Alice Bailey - Autobiography

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Autobiography of Alice A. Bailey - Chapter IV

I ran the cafeteria and learnt to be a good vegetarian cook. My first chore at Krotona was emptying the garbage pails, so I began at the very bottom, and I watched the people - most of them unknown to me - with great interest. I liked so many of them so very much. I cordially disliked a few. I came to two conclusions, that in spite of all the talk about a balanced diet, they were not a particularly healthy lot, and I found, also, that the more rigid and sectarian the approach to vegetarianism, the more critical and superior the person appeared to be. There were vegetarians at Krotona who would eat neither cheese, nor milk, nor eggs because they were animal products and they felt that they were very, very good and well on the way to spiritual enlightenment. But no one's reputation was safe in their hands. I have wondered about this and I have definitely come to the conclusion that it is better to eat beefsteak and have a kind tongue than to be a strict vegetarian and, from a pedestal of superiority, look down upon this world. Again, I would point out that generalizations are inexact. I have known many vegetarians who were lovely and sweet and kind and good. [155]

It was during this year, 1918, that I discovered for the first time who it was that had come to see me in Scotland when I was a girl of fifteen. I had been admitted into the Esoteric Section (E.S.) of the Theosophical Society and was attending their meetings. The first time that I went into the Shrine Room I saw the customary pictures of the Christ and the Masters of the Wisdom, as the Theosophists call Them. To my surprise there, looking straight at me, was a picture of my visitor. There was no mistake. This was the man who had walked into my aunt's drawing room, and it was not the Master Jesus. I was inexperienced then and rushed to one of the senior people at Krotona and asked for the name of this Master. They told me that it was the Master K.H. and then I made a basic mistake for which I have since paid the price. Believing that they would be pleased and not intending in the very least to be boastful I said, in all innocence, "Oh, then, He must be my Master, for I've talked with Him and been under His guidance ever since." This person looked at me and said, with rather a withering inflection, "Am I to understand that you believe yourself to be a disciple?" For the first time in my life I was up against the competitive technique of the Theosophical Society. It was, however, a wholesome lesson for me and I profited thereby. Learning to hold one's tongue is essential in group work, and one of the first lessons which any one affiliated with the Hierarchy has to learn.

During all this time the children were growing and learning and were increasingly a delight to me. There was nothing in Walter Evans' very brief occasional letters to indicate a change of heart and I began again to consider the necessity of getting a divorce. As the end of the war approached, I consulted a lawyer and was advised that I would have no difficulty.

In January, 1919, I met Foster Bailey and later, after [156] I had been granted my divorce, we became engaged to be married. Divorce proceedings had been instituted before I met him. I had dreaded and feared the divorce trial but nothing could have been simpler. The evidence was too good and the witnesses too reputable. An old friend of mine of long standing, Mrs. John Weatherhead, went with me to the trial. I was sworn in; the judge asked me one or two questions as to residence and age of the children and then said, "I have read the depositions of your witnesses, Mrs. Evans, take your decree and the custody of the children. Good morning - next case." So that cycle ended. I was free and I knew that I had done the best thing for the children. California is one of the most difficult states in which to get a divorce and the rapidity of my divorce trial testifies to the rightness of my case and the correctness of my evidence. Walter Evans did not contest it.

During 1919 Foster Bailey and I grew more and more active in Theosophical work and associated very closely with us was Dr. Woodruff Shepherd. I was then living on Beechwood Drive with the three children and Foster Bailey was living in a tent at Krotona. He had been demobilized after the Armistice but had been on sick leave for months as he had crashed whilst piloting a plane, training army observers. I had been introduced to him, after a lecture I had given at Krotona, by Dot Weatherhaed, who not only introduced him to me but was also instrumental in introducing me to occult truth and to Krotona. Foster's recollection of that introduction is summed up in the words: "All I saw was a hank of hair and a bony female!" I have always had lots of hair. It is a family inheritance and my three girls have masses of lovely hair. I shall never forget a remark of my eldest daughter, Dorothy (who is famous for her remarks with a double meaning). I had washed [157] my hair one day in England and was sitting out in the garden at Ospringe Place, Faversham, drying it. Dorothy looked out of the window and called out, "Oh! Mother, if you would only keep your back to people and they saw only your lovely hair, they would never guess how old you are!"

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