Free My Guru & His Disciple by Christopher Isherwood Page B

regarded me as having now become Prabhavananda’s exclusive property, for he kept discussing with me his plans for a monastic community in which I was to be included. He had provisionally named it Focus.
    Gerald was now no longer thinking in broad terms, of interrelated groups dotted about the country. Focus was to be independent, and very small—just Gerald and an English friend of his and Denny and I. Gerald had already arranged for Denny to go and work on a farm in Pennsylvania, because the farm was being run on biodynamic principles—involving the use of compost heaps. He wanted Denny to become a biodynamic expert and then put his knowledge into practice at Focus, since we were to grow our own food.
    It seemed that life in our community was to be turned strictly inward, with all of us focused on “this thing,” and the time left over between our meditation periods allotted to vegetable growing, household chores, frugal meals, and rationed sleep. Maybe we would never go outside the place at all.
    Surely neither Denny nor I—for Gerald’s friend I can’t answer, since I didn’t know him—would have lasted at Focus a single month. Did I ever seriously intend to join it? I don’t think I knew, myself.
    I was still living with Vernon, still working at M-G-M. I knew that I should be obliged to make a move of some kind, before long. Now that the United States had started conscription, conscientious objectors were to be drafted for firefighting and other forestry duties and sent to camps in the nearby mountains. At present I was over draft age, but I felt sure that men in my age group would be called up in the nearly certain event of war. So why shouldn’t I volunteer now, just as many people were volunteering for the Armed Forces, instead of waiting passively to be pushed? (I did do this, some while later, but was told that volunteers for service in the camps were not being accepted.)

Six
    November 12, 1940. Headache this evening, and rheumatism in my hip. So I did my meditation sitting upright on a chair in my room. Perhaps because of the headache, concentration was much easier than usual. My mind soon became calm. Sitting with closed eyes in the darkness, I suddenly “saw” a strip of carpet, illuminated by an orange light. The carpet was covered with a black pattern, quite unlike anything we have in the house. But I could also “see” my bed, standing exactly as it really stands. My field of vision wasn’t in any way distorted.
    As I watched, I “saw,” in the middle of the carpet, a small dirty-white bird, something like a parrot. After a moment, it began to move, with its quick stiff walk, and went under the bed. This wasn’t a dream. I was normally conscious, aware of what I saw and anxious to miss no detail of it. As I sat there, I felt all around me a curiously intense silence, like the silence of deep snow. The only sinister thing about the bird was its air of utter aloofness and intention . I had caught it going about its business—very definite business—as one glimpses a mouse disappearing into its hole.
    November 13. I told the Swami about the parrot, this evening. He said it was a “symbolic vision,” not a hallucination. On the whole, he seemed pleased. He thought it a sign that something is happening to my consciousness. Probably, he said, there will be other visions. I must take no particular notice of them, and not regard them as a matter for self-congratulation. They have no special significance. The psychic world is all around us, full of sub-creatures, earthbound spirits, etc. To be able to see them is just a knack, a minor talent. Dogs see spooks all the time. It is dangerous to let them interest you too much. At best, they are a distraction from the real objectives of the spiritual life. At worst, they may gain power over you and do you harm.
    I also asked the Swami about sex. He said that all sex—no matter