Iris Murdoch - The Sea, the Sea

‘But then you were just keen on studying the superstition?’ I said. I felt that this evening, in spite of our embarrassments, my cousin was more open to me than I had ever known him.

‘What after all is superstition?’ said James, pouring some more wine into both glasses. ‘What is religion? Where does the one end and the other begin? How could one answer that question about Christianity?’

‘But I mean you were just a student of-not a-’ What did I mean? I could not get my question clear.

‘Of course,’ said James, on whom the wine seemed simply to have the effect of speeding his utterance, ‘you are right to keep using the word “superstition”, the concept is essential. I asked where does the one end and the other begin. I suppose almost all religion is superstition really. Religion is power, it has to be, the power for instance to change oneself, even to destroy oneself. But that is also its bane. The exercise of power is a dangerous delight. The short path is the only path but it is very steep.’

‘I thought religious people felt weak and worshipped something strong.’

‘That’s what they think. The worshipper endows the worshipped object with power, real power not imaginary power, that is the sense of the ontological proof, one of the most ambiguous ideas clever men ever thought of. But this power is dreadful stuff. Our lusts and attachments compose our god. And when one attachment is cast off another arrives by way of consolation. We never give up a pleasure absolutely, we only barter it for another. All spirituality tends to degenerate into magic, and the use of magic has an automatic nemesis even when the mind has been purified of grosser habits. White magic is black magic. And a less than perfect meddling in the spiritual world can breed monsters for other people. Demons used for good can hang around and make mischief afterwards. The last achievement is the absolute surrender of magic itself, the end of what you call superstition. Yet how does it happen? Goodness is giving up power and acting upon the world negatively. The good are unimaginable.’

Perhaps James was drunk after all. I said, ‘Well, I don’t understand the half of what you say. Maybe I’m just an old-fashioned ex-Christian, but I always thought that goodness was to do with loving people, and isn’t that an attachment?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said James, rather I thought too casually, ‘yes-’ He poured himself out some more wine. We had opened another bottle.

‘All this giving up of attachments doesn’t sound to me like salvation and freedom, it sounds like death.’

‘Well, Socrates said we must practise dying-’ James was now beginning to sound flippant.

‘But you yourself,’ I said, for I wanted to hold on to him and bring all this airy metaphysic down to earth, and also to satisfy my curiosity when for once he was in a talkative mood, ‘you yourself have loved people, and after all why not, though God knows who they are, since you’re so damn secretive. You’ve never introduced me to any of your friends from the east.’

‘They never visit me.’

‘Yes, they do. There was that thin bearded chap I saw in your flat once, sitting in a back room.’

‘Oh him,’ said James, ‘he was just a tulpa.’

‘Some sort of inferior tribesman I suppose! And talking of tulpas, what about that sherpa that Toby Ellesmere said you were so keen on, the one that died on the mountain?’

James was silent for a while and I began to think that I had gone too far, but I let the silence continue. The sea was audible but quieter.

‘Oh well,’ he said at last, ‘oh well-’, and then was silent again, but was clearly going to tell something, so I waited.

‘There’s not much to that story,’ he said, rather disappointingly, ‘at any rate it’s soon told. You know that some Buddhists believe that any earthly attachment, if it persists until death, ties you to the Wheel and prevents you from attaining liberation.’

‘Oh yes, that wheel-’

‘Of spiritual causality. But that’s by the way.’

‘I remember I asked you if you believed in reincarnation and you said-’

‘The sherpa in question,’ said James, ‘was called Milarepa. Well, that wasn’t his real name, I called him that after a-after a poet I rather admire. He was my servant. We had to go on a journey together. It was winter and the high passes were full of snow, it was a pretty impossible journey really-’

‘Was it a military journey?’

‘We had to get through this pass. Now you know that in India and Tibet and such places there are tricks people can learn, almost anybody can learn them if they’re well taught and try hard enough-’

‘Tricks?’

‘Yes, you know, like-like the Indian rope trick-anything-’

‘Oh, just that sort of trick.’

‘Well, what is that sort of trick? As I say, all sorts of people can do them, they can be jolly tiring but-you know they have nothing to do with-with-’

‘With what?’

‘One of these tricks is raising one’s bodily warmth by mental concentration.’

‘How’s it done?’

‘It’s useful in a primitive country, like being able to go on walking for forty-eight hours at five miles an hour without eating or drinking or stopping.’

‘No one could do that.’

‘And to be able to keep oneself warm by mental power is obviously handy on a winter journey.’

‘Like good King Wenceslas!’

‘I had to cross this pass and I decided to take Milarepa with me. It would involve spending a night in the snow. I didn’t have to take him. But I reckoned I could generate enough heat to keep us both alive.’

‘Wait a minute! You mean you can do this thing of generating bodily heat by mental concentration?’

‘I told you it’s a trick, ’ said James impatiently. ‘It’s got nothing to do with anything important, like goodness or anything like that.’

‘And then-?’

‘We got up to the top of the pass and got caught in a blizzard. I thought we’d be all right. But we weren’t. There wasn’t enough heat for two. Milarepa died in the night, he died in my arms.’

I said, ‘Oh God.’ I couldn’t think what further to say. My mind was confused and I was beginning to feel very drunk and sleepy. I heard James’s voice continuing to speak and it seemed to come from very far away. ‘He trusted me… It was my vanity that killed him… The payment for a fault is automatic… They can get to work on any flaw… I relaxed my hold on him… I lost my grip… The Wheel is just…’ By this time my head was down on the table and I was falling quietly asleep.

I awoke and it was day. A clear grey light of dawn, the sun not yet risen, illuminated the kitchen, showing the wine-stained table, the used dishes, the crumbled cheese. The wind had dropped and the sea was silent. James had gone.

I leapt up and called, running out onto the lawn. Then I ran back into the house, calling again, and then through and out of the front door onto the causeway. The blank grey silent light revealed the rocks, the road, and James just getting into his car. The car door closed. I called and waved. James saw me and lowered the window, he waved back but he had already started the engine and the car was moving.

‘Let me know when you’re back!’

‘Yes. Goodbye!’ He waved cheerily and the Bentley sped off and turned the corner and its sound fell into the silence. I returned slowly to the house.

I walked back over the causeway, aware now of a dreadful headache and a swinging sensation in the head: not surprising, since, as I established later, James and I had drunk between us nearly five litre bottles of wine. There was also a rapid sliding crowding curtain of spots before the eyes. I got inside, reached the kitchen and sat down again at the table, resting my head in my hands. I carefully worked out where I could find a glass of water and some aspirins and I got up and found them and sat down again and dozed. The sun came up.