Weekly Series on the Soul, Part 28 – Enemies

Update, July 10, 10:15pm: Errors corrected, hopefully. That’s what I get for writing and typing too fast and hitting publish too soon.

+JMJ+ Welcome to part 28 of our weekly series on the soul, entitled Enemies. And believe me, what I’m reading right now was written by an enemy of our souls. I’m talking about Alice A Bailey. Bailey wrote quite a bit about the soul in her books, and I don’t think any of it is compatible with the Catholic faith. Following her teachings would not be the path of discipleship in any authentically Christian sense, even though she did author two books on Discipleship in the New Age. Her teachings on Christ Himself are highly problematic, to vastly understate the case: the Christ is an office, not a person, Jesus and the Christ are not the same person, the Jews of the time distorted His message, yada yada yada.

The Buddha gets more sympathetic treatment but the form of Buddhism in the Alice Bailey books, along with those of Theosophy’s founder, H. P. Blavatsky, don’t resemble any Buddhism I’ve encountered anywhere else, and I was a Buddhist for years. “Oh, that’s because we teach Esoteric Buddhism,” Theosophists say. Yeah, right. Um, no, they teach “Not Really Buddhism” and “Not Really Christianity” either. I noticed this as a New Ager when I read them all those years ago. And it bugged me even then.

I heard someone say recently that Alice Bailey was the leader of the New Age movement. Well, she was not and is not “the” leader of the New Age movement, which really has no one leader, but she was and is certainly “a” leader of it, and influenced a wide range of people, some who probably have never heard of her, and some who know full well what she was all about and are proud to spread her ideas, and eager to work hard to see them come to pass. I’ll mention a few of them in this post.

The AAB/Blavatsky/Theosophy Connection

I’m re-reading their writings now, in the light of what I know now as a Catholic of twenty-four years (orthodox with a little “o”, not a leftist, modernist, nor a dissenter). Blavatsky has had a huge influence on the New Age, no doubt. Even in the non-New-Age world, on those who don’t know much if anything about the New Age or Blavatsky or Theosophy in general. Witness the popularity of UFO books, websites, and TV shows. Ancient alien weirdness is straight out of Blavatsky’s books, though she’s often not credited for it. (Erich von Däniken refers to her ideas but that’s revealing and not in a flattering way. He’s a known fraud and I think back to when my father brought home Chariots of the Gods. Even then, with my little kid eyebrow raised, I know I looked at him like I thought he had flipped, the same look I gave a friend of mine many years later when he would call me praising some book about Atlantis or Lemuria. He was a dear friend but sometimes I would hang up on him anyway. Some things should not be encouraged, friend or not.)

I will write more about Blavatsky in coming days but I’m beginning my re-read of these influential Theosophists with the works of Alice A. Bailey, a student of Blavatsky’s Theosophy who went on to found her own, shall we say, creative version of the Ascended Masters’ teachings. (Oy, I can hardly type that without stopping to roll my eyes and getting a fresh cuppa before I continue. I think I will do that. Back in a minute.)

I found almost all of her books in free PDF format, some more useful than others in that they have page numbers, and some even more useful in that they have page numbers that correspond to those in the printed books. Makes providing references much easier and less work for me, and less money I have to shell out for printed copies, even used ones are not cheap and they’re not all available in Kindle. There are twenty-four books, not counting the various compilations, and I don’t plan to read all of them.

The one I’ve chosen to begin my re-reading of Bailey books is one I only glanced at first time around. Education in the New Age didn’t mean much to me then but now it has a more ominous ring. Especially since I found out about—

The AAB/Muller/Common Core connection

Oh, yes, Robert Muller. That’s Muller, not Mueller, btw. This Robert Muller died years ago but he came up with Common Core before he left. Oh goodie. The following is from his World Common Core Curriculum Manual, as posted on the OpenLibrary site:

From the Preface: “The underlying philosophy upon which The Robert Muller School is based will be found in the teachings set forth in the books of Alice A. Bailey by the Tibetan teacher, Djwhal Khul (published by Lucis Publishing Company, 113 University Place, 11th floor, New York, N.Y. USA 10083) and the teachings of M. Morya as given in the Agni Yoga Series Books (published by Agni Yoga Society, Inc., 319 West 107th Street, New York, N.Y. USA 10025).
Note: Robert Muller has become known as “the Philosopher” and “Prophet of Hope” of the United Nations (see Douglas Gillies, Prophet – The Hatmaker’s son: the life of Robert Muller – it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Muller). The curriculum won Muller the “UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) Prize for Peace Education” in 1989.
1/6/2013
World Common Core Curriculum Manual, as posted on the OpenLibrary site

THIS is what Common Core is all about, putting the teachings of people like Alice Bailey into the mainstream and into our educational system, Alice Bailey’s teachings whose aims are in part the creation of the new species of human being that her “ascended masters” have in their “Plan”, and that Barbara Marx Hubbard and a whole lot of other people have been talking about for decades, only we haven’t been listening because we thought they were kooks. And they are. But they are kooks in high places who know powerful people and they are in our local and state governments and sitting on school boards and putting their crazy curriculum into our schools.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ve only begun my re-reading of Education in the New Age, but already I’ve read things that I am eager to share with you and will as this project continues.

The AAB/Hubbard Connection

About that new species of human being I mentioned above. Think I’m kidding? Think I’m cray-cray? The idea is but I’m not. Lest you imagine that I’m imagining things, let me share a video with you. I saw this one by Barbara Marx Hubbard just the other day.

Video: “Barbara Marx Hubbard Introducing the New Human”

“October 28, 2018: Barbara Marx Hubbard’s declaration of Homo Universalis at a Sunday service in the Dome at Sunrise Ranch, Loveland, Colorado. Sunrise Ranch is the international headquarters for the Emissaries of Divine Light.” [My note: That’s incorrect. I distinctly heard BMH say Homo Amore Universalis. Note on my note: I just found several other references around the web to Homo Universalis. Seems a lot of people either dropped the love from the name after some time or it was added after these references were made. I dunno which.]
From the YouTube description of the video.

I’ve watched some Hubbard videos over the last few months and I remember thinking her ideas sounded a lot like Bailey’s but I don’t remember her mentioning Bailey at all. I think it’s reasonable to suppose that she got at least some of her ideas from Bailey whether she gives her credit or not. I’ll have to go back and watch again so I can note those instances. Ugh, I don’t fancy that but I’ll do it for this project. Suffice it to say that Hubbard is a very influential leader in the New Age movement and thoug she died in 2019, through her books and videos and her many, many fans and students, her influence will live on for quite some time.

As I continue to re-read and fall into some rabbit-holes as I read, I’ll make notes and share what I find here. I’ll be looking at Bailey mainly, but Muller and Hubbard and some other Bailey acolytes will get their own days in the spotlight, too.

The AAB/UN Connection

This might surprise some people but I knew this as a Bailey fan when I was a New Ager: there is a meditation room, originally designed by Dag Hammarskjöld, at the UN maintained for many years now by Bailey’s Lucis Trust. In case you’re wondering what it looks like, I find it less than inspiring.

More about this later. Also from their website:

Support of the United Nations
The Lucis Trust has Consultative Status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC) and World Goodwill is recognized by the Department of Public Information at the United Nations as a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO). As such the Trust and World Goodwill are part of a community of many hundreds of NGOs that play an active role in the United Nations, particularly in spreading information about the UN and fostering support for UN programs. Since their inception Lucis Trust and World Goodwill have given their support through meditation, educational materials and seminars, by highlighting the importance of the UN’s goals and activities as they represent the voice of the peoples and nations of the world. [Emphasis added.]
From the Lucis Trust website.

It’s not so much their support for the UN (or is it UN support for Lucis Trust?) that bothers me, it’s the meditation and educational materials and the seminars they give there. For connections here see the above-mentioned Robert Muller (about which I will have more to say in future posts) and also one Maurice Strong. Wanna see his string of accomplishments, including some at the UN? From Wikimedia for convenience:

Maurice Frederick Strong, PC, CC,OM, FRSC, FRAIC (April 29, 1929 – November 27, 2015) was a Canadian oil and mineral businessman and a diplomat who served as Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.
Strong had his start as an entrepreneur in the Alberta oil patch and was President of Power Corporation of Canada until 1966. In the early 1970s he was Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment and then became the first executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme. He returned to Canada to become Chief Executive Officer of Petro-Canada from 1976 to 1978. He headed Ontario Hydro, one of North America’s largest power utilities, was national president and chairman of the Extension Committee of the World Alliance of YMCAs, and headed American Water Development Incorporated. He served as a commissioner of the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1986 and was recognised by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as a leader in the international environmental movement.
He was President of the Council of the University for Peace from 1998 to 2006. More recently Strong was an active honorary professor at Peking University and honorary chairman of its Environmental Foundation. He was chairman of the advisory board for the Institute for Research on Security and Sustainability for Northeast Asia. [Emphasis added.]
From the Wiki page on Maurice Strong.

That’s a lot of opportunities to spread an awful lot of awful ideas. And spread them he did. And this is only a partial list. It doesn’t even mention his work on the Earth Summit, the Earth Council, or the Earth Charter. And this is still a partial list. More on him later. He gets a section in Lee Penn’s book, False Dawn: The United Religions Initiative, Globalism, and the Quest for a One-World, which I’ll link again in the notes at the end of the post. The goal of his work on the Earth Charter was that it would “become a symbol of the aspirations and the commitments of people everywhere” and he sought to rectify what he (and his co-worker Mikhail Gorbachev, oh, yeah) saw as the excessively “anthropocentric emphasis” of the UN’s Declaration on the Environment. (I’m indebted to Lee Penn for information about Maurice Strong and Gorbachev and their work on the Earth Charter. And more, still to come in this series.)

It’s amazing how many people, ideas, movements and organizations are connected when you start looking into it. Reading Lee Penn’s book has been a lot like reading Discover the Networks if it were in book format instead of a web of pages on the web.

Bottom line: There are many dangers to the soul out there and some of them present themselves as goals and aspirations that sound all good and fine until one looks more closely at them. I’ve barely scratched the surface here as a mere preliminary look at what has been happening for many, many years and in many, many places where most people would have least suspected it. Not only have I come to think of it as part of my mission, to let people know what’s happening, but to let people know about the New Age itself. It’s very alluring to some of us, it was to me. It isn’t now that I see it for what it is. Fallen angels are still angels of light, even if that light has been distorted and obscured by their choice to turn away from the only God there is. And those fallen angels are exactly what I think the “ascended masters” are and whoever else is leading the leaders of the New Age, and they aren’t leading them to heaven but to a not-so-brave new world.

I hope this made any sense. Consider it to be one of those phone calls you get from a friend who is always finding something to share with you and goes on and on and doesn’t let you get a word in. Well, luckily for you, there’s a combox below all of this and you can sound off there. But I did write this all quickly, trying to get it posted before time for the Rosary, it’s already a day late. Egad! I’ll read through it later and then I’ll probably want to start over. But I have so much ground to cover. Argh! If I ever want to turn any of this into a book, I’ll have some massive re-writes to do first. ;)

Thank you for visiting and reading. Until next time, whoever and wherever you are, please stay safe and well, virtuous and holy. May the Lord bless and keep you, and may His peace be always with you. +JMJ+

Notes and Links

False Dawn: The United Religions Initiative, Globalism, and the Quest for a One-World, by Lee Penn. Paperback. Kindle. Read it on Scribd.
Robert Muller’s World Common Core Curriculum Manual, as posted on the OpenLibrary site.
Barbara Marx Hubbard Introducing the New Human
Maurice Strong: I used the Wiki page and Lee Penn’s book.

Image credit: 1) The Temptation of Christ (1854), by Ary Scheffer. Wikimedia, public domain. 2) Meditation Room, United Nations Headquarters, photo © F. Lère.

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