By The Body Of The Earth or The Sannyasin

The Man of Secrets

The pilgrims were praying to the sun, waist-deep in the water, the high dunes sloped down into the sea, so pure, so soft, like a white. Arabia; one felt like staying there for ever, watching the suns go by, without wanting anything but that smooth luminous whiteness which flowed into the rippleless water, that simple perdition without a murmur. Then the dunes curved inwards, formed a flat bay, a small beach of fine sand without a rock, and there were the green burst of the palm grove, the sound of conch-shells, the bronze bells, the same endless chanting under the high towers. Two worlds. And a little white beach... Et une petite plage blanche. My eyes wandered from the dunes to the palms, from the palms to the dunes and to the pilgrims, and I too wanted to fold my hands, to pray, to worship, I don't know—simply to worship. Perhaps that was the oldest religion: the first murmur of beauty in man because something suddenly opens in him and he wants to fold his hands, to pray, to sing—no matter what—to clothe in a verb or a colour that very tiny thing within which stirs and which would like to let flow one drop of its eternity. I stretched out my hands and everything was illumined that morning because I loved—the world is sometimes a glory which reveals itself; I folded my hands as if to love were primarily to recognize, and recognize everything: a totality of love which would leave nothing outside, not a single thing, because everything vibrates with the same thing, the same tiny thing within which recognizes itself everywhere—the world is a total unity which sometimes marvels at itself. And in that look there was no longer any “I” or others, nothing “other”: it was like an immensity of love which responded to itself everywhere, at every point, a swelling of being in which the heart seems to beat everywhere—there is no longer any centre, everything is the centre! No within, no without, everything communicates; no eyes to look and discover beauty and love; it is everything which loves, it is the bursting forth of a myriad looks as if one loved everywhere at once, a great snow of light in which every crystal is a fragment of me which sings: that sings, everything sings, it is the light which sings—the world is a great ever-singing rhythm, and sometimes the heart is aware of it.

O Tara,⁹ O Mother

A beggar stretched out his hands in the sun, he was alone on the little beach, he seemed to be begging to the sun.

O Tara
Everything is thy will
Thou art the all-will
Thou, the doer of the action, O Mother¹⁰

He sang, and his words did not matter, they were in tune, they contained the music of the truth. All the dunes sang through that beggar.

It is Thou who doest
O Mother
And they say: it is I who do

And just when he pronounced “and they say”, there was something like a sadness; a small sudden rift, a second's pause, his voice broke. And all the suffering of the world was there... Was it really he or I who sang? I no longer knew, it was that little break of a second, that rift of the “I” in the totality, and a sudden acute suffering like a. suffocation: the “I” was the suffering, the intolerable suffering of not being able to contain that. An immensity of music which breaks, something which suddenly yawns, and one feels like throwing oneself into it as if nothing and no one in the world could fill that hole.

O Tara, O Mother...

And I say: have you heard that little note which breaks within, that sudden cleft of infinity in a second? There is one second in a life, one tiny little second that counts... une toute petite seconde qui compte.

—Well! crystal-man?

He placed his hand on my shoulder. Everything rushed back into this body: an instantaneous shrinkage, a second of suffocation—we are habitually suffocated.

—Did I frighten you?

And just as. I was re-entering my body, on the way, in a flash, I thought I saw a total Person who was us, Björn, I, innumerable, vast—a Body, a single Body,—and to say “I” there in that bit of a shell was as absurd as taking oneself for a coccinella on a white beach.

My presence of mind returned, though it was more like an absence.

—Did you get a sun-stroke or what?

He shook me. The sea-water trickled down from his flaxen locks, he looked like a Nordic god.

—Ah! brother, how beautiful life is. I could devour it!

It was Prince Björn, alive, greedy, childlike.

—Come, let's sit in the shade, I am going to tell you the secret.

Everything darkened. Then Balu's words came back to me, clear, clear, crystalline, with that little sound of obviousness “He is going to die.”

—Yes, the secret, my secret, come.

And he drew me towards the dunes.

It was so absurd that “secret”, it sounded so false here. I looked at Björn, Prince Björn who was towelling himself, and then at that other who seemed to be stuck on him, “the man of secrets”—perhaps it was that, Björn's death?

—When I was in Zinder with Erik...

But I no longer heard him, I was intent on the shadow following Björn; if I found out... perhaps I could save him?... What did it mean, “death”?—It is there all the time, one carries it around with oneself, but at what moment does it become death? Yes, the moment... I was intent upon it, as if I were going to catch it, that moment, that second when one veers into death—Why? What was there in Björn which called death? A man dies only because he calls death. The false Björn?...

It was a revelation.

I stopped dead in the sand and everything became clear, precise: Björn's violet shadow, his tanned back with little drops of sea-water on it, all the physical details were magnified, engraved luminously, and then that piercing look which sees through: a world in the sweep of a microscopic clear second. And at that moment there was nothing to understand, it was understood, it was the living light containing all explanations without a shadow of explanation—afterwards, the thread has to be pulled and unrolled but it is no longer exactly that, it is an approximation, a translation into a foreign language. A white little second—which could, far, far below, create pictures or music, events, philosophies, but it had already become petrified and fallen back into the box half dead. And what I saw at first was a luminous death, as it were, all white, a death which was not an anti-life—we understand nothing of death because we see it as black, “against”, the enemy, a negation, the defeat... The defeat of what? And I saw, from the other side, a black death, that kind of anti-self which comes and sticks to us, the false Björn—”death”. But a death which comes and sticks to compel us to be ourselves, the true ourselves! It is the guardian of the true life. And each time one goes over to the wrong side, the self of death takes the place... le moi de mort prend la place—it takes the place, not in order “to kill”, but to compel us to re-establish the true. Death: it is the incapacity to re-establish the true. It was luminous. And at the same time, simultaneously, in that white second, I looked, and there was no death anywhere! Not an atom of death, no shadow, no negation, no anti-self, it was utter light—an absolute positiveness of everything. Everything flows, towards that, for that, irresistibly, like these dunes, towards that total Self where death is no more because we have become totally true. And in a single sweep, all the whites and blacks in the world disappeared into thin air, the “for” and “against”—there is no death! There is no against, no “anti” anything at all! Everything goes there, everything flows towards that, through all the “for” and all the “against”, there is nothing but light! There has never been anything but light—we are completely outside the issue, we attach words to something which does not exist, there is only That which exists, That which becomes, That which grows, That which moves towards the precipice of That, and even if we were for our “against” and against our “for”, we would go there just the same, exactly where we should go, in this language or any other. Indeed the world escapes us completely, except for a second by chance we do not know the language.

—Wait, we shall sit down here.

And I returned to that kind of darkness we call day.

—Every morning I come here.

There was a tiny building at the foot of the dunes. At first I did not make out what it was. Then I realised that it was a temple, quite a, small granite temple, microscopic, hardly taller than, Björn, surrounded by a miniature peristyle with four sculptured columns. The dunes dropped behind it like a great awning, the steps were almost buried in sand. There was not a sound, not a breath of air—only the drone of the chanting in the distance and the frail voice of the beggar:

O Tara, O Mother...

Then a strange impression took hold of me while I was going up those steps, something seemed to sweep away my light, a new layer of being which surfaced—it welled up incessantly that morning, like worlds which came and burst one after another like coloured bubbles, each one with its own rhythm,—and it was not a feeling of anguish, it had no raison d'être because I was as tranquil as the dunes, but it was very deep, a sort of throbbing, like a child who discovers a deserted house, or as in a dream when one comes upon a strange, forgotten place, suddenly recognized, intimately recognized: it is there. And I knew that kind of emotion well, it was always accompanied by an odour... One day, I will have to understand.

I peeped in through the tiny doorway. A ray of sunlight fell on a sacred stone, completely bare: a rock. There were fresh flowers on the ground, a little bowl of red powder; incense was burning, there was an Egyptian atmosphere in that tiny place, and everything was dark except for the stone. And just as I was about to come out, I saw on the ground, in a corner, leaning against a wall... Batcha—Batcha, one cheek resting on her knees, quietly asleep.

I did not breathe a word and went back to join Björn.

He was silent. He was squatting under the peristyle, facing the north, looking at the palm-grove. The sea was only ten metres away from us like a dark blue lake; the great dunes flowed into the deep like turquoise. There was not a bird, no rolling of waves; only that incessant chanting, and that strange odour which stirred me. Then that solitary voice again, slightly shrill, almost derisive in the midst of the sands:

O Tara, O Mother
Thou art the guide
Thou art the tree in the seed
Thou art the mango and the shade of the mango-tree
And the winding of the path under my feet
As Thou goest, so go I

I listened in the silence; I was as smooth and naked as the sea and I seemed to hear far, far away, the murmur of another story, the same story always, but more hazy, and which had that odour and that song. It was like a memory in the distance, hemmed in by sand and granite, a day similar to this one when things bad begun: a beginning of the story, a moment charged with power which came back from life to life, like wave upon wave on the same beach. Ah! we return from more than one island and we cross this little beach today, coming from where, which lost archipelagos? It was like a door opening deep down with an odour of sand and a song, something which suddenly yawned; and life was swept away in one breath as if one had lived beside the point, all the time beside the point, pretending to bustle on some solidity, and then one comes to the fact: it is there—there is nothing to see and everything is charged with a presence. Björn also felt something; he remained silent, he looked at the dunes, the palm-grove and again at the dunes.

—Nil, sometimes I feel that we know nothing at all. We think we have the secret, and then... we are futile.

With a wave of his hand, he pointed to the dunes.

—One has to fight, otherwise one is finished... it means dissolution.

He clasped his arms round his legs and set his jaw. And I remembered myself in that train, squatting in the same way, jogging along in my rocky desert.

—Nil, what are we doing here, tell me? Sometimes, I no longer know what I mean, it's like a story I have invented and then it's all wrong... It was so simple when I was a child: there was the cry of wild geese on the lake—you understand, the call of the ganders—I used to stay there, hidden in the rushes and listen for hours... The call of the ganders, that I understand well. And the mists of May, the floating sky, and then that call... et puis ce cri. All the rest... I have sailed, walked, changed colour and jobs, I have done... I don't know what—it's as nothing. It is like an invention, it doesn't exist. But the cry of wild geese... that exists.

He laid a finger on his cheek. He was such a charming Björn!

—Well, this is perhaps your secret?

He looked at me uncomprehendingly. Then his face hardened again, it was that kind of fierce determination which made him so pathetic.

—It doesn't matter, one has to hang on, that's all. Besides, I am on the eve of discovering. Even if this eve comes to another six months, I am drawing near. And after all...

He swept away the sand on the steps.

—...After all, it's the same thing; what I am seeking here, is what I was seeking there; it is the same but it is an active dream, you understand, a cry which has power, not the cry of those stupid geese. Listen...

He had become enthusiastic once more; he was back in his dream again.

—When I met Guruji on the lagoon, one day, during the season of the birds, I said to him: “I know how to call the birds; I know the cry of the Arctic terns, the cry of the fulmars, the cry of the coots; I call them and they reply...” Do you know what he said to me—it was my first revelation: “If you call the gods, they reply also.” He said: “When I call “Gorom”, you turn round, there is a reply—everything replies, if you know how to call. But one must know the name.” Everything replies, that's the thing, Nil! Well, the mantra is the cry of things, it is their name. It's like the cry of the ganders: one must know how to call.

—And so, what do you want to call?

—Why, everything! Listen, I'll explain to you, it's tremendous...

—If it's tremendous, then I am suspicious.

—Oh! you... Listen, everything has a cry: water, fire, people, the sap in the palms, even stone, everything. Each thing has a cry, a true name. Well, that cry is the sound produced by the movement of the forces which constitute the thing—we are a field of forces, we are made of a thousand lines which imprison forces; they say “atoms”, they say “molecules” or I don't know what, but that's only one way of seeing, it's a system of notation. There are many systems of notation physical, chemical, religious, musical, poetical, each has its system. And actually, each one tries to call one species of things, that is, to master or to reproduce one thing. But the scientists, when they want to reproduce the thing, they need a tremendous mechanism; the musicians also try to reproduce, the priests as well. But if one knows the sound which constitutes the thing—the stone or the fire, the god or the devil—one produces it automatically, you understand? To name is to have the power. Well, the Tantrics have the secret of sounds. They have the power.

—It is magic.

—But everything is magic! What is not magic? We are all manipulating forces without knowing it. It's only a question of choosing one's kind of magic, the one which has the most power, the one which makes the most beautiful music in the world.

—And what do you want to “produce” in fact?

—But everything, I tell you! Mastery.

—And why?

He was flabbergasted for a moment, his face twisted as if he were going to be angry, but he recomposed himself.

—I shall give you an example. It is I who look after Guruji's house (by the way, I'm late, I shall get scolded!), I clean the house, I do the shopping...

—It's you who pay?

Björn was taken aback.

—Yes, of course... I bring his wood also. One day returning home, I remembered suddenly that there were no more matches; I ran to the bazaar, I bought some matches; I went back, Guruji was in meditation... his lamp was lit. There was not a single match in the house!

—So what! One can get a box of matches in the bazaar for six paise... It's perhaps quicker than learning the fire-mantra, no?

I thought he was going to explode.

—But what do you want, crystal-man? Do you want to destroy me, or what? Is it that that you want?

There was panic in Björn's eyes.

—I am nearing the goal, I am on the verge of victory, I... Then I knew that I had put my finger on Björn's malady, the point to be demolished—the point of death. And all my life I have asked myself whether I was wrong to want to demolish that... I do not know, I no longer know. It was his life and it was what prevented him from living, the two together, as if the surest point were also the most deadly point. Sometimes, I wonder if the summit of a man is not his innermost abyss. It is the same thing, the reverse and the obverse: the mortal malady and the salvation together. And perhaps it is not a mortal malady, but only the means of liberating oneself from an obsolete summit.

—You don't understand anything...

He was so pathetic, this Björn, he wanted so much to convince me. Or so much to convince himself?

—To light the fire is nothing, there are all kinds of powers. One can combine the mantras, mix the sounds; one can cure, one can kill, induce illness, integrate, disintegrate, change the course of thoughts—one can call the gods, fill life with a superhuman force. It is a chemistry of sounds, a concrete poetry: one calls. People are constantly calling with their thoughts; they call sickness, death, catastrophes; they call all kinds of evil spells while going down a boulevard, they are covered with flies—so one calls the pretty birds from the invisible world... les jolis oiseaux de l'invisible.

He was so golden in the sun; and I almost saw his birds. But it had no substance, it was mere dream-froth. Behind, oh! behind, I felt, I heard something else which made no sound, no froth, which flowed, flowed so simply, so clearly, which was like the true substance of the world—oh! no marvellous invisibilities but a greater visibility, something which swelled with truth the smallest grain of sand.

The shadow came back over his face.

—The trouble is that one needs a lot of time. Five hours of japa a day—japa means the repetition of the mantra,—one hundred thousand times this mantra...

—But if you know the sound...

—But I know it t Only that's not enough, one must “awaken” the mantra. One must “charge” it. It's like an accumulator that you charge through repetition, and then suddenly, it awakens, one establishes contact. Then one is master of the force, it is enough to name it, it is there. But there are many forces, you understand, many different “gods”, that's the difficulty. For the last three years I have been going from one mantra to another, and then... He tells me that I too am in the process of “charging” myself and that one day I shall reach a saturation point. Of course...

—You are completely beside the point, Björn.

—And you, you get on my nerves.

—One sound is enough.

—Which sound?

—Listen, Björn, you want to call the gods, but let me tell you one thing: for five thousand years now we have been calling the gods and it has not changed anything in the world. In fact it is very simple, you can have all the visions in the world, you can make all the gods appear under people's noses but finally they will not be more dazzled than by their television or their cinema. And I tell you that if the world had the power of vision, it would not be more advanced than before: they would press their psychic button and treat themselves to an hour of invisible cinema; then they would go and drink a glass of beer and would be as bored as before. Because nothing changes so long as something inside does not change!... Björn, the miracle of the world is not at all tremendous, on the contrary, it is something very simple—so simple that one does not notice it. That is the secret. All the rest, as you say, does not exist, it's just noise and fuss, dust thrown in people's eyes. They are all theatrical: your Tantric, the priests, the Churches, all of them—they are barn-stormers of the Spirit.

Björn was as white as a sheet.

—I have been working for three years, I have staked everything on it...

I do not know what passed in his eyes, he stared at me, it was cold like a knife. Then, emphasising each word, his steel-blue look holding me like an insect under a microscope, he said.

—You need a catastrophe.

And he fell silent.

There was a blank in me, a second's pause.

Then a tiny wave broke on the beach with a purling of shells.

I was suddenly far away, completely outside the story, placed there for a moment on that beach, as if awakened from a dream. And then that intense look which grasped the slightest little thing with a fulgurating intensity, that glance as from another planet—ten times, a hundred times that look opened in me, and each time it was the same: a second of eternity which rents the décor, and the soul looks... l'âme regarde. Everything is seized instantaneously, without the least perturbation, the least emotion, seen as in a snowy silence, and it moves no longer, it is photographed for all eternity. And like that, here and there, small ineffaceable pictures, little bursts of white or black, on a limitless road which goes one knows not where, nor why, beyond this life.

That little wave, I think I shall still listen to it even after centuries; and I shall no longer know what it means; but it will stir in me like that odour of sand, like that distant chanting, that turquoise sea or the shadow of the peristyle, or the white cascade of little buried steps which no longer lead to a temple from here, to a present-day beach, a moment of this sun or this creek, but to a vast uninterrupted story in which I have walked, prayed, suffered, listened in the same way one day to an identical little wave which came to whisper on the beach in a purling of sea-shells.

—And your catastrophe, you shall have it.

He banged his fist on the steps.

Yes, I know, I was waiting for that thing, that “catastrophe”, that old Threat. But what?... I looked at the beach, the dunes, the pilgrims at their prayers; everything seemed to me so. simple, so luminous; where was the catastrophe in that? It did not exist, it was not, it was an impossibility, an invention of those who thought themselves outside that... And suddenly I saw the illusion—the formidable illusion; it was like two worlds, separated by a stupendous abyss, and yet it was one and the same world, one and the same substance—luminous, totally luminous, without an interstice of shade, without a rift of pain, it was that and nothing but that, immortal, glorious, untouched for ever by any breath of pain—and then a wrong look and everything tilts over: it is the antipodes, night, death, suffering, the total contradiction of that, uncertainty bordering on terror—the Threat, everything crumbles beneath one's feet. And the Threat was not the possibility of catastrophe or death, it was the fact of being outside that, or rather of thinking oneself to be outside that—everything was threatened because it was not that. One restores the look, and everything disappears; it no longer exists, it never existed I And yet, it is the same thing, the same world with the same events, the same “accidents”: on the one hand, the accident does not exist; on the other, everything is an accident, an inexorable accident. Just a wrong look and everything is reversed: a sudden swarm of snakes—Destiny.

In the distance, the beggar was still singing:

O Tara, O Mother
Thou hidest the lotus in the mud
And the lightning in the clouds
To some thou givest light
To others thou makest choose the precipice
O Tara, Tara
As thou wiliest me to move, so I move

And I wondered whether that change of look could also change fate, cancel out the catastrophe?

Then everything faded, there was only Björn in front of me, his face twisted, and a small self of shadow who looked.

—One day I shall see the gods.

He got up. I caught him by the arm:

—Björn!

Something had to be done, he was going to die. I could feel that death, it was hanging over him!

—Björn...

—What?

He avoided my eyes.

—There is only one thing that saves...

—One day, I shall receive the initiation.

He repeated it like an obstinate child, and I was full of anguish, I could do nothing for him. Anger seized me.

—He has promised, he said I shall receive the initiation.

—He is pulling your leg, he is exploiting you.

—You are lying, you have no right to.

—The right...

The image of the Sannyasi reappeared before my eyes. I saw myself again running behind him in that street by the port, with that anger, that desire to hit and hit until he fell to the ground—and I shall spit on him. It was as vivid as if it were yesterday. And Björn in front of me was like myself, the same story—there is only one story, one single story, one single drama in all men!

—Björn, there is only one catastrophe in the world: one is a slave—and one becomes free. Or one dies... il n'y a qu'une catastrophe au monde: on est esclave—et on devient libre. Ou on meurt.

—But I am free!

—Oh! Björn, I don't know whether it's because I have suffered so much at their hands, but these teachers make me vomit, they and all their initiations, it is like a nightmare that I have lived through, it is engraved, branded into my flesh...

Then, the whole story came back to me in a flash, the image, the scene; it rose from far, far away in my memory, with that weight of obscurity and threat—oh! the greater the light becomes, the more darkness I discover!

—The last image of a dying man, you know, something which is fixed and which one takes away with one: that image.

Björn looked at me, amazed.

—I saw that a long time ago, several times, in dreams—each time the same dream—but it's more than a dream, it is a lived memory, something which must have happened in a certain life... And it is always the same man, powerful, a shaven head, his body bare, flashing eyes, and then that blue light around him—my so-called “master”—and I am standing there before him, powerless, in his grip, a puny little thing which he looks at—oh! that look... And I spit my liberty in his face. A battle, without a word, without a gesture, there, round a fire. And that curse which he throws upon me. Then it is as if I were going to hang myself. That is the image... Björn, it is dreadful. And they are strong, they are powerful, they are “full of light”, oh!—I spit upon them, I vomit them up, them and all their initiations, I want no more of it!

Björn looked at me, completely staggered, and I was as staggered as he was in the face of that totally forgotten image rising from I knew not where, and which came back in a flash with a great power of repressed pain and revolt. And there was a sequel to that “dream” which I never told Björn, that was almost as abominable as the rest: I was wandering in a forest looking for someone—someone I had absolutely to find again, who was my salvation, my deliverance—I don't know who, but it was “she”, and I was searching and calling, it was a terrible distress. And then... no one. And then I was going to hang myself.

—You dreamed it.

—Perhaps. But if it is a dream, then nothing in life is more alive than that dream—what do we know of the prolongation of things, Björn? In two directions we dream, towards the past and the future, and everything goes together. If one can seize the image, one can defend oneself, one can beat it back again and again and prevent it from returning. I met you also in dream, in a train, before having met you here.

—Humbug. He is not like that, Guruji is not like that.

—No, I can smell him round you... Listen Björn, I shall tell you, they are the charlatans of the Truth. They will, show you fireworks, they will show you gods, devils, angels, they will show you supernatural powers, but I don't need the supernatural: I need a truer “natural”; I don't need miracles: I need the Truth—the pure, simple, real Truth—one single password is enough: That... Ça. And to find that mantra, there is no need for teachers: one day it wells up by itself because one has called it so much; one day it is there like a friend who leaves you no more, like a country in which one is born for good, an air in which one can breathe... un air où on respire... Björn, the sign of the supreme Truth is that it is within the reach of everybody. What is highest is also nearest...

Then, something really crashed on my head.

—... While to find all these miraculous, shimmering small truths, intermediaries are necessary. And the smaller they are, the more miraculous they are.

Björn was struggling with himself in front of me, I thought I was getting through to him.

—It is simple, very simple Björn, it is all there, you have everything that is needed. A single password is enough.

He recoiled as if he were afraid, his forehead touched the top of the peristyle.

He pointed to the dunes:

—That is where your supreme mantra leads, to dissolution.

He went down a step.

—As for me, I'm going there, towards men.

He turned his back on me and went away towards the palm-grove.

Everything relapsed into silence.

A beating, droning silence.

I nearly ran after him to take him by the arm. But I stayed rooted to the spot, empty, my head battered by that chaos—where was it, my beautiful Truth? It was like a swarm of wasps around, me, the whole light of truth buzzed away by those wasps, and so futile! Not for one moment had I helped Björn, nothing had happened between us, nothing had got through: just noise, fracas, wind. Each one draws the circle of his thought and sits right in the middle of it like a castaway on an island. And I saw this Björn seated on his little island, and the others and everybody else, and I on my little island of truth—and these were all little true falsehoods, little commodities of one day, little habitable mole-hills scooped out from something else, which was neither truth nor falsehood... which was That... immense. A totality of That. Not a falsehood anywhere, not a rift of a lie! Falsehood lay in seeing only one point of the whole. And all the time I wanted to jump into that whole—my country, my vast light, my rippleless freedom. Ah, I can land on their islands and play the savage for a moment, I can go from island to island and build pretty castles, but I am not really there! Hardly have I drawn a circle around me, than I want to jump out of it and shout: “Yes-No!” “it-is-true-it-is-false!” everything is true! But leave me alone, let me breathe the air of the open sea, I need only to be in the vast, only to breathe the great bowlful, I have finished playing the savage!

Then I swept everything away, cut off the current.

And I was king everywhere.