Typing for the Swami, 1966 (Diary Excerpt)

If this notebook is lost, please return to:

Satsvarupa dasa Brahmacari
c/o International Society for Krishna Consciousness, Inc.
26 Second Avenue, New York, NY

Swamiji, I am remembering you.  I am here now and you are here around the corner in your room.  Life is freed for me from the karma of the past.  I want to learn Krishna conscious philosophy.

Should I do the typing or go see the Swami?  Without any notes, I just start to remember what the Swamiji said in his lecture and I type some of it down.  I can type pretty good.  I don’t make mistakes.  It starts to come to me, some of the things he said in his lecture.  At least I remember the essence of it.  I don’t attempt to write the whole thing down, just the essence as I remember it.

I don’t really do it for him, it’s more for myself.  It’s not that I go to my apartment having memorized what he says, but it just comes out and keeps my head balanced.  I really like to walk through the streets feeling the Hare Krishna mantra and seeing the city in the summer.  I feel such a well-being as Swamiji’s boy.

My yoga is typing.  I’m not just typing something for Swamiji.  I’m doing yoga.  It’s for myself.  It’s the last kind of creative writing I’ve allowed myself.  I’ve stopped all other writing – my novel-writing and my short-story writing – it was all so corrupt and egotistical.  But this remembering and recording short sentences is the fruit of anything I’ve learned as a writer.  I try to communicate what Swamiji said in my own voice, as concisely as possible.  It’s Swamiji, but expressed in my own way.  I get creative joy out of this writing.  It’s a good discipline for spiritual life.

Usually as I start to type, something comes to mind.  Yesterday I remembered about the three modes of nature.  “There are three modes of material nature, raja-guna, tamo-guna, and sattva-guna.  We are all under the modes of nature.  Krishna is above the modes of nature.  Surrendering to Krishna brings freedom from the modes.”  Just things like that.  He also said, “The donkey carries the washerman’s load.  He thinks the washerman is the source of his food, but he can get grass anywhere.  This is the foolishness of the ass.  Materialists are like this donkey.”  Typing these things down is a nice way to be with Swamiji.  I’m starting to grasp the philosophy too.

I think you have to get a special, mystical revelation from Krishna to understand Swamiji.  He’s incomprehensible.  Swamiji said that by service the revelation will come.  Note-taking helps.

I am trying to kick off my false ego.  Novel and poetry-writing is false ego.  I’m ready to make the break with the past for Swamiji’s sake.  I throw my manuscripts into the incinerator. I had to think about that one before I did it though.  What if these manuscripts were great works?  What if I am a genius and I just don’t recognize it?  Still, they had no Krishna consciousness.  How could they help anyone?  Swamiji says even great literature, if it is without Krishna consciousness, is like decoration of a dead body.

Now I only want to express Krishna-thought and read Krishna-thought.  We shouldn’t have other books in the storefront.