The Golden String: An Autobiography

by Bede Griffiths

rare

Genres: Biography, Religion, Spirituality, Christian, Memoir, Christianity, Autobiography

192 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1954

About the author

Bede Griffiths (1906-1993), born Alan Richard Griffiths and also known as Swami Dayananda (Bliss of Compassion), was a British-born Benedictine monk who lived in ashrams in South India. He was born at Walton-on-Thames, England and studied literature at Magdalen College, Oxford under professor and Christian apologist C. S. Lewis, who became a lifelong friend. Griffiths recounts the story of his conversion in 1931 to Roman Catholicism while a student at Oxford in his autobiography The Golden String.

Although he remained a Catholic monk he adopted the trappings of Hindu monastic life and entered into dialogue with Hinduism.

Griffiths was a proponent of integral thought, which attempts to harmonize scientific and spiritual world views. In a 1983 interview he stated,

"We're now being challenged to create a theology which would use the findings of modern science and eastern mysticism which, as you know, coincide so much, and to evolve from that a new theology which would be much more adequate."

Reviews

[Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this memoir of a Benedictine monk who came to Catholicism in early adulthood and found his calling living in a monastery. Bede Griffiths was about 48 when he wrote this book, and then went to India and spent 35 years there as a Catholic monk, but also learning everything he could about Eastern religions and finding "the other half of his soul" in Eastern thought.

I'm not Catholic, but I really loved this story and I've already bought a copy of his second memoir, which takes up where the first left off. I find his spirituality very inspiring.

[MM · Rating 5 out of 5]

A sweetly written and quietly inspiring text, this gem of a book is moving in its sincerity and simplicity of narration. Griffiths sets out to explain how he wound the golden string which he was given one day as a school-child and landed upon God and His church. Griffiths' journey is particularly stirring because of how it is marked and shaped by his readings - which he takes to be of primary importance. Indeed, the difficulties of minimalist and monastic living are barely remarked upon.

One day as a school-child, he recounts, he was walking back home and suddenly the sense of an overwhelming presence and beauty in nature overcame him:

One day during my last term at school I walked out alone in the evening and heard the birds singing that full chorus of song, which can only be heart at that tat time of the year at dawn or at sunset. I remember now the shock of surprise with which the sound broke on my ears. It seemed to me that I had never heard the birds singing before and I wondered whether they sang like this all year round and I had never noticed it. As I walked I came upon some hawthorn trees in full bloom and again I thought that I had never seen such a sight or experienced such sweetness before. If I had been brought suddenly among the trees of the Garden of Paradise and heard a choir of angels singing I could not have been more surprised. I came then to where the sun was setting over the playing fields. A lark rose suddenly from the ground beside the tree where I was standing and poured out its song above my head, and then sank still singing to rest. Everything then grew still as the sunset faded and the veil of dusk began to cover the earth. I remember now the feeling of awe which came over me. I felt inclined to kneel on the ground, as though I had been standing in the presence of an angel; and I hardly dared to look on the face of the sky, because it seemed as though it was but a veil before the face of God.

Griffiths pursues this experience and becomes a lover of nature. He spends his days in the countryside among the birds and the willow trees. When he enters Oxford, this same experience and love of nature encourages him to pursue a study of literature, wherein he finds kindred spirits in Wordsworth and Shelley. Though this poetic turn could be dangerous, he says, it is by no means all bad, for "Poetry is the means by which the feelings and the imagination are educated and their powers developed."

Eventually, he decides to pursue a live away from industrialism (a minimalist lifestyle off the grid, essentially) with some of his friends. After some years, he read Dante's Divine Comedy, which he realises has more moral depth than the poets he had been attached to until that point. Upon finally reading the Bible, he finds that his love of Beauty and Truth were linked to some power for Good. He describes the Old Testament as a completion, and a step above, the literature he had been reading until that point. In the Gospels he finds a character of authenticity and realism, which to him proved the historical nature of the accounts (this was justified by later readings).

Alongside his readings, he experiences a number of epiphanies and struggles, spiritual experiences as it were. He struggles first with submitting to God his reason, and then submitting his will. Finally, he joins a monastery, where he finds a life(style) of prayer and contemplation along with simple industriousness. A monastery, he says, "can never be merely an escape from the world. Its very purpose is to enable us to face the problems of the world at their deepest level, that is to say, in relation to God and eternal life." In the monastery he encounters for the first time an environment where prayer is a permanent background to life - an environment, I imagine, that is only available now in the East. He sees that the absence of prayer and of a higher (after)life to anticipate and aspire towards leaves modern man helpless and anxious: "Life in the modern world was cut off from its source in God; men's minds were shut up in the confines of the material world and their own personalities, unable to escape from their fetters." Ultimately, the monastic life focusses on developing contemplation of God in every aspect of our work, or what is called taqwa.

However, this is not merely a text of his experiences, but contains brief yet insightful analyses of important topics which cannot be discounted as mere opinion or fancy. The way in which he frames his conclusions, however, as part of the his discovery upon his journey through the grace of God yet of universal and true import is what is particularly striking. It is humble yet assertive, which I believe contemporary people living in pluralistic societies could learn from.

Griffiths' heartfelt love for beauty, and his ravelling of the golden string he was handed that day as a schoolboy, is the story of a spiritual wayfarer and reminds us to be truthful and honest in what we do and reflective with what we read. It emphasises that life is a journey that we are set upon by God Himself. Griffiths did not come from a particularly difficult or impressive background, but he was reflective and his knowledge transformed him. Through the pages, one can quietly sense his love for God, and it feels as though being in the presence of a holy teacher.

Griffiths' book and his journey is a reminder that books too are companions and teachers, but that they must be coupled with reflective and sincere action. Upon reading it, I felt inspired again to be sincere in my own life and to remember my experiences that drive me to learn, to wind up my own golden string. As Griffiths says:

For the love of God is not a mild benevolence; it is a consuming fire. For those who resist it it becomes an eternal torment; to those who are willing to face its demands, it becomes a fire that cleanses and purifies; those whom it has penetrated, it transforms into itself.

[Ci · Rating 5 out of 5]

The title comes from William Blake’s poem “Jerusalem”

I give you the end of a golden string;
Only wind it into a ball,
It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate,
Built in Jerusalem’s wall.…

This autobiography bears the mark of its author in its clean, elegant, gentle manner. It is a biography of mind, traversing in its searching for spiritual home. “Traversing” is a word denoting originally “foot askew”, an uneven trekking through unknown landscapes.

What particularly interesting to this reader are the books and ideas Griffiths explored since his early school years. He also mentioned C.S. Lewis, his literature tutor with great affection and respect. Yet his growth was somewhat different from that of Lewis’ “Surprised by Joy”. The uniting aspect is the deep love of Nature, and their ability to appreciate Nature beyond the aesthetics, “That there was something more than the sense of beauty … there was also a sense of values, of something sublime and beyond the reach of modern man….”

Even though Griffiths resisted the rational philosophy in his early years in Oxford in favor of romanticism, he eventually got around to imbue in Spinoza, Berkeley, Kant in developing a sense of ethics and inklings of the possibility of God through rational reason. However, his searching for God made him renounced his Reason, and Will, moving him from an intellectualized religious practice to an asceticism that bordered on insanity. He exhibited signs which modern medicine would not be too slow to call as eating disorder or other psychosis. Yet his writing exhibited such a lucidity and warmth that it leaves doubt whether there are minds of “others” who are so God intoxicated. Yet each step of his life was marked by something tangible — a book, an encounter, a sustained life experience. “Leaping into the dark” happened a few times, but not without the hovering and hesitation before the jump.

In some ways, Bede Griffiths reminded me of the main character in Somerset Maugham’s “Razor’s Edge”, except that this time we have his own words to describe how and why he traveled so far from the maddening crowd.

[Alyssa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dense. A super slow read but full of amazing bits of insight. Everything from poetry to the love of nature to the importance of sacraments. I didn’t realize how similar Catholicism is to my own faith. I love learning about others spiritual journey.

“ I realized then that the will of God was not to be found in following my own desires, however spiritual they might seem, but in seeking to adapt myself to those circumstances in which by divine providence I actually found myself. “

[Glen Tucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was fascinated by Bede coming from near where I grew up and that he was a monk at Prinknash abbey about 10 miles from where i grew up.
Also after expereinceing "God" as a natural energy in nature he began as an Anglican which was my youth's experience.
I was interested in the fact that he went on to live in India and to create a Catholic Ashram there, but this book only takes one to the point where he leaves to go there.
But his coverage of so many books and authors is a tour de force of the philosphical world and had introduced me to many books I now need to read such as Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov!
This is a hard read, packed with ideas and his beliefs, but also a fascinating view of an unauthodox journey to his Dominican Catholic beliefs.
If you are "cursed" with the need to know everything, this is a book you have to read.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow -- took me long enough to read this short book! Part of that is that I was reading it but then set it aside because I was leaving for India (to Bede Griffiths' ashram, Shantivanam, part of the New Camaldolese Benedictine Order) and ran out of time. So I started over.

I can't even write a review of this book; it's too good and I'd quote too much, and I don't have time right now, but I may write more later.

[Jerin Philip · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great memoir of an intellectual young man's discovery of God that leads him to the Church by way of inspiration from the natural world, extensive reading, an experiment in simple village life, and an encounter with monasticism. Interwoven with beautiful, penetrating insights on theology.

[John Wilcox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bede Griffith's short autobiography is on that shelf of books that has been most influential for me. I discovered it by a reference made in CS Lewis's own autobiography, and am thankful to Lewis for it. While I am not a Catholic, and find he gives rather an inadequate, dismissive treatment of the Prostestant reformation, there is great wisdom in this book, and it is one I shall reread numerous times.

[Tyrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A beautifully written spiritual memoir. I particularly enjoyed the final, more speculative chapter, in which Dom Griffiths considered the possibility of a Vedanta-Christoan synthesis. His speculations here seem entirely orthodox, but Fr Bede was seemingly deranged by the sixties and adopted more problematic positions after his remove to India.

[Glen Tucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed his unique path to becoming a monk in the Dominican discipline and his later travel to India where he established a Christian ashram.
This book ends before he goes to India so I shall be reading more of his books
Not a simple pick up and read quickly though.

[David Acree · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful book. The journey of logic and reason from Griffiths’ youth through adulthood is powerful. His inclusion of the great world religions in the search for the Divine is a profound insight.

[ag Berg · Rating 4 out of 5]

I learned so much from this book. I liked that it was easy to understand. So my journey continues...

[Drew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Serious theological tome told as an autobiography.

[Trey Henry · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating story of a man with plenty of philosophical musings to keep the mind sated.

[Noodles · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting book.
Bede was an intensely intellectual man. After reading this, I admire him, would love to have met him, and hope to read about his later experiences in India. I think he would have been completely horrified to see an edition of his book with so many spelling and punctuation mistakes in it. It happened often enough to be a distraction. Medio Media must have sacked the proofreaders to save money. Very poor, for a £9.99 rrp book with less than 200 pages.
This autobiography charts the author's intellectual and spiritual development - from a Protestant child, through an almost pagan phase as he lost that religion, finishing up as a Catholic monk. At each phase, his changing thought processes are clearly described. This mostly involves his extensive reading in a wide variety of areas: philosophy, history, religion and so on. He mentions the key ideas he picked up from different authors, and the impact they had on the development of his own personal philosophy. I found these descriptions much more convincing on the loss of his religion than on the re-finding of it. The detail of why he turned back to his faith were a bit lost on me, it seemed to happen because he thought the Bible was so well written that it had to be true. Perhaps that's just because it's too hard to describe a gradually growing faith, or because I couldn't relate to that part of the book as much as the loss of faith.
As a scientist myself, it was illuminating to read about a man who based his understanding of life purely on faith, philosophy and reading. His viewpoint is often very anti-science, which perhaps reveals a weakness in that way of thinking. The philosopher and believer can become blind to the contribution of the scientist, by rejecting the process, just as surely as the scientist can be blinded by rejecting everything outside their own sphere of 'proof'. To be truly open-minded is to accept possibilities from both sides of that fence. After all, the philosopher and scientist both have the same aim - to uncover the hidden truths of the universe.
After Bede's re-conversion, there are fascinating descriptions of what the church is, what his understanding of the basic functions and theology of Christianity are. I don't agree with him on much of it, as his own personal faith is often presented as absolute fact. But have to give credit for explaining things that never made sense to me, despite many years of church attendance as a youth.
I bow to Bede's superior knowledge in almost all parts of the book, accepting what he says as I have no intellectual foundation to challenge it. But when he ventures very briefly into ancient Chinese philosophy, where I have read a reasonable amount, there seemed to be some very sweeping statements without necessarily having the depth of understanding to make such definitive claims of what things mean. I'd be interested to see this book considered by people who are experts in philosophy and theology, to see if they agree with the grand statements of fact that Bede often presents.
Perhaps the best thing about reading this book is the chance to observe the true intensity of faith and intellectual enquiry that the man had. This is nicely illustrated by the epilogue description of him on his deathbed, being read to by a brother monk, with that fire of thought and faith burning undiminished inside him.

[Elizabeth Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to laugh at Griffiths--this is about the most intellectual rendering of a spiritual life I've ever seen! With two exceptions, every major turning point in his life was instigated by a book. I found this abstract journey strangely compelling, however, and was intrigued by his circuitous, academic path into the life of faith. I'm curious to read his later work, as I found the theology of his early conversion too dismissive of the physical and relational world for my tastes. Down with dualism!

During most of our waking hours we live on the surface of our being in contact with all the different things which are presented to our senses. Sometimes when we are deep in conversation with a friend or reading a book or perhaps in a dangerous situation, we lose the sense of time and enter into a deeper region of the soul, where it is withdrawn from the outer world: but we are still not far from the surface. Beyond this, beyond all thought and feeling and imagination, there is an inner sanctuary into which we scarcely ever enter. It is the ground or substance of the soul, where all the faculties have their roots, and which is the very centre of our being. It is here that the soul is at all times in direct contact with God. For behind all the phenomena of the world, behind the sights and sounds, behind the forms and energies of nature, there is the ever active presence of God, which sustainst them in their being and moves them to act. --Bede Griffith, The Golden String 116

[Eileen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Autobiography of a young English man, a student and later friend of C. S. Lewis, who becomes converted from not much of anything to Catholicism, joining a monastery almost immediately after. He later starts a Christian monastery in India with the commitment to include as much as possible of the local language, customs, and using the form of the Hindu ashram. This book ends before he gets to India, though, so I'm planning to read the sequel: Marriage of East and West. Very interesting reading. I had a hard time putting it down at night to go to bed.

[Pat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read - and loved - in my idealistic youth. The combination of beautiful English writing and selfless seeking moved me enormously back then. It may be a mistake to reread it however!