A Disciple's Journal: In the Company of Swami Ashokananda

by Sister Gargi

  I remember speeding to the main San Francisco post office with the latest installment ready to mail. Swami sent Miriam Kennedy, who was extremely efficient, with me to negotiate with the postal clerk and to register the manila envelope while I stood by, fuming. Could I not do this myself? It was a lesson in patience and humility. Miriam and I mailed each chapter twice—on different days, as Swami recommended, in case the first mailing went astray. Then page proofs of earlier chapters would arrive from India. And so it went, until the book was published.

  Swami had put his heart into this book about his hero, Swami Vivekananda, from its very start to its completion. He was also editing me, and after a time I learned to write at will, whether I felt like it or not—I became a “hack writer.” “Be prayerful when you write,” Swami had said at the beginning; so gradually, over the next three years, I turned my resistance into prayer and finished the first book in early 1957.

  That summer of 1955, Miriam King, who had secretly fled from the convent, was discovered in Hollywood. Swami insisted that she come to Lake Tahoe by bus to talk with him. She arrived on September 10. Miriam later told me that Swami said to her, “You could not have hurt me more if you had thrown a bucket of hot tar in my face.” For the rest of the summer he gave her his full attention (except for reading Swamiji’s letters) in an effort to win her back. He succeeded—temporarily.

  That was a shattering summer for me. Without Swami’s attention, I was an infant abandoned. I knew better, but knowing and feeling were two very different things and could by no means be brought in accord with one another. I hid my shameful heartbreak from Swami with apparent success, but there was no cure for it. I hid it also from Miriam; she and I got along very well, laughed together, liked each other. Back in San Francisco, Swami’s attention was still riveted upon her; nevertheless, in a year or so she left for good without a word. She just left. Swami was, of course, pierced through.

  In the fall of 1955 I developed a severe and, for a time, undiagnosed case of hyperthyroidism. My eyes burned and my pulse rate was habitually well over ninety. Because I was ill, Swami began to take me on drives through Golden Gate Park with Ediben at the wheel and me in the back seat. These afternoon outings took time away from Swami’s rest, which he badly needed, but he would not listen to that side of it—not from anyone.

  November 14, 1955

  As Swami, Ediben, and I drove through the park, Swami gave me much needed words of encouragement.

  Swami: Whenever one tries to work for Swami Vivekananda there are always obstructions. Don’t think that Swamiji can’t get hundreds of people to work for him. It is our great privilege to be allowed to work for him and for Sri Ramakrishna.

  The book [New Discoveries] will help many people. Do you think that the world will like that? No—obstructions are put in the way of every good work. That is a fact. Push on! I am afraid you will not finish.

  November 15, 1955

  Swami went to the Olema retreat. Before going, he took Ediben, Jo, Anna Webster, and me to see the new temple (then in the final stages of construction) to decide about grills over the air vents in the auditorium.

  Ediben (to me): Once you have felt jealousy in connection with your guru and conquer it, you will be rid of it forever.

  Me: I conquer it only because Swami is so good to me.

  Ediben: But of course he helps you—that is what the guru does.

  November 26, 1955

  Almost every day Swami, Ediben, and I drive around and around through Golden Gate Park. How beautiful the trees are—every shade of green and every shape and height, and now in the autumn, yellow and red, too.

  Invariably we stop at the Japanese Tea Garden. I get out, and Swami says: “Buy two bags of fortune cookies, three bags of sesame cookies, four bags of melon candy.” He gives me the money—a crisp five-dollar bill. I ask for change in clean, crisp one-dollar bills. The Japanese girl looks at me as though I were mad. Then we drive on. Swami opens a bag of fortune cookies and breaks one in half, giving half to Ediben, half to me. Then he eats one himself. The first time he did this, he read out the fortune: “‘Your dearest wish will come true.’ That is for you, Marie Louise,” he said. “Before I opened it, I said to myself that whatever it would be would apply to you.”

  We ate all the cookies and candy, Swami giving one to me and one to Ediben for each one he ate. It couldn’t have been worse for him with his diabetes, but as Ediben said, Swami was a law unto himself.

  For Thanksgiving I went to my family’s country home at Los Gatos. I wanted to see and smell the country, yet I dreaded to go because of the guests that would be there.

  I came home a day later on Friday. As Ediben drove us through the Presidio, I told Swami about how upset I had become in Los Gatos. He said, “You were well served. I know you should not go to Los Gatos, but you people are all smarter than I am. Oh, yes! You cannot have spirituality and the world both. There is just no compromise between the two. Sri Ramakrishna said, ‘If you don’t want to eat fish, why go to the fish market?’”

  November 29, 1955

  Swami told me as I sat in his office, “No Christmas at home—you can spend Christmas here. Your family is here. Have Christmas with your new family, not your old family.” There was no argument about it. I sat still and twisted my hands in my lap. I told him about a guest at the Ranch who had had a dream of Sri Ramakrishna when he was four or five years old. I asked Swami if it could have been true. He said, “Does he show any signs of renunciation? If it was Sri Ramakrishna, he would now be inclined towards renunciation.”

  I started to tell him about the man, but Swami suddenly got very severe. “Think of all men as rotting corpses. Of course, you shouldn’t act towards anyone that way, but take that attitude. Do you think maya [cosmic delusion] will let you go so easily? No! Do you think the power that has created and sustained this whole universe will let you go without a struggle? All men to you are corpses—rotting corpses!”

  Monday on our drive he asked me where I had had lunch. I had to admit that I had eaten in a restaurant on Lombard Street.

  Swami: Do you think you can eat with anyone and everyone and not be affected? It is a wonder you people have any devotion at all. You think it does not matter where you eat, but it matters a great deal. People are animals when they eat. Do you think that vibration won’t touch you? It will. That is why they read during meals in monasteries or try to think of God with every bite.

  November 30, 1955

  Following the Wednesday evening lecture, many devotees were standing in Swami’s office and in the hall just outside his door.

  Swami: You should not bow your head to anyone but God. Bow your head to God, not out of fear but because of a recognition of what He is. One feels like that. There are moods when one wants to bury oneself where His foot has fallen.

  December 1, 1955

  I went to the public library to look up the memoirs of Thomas Wentworth Higginson [a follower of transcendentalism who had befriended Swami Vivekananda] to see if he had mentioned Swamiji. He hadn’t. Swami said, “They [the worldly people who met Swamiji] go right back to worldliness.”

  My doctor found that I hadn’t improved. He said he would recommend surgery on my thyroid gland, but that I should get the opinion of a specialist first.

  Last Tuesday, I rode in the back seat as Ediben drove Swami to I. Magnin to look at the store’s pink marble floor. (Swami was looking at floors everywhere for the new temple.) From there, we went to the Golden Poppy on Polk Street. Swami gave me two crisp five-dollar bills and I bought candy for Ediben and myself. As we drove on to the Marina, Ediben reminded Swami that it was Miriam Kennedy’s birthday.

  “I am very glad that I didn’t scold her this morning,” Swami said.

  “Yes,” said Ediben. “You were very gentle with her. I thought you must know it was her birthday.”

  “No,” Swami said, “I didn’t know. It just
happened that I didn’t scold her. I am awfully glad.”

  We went back to the Golden Poppy to buy birthday candy for Miriam. Ediben got out to get it; she knows better than I what Miriam likes.

  As soon as she was out of sight, Swami turned to me and, with the mischievous look of a little boy, said, “Come on, Marie Louise.” He pointed. There was a nut store! We got out and looked in the window; but the nuts didn’t look very good nor did the place look very clean, so he didn’t buy anything. We got back in the car.

  December 2, 1955

  Again in search of floor tile for the new temple, Swami went with Jo to Old St. Mary’s on Grant Avenue to look at the floor there. Afterward he said, “I strongly felt the vivid presence of Sri Ramakrishna and Holy Mother and the Madonna at St. Mary’s.”

  Jo told me that he knelt down and made the sign of the cross for the sake of the people who were looking at him.

  Disciple: How could they be there where Christ and the Madonna are worshiped?

  Swami: I can’t draw you a diagram of it; it can’t be described. But there were the three, the three in one. They are they! Once a Hindu Christian came to Dakshineswar during Sri Ramakrishna’s lifetime. He recognized Christ in Sri Ramakrishna. He told everyone: “You do not know what you have here!”

  December 3, 1955

  Today Swami and Ediben went to visit a devotee in St. Francis Hospital while I waited in the car. “She will not die,” Swami said of the devotee. [Later she came so close to death that everyone, including her doctors, gave her up, but she did not die.] Then we drove to the Marina. There was a gray-silver sheen on the water. I saw a strange sea creature rear its black head, swim along, and then go under again. I pointed this out. It was not a porpoise or a shark—a mystery! I mentioned the dugong, the sea elephant, Eugenie, now at the aquarium.

  Swami: Where do you get so much knowledge?

  Me: You told me to read Time.

  Swami: Work on Swamiji’s book. That is enough knowledge. Concentrate on that. Worship takes great concentration. Then God is pleased. What you are doing is worship. Do it with concentration. Only then will it be good.

  (We returned to the Temple. Swami seemed unbearably tired as he went upstairs.)

  December 5, 1955

  I was given all sorts of tests at Stanford Hospital for the activity of the thyroid. Later, Swami, Ediben, and I drove through Golden Gate Park in rain that was silvery.

  Back at the Temple I learned that Jo (and no doubt others) thinks that I am putting on being sick so that I will get attention from Swami. Oh God! One thinks one has friends and then finds that they know nothing at all of what one is like, nor have they any real fondness. The knife comes out in a moment. The tongue is all too ready to say the mean thing, and the heart is all too ready to believe it.

  I told Ediben this had hurt me through and through to the backbone, and I cried on her shoulder (figuratively). She said, “That is something you have to learn—that you have no real friends, and you have to learn to live with it,” meaning, I think, that few friends understand what one is made of.

  Well, who cares? This is more Jo’s problem than mine. Let her fret over it. She said sanctimoniously that it was not fair to Swami for me to go on pretending to be sick.

  “It is just that little thing—jealousy,” Ediben explained. Of course. And that little thing twists the world all out of shape. Swami told me the mind is not to be trusted, that I must watch and watch and watch.

  Let me never say that someone is malingering to get attention from Swami! How could anyone fool Swami in the first place?

  But Jo did not mean any of this. It was momentary.

  December 6, 1955

  Me: Some people think that I am putting this on.

  Swami: Who thinks that?

  Me: Well, I heard that Jo said that, and others.

  Swami: Never believe anything you hear secondhand. Only believe it if you hear it directly. People get things wrong.

  Me: Yes, that is probably true. What upsets me is that I think people understand me and know me, but they don’t at all.

  Swami: Marie Louise, you expect people to be Godlike, 100 percent perfect. They are not. Some may be good but they have many faults also. Recognize that. Otherwise, life will be unbearable. Don’t let it bother you. Face Jo with it.

  I have the same thing said about me. Some swamis think that I’m not sick at all, just putting it on. In India, when I had an ulcer, I heard that someone had said that it was just in my mind. I faced him with it: “Do you think all these x-rays are just in my mind?” He was stopped. Face Jo with it. Ask her if she thinks what all the doctors say—your rapid pulse and all that—is not real. People are not good, but what can you do about it? The inside is God, but not the outside.

  Me: Besides, it is only temporary.

  Swami: Yes, it is just temporary. There are also some good people.

  Me: God is the only real thing.

  Swami: Yes.

  December 9, 1955

  The doctors decided that instead of surgery on the thyroid, I am to drink radioactive iodine, which will destroy the overactive gland in four to six weeks.

  Swami: Work on Swamiji. That is like meditation. It will lift your mind. Your physical condition lowers your mind; idleness, unfortunately, doesn’t lift it—it only lowers it further. You must work regularly, live regularly, with rhythm. The mind sags down otherwise.

  Me: Has my mind sagged down far?

  Swami: No, not very far. But work on Swamiji’s book. That will lift your mind so that it will stay up permanently.

  Swami gave me many questions to ask the doctor. I forgot to ask the most important ones, the very ones Swami invariably questioned me about when I returned. He became disgusted.

  December 12, 1955

  After looking at the new temple where a leak had been discovered, Swami said to Ediben while driving one day, “I wonder, is it more blessed to have everything fall into one’s hands without an effort or to have to work and struggle for everything one wants to do? It has been a struggle for every inch of the new temple, and now it is leaking.”

  Ediben told Swami that it was more blessed to struggle, for that laid strong foundations, and anyhow she liked it that way because of her pioneer blood. Swami turned to me in the back seat and asked me which way I liked it. I said I liked the struggle too but added, “I’m sorry you have to have so much trouble.” He answered, “Never mind me; that is neither here nor there.”

  Another time Swami said, “I hope I can stay here until everything is finished. I would hate to go, leaving everything unfinished, in a mess, a great burden of debt. People will say, ‘What a rogue he was! No sense of responsibility.’ When a man does big things and finishes them, he is well thought of; but if he does not finish them, he is considered worthless. Marie Louise, listening back there, will think that I am thinking only of myself and not of the students.” I said I was thinking no such thing.

  Jo brought me my dinner Saturday night. I had “faced her” with her remark.

  December 13, 1955

  Swami: Everything must be very realistic in spiritual life. Of course, it is a higher kind of realism, but realistic it must be.

  That afternoon

  We drove along the ocean and through Golden Gate Park. When we got back to the Temple, Swami found that he had lost his beads (rosary), which, evidently, he always carries in his pocket wherever he goes. He went upstairs to look for them, thinking he had not taken them; then he came down again. He and Ediben looked in the car, but they were not there. After he had gone upstairs again, I left with Ediben and saw Swami’s beads lying in the gutter, just where the back wheel of Ediben’s car would have run over them. They were the beads that Swami Shivananda [a direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna] had given him. I handed them to Ediben and she went back into the Temple to phone Swami.

  “Tell Marie Louise man
y thanks!” he said, but he was sorry that they had been in the street. Moreover (although Swami did not say this), both Ediben and I, who had been eating cookies and candy, had touched them. But, as Ediben said, “Ganges water will fix that.” Anyhow, at least the car didn’t run over them. How nice to have found Swami’s beads for him!

  December 1955

  Swami: Be strong! Be strong mentally and physically. Look at Swamiji’s pictures [referring to photographs he had just received from Almora—Swamiji with shaven head and a background of trees]. If you want to work for Swamiji, if you want to follow in his footsteps, you must be strong like that.

  Me (smiling foolishly): I try.

  Swami: Yes, you do very well; but you must do better.

  7

  BALANCING ON A RAIL

  Before I discovered Vedanta and came to know Swami Ashokananda and other swamis of the Ramakrishna Order, I had thirstily read books by authors such as Gerald Heard and John Burton and, even earlier, P.D. Ouspensky and G.I. Gurdjieff. I knew about the concepts of renunciation, selflessness, recollection, and so on. I knew people who helped their less fortunate fellow human beings, who lived frugally so that they could give more to others, and who gave thought to God. I knew many genuinely good people. If they did not exist, we humans would have long since gone back to the trees.

  While I had heard and read about selflessness, purity, and goodness, and while I thought I knew people who exemplified those golden qualities, actually I had not the faintest idea of the true meaning of a life lived for others, without any allowance made for oneself. I do not mean a life of martyrdom or penance but one of overflowing love, where a thought of self, however small, is a desecration—is, in fact, impossible.