Chapter 14 - The Nature Of The Highlands

We had crossed the feared 18,000-foot pass in perfect ease and under a cloudless sky. The sun was so hot during the ascent that I had discarded my warm things, but hardly had we entered the shadows on the other side of the pass when we were plunged into icy cold, that made me regret not having kept my warm clothing at hand. Tibet is a country where one is ever up against the unexpected and where all accepted rules of nature seem to be changed. The contrast between sunshine and shade is such that if for any length of time one part of ones body would be exposed to the sun, while the other remained in the shade, one could develop simultaneously blisters, due to severe sunburn, and chilblains due to the icy air in the shade. The air is too rarefied to absorb the sun's heat and thus to create a medium shadow temperature, nor is it able to protect one from the fierceness of the sun and its ultra-violet rays.

The difference in temperature between sun and shade can be as much as 100 Fahrenheit, according to some observers, and I can well believe it, for when riding, I often found my feet getting numb with cold, while the backs of my hands, which were exposed to the sun while holding the reins, got blistered as if I had poured boiling water over them, and the skin of my face came off in flakes, before I got sufficiently acclimatised. In spite of applying various ointments, my lips cracked open, so that eating and drinking became difficult and painful, but fortunately after three or four weeks my skin grew sufficiently sun-resistant to make me immune against these troubles for the rest of my journey. Even Tibetans, except those who live permanently in the open air, like herdsmen, farmers, or muleteers, often wear face-masks when travelling to protect themselves from the fierce sun and the still fiercer winds, which at certain seasons sweep over the highlands, carrying with them clouds of fine stinging sand that penetrate even the heaviest clothing. To meet a caravan or a group of masked and armed men somewhere in the wilderness, far away from the haunts of men, was a rather frightening experience, as one never could be sure whether the masks were worn merely for protection against the inclemencies of the climate or for hiding the faces of robbers who, especially in times of unrest, infested the more remote regions of Tibet.

However, I was not unduly worried about these things at that time (though I knew that fighting was going on in neighbouring Chinese Turkestan), because after leaving the last check-post on the Ladakh side at Tankse, I branched off from the caravan route into the no-man's-land which stretched from the region of the great lakes, Pangong and Nyak-Tso, towards the Aksai-Chin plateau. In those days there were no frontiers between Ladakh and Tibet in this region. It was one of the few spots in the world where man and nature had been left to themselves without interference of man-made `authorities' and governments. Here the inner law of man and the physical law of nature were the only authorities, and I felt thrilled at the thought of being for once entirely on my own, alone in the immensity of nature, facing the earth and the universe as they were before the creation of man, accompanied only by my two faithful Ladakhi's and their horses. The horses more or less determined the choice of our camping-places, as we could stop only where there was sufficient grazing ground for them as well as water.

In spite of the feeling of smallness in the vastness and grandeur of the mountain landscape, in spite of the knowledge of human limitations and dependence on the whims of wind and weather, water and grazing-grounds, food and fuel and other material circumstances, I had never felt a sense of greater freedom and independence. I realised more than ever how narrow and circumscribed our so called civilised life is, how much we pay for the security of a sheltered life by way of freedom and real independence of thought and action.

When every detail of our life is planned and regulated, and every fraction of time determined beforehand, then the last trace of our boundless and timeless being, in which the freedom of our soul exists, will be suffocated. This freedom does not consist in being able `to do what we want', it is neither arbitrariness nor waywardness, nor the thirst for adventures, but the capacity to accept the unexpected, the unthought-of situations of life, good as well as bad, with an open mind; it is the capacity to adapt oneself to the infinite variety of conditions without losing confidence in the deeper connections between the inner and the outer world. It is the spontaneous certainty of being neither bound by space nor by time, the ability to experience the fullness of both without clinging to any of their aspects, without trying to take possession of them by way of arbitrary fragmentation.

The machine-made time of modern man has not made him the master but the slave of time; the more he tries to `save' time, the less he possesses it. It is like trying to catch a river in a bucket. It is the flow, the continuity of its movement, that makes the river and it is the same with time. Only he who accepts it in its fullness, in its eternal and life-giving rhythm, in which its continuity consists, can master it and make it his own. By accepting time in this way, by not-resisting its flow, it loses its power over us and we are carried by it like on the crest of a wave, without being submerged and without losing sight of our essential timelessness.

Nowhere have I experienced this deeper than under the open skies of Tibet, in the vastness of its solitudes, the clarity of its atmosphere, the luminosity of its colours and the plastic, almost abstract, purity of its mountain forms. Organic life is reduced to a minimum and does not play any role in the formation and appearance of the landscape or interfere with its plastic purity; but the landscape itself appears like the organic expression of primeval forces. Bare mountains expose in far-swinging lines the fundamental laws of gravitation, modified only by the continuous action of wind and weather, revealing their geological structure and the nature of their material, which shines forth in pure and vivid colours. The roles of heaven and earth are reversed. While normally the sky appears lighter than the landscape, the sky here is dark and deep, while the landscape stands out against it in radiating colours, as if it were the source of light. Red and yellow rocks rise like flames against the dark blue velvet curtain of the sky. But at night the curtain is drawn back and allows a view into the depth of the universe. The stars are seen as bright and near as if they were part of the landscape. One can see them come right down to the horizon and suddenly vanish with a flicker, as if a man with a lantern had disappeared round the next corner. The universe here is no more a mere concept or a pale abstraction but a matter of direct experience; and nobody thinks of time other than in terms of sun, moon, and stars. The celestial bodies govern the rhythm of life, and thus even time loses its negative aspect and becomes the almost tangible experience of the ever-present, ever-recurring, self-renewing movement that is the essence of all existence. As the sky is hardly ever hidden by clouds, man never loses contact with the celestial bodies. The nights are never completely dark. Even when there is no moon, a strange diffused light pervades the landscape, a truly `astral' light, that reveals the bare outlines of forms without shadows or substance and without colour, yet clearly discernible.

Even the waters of rivers and brooks rise and fall in accordance with this celestial rhythm, because during the twelve hours of daytime the snow on the mountains melts due to the intensity of the suns rays (in spite of the low temperature of the air, while at night it freezes again, so that the supply of water is stopped. But as it takes the water twelve hours on the average to come down from the mountains, the high tide of the rivers begins in the evening and ebbs off in the morning. Often the smaller watercourses dry out completely during the daytime and appear only at night, so that one who unknowingly pitches his tent in the dry bed of such rivulet may suddenly be washed away at night by the rushing waters. (It happened to me, but fortunately I managed to save myself and my equipment.)

The great rhythm of nature pervades everything, and man is woven into it with mind and body. Even his imagination does not belong so much to the realm of the individual as to the soul of the landscape, in which the rhythm of the universe is condensed into a melody of irresistible charm. Imagination here becomes an adequate expression of reality on the plane of human consciousness, and this consciousness seems to communicate itself from individual to individual till it forms a spiritual atmosphere that envelops the whole of Tibet.

Thus a strange transformation takes place under the influence of this country, in which the valleys are as high as the highest peaks of Europe and where mountains soar into space beyond the reach of humans. It is as if a weight were lifted from one's mind, or as if certain hindrances were removed. Thoughts flow easily and spontaneously without losing their direction and coherence, a high degree of concentration and clarity is attained almost without effort and a feeling of elevated joy keeps one's mind in a creative mood. Consciousness seems to be raised to a higher level, where the obstacles and disturbances of our ordinary life do not exist, except as a faint memory of things which have lost all their importance and attraction. At the same time one becomes more sensitive and open to new forms of reality; the intuitive qualities of our mind are awakened and stimulated---in short, there are all the conditions for attaining the higher stages of meditation or Dhyāna.