Article August 18, 2003 Issue

My long road of spiritual discovery

By José Rodríguez Peláez

When I Was 14 Years Old, I had a very instructive experience concerning God. Our teacher advised us to go to the chapel of the school. But even though I knew that God was Love, this was a torture for me. I couldn't stand being there, not even for two minutes. I felt something similar to fear, and I didn't know why.

Then one day when I was leaving school, I saw a beggar selling estampitas [card with illustrations] of Catholic saints. All of them had three little dots in the front. The vendor would declare in a mysterious tone, "If you concentrate on the dots for a minute, and then look at a blank wall, you will see a large image of the saint projected there."

Although I knew this was just the effect of an optical law, I bought an estampita anyway. I followed the instructions and was able to see how the image of St. Teresa was projected on the wall. This didn't surprise me, and I didn't feel I was the protagonist in a mystic experience, because in my physics class we had studied the law that based that optical illusion.

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