A Disciple's Journal: In the Company of Swami Ashokananda

by Sister Gargi

  Me: I think you are like an ocean.

  Swami: I am the very least of the swamis of today—a tiny little lake, and stagnant.

  December 1951

  Swami: It is extremely important that you become established in this life. You cannot go back to a married life. Even if you had the opportunity, you could not live that life. Do you want a social life, going to dinner parties, entertaining, and so on? Do you want that?

  Me: No. I don’t.

  Swami: Well then . . . this is a competitive life. In worldly life one competes against others; in spiritual life one must compete with conditions. Work, work, work. Otherwise depth cannot be reached.

  10:30 p.m., December 31, 1951

  Swami (on his way upstairs, to all who were there): Happy New Year to you all! A brave New Year! A courageous New Year! A strong New Year! No weakness, no pampering. Stand strong, straight, unafraid!

  2

  A HACK WRITER

  In the years before I discovered Vedanta, I had written poetry and short stories. The poetry came in a flood, welling up, it seemed, from some subterranean lake. I somehow drowned myself in that lake and from there dictated the words and lines to the hand that wrote them down. It was not that I did not chisel the phrases and lines as they arose, but there first had to be a total absorption in a deeper, wiser consciousness than that which ordinarily informed my mind. Otherwise I did not call the result writing. To me, the act of writing required an immersion in another world, another mind below the surface. What trickled or flooded up was not necessarily good—the surfacing water could be muddy or brackish. Nevertheless, it had come from a subliminal source and was writing.

  Short stories and poetry flowed most easily from the submerged lake of rhythms and cadences. Nonfiction that required research flowed not at all, unless it was a tirade of some sort, to be at once destroyed. To write essays on the visiting swamis, as Swami Ashokananda had asked me to do in 1951, was to seek water in a block of solid rock that extended to the center of the earth and beyond. In fact, it was not to seek water at all, but to access my brain, which, as I said earlier, was a mass of cotton wool, steeped now in the smoke of innumerable cigarettes. The page of my notebook remained blank—well, not altogether blank; I wrote some nauseating descriptions of godlike men who had huge, glowing eyes and elongated hands.

  The difficulty was that Swami Ashokananda’s contemporaries from other Vedanta societies in America seemed to me to be beings who walked with God Himself, spoke with God, and perceived the world with the eyes of God. They had come to the Temple, had talked with the devotees in thick Indian-accented English that might as well have been Sanskrit, and had then vanished into the upper regions of the monastery. I was awed by these visitations. How was I to write anything but reverential, besotted goo? And that is what I wrote.

  January 3, 1952

  Swami (looking at my manuscript): After all these years you have written only sixteen pages.

  Me: There’s more, but it all has to be rewritten.

  Swami (to others present): She is a master. She must polish and polish. A Hindu story tells of the Master Artist in Heaven. He polished everything; he was a great artist. It came time for his son to marry, and so he decided that he himself would fashion the bride, as then she would be perfect. So he set about it. She was never just right. For years and years he worked on her, polishing and polishing, until at last, what did he have? A small mole.

  Me: Yes. That is the way it is.

  Swami: That won’t do. Be a hack writer!

  Me: I am a hack writer. But it takes me a long time to hack.

  Swami: Well, keep on. I don’t want to make it too hard for you.

  January 8, 1952

  Swami: Worldly people are no good. They are just rotten. That is my opinion.

  Me: Oh, do you think so?

  Swami: Yes, I think so. Why should I not think so?

  Me: They try to be good.

  Swami: Pah! They are good when it suits their purpose. They would not draw one breath if they thought it would do good for others. There is no hope for worldly people.

  Me: That is terrible.

  Swami: Why is it terrible?

  Me: I know worldly people. I feel sorry—

  Swami: Why should you feel sorry about them?

  Me: I don’t know. I can’t help it.

  Swami: There was a man in the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna who could not sleep in his bed because he thought of all the people who did not have beds.

  Me (laughing): Yes, I should just worry about myself.

  Swami: You are out of the world. Don’t get sucked back in. Go forward, race ahead! You have been led out of the forest into a clear field. Don’t just stand in the field and think, “Oh, how good God is to have saved me, how beautiful the field is,” and write a poem about it. The tigers will creep out of the forest—run! Renunciation is the thing. You cannot see what is real if you do not renounce the unreal; that is the only way.

  Tighten up. It is a question of how you spend time. You spend your time in work for God. Work as worship. When you write or study, always think of it that way. Of course, I know it is hard. You stay at home all day doing what does not come easily. But as I said in my lecture Sunday, spiritual life is really not hard when one considers how long it takes for the ordinary person to change. They change very little in one lifetime—imperceptibly. In spiritual life the problem is that they change so fast that one must think how to channel those changes. That is the problem here.

  The average person should live 70 percent of his life in austerity and 30 percent in pleasure—but that pleasure should be in accord with what is right. Most people are self-indulgent; that is the worst troublemaker. In the early part of a person’s life, one should be trained in moral and spiritual virtues, not in the development of talents. Talent is not important; it is character that is important. Later, talents will develop as they should.

  January 12, 1952

  I went with Jo Stanbury to a nearby market for Swami’s dinner. Jo mentioned that his diet is extremely restricted—a combination of diets for high blood pressure, diabetes, and stomach ulcers, leaving him practically nothing to eat. Yet he eats as he pleases.

  “If only he would follow doctor’s orders,” Jo said.

  “Maybe he feels the matter is predetermined,” I suggested.

  “If that is the case,” Jo said, “he is not consistent. He does sometimes take some care about his diet. But, of course, swamis are never consistent. One just doesn’t know and can’t judge. He might just pop off or go back to India. Then where would we be?”

  Jo had hinted to me to come to the Temple that night. I brought along my manuscript to work on in the back office, in case Swami wasn’t there.

  Swami: What have you there?

  Me: The article about the swamis.

  Swami: Let me see it. (I gave it to him, and he read here and there, smiling as though amused and pleased.) It is very uneven. You have written so much on Swami Pavitrananda. If you are going to have infatuations, how can you be a good writer? But do it in your own way. Finish it, and we will see. Finish it soon. Of course, I don’t want to nag you too much.

  Me: I will finish it next week.

  Swami: Good. If it is ever published, the swamis will cut your throat.

  (The article turned out to be, as Swami would say, “a miserable failure” and was never published.)

  January 1952

  Swami (teasing Kathleen about her newly permed hair): You look like a Fiji Islander. Can’t you do something? Put oil on it.

  Kathleen: When it grows out it will be all right.

  Swami: Well, in the meantime, I am sure you can do something.

  Kathleen (mournfully): When I was a baby, I wanted to be bald like my uncle. My hair was a nuisance even then. I had to have it put up in curlers at night. I always slept on lumps.


  Swami: You give such importance to small things. Other people have had hair. It is the art of the dramatist to build up the insignificant until it has immense importance.

  January 16, 1952

  Swami has put a stop to the evening meetings in the back office. He wants to make us independent of him. This has caused a lot of woe. To some he was brusque about it: “Go home!”

  Swami (to me): I am sorry I spoke the way I did. Some arrangement must be made. All of you will have to learn to be independent. I am an uncertain person now. That is one reason for it. Also, I cannot discriminate between students. There are many who would like to be here. They see all of you here and do not see why they cannot come. They should come. I am a man of good will (his face shining with good will).

  This place is so small, but that is not the only reason. It is really not good for some to be here too much. I have noticed that they become unbalanced. They are not strong enough to hold the impact of spirituality.

  I must have seemed downhearted. Swami went on to console me, “You come during the day, don’t you? Come at lunchtime. And then you come anyhow on Wednesday and Friday nights. Of course, there are five more nights in the week. Make your house attractive so that you will like to be in it. Read or study or write, if you feel like it, in the evenings.

  “There will be times of depression and discouragement. Think then of Sri Ramakrishna and Swamiji. You are doing their work. You have come to Sri Ramakrishna. Whether you understand that or not, it is a fact. You have come from a rough sea into a calm harbor. The world can never buffet you again.

  “A little effort and the path is made clear. Look at your own life. Have not all obstructions been removed? Be a worker. Devote yourself to the Lord’s work. That is the way to come close to God and to become a source of great good to the world.”

  (Happily, soon all of us were back in the evenings, and things went on as before.)

  January 19, 1952

  A large crowd, which included students from Berkeley, was gathered in the back office after Swami Vivekananda’s birthday celebration.

  Swami: What you call idolatry is the worship of the living God. I know of a man who had been away from home for a time. On his return he saw the picture of Sri Ramakrishna just shake from head to foot with joy. It was the figure, not the picture itself, that shook like that. [The man he spoke of was a monk, Swami himself, on his return from New York in 1932.]

  Another monk touched the feet of the statue of the Divine Mother and felt not stone but warm, living flesh. [This monk was Swami Nirvedananda.]

  Mr. E.C. Brown, the president of the Society and a monastic, came downstairs. It will soon be Mr. Brown’s eighty-second birthday.

  Swami: Well, what is it, Mr. Brown?

  Mr. Brown: I was just wondering if you might consider the hour.

  Swami: It is said that there are three things one should not keep even the remnants of: a serpent, a disease, and an Englishman (referring to Mr. Brown). Of course, I just made up the last part.

  Mr. Brown: Mrs. Soulé could express my sentiments better in song, but I will sing them.

  (In a croaking voice)

  Oh, father, dear father, come home with me now,

  The clock in the steeple strikes one.

  Swami: He is getting a little crazy. Look how flushed he is!

  (With the backing of others, Mr. Brown was finally able to convince Swami that he should go upstairs.)

  January 22, 1952

  Swami: How is meditation?

  Me: Very good.

  Swami (referring to the tumult that his order to stay away in evenings had created): Mind is pacified?

  Me: Yes, Swami, but sometimes I am very emotional during meditation.

  Swami: Emotion can be good. What kind of emotion?

  Me: Good emotion.

  Swami: That is all right. But suppress it during meditation.

  Me: Sometimes it is so strong, I cannot.

  Swami: If Hitler were standing alongside you with a stick, you would be able to suppress it. If you were compelled to suppress it, you could suppress it.

  January 23, 1952

  Swami was about to go upstairs as I entered the front door.

  Swami: Well, how is the writing?

  Me: I finished, but I find it is not good. The part about Swami Pavitrananda is really not good.

  Swami: That is just puerile! Finish it and then change it. Do the big thing first, like a sculpture; later chisel and refine. Have you written the conclusion?

  Me: No, Swami. I thought I would type the rest first.

  Swami: No. You are just afraid of the hard part. Face it! Typing is just mechanical work. Write the conclusion. (Swami put such power behind all this that I felt myself shaking.)

  January 26, 1952

  Swami (as I entered): Well, how is the article?

  Me: I finished it. I wrote the conclusion.

  Swami (trying not to look pleased, and succeeding): Now write a summary—a synopsis of the introduction and conclusion and give it to me.

  Me: Yes, Swami.

  Swami: You are doing well?

  Me: I guess so.

  Swami: If you feel all right, then you are all right. (He went upstairs.)

  January 29, 1952

  Swami: Be strong and be happy. Without happiness nothing can be done. Learn how to write just as you learn how to meditate. Write as worship. Understand that you are living a dedicated life. You are people of little faith. Think of Swamiji—he gave his life for America. You have the privilege of participating in his work. Do you feel that? (His eyes were burning when he asked me this.)

  Me: I feel it more and more.

  Swami: Feel it! Work for him! When you can do that, I will know you are a human being.

  Me: I cannot believe that he wants me to.

  Swami: That is a flimsy excuse for not doing it—“Oh, Lord, I am so unworthy.” Sri Ramakrishna once asked a devotee to fix him some tobacco. But the devotee said, “Oh, no, sir, I am too unworthy to do that.” And he didn’t do it. Don’t commit that sin.

  Later that day

  Swami: I think we will start a magazine. The editorial offices could be in Olema. I might live over there.

  Me: How wonderful that would be! When?

  Swami: You ask when? Look how long it has taken you to write one article. After you have finished the article, you can write poetry. You can also write the lives of great men, reflective and poetic articles. Also, you can write one-act dramas of incidents in the lives of saints. You could also do summaries of books. The magazine needs the sort of thing you can do. It needs a light touch.

  One must have a purpose—an ideal purpose, of course—but there must be a practical purpose along with it; otherwise the ideal has nothing solid to grow on.

  February 12, 1952

  Mara Lane says that Swami used to suddenly come downstairs in the evening, stand in the doorway, and deliver a few statements that would hit the bottom of one’s soul and revolutionize one’s life. Then he would depart as suddenly as he had come, leaving one with one’s mouth hanging open.

  February 14, 1952

  The guru and the disciples—worlds apart, and yet, because his genius is the genius of compassion, he reaches across the apparent gulf and draws us to him, much as a mother draws the child to herself. The mother understands its baby talk and its needs and gives it strength and guidance along the steep, winding road to adulthood. The guru will sometimes give the mature disciple a swift fatherly kick up the hill, which can be painful. Swami told us, “A man of illumination can be as hard as flint; his mind rejects the relative. Or he can be as soft and tender as a flower. When he sees God in all forms, he is the soul of compassion; he will give his life for others. Those two attitudes are two phases of the same thing.”

  February 18, 1952

  I had been complai
ning that Dr. Chaudhuri’s class on Indian philosophy at the American Academy of Asian Studies was sometimes repetitive and boring.

  Swami: Boredom is the privilege of fools and the rich. It is a habit. You must get over it.

  February 1952

  Me: Will I ever realize God?

  Swami: If towards the end of your life you see God everyplace, maybe sometimes more vividly than at other times, but always feel His presence, then you will be safe.

  Me: Is it possible that that will be?

  Swami: I expect that from all of you. But it is necessary to work.

  March 1952

  Me: I have been trying to write poetry, but I cannot.

  Swami: Train your mind to produce. In the past you wrote only when the mood struck. Spirituality means the ability to produce at any time. Then inspiration is really yours. Otherwise it comes and goes; it is never truly yours. You have not written for a long time so your mind has to get into practice. Be a hack writer. That is the way to clear the obstructions; then that exquisite thing will come. I am convinced that there are wonderfully beautiful things within everyone. All that is necessary is that the obstructions be removed. You are to grow into a writer, a reader, and a meditator. That is my job, and I will take no excuses. Be a soldier in the field.

  March 1952

  Swami (to Ediben, laughing): Mrs. ——— asked me if she would have to give up skiing. I was very surprised. I would never have thought she was a skier. I told her she would not have to give that up.

  Me: Oh! You mean one does not have to give up skiing?

  Swami: Was I talking to you?

  Me: I mean in general.

  Swami: Austerity for you! (He chanted in Sanskrit and then translated into English.) “Through austerity one knows Brahman.”

  Me: I am not very austere.

  Swami: You are not anything at all yet. You are becoming.

  March 26, 1952

  Swami (to Edna Zulch): Conflict is good. Each time you fall and get up, you are a little stronger. Through struggle comes strength. God gives His blessings, but first He makes you worthy of receiving them, just like a king who trains his sons so that they can rule the kingdom. Do not be afraid. As long as you have fear, you will never attain to God. You may fail yourself time and again, but God will never fail you. Never. He will always stand behind you and give you strength.