By The Body Of The Earth or The Sannyasin

The Vision

He was hurrying to hang himself, that Sannyasi; he thought he had lost heaven, lost the earth, the beloved and the light which makes one love well. He did not know, he no longer knew, his eyes were burning, he was running along that track which seemed to vanish in a cloud of sand-storm. It was the northern track. Night was falling, the odour of the acacias mingled with the salt of the sea, with a wind of thorns and malediction. He was going to Kali's Rock.

And all the voices of the past came back:

—O Stranger, hurry up, darkness is upon you.

I had pushed the boat in the wind; she was clad in red, she had put her gold bangles in the man's hand, windward ho! And I am running still, I have never reached port.

—I have taken out some white clothes for you, the Kashmiri carpets, we are walking in a forest of blue cedars...

But it was Björn's forest: “I'll marry her, we'll have a hut, we'll make a boat, fishing nets... All black, the little Björns!” I could still hear him shouting behind me: “In four years, she will have flat breasts and her mother's mug.”

—But it's not that, Nil! not that, not that... pas ҫa, pas ҫa...

It was not that—and it was nothing at all; it was the night and the wind that were blowing behind me.

—Nothing-at-all, Mr. Nothing-at-all, there are millions of beaches in geography... but only one wave... brings to each one... a single cowrie.

I have even lost the single sea-shell she had given me; I have always lost it: “Here, this one has been waiting a thousand years for you,” and I went away. I am still running.

—Every time, you made the same error.

Error? What error? There is no error, there is never any error, you yourself said so.

—I ask you for one day, only one day...

But in the depths of my madness, in the depths of my distress, there was something which repeated stubbornly: “You were right to go away, even if it had to be started all over again, I would still do it a thousand times...”

—I want to be free, do you hear, free!

Well! you have your freedom; what are you complaining of? You are not at the wedding party, so what else do you want?

—Too late, Nil, too late... trop tard...

And that was the most poignant of all; it had no reason, no meaning; it burned deep in the depths like an ever-open wound.

—Trois fois tu es venu, trois fois tu as tué... Three times you have come, three times you have killed.

And the Promontory; I am on it.

—Björn! Björn!

It was Balu, he was running. Some mynas had flown away from between the rocks; he was running with his satchel: “I tell you something has happened to Björn, something has happened...”

—Erik is dead; he committed suicide.

One shaft, two shafts, three shafts... Erik is dead and Björn is dead, they are all dead; they did not want any shafts, they did not want any nauseous little happiness, and I, what did I want?

—Something else, something else, another life on earth!...

And I burned everything for that. I ravaged everything. And now I was running to hang myself for that nauseous little happiness. “All white, the little Nils! We'll have a hut; we'll be free; we'll go far, far away to the north, there will be green paddy-fields...” Oh! was I going to hang myself for that? But could I deny Batcha also? I could deny nothing, not even the Sannyasi! And I was running in that acacia forest, running in a poignant, growing contradiction which was clutching at my throat.
—It is closed on all sides, Nil, I am trapped like a rat, a prisoner on the island!

And then, suddenly, Björn, on the roof of the grain merchant's shop, naked, some bricks in his hand.

—Hein! Suppose we cheat the gods with a stroke of luck? Tails you go, heads...

I climbed up onto the Promontory. My hands were torn by the brambles; the island was foaming like a mad woman. And Mohini was there, leaning over my shoulder:

—A beautiful place for killing oneself.

They were all there: Balu, Björn, Batcha, Erik... There was even that naked idol—with its mouth open, a sword in its hand. An erne flew into the sky with an angry cry. I was driven against the wall of the sanctuary, facing the void; the wind was flapping that orange robe as if it willed to tear it: dorai, dorai... assassin, assassin, perjurer.

—Ah! So you wanted to be free, Sannyasi, well, you are!...

Even Balu had stoned me; they had all turned their backs on me.

—You renounce the three worlds, you cast them into the fire.

I took a grain of coloured rice and I cast it into the fire.

—You have no country any longer, no family any longer, no home any longer; you are the son of the Fire.

—I am the son of the Fire.

—Then what more do you want?

—I say that I have found a great Light up there; I have left everything for that.

—That is precisely your error

And that void at my feet, that hole of darkness, it was only the obverse of their heaven: I could just as well have disappeared into an abyss of light with the halo of a little saint!

—I called you, I called you every day but you did not reply, Nil, there was no one, no one, it was dreadful; you no longer existed!... tu n'existais plus!

And that little voice was like a knife in my heart. I had lost her; I had lost everything, what could I still want?

—I walked towards the river; that great presence was behind me, and all was like the luminous trajectory of a great being behind me, who almost became one with me, and sometimes, for a second, the two coincided, it was the perfection of the truth. Thus flowed everything in a spontaneous marvel, with an inconceivable precision: it was that, the living truth.

Oh! How could I deny that?

—An'mona! An'mona! Nothing-at-all, Mr. Nothing-at-all!

—Batcha, oh! What a fool I was!

And Mohini hanging onto my arm:

—Death is upon you, Nil.

—You are lying, it's blackmail.

—It is over us, Nil, Destiny is hanging over us. What you are fleeing from, you will meet again ten times, a hundred times... Until things are fulfilled

—Watch out, don't try to corner me!

And it was I who was cornered now, driven against the wall, like Björn. But what the devil had I done, where was the wrong, what wrong?

—I love and have forgotten everything.

—Well, I do not love.

—You are a brute.

—Yes, free... Oui, libre.

—You are running away, Nil.

She was so white in that red forest... Elle était si blanche dans cette forêt rouge.

—When you have burned me as well, you will understand.

She had said that so quietly. She was so pale against that extravagant nuptial scarlet. And I did not understand, I could not understand—I was not going to say “no” to that freedom, and could I say “no” to Batcha, “no” to this earth? On both sides, I was the deserter! And could I say “yes” to their nauseous little happiness? It was the supreme perjury, the abominable success. I had not come here to make little Nils who would make little Nils who would make little Nils!... It is not that, Nil, not that—the true life!... pas ҫa, la vraie vie!

To both sides, I was a traitor, as if heaven and earth were real, one without the other.

   O Child
Heaven needs the earth to become real,
As much as the earth needs heaven to be free,
And they will become real, one by the other:
Heaven by the pain of earth,
And earth by the freedom of heaven.

And I had not found either the place or the key; I had found Batcha only to lose her.

—Ah! You see, you too wanted to take, you too wanted to run away with your loot.

Oh! I know, that is my error; as soon as one speaks of love, everything goes wrong. But did I love her less when I did not know that I loved her? And what could I have done, really? Things had gone wrong of themselves without my knowing it, on the very day I had put that tilak on her forehead—and it was through that red tilak that I found her again in the paddy-fields. Oh! everything is an impossible contradiction—one does things, and that is all, it is done... c'est fait. And I was turning in circles round a minute, burning point, poignant and elusive: the knot of the story. There was always that yes-no, that running away and then that return, that freedom and that love; and I felt that the “no” of my running away had as much meaning as my return, as if the error contained the key of the complete truth: its red mark which separates and reunites.

   O Child
I have told you there is no error, ever. The error
is not to understand the true meaning of what one does
You think you went away to be free, and you think you are returning
for her; you think it is through revolt that you raise your
fist and you think it is to kill yourself that you have climbed up
here. But you know nothing. In truth, men do what
I will, they make the necessary gesture without knowing why, and when all
is done, they realise that they had never run
after gold nor killed for a petty happiness, and that this
dead one had never died—no one dies,
and who kills, if not I? Their gesture prepares an end
unforeseen by them and for which they had run so much
unknowingly. Go forth, my drama has not the meaning you
give to it, and when your eyes are opened, you will see that
there never was any drama—everything is the same,
and everything is clear... tout est pareil et tout est clair.

Then, for the last time, I gathered my strength together; my hands were burning, my body was like a cord in the wind. It was the end:

—For the last time, if live I must, if this life has a meaning...

   O Child
For each one, there is an impossibility
A burning contradiction
If you have found your impossibility
You have found the supreme possibility
It is the obstacle and the lever

—I ask only that she be given back to me!

No one replied.

Then Balu's image flashed suddenly through the darkness, hopping on the pavement, that first day:

—Batcha is the queen... Batcha, c'est la reine.

—Ah! and wby?

—Yes, she is like Björn; they are going to die.

They are going to die. He had said “they are going”; he had not said “he is going”.

—It is too late, Nil.

I turned round.

There was that idol in the depths of the grotto, with its sword, its arms like a wheel. Anger gripped me, I seized it by the neck. I was going to throw myself into space with it—I was not going to die without settling my old score with her, oh!... I bent down...

—Ah, stony-face, you jeer. You lead us like puppets...

And I could have sworn that she smiled.

—Puppets... You would be too happy if I threw myself also into space!

Everything fell silent; even the wind seemed to stop.

—Well, I am stronger than you! I have something that you have not—I have the filth of the earth, I have the night of the earth. I have the suffering of the earth. I even love a dead one whom I shall never see again. Oh! Kali, you can bless, you can kill, you can crush me under your law, but I love... j'aime. I love, it is all I have, it is all that remains. I have no offerings, no drums, no trumpets, no paradise at the other end. I love, that is all there is... j'aime, c'est tout ce qu'il y a. I have no powers, no light, nothing worthwhile, I am the perjurer, nil, nothing-at-all; I have no country, no family, no home—they have all turned their backs on me,—but my love, I give, I give it to whomever wants it, for nothing, for everything: for the wind, the night, for the sorrow of the world, the sorrow of nothing, for all shames which pass, for whomever cares not. I love, I love, it is all I have. I am, because I love! And even in the depths of hell, I shall still love.

And then, there was no more wind, no more anger. No more sorrow in my heart; nor night, nor day. Even death had lost its meaning. There was only that little flame which burned in my heart, that one last treasure at the end.

I stood alone on that rock and I looked.

There was no one left. And even people were superfluous, even memories crumbled away into dust. It was the great calm shipwreck, and even the shipwreck was behind me; there was no more ship, no more tears, no more separation—everything was already separated; one is silent and sorrowless, one is the last survivor and one looks. One looks. There is no more death, even death has passed; it is with the living, it is before the shipwreck; it is loving and not loving, willing and not willing; there was no more abyss, no more anguish, no more fall, no more despair, nor even the quiver of a hope; only the great smooth waters of the beginning, only a great tranquil lake filling itself with its own eternity, and something which gazes... gazes, as if it had always gazed, beyond lives and deaths, beyond happy and unhappy islands, resurrections and shipwrecks again.

A cricket began to chirr in the sanctuary. One solitary cricket. I raised my eyes...

The droning of a plane could be heard. The sky was as clear as an aquamarine and studded with stars. Two little green and red lights drifted along in the north-east, going towards Rangoon or Singapore. We were in the twentieth century of history.

—In our country, even the birds do not pass by chance... Chez nous, même les oiseaux ne passent pas par hasard.

Even the planes. We were under the same parallel, thousands of miles away in a South American forest, with my brother the gold-seeker. It was the beginning of the story. It had happened twenty years ago. We were both lost in the great stridulant night of the Oyapock, puny and absurd under the high vault of the balata, and we thought we were seeking gold; we listened every evening at the same hour to the plane to Rio flying high, so high over our heads—and we laughed, we were so much higher than the plane, we two insignificant fellows slaving the whole day in the marshes to extract a few unlikely grains of gold. And our dream was so much truer, our impossible road in the dai-dai amid the falling trees, so much surer than their planned route between two cities gorged with gold. And this evening also, high, so high over my head, that same plane signalled to me, and I was alone and nil on that rock, in orange rags which were as unlikely as my gold-seeker's rags; and I was still seeking the vein of gold, the indubitable life, but I had not found it: even my dreams betrayed me, even my brothers would have disowned me had they seen me.

—Hey, Job, what are you seeking?

—A heap of gold to ruin all the gold of the world!... Un tas d'or pour ruiner l'or du monde!

And it was I who was ruined. Who was right then?...

One day, I set out in quest of a truer life, and I had taken a chance on the gold adventure as I might have taken a chance on lyre-birds or the North Pole: anything, as long as one could breathe wideness; but I had found frontiers, police forces, charted forests, explorers who explored only their black misery. I had found that the adventure lay elsewhere, under no tropic, and that all roads without ended within; I had become a Sannyasi as I might have become a whirling dervish or a Corybant: anything, a beggar, naked and ash-smeared, as long as one could breathe wideness, as long as life was free and true; and I had found the great paths above where the light irradiates, I had heard the unforgettable music, the Rhythm which gives the rhythm to all things; I had drunk the great liberating bowlful; and then I had lost the earth. And every road closed in on its opposite; every adventure ended up in an anti-adventure; as if every “yes” led to a “no”. Or was it only the end of a curve, the passage to a greater yes, a truer adventure? And perhaps there had never been a “no” anywhere, at any moment—nothing to deny, nothing that denies: only a greater and greater “Yes” which spiralled upwards like the spires of the turritellas.

The Rangoon plane had disappeared with its cargo of men sure of themselves. The night was limpid. There were lights on the coast. There was a steamer at anchorage which looked like a Christmas toy in a great tree of night. And a lighthouse... It was exactly there that Björn had been cremated. He was dead. They were all dead: Erik, Björn, the Sannyasi, the gold-seeker—dead, Erik, my brother of a Sahara which did not end at the 33rd parallel; dead, Björn, who wanted power for his brothers; dead, the Sannyasi who wanted freedom. They were all dead; I was the last survivor, the fourth of the silver birch—the absurd nothing-at-all who was not from here, not from there, not from above, not from below, and from where was I?... Et d'où étais-je?

—Would you like me to tell you, Job, you and yours, are from nowhere.

From nowhere,—or from a place which is not yet born.

And it was Björn who cried out:

—Even if I die, even if I die! I believe more in my dream than in your normal prison.

I believe, oh! I believe... je crois, oh! je crois... even if I die, I believe. We do not know from where we are and we knock at doors like the blind; we are the sons of a new race, the adventurers of a truer life, and even if our rags betray us, they are truer than ourselves! We are the sons of a new world in the twilight of the intellect and the machine—the sannyasis of a “nothing known”—and we are knocking in the dark, we do not know the way, we do not even know our words or our meaning, but we are knocking at the doors of the future, we are babbling the words of the other man, we are delivering the lights which will build the world of tomorrow as surely as the first glimmers in the monkey built the man of today. And we will compel the earth to become greater than its matter and its heavens. I believe, oh! I believe... Je crois, oh! Je crois... sheerly, like the primates in their cave, like the deluge which falls, like the fire, the plant, like the mineral in the bottom of its pit—and even if I die, I believe!... je crois.

And I was dropping with sleep at the feet of that idol, I heard a tranquil, neutral voice say: “A second time you have conquered.” But I did not know what I had conquered; I was like a corpse on his bed of stone and I had lost everything.

Now, that same night, at the feet of that divinity who blessed on the one hand, and cut your throat on the other, I had the most extraordinary vision of my life. A grace, a pure grace was sent to me there, when I had lost everything, and I want to disclose it for all those who are suffering the pangs of separation and who do not see and do not know. But now I know. I know there is a place where souls are eternally together and that the death of the body is not really death; I know there are other lives and that this futile, miserable, incoherent life, like a story without beginning or futurity, is a link in an immense and endless Saga and that our acts of yesterday explain our acts of today. We all go from life to life through our myriad sufferings and calls and quests, towards a complete explanation, a total moment, a rounded consciousness in which nothing is separate or truncated or hurt, in which we hold, simultaneously, the thread of all our lives and the joy which wove that rainbow step by step. For, in truth, we are a growing light, we are a widening consciousness, a joy that is forged from body to body, and we go from separation to unity, from ignorance to the truth which knows, from the body's oblivion to the soul's memory; we go towards the complete story and the total revelation; we are pilgrims in a marvellous adventure: each life is a step in the ascension; each shadow a fold of the inevitable flowering; each death a passage towards other and greater lives; the result is sure! And if there are any who say I am mad, I say that the whole Himalayan range is an hallucination of the geographers and that the beauty conquered, the harmonies freed, the touches of azure captured by all those who have searched, sung, carved or painted, are a marvellous madness, more real than all the reasons in the world—and perhaps, that very madness and those very hallucinations are preparing the earth of tomorrow. The world is a vision that is becoming true. We are the builders of an eternal Image.

That night, I entered death consciously and returned from it with knowledge. And not only did I see death but I lived, or rather re-lived a past death, bringing back with me the indelible memory of the continuity of existences. And I wonder if the future we discover step by step is not an old past: an eternal seed is unfolding. It was suddenly like the pieces of a puzzle which fell into place and formed a complete picture: scenes seen here and there, incoherent, unlinked, sometimes even years apart, were assembled together in a single moment and gave me the key to the story. And well it seems to me that each one of us must have his own key, only he does not know that there is a story, that each image counts and has a meaning, and because we see them surge up unexpectedly years apart, like little will-o'-the-wisps in the night, we do not know that they form part of a great uninterrupted film, and we push them back into oblivion—but everything has a meaning, the signs of the trail are plentiful! Only one must know that these are signs and that there is a trail. And I fully believe that what I saw that night was not only an image of the past, but also an image of the future and, perhaps, an eternal Image.

The first “scene”, if one can call it that, is the least clear because it was not so much a precise image as a very familiar atmosphere, a kind of odour of remembrance which remains floating in the twilight of the memory with a sharp intensity. Several times, I had seen that with variations.

I was wandering in a forest. And it was that walk in the forest which had an overwhelming intensity. I was lost; I had lost everything; I was seeking her; I was seeking her everywhere, her... elle; I was calling... calling, and still I did not find her, and it was as if Death fell upon me. She was my life—more than my life—and she did not reply, and no one replied... I had seen that same image several times; I knew it well; it usually came after another scene in which I was standing in front of that man enveloped in a deep blue light, sitting before a fire, who threw his curse upon me, and I spit my liberty in his face. But on that particular night, after having wandered in the forest, I suddenly found myself at the top of a tree, clinging to a branch with my two hands—very white hands, I can still see them—and I saw myself plunging head first into the void. I was committing suicide. And it was from that point that my vision began to take on a fantastic precision, as if someone had actually filmed the whole story (but, in fact, I think there is someone in us who always films everything).

And I entered death.

Suddenly, I found myself in a tremendous darkness—one calls it “night”, but our night is luminous in comparison to that darkness! An absolute black which was like the very essence of blackness with no vibration which permitted one to say “it is black”: it was not “black”, it was THE black, like death, without a vibration, without a spark of blackness. A density of suffocating blackness. It was suffocating; one was in it as in death—and, in fact, it was death.

And then I had the impression (I say “impression” but it was not at all vague; it was atrociously concrete, except that I did not “see”: I felt, I touched) of being suspended over an abyss with my feet on a tiny ledge a few centimetres wide and my back against a wall—a formidable, vertical, black wall, like a flow of basalt—which plunged into a gulf. And I was there, in the middle of the gulf, stuck, pressed against that wall, that tremendous wall, clinging to it for dear life, unable to move. And I had to move, I had to cross that gulf, I had to get to the other side; it was life on the other side, it was salvation on the other side—to fall there was worse than death; it was death in death. And I could not move; I was paralysed, frozen against that wall; I could do nothing, I could see nothing, there was nothing; it was atrocious—and then... the silence; crushing, massive, like a world of absolute, implacable negation, in which one must not be, one cannot be. And both my hands were clinging to that stone.

And suddenly, in that formidable darkness, I heard Batcha's voice... Batcha's voice, her voice, oh! Lord, I do not know if miracles exist, but that voice in the darkness was the ineffable miracle—her voice, clear, clear, crystalline, miraculous: “PULL ... PULL ...” Tire...

She was saying: Pull.

And at the same time I felt something like a rope that she threw to me, something which touched my hands. I clung to the rope: “Pull... Pull...” And in that child's voice there was such a tremendous force of love, as if it were her soul which grasped mine and pulled it out of the night. “Pull... Pull...” tire... tire. An unshakable force which pierced that monstrous blackness like a sword of light. And it was a child's voice.

I pulled, I clung, I advanced step by step in that night, hanging over that ledge; I was like a drowning man groping towards the fresh air, and there was that voice, that little voice, so warm, so sure, so quietly powerful, which was calling me from the other side, oh! so full of love: “Pull...” tire.

Never, never in this world, in any circumstances, at any moment of my life, in any accident of my life have I been more atrociously conscious and living as in those few minutes of “dream”. If I dreamt, then death is a dream and the whole of life is a copy less living than death.

Abruptly, without any transition, I found myself on the other side of that abyss. And I saw, a little ahead of me, a kind of luminous shell—like the hull of a boat, all luminous and white, shining, radiant, and at the very moment I saw that hull (or that shell, I do not know), a strange phenomenon took place: I saw my body (saw it from the outside, as if I had gone out of it) making a sort of somersault in the air, but slowly, very slowly, as if in a slow-motion film—revolving slowly, turning over completely, and even before I had time to understand what was happening, I found myself inside that shell, completely dazzled.

It was luminous, luminous, extraordinarily luminous; a pure, radiant, white light like that of a diamond. And everything was like that... the air, the shell; it was as if light surged from all sides at once without any particular source of light: it was living light, vibrant light... a substance of light.

She was there... Elle était là.

It was her, all white and luminous, lying on a bed to the left in front of me. It was Batcha... But Batcha... It was more than Batcha, infinitely more than Batcha; one could say the luminous essence of Batcha, the pure reality of Batcha—her—as if the little Batcha of the earth were only the image of this one. And of what beauty! oh! radiant... It was her, indubitably her, unique, unlike any other. Eternally her. She was as if plunged in a deep sleep.

There was another “bed” by the side of hers, to the right (I say “bed”, but the substance of the objects was also luminous, snowy). I knew it was my bed; hers was on the left, mine on the right. Then I began to look at that “shell” round us—that luminous shell, so perfectly closed: we were at home, marvellously at home, enveloped, protected for eternity, clasped in an absolute security. Nothing could touch us there. It was our age-long dwelling, our trysting-place. It was our everlasting reunion, our eternal centre.

I turned round. There was a being there. But curiously enough, he was not a stranger, not “different” from the place; he was as though made of the same substance as the place. He was a guardian or a help. He was all in white, but less luminous than Batcha, more neutral he seemed like a nurse. He was watching over us.

He came towards me to help me undress. Then I suddenly felt very tired and dirty, dusty, exhausted, as if I had been on a long journey. I wanted to have a bath. I took a step to the right, I looked at my feet... and, suddenly, I realised that I was dead. I “was dead”: my body was dead. It gave me a shock; a very slight shock which cut the thread. I remember a second of embarrassment before that body and saying to myself: “So there is no need to...” And I woke up.

The idol was there in the darkness.

A solitary cricket was chirring.

I remained a long time with my head in my hands, leaning against the wall, in a state of complete bewilderment and wonder at the same time, as on that day when I had heard divine music in a station.

And then I knew.

Then everything was clear. Now I know, I know that never again will there be darkness in my heart. I know that death is a myth and that beings meet again in death as in life, and that we journey together, always together... toujours ensemble, through all lives and all deaths, and beyond.