There are, it seems to me, only two possible perspectives on human understanding: the horizontal and (or) the vertical. They could also be named the anthropomorphic and the abhuman. The vertical movement is the sheer upward thrust towards the unnameable, the unutterable, the very source of wholeness. The horizontal is the human condition expressing itself, in terms of, concern for man as one’s neighbour—biological and social, the predicament of one who knows how to say, you and I.

The vertical2 rises slowly, desperately, to move from the I to the non-I, as non-dual Vedanta would say—the move towards the impersonal, the universal (though there is no universe there, so to say) reaching out to ultimate being—when there is just being there are no two entities, no I, and you. The I then is not even all, for there is none other to say I to. It is the nobility of Nirvana, of zero, of light.

The horizontal again, on its long, arduous and confused pathways will reach the same ultimacy by divesting the I of its many vestments through concern for the other, by compassion for the other, and will yet leap into Sakka’s flame, as gift, as sacrifice, like the Bodhisattva hare did, and reach the heart of ‘coolness’ in the heaped up fire.

The vertical then is the inherent reality in the horizontal: the I and you, the I and I, so no I but ‘I’, and never I again. You can and must go beyond yourself, but you cannot go beyond the Self, the ‘I’.

II

Putting it in other terms (as my friend Denis de Rougemont might say) in the symbolism of the Cross, the vertical is the impersonal personal, the horizontal the neighbour, the human universe. Hence it is the vertical, that is the longer, de Rougemont would say, the person (from persona) being the ultimate entity. Human experience then is the point of this intersection—man, at every moment, is expressing the crucifixion: the instance of love: the altar of the cathedral, the cathedral itself according to tradition, being shaped in the form of the natural person. Excruciation then is the nature of the holy human condition, the Christian way.

No, Raja, I must start from where I am

I am those monsters which visit my dreams,

And reveal to me my hidden essence.

No help, Raja, my part is agony,

struggle, abjection, self-love and self-hate,

prayer for the Kingdom

and reading Pascal.3

III

Lao Tse said: To go very far you stay where you are. The point of intersection of the here and there—is the no-where, the no-when, the Truth.

In the horizontal, the geometrical Vedic hearth is shaped as a woman, that is, the world, from which Agni, the fire god, the masculine principle, goes vertically upward, shining. He illumines everything, vertically burning it all up: Holy Ash, is Truth.4