Roberto Calasso - Ka

Vasiṣṭha said: “This was our axiom: that what was not manifest took precedence over what was manifest, that the manifest was subject to the unmanifest. And since the manifest, insofar as it depended on the unmanifest, was merely a consequence of it, and a consequence, what’s more, that had not been clearly and unambiguously desired, as the events of Brahmā’s early life bear witness, the manifest could be considered as a residue , a leftover, a remnant, the place where whatever was superfluous, and could not be reabsorbed in the realm from which it originated, had gathered.

“Rather than for the thing itself, the substance, which is ever beyond our grasp and in any event overwhelming, we fought for the leftovers, the residues. And fought among residues. That is our territory, the only territory where the presence (memory?) of another territory might flash across our minds. Never forget that even the most noble gods, the Twelve, the Ādityas, took their form when Tvaṣṭṛ, the Craftsman, cut the Sun down to size, because its light was flooding the world. Shut up in his workshop, Tvaṣṭṛ clipped it, pruned it, pushed it back and forth on his grindstone. As though from a blacksmith’s bench, shavings of bright sunshine fell to the ground. The Ādityas were born of those shavings. And if they were scraps, how much more so is the earth and those who inhabit it…”

Atri said: “What’s the first thing we notice, when we bend our gaze down upon the plains of earth? Fires. We recognize them as people. They are the toughest of living beings. Our vast memory recognizes, in a certain mud hut in the forest, down near Kāñcī, the same fire we once saw dart from the hands of an ancestor as he strained to climb the ridges of the Hindukush or gazed through mist at the immense folds of lands still to explore, toward the east. We alone know that that fire has been ever the same, fed and renewed for hundreds of years by kinsmen who know nothing of each other, terrestial model of the fragile, unfailing life that no man ever manages sufficiently to imitate.”

Viśvāmitra said: “You see that Agni means fire — and you are satisfied. You think that such a precious and dangerous element deserves a great many honors. But you are wrong. Agni’s secret name, the name the gods use when they speak of him — and it is also a common word in our language — is agre , ‘forward.’ Before he is fire, Agni is everything that goes beyond us, the dazzling light that darts ahead of us wherever we are. When we go forward, we are merely following Agni. Man’s conquests are the scars Agni leaves behind in his progress across the earth.”

Jamadagni said: “Where does fire come from? From the mouth. From the vagina. From a smooth, moist cavity. From the burning lake. There is a fire beneath the waters. It is the Submarine Mare. Her name is Vaḍavā. Hot blasts issue from her mouth. One day, when the oceans can no longer hide her, when all the waters have been devoured, then the Mare’s head will surface once more. It will be the end of a world.”

Bharadvāja said: “The mind is ever treacherous, even when it is but one component of the innumerable tiny beings who populate the earth. Even in that fragmented, occulted, clouded state it preserves its nature, the same that caused it to rise as desire from within the asat , the boundless which is not, and yet desires. But how can that which is not lie at the origin of that which is? It almost seems as if there were two states of being, each of which seeks to deny the other. Yet the poets, the kavis , having long searched their hearts, discovered that there was a connection, a bandhu , suspended between the two states, a rope that ended by hiding itself (knotting itself) in the asat. In the void? In the fullness? This they didn’t say — and doubted whether anyone could. ‘The one who looks down on it, in the highest heaven, only he knows — or perhaps he does not know.’ But why should the mind have this privilege? Why should the mind be before and after every other thing? Because it can never be found in the world. You can open up any body, any element, with the finest of metal points, you can turn everything inside out and expose all that has been hidden, until matter becomes a whirr of dragonflies. To no end: you will never find so much as a trace, not even the tiniest, of the mind. The banner of its sovereignty is precisely this: its not being there. No one can ever claim to have grasped it. It is like a dazzle on water: you can follow it, but however far you go toward it, it will always move the same distance away.”

The impatient Nārada was the only one who felt the need to offer explanations. He took advantage of a period of silence to take up the discussion again, turning toward their foreign guests: “It has come to my attention that in your land a person who writes a work read by generation after generation is said to be ‘immortal.’ And the work too is said to be ‘immortal.’ This seems to me an improper use of the word ‘immortal.’ It would be enough to say that this man is evoked, through his work, in the minds of many. That he is a frequent guest of the memory. But no more. Immortality is not so simple as the passing on of memory. But it does have a relationship with the word. In the beginning, the gods were afraid of death, not unlike yourselves. They felt exposed, like animals grazing who know they are being followed by the predator’s eye. To keep death at a distance they decided to hide. But where? In the Vedas. They wrapped themselves in the meters as though in robes. The metres are called chandas because the gods wrapped themselves in them, acchādayan . But death saw them there too. ‘The way you see a fish in water,’ say the texts. The meters certainly have something to do with escaping death, but they are not enough. They are transparent water, a fleeting protection, as our clothes for us. So, to hide. the gods went beyond that. Leaving meters behind, they moved on to the syllable. And here one would have to consider whether the syllable can escape death. But we will talk about that some other evening. In any event we shall be far indeed from fame, a word unduly close in your minds to the word ‘immortality.’”

Vasiṣṭha said: “To attribute infinite duration to the gods, or infinite knowledge, or infinite strength, is groveling and superstitious. The gods are simply those who have come closest to brahman . It’s true that, vain and fatuous as they were, they claimed to be responsible for their victory, claimed to originate their own actions. Men do the same, to imitate them. But it is pure boastfulness. The only knowledge is the getting closer — and the recognition of what you are getting closer to. Agni, Vāyu, and Indra tried as much. There was a mocking Yakṣa who belittled their power. And they couldn’t work out who he was. Then, while trekking up through the woods, Indra had a stroke of luck: he met Umā, that is Pārvatī, the Mountain Girl. It was she who explained to him, in that brusque way women have: ‘You are still glorying in a victory that isn’t yours. That Yakṣa was brahman . He was responsible for your victory.’ So Indra was able to recognize brahman in a Yakṣa who never showed his face again. He had gone a step further than the others. Something similar happened among us ṛṣis . One day I met Indra face-to-face. And this is still a difference between myself and the other ṛṣis. But then Indra was lost to my sight too.”

Bharadvāja said: “What you foreigners recently called the coincidence of opposites, what you developed as a thesis, was, for us, a state. A formless, tremulous, borderless extension, moving of its own accord — and within it a glow and a warmth, which at first glance look like a will-o’-the-wisp. But then they expand, they radiate outward in the waters from a red-hot bar. The first of all states, the one to which, after each event, one returns as to a final barrier, behind which we shall always meet the same barrier and so on and on for all time, is the birth of fire from the waters. Of Agni from Soma. The liquid fire.