Chapter 39
Artabhaga gazed at the moon and the sky. Lying beneath the vastness of the sky, he forgot that he too was a part of it. It was the twelfth night of the bright fortnight and the moon had yet to attain its full glory. At a slightly slanting angle, a little farther down, was a star that seemed to be shy of its own luster. It seemed to draw into itself its magnificent eloquence and radiance. Artabhaga stared at it, trying to fathom the music that refused to fall on earth. It had a sound that vibrated with every atom of its being until he felt his whole body singing like a finely tuned, strung instrument. What language did that music speak? Was it a moment such as this that led the ancient sages to create hymns to eternity? When perception fails we invoke inference, when inference fails we invoke memory, and when memory fails, we give up the effort at reasoning. Eternity seizes such a moment to manifest itself.
Artabhaga watched the sky as a delicate veil formed over and around the moon. Its texture thickened, lost its transparency, and became opaque enough, until right before his eyes the evanescent beauty of the magical moment ceased as if it had never existed. A massive cloud invaded the space of the sky, leaving no visible trace of the moon behind it.
Artabhaga came back to himself. He was back in Videha. The change of season seemed to tell a different story life. He was curious to know if Yajnyawalkya had responded to the changed rhythm of life. He wondered whether it was his own weariness that made it seem to him as though an epoch had come to an end. He realized with a frightening certainty that he was losing his will to choose a language to express himself. And with the loss of the will to choose he was losing the link that connected him with the world of society. He had been living off the map so long that there was nothing he could share with those who lived inside it. He felt that he had created an inviolable language of his own which made him unavailable for any kind of discourse with the world outside.
What did he live on and live for? It seemed to him so long ago- all enacted behind a veil of mist, here in Videha- a city without a body! A wandering ascetic like him had no reason to be drawn into the vortex of its seductive spell. Never in his life had he felt so lost and forsaken as he did now. The city bore no sign of the past. Everything was erased past recovery. Space and time stared back at him vacantly. He wanted to laugh, loudly and unashamedly. Laughter can be creative in its purity. Uncritical, undifferentiated, it can be yet stubborn in its refusal to integrate with the world of men which demands a reason and a justification for every human act of the mind.
He discovered that he could not laugh. It asked for a defiance that was of a godly stature. He could not rise above the sadness that threatened to submerge him.
'Yajnyawalkya': the name and its sound invoked no feeling. Instead, he saw a luminous cloud melting in the moonlight.
Looking all around the deserted, moonlit disembodied city where a few years ago he had been living other's lives, he suddenly felt deprived. It was like standing on a stage alone like the last
actor, crippled, motionless, and unable to make an exit. He was no longer a man who could affirm his existence. If this is what the world means by submitting to fate, whose fate was being enacted now? For he had divested himself of all illusions of choice. It is reassuring to tell yourself that what you call your life was all there in time and yet out of time, and therefore eternal, ever present and irredeemable. How reassuring to tell yourself that you have dreamed the whole journey, before in fact you have made it!
He stood up. But before he could realize what he wanted to do, he threw himself face down, on the moist grass and wept like a child. For the first time he found himself uttering a name: the name of a man who would not let him go.
'Yajnyawalkya' : he whispered softly first, and then he cried aloud : “ Yajnyawalkya”, I hateyou!”
….....................
Far away in the heart of the city the huts, cottages, mansions and the palaces were silent. Yajnyawalkya lay awake. His field of perception had congealed around the body. The body never thinks. Or did it? What were those age-old affirmations that he had inherited from his ancestors, saying to him?
'Worship the Sun', he was told: 'Worship the Sun, the source of infinite life and never-ceasing light; for that light is the light of the purest intellect within ourselves. Let that ray of intellect penetrate the dark, and you will need no other light. There will be no darkness even in your nights.'
Here he was, invoking the light, but unable to recognize its sign. He felt implicated in a game with no routes of escape in sight. He remembered his own discourses at the congregations of disciples. Questions demanding answers, leading to still more questions and heterogeneous combinations of possible words! It was a discourse duplicating the functions of the body but hopelessly circumventing the voice and the language of the body: shrouding what was transparent, in the opacity of language!
What was it that the several generations of his ancestors had held as a mystery not to be touched for the fear of destroying themselves? Or was it that by a strange, uncanny conspiracy he was kept out of its knowledge and fooled into walking away from it?
Voices from the past suddenly began to take on an ever-present reality. Each voice seemed to be in communion with the other, sharing some knowledge that eluded him. He was at the centre of those speaking voices. But was this too an illusion like everything else: his being at the center of it all?
The surge of voices and images was arrested unexpectedly at this point. He recalled his confrontation with Maitreyi as she stood holding his eye before stepping out of his way. She seemed to acknowledge his absence from her life and wanted him to acknowledge it too. He had offered no apologies and moved away from her in disdain.
What was he to her? The answer did not emerge at that point in time in the past because he had not given a thought to the question then. But here, away from her in space and time, the answer stared at him, clear as the sunlight in her eyes: he was a central presence that had never been there; never been itself. It was just a space that was being filled by an exile.
“You are free,” she had said, and her words had stung him like a scorpion. But there was no malice in her tone. She had uttered those words as though she was allowing another being to speak through her.
But why did he remember her? Now? She appeared before his eyes fully presenting herself in her absence, and her absence spoke. It was her silence that had been listening to the choric voices surrounding him. That ever listening silence seemed to say: “Yes, you are at the center. It is no illusion”
But how could those voices be real? Was he dreaming them into existence? Her silence could be heard above the voices. It said, “Come over to this side of the fence. You will see it all, the shapes and the faces of those voices!”
Was she saying it with bitterness? No, because hers was a voice whose meaning could never be mistaken.
But the voices continued to surge around him in waves. He heard infinite echoes of anguished fury, restlessly beating against an invisible screen and turning back on themselves with diminished intensity.
He lay on his back, awake till the small hours of the dawn. The half-light on the horizon chased away the phantoms of the night. He left his cottage before anyone could see where he was going and headed for Gargi's abode.
The silence around her cottage was warm, pulsating with a life of its own. He paused and knocked softly.
…......................
“ Yajnyawalkya, do I believe my eyes?”
“Gargi, I have come to seek myself.”
“........, A solitary god, seeking expression in a woman?” said Gargi.
“No, a human, seeking completion!”
“In the act of love? An act of the body when the mind is absent?”
“No, in the full presence of my inmost Self!”
“Then I, Gargi, this mortal woman, want to see that Self, feel it, and carry it within me. Can you promise that you will never abdicate your seat in the shrine?”
“Gargi, my Self knows no shrine.”
“What do you want, a home, or a shrine?'
“By whatever name you may call it, I need a resting place!”
“A resting place or a sojourn for the dark night of your soul?”
“Gargi, we are both groping in the dark.”
“ Yajnyawalkya, you who claim to know the Absolute, the soul of all living beings? I can't believe your words.”
“I don't believe them myself!”
“Your soul has fled from your words, Yajnyawalkya!”
“I have come to make an offering of myself, my heart, my mind, my words; my whole being that is made of elements. Take it and extinguish it. Leave nothing behind. My eyes, my skin, my breath, my flesh; take everything and liberate me.”
“Yajnyawalkya, the fire is elsewhere. Ask your own Self.”
“I cannot hear, I cannot see that Self except in you!”
“What am I, Yajnyawalkya, a body of flesh and blood? Do not demean me. I am here for you in the body only for this moment. The next moment you will claim your soul back and hate this body!”
“.....................!”
“Yajnyawalkya, you and I have trodden different paths to reach the same destination. Do you still think that you need me to see your Self, or that I need you to see mine? No, we don't need each other.”
“It takes courage to say that, Gargi. Do you have it in you?”
“Yes, I do...I know you cannot belong to a mortal being; that will be the end of you and the end of your seeking!”
“I don't know what I am seeking!”
“Yajnyawalkya ?!”
“Yes, Gargi, the path ahead is not for the mortals”.
“ Yajnyawalkya, I have accepted that long back, ever since I came to Videha. I have stopped at this point in my journey. Maybe, it's the death of my spirit. But you, Yajnyawalkya, you cannot stop evn if you want to! The powers above are not going to let you...Look at the sky above. It's for all; we know it. But at this moment it is there only for you and me! Infinite, and yet finite for everyone because we take as much of it as we can touch. I am enriched, Yajnyawalkya, because I have touched it and I am going to take that small patch with me to make a quilt out of it.”
There was nothing more to say. Yajnyawalkya walked out of Gargi's abode, a different man.
Artabhaga gazed at the moon and the sky. Lying beneath the vastness of the sky, he forgot that he too was a part of it. It was the twelfth night of the bright fortnight and the moon had yet to attain its full glory. At a slightly slanting angle, a little farther down, was a star that seemed to be shy of its own luster. It seemed to draw into itself its magnificent eloquence and radiance. Artabhaga stared at it, trying to fathom the music that refused to fall on earth. It had a sound that vibrated with every atom of its being until he felt his whole body singing like a finely tuned, strung instrument. What language did that music speak? Was it a moment such as this that led the ancient sages to create hymns to eternity? When perception fails we invoke inference, when inference fails we invoke memory, and when memory fails, we give up the effort at reasoning. Eternity seizes such a moment to manifest itself.
Artabhaga watched the sky as a delicate veil formed over and around the moon. Its texture thickened, lost its transparency, and became opaque enough, until right before his eyes the evanescent beauty of the magical moment ceased as if it had never existed. A massive cloud invaded the space of the sky, leaving no visible trace of the moon behind it.
Artabhaga came back to himself. He was back in Videha. The change of season seemed to tell a different story life. He was curious to know if Yajnyawalkya had responded to the changed rhythm of life. He wondered whether it was his own weariness that made it seem to him as though an epoch had come to an end. He realized with a frightening certainty that he was losing his will to choose a language to express himself. And with the loss of the will to choose he was losing the link that connected him with the world of society. He had been living off the map so long that there was nothing he could share with those who lived inside it. He felt that he had created an inviolable language of his own which made him unavailable for any kind of discourse with the world outside.
What did he live on and live for? It seemed to him so long ago- all enacted behind a veil of mist, here in Videha- a city without a body! A wandering ascetic like him had no reason to be drawn into the vortex of its seductive spell. Never in his life had he felt so lost and forsaken as he did now. The city bore no sign of the past. Everything was erased past recovery. Space and time stared back at him vacantly. He wanted to laugh, loudly and unashamedly. Laughter can be creative in its purity. Uncritical, undifferentiated, it can be yet stubborn in its refusal to integrate with the world of men which demands a reason and a justification for every human act of the mind.
He discovered that he could not laugh. It asked for a defiance that was of a godly stature. He could not rise above the sadness that threatened to submerge him.
'Yajnyawalkya': the name and its sound invoked no feeling. Instead, he saw a luminous cloud melting in the moonlight.
Looking all around the deserted, moonlit disembodied city where a few years ago he had been living other's lives, he suddenly felt deprived. It was like standing on a stage alone like the last
actor, crippled, motionless, and unable to make an exit. He was no longer a man who could affirm his existence. If this is what the world means by submitting to fate, whose fate was being enacted now? For he had divested himself of all illusions of choice. It is reassuring to tell yourself that what you call your life was all there in time and yet out of time, and therefore eternal, ever present and irredeemable. How reassuring to tell yourself that you have dreamed the whole journey, before in fact you have made it!
He stood up. But before he could realize what he wanted to do, he threw himself face down, on the moist grass and wept like a child. For the first time he found himself uttering a name: the name of a man who would not let him go.
'Yajnyawalkya' : he whispered softly first, and then he cried aloud : “ Yajnyawalkya”, I hateyou!”
….....................
Far away in the heart of the city the huts, cottages, mansions and the palaces were silent. Yajnyawalkya lay awake. His field of perception had congealed around the body. The body never thinks. Or did it? What were those age-old affirmations that he had inherited from his ancestors, saying to him?
'Worship the Sun', he was told: 'Worship the Sun, the source of infinite life and never-ceasing light; for that light is the light of the purest intellect within ourselves. Let that ray of intellect penetrate the dark, and you will need no other light. There will be no darkness even in your nights.'
Here he was, invoking the light, but unable to recognize its sign. He felt implicated in a game with no routes of escape in sight. He remembered his own discourses at the congregations of disciples. Questions demanding answers, leading to still more questions and heterogeneous combinations of possible words! It was a discourse duplicating the functions of the body but hopelessly circumventing the voice and the language of the body: shrouding what was transparent, in the opacity of language!
What was it that the several generations of his ancestors had held as a mystery not to be touched for the fear of destroying themselves? Or was it that by a strange, uncanny conspiracy he was kept out of its knowledge and fooled into walking away from it?
Voices from the past suddenly began to take on an ever-present reality. Each voice seemed to be in communion with the other, sharing some knowledge that eluded him. He was at the centre of those speaking voices. But was this too an illusion like everything else: his being at the center of it all?
The surge of voices and images was arrested unexpectedly at this point. He recalled his confrontation with Maitreyi as she stood holding his eye before stepping out of his way. She seemed to acknowledge his absence from her life and wanted him to acknowledge it too. He had offered no apologies and moved away from her in disdain.
What was he to her? The answer did not emerge at that point in time in the past because he had not given a thought to the question then. But here, away from her in space and time, the answer stared at him, clear as the sunlight in her eyes: he was a central presence that had never been there; never been itself. It was just a space that was being filled by an exile.
“You are free,” she had said, and her words had stung him like a scorpion. But there was no malice in her tone. She had uttered those words as though she was allowing another being to speak through her.
But why did he remember her? Now? She appeared before his eyes fully presenting herself in her absence, and her absence spoke. It was her silence that had been listening to the choric voices surrounding him. That ever listening silence seemed to say: “Yes, you are at the center. It is no illusion”
But how could those voices be real? Was he dreaming them into existence? Her silence could be heard above the voices. It said, “Come over to this side of the fence. You will see it all, the shapes and the faces of those voices!”
Was she saying it with bitterness? No, because hers was a voice whose meaning could never be mistaken.
But the voices continued to surge around him in waves. He heard infinite echoes of anguished fury, restlessly beating against an invisible screen and turning back on themselves with diminished intensity.
He lay on his back, awake till the small hours of the dawn. The half-light on the horizon chased away the phantoms of the night. He left his cottage before anyone could see where he was going and headed for Gargi's abode.
The silence around her cottage was warm, pulsating with a life of its own. He paused and knocked softly.
…......................
“ Yajnyawalkya, do I believe my eyes?”
“Gargi, I have come to seek myself.”
“........, A solitary god, seeking expression in a woman?” said Gargi.
“No, a human, seeking completion!”
“In the act of love? An act of the body when the mind is absent?”
“No, in the full presence of my inmost Self!”
“Then I, Gargi, this mortal woman, want to see that Self, feel it, and carry it within me. Can you promise that you will never abdicate your seat in the shrine?”
“Gargi, my Self knows no shrine.”
“What do you want, a home, or a shrine?'
“By whatever name you may call it, I need a resting place!”
“A resting place or a sojourn for the dark night of your soul?”
“Gargi, we are both groping in the dark.”
“ Yajnyawalkya, you who claim to know the Absolute, the soul of all living beings? I can't believe your words.”
“I don't believe them myself!”
“Your soul has fled from your words, Yajnyawalkya!”
“I have come to make an offering of myself, my heart, my mind, my words; my whole being that is made of elements. Take it and extinguish it. Leave nothing behind. My eyes, my skin, my breath, my flesh; take everything and liberate me.”
“Yajnyawalkya, the fire is elsewhere. Ask your own Self.”
“I cannot hear, I cannot see that Self except in you!”
“What am I, Yajnyawalkya, a body of flesh and blood? Do not demean me. I am here for you in the body only for this moment. The next moment you will claim your soul back and hate this body!”
“.....................!”
“Yajnyawalkya, you and I have trodden different paths to reach the same destination. Do you still think that you need me to see your Self, or that I need you to see mine? No, we don't need each other.”
“It takes courage to say that, Gargi. Do you have it in you?”
“Yes, I do...I know you cannot belong to a mortal being; that will be the end of you and the end of your seeking!”
“I don't know what I am seeking!”
“Yajnyawalkya ?!”
“Yes, Gargi, the path ahead is not for the mortals”.
“ Yajnyawalkya, I have accepted that long back, ever since I came to Videha. I have stopped at this point in my journey. Maybe, it's the death of my spirit. But you, Yajnyawalkya, you cannot stop evn if you want to! The powers above are not going to let you...Look at the sky above. It's for all; we know it. But at this moment it is there only for you and me! Infinite, and yet finite for everyone because we take as much of it as we can touch. I am enriched, Yajnyawalkya, because I have touched it and I am going to take that small patch with me to make a quilt out of it.”
There was nothing more to say. Yajnyawalkya walked out of Gargi's abode, a different man.
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