Ardor (21 page)

*   *   *

In the story of Yajña and V
ā
c, it is taken for granted that the Devas will win their war, as they have chosen the side of the Mind and of Sacrifice. At the same time, though, they badly need V
ā
c, the adversary’s prime force. Mind must first of all assert its supremacy over Speech, since the operation of Mind involves language, yet also goes beyond it. Thinking is
not
a linguistic act: this was a basic idea of the
ṛṣ
is.
But thinking
can
also be a linguistic act, once the Devas, through Yajña, succeed in bringing V
ā
c across to their side. And that passage brings an enhancement in the implicit power of the Devas, as well as the defeat of the Asuras. At this point the gap between the Devas and Asuras opens up once and for all: the Asuras are now beings who have
lost
speech. They become “barbarians (
mlecchas
)” as soon as V
ā
c abandons them. This is the first expression of scorn for the barbarian as a babbler. And the brahmin’s work, preeminently work of the mind, would follow the greatest rigor in the use of speech, so as not to descend into the “language of the Asuras.” The Devas thus gained the highest and most unassailable power. But inherent in this supreme power was a supreme danger. Indra, king of the Devas, discovered it for himself. And so it happened that Indra “thought to himself: ‘A monstrous being will surely spring from this union of Yajña and V
ā
c: let it not take advantage of me.’ Indra became an embryo and entered into that coupling.” A few months later, as his birth was approaching, Indra thought once again: “The womb that has contained me certainly has great vigor: no monstrous being must be born from it after me, lest it should take advantage of me.” So Indra ripped out V
ā
c’s womb, into which he had introduced himself, so that it was impossible for it to give birth to another being. That torn and tattered womb is now on the head of the Sacrifice like a pleated turban: “Having seized it and held it tightly, he ripped out the womb and put it on the head of Yajña, Sacri
fi
ce, for the black antelope is sacrifice: the skin of the black antelope is the same as the sacrifice, the horn of the black antelope is the same as that womb. And since Indra ripped out the womb holding it tightly, for that reason the horn is tied tightly to the edge of the garment; and since Indra, having become an embryo, was born from that union, for that reason the sacrificer, after having become an embryo, is born from that union.”

Speech and Mind must both remain on the side of the Devas, but they must not be
united
: intercourse between Mind and Speech would end up creating a being of such power that it would overwhelm the power of the Devas. And the Devas have lived, from the beginning, in terror of such a moment. With pain and effort they have conquered the sky and immortality. Now they are chasing humans away, removing all traces of the sacrifice while, on the other hand, they are keeping watch to make sure no power is unleashed by rites that might overwhelm them. If relations between Speech and Mind were from then on unstable, clouded, and marked at times with ill-concealed hostility, it is due to Indra’s ruthless intervention: one of those vile and mysterious exploits of his that trigger enormous consequences.

The relationship between Mind and Speech thus established what was to happen in the world: not simply a pair of lovers, but a scene of horror that recalled a brutal attack. A male being, Sacrifice, bears on his head the torn uterus of his lover Speech, where he will never be able to pour his semen. The Devas wanted it this way so that the balance of power would never again be upset—in this case, against them. This is the condition in which the world must live. This is where one should go back in order to understand sexual attraction, but also the insuperable imbalance and disunity that has reigned between Mind and Speech from then on. In the West, it is a theme that finds echoes in the nostalgia and perpetual, helpless evocation of the language of Adam.

Another layer of implications in the story of Yajña and V
ā
c and their fateful coitus is that of the conflict, of the latent and deadly hostility between myth and ritual. While the stories of the Olympians in Greece manage to free themselves from their ritual associations, to proliferate and eventually be lost in the vast estuary of Alexandrian literature, in Vedic India the process is the reverse: the progressive subjection of the mythical stories to ritual action, as if their purpose was simply that of illustrating it—and not to exist in their own right, as a primary manifestation of the divine. Perhaps this is why the Devas always retained a certain cowardly and ineffectual streak. A sequence of ritual acts had once made them into what they then were. Another sequence, breaking free from their control, would one day be able to bring them down.

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Although they were opposites in everything else, Athens and Jerusalem ended up establishing a strategic alliance and basing it on one word:
lógos.
An alliance sealed with the opening verse of John’s Gospel. From the time of the Greek sages,
lógos
had been a power connected to speech, to discourse, even though it did not let itself be wholly absorbed into it.
Noûs
, on the other hand, had always been a force independent from speech. With John’s Gospel,
lógos
, in becoming the Word and the divine incarnation, reestablished its sovereignty. Any further power was inconceivable. And so thought and mind were indissolubly linked to speech. From then on, nondiscursive thought was to be pushed aside, or even underground. It was the Egypt of thought, its
facies hieroglyphica
, that was swallowed up, driven away by the formidable forces of
lógos
as Reason and of
lógos
as the Word.

Vedic India remained extraneous and hostile to this drama without ever giving way. The Br
ā
hma
ṇ
as already abandon the mythical stories and liturgical sequences devoted to the irreversible imbalance between Mind and Speech, to the greater weight of the first over the other. Then in the
Ch
ā
ndogya Upani
ṣ
ad
the relationship is described more bluntly: “The mind indeed is more than speech.” The watershed between East and West, over which so much thought has been given, can be traced to this point. All the rest follows from that radical divergence, which India would never abandon, following it from the Veda to the Ved
ā
nta.

In saying this, the
Ch
ā
ndogya Upani
ṣ
ad
uses a language that is neither philosophical nor oracular, but serenely apodictic: “The mind indeed is more than speech. As a fist holds two
ā
malaka
or
kola
or
ak
ṣ
a
fruits, in the same way the mind holds speech and name. If the mind thinks: I want to study the hymns, then they are studied; I want to celebrate sacrifices, then they are celebrated; I want to obtain children and cattle, then they are obtained; I want to devote myself to this and the other world, then they are devoted to. For the Self,
ā
tman
, is mind, the world is mind,
brahman
is mind. Venerate the mind.”

*   *   *

Sacri
fi
ce is not only the offering of a specific substance, such as the prodigious
soma.
Sacrifice is also a concerted action that produces a substance: “‘It is honey,’ they say; for honey means the sacrifice.” But if we watch a sacrifice, we don’t see this honey. We see gestures accompanied by words. And the essence of the word is in its being a substitute: but for what? For the thing named, say the Western theorists. The Vedic ritualists thought differently: the word substitutes the honey produced by the sacrifice, honey that the gods sucked and drained away to prevent men finding the path to heaven through the sacrifice: “The sacrifice is speech: for with it he provides that part of the sacrifice which has been sucked and drained away.” For the word to substitute the honey, it has to have a sacrificial nature already. Let us recall how Yajña, Sacri
fi
ce, as soon as he saw V
ā
c, Speech, thought: “Let me couple with her,” as if nothing for him were quite like it. And nothing attracted him more. This is why speech comes into action.

For the Vedic ritualists, everything involved composition, work. Even the splendor of Indra (who is also the sun) was not so in the beginning: “In the same manner that everything else is now dark, so was he then.” It was only when the gods composed their “favorite forms and desirable powers” that Indra began to shine. Never had composition been recognized as having so much power: in its forms, gestures, words. This is the secret inheritance that ritual—through devious paths and deep oblivion—has consigned to art.

VII

Ā
TMAN

Brahman
or the knowledge of it are no different among very powerful beings such as Vāmadeva or in the much less powerful men of today. But one may suspect that in men of today the fruit of the knowledge of
brahman
is uncertain.

—Śaṅkara,
B
ṛ
had
ā
ra
ṇ
yakopani
ṣ
adbh
āṣ
ya
, 1.4.10

From the
Ṛ
gveda
to the
Bhagavad G
ī
t
ā
a way of reasoning is developed that never acknowledges a single subject, but rather presupposes a dual subject. This is because the constitution of the mind is dual: consisting of a gaze that perceives (eats) the world and of a gaze that contemplates the gaze directed at the world. The first expression of this idea appears with the two birds in hymn 1.164 of the
Ṛ
gveda
: “Two birds, a couple of friends, are perched on the same tree. One of them eats the sweet berry of the
pippal
; the other, without eating, watches.” There is no more basic revelation than this. And the
Ṛ
gveda
presents it with the clarity of its enigmatic language. The dual constitution of the mind implies that two birds dwell perpetually within each of us: the Self,
ā
tman
, and the I,
aham.
Friends, alike, sitting on the tree at the same level, one might seem the double of the other. And so it is in the life of many, who never manage to distinguish between them. But, once their difference has been recognized, everything changes. Every moment becomes the superimposition of two perceptions that can add together, cancel each other out, multiply each other. When they multiply each other, according to the mysterious formula 1
×
1, thought springs forth. Even if, seen from outside, all remains the same. The answer seems still to be 1.

Ā
tman
, the Self, is a discovery. How to attain it was the ultimate doctrine for the disciples who had studied and assimilated all the Vedas. No one attained it unless he was capable of considering what was going on in his own mind as an uninterrupted exchange between the I,
aham
, and the Self: similar and opposing powers, the one—
aham
—intrusive yet insubstantial, the other—
ā
tman
—supreme and untarnishable, yet difficult to coax out from its habitual hiding place. To reach it required constant work, and yet it was only a small part of the way the Self took to reveal itself. And then there was everything that appeared before the eyes: the world. And here another endless round of exchanges began that ended up entirely transforming the appearance of the outside world, to the point of making it become external by convention only. Meanwhile, in parallel, the inner world expanded and accommodated the essential parts of everything: worlds, gods, Vedas, the vital breaths. “Let him know this: ‘All the worlds I have placed within my Self, and my Self I have placed in all the worlds; all the gods I have placed within my Self, and my Self I have placed within all the gods; all the Vedas I have placed within my Self, and my Self I have placed within all the Vedas; all the vital breaths I have placed within my Self, and myself I have placed within all the vital breaths.’ For imperishable, in fact, are the worlds, imperishable the gods, imperishable the Vedas, imperishable the breaths, imperishable is all this: and in truth anyone who knows this passes from imperishable to imperishable, conquers recurring death and reaches the full measure of life.”