ALICE BAILEY'S EXPERIENCES WITH THE SECRET DOCTRINE

 

 

On this matter Alice Bailey in her Unfinished Autobiography commented the following:

 

I met two very old ladies who lived side by side in two cottages — indispensable to each other and quarreling all the time. They were both of them personal pupils of H. P. Blavatsky. They had trained with her and studied with her.

 

I had just made the acquaintance of her great book "The Secret Doctrine." I was intrigued by it but completely bewildered. I couldn't make head or tail of it. It is a difficult book for beginners for it is badly put together and lacks continuity. H. P. B. starts with one subject, wanders off to another, takes up a third at length and —if you search— you will find her returning to her original theme sixty or seventy pages further on.

 

Claude Falls Wright, who was H. P. Blavatsky's secretary, told me himself that in writing this monumental work (for that is what it is) H. P. B. would write page after page, never numbering the pages, and simply throw them on the floor beside her as she finished them. When she was through writing for the day Mr. Wright and her other helpers would collect the sheets and endeavour to get them into some kind of order and, as he said, the wonder was that the book is as clear as it is. Its publication, however, was a great world event and the teaching it contains has revolutionised human thought, little as people may realise it.

 

I regard the hours of study that I expended over it as some of the most valuable hours of my life and the background and knowledge it gave me has made all the best of my work along occult lines possible. I sat up in bed reading "The Secret Doctrine" at night and began to neglect reading my Bible, which I had been in the habit of doing. I liked the book and, at the same time, I disliked it cordially. I thought it was very badly written, incorrect and incoherent but I could not get away from it.

 

Then these two old ladies took me in hand. Day after day, for weeks, they taught me. I moved over into a little cottage so as to be near them. It was safe ground for the children, trees to climb, gardening to do and no care to make me anxious.

 

So, whilst they played, I would sit on the porch in one or other of the cottages and talk and listen. Many of H.P.B.'s personal pupils have helped me and have personally taken the trouble to see that I understood what it was that was happening to human thought through the publication of "The Secret Doctrine."

 

I have often been amused by the orthodox Theosophists who have disapproved of my presentation of theosophical truth. Few of them, if any, who have thus disapproved ever had the privilege of being taught by personal pupils of H.P.B. for weeks and months on end, and I'm pretty sure that, thanks to these old students, I have a clearer perception of what "The Secret Doctrine" was intended to convey than most of them. Why should I not? I was well taught and I am grateful.

 

 

I, in the meantime, had started a Secret Doctrine class and had rented a room on Madison Avenue where we could hold classes and see people by appointment.

 

This Secret Doctrine class was started in 1921 and was exceedingly well-attended. People from the various Theosophical societies and occult groups came regularly. Mr. Richard Prater, an old associate of W. Q. Judge and a pupil of H. P. Blavatsky came to my class one day and the next week turned his entire Secret Doctrine class over to me.

 

From the Secret Doctrine class arose groups of students all over the country who received the outlined lessons that I was giving to the class on Madison Avenue. These classes grew and prospered until they aroused definite Theosophical antagonism and I was warned by Dr. Jacob Bonggren that the classes were under attack.

 

Often in the late afternoon there were classes and I look back to those times in which I taught the fundamentals of the Secret Doctrine as some of the most profitable and satisfactory times in my life.

 

 

In many ways today H.P.B.'s book The Secret Doctrine is out of date and its approach to the Ageless Wisdom has little or no appeal to the modern generation. But those of us who really studied it and arrived at some understanding of its inner significance have a basic appreciation of the truth that no other book seems to supply.

 

H.P.B. said that the next interpretation of the Ageless Wisdom would be a psychological approach, and A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, which I published in 1925, is the psychological key to The Secret Doctrine. None of my books would have been possible had I not at one time made a very close study of The Secret Doctrine.

 

 

(Chapters 4 and 5)

 

 

 

 

 

 

OBSERVATIONS

 

It is false that Alice Bailey has studied The Secret Doctrine, because if that were true then Alice Bailey would have realized that what Charles Leadbeater taught is full of lies, and then she would not have made the huge mistake of copying this liar man.

 

It is also false that her book A Treatise on Cosmic Fire is the psychological key to The Secret Doctrine, since this book by Alice Bailey is full of falsehoods.

 

I have not found that Claude Falls Wright said what Alice Bailey said above, most likely that is false because several of Blavatsky's students stated that she was very thorough in the preparation of The Secret Doctrine.

 

And given what a liar Alice Bailey was, I have my doubts that she really knew and lived with several direct students of Blavatsky.