Henri Michaux: A Barbarian in Asia

This impression of the rails beyond, of the trains that presently are going to carry you away, this sleep is a preliminary, to make believe that sometimes you wait a week or two before laying eyes on your train. (Natur ally, the waiting rooms are unoccupied. Too far from the train, too full of seats.) This waiting for departure — and yet this sleep.

These people, dead tired at the mere thought of traveling. Intent on getting their rest, above all, their rest.

This is a unique impression.

And there are always thousands of Hindus in this station, between whose bodies you have to pick your way, stepping warily as on swampy ground, and after a struggle reaching your compartment followed by a few eternal eyes.

All the ‘best’ people in India gave it up, from the beginning, gave up India and the whole earth.

The great miracle of the English is that now the Hindus do care about it.

If the Christians had wanted to convert the Hindus, instead of ten thousand ‘average’ missionaries, they would have sent one saint.

One saint alone would convert millions of Hindus.

No race is more responsive to holiness.

Chastity is the starting-point of magic.

The Hindus reproach the Catholic missionaries (who almost all observe their vows of chastity) for not profiting enough from it, for not deriving a spiritual strength directly from it. What does this mean exactly?

The Jesuit who put this question to me had the eyes of a small boy, of a schoolboy, not the eyes of a man.

I might have made use of the fact when replying, but I preferred to reflect upon it at leisure.

Some Hindus are still of the opinion that Europe should ‘rest’ on Asia. But Europe is unable to rest on anyone. It can rest no more. The time for resting is past. All we can do now is to see whether anything can be made with what is left.

Besides, resting did not produce enough.

Another difference between the Hindu’s way of praying and the European’s is this — an all-important difference: the Hindu prays naked, as naked as possible, covering only the chest or the belly if he is in delicate health.

This is no time to be proper. He prays alone in the dark under the motionless world.

There must be no intermediary, no clothing between the All and one’s self, nor must one feel any division whatsoever of the body.

The Hindu is also perfectly happy to pray while bathing.

A Hindu who said, in my presence, his prayer to Kali , removed his clothing, except for a small belt, and told me: ‘When I pray alone at sunset, and naked, I pray more easily.’

All clothing cuts one off from the world. Whereas, lying stretched in the dark, the All flows to you and carries you away in its wind.

While making love to his wife, the Hindu thinks of God, of whom she is an aspect and a particle.

How fine it must be to have a wife who understands this, who spreads immensity above the small and yet so disturbing and decisive love-shock, above this sudden, great abandonment.

This communion in the infinite, at such a moment of mutual pleasure, must be really an experience that enables you to look people in the eye afterward, with a magnetism that cannot retreat, holy and at the same time lustral, impudent and shameless; even the animals, say the Hindus, must communicate with God, so odious to them is limitation of any kind. 6

There are even Hindus who masturbate while thinking of God. They say that it would be worse still to make love to a woman (European style) — she individualizes you too much, and does not know how to pass on from the idea of love to that of the All.

The Hindu is greedy: he holds a third of the world’s money.

He thesaurizes. He likes to appraise his gold, his pearls. To think about his potentiality.

On a spiritual plane, he is greedy for God. One pictures the Hindus as leeches on God’s surface.

Vivekananda to Ramakrishna. His first question: ‘Have you seen God?’

Dhan Gopal, returning from America, inquires about his brother: ‘Has he seen God?’

Have you had God? would be more nearly what they have in their minds.

The Yogi economizes his strength. This superman resembles the ox. Never reaches the painful, live center of himself, willfully avoids it. Sanscrit, a possessive language.

The Hindu’s love of the Homeric explanation, the embracing, magnetic description, that imposes the vision.

To him, a horse, plain and simple, is no horse; you must tell him — horse with four legs, with four shoes, with a belly, a sexual organ, two ears; the horse must be carved inside of him.

Venerable Nagarena, what virtues must a disciple possess? (Question of King Milinda).

Reply:

1)

one virtue of the ass

2)

two of the cock

3)

one of the squirrel

4)

one of the she-panther

5)

two of the he-panther

6)

five of the tortoise

7)

one of the bamboo

8)

one of the goose

9)

two of the crow

10)

two ofthe monkey, etc.

34)

two of the anchor, etc.

36)

three of the pilot

37)

one of the mast, etc.

61)

two of the sowing, etc., etc.

There are sixty-seven divisions and more than a hundred virtues.

No wonder so many virtues are required, nor even that it takes three hundred pages to explain them, to describe minutely the ass with its two ears, the cock with its spurs… leaving nothing obscure, but it is astonishing that he knows all this in advance . That, however, is the Hindu mind — broad, panoramic, possessive, sensual. The opposite of the Chinaman, who is all allusions, detours and brief contacts.

When I saw the Turks on the one hand, and on the other the Armenians, without knowing anything about their history, I felt that in a Turk’s skin I would beat up an Armenian with great pleasure, and as an Armenian I should have to be beaten up.

When I saw the Moroccans on the one hand, and on the other hand the Jews, I understood why the Moroccans always enjoyed violating the wives of the Jews right in front of their noses and always did so.

This can be explained. But then it turns out to be quite another thing.

The first time a snake sees a mongoose it feels that the encounter will be fatal to itself, a snake. As for the mongoose, it does not begin to detest the snake after thinking the matter over. It detests it at first sight , and devours it.

When I saw the Hindus and the Moslems, I understood at once what a strong temptation it was to the Moslems to give the Hindus a good licking, and the pleasure the Hindus took, on the sly, pitching a dead dog into Moslem mosques.

Now for those who have not seen or have not felt this, various explanations, coming from far back, may be found.

The Arabs, Mohammed’s people, have set their mark on the people who have adopted Mohammedanism: Turks, Afghans, Persians, Hindus converted by force, Ethiopians, Moors, Malays, etc.

With the Arab, all is anger. His creed is full of threats: ‘There is no other God than God.’ His creed is a retort, almost an oath — he scolds. He gives no quarter.

His greeting: May salvation be to whomsoever follows the true religion. (The true religion! To others no greeting.)