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

by Sister Gargi

  The main point about work is that the students should grow spiritually. You can guide a student through the training in a gentle way or in a scolding way. You people have the misfortune of having an irritable swami. Now Swami Akhilananda is very gentle and patient. He never blames anyone for a mistake, just brushes it aside.

  Devotee: Can people learn that way?

  Swami: Yes, surely, gentleness has a great effect.

  Devotee: But can much work be done?

  Swami: Perhaps not. That may be a difficulty.

  February 13, 1959

  Swami talked about how one could, through building up habits, train one’s mind so it would be unaffected by bodily conditions: “Infinite patience is Eternity. When you become infinitely patient, you begin to taste Eternity. Outer circumstances do not faze you and the mind begins to unfold.”

  March 18, 1959

  At the end of the annual meeting of the Vedanta Society this evening, Swami said that the lack of enthusiasm about the new temple frightened him. He then proceeded to lash into everyone, saying that we were becoming just “religious”—expecting blessings but taking no responsibility—and that to launch the work of a Divine Incarnation was a profound responsibility. “Be lions! Take this responsibility and work even if for no reward. If you can do this, you will be lions.”

  Swami’s closing remarks as he scolded the members were recorded on tape and are given below with minimal editing.

  I am telling you all these things because when the new temple is open and innumerable problems arise before us, you will have to conquer them, and you will need courage. If you are frightened you will not do anything, and I have a kind of fear in my heart that you are all becoming complacent religious people. You go in for all kinds of superstitions—the grace of God and things like that. But you never go in for the central teaching of Swami Vivekananda and of Vedanta—that the Atman is the All, and in It reposes infinite power and energy and resourcefulness. If you want to do the Lord’s work and if you want to behave like human beings, as Vedanta looks upon a human being, then you have to call out the power that is within you and stand upon the ground of that power. Are you willing to do that, or do you want just a comfortable religion now?

  This is the thing that has really impressed me this evening: all of you have quieted down a little. In this crucial year, instead of seeing great enthusiasm bubbling up in your hearts, which would make you ask a thousand questions, I see that you are becoming very peaceful Vedantins. That is a disappointing thing. Tall talk and piousness have no place in Vedanta. You have to think big things, to see large visions, and to call out powers to support those visions and make them real in your life. That is what I want to impress upon your mind. And if you do not come up to this, then all these new temples and other things that are being done are a big joke—and sometimes I am afraid that big joke will be played upon us to the hilt.

  This was met by a stunned silence.

  Later, in the back office, I said, “That was a rousing talk you gave.” “It was not a talk—I meant it,” Swami replied, “and I will see to it that something is done.”

  March 20, 1959

  Swami expressed regret today over what he had said at the annual meeting.

  Swami: I am afraid I made everyone feel bad and down-hearted. They meet together like that only once a year. It should be joyous.

  Me: I think you stirred people up. And if what you said—that enthusiasm has fallen off—is true, then it was good to stir it up.

  Swami: Yes, I think it has fallen off. The attendance at Sunday lectures has dropped. It is not just that fewer strangers come; the members don’t come.

  March 22, 1959

  Sally Martin suddenly returned after a harrowing escape from a primitive tribe in the Philippines, the headman of which—an all-powerful ruler—had decided to make her his eleventh wife. Sally’s anthropological studies were abruptly broken off at this point. (This, at any rate, is the story she told.)

  March 24, 1959

  Swami spoke of many things but mainly about the Durga Puja that will take place at the dedication of the new temple—an elaborate worship requiring many ingredients, such as unhusked rice and wheat, oats, various seeds, blades of Bermuda grass (which will be grown for the purpose), and water from many different sources—ocean, river, well, lake, rain, dew, and so on.

  When the Berkeley Temple had been dedicated in 1939, the worship was for members only. “We were afraid of the neighbors,” Swami said. “There was no telling what they might do if they thought something strange was going on. They might have called the police. During the lives of the direct disciples, the worship of Sri Ramakrishna was extremely simple. He was offered things as though he were there. The next genera-tion started making it extremely elaborate. That is how it goes.”

  That evening

  Kathleen objected to the rush and inconvenience that she anticipated in going every night for arati [evening vespers] at the new temple, which Swami said we must attend after the temple is opened.

  Swami (to Kathleen, after a severe tongue-lashing): You will grow more and more round; you will ease your fat body into a soft chair and just flap your fins. That is what you have planned for yourself.

  March 25, 1959

  Swami was reading the newspaper in the back office while Kathleen, Jeanette, and I were talking nonsense. Suddenly Swami looked up from his paper.

  Swami (half joking, to me): What profound truths are you uttering?

  Me (shamelessly): I asked Kathleen if Charlotte had given a big dinner party for Mara and her nephew or just—

  Swami (becoming serious): That is what I thought, something like that. I consider it an insult to me that you people sit here in my presence and talk rubbish. I will banish you from here. You can go to your own homes and do your gossiping there.

  I had kept saying, “Yes, yes,” for the dreadfulness of taking such slop in the Temple in Swami’s presence seemed appalling. He went back to reading his newspaper and we sat silent and ashamed. Our evenings with him in the back office are numbered—only seven months more before the move to the new temple.

  I really didn’t know everything that was on Swami Ashokananda’s mind in the early spring of 1959, but the inauguration of the new temple, scheduled for October, required attention to endless details. Needless to say, the move from the familiar and beloved Old Temple would be an upheaval for the Vedanta community in San Francisco, and the responsibility for the New Temple’s success rested entirely on Swami’s shoulders.

  March 27, 1959

  Swami told me that lately he can no longer sleep at night because of the worries and tensions of the day. It takes him hours to relax. If he sleeps it is only fitful, for some worry will awaken him. Then he gets up, I think, at four o’clock to meditate (although he only hinted at this).

  Swami: It is only after the sun comes up that I get a real sleep. That is my best sleep, between about five and nine.

  What kind of a Swami am I? Where can you see spirituality in me? I should be meditative, serene. I should just sit and talk about God to people, give people God realization at a touch. People should be able to come here and find peace and joy. As it is, I just think about buildings, statues, and going here and there.

  Me: I wish you didn’t have to do all that—wrestling with Mr. Shinn, for instance; that is terrible.

  Swami: No, no, it is not that I shouldn’t have to do it. I like to do it; it is my nature to be active. But where is there any spirituality in it?

  Me: As I see it, it is a great sacrifice. Swami Vivekananda said that work is as good as meditation. The way you work, one can see that it is true. It is what you preach from the platform, and you prove it by your life.

  Swami: None of the devotees would believe you if you said that. No swamis would believe you.

  Me: Perhaps the swamis wouldn’t, but the devotees would.

  Swami:
That is what you say.

  Me: Swami, I think you could give anyone God-consciousness with a touch, if you wanted to. The trouble is no one is worthy. They would explode.

  Swami (looking at me incredulously): You have written a book about Swamiji. Why is it you have no sense of proportion?

  Me: I think I have a very good sense of proportion. Anyhow, I am fishing.

  Swami: You are fishing in a dry riverbed.

  March 30, 1959

  Swami stayed in Mr. Shinn’s studio for well over an hour this morning while I took a walk and read in the car. Driving back, I asked him if the statue of Swamiji was improving.

  Swami: No, not at all. There are fundamental mistakes that have to be corrected or it will never come to life. The face is too small. Actually Swamiji’s face was larger than Holy Mother’s and also larger than Sri Ramakrishna’s, but in the statue it looks smaller than both. Something is fundamentally wrong, but I can’t tell Mr. Shinn that outright. I just have to ask him to change it little by little or he would resist. He has lost his initiative. He knows that whatever he does on his own we won’t like, so he waits to be told. In a sense that is good, but it has its bad side. And then he is, of course, tired. He has worked on these figures for so long he has grown stale.

  That evening

  Swami had been working in the front room with Dorothy Peters on the photographs of Swamiji’s statue, so he did not come into the back office to talk to us until after 11 p.m. Jo, Mara, and I were there. He asked what I had eaten for dinner. Then I suddenly remembered that I had started to cook some lentils and had left them on the stove with the gas burning.

  Swami: Go home now and turn it off. Go right now!

  Me: I think it will be all right. The flame was very low.

  Jo: Lentils burn easily.

  Swami: It will explode. Do you want a fire?

  Me: No, but I don’t want to go home now.

  Swami (with a stern glare that meant “GO and do as you are told”): You sound like Sally Martin.

  Me (in a temper): Oh, all right! Good-bye, Swami. (With control, I did not slam the front door.)

  I walked as fast as possible to my apartment. The place smelled strongly of lentils. I rushed into the kitchen and turned off the gas. Nothing was burning yet. I walked rapidly back to the Temple. As I turned onto Webster Street, I saw Jo and Mara leave. Swami waited on the corner, watching them get into Jo’s car.

  I rushed up to him. Swami greeted me with “Ah! I thought so,” meaning, I think, that he knew I would come back. He smiled very sweetly. “You know,” he said, “fire is a very strange thing. One cannot trust it. One never knows what it will do.” Jo and Mara drove off and Swami kept talking to me as I followed him back into the Temple. It was very late so I said, “I think I had better go home, Swami,” but he asked me to sit down for a minute in his office. Then he told me the story of how a young monk in San Francisco, many years ago, had left an iron burning on the third floor of the Temple. The monk went to hear his lecture and afterward drove with Swami through Golden Gate Park. When they got home, they found that the iron had burned cleanly through the ironing board and through the floor into the space between floors, where it was burning the beams. The monk fished it out and poured water on the smoldering beams. “At any moment the Temple could have burst into flames!” Swami concluded. “It was just the grace of God that it didn’t.”

  His point was taken. I said that I probably shouldn’t try to cook things that take a long time because I invariably forget them. I left and he went outside with me and watched me walk all the way up the street. At the corner I turned and saw him still standing there.

  March 31, 1959

  Around one-thirty I was sitting in Swami’s office. Ediben came in to tell Swami that a woman had come to the front door wanting to know if she could “rent” a book. The subject arose of the need for a reading room. Ediben, who had been a Christian Scientist before she came to Vedanta, contended that we must have a reading room in the new temple in order to draw young people. The whole matter infuriated Swami.

  Swami: Your ideas are fantastic. You don’t think anything through. Where to have it?

  Ediben: Why, on the landing overlooking the garden. And on nice days people could sit on the balcony off the landing. We could put an awning up.

  Swami (becoming more and more annoyed): In the first place, people would not be drawn by a reading room. Many people go to the Christian Science reading rooms because they think Christian Science will help them materially. They don’t want what we have to offer—dry intellectualism and renunciation. Second, we don’t want “young people.” Young people are volatile. There is no sense wasting time on them. What we need are new recruits who have a few more years of work in them.

  Ediben: Well, a reading room will draw new recruits.

  Swami: Get the money. We can’t have a reading room in the new temple where the offices will be. I won’t have the place clut-tered up.

  Ediben (pausing in the doorway): Then let us have no more talk about young people being attracted to the Hollywood center!

  Swami (mildly, to my surprise): I never said anything like that.

  Ediben (in exasperation): Oh, Swami . . .

  I enjoyed all this immensely. I took Swami’s side throughout, for it seemed absurd to think that a reading room would draw people. Later, Ediben said she would cut my throat.

  Ediben: You haven’t thought it out.

  Me: I haven’t thought about it at all, but what Swami said seemed right.

  Ediben: He hasn’t thought about it either. I am thinking of when he won’t be with us any more. Then how will people be drawn to the new temple? Certainly the other swamis won’t be able to draw anyone.

  Me: Neither will a reading room.

  Ediben (insisting): It will!

  Me: Then we can build a separate one next door.

  Ediben: What with?

  (Swami had been out of the room during this exchange. Now he was ready for me to drive him to Sausalito. Before we left, behind his back, I stuck my tongue out at Ediben, and she at me.)

  That night

  Kathleen, Mara, Jeanette, Dorothy Madison, Dorothy Peters, and Luke (Mary Lou Williams) were in the library. I came in rather late. Swami was reading the newspaper and there was silence. Kathleen was trying to decide whether or not to go home. “Why go?” I asked her quietly. “Swami did not greet me with much warmth,” she said, aggrieved. But she stayed and it was fortunate, for finally Swami talked for a long time.

  Dorothy Madison, who always had questions that start a conversation, asked why the devotees who had talked to M [Mahendranath Gupta, the author of The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna] did not get a description of Sri Ramakrishna from him.

  Swami: Why should he tell them? He would probably say, “Meditate and you will see for yourself.”

  Dorothy: That seems lazy.

  Kathleen: Lazy?

  Dorothy: I mean lazy of M not to bother to describe Sri Ramakrishna.

  Swami: Why should he? Great souls don’t like to talk about those things. Most devotees aren’t ready to hear about them; they just like to ask questions. Do you think those great souls [like M] are at the beck and call of everyone who asks them questions? They want to dwell in God; they don’t want to talk.

  Dorothy: Swami, you said you had a friend—I don’t know if it was really a friend or yourself—who said that after he had seen God, he had a tremendous urge to share the experience with everyone.

  Swami: Yes, some people do feel that way, but it does not necessarily follow. There is the idea that God Himself will do everything to enlighten souls. He created this world and He has not just left His creation to fend for itself. He Himself will bring souls to Him when they are ready.

  Mara: Isn’t that the same as just waiting for nature to take its course?

  Swami: No, it is not the same
; it comes directly from God.

  Then the question came up as to how Holy Mother could see other forms of the Divine Mother, if she herself was the Divine Mother.

  Swami: There is no end to that world [of divine forms]. One can get lost in it as in a maze. Always lean toward the Impersonal.

  Dorothy Madison: If one’s Ishta is Sri Ramakrishna, can one love Swamiji and Holy Mother also? That is, can one love all three equally?

  Swami: No, love them because they are connected with Sri Ramakrishna. Have great love and reverence for them, but not the same as for Sri Ramakrishna. In India discussions often take place as to whether Holy Mother and Swamiji are the same as Sri Ramakrishna, or parts of him, and so on. I have never asked these questions; why should I bother about those things? One can go on spinning theories, but what is the use of it? Go straight. Always lean toward the Impersonal; the Personal God is the Impersonal.

  Devotee: Can one love God without seeing Him?

  Swami: Yes; you see Him all the time. You don’t pay attention. It is as though a man were to come to your door every morning, but you don’t look at him. Then one day you see him and ask, “Where have you been?” He answers, “I have been coming every morning but you never looked at me.” Literally fall in love with God.

  April 1, 1959

  Swami: Are you getting ahead in your writing?

  Me: No.

  Swami: Why not? Don’t you feel well?

  Me: I feel all right. I have been trying to write a diary of sorts. It takes a lot of time.

  Swami: What do you put in that diary?

  Me: I try to write down what you say and do.

  Swami: Oh, why bother to write about a trivial person?

  Me: I think nothing is trivial if it is about someone who is not trivial. Besides, it is just for my own pleasure. In my old age I will read it.

  Swami: So that is what you plan for your old age!

  Me: When I am not thinking of God, I will think about you—that will be the same as thinking of God.