April 16. Richard did finally leave on the 10th, as arranged. Today, Yogi arrived. Also Donald Hayne.
(Yogi, as I’ve said already, was Yogini’s husband. His real name was Walter Brown. At the time of this visit, I think he must still have been a technical sergeant in the army, stationed near San Diego. He was a grey-haired, good-looking man, with a tiny moustache and eyeglasses: a typical, careful office worker. He wouldn’t be sent overseas, as he had some physical defect, and the army was about to discharge him. He had caused quite a sensation in camp by having a picture of Ramakrishna by his bed and burning incense in front of it every evening. He had also formed a small group for Vedanta study, much to the annoyance of the chaplain.
I had met Donald Hayne some time before this—the previous year, I think—at Chris’s Laguna Beach house, where he had come to visit Gerald. He was a big man, good-looking in a heavy Roman way, but flabby. At that time he was a priest, who taught history at the University of Iowa.
One day, after I’d come to live at Ivar Avenue, I got a letter from Donald, saying that he had decided to give up his job, because he couldn’t conscientiously continue to teach history according to Catholic dogmas. He was also seriously considering giving up the priesthood altogether. He wanted to come to California, talk to Swami and find a job. The trouble was, he had no money. So, with Swami’s consent, I invited him to come and live at Ivar Avenue while he looked around.)
Hayne is to have my room. I’m moving in with Webster. The girls, particularly Sarada, are greatly excited by his arrival. They are sure he’ll be converted to Vedanta—and what a scoop to get a real Catholic priest! Also they admire his looks. They think he resembles the actor, George Sanders. As a matter of fact, he does.
April 17. A long talk with Hayne, last night. Apparently, his doubts about his vocation had a great deal to do with a sudden wave of sex feeling. He must be a case of arrested development. Now, he wants to get married—never mind to whom. As a good Catholic, the idea of unmarried sex is impossible to him, he says. Told him I think he’s crazy. He must try it out first. Otherwise, he can’t really know if he wants it. And he’ll make some girl miserable. When I told this to Swami later, he said he was so glad I’d said it. “Of course,” Swami added, “I couldn’t possibly tell him that.” Swami’s attitude is, once a monk always a monk: so far better let Hayne visit every brothel in town than tie himself up for life—especially since the Catholics don’t permit divorce.
But there’s something fantastic, and deeply disingenuous about Hayne’s whole attitude—despite the fact that he’s very friendly and can be quite charming. I don’t know what to make of him. A rather mysterious girl named Miss Heinen keeps calling him on the phone. Hayne says that she was a pupil of his in Iowa, and hints that she’s practically a mental case. He’s been out to see her a couple of times, already.
(Here I’ll insert two letters, written at this time. I happen to have kept carbon copies, which I very rarely do. They are worth putting in because they were written to be read, and therefore represent a “presentation” of my state of mind. To some extent, they are propaganda. I find them both horribly embarrassing, and it will be noticed that they contradict each other on some points.
The first letter is to a C.O. named Hoosag Gregory who was working on detached service as a male nurse in a lunatic asylum. As will be seen from my reply he had written me about an article which criticized Heard and Huxley. He wanted to know about Vedanta and Ivar Avenue. And he also asked me—as one sometimes asks perfect strangers—if he should get married. My reply is dated April 20th):
Dear Hoosag,
Many thanks for your letter. I’m glad your work continues to interest you. Don’t despair because, as you say, the patients respond more to electricity and insulin than they do to love: that’s only because very few of us can generate an amount of love equal to a powerful electric shock. You know that early poem of Stephen Spender’s?
I must have love enough to run a factory on,
Or give a city power, or drive a train.150
Personally, I doubt if I could make even a toy train move one inch.
Yes, I saw Richard Chase’s article in the Partisan Review.151 It had been advertised, and I was looking out for it. It disappointed me, rather. I’d hoped for something bold and slashing; whereas this was just academic stuff making academic points, and reproving Heard and Huxley on purely academic grounds. This was just, no doubt, as far as it went, and interesting to some—but not to me, not to anybody who ever seriously wanted to know how to live their life, not to anybody whose reaction to any statement is: “How does this affect me, and what, if anything, ought I to do about it?” Ah, what poor, lifeless, barren talk this is—this tripping up of the experimenter by the theorist who hasn’t the guts even to bet a dollar on a horse! I don’t mean anything personal against Chase (about whom I know nothing) but it’s the mentality of all that tribe. I have associated with it, before now, myself, and been guilty of just that archly snooty tone.
The talk about escapism and the life of action seems to me every day more meaningless. If God exists at all, there can be only one question: how can I get to see Him and know Him? For some, this may be through prolonged contemplation; for others, no doubt, through social service. But there is no basic difference between the two kinds of life, because the object of both is exactly the same. Whether you sit motionless all day in prayer before a shrine, or work your hands off in a hospital, you are helping nobody but yourself. Either you are moving nearer to God, or you are not. In either event, the material world, as it is pictured by the social reformers, is not being improved one particle. Yes, indeed, large quantities of filth are being shovelled up in one corner and carted away to another; but the amount of filth remains the same. Nobody going into a bowling alley supposes that some socially valuable object is served by knocking over the pins. We all know that the players are doing it for exercise. But our insane vanity and self-love blind us to the painful truth that this also applies to the whole of human activity. We can do nothing to help each other, nothing whatever. We help each other only by being, by setting an example, by giving forth the light of God inside ourselves. Nevertheless, the hospitals must be kept open, and the blueprints must be drawn—not to cure or house the patients, which is utterly immaterial and unimportant, but in order that, by offering all this activity to God, we may come nearer to Him—may “take exercise” in fact—and, in doing so, may attract others to His light within ourselves.
The only escapism which really means anything is the attempt to escape from this duty of offering our lives to God—and the form which this escape takes is always either a flight into exaggerated activity, or into the narcotics—exaggerated sexuality, drink, dope, etc. Of these, the flight to narcotics is less vicious and degrading, because society disapproves of it; therefore it is seldom coupled with the worst sort of self-love. Also, in the states produced by overstimulation of the nerve centers and glands, people get half-glimpses of reality. You seldom find a drunkard who is an atheist at heart. Whereas these other escapists—most of them engaged in activities which Time magazine would describe as admirable—they are much farther from the truth. They live in a mad world of vanity, in which they believe themselves to be indispensable, and directly responsible for all kinds of striking improvements in the material world around them. When they discover that this is not the case, they often commit suicide.
Oh yes, you say, very fine and high-class sentiments, provided you have shed the teardrop of faith, and can honestly say you believe in God. Well, then, why do I believe in God? Not for any reason which would sound well in a sermon. I have had no visions, or revelations, or direct experience—except of the most cloudy and untrustworthy kind. No, I believe in the belief of others—that’s all, and yet it’s more than enough. I don’t mean the belief which the saints had—although that, in itself, is impressive; especially in the case of St. Francis, St. Philip Neri, Ramakrishna, Jesus. I mean that a man I have actually met—th
e Swami—believes in God so entirely, so simply, so calmly, so intelligently and so lovingly, that I am bound to say that, in all my quite large experience of human beings, disbelief has never produced a representative one quarter as convincing. Yes, I have known some very admirable stoics—loving, upright, gentle, courageous—but, somehow, just because of this failure to believe, they were curiously impotent, twisted, maimed. Fanatics don’t impress me much, on either side of the fence. But the Swami is neither crazy, nor tense, nor stupid. I wish you could meet him—or, indeed, any monks of the order. I think they could help you.
About sex, just this. For God’s sake, don’t get married, until you are quite quite sure that you are not ready for the spiritual life until your next incarnation. If there is still a lot of curiosity, have sex, have lots of it (you’ll pay later, but that can’t be helped) but don’t marry. Then—if you’re bitten already with this other way of life—you will make a wretched husband, and some poor girl will be very unhappy; and you will have a ghastly time unlocking all the handcuffs again—especially if there are children. Don’t let anyone, especially any Quaker, confuse you about this. There is lots of talk about the way to God through married life. That way exists. It is exactly twice as hard as the monastic way. Very few get to the end of it.
Well, I’ve certainly given you an earful! It’s much too dogmatic and oracular, but it’s how I feel at the moment, so excuse the tone …
(And here—after that icy douche of asceticism, in which I now detect a good deal of sadism and spite (maybe Gregory, in his letter, had seemed to approve of the Chase article?)—is a more moderate and somewhat more sincere reply I wrote to Caroline Norment, dated April 24th):
Dear Caroline,
Thank you so much for your letter, and for asking me such clear, answerable questions, unlike some of my other friends who either don’t ask at all, out of a kind of shyness, or, if they do ask, make it only too painfully clear that they think I am—well, not crazy exactly, but temporarily touched.
Yes, the picture I sent at Christmas is a photograph of the temple at our Hollywood center. Its exterior is by far the most exotic thing about it. Inside, it is a very plainly decorated lecture hall, with a small inner room at one end which is used for meditation, and contains a shrine. We live in houses on either side of the main building, just ordinary Hollywood houses, one Spanish style, the other vaguely Japanese. I tell you all this because there is no need for you to picture us living in a sort of oriental-theosophical atmosphere, with robes and mysterious symbols and dim lights. There is ritual, of course, in the worship: ritual which has been practiced in India for tens of centuries; out of which, I imagine, the Catholic mass evolved. There are many points of resemblance.
“Does it bring strength in a positive way?” I don’t have to hesitate before I answer yes to this. I think you know me well enough to know that I am not the sort of person to be interested in renunciation for renunciation’s sake. If anything, I err in the other direction, because I am perpetually reacting from my puritan family background: I can never feel that the pleasures of the world are either sinful or tasteless, and I could never get much nourishment from a religion which said they were. This is, of course, just a temperamental matter: I happen to have had a particularly interesting, pleasant, successful, exciting life, so naturally I tend to be optimistic about life in general, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
At the same time, I have always felt the need, in life, for some sort of dedication and meaning—as who doesn’t? At one time, when I was a very young man, I was able to think of the profession of writing as a kind of religious vocation, for the sake of which one made certain sacrifices and accepted certain disciplines. I still think this is true, or could be true—though there are probably very few artists or writers or musicians who really live up to the challenge of their profession as a way of religious self-dedication. If even Tolstoy can write about this the way he does in that wonderful passage in A Confession,152 then what are the rest of us to say?
So, without in any way giving up writing, I had to look around for some more complete kind of dedication. That was why I came to Haverford. That was why I was at one period interested in socialism. That is why I have come here. To me, all these stages have been part of the same search. And, of course, the possibility of spiritual growth existed in each. I don’t feel that the work we did at the college workshop is either better or worse, more escapist or less escapist, more “practical” or less “practical” than the work we are doing here. To people trying to lead the life of prayer and meditation in a monastery or retreat, the danger is, no doubt, that they may become insensitive or callous, and lose their sense of the world’s suffering and need. But for the people who lead the life of social work and active relief in the world there is equally the danger, as you and I well know, that one may become so deeply involved, so eager to achieve certain results, that one loses altogether the sense of what it is all for, the sense of God, in fact. And so the two lives are complementary. Whether one stays in one, or the other, or switches back and forth, must be an individual matter, dictated by circumstance and what we can guess of God’s will for us. Again and again, in Haverford, I felt the need of the kind of training I’m getting here: I could have helped Caro and Mr. Robinson ever so much more if I had had it. And often, here, I’ve wished I could spend a week working in a hospital, or back at the workshop, to keep the perspective. Of course, there is still, quite aside from all this, the question of vocation and ability. You, for instance, are obviously an organizer, a counselor, and you belong in the kind of work you are doing. I am only an amateur social worker, and whatever I do in that way would be more for the good of my soul than for any efficient result it produced. My real job is literary, and belongs much more to the monastery than to the hostel.
So I can’t, you see, say how long I shall stay here. Nor can I say that this life is a preparation for work in the world (though in a sense it is) or that work in the world would be a preparation for this life (though in a sense it is). Certainly, there is no question of severing any friendships or making any breaks. We don’t have the restraint here which seems to exist in most Catholic houses. I go out and visit people when I have time—though that isn’t so often!—and all kinds of visitors are with us continually. About celibacy, yes, there is a vow—a conditional one, which can be terminated after three years; and a lifelong one, which is made after ten, when one becomes a full-fledged monk, and presumably takes up some kind of ministry. When I spoke of Friends disagreeing with monasticism and celibacy, I was quoting Douglas Steere, who expressed himself quite definitely on this point to Gerald and myself.
That is all there seems to be to say at the moment. I hope this letter will reassure you, if you need reassurance, that I haven’t “turned my back” on anything you value or believe important. I am not bound, as yet, in any way whatsoever; and, as I have been here only ten weeks, these are very early days to be making statements.
I pray for the greatest possible success and enrichment of your work in New York. I shall be thinking of thee (after all, I slip back into saying thee as soon as I imagine myself talking to thee!) very very often. …
May 1. Shaky after two days in bed with flu. But I want to write down a few things.
While in bed, I read Waley’s translation of the Chinese novel Monkey,153 and The Light of Asia,154 and several Buddhist writings from Lin Yutang’s anthology.155 And the result is that I feel, very strongly, we must not rave against the body. The body is not a lump of corrupt filth, it is not evil. It is our faithful, loyal servant, in sickness and in health: it really does its best. Of course, if you let it be the master, then it will display all its greed and stupidity and brutishness. If you put your dog on the dining room table, you mustn’t be surprised if it gobbles everything up. We must be very firm with the body, and also very kind. Also, I do feel that we must be ready to accept sickness—not as a burden, but as a profoundly educational experience, neither less, nor more, educat
ional than health.
Sudhira has been looking after me. She tells me stories of her work at the county hospital. The bellhop from the Beverly Wilshire Hotel who suddenly developed leprosy. They usually had two or three lepers at the hospital. During the first weeks you have to watch them, for fear of suicide. Later, they adjust themselves, and can be sent to the colony in Louisiana. While Sudhira was nursing in the children’s ward, she caught meningitis and became delirious. Two beautiful white horses appeared in her room and told her that they’d come to take her away with them to Mount Shasta, but that first they must all three go into the chapel and say a prayer. Sudhira actually followed them into the hospital chapel, dressed only in a short nightgown. She was kneeling at the altar rail and laughing at the awkwardness of the horses, who couldn’t kneel properly, when a doctor found her and led her back to bed. After this, she didn’t see the horses any more. But, a few days later, she became convinced that an escaped convict was hiding in her room. Whenever the nurse came in, she made him get under the bed, and dragged the bedclothes down on one side to hide him. She gave the convict most of the food they brought her: the nurse could never understand why it was always spilled on the floor.
The woman from next door, calling to her husband: “Don’t you go sweeping the path. I don’t want you to get sweaty.” “What are you doing?” the husband calls back. “I’m cleaning the bathroom.” “Well, don’t you get sweaty either.” Their old voices, affectionately quarrelsome.
May 4. Got up this morning, but I’m back in bed again this evening, resting. Web hurries in and out, bringing me things, like a hospital orderly under Sudhira’s command. He shows a kindness and gentleness which are almost feminine. He takes our monastic relationship absolutely literally. As far as he’s concerned, we’re brothers, and that’s that.
Christopher Isherwood Diaries Volume 1 Page 47