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

by Sister Gargi

  Swami: When did it come?

  Me: Oh, a day or two ago.

  Swami: My, my, Marie Louise, you are clever.

  Me: Well, now that you know, I can tell you that there is a terrible mistake in it. (I told him about the photocopy of the envelope.)

  Swami: Oh, my! But I am sure Swamiji wrote that letter to Isabelle. It somehow got in the wrong envelope. Well, there is nothing we can do about it now. (He asked where the book was, and I said in an offhand way that I had it. His eyes twinkled and he asked no more. He knew, of course, exactly what I was up to.)

  June 3, 1958

  Swami Gambhirananda has now sent me a bound copy of New Discoveries from India. I told Swami Ashokananda it had arrived at the airport and he asked me to get it.

  I drove via Mrs. Roundtree’s house to first pick up her hand-bound copy for Swami Ashokananda, but I had forgotten that it was her day to go to Olema. I picked up the package at the airport and on the way home I again stopped at Mrs. Roundtree’s. She was still out—so now there would be no chance to present Swami with his own copy of the book before he sees my bound copy from Swami Gambhirananda.

  I did not open my package until Swami returned from Sausalito. I then asked him, “Don’t you want to wait until tomorrow?”

  “Why?” he asked.

  “There is a book for you. I thought you should have it first.”

  “A book for me?” His eyes shone. But he told me to open the package, so I did.

  There was great excitement. Swami looked at the book lovingly and with absorption. He seemed so relaxed and happy. Others came into his office to see. Everyone was happy and delighted.

  June 4, 1958

  I again drove to Mrs. Roundtree’s to pick up the bound copy for Swami, which she had finished after much travail. She had sweated over it with me breathing down her neck every inch of the way. I took it home, stopping on the way to buy some candy. After I got home, Swami phoned.

  “What have you been doing all morning?”

  “I bought some candy.”

  “Is that all you have done the whole morning?”

  “Well, something else. I will tell you later.”

  He said he would be back from the doctor around three.

  When I arrived in his office, Nancy Jackman was also sitting there. I was so excited—too excited. I had written an inscription in the book after fretting all day over its wording. My heart was pounding, hands sweating and shaking. Impatient and sort of wild, I burst into Swami’s office to give him the book. He stopped me. “Just wait a little while,” he said. It was like a blow on the head.

  I went into the library and said to Edna and Elna, “He doesn’t want it yet.” I felt roasting, my face and my brain bursting with blood, my heart racing, and I wanted to sob. I forced myself to work on my perpetual letter of reply to Swami Madha-vananda (that I had been working on since last summer) and thus slowly calmed down.

  Then Swami called me. I picked up his copy of the book and again dashed in. Nancy was still there! Swami said, “Will you show your book to Nancy?” He meant the copy from Swami Gambhirananda. I said, “Yes, but I want to give you this.” He said, “Just wait. Get your copy so Nancy can see it.” My reaction at being put off a second time was not so violent—the edge was gone, though I was still upset.

  Finally, Ediben took Nancy home (as a kindness to me) and Swami again called me into his office. This time I walked in without the book, as though not caring about it.

  Swami: Where is the book? Don’t you want to give it to me?

  Me: Yes, I want to give it to you. (I got his copy and handed it to him. It was wrapped in tissue paper. He took it, his face beaming and eyes shining.)

  Swami: I had no idea you were doing this. It didn’t occur to me until a few days ago. So this is what you have been up to! It really didn’t occur to me that this is what you wanted the unbound copy for.

  Me: I thought you must have known. What else could I have wanted it for?

  Swami (beaming): I thought you wanted to edit it.

  Me: My, you are innocent!

  It sounded fresh, too familiar. I had meant to say “unsuspecting” or something like that. The smile faded a little from Swami’s face. He let the remark go, but I could sense—I knew—it had been wrong. Everything was wrong again.

  He undid the tissue paper and looked at the book.

  Swami: Why didn’t you put your name on the cover? (Whether or not to put my name as the author had been one of those terrible things I could not decide, asking everyone.)

  Me: I thought I should leave it off your copy.

  Swami (without enthusiasm): Very good, thank you. (Then he read the inscription, which expressed the book’s debt to him, and smiled wanly.) It is very sweet of you to have written that, Marie Louise; but it is not true.

  Me (exclaiming, but sick at heart because everything had gone wrong): Oh, it is absolutely true!

  Swami: Who did you have bind it?

  Me: Mrs. Roundtree.

  Swami: Why did you ask her to do it? You shouldn’t bother people like that. She has been sick only recently. She has gotten very thin.

  Me: She took every care with it.

  Swami: I have no doubt of that. But you shouldn’t have put her to that trouble. Why didn’t you have a professional do it?

  Me: I thought it would be better to have a devotee do it. (He shook his head.) But she was overjoyed to do it!

  Swami: I don’t doubt that. But you shouldn’t bother people.

  Then he said that my copy from Swami Gambhirananda had a better binding. I pointed out that this wasn’t true because it did not have real leather on the back and was not sewn as well. He was surprised about it not being real leather, but still he was not convinced in the slightest that Mrs. Roundtree’s binding was better. (Never must she know this—what pains she took and with what devotion—and it is well bound.)

  I told Swami that he could not keep the newly bound book because it still had to be kept under pressure. I asked him if he would keep something on top of it when he was not looking at it. He said, “No.” Now I would have to take it back—a fiasco from start to finish! I asked him if I could tell Mrs. Roundtree that he liked the book. He said, “Yes, surely tell her. Say it is very good.” With relief, I told her.

  June 5, 1958

  Swami was talking to me on the phone about my letter to Swami Madhavananda. I said as he was about to hang up, “Swami, would you like me to have my name stamped on the cover of your copy of the book? It can be done.”

  He was suddenly cross. “Just forget that!” he said, and then he added, “You should have had it bound by a professional. Who advised you to have Mrs. Roundtree do it?” I was silent.

  Swami (demanding an answer): Who told you that?

  Me: Anna Webster.

  Swami: Who?

  Me: Anna Webster.

  Swami: How did she know about it?

  Me: She was going to do it herself. In fact, it was her idea—a long time ago.

  Swami (after a long pause): Always have things like that done by professionals, not by these amateurs. I don’t say that only about the book but as a method of work.

  Me: All right, Swami. (It was all I could manage to get out.)

  I have kept the book at home under pressure. It does not seem so terrible. I don’t like the way the title is stamped on the spine, but that was entirely my fault. A professional could have given better advice, I guess. I am so sad that the book was not just exactly right, sad that Swami was not happy with it. It seems like some terrible and irrevocable mistake. I plan to have one copy rebound for him by a professional when the shipment of books arrives from India.

  In mid-June, Swami began wondering what the reaction of the swamis in India would be to New Discoveries, then being distri-buted by Advaita Ashrama. “They probably won’t even both
er to read it,” he said. “They no longer care about Swamiji. They have gone back to the old way—meditation and worship. I have noticed that the new swami here has that attitude. All he thinks is important are the Upanishads, Shankara, and the Gita—finished.”

  Swami began to get feedback from India almost immediately. Some of the big-shot swamis there, whom I did not know but of whom I was in awe, wrote to him glowingly of the book. Now and then Swami would read me excerpts from their letters, and invariably the next day he would find occasion to pounce upon me lest my head had swollen. I used to brace myself for the scolding that was bound to come after lavish praise from India had been relayed to me.

  The response to the book was not all good. There was talk about prohibiting a second edition because one swami had vociferously felt that the book was disparaging of his revered guru Swami Brahmananda—a criticism that stunned me.

  Hearing of this, Swami told me to prepare a second edition and to change not a single word of the first edition. But that was more than I was capable of. Reading over the first edition during 1959, I found many sentences that needed changing. It was impossible for me not to correct faulty grammar and clumsy wording. And so I made some changes, thinking no harm could be done. When I showed the manuscript to Swami, he scolded me severely. “I told you not to make any changes. I have never known such an ego. Do you think this is your book?” And so it went for quite some time. Then, more softly, he added, “Don’t you see, Marie Louise, if you change anything, they will ask why you cannot change what has been objected to?”—that is, a sentence or two implying that Swami Vivekananda had scolded his brother disciple Swami Brahmananda.

  Swami eventually let me retain most of my corrections, and the manuscript for the second edition went to Advaita Ashrama in 1965. The first printing of the second edition read that the book was by “Marie Lousie Burke” (italics mine), which I hoped was not Swami Vivekananda’s judgment upon me. In any case, the cover and title page had to be redone. The revised second edition of Swami Vivekananda in America: New Discoveries was finally published in 1966 by the Ramakrishna Order.

  11

  MILTOWN

  In May of 1958 the Society’s books were removed from the library of the Old Temple. As I drove with boxes of books in my car to the new temple up the hill, I knew that it was the beginning of the end of an era at the Vedanta Society of Northern California. A door had not been slammed but had been loosened from the wall and was swinging shut. It would be more than a year before the latch clicked and a new era began.

  Meanwhile, books or no books, things went on more or less as before in the Old Temple. Sitting in his small office at the center of the Society’s activities, Swami, despite his ill health, kept his guiding hand on everything, including his disciples with all their quirks (pronounced quarks), moods, and balky egos. He was like a blacksmith firing and hammering out what he hoped would be shining swords. No one escaped this forging.

  The new temple, four blocks away, was nearly finished. There remained the construction of the altar and the sculpting of the figures that were to be installed on it. The sculptor, Mr. Robert Shinn, lived and had his studio in Sausalito, a town across the Golden Gate Bridge. Swami went to the studio almost every day to supervise the modeling of the statues before they were cast into bronze. Generally, I was Swami’s chauffeur to and from Sausalito.

  My journal for the last half of 1958 included snatches of the conversations that took place during those drives and elsewhere.

  July 1958

  Now that Ediben has gone to Lake Tahoe, I am driving Swami, and often Dorothy Peters, to Mr. Shinn’s studio in Sausalito at least every other day to look at the statues in progress for the altar of the new temple.

  On our way back from Sausalito the other day, Swami was speaking of how delicate it is to get artists to accept criticism from him while working on the statue of Swamiji. I said, “You are so gentle and patient. You can’t just tell them what to do.” Swami looked at me, his eyes shining with amusement. “I seem to remember,” he said, “someone who resorted to a great deal of Miltown.” To Dorothy, he explained, “She resisted me when she was writing New Discoveries. I would say, ‘Put this about Swamiji in here; put that in there.’ It got so that whenever she saw me coming along the path to Ediben’s cabin at Tahoe, she would run for the Miltown.”

  July 10, 1958

  Swami asked me to bring the copy of the book that Mrs. Roundtree had bound for him. I told him it should stay under pressure longer. He said it had been long enough—he wanted to let the monks read it. I took it to him. Looking fondly at the inscription, he said he would have to take it out.

  Me (trying to be casual): That page can be cut out; you didn’t like it anyhow.

  Swami: You can write what you want. You are a poet and a prose writer. (His eyes sparkled, and he looked so kind and indulgent.) I admit I nagged you. It is my privilege to nag you.

  Me: It is my privilege to be nagged—if that is what you call it.

  Swami (to Dorothy Peters): She used to run for the Miltown every time she saw me coming. I was really frightened for a while.

  Me: I will never get across to anyone the right interpretation of that story.

  July 12, 1958

  I feel sad. I feel that today everything I say is wrong. Dorothy Peters gasps every time I speak.

  Swami: Are you feeling gloomy and melancholy?

  Me: Yes. That is, I was . . .

  Swami: What is the cause of it?

  Me: I don’t know exactly.

  Swami: The removal of the bookcases to the new temple?

  Me: I guess that is part of it.

  Swami (seriously): You mustn’t let things like that affect your mind. Circumstances are bound to change. Life itself is change. Never let it drag your mind down. Be cautious about it.

  Me: I guess it was subconscious.

  Swami: That is why you must be especially careful and watchful.

  July 15, 1958

  Swami: When you can feel free of the body, nothing can hurt you; things can no longer affect you. Birth, death, and suffering—none of those things have any meaning.

  Me: What about the suffering of others?

  Swami: People think that if one becomes detached, one becomes hard-hearted. Actually, one becomes extremely kindhearted. But there is a different feeling than before; there is a different meaning in it. One sees that man is Spirit, but one also sees that he is caught in maya. One feels a great tenderness. The suffering of others has a different meaning altogether.

  July 16, 1958

  Due to his prolonged illness, Swami has not lectured at the Temple since May 4.

  Swami: Next Sunday I will lecture. I do not know what will happen. I have forgotten how to lecture. I don’t know why people like my lectures. I just ramble on and on—no organization, nothing. And they are so long; people have to sit for two hours.

  Me: Your lectures are entertaining.

  Swami (with mock horror, explosively): What?

  Kathleen: You lift people.

  Me: Yes, that too, but people are vastly entertained—not on a superficial level. They like your brilliance.

  Swami (smiling): I don’t know what I will say about Buddha. (Kathleen brought out a children’s book on Buddha from the Sunday school closet and said, laughing, that he might like to read it; Swami was seriously grateful and interested.)

  July 18, 1958

  Swami: Do you offer all your work to Sri Ramakrishna?

  Me (hesitantly): Yes—generally.

  Swami: Be sure to do it. After you have finished working, offer it. Become more and more conscious that you are working for Sri Ramakrishna. Otherwise, your work won’t be a spiritual practice.

  October 28, 1958

  Me: Swami . . .

  Swami (looking up from his reading): Yes?

  Me: Swamiji says that no one can he
lp anyone. One must do everything for oneself. But what about the guru?

  Swami: Yes, the guru helps, but the disciple must do the main part. The willingness of the disciple to change, to be ready to learn, is the important thing. And later, when the disciple is advanced, he must stand on his own feet. There is a tremendous struggle. He must go through it himself.

  Me: But the guru does give the initial help.

  Swami: Yes. Swamiji spoke in a general sense. How often does a Divine Incarnation come? A Divine Incarnation and his disciples, of course, help. They can even, if they want, remove someone’s unwillingness and transform him. But when it comes to the ordinary guru, the disciple must help himself.

  Me: In the advanced struggle, doesn’t the guru also help?

  Swami: Yes, somewhat, but the disciple must do most of it. It is said that one must have the grace of four things: God, one’s Ishta, and the devotees. The fourth thing is the grace of one’s own mind. Without that, the first three are nullified.

  All spiritual life is not as you have it here—security, happiness, serenity. (Swami lifted his hands, palms upward, and tilted his head up with a look of vapid bliss in imitation of my state.) There comes a period of intense struggle. It is said that God will do everything. But even there, it is the devotee who must surrender to God. That only comes with struggle.

  November 4, 1958

  Mrs. Fahey (a professional bookbinder—the best) came to my apartment this morning to discuss the binding of the book. At the end of a long, detailed discussion, I asked the price. It was $125, probably very little. I told her it was too much for me to afford. When I asked Swami if I could have it done, he said, “No, you may not.”

  November 9, 1958

  After his Sunday lecture this morning, Swami came into the back office and talked to us. Then he waited until 3:40 for a young man who hadn’t arrived for his 2:30 appointment. Swami seemed so tired, hardly able to talk. “If he forgets his appointments,” I said, because he had done so before, “is he worth giving them to?” Swami glared at me. Finally he went upstairs.