Tommy Pilgrim

BOOK ONE

The Quest of Tommy

“… He left with his words charging the atmosphere, leaving my brain swallowing its meaning. What a strange old man, so proud and lonely. Of course I knew what love is. How wouldn’t I”

Tommy Pilgrim

The first sunrays were getting through the window, drawing patterns of shade and light on the pictures over the shelf. It was reflecting its colors over the statue of Lord Buddha, my books and the plants next to the kitchen. It was playing with things up and down like an angel without fingers.

There was no strength in my being when the sun grew stronger, heating the mattress with myself lying half dead. I was finished, without willing to face the world outside and burying my head even deeper under the pillow. Forget all about my ideals of freedom, happiness and a perfect life. The truth always comes to destroy delusion. No one is free in the other world where I also live, and my fate was ringing eternally and loudly, closer to my brain and nothing else could keep me dreaming. Modern man is my name. The alarm clock was my master.

It was a Monday at 07:15 AM. For three years I’ve been paying the price for my ambitions, taking shower and shaving, putting on the same clothes and driving my car to my air-conditioned cell. After parking in the same corner and locking myself in that ugly room without seeing the sky anymore, turning on computers and checking emails, hundreds of them. Every day new requests of refund and discounts, extensions of deadlines, bills expiring and new orders post-poned. Many, many statements, invoices and phones ringing. The entire day talking at the accounting office of a fancy hotel facing the beach, plenty of rooms and things to be done. Checking numbers, numbers and papers until my eyes would burn and my head seemed to explode.

In fact the work was good, but I couldn’t avoid leaving for a coffee many times a day, to breathe, to smoke, to remember what I was doing. Sometimes, it was just to watch the tourists passing by with their beach towels, sunglasses and sunshades.

Many times I would sit quietly in the alley. My heart would beat strong as if telling me to do something, to change the entire thing, and the maids would ask me if everything was okay. I was only twenty-eight years old with a bright future and shiny shoes. Going to the washroom, without looking at the mirror, the dark circles were a constant presence in my face.

At least I had a few friends in the hotel. The maintenance guys would joke to help me relaxing, but it never worked. The phone was ringing again and new problems were coming. Eating pizza and Chinese food on my desk, never before two in the afternoon, but never touching the phone during my lunch. I had a beautiful shiny pen and a stainless-steel stapler. Mobile phones and wires. Electronic signals and radiation. Artificial food and water, artificial air and unfulfilled dreams. In fact, non-knowledge, pure ignorance of my dreams. No higher or lower goal to move me, no reason for being, breathing or thinking.

My life.

Now, wait a second. It doesn’t mean that I was satisfied, neither accepting things so easily. Questioning the values of everything around me, and fighting within the thick frame of my limitations, already tired of going to the same places, talking to the same persons, and listening to the same eternal useless conversations. Tired of trying to quench my thirst with delusions and lies. It would hurt me badly, but this was my truth.

Lies.

My life was soaked in lies. There was nothing I could believe to satisfy my spirit. There was nothing outside to give me the sacred peace that I couldn’t feel nor understand, nor believe, what accordin-gly to the books from all religions, lies within myself even before this world was created. My Self, the books were saying. All pervading and ever free, the eternal part of myself was the last tale I was trying to believe.

Really. My distorted spiritual life had become a constant thought in my busy and empty days. I was trying to understand so many things at the same time. If all these stories were truth and my only possession, it was also truth that it was totally out of my reach. It was far away from my wildest dreams.

No one in the office ever noticed my drama. The work was going fine like a machine perfectly tuned. However, if anyone there could observe the depths of my soul, it wouldn’t find any happiness at all. I would go deep in thought in my lonely road every day, without finding any results, seeking that hidden knowledge and finding frustrations only. Many times, the pain would grow late at night until almost bleeding, when tears were rolling on my face to remind me of the great Lord Buddha.

He would shine in my imagination and give me the strength to keep going to work, practicing yoga and meditation, studying the sacred books which I couldn’t understand a word. The wisdom of ancient men who could see, as clear as water in the fountain, the world which I was a stranger, a foreigner. A dreamer who couldn’t dream its own dreams. A dreamer who didn’t know what to dream, wasting energy trying to conceive what only Saints could do, and losing my strength trying to explain what even they couldn’t do so.

This was me. I was dying slowly and wasting my sleep with no reason, just feelings; strange feelings and the restlessness consuming my soul.

My life was going on like this for months, moving from home to work and the movie theaters. The strange thing is that looking outside, nothing was actually wrong with me. I had nice parents, good education, no big traumas, and never had problems with my sexual life. Although sleep vanished and I would spend hours looking at the walls, looking at the sky, going to bed with the sun rising and still thinking, trying to make plans for my uncertain future.

Sometimes, the spiritual books would make me very angry, to the point of questioning the truthfulness of religion. They were saying that bondage is of the mind and freedom is also of the mind. They were saying that a man of wisdom lives and works in the world without being polluted by it. The Universal Mind is my mind, but actually how is this? How can be true that the whole universe dwells within me without becoming another lunatic? How can I convince myself that the Cosmos is my body and still behave like a normal person?

This was my drama. Without knowing if there was any answers, but wishing to know them so much. I’ve never seen something in this world more difficult to achieve.

Is true that it was hard to believe that my life was so simple and ordinary, so limited to the coconut trees and my window. However, there was no way to change it, neither to get out of my conditioning and break the chains imposed by my fate, created by myself, to my own very self. As moving back and forth the questions were increa-sing slowly. Slowly, the doubts were growing stronger.

Perhaps I will never know if this was my imagination or not, but very often a clear light would appear during my hours of meditation. A shy gleaming light would appear, coming from the top of my eyes and moving, growing in twinkling circles of many colors until disappearing into the void. I didn’t know what it was. It made me scared in the beginning. It could be a mental disorder or even a brain disease.

Even a transcendental face. In my despair to run from my pain, it could be a faceless face trying to say something, a face with no eyes and no mouth, no nose and no ears talking in a strange language that it couldn’t be understood. There were just feelings and silence, the eagerness of my heart. From all my choices that was the best one to believe. I really thought it could be some kind of Celestial face.

Why not?

My reason wasn’t giving me any relief whatsoever. In my dreams I really wished it could be someone calling me from the distance, maybe somebody great. It could be a messenger of Lord Buddha or my guardian angel, a mysterious being to answer my questions. Someone who could give me the peace and understanding gone a long time ago.

An enlightened Master.

Is it possible that I also have a master in this life? I didn’t even know if they were real. Another question to torment me during my sleepless nights, begging to the stars and the moon to relieve me.

It was another Monday in the end of the month. The collectors and debtors, clients and suppliers were in my office early in the morning. Discussing and closing business. New agreements were approaching their dead-lines, payments to be done before noon, new purchases to be made and the damned phone that didn’t stop ringing. It was another of those damned days when nothing was finished and nobody was content. The weekend had been bad and the graphics were vacillating; the world was falling apart to those greedy people. The pressure of dozens of economic, commercial and selfish interests was blowing on me, and another phone call was finished when my nervous system finally broke down.

My mind got blank. I fell on my leather chair, hands shaking and sweating, seeing that faceless face glimmering between the papers and me. For a moment my self-control almost got lost. My stomach went to my throat, the room was spinning around and I didn’t know whom, why, where or what I was doing, when understanding for the first time the language of my Soul.

In the eternity of a second, I saw what my fate had reserved for me and wasn’t afraid of that. Understanding what differs a true man from the others. Without wasting another minute, I stood up leaving everything the way it was, in the same place, lifeless over the desk. Leaving with no guilty the dreams of the worldly behind. Without thinking anymore, walking along the fancy hall at the 25th floor, for the first time in my life without looking at those weird pictures of rich people smiling, these nice women in bikinis whom will never go out with me, those smart cars which I would never have the money to buy.

The body was moving by itself without taking the eyes from the goal. Moving with the determination of those whom will conquer or die in the quest. Knocking at the great Mr. Clarence Snowfield’s door, the big boss, the best wood available in the market, and facing him touching his golden watch, always lost in his countless desires, insatiable lust and unbearable greed.

“What, Tommy?” He asked, exposing shamelessly the darkness surrounding his soul.

“I am leaving the job, sir.”

“When?” He replied mockingly, already used to be left alone. No woman, no children and no friends.

“Right now.”

Leaving the shadows with only one thought in my mind. Taking all my savings and buying a ticket to New Delhi, India, the land of the Illuminated, the home of the Spirit, the abode of the gods. I had no idea of where to go or what to do, without knowing the language they speak and no clue of how this country may look like. No idea if an airplane could save my life.

All I knew and could feel was my heart beating fast, and the conviction that all that could matter to me from that moment until the rest of my life, was my dream. This blazing desire, this insane passion, this uncontrollable impulse to move towards understanding, at least of my own life. This terrible yearning burning to find a reason for being a human being.

I wanted to know, to grow, and perhaps my will could bring me a teacher in this subject; and if not, I will discover it by myself. To break my limitations and see the light of Eternal Knowledge, to clean forever the dust away from my face. I was tired and nothing else was important. I would sell my car, return my apartment, donate the furniture and disappear in this world.

Let me starve! Let my friends laugh on me! Let those people think I’ve gone mad! I prefer to be homeless and move with no shelter; to die in the gutter and be eaten by dogs if this is my destiny, but at least to see with my own eyes, feel with my own heart and live with my own life, eating with my fingers and sleeping over the grass!

With no delay I gave action to my thoughts, with the braveness of a warrior and the madness of a barbarian, loading my backpack with its contents carefully chosen and throwing by the window what was useless in my journey. The boots I’ve never used were there and my powerful Army knife remained with me. My tent and my Mega-lite torch, my sleeping bag and my books, my Tablet, my notes and all my hopes.

All my life was over my shoulders. All I needed to survive was moving with me to the unknown, to the void, to the darkness. Deci-dedly moving to find the peace in my soul and keep it with me forever.