Roberto Calasso - Ardor

Here a comparison is made with “mind,” manas , which is the next power. Now it will be Speech that gives way. Manas , in its turn, is not the last word, but if anything the first. For manas is a generic, all-embracing word. More powerful than manas will be some of its modalities. How to dismantle and reassemble the mind has never been taught with such precision as in the Upaniṣads. Manas therefore yields to a further power, which is saṃkalpa , “intention,” “plan.” It is the word used by the sacrificer when he declares that he has decided (has planned) to celebrate a sacrifice. Saṃkalpa is more than mind since it is what sets mind in action. Saṃkalpa is the first impulse that leads to the deployment of that which is. And here Sanatkumāra, with supreme subtlety, drew this category out of its narrow psychological context, making it fill the cosmos. Once the mind is set in motion, not only are words spoken, not only are words fixed in writing, but “sky and earth are founded on intention”—and, following them, the rest of the world, right down to food and life. A sudden, acrobatic, overwhelming passage. An exemplary Vedic gesture.

The saṃkalpa , however, is just a first sign of the sharpening of the mind. Something else still has to be revealed. “Awareness ( citta ) is more than intention.” Another important threshold, which certain translations fail to notice. Senart translates citta as “ raison ” (reason), Olivelle as “thought.” And yet citta is neither reason, which is misleading, nor thought, which is too broad. Citta is the word used for the act of becoming aware. And bringing to consciousness. In the end, it is the pure fact of being conscious. The primacy of awareness over everything is the cornerstone of Vedic thought. If citta meant reason or general thought, Sanatkumāra’s line of argument would lose its meaning at the point where he says: “So, however much someone may know, if he is without awareness they will say of him: ‘He is not there.’ If he knew, if he were a sage, he would not be so lacking in awareness.” The ṛṣis , the first sages, are the masters of consciousness. Their function, more than any other, before any other, is to be watchful. And so they watch over the world and its dharma so that it comes to no harm. But they may only do so if, like the gods, they have perpetual wakefulness.

With each threshold it might be thought the last has been reached. If citta , awareness, is indeed fundamental, what power could be greater? The speculative machine now proceeds with ever more subtle distinctions. “Meditation ( dhyāna ) indeed is more than awareness.” The words already point to certain Buddhist harmonics: in Pali teachings, the word citta will become synonymous with “mind”; and dhyāna is a word of key significance for the Buddha. But here the grandiose Vedic perspective — cosmic rather than psychological — opens up once more: “The earth, in a certain way ( iva ), meditates; the atmosphere, in a certain way, meditates; the waters, in a certain way, meditate; gods and men, in a certain way, meditate; therefore those among men who reach greatness are, in a certain way, partaking of meditation.” The word iva , which marks entry into the indefinite and the casting off of the literal, is used for the earth as for gods and for men. All and everything meditates, in a certain way. And beyond meditation? “Discernment ( vijñāna ) is more than meditation.” Vijñāna : once again a term that will have an important role in Buddhism. To understand its particularity, we have to think of the discernment of spirits that would be practiced by Evagrius and the Desert Fathers — and, one day, by Ignatius of Loyola.

One might think that vijñāna is the last link in Sanatkumāra’s chain. But it is not. With a sudden change of tack it continues: “Strength ( bala ) is more than discernment. One man alone, with his strength, can make a hundred sages tremble.” The words here catch us by surprise and turn the game upside down. Just when we thought we were following an itinerarium mentis , we find the reappearance of simple strength. Strength as a simple physical quality. But it is enough. And straightaway, here opens up another series of powers that go further. There is no more mention of mind. Now it is “food,” anna ; waters; “incandescent energy,” tejas ; space. Having reached space, we might begin to lose track. What would there be beyond space? Another surprise: memory. With another unexpected move, he goes back into the mind. And beyond? Hope. And, stronger than hope, prāṇa , the “breath,” which here means life itself. Having reached life, finally there is a pause. And the teacher says to his pupil: “He who sees this, he who knows this, that person is an ativādin. ” An ativādin is someone far beyond ( ati ), who cannot be reached with words.

Have we arrived at the end of the chain? No. Another more intricately linked chain begins. As if to strip the pupil of the illusion of having found an answer. The teacher continues: “The only one who wins with the word is he who wins with truth.” What follows is a further recursive procedure. Truth this time is surpassed by the discernment of thought ( manas , which finally reappears). Thought surpassed by faith in the effectiveness of the rites, śraddhā. Faith by perfect practice. This is surpassed by sacrifice. Sacrifice by joy. Here once again, a surprise: “Only when you feel joy do you sacrifice. You must not sacrifice when you are prey to suffering. Sacrifice only when you feel joy. But you have to know joy.” By the time we have become accustomed to the succession of powers and there is still no end in sight, we suddenly find ourselves taken back to the starting point: the moment when the student Nārada appeared before the teacher and said: “I, sir, am suffering.” Now the opposite power finally appears: “joy,” sukha. A word very close in sound to śoka , “suffering.” The path has to be found from one to the other. The teacher continues, unflinchingly: “Joy is fullness. There is no joy in what is limited.” But where is that fullness, the pupil wants to know. “It is below, it is above, it is to the west, it is to the east, it is to the south, it is to the north, it is all of this.” Here once again we feel close to a final word. And it is exactly here that the sharpest psychological arrow strikes. The teacher continues. “But the same can be said of egoity [ ahaṃkāra , the word that from now on will be used to describe what Western psychology calls “ego”]: the I is below, it is above, it is to the west, it is to the east, it is to the south, it is to the north, the I is all of this.” Once again, an irony: the imaginary supremacy of the I is the strongest obstacle to perception, simply because it is what most resembles the true final word: ātman , Self, which other masters had pointed out to Nārada, as if it were the way out of suffering. And the teacher, first of all, describes ātman in the same terms used for the I, placing it in all directions of space. But, as had already happened once with vāc , “speech,” in relation to nouns, something more can also be said about ātman. And it will be the decisive phrase: “He who sees like this, who thinks like this, who knows like this, who loves ātman , who plays with ātman , who copulates with ātman , whose happiness is in ātman , that man is supreme, he can have all he desires in all worlds.” Now the moment has come in which the chain could be followed in reverse. From life, power by power, down to the nouns, since “all of this follows from ātman. ”