MORE ON SWAMI PRABHAVANANDA

In his book My Guru and His Disciple (1980), Christopher Isherwood provides the following biography of Swami Prabhavananda:

He was born on December 26, 1893, at Surmanagar, a village in Bengal near the town of Bankura, northwest of Calcutta. His name, during the first twenty years of his life, was Abanindra Nath Ghosh.

Abanindra's parents were normally devout Hindus. He accepted their religious beliefs, but he wasn't a deeply meditative or reclusive boy. He liked playing football and other games, and had plenty of friends.

However, by the time he was fourteen, he had read about Ramakrishna, the holy man already regarded by some as an avatar. Ramakrishna had been born in a village not very far away, and had spent his adult life at a temple just outside Calcutta. Abanindra had also read about Ramakrishna's chief disciples, Vivekananda and Brahmananda, who had founded the Ramakrishna Order of monks after Ramakrishna's death in 1886. He felt a mysterious power of attraction in their names.

Then one day, by seeming chance, Abanindra met Sarada Devi. She had been Ramakrishna's wife and was now regarded by his disciples as their spiritual mother--"Holy Mother," they called her. One of her attendants told Abanindra who she was; otherwise, he would have taken her for an ordinary countrywoman, sitting barefooted, without the slightest air of self-importance, outside a village inn. When he approached and bowed down to touch her feet in reverence, she said, "Son, haven't I seen you before?"

When Abanindra was eighteen and a student in Calcutta, he visited the Belur Math, the chief monastery of the Ramakrishna Order, which is beside the Ganges, on the outskirts of the city. He wanted to see the room in which Vivekananda used to stay; since his death in 1902, it had been maintained as a public shrine. When Abanindra left the Vivekananda Room, he found himself for the first time face to face with Brahmananda. And Brahmananda said to him, "Haven't I seen you before?"

The effect of this encounter upon Abanindra was far too powerful and subtle to be described in a few words. He longed to meet Brahmananda again. So, a few months later, he impulsively spent the money he had been given for tuition fees on a ticket to Hardwar, because he knew that Brahmananda was visiting the monastery there. He arrived in the middle of the night, unannounced, but Brahmananda didn't seem at all surprised to see him. He allowed Abanindra to stay a month, accepted him formally as his disciple, and then sent him back to Calcutta to continue his education.

Although Abanindra felt such devotion to Brahmananda, he wasn't yet intending to become a monk. At college he came under another strong influence. Organized militant opposition to British rule was now growing, and many students were involved. Abanindra decided that his first duty was patriotic. He must devote himself to the cause of India's freedom; in order to be able to do this single-mindedly, he vowed not to marry until it was won. He joined a revolutionary organization and wrote pamphlets for it, which were secretly distributed. Because he looked so boyish and innocent, his comrades entrusted him with some revolvers which had been stolen from a British storehouse; he hid them in his room. These young men were mostly untrained--they were risking their lives just as much as the veterans of the movement. One of them threw a bomb at the Viceroy and had to escape from the country. Another, who was Abanindra's close friend, was arrested and died in prison, probably as the result of being tortured. The authorities called it suicide.

Abanindra was now studying philosophy. He began coming regularly to the Belur Math because one of the swamis there could instruct him in the teachings of Shankara. His instructor kept urging him to become a monk, but Abanindra would argue with him, saying that the monastic life was escapist, a refusal to accept one's political responsibilities.

During the Christmas vacation, Abanindra stayed at the Math (monastery) for a few days. It was then that another extraordinary incident took place. Here is Abanindra's account of it, written many years later. ("Maharaj" was the name by which Brahmananda was known familiarly in the Order; its approximate meaning is "Master.")

One morning, as usual, I went to prostrate before Maharaj. An old man was also in the room. Suddenly he asked Maharaj, "When is this boy going to become a monk?" Maharaj looked me up and down, and his eyes had an unforgettable sweetness as he answered quietly, "When the Lord wills." That was the end of my political plans and ambitions. I remained at the monastery.

During the years which followed, Abanindra was at the Ramakrishna monastery in Madras. He attended Brahmananda whenever he was allowed to, which was not often, because Brahmananda had to travel from one monastery to another in the course of his duties as Head of the Order. However, Brahmananda was present when, in the autumn of 1921, Abanindra took his final vows (sannyas) and became Swami Prabhavananda. (Prabhavananda means "one who finds bliss within the Source of all creation"; ananda, meaning "bliss" or "peace," is the suffix usually added to a swami's given name.)

In 1922, Brahmananda died. In 1923, Prabhavananda was told by his seniors that an assistant swami was needed at the center in San Francisco and that they wished him to go there. (There were already several such centers, founded by Vivekananda during his second visit to the United States, 1899-1900. These centers were often called Vedanta societies, meaning that they were dedicated to the study and practice of the philosophy which is taught in the Vedas, the most ancient of the Hindu scriptures.)

Since Brahmananda's death, Prabhavananda had been hoping to be permitted to lead a contemplative life, practicing intensive meditation, at a monastery in the Himalayan foothills. He felt quite unfitted to teach anybody. In his own words, "I was barely thirty, I looked like twenty, and I felt even younger than that." But his seniors rebuked him for his lack of confidence. How could he presume to imagine that success or failure depended on his own efforts? Had he no faith that Brahmananda would help him? "How dare you say you cannot teach? You have known the Son of God!"

When Prabhavananda lectured for the second time at the San Francisco Center, he was suddenly at a loss for words and had to excuse himself and walk out of the room. But this was only beginner's stage fright. He soon became an effective speaker, as well as an efficient assistant to the swami in charge. Within two years he was sent to Portland, Oregon, to open a center there.

While he was living in Portland, Prabhavananda was invited to Los Angeles, to give a series of lectures on Vedanta philosophy. It was then that he got to know Mrs. Carrie Mead Wyckoff. Thirty years earlier, as a young woman, Mrs. Wyckoff had met Vivekananda while he was in California. Later she had become a disciple of Swami Turiyanada, another of Ramakrishna's direct disciples, and he had given her the monastic name Sister Lalita--Lalita was one of the handmaidens of Krishna. Henceforth, people usually called her "Sister."

Sister was now a widow and she had just lost her only son--it seemed natural for the elderly lady and the youthful swami to form a kind of adoptive relationship. Sister returned with him to Portland and kept house for him at the center. Then, in 1929, she offered him her home, 1946 Ivar Avenue, to be the center of a future Vedanta Society of Southern California. They moved into it as soon as arrangements to carry on the work in Portland had been made.

At first the Society was very small. The living room of the house was easily able to hold Prabhavananda's congregation. An Englishwoman whom they called Amiya came to live with them; later they were joined by two or three other women. They had barely enough money to live on.

Then, around 1936, the congregation began to expand. Prabhavananda had become well known locally as a speaker. It was now only rarely that anyone would telephone to ask if the Swami would draw up a horoscope or give a public demonstration of psychic powers. In fact, word had got about that he wasn't a swami in the usual California sense but a teacher of religion whose title had the same significance as "Father" in the Catholic Church.

And then donors appeared with enough money to pay for the building of a temple; there was room for one in Sister's garden. It was finished and dedicated in July 1938.