A Passage from India  

Swami Prabhavananda at Belur Math 1963 Copyright Vedanta Society of Southern California All rights reserved, Collection of  The Vedanta Archives

At Swami Prabhavananda’s persistent request, Isherwood accompanied Swami Prabhavananda, who was, as always, also accompanied by Swami Krishnananda, to India in December of 1963. Swami Vivekananda’s 100^th Birth Anniversary was being celebrated, culminating in a Parliament of Religions at which Chris was to speak. Chris had a meltdown. He had started self-medicating even ahead of the trip itself. We must acknowledge that this was a very stressful period in his life as the relationship between Chris and Don was in prolonged and agonizing upheaval.

John Yale was also in India at the time to take his vows of sannyas.[1] Yale writes of this visit:

During sessions of the Parliament Chris gave several lively talks. One on Swami Vivekananda, another on his conception of and reverence for the guru. He was treated with the greatest respect, which meant, considering the circumstances, rendered adulation as a religious spokesman. …To be treated as a religious leader was a situation intolerable to Chris's hatred of sham. What happened is recounted in the following entry from my [John Yale’s] journal:

Friday, January 3, 1964. Belur Math. Chris was given a round-the-world air ticket to come here and speak at the Parliament of Religions. Yesterday he appeared, returned ahead of time from an excursion to Maharaj's village, which he had abandoned with the excuse that he was not feeling good. Privately he told me what had happened. Being on display, written up by newspapers, giving lectures, being supposedly a religious celebrity, he grew nauseated with the role… Said he'd never be placed in such a false position again. "…It is as though my serious work [which he assumed the monks had never read} must be considered to be done by a secret Mr. Hyde. I don't feel like that at all. Within my lights the novels I write are serious, expressing a kind of truth as I see it. Speaking on religion—which means being considered religious—puts me in a false position. I'll never do it again… "

[In all fairness, we should mention that Swami Prabhavananda had also never read his fiction novels, “Swami was well aware I had written novels and that they had scenes in them which some people considered shocking. He had no intention of reading the novels…”[2] a fact which didn’t seem to rile Isherwood; and we will see shortly that when Isherwood does ask Swami’s approval for a novel, Isherwood offers up the venture very meekly.] Yale continues: 

Chris left India the same day we completed our vows, feeling, I think, that the experience had been a fiasco. But… things turned out otherwise. The idea for a new novel was born out of those few trying days at Belur Math. He told me that he felt this to be one of Sri Ramakrishna's little jokes, or perhaps his reward for having acceded to his guru's demand despite his own disinclination.

In fact, Isherwood got the idea for A Meeting by the River on the plane ride out of India. He writes: “I used to claim jokingly that it was then I first became aware that Vivekananda[3]… had given me a charming thank you present, an idea for a novel… about Prema taking sannyas.”

Prema writes:

Chris remained till the day of our glory and rushed up to prostrate when we issued from the temple resplendent in gerrua, about 6:00 in the morning. Bless his heart...The beautiful gesture of Patrick prostrating before Oliver [in Meeting] is a fictionalized account of the true fact, Chris's salutation of me in that memorable dawn.

A Meeting by the River concerns two brothers. The elder, Patrick, is a successful man of the world and a devoted hedonist; the younger, Oliver, a monastic novice and candidate for sannyas. The two meet after a long separation at a Hindu monastery on the Ganges just as Oliver is about to pronounce his vows. As they meet, each is prepared to reject the point of view of the other, attitudes made more intense by the remnants of old sibling rivalries. This is how Chris expressed the work's inception in a letter he wrote me on March 15, 1964, as he was about to begin work:

… for many years I have been playing with the problem of a confrontation—two people who are like two halves of a larger person, and who represent diametrically opposite ways of life… one is in the world, the other has been rather mysteriously absent in India… I know I am not making it sound exactly thrilling, but I do smell something.

The “something” culminated in the long-sought synthesis, Isherwood’s first religious novel. Of the presentation to Swami, Isherwood writes:

May 31, 1966. Yesterday I finished my third and final draft of A Meeting by the River. I’ve always known that I would have to show it to Swami—since he will be held responsible for me if Belur Math takes offense at anything in the book… But the thought of Swami reading the homosexual scenes[4] makes me squirm inside. Why? I would never apologize for them, morally or artistically… Furthermore, Swami has praised me for being myself and making no pretenses about the way I live my life. Just the same, I squirm. Am taking him the manuscript tomorrow.

June 3[, 1966] Swami rang up to say he’d finished my novel. "When I finished the last scene there were two tears running down my cheeks." What an angel he is! He was obviously every bit as relieved as I was… He even suggested it could be sold at our [Hollywood Temple] bookshop, but I felt that this was just his relief speaking.[5]

Gore Vidal in a review written for The New York Review of Books classed A Meeting by the River as one of Chris's best. It was also produced as a play, which Chris said he preferred to the novel. Additionally, he and Don Bachardy co-wrote a draft of a screenplay; but the film was never made.

The Diaries

Isherwood’s work as a diarist is of utmost interest. Several of his readers consider his journals his finest writing. He began when he was very young, at the age of 4 dictating diary entries to his mother, Kathleen, herself a devoted diarist. The journal was to become his stockpot; but just as importantly, it was the arena for analyzing his thoughts and feelings, the place where he would, as he put it, “discuss with myself.” He sought to be assiduously honest, meticulously peeling the onion while we watch.

Sometimes in the course of the diaries, he criticizes others for traits he himself has demonstrated; but immediately, he will recognize the hypocrisy. Rather than cancelling the entire comment, as though the recognition has levelled out the criticism, he leaves the whole process exposed, for it’s the self-revelation that’s important. He incisively lays out the purpose and process of his diary writing in Meeting by the River, where the fictional character Oliver writes:

…At this point, I suddenly stopped. I felt, with a strange kind of panic, that I mustn’t write another word. At first this feeling seemed justified and right and proper. I took it for the voice of conscience. I said to myself, keeping this diary has helped me so much, through the months I’ve been out here. It has got me over all kinds of negative moods and aversions. But never before today have I used it as an outlet for personal resentment. Isn’t this terribly wrong and dangerous? But then it gradually dawned on me why it really was I was afraid to go on writing. I … wasn’t getting down to the truth. The truth is that I’m unspeakably humiliated and shocked to discover that I, who am supposed to be spiritually advanced to the level at which I can take sannyas, still feel these spasms of sheer hatred toward my own brother! That stabs my ego in the very heart of its vanity. It was already beginning to pose in its swami’s robes and admire itself as a budding saint. Now it gets glimpses of its unchanged unregenerate vicious monkey-face, and it’s shocked….It tries desperately not to look.

The monkey must be made to face its ugliness again and again. That’s why I should keep on with this diary and even write it in more detail than usual … being as frank as I can. It’s absolutely necessary to bring everything out in the open at last…[6]

In the diary entries he presents in My Guru, he had two primary antagonists. The first was his stubborn inner Puritan (surprise!), who in turn became the enemy of a lesser enemy: a self-confessed propensity for sloth. But his major nemesis was the ego. However, in doing battle with the ego, he was armed with more than his discipline of introspection. He had his guru.

As an example of combatting the ego through introspection, he wrote:

I think, however, that Swami was perhaps saying this to me as a gentle rebuke to my overindulgence in humility, in my relationship with him. He is fond of telling other people how humble I am about my literary reputation. But he must know perfectly well what my humility really is–the other half of my vanity.[7]

Regarding Chris’ humility[8], while he recognizes and freely confesses to humility as a conscious act, in the theatrical sense of the word, many who knew him or simply ran into him around town found this behavior so consistent and spontaneous as to indicate a genuine rather than assumed attitude.[9] Moreover, in reading his diaries, one rarely gets a sense of his status, either financial or professional, unless he’s having difficulties, as though his successes don’t seem to figure deeply in his self-image. For example, at the conclusion of his Quaker work in Pennsylvania, where he lived modestly in a spare bedroom of a suburban Quaker family and exhibited no grandness at any level, including his work assignments, he mentions that a friend concerned about his lack of literary output prodded him into writing something…anything. So Isherwood wrote a story and got it published in The New Yorker. For most writers, this would be a crowning achievement; but for Isherwood, it was easy pickings.

From “gentle rebuke,” we go to surgical intervention—Swami’s technique of subtle, often humorous, yet lethal ego puncture. Isherwood records:

Once fishing for a compliment, I asked Swami why he so seldom scolded me. He answered, “I don’t scold for the big faults.” He gave no sign of awareness that this statement had crushing implications.

I was so taken aback by it that I didn’t question him further, either then or at any later time.[10]

And then there’s the nuclear option: The Scolding. It is important that this discipline is understood. Swami Prabhavananda, who frequently participated in all aspects of this procedure—getting, giving, and witnessing (remarkably difficult, even when it’s not directed at you)—explains the phenomenon in The Eternal Companion, Swami Prabhavananda’s biography of his guru, Swami Brahmananda:

Sri Ramakrishna himself often rebuked his most intimate disciples, and Maharaj [Swami Brahmananda] also used this method to train those who were near and dear to him. The chastening of a disciple never began, however, until after he had enjoyed several years of love and kind words. These experiences were painful at the time, but they were later treasured among the disciple’s sweetest memories. It often happened that even while the disciple was being reproached by Maharaj, he would feel a strange undercurrent of joy. The indifference of Maharaj was the only thing we could not have borne; but Maharaj was never indifferent. The harsher his words, the more intensely we felt his interest in our welfare. The very fact that he could speak to us in this way proved that we were his children, his own. Sometimes, a disciple would be reproved for quite insignificant reasons, or on grounds that seemed to him utterly unjust. But, as time passed, he would realize that there had been certain tendencies and karmas stored in his subconscious mind, and that Maharaj had seen them and was working to annihilate them before they could appear and become harmful. Thus, at the cost of a little unpleasantness, the disciple would be spared years of painful struggle and self-discipline.

…When Maharaj disciplined us, he gave us the power to bear it. We never reacted with resentment. We knew that whatever he did was for our own good.

…[Maharaj said] “The Mother holds the child on her lap and spanks him; and the child cries: ‘Mother, mother!’” Never before had I been so deeply aware of his love and protection…His words soothed my burning heart. Then he said: “Our love is so deep that we do not let you know how much we love you.”[11]

Chris writes about the only time he was “bawled out” by Swami. However, as well as a first-hand description of a scolding, the entry also offers up a heaping helping of Isherwood’s feelings of persecution at the hands of the nuns and the tragically “respectable” devotees. The incident began on June 16, 1974 at a Father’s Day celebration. As usual, Chris was at Swami’s side. Chris had misunderstood a story Swami was telling. Chris then asked what Swami considered an inappropriate question and another ridiculous one. Swami took umbrage on the spot. According to Chris, Swami called him on the phone the next morning to continue an intensified tirade. Chris records of the phone call in My Guru:

I asked him [Swami] to forgive me, and he laughed and said, “How should I not forgive you? You are my disciple and my child.” “A very silly child,” I said. “Oh, no, Chris, you are the most intelligent of all my children.” [12]

Right after our conversation was over, I felt that his scolding had truly been a blessing. {Enter Iago} But already, such is egotism, I am beginning to indulge in resentment, because I am certain that someone at the Center must have commented on my mistakes to Swami and thus put the idea of scolding me into his head…

While in My Guru he accuses “someone at the center” of manipulating Swami into taking offence, in Volume 3, he says he suspects “one of the nuns[13]” of putting the idea into Swami’s head. It should be pointed out that during his time as a monk, Chris spoke highly of many of the convent members.  It is curious that after describing the same reactions that Swami Prabhavananda had described in The Eternal Companion, e.g. “I felt that his scolding had truly been a blessing,” Isherwood immediately reverses himself, “I am beginning to indulge in resentment,” using the very same word Swami had used in his statement, “We never reacted with resentment” but in contradiction. Had he confessed his thought process but then plunged deeper, this would have been in keeping with Isherwood’s practice of revealing the entire thought process; but in this case, he is unfortunately arrested at the resentment stage.

We will see how invaluable the diaries were in the creation of My Guru & His Disciple.

My Guru & His Disciple

“I don’t know what I think of My Guru. I can imagine really savage attacks on it and yet in a way I think it is the most worthwhile book I have written and probably one of the best modern books of its kind.”[14]

Isherwood began the book just a few months after Swami’s death on July 4, 1976. He describes the process in his diaries:

September 22 [1976], I had meant to begin my memoir of Swami today, but that would be a compulsive gesture. What I will do, until I do actually begin, is to discuss the project with myself, here [the diary].

For example: I originally thought I would start with getting the news of Swami’s death by phone from Jim Gates at Gavin’s house in Tangier… but I feel that this approach would have a certain vulgarity. Because it would necessarily hit a note of drama… No, I should begin at the very beginning, quite undramatically. I should have to begin with Gerald Heard, and in fact, follow the line of my diary. I must be shown to have met Swami through Gerald—not merely in the sense that Gerald introduced me to him, but in the sense that Gerald presented him, Gerald’s image of him, to me. At first, I certainly saw Swami through Gerald’s eyes.

Another thing I realized is that I must read right through my diaries—all of them, down to the present day, in order to get an overview. By an overview, I mean a sense of how the relationship between these two people, Swami and me, developed and changed. In this way, I shall probably find out a great deal which I don’t know, am not aware of, yet. OK, good, that’s how I will begin.[15]

My Guru is more than an excerpted condensation of the diaries. In some cases, it supplies information not mentioned in the diaries. For example, the Diaries, Volume 1 version of Chris’s first appointment with Swami surprisingly does not include Chris “coming out” to Swami. In response to an enquiry about this as well as the general primness of Volume I, Katherine Bucknell, Isherwood scholar and the Diaries’ editor, replied, “He was well tuned in to the risks of putting on paper anything he wasn’t comfortable to have in the public realm.“

In later entries he continues:

Feb 1 [1977], I have just finished reading right through my diaries, from the beginning of 1939. There is still one gap I want to fill–—never mind how inadequately; from Jan 1^st 1976, until the next entry, on Aug 1^st…

What is fatally missing from the diary as a result of this gap are any entries about our last few meetings with Swami. I shall also have to describe the two memorial services for him which I did attend[16]… I hope Don will have some detail in his diary about this period.

Feb 18^th [1977], On Feb 12^th, the day after our return [from the “frozen North”], I formally made a start on my Swami memoir. (I tried doing the opening draft in pencil on Gerald Heard’s old writing board, and again it seemed to give forth some power—at least, I scribbled several pages.)… Perhaps the best thing about it [the book] will be its final passage, a description of me in old age and of what Swami means to me now that he is dead and of how I view my approaching death and of the phenomenon of happiness near the end of life. [17]  

Who was his audience? Certainly his own mind. We’ve seen repeatedly that writing was the way he processed things intellectually and psychologically. A friend[18] and fellow devotee told Chris how much she enjoyed My Guru, how inspiring it was. He thanked her and then told her that he had not really written it for devotees but for the gay community, so that they would know that there was a religion, a place they could go, where their sexual orientation simply didn’t matter. Although communication with the gay community was almost certainly an important factor, he makes no mention of it as such in the Diaries while he’s composing the book. More likely, when responding to Carol, a woman devotee, he was in part indulging in one of his favorite past-times, playing “shock the squares” extra points if the square was also a devotee. But an incident related in Volume 3 from December of 1975 (p.489) may explain his pique. In response to an article about him in The Advocate in which he mentioned Swami and Vedanta, he had heard that Abhaya (not a convent member as implied by the diary entry) “was terribly shocked. …she was afraid that all the queers would start coming to the temple.” And an incident after My Guru was published which also enforces his statement is worth mentioning. In response to a harsh criticism of the book, Isherwood despaired that perhaps it was only the gay community that would understand it.  

Swami Prabhavananda at the  Santa Barbara Center  Copyright Vedanta Society of Southern California All rights reserved, Collection of  The Vedanta Archives

Toward the end of the project, Isherwood writes, “I fear…he [Swami] will have slipped out of my net.”[19] In the beginning of the writing process, he wrote that he couldn’t imagine two more dissimilar men than Swami and himself. However, as often happens with biographies, the character of Swami he did catch had a striking similarity to himself. Both were literary; both enjoyed people and were broad-minded in their appreciation of character; both had a sophisticated understanding of how people and the world worked; both were adventurous; both had a sharp sense of humor; both had a flair for the dramatic; both were teachers, mentors, and father figures.[20] But most importantly, both had tremendous guru bhakti .[21]

John Yale writes of My Guru and His Disciple:

Who but Chris would have been capable of revealing to a large public the intimate life of a mystic, rendering spiritual attainment convincing and beautiful? Who else but he, among all those who knew Swami Prabhavananda, took the pains to record, year in and year out, those revelations he heard from his guru which would show us, after he had departed, what was going on inside a man of God? ... Chris's memorial to Prabhavananda is a scientifically valid account of the religious impulse, the spiritual preference. And at the same time, so artistically done, in the tradition of great devotional literature. One critic called it the best book of devotion of this [the 20^th] century.

What did Isherwood finally think of the book? James P. White, a young writer whom Isherwood mentored and befriended recalls “Once, when he was speaking enthusiastically about My Guru, he said to me, ‘Jim, I never should have written a novel.’”[22]

My Guru, Too—Begging to Differ

We are enthusiastic fans of My Guru; every reading is more rewarding than the last. However, when first reading it in 1980, the year it was published, we were surprised to find that some incidents Isherwood describes differ from our first-hand recollections. In some cases, Isherwood was not himself present, as he acknowledges about certain events in the latter stages of My Guru.

The first incident in question is on page 323. On June 23, 1974, Isherwood attended a Swami Prabhavananda Sunday morning lecture in Santa Barbara, which, at this stage in his life, was unusual for Chris. We find in the journals that Isherwood had a commitment in the area later that afternoon. Swami was going through a period of deteriorating health that made him more delicate in general. Isherwood reports that Swami was particularly unwell that day. He wore Western dress rather than his customary ochre robes because he was in danger of tripping on them. Isherwood writes about the event in question:

At the end [of the lecture], he blessed us all. Then he made a gesture toward the shrine—as if of acknowledgement—and said, ”Who spoke through me.” It seemed perfectly obvious that he meant, “It was He who spoke through me.” But several people who talked to me later were puzzled. They had taken swami’s statement as a question, “Who spoke through me?”

Being present at the lecture, I[23] was surprised by Isherwood’s recreation. What I saw and heard was an exhausted and beleaguered Swami whose boundaries between planes had been systematically dissolving. It was a gray event. After the lecture, he got up from his chair and was starting to exit to the side room when he abruptly turned toward the shrine, pointing his finger at it, and said, “Who spoke to [not through] me?” It was a question, but also an accusation; the longtime Swami-in-charge was being in charge. He reacted as though he thought someone had spoken out of turn and needed to be corrected. He paused for a moment, collected himself, and exited the temple.

Eyewitness accounts often differ. But I was seated very near the front of the right-hand side, where Swami had been seated and spoke, and had the luxury of listening with 28 year-old ears. Moreover, Isherwood’s account doesn’t really make sense. It is full of assumptions and interpretations, e.g., “he made a gesture toward the shrine—as if of acknowledgement“; and most egregious, “It seemed perfectly obvious that he meant, ‘It was He who spoke through me.’” In short, Isherwood’s version relies on assumptions and a rephrasing of what he actually heard, literally putting words in Swami’s mouth, to come to his dubious conclusion.

The atmosphere at the lecture was sad, not beatific. Moreover, Swami did not characteristically broadcast mystical events, especially at venues open to the general public. His growing inability to contain them without show was a sign of the end approaching. Isherwood describes Swami as feeling unwell both before and after the lecture. In fact, to Isherwood’s disappointment, Swami wouldn’t see him after the lecture, as was the norm, because he just wasn’t up to it.[24] And there is the fact as Isherwood writes, that others also thought it was a question.

The second such story is recorded on page 317. Chris was not present at the event but was told on October 11, 1973 by, among others, Swami Prabhavananda himself, about an event that took place at Durga Puja in the Santa Barbara Temple five days earlier, on October 6, 1973. The story, however, needs context. Swami Prabhavananda’s health had become increasingly delicate as his spiritual sensitivity had become increasingly keen. His doctor told him that his heart couldn’t withstand intense spiritual experiences, yet his soul was easily engaged.

The way Isherwood describes the Durga Puja event, Swami was offering a flower at the shrine toward the end of the worship and “was suddenly overwhelmed with emotion, realizing how gracious Mother had been to him. He burst into tears. Chetanananda had to help him into the little office room...” When Chetanananda mentioned Mother’s grace to swami, “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 regained control of himself, he went back into the temple and blessed the congregation, so they wouldn’t think he was sick.”

We were present. This is a very vivid memory. The incident was quite dramatic and, for many of us, frightening. We have spoken to some devotees who were present as well as to Swami Chetanananda, asking for their recollections. The Rashomon factor notwithstanding, here is what we experienced and have gleaned: Swami had been sitting in an armchair during the worship. After offering the flower, Swami was back in his chair. Swami suddenly groaned, and his head snapped back, lifeless. He had lost outer consciousness. To my eyes, Swami Chetanananda seemed agitated; he was firing orders at Krishnananda in Bengali, which signaled panic, as Krishna didn’t speak Bengali. Swami Chetanananda helped Swami into the little side office. Swami was still in a mood and told Chetanananda not to mention Mother. Swami Chetanananda tells us that Narayan, a devotee and a doctor, came back there to check Swami. After a while, Swami left the temple through the office and was taken to his room. No one we spoke to remembers Swami coming back into the temple, although that may have happened. An hour or so later, the devotees were having lunch on the extensive grounds, and Swami Prabhavananda came out then, completely resurrected, and circulated among the devotees for quite some time, in part to show he was all right, looking very happy and well…glorious.

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