Alice Bailey - Autobiography

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Autobiography of Alice A. Bailey - Chapter IV

There are schools of thought which teach that fear, if indulged in, will materialize that which you fear. Personally, I do not believe a word of it because I have spent my life fearing all kinds of things which have never happened and as I am a rather powerful thinker I surely could have materialized something if it had been possible. The question might be asked how can one combat fear? Well! I can only tell what I myself have found successful. I never attempt to combat fear. I take the positive position that I will live with my fears if necessary and I just pay no attention to them. I don't fight them; I don't argue with myself; I simply recognize my fears for what they are and pass on. I think people have to learn a much more patient acceptance of what is, and not spend so much time wrestling with themselves over their individual problems. Other people's problems are more profitable from the angle of general helpfulness. Concentration on service can and does lead to self-forgetfulness.

Also, I have asked myself, why should I not be afraid? All the world is afraid and who am I that I should be exempt from the common lot. And this same argument applies to many things. Those schools of thought which tell the public that because they are divine they should be exempt from sorrow, ill health and poverty, are misleading the public. They are in the majority, of course, quite sincere but their emphasis is wrong. They lead the public to think that material well-being and prosperity is a thing of paramount importance and that they are entitled to it and will get it if they affirm their divinity - a divinity which is there but which they are not evolved enough as yet to express. Why should I be exempt from these things when all humanity is suffering from them? Who am I that I should be rich, for neither poverty nor riches really matter? Who am I that I should have perfect health when the fate of humanity [152] at this time seems to indicate something different? I believe firmly that when I can, through the process of evolution, fully express the divinity that is in me I shall have perfect health. I shall not care whether I am rich or poor, and having a popularity with other personalities will not matter to me at all.

I am bringing this up most definitely because these misleading doctrines are sweeping the public consciousness and lead eventually to disillusionment. The time will come when we shall be liberated from all the ills of the flesh, but when it does come we shall have learned a different sense of values and will not be using our divine powers to get material good for ourselves. All good things come to those who live harmlessly, who are kind and considerate as well. But harmlessness is the key and I leave you to find out for yourselves how difficult it is to be harmless in word and deed and thought.

Life in Hollywood was now easier for me. The children were old enough to go to school and kindergarten. I had many friends and the grounds at Krotona, the Theosophical Headquarters, were delightful. Krotona was a community of about five hundred people, some living on the grounds and some elsewhere in Hollywood or Los Angeles. There were lecture halls, class rooms, a shrine room where members of the Esoteric Section met and a cafeteria which fed the people. The place was beautifully run and, when I got there at first, it seemed to me to be a paradise on earth. Everybody there appeared to me to be deeply spiritual. I thought the leaders and teachers were at least initiates of high degree. I attended meetings and classes and learnt a great deal for which I am very grateful.

After I had been there a short time I was asked to run the cafeteria and - ignorance being bliss - I joyously accepted the responsibility. It was, of course, strictly vegetarian, [153] and I had been a vegetarian ever since coming across the Theosophical teaching. My children had never tasted meat or chicken or fish and I suffered from the normal superiority complex which is often an outstanding characteristic of a vegetarian.

I am convinced that there comes a phase in the life of all disciples when they must be vegetarians. In the same way, there must come a life in which a man or woman should be a celibate. This they must be in order to demonstrate that they have learned control of the physical nature. Once they have learned that control and once they can no longer be swayed by the appetites of the flesh, they can be married or not married, they can eat meat or not eat meat as seems best to them and as their karma may indicate or their circumstances dictate. Once that has been proven, the situation is altered. The physical disciplines are a phase of training and when the lesson is learnt they are no longer needed.

The argument for vegetarianism, based on the cruelty of animal eating, may not be as sound as it appears to the emotional and sentimental types. I worried about this a great deal, because I love animals. I would like here to make two suggestions which I have found helpful. There is a law of sacrifice governing all the evolutionary process. The vegetable kingdom draws its sustenance out of the mineral kingdom, for its roots are in the mineral kingdom. The animal kingdom, on a very large scale, draws its sustenance out of the vegetable kingdom and it lives by the life of that kingdom. Some of the higher animals are carnivorous and, under the law of evolution, prey upon each other, but they are not incited thereto by man's thought, as some fanatics claim. Sequentially, then, the human kingdom might well be regarded as drawing its sustenance out of the animal kingdom and, because man is the macrocosm for all the three lower kingdoms, he might be supposed, [154] normally, to draw his life from all the three, and he does. In the ancient scriptures of the East, it is pointed out that the human kingdom is "the food of the gods" and in that statement the great "chain of sacrifice" is complete. My second point has reference to the law of cause and effect, or of Karma, as the Theosophists call it. In the early days of primitive man, men were the victims of the animal kingdom and they were quite defenseless. The wild animals of the past preyed upon human beings. In all kingdoms the Law of Retribution works. It is possible that it is this law which is one of the factors inclining humanity towards meat eating. I worked this out in my own consciousness in due course of time but not rapidly.

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