[17] The original documents appear in the O. E. Critic for June 21st, 1922, and include a confession signed by a priest of the L. C. C. who states that he was "led astray by those whom I considered to be my superiors both morally and spiritually" adding "Wedgwood absolutely declines to give up the mal-practice." Wedgwood fled to Algeria at the end of March. A cable from Sydney dated May 30th states that "Mrs. Besant refused to answer any enquiry in reference to Wedgwood. Police now holding an enquiry into the charges against Leadbeater." Dr. Stokes concludes his comments on the documents as follows:—"And Annie Besant, having repeatedly been informed of the facts, not only refused to look into them, but launched her anathemas against those who criticised, even threatening them with expulsion from the E. S., and even very recently cabling to Wedgwood that he made a mistake in resigning!—It is on Annie Besant, more than on any other one person, that the responsibility for the present scandalous condition in the T. S. rests. The best of societies may have its black sheep and it is not to be blamed if it does its best to purge itself. But it is Annie Besant, with her tools and sycophants, who has ever concealed and denied the palpable facts, or, where they could not be denied, has palliated, excused and even defended them, throwing over them a veil of esoteric glamour, supporting such scoundrels as Leadbeater and Wedgwood, apparently in order the better to serve her ambitions. A vote of confidence in Annie Besant to-day either betrays total ignorance of the facts, or associates those who give it with the grossest forms of moral rottenness." [See Addendum] for Mr. Piddington, K. C's opinion on Mrs Besant's conduct in Australia last May; also Mr. Hugh Gillespie's evidence of her use of the Esoteric School as a "political machine" to secure her "ascendancy in the various bodies to which E. S. members have gained access."
[18] As to the methods employed to suppress criticism, Dr. Hiestand-Moore says in the same issue:—"Slander, falsehood, deceit, treachery, all have been summoned to the support of Mr. Leadbeater's cause. Anonymous communications have been written to confound the prosecution, letters have been stolen and threats made. The Editor of The Voice has been compelled to call upon the Secret Service to protect her mails." [An entire issue in proof with copy and unset matter disappeared, and had to be rewritten!] Again, the Editor of the O. E. Critic writes:—"It is understood, and I have the direct testimony of the publisher to the fact, that the entire edition of the Brooks' books [Esoteric Bogeydom and Neo-Theosophy Exposed] was corralled by Mrs. Besant in order to suppress their circulation. They tell too much about her."
Tampering with H. P. Blavatsky's writings.
THE result of Mrs. Besant's first failure, through harbouring doubts of her Teacher's bona fides and esoteric knowledge, was soon manifested when she began to publish new editions of H. P. B.'s works. The first noteworthy example was her excision from The Voice of the Silence of passages and notes, presumably out of deference to Brahmin sentiment, which then governed her actions. One of the last verses in "The Two Paths" (the second of the "Three Fragments" forming the little book) in the original edition (1889) begins thus:— "He who becomes Pratyeka Buddha, makes his obeisance but to his Self." In a footnote H. P. B. explains that "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."
In Mrs. Besant's edition both the passage and the footnote I have quoted are omitted. Her reason for this unscrupulous proceeding is given in a footnote on p. 416 of the so-called "third volume" of The Secret Doctrine. In this note Mrs. Besant, from the heights of her then newly-acquired Brahmanical wisdom, adopts the following dictatorial and censorious tone towards her late Teacher:—
The Pratyeka Buddha stands on the level of the Buddha [!], but His work for the world has nothing to do with its teaching, and His office has always been surrounded with mystery. The preposterous [sic] view that He, at such superhuman height of power, wisdom and love could be selfish, is found in the exoteric books, though it is hard to see how it can have arisen. H. P. B. charged me to correct the mistake, as she had, in a careless moment, copied such a statement elsewhere.—A. B.
Observe the assumption of superior knowledge to H. P. B.'s, and the use of the words "preposterous" and "careless." To any real Oriental chela such an attitude towards his Guru would be simply unthinkable; but we have seen how very quickly Mrs. Besant believed herself to have soared far above the "chela on probation" state of her H. P. B. days into that of an "Initiate" and future "Supreme Ruler of the World of Gods and men." To such vanity and self-delusion everything is possible. How different was the attitude of the real Occultist who was spoken of by the Masters as "Our Brother H. P. B.," yet called herself "a Chela of one of Them"!
The passage I have italicised in the above footnote by Mrs. Besant is untrue on the face of it to anyone who knew, as I did, the loving care with which H. P. B. prepared this unique little book of "Golden Precepts." Moreover, she states in her Preface that the verses given are selected from a much larger number which she "learnt by heart." Further, H. P. B. not only repeated but greatly amplified this statement about the Pratyeka Buddha in her Theosophical Glossary, a fact which Mrs. Besant had evidently forgotten when she concocted the footnote quoted above.[19] The Pratyeka Buddha is doubtless much that Mrs. Besant claims for him, but she does not seem to know, or has probably forgotten, that there are two classes of Masters, two "Paths" (as this very section of The Voice of the Silence shows); that the "Pairs of Opposites" obtain on all planes of Manifestation and Being, right up to the threshold of the Unmanifested—the ONE; that, while there are Masters of Compassion, there must of necessity exist also the opposite pole—the wearers of the "Dharmakâya robe," with all the power and knowledge which that state implies, but without that Compassion which alone makes a Master of the "Right Hand Path."[20]