Theos-Talk Archives (May 2005 Message tt00639)

In reply to Krishtar's request: "Can you please tell me what is the feeling 
towards CWL that the research and the repercussion of the referred book 
created in you as an author of it?.....I also maintain the POV that he, CWL 
deliberate or not , nor judging here, fell into a trap of his own psychism 
incongruities as many psychists still do."

The full answer would be too lengthy for posting here, but a summary of my 
positon would be as follows. Leadbeater obviously began by consciously 
constructing a "new life" for himself (i.e. deliberately lying about his past) 
in the early years of his Theosophical career. As he cultivated "clairvoyance" 
so he came to believe in his own fictional creations, and to "see" the 
fantasies (using the term in its psychological rather than popular sense)he 
created. I thus agree with E.L. Gardner (both in his published work, "There is 
No Religion Higher than Truth" and in the substantial unpublished work he 
wrote on the same theme): Leadbeater was not telling the truth, but nor was he 
lying; he was describing what he "saw" as reality but which was a fiction of 
his own creation. W.Q. Judge's work on "Astral Intoxication" is relevant here. 
I would differ from Theosophical commentators (like Gardner) in that I base my 
assessment on psychology rather than occultism, but the conclusion is 
effectively the same.

Leadbeater has to be seen in the same category as many other occult and 
religious "seers": they move from saying what they know to be untrue, to 
believing absolutely in the "truth" of what they say. One can think, for 
example, of Joseph Smith, Mary Baker Eddy, L. Ron Hubbard.....

One of my areas of interest (outside the history of esotericism) is the nature 
of memory and the "construction" of memory. There is much scientific evidence 
to show that people can and do come to believe in "realities" which have never 
existed. Leadbeater taught his pupils that the beginning of clairvoyance was 
imagining they could see what they were supposed to see: deliberately 
cultivating the imagination to "see" things will probably have a predictable 
outcome.

Did Leadbeater "see" what he claimed to see? I think almost certainly. Did 
what he "saw" have any objective reality? I think almost certainly not.

Dr Gregory Tillett