M. M. Schuré and Lévy on the Crisis of 1913

LET us see, however, what others have to say seven years later on the state of the T. S. In 1913 another violent crisis convulsed this miserable travesty of a Society that once stood for the highest principles and ideals, but which even a Lake Harris might blush now to be associated with. As before, it centred round the shocking perverter of morals who had obtained complete ascendancy over Mrs. Besant. A book entitled Mrs. Besant and the Present Crisis in the Theosophical Society was published in 1913 by M. Eugène Lévy, "with a Prefatory Letter by M. Edouard Schuré," the well-known author of The Great Initiates and other mystical works. Writing to M. Charles Blech, General Secretary of the French T. S., M. Schuré states that he feels "compelled to retire officially from the T. S." and that it is his "duty" to give his "reasons straightforwardly." After alluding to the date (1907), when M. Blech had offered and he had accepted the honorary membership in the Society, M. Schuré goes on to speak of Mrs. Besant, as she had then appeared to him, in high terms, expressing the hope that "the nobility of her past career" was an augury "that the T. S. would continue in the broad way of tolerance, impartiality, and veracity which forms an essential part of its programme." M. Schuré then continues:—

Unfortunately things turned out otherwise. The primary cause of this deviation lies in the close alliance of Mrs. Besant with Mr. Leadbeater, a learned occultist, but of an unsettled disposition and doubtful morality. After Mr. Leadbeater had been found guilty by an advisory Committee of the T.S. Mrs. Besant publicly announced her reprobation of the educational methods with which he was charged.... By an inconceivable change of front she soon afterwards declared her intention of bringing Mr. Leadbeater into the T.S. again and she succeeded.... The excuses she gave for this recantation were charity and pardon. The real reason was that the President needed Mr. Leadbeater for her occult investigations, and that this collaboration appeared to her necessary to her prestige. To those who have followed her words and acts from that time onwards, it is clearly manifest that Mrs. Besant has fallen under the formidable suggestive power of her dangerous collaborator, and can only see, think and act under his control. The personality henceforward speaking through her is ... the questionable visionary, the skilful master of suggestion who no longer dares to show himself in London, Paris, or America, but in the obscurity of a summer-house at Adyar governs the T. S. through its President. The ill-omened consequences of this influence were soon to appear before the world through the affair of Alcyone and the founding of the Order of the Star in the East.... If a real Indian initiate, a Brahmin or otherwise, of ripe age, had come to Europe on his own responsibility or in the name of his Masters to teach his doctrines, nothing would have been more natural or interesting.... But it was not in this form that we beheld the new apostle from Adyar. A young Indian, aged thirteen, initiated by Mr. Leadbeater ... is proclaimed and presented to the European public as the future teacher of the new era. Krishnamurti, now called Alcyone, has no other credentials than his master's injunctions and Mrs. Besant's patronage. His thirty-two previous incarnations are related at length, the early ones going back to the Atlantean period. These narrations, given as the result of Mr. Leadbeater's and Mrs. Besant's visions, are for the most part grotesquely puerile, and could convince no serious occultist. They are ostensibly designed to prove that for twenty or thirty thousand years the principal personages in the T. S. have been preparing for the "Great Work" which is soon to be accomplished. In the course of their incarnations, which remind one of a newspaper novel, these personages are decorated with the great names of Greek mythology, and with the most brilliant stars in the firmament. During a meeting at Benares, Krishnamurti presenting certificates to his followers, received honours like a divine being, many persons present falling at his feet. He does not, however, utter a word, but only makes a gesture of benediction, prompted by Mrs. Besant. In reporting this scene Mr. Leadbeater likens it to the descent of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost.

For this dumb prophet is founded the Order of the Star in the East, which the whole world is invited to join, and of which he is proclaimed the head ... this passive young prodigy, who has not yet given the world the least proof of having any mission at all [this is as true in 1922 as it was in 1913.—A. L. C.], becomes henceforth the centre and cynosure of the T. S., the symbol and sacred ark of the orthodox faith at Adyar. As to the doctrine preached by Mrs. Besant, it rests on a perpetual equivocation. She allows the English public at large, to whom she speaks of the coming Christ, to believe that he is identical with the Christ of the Gospels, whereas to her intimates she states what Mr. Leadbeater teaches, and what he openly proclaims in one of his books, The Inner Life—namely, that the Christ of the Gospels never existed, and was an invention of the monks of the second century. Such facts are difficult to characterise. I will simply say that they are saddening for all who, like myself, believed in the future of the T. S., for they can only repel clear-sighted and sincere minds.... In my eyes, one can no longer be an actual member of the T. S. without implicitly approving the deeds and words of the President, which flagrantly contradict the essential principle of the Society—I mean scrupulous and absolute respect for truth. For these reasons I regret that I must send you my resignation as a member of the Theosophical Society.

The italics throughout the foregoing quotations are mine, and serve again to emphasise essential points; points almost exactly similar to those raised by Mr. Kingsland, the most serious being the condonation by Mrs. Besant of immoral practices in a colleague whose collaboration, as M. Schuré shrewdly adds, has become a necessity to her, and under whose "formidable suggestive power" she has now completely fallen. If this was true in 1913, what may not be said in 1922, when the intervening nine years have given time for the growth and development of this deadly Upas Tree? I use the simile advisedly, for this teaching is a "deadly" poison, not only from the ordinary moral standpoint, but especially from that of the esoteric teaching of H. P. B. and the Trans-Himâlayan Brotherhood, under whose authority it is falsely and blasphemously given out; I do not hesitate to declare it.

M. Schurélso emphasises an important and vital point which Mr. Kingsland seems to have felt equally deeply, viz.—That Mrs. Besant has no use for any but those who accept everything she says and does with blind subservience, even when, in the eyes of such men as M. Schuré, Mr. Mead, Mr. Kingsland, and others, it merits strong condemnation as "untrue" and "misleading." In the pages of the recent numbers of the Theosophist the talk about "freedom of opinion" within the Society is still repeated, although in actual practice, as I have shown, the exact opposite obtains. Much that emanates from this tainted source is so fantastic and puerile that ridicule ought long since to have killed it, as it did Oscar Wilde's æsthetic movement.