Chapter 55

It was well past noon. Yajnyawalkya did not want to stir out of his meditative mood. He had to make up his mind about meeting Janaka . The delay was causing a loss of orientation. Artabhaga feared that Yajnyawalkya might have a second thought about leaving Videha if he continued to stay in this state of indecision. He watched Yajnyawalkya and wondered what it could be that held him back.

Two days passed without any decision. Artabhaga felt restless. He asked Yajnyawalkya if he should stay on or make a move. Yajnyawalkya realized that he was leaving Artabhaga also along with himself in a quandary

On the next day he reached Janaka’s palace and waited to be summoned. Janaka finished his conference with the ministers in a hurry, sent them off, and asked for Yajnyawalkya to be presented.

When Yajnyawalkya entered the conference chamber, he found Janaka seated with his back turned to the entrance. On feeling Yajnyawalkya’s presence, he got up and turned to face him. Finding signs of indecision on Yajnyawalkya’s face, he decided to let him speak first. He asked Yajnyawalkya to sit down.

Yajnyawalkya looked straight into Janaka’s eyes and then looked away without saying anything. He remembered a day in the past when he had reached this seat of power in supplication, to hear Janaka say, “Pray, what has brought you here, your need, or your desire to teach me?”---and his own answer: “Both!”

They had come a long way from that day. Initially both had used every opportunity to demean the other. But that was a brief interlude. It did not take them long to realize what their relationship was meant to be.

Yajnyawalkya, the philosopher was trying to find words which would bring that relationship to a meaningful end. Janaka did not know what it was that agitated Yajnyawalkya; but he waited with a vague premonition.

“I have come to beg your leave to go back home,” said Yajnyawalkya, startled to find the word ‘home ‘escape his mouth instead of the word ‘hermitage’.

Janaka was silent for a moment. He got up from his seat and said, “You are free to make your decision. It will be unjust on my part to force you to stay against your wish. Still, I only hope that no offence on any one’s part has caused you to take this decision.”

Yajnyawalkya looked at him to acknowledge his feeling. “No,” he said, “I am thankful to you for the privilege and honour you have bestowed on me. But this day had to come some time or the other.”

Janaka said, “You will be dispatched to your hermitage with the honor and respect which  is due to you, but not before you  grant me one last talk with you.”

Yajnyawalkya said, “Do not think of terminating our relationship by looking upon it as the ‘one last talk’. So long as there is life, we shall be there for each other.”  

Janaka smiled wearily.

“You know, my life is ebbing out. Any meeting could be called the last one! But I am not sad. I am fulfilled.”

Yajnyawalkya looked at Janaka as if he had missed something over a period of time. Janaka,the warrior king of the past, now looked like an ascetic king, reigning over two kingdoms, one belonging to the world outside, and the other, inside his self. He seemed to rule over both with equanimity.

Yajnayawalkya and Janaka were looking at each other with a new understanding of themselves. Janaka was trying to probe beneath the surface.

“Did you ever wonder why I asked you to come to Videha?” he asked. The question sounded like an anachronism.

“I know, this question ought to have come up between us long back,” said Janaka. “But did you ever think about it?” he asked.

Yajnyawalkya was unaffected by the subtle aggression behind it. His silence had a sobering effect on Janaka. A vast tide of time had suddenly surged forward and thrown up the relics of unstated and unresolved strife on the shore. Both of them were invited by time to look at them dispassionately.

Yajnyawalkya said, “I have no need to feign ignorance. Everyone has held the question in abeyance and every one has been seeking the answer not really from me, but from the deepest seat of life in the self. All of you who want to elicit the answer from me have recognized the existence of Shakalya in your own selves.”

Janaka smiled. He said, “Once upon a time, I would have been offended by the way you are     

drawing a line between yourself and others whom you are addressing as ‘all of you’. I have crossed the barrier between ‘you’ and ‘I’ long back. Besides, that was not what I had in mind. You overreached my meaning.”

Janaka brooded over this sudden collision between himself and Yajnyawalkya. Yajnyawalkya too was disconcerted by this unforeseen turn in the conversation. Both of them remained silent for a while to let the tension subside.

Janaka stole a glance at Yajnyawalkya. He realized that they had drifted away from each other. He spoke after a brief interval. “Frankly speaking, I was not intrigued by the way in which you reacted to Shakalya’ s vulgar overtures during that debate. Yes, it is true that my invitation to you to come and be my official priest had a significant co-relation to what I witnessed happening between you and Shakalya on that fateful day. I saw a mysterious occult power manifesting itself in you. I don’t know, if you were aware of it yourself. But I had noticed what was exceptional about you. You were a strange phenomenon. Your knowledge did not seem to have its roots in meditation or contemplation. It was a sudden clear vision. Your words did not carry any emotion that could be attributed to any personal involvement. They had a life and a power of their own. I wanted to understand that power. It is said that you cannot control the vibrations of a drum by just listening to the sound. But if you acquire and control the drum itself, you will understand its language. I wanted to understand the language you spoke. I realized that I could not understand it unless I knew the man who spoke it.’

Yajnyawalkya who was listening without looking at Janaka, turned and looked at him now. Janaka turned away from his gaze. It was a heavy moment for both. Yajnayawalkya spent a few moments in introspection.

“An epoch has gone by,” he said. “We no longer need an intellectual effort to understand each other.”

Janaka said, “True! But I have been trying to transcend intellectuality all these years; I could not cross the threshold. Fear holds me back. I cling to the knowledge of the world I see, because it gives me assurance of my existence. I don’t want to lose the thread of my awareness of this world and myself. I don’t want to go into the unknown with none by my side. You have conquered the unknown. You could see what lay ahead of Shakalya. I wish I had that clear vision.”

Yajnyawalkya watched Janaka without intruding on his thoughts.

He said, “All of us have the freedom to enact our passions and desires. You and I and Shakalya, all of us have been endowed with that freedom. We take it as the gift of our intellect. But we fear to travel till the end of the road shown to us by the intellect. Then, somewhere along the road, intellect leaves us and we walk by its shadow, not realizing that we are being propelled by a shadow, not by the light. That twilight hour between light and darkness is the hour of Maya, the goddess of delusion. She is fascinating because she appears to set you free. She laughs because you will use your freedom to walk your way to annihilation.”

Janaka said, “Then it’s true that there is none by our side when we walk our way to the end. Who after all is the Maya you are talking about---our companion, or our own shadow? I would prefer a companion, even if he or she is an illusion of the way.”

Yajnyawalkya laughed heartily. He said, “She is our companion so long we let her lead us.”

“Is she beyond the intellect?” asked Janaka.

“No,” said Yajnyawalkya. “She is the creation of our intellect,” he added.

Janaka was puzzled. He felt he both knew and did not know what Yajnyawalkya was talking about. He traced back the thread of their conversation and suddenly halted at a point backwards. “And what if we stay awake in that twilight hour between light and darkness?” he asked like a man who had suddenly caught a glimpse of what he had missed.

“Then we defy Maya and belong to our Self,” said Yajnyawalkya.

Janaka said, “I have to accomplish this last and supreme feat of the mind when the hour comes. Tell me, will I be able to do it?”

Yajnyawalkya got up from his seat and clasped Janaka’s hand firmly.

“Never think of yourself as alone. I am imparting to you all the strength and love I possess in my own Self. You will cross the threshold with love, and not fear the unknown,” he said.

Janaka looked deep into Yajnyawalkya’s eyes to reclaim a long known kindred soul whom he had lost somewhere in the course of the journey. His eyes brightened as he said, “Preserve this concentrated power of truth which your language has acquired over a period of time. It is a mystery to those who do not know how long you have ruminated in solitude over the secrets of life. You may not proclaim it aloud, but I know. Your language truly partakes of ‘Brahma’ if I may dare to use that term.”

Yajnyawalkya’s face turned grave. He said, “It was my language that estranged me from all those whom I loved.”

“None knows this better than I,” said Janaka.

Yajnyawalkya looked at Janaka speechlessly. Janaka said, “Do you expect me to reproach you? After all these years? No! I knew you perhaps better than you know yourself. Don’t look at me with disbelief in your eyes. I would have been far happier if you had used your speech with less restraint.”

Yajnyawalkya said, “Did you invite me to Videha to teach me defiance?  I must tell you, I had plenty of it already!”

Janaka laughed. “Didn’t I know that? I didn’t invite you to Videha to subdue your spirit. I wanted to know what made you invincible without wielding a weapon. I wanted to have a glimpse of that spirit. But it was always as if you had offered your spirit to the sacrificial fire and you existed to the world in the form of a shadow.”

Yajnyawalkya turned pensive. He said, “You are the one who did not insult me through incomprehension. I need no other reward.”

Janaka said, “What reward can a mortal like me hold out to you? Immortality of ‘Brahma’ is the only reward for you, which is not in the power of any human to give to a person like you.”

Yajnyawalkya said, “Do not elevate me to such a dizzy height. As I look back, I realize, my avowed purpose had nothing to do with the value and success of my life. My life was a game that I had to play with no dice in my hand. My spirit was the only treasure in my possession, which I guarded against all invasions. And as I leave Videha and you that is the only belonging which I take back with me.”

Janaka resented this expression of self-sufficiency. He looked at Yajnyawalkya with a hurt expression.

“Why do you consider yourself so miserly? You have a lot to give to us and take back from us. And without realizing what you gave, you made me rich.”

Yajnyawalkya breathed in deeply. He said, “I was waiting for you to ask me the one single question you had always held back from intruding between us. But since you refuse to ask it let me face it on my own. ‘What had transpired between me and Shakalya on that fateful day?’ I had known Shakalya since the day we were initiated into the mystery of Gayatri mantra by our Guru Vaishampayana. Shakalya was a god unto himself. He was of this earth. It was here and now, on this earth and in the given moment that everything acquired a meaning for him. Nothing existed beyond this earth and beyond the given moment. He lived from moment to moment without dwelling in any of them. Nothing was mysterious and therefore nothing was sacred to him. Woman was an instrument with which he located the dark roots of power hidden inside his body. Women held no mysterious secret for which men needed to worship her. A woman’s essentiality was in her youth and sensuality for him. She existed for the moment as an extension of his body and her body incarnated in the desire born of the given moment. Nothing mattered to him beyond the satisfaction of desire. He used women as rags with which to wipe off the traces of passion. He could not relate with them. His repulsive acts of sensuality filled me with disgust in those days. I came to hate the women who participated in his game of lust and flaunted their body as the victory of their precious womanhood. The more I saw the depreciation of the act of love and the body of woman the more I was driven to seek woman and love in the inmost sanctum of my heart. I fell in love with the image of woman who could unfold to me the mystery of Gayatri. She spoke to me in the language of energy: a language that I did not need to be taught, because

unknown to me, the knowledge of that language was always inside me. She reminded me of my ancient link with all that was sacred, beautiful and immortal in man, and retreated back to her mysterious dwelling-place in the heart, once her mission was fulfilled. She was no delusion; she was the truth of my life.”

Yajnyawalkya stopped, surprised by the intensity of the revelation. He refused to look at Janaka, not knowing how he was brought to this point of self-realization, which was destined to find expression at this point of time.  

But Janaka was absorbing every word of it as if he was entering into a sacred, tranquil territory of mind with new portals opening up into the hitherto unseen depths of Yajnyawalkya’s mind.

“Did Shakalya fathom what was taking place between you and him?” Janaka asked after a pause.

Yajnyawalkya came back to himself. It took him some time to relate with Shakalya again.

“I suppose he did understand my reaction, but not the significance of my inner world which he was bent on destroying,” said Yajnyawalkya.

Some moments passed in silence. Then Yajnyawalkya continued:

“I resolutely stayed away from Shakalya and his exploits, not because I dreaded being drawn into the mire of lust, but because I could see and gauge the damage being inflicted on Shakalya himself as he saw me unaffected by his crude display of manliness.”

Yajnyawalkya was trying to erase the memory of that part of his life by not giving it a name and an existence. But he realized that there was no release except by purgation. He could hear the raucous, rugged laughter of Shakalya and his companions all over again as he reminisced over those days. He quietly brooded over the past.

“Shakalya seemed to have stopped at the threshold of life where his sensuality had brought him and transfixed him. His obsession with his habitual responses of the body had enthralled him and would not let him see the world that lay beyond the threshold. What he regarded as his heart was the home for swaying passions: demanding, hysterical and calculating. He could not discriminate between the absence and presence of his self in his acts of commitment or hostility. I had a growing awareness of the desperation with which he sought an anchorage. I knew, he was not going to find it so long as he refused to see the darkness that resided in his heart. I had to struggle to save my own world from disintegration and erosion by exposure to the infectious desecration.”

Janaka was looking at a man who was trying to come to terms with the knowledge of his earthly existence and the call of the divine. The fatigue was writ large on Yajnyawalkya’s face. Janaka was searching for words which would resolve the strain between the mind and the body. He kept quiet, realizing that silence was more healing than words. After a brief spell of introspection Janaka felt the need to make Yajnyawalkya speak. Without giving much of a thought to what he was saying, he asked, “Are you suffering from a feeling of loss? I mean, did you lose something precious in the process of holding yourself together?”

Yajnayawalkya said, “I don’t want to look back to count my losses and gains. I would have been glad to see Shakalya regain repose. He was killing himself. And he did not know he was battling with himself. His sole objective was to see me fall from grace,”

“And would he have rested, had he the power to do so?” Janaka asked.

“I don’t know. Perhaps that kind of victory would have been the end of his reason for existence,” said Yajnyawalkya. .

Janaka said, ‘Either way, he was driving himself to his end. His failure to demoralize you was driving him to desperation, but success in doing so would have left him with no further goal.”

Yajnyawalkya said, “I realized that indifference to Shakalya was my self-defence, but it was proving fatal for Shakalya.”

“Do you hold yourself responsible for what happened to Shakalya?”Asked Janaka.

“I know, the world in which I live and find my livelihood,has thought of me as a blasting oracle. That too, was an extension of my overwrought relations with Shakalya. I chose to remain silent because I valued my domain which I refused to share with others.”

Janaka stared at Yajnyawalkya to decipher the unwritten and unspoken script underneath the surface. He felt the presence of a tale that was still held back. He watched Yajnyawalkya to recover the traces of some lost words, gestures and signs. However, he felt as if he was watching a receding wave that returned to the ocean, offering only a glimpse of what the ocean had sent forth.

Why were they unable to name the crisis that had erupted between them in the past and threatened to rupture their brotherhood? Janaka hesitated for a while as he blindly explored the dark recesses of his mind. He did not know how to bring the word between them, now, at this point of departure. Gradually the recollection dawned on him vividly. He remembered his resentment of the past over the thought of Gargi, because he had perceived her to be the cause of Yajnyawalkya’s frequent withdrawal into himself and his own inability to reach out to him at such moments. Janaka remembered the violence of the hatred that had shaken him up then. It was hatred: hatred in its raw vehemence! It had assumed a demoniacal dimension and racked his consciousness in the past. He had not been able to understand whether he hated Gargi, Yajnyawalkya or himself! The image of Shakalya could not be separated from the thought of Gargi nor could he forget the violence with which that thought had swayed his mind.

Now, as both he and Yajnyawalkya stood on the other shore of time, he could see what the presence of a woman between two men can lead to. He remembered the flagrant heat he experienced whenever he had found Yajnyawalkya lost wistfully in the thought of Gargi.

Janaka felt, he had left that unreasonable, irrational anger far behind now. But where was Yajnyawalkya? Was Gargi still there between them? Could he dare to name her between them, even now? He had sought light on this dark cavern of his mind hidden behind the symbolic name ‘Gargi.’

Janaka said, “Do not hold back anything from your domain from me today.”

Then after a pause he asked, “Did you not come under the spell of Maya in the past?”

Yajnyawalkya said, “Yes, I did once! And I am grateful to her, because she, the Maya, spoke to me in a language she herself did not understand, but she brought back to me my own language which I had forgotten. Yes, there was a time when I was swept off.”

Janaka said, “What is it that comes over us in such moments? Is it fear of losing our identity? Isn’t it the fear of dying that drives us to seek our own self in woman? Why do we hate woman after we disentangle ourselves from the whole act? Is it because she absorbs all that we hold on to as our self, instead of giving it back to us? Perhaps our hedonism, our worship of beauty, is nothing but a veil that we cast on our primordial fear of dying!”

Yajnyawalkya thought that Janaka was asking these questions more to himself than to him. But finding no reply from Yajnyawalkya, Janaka got up and sat near Yajnyawalkya. He really meant to seek an answer from Yajnyawalkya.He said, “When one has to travel a long distance in the shortest possible time, one resorts to a fastest vehicle. Think of me as a traveler and be my vehicle.”

Yajnyawalkya watched Janaka for the signs that would enable him to understand his state of mind. He asked him, “Why do you fear dying? Do you fear it because it would leave you alone?”

Janaka said, “I have experienced the fear of being left alone when I had lost my way, in my youth, and had to spend the night in a forest. But I was not really alone. I knew, I was surrounded by ferocious animals for whom darkness was a way of life.”

Yajnyawalkya said, “But they did not attack you. You were vigilant even in the dark. They knew it and dared not come near you.”

There was a pause. Then Yajnyawalkya said, “Let me tell you a story which I had heard often from my father. The Creator of this universe was the first being with the knowledge of Self. When he looked all around as He knew Himself, there was none but Himself. He was scared. He asked himself, “Whom do I fear? There is none but myself!” This thought dispelled fear from his mind”

Janaka smiled in amusement. He said, “That was good for the Creator. He was undivided. We are human. Our fears are our own multiple selves. I am broken into fragments and each fragment is claiming ascendancy.”

Yajnyawalkya drew closer to Janaka, and in a gesture, placed the palm of his hand securely on the crown of Janaka’s head.

Janaka felt a wave of energy pouring down his spine. His warring intellect calmed down. Yajnyawalkya began to speak in a voice that sounded as if it was not his own.

“I am your Self, your mentor! You have forgotten me but I have not forgotten you. You are going to die to your intellect, to your reasoning, doubting mind. You are with me. Now you are going to listen to me. Hold on to me.”

Janaka surrendered wholly to that commanding reassuring voice. He felt himself totally withdrawn to the body. There was nothing outside. He felt himself being pulled upward. There was no Yajnyawalkya, only a voice and a presence. That presence led him up, halting at intervals, and then there was a sudden upsurge of energy; and in a lightening flash, he felt, he felt his Prana breaking out into infinity, into a vast ocean of light. Time stood still. Then, gradually, there was a return to the body. It was like thousands and thousands of streams of water running down in ecstasy. His sight and senses returned gradually to the known and familiar world. He opened his eyes and saw Yajnyawalkya looking at him calmly. Yajnyawalkya spoke to him again, “That is It. We are all going to return to It. You have seen it. Rest in it. It was not a delusion.”

Janaka was bathing in smiles. He held Yajnyawalkya’s hand and said, “There is only joy, because I found my Self.”