All the universe is ultimately nothing but meaning, the Word, pure knowledge. You yourself are pure knowledge undifferentiated, though you think you are differentiated-and from there comes the trouble, the misunderstanding of the Word. When differentiating yourself from the world, you do so as well from the meaning of the Word.
The true literary creator, or reader, is he who lives in undifferentiated silence, and worships this silence in such a way that the silence worships itself in vibratory sound. For the serious writer, this is a spiritual experience, leading him or her to the Absolute.
In the dissolution of the Word there is joy. In the dissolution of the ego, the Absolute. In that sense, all words, all literature are prayers to take you from your ego-ridden condition to the Absolute, the Truth.
Raja Rao, the Sacred Wordsmith, is no longer.
His small grey typewriter sits idle in the closet, leaning against boxes full of the manuscripts he brought to life with its keys. He always wrote in bed. Propped up by pillows, he would sit upright-his rectangular eight-inch-tall dark brown handcrafted writing table before him. Over the years, he'd tapped out thousands of precious pages on his ancient Hermes-Rocket manual typewriter. Occasionally, he broke into longhand, often so illegibly that even he could hardly decipher what he had scribbled down.
From a young age, Raja knew he would be a writer. Born to a Brahmin family-Vedantin priests and advisors to kings since the thirteenth century-he grew up with a profound knowledge of classical Indian philosophy and culture. Even as a boy, he was convinced writing was his dharma, what one is born to do. The act of writing was his sadhana, the practice taken up to reach one's spiritual goal. His metaphysical and literary quests were interwoven. He was committed to fulfilling his dharma no matter what the consequences-be they poverty, starvation, even death.
He never wrote for money, fame, or an audience-only for the sake of his dharma. In his early years, he wanted to publish anonymously, but his publisher would not allow it. Raja often said that when one follows his dharma, with no thought of reward, the universe itself comes to help, opening all doors. He lived his dharma more devotedly than any human being I've ever known, following his path with absolute commitment, unshakeable courage, and unbounded joyous enthusiasm.
Raja so reverenced the word, he never used abbreviations or colloquialisms; he abhorred American slang. In the twenty-six years we were together, I not once heard him utter a frivolous word. He disliked creative-writing classes; indeed, was adamantly opposed to all mental manipulations of the word. He understood that the true art of writing arises, beyond the personal self, from one's inmost being. He always said, "The word is sacred, and writing is worship. When awarded the 1988 Neustadt Prize for Literature, in his acceptance speech, he stated, 'I am a man of silence. And words emerge from that silence with light. And light is sacred... The writer or poet is he who seeks back the common word to its origin of silence, that the manifested word become light.'
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