My Guru and His Disciple

by Christopher Isherwood

  * * *

  I had now met Aldous Huxley many times—usually with Maria, but occasionally by himself at M-G-M, while we were both working there. (He was earning fifteen hundred dollars a week, and sending most of it to help relatives and friends in wartime Europe.) I already felt at ease with Maria, who was charmingly outspoken; she asked me frank questions about my personal life, which I answered with equal frankness. When the three of us were together, we behaved like intimate friends. When Aldous and I were alone, I felt uneasy because I was aware—indeed, it was Gerald who had made me aware—that Aldous, with all his liberalism, found homosexuality and the homosexual temperament deeply distasteful. I am sure that he liked me personally and that he fought against his prejudice. He was a nobly fair-minded man. Nevertheless, my uneasiness remained.

  That Aldous and I were both officially disciples of Prabhavananda didn’t strengthen the bond between us, as far as I was concerned. I was beginning to realize that Aldous and Prabhavananda were temperamentally far apart. Prabhavananda was strongly devotional. Aldous was much more akin to his friend Krishnamurti, who was then living at Ojai, a couple of hours’ drive from Los Angeles. Krishnamurti expounded a philosophy of discrimination between the real and the unreal; as a Hindu who had broken away from Hinduism, he was repelled by devotional religion and its rituals. He also greatly disapproved of the guru-disciple relationship.

  According to my diary (July 31), I must have told Aldous at least something about Prabhavananda’s latest instructions to me, thus prompting Aldous to tell me that Krishnamurti never meditated on “objects”—such as lotuses, lights, gods, and goddesses—and even believed that doing so might lead to insanity.

  This conversation disturbed me very much. Suppose Gerald is barking up the wrong tree? But I’m also aware that these doubts are not quite candid; they are being prompted by the Ego as part of its sabotage effort.

  My indiscretion in talking to Aldous about Prabhavananda’s instructions was inexcusable. Indeed, it was worse than an indiscretion, since I must have known in advance that Aldous would be critical, and would thus disturb me and strengthen my doubts.

  * * *

  The refugees weren’t the only ones who drew me into their midst and away from Prabhavananda. There was also an assortment of men and women whom I will call “Seekers,” because many of them would have so described themselves. I met them through Gerald, who had now become a central figure in their circles, not only in Los Angeles, but throughout the country. Chris Wood protected him from the Seekers’ phone calls by refusing to take messages for him, but his mail was enormous and urgent. “It’s funny,” I once said to him, “how these people invariably write to you airmail special delivery, when all their questions are about eternity.”

  Some of the Seekers had unquestionable integrity and courage—even perhaps saintliness: a man who had become a clergyman because he had had a vision of Christ when he was fighting in World War I, a Japanese who had been persecuted by his countrymen for his pacifism, an ex-burglar who had practiced mental non-violence while being beaten up by prison guards. As for the rest, many might have been called cranks but almost none of them fakes. I couldn’t imagine any of them as disciples of Prabhavananda—some because they were too exclusively Christian, others because they put the need for social action before spiritual training, others because they were entangled in the occult, others because they were trying to use what they called religion to heal sickness, promote longevity, ensure success in business and joy in marriage—all this with perfect confidence in the purity of their motives.

  What was I looking for, amidst these people? What made me sit through their lectures and join them in hours of earnest discussion? I might have answered truthfully that I was interested in some of them as practitioners of pacifism. I could have claimed that the rest were at least teaching me tolerance: during my pre-California life I wouldn’t have been seen dead with them. Their earnest air of dedication, their gently persuasive voices, and their pious vocabulary would have turned my atheistic stomach.

  But I had to admit to a deeper motive. I was associating with the Seekers in order to find weaknesses in their faith and contradictions in their creeds; to, prove to myself, if possible, that they were seeking a nonexistent treasure. If their treasure was non-existent, then Prabhavananda’s might be, too.

  Thus I kept rediscovering in myself an active underground force of opposition to Prabhavananda’s way of life—insofar as it threatened to influence mine. In my diary, I called this force my ego—what I actually meant was my self-will. “Nothing burns in Hell except self-will” was a favorite quotation of Gerald’s, from the Theologia Germanica, XXXIV.

  Speaking of hell, I am thankful that I at least had the good sense not to personify my self-will as the Devil and imagine myself to be the prey of an awesomely malign superpower, whose strength I couldn’t be expected to resist. What I was struggling with was something quite intimate and unalarming, something that had an animal, not a superhuman nature; something that was partly a monkey, partly a dog, partly a peacock, partly a pig. One must be firm with it, one must keep an eye on it always, but there was no reason to hate it or be afraid of it. Its plans for my future weren’t devilish, they weren’t even clever. It merely wanted to maintain the usual messy aimless impulse-driven way of life to which it was accustomed. It would actually rather wallow in “lazy black misery” than be interfered with by Prabhavananda.

  Five

  By August 1940, the war had long since ceased to be called “phony,” even in California. It was a solid presence which cast its shadow all over the United States. The Nazis had occupied France and threatened to invade England. Americans had begun to tell each other fatalistically, “We’ll be in it soon.”

  The future promised us bureaucratic discipline, denial of comfort, frustration of self-will. So my anti-Prabhavananda underground panicked and was ready to lie low and give up its sabotage efforts, for the time being. In contrast to the grim activity of the outside world, the Vedanta Society way of life suddenly appealed to it, as being quiet and snug. While the rest of me tried to meditate, it could at least sit still and do nothing.

  * * *

  August 9. To see the Swami. Sat in the temple while he and several of the holy women who live at the Center finished their evening rites. The bottoms of the women were enormous, as they bowed down to adore. Could concentrate on nothing else.

  (“The holy women” was one of Gerald’s phrases. Used by him, it chiefly expressed affectionate humor, but also some misogyny. He and I agreed, at that time, in finding women hard to coexist with as fellow worshipers. They so often seemed to us to be calling attention to their presence, especially when decked out in their best saris with tinkling bracelets, and the saris naturally enlarged the bottoms. Our prejudice would never have included Sister Lalita, however. In the temple she was the most self-effacing of us all.)

  The Swami called me into his study afterwards. He gave me new and much more elaborate instructions.

  First, I am to think of people all over the world—all kinds of people at all kinds of occupations. In each one of them, and in all matter, is this Reality, this Atman, which is also inside myself. And what is “myself”? Am I my body? Am I my mind? Am I my thoughts? What can I find within myself which is eternal? Let me examine my thoughts and see how they reflect this Atman.

  August 12. Meditation night and morning. It is much easier now, since the Swami’s new instructions, because I can begin with the external world and work inward. I start by thinking of Heinz. Then of the airmen fighting over the Channel. Then Hitler, Churchill. Then Teddy, our dog in Portugal, the ocean with all its fish, etc. etc.

  August 13. Huge German air attacks on England. Invasion is expected hourly. I feel terribly depressed, but not frantic. It’s amazing how much my “sits” help, however badly and unwillingly I do them. They clear the mind of that surplus of misery which is entirely subjective and unnecessary, and helps no one—which, in fact, merely poisons
the lives of everybody around you and makes their own troubles harder to bear. Too much unhappiness over external tragedies is as bad as too little. Both softening and hardening of the heart can become vicious. I begin to understand what Eliot means in Ash Wednesday: “Teach us to care and not to care.”

  August 18. Today I finished an almost unbroken week of “sits.” My chief effort is to stand outside the Ego, to try to catch a glimpse of the world with a non-attached eye. But the Ego, with its gross body and great swollen, sullen pumpkin head, is like a man who will stand right in front of you at a horse race; you can only catch glimpses of the race by peeping under his arms or between his legs. It is terribly difficult, but the mere discipline of trying brings its own rewards—cheerfulness, long periods of calm, freedom from self-pity. Vernon is the invariable barometer of my failure or success. Yesterday afternoon, when we were laughing together, he suddenly said, “If only it could always be like this!”

  (I should mention here that Vernon and I were just about to move into a rented house back in the Hollywood area. This wouldn’t necessarily isolate me from the world of the refugees but it would enable me to visit the Vedanta Center much more easily.)

  September 7. Looking in through the glass door of the living room at Ivar Avenue, I saw the Swami sitting alone. He must have been meditating—his face was utterly transformed. It was very still and almost frighteningly attentive, like a lion watching its prey before it jumps. Then he became aware of my presence and rose to greet me, his usual gay polite Bengali self.

  * * *

  According to my diary, I found it easier to meditate in the shrine room of the temple than in my room at home:

  The atmosphere is extraordinarily calming, and yet alive, not sleepy. Someone said to me that it’s like being in a wood. This is a very good description. Just as, in a wood, you feel the trees alive all around you, so in the shrine the air seems curiously alert. Sometimes it is as if the whole shrine room becomes your brain and is filled with thought. Of course, the smell of the incense also helps. It induces a special mood by association—just as the smell of antiseptics induces the passive mood of the hospital patient.

  If you entered the temple when it wasn’t being used and when the curtains were drawn together, concealing the shrine, it looked like a small lecture hall which was remarkable only for the good taste and simplicity with which it was furnished. Light gray walls, a light gray carpet, rows of light gray seats facing a pulpit on a platform. On the walls were photographs of Ramakrishna, the Holy Mother, Vivekananda, Brahmananda, an image of the Buddha, the alleged face of Christ on the Turin shroud. There were no decorations, Indian or other, except for the word Om, which was carved on the pulpit.

  When the curtains were drawn apart, you saw that there was a little windowless shrine room beyond the platform on which the pulpit stood. Within this shrine room, on a pedestal of two steps, stood the shrine itself. It was about four feet in height and had been made in India out of a dark wood which was intricately carved and gleamingly polished; four double Corinthian pillars supporting a dome. Under this dome, a photograph of Ramakrishna stood in the middle. To the right of it was a photograph of Holy Mother; to the left were images of Buddha and Krishna and a Russian icon of Christ. Photographs of Brahmananda and Vivekananda were on a lower level, together with images of some minor Hindu deities.

  During the Sunday lecture, the curtains were parted and the shrine exposed, decked with garlands of flowers and lit by candles in glass candlesticks which had sparkling pendants. It looked exotically pretty, and no doubt a casual visitor to the temple, seeing it for the first time, would regard it merely as a charming focal point in the scheme of decoration. But this shrine really was a shrine, in the primary meaning of the word. It contained relics of Ramakrishna, Holy Mother, and some of their disciples, including fragments of bone which had been preserved after their bodies had been cremated. The Hindus, like the Catholics, believe that such relics generate spiritual power which can be communicated to worshipers who expose themselves to it. But this is only half of the process. What the worshipers receive, they must return to the shrine through acts of worship; thereby they “recharge” the shrine, and thus themselves, continually. It was therefore a rule that ritual worship must be performed before the shrine every single day.

  When driving along Sunset Boulevard, I would sometimes feel the impulse to park outside a certain church and go into it. Before kneeling in one of the pews, I would genuflect to the altar and cross myself. I always felt slightly guilty of theatricalism as I did this, and excused the action to myself as being a gesture of mere conformity, since I was in a Catholic church.

  What was I actually doing there? I might have answered that, by meditating in our temple, I had discovered in myself a strong devotional inclination which I had been suppressing throughout most of my adult life. Because of this inclination, I now felt drawn to any sacred place. A Catholic church was more like our temple than a Protestant church would have been, because it contained a shrine. The consecrated Host was present in the tabernacle on the altar, and people kept coming in throughout the day to kneel before it and adore it.

  This was true, but not the whole truth. Because of my Protestant upbringing, going into a Catholic church still gave me a slight sense of daring, of doing what was forbidden. This was what made my visit exciting. To genuflect and cross yourself was scandalous behavior, by the Protestant standards of my youth. To bow down before a Hindu shrine wouldn’t have been scandalous in the same way; it would have been just heathen and therefore meaningless.

  Having entered the pew, I became a Vedantist again and meditated according to my instructions. I felt nothing incongruous in doing this. After all, we had Christ’s icon on our shrine, so why shouldn’t I regard myself as a welcome guest—welcomed by Christ, at any rate, if not by his priesthood? However, I never stayed on in the church if a service was about to be held; that would have seemed to me like trespassing. And I never dipped my finger in the stoup of holy water. That, I felt, would have involved me in an alien and therefore dangerous kind of magic.

  * * *

  About the middle of August, a young American named Denny Fouts had arrived in Los Angeles. Denny would represent himself to new acquaintances as having been a spectacularly successful homosexual whore. It was true that he had had a number of affairs with rich men and that they had given him a lot of money. He made much of this, speaking of having been “kept” by them, and watching your face as he used the word to see if you would wince. (I have described him as “Paul” in my novel Down There on a Visit, which also contains a sketch of Gerald as “Augustus Parr.”)

  At first I had found Denny’s tactics tiresome. Then he had surprised and intrigued me by showing great interest in Vedanta and in the Swami. Long conversations with him had gradually convinced me that his interest was absolutely serious. It seemed to be related to some terrifying insights he had had while taking drugs.

  October 26. Lunch with Denny, who is anxious to start a new life—get a shack in the hills, a menial job, and immediately renounce everything: sex, drink, and the Gang. He’s very nervous and much worried about his motives—is he wishing to do this for the right reasons? But surely, at the start, the reasons don’t matter? If you are doing this for the wrong reasons, I told him, you’ll very soon find out.

  Meanwhile, Denny still goes to parties and gets drunk and talks nothing but religion, to the great amusement of his friends, who call him “the drunken yogi.”

  Today I took him to the temple, where we sat for some time in the shrine (or “the box,” as Gerald calls it). I couldn’t concentrate—I was thinking all the time of Denny—trying to “introduce” him to Ramakrishna, and hoping he wouldn’t be put off by the photographs on the shrine, and the flowers, and the ivory and brass figures. It does look rather like the mantelpiece in an old-fashioned boudoir. Actually, Denny liked it all very much, but was dismayed because he had thought what a wonderful place it would be to have sex in.

/>   By this time, I had become possessive of Denny, regarding him as my personal convert, the soul I had saved. And I was eager to bring him to Prabhavananda. I expected to get credit from both parties; Prabhavananda was to praise me for my valuable catch, Denny for my understanding, all-pardoning guru.

  Their meeting was a disaster. I wasn’t present, but, from what Denny told me about it later, I guessed that he had struck the wrong note from the beginning. He must have been aggressive and theatrical and strident, painting himself as the lowest of sinners and daring Prabhavananda to reject him. This approach might have made an impression on some Christian ministers. But Prabhavananda wasn’t interested in show-off sinners, any more than he was interested in self-satisfied holy men. All he watched and listened for was the look and sound of truth.

  When Denny had finished his performance, Prabhavananda discouraged him from trying to make a drastic change in his life, telling him that what he needed was hard work; he had better go out and get himself a job.

  Denny was terribly disappointed and hurt. As soon as we got back to his room, he threw himself down on the bed and burst into tears, sobbing that he was rotten, everybody despised him, and he’d better kill himself with heroin as soon as possible.

  I protested, of course—as anybody would. In fact, I said far more than I meant. I told him that I didn’t despise him, that I admired him and liked him and wanted to be his friend.

  At first I was slightly shocked by what seemed to me to have been an inflexibility and lack of understanding in Prabhavananda’s behavior. Also, my feelings were hurt by his rejection of the first disciple I had brought to him. He immediately sensed this, the next time we were alone together. With his usual gentle reasonableness, he explained that, in the religious life, if you try to do too much in too great a hurry, you are sure to have a reaction and perhaps lose your faith altogether. Maharaj had always been suspicious of sudden hysterical “conversions.” Soon I began to realize that Prabhavananda had shown sound judgment.