"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."
"Maithuna is dhyana," Ranga concluded. A new word, he evidently felt, would explain everything.
"But what is dhyana?" Will asked.
"Dhyana is contemplation."
"Contemplation."
Will thought of that strawberry-pink alcove above the Charing Cross Road. Contemplation was hardly the word he would have chosen. And yet even there, on second thoughts, even there he had found a kind of deliverance. Those alienations in the changing light of Porter's Gin were alienations from his odious daytime self. They were also, unfortunately, alienations from all the rest of his being-alienations from love, from intelligence, from common decency, from all consciousness but that of an excruciating frenzy by corpse-light or in the rosy glow of the cheapest, vulgarest illusion. He looked again at Radha's shining face. What happiness! What a manifest conviction, not of the sin that Mr. Bahu was so determined to make the world safe for, but of its serene and blissful opposite! It was profoundly touching. But he refused to be touched. Noli me tangere-it was a categor ical imperative. Shifting the focus of his mind, he managed to see the whole thing as reassuringly ludicrous. What shall we do to be saved? The answer is in four letters.
Smiling at his own little joke, "Were you taught maithuna at school?" he asked ironically.
"At school," Radha answered with a simple matter-of-fact-ness that took all the Rabelaisian wind out of his sails.
"Everybody's taught it," Ranga added.
"And when does the teaching begin?"
"About the same time as trigonometry and advanced biology. That's between fifteen and fifteen and a half."
"And after they've learned maithuna, after they've gone out into the world and got married-that is, if you ever do get married?"
"Oh, we do, we do," Radha assured him.
"Do they still practice it?"
"Not all of them, of course. But a good many do."
"All the time?"
"Except when they want to have a baby."
"And those who don't want to have babies, but who might like to have a little change from maithuna-what do they do?"
"Contraceptives," said Ranga laconically.
"And are the contraceptives available?"