The Alchemist - Paulo Coelho - Part 2 of 4

2020 Reading Challenge - Day 189

July 8, 2020

Book 54 - The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho (1993)
 Part 2 - page 48-104
Reading Time - 60 minutes

Santiago is working for the crystal merchant in Tangiers who has a dream of his own... to one day make the pilgrimage to Mecca. But... he is afraid to go because he doesn't want to grow... he likes the life that he has. And... in not going... he can continually dream of going. If he actually went to Mecca... then what?

As for our friend Santiago... he's been with the merchant for almost a year and has enough money saved up to buy twice the amount of sheep that he sold before he started this adventure. He could easily go back home and be twice as wealthy as before but he remembers Melchizedek... And so he continues his Personal Dream, joining a camel caravan to cross the desert. Along the way, he meets an English alchemist who is always reading a book... while Santiago learns to read the desert. They eventually reach an oasis and hunker down for a while due to tribal warfare in the surrounding region.

There were a few quotes that really struck me from this section of the book.

Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the Soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected and we are able to know everything because it is all written there".

I was going to say that this reminded me of the quote by Albert Einstein... but in looking for that quote, I discovered that the following was never said by Einstein but is a paraphrase of a guy named  Bob Samples who did his own individual analysis of Einstein.

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

Still... the quote does ring true... after the Enlightenment, we have became a very rational culture and have tossed intuition to the curb. The Alchemist is all about listening to the Soul of the World and trusting in the signs and omens that come our way. To do that, we need to trust our intuition...

Another quote:

We are afraid of losing what we have but fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.

I've been mulling the idea of loss for awhile... It is one of the things that is front and centre during this time of Covid-19. Losing jobs, routine, employment, money, health, connections... it's all there. And makes me think that we came onto this earth to experience that sense of loss. Because if we come from a place where there is no loss... how could we even comprehend that... only by the experience of it. Our entire lives are a form of loss or entropy... losing friends, family, health, wellness, eyesight, hearing. Growing old is not for the faint of heart... and yet... we need to remember that ultimately we/it are all one.

Which leads to the next quote... a short one... "everything, every thought has a soul"... Huh... We can barely comprehend that humans have souls. Now let's add in animals... that gets tricky right off the bat. But to think that plants, rocks, even created things, and thoughts, have souls... Just slightly mind-blowing... Although I do remember from Philosphy 101 - the idea that each object has a form and an essence. Not too far off from soul... But I guess in many ways, if we believe that everything is One... then why would a rock not have a soul? Or some connection to the Oneness... different from ours but legitimate in its own right? It might make our handling of the earth slightly different if we didn't always keep our superiority complex front and centre.

I think I could spend a lot more time mulling that over...