My Guru & His Disciple (22 page)

While I was working on such passages, it was easy to tell myself that I was unworthy of my task. Puritanism tempted the ego to assert itself in the role of Outcast Sinner, just when I should have been ignoring it completely and getting on with the job. This wasn't a question of being worthy or unworthy but of having the necessary literary skill; I had it, so what was there to worry about? It is arguable that, in certain cases, a spiritual teacher may lose credibility because his way of life contradicts what he teaches. But here it was Shankara, the impeccable, who was doing the teaching; I was merely his scribe.

My progress through the
Crest-Jewel
was slow. I didn't finish it until the end of 1946. It was published in 1947.

*   *   *

In January 1947, I took off by plane on my first postwar visit to England. I hadn't seen my mother or my brother, Richard, in eight years. This trip was clearly necessary and could be justified to everybody, including Swami, as a family duty. However, when it was over, I didn't return to California. Caskey was waiting for me in New York, where we had decided to try living for a while. It wasn't long before New York had convinced us both that it wasn't for us. But, meanwhile, I had had an offer from my publishers to write a travel book for them about South America. This appealed to us as an adventure and also because it would give Caskey a chance to practice his profession, photography. Our journey began in September 1947 and continued throughout the following winter and spring. From Buenos Aires we sailed for France, stayed a week in Paris, and then crossed to England.

While in Paris in April 1948, we saw Denny Fouts for the first time in about two years. My meeting with him is described in
Down There on a Visit
more or less as it actually took place, except that Caskey had to be left out because he wasn't a character in the novel. Denny was then smoking opium whenever he could afford to. When he couldn't, he had to content himself with a kind of tea brewed from the dross out of his opium pipe; from this he got small pleasure and violent stomach cramps. He didn't give us the impression of being depressed or debauched or down-at-heel, however. He was dressed with extreme elegance when he came to have dinner with us at a restaurant—or rather, to watch us eat. He did so with an air of controlled distaste, as though our addiction to solid food were a far more squalid vice than his. Now and then, his manner became a trifle vague, but his wit was as sharp as ever.

There is one memory which I want to recall here, although it is also recorded in
Down There on a Visit.
Arriving at Denny's apartment one day, we were introduced to some young French friends of his. They began what sounded like a parody of Frenchified intellectual conversation. One of them made a sneering reference to those dupes who believe in a life after death. What I can still hear as I write this is the withering tone in which Denny silenced him, exclaiming, “You little
fool
!” Denny's scorn was quite uncannily impressive. It was as if he
knew.

He died that same year on December 16, almost instantly, of a heart attack, in Rome.

*   *   *

I saw Swami shortly after my return to Los Angeles in July 1948, but we didn't meet often during the rest of that year. I was busy at M-G-M, helping write a film based on Dostoevsky's
The Gambler.
Also, I had started writing
The Condor and the Cows,
the book which describes our South American journey.

During the fall, Swami added to my work load with a project of his own—to translate and write a commentary on the yoga aphorisms of Patanjali. Although they are usually called aphorisms in the English translations, their Sanskrit name
sutras
is more descriptive, because
sutra
means, literally, “thread.” Composed in a period when there were no books, these terse sentences were designed to be easily memorized; they form only the bare connective thread of a philosophical exposition. Here are Patanjali's first four sutras:

This is the beginning of instruction in yoga.

Yoga is the control of thought waves in the mind.

Then man abides in his real nature.

At other times, man remains identified with the thought waves.

It will be seen that a great deal of explanation has already become necessary here. In ancient times, a teacher would repeat each sutra from memory and would then explain it in his own way. Often, these explanations would be memorized by his students and passed down to later generations. Thus a large and growing body of commentary attached itself to the original work. Vivekananda himself had made a commentary on Patanjali while he was lecturing in the United States, and Swami quoted from this extensively.

When I started work, my intention was simply to polish Swami's commentary and perhaps revise its phrasing, here and there. But comment inspires comment. Additional explanations and illustrations kept occurring to me and being slipped into the text. Furthermore, I found myself writing for an audience of my own, those of my friends who knew almost nothing about Vedanta and needed to have Patanjali explained to them in Occidental terms. Through all this, I had the support of Swami's approval. Still, I am more aware now than I was then that our editorial “we” had to represent two audibly different tones of voice, the Bengali and the British.

(Our Patanjali was published in 1953. The publishers had asked us for a special title, to distinguish it from other translations of the sutras, and in an uninspired moment I had suggested
How to Know God,
which was enthusiastically accepted. The title now makes me think of all those books which tell you
how to
fix the plumbing, plant a vegetable garden, cook on a barbecue, etc., and embarrasses me so much that I avoid saying it aloud, if I possibly can.)

November 6. Master, be with me specially at such times. Help me to remember you constantly and let me feel your presence. You aren't shocked by the camping of the publicans and the screaming of the sinners. You didn't condemn—you danced with the drunkards.

This was written after a party which my diary describes as a “massacre.” It had left me with an unusually bad hangover and, no doubt, a sinkful of dishwashing to be done. Such a situation was apt to arouse my puritan resentment against the life I was allowing myself to lead. Only, this time, it seems that my reaction was more positive. If we
had
to have such parties, why not mentally invite Ramakrishna to join us? He couldn't refuse.

Ramakrishna had been known to get out of a carriage to dance with drunkards on the street. The sight of their reeling inspired him because it made him think of the way a holy man reels in ecstasy. He danced with his friend G. C. Ghosh, a famous dramatist and actor, when Ghosh was drunk, and encouraged him to go on drinking. Ghosh took advantage of Ramakrishna's permissiveness and visited him at all hours of the night, sometimes on the way home from a whorehouse.

Ghosh became a kind of patron saint for me—I felt closer to him than to any other member of Ramakrishna's circle—but I wasn't worthy to be his disciple. I failed to go the whole hog, as he had, either in debauchery or devotion. Ghosh dared to reveal himself shamelessly to Ramakrishna, thereby making a sacrifice of his own self-esteem and self-will and submitting totally to Ramakrishna's guidance. That was his greatness. I am sorry, now, that, throughout my long relationship with Swami, I never once came into his presence drunk. Something wonderful might have happened.

*   *   *

On March 1, 1949, I went up to the Center to take part in Ramakrishna's birthday puja. Webster was there. He had left the Center not long after I had. I think he was already married, or engaged to be.

At first he was a little awkward and on the defensive with me. Then we settled down into the mood of old alumni, and joked about the new building schemes—the temple is to have enlarged wings. The old place certainly has changed. Nearly all the girls are now up at Montecito, and there are several new monks here. George took flash-bulb photos throughout the puja. This bothered some people, but it's his privilege, granted by Swami.

They have recently bought another house, the one that stands behind 1946. There is a room in it which Swami says is for me. It rather scares me, the way he waits. Shall I ever find myself back there? It seems impossible—and yet—

While Swami was in Arizona the other day, as the guest of some devotees, he was taken to Taliesin West, where he met Frank Lloyd Wright. Swami—who had never heard of Wright—and whose previous ideas of architecture were limited to domes and lots of gold—was greatly impressed. “Mr. Wright,” he said, “you are not an architect, you are a philosopher.” And he added that, at Taliesin, you felt yourself “not in a house but protected by Nature.” I couldn't help laughing when Swami told me this, because the cunningest flatterer couldn't have buttered Wright up more completely than Swami had, in his utter artlessness. Needless to say, Wright was enchanted.

July 26. Today I went to the Center to attend Sister's funeral—or rather, the part of it which took place in the temple. I think her family organized another ceremony elsewhere.

Sister died last week in Montecito. I saw her there on the 20th, I drove up for lunch. She had had pneumonia then, and an attack of uremia, but she seemed better that day. The dark plum-colored rash which had broken out in several places on her body was clearing. She apologized for it with her usual courtesy. She didn't want me to touch her hand, which was smeared with salve. She had known me as soon as I came into the room. “It's so nice to see old friends,” she said. After a few minutes she drowsed off. Amiya and Swami told me that, much of the time, she thought she was back in Honolulu, where she lived during her youth. Swami also told me that she had had difficulty in urinating but was able to do so after he'd given her a drop of Ganges water. (How this would horrify some people I know!) I came away with a feeling that she was going to recover this time.

Today was a hot morning. I arrived at the temple in a bad mood, having been horrible and unkind to Caskey before I left the house. Some people arrived with flowers, which I hate at funerals and never bring if I can avoid it. There were women in various degrees of elegant mourning. Swami sat on the sofa in the living room. You couldn't exactly say his face looked tragic, but the brightness had left it and it was almost frighteningly austere.

He took my arm and led me into his bedroom, where he told me about Sister's death. Just before it happened, Swami found himself “in a high spiritual mood,” and then they called him into her room, and at that moment the breath left her body with a faint puff, through the lips.

“She was a saint,” Swami said. He believes that she passed into samadhi at the end. He said how, recently, she had told him that she never left the shrine until she had seen “a light.” She thought this quite normal and supposed that everybody saw it. In fact, she was apologizing to Swami because, in her case, it often took quite a long time and made her late for meals and kept people waiting.

Came away in a calm happy “open” mood, and felt a real horror of my unkindness to Caskey and of any unkindness to anyone. Thinking of Sister, I remembered how I asked her, once, what Vivekananda had been like. She answered without hesitation, “Oh, he was like a great cat—so graceful.”

*   *   *

By gradual degrees, Gerald Heard had become disinclined to go on living at Trabuco. No doubt, as he grew older—he was now sixty—he felt the strain of being the central figure in this group, and of all the talk and letter writing and planning that it involved. This year, he came to a decision: Trabuco ought to belong to an organization which could make more effective use of it. Gerald easily persuaded his fellow trustees to agree with him, as soon as he had made it clear that he himself was determined to retire. And so Trabuco, which had never been the property of an individual, was offered to another non-individual, the Vedanta Society.

It so happened that a number of young men had joined the Center during the past months. Swami sent several of them to live at Trabuco. It was officially opened as a Vedanta monastery on September 7.

In October, Swami left for India with George and three of the nuns. They returned in May 1950. I saw Swami fairly often after his return, but I have no record of our meetings. My diary keeping almost stopped, that year, because of misery-sloth induced by the Korean War and the gradual breakdown of my relationship with Caskey. We were both aware of this breakdown but wrongly blamed it on the pressures of life in Los Angeles, so we decided to move down to Laguna Beach. Once settled into a house there, we soon began to jar upon each other again. My few diary entries of 1951 are mostly self-scoldings—for giving way to feelings of helplessness, for being “criminally unhappy,” for trying to impose my will on Caskey under the guise of “reason.” I now began to spend more and more time away from him, staying in Los Angeles.

*   *   *

August 22, 1951. Today I had lunch with Swami, who is at Trabuco. He urged me, more strongly than ever before, to come back and live with them. He said, “It
must
happen. I've wanted it and prayed for it so much.” I answered evasively, as usual.

Gerald Heard and Chris Wood came to visit him later, and I returned with them to Laguna and had tea. I asked Gerald what he thought I should do about Trabuco. He said that I should obey Swami and go to live there. He said that he knew Swami was “deeply disturbed” about me, and that he was disturbed himself. If I didn't do as Swami told me, “something terrible” might happen to me.

I asked, “What?” Gerald said that I might lose my faith entirely and cease to believe that God exists. He then became very mysterious, saying that he feared I was being followed by “something” which was trying to possess me, and even hinting that he had had a glimpse of it. I asked him to describe what it looked like. He gazed at me solemnly for a moment and then answered sternly, “No.”