This Protest has been undertaken at the earnest and repeated requests of Theosophical friends of long standing. They feel strongly that the time has come for one of H. P. Blavatsky's old pupils, who was a member of her Inner Group, to demonstrate as clearly as possible that the teachings promulgated for nearly twenty years past by the present leaders of the "Theosophical Society" have departed more and more from H. P. B.'s, and are now their direct antithesis, particularly on the fundamental question of sex morality.
Since Mr. G. R. S. Mead, one of my fellow-members of the Inner Group, spoke out at the Leadbeater Inquiry of 1906, and resigned, no other surviving member, so far as I have been able to ascertain, has attempted to stem the awful and ever increasing tide of horror and delusion, that is, engulfing—one might almost say has engulfed—Mrs. Besant's Society. If Mr. Mead could say in 1906;—"We stand on the brink of an abyss," what is to be said now? The enquiries and researches I have undertaken to enable me to write this pamphlet have revealed the present state of things to be far worse than I could have imagined possible.
From the time I left Mrs. Besant in 1895 and Mrs. Tingley in 1899, I have been out of touch with these two movements, each calling itself "theosophical" and each leader claiming to be H. P. B.'s "successor." This is the reason why I have hitherto kept silent; in fact, it was not until I came to live in India in 1918, after spending some years on the Continent, and met some of the members—both Indian and European—who had left Mrs. Besant in more recent years, that I learnt of the appalling developments since she became President and installed the sex pervert Leadbeater as supreme esoteric teacher.
I feel that I should be failing in my duty, and false to the solemn Pledges I have taken, if I did not now do my utmost to clear H. P. B.'s name from these horrible associations, and demonstrate that they have nothing whatever to do with her Masters (the Trans-Himâlayan Brotherhood) or Their Esoteric doctrine.
I therefore Protest with all my strength, and in Their sacred Names, against what is to me a desecration and a blasphemy.
September, 1922.
A. L. C.
FOR the past fifteen years, despite repeated scandals, exposures, and even the damning evidence produced in various court cases, Mrs. Besant still persists in her blind and fanatical support of the sex pervert and pseudo-occultist C. W. Leadbeater, and the promulgation of his delusive, immoral, and poisonous teachings among the members of the Theosophical Society she rules, and the public at large, to whom she is known chiefly as an able speaker and an astute politician. Goaded by a revival of the well-known evidence against Mr. Leadbeater, and a severe criticism of her own actions, Mrs. Besant published in her official organ (Theosophist, March, 1922.) an article entitled "Whom Will Ye Serve?" and a long Supplement addressed to the members, reiterating her support of Mr. Leadbeater, and making statements in justification of him and herself that call imperatively for a dispassionate review of the history of this ill-omened partnership, and the strongest possible protest against the complete stultification and perversion of H. P. Blavatsky's life-work and teaching that it involves.
I have no personal quarrel with Mrs. Besant, whose brilliant intellectual gifts we all so much admired in the early days, and who accomplished such splendid work for the Cause during H. P. Blavatsky's lifetime. I had already been a member of the Society for four years when Mrs. Besant joined in 1889; and as we both subsequently became members of the Inner Group of H. P. B.'s personal pupils, I feel I am in a position to review the facts, and entitled to utter this protest. In fact, I can no longer remain silent in the face of so much that is abhorrent to every true Theosophist, to every devoted follower of H. P. Blavatsky, her Masters, and Their teachings.
In a private letter to Mr. Judge, in or about 1887, H. P. B. writes: "I am the mother and creator of the Society; it has my magnetic fluid.... Therefore I alone and to a degree ... can serve as a lightning conductor of Karma for it. I was asked whether I was willing, when on the point of dying—and I said 'Yes'—for it was the only means to save it. Therefore I consented to live...." Obviously, the only possible conclusion to be drawn from this is that, when in 1891 H. P. Blavatsky passed away (or rather was "recalled") nine years before the limit of time within which the Masters' help could be given,[2] it was because They saw that the T. S. had definitely failed, that it could no longer be kept alive.
A long and, in this connection, very important letter was written by H. P. Blavatsky in 1890 "To my Brothers in Aryavarta," giving the real reason why she did not return to India. Among other significant statements which she makes (Theosophist, January, 1922.), there is one which shows that she must clearly have foreseen the ultimate disintegration of the Society, which occurred in 1895. Writing of the shameful way in which she was thrown overboard, like a second Jonah, by Colonel Olcott and the T. S. Council at Adyar in their cowardly panic during the crisis of 1884-85, H. P. B. says: "It was during that time ... that the seeds of all future strifes, and—let me say at once—disintegration of the Theosophical Society [Italics mine.—A. L. C.] were planted by our enemies.... In a letter received from Damodar in 1886 [He had been called by his Master to Tibet the previous year.—A. L. C.] he notified me that the Masters' influence was becoming with every day weaker at Adyar." Further on in the letter H. P. B. again refers to Adyar, and to an invitation to return to India which "came too late ... nor can I, if I would be true to my life-pledge and vows, now live at the Headquarters from which the Masters and Their spirit are virtually banished. The presence of Their portraits will not help; They are a dead letter." [Italics mine. Yet Mrs. Besant asks us to believe that They returned when she was elected President in 1907, and even nominated her!—A. L. C.]
In the same letter H. P. B. says that she was pledged never to reveal "the whole truth" about the Masters to anyone, "excepting to those who like Damodar, had been finally selected and called by Them." She also speaks of him as "that one future Adept who has now the prospect of becoming one day a Mahatma, Kali Yuga notwithstanding." It is he again of whom she spoke four years earlier, when she wrote: "During the eleven years of the existence of the Theosophical Society I have known, out of the seventy-two regularly accepted chelas on probation and the hundreds of lay candidates—only three who have not hitherto failed, and one only who had a full success." ("The Theosophical Mahatmas." Path, December, 1886.) Damodar is the only chela she ever spoke of as a "full success" in her lifetime; and it is worthy of special note that he was a high caste Brahmin who did not hesitate to give up caste and become a Buddhist (so Colonel Olcott states).
In the late spring Mrs. Besant paid a hasty visit to Australia, whither her "brother-initiate" had to flee from India some time since, as previously from London, Paris, and America. The cause is always the same; scandals inevitably arise, and Australia has proved no exception. Mr. Leadbeater is a "Bishop" of the "Liberal Catholic Church," an anomalous body warmly supported and encouraged within and without the T. S. by Mrs. Besant. Other of its bishops have incurred similar odium and a "priest" has quite recently confessed in writing and implicated the "Presiding Bishop" and others. It has been stated that all these men are being watched by the police, who are only waiting to secure enough evidence. Matters cannot go on much longer like this; and a pamphlet published at New York last February says that "with difficulty a delay of a few months has been obtained in a pending arraignment and exposure in the Public Press in America." When it comes it will be a far graver indictment than that which precipitated the 'Besant v. Judge' crisis in 1894-95, and rent the T. S. in twain. Then Mrs. Besant accused her colleague Mr. Judge of "giving a misleading material form to messages received psychically from the Master in various ways ..." (Enquiry at London, July, 1894); but now she is deliberately condoning, if not actually supporting, something far worse which was investigated and found true by a T. S. committee of enquiry in 1906.[3]
For those unfamiliar with the events succeeding H. P. Blavatsky's death in 1891, I must add that those of us who supported Mr. Judge against Mrs. Besant's charges came under the sway, after his death a year later, of an equally masterful, able, and ambitious woman having very similar characteristics and methods. This was Mrs. Katherine Tingley, formerly a New York professional psychic and trance medium, from whose organisation ("The Universal Brotherhood") I resigned in 1899. Her activities are now mainly confined to a colony in California.
A point to which I think attention has not hitherto been drawn is the striking similarity in the fate which befell Mrs. Besant and Mr. Judge respectively after the death of H. P. Blavatsky. Being left as the most obvious leaders of the European and American Sections respectively (neither of them were in England when she died), the E. S. Council decided that they should carry on the Esoteric School as joint Outer Heads in place of H. P. B., oblivious of the fact that one of them (Mrs. Besant) was untrained, and both were unfit to fill such a high occult office (see post p. 86). This soon became evident when each in turn fell an easy prey to external influences which first separated them, and then disrupted the Society and E. S.
Among the old T. S. and E. S. papers now lying before me I find not a few which throw a most illuminating light on Mrs. Besant's activities in recent years. Before dealing with her latest statements I will quote extracts from these papers in support and elucidation of the points I wish to make, viz:—
(a) That under Mrs. Besant's guidance the T. S. has long ceased to represent H. P. Blavatsky's teaching, or the thought of its Founders.
(b) That it is now completely dominated by the deluded, impure, and poisonous ideas of an acknowledged sex pervert, to whom this unhappy and misguided woman believes and openly declares herself to be bound by indissoluble and age-long ties.
(c) That in adopting and conniving at the promulgation of the teachings of this man, and allowing him virtually to control her Society, Mrs. Besant most impiously gives out that she is acting under the orders of the Trans-Him㭡yan Masters of Wisdom, and H. P. Blavatsky's directions.
This last point (c) is the real gravamen of my Protest. It would be of relative unimportance—Mrs. Besant having already wrecked the Society in 1895—that it had descended to the level of any existing sect, Christian or other (as much a close corporation as the Adventists or New Jerusalemites), had its two present leaders dropped the title, and ceased to claim any connection with the "real Founders." But, on the contrary, Mrs. Besant and Mr. Leadbeater use Their sacred names and declare themselves to be under Their direct guidance. Such proceedings merit the sternest possible moral condemnation in view of the facts.
[2] " ... there remain but a few years to the last hour of the term—namely, till December the 31st, 1899. Those who will not have profited by the opportunity (given to the world in every last quarter of a century) ... will advance no further than the knowledge already acquired. No Master of Wisdom from the East will himself appear or send anyone to Europe or America after that period.... Such is the law, for we are in Kali-Yuga—the Black Age—and the restrictions in this cycle, the first 5,000 years of which will expire in 1897, are great and almost insuperable." (H. P. Blavatsky in the "Book of Rules, E. S. T." 1888.)
[3] For later and fuller particulars from Australia, see Addendum.
THE first of the old papers I shall quote from is by my old friend and fellow-Councillor Mr. William Kingsland, author of The Esoteric Basis of Christianity and kindred works. He was one of the leading members in the early days under H. P. B. who, when Mrs. Besant on securing the Presidency after Colonel Olcott's death in 1907 reinstated Mr. Leadbeater, resigned their membership. Mrs. Besant had reviewed a new book by Mr. Kingsland, and took the opportunity to refer to his resignation. Replying in "An Open Letter to Annie Besant" dated December, 1909, he tells her: