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made him feel unsure of himself, as he was the first to admit.
    I, on the other hand, was eleven years Prabhavananda’s junior, as boyish-looking as he, and even less sure of myself. Many of the psychological props which had hitherto supported me had been knocked away. I now needed a new kind of support, and I urgently hoped to be able to accept him as my first and only religious teacher, my guru.
    He was considerably shorter than I was. This made me able to love him in a special, protective way, as I loved little Annie Avis, my childhood nanny, and as I should love Stravinsky. His smallness sometimes seemed baby-like, because it was combined with an animal lack of self-consciousness about his physical functions. He belched loudly without excusing himself. He also expelled the mucus from his sinuses with harsh snorting noises which embarrassed the fastidious. (In later life, he stopped doing this—probably because his sinuses cleared after he gave up smoking.)
    As a youth he must have had a lithe, athletic body which I would no doubt have found sexually attractive. He was still slim and carried himself erect. I was aware of a strong sexuality in him which seemed to be controlled, rather than repressed or concealed. He would remark, quite often and without embarrassment, that some girl or woman was beautiful. His honest recognition of the power of sex attraction and his lack of prudery in speaking of it was a constant corrective to my inherited puritanism.
    The breadth and smoothness of his forehead gave him a calm, truthful look. His nostrils were very wide; I wondered if this was the result of the deep inhalations and exhalations which he recommended as a method of quieting the mind before meditation. His lips were big and expressive, without any suggestion of austere restraint; when they parted a little, the two extra-large front teeth peeped out, comically rabbitlike. His skin was golden but not dark. When he wore his monastic robes—of which the yellow color symbolizes renunciation—the effect was striking; he seemed all gold. But that was only when he gave lectures in the temple. Otherwise, he nearly always wore informal Western clothes: a white shirt with or without a tie, a woolen pullover, gray flannel slacks, and leather slippers.
    Oriental eyes are often somewhat dismissively described as beautiful. Prabhavananda’s eyes, if you considered them simply as features, were not remarkably so. They didn’t dazzle or dominate you at first glance. They were soft, dark, and moist, with yellowish whites. Therefore, whenever I describe their effect upon me, the reader must remember that I am really describing how Prabhavananda—or “this thing”—was using them on that particular occasion.
    His voice was naturally soft. But when he lectured, he spoke loudly and clearly, without effort. His English was fluent, with some quaint pronunciations which delighted me. He said “fussht” for “first,” “etarnal” for “eternal,” “okezzshionally” for “occasionally,” “whir-relied” for “whirled,” “Mr. Hard” for “Mr. Heard.”
    *   *   *
    â€œThis house belongs to Maharaj. Maharaj is watching over it, over all of you. I can do nothing on my own. I am only his servant.” This was what Prabhavananda would tell me, and everybody else who came to the Center, again and again.
    Such statements embarrassed me a little at first. I reacted to them with a nervous smile. But I was aware that Prabhavananda didn’t make them lightly; that they didn’t merely express a conventional piety, as in the phrase: “This is God’s house.”
    You could say that his belief in the presence and protection of Brahmananda was all the religion he needed. It was through Brahmananda that he felt himself in communication with “this thing.” Actually, during his monastic life in India, he had