For having
questioned Leadbeater's clairvoyance, Edward Gardner was attacked by Leadbeater's
followers, but there were also Theosophists who defended him, and one of them
was Ernest Wood.
I much regret to find in the July
1964 issue of The American Theosophist, in an article by Hugh Shearman
criticizing Mr. Edward Gardner's
booklet "There is No Religion Higher than Truth," a comment
denying Mr. Gardner's statement that it was Mr. Leadbeater, not Mrs. Besant,
who discovered Krishnamurti. I wish to inform Mr. Shearman and the readers of
his article that it was Mr. Leadbeater who made the discovery. Mr.
Leadbeater was the source of the proclamation of the coming of the World
Teacher, bur Mrs. Besant made the proclamation later with full confidence in
him. In this matter Mr. Gardner was perfectly correct.
Having been present on the occasion
of the "discovery" of Krishnamurti, I am in a position to give a
direct eye-witness account of the matter. I am not trusting entirely on memory,
as I still have with me a large collection of notes, among which is my article
"Ten Thousand Hours with Mr. Leadbeater," written and published in a
theosophical sectional magazine while he was still alive. There is also the
very abbreviated account of the incident which was presented in my old
out-of-print book unfortunately entitled (by the publishers in London), Is
This Theosophy? I have, in fact, a
large collection of notes and cuttings on this and kindred subjects, weighing
no less than 30 pounds - a mine of information which may possibly be sorted and
edited by someone after my death.
Let me now proceed, then, to the
defense of my old friend, Mr. Edward
Gardner, and what he has written in his pamphlet "There is No Religion
Higher than Truth", every bit of which I think I can endorse -
remarking incidentally that he is quite possibly the oldest living Theosophist,
aged 94, and has all along, since 1907, been very active in the movement in
England.
Mr. Leadbeater came to Adyar from
Italy early in 1909. Already at Adyar, I soon came to know him well and helped
him to clear up his arrears of correspondence - some hundreds of letters from
all over the world, mostly asking for occult assistance, which he freely gave,
refusing outright the offers of considerable money gifts in this connection,
which were occasionally made. We used to work together at his desk or table -
as the case might be - up to as much as fourteen hours a day, perhaps an
average of ten or twelve. In the evening, after 5:00 p.m., we used to knock off
for an hour or so and go to swim in the Bay of Bengal.
After a while, a group of boys began
to come and watch us, and a little later they joined us in the water, at the
invitation of one of our group of four, which included Mr. J. van Manen from
Holland, who was an old friend of Mr. Leadbeater's, and a young South Indian
Brahmin graduate of Madras University named Subrahmanyam Aiyar, who had a room
near mine in the Indian Quadrangle at Adyar.
One evening, Mr. Leadbeater, on our
return to his room after our swim, told me that one of the boys had a
remarkable aura. I asked which one, and he said it was the boy named
Krishnamurti. I was surprised, for I already knew the boys, as they had been
coming to me and to Subrahmanyam in the evenings to help in connection with
their school home work, and it was evident that Krishnamurti was not one of the
bright students. Then Mr. Leadbeater told me that Krishnamurti would become a
great spiritual teacher and a great speaker.
- I asked, "How great?
- As great as Mrs. Besant?"
He replied, "Much greater."
And shortly after that he said that
Krishnamurti would be the vehicle for the Lord Maitreya, the coming Teacher,
who had inspired Jesus. He was directed to help in training the boy for that
purpose, which would be fulfilled, he told me, "unless something goes
wrong." This I want to emphasize, in justice to Mr. Leadbeater. He wrote
Mrs. Besant, who was then abroad, telling her of his "discovery."
The following is an extract from his
letter to her, dated September 2, 1909.
« Naraniah's children are very well
behaved, and would cause us no trouble; van Manen and I have taught some of
them to swim, and have also helped the elder with English composition and
reading ... It seems to me that if we are to have the karma of assisting even
indirectly at the bringing up of one whom the Master has used in the past and
is waiting to use again, we may as well at least give him a chance to grow up
decently."
Later, the plan did go wrong in his
eyes.
We may now return to the development
of Krishnamurti's education. Krishnamurti's father came to Mr. Leadbeater one
day in great distress. I was present. He said that the boy had been treated
very roughly at school. It was true that he was a very dreamy boy and therefore
not good at his lessons, but this cruelty was really unbearable. Mr.
Leadbeater's advice was simple: "Take him away from the school."
This was not practical, the father
replied, since the schools were registered by the government and if the boy did
not pass through this Government system he could not afterwards take up any of
the traditional occupations of the literary classes - government service, the
law, medicine, engineering, teaching, etc.
Mr. Leadbeater, obviously much
troubled, then said, "But anyhow you cannot allow that cruelty to go on.
And it is all the worse in the case of such a sensitive boy."
Regarding Krishnamurti as one who
was destined to become a great spiritual teacher, Mr. Leadbeater then added
that if the father liked he would write to Mrs. Besant and ask her interest in
the boy's career. She might probably arrange for him to be educated in England
later on - the desire of the heart of many Indian fathers for English education
brought in its train considerable economic and social advantages in those days.
In the meantime, he and his friends would see that Krishnamurti did not lack
private tuition, pending Mrs. Besant's return.
The father accepted this solution of
his difficulty, and the result was that Krishnamurti and his younger brother,
Nityananda, became constant members of our party. Several people volunteered to
give them private tuition, two subjects falling to my lot.
The following is an extract touching
on this subject, from a letter from Mr. Leadbeater to Mrs. Besant dated October
14, 1909:
« Naraniah has had a providential
difference of opinion with his schoolmaster, who seems to have been utterly
inefficient, so the two boys in whom He is most interested are at present at
home, and I am utilizing the opportunity to have them taught as much English as
possible, taking them myself when I can spare the time, and getting Clarke,
Wood, Subramania and others to assist ... When you are here I shall be bolder,
and can do more of what He wishes.
In Mrs. Besant's reply to Mr.
Leadbeater's letters, and with reference to his trouble, she approved of the
arrangement that had been made and, on her return to Adyar from abroad, she
accepted legal guardianship of the two boys.
Some months later Mrs. Besant went
to pay visits at several places in the north of India, including a long stay in
Benares, where she had a bungalow of her own near the Central Hindu College, in
the management of which she was one of the most prominent figures. She took the
two boys with her, to give them experience. There were then frequent gatherings
and meetings in Mrs. Besant's bungalow, in which Krishnamurti was caused to
play a prominent, though characteristically simple and gentle part. It was at
those meetings that various movements which culminated in "The Order of the
Star in the East" were born.
While Mrs. Besant was still in
Benares, I had occasion to make a trip into the Telugu country for about a
week. I arrived back in Adyar in the early evening and immediately went over to
Mr. Leadbeater's room, as usual - a new apartment, upstairs, to which he had
comparatively recently moved. He was typing away on his little Blickensderfer.
He looked up with a greeting, continued typing for a few minutes, and then
finished with a flourish and an air of great satisfaction. He gathered his
papers together while rising from his roll-top desk, and came over to the
square table in the center of the room where he usually sat to work. He put the
typewritten manuscript into my hands and told me it was Krishnamurti's first
book, and that he was surprised at such early publicity.
Krishnamurti had made a great
impression upon some members of the staff and some senior students of the
Central Hindu College, particularly the then principal, Mr. G.S. Arundale. Some
of them had been at meetings in the evenings in Mrs. Besant's bungalow, and at
these he had been answering questions for them, and giving them something from the
notes which he had made of his morning memories. The notes had now been put
together, and here was the result, a little book. Would I take it home with me
and tell him - Mr. Leadbeater - in the morning what I thought of it?
The Introduction began: "These
are not my words; they are the words of the Master who taught me." Next
day I delivered my opinion - a delightful little book, but extremely simple.
Would the instructions contained in it be sufficient to bring one to the
"Path proper," to the "First Initiation," which Mrs. Besant
had described in her books? Yes, said Mr. Leadbeater, more than that; if
completely carried out, these instructions would lead one to Adeptship itself.
I remarked that there were one or
two curious things about the manuscript. It was very much in Mr. Leadbeater's
own style, and there were some sentences which were exactly the same as in a
book of his which we had already prepared for the press. He told me that he
wished indeed that he might have been able to write such a book himself. As to
the sentences I mentioned, he said he had usually been present when
Krishnamurti was being taught in his astral body by the Master; he remembered
these points and had made use of them in meetings of Theosophists, and so I had
noted them down and had incorporated them into the material of his book, The
Inner Life. As to style, he said, it was but natural that he himself should
have adopted something of his own Master's style after himself being taught by
him for so many years.
I prepared the little book for the
press and it was duly published, after Mrs. Besant's return from Benares, under
the title which she gave to it: At the Feet of the Master. It created a
sensation, and practically a new cult within the Theosophical Society, in view
of its containing the actual instructions of one of the Masters, and being the
output of a child who was to become in effect the very incarnation of the
Masters of Masters Himself.
Mr. Leadbeater did not publicly
proclaim these facts. Though he was the first to see and say that Krishnamurti
would be the vehicle for the coming of Christ, with the reservation already
mentioned ("unless something goes wrong," which I on the spot put
down in writing), he left all the proclaiming to Mrs. Besant. As I have
indicated, he informed Mrs. Besant by letters of his findings and afterwards
did as she wanted. He was in fact anxious to avoid publicity and quite anxious
when formal groups were established to assist in the preparation. It was not
his own desire that there should be any proclamation until Krishnamurti had
finished his education. However, Mrs. Besant did proclaim it.
I hope that it is now clear that it
was Mr. Leadbeater who "found" Krishnamurti and announced his
destiny, and that Mrs. Besant later "proclaimed" the event and
promoted the project with conviction and enthusiasm.
She told me afterward that she had
an arrangement with Mr. Leadbeater. She accepted his clairvoyance as if it were
her own and he loyally supported her decisions as to what to do. Later,
especially when in Europe in 1925, she made pronouncements of great import.
She said that the coming of the Lord
was near at hand and that he had chosen twelve disciples, seven of whom she
named. This time, she said, the apostles were to be prepared for him in advance
and would also help to prepare the way for his coming. This news reached Mr.
Leadbeater in Sydney while I was sitting with him. He was visibly distressed,
as he did not believe in it, and said to me:
- "Oh, I do hope she will
not wreck the Society!"
He knew that she had been taking
statements from others as well as himself. Still, Mr. Leadbeater kept to his
contract loyally and did not let this out in public, except on one occasion,
when he was caught by surprise in a question meeting. It was only after Mrs.
Besant was so ill as to be unable to carry out her daily work as President -
which I used largely to carry out under her direction, as I was then Recording
Secretary of the Society, and used to go to her almost daily for this business
- that Mr. Leadbeater became at all active in what may, for brevity's sake, be
called theosophical politics.
The announcement of the twelve
apostles was only one of several statements which he told me were wrong and
were due to her impulsive eagerness. I need not give details here.
So, on item first of the
"refutations" of Mr. Gardner, I wish to add my testimony that he was
perfectly correct. I may add that his "unconscious kriyashakti"
theory is undoubtedly correct also. I have found and physically confirmed its
operation in many clairvoyants who were coloring what they saw, or in some
cases what they thought they saw, being affected by their own desires, though
sincerely unaware of the process in themselves.
Some people have such strong
"visualisation" that sometimes, even when they do actually obtain
something quite correctly by clairvoyance or by intuition, they are likely to
embellish it from their own subconscious mind and cannot distinguish it from
actual seeing or hearing.
It was on this ground that Mr.
Gardner wrote that the Lord Maitreya and the Masters "with whom Mr.
Leadbeater was on such familiar terms" (note this qualification made by
Mr. Gardner) were his own thought creations - though with no intention to
deceive, he believed.
This second item of Mr. Shearman's
criticism of Mr. Gardner's booklet is only an expression of opinion - deeply
considered in a "forty years' perspective." I can testify that the
lives of Alcyone - with the exception of one in which Mrs. Besant collaborated
- were the work of Mr. Leadbeater alone, mostly written down by me while he was
looking and talking and answering my incidental questions.
I too came to the conclusion that
Mr. Leadbeater then, and on many other occasions, was largely "seeing his
own thought-forms," and this not merely on theory, but on material
evidences - again too much to mention even briefly here.
The third item taken up by Mr.
Shearman relates to Mrs. Besant's shutting off of her psychic powers in 1912.
This does not bear on the present question, as there was no hard and fast
evidence in this matter.
The fourth item of Mr. Shearman's
criticism relates to The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett, later
published, and especially to Letter No. 10. That letter was inconsistent with
Mr. Leadbeater's master-image. My personal contribution on this point is that
Mrs. Besant certainly had a copy of the Mahatma Letters - at least all those
concerning teachings and therefore including Letter No. 10.
This I know because, in 1909, she
lent them to me to read, with the proviso that I must not take them out of her
room. I did not see a set among Mr. Leadbeater's papers and books, but I
believe he was familiar with them, as he had worked closely in London with Mr.
Sinnett, to whom most of the original letters belonged. No. 10 was, however,
only a copy made at Simla in 1882, as the original belonged to Mr. A.O. Hume.
But Mr. Leadbeater never did regard that Letter No. 10 as reliable, and
after the Letters were published, he quite often spoke of the book in my hearing
as "that abominable book."
So, on all counts, I can say that
there are no grounds for condemning Mr. Gardner's views. They are an expression
of very ripe, thoughtful and honest study, which he is surely entitled to put
before his collegues in a Society which is concerned with "No religion
higher than Truth." Mr. Gardner, too, is now entitled to "a valiant
defense of those who are unjustly attacked," and I am glad to do it,
mostly from my own direct knowledge, although sorry to have to do it.
(American
Theosophist, December 1964, p.287-290)
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