Mirroring Jem’s answer back to him, Alph said:
“Worship is necessary firstly because the wave-bodies need it, and secondly for the pleasure of consciousness!”
Jem wasn’t expecting such a simple answer…
“Didn’t you ever hear from your enlightened ones Jem, that ‘Allah does not need your prayers, whatever you do, you do it for yourself?’”
What an interesting character this Alph was… He had a way of simplifying even the most complicated of topics down to a few sentences, clarifying the whole topic! As though he wasn’t a living unit, but an enormous emotionless computer! How can a unit attain this state? Jem wondered… We must really know ‘nothing’, he admitted to himself in his thoughts… Then, with all his helplessness and impotence, he submitted himself to Alph…
“Alph, I submit to you wholeheartedly! Please help me to attain the universal realities, help me to become free of the ‘relative’ truth and discover the actual and absolute truth…”
Jem felt like a bird in an egg, his whole world comprised the tiny little egg he was stuck in… But now he was aware of an outside world and he was trying to depict and understand it based on the bits and pieces of ‘reality shots’ Alph was injecting into his egg… He knew that ultimately he had to crack open and hatch his egg and make the transition to the real world.
Perhaps the teachings ‘die before death’ and “people are asleep and will wake up upon death” alluded to this process of hatching one’s egg?
“I am not the one to hatch your egg, Jem!”
Alph interrupted Jem’s thoughts and, trying to direct him, he continued:
“It is against nature… Every bird, once it is ready to survive in this world, will hatch its own egg and make its own transition to the world. If you were to hatch the egg from the outside, you will not be aiding the process but harming and impeding it. Think of the silkworm, does it not work in the same way? Once it has developed its wings, it hatches out from its cocoon and flies away…”
“But not all of them succeed in emerging from their cocoons… Some die as pupas inside the cocoon and get thrown into boiling water?”
“Well, that is life, my friend… Some metamorphose, hatch out from their cocoons and fly away, and some fail to do so, get baked in hot ovens and thrown into boiling waters!”
“But how is it their fault? Why is it that some get to complete their metamorphosis and fly away into the beautiful skies while others can’t get passed the pupa stage and are thrown into boiling waters together with their cocoons?”
“Dear Jem, what is the poor gazelle’s fault when the lion tears it to pieces with its teeth and claws? Try and put yourself into the spot of that lion or tiger just for a few seconds… What is the baby gazelle’s fault? And how about the baby lamb jumping about in the pasture next to his mother, what is its fault that you humans slaughter it and fry it and eat it with pleasure?”
“I swear when I think of it like this, we are no different to those lions and tigers!”
“But you are not asked to live like a lion or a tiger, you are asked to live like a human being. That is, you are required to contemplate, to realize your real worth by knowing your true self, and thus decipher and become one with the universal secrets! In your terms, you need to ‘reach Allah’… if only you knew the meanings within the depths of these two short words…”
“So, how is it going to be, Alph? Sometimes it all seems too simple, and sometimes it seems like an extremely complicated predicament! How is everything just going to settle down into their places?”
“As you say: Allah is great… One who seeks shall find… Let us see what Allah manifests, for whatever it may be, it will always be beautiful… For now, In Essence!”
“Hey wait! Alph! Don’t leave just yet… not like this…”
But Alph had gone… leaving Jem to deal with his own self…
Waves can’t settle down without rippling first!
But this was noripple, Jem thought… this was more like a hurricane..!