Osho on Alice Bailey

 

 

[The sannyasin says he belonged to a group which studied Alice Bailey... ]

 

 

A good author but without any experience... a very good author. If you have not experienced it, you might almost believe that he has experienced, he is such a good author, has a rare quality. Because if you have not experienced it, to write in that way is very difficult... but he has done that.

 

In the past hundred years there have been a few very rare authors; he is one of them: a man who has no experience but has great understanding -- intellectual. It is so deep an intellectual understanding that only an experienced man can feel that he has not seen it. Sometimes it happens -- because to write is, in itself, a great art.

 

For example, you have experienced me but you may not be a good author, your description may be poor. You talk to somebody who is really an artist; he has not seen me and he has not been with me. You talk to him and he takes fragments from you, elaborates on them, creates a kind of system. His writing may be far more valuable than your writing... as far as writing is concerned. He may be more logical, more penetrating, more appealing if he has the art, but still something will be missing -- that will be in your writing. Something essential will be missing in his writing. On the surface he will do everything that he can. It will be a lamp without a flame. But for those who have not seen the flame, even the lamp is more than enough. Once you have seen the flame then you will know whether the lamp is lit or not.

 

Bailey is one of those beautiful authors, another is Leadbeater, another is Rudolph Steiner. These hundred years have seen many people. This is one of the most intellectual ages in history. Our approach is intellectual; we go through the intellect. And if somebody is very articulate, he can create such a picture that you will feel that he has been there; he has been in that space.

 

But Bailey can be helpful because whatsoever fragments he has gathered from other sources are all valuable. He himself may not have experienced, but he has some contact with sources where the experience has happened. He is making fragments available to people which are true, but only as fragments. One fragment that he has taken from one source is true, another fragment from another source is true... but all the fragments taken together are not true. You follow me? All the fragments taken together as an organic unity are not true.

 

The same is happening in the Arica movement. They have taken fragments from many sources, and all alive sources. Each technique in itself is right -- nothing is wrong about it. Taken separately, each is true. Put together with all the other techniques there is no whole; there is no centre that holds them all in one. They are all eclectic; they don't have any soul.

 

It is as if you have cut somebody's hand and somebody's head and somebody's leg and somebody's body, and then you put all the fragments together. You can sew them together so perfectly that the body looks whole; somebody can be deceived -- but the soul is missing! The hands had been alive when they were with their source, the head had been alive when it was with its source, and so every fragment had been alive, had come from an alive man. But now it is no more alive and there is no centre that holds them together.

 

Good, Bailey is good -- he has brought you here -- but he is not a master. But these people are also needed; the world needs all kinds of people. The world needs teachers too; he is a good teacher. And this is the distinction that I make: a master is one who has known himself. He may not be a good teacher, he may be -- that depends. There have been many masters who were not good teachers, they were not very articulate: as far as teaching was concerned, they were poor people. But they knew the experience. There are teachers who are not masters. They teach perfectly well but they have not known themselves. It is very rarely that a man is both a master and a teacher. When a man is both a master and a teacher -- when he has known and has the capacity to make it known to you -- that is a rare phenomenon. Bailey is a good teacher.... But teachers are needed. By and by through the teachers you move towards the masters.

 

-Osho, "Don't Just Do Something, Sit There, #3"

 

 

 

 

 

There is a question about Alice Bailey, who claims that some Master K. has been sending messages to her from Tibetan mountains. This is quite possible, and Alice Bailey may be right. In fact, there are bodiless souls in the universe who are very compassionate and loving to us and who try to help us even from their ethereal existence. And they do send messages if they come across some suitable medium.

 

Alice Bailey is not the first person on this earth to have received such messages. Many people like Madame Blavatsky, Annie Besant, Colonel Olcott and Leadbeater have worked as mediums for such bodiless souls in the past. And by contacting such souls who have attained higher states of spiritual growth many things can be known and communicated. The Theosophists carried out a great experiment of this kind in relation to J. Krishnamurti.

 

Many efforts were made to put Krishnamurti in contact with souls in search of right mediums. Krishnamurti's earliest books, AT THE FEET OF THE MASTER and LIFE OF ALCYONE belong to the period when he was in contact with Tibetan Masters. That is why Krishnamurti disowns their authorship. He did not write them in his conscious state; they were really communicated to him by Tibetan Masters. AT THE FEET OF THE MASTER is an extraordinary book, but it is not written by Krishnamurti he was only a medium who received it in the form of messages, Alice Bailey claims to be such a medium who receives messages from bodiless souls.

 

Western psychologists will not accept Bailey's claim, because they have no way to verify it. Western psychology has absolutely no knowledge of anything beyond the life available to us on this planet. When I say western psychology, I mean the conventional psychology being taught at Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard, not the parapsychological sciences that have been developing in the West for some time. Conventional psychology is not at all aware that man can live in a bodiless state, and that bodiless souls can communicate with us. But such souls have always existed and they do communicate with us.

 

There is an episode in Mahavira's life: Mahavira is standing on the outskirts of a forest, alone and silent. A cowherd comes to him and asks him to take care of his cows for a while, because he has to go to his village on some urgent business. Since Mahavira is in silence, he cannot say yes or no, but the cowherd takes his silence as his consent and hurries away to his village.

 

On his return he is shocked to find that all his cows have disappeared, while Mahavira is standing there as before. The cowherd believes his cows have been stolen with the connivance of this man who is now pretending to be deaf by not answering his questions. He curses Mahavira and beats him mercilessly; he even sticks an iron rod into his ears, telling him, "You are pretending deafness -- so have it for good." Mahavira does not say a word; he remains standing motionless and silent.

 

Legend has it that Indra, king of the gods, comes to Mahavira and offers protection but Mahavira declines the offer. This Indra is not a person, he is one of the bodiless souls who is grieved to see an innocent and defenseless person like Mahavira being tortured. But Mahavira emphatically says "no" to Indra. It is amusing that the one who does not say a word to the cowherd torturing him, says "no" to Indra. In fact this dialogue between Indra and Mahavira takes place at some inner level where Mahavira has received Indra's message psychically. If he spoke to Indra, he could have also talked to the cowherd and explained his situation. But he maintains his vow of silence in spite of all the tortures he is subjected to. His vow of silence is for twelve years. Evidently he does not have to refuse Indra verbally -- it is an inner dialogue, that can be carried without words and language. There are such channels of esoteric communication where neither words nor sense organs are needed.

 

Mahavira's followers have been in difficulty explaining this episode. But it is quite possible. There are bodiless souls who can communicate with us astrally and without words. Mahavira is reported to have said to Indra, "No, if I agree to be protected by you I will lose my freedom. Leave me undefended so my freedom re mains intact. Your help will surely bind me to you, and I don't want bondage even in return for my protection." Mahavira means to say that the cowherd will not do him as much harm as Indra's protection because it will bind him with the king of gods. Tortures inflicted on him by a keeper of cows will not bind him in any way, but the security provided by Indra certainly will. He would not like to give up his freedom at any cost.

 

Another legend says when Gautam Siddhartha first attained to Buddhahood, gods came to greet him. Buddha did not say a word for seven days after his enlightenment -- as if he had lost his voice. It happens often when one attains to the supreme knowledge; he loses his speech.

 

It is easy to speak in a state of ignorance. When one does not know the truth he has no sense of responsibility for what he says; he can say anything he likes. There is no difficulty in speaking about something we don't know, because we are not afraid of being wrong. But when one comes to truth, he becomes speechless, because truth cannot be said.

 

So when Buddha became Buddha, he kept absolutely silent for seven days, and it is said the gods became disturbed and implored him to resume speak ing. It would be calamitous for mankind, the gods thought, if Buddha did not share his priceless wisdom with those who needed it. It is after millenia that a man like him is born on this planet. "Pray, speak for the sake of the suffering humanity," the gods begged him.

 

These gods are bodiless souls, not persons. They are highly evolved souls, aware that what Buddha has achieved is rare. And fortunately for the world he is in a human body, so he is in a position to communicate with the world. The gods cannot communicate, they lack bodies. Gods also know what Buddha has known, and they are anxious to communicate it to the world, but they are helpless. Here is a person who has known the ultimate truth and is still in his body and in the world. And it is only rarely that a member of the human race stumbles upon the ultimate truth. Therefore these bodiless souls insist that Buddha must speak, and speak without any further delay. And with great difficulty they succeed in persuading Buddha to speak, and they rejoice at their success.

 

But these astral souls are not going to use Buddha as their medium. It is not that Buddha will convey their message to the world. Buddha has his own message, his own speech. What Alice Bailey says is right. But it is difficult for her to assert that what she says is right because she is only a medium, the messages belong to somebody else. A medium can say only this much; the messages are received at the level of his inner space. But he cannot claim that whatever he receives is right, that it is not his own mind game, a trick of his unconscious. A medium cannot assert that he is not a victim of self-deception, because countless people are deceived by their own unconscious into believing that they are mediums of great souls or gods. It is really hard for a medium to assert his authenticity, and the psychologists can easily corner Alice Bailey.

 

-Osho, "Krishna: The Man and His Philosophy, #16, Q1"