Roberto Calasso - Ka

“For this reason, and only for this reason, tapas —the heat — came before the word, the number, reasoning, deduction. This is why the first image thought chose for itself was that of a submerged, pervasive brazier, a glow in the water. It was the only way to lead us back to that state that preceded all others, when the waters issued forth from the mind and the mind from the waters. Who could say which came first?”

Jamadagni said: “There are many worlds — and never fewer than two: this and that. This is the world of men, that is the world of the gods. Look at the animals and you will see what I mean: tame animals are the world of men; wild animals, the world of the gods.”

Yājñavalkya said: “To gain access to that world, to move toward it, one must yoke together mind and word. No other chariot will carry us there. But one must watch carefully to see that the yoke is balanced. For the word is smaller than the mind. So, beneath the main bar of the yoke, on the side of the word, it is well to slip another wooden plank, so that the bar stays flat. Such are the precautions upon which the course of our lives depends.”

Atri said: “Many have asked and will ask themselves: why does something happen, if it must then be submerged? What is the point of an intact dharma among corpses? What is the difference between one era and another, if all are swallowed up? I was asked this question many times. I asked it myself every time I was left with only the billowing waters beneath me. In the midst of that indigo or sometimes of that interminable grayness, there was but one black speck, a wandering bed. On it lay a sleepy viṣṇu, glued like a lover to the coils of Śeṣa and protected by the canopy of his heads: a delicate toy no child could ever play with. Śeṣa was a lump, a leftover, the residue of what had been. Not all had been hallucination, so long as that lump still drifted around. It was here that deeds undone, fruits uneaten, gathered and clotted. Waiting to measure out the days of the new era.

“‘But then does nothing new exist?’ they asked me. ‘One should be thankful that anything exists at all, why ask for it to be new as well?’ I answered with a brahman’s impatience. Yet I knew that, however tiny, the new does exist. While all expands and all is reabsorbed, ever in the background a faint hiss tells us the arrow is heading toward its target. The feather ruffled by the arrow is the new.”

Viśvāmitra said: “I remember. It was nearly time to press the soma —the midday pressing. It was winter, almost at the solstice, like today. We were celebrating the mahāvrata , the ‘great vow.’ I had just finished intoning the thousand verses of the hymn called the mahaduktha . All at once I realized that Indra was sitting next to me. I thought it was an illusion. I went on with the verses, looking straight ahead of me. Then, furtively, I risked another glance. Indra was still there. So I said: ‘I am honored to see you here in my home, but my wish would be to join you in your own beloved home, in the sky.’ Meanwhile the ceremony continued. The verses echoed around like a swarm of hornets. Indra said: ‘Follow me.’ When we were in the sky, I said to him: ‘I would like to get to know you.’ Indra answered: ‘I shall grant you this favor.’ Then he fell silent. For a long time we sat opposite each other. Then Indra said: ‘I am prāna , breath. You are breath. All beings are breath. Breath is what burns below. Thus do I penetrate all spaces. The mahaduktha you were reciting is also breath. It is light too. It is food.’ Indra then explained that there are seven breaths — and each goes in a different direction. As he was describing them, I recognized them: they were none other than ourselves: the Saptarṣis. Now I understood why, during the mahaduktha , the hundred harp strings were brushed in seven different ways, using an udumbara twig. Now I understood why the hotṛ had pushed the seat of the swing, with immense care, in seven different directions. That day Indra revealed to me why we must celebrate the rite we were already celebrating. On my return, I told everyone of my vision. So today we know why we celebrate the mahāvrata . This is the right sequence of events. The vision comes afterward . First one must arrange the gestures. But without knowing exactly what they mean. The vision throws light on how and why things must happen as they already do. Since everything already happens. But how did it happen?

“The mahāvrata was an ancient ceremony — like all the ceremonies founded by the vrātyas . People no longer speak of the vrātyas , but they are the shadow that accompanies our every gesture. And if one does not know the shadow, one knows nothing. So I will speak of them. With black turbans and black sandals complete ‘with ears’ (as they used to say), wrapped in robes with red and black fringes, antelope skins on their shoulders, a metal-pointed stick and small loose-strung bow in their hands, grouped around a rickety cart, open-topped, that lurched askew, off the beaten track, drawn by a horse and a mule, driven by a man with long, loose hair and a silver collar, stiff as a corpse: thus did the vrātyas wend their way. They were always followed by a whore and a man from the Magadha. Although, according to the precepts, they were a ‘non-whore called whore’ and a ‘man-not-from-the-Magadha called man-from-the-Magadha,’ apumścalu pumścalūvākyā and amāgodho māgadhavākyah . I know this may sound strange. But consider: anyone taking part in a rite is not what he is. He is something else… And the life of the vrātyas was nothing but a rite, throughout their ceaseless wanderings. The vrātyas traveled, made music, bullied, stole, danced, spied, plundered, cursed. But they were also the butt of curses, outcastes, emissaries of the unnameable, all that you would like to leave behind but that always comes back like the past. They were a ‘pack,’ vrāta , a band, a fraternity bound by a ‘vow,’ vrata , which imposed a certain ‘way of life,’ vratá . They were the eternal ambush. When the people who lived in the grāma —the communities, likewise nomadic, though they moved more slowly, with their herds — chose to evoke an image of terror, they didn’t think of the beasts of the forest, nor of the enemies they met on their wanderings and would have to fight, enemies who had no horses and did not speak the ‘perfect language,’ Sanskrit. They thought of the vrūtyas . Occasionally some of the young people in the community, particularly the younger sons, would disappear, and it was rumored that they had joined the vrātyas . Everybody knew there was another community in the forest, a parallel, tighter community, whose contrasting gestures, behavior, language, and dress formed a counterpoint to the life of the grāma , sometimes invading it, with brash ferocity, striking as suddenly and unexpectedly as Rudra’s arrow. Thus they thought of them as of Rudra’s noble bands. They were the esoteric itself, precipitous, rapacious, self-contained. They congratulated themselves on being indistinguishable from each other, like two-legged wolves. They referred to themselves as ‘dogs.’ They would have no truck with the exoteric, which alone allows a community to exist. The brahmans, on the other hand, who were the guardians of the esoteric, also wished to be guardians of the community, of normal life, life without upheavals or excesses of knowledge. Knowledge they would take care of themselves, in silence. All everybody else had to do was to live. But the vrātyas were not like that. Often they were announced by a great din. Harps, drums, rattles, flutes. To their minds, even the earth was first and foremost a sound. They dug a deep hole. They laid out the skin of a sacrificed animal. They beat on it with its tail. It was the earth drum. Like a strip of sound they slithered around the encampments of community life — and this in itself sufficed to alert those who lived there, in transient settlements, with their carts and herds, that an other life was always open, always flitting outside and beyond: that the community was not everything. Thus, for a long time the vrātyas were the sensible presence of the esoteric. But what is the esoteric? The esoteric is the forest. To grasp the ultimate significance of what happens in the society of men, one must go outside that society. There are traces of servitude and blindness in everything formulated within that society. He who goes out of it breathes for the first time. For the first time he is alone. He feels terror — and provokes terror. The forest is the roaring of wild packs, two-legged wolves — and it is the silence of the renouncers. The young predators and the solitary thinker, still as a log, communicate through their knowledge, remote now, beyond the grasp almost of the knowledge of the householder who observes the rites of the hearth and home. What is the esoteric? The thought closest to the vision things have of themselves.