Report to Greco
Vienna 1921. Closeted inside an apartment there, my favourite is deeply engrossed in writing a play on "Buddha'. He had been grooming himself into a state of ascetic discipline for some time to write this play. Cut off from the enticing city outside, he listened to the voice of this new master sitting inside him - " Desire is flame, love is flame, virtue, hope ,"I" and "you", heaven and hell are flames. One thing and one thing only is light: - the renouncement of flame". His mind was like a yellow heliotrope and Buddha the sun. Slowly, the writer was getting submerged in Buddha.
When he finished the play, he felt that he had paved a new road to salvation. Now he had no fear as no desire could conquer him. He slowly opened the window of his apartment. Leaning out of the window he looked at the men, women, cars, groceries, fruits and drinks on the street outside. He then went to the street outside to mingle with that wave of crowd and to breathe the city. He walked to the nearby movie theatre to see what was going on there. The movie appeared boring. Next to him sat a girl and he could smell her cinnamon breath. From time to time her knee touched him. He shuddered, but he did not draw away. In that semi darkness, he could see her smiling glance. He got up to leave and she followed him. Strangely, he struck up a conversation with her and soon they were in a park outside. It was summer and the night was sweet as honey. The moon shone above and the song of a nightingale hidden deep in the lilacs could be heard.
"Frieda, Will you spent night with me ". These terrible words escaped from his lips.
"Not tonight. I will come Tomorrow", the girl replied
He came back to his apartment. Something terrible suddenly happened to him. His face started swelling and he heard the blood rushing to his head. His soul had become enraged. Little by little, his lips, cheeks and forehead bloated into a big mass. Stumbling along the room, he went to look at the mirror and he was aghast with his horribly disfigured face. His eyes were like two barely visible slits.
The next day he remembered his promise to the girl Frieda. He called the chambermaid and gave her a telegram to be sent to Frieda- "Don't come today, Come tomorrow". A day went by, two, three and a week had passed with no improvement in his illness. Afraid that the girl might come, he kept on sending her the telegram- "Don't come today, come tomorrow". Finally he could not stand it any longer and fixed an appointment with Dr. William Stekel, the renowned professor of psychology and disciple of Sigmund Freud.
The professor began to hear his confession. He related his life history, the events in Vienna, his search for salvation in Buddha. At the end, the professor burst into a shrill, hysterical laughter and said -"Enough, Enough!, the professor laughed a bit sarcastically and continued, “This disease you are suffering is called "Ascetics' disease" and it is extremely rare in our times, because what body, today, obeys the soul?. In ancient times, the saints who stayed in Theban deserts used to run to the nearest city when they felt compelled to sleep with a woman. Just as they reached the city, their face used to turn as revolting just as yours. With such a face they could not face any woman. So they ran back to their hermitage in desert thanking God for delivering them from sin. You have the same situation. You will be rid of the mask glued to your face only if you leave this city".
My writer returned home. He did not believe it. Scientific fairy tales, he said to himself. He waited another two weeks. The disease showed no sign of parting. Finally, one morning he packed his suitcase and headed to the railway station to leave Vienna. The city was awakening. The sun had come down to the streets. He was in a fine mood and he felt weightless as he walked. He could move his eyes now. A cool breeze caressed his face like a compassionate hand. He could feel the swelling subsiding. When he reached the station, he took out his hand mirror and uttered a cry of joy. He had regained his normal face. The disease was gone.
In a country like India, where spiritual experience is full of sham shading, this experience of a spiritual adventurist is profound and authentic. The man who underwent this spiritual adventure was the literary giant of Modern Greece and one of the greatest novelists of the last century- Nikos Kazantzakis. This is not only the opinion of a humble admirer like me but also of great men like Albert Schweitzer, Jawaharlal Nehru and great writers like Thomas Mann and Albert Camus. (In 1957 when Camus received Noble prize, Kazantzakis was slated to win. The Academy thought he fostered communist ideologies and so he lost the prize by one vote. A month later Camus wrote a graceful letter stating that Kazantzakis had deserved the Nobel 'a hundred times more' than himself .)
There are certain writers who affect the very marrow of our being from the first reading itself. Like good wine, years have only matured my profound appreciation of this writer. No writer of the last century has experienced the interminable struggle between the flesh and the spirit as Kazantzakis. As a result, every molecule of his writing carries the dye of his flesh and blood.
Kazantzakis was born in Crete, an island that is now part of Greece but was once a Turkish colony. During the Cretan revolt of 1897, his family moved to Greece. He studied law in Athens and in 1907 he went to study under the great philosopher Henri Bergson, who influenced his writing considerably. Bergson's 'Elan vital'-the life force that can conquer matter became his motif in many of his astonishingly beautiful Novels like- Zorba the Greek, Greek Passion (I personally rank it as one the ten greatest novels of Twentieth century) , Freedom or Death, Last temptation of Christ and his famous autobiography "Report to Greco", from which I have summarized the above incident. In 1945, he married his lifetime companion and Greek intellectual, Helen Kazantzakis. Helen has incidentally written a famous biography about Mahatma Gandhi.
Kazantzakis was a highly religious man but he did not belong to any religion. He imbibed many ideologies like socialism and communism but never lifted any flag. The Greek Orthodox Church excommunicated him as he sought his own Christ in his famous Novel "Last Temptation'. When he died on October, 1957 due to an Asian Flue he contracted in a clinic in Germany, his body was not allowed a burial in Greek soil. He came to sleep beside his Grandfather in his birthplace Herakleion in Crete. His epitaph is a summation of his ideals- "I hope for Nothing, I fear nothing, I am free".
There is another fascinating incident that Kazantzakis mentions at the beginning of his autobiographical novel 'Report to Greco'. It is about his imaginary encounter with another great Cretan El Greco, the famous painter. He imagines himself being led up to the summit of 'God-trodden Sinai'. Suddenly he senses that the God with whom he has wrestled all his life is about to appear for a final reckoning. He turns, 'with a shudder'. But-
"It was not Jehovah, it was you, grandfather, from the beloved soil of Crete. You stood there before me, a stern nobleman, with your small snow-white goatee, dry compressed lips, your ecstatic glance so filled with flames and wings. And roots of thyme were tangled in your hair. You looked at me, and as you looked at me I felt that this world was a cloud charged with thunderbolts and wind, man's soul a cloud charged with thunderbolts and wings, that God puffs above them, and that salvation does not exist."
Yet Greco's message is not that 'salvation does not exist'. When Kazantzakis beseeches him for a command, Greco answers- "Reach what you can, child." But this does not satisfy him. He asks again. '"Grandfather give me a more difficult, more Cretan command." ' Now Greco vanishes, but 'a cry was left on Sinai's peak, an upright cry full of command, and the air trembled: "Reach what you cannot!"
'Reach what you cannot' can be a fine motto for every one of us. Unfortunately, we fail to transcend and realize our full potential in our daily drudgery for survival. We become slaves to the taverns of hope and cellars of fear in the path of our life. We have to smash boundaries, deny whatever our daily eyes see, rivet our eyes on our mission, ascend without descend and die every moment to give birth to the impossible. That alone gives a human meaning to our superhuman struggle.
May you have the courage to liberate yourself from the manacles of fear and forge ahead with full steam to "Reach what you cannot".
Read this book and get transformed yourself