Alice Bailey - Autobiography

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Autobiography of Alice A. Bailey - Chapter VI

He also instituted the new rules for disciples which permit a much greater freedom to the individual disciple than do the rules so well known in the past. No obedience is today exacted. The disciple is regarded as an intelligent agent and is left free to fulfil the requirements as he sees best. No secrecy is enjoined because no disciple is admitted into an Ashram or into a place of initiation as long as there is the slightest danger that he will speak. Disciples are now being trained telepathically and the actual physical presence of a Master is no longer necessary. The old personal development is no longer emphasized. The need of humanity is presented as the major incentive for spiritual development. Disciples are being taught today to work together in groups with the possibility of group initiations held before them, an entirely new idea and vision. The physical disciplines are no longer obligatory. The modern disciple, intelligent, loving and serving, is regarded as not requiring them. He should have outgrown his physical appetites and be free now to serve. Much of this teaching is given in a book just published, Discipleship in the New Age, which contains instructions that the Tibetan gave to a group of His disciples in the world, some of whom were known to me and some of whom were not. This is the first time in the history of the Hierarchy, as far as we know, that the detailed instructions given by a Master to His group of disciples have ever been published and so put into the hands of the general public.

In the above paragraphs I have attempted very briefly to describe some of the activities which the Tibetan initiated in an effort along with other members of the Hierarchy to strike the keynote of the new age, and it is upon these [241] things in the senior degrees of the Arcane School that we seek to lay the emphasis.

Some of the students have been with us twenty years or more. They have faithfully done their work and are definitely getting results. Later we hope to develop certain groups that will use some of the techniques with which the Tibetan has dealt in what will probably be His outstanding work, A Treatise on the Seven Rays. There He elaborates a new school of healing. He gives the technique for building the path of Light between soul and spirit, just as man has created a path between himself and the soul. He emphasizes, also, the new esoteric astrology which deals with the purpose of the soul and the way which the disciple must tread. He also gives the fourteen rules which Initiates have to follow, and this treatise in five volumes is, therefore, a complete compendium of the spiritual life and presents those new formulations of ancient truths which during the Aquarian age will guide humanity.

Towards 1934 we began to visit other parts of Europe. During the next five years we went at different times to Holland, to Belgium, to France and to Italy, and usually when in Europe we went to Geneva or Lausanne or Zurich and stayed there for a little while. People from different parts of Europe would meet us there. It was very revealing to us after so many years work to find ourselves facing an audience in Rotterdam, or Milan, in Geneva or Antwerp and find exactly the same quality in the people as in Great Britain and the United States. The same things could be said to them; the same vision of brotherhood and of discipleship. Their reactions were the same. They understood and longed for the same liberation and the same spiritual experiences.

I got quite adept at speaking through an interpreter. When lecturing in Italy Dr. Assagioli would act as my [242] interpreter and when in Holland the head of our work there, Gerhard Jansen (usually called Gerry by those of us who love him) translated for me. I watched him sometimes in a cosmopolitan crowd and heard him switch with equal facility to half a dozen different languages. Prior to the war he did a fine piece of work in Holland. Practically all his school papers were translated into Dutch and he himself handled a large and earnest body of students. The work in Holland and the work in Spain were two very bright spots and different as these countries were in temperament there was no difference in their earnestness.

At this point the manuscript ends. [245]

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