RESPONSE TO AN ALICE BAILEY DEFENDER

(The following text is the answer that Richard Robb, who is the founder of the world's most important theosophical bookstore "The Wizards Bookshelf", gave to a follower of Alice Bailey.)

Hello Dick,

To comment on the Stan Treloar letter in which he writes:

-       “I have yet to see a valid, let alone intelligent reason why Bailey should be deemed so foul by our ultra conservative, fundamentalist theosophists.”

Its unlikely that Mr. Treloar will ever concede any reason at variance with his bias, but let us show why the writings of Alice Bailey, are not theosophy.

In labeling adherents of original teachings as “ultra conservative and fundamentalist”, we see the familiar pattern of the revisionist, who alters facts for current agendas.

The real problem is the claim by Bailey’s followers, that theirs teachings are somehow theosophical.

Infatuated by Leadbeater, the Bailey’s writings are so biased towards Churchianity that it’s hardly possible to find a page without Church overtones, and the word “God” used in extension.

And in concert with Leadbeater, principles in nature are anthropomorphized as in “the Third Logos issued a ray from His throat chakra...etc”.

The spook pretending to be Djwal Khul is no different than the one who hoodwinked Sinnett after he hypnotized Laura Holloway.

BUT WHAT IS THE POSITION OF THEOSOPHY?

Here is the response:

« Christianity may be the official religion of the dominant races, its profession the easy road to respectability and fortune; but it has no rewards that we court, and the Theosophical Society is meant to be a platform of true brotherhood, a bond of amicable tolerance, a fulcrum by which the lever of Progress may move the mass of Ignorance.

It has no religion propagate, no one creed to endorse: it stands for truth alone, and nothing can make us deviate from this which we consider the path of our Duty and for which we have sacrificed everything.

Our motto will stand forever:

“there is no Religion higher than TRUTH”

»

(Theosophist, Vol. IV, Supplement to Nº11, August 1883, p.2)

The success of Bailey (a hapless medium) and her mentor Leadbeater (an untrained psychic) is due to the gullibility of mystically inclined church people, a barrage of glamorous assertions and grandiose pronouncements, and the availability of a vast theosophical literature to play with.

Thus, their spurious writings have misguided the public for 75 years as to what theosophy really is.

They are the inventors of Christian or rather “churchian Theosophy” which is, in itself, a contradiction of terms and has nothing to do with either the true teachings of Jehoshua of Pantera, nor of the Ancient Wisdom of Orient.

Defenders of Leadbeater or Bailey are free to believe what they will; but when they claim it is Theosophy, they exercise a consummate deceit and a ludicrous falsehood, which a simple comparison will prove.

And the following excerpts will help to indicate the position of basic theosophy:

« I dread the appearance in print of our philosophy as expounded by Mr. Hume.

He makes of us agnostics!

We do not believe in God because, so far, we have no proof etc.

This is preposterously ridiculous; if he published what I read, I will have Blavatsky or Djwal Khul deny the whole thing; as I cannot permit our sacred philosophy to be so disfigured.

He says that people will not accept the whole truth; that unless we humor them with a hope that there may be a “loving Father and Creator of ALL in heaven” our philosophy will be rejected a priori.

In such a case the less such these ignorant men hear our doctrine, the better for both. If they do not want the whole truth, they are welcome. But never will they find us (at any rate) compromising with and pandering to public prejudices. »

(Mahatma Letter 54, p.304-305)

Indeed, the whole purpose of Theosophy is to lift men’s minds out of the superstition of revealed religion, with its debased concepts of universal deity made into an interfering anthropomorphic personal god, of dead letter ritualism, blind faith, the “second coming”, remission of sins (and thus implied lack of personal responsibility), and all the rest that tend to externalize the light that is to be found within man’s own conscience.

And that's why Master Kuthumi also wrote:

« And now, after making due allowance for evils that are natural and cannot be avoided—and so few are they that I challenge the whole host of Western metaphysicians to call them evils or to trace them to an independent cause—I will point out the greatest, the chief cause of nearly two thirds of the evils that pursue humanity ever since that cause became a power.

It is religion under whatever form and in whatsoever nation. It is the sacerdotal caste, the priesthood and the churches; it is in those illusions that man looks upon as sacred, that he has to search out that multitude of evils which is the great curse of humanity and that almost overwhelms mankind.

Ignorance created Gods and cunning took advantage of the opportunity.

Remember the sum of human misery will never be diminished unto that day when the better portion of humanity destroys in the name of Truth, morality, and universal charity, the altars of their false gods. »

(Mahatma Letter 10, p.58)

Blavatsky makes an unequivocal statement regarding “improvising” to accommodate the masses, and revisions designed to be “popular,” which Theosophy can never be, in this era:

« Ready to lay down our life any day for THEOSOPHY—that great cause of the Universal Brotherhood for which we live and breathe - and willing to shield, if need be, every true theosophist with our own body, we yet denounce as openly and as virulently the distortion of the original lines upon which the Theosophical Society was primarily built, and the gradual loosening and undermining of the original system by the sophistry of many of its highest officers. ... The wise horticulturist uproots the parasitic herbs, and will hardly lose time in using his garden shears to cut off the heads of poisonous weeds. »

(Is Denunciation a Duty? Lucifer, Vol. III, Decembre 1888; B.C.W., Vol. X, p.198-199)

In other words, ferret out wrong ideas, not individuals. And the “new dispensation” which claims to be “in tune with the times” is precisely that.

The defenders of Leadbeater and Bailey says it has superseded the “out of date fundamentalist theosophy,” with a modern enlightened system.

But in fact, that new wave of pseudo-theosophy focuses on psychism instead of spirituality, since it accepts hatha and kundalini yoga (radically imbalanced toward the physical) with its emphasis on chakras of the body, hypnotism, survival of the personality after death (rendering reincarnation absurd), channeling (mediumship), prayer, past life recalls, and terminology borrowed heavily from the church pulpit.

In short, everything that stands in direct opposition to the Ancient Wisdom. And instead they make little emphasis on altruism, brotherhood, or Buddhist philosophy.

Only the hollow glamour of psychic tots, permissiveness, and external observances. They are definitely in tune with these times as physical technology runs rampant, bereft of philosophy.

The psychic and intellectual ego is satiated ad infinitum, while the spirit is left to starve.

No. Theosophy changes not one iota with the cycles of time, or the fads that boil to the surface in the cauldron of society.

The first Law of Nature is equilibrium . . . balance . . . equity. We call it Karma.

The Middle Way is no sophistry, but a mirror of Nature, requisite for attunement.

Discretion, altruism, and learning through correspondences and deductive reasoning (from universals to particulars) are the measures of real Theosophy. Instead revelations and assertions of pseudo-theosophy lead nowhere.

For further reading:

• The Elder Brother, by Gregory Tillett, RKP, London, 1983, 349 pages. (biog of CWL)
• Theosophy Versus Neo-Theosophy, by Margaret Thomas, 1990. Isis Books, M-793, Road 7, Napoleon, Ohio. 140 pages.
• The Pseudo-Occultism of Mrs. A. Bailey, by Cleather & Crump, Manila, 1929; 1980. 34 pages.
• Misleading Mayavic Ideations: The Neo-Theosophy of C.W. Leadbeater and Annie Besant, by Ray Morgan, Tucson, AZ 1976. 34 pages. 8 1/2x11.
• A Study of the Arcane School of Alice E. Bailey, by Victor Endersby. Theosophical Notes, 1963. 45 pages. 8 1/2x11. (Theosophical Notes was issued monthly from 1950-1978, Napa, California.)

(Source: Magazine Hight Contry Theosophist, may, 1996, p.11-14)