'D LIKE TO SAY SOMETHING TO EXPLAIN WHY The Alchemist is a symbolic book, whereas The Pilgrimage was a work on non-fiction.

For eleven years of my life I stuied alchemy. The very idea of transforming metals into gold, or discovering the Elixir of Life, was too fascinating to pass unnoticed by someone coming face-to-face with magic for the first time.

I confess that the Elixir of Life was what attracted me most. Before I heard and felt the presence of God, the idea of everything one day coming to an end used to drive me to despair. So when I learned the possibility of finding a liquid that could prolong my life by many years, I decided to dedicate myself, body and soul, to making it.

Those were times - in the early 70s - of great social upheaval, and no serious works on alchemy had been published in Brazil. Like the two characters in the book, I started to spend what little money I had on buying imported books, and devoted many hours every day to studying their complicated symbolism. I tracked down two or three people in Rio de Janeiro who were seriously involved in the Master Work, but they refused to see me. I met many others who called themselves alchemists, people who had their own laboratories and promised to teach me the secrets of the Art in exchange for absolute fortunes. Today, I realize that they knew nothing about what they pretended to teach.

All my efforts were in vain. Nothing happened, none of those events were reported in the published texts on alchemy. Books written in such impenetrable language, full of symbols, dragons, lions, suns, moons, and quicksilver. The symbolism allowed such a wide range of uncertainty that I always felt I was following the wrong path. In 1973, desperate at my failure to make any progress, I committed a supremely irresponsible act. At the time I was working for the state, giving lectures on drama, and I decided to set my students exercises relating to the Emeralrd Tablet.

This action, and other incursions into the murkier areas of magic in the following year, led me to experience, in flesh and blood, the truth of the proverb, "As you sow, so shall you reap". My whole life was in ruins. For the next six years I was quite sceptical about anything to do with mysticism. During this time in spiritual exile, I learned many important things: that we only accept a truth after we have first wholeheartedly rejected it; that we musn't run away from our own destiny; and that the hand of God is firm, but infinitely generous.

In 1981 I met RAM and my Teacher, who led me back to the road I am destined to travel. And as he introduced me to his beliefs, I went back to studying alchemy on my own. We were talking one night, after a long telephatic sessions, and I asked him why alchemists always use such vague, complicated language.

My Teacher said, "There are three types of alchemist: those who are vague because they don't know what they're doing; those who are vague because they do know what they're doing, but who also know that the language of alchemy is addressed to the heart, and not to the mind."

"And the third type?"

"Those who will never hear about alchemy, but who will succeed, through the lives they lead, in discovering the Philosopher's Stone."

And with this, my Teacher - who belonged to the second category - agreed to give me lessons in alchemy. I discovered that the symbolic language, which so annoyed and confused me, was the only way to reach the Soul of the World, or what Jung called "the collective unconsciousness". I discovered the Personal "Legend", and the Signs of God, truths which my rational mind had refused to accept because of their simplicity. I discovered that carrying out Master Work is not the work of a few, but of every human being on the face of the Earth. And that while, of course, the Master Work will not always reveal itself to us in the form of an egg, or in a jar of liquid, everyone, beyond any shadow of doubt, can enter into the Soul of the World.

This is why The Alchemist, too, is a symbolic text. In the course of the book I pass on everything I have learned. I've also tried to pay homage to great writers who managed to achieve the Universal Language. Hemingway, Blake, Borges (who also used Persian history in one of his short stories), Malba, Tahan, among others.

To conculed this long preface, and illustrate what my Teacher wanted to say regarding the third type of alchemist, it is worth recalling a story he told me himself, in his laboratory.

"Our Lady, with the Baby Jesus in her arms, decided to come down to Earth and visit a monastery. The monks proudly joined in a long queue, and each of them came before the Virgin to render their homage. One declaimed beautiful poetry, another showed his illuminated paintings of biblical subject, a third repeated the names of all the Saints. And so on, one monk after the other, praising Our Lady and the Baby Jesus.

"The last monk of all there was the humblest in the whole monastery, who had never studied the learned books of the time. His parents were simple people, who worked in an old travelling circus, and all they had taught him was to throw balls into the air and juggle with them.

"When it was his turn, the other members of the order wanted to bring the homage to a conclusion, since the old juggler would have nothing important to say, and might lower the image of the monastery. But in the bottom of his heart, he also felt a burning need to give something of himself to Jesus and the Virgin.

"Ashamed, conscious of the disapproving looks of his brothers, he took a few oranges from his bag, and started to juggle them in the air, saying that juggling was all he knew how to do.

"It was at that moment that the Baby Jesus, sitting on Our Lady's lap, smiled and started to clap his hands. And the Virgin reached out her arms, inviting him to hold the baby."