Will had to admit that he had only the haziest notion.
"And to tell you the truth," said Ranga, with a laugh that broke irrepressibly through the crust of his pedantry, "I don't really know much more than you do. Tantra's an enormous subject and most of it, I guess, is just silliness and superstition-not worth bothering about. But there's a hard core of sense. If you're a Tantrik, you don't renounce the world or deny its value; you don't try to escape into a Nirvana apart from life, as the monks of the Southern School do. No, you accept the world, and you make use of it; you make use of everything you do, of everything that happens to you, of all the things you see and hear and taste and touch, as so many means to your liberation from the prison of yourself."
"Good talk," said Will in a tone of polite skepticism.
"And something more besides," Ranga insisted. "That's the difference," he added-and youthful pedantry modulated into the eagerness of youthful proselytism-"that's the difference between your philosophy and ours. Western philosophers, even the best of them-they're nothing more than good talkers. Eastern philosophers are often rather bad talkers, but that doesn't matter. Talk isn't the point. Their philosophy is pragmatic and operational. Like the philosophy of modern physics-except that the operations in question are psychological and the results transcendental. Your metaphysicians make statements about the nature of man and the universe; but they don't offer the reader any way of testing the truth of those statements. When we make statements, we follow them up with a list of operations that can be used for testing the validity of what we've been saying. For example, tat tvam asi, 'thou are That'-the heart of all our philosophy. Tat tvam asi," he repeated. "It looks like a proposition in metaphysics; but what it actually refers to is a psychological experience, and the operations by means of which the experience can be lived through are described by our philosophers, so that anyone who's willing to perform the necessary operations can test the validity of tat tvam asi for himself. The operations arc-called yoga, or dhyana, or Zen-or, in certain special circumstances, maithuna."
"Which brings us back to my original question. What is ntaithuna!"
"Maybe you'd better ask Radha."
Will turned to the little nurse. "What is it?"
u Maithuna," she answered gravely, "is the yoga of love."
"Sacred or profane?"
"There's no difference."
"That's the whole point," Ranga put in. "When you do maithuna, profane love is sacred love."
"Buddhatvanyoshidyonisansritan," the girl quoted.
"None of your Sanskirt! What does it mean?"
"How would you translate Buddhatvan, Ranga?"
"Buddhaness, Buddheity, the quality of being enlightened."
Radha nodded and turned back to Will. "It means that Buddhaness is in the yoni."
"In the yoni?" Will remembered those little stone emblems of the Eternal Feminine that he had bought, as presents for the girls at the office, from a hunchbacked vendor of bondieuseries at Benares. Eight annas for a black yoni; twelve for the still more sacred image of the yoni-lingam. "Literally in the yoniV he asked. "Or metaphorically?"
"What a ridiculous question!" said the little nurse, and she laughed her clear unaffected laugh of pure amusement. "Do you think we make love metaphorically? Buddhatvan yoshidyonisan-sritan" she repeated. "It couldn't be more completely and absolutely literal."
"Did you ever hear of the Oneida Community?" Ranga now asked.
Will nodded. He had known an American historian who specialized in nineteenth-century communities. "But why do you know about it?" he asked.
"Because it's mentioned in all our textbooks of applied philosophy. Basically, maithuna is the same as what the Oneida peopie called Male Continence. And that was the same as what Roman Catholics mean by coitus reservatus."
"Reservatus," the little nurse repeated. "It always makes me want to laugh. 'Such a reserved young man'!" The dimples reappeared and there was a flash of white teeth.
"Don't be silly," said Ranga severely. "This is serious."
She expressed her contrition. "But reservatus was really too
funny."
"In a word," Will concluded, "it's just birth control without
contraceptives."
"But that's only the beginning of the story," said Ranga. "Maithuna is also something else. Something even more important." The undergraduate pedant had reasserted himself. "Remember," he went on earnestly, "remember the point that Freud was always harping on."
"Which point? There were so many."
"The point about the sexuality of children. What we're born with, what we experience all through infancy and childhood, is a sexuality that isn't concentrated on the genitals; it's a sexuality diffused throughout the whole organism. That's the paradise we inherit. But the paradise gets lost as the child grows up. Maithuna is the organized attempt to regain that paradise." He turned to Radha. "You've got a good memory," he said. "What's that phrase of Spinoza's that they quote in the applied philosophy book?"
" 'Make the body capable of doing many things,' " she recited. " 'This will help you to perfect the mind and so to come to the intellectual love of God.' "
"Hence all the yogas," said Ranga. "Including maithuna."
"And it's a real yoga," the girl insisted. "As good as raja yoga, or karma yoga, or bhakti yoga. In fact, a great deal better, so far as most people are concerned. Maithuna really gets them there."
"What's 'there'?" Will asked.
" 'There' is where you know."
"Know what?"
"Know who in fact you are-and believe it or not," she added, "tat tvam asi-thou art That, and so am I: That is me." The dimples came to life, the teeth flashed. "And That's also him." She pointed at Ranga. "Incredible, isn't it?" She stuck out her tongue at him. "And yet it's a fact."
Ranga smiled, reached out and with an extended forefinger touched the tip of her nose. "And not merely a fact," he said. "A revealed truth." He gave the nose a little tap. "A revealed truth," he repeated. "So mind your P's and Q's, young woman."
"What I'm wondering," said Will, "is why we aren't all enlightened-I mean, if it's just a question of making love with a rather special kind of technique. What's the answer to that?"
"I'll tell you," Ranga began.
But the girl cut him short. "Listen," she said, "listen!"
Will listened. Faint and far off, but still distinct, he heard the strange inhuman voice that had first welcomed him to Pala. "Attention," it was saying. "Attention, Attention ..."
"That bloody bird again!"
"But that's the secret."
"Attention? But a moment ago you were saying it was something else. What about that young man who's so reserved?"
"That's just to make it easier to pay attention."
"And it does make it easier," Ranga confirmed. "And that's the whole point of maithuna. It's not the special technique that turns love-making into yoga; it's the kind of awareness that the technique makes possible. Awareness of one's sensations and awareness of the not-sensation in every sensation."
"What's a not-sensation?"
"It's the raw material for sensation that my not-self provides me with."
"And you can pay attention to your not-self?"
"Ofcourse."
Will turned to the little nurse. "You too?"
"To myself," she answered, "and at the same time to my not-self. And to Ranga's not-self, and to Ranga's self, and to Ranga's body, and to my body and everything it's feeling. And to all the love and the friendship. And to the mystery of the other person- the perfect stranger, who's the other half of your own self, and the same as your not-self. And all the while one's paying attention to all the things that, if one were sentimental, or worse, if one were spiritual like the poor old Rani, one would find so unromantic and gross and sordid even. But they aren't sordid, because one's also paying attention to the fact that, when one's fully aware of them, those things are just as beautiful as all the rest, just as wonderful."