Theos-Talk Archives (November 2006 Message tt01094)

Friends, 
 
 
Mr.  Ernest Wood served for many years as C.W. Leadbeater?s private secretary and as the International Secretary, Adyar. 
 
On the false clairvoyance possessed by CWL, Mr. Wood gives us this first-hand testimony in his book ?Is This Theosophy??:  
 
?Another friend, an European doctor, quietly severed his connection with Mr. Leadbeater altogether.  He was the only person, as far as I know,  who ever tried secretly to put Mr. Leadbeater to the test. They were very friendly and had been together to a theatre.  This gentleman deliberately pretended  that he had a vision of two gigantic figures one on each side of the stage, standing up there like the guardian genii of Indian temples, or Japanese doorways. He described them, and Mr. Leadbeater, he said, told him he was correct.? 
 
?There was an explanation for this, however. Mr. Leadbeater always gave great credit to imagination as verging to clairvoyance. When you imagine something, he would say, there is always something present to cause that imagination. He held that the best way for most people to develop clairvoyance was to let the imagination play in the first place.?
 
?A striking conversation took place in my presence on this point. One of our prominent members had been through an important ceremony on the astral plane   during t he sleep of his physical body, and had thereby become what was called ?an Initiate?.  It happened that he was to be called as a witness in a certain case. He was full of anxiety about it.  ?Whatever shall I say if they ask me about my being an Initiate? I do not remember anything at all of it?.? 
 
?Mr. Leadbeater?s reply was: ?But why don?t you remember? You ought to be able to remember?.?
? ?Well, if I let my imagination play on it,  I can get a sort of impression about it?.?
 
? ?That is just what you ought to do. There is a cause for such imaginings. How can you expect your clairvoyant power to develop if you destroy its delicate beginnings?? ? 
 
?The member followed this advice and became one of the prominent clairvoyants in the Theosophical Society (...)?  
 
So far, Mr. Ernest Wood, ex-private Secretary to Leadbeater and International  of  the Theosophical Society, Adyar. 
 
Thus was Mr. Leadbeater?s ?clairvoyance?. There was no objective observation involved. It was pure, conscious imagination, and that is tantamount to fraud. 
 
It was by this imaginary mechnisms that  he ?talked to Lord Christ?, personally visited Mars and Mercury and knew the ?past lives? of everyone around him. He controled the Adyar theosophical movement  with the careful distribution of information relating to discipleship status and to false Initiations to this and that person.  
 
To consolidate his popish power, he created a ritualistic structure whose source was also his feverish but unhealthy imagination.  
 
Since the 1950s, Adyar leaders ceased to renew those fancies. Yet they did not have the courage to face truth and to be loyal to the real founders of the movement ?  or to the slogan of their organization: ?There is no religion higher than truth?.  
 
They do not defend Leadbeater in a direct way,  yet they try to avoid as much as possible clarification about  these matters of  decisive importance. Thus, consciously or unconsciously, they try to keep Adyar members from rediscovering the real teaching given humanity by the Masters through H.P.B.   
 
Yet there is always hope. Things are lost but to be found again in the right time. Illusions are created but to be dissolved after their energy has ended. Everything is cyclical.  People do change ? and they often change for the better.  
 
Best regards,  Carlos. 
 
 
NOTE: 
(1) ?Is This Theosophy??, by Ernest Egerton Wood, London: Rider& Co., Paternoster House, E.C., 1936, 318 pp., facsimile edition by Kessinger Publishing, LLC, Kila, MT, USA.  See p. 141. 
 
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