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Autobiography of Alice A. Bailey - Introduction
I have not, therefore, been useless where world service is concerned but I do not, and cannot, claim that my success has been due to my personal efforts alone. I have always been blessed with marvelous friends and helpers who - down the years - have remained my friends, no matter what I did to them. I have had many such friends and a few - a very surprisingly few - enemies. These latter have done me no real harm, perhaps because I could never dislike them and could always understand why they disliked me. My husband, Foster Bailey, has for over twenty-five years made all my work possible. Without him I feel I could have accomplished very little. Where there is deep and abiding love and understanding, respect and unbroken comradeship, one is rich indeed. He has been to me a tower of strength and "the shadow of a great rock in a thirsty land." There are things which are damaged by expression in words and which sound meaningless and futile when written down. Our relationship is one of them. For many lives we must have lived and worked together and we both look forward to many more. I have no more to say on this subject. What, I often ask myself. could I have done without the understanding [4] friendship, affection and staunch cooperation of my many friends and co-workers who for years have stood by me? I cannot list them but they are the people who are essentially responsible for the success of the work we - as a group - have done. The reason for this autobiography is therefore a threefold one, for there are three things upon which I want to lay the emphasis, and which I hope will emerge into clarity. First of all, the fact of the Masters of the Wisdom, Who work under the guidance of the Christ. I want to make clearer the nature of Their work. I want to present Them to the world as I personally know Them, because, in the years that are coming, more and more people will testify to Their existence, and I would like to make the way easier for them. This I will enlarge upon later and show how I personally came to know of Their existence. In everyone's life there are certain convincing factors which make living possible. Nothing can alter one's inner conviction. To me, the Masters are such a factor and this knowledge has formed a stabilizing point in my life. The second thing which I would like to do is to indicate some of the new trends in the world today which are definitely influencing mankind and raising the human consciousness. I want to point to some of the newer ideas which are coming out into the world of human thought from the inner group of Masters and which are ushering in a new civilization and culture and - incidentally from the angle of eternity - destroying many old and beloved forms. In my life I have seen, as have all thinking people, the disappearance of much that was worthless in the field of religion, of education and of the social order. And that is very good. Looking back, I can imagine nothing more appalling than the perpetuation of the Victorian era, for instance, with its ugliness, its smugness, and the excessive comfort of [5] the upper classes (so-called) and the frightful condition under which the laboring classes struggled. It was in that well-padded, sleek and comfortable world I lived when a girl. I can imagine nothing more blighting to the human spirit than the theology of the past with the emphasis upon a God who saves a smug few and condemns the majority to perdition. I can imagine nothing more conducive to unrest, class war, hate and degradation than the economic situation of the world, then and for many decades - a situation largely responsible for the present world war (1914-1945). Thank God, we are on our way to better things. The group who have shared our work - along with many other groups, responding to the same inspiration of love of humanity - will have done our tiny part in bringing about much needed changes. The world trend towards federation, towards understanding and cooperation, and towards those things which will benefit all and not just a chosen few is of encouraging importance. We are on our way towards brotherhood. The third thing which I would like to do is to show how wonderful human beings are. I have lived on three continents and in many nations. I have known the very rich and the very poor, intimately and from the angle of close friendship; the very highest in the world have been my friends and the very lowest; and in all classes, nations and races I have found the same humanity, the same beauty of thought, the same self-sacrifice and the same love of others, the same sins and weaknesses, the same pride and selfishness, the same aspiration and spiritual objectives and the same desire to serve. If I can manage to bring this out with clarity and force, that alone will justify this book.
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