1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
on 23 February 2014
The autobiography of Ernest Wood was a very interesting reading. Ernest Wood was an amazing personality of the Theosophical Society, usually underestimated. He was a Englishman from Manchester who was captivated by the presence of Annie Besant, and later he traveled to Adyar (India) to help her and Charles Leadbeater. He lived an intense theosophical life, for a long period in the Theosophical Society, and also after abandoning it when he dedicated himself to yoga and education in India and United States. He was a precious intellectual of his time in his topics of study: Theosophy, Yoga, Indian Philosophy, Hinduism, and the Seven Rays. (probably he was the first to write a book describing in the detail the Seven Rays in the version which is currently so wide spread in new age movements, and only in this book we know the story behind the knowledge he acquired about the Seven Rays) Trained with a critical, practical and scientific mind, his contributions to theosophical knowledge were of high quality. His history and involvement with the Theosophical Society are very inspiring, and his critical mind offers the reader a very keen perspective of what was happening in the Theosophical Society in the beginning of the 20th Century, including the scandal involving Krishnamurti and the election of George Arundale as the third president of the Theosophical Society. (Ernest Wood was the other candidate to the presidency) It is a shame that he published this autobiography when he was very young, and the last decades of his life are not described in it, although they were very important, especially for his work in education with Maria Montessori.