Skip to main content

Mount Analogue


The Ascension of Mount Analogue by Remedios Varo

"He questioned us one after the other. Each of his questions, although quite simple - Who were we? Why had we come? - caught us off guard and shook us to the core. Who are you? Who am I? We could not answer him as we would a consular official or customs agent. Tell one's name and profession? What good would that do? But who are you? And what are you? The words we pronounced - we had no others - were lifeless, repugnant, and grotesque like cadavers. We knew henceforth that we could no longer pay the guides of Mount Analogue with words."

Mount Analogue is an unfinished novel by the French writer, Rene Daumal. He succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of thirty six leaving his manuscript in mid sentence and with only a sketch as to how it was to be completed (in a further two chapters). It is (and was to be) short yet it is a beautiful, mysterious and resonant tale.

Led by Father Sogol, once a monk, now a mountaineer and inventor, a small party make their way to a hidden continent, Mount Analogue, whose base is rooted in earth and whose pinnacle is in heaven and begin their ascent. In essence that is it but along the way, Daumal explores through poetic image, metaphor, allegory and metaphysical sleight of hand what it might mean for a person to embark on a heavenly ascent? What it might mean to answer the question who am I? And why such a question demands a change in consciousness rather than answer in any of the accepted currencies of the world, most especially words!

Father Sogol (Logos) is modelled after Gurdjieff of whom Daumal was a pupil and like his master, Daumal, places his deepest faith in asking the right question in the right way (rather than constructing answers). It is only when: who am I? strikes the very depths, when one suffers it, that a new way of being emerges as the answering activity. Reading Mount Analogue, time and again, I found myself not only thinking but feeling the dissatisfaction of any simple answer to that apparently simple question. Like a New Testament parable the transparency and simplicity of the text is deceptive. It lures you in to pondering at the heart.

There is too a characteristic emphasis on the importance of the group - the journey to Mount Analogue is a pilgrimage but not one aimed at transforming an individual pilgrim's soul but that of a group sharing the struggle to achieve a full humanity. The journey can only be embarked upon, Daumal suggests, when the group forms (even though Father Sogol, on his own, 'knows' the way) and as you ascend, you must prepare the ground for the group immediately following. No ascent is possible if it is not grounded in preparing the way for others.

I find this emphasis (that was a characteristic of Gurdjieff) deeply moving. The Bodhisattva renounces enlightenment until the last blade of grass is enlightened because no enlightenment is fully possible until this is so, all is transfigured. Hell will be empty at the 'end of time' because, as St Silouan of Athos says, 'Love could not bear it'.

Each step of the way is one's own and a opening for the step of another. We are saved together or not at all.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Buddha meets Christ in embrace

Reading Lama Anagarika Govinda is proving nostalgic on a number of fronts. I recall my first reading of it in my first year at university, bought at Watkins, the famous 'esoteric' bookshop in Cecil Court in London. I sat in my hall of residence room transfixed by a world made familiar; and, it was deepening of a commitment to contemplation (which has been observed fitfully)! I remember returning, at the time, to my school to give a talk to the combined fifth form on Buddhism and using Govinda as the backbone of my delivery (both this book, and his equally wonderful, the Foundations of Tibetan Buddhism). I was voted (I immodestly remember) their best invited speaker of the year. I had even bought a recording of Tibetan music as opener and closer! He reminded me of how important Buddhism was (and is) to my own thinking and comprehension of my experience. The Buddha's First Sermon in the Deer Park was the first religious text I read (of my own volition) at the tender age...
13 comments
Read more

Luminous Spaces - the poetry of Olav H. Hauge

Don't give me the whole truth, don't give me the sea for my thirst, don't give me the sky when I ask for light, but give me a glint, a dewy wisp, a mote as the birds bear water-drops from their bathing and the wind a grain of salt. It began with a poem, this poem, in Mark Oakley's 'The Splash of Words: Believing in Poetry' - a wonderful series of meditations on particular poems, one each chapter. The poet is the Norwegian, Olav H. Hague (1908-1994). I immediately ordered, 'Luminous Spaces: Selected Poems & Journals' and was enjoying dipping until, at the weekend, recovering from a stomach bug, I decided to read them through and fell wholeheartedly for a new friend. Hague was born on a farm. His formal education was brought short by a combination of restricted means, an inability to conquer mathematics: and, a voracious diet of reading ranging beyond the confines of any confining curriculum. He went to a horticultural college instead an...
1 comment
Read more

Red Shambala

Nicholas Roerich is oft depicted as a spiritual seeker, peace visionary, author of numberless paintings, and a brave explorer of Central Asia. However, Andrei Znamenski in his 'Red Shambala: Magic, Prophecy, and Geopolitics in the Heart of Asia' has him perform another role - that of geopolitical schemer. The scheming did have at its heart a religious vision - of a coalition of Buddhist races in Central Asia that would establish a budding utopia - the Shambala of the title - from which the truths of Buddhism (and co-operative labour) would flow around the globe. This would require the usurpation of the 13th Dalai Lama to be replaced by the Panchen Lama guided by the heroic saviour (Roerich) who appears above dressed for the part. In the achievement of these aims, the Roerichs (including his wife, Helena, who had a visionary connection with 'Mahatmas' whose cryptic messaging guided their steps) were willing to entertain strange bedfellows that at one time include...
Post a Comment
Read more