Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

The students rose to escort the sages to their cave. The sages walked away, frowning their thoughts.

Idriss looked around as Silvano offered his arm. He found Karla’s eyes, and smiled at us.

‘Glad you’re here, Karla,’ he said, as he walked back to his cave with Silvano. ‘So nice to see you two together.’

‘You know,’ Vinson said when we were alone. ‘I think I’m getting the hang of this. You’re on to something with the T-shirts, Karla. You’re keeping notes, Randall, right?’

‘Meticulous notes, Mr Vinson.’

‘I’d like to see those later, if it’s okay.’

‘Me too,’ Karla said.

‘Me three,’ I agreed.

‘I’m so happy we have that settled,’ Didier said. ‘Now, will someone please open the bar. My soul may be improved, but mind is screaming for mercy.’

Doubtful had a question, after the contest resumed, but Idriss raised a soft hand of insistence, silencing everyone, and pushed on to the horizon of his thought.

‘So far as I can see,’ he said quietly, his raised hand like a trident made from pure patience, ‘we are the only species with the capacity to be more than we are, perhaps even more than we dream we are, and the potential to get wherever it is that we choose to go.’

He stopped for a moment.

‘Why do we let the few push the many to compete and consume and fight?’ Idriss said. ‘When will we demand peace, as passionately as we demand freedom?’

Sudden tears fell into his upturned palms, resting in his lap.

‘Forgive me,’ he said, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.

‘Great sage,’ Let Me See said, crying sympathy with him. ‘We are all drawn here today by the power of love. Let us remain happy in our spiritual endeavours.’

Idriss laughed, clearing his eyes of moonstone tears.

‘That is a semantic error, great teacher,’ he said, composed again. ‘Love has no power, because it can only be freely given.’

‘Very well then,’ Let Me See smiled, ‘what is Power?’

‘Power influences or directs people or processes,’ Idriss said. ‘Power is a measure of control, and is always connected to authority. Power is fear, submitting to greed. There is no fear and there is no greed in love, just as there is no authority or control, which is why it is beyond illusions of power.’

‘But what about the power of healing?’ Grumpy asked. ‘Do you deny that?’

‘That is the energy of healing, master- ji . Every healer knows that there is no power in it, but that the energy is abundant. Energy is the process. Power is the attempt to influence, direct or control the process.’

‘Even the power of prayer, master- ji ?’ Ambitious asked. ‘Is there no such thing?’

‘There is the spiritual energy of prayer,’ Idriss replied, ‘just as there is the spiritual energy of love, and both are reservoirs of grace, but there is no power. Energy is the process, and power is the attempt to control the process.’

Vinson was wriggling to speak.

‘Power bad, energy good,’ he whispered to Karla. ‘Absolute power corrupts.’

‘Very good, Stuart,’ Karla whispered happily.

‘Let us smoke again for a while,’ Idriss said to the sages.

‘Very good, Idriss,’ Didier whispered more happily, and the assembly relaxed, while the sages and my French friend sated themselves.

‘Shall I continue?’ Idriss asked, when the sages were high enough to get down to metaphysics again.

‘Certainly,’ the sages replied.

‘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.’