…FIGURING…

Stage 41 / Saturday 6 June / From Navarrenx to Mauléon / 18 km

 

While yesterday in leaving Argagnon I crossed the Gave de Pau, today in leaving the fortified village of Navarrenx, I cross the waters of the Gave d’Olloron. “Gaves” are the names given in Gascony to the waters flowing tumultuously from the Pyrenees in the pyrenean Piedmont. But one should not imagine that the expression “gaver (force feed) a goose” has the same etymological root. Because the “gave” is also the crop or gizzard of the bird in Picardie. So that, as I said earlier, one must mistrust words, literally and figuratively!

 

Meanwhile, full of spirit, if not foie gras, I have force fed myself with thoughts in recent times! And yet I want to deepen the relationship that I envisage between thought (internal kneading of the brain) and spirit (mental surging seeming to diffuse from the outside of the brain). The two are combined in a sort of mental transmitter-receiver apparatus, and it is difficult to decide what distinguishes the material part of the encephalon (which kneads thoughts) from that which inspires it immaterially (and with such flashes of wit, ha, ha!)

 

This analogy would explain why an idea can be one and multiple at the same time, taking diverse nuances for different individuals, each according to his own capacity to think. “From the same idea ten men will produce ten different thoughts, if they have enough life of their own and originality in themselves to shape them into their effigy.” (Esprit-Adolphe Segretain – 1842 – Elements of the State, or Five questions about the Religion, Philosophy, Morals, Art and the Policy, volume 2.)

 

Meditation and contemplation open the way to original thoughts, like sometimes awaking from sleep. It seems almost that there is a spiritual sixth sense functioning better when the five other senses are somnolent. Better reception? Good physical and mental health, the letting-go after an effort, and rest, all stimulate and nourish meditation. And the healthy walk of a pilgrim proves it! My steps often chant for me a state of wakened dreaming! And my stops in the silence of a “Camino” chapel often inspire me renewed serene equanimity.

 

I remember the famous “E.T. phone home!” in Stephen Spielberg’s popular film where the extra-terrestrial enters a cataleptic state to communicate with his fellow-beings … and his heart reddens with emotion! Thus the Ancients readily made images of the emitting power of the spirit by representing a halo above the head of beings most capable of influencing for good, the saints! For their contemporaries, the communicative energy and good works truly seemed to shine. Today science seems to say that the brain also acts as an efficient filter, eliminating what is useless and cumbersome in order to adjust the number of neurons and the quality of their connections to the needs required by evolution. The size of the homo sapiens brain apparently has doubled in less than two million years compared to homo erectus.

 

As for me, will my pilgrimage enlarge my little brain? Am I going to see my sensitivity to spiritual influences develop? If so, should I then accept the familiar expression that scientists use when they cannot find a proof: “Everything happens as if … God truly exists”? This God, is He as some think a complete illusion deriving from a sort of chemical photosynthesis influenced by scattered rays and other still poorly explained types of cosmic energies?

 

In any case, I’m beginning to have great respect for the spiritual resonance of which the ancient world was capable. I think of the incredible serenity and certainty of a life after death, which was perpetuated during nearly two thousand years of ancient Egypt’s stable history. The spiritual contemplation of people along the Nile, in the rhythm of their laborious but peaceful life, punctuated by the regular and beneficial flooding of their river god, was undoubtedly more efficient than mine. Even if it was less informed about what was happening elsewhere! And these people have left us many laudatory representations depicting a life which seemed very happy despite the statute labor [corvées] they had to perform for the state …