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It is important to note here that people do not seek out cults." Whitsett writes. We are going through life transitions. We are feeling shaky and looking for social support and self support.

""Cushman has eloquently shown how the cult (in guise of offering normal human support) first induces "pathology" and then purports to cure it. Through various indoctrination techniques particularly an assault on the cultural frame of recruits, which includes their values, belief system, codes of behavior, and language, the cult induces a narcissistic crisis (psychologese for a wounding assault on the victim's core sense of self)

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a necessary point if one is to understand how a single woman impressed, convinced, and inspired so many people, given the more incredible aspects of her Thesophy (and her trying personality)."

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From C. C. Massey to E. Maitland
"July 16 [1884].

"I had a note from Olcott this morning. He seemed greatly pleased with his visit to Mrs. Kingsford. No doubt she will soon be ‘the Goddess’ with them again, as she was with Sinnett a year ago!

As to their attitude towards yourself, perhaps you are right; but that, too, is a question of times and moods, and meanwhile your equanimity is not likely to be disturbed. And now that troubles are menacing on account of ‘the old Lady,’ other people’s depravity will throw yours into the shade.

I, who have been the spoilt child of the theosophical movement up to now, may be discovered to be a very wicked wretch, if not a Jesuit. (12) We all have to take our turns at this sort of thing in the ‘Brotherhood.’ . . . .

. . . We had been warned that our attitude towards the Theosophical Society and its Masters exposed us to personal danger from the occult powers possessed by them, and some of the more ardent of their partisans had already expressed their surprise at our immunity from their vengeance.

Certain incidents which occurred during our sojourn in London this summer seemed to lend confirmation to the idea, of which the following is one: -

Mary was roused from sleep one night by a sound of rustling among some manuscripts which were on a table at the foot of her bed, and on looking to see the cause, beheld a dwarf figure, which she recognised as that of an elemental of the order of the Gnomes, or earth-spirits; for it was costumed as a labourer, and carried a long-handled shovel, their distinguishing symbol. It was turning over the manuscripts as if looking for some particular paper, and muttering to itself in French. She therefore accosted it in the same language, sharply demanding its business, and bidding it begone. Upon which the imp looked at her in great surprise, as if not expecting detection, and exclaiming in the same language that it had made a mistake, and took its departure.

On the following night I was roused from a sound sleep by hearing her exclaim in great distress, "Caro! Caro! I am dying!" Owing to the distance between our rooms - for they were on different storeys and staircases - I knew that her actual voice could not have reached me, call as loudly as she might.

I took it, therefore, for an interior summons, obeying which I hastened to her door, and knocking at it, asked if she was in want of anything, as I fancied I heard her calling out. Whereupon she presently exclaimed, "Oh! I am so glad you woke me; I was just being suffocated by a terrible nightmare."

(Corboy: In modern sleep medicine this is known as a night terror and understood as a sleep phenomenon, not astral at all [www.google.com])

She had been much exercised about the experience of the previous night, owing chiefly to the circumstance that the goblin spoke in French, this being quite a novel feature to her; and she could not help connecting it in some way with a visit she had on that day paid to Madame Blavatsky, in which they had chiefly spoken French together.

(Corboy this was in the 1880s. No one yet understood REM sleep, or the existence of subconscious thought and dream processes.)

The visit itself had been marked by an incident which we had discussed with considerable interest, and which was in this wise.

On calling at the house [in London] where Madame Blavatsky was staying, she found her on the point of going out for a drive, and instead of entering the house, complied with a message asking her to get into the carriage and wait there.

Presently Madame appeared, with one of her Indian proteges, one M------, and the three went for a drive together, Madame being very cordial, and cheerful even to jocularity. After a while she referred to the criticism we had written on Mr. Sinnett’s book, Esoteric Buddhism, quoting a sentence which she ascribed to Mary, and asking how she could say such a thing.

To which Mary replied that she had said nothing of the kind, but quite the opposite.

Whereupon, in order to prove herself right, Madame asking M------ for the pamphlet, saying she was sure he had it about him.

This M------- denied, but, on her persisting, searched his pockets for it, but without finding it. At this Madame seemed disappointed, but presently regained her cheerfulness, and showed herself full of vivacious humour, much to Mary’s delight, as she had heard so much of that trait in her character, but had never yet witnessed any exhibition of it.

In the course of the drive the "Old Lady" proposed that they have some refreshment, and the party accordingly repaired to a confectioner’s, and called for some chocolate.

While sitting there Madame again recurred to the pamphlet, reaffirming her accuracy, and insisted on M------ again searching his pockets for it, saying in a tone of command, "I must and will have it."

This time, after a short search, he produced it; upon which Madame exclaimed triumphantly, "There! you see! the Masters------." To which Mary responded by saying quietly, "That is very nice; now I will show you"; and taking the book, she found the passage, which proved to be as she had declared. Madame at once frankly admitted her mistake, saying she was very glad to find she was wrong; and the rest of the time passed pleasantly all around.

On coming home and telling me the story, Mary said that, even if she had believed there was a miracle in the matter, she would not have shown any surprise, as that would have been to credit Madame with a monopoly of thaumaturgic power.

What she wanted, however, to do was to find a middle course between a miracle - in which she did not for a moment believe - and a barefaced trick, deliberately contrived and rehearsed to impose upon her.

The explanation to which we inclined was this twofold one.

Madame had been prompted, partly by her irrepressible love of fun, and partly by her desire to put Mary to a test to ascertain whether she was really a sensible person, or belonged to the category of those whom Madame had been wont to call her "domestic imbeciles," "flapdoodles," and the like names.

(Mme Blavatsky sounds to my modern mind like a circus trainer complacently smirking at the obedience of the various caged animals--Corboy)

It was the way of the Adepts in occultism to test their neophytes, and Mary took this as an ordeal similarly devised to try her, and believed that her behaviour on the occasion had greatly raised her in Madame Blavatsky’s estimation.

(Placing these people, despite their skepticism within the belief system in which MB operated)

In this view I was glad to concur, but could not help remarking that it was a serious risk for the "Old Lady" to run, whether as regarded her own credit or that of her cause, as the generality of persons would be apt to take a view less favourable to her.

But then prudence was notoriously not her strong point, and, in fact, was the very last quality with which either her friends or her enemies would credit her.

For she was a veritable personification of impulsiveness.

(Yet, if her letter to the Imperial Russian secret service is authentic, MB's impulsiveness might have been a well honed way to throw people into confusion--an important skill for a trickster to master. Gurdjieff did the very same thing, and he learned much material from Theosophy. A member of ours, The Anticult has discussed confusion technique here

[forum.culteducation.com]

Mumbling

[forum.culteducation.com]

Boredom can be used as a technique, too

[forum.culteducation.com]

--Corboy)
Knowing, too, as we did know, that for several years prior to the formation of the Theosophical Society she [Madame Blavatsky] had followed the vocation of a professional spirit-medium, and knowing also the class of entity with which such persons are apt to be in relation, and the liability of sensitives to yield to sudden suggestions from such source, we were disposed to regard her peculiarities as representing a survival from her former vocation, and as due, therefore, to what she herself called "the spooks of the seance-room," rather than to any deliberate design of her own to deceive. . . .

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Her footnotes are as readable as the text. She says something about Theosophical writings (including specifically, those of Rudolf Steiner, a spin off of Theosophy, who went on to create the Waldorf School program. Those who operate the Waldorf/Steinerian schools do not honeslty and candidly inform parents of Steiners own belief system. Many parents have resented this deception and have written about it.

But back to Theosophy and why it and its various spin offs generate written material that induces confusion and (Corboy's hunch) leads to increased dependance on Master teachers, rather than a stable increase in understanding and an increate in adult agency and autonomy.

Maria Carlso noted that she found Blavatsky's writing to be 'hynotic and associative.'

(No doubt esotericists would blame Carlson for being a mere academic, thrall to dark astral forces. They always use that dodge or some version of it and sign it "with Love")

In a footnote, I think following chapter 4 or 5, Maria Carlson wrote that the problem with reading Blavatsky, Besant, Steiner and other esotericists, is that these authors do not reason according to causal logic or by use of objective evidence and premises.

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One of the major reasons that Theosophy and Anthroposophy are difficult to define and outline concisely is that both doctrines continually redefine basic concepts (such as Logos, Christ, soul, spirit, plane, and so forth) according to the immediate demands of the point under discussion.

"The understanding of the various terms also change with time, topic, exegete, and the point of the argument:

Mrs Besant and Rudolf Steiner, for example, frequently (though not always), mean very different things when they use the word Logos; thier definitions are, in turn, different from either the traditional Christian or Gnostic understanding of that important term.

"At the same time, enough points of coincidence lull the reader into a false sense of identity of concepts. The esultis that becomes impossible to get a real grip on what should be basic building block ideas.

"Furthermore, occultists tend to develop their arguments not by deduction or even induction, but by analogy. The reader, at the time of reading, momentarily senses the relationship of terms and intuitively or sympathetically perceives parallel; afterward, undnerstanding vanishes. "Finally (Carlson continues) not only do the Theosophists constantly redefine their own terms, but they "translate" the statements of non Theosophists into their own terminology, invariably muddling the translation. Their definitions of basic concepts are unfortunately so loose and subjective that just about any alien concept can be subsumed by them.

"Thus, for example, Anne Kamenskaia, discussing Fedor Dostoevsky (who was not much taken with oriental philosophy) blithely attributes to him the idea that mankind will achieve spiritual heights not through sorrow and suffering, but through the radiant flight of an exultant soul liberated from the chains of karma (!), although Dostoevsky would never have chosen to express himself in that way."

(Maria Carlson, No Religion Higher Than Truth: A History of the Theosophical Movement in Russia 1875-1922 Princeton University 1993, page 229, footnote to Chapter 5: Theosophical Doctrine: An Outline.

(Corboy note: I am not sure, but perhaps this alludes to the kind of dream like primary process thought one encounters in dreams or in the thought process of children too young to be capable of former logic.

This is richly creative for artists, but incompatible with adult logic and scientific and historical problem solving.

If one cannot retain logical grasp of such material, that means that one is always left insecure and in need of a 'Master'.

It is not ones own fault -- the text has been written out in a manner that mimics adult logic but that is actually pre-logical and possibly for some readers, could be hypnotic due to induction of confusion technique. )

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At age 22 Bailey did evangelical work in connection with the YMCA and the British Army.[13] This took her to India where, in 1907, she met her future husband, Walter Evans. Together they moved to America where Evans became an Episcopalian priest.[14] However, this marriage did not last. She stated that her husband mistreated her and in one of his fits of temper, threw her down the stairs.[15] Bailey pushed for and received a divorce. She left with their three children; after formal separation in 1915. Then followed a difficult period in which she worked as a factory hand to support herself and the children.[11][16][17][18]

Bailey's break was not only with her Christian husband, but with Christianity in general. In her autobiography she wrote that "a rabid, orthodox Christian worker [had] become a well-known occult teacher."[19]

[edit] With the Theosophical Society

In 1915 Bailey discovered the Theosophical Society and the work of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (Bailey, pp 134–136).

Theosophical Society states that Bailey became involved in 1917.[20]

Theosophist Joy Mills states that in 1918 she became a member of the Esoteric Section of the society.[21] Theosophist Bruce F. Campbell notes, "She quickly rose to a position of influence in the American Section of the Adyar society, moving to its headquarters at Krotona in Hollywood. She became editor of its magazine, The Messenger, and member of the committee responsible for Krotona."[22]

Bailey claimed to recognize Koot Hoomi, the master who had visited her in her childhood, from a portrait she saw in the Shrine Room of the Theosophical Society. (Bailey, pp 156).[23] Bailey wrote much about those she called the "Masters of the Wisdom", which she believed to be a brotherhood of enlightened sages working under the guidance of "the Christ." In part, she stated her writings were an effort to clarify the nature of these Masters, and their work.[24][edit] "The Tibetan", split from Theosophy, and second marriage

Bailey wrote that, in 1919, she was contacted by a Master known as The Tibetan (later associated with the initials D.K., and eventually the name Djwhal Khul). Bailey stated that after initial resistance, she was eventually persuaded to write down the communications from this source. She wrote for 30 years, from 1919 to 1949.[2] The result was 24 published books on ancient wisdom, philosophy, religion, contemporary events, science, psychology, nations, astrology, and healing.

Also in 1919, 32nd degree Freemason Foster Bailey (1888–1977), who was to be her second husband, became National Secretary of the Theosophical Society. (Bailey, p. 157)[25] They married in 1921.[26]

The Theosophist published the first few chapters of her first work, Initiation, Human and Solar, but then stopped for reasons Bailey called "theosophical jealousy and reactionary attitude."[27]

Bailey "objected to the 'neo-Theosophy' of Annie Besant" and worked with Foster Bailey to gain more power in the American Section.[27]

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Theosophy's Shadow
by Nicholas Weeks

Men must learn to love the truth before they thoroughly believe it.1

This article is intended mainly for those attracted to the New Age books of Alice A. Bailey.

Her claim that her teachings came from the same Occult Brotherhood that taught HP Blavatsky, the founder of the modern Theosophical Movement, is not valid.

This short piece is not about whether Bailey's writings are inspiring, wonderful or contain any truth; but simply whether HPB and AAB had the same mentors, as claimed by Bailey.

Bailey's guide professed to be the same Djual Khool that was one of HPB's teachers.

Bailey also declared that her guru was the same Master Koot Hoomi that Blavatsky knew. This paper will propose that the so-called Tibetan and the Hierarchy of Masters portrayed in Bailey's books, were not Djual Khool and the Adept Brotherhood known to HPB.

Bailey asserted that her teachings are grounded in and do not oppose in any fundamental way Theosophy as lived and taught by HPB and her Gurus.

This assertion is false. Her books are rooted in the pseudo-theosophy pioneered by CW Leadbeater.

For example, one of CWL's favorite revelations was the return to earth of "Maitreya" the Christ. Bailey accepted this fantasy.

She placed an immense spiritual value on the Great Invocation2 which is supposed to induce Christ and his Masters to leave their hidden ashrams, enter into major cities and begin to dictate the redemption of Aquarian society.

Contrariwise, the Theosophy of HPB and her Gurus emphasizes reliance on the Christos principle within each person.

As Blavatsky explained: "[Christian theology] enforces belief in the Descent of the Spiritual Ego into the Lower Self; [Theosophy] inculcates the necessity of endeavouring to elevate oneself to the Christos... state."3 The discovery and altruistic expression of our innate divinity uplifts each individual and thus, very slowly, all of humanity.

Channels such as Bailey are sincere and convinced that their inner voices and visions are real Masters. Unhappily, sincerity is no protection from delusion.

In 1884 Master KH wrote to a psychic of that time, giving an explanation for the befuddling of a channel or seer.

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Since you have scarcely learned the elements of self-control, in psychism, you must suffer bad consequences. You draw to yourself the nearest and strongest influences " often evil " and absorb them, and are psychically stifled or narcotised by them. The airs become peopled with resuscitated phantoms. They give you false tokens, misleading revelations, deceptive images. Your vivid creative fancy evokes illusive Gurus and chelas [disciples], and puts into their mouths words coined the instant before in the mint of your mind, unknown to yourself. The false appear as real, as the true, and you have no exact method of detection since you are yet prone to force your communications to agree with your preconceptions.4

Efforts to discern reality from illusion must not be confined to our study and meditation times, but should also pervade our ordinary daily life.

Should devotees of Bailey wish to compare closely the main principles of real Theosophy with their present faith, they might consider using some of the three methods mentioned in this article. Hopefully, followers of Bailey will not rely exclusively on her own explanations.

Surely, if she really teaches the same basic Theosophy as HPB, one could resolve any conflicts between their teachings without acceding to AAB's every proclamation. The template of basic Theosophy is in the original writings of HPB and her Gurus.

Bailey's key teachings must match this template or they cannot be from the same sources that taught HPB.

1) Contrast primary goals and objectives. One such purpose of the real Brotherhood was expressed by Koot Hoomi, the actual Guru of Djual Khool and supposed mentor of Bailey's Tibetan guide.

The God of the Theologians is simply an imaginary power... Our chief aim is to deliver humanity of this nightmare, to teach man virtue for its own sake, and to walk in life relying on himself instead of leaning on a theological crutch, that for countless ages was the direct cause of nearly all human misery... The best Adepts have searched the Universe during millenniums and found nowhere the slightest trace of [God], but throughout, the same immutable, inexorable law.5

Bailey's Tibetan theologian (the supposed disciple of KH, the author of the passage above) gives his view of deity and law.

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A law presupposes a superior being who, gifted with purpose, and aided by intelligence, is so coordinating his forces that a plan is being... matured... A law is but the spiritual impulse, incentive and life manifestation of that Being in which [a person] lives and moves. [A law] which is sweeping him and all God's creatures on to a glorious consummation.6

This superior being is gifted and aided from the Supreme Being with purpose and intelligence, no self-induced evolution needed for him. This deity is certainly a law unto himself, which is just what the Church has preached for hundreds of years. God's law will simply sweep all of us up and away to some sublime end. One just needs to "pass... through himself as much of that [Being's] spiritual life impulse"7 as one can. This New Age theology sounds familiar. Her Tibetan has just replaced that old, prosaic God and His angelic cloud of witnesses with the Solar Logos and his devas. Jesus and his disciples are supplanted by Maitreya Christ and his disciples, the Masters of the Hierarchy.

But does the problem of personal God or impersonal Principle really matter? The Master Koot Hoomi answered a similar query long ago.

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You say it matters nothing whether these laws are the expression of the will of an intelligent conscious God, as you think, or constitute the inevitable attributes of an unintelligent, unconscious "God," as I hold. I say, it matters everything... Immutable laws cannot arise, since they are eternal and uncreated; propelled in the Eternity and... God himself, if such a thing existed, could never have the power of stopping them.8

Koot Hoomi also wrote that the "very ABC of what I know" and "the rock upon which the secrets of the occult universe" are "encrusted" is the certainty of there being no personal God, only the infinite mind's "regular unconscious throbbings of the eternal and universal pulse of Nature."9

Bailey's view that the Theosophical Movement revolves around humanity invoking an avatar and his hierarchy is foreign and opposed to Theosophy as taught by HPB and the Adepts.

Theosophists "try to replace fruitless and useless prayer by meritorious and good-producing actions."10

Bailey recommended chanting the Great Invocation to supplicate and vacuum forth from their high plane, our saviors, the Christ and his Masters. As if Masters and avatars are too nonchalant, ignorant of mankind's trials or powerless to come forth and help us, without millions first imploring them.

Granted, the question of why and how avatars descend is profound. HPB's teachings mention causes and conditions such as a divine seed for all avatars, certain time cycles and the Spiritual Sun being a source.11 Bhavani Shankar, a disciple of KH, wrote that the Divine Principle sometimes responds to someone attaining high Adeptship by sending forth an avatar.12

As for the Occult Brotherhood encouraging humanity to pray for (and even supplying the invocation for) avatars and Masters to come forth and usher in the New Age, real Theosophy says: "work is prayer."13

While entreaty by the suffering masses for divine aid (with or without the Great Invocation) is an understandable, ancient attitude, it has no invocative pull on avatars or Adepts, as Bailey suggests.

The Occult Brotherhood knows the karmic cycles of mankind and is constantly helping us; even supplying avatars when karma permits, not just when we want them.

Many people are eager to have a constant presence of godly elder brothers guiding their lives and civilization; which happens to be just what Bailey and Leadbeater and much of the New Age promises, thus its popularity.

Spiritual evolution, says Theosophy, takes place because of our "self-induced and self-devised efforts,"14 not from our prayers and invocations for Christ and his Hierarchy to govern civilization.

Unlike a traditional view of avatars, such as found in the Bhagavad Gita (4, 6-8) which says the Lord comes when virtue is almost extinct, Bailey's advisor teaches that the Christ will come only after humanity has shown good faith by refining itself psychically and socially.

Much of Bailey's writings revolve around preparing the reader for this advent by urging purificatory study and meditation on, and proclamation of, the reappearing Christ and his Masters.

This preparation requires extensive reading and pondering on the occult technology of this world's political and social relations, plus initiation, psychology, telepathy, astrology, healing, the seven rays, etc.

Her books inform us about the Hierarchy, (of this planet, of the solar system, of Sirius and beyond) its constitution, work, goals, principal members and their projects.

The Brotherhood known to HPB was not called "Occult" for nothing; very little was given out about Them. Nor were comprehensive, detailed volumes on occult subjects furnished by HPB; unlike Bailey's artificial esoteric treatises.

Why? Because pondering on descriptions of superior beings and the occult side of the universe will be of very little help spiritually.

Furthermore, if the teachings are patently spurious, as Bailey's are, our imagination is stimulated and overfilled with images and concepts that lead us far away from the real Adepts and our rightful spiritual destiny.

This trumpeting of Christ's arrival with his Hierarchy has been going on for many decades.

Surely when a genuine avatar descends he is not announced by thousands of promoters wailing and hailing for years beforehand. HPB wrote that to draw near the Masters "can only be done by rising to the spiritual plane where the Masters are, and not by attempting to draw them down to ours."15

Consider another HPB quote and note the spiritual self-reliance and impersonal nature of divinity advanced.

Each human being is an incarnation of his God [Higher Self]... As many men on earth, so many Gods in Heaven; and yet these Gods are in reality One, for at the end of every period of activity, they are withdrawn like the rays of the setting sun into the Parent Luminary, the Non-Manifested Logos, which in its turn is merged into the One Absolute...

Our prayers and supplications are vain, unless to potential words we add potent acts, and make the aura which surrounds each one of us so pure and divine that the God within us may act outwardly... [

A] prayer, unless pronounced mentally and addressed to one's "Father" in the silence and solitude of one's "closet," must have more frequently disastrous than beneficial results...16

The fact that for thousands of years most people have not worshipped their own inner divinity as suggested above, is one reason why the Theosophical Movement was reborn a century ago, to try to counter this separative tendency to invoke an external, personal deity.

Since Bailey's Great Invocation is to be droned by the masses in this conventional way, it opposes the self-reliant, philosophically atheistic attitude (and silent practice) suggested by the Brotherhood. This is another point in favor of Bailey's guide not being Djual Khool.

So what should a follower of Theosophy rely on (and recommend to others) to subdue their passions and selfishness and thus foster planetary redemption?

"His Higher Self, the divine spirit, or the God in him, and...his Karma."17

Karma means altruism in thought, word and deed now.

It means practicing "virtue for its own sake," not in order to speed the descent of Christ and the Hierarchy.

To put it simply, as one of the Masters wrote to Olcott in the 1870s: "Act as though we had no existence. Do your duty as you see it and leave the results to take care of themselves. Expect nothing from us, yet be ready for anything."18

A letter from an Adept to Annie Besant warned her about the worshipful attitude towards the Masters developing in her Theosophical Society. Bailey was critical of the TS and yet the jargon and gush she wrote about the Hierarchy over 30 years (1919- 49) was as bad, if not worse, than that in the TS of the same period. The Adept wrote:

Is the worship of a new Trinity made up of the Blessed M[orya], Upasika [HPB] and yourself [Besant] to take the place of exploded creeds? We ask not for the worship of ourselves... The cant about "Masters" must be silently but firmly put down. Let the devotion and service be to that Supreme Spirit alone of which one is a part. Namelessly and silently we work and the continual references to ourselves and the repetition of our names raises up a confused aura that hinders our work.19

This Trinity of HPB, M and AB was (thankfully) never put forward by Bailey. Instead she chose the fantastic Triune God of Manu, Mahachohan and the Bodhisattva, another revelation from CW Leadbeater.

If the Adepts' work was being hindered by the "confused aura" exuded by the references to themselves in 1900, ponder how much their work, up to the present time, must have been thwarted by Bailey's books, Great Invocation, Arcane School etc.

2) Contrast key terms or themes.

One of the most pervasive themes in AAB's work and writing is the feverish pursuit of spiritual status.

Her Tibetan's first two books20 were dedicated to initiation and occult meditation.

Several other books focussed exclusively on her variant of discipleship and the spiritual path. Nearly every text she channelled is strongly colored by an advocacy of discipleship.

After less than five years of being the medium for her Tibetan, she formed the Arcane School.

This school is just the sort of nursery for occultists HPB's Gurus would have nothing to do with.

Bailey's book on occult meditation even gives the floor plan and curriculum for a prophesied occult college. Master KH wrote that one "who is not as pure as a young child had better leave chelaship alone."21 Blavatsky told the American theosophists:

The [Theosophical] Society was not founded as a nursery for forcing a supply of Occultists - as a factory for the manufacture of Adepts. It was intended to stem the current of materialism... By "materialism" is meant not only an anti-philosophical negation of pure spirit, and, even more, materialism in conduct and action... but also the fruits of a disbelief in all but material things... A disbelief which has led many... into a blind belief in the materialization of Spirit.22

The Secret Doctrine mentions the "depraved tastes" of humanity that craves "the materialization of the ever-immaterial and Unknowable Principle."23 Alice Bailey's writings cater to the human weakness for having divinity and divine fields made understandable to our personal mind.

Rather than uplift our personal awareness to our actual spiritual nature and know Spirit in truth, most of us prefer the comfortable fiction.

Another key theme is the nature and relationship to humanity, of the Occult Brotherhood.

According to Bailey one of the prime aims of the Hierarchy was to prepare humanity for the reappearance of the Christ.24 In addition to Christ's Second Coming there will be an externalization of the Hierarchy. Part of this advent involves several of the Masters descending from the etheric plane and taking up lodgings in various cities around the globe. An entire book,25 plus many passages in her other tomes, expound on this theme. The Masters, as dutiful planetary civil servants, will apportion tasks concerning economics, religion, education, etc. amongst themselves. At that point they will proceed with the task of directing the planned new world order.

On the other hand, HPB and her Gurus present the Brotherhood as quite aloof from society's affairs. Which is not surprising since they are liberated from self-centered, worldly concerns and have no interest in greasing the wheels of our banal, materialistic civilization. As Bodhisattvas They do help, but being creatures of the immutable Law of Karma, "can not stop the world from going in its destined direction."26 HPB wrote:

The more spiritual the Adept becomes, the less can he meddle with mundane, gross affairs and the more he has to confine himself to a spiritual work... The very high Adepts, therefore, do help humanity, but only spiritually: they are constitutionally incapable of meddling with worldly affairs... It is only the chelas that can live in the world, until they rise to a certain degree.27

3) Contrast methods of teaching. This is not a new debate. With respect to Bailey's insular teaching method, which uses constant declaration with little or no supporting evidence, here is what Alice Cleather, a member of HPB's Inner Group, wrote in 1929:

Boiled down, what does it all amount to? Simply Mrs. Bailey's calm, unchecked (and uncheckable) assertions, for the validity of which she claims the equally unchecked (and uncheckable) "authority" of her "Tibetan".28
The late Victor Endersby pointed out:

There is a gulf as wide as the world between the presentation by H.P.B. and that of Bailey, in the matter of mode alone. H.P.B.'s was accompanied by voluminous evidence from many sources... Nothing of this appears in the Bailey output... the entire structure rests on her ipse dixit29 alone. One thing is certain: whatever her "K.H." and "Djwhal Khul" may have been, they were not the mentors of H.P.B. That much is surely proven by the texts as anything could be.30

In 1882 HPB's Master Morya wrote:

A constant sense of abject dependence upon a Deity which he regards as the sole source of power makes a man lose all self-reliance and the spurs to activity and initiative. Having begun by creating a father and guide unto himself, he becomes like a boy and remains so to his old age, expecting to be led by the hand on the smallest as well as the greatest events of life... The Founders31 prayed to no Deity in beginning the Theosophical Society, nor asked his help since.

Are we expected to become ... nursing mothers...? Did we help the Founders? No; they were helped by the inspiration of self-reliance, and sustained by their reverence for the rights of man, and their love for a country [India]...

Your sins? The greatest of them is your fathering upon your God the task of purging you of them. This is no creditable piety, but an indolent and selfish weakness. Though vanity would whisper to the contrary, heed only your common sense.32

Although the "sinners" mentioned by Morya were some Hindus of a century ago, Alice Bailey, her Tibetan and their followers share the same habit, fathering upon their Hierarchy and Planetary Logos, their indolent and selfish wish that Sanat Kumara, Christ and the Masters will purge humanity of sin.

These are just a few of the topics (barely touched on) that must be studied closely by those who wish to understand how inimical Theosophy and pseudo-theosophy are.
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Notes


1. Blavatsky: Collected Writings Theosophical Publishing House, vol. 11, 49.

2. It can be found in any of Bailey's books.

3. The Key to Theosophy, Theosophical University Press, 155.

4. From a portion of a KH letter to Laura Holloway; written in the summer of 1884. See the full letter (number 17) online at: [www.blavatskyarchives.com]

5. The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett 2nd. ed., TUP, 53, 142-43.

6. A Treatise on White Magic, Lucis Publishing 10-11.

7. Op. Cit.

8. The Mahatma Letters, 143, 141.

9. Ibid 143, 138.

10. The Key to Theosophy, 70.

11. See Blavatsky: Collected Writings, vol. 14 and The Secret Doctrine.

12. See The Doctrine of the Bhagavad Gita, Concord Grove Press, chapter III.

13. Blavatsky: Collected Writings, vol. 9, 69.

14. The Secret Doctrine, TUP, vol. 1, 17.

15. Blavatsky: Collected Writings, vol. 12, 492.

16. Ibid, 533-35.

17. The Key to Theosophy, 73.

18. "Address of the President-Founder," The Theosophist, Aug. 1906, 829-30.

19. The Eclectic Theosophist, Sep./Oct. 1987.

20. Initiation Human and Solar and Letters on Occult Meditation.

21. Letters From the Masters of the Wisdom, First Series, TPH, 1948, 34.

22. Blavatsky: Collected Writings, vol. 9, 244.

23. Volume II, 503.

24. As witness her book The Reappearance of the Christ, Lucis Publishing, 1948.

25. See her The Externalization of the Hierarchy.

26.The Mahatma Letters to A.P. Sinnett in Chronlogical Sequence, TPH, 1993, 474.

27. Blavatsky: Collected Writings, vol. 6, 247.

28. Quoted in Theosophical Notes Special Paper, Sept. 1963, 14.

29. Latin -- he himself said it: an assertion made but not proved.

30. Theosophical Notes Special Paper, Sept. 1963, 40.

31. HP Blavatsky, WQ Judge and HS Olcott.

32. Letters From the Masters of the Wisdom, First Series, 107