My Father's Guru

by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

  He’s entirely gone, entirely mystically committed. Is even thinking of quitting Harvard, because of the “crazy game it is.” Strangely enough, though, he is a striking person. Somewhat sage-like. I’m beginning to think that somewhere there must be a secret manual, entitled, “How to act like a sage and be believed,” that all these people read, for otherwise, how do they manage to imitate each other so perfectly? And in such detail? Going to the meeting at 8:30, will finish this letter when I return. It’s now 2:30—just got back. It is without a doubt the most interesting evening yet spent at Harvard. Truly a remarkable intellectual experience. It was a very exciting experience. Everyone there took an active and interested part in the discussion which reached a superb level of intellectual depth; nearly everyone there said they had found it a unique meeting. Very tired now. Will write it all out tomorrow.

  I never did, and I have no memory at all of the most memorable evening I spent at Harvard.

  Matilal and I began reading Sanskrit texts with T.R.V. Murti, the Buddhist scholar from the Benares Hindu University. When he found out I was dating a girl, he told me he could not teach me unless I stopped. It was the Hindu tradition. I was surprised when Matilal defended him, because I always presumed he was as secular as I was rapidly becoming. But it was his tradition, and he knew it intimately. There was nothing, he explained, peculiar about Murti’s comment, given that he thought of the two of us as more than ordinary students. For Murti, it was as if we were his chelas, his disciples, and he saw it as his duty to teach us more than Sanskrit. But I did not stop.

  Matilal and I also read some texts with the great Sanskrit scholar V. Raghavan from Madras. He was a man much taken with himself and his knowledge of Sanskrit, which was indeed phenomenal. Matilal and I invited him to an Indian curry in my apartment, and when he arrived we were playing The Magic Flute. He entered, sniffed the air suspiciously (neither Matilal nor I were sterling cooks), and told us to take off the noise.

  “But Professor Raghavan,” I protested, “that is not noise. That is The Magic Flute.”

  “I don’t care what kind of flute it is, take it off.”

  I later put on some Indian music, but that was not to his liking, either, since it was North Indian, and he only liked South Indian music. Before he left, I asked him what Sanskritist I might consider working with when I went to India, and he told me, “There is only one Sanskritist in India, and you are talking to him.” While a great scholar, he was also a devout Hindu, and he told us proudly: “Every morning when I awake, I recite a chapter from The Ramayana in Sanskrit. No breakfast without Ramayana.” In his own way, he was as fanatical as P.B.

  Edward Conze, the Buddhist scholar from England, was at Harvard at that time as well. Nagatomi and I took him out to dinner one night, during which he proceeded to destroy the reputation of his colleagues. Over dessert he hissed at his wife, who had mildly corrected him: “What do you know about such matters? You were a cleaning lady when I met you.” This completely flabbergasted me and the other guests. Alan Watts, too, had been unbearably rude to his wife, bragging openly about his attraction to other women. I was beginning to wonder about these scholars of Hinduism and Buddhism. The gentleness and compassion for all beings that they read about in their texts did not seem to translate into their lives.

  The more I learned about India, the more I realized how little P.B. actually knew. This began to enrage me. I felt I had been taken in, duped. It was all a trick. P.B. knew no Sanskrit, knew no texts, invented things, lied, cheated, and stole, intellectually speaking. How could I have been so stupid? In spirit, P.B. might have been like the Indian sages he idolized. His ideas may have been similar to theirs. But he did not really represent any tradition, any body of knowledge, any other person—in fact, anything at all. He was just a hodgepodge of misread and misunderstood ideas from an ancient culture he did not know or understand. In this sense he was a phony, a charlatan, a mountebank, an impostor, a quack. I couldn’t find enough words to describe my disappointment.

  I ranted and railed to my parents. They were fair to me, but they also defended P.B. They were interested not in scholarship but in experience. I felt it incumbent on me to prove to them that P.B. was a fraud. The opportunity came while I was still at Harvard, spending a summer with my parents in Cannes. P.B. was there.

  I had long wondered how P.B. had become Dr. Brunton. Something about this was wrong. I knew enough now about universities to realize that P.B. could not possibly have been awarded a Ph.D. for any of his books. The fact that nowhere in his writings did he ever mention having studied at a university made me suspicious. Was it merely a marketing device, to make his books more acceptable? Could somebody simply award himself a degree? Wasn’t this illegal? One day I decided to ask, in front of my parents. It was an awkward conversation, undoubtedly because when I finally was able to ask, at twenty-two, it was only because I really already knew, or suspected I knew, the answer. I had long thought there was no real doctorate, that the “doctor” in Dr. Brunton was a sham. But I wanted to ask him and force him to respond in front of others. I was beginning to take revenge for the kind of deception P.B. had practiced upon me.

  “P.B.,” I asked innocently, “what degree do you have?”

  “I have a weighty academic honor.”

  “What is that?”

  “A Ph.D.”

  “Where is it from?”

  Long pause. Finally: “Roosevelt University in Chicago.”

  “When did you attend graduate school there?”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Did you have an oral examination?”

  “I did not. I was awarded the degree partly on a philosophical thesis submitted that was judged as showing a capacity for original research and as making a contribution toward existing knowledge and partly in recognition of distinguished service to the cause of Oriental research.”

  It sounded very formal. Had he rehearsed this for just such an occasion as now? “You mean, the faculty of Oriental research awarded you this degree?”

  “No, I became a candidate specifically for a doctorate of philosophy because this would be a recognition of attainment in the field that most concerned my future publications.”

  “Were you actually there? I mean, how did you get your degree?”

  “It was mailed to me.”

  “Did you write a thesis?”

  “Yes.”

  “What was it called?”

  “I no longer remember”

  “About India?”

  “Yes.”

  “Involving Sanskrit?”

  “Yes.” But the yes was becoming fainter and fainter. My parents were silent, looking away in embarrassment for both of us. My cruelty was beginning to pall on me.

  “Did you ever use your degree?”

  “No, because there is no academic or professional post that I would accept were it to be offered me.”

  “Was one ever offered?”

  A thin smile, silence. To my parents this signified “many.” To me, it meant “no.” “In any event, if I were to discard the college degree I hold, my place in world literature is assured.”

  World literature? The man was hallucinating. But I could not continue, much as I wished to. My parents were not amused by my supercilious manner, and I realized that what I was doing was intolerable to them. I couldn’t help but ask him a final question, though: “When did you get your degree?” It was the ultimate in bad manners, and before he could answer or, more likely, remain silent, my parents brought the conversation to a close. “Jeff, this conversation is rude and unnecessary. Enough.” I was triumphant, my parents, appalled.

  “So what?” my father said later. “So if he doesn’t have a Harvard degree? Does it make any difference?” It made a difference to me because I could remember the years of servility, the many introductions my father had made where the doctor was emphasized, no doubt reflecting the Jewish admiration for learning “Here was a man who knows something,” it said, a scholar, a man o
f the book. But P.B. was no such thing. The degree was fraudulent, the scholarship nonexistent, the learning of Sanskrit a wishful or wistful thought. P.B. knew a series, a limited series, of words in Sanskrit, not a language. He could not read the alphabet, any Indian alphabet, nor a single sentence in Sanskrit. Indeed, he would not even know if a sentence were Sanskrit or Hindi. He was completely ignorant of the language. More deeply, he was totally ignorant of the larger issues of Indian history and culture. He knew nothing of the reality of India. He inhabited a phantom India that existed only in his imagination and that of his disciples. Even as a fantasy it was impoverished, for nothing real that happened to Indians, all the despair and misery, the abuse, the disillusion, some of which was documented in texts he could not read and some of which he must himself have witnessed, would ever find a home, even a transient one, in his thinking.

  I recently called Roosevelt University and spoke to the chair of the department of philosophy, as well as to the office of the president. Perhaps, I thought to myself, I have been doing P.B. an injustice. After all, many people have degrees who have done little or no scholarship. Maybe P.B. had admirers in the university who appreciated the fact, which I could not deny, that he brought Indian philosophy to the attention of Western Europe and the United States. It was sad. Nobody had heard of him. There was nothing about a Paul Brunton in any file.

  By August 1945, P.B. had had note paper made up that said, “Dr. Paul Brunton.” The recognition of the world may be nothing but maya, but he craved it anyway. He seemed to need it as badly as I needed to reach through my illusion to disillusion.

  That final disillusion came the summer of 1967, in Cascais, Portugal. My parents were spending their summer vacation there, and P.B. joined them. It is to my parents’ credit, I think, that they maintained friendly and cordial relations with P.B. The same could not be said for me. I was twenty-six at the time, at the height of my resentment for what I then perceived as the lies of my childhood with P.B. I was in my final year as a graduate student in Sanskrit at Harvard and by now knew enough Sanskrit to know that P.B. did not know any. One evening after dinner, the conversation turned to the subject of mediums. I was entirely skeptical. P.B. was not only a complete believer but gave us to understand that he knew certain things about trance mediumship that made it dangerous to engage in.

  “Like what?” I said.

  “The spirits that come, when called, are often half-animal, half-human, and they are antagonistic to humans because of the way they were treated while alive.”

  The comment was preposterous to me, and I said so.

  “P.B., that’s nonsense, and you know it.”

  P.B. was adamant “It is true. We may submit ourselves to invading spirits of an evil order who thrust themselves upon our brains.”

  “P.B., excuse me for being impolite, but that is pure bullshit. You are talking plain rubbish. None of this exists, and you know it.” But I wasn’t really sure. Maybe he really did believe it after all.

  P.B. was not the least bit angry. “No, Jeff, you are wrong.” He then asked me what it would take for me to abandon my growing disbelief in the whole system that was his life. “For example, were I to cause this table to rise up in the air and float there, would that convince you?”

  I suppose this was to have had even more effect since he had just talked about the dangers involved. Maybe he was hoping everybody would recoil in horror at the thought. He had his usual calm air about him, and he said it with such self-confidence that for a moment I was hesitant to answer. The table he was referring to was an immense ancient oak dining-room table, weighing several hundred pounds at least.

  We were about eight people seated around the table, including my sister, my mother and father, and several guests. The challenge was simple. I accepted. “Yes, P.B., if this table were to rise in the air, I would concede my defeat. But, P.B., it is impossible. It won’t happen.” I wanted to save him the humiliation that I could sense was about to come. He smiled mysteriously, and I once again wondered what he had in mind with such a direct, simple, and open challenge. At last, the moment of truth seemed to have arrived for both of us. What was he planning?

  P.B. asked us to place our hands on top of the table and to close our eyes He was going to call the spirits to assist him in raising the table. We all did as instructed P.B. began to chant some mumbo-jumbo that he claimed was Sanskrit, but of course by now I knew better. Suddenly he said he could feel the presence of the spirits in the room. “Keep your eyes tightly shut,” he ordered, which I took as a signal for me to open mine. I saw everybody doing exactly as P.B. suggested, with their hands flat on the large table. Meanwhile he placed his hands underneath the tabletop and began to push up with all the strength in his little body, which was not much, causing a slight movement of the massive table. Then he said, “They are here, and they are beginning to move the table. Can you feel it?”

  “Yes,” came the assent from those around the table.

  I could stand it no longer “Well, I’m not surprised it is moving, since you have your hands underneath it and are pushing it.”

  P.B. started and gave the appearance of emerging from a trance. He looked sad and weary. Suddenly I felt small. My parents were horrified, not at the deception he had perpetrated on them but once again at my bad manners. I had to concede their point. But bad manners was one thing, fraud another. P.B. had been caught red-handed in an attempt to convince people that spirits were present, when all that was present were his own hands. I can’t imagine how he would have proceeded. No amount of effort could have lifted the table into the air. I suppose he was hoping that the movement would be sufficient to quell my skepticism. Maybe he would explain that the spirits were exhausted that day, but we had all felt their presence, had we not? Maybe he thought he could somehow persuade us to believe that it had actually risen when all it had done was move. I find it hard to imagine what was going through his mind.

  This incident spelled the end for me. The unmasking was complete. P.B. hardly reacted. Maybe he was relieved it had finally come: the day of reckoning. For me, P.B. was now nothing more than a charlatan, reduced to attempting carnival tricks for what he hoped would be a gullible audience. Maybe I had unnerved him or enraged him, or perhaps he was himself just too tired that day to rise to the occasion. It was a pathetic ending. I was not without feelings of guilt at having reduced him to this. It was a little bit like seeing a spiritual Napoleon pacing his island prison and dreaming of his days of glory. He who had commanded millions could not now find a single boatman to take him away. P.B., too, had—at least in his mind—been engaged in gigantic spiritual battles, commanding unseen forces from distant stars all for the good of mankind. And here in this obscure corner of Europe he could not lift a dining-room table an inch off the ground. What an ignoble end. Did he hate me? I don’t know. I never saw him again.

  My parents did not lose touch with him, however, for he was their friend, whatever they thought of him as a spiritual master. He had not published another book after the one in 1951, The Spiritual Crisis of Man, which sold few copies and was ridiculed by reviewers. His disciples had begun to fall away after the World War III debacle.

  Eventually he moved to Switzerland, where he rented a tiny apartment in Vevey on the Lake of Geneva. Here he lived in retirement and obscurity, still taking his notes, reading his mystic books, preparing his meager meals for himself and answering his ever-diminishing mail. His books were hardly read; few people asked him to speak anymore or wished to see him. My parents continued to visit him, however, and he them, mainly in Cannes in the South of France. He seemed happy, and not the least depressed at the alterations in his literary fortunes. Astonishingly, he did not seem to mind the loss of his status as a guru. He seemed pleased, even relieved, that my parents now treated him as a friend rather than as a guru. The air of mystery surrounding him became less, his secretiveness diminished, his pretensions began to vanish. He and I did not remain friends. I think the fault was primarily
mine. I never attempted to see him again. In some way the disappointment went deep.

  As the connection with P.B. began to loosen, however, my father’s rivalry with his brother Bernard merely intensified. Bernard seemed still locked in a battle with P.B., unable to relinquish him as a guru and keep him as a friend. Perhaps he had invested too much, or perhaps there was little else for him. My father, now living in the South of France, decided to attempt shock therapy on Bernard, with a “Wake Up Bernard” letter dated March 20, 1965:

  Wake up Bernard! Wake up before it’s too late. Come out of your cocoon now. You have buried yourself long enough, Bernard, and it is about time you woke up. You really should try and see Dr. Mira Schneider in Buenos Aires. She is a very good friend of ours and has been a tremendous help to me. She has released me from my inhibitions and complexes. Go and see her and unload yourself completely. She is a very great woman and may not be in this world much longer as she is very sick. So take advantage while she is still here. She is more than a psychiatrist, since she herself has found the Truth.

  Now Bernard, you must face some facts. P.B. is not the great Guru you have made him out to be all these years. Actually, he ruined your life and almost ruined mine When I first went to see him in Mysore he agreed to be my Guru, saying that he had only accepted one disciple before me. Then a year later he told me he was not a Guru. He even gave me financial advice saying that since I was in a lucky cycle, I could speculate in the stock market. This caused me about a $25,000 loss in the Cotton future in Palm Springs. Remember? Once when he saw a house he insisted upon buying it. When I pointed out to him that he should wait, he told me “Look here, when one sees his Guru he recognizes him instantly. In the same way, I know this house is ideally suited to me.” A couple of days later I put a deposit of $1,000 on the house which I lost because it turned out to be unsuitable for him after all.