Theos-Talk Archives (January 2005 Message tt00633)

The auto biography of Alice Bailey is online, I thought would be
interesting to post here an excert of it where she mentions
about her link and some experiences in the Theosophical Society. 

Regards,

Erica


Autobiography of Alice A. Bailey - Chapter IV

The original platform of the T.S. had been founded on the autonomy
of the lodges within the various national sections but, at the time
that Foster Bailey and I came into the work, this whole situation
had been fundamentally changed. Those people were put into office in
any lodge who were E.S. members and through them Mrs. Besant and the
leaders in Adyar controlled every section and every lodge. Unless
one accepted the dictum of the E.S. members in every lodge, one was
in disgrace and it was almost impossible for the individual,
therefore, to work in the Lodge. The sectional magazines and the
international magazine, called "The Theosophist," were preoccupied
with personality quarrels. Articles were given up to the attack or
the defense of some individual. A strong phase of psychism was
sweeping through the society due to the psychic pronouncements of
Mr. Leadbeater and his extraordinary control over Mrs. Besant. The
aftermath of the Leadbeater scandal was still causing much talk.
Mrs. Besant's pronouncements about Krishnamurti were splitting the
society wide open. Orders were going out from Adyar, based upon what
were claimed to be orders to the Outer Head by one of the Masters,
that every member of the Theosophical Society had to throw his
interests into one or all of the three modes of work - the Co-
Masonic Order, the Order of Service and an educational movement. If
you did not do so you were regarded as being disloyal, inattentive
to the requests of the Masters and a bad Theosophist.
Books were being published at Adyar by Mr. Leadbeater [171] that
were psychic in their implications and impossible of verification,
carrying a strong note of astralism. One of his major works, Man:
Whence, How and Whither, was a book that proved to me the basic
untrustworthiness of what he wrote. It is a book that outlines the
future and the work of the Hierarchy of the future, and the curious
and arresting thing to me was that the majority of the people slated
to hold high office in the Hierarchy and in the future coming
civilization were all Mr. Leadbeater's personal friends. I knew some
of these people - worthy, kind, and mediocre, none of them
intellectual giants and most of them completely unimportant. I had
traveled so widely and had met so many people whom I knew to be more
effective in world service, more intelligent in serving the Christ,
and more truly exponents of brotherhood that my eyes were opened to
the futility and uselessness of this kind of literature.

Owing to all these various causes many people were leaving the
Theosophical Society in disgust and bewilderment. I have often
wondered what would have been the fate of the T.S. if they had had
the grit to stay in, if they had refused to be ousted, and if they
had fought for the spiritual basis of the movement. But they did not
and a great number of the worthwhile people got out, feeling
frustrated and handicapped and unable to work. I, personally, never
resigned from the society and it is only during the past few years
that I have let my annual dues lapse. I am writing about this
somewhat at length because it was this situation or background that
made it necessary for changes to take place and out of these our
work for the next twenty years took shape.

The disciples of all the Masters are everywhere in the world,
working along the many different lines to bring humanity into the
light and to materialize the kingdom of [172] God on earth, and the
attitude of the Theosophical Society in regarding itself as the only
channel and its refusal to recognize other groups and organizations
as integral and equally important parts of the Theosophical Movement
(not the Theosophical Society) in the world is largely responsible
for its loss of prestige. It seems rather late now for the T.S., to
mend its ways and to emerge from isolation and separateness and to
form part of the great Theosophical Movement which is today sweeping
the world. This movement is not only expressing itself through the
various occult and esoteric bodies, but through the labor unions,
through the plans for world unity and postwar rehabilitation,
through the new vision in the political field, and through the
recognition of the needs of humanity everywhere. The degeneration of
the initial, beautiful impulse is heartbreaking to those of us who
loved the principles and truths for which Theosophy originally stood.

http://laluni.helloyou.ws/netnews/bk/autobiography/auto1059.html



Erica Letzerich .'.






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