Free Christopher Isherwood: A Personal memoir by John Lehmann Page B

College, Southern California. Their intellectual, social and professional backgrounds differed widely. Perhaps they had nothing in common but a need, a need for a refreshed faith, a new kind of integration which would help them with the problem of their own muddled lives and the desperately anarchic world in which they lived. One should not imagine them as dedicated, or even specially devout. Some were frankly sceptical. Others winced at  the sound of holy words which had been used to blackmail their childhood. A few were jealously on guard over the corpse of a dogma. Nearly all, at one time or another, had had a faint glimpse of some central Reality within themselves - a glimpse toward which they had feebly struggled for a while and then weakened, ruefully confessing their lack of condition. It was discipline and training which they hoped for here. We had gathered, as research-workers in any field may gather, to compare notes, to discuss techniques, and to get the inspiration which a feeling of companionship in effort can give ….
    Next morning, our communal life began, according to the prearranged schedule. We were called at five o’clock. At five-thirty we gathered for an hour of group meditation. At seven, we had breakfast - in silence, while one of us read aloud. At nine, we met for an hour and a half of discussion. At eleven-thirty the midday meditation began. At one, we lunched and talked. Theoretically, the early part of the afternoon was free, but a few of us often met, in smaller units, to discuss some topic of general interest. At four there was another general discussion. At six, the evening meditation. At seven-thirty supper, with reading. At nine, bed ….
    Looked at from the outside, such a programme of living as has been described above may appear unnatural, unhealthy and altogether fantastic. It did not seem so to those who took part in it … .
          
    Fantastic it did indeed seem to his friends in London under the bombs, and fantastic in the life of the Christopher they had known. Some months before he had written to me:
    I am just stuck in one of my sterile periods. So I confine myself to keeping a very detailed diary of my life here, which will provide me with plenty of raw material for later. It certainly is a very extraordinary life - one third German Refugee, one third Yoga and one third Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, which has just given me a job, writing dialogue for a James Hilton story! I cannot say that I am happy, or ever could be, as long as this war lasts, but I am certainly going through one of the most interesting periods of my life, and learning a great deal. I see Berthold a lot. Huxley and Heard quite often. And there are exotic glimpses of Garbo, Krishnamurti, Bertrand Russell and Charlie Chaplin. I haven’t yet met Mickey Rooney, although I am now employed under the same roof, but no doubt I shall.
         
    The German Refugee part of his life was mainly in Salka Viertel’s circle, where the Manns and many other Germans in California gathered. What he didn’t say in this letter was that he had talked the Vedanta people into accepting his homosexual life, the idea being that any deep attachment to another human being was to be deplored in a Yoga initiate, but that sex didn’t matter. To his English friends it looked as if he had found a way of having his cake and eating it.
    The MGM part of his life must eventually have been a disappointment to him. He was kept very busily at work, partly for MGM and partly for other film moguls, but very few of the scripts he worked on were ever used for films - sometimes his scripts were scratched and other script-writers were brought in, sometimes they never got to shooting at all, sometimes he never even got a credit when it was shot. He must have had a special skill or he would not have got so many jobs. He was remarkably cool and philosophical about it, and treated it all as a way of making money