‘Mr. L. told me that
it would make me grow strong and manly.’ Asked his reasons fro concealing
these facts so long from his parents, he said ‘He made me promise not to
tell.’”

The testimony given by the mother of the second boy

The mother of the second boy noticed with sorrow and regret that the
relations between Mr. L. and her son had become strained and that some
change, the cause of which she did not understand, had been the result of a
short visit which he had made to Mr. L. when fourteen years of age. After
this visit she noticed that the tone of his letters to Mr. L. was changed
and the he never answered Mr. L.’s letters to him without repeated reminders
from her of his neglect, whereas, before the visit, frequent, intimate and
affectionate letters passed between them. When the mother questioned him
with regard to his loss of kindly feeling for Mr. L. the boy always replied:
“Mother, I cannot tell you.” Before his visit to Mr. L. it would have been
his greatest joy to travel with him and help as ______ did; but after his
visit, when asked: “Would you like to travel with him?” he replied firmly:
“No, I never would. ” After learning of the charges made against Mr. L.the
mother again questioned the boy. With great reluctance he admitted the facts
of Mr. L.’s immoral conduct and in reply to the question: “When did it
happen?” he said: “The first night I
visited him, when we slept together.” When asked what excuse Mr. L. gave for
such conduct, the boy’s words were: “Mother, I think that was the worstpart
of the whole thing. Somehow he made me believe it was Theosophical.”

Extracts from the London Committee verbatim report, May 16th., 1906.

Leadbeater: …… Remember that both I and Mrs. Besant answered under that
confidence and we should not expect that our answers were going to be laid
before a whole Section and before the whole world…..Of course, I am aware
that the opinion of the majority is against that course. They would regard
things I look on as worse as much less objectionable. The only point in my
mind is that I should assure you that there was no evil intent. I was simply

38.

offering a solution of a serious difficulty. It is not the common solution
but to my mind it is far better than the common solution, but I do not
expect that you should agree with me. The point is that the Society wishes
to clear itself from all connection with that view. The Society is correct
in taking that ground if that is the opinion of its representatives…..You
may hold any views of the course which I took, but our own idea is to
prevent the Society from being injured.
……………….
Leadbeater: The interlineations in writing giving a statement by the
mother as to interval is untrue. The original interval was a week, and then
it lengthened to ten days and then a fortnight and so on.
………..
Leadbeater: I want to call up quite clearly the exact incidents. I
scarcely recollect. There was advice but there might be a certain amount of
indicative action. That might be possible.
…………
Thomas: You admit giving the advice to more than two boys.
Leadbeater: You are to take it that the same advice was given to
several(Italics ours)
 
…………
Keightley: I should like Mr. Leadbeater to tell us whether in following
this course he did so with Mrs. Beasnt’s knowledge and consent before these
charges were sent to India. He states in his letter that he has no secrets
from Mr. Besant and he has been in intimate relations with her. I should
like him to tell us at what date Mrs. Besant was made aware and whether at
that time she did not express disapproval.
…………
(Miss Ward quoted Mrs. Besant’s statement of Disapproval)
…………
Burnett: The inference remains that he does not tell all of his methods
to Mrs. Besant.
Olcott: Since he did not want the boys to tell their mothers he would I
should think, shrink from telling Mrs. Besant.
………… (After Mr. Leadbeater withdrew from the room)
Miss Ward: ………I would like to say that we should remember that he is not
sane on these matters and that he has for a number of years given his whole
life to the movement and that a large number of people owe him help. I think
f we can keep the resignation in we should.
Keightley: We have a greater duty upon us that we owe to the
individual.- - the duty to the movement. We stand here in the position of
trustees representing the interests of the movement throughout the world. We
have to face the world……………… …………
Mead: May I put in a word on behalf of the mothers of these boys: This
is the most terriblething. We have some of the best women in the Society
broken-hearted about this. What do we do to defend them?
…………
Bernard: If the measure is not strong enough it will not do. Mrs. Besant
said he would not do it any more but he has not given such a promise. He
even said it was hardly right for him to give explanations. If my colleagues
heard what I have heard they would demand his expulsion.
Thomas: I wish I could accept his resignation but I cannot.
Olcott: A cable has just been received which makes the case worse than
before.
Thomas: I think he tried to tell the truth but there is no expression of
regret and he holds still that the practice is a good one.
Sinnett: It seems to me that our remarks are based on the idea that
there is something behind. We ought to act only what is before us.
Thomas: I cannot accept the statement that he did this in good faith. I
think the whole of the evidence show that if it was not a case of direct

39.

vice, t was a case of gratifying his own prurient ideas.
…………
Burnett: I should like to say why I am here and support the expulsion.
We are not here to persecute Mr. Leadbeater. We are here to preserve the
good name of the Theosophical Society before the world. And while some of us
may have opinions that would differ because of our intimate relations with
him, belief in his personal integrity has no bearing on the present
situation. We know how the world regards the matter. It is not supported by
any doctor; therefore, we must get out of our mind any idea of personality.
I have no feeling against the man who sat here today and uttered the most
infamous things (Italics our) I have ever listened to, but I say that if we
do not expel this man, the world will rise up against the Society. ……….
(Mr. Leadbeater was called in and the
resolution accepting his resignation was read to him by the President)
Mead: Do you mean to continue this course of teaching?
Leadbeater: Seeing there is so much feeling in the matter by people
whose views I respect, I do not. (Italics ours)  

Extracts from Exhibits available later and to which Col. Olcott referred
when he said a cable had been received making the case worse than before.

>From a letter Mr. Leadbeater wrote to one of the boys, part of which was in
cipher:

PRIVATE

My own darling boy, there is no need for you to write anything in
cipher, for no one but I ever sees your letters. But it is better for sees
your letters. But it is better for me to write in cipher about some of the
most important matters…………………………………Turning to other matters, I am glad to
hear of the rapid growth and the strength of the results. Twice a week is
permissible, but you will soon discover what brings the best effect (The
occurs the following passage in cipher, the boy’s translation of it being
given). The meaning of the sign is urethra. Spontaneous manifestations are
undesirable and should be discouraged. If it comes without help, he needs
rubbing more often, but not too often or he will not come well. Does that
happen when you are asleep? Tell me fully. Glad sensation is so pleasant.
(Italics ours)
Thousand kisses darling.
                    
>From a letter of the boy’s mother:

Mr. L. gave to this boy a teaching admittedly dangerous, and, at the
same time, prevented the counsel and the guidance of his parents in so
critical a matter by impressing the boy strongly with secrecy Mr. L. either
considered the parents unfit counselors or else he feared their disapproval.
In either case it was an assumption of privilege. For no matter which view
he held, the parents are Karmically responsible for the child, and such
teaching so contrary to their sense of right would have been possibly
permissible only after having consulted them and received their
consent…………………………… for in this, you will observe Mr. L. expresses himself as
“glad the sensation is pleasant”, showing that he approves of the sensuous
part of the practice. This surely was teaching the boy to throw pleasurable
consciousness into the practice……..A.B. said to me in ’97 “never make the
mistake of doing evil that good may come.” Now it appears to me that this
act is far more evil in its effects than

40.

what we call lust, for it warps the nature and annuls any possible good that
might result………It is an inexplicable feature in this case, that the boy was
taught this method while away from his home.There was ample opportunity for
Mr. L. to have consulted the boy’s father about this when in our city buthe
did not.
>From Jinarajadasa’s Circular of April 16, 1906:

>From all the information that has so far come to my knowledge, and I
think that I am now acquainted with practically all that there is, I have
not the slightest hesitation in saying that there is not the faintest
particle of proof of the charge (sodomy), nor anything that to a
clear-sighted man would seem even to justify such a charge. I gather that
his accusation against Mr. Leadbeater has been made in other countries.
I know that, as a matter of fact, this insinuation was made by some
people in Ceylon, while he was in that country between 1885-89. I heard of
it when I was a boy of 12, and before I knew Mr. Leadbeater. But soon after
my acquaintance with him, I understood why the charge was made. He was
especially kind to some boys there and helped them always….
…..I have known Mr. Leadbeater for 19 years, during 11 of these I lived
with him. Many a year, when his means were little, we have lived and worked
together in one little room. I saw him night and day these years, and I
think I can honestly say that there was no act or thought of his that was
hidden from me. During all these years of intimacy I never saw or hear from
him the slightest thing to raise even a suspicion in my mind of this charge
of… (sodomy) ….I gather that some think that Mr. Leadbeater is “a sexual
pervert”. Witness, for instance, his liking every boy, as though there can
be no rational explanation for that. Secondly, his irritability. How this
can easily come about, I know. Those who have to travel about and lecture,
as he did, meeting new people, thrown constantly into new surroundings and
magnetism, that constant need to adapt oneself to new circumstances every
week almost…..
But there is a truer charge that Mr. Leadbeater taught some boys..
(onanism). Mr. Leadbeater admits it, but he deserves to be herd on the
matter……….
We have certain ideas in which we are brought up in this world and one,
certainly a strange one, is, condoning illicit intercourse. We know that men
are not angels, and so no one insists that a man shall not have intercourse
with a woman before marriage. We little think of the woman, except to
condemn her, and in certain countries, to punish her. Our disapprobation of
the social evil is so slight that certainly to offer it is the only possible
remedy to many a youth under a difficult circumstance. Let a man sin in this
way. It matters little. Yet that this solution is an outrage on womanhood
and humanity, and is not the solution that we seek, I know in my inmost
being, even though I have accepted it and followed it in those times when
desire forces were too strong for my mastery. (Italics ours)

Then there is Mr. Leadbeater’s advice that this is not the solution.
What the solution is I don’t know. Some day, no doubt, humanity will
discover it. Certainly it is not the solution offered by Mr. Leadbeater. I
should never offer it as even the shadow of one.
(Italics ours) (Exhibit Narayaniah case)

Mrs. Besant writing from Simla, June 9th., 1906 (with permission to use
publicly should the need arise): says in part:

This was the first time I had heard of such a method a meeting the
sexual difficulty, let alone of Mr. Leadbeater’s recommendation of it. I had
always regarded self-abuse as one of the lowest forms of vice, a thing
universally

41.

reprobated by decent people. To me it was not arguable. But I have since
heard that it is sometimes practiced and recommended by ascetics, otherwise
god men, for the sake of preserving chastity- - as though self–abuse did not
destroy chastity as much as prostitution, and in an even more degrading
way!” (Italics ours)

Mrs. Besant to Mrs. Dennis, May 10th., 1906:

You asked me what you are to think of my position. This, I know Mr.
Leadbeater to be a disciple of Master K.H. I have constantly met him out of
the body and seen him with the Master and trusted their work. I know that if
he were evil minded this could not be. I cannot therefore join in hounding
him out of the T.S. in which he has been one of our best workers…..I should
save trouble by deserting Mr. L. but I do not see that to be my duty.”
 
(Exhibit Narayaniah case)

>From Mr. Leadbeater to Mrs. Besant, June 30th.,
1906:

You speak of defending the advice I gave; but you cannot defend it
because you don’t agree with it, as you have said clearly from the first,
therefore the clamour of the American Executive against you is silly.
(Italics ours)
(Exhibit
Narayaniah case)

>From Mr. Leadbeater to Mrs. Besant, September
11th., 1906:

You know I never for a moment suggested that the Masters dictated or
approved such teaching. I should myself simply infer that They left me to
make my own discoveries, and presumably therefore did not consider that this
one thing out-weighs everything else, as you apparently do now, though you
as certainly did not think so when we were together at Benares. Both
matrimony and prostitution must obviously be worse, because in each case
they involve action upon radically wrong, is it not more probable that in
spite of that defect, they were willing to use what was good in me, than
that both of us and several other people have been consistently and
successfully deluded for many years, especially when you consider how much
good came out of the delusion. If we are to suppose the whole transaction
carried out by Dark Powers at the cost of infinite trouble, you do not see
that the balance of result of that transaction is enormously against them? I
suppose it is useless to write, because you have felt a certain line to be
your duty and you naturally therefore see everything from that point of
view; but at least do not let yourself be persuaded to think that I am still
carrying on that line of teaching in spite of you; I yielded my opinion to
yours at once, but it does not seem to have made any difference. All through
the affair, I have guided my self as far as possible by what I thought you
would wish. (Italics ours)
 
(Exhibit Narayaniah Case)

At the time of this turmoil Mrs. Besant sent a letter to the
Corresponding Secretary of the Esoteric Section in America which, with her
consent, was later issued as a printed circular. An extract reads: Mr.
Leadbeater appeared before the Council of the British Section,
representatives from
the French and American Sections being present and voting. Col. Olcott in
the chair. He denied none of the charges, but, in answer to

42.

questions, very much strengthened them, for he alleged that he had actually
handled the boys himself, and that he had thus dealt with boys before
puberty ‘as a prophylactic’. So that the advice supposed to be given to
rescue a boy, as a last resort, in the grip of sexual passion, became advice
putting foul ideas into the minds of boys innocent of all sex impulses, and
the long intervals, the rare relief, became twenty-four hours in length, a
daily habit. It was conceivable that the advice as supposed to have been
given, had been given with pure intent, and the presumption was so, in a
teacher of Theosophical morality; anything else seemed incredible. But such
advice as was given in fact, such dealing with boys before sex passion had
awakened, could only be given with pure intent if the giver were, on this
point, insane . Such local insanity, such perversion of the sexinstinct too
forcibly restrained, is not unknown to members of the medical profession.
The records of a celibate priesthood and of unwise asceticism are only too
full of such cases, and their victims on all other points good, are on the
sex questi on practicallyinsane.

Let me place here on record my opinion that such teaching as this given
to men, let alone to innocent boys, is worthy of the sternest reprobation.
It distorts and perverts the sex impulse, implanted in man for the
preservation of the race; it degrades the ideas of marriage, fatherhood and
motherhood, humanity’s most sacred ideals; it befouls the imagination,
pollutes the emotions and undermines the health. Worst of all that it should
be taught under the name of the Divine Wisdom, being essentially ‘earthly,
sensual, devilish’. (With the exception of the first two words, italics
ours)
    
And a few weeks later, writing to the American Section from Benares
City, she said in part:

Any proposal to reinstate Mr. Leadbeater in the membership of the T. S.
would be ruinous to the Society. It would be indignantly repudiated here and
in Europe and I am sure in Australia and New Zealand, if the facts were
known. If such a proposal were carried in America – I do not believe it
possible –I should move on the T. S. Council, the supreme authority, that
the application of membership should be rejected. But I am sure Mr.
Leadbeater would not apply.

But in The Theosophist, February, 1908, following a certain telegram, to
which reference will be
Made presently, was published the following from Mr. Leadbeater:

You ask me to write a formal letter which you can show, if necessary, to
say what is my present position in regard to the advice which I gave some
time ago to certain boys. I need hardly say that I adhere to the promise I
gave you in February of last year (1906) that I would not repeat that advice
as I defer to your opinion that it is dangerous. I recognize as fully as you
do that if would be so, if promiscuously given and I had never dreamt of so
giving it.

After a move by the Council of the Blavatsky Lodge in 1907 to reinstate
Mr. Leadbeater which caused Mrs. Besant to send the following telegram:

If publicly repudiates teaching two years after repudiation on large
majority representative of the whole Society would reinstate not otherwise,
the President completely changed her mind. Nor was it then deemed necessary
to wait

43.

“two years”. She addressed a letter to the members of the Theosophical
Society in which she now said:

Much has been made of a “cipher letter”. The use of cipher arose from an
old story in the Theosophist, repeated by Mr. Leadbeater to a few lads; they
as boys will, took up the cipher with enthusiasm and it was subsequently
sometimes used in correspondence with the boys who had been present when the
story was told. In a type-written note on a fragment of paper undated and
unsigned, relating to an astral experience a few words in cipher occur on
the incriminated advice. Then follows a sentence, unconnected with the
context, on which a foul construction has been placed. That the boy did not
so read it is proved by a letter of his to Mr. Leadbeater – not sent, but
shown me by his mother – in which he expressed his puzzlement as to what it
meant as he well might. There is something very suspicious about the use of
this letter. It was carefully kept away from Mr. Leadbeater (Mrs. Besant
however had a copy!), though widely circulated against the wish of the
father and mother, and when a copy was lately sent him by a friend, he did
not recognize it in its present form, and stated emphatically that he had
never used the phrase with regard to any sexual act. It may go with the
Coulomb and Pigott letters.

Mrs. Chidester, Assistant Corresponding Secretary of the American E. S.,
replied to this, enclosing a photograph of the cipher letter, which was
typewritten and unsigned, but written on the stationary Mr. Leadbeater
habitually used and interlined in his own handwriting:

First, as to the Cipher-letter being forgery.

When on September 28, 1907, you were shown the original Cipher-letter,
you did not in any way or manner question its genuineness nor did you
attempt any explanation or defense of it. Nor do I understand that Mr.
Leadbeater has ever denied writing it. Furthermore you virtually
authenticate it in the first part of the paragraph dealing with it on pages
10 and 11 of your letter……

Before even the two years she had stipulated had elapsed she inserted
the following in the Theosophist for January, 1909, concerning the
readmission of Mr. Leadbeater to the Theosophical Society in 1908:

The General Council of the Theosophical Society has declared by a
majority composed of 13 General Secretaries, its 4 official members and 4
our of the additional members – 21 in all – that “there is no reason why Mr.
C. W. Leadbeater should not return, if he wishes to his place in the Society
which he has in the past served so well.” 

In the Theosophist for March, 1909, she wrote:

I am not in a position to tell our readers what will be done by those
who disapprove of the action of the General Council of the Theosophical
Society in opening the door to the return of my highly-valued colleague, Mr.
C. W.

44.

Leadbeater. The more liberal minded of the, who are willing to live and
let live, will probably take advantage of the new rule (Rule 31) which
permits a dissentient minority to organize itself independently outside the
National Societies and to attach itself only to Headquarters. Thus it will
publicly show its disapproval of the liberty affirmed by the President and
General Council; but at the same time will not seek to coerce the great
majority of members.

1912

Just as the 1906 trouble arose out of incidents in preceding years so
did the 1912 which resulted in Mr. Jiddu Narayaniah’s suit to recover
possession of his two sons, J. Krishnamurti (whose portrait in the latter
half of 1925 appeared in newspapers in practically every country of the
world as “The Coming Christ”) and J. Nityananda. He desired to set aside the
guardianship of Mrs. Besant which placed them in propinquity to Mr.
Leadbeater and had recourse to law in the hope of achieving his object.

He wrote to Mrs. Besant on January 6th., 1912, from Adyar:

Respected and Dear Mother,
In continuation of my conversation with you in Benares on the 31st
ultimo, just before my departure to this place, I respectfully beg to inform
you that after deep consideration, I have come to the following conclusion
on the facts here mentioned and I earnestly hope and trust that you will
give your best consideration and render me the relief I seek…….
What I personally witnessed I have brought to your notice on several
occasions, and I told you in no doubtful terms that Mr. Leadbeater has the
lowest kind of sexual appetite, and that he has his own ways of gratifying
it. What the other person has seen was, I am told, also brought to your
notice, by some at least of those to whom the person had spoken. I
therefore requested you on many an occasion to separate my boys from him.
You were kind enough to comply with my requests, but only half and half
still giving room to Mr. Leadbeater to continue his dirty practices.
On the last occasion, namely when I spoke to you in Benares, you plainly
told me that you could not separate the boys from that man.
My own impression is that Mr. Leadbeater is a thoroughly undesirable
character to be in charge of my boys, not even to temporarily associate with
them.
I therefore finally request you to bring about a complete and final
separation of my boys from that man and assure me in writing that you will
not permit him to influence in any manner either by day or night my boys and
that you will never allow that man even to meet my boys, even occasionally,
or to carry on any sort of correspondence with my boys, so that the boys may
not come under his influence to the least extent. If you fail to comply with
my request, I regret that I shall have recourse to law to find my remedy,
and I very respectfully submit that this is no threat of mine…..

45.
…………
Even this sacrifice I am resolved to make in order that I may save those
children from what I am convinced would be their ruin, if they continue to
remain in that man’s hands, already a well-known old offender.

May the Lords of Compassion make you have compassion on me. 
(This and all succeeding quotations in the 1912 sections from exhibits and
evidence in the case at the Madras High Court, March, 1913)

Mrs. Besant prepared a written reply to Mr. Narayaniah’s plaint when he
filed suit for possession in which she attempted to obscure the point at
issue by making allegations against The Hindu newspaper and certain people
who, she asserted, were behind the suit.

Mr. Justice Bakewell ruled “The whole of paragraph 29 is scandalous”,
and passed an Order, part of which runs:

Her (Mrs. Besant’s) written statement cannot by any stretch of language
be described as pleadings. It is verbose, prolix, argumentative and
irrelevant, and in one of the paragraphs at least, namely paragraph 29, it
is highly scandalous, and consists largely of evidence…….The plaint (on
behalf of Mr. Narayaniah) is also prolix and contains many matters of
evidence but the statements in the defendant’s written statement are not
caused by its bad pleadings. The written statement is ordered to be struck
out, since it is impossible to separate the objectionable part from the
necessary assertions. The defendant is ordered to pay the plaintiff’s taxed
costs of this application occasioned by the filing of this written
statement.
Counsel for Mr. Narayaniah filed certain letters from Mr. Leadbeater to Mrs.
Besant which indicate that the trouble began as far back as April, 1910.
Incidentally, certain sentences in this correspondence may be noted:

Undated but after April 24, 1910: I mentioned to you yesterday that the
Master had spoken very kindly and encouragingly about the recent
disturbances here, but I had not time to tell you what He said and I should
like you to know it exactly as soon as possible, lest by chance you should
not have remembered it in full…. 
Dec. 24, 1909: I am directed to see that the boys do not again enter
their old house, and I fear I may have difficulty with that father, since
his mind moves very slowly. Can you impress it upon him? …. I wonder whether
the Master anticipates trouble with him about that ceremony, for He again
referred to it last night…..The Master plainly intimated that this was the
last time they would be permitted to take part in anything of this sort, and
this only as a concession to “The weaker brethren”. I think it would bea
blessing if the father could be kept away over the date of the ceremony,
January 7…. Could you not send him to inspect a branch in Kashmir or some
other distant province? I am rather
nervous about the function.
Jan 3, 1910: Krishna has written you his idea of the ceremony, which
began the New Year for us, but he does not remember (for he probably did not
see) that the Lord Maitreya Himself looked in and the Star once more gleamed
over

46.

us at the critical moment. More and more I see the importance of every step
in this affair, and my sense of responsibility grows day by day. Of this
last development I have told Mrs. Russak, Mrs. Van Hook, Ruspoli and Clarke,
the people whom Krishna himself chose. I do not know whether it would be
well that the whole Sunday morning should know but if so, I think it would
be better for you tell them, on your return.
Jan. 6th., 1910:….The grouping, which you describe accurately,
represents one state of the proceedings, and it is the time that the Lord
Maitreya solemnly gave him into our charge on behalf of the Brotherhood.
 
(Italics throughout ours)

In the recorded evidence Mr. Narayaniah says in part:
 
In December the boys slept in Mrs. Besant’s room, while she was at
Benares, but they took their meals with their father, as usual. Witness went
to Benares for the Convention in December, 1909 (sent away in accordance
with Mr. Leadbeater’s request? - -Compilers), and returned to Adyar in
January, 1910, and he did not know what took place at the “initiation”
further than that Mr. Leadbeater and the elder boy were closed up in a room.
He thought it was Mrs. Besant’s room. Mrs. Besant returned to Adyar in 1910,
and then she put a draft form of guardianship into his hands and asked him
to go through it and sign it. He kept it for some days and she asked him
about the document, and he said that he was not prepared to sign it. Some
time after that Sir Subramnia Iyer came to him and asked what the difficulty
was regarding the document and he said that he did not like to sign such a
document. Then Mrs. Besant went to him, and asked whether he believed in
“the Masters”? He said “Yes”. “Don’t you believe that I am in communication
with the Masters? You take me to be your spiritual teacher. I know you won’t
give me any difficulties, but difficulties may arise, after your death, with
your relations. So I want that letter.” He inserted in the draft that Mrs.
Besant should be guardian after his life time”. Mrs. Besant objected to his
stating “after my lifetime” and wanted him to constitute her as guardian
immediately.

It was stated in the letter : Of. Also Mr. N.’s letter
: Yet Mrs. Besant can
that she alone should be the : of March 6, 1910 when
: actually say in the
guardian of the boys and he : he says in part:
: Watch Tower Notes.
did not give power to transfer : As my desire is that
: The Theosophist, Jan.
the guardianship. The last : you and you alone should
: 1922.
clause “I do not give you power : be their guardian, I do
: And thus on December
to transfer the guardianship” : not give your power to
: 5, 1921, the chapter
was written by him. (Italics : transfer the guardian-
: closed which began on
: ship I give
you, to any : January 11, 1910, when
other but to
myself, in : the charge of guarding
case you find
any neces- : and of training was
sity to do
so. If you hap : given to my brother C.
-pen to pass
away from : W. Leadbeater and my-
your present
body before : self.
I do, the
guardianship : (Italics ours)
.. should
naturally revert :
to me….(or)
persons :
appointed by
me for that :
purpose in
my will.
Lakshman, servant of Mrs. Besant, is recorded as saying in
cross-examination:

The boy (Krishnamurti) had a separate bath room, but that day he was
bathing in Mr. Leadbeater’s bath room, and witness

47.

was surprised to find them together there, and naked. It is considered a
sinful act for Hindus to bathe completely naked, and through shame he did
not call Mr. Leadbeater but he went away.

>From Mrs. Besant’s evidence:

In February, 1910, the plaintiff told her that he had seen Nitya
shivering on the verandah outside Mr. Leadbeater’s room, and that the boy
had said that Krishna was inside and that plaintiff had then seen something
nasty….. Mr. Leadbeater’s room, and that the boy had said that Krishna was
inside and that plaintiff had then seen something nasty….. It is absolutely
false that she is aware of any evil practices of Mr. Leadbeater.
(Italics ours)

In reply to Plaintiff’s counsel:

I never explained to him (the father) that giving over the boys meant
that they ought not to marry. I think he did understand it. If I had thought
it was necessary to explain to him, I would have done it. As Initiates no
sexual activity is possible. If what is said had happened, it is impossible
that the boy should be as he is. He could not have it. If he could have had
it, he never would have consented to it. All sexual impulse lay behind.

Mr. Justice Bakewell, in summing up, said in part:

Mr. Leadbeater admitted in his evidence that he has held, and even now
holds, opinions which I need only describe as certainly immoral and such as
to unfit him to be the tutor of boys, and taken in conjunction with his
professed power to detect the approach of impure thoughts, render him a
highly dangerous associate for children…… (I am of opinion for the reasons I
have given that it is necessary in the interests of the children and for
their future protection that they should be declared wards of Court and I
declare accordingly. I also direct the defendant to hand over the custody of
the two boys, Krishnamurti and Nityananda, to the plaintiff on or before the
26th of May, 1913. With regard to the costs of the case, this trial has been
unduly protracted and considerable expense has been caused by the charges
which were made by the plaintiff and I find not to have been proved. I
therefore direct him to pay the costs of the suit and the defendant’s
including the costs of the several commissions and all costs expressly
reserved.
 
April, 18, 1913

1921-22
Yet once more in the third cycle of trouble that began in 1921 and has
continued practically without remission to the present day, the conflict was
the outcome of hidden actions, with sinister appearances, happening again
and again in the preceding years until their cumulative effect could not be
ignored. As in 1906, so in 1912 and again in 1921. Let the extracts from the
original documents tell their own story to those who seek truth and truth
alone.

Incidentally, it is interesting to note here that when Mr. Leadbeater
met Mr. T. H. Martyn in Rome in 1906, the latter’s attitude was summed up
thus: “I found that

48.

had already received a letter from Dennis giving it (the accusation) in a
wildly exaggerated form but had simply put it in his pocket and kept
silence”, when Mr. Leadbeater’s judgment was, apropos of another matterin
the same letter: “Martyn is so eminently a man of common sense that I always
feel disposed to allow great weight to any suggestion which he venture to
make. (Letter from Mr. Leadbeater to Mrs. Besant, date May 17th., 1906,
which was an exhibit in the Narayaniah case – Italics ours)

Also, it was a matter of common knowledge in the Theosophical Societ6y
that up to 1921 both Mr. Leadbeater and Mrs. Besant vouched for the fact
that Mr. Martyn says of “initiations” …..In July,1917, five of us were told
that we had taken various initiations. No one remembered in the morning - -
some had hardly slept at all feeling rather excited.”) But judgment changed
as did his position in the “occult hierarchy” when Mr. Martyn became the
accuser. The following are all extracts (Italics ours)

from his letter to Mrs. Besant, date May 20th., 1921:

1906: Police proceedings against the latter (Mr. Leadbeater) were
seriously threatened. On of his boys in desperate trouble urged me to try
and prevent them being proceeded with and admitting that the only evidence
he could give confirmed Leadbeater’s immoral practices…… I went away to
Africa soon after and on returning I tried to forget what this confession
involved, to explain it away; and succeeded.

1914: …Leadbeater came to live with us in Sydney. I took him at his own
valuation and yours, regarding him as an Arhat.

1917: …I went to America. Young Van Hook was in New York. He talked
freely of C.W.L.’s immorality and about faking the “lives” of people….Now,
here is the evidence of two Leadbeater boys (my 1906 experience - - I can
give you the name if you want it - - and young Van Hook) both subsequent
(Mr. Martyn’s italics) to the 1906 inquiry and subsequent both to the
confessions of all the American boys and to C.W.L.’s admissions at the
enquiry of 1906. I have put these pieces of evidence together and add to
them the compromising facts of life in my house (I am only touching the
fringe of this in this letter) and find staring me in the face the
conclusion that Leadbeater is a sex pervert, his mania taking a particular
form which I have - - though only lately - - discovered, is a form
well-known and quite common in the annals of sex criminology. There are some
I know who think C.W.L. may have brought over old sex weaknesses and still
be chosen by the Masters to do certain work for them. I have found comfort
in the possibility up to the time of my last interview with you in London.

49.

1919: .. my visit to London. A week before you sent for me and gave me
your message in October, 1919, I called on Mrs. St. John. She was in great
trouble because the police were taking action (so she told me) against four
L.C.C. priests, Wedgwood, King, Farrer and Clark. She wanted me to warn
Wedgwood in Australia and did not know how to without incriminating herself
by compounding a felony. Farrer she told me she had got out of the country
and she was sure the police would not find him (Italics Mr. Martyn’s). King
had decided to remain in London and see it out as Farrer was out of the way,
etc. Of course, while in London I heard about charges of sodomy with boys
being made against Wedgwood ( by Major Adams and others) and reports about
him had also reached me from Sydney but what Mrs. St. John told me came as a
complete surprise. A week later Graham Pole sent me word to say you wished
to see me urgently and I called. You then told me that you wished to
communicate with Wedgwood in Sydney but by so doing directly you would be
compounding a felony and you gave me the message for Raja that
Wedgwood must leave the E.S. and T.S. etc. I happened to think of …(a)…talk
you had given on a previous Sunday about black magic and sexual excess and
asked if you were referring to Wedgwood’s case….you said yes, that Krishna,
who was very intuitive at times had in a comment suggested the explanation.
Now, you will see that this went much further than implying Wedgwood had
compromised himself - - a good man might do that and be innocent of evil. It
meant to me that on your own evidence and that of Krishna, Wedgwood was
guilty of sex depravity. Then there cropped up the matter of Wedgwood’s
initiation. You told me he was not an initiate. I could not be surprised at
that naturally, if the other was true, how could he be? ….In America after
leaving you certain people came to me and told me they had heard that the
truth about Wedgwood was coming out at last and explained that he had in
London admitted his trouble to one of them (or both, I am not sure); that
great efforts were made to help him overcome it; that things went on well
for a time, but that later on he dropped back again into his evil ways. I
can give you names if you want them. When I reached Sydney Raja accepted the
message with evident reluctance…. And I soon saw that the breakdown of
Wedgwood involved to him nothing short of the collapse of Leadbeater as an
Arhat: of the divine authority of the L. C. Church; and of all reliance on
the genuineness of reported initiations, discipleships, etc….he just became
the politician pure and simple scheming to maintain what to me was - - on
the evidence available - - a falsehood; he showed no desire at all to find
the truth and follow it (Italics Mr. Martyn’s).
I may have been a little unfair in this conclusion because I afterwards
found that Raja is an echo of C.W.L. and that he takes his occultism
directly from what the latter says without question.
Then followed that cable to you from Raja explaining what your
statement – that Wedgwood was not an initiate – involved. He made no
reference in the message to the immorality - - that was apparently
unimportant and you replied accepting Leadbeater’s statement about the
initiation as decisive and cancelled your instructions….

Cables: Sydney Dec. 17th, 1919, to Besant, Adyar.
“Martyn reports you said Wedgwood not initiate. Leadbeater asserts you
were present at initiation. Am most anxious members sake there should be no
fundamental divergence between you and him on such important occult matter
since at same time…and….took second…and…first. Do you mean that since you
have no recollection you cannot assert Wedgwood initiate but do not wish to
be quoted as saying that he is positively
uninitiated.”
Dec. 22, Bombay.
“Brother’s statement enough accept fact, cancel message sent.”

50.

Before Raja’s cable was sent I had interviewed Leadbeater alone. He
wanted to hear all he could. I told him about the evidence thrust on me in
America about Wedgwood having confessed and he said “Well, we had better get
rid of him then”. I have often since remembered this incident. If Leadbeater
knew Wedgwood to be innocent because (Italics Mr. Martyn’s) he was an
initiate why should he have said that?

….Like many of the older members I have known how you and others for quite a
long time regarded Chakravarti as a Master in the flesh and later had to
repudiate him when certain facts indicated the mistake…. the incident hasa
bearing in the case of Leadbeater. 

How insidiously, by the way, this form of sex teaching may be spread in
the desire to safeguard reputations, is shown in an article in Theosophy in
Australia, February, 1922, entitled “The Sex Question”.

This question has received a certain amount of prominence recently among
our members, and certain practices have been more or less freely discussed.
There have been at various times among educationalists different suggestions
made as to the best course to be adopted in the case of those under-going
special training, with a view to combating or neutralizing so much of the
natural physical instinct as would interfere with the progress of the pupil
along that line. It is not my intention to attempt a review of the methods
suggested, but it may well be borne in mind that competent authorities are
of divided opinions, and where they differ, we of the rank and file may well
refrain from dogmatism. (Italics ours)

Who are the only “educationalists” advocating such a course? And who,
the “competent authorities”?

Reginald Farrer, a priest of the Liberal Catholic Church, wrote to Mrs.
Besant and two others as follows:
“It is with infinite regret that I tender you my resignation from the
Co-Masonic Order. I am impelled to this extreme decision because I am no
longer worthy to be considered of good report.

“The imputation against myself as well as against Wedgwood. King and
Clark in Mr. Martyn’s letter is but too true. Yet, I would have you believe
that I was led astray by those whom I considered to be my superiors both
morally and spiritually. I was not strong enough to control my own lower
nature, and gave way to a practice that I am now heartily ashamed of.
Reparation for the stain that I have brought upon the Order I cannot make
and I have come to the mournful conclusion that it is incumbent on me to ask
you to strike my name from the Roll of Co-Masonry.
“My reason for writing this letter is to unburden my conscience. I can
no longer carry this weight on my shoulders, especially as it reflects so
much discredit on the different orders of which we are members.
“Wedgwood absolutely declines to give up the mal-practice, and for the
sake of those who are in the different Orders and for those who will join if
the good name is untarnished I must make this confession.
“Again, Acuna, who is also addicted to this vice has actually stood
sponsor for one of his “friends” who was initiated into Emulation Lodge
recently.
“The foregoing declaration is made without any feeling of malice
whatever, but in a sincere endeavor to make known the facts in the hope that
in some small way, and at a late hour, I may serve the cause of Truth.”

51.

The preceding document, known as “ The Farrer Confession”, soon became
public property, more or less, in London at least. Not so, the following
confirmation dated June 23, 1922, of such practices among some priests of
the Liberal Catholic Church as well as corroboration of Mrs. Besant’s
statements to Mr. Martyn which she asserted later he “grossly exaggerated”.

“I, RUPERT GAUNTLETT, of 9 Talbot Mansions, Museum Street, W.C. 1, make
the following statement on Oath, and do so for the purpose of contributing
to the clearing up of the scandals which are now so seriously wrecking the
harmony of our Society. The statement is therefore, made entirely without
malice, and solely for the above mentioned purpose.
“When Mrs. Besant was in England during 1919 I had an interview with her
at her flat in Robert Street, and the subject of Mr. Farrer’s confession of
Sexual Malpractices was brought up. Mrs. Besant asked me what was my
position in the Liberal Catholic Church and what were my intentions in
regard to this confession. I stated that though I had no knowledge of the
truth or otherwise of the charges which Mr. Farrer had brought against other
persons. I was at the same time so reluctant to be associated with persons
against whom such charges could be made that I was seriously considering my
resignation from the Church. Mrs. Besant then asked me not to take this
action as the time she said, might come when it would be essential for some
one to take action for the cleaning of the Church from such scandals and in
that case I should be the person to do so. I asked her whether there as any
real ground for Mr. Farrer’s statement in so far as it incriminated others,
and Mrs. Besant then said that she had no doubt as to its truth, and that in
any case, within her personal knowledge, Mr. Wedgwood’s behavior when at
Adyar was such that she refused ever to have him there again. On this
assurance I consented to remain in the Church, for the specific purpose of
taking my present action when the time should be ripe, and before doing so I
wrote to Mrs. Besant in March that I was now acting in accordance with her
instructions.
“On March 22d last I saw Mr. Wedgwood in London, and had a serious
conversation with him on this subject. As Senior Bishop of the Church he
told me that he wished to resign, and that he wished his resignation to take
effect from after March 23d, on which date he had certain duties to perform
which could not be postponed.
“I asked him most seriously to reconsider his resignation, as coming at
such a time it could only be considered as implying his guilt of the charge
made against him, and I asked whether it would not be better to bring a
libel action against Mr. Farrer and so, for the sake of our various
interest, clear his character. He told me he would not do this and that I
was to accept his resignation, and on this I did so, but at the same time
stated most clearly that I could only do so on the distinct understanding
that guilt was implied by his resolution. He was unshaken in his purpose,
and I then accepted his resignation…… …”
(Italics ours)

In July, 1922, Mr. John Van Manen issued a pamphlet on “Our Present
Trouble”, published in Calcutta on page 1 of which, this statement occurs:
..Once more our internal problems are before the world. By a late mail
from America I have received a private letter asking me to furnish in
writing a copy of a certain statement made to me some years ago by a boy
closely connected with Mr. L., of considerable import and bearing on

52.

the question under debate. This statement was, when made to me, placed by me
before Mrs. B. in person and communicated to Mr. L. by letter. Under all the
above circumstances I feel that I cannot shirk responsibility by not
answering the letter addressed to me. As it is, however, likely that any
answer of mine would be made public use of in one way or another I want to
make it a complete and full statement of my position and views which, I
feel, are not only those of several others in this matter but legitimate and
reasonable…………

The scandals in Sydney, Australia, resulted in a Police Enquiry. The
following is a true copy of a précis furnished to the Executive of the
Sydney Lodge of the Theosophical Society, after inspection of the Report
presented to the Minister of Justice, New South Wales, Italics ours:

Three adults at different times saw one particular boy (A) in
Leadbeater’s bed with him. On two occasions the boy was naked. This boy (A)
denies that he ever slept with Leadbeater.
Another boy, however, gives evidence that (A) frequently, perhaps
habitually, slept with Leadbeater, and that (A) ‘s bed was frequently
unoccupied at night (both boys had beds on the balcony of Leadbeater’s
room). 
One boy explains that Leadbeater encouraged him to first bathe, and then
lie down on his (Leadbeater’s) bed in his bathing wrapper on an afternoon
preceding a T.S. meeting at night. He was to rest in order to be fresh for
the meeting at night. Leadbeater lay on the bed with a book in his left
hand; the boy lay on the other side. Without any words, Leadbeater with his
right hand caught hold of the boy’s person and proceeded to masturbate him.
This boy had not arrived at the age of puberty. He explains that he had a
feeling that it was not right and slipped off the bed. He avoided giving any
further opportunity of the same kind, though there were other rest
afternoons. No date could be fixed by the boy, but it seems probable the
incident happened during the first few month of Leadbeater’s residence in
Sydney, 1914-1915.
Among those who volunteered evidence in favour of Leadbeater were
several adults who happened to be visiting Sydney. Some of these in their
evidence admit that they themselves have been addicted to the habit of
masturbation. Two who make this admission are old Leadbeater boys and both
are prominent T.S. officials. Two or more of the boys who gave evidence
admit the same habit, and the Enquiry Officials seem satisfied that most of
the boys who came before them were victims of it.
It would seem that there are quite a number of young boys who have
associated with Leadbeater while he has been in Sydney, for a short time
only. One of these gives evidence, and he states:
“I left the Church so abruptly for the reason that I had a feeling for
some “time, but never said anything, that something was wrong. I shook it
off for a “while but I still believe that there was some undue familiarity
between Bishop “Leadbeater and the boys ___________ and ___________ and
another boy named ___________; “I forget his (full) name, he left the Church
very suddenly.”

The Police, forwarding “Alterations in Evidence” under date June 7th.,
1922, state:

We beg to report in forwarding the attached alterations that all the
witnesses making statements in defence of Bishop Leadbeater have

53.

re-attended the Criminal Investigation Department with the exception of Mrs.
Kollerstrom, who was instructed to return Tuesday last if she wished to
review her evidence; and all of them with the exception of two (Fritz Kunz
and Stephen Leigh) wanted to alter their original statements and one of them
(Rein Vreede), it will be noted called the second time for the purpose of
re-qualifying his original qualifications.
Mr. Jinarajadasa made extensive alterations, but appeared to uncertain
of what he did say that apparently he could not trust himself to correct his
statements verbally, and wrote out what he had to convey, which in our
opinion does not materially alter his original statement, and even then did
not write it out without making three errors.
The brothers Krishnamurti and Mityananda nearly got to loggerheads over
the exact manner in which they could correct their statements. (Italics
ours)

The HEAD of CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION DEPARTMENT
(Chairman of the Enquiry) makes
the comment to the Inspector General of Police:

I am of the opinion, however, that there are good grounds for believing
him (Leadbeater) to be a sex pervert…..The suspicions generally expressedby
___________are not without foundation (Italics ours).

The INSPECTOR GENERAL OF POLICE comments:
The evidence in the possession of the Police does not appear to call for
any independent action against Leadbeater at present, but sufficient is
disclosed in the accompanying papers to justify his conduct being kept under
observation. (Italics ours)

The CROWN SOLICITOR:

There is not much doubt that Leadbeater has in the past practiced , and
probably does still advise, masturbation, but save as above, there is no
evidence available.

Has Mr. Leadbeater kept his promise made to several people in 1906 and
his repeated pledge to Mrs. Besant? Can his word be relied upon? Is it
possible that he can be used in the slightest way by Members of the White
Lodge utter in their purity?

1925

>From Truth, London,
issue of December 30, 1925:
Mrs. Besant’s Disciples.
A few weeks ago Mrs. Besant announced at Queen’s Hall the impending
second advent of the Messiah and the preliminary appointment of some of his
Apostles. Many readers of TRUTH will doubtless remember what was said here
at the time as to the disreputable antecedents of one or two of these
worthies. That they are not unfair samples of the crowd of disciples which
Mrs. Besant has gathered around her may be guessed from a scandalous affair
that has just occurred in Holland. A man named Kieft – a lay brother, or
something of that kind – who was in charge of the acolytes, or choir boysor
whatever they may be, attached to a new

54.

Besantine church at a place called De Duinen, near Huizen, in North
Holland, was tried a few weeks ago for unnatural offences with these boys.
The court reserved judgment. Kieft has now been found guilty and sentenced
to six months imprisonment.
Unless my memory is at fault, “De Duinen” is the residence of a Dutch
lady of substantial means, who has fallen under the influence of Mrs. Besant
and some of the other “Apostles” and has been a lavish benefactress of this
unsavoury sect. She built, I believe, the church which figures in the story
of Mr. Kieft, and no doubt it has been largely by her help that this sect of
Theosophists have obtained a footing in Holland. It might be supposed that
the conviction and imprisonment of Kieft would open the lady’s eyes to the
character of Mrs. Besant’s disciples, but after the example of Mrs. Besant
herself this by no means follows.
- - - - - - - - -

In view of the great influence which Mrs. Besant exercises over many
minds it is necessary to say plainly that she cannot be dissociated from
these scandals. She cannot be ignorant of the character of men like
Leadbeater and Wedgwood…………

55.

SECTION lll

William Quan Judge
….if your discretion and silence are likely to hurt or endanger others, then
I add: Speak the truth at all costs, and say, with Annesly, “Consult duty,
not events.” There are cases when one is forced to exclaim “Perish
discretion, rather than allow it to interfere with duty.”
Key to Theosophy, p. 202

Ingratitude is a crime in Occultism and I shall illustrate the point by
citing the case of W.Q. Judge. He is one of the three founders of the
Theosophical Society, the only three who have remained as true as rock to
the cause. While others have all turned deserters or enemies, he has ever
remained faithful to his original pledge……He is the Resuscitator of
Theosophy in the United States, and is working to the best of his means and
ability, and at a great sacrifice, for the spread of the movement……Brother
Judge refuses to defend himself…But is that a reason why we should let him
go undefended? It is our bounden duty to support him, in every way, with our
sympathy and influence, energetically, not in a half-hearted, timid way….Is
it the part of “Brother-Fellow” to remain indifferent and inactive whenone
who has done so much for the noble and sacred CAUSE is vilified for its
sake, hence, for that of every Theosophist; when he is selected by the enemy
as the mark of all the lying and damaging attacks of those who wish to
destroy the Society in order to build on its ruins another, a bogus Body of
the same name, and to enshrine therein an idol with feet of clay and a heart
full of selfishness and evil, for the admiration and worship of credulous
fools? Can we allow them to achieve this object when they seek to ensure
success by undermining the character of this most unselfish champion of our
T.S. ? Put yourselves in the victim’s place, and then act as you think your
Brothers should act towards you under similar circumstances. Let us protect,
I say, all of us; protect by word and deed. Let every one who can hold the
pen expose every lie said about our friend and Brother, in every case we
know it to be a lie. Second Prelimnary Memorandum issued by H.P.B.,
April, 1890

Let them read Masters’ letter in the prelimnary - - - (Second Prelimnary
Memorandum as given above). All that I said about W.Q.J. was from HIS words
in HIS letter to me. H.P.B. quoted in “Letters That Have Helped Me”, p.lll

William Q. Judge’s intimate connection with the founding of the
Theosophical Society in 1875 and the close ties of his work with H.P.B.
right up to her death in 1891 are facts that have been purposely obscured.
Why, will be indicated presently. Let us look at a few records that are a
matter of Theosophical history. 1875- - -1891

On that eventful evening, September 7th 1875, H.P.B., Col. Olcott and
Mr. Judge were three of those present at 46, Irving Place, New York City.
Keen,

56.

interested discussion of a talk that had just been given was going on when
Col. Olcott handed to Mr. Judge a slip of paper bearing the words “Would it
not be a good thing to form a society for this kind of study?” Mr. Judge
read it, passed it to H.P.B., who at once turned to him and said “Ask Col.
Olcott to form a Society.” Mr. Judge, in the chair, called the meeting to
order, nominated Col. Olcott as permanent Chairman and was himself nominated
Secretary. Such was the foundation of the Theosophical Society.

When H.P.B. and Col. Olcott sailed for India late in 1878 he alone was
the mainstay of Theosophical activity in the United States for the next five
years. In the early summer of 1884 he went over to Paris to meet the other
Founders on their return to France, exchanging the ties of close
correspondence for renewed personal contact. After spending some time with
H.P.B., he left her to go to Adyar, not returning to the United States until
the end of the year. Twelve months were spent stimulating Theosophical
interest in the scattered lodges of the American Section. Then in 1886 he
started his magazine The Path which the Masters themselves proclaimed “the
best, the most Theosophical of all Theosophical publications”, and which
H.P.B. described as “pure Buddhi” beside which Lucifer was “fighting
combative Manas”. Of it was also said:

He who does all and the best that he can and knows how does ENOUGH for
Them. This is a message for Judge. His PATH begins to beat The Theosophist
out of sight. It is most excellent…..The Path alone is his certificate for
him in Theosophy.
H.P.B. in a private letter, quoted in Irish Theosophist, June, 1895.

In 1888 when another important step in this particular cycle of the
Theosophical Movement was about to be taken H.P.B. summoned Mr. Judge to
London. There, at her request, he drafted the rules for the guidance of the
Esoteric Section. When he went back to the United States he returned with
recognition of this intimate work of years recorded beyond dispute to be
made public at the right time. This fact is significant as is also another
to be referred to presently. Otherwise, why did H.P.B., sending Annie Besant
as her messenger to the American Section, bid her herself read the following
message in open convention? Be it

57.

noted that this was written only twenty-three days before H.P.B.’s death and
that she sent it distinct and separate from the general message to the
American Section:
 
15.4.1891

To the Fifth Convention of the American Section of the Theosophical
Society.
“Brother Theosophists:
“I have purposely omitted any mention of my oldest friend and fellow worker,
W. Q. Judge, in my general address to you, because I think that his
unflagging and self-sacrificing efforts for the building up of Theosophy in
America deserves special mention.

“Had it not been for W.Q. Judge, Theosophy would not be where it is
today in the United States. It is he who has mainly built up the movement
among you, and he who has proved in a thousand ways his entire loyalty to
the best interests of Theosophy and the Society.

“Mutual admiration should play no part in a Theosophical Convention, but
honour should be given where honour is due, and I gladly take this
opportunity of stating in public, by the mouth of my friend and colleague,
Annie Besant, my deep appreciation of the work of your General Secretary,
and of publicly tendering him my most sincere thanks and deeply felt
gratitude in the name of Theosophy, for the noble work he is doing and has
done. Yours fraternally H.P. Blavatsky.” (Italics ours)

Four years previously H.P.B. had begun her first Message to the American
Section: “William Q. Judge, General Secretary of the American Section of the
Theosophical Society, “My dearest Brother and Co-Founder of the Theosophical
Society:

“In addressing to you this letter which I request you to read to the
Convention summoned for April 22d, I must first present my hearty
congratulations and most cordial good wishes to the assembled Delegates and
good Fellows of our Society and to yourself – the heart and soul of that
Body in America. We were several to call it to life in 1875. Since then you
have remained alone to preserve that life through good and evil report. It
is to you chiefly, if not entirely, for it, for the first, and perhaps for
the last time publicly, and from the bottom of my heart, which beats only
for the cause you represent so well and serve so faithfully.

“I ask you also to remember that, on this important occasion, my voice
is but the feeble echo of other more sacred voices, and the transmitter of
the approval of Those whose presence is alive in more than one true
Theosophical heart, and lives, as I know, preeminently in yours ……”
(Italics ours)
Five Messages from H.P.
Blavatsky to the American
Section, p. 3. Also Report of the Convention,
Letter of H.P.B. 1888

58.

When H.P.B. died on May 8th, 1891, Mr. Judge was in New York and Mrs.
Besant in midocean on her homeward voyage. He left on the first steamer for
England and on May 27th called a conference of the Advisory Council of the
Esoteric Section. The circular concerning this meeting states:
The American Concillors were represented by Bro. William Q. Judge, with
full power, and Bro. Judge attended as the representative of H.P.B. under a
general power as given below.

What that “general power” which made Mr. Judge H.P.B.’s representative
was, is recorded in the following words when his occult status was made
known publicly for the first time at the meeting of this Advisory Council:

ESOTERIC T.S. SECTION

As Head of the Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society, I hereby
declare that William Q. Judge of New York, U.S.A., in virtue of his
character of a chela of thirteen years’ standing and of the trust and
confidence reposed in him, is my only representative for said Section in
America, and he is the sole channel through whom will be sent and received
all communications between the members of said Section and myself, and to
him full faith, confidence and credit in that regard are to be given. Done
at London, this fourteenth day of December, 1888, and in the fourteenth year
of the Theosophical Society. H.P. Blavatsky
(Seal) (quoted
in Circular of May 27, 1891)
 
London, October 23d, 1889

…The Esoteric Section and its life in the U.S.A. depend upon W.Q.J.
remaining its agent and what he now is. The day W.Q.J. resigns, H.P.B. will
be virtually dead for the Americas. W.Q.J. is the Antaskarana between the
two Manas (es), the American thought and the Indian, - - or rather the
trans-Himalayan esoteric knowledge. Dixi. H.P.B.

P.S. W.Q.J. had better show and impress this on the mind of all those whom
it may concern.
 
(Circular of August, 1893)

Naturally, therefore, the Council came to the following decisions, as
recorded in the Circular of May 27, 1891, signed by all who attended the
conference, viz. “Annie Besant, Alice Leighton Cleather, Isabel
Cooper-Oakley, Laura M. Cooper, H.A.W. Coryn, Archibald Keightley, William
Kingsland, Emily Kislingsbury, G.R.S. Mead, W.R. Old, E.T. Sturdy, Constance
Wachtmeister, W. Wynn Westcott, Claude F. Wright and William Q. Judge, for
the entire American Council E.S.T. and individually.” (Italics theirs):

59.

In virtue of our appointment by H.P.B. we
declare:
That in full accord with the known wishes of H.P.B., the visible Head
of the School, we primarily resolve and declare that the work of the School
ought and shall be continued and carried on along the lines laid down by
her, and with the matter left in writing or dictated by her before her
departure.
That it was recorded that there was ample proof by witnesses, member of
this School, that her last word in reference to the School and its work
were: KEEP THE LINK UNBROKEN! DO NOT LET MY LAST INCARNATION BE A FAILURE.”
…………

That this Council records its decision that its appointment was solely
for the purpose of assisting H.P.B. in a consultative way, and that as she
had full power and authority to relieve us from duty at any time, our office
and that of each of us ends with the above resolution passed in order as far
as possible in our power to place the future conduct of the School on the
basis directed and intended by her: therefore we collectively and
individually declare that our office as Councillors ceases at this date, and
that from henceforth with Annie Besant and William Q. Judge rest the full
charge and management of this School. (Italics ours)

These facts, be it noted, Mrs. Besant well knew and for three years E.S.
documents went out signed in their joint names. As a matter of fact this
same Circular of May 27, 1891, contained an addendum so signed, containing
these significant words:

Consider the position of the School: we are no longer a band of students
taught by a visible Teacher; we are a band of students mutually
interdependent forced to rely on each other for our usefulness and our
progress, until our very brotherliness in mutual help shall draw a visible
Teacher back among us. H.P.B. remains one of our heads though H.P. Blavatsky
is “dead”, and the Heads of the School have not withdrawn, Their guidance in
withdrawing the presence chosen to represent Them for a time on which we
have rejoiced to lean. Especially important is it that at the present
juncture we should bear in mind the words of H.P.B. written at the
conclusion of the Key to Theosophy (See Section “The Future of the
Theosophical Society”, ps. 241-243, original edition, or reprint by
Theosophy Company, Los Angeles………)

There, then, is our next pressing work, our most mighty responsibility.
For if we of this School, Brothers and Sisters, cannot accomplish this task,
the Theosophical Society is doomed………

…..We believe in H.P.B. and in the Masters, and it is enough for us that
they say. “Go and carry on our work along the lines on which you have been
instructed…”
…..For the use of all of us, there are written teachings left by H.P.B. in
our hands that will give food for study and thought for many a year to come
(Italics ours), and though the main duty of the Esotericist is service to
others, and not personal advancement in knowledge, it is characteristic of
her thought for us that behind her she left intellectual and spiritual food
for the earnest student, as well as the charge to complete her unfinished
work.

Under the heading “Yours till Death and after, H.P.B.” Mr. Judge wrote
an article immediately after H.P.B.’s death which appeared in Lucifer, Vol.
VIII, June, 1891, ps. 290-292 (afterward republished in “H.P.B. In Memoryof
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky by Some of Her Pupils”, ps. 26-28) that contained
certain words she had written

60.

to him as far back as 1888. The reader’s attention is especially called to
the significant fact that H.P.B. penned these words in 1888 and that Mr.
Judge published them immediately after her death, reprinting the in The
Path, January, 1892, long before any troubles arose. Both the writing by
H.P.B. and the publication and republication by Mr. Judge clearly show how
accurate was the vision in connection with the breaking up of the
Theosophical Society. He says on p. 291, Lucifer, and on p. 27 of that
Memorial Book:

In 1888 she wrote to me privately:-
Well, my only friend, you ought to know better. Look into my life and
try to realize it –in its outer course at least, as the rest is hidden. Iam
under the curse of ever writing, as the wandering Jew was under that of
being ever on the move, never stopping one moment to rest. Three ordinary
healthy persons could hardly do what I have to do. I live an artificial
life: I am an automaton running full steam until the power of generating
steam stops, and then - - good-bye! *** Night before last I was shown a
bird’s eye view of the Theosophical Societies. I saw a few earnest reliable
Theosophists in a death struggle with the world in general, with other - -
nominal but ambitious - - Theosophists. The former are greater in numbers
than you may think, and they prevailed, as you in American will prevail, if
you only remain staunch to the Master’s programme and true to yourselves.
And last night I saw *** and now I feel strong - - such as I am in my body
- - and ready to fight for Theosophy and the few true ones to my last
breath. The defending forces have to be judiciously - - so scanty they are -
- distributed over the globe, wherever Theosophy is struggling against the
powers of darkness.

In reprinting the words in The Path, January, 1892, he added a quotation
from that important last section of The Key to Theosophy and then said:

In the first quotation there is a prophecy that those few reliable
theosophists who are engaged in a struggle with the opposition of the world
and that coming from weak or ambitious members will prevail, but it has
annexed to it a condition that is of importance. There must be an adherence
to the program of the Masters. That can only be ascertained by consulting
her and the letters given out by her as from those to whom she refers…….. 

We must follow this program and supply the world with a system of
philosophy which gives a sure and logical basis for ethics, and that can
only be gotten from those to whom I have adverted; there is no basis for
morals in phenomena, because a man might learn to do the most wonderful
things by the aid of occult forces and yet at the same time be the very
worst of men. A subsidiary condition, but quite as important as the other,
is laid down by H.P.B. in her words that we must “remain true to ourselves”.
This means true to our better selves and the dictates of conscience. We
cannot promulgate the doctrines and the rules of life found in theosophy and
at the same time ourselves not live up to them as far as possible. We must
practice what we preach, and make as far as can a small brotherhood within
the Theosophical Society. (Italics ours)

61.

1893-96

But in 1894 Mrs. Besant charged Mr. Judge with forging letters in the
handwriting and in the name of Masters. To understand the case fully and in
detail the reader’s attention is directed to “The Theosophical Movement,
1875-1925: A History and A Survey” (E.P. Dutton and Co., New York), as well
as to Lucifer, other magazines and certain pamphlets, page references in
which will be given presently. Here are related but the most essential
details in chronological order:
Mrs. Besant on p. 9 of her pamphlet
“The Case Against W.Q. Judge” says:

I met Mr. Judge first in April, 1891, when sent to America by Madame
Blavatsky to make his acquaintance and to carry a message from her to the
American Convention. I knew of him that he had been one of Madam Blavatsky’s
pupils in the early days, and he showed me a letter of hers in which she
spoke of him as being one of the founders of T.S. I knew that from the year
1886 Mr. Judge had been working in America for the Society, with marked
ability, devotion and success, that he had sacrificed for it his means of
livelihood, and worked with unswerving courage and unfaltering purpose. I
found him to be a man of clear insight, shrewd ability, earnest devotion,
and some psychic gifts, so that he was available to some extent as a medium
of communication with person not physically present. He claimed to have
given sixteen years (from 1876 to 1891) of unbroken service to the T.S. and
the Masters, and this long period of service gave him weight in my eyes. It
was not until Christmas, 1893, that I learned that the “sixteen years” were
illusory, that for the greater part of them little work was done, that
during part of them there was a complete breach between H.P. Blavatsky and
himself, and that at one time she uttered most bitter reproaches against him
and regarded him as having become her enemy. 
(Italics ours)

For these last statements Mrs. Besant failed to produce any evidence nor
did she reveal her means of proving that what H.P.B. wrote in 1889; “William
Q. Judge of New York, U.S.A., in virtue of his character as a chela of
thirteen years standing” – which makes it sixteen years in 1891 – was
“illusory”.

 
September, 1893
She further says on p. 13 of
the same pamphlet:
I went to America in September, 1892. Some words and acts of Mr. Judge
awoke again in me a fear, for he spoke in a veiled way that seemed to imply
that he was going to use Master’s authority where no such authority had been
given. The result was that I made a direct appeal to the Master, when alone,
stating that I did feel some doubt as to Mr. Judge’s use of His name, and
praying Him to endorse or disavow the messages I had received through him.
He appeared to me as I had so often before seen him, clearly, unmistakable,
and I then learned from him directly that the messages were not done Him and
that they were done by Mr. Judge.

62.

December, 1893

And she continues on the same page:
The order to take action was repeated to me at Adyar, after the evidence
was in my hands, and I was bidden to wash away the stains of the T.S. “Take
up the heavy Karma of the Society. Your strength was given you for this.”
How could I, who believed in Him disobey? (Italics ours)

The reader is requested to bear in mind the above statements from the
pen of Mrs. Besant who says that the Master spoke to her twice in 1893. How
faithful she was to her own “vision” and the “messages” she herselfreceived
can be judged from her speech read at the Third Session of the European
Convention, July 12, 1894, only six months after the receipt of
communications which she herself said came from “Master”.Extracts are
quoted, ps. 11-13 “The Neutrality of the T.S.” (Italics Ours)

For some years past persons inspired largely by personal hatred for Mr.
Judge, and persons inspired by hatred for the Theosophical Society and for
all that it represents, have circulated a mass of accusations against him,
ranging from simple untruthfulness to deliberate and systematic forgery of
the handwritings of Those who to some of us are most sacred……..Under the
promise that nothing should be done further in the matter until my
interventionhad failed, I wrote to Mr. Judge. The promise of silence was
broken by persons who knew some of the things complained of, and before any
answer could be received by me from Mr. Judge, distorted versions of what
had occurred were circulated far and wide. This placed Mr. Judge in a most
unfair position, and he found my name used against him in connection with
charges which he knew to be grossly exaggerated where not entirely untrue.
…..then I made what many of Mr. Judge’s friends think was a mistake. I
offered to take on myself the onus of formulating the charges against him. I
am not concerned to defend myself the on this, nor to trouble you with my
reasons for taking so painful a decision; in this decision for which I
alone am responsible, I meant to act for the best, but it is very possible I
made a mistake -- for I have made many mistakes in judgment in my life, and
my vision is not always clear in these matters of strife and controversy
which are abhorrent to me… ……

And now I must reduce these charges to their proper proportions as they
have been enormously exaggerated, and it is due to Mr. Judge that I should
say publicly what from the beginning I have said privately. The President
stated them very accurately in his address to the Judicial Committee: the
vital charge is that Mr. Judge has issued letters and messages in the script
recognizable as that adopted by a Master with whom H.P.B. was closely
connected, and that these letters and messages ere neither written nor
precipitated directly by the Master in whose writing they appear; as leading
up to this there are subsidiary charges of deception, but these would
certainly never have been made the basis of any action save for their
connection with the main point.

Further, I wish it to be distinctly understood that I do not charge and
have not charged Mr. Judge with forgery in the ordinary sense of the term,
but with giving a misleading material form to messages received psychically
from the Master in various ways, without acquainting the recipients with
this fact.

63.

I regard Mr. Judge as an Occultist, possessed of considerable knowledge
and animated by a deep and unswerving devotion to the Theosophical Society.
I believe that he has often received direct messages from the Masters and
from Their chelas, guiding and helping him in his work. I believe that he
has sometimes received messages for other people in one or other of the ways
that I will mention in a moment, but not by direct writing by the Master nor
by His direct precipitation; and the Mr. Judge has then believed himself to
be justified in writing down in the script adopted by H.P.B. for
communications from the Master, the message psychically received and in
giving it to the person for whom it was intended, leaving that person to
wrongly assume that it was a direct precipitation or writing by the Master
Himself – that is, that it was done through Mr. Judge, but done by the
Master (These two words italicized by Mrs. Besant).

(Then follow certain sentences on precipitation that, incidentally,
should be compared with H.P.B.’s explanation in “Lodges of Magic”, Lucifer,
October, 1888, and the Master’s as given in The Occult World, ps. 145-6,
fourth edition, indicating that Mrs. Besant did not know the rationale nor
had she the “key” by which the true chela knows whether communications are
really from a Master or not)

Within six months after what she declares are Master’s instructions to
“take up the heavy Karma of the Society” she concludes this statement of
hers, p. 14, same pamphlet:

…..I have made the frankest explanation I can…….For any pain thatI have
given my brother, in trying to do a most repellent task, I ask his pardon,
as also for any mistakes that I may have made (Italics ours).

Mrs. Besant’s, Mr. Bertram Keightley (a friend of Mrs. Besant’s) moved
and Dr. Buck (a friend of Mr. Judge’s) seconded the following resolution
which was carried nem con. (p. 16, “The Neutrality of the T.S.” Ita lics
ours):

Resolved: That this meeting accepts with pleasure the adjustment arrived
at by Annie Besant and William Q. Judge as a final settlement of matters
pending hither to between them as prosecutor and defendant, with the hope
that it may be thus buried and forgotten, and --

Resolved: that we will join hands with them to further the cause of
genuine Brotherhood in which we all believe.

Despite her own words and the form of this Resolution in which she
concurred, Mr. Besant actually descended to the following tactics, as she
herself outlines in the pamphlet “Should Mr. Judge resign?” p. 6. The
Theosophical Society has still to learn why Mrs. Besant went back on the
European convention Meeting and its

64.

resolution:

….I was bound under a legal agreement of 1893, to be in Australia on the
1st September last for a lecturing engagement. I was therefore obliged to
leave London, and I took the last ship which made me land in Australia the
day before that on which my first lecture was to be delivered. By sitting up
all night before I started for Australia, I managed by myself to direct copy
of this inquiry with my statement that I believed that these forgeries had
been made, to all the leading London papers. In addition to that I sent to
all these papers a statement which I had drawn up and submitted to certain
well-know persons, with regard to the policy of concealing or evading truth,
or considering that ordinary morality was not binding on any one who stood
as an occultist ……..I sent that also to the London papers, and I sent it
with a private note from myself asking them to give full publicity. I placed
all these documents in the hands of my friend Miss Willson, of the London
head-quarters, and asked her to deliver them by hand at the newspaper
offices. (Italics ours)

And Mrs. Besant’s way of “putting and end to a distressing business” was
to use the “Westminster Gazette” articles of 1894 to raise the whole matter
again at Adyar on December 25th, 1894, requesting Mr. Judge – behind his
back and in his absence – to resign the office of Vice-President of the T.S.
Because she had been “checkmated at all points, isolated, and finding the
way completely blocked to further action I accepted my defeat” ( See “The
Case Against W. Q. Judge”, p. 19) in 1894, she renewed the mock trial in a
dastardly, shameful way in 1895. She
never gave William Q. Judge the opportunity of meeting her again on her own
ground and “checkmating” her when she raised the same charges for the
second time; she even went so far, by means of a parliamentary trick, as to
cause his defence presented by American friends at the London Convention of
1896 to be laid on the table without being read, while causing her own
statements to be printed and circulated in the pamphlet “The Case Against
W.Q. Judge”. This carries its own refutation all unconsciously – its
contradictory passages have merely to be tabulated side by side. In all of
these attacks she was greatly assisted and derived benefit from the “occult”
position of Gyanendra Nath Chakravarti with whom, however, she parted
company ten years later. The white magician of 1893-4 had become a black in
1903-4.

How consistent Mrs. Besant is may be judged by taking “The Case Against 
W. Q. J.

65.

Judge” and setting :
p. 6 against ps. 8 and 21, also Lucifer, November, 1893, p. 187 (where
she first says that spiritual facts aren’t demonstrable and cannot be proved
on the physical plane and where she expects her own statements of
experiences to be accepted without proof but where she expects Mr. Judge to
lay “irrefutable evidence” of the truth of his)

ps. 8 and 9 against W.R. Old’s letter to Lucifer, Mrs. Besant’s article
in that magazine, December, 1894, p. 458 and W. Q. Judge’s letter dated
January 25, 1895 and reprinted in the following number of Lucifer (where she
first says that Mr. Judge’s complaints that he has not received copies of
the documents are not true and that he knew every document she was going to
use and every argument she was going to employ and then declares that no
duty lay on her to supply him with copies, that she had no time to make
copies and that she was not inclined to undertake the cost of having them
transcribed)

p. 10 against her Hall of Science statement, the relevant part reprinted
in “The Theosophical Society and the Westminster Gazette” p. 8, or in
Lucifer, February, 1895 (where she first implies that she had had letters in
the same handwriting and from the same person as Madame Blavatsky had, on
her own knowledge, and then says that her first-hand knowledge was of the
existence of the teachers but on the letters – received through Mr. Judge
and not direct at all – she was duped)

ps. 1 and 13 against ps. 12-14 “Neutrality of the T.S..”
(where she says , as shown, that she was acting under Master’s orders but
also states that she alone was responsible for the decision; and where after
saying that she wishes it to be distinctly understood that she does not
charge Mr. Judge with forgery, and that she believes that the gist of these
messages was psychically received, she re-formulates the original charge
that Mr. Judge forged scripts adopted by the Mahatmas)

How truthful Mrs. Besant is may be judged by taking that same
pamphlet “The Case Against W.Q. Judge” and setting:
 
ps. 19, 20 and 88 against ps. 11 and 12 of “The Neutrality of the T.S.”
and p. 353, The Theosophist June, 1909 (where she first acknowledges
herself checkmated and defeated in and condemned by many for her action
against Mr. Judge who she asked should be called on to resign his office and
then has stated in the magazine she herself edits that the proposal of some
members for the expulsion of Mr. Judge was “defeated by the interpositionof
Mrs. Besant”!)

Mr. Judge died on the 21st of March 1896. The evidence that Mrs. Besant
and his other ignorant detractors were wrong is shown by the record he left
behind and by his work and teachings from first to last. He came to H.P.B.
in 1874, began active work in 1886, died in 1896. Mrs. Besant and any of her
followers are challenged to

66.

show a single inconsistency between the teachings as given by Mr. Judge,
during his twenty-one years of active Theosophical work, on the one hand and
the Masters and H.P.B. on the other. Our first section has already shown how
variant are the teachings given by Mrs. Besant and her present-day
colleagues as compared with those of H.P.B. and the Masters.

This Mr. Judge who was a “forger” has been praised in The Theosophist
June, 1909, and again in that same magazine in March, 1922. Are we to
suppose that when a General Secretary of a Section becomes a “forger” he
also remains “ a great Theosophist”, is “spiritual and intuitional”,
“extraordinarily capable as an organizer and leader”? That “His real work,
the spread of Theosophy in America, was splendidly performed, and his memory
remains as lasting inspiration”? The memory of a forger, and a forger of
masters’ script, a lasting inspiration! But despite the true tributes in her
magazine to William Quan Judge, Mrs. Besant has not yet had the courage and
the honesty to withdraw the unproven charges which out of personal reasons
of vanity and pride she hurled against Mr. Judge.

Those who were not able to preserve humbly the right line of messages as
they came and rejected them for false messages became themselves
perpetrators of false teachings and givers of bogus messages. Prominent
among them is Mrs. Annie Besant. That she has done this during this last
twenty years is evident and the latest letter given in the name of the
Master of Masters (The Theosophist, January, 1926) carries its own
condemnation to any intuitive Theosophist. How Mrs. Besant has deviated from
the teachings of Theosophy is shown in the first section; her identification
with those promulgating immoral teachings and practices, indicated in the
second, follows from that very deviation and is the cause of her downfall to
the detriment of the people whom she leads.

The trouble dates from that fateful moment in the Hall of Science when
on

67.

August 30, 1891, by implication in subtly worded sentences she led her
audience to believe that her evidence of communications from the Masters was
first-hand. (“What evidence have you beside hers? My own knowledge.”) When
she refrained from correcting the impression by stating that the messages to
which she referred came to her through another person, W.Q. Judge, she then
and there began the blunting of her sense of truth in connection with the
sacred cause of the Masters. How this has led her further and further away
from the possibilities that were hers at the time of H.P.B.’s death can be
traced to the very point where today she gives out in the highest names such
letters as are now scattered broad-cast for those who prefer blind belief to
the arduous, earnest search for true knowledge.

********************* 



Dallas
 

-----Original Message-----
From: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com [mailto:theos-talk@yahoogroups.com] On
Behalf Of Perry Coles
Sent: Tuesday, April 19, 2005 1:55 AM
To: theos-talk@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Theos-World Re: practicing universal brotherhood rather than merely
mouthing the concept



Hi Eldon & All,
Thanks for reposting this, I found it very good.
It seems to me that we are all in a process here, which perhaps can 
help us to understand some of the motives and mindsets that are 
behind the way we interact with each other.

We all have various different ways that our fears and past 
conditioning trigger our responses. (of course I fully include myself 
in this as well)

Maybe if we try and use awareness and deep questioning of ourselves 
and our own motives we can grow and hopefully see that our responses 
to others actually reflect back to ourselves insights as to how we 
may be motivated and how we operate.

Fear can come from emotional need to believe things are a certain way 
or needing others to see things the way we see them.

Ten years ago I also was a big Leadbeater fan however now I see the 
man from a completely different perspective which may change in one 
way, shape or form as time goes by.
If asked what I think about CWL I can only give my own impressions as 
they are now however that does not mean they are anything other than 
my own impressions at this point in time.

The same of course can be said of Blavatsky and any other writer, 
teacher or perspective.

The reality of life in this cycle seems to be that conflict arises 
and I am interested in finding how can we as a group and as 
individuals try and develop strategies that encourage free exchange 
of perspectives and ideas without it descending into personal ego 
issues or attacks.

Some of us find a more intellectual approach that compares different 
writers and philosophies to be very effective and helpful, some find 
this too heady and approach from a different modality.
However all modes need the opportunity and the freedom to express 
themselves.

Theosophy as I understand it suggests that there are many different 
modes and approaches we may take to come to an understanding of who 
and what we are, and our relationship to the ALL.

So perhaps if we can weather though the ups and downs of group 
interaction in a self reflective way, constantly checking what our 
own motives may be, it may be used as a process to understand these 
complex areas of human interaction and motivations and a deeper 
understanding of ourselves.

Cheers

Perry

--- In theos-talk@yahoogroups.com, "Eldon B Tucker" <eldon@t...> 
wrote:
> Here's something I wrote to the list back in September that I think 
is
> important for all of us to keep in mind.
> 
> -- Eldon Tucker
> 
> ----
> 
> People may come to Theosophy from many different approaches. Some 
may have 
> started with books by Leadbeater and Besant, others with books by 
Barkorka 
> and Purucker, others with Judge and Blavatsky books. I would expect 
that if 
> they can engage each other in friendly discussion, they can broaden 
their 
> knowledge and grow to greater insight.
> 
> I don't think it's necessary to tell people to only read certain 
authors 
> and avoid others as being tainted. I will say what I prefer, but 
leave it 
> to other people to decide what appeals to them best. In a free 
exchange of 
> ideas over an extended period of time, I think people will 
gravitate to the 
> highest approach they are ready for. Each person sets their own 
limit and 
> is better able to seek it out when exposed to a friendly, diverse 
> environment that encourages thoughtful study.
> 
> Although I'd consider my studies as being advanced, I recognize 
that it is 
> just from my point of view and others would see things differently, 
often 
> with wherever they are at being highest, for now, in their 
estimation. And 
> it does not serve a useful purpose to rank and order different 
approaches, 
> with one's own on top, of course, in order to add to one's self-
importance 
> and putting others in their place.
> 
> If someone wants to study Leadbeater's life from a historic 
standpoint -- 
> or Blavatsky's, Judge's, or Krishnamurti's -- that's fine as long 
as they 
> don't use their appraisal as a hammer to hit people on the head 
when they 
> say that they read and like the books any of these people may have 
written.
> 
> A metaphysical and spiritual thread of discussion is as valid as 
any 
> historic one, and everyone should be free to share their ideas, 
regardless 
> of the author or any historic threads of discussion going on at the 
same
> time.
> 
> Regardless of what we might discuss, it's important that we respect 
the 
> others among us of different backgrounds and beliefs, and not put 
things in 
> a way that sounds like a personal insult, like "You like that idea 
from a 
> Crowley book? You must be an evil dugpa!" Or "You say you like that 
idea 
> from a Bailey book, yet we have just proven in our historic 
discussions 
> that Bailey was a fraud. Only an idiot would believe something she 
wrote. 
> Do you recant any belief in her works or do you confess to being an 
idiot?" 
> Or "Do you profess a belief in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior 
and 
> profess a belief in the One True God, or do you admit to being a 
devil 
> worshiper destined to burn it hell?" -- Note that there are all 
leading 
> questions that require people to either submit to one's belief or 
confess 
> their stupidity.
> 
> It's possible from any particular slant of discussion to find ways 
to put 
> people down, even if one is not doing so intentionally. A 
discussion of the 
> actual history and spiritual credentials of someone's favorite 
theosophical 
> figure could have a chilling effect upon people reading his or her 
books 
> and wanting to discuss the ideas presented. Yet were they free to 
discuss 
> the ideas, perhaps we'd learn something from them and they're be 
exposed to 
> better ideas from us as well.
> 
> A discussion of metaphysics might lead to suggestions that people 
not 
> versed in that particular set of philosophical ideas is "not ready 
yet" and 
> should simply be dismissed as spiritual wannabes. That, of course, 
has a 
> chilling effect on the skeptic or believer in something different, 
making 
> him or her to want to brand people a bunch of religious kooks and 
leave for 
> a better group of people.
> 
> It all comes down to a matter of respect. We can explore new ideas, 
> challenge existing assumptions, and seek a greater understanding of 
things. 
> But we should maintain sufficient objectivity to know that our 
personal 
> viewpoint isn't the prime perspective of the universe. Everything 
only 
> seems that way *to our eyes*. If we can believe what we will and 
yet 
> happily allow others to coexist with different beliefs and 
assumptions, 
> respecting their individual and likely different seeking of truth, 
we are 
> actually practicing universal brotherhood rather than merely 
mouthing the 
> concept.





 
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