The Mountain Shadow

‘The fact that we are what we are,’ Idriss said, as if the discourse had never paused, ‘asking all the right questions, no matter how many centuries it takes us to get to the truth, is destiny itself. Destiny, too, like life, is an emergent phenomenon.’

Vinson leaned in to whisper a question, but Karla beat him to it.

‘Energy plus direction equals destiny,’ she said quickly, focusing on the debate.

‘But destiny?’ Doubtful said, his shaved head glistening with sweat in the warm evening. ‘Can you explain that again?’

‘Our human destiny is a fact, not a supposition,’ Idriss said. ‘Destiny is the ability to focus spiritual energy, in the form of will, to change the future course of our lives. We are all doing this, to a greater or lesser extent, in all our lives, and in the collective life of our species. We are living directed lives already, and it is up to us to realise it, and to direct them more positively.’

‘But realise it how?’ Let Me See asked.

‘Express the set of positive characteristics to the best of your ability,’ Idriss replied. ‘That is the realisation of the soul, expressed in human kindness and courage.’

‘Why?’ Ambitious asked. ‘Why should anyone ever bother to do good or positive things? Why not simply work for self-benefit? Since you are so much a man of science, isn’t that evolutionary?’

‘Not at all,’ Idriss smiled, answering a question he’d faced hundreds of times before. ‘Everywhere that some people look, they see a savage world, competing to the death. But there is also magnificent cooperation in the world, from ants in colonies, to trees in colonies, to human beings in colonies. Adaptability is exquisite cooperation. Cooperation is evolution.’

‘But surely the fittest survive,’ Ambitious pressed. ‘And the fittest rule. Do you mean to overturn the natural order of things?’

‘The natural order of things is cooperation,’ Idriss countered. ‘Molecules do not compete to form organic molecules, they cooperate to form them. And we, great sages, are very large collections of very cooperative organic molecules, thanks to the Divine. When they stop cooperating, we are in trouble.’

‘Since you like to take this discourse back to first principles,’ Let Me See observed, ‘can I ask if you are suggesting that there is a different moral order, beyond that found in the sacred texts?’

It was a trick question. I knew that Karla was itching to answer it, because we’d discussed it several times.

‘The sacred texts are there for us to know what we can become,’ Idriss said. ‘Until we get there, in our tragically long cultural evolution, until we get to a place that is worthy of such beautiful revelations, our common humanity is a very useful guiding star to the essential truth in all of them.’

‘Are you brushing the sacred texts aside?’ Let Me See asked.

‘You speak those words, not I. My advice, for what little it is worth, is simply that the sacred texts are like sacred places. Just as we should be clean when we enter sacred places, so should we be clean when we enter sacred texts. And the best way to present a clean soul to the great revelations of the Divine, is to be a clean human being in your dealings with others, and the world that sustains us.’

The sages conferred again, and Idriss took the opportunity to call for a new hookah pipe, puffing it alight for the sages contentedly.

‘Good heart, good faith?’ Vinson suggested during the pause.

‘You’re really getting this,’ Karla said quietly.

Randall was taking notes in his journal. Ankit was helping him, whispering the end of a half-remembered line from time to time.

‘How do you like it, guys?’ I whispered.

‘It’s like jumping up in a parachute,’ Randall replied. ‘Instead of down.’

‘We could use this teacher of yours in the Party,’ Ankit said admiringly.

‘There’s a party?’ Didier asked, brightening.

‘The Communist Party,’ Ankit whispered back drily. ‘But a small party might be arranged for you later tonight by the fire, Mr Didier, if you desire it.’

‘Superb,’ Didier enthused. ‘Oh, God, the holy men are talking again.’

‘I confess, great sage,’ Let Me See said modestly, ‘that you have lost me in the jungle of your imaginative ideas.’

‘Yes,’ Doubtful added. ‘I am also lagging behind, because your discourse on spiritual matters does not employ the usual spiritual language, Master Idriss.’

‘Everything is a spiritual language, noble thinker, but simply on a higher or a lower frequency of connection,’ Idriss replied. ‘This discourse that we share is but one of many.’

‘How can there be more than one spiritual language?’ Doubtful asked.

‘If there is a God, and a spiritual language that connects us to God, then by definition it is the only language of purpose, simply expressed in different ways.’

‘Even in negative ways?’ Grumpy asked, waking to the theme.

‘Wouldn’t you prefer to concentrate on the higher spiritual language, as we have done so far, and not on the lower?’ Idriss lamented.

‘Do you not have examples, then?’ Ambitious asked.