It was a great and valuable feature of H. P. B.'s, method that she taught us to reason on these lines, checking everything by the Law of Correspondences. But Mrs. Besant has evidently long since abandoned this, and prefers the sacerdotal plan of accepting everything on "authority," which in her present phase means Leadbeater or her own psychic delusions. The "World Teacher" dogma is a case in point. She asserts it as a fact to be accepted because she says it; whereas, as I have shown, it is untenable in the light of The Secret Doctrine ([see ante p. 2]), which endorses Oriental tradition and cyclic law.
Mrs. Besant's partiality for the Pratyeka Buddha, however, may possibly be explained by some words that H. P. B. once wrote of her to Mr. Judge:—"She is not psychic or spiritual in the least—all intellect." For H. P. B. opens her paragraph in the Theosophical Glossary on the Pratyeka Buddha with these words: — "The Pratyeka Buddha is a degree which belongs exclusively to the Yog㤨㳹a school ... one of high intellectual development with no true spirituality". (Italics mine.) Moreover, we have the authority of the Maha Chohan Himself (the Head of the Trans-Himâlayan Brotherhood) for the statement that even Nirv㯡 is, "after all, but an exalted and glorious selfishness."
In the Theosophist for March, 1922, Mrs. Besant says, in her "Watch-Tower" notes:—
A wild theory has just been started in the U. S. A. that The Secret Doctrine, brought out by the London T. P. H. after H. P. B.'s death, was not as H. P. B. wanted it. The insinuation is made that H. P. B. was "edited" by those in charge of the second edition. The trustees to whom she left the safeguarding of her printed books and unpublished manuscripts were all her own pupils who had lived with her for years, and they made only such changes as she had herself directed, which consist mainly in the correction of verbal and grammatical errors, and the arrangement of the material of Vol. III.
I have italicised the statements requiring explanation or correction. The "second edition," as Mrs. Besant must be well aware, was merely a re-print to meet an unexpected demand, and bears the same date as the original edition, viz., 1888. But as Mrs. Besant only joined the T. S. early in 1889, and was led to seek an interview with H. P. Blavatsky after reviewing The Secret Doctrine for the late Mr. W. T. Stead, then Editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, clearly she can know absolutely nothing of the preparation of its first or of its "second edition"! As to the alleged "trustees," I can only say that I never heard of their existence. Mrs. Besant only "lived with" H. P. B. for rather more than eighteen months. H. P. B. left 17, Lansdowne Road, London, W., in the summer of 1889, the Headquarters being moved to Mrs. Besant's house in Avenue Road, N.W., where she died in May 1891, while Mrs. Besant was on her way back from a lecture tour in America.
Take next the alleged "safeguarding" of H. P. B.'s "unpublished manuscripts." Those who were responsible for the so-called Volume III, had a strange and unusual conception of the meaning of the word "safeguarding." It so happens that while it was being set up I was able actually to peruse one or two of the familiar long foolscap sheets which H. P. B. always covered with her small fine handwriting. They were mutilated almost beyond recognition, few of her sentences remaining intact; and there were "corrections" not only in the handwritings of the editors, Mrs. Besant and Mr. Mead, but also in that of others which I was able to identify. More than this I cannot say without abusing confidence; but the wrong done to my Teacher compels me to say this much.
Those who were H. P. B.'s untiring and unfailing helpers in the preparation of The Secret Doctrine for the press in 1887-88, Dr. Archibald and Mr. Bertram Keightley, have, fortunately for posterity, put on record their experiences of those days. They have made statements of the utmost value in connection with the facts I am here dealing with, which they wrote specially for Countess Wachtmeister's Reminiscences of H. P. Blavatsky and "The Secret Doctrine," published in 1893. Moreover, Dr. Keightley wrote an account of H. P. B.'s manifold literary activities at this time, which appeared in the Theosophist for July 1889, in which he states that "the Third Volume of The Secret Doctrine is in MS. ready to be given to the printers. [Italics mine.—A. L. C.] It will consist mainly of a series of sketches of the great Occultists of all ages, and is a most wonderful and fascinating work."
In the face of this clear and definite statement, made by one whose word I know to be unimpeachable, and who lived and worked with H. P. B. at that time, what becomes of H. P. B.'s alleged "directions" for the "arrangement of the material of Vol. III" which Mrs. Besant speaks of above, and the statement in the Preface to her version of Vol. III:—"The task of preparing this volume for the press has been a difficult and anxious one.... The papers given to me by H. P. B. were quite unarranged, and had no obvious order...."? This volume, given by Mrs. Besant to the world in 1897, is most certainly not the one Dr. Keightley speaks of as "ready" for "the printers" in 1889, as I will prove. What then became of that volume?
But first I will quote Dr. Stokes, Editor of the O. E. Critic, whose most specific charges and plain statements of fact hardly come under the purposely misleading term "insinuations," used by Mrs. Besant! Dr. Stokes "insinuates" nothing; he heads his most damaging accusation as follows:—