The Pilgrimage (8 page)

They act as if it were shameful to make any show of love, was all he said.

A girl near us was staring at Petrus and me. She must have been half our age. Petrus held
up his cup of wine and made a toast in her direction. The girl laughed in embarrassment
and pointed toward her parents, as if to explain why she did not come closer.

Thats the beautiful side of love, Petrus said. The love that dares, the love for two older
strangers who have come from nowhere and will be gone tomorrow gone into a world where
she would like to travel, too.

I could hear in his voice that the wine was having an effect on him.

Today, we will talk of love! said my guide, a bit loudly. Let us speak of true love, which
grows and grows, and makes the world go round, and makes people wise!

A well-dressed woman near us seemed not to be paying any attention at all to the party.
She went from table to table, straightening the cups, the china, and the silverware.

See that woman there? asked Petrus. The one whos straightening things up? Well, as I said,
eros has many

faces, and thats another of them. Thats frustrated love, with its own kind of unhappiness.
She is going to kiss the bride and groom, but inside shell be saying that a knot has been
tied around them. Shes trying to neaten up the world because she herself is in complete
disor- der. And there he pointed toward another couple, the wife wearing excessive makeup
and an elaborate coif- fure is eros accepted. Social love, without a vestige of passion.
She has accepted her role and has severed any connection with the world or with the good
fight.

Youre being very bitter, Petrus. Isnt there anyone here who can be saved?

Of course there is. The girl who was watching us, the adolescents that are dancing they
know only about good eros. If they dont allow themselves to be influ- enced by the
hypocrisy of the love that dominated the past generation, the world will certainly be a
different place.

He pointed to an elderly couple sitting at one of the tables.

And those two, also. They havent let themselves be infected by hypocrisy like the others.
They look like working people. Hunger and need have required them to work together. They
learned the practices you are learning without ever having heard of RAM. They find the
power of love in the work they do. Its there that eros shows its most beautiful face,
because its united with that of philos.

What is philos?

Philos is love in the form of friendship. Its what I feel toward you and others. When the
flame of eros stops burning, it is philos that keeps a couple together.

And agape?

Todays not the day to talk about agape. Agape is in both eros and philos but thats just a
phrase. Lets enjoy the rest of the party without talking about the love that consumes. And
Petrus poured some more wine into his plastic cup.

The happiness around us was contagious. Petrus was getting drunk, and at first I was a
little surprised. But I remembered what he had said one afternoon: that the RAM practices
made sense only if they could be per- formed by the common people.

That night, Petrus seemed to be a person like any other. He was companionable and
friendly, patting people on the back and talking to anyone who paid him any attention. A
little later, he was so drunk that I had to help him back to the hotel.

On the way, I took stock of my situation. Here I was, guiding my guide. I realized that at
no time during the entire journey had Petrus made any effort to appear wiser, holier, or
in any way better than I. All he had done was to transmit to me his experience with the
RAM practices. Beyond that, he had made a point of showing that he was just like anyone
else that he expe- rienced eros, philos, and agape.

This realization made me feel stronger. Petrus was just another pilgrim on the Road to
Santiago.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels ... and though I have the gift of
prophecy ... and have all faith so that I could remove mountains ... and have not love, I
am nothing.

Petrus was once again quoting from Saint Paul. My guide felt that the apostle Paul was the
major occult interpreter of Christs message. We were fishing that afternoon after having
walked for the whole morning. No fish had yet perished on the hook, but Petrus didnt care
about that at all. According to him, fishing was basically a symbol of the human beings
relationship with the world: we know why we are fishing, and we will catch something if we
stay with it, but whether we do or not depends on Gods help.

Its a good idea always to do something relaxing prior to making an important decision in
your life, he said. The Zen monks listen to the rocks growing. I prefer fishing.

But at that time of day, because of the heat, even the fat, lazy fish on the bottom
ignored the hook. Whether the bait was up or down, the result was the same. I decided to
give it up and take a walk through the nearby

woods. I went as far as an old, abandoned cemetery close to the river it had a gate that
was totally dispro- portionate to the size of the burial ground and then came back to
where Petrus was fishing. I asked about the cemetery.

The gate was part of an ancient hospital for pil- grims, he said. But the hospital was
abandoned, and later, someone had the idea of using the facade and building the cemetery.

Which has also been abandoned. Thats right. The things of this life dont last very long. I
said that he had been nasty the night before in his

judgments of the people at the party, and he was sur- prised at me. He said that what we
had talked about was no more or less than we had ourselves experienced in our personal
lives. All of us seek eros, and then when eros wants to turn itself into philos, we think
that love is worthless. We dont see that it is philos that leads us to the highest form of
love, agape.

Tell me more about agape, I said.

Petrus answered that agape cannot really be dis- cussed; it has to be lived. That
afternoon, if possible, he wanted to show me one of the faces of agape. But in order for
this to happen, the universe, as in the business of fishing, would have to collaborate so
that everything went well.

The messenger helps you, but there is one thing that is beyond the messengers control,
beyond his desires, and beyond you, as well.

What is that? The divine spark. What we call luck. When the sun had begun to set, we
resumed our

walking. The Jacobean route passed through some vine- yards and fields that were
completely deserted at that time of day. We crossed the main road also deserted and
started again through the woods. In the distance, I could see the Saint Lorenzo peak, the
highest point in the kingdom of Castile. I had changed a great deal since I had met Petrus
for the first time near Saint-Jean-Pied- de-Port. Brazil and the business deals that I had
been worried about had practically vanished from my mind. The only important thing for me
now was my objective. I discussed it every night with Astrain, who was becom- ing clearer
and clearer for me. I was able to see him, seated at my side, any time I tried. I learned
that he had a nervous tic in his right eye and that he had the habit of smiling
disdainfully every time I repeated something as evidence that I had understood what he was
saying. A few weeks earlier during the first days of the pilgrim- age I had been afraid
that I would never complete it. When we had passed through Roncesvalles, I had been very
disillusioned about everything to do with the jour- ney. I had wanted to get to Santiago
immediately, recover my sword, and get back to fighting what Petrus called the good
fight.* But right now, with my connection to

* I found out later that the term had actually been created by Saint Paul.

civilization severed, what was most important was the sun on my head and the possibility
that I might experi- ence agape.

We went down the bank of an arroyo, crossed the dry bed, and had to struggle to climb up
the other side. An impressive river must have flowed there once, wash- ing away the bottom
in its search for the depths and secrets of the earth. Now the riverbed was so dry that it
could be crossed on foot. But the rivers major accom- plishment, the valley it had
created, was still there, and it took a major effort to climb out of it. Nothing in this
life endures, Petrus had said a few hours before.

Petrus, have you ever been in love?

The question was a spontaneous one, and I was sur- prised at my courage. Up until then, I
had known only the bare outline of my guides private life.

I have known a lot of women, if that is what you mean. And I have really loved each of
them. But I expe- rienced agape only with two.

I told him that I had been in love many times but had been worried about whether I could
ever become serious with anyone. If I had continued that way, it would have led to a
solitary old age, and I had been very fearful of this.

I dont think you look to love as a means to a com- fortable retirement.

It was almost nine oclock before it began to get dark. The vineyards were behind us, and
we were walking through an arid landscape. I looked around and could

see in the distance a small hermitage in the rocks, similar to many others we had passed
on our pilgrimage. We walked on for a while, and then, detouring from the yellow markers,
we approached the small building.

When we were close enough, Petrus called out a name that I didnt understand, and he
stopped to listen for an answer. We heard nothing. Petrus called again, but no one
answered.

Lets go, anyway, he said. And we moved forward.

The hermitage consisted of just four whitewashed walls. The door was open or rather,
there really was no door, just a small entry panel, half a meter high, which hung
precariously by one hinge. Within, there was a stone fireplace and some basins stacked on
the floor. Two of them were filled with wheat and potatoes.

We sat down in the silence. Petrus lit a cigarette and said we should wait. My legs were
hurting, but some- thing in that hermitage, rather than calming me, made me feel excited.
It would also have frightened me a little if Petrus had not been there.

Where does whoever lives here sleep? I asked, just to break the uneasy silence.

There, where you are sitting, Petrus said, pointing to the bare earth. I said something
about moving to another spot, but he told me to stay exactly where I was. The temperature
must have been dropping, because I began to feel cold.

We waited for almost an hour. Petrus called out the strange name several more times and
then gave up. Just

when I expected us to get up and leave, he began to speak.

Present here is one of the two manifestations of agape, he said, as he stubbed out his
third cigarette. It is not the only one, but it is the purest. Agape is total love. It is
the love that consumes the person who experiences it. Whoever knows and experiences agape
learns that nothing else in the world is important just love. This was the kind of love
that Jesus felt for humanity, and it was so great that it shook the stars and changed the
course of history. His solitary life enabled him to accomplish things that kings, armies,
and empires could not.

During the millennia of Christian civilization, many individuals have been seized by this
love that consumes. They had so much to give and their world demanded so little that they
went out into the deserts and to isolated places, because the love they felt was so great
that it transformed them. They became the hermit saints that we know today.

For you and for me, who experience a different form of agape, this life may seem terrible.
But the love that consumes makes everything else absolutely everything lose its
importance. Those men lived just to be con- sumed by their love.

Petrus told me that a monk named Alfonso lived there. Petrus had met him on his first
pilgrimage to Compostela, as he was picking fruit to eat. His guide, a much more
enlightened man than he, was a friend of

Alfonsos, and the three of them had together per- formed the Ritual of Agape, the Blue
Sphere Exercise. Petrus said that it had been one of the most important experiences of his
life and that even today when he per- formed the exercise, he remembered the hermitage and
Alfonso. There was more emotion in his voice than I had ever heard from him.

Agape is the love that consumes, he repeated, as if that were the phrase that best defined
this strange kind of love. Martin Luther King once said that when Christ spoke of loving
ones enemies, he was referring to agape. Because according to him, it was impossible to
like our enemies, those who were cruel to us, those who tried to make our day-to-day
suffering even worse. But agape is much more than liking. It is a feeling that suf- fuses,
that fills every space in us, and turns our aggres- sion to dust.

You have learned how to be reborn, how to stop being cruel to yourself, and how to
communicate with your messenger. But everything you do from now on and every good result
that you take with you from the Road to Santiago will make sense only when you have also
experienced the love that consumes.

I reminded Petrus that he had said that there were two forms of agape. And that he
probably had not experi- enced this first form, since he had not become a hermit.

Youre right. You and I and most pilgrims who walk the Road to Santiago, learning the RAM
practices, expe- rience agape in its other form: enthusiasm.

For the ancients, enthusiasm meant trance, or ecstasy a connection with God. Enthusiasm
is agape directed at a particular idea or a specific thing. We have all experienced it.
When we love and believe from the bottom of our heart, we feel ourselves to be stronger
than anyone in the world, and we feel a serenity that is based on the certainty that
nothing can shake our faith. This unusual strength allows us always to make the right
decision at the right time, and when we achieve our goal, we are amazed at our own
capabilities. Because when we are involved in the good fight, nothing else is important;
enthusiasm carries us toward our goal.

Enthusiasm normally manifests itself with all of its force during the first years of our
lives. At that time, we still have strong links with the divinity, and we throw ourselves
into our play with our toys with such a will that dolls take on life and our tin soldiers
actually march. When Jesus said that the kingdom of heaven belonged to the children, he
was referring to agape in the form of enthusiasm. Children were attracted to him, not
because they understood his miracles, his wisdom, or his Pharisees and apostles. They went
to him in joy, moved by enthusiasm.

I told Petrus that on that very afternoon, I had real- ized that I was completely absorbed
by the Road to Santiago. Those days and nights in Spain had almost made me forget about my
sword, and they were a unique experience. Most other things had lost their importance.

This afternoon, we were trying to fish, but the fish would not bite, said Petrus.
Normally, we allow enthu- siasm to elude us when we are involved in such mun- dane
activities, those that have no importance at all in the overall scale of our existence. We
lose our enthusi- asm because of the small and unavoidable defeats we suffer during the
good fight. And since we dont realize that enthusiasm is a major strength, able to help us
win the ultimate victory, we let it dribble through our fin- gers; we do this without
recognizing that we are letting the true meaning of our lives escape us. We blame the
world for our boredom and for our losses, and we forget that it was we ourselves who
allowed this enchanting power, which justifies everything, to diminish the manifestation
of agape in the form of enthusiasm.

I remembered the cemetery near the river. That strange, unusually large portal was a
perfect representa- tion of what had been lost. And beyond it, only the dead.

As if he had guessed what I was thinking, Petrus began to talk about something that was
similar.

A few days ago, you must have been surprised when I got so angry with that poor waiter who
had spilled coffee on my shorts shorts that were already filthy with the dust and dirt of
the road. Actually, I was ner- vous because I saw in the boys eyes that his enthusiasm was
draining away like the blood that runs from wrists that have been slashed. I saw that boy,
so strong and full of life, beginning to die because inside him, moment by

moment, agape was perishing. I have been around for a long time, and I have learned to
live with these things, but that lad, with the way he behaved and with all the good things
I felt that he could bring to humanity, left me shocked and sad. But I know that my anger
wounded him a bit and stemmed the death of agape.

In the same vein, when you exorcised that womans dog, you felt agape in its purest form.
It was a noble deed, and it made me proud to be here serving as your guide. So for the
first time in our experience on the Road, I am going to participate in an exercise with
you.

And Petrus taught me the Ritual of Agape, the Blue Sphere Exercise.

I am going to help you to arouse your enthusiasm, to create a power that is going to
expand like a blue sphere that encloses the entire planet, he said, to show that I respect
you and what you are doing.

Up until then, Petrus had never expressed an opin- ion, either favorable or unfavorable,
regarding the way in which I performed the exercises. He had helped me to interpret my
first contact with the messenger, and he had rescued me from the trance of the Seed
Exercise, but he had never expressed any interest in the results I had achieved. More than
once I had asked him why he did not want to know about my feelings, and he had answered
that his only obligation as my guide was to show me the Road and to teach me the RAM
practices. It was up to me whether I enjoyed the results or found them to be unpleasant.