ALAN WATTS AND SWAMI PRABHAVANANDA

Philosopher Alan Watts in his autobiography In My Own Way (1972) describes one of his meetings with Prabhavananda.  It occurred at a tea party gathered by Prabhavananda at his apartment at the Vedanta Temple in Hollywood, and reveals much about the relationship between the two men and their points of view.  Watts writes:

We were joined by Huxley, Isherwood, and many of the Swami's distinguished lay disciples.  Very soon it became apparent that I had been put on the path of the razor's edge.  On the one hand, the Swami wanted to demonstrate to the others the error of my views, while, for my part, I did not want to embarrass him in front of his disciples.

The trouble started when one of the sisters, nuns, who were serving the tea, said, rather too innocently, “Oh, Mr. Watts, I'd be so interested to know what you think about Krishnamurti.”  “Well,” I replied, “I must say that I find his work very fascinating, because I think that he is one of the few people who have come to grips with such basic problems of the spiritual life as trying to make oneself unselfish.”

“Yes, Krishnamurti is a very fine man,” the Swami chipped in.  “I don't think any of us can doubt the greatness of his character.  But his teaching is very misleading.  I mean, he seems to be saying that one can attain realization without any kind of yoga or spiritual method, and of course that is not true.”

“No, indeed,” I countered, “if in fact there is something to be attained.  Your Upanishads say very plainly, Tat tvam asi, You ARE That, so what is there to be attained?”

"Oh, no, no!” the Swami protested.  “There's all the difference in the world between being merely informed, in words, that this is so and realizing it truly, between understanding it intellectually and really knowing it.  It takes a great deal of work to go from one state to the other.”

“But so far as I can see,” I went on, “the more people consider themselves to have made progress in such work, the greater their spiritual pride.  They are putting legs on a snake--congratulating themselves for bringing about, by their own efforts, a state of affairs that already IS.”

“Well, I wonder,” mused Aldous, “isn't it rather curious that there has always been a school of thought in religion that attributes salvation or realization to an unmerited gift of divine grace rather than personal effort?”

“Of course,” said the Swami, “there are those exceptional cases of people who seem to be born--or suddenly endowed--with realization.  But we mustn't leave out of account the work that must have gone into it in their former lives.”

“But that virtually cuts out the principle of grace altogether,” I said.  “When Christians say that something comes about by the grace of God, Hindus and Buddhists say that it is so already and always has been.  The self, Atman, is the Godhead, Brahman.  It has always been so from the very beginning, so that your very TRYING to realize it is pushing it away, refusing the gift, ignoring the fact.”

“But this is ridiculous,” the Swami objected. “That amounts to saying that an ordinary ignorant and deluded person is just as good, or just as realized, as an advanced yogi.”

“Exactly,” I said.  “And what advanced yogi would deny it?  Doesn't he see the Brahman everywhere, and in all people, all beings?”

“You are saying,” said the Swami, “that you yourself, or just any other person, can realize that you are the Brahman just as you are, without any spiritual effort or discipline at all!”

“Just so.  After all, one's very not realizing is, in its turn, also the Brahman. According to your own doctrine, what else is there, what else is real other than the Brahman?”

“Oh!” the Swami exclaimed.  “There was someone who came to Sri Ramakrishna with such talk.  He said, ‘If that is your Brahman, I spit on it!’  Don't fool me.  If you were truly one with the Brahman and truly in samadhi, you would be beyond suffering.  You would not be able to feel a pinch.”

“You mean that the Brahman cannot feel a pinch?”

“Of course not!”

At that moment I had one of the great temptations of my life, and resisted it. Instead, I said something like, “I don't think your Brahman is very sensitive,” laughed and changed the subject.  Yet, in a way, I regret it.  I felt, in retrospect, that I should have honored the Swami by going the whole way, pinching him hard, and seeing what he would have done, for although he may be shrugged off by those who see him as representing the idle romanticism of Hollywood Swami-Land, he has nonetheless given thousands of people that startling and disquieting question: “Who, what, do you think you really are?  Absolutely, basically, deeply within?”