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terrific. “I” make mistake after mistake, get the order of the extracts mixed up and generally do “my” best to sabotage the whole project. “The Devil” really is much more tamas than rajas . 14 However, it is going ahead. I am halfway through chapter 16, which will cover Frank’s last nine and a half months. After that, there’s the chapter about Kathleen’s life immediately after his death until the end of 1915. And then one or two more chapters, concluding. I still don’t see why I shouldn’t finish all this before my birthday, in a rough draft.
    On the 15th, a stranger called me from New Jersey. (I couldn’t quite get his name but I think it was Scott Dancer. 15 ) He said he lived in a farm near Sussex and that he had a friend named Eric who he’d lived with for many years and that he’d had a vision in which he saw what death is all about and what the answer to it is, and he knew he had to get in touch either with R.D. Laing 16 or with Auden or with me. “And now,” he said, “what are we going to do about it—are you coming to me or shall I come to you?” I tried to wriggle out of this, suggesting that he should communicate with me telepathically rather than physically. He said, “I can tell from your voice that you’re tense, you’re holding back.” I said, “Of course I’m tense, I’m trying to get on with my writing.” He then suggested he should call me when I was more relaxed—why not that evening? “This evening,” I told him, “I’m going to see my guru.” I knew this would shake him up and it did, having a guru is a kind of checkmate move in dealing with this type of communication, because of course Mr. Dancer was in fact offering to be my guru, himself. However he wasn’t discouraged. He told me, in a “hypnotic” tone, repeating each sentence three times, that I mustn’t resist, I must open myself to what he had to tell me, I must give up writing, writing was no good for me, I had come to the end of writing, and now I must act . “Tell your guru everything I’ve told you.” I promised I would. “And, before you go to see him, smoke a joint.” I told him severely that my guru strongly disapproves of grass. However, we parted quite friendly, after I’d assured him that I would let him know instantly when I got a “sign” from him. He had told me he would send me one.
    I really was going to see Swami that evening—he’s staying at the house on the Old Malibu Road where he was last year—and I did tell him about Mr. Dancer. He laughed, but he was much more amused by a letter he had had from that exhibitionist clown, Peter Schneider. Peter said he was worried because he found that he sometimes repeated “his” mantram (he hasn’t got one, since he isn’t initiated yet) “automatically”! His letter ended, “I love you.” (A couple of weeks ago, Peter wrote Swami asking if he could come to Trabuco but stipulated that it must be sometime when Cliff Johnson wasn’t there. This didn’t displease Swami because he thinks Cliff is such an egomaniac and alienates everybody—which may well be true; but just the same I rebuked Peter for writing it.)
    Swami told me how he was lying in bed, not long ago, in the middle of the night, and his little finger began to twitch, and suddenly the thought came to him: I have no control over this body, it is the Lord who controls it. And this made him ecstatically happy and he was awake for a long time, “having a wonderful time.” He also told me that often while he is meditating he imagines that he is in the Ramakrishna loka : “They are all there and I am their servant.”
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    July 23. Such a strong disinclination to write up this diary and yet I want to, really; there’s so much to record. I’ll try doing a very little, but