Why has it always been necessary for Mrs. Besant to have an "intermediary"? Before Mr. Leadbeater it was her Brahmin guide, and before him it was Mr. Judge. To each in turn she gave implicit belief in the matter of "messages" and directions from the Masters, while outwardly claiming "direct" communication. The fact is that, as I have come to believe, the plain psychology of the thing is—sheer femininity. With all her intellectual talents, her once clear brain, Mrs. Besant is (in her personality) just simple woman, relying upon male guidance and authority as instinctively as any of her humbler sisters. And what student of human nature will fail to recognise in her that purely feminine trait of blind and fanatical "obedience" which loves to receive and obey "orders" even though the result should be "a world in ruins"? The existence of this fundamental and essential quality in female human nature is the real reason why even the most broad-minded men shrink from giving women equality of power with themselves in wordly affairs.
Let me here declare what I believe to be the real truth; namely, that after H. P. Blavatsky's death in 1891, neither Mrs. Besant, nor Mr. Judge, nor Colonel Olcott, nor anyone else, could "communicate," because H. P. B.'s withdrawal meant the withdrawal of her Masters as well. It has always seemed strange to me that this was never realised by anyone, for in this pamphlet I have quoted quite enough from H. P. B. to make it perfectly clear. Does she not say in the 1890 letter to the Indians ([see p. 2]) that after she had to leave India in 1885 the Masters' influence at Adyar became a dead letter? Did not the Masters Themselves write as early as 1884 that they could only communicate through her or in places previously prepared magnetically by her presence? How, then, could They be expected to continue to communicate or direct the affairs of the T. S. (as They did in India until 1885), or the E. S. (as They did from 1888 to 1891), after They had withdrawn the Agent They had so carefully prepared and subjected to the severest trials and initiations in Tibet? Barely three years after this withdrawal the fatal "Split" took place owing to Mr. Judge giving out what purported to be "direct" communications, but which, as I discovered after working for a time under his inspirer and successor, Mrs. Tingley, were obtained from her. Mrs. Besant, in accusing him, did precisely the same, for she stated in her Case against W. Q. Judge that she had received her orders direct from the Master, whereas (as I relate elsewhere, [post, p. 56]) she admitted to the Inner Group that they came "through" her Brahmin guide.
This, then, was the great and fundamental error committed by the leaders of the movement, after H. P. B. was withdrawn. It is responsible for all the subsequent troubles, and the appalling situation with which we are faced to-day. A great and world-wide organisation is being used to promulgate blasphemous, poisonous and absolutely anti-Theosophical and anti-Occult doctrines as emanating direct from the Masters who definitely withdrew Their chosen Agent in 1891. ([See ante p. 2.])
In any case, even had she lived, H. P. B. told the E. S. that the "last hour of the term" was December 31st, 1899, after which "no Master of Wisdom from the East will himself appear or send anyone to Europe or America." ([See footnote, ante p. 2.]) She also said that the next Messenger would be sent out in 1975. Yet the fiction that the Masters are still directing the leaders and the movement is kept up, not only by Mrs. Besant, but also by Mrs. Tingley, 22 years after "the last hour of the term."
It is the same with all this wild talk about the imminent advent of a "World-Teacher." Is this in the least probable, in view of the above pronouncements? H. P. B. definitely states in The Secret Doctrine the exact opposite; but all the Neo-Theosophists seem to prefer the Besant and Leadbeater books. H. P. B. says, with reference to this very Maitreya whose name they so lightly take in vain, that He is not due until the Seventh Sub-Race, i.e., several thousand years hence; and that, in any case, "it is not in the Kali Yug, our present terrifically materialistic age of Darkness, the 'Black Age,' that a new Saviour of Humanity can ever appear." (S. D. Third Ed., Vol. I, p. 510 et seq. See also Theosophical Glossary, "Kalki Avatar" and "Maitreya Buddha.") If we accept H. P. B.'s authority there is no evading this issue, and we must reject the Besant-Leadbeater pretensions in toto, for their absurdity is patent. Yet they claim to have been specially taught and prepared by her to carry on her message! (Vide Mrs. Besant in the Theosophist, March, 1922; and also [post p. 68].)
FOOTNOTES:
[4] In these incarnations such names are used as; Mars for the "Master M."; Mercury for the "Master K. H."; Surya, the Lord Maitreya, the present Bodhisattva, the Supreme Teacher of the World"; Sirius for Mr. Leadbeater; Herakles for Mrs. Besant; Alcyone for Krishnamurti; Mizar for his young brother, etc. A list of these names and those to whom they apply is given in the Foreword of the book. [Italics mine. Here we see the bald and unabashed appeal to the personality and its ambitions and desires which is characteristic of this kind of charlatanism.—A. L. C.] We shall here substitute the names of the real persons as given in this list for the fancy names used to distinguish them in the body of the book, Man: Whence, How and Whither.
[5] M. Ruspoli is an Italian theosophist recently living at Adyar, with whom Mr. Leadbeater stayed in Italy.
[6] It is a remarkable fact that outside this little circle not a single being in our great world has ever entered into these family communities to whom the honour is given of being the pioneers of every civilisation of the past. Even though we are invited to assist at marriages running into thousands, ever the same names appear and all the members of all the families are identified. This singular oligarchy of friends and devotees of Adyar perhaps merited to be signalised throughout the evolution of our earth, the more so that Mr. Leadbeater, writing in his bird's-eye view of the twentieth century and of the pioneers of the future sixth race, remarks maliciously: "We know who will not be there." He puts in italics the word not; desirous doubtless to indicate the unworthiness of other theosophists.
[7] Mr. Martyn is the President of the Sydney Lodge, Australian Section T. S., a member of thirty years' standing. [See Addendum].