Mass today at Loreto House. I gave a short homily27 to the Irish nuns in a big, cool academy, quiet, clean, tranquil. After Mass I am surrounded on all sides, praised, questioned, admired, revered—so much so that I can hardly eat breakfast.
At the Temple of Understanding Conference, which ended today, there were two little girls in miniskirts, Schotzy and Pattie, very sweet and naked, touchingly convinced of their own particularity, calling everything so beautiful—except when it was obviously too square—but all Calcutta beautiful, beautiful and the people beautiful. Last night they wandered off with some hippies into a village and smoked pot somewhere and almost got themselves killed and came back laughing about how it was all so beautiful, beautiful.
I had dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Park Street with Wei Tat, who returns to Hong Kong tomorrow.
I miss my dear Miss Vatsala Amin and her dark eyes and white sari and wonder what to do with that sandalwood garland. And for God’s sake I hope I can get to the Himalayas and into a quiet cabin somewhere and get back to normal!
Sankaracharya28 on the mind and the atman (from The Crest-Jewel of Discrimination):
“The Atman dwells within, free from attachment and beyond all action. A man must separate this Atman from every object of experience, as a stalk of grass is separated from its enveloping sheath. Then he must dissolve into the Atman all those appearances which make up the world of name and form. He is indeed a free soul who can remain thus absorbed in the Atman alone….
“The wind collects the clouds, and the wind drives them away again. Mind creates bondage, and mind also removes bondage.
“The mind creates attachment to the body and the things of this world. Thus it binds a man, as a beast is tied by a rope. But it is also the mind which creates in a man an utter distaste for sense-objects, as if for poison. Thus it frees him from his bondage.
“The mind, therefore, is the cause of man’s bondage and also of his liberation. It causes bondage when it is darkened by rajas. It causes liberation when it is freed from rajas and tamas, and made pure….
“Therefore, the seeker after liberation must work carefully to purify the mind. When the mind has been made pure, liberation is as easy to grasp as the fruit which lies in the palm of your hand.”
October 27, 1968. Feast of Christ the King. Calcutta
In ipso omnia constant… All is in Him, from Him, for Him (for the Father through Him).
This morning Sister Barbara Mitchell and I went to say Mass in the home of Lois Flanagan. It was quiet and simple. The three little Chinese girls Lois has adopted were there, and Bob Boylan,29 and a priest from St. Lawrence High School who had brought all the necessary things. The cyclone has not hit here yet. Everyone is now being overwarned. As we drove back to the hotel the air-raid sirens were being tested—for the imaginary war with Pakistan. There is firing at Suez and Tito says there will be a Third World War if the Russians try to take over Yugoslavia, etc., etc. Everyone has long ceased to listen to any of it.
SCIENTIFIC LIFE DIVINE MISSION,30 A Purely Scientific Nonsectarian All Faiths Fellowship International Movement for the Perfect Development of Body, Mind and Soul…
Eminent Supporters of the Views…”
Eminent Wellwishers…
“Creation is the Kingdom of God composed of matters and spirits for a set scientific course to go particular functions to do and gone to reach according to His wishes manifested in the properties of ingredients…
“Follow the God-prescribed scientific life…”
Ingredients of eminent wellwishers…changing assemblies…with choral voice…agreeing…wishing well according to ingredients…coalitions perfect in all respects…. With one accord we declare, “Man is a pure scientific being…” Carrying on with nebulas, wind, heat, light, and sound. “All are carrying on accordingly! Scientific way of handling the situation is the best.” Ashram. “Please communicate only with the headquarters.”
HOW TO MAKE LIFE BLISSFUL AND WORTH DIAMONDS
“To a large majority of people the present state of affairs causes disappointment.”
AUSPICIOUS ANNOUNCEMENT
“The Almighty Father has been at work now for some time and in the near future man’s desire for peace and prosperity is going to be fulfilled. You may be surprised to have this news…
“God has declared state of emergency. BE HOLY NOW!
“All India has become a whorehouse! Do you not love me enough to abandon this dirty habit?”
AN EYE OPENER FOR BLIND FOLLOWERS, DEVOTEES AND WORSHIPPERS
“Religio-political World History Geography and Philosophy being taught by Most Beloved World God Father Shiva like Kalpa (5000 years) ago.
“Look! The science proud European Yadavas will destroy one another in this international atomic war (Mahabharata) like 5000 years ago.
“GREAT BLUNDERS
“By preaching that a human soul in Shiva or that God is omnipresent the preachers have led mankind astray from Me. I get the golden-aged Jiwan Mukt Deity Sovereignty reestablished through Human Brahma by impartation of Godly Knowledge and Yoga to the Iron-Aged People. For further explanation contact Brahma Kumari.
“GOD’S ACTS
“At the confluence of the Iron Age and Golden Age when complete irreligiousness and unrighteousness prevails, I Knowledgeful Shiva, the God-Sermonizer of Gita descend from My Param Dham (Brahmlok) in an old man who comes to be known as Brahma or Adam.”
In 1863 Baha’u’llah31 announced to the few remaining followers of Bab that He was the chosen Manifestation of God for this age—but he was not greeted with enthusiasm by the religious leaders of Islam.
One of the swamis has flashing eyes, a black beard, rapid speech and sweeping gestures. At times he gives an irresistible impression of Groucho Marx. He has great white teeth and contempt for all competitors. Even his Kleenex is saffron!
COMPLAIN NOT, BUT CREATE
“Shake off your sloth my sluggard and tunnel your way to truth, make a footpath to fortune, build bridges to business and new highroads to heaven.”
[The Minister of the Silent Spirit (d. 1925)]
And amid all this, a pure gem: the little book on King Rama IV Mongkut, Bhikkhu, Abbot of Wat Bovoranives, then King of Thailand (d. 1868).32 A really beautiful account of a holy life, simple and clear with some Franciscan signs and miracles.
“There is nothing in this world which may be clung to blamelessly, or which a man clinging thereto could be without blame.”
[H. M. King Maha Mongkut (Rama IV)]
October 28, 1968. New Delhi
The flight this morning from Calcutta to New Delhi turned out beautiful. At first it was very stormy and cloudy. Then all of a sudden I looked out and there were the Himalayas—several hundred miles away, but an awesome, great white wall of the highest mountains I have ever seen. I recognized the ones like Annapurna that are behind Pokhara, and could pick out the highest ones in the group, though not individually. Everest and Kanchenjunga were in the distance. Later a big, massive one stood out but I did not know what it was. And the river Ganges. And below, the enormous plain cut up with tiny patches of farms and villages, roads and canals. A lovely pattern. Then the dry plain around Delhi. Rock outcrops. Burnt villages. As soon as I got out of the plane I decided that the air of Delhi, was much better than that of Calcutta and that I was happy to be here. Harold Talbott was at the airport and a Birla man also to meet Huston Smith who hopes to show his movie of Tibetan monks to the Dalai Lama. We are to go up by train to Dharamsala next Thursday.
Real India. I haven’t seen much of New Delhi yet, except a long avenue leading to a squat, huge, red dome. And the hotel, which is cleaner, newer, less crumbling than the Oberoi in Calcutta.
Soon I will discover what I am going to remember about the hotel in Calcutta. The Grand Hotel Oberoi Karma, with cows on the front doorstep, and turbaned Janissaries, and girl students in saris raising money for food relief. The endless corridors. The endless salaams. The garden cafe where they
overcharge you in the dark and give you back unrecognizable bills. The beggar with the armstump. The beggar with the humpback. The beggar woman with the baby who ran after me saying “Daddy, Daddy.” And men sleeping on the steps of shops. The tall palms, the ugly white courtyard, the kites circling over the tables. Memories of the Raj.33 Old bathtubs. Old johns of the Raj. The long mirror in which the colonel ruefully sees himself naked, too fat. The red chairs. The incense from Bangkok in the ashtray. The salaams of the elevator men. Long life to the old johns of the Raj!
And the taxis of Calcutta lowing mournfully in the wild streets like walruses or sea cows. And now in New Delhi—more bicycles, motorcycles, trees. A Moslem leaning in the dust toward a tree. The great death house of Humayun.34 Smoke in the evening. The moon rising in the first quarter over gray domes. There are more guns in the movie posters here. More military bases. More soldiers.
“Therefore have no fears, have no terror of that deep blue light of dazzling, terrible and awful splendour, since it is the light of the Supreme Way.”
[Tibetan Book of the Dead]
October 29, 1968
Early morning in New Delhi. A soft rose light, vast gentleness of sky. Many birds. Kites hopping around on the fly roofs of very modem houses. The domes in the smoky distance. The distant throbbing of a drum. I have much to read: [Giuseppe] Tucci’s The Theory and Practice of the Mandala [London, 1969], [Armand] Desjardins’ Message des Tibetains [Message of the Tibetans, London, 1969], the Dalai Lama’s pamphlet on Buddhism, essays by Marco Pallis, Trungpa, and things I picked up yesterday from Dr. Lokesh Chandra of the Academy of Indian Culture.
“Man seeks to reconstruct that unity which the predominance of one or other of the features of his character has broken or threatens to demolish.
“…to help the primeval consciousness, which is fundamentally one, to recover its integrity.
“…the same desire of achieving liberation of catching that instant, which once lived, redeems the Truth with us.”
[Tucci, pp. vii-viii]
“Maya—avidya—duality develops within cosmic consciousness.” “A magic liberty” (good!) which causes samsara. The centrifugal force by which original consciousness flies from itself, negates itself by unconsciousness and arbitrary position of images. Shakti: the power creating phantasms. Shakti is feminine.
Knowledge to which action (and experience) do not conform is not indifferent. It is an evil, a disruptive force: because it does not transform. It corrupts. The idea of initiatory knowledge is to unite knowledge, practice, and experience of revulsion and reintegration.
“Over 100 Kuki and Mizo hostiles with arms and ammunition have surrendered to the Manipur police….”
(Times of India)
The mandala concept accepts the fact that cosmic processes (maya) express themselves in symbols of masculine and feminine deities, beatific and terrifying. It organizes them in certain schemas, representing the drama of disintegration and reintegration. Correctly read by the initiate, they “will induce the liberating psychological experience.”
“First and foremost, a mandala delineates a consecrated superficies and protects it from invasion by disintegrating forces symbolized in demoniacal cycles…. It is a map of the cosmos” which rotates round “a central axis, Mount Sumeru,” the axis mundi [axis of the world] uniting the inferior, underground world, the atmospheric and the celestial. Here is the “palace of the cakravartin, the ‘Universal Monarch’ of Indian tradition.” The initiate identifies himself with this center—his own center is the axis mundi—and is transformed by it.
[Tucci, pp. 23–25]
“So the mandala is no longer a cosmogram but a psychocosmogram, the scheme of disintegration of the One to the many and the reintegration from the many to the One, to that Absolute Consciousness, entire and luminous, which Yoga causes to shine once more in the depths of our being.”
[Tucci, pp. 21–25]
And yet I have a sense that all this mandala business is, for me, at least, useless. It has considerable interest, but there is no point in my seeking anything there for my own enlightenment. Why complicate what is simple? I am reading on the balcony outside my room. Five green parrots, then eight more fly shrieking over my head.
Desjardins on the choice of a guru:
“For the ‘seeker after Truth’ only meetings with very great masters and very great sages can be really interesting. It is better to seek, seek, and seek again a real sage, a truly liberated sage, and spend perhaps no more than a single day with him, than to dissipate one’s efforts in encounters and conversations with less representative persons, or persons who are in any case further from true Realisation. It is no longer a matter of talking to Tibetans who have the title lama; it is a matter of meeting masters.”
“The master’s consciousness is enhanced to the point at which it contains the disciple within himself, and is one with the source of the disciple’s vital energy. For the master nothing remains to be achieved in any sphere; there is nothing above or beyond what he is. Evolution has reached its end for him. He wants nothing. He rejects nothing.”
[Desjardins, pp. 29–31]
Bodhicitta: the seed-thought of illumination.
(See Tucci, p. 15)
“He has pity on those who delight in serenity, how much more than upon other people who delight in existence.”
(Tucci, p. 17)
“When knowledge perceives no object, it remains as pure knowledge since, as there is no one perceivable, it perceives nothing.”
(Tucci, p. 17)
Harold Talbott gave me an extraordinarily interesting account of his September audience with the Dalai Lama. He is in a way under close personal care of the Dalai Lama, who is interested in him and in his studies, and has been very kind to him. Harold is impatient for initiation. The Dalai Lama seems to be very wise in his handling of the situation.
I saw some very clean and handsome tankas in Tibet House. There were three rooms full of them. Impressive design, and perfect colors: blue and green from minerals in Lhasa35; yellow from minerals of Kham or from Utpal lotus found near Lhasa; red from oxide of mercury; gold from Nepal; blue from lapis lazuli; indigo from the Indian plant nili; black from the soot of pine wood. The brushes are made of pine twigs with goat or rabbit hair inserted. Circles are described with a compass made of split bamboo. Could there be a technical connection between the painters of Russian icons and the tanka painters of Tibet?
The axial, vertical Brahma line of the tanka. The axis of life-Mt. Sumeru-the human backbone. At the summit of the head above the backbone is the hole of Brahma through which one escapes to nirvana. The face of Buddha in tankas is drawn on a full-moon day, colored on a new-moon day.
The need to combine mantra and mudra.
“The artist is a sadhaka. He must ascend, on to the spiritual plane which he intends to paint. He must transform himself into the illustrious beings whom he must adore. ‘He who is not God may not adore God.’”
[Dr. Raghu Viral]
“Shoe-lifter Arrested. New Delhi, October 29-The police today claimed to have arrested a notorious shoe-lifter from Jama Masjid.36 The alleged accused, Nazir, operated throughout the city, lifting shoes from shrines while devotees were at prayers. Nazir was arrested while striking a deal of stolen fancy shoes and a cycle in the Jama Masjid junk market.”
(Hindusran Times Correspondent)
October 30, 1968. New Delhi
It would be interesting to see what lamas might think of the visions of the Heavenly City and Temple in Ezekiel and the Apocalypse.
Early this morning in the hotel a man next door was coughing and vomiting violently. Next he was doing his puja, chanting loudly in Hindi with an occasional cough. It got louder and louder. Maybe a Sikh.
There is nothing of a mandala about the Red Fort, the only sight I have sightseen in Delhi so far. It has a splendid high red wall toward the city and a lower wall with many pleasances toward the meadow where the river Jumna once flowed (now it is furth
er away). There is an interesting high tunnel full of shops and raucous music as one enters. Then the gardens, the porches, the place where there were pools, the place of dancing, the little pearl mosque, most lovely. I obeyed the sign and took no pictures. Refused the importunities of a guide. There were soldiers on motorcycles and an ugly barracks with arched porches, built by the British.
I had a late lunch with Anthony Quainton and his wife from the American Embassy.37 They are surprisingly young. I learned nothing special about Bhutan. He gave me advice about seeing an Indian official. The meals are too heavy. I wanted to sleep. But it was already past three and time had come to go to tea with Dr. Syed Vahiduddin, one of the speakers at the Temple of Understanding Conference in Calcutta. He is a Moslem and head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Delhi. A long expensive taxi ride to the other side of Old Delhi, past Raj Ghat, the Gandhi memorial, and some difficulty finding his house at Cavalry Line on the university campus. We had a good conversation. He started by talking of the technical problems of Sufism and Hinduism in his courses at the university. Then we discussed the Temple of Understanding Conference. He told me some good Sufi stories, one about a Sufi at a reception where a courtesan had hastily been concealed behind a curtain so as not to give scandal when he arrives. She finally gets tired, comes out and recites a pretty verse to the effect, “I am what I appear to be. I hope you are the same.” There was a picture of Rudolf Otto on the table. Vahiduddin had studied at Marburg. He lamented the absence of genuine Sufi masters, though there are some, hidden. And the great number of fakes who are very much in the public eye. He praised a classic Sufi who said that, “To say I am God is not pride, it is perfect modesty.” Vahiduddin also said that a religion that ignores or evades the fact of death cannot make sense. (This I myself said in my talk at the Temple of Understanding Conference.)
The Other Side of the Mountain Page 27