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Alice A. Bailey
Shown here on the cover of a Danish translation of her autobiography, her work has been translated into over 50 languages.

Alice Ann Bailey, often known as Alice A. Bailey or AAB (16 June 1880 Manchester, England - 15 December 1949), writer and lecturer on Neo-Theosophy, was born in England in 1880 as Alice LaTrobe Bateman. She moved to America in 1907 where she spent the rest of her life. She was a prolific author on occultism and founded an international esoteric movement. Sir John Sinclair, Bt., gives a commentary on the seminal influence of Alice Bailey, which he says underlies the consciousness growth movement in the 20th century.

Life

Alice Bailey came from an wealthy upper class British family and as a member of the Anglican Church, had a thorough Christian education. In 1907 she met the man who became her first husband, Walter Evans, while she was doing evangelical work with British soldiers in India. Together they moved to America, where W. Evans became an Episcopalian priest (Bailey, p. 1 & p. 47). She claimed that her husband physically abused her so she asked for, and received, a divorce from the Episcopal Church in California (Bailey, p. 121-122).

On June 30th, 1895, as a teenager, she was visited by a man dressed in a western suit with a turban who appeared to be non-European. He predicted to her the course her life would take. At the time she thought the visitor was Jesus, though she later understood that the visitor was the Master KH. Bailey was never sure if the man had visited her in person or if he had come in a vision (Bailey, pp 134-137).

After her divorce in 1915 Bailey joined the Theosophical Society and began to read the books of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (Bailey, pp 134-136). In 1918 she became a member of the Esoteric section of the Theosophical Society. She described a key experience there as follows:

The first time that I went into the Shrine Room I saw the customary pictures of the Christ and the Masters of the Wisdom, as the Theosophists call Them. To my surprise there, looking straight at me, was a picture of my visitor. There was no mistake. This was the man who had walked into my aunt's drawing room, and it was not the Master Jesus (Bailey, pp 156).

Bailey's books contain much information about the “Masters of the Wisdom,” a brotherhood of enlightened sages who work under the guidance of the Christ. She considered her books, in part, an effort to clarify the nature of the Masters and the nature of their work.

This I will enlarge upon later and show how I personally came to know of Their existence. In everyone's life there are certain convincing factors which make living possible. Nothing can alter one's inner conviction. To me, the Masters are such a factor and this knowledge has formed a stabilizing point in my life (Bailey, p. 4).

In 1919 Foster Bailey (her future second husband) became National Secretary of the Theosophical Society while Alice Bailey was editor of the Theosophical Society magazine, The Messenger (Bailey, p. 157). Eventually she broke with the Society, having come to see it as too authoritarian and involved in lower psychic phenomena. But she continued throughout her life to recognize the importance of Madame Blavatsky's works and saw her own writings as a continuation and further development of Blavatsky’s teachings (Bailey, pp. 168-177).

As with Blavatsky/Theosophical material, and more recent contemporary channeled material from other sources, we find in the Bailey work the same occult cosmological hierarchy: physical, etheric, astral, mental, causal, and higher inhabited levels of existence (Klimo, Jon, Investigations on Receiving Information from Paranormal Sources, J. Tarcher, Inc, 1987, p 118).

Alice Bailey's first telepathic contact with the Tibetan Master Djwhal Khul occurred in 1919:

I had sent the children off to school and thought I would snatch a few minutes to myself and went out onto the hill close to the house. I sat down and began thinking and then suddenly I sat startled and attentive. I heard what I thought was a clear note of music which sounded from the sky, through the hill and in me. Then I heard a voice which said, "There are some books which it is desired should be written for the public. You can write them. Will you do so?" Without a moment's notice I said, "Certainly not. I'm not a darned psychic and I don't want to be drawn into anything like that." I was startled to hear myself speaking out loud. The voice went on to say that wise people did not make snap judgments, that I had a peculiar gift for the higher telepathy and that what I was being asked to do embodied no aspect of the lower psychism. I replied that I didn't care, that I wasn't interested in any work of a psychic nature at all. The unseen person who was speaking so clearly and directly to me then said that he would give me time for consideration; that he would not take my answer then and that he would come back in three weeks' time exactly, to find out what I intended to do (Bailey, pp. 162-163).

Bailey was eventually persuaded by Djwhal Khul to write down what he wanted to dictate to her telepathically, and this dictation continued for 30 years (1919 to 1949). The resulting twenty-four books (see bibliography below) give a body of esoteric teachings relating to ancient wisdom, meditation as service to humanity, philosophy, religion, contemporary events, science, psychology, the nations, astrology, healing, etc.

In 1923, with the help of her second husband Foster Bailey, she founded the Arcane School which gave (and still gives) correspondence course training based on the teaching in her books (Bailey, pp. 192-193). The Arcane School is part of the Lucis Trust, a not-for-profit foundation which also publishes Bailey's books, and shelters such Foster Bailey initiatives as World Goodwill and Triangles. About 100 of Alice Bailey's public talks and private talks to her more advanced Arcane School students are now available online. Bailey continued to work right up to the time of her death from leukemia in 1949 (Foster Bailey, in the preface to her autobiography, pp. 1).

Criticism

Some critics have identified Bailey's writings as racist and antisemitic.

In 1997, Rabbi Yonassan Gershom wrote an article titled "Antisemitic Stereotypes in Alice Bailey's Writings" in which he claimed that in Bailey's "Plan for the New World Order," her call for "the gradual dissolution - again if in any way possible - of the Orthodox Jewish faith," indicated that "her goal is nothing less than the destruction of Judaism itself."

Monica Sjöö, in her book The Great Cosmic Mother: Rediscovering the Religion of the Earth, spoke of Bailey's "reactionary and racist influence on the whole New Age movement."

The Lucis Trust has responded to such critcisms by openly admitting that "the books that the Tibetan wrote with the cooperation of Alice Bailey between 1919-1949" have "seemed to single out the Jews for special criticism" and that they display "an unwavering opposition to Zionism". They also say that the term "race" as it appears in Bailey's writings has nothing to do with biology, religion, nationality, or social views, but instead refers only to "a state of consciousness.".

Bailey's works are also criticised by some Christian groups. In his book "Unmasking the New Age", the Christian writer Doug Groothuis claims that Bailey's Lucis Trust was originally named the "Lucifer Trust" and was later changed due to controversy. The conservative Christian Watchman Fellowship warns that although Alice Bailey wrote extensively about the spiritual role of Jesus, her teachings are actually contrary to orthodox and traditional Christian doctrine..

Some of Bailey's books are criticized by Theosophists who see certain aspects of her writings as borrowed from Theosophy yet including perspectives that were not part of the original teachings of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky.

Bibliography

The Lucis Trust is the official publisher of Alice Bailey's books. A few books of Alice Bailey that are no longer under copyright are also available online at independent web sites.

Credited to Alice Bailey and Djwhal Khul:

Initiation, Human and Solar -- 1922
Letters on Occult Meditation -- 1922
A Treatise on Cosmic Fire -- 1925
Light of the Soul: The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali -- 1927 (commentary by Alice Bailey)
A Treatise on White Magic -- 1934
Discipleship in the New Age -- Volume I - 1944
Discipleship in the New Age -- Volume II - 1955
Problems of Humanity -- 1947
The Reappearance of the Christ -- 1948
The Destiny of the Nations -- 1949
Glamor - A World Problem -- 1950
Telepathy and the Etheric Vehicle -- 1950
Education in the New Age -- 1954
The Externalization of the Hierarchy -- 1957

A Treatise on the Seven Rays:
- Volume 1: Esoteric Psychology I -- 1936
- Volume 2: Esoteric Psychology II -- 1942
- Volume 3: Esoteric Astrology -- 1951
- Volume 4: Esoteric Healing -- 1953
- Volume 5: The Rays and the Initiations -- 1960

Credited to Alice A. Bailey alone:

The Consciousness of the Atom -- 1922
The Soul and its Mechanism -- 1930
From Intellect to Intuition -- 1932
From Bethlehem to Calvary -- 1937
The Unfinished Autobiography -- 1951
The Labors of Hercules -- 1974
The Labours of Hercules: An Astrological Interpretation -- first published 1982

References

Sinclair, Sir John R., 1984, The Alice Bailey Inheritance. Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, England: Turnstone Press Limited
http://www.esotericstudies.net/talks/index.htm
http://www.nonduality.com/ alice.htm
http://www.pinenet.com/rooster/bailey.html
http://www.monicasjoo.org/artic/channelbrief/sinisterchannelings1.htm
http://www.lucistrust.org/en/arcane_school/talks_and_articles/concerning_the_ageless_wisdom_writings_on_the_jewish_people
http://www.lucistrust.org/en/arcane_school/talks_and_articles/concerning_the_ageless_wisdom_writings_on_the_jewish_people
Groothuis, Doug. Unmasking the New Age. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1986; p. 120.
http://www.watchman.org/profile/bailypro. htm
http://www.watchman.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=home. about_us
http://www.watchman.org/profile/bailypro. htm
http://www.blavatskyarchives.com/baileyal. htm
http://members.aol.com/uniwldarts/uniworld. artisans.guild/HPBvsAB.html

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