"THE NEW MESSIAH."

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 4927, 18 January 1926, Page 3

"THE NEW MESSIAH."

MRS. ANNIE BESANT’S FIN'D.

LAW CASE FOR POSSESSION

Mite Annie Besant, who is providing the world with a new Messiah, is losing none of her enterprise, despite the fact that she is now in the seventyninth year of her varied and at times stormy career. She began life as a Mis.s Wood, and married the Rev. Frank Besant, but life in a. Lincolnshire vicarage palled, and six years la,ter the lady embarked on spearatioh and free thought She was- first heard of when she was prosecuted and convicted with Charles foi publishing “blasphemous literature. Bradlaughism Mrs Besant soon left as too much like milk and water, and in 1889 she joined the Theosophical, Society, an institution founded in America in 1875 by the somewhat fraudulent Madame Blavatsky and Colonel Henry S. iDlcott, and of which Mrs Besant hers.elf became president in 1907. Krishnamurti, Mrs Besant’s new Messaih, is a young man of thirty, whose fath.er, a Government pensioner in Madras, some years back sought unsuccessfully to recover him from the la,dy’s control. The father is a Brahmin, Mr G. Narayan Iyer, and in 1910 he was acting ag- secretary of the esoteric branch of the Theospphfbal Society at Adyai, in India His two boys attracted .the notice of Mrs Besant, apd she offered to send them .to England to be ! educated, finishing up with a course at Oxford. Mr Iyer jumped at the idea, and Mrs Besant took over the guardianship of the two yputlis, having developed the intention, according to her own statement in conducting her case in Court, of training Krishnamurti, the elder of the two, for "the spiritual, leadership of .the world.” All went well until 1913, when Mr Iyer repented of his bargajn and brought a lawsuit to recover possession of the boys, then in England! He made a number of allegations against Mr (or Bishop) Leadbeater, who had had control of his sons in India, and the Court ordered Mrs Besant to return the new Messiah to his parents a,nd hfe ordinary walk in life. Mrs Besant promptly appealed, but the High -Court of Madras upheld the judge’s order. Nothing daunted, the lady went ahead with an. appeal to the Privy, Council and won the day oil various points bf law, and the new Messiah of Theosophy was thus preserved to the sect. Much curious evidence wa/s heard in the course of these proceedings. Mr Leadbeater, for instance, deposed that he had been conducting clairvoyant experiments with' Mrs Besant, who had inforjmed him that he was “a man on the threshold of divinity”—the judge’s opinion in Madras being emphatically that he wasn’t; Mr Leadbeater also deposed to having “seen' things” on Mars and Mercury, and said it was true he had stood face to face with “the supreme director of Evolution.” —‘‘Dominion.’’