In this book she describes her 50-year search for a genuine guru, a real spiritual master. She didn’t find one, but she encountered many unusual people of various religions and disciplines and learned a lot along the way.
This article highlights some remaining material of particular interest. There is a little more to say about cults and the damage that they do to their members, about the Maharishi Yogi and about the feeling of being alien to this world.
As I have described in one of the basic cult articles, anyone who gets involved with one is in danger of being left stranded. They may also have been encouraged to burn their bridges behind them, which gets them into double trouble.
There are some examples of this in Call No Man Master.
The summaries of what Joyce Collin-Smith tells us speak for themselves.
Being left stranded by Ouspensky
After the Russian spiritual teacher P. D. Ouspensky’s wife moved to the US, after some wavering he decided to join her.
His disciples resigned from their jobs, sold their homes and went with him to Southampton. On arrival at the docks, he suddenly announced that he had changed his mind. His followers were thrown into hysterical disarray, some boarding the ship without him and others returning, homeless and jobless, to the area they came from to anxiously await his next orders.
This reminds me of what happens to Sarah Brown at the end of Stella Benson’s Living Alone. The witch, who abandons the penniless Sarah - who has given up everything for her sake - may not be a cult leader but she behaves very like one in this instance.
The irony here is that Ouspensky confessed that he had been very foolish in giving up his career and all his prospects to follow his own master - Gurdjieff - only to become disillusioned and end up parting company with him.
People who are attacked by vampires often become vampires themselves.
Being left stranded by the Maharishi Yogi
The Maharishi Yogi’s principal assistant was a man called Philip. He had abandoned his career in the law and everything else to follow the Maharishi, who later sent him to India.
Joyce Collin-Smith lost touch with him for 20 years. He suddenly and unexpectedly turned up in London, exhausted, distraught and penniless. He was almost 60, had no income and no way of resuming his career in the law.
The Maharishi had kept him fasting and meditating alone in a Himalayan cave in the darkness for several years. He had escaped, but now he had to try to adapt to Western life.
The only job he could get was as a waiter in a Japanese restaurant.
He appeared to be a completely broken man.
This is what he got for abdicating responsibility for his life and wellbeing. He had submitted his will entirely to that of the Maharishi and tried to carry out even the most impossible requests.
Studying with a teacher is one thing; handing oneself over to be totally controlled by a master is something else. It is a very unwise thing to do. This is the biggest lesson in the book.
Ridiculous orders
Giving orders that make no sense is a feature of many cults.
Ouspensky’s wife imposed a harsh, humiliating and bizarre regime on the followers in the US. On one occasion she ordered people to exchange clothes!
This reminds me of something I experienced for myself when I was a guest in a ‘safe house’.
I remember being surprised when I sprinkled what I expected to be salt onto my meal and pepper came out of the salt cellar. I found that the salt was in the pepper pot!
At the time I thought it was a mistake, but I later learned that an order had been given to exchange the contents of all the pairs of containers.
No rest for the wicked
Joyce Collin-Smith reports that the Maharishi Yogi needed very little sleep. This reminds me of Stella Gibbon’s Esmé Scarron and Violet Needham’s Mr Papadopoulis.
Stranger in a strange land
Some people have a very strong feeling of not belonging in this world. They may feel that they have been abandoned by their own people and are trapped in exile among incomprehensible, unsympathetic aliens. They may use different words and metaphors, but they are describing, or trying to describe, the same phenomenon.
As mentioned in the previous article, Joyce Collin-Smith had this ‘stranger in a strange land’ feeling as a child. Much later in the book she mentions it again.
She felt like someone who had been shipwrecked on an island and enslaved and was constantly creeping away to scan the horizon for a sail, only to be dragged back to work by the inhabitants.
Like many others of her kind, she was waiting for her people to come and take her away from an unbearable existence.
A great friend of hers expressed the idea in terms of science fiction. A space ship crash landed on earth and the people in it were captured by the locals. They have forgotten who they were and where they came from. They have an aching memory of home in their hearts.
Leaving Call No Man Master here
With books such as Call No Man Master there is always a little more to say, not to mention the feeling that it should be gone through just one more time in case there are any overlooked gems, but enough is enough.
Perhaps the extracts and associated commentary will inspire a few people who didn’t know about it to read the book! It might seem that with so many articles everything in it will have been covered, but this is far from being the case: the book contains much material that is not very relevant to this blog. For example, there is a lot of Hinduism, Buddhism and transcendental esotericism in Call No Man Master.
There is a sequel called The Pathless Land that I haven’t read - yet. If there is anything that resonates very strongly, I will produce an article or two.
