False
Dawn - Chapter 11
Alice A. Bailey and the Lucis
Trust
A guest document - By Lee Penn
Contents
Introduction
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.
A Lucis Trust/World Goodwill pamphlet, “The New Group of World
Servers,” says of world servers, those who put Theosophical principles
into practice: “When active in the religious field, they heal
differences and recognise the universality of truth. They attack
no people, classes or systems, and under no circumstances do they ever
condemn or criticise any race or nation.” [78] It seems that
Bailey would not meet the standards that her own followers at World
Goodwill apply for membership in the “new group of world servers.”
There is no evidence whatsoever that any URI leaders share Alice
Bailey’s anti-Semitic views. Nor have Robert Muller, Barbara Marx
Hubbard, or Neale Donald Walsch repeated any of Bailey’s diatribes
about Judaism; they focus their scorn instead on orthodox,
“fundamentalist” Christianity. Nevertheless, in most political
and religious discourse since 1945 in Western Europe and North America,
any hint of anti-Semitism has usually sufficed to make suspected
writers, politicians, or religious leaders – and their avowed followers –
outcast. As historian Philip Jenkins has said, “the anti-Semite
is denounced in the United States and obliged to keep quiet.” [79] It is noteworthy
that this social sanction seems not
to apply to Alice Bailey, her teachings, and her present-day
Theosophist followers. This is not because Bailey’s feculent
writings are secret. On the contrary. All of the Bailey
books remain in print; they are readily available in bookstores, and as
a Lucis Trust CD-ROM of all 24 volumes. [80]
Equal-Opportunity
Contempt for
Traditional Religions
Bailey consigns traditional Judaism, Islam, and Christianity to the
dustbin of history: “Palestine should no longer be called the
Holy Land; its sacred places are only the passing relics of three dead
and gone religions. … Judaism is old, obsolete, and
separative and has no true message for the spiritually minded which
cannot be better given by the newer faiths; the Moslem faith has served
its purpose and all true Moslems await the coming of the Imam Mahdi who
will lead them to light and to spiritual
victory; the Christian faith also has served its purpose; its Founder
seeks to bring a new Gospel and a new message that will enlighten all
men everywhere. Therefore, Jerusalem stands for nothing of
importance today, except for that which has passed away and should pass
away. The ‘Holy Land’ is no longer holy, but is desecrated by
selfish interests, and by a basically separative and conquering
nation.” [81]
Alice Bailey specifically hated the Vatican – enough to propose
dropping the Bomb on the Holy See. In a section of The Externalisation of the Hierarchy
dated April-May 1946, she wrote that “The atomic bomb does not belong
to the three nations who perfected it and who own the secrets at
present – the United States of America, Great Britain, and
Canada. It belongs to the United Nations for use (or let us
rather hope, simply for threatened use) when aggressive action on the
part of any nation rears its ugly head. It does not essentially
matter whether that aggression is the gesture of any particular nation
or group of nations or whether it is generated by the political groups
of any powerful religious organisation, such as the Church of Rome, who
are as yet unable to leave politics alone.” [82]
Bailey explained her animosity: “The churches are themselves great
capitalistic systems, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, and show
little evidence of the mind that was in Christ.” [83] She said, “The
Roman Catholic Church stands entrenched and unified against any new and
evolutionary presentation of truth to the people; its roots are in the
past but it is not growing into the light; its vast financial resources
enable it to menace the future enlightenment of mankind under the cloak
of paternalism, and a colorful outer appearance which hides a
crystallization and an intellectual stupidity which must inevitably
spell its eventual doom, unless the faint stirrings of new life
following the advent of Pope John XXIII can be nourished and
developed.” [84]
Bailey despised the Russian Orthodox Church, as well. She praised
the Bolsheviks for crushing the pre-1917 church and replacing it with a
collaborationist, KGB-riddled structure: “The Greek Orthodox Church
reached such a high stage of corruption, graft, greed and sexual evil
that, temporarily and under the Russian Revolution, it was
abolished. This was a wise, needed and right action. … The refusal of
the revolutionary party in Russia to recognize
this corrupt church was wise and salutary … The church in Russia
has again received official recognition and faces a new
opportunity. … The challenge of its environment is great
and it cannot be reactionary as can – and are – the churches in other
parts of the world.” [85]
While Bailey condemns traditional Judaism and Christianity repeatedly
in many of her books, she also aims a few shots at traditional Asian
religions. “In the Oriental religions a disastrous negativity has
prevailed; the truths given out have not sufficed to better the daily
life of the believer or to anchor the truths creatively upon the
physical plane. The effect of the Eastern doctrines is largely
subjective and negative as to daily affairs. The negativity of
the theological interpretations of the Buddhist and Hindu Scriptures
have kept the people in a quiescent condition from which they are
slowly beginning to emerge.” [86]
She added, “There is no indication that the great Oriental religions
are taking an active lead in producing a new and better world.” [87] She also said,
“all the world Scriptures are now seen to be based on poor translations
and no part of them – after thousands of years of translation – is as
it originally was, if it ever existed as an original manuscript and was
not in reality some man’s recollection of what was said.” [88] And so much for
the Koran and all other
religions’ sacred texts.
In the early 1970s, Foster Bailey, who had been Alice Bailey’s husband
until her death in 1949, dismissed all the major religions with similar
contempt. He said, “It is not reasonable that either Buddhism or
Christianity, or any of the other old age organised religions, can
transcend their perversions or that they have within themselves the
qualities needed for world usefulness in the new Aquarian age. However,
they still can have usefulness for the millions of human
beings who are Atlantean in consciousness and who do not have the
capacity to respond the new spiritual potencies of the Aquarian age.” [89]
The Coming New
Religion
A New Religion would replace these outmoded beliefs. To establish
the New Religion, Alice Bailey’s New Age Christ has three current tasks:
“Therefore, we have isolated (if I may use such a word) three
activities to which the Christ is at this time dedicated:
1. The reorganisation of the world
religions – if in any way possible – so that their out-of-date
theologies, their narrow-minded emphasis and their ridiculous belief
that they know what is in the Mind of God may be offset, in order that
the churches may eventually be the recipients of spiritual inspiration.
2. The gradual dissolution – again, if in any way possible – of the
orthodox Jewish faith, with its obsolete teaching, its separative
emphasis, its hatred of the Gentiles and its failure to recognize the
Christ. In saying this I do not fail to recognize those Jews
throughout the world who acknowledge the evils and are not orthodox in
their thinking; they belong to the aristocracy of spiritual belief to
which the Hierarchy itself belongs.
3. Preparation for a new revelation which will inaugurate the new era
and set the note for the new world religion.” [90]
The New Religion proposed by Bailey would be based on magic, spiritual
elitism, and the manipulation of the people: “The new religion will be
one of Invocation and Evocation, of bringing together great spiritual
energies and then stepping them down for the benefiting and the
stimulation of the masses. The work of the new religion will be the
distribution of spiritual energy and the protecting of humanity from
energies and forces which they are not, at the particular time, fitted
to receive.” [91]
In the New Religion, “the science of invocation and evocation will take
the place of what we now call prayer and worship,” [92] because “as man
progresses upon the Path he forgets worship; he loses all sense of
fear, and adoration fails to engross his attention.” [93] (By this
standard, the seraphim, cherubim, and elders described in chapters 4
and 5 of the book of Revelation have not progressed far “upon the
Path.”)
There will be two levels of religious practice – one for the masses and
one for the adepts of the New Age: “This new invocative work will
be the keynote of the coming world religion and will fall into two
parts. There will be the invocative work of the masses of the
people, everywhere trained by the spiritually minded people of the
world (working in the churches whenever possible under an enlightened
clergy) to accept the fact of the approaching spiritual energies,
focused through Christ and His spiritual Hierarchy, and trained also to
voice their demand for light, liberation and understanding. There
will also be the skilled work of invocation as practised by those who
have trained their minds through right meditation, who know the potency
of formulas, mantrams and invocations and who work consciously.” [94]
The New Religion will work closely with the United Nations: “Thus the
expressed aims and efforts of the United Nations will be eventually
brought to fruition and a new church of God, gathered out of all
religions and spiritual groups, will unitedly bring to an end the great
heresy of separateness.” [95]
This foreshadows Robert Muller’s writings about the religious role of
the UN.
In April/May of 1946, [96]
Bailey wrote that all of us must change our religious beliefs, since
the alternative is “a religious war which will make the past war [97] appear like child’s
play.” [98] She
said, “That the Jews should be rid of fear is of major importance;
that they should know and recognise the Christ as the Messiah, and
therefore find for themselves that the religion they follow is
destructive of many of the finer values, is likewise of major
importance; that orthodox Judaism, along with all the other faiths,
should … all move towards some loving synthesis and eliminate
their mutual antagonisms and rivalries is equally urgent.” [99] Bailey continued,
“That the Vatican cease its political scheming, its exploitation of the
masses and its emphasis on ignorance is as important; that the manifold
divisions of the Protestant churches be bridged is imperative. If
none of these things happen, humanity is headed towards a religious war
which will make the past war appear like child’s play; antagonisms and
hatreds will embroil entire populations and the politicians of all the
nations will take full advantage of the situation to precipitate a war
which may well prove the end of humanity. There are no hatreds so
great or so deep as those fostered by religion.” [100] Bishop Swing’s
warning, “What is a bigger terrorist threat than religion in the world
today? There is none,” [101]
echoes this statement by Bailey.
Bailey expected the New Religion, which she called the “Church
Universal,” to emerge by the close of the twentieth century – that is,
just in time for the formation of the URI. She said, “Eventually,
there will appear the Church Universal, and its definite outlines will
appear towards the close of this century. In this connection,
forget not the wise prophecy of H.P.B. [102] as touching events at
the close of this century.” [103]
(Blavatsky had said, “In Century the Twentieth some disciple more
informed, and far better fitted, may be sent by the Masters of Wisdom
to give final and irrefutable proofs that … the source of all
religions and philosophies now known to the world has been for many
ages forgotten and lost to men, but is at last found.” [104])
Bailey added, “I write for the generation which will come into active
thought expression at the end of this century; they will inaugurate the
framework, structure and fabric of the New Age which will start with certain premises which
today are the dream of the more exalted dreamers and which will develop
the civilisation of the Aquarian Age.” [105] She said that
“the problem before the Hierarchy” is to ensure that “the Plan can be
rightly materialized and the close of this century and the beginning of
the next see the purposes of God for the planet and for humanity assume
right direction and proportion.” [106]
Bailey said, “The day is dawning when all religions will be regarded as
emanating from one great spiritual source; all will be seen as unitedly
providing the one root out of which the universal world religion will
inevitably emerge.” [107]
She added that “in the new world order, spirituality will supersede
theology; living experience will take the place of theological
acceptances. The spiritual realities will emerge with increasing
clarity and the form aspect will recede into the background; dynamic,
expressive truth will be the key-note of the new world religion. The
living Christ will assume his rightful place in human consciousness
and see the fruition of His plans, sacrifice, and service, but the hold
of the ecclesiastical orders will weaken and disappear. Only those will
remain as guides and leaders of the human spirit who speak from living
experience, and who know no creedal barriers; they will recognise the
onward march of revelation and the new emerging truths. These
truths will be founded on the ancient realities but will be adapted to
modern need and will manifest progressively the revelation of the
divine nature and quality.” [108]
Thus, liberal Protestants and modernist Catholics will have their
dreams realized in the New Religion.
Bailey also said that mankind’s adherence to the traditional religions
is an accident of birth, and that old differences will be superseded by
“One Humanity”: “World Unity will be a fact when the children of the
world are taught that religious differences are largely a matter of
birth; that if a man is born in Italy, the probability is that he will
be a Roman Catholic; if he is born a Jew, he will follow the Jewish
teaching; if born in Asia, he may be a Mohammedan, a Buddhist, or
belong to one of the Hindu sects; if born in other countries, he may be
a Protestant and so on. He will learn that religious differences
are largely the result of man made quarrels over human interpretations
of truth. Thus gradually, our quarrels and differences will be
offset and the idea of the One Humanity will take their place.” [109]
Updating Freemasonry
for the New
Religion
Alice Bailey said, “one of the things that will eventuate – when the
new universal religion has sway and the nature of esotericism is
understood – will be the utilisation of the banded esoteric organisms,
the Masonic organism and the Church organism as initiating
centres. These three groups converge as their inner sanctuaries
are approached. There is no dissociation between the One
Universal Church, the sacred inner Lodge of all true Masons, and the
innermost circles of the esoteric societies.” [110]
Alice Bailey also predicted that Masonry would be a path to power in
the new world order: “The Masonic
Movement when it can be divorced from politics and social ends
and from its present paralysing condition of inertia, will meet the
need of those who can, and should, wield power. It is the
custodian of the law; it is the home of the Mysteries and the seat of
initiation. It holds in its symbolism the ritual of Deity, and the way
of salvation is pictorially preserved in its work. The methods of
Deity are demonstrated in its Temples, and under the All-Seeing Eye the
work can go forward. It is a far more occult organisation than
can be realised, and is intended to be the training school for the
coming advanced occultists. … It meets the need of those
who work on the first Ray of Will or Power.” [111]
Her husband Foster Bailey, a 32nd degree Mason, [112] said that Masonry “is
all that remains to us of the first world religion which flourished in
an antiquity so old that it is impossible to affix a date. It was
the first unified world religion. Then came the era of separation
of many religions, and of sectarianism. Today we are working
again towards a world universal religion. Again then, Masonry
will come into its own, in some form or another.” [113]
Alice Bailey held great hope for Masonry as a building-block for the
religion of the future, but believed that Masonry would have to adapt
to the times. Part of this adaptation would be the cleansing of
Christian and Jewish imagery from Masonic rituals: “The time has now
come, under cyclic law and in preparation for the New Age, for certain
changes to be worked by Masons with spiritual understanding. The
present Jewish colouring of Masonry is completely out of date and has
been preserved far too long, for it is today either Jewish or
Christian, and should be neither. The Blue Lodge degrees [114] are entirely Jewish in
phrasing and wording, and this should be altered. The Higher
Degrees are predominantly Christian, though permeated with Jewish names
and words. This too should end. This Jewish colouring is
today one of the hindrances to the full expression of Masonic intention
and should be changed, whilst preserving the facts and detail and
structure of the Masonic symbolism intact.” [115]
Dealing With
“Reactionary Forces”
Bailey believed that “conservative elements” and “reactionary forces”
will be the opponents of the New Religion: “This inherent fanaticism
(found ever in reactionary groups) will fight against the appearance of
the coming world religion and the spread of esotericism. For this
struggle certain of the well-organised churches, through their
conservative elements (their most powerful elements), are already
girding themselves.” [116]
Bailey offers a solution – to “arrest the reactionary forces in every
nation”: “If we can delay the crystallisation of the ancient
evils which produced the world war, and arrest the reactionary forces
in every nation, we shall be making way for that which is new and
opening the door to the activities of the New Group of World Servers in
every land – that group which is the agent of the Christ.” [117] She left it
unclear whether she meant to stop her opponents spiritually, or whether
she was suggesting that the “reactionary forces” should be put under
arrest on the physical plane.
Bailey said that the coming of “the new ideals, the new civilisation,
the new modes of life, of education, of religious presentation and of
government” [118]
is inevitable. “They can, however, be delayed by the reactionary
types of people, by the ultra-conservative and closed minds and by
those who cling with adamantine determination to their beloved
theories, their dreams and their visions, their interpretations and
their peculiar and oft narrow understanding of the presented
ideals. They are the
ones who can and do hold back the hour of liberation.” [119] It’s not a giant
step for a Theosophist to conclude that “the hour of liberation” should
be hastened by getting “the reactionary types of people” out of the way.
Bailey’s New World
Order: “A New Power
of Sacrifice”
With the New Religion and the “coming world state,” there will be
spiritual totalitarianism. As Alice Bailey said, “This coming age
will be as predominantly the age of group interplay, group idealism,
and group consciousness as the Piscean Age has been one of personality
unfoldment and emphasis, personality focus and personality
consciousness. Selfishness, as we now understand it, will
gradually disappear, for the will of the individual will voluntarily be
blended into the group will.” [120]
After all, the existence of separate persons is an illusion; we are all
really part of The One. She said, “In the coming world state, the
individual citizen – gladly and deliberately and with full
consciousness of all that he is doing – will subordinate his
personality to the good of the whole.” [121] (As Orwell said of his
protagonist, Winston, at the end of 1984,
“He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.” [122])
Alice Bailey and her associates at the Lucis Trust have repeatedly
praised revolutions and dictatorships, approving them as part of the
workings of “the Plan.” In September 1939, [123] she said, “The men who
inspired the initiating French revolution; the great conqueror,
Napoleon; Bismarck, creator of a nation; Mussolini, the regenerator of
his people; Hitler who lifted a distressed people upon his shoulders;
Lenin, the idealist, Stalin and Franco” were “great and outstanding
personalities who were peculiarly sensitive to the will-to-power and
the will-to-change;” all were “expressions of the Shamballa force” (a
force which Bailey extolled) and “emphasised increasingly the wider
human values.” [124]
Bailey explained that “There are disciples of Shamballa just as there
are disciples of the Hierarchy … It is wise and valuable to
remember this. They are powerful, these disciples of Shamballa,
headstrong and often cruel; they impose their will and dictate their
desires; they make mistakes but they are nevertheless true disciples of
Shamballa and are working out the Will of God as much as the disciples
and Masters of the Hierarchy are working out the Love of God.” [125] Bailey uses
pseudo-mystical language to dismiss the victims of the dictators: “If
you study the nations of the world today from this angle, you will
see this Shamballa energy of will working out potently through the
agency of certain great outstanding personalities. The Lord of
Shamballa in this time of urgency … is sending forth this dynamic
energy. It is form destroying and brings death to those material
forms and organised bodies which hinder the free expression of the life
of God, for they negate the new culture and render inactive the seeds
of the coming civilization.” [126]
Bailey viewed the dictatorships of her time as a positive part of human
evolution, fostering humanity’s “power to regard himself as part of a
whole:” “Everywhere and in every country men are being taught in their
earliest years that they are not only individuals, not only members of
a state, empire or nation, and not only people with an individual
future, but that they are intended to be exponents of certain great
group ideologies – Democratic, Totalitarian, or Communistic. … All this
is very good and part of the ordained plan. Whether it is the
democratic ideal, or the vision of the totalitarian
state, or the dream of the communistic devotee, the effect upon the
consciousness of humanity as a whole is definitely good. His
sense of world awareness is definitely growing, his power to regard
himself as part of a whole is rapidly developing and all this is
desirable and right and contained within the divine plan.” [127] (After World War
II started, Bailey’s writing strongly supported the Allies, favoring
early US entry into the war against the Nazis. [128])
Bailey expected that “a spiritual Hierarchy” would appear and “govern
the people throughout the world and will embody in itself the best
elements of the monarchial, the democratic, the totalitarian, and the
communistic regimes. Most of
these groups of ideologies have latent in them much beauty, strength
and wisdom, and also a profound and valuable contribution to make to
the whole. Each will eventually see its contribution
embodied under the control of the Hierarchy of the Lords of Compassion
and the Masters of the Wisdom.” [129]
For Bailey, spiritual Communism was the objective: “The Lord of the
World, the ‘Ancient of Days,’ is releasing new energies into humanity,
transmuted in the present furnace of pain and fiery agony. This
transmutation will being about a new power of sacrifice, of inclusive
surrender, a clearer vision of the Whole and a cooperative spirit
hitherto unknown and which will be the first expression of that great principle of sharing, so sorely
needed today.” [130]
World Wars and Atom
Bombs: Engines of
Human Evolution
There is no one so cruel as a utopian who sees traditionalists standing
in the way of the March of History. In Bailey’s view, war and genocide
were part of God’s plan, a divine house-cleaning to remove obstacles to
the return of “the Christ” and the coming of the New Age.
Alice Bailey began writing about a coming “selection” as early as March
1934. [131] She
said, “Thus is the New Age dawning. … Ever the race is
to the strong, and always the many are called and the few chosen. This
is the occult law. … Lest this widespread upheaval and
consequent disaster to so many should seem to you unfair, let me remind
you that this one life is but a second of time in the larger and wider
existence of the soul, and those who fail and are disrupted by the
impact of the powerful forces now flooding our earth will nevertheless
have their vibration ‘stepped up’ to better things along with the mass
of those who achieve, even if their physical vehicles are destroyed in
the process. The destruction of the body is not the worst
disaster than can overcome a man.” [132] When Bailey
wrote this, the Nazis had just taken power; manmade famine and
political purges were occurring in the Soviet Union; Japan had begun
its war against China. Many, many “physical vehicles” were being
destroyed.
Bailey’s dismissal of people as “vehicles” foreshadows the beliefs of
the Heaven’s Gate suicide cult. They viewed human bodies as
temporary “vehicles,” to be discarded in order to reach the higher
plane of existence. [133]
When the Hale-Bopp comet appeared in 1997, the cultists expected to be
picked up by aliens and taken into the next kingdom. Therefore,
39 members of this group committed suicide together in a California
mansion in March of that year in order to make a “spiritual” ascent. [134]
In September 1939, [135]
Bailey wrote in Externalisation of
the Hierarchy about the “beneficent and needed” aspects of the
beginning of World War II, which she saw as a necessary step towards
creating “new forms in the religious, political, educational and
economic life of the race:” “Today we are watching the death of a
civilisation or cycle of incarnation of humanity. In all fields
of human expression, crystallisation and deterioration had set
in. … there is everywhere a cry for change and for those
new forms in the religious, political, educational and economic life of
the race which will allow of freer and better spiritual
expression. Such a change is rapidly coming and is regarded by
some as death – terrible and to be avoided if possible. It is
indeed death but it is beneficent and needed.” [136] She added, “Pain
has always been the purifying agent, employed by the Lords of Destiny,
to bring about liberation. The accumulated pain of the present
war and the inherited pain of the earlier stage (begun in 1914) is
bringing about a salutary and changing world consciousness. The
Lord of Pain has descended from His throne and is treading the ways of
earth today, bringing distress, agony and terror to those who cannot
interpret His ends.” [137]
Bailey said in June 1947 [138]
that World War II, “with all its unspeakable horrors, its cruelties,
and its cataclysmic disasters – was but the broom of the Father of all,
sweeping away obstructions in the path of His returning Son.” [139] (These
“obstructions” are people,
not impersonal forces or institutions.) She added, “It would have
been well-nigh impossible to prepare for the coming in the face of the
pre-war conditions. Upon these facts the new group of world
servers must today take their stand.” [140]
In The Rays and the Initiations,
Bailey gave credit to the “Hierarchy” of ascended spiritual masters for
“Their decision, taken early in this century, which precipitated – in
the centre which we call ‘the race of men’ – those potencies and
stimulating energies which produced that major destructive agency, the
world war (1914-1945).” [141]
In April 1943, [142]
Bailey said, “One of the purposes lying behind the present holocaust
(World War II) has been the necessity for the destruction of inadequate
forms. … Therefore the Law of destruction was permitted to work
through humanity itself, and men are now destroying the forms through
which many masses of men are functioning. This is both a good and
a bad thing, viewed from the evolutionary angle” [143] (“Destroying the
forms” does not mean shredding IRS paperwork; it is the Theosophist
code phrase for killing.)
After the war, Bailey wrote in Education
in the New Age that “the Custodians of God’s Plan” viewed World
War II as “in the nature of major surgical operation made in an effort
to save the patient’s life;” the operation had been “largely
successful” in removing “a violent streptococcic germ and infection”
that had “menaced the life of humanity.” [144] The operation
“was made in order to prolong opportunity and save life, not to save the form. The
operation was largely successful.” [145] Nevertheless,
she warned that the two World Wars would be only the beginning of
sorrows: “The germ, to be sure, is not eradicated and makes its
presence felt in infected areas in the body of humanity. Another
surgical operation may be necessary, not in order to destroy and end
the present civilisation, but in order to dissipate the infection and
get rid of the fever.” [146]
She added, “The next stage of human evolution will emerge as a result
of the purificatory action of the World War.” [147]
Bailey’s romance with mass death extended to nuclear weapons. Regarding
the origins of the Bomb, Bailey said, “The atomic bomb
emerged from a first ray Ashram, working in conjunction with a fifth
ray group; from the long range point of view, its intent was and is
purely beneficent.” [148]
In an essay titled “The Release of Atomic Energy,” written on August 9,
1945, Bailey hailed “the release of atomic energy … this week, August
6, 1945, in connection with the bombing of Japan” as “the greatest
spiritual event which has taken place since the fourth kingdom of
nature, the human kingdom, appeared.” [149] She added: “You
will now understand the meaning of the words used by so many of you in
the second of the Great Invocations: The
hour of service of the saving force has now arrived. This
‘saving force’ is the energy which science has released into the world
for the destruction, first of all, of those who continue (if they do)
to defy the Forces of Light working through the United Nations. Then –
as time goes on – this liberated energy will usher in the new
civilisation, the new and better world and the finer, more spiritual
conditions.” [150]
Bailey viewed the “first use of this energy” in “material destruction”
(the atomic incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) as “inevitable and
desirable; old forms (obstructing the good) have had to be destroyed;
the wrecking and disappearance of that which is bad and undesirable
must ever precede the building of the good and desirable and the
longed-for emergence of that which is new and better.” [151] (It is an
interesting coincidence that Bailey hated Christianity – and Nagasaki
was the oldest Christian community in Japan. [152])
Perhaps Alice Bailey was channeling Dr. Strangelove on the
Earth-plane. Her followers continue to do the same.
In 1990, Mary Bailey, the second wife of Foster Bailey, [153] published A Learning Experience, present-day
reflections on the teachings of Alice Bailey. The book contained
an essay, “Atomic Energy – Curse or Blessing?,” written in response to
the Chernobyl disaster. She reprinted most of Bailey’s “Release
of Atomic Energy” essay from 1945 – including all the material quoted
above. And she defended
Alice Bailey’s position: “It seems inevitable that, at this stage in
its planetary evolution, humanity should be more aware of the
destruction of form resulting from the use of two atomic bombs than
with the liberation of the soul within the form. But this
liberation and new opportunity, to the spiritual Hierarchy, is the real
consequence of the bombs and their only justification because here the
evolution of rootraces (and subraces) is concerned, with far-reaching
implications.” [154]
Bailey’s calm acceptance of others’ deaths arose from her beliefs about
life and death, views reminiscent of Gnosticism that were expressed in Education in the New Age: “To the
Custodians of God’s Plan and to Those Who are working out the new
developments, the form side of life,
the outer tangible expression, is of entirely secondary
importance. Your vision is oft distorted by the pain and
suffering to which the form is subjected (either your own or that of
others, individually or en masse).” [155] (“The form” is
New Age-speak for a person.) She reiterated: “let us never forget
that it is the Life, its
purpose and its directed intentional destiny that is of importance; and
also that when a form proves inadequate, or too diseased, or too
crippled for the expression of that purpose, it is – from the point of
view of the Hierarchy – no disaster when that form has to go. Death is
not a disaster to be feared; the work of the Destroyer is not
really cruel or undesirable.” [156]
Rather than being the “last enemy to be destroyed” (1 Cor. 15:26),
Bailey says that “death is the great Liberator.” [157] This is so
because “The domination of spirit
(and its reflection, soul) by matter is what constitutes evil.” [158]
Praise for Communism:
From Lenin to Mao
Alice Bailey criticized the Stalinist regime in the USSR [159] but said that “The
true communistic platform is sound; it is brotherhood in action and it
does not – in its original platform – run counter to the spirit of
Christ. The imposition of intellectual and formal communism by a
group of ambitious and sometimes evil men is not sound; it does not adhere to
the true communistic platform, but is based on personal ambitions, love
of power and on interpretations of the writings of Lenin and Marx which
are also personal and run counter to the meaning of these two men.” [160] Like the
Trotskyites, Bailey wished to defend the reputations of Marx and Lenin.
Bailey said that “true Communism” would “prove convincing to the world”
after the fall of the Iron Curtain. In The Rays and The Initiations, she
said, “In Russia a world ideology is being wrought out which (when
proven) can be presented to the world as a model system; this, however,
will not come as a result of dictatorship, nor can it be presented
aggressively to the world. Russia is in reality – whether she
realises it or not – undertaking a
great experiment in education and, in spite of evil methods and
sinning against the soul of human freedom, eventually this educational
process will prove convincing to the world and provide a world
model. This can only take place when the present group of
dictators and arrogant men have passed away or been forced out of power
by an awakening people.” [161]
She added, “when the present group of totalitarian rulers (behind what
you call the ‘iron curtain’) die out a different state of affairs will
gradually supervene and a true Communism (in the spiritual sense of the
term) will take the place of the present wickedness.” [162]
The economic system that Bailey proposed for the “new world order” will
be built on global economic planning and wealth redistribution. In The Externalisation of the
Hierarchy, she said, “The new world order will recognise that
the produce of the world, the natural resources of the planet and its
riches, belong to no one nation but should be shared by all. There will
be no nations under the category ‘haves’ and others under
the opposite category. A fair and properly organised distribution
of the wheat, the oil and the mineral wealth of the world will be
developed, based upon the needs of each nation, upon its own internal
resources and the requirements of its people. All this will be
worked out in relation to the whole.” [163] The order of the
day will be world central planning: “the entire economic problem and
the institution of the needed rules and distributing agencies should be
handled by an economic league of
nations. In this league, all the nations will know their
place; they will know their national requirements (based on population
and internal resources, etc.) and will also know what they can
contribute to the family of nations; all will be animated by a will to
the general good.” [164]
In Problems of Humanity,
Bailey said that capitalism must go; “The world economic council (or
whatever body represents the resources of the world) must free itself from fraudulent
politics, capitalistic influence and its devious scheming; it must set the resources of the earth
free for the use of humanity. … Sharing and cooperation
must be taught instead of greed and competition.” [165] She added, “The
problem of distribution is no longer difficult once the food of the
world is freed from politics and from capitalism.” [166] Communism, which
ruined the economies and the natural environment of the Soviet Union
and Eastern Europe, would be attempted on a global scale.
Foster Bailey carried on Alice Bailey’s work after his wife’s death in
1949. In a 1972 Lucis Trust book, Running
God’s Plan, he praised the
Russian Revolution: “Another hierarchical project approved at a
centennial conference was to take action to raise the consciousness of
the four hundred million mass of Russian people. In a few short
years this effort has achieved amazing results and is already an
outstanding hierarchical success. It has been demonstrated that
hopeless, illiterate peasants when stimulated and given a chance become
industrial workers.” [167]
Historians describe these same events as forced industrialization,
coerced collectivization, and man-made famine. He also said,
“History may well recognize Khrushchev as the greatest Russian
liberator since Lenin” [168]
– a telling definition of “liberation,” given the totalitarian nature
of the regime that Lenin founded.
Foster Bailey’s spiritual “hierarchy” of ascended masters also approved
of Maoism and the Chinese Cultural Revolution – which was still in
progress when Running God’s Plan
was published. Foster Bailey said, “The cultural revolution in
China was begun a few short years ago. This also is an
hierarchical project. Amazing changes have been achieved in that
short period. Chester Ronning, Canada’s former Ambassador to
China and an authority on China today, says that the Chinese people
through revolution have changed their way of thinking. This is
fundamental to national reform.” [169] He added, “The
change for the better in the life of the common people in China in the
last few years is more than amazing. Seven hundred million human beings
have been lifted into a new way of life.” [170] Foster Bailey
specifically praised the Cultural Revolution’s practice of forcible
rustication of city dwellers: “Today under Mao the mass of the people
receive the greatest attention. … City dwellers are sent
into the countryside to learn of the farmers. Not just how to
farm but attitudes to life and to people.” [171]
Foster Bailey’s spirit guides also approved of the unification of
Europe – by whatever means necessary: “Another approved
hierarchical project is the uniting of the nations of Europe in one
cooperating peaceful community. … One attempt was to begin
by uniting the peoples living in the Rhine river valley using that
river as a binding factor. It was an attempt by a disciple but
did not work. Now another attempt is in full swing, namely the
six nation European Common Market.” [172] (This “disciple”
was probably Napoleon, whom Alice Bailey had hailed as a “great
conqueror”.) [173]
Napoleon’s principal legacy was death and destruction – “17 years of
wars, perhaps six million Europeans dead, France bankrupt, her overseas
colonies lost.” [174]
Evidently, the Theosophists’ spiritual masters in the “Hierarchy”
condoned mass bloodshed to achieve their goals. According to the Black Book of Communism, there have
been approximately 20 million killed under Soviet Communism, and 65
million slain by the Chinese Communists. [175] Many critics of
New Age and Gnostic ideology have argued that these world-views are
favorable to totalitarianism; [176]
the writings of Alice and Foster Bailey bear this out.
How will the New World Order be brought about? In a 1978
pamphlet, Bailey’s followers at World Goodwill divided mankind into
four classes with varying levels of enlightenment, and stated that
social change flows from the Hierarchy to the “New Group of World
Servers,” and then down to the rest of us:
“People in the world at this time can
be divided into four groups. …
First
the uninformed masses. These through poverty, illiteracy,
hunger, lack of employment, without leisure or means for cultural
advancement are in an inflamed condition. They are, however,
enough developed to respond to the mental suggestion and control of
more advanced people.
Second, the middle classes – both
higher and lower. These constitute the bulk of any nation
– intelligent, diligent, often narrow-minded, enquiring, essentially
religious; they are torn by economic and ideological conflicts and,
because they can read and discuss and are beginning to think, they form
the most powerful element in any nation.
Third, the thinkers everywhere.
These are the intellectual, highly educated men and women who sense
ideas and can formulate them into ideals. They utilise all the
known methods to reach the general public. They stir the middle
class to activity and, through them, arouse the masses. The part
they play is of paramount importance. They are steadily
influencing world affairs – sometimes for good and sometimes for
selfish ends.
Fourth, the New Group of World
Servers. These are the people who are building the new
world order. They are all of them definitely serving humanity,
and are, through the power of their response to the spiritual
opportunity, tide and note, emerging out of every class, group, church,
party, race and nation, and are therefore truly representative. … They
own to no creed, save the creed of Brotherhood, based on
the One Life. They recognise no authority save that of their own
souls. …
Behind this four-fold division of humanity stand those Enlightened Ones
whose right and privilege it is to watch over human evolution and to
guide the destinies of men. In the West we call them Christ and
His disciples. In the theologies of the East they are called by
many names. They are also known as the Agents of God, or the
Hierarchy of liberated souls, who seek ceaselessly to aid and help
humanity. This they do through the implanting of ideas in the
minds of the world thinkers, so that these ideas in due time receive
recognition and eventually become controlling factors in human life.” [177]
This theory of social class and social change gives a new meaning to
the term “liberal elitism.”
Human Civilization:
Destruction and
Rebirth
Bailey wrote in the 1940s that the New Age, which she described as “the
new heavens and the new earth,” would be preceded by two kinds of
“intense creative activity.” [178]
First would come “A destructive cycle,
wherein the old order passes away and that which has been created –
human civilization with its accompanying institutions – is
destroyed. With this destructive action Humanity is today
occupying itself – mostly unconsciously. The major creative
agents are the intelligentsia of the race.” [179] (She appears to
have prophesied the global cultural revolution of the 1960s, and the
role that the “chattering classes” have played in destabilizing
traditional order.) Bailey said that after the destruction of the
old order would come the building of the new, “A cycle of restoration, with many
accompanying difficulties in which the mass of men take part, under the
influence and inspiration of a regenerated intelligentsia.” [180]
Bailey said that the spiritual Hierarchy has been busy with destruction
since 1775. And when humanity achieves spiritual fusion with
these entities, the result will be “the final act of destruction.” In The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
she wrote, “It is interesting to note (though it is of no immediate
moment) that the work of destruction initiated by the Hierarchy during
the past one hundred and seventy-five years (therefore since the year
1775) has in it the seeds – as yet a long way from any germination – of
the final act of destruction which will take place when the Hierarchy
will be so completely fused and blended with Humanity that the
hierarchical form will no longer be required. The three major
centres will then become the two, and the Hierarchy will disappear and
only Shamballa and Humanity will remain. … This event of
final dissolution will take place only at the close of our planetary
existence.” [181]
The End of the
Theosophical Road: “The
Centre of Pure Darkness”
Bailey also set forth the results that individual seekers would attain
from ever-growing closeness to the Hierarchy. Those who learn to
meditate will see that “darkness is pure spirit.” [182] Followers of Bailey’s
New Age path will find that “each contact with the Initiator leads the
initiate closer to the centre of pure darkness – a darkness which is
the very antithesis of darkness as the non-initiate and the
unenlightened understand. It is a centre or point of such intense
brilliance that everything fades out and at the place of tension, and at that
darkest point, let the group see a point of clear cold fire.” [183] (Perhaps Dante
was right when he described the center of Hell as ice.) [184] She urged her
followers toward the “Great Renunciation,” “the final great
transference, based upon the renunciation of that which for aeons has
connoted beauty, truth, and goodness.” [185]
Dale McKechnie, Vice President of the Lucis Trust, said in 1998 that
“The Bailey books carry one deeper into the relationship between Christ
and God and the spiritual Hierarchy.” [186] For those with
eyes to see, the character of Bailey’s “spiritual Hierarchy” is clear:
individual intercourse with it leads to “the centre of pure darkness,”
and when mankind has blended with the Hierarchy, there will be a “final
act of destruction.”
McKechnie said in 1998 that the teachings of Alice Bailey “oppose what
would be called orthodox Christianity. The one overshadows the
other.” [187]
Given the nature of Bailey’s teachings, that’s an understatement.
False Dawn -
Chapter 12:
Present-Day Followers of Alice Bailey
Pathways to Peace and its Theosophical
Associates
Pathways to Peace is listed as a URI Affiliate; [188] its president is Ms.
Avon Mattison, who has donated to the URI for several years. [189] She was also a member
of the URI “Organizational Design Team” that prepared the initial draft
of the URI Charter in early 1998. [190] The
vice-president and treasurer of Pathways to Peace, Masankho Banda, [191] is active in the URI. [192] Robert Muller is
“Senior Adviser” for Pathways to Peace.” [193] Other members of
the “Council of Advisers” include Gordon Davidson, Corinne McLaughlin,
Jean Houston, Barbara Marx Hubbard, and David Spangler, all of whom are
prolific New Age authors. [194]
Pathways To Peace says that it “has Consultative II Status with the
United Nations Economic and Social Council, and works with the U.N.
Centre for Human Rights, U.N. Centre for Human Settlements, UNESCO,
UNICEF, and other Agencies. It is also an official Peace Messenger of
the United Nations.” [195]
Mattison, along with Gordon Davidson and Corinne McLaughlin (who also
support the URI), are members of the “Steering Group” of the “World
Service Intergroup” (WSI). [196]
The WSI’s stated purpose is to “generate a focused, conscious and
deliberate intergroup effort to specifically assist the Externalization
of the Hierarchy and the Reappearance of the Christ. Hierarchy is a
term used here to refer to those spiritual Masters of all traditions
who have evolved through human experience to embody greater light,
love-wisdom and spiritual power through ceaseless service to humanity
and the Divine Plan. They have worked throughout the ages to further
human evolution, and They are now in process of ‘externalizing’ or
becoming known in public life. One of our tasks is to recognize
them, and assist them by preparing humanity for the imminent
reappearance of the World Teacher.” [197] WSI members
“study and honor all of the great spiritual teachings of the ages,
especially the more modern presentations by H.P. Blavatsky, Alice
Bailey, Helena Roerich and other teachers of the Ageless Wisdom.” [198] The members of
WSI’s “Steering Group” are “representatives of esoteric organizations
who are willing to dedicate major time and energy to the work of the
World Service Intergroup … All members are long-term students of
the Tibetan [199]
and have in-depth meditation and intergroup service experience.” [200] In short,
Mattison, Davidson, and McLaughlin are devotees of the teachings of
Alice Bailey.
Corinne McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson
The Dalai Lama wrote a laudatory foreword for McLaughlin and
Davidson’s Spiritual Politics,
describing the book as “timely” and “a new approach for creating a
happier, more peaceful world.” [201]
This is surprising, since the authors say that war can be a source of
positive social change: “if peace is maintained at any price in order
to continue vast injustices and materialistic, wasteful life-styles,
then spiritual death may be the result. Physical death is only of
the body, the form nature, which according to the Ageless Wisdom will
be reborn again in another form. We must be cautious about a
stubborn idealism that loves the ideal of peace more than it loves
humanity’s evolution. We can become so enamored of peace that it
leads to inertia, stagnation, and above all else, an attachment to
material comfort. Peace and war are not true opposites; peace and
change are. War is only one form of change, and often the least
effective. Yet there is a role for the right use of destruction
when it is used against rigid and crystallized forms of thought and
cultural patterns that prevent Life from evolving to its next step.” [202] This belies the
Dalai Lama’s statement that Spiritual
Politics promotes a “more peaceful world.”
McLaughlin and Davidson wrote that “the next release of the Shamballa
[sic] energy into human consciousness is planned for the year 2000 …
which will bring another cycle of major upheaval and change as we move
into the next millennium. This high-voltage energy of synthesis
will test every individual and institution to determine if they are
aligned with the Higher Will. … If they are out of
alignment, they will degenerate emotionally, physically, and
mentally. This process has already begun, as we can see through
the downfall of groups that are opposing evolution and synthesis, and
will only accelerate in the years ahead.”[203] Shamballa [204] energy “destroys those
material forms that have outlived their usefulness and that hinder the
free expression of the Light of God … Once the obstacles to its
free expression have been removed, the unifying force released by
Shamballa will … create union and interdependence in religious,
social, political, and economic fields.” [205] In other words,
the Shamballa energy will get the reactionaries out of the way,
allowing global unity.
NOTES
Internet citations were prepared in 2003 and 2004; documents may
have been removed from the Net, or moved to different locations, since
then.
[1] J. Gordon Melton,
Jerome Clark, and Aidan A. Kelly, New
Age Almanac, Visible Ink Press, 1991, p. 10.
[2] Christopher Partridge, ed.,
New Religions: A Guide – New
Religious Movements, Sects, and Alternative Spiritualities,
Oxford University Press, 2004, p. 329.
[3] United Religions
Initiative, “Interim Global Council Membership in 2000,” Annual Report 2000, p. 8.
[4] United Religions
Initiative, “Honoring URI Donors and Volunteers,” Annual Report 2002 leaflet.
[5] The Rev. Betsy Stang
(Wittenberg Center for Alternative Resources), telephone interview by
Lee Penn, 12/10/97.
[6] Lucis Trust, “World
Goodwill,” http://www.lucistrust.org/goodwill/index.shtml,
printed 08/06/04.
[7] Alice A. Bailey, Esoteric Psychology – Volume II: A
Treatise on the Seven Rays, Lucis Publishing Company, 1942, p.
vii.
[8] Alice A. Bailey, A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, Lucis
Publishing Company, 1925, p. xi.
[9] Foster Bailey, Running God’s Plan, Lucis
Publishing Company, 1972, p. 27.
[10] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, p. 137.
[11] Ibid., p. 107.
[12] Ibid., p. 118.
[13] Ibid., p. 118.
[14] Ibid., p. 118.
[15] Alice A. Bailey, A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, Lucis
Publishing Company, 1925, p. 306
[16] Alice A. Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations: Volume V, A
Treatise on the Seven Rays, 1960, Lucis Publishing Company, pp.
79-80.
[17] Alice A. Bailey, A Treatise on Cosmic Fire, Lucis
Publishing Company, 1925, p. 211.
[18] Alice A. Bailey, Initiation, Human and Solar, Lucis
Publishing Company, 1922, p. 29.
[19] Ibid., p. 28.
[20] Ibid., p. 129.
[21] Ibid., p. 28.
[22] Charles Upton comments
that the Theosophists appear to have erred in their characterization of
Sanat Kumara. He says, “In Hindu doctrine, Sanat-Kumara is one of
the four “mind-born sons” of Brahma the Creator. Madame Blavatsky and
her Theosophical Society have distorted this figure in the following
ways: 1) They name him as a son of Shiva, not Brahma. 2) They identify
him with the Hebrew Ancient of Days, though he is actually a pictured
as an eternal youth. 3) They consider him the ‘Lord of the World’ or
‘planetary logos,’ whereas in his original form he has nothing to do
with world governance, but rather represents ascetic withdrawal from
the world. 4) They claim that he came to Earth from Venus, a planet
named after the Roman goddess of erotic love and identified with
similar goddesses by both the Greek and the Mesopotamians, and a planet
identified by the Hindus themselves with the god Shukra, analogous to
the Greek Eros – and yet the Sanat-Kumara in Hindu belief is a
brahmachari, a religious celibate. It’s as if Blavatsky’s sources were
deliberately attempting to invert traditional Hindu doctrine.” (E-mail
from Charles Upton to Lee Penn, 08/13/04 and 10/09/04.)
[23] H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of
Science, Religion, and Philosophy, Vol. I — Cosmogenesis,
Theosophical University Press, 1999, reprint of 1888 ed., pp. 458-459.
[24] H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of
Science, Religion, and Philosophy, Vol. II — Anthropogenesis,
Theosophical University Press, 1999, reprint of 1888 ed., p. 45,
footnote.
[25] H. P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of
Science, Religion, and Philosophy, Vol. I — Cosmogenesis,
Theosophical University Press, 1999, reprint of 1888 ed., p. 459,
footnote.
[26] Ibid., p. 458.
[27] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, p. 685.
[28] Ibid., p. 685.
[29] Alice A. Bailey, The Reappearance of the Christ,
Lucis Publishing Company, 1948, p. 121.
[30] Ibid., p. 121.
[31] Ibid., p. 121.
[32] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, pp. 122-123.
[33] Alice A. Bailey, The Reappearance of the Christ,
Lucis Publishing Company, 1948, p. 9.
[34] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, p. 530.
[35] Ibid., p. 635.
[36] Alice A. Bailey, Esoteric Healing – Volume IV: A Treatise
on the Seven Rays, Lucis Publishing Company, 1953, p. 393.
[37] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, p. 603.
[38] Ibid., p. 597.
[39] Ibid., p. 590.
[40] Alice A. Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations: Volume V, A
Treatise on the Seven Rays, 1960, Lucis Publishing Company, pp.
233-234.
[41] Alice A. Bailey, The Unfinished Autobiography of Alice A.
Bailey, Lucis Publishing Company, 1951, p. 142.
[42] Alice A. Bailey, Education in the New Age, 1954,
Lucis Publishing Company, p. 134.
[43] Ibid., pp. 133-134.
[44] Ibid., p. 136.
[45] Ibid., p. 138.
[46] Ibid., p. 71.
[47] Alice A. Bailey, Problems of Humanity, 1947, Lucis
Publishing Company, p. 90.
[48] Alice A. Bailey, Education in the New Age, 1954,
Lucis Publishing Company, p. 118.
[49] Alice A. Bailey, The Destiny of the Nations, 1949,
Lucis Publishing Company, p. 125.
[50] Alice A. Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations: Volume V, A
Treatise on the Seven Rays, 1960, Lucis Publishing Company, pp.
593-594.
[51] Alice A. Bailey, Esoteric Psychology: Volume II – A
Treatise on the Seven Rays, Lucis Publishing Company, 1942, p.
379.
[52] Foster Bailey, Running God’s Plan, Lucis
Publishing Company, 1972, p. 154.
[53] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, pp. 213-214.
[54] Alice A. Bailey, Education in the New Age, 1954,
Lucis Publishing Company, p. 54.
[55] Ibid., p. 51.
[56] In addition to the books
cited below, other Bailey works contain anti-Semitic material: Alice A.
Bailey, Problems of Humanity,
Lucis Publishing Company, 3rd ed. 1964, pp. 86, 95-105, 141, and 172;
also, Alice A. Bailey, The
Unfinished Autobiography of Alice A. Bailey, Lucis Publishing
Company, 1951, pp. 118-121; also, Alice A. Bailey, The Destiny of the Nations, Lucis
Publishing Company, 1949, pp. 34-35.
[57] Alice A. Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations: Volume V, A
Treatise on the Seven Rays, 1960, Lucis Publishing Company, pp.
705-706. Other anti-Semitic material appears on pp. 429-430, 534,
548, 634-637, and 679-681.
[58] Ibid., p. 318.
[59] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, p. 541.
[60] Ibid., p. 543.
[61] Ibid., p. 543.
[62] Charles Upton notes an
error of Bailey’s: “The symbol of Aries is the ram – a male sheep – not
the goat. The astrological sign of the goat is Capricorn.”
(E-mail from Charles Upton to Lee Penn, 10/09/04.)
[63] Alice A. Bailey, The Reappearance of the Christ,
1948, Lucis Publishing Company, p. 81.
[64] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, pp. 71-79.
[65] Ibid., p. 78.
[66] Ibid., pp. 76-77. Other
anti-Semitic material appears on pp. 74, 87, 88-89, 92, 544, 551,
615, and 637.
[67] Alice A. Bailey, Esoteric Healing – Volume IV: A Treatise
on the Seven Rays, Lucis Publishing Company, 1953, p. 263.
[68] Ibid., p. 264.
[69] Ibid., pp. 265-266. Other
anti-Semitic material appears on pp. 267-269 of Esoteric Healing.
[70] Alice A. Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations: Volume V, A
Treatise on the Seven Rays, 1960, Lucis Publishing Company, p.
753.
[71] Ibid., p. 620; see the
parenthetical comment in the book.
[72] Ibid., p. 635.
[73] Ibid., p. 634.
[74] Ibid., p. 680.
[75] Alice A. Bailey, Esoteric Healing – Volume IV: A Treatise
on the Seven Rays, Lucis Publishing Company, 1953, pp. 266-267.
[76] Ibid., pp. 268-269.
[77] Charles Upton comments,
“This prejudice against Jews may have been of long standing, but was by
no means universal. The history of Islam contains as many examples of
Muslim-Jewish amity and cooperation as of Muslim-Jewish enmity. When
Benjamin Disraeli became British Prime Minister, his opponents
protested that he would be partial to Arab interests in the Middle East
since he was a Jew.” (E-mail from Charles Upton to Lee Penn, 04/27/04)
[78] World Goodwill, “The New
Group of World Servers,” 1978, p. 4; from the New Religious Movements
collection of the Graduate Theological Union Library in Berkeley,
California.
[79] ZENIT.org News Agency,
“Historian Laments the New Anti-Catholicism in U.S.: Philip Jenkins, an
Episcopalian, Faults the Intellectuals and Liberals,” http://www.ewtn.com/vnews/getstory.asp?number=36317,
printed 06/04/03.
[80] Lucis Publishing Company,
“US Online Secure Order Form,” https://www.lucistrust.org/purchase/price.shtml,
printed 06/04/03.
[81] Alice A. Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations: Volume V, A
Treatise on the Seven Rays, 1960, Lucis Publishing Company, p.
754.
[82] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, p. 548.
[83] Alice A. Bailey, Problems of Humanity, Lucis
Publishing Company, 3rd ed. 1964, p. 169.
[84] Ibid., p. 131. Bailey
originally published this book in 1947, and died in 1949. The reference
to Pope John XXIII is a posthumous emendation of the text
by the Lucis Trust. It is noteworthy that they did not amend Bailey’s cruel,
totalitarian writings in the newer printings of her other works.
[85] Ibid., p. 131.
[86] Ibid., p. 129.
[87] Ibid., p. 138.
[88] Ibid., p. 126.
[89] Foster Bailey, Running God’s Plan, Lucis
Publishing Company, 1972, p. 160.
[90] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, pp. 544-545.
[91] Ibid., p. 401.
[92] Ibid., p. 414.
[93] Ibid., p. 268.
[94] Alice A. Bailey, Problems of Humanity, Lucis
Publishing Company, 1st ed. 1947; rev. ed. 1964, p. 159.
[95] Alice A. Bailey, The Destiny of the Nations, Lucis
Publishing Company, 1949, p. 152.
[96] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, p. 541.
[97] Bailey was referring here
to World War II.
[98] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, p. 545.
[99] Ibid., p. 545.
[100] Ibid., pp. 545-546.
[101] Coleen O’Connor, “Uniting
Religions: Bishop Swing talks about religious terrorism, atomic bombs,
and why we need a United Religions now,” http://www.gracecathedral.org/enrichment/interviews/int_19990107.shtml,
printed 2/4/03.
[102] Bailey often abbreviated
the name of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky to “H. P. B.”
[103] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, p 510.
[104] H. P. Blavatsky, The
Secret Doctrine: The Synthesis of Science, Religion, and Philosophy,
Vol. I – Cosmogenesis, Theosophical University Press, 1999 reprint of
1888 ed., p. xxxviii.
[105] Alice A. Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations: Volume V, A
Treatise on the Seven Rays, 1960, Lucis Publishing Company, p.
109.
[106] Alice A. Bailey, The Destiny of the Nations, 1949,
Lucis Publishing Company, p. 11.
[107] Alice A. Bailey, Problems of Humanity, Lucis
Publishing Company, 1st ed. 1947; rev. ed. 1964, p. 140.
[108] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, p. 202.
[109] Alice A. Bailey, Education in the New Age, 1954,
Lucis Publishing Company, p. 88.
[110] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, p. 513.
[111] Ibid., p. 511.
[112] Foster Bailey, The Spirit of Masonry, Lucis
Publishing Company, 1957, p. 135.
[113] Ibid., p. 29.
[114] The “Blue Lodge” degrees
are Enrolled Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason. These
degrees are universal throughout Masonry. Anyone who wishes to
pursue the higher-level Masonic degrees in the Scottish Rite or York
Rite must first attain the Master Mason degree. For the texts of
the rites used in the “Blue Lodge,” see Malcolm C. Duncan, Duncan’s
Masonic Ritual and Monitor, David McKay Co., Inc., 3rd ed., n. d. This
book is widely available in paperback.
[115] Alice A. Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations: Volume V, A
Treatise on the Seven Rays, 1960, Lucis Publishing Company, p.
418.
[116] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, p. 453.
[117] Alice A. Bailey, The Reappearance of the Christ,
Lucis Publishing Company, 1948, pp. 188-189.
[118] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, pp. 278-279.
[119] Ibid., p. 279.
[120] Alice A. Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations: Volume V, A
Treatise on the Seven Rays, 1960, Lucis Publishing Company, p.
109.
[121] Alice A. Bailey, Education in the New Age, 1954,
Lucis Publishing Company, p. 122.
[122] George Orwell, 1984, New
American Library edition, 1961, p. 245.
[123] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, p. 105.
[124] Ibid., p. 133.
[125] Alice A. Bailey, The Destiny of the Nations, 1949,
Lucis Publishing Company, p. 16.
[126] Ibid., p. 17.
[127] Alice A. Bailey, Education in the New Age, 1954,
Lucis Publishing Company, pp. 103-104.
[128] See, as one example,
Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation
of the Hierarchy, 1957, Lucis Publishing Company, pp. 229-240.
[129] Alice A. Bailey, The Destiny of the Nations, 1949,
Lucis Publishing Company, pp. 11-12.
[130] Ibid., p. 95.
[131] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, p. 3.
[132] Ibid., p. 7.
[133] “Members of the group
believed they were ‘exiting their vehicles,’ or their human bodies, to
move onto a higher plane.” (CNN, “Former Heaven’s Gate member
kills himself; another tries,” May 6, 1997, http://www.cnn.com/US/9705/06/heavens.gate/,
printed 06/04/03.)
[134] For further information
on this cult, see Christopher Partridge, ed., New Religions: A Guide – New Religious
Movements, Sects, and Alternative Spiritualities, Oxford
University Press, 2004, pp. 372, 391, 406.
[135] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, p. 105.
[136] Ibid., pp. 114-115.
[137] Ibid., p. 116.
[138] Ibid., p. 612.
[139] Ibid., p. 618.
[140] Ibid., p. 618.
[141] Alice A. Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations: Volume V, A
Treatise on the Seven Rays, 1960, Lucis Publishing Company, p.
553.
[142] Ibid., p. 76.
[143] Ibid., pp. 75-76.
[144] Alice A. Bailey, Education in the New Age, 1954,
Lucis Publishing Company, p. 111.
[145] Ibid., p. 111.
[146] Ibid., pp. 111-112.
Bailey’s use of the germ/infection metaphor for people paralleled
Himmler’s speech to senior SS officers in Posen in 1943: “We have
exterminated a bacterium because we do not want in the end to be
infected by the bacterium and die of it. I will not see so much
as a small area of sepsis appear here or gain a hold. Wherever it
may form, we will cauterise it. All in all, however, we can
say that we have carried out this most difficult of tasks in a spirit
of love for our people. And we have suffered no harm in our inner
being, our soul, our character.” (Michael Burleigh, The Third Reich: A New History,
Hill and Wang, 2000, p. 661).
[147] Alice A. Bailey, Education in the New Age, 1954,
Lucis Publishing Company, p. 149.
[148] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, p. 548. Bailey’s teachings
include the idea that there are seven “rays” – spiritual traits – that
dominate human action.
[149] Ibid., p. 491; see also
Alice A. Bailey, Problems of Humanity,
1947, Lucis Publishing Company, p. 81: “The release of the energy of
the atom is definitely the inauguration of the New Age.”
[150] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, p. 497.
[151] Ibid., p. 498.
[152] John McManners, The Oxford Illustrated History of
Christianity, Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 515.
[153] Biographical information
is from Michael D. Robbins, “Alice A. Bailey,” http://www.esotericastrologer.org/EA%20Essays/EAessaysMDR12.htm,
printed 05/19/04. Mary Bailey married Foster Bailey after Alice
Bailey, Foster’s first wife, died in 1949.
[154] Mary Bailey, A Learning Experience, 1990, Lucis
Publishing Company, pp. 191-192.
[155] Alice A. Bailey, Education in the New Age, 1954,
Lucis Publishing Company, p. 111.
[156] Ibid., p. 112.
[157] Alice A. Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations: Volume V, A
Treatise on the Seven Rays, 1960, Lucis Publishing Company, p.
607.
[158] Ibid., p. 144.
[159] She opposed Soviet
“separateness,” not totalitarianism. “The major sin of Russia,
and that which has prostituted and warped the initial divine impulse
underlying the ideology of that country, is the determination she
demonstrates at this time to be separative and to shut the Russian
people away from world contact, using the instruments of deception and
the withholding of information. It is not the totalitarian nature
of the Russian government which is the prime disaster; it is the
refusal to develop the universal consciousness. … Russia is
drifting into a pronounced expression of the great heresy of
separateness.” (Alice A. Bailey, The
Rays and the Initiations: Volume V, A
Treatise on the Seven Rays, 1960, Lucis Publishing Company, p.
595; see also pp. 428 and 679 for similar criticisms.)
[160] Alice A. Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations: Volume V, A
Treatise on the Seven Rays, 1960, Lucis Publishing Company, p.
680.
[161] Ibid., p. 632.
[162] Ibid., p. 745.
[163] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, p. 191.
[164] Ibid., p. 197.
[165] Alice A. Bailey, Problems of Humanity, Lucis
Publishing Company, 1st ed. 1947; rev. ed. 1964, p. 177.
[166] Ibid., p. 175.
[167] Foster Bailey, Running God’s Plan, Lucis
Publishing Company, 1972, p. 12.
[168] Ibid., p. 45.
[169] Ibid., pp. 12-13.
[170] Ibid., p. 165.
[171] Ibid., p. 166.
[172] Ibid., pp. 14-15.
[173] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, p. 133. Corinne McLaughlin and
Gordon Davidson, followers of Alice Bailey and supporters of the URI,
said, “Napoleon was following the guidance of the Adepts as he
successfully began to unify Europe, but they warned him not to invade
Russia. His own ego and lust for power overcame him, and he
refused to listen. His obsession with power was dramatically
expressed by demanding a coronation as emperor and then suddenly
seizing the crown and placing it on his own head, rather than allowing
the pope to crown him, as was the custom. This symbolized his
supreme arrogance in setting himself above even the Pope as God’s
representative on Earth. By not following the spiritual guidance
he was given, Napoleon cut himself off from further help and eventually
brought disaster upon himself and his armies.” (Corinne
McLaughlin and Gordon Davidson, Spiritual
Politics: Changing the World from the Inside Out, Ballantine
Books, 1994, p. 243). Another Theosophist and follower of Alice
Bailey, David Spangler, said the same: “Napoleon was an individual who
was sent with a divine destiny to create in Europe something equivalent
to the United States of America. His task was to lay a foundation
for a United Europe, with one set of laws, one basic language, one
coinage, and to eliminate the kind of strife that we have had for the
past two hundred years in Europe. Unfortunately, as Napoleon
gained power to do this, when he moved into the position where he was
able to accomplish this, it went to his head. This was
symbolically evident when it was time for him to be crowned Emperor and
he seized the crown from the bishop and placed it on his own
head. This is very symbolic of an individual’s saying, ‘It is I
who am crowning myself. It is not God.’ It was at this
point that the spiritual powers of the world that had been backing him
and had been responsible for many of his successes withdrew. It
was at that point that Napoleon began to go downhill.” (David
Spangler, Explorations: Emerging
aspects of the new culture, Findhorn publications lecture
series, 1980, p. 102). Do these fans of tyranny channel
information from the same sources, or do they plagiarize each other on
the material plane? (For more information on David Spangler, see
Ron Rhodes, “The New Age Christ of David Spangler,” Journal of the Spiritual Counterfeits
Project, Vol. 23:2-23:3, 1999, pp. 20-29; available through http://www.scp-inc.org)
[174] Victor Davis Hansen, “The
Little Tyrant: A review of Napoleon: A
Penguin Life, by Paul Johnson,” Claremont Review of Books,
Summer 2003, http://www.claremont.org/writings/crb/summer2003/hanson.html,
printed 06/06/03.
[175] Stéphane Courtois
et al., The Black Book of Communism:
Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, 1999, p. 4.
[176] The following works link
totalitarianism to Gnosticism: Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics: An
Introduction, University of Chicago Press, 1952; Eric Voegelin, Science, Politics, and Gnosticism,
Regnery Publishing, 1997; Thomas Molnar, Utopia: The Perennial Heresy, Sheed
and Ward, 1967; Stephen Muratore, “The Earth’s End: Eschatology and the
Perception of Nature,” Epiphany,
Vol. 6, no. 4, Summer 1986, pp. 40-49. However, Stephan A.
Hoeller, a present-day Gnostic scholar, denies this link. He
says, “All modern totalitarian ideologies are in some way spiritually
related to Gnosticism, says Voegelin. Marxists, Nazis, and just
about everybody else whom the good professor finds reprehensible are in
reality Gnostics, engaged in ‘immanentizing the eschaton’ by
reconstituting society into a heaven on earth. … At the
same time, Voegelin has to admit that the Gnostics regard the earthly
realm as unredeemably flawed. One wonders how such a realm could
be turned into an earthly utopia. That Voegelin’s supposed
Gnostics have no knowledge of or sympathy with historical Gnosticism
does not bother him either. Gnostics they are, and that is
that. The confusion Voegelin created was made worse by a number
of conservative political thinkers, mainly those with Catholic
connections. Thomas Molnar, Tito Schabert, and Steven A. McKnight
followed Voegelin’s theories despite the obvious
inconsistencies.” (Stephan A. Hoeller, Gnosticism: New Light on the Ancient
Tradition of Inner Knowing, Quest Books, Theosophical Publishing
House, 2002, p. 183.)
[177] World Goodwill, “The New
Group of World Servers,” 1978; from the New Religious Movements
collection of the Graduate Theological Union Library in Berkeley,
California, pp. 6-7. This fourfold division of mankind is derived
from Alice Bailey, Esoteric
Psychology, Volume II, A Treatise on the Seven Rays, Lucis
Trust, 1942, pp. 632-639. She listed the classes as “the ignorant
masses,” “the middle classes,” “the thinkers of the world,” and “the
New Group of World Servers.” Above all of these stand “Those
Whose privilege and right it is to watch over human evolution and to
guide the destinies of man.” This material is on-line at http://beaskund.helloyou.ws/netnews/bk/psychology2/psyc2248.html,
http://beaskund.helloyou.ws/netnews/bk/psychology2/psyc2249.html,
and http://beaskund.helloyou.ws/netnews/bk/psychology2/psyc2250.html
(printed 07/20/04); the web site has electronic copies of all the
Bailey books.
[178] Alice A. Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations: Volume V, A
Treatise on the Seven Rays, 1960, Lucis Publishing Company, p.
553.
[179] Ibid., p. 553.
[180] Ibid., p. 553.
[181] Alice A. Bailey, The Externalisation of the Hierarchy,
1957, Lucis Publishing Company, pp. 566-567. Bailey says that
there are now “three major planetary centres – Shamballa, Hierarchy,
and Humanity.” (Bailey, ibid., p. 567) With the fusion of
Hierarchy and Humanity, only Shamballa and Humanity, two “planetary
centres,” will remain.
[182] Alice A. Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations: Volume V, A
Treatise on the Seven Rays, 1960, Lucis Publishing Company, p.
174.
[183] Ibid., p. 174.
[184] In contrast to Bailey’s
description of “the Initiator” as “pure darkness,” the Apostle John
wrote, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you,
that God is light and in him is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5)
Charles Upton warns against Bailey’s “clear cold fire.” He says,
“Fire without heat symbolizes knowledge without love – which, according
to St. Augustine in The City of God,
is precisely demonic knowledge.”
[185] Alice A. Bailey, The Rays and the Initiations: Volume V, A
Treatise on the Seven Rays, 1960, Lucis Publishing Company, p.
224.
[186] Telephone interview,
April 24, 1998, by Lee Penn of Dale McKechnie, Vice-President of the
Lucis Trust.
[187] Ibid.
[188] United Religions
Initiative, “Affiliates – North America,” http://www.uri.org/regionalnews/affiliates/index.asp,
printed 09/23/04.
[189] United Religions
Initiative, “Honoring Our Donors,” Annual Report 2001, p. 10, and
United Religions Initiative, “Honoring Our Donors,” Annual Report 2000, p. 9.
[190] URI on-line archive,
e-mail from Sally Ackerly to URI leadership, February 27, 1998, http://origin.org/uri/txt/Org2Design.txt.
Printed 1998; no longer on the Net.
[191] Pathways to Peace,
“Council of Directors,” http://www.pathwaystopeace.org/pathways/executive_council.htm,
printed 06/06/04.
[192] Masankho Kamsis Banda,
“Creating a worldwide Legacy of Peace Messengers” (biography), http://www.ucandanc.org/Biography.html,
printed 04/11/03.
[193] Pathways to Peace,
“Council of Directors,” http://www.pathwaystopeace.org/pathways/executive_council.htm,
printed 06/06/04.
[194] Ibid.
[195] Pathways to Peace,
“Mission,” http://www.pathwaystopeace.org/pathways/organization_and_mission.htm,
printed 04/11/03.
[196] “World Service
Intergroup,” http://www.synthesis.tc/,
printed 12/16/02.
[197] Ibid.
[198] Ibid.
[199] The Tibetan is the
nickname of the spirit who (according to Alice Bailey, as she stated in
her books) dictated Bailey’s Theosophical books.
[200] “World Service
Intergroup,” http://www.synthesis.tc/,
printed 12/16/02.
[201] Corinne McLaughlin and
Gordon Davidson, Spiritual Politics:
Changing the World from the Inside Out, Ballantine Books, 1994,
foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, p. xiv.
[202] Ibid., p. 51.
[203] Ibid., p. 255.
[204] McLaughlin and Davidson
mis-spell the term throughout their book; its correct spelling is
Shambhala. (See, for example, Christopher Partridge, ed., New Religions: A Guide – New Religious
Movements, Sects, and Alternative Spiritualities, Oxford
University Press, 2004, p. 210.)
[205] Corinne McLaughlin and
Gordon Davidson, Spiritual Politics:
Changing the World from the Inside Out, Ballantine Books, 1994,
pp. 252-253.
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