THEOSOPHY AND THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

In early adolescence, J. Krishnamurti had a chance encounter with prominent occultist and high-ranking Theosophist C.W. Leadbeater on the grounds of the Theosophical Society headquarters at Madras.  He was subsequently raised under the tutelage of Annie Besant and Mr. Leadbeater, the leaders of the Society at the time, who believed him to be the likely "vehicle" for an expected World Teacher whose coming the Theosophists had predicted.

But what is theosophy and the Theosophical Society?  To begin with, theosophy is an occultist, synthetic religion, drawing upon all faiths but originating in an esoteric form of Buddhism.  Its doctrines, however, are primarily a free adaptation of Hinduism.  Its aim is the establishment of a true brotherhood among all peoples dependent on an esoteric, ancient wisdom, expressed in Vedantism, and transmitted through "masters" or "Mahatmas" who appear from age to age.  

These "great souls" have occult powers which give them, for instance, unique control over their own bodies and over natural forces.  Under their guidance, humanity, bound to the ever-turning wheel of reincarnation by the Law of Karma, will someday gain happiness.  The world then will "drink as one from the one wonderful Fountain of Wisdom from which all religions have drawn their hitherto partial truths."

The Theosophical Society was founded in New York City in 1875 by Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-1891), a Russian-born spiritualist, in company with an American, Colonel H. S. Olcott (1832-1907), her partner in numerous occult and spiritualist activities.  With them as well, another American, W. Q. Judge (1851-1896), and thirteen other interested people.

Theosophy appealed to a Western elite disenchanted with Christianity and open to new ideas, especially from the East.  The Society was established on the thesis that there is an Ageless Wisdom, the thread of which can be traced through all cultures and mythologies, through religion, philosophy, and science.  The Society's headquarters were transferred from New York to Bombay in 1879, and were permanently established four years later in the town of Adyar, now a suburb of Madras.  The Society today has national centers in some sixty countries.

Colonel Olcott was named the first president of the Society, to be followed by Annie Besant (1847-1933), an Englishwoman and one-time freethinker who renounced her citizenship and became an Indian.  A dynamic and eloquent lecturer, Mrs. Besant joined the freedom movement against the British and was elected president of the Indian National Congress in 1918.  She also founded the Hindu college in Benares which has grown into the present Benares Hindu University.

It was Mrs. Besant's close associate and fellow Theosophist, the Reverend Charles Leadbeater, a former Anglican clergyman, who, in 1909, personally "discovered" Krishnamurti.  Mrs. Besant firmly shared Leadbeater's belief that the fourteen-year-old boy from Madras was none other than this age's World Teacher. Krishnamurti renounced this eventually and set out on his own.

Madame Blavatsky was the Society's founder.  Alan Watts, skeptical of her, writes, "Her story was that, as a young woman, she had gone to Central Asia and Tibet to become the student of supreme gurus Koot Hoomi and Maurya, which are not Tibetan names, and whose alleged photographs look like versions of Jesus, who thereafter wrote her constant letters by psychokinetic precipitation or telepathic amanuensis in a distinctly Russian style of handwriting.  Madame Blavatsky's voluminous works reveal only the most fragmentary knowledge of, in this instance, Tibetan Buddhism, but she was a masterly creator of metaphysical and occult science fiction, and a delightful, uninhibited and outspoken old lady who spat and swore and rolled her own cigarettes."

"Perhaps she was a charlatan, but she did a beautiful job of it," Watts said, "and persuaded a goodly number of British aristocrats and literati to take to the Upanishads, the Yoga Sutra, the Bhagavad-Gita, and the Buddhist Tripitaka.   Those persuaded found them much more interesting and profound than the Bible, especially the Bible as interpreted by the run-of-the-mill Catholic and Protestant clergy at the end of the nineteenth century." 

Despite regular growth, the Society has been marked by a number of schisms.  W. Q. Judge left in 1895 due to a difference of opinion with his colleagues and formed a separate theosophical organization.  At least three other schismatic groups may be counted.  There are separate theosophical societies in Pasadena, California, and in Unterlengenhardt, Germany, and the United Lodge of Theosophists in Los Angeles, with several foreign branches.  A major schism was led by Dr. Rudolf Steiner of Germany, who, after an argument with Annie Besant, formed what was called the Anthroposophical Society in 1912. Attempts at reunification have so far been unsuccessful.