Raja Rao - The Serpent and the Rope

‘Strange, as I myself go away from Buddhism it is Madeleine who gets deeper into it. She is moved by Buddhist compassion and poetry: it has, as she said, Christian humility without stupidity and blind belief; it has poetry without the smell of the crypt. Oh, the Christian love of relics! This body seems more worthy to the Christian after death than in life. Those who have no roof over their heads still buy space for a caveau de famille, says Madeleine. She knows what she is saying, for the family is talking a great deal about the famous caveau de famille at St Médard. “Caveau for caveau,” says Madeleine, “I would rather my bones felt the warmth of the southern sun than that the mist, penetrating through the earth, should form round globules of perspiration on my non-existent body. Oh!”

‘For Madeleine there is an area which is not me that she fills with Christian longings, but she will not admit it. She thinks it is betraying me to praise St John of the Cross. But sometimes when they sit in the sun of the courtyard, and Georges and she discuss the Spanish mystic, she seems so tender and understanding that it is she who would teach Georges. Catholicism is in her blood. Not all Georges’s fervour can give him the instinct — and religion is an instinct — that gives illumination to a line, a reference. Just the same way when she talks of Buddhism I feel the word dukka almost with the entrails dropping into my hand, whereas for her it is mere sorrow. Dukka is the very tragedy of creation, the sorrow of the sorrow that sorrow is.’

August 23. ‘Madeleine today came and sat near me on my bed. Outside the day was glorious — I could almost hear the parrots cry, or the monkeys leap from branch to branch of the peepul tree. She saw how happy I was. But it was with a happiness that knows life is a continuous jump from awareness to awareness, like a straight line is from point to point. In between is the knowledge of the perpetuity of life. Sorrow is the background of all moments, for moment means the transitory and the transitory is always sorrowful. I remembered Rilke.

‘She was so happy herself; she kissed me on the lips as never she had. She gave the whole of herself to me, as though it were a gift that my life might be spared. But I am not so ill — that is the wonder of it. I was told that when Mother was ill they needed to have a basin and a towel always by her. Mine is only a minor relapse. There is nothing to worry about.

‘Madeleine does not love me. She wants me to be big and true that she may pour her love on me, as some devotee would want her Shiva or Krishna to be big and grand, that she might make a grand abhishka with milk and honey and holy Ganges water. To anoint oneself in worshipping another is the basis of all love. We become ourself by becoming another.’

August 24. ‘That Georges is leaving in three or four days oppresses me. Something in him was like a solid stone wall, on which Madeleine lent to love me. He must have prayed to his God a great deal. But Madeleine is happy; she hates confusions. She thinks Georges’s God is something of a carnival god, with big teeth and terrible to see. “In the Middle Ages,” she said, “Georges would have been like that famous bishop who started counting his rosary the louder, that the torture of the heretic might be adequate. For the excellent bishop had said to the torturors, ‘He should be tortured until I hear his cry.’ So the bishop went on shouting to his Father that the sins of the Church might be forgiven.”

‘Fanaticism is such a force. It takes you to sublimities and gives you the sense of the heroic, the impossible. The fanatics today become mountain-climbers. It is ultimately a form of spiritual vanity.

‘Truth must be simple, natural and sweet.’

August 26. ‘Georges came to me on Saturday, when Madeleine had gone down to Auch to buy provisions. He sat with ease and reverence as though he had long communed with God. He said:

‘“You know, Rama, I have a last request to make. I say it from the depths of my sinful heart. I am a Russian, you are an Indian. We both have the messianic madness of the race in us — for us only the Absolute counts. Living beside you, as I do these days, you cannot imagine how much your Brahminical ‘aura’, as it were, helps to make me a better Christian. What we do with such an effort, such a desire for virtue, you do so spontaneously. What I admire is the frugality of your food, the generosity with which you open yourself to everyone and everything. Above all, and for a Christian what is fascinating, is your relationship with Madeleine. I have never seen a European couple act and behave with such innocence. The sin of concupiscence…” After that my mind went black. I would never have thought any intelligent man in the year 1951 could use such a crude word. It spoke more of Georges’s deeper mind than anything he had said. I can still remember him saying, “The sin of concupiscence!” I looked out into the sky, and saw the birds pecking away at the figs. I almost felt I should rise and throw a stone at them.

‘There was a long since. Then Georges said:

‘“Salvation is only for the baptized. You know how Maritain brought Péguy back to the Church. I tell you, Rama, there is no salvation, none, but in the Church of Christ.”

‘He burst into tears, and his face shone as did Alyosha Karamazov’s when Staritz Zossima rose from his dead body and appeared to him, hallowed.

‘“I will always pray for you. Father Zenobias already prays for you. There is no hope but in the Church of Christ.”’

August 29. ‘Strange that this has left so deep a mark on me. Night after night I have opened my eyes and looking out of the window have seen the nightbirds active in the trees; far away some light has shone, even as it might from the Pyrénées, and I have been filled with a longing for God — to kneel, yes, to kneel and worship something that has such a nearness of presence, such intimacy, such historical authenticity.

‘I can now understand the Muslim, for Mohammed was the last Historical Prophet of God. I realize that when the son of man comes to earth, he gives us the proof of God in a way that no religion of the pagans, be it Hindu or Greek, could ever offer. Shiva and Vishnu live in Kailas or Vaikuntha, and you may see them or not see them; and once seen they may again disappear. But religion with a prophet gives God a place in time, gives him a mother and father, even were he Virgin born and gives him friends and enemies. Judas more than St John made Christ Holy. You know Saint John in the same way that in some families they say, “Oh, the grandmother of Saint Louis was a La Rochefoucauld,” and it is immediately understood that Saint Louis must have been true, and that you yourself had fought in the crusades and won back the oriflamme of Jerusalem. Historicity is part of human certainty — it makes man real. If Christ — or Mohammed — were not historical there could be no God.’

August 30. ‘I came to work on my Albigensians and unknowingly my mind wanders away and I start speaking of myself to myself. And history makes involutes to prove me. Lord, how can one ever get out of oneself!

‘The historical presence of Christ and Mohammed, I was saying, is implicative of God. This is the true explanation, if ever, of Christian heresy. The Cathars, when pressed to answer if they did indeed believe in Christ, were not always so sure as when asked if they believed in the Holy Ghost. What is uncertain is an enemy of the people. It is a sort of spiritual Darwinism. Christianity, Islam, and Judaism belong here, but Taoism, Buddhism and Vedanta live in the chaos of the present: the present seen as present could never be Chaos. That is why Indians wrote no history; even Buddhism was too historical, and therefore too psychological, for India. Vedanta triumphed like Mahayana Buddhism — so near to Vedanta — did, and Taoism against Confucianism.