Chapter54

A day passed without much of an interaction between Yajnyawalkya and Artabhaga. Artabhaga brooded over his consent to Yajnyawalkya’s proposal of accompanying him to his home and hermitage. There was of course, no doubt in his mind about the sincerity behind it. However, he was not sure whether he was not entering into a bondage that was within his capacity to fulfill.

In the afternoon, Yajnyawalkya returned from Janaka’s palace, still unable to divulge his state of mind to Janaka. When he found himself with Artabhaga, the dilemma was cast plainly on his face. Artabhaga sensed it. Artabhaga did not know what it was that Yajnyawalkya was holding back.

He found a moment to engage Yajnyawalkya in conversation. Yajnyawalkya was reluctant to reveal the immediate concerns of his mind. After a long time he had found himself in close proximity of another person. He was not accustomed these days to being watched and scrutinized.

Artabhaga leaned against the wall and watched Yajnyawalkya sitting opposite. Yajnyawalkya was surprised to find a look of keen curiosity in Artabhaga’s eyes. He knew, there was no point in parrying whatever question there was in Artabhaga’s mind.

“You want to say something!” Yajnyawalkya said, trying to elicit the question.

“I don’t know if I should ask you, but still---! Have you loved in life?” Artabhaga asked, a little boldly now.

Yajnyawalkya looked puzzled. “Loved what?” he asked.

“I mean, have you loved a woman?” Artabhaga mustered courage and blurted out.

Then realizing how personal and intimate the question was, he retreated, saying, “You may not name the person. I am interested in knowledge, not in the details,” he clarified hesitantly.

Yajnyawalkya closed his eyes and retreated into himself for a while. Then, with eyes still closed, he whispered, almost to himself, “Yes, I did! I did love!” 

Then coming back to himself, he opened his eyes and said, “I do not know what, or who it was I loved!”

Artabhaga felt it was as if he was in the presence of someone who was slowly opening the dark recesses of the mind, fearful of what was concealed inside.

Artabhaga asked, “Was it love?”

Yajnyawalkya looked at him absentmindedly. When he answered, he was not addressing Artabhaga’s question. He was addressing something deep inside his own self.

He said aloud, “I don’t know! Words are sufficient only unto themselves. Every one of us evolves a unique language and vocabulary, all our own, when it comes to transmuting experience into language. And when it comes to ‘woman’, every one of us addresses her in an archetypal language. We bring our history and our present to mould our ‘self’ in her presence. We write our question in the language of the body, but expect the answer in the language that is beyond the body. The woman is the illusion of the moment. She is only a mirror which holds forth our question to ourselves.”

Yajnyawalkya paused, unable to trust his own voice and its language.

Artabhaga said, “Did you find an answer?”

Yajnyawalkya looked at him as if he was looking at himself. “You might as well have asked if I found my Self,” said he. Yajnyawalkya continued after a moment which was a moment of introspection for both.

“If I knew my question, I would not seek a woman to reveal the answer,” said Yajnyawalkya.

Artabhaga pondered over this declaration. Suddenly, he found it tremendously absurd to think of it all in this way. Does one need a woman to spell out what one is seeking? Is that all there is to ‘woman’? Looking at Yajnyawalkya staring into the heart of uncertainty, Artabhaga felt sad! He had never known a woman intimately, but he felt certain that there is a whole universe of intangible music, waiting to be discovered in the world which woman inhabits.

Yajnyawalkya remained silent for a few moments. The silence which had accompanied him ever since he left Vaishampayana’s hermitage-academy after that fateful confrontation, now urged him to speak. He sought Artabhaga’s participation in his effort to rid his proud spirit of the weight it carried all along. It was a load of bitterness that sullied all his moments of pure happiness whenever he came across them.

He yearned for Artabhaga’s questions. Unlike the questions of the academic scholars,Artabhaga’s questions pierced through the veil of  Yajnyawalkya’s formidable exterior to reach the core of his knowledge of himself.

Artabhaga sensed the pain that was gnawing at the heart of this man whom he had continued to love and hate in the past. He could not bear the silence.

“Forgive me,” he said, “Perhaps I overreached in my curiosity. But believe me; I don’t intend to wrench away your secret understanding of yourself. Moreover, if my questions end up in unwittingly exposing some unhealed wounds, I must stop.”

Yajnyawalkya looked hurt. But the pain was welcome. He met Artabhaga’s eyes candidly, and said, “No, don’t stop! Ask whatever you want to! All these years I have answered questions of those who wanted my knowledge. In you, I have met for the first time someone who wants to know the man who is supposed to hold the key to all knowledge! You want to know if I found my Self in ‘love’. You know I did not. You wanted to know if I realized Brahma. You know, I did not. When I seek the ultimate layer of my consciousness, I find nothingness, absolute nothingness! That is what I see as Brahma! Now I realize; all along, I have been in search of something precious that could fill up that void—that absolute nothingness—with absolute ‘isness’. Every effort ended up in disillusionment. Nothing remained in that void, except the knowledge that I exist; I exist truly and painfully to my awareness of myself. That, which remains after everything has been subtracted, is ‘I’.

Yajnyawalkya stopped. Artabhaga smiled. He said, “And that ‘I’ wants to love and be loved. Why don’t you accept it?”

Yajnyawalkya could not counter this simple affirmation.  He had no desire to do so

After a moment of silence, he laughed with amusement. “I wish, things were as simple as that for me. Had they been so simple, I would not have been in Janaka’s assembly a decade ago. I would not have been here in Videha at all,” he said.

“And then would you have found love, Self and Brahma?” asked Artabhaga.

“Perhaps,” said Yajnyawalkya.

“Who did not let the things be simple then?” asked Artabhaga.

Yajnyawalkya was amazed by the directness of the question. He did not want to evade the question. He addressed his whole life as he had lived it, when he thought of answering.

He said, “I do not know when and how our free will ends and destiny takes over. For me, I began to understand the meaning of ‘Prana’, the vitality of the body, when I was first initiated into the mystery of Gayatri mantra.”

Artabhaga was animated by the awakening into knowledge as Yajnyawalkya spoke. The first light of the dawn had begun to brighten the sky at last.

Yajnyawalkya said,”I was born to sage Yajnyawalkya of Vasishtha descent. Our ancestor Vasishtha was known for the pious self-restraint with which he countered and subdued his adversaries.”

“Yes, I have heard of him, especially of his long drawn-out battle of attrition with the sage-king Vishvamitra,” said Artabhaga.

“We inherited Vasishtha’s inward strength, which no adversary can take away. That was our wealth and that was our pride. But it also kept us away from the clamour of self-seekers for royal patronage. The goddess of material wealth was always displeased with us,” said Yajnyawalkya.

There was a glint of skepticism in Artabhaga’s eyes as he thought of the thousand cows that Yajnyawalkya had grabbed with audacity in that memorable conference of sages in Janaka’s assembly years ago. Yajnyawalkya noticed it and understood its import.

“I can see what you are thinking. Why did I mock the sages and walk away with that coveted prize of a thousand cows? Isn’t that your question?” asked Yajnyawalkya. Artabhaga simply stared back at Yajnyawalkya. Yajnyawalkya smiled as he got no answer.

“I don’t owe an answer to anyone for what I did. Anyone in the assembly could have done it and was free to do it,” said Yajnyawalkya.

“And so you used your freedom to make a mockery of the proceeding,” said Artabhaga.

“I wasn’t mocking; I spoke the truth. It was true that I needed wealth to support my hermitage. You cannot realize Brahma when you are in the pangs of hunger. In fact, that was the mockery if there was any; that you hold a session, invite scholars whose family looks to them for the next day’s meal and you try to tease their philosophy out of them.”

Yajnyawalkya was speaking with unconcealed bitterness.

Artabhaga was astonished by the pathos behind it. He drew back and leaned against the wall as he thought of the scholars who had gathered at Janaka’s assembly years ago. In fact, many of them were in the good books of kings and ministers. Those who were not, had stayed away. And those who were enlightened were living in anonymity in forests.

Yajnyawalkya noticed signs of bewildered withdrawal in Artabhaga. But today he needed to speak.

“There was no space in my heart for love.” He said. “My inheritance of pride and self-restraint was like a double-edged sword. It would not let me be a supplicant for patronage, nor would it let me hurt in retaliation.” Yajnyawalkya stopped for breath; then continued without waiting for Artabhaga’s response.  

“All along my journey, I was sustained by the power of Gayatri mantra. Initially it was childhood faith. I grew up with the incantation of the mantra. But its meaning grew on me with time. It came to me in the dawn of my life. The first incantation of Gayatri mantra in the morning filled me with strength and courage. It made me aware of the elixir of life flowing through my veins. Those were the moments I cherished in my memory ever since. In those moments I felt my life grow one with the words of Gayatri mantra. I used to look intently at the light of dawn giving birth to the Sun god and in those moments of waiting for the rise of the sun, my eyes, ears and voice would merge into one single tide of energy. My soul would sing in ecstasy, “I am! I am that miracle which you see happening on the horizon, on the mountain, in the sky above!”

Yajnyawalkya paused, lost in the sound of his own voice. Artabhaga listened to a language that came from a mystic source.

“Why did you stop?” he said, “It’s sheer joy to hear you!”

Yajnyawalkya said, “That which I saw, felt and heard in the purity of my soul was just a feeling. I have lost it!”

Artabhaga said, “No, you have not lost it; you have forgotten it. You have forgotten how to recall it.”

Yajnyawalkya said, “Loss of the memory of an object, and the loss of the ability to recall a feeling are different things.”

Artabhaga said, “If that feeling were to revisit you would you not recognize it?

Yajnyawalkya smiled ruefully. “If it were a thing in my possession, I would not let it be lost. That feeling was indeed a miracle, and a miracle does not happen according to our volition”.

Artabhaga wondered if our fleeting encounter with what the sages call ‘Brahma,’ is indeed a miracle, or the grace of what we call ‘Ishwara’—God, or our meeting with the ‘One’ who is inside us.