My Guru & His Disciple (11 page)

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Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, regulations were issued which restricted the movements of “enemy aliens” to very small areas around their domicile—the area around our hostel contained no post office, no movie theater, no drugstore. Nearly all the refugees were still technically German or Austrian citizens and therefore subject to this restriction.

They took it very quietly. This was what their chronic pessimism had been awaiting. In their voices there was a note, almost, of relief that the inevitable worst was no longer to be delayed. “It's France, all over again,” they muttered. “Next will come the detention camps.”

Caroline made a vigorous speech, assuring the refugees that the regulations couldn't possibly be enforced because they were so absurd and unjust. “If we make such a mess of bureaucracy in this country, it's because we're not used to it.” (This I interpreted as a gentle reproof: “You Europeans got so used to
your
bureaucracy that you didn't realize it would turn into a tyranny and destroy you.”) Then she was off on the warpath to the District Attorney's office in Philadelphia. To my astonishment, the D.A. lifted all local restrictions on our hostel members immediately. Caroline took her victory as a matter of course, never having doubted that the American Way of Life would prevail. To me, this was an extraordinary demonstration of the Quakers' power over the consciences of non-Quaker Philadelphians, even in wartime.

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In the middle of May 1942, a young English Quaker lectured at the Meeting House. He was on his way back to England after working with the Friends' ambulance unit in China. He had blond hair which was curly like a lamb's fleece, and a charmingly silly, innocent laugh. He seemed to me to be an ideal non-violent hero. I got an instant crush on him—and was thus moved to volunteer for a second ambulance unit, which the Quakers were then organizing. I was turned down, however, because all volunteers had to be either doctors or trained automobile mechanics.

*   *   *

Meanwhile, as expected, the U.S. draft age had been raised. It now included those in my age bracket.

June 17. Today I sent off form 47 to the draft board, applying for 4-E classification as a conscientious objector. When you write these things down for official consumption, they sound horribly priggish and false—because you are presenting yourself as a strictly logical, rational human being with principles, a philosophy of life, etc. Whereas I, personally, am much more like a horse which suddenly stops and says, “No. That's going
too
far. From
that
pond I won't drink.”

I have reasons, of course, and a philosophy. I can explain them—quite lucidly, if necessary. But how dry and cold they would be without the personal factor behind them: Heinz is in the Nazi army. I would refuse to kill Heinz. Therefore, I have no right to kill anybody.

Of course there are a dozen ways in which you can come to the pacifist decision. And I don't doubt that there are many people who honestly arrive at it on general principles: they simply know that it is wrong for them to kill. But I have never been able to grasp any idea except through a person.

June 30. Medical examination at the draft board. All these kids seem so utterly helpless, so unprotected. You feel, “Let me go, instead of them.” Their nervous little jokes. The old-timer who scares them with his army tales. The boy who's afraid he'll faint when they take his blood. (He didn't.) The young Negro's beautiful body, so dignified in its nakedness; nearly everybody else wore undershorts.

I had to wait till last because, for me as a C.O., this wasn't just a preliminary but the only examination I should get. They didn't do much beyond establishing the fact that I was alive.

*   *   *

The Friends Service Committee had now decided that the hostel must be closed down—partly for financial reasons, partly because no more refugees were expected to be able to get over from Europe and because those who remained with us would nearly all be able to find jobs in the rapidly expanding wartime labor market.

I myself left Haverford early in July, to return to California. Soon after my arrival there, I got a notice from my draft board that I had been classified 4-E. This meant that I could expect a call to the forestry camp within the next six weeks. Or so I imagined.

*   *   *

While I was away in Pennsylvania, Gerald Heard and Felix Greene had bought—with money from an anonymous donor—a ranch called Trabuco. It was sixty miles south of Los Angeles, in an almost empty stretch of country behind the coastal hills. Here Felix had caused to be built what they already called Trabuco College. Gerald said that it looked like a small Franciscan monastery in the Apennines. It was indeed dramatically picturesque, a complex of tile-roofed buildings with cloisters which commanded a vast airy view westward to the ocean. And its interior design was a model of monastic simplicity—built-in cabinets and tiled floors—requiring a minimum of dusting and sweeping.

Felix had worked all through the winter, studying and revising the architect's plans, pressuring contractors to get on with the job, dashing from place to place to snap up the last available supplies of lumber and metal fixtures before they were “frozen” by military authorities. He had also done a great deal of the construction with his own hands. “With an energy,” said Gerald, “that was almost
epileptic.”
Gerald's adjective suggested not only unwilling admiration but an ironic admission of responsibility. He himself had unleashed Felix and his energy upon the original modest Focus project. And now Focus, the mini-retreat for four people, was swallowed up within Trabuco College, this—to Gerald—slightly embarrassing showplace, which could house fifty.

Gerald reminded us frequently that Trabuco was to be a college in the sense of the Latin word
collegium,
“a community.” He also spoke of it as “a club for mystics,” non-sectarian, non-dogmatic, and as “a clearinghouse” for individual religious experiences and ideas. Those who visited it were to meet as colleagues, not as masters and disciples, not as spiritual superiors and inferiors.

*   *   *

More than two months passed and I had still heard nothing from the draft board. On September 25, I got a letter from one of the boys at the forestry camp, saying that they had been expecting me to arrive some days previously. Was I technically AWOL without knowing it? Alarmed, I telegraphed the director of the camp, asking what I should do. He wrote back that if I hadn't got my induction notice I needn't worry. He wasn't allowed to admit me to the camp without it.

Meanwhile, the Swami was urging me to apply to the draft board for reclassification as a theological student, 4-D. (One of the men at the Vedanta Center in San Francisco had already been classified 4-D, so a precedent had been established.) The Swami had a frankly admitted motive for keeping me out of the forestry camp. He wanted me to come and live as a monk at the Vedanta Center, as soon as he could make arrangements to accommodate men there. This might take several months. But he also had an occupation for me which I could begin work on immediately. He had just finished a rough translation of the
Bhagavad-Gita
and needed me to help him polish it.

I told him I doubted very much that the board would agree to reclassify me when I was already as good as drafted. Why should they take the trouble to do the extra paperwork? The Swami giggled and said, “Try.” To my ears, there was a slightly uncanny quality in this giggle; it sounded as if he knew something about the situation which I didn't. I sent off my application for 4-D.

September 28. Talked to the Swami on the phone. He is ready to write a letter to the draft board, backing up my appeal for reclassification. But first he wanted me to reassure him that I really intend to become a monk. I said yes of course—but later I was bothered by all kinds of doubts. Just what does the Swami mean by “monk”? One who takes the vows of chastity and poverty? Or one who belongs, specifically, to the Ramakrishna Order, conducts lecture courses, officiates at the rituals, and goes to lunch with householder devotees in their expensive houses. I'll see him tomorrow and ask him.

September 29. As I expected, the Swami waved my doubts aside. Of course, he said, I wouldn't be asked to do things I wasn't fitted for or wasn't inclined to do.

October 12. Most days, I see the Swami and we work together on his translation of the Gita, turning it into more flexible English. This is a very valuable way of studying, because I have to make absolutely sure I understand what each verse means. Some of the Sanskrit words have meanings which sound bizarre in English, and the Swami, who has long since learnt to paraphrase them, has to be practically psychoanalyzed before he'll admit to the literal translation.

No call from the draft board yet.

There never was a call. Nor any answer to my application for 4-D. This silence was explained when the authorities later announced that they were lowering the upper draft-age limit to thirty-seven. By that time, I was well into my thirty-ninth year.

January 29, 1943. The opening of Brahmananda Cottage (as the Swami has christened the house where we're to live, at the Vedanta Center) is still fixed for the sixth of February. At the moment, this, and all that it implies, seems utterly remote and unreal. I told the Swami some weeks ago, “I've been ten thousand miles away from you.

Daydreams of a “last fling.” Some part of me is irrationally convinced that somehow someone will show up to give me a glamorous final twenty-four hours of sex in the best Elinor Glyn style.

February 3. Lunch with Berthold Viertel. Talked about my move to the Center. He disapproves of it with all the jealousy of his fatherly affection. A return to the Quakers he could understand, a retirement into an ivory-tower life of novel writing he could understand. But why am I joining these obsolete Hindus? What possible relevance can their beliefs have to the world of 1943?

Berthold feels a deep suspicion of Gerald, whom he naturally associates with Vedanta and the Swami. He asked, “Would you be doing this if you'd never met Heard?”—as though he expected the question to disconcert and perhaps enrage me. “Would I have written for the movies,” I countered, “if I'd never met you?”

In the afternoon, I called Denny on the phone, up at the forestry camp. He seems to be completely happy there. He has been skiing. He showed no special desire to come down and visit us.

Supper with Chris Wood. Afterwards, we went to the Club Gala. I haven't been to a place of this sort in ages, and it was so nostalgically reminiscent of all the other times—the baroque decorations and the cozy red velvet corners, the sharp-faced peroxide pianist with tender memories and a tongue like an adder, the grizzled tomcat tenor, the lame celebrity, the bar mimosa, the public lovers, the amazed millionaire tourist and the daydream sailor. I have loved them all very much. I owe them many of my vividest moments of awareness. But enough is enough. And here we say goodbye.

Or do we? Isn't this entirely the wrong spirit in which to become a monk? I am not going to the Center to forget such places. No—if this training succeeds, I shall be able to return to the Gala, or any other scene of the past, with the kind of understanding which sees what they are really all about.

Eight

Against my will, terrified, helplessly attracted, I cross the vast empty courtyard in blazing sunlight, pull the bell chain—
clang,
the grim ironbound wicket opens. They are all inside, in the shadows, cowled and black-robed, waiting for me. Within a moment, they have stripped me of my clothes and forcibly robed me. I stammer the irrevocable vow. I vanish into silence and an eternal indoors, trapped by the Trappists,
a monk!

This youthful fantasy-farce—inspired by
The Garden of Allah
and the anti-Catholic horror tales of my Protestant upbringing—kept recalling itself to my mind and making me grin as I took part in the events of February 6; the service in the temple, the dedication of Brahmananda Cottage with a homa fire in its living room, the reception afterwards, at which the inmates of the Center mingled with the householders of the congregation, amidst much eating, photography, gush, and chatter. The atmosphere of this last scene reminded me strongly of life in Quakerdom.

We four male monastics were on display, embarrassed, robeless, and quite unmonklike, in our Sunday suits. Prabhavananda wore his robes for the occasion, and only he seemed at ease, beaming and delighted because Maharaj's work was going forward, the Center was growing bigger. In recognition of my own altered status, he had now stopped calling me Mr. Isherwood and started calling me Chris—he pronounced it “Krees.” (In my diary I began to reciprocate by referring to him as Swami instead of the Swami.)

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Brahmananda Cottage was number 1942 Ivar Avenue. The temple stood between it and number 1946. These three buildings could hardly have been less alike—1942 was a small, Spanish-style, stucco-walled house with a tiled roof—yet they formed a kind of unit simply by being so close together; there were only a few yards between them. It seemed absurd to think of 1946 as a convent and of 1942 as a monastery in the ordinary sense of the words, for how could nuns and monks be isolated from each other when they were living at such close quarters? In fact, the inmates of the Center were now like members of a family. The men shared many occupations with the women, and they were in and out of each other's houses all day long. We only separated to sleep.

*   *   *

February 8, 1943. Well, now that we've slept two nights in Brahmananda Cottage, now that the mimosa is withering in the vases and the homa fire leaves no trace beyond a stain of clarified butter on the hearth—is there anything I can say about the monastic life?