October 2015 Newsletter
The following articles are reproduced from the October 2015 Newsletter to members. Non-members may or may not be able to relate to the contents.
Remembering Annie Besant
1 October 1847 - 20
September 1933
Annie Besant (1847–1933), second President of The Theosophical Society from 1907 to 1933, was described as a ‘Diamond Soul’, for she had many brilliant facets to her character. She was an outstanding orator of her time, a champion of human freedom, educationist, philanthropist, and author with more than three hundred books and pamphlets to her credit. She also guided thousands of men and women all over the world in their spiritual quest. Her birthday, 1st October, serves a a memorial day in her memory.
Early Days
Annie Wood was born on 1 October 1847, and educated privately in England, Germany and France. She was a devout Christian, and was married at the age of twenty to an English clergyman, Rev. Frank Besant, Vicar of Sibsey, Lincolnshire, by whom she had a son, Arthur Digby, and a daughter, Mabel. However, the awakening of her character made her challenge several of the Christian dogmas. ‘It was not the challenge of unfaith’, as Jinarâjadâsa was to say later, ‘but rather of a highly spiritual nature that desired intensely not only to believe but also to understand.’ Unable to make logic out of Christian traditions, she left the Church in 1872 and became a freethinker, thus ruining her social position through her passion for Truth; consequently she had to leave her husband and young son. In 1879 she matriculated at London University and went on with her studies in science but met obstacles there owing to the sexist prejudices of her time.
She joined the National Secular Society in 1874 and worked in the free thought and radical movements led by Charles Bradlaugh, MP. She co-edited the National Reformer with him and wrote many political and free-thought books and pamphlets from 1874–88. At this point her husband moved court to take their little daughter away from her, alleging that she was ‘unfit’ because of her ideas. This deprivation caused her profound grief. (But, when the children were older they became devoted admirers of their mother.) She was prominent in the Labour and Socialist movements, a member of the Fabian Society and Social Democratic Federation, and took an active part in Trade Union work among unskilled labourers; with Herbert Burrows she led the path-breaking match girls’ strike to a successful conclusion.
Meeting with H. P. Blavatsky
Feeling dissatisfied with the negative approach of free thought, Mrs Besant now made researches into spiritualism, hypnotism, and so forth. At this juncture Mr W. T. Stead, the editor of The Review of Reviews, sent her Madame Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine to review. As she read the book, it was as if a long lost vision of truth flashed through her mind.
She asked for an interview with the author, and from that first sight of HPB, her whole life changed. She abandoned her secularist ideas and also to some extent the socialist philosophy, but the new light which she received inspired her more firmly than ever to the service of the world. Her approach towards the various evils in the world changed and she began to deal with the root causes in the light of the laws which govern all existence.
The Theosophical Society
Annie Besant joined The Theosophical Society on 21 May 1889, and became a devoted pupil and helper of HPB, pledging her loyalty to the President-Founder, Col. H. S. Olcott, and the cause of Theosophy. She became the most brilliant exponent of Theosophy, both as orator and author. In 1893 she represented The Theosophical Society at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago.
In India
In 1893 she landed in India, made a tour of the country in the company of H. S. Olcott, and, by her splendid presentation of Indian philosophy and her undisguised personal preference for the Indian spiritual heritage, won the support of orthodox Brahmins to Theosophy. The transformation of the religious life in India, particularly among Hindus, is one of the wonders she performed. She was an untiring worker for the upliftment of women, and pleaded again and again for a radical change in social conditions, but never desired any modification of the Indian woman’s temperament which she held to be one of the most spiritual in the world.
She soon gathered round her a band of Indians to work for the regeneration of the country and in 1898, after much planning, founded the Central Hindu School and College in Benares (now Varanasi). A few years later she started the Central Hindu School for Girls. Theosophists from overseas came to help her in the work of the college, which was established with the object of impressing India’s past glory on the minds and hearts of the students. A brilliant band of workers gathered round her, all of whom worked in an honorary capacity. Later the college became the nucleus of the Hindu University, and in recognition of Mrs Besant’s services to Indian education the degree of Doctor of Letters was conferred upon her in 1921.
As Lord Baden-Powell deemed that Indians were unfit to be scouts, the Indian Scout Movement was founded by her in 1918, the boys wearing Indian turbans! When Baden-Powell came to India and saw how successful was the movement created by Annie Besant, it was amalgamated with the world movement, and she was made the Honorary Scout Commissioner for India. In 1932 Baden-Powell sent her from London the highest Scout distinction, the ‘Silver Wolf’ medal.
Second President of the Theosophical Society
In 1907, after the passing of Col. H. S. Olcott, Annie Besant became the second International President of the Theosophical Society, an office which she held until her death in 1933. Mrs Besant had always been a great traveler, having visited in the course of her Theosophical work nearly all the countries of Europe more than once, and making several visits to the United States and Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Her great organizing capacity was used to ‘make theosophy practical’, and action became her ‘slogan’. During her presidency, the Society grew considerably, with the addition of more than thirty-six Sections or National Societies to the initial eleven.
Dr Besant continued to tour and lecture all over India, dealing extensively with education. Lodges of the Theosophical Society undertook to open schools wherever they could. She also tried to draw women into the movement wherever possible, for at that time women were not encouraged to take part in public life.
Clear explanations of the many enigmas of life and the universe were presented in her outstanding books such as A Study in Consciousness, which is used in some universities as a textbook. Another of her major works, Esoteric Christianity, has been considered a historical document; and has helped to revive true knowledge of Christianity.
Her lectures at Theosophical conventions on the great religions of the world were put into a valuable book entitled Seven Great Religions, presenting the core teachings of each one of them. The first edition of her English translation of the Bhagavadgitâ was published in 1905.
Dr Besant was a practical mystic, exemplifying in her life and in all her actions a lofty idealism, and a truly religious awareness — a combination found in very few people. In 1908 she announced the formation of a Theosophical Order of Service, which aimed at banding members together in groups with the motto ‘Union of all who Love in the Service of all that Suffer.’
From 1908 onwards Dr Besant proceeded to enlarge the Headquarters estate at Adyar. In order to link Adyar more intimately with the rest of the Theosophical world, she started The Adyar Bulletin, which continued until 1929. Presently the Adyar Newsletter fulfils a similar function.
Annie Besant and J. Krishnamurti
A new phase of Dr Besant’s activity began when she came into contact with two remarkable Indian boys, and declared that the elder of them, J. Krishnamurti, was destined to be the vehicle of the ‘World Teacher’, the Bodhisattva Maitreya. In 1910 she assumed the guardianship of J. Krishnamurti and his brother, and despite great difficulties launched him on his remarkable career.
Mrs Besant saw her role in Krishnamurti’s life as that of a catalyst: ‘Amma never told me what to do’, Krishnamurti gratefully recalled in later life. She merely tried to prepare him for a worldwide regenerative mission. He was encouraged to meet people, to give talks and lead discussions. The Order of the Star in the East was organized to pave the way for the very special work he was to do.
Clairvoyant Investigations
Those who came into intimate contact with Annie Besant were aware of her spiritual powers and first-hand knowledge of many occult matters. She used certain of her yogic powers to investigate the nature of the super-physical realms, and several books on this recondite subject were written in collaboration with her colleague, C. W. Leadbeater. A remarkable piece of writing done by them was Occult Chemistry, in which they described the chemical elements examined by them. The first edition was printed in 1908, when it did not appear possible to reconcile their observations with the scientific knowledge of atomic structure of those times, but recent developments in the field support them. C. Jinarâjadâsa, a former President of the Theosophical Society, published in 1951 a third, enlarged edition of Occult Chemistry, containing descriptions of 111 atoms, including 14 isotopes, and the molecules of 29 inorganic compounds and 22 organic compounds. Dr Stephen M. Phillips, a theoretical physicist, made a detailed analysis of the Besant–Leadbeater studies in the late 1970s and provided a lucid explanation and reinterpretation of their observations, reconciling them with present-day physics.
Last Days
On 20 September 1933, Dr Besant laid aside her physical body at Adyar. Her Presidency spanned twenty-six years full of glorious devoted service to the Theosophical Society and to mankind at large, and she passed away as she had lived — a warrior Soul.
Mr N. Sri Ram, who was then her Secretary, wrote the following tribute:
Dr Besant was nothing if she was not wholehearted and whole-souled in all that she undertook, in every aim and every inner impulse. . . . Almost always, as I know from personal knowledge of how she affected various people, they were struck with the extraordinary magnetism that seemed to surround her, the brightest energy, which seemed to leave her at the end of the day almost as fresh as at the beginning!
The Hidden Side of Things
In his book of this title, C. W. Leadbeater writes:
"Theosophical students are at least theoretically acquainted with the idea that to everything there is a hidden side; and they also know that in the great majority of cases this unseen side is of far greater importance than that which is visible to the physical eye.
To put the same idea from another point of view, the senses, by means of which we obtain all our information about external objects, are as yet imperfectly developed; therefore the information obtained is partial. What we see in the world about us is by no means all that there is to see, and a man who will take the trouble to cultivate his senses will find that, in proportion as he succeeds, life will become fuller and richer for him. For the lover of nature, of art, of music, a vast field of incredibly intensified and exalted pleasure lies close at hand, if he will fit himself to enter upon it. Above all, for the lover of his fellow-man there is the possibility of far more intimate comprehension and therefore far wider usefulness.
We are only halfway up the ladder of evolution at present, and so our senses are only half-evolved. But it is possible for us to hurry up that ladder—possible, by hard work, to make our senses now what all men’s senses will be in the distant future. The man who has succeeded in doing this is often called a seer or a clairvoyant.
A fine word that—clairvoyant. It means ‘one who sees clearly’; but it has been horribly misused and degraded, so that people associate it with all sorts of trickery and imposture—with gypsies who for sixpence will tell a maid-servant what is the colour of the hair of the duke who is coming to marry her, or with establishments in Bond Street where for a guinea fee the veil of the future is supposed to be lifted for more aristocratic clients.
All this is irregular and unscientific; in many cases it is mere charlatanry and bare-faced robbery. But not always; to foresee the future up to a certain point is a possibility; it can be done, and it has been done, scores of times; and some of these irregular practitioners unquestionably do at times possess flashes of higher vision, though usually they cannot depend upon having them when they want them.
But behind all this vagueness there is a bed-rock of fact—something which can be approached rationally and studied scientifically. It is as the result of many years of such study and experiment that I state emphatically what I have written above—that it is possible for men to develop their senses until they can see much more of this wonderful and beautiful world in which we live than is ever suspected by the untrained average man, who lives contentedly in the midst of Cimmerean darkness and calls it light.
Two thousand and five hundred years ago the greatest of Indian teachers, Gautama the BUDDHA, said to His disciples: ‘Do not complain and cry and pray, but open your eyes and see. The truth is all about you, if you will only take the bandage from your eyes and look; and it is so wonderful, so beautiful, so far beyond anything that men have ever dreamt of or prayed for, and it is for ever and for ever.’
He assuredly meant far more than this of which I am writing now, but this is a step on the way towards that glorious goal of perfect realisation. If it does not yet tell us quite all the truth, at any rate it gives us a good deal of it. It removes for us a host of common misconceptions, and clears up for us many points which are considered as mysteries or problems by those who are as yet uninstructed in this lore. It shows that all these things were mysteries and problems to us only because heretofore we saw so small a part of the facts, because we were looking at the various matters from below, and as isolated and unconnected fragments, instead of rising above them to a standpoint whence they are comprehensible as parts of a mighty whole. It settles in a moment many questions which have been much disputed—such, for example, as that of the continued existence of man after death. It explains many of the strange things which the Churches tell us; it dispels our ignorance and removes our fear of the unknown by supplying us with a rational and orderly scheme.”
On Saturday, 17 October, 2015, at 5 p.m. our Hon. Secretary, Lily Chong, will give a talk on “The Hidden Side of Things” based on the book by CWL. Don’t miss this talk which was last given in February 2012, more than 3˝ years ago.
One of the most important things we learn about the hidden side of things is the significance of membership and the importance of attending lodge meetings. Why is it necessary for members to come regularly for our Saturday meetings? Can we not just stay at home and do our own reading? To do so will be missing perhaps the most significant aspects of membership of this great Society. Come and be reminded of the Hidden Side of Lodge Meetings which will be elaborated by the speaker. This is a most useful talk for those who wish to know more about such things and to gain some idea of the inner side of the world as a whole and of our daily life. Don’t miss this opportunity to know more about the occult world.
However, please note that this talk is restricted to members only. Non-members will not be admitted.