a Father feels for a son. And may I think of You calmly and with determination, even when I find it hard to say I love You.’
Usually, at this point, I would feel – for only a fraction of a second, but that’s always enough – the One Presence that moves the Sun and the Earth and ensures that the stars remain in their places. But I don’t feel like talking to the Universe today, I just want the man at my side to give me the answers I need.
He removes his hands from the tree trunk, and I do the same. He smiles at me, and I return his smile. We make our way, in silence, unhurriedly, back to my house, where we sit on the verandah and drink coffee, still without talking.
I look at the huge tree in the middle of my garden, with a ribbon tied round its trunk, placed there after a dream I had. I am in the hamlet of Saint Martin, in the French Pyrenees, in a house I now regret having bought, because it has ended up owning me, demanding my presence whenever possible, because it needs someone to look after it, to keep its energy alive.
‘I can’t evolve any further,’ I say, falling, as always, into the trap of being the first to speak. ‘I think I’ve reached my limit.’
‘That’s funny. I’ve been trying all my life to find out what my limits are and have never reached them yet. But then my universe doesn’t really help, it keeps expanding and won’t allow me to know it entirely,’ says J. provocatively.
He’s being ironic, but I keep talking.
‘Why did you come here today? To try and convince me that I’m wrong, as usual? You can say what you like, but words won’t change anything. I’m not happy.’
‘That’s exactly why I came. I’ve been aware of what’s been going on for some time now, but there is always a right moment to act,’ says J., picking up a pear from the table and turning it over in his hands. ‘If we had spoken before, you would not have been ripe. If we were to talk later, you would have rotted.’ He bites into the pear, savouring the taste. ‘Perfect. The right moment.’
‘I’m filled with doubt, especially about my faith,’ I say.
‘Good. It’s doubt that drives a man onward.’
The usual apt responses and images, but they’re not working today.
‘I’m going to tell you what you feel,’ J. says. ‘You feel that nothing you have learned has put down roots, that while you’re capable of entering the magical universe, you cannot remain submerged in it, you feel that all of this may be nothing but a fantasy dreamed up by people to fend off their fear of death.’
My questions go deeper than that; they are doubts about my faith. I have only one certainty: there exists a parallel spiritual universe that impinges on the world in which we live. Apart from that, everything else seems absurd to me – sacred books, revelations, guides, manuals, ceremonies … And, what is worse, they appear to have no lasting effects.
‘I’m going to tell you what I once felt,’ J. adds. ‘When I was young, I was dazzled by all the things life could offer me. I thought I was capable of achieving all of them. When I got married, I had to choose just one path, because I needed to support the woman I love and my children. When I was forty-five and a highly successful executive, I saw my children grow up and leave home, and I thought that, from then on, everything would be a mere repetition of what I had already experienced. That was when my spiritual search began. I’m a disciplined man and I put all my energies into that. I went through periods of enthusiasm and unbelief, until I reached the stage you are at now.’
‘Look, J., despite all my efforts, I still can’t honestly say that I feel closer to God and to myself,’ I tell him, with barely concealed exasperation.
‘That’s because, like everyone else on the planet, you believed that time would teach you to grow closer to God. But time doesn’t teach; it merely brings us a sense of weariness and of growing older.’
The oak tree in my garden appears to be looking at me now. It must be more than four hundred years old, and the only thing it has learned is to stay in one place.
‘Why did we go and perform that ritual around that other oak tree? How does that help us become better human beings?’
‘Precisely because most people don’t perform rituals around oak trees any more, and because by performing apparently absurd rituals, you get in touch with something deep in your soul, in the oldest part of yourself, the part closest to the origin of everything.’
That’s true. I had asked a question to which I already knew the answer and received the answer I was expecting. I should make better use of his company.
‘It’s time to leave,’ says J. abruptly.
I look at the clock. I tell him that the airport is nearby and that we can continue talking for a while longer.
‘That isn’t what I mean. When I went through what you’re experiencing now, I found the answer in something that had happened before I was born. That’s what I’m suggesting you do now.’
Reincarnation? But he had always discouraged me from visiting past lives.
‘I’ve been back into the past already. I learned how to do that before I met you. We’ve talked before about how I saw two incarnations, one as a French writer in the nineteenth century and one—’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘I made mistakes then that I can’t put right now. And you told me never to go back again, because it would only increase my sense of guilt. Travelling to past lives is like making a hole in the floor and letting the flames of the fire in the apartment below scorch and burn the present.’
J. throws what remains of his pear to the birds in the garden and looks at me with some irritation.
‘If you don’t stop spouting such nonsense, I might start believing that you’re right and that you really haven’t learned anything during the twenty-four years we’ve been together.’
I know what he means. In magic – and in life – there is only the present moment, the NOW. You can’t measure time the way you measure the distance between two points. ‘Time’ doesn’t pass. We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; we’re always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better, about the consequences of our actions, and why we didn’t act as we should have. Or else we think about the future, about what we’re going to do tomorrow, what precautions we should take, what dangers await us around the next corner, how to avoid what we don’t want and how to get what we have always dreamed of.
J. takes up the conversation again.
‘Right here and now, you are beginning to wonder: is there really something wrong? Yes, there is. But at this precise moment, you also realise that you can change your future by bringing the past into the present. Past and future only exist in our mind. The present moment, though, is outside of time, it’s Eternity. In India they use the word “karma” for lack of any better term. But it’s a concept that’s rarely given a proper explanation. It isn’t what you did in the past that will affect the present. It’s what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future.’
‘So …’
He pauses, becoming increasingly irritated at my inability to grasp what he’s trying to explain
