Baird Thomas Spaulding is an American writer, author of the popular Life and Teachings of the Masters of the Far East, and the inspirer of several questionable religious cults.
Biography
Information about the date of birth of the writer is rather contradictory. Today there are two versions. According to one, Tom Spaulding was born in England in 1857, and according to the other, the birthplace of the writer was the American town of North Cohocont, New York State, where he was born in 1872. Baird also claimed in some of his interviews that his homeland is India, but this has not been documented in any way.
Most likely, the discrepancies are caused by the fact that in the era of constant migration of people to the "new world", their children received new documents, in which the date of birth was the day of arrival in the United States. One way or another, the Spaulding family soon moved to the American West, and Tom, having completed his school education, entered the university, where he received an engineering degree and worked in mining for a long time.
The beginning of a writing career
In the late 1800s, Spaulding visited the Far East and then India. The local spiritual practices fascinated him, and Tom decided to devote his life to their study. Soon he undertook several more trips to India, to the East. The turning point for Spaulding was an expedition to Tibet in 1894, where he traveled with eleven other explorers.
Baird argued that it was on this journey that all members of the expedition came into contact with some "Great Masters of the Himalayas", spiritual beings, guiding them on the right path. In 1924, Spaulding published his first book of the famous cycle, which became quite popular not only in his homeland, but also in some Asian countries, for example, in Vietnam.
Of course, Spalding's work did not smell of science, and even more so serious research. However, his books are a pretty good guide to the culture and religious traditions of the places he visited, and at the same time a peculiar, albeit primitive, philosophical concept about the Ascended Masters, "Ascended Masters", a peculiar idea of the structure of the world, adapted to Western thinking.
In 1911, Baird settled his personal life by marrying a girl from California. His wife fully shared her husband's mystical views and became an indispensable assistant in his esoteric exercises. Tom returned to India several more times, and claimed that he was constantly in contact with the "Ascended Masters", having communicated with whom any person could walk on water and perform other biblical and not very miracles. Of course, not a single practical confirmation of his words appeared, but this did not prevent Spaulding from generating many followers of his ideas.
Death and influence
Tom published three additional volumes of his concept just before his death in 1953. His books remained in print for a long time, and when the New Age movement (the fascination of Western countries with spiritual practices of the East, spiritualism and unusual religious ideas) arose in the seventies, Spalding was remembered. Sects such as Church Universal and Triumphant, Methernitha and others grew up on his ideas. Several New Age figures have claimed to be in touch with their deceased guru Baird.
