‘And of course the river rose high and stood still, but suddenly opened out a blue lane, small as a village footpath, through which Radha walked to the other side. And coming to the opposite shore, she thanked the river, and saluting the Great Sage Durvasa, in many a manner of courtesies and words of welcome, spread the leaf, and laid him the food.
‘Durvasa was mighty hungry and he ate the food as though the palm of his hand went down his gullet. “Ah, Ah,” he said and belched and made himself happy, with curds and rice and many meats, perfumed and spiced with saffron, and when there was nothing left in leaf or vessel, he rose, went to the river and washed his hands. Radha took the vessels to the waters, too, to wash, threw the leaf into the Jumna, and stood there to leave. Then it was she suddenly remembered, the river was in flood. Sri Krishna had told her what to say while going and not what to utter while coming back.
‘Durvasa understood her question before she asked — for the sages have this power too — and he said: “Tell the river, Durvasa the eternal upavasi,6 says to the river, ‘Open and let Radha pass through to the other shore.’”
‘Radha obeyed but she was sore sorrowful. “I have seen him eat till his palm entered his gullet, and he has belched and passed his hand over his belly with satisfaction. It is a lie, a big lie,” she said, but she went to the river thoughtful, very thoughtful. “River,” she said, “Durvasa who is ever in upavasa says open and let me pass.”
‘And the river opened a lane just as wide as a village pathway, and the waves held themselves over her head, and would not move. She came to the other shore and returned to the palace in heavy distress. “Yes, nature is a lie, nature believes and obeys lies. Lord, what a world,” she said to herself, and going into the Hall of Sorrowing, shut herself in and began to sob. “Lord, what a lie the world is, what a lie.”
‘Sri Krishna knew the cause and cadence of this all, and gently entered the Hall of Sorrowing: “Beloved, why might you be in sorrow?” he said.
‘“My Lord,” she answered, “the river believes you are a brahmachari, and after all who should deny it better than me, your wife. And then I go to Durvasa and he eats with his palm going down his gullet, and he says, ‘Tell the river, Durvasa who’s ever in upavasa asks you to open and let Radha pass.’ And the river opens herself, makes a way large as a village pathway and I pass over to this side. The world is a fib, a misnomer, a lie.”
‘“The world, my dear, is not a lie, it is an illusion. Besides, tell me, is my body your husband, Radha?”
‘“No, My Lord.”
‘“Is my mind your husband, Radha?”
‘“No, my Lord.”
‘“Then what is it you mean when you say to yourself, ‘Krishna, my husband’.”
‘“Assuredly something beyond the body and beyond the mind — the Principle.”
‘“And tell me, my love, can you possess that, can you possess it?”
‘“No, my Lord, how can I possess the Absolute? The ‘I’ is the Absolute.” And she fell at the Lord’s feet and understood, and lived ever after in the light of the Truth.’
To be free is to know one is free, beyond the body and beyond the mind; to love is to know one is love, to be pure is to know one is purity. Impurity is in action and reaction: what is born must die, what has form must vanish and stink. La Charogne of Baudelaire was a fact; La Charogne was a fact to accept, so that Cézanne could paint the mauve and violent sky of Mont Ste-Victoire. You need not take consolamentum and jump into the fire to be a Cathar, for what are you but a Cathar? Everyone, beyond his body and beyond his mind, is a Cathar. The Ganges dissolves all sin. Even the ashes of the dead that the fire has burnt must dissolve in the Ganges and have absolution.
Sakala kalusha bhangé svarga sopana sangé
Taralata Gangé Devi Gange prasida
Dissolver of blemishes
Companion of the Waters
Dancing and sparkling Ganges I worship.
Benares is everywhere where you are, says an old Vedantic text, and all waters are the Ganges. To realize this is to be a true Cathar. The rest is heresy.
But I had such a tender heart for the Cathars, as I had for the Buddhists, that I felt I must go down south, and see in the light of the Languedoc the truth of this truth, so to say. Yet the Church too had its truth — you must remember what a kind and gentle Christian even Innocent III was. On the other hand, how could one condemn those who, with such beauty in their eyes and their faces lit with a divine conviction, jumped down the precipice at Montségur, or shut themselves up in the caves of Orolac, the Holy Grail in their hands. Death itself to them was life.
The Cathar, the Saint, wants to transform the world in his image — he the supreme anarchist. The sage knows the world is but perception; he is king, he, Krishna the king of kings. The one cannot be many, but the many can be one, and the one thus transcended to its non-dual source, the ekam advayam, the one- not-two is Truth. (In between is the moralist, the Republican of Ferney, with one foot in royalist France, the other in Zwingli’s Switzerland, in the contemplation of the lake, memoryful.) Brother, my brother, the world is not beautiful — you are beauty. Be beauty and see not the beautiful, my Parsifal.
I went down to Montpellier again, to that very lovely arched town of Henri IV, took a room on Boulevard Ledru-Rollin, just off the recurrent aqueduct of Le Peroux. Wandering backwards and forwards through that light and clear air, wandering to Béziers to see the Black Church again, going to Sète to see the Cemetery, taking a train and going to Carcassonne, feeling the earth, and looking at the faces of the men and women of Languedoc, I understood much that no history could say. There was great kindness in the sunshine, a keen perceptivity about the cypresses, the oaks of the garigue; some love had passed by there, that had no name as yet, and had hallowed the land. The minstrelsy of Languedoc had made modern man, as Denis de Rougement explained, and the troubadour was the forerunner of Paul Valéry. The Lady had to be, for the Cemetery of Sete to have meaning. The Mediterranean had to be, for happiness to be. In that sunshine, in the touch of that volcanic earth, man could believe in his own realistic eternity. Greece made life real. Montségur made death real. To believe in death is to commit suicide — the Cathar Bernard Bort refused consolamentum because he thought he could not die: quia non putabat mori. Life that prolongs itself beyond death, beyond all deaths, is orthodox, is the real law. ‘Never at any time am I subject to Death,’ says the Rig Veda. The only real illusion, mrityu, mara, is Death. Man seeks for ever the death of death.
You can live in life and think on death. Can you be in death and think on life? La Charogne proved the soul. Valéry fulfilled Bertrand de Born:
Lumière!… ou toi, la mort!
Instead of life being turned into death, death had to be integrated into life. The cemetery proved the Mediterranean, with its serrated cypresses going upward into the light of the hill, the silly tower of the church, and its empty bell, showed the wide, blue, free Mediterranean was the norm, the reality. The Mediterranean is inclusive of Sete. ‘La mer, la mer toujours recommencée.’