Esoteric Healing A Practical Guide Based on the Teachings of the Tibetan in the Works of Alice A. Bailey

Author of Esoteric Healing Alan Hopking, MA MNIMH MRCHM FINEH, is the son of a copper miner. He was born an identical twin in the copper-mining town of Mufulira, Zambia, on May 12, 1950. Throughout his childhood he had an interest in plants. At school he excelled in sports and athletics. He went to one of the best private senior boys schools in the southern hemisphere: Falcon College in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. He was a successful and popular student especially on the sports field. Due to unrest in Zambia his family moved to South Africa. He finished his schooling in East London. At twenty, while working in Cape Town in the Cape Times, he formed a band called Grave Concern and wrote most of the music. In Cape Town he was initiated into Transcendental Meditation (TM). On his first meditation under his initiator he was told he had the experience of Sachitananda (bliss consciousness). During this time Alan became vegan and went on extensive fasting and meditation training; one fast lasted thirty days. His interests were wide and he went to many Theosophical Society meetings and Lucis Trust full-moon meditations. He loved to walk in the mountains and swim in the cold streams and waterfalls, and meditate. He then decided in 1971 to train as a teacher of TM with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in Spain. Before completion Alan had another important spiritual experience, and he decided to go to England in 1972 with the intention of studying for the Anglican priesthood. Instead he joined the Anchorhold Community associated with the monastery St John in Oxford, the first monastery to be re-formed in England since the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. Two years later he decided to join the monks of the mother house in Oxford. He trained in theology for three years while he was a postulant and novice. At the same time he studied Buddhism. During his noviciate he became a scholar of and was strongly influenced by the life and teachings of Jakob Boehme, a mystic of the seventeenth century. Then he started to study the writings of Rudolf Steiner. As a result he decided not to take the vows of a monk. So after five years living a monastic life he left going straight into the Shalesbrook Seminary, to train as a priest for the Christian Community founded by Rudolf Steiner. He became an active member of the Anthroposophical Society. After completing the priesthood training, he was sent out to test his vocation: first in San Francisco for a year, then to Coburg in Germany for a year, where he worked on an Anthroposophical farm with adults with special needs. Here his interest in the teachings of Alice A Bailey was reignited. He became an Arcane School student while in Germany. At this time, when reading the book Esoteric Healing, he decided he wanted to train in medicine and healing. It was this book and Treatise on Cosmic Fire that particularly captured Alan's imagination. The latter work was extremely abstract and the former had an unstructured practical threadHopking, Alan N. is the author of 'Esoteric Healing A Practical Guide Based on the Teachings of the Tibetan in the Works of Alice A. Bailey', published 2005 under ISBN 9781577331629 and ISBN 1577331621.