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Autobiography of Alice A. Bailey - Appendix - The School
The School The next phase of the work which I sought to see accomplished is now in working order. It was my wish (as it is the wish of many associated with the Hierarchy) to see an esoteric school started which would leave the membership free, which would bind them by no pledges or oaths and which would - whilst assigning meditation and study and giving esoteric teaching - leave people to make their own adjustments, to interpret the truth as best they could, to present to them the many points of view and at the same time communicate to them the deepest esoteric truths which they could recognize if there was that in them which was awakened to the mysteries and which, even when read or heard, could do them no harm if they lacked the perception to recognize the truth for what it was. A.A.B. started such a school in 1923 with the aid of F.B. and certain students of vision and spiritual understanding. She made it a condition that I should have nothing to do with the Arcane School and that I should have no control over its policies and curriculum. In this she was wise [250] and right and I fully endorse her position. Even my books were not used as textbooks and only during the past three years has one of them, A Treatise on White Magic, been adapted as a course of study and that at the very earnest request of many students. Also, some of the teaching upon the antahkarana (which will appear in a later volume of the Treatise on the Seven Rays) has been used for two years in one section of the fourth degree. The teaching on glamor has been given as some of the reading matter for another section. In the Arcane School, no obedience is exacted, no emphasis is laid on "obeying the Master" for no Master is running the school. Emphasis is laid upon the one Master in the heart, the soul, the true spiritual man within each human being. No theology is taught and the student is under no compulsion to accept any interpretation or presentation of truth. A member of the school can accept or reject the fact of the Masters, of the Hierarchy, of reincarnation, or of the soul and still remain a member of the school in good standing. No loyalty is expected or asked, either to the school or to A.A.B. Students can work in any of the occult, esoteric, metaphysical or orthodox groups and churches and still be members of the Arcane School. They are asked to look upon such activities as fields of service wherein they can express any spiritual help they may have gained through their work in the school. Leaders and senior workers in many occult groups are also working in the Arcane School, but feel perfectly free to give their time, loyalty and service to their own groups. The Arcane School has been in existence for twenty years and is now entering into a new cycle of growth and usefulness - along with the whole of humanity - and for this due preparation is being made. The keynote of the school is service, based on love of humanity. The meditation work is balanced and paralleled by study and by the effort to teach the students to serve.
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