* * *
I felt entirely at ease, however, with the other women at the Center. It was easy to think of them all as being my sisters, though with varying degrees of intimacy.
Amiya, the big blond Englishwoman, was plump but still pretty; she had a soft creamy skin and sparkling eyes. She was an efficient cook and housekeeper, bossy, lively, warmhearted, talkative, devoted to Swami and to Sister. Having shared their years of poverty with them, she was inclined to patronize female newcomers. But she didn’t object to us men, and she and I were soon drawn together by our Britishness. Even when I saw how her ladylike limey accent and peculiarly British tactlessness must infuriate Americans, I couldn’t take their side against her.
Swami himself turned on Amiya sometimes and scolded her unmercifully, in public, so that she shed tears. She took this meekly, but I was shocked. I asked myself: Why does he have to do it in front of the rest of us? Is he taking revenge on her because she’s British and a woman? Does he have a deep-down Hindu contempt for all women?
Once again, Swami seemed to read my thoughts, for he now often spoke of the scoldings which Brahmananda had given him. “He pounded and pounded on me,” Swami said, repeating the word with an almost sensual relish; and he added that the scoldings were sometimes quite unjust. For example, Brahmananda had found fault with him because a letter in the printed heading on some stationery was seemingly broken. When Swami had brought the style book and shown him that the gap in the lettering was actually intentional and part of the design, Brahmananda ignored the explanation and continued to scold. And then, said Swami, he had begun to realize that Maharaj wasn’t concerned about specific mistakes or faults, he would rebuke and humiliate you in order to correct bad tendencies which he detected in your subconscious mind.
Very well, I could take it on trust that a Brahmananda could behave with seeming unreasonableness and cruelty, and do so out of sheer benevolence. How can one hope to understand the actions of such a superhuman being? But could I believe that Swami also had this kind of discrimination? There were times when I couldn’t. When Swami lost his temper, I found his performance altogether convincing. He seemed immature and petty.
This raised a question: What exactly was Prabhavananda? Could he be simultaneously Abanindra Ghosh and Brahmananda’s instrument? Could he be combining the mannerisms of his immature persona with the insight of a great saint? Well, time would show. It was my hopeful belief that, by degrees, Swami would become less of Abanindra and more of Maharaj. Meanwhile, I loved him as he was, and that included all of Abanindra.
* * *
Sarada was a girl in her early twenties, of Norwegian descent. She had studied music and dancing. Often, when she thought nobody was watching, she would execute ballet movements, humming to herself. A certain balletic gracefulness could also be noticed in her gestures as she sat before the shrine, performing the ritual. She probably spent more time in the shrine than any of us, except George, with the result that she neglected her household duties.
Amiya was fond of Sarada, but she was forced to play the humiliating role of Martha in the Gospel story, chiding her sister Mary for sitting at the Lord’s feet instead of helping to get the dinner ready. She was also a bit jealous of the praise Sarada got from Swami for her devotion. Sarada didn’t resent Amiya’s grumbling. She must have known that she herself was often guilty of an irritating holy vagueness, an air of thick-skinned serenity which could try anyone’s patience. But Sarada also had a wild, lively, unaffected side to her character. She was capable of saying straight out, without coyness, that she thought Richard “a beautiful boy.” She was full of jokes about our daily life, which included the ritual and Ramakrishna himself. At first, she even shocked me slightly. This was a response conditioned by my Ten Commandments upbringing. It helped me to realize how meaningless the concept of blasphemy was in my present surroundings. There was no way of blaspheming against the kind of God we were being taught to believe in here.
* * *
Yogini was a married woman of about thirty. Her husband, whom Swami had named Yogi, was in the Army but about to be discharged for some medical reason. He, too, was a devotee and had created a sensation in camp by having a picture of Ramakrishna by his bed and burning incense in front of it every evening. He had also formed a group of fellow soldiers to study Vedanta, despite the disapproval of the chaplain. Soon Yogi and Yogini would have to decide what their future was to be. Would Yogini leave the Center and settle down elsewhere with Yogi as a married couple? Or would they both live here in partial separation, as monk and nun? Or would they separate altogether and Yogini remain here? (They finally chose the third alternative.)
Yogini was attractive, with a good figure, fresh coloring, and lots of frizzy fair hair. She laughed a great deal and seemed to take everything lightly. It was some time before I was able to appreciate the seriousness of her commitment to the religious life and the strength of her loyalty to us as her brothers and sisters. She was someone you could rely on absolutely.
One morning, a lady appeared at the Center who was from a government office which issued propaganda to foreign countries about the virtues of cultural life in the United States. She wanted me to write an article on the Vedanta Society, to show (these were her own words) “how wonderfully the United States tolerates all religions.” I refused, as tactfully as I could. When I described this encounter, that day at lunch, Yogini said, “I think it’s wonderful how we tolerate the United States.”
* * *
Sudhira was a hospital nurse by profession. I believe she had first come to the Center to nurse either Sister or Amiya through an illness. She was Irish-Californian, with a strong accent on the Irish.
Sudhira had a charming, handsome face, but her essential beauty was of a rarer kind—the beauty which shows itself in the carriage of the head and shoulders, the movements of the hands, the walk. Physically, she was a great aristocrat. Sometimes, when she came into a room, quite unselfconsciously intent on carrying a tea tray, her entrance was so stately that it filled me with delight.
When Sudhira was a girl, she had fallen in love with a young airplane pilot. Three days after their marriage, he was killed in a crash. She became obsessed by the fact of his death; she longed to find out what death really is. She was already working as a nurse and now she made a point of getting herself assigned to seemingly terminal cases, so that she could observe them while they were dying. Being good at her job, she sometimes saved them—and immediately lost interest in them.
While nursing at the County Hospital, she had managed to contract most of the available infectious diseases. She had also got herself involved in numerous automobile accidents. That she had survived all these seemed to suggest that her particular kind of death addiction was only a flirtation; much as she loved to wander along the mortal frontier, she had no immediate intention of crossing it.
I soon began to build a myth around her. She was the universal Nanny, I told her. She was the figure that we meet twice in our lives, at the entrance and at the exit, to help us into this world and out of it. I begged her to be with me at my deathbed, we would have such a wonderful time together. And I told her about the poem I was writing. I was trying to describe her in mythical terms but could get no further than the first line: Is that the needle, Nanny, you are bringing?
Sudhira laughed, but she didn’t tell me I was being silly—her Irish heart loved this kind of talk. Soon I started getting sick for short spells; thus we could spend hours chatting, instead of doing our proper jobs. Her presence tempted me to transform my life at the Center into an illness, a toxic laziness, from which I should become increasingly unwilling to recover.
Nine
March 26, 1943. Woke murmuring a line from Yeats’s translation of Oedipus at Colonus: “Even from that delight memory treasures so…” I read Yeats often, just now. He represents a most elegant kind of sexual sublimation.
Felt a bit heavy from Sudhira’s vitamin B1 shot last night. She has decided that we all
need pepping up, and goes around at bedtime with the hypodermic, visiting her “customers.”
Tried to think that my Real Self was already sitting in meditation before the shrine, as I herded my sleepy body out to the washroom, emptied its bladder, and sponged its face. Webster, who had called me, was in the boys’ bedroom, finishing his homework by electric light. Thought: “Shall I point out that it’s already daylight outside, if he’ll raise the shades? Don’t be such an old fusspot. But surely it’s time he went into the temple? That’s his affair, not yours. Shut up.”
Raised the shades in the living room, thinking how much I love the daylight. In this mood, I picture myself as a wistful prisoner—the type that watches the swallows and waters a flower with his tears.
Arrived to find the shrine room empty. Tried to pray for my friends, but could feel absolutely no affection for anybody. The only thought which almost always seems valid is of the boys fighting each other all over the world. That gives me a sense of obligation. Because of their suffering, even if for no other reason, I must contribute my tiny effort toward this other way of life.
Then the usual bad feelings—vanity, because Swami came in late and saw that I was already in the shrine. Self-accusation, because I’m not in England. This still sometimes recurs—although I know perfectly well that, whatever my duty may have been in the past, it is now to stay here, and that I only wish to return because I care what the world thinks of me. Then satisfaction, because, technically, I’m still keeping all the rules. Then sex thoughts. Then resentment against various people whom I regard as threats to my convenience.
After worship, as I was going across to the other house for breakfast, a special-delivery letter was handed to me by the mailman; it was from Richard’s father to Swami. I touched it to my head in mock salutation before giving it to Swami, and immediately felt that the joke was silly. Swami read the letter, which had an enclosure for Rich, while I watched him inquisitively and Sudhira brought in spoon bread and eggs and we ate our prunes. Swami passed me the letter to read. Rich’s father wasn’t sure if he should take Rich’s decision to leave the Center seriously, since Rich hadn’t mentioned that he and Swami had discussed the matter.
Rich didn’t read his part of the letter but took it away with him from the table. Sister remarked that she’d have to hire a gardener, now that Rich is leaving. When we got up from breakfast, I urged Swami to get Rich away as soon as possible. I made this sound as if I were thinking of Rich’s own good. The truth is that this interim period, with Rich smoking up the living-room and listening to jitterbug music, is getting on my nerves. Also, I know that he’s planning some kind of sex excursion for tomorrow night—as why the hell shouldn’t he? But it makes me feel so insecure.
Asit put me into a good temper by flattering remarks about my new haircut. Burned trash in the incinerator. I often feel mad at Asit when I’m burning the trash, because he’s apt to leave razor blades amidst the wastepaper, twice I’ve nearly cut my hand. However, this morning he hadn’t left any. Felt a warmth toward him and Rich—the first decent feeling of the day.
Met Sudhira, who told me that she’d been having an argument with George about Richard. According to her, George thinks that Rich should be forced to stay here, no matter how, because the Lord is sure to work on him gradually if only he sticks around. Sudhira disagrees.
She told about a marmoset she’d had as a pet. It bit and the vet filed its teeth, and it got toothache and sat with its paw to its mouth and the tears running down its face. And Sudhira, who had hated it, began to feel sorry for it and got codeine for it from the hospital and it turned into a dope fiend, and died. She was so beautiful as she described this, with tears in her eyes.
(Presumably, the marmoset represented Richard and the moral was that you must never interfere forcibly with another person’s way of life. A peculiar charm of Sudhira’s anecdotes was that they seldom quite applied to the subject they were meant to illustrate.)
Returned to the kitchen to help with the dishes. Dishwashing is always enjoyable here, everybody is so cheerful. I make up nonsense verses to amuse the girls. For example:
With many a mudra and mantram, with mutterings and mouthings and moans,
The rishi flew into a tantrum, and rattled the avatar’s bones.
After reams of ridiculous ritual, after offerings of ointment and eggs,
The cripples were kissed by Rasputin, and recovered the use of their legs.
Then went into the temple, to watch Sarada doing the first part of the ritual. Swami wants me to learn it. I had the book of instructions open in front of me and followed. Then I went in to see Swami, who showed me the rest. He had been talking to Richard, who had said he wanted to be a military policeman and shoot someone in the belly. “He’s an egomaniac,” Swami said, but he couldn’t help smiling. He loves Rich.
Richard did finally leave, on April 10. In my diary, I tried to define my feelings about this:
Let those who want to leave, leave. I can’t agonize over straying sheep. Whatever else the religious life is, it isn’t tragic, because every effort and discomfort is purely voluntary; you can stop whenever you wish. And this talk about the world’s pleasures being wretched and tasteless is just silly, as far as I’m concerned. Sure, you have to pay for them, but they’re marvelous while they last. You can’t wish them away and groan and say you never did like them, really. They have extraordinary beauty and significance, and woe to the wetleg who denies it.
The world at its best isn’t miserable, isn’t hateful—it is mad. The pursuit of worldly pleasures as ends in themselves is madness, because it disregards the real situation, which is that we are living a life that has only one thing to teach us, how to know God in ourselves and in other people. To be sane is to be aware of the real situation. The desire, the homesickness, for sanity is the one valid reason for subjecting oneself to any kind of religious discipline.
May 1. Shaky after two days in bed with flu. But I want to write down a few things.
While in bed, I read Waley’s translation of the Chinese novel Monkey. Also The Light of Asia, and several Buddhist writings from Lin Yutang’s anthology. Having done so, I feel, very strongly, that we must not despise the body. The body is not a lump of corrupt filth, it is not evil. It is our faithful loyal servant, in sickness and in health; it really does its best. Of course, if you let it be the master, then it will display all its greed and stupidity and brutishness. If you put your dog on the dining-room table, you mustn’t be surprised if it gobbles everything up. We must be very firm with the body and also very kind.
Also, I do feel that we must be ready to accept sickness—not as a burden, but as a profoundly educational experience, neither less nor more educational than health.
Sudhira has been looking after me, and telling me stories. While she was nursing in the children’s ward at the County Hospital, she caught meningitis and became delirious. Two beautiful white horses appeared in her room and told her that they’d come to take her away with them to Mount Shasta, but that first they must all three of them go into the chapel and say a prayer. Sudhira actually followed them into the hospital chapel, dressed only in a short nightgown. She was kneeling at the altar rail and laughing at the awkwardness of the horses—they couldn’t kneel properly—when a doctor found her and led her back to bed.
May 4. Was up all day, but am back in bed this evening, resting. Webster hurries in and out, bringing me things, like a hospital orderly, under Sudhira’s command. He shows a kindness and gentleness which are almost feminine. I feel he takes our monastic relationship absolutely literally. As far as he’s concerned, we’re brothers, and that’s that.
I have no idea “where I am.” Have I made progress during these three months, or haven’t I? To a certain degree, I do feel yes, I have. Just being with Swami has given me a much clearer idea of what the spiritual life ought to mean. How infinitely difficult and yet how utterly simple it is! Want to find the Atman? All right, go ahead and dig it out, like
a terrier.
The worship is very helpful. I did it again today—for about the 18th time. Nearly always, I at least manage to get a great awareness of responsibility. Here am I, with all my karma upon me, presenting myself before the unthinkable majesty of what is enthroned in the shrine. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m the only one they could send today.” Offering the prayers and mudras, the flowers and lights and incense, I am representing everybody I have ever known and all my unknown human brothers and sisters. This is when I think about Heinz and try to send him a message—even if he’s already dead.
(A mudra is any one of the various symbolic hand gestures used in the ritual. My diary doesn’t mention what was, for me, the most important quality of the worship; it was the best of all aids to concentration. While performing the various acts of the ritual, you were obliged to keep your mind on what you were saying and doing—all the more so, if you were a beginner. Thus you could scarcely avoid thinking about God almost continuously, for about an hour and a half. Under any other circumstances, my span of concentration would have been about one and a half minutes.)
May 19. The man came round today who exterminates vermin and termites. Sarada, who is a born missionary, had a talk with him and excitedly reported that he is much interested in Vedanta. “I’m sure he’s got the makings of a devotee,” she said. George commented dryly: “From ratman to Atman.”