On May 8 of each year
it is customary to give a speech in Theosophical lodges about Blavatsky, in
honor of the founder of the Theosophical Society; and on May 8, 1917,
Leadbeater delivered the following speech at the Sydney Lodge. (Note: in purple
I added my observations).
H. P. BLAVATSKY
By C.W.
Leadbeater
This realistic talk, containing the famous message
from H.P. Blavatsky, was given by Bishop Leadbeater to the Sydney Lodge on the
8th of May 1917. Many Theosophists have never read it. It makes an impressive
prelude to White Lotus Day twenty-one years later.
H.P.B.’s New Body
You are rather fortunate people,
brothers. I shall be able to open with something which you certainly do not
expect. As I was on my way across to you (on the ferry from Neutral Bay,
crossing Sydney Harbour), Madame Blavatsky herself gave me a message to you.
Now I am quite sure you did not expect that — at least, I did not. I tried the
best I could to get it down, but I am a little doubtful about the exact wording
in some places still.
Of course, you know that Madame
Blavatsky lives now in a masculine body which she took directly she left the
other one. When she left that body, of which you have a very inadequate
portrait over there, she stepped into the body of an Indian boy, then about
fourteen years old. It was a misfit for Madame. Her previous one was; all must
have been. She was not like anyone else — she was absolutely unlike. Mr.
Sinnett, who knew her well, and despaired of doing practical work with her,
said that she was so unlike other human beings that he was quite sure she must
have arrived on this system on a comet from some other system. I knew perfectly
well what he meant. I even sympathized with him silently, and I quite
understood the difficulties.
I am told that the parents of that
boy were immensely surprised at the change in him. He fell into a river and got
his body drowned, and then when they carried him home and were preparing to
burn the remains, the remains revived; but they always said they did not
recognize their son in the least. He had been a good, quiet, docile boy up to
that period, but after that time he was no longer at all the same gentle and
meek entity. The Indian boy is usually a meek entity, poor thing, because he is
forced into it. But this was not the kind of person who could be forced into
anything whatever. Far from it.
She has held that body ever since.
She did make a tentative effort once at occupying another just for a few hours
occasionally, but she dropped it. She found that that was a misfit; but all
bodies would be, more or less, I think. The ego and its vehicle have come to
some sort of an understanding, and they pull along very well, so far as I can
see; so she is now an Indian with rather an ascetic-looking face — a very
strong face, of course, otherwise it would not be Madame Blavatsky.
(It is false that Blavatsky had already
reincarnated because Master Kuthumi specified that she had important work to do
on the higher planes and that therefore she would not be able to return soon.)
So far in this life she has not come
down among us or taken any direct share in the work of The Society, though she
has often given us her advice, I am glad to say, and has also dictated to us or
written for us various teachings on different points. But at the present moment
this is what she has to say to you. So far as I know, you are the only people in
the world who are getting a message from her; you may naturally feel yourselves
honoured.
She says:
The Message
« I greet you well, you who meet to
celebrate my birthday in my present body.
Mine was the rough pioneer work. I
bore the brunt of the storm. Yours is the smoother sailing of the entrance into
port. Yet both were needed, and but for that clearing of the ground you could
not sow your seed so easily, you could not gather in your crops.
Now you have many lines along which
you can choose your work, but none of them would have been possible unless the
parent Society had first been firmly established. More than once I have had to
shake and to sift its members before they were ready to follow where the
Bodhisattva wished to lead them, before they had conquered all their ancient,
time-honoured, moss-grown prejudices, and were prepared to open their minds to
comprehend the wide ocean of His all-embracing love.
You who live here, in the metropolis
of the Southern Hemisphere, you have a grand opportunity before you. See that
you take it, that your part of this new Sub-Race may not disappoint Him [Lord
Maitreya] when He comes to rouse it and to lead it. I watch you, as I watch my
own Society. You have my earnest goodwill and the Great Masters’ blessing in
all your lines of work. Go on and prosper, but remember that only by utter
self-forgetfulness can success be obtained. »
(This message is spurious since Blavatsky
pointed out that Maitreya will only come until the end of the fourth round,
and not in the 20th century as Leadbeater intended.)
There are two or three points there
quite new to me, and therefore probably new to you too. You see, she speaks of
what some people call death as her “birthday” into her present body. That is
because she stepped straight from one to the other. I remember the other side
of that, of course. She had been ill. She had been suffering from influenza,
but she was recovering. She was very distinctly getting better; there was
nothing whatever to cause the least anxiety to her friends, and suddenly she
died. Then we did not quite understand. Now we know that it was because the boy
chose that particular moment, or somebody chose it for him, to get drowned.
So she had to rush off and take that
body, because if she had left it too long it would have been impossible to take
it. There are certain rules governing that sort of thing. That is one point.
Shaking The Society Then I notice
that she says, “I have had to shake and to sift my Society.” Of course, she
refers to the different troubles through which The Society has passed, but you
will note she speaks as though she had engineered those things. We may be sure
that she does not speak lightly or without adequate reason. But I never
suspected her hand in that particular thing before. I suppose she must have
engineered the Coulomb business, through which I went with her, but one
certainly would not have thought it by the way she talked of it.
Also she must have been responsible
for the Judge business — not responsible in the sense that she caused it to
happen; but I suppose she took advantage of it to sift out those who were not
strong enough to bear that which lay in front of them.
(Blavatsky was very hurt by the Coulomb
attacks, so I highly doubt that she would have incited them as Leadbeater
claims; and it is completely false that Blavatsky wanted to expel
William Judge from the Theosophical Society since she always defended him, and that
maneuver was instigated by Annie Besant and Henry Olcott.)
Of course we have been widened out.
Of course our views on many points have been modified as the years rolled on. I
must say I had not myself thought of Madame Blavatsky as intentionally,
calculatingly taking a hand in all that. I do see now —it is always the case—
that I need not be at all surprised at it. She widened me out, painfully, in
exactly the same kind of way — changed the whole current and style of my life
and thought in the short space of six weeks. I suppose she has been applying
the same general plan to The Society as a whole. In the case of The Society (it
not being a coherent whole that just had to stand it) it sifted some of the
people out. Let us hope that those who remain are strong enough to bear the
obloquy which necessarily associates itself with new movements and unpopular
causes generally.
(Here Leadbeater alludes to many members who
resigned or were expelled from the Theosophical Society Adyar for disagreeing
with him and Mrs. Besant.)
Metropolis of the Southern Hemisphere
Then I note that she calls Sydney
“the metropolis of the Southern Hemisphere,” which I take as a compliment — not
undeserved, however, in many ways. I know, I think, all the cities in the
Southern Hemisphere from having visited them in this incarnation, and I should
say that Rio Janeiro runs you close in some ways, but it has not quite the
beauty, and it has not the future, of course. You are the Sixth Sub-Race, not
South America. Still, I should think in its way the remark is distinctly a
compliment, and Madame Blavatsky rarely pays compliments, so you may take the
flattering unction to your souls that if you do not deserve it, at least your
city possibly does.
(This asseveration was
invented by Leadbeater to exalt the ego of his Australian followers.)
You see, also, that she speaks of
our part of the Sub-Race not disappointing Him when He comes to rouse it and to
lead it. That is the first definite promise I have had that the World-Teacher
will visit Australia. I know that He must do so, because of things that have
been said of His going all through the world, but that is the first direct
reference to this country.
Also you see that she gives you her
goodwill and the Great Masters’ blessings, and she ends with a warning which
she often gave us during that other life, that we must forget ourselves, or we
cannot do His work. That is something new and special for yourselves.
(Here Leadbeater
manipulates his listeners into continuing to support him in the farce he
invented of the "next coming of Lord Maitreya, the World Teacher.")
Those Accusations!
Now, what am
I to say about her, on this her birthday into her new body?
I thought it best to come down and
speak to you, because I suppose there are hardly any among us here who saw her;
none, I take it, who knew her at all well. I had that great privilege —that
very great privilege— and therefore I think that it is right that I should come
and bear testimony to what I know with regard to her. You know she is still
often attacked. People say all kinds of weird and really insane things about her.
They accuse her of immoral life, of being a Russian spy, of being a charlatan,
of having cheated and deceived people in all sorts of ways. Now, the people who
talk in that way about her are not the people who knew her, and I think you
should bear that in mind if you hear people saying, “Madame Blavatsky? Of
course she was a charlatan.”
You could say, “Indeed, did you know
Madame Blavatsky?” “Oh, no, of course I did not.” Well, I did. I can give you
first-hand evidence. I saw quite a good deal of her at different times.
Furthermore, I travelled with her, and in travelling with a person in many
cases one gets to know more about him than by living next door to him for
twenty years.
(Leadbeater
only traveled once with Blavatsky and he actually knew her very little.)
The Russian Spy Story
There was the theory of the Russian
spy. I am very sure that Madame Blavatsky was not a spy of any kind. She was
not fitted by nature for that work. She was so exceedingly outspoken that she
was perpetually saying things that we wished she would not say. She certainly
could not have carried on anything in the nature of conspiracy. The last person
in the world!
She would have given herself away in
the first ten minutes. She never betrayed the great occult secrets, it is true,
but that is rather a different matter. Most assuredly she would not have been
.any of these things. Nor could she have been one who deceived others by means
of a widely spread conspiracy with many confederates, which is what has been
charged against her by different people at various times.
First of all, I know she could not have
been that, because I knew her nature, and knew that she was incapable of
carrying out anything systematized. There was no system in her. That is what
made it so difficult for us to learn, because there was no system in her
teaching even; furthermore, she would not be bothered with business details of
any sort.
(It is true that
Blavatsky was too frank, but on the other hand, she did detail her teaching
enough, what happens is that it is difficult to grasp.)
When I came to her first I was a
young curate — belonging to a profession, you see, which she might well have
supposed to be prejudiced against her, as indeed many of the clergy certainly
were, and are. Nevertheless, as soon as I attached myself to her, one of the
first things she did with me was to turn over the whole of her correspondence
to me. She would not open her letters. She would not look at them. She would
give no directions as a general rule as to how they should be answered. She
simply threw the whole thing over to me with the instruction, “Do what you
like; say anything you choose; get rid of the people somehow.”
(This
is false, Leadbeater never dealt with Blavatsky's correspondence.)
That was rather unsatisfactory for
some of the people, but at least I should venture to submit that it was not the
kind of thing a spy or the head of a great conspiracy would do. She had her own
means of knowing me, otherwise, I have no doubt, but it was hardly the action
of such a person as they have tried to image her.
Phenomena
She was accused of much fraud in
connection with what were called her “phenomena” — the curious little things
she used to do, apparently with the idea of convincing people that there were
forces outside the physical plane. I have seen her do quite a number of those
things. It did seem to me that she did not know how to do them effectively at
all. She performed the phenomena by all kinds of unusual occult means, but she
knew so little about the modus operandi
that she used to make them look like conjuring tricks.
She did not take the obvious
precautions that an impostor would have taken. She constantly did things so
that they could be explained away. She really did the things occultly, I know,
because I have myself since learnt how those things are done.
(This is also false
since Leadbeater never performed any occult feats and his presumed clairvoyance
turned out to be completely false.)
At the time I did not know at all,
but at that time the situation was different. Letters used to be received from
the Masters, not written directly by Them but under Their general instruction
by some of Their pupils; that was quite a feature of that early system of
propaganda. The Masters Themselves not infrequently materialized and showed
Themselves among us. I have seen, I think, nearly all of Them in that way in
the earlier days.
(Leadbeater only
exchanged a few letters with Master Kuthumi, but since he failed as a chela, it
is a lie that he has seen almost all the masters.)
That time has entirely passed. We do
not now accept letters for the Masters. They do not materialize Themselves
among us. Instead, They communicate, when They wish to do so, through Their
pupils, and very rarely, except with those who are already pupils of Theirs.
They rarely send messages for outer people. At the same time, I think it is
well you should know that the Masters are taking just now a hitherto
unparalleled amount of direct interest in our work.
Several of the Great Ones, (and most
of all the Great World-Teacher whose coming we await) have recently condescended
to give-specific directions as to certain things that They want done — have
indicated avenues of work which They see opening before us, those things to
which Madame Blavatsky referred in what she said; and the lead of that Great
One, the World-Teacher Himself, has been followed by others of the Masters-Many
of them have given much more detailed instruction during the last year than
They have been doing, since the time, thirty years ago and more, when They
moved comparatively freely among us.
So that you see that you are
entering on another era of The Society’s work. For forty years it has been
making its way intellectually, and, of course, it will still continue to try to
do that, but also new lines are opening up, and the Masters who have left us to
so large an extent to go on our own way during the last thirty years of those
forty, are now again giving more direct instructions. That is a very
significant fact, to me, at least, who remember that old time, and have gone
through all the intermediate period into which most of you came.
(The masters actually
walked away from the Adyar Theosophical Society when it expelled Blavatsky, and
here Leadbeater makes up all this stuff in order to pretend that he is the
intermediary between the teachers and the Theosophists, so that he can continue
to manipulate them.)
The Masters Directing
We are going back, under different
conditions, to that older position. I congratulate you on it; but it will mean
a great deal harder work. It will mean the bustling about of the quiet and
easy-going Theosophist in a way to which he has not been accustomed for a good
many years; for I remember that old time, when we never knew five minutes
before what was going to happen, except that it would be something we did not
expect. It will not do us any harm to be enlivened a little, but under these
new conditions you will have to work. You had better make up your minds that
work is going to be the order of the day.
There will be a great deal more to
be done than has been done in the past. Madame Blavatsky seems to recognize
that, you see, and if she is going to take an active interest in that work,
none will welcome her more warmly than I myself, and your great President (Mrs.
Besant), who is especially her pupil, and speaks of her always with the
greatest love and reverence.
(Publicly Leadbeater
and Besant spoke well of Blavatsky, but in their private correspondence they disowned
her.)
Reactions
Now, supposing you had met Madame
Blavatsky, as I did, away in 1884, how, I wonder, would she have impressed you?
Well, either you would have liked
her immensely or you would have disliked her intensely. You would not, I think,
have been indifferent. I do not think I ever saw anybody who was indifferent to
Madame Blavatsky. Some loved her with a really grand devotion. I did myself,
the President, Mr. Mead, the Oakleys — all these people loved her intensely.
Other people hated her just as vigorously, but she was not one to encourage any
lukewarmness of feeling; one way or the other people had to find themselves in
her presence, and to express themselves too, more or less.
(It is false that
Leadbeater appreciated Blavatsky, and the proof is that when she went to live
in London, he may have visited her numerous times, but never did.)
I think most of all you would have
been impressed with the tremendous power that radiated from her. You would have
felt that those pale blue eyes were looking straight through you, boring holes
in the back of your head — a kind of feeling which, of course, some people did
not like. It depends rather on what they happen to be trying to hide, and I
think most people felt that in her presence the hiding was a very unsuccessful
business.
Aristocratic
She was so many-sided that any
attempt to describe her is foredoomed to failure. She was of noble birth. She
sometimes used to make a special parade of being violently anti-aristocratic in
her ways and manners — rather went out of her way to shock people whom she
thought were very proper and prudish, but at the same time no one could act as
the grand lady better than Madame Blavatsky when she chose. I have seen her
take the part that was her own — that of a Russian noblewoman. It could not
have been better done. She was regal then as a queen in her gesture, her manner
and her speech. But on other occasions she ran very much into the opposite
extreme.
She was the most brilliant
conversationalist that I ever knew and I have heard Gladstone speak, and
several others who are supposed to excel in that way — but I never heard anyone
who could be as witty and display as much out-of-the-way knowledge as Madame
Blavatsky. She always seemed to know, to have a fund of information about all
sorts of unusual things. She seems to have read voluminously, encyclopedically,
and yet I know that sometimes she seized upon the passages that she needed from
books without toiling all through the intermediate padding. I have known her to
do that on certain occasions. Whether it was in that way that she acquired all
her knowledge I do not know, but certainly that power she had, and we saw a
good deal of it at different times.
(This
is a lie because Leadbeater was never a Blavatsky's pupil.)
Accomplished
She had evidently been a very
accomplished woman of the world before she adopted this strange, almost
yogi-like life of hers. She could play the piano most brilliantly, but she
never would. I have caught her doing it on board ship in the music-room, when
all the other people were safely down at dinner, but normally she would say she
could not play at all, she did not do that sort of thing.
She was a wonderfully many-sided
person, and she trained us in a way that you would not have liked at all, but
it was effective. We were all told much about the culture of character, how we
can slowly build it up. I hope most of us are trying to do so. We change our
characters but slowly, and bit by bit. Now, she had the faculty of changing her
pupils’ characters very rapidly. As I tell you, she turned me clear round in
six weeks. I did not like it at all, and felt very miserable under the process,
but I am bound to admit it was effective. The thing was really done. It was not
any kind of outside or superficial change; it was an absolutely fundamental
change of character clear way down, but oh dear me, it hurt.
Temperamental
Of course, one is prepared to stand
a good deal for such a cause, and one is thankful after it is done, but I must
say that thankfulness is not the predominant feeling at the time. Only several
of us had made up our minds that whatever she did or said, we intended to stand
by her and to learn what she had to teach. She could not rebuff us, however
much she tried. We absolutely refused to take offence. I am bound to say that
if any other lady any where else had behaved in the same way, we should have
bowed politely and retired from her presence, and not come back; but in her
case we knew that she had something to give, and I at least very soon grasped
that she did nothing without a purpose.
She would sometimes fly apparently
into a wild rage about nothing in particular, and the average critical person
would plume his ruffled feathers and say:
-
“Dear me, how can a spiritual teacher lose her temper like that?”
He put himself into the attitude of
criticising the teacher, and that was the end of him usually. He did not get
any further, naturally enough. But if, instead of setting oneself to criticise,
one took the trouble to try to under stand, one then suddenly discovered there
was reason in all this, and that each particular thing was done for some
purpose. Whether it always was, I do not know; but I know it was in many cases,
because I have been able to see the purpose. I daresay there were many others
where I did not see it.
(Here Leadbeater
continues to lie about having been a disciple of Blavatsky and indirectly
indicates to his followers that they should not criticize him because he knows
what he is doing.)
Nervous Strain
She had a terrible body. I suppose there was hardly an hour when she was
free from great pain. She used to deaden its nerves by tobacco. She smoked
cigarettes constantly —not a very good example to set, perhaps, to young people
round her— but once when she was communicative (there were occasions, but they
were very rare) I said to her:
-
“Madame, is it
necessary on the occult path to smoke so much?”
I
forget what uncomplimentary epithet she gave me; but the answer was:
- “Don’t you see I have this old body? I must keep it going somehow, otherwise it
would break down into hysterics. I have to keep it together. I want to finish
certain books, I want to do certain work, so I do these things.”
I had a theory then —I am not sure
about it— that when she let off steam by a violent explosion which looked like
temper, she was relieving the nervous strain. It does work off a nervous strain
to break out and make remarks. It is much easier than bottling a thing up, as
we know we ought. Our strain is not so great, but I can quite imagine that
where a strain is a hundred times greater, it is perhaps the easiest way. And I
made a discovery one day which opened my eyes.
If in the midst of one of those
tremendous tirades —generally because the coffee was cold or some trifle like
that— we suddenly asked some deep philosophical or metaphysical question, the
whole thing was cut off as though with a knife, and she was absolutely a
reasonable being once more, and proceeded to answer the question. Of course we
began to think up questions and get them ready, and saved ourselves a certain
amount of humiliation and trouble thereby.
(It is true that
Blavatsky was a compulsive smoker, but I am more inclined to consider that this
was because she was very addicted, since from a young age she had taken up this
bad habit, and not so much to alleviate her nervous strain as Leadbeater
claims.)
A Poser!
She was never, so far as I saw, at a
loss to answer a question. Well, yes, once — not at a loss even then, exactly,
but she did not give much of an answer. She was sitting writing, and a certain
American lady was sitting on the floor (it was a way they had) and leaning up
against her knee. Suddenly after a period of reading on the part of the lady
and industrious writing on the part of Madame Blavatsky, the lady ejaculated:
-
“Oh, H.P.B., why did Parabrahman manifest Himself?”
Madame
Blavatsky turned and replied:
-
“Good gracious! ask Parabrahman; I don’t know!”
She does not seem to have been ready
for that question, but generally she answered them very well. I took a lesson
from her in that way, and have tried in my feeble way to copy her method. Even
where the question was not a promising one, she would contrive to give it a
little twist so as to bring something useful out of it.
She saw straight through people, and
if they were a little scoffing, a little — not exactly impertinent, but rather
tending towards that frame of mind, she sometimes put them down in the most
unpleasant ways by asking unfortunate questions, or bringing out fragments of
their private history. Some people do not like that. She hated people who posed.
She used to prick bubbles of that kind, and the bubble that was pricked never
forgave her, of course; but other people wickedly enjoyed it.
Tireless Worker
She was an indefatigable worker. She
got up at six in the morning. It is colder in England than it is here, and in
some of the winter mornings one does not feel like turning out at six. That
would not have mattered if she had not worked on till two in the morning. Many
and many a time her secretaries have taken out a heap of letters at three in
the morning to catch the early post, and have been expected to be on deck at
six all the same. There never was such a worker as she was, so constantly under
stress.
I believe now that the reason was
that she never quite knew how long she could depend on that unfortunate body,
and she wanted to make sure of getting things done. I know that she took it
intentionally, quite knowing what she was doing — took it again when it was
worn out and diseased and suffering to the last degree; for I was present in
India when her Master came in a materialized physical body and passed through
the ante-room where Damodar and Mrs. Cooper-Oakley and I were, into the inner
room where Madame Blavatsky was supposed to be at the point of death.
(Here again Leadbeater
is lying because at the time Blavatsky nearly died and was saved by Master
Morya —March 5, 1885— Leadbeater was in Burma.)
He asked her, so she told us
afterwards, whether she would keep that body, or whether she would give it up
then. She chose to keep it at the cost of tremendous suffering; but it was
after that that she wrote The Secret
Doctrine; so you see we owe her very much for the suffering which she
endured — endured really on our behalf ; for it would have been far easier for
her to take the freedom which she had so dearly earned.
The Mahatma Letters
She was often accused of fraud with
regard to those letters from the Masters. It was supposed that she might have
written them. The Psychical Research Society put the letters and her
hand-writing before some of the great hand-writing experts. The chief English
expert decided that she might have written them; the chief expert in America
decided that she could not possibly have written them. There you have the two
opinions. I know, as a matter of fact, that she did not write them, because I
have myself received such letters in India when she was seven thousand miles
away in England. I have seen one of those materialize in a drawing-room; I have
also seen one materialize in a railway-train, so I know that Madame Blavatsky
did not write them.
As to the phenomena, I know quite
well now how all those were done. There was no deception about it in any way;
only a little quite elementary knowledge of occult forces.
So when you hear it said, as
sometimes you may, that she was in many ways a fraud or a charlatan, you may
say in reply that you have yourself heard direct testimony, from one who knew
her well and intimately, that most assuredly she was not either of those
things; that she was a very great teacher working under appalling difficulties;
that those who knew her best loved her most. Most of all, perhaps, your great
President loved her, and loves her still, and where she loves and reverences,
assuredly you will not be wrong if you place your love and reverence also. If
Mrs. Besant knows Madame Blavatsky to have been genuine, I think most of us who
know Mrs. Besant would be disposed to rank her opinion very far higher than
that of those various outsiders who did not know Madame Blavatsky.
(Here Leadbeater is
still a hypocrite because if he and Besant had really valued Blavatsky as they
so claim, then they would not have despised Blavatsky's work as if they did.)
We Will Remember Her
So let us thank her each year on
this day. Let us remember her with love and with reverence, realizing what she
herself has to some extent said in her message, that but for her and the
suffering which she bore in order to teach, and the hard pioneer work which she
did, we should not be able to do what we are doing today, be that little or
much.
In her name and in her memory let us
go on, and try to carry on her work. Let it not be said that she, the great
pioneer, was not duly, nobly, faithfully followed. Let us remember her, and
with her remember her great colleague, Colonel Olcott, who managed the
administrative side of affairs, while she did the teaching. Let us remember
them always with the honour which is their due, and I am quite sure that both
of them would tell us that the best way to keep their memory green is to carry
on the Masters’ work, to which they devoted their lives.
(In this speech Leadbeater shows once
again his immense falsehood, invented reincarnations, messages and all kinds of
lies in order to continue to hoodwink his followers.)
_ _ _
This
speech was first published in magazine Theosophy
in Australia, September 1917, p. 144-150.
Later
was published in magazine The Messenger,
December 1917, p. 601-603 and January 1918, p. 636-639.
And
later was published in magazine The
Theosophist, May 1938, p. 131-140
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