ALICE BAILEY'S INCURSION INTO THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

 

In her Unfinished Autobiography Alice Bailey recounts the experiences she had during her stay in the American section of the Adyar Theosophical Society, and the reasons that led her to leave that organization:

 

I had joined the Theosophical Lodge in Pacific Grove and was beginning to teach and hold classes.  I remember the first book which I started to expound.  It was that great book by Mrs. Besant, "A Study in Consciousness."  I knew nothing about consciousness and I could not possibly define it but I kept six pages ahead of the class and somehow managed to get away with it.  They never discovered how little I knew.  I know that no matter what the class learned I learned a great deal.

 

It was towards the close of 1917 that Walter Evans went out with the Y.M.C.A., to France and my friend, the Bishop, arranged that I should have an allotment of one hundred dollars a month from his salary.  This was sent direct to me by the Y.M.C.A., until his work with them ceased.

 

This, with my own small income (which was beginning to dribble through more regularly) enabled me to drop my work as a sardine packer and make other plans.  My work with the Theosophical Lodge in Pacific Grove was having results and I was beginning to get a little bit known as a student.

 

It was suggested to me that in view of the fact that my finances were somewhat stabilised I go down to Hollywood where the headquarters of the Theosophical Society, at Krotona, were to be found.  I decided to make the move and towards the end of 1917 we went down.  I found a small house, close to the T.S. headquarters, and I settled there with the children, in a cottage on Beechwood Drive.

 

Hollywood was relatively unspoiled in those days.  The movie industry was, of course, the major industry, but the town remained at that time quite simple.  The main streets were all lined with pepper trees and there was not the breathlessness, the mad rush, the brittle brilliancy and the glare of modern Hollywood today.  It was then a gentler and sweeter place.

 

Life in Hollywood was now easier for me.  The children were old enough to go to school and kindergarten.  I had many friends and the grounds at Krotona, the Theosophical Headquarters, were delightful.

 

Krotona was a community of about five hundred people, some living on the grounds and some elsewhere in Hollywood or Los Angeles.  There were lecture halls, class rooms, a shrine room where members of the Esoteric Section met and a cafeteria which fed the people.  The place was beautifully run and, when I got there at first, it seemed to me to be a paradise on earth.  Everybody there appeared to me to be deeply spiritual.

 

I thought the leaders and teachers were at least initiates of high degree.  I attended meetings and classes and learnt a great deal for which I am very grateful.

 

After I had been there a short time I was asked to run the cafeteria and —ignorance being bliss— I joyously accepted the responsibility.  It was, of course, strictly vegetarian, and I had been a vegetarian ever since coming across the Theosophical teaching.  My children had never tasted meat or chicken or fish and I suffered from the normal superiority complex which is often an outstanding characteristic of a vegetarian.

 

I ran the cafeteria and learnt to be a good vegetarian cook.  My first chore at Krotona was emptying the garbage pails, so I began at the very bottom, and I watched the people—most of them unknown to me—with great interest.  I liked so many of them so very much.  I cordially disliked a few.

 

 

It was during this year, 1918, that I discovered for the first time who it was that had come to see me in Scotland when I was a girl of fifteen.  I had been admitted into the Esoteric Section (E.S.) of the Theosophical Society and was attending their meetings.

 

(Note from Cid: the esoteric section was initially a section that was reserved for people who wanted to engage more in their spiritual and esoteric development, but Annie Besant later transformed the esoteric section of the Adyar Theosophical Society into a farce that was to her service.)

 

The first time that I went into the Shrine Room I saw the customary pictures of the Christ and the Masters of the Wisdom, as the Theosophists call Them.  To my surprise there, looking straight at me, was a picture of my visitor.  There was no mistake.  This was the man who had walked into my aunt's drawing room, and it was not the Master Jesus.

 

I was inexperienced then and rushed to one of the senior people at Krotona and asked for the name of this Master.  They told me that it was the Master K. H. and then I made a basic mistake for which I have since paid the price.  Believing that they would be pleased and not intending in the very least to be boastful I said, in all innocence, "Oh, then, He must be my Master, for I've talked with Him and been under His guidance ever since."

 

This person looked at me and said, with rather a withering inflection, "Am I to understand that you believe yourself to be a disciple?"

 

For the first time in my life I was up against the competitive technique of the Theosophical Society.  It was, however, a wholesome lesson for me and I profited thereby.  Learning to hold one's tongue is essential in group work, and one of the first lessons which any one affiliated with the Hierarchy has to learn.

 

During all this time the children were growing and learning and were increasingly a delight to me.  There was nothing in Walter Evans' very brief occasional letters to indicate a change of heart and I began again to consider the necessity of getting a divorce.  As the end of the war approached, I consulted a lawyer and was advised that I would have no difficulty.

 

 

In January, 1919, I met Foster Bailey and later, after I had been granted my divorce, we became engaged to be married.

 

During 1919 Foster Bailey and I grew more and more active in Theosophical work and associated very closely with us was Dr. Woodruff Shepherd.  I was then living on Beechwood Drive with the three children and Foster Bailey was living in a tent at Krotona.

 

He had been demobilised after the Armistice but had been on sick leave for months as he had crashed whilst piloting a plane, training army observers.  I had been introduced to him, after a lecture I had given at Krotona, by Dot Weatherhead, who not only introduced him to me but was also instrumental in introducing me to occult truth and to Krotona.

 

Towards the end of 1919 Mr. Bailey was made National Secretary of the Theosophical Society.  Dr. Shepherd was made Publicity Director and I became editor of the sectional magazine, The Messenger, and chairman of the committee which was running Krotona.  All phases of the work and all the different policies and principles governing the administration were, therefore, open to us.

 

The General Secretary, Mr. A. P. Warrington, was a close friend, and all the senior workers were friends and there seemed to be great harmony and a truly cooperative spirit.  Little by little, however, we discovered how superficial this harmony was.  Little by little we entered upon a most difficult and distressing time.

 

Our affection and personal loyalties were with our friends and co-executives, but our sense of justice and our adherence to the governing principles were constantly being outraged.

 

The truth of the matter was that the management of the Theosophical Society in the United States, and still more so in Adyar (the international centre), was at that time reactionary and old-fashioned whereas the new approach to life and truth, freedom of interpretation and impersonality were the characteristics which should have governed policies and methods but did not.

 

The society was founded for the establishing of universal brotherhood but it was degenerating into a sectarian group more interested in founding and sustaining lodges and increasing the membership than in reaching the general public with the truths of the Ageless Wisdom.

 

Their policy of admitting nobody into the E.S. for spiritual teaching unless they had been for two years a member of the T.S. is proof of this.

 

Why should spiritual teaching be withheld until a person had demonstrated for two years their loyalty to an organisation? 

 

Why should people be required to sever their connection with other groups and organisations and pledge their loyalty to what is called the "Outer Head" of the E.S. when the only loyalties which should be required are those dedicated to the service of one's fellowmen, the spiritual Hierarchy and, above all, one's own soul?

 

No personality has the right to ask spiritual pledges from other personalities.  The only pledge that any human being should give is, first of all, to his own inner divinity, the Soul, and later, to the Master under Whose guidance he can more efficiently serve his fellow-men.

 

 

I remember at one of the first E.S. meetings I attended Miss Poutz, who was the secretary of the E.S. at that time, made the astounding statement that no one in the world could be a disciple of the Masters of the Wisdom unless they had been so notified by Mrs. Besant.

 

That remark broke a glamour in me, although I did not speak of it at that time except to Foster Bailey.  I knew I was a disciple of the Master K. H. and had been as long as I could remember.  Mrs. Besant had evidently overlooked me.

 

I could not understand why the Masters, Who were supposed to have a universal consciousness, would only look for Their disciples in the ranks of the T.S.  I knew it could not be so.  I knew They could not be so limited in consciousness and later I met many people who were disciples of the Masters and who had never been in touch with the T.S. and had never even heard of it.  Just as I thought I had found a centre of spiritual light and understanding, I discovered I had wandered into another sect.

 

We discovered then that the E.S. completely dominated the T.S.  Members were good members if, and only if, they accepted the authority of the E.S.  If they agreed with all the pronouncements of the Outer Head and if they gave their loyalty to the people that the heads of the E.S. in every country endorsed.

 

Some of their pronouncements seemed ridiculous.  Many of the people endorsed were mediocre to the nth degree.  A number who were looked up to as initiates were not particularly intelligent or loving, and love and intelligence, in full measure, are the hall-mark of the initiate.

 

Amongst the advanced membership there was competition and claim making and, therefore, constant fighting between personalities—fighting that was not confined just to oral battles but which found its expression in magazine articles.  I shall never forget my horror one day when a man in Los Angeles said to me, "If you want to know what brotherhood is not, go and live at Krotona."  He did not know I lived there.

 

The whole situation was so serious and the split in the section so great between those who stood for brotherhood, for impersonality, for non claim-making and for dedication to the service of humanity that Foster cabled Mrs. Besant to the effect that if the E.S. did not cease dominating the T.S. the E.S. would soon be under very serious attack. 

 

About that time Mrs. Besant sent B. P. Wadia over to the States to investigate and find out what was going on, and official meetings were held with Wadia arbitrating.  Foster, Dr. Shepherd and myself, along with many others, represented the democratic side: Mr. Warrington, Miss Poutz and those ranged with them represented the side of authority and the domination of the E.S.

 

I had never before in my life been mixed up in an organisational row and I did not enjoy this period at all.  I loved some of the people on the other side very much and it distressed me exceedingly.  The trouble in time spread to the whole Section and members kept resigning.

 

In the meantime we had been working hard in our T.S. offices; the children were well; we were planning to get married as soon as things straightened out somewhat.

 

Our own income was quite seriously reduced.  The salaries at Krotona were ten dollars per week.  Walter Evans' money had ceased coming in since the divorce.  Foster had nothing at this time.  He had relinquished his legal practice at the time of the war though he had intended resuming it.

 

 

The T.S. situation was getting more and more difficult and plans were being made already for the convention of 1920, where the whole situation blew up.

 

Speaking of my interior experience, I had become as disillusioned with the T.S. as I had with orthodox Christianity but the situation was not so acute because great and basic truths had come to have meaning to me and I was not alone because Foster and I were already planning to get married.

 

All this time the situation at Krotona was getting more acute.  Wadia had arrived at Krotona (as the representative of Mrs. Besant) and was stirring up trouble and we collaborated with him to the full in order to swing back the Theosophical Society to its original impulse of universal brotherhood.

 

We collaborated because at this time Wadia seemed sound and sincere and to have the interest of the society truly at heart.

 

 

 

The cleavage in the society was steadily widening and the line of demarcation between those who stood for the democratic point of view and those who stood for spiritual authority and the complete control of the Theosophical Society by the Esoteric Section was rapidly growing.

 

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 pre-occupied 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 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 civilisation 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 travelled 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 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 materialise the kingdom of God on earth, and the attitude of the Theosophical Society in regarding itself as the only channel and its refusal to recognise other groups and organisations 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 post-war 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.

 

Let there be no mistake, the movement initiated by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky was an integral part of a Hierarchical plan.  There have always been theosophical societies down the ages —the name of the movement is not new— but H. P. B. gave it a light and a publicity that set a new note and that brought a neglected and hitherto somewhat secret group out into the open and made it possible for the public everywhere to respond to this very ancient teaching.

 

The indebtedness of the world to Mrs. Besant for the work that she did in making the basic tenets of the T.S. teaching available to the masses of men in every country, is something that can never be repaid.  There is absolutely no reason why we should overlook the stupendous, magnificent work she did for the Masters and for humanity.  Those who have during the past five years so violently attacked her seem to me of no more importance than fleas attacking an elephant.

 

 

In 1920 this whole situation was reaching a climax.  The cleavage between the authoritarians of the E.S. and the more democratic minds in the T.S. was steadily widening.  In America Mr. Warrington and the E.S. wardens and heads everywhere represented one group, and the other group, at that time, was led by Foster Bailey and B. P. Wadia.

 

This was the situation which was rampant when the famous convention of 1920 took place in Chicago in the summer.  I had never been present at any convention in my life and to say that I was disillusioned, disgusted and outraged is putting it mildly.

 

Gathered together was a group of men and women from all parts of the United States who were presumably occupied in teaching and spreading brotherhood.  The hatred and rancour, the personality animus and the political manipulation was so outrageous and shocking that I made a vow never to attend another Theosophical Convention again in my life.

 

Next to Mr. Warrington, we were the ranking officials of the T.S. but we were a small minority.  It was obvious from the first moment of the Convention that the E.S. was in control and that those who stood for brotherhood and democracy were hopelessly outnumbered and, therefore, beaten.

 

There were Theosophists on the authoritarian side who were bitterly unhappy.  They were controlled by the E.S. but felt that the methods employed were shocking.  Many of them did what they could to show a friendly spirit to us as individuals.  Some of them, towards the close of the Convention, were convinced of the rightness of our position and told us so.  Others, who came over to the Convention with an open mind, threw the weight of their interests and backing on our side.

 

In spite of it all, however, we were hopelessly defeated and the E.S. was aggressively triumphant.  There was nothing for us to do but to return to Krotona and the situation was such that eventually Mr. Warrington was forced to resign as head of the Theosophical Society in America, though retaining his position in the E.S.

 

He was succeeded by Mr. Rogers who was bitterly opposed to us and far more personal in his opposition than Mr. Warrington.  The latter realised our sincerity and apart from organisational differences there was a strong affection between Mr. Warrington, Foster and myself.  Mr. Rogers was of a much smaller calibre and he threw us out of our positions as soon as he got into power.  Thus ended our time at Krotona and our very real effort to be of service to the Theosophical Society.

 

(Extracts of chapter 4)

 

 

 

 

 

OBSERVATIONS

 

In summary, Alice Bailey and her second husband, Foster Bailey, distanced themselves from the Adyar Theosophical Society because they did not agree with the authoritarian and dogmatic way that Mrs. Besant and her lackeys in the esoteric section ran to this organization.

 

And it is false that Alice Bailey was a disciple of Master Kuthumi, and it is also false that she knew many disciples of the Masters, because the enormous amount of falsehoods that she put in her books discredits this statement.