Alice Bailey - Autobiography - Chapter VI
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Autobiography of Alice A. Bailey - Chapter VI
The district had been at one time the center of the Black Mass
in Central Europe and evidences of this could be found on the country roads. The little
villages around had been largely deserted by their inhabitants owing to economic
conditions and had been purchased by groups from Germany and France whose aims and ideas
were anything but nice or clean. The few years preceding the war, particularly in Germany,
were peculiarly nasty. All kinds of vices and evil were cultivated and a lot of those who
practiced these undesirable modes of life hied themselves to the Italian lakes during the
summer. Some day the place will be cleaned up and real spiritual work will go forward. One
of the things we had to contend with was the spirit of evil which permeated the place and
the peculiarly decadent and objectionable people who lived on the shore of the lake.As
soon as I found the kind of place it was, and that in spite of all its beauty there lurked
much evil, I simply sat down and told the girls all about it. I was determined that they
should not be so innocent that they would get into danger and I pointed out the types of
people on the roads who were plainly the undesirable kind. I did not dress up the
information in beautiful language. I told them baldly and straight just what it was all
about, including its degeneracy and its homosexuality, so that they passed unscathed
through a great deal which might have damaged them. You see, there were no secrets
withheld, there were no peculiar sins and unholy performances that I had not told them had
existed. I pointed out to them the type of people who indulged in these kinds of things
and they were so blatantly obvious that the girls knew that it must be so. I have never
believed in keeping young people free from the knowledge of that which is undesirable.
I have allowed them to read what they liked, provided that if it was a book that I felt
was pure dirt I would tell [224] them about it and ask them why they wanted to read it. My
experience was that if you were perfectly frank and yet perfectly willing to let them read
even what you yourself felt was unwise, their natural cleanness and their natural
fastidiousness were full protection. We never had any reading under the bedclothes, as far
as I know, because they knew they could read what they liked, and that I would express
myself freely. Anyway, the girls passed through three summers of Ascona and knew much that
was going on and got no harm.
The first
summer at Ascona we stopped with Olga in her own home but after that we occupied a small
cottage overhanging the lake which she had built on her property. Close to our own home
she had built a beautiful lecture hall where the meetings were held morning and afternoon.
The grounds were lovely. The swimming and boating were ideal and the opportunity at first
presented seemed to us Heaven sent, and to have in it the promise of wide future
opportunities for expansion. The first year we were there the group was somewhat small but
the last two years it steadily increased in size and I think it could be said that the
work was a great success. People of all nationalities met there and we all lived together
for weeks and got to know each other very well. National barriers seemed non-existent and
we all spoke the same spiritual language.
It was there for the first time that we met Dr. Robert Assagioli, who had been our
representative in Italy for several years, and our contact with him and the many years of
work with him constitute one of the outstanding happy factors in our lives. He was at one
time a leading brain specialist in Rome and when we first knew him was regarded as an
outstanding European psychologist. He is a man of rare beauty of character. He could not
come into a room without his essential spiritual qualities making his presence known.
[225] Frank D. Vanderlip in his book "What Next in Europe" makes a striking
comment about him. He calls him the modern St. Francis of Assisi and says that the morning
he spent with Robert was a high-water mark of his European trip. Dr. Assagioli is a Jew.
At the time we met him at Ascona and later visited him in Italy the Jews were well treated
in that country. The approximately 30,000 Jews in Italy were valued as Italian citizens
and were subjected to no restrictions or persecution.
The talks
by Dr. Assagioli were outstanding features of the Ascona conferences. He would lecture in
French, Italian and English and the spiritual power which poured through him was the means
of stimulating many into renewed consecration in life. For the first two years he and I
carried the bulk of the lecture work though there were other able and interesting
speakers. The last year we were there the place was overrun by German professors and the
whole tone and quality of the place altered. Some of them were most undesirable and the
teaching given shifted from a relatively high spiritual plane to that of academic
philosophy and a spurious esotericism. 1933 was the last year that we went there.
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