"An Isherwood Life"

READING

The writer Christopher Isherwood emigrated to the United States from England in 1939.

After a brief stay in New York, he decided to visit Los Angeles, where British friends Gerald Heard and Aldous Huxley were already settled. Isherwood was to spend the rest of his life based in California, living many of those years in Santa Monica with his partner, the artist Don Bachardy.

The readings offer a glimpse of Isherwood's introduction to his spiritual path, a form of Hinduism known as Vedanta, and his spiritual director, Swami Prabhavananda. In the beginning, Isherwood was extremely skeptical. He writes,

"I knew, from somewhat vague gossip, that Heard and Huxley had become involved in the cult of Yoga, or Hinduism, or Vedanta - I was still contemptuously unwilling to bother to find out exactly what these terms meant. To me, all this Oriental stuff was distasteful in the extreme. However, my distaste was quite different from the distaste I felt for the Christians. The Christians I saw as sour life-haters and sex-forbidders, hypocritically denying their rabid secret lusts. The Hindus I saw as stridently emotional mystery-mongers whose mumbo jumbo was ridiculous rather than sinister. That Heard and Huxley could have been impressed by such nonsense was regrettable. I explained their lapse by saying to myself that it was typical of these hyperintellectuals to get caught unawares from time to time and led astray by their emotions. But surely such a lapse could be only temporary? I intended to avoid discussing the subject with them, as tactfully as I could. . . ."

But it wasn't long before Isherwood and Heard were having the conversations he planned to avoid, though he remained dubious.

"Gerald countered my objections with a compliment," Isherwood wrote. "My attitude showed, he said, that I was approaching the problem in exactly the right spirit. Credulity was the greatest obstacle to spiritual progress; blind faith was just blindness. . . ."

A month or so later, Isherwood was having his second interview with the Swami. His diary entry from August 4, 1939, relates the encounter.

"The Swami was in his study when I arrived. He is smaller than I remembered - charming and boyish, although he is in his middle forties and has a bald patch at the back of his head. He looks slightly Mongolian, with long, straight eyebrows and wide-set dark eyes. He talks gently and persuasively. His smile is extraordinary. It is somehow so touching, so open, so brilliant with joy that it makes me want to cry.

"I felt terribly awkward - like a rich, overdressed woman, in the plumes and bracelets of my vanity. Everything I said sounded artificial and false. I started acting a little scene, trying to appear sympathetic. I told him I wasn't sure I could do these meditations and lead the life I am leading. He answered, 'You must be like the lotus on the pond. The lotus is never wet.'

"I said I was afraid of attempting to do too much, because if I failed, I should be discouraged. He said: 'There is no failure in the search for God. Every step you take is a positive advance.'

I said I hated the word 'God.' He agreed that you can just as well say 'The Self' or 'Nature.'"

Then the Swami gave him meditation instructions.

"1. To try to feel the presence of an all-pervading Existence.

2. Send thoughts of peace and goodwill toward all beings - north, south, east and west.

3. Think of the body as a temple, containing the Reality.

4. Meditate on the Real Self. The Self in you is the Self in all beings. I am infinite Existence, infinite Knowledge, infinite Bliss."

The next day, August 5, Isherwood records in his diary:

"I find number one the easiest - especially at night. It would be quite easy in the desert. Here, you keep hearing cars, steam hammers, distant radio, the clock, the icebox motor - and have to remind yourself that the Existence is also within these mechanisms. Number two is easy as long as I think of typical people in each country. For some reason, it is most difficult to send goodwill toward the South Americans. The points of the compass bother me, too. Where is everybody? This would be easiest on top of a mountain or a skyscraper. Number three very difficult. Much involved with thoughts of sex. Number four: relatively easy . . . ."This evening, on bedroom floor, in the dark. Unsatisfactory. Stuck at number one, because I couldn't get over the feeling that everyone was asleep and therefore no longer part of 'Consciousness.' Posture difficult. My back hurts. But I feel somehow refreshed."

SERMON

Several local events have marked the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of Christopher Isherwood's birth this year. A small but thoughtful exhibit at the Huntington Library, accompanied by a concert series featuring the work of composers he knew. Two lectures at the Santa Monica Public Library. Articles and reviews in the "Los Angeles Times."

He lived here from his mid-thirties on, first as a member of the exiled European community of writers, musicians, and artists who fled the tightening vise of Nazism and the impending war; later, as a permanent resident, appreciative of his adoptive home. When Isherwood arrived in Los Angeles, he was already famous for his "Berlin Stories," which inspired the popular musical "Cabaret." He was a very productive writer, with novels, autobiographies, plays, screenplays, travel essays, and translations to his credit. Christopher Isherwood is best known as a writer, but his life as an openly gay man and his spiritual history with the Vedanta society also contribute to his legacy. Altogether they create a colorful biography. Now that his personal diaries have been published, readers can relish his keen observations and devastating wit, along with a glimpse of Los Angeles at a time when life was neither simpler nor more innocent than it is today.

Exploring Christopher Isherwood's work, life, and circle of friends has been an enduring interest for me since I moved to Los Angeles. Curious about his transition from England and Berlin to what the "Los Angeles Times" described as "a bright city full of churchgoers, orange groves and beach boys," I read his spiritual autobiography to find out how he did it. "My Guru and His Disciple," from which I read earlier, tells the story of Isherwood's journey from religious skeptic to follower of Swami Prabhavananda. His association with the Vedanta society, which began when Isherwood was a young man, continued for the rest of his life. It made Los Angeles his spiritual home. The Vedanta tradition is a liberal religious expression of Hinduism. While it uses the Hindu spiritual practices of meditation, yoga, and ritual offerings, it is universalist in spirit. Christopher Isherwood described it as a "non-dualistic philosophy," pointing always towards the "ultimate reality beyond the phenomenal universe." For this reason, Vedanta entertains many images of god, for they are all projections of the ultimate reality.

The story of the birth of Krishna, the blue baby who became the god Vishnu, as fantastic as it seems to us, and must have seemed to Isherwood, is just one example of the variety of Hindu images of the divine. Yet it became part of Isherwood's religious vocabulary as well. He approached the Swami with a question about sexuality - for Isherwood had decided that he would not follow this path unless he would be accepted as he was, an openly gay man. The Swami advised him to see his lover "as the Young Lord Krishna." Isherwood took this to be a very good sign. He wrote, "I understood the Swami to mean that I should try to see . . . the very aspect of him which attracted me to him sexually - as the beauty of Krishna, which attracts devotees to him spiritually. . . . What reassured me," he added, "was that he hadn't shown the least shadow of distaste on hearing me admit to my homosexuality."

I dwell on this point because it reveals how fundamental acceptance is to adopting a faith tradition. Christopher Isherwood put his Swami to the test - and was pleasantly surprised. Expecting an "blast of icy Puritanism," he came away with the learning that Vedanta doesn't make such judgments about people.

Vedanta, by the way, has a close connection to Unitarian Universalism. The Unitarians helped to sponsor the appearance of Swami Vivekananda, the principal exponent of Vedanta in the West, when he came to the Parliament of Religions at the Chicago Columbian Exposition in 1893. Unitarians were active in helping Vivekananda travel throughout the United States, where he founded two Vedanta Society centers, one in New York, the other in San Francisco. Unitarian churches, from Detroit to Oakland, invited him to lecture and helped build his following.

Christopher Isherwood's Swami, Prabhavananda, belonged to the next generation of gurus. Prabhavananda became thoroughly acculturated to western ways and further adapted the Vedanta message to the American sensibility. This cross-over posed no problem for Vedanta philosophy, which readily embraced diversity and spoke of "truth as one," though "sages call it by various names."

The Vedanta society that welcomed Christopher Isherwood was a curious mix of acceptance and austerity, both of which attracted him. But he also offered up considerable resistance and ambivalence about undertaking a spiritual path. This aspect of Isherwood's religious life is instructive.

Not only did he struggle with his own bias - his "distaste" for what he called "mystery-mongers" with "ridiculous mumbo jumbo," but also with the discipline of meditation. He honestly admitted that he had difficulty sending goodwill to people all over the earth. Later on, he chafed against expectations that were placed on him, including his role as translator and official biographer of Ramakrishna.

His autobiography and diaries relate his deeper spiritual struggles as well. In "My Guru and His Disciple," Isherwood wrote about visiting the actor Charles Laughton, who was in the hospital and close to death. As he sat by Laughton's bedside, praying, he became aware of "the caperings" of his ego, as he put it. They were "whispering, 'Look, look, look at me. I'm praying for Charles Laughton! . . . How wonderful if he would die, quite peacefully, right now at this moment.'"

Lessons from Isherwood's spiritual life are applicable to us, here and now. His questioning of the Swami to determine whether he would be accepted reminds us that we have not proven ourselves worthy unless we can stand up to the test too. The combination of doubt and curiosity with which he approached the Swami no doubt characterizes the attitude of a seeker exploring a faith tradition of any kind. It took reading Isherwood's account, however, to make me realize it.

Ambivalence is part of the experience of joining a group. We doubt, we test, we dip our toe in - and meanwhile we think everyone expects us to be confident, committed, and ready to dive deep. It doesn't happen that way.

At the same time, the yearning for a spiritual life is so strong that even someone as skeptical and worldly as Christopher Isherwood felt the tug and followed it. He did go deep, but not without the usual hazards. He had a deep disagreement with the Swami about going to war. Swami was a militaristic defender of India, while Isherwood was a "hard-line pacifist." Isherwood wrote in his diary, "I disagree with Swami's attitude, utterly. . . . If he were someone else, I'd say it was disgusting to see a minister of religion - and at his age - demanding bloodshed. But Swami is Swami, so it doesn't matter. It's not what our relationship is all about. . . . I don't go to Swami for ethics, but for spiritual reassurance."

And Isherwood felt the discomfort of representing a faith tradition. After speaking before a crowd at an interfaith gathering in India, Isherwood succumbed to illness and remorse. "I resolved to tell Swami," he wrote in his diary, "that I refuse, ever again, to appear in the temple or anywhere else and talk about God. . . . When I give these God lectures, it is Sunday Religion in the worst sense. . . . I simply cannot appear before people as a sort of lay monk. Whenever I do, my life becomes divided and untruthful ?"

Isherwood fought the temptation to be a hypocrite, even while he registered his own hypocrisy, the "caperings of his ego," and his indulgence in sensual pleasure. His unrelenting honesty might have worked against him, causing him to back away from the challenges of his spiritual life. But not even the bad reviews of his biography of Ramakrishna pushed him all the way back. Instead, he recorded faithfully the push and pull of his life, the lapses, the people who annoyed him, along with the moments when he felt the presence of the ultimate reality, which he learned to call God.

Isherwood's life has much to teach us, especially his spiritual search. He yearned for an honest merging of who he was with all that is. He found a way and left us, his neighbors and readers, with a glimpse of that truth which is one, but "which sages call by various names." Isherwood's life is one name for that truth.

References used to prepare this sermon include these books by Christopher Isherwood: "My Guru and His Disciple" and "Diaries: Volume One 1939-1960," edited by Katherine Bucknell; also "Vedanta for Modern Man," edited by Isherwood, and containing essays by Swami Prabhavananda, Gerald Heard, Aldous Huxley, and Isherwood, among others.