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.
FOOTNOTES:
[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].