Work in Progress

And Livia was going to detonate it – the bomb of our stupidity. Which has a very long fuse. A fuse stretching from here … to wherever she is. She’s going to push down the plunger.

And do you know what: the Organisational Management move is the detonator.

Really?

This is the latest phase of Livia’s war against Organisational Management. She’s playing 5D chess. O.M. will never know what’s hit ‘em.

What we are! What we could be! Behind enemy lines! Placed carefully. Lodged where we might do the most damage! Ready to be set off by the right trigger words. Like some sleeper cell – so asleep that we don’t even know who we are.

We have to invert the disgust, somehow. Let it become … what? Change it. Convert it.


We have to reach the greater disgust – that’s the thing. Find our way to the Disgust with Everything.


Drunk with disgust. Drunk from disgust.


Gazelle hasn’t even had any of the wine yet. Suck it down, Gazelle – see what it does to you. Maybe you’ll reach the Greater Disgust straightaway. A sign of your advanced spiritual evolution.


A toast: to poison. And to lies! Don’t forget lies! And to the opposite of poison, the opposite of lies! To tensions. To contradictions. To the Most Low and to the Most High!


We were especially attuned to this. We were formed to taste it, this disgust. It’s like having a very fine palate. It’s like being a connoisseur.

All the flavours of disgust. All the foulness. That’s what we can taste. In all its nuances. In all its … subtleties.


To the antidote! To truth! To the Most Low and to the Most High. To tensions. To contradictions. To opposites. To extremes!


The diseased terroir. The fouled terroir. That’s what we’re drinking: disease. That’s what we’re drinking: the foulness. That’s what’s running in our bloodstream. In our digestive tract.

It probably crossed the blood-brain barrier, long ago . It’s accumulating in our brain. In our reproductive organs. It’s giving us neurological damage and heart damage and strange new cancers …


The pedagogy of disgust. The pedagogy of revulsion.


We don’t deserve death. We don’t warrant an end. We have to keep going. So we can become as disgusting as possible. Reach the point of maximum disgustingness.

We’re already there. No we’re not!


Disgust isn’t just psychological. It isn’t some mental state. It’s ontological.


When disgust gets existential, that’s when things really start.

Uma’s, like, the boss teacher, instructing the gods about the ultimate reality – about Brahman. She’s really serene and philosophical. The gods are kinda arrogant. They think they know everything.

Then this mysterious appears to them. Something really enigmatic, like the monoliths in 2001 or something. The gods are scratching their heads, wandering what it is.

Then Indra, who’s, like, king of the gods, admits that he doesn’t know – that he can’t know. That he’s ignorant. An important moment. And he asks for enlightenment. He asks God – he discovers humility.

And Uma appears to tell him that he’s seeing Brahman, ultimate reality. Or an aspect of reality. That makes all experience possible. By whose will does the mind think? By whose command does the breath move? By whose presence do speech and sight function?’

The answer is, Brahman, philosopher. From the lips of Uma. The power behind every power. Who can only be revealed from calm, serene Uma …


What’s out there’s in you, too. That’s what I remember. Brahman’s the unknown. We can’t dominate it. We can’t even face it directly. And it’s silent – the ultimate, silent reality. Uma – in the Upanishad – speaks of it, but only to show that it’s beyond speech. Brahman’s all about awakening.


I’ll bet Mother knows all about Brahman.


Mother’s about the earth, philosopher. She’s about life and fertility and creativity and nurturing. The earth as a living, nurturing force and all that. Cycles of life – birth and growth and death and renewal. Care and power. Protecting her offspring. I think she has a lot to do with Brahman.


‘He who thinks he knows It, does not know it / He who knows that he does not know It, knows It’. That’s what it says, philosopher. You can’t know Brahman.


Brahman is ‘that which the eye cannot see, that which the mind cannot think, that which speech cannot express’. yet because of Brahman, the eye sees. Because of Brahman, the mind thinks. Because of Brahman, speech speaks … What does that mean?

That Brahman is the condition for experience, not part of experience.


Ask your questions to Mother, philosopher. ‘By whose will does the mind think, Mother? By whose command does the breath move? By whose presence do speech and sight function?’

I’ve been known to wear a sari.


We actually had an India wedding. It was in Vienna, where my parents live. We flew a priest out. A long blessing. Alan was an angel. He liked the exoticism. The priest looked like something straight from the comics. You know – those Indian comics.

Amar Chitra Katha. Sure, I know them.

Which was your favourite? My dad used to buy us the spiritually elevating ones. Kinda dull. The one about Sankara. And about that sage who went about in the nude. We had the bumper collection about Vishnu’s avatars, too. The fish, the lion man, Rama and Krishna – the lot.


Can you speak Hindi?

No.

Tamil?

No.

Not can I. Well, malayalam. We always spoke English at home. My parents. Even my grandparents. That’s what they decided.


I studied a bit of Sanskrit. I went to an evening class. It was hard. The way you were supposed to combine the words. Sandhi, right? We read the Upanishads. I can’t remember which ones. I can’t remember anything.


My family are Keralan. Keralan Christians. But I know all the Hindu stories.


Do you go back, ever?

We went when my dad died. That was a while ago. Not since then.


We’re not made for this weather, are we?

This wind. This wind is fierce.

It’s okay if you’re dressed right.

Are you saying I’m not dressed right?

My dad’s never got used to the cold. He’s always cold, in the middle of summer. Our kind’s made for the heat, philosopher.

Teach yourself Sanskrit books. Is that really what you’re doing? I can remember some Sanskrit. My dad taught me. Tat Tvam Asi. Do you remember that?

That thou art.

Exactly. And I’m actually named after an Upanishad. Or a character in an Upanishad. Or something.


Learning Sanskrit: that’s what you should be doing. Writing about Indian philosophy. Drawing on the Indian Imaginarium.


We should embrace the Indian Imaginarium, philosopher. The Indian archives. Probably all kinds of things in the Puranas.


Indian mythology is just there to be raided.


There are funding opportunities, philosophy. We could put in a research bid together – wouldn’t that be romantic?

Unlocking the Archive: Management lessons from the Puranas. How about that? What’s Sanskrit for Management? Lessons from the Upanishads: now that’s a book title. Could be a real airport book in Chennia and Hyderabad …

She wanted to hear the cry of the Vedas. To sound the Upanishadic roar.


What was the Grundstimmung of ancient Indian thought? she wondered.


There was a European philosophy department – that was bad enough. But the next dimension was to open an Indian department within the European department. An Indian crypt! An Indian cult. Why not? Discernible only to those in the know.


Indian philosophy funnelled through European philosophy. Squeezed through it. Like a tamarind pulp through a sieve. That was Livia’s plan.


Dreaming of the Sanskrit leap. The Sanskrit pirouette.


Having learnt nothing of modern French or modern German – or, for that matter, modern Italian – I had gone back to learn nothing of Biblical Greek and koine Greek. And Latin! Don’t forget Latin!

Having travelled a certain path with Indo-European languages, I would now go back still farther. All the way to the cradle of so many of the European philosophical languages: Sanskrit.

Not learning Sanskrit would be an even greater triumph than not learning all my other languages.


Some great work of Indian-European synthesis. Of almost absolute spuriousness. Of brazen incompetence.

Like one of those crazy books people send to philosophy departments out of the blue (The Bottomless Depths of the Irreal, The Colour of Uncreated Light.)


The Indian abyss. The Indian crack.


We have the Indian gear in our gearbox. We can stick-shift to Indian, when we really need it. We can inject an Indian turbo boost into our European engine.


Livia, never happier than the idea that I was reading Ramanuja. And Sankara. Are you reading Ramanuja? She’d ask me. And Sankara?

Livia, introducing me as her Indian philosopher in residence. As the department Indian philosopher. As the resident Ramanuja and Sankara specialist. She didn’t quite introduce me as a scholar of Sanskrit – that was a step too far.


The tension created by the UK Indian philosopher was greater than UK European philosopher. It’s the same as if the rest of us weren’t would-be UK Indian philosophers, too.

But there are too few UK Indian philosophers. No departments of Indian philosophy – where you can even study it, Indian philosophy. No one seeking careers in UK Indian philosophy. No posts ever advertised in UK Indian philosophy. You can’t publish Indian philosophy in analytic philosophy journals. In the European philosophy journals too, for that matter. Comparative religious journals, maybe, but what philosopher ever reads those?


Of course, no one would even notice if I failed at my UK version of Indian philosophy. Like a tree dropping in a faraway forest. If I fucked up, Indian style. Just as barely anyone noticed if I failed UK European philosophy style.

I would only ever be a secret failure. A failure in the darkness. But all the more impressive a failure for that.


Couldn’t you use your amazing Indian philosophy powers to save us? In our last hour, our most desperate moment, you could whip out your Indian philosophy to save us. The flaming mace of Indra, or whatever.


You were the Indian, and I was … the girlfriend.

The actually intelligent. The philosophically able. The one with the looks. And the mystique.

We have to get out of this somehow. Explode all this. Light the fuse.

Perhaps it’s already lit. Perhaps the fuse is just very long.

We’re the fuse, don’t you see? Livia lit us …

And we’re going to explode? Like Livia’s suicide bombers? Is that our fate?

We’ll only make sense if exploded: that’s what Livia thought. As philosophical grenades, pins pulled out …

We were fucked up in the right direction – that’s what Livia thought. We had an innate Gnosticism, that only had to be brought on. Encouraged.


We had a sense of Urgency. We were touched by a sense of the Apocalypse. Livia liked that. We weren’t Complacent.

There was something wrong with us. We were one sided. Exaggerated. We had little … sense of proportion. Little to no balance.

We weren’t well rounded individuals. Something had gone wrong in our development. We had mutated in some way. Dysgenics was at work. A kind of warping of the soul.

We were Damaged – no question. We were fuck ups – but apocalyptic fuck ups.


Singing our dysgenic songs. Our mutants’ laments. In the fuck up’s choir.


God’s favourite fuck ups – that’s who we were.


We were mushrooms, growing in the world’s night. Mould, growing on the world’s walls.


We ring stupidity’s bells. We sound the stupidity’s basso profundo.

I’m farther out than you, philosopher. I’m more desperate than you. I’m more lost than you.


It’s not even angst. It’s not even suffering. It’s not even pain. Just numbness. Just … dissociation.

*There’s an evil in the world.

The evil is the world.


So the universe is Hitler, or something. And that’s what’s wrong? I don’t see how … things can be evil? Like, stuff? Isn’t it us? Don’t we bring good and evil into the universe? Isn’t it about what we call good and evil?


Don’t you ever listen to yourself and wonder how you could think these things?