Tag: conspiracy theories

Re-visiting Alice Bailey’s 10 Point Plan

Posted on by isobelblackthorn

by Patrick Chouinard

I’m delighted to share this article by theosophical teacher and thinker, and dear friend Patrick Chouinard in which he addresses the broader issues underlying the so-called Ten-Point Plan circulating among conspiracy theorists opposed to Alice Bailey.

Are Alice Bailey’s teachings satanic or part of a conspiracy for a “one world government”?

Alice Bailey teaches that we are here on earth to love and be of service, and lead lives of unselfishness, honesty and goodness. Isn’t that what God wants of us? Jesus said only those who follow God’s commands love God and only these will be saved (Matthew 19:17; Matthew 7:21–23; Rev 20:12) and He gave a “new command”: Love one another. What God looks at is our heart. We are told in the Bible that “God is love”: “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love; Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him” (1 John 4:8 and 4:16) .

Alice Bailey writes: “Let love be the keynote in all relationships, for the power which must salvage the world is the precipitation of love; Arrest each unloving thought; stamp out each critical action, and teach yourself to love all beings – not in theory but in deed and in truth.”

Theosophy is of God because these are the principles or “commands” it teaches and stands for. It emphasizes love and compassion above all. H.P. Blavatsky, the foundress of the theosophical movement wrote: “ALTRUISM … This is the keynote of Theosophy and the cure for all ills; the giving to others more than to oneself… especially that which we owe to all those who are poorer and more helpless than we are ourselves – self-sacrifice.”

James, the brother of Jesus wrote, “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27).

I fail to see how striving to live these ideals could be satanic or “lead one astray.” You don’t have to agree with everything Alice Bailey or Blavatsky wrote (nor do they encourage mindless unquestioning acceptance) – I don’t – but to call their work evil or of Satan, the “father of lies,” is actually itself “Satanic,” for the way of Satan (the “accuser”) has ever been to make evil to appear good and good to appear evil. Let me quote the Biblical criteria for deciding which side a teacher is on:

“But he that believeth these things which I have spoken, him will I visit with the manifestations of my Spirit, and he shall know and bear record. For because of my Spirit he shall know that these things are true; for it persuadeth men to do good. “And whatsoever thing persuadeth men to do good is of me; for good cometh of none save it be of me.”

(Ether 4:11)

Is there anything in any of Alice Bailey’s teachings that does anything other than attempting to persuade men and women to do good? I assure you there is not. If there is good in a teaching then the scripture says that this “good cometh of none save it be of me.”

And as Hastings Rashdall said:

”Those who believe that love is the thing of highest value in human life will generally believe also that ‘God is love indeed, and love Creations highest law.’ But even if through intellectual perplexity they fail to do so, such persons may be placed among those of whom Christ said, ‘He that is not against us is for us’…”

Hicks on Unsplash

There are many Youtube videos on the supposed “10 Point Plan of Alice Bailey” which totally misrepresents what she taught and wrote. For her actual position see : https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=258840451182820&id=258830914517107 .

Furthermore, Alice Bailey was AGAINST a centralised totalitarian “one world government,” and any form of authoritarianism or oppression:

“The basic goal is the freedom and the liberation of mankind, but the spiritual workers are handicapped by the fact that men themselves must make free choice and decision in order to be free; they can only be liberated when they – as individuals and later as groups – liberate themselves from the expressed thought-control of the powerful dominating groups and from the fears which these groups intentionally engender.

Freedom can never be conferred through totalitarian methods; liberation cannot come through a dictator or dictating groups…they are fighting – and rightly fighting – the totalitarian methods of cruelty, spying, murder, suppression and the lack of freedom.

What they are doing in truth is fighting the abominable methods of imposing the rule of a few evil and ambitious men upon the masses…They are fighting the technique of exploiting the ignorant through misinformation, organized lying and limited education. They are fighting against the sealing up of nations within the confines of their own territory, against the police state, the lack of free enterprise and the reduction of men and women to automatons. This is the true imprisonment of the human spirit.”

(The Rays and the Initiations, p.745)

”Mankind is not ready for some super-government, nor can it yet provide the unselfish and trained statesmen that such a government would require. As yet, there are more seeds of danger in this concept than there are of helpfulness. Nevertheless, it is a dream which will some day materialise.”

Externalisation of the Hierarchy, p. 640

“The unification to which the forward looking people aspire does not involve the neglect of any part, but it does involve the care and nurture of each part in order that it may contribute to the well being of the entire organism. It involves, for instance, the right government and proper development of every national unit so that it can adequately perform its international duties, and thus form part of a world brotherhood of nations.

“This concept does not even involve the formation of a world state, but it does involve the development of a universal public consciousness which realizes the unity of the whole, and thus produces the determination that each must be for all and all for each as it has been said. Only in this way can there be brought about an international synthesis which will be characterized by political and national unselfishness.

“This universal state of mind will not again inevitably involve the founding of a world or universal religion. It requires simply the recognition that all formulations of truth and of belief are only partial in time and space, and are temporarily suited to the temperaments and conditions of the age and race.

“Those who favor some particular approach to the truth will nevertheless achieve the realization that other approaches and other modes of expression and terminologies, and other ways of defining deity can be equally correct and in themselves constitute aspects of a truth which is greater and vaster than man’s present equipment can grasp and express.

“The new world order will not impose a uniform type of government, a synthetic [universal] religion and a system of standardisation upon the nations. The sovereign rights of each nation will be recognised and its peculiar genius, individual trends and racial qualities will be permitted full expression”

The Emerging New World Order [according to Alice Bailey] : http://malvinartley.com/PDF%20Files/2025_nwo_compilation.pdf

All of this directly contradicts the “New World Order” narrative painted by Bailey’s accusers.

It is true that Alice Bailey was critical of orthodox (i.e, Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical, etc.) Christian theology, yet she said “There is, however, no point in attacking Christianity. Christianity cannot be attacked; it is an expression—in essence, if not yet entirely factual—of the love of God, immanent in His created universe.” (Her views on the New Testament and on Christ are contained in her book From Bethlehem to Calvary: https://www.lucistrust.org/online…/from_bethlehem_calvary .)

She regarded Christianity as the “religion of love” and of service. Aside from these two essentials she thought certain ideas and attitudes in orthodox Christianity need revisioning:

“Priests and churchmen, orthodox instructors and fundamentalists (fanatical though sincere) are seeking to perpetuate that which is old and which sufficed in the past to satisfy the enquirer, but which now fails to do so. Sincere but unenlightened religious men are deploring the revolt of youth from doctrinal attitudes…

[The] presentation of divine truth, as given by the churches in the West and by the teachers in the East, has not kept pace with the unfolding intellect of the human spirit. The same old forms of words and of ideas are still handed out to the enquirer and they do not satisfy his mind nor do they meet his practical need in a most difficult world. He is asked to give unquestioning belief but not to understand…[He] is asked to accept the interpretations and the affirmations of other human minds who claim that they do understand and that they have the truth…

[Christ] must feel (with an aching heart) that the simplicity which He taught and the simple way to God which He emphasized have disappeared into the fogs of theology…Men have traveled far from the simplicity of thought and from the simple, spiritual life which the early Christians lived.

Is it not possible that the Christ may regard the separative life of the churches and the arrogance of the theologians as wrong and undesirable—dividing (as they have) the world into believer and unbeliever, into Christian and heathen, into the so-called enlightened and the so-called benighted—and as contrary to all that He Himself held and believed when He said, “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold.” (John X.16.)

Gabriel Lamza on Unsplash

How can light shine again in the minds of men when churchmen keep the people in a state of fear unless they accept the old theological interpretations and the old ways of approaching God?

Christianity has emphasized immortality but has made eternal happiness dependent upon the acceptance of a theological dogma: Be a true professing Christian and live in a somewhat fatuous heaven or refuse to be an accepting Christian, or a negative professional Christian, and go to an impossible hell—a hell growing out of the theology of The Old Testament and its presentation of a God, full of hate and jealousy.

Both concepts are today repudiated by all sane, sincere, thinking people… Still less do they accept the “lake that burneth with fire and brimstone” (Rev. XIX.20) or the everlasting torture to which a God of love is supposed to condemn all who do not believe in the theological interpretations of the Middle Ages, of the modern fundamentalists or of the unreasoning churchmen who seek—through doctrine, fear and threat—to keep people in line with the obsolete old teaching.

The churches in the West need also to realize that basically there is only one Church, but it is not necessarily only the orthodox Christian institution. God works in many ways, through many faiths and religious agencies; this is one reason for the elimination of non-essential doctrines. By the emphasizing of the essential doctrines and in their union will the fullness of truth be revealed.”

Yes, Alice Bailey believed that one can find God in other religions besides Christianity. Christians seem to have forgotten that truth, wherever it is found, must come from God. According to pastor John Burke, God looks to our heart (1 Samuel 16:7) not our beliefs:

“No one person knows or sees all—we’re all limited, unless God reveals himself, we’re all just making blind guesses…What’s fascinating if you read the sacred Scriptures of the World’s Religions is that only one God speaks to All Nations, or seems concerned with all people on earth.

Ultimately, we don’t know, but we don’t need to worry about “those other people” because God cares about them more than you do. “The eyes of the Lord search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him” (2 Chronicles 16:9). What does He see when he looks in your heart—a desire to seek Him? To humbly follow Him? To love him?

So the important question for you and me is not, “What about other religions” or “How will God deal with people who have never heard.” We don’t really know. The better question for us is, “What will I do with what I do know?” Will I seek God? Will I live for God? God wants relationship with you.” (No Perfect People Allowed)

It is curious how Bailey’s Christian critics fear the creation of an imposed “one world religion,” whereas it is they who seek to covert everyone to their creed – a “one size fits all” religion, with all the “right” views on Christ and Christianity (because they are so sure they have the last word on how to interpret the Bible). Religious diversity and different theological interpretations seem intolerable to them.

The so-called “new age” Christian theology of Alice Bailey is supported in the Bible ( see Joseph J. Dewey’s ‘Gods of the Bible’ http://www.freeread.com/the–gods-of-the-bible-part-1/ ). In Romans 9-11, Paul envisages the eventual salvation of the Jews and his Adam christology of 1 Corinthians 15: 22 points towards universal salvation. 1 Cor 15:19 tell us that God’s plan of salvation continues after death ( see also Tim 2:4), just as the preexistence of the soul is in the Bible (Ephesians 1:4; Jeremiah 1:5) and reincarnation ( Revelation 3:12 https://www.near-death.com/reincarn…/history/bible-00.html ). As for the “Lucifer Trust” issue, here is the unsinister truth about it: http://www.freeread.com/archives/3102.html

The mission statement of the Lucis Trust is summarized at their website:

“The worldwide activities of the Lucis Trust, founded by Alice and Foster Bailey, are dedicated to establishing right human relations. The motivating impulse is love of God, expressed through love of humanity and service of the human race.” They certainly sound like Satanists! The real history of Satanism is not a real history at all. It is mostly Christian Fundamentalist propaganda written for the purpose of demonizing perceived enemies of fundamentalist beliefs.”

It seems Christianity as it has existed has always needed an enemy – an enemy to define itself against; to separate itself from, and to rally its membership against, rather than to humbly and simply love and serve in the spirit of Christ. Evangelicals focused on Communism, then when that threat fell, they filled the void with an anti-gay campaign (raising millions to “fight” this “threat”).

Now the big enemy is the New Age movement and Alice Bailey (they are in good company, even Jesus was accused of being possessed by Beelzebub). Contrast that with this challenge given by Alice Bailey:

“I ask you to drop your antagonisms and your antipathies, your hatreds and your racial differences, and to attempt to think in terms of the one family, the one life, and the one humanity. I would remind you that hatred and separateness have brought humanity to the present condition…I ask you to seal your lips to words of hatred and of criticism, and to talk in terms of brotherhood and of group relationships…

Lose sight of your own affairs, your petty sorrows, worries and SUSPICIONS, in the urgency of the task to be done, and spread of unity, of love and of harmlessness.

I also ask you to sever your connection with all groups which are seeking to destroy and to attack, no matter how sincere their motive. Range yourself on the side of the workers for constructive ends, who are fighting no other groups or organisations, and who have eliminated the word “anti” out of their vocabulary.”

Esoteric Psychology – Volume I, 2. The Present Ray Plan and the Workers

Now that is a campaign worth rallying around.

Check out other articles written about Alice Bailey here: https://isobelblackthorn.com/alice-bailey-articles/

More Conspiracy Thinking About Alice Bailey: The United Nations

Posted on by isobelblackthorn

by Isobel Blackthorn

For conspiracy thinkers in the 1950s and 60s, the United Nations exemplified not internationalism as Alice Bailey pictured the organisation, but totalitarianism. As if Hitler, Stalin, Franco and Mussolini were not bad enough, Chairman Mao Zedong implemented his own communist version of group consciousness, the individual forced to serve the ideals of Chairman Mao. A consequence of this experiment was the great famine of 1959-61, leading to the deaths of up to forty-five million people. This example of a totalitarian regime requiring citizens to kowtow to a typically despotic leader, one with distorted ideals and a self-centred vision, terrified sections of the American community after McCarthy whipped up anti-communist fears. 

The New World Order narrative emerged out of this anti-communist sentiment along with a newly politicised fear of global tyranny coming in the wake of the creation of collective security organisations: the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the United Nations.  This narrative pivots on the apprehension of a hidden plot to subsume sovereign nations, and personal autonomy by extension, under a one-world government.

As the twenty-first century unfolds in the shadows of the bombing of the World Trade Centre in 2001 and the global financial crisis of 2008, the New World Order narrative has gained credence. Both events have ushered in a new era of chaos and uncertainty, with deep fears in the populace concerning matters of terror and security, unjustified wars, and a widespread mistrust in the global financial system and the political will to do something about it.

All conspiracy theories require a scapegoat or fall guy, a human agent masterminding the plot. Alice Bailey is an easy target.  She’s a Theosophist – and in conspiracy circles, Theosophists are known to be an evil, occult sect aligned with the Nazis. She’s dead, so can offer no defence, and she’s a woman, a soft target. She moved in high circles, counting among her friends numerous dukes and baronesses and sirs. She was linked to Freemasonry via her husband. As if that were all not damning enough, when Bailey made numerous statements in her texts in support of the United Nations, she effectively handed New World Order conspiracy thinkers the rope for her own execution. 

The New World Order mega-theory is one of the most influential and persuasive conspiracy narratives at large today and has many variants. With respect to the United Nations version, not only does Alice Bailey’s writing provide substantial material that feeds the secret-occult-order trope, leading figures within the United Nations are known or thought to be or have been followers or admirers of her teachings, or have loose associations, arousing paranoia that the organisation has in fact been infiltrated.

This apparent merging of the occult with the United Nations in the eyes of conspiracists enables them to claim that various behind-the-scenes actors controlling the UN have a secret agenda to institute an evil plan laid out by Alice Bailey. It is a plan of absolute global control and domination of the economic, religious, political and social spheres. In effect, a one-world government with malevolent intent, poised to impose martial law over the United States, and institute programs of global depopulation.

Whenever conspiracists feel a need to justify their claims regarding the UN, they need only point to Alice Bailey. Since Bailey’s oeuvre is esoteric in nature and she had the audacity to re-interpret the role and significance of Christ, it seems predictable that the Bailey mega-theory has firm roots in the Christian far right.

One example can be found in Lee Penn’s False Dawn: The United Religions Initiative, Globalism, and the Quest for a One-World Religion. The primary focus of Penn’s attack is the United Religions Initiative, which was launched by his former bishop, Bishop Swing, in 1995 to promote interfaith cooperation and help put an end to religiously motivated violence. Bishop Swing’s stance caused Penn to leave the Episcopalian church and switch to Eastern Catholicism. The URI describes itself as:

‘a global grassroots interfaith network that cultivates peace and justice by engaging people to bridge religious and cultural differences and work together for the good of their communities and the world.’

http://www.uri.org

It is this trajectory towards universality that upset Penn, who saw his Eastern Catholic faith undermined; his own newly adopted and closely held creed no longer regarded as absolute truth, but positioned relative to other creeds. Penn is concerned that those associated with the URI are also proposing to construct a new world order through the United Nations. Penn goes on to cite the various ways that the URI and the UN are linked.

Penn’s scope is broad, his referencing meticulous, and his work has all the appearance of thoroughness and rigor. And he demonstrates the hallmarks of the conspiracy thinker. Having pre-judged the URI and all its associates, Penn bases his argument in part on the assumption that it is possible to assess the motives of an organisation based on the affiliations of its membership. Second, he believes that an organisation should be condemned on the basis of an apparent association with a particular current of thought, the New Age. Third, he believes that this current of thought is essentially evil. He then applies a dot-joining technique that masquerades as incisive analysis, stringing together various extracts taken out of context as representative of whole bodies of work and using them as evidence to support his claims.

In conspiratorial fashion, after citing the URI’s relationship with the United Nations, in a part of his work titled “Servants of the Shining Darkness: The Anti-Gospel of the New Age Movement”, Penn directs his scaremongering at Theosophists Blavatsky and Bailey, and idealist philosopher Teilhard de Chardin, all of whom advocate notions of interconnectedness, inclusivity or unity. In his Bailey chapter, from the outset he asks his readers to keep in mind the number of Bailey followers who have donated to the URI, including, according to him, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Jean Houston, Avon Mattison and Robert Muller.

Penn begins his analysis by focusing on concerns raised by Cumbey that Bailey’s work is representative of the Antichrist, before spotlighting her statements relating to population control in which she, like many other thinkers of her time, considers ways to limit growth of the human population.

For Penn, matters of abortion and contraception, and the right of women to choose what happens to their bodies, cannot easily be separated from concerns over some imagined eugenics or ruthless cull being plotted by the United Nations. Ironically, Alice Bailey’s Edwardian moral values and sensibilities meant she distanced herself from her feminist sisters, including vociferous birth control campaigner Rose Pastor Stokes. For Stokes, women’s bodies were paramount, for Bailey it was the planetary body. Besides, Bailey argues that population control should be exercised not through some despotic program of eugenics, but through the exercise of personal self-control.

Penn’s presentation of Bailey’s teachings comprises little more than a series of quotes and linking sentences, as though, bereft of their original context, these quotes are able to more or less speak for themselves. In the section of his chapter titled ‘Bailey’s New World Order: “A New Power of Sacrifice”’ the only interpretation Penn offers is an accusation that Bailey is guilty of ‘spiritual totalitarianism’.

In support of his claim, Penn draws on Bailey’s vision for the New Age as based on group interplay, group idealism and group consciousness. He seems alarmed at the notion that individual awareness will become blended into group awareness, and that the individual is encouraged to surrender to the good of the whole. For him, this represents a loss of personal autonomy, something sacrosanct amongst conspiracists.

Soul awareness, or merging into group awareness isn’t a loss; it’s a gain, an expanded sense of self that carries with it a profound sense of sublime fulfilment and a kind of serene wellbeing, of feeling filled with love and joy. It’s similar to the feeling you get when you fall completely in love and feel yourself expanding. Or when you hold a newborn in your arms. You are still you, but you are also bigger than you. It is a both-and situation.

Penn seems incapable of understanding this. Using a string of quotes, he seeks to demonstrate what spiritual totalitarianism might look like. He conflates Bailey’s notion of subordinating the individual personality’s wants and wishes for the good of the whole as a form of Orwellian Big Brother.

For Penn, the New World Order equates to The Plan, which in turn equates to dictatorship.

Most references to a new world order in Bailey’s writings, were given in pamphlets to the New Group of World Servers’ Units of Service, collated in The Externalisation of the Hierarchy. Here the new world order concerns:

‘A general process of educating the public in the fact and use of goodwill. A great but undeveloped potency is still locked up in mankind which, if evoked by man himself, will prove adequate to do two things:
 
1.     Lay the foundation for a stable peace—active and positive because the result of active and positive action—after the Forces of Light have won the victory upon the physical plane.
 
2.     Provide the subjective synthesis or network of light embodying the force of goodwill as the expression of right human relations. This will guarantee a workable world order and not an imposed tyranny or a mystical and impossible dream.’ 

Externalisation of the Hierarchy, 321-2.

When Bailey affirms the bringing about of ‘the eventual synthesis and unification of men of goodwill and of understanding into one coherent body,’ (Esoteric Psychology II, 669) the only harm that can be found in the idea is seated in ill-conceived threats to the individual ego, or the personality-centred individual. Conspiracy theorists like Penn see into this notion of the individual sacrificing their selfish desires, impulses and drives for the good of the whole, a loss of personal power and autonomy. Yet the entirety of Bailey’s work is spiritual and concerns the evolution of the soul, one that involves a journey away from all of the divisions that the personality likes to surround itself with, towards the embodiment of love. Goodwill is simply an ordinary and everyday expression of agape.

If conspiracists stopped for a moment and attempted to understand that the individual is not sacrificed for the good of the whole, that when Bailey talks of group consciousness, another may talk of the importance of community or neighbourhood, they might see that they are reacting to language, to words, only because they have imbued those words with meanings that were never intended.

Read my previous articles here:

https://isobelblackthorn.com/2021/01/18/alice-bailey-and-the-new-world-order/

https://isobelblackthorn.com/2021/01/27/new-world-order-and-alice-bailey-whats-the-evidence/

Isobel Blackthorn, PhD, is the author of The Unlikely Occultist: a biographical novel of Alice A. Bailey, and the biography Alice A. Bailey: Life & Legacy

Book Review: Death Sentences by Michael Zimecki

Posted on by isobelblackthorn

Introducing Death Sentences, a novel written in the form of a memoir and narrated by a guy on death row.

#Death Sentence

About Death Sentences

Peter “Pop” Popovich is a 24-year-old unemployed glazier, anti-Semite and white supremacist who is pushed over the edge by his chaotic mother, his unresponsive lover, an uncaring stepfather and a right-wing hate machine that tells him liberals want to take away his guns and his liberty.
While ‘POP’ waits to be executed for his crimes, he squibs sentences, whole paragraphs, a novel about life on Death Row in which he reprises the life that landed him there.
Death Sentences is loosely based on an incident in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in April 2009, when a lone gunman, convinced that the government was coming to take away his guns, had a four-hour standoff with police.
This explosive novel, reminiscent of the works of Ed Bunker and Charles Bukowski, is a hellish story from the American underclass, its disenfranchised characters long abandoned by government and society and prone to constant failure and excessive violence.

My Thoughts

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I opened Death Sentences. This could have been the sort of book I would pass by as not that entertaining or interesting. I am glad I stuck around and delved in, for this is quite a gem of a book for a number of reasons, not least it is well written and instantly engaging.

Meet the bizarrely likeable “Pop”, who is on death row for murder, as he outlines his life of incarceration in a penitentiary in Pennsylvania. There isn’t much to say. Living is limited, humiliation and deprivation are constants and it is little wonder that most inmates commit suicide before they ever get to meet their prescribed death.

What drives this story is Pop’s past and how he came to end up on death row. It is a past that applies to a lot of disenfranchised men in the US.

Pop grows up in Pittsburgh in poverty, surrounded by dysfunction. His mother is an alcoholic who lurches from one disastrous liaison after another. Pop is not stupid but he drops out of school feeling alienated and harbouring deep resentments. He  absorbs the racial hatred that surrounds him. He has a love affair with guns. After a spell in the marines his far-right paranoia is fed by conspiracy theories, expounded by the likes of Alex Jones. It is a potent mix that is not going to end well. Pop is just not capable of being anyone other than who is he, because there is no one in his life to show him another way.

The narrative is fast-paced, raw and punchy. Zimecki applies a cold, hard realism, drawing the reader into a world they would probably rather not have to think about and holds them there as the all-too familiar descent unfolds. By the end of it, the reader will be forgiven for wanting to put on trial the system that led Pop to commit his crimes.

Death Sentences takes the reader to places This Boy’s Life would not dare to go, but could have, if the protagonist/narrator had been more like Pop – especially when it came to bad luck – and made one or two different choices along the way. Zimecki has penned a necessary read; Death Sentences ought to be a set text in high school English.