By The Body Of The Earth or The Sannyasin

Bhaskar-Nath

I reached the White Island on a new moon day and in a sand-storm. I was exhausted and burning with fever. It was in October, the time of Scorpio, the time of obscure upheavals, of double or quits, of breaches of light or of sudden crumblings—not that I attach any special importance to the stars, but everything is significant to me and the farther I go, the more I see that everything moves together; each detail brings me a sign of the whole and I listen at every moment, in this rising fever or that dark stumbling of chance, to the ebbing of a great tide which drives the peoples and sends the worlds spinning—and woe unto us if the instrument is attuned only to sham images and soulless rhythms. But I too had lost the rhythm, I was caught up in the insane rush of men and I looked at those crates of lemons on the platform as if I were going to see Björn spring up suddenly, having escaped from the Japanese Hospital.

—Hey, Sannyasi, your staff.

“Sannyasi, Sannyasi...” Will they never leave me in peace! He held out my staff. It was a pilgrim from the north. Then I don't know what came over me: I seized my staff and broke it in two across my knee. He was thunderstruck. I thrust the two pieces into his hands:

—Here, it's for you, I have reached the end of my road.

And I went out.

I went through the warehouse where I had heard divine music, but there was no longer any music in my heart, there was only that pounding of a drum in my temples, like the angry march of Shiva. I saw the margosa again near the station and heard once more the silvery jingling of the horse carts, but not the child who had led me to my brother. I had no brother any more, he was dead—or was it he who came and whispered in my ear: “One day I shall return and break your glass.” I was no longer borne by the smiling grace which arranged each step, each encounter; I was burning with fever in a sand-storm, and in the great misery of being only oneself.

—Hey, Sannyasi, take my cart, it is light.

Sannyasi, Sannyasi... I lowered my head each time, as if I were an outcast... stigmatised, branded, cut off from others and from everything by that orange symbol. The wind was blowing from the south, the dunes rolled over the palms, threw up crests of sand which swept down the main-street like sprays of thorns; my robe was flapping; people pointed at me, women whispered on the balconies: dorai, dorai... the white man, the white man... The passers-by turned round, I heard a rumour spreading: dorai, dorai... I advanced with my back bent, clutching my orange scarf to my breast like a thief filled with shame: dorai, dorai... The white man, the white man, the reprobate, the cursed Sannyasi, the deserter from no country, disguised in orange here, disguised in black there; disguised in any case and not even knowing in which skin to dress—not even that of a naked sannyasi; the nil, the null, the nothing-at-all who was not from here, nor elsewhere, not from above, not from below, oh! who will tell me from where I come, my name, my country? Will not a great white horse come once more to bear me away on its victorious back and deliver me from this spiritual fortress as he delivered me from the fortress of the white man?

—Balu!

He opened his mouth, looked at me with a kind of stupefaction, almost fear, as if I were a ghost—Balu! grown taller, thinner, in front of the grain merchant's shop. I held out my hand, oh! like a beggar.

—Balu!...

He dropped his handful of grains and ran away as fast as his legs could carry him. They all turned their backs on me.

I took the temple street, my head was throbbing, my body was furrowed by white waves, my mouth felt like paddy-husk. I asked for a glass of water at Meenakshi's. The mother appeared on the door-step, her fists on her hips, dressed in a purple sari. She looked at me... Her eyes seemed to tell me: “She's dead Nisha threw herself into the well.” I went away. I walked in the temple street, walked amongst the jingling carts,—through the whirling sand; I went towards a distant tower, a high dark blue watch tower silhouetted against a sky of white cirrus, and I was puny and absurd in that robe, I was alone and at the end of everything; there was no longer any road to follow, nowhere to escape, it was over, the trick was played: I had covered all the roads, even the roads of liberty, even those from which one should not return. There was no longer anything but a little door in the distance, a child so white, and I went forward like a blindman, groping in my fever, with that sole mantra ringing in my heart: where is she, where is she... où est-elle? Is she alive?

I climbed the three steps. My heart was pounding as if it would burst. The loggia was open—the divinities, the odour of sandalwood, the patio ablaze with light... I stumbled against something which broke with a sharp sound. I bent down: it was a child's ektara.

He was there, seated in his corner, alone, surrounded by his tools, torso nude—he looked at me. I don't even know whether I greeted him, I sank into that look, plunged there, into that great calm power which washed away all my suffering, smoothed out my wrinkles, bathed my misery in coolness and peace, as if I had walked for centuries, rung through lives, my body covered with scales... I wanted to throw myself at his feet. He stopped me with a gesture.

—Mani!

A young girl appeared. She held a jug of water in her hand and a towel. There was not a sound in the house.

—Serve him. He is a sannyasi, he is at home here.

Sannyasi... Sannyasi... She approached; I wanted to cry out: no, no! I am not a sannyasi! Stop, but leave me alone! I am not a sannyasi, I am nothing at all!... She poured water over my feet. Oh! he had done it on purpose, it was planned, he wanted me to understand that I was the stranger, the sannyasi received according to his order. I was filled with shame. I wanted to leave, I was lost like a child. And then, suddenly, that also was riveted before my eyes: the girl bending over my bare feet, her hair trailing on the ground, that bit of orange clothing—everything sank as if into a well before my eyes, the image became deep, deep, intense, slipped into another world, unveiled superimposed layers, and it was no longer “me”, but me upon me and times without number which came back; each gesture from the foreground was repeated on other planes—twice, three times, or was it perhaps the reverse, and I was there, outside, beginning the old story over again, gesture for gesture. It was a kind of giddiness. Or was it my fever—was I raving?

—Sit down.

The girl placed a mat at my feet. A carrom game had been left unfinished—they had all fled. Mâ arrived.

My heart leaped; I would have liked to have taken her hands, touched her feet. She drew back a step, pulled a corner of her sari over her forehead, held out a tray to me, and went away without a smile.

I was frantic with anxiety.

—Maharaj...

—You have returned, he said at last... You had to return.

—Maharaj, where is she?

He looked at me. Oh! I know that I should never have asked that question.

—She lives, he said simply.

A wave of blood rushed into me;. I closed my eyes.

—She will see you... if she wishes.

She lives, she lives... I was burning, frozen, I gulped down my glass of water at a draught. Then Bhaskar-Nath's gaze held me and with the brutality of a wrestler, he said:

—Don't you see how you have shrunk?

I thought he had slapped me. I could still hear the voice of the Sannyasi behind me: “You little slug!”

—Listen, Sannyasi, I see everything very well...

He laid his clasped hands on his knees—exactly like Batcha. He looked straight ahead at the sand of the patio. I became sane again.

Then... silence.

And that odour of sandalwood, the chanting of the schoolchildren, the sound of the conch-shells entered into me, and everything was the same: it was today or yesterday, or lives ago... it was infinitely the same, oh! what is it that changes?... oh! qu'est-ce qui change? We are in the heart of Egypt under our débris, we are in unlost times, and that moment's odour, that ray of sunlight on the sand of a patio seizes us all at once and leaves us like an eternal child in the midst of the rush of things.

—I could have slammed the door in your face.

I started. He clenched his fist.

—But one does not slam the door on Destiny. One does not change destiny by closing the door, one changes destiny by being greater than destiny. Oh! if I were still capable of sorrow, it is with tears of blood that I would speak to you...

With a sweep of his hand, he pushed aside his tools. There was a sheet of accounts in front of him.

—You have arrived at the appointed time. One cannot blame you; you have followed the law of your nature. But now the time has come when you can change that law if you so will. Because there is a time when one can.

—But why...

—Be quiet, listen. I want you to see clearly; only Truth can save you; it alone has the Power. It is the only power. Batcha is going to die, perhaps... so understand this. Destiny is not made to crush or to punish us, Sannyasi, it is made to compel us to grow—you are a sannyasi and the time of sannyasis is over, and you do not know how to get out of it; you have never known how to get out of it. You have always repeated the same foolishness. Understand that one does not get out of it by cries or revolt or through fever, but by emerging onto another level of consciousness. When you have changed your inner state, you will change the outer state and you will have conquered destiny.

He leaned towards me. I could see the veins throbbing in his neck.

—The difficulty that you have not overcome once will come back upon you ten times and each time stronger because of your failure, until you have the courage to dissolve the ancient knot and be greater than yourself. That is Destiny—the passage to the other state.

—But what wrong have I done, tell me? I wanted... I came to this island by chance... I met Balu...

—By chance! But what do you think! And that glass that you are putting to your lips, do you think it touches your lips by chance?... There is but one Body in the world! a single body... un unique Corps. And if the tiny point that you are has come to this island, it is because an arm bigger than yours, of which you are a part, has brought you here for a purpose.

—We are puppets!

—Yes.

—Then what can I change?

—Everything. You can change your state. You can choose to be the puppet which can do nothing or the Body which is everything and which knows what it does and why it does it, and how it goes and where it wants to go.

—What must I do?

—It is not a question of doing; one must be.

—I wanted to be; I have left everything for that.

—That is exactly your mistake.

—I found a Light up there, it was... Oh! It was marvellous. And then it was the end of the earth. One is dissolved... gone is life.

—That is not true!

Then he hammered out his words. He was like a mass of power in front of me:

—If you eliminate everything in order to reach the Light, you will have a glory of empty light. If you include everything in order to reach the Light, you will have the glory of full light.

And I could have sworn that there was that same orange radiation round him, dense, almost golden, as in the banyan forest.

—Because everything that touches that light becomes full—it is the fullness of all things; it is the luminous foundation of all that is. You can choose to fall asleep there for ever and you can choose to be dissolved in it, you can choose to go into it naked like a little saint—in fact, you can choose all you wish, because that light welcomes all with an equal look. It is the great Look which makes be what it sees. If you see just one little thing in that light, you become that one little thing; if you see a microscopic divinity, that microscopic divinity becomes an absolute of luminous totality which leaves nothing more to be desired, or seen—all that touches that, becomes that, full of that, absolutely that. It is paradise—yes, the paradise of what one wishes... le paradis de ce que l'on veut.

He drove his eyes into mine.

—And if you have renounced everything in order to reach there, then yes, you will get an enormous empty divinity and it is the end of the earth. But I say...

Then he raised his folded hands in front of him slowly, as if he were greeting an unknown divinity.

—I say that it is the beginning of the builders of the spirit. It is the coming reign of the divine workers who will re-fashion the earth in the image of their vision of beauty. It is the time of concrete visionaries who will seize the great eternal Look, not in order to fall asleep there in an inert beatitude, but in order to draw the Power from above into everything they do, every being they meet, every particle they touch and make it yield its content of light because, indeed, heaven is everywhere, in every thing, every being, every circumstance of the earth, and it is for us to make the outside become what it is already within... But it is a more difficult heaven; it is not for the spiritual sleepers.

Björn's image fell upon me; I had the impression that I was there exactly as he was before he died.

—Björn also wanted Power and he is dead. If I have taken the wrong path by seeking up above, and he has taken the wrong path by seeking down below, then where is the path?

—You were not wrong and neither was Björn. You have covered only half the distance. When you found heaven up above, you found only half of it—the other half is to be created here, on the earth. You found Him, but not Her.

—Who, her?

—And Björn was not wrong when he sought down below; he simply began where he should have ended; he laboured below without the light from above, so everything collapsed. Listen, child, Power is one, it is everywhere; there is only one Power in the world and not two—in the atoms, the monkeys and the gods—but if you take it from below, it is full of the filth of the earth and it performs monstrous miracles one must go right up and bring it right down. I too am a Tantric but I have no red triangle on my forehead and I do not perform miracles—I release the quiet miracle which is in the heart of things. I am also a Sannyasi but I have no orange robe; and I have renounced everything without running away from anything—but my heaven, I carve with my chisel at every moment, in all I do and all I see, even in my accounts. And I am neither a Sannyasi nor a Tantric; I am still something else... Listen, my son, there is a secret...

Bhaskar-Nath was leaning forward, his look riveted on the ground as though he wanted to pierce it with light.

—You have returned here and Destiny weighs upon you, and sometimes, one falls on the way like Björn—there is always a moment when one falls on the way. It is called a, “fall”, but at that rate the whole of life is a fall from a heaven from which we should never have come out. The Truth is greater than our morality, Sannyasi, greater than our virtues, and in error is hidden a heaven that we have not foreseen... And I say: we fall again and again; we break our necks in life; we are robbed of our good each time because, at each stage, we have to bring down the degree of heaven that we have reached—if we did not fall, never would heaven touch our earth! It would remain where it is, all alone and perfectly null. And the higher you climb, the deeper and more painful is the descent. But there lies the secret... Listen. In truth, each descent kindles your impeccable heaven with a warmth of suffering which has the power to transform the level of darkness it touches. And in descent after descent, one transforms: the world of thought, first of all, then the world of the heart, of the emotions, the life of every moment, the hidden depths and obscure recesses, then the body—your body,—sickness and death. Death is the final enemy to be conquered... La mort est le dernier ennemi à vaincre. And the deeper you descend, the more your sclerotic white heaven is kindled by a fire of power and love, as if the pain of the night forced it to become greater than itself—in truth, the heaven of the Spirit is only a pale copy of itself as long as it has not plunged into the flaming crucible of the earth. And when you approach the last stages of the descent, your heaven, up above, hurled down, fallen, is lit with a burning gold, dynamic, all-powerful, even down to the most obscure cell, the most rebellious matter, as if it were going to burst under the pressure of that Night; as if the true Sun were in the depths of the body. And I say this: the power of the fall is the very power of the Transmutation. When we have drawn our heaven right down, into our bodies, it will touch the other half of its Truth the two will-become one and matter will be changed.

He stopped a moment and looked around him as if he saw something.

—Then we shall no longer need to fall or die because heaven will be everywhere, down below as well as above; each point will be the summit, each being will be his own heaven, each moment will be the goal, and the pallid beatitude of the empty immensities will become the countless felicity of the divine myriads on the earth.

Bhaskar-Nath raised his eyes and looked at me. And I saw.

—Now go, it is time.

I got up like a robot.

—And do not forget, it is as you will. One day, you will have the delight of the two worlds, but first of all, you must break the attachment to the one and to the other.

I went out. One could hear the sound of the gongs and the conch-shells in blasts. I almost tripped over that ektara again. Then I found myself in the street, dazzled. The south wind was blowing furiously.

—Nil!

I turned round. It was Balu—Balu, hard faced, tight-lipped. He clenched his fists in his pockets, raised his head:

—She will wait for you over there this evening.

He pointed to the beach with his chin. Then his eyes came back to me and he looked at me with such hate that I was stunned.

—Balu...

He turned his back on me; I was alone.