Finding a path through the pathless land

”Theosophy Versus Neo-Theosophy” is a book with a somewhat complicated publication history. Margaret Thomas, a member of the “Theosophical Society Scotland, Wales and England”, compiled the original material and published it in mimeographed form around 1924. It's not clear to me what international Theosophical society (if any) the British group was affiliated with. Victor Endersby serialized Thomas' work in his magazine “Theosophical Notes” from 1952 to 1953. Despite diligent searches on the web, I haven't been able to find out what Theosophical group Endersby belonged to. He may have been something of a freelancer. In 1995, M R Jaqua published the book showed on this product page. It contains the first chapter of Thomas' original work (chapters two and three have been omitted) plus some additional material. Jaqua's exact affiliation is also unknown, but the added material in his book relies heavily on Gottfried de Purucker's writings and would therefore point to the Theosophical Society Pasadena. Both Jaqua's edition and Thomas' original work are available on the web.

After the death of Theosophy's creator Helena Petrovna Blavatsky in 1891, the Theosophical Society soon split in two main branches, today usually called Adyar and Pasadena. The Adyar group is often regarded as the “official” Theosophical Society and was originally led by Annie Besant and C W Leadbeater, two rather colorful personalities. Jiddu Krishnamurti was also associated with Adyar and promoted by them as “The World Teacher”. The “Pasadena” branch was originally led by William Quan Judge in New York and after his death by Katherine Tingley in Point Loma. Purucker took over at Tingley's passing, but the society didn't really move to Pasadena until after his death. The “Pasadena” group accused Adyar of tampering with Blavatsky's original message, but I think it's obvious that Tingley also introduced substantial changes, leading to further splits. Thus, some groups accept Judge but not his successors. This makes the Theosophical scene somewhat complex (and more complex than I initially imagined - it seems truth isn't an entirely pathless land after all). “Theosophy Versus Neo-Theosophy” is an attack on Adyar, arguing that their revisions of Blavatsky's doctrines are really a form of debased Neo-Theosophy. The original work also contained material on the scandals surrounding C W Leadbeater, who was accused of being a pedophile.

Some of the differences between Blavatsky and Besant/Leadbeater are truly “esoteric”, while others are easier to grasp. Thomas points out that Madame Blavatsky was extremely negative to Christianity. She didn't regard Jesus as a “master” and occasionally came close to denying his very existence. Blavatsky was also opposed to all forms of priestcraft and traditional religious hierarchies. By contrast, Besant and Leadbeater placed strong emphasis on Jesus. They may have interpreted the Christian message in their own idiosyncratic manner, but the outward forms nevertheless have a family likeness with official Christianity, including Jesus' sacrificial death on the cross and the idea that the man Jesus was the vessel for an advanced spiritual being called Christ. Leadbeater went even further, and promoted a Theosophical “church”, known as the Liberal Catholic Church, with himself as bishop. The church put heavy emphasis on the sacraments and apostolic succession, thus mimicking the priestcraft Blavatsky loved to hate. Thomas further feels that Blavatsky's strong non-theism was replaced by Adyar with a de facto emphasis on a personal god, the Solar Logos. Christ could also be seen as a personal god. Unsurprisingly, Thomas rejects Adyar's promotion of Krishnamurti as some kind of Messiah figure. While the end of our present cycle is approaching, it is still in the future. Thomas believed that a world teacher wouldn't appear until 1975. She also accused Besant and Leadbeater of conflating Maitreya (the true teacher) with the Christ of Christianity in the person of Jiddu Krishnamurti.

Jaqua's additional material is extremely interesting. It contains criticisms of Leadbeater's popular book on the chakras. The critics believe that Leadbeater was factually wrong about the chakras and their placements, but more importantly, they accused him of Tantric sex magic and black magic. Here are some pertinent quotations.

>>>The Blavatskian idea is basically to avoid any type of attempt at psychic or occult development, as virtually no one can live the life required. These faculties will be natural at a later stage of evolution. The Leadbeater school, in contradiction, centers their whole scheme on the psychic glamors.>>>

>>>Raja-yoga, which is the method of Theosophy and Blavatsky, Judge, and Purucker, does not regard study of especially the lower chakras as important but inimical and dangerous, and as a method used in black magic. It sees concentration on the chakras below the head as harmful or fatal to spiritual development. It is a concentrating on the perishable physical and astral qualities instead of the truly valuable mental and spiritual qualities. It is a directing of the attention in the wrong course, towards the material and away from the spiritual.>>>

>>>Blavatsky states elsewhere that Raja-yoga schools never publish tantra-like works or on the chakras because they "tend to Black Magic and are most dangerous to take for guides in self-training." She adds: "I hope that American Esotericists will be on their guard." In the original Esoteric Section under Blavatsky overall and Judge in America, there was a prohibition "against physical means and physical practices pursued for the finite purpose of developing psychic power.">>>

What Jaqua and his fellow critics reject are attempts at raising the kundalini through various bodily practices, but perhaps also the attainment of psychic powers such as clairvoyance. To them, Leadbeater was a follower or dupe of the “Left Hand” path, which H P Blavatsky had regarded as demonical. While there are obvious dangers with both clairvoyance and attempts to awaken the “serpent power”, I suspect matters of authority are involved, too. Leadbeater's insistence that his clairvoyant visions (really new revelations from the gods) were just as authoritative as those of Blavatsky clashed with the more dogmatic groups for whom the published writings of HPB were enough. This reminds me of the “routinization of charisma” observed by sociologists in many religious groups. It's quite common for the freewheeling spiritual explorations of a religious founder to be turned into scholastic dogma by the second generation. Leadbeater and Besant represents a continuation of Blavatsky's charismatic leadership (which, of course, was based on *her* visions), while some of their critics represent the routinist and scholastic tendency defending “orthodoxy”. However, Adyar simultaneously also represented a mainstreaming of Theosophy, since their teachings were easier to grasp for the multitude than the heavy tomes of Madame Blavatsky. This is another common phenomenon: the dilution of any esoteric teaching over time.

With that, I end my own little exploration of Neo-Theosophy!