The Boy and the Brothers

An experience that paralleled mine with Michael, though on a larger scale in that it was on the public stage, was that of Bill Coote and Maud McCarthy later to be known as Swami Omananda when she became the first Western woman to take sannyasi. This is related in her two books The Boy and the Brothers and Towards the Mysteries which were originally published in 1959 and 1968 respectively. The first tells their story, which is an extraordinary one that should be better known, while the second is an account of the teachings that the Masters gave through the 'Boy' as Bill Coote was called. He was the medium who performed the same role for the Masters as Michael did. I consider these to be among the most important spiritual books of the last century.

The reason I make this claim is because they are two of the very few books that give the Masters' teachings in a completely undiluted way. Straight from the horse's mouth, one might say if that didn't sound a little disrespectful. There is no subjective bias on the part of the vehicle they came through and no interpretation put on a message received in a non-verbal form. It is simply the Masters' exact words coming directly from them through a medium who must have been a very pure soul, carefully selected for his lack of worldly contamination. It is apparent from the books that the Boy was one of those rare people who are completely true to themselves and that his spiritual instincts were absolutely sound.

I say that these are the Masters’ unadulterated teachings for two reasons. Firstly, the beings that communicated really were the Masters. Of that even the most casual read will leave you with no doubt. There are many channelings that are claimed to come from the spiritual hierarchy but I know of few others that so unequivocally do. Actually, I know of none that come through with this degree of purity. It is true that over the past century there have been discarnate beings from many levels of the inner universe communicating but the great bulk of these beings are located on and speak from the psychic and mental levels, which are levels of form and duality, and are not liberated beings though that may not be the impression they give or what is claimed for them.

These are the only books I know of that really carry the vibration of the Masters in a way that brooks no argument. There are other writings that do that to a degree, and some would put the Alice Bailey books in that category*, but it is never totally pure (though maybe it is not meant to be so that we learn to discriminate but that's another matter). However in these two books it is, and that is because of the way the communications were received.  They did not come through the Boy's mind, as is the case with psychic or telepathic communication. He was a deep trance medium which meant that he was taken out of the body and quite unconscious of what was said through him so what came through was literally the Masters themselves. This is never the case with channeling or inspirational writing or telepathically received material. There is always input from the recipient's mind. Not so here. Having witnessed the identical thing with Michael I can vouch for the authenticity of this case.

That the first book is called The Boy and the Brothers is interesting. It’s almost a spiritual teaching in itself for it tells us two very important things. One, that the most spiritual people are the ones who have the child-like quality of the Boy. They are not trying to be anything. They just are what they are. They have gone beyond the dualistic state of experience and experiencer, what I think of as the fallen condition where you see through the distorting lens of the mind, and attained to a sort of holy innocence. I have to say that Michael also had something of this which could even lead to him on occasion being mistaken for a fool.

The Masters in these books described themselves as brothers. That is also how the Masters who contacted me spoke of themselves. It is how they think of themselves. They are brothers to each other and brothers to us because we are all children of the one Father. They, however, recognise their parenthood. They are one with the Father. We, if we are spiritual aspirants, aspire to this recognition but have not attained it yet so, while we may be brothers, we are certainly younger brothers. It seems that in this world the right balance between equality and hierarchy is hard to strike but both are based on reality, and understanding that the one relates to inner being while the other concerns realised being should make the need to achieve that balance clearer.

The Boy served as the medium for the Brothers for twenty seven years. They started giving teachings through him in England at the beginning of the 1930s but then more or less drove the Boy, Maud McCarthy and her entire family to India in 1935, saying that a great destruction is coming. Of course it came in 1939. The teaching continued unabated through much hardship until the Boy's death in 1953.

To readers of this blog, who presumably are interested in the idea of spiritual masters, I cannot recommend these books highly enough. Unfortunately they are no longer in print but if you can find a copy, either secondhand or online, I would advise you not to hesitate. I don’t think you will find many books that convey the essence of spirituality as well as these two do and they contain teaching to last a lifetime, teaching which is stripped clean of any colouring by a belief system but which is just naked, unvarnished truth.

*I used to take these on their own estimation but I now think they are too influenced by Theosophical ideas as well as being repetitive and long-winded so although a spiritual being of some sort may have been behind them there is a lot of Alice Bailey in there as well.