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

by Sister Gargi

  That night

  We celebrated Anna Webster’s seventieth birthday with ice cream and cake in the back office.

  Swami (at the close of the evening): Many, many happy returns!

  Anna: Oh, not too many, please.

  Swami (smiling): If you are happy, what difference does it make how many? You people think so strangely. You do not know what will happen to you after death, but you assume it will be better than what you have. You know what you have here, and yet you want to exchange it for the unknown.

  Anna: Swami, from all you have said, I thought I didn’t have to have any fear of death at all.

  Swami: You don’t know what will happen.

  Me: At least death will be a rest.

  Swami: Who told you that?

  Me: You did—in your lecture this morning.

  Swami: You are certainly a fool! Do you think in a public lecture I would tell about the bad side of it? There are hells that souls go to also. The Buddhists have pictured hells that make the Christian hells seem like child’s play.

  Me: People go also to those seven worlds below?

  Swami: Souls, not people. Well, Sri Ramakrishna promised he would appear to his devotees at the time of their death.

  Devotee: What is the definition of a devotee?

  Swami: When the great masters say something, no one asks them exactly what they mean. After they are gone, people begin wondering.

  Devotee: The commentaries that will be written!

  Anna (hotly): If one knows what it means to love, one knows what it means to be a devotee.

  Swami: Why bother about all these hazy statements? Just do your best. What have you achieved?

  Anna: I haven’t achieved anything.

  Swami: Do your best. Keep on.

  When Swami was on his way upstairs, he said regretfully, “I am afraid that I upset Mrs. Webster by that talk about death.”

  Me: She recovered.

  Swami (shaking his head): No, she felt dampened.

  November 1958

  Swami was reading the newspaper in his office.

  Swami: Someone suddenly dies. It makes me remember that someday my name will be in the paper as having died. The very thought of my death fills me with ecstasy.

  Me: It doesn’t fill me with ecstasy.

  Swami: Think of going on and on. It is unbearable.

  Me: Yes, for you it is unbearable. But it is unbearable for me to think of going on and on without you here.

  Swami: You will find something better within. You won’t even want to look at me.

  Me: If I really saw you now, I guess it wouldn’t matter if you were in your body or not.

  Swami: See Sri Ramakrishna.

  Me: If I really saw you, I would see Sri Ramakrishna.

  Swami: See him.

  November 13, 1958

  I have been expressing my opinion lately too vociferously. It sounds egotistical. No doubt, it is egotistical. The other night Mara mentioned that Swami Shantaswarupananda [an assistant swami] used the expression “clumsy-minded.” She said she didn’t like it. I said to her, “Oh, I like it!” Swami heard and pounced up me fiercely. “Who gives a whale of a bean whether you like it or not?”

  November 16, 1958

  Swami was speaking to a few devotees about the philosophy of Ramanuja [the great South Indian saint who founded the school of Vedanta called qualified nondualism].

  Swami: Read these things! In three or four generations you will be a sect of idiots—“the swami did this; that swami flew through the air; the other swami did such and such”—there will be no similarity between you people and true Vedantists. Study philosophy, but it is good to have devotion; no matter what path you follow, you have to have devotion. Devotion is a movement in the heart, a cry of the heart. Otherwise, it is like trying to start a car without any gasoline, isn’t it?

  One can have devotion without thinking of oneself as a miserable sinner. Doesn’t the prince love his father, the king, more than a beggar can love him? Actually, the true devotee forgets himself in the love of God. He feels insignificant; he cannot think of himself at all. But ordinary devotees take the language of devotion literally—miserable sinner, and so on.

  November 20, 1958

  I went to the Temple about 1:15 p.m. Swami asked me to come into his office and sit down. He asked what I had been doing all morning. I said, “Writing in a diary that I keep off and on—a sort of journal about you.” He was delighted that I keep such a diary and said I should write in it every day.

  He was reading an Indian newspaper. I interrupted from time to time to ask about various small matters. Then he finished with his newspaper and looked at me, asking me to say anything that was on my mind. Generally, when he asks this, ready to talk to me, I have nothing to say. This time, I asked, “Is it because the mind is part of maya that the objective world seems to be reasonable?” Swami seemed to be pleased with this question. His eyes shone and his face was bright. I felt happy inside, glowing and excited.

  Swami: Reasonable or not, it is because of the dual aspects of maya—the mental or subjective aspect, and the world or objective aspect—that the mind finds the world chummy.

  Me: So, because the mind is itself maya, the outer world of maya seems to make sense?

  Swami: Yes.

  Me: But actually there is no rhyme or reason to the world of maya, as Swamiji said.

  Swami: That is right. From the point of view of the Absolute, one cannot say at all what the universe is like; it is different from what we think.

  Me: I shouldn’t think one would see the world at all from that point of view.

  Swami: One catches glimpses. When one comes down from the Absolute, one sees the world and sees that things happen without any reason. That is what is meant by the lila of God—the divine play—no meaning at all.

  Me: Then how can the study of philosophy lead anywhere?

  Swami: Through studying philosophy one becomes convinced of the unreality of the world. The mind looks deeper and deeper for the Real.

  November 1958

  After the Sunday lecture, Swami sat in his chair in the back office and talked to a roomful of devotees. In the course of the talk, he discovered that a book of instruction about the elaborate worship of Sri Ramakrishna was being sold in the Berkeley Temple. He scolded Mrs. Harvey, the secretary of the Berkeley Vedanta Society. “You people will form a cult. You go in for mystery mongering: ‘Ring, bing, rah, ping’ [imitating ritualistic worship]. Don’t do all that. It is enough to have devotion. Practice what Swamiji taught; that is a higher practice—the worship of God in man.”

  Someone asked if the worship of Sri Ramakrishna was not performed daily at Belur Math. Swami said, “What has that to do with you? Why should you know what is done at Belur? Besides, it is done correctly there, with great devotion. The Hindus understand those things. But you will be like the Christian missionaries in India if you try to introduce Indian customs in America—eat Hindu food, dress like Hindus, take Sanskrit names—you will become fifth-rate Hindus. What is there in that?”

  Later the crowd thinned out. “You had all better go now,” Swami had said many times, though he remained in his chair. Someone reminded him that it was nearly four o’clock and that he had had no rest or lunch. “Yes, in a moment,” he said. “I have to come down a little. Lecturing stirs me up. If I had learned the art of lecturing, it wouldn’t affect me.

  “One cannot have both. If one wants many people to come to Vedanta, one will have to make compromises in the religion. People want candy; if you give them quinine, they run away.”

  December 1, 1958

  Saturday night in the back office I kept saying rather stupid things, for which Swami scolded me. This is not unusual, but this time I felt hurt, crushed, my pride wounded. This may have been because of the presence of a certain very critical devo
tee (that is, because of my reaction to this particular devotee). In any case, I felt that my brain was indeed getting soft, as Swami said.

  So to recoup my forces, and also with some idea of standing aloof and on my dignity, I did not go to the back office after the Sunday lecture yesterday to meet Swami and the devotees, nor did I go last night. Swami phoned around nine-thirty to ask if I was coming or not. I said I was not. He asked if I was well. I said, yes, I was well, thank you. That was all.

  This morning I went to the Temple, still dignified. Swami was not downstairs, so I phoned him in regard to some work.

  Swami: Why didn’t you come yesterday? You did not come after the lecture or at night. Are you in a mood?

  Me (hesitating): No.

  Swami: Then what was the matter? Did my lecture make you moody?

  Me: Oh, no. It was a wonderful lecture. It made me unmoody.

  Swami: So then, there was a mood before the lecture?

  Me: Yes. Sort of, and I returned to it.

  Swami: Why? What was the mood about?

  Me: I feel I am so stupid that I shouldn’t come around.

  Swami: Well, be stupid, but come around. Don’t let yourself get in a mood. To be in a mood is egotism.

  Me: I know.

  Swami: One never knows what the mind will do when it gets moody. You will say, “Oh, I don’t like Vedanta anyhow.”

  Me: I would never say that. I would say, “I am not good enough for Vedanta.”

  Swami: No. Moodiness itself is egotism. So the egotistical mind would say, “Vedanta is no good.” Isn’t it?

  Me: Well, I guess so.

  Swami: Yes. That is it. Be very careful.

  December 2, 1958

  I drove Swami and Dorothy Peters to Mr. Shinn’s. He is now working on the statue of Swami Vivekananda. Dorothy goes along to photograph the statues and then she and Swami study the photographs at length. It is the same painstaking process that went on with the statues of Sri Ramakrishna and Holy Mother. By now, though, Mr. Shinn does not fight Swami every inch of the way.

  Back at the Temple, Swami talked to Dorothy for a minute or two in his office. I waited in the hall to say good-bye to him before he went upstairs. When he and Dorothy came out of his office, he said, “What are you doing out here?” I answered somberly and perhaps in a sepulchral voice, “I am waiting to say good-bye to you.” Swami looked genuinely startled. “My,” he said, “you sound so ominous.”

  Me: I mean good-bye for a few minutes or hours, not forever.

  Swami (to Dorothy and me): Florence Wenner did like that. She came one morning and said, “Good-bye, Swami.” I did not think anything of it. I said, “You are going home?” She said, “No. I am leaving. I am going to get a Ph.D. at Berkeley. After that I will come back.”

  Me: I didn’t know she had intended to come back.

  Swami: Oh, yes, but she was a poet and one never can believe poets. What they say is true only for the mood they happen to be in. Frivolous! In America women are supposed to have that right, aren’t they? They can say, “What I said was true then, but it is not true now. My mood has changed.” They are supposed to have that right?

  Me: Yes. It is a woman’s privilege to change her mind.

  Swami: Florence got the idea into her head that I had stopped the magazine because I wanted to make someone else editor. She had the impression that I thought she couldn’t write good English. The idea was firmly rooted; she wrote a great many sonnets about it and gave them to me, but I didn’t read them. If I had read them, I would have known what was on her mind. Now, whenever someone gives me a poem, I feel I have to read it.

  Me: She probably thought you had read them and didn’t respond properly.

  Swami: Yes, she probably thought that. (Swami sat down, looking tired.) Who knows what was the real reason behind it? Desires are like water—they will find a way. When one sees water dripping from a ceiling, the real leak is rarely directly above the drip but has come from a long way, deviously. Water always finds its own way; no one can say how it got where it did.

  December 3, 1958

  Swami: Once one has fallen from spiritual life, very seldom can one get back in that lifetime.

  Dorothy Peters: Why is that, Swami?

  Swami: It is like falling from the heights of a mountain. One is crushed by it and hasn’t the strength to climb back.

  There was once a monk who used to have very deep meditation. One day he got up to answer the call of nature, and he was in such a hurry to get back that he didn’t bother to clean himself. Because of that, he couldn’t concentrate well again. He said he saw a semicircle of little green people in front of him jumping up and down and clapping their hands in glee. It took him years to get back.

  Me: I don’t understand. (I did not understand why the monk couldn’t concentrate again, but Swami thought I meant about the little green people.)

  Swami: Don’t you think that there are many people who would be delighted if you would give up your religion? They would start inviting you to cocktail parties right away. You would not have to announce anything. They would know instinctively. Maya seeks any foothold. Just a small mood can be enough.

  Wild elephants used to enter a village in India and trample the crops. The villagers dug a deep pit and filled it with mud. One of the elephants fell in and struggled all night to get out, but he couldn’t get any foothold in the mud. The next morning, one of the villagers started teasing him by poking him with a stick. The elephant wrapped his trunk around the stick and pulled the man in, then stepped on his body to climb out, and went on to ravage the poor villagers’ crops—the man’s body had given him the foothold. That is maya; just the smallest thing can be enough to wreak havoc. In spiritual life one cannot afford to have moods.

  Swami (referring to me): She was in a mood the other day. She didn’t come here.

  Me: That is why he has told us these stories.

  Dorothy: Oh, not to entertain us?

  Swami (to me): You had better go now. Don’t you have shopping to do? You had better have your cap cleaned. (It had fallen in the dust in Sausalito.)

  December 4, 1958

  On the drive to Sausalito today, I realized that I had on my reading glasses and started fishing in my bag for the right ones.

  Swami (very cross): Why is it that all women have to get things out of their pocketbooks when they are driving? It is sloppy. If you need other glasses, why didn’t you put them on before you started? Sloppy! Dis-gust-ing! Driving with one hand and exploring a pocketbook with the other—it is just disgusting. (This was delivered with such vehemence that I could not remove the grin from my face.)

  Coming back from Sausalito, before crossing the bridge, Swami asked me if I had change for the toll ready or if I had to fish in my purse. I said proudly that I had it.

  Swami: My, Marie Louise, you are learning.

  Me (laughing): It is a touch-and-go business.

  Swami: Old habits never die. Like old soldiers. One thinks one has killed them, but they reassert themselves. Sister Nivedita [a fearless disciple of Swami Vivekananda] wrote that she taught the children in India to cross out their mistakes with a bold stroke. That is the way—not a feeble, indecisive line.

  That evening

  Returning home, I found a package from Mortimer Smith, which contained the enshrined portrait of Swami Vivekananda that Mr. Smith had promised to send me. I took it to the Temple. Swami did not come down to his office until nearly ten o’clock. I told him I had received a package in the mail. His eyes lit up as he realized what it must be. I had put it on a chair in his office. I got it and handed it to him unopened. I said I wanted him to open it. I helped with scissors while he carefully unwrapped it. Jo, Mara, Kathleen, and I looked on, excited. There was a great deal of excelsior and tissue paper, and then the wooden shrine and in it the portrait painted on porcelain from the photograph
—a wonderful likeness of Swamiji in meditation posture.

  Swami: Well now, that is something. Mr. Shinn should see this. It would open his eyes. You see, there are not the shadows that are in the photographs. Would you mind if I took it to show Mr. Shinn?

  Me: Of course not.

  Swami: But I shouldn’t leave it with him.

  Me: Oh, no! If you want to, of course (I added hurriedly)—whatever you want to do.

  Swami (admiring it): It would be too much of a risk. It shows the eyes very well and the cheeks. (He touched it to his head.)

  December 5, 1958

  I told Swami that I had taken a book to Nancy Jackman, who is recovering from an operation.

  Swami: Was she happy to see you?

  Me: I don’t know. She said she was happy.

  Swami: Why do you say that? Do you think she wasn’t really happy?

  Me: I don’t know. I guess she was.

  Swami: Don’t bother about how other people react to you. You do the right thing. Make a conscious effort not to think of what others are thinking about you. Remember.

  December 7, 1958

  Toward the end of the lecture this morning—“How to Find God”—Swami spoke movingly about true love of God, of how the soul longs for Him. For the first time since I have attended his lectures, Swami seemed so deeply moved by what he was saying that his voice sounded for a few minutes as though he was going to cry. Later, I mentioned it to him.

  Me: You seemed overcome by what you were saying.

  Swami: Where were you sitting?

  Me: In the back row.

  Swami (smiling): How could you notice all that from so far away?

  Me: It is not that far. The auditorium isn’t so big that the last row is far, far away.

  December 1958

  Swami: Divine grace, if it does not at once bring the vision of God, takes the form of great longing to see Him and great effort. It makes you strong. Grace goes with renunciation and effort.

  Swamiji wanted to create a new kind of man—one who would combine “the heroic virtues of the West with the calm virtues of the Hindus.” Be strong. Undertake difficult accomplishments. Don’t water down the teachings of Vedanta. Follow the teachings of monistic Vedanta and look the whole world in the eye.