Are Esoteric Teachings Useful?
Question: Is there any usable knowledge in the writings of Alice A. Bailey or any other esoteric writings?
First, let me say that as a general rule esoteric knowledge has a much different purpose than exoteric knowledge, such as an engineer building bridges.
If a person wants knowledge to obtain skills to do outward things then DK is not your man. To learn practical applications in the outward world one must learn from the teachers in the outward world. For instance, I make signs and I certainly do not look to esoteric knowledge to improve my craft.
Probably the closest subject corresponding to esoteric knowledge learned by standard scholars is the subject of philosophy — which sometimes goes into the outskirts of the esoteric.
You can’t build a bridge or manufacture a car with philosophy. People generally study it because they find it interesting. It expands their mind and helps give them purpose in life. A life with purpose is much more exciting than one without it.
Esoteric and spiritual knowledge does not build bridges, for it is not directed toward the outer world, but the inner. Is the inner world worth cultivating?
Yes, a thousand times yes. When we die, we take nothing of the outer, but the inner remains making its cultivation of sublime importance.
But one may say these pieces of knowledge you are inserting in your mind are fairly meaningless and they are making no change.
My answer is that every piece of knowledge or revelation of a principle is important.
Visualize putting a puzzle together and you do not know what the final picture looks like. You may place hundreds of pieces and still not know, but if you continue the time finally comes that one seemingly insignificant piece turns on the light of seeing, and you now see and understand what the finished picture will be.
Now if you go back to the beginning and find that piece that turned on the light and just look at that alone, could you have guessed the picture?
No.
Why not?
Because it was not the final piece that turned on the light, but a combination of all the pieces.
Even so, it has been with me. I have found pieces here and there, but still could not see the picture until I gathered enough so the picture could finally be visualized.
The writings of DK through Alice A. Bailey have given me many pieces to many pictures that has turned on many lights.
Has it made a difference?
It didn’t build any outward bridges but it built a lot of inner ones.
The light I received from DK overshadowed anything I learned in the church, for I became dissatisfied with the simple teachings there and shifted my consciousness away from standard religion to higher knowledge. This led me out of the church, which was a good thing for me.
I have told the group before that the whole concept of the Molecular Relationship was downloaded into my mind in an instant, but I’m not sure I would have understood crucial ingredients if I had not studied principles as taught by DK.
I could write a book on things I learned from the Alice A. Bailey books, but just as important as the actual learning was what the learning did for me. It gave me an increase of faith and a fiery purpose to keep moving forward in my progression. After all, what good is life if you have no purpose? Other writers and teachers have assisted me along the way, but DK gave me the realization that there is unlimited knowledge out there for the taking. Earlier in the church I thought I was at a dead end — that I had all the basics and the prophet would have to give more revelation at a future time.
Take the principle of harmlessness for example. This teaching is not new and was briefly mentioned by Jesus. It is difficult to find anything that is entirely new. On the other hand, DK gave many new insights on this principle that went way beyond anything written in the Bible. His teachings on it made me much more aware of myself and how to apply this principle in ways that I never received from the words if Jesus.
Here’s just one example. He pointed out we can create harm by attempting to enlighten others. Some people are not prepared for certain truths and if we try to force-feed others too soon it will damage their psyche. When I read this, I immediately knew this was true and it changed my approach in teaching. It made me much more accepting of people that were not ready to change.
After I introduced DK to Curtis (my nephew) we sometimes used to do a fun exercise. We’d take one of the DK books and open it at random to a page and read about 100 words and the examine the knowledge that was there. Each time we were amazed at how much we would find there which was usually more useful knowledge than in a whole church book that we had been reading in the past.
DK’s teachings on the Intuition have been particularly useful to me. Again, many in the past have spoken about intuition, but not the way DK does. DK defined it differently than I had seen before and made me realize that I had used this principle but just had not isolated it properly in my mind. When I did this, it gave me much more power to use it and see the Oneness Principle, something DK did not teach in so many words, but led me toward.
I personally owe a lot to DK and would be a much different person today if his writings had never existed. Even though he teaches much that is esoteric, I have found that his teachings have done much to ground a dreamer, such as myself, in the real world.
“One’s first love is always perfect until one meets one’s second love.” — Elizabeth Aston
June 27, 2009
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