My Guru & His Disciple (14 page)

Also, I do feel that we must be ready to accept sickness—not as a burden, but as a profoundly educational experience, neither less nor more educational than health.

Sudhira has been looking after me, and telling me stories. While she was nursing in the children's ward at the County Hospital, she caught meningitis and became delirious. Two beautiful white horses appeared in her room and told her that they'd come to take her away with them to Mount Shasta, but that first they must all three of them go into the chapel and say a prayer. Sudhira actually followed them into the hospital chapel, dressed only in a short nightgown. She was kneeling at the altar rail and laughing at the awkwardness of the horses—they couldn't kneel properly—when a doctor found her and led her back to bed.

May 4. Was up all day, but am back in bed this evening, resting. Webster hurries in and out, bringing me things, like a hospital orderly, under Sudhira's command. He shows a kindness and gentleness which are almost feminine. I feel he takes our monastic relationship absolutely literally. As far as he's concerned, we're brothers, and that's that.

I have no idea “where I am.” Have I made progress during these three months, or haven't I? To a certain degree, I do feel yes, I have. Just being with Swami has given me a much clearer idea of what the spiritual life ought to mean. How infinitely difficult and yet how utterly simple it is! Want to find the Atman? All right, go ahead and dig it out, like a terrier.

The worship is very helpful. I did it again today—for about the 18th time. Nearly always, I at least manage to get a great awareness of responsibility. Here am I, with all my karma upon me, presenting myself before the unthinkable majesty of what is enthroned in the shrine. “I'm sorry, sir. I'm the only one they could send today.” Offering the prayers and mudras, the flowers and lights and incense, I am representing everybody I have ever known and all my unknown human brothers and sisters. This is when I think about Heinz and try to send him a message—even if he's already dead.

(A
mudra
is any one of the various symbolic hand gestures used in the ritual. My diary doesn't mention what was, for me, the most important quality of the worship; it was the best of all aids to concentration. While performing the various acts of the ritual, you were obliged to keep your mind on what you were saying and doing—all the more so, if you were a beginner. Thus you could scarcely avoid thinking about God almost continuously, for about an hour and a half. Under any other circumstances, my span of concentration would have been about one and a half minutes.)

May 19. The man came round today who exterminates vermin and termites. Sarada, who is a born missionary, had a talk with him and excitedly reported that he is much interested in Vedanta. “I'm sure he's got the makings of a devotee,” she said. George commented dryly: “From ratman to Atman.”

(Speaking of George reminds me of something which happened several weeks ago. Web and I—we're temporarily sharing the big bedroom because of visitors—were wakened in the dead of night by a mysterious thudding. I was sure that I knew what it was. It instantly brought back the memory of a Japanese air raid—my first—heard over Canton from far away across the river, in 1938. A raid on Los Angeles is considered just possible; we've had two or three false alarms already. I assured Web, who was excited but a trifle nervous, that this could only be a nuisance raid. A Japanese aircraft carrier must have sneaked up near to the coast in the shelter of a fog, and launched a few planes. Our chances of being hit were one in a billion … And then—we both realized that we were listening to George's typewriter! He produced the peculiar thudding sounds by typing with it placed on the floor. What had fooled us was that he hadn't chanted while he typed, as he nearly always does.)

Today and all night until 7:00 a.m. tomorrow morning, we have a 24-hour vigil, taking it in turns to chant Ramakrishna's name in the shrine, an hour at a stretch—because it is the full moon of Buddha's birthday and because Swami thinks we are getting lazy.

Have just done my stint in the shrine room, chanting “Jaya Sri Ramakrishna!”

(
Jaya
or
Jai
means “hail,” “victory to,” or “glory to.” Sri, when used as a prefix to honor a deity or saint, means “revered” or “holy.” In a secular sense, it is the equivalent of “Mr.”)

The first ten or fifteen minutes are the worst, because they are a conscious effort. Then, as Sudhira puts it, “the thing begins to say itself.” You find yourself changing gear from one inflection to another. “
Jaya
Sri Ramakrishna” becomes “Jaya
Sri
Ramakrishna,” which becomes “Jaya Sri
Ramakrishna
.” Sometimes you begin to rock back and forth, keeping time to the chant. Sometimes you go up and down the scale, almost singing it. Sometimes you get terrifically loud and start shouting it. Sudhira, who loves anything emotional, says it's best in the middle of the night. Once she and Asit and another devotee got together and made such a noise they could be heard all over the neighborhood. The shrine room “feels” quite different when the chanting is going on—it's like being at a jam session.

I asked Swami: “If Vivekananda had already experienced the highest samadhi, why did he have any more doubts?” Swami explained that Ramakrishna wished him to have doubts. He deliberately “locked the door and kept the key,” in order that Vivekananda should return to ignorance. Vivekananda had to doubt, for our sake. Otherwise, we should say to ourselves: “It was very easy for him to believe, he was simply hypnotized by Ramakrishna's personality. His belief proves nothing.” What's so reassuring is that Vivekananda went on doubting so long before he became convinced.

Amiya and I were letting off steam together over the horrors of American food—for example, mint jelly and mayonnaise on fruit salad. (I must admit, I rather overplay the role of fellow Britisher, to please Amiya.) Yogini is the worst offender, I said; her mixtures would shock the witches in Macbeth. Sarada came by, overheard us, and laughed.

*   *   *

At this point, my diary refers to a project which had been in my mind for a long while already—a novel describing the making of the film with Berthold Viertel in England, during 1933–34. All that existed of it so far was its title,
Prater Violet,
and three “quite promising” pages. My desire to get back to work on
Prater Violet
was related to a general anxiety about my future as a fiction writer. I had good reason to be anxious. In the four years since I arrived in the States, I had produced nothing but two
New Yorker
-type short stories.

Swami was well aware that I had written novels and that they had scenes in them which some people considered shocking. He had no intention of reading the novels, but he was rather amused by the idea of their shockingness and proud of my celebrity. Somebody complained to Swami about the indecency of a scene in one of Aldous's novels. Swami silenced him by asking gaily, “Is it
warse
than Shekspeare?” And there was an American writer who had visited Swami and later described him in print as “a great soul.” Swami had forgotten the writer's name but I identified him as that supershocker, Henry Miller. (See
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare.
) I told Swami: “You certainly choose the dirtiest writers for your disciples!”

Swami didn't tell me
not
to write any more novels. He simply took it for granted that I would devote all my available time and my literary abilities to our
Gita
translation, articles for our magazine, and similar tasks. The fiction writer was thus being forced to go underground. But he was determined to survive, and maybe these restrictions were just what he needed to provoke him into becoming active again. He was now a subversive element, whose influence would grow steadily stronger and make itself felt before long.

May 22. Right now, I'm going through an ebb-tide phase—one of those periods which have recurred throughout my life, during which I would, ordinarily, oversmoke, lounge around doing nothing, go too often to the movies, run after sex, read crime stories, drink too much, wallow in the newspapers, and feel depressed. I must watch myself or I shall be apt to grab some excuse for leaving the Center altogether. (If, for example, they were to raise the draft-age limit again, which seems possible.) The forestry camp now presents itself in a furtively attractive aspect, because it would permit a return to sexuality. I now think of sex in entirely promiscuous terms; I've no desire for any kind of relationship. I don't know if this is a good sign, or not.

Reading the life of Vivekananda, the part about his austerities, I ask myself: What were all those agonies and struggles
for
? There are times when I feel that I have absolutely no idea. But then I always think: Well, can you tell me what Churchill's blood-toil-tears-and-sweat are
for
? I don't know that, either; so the balance is restored. The spiritual life is, at worst, no more unreal than the political.

I'm starting to make a selection of Vivekananda's sayings, taken from his letters and lectures:

If living by rule alone ensures excellence, if it be virtue strictly to follow the rules, say then who is a greater devotee, a holier saint, than a railway train?

If you are really ready to take up the earth's burden, take it up by all means—but do not let us hear your groans and curses, do not frighten us with your sufferings. The man who really takes up the burden blesses the world. It is the Saviour who should go on his way rejoicing—not the saved.

The dualist thinks you cannot be moral unless you have a God with a rod in His hand, ready to punish you. Suppose a horse had to give us a lecture on morality, one of those very wretched cab horses who moves only with the whip. He begins to speak about human beings and says they must be very immoral. Why? “Because I know they are not whipped regularly.”

I am glad I was born, glad I suffered so, glad I did make big blunders, glad to enter peace. Behind my work was ambition, behind my love was personality, behind my purity was fear, behind my guidance the thirst for power. Now they are vanishing and I drift.

I hate this world, this dream, this horrible nightmare, with its churches and chicaneries, its fair faces and false hearts, its howling righteousness on the surface and utter hollowness beneath, and, above all, its sanctified shop-keeping.

Let the barks of puppies not frighten you—no, not even the thunderbolts of heaven—but stand up and work.

May 24. Sister was very contrite this morning because she'd disagreed with Swami yesterday when he denounced wartime patriotism. “Well,” she sighed, “that's just one more hump I'll have to get over.”

Swami should be the last person to blame anyone for being patriotic. At heart he's still a flaming Hindu nationalist, and gets very heated when British policy is discussed. But I'm never really bothered by his inconsistencies. And, essentially, he's so humble. I'm sure he refers every problem back to the shrine and Maharaj. I'm glad that he's sometimes vain about his youthful appearance; that's so much better than being “above” vanity and trying to impress everyone with your holiness. Swami's great quality is that he never gets in the way of what he stands for; his figure never blocks out the light.

May 28. A blue jay, with a particularly harsh note, has got terribly on Swami's nerves. He throws stones at it, jumping into the air with a little hop and nearly overbalancing. Amiya and Sudhira like the bird, however, because it enrages Dhruva, whom they both dislike. Dhruva barks frantically at the jay, as it perches just out of his reach and screeches insults.

(Dhruva was Sister's beloved, ill-tempered old collie. He was named for one of the saints of ancient India. According to legend, Vishnu—God in the aspect of Preserver—rewarded Dhruva by taking him up to the sky and setting him there as the polestar.)

*   *   *

At the beginning of June, Swami left suddenly for the East, because Akhilananda, one of his brother swamis, had become seriously ill at the Vedanta Center in Providence, Rhode Island. Before leaving, Swami told me that I was to sleep in his bedroom while he was away. Since his room was in the other house, amidst those of the nuns, this was a seemingly strange decision. Perhaps Swami, who was somewhat literal-minded about sex, thought that I, as a homosexual, would be further from temptation's reach there than while sharing Webster's bedroom. No doubt, also, he foreknew the effect that being in his room would have on me. I was extraordinarily conscious of Swami's presence there, almost as though I was sharing it with him. I wrote in my diary that I felt like apologizing to Swami every time I used the toilet, and that I hoped I should go on feeling that way as long as my stay lasted. I did.

July 1. Who should saunter in this afternoon but Richard, with his hair cropped short. He wore a blue Navy denim shirt, blue-jean pants, and a seaman's sweater. He was three weeks in the Merchant Marine, on Catalina Island, and then got himself discharged because they taught him nothing except cleaning toilets. Now he has a job as an usher at Warner's Theater. He plans to stay there two or three months, till he can join the Marine Corps.

As soon as we look at each other, we always begin to laugh, like two people who are bluffing at poker. Only, at the same time, I get the uneasy feeling that maybe Rich isn't bluffing. Rich sometimes gives you a look which is disconcertingly mature, indulgent almost, as though he were a grownup playing with a child.