BESANT, ANNIE

BESANT, ANNIE . Annie Besant (1847–1933) was a British activist with many facets to her life: Anglican; atheist and Freethinker; socialist; Theosophist; educator, reformer, and politician in India; and prophetic announcer of the coming World-Teacher and New Civilization. Besant's monism and her desire to serve humanity were the unifying themes in her diverse efforts. She accomplished pioneering and influential work in Britain and India, and exerted an international influence in her political and religious work. As the second president of the Theosophical Society (1907–1933), Besant popularized Theosophical concepts around the world through her lectures and writings, putting the concepts articulated by Helena P. Blavatsky into accessible language.

Besant possessed a progressive millennial outlook, believing that human effort guided by superhuman agents or forces (when she was an atheist she defined them as Nature and Evolution; when she became a Theosophist they were the Masters and the Solar Logos) could create the millennial condition of collective well-being on Earth. In 1908 Besant added messianism to her thought, and groomed a young Indian, J. Krishnamurti, to be the physical vehicle for the Lord Maitreya, a messiah who would usher in the millennial New Civilization. Besant believed that Krishnamurti as the World-Teacher would present a teaching that would become the next world religion, and thus raise humanity's awareness of spiritual unity and create the "New Civilization." Much of Besant's progressive millennialism, including its messianic themes, were perpetuated in the written works of Alice Bailey (1880–1949), another British Theosophist. Bailey was among the first to use the terms New Age and the Age of Aquarius, making Annie Besant an important source for the New Age movement.

Early Life

Annie Wood was born and raised in London by parents with a predominantly Irish background. She was raised in the Anglican faith and received an education in the home of a maiden lady. She married Frank Besant, an Anglican priest, in 1867. They had a son and a daughter, but the marriage failed, in part due to her intellectual questioning and rejection of Christian doctrines and the Bible. The couple separated but a divorce was never granted.

Atheism and socialism

After a brief passage through theism, Besant found an intellectual home in Charles Bradlaugh's National Secular Society in 1874, where she became an atheist and Freethinker. Besant and Bradlaugh had a close relationship. She became a vice-president of the National Secular Society, and she and Bradlaugh formed the Freethought Publishing Company. Besant became a noted public speaker, questioning Christianity and the Bible and advocating social reform and women's rights. In 1877 Besant became the first woman to be prosecuted for disseminating information on birth control when she and Bradlaugh were prosecuted for publishing a pamphlet on contraception. Besant subsequently published her own booklet on contraception that was translated and sold internationally.

In the late 1870s Besant studied science at London University, but did not receive a degree. Besant's atheism was a monistic materialism—she believed that the one universal substance was matter—but she had a lively interest in the study of world religions and philosophies, as manifested in a magazine titled Our Corner she founded in 1883.

In 1885 Besant joined the Fabian Society of socialists, and maintained her commitment to nonrevolutionary socialism for the rest of her life. In 1888 Besant and Herbert Burrows organized the Bryant & May match girls strike, and subsequently the strikes of other workers, marking the formation of the trade union movement.

Theosophy

Besant joined the Theosophical Society in 1889 after reviewing Helena P. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine (1888). The two thick volumes of The Secret Doctrine titled "Cosmogenesis" and "Anthropogenesis" purport to reveal the secrets of progressive evolution of consciousness in the universe and humanity. Blavatsky claimed that his complex philosophy was revealed to her by elusive Masters of Wisdom, described as men in physical bodies possessing highly evolved awareness who directed evolution on this planet. Besant went to meet Blavatsky, then residing in London. She took the ailing Blavatsky, who was much beleaguered by critics skeptical of the existence of the Masters and their appearances and communications, into her home, where she resided until the end of her life. Becoming a Theosophist marked Besant's shift from monistic materialism to a monism that affirmed the reality of a spiritual dimension to life. Theosophy's assertion that spiritual reality could be investigated and confirmed by the development of new faculties of perception appealed to her rationalism.

When Blavatsky died in 1891 a power struggle ensued within the Theosophical Society, with Besant and Henry Steel Olcott, the Society's president, on one side, and William Q. Judge on the other. Judge led the American Section in its succession from the Theosophical Society. His organization was inherited by Katherine Tingley upon Judge's death in 1896, and she created the Point Loma community of Theosophists. A new American Section of the Theosophical Society was built up, boosted by lecture tours by Annie Besant, which is now called the Theosophical Society in America. Besant was elected the second president of the international Theosophical Society, headquartered in Adyar, Chennai (Madras), in 1907 after Olcott's death.

Work in India

Annie Besant first visited the international headquarters of the Theosophical Society in India in 1893, and she made the country her home in 1895. In India Besant worked to build Hindu pride and worked for educational and social reform and Indian Home Rule. Olcott had worked to revive Buddhism in Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) in an attempt to counteract the demoralizing effects of colonialism and Christian missionaries. Besant was determined to do the same for Hinduism in India. She believed that she had been a Hindu in previous incarnations and regarded India as her homeland.

Among the schools founded by Besant and other Theosophists in India were the Central Hindu College for boys, which was founded in 1897 and in 1916 became the Benares Hindu University, and the Central Hindu Girls' School, founded in 1904. In 1914 Besant began speaking out for social reform in India and working for Indian Home Rule within the British Commonwealth. Besant believed that a self-ruling India as part of the Commonwealth would contribute to the ultimate unity of humanity in the New Civilization. She founded daily and weekly newspapers to promote her political efforts. She also founded associations to promote patriotism among young Indians, and started the Indian Boy Scouts Association. In 1916 Besant founded her Home Rule League. She also worked for women's rights in India, and in 1917 helped found the Women's Indian Association and later the All-India Women's Conference.

As a result of her work for Home Rule, Besant and some of her colleagues were interned in 1917 by the colonial government. Besant's internment increased the Indian public's awareness of the agitation, and at age seventy Besant was elected president of the Indian National Congress. She promptly turned the office into a base for political activism. Historian Nancy Fix Anderson has written that Besant was the "primary instigator of the organised Indian nationalist movement," and that she worked "for a sense of inclusive Indian identity" (p. 36). Besant's career as Indian politician was quickly eclipsed by that of Mohandas Gandhi, who called for complete independence from the British empire, which Besant opposed.

The World-Teacher

In 1908, just after becoming president of the Theosophical Society, Besant and her colleague in psychic investigations, Charles W. Leadbeater, began lecturing on the imminent appearance of the Lord Maitreya, the Master who was said to hold the office of the bodhisattva. Drawing on Buddhist and Christian expectations, Besant and Leadbeater added messianism to the progressive millennialism of Theosophy. Besant adopted a twelve-year-old Indian boy, J. Krishnamurti, and raised him to be the vehicle of the World-Teacher (jagadguru). She believed that Krishnamurti as the World-Teacher would present teachings that would become a new religion and raise humanity's awareness of spiritual unity, thereby creating the millennial New Civilization. Besant created an international organization known as the Order of the Star in the East, with about thirty-thousand members who anticipated the coming of the World-Teacher. She purchased a home for Krishnamurti in Ojai, California, along with additional land she named the Happy Valley. Besant believed that the "new race" of aware human beings would develop in southern California, Australia, and New Zealand. The many New Age and Theosophical groups that continue in the Ojai valley carry on Besant's expectations.

Beginning in 1922, Krishnamurti had experiences that led him to conclude that his consciousness had blended with that of the Lord Maitreya. He began speaking publicly as the Lord Maitreya in 1925. Eventually, however, Krishnamurti concluded that people were not hearing his Zen-like message advocating personal effort in achieving "choiceless awareness," and instead were relying on him for salvation. In 1929 Krishnamurti dissolved the Order of the Star and distanced himself from the Theosophical Society and his role as the World-Teacher. Krishnamurti never denied being the World-Teacher, and he went on to become an internationally known teacher. Annie Besant maintained her faith in Krishnamurti as the World-Teacher until her death in 1933.

Conclusion

The stages of Annie Besant's life were held together by her commitment to the service and betterment of humanity and by her monism. She was a strong believer in the Victorian doctrine of progress, believing that humans working according to a higher plan could create a collective salvation on Earth (the millennial kingdom). She found it frustrating that despite all her hard work society remained imperfect. So in 1908 she added messianism to her progressive millennialism; the World-Teacher would accomplish the New Civilization. After Krishnamurti distanced himself from her messianic plans in 1929, the Theosophical Society gave up messianism while maintaining its progressive millennial orientation, although many individual Theosophists remained intensely interested in Krishnamurti's teachings. Annie Besant's hope for a New Civilization accomplished by a critical mass of people developing a consciousness of spiritual unity under the guidance and influence of Masters, and including the possible return of the Christ, continues to influence the New Age movement, especially through the writings of Alice Bailey, a former member of the Theosophical Society.

See Also

Blavatsky, H. P.; Judge, William Q.; Theosophical Society.

Bibliography

Anderson, Nancy Fix. "'Mother Besant' and Indian National Politics." Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 30, no. 3 (2002): 27–54. Describes Besant's impact on the Indian Home Rule movement.

Besant, Annie. Autobiographical Sketches. London, 1885. Initial autobiographical account written prior to becoming a Theosophist.

Besant, Annie. Annie Besant: An Autobiography. London, 1908. Revision of Autobiographical Sketches after her conversion to Theosophy.

Jayakar, Pupul. Krishnamurti: A Biography. San Francisco, 1986. The first biography of Krishnamurti that revealed he thought of himself as the World-Teacher until the end of his life.

Nethercot, Arthur H. The First Five Lives of Annie Besant. Chicago, 1960.

Nethercot, Arthur H. The Last Four Lives of Annie Besant. Chicago, 1963. These two books by Nethercot remain the most thoroughly researched biographical treatments.

Sloss, Radha Rajagopal. Lives in the Shadow with J Krishnamurti. London, 1991. An eye-opening biography of Krishnamurti.

Wessinger, Catherine Lowman. Annie Besant and Progressive Messianism. Lewiston, N.Y., 1988. An intellectual biography of Besant that traces her evolving millennialism.

Wessinger, Catherine Lowman. "Annie Besant and the World-Teacher: Progressive Messianism for the New Age." Quest (spring 1989): 60–69. Short description of Besant's progressive millennialism and her influence on the New Age movement.

Catherine Wessinger (2005)