David Reigle
is a very good researcher of oriental texts and I admire his work very much,
but there is also something where I do not agree with him, and it is in his
defense of Alice Bailey.
In 1997,
Reigle published an article in which he explained the reasons why he considers
that Alice Bailey is genuine and his article you can read here.
And below I
summarize the reasons he gave, and I add the reasons why I disagree with him:
1) The first
reason is because Alice Bailey's books are structured through themes divided
into subtopics and these subtopics divided into sub-subtopics, and so on. And
Reigle says that this peculiar way of structuring a text is very characteristic
of Tibetan writings and very unusual in English-language writings.
But the
detail is that there are also Westerners who write this way. For example, when
I write a very long and complex article, I structure it in this way and I know
other Western researchers who do the same, such as David Pratt or José Ramón
Sordon, and our texts are not of Tibetan origin.
2) His
second reason is because the five initiations mentioned by Alice Bailey have
several similarities with the "Fivefold Path to Buddhahood" which is
one of the most defining teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. And David Reigle argues
that this idea of the five initiations taught by Leadbeater and Bailey is not
found in Blavatsky's writings.
And on this
point I cannot tell you if what he says is true or not, because I have not yet
compiled the theosophical information that was written about the initiations,
but even assuming that it is true, knowing that Leadbeater lived for several
months with Colonel Olcott, who was a great scholar of Buddhism, who knew several
important lamas, and who was instructed by Master Morya himself, it is quite
possible that Colonel Olcott knew about these five initiations and mentioned
them to Leadbeater, who later published them in his books and then Alice Bailey
copied them.
3) And as a
third reason David Reigle wrote:
« Perhaps the greatest objection
maintained by the Theosophists against the Tibetan origin of Alice Bailey's
writings is the frequent use of the word "God". »
And then he
gave an argument to invalidate this objection, and I agree with him that some
masters are more open to the religious beliefs of the people (as for example is
the case of Master Pasteur) and it is likely that for many Theosophists this is
their main objection.
But for
those of us who have studied the original Theosophy, our main objection to
Alice Bailey is not that, but the fact that her work is filled with the lies
and falsehoods that Leadbeater invented, and while the three previous arguments
mentioned by David Reigle could leave some doubt, this last statement
completely eliminates the possibility that the books of Bailey were transmitted
by a master of the Orient.
Because it
makes no sense that a great Tibetan master who lives in the Himalaya and who is
in close contact and collaboration with the Transhimalayan masters, instead of
transmitting the Eastern esoteric teaching that these Masters taught to
Blavatsky, to William Judge and to Henry Olcott, he repeats exactly all the
falsehoods that an ex-Anglican priest had just invented on the other side of
the world.
And
therefore it is much more logical to consider that Alice Bailey, ignoring the
deceit of Leadbeater, copied the lies that he invented without realizing his
mistake, and to give more prestige to his books, she pretended that these were
dictated telepathically by a great Tibetan master.
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