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I was never psychoanalyzed. I’ll tell you how it
happened. I always had a chip on my shoulder about
psychoanalysis. I knew the remark of Rilke to a friend
of his who wanted him to be psychoanalyzed. Rilke
said, “I’m sure they would remove my devils, but I
fear they would offend my angels.” When I went to the
analyst for a kind of preliminary meeting, he said,
“I’ll be able to fix you so that you’ll write much
more music than you do now.” I said, “Good
heavens! I already write too much, it seems to me.”
That promise of his put me off. ¶ And then in
the nick of time, Gita Sarabhai came from India.
She was concerned about the influence Western
music was having on traditional Indian music, and
she’d decided to study Western music for six months
with several teachers and then return to India to do
what she could to preserve the Indian traditions.
She studied contemporary music and counterpoint
with me. She said, “How much do you charge?”
I said, “It’ll be free if you’ll also teach me
about Indian music.” We were almost every day
together. At the end of six months, just before she
flew away, she gave me the Gospel of Sri
Ramakrishna. It took me a year to finish reading it.
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