My Guru & His Disciple by Christopher Isherwood Read Free Book Online

met most of Ramakrishna’s direct disciples and had spent much more time with some of them than he had spent with Brahmananda himself. Knowing these disciples must have confirmed Prabhavananda’s faith. He spoke of them with the deepest reverence. But Brahmananda was his guru, and remained unique.
    Could I pretend to understand what such a devotion must mean? No. My own experience of relationships was so different and so inferior. I couldn’t help thinking of any sort of love relation as a bargain struck between two parties. The parties might keep to it for a short or a long while or even until death, but they could never regard it as absolutely firm. Neither one of the parties could be trusted not to violate it at any moment without warning—thus enabling the other party to impose penalties or employ the blackmail of forgiveness.
    Prabhavananda explained that Brahmananda didn’t love others in this person-to-person way. Having realized God, who is love, he had become love. Those who came into his presence felt that love; he gave forth love while remaining incapable of possessiveness or jealousy.
    I could understand this statement as an intellectual proposition; emotionally, it was unintelligible to me. And I had difficulty in relating it to Brahmananda’s behavior during that brief, extraordinary scene of Abanindra’s decision to join the monastery. Brahmananda’s answer, “When the Lord wills,” seemed disconcertingly passive, almost indifferent—even though it was accompanied by a look of “unforgettable sweetness.” Was this because Brahmananda was already aware that Abanindra had subconsciously made up his mind to become a monk?
    And, beyond this mystery, there was an even greater one: What had both Brahmananda and Holy Mother meant by asking, “Haven’t I seen you before?” Must one suppose that they had been associated with Abanindra in a previous life? And did that mean that Abanindra was already a member of their inner circle and that his becoming a monk in this life was therefore inevitable? I decided not to try to make sense out of any of this for the present. I put it into what Gerald aptly called “my suspense account.”
    When Prabhavananda insisted that he himself wasn’t really running the Center, the image which occurred to me in trying to understand this situation was that of a party of rock climbers, roped together. The highest climber we could see was Prabhavananda. But, above him, up there out of sight, was Brahmananda, the actual leader of the party. Brahmananda had already reached the summit, the goal of the climb. Therefore he must have seen to it that the top end of the rope was firmly belayed. The climbers could all follow him to the summit, provided that they didn’t lose their determination to go on climbing. Even if they slipped and fell, it could only be for a short distance. The rope would break their fall and hold them while they found a new toehold on the cliff face.
    It was very important to me that Prabhavananda described himself as a servant; that made me feel closer to him. It meant that I needn’t expect him to be perfect and try to explain away his weaknesses. From this standpoint, his major addiction, chain-smoking, seemed sympathetic, even reassuring. The humility expressed by his attitude to Brahmananda must surely protect him from spiritual pride. Instead of claiming the greatness of a spiritual teacher, he was showing us an example of a great disciple—which was what we most needed, being disciples ourselves.
    Nevertheless, the basic question remained: Was Brahmananda indeed up there, and was there contact between him and Prabhavananda? Perhaps the day would come when I should be able to get a direct answer to this, through meditation. All I could hope for at present was some kind of half answer obtained indirectly through Prabhavananda, by studying his words and actions and trying to get a glimpse