Thursday, January 14, 2016

I'm not the only one with these challenges . . . Please BE PATIENT

I've spent extensive time over the past two years reviewing my library and archives.  I've scanned enormous amounts of material, made extensive notes, ordered discovered potential references.  As a result, I've got lots of irons in the fire and am frustrated trying all I need to do in this human body.  Going through my library, I recently found a reference that probably proves I'm not the only one, neither am I the first and probably not the last.  Reading an internet reference to Theosophical bent - "religious scholar" and lecturer, Mircea Eliade, originally a Romanian based academic, I discovered he had similar woes.  I also discovered that what I was trying to do was probably larger than Eliade's post-war 1949 frustrating project of classifying 9,000 projects was.  The passage that inspired me to order and review Journal I, 1945-1948 of his journal was a quoted unfavorable reference to Alice Bailey and her husband Foster Bailey.  Quoted below is the part I found interesting:

Mircea Eliade - Journal I - Alice Bailey references are on page 160 of this book.


At teatime, Mme. Froebe tells me about visions experienced by
certain eccentric guests, among them Alice Bailey, who saw a monk
repeatedly entering the window on the right (all this happened in the
room where we're staying, on the second floor, the room in which I'm
writing this) . Alice Bailey (what an able adventuress! I met her in
London in 1940; my Polish translator-God only knows what her name
was; and what an intelligent, likable, informed woman !- gave me a
letter of recommendation, and Alice Bailey invited me to dinner. She
was with her husband- a nonentity-and a friend , a tremendously
voluble American woman, probably her patroness, because she paid for
the dinner. Alice Bailey conducted a school of " initiation by correspondence"
with a rather high tuition; she had published a number of
books-unreadable, and absolutely worthless)-Alice Bailey evoked
her master and protector in Tibet, with whom she was in regular
communication through telepathy; and with the aid of a ritual she
expelled the shade of that mysterious monk who kept coming in the
window. After that, Mme. Froebe adds, the monk visited the room next
door, where a young Dutch Quaker was staying; he would come at 2:00
A. M. Since the young man's room was directly over Mme. Froebe's
bedroom, she would hear him jump out of bed and turn on the light. He
would start reading aloud from the Bible. I don't know what sins that
monk bad committed, but on hearing the words of the Bible he would
disappear.

Well, that was interesting, although Eliade's religious scholarship fails to impress me -- he was obviously a hanger-on himself at Eranos, the institute co-founded by Olga Froebe and Alice Bailey.  HOWEVER, I was amused and could related to something else related in this book -- his difficulty in finishing a plethora of projects:

18 May
I've written nothing in this notebook for several weeks because
I have been totally immersed in analyzing, classifying, and completing
the materials on shamanism, gathered in the last nine years. Every day,
at the Musee de I 'Homme. Have opened the notebook in order to record
that today I received the corrected proof copy of Le Mythe de l' eternel
re tour.
25 May
Am continuing to work, day and night, on shamanism. Sometimes
I feel almost crushed by the massive Soviet ethnographic
production. And since I can't see a problem clearly until I see it whole,
I keep putting off writing until the last moment, until I've verified even
the smallest detail (verifications which often are futile because I can't
use them; at most, I content myself with an allusion in a footnote).
Another danger: sometimes my "enthusiasm" is exhausted in the
research itself, and when I decide to write it up, I compose somewhat
reluctantly, hastily, using only a small part of the documentation I've
collected and spent days mulling over.  (page 90, Mircea Journal I)

Well, I've similar problems.  I've been almost totally immersed (besides my remaining law practice) with ANALYZING, CLASSIFYING, and COMPLETING . . .  It has dawned on me that I've been in this struggle for now nearly 35 years since 1981.  That's five years longer than the religious wars ending in the Treaty of Westphalia lasted in Europe!

I do think I have things computer organized now to the point where writing and accurate referencing will proceed smoothly.  Pray for me.  I've had health issues recently that has also served to somewhat slow me in this process.  I've amassed tremendous materials on General Vallely and Michael Aquino -- that backburnered projecd continues.

Thanks for your patience and stay tuned.

CONSTANCE