How in
1909 William Kingsland Denounced Annie Besant’s Farce
Theosophist Carlos Cardoso Aveline wrote:
Karma has its own and mysterious ways to operate. Valuable people get
invisible for some time in the history of theosophical movement. They are
almost completely forgotten, and then – due to the law of cycles – the memory
and record of their lives and efforts awaken again.
Alice Cleather is one example among others. She belonged to the Inner
Group of the esoteric school founded by H.P. Blavatsky in London during the
late 1880s. In the first part of the 20th century, Ms. Cleather wrote three
books on her teacher, on theosophy, and on the theosophical movement.
She showed how Annie Besant abandoned the original theosophy in order to talk
to the “king of the world” and to organize the public reappearance of her own
imaginary “Lord Christ-Maitreya”.
Forgotten by some, unknown to many, Alice Cleather’s books have decisive
things to say to the theosophical movement in the present century. Though
not infallible, Ms. Cleather was an ethical person. She had a clear vision. Her
testimony has a place in the history of the theosophical movement.
Mr. William Kingsland is another “invisible” theosophist whose life
and work are getting visible again. Kingsland was the president of
the London Blavatsky Lodge for some time, during H.P.B.’s life. He was present
in all of the 1889 meetings with H.P.B. whose content is transcribed in
the volume “The Secret Doctrine Dialogues”.
He chaired 12 of those 21 meetings, and took an active part in the
discussions and dialogue. Page after page, the reader of “The
Secret Doctrine Dialogues” gets used to Kingsland’s views and ideas,
as he follows the direct and frank dialogue with H.P. Blavatsky.
It was in December 1909, some twenty years later, that William Kingsland
resigned his membership of the Adyar Society. He did so with an Open Letter to
Annie Besant, and a significant part of the document is reproduced in chapter
one of Alice Cleather’s book “H.P. Blavatsky – A Great Betrayal”.
The books by Mrs. Cleather are helpful in many ways to the new
generations of students who want to understand the evolution of the
theosophical movement as a whole. While in the United States the United Lodge
of Theosophists (ULT) started to emerge in 1909 with the goal of rescuing
the original philosophy, in London William Kingsland, Edward Schuré and others
were leaving the Adyar Society because Adyar had adopted as its de facto guru
someone who many considered a criminal, or at least an enemy of the Masters of
the Wisdom and their Ethics. Kingsland and Schuré followed the example given
by G.R.S. Mead.
The honest people who had been used in the political campaign unleashed
against William Judge in 1894-1895 then could realize, at least in part,
what had really happened to their Society.
We reproduce below Chapter one of Mrs. Cleather’s book “H.P. Blavatsky, a Great Betrayal”. The
title of the text is “Mr. William Kingsland on the Crisis of 1906”.
In order to understand the first paragraph, the reader must take into
consideration the fact that in 1906 Mr. Charles Leadbeater had been forced by
Henry Olcott to resign his membership of the Adyar Society, in order to avoid
being formally expelled.
Mr. William Kingsland on the Crisis
of 1906
(Alice Leighton Cleather wrote)
The first of the old papers I shall quote from is by my old friend and
fellow-Councillor Mr. William Kingsland, author of The Esoteric Basis of
Christianity and kindred works. He was one of the leading members in the
early days under H. P. B. who, when Mrs. Besant on securing the Presidency
after Colonel Olcott’s death in 1907 reinstated Mr. Leadbeater, resigned their
membership. Mrs. Besant had reviewed a new book by Mr. Kingsland, and took the
opportunity to refer to his resignation.
Replying in “An Open Letter to Annie Besant” dated December, 1909, he
tells her:
« You have dragged in a perfectly irrelevant,
uncalled-for and untrue statement which I cannot allow to pass unchallenged. … The
words I refer to are these:
-
“We have here a very excellent Theosophical book, with
an evasion of all recognition of the source whence the ideas are drawn. When
Theosophy becomes fashionable, how those who refuse to walk with her in the
days of scorning will crowd to claim her as theirs when she walks in the
sunshine amid applause!”
Now these words convey the implication, in the first place, that there
is a connection between the form in which my book is presented, and recent
events in the Theosophical Society which have led me as well as many others, to
sever our connection with that Society; and, in the second place, that we now
“refuse to walk with her” because, forsooth, she is not now “fashionable”, but
“in the days of scorning”. Neither of these statements is true, and the
implication is most unworthy of you ……. That, however, is a small matter
compared with the implication that I and others have turned our backs on Theosophy
for so unworthy a reason.
Let me ask you to look at the names of the old and tried workers whom
you have forced out of the Society by your disastrous policy, and then ask
yourself in the Great Presence whether it is true that any of them have
deserted Theosophy or rather the Theosophical Society because it is less
“fashionable” now than it was in the old days when you and I and these others
stood side by side and fought the battle for H. P. Blavatsky.
Did any of us shirk obloquy then,
and do you really think we are less ready to face it now?
It is one thing, however, to incur obloquy for the sake of Truth, and
quite another thing to be asked to do it in support of immoral teachings
……. What I want to point out now more particularly, and in the interest of true
Theosophy, is, that you are now making the grand mistake – one never made by H.
P. Blavatsky – of thinking, writing, and speaking as if Theosophy and the
Theosophical Society were one and the same thing, absolutely identical; and
that there can be no Theosophy in the world without the Theosophical Society,
and no Theosophists outside of it.
. . .
You must know that in leaving the Theosophical Society, the great
majority of us at all events have not given up Theosophy, even if we may feel
compelled to teach it under another name, and though we can no longer work with
or through the Theosophical Society, we are none the less carrying on the great
work which H. P. Blavatsky initiated.
But in the old days we did at least think that the Theosophical Society
stood for pure Theosophy and pure Morality. We cannot think or say this any
longer. The “Theosophy” of the Theosophical Society is now a definite creed
and dogma based upon authoritative psychic pronouncements, from which those who
dare to differ are first of all squeezed out of office by the President, and
finally compelled to leave the Society, being denounced in the strongest
language as “persecutors” and “haters”. I am quite aware that all the time you
are preaching freedom of opinion; but that is one of the farcical aspects of
the régime which you inaugurated.
. . .
Whatever you may preach, it is now notorious that your practice has been
the exact reverse. You commenced by turning out the Vice-President for daring
to hold a different opinion from your own as to the inception of the Society;
and you then proceeded so to manipulate matters that several old and tried
officials who had been in opposition to your pronouncements and policy, were
ousted from their positions as General Secretaries of Sections ……. Well, you
succeeded in getting your own supporters appointed – and in losing many
hundreds of old members.
Doubtless you will now have complete control and be able to mould the
Society to your own will and liking, and train it to “obedience” to your
psychic authority and visions.
At what expense and sacrifice of principles you have already done this,
we all know. But let none imagine that this is the basis on which H. P. Blavatsky
founded the Society; or that it will thus fulfill the mission for which it was
intended; or that it can thereby become other than a narrow and exclusive
sect. And if perchance your statement is true that the Theosophical Society
which you so mistakenly identify with Theosophy is now “in the days of
scorning”, possibly even more than it was in the old days.
What and who is it that has made it
so?
Is it not because the President and General Council have set their seal
and official condonation to a “theosophy” which countenances the grossest
immorality, and which can advocate – as a means of “discharging [sic]
thought-forms” (see Van Hook’s pamphlet) – a practice which you yourself once
characterised as being “when taught under the name of Divine Wisdom, essentially
earthly, sensual, devilish?”
Yet it is thus taught and justified with an appeal to the laws of
reincarnation and karma – in Van Hook’s pamphlet, which you and the
General Council have refused to repudiate, and have thereby condoned.
And now, since you have had your own way, and have cleared the Society
of the elements of the so-called “hatred and persecution”; can you not at least
refrain from hitting behind our backs? Nothing is sadder for your old friends
and comrades than to see you stoop to veiled insinuations, and even direct
untruths; missing no opportunity – not even in the review of a book – of
striking unjustly and falsely at those who have recently been your opponents,
and who have now no direct means of answering you, or of refuting your statements
within the Society itself. »
(Final Commentary by Ms. Alice Leighton
Cleather.)
I have italicised a few passages which seem to be of special importance
as showing that, thirteen years ago (in 1909) Mr. Leadbeater’s sinister
hand had already grasped the Society and its infatuated President, and that his
vile and immoral teachings, supported by her, had driven out some of the oldest
and most clear-headed and clear-sighted of H. P. Blavatsky’s friends and
pupils; among them Mr. G. R. S. Mead, one of the Leadbeater Committee of
Inquiry, who also resigned at the time Mrs. Besant became President for the
same reasons as those stated by Mr. Kingsland.
The “practice” to which he alludes in his Open Letter is of course now
well known to be that taught and advocated by Mr. Leadbeater, who claims that
in so doing he is acting on the advice and under the authority of one of the
Masters of Wisdom. Could a more terrible infamy be perpetrated!
(https://www.carloscardosoaveline.com/an-open-letter-to-annie-besant/)
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