My Guru & His Disciple (35 page)

Nevertheless, it is possible that I have encouraged others to practice a cult of Swami. Because, when I talk to people about him, I am nearly always talking about him as the Guru, not as Abanindra Nath Ghosh. Therefore, I am apt to say, for example, that I believe—and I do believe it—that it is a tremendous privilege to set eyes on Swami even once and that a single meeting might have incalculable effects upon an individual throughout the rest of his life … I suppose that's certain to be understood as cult talk.

Nineteen

June 1, 1972. Swami told us that people sometimes ask him for a Brahman mantram when they are initiated, but then usually want to exchange it later for a mantram containing the name of some divine personage. The Impersonal God nearly always proves unsatisfactory as a subject for meditation.

July 14. Swami told how Gerald, shortly before his illness, had had a dream in which he was at Belur Math, and Ramakrishna was also there, surrounded by his disciples. As Gerald walked past them, Ramakrishna pointed to him and said, “That one belongs to me.” Swami had heard this from Michael Barrie.

July 16. We have been told—as though this were something shocking—that Swami made a scene while he was staying at Trabuco recently: he sent back his piece of chicken to the kitchen, saying that it was undercooked, and that if there was no one who could cook his chicken properly for him he would have to return to Hollywood.

Okay, so the holy man flew into a tantrum. How dreadful! But don't monks (and nuns) need discipline?

July 20. Swami's eyes are getting worse; he strained them by too much reading and writing. His doctor is against letting him have a cataract operation, because of his weak heart.

Swami told us how some young girls who were Krishna devotees once began worshiping Brahmananda as the Baby Krishna. This caused him to go into samadhi. They brought milk and tried to feed it to him as one feeds a baby, but he couldn't swallow it, having lost outer consciousness; it dribbled down his chin … Swami hadn't included this story in The Eternal Companion because he felt that Western readers might find it too exotic.

August 3. Supper with Swami at the house in Malibu which a devotee has lent him for his summer holiday.

Once again—nearly thirty years after the event!—Swami referred to Ashokananda's accusation that we had insulted Vivekananda, and to his own reassuring vision of Vivekananda which had followed it. This time, however, he added something to the story which I had never heard before—astonishing us by remarking, almost casually, that, just before he had the vision, he had been considering suicide: “How could I live if I had insulted Swamiji?”

“Surely,” I said, “you couldn't have considered killing yourself and leaving your work unfinished? That isn't like you.” From my point of view, this had to be either just a bit of Indian hyperbole or a staggering revelation of the depth of his devotion. Well, maybe I don't take his devotion seriously enough, even after knowing him all these years.

Glancing along the bookcase in Swami's bedroom, it seemed to me at first that his hostess had carefully stocked it with exclusively religious reading matter. But accidents will happen. In between The New Testament in Modern Speech and St. Francis de Sales's Treatise on the Love of God, I came upon Myra Breckenridge.

September 15. When we were alone with him in his room, Swami told us that he can read very little now, because of his cataracts. I asked, “Don't you miss it?” and he answered, with the sweetest significance, “I don't miss
anything
.”

He came into the dining room, to eat supper with the nuns and us. When we'd finished eating, he began to talk about Maharaj and Premananda: “When you were with them, you were in another world.” He described how Maharaj would call for his water pipe, take a few puffs, and then become absorbed in meditation—“he'd go away somewhere else.” Having remained in this state for a long while, he would “come back” and exclaim with surprise that his pipe had gone out.

The nuns have a microphone fixed in a flower vase on the dining table, so that Swami's words can be unobtrusively tape-recorded when he is in the mood to talk. Swami was certainly in the mood this evening, but his talk soon left the spiritual heights and became gossip about the progress of the various Vedanta centers in the United States—which swamis had made a success of their work and which had flopped. Swami has followed all this with an interest which would shock some of the more sentimental devotees. I have always realized that he is keenly competitive where the swamis of his own age group are concerned and determined to believe that our Center is the Best in the West. I found him funny and charming in a hard-boiled way, like a veteran actor reminiscing about show biz.

October 4. Swami asked me about my meditation. I said I was finding it helpful to keep reminding myself how near my death may be. Swami then told me that Vivekananda had said: If you are trying to know God, you must imagine that death is already gripping you by the hair. If you are trying to win power and fame, you must imagine that you will live forever.

December 27. Don and I went to the vespers of the Holy Mother puja. Asaktananda was doing the ritual, and he seemed to be behaving with an informality which was surprising and impressive, considering that he has such a serious devotional character. There was a lot of laughter from the monks and nuns inside the shrine room, I don't know what about. When it was my turn to be touched with the relics, Asaktananda said, “Chris, I thought you were still in New York!” and his tone was like that of a host at a party.

February 23, 1973. Swami described a meeting he had had with one of his disciples, whom he hadn't seen for some time. They had had some friction in the past and now the disciple had asked him, “Are you still angry with me?” Swami told me he had answered, “The guru in me was never angry with you—only the man. If the guru had been angry, then nothing in the three worlds could have saved you.”

This reply startled and jarred on me; I was shocked by its seeming arrogance. But then Swami explained that “the guru in me” wasn't himself at all; it was the Lord. He added, “I never feel that it is I who am initiating a disciple; it is the Lord.”

April 6. I asked Swami, did he fear death. He said no, not at all. But he then repeated a story he has told me before: how, when he was going to have a double-hernia operation and had to fill in a form relieving the surgeon of responsibility in the event of his death, he had felt afraid and had prayed to Maharaj for release from his fear. It had left him immediately.

April 18. Something reminded me that Gerald Heard had once told me, back in 1939, that Swami had talked of arranging for him to take sannyas. I asked Swami if this was so. Swami said that it was, and added: “And you too, Chris—even now—why don't you come back to us?” I said, “I'm not fit to,” and he answered, “Only the Lord can judge who is fit.” We looked at each other and he giggled.

He giggled again at supper when he told the nuns, “Chris is going to become a monk.” I laughed, and the girls laughed, too, watching my face uneasily to see if this really was only a joke. It was very odd and disturbing. Doesn't Swami accept my present way of life, after all? I had begun to believe that he did.

(This was, in fact, the last time that Swami made such a suggestion to me. What had moved him to do it? It was just one of his mysterious impulses.)

At the question period last week he was asked, “Should one regard the guru as being the same as God?”—to which he unhesitatingly answered, “Yes.” Then he added: “But I'm not that kind of guru.” “What kind of guru are you?” someone asked. Swami answered, “I am the dust of the feet of Maharaj.” Then he smiled: “There is some holiness even in the dust.”

May 2. When I went to see Swami I got a very powerful vibration from him. It began when I asked him what he does all day, now that he can't read. He said that he feels the Lord's presence. I asked him if he meditates. He said no, not in the daytime. When he meditates, it is either on the Guru in the center of the brain or on the Lord in the center of the heart.

Then he began to recite the formal meditation on the Guru, partly in English and partly in Sanskrit: “He is making with the right hand the sign which dispels fear and with the left hand he is bestowing his blessings on me. He is calm and he is the image of mercy and he is pleased with me…”

This recitation was interrupted by the arrival of George, to help Swami get dressed to go to the temple for the class. (This is one of George's prerogatives and I know, without Swami's ever having had to tell me, that I must never help him dress, even if George arrives late.)

Then Swami took my arm for the walk to the temple. (This is my prerogative.) I always try to meditate on the Guru while we're walking, but my vanity at being Swami's attendant and entering the temple with him in front of all those people usually spoils my concentration.

This evening, just as we were about to go into the temple, Swami suddenly continued his recitation with the words, “He is pleased with you, smiling, gracious…” I don't know if he said “you” instead of “me” intentionally, but I couldn't help taking it personally and feeling that the Guru was speaking to me through Swami. It was an extraordinary moment.

June 7. Swami told us that he hadn't slept more than two hours the night before. I asked, “So you made japam nearly all night?” And he answered, with a sort of comic ruefulness, “What else should I do?”

June 14. An absurd situation arose when I came into Swami's room. As usual, I prostrated and touched his feet with my forehead. As I started to get up again, I saw his hand extended over me. In my dumb vague way, I thought he was holding out his hand for a handshake, so I tried to take it. Immediately he raised his hand a little, out of my reach. So I reached up for it, rising slightly to do so. He raised it still higher—which was quite awkward for him, since he was still seated in his armchair … And then at last I realized—he was blessing me! I was terribly embarrassed, but he didn't laugh.

June 23. Swami's Father's Day lunch. The emergence of Swami from his room, into the garden, was particularly ceremonious this year; the procession included Pavitrananda from New York, George, Asaktananda, Chetanananda, and me. I had been in Swami's room with the others and tried to slip around and join the crowd. But Asaktananda grabbed my arm and held me firmly. So we took our turn in facing the clicking and flashing cameras of the massed devotees. It was as if we had just gotten married.

At last we were all seated amidst the flowers at the central table, under the colored parachute-silk awnings spanned from the tree limbs—like saints in a farcical heaven. Swami reproved the monks because some of them had started to eat before he did. He was in that kind of a mood. Then came some very tough meat and the usual blush-making songs.

And then Swami spoke. His speech was dismayingly long and rambling—a history of our Vedanta Society, told chiefly in terms of the sums of money donated for various building projects, in Hollywood, Montecito, and Trabuco. Swami also alluded to Heard, Huxley, and me—saying that, as he put it, “although I am nothing,” these famous men had sat on the floor in his presence! There was a vanity in this which Don and I both minded, not because it was vanity but because it seemed so senile. I have never heard Swami talk in this tone before. When it was over, he was obviously exhausted. He went to his room, saying that he wanted to be alone.

October 11. When we went to see Swami yesterday evening, we had already heard rumors of what had happened to him at the Montecito temple, on the 6th. Swami told us the whole story, in his objective way, as though he were describing a sudden attack of appendicitis.

It was during the celebration of the Durga puja. While Swami was offering a flower at the shrine, he was suddenly overwhelmed with emotion, realizing how gracious Mother had been to him. He burst into tears. Chetanananda had to help him out of the shrine room and into the little office room at the back of the building. Chetanananda said to Swami, “This is a sign of the great grace Mother is showing you”—at which Swami began to cry again and couldn't stop for some time. He begged Chetanananda not to mention Mother's name to him again. When he had regained control of himself, he went back into the temple and blessed the congregation, lest they should think he was sick. After this, he became “very jolly.” The nuns told him that his face looked changed; it was flushed.

Swami seemed very well when we saw him, though perhaps a bit tired. Now they are getting ready to celebrate the Kali puja here. One of the nuns came in to speak to Swami about the hiring of a boat—to take the worshipers out after the puja is over, so they can drop the statue of Mother Kali into the sea. Swami immediately got angry: “I don't want to hear about that. It's like arranging the baby's funeral before it is born.”

(After a statue has been worshiped in the shrine room, it must either be disposed of at once or else worshiped daily from that time forward. Perhaps Swami's indignation was due to the intensity of his experience at Montecito, making him more than ever convinced that the Divine Mother actually enters and is present within the material object which represents her.)

December 5. This evening, Swami asked me if I had had any “experiences.” That's the word I always use when I ask him the same question. I found myself instantly in a state of strong emotion. I told him that I hadn't had any experiences, but that that didn't matter, because at least I know now that, if I hadn't met him, my life would have been nothing. My voice was shaking and tears ran down my face. Swami didn't say anything but his face became aloof in that way it does when he is in a spiritual mood—“deserted,” one might call it, because one feels that he is “out of himself.” We were silent for a long time.