PART ILeto was a 17 year old boy who lived in Avatarati. He was taller than most of the kids of his age. Nevertheless, his slender boy gave away his fading childhood. his parents worked on the Nascram's wheat fields in the outskirts of the city. But due to his father's health deteriorating over time, Leto was forced to work on the city market.
Leto didn't stand out for his physical, but for his mind. He managed to learn mathematics by his own, and this knowledge earned him a job in a market stand as assistant accountant.
Every week a peculiar character arrived to the market. He was known as the "old paper maker" a nickname the youngsters gave him. He had a long, white beard which covered all the lower half of his face. His thick eyebrows gave him a martial appearance, which was strengthened by his bald head.
Although he seemed like an old man, he irradiated a juvenile aura. His laughter was known throughout Avatarati, and his face was molded by a lifetime of smiling. He moved in such a subtle and fluid way, similar to a stream of water flowing through rocks. though he didn't show any sign of developed muscles, he was extremely strong since he carried a great quantity of odds and ends in his knapsack which he carried to the city for selling and trading. The "old paper maker" won this nickname because the main product he sold was paper. But this was no ordinary paper. It was zensunni paper, and it was said it lasted a lifetime. Zensunni paper is not magical: If you put it over a flame it burned, if you soak it in water it wold turn into a formless mulch, if you teared it apart, it wouldn't recompose or heal in any way. It simply lasted , it didn't turn yellow or wear away like normal paper and every drop of ink you dropped on it would stay on its place. Common folk didn't knew the true name of this paper, the old man always said he had a "secret way of pressing the sugar cane" to form such a durable paper.
Every week the old paper maker arrived to the market when the sun was on its highest point. He searched for an empty spot, and unloaded his heavy knapsack on the ground. Then, he lay a big silk sheet and arranged several stacks of paper of different colors and notebooks with different designs on them. He then seated down and chatted with the possible clients and with anybody who came to talk to him.
Leto's boss always tasked him to buy paper from the old man, to keep the numbers of his stand. That day was not different: As soon as the old paper maker seated down, Leto went to buy the paper.
-"Good morning sir!" Leto said while playing with the gold coins his boss gave him.
-"Hello young one, let me guess... you want ten white pages" the old man was seated with his legs crossed, looking at him with a smile but with inquisitive eyes, analyzing all the micro gestures the kid made. As a zensunni monk, the paper maker was trained to read even the tiniest gesture of a person's body, this ability gave zensunni monks insights of a person's thoughts and attitudes.
-"Yes please, sir" Leto always bought the same amount of paper every other week
Is logical he knew how much paper I was going to buy his mind always tried to identify the reason for everything.
The old man looked for the package with white paper, he then took the amount the child needed and tied the pages with a string, before he gaved them to him, he asked
-"Tell me child, for what purpose you use this paper?"
-"To keep the numbers of my boss stand. He likes your paper because he says it will never deteriorate" Leto said the last words with a skeptical tone, he always thought his boss was a fool for believing those folk stories about the old man and his mystical powers. The zensunni school was a rather secret order, although they gladly shared all their knowledge with other guilds and erudites, they tried to keep themselves off the public eyes. That's why most of the people didn't knew the old man was part of this school, and one of the highest grades.
-"Hmmm, you seem quite doubtful about the properties of my paper" The paper maker said to Leto, slowly stroking his long beard.
-"Well, I don't believe all that gossip about your magical powers and how you enchant your paper. Although I have always been curious about how do you make this paper, I know my boss has been buying your paper for 15 years and not a single page has damaged or broken."
-"You are a curious one, aren't you? Let me give you an advice child: Some things are not meant to know, and that depends in what things you want to know." For Leto this was a strange sentence, superficially he felt attacked by the old man, but for a second his mind told him there was a hidden meaning on those words. This was no accident, zensunni monks have always used this exact sentence to identify possible students for their mystic school. People with the aptitude to join the school would trascend the spoken word and understand the true meaning of the message: An invitation to something bigger than them.
Although Leto knew he needed to continue that conversation, other parts of his mind started working
I need to work, I'm taking to long, my family needs the money'
He just said - "May I have my paper sir?"
The old man looked straight to Leto's eyes for a few seconds
He knows what is going on, but his mind is diverging from my words, he is not ready, but he will soon beHe took the tied pages and hand them to Leto. When Leto took them, the old man said locking his eyes with Leto's " remember child, we often have to do things we are not supposed to do, but we must do. The universe has mysterious ways of unraveling events"
Leto handed him the coins and left the improvised stand of the old paper maker, looking back for a few seconds before disappearing behind some fruit stands. That was a weird conversation for him, he had never felt so many parts of his minds working at the same time while talking with some one. An interest in that peculiar character rose in Leto's mind, but was diminished once he arrived to the stand and started working.
The old paper maker kept thinking about leto, he had found a potential disciple
Now, we must wait for the correct conditions to appear. This kid has a potential to become a great addition to the zensunni school, its quite funny how you found the correct person in the wrong placesThe old man finished thinking about the conversation, and his emblematic smile appeared on his face when a man arrived to buy some paper.
The old paper maker lives in a small island north-east of Avatarati. He has a sugar cane field, his workshop, and a garden.
PRELUDE TO PART II Question: How does the master become eternal?
Answer: By taking care of the universe, not himself. Like the water or the wind that don't think about their self-nurturing but instead nurture the whole world, the master is eternal by leaving a trace of himself in every entity of the universe.the book that Leto was reading was full of these metaphores. The old paper-maker had ordered him to read it while he leave to Avatarati for the usual trading at the market. Some time had passed since he left the city and came to live with the zensunni monk at his cottage, which was located on an island at the center of a lake.
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It is such a relaxing place, I feel almost in another world Leto thought while rapidly passing the pages of the thick book. He was seated outside the cottage: a small construction of a strange architecture. It was comfortable but rather blank, without the ornament or decoration of the houses of Avatarati he was used to. The day was happily sunny, and all sort of insects and critters were roaming the vicinity.
Almost coincidentally he stopped on a page that catch his attention, since the tittle related with his thought.
The alam al-mythal
Without knowing it, we inhabit two worlds at the same time. The first one is the physical one, which we can sense everyday since the beginning of our lives. We do this with our senses, which depends on specialized organs for proper working.
The second world is that one where our subtle-self exists: Our mind, imagination and spirit. This world we call the "Alam Al-mythal" or "world of imagination" Analogously but at the same time different to the physical world we feel this world with our consciousness. While we have sense in the physical world, in the Alam Al-mythal we only have varying degrees of our conscious. You can experiment these degrees while dreaming having a hunch, or having a deja-vu. These are some examples where you are "sensing" the imaginary world.
There is great benefit from having a better perception of this world. And similar in how you can train your physical senses to better perceive and react in the physical world, you can train your consciousness to better perceive the Alam Al-mythal. Leto stopped reading, his mind was digesting the idea of living in two worlds at the same time. A butterfly was flying near him, and it catched his attention. graciously moving in the air, Leto start to imagine the butterfly being in two places at the same time, but he couldn't. It was impossible,
If the butterfly is flying right here, how it could be in Avatarati or some other place? He thought, trying to rationalize, as he usually did. Then the butterfly landed on a reed near the edge of the island. The butterfly continued flying and Leto kept following it with his sight, slowly stopping his train of thought. A couple of minutes passed and he was completely in the movement of the insect, Then the butterfly landed on a reed near the edge of the island. its black and orange wings were reflected by the crystal clear water of the lake, making an almost perfect copy of it. Leto realized that the water was reflecting the butterfly, and in some way this image, of two butterflies were there was only one real made him understand the meaning of what he has just read.
