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Spiritual Cycle Trilogy 3: The Key to the Door Printable Version PRINTABLE VERSION
by Awais Aftab, Pakistan Dec 2, 2004
Peace & Conflict   Short Stories

  

Spiritual Cycle Trilogy 3: The Key to the Door

The chirping of the birds woke me up. Yawning, I looked at the calendar; it was Sunday and I was to spend the morning drinking tea with Dr. Samuel Nelson. Samuel was an old friend of mine. We had met in college and had been friends ever since, though our fields were different. Samuel had a PhD in philosophy and was teaching at a university. I, on the other hand, was a retired civil servant and was currently writing a book about my experiences in the service. After I retired, it became my routine to spend the Sunday morning at Nelson’s house.
I got up, took a quick shower, changed and went on my way to his house. He was sitting in the garden, like always, and was reading the newspaper.
“Morning James,” he took his glasses off and smiled at me.
“Anything new in the paper?” I asked as I sat down.
“The same old stuff,” he said.
He poured down some tea for me. “I had that dream again,” he said slowly.
“That Julia Roberts one?” I asked smiling.
He laughed lightly and immediately became serious. “I saw that door,” he paused. “It was so near this time, so near.” He shook his head.
“Could you open it?”
“No, I woke up before I could even extend my hand towards it.”
The strangest thing about Samuel was the dreams he had; which just showed one thing: a door. During our talks he had told me a lot about it. He had started having these dreams when he was a small child. At that time, he used to see himself standing in a very long, dark corridor, at the end of which there was a door of light. It shone but its light produced no effect on the walls of the corridor just as the light of the sun can’t ‘lighten’ the dark space around it. That door was unparallel in its beauty, its magic. The doctor could feel that the door was the door to salvation, that the door was the purpose of his life. It seemed to whisper to him, guide him. Whenever he did something good he moved a step closer to the door and whenever he did something bad he moved a step backwards in the long, dark corridor. He had chosen philosophy as his subject because he felt that it was his destiny. That night, he had moved a lot closer to that shinning door, and had known that his decision was correct. He was always engaged in asking questions and finding answers to them. He had married but his wife had died after a few years of an extremely rare disease. It was the worst shock of his life but not a tear rolled down his cheeks. He accepted that pain just as a shock-absorber absorbs a shock, and somehow that pain became a part of him and helped him to become a better person; he came closer to the door.
He became a totally changed person. He brought out meanings from the chirping of the birds and the colours of the flowers. I had seen him several times talking to the flowers in his garden. Somehow, he had learned about something called ‘the spiritual cycle’ and he was positive that by entering that door he could enter the cycle.
The next week when I met him, I saw him frustrated and nearly hysterical. He had reached that door the previous night but he couldn’t open it: it was locked. All his life he had been running after that door and when he reached it, it was locked. It was nearly enough to make him kill himself. Yet, soon he regained his control and became patient.
After that he began to spend his life in isolation in his house. He even politely refused to see me. I just prayed for him; I knew he was passing through severe agony.
In a few months, my book was completed and published. I sent a copy to Dr. Samuel. A week later, I received a written letter from him. It said:
“Thank you, old friend. Your book showed me where the key was.”
No one ever heard of him later. He just disappeared. Perhaps, he entered that next cycle. But how did he find the key from my book? Apparently, he had seen something in my life, which even I, myself, had not noticed. I believe now that I was meant to write that book so that Samuel would find the key to the door. Perhaps, that was the mere purpose of my life.





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Awais Aftab


Writing has been a passion, a love ever since I learned to write. For me, writing is a means of expression of 'secret tears and secret pleasures'. True writing comes from the heart and often it is the one to find you, not you the one to find it. Writing gives me power, the strength to carry on, the will to live and to live in a better way. It helps me find deeper meaning in the world around me and to understand myself much better. I can't survive without writing. For me, my writings are the whispers of life, in which the glory and sorrow of life echoes. For me, these are the glittering tears, whose every flash encompasses a thousand aspects of life. I believe that, 'I write; therefore I am.' However, true ease in writing comes from art, and I still have to learn a lot about that.
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