"You mean," I said, "that if I rob or murder someone, or even if I hate someone, that this will eventually come back to me?"
"Exactly," she replied. "But that's only half of it, for you see if you are patient, helpful, or think kindly of others, these, too, will come back to you.
"The great Macro philosopher, Jesus, said that whatever measures you deal out to others shall be dealt back to you in return. That's why the golden rule of treating others as you would like to be treated makes sense from a Macro view, though not from a limited micro view.
"Another expression of the law of karma is Newton's third law: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. This law is cumulative throughout all of one's incarnations and there is but one escape from its effect-an applied and practiced Macro perspective."
"I'm not sure I understand." I hesitated.
"What I mean, Jon, is that the same law applies to all experience, but it is seen and interpreted differently according to the size of one's perspective.
"From a Macro perspective it is seen that your conscious intent affects every cell of your body and exerts an influence on your environment. It is understood that you, and only you, are responsible for your life and what it holds. This is the great truth that will soon come of age in your 1970s culture-the most joyful, rejuvenatingly hopeful insight of all. We are not the victims of circumstance but the architects of our lives. Our conscious thoughts create an image of our lives, our selves, our feelings, and our unconscious produces it in perfect accordance with our predominant conscious beliefs.
"The law, you see, remains the same in all those lives we live. We just interpret it differently, depending on our level of evolution during the particular life in question."
"Well," I asked, "if we've all reincarnated so many times, why don't we remember past lives? Are you saying it's just because we don't want to remember them?"
"That's right," she replied. "People forget their past lives because they don't want to remember their ugly, selfish actions which would humble their pride and make it impossible for them to feel superior to others. Pride is possible only when we forget our past failures. However, he who forgets his past is doomed to repeat it. To the extent that human souls deny that each person's mind is totally responsible for all it experiences they can only continue repeating the same selfish actions that cause the same painful consequences. They must accept total responsibility for their entire state of being, then joyously create the life they want if they are to facilitate evolution." She smiled and took my hand. "We'll talk about that more later. Right now let's freshen up and go have lunch."
We got dressed and ate a delicious meal in the Alpha dining room. Their kitchen was a marvel. All one had to do to get any kind of food was turn a dial and press a button. Within a few seconds your chosen meal appeared either hot or cold, just as you selected, from a sliding panel in the wall.
I had what I thought was a delicious two-pound steak served medium rare and sizzling hot. After I had eaten it and profusely praised the cook, Carol, finishing her carrot juice, informed me that the steak was synthetically derived from high protein seaweed combined with other vegetable ingredients. The cook, I learned, was another computer-run servo-mechanism.
Carol tried to explain their complicated food-processing technology, but I told her not to bother, since I was trying to forget that steaks weren't really steaks. She accused me of practicing delusionary amnesia to deny unpleasant reality, and I had to admit my guilt. I could still remember the delicious taste of my steak and I knew I would enjoy my meals in 2150 if I could just forget where they came from.
My major objection to a vegetarian diet was that I liked the taste of meat and felt it was the best source of protein I knew of. If the science of 2150 had solved these problems I wouldn't fight it, even if I didn't agree with Carol that it was wrong to kill animals for food.
I told Carol that I thought she and the rest of the Macro society members were pretty hard on micro man and his habits. However, she insisted that she did 'not condemn micro man or feel that she was intrinsically better than he was any more than a sixth-grade child was better than a first-grade child. It was all a matter of evolution along the m-M (for microcosmic-Macrocosmic) continuum toward ever greater awareness of the oneness of all. Besides, she insisted that she could remember many past lifetimes in which she had lived selfish micro existences both as male and as female.
I wondered about this business of past lives of different sexes, but decided to bring it up later.
Back-in our Alpha dyad room-I thought of it as our room now-Carol showed me the toilet facilities by activating a circuit which caused a portion of the wall and adjoining floor to change into a very strange, but remarkably convenient, area for disposing bodily wastes. When I looked pained at its lack of privacy, Carol smiled and suggested I press a nearby button, which I did, causing an opaque plastic-like wall to slide completely around the area.
"There you are, Jon," she said. "A way to hide that part of you which you feel is shameful. We prepared this barrier screen especially for your arrival," she teased.
"Here in 2150 we provide privacy for thinking, not for hiding, but I know that you in the 20th century were still very ambivalent about the human body and its most basic and necessary functions."
I had to agree with Carol that I was probably neurotic by 2150 standards, but I used the opaque wall and asked her to do the same. I was pleased that she didn't resist my request. She was a very accepting, easy-going person. Not that she was at all reluctant to express a point of view that differed with mine, but she didn't get impatient or angry with my micro neurotic ways or my insatiable curiosity about 2150.
When I asked her about the video wall screen, she explained that it was connected with Central Information just like the one in the C.I. room. Then/ she showed me some new ways of using it.
As we sat down in the two chairs facing the. video screen Carol commanded Central Information to show us some newsmagazine material from 1970. Almost immediately we found ourselves leafing through the pages of Time and Newsweek magazines as recorded on microfilm. Carol stopped the C.I. at one of the pages and asked me to read and comment on the following:
Time magazine, 7-13-70:
"Millions of Americans in 1970 are gripped by an anxiety that is not caused by war, inflation, or recession-important as those issues are. Across the U.S. the universal fear of violent crime and vicious strangers, armed robbers, packs of muggers, addict burglars ready to trade a life for heroin is a constant companion of the populace. It is the cold fear of dying at random in a brief spasm of senseless violence for a few pennies, for nothing. "And yet, Americans are several times more likely to. be hurt in auto accidents or household mishaps than to be raped, robbed or murdered. Only about 10% of robbery victims are badly injured, fewer than 1% are killed. The nation's well-being is far more insidiously undermined by embezzlers, price-fixers [micro politicians] and organized racketeers than by muggers or car thieves.
"Roughly half of all serious crimes are never reported, often because numbed victims expect no, help from overburdened police. Between 70% and 80% of police effort is spent, not on crime, but on hushing blaring radios, rescuing cats, and administering first aid. Countless additional police hours are wasted on crimes without true victims, e.g., drunkenness, gambling, pornography, illicit sexual activities. Even the best police work is undone by clogged courts and punitive prisons that breed more crime."