Theos-Talk Archives (April 1996 Message tl00031)

>Forty Years of Occultism
>
>Alan Bain
>
>A month or so ago, on the Internet theosophy list, I mentioned
>that come April 4th I would have been involved in matters
>theosophical for 40 years to the day, and hinted portentiously
>(probably) that come the day I would reveal all.
>
>Naturally, as is the case with we overworked and busy Adepts,
>the appointed time and place passed me by without a reminder.
>
>As I had finished scanning and proof-reading chapter six of
>Ernest Wood's "Is This Theosophy ... ?" I was reminded by his
>experiences of many of my own, including the occasion that has
>enabled me through the years to recall the precise date and even
>the approximate hour of my own entry into the mysterious world
>of occult philosophy (as Cornelius Agrippa called it) or
>theosophy (as we call it).
>
>On the night of 3rd/4th April 1956 I had reached a point in my
>life whereby it seemed that I had been given no choice but to
>stand firm on matters of spiritual principle - as it seemed at
>the time - and was in consequence quite alone in the world,
>with hardly a single friend, living in a small bedsitter in
>London.
>
>I was exhausted in the same way as one can be after a "psychic
>battle" and more than ready simply to lie down on the bed in my
>clothes and fall asleep.  But I was afraid.  For no reason I
>could fathom, hard as I tried to rationalise the matter, I was
>filled with a conviction that if I went to sleep I would die.
>And I mean die - finished, dead, kaput - no more.  The obvious -
>the only - means of avoiding this was to remain awake,
>presumably forever, though my thoughts did not follow through
>that far, and so I tried, tired as I was, not to stay awake, but
>to prevent myself falling asleep.
>
>Eventually - about three in the morning - I realised I was not
>going to make it, and quite literally resigned myself,
>reconciled myself to the fact - yes, fact - of my impending
>demise.  By the morning would I would have died.  I lay on the
>bed, no longer fearful, just exhausted and ready as I could be
>to face the inevitable.
>
>And so it was that I awoke - rather late on the 4th April -
>dead.  That is to say that the Alan Bain who lay down on the bed
>at three in the morning was gone, complete with phobias,
>inadequacies and inhibitions, and a new Alan Bain had emerged,
>chrysalis-like, from the shell of the old.  Reborn.
>
>Within six months I had worked my way through the rudiments of
>Astrology, Theosophy (via Jinarajadasa) and Qabalah (as in Dion
>Fortune's "Mystical Qabalah").  Within a year I was heading a
>small group of students, mostly around my own age - by then 23 -
>which was unusual for those days, as most people seemed to
>become interested in such matters in their early forties.
>
>Qabalah, later spelt "Kabbalah" to avoid being confused with the
>"magical" variety, became my personal working and teaching
>method, and the first draft of my "The Keys to Kabbalah" was
>completed in 1970-71.  It received its latest redefinition and
>extensions last year, 1995.
>
>Like many theosophists since the time of Besant and Leadbeater,
>I have been involved with all three of the later manifestations
>of the movement: the Liberal Catholic Church (which I find to be
>neither liberal nor catholic); Co-Masonry (of limited but some
>value, once you have finished playing "Knock knock, who's
>there?") and the Adyar-based Theosophical Society.
>
>Like many theosophists I have met, mostly electronically, during
>the past year or two, I have come to realise that the real
>strength of the occult or theosophical ideal was that, however
>imperfectly expressed, by Madame Blavatsky and friends back in
>1875.
>
>120 years later, some of us, returning (I suspect) to both our
>source and our roots, are wondering about starting over, about
>ridding ourselves of hierarchical and power structures which
>seem to have done as much harm as they have good.  Without their
>having existed, it is fair to say I would have nothing to
>write about today, but I think it is also fair to say that
>*their* day is passing, and we truly are moving into a "New Dimension"
>if not a "New Age" - no doubt we shall see.
>
>Wish me a happy anniversary!
>
>Alan
>---------
>THEOSOPHY INTERNATIONAL:
>Ancient Wisdom for a New Age
>TI@nellie2.demon.co.uk

Thank you,

Happy Aniversary!

Rudy

THEOSOPHY INTERNATIONAL
<a matter of consciousness>

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