THE " NEW MESSIAH"
No one who has been in the Queen's Hall at one of these- meetings wilk.care to deity that Mrs. Besant's auto-suggestive hallucinations are sincere or that her language is impressive. But the more readily we acknow- ledge the dignity and beauty of Mrs. Besant's words, by so much the more must we regret that at the end of her long intellectual life she has invented a creed which is associated with events not only deplorable but disreputable.
The environment of Mrs. Besant's orations has been reduced to a regular form. -The audience sits in silence. A small rostrum at the front of the platform is decorated with flowers. Behind this rostrum is a row of theo- sophical " bishops '-' dressed in purple. Suddenly Mrs. Besant appears on the platform ; the audience stands. There is a deep silence. Mrs. Besant is dressed entirely in white. She begins to speak ; for an hour the words come with deliberation but never with the least hesitation. Her sentences are perfectly constructed and no word is ill chosen. She uses no gesture ; indeed her hands are pressed together as though she were laying upon herself a restraint that is in odd keeping with what to the coldly critical seems to be the want of restraint in her ideas. At the end of an hour she ceases and dis- appears. There is no applause and if any is attempted she reproves it.
What is the history of this new Messiah ? Seventeen years ago a Brahmin of Madras, Narayaniah, who had been a lower-grade Civil Servant, was engaged at the chief office of the Theosophical Society at Adyar. Mr. Leadbeater, the well-known Theosophist who has long been Mrs. Besant's most intimate collaborator, became interested in the two sons of Narayaniah. But Nara- yaniah disliked and mistrusted his influence over the boys, tried to detach them from him and evidently hoped that Mrs. Besant would be on the side of paternal authority. Mrs. Besant, however, who had already obtained a legal guardianship over the boys, removed them from India. - In 1912 Narayaniah brought an action in a Madras Court to break the guardianship. The result of the trial was that Mrs. Besant was ordered to restore the brothers to their father, but the judgment was inoperative as the elder boy was already about to reach the age when he would be free from the effects of such a judgment. We do not know why the younger son was not restored, but apparently he lived chiefly in America, where he died last year. It is the elder boy, Krishnamurti,. who is now proclaimed by Mrs. -Besant. But a few words more must be said about the trial. The brothers, being absent, could not give evidence, but the Judge held that though the offences alleged -against Leadbeater were not established, Leadbeater's opinions were " certainly immoral and such as to unfit him to be the tutor of-boys and rendered him a highly dangerous associate for children."
It might have been thought that Mrs. Besant would thenceforth have kept her wards apart from Leadbeater, but Krishnamurti for the last few years, as we read lately in Truth, has been under the tutelage of Lead- beater in Australia, ostensibly undergoing the preparation for his Messianic mission. As long ago as 1906 the British branch of the Theosophical Society had in- vestigated charges against Leadbeater and had called upon him to resign his membership. It is not surprising that many respectable Theosophists have become alarmed at Mrs. Besant's action in trying to transfigure all these facts with an atmosphere not merely of respectability but of holiness. Not long ago several members and one entire branch resigned from the Theosophical Society as a protest against Mrs. Besant's new Messianic creed. It is said that in various European countries there have been larger secessions.
When Krishnamurti was still a child Leadbeater traced the various reincarnations of this new World Teacher back for some 4,006 years. Mrs. Besant appears to have at once accepted this imposing spiritual genealogy. We gather that- if she were asked for proof she would reply with the true Gnostic answer that proof is an unnecessary thing, indeed a kind of vulgarity, since such revelation comes only to the few who are chosen to be the recipients of mystidal truth. She asserts that she believes that as the Clirist entered into the body of the man JeSus so the Christ- has entered again into the body of Krishnamurti. It would require a new Irenaens to dispose of such siinple assertion by argument. It is strange that the Theosophical. Society, which was created by Madame Blavatsky and was carried on by Major Olcott to study comparative religion and to encourage a general aspiration towards universal brother- hood and the " One Life" of Vedic and Buddhist literature, should have led on to the evolution of so very definite though so fantastic a dogma as is now set forth.
A reference was made at the beginning of this article to Mrs. Besant's acceptance of what she has herself inspired. A writer in the Manchester Guardian says that a great deal turns upon a passage from a speech, made by Krishnamurti in India, which Mrs. Besant quotes in her addresses. Here are his words :— " We are all expecting Him who is the example, the embodiment of nobility. He will be with us soon. He is with us now. He comes to lead us all to that perfection where there is eternal happi- ness. He comes to lead us and comes to those who have not understood, who have suffered, who are unhappy, who are enlight- ened. He comes- to those who want, who desire, who long. I COME to those who want sympathy, who want happiness, who are longing to be released, who are longing to find happiness in all things. I come to reform and not to tear down, not to destroy, but to build."
The point is that in this passage Krishnamurti suddenly changes from the third person to the first. " When those words were spoken," says Mrs. Besant, " some saw a great light and some saw the Christ himself. That was to us the birth of the Christ." To others it must seem a vicious circle in which Mrs. Besant uses assertion and evidence as indistinguishable things.
The World Teacher is still undergoing his preparation for his Messianic mission near London.. Leadbeater is said to be still in Australia. The apostles of whom apparently there are to be twelve have yet to be chosen. Photographs of Krishnamurti show him to be a good looking young man, and he is said to enjoy life like other young men of his age.
That such things should happen in these days is a fact worthy of observation whether we regard them as unimportant because silly, or important because sinister, or blasphemous, or merely strange.
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