Jem had been reading and researching astrology for a whole week now. He had found some very interesting information. Well-known Islamic scholars had talked about the effect of the signs over literally everything on the face of the Earth! How had they procured such profound knowledge back in their days and how were they able to discover the effects of the stars on one’s fate, life on Earth, death and the Intermediary Realm, and even the heavens!!?

Jem, who had found himself in a world he had no idea existed, was dazed by all this new information. He was encountering such amazing realities of which he previously had no knowledge, that all his value judgments and everything in his created ‘world’ were now hanging by a thread, subject to change at any time.

At times he felt like he was suffocating, or like he was about to collapse, and sometimes he felt like denouncing everything he knew and wandering around in a totally ‘empty’ state…

It was so difficult to accept that everything he valued actually meant nothing, like a balloon without air, accepted to be ‘something’ only because of conditionings! His whole thought system had been confounded.

If he wasn’t such an intellectual he would have denied it all and perhaps even fallen to the base state of bodily life, but his introspection, contemplation and comprehension abilitiesprevented him from such primitiveness.

His determination to completely decipher and understand these newfound truths that had jammed up all his thoughts and value judgments impeded any tendency to go astray! His whole aim now was to understand Alph, and the system in which he was living…

He was sitting on a bench at the top of a hill surrounded by trees watching the ocean scene and enjoying the fresh air… His mind was mostly caught up on the topic of astrology… How could it be that the human mind is programmed with the influences of cosmic rays, he kept wondering. And if the brain was programmed with cosmic rays, were they subject to change later on? If alteration was possible, how was it done? What was going to happen if alteration wasn’t possible? Questions, questions, questions… I wonder if one day I will finally have all the answers, he thought to himself…

“In Essence, Jem! I see you are bursting with questions as always… Your vibration was so potent that it attracted me here! So nice to encounter an earthling who, despite the primitive state of his species, is able to transcend the bodily life and activate his thought mechanism!”

“In Essence, Alph… Thank you for the wonderful compliment… However, one cannot be happy when one is unable to find answers to so many questions… Especially this ‘astrology’ business that you threw my way has completely befuddled me! And that other thing you said, about reality versus dreams! I’m so confused, Alph, please explain what you mean by reality and dreams to me, I mean, how can this world that we perceive to be ‘real’ via our five senses, be a mere dream?”

“Ok, Jem, since you ask, I shall explain, even though I know you are not yet ready to completely understand it… As you have been so conditioned to think and evaluate everything via your five senses it is almost like you have lost your skill to look and see anything beyond them. Nevertheless, I am still going to explain it all to you… An elastic cup can be forced to expand, and if it lacks elasticity, then it’ll be forced to transform.”

“I didn’t get what you just said but never mind, right now I just want to know about the reality-dream mechanism, and then I want to learn about brain programming… If the brain is programmed by cosmic rays is it subject to change and can we alter this program in any way? It’s critical that I understand this.”