I embraced them and thanked them, touched by their concern. I assured them that any debt to me was amply repaid by their willingness to give up their lives to join me in Elgon's palace. Before I left, I made them promise that they would not try to join me on Micro Island. Then I bade farewell to all my Alpha members. As Nancy's eyes caught mine, my blood felt warm inside me and I wondered if she knew-if Bruno had known.
No time to pursue that now, though. I surrounded her with loving thought and went immediately to the tutoring room to meet with Rana.
It was still early morning and I had always met her in the evening. Still I had an overpowering feeling that she would be there waiting for me. I wasn't disappointed, for, as usual, the door opened before I got to it. Upon entering I found Rana calmly sitting back in one of the chairs smiling at me as if we were meeting for one of our regular Personal Evolution sessions.
"I won't ask how you knew I would be coming here at this time in my astral body," I said, "because I'm sure that your power of precognition is working perfectly along with your telepathy which told me that you'd be here."
Rana nodded her agreement. "I also know," she said, "that you are hoping I will have a solution to your problem with Elgon. You'll, be pleased to know that I have learned the solution from your own mind."
"My God! Thank you, Rana, thank you," I said with joyous relief. Then urgently, "What is it?"
She shook her head. "I'm going to disappoint you, Jon, by refusing to tell you what I see you doing in the future."
"What?" I asked, shocked by this turn of events. "Are you telling me that you know the solution but you won't tell me what it is? Are you afraid that if you tell me it won't happen?"
"No," she replied. "Whether I tell you or not, there is only one course of action that you will take at this time."
"Then I can't understand why you won't tell me what it is if it can't affect my future actions," I said puzzled and bewildered.
"Because," she answered, "if I tell you, it will affect your future thoughts, and while this won't change your actions with Elgon it would change your actions later on."
"I don't understand, Rana," I said. "What do you mean?"
"I'm talking about the problem of good and evil," she replied, "which will be your final test for third-level awareness. You'll remember that these concepts, like everything else, depend on the size of your perspective.
"The measure of a mind's evolution is its acceptance of the unacceptable. What may be unacceptable at the micro level is always acceptable at the Macro level."
"Yes," I concurred, "and I remember that everything is perfect from a totally Macro view. But what's that got to do with the solution to my problem?"
She continued her explanation, "I'm saying that ou haven't become aware of your only satisfying solution to Elgon's threat is because you've been using a micro view in which it appears unacceptable and even bad or evil."
"Then you're saying that if you told me what it was I would use it, but for the wrong reasons-because you told me and not because I discovered and accepted it myself, right?"
"That's exactly right, Jon," she replied, "and while this would not affect the distant future it would affect your next ten thousand years and lengthen the time before you and Lea will become one again at the physical and astral levels:"
"I hate to say this, Rana, but thank you for not telling me," I said reluctantly. "I'll have to go back to Elgon's palace and see how long it takes me to discover this solution which you say is already in my mind-the one course of action that I can take."
As I prepared to leave, Rana cautioned me to be careful not to see Lea before returning to Micro Island. I asked why.
"Because," Rana explained, "as your twin soul she will not, at this time, be able to hide from you the solution you're seeking, and the effect will be the same as if you had gotten the information from me."
I thanked her once again and agreed to follow her advice. Then I returned to Elgon's palace without attempting contact with Lea.
I realized that in spite of the constant video picture of Carol in her empty room I didn't know where that room was. I would have to explore the palace to find it. Then I made my big mistake.
I forgot that Elgon had stationed a number of his telepaths outside my room and when I came walking through the walls out into the hallway they saw me immediately and tried to stop me. I visualized myself in the huge dining room and disappeared from their view, but they had already notified the rest of their mind net of my escape into my astral body.
Finding myself suddenly in the dining hall I began running with literally the speed of thought, from room to room hunting for stairs leading down into the lower levels of the palace, because I felt that's where I would find Carol. By the time I located the right stairs and had descended to the level where I felt Carol was being held, Elgon's telepaths had located me.
Once again I felt the increasing power of the crushing vise on my mind, but this time I sought to deal with it by not resisting. I tried to respond to it with Macro loving acceptance. At the same time I continued my search for Carol. The underground cellars of Elgon's palace seemed a veritable labyrinth of rooms, but at last I passed through the right door and found myself in the right place with Carol lying as if dead at the center of the room. As I started toward her, I heard deep booming laughter as Elgon emerged from the shadows at my side.
Almost instantly the pressure of the vise upon my mind multiplied and I realized that Elgon was now personally directing the Macro powers of his thousand-member mind net with crushing force upon me. I have no doubt that Rana or even Lea could have handled their telepathic onslaught, but my level-two powers were no match for this mind net.
The pressure quickly overwhelmed me. I could no longer accept it. Then as I began to struggle against it the end came very suddenly. I lost consciousness and awoke back in 1976.
My room was dark. It was only 4 a.m.
I quickly decided to go back to sleep and see what had happened to me back to 2150. While it took me some time to calm my mind from the vivid memory of the crushing vise, I at last managed to fall asleep and awakened back in the canopied bed with Sela bending over me.
The moment I opened my eyes she said, "You are a fool, Jon Two."
I smiled at her in Karl's wry cynical way and said, "I see you no longer keep up the pretense that I'm a level ten."
"That's right," she replied. "We've discovered that your Macro powers are very limited. You'll hardly be attaining level three in these next few days.
"But that's not why I was calling you a fool. Don't you realize that if you leave your body unprotected while you're gone from it on the astral plane someone who knows how-as I do-can sever the silver cord and separate you permanently from your physical body?"
"Yes," I said. "I knew this, but you want me to become a permanent 'live' resident of Micro Island, not a dead one. My propaganda value would be worthless if I was dead."
Sela gave me her sensuous look in which her tongue touched her lips in a kissing motion before she said, "I don't want you dead, Jon. I want you as my lover, and I know that unless you help us complete your time translation that magnificent body of yours will soon die, and your mind will be lost 174 years in the past."
"Sela," I said, "I no longer desire a micro existence."
'But you have no choice," she replied. "You can either live on Micro Island in 2150 in a well-run micro society or you can live in 1976 in a chaotic micro society."
When I didn't reply to this she finally gave a long sigh of resignation and said, "You leave us no other choice but to release Carol to find her own way back to the Macro society. You realize, of course, that since she will not obey our laws she will be put to death."
"That's murder!" I said.
"It's not murder," she replied. "When a person chooses to break laws that she knows will cause her death, that's suicide. Of course, you can always prevent her death by agreeing to become a permanent resident of Micro Island."
"Give me more time," I said. "Let me think about this."
"You've had plenty of time, Jon," she said, "but to show our generosity we'll give you one more day. If by tomorrow morning you have not decided to cooperate with us we will release Carol and you can watch her cause her own death."
After a long silence Sela left and I began pacing about my prison suite trying vainly to discover the solution that Rana said was already in my mind. What was it, I wondered? What would appear the worst possible decision I could make? Well, from one view point, it would be defying Elgon and refusing his terms. That would humble my pride because I would not only lose Carol, but also my chance to live in 2150.
Yes, without a doubt the hardest thing for me to do would be to watch Carol being executed by the Micro Islanders-especially knowing that I could have prevented it.
I remembered Rana saying, "But nothing is terrible from the Macro view. Things can only be terrible from the micro perspective, which is too limited to see that we live in a perfectly just and balanced– macrocosm in which we experience only what we have chosen."
Then if Carol dies, I thought, she will have chosen it and it will bother me only to the extent that I view her as a possession of mine that I can lose. We can have anything we desire and believe in sufficiently, say the Macro philosophers, and since each soul has free will and absolute Macro power there is no problem.
All right, I agreed, there is no problem from the Macro perspective-but I don't live at that level! Where I live, there are lots of problems, and at the moment the most important one is saving Carol from death and me from losing 2150. This would lie resolved successfully if I would just cooperate with Elgon. Then I could dedicate the rest of my life to finding a way to return to the Macro society. But would I?
I was left completely alone for the rest of that long day and evening while I agonized over what I should tell Elgon in the morning. By the time evening came, I was completely, exhausted, having come to the conclusion that I would choose life for Carol, and, thus, life for me on Elgon's Micro Island. Sleep finally came, bringing with it a ghastly nightmare.
I dreamed that I was dressed in long black robes sitting as a judge in a vast desert. In front of me as far as I could see there stretched a long line of people whom I must judge. According to the bailiff standing beside me they had all committed some crime requiring the death penalty. As I listened to each person's explanation of his crime, however, it seemed to me that they all pleaded in such a moving and piteous fashion that I waived the death penalty for each and every one of them. They cheered, thanked, praised me because I chose life for all who came before me.
Then the scene changed to another part of the desert and I found myself walking with the bailiff at my side through a gigantic prison yard where all those whom I had saved from death were shackled by a great ball and chain so that they could barely move. Now instead of praising and thanking me they were all cursing me. I was appalled to see that they were all afflicted with some hideous disease that was destroying their bodies by slowly eating the flesh from their bones. Somehow I felt compelled to look at every one of these prisoners whose lives I had saved and who were now such grotesque and horrifying victims of a plague that slowly and painfully ate away their bodies.
I heard one call out to me. Turning to him, I shuddered and awoke in tears of terror, for the prisoner who last cursed me for saving his life was Karl!
I felt sick at my stomach with self-hatred to think that I could do that to Karl even in a dream.
Why would I have such a dream? What could it possibly mean? As I asked this question I remembered the words of Rana, "All pain, misery, and disease are the results of resisting that which is inevitable-that which we ourselves have chosen to grow on."
Then what was the solution? Again I could almost hear Rana saying, "The only way to balance negative actions is with positive actions. Thus, loving acceptance balances all. The only sin anyone ever commits is denial of the perfection of what is."
Then my dream, I decided, must have been created by my higher self to show me the consequences of trying to deny the perfection-the necessity-of what is. Did this mean that I should take the other path and let Carol die?
Had I let Karl die in the past? Is that why he was in my dream?
From some cranny of my mind came two replays; one in which Karl was finishing off a pint bottle of carrot juice, and one in which Carol was getting her usual from the mechanism in the cafeteria-carrot juice.
Then a double exposure-Carol's 1976 "past" life review of herself as a black student fighting pollution, and Karl ranting about industrial pollution.
My mind raced.
But she's a girl-the girl I love, my soul mate, my Alpha mate!
And Karl? He's a man-the man I most love, my best friend, my stepbrother, my roommate!
"Oh, my God!" I thought out loud. "Oh, my everloving God!"
I grasped my arms across my chest and rocked back and forth in my pain, conflict, agony, fear, and joy.
When I finally got it all together and accepted the perfection of this new insight, I went downstairs and laid the news on Karl and Neda.
It hit them just about the way it hit me, and we all ended up in tears of joy and amazement at the incredible perfection of the eternal plaid of our lives.
The big question remained. Should I let Carol-Karl?-die?
I spent the rest of the day trying to answer this question and by evening I admitted to Karl and Neda that the thought of watching Carol die when I could have prevented it was just more than I could take. We talked far into the night with Karl arguing that my decision to save Carol and myself was the only sane and decent one, and with Neda arguing that I should ask my higher self for the answer and follow it, no matter how difficult.
I just shook my head, then went back to my apartment. Once in bed I didn't want to go to sleep until I was sure of my decision for Elgon, so I tossed and turned until finally in desperation I remembered Carol's advice whenever I was particularly frustrated: Macro contact recall.
As I focused my mind on my last contact with the Macro self I felt the anxiety and tension begin flowing out of my body. The rhythm and depth of my breathing changed and again the unspeakable union of all opposites led to the ultimate experience of that which is beyond time, space, and words.
I must have fallen asleep because when I opened my eyes I saw both Sela and Elgon bending over me. Then I heard Elgon say, "I'm glad you're finally awake. We're ready for your decision."
Without thinking I replied, "I've decided to learn the lessons I came here to learn and permit Carol to do the same."
"You mean you are willing to watch her die before your very eyes?" Sela said.
When I didn't reply Sela pointed-to the video screen. "Are you sure you can live with that decision?"
I looked across the room at the giant video screen. The picture of Carol had changed. Instead of lying on the floor of a barren room she was now spread-eagled against a wall in the courtyard with manacles at her wrists and ankles. Her body was naked and obviously conscious because it seemed to be writhing in pain. A close-up picture of her face revealed that her catatonic trance had been ended, for her eyes were open and staring at something before her. Then the picture changed and I saw what she was looking at-a howling, screaming mob of Micro Islanders who were being restrained by a high steel-like mesh fence.
"If we raise that fence," Elgon said, "that mob will stone her to death for advocating birth control and refusing to bear children. Since she's a foreigner, the penalty for those crimes is death. Are you sure you won't cooperate with us, Jon?"
I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.
Elgon and Sela observed me intently without speaking and the silence between us grew until suddenly Elgon nodded his head and the audible sound from the video panel increased.
I tried not to look at the screen but my eyes seem to have a life of their own. I stared at the mob which was now pouring through the opened fence,
racing to large piles of small, sharp, quartz-like stones that were piled several feet in front of Carol.
For the next half-hour I watched the mob-men, women, and children-throw the small sharp stones at Carol's suffering body. I watched the whole gory process from the first superficial cuts on her beautiful legs, arms, breasts, and face until her whole body was covered with gaping bloody wounds, and finally to the sight of one eye gone and the other hanging by a shred of tissue down her torn and bloody cheek. Since the stones were small, they left her conscious till the very last, her lovely body literally hanging in shreds from her bones.
Even with the memory of my most recent Macro contact fresh in my mind that half-hour was the most excruciatingly painful of my entire life.
Elgon broke the silence. "It's one thing, Jon, to watch another person die like this. It's quite another to experience it yourself."
With these words Elgon summoned a number of his followers who led me out of the palace to the same courtyard wall from which the remains of my beloved Carol were now being removed so that I could take their place. As they hurled me forward my feet were gouged by the sharp white stones now stained red with her blood.
The mob regathered, shouting obscenities and accusations at me as I was thrust against the slaughtering wall, still wet with blood. As they snapped the bloody manacles around my wrists and ankles, my mind became a blur of memories-Lea, and our brief moments together-Rana and the many lessons I should learn... did learn?... would learn?-Neda and her incredible transformation-Karl, my faithful friend, and the trauma I had brought into his life these past few months-and his parallel self, my beloved Carol whose warm blood separated me from the coarse brick of the wall behind me.
In the distance I saw Elgon and Sela moving toward me through the crowd. Somehow, though they stood only inches from me now, they seemed also to be miles away. Elgon dipped the tips of his fingers into the red pool below me. Then, wiping his fingers across my chest, he asked me contemptuously if I would like to reconsider my decision. I did not speak, for the answer lay bitterly in my eyes.
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