atal and irresistible forte rather than acting deliberately (The O C Bible in one of its Navachnstian books, has a relevant text, Avatara 1181 "My tongue is merely the baliset and you are the musician who plays on it I am your glove puppet, yours are the fingers I express only what you think m your mind ') A curious yet profound text in the 0 C Bible which greatly influenced Paul is the sirat with its central image, "Paradise on my right, Hell on my left and the Angel of Death behind" He rolled this quotation in his mind as he and his mother sped along a narrow cleft toward the Cave of the Ridges, completing one phase of their flight from the Arrakeen massacre The sirat is a narrow bridge along which we travel through our journey of life Although Paradise is our goal, we must not step off the sirat to reach it prematurely, neither must we allow ourselves to be snared by the tendrils of Hell Death is behind to catch whoever stumbles The text says, "On my right there are houns, ORANGE CATHOLIC BIBLE 412 ORANGE CATHOLIC BIBLE a garden, portyguls laden with fruit and blossom, both at the same time, there is the sondagi and the akarso, with people clothed in silk and gossamer dnnking raehag at tables under the boughs, there n is always sihaya On my left are the djmm in the burning sands of the bled, al-Lat bums there like blood, bakka pours from the bodies of those who run there, limping, driven by the ghafia, yet near me there am faces of attraction, eyes like opafire, distracting, dazzling " and again "I walk the straight and narrow path between the Yang of light, the Yin of darkness, myself am Yaag, myself am Yin, am both, yet neither, for I move between " There is another image often remembered from the sirat "On the planet Mercury, whose face is ever to al-Lat, tee is a ndge it is the sirat On one side all is heat and molten rock and the noise of steam and the bubbling of boiling sand, on the other side there is permafrost, ice, bitter cold, dark and silence broken only by the tinkle of the crystal stars Only on the ndge is it safe to move, for a little while *' "Relax," says the siiat, "relax, enjoy the view" On the stiat there are resting places For Muad'Dib there was Chani As recorded in Princess Irulan'i Muad'Dib The Religious Issues, when Paul drank the Water of Ufc, "He held himself poised in the awareness, seeing time stretch out in its weird dimension, delicately balanced yet whirling, narrow yet spread like a net gather ing countless worlds and forces, a foghtwire that he must walk, yet a teeter-totter on which he balanced On one side he could see the Impenum, a Harkonnen called Feyd-Rautha who flashed toward him like a deadly black, the Sardaukar raging off their planet to spread pogrom on Arrakis, the Guild conniving and plotting, the Bene Gessent wife thejr scheme of selective breeding They lay massed like a muiKterhead on his horizon, held back by no more than the Fremen and their Muad'Dib, the steeping giant Fremen