Alice A. Bailey

Her life

She was born Alice La Trobe-Bateman in Manchester on 16 June 1880, into a conservative, orthodox Christian English family. In 1907 she moved to the United States, where she spent most of her life as a writer and teacher. She died on 15 December 1949.

In 1919 she began a telepathic collaboration with the Tibetan Master Djwhal Khul. At first she was reluctant; her condition for accepting was that the writings be published without any claims and that the teaching stand on its own merit. The collaboration lasted exactly thirty years. Near the end of her life, at a friend's urging, she wrote The Unfinished Autobiography.

The Lucis Trust and the Arcane School

Alice and Foster Bailey founded the Lucis Trust in 1922. The Arcane School, opened in 1923, and the Triangles and World Goodwill activities developed within it. The Lucis Trust remains the publisher of the books today.

How to approach the teaching

In his preface to the books Foster Bailey makes two important points. First, spiritual concepts must be expressed within the limits of the concrete mind and of language; remembering this keeps the teaching from becoming dogma. Second, the teaching given is only the beginning of esoteric knowledge and may change when better knowledge is found. It should be read not as an authority but as a hypothesis to be tested by its effect on life.

We follow this approach: we cite our sources, keep quotation separate from commentary, and ask students to test the teaching through intuition and practice rather than accept it blindly.

Abbreviations used on this site