Island - Aldous Huxley [38]
“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?”
“Of course.”
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 categorical 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