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Esoteric Healing (A treatise on the seven rays)

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The soul is a great spiritual reality--the source of all that is good, noble, true and healthy in the life of the human individual (the personality). The soul is the true healer. As the Tibetan Teacher, Djwhal Khul says, is his superb volume on the art and science of esoteric healing, "All disease is the result of inhibited soul life". The task of healers in the New Age will be to promote the flow of soul energy through the personality--sweeping away the miasms of mind, emotions and body.

The Tibetan Teacher is a Master on the second ray--the Ray of Love-Wisdom. He is known for His profound understanding of the human energy system--spiritually, psychologically and physically. His 'secretary' Alice Bailey--a woman of great illumination, compassion and understanding worked with Master DK for thirty years and produced these wonderful volumes of esoteric thought, thus laying the groundwork for many arts and sciences which will grow and flourish in the Aquarian Age.

The Tibetan's perspective is vast. He views the world as an initiate of the fifth degree. He is beyond prejudice and pettiness, no matter how some readers may interpret his often frank words. His task is to see and reveal truth to those who can respond. The causes of disease are known to Him and these He must isolate--in individuals and groups. Many nations, groups and individuals have come under his luminous scrutiny. Many have not liked what they have read, considering it erroneous or prejudiced because it is so clear and frank.

Because of His clear analysis of the virtues and strengths of the Jewish People, and also of elements of character requiring transmutation, the charge of anti-Semitism has been leveled at the Tibetan and at Alice Bailey, too. Nothing could be further from the truth. Some of the Tibetan's closest cooperators were Jewish, and several among Alice Bailey's most trusted friends and co-workers were Jewish. I, who write this, am also a Jew.

All groups of people, all individuals, have over a long incarnational past made mistakes. No individual or group is immune. It is far better to understand and correct these errors (based upon astrological and ray energies) that to accuse the source that points them out.

A really fair reading of Alice Bailey's work will reveal the utter falsity of such charges. The Tibetan's writings and hers, resound with compassion for the entire human race, and with the loving-will to see the human condition raised into a state of true spirituality.

We ordinary people (not yet initiates of high degree, not yet Masters of the Wisdom) have our own prejudices arising out of the limitations of our perceptions. If we want to advance spiritually and be really useful, we will have to broaden our point of view, and avoid responding personally and emotionally to statements with which we disagree.

Who is the Jew? Who is the Gentile? Who is the Oriental? We are all one humanity and as reincarnating souls we could incarnate in any race, national or cultural group.

A great healing for humanity will occur when we learn to see things from the perspective of the soul. We will see the things which have to be corrected and, without personal reaction, we will take the necessary action.

The Tibetan Master assisted Helena P. Blavatsky as He did Alice Bailey--to bring forward a new teaching which emphasizes brotherhood and the one soul of humanity. On the way to that brother/sisterhood and unity, let us be frank about our shortcomings--as individuals, as groups, as nations, as races--there is much to be improved, and it is within our power to take the needed steps.

As a Jew, I affirm the love, compassion and wisdom of the great Teacher known to us as Djwhal Khul, and I equally affirm these qualities in his trusted co-worker Alice Bailey. Whoever refuses to read and understand the great Teaching given by the Tibetan and AAB because of a suspicion of prejudice and, especially, of anti-Semitism, will deprive themselves of a priceless revelation of illumined wisdom.

Sincerely,

Michael D. Robbins, Ph.D.
President
University of the Seven Rays

An original presentation by the Tibetan D.K. (with Alice Bailey as the scribe) on the basic causes of disease, the basic requirements for healing, and the ten laws of healing. This book has profound depth and wisdom--a priceless gift from one of humanity's Great Teachers. After studying Esoteric Healing, counseling and teaching healing techniques for thirty years, I attempted to present a few of the Tibetan's principles in a simple style along with intuitive impressions on healing I had received. But Esoteric Healing is Truth in pure form! Highly recommended for the sincere esoteric student.

This book is much more valuable than it may first seem, being one among many AAB books with a lot of technical detail to challenge the disciple on the Path. It is also a useful tool for healing groups; especially those performing "absent healing" or "rescue" work. However, I like it as is, and see it has made a significant base-contribution to the now booming New Age industry of spiritual healing.

We all want to have perfect health. As spiritual healers we would like to return the patient to perfect health. This book explains that health is closely related to the relation between higher self and lower self of the patient. If there is discord between higher and lower aspects of the person illness results. Is healing as simple as aligning the patient's inner self so that higher and lower self are not at war with each other? At one level it is that simple, but at the practical level there are obviously rules and techniques to be acquired and practised by the healer. This book sets down "rules" and "laws" for esoteric healing. In explaining these, I believe it has a systematic and elevated approach to energy healing.

Whether it was the Master DK speaking through Alice Bailey doesn't matter. The fruits of the book are in that it holds the practical, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual keys to healing. Over many years I have found this to be valid, and although I am not yet a perfected soul, I can affect minor cures, or assist folks to heal themselves of greater ailments. Finally, it is pleasing to see commonsense does not preclude ordinary medicine out-of-hand for what it is worth, since we have:-

"Rule Four": A careful diagnosis of disease, based on the ascertained outer symptoms, will be simplified to this extent - that once the organ involved is known and thus isolated, the centre in the etheric body which is in closest relation to it will be subjected to methods of occult healing, though the ordinary, ameliorative, medical or surgical methods will not be withheld.

This book is part of a series of books whose wisdom is overwhelmingly evident. I was wary when I encountered the brief passage stating that the karma of Jews was being played out. The law of cause and effect (karma) is illustrated at work in many different groupings of living beings in this series, however. Also, specific mentions comprise a very small portion of the text overall.

The messages in the book were focused again and again on the movement towards integration as opposed to separateness, the need to move beyond personal ego to work toward the greater good of all, and the real physical force of love. Even so, the series introduced a number of ideas to me that I found intellectually and emotionally somewhat threatening. Again and again I was inspired to think deeply upon these ideas.

I cannot say I agree with everything written in the series. The authors seem to know vastly more than I do, but I have nothing at this point in my evolution to rely upon higher than my own intellect or Higher Self--and so I ponder, observe, and seek more information.

This series, and this book, has so much content of obvious benefit to humankind. I highly recommend it to anyone who has the inclination and capacity to read it carefully and with discernment.

My experience of this book is one of profound wisdom and depth. I use this healing information in connection with my healing and counselling practice and find that it helps tremendously.

I suggest that your next spotlight on this book is the review titled Love and Compassion--Not Prejudice: The Soul as Healer by Michael Robbins, with 18 out of 19 readers rating it helpful. This review is beautifully written, with quite helpful comments on how healing is approached in this book.

Everything was great no problems. Awesome book for the person looking for spiritual enlightenment. Especially if you are a healer or training to be a healer.

recommended 2 years ago. guess i wasn't ready for the lesson until it appeared. thanks amazon for being there when i was ready. rfs

I do not discourage anyone form reading "Esoteric Healing" or any of Bailey's other works (her "Treatise on Cosmic Fire" has many insights). I do not question Bailey's extensive theosophic knowledge (from wherever or whomever it comes). I do wish to remind the readers of Bailey's works to have an alert mind and watchful, discriminating eye. I know in my heart and soul that the path to truth and wisdom cannot be paved with words of hate, but with tolerance, kindness, love and the pursuit of knowledge of our individual spiritual paths and evolution,the spiritual planes and the workings of the external and internal universes. Whenever divisive words of hate come one's way, it should automatically send up a red flag that something is not quite right. That red flag exists with Alice Bailey and should always remain in the back of one's mind when reading her works.

This review is intended as a general comment on the entire Alice Bailey teaching, and not just one book. What follows represents my current evaluation of the books, an evaluation that has evolved and changed over many years, following my personal experience studying the books. In the 1960s and 70s I had extensive contact with some of Bailey's co-workers who knew her, and her teaching, well and I had help from them in understanding her teaching. My current views on the Alice Bailey teaching would not please them, but I have tried to be careful and not to be unkind.However, there is just no avoiding the conclusion that while the books are somewhat interesting, they are very defective as a guide to life which is the purpose for which they are intended.


The Alice Bailey books are complex and difficult. Many good things, and even some great ideas, are to be found in them. On occasion, in the past, I have recommended them to people searching for an esoteric vision of the Christian teaching. I would no longer recommend them to anyone. There are many serious problems with the Bailey books, and there there are far better spiritual teachings to be found elsewhere.

The problems of the books include:

1. Alice Bailey, and her (frequently over-enthusiastic) followers insist that her books are a universal teaching for the New Age. But they are actually a neo-Gnostic Christian teaching dressed up with with some Theosophical Society terminology and some terminology derived from the mysticism of India. Behind the facade of that terminology, the strongly Christian orientation of her youth (she was a missionary in India), comes through in all her books, but now strongly influenced by Gnosticism. For instance, this short quote from `Rays and the Initiations' p.637: "The decision anent the Jews is one of hierarchical importance, owing to the karmic relation of the Christ to the Jewish race, to the fact that they repudiated Him as the Messiah and are still doing so, and of the interpretive nature of the Jewish problem as far as the whole of humanity is concerned."

But if you are sympathetic to Christian Gnosticism (repudiated, for good reason, by every Christian denomination I know of), you might find Bailey's books an interesting experiment in neo-Gnosticism.

2. Despite the claims that the books were dictated telepathically to Bailey, who was living in NJ, by a Tibetan lama called Djwal Khul, who was in Tibet; there is no Buddhism to be found in the twenty-four books that Bailey wrote. That discrepancy leaves a core claim of the books, i.e. their origin, totally unsupported.

If you want to spend years studying a series of esoteric books which make claims of fact that are not rationally supported by anything, these books are for you. And because of the nature of the books it will take you years.

3. The ideas found in the books are difficult to understand because in addition to the dry writing style, her ideas are peculiar. It is quite likely they have virtually no relation to any ideas with which you are familiar; unless you are familiar with the of Theosophical Society writings of Helena Blavatsky, particularly with `The Secret Doctrine'. There is a certain similarity to the Blavatsky books. However, the Theosophical Society has publicly repudiated Bailey, and in fact Bailey was kicked out of the Theosophical Society at the time she started to write her books. There are many long passages, sometimes continuing for dozens of pages, which are incomprehensible. One of her closest co-workers (who I knew personally) admitted that neither he nor anyone else can explain the meaning of many of those passages. For me, this brings to mind the comment that Robert Browning made about one of his early poems, "When I wrote it only God and I knew what it meant, now only God knows."

(parenthetically: The account of the so-called Masters of the Ancient Wisdom' which are central to support virtually all of Alice Bailey's claims, originated with Helena Blavatsky. K. Paul Johnson has shown in his scholarly study of Blavatsky, called `The Masters Revealed', that Blavatsky's account of a Hierarchy of Masters' is a fantasy. Djwal Khul is no more a reality than Gandalf in the "Lord of the Rings", but Gandalf is probably a better model for ethical living.)

But if you enjoy being puzzled by long dry passages, that may not have any meaning at all, you might find Alice Bailey's books just what you are looking for.

4. If you do buy an Alice Bailey book, and get confused trying to understand what it means (if anything) , there is help available. You will find in all the books a message directing you to contact the Arcane School, an organization founded by Alice Bailey as a way to promote her teaching. There are now also a number of other groups giving such help, including the School for Esoteric Studies, and the University of the Seven Rays. You will find that the people at the Arcane School, and the other groups, are very nice, very helpful, even well educated; and you will probably like them. They will be anxious to help you. But if you express doubts about anything that is contained in the books, no matter how problematic that content is, or how absurd it seems; you will be told (nicely at first) that you are wrong and that what you think is an incorrect, or absurd, statement are actually the words of the Master Djwhal Khul, who has an understanding that is above human understanding. In other words, they consider the content of the books divinely inspired, and that every statement, in every sentence, is correct and can not be questioned. So although it is called a New Age teaching, it is actually completely authoritarian and fundamentalist at its heart.

That is the inverse of what the New Age claims to be, but if what you are looking for is fundamentalism and authoritarianism in New Age dress, the Alice Bailey teaching may be just what you want.

5. There are also the well known accusations of Alice Bailey's antisemitism. Sorry to say that those accusations are not only true, but that her antisemitism is woven through the books in such a way that they become an integral part of her teaching. Also, since every statement in the books is considered the divinely inspired word of the Master, you are not allowed to question claims such as, for example, Bailey's view that Jews brought a force she calls "cosmic evil" to this world from another world where they previously existed, and that Jews are the exponents of "materialism" and "separatism" on this planet. In fact, these views are very similar to what Hyam Maccoby describes as the view of many Gnostic sects, "that the Jews are representatives of cosmic evil, the people of the Devil."

If you are a person who dislikes Jews, combined with an interest occult books, the Alice Bailey books may offer just the combination of those that you have been looking for.

But if, instead, you are a person who is looking for a good teaching, a teaching which is a Way to become a better person and live a more ethical life, a teaching which is a Path that will make it possible to contribute positively to the world, and which is based on a systematic teaching; what I would suggest is to study the writings of those great individuals who were living examples of their philosophy and their religion as a way of life. Such writings can be found in the schools of Greek or Roman philosophy, in the writings of the great Christian theologians and philosophers, and in the books from similarly helpful teachers that are found in Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Confucianism, and Judaism. Why waste time on the absurdities of the Alice Bailey cult writings when there are so many better options?

Alice Bailey continues the centuries old despicable tradition of blaming the Jews for the world's problems and depicting the Jew as evil and corrupted. What distinguishes her writing from the usual anti-semitic drivel is that she promotes these views under the guise of "New Age" wisdom imparted to her by a "Tibetan Master".

Some quotes directly from her book:

1) "Today the law of Karma is working and the Jews are paying the price, factually and symbolically, for all they have done in the past. Factually and symbolically...they stand as they have ever chosen to stand, for separation ...."

2) "They have never yet faced candidly and honestly (as a race) the problem of why the many nations, from the time of the Egyptians, have neither liked or wanted them...Yet there must be some reason, inherent in the people themselves, when the reaction is so universal and general... Their demand has been for the Gentile nations to put the matter right, and many Gentiles have attempted to do so."

3)"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 endeavor 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...The Jewish problem will be solved by the willingness of the Jew to conform to the civilization, the cultural background and the standards of living of the nation to which...he is related and with which he should assimilate..."

4)"The evil karma of the Jew today is intended to end his isolation, to bring him to the point of relinquishing material goals, of renouncing a nationality that has a tendency to be somewhat parasitic within the boundaries of other nations, and to express inclusive love, instead of separative unhappiness."

Sean David Morton, in his article, "Dark Prophet" states about these quotes:

"This Alice Bailey tirade was not written in 1920 or 1930. Alice Bailey penned these words under the direction of a so-called "Tibetan Master" in 1949 when the entire world knew what had just happened to the Jews in Europe. Perhaps she felt the same way about the Tibetans when the Chinese were slaughtering them by the millions in the 1950's. Maybe she felt that the Tibetans had it coming' for some mass Karmic Crime."

The irony of this bigotry is that Bailey represented herself as continuing the theosophic traditions of HP Blavatsky. One of the basic tenets of theosophy, however, is "to form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour." Clearly, Bailey's "tirades" against the Jews are antithetical to this basic tenet, and should be vigorously opposed by any thinking, good-hearted and truly spiritual individual.

HP Blavatsky in "Isis Unveiled" herself stated that "Very few Christians understand, if indeed they know anything at all, of Jewish theology". Perhaps if Bailey (and her supposed "Master") had taken the time to study and understand Judaism, instead of blindly attacking it, she would have seen and felt the deep spirituality inherent underneath the surface.