This
text is part of a presentation that was delivered at Adyar, on August 12, 1931,
for the celebration of the centenary of Blavatsky's birth, and in purple I
added my comments.
I suppose that the way in which one
regards the teacher through whom the light came to him, the person who led him
to the feet of the Master, is something different from the way in which he
thinks of anyone else. It is an unique relationship. Probably we all feel
something of that when we think or speak of our great Founder, Madame
Blavatsky. In my own case, the first news of Theosophy came to me [in this
incarnation) through Mr. Sinnett’s book, The
Occult World; but of course we all knew that it was through Madame
Blavatsky that the information was given, that the channel was opened.
There are not many of us left now
who knew her personally — rather a strange fact, for after all it is only forty
years ago that she laid aside her physical body. And yet, out here in her own
Headquarters at this moment, I suppose there are not more than five or six who
remember her clearly. Those who did know her will speak.
What are we to say about her?
She was a wonderfully many-sided
person. It certainly is true of her, as was said poetically of Cleopatra: “Age
cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety.” But we all join, not
only in feelings of gratitude and deep devotion, but also —those of us who knew
her— in a very strong, a peculiarly strong, personal affection. She was indeed
a most wonderful person in many different ways.
(Here Leadbeater is being very hypocritical because in
front of the Theosophists he pretended to admire and love Blavatsky a lot, but
in private he assured that Blavatsky was insane, see link.)
As you heard from Mr. Keightley’s
paper, her methods with her pupils were strange. The education she gave us was
distinctly strenuous; but in spite of that, we loved her very deeply. It was
almost curious; for I must admit that some things she used to say to us would
have come harshly, hardly, from anyone else. If any other lady had addressed us
in the way she did, we should have raised our hats politely, walked away — and
not returned. But at the back of our minds was the certainty that she had the
knowledge which we intended to have and was the only person from whom we could
gain it. Therefore we endured all these outbursts, supposing that they were really
intended to help us somehow. And they w ere! The method was strenuous, but most
effective.
I can personally testify that she
changed me absolutely in about six weeks. To upset all a man’s previous
attitude in life and make him permanently look at everything quite differently
is something of a feat to perform. We are rather conventional people over in
England, and the most conventional of all are probably the clergy; and I was
then a young curate — a priest of the Church of England. We all have our peculiarities;
some no doubt good enough, others less agreeable perhaps.
We are a little bit given sometimes
to think too much of ourselves; and —at any rate, I can speak for the young
generation of my period— the one thing we most detested was to be made to look
foolish in public. Well, she played upon that weakness unsparingly, until she
brought us into a condition where we absolutely did not care in the least that
we were made to look ridiculous. I do not mean that we learnt to conceal our
feelings — that we pretended not to
care, while suffering horribly internally; naturally, that was a stage through
which we passed; but we quickly rose above that and reached a position in which
we really did not care. And for
myself, I have never cared since; the cure was permanent. It takes a great deal
of force to bring a man entirely round in that way.
Above all things, she made us see
that these things were a Maya
[illusion]; it mattered very little what happened to us on the physical plane.
It was past karma, and it was useless to worry about it at all. That is the
true point of view, but it takes the average man some time to reach it. He
accepts it intellectually, but to make him actually
not care in the least is difficult; but that was one thing that she did for us,
and I have always been thankful for it, though I cannot pretend that I enjoyed
the process at the time.
You want reminiscences of her?
A little while ago I wrote a booklet
called Hove Theosophy Came to Me. In
that I devoted a chapter to Madame Blavatsky; more than I can tell you now is
told there. Also, as that book was the history of my connection with Theosophy
in those early days, Madame Blavatsky permeates the whole volume. You will find
many anecdotes illustrating her methods and character in that little book. A
strong character, very unusual, but a wonderful, magnificent character: in many
ways unapproachable, I think.
The tremendous power she radiated
was of course the power of the Masters, or of her Master especially. Remember,
she was one of these First-Ray people, and power is their speciality. They pour
it out always — strength, courage, determination. She was liable sometimes to
be quite upset by an attack upon her Society, but nevertheless she never
despaired about it. She always wanted to repudiate any accusation made, to
answer immediately and fully. Often we thought it was useless; but reams of
paper were covered with her diatribes. Sometimes they were not all published,
because many of these attacks were utterly insignificant, and best met with
silent contempt.
But that was not Madame Blavatsky’s
idea. Not that she wanted to hit back, to injure the person, but she wanted to
put things right. She had a great sense of justice. She felt that justice was
not done to the Theosophical teaching, which was perfectly true. She came
before the world with the most wonderful philosophy that exists, and many
people just ridiculed it and put it aside, for it was a very materialistic age.
It was she who set in motion the forces which rescued us from that, which
really changed the mental attitude of Europe and America on these subjects.
The work of this Society, her
Society, has never received credit from most people for half of the result
which it has achieved. It was helped, we know, by the Society that once
bitterly attacked it, the Society for Psychical Research; it was helped also by
the few really scientific investigators into spiritualistic phenomena; but it
was she first, and she only, who gave to the Western world a definite system
which solved its problems and explained its difficulties.
The attitude of that world has been
entirely changed during my own lifetime, and that is due to Madame Blavatsky,
who unveiled for us the Ancient Wisdom of the ages, the Secret Doctrine.
Sometimes she was, naturally, a little impatient with our stupidity, because
the whole thing was so new to us; but wonderful indeed were the results
achieved.
Not many days ago I met her in her
new manifestation, and spoke to her about this Centenary. I am afraid she does
not appreciate it quite as we do. She appreciates the affection and good
intention of it, but she is just a little contemptuous about “all this fuss,”
as she calls it.
-
“I told you to
celebrate the day I left the physical body,” she remarked.
-
“Well,” I said, “you
must let us be a little human, and celebrate also your arrival on the physical
plane.”
I
then ventured to ask him whether he would attend.
- “No, not as yet.”
(Here Leadbeater
continues with the falsehood he invented that he was in contact with Blavatsky —which
according to him— just after her death in 1891, she transferred her
consciousness to the body of an Indian boy.)
He must go his own way in that.
Assuredly she earned the right to a life of repose this time, for that last
life was very terrible; there was very great suffering, because she was more
sensitive than almost any other person, and yet had to live in the world and
bear the brunt of many most brutal and malicious attacks.
Things utterly impossible to her
character were said of her. Men accused her of being a Russian spy, for
instance. Nobody in the world was less fitted to act as a spy. She was
excessively outspoken; she could not keep back anything for ten minutes, and
she never hesitated to express her feelings with the utmost frankness. And as
to her views, I have heard her tell an Indian audience that if Russia were to
take the place of England in India, things would be much worse even than they
are now.
-
“I am a Russian,” she
said, “and I know whereof I speak; therefore I warn you; you would be going out
of the frying-pan into the fire.”
You cannot realize, you who were
born in India, what Theosophy meant to us in Europe — what was to us the value
of the knowledge she gave us. It seemed that the whole of life was explained to
us, as though a great light had blazed out in the darkness, and our enthusiasm
was equally great. She spent her life and strength in giving that knowledge; so
it is indeed well that Theosophists all over the world should be meeting to
celebrate this centenary, and exchange these kindly greetings and good wishes.
You all heard the article by Mr.
Bertram Keightley; I should like to bear witness that it really does give
exactly the atmosphere that was surrounding us in those days, though naturally
he saw much more of it than I did, as he resided in the same house as our great
Founder. He tells you of the first time he saw Madame Blavatsky; it was on that
very same occasion that I also had the honour of meeting her for the first
time. I happened to be sitting near the door, because I came in late; and she
burst upon us just in the way which he describes. When his article comes out in
print, I hope you will all read it, and try to understand the curious position
over there in Europe in the beginning of things — on the one hand the little
difficulties with which we had to struggle, and on the other the tremendous
help and power that lay behind Madame Blavatsky all the time.
Even if she did sometimes abuse us,
we loved her and shall continue to do so through the ages, because that deep
affection lies between the egos and not the personalities. I wish I could
convey to you an idea of all she was to us, but one cannot put these things
into words. W e did everything we could to follow her, and we shall continue to
follow her, whatever other people may say. We are quite indifferent to all the
scandalous and malevolent attacks on her; we
knew her; we still know her.
(Here Leadbeater is still very hypocritical because he
pretended to have been a Blavatsky’s disciple and knew her very well, when in
reality he was never her student and only knew her very little; and below he
returns with the lie that Blavatsky had already reincarnated.)
It is not true to say that she takes
no interest in the affairs of her Society, although she does repudiate any
responsibility for what happened in that life. Indeed, on one occasion,
fourteen years ago, she actually condescended to send a message to one of our
Lodges on White Lotus Day.
(If you read that note you will realize that it was
actually produced by Leadbeater himself.)
We sometimes say to him (for she has
a male body now):
-
“Tell us this or
chat; there are points here in The Secret Doctrine that are rather difficult to
reconcile.”
He
replies:
-
“I have nothing to do
with that now; that belongs to my past life, and I am not going to take it up
again.”
Study her Secret Doctrine, brethren. It is very hard reading, but still it is
the foundation and the beginning of all this great movement, and this centenary
celebration over all the world is one small part of the results produced.
(That
advice Leadbeater himself did not follow, since in the Secret Doctrine it is specified that Maitreya will only come to
earth at the end of the fourth round, and not in a few years as Leadbeater
claimed.)
That she was brave, forceful,
one-pointed, these were prominent and permanent characteristics, and her
devotion to her Master was something very wonderful. She was not what would be
called a reverential person, by any means.
She had a great hatred of hypocrisy,
and therefore much that she saw among religious people in general annoyed her.
Against all their manifest inconsistencies she spoke with vigour and decision,
and she was not always polite in her choice of language, and sometimes rather
too indiscriminate in her denunciations. So on the whole, she could not be
regarded as at all a reverentially-disposed person. But when she spoke of her
Master, her very voice changed; she fell at once into an attitude of the
deepest reverence.
I remember an occasion when she was
in the midst of a violent tirade, and a very startling phenomenon occurred
which she took to be of the nature of a call. In a moment her whole aspect and
attitude completely changed. She started up at once:
- “What is it? I am ready.”
Wonderful one-pointedness! I only
wish we could all have half as much of that quality as she had; it would make
the work of our Society flourish in a way that we can hardly imagine now. Let
us follow her as far as we can — humbly and at a distance, of course, because
she was far more highly evolved than we are as yet. Let us not only remember
her with gratitude, but obey the instructions which she gave us, and live the
Theosophic life. In that we shall be raising a true monument to her memory, in
the way she would most have desired.
(Theosophist, October
1931, p.41-47)
OBSERVATION
This is yet another example of the big cynicism of
Charles Leadbeater who flattered Blavatsky in public and made up the lies that
she had already reincarnated and that he was in contact with her, in order to
continue manipulating the members of the Theosophical Society Adyar.
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