Henri Michaux - A Barbarian in Asia

I had lost all hope of finding out what idolatry was about. Now, at least, I have seen one kind of it. The Hindu is steeped in idolatry. Anything will do, but he must have his idol. He ‘joins’ the idol. He draws its power from it. He must idolize.

The Rig Veda is full of hymns to the elements, to Agni the fire, to the Air, to Indra the heavens, and to the sun.

They always adore it.

In the morning, they precipitate themselves from trains to come and salute it (and I am not confusing them with Mohammedans).

If they happen to be performing their ablutions in the Ganges when the sun rises, they salute it with devotion.

The Hindu has a thousand idols.

Does Don Juan love women? Hum. He loves to love. The Hindu adores to adore. He cannot help it.

Love is not what they feel for Gandhi; they adore him, his portrait is in all the temples, it is prayed to. Through him they communicate with God.

The Hindu adores his mother, the maternity of his mother, the potential maternity of little girls, the infancy of the child.

He possesses five sacred trees.

When the wife of the head schoolmaster in a village near Shandernagor died, her footprints were taken, these prints were reproduced in red in the temple, beside the statue of a god, and each of the pupils adored ‘the mother.’

The Hindu likes to bow down.

The cult of Vivekananda, who died not so very long ago (and who had, they assured me, succeeded in attaining divinity, by the Mohammedan, Christian, Buddhist method, etc.), is carefully kept up. His breakfast is brought at eight o’clock to the room that he occupied at the end of his life, at Belur, at noon another meal, at one o’clock, the moment when he was accustomed to rest, his photograph is laid on the bed and covered with a sheet. In the evening his photograph is brought downstairs so that he may say his prayer to Kali.

The Hindu wants to give worship, therefore he prefers to see the maternal rather than the feminine in woman, but naturally he takes care to maintain communication with everything. The Being swarms on every side, nothing should be overlooked, and as he is exceedingly sensual, he knows quite well, besides, how to place himself in communication with universal fornication.

It was not many years ago that the great ascetic Rama-krishna wore women’s dress so that he might feel himself to be the mistress of Krishna, the God who lived among men.

There is something incomparably splendid in this whole Hindu people, that always seeks the most and not the least, that has been the foremost to deny the visible world, for which, not only spiritually, but physically, it does not care, the people of the Absolute, a radically religious people.

The Christian religious sentiment (though they have got Jesus Christ just where they want him, and often speak of him as ‘one of themselves,’ an Asiatic, etc.) has a different aspect from the Hindu religious sentiment.

Lord, Lord, from the lowest depths, I cried unto thee.

‘De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine.’ Here are words that release a fundamental Christian feeling, humility.

When you enter the cathedral at Cologne, no sooner inside and you are at the bottom of the ocean and only above, high above, is the gate of life…: ‘De profundis,’ you enter and you are immediately lost. You are nothing now but a mouse. Humility, ‘praying Gothic.’

The Gothic cathedral is built in such a way that he who enters it is overcome by weakness.

And you pray there on your knees, not on the ground, but on the edge of a chair, the centers of natural magic dispersed. Unfortunate and inharmonious position in which you can only sigh, and try to tear yourself away from your misery: ‘Kyrie Eleisu religions on the contrary do not bring out the weakness of man, but his strength. Prayer and meditation are the exeon, Kyrie Eleison,’ Lord, have mercy.

The Hindu religions 1on the contrary do not bring out the weakness of man, but his strength. Prayer and meditation are the exercise of spiritual forces . Beside Kali one may see the table demonstrating the attitudes of prayer. He who prays well makes stones fall, perfumes the waters. A prayer is a rape. Good tactics are required.

The interior of temples (even those that on the outside are the largest) is tiny, tiny, in order that one may be aware of one’s strength. There will be twenty niches, rather than one grand altar. The Hindu must be aware of his strength .

So he says AUM. Serenity and power. Magic at the center of all magic. One should hear them sing it in the Vedic Hymns , the Upanishads or the Tantra of the great liberation .

Joy in mastery, taking possession, the assured raid on the divine body. With one of them, I remember, there was a sort of cupidity, of spiritual ferocity that spat, victorious in the face of misfortune and of the lower demons. With others a positive bliss, limited and classified, one that could never be taken away from them again.

The uniting of the individual mind with God. This kind of seeking is by no means rare. A great many Hindus are entirely occupied with it. It is not at all exceptional. But to succeed is another thing.

Towards half past six in the evening at sundown, you hear over the whole countryside and in the villages the very loud sound of the conch-shells. This is a sign that the people are praying (excepting the lowest of wretches, each one in his pagoda, of stone, of wood or of bamboo covered with leaves). They pray and soon roll on the ground possessed by the Goddess Kali or any other. These faithful are well-meaning people who have been taught such-and-such a practice and who, like most of those who go in for religion, flounder about when they reach a certain level and never get any further.

Well-meaning people, one never does know whether to laugh or to cry. One of them whom I had seen thus engaged (though they are careful, as a rule, to avoid praying in the presence of Europeans) said to me: ‘Today I have only attained a small part of God.’

Even Hindu ecstasy in its highest forms must not be confused with the mysterious ways of the Christian mystic. Saint Angela of Foligno, Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Lydwine of Schiedam attained it by self-laceration, the Admirable Ruys broek, Saint Joseph of Cupertino , by frightful humility, so by dint of being nothing and entirely stripped, they were snapped up by the Divinity.

Nothing is sadder than failure. Rarely do the religious Hindus bear the mark of divinity. They have it as the critic of the ‘ Times’ and professors of literature in schools have the stamp of literary genius.

Faith with them as with us is extremely significant.

At the door of temples one often sees two rows of beggars provided with touching appeals to faith. They are like large carved wooden figures: a man lies stretched on the ground — this man is dead — a woman on her knees is gazing in astonishment.

This woman has the promise of a God (is it Siva? I cannot recollect) that she will bear a hundred children. A hundred — and her husband is dead, there he is, and he has only given her so far eighteen children. Moreover, widows do not remarry.

‘Huh! promising me a hundred children.’ Then she waits for the God to show what he can do, and Siva (but it can’t be Siva) is touched, and forced by her faith, resuscitates the husband.

What I am telling here is the story according to the expression of the group. But the Hindus do not know how to paint, still less how to carve a natural expression. That is why I am inclined to think that the woman’s attitude should be a little more respectful. 2