Alice Bailey - Autobiography - Chapter V







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Autobiography of Alice A. Bailey - Chapter V





Life in this postwar world is too important to any man or
woman to occupy themselves with defaming and running down people who have been dead for
decades. There is work to be done in the world today; there is truth to be recognized and
proclaimed and there is no room for muckraking and personality slandering by those who
want to make a few hundred dollars from the enemies of a teaching. This is one reason why
I am writing this autobiography. The facts are here.In these early days of which I
write no one would have believed that the time would come when the teaching that I was
just beginning to give out and the work to which Foster and I dedicated ourselves would
assume such proportions, that its various branches are now internationally recognized and
that the teaching would have helped so many hundreds of thousands. We stood alone with,
perhaps, a few unknown followers against one of the most powerful so-called occult bodies
in the world. We had no money and we saw no future ahead. Our joint finances on the day
when we sat down to size up the situation and to lay plans for the future were exactly
$1.85. It was the end of the month, the rent was due, the grocer's bill for the past month
was not paid, nor was the rent or the gas, light or milk bill. As we were not married none
of these were Foster's responsibility but, even in those days, he shared all things with
me. We were drawing no salaries [179] from the T.S. and my very small income was not
available. There seemed nothing for me to do.
Personally,
though I am recognized all over the world as a teacher of meditation I have at the same
time never relinquished my habit of prayer. I believe that the true occultist uses prayer
and meditation interchangeably according to need and that both are equally important in
the spiritual life. The trouble with prayer has been that the average human being makes it
entirely a selfish thing and a means of acquisition of things for the separated self. True
prayer asks nothing for the separated self but it will always be used by those who seek to
help others. Some people are too superior to pray and regard meditation as far more
exalted and more fitted to their high point of development. For me it has always been
enough that Christ not only prayed but taught us the Lord's Prayer. To me, also,
meditation is a mental process whereby one can acquire clear knowledge of divinity and
awareness of the kingdom of souls, or the kingdom of God. It is the mode of the head and
of the mind and is greatly needed by the unthinking people of the world. Prayer is of the
emotional nature and of the heart and is universally used for the satisfaction of desire.
Both should be used by the aspiring disciples of the world. Later I will touch upon
Invocation which is the synthesis of the two.
Anyway, in this time of material need I - again as usual - stuck to prayer and that
night I prayed. The next morning when I went out on to the porch I found there the needed
cash and, within a day or two Foster Bailey got a letter from Mr. Ernest Suffern offering
him a position in New York in connection with the T.S. of that city at a salary of $300 a
month. He also offered to purchase a house for us in a small commuting-town across the
Hudson. Foster accepted the offer and left for New York whilst I [180] stayed behind to
see what the developments were and to take care of the children.
Living with
me at that time was Augusta Craig, commonly called "Craigie" by all of us who
knew and loved her. She lived with us off and on for many years and was greatly loved by
me and the children. She was a unique person, rippling with wit and mentality. She never
approached a problem in the ordinary way or from the ordinary angle. Perhaps this was
because she had been four times married and had a vast experience of men and matters. She
was one of the few people to whom I could go for advice because she and I so thoroughly
understood each other. She had a caustic tongue and yet was so permeated with
"It" that no matter where we were the postman, the milkman and the iceman, if
unmarried, all tried to beguile her away from me. But she would have none of them. She
decided life with me was interesting enough and she stuck with me until a few years before
her death when she went into an old ladies' home in California, largely, she told me,
because she had no use for old ladies. However, being an old lady and over 70 when she
left me she thought they might profit from some of her experiences. I do not think she
enjoyed the other ladies but she felt she was very good for them and I'll guarantee she
was. She was always very good for me.
The time came at the end of 1920 when Foster wrote to me to join him in New York and I
left the children in Craigie's care, knowing they would be safe, cared for and loved. I
travelled to New York where Foster met me and took me to an apartment house in Yonkers,
not far from the lodgings in which he was living. We married very shortly afterwards,
going to the City Hall one morning, procuring a license, asking the man at the license
bureau to recommend a clergyman for the marriage ceremony and [181] getting married at
once. We returned to the office immediately for the afternoon's work and from that moment
we have carried on for 26 years.





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