By The Body Of The Earth or The Sannyasin

The Sannyasi

We walked for days, for months, under the monsoon and the sun, through red, crevassed plains, parched rivers, lands of fervour and famine, paddy-fields on paddy-fields, stridulant and egret-scattered; we passed sulphur torrents, angry rivers, inundated jungles where blue herons chattered; slept in temples, slept on the roads, kept vigil on moon-laved banks where jackals yelped; we walked and walked until all the roads were alike and all the days merged into a same rhythm of dust; there was no longer cold nor hunger, heat nor sleep, no more haste nor attachment; there was something which went on endlessly, painlessly, like the flight of rose-starlings through the paths of the setting sun or like the prayers of the Brahmins, without lift and fall, indefinitely. We were going north, always north, barefooted and in rags, never spending more than one night in the same place, never begging more than once in the same place, and if the first door closed, we simply took to the road again. It was the law, the simple law. He never said anything and I had nothing to may; we just kept on going, for ages perhaps, and we came from nowhere, for everywhere was the same; there was no goal in front, no memory behind, no expectations, no hopes; there was only that which kept moving, one knew not why or how. And if I stopped for a moment, with closed eyes, he would pull me brutally:

—Hey! boy, what are you meditating about!... Come on, let's be on our way.

Sometimes, a wave of revolt swept over me.

—But what the...

Then he picked up a handful of dust from the road and threw it in my face with a burst of laughter:

—Ah! you rascal, you want to eat dust? Well then, eat it!

And I did not know whether to laugh or cry. What did it matter anyway? There was no reason to trouble oneself for that little old thing which was walking; was I not seeking something else anyway? And why meditate, on what? To give myself more weight, to make a fuss?... Then everything seemed to fade into such an acute absurdity that even the something else was reduced to dust: it was nothing any longer, walking in nothing, seeking nothing more, with just a bit of something still sufficiently alive to feel dizzy. It was a critical moment. Then that also went away; it was only a passing wave of “I”. And when everything relaxed, spread out, the Sannyasi stopped by the roadside as if by chance and drew out a handful of grains from his belt:

—Here, little one, eat, it's good.

And he looked at me with such tenderness that I felt like crying as well, and then I laughed, I caught hold of his staff:

—Hey, sannyasi! let's be on our way, it's time!

And we went along together, laughing. Everything tipped in the opposite direction; it was regal, light, oh! 40 light; there was no day, no night, no tomorrow, no yesterday; no time, not even something to be surprised about: it laughed, it went along, it was nothing marvellously, which was perhaps something, but without a look at oneself; it flowed like the river, it went with the wind, it was stupid like the sparrow or perhaps wise like the crane in the paddy-field? And it knew everything instantly: the approaching rain, the goat's discourse, the question of the passer-by, the snake under the leaves; it was a small cascade which cascaded everywhere: it was simple, it came upon itself everywhere. But one second of reflexion, one look too many, and everything became blurred; one no longer understood anything it was cut off. Then the Sannyasi stopped again in the middle of the road, put his hands on his hips and looked at me, blowing out his cheeks:

—You are an ass.

And it was true.

The days passed, and the weeks, the months or the years. Then that lightness passed away too, or perhaps it was still there, but underneath, showing itself in a flash sometimes, which shook the Sannyasi and me with laughter. It was only the great foam of life, a universal sparkling of millions of bubbles, and one could lose oneself in it marvellously like the drop in the ocean, the insect in the forest or like the sap in the plant. But something was pulling, calling... further... higher... more... or was it simply the worn-outness? I had walked so much on these roads, melted so completely under that sun, that sometimes I no longer knew whether it was in this life or another, in the Stone Age or the Bronze, years ago or only a minute; I walked even in my sleep, and when he pulled me abruptly, was I on this side or the other? I sank slowly into a great griefless country where there was no scenery any more, no seasons, no more me, no more thought; I followed the rhythm of my steps which followed the rhythm of I know not what, and they were not even my steps any longer; it was a cadence which walked without me or flowed through me; I followed the paths of the great country which opens up at the end of all the paths, when the body and pain change into a rhythm of silence, when the silence expands and becomes a swell, which becomes a song, which becomes peace and carries a little shadow along with stones and thorns—where then is misery and the pity of being “me” when everything flows into the great river? There are thorns only in the heart of man, and my heart had become so worn out on the roads that there was nothing left of it, or perhaps it beat everywhere with the grass and the cicadas. Where was that strange invention—”me”? It was vast and tranquil and infinitely sweet, like the sweetness of the worlds from before man, or after him; it was even like a Gregorian chant and moved by the great Law; it was a great, flowing solemnity, without a shadow, without a ripple, immense and impossible, as if we disturbed everything with our cries, our tears, as if one had to cease being man in order to enter into the great sovereignty of the world and to share the calm empire of the gods or of a small egret in a rice-field. And sometimes I felt that I would disappear completely; I had a moment's suffocation and everything contracted; a tiny hardness knocking against itself—the pain of being “me”, the thorns which tear; and just at that very moment, I had the impression that it was Batcha at the other end of the thread and that she was pulling: An'mona! An'mona! And instantly, I found the question again, my question, the only one I had left, as if “I” were only a question in the world, a sole, unique interrogation in a no man's land of immediate knowledge.

—Sannyasi, tell me...

His eyes pierced through mine. I had to struggle a moment, I felt that light which was going to dissolve my question; I was going to give up, shrug my shoulders, take to the road again. But suddenly, I saw—saw as one sees at the moment of dying—the whole picture; the Sannyasi's stained scarf, the drops of sweat between the rudraksha beads of his necklace, the branch of the fig tree over the road, the ochre dust on the path which went down to the river. If I did not ask my question immediately, it would be the end, I would leave, disintegrate completely.

And a furore rose in me:

—You are going to speak this time.

I caught him by his scarf.

—Sannyasi, do you hear, I am going to die perhaps, but it's all the same to me, I am not afraid of dying, I only need to know. I want to know, you understand. To know why, why all this? Why all these lives, this misery of being, this walking, this suffering, if it's only to be done with it all? Why? Why all these years, these millions of years to conquer life if it's only to throw it away at the end? And all this work, this labour of thought, the pains we take to build ourselves, this suffering to create, if it's only to demolish everything in the end, tell me? What does it mean, what does it add up to, will you tell me?

He was like a stone in front of me.

—Liberation? Beatitude?

Then I saw red. I was like an absurd little puppet on the side of the road, but suddenly it was as if millions of men came to cry out in my body, a world of suffering which fell upon my shoulders. Oh! it was not metaphysics, it was utter physics.

—So... your heaven, I don't want it, I spit in its face.

I saw his cheeks swell... I did not know whether he was going to laugh or explode. Then I plunged into a sort of burning prayer which sprang from the depths of my heart:

—If this earth has no meaning—a meaning, you understand, here, on this very earth itself—if it is only a passage towards the Beyond, a trick to get out of it, then what heaven, tell me, what beatitude will ever atone for all this suffering? If there is no heaven for the earth, if there is no meaning for the earth, then the whole of this world is an insanity, and I have no use for paradise, let it stay up there, I am with the dead!

He looked at me quietly, and there was that sparkle of a huge amusement in his eyes. My temples throbbed, I felt as though I were going to collapse suddenly in the dust, with gaping mouth, and that would be the end, so much the better!

—Not yet there, he said simply.

And he continued on his way. Then I summoned up all my strength, I caught him, by, the arm—if I did not get it over with immediately, I was lost.

—But when I am there, there will be no person left!

—You're afraid?

I can still see that river, that enormous mouth which carts away the sands in the setting sun, those waters, slow and heavy from having dragged the mud and the ashes of the dead and the prayers of the living. And then the sea in the distance, in a haze of golden dust; and one no longer knew whether it was the tawny flow of the great river or the blazing quicksands, or if the earth were not setting out from here for some golden periplus—the earth, this earth... cette terre.

—Afraid of what? Will you tell me? I have nothing more to lose.

—Except yourself.

There were tall tufts of grass on the bank, and sand, banyan trees, a village opposite with its rose-tinged minaret. A jackal began to yelp behind us. The river flowed soundlessly like lava. The Sannyasi was motionless, leaning on his staff, his orange robe almost melting into that fiery radiation.

—Except myself...

Who, “myself”?

Behind us the jackal yelped once more, a long hysterical laugh which ran through the grass and seemed to echo from all sides. Then the silence, broken from time to time by some rumblings. Myself, who was the “me”, where was the “me”? It was nothing any longer; not even a life, not even a person—where was that person? There were grasses, beasts, waters; “Me” came from afar like the river, carting away a world of mud and pain and prayers, soon to be thrown into the sea and dissolved into nothing, without more ado, while the jackal yelped and would yelp again. The “me” had been rolling on for centuries; it was only an immense oldness which was dragging along miseries, mud and all possible shame in its heart and some wisps of joy so mixed with pain that it was all the same; it went on indefinitely, it understood everything, bore everything, oh! what had it not rolled in its water? And then, someone, on the bank, who looks on, a very tiny something leaning there, which waits as if it had waited millions of years, since the cycles of the ice-age, since peoples have come and gone, with the jackal's yelp, with the breeze in the grasses, with the cries of all those who have come and gone and their sorrows and their lost stories. I have always been there, on the banks of the great river, I was that look at the end, that little breath of all their breaths, that little pain of all their pains, that stark question at the end, oh! I have had that look thousands of times, here and there, at the end of a life, that mere little breath, as if everything were gathered together in a single soul: the miseries and the days, the faces and the gestures, the millions of gestures for nothing in an ultimate prayer, which was not even a prayer any longer, which was only that cry at the end: I am waiting, oh! I am waiting for the moment of true life, the living life, the world of truth—not that caricature of life, walled in, sealed, dying, which knows nothing, which can do nothing, which does not even remember from whence it came nor why it goes on, that blindness in a body, without a sign, without a key, except for dreams and fables, oh! to know, to be infinitely, to live infinitely, to have direct perception, to find the thread again! To live, to love, to spread out everywhere, to feel everywhere, to see everywhere, as much as one might will, as much as one might love, with no separation, with no distance; to sing, to smile everywhere, in all that is, in all that lives, all that throbs; to die, to be reborn at will, to keep the thread indestructibly and to fill every moment with a totality of existence as full as all the millenniums together. I am waiting, oh! I am waiting for the hour of truth when our millions of dissolved, burned-out loves, rolled down the river, might love again, love forever, when our millions of gestures might touch the living glory they have fashioned in the dark, our flouted lives might know the joy they forged in ignorance, and our lost breaths sing the great paean of the divine world—and we will touch heaven with our hands, we will build the earth in the image of our soul and incarnate the light in a body. Oh! I am waiting, I am waiting for the hour of that “Something Else”, I am waiting for another being on this earth.

—Let's be on our way.

—Listen...

—What now?

I looked at him without anger, I was in the truth-breath; I was in the calm certitude of the truth which imposes itself.

—There is something else, Sannyasi, I swear to you, your dissolution is not the end.

He stopped short.

—What do you know, my fine fellow, you have not even been born yet!

Then he jabbed his finger into the hollow of my chest, as on that day in the train:

—If you want the lion's reply, you have to become like the lion. If you want man's replies, very well, continue to whimper, to suffer and to die.

And he turned his back on me. Then he changed his mind suddenly and fell on me like the wind:

—Men ask questions which do not belong to their state, so they get no answer. They get only ideas. You must change your “state”, Mr. Foreigner, you must become like the lion!

And he strode away towards the river.

He hailed the ferry-man.

There was a rose-tinged minaret full of pigeons. There was a forest of banyan trees on the other bank, and the village was all golden as if in a fairy-tale, one could hear the Muezzin's cry. And just as I set foot on the other bank, I had the impression that I was living a marvellous adventure—oh! I could end up badly, or not end up at all, lose myself, find myself, be dissolved or not, what did it matter! I was in the Adventure, the true story, in that sort of living question that one asks from life to life, which is like the life of life, the true “why” of all these millions of steps for nothing—I was there, I was holding the thread, it was for that that I was born: to hold that unique thread, that unique little burning question which was like the reply itself, and I could die a thousand times, what did it matter! I was holding the only thing that stands fast, dead or alive, the knot of the story, the moment which weaves together all moments. Indeed, we do not need a reply, we need only to live to the breaking-point a certain question which haunts us.

—Are you ready? he asked me abruptly, right in the middle of the bazaar, in that odour of saffron and marigolds, while the pigeons passed with a clapping of wings.

I looked at him, and everything seemed to me so simple, so natural, so exactly timed—why did I need to be ready, and for what? Everything was ready for me at each minute, even those pigeons passed by at the right time. It was miraculous, quite simply; that moment in the middle of the bazaar was miraculous, it vibrated with I know not what quivering of eternity as if it were carrying in its orb an infinitude of moments which came only to make that clapping of wings round a minaret. The miracle of the world is not to see miracles! It is to perceive suddenly what really is.

—A-n-y-thing, I replied.

His teeth glistened in a broad smile, he seized a bunch of hanging bananas and dumped it in my arms.

—Here, eat!

Then he bought some rice and two pieces of white cloth; he borrowed a copper bucket and we went towards the bank of the river into the banyan forest.

There were two sannyasis sitting round a fire. They seemed to be waiting for us. One was very old with long hair twisted into a plait and coiled on the top of his head; the other was young, he was meditating. The Sannyasi filled his copper bucket in the river. The sands were shining like water.

And that evening, he took out a shingle of orange clay which he crushed into powder on a rock, and he dyed the white cloths gerua.

—Tomorrow you will receive the initiation.

When I awoke the next day, I had a very peculiar sensation, like a man who has just passed through a cataclysm of the memory—one of those gigantic cave-ins that sometimes rent one's sleep, as if one were being dynamited into another layer of being. I found myself in a strange state, a kind of astonishment. That banyan forest was familiar and I was someone very familiar but suddenly hurled into another story, almost another age, and I was reliving something well-known, but with a body of time-present which did not understand very well though it let itself be led like a child one takes through a mysterious rite.

—... C'est l'heure... It is time.

He appeared before me all at once, very tall, enveloped in shadows. I straightened up. My body was lying in the sand, my head on a banyan root; the day had not yet dawned. There was a big river flowing and tall grass; one could hear the cicadas. The twilight was a great cicada-song. I looked at that tall silhouette in front of me; it was like an old, old story repeating itself. I picked up my scarf, I went towards the river unknowingly; but I knew everything very well, it was all foreseen. A man was there, waiting for me.

—Sit down. Take off your clothes.

I did as he told me. The cicadas were silent for a moment, then resumed once more their high-pitched stridulation, immense, as in the night of time; we were two tiny shadows in the murmur of the worlds; there we were, less than the cicadas, less than the grass,—we had not to make a sound, above all not disturb anything.

I did not move any more.

He pulled out his paraphernalia. It was the barber.

—Hold your head straight.

I held my head straight and looked at the great river in the rising dawn. The air was light, it smelt of vetiver. The sand was cool like the feet of a divinity in the heart of a sanctuary. He sprinkled a little water over me and began to shave my head, snipping off little tufts, gripping my head at arm's length. Perhaps he was going to cut my throat in the end and offer me to the river, all neat and clean. And there was a sweetness; there was nothing more to want or not want, no more fear, no more expectation: it was there. I was in the eternal fact. I was borne by immense hands, with the grass and the cicadas; I was part of a great, rising celebration. It was today or yesterday and always, it was a vast singing Sacrifice without tragedy, without fear, like a simple act of love, because each one had to give what he is, each one had to sing his song—for nothing, for everything, for the river and the rising day, for the fading stars, for that great mysterious thing which throbs in each one. It was thus, it was the Law, the true movement of the world—a great rising rhythm of offering—and we were doing neither, more nor less than the cicadas, only we did not know it, we had lost the rite and the music; but it was there, it was the same, and we made the offering unknowingly. Oh! I remember a day like this when I walked to the sacrifice unknowingly, and perhaps there had been many other sacrifices of tears and blood before that one, perhaps many barbarous offerings were necessary to rediscover the song, and when it sings there is no further need for sacrifice, perhaps no further need to die even, because that very song makes us invulnerable. It was in winter in the barbaric countries, in the place called Buchenwald; we had passed through the portal and had entered a white-tiled, neon-lit catacomb; they had undressed and numbered us, they had examined our mouths and removed the gold teeth; we were naked and ready, drawn up in close ranks in the great white-tiled tunnel. We passed in groups into the immense hall. There was not a murmur, not a cry. There was only the crackling of the electric clippers which hung from the high vault, and men, perhaps, who passed two-by-two under a deadly white light; they were scoured, shaven, washed, they looked at the little tufts of hair on the ground, the last remnants of their person, there in little blond or white heaps, in the staggering silence of a herd of shadows being led to the sacrifice. They had passed the second portal, they had entered the room with chemical baths, the immense, white-tiled creosote pit; they had left behind their impurities, abandoned their hopes, their despairs, their names, their ages, their times; they went two-by-two in silence, bereft of hate, of fear, of surprise even, under the fiery sprays, the icy sprays, under the fierce white light of a frightful ceremony; they went through immense immaculate corridors, without a word, without a cry—then, at the end, were thrown abruptly, dazzled, into a courtyard white with snow, among men perhaps, their heads shaven, dressed in sackcloth, numbered—nul and void like nothing on earth, dead or alive, without any distinction.

And then, in that non-world of the world, as everything became drowned in stupefaction something lit up within: a flame, a cry, an intensity of pure life—pure—absolute, unconditioned, equal only to the intensity of an onrushing death. And that was invulnerable. It was the life of life, even death lived by that! A fire of being so imperiously puissant that it made eternity break out suddenly like an archangel in the night, as if the very heart of death had a face of eternal light.

And it sang.

I left my head between his hands and everything began again following another rite—or perhaps it was always the same, but willed this time: we always pass and repass through the same place, amidst a scenery of light or shadow, of beauty or terror, by the oui or by the non, under the high vault of the banyans or the underground of the condemned, and when one arrived at the point it was the same, there was no longer any oui, any non, nor any terror. It was a cicada-song. Little tufts of hair were falling, years and years were falling away, oh! how that man was liberating me... so simply; he shaved and scraped away' the old grimace—that immense old habit of being like one's portrait, as if one had passed one's life copying a false image—and then it was inimitable. It was quite fresh and it looked on. It looked on, like a child through another window: a great flowing river and tall grass full of cicadas. And it was so ancient at the same time! When one opened that window, one had been as if leaning there forever, with one's cheek resting on an immense tenderness, and it was the great river of all rivers, the one moment of all moments, the cicada of a million lives.

Then the sun rose suddenly, piercing the forest with fire, scattering its little flames of gold on the river. The barber prostrated himself in the sand. I went towards the river. I was light and naked, I was clear like a cicada; I threw my clothes on the bank and went forth as though held by a great hand. Everything was so familiar that morning, like a dream which becomes true, like a film which suddenly stops on a single image and we say: oh! it's that, I know, I know!

That morning I knew everything.

The Muezzin began to chant in his minaret.

I remained rooted to the spot on the bank of that river, I no longer moved. Oh! there is an eternal image behind us and sometimes it emerges. There is a profound cry which sometimes carries us away. That morning there was nothing but that great cry which seemed to come from far, far up there, which devoured everything, filled everything. It was like a sudden chasm, a hole in the memory, something which gaped: there was no longer any river, any “me”, anybody; there was nothing but that great cry up there, so heart-rending, something which called, called as if it had never ceased to call throughout all the ages, through all places, all times, all sufferings and triumphs, all the skins of man, black or white; I had always been that single cry, that something which does not see, does not know, but which cries out, oh! which cries out as if from the depths of time like someone immured alive. And then it collapses. Everything collapses: my names, my forms, my life, my lives and all the gestures, the millions of gestures, the faces, the memories, the hopes and all that one seeks and all that one wants—what else could I want? For a million years I have wanted that!—That, that only, to cry out that as one drowns, as one loves, body and soul, that single cry which fills everything, carries away everything, lives, deaths, the future, the past; which makes the soul burst, barriers collapse, which sweeps everything away—not a trace of anything else, not a single thing to want, not even a single truth to attain: that, utterly that, to cry out that as one breathes, as one dies or as one lives, for nothing, simply because that cries out, that cries out, because it is that, that unique thing that one is, that pure cry of being. A formidable white devastation.

Then I prostrated myself in the sand. And I no longer knew where I was, whether it was the east or the west, the north or the south: it was Mecca everywhere.

I went into the river. A bird flew away with a shrill cry—blue, green—the air was like a golden powder. And I felt there was something to be done, a gesture to be made. The Sannyasi came out of the banyan forest over there, he advanced like a flame through the tall grass. I took some water in my cupped hands, I stretched out my palms towards the sun, I would have liked to sing out, to make an offering, I don't know, to give something... participate; I offered my water to the sun, murmured I know not what, but it was myself I would have liked to make an offering, to cast myself into the river; it was so small, so limited in that great torrent of adoration which flowed, vibrated everywhere, sang everywhere, with the water, the grass, the sand, the foam over there: it gave itself with such an abundance, it rose up towards the sun. And then that little naked body, so white, so clumsy! Thus I cast myself into the river: “Take, take all that, take.” Oh! it was so beautiful, the great river, so harmonious, so full of love. Thrice I dived in—thrice, why? I do not know; there was a number, a rite, it had to be attuned to something; and I could feel, I could touch that rite, I advanced, as if gropingly into a great ceremony. Each drop, each gesture had a meaning, a number, something which made it sacred—it was sacred, the world was sacred, the river was sacred,—but for no reason; it was simply like that, the rhythm was like that, it was the rhythm which created the sacredness, the rhythm which gave the meaning, the direction of things, automatically, like the infallible flight of the bird which comes straight from Siberia. And I was reaching out so tensely towards that impalpable, vibrating “Thing”, I too would so much have liked to know the gesture, to be in it. And suddenly, I had the impression that someone was behind me: a Presence.

A great Presence.

A being, a light; something which knew, which was guiding me. I closed my eyes for an instant and I felt that one should be clear, clear, absolutely clear, let that flow pass through one, let it act above all let it act, be white, completely white and motionless—given over. And it passed through me: it pushed my hands, my body, it knew the gesture.

Then I stretched myself out flat in the water, my arms like a cross. And it was the gesture, the unique gesture: an instantaneous sweetness. I was in the rhythm; I was at the goal, there was nothing to be sought, nothing to be attained: an instantaneous royalty.

—O, boy...

I returned to the bank. That presence was still behind me, and everything was very supple; my body had become very supple; each step, each movement was driven by an infallible rhythm, a vibration which perceived and acted at the satire time; one had to be as pure as possible, precise, transparent. It was like a great luminous movement, the luminous trajectory of someone behind me, who almost became one with me; and sometimes, for a second, the two coincided, it was the perfection of truth: I was true and everything was true. And in that very second, I saw that everything was like that; the whole world was the projection of an immense luminous trajectory, and that perfect coincidence was the sacred thing, the truth of the world. Thus everything flowed in a spontaneous marvel, with an inconceivable precision: it was that, the living truth.

He put his arm on my shoulder.

—Little one, you are going to celebrate the last rites.

I looked at him; I understood nothing.

—Yes, for your family.

My family?... I felt myself instantly shrunken.

—Afterwards, you will no longer be able to. It is the last time. Do as I say.

I did as he said. I took a little water in the hollow of my hands. There were tiny translucent fish which came to suck the grass. Then he chanted a verse in that bronze language which surged like a sea, and, immediately, it was something else, there was a meaning behind the words, a music which created the truth:

—For the appeasement of your kin, you pour this water.

I poured the water. I let it trickle drop by drop into the great river. The river carried it away. I did not understand very well, but it was part of the rhythm, it was right and in accord.

—Now you no longer have a family.

He got up; he threw a little water over his shoulder.

—Come, follow me.

I followed the Sannyasi.

I cannot really say what happened from that moment on. It was no longer me, and yet it was me as I had never been before: a concentration of me, a luminous essence, something which was no longer my thousands of gestures, a habit of living this life, nor even the memory of everything I had been and of all my adventures, that kind of veneer which gives us a face or a grimace; it was not a total denudation either, an emptiness of me, and yet I was walking naked through the tall grass, a little embarrassed by this too white body as one might be by an ill-fitting garment; nor was I diffused, or mingled as before, with the river, dissolved in the great rhythm. There was something which was supremely me behind all those gestures, all those memories, and which created a rhythm also, a vibration which coagulated all that; a kind of memory of all memories, a note of all notes, a something which had inhabited all the adventures, all the stories, vibrated identically in all the forms, all the faces, all the colours of the good, the bad—yes, like a similar music, my music, here and there, in a black skin or white, in lost times, in times retrieved; a same story of the story which created all stories, like the same blue in the hands of an eternal artist who son times creates tormented skies or at others smooth and blessed ones, but always the same hue, my hue: an eternity of “me”, unique, unlike anything, oh! so much “me”, a concentration of “me” like twenty generations gathered together in a single stroke, which walked with me, felt with me, prayed with me, an epitome so intense that it blazed, a fusion of beings so compact that it was like a radiation round me.

And everything had that orange hue.

We entered the forest. The Sannyasi walked in front of me, his robe sometimes flaming in a ray of sunlight. The sand was very soft under my feet and smooth like a gazelle—I could hardly see where I was going: I walked from one golden beam into another golden beam amidst strange fulvous pillars entwined together into a mêlée of pythons, then hurtling themselves towards the sky and re-entwining into a vault from which a liana sometimes fell like a fiery stalactite. I advanced without quite knowing where I was going, my eyes seemed veiled with a sweetness; I felt very small, very white, there was that great Presence behind me; there was like a fire blazing in my heart and everything became fused: those flaming banyans, those orange sands, that great gaze upon me; an infinitely sweet fire which flowed from my heart towards all things, and I recognized them all, I had a glance for them all, I would have liked to touch them, take them into me, embrace them all, like a dead man who is leaving and who looks for the last time, from above his body, with a single seizing glance, at that body and all bodies and all things, with the tenderness of absolute understanding. I walked in the midst of that orange sweetness with the recognition of an eternal lover. I had been walking for ever perhaps, I was there as though at the end of a thousand years, I was only a small image, a symbol borne by an orange radiation and each step seemed charged with an infinite meaning, as if all walks, all roads, culminated in that single little wake of sand, as if all steps, the thousands of steps led to that single little step, all days fused into that one, all joys, all sufferings dissolved, transmuted into that unique golden, roseate vibration which enveloped me, filled me, so warm, so full that it seemed to caress everything, bathe everything, love everything, as if those thousands of beings I had been came to be unknotted here, to look with me, burn with me, love with me, to carry their offering of pain and hope, to open their hands in that forest and give back their good, their evil—give, give, there is nothing but giving at the end; to close one's eyes, to abandon oneself. Oh! I had never lived for anything else but that giving, that single moment when everything melts; everything drops away, that ultimate royalty of giving, that end of all roads, that orange unravelling in which one bathes oneself as in a fire of tenderness, as in a love-song, that deliverance of going forward without anything, without expectation, without hope, like a dead man who has already died so many times that he has nothing more. to fear, nothing more to lose, like a living being who has already lived so much that he wants nothing more for himself, and what could he want—what heaven? What could he still fear? He knew all heavens, all hells, he had wandered everywhere, known all riches, all miseries, what could he still expect? There was that song at the end, that tenderness for nothing, for everything, that deliverance of laying one's forehead on the great sacrificial table, of opening one's hands and giving back one's note. There was only that small image beneath a great gaze, there was my brother of light, my brother of all-time, and I advanced into him at the end, I went back into his eyes, the small image into the larger, the myriad miseries into a great fire which loves, the myriad steps into a great trajectory of love, the thousands of days into the single day which counts. And all was like an orange hymn.

They were chanting.

It was a big clearing on the edge of the sands, the sea rumbled in the distance, the roots of the banyan trees hung round us like the rigging of a sailing-boat.

They brought some wood.

—Nous y sommes... We are there. Sit down.

He drew a circle around me. Their voices filled the whole clearing like a tide of golden bronze which mingled with the sound of the sea.

—You will do as I say.

He placed a bowl of ghee¹⁸ and some grains of coloured rice near me.

They lit a fire as though for my own funeral pyre.

I was alone.

I was facing the rising sun.

I was naked in the middle of the clearing.

They drew away from me, chanting.

—You renounce the three worlds. You cast into the fire the three lives... Tu renonces aux trois mondes. Tu jettes dans le feu les trois vies.

I took three grains of rice, I took a little ghee; I cast them into the fire.

—You renounce the mental world, the brilliant world, all its gods and its forms, you cast them into the fire: Aum Svaha.

I cast them into the fire.

—You renounce the vital world and all its lights and powers, you, east them into the fire: Aum Svaha.

I cast them into the fire.

—You renounce the physical world, your flesh and its desires, your emotions, your thirsts, you cast them into the fire: Aum Svaha.

I cast them into the fire.

—You renounce all the worlds. You have no more home, no more ties, no more country, you are the son of the Fire.

I am the son of the Fire.

—You are That. In that you live, to That you return, thus art thou.

They were chanting behind me, and I no longer knew who I was nor for what nor by what; I knew only that fire which burned in my heart, which burned in front of me and everything had mingled; I knew only that chant in the clearing, that offering of fire which sang forth in my heart, I was that living fire: O Fire, O great Fire, I know not what they say, I understand not their words or their worlds or their gestures; I understand that I am here, at the end of the worlds, at the end of the gestures, alone and naked before thee, and what is needed? What is the truth, the simple truth, tell me, I ask for nothing but the truth, utterly pure, utterly true? What is the truth?... And mutely it burned, as if the truth were simply to burn.

Then I threw everything into my fire: everything which questions, everything which demands, everything which encumbers, everything which knows, does not know, shines, does not shine, everything that can make a fire, nothing but the fire of truth. O Fire, O great Fire, I cast this life into thy flame because it is not the life, because it is small, limited, because it dies, because the truth cannot die! O Fire, O great Fire, I cast this thought into thy fire because it knows nothing, can do nothing, because it turns endlessly in circles, without a remedy, without a solution, without ever a certitude, because the truth really knows, because the truth can! O Fire, I cast these emotions, these feelings, I cast this confusion into thy fire and these errors, this misery of the senses and this yoke with no respite, this thirst, this perpetual thirst, I cast my humanity into thy fire, Aum Svaha. I am the son of another race! I am of another birth. O Fire, O great Fire, I have not come into this world in order to repeat the rituals of the dying! I am the lover of another life, I am the son of another Light, where is life, tell me? What should I renounce? Life is not yet!... La vie n'est pas encore!

Then I took the last grain of rice in the hollow of my hand and I looked at that flame for the last time, with all my strength, with all my soul, with a supreme call to the truth, as if it were the truth which had to pronounce the word, enunciate, as if I were going to die at that instant: I ask for the truth, the truth—and if there is no truth, then let everything be consumed.

And something replied.

An influx of fire into my body, a crushing pressure—no fear: simply the impression that I was being burned alive, inside. No nerves, no cells, not even a body: a dense fire which absorbed everything. Then all around (or within, I don't know which) like an onslaught or a precipitation, a gathering; they were all there, leaning over me, pressed against me, like fires, they too: all those beings of my being, all those lost lives equally burned, all those dead-never-dead, that long interminable burning procession of which I was the residue of the end, the final chant, the ultimate living question; they were all present, they looked with my eyes, touched with my hands, vibrated with my body, all suspended there in a last second. And there was that grain of rice in the hollow of their hands. Then I heard something like a distant chant which rose, rose, indistinct and subdued, like the sound of the sea, like the chant of those sannyasis, a long chanting theoria which came from the depths of lives, from the depths of deaths, each one with his offering of fire: all the forms they had adored, sung, carved or painted, all their hopes, their despairs, their sacrifices, all their given loves, their dead beauties, their summits of greatness and their eversame distress: pyre upon pyre and imperious idols, white gods, black gods and robes of all colours, of all miseries, cries for help, cries for nothing, futile and ephemeral illuminations, realisations of dust, flecks of gold or of snow, white moments which always ended badly, pure salvations which saved nothing—a great immense procession of fire which mounted from the depths of the nights, from the depths of my lives, which had all the faces, all the looks, even the face of the sannyasis, even the grimace of the tortured, even the smile of the blessed—all alike—one single great supplication from the depths of the ages... une seule grande supplication du fond des âges..., from the depths of those thousands of men who were pounding in my heart like the primate of old in the millennial forest; and it was the reply, like an orange outburst: something else, something else, another man, another life on earth! It sang that morning, it resounded in my heart like the clarion of the new world, like a tocsin of the end of an age: something else, something else, another being who will be born from our fire, another earth which will be born from our cry of truth, something we do not know yet, but which will be born by the power of our fire as Matter is born of a fire, as Beauty and Love are born of a fire, as Man is born of a cry.

Then I opened my hands and cast my last grain of rice into the fire.

And something happened.

He placed his hand on my shoulder, I started. I had forgotten him and his initiation completely; I was in another story; I was thousands of miles away—perhaps in the story of the world of tomorrow. Oh! I had been that Sannyasi so often—once, twice, three times and many other things besides, with those circling around me and I had come back to make the gesture, to burn the world once more but as a supreme incendiary, a final iconoclast, to burn even that very fire and wring the, neck of the old story.

—Now, you are going to receive the initiation.

He sat down in front of me.

—Do as I say.

I did as he said.

He placed his right hand on my head, I placed my right hand on his right knee. He leaned towards my ear.

There was no sound, they had all gone away.

One could hear the rumbling of the sea in the distance.

He pronounced three syllables.

I repeated three syllables.

It was over.

He got up. I got up. He took the orange cloth and put it in my hands—oh! I understood well now why those clothes were of that colour. Then he handed me a staff, a begging bowl. He took off his necklace of wooden beads and put it around my neck.

—Now you are a sannyasi.

He stood very erect in front of me. His naked torso shone in the sun, he looked like a tawny erne.

—You are alone with Truth.

Then his face suddenly relaxed; he looked at me with a sort of jubilant tenderness and he gave one of those thunderous, triumphant, royal laughs, his head thrown back as if he were drinking the wine of the gods. And he turned his back on me.

I never saw him again.

But as for myself, I had burnt his initiation with the rest. I was alone.

I was in another state.

There was a little heap of ashes in the middle of the clearing.

I was in another thing which was perhaps the “something else” that I had called down, I do not know. I was completely outside the story, radically outside, transported into another gravitation. And I cannot really tell, because there was nothing to see, nothing supernatural, no apparition, no revelation, nothing miraculous, and yet it was like a revelation: I had the impression of seeing something without seeing it, of touching something without touching it, or rather of being touched by something, like a blindman or like a new born baby, in a world so radically different that there were no corresponding organs, nothing that could translate. And yet it was massively there. It was not an illumination or a sublimation, nor was it a glorification of everything already known to me—it was something else. A total “Elseness”. I was in that clearing as might have been an anthropoid touched by the first wave of thought. But it was not thinking, it was another vibration of being. And it was there: there was no need to close one's eyes, no need to meditate, to abstract oneself on vertiginous heights nor to go into ecstasy—it was there, with one's eyes wide open, standing like a man on his two feet; no need to spread or flow into a cosmic stream nor to be dissolved; it was the opposite of dissolution; it was a concentration, a tremendous concentration of being, almost a gravity, such a heavy density that I was like a solid, vibrant, radiant block—a mass of compact vibration: it vibrated. But it was not like a thought or an emotion which vibrates: it was a dense beam of vibrations a vibrating mass, perhaps myriads of vibrations which were so rapid that they were going to coagulate, become solidified, fused into one, like an energy about to turn into Matter; just one more degree, one more acceleration, and everything would solidify. I was caught within that, held, immobilised like a bee in a stream of honey. And it was warm—a warm power—almost a swell of fever of which the heat did not resemble material heat, but which was more like intense love, a paroxysm of love or of joy perhaps, a love-joy which had nothing to do with human feelings or emotions or soul-states: a substance of love, a stream of solid joy which held one in its ray. And quiet—quiet without any shadow of excitement or of upheaval, not even of a quivering, or such a rapid quivering that it too was caught, struck with eternity. And time changed. One was as if on the brink of a second so accelerated that it was about to turn into eternity; it was like time not yet solidified, in the same way as it was a matter not yet solidified; to live in it was to live for eternity. A vast centreless immobility. And yet, it was there, one's eyes wide open, a kind of material eternity which extended in the twinkling of an eye, which spanned all time—past, present, future. And it could not die any more than energy could cease to be energetic: it was Energy itself, a centreless super-sun which wove together all suns, all atoms, all bodies; it was the life of life. It was perhaps the life that is not yet born, the future life—or which is already born perhaps, which is there, always there, and for some mysterious reason one enters into it, one crosses the threshold, as matter crossed over the threshold of Life one day and emerged into a more rapid movement, as the anthropoid crossed over the threshold of mind one day, and entered into another acceleration which made him think and reflect. But it was imperceptible, it was inexpressible, I did not know the mechanism—it was simply. I cannot even say “I saw”—there was nothing to see! It was not yet born for our eyes—one was simply seen by that. And that was the true Sacred. It was the puissant Mystery of no past, no memory, no initiation; it was the absolute Future, nameless, signless, without a trace of recognition, without even a quivering of being—it was simply there, a radiating, massive, imperious solidity: “I WILL”. A motionless “I will” which looks at the earth and awaits the hour—which awaits, perhaps, our millions of cries in order to open the golden door and draw us onto its threshold. A new Power for the world which came neither from thought, nor from matter, nor from life, nor even from soul. A motionless cataract of warm power charged with love.

Then I drew my scarf over my chest and set out straight ahead.