Roberto Calasso: Ardor

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Janaka, a king famous for his magnanimity and learning, was pleased with Yājñavalkya’s answers on the agnihotra. To such an extent that, according to the version in the Jaiminīya Brāhmaṇa , “he became his disciple.” Humbly, he said to Yājñavalkya: “Teach me.” The situation was reversed. Now it would be Yājñavalkya who asked the questions, who wanted to work, like a surgeon, precisely on the weak joints in Janaka’s knowledge. Yet that knowledge was impressive. With great benevolence, Yājñavalkya described Janaka as someone who, before setting off on a long journey, “finds for himself a chariot or a boat.” These, for him, were the upaniṣads , the “secret connections” that he had gathered together to enable him to pursue the long journey of knowledge. Yājñavalkya, it seems, paid no similar homage to anyone else. But though so laden with power and knowledge, Janaka had reached a point where the “secret connections” no longer helped him. Yājñavalkya sought to question him on that very point. Abruptly — as was his style — he asked: “When you are freed from this world, where will you go?” With equal frankness, Janaka answered: “I don’t know where I will go, my lord.”

It is an exchange that disposes once and for all of every bigoted vision of Vedic India. Here the wise king, Janaka, acknowledges being lost and ignorant, like everyone, at the moment when one leaves the world, from which it is possible to release oneself (an Indian obsession, like “salvation” will be for Christians), but without necessarily knowing where one is going. At this point Yājñavalkya, in an Upaniṣad, offers an insight that goes beyond the upaniṣads (in the sense of “secret connections”).

In order to explain where we go after death, Yājñavalkya mentions neither life nor death. He has the temerity to say, as if his words were a detailed reply: “Indha [the Flaming One] is the name of that person ( puruṣa ) in the right eye; in truth he is indha , but he is called Indra to hide his real name. The gods love what is secret and abhor what is obvious.” The last sentence appears countless times in the Brāhmaṇas, as a warning that we are crossing into esoteric territory. And the esoteric is such, above all, because the gods love it, whereas they don’t like what is clear at first sight. This is the Indian response — many centuries ahead — to that “hatred of what is secret” on which, according to Guénon, the West would be based. Here Yājñavalkya gives us a lightning demonstration of what might be the secret. In declaring what happens after death, he does not describe an earth or a heaven of everlasting life. But he speaks of physiology. He speaks of that minuscule figure we see reflected in the pupil of another’s eye. And he calls it a “person,” puruṣa , a being about which the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad itself said: “The ātman , the Self, existed alone in the beginning in the form of Puruṣa.” In this case the king of the gods, Indra, is a cover for another figure, the mysterious Indha, the Flaming One, who has a female companion, Virāj (the name of a meter but also the consort of Puruṣa). But why should these two minuscule reflected figures reveal to us what happens after death? Because they are linked together in an extremely long and continually renewed coitus in the space inside the heart: a protective cavern. And what do they live on? “Their food is the red mass inside the heart.” Here, like a cusp, metaphysics penetrates physiology. The coitus between Indra and Virāj is wakefulness — and the state that reigns at the end of coitus is sleep: “For, as here, when human coitus comes to an end the man becomes, as it were, insensible, so then he becomes insensible; because this is a divine union, and this is the supreme happiness.” The two figures reflected in the two eyes enabled Yājñavalkya to enter the cavity of the Self and surprise it in its constant and double erotic activity, which is the mind itself. And from here Yājñavalkya rises straightaway to the peak of negative theology: “As for the ātman , the Self, it can only be expressed in the negative: ungraspable, because it cannot be grasped; indestructible, because it cannot be destroyed; detached, because it doesn’t become attached; without ties, nothing stirs it, nothing wounds it. In truth, Janaka, you have attained non-fear ( abhaya ).” And here is an echo of the speech that will denote the mudrā of the hand raised to shoulder height: the most typical gesture of the Buddha.

The boldness of Yājñavalkya’s reply should be stressed. He is speaking to someone who already knows much, but whose knowledge lacks one final step. He does not think it appropriate to use words of reassurance, nor to make any promises. Yājñavalkya needs only to refer to one physiological fact — the figure reflected in the pupil — in order to produce the revelation of something that encapsulates everything: the Self as an unshakable power that acts unremittingly in every living being, even if it is not perceived. Nothing else is needed to attain “non-fear,” which is the only form of peace. As soon as he had heard him, Janaka said to Yājñavalkya: “May abhaya , non-fear, peace, be with you, Yājñavalkya.”

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In two boundless Indian works, the presumed author is also a character in the work itself. As Vyāsa is for the Mahābhārata , so Yājñavalkya is for the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa. In the case of Vyāsa it is impossible to give any historical identity to him; in the case of Yājñavalkya it is almost impossible. But their appearance as characters is equally necessary. The author is an actor who appears on the scene and then disappears, like so many others. And at the same time he is the eye behind which there is none other, the eye that allows everything to unfold before the eye of that nameless being who listens, who reads.

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How did Janaka react when Yājñavalkya showed him, in just a few words, what happens after death — and with reference only to the figure we see reflected in the pupil? The Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad tells us immediately after: “At that time Yājñavalkya went to Janaka of Videha, with the intention not to speak.” A magnificent incipit , once again in keeping with the stern character of Yājñavalkya. But Janaka remembered that on another occasion, when he had argued on the agnihotra , Yājñavalkya had granted him a vara , a “boon”: the chance to make a wish that he had to fulfill (Indian stories — above all the Mahābhārata —tend to be stories that interweave boons and curses, as in Wagner’s Ring ). Now was the moment to make that wish — which was to continue questioning Yājñavalkya.

Then something surprising happened: the ṛṣi who hadn’t wanted to say anything, the ṛṣi who regularly spoke with sharp, cutting jibes, before immediately passing on, withdrawing into silence, this time spoke at length, with brilliant eloquence, as if yielding to an uncontrollable impulse. And finally he explained in detail the doctrine of the ātman , in the most intense and beguiling terms. Never again in Indian literature, not even in Kṛṣṇa’s teaching of Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gītā , would doctrine find such luminous words. There was also a moment when Yājñavalkya had the impression he had gone too far. He thought then: “The king is clever, he has taken all my highest doctrines from me.”

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If Yājñavalkya wanted to grant a “boon” to Janaka of Videha after his disputation on the agnihotra , he had good reason. For on that occasion Janaka had shown himself to be finer than three brahmins, one of whom was Yājñavalkya himself. After having questioned them he had left on his chariot: proud, scornful, dissatisfied. The three brahmins knew they hadn’t been up to the task. “They said: ‘This king has beaten us: come, let us challenge him in a disputation.’” Then Yājñavalkya had come forward and stopped them, with well-picked words. If they had in fact won, he said, the incident would have left no impression. It is normal for brahmins to defeat a king in a theological argument. It is almost their raison d’être. But if Janaka happened to win? Better not to think about it … The world would have been turned upside down. So Yājñavalkya preferred to go to Janaka alone and humbly asked him what he knew about the agnihotra. He discovered that Janaka knew much. It was then that he granted him a “boon”—and Janaka asked to question him further. “Janaka, from then on, was a brahmin.”