My Guru and His Disciple

by Christopher Isherwood

  But Nachiketa rejects all these, saying that no one who has met Death face to face, as he himself has, could desire such things, knowing them all to be perishable and therefore worthless.

  Whereupon Death, convinced that he has found a worthy pupil, begins to teach Nachiketa the truth about immortality …

  Reading this story aloud in the shrine room, I consciously did my utmost to entertain our invisible guest as he sat at his breakfast. Now and then, I would raise my eyes to the shrine and address him directly. I hammed up the passages of drama and comedy, trying to make him weep or chuckle … You were showing off, I would later accuse myself; is that what you call worship? I was offering Vivekananda what I do best, I would reply; and if I don’t enjoy my own performance, how can I expect him to?

  Then I had breakfast with Swami. He has been pestered by another of these madwomen—they’re one of his chief occupational hazards. She broke into his room recently, in the middle of the night, and later wrote letters accusing him of forcing her into samadhi against her will, and of teaching her masturbation by remote control. Swami can never help laughing when he talks about such situations, but they scare him when they happen.

  He gave me mahaprasad, a grain of rice from the Jagannath Temple at Puri. Ramakrishna said that this prasad is like Ganges water, “Brahman made visible.” Swami has a whole store of these grains and takes one first thing in the morning, every day.

  May 24. The madwoman has been sending Swami more anonymous letters, with torn-up photos of Ramakrishna or Swami in them, and the question, “Is the farce still going on?”

  June 2. Don said this morning that he would like to have a mantram and wished Swami would give him one. It’s the first time Don has ever said this.

  June 7. Yesterday evening, Don came up with me to the Center, talked to Swami alone, and told him he wanted a mantram. Swami seems to have been pleased and surprised—as well he might be, since Don has known him for nearly ten years without asking for one! He gave Don some instructions about meditating and told him he’d initiate him next December.

  (The mantram Swami gave Don must have been a provisional one, not the personal, permanent mantram which he would be given at the time of his initiation.)

  Swami is being threatened again by the madwoman. So the boys have fixed a buzzer system between his room and the monastery. If she arrives in the middle of the night and starts to smash in Swami’s door, he merely has to flip the switch and the monastery is alerted like a fire station. The boys can be over in eighteen seconds—they have rehearsed it!

  July 9. Don left for New York this evening, to draw various people. While waiting for his plane at the airport, we talked about the mantram Swami gave him. He said that repeating it has made a tremendous difference to him already. He also said he was afraid that making japam might take over his life. He was afraid he might get in deeper than he was ready to get, and be unable to think about anything but finding God. I said well, that was something we neither of us could do anything about, if it was going to happen. My attitude wasn’t due to pious resignation. I just don’t believe it will happen, so I have no idea how I should react if it did. I suppose I should be both miserable and delighted.

  * * *

  That autumn, the swami in charge of one of the other Vedanta centers died. A woman member of his congregation had gradually, through the years, established herself as a power figure. Now she seemed to be threatening to take control of the Center. Its other members, we heard, were all under her influence and would do nothing to oppose her.

  A few days later, while I was visiting Swami, several women devotees were discussing the situation in his presence. One of these women was particularly vehement. She kept telling Swami that he ought to get on a plane and go and deal with the power woman in person, but that he was afraid to. It was a strangely ugly scene, reminding me of the women in Icelandic sagas who taunt their men into going out to kill someone. The woman who was speaking seemed to turn into the woman she was attacking.

  This was one of the rare occasions on which Swami appeared to me to be intimidated and temporarily helpless. Yet I didn’t feel disturbed. Such glimpses of his weaknesses and faults helped me to see him doubly—as Abanindra Nath Ghosh and as the receptacle of “this thing,” the Eternal. If I had felt that it was Abanindra who was getting more and more spiritual, I should have been shocked by his accompanying weaknesses. But no, I told myself, that isn’t what’s happening, at all. Abanindra, with his weaknesses and his virtues, is fading away, while “this thing,” which has always been present within him, is becoming more and more evident.

  * * *

  During October, Swami somehow got to hear about a book, not yet published, which described its author’s unsuccessful search for a suitable spiritual teacher, either living or dead. Ramakrishna was among the candidates. The author had at first felt attracted by Ramakrishna’s personality but had decided against him on the ground that he was (I quote) a homosexual who had had to struggle hard to overcome his lust for his young disciple later to be known as Vivekananda.

  Swami was outraged. He met with the author, who was persuaded or intimidated into deleting this passage from the manuscript. I could understand Swami’s indignation, although, as a homosexual, I couldn’t altogether share it. Certainly, the author’s statement about Ramakrishna and Vivekananda was irresponsible and unsupported by any convincing evidence. Still, it didn’t shock me so much that I was unable to examine it, and my reactions to it, calmly.

  It is on record that Ramakrishna said he had been troubled by lust on at least one occasion and had overcome it through prayer. However, he didn’t say that his lust had had any particular human object, so it may have been simply an upsurge of sexual desire. Swami used to tell us that it was necessary for Ramakrishna to experience all the temptations which a human being can feel.

  Did I then believe that Ramakrishna could have felt lust for Vivekananda? How could I possibly say with any assurance what a Ramakrishna could or couldn’t have felt? Such a being sometimes behaves in a way which we can’t explain, because his motivations are quite different from ours. When one of Ramakrishna’s disciples was asked why Christ blasted the barren fig tree, he answered, “First become a Christ, and then you’ll know why he did that.” Only the wretched little puritan, with his fixed rules of conduct and catalogue of sins, is certain that he can understand, and judge, everybody’s motives, including God’s.

  The one assumption I thought I could safely make was this: Since we know from the records that Ramakrishna always spoke and acted with complete childlike frankness, it seems probable that, if he had felt lust for anyone of either sex, he would have immediately run to confess his lust to the individual concerned, and then told everyone else in the neighborhood about it. Which would mean that, if such a situation had indeed ever arisen, it must have been known of and concealed by Ramakrishna’s biographers.

  It didn’t surprise me that someone reading about Ramakrishna for the first time should be disconcerted by the extremely emotional way in which he expressed his love for his young male disciples—and that such a reader should also fail to realize that Ramakrishna’s kind of love feels no inhibitions because it makes no demands. Most of us are familiar only with the kind of love—be it parental or romantic—which does demand something in return. So we suspect Ramakrishna’s love of having ulterior homosexual motives.

  There is another excuse for accusing Ramakrishna of homosexuality; he sometimes dressed in woman’s clothes. As a boy, he did this for a joke; he was a talented impersonator and mimic. As an adult, he wished to experience every sort of religious mood, including the mood of a female devotee of Krishna. He used to say that one “should make the outside the same as the inside”; and so, when he took part in certain pujas, he wore woman’s clothes, with ornaments and a wig, to complement his devotional mood. This naturally scandalized the conventionally pious. Ramakrishna regarded the distinction between the sexes as a part of maya, the cosmic illusion; therefor
e, he can’t have thought of himself as being exclusively masculine or feminine. In daily life, he didn’t appear effeminate, and when he dressed as a woman he changed so completely that his friends often couldn’t recognize him.

  I was well aware of these facts and yet, when talking to fellow homosexuals, I would often put it that Ramakrishna “got into drag.” This expressed my need to think of him as someone who was, at least to some extent, one of us. I couldn’t honestly claim him as a homosexual, even a sublimated one, much as I would have liked to be able to do so.

  I wished that I could have discussed these matters in Ramakrishna and His Disciples. But that was out of the question. For my book had now become an official project of the Ramakrishna Order. Each chapter was sent off to India as soon as it was finished, to be submitted to the approval of Swami Madhavananda, the present head of the Order. (Sankarananda had recently died.) Many of Madhavananda’s comments and corrections were helpful. But, every so often, I was made aware that there were limits to his permissiveness.

  * * *

  On October 20, 1962, the Chinese attacked Ladakh in Kashmir and the North East Frontier Agency, gaining much territory claimed by India.

  November 1. Nehru has dismissed Krishna Menon as defense minister, holding him responsible for India’s unpreparedness for the Chinese invasion. Swami said of Menon, “He should have been lynched!” Swami is very chauvinistic about the crisis. He would like India to ally herself with the West.

  November 14. Just back from spending three days at Trabuco. While there, Swami said to me, “Just think, you might have been a swami by this time.” But then he added, as he has never done before: “But perhaps you are more useful like this.”

  November 22. Saw Gerald yesterday. We talked about morality. How nowadays people tend to think of religion as being only a set of ethical standards. I said I don’t go to Swami for ethics, but for spiritual reassurance: “Does God really exist? Can you promise me that he does?” I feel this so strongly that I can quite imagine doing something of which I know Swami disapproves—but which I believe to be right for me—and then going and telling him about it. That simply isn’t very important. Advice on how to act—my goodness, if you want that, you can get it from a best friend, a doctor, a bank manager.

  Swami has reverted to his caste psychology. After all, he does belong to the Kshatriya, the warrior caste. Not only are the Chinese to be run out of the whole area; he demands Tibet! I think he’ll be really disappointed if this truce leads to peace … Well, there you are, that’s the other side of the coin. I disagree with Swami’s attitude, utterly. I’m still a hard-line pacifist. If he were someone else, I’d say it was disgusting to see a minister of religion—and at his age—demanding bloodshed. But Swami is Swami, so it doesn’t matter. It’s not what our relationship is all about.

  * * *

  Charles Laughton was at the Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, dying of cancer. One of my visits to him was on November 29:

  He was sleepy and in pain but quite lucid. He said, “The preoccupation is with death, isn’t it?” What he really wanted to ask, though he didn’t put it directly, was whether or not I approved of his having seen a priest. I told him I certainly did. He said he would like to see another priest, a better one, but he didn’t make it clear in what way better. I tried to tell him tactfully that it didn’t really matter if he got to see another priest or not. He should speak to God, ask for help. Because God is there. “I know,” Charles said.

  He kept dozing off and I was holding his hand and praying to Ramakrishna to help Charles through his suffering and dying. I even said what I have never said before, “Do it for Brahmananda’s sake, for Vivekananda’s sake, for Prabhavananda’s sake,” and this was “put into my mouth,” it seemed.

  All mixed up with the praying, which moved me and caused me to shed tears, were the caperings of the ego, whispering, “Look, look, look at me. I’m praying for Charles Laughton!” And then the ego said, “How wonderful if he would die, quite peacefully, right now at this moment!”

  It is most important not to make these confessions about the ego as though they were horrifying. They are not—and it is mere vanity to pretend that the ego doesn’t come along with you every step of the way; it is there like your sinus, and its intrusions are no more shocking than sneezing.

  The really important question is: Why should I pray for Charles? Shouldn’t I let him do it? Wasn’t I like an agent, trying to muscle in on a deal?

  December 8. Swami, when asked about prayer, said that it is good both for you and for the person you pray for; and he added: “You see, when you are speaking to God like that, there are not two people, there is only one.” He also said that all you needed was faith that the prayer would be answered. You didn’t have to be a saint. If you had faith, then it would be answered. He said this with that absolute compelling confidence of his.

  December 18. Don’s initiation day. It imposed the usual states of aversion and boredom on him; the long, boring puja first, the devout congregation, the reek of Sunday religion. The initiation of Don and of several other devotees took place immediately after the puja. He didn’t stop for the end of the homa fire, or for lunch. And now—as I did, all those years ago—he has forgotten his mantram and must go back and check it with Swami!

  Never mind. The deed is done, and of his own free will. That’s all that matters for the time being—maybe for years to come. It will catch up with him.

  December 26. We went to Swami’s birthday party and Swami wrote Don’s mantram down for him. Don hates to destroy the paper it was written on, but Swami told him to.

  Swami looked absolutely radiant. He told us that his best birthday present had been “a visit from Maharaj.” He had woken at five this morning, gone to the bathroom, got back into bed, and had then had a (seemingly) long visitation dream of Maharaj, sometime before seven o’clock. He couldn’t say if it had taken place here or in India. He had been dressing Maharaj. The wearing cloth was crumpled. He was impressed by the beauty of Maharaj’s skin; it was golden and shining.

  I never knew before that Swami quite often suffers from feelings of sickness, after initiating people. “But I didn’t feel anything bad that day,” he told us, referring to Don’s initiation day. “They must have been all good people.”

  January 3, 1963. The nuns at Montecito have been getting threatening phone calls: “You bitch. Tell your Swami to get out of this country in twenty-four hours, or we’ll burn the temple!” The nuns have called in the police, who take the matter quite seriously and have even been patrolling the area by plane. Swami, telling this story, said, “You beech.”

  January 29. The Brahmananda puja two days ago appears to have been an extraordinary occasion. Prema says that Swami seemed to be filled with power: “He kept blessing people and you felt he could really do it!”

  February 1. Swami has a new project which excites him: to get some young swamis from India, train them at Trabuco, and then send them as assistants to the various American centers. I realize that he doesn’t want to produce American swamis to head American centers. He thinks that American congregations wouldn’t take them seriously. He does believe, however, that American swamis could do valuable work in India.

  February 20. Swami retold the story of how he met Brahmananda and of the various stages of his involvement with him. This included one episode which, he says, he has never told anybody else. In the days before he became a monk and was still a student in his late teens, he once went to see Brahmananda at someone’s house. (Balaram’s?) When he arrived, he suddenly felt a strong desire to go over and sit on Brahmananda’s lap. This made him ashamed, so he ran out of the room without even speaking to Brahmananda.

  February 28. Last night, Swami warned us strongly against making japam while you are feeling resentment against anyone. He even thinks it could harm that person, after the manner of black magic.

  March 6. Somebody gave Swami Montgomery Hyde’s The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde. Swami commented, afte
r reading it, “Poor man!” And to Prema, he said, “All lust is the same.”

  (I was surprised that anyone would have given Swami such a book. But Swami’s reading had certainly become increasingly liberal in scope as he grew older. His early period—during which he regarded all novels as “a trash”—had come to an end (or so I seem to remember) when someone persuaded him to try The Brothers Karamazov. Swami loved it, particularly the part about Father Zosima, and thereafter began to read all kinds of novels indiscriminately, hoping for another such experience. “The trouble is, Swami,” I told him, “you started off with the best one.”)

  June 2–5. Some notes made while staying at Trabuco:

  Light rain falling. The noisy frogs in the lily pond in front of Swamiji’s statue. The dog got skunk secretion all over him and lay outside the shrine and you could smell him even when you were inside it.

  Watching Swami huddled in his chadar before the shrine, with the bald patch at the back of his head, I thought: He’s been doing this all his life. He isn’t kidding.

  Swami said that he had “the intense thought that I am the Self in all beings, so how can one harm anyone? It’s a wonderful life, if you can feel like that … I say, Oh Lord, don’t test me!” (Swami later explained that he meant he didn’t want to suffer.)

  Pope John XXIII—whom Swami has always greatly admired—has just died, after terrible sufferings. Swami said that this was perhaps because it was his last life; bad karmas are sometimes burnt up by suffering.

  Swami told me: “Pray for devotion and knowledge. Say Not I but Thou.” But he added that it was no use praying that God’s will be done, because God’s will will be done, anyway.