First of all who is Alice bailey

Between 1922 and 1949, Alice Bailey published 24 books of “revelations,” most of which she claimed to have channeled from the Tibetan ascended spiritual master Djwhal Khul. All these books remain in print through the Lucis Trust, and are widely available. A standard almanac on the New Age movement says, “The Arcane School and the books of Alice Bailey have contributed heavily to the concept and language of the New Age Movement.”[1] A recent survey of new religious movements says that Bailey’s group “is widespread in the Western world and membership is probably a few thousand people worldwide.”[2]



The Rev. Betsy Stang (a Wittenberg Center interfaith minister who served on the URI Interim Global Council in 2000,[3] and who was a donor to the URI in 2002[4]), said of Alice Bailey’s writings, “Some of Bailey’s writing is really remarkable, very Gothic. You would put her with Blavatsky, Gurdjieff, and Steiner. She is historically very important. In my mind, Bailey has beautiful, poetic evocations in her books.”[5]

Here follow some of Bailey’s “beautiful, poetic evocations.” As you read them, recall that Alice Bailey’s present-day followers are public supporters of the URI, and have been donors to the movement. Note, as well, that World Goodwill, an affiliate of the Lucis Trust, enjoys UN recognition as a “Non-Governmental Organization.” As World Goodwill says, “World Goodwill is an accredited non-governmental organisation with the Department of Public Information of the United Nations. It maintains informal relations with certain of the Specialised Agencies and with a wide range of national and international non-governmental organisations. World Goodwill is an activity of the Lucis Trust, which is on the Roster of the United Nations Economic and Social Council.”[6]

At the beginning of each of the Alice Bailey books that were – supposedly – dictated by the “Tibetan,” there is this ambiguous disclaimer by the spirit guide: “The books that I have written are sent out with no claim for their acceptance. They may, or may not, be correct, true and useful. It is for you to ascertain their truth by right practice and by the exercise of the intuition. Neither I nor A.A.B. is the least interested in having them acclaimed as inspired writings, or in having anyone speak of them (with bated breath) as being the work of one of the Masters. If they present truth in such a way that it follows sequentially upon that already offered in the world teachings, if the information given raises the aspiration and the will-to-serve from the plane of the emotions to that of the mind (the plane whereon the Masters can be found) then they will have served their purpose. If the teaching conveyed calls forth a response from the illumined mind of the worker in the world, and brings a flashing forth of his intuition, then let that teaching be accepted. But not otherwise.”[7] This is akin to a software warranty written by a crafty lawyer: you may use this, but we make no guarantee that it will be “useful.” The “Tibetan” is correct about this: those who pursue the Theosophical way do so at their own risk.

Continuing Blavatsky’s Work


Alice Bailey positioned herself as a follower of Blavatsky, and as her spiritual successor. Bailey praised Blavatsky on the acknowledgment page of A Treatise On Cosmic Fire, saying that the book is “dedicated with gratitude to Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, that great disciple who lighted her torch in the east and brought the light to Europe and America in 1875.”[8] In Running God’s Plan, her husband Foster Bailey likewise made it clear that Alice Bailey had followed Blavatsky’s teachings, and claimed that both women had the same mentor, the Tibetan spirit guide Djwhal Khul: “Modern esotericism is a new phenomenon in the western world pioneered by the Tibetan teacher, Djwhal Khul, working with H.P. Blavatsky. Again, this time working with Alice Ann Bailey, the same master teacher has provided the interim teaching needed for conscious entry into the new Aquarian Age. The study of this new teaching in the books published under the name of Alice Bailey is producing a revival of esotericism and a new technique for self-development, this time with the selfless goal of world service.”[9]

Praising the Fallen Angels and Re-defining “666”


Bailey denied any opposition between God and the Devil, Christ and Anti-Christ: “Christ and anti-Christ are the dualities of spirituality and materialism, both in the individual and in humanity as a whole. Or you can speak of God and the Devil with the same basic implications.”[10] Bailey describes Lucifer as the ruler of humanity, “Son of the Morning, The Prodigal Son.”[11]



Therefore, the revolt of the angels against God was part of “the divine plan of evolution.” [12] Bailey said that “the Great Law of Duality came into action, bringing about the ‘fall of the angels,’ as they descended from their sinless and free state of existence in order to develop full divine awareness upon earth, through the medium of material incarnation and the use of the principle of mind.”[13] Bailey says that at the inception of the “divine plan,” “there took place the original ‘war in the heavens,’ when the sons of God who responded to the divine urge to experience, to serve and to sacrifice, separated themselves from the sons of God who responded to no such inspiration but who chose to stay in their original and high state of being.”[14] In other words, the rebel angels were really the good guys.



Bailey re-interpreted the number 666 as the number of a “Heavenly Man;”[15] she also saw it as the number of “materialism, the number of the dominance of the three worlds prior to the process of reorientation and the expression of developed idealism and purpose. The third aspect expresses itself through pure materialism, and hence the three sixes.”[16] She thus obscured a symbol which the Bible describes as “the number of the beast” (Rev. 13:18).



Alice Bailey said that “the Ancient of Days”[17] and the “Lord of the World, the One Initiator”[18] is a spirit named Sanat Kumara, “the Great Sacrifice.”[19] He came to Earth from Venus[20] in “the middle of the Lemurian epoch, approximately eighteen million years ago” and “has remained with us ever since.”[21]



Previously, Blavatsky had made clear her view of the nature and origin of Sanat Kumara.[22] Blavatsky had said that Sanat Kumara is one of “the ‘mind-born Sons’ of Brahmâ-Rudra (or Siva) the howling and terrific destroyer of human passions and physical senses.”[23] Venus, the planet from which Sanat Kumara came, “is our ‘Lucifer,’ the morning star.”[24] The parent of Sanat Kumara is Siva, “the destroyer;” Siva is “the creator and the Saviour of Spiritual man, as he is the good gardener of nature. He weeds out the plants, human and cosmic, and kills the passions of the physical, to call to life the perceptions of the spiritual, man.”[25] Blavatsky also noted that Christians call Sanat Kumara one of the fallen angels.[26] Therefore, Christians may conclude that the Theosophists’ lord, whom they name Sanat Kumara, is a devil, a servant of the hostile power that Christ called “the ruler of this world” (Jn. 14:30).



Alice Bailey believed that “for the first time” mankind is “intelligently participating and cooperating” in the “entire evolutionary process.”[27] Therefore, the spiritual Hierarchy can “bring to an end the long silence which has persisted since Atlantean days” and “renew an ancient ‘sharing of the secrets.’”[28] Thus, “in the immediate future,” the “Masters will walk openly among men.”[29] This “return to the situation which existed in Atlantean days,”[30] when “the Members of the spiritual Hierarchy were openly guiding and directing the affairs of humanity,”[31] carries with it certain dangers. As Bailey herself said, “Then took place the great war between the Lords of Form and the Lords of Being, or between the Forces of Matter and the Great White Lodge. … The Forces of Light triumphed because the Hierarchy was forced to intervene potently … They brought the Atlantean civilisation to an abrupt end after a long period of chaos and disaster. This took place through the medium of a culminating catastrophe which wiped hundreds of thousands of human beings off the face of the earth. This historical event has been preserved for us in the universal legend of the great flood.”[32] Bailey’s “Hierarchy” wants mankind to return to a spiritual condition that last existed just before the Flood. Been there, done that; why would this work any better for mankind the second time than the first?

Proclaiming Human Divinity and Denying Christ


Like Barbara Marx Hubbard and Neale Donald Walsch, Bailey asserts human divinity. “We are all Gods, all the children of the One Father, as the latest of the Avatars, the Christ, has told us.”[33]



There is a down-side to this exalted status, however. Bailey denies that Christ loves us: “The Son of God was called in The Old Testament a ‘man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.’ This did not in reality refer to His sufferings for poor miserable humanity (as orthodox theology so selfishly interprets it) but to the fact that He had to submit Himself to contact with humanity.”[34] Nor does Christ’s sacrifice save us. “It must be remembered that it is the teaching given by the Christ which saves humanity – not any symbolic death upon a cross. Men must save themselves by their reaction and their response to the teaching given in its purity by the Christ.”[35] Bailey denies hell; she therefore also denies salvation and grace: “There is, as you well know, no angry God, no hell, and no vicarious atonement. … As these erroneous ideas die out, the concept of hell will fade from man’s recollection and its place will be taken by an understanding of the law which makes each man work out his salvation upon the physical plane, which leads him to right the wrongs which he may have perpetrated in his lives on Earth, and which enables him eventually to ‘clean his own slate.’”[36] What a rotten deal Bailey offers! Instead of being saved and forgiven through Christ’s death and resurrection and being told like the good thief, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise” (Lk. 23:43), we are left with the unforgiving law of karma and the requirement to right all the wrongs of all our past lives ourselves.

As befits a utopian social reformer, Bailey taught that Christ’s Kingdom is of this world: “Christ taught also that the Kingdom of God is on Earth and told us to seek that Kingdom first and let all things go for its sake.”[37] Jesus Christ said otherwise to Pilate while He was on trial for His life: “My kingship is not of this world” (Jn. 18:36).



Did Christ ascend to heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father? Not according to Bailey. “He cannot return because He has always been here upon our Earth, watching over the spiritual destiny of humanity; He has never left us … He can only reappear,”[38] coming forth from “His present retreat in Central Asia.”[39]



Bailey held that in the New Age, the sign of the Cross will be replaced by a new “mark” of “a new type of salvation.” In The Rays and the Initiations, she said, “Recognition of the successful work of the New Group of World Servers will be accorded by the Hierarchy, and the testimony of the recognition will be the appearing of a symbol in the aura of the group – of the entire group. This will be a symbol projected by the Hierarchy, specifically by the Christ. … It is ‘the mark of a Saviour’ and it will embody the mark or indication (the signature as medieval occultists used to call it) of a new type of salvation or salvage. Up till now the mark of the Saviour has been the Cross … The future holds within its silence other modes of saving humanity. The cup of sorrow and the agony of the Cross are well-nigh finished. Joy and strength will take their place.”[40] Bailey’s prophecy of the replacement of the Cross by a new symbol appears to foreshadow the Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s current “take down the cross” campaign.

Bailey supported progressive, evolutionary, liberal Christian theology. In her autobiography, she said, “there was really no reason because a priest or teacher six hundred years ago interpreted the Bible in one way (probably suitable for his time and age) that it should be acceptable now in a different time and age, under a different civilisation and with widely different problems. If God’s truth is truth then it will be expansive and inclusive, and not reactionary and exclusive. If God is God, then His divinity will adapt itself to the emerging divinity of the sons of God, and a son of God today may be a very different expression of divinity from a son of God five thousand years ago.”[41]

Population Control


In the 1940s – when world population was less than half what it is today – Alice Bailey said, “certain physical restrictions should be imposed, because it is now evident that beyond a certain point the planet cannot support humanity.”[42] Bailey’s proposed solutions were far-reaching: eugenics, and the reshaping of human sexuality so that people – like animals and plants – only mate and reproduce for a part of each year: “The emphasis in the future will shift from the urge to produce large families to that of producing quality and intelligence in the offspring. This will include that science of which eugenics is the distorted and exoteric indication.”[43] “The real change in human consciousness which is needed will appear only as the race itself is brought under a rhythmic law – under which, for instance, the animal lives function, or the seasonal law under which forms in the vegetable kingdom operate – thus transferring the whole concept on to a higher turn of the evolutionary spiral.”[44]

Bailey also said, “One of the tasks of the educator of the future will be to teach the meaning of the Law of Rebirth, and thus bring about such a profound change in the racial attitude to life and sex, to birth and parenthood, that sex rhythm, cyclic experience, psychological preparation and directed, controlled body-building may go forward and supersede the present methods, which are based upon an uncontrolled response to the sex urge and desire, and the unthinking procreation of children. The vast population of the world today is the result of an animal response to these urges and of the general promiscuity, which is perhaps the outstanding factor, esoterically speaking and from the standpoint of the Hierarchy, of the present world distress, economic difficulties, and national aggressions.”[45]

Astrological Racism


In many of her books, Alice Bailey upheld occult racial theories, including the division of mankind into races that are on different points of the “ladder of evolution;” the Aryans and an emerging “new race” are the most-evolved. In Education in the New Age, Bailey predicted the use of occult racial theory in the schools of the future: “Young people will then be studied from the standpoint of their probable point upon the ladder of evolution and will be grouped as: a) Lemurians, with physical predispositions. b) Atlanteans, with emotional dominance. c) Aryans, with mental tendencies and inclinations. d) New race, with group qualities and consciousness and idealistic vision.”[46]



In Problems of Humanity, Bailey stated that the races are unequal now, but that this is a temporary condition: “Under the great evolutionary process, men and races differ in mental development, in physical stamina, in creative possibilities, in understanding, in human perceptiveness and in their position upon the ladder of civilization; this, however, is temporary, for the same potentialities exist in all of us without exception, and will eventually display themselves.”[47] She said, “The new race is forming in every land, but primarily in those lands where the fifth or Caucasian races are to be found.”[48] In The Destiny of the Nations, Bailey predicted that “very low grade human bodies will disappear, causing a general shift in the racial types toward a higher standard.”[49]

In The Rays and the Initiations, Bailey said that the “new race” will be distinguished by “a state of consciousness which is the Aryan or mental consciousness or state of thinking … This state of consciousness will find its expression in people as far apart racially as the Japanese and the American or the Negro and the Russian.”[50] Distinguishing herself from the Nazi race theorists, Bailey said in Esoteric Psychology, “I am not using the word Aryan as synonymous with Nordic but as descriptive of the intellectual goal of humanity, of which our Occidental civilisation is in the early stages, but which men of all time and all races have individually demonstrated. The Aryan state of consciousness is one into which all men eventually pass.”[51]



A quarter-century later, Foster Bailey – Alice Bailey’s husband – proposed the same racial theories: “For millions of years the evolution of humanity has been going on. … We recognize three great stages of this human growth – Lemurian, Atlantean, and Aryan. We are now in the Aryan stage of the process of perfection. It is difficult to realise what a human being was like in Lemurian times.”[52]

Human Inequality in the New Age


Elitism and condescension would be the hallmarks of the planning and execution of Bailey’s proposed New World Order. In The Externalisation of the Hierarchy, Bailey said, “The needed choices can now be made in cooperation, in consultation and with open eyes. The choice is clearly before the thinking people in every country, and upon their decision rests the fate of the less intelligent masses.”[53] In Education in the New Age, she said, “Cooperative goodwill is all that can, at this time, be expected from the masses, and this is the sublimation of forces released through civilisation. Loving understanding should be the hallmark of the cultured, wiser group, plus an ability to correlate the world of meaning with the world of outer effects. Ponder on this sentence. Group love is, and must be, the outstanding characteristic of the Illuminati of the world, and it is at this time the motivating power of the Masters of the Wisdom, until such time as enough disciples are expressive of this particular force.”[54]



Inequality, based on “the new form of astrology” and “esoteric psychology” will be the basis of schooling in the New Age, as well. Bailey said, “It will be apparent, then, that those to be taught will be gauged from the angles upon which I have touched: a) Those capable of being rightly civilised. This refers to the mass of men. b) Those capable of being carried forward into the world of culture. This includes a very large number. c) Those who can add to the assets of civilisation and culture ‘the equipment’ required for the process of functioning as conscious souls, not only in the three worlds of instinctual and intellectual living, but in the world of spiritual being also, and yet with complete continuity of consciousness and with complete triple integration. Not all can pass into the higher grades, and this must be appreciated. The gauging of ability will be based upon an understanding of the ray types (the science of esoteric psychology), on a comprehension of the condition of the glandular and physiological equipment, upon certain specific tests, and upon the new form of astrology.”[55]

Anti-Semitism


Bailey expressed hatred for Judaism in many of her books.[56]



In The Rays And The Initiations, Alice Bailey says, “Symbolically, the Jews represent (from the point of view of the Hierarchy) that from which all Masters of the Wisdom and Lords of Compassion emerge: materialism, cruelty, and a spiritual conservatism, so that today they live in Old Testament times and are under the domination of the separative, selfish, lower concrete mind. But their opportunity will come again, and they may change all this when the fires of suffering at last succeed in purifying them and burning away their ancient crystallisation, thus liberating them to the extent that they can recognise their Messiah, Who will not, however, be the world Messiah. The Jews need humility more than any other nation. By humility they may learn something of value as well as a needed sense of proportion.”[57]



In a tactic that is common for today’s religious liberals, Bailey criticized St. Paul and separated his teachings from Christ. Her “contribution,” as evident in two of her works, was to add a swipe at the Jews. In The Rays and the Initiations, Bailey said, “In the immediate past, the keynote of the Christian religion has been death, symbolised for us in the death of the Christ, and much distorted for us by St. Paul in his effort to blend the new religion which Christ gave us with the blood religion of the Jews.”[58] In a section of The Externalisation of the Hierarchy written in 1946,[59] Bailey reiterated: “the failure of Christianity can be traced to its Jewish background (emphasised by St. Paul), which made it full of propaganda instead of loving action, which taught the blood sacrifice instead of loving service, and which emphasised the existence of a wrathful God, needing to be placated by death, and which embodied the threats of the Old Testament Jehovah in the Christian teaching of hell fire.”[60] She added, “I have sought – with love and understanding – to point out the faults of the world religions, with their obsolete theologies and their lack of love, and to indicate the evils of Judaism. The present world faiths must return to their early simplicity, and orthodox Judaism, with its deep seated hate, must slowly disappear; all must be changed in preparation for the revelation which Christ will bring.”[61]

In The Reappearance of The Christ, Bailey said, “Christ came to bring to an end the Jewish dispensation which should have climaxed and passed away as a religion with the movement of the sun out of Aries into Pisces. He, therefore, presented Himself to them as their Messiah, manifesting through the Jewish race. In the rejection of Christ as the Messiah, the Jewish race has remained symbolically and practically in the sign of Aries, the Scapegoat;[62] they have to pass – again speaking symbolically – into the sign, Pisces, the Fishes, and recognize their Messiah when He comes again in the sign Aquarius. Otherwise they will repeat their ancient sin of non-response to the evolutionary process. They rejected that which was new and spiritual in the desert; they did it again in Palestine two thousand years ago; will they do it again, as opportunity is offered to them? The difficulty with the Jew is that he remains satisfied with the religion of nearly five thousand years ago and shows as yet little desire to change.”[63]



In the January 1939 section of The Externalisation of the Hierarchy, [64] Bailey wrote, “The solution will come, as I said, when the races regard the Jewish problem as a humanitarian problem but also when the Jew does his share of understanding, love, and right action. This he does not yet do, speaking racially. He must let go of his own separative tendencies and of his deep sense of persecution. He will do this latter with great facility, when he grasps, as a race, the significance, the significance and inevitability of the Law of Karma, and from a close study of the Old Testament and of the acts and deeds there claimed by him as his racial acts and deeds (conquest, terrorism, and cruelty), realises that the law is working out and incidentally releasing him for a greater future. There must, at the same time, be a realisation by the Jew and Gentile of equal responsibility and equal liability for the present world difficulty.”[65] Bailey wrote this after the November 1938 Kristallnacht pogroms in Germany, and on the eve of the Shoah, the Nazi genocide.

At the same time, Bailey also gave a novel account of Jewish history – or, rather, pre-history: “those whom we now call the Jews … are the descendants of that earlier group which was held in pralaya between the first and second solar systems, If you will remember that the third ray governed that system and also governs the Jewish race, if you bear in mind that that system was occupied with the divine aspects of matter only and with external conditions, and that the Jews were the highest product of that system, you can come to an understanding of the Jew, his separateness, his desire for racial purity and his interest in all that is commercial and tangible.”[66]



In Esoteric Healing, she wrote: “Their aggressive history as narrated in the Old Testament is on a par with present-day German accomplishment; yet Christ was a Jew and it was the Hebrew race which produced him. Let this never be forgotten. The Jews were great aggressors; they despoiled the Egyptians and they took the Promised Land at the point of the sword, sparing neither man, woman, nor child. Their religious history has been built around a materialistic Jehovah, possessive, greedy and endorsing and encouraging aggression.”[67] “Today the law is working, and the Jews are paying the price, factually and symbolically, for all they have done in the past.”[68] “Until, however, the Jews themselves face up to the situation and admit that there may be for them the working out of the retributive aspect of the Law of Cause and Effect, and until they endeavour to ascertain what it is in them, as a race, which has initiated their ancient and dire fate, this basic world issue will remain as it has been since the very night of time … What I have said in no way mitigates the guilt of those who have so sorely abused the Jews. … Though much that has happened to the Jews originated in their past history and in their pronounced attitude of separativeness and nonassimilability, and in their emphasis upon material good, yet the agents who have brought the evil karma upon them equally incur the retributive aspects of the same law.”[69]



When Bailey accused Jews of “separativeness” and “emphasis upon material good,” she was making – in her own terms – the most serious accusation possible, since she said “the true nature of cosmic evil finds its major expression in wrong thinking, false values, and the supreme evil of materialistic selfishness and the sense of isolated separativeness.”[70]



In a section of The Rays and The Initiations written in 1948[71] – after the Shoah –Bailey said that “The Jewish people have not only repudiated the Messiah (which their race produced), but they have forgotten their unique relation to humanity; they forget that millions in the world today have suffered as they have suffered and that – for instance – there are eighty per cent of other people in the concentration camps of Europe and only twenty per cent Jews. The Jew, however, fought only for himself, and largely ignored the sufferings of his fellowmen in the concentration camps.”[72]

Regarding the establishment of the State of Israel, Bailey said, “Today the Jewish people are engineering trouble, and it is interesting to note that the main contention of the past of Poland, lately of the Irish, and today of the Jews, is territory, thus evidencing a most distorted sense of values. … They are claiming a land to which they have no possible right and which the Jews have ignored for two thousand years.”[73] She added, “The menace to world freedom today lies in the known policies of the rulers of the U.S.S.R. and in the devious and lying machinations of the Zionists.”[74]



Instead of Zionism or religious orthodoxy, Bailey proposed assimilation as the solution to the “Jewish problem:” “The Jewish problem will not be solved by taking possession of Palestine, by plaint and demand and by financial manipulations. That would be but the prolongation of ancient wrong and material possessiveness. The problem will be solved by the willingness of the Jew to conform to the civilisation, the cultural background and the standards of living of the nation to which – by the fact of birth and education – he is related and with which he should assimilate. It will come by the relinquishment of pride of race and of the concept of selectivity; it will come by renouncing dogmas and customs which are intrinsically obsolete and which create points of constant irritation to the matrix within which the Jew finds himself; it will come when selfishness in business relations and the pronounced manipulative tendencies of the Hebrew people are exchanged for more selfless and honest forms of activity.”[75]



Bailey added that, on the part of Gentiles, “The growing anti-Semitic feeling in the world is inexcusable in the sight of God and man. I refer not here to the abominable cruelties of the obsessed German people. Behind that lies a history of Atlantean relationships into which it is needless for me to enter because I could not prove to you the truth of my statements. I refer to the history of the past two thousand years and to the everyday behaviour of Gentile people everywhere. There must be a definite effort on the part of the nationals of every country to assimilate the Jews, to inter-marry with them and to refuse to recognise as barriers old habits of thought and ancient bad relations.”[76] Give Bailey credit for this: she wanted to use non-violent means, assimilation and inter-marriage, as the Gentiles’ solution to the “Jewish problem.” She accurately distinguished between the Nazi genocide and the long-standing anti-Jewish prejudice in Christian and Islamic nations.[77] But as an explanation for the Shoah, “a history of Atlantean relationships” between the Germans and the Jews in their past lives is a true prize-winner.

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