The Pilgrimage

The girl in blue saw that I was watching her and tried to conceal herself among her girlfriends. As she did, the boy searched for her with his eyes. When he saw that she was there with her friends, he went back to his conversation with his own group.

I pointed out the two of them to Petrus. He watched the game of glances for a while and then went back to his cup of wine.

"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.

"That's 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 who's straightening things up? Well, as I said, eros has many faces, and that's another of them. That's frustrated love, with its own kind of unhappiness. She is going to kiss the bride and groom, but inside she'll be saying that a knot has been tied around them. She's trying to neaten up the world because she herself is in complete disorder. And there"--he pointed toward another couple, the wife wearing excessive makeup and an elaborate coiffure--"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."

"You're being very bitter, Petrus. Isn't 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 don't allow themselves to be influenced 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 haven't 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. It's there that eros shows its most beautiful face, because it's united with that of philos."

"What is philos?"

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

"And agape?"

"Today's not the day to talk about agape. Agape is in both eros and philos--but that's just a phrase. Let's 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 performed 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 experienced eros, philos, and agape.

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

Enthusiasm

"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 Christ's message. We were fishing that afternoon after having walked for the whole morning. No fish had yet perished on the hook, but Petrus didn't care about that at all. According to him, fishing was basically a symbol of the human being's 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 God's help.

"It's 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 disproportionate 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 pilgrims," 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."

"That's right. The things of this life don't 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 surprised 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 don't see that it is philos that leads us to the highest form of love, agape.