Dear old Will and Mary, saintly characters if I ever saw two. Ruano, although still filled with an apparently inexhaustible store of energy, with a colorful life behind her. Norina, an aging woman with a brilliant career in the past. Malcolm and Jean, buffeted about by life for years and glad of a haven. Elizabeth, seeking respite from marital maladjustments in union with you. All of these people, good-hearted, sincere, loyal, but looking back over their shoulders at life. I feel that my life hasn't even begun. In my mind, I'm still seventeen, with the world before me to be encountered, enjoyed, conquered, learned lessons from. I have no sense of age. I'm not ready to sit down and tie up rice, although I'll do it as a matter of course and devotion to you.
But I am ready — and as eager as a racehorse at the barrier — to win great funds of spiritual strength and Knowledge and spread forth into the world with a message and a practical application of that knowledge to help your children. With that goal in view, I can't help chafing. I see so many who need so much and now that I am here in India, I feel even more helpless than before. At least in Hollywood, much as I hated the life, I was helping a few to survive, I felt that my money was being turned to advantage. I could talk, I could console, I could help people laugh, turn their minds to the lighter side of life.
But now I do nothing. I have no money, and those who need me starve. I have no contacts, except by letter, and that is a poor substitute. I sit in a comfortable ashram and learn Urdu (badly) and toy with the idea of getting out a magazine (sometime) and doing a film (perhaps), or hop on trains and go dashing around the country, spending your money and still grumbling. A fine disciple I am! And with it all, there is that frightening thought that if you should send me back to America, what have I to take back to them there?
Is it selfish for me to want enlightenment? Is it unreasonable to ask you to touch lightly my slumbering soul and arouse it to life? Is it too much to expect that, undeserving as I undoubtedly am, you will soon whisper that magic word in my inner ear that will vitalize my whole being, unlock those chambers of mental and spiritual energy, enable me to really live and serve?