Пауло Коэльо – Aleph (страница 1)
Paulo Coelho
Aleph
Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa
Dedication
For J. who keeps me walking,
S. J. who continues to protect me,
Hilal, for her words of forgiveness in the church in Novosibirsk.
O Mary, conceived without sin,
pray for those who turn to you.
Amen.
A certain nobleman went into a far country to
receive for himself a kingdom, and to return.
Epigraph
The Aleph was about two to three centimetres in diameter, but all of cosmic space was there, with no diminution in size. Each thing was infinite, because I could clearly see it from every point on the universe.
Jorge Luis Borges, ‘The Aleph’
Thou knowest all – I cannot see.
I trust I shall not live in vain,
I know that we shall meet again
In some divine eternity.
Oscar Wilde, ‘The True Knowledge’
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
King of My Kingdom
Chinese Bamboo
The Stranger’s Lantern
If a Cold Wind Blows
Sharing Souls
9,288
Hilal’s Eyes
The Ipatiev House
The Aleph
Dreamers Can Never Be Tamed
Like Tears in the Rain
The Chicago of Siberia
The Path to Peace
The Ring of Fire
Believe Even When No One Else Believes in You
Tea Leaves
The Fifth Woman
Ad extirpanda
Neutralising Energy without Moving a Muscle
The Golden Rose
The Eagle of Baikal
Fear of Fear
The City
The Telephone Call
The Soul of Turkey
Moscow, 1 June 2006
Author’s note
Copyright
King of My Kingdom
Oh no, not another ritual! Not another invocation intended to make the invisible forces manifest in the visible world! What has that got to do with the world we live in today? Graduates leave university and can’t find a job. Old people reach retirement and have almost nothing to live on. Grown-ups have no time to dream, struggling from nine to five to support their family and pay for their children’s education, always bumping up against the thing we all know as ‘harsh reality’.
The world has never been as divided as it is now, what with religious wars, genocides, a lack of respect for the planet, economic crises, depression, poverty, with everyone wanting instant solutions to at least some of the world’s problems or their own. And things only look bleaker as we head into the future.
What am I doing here, trying to make my way in a spiritual tradition whose roots are in the remote past, far from all the challenges of the present moment?