by Paulo Coelho
“Why did we leave the temple we were in?”
Karla shot her a strange look.
“I know we weren’t in any temple, it’s just a figure of speech. I know my name, your name, our final destination, the city we’re in—Istanbul—but everything looks so different, as though…”
It took her a few seconds as she searched for words.
“…as though we’d walked through a door and left the entire known world behind, including our worries, our despairs, our doubts. Life seems simpler and at the same time richer, happier. I’m free.”
Karla began to relax a bit.
“I can see colors I’ve never seen before, the sky looks alive, the clouds are forming shapes I can’t understand yet, but I’m certain they’re scrawling messages for me, to guide me from this point on. I’m at peace with myself and I don’t view the world from the outside: I am the world. I carry with me the wisdom of those who’ve come before me and left their mark in my genes. I am my dreams.”
They passed in front of a café, identical to the hundred others in that area. Marie continued murmuring “incredible!” and Karla asked her to stop because this time they really were about to enter a place relatively forbidden to them—only men went there.
“They know we’re tourists and I hope they don’t do anything, like kick us out. But, please, behave yourself.”
And that’s exactly what happened. They walked in and chose a corner table. Everyone looked at them in surprise, took a few minutes to realize the two girls weren’t familiar with local customs, and went back to their conversations. Karla ordered a mint tea with lots of sugar—legend had it that sugar helped to diminish hallucinations.
But Marie was having wild hallucinations. She spoke about bright auras around people, claimed she could manipulate time and had in fact just spoken with the ghost of a Christian who’d died in battle there, in the exact spot where the café stood. The Christian soldier had found absolute peace in heaven, and was pleased at having been able to communicate again with someone on Earth. He was about to ask her to give a message to his mother, but when he understood that centuries had passed since his death—Marie had informed him—he gave up and thanked her, then vanished immediately.
Marie drank the tea as though for the first time in her life. She wanted to show with gestures and sighs how delicious it was, but Karla again asked her to control herself. Once more, Marie felt the “vibration” surrounding her companion, whose aura now revealed several radiant holes. Was this a bad sign? No. It looked as if the holes were old wounds that were now rapidly scarring over. She tried to calm her down—that she could do, starting a conversation in the middle of her trance.
“Do you have a thing for the Brazilian guy?”
Karla didn’t answer. One of her light-filled holes seemed to shrink a bit, and Marie changed the subject.
“Who invented this stuff? And why don’t they hand it out for free to everyone seeking to be one with the invisible, seeing how it’s absolutely essential to changing our perception of the world?”
Karla told her that LSD had been discovered by chance, in the most unexpected place in the world: Switzerland.
“Switzerland? Where they only know about banks, watches, cows, and chocolate?”
“And laboratories,” Karla added. LSD was originally discovered to cure some disease whose name she couldn’t remember at the moment. Until its synthesizer—or inventor, as we’d say—decided, years later, to try a bit of the product that was already making millions for pharmaceutical companies around the world. He ingested a tiny amount and decided to ride home on his bike (the country was in the midst of a war, and even in a neutral Switzerland of chocolates, watches, and cows, gasoline was rationed), when he noticed everything looked different.
Karla noticed a change in Marie. She needed to get on with her story.
“Well then, this Swiss man—you’re probably asking how I know this whole story, but the truth is there was a long article on this recently in a magazine I read at the library—noticed that he couldn’t mount his bike…He asked one of his assistants to take him home, but then he thought perhaps it was better he go to a hospital instead; he must be having a heart attack. Then suddenly, and I’m using his words, or close to them, I can’t remember them exactly: ‘I began seeing colors I’d never seen, shapes I’d never noticed which wouldn’t disappear even after I closed my eyes. It was like standing before a giant kaleidoscope opening and closing in circles and spirals, bursting into colorful fountains, flowing as though rivers of joy.’
“Are you paying attention?”
“More or less. I’m not sure I’m taking it all in, there’s a lot of information: Switzerland, bicycles, the war, a kaleidoscope—could you simplify a bit?”
Red flag. Karla ordered more tea.
“Try to concentrate. Look at me and listen to what I’m telling you. Concentrate. This awful feeling will be gone soon. I need to make a confession: I only gave you half the dose I used to take when I used LSD.”
That seemed to relieve Marie. The waiter brought the tea Karla had ordered. She made her companion drink it, paid the bill, and they went out once again into the cold air.
“And what about the Swiss man?”
It was a good sign that Marie remembered where they’d left off. Karla asked herself if she’d be able to buy a sedative if the situation got worse—if the gates of hell replaced the gates of heaven.
“The drug you took was sold openly and freely at pharmacies in the United States for more than fifteen years, and you know that there they’re strict about these things. It even made the cover of Time magazine for its benefits in treating psychiatric patients and alcoholism. Then it was made illegal because every now and then it had unexpected side effects.”
“Such as…”
“We’ll talk about those later. Now, try to move away from the gates of hell in front of you and open the door to heaven. Enjoy it. Don’t be afraid, I’m right here and I know what I’m talking about. You should only feel like this for about another two hours at the most.”
“I will close the gates of hell, I will open the gates of heaven,” Marie said. “But I know that, even if I can control my fear, you can’t control yours. I can see your aura. I can read your thoughts.”
“You’re right. But then you must also have read that you don’t run the least risk of dying from this, unless you decide to climb some building and see if, finally, you’re able to fly.”
“I understand. Besides, I think it’s begun to wear off.”
And, knowing she wouldn’t die and that the girl at her side would never take her to the top of some building, Marie’s speeding heart slowed a bit, and she decided to enjoy the two hours she had left.
All of her senses—touch, sight, hearing smell, taste—became one, as if she were capable of experiencing everything at the same time. The lights outside began to lose their intensity, but even so she could still see the auras of other people. She knew who was suffering, who had found happiness, who would die shortly.
Everything was new. Not only because she was in Istanbul, but because she was in the presence of a Marie she did not know, much more intense and much older than the Marie she had become accustomed to living with for all those years.
The clouds in the sky were growing heavier, warning of a possible storm, and little by little their shapes began to lose the meaning that earlier had been so clear. But she knew that clouds have their own code for speaking with humans, and if she kept an eye on the heavens in the coming days, she would end up learning what they were trying to tell her.
She wondered whether or not to tell her father why she’d chosen to go to Nepal, but it would be silly not to continue on after they’d made it this far. They would discover things that later, with the limitations that came with age, would be more difficult.
How did she know so
little about herself? Some unpleasant childhood experiences came back to her, and they now no longer seemed so unpleasant, merely experiences. She had given so much importance to them for so long—why?
But ultimately she didn’t need an answer, she could feel these things were resolving themselves. Every now and then, as she looked at what appeared to be spirits circling around her, the gateway to hell passed before her, but she was intent on not opening it.
At that moment, she basked in a world without questions or answers. Without doubts or convictions. She basked in a world that was one with her. She basked in a world without time, where past and future were merely the present, nothing more. At times, her spirit showed itself to be very old; at other times it seemed like a child, making the most of all that was new, looking at her fingers and noticing how they were separate and the way they moved. She watched the girl at her side, happy that she was now much calmer, her light had returned, she really was in love. The question she’d asked earlier made absolutely no sense, we always know when we’re in love.
When they came to the door of their hotel, after nearly two hours walking, she knew the Dutch girl had decided they would wander the city so the effects of the drug could pass before they met up with the others. Marie heard the first peal of thunder. She knew that God was talking to her, telling her to come back to the world now, there was much work to be done. She ought to help her father, who dreamed of being a writer but had never committed a single word to paper that wasn’t part of a presentation, or a study, or an article.
She needed to help her father as he’d helped her—that was his request. He had many years ahead of him. And one day she would marry, something that had never crossed her mind, and that now she considered the final step in a life without rules or limits.
One day she would marry and her father would need to be content with his own life, doing something he liked to do. She loved her mother very much and didn’t blame her for the divorce, but she sincerely wanted her father to find someone with whom to share the steps we all take on this sacred earth.
At that moment, she understood why the drug had been outlawed; the world could only work without it. If it were legal, people would only retreat deeper into themselves, as though they were billions of monks meditating all at the same time in their interior caves, indifferent to the agony and glory of others. Cars would stop working. Planes would never again take off. There would be no seed or harvest—only awe and ecstasy. In no time, humanity would be swept from the earth by that which in principle could be a purifying breeze but had instead become a gale of collective annihilation.
She was in the world, she belonged to it, and she ought to follow the order God had given her with his thunderous voice—work, help her father, fight against the wrongs she witnessed, engage with others in the daily battles they were fighting.
This was her mission. And she would see it through. She had had her first and last LSD trip, and she was glad it was over.
That night, the same group got together and decided to celebrate their last day in Istanbul at a restaurant that sold alcoholic beverages, where they could eat, get a little drunk together, and share their experiences of the day. Rahul and Michael, the drivers, were invited along. They protested that it was against company protocol, but they soon gave in without much of a fight.
“Don’t go asking me to stay another day, I can’t do it or I’ll lose my job.”
The group wasn’t asking to stay. There was still much of Turkey ahead of them, especially Anatolia, which everyone said was a marvelous place. The truth was they had begun to miss the constant changes in the landscape.
Paulo had already returned from his mysterious place. He’d gotten dressed for the evening and knew they would be leaving the next day. He begged everyone’s forgiveness and explained that he’d like to dine alone with Karla.
Everyone understood and silently rejoiced in that “friendship.”
* * *
—
There were two women whose eyes shone bright. Marie and Karla. No one asked why, and neither of them offered any explanations.
“How was your day?”
They’d chosen a spot where they could drink, and they’d both already finished their first glass of wine.
Paulo suggested that, before he respond, they order food. Karla agreed. Now that she’d finally become a real woman, capable of loving with all her strength without the aid of some sort of drug, the wine was merely a celebration.
She knew what awaited her. She knew what kind of conversation they would have. She had known ever since they’d made amazing love the night before; at the time, she’d felt like crying, but she accepted her fate as though it were already written. The only thing she’d ever wanted in life was a heart on fire, and the man who’d given her this was at that moment inside her. And that night, when she finally confessed her love, his eyes hadn’t lit up as she’d imagined they would.
She wasn’t naïve, but she’d always gotten what she wanted in life—she wasn’t lost in the desert but running like the waters of the Bosphorus toward a gigantic ocean where all rivers meet, and she would never forget Istanbul, the skinny Brazilian and his conversation, though she couldn’t always follow it. He had performed a miracle, but he didn’t need to know this—otherwise guilt might change his mind.
They ordered another bottle of wine. It was only then he began to speak.
“The man without a name was at the cultural center when I arrived. I greeted him, but he didn’t return my greeting; his eyes were fixed on something, like in a sort of trance. I kneeled on the floor, tried to clear my mind and meditate, to reach out to the souls there who danced about, singing and celebrating life. I knew that at some point he would leave his state, and I waited—actually, I didn’t ‘wait’ in the literal sense of the term, I delivered myself to the present moment, without waiting for absolutely anything.
“The loudspeakers called the city to prayer, the man returned from his trance state and performed one of that day’s five rituals. It was only then he noticed I was there. He asked why I’d returned.
“I explained that I’d spent the night thinking about our previous encounter and that I’d like to deliver myself, body and soul, to Sufism. I was dying to tell him how, for the first time in my life, I’d made love—because when we were in bed, and I was inside you, it was as though I really was leaving my own body. I’d never experienced that before. But I deemed the subject inappropriate and said nothing.
“ ‘Read the poets,’ came the response from the man without a name. ‘That’s all you’ll ever need.’
“That wasn’t all I needed. I needed discipline, rigor, a place to serve God so that I could be closer to the rest of the world. Before going there for the first time, I had been fascinated by the dervishes who danced and entered into a sort of trance. Now I needed my soul to dance with me.
“I ought to wait a thousand and one days so this could happen? Perfect, I’d wait. By that time, I’d done plenty of living—perhaps twice as much as my high school classmates. I could dedicate the next three years of my life and, eventually, try to enter into that perfect trance of the dancing dervishes.
“ ‘My friend, a Sufi is a person who lives in the present moment. Tomorrow isn’t a part of our vocabulary.’
“Yes, that I knew. My real question was whether I needed to convert to Islam to continue my learning.
“ ‘No. You need make only one promise: deliver yourself to the path of God. See His face each time you drink a cup of water. Listen to His voice each time you pass a beggar on the street. That’s what every religion teaches and it’s the only promise we ought to make—the only one.’
“ ‘I still lack the discipline for that, but with your help I’ll arrive at the place where heaven meets earth—in man’s heart.’
“The man without a name said that he could help me if I left my e
ntire life behind and did everything he told me. Learn to beg when I had no money, to fast when the moment arrived, to serve lepers, to wash the wounds of the sick. To spend my days doing absolutely nothing, merely staring at a fixed point and repeating the same mantra, the same phrase, the same word.
“ ‘Sell your wisdom and buy space in your soul to be filled with the Absolute. Because the wisdom of men and women is madness before God.’
“At that moment, I began to doubt I was capable of this—perhaps he was testing me with this demand for absolute obedience. But I detected no hesitation in his voice, I knew he was serious. I also knew that my body had entered that green room that was falling apart, with its broken stained glass and on that day particularly free of filtering light, as a storm was approaching.
“I knew that my body had entered that place, but my soul had remained outside, waiting to see what would come of it all. Waiting for the day when, by a simple coincidence, I would walk in there and see others spinning around one another. Everything would be a well-orchestrated ballet and nothing else. But that wasn’t what I was looking for.
“I knew that if I didn’t accept the conditions he was imposing at that moment, the next time I’d find the door closed to me—even if I could come and go as I pleased, as I’d done the first time.
“The man was reading my soul, observing my contradictions and doubts, and at no moment did he show any flexibility—it was all or nothing. He said he needed to return to his special meditation, and I asked him to answer at least three more questions.
“ ‘Do you accept me as your disciple?’
“ ‘I accept your heart as a disciple, because I cannot refuse—otherwise, my life would have no use. I have two ways of showing my love of God: the first is to praise Him day and night, in the solitude of this room, but that wouldn’t be the least use to me or Him. The second is to sing, dance, and show His face to all through my joy.’