Spiritual teaching has to be relevant and practical in terms of living a better life on earth.
Robert: Welcome. Inner sight is simply seeing that which is always present but not yet fully recognized. You have within you, the ability to see yourself and the world around you in a new way, with new eyes, so stay with us and together we’ll look at the world and ourselves with inner sight. Our theme for today is the books of Alice Bailey. The Lucis Trust organization was founded by Alice Bailey who wrote twenty-four volumes of literature. All of the dialogue that you’ll hear on this show emanates from the works of Alice Bailey, as does the following thought: “The books that I’ve 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. If the teaching conveyed calls forth a response and brings a flashing forth of the intuition, then let that teaching be accepted, but not otherwise.” We’ve so often spoken about the books of Alice Bailey, and we thought it would be a good idea to more or less do an overview on those twenty-four volumes of literature. Where do we begin, Sarah and Dale?
Sarah: Well, maybe we can begin by just commenting on that opening remark, which appears in the front of every one of the books published over Alice Bailey’s name, because it’s a reminder that every reader, every student, has to approach what is said in the books through their own inner light, their own inner lighted lamp, which is the soul and the intuition. I don’t know if people realize or give themselves enough credit, so to speak, for having such an inner judge and evaluator, but we do—with some training and some practice and sometimes with some mistakes—know how to assess the value and worth of spiritual teaching.
Dale: That’s right. We’re so oriented towards getting approval or getting some kind of verification from other people, of some outside source. But these teachings call upon one’s own inner self. It calls upon you to look within yourself and to reflect, and you be the judge here, because ultimately it comes down to you.
Sarah: Even if you judge wrongly, it’s still the means by which you learn.
Dale: And that’s the whole purpose of these teachings, to stimulate that inner approach to the soul, essentially.
Sarah: I think that’s an interesting point of view on which to begin our discussion of these books, which are really, for many people, I think, a lifetime project; twenty-four books. It isn’t a matter of just reading them one time and being done with each of them. I think most people find they have to read them two or three or more times. We return to the books over and over again, and always, hopefully, on a higher turn of the spiral because the teaching— which is the Ageless Wisdom, which we’ve discussed—can be approached on so many levels.
Dale: That’s right and you mentioned levels; these teachings, at least to me, and I’m talking from my own experience here, they carry you to a different level, a new level, a higher level. That’s very important because it’s incumbent upon every one of us to extend ourselves a little further beyond where we are today.
Sarah: And sometimes that means you have to kind of strain to understand.
Dale: Yes, and they’re just a little bit enough ahead of you to pull you forward.
Sarah: In fact, many of us begin reading the books of Alice Bailey with the feeling, I don’t understand a word of this. But there’s something within us that says, even though I don’t understand it, it seems very important. That realization is often enough to keep a person returning to the books, and gradually, your own inner lamp does get brighter, and you do begin to understand more and more of the teaching.
Dale: I just want to verify that. So many of the students in the Arcane School— which uses the Bailey teachings—have said this very thing. They start out reading one of the books, and they just don’t seem to grasp it all at first, but they come back to it a year later, and they’re amazed about how much they understand all of a sudden. So, it is an accumulating thing that happens to one’s consciousness.
Sarah: The books of Alice Bailey are one of three ways that it’s said that the ancient mystery teachings are channeled into human consciousness. It’s said that there are three inlets: one is through Freemasonry, and another is through the churches, religion, and the third is through esoteric philosophy, which is the knowledge of that which is hidden and behind the scenes. These books fall in the third category of esoteric philosophy. There are other strains of esoteric philosophy, such as Rosicrucianism, which some of our listeners might have heard of. Theosophy. There are many avenues of esoteric philosophy, but the books of Alice Bailey constitute what is called the second release, with the first being The Secret Doctrine, which is a part of the Theosophy teachings written by H.P. Blavatsky and published, I think, in the late 1800s, 1875 or so, and then Alice Bailey’s teachings came along in the early part of this century. She wrote her books between approximately 1920 and 1949, when she died. There are twenty-four books, but you could break them down into a series of categories. Some of them focus on world problems, and I think that’s an important point for people to understand: that spiritual teaching has to be relevant and practical in terms of living a better life on earth, being of service and illumination to one’s fellow men, becoming a server of the race rather than someone who just takes and lives the selfish life. So, the books do focus on world problems, especially Problems of Humanity, Glamour: A World Problem, The Destiny of the Nations, and Education in the New Age.
Dale: Those are all titles of four of the books that she has written. Yes, I agree that focusing on problems is necessary. One might think that this is esoteric philosophy and if it has to do with spiritual teachings, why are we talking about world problems, but that’s exactly the kind of teachings that the disciple of today or the esoteric student today needs because it provides a new way of looking at the world and understanding these problems from an esoteric point of view. That’s exactly what these particular books delve into.
Sarah: Another category of the teaching is the path of discipleship, discipleship being spiritual development; it is a path. It’s an ongoing process. There are two volumes called Discipleship in the New Age that concern that path. There’s also the book A Treatise on White Magic, white magic being the magic of the soul, the power of the soul.
Robert: I started off with the most simple book. I don’t think it’s one of the twenty-four, but it’s the autobiography of Alice Bailey, and I certainly enjoyed that a lot, and it really spurred me on to read some of the other books.
Sarah: Yes, Alice Bailey did write five books just based on her own past study and experience. The autobiography is a story of her life, obviously. The Consciousness of the Atom, The Soul and Its Mechanism, From Intellect to Intuition, and From Bethlehem to Calvary are all books that she wrote. Another category of the books that people might find appealing is that of meditation, which includes From Intellect to Intuition. Discipleship In the New Age also has a lot of instruction on meditation, but it’s not for the beginner. It’s quite advanced. And there’s the book Telepathy and the Etheric Vehicle, which offers instruction, and Light of the Soul.
Dale: Meditation is very much at the center of all of these teachings, and it comes up in all of the books. So yes, it’s a particular type of meditation based on what they call Raja Yoga, which is the “princely science of the mind.” That is the basic technique used through all the teachings in the Bailey studies.
Sarah: There’s also a special subdivision within the books called A Treatise On The Seven Rays, which we have discussed on past programs, the rays, the seven rays, which are the seven attributes or qualities of divinity. There is a five-volume series on the seven rays, which includes two volumes on Esoteric Psychology, a volume on Esoteric Astrology, a volume on Esoteric Healing, and the fifth volume is called The Rays and the Initiations. All these books go into great depth on the science of the rays, which is the psychological makeup of not only a human being, but of groups and of nations, would you say?
Dale: It’s the differentiated energy of the One Life, differentiated into seven qualities, and each of these qualities is represented by one of the seven rays.
Sarah: And each person, each group, each nation is affected differently by these rays.
Dale: Depending on how the energy or the substance of which we’re made reacts to these energies. That will determine pretty much the quality that’s expressed.
Sarah: Her books also concern the nature of the Hierarchy. We’ve talked about the Masters or the Spiritual Hierarchy, the White Brotherhood, as they’re called sometimes, the beings who have progressed through the stage of human experience and have risen to a level of consciousness that is more detached from the life of the human being in the world and yet is involved in the progress of humanity and the unfolding of the Divine Plan for our world. The nature of Hierarchy is an important concept in the Ageless Wisdom. It’s discussed in the book Initiation, Human and Solar, and in the book The Externalization of the Hierarchy, and in The Reappearance of the Christ. We can talk in a little while on the whole concept of Hierarchy because I think it’s very misunderstood today.
Dale: And the important thing is that these are not people sitting around in a smoke-filled room determining the fate of the world. They are great advanced beings who have gone through the human stage and now exist, for the most part, on the inner side of life, on the “inner planes,” as it says. They act as guides of the activities in the world.
Sarah: Every person who is on the spiritual path takes his or her place within the chain of being, which is called the Hierarchy. Each person, regardless of where they might stand on that evolutionary scale, has a part to play in the unfolding Plan and a service to give. Everyone is needed. This is what’s so, I think, magnificent and even thrilling about the whole concept of Hierarchy: that it involves the transmission of spiritual energy into the world through this great chain of being. The books of Alice Bailey go into great discussion of it. Finally, the last book which we should mention in just this kind of breakdown of the general teaching is a book that’s unique unto itself, I think, and that’s A Treatise on Cosmic Fire.
Dale: I’ll let you explain that.
Sarah: Oh, dear. Well, it was one of the first books that she published, but it’s so extraordinary. It’s well over a thousand pages and what would you say? It involves the cosmology of the universe.
Dale: Right. It’s more to do with the cosmology but at the same time, it has a lot of practical information there that can be applied, and it’s kind of fascinating. It points to future teachings, but it’s an absolutely fascinating book, even though it does go on for over a thousand pages. It’s hard to describe because we just don’t always have a lot of common day terminology to describe it. It delves into the laws that govern the universe and the planet Earth and a whole lot on the angels and what they call the Deva Kingdom. These are another parallel kingdom to the human kingdom and they control a lot of the substance—in fact, they are the substance—that makes up the earth. All that exists in the manifested world has to do with the Deva forces.
Sarah: Another aspect of the Treatise on Cosmic Fire that I think is fascinating is that it goes into an in-depth discussion of the three fires that control all life. There’s electric fire, which is the fire of spirit, and it’s said that if you understand electricity, you understand the laws of the universe, which I think is quite fascinating. There’s solar fire, which is the fire of the mind. And there’s fire by friction, which is how most human beings, you could say, sand down their rough edges, learn through experience and suffering and pain. All of these fires are what are produced by life on the level of manifestation, and A Treatise on Cosmic Fire goes into great detail on that.
Dale: It’s not a book that one should read first.
Sarah: No, although people sometimes do.
Dale: Yes, it’s an absolutely fascinating book and a lot of people are drawn to it, but I would suggest you not buy that book first because there are a lot of other books that will help you understand that when the time comes.
Sarah: I think people are drawn to different books depending on their own orientation to the path, their own need and their own spiritual interests. If people are interested in meditation, then they might want to start with the book From Intellect to Intuition, which is a really good overview of Raja Yoga, as Dale said, the yoga of the mind. Raja Yoga is a method of meditation that develops the mind, lifting the point of focus from the concrete mind—where most of us probably are focused—to the higher abstract mind and even the intuition, which is actually above the level of the mind. It’s that aspect of consciousness that registers the divine Plan for our world and is able to discern how to serve that Plan, how to cooperate with it. It’s completely impersonal, whereas the lower concrete mind is very self-centered, self-concerned. The intuition is universal in its focus, and meditation is the practice by which the mind becomes open to this universal level of consciousness. We don’t lose our sense of identity of being, but we merge in consciousness with the Whole through the practice of meditation. I’m not talking about something that happens tomorrow or next year, but through many, many years and perhaps lifetimes of meditation.
Dale: There’s one more book that we didn’t mention, I think, and that’s The Light of the Soul, which is also…
Sarah: I mentioned it. I zoomed right by it, but it is one on meditation.
Dale: Yes, it’s very closely related to meditation because it has to do with the aphorisms of Patanjali, which is a very ancient series of aphorisms given out: rules of meditation and the awakening of the mind through the agency of Raja Yoga.
Sarah: Yes, it’s an ancient classical Hindu text, and The Light of the Soul is Alice Bailey’s commentary on it.
Robert: You’ve been listening to Inner Sight. Now we would like to close with the world prayer called the Great Invocation. It’s a call for light and love and goodwill to flow into the world and into our hearts. Let’s listen for a moment to these powerful words.
Sarah: Closes the program by reciting the adapted version of the Great Invocation.
(This is an edited transcript of a recorded radio program called “Inner Sight.” This conversation was recorded between the host, Robert Anderson, and the then President and Vice-President of Lucis Trust, Sarah and Dale McKechnie.)
(Transcribed and edited by Carla McLeod)
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