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By the time Emy ran away from home to join that circus, 1925, the Theosophy movement was sprouting in India and points West. Annie Besant, with "eyes like a tiger," recognized Emy's spiritual progress and devotion to someone called "World Mother"; Annie embraced Emy with the greeting, "Welcome, Brother" (a term Mrs. Besant regarded as a special accolade). Unlike other brothers, Emy never claimed to have visions or to be clairvoyant or to be in touch with Master Koot Hoomi, who was said to live on the side of a ravine in Tibet. She seems to have been happy, although her two daughters, whom she took with her all over the world—the Theosophists had meetings all the time—got bored and ran away to home life.
Triumphant Innocence. It is distressing that among prophetic souls, faction should flourish. After much infighting, things began to fall apart during a trip to Australia by Emy and Krishna. Later, homeward bound for India, Krishna found the boat "full of Australians, the scorning variety, who laughed at him to his face." In 1929 he accepted the Australian opinion, sensibly dissolved the "order" formed about him and decamped to private life.
In this book Emy emerges as a high-spirited woman with an innocence that triumphs over every absurdity. Not the least pleasant thing about her story is that the reader never quite knows—as in a novel—just how much the main character knows of what is really going on. From her home in London she still writes to Krishna (who moves between India, California, and other spiritual strongholds), but is reconciled to his repudiation of the quasi-divine role assigned to him by the Theosophists. Gravely she ends her book with the assertion that the once-weedy youth is "the perfect flower of humanity." At 83 Emy is a stubborn woman who, out of honesty, naivete and with an innocent eye, has inadvertently given a pleasant study of the religious temperament at work in an unworthy cause.