Theos-Talk Archives (November 2006 Message tt01391)

Friends, 
 
The appearance in 1910 of the booklet ?At the Feet of the Master? was a great and spectacular event, and it   took place in connection with the creation of the messianic organization ?Order of the Star in the East?.   
 
Jiddu Krishnamurti, a 14 year-old  Leadbeater-boy,  was supposed to have written that text, a booklet which  in fact is merely an undeclared collation of well-known traditional ideas. It also included a good deal of Leadbeater?s  own  illusions and  misconceptions.  
 
The mere illusion that a young boy could have written a ?grown-up text?  was used and presented as a ?phenomenon? in itself ;  as something quite extraordinary ;  and as an evidence that Christ/Maitreya  had, at last, indeed come back.  All that people had to do was to ?believe?.  
 
Ernest E. Wood, former international secretary of Besant?s Society, writes referring to the messianic Order of the Star:  
 
?Thousands of members of the Theosophical Society flung themselves into the new movement. Some held aloof, among them myself.  Some few criticized it on various grounds. One or two pronounced the opinion that  Krishnamurti did not know enough English to write the sentences in the book. I quite agreed with them, but I explained the difficulty away to myself by saying that the preface announced that Krishnamurti had not  written it himself ? they were the words of his Master. Still the difficulty remained  that Krishnamurti could not have linked the sentences together and punctuated them so well. Nor could he have written the preface, in my opinion. These problems I left suspense. We could very well wait to see if the Teacher came.? (1) 
 
Later on, Krishnamurti rejected  the book and the  theosophical publishers had to stop publishing his name on its front cover.   Instead they use ?Alcyone? which is the code name invented by Leadbeater to refer to Krishnamurti in his  imaginary ?past lives? ?as described by the ?bishop?. 
 
Ernest Wood found the book was too simple and limited to have such an importance as a social event. Wood  narrates a frank conversation he had with Leadbeater:  
 
?I delivered my opinion ? a delightful little book, but extremely simple. Would the instructions contained in it be sufficient to bring one to the ?Path proper?, to the First Initiation which Mrs. Besant had described in her book?  Yes, said Mr. Leadbeater, more than that, if completely carried out these instructions would lead one to Adeptship itself.?
 
In parenthesis, one can see in this last sentence above the very seed-idea  for the 1925 high-sounding declaration made by Annie Besant,  that  she herself, as well as J. Krishnamurti,  C. W. Leadbeater, George  Arundale,  James Wedgwood and others,  had all achieved Adepthood and were now ?Initiates of the fifth circle?.  Soon after that Besant lost her mind, her memory  and her balance, as reported by both Mary Lutyens and Ernest Wood.  
 
Wood goes on describing his conversation with Leadbeater:  
 
?I remarked that there were one or two curious things about the manuscript. It  was very much in Mr. Leadbeater?s own style, and there were some sentences which were exactly the same as in a book of his which we had already prepared for the press. He told me that he wished indeed that he might have been able to write such a book himself. As to the sentences I mentioned, he had been usually present when Krishnamurti was being taught in his astral body by the Master ; he remembered these points...? (2) 
 
Leadbeater explained everything away, for those who woud  believe everything he said. 
 
It was Annie Besant who decided for the title ?At the Fee of  the Master?,  as Wood reports. 
 
At that age, Krishnamurti was not very interested in books  or in writing; but all he had to do was to play the outer  role of a young author. 
 
In her 2003 book about Krishnamurti,  Ms. Jean Overton Fuller reports on a talk to Mary Lutyens,  the main biographer and a lifelong intimate friend of Krishnamurti?s: 
 
?I talked with Mary Lutyens about this. She inclined to think the composition was very largely Leadbeater?s.? (3) 
 
In her book ?Life and Death of  Krishnamurti?, at a footnote by the end of Chapter II, Mary Lutyens says that the originals of the Krishnamurti notes ?disappeared?.  By a strange coincidence, the only originals ever available were the ones written by Leadbeater himself.  
 
An analysis of the content of the booklet will confirm that the real author is Leadbater.  It  will also show us that he included in it many of his own mayavic notions about the spiritual path.
 
?At the Feet of the Master? is,  indeed, one of  the major ?spiritual?,  editorial and political frauds  fabricated by Adyar leaders in the 20th century.  
 
 
Regards,    Carlos.   
 
 
NOTES: 
 
(1)  ?Is This Theosophy??, Ernest Wood,    London: Rider & Co., Paternost House, E.C., reprinted by Kessinger Publishing,LLC, 318 pp., see p.  162. 
 
(2) ?Is This Theosophy??, Ernest Wood,   see p.  161. 
 
(3) ?Krishnamurti and the Wind?, by Jean Overton Fuller, The Theosophical Publishing House, London, 2003, 300 pp., see p. 23. 
 
 
 


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