My Guru & His Disciple (26 page)

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On December 11, 1957, while we were staying in London, I had had a dream about Brahmananda.

The first part of my dream had no particular location. I was somewhere talking to someone in monastic robes whom I knew to be Brahmananda. I say “knew” rather than “recognized,” because I had no clear image of his physical features—although they were so familiar to me when I was awake, because of all the photographs I had seen.

Brahmananda said to me that he couldn't understand why Ramakrishna had traveled from one place to another, since he was able to see God anywhere. I went away and thought this remark over. Then I decided to go back and ask Brahmananda why
he
had traveled around so much—far more, actually, than Ramakrishna had.

When I returned to put my question, Brahmananda was seated on a platform; this was about six feet high, with trees growing behind it. Both the platform and the trees were somewhat Japanese in appearance. (Remembering them after waking, I thought that I might have borrowed them from the scenery of the Kyoto temples, which Don and I had recently visited.)

As I approached the platform, Brahmananda prostrated before me. And I prostrated before him, shedding tears and thinking of my unworthiness but also feeling a tremendous joy. Although my forehead was bowed down to the ground below the platform and the platform was so high, I felt Brahmananda's hands touching the back of my head in blessing—which would have been physically impossible for him. (This may have signified that the power of a blessing cannot be limited by distance.)

I suppose that the astonishment and joy caused by Brahmananda's prostration and blessing made me forget about my question. Anyhow, I didn't ask it. As I got up and walked away from the platform, there were suddenly other people around me. One of them asked, “Did Maharaj tell you anything you may tell
us
?” This was said with deep respect. I knew that Brahmananda's behavior toward me had made them regard me as someone of importance. I shook my head, still shedding tears but now beginning to feel vain and take credit to myself for the grace which had been shown me. Then I woke up.

During my dream, it had seemed to me that I understood why Brahmananda prostrated before me. I had interpreted his action by relating it to a scene in Dostoevsky's
The Brothers Karamazov,
in which the saintly Father Zosima bows down at Dmitri Karamazov's feet. Zosima later explains that he had bowed down to the great suffering which he saw was in store for Dmitri.

However, when I was awake again and was considering the dream, I realized that this interpretation couldn't be correct. Zosima's reaction, produced by Dostoevsky's own obsession with suffering and guilt, would be quite foreign to Brahmananda's way of thinking as a Vedantist. Even if my karma was as bad as Dmitri's, Brahmananda would still regard me as an embodiment of the Atman, not as a
jiva,
an individual soul living in ignorance of its divine nature. I now interpreted Brahmananda's prostration as a reminder—the Atman in himself was bowing down to the Atman in me in order to remind me of what I truly was. Brahmananda, unlike Zosima, had not only bowed down but also blessed me as an individual soul, thus reassuring me that he loved and accepted me even with all my present imperfections.

Although my dream had had a dreamlike setting, my change of attitude in it, from humble thankfulness to smug self-congratulation, had been psychologically lifelike. I had been very much my ordinary self throughout it, despite its extraordinary happenings. Thus it had had some of the quality of a normal experience.

I now realized that I had never, before this, felt strongly drawn to Maharaj. That was because I had misunderstood his nature, finding him awesome and remote. Vivekananda's humorous, aggressive, sparkling personality attracted me much more because he seemed more human—that is, more of an individual. But what my dream experience had given me was a moment's awareness of a love which was larger than human. For the first time, I began to understand what Swami meant when he said that Maharaj had
become
love. That, perhaps, was why I had been conscious of him in my dream as a presence, rather than as an outwardly recognizable person.

When I described all this to Swami, he assured me that my dream had actually been a vision. He was speaking from his own experience in stating that you could have a vision either when awake or when asleep; both kinds were equally valid.

“It was a great grace,” he told me solemnly. On another occasion, speaking to Prema, he interpreted this vision as having been a sign from Maharaj that I was the proper person to write the Ramakrishna biography. How like Swami that was! When he had set his heart on something, it
had
to have the Lord's blessing.

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March 13, 1958. Swami told me that the people at Belur Math had written that George had been utterly transformed by sannyas in a single day—but they didn't say how. George himself had written: “Three days ago, I became a Brahmin. Two days ago, I became a ghost—one always becomes what one fears! Yesterday I became Krishnananda.” There is a majestic note of impersonality in this last sentence. It's like when you say, in the ritual worship, “I am He.”

(George was referring to different stages of his preparation to take the vows of sannyas. The sannyasin has to renounce all caste distinctions. Since you can't renounce what you haven't got, George had first to be admitted into the highest caste, that of the Brahmins. Taking sannyas is regarded as a spiritual rebirth. Since you can't be reborn as long as you are still alive, George had first to think of himself as having died and become a ghost.)

March 28. Swami said he has only recently discovered that God's grace is actually in the mantram. Maharaj had told him that this was so.

April 24. Swami says that visions don't matter—only devotion matters. He told me to “remember the Lord.”

May 9. Swami said that enlightenment is not loss of individuality but enlargement of individuality, because you realize that you're everything.

June 26. Swami told me that he feels the presence of the Lord almost continuously; he no longer has to make much of an effort. When he wakes up in the night—which he has to do, two or three times, to go to the toilet, because of his prostate trouble—he feels the presence. Sometimes it is Ramakrishna, sometimes Holy Mother, Maharaj, or Swamiji. I asked if it made any difference that he had known Maharaj and seen Holy Mother during their lifetimes, but not the others. No, he said, they were all equally real.

He says he never prays directly for problems to be solved. He only asks for more devotion to the Lord.

August 22. Unwillingly, I have to admit to myself that the whole introductory section of Ramakrishna and His Disciples—telling how I personally came to know about him—is irrelevant. I've written seventy pages and it's not that they're bad; they just don't belong in this book. I can probably use them, one of these days, somewhere else.

(The Vedanta Society's press published a revised version of this material in 1963, as a pamphlet called
An Approach to Vedanta.
)

August 31. Swami told me on the phone that a well-known actress came to him and asked if she should go to India. Swami said, “Why? You won't get anything out of India unless you have reached something inside yourself.” He then asked her if she had been meditating according to his instructions. When she told him no, he “got all excited” and told her not to come back until she had done so for a month. So then she got out of her chair and sat on the floor at Swami's feet and said, “Teach me once again.” So he did, and she went away—on probation!

November 19. Tonight I went up to the Center. Suddenly I was so glad to be sitting on the floor beside Swami's chair—like his dog, without saying a word. After supper, I read them the revised first chapter of the Ramakrishna book.

December 11. Swami told me that he'd had “a terrible time” that morning, in the shrine room: “I mean, a
good
terrible time.” He had been overpowered by the knowledge that “there is abundant grace.” He had cried so much that he had had to leave the temple. He said, what was the use of reasoning and philosophy, when all that mattered was love of God.

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Early in January 1959, while I was having supper with Swami, he mentioned the apartment house which the Vedanta Society was about to have built, as an income property. Several devotees were planning to move into it. He urged me and Don to take one of the apartments.

To have done this would have been almost the same as moving into the Center itself, right across the street. We should have become involved in all its activities, to the gradual exclusion of our own. No doubt, Swami would soon have got into the habit of sending for me at all hours, just as he would send for one of the monks or nuns, whenever he was troubled by an anxiety or inspired by a new project … No, the apartment house was out of the question for us, and I never considered it seriously, though I had to pretend to him for a while that I was doing so.

Swami's suggestion was obviously his first move in another back-to-the-monastery campaign. This time, my relationship with Don was under attack. When monk- or nun-making was possible, one had to accept the fact that Swami, being Swami, would do his best to break up any worldly relationship, however fond he might be of the individuals involved in it.

Though I knew better than to try to persuade Don, I did, of course, hope that he might eventually become Swami's disciple. I longed to share that part of my life with him. But, in that case, Swami would have to accept us as a pair of householder devotees. I couldn't imagine myself becoming a monk again under any circumstances, as long as I had Don. If Don were to decide to become a monk, I suppose I might have followed him back into the Order—even though I knew that this would be a separation; a more painful one, perhaps, than death or desertion. Swami would keep us living apart from each other in different centers. He had already “put asunder” several married couples who wished to become monastics, sending the wife to Montecito and the husband to Trabuco. The old permissive days of the single Hollywood household were long since over.

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April 29, 1959. Swami told us he believes that he, as an old man during his last incarnation, met Brahmananda as a young man. This was during the eighteen-eighties, on the bank of the river Narmada, where they were both practicing austerities.

I don't think I had ever heard Swami say this before—as he grew older, he revealed more and more of his past life. If I had heard this earlier, I should have remembered it as a possible explanation of Maharaj's otherwise mysterious question, when he and Abanindra first met: “Haven't I seen you before?”

Swami's statement also relates to a story which is printed in his book about Brahmananda,
The Eternal Companion:

I was sitting cross-legged in front of Maharaj with his feet resting on my knees. This was the position in which I often used to massage his feet. Then something happened to me which I cannot explain, though I feel certain that it was Maharaj's doing. I found myself in a condition in which I was talking and talking, forgetting my usual restraint; it seemed to me that I spoke freely and even eloquently for a long time, but I do not remember what I said. Maharaj listened and said nothing.

Suddenly I returned to normal consciousness and became aware of Maharaj leaning toward me and asking with an amused smile, “What did you say?” I then realized that I had addressed him as “tumi” (the familiar form of “you,” which is used in speaking to equals and friends). I hastened to correct myself, repeating the sentence—I have forgotten what it was—but using “apani” (the respectful form of “you,” by which we addressed him). At this, he seemed to lose all interest in the conversation and sat upright again.

I can only assume that Maharaj wanted to corroborate his own intuitive knowledge of my past lives and that he therefore put me into this unusual state of consciousness in which I was able to tell him what he wanted to know.

(The Hindus believe that memory of our past lives is stored in the mind and can be evoked by oneself or by another person. If Swami had been an old man at the time of this previous meeting with Brahmananda, it would have been natural for him to address the young Brahmananda familiarly.)

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In the middle of that summer, one of the monks at Trabuco decided that he wanted to leave the Order and marry a woman he had met. He had been in the monastery for years and the monastic life had seemed to be his true and contentedly accepted vocation.

Swami had been known to get violently upset in such situations, shedding tears and lying awake for nights on end. On first hearing about the woman, he had exclaimed, “I'd like to poison her!” Later, however, he became calm and seemed almost indifferent—which rather hurt the monk's feelings. This intrigued me. When I questioned Swami, he showed a curious objectivity, as he often did when discussing his own reactions. “I couldn't pray for him, Chris. I don't know why. I only said that the Lord must do his will. I prayed three whole nights for ———,” naming another monastic who had left the Order.

Swami's view was: Why did the monk have to marry this woman right away? Why didn't he go off with her somewhere and have an affair? Then he would probably get tired of her and want to come back to the Order. Swami was quite ready to take the monk back, as long as he wasn't married; but if he did rejoin the Order, Swami said, he would be sent to one of the Ramakrishna monasteries in India for a while, before returning to Trabuco. The monk finally got married, however.

Lest readers think that Swami's attitude to the woman betrayed male chauvinism, I should mention that on another occasion, when one of the nuns wanted to marry a man, Swami's attitude to him was equally ruthless.