Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  How much unhappiness there is in the world! No need to search for it across the ocean, in bombed London, or China, or Greece. The other evening, outside my window, a little boy cried to his mother: “You don’t want anyone to play with me!” Even the most trivial unkindness is heartbreaking, if one weren’t so deaf and blind. Every sigh, every tear, every cross word is really the last straw which breaks humanity’s back. If we could be conscious, every minute, of the dreadful predicament of life, we should handle each other with the greatest gentleness.

  Very occasionally, I’m aware of this; and it’s almost more than I can bear. The other night (it sounds absurd when I write it) I ran the car over a tin can on our parking lot, and felt almost as bad as if I’d killed a cat. “Oh God,” I said to myself, “must we always keep smashing things?”

  Lunch with Denny. He’s been looking for a shack to live in. He wants to get somewhere alone by himself and start meditating: his interview with the Swami hasn’t dismayed him. He has extraordinary reserves of willpower, backed up against a huge black rock of despair, like a creature at bay. His despair isn’t noisy. It’s quiet and well mannered: the dynamic despair which makes dangerous criminals and, very occasionally, saints. Gerald says that he sees Denny as a figure “with something standing behind it”—an embodiment, perhaps, of certain acts, with a being of its own. Gerald says that Chris—during the violent neurotic quarrels of his earlier life—gave you this same impression. The terrible scene was actually being made by someone outside himself—and Chris’s own face, at the moment of crisis, was curiously peaceful, almost disinterested.

  November 8. Picked up Gerald in the car and was down at the temple by seven-thirty. When I went into the shrine, the Swami was already seated. I took my place on his left, holding a little tray with the flowers I had been given, by one of the women, to offer: two red roses, a white rose, and a big white daisy. First the Swami told me to meditate as usual. Then I had to offer the flowers—the red roses to the photographs of Ramakrishna and his wife, “Holy Mother,” the daisy to the icon of Christ, the white rose to Swami himself, as my guru, my teacher. Next, he told me to meditate on Ramakrishna in the central cavity of the heart. Then he taught me my Sanskrit mantram (which I must never repeat to anybody) and gave me a rosary, showing me how to use it, repeating the mantram and meditating on Ramakrishna’s body—“a thousand times more brilliant than the sun, but mellow”—the feet, the navel, the heart, the head. I worked on this for a time. Then I went into the house and had coffee and toast. About nine o’clock, we settled down to the festival of Holy Mother—this is her birthday. The Swami offered flowers, incense, water for washing. He made spots of red on the foreheads of Ramakrishna and Mother with sandalwood paste. Food was brought in, a complete meal: soup, curry and chocolate cake with whipped cream. The Swami’s nephew Asit [Ghosh] acted as prompter, reading the ritual directions in Sanskrit. At the end of the ceremony, we each offered a flower. After this, we went into the Swami’s study, where there is a grate, for the fire ceremony. All our actions, good and bad, were symbolically offered up and purified in the fire. The Swami made a sign on our foreheads with the ash, to symbolize the opening of the third eye, the eye of the spirit.

  Then lunch, very gay, with all the “holy women.” The food offered in the temple is mixed in with what we eat, so that lunch is really a kind of communion service. They do this every day.

  The Swami admitted that he oversmokes. “You must listen to me,” he giggled, “not follow me.” He told us that, during his first ten years here, he made no converts at all. Now he has about twenty-four.

  Drove Gerald home. We agreed that this sort of thing could never be transplanted to the West. Ritual is valuable, certainly—but perhaps only for the person who actually celebrates it. The holy women seemed more concerned today with the mere domestic bustle of preparing and serving food. At least, that was the impression I got as an outsider.

  Nevertheless, all this Hindu domesticity doesn’t repel me. Precisely because it is so domestic. Ramakrishna really does seem to be established in that household. They fuss over him like a guest of honor. There is no dividing line between the activities of the temple and their daily lives. And, after all, if you admire the man at all, why not make him feel at home? Why not reproduce, as far as possible, the ceremonies he used to practice? It’s really a matter of common politeness—like eating Chinese food when the Chinese ambassador comes to dinner.

  November 12. Headache this evening, and rheumatism in my hip. So I did my meditation sitting upright in a chair in my room. Perhaps because of the headache, concentration was much easier than usual. My mind soon became calm. Sitting with closed eyes in the darkness, I suddenly “saw” a strip of carpet, illuminated by an orange light. The carpet was covered with a black pattern, quite unlike anything we have in the house. But I could also “see” my bed, standing exactly as it really stands. My field of vision wasn’t in any way distorted.

  As I watched, I “saw,” in the middle of the carpet, a small dirty-white bird, something like a parrot. After a moment, it began to move, with its quick stiff walk, and went under the bed. This wasn’t a dream. I was normally conscious, aware of what I “saw” and anxious to miss no detail of it. As I sat there, I felt all around me a curiously intense silence, like the silence of deep snow. The only sinister thing about the bird was its air of utter aloofness and intention. I had caught it going about its business—very definite business—as one glimpses a mouse disappearing into its hole.

  November 13. I told Swami about the parrot, this evening. He said it was a “symbolic vision,” not an hallucination. On the whole, he seemed pleased. He thought it a sign that something is happening to my consciousness. Probably, he said, there will be other visions. I must take no particular notice of them, and not regard them as a matter for self-congratulation. They have no special significance. The psychic world is all around us, full of sub-creatures, earthbound spirits, squalid little embodiments of desire and fear. To be able to see them is just a knack, a minor talent, like clairvoyance. Dogs see spooks, all the time. It is dangerous to let them interest you too much. At best, they are a distraction from the real objectives of the spiritual life. At worst, they may gain power over you and do you harm.

  I also asked the Swami about sex. He said that all sex—no matter what the relationship—is a form of attachment, and must ultimately be given up. This will happen naturally as you make progress in the spiritual life. “The more you travel toward the North, the farther you are from the South.” But he added that force is no good. A man came to Brahmananda (the Swami’s teacher) and asked to become a monk: he had castrated himself to be free from sex. Brahmananda wouldn’t receive him. When the Swami was a young monk, he once asked Brahmananda to release him from sexual desire. (Brahmananda had the power to do this.) But Brahmananda smiled and answered: “My son, if I did that you would miss all the fun in life.”

  To encourage me, the Swami quoted a saying of Ramakrishna’s: “‘He who has been bitten by the cobra is sure to die.’ The cobra has bitten you, Mr. Isherwood,” he giggled, “you won’t live long!”

  Some notes from the Swami’s lectures:

  We make the mistake of seeking perfection outside ourselves. We want to achieve completeness by creating something, or by accumulating possessions, or by reorganizing a part of the external work. But completeness is within us.

  The aim of life is to be reborn in spirit as we were born in flesh. To be born in spirit is to attain samadhi, transcendental consciousness.

  It’s no good just saying, “I have faith,” and leaving it at that. Faith in someone else’s revelation is not enough. It will get you nowhere. This is the characteristic mistake of the West. But India has never relied on this secondhand faith. Indians ask, “What is your experience? Do you see any light?” Experience, empirical knowledge, are what really matter in religion.

  The universe, according to Vedanta philosophy:

  1. The ultimate Reality. This, for conv
enience, has two names: Brahman (God transcendent, all around you) and the Atman (God immanent, within you).

  2. Ishwara: the Reality united with its power, to create, preserve, and destroy the universe. This does not imply a philosophical dualism, because the Reality and its power are inseparable, like fire and its heat. Brahman, the Reality, has, by definition, no attributes. Ishwara has attributes: it is “the personal God.” The Hindus personify its powers as Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver) and Shiva (the dissolver). Jehova is also a personification of Ishwara.

  3. Prakriti, or maya: the effect of Brahman’s power, the basis of all mind and matter. Modern physics recognize the principle of prakriti in saying that the universe is composed of different arrangements of identical units. Prakriti can be roughly translated as “nature,” “illusion.”

  4. The gunas (meaning, literally, “rope that binds”). Prakriti is said to be composed of three gunas, three forces.

  (a) Sattva: the quality of fineness, beauty, purity, calm: the power of self-revelation in any object.

  (b) Rajas: the quality of action, reaction, repulsion: the power which holds an object together.

  (c) Tamas: obstruction: the power which veils and obscures an object’s identity.

  Psychologically, sattva creates the mood of peaceful, clear understanding. Rajas brings restlessness, hate, rage, aggression, and desire to enjoy. Tamas brings laziness, dullness, obstinacy.

  All three gunas are present in everything, in different combinations, one or the other predominating. To see the Reality, we must go beyond the gunas, even sattva. But pantheistic nature poets who say they have seen God usually mean only that they have become aware of sattva.

  The mistake of the West is the mass-application of all its standards. “If a thing is good for me, it’s good for everybody.” Indian thought does not agree. It discriminates between different types of people and the different approaches which are helpful for each. You cannot approach a sattvic man as you would approach a rajasic man. This does not imply any contempt for lower types; only a recognition that the guna classifications really do hold good in nature. This was the origin of the Indian caste system.

  November 30. About two weeks ago, I had another vision. The same orange light, but redder, this time, like firelight. I thought, “It’s happening again.” A face began to form. It was my own face. I looked at it, quite consciously, for several seconds before it disappeared.

  When I started to tell the Swami about this, he looked dismayed and exclaimed in alarm: “Not that parrot?” (Because, says Gerald, the parrot might eventually have “come through” and been visible to other people. Most embarrassing. And then the Swami would have had to exorcise it. We’d have a three-day sit at the temple, and, goodness, how much Ramakrishna would eat!)

  However, when I explained, he was pleased and told me I’d seen my own “subtle body.” He asked me if the face wasn’t much handsomer than my own physical face. As a matter of fact, it was: very distinguished, rather like a Red Indian, with light blue eyes.

  Since then, my sits have been most unsatisfactory. I seem to be stuck in the apparent world, like a fly in glue. Terrible attacks, storms of rajasic fury, sweep over me, until I begin to wonder how long I shall stay even outwardly sane. Back at the studio, since last week. I miss seeing Gerald. Denny is living up there, now, till Chris returns. We are putting a new beginning on to Rage in Heaven, which may go into production next week. Vernon now sits regularly. I can’t say it’s improved our home life. We still squabble and sulk. Mostly it’s my fault.

  (Sometime in December, Denny left for the East. Gerald had arranged for him to work on a farm in Pennsylvania, beginning after Christmas. The farm was run by a man named Pfeiffer, whose “bio-dynamic” system interested Gerald. He thought he could use it at the monastic community he was then planning.

  We talked a great deal about the community at that time. Gerald had provisionally christened it “Focus.” He only wanted quite a small place—just ourselves, Denny, and maybe a friend named Sandy Parness from England. There was a good deal of discussion as to whether my cousin Felix Greene would be suitable. Gerald thought not. He was too “unstable,” and, to use another of Gerald’s favorite condemnatory phrases, “under very great strain.” As for Sandy Parness, the problem was to get him without his friend Nik Alderson. “If Sandy wants to bring him over,” he told me, “you’ll see the hard side of your Gerald.” We never did. Nik was killed in Libya, serving with the Friends Ambulance Unit, on February 14, 1942.)

  December 9. Rage in Heaven is now supposed to start shooting in four days. Yesterday, we had a conference at Gottfried’s house, with Thoeren and [Robert] Sinclair, the director. Sinclair has a great deal of charm. He is very much one of the Lost Generation; boyishly irresponsible, a prey to whisky and sexual despair. His wife has just left him, and he sits alone in a big rented house on the hill above the Sunset Strip, contemplating a bookcase full of beautifully bound editions—Boswell, Thackeray, Gibbon—and thinking about—what? I daren’t even try to imagine. The lives of so many of these studio people, when you get to know them, are terrifying in their emptiness. When their big, noisy parties break up, and they are left to themselves, what happens? Don’t they simply disappear? Al Mannheimer, the writer, is another, with his red, curiously swollen face, which looks as if he’d just been beaten up. His gnawing worry about the draft. His blinding headaches. They all take refuge in marriage, in a series of marriages; they are bound to their jobs by chains of alimony.

  Then there’s Bill Lipman, a writer whose specialty is Westerns: a cowboy spirit imprisoned in a pudding of sullen grey hairy fat. He is on a diet: all week, he drinks orange juice and black coffee, eats nothing. It doesn’t help. In his house are thousands of dollars’ worth of electrical reducing apparatus which he is too lazy to use. His father invented crepes suzette. He knows more about food than anyone in Hollywood. Is in favor of sending over a U.S. expeditionary force.

  I am fondest of Chuck Reisner, with his great flat ex-bruiser’s face. His son made him the hero of a story, “The Champ,” which later was turned into a movie with Wallace Beery and Jackie Cooper. Chuck says that picture writing is pure mathematics. In every story, you must ask yourself, “What’s the main pursuit?” At present, he’s directing The Big Store for the Marx Brothers. Groucho, Chico and Harpo eat at our table in the commissary nearly every day: being intellectuals, they prefer the writers to the other actors. Groucho is very funny, but aggressive and malicious. He’s always picking on somebody and getting a laugh against them. His great enthusiasm is Gilbert and Sullivan.

  Chuck Reisner worked on most of the early Chaplin pictures. He told me all about Chaplin’s disastrous marriage to Lita Grey. According to Chuck, the Grey family set out deliberately to catch Chaplin: they arranged for Charlie and Lita, who was a juvenile whore of great talent, to be left alone together all one rainy day. Charlie, stronger minded than usual, held out until the evening. “He showed her his pictures and his books, and he played for her on his organ, and they played cards and dominoes and checkers, and by six o’clock, there wasn’t a thing left to do—so Charlie laid her.” Immediately, Lita’s mother appeared with her lawyers, and Charlie was in the trap. Lita was so young, they had to marry in Mexico. When Mrs. Grey Senior got down to the border (she was travelling separately from the others) there was a cholera epidemic, and the Mexican authorities insisted on special sanitary precautions. They took Mrs. Grey, an imposing lady dressed in all her finery, and put her into a box in the middle of the street in Tijuana, among the chickens and goats. Then they burnt herbs under her to fumigate her. So poor Charlie was indirectly revenged.

  Chuck also specialized in farces featuring chimpanzees and lions. He had one chimpanzee which was particularly intelligent. They were making a picture with the chimp and Sid Chaplin, Charlie’s brother. The chimp had to put on a mock fight with Sid. It got rather rough, and Sid received a bad cut on the forehead. Someone yelled, “Keep the chimp away! If
he smells blood, he’ll go crazy!” But the chimp, instead of attacking Sid, ran across the studio, fetched the first-aid kit, opened it and tried to dress the wound.

  Chuck believes firmly in psychology. The whole technique of living, he says, is to relax and smile. A smile in the morning on the face of a director will go right around the studio. It creates confidence. People tell their wives about it at night: “The boss smiled at me today.”

  He decided to live in Laguna Beach, because he wanted to get right away from Hollywood every evening. By taking short cuts, he found he could drive down there in an hour and ten minutes. He went into training for this drive. People were amazed. It became famous.

  Chuck has tried various religions. At present, he is enthusiastic about Unity. Every evening, he prays for the heads of the studio: “God bless Louis B. Mayer. God bless Louis B. Mayer. God bless Louis B. Mayer … Louis B. Mayer is God’s perfect child—” And so on, down the list.

  The other day, he was counting the steps from Hollywood Boulevard to his apartment. He got so excited that he arrived out of breath. In the elevator was a pretty girl. Chuck didn’t want her to think him short-winded and middle-aged, so he held his breath, way up to the eighth floor. When he got into his apartment, he collapsed and had to lie down, gasping, on the bed.

  December 30. Thoeren had a dream. He saw a copy of Box Office, with a list of the year’s worst pictures—and against each title a brief sentence of comment. Looking down the column, he read: “Rage in Heaven. … Must vanish.”

  In Paris, the film company gave Thoeren a collaborator he didn’t want. For six weeks, the man sat in Thoeren’s apartment, making no suggestions, not saying a word. At length, Thoeren got exasperated: “Look here,” he exclaimed, “can’t you help me? I’m stuck. What does the girl do now?” The collaborator thought for a moment. Then he jumped energetically to his feet, and started to stride across the room. “The girl—” he began. “You see, the girl—” He reached the door, opened it, went into the corridor: “It’s like this—the girl—” Then the door closed. Thoeren never saw him again.