Customer Reviews

Externalisation of the Hierarchy (Zzz)

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My co-workers and I find this book to be extremely useful in realizing and meeting our own expanding responsibilities to influence the direction of our civilization through meditation and also through work on the physical plane.

The Tibetan Teacher, known as Djwhal Khul, who asked Alice Bailey to write this book as he gave it telepathically to her, first explains the importance of human free will. The Hierarchy of Masters cannot infringe upon human free will and impose a course of action based on their own deeper knowledge and more profound insight. The powerful support from the Great Ones for a civilization of light and love is explained. The outcome, however, depends upon how we humans use our free will.

The energies at work behind our world scene are shown and some of the great Beings are identified who are in service to this planet during this climaxing moment of human evolution. He explains many aspects of this work by the Masters.

The two Great Approaches to humanity, the Buddha and the Christ, are discussed. The Buddha challenged the people to tread the Path of Illumination, of wisdom, mental perception and intuition. The Christ was the expression of this Light, and also of Love. A third Great Approach to humanity is described as imminent as the Hierarchy moves closer to humanity -- in response to humanity's demonstration of creative love and humanitarian efforts.

The Externalization of the Hierarchy (when the Masters will once again walk with humans upon the earth) will come after the process of realignment between all spiritual groups and the Masters has taken place. We are warned not to evade responsibility by placing it upon the shoulders of spectacular men. No single group has the answer to world peace. Humanity itself must each contribute, acknowledge mistakes, ask forgiveness for errors of judgment and world-wide selfish purpose. No one national group is purely wrong and evil or purely good and unselfish.

The message is clear, everything depends upon our willingness to work in cooperation with others, to act with wisdom and love in every situation.

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 very 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, and it is as a guide to life that 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.

A list of some problems of these book, and their possible, follows:

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."

Resolution: For those who 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.

Resolution: For those who are willing to spend years of their life 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.)

Resolution: For those who enjoy being puzzled by long dry passages, that may not have any meaning at all, the Alice Bailey's books may be just what is wanted.

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.

Resolution: For those readers who are looking for 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."

Resolution: For those readers who dislike Jews, combined with an interest occult books, the Alice Bailey books may offer just the combination of those that you have been looking for.

Conclusion: For those who are looking for a good teaching, a teaching which is a Way to become a better person through living 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?

This book appears to be a compilation of pamphlets from 1919 to 1949 by "The Tibetan" communicating clairaudiently with Ms Bailey. Opinion seems to be divided as to whether books such as this are works of great spiritual value or are Satanic works connected with the "New World Order".

The world according to "The Tibetan" appears to be governed by someone called Sanat Kumara (obviously, a slight shuffle of the letters changes Sanat to Satan), who is also known as "Ancient of Days", "the true Light of the World" and "the Eternal Youth". Supposedly leading to him are "the One Universal Church", "the sacred inner lodge of all true Masons" and the "inner-most circles of the esoteric societies". The masonic movement is described as "a far more occult organisation than can be realised".

There are some controversial statements to be found within these pages: fascism and communism are described as "great world ideologies" (p126); "reincarnation is a basic law of nature" (p232); "the Axis nations need to grasp the teaching of the Buddha, Lord of Light" (p359); Gandhi is described as someone who "brings into clear perspective the uncompromising fanatical attitude" and who "would precipitate civil war in India" (p368); "the Jews should recognise the Christ as the messiah" (p545). Possibly worst of all are the statements that "the Japanese nation must go back to the nursery state" (p428) followed by a comment on page 491 that "the release of atomic energy in connection with the bombing of Japan" was "the greatest spiritual event which has taken place since the the human kingdom appeared".

What else? "Schools of thought and world religions are to be blended into one" (p30), "Jews are to be integrated into society" (p77). The finale can be found on page 566: apparently "seeds have been planted for a 'final act of destruction' when humanity and Heirarchy are 'completely fused and blended'".

I found most of the book to be repetitive waffle about world peace, Masters, ashrams, service, etc. The "Heirarchy" is supposedly based at the "Great White Lodge on Sirius" and it would appear that the one world religion is to be a mix of Christianity and Buddhism.

Atheism never appeared so attractive.