MY GURU AND HIS DISCIPLE

by Christopher Isherwood ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 23, 1980

A rambling, agreeable diary-cum-commentary of Isherwood's long (1939-76) connection with Swami Prabhavananda. The ""disciple""--who looms much larger in the book than the guru--cuts a contradictory figure as a devotee. He starts out from an admittedly simpleminded Marxist atheism (God the ""symbol of the capitalist superboss""), but ends in an equally uncritical pious Hinduism. (At Charles Laughton's deathbed, he prays to Ramakrishna and urges Laughton to pray to ""God"": ""Do it for Brahmananda's sake, for Vivekananda's sake, for Prabhavananda's sake."") On the other hand, Isherwood has next to no theology. His religion is simply the hints and glimpses he gets of transcendence from observing the swami's spiritual life. (And yet, he claims, this is not a personality cult.) Isherwood, despite his passionate, eager homosexuality, champions his celibate guru, and spends more than a year as an aspirant monk. (Shortly before this, he and his current lover get into the habit of afternoon car trips, with the non-driver reading aloud from some religious work to keep the driver's mind off ""sexy pedestrians."") Typically Isherwood makes no excuses for these and other follies and inconsistencies--any more than he paints halos around the head of his guru. In these scattered, impromptu sketches we see Prabhavananda as a messy (belching, hawking up phelgm), imperfect (politically chauvinist, jealous of ""competition"" from other swamis), and therefore highly believable saint: a humble, loving, selfless, transparent human being. What difference he made in his disciple's life--beyond a purely personal intimacy--is hard to say. In his conclusion Isherwood regrets that he can't assure his fellow mortals that ""all is ultimately well."" Prabhavananda might say this with ""the absolute authority of a knower,"" but he can't. No cosmic panoramas, then, just a handful of casual, but convincing and artfully drawn portraits.

Pub Date: May 23, 1980

ISBN: 0816638640

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1980

Categories: NONFICTION