Turning his back to me, Elgon bent to pick up two of the red-stained stones. He held these up for the crowd to see, then handed one to Sela as he turned and, facing me now, cast the first stone.
I heard, deep in the recesses of my mind, the voice of Rana echoing, "In ancient Judea, Jon, the souls of Carol and yourself incarnated into a fierce and proud family. You grew up to be beautiful to look at but vain and proud. You were quick to condemn and more than once self-righteously joined in the stoning to death of those you condemned."
I knew why it was happening, but my eyes and my mind were still overflowing with hatred for Elgon.
In my mind Rana's voice was saying, "The measure of a mind's evolution is its acceptance of the unacceptable."
I tried the Macro pause. I tried to think myself into a Macro perspective of loving acceptance. I tried to love and accept Elgon and "what is" as perfect. I tried but to no avail.
Acceptance of the unacceptable-my final test, and I had failed. I could not lovingly accept Elgon.
There are limits to everything-even pain-but with hundreds of jagged stones tearing at my body, the tide of pain soared through me until it-seemed I could not bear to live another second.
My eyes could no longer see, but to my mind Lea appeared.
"Remember, Jon, the measure of a mind's evolution is its acceptance of the unacceptable."
With these words ringing in my mind I awakened in 1976.
CHAPTER 17: Evolation
A month has passed since my death in 2150, and this long separation from the Macro society has been hard to bear. Yet, as I sit here in the warm spring sunshine on the small balcony outside my apartment, I know that I have come to accept this separation, and even the terror and pain of my last hour in that future world.
I no longer condemn or feel any anger toward Elgon, Sela, or anyone else, for I myself chose my experiences.
Anger, like all other violence, is a last desperate attempt by micro beings to deny responsibility for their life situation by blaming it on others. Violence and anger will, therefore, continue until man learns to accept full responsibility for everything that happens within his life. I hope that I have arrived at that point in my soul's evolution.
And now, Karl, as my mother entrusted me to you, I entrust this journal to you, to do with as you see fit.
Soon I shall come down and join you and Neda for one last meal together. At the end of this evening, I'll kiss: you both and say that I look forward to seeing you again soon.
Forgive me for writing my farewell instead of speaking it. You are dearer to me than I could ever say.
It's taken me such a long time to learn that all failure is success-all death is birth.
I'm going to evolate tonight.
You see, last night I had another vivid dream, Karl. It was a vision. I've made a rough sketch of it for you and Neda on the next page.
"Thank you" doesn't begin to say enough, Karl.
Remember your dreams. I'll be there. I am with you always.
I love you.
We are one.
'Bye for now,
Jon
Epilogue
Three months have passed since we cremated Jon Lake's body and scattered the ashes in a woods near our boyhood home. I must admit that at first I had great difficulty accepting Jon's suicide. I said that it was a cop-out and not worthy of his Macro philosophy. However, as the weeks have passed, Neda has chipped away at my micro philosophy until today I see Jon's action in a very different light.
Perhaps the most important factor altering my viewpoint was a conversation we had with Jon a few nights before he left us. Jon didn't include it in his journal and I wish he had because it would have reminded me of the Macro society's view of life and death.
Between Neda and myself we have recalled most of the details of that conversation. As we remember, it began one evening when I remarked about a student in our department who had just committed suicide. I said that suicide was a cop-out and Jon had replied with the following.
"You're complaining, Karl, about a conscious act of suicide which may or may not be an attempt to deny one's own responsibility for his present state of being. Aren't you forgetting that all micro existence is unconscious suicide? It may end swiftly as in a lethal accident, or it may be a slow process of micro aging which results in the long-term decay and deterioration of the body until some vital part fails completely. All of this deterioration is the natural result of resisting the responsibility and the consequences of one's own chosen life pattern. This resistance causes all the life stress that Dr. Hans Selye referred to in his book, The Stress of Life."
"All right," I said, "I won't argue unconscious suicide or Dr. Selye's stress theory, but the student we're talking about committed conscious suicide since he left a note apologizing to his parents. Now I say that's a coward's way out."
Jon gave me his big grin and said, "According to that French sociologist we studied, Emile Durkheim, there are two types of suicide: anomic and altruistic. The first, anomic, is due to self-other alienation and is an attempt to escape from a life so overwhelming that the person perceives himself as being completely inadequate to cope with it. This is what I call conscious micro suicide. It is always unsatisfactory to the micro self because when the person wakes up in his astral body he finds that he's still stuck with a mind that believes it's not responsible, a mind filled with the kind of unforgiving self-loathing that the micro self experiences when faced with failure."
At this point Neda interrupted asking, "But, Jon, didn't you say that all actions are perfect from the Macro view? How can suicide be perfect?"
"At the Macro level," he answered, "every negative action is balanced by a positive action and, thus, they cancel each other, leaving perfect balance. From the Macro view one can see that every failure is a success in the long run because it leads to the insight necessary for learning. If a soul has to commit micro suicide, once or a thousand times, in order to learn that there is no escape from its own responsibility for its state of being, then that is necessary and perfect for that soul."
"I see," Neda said nodding her head. "Then what is altruistic suicide?"
"A good example of that kind," Jon explained, "was demonstrated when the Titanic sank. Some of the people aboard went down with the ship rather than deprive someone else of a seat in the very limited number of lifeboats. History is filled with examples of altruistic suicide in which people consciously give up their lives so others can live or profit from their example."
"Suicide as an example...," Neda hesitated. "Is that what the members of the Macro society are doing when they permit the Micro Islanders to kill them? Maybe they're trying to show by their example that physical life is not the ultimate goal."
"That's part of it," Jon responded. "The most famous example of this was the suicide of one of the greatest Macro philosophers ever to be incarnated on this planet, Jesus of Nazareth. He permitted himself to be killed to demonstrate that the Macro self is the master of the microphysical self and that it can even recreate or resurrect a body that has been killed. I think he was also demonstrating his belief that physical existence, while necessary for micro man, is only one very limited perspective along the m-M continuum."
"So the evolutionary goal," Neda added, "is to not get stuck forever at the micro-physical level, but to journey onward toward ever greater awareness until each soul returns to full awareness of its macrocosmic origin."
"That's right," Jon said, "and that leads us to a third type of suicide that micro man is not yet aware of evolutionary suicide. What the Macro society calls evolation."
"I think you've mentioned that before, Jon," I said.
"Yes, you'll remember that when I was in the hospital trying to save lives I was thwarted by some of the patients whose subconscious minds had decided on death," Jon said. "Remember Bruno who told me that he had incarnated to balance his vibrations. Now that he had accomplished this purpose he was graduating from this life and evolving
on to a new dimension. You may recall that our Deltar, Hugo, also planned to consciously terminate his physical existence-to evolate.
"No one dies until he is convinced at the Macro or sub-conscious level that he has learned all he can or all he wants to in that particular life. This applies just as much to the baffling problem of crib deaths as to deaths due to cataclysmic earthquakes or tidal waves."
"Are you saying that the sub-conscious mind knows what will happen in the future and could avoid an accident if it so desired?" Neda asked.
"That's exactly what I'm saying," Jon nodded enthusiastically. "From the Macro point of view there are no accidents."
"But getting back to evolutionary suicide," I said, "isn't that as big a cop-out as anomic suicide? If you've learned your lessons you'd ought to stick around and help those who haven't."
"That's like saying that everyone should stay in first grade forever so they can help teach the lessons there," Jon replied.
'But someone's got to teach them," I protested.
"There has never, in the history of our universe, been a shortage of teachers-only of students willing to learn. As the Macro philosophers have said-when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Ask and you will receive is another way of stating this Macro truth. It reflects back to prepotent desire and predisposing belief. If you desire something more than learning or if you don't believe that you can learn, or that you deserve to learn, you'll have to wait until your desire and belief are greater before you succeed," Jon explained.
"I still don't see how you could tell the difference between a cop-out suicide and evolutionary suicide," I said, shaking my head.
"It's a question of motive, Karl," Jon explained.
"Was the motivation for death to escape the past or to embrace the future? A cop-out suicide is escaping his past and/or present-an evolutionary suicide is embracing his future,"
"That's a hard one to handle," I complained. "Wouldn't a person tend to lie to himself about his desire to escape life?"
"Sure, that happens a lot," Jon answered. "In each life there are lessons that must be learned, but if you lie to yourself about having learned all there was to learn in first grade, then commit suicide, you wake up right back in first grade. You see, in this planetary schoolroom it's impossible to be a drop-out for very long. You can't run away from your own greater self."
"Micro man views physical life on this planet as the final stage, rather than just a preparation for experiencing the next dimension. With that sort of philosophy he naturally tends to think that suicide would end it all. He becomes the victim of his own micro philosophy."
"Then is suicide a sin or not?" Neda asked.
"It's hard to generalize about suicide, Neda, since all death is either conscious or unconscious suicide," Jon replied thoughtfully. "As for sin, there is only one sin, and that is to deny the perfection of our macrocosmic oneness with all that is, was, or ever will be. But even that is only a sin from the micro view. From the Macro view there can be no sin, for all is purposively and evolutionarily perfect. The key then, is to accept the perfection of what is by responding to everything with loving acceptance, thereby freeing yourself from the bonds of anxiety, fear, and condemnation which bind you to physical existence. Then, and only then, is evolation possible."
"Ok. If I was Macro I'd know who was living by the rule of loving acceptance and who wasn't, and I'd know everyone's motive for ending their life. Then I'd be able to tell if it was suicide, as we popularly think of it, or evolation. The problem is, I'm not Macro!" I protested, "So I still don't know how to tell the differences!"
"Remember that monograph we read back in Cultural Anthropology? The one on that Indian tribe whose old people, when they were ready to die, just said goodbye to everyone, went up on a hill, and died?" Jon asked.
"Yeah. Kind of like your Hugo's plan to...' I began.
"That's it exactly, Karl," Jon interrupted. "If you use anything to do the job with, you committed escapist suicide. If you wrapped up the details of your life then just laid down and died, that's evolation."
That's as close as Neda and I could come to a total recall of that evening's conversation.
It was Jon's comments on evolation, combined with our dreams of him, that ultimately modified my view of Jon's death by broadening my perspective.
I still miss Jon terribly. But Neda reminds me that nothing is terrible from a Macro viewpoint, so I know what level I'm at.
However, I can remember Jon saying that our level of awareness is constantly fluctuating, and that in one twenty-four-hour period an average micro person like myself can run the gamut from micro awareness to low level, or even high level, Macro awareness-the latter occurring mostly when we're asleep and dreaming.
I'll end this epilogue with such a dream.
It was the last of a series of dreams I've had about Jon. In most of them we just talked in our usual manner, but this one was different. We know it was symbolic because Jon had told us that 2150 has neither graves nor tombstones since discarded physical bodies are vaporized.
In this dream Neda and I were standing with Jon before a great tombstone upon which were engraved the following words:
DIED
JON & CAROL
8-927 3-927
DELTA 927
1976 2150
REBORN
JON & CAROL
9-927 4-927
DELTA 927
2150
Author's Statement
In closing I would like to say that the ultimate purpose of this book-indeed, of all my publications is to encourage the development of a unified, harmonious society for the earth's Aquarian Age.
I will leave you with the most hopeful words ever spoken:
"Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened." (Matt. 7:7)
With Macro love-
Joyously!
Thea Alexander
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2150 A.D. Page 30