Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1

by Christopher Isherwood

  This accounts for everybody except the two who only stayed with us for a very short time—Harold Winchester and Edna Acheson. Harold was a pleasant fattish man who had some kind of a small factory. He was ill-informed but very earnest. He had to leave at the end of a week, for business reasons. No one could quite understand why he had ever been invited.

  Edna Acheson was headmistress of a girls’ school. She seemed a quiet, mousy academic female who would give no trouble—and she didn’t until, about a week after the seminar opened, she went mad.

  It was during supper, and I was reading aloud to the group from Vivekananda’s The Real Nature of Man. Suddenly, Edna Acheson started to interrupt. She was tremendously excited. “Yes, that’s it!” she exclaimed: “Don’t you see? It’s number seven! Don’t you understand? It’s all hypnotism!” At first, I tried to go on reading—hoping it would calm her; but she only got more and more frantic, and finally she was taken upstairs and induced to lie down in her room. She asked for me: “Christopher is laughter. Make him bring the laughter.” I talked to her, but it didn’t do any good. She also asked repeatedly for Gerald. She seemed to have him on her mind, and somehow to be frightened of him: he was connected with the “hypnotism.” She said she had something very important to tell him. Gerald wouldn’t see her. He said it would only excite her, but I think he was also a bit scared: he had met a lot of borderline cases who were “in love” with him and made terrible scenes. Some of the time, she was quite violent, biting and scratching: Denver Lindley and Donald Booz had to hold her down. Then she had lucid moments, and said quietly to those around her, “It’s dementia praecox, isn’t it? That’s what we’re fighting.” She kept talking about numbers and hypnotism. It was obvious that she’d arrived at La Verne in a state of great distress and tension which, by a tremendous effort, she’d managed to repress until this moment. We all waited around—part of the time we held a silent prayer meeting—until near midnight, when a trained nurse and an ambulance arrived from the hospital to take her away.

  Within a few months, Edna Acheson recovered completely. She went back to her job, and often wrote letters to members of the group, seemingly quite friendly and unembarrassed by what had happened. But a lot of us had an uneasy feeling that we’d somehow failed her.

  The schedule of the seminar was as follows:

  5:00. Get up. 5:30–6:30. Meditation. 7:00. Breakfast.

  9:00–10:30. Discussion period. 11:30–12:00. Meditation.

  12:30. Lunch. 4:00–5:30. Discussion. 6:00–7:00. Meditation.

  7:30. Supper.

  The weekends were free, and most people made expeditions to the mountains or the beach. Free, also, were the afternoons, from lunch till four o’clock, aside from our rotating duties as dishwashers, table setters, etc. A few of us often met, at that time, to discuss topics of more limited interest—such as diet, or the problems of the householder—in groups which Gerald, with his flair for official language, called subcommittees. These subcommittees were supposed, in due course, to make a report to the group as a whole, during one of the discussion periods.

  The meditation periods were what I most looked forward to, throughout the day. Being in the group, filing into the darkened room, descending into the silence as if into a pool, fitting into your accustomed place in the circle—all this gave me an extraordinary feeling of safety, even of comfort. For the first time, I understood the basic appeal of a monastery. Actually, the degree of concentration possible wasn’t as great as in solitary meditation—people coughed and sneezed and shifted—but the low-water mark, on the other hand, wasn’t so low. The minimum effort of the group kept you partly afloat. We were all helping each other.

  By starting earlier and finishing later, it was quite easy to increase the scheduled two and a half hours to three and a half or four. Gerald, as always, was doing his six. I used to meditate a good deal in my room, when I wanted to be alone.

  Over and above the practice of meditation, I learnt, at La Verne, a little of what continuous vigilance ought to mean. To watch, every moment of the day, every word, every action, every thought. Never to loll and lounge. Never to be idle. Never to give way to gossip or anxiety. (All this while, the Nazi armies were pushing deeper and deeper into Russia, and one longed to sneak out to the drugstore and peep at the latest headlines.) To ask the Real Self, at the end of every task, “What do you want me to do next, Sir?” (There is always an answer; usually something distasteful.) To try to annihilate your ego, to let the Real Self walk about in you, using your legs and arms, your brain and your voice. It’s fantastically difficult—and yet, what else is life for?

  At breakfast and supper, one of us read aloud to the group; in this way we worked through or dipped into The Practice of the Presence of God,97 Kelly’s Testament of Devotion, Fénelon’s Letters to Women, Waddell’s Desert Fathers, Leen’s Progress Through Mental Prayer, Laubach’s Letters by a Modern Mystic, the Theologia Germanica,98 and several others. Sometimes, after supper, I read poetry aloud to the group. Denny never came to listen to this. It was too shaming, he said. And it probably was: I used all the theatrical tricks.

  Gerald was the unofficial chairman of our discussions, and he managed them wonderfully: I can’t imagine anybody doing it as well or better. He was tact itself in checking the overtalkative and encouraging the shy to speak. Also, he was really brilliant at summing-up, in a couple of sentences, the meaning of some rambling speech which nobody else had been able to understand. His own orations were as spellbinding as ever; but Denny and I knew them practically by heart, and so we were hypercritical.

  Denny was my great problem at La Verne, and I, no doubt, was his. Our influence upon each other was disastrous. I think the breakdown of our chastity resolutions had a lot to do with this. As soon as we were alone together, we would begin picking everybody to pieces, from Gerald downwards: Gerald, of course, was our special victim. We made jokes about his well-cared-for beard, parodied his favorite phrases, detected new dishonesties in everything he said. We were really venomous. Denny’s attitude, then as later, was, “Well, if they aren’t acting up to their principles” (and he always managed to prove to himself that they weren’t) “then I needn’t act up to mine.” I was even more guilty, because I egged Denny on in order to be able to enjoy the contrast of someone even sourer than myself.

  Nevertheless, this negative emotion didn’t always persist. We had our better days. (The better days are recorded in the diary I shall quote from in a moment: the bad days aren’t mentioned, because then I didn’t feel like writing at all.) During my lucid intervals, I could look into the future and come to certain decisions. Chiefly, I felt that the contemplative life was not for me—at any rate, not yet. I must do some social work. I told Harold Chance this, and he agreed to give me introductions to the appropriate members of the AFSC in the East. Felix, as the result of his stay at La Verne, had decided to leave his job in Philadelphia and come to be with Gerald in the West. So the score stood at one all, in the Monks versus Quakes game.

  Here’s my diary, written at the time of the seminar itself. It begins with some “case histories.” Quite early in the seminar, we each of us made a personal statement, explaining how we became interested in the problems of the spiritual life. I wish I had reported them more fully. All I have are these “headlines.”

  Gerald Heard: Educated to believe in humanism backed by machine guns. An efficiency cult. Then the 1914 war, and despair. Discovery of an essential religion in the Society of Friends, the Catholic Church, Buddhism, Vedanta. “He who is within my heart is within the sun.” God, not the ego, must be central.

  Allan Hunter: I’m the rat that refused to leave the sinking ship. Blind, pig-headed loyalty. In 1918, a revelation: that Christ’s way is practicable.

  Harold Winchester: Atheism. Social work which became futile, because the trouble was inside myself.

  Ted MacCrea: Worked my way through college by preaching. I simply repeated what my father (a minister) had told me. Then teachi
ng for nine years, with “cultural” interests and a feeling of despair. Anglo-Catholic priest recommended confession and a retreat.

  Denver Lindley: I was a materialist, and I found myself surprised I wasn’t leading a much worse life. The idea of religion came with tremendous impact. Am prejudiced against the Christian church, because I dislike the idea of a personal God.

  Denham Fouts: Somebody said (about God), “I have no need of that hypothesis.” I have desperate need of God as an hypothesis.

  Cora Belle Hunter: Reality abides in that point of interaction between the Personal Mind and the Greater Mind. Relaxation, peace, healing, forgiveness are all one process.

  Felix Greene: A wildly swinging pendulum: belief, disbelief, belief. Clubs for the unemployed. Met an old disillusioned philanthropist who told me that he’d never created any kindness. Little by little, came the intellectual conviction.

  Donald Booz: I’m a student in the worst sense of the word. Arrant intellectualism. “What gives us power is our God.”

  Harold Stone Hull: Like the bugs, I didn’t like the light. Took refuge in building a new Jerusalem.

  Elizabeth Hunter: The problem of being married to a man who believed in Christ. At first, I felt I was only working for an absentee landlord. Ten years ago, I heard Kagawa, but didn’t see how to go on from there.

  July 15. Almost every morning, lately, I’ve woken repeating some line of poetry. Today’s was, “.… like rats that ravin down their proper bane, a thirsty evil, and when we drink we die.”99

  First watch, sixty-five minutes. Difficulty with worship. As before, I found it helpful to picture the group as skeletons, in X-ray anonymity. Again the feeling, what else should I be doing, if not this? “Whither should I go then from Thy Presence?”

  Every instant must be intently observed: one can’t be too alert. My annoyance when Felix used the downstair bath; my anxiety when he seemed about to ask to borrow my car. My aversion to Bill Rahill’s mannerisms when reading aloud. My vanity displayed in talk with Allan and Eugene Exman, after breakfast, in the park.

  Gerald spoke on compassion. The original sin of the animals. (Rodney Gale suggested that “previous sin” would be a better term.) They have sinned more than man, because they are living fossils—the bird sacrificed awareness in order to fly, the fish to swim. Awareness comes through the struggle to advance. After terrific efforts, the forebrain develops, the forefinger is opposed to the thumb, things can be picked up, fashioned into tools and used. The failure of the huge and predatory animals; the survival of the small and adaptable. The Tao-te Ching teaches us to be flexible, like water; not unyielding like rock. The little monkey evolved into man. The mammoths didn’t. Now, if we fail, no creature can take our place: we are the only unfossilized species. There is no excuse for anything that has life, if it fails. Because the deep will is present even in the protoplasm.

  Walked across to the drugstore, ostensibly to buy something, actually to read the headlines. No special news, but I returned tense and restless.

  Second watch, fifty-five minutes. Fairly good. Moments of awareness that this search is all that matters; nothing else has any interest. Strong sense of interchange with Denny, who sat next me.

  This afternoon, Cora Belle Hunter lectured on her system. The period of the removal of tensions corresponds to purgation. Our bodies are the event in space-time which is the interaction of the cosmic and the individual will. Our tensions are our separateness, i.e. our sins.

  Gossip and boastful sex talk with Denny this afternoon spoilt the third watch, thirty-five minutes, dull and scattered. More boasting, this evening, to Denver Lindley, about my knowledge of German. Pushful eagerness to speak when others are talking. Am reading the Tao-te Ching, and Secretly Armed.

  July 16. Dreams: a movie job with Orson Welles—some kind of wartime film, connected with the Isle of Wight. A lumberyard (in Reykjavik, Iceland). Small boys in sweaters, fighting. One boy is knocked down and killed with a wooden rolling pin, his neck broken, his skull bashed in. A voice in my ear explains: “He’s the Totem Seal.” A feeling of horror at ritual murder, tied in with the war.

  An indignation dream about being kept waiting by Mrs. Chisholm (Hugh’s mother) first at Santa Monica, then at Cambridge, England. Vernon wants to stay to lunch, but I insist on leaving, as a protest, which makes him unhappy. A tremendously strong emotional realization that even the least unkindness is intolerable.

  Woke repeating: “Follow the deer? follow the Christ, the King—Else, wherefore born?”100

  First watch, seventy-five minutes, medium poor. Selfishness over window shade in meditation room. It was letting in light, so I shifted my place to avoid it, and somebody else had to sit there instead.

  About the spiritual life: If you are learning Chinese, speak nothing but Chinese, even if you know only half a dozen words. The temptation to relapse into “English” (the daily gossip of envy, hatred and vanity) is terribly strong.

  I shouldn’t have told my dreams to Denny. Shouldn’t have suggested I find another K.P. helper—thus calling attention to myself as a volunteer, instead of simply doing the job. Must stop wandering aimlessly about the passages: they lead to the drugstore and the headlines. Ate too much breakfast.

  Got in half an hour’s meditation this morning, alone. Disturbed at first—it’s amazing what a flutter just walking upstairs and talking to people can produce—but good later. Was able to pray on my knees, which I like. Unfortunately someone came in and saw me: which was exactly what my ego had wanted.

  Voted for individual statements at discussion, because I wanted to speak my piece. Raised my voice too loud in discussion with David White. Failed in courtesy toward other speakers, and didn’t listen carefully enough to their views. Result: Second watch, thirty minutes, greatly disturbed and very poor. But I did get the conception clear which Gerald often speaks of—of looking over the Ego’s shoulder while it’s jumping about.

  Useful to think of that part of my will which wants this way of life as a research worker, fallible but serious minded. The research worker has to share his study with Maggie, his lisping, cute little daughter, Grandfather Chips, his miserly, selfish old parent, and Libido, an immense gorilla who, when aroused, can be really dangerous, but who spends most of his time snarling, or bolting his food, or snoring, or nastily playing with himself. The research worker tries to concentrate, while Maggie dances about, prattling of her exploits, and Grandfather Chips fusses over his money and plans to get more. Sometimes he has to intervene to restrain the gorilla, who is apt to smash up all the furniture, and overturn the workbench with his apparatus. Sometimes, he gets rattled and gives up in despair. But, sooner or later, he must pull himself together and continue his work.

  Remember: every word spoken to another human being is spoken in the presence of these four. They all hear it, and make a note of the information, privately planning to use it for their own purposes, when the opportunity offers. Maggie, Chips and Libido are the most ruthless black-mailers: they are entirely without shame or pity. “I’ll never leave you,” says a lover. “Good,” thinks Maggie: “Now I’ve got him where I want him.” A friend tells us he has just landed a well-paid job. “Aha,” thinks Grandfather Chips, “in a week or two, I’ll touch him for a loan.”

  Selfishness about swimming spoilt the whole afternoon. Also my rudeness to Bill Rahill, David White, Margaret Calbeck and the rest of the junior group on the subject of confidences. They were having a discussion of their sex problems. Gerald wanted me to take part in it, and be frank. I refused. I’m bored sick of confessions.

  Talked too much during discussion period. Third watch, seventy-five minutes, very poor.

  July 17. Dream: Returning to London. The houses were smashed, but only the top floors. Thought of John Lehmann, with his top-floor flat in Mecklenburgh Square. Looking from Piccadilly Circus in the direction of Leicester Square there were so many ruins you could see a hill in the distance. Went out to Pembroke Gardens on a bus. Described Los Angel
es to the family with great enthusiasm. Tried to get a job through an agent. In the newspaper, an advertisement in fake Elizabethan language for seats in a fighter plane to take part in an air raid. Woke with enormous relief that I’m still here.

  First watch, ninety minutes, very poor. Wandering thoughts. Second watch, thirty minutes, poor. Third watch, thirty minutes, at the waterfall on Baldy Camp road—poor, but would probably be good if repeated a few times.

  July 18. Detective-story dream, bright and amusing, highly self-satisfied, with touches of sexual vanity.

  First watch, ninety minutes, medium poor. Second watch, began well, poor later.

  At breakfast, reading from Waddell’s Desert Fathers. Very moving. But I had to put my oar in. Too much chatter while washing up. Ratlike preoccupation with my comfort. Slight cowardice while swimming at dam—scared of sliding down steep slope into water: covered this by pretending the place was uncomfortable.

  Third watch, some moments of compassion, but competitive clock-watching toward the end.

  July 19. Beginning of sex dream with B. But this turned into a parting, and I saw B. go off with someone else, without regret. Woke at 4:30. First watch, one hundred twenty minutes, medium poor.

  Read headlines at drugstore. Usual pointless despair. Must concentrate every moment on interior life. Avoid daydreaming. This idiotic desire to run upstairs, see what’s doing, and run down again, like a chicken without a head.

  Weekend disturbance. Many of the others plan to get away and “relax.” But the real relaxation would be to stay here and try to calm myself inside.