The italics throughout the foregoing quotations are mine, and serve again to emphasise essential points; points almost exactly similar to those raised by Mr. Kingsland, the most serious being the condonation by Mrs. Besant of immoral practices in a colleague whose collaboration, as M. Schuré shrewdly adds, has become a necessity to her, and under whose "formidable suggestive power" she has now completely fallen. If this was true in 1913, what may not be said in 1922, when the intervening nine years have given time for the growth and development of this deadly Upas Tree? I use the simile advisedly, for this teaching is a "deadly" poison, not only from the ordinary moral standpoint, but especially from that of the esoteric teaching of H. P. B. and the Trans-Himâlayan Brotherhood, under whose authority it is falsely and blasphemously given out; I do not hesitate to declare it.
M. Schurélso emphasises an important and vital point which Mr. Kingsland seems to have felt equally deeply, viz.—That Mrs. Besant has no use for any but those who accept everything she says and does with blind subservience, even when, in the eyes of such men as M. Schuré, Mr. Mead, Mr. Kingsland, and others, it merits strong condemnation as "untrue" and "misleading." In the pages of the recent numbers of the Theosophist the talk about "freedom of opinion" within the Society is still repeated, although in actual practice, as I have shown, the exact opposite obtains. Much that emanates from this tainted source is so fantastic and puerile that ridicule ought long since to have killed it, as it did Oscar Wilde's æsthetic movement.
Mrs. Besant's "return of the Christ."
TO return to M. Lévy's book; it deals with "Mrs. Besant's Proceedings" under various headings. In the one entitled "Mrs. Besant's Return of the Christ" is to be found some of the most amazing balderdash—given out as serious teaching!—it has ever been my lot to encounter. For instance, a book called Man: Whence, How, and Whither, written by Mrs. Besant and Mr. Leadbeater in collaboration, is quoted from by M. Lévy at considerable length. He explains that "the substitution of a "false Christ" for the "Christ of the Gospels" is here supported by "a new order of evidence" (Italics mine). Specimens of this "evidence" follow, and I will here give some of it in order to show the almost unbelievably low level of intelligence to which this whole mischievous movement—miscalled Theosophical—has descended, and the sort of elements in human nature to which such an ill-conceived and fantastic production is designed to appeal. M. Lévy writes:—
In the course of their investigations these two occultists look up on the one side, the past incarnations of him whom Mrs. Besant calls the "Master Jesus," that is, of the "Jesus" born 105 B.C.; and on the other side, the past lives of the being whom she calls the "Lord Maitreya, the present Bodhisattva, the Supreme Teacher of the World"; whose ego at a given moment replaced that of "Jesus," this being the last incarnation of the Christ whose immediate return she is announcing.
Let us first quote from their account of the incarnations of the "Supreme Teacher" ... In the chapter headed "Early Times on the Moon Chain," p. 34, we read:—
"There is a hut in which dwell a Moon-Man, his wife and children; these we know in later times under the names of Mars and Mercury, the Mahaguru and Surya. A number of these monkey-creatures live round the hut, and give to their owners the devotion of faithful dogs; among them we notice the future Sirius, Herakles, Alcyone, and Mizar, to whom we may give their future names for the purpose of recognition, though they are still non-human."[4]
In the Fourth Root Race we again find the personage supposed to be "Maitreya" as the husband of the ego claimed by these authors as that of "Master K. H." Mrs. Besant is again incarnated in the family as daughter, the eldest sister of the "Master M."; "Maitreya," the future World-Teacher, being at this time the head of the tribe (p. 113)....
We have thus reached to somewhere about the year 15,000 B.C., and then—incredible as it seems—they give no further incarnations of him whom they nevertheless claim to have been the World-Teacher at the beginning of our era.
They give us his incarnations as husband, as father, as counsellor and priest, and are silent as to the only incarnation of fundamental and vital importance to the whole world.
Let us see if the incarnations of their "Jesus" will fill this gap in our knowledge, if they will throw light on this essential point, thus left in obscurity.
We meet this "Jesus" for the first time at the beginning of the Fifth Root Race, as daughter of Alcyone (Krishnamurti) and sister of "Maitreya" (p. 252.)
Then, on p. 328, as the wife of Julius Cæsar 18,878 B.C., he, or rather she, being at this time the widow of Vulcan (Known in his last incarnation as Sir Thomas More)....
He is later identified as daughter of Alcyone-Krishnamurti (his father) and Fabrizio Ruspoli (his mother),[5] parents at the same time of the future "World-Teacher, Maitreya," their young daughter. These incarnations took place 72,000 B.C., on the shores of the Lake of Gobi, we are told on p. 490.
In 15,910 B.C., we find "Jesus" as grandson of "Maitreya," and as father and grandfather of a large family composed, as in all cases investigated by these two authors, of present members of the Theosophical Society only, and including the faithful friends of Adyar to the exclusion of all others.[6]
" ... In 12,800 B.C. the "Jesus" of these investigations again forms part of a very extensive family composed as usual of the selfsame elements, and including amongst the names known in the theosophic world that of Mme. Marie Louise Kirby (an Italian theosophist recently at Adyar) who was his sister. "Jesus" was then the father of Mrs. S. Maud Sharpe (General Secretary of the English Section), of Julius Cæsar, and of T. Subba Rao; the Teshu Lama being at that time his daughter, etc., etc. (p. 499)....
Once more have our hopes been betrayed, for an absolute silence broods over the Incarnations of "Jesus" later than this date of 13,500, as it reigned over those of the "World-Teacher"....
We cannot, however, conceive that this information gathered from occult investigation will be felt to be indispensable by anyone. Now that we know that Mrs. Besant's "World-Teacher" is an ordinary man of the lunar chain (to whom Mrs. Besant was first domestic animal and then sister, and who, in the early period of our earth, was daughter of the young Krishnamurti (or of M. Ruspoli), who could be found still to imagine that there could be here any question, save a mad or impious joke"....
Incredible as it may appear to those who know anything of H. P. Blavatsky's teachings, their comprehensive grandeur and sublimity, especially as given in The Secret Doctrine, this extraordinary mixture of clumsy fairy-tale and extravagant and even malicious mumbo-jumbo is apparently swallowed whole by the blind and credulous followers of this grotesque "Neo-Theosophy." Not so much for them do I write as for those who, while interested in these subjects, have neither the inclination nor the leisure to examine, for instance, such published Records as these from which I quote, for themselves. Such would naturally accept on their face value Mrs. Besant's own account of herself and of her Society, unaware that she is no longer anything but a "blind leader of the blind," incapable of distinguishing light from darkness, truth from falsehood. We have direct testimony to the truth of this statement in Mr. T. H. Martyn's now famous letter to Mrs. Besant. [7] In it he tells her:—"You have been relying upon C. W. L. as sole intermediary between the Hierarchy [the Trans-Himâlayan Brotherhood, the Masters of Wisdom. Italics mine.—A. L. C.] and yourself for many years.... C. W. L.'s word is final and his seership infallible to you." The quality of this supposed "seership" bears a very close resemblance to a stupid and vulgar hoax. This is clearly shown by Mr. Martyn, who says:—"In 1919 I went to America. Young Van Hook was in New York. He talked freely of C. W. L.'s immorality and about faking the 'lives' of people" (Italics mine.) Mr. Martyn then puts together various pieces of evidence against this man, and tells Mrs. Besant that he finds "staring me in the face the conclusions that Leadbeater is a sex pervert, his mania taking a particular form which I have—though only lately—discovered, is a form well known and quite common in the annals of sex criminology." (Italics mine.) This sex criminal, then, is the creature whom Mrs. Besant has accepted "for many years" as "sole intermediary between" herself and—the Masters of Wisdom!! One almost hesitates to draw the obvious inference; for this is the man whom she has for years held up to and imposed upon their followers as a model of all the virtues—"a saint"—a person "on the threshold of divinity." ([See also footnote post, p. 56].)