The God Principle

 

 

   Aliyah discovers an important key to analyzing natural phenomena and mapping those to spiritual phenomena.

 

 

Treks into the rocky desert were always something to look forward to. She had a strange fascination with that terrain, for she found it indescribably beautiful and never missed an opportunity to spend some hours alone with the desert.

“Here I am, driving a hundred miles through godforsaken country just so that you can stare at a ghastly skeleton in the middle of nowhere,” Emma grumbled as she threw up her hands in mock frustration. “This is the last time, hon. I am not going to indulge you anymore.”

Emma was her good friend, though quite her opposite in nature. A gregarious party animal and always ready for a bit of fun, for Emma, excitement in life meant clothes, people, parties and cars. She found Aliyah a strange girl, quite unlike herself, and she couldn’t figure out what brought them close. Still Emma enjoyed talking to Aliyah and listening to her wild and crazy ideas. They always made her pause, and think again.

Emma parked her Beetle in the shade of a big rock and watched Aliyah clamber out into the sunshine.

“Not me, hon,” she said, “It gives me the creeps. Besides, I have a lot of catch up to do with my reading.” 

 

With the air conditioning and stereo on full blast, Emma pulled out a novel, some popcorn and soda cans, pulled back her seat and was soon transported into a much more exciting world than the forlorn desert she left behind.

Aliyah took a deep breath. The desert was as inviting as always: the hot winds, azure blue sky, visibility from horizon to horizon, sandstone rocks sculpted by winds into other-worldly forms, small shrubs and cacti for greenery, an occasional movement as a lizard crawled hurriedly beneath a rock. Here was nature in raw and stark splendor. It looked practically lifeless to the casual observer, but she knew it was just an appearance. Even in such extreme conditions, life thrived, almost hidden. A lot of it existed as raw potential in the ground, and all it took was a brief spell of rain to transform the desert into a fleeting paradise of grass, shrubs and carpets of exquisite flowers, replete with insects and small animals. The rains would visit the desert rarely and briefly, and the quick but evanescent transformations she had seen then had been nothing short of miraculous.

 

And indeed, this was reminiscent of her own social work with deprived children, for she had found that their lives were arid and dry like this desert and a shower of love was what they needed to bring forth their potential to flower and fruit. For this reason she had long associated water and rain with love. The sparkling clear water that fell as rain from the skies she associated with a heavenly love, and her own tears for the children she associated with an earthly love.

And this love could transform lives, as she had seen. To her, many human lives were also like deserts, seeking expression, hoping for a miracle of rain to rejuvenate them, and yet none seemed to be forthcoming. An occasional shower brought in a period of tremendous activity and fulfillment, and then life went back to a normal, apparently lifeless routine. Here was a reflection of her own life, and perhaps that of millions of others. The earth teemed with many lush ecosystems, but nearly one-tenth of its human population somehow chose to, or were forced to, live in desert lands. She found a tremendous symbolism there.

Was it that the desert represented some sort of purgatory? In allegories, it stood for trials and tribulations, and it was a curious fact that many of the world’s great religions and spiritual traditions arose in arid or desert lands. The sandy deserts such as in the Middle East, the arid plains and plateaus such as those in India, and the cold and rocky deserts found in Tibet or China were ample testimony to this. She knew that dusts from the deserts were carried up daily into the sky by winds, and across continents, where they served as the condensation nuclei for clouds and water drops. And they came down as showers of rain, at the center of every life-giving drop. So had the spiritual teachings, traditions and their messengers that lived through scorching tribulations and the purgatory of a desert-like life, traveled far from their homelands, guided by invisible forces, and sought to bring down a shower of heavenly love and life to nations and cultures around the world. The desert was a perfect allegory of a life being prepared in spiritual development. Didn’t Jesus go into the desert to be tempted by the devil prior to His ministry? And wasn't it true that the sweetest fruit and the juiciest fruit grew in the desert? ⁽¹⁾

 

She found it very curious that such landscapes existed on the earth, when two-thirds of the planet was covered with oceans and water was being cycled through the atmosphere. She knew that some deserts faced the oceans, and some existed in proximity to forests. Such apparent barrenness in proximity to abundant life was quite a surprise. Yet they came about naturally through the action of the elements, and so did other ecosystems like the grasslands, the forests and so on. It looked like a whole spectrum of living conditions, from purgatory to paradise naturally co-existed in the same universe.

The wind kicked up dust in her face and she covered her eyes for a moment. When she looked again, a small vortex of moving air, like a miniature tornado, was stealing through the ground, rising up a cloud of dust that moved with it. The dust rose because there was little moisture in the ground and therefore no shrubs or grasses to hold it in place. The same winds had sculpted curious shapes out of the rocks. The action of wind, water and heat had caused the inexorable weathering of the body of earth, breaking cliffs into boulders and boulders into smaller rugged stones, even dust. These elements were so powerful that they had caused whole mountain ranges to disappear over eons.

 

Indeed, the ancients had always held that everything was composed of the elements they called earth, wind, water and fire. Quite understandable, she reflected, given their lack of scientific understanding. But how could they really describe anything, using that system, let alone a complex human being with body, mind and emotions? Or perhaps they could be allegories? Maybe it was indeed possible to describe a human being with that system?

This was a curious thought. The body was obviously formed from the elements of the earth, and she did associate water with love, or emotions. Its frozen form, ice, was often associated with a lack of emotion. And air, or breath, to the animal body was like the mind to human civilization – animating it, giving it life. And mind, like the air, was intangible and invisible. Air currents could then be an allegory to thoughts. The atmosphere of air around the planet was layered much like an onion, and she had a similar concept of the mind as well. Perhaps fire was an allegory for the so-called spirit. This was a curious association. Did the four elements of earth, wind, water and fire correspond to the realms of body, mind, emotions and spirit?

 

She sat down upon a rock and faced the setting sun, her hair flowing in the wind. There was a poetic beauty in everything that surrounded her, something that resonated deeply within her soul. But why? she asked herself. Why do I find the desert so beautiful and appealing? Is it that this terrain carries some deep reflection of myself? Does what happen here have anything to do with my own nature? The thought refused to go away and she considered it further. 

(continued here)

 

Footnotes:

 

1. Dates and watermelons respectively.  Dates have approximately 66% sugar content, as per USDA Agricultural Research Service, Nutrient Data Lab.