Theos-Talk Archives (September 1995 Message tl00093)

Rich:

>Was he [CWL] simply a deluded fool, or did he have some ennobling purpose
in mind
>when he penned all this stuff on Mars and how Norwegian they are? Maybe he
>thought we would take comfort in hearing about beings from elsewhere who were
>much like us? I read this stuff and think "good god, who IS THIS GUY?"

Perhaps Jerry H-E could help answer this question. I read years ago a transcript
of Besant and Leadbeater doing their psychical investigations. They were both
"awake", talking out loud, and what they said was being written down. These
notes
would be written up as some of their psychical investigations. What they
were doing
sounded like directed imagination, rather than actual out-of-the-body
experiences.
Leadbeater would first mention something, then Besant would say something
like, "Oh,
yes, I see it too." This was all written up, in a quite critical manner, in
an issue
of the "O.E. Library Critic," although I'm not sure if it was in the 1910's
or 1920's.
I have a copy of the article somewhere, but could not locate it just now.

We have two questions here. First, what method of investigation did they
use? Was
it out-of-the-body exploration, directed imagination, intellectual-intuitive, or
yet some other method? Second, what was their motivation? As to the first
question,
we have to go by historical information to look for clues. As to the second,
we can
give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they had the highest motives.
Perhaps
they got carried away in their writings, because there were no other people to
oppose them. They had too powerful an influence over the Theosophical
Society, and
there was no checks-and-balances in place.

-- Eldon