2150 A.D.

Thea Alexander

Prologue to Journal of Jon Lake
CHAPTER 1: Lea
CHAPTER 2: Was It a Dream?
CHAPTER 3: Carol
CHAPTER 4: Alpha Mates
CHAPTER 5: The Test of Reality
CHAPTER 6: Jon's Alpha and Rana
CHAPTER 7: The Unlimited Self
CHAPTER 8: Macro Contact
CHAPTER 9: Proof of the Pudding
CHAPTER 10: Jon's Past Lives
CHAPTER 11: Neda
CHAPTER 12: The Fifty-Foot Leap
CHAPTER 13: LOSS
CHAPTER 14: The Challenge
CHAPTER 15: Micro Island
CHAPTER 16: Karma
CHAPTER 17: Evolation
Epilogue

Prologue to Journal of Jon Lake

   Born September 12, 1948
   Died May 2, 1976
   My name is Karl Johnson and I was the roommate and best friend of Jon Lake, who wrote the following journal.
   People have questioned me about the strange behavior and subsequent death of Jon, but I've been afraid to be completely truthful in my answers. At first I didn't know what had happened. When I found out, I refused to believe it. Finally, however, I have accepted the truth, though I realize it will be rejected by many people-particularly the authorities.
   The police, the university officials, and Jon's professors will, of course, laugh at his story. However, while today there may be few minds sufficiently evolved to accept the unusual concepts presented in this journal, I believe that it is only a matter of time before everyone will accept them.
   Before you begin this journal, let me give you a brief description of Jon Lake as I knew him for over 20 years. We both grew up in the same small Midwestern town during the late 1940s and '50s. We met in first grade and became lifelong friends. This in spite of the fact that Jon, being the only son of our town's doctor, lived on the hill at the wealthy end of town and I, the son of a day laborer, lived on the other side of the track.
   When we were seven years old Jon's mother died of leukemia. Two years later my father was severely burned getting Mom and me out of our house as it burned to the ground. Dr. Lake tried desperately that night to keep the forces of life alive in Dad's charred body. As the sun rose, weeping at his failure, Dr. Lake took Mom and me into his home where he treated me like his own son until his death, 10 years later. Jon and I grew up closer than any brothers I ever knew, for we never fought, and while I have been angry with many people, I have rarely ever been angry with Jon. He was the kindest and most patient man I ever knew.
   Jon was a brilliant student, and I began just the opposite. For twelve years he tutored me, never once losing his patience with my truculence toward the ridiculous nature of most school subjects. He succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations, for I graduated in the top 5 percent of both high school and college. Jon, of course, graduated at the top of our class as well as being voted best athlete in both high school and college.
   Jon was so good a quarterback that catching his well-thrown passes made me a college football star in spite of myself. Jon could have played professional football if it hadn't been for the Vietnam War. It seems that Jon's father had incurred the wrath of two members of the local draft board who revenged themselves by having Jon and me drafted two weeks after our college graduation.
   In the army we stayed together all the way to the final patrol, where our platoon was blown to pieces and I found myself carrying Jon through what seemed like endless miles of jungle. Somehow we were found by medics and flown to a base hospital where Jon was parted from his right leg and I gave up the sight in my left eye.
   While Jon was never bitter about the loss of his leg during that monumental madness called the Vietnam War, I was filled with rage. Jon said that he had learned a valuable lesson in that he could not bring himself to kill or even wound another person, even to save his own life. But I could have told him that without the Vietnam War.
   Perhaps the single most difficult thing about Jon for me to understand was what I called his tender-heartedness. He couldn't bear to hurt anything. Yet while he would not intentionally step on a bug, or even uproot a plant, he didn't go around preaching his beliefs to others. He always said that each person can only learn when they are ready to learn, and that what is right for one person can be wrong for another.
   Thus, Jon never allowed himself to become upset by the war, saying that it was a necessary experience for all involved in it. He called it karma. Try as I might, I could not get him to join me in protesting the war or even to argue with me about it. Jon seldom argued with anyone. He just agreed with them, saying that whatever they believed in was true for them.
   In many ways Jon was a paradox to me. He was six feet three inches tall and weighed 180 pounds and could run faster than any other man in college. On the football field, however, he didn't like to block or tackle for fear of hurting someone. He would kill nothing, but he ate meat that had been killed by others. With his deep blue eyes, and strong, beautifully chiseled features he was very popular with the girls, which sometimes created problems.
   During high school he got a girl pregnant. It was the only time I ever saw Dr. Lake furiously angry with Jon I can still remember Dr. Lake shouting angrily that no person had the right to bring a child into this world that he was not psychologically and financially able to care for.
   In college Jon had majored in philosophy and minored in psychology and sociology. When we were medically discharged from the army, Jon persuaded me to return to the university to seek graduate degrees. We both majored in psychology and minored in sociology. Jon was fascinated by the social factors in the development of individual behavior and personality. His enthusiasm inspired me to a practical interest in learning how to influence social changes so that we would have no more tragic fiascos like Vietnam.
   At the time Jon's journal begins, we had finished all our class work for the Ph.D. degree and were jointly working on a social-psychological dissertation concerning the development of values and self-esteem in children.
   I could write much more about Jon, but this is his story, not mine. My purpose has been to provide a setting for this truly remarkable journal and a brief description of my friend, Jon Lake-a man you will never forget.
   Since Jon was not writing this journal for publication, but mainly for self-study, portions of it would have been somewhat technical for the average reader. I have, therefore, deleted the most esoteric and complex passages. Some of these have been condensed and appear in the C.I. Data Excerpts section at the back of this book. Three people other than myself read the complete journal while Jon was still alive and able to explain and demonstrate some of its concepts. We were all so profoundly impressed that our lives have not been the same since. I would, therefore, recommend that the serious reader give some attention to those excerpts from Jon's conversations with C.I. and refer to them often during the reading of his journal.
   Many of the things you will read in this journal will be difficult, if not impossible, to believe.
   Jon however believed that, in time, the strange concepts presented here will be accepted by all.

CHAPTER 1: Lea

   For months I awakened reluctantly each morning, mentally reaching back into my dream state for some indescribable adventure that lay, mistily, just beyond my reach. Last night my longing for its completion was realized. I awakened in another time-in another place in another body.
   Lying in the middle of a small grassy clearing, I opened my eyes to a sky of soft azure blue. Trees towered in uncluttered profusion as far as I could see.
   The musky scent of new-mown clover was brought to me on the cool morning air. The sound of birds calling to one another filled me with a sense of rightness and peace. My bare body tingled as its tiny hairs bent with the breeze. What beautiful freedom!
   Arising, I breathed deeply, filling my whole being with the' beauty of my new surroundings. With a mounting sense of adventure I walked, jogged, then ran through this lovely wooded park. Running had always seemed to me the ultimate in physical freedom. Now I ran on and on with no sense of tiring, enjoying the soft earth under my flying bare feet.
   Suddenly I was in a small clearing surrounding a natural fountain.
   Swerving to avoid it, I stopped so suddenly that I almost lost my footing.
   Tears of joy blurred my vision as I gazed with amazement at my legs-both of them!
   Four years ago, in Vietnam, I had lost my right leg, and I had hobbled around on an artificial one ever since, unable to experience the exhilaration of running.
   How had my leg returned?
   Carefully examining my body, I realized that I hadn't seen it in such great shape since my undergraduate days on the football field. As an extremely active young man, I had had my share of scars, but nowhere was there even a trace of them.
   I gave puzzled thanks for this new, apparently perfect, body.
   As the morning sun topped the horizon I noticed the almost crystal clarity of the air. How long has it been, I thought, since I've seen a sky so clear and breathed air so fragrantly fresh?
   Where could I possibly be? I had gone to sleep last night in Upper Manhattan in a one-bedroom walk-up which I share with my best friend, my stepbrother, Karl Johnson. But I had certainly awakened somewhere else.
   Was I dreaming? Would I soon awaken back in my one legged body?
   I looked about me eager to fill my eyes before this beautiful new world might suddenly dissolve into an evanescent dream.
   A covey of birds startled me as they took noisily to the air. Contemplating their direction, I wondered what season this was. I had gone to sleep on a cold January night, but I had obviously awakened in some other time or place, for it was certainly not winter here.
   I began jogging along a path that wound around the flower bed and into the woods beyond.
   A shot of ice-cold apprehension burst through me as I realized that I was not alone. There before me stood a radiantly real woman!
   She was dressed in an iridescent aquamarine tunic that covered a scant five inches of her shapely thighs. Her cerulean blue eyes caressed me with an all-knowing embrace. The sunlight, sifting through her short golden hair, formed a shimmering halo.
   I was so startled to see her and so mesmerized by her beautiful clarity that I literally forgot to breathe!
   Those all-knowing, all-accepting eyes seemed filled with dancing lights as she said, "Hi! I'm Lea. I've waited a long time for you, Jon. You don't remember me yet, but you will."
   This can't be really happening, I thought.
   "Oh yes, it can," Lea answered in a low almost musical voice that caressed my ears in a ticklish sort of way.
   Her response to my unspoken thoughts disarmed me. "You mean, I'm not dreaming?"
   For a long moment she looked at me thoughtfully. "In a way, yes; and in a way, no," she answered. 'You see, there are two Jon Lakes. One of them is asleep in what you think of as 1976 'time'; the other is standing here with me, in what you would think of as 2150 A.D., occupying the body you're so pleased with-your astral or soul body."
   "My astral body? In what year?"
   My amazement amused her. "Yes, your astral body. It's almost identical to your physical body except that its electrical vibrations move so fast that it can't be seen by the eyes of the physical body. Your astral body has translated 174 'years' forward in time to what you would think of as 2150 A.D."
   "A hundred and seventy-four years!" I exclaimed. "Wow! What a dream! And you say that I've got two bodies?"
   "Actually, there are three right now," Lea replied.
   "Your 1976 body, minus one leg, is dreaming what's happening to you now. Your 2150 body awaits you. And this body-your astral body-presently houses the unique electronic essence that is called 'Jon Lake.' It is definitely not dreaming." When we get back to our Delta you'll learn more about that before returning to 1976."
   Her casual remark that; I would be returning to my physical body delivered a surprising jolt.
   "You mean I have to go back to my crippled body?"
   "Oh, yes," she answered. "You must always wake up back in 1976 unless you free yourself by attaining a high level of Macro awareness."
   "Macro awareness?" I puzzled.
   "Macro awareness," she explained, "simply means an 'applied' awareness of the macrocosmic oneness of all that is, all that was, and all that ever will be.
   "We here in 2150 are far from total Macro awareness. But we have evolved-to a point where we can remember our macrocosmic origin and practice some of the Macro powers-what you refer to as E.S.P., or extrasensory perception."
   Somehow sensing my questions, she added, "You'll learn more about that later," and reached out to take my hand.
   The most startling thing happened-her hand passed right through mine!
   "What's happened to me?" I exclaimed, trying desperately to take her hand and finding it totally impossible to even touch her.
   "It's all right, Jon," she quickly assured me. "I forgot that I'm in my physical body, which naturally can't touch your high-vibration astral body."
   "Well, I'll be," I said, more to myself than to her. "I'm a ghost!"
   "That's one way to say it." Lea laughed.
   "But if I'm a ghost, then how can you see me?"
   "I'm not seeing you with my physical eyes, Jon. I'm seeing you with my Macro power of clairvoyance, and I'm hearing you telepathically."
   "You can see me and hear me, but you can't touch me?"
   "Not yet," Lea replied, "but just as soon as we get to the life continuity lab we'll fit you into your 2150 physical body. Then we'll be able to touch again."
   "Again?" I thought, and she heard it.
   "You're not ready to understand that yet, Jon."
   "Come on. Let's hurry and get you into your new body so we can touch again."
   With that last word hanging like a huge question mark in my mind, I found myself running as fast as I had ever run, yet still unable to overtake the beautiful form of my new mind-boggling companion.
   Suddenly we topped a wooded hill and began descending into an emerald green valley at the center of which was a sparkling clear blue lake. It was such a captivating sight that at first I didn't notice the twelve large buildings tucked in among the trees that surrounded the lake.
   "This is our Delta. It includes twelve buildings and ten thousand people."
   As we approached I realized that the lake was much larger than I had first thought, but so also were -the buildings. Each structure was about a hundred and fifty yards square and twelve stories high. They were constructed of lustrous, but opaque, green glass-like material.
   I noticed that both men and women were dressed identically in short tunics like Lea's. They differed only in the various predominant colors.
   Entering the huge building, we passed some young men and women. They all looked exceptionally attractive and energetic.
   Though everyone smiled at Lea, some of them didn't seem to notice me at all. I even found it difficult to avoid bumping into them at times.
   Then, as I turned to frown at a man who had almost run me down, I had the most shocking experience of my life-a young woman walked right through me!
   Lea laughed and as I turned my bewildered face toward her she said, "Don't worry, Jon. Some of them can't see you in your astral body, but they can't hurt you, either, by walking through you."
   As she said this a part of the wall opened and she walked through. I followed, experiencing the eerie sensation of watching the door slide shut through my leg.
   The room was filled with strange looking chairs neatly arranged around a large cylindrical container with a curved glass-like top.
   I was startled to see lying in its bedlike interior the naked body of-me!-apparently asleep for I could see my chest rising and falling.
   Lea smiled triumphantly and said, "That's your new body, Jon. It's almost identical to your 1976 body except that it has no physical imperfections."
   "Good God!" I exclaimed. "It's me-and-and-I'm me!"
   "That's right, Jon. You are you, it's you, and I'm you," Lea explained.
   I had too many questions to even speak coherently.
   "This body is modeled after our electronic pattern and your gene patterns. It's alive, but it won't be occupied until your astral body enters it."
   My mind was spinning.
   "I want you to let go of your mind with all its concerns, and let me take over the operation of your astral body for the next few minutes." Lea was saying. "Can you trust me, Jon?"
   Looking into those all knowing eyes, my mental turmoil was gradually replaced by desire until every fiber of my being reached out to this girl who called herself Lea.
   Nodding my head, I said, "I trust you, Lea."
   Suddenly I was as clear-as honest, as open, as undefended-as she was. There were no barriers between us. We merged, and though her lips did not move, I heard her voice.
   "We are one, Jon. Let go, and let's grow!"
   Next thing I knew, I was looking up into her face as she swung the glass-like cover from above me.
   Sliding to my feet, I felt the exquisite touch of Lea's hands for the first time as they slid ecstatically down my sides and around my back. I took her quickly into my arms and our lips met as I said her name.
   A pleasant weightiness filled my groin, and I flushed with a new realization. I was naked!
   Lea's amused laughter echoed amid the conflict between my body and my mind: How could I quickly cover my "bare essentials?" Why should I? And why had I not been concerned with my nakedness before?
   "You're in a physical body again, Jon," Lea responded to my unspoken thoughts. "Only in a physical body can one be embarrassed by nakedness. Here, maybe this will make you feel better," with which she handed me one of their universal tunics and a pair of short stocking-like boots.
   Hastily donning these, I talked about the room's contents in an effort to divert my all-too-easy-to-read mind away from what it wanted to think, toward what it should be thinking!
   The sense of effortless freedom I had experienced with my astral body was gone now that it was surrounded by this dense physical body. It was, however, a gem of health and energy, with magnificent strength and coordination.
   The tunic fitted perfectly and moved with my body like a second skin.
   Though it had been colorless before I put it on, it now radiated a basic blue-gray tone with iridescent rays of orange, pink, and a little bit of blue, yellow, and green here and there.
   Lea addressed my amazement explaining that their universal garment was, in fact, quite colorless until it entered someone's life field. This, she added, was the electrical pattern unique to each individual which emanates from the physical body he is inhabiting at the time. The tunic acts like a million tiny lenses reflecting and magnifying the colors of that personality's life field or aura.
   She went on to explain that there are ten basic predominant colors reflected by the tunics, and that these colors correspond with the person's level of awareness at the time.
   The basic grayness reflected by my tunic indicated the beginning level of Macro awareness.
   Before I could ask any of the hundred questions that whirled through my mind, she told me that C.I. would answer any and all of my questions and that we'd best get going, since my time was limited.
   C.I. occupied the top six floors of this huge building. We entered what appeared to be a shaft of light about four feet in diameter, which Lea called a void. A slight jump took us from the first to the twelfth floor almost instantly. I could see, though, that it would take me a while to adapt to this unusual means of transport.
   C.I. contained a thousand soundproof rooms ten feet square, each of which was equipped for what appeared to be a full wall video tape presentation on any subject one cared to ask about.
   We sat in large comfortable chairs that automatically adjusted themselves to our bodies.
   Lea touched a small white circle on the arm of her chair, and a pleasant female voice said, "Central Information. May I help you?"
   "What are the dimensions of the Delta 927 Lake?" Lea inquired.
   A large map of the lake appeared on the wall and we were told that the lake of Delta 927 was approximately eight kilometers long, five kilometers wide, and had an average depth of ten meters.
   Lea, sensing my mental calculations, asked for equivalents in miles and yards. Gaining this, she said, "I must leave you now."
   "Leave?" I asked, and came to my feet, totally unable to believe what I had heard.
   "Yes, Jon. I have to go now," she replied calmly.
   I was beside her in an instant.
   "I'll go with you."
   "No, that's not possible, Jon. It's extremely important that you stay right here with C.I. and learn as much as you can, as fast as you can. C.I. can help you do that much better than I."
   "When will you be back, then?" I asked.
   "I won't be back, Jon."
   "What do you mean? You can't just get up and go when we've only just met. I'll come with you," I insisted.
   "As much as I'd like that, it's neither practical nor possible," was her reply.
   "I don't understand, Lea. Why can't I go with you?"
   "It's critically important that you stay here and grow as fast as you can. My presence would be a distraction, and we can't afford that risk.
   "Let me try to explain, Jon, but I must be very brief and you must wait for further details until our next meeting, should there be one."
   "What do you mean, 'should there be one'?" I interrupted.
   "Please, Jon, trust me. Believe me when I say that we must use our time as best we can. I want to stay with you as much as you want me to stay, but that's not at all practical.
   "I don't know whether I will see you again, or, if so, when. We will attempt another time translation, but we don't know whether it will succeed or not. So you can see that there is no way for me to tell you whether or not we will meet here again.
   "This I do know, that the more time you spend talking with me, the less time you will have with C.I., and the less chance we will have of completing another successful time translation," Lea explained hurriedly.
   "How can you be so calm about it?" I said. "How can you just say goodbye and walk away knowing we may never meet again?"
   "We are together always, Jon. I am never far from you. Your dreams of me are real-a valid reality-not just fantasy or wish fulfillment. Believe me, Jon, I am always with you. True, I miss your touch, your voice, the joys shared on a physical level, but they will be there, if not in this lifetime, in another," she added. "What is, is perfect for its time and place. Accept that joyously, Jon, and enjoy growing your way toward what you desire."
   "But I don't," I began.
   She put her finger to her lips to quiet me.
   "When you fall asleep here, your other body, back in 1976, will awaken, hopefully remembering everything you've experienced here in 2150 and believing in its reality-its validity."
   "But Lea-"
   "Please, Jon. Just ask C.I. We must make every minute count if we're to have even a chance of seeing one another again in this 'time'," she said quickly.
   Then, gently touching my face, she hesitated for a moment, as her incredible eyes poured forth into mine love, joy, pain, tragedy, acceptance, and peace.
   "'Bye for now," she said warmly, almost to herself, and left me alone with C.I.
   Forcing myself to trust, believe, and act on what she had said, I began asking questions, but each question seemed to lead to another. I became fascinated with this magnificent learning technique.
   To be able to both see and hear the answers to my inquiries was a tremendous advantage I. compared it to my usual 1976 research procedures. I remembered the long waits in the library for materials from the stacks, the frustration at being told that pertinent volumes were already checked out by someone else or were never available in the first place. And there were the seemingly endless hours of reading through tomes of academically contrived chaff sifting out the wheat to be found floating there on seas of pedantic verbosity.
   For the next three hours I sat spellbound, soaking up information about 2150, and learning more and faster than ever before in my life.
   C.I. informed me that it had an almost unlimited number of data banks filled with information on every subject man has ever experienced. When I asked how this was possible, C.I. began describing technological processes so advanced and complex that I interrupted, afraid of spending my allotted time unwisely.
   C.I. addressed my level of understanding by explaining that its own beginnings were represented by a learning device designed for use-in the '70s and called Computer Administered Instruction (C.A.I.).
   My interest intensified. I had heard of C.A.I., but I had never experienced it, so I decided to test C.I.'s ability on a subject I knew more about-myself!
   C.I. began, "You entered this lifetime on September 12, 1948, the only child of Ben and Jessica Lake. Your father was the town physician, your mother the librarian, prior to her marriage to Dr. Lake. On your first day in school you met Karl Johnson, who was to become your best friend. After the death of your mother during your second-grade experience, and the death of Karl's father two years later, not; Karl became your stepbrother the summer before you entered junior high school."
   "You tutored Karl through school, and he returned the favor by getting you out of social jams which you seemed to have a propensity for. Take the homecoming dance during your senior year, for example. Even as Most Valuable Player on your football team, which you were voted that year, you couldn't take both Jan and Valerie as your date to the same dance-and you did promise them both. Thanks to Karl, you were saved again."
   C.I. went on, "There were some things that even Karl couldn't handle, though, like Valerie's pregnancy. That was the only time your father ever cursed at you. He didn't like the idea of aborting a pregnancy, but he had a strong conviction that no one has a right to create a child that he is not both, psychologically and financially able to care for. That lesson in sexual responsibility was dearly paid for by you, by Valerie, and by your father. Fortunately, you learned it well."
   "This and other hard-earned lessons left you with a relatively effective life philosophy which helped both you and Karl throughout your college careers. Karl, if you recall, was quite a rebel. He was constantly fighting, "... the ridiculous nature of most school subjects," or "... that monumental madness called the Vietnam War." You were the calming influence, reminding him that what is wrong for one person may be totally right for another. And that each person can only learn when he is ready to learn. Your position that professors are just the victims of their own psychological needs and their own limiting belief systems never fitted quite right with Karl. He always felt it was the students who are the victims."
   "After your degrees in philosophy and psychology, respectively, you and Karl were drafted and within a very few months landed in Vietnam. There you served together until that final patrol where your platoon was destroyed. Karl used the one eye he had left to find his way back through miles of jungle with you, on his back, unconscious, and minus your right leg."
   "Karl was as bitter about your injury as he was about his own, perhaps more so. You, on the other hand, felt that this was your karma and that, sad as it might be, it was necessary for your growth during that lifetime.
   "While you, too, felt that the Vietnam War was a mistake from the start, you had by that time accepted a philosophy which held that truth is subjective and that whatever a person believes is true, is true for him. This, you felt, required you to – respect the right of each individual to believe whatever he wanted to. You could not condemn him for acting on that belief even though you disagreed with it.
   "It was this very philosophy that led you to sacrifice your own leg rather than destroy another person.
   "It was also this philosophy that got you involved in the Ph.D. dissertation that you and Karl are now writing on the development of values and self-esteem in children. And it is that philosophy, which provided the first link in the time translation path to bring you here to 2150 for whatever period of time is possible. But you can talk it better than you can practice it, Jon.
   "If you're satisfied with the accuracy of our data banks, we can go on to examine other significant lifetimes. If not, we can get far more specific regarding your present life-such as-"
   "Wait a minute!" I interrupted. "I've read a little about reincarnation, but what do you mean by 'significant' other lives?"
   "Yes, we know that you're familiar with what your age calls the theory of reincarnation and what, within your concept of time, you refer to as 'past lives.' Here in 2150 it is no longer considered a theory, it's a fact, though it's based on a very limited basic assumption regarding time.
   "If you wish, we can provide you with information on as many of your 'past' lifetimes as you would like to remember. We suggest that you limit this exploration to include only significant lives, meaning those whose lessons pertain specifically to the challenges of your present life. We would like you to keep in mind, however, that all these lives are, from a broader point of view, occurring simultaneously."
   Juggling priorities, I asked about 2150's concept of time and got totally lost in the details of C.I.'s doubtless excellent, but very complex, presentation of their metric time system. So I changed the subject enough to, hopefully, bring answers to within my comprehension.
   "I don't understand how you could tell me about my present life, much less about my past ones, or, if I understood you correctly, some of my future lives," I puzzled.
   "We have obtained information about you in two ways," C.I. explained. "First, from your own subconscious mind, and secondly, from the universal mind in which is recorded everything that is happening, everything that ever has happened, and everything that ever will happen to your immortal mind. The system is very similar to that used by our C.I. data banks. Most of the data is now available to us, though we're still establishing electromolecular-what you would think of as telepathic-for some of it."
   "But how do you have access to my immortal mind?" I asked.
   "You are sitting in a chair that provides us an electromolecular connection to all your memories as well as all emental* and physical data on your body right down to the sub-atomic level. However, since one of your twin souls, Lea, has a mind structure identical to your own, everything about either of you is recorded in both your mind and hers. We have this 'telepathic' connection to the mind of every member of the Macro society. This establishes a partial connection to the macrocosm."
   *Emental: Contraction of emotional and mental.
   "That's enough," I said. "You've lost me again. I always thought there was only one twin soul for each person. And what is this Macro society you spoke of? And can you give me more on the macrocosm?" The questions pouring out of me were barely representative of the hundreds I kept within. I was so anxious to learn, so much, and I didn't know which questions to ask first.
   "We will start by presenting the basic concepts of the macrocosm," C.I. began.
   I won't try to include here everything that C.I. said during the following hours, but a few of the highlights are important and should be mentioned here.
   C.I. began by saying, "The human soul is an integral part of the perfectly balanced macrocosm. Thus, in the beginning, each human soul was part of a soul matrix which was perfectly balanced in positive and negative polarity-masculine and feminine traits. However, to experience complete devolution and microcosmic awareness, each soul matrix mentally separated itself into seemingly individual entities which, in periodic incarnations on this planet Earth, function as either male or female.
   "The entity you think of as Jon Lake, like other soul matrix entities, temporarily forgot its oneness with all that is, all that was, and all that ever will be, as well as its macrocosmic origin. However, since you completed your devolution into the microcosm and began evolving back toward awareness of your macrocosmic origin, your soul matrix entities-your twin souls-have been seeking each other."
   Trying to comprehend the fascinating things C.I. was saying, I began to sense a relieved rightness about it all. It was almost as if these words were touching some deep hidden memory within me that was now slowly beginning to emerge into consciousness.
   "Please continue," I urged. "What you say somehow feels very right to me, though I'm not sure I really understand it all."
   "You're remembering," C.I. replied. "In time you will begin to remember fragments of other lives. You dream of them often. Ever since you were born, Lea has been visiting you on the astral plane, but you didn't remember, since you had not yet learned the importance of your dreams."
   "Is that why..." I hesitated. "Is that why I woke up so many times feeling full of joy and hope for something that seemed to be there just beyond my reach?"
   "Yes," was C.I.'s reply. "It was all you could remember of your contacts on the astral plane where Lea reminded you again of your oneness and that she was working to bring you to 2150."
   C.I.'s voice was fading, though I listened intently.
   "Your time translation is our most advanced 'continuity of life' project. It has been achieved through the joint efforts of the most highly evolved minds in our galaxy, with your own budding belief in macrocosmic oneness playing a..."

CHAPTER 2: Was It a Dream?

   I awoke fresh and alive, as though I had just come in from a brisk walk.
   My big round alarm clock read 7:41.
   Where had I been? What had I been hearing?
   A female voice seemed to echo back into my dream. Some kind of a formula... or a process. A sentence, half finished.
   Pulling my pillow over my head I tried to go back to sleep, mentally stretching back into my dream.
   Then it hit me as though I was still dreaming.
   But I wasn't!
   I could hear the pleasant voice of C.I. presenting so many new ideas that my mind was reeling under their impact.
   Then there was that girl, Lea. What clarity!
   "Clarity"? Where did that word come from? "Clarity."
   It had a nice feeling attached to it, yet it now meant something new-something it had not meant before last night's dream.
   Lea was "clear." There was no game-playing, no being what she thought I wanted her to be, no pretense, no expectations, no defenses, just a very bright, capable, honest, straightforward woman joyously experiencing and respecting herself, others, and life itself.
   Hers was not the shallow, brittle beauty of a Hollywood starlet, but a deep almost spiritual essence that seemed to radiate from her. While her physical beauty was obvious, it was the sparkling multifaceted depths of her mind which aroused and excited me with a completeness that I had never quite reached before.
   Hugging my pillow, I felt Lea warm against me and, once again, argued with myself. Why cover my bare body? Just so I wouldn't be embarrassed? Why be embarrassed? If the body is just the outer garment of the essential self.
   And there was another new term. "Essential self." It, too, meant something new; something more complex. This dream was a more interesting education than any class I'd ever attended!
   Why?
   The question brought my mind's focus from a fantasy world of the future back to the prosaic present. Mentally I moved into this new day. Physically, or was it spiritually?-some deep core of my essential self reached forward into 2150 and stayed there.
   The feeling of loss was strong in me as I sat up in-bed and strapped on my artificial limb. Karl had already left to teach his 8 a.m. Introductory Psychology class. I was glad that I had given up my teaching assistantship this semester to work full-time on our dissertation. This left my time relatively free of demands, so I could let this incredible dream drift about the edges of my mind as I pursued my day's activities.
   Was it just a dream? Just. Maybe that was the wrong word. That booklet I had scanned-a light brown booklet-said something about dreams being much more important, a reality of their own. What was it? Maybe I could find it again. Just a little booklet, "Interpret Your Dreams from a... " something or other.
   Finishing my breakfast, I cleaned up our small kitchen absorbed in conflict. Never had I experienced a dream so clear and vivid and with such an incredibly detailed story.
   Yet if I took it seriously, I might just as well forget about becoming a respected social psychologist. Anyone in my field who spoke of time travel, astral bodies, parapsychology, or other forms of intelligent life contacting us here on Earth, would be ostracized by his colleagues.
   Still, I decided to write down what I could remember, and as I slowly recorded this strange experience, I began to live it again:
   As I puzzled over that last statement of C.I.-something about my belief system-the door opened.
   "Man, am I hungry!" Karl shook the snow off his fuzzy black hair as he pulled off his fake fur overcoat and boots.
   Seemed like I had just begun, and here it was 1:30 already!
   "You look like Big Foot with that coat on!" I said. Karl was not a small man. While I was the runner on the team, Karl cleared the way so I'd have an opening to run through. And he was built for the job!
   "I could eat like Big Foot right now!" he answered. "Let's have some lunch. What are you doing?" he added.
   "Been writing down some ideas I got from a dream last night."
   "What?"
   "I said I've been writing down some ideas I got from a dream last night."
   "That's what I thought you said. What the hell are you talking about?" Karl peered at me with that intense green eye of his.
   Sometimes I think that Karl's eye was taken from him not to keep him out of pro football, as he sometimes postulates, but rather for the protection of the people he looks at. He has enough power in that one eye to make up for the one he lost and then some!
   Feeling a shade intimidated by his look and the hint of sarcasm in his inquiry, I began, "Last night I had the most 'real' dream."
   "A wet one, I trust."
   "Damn it, Karl! I'm serious!"
   "And I'm dying of starvation. You'll have to wait a minute or deliver your oration to a dead audience!"
   He disappeared into the kitchen, emerging a moment later with a pint bottle of carrot juice in his left hand; peanut butter, jelly, salami, brick cheese, and lettuce sandwiched precariously between two oversized slices of wheatberry bread in his right hand; and a paper towel with a freshly rinsed carrot inside it tucked between his forearm and his chest. He was big on carrots.
   "Okay," he said, "lay it on me." His beanbag chair cringed briefly before yielding to his 240-pound onslaught.
   Pacing the floor, I told him of the fantastic freedom I had experienced a mere seven hours ago. His angular face remained impassive, but as I finished, it broke into a huge grin.
   "Well, now," he chuckled. "I can understand why you were sorry to wake up. Leave it to you to produce the summa cum laude dream of all time!"
   I shook my head slowly. "But I don't think that I, Jon Lake, could produce a dream like that. Really, Karl. I mean, the new words, the detail... I can't even imagine that kind of stuff, much less dream it."
   "Okay, Jon. Maybe it was the Jon Lake of 2150 who produced the classical wish fulfillment dream for the crippled Jon Lake of 1976. After all, that's what your dream girl, Lea, said, wasn't it?
   "And by the way, did you think of asking your dream computer how they were able to develop a utopia like 2150 in just a hundred and seventy-some years? Like how was it possible to go from a world of competition, conflict, distrust, hatred, overpopulation, pollution, ignorance, and monumental selfishness to a world of cooperation, love, and wisdom? Did you think to ask that question, Jon? Sure would be nice to know the secret." Karl laughed. "Maybe we could change the topic of our dissertation, put you to sleep for a week or two, and get your C.I. to write it for us!"
   "Seriously, Karl, I did ask about some of those things. C.I. said that our society, which she called the micro society, perished sometime around the year 2000, along with most other micro societies of the Earth, due to their inability to cooperate with one another."
   "So, it ended," Karl paraphrased, "not with a whimper, but a bang."
   "No, C.I. spoke of factors which worked over a long period of time to bring about the destruction of micro society. It wasn't sudden."
   I hesitated with a new thought. "Hell, we're right in the middle of it! C.I. said the Macro society of 2150 had its beginnings back in the 1970s. That's right now, Karl!"
   "Oh, great," Karl scoffed. "We can expect it any time now. How's it all going to happen?"
   "I don't know, Karl. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Whichever came first, the chain broke a link somewhere along the line 'cause they don't have the same theories regarding human behavior in 2150 as we have here in 1976.
   "C.I. disagreed with our theory that most of human behavior is completely determined in. the first few years of a child's life. C.I., granted that early inadequacies in nutrition or intellectual, emotional, or physical stimulation can do great damage, which, bolstered by our limiting belief systems, could preclude further significant development. According to C.I.,, though, all the fears and hang-ups that we blame on our treatment during childhood are open for restatement, redefinition, and remodeling by our 'applied and practiced belief system.' We are not the pawns of our upbringing any longer than we want to be! We are free agents to be whatever we decide we want to be as long as we believe it's possible and are willing to put in the effort and discipline necessary to bring it about," I explained.
   Karl whistled, "That's a pretty heavy statement, Jon, and a pretty heavy dream."
   "That's not all, Karl," I continued, anxious to test more – of my new data. "C.I. called us 1970s people 'micro man.' Says we see life and reality through the limiting view of a microscope-making mountains out of molehills-while almost completely ignoring the unifying, harmonizing macrocosmic realities that lie just beyond our limited view."
   "Micro man, hum," Karl thought out loud. "And these... what I'd think of as 'peace-creating' realities are right there, but just out of reach?"
   I was delighted to see Karl caught up in C.I.'s "future" philosophy. "I wouldn't say really out of reach, Karl. It's more like we're wearing blinders. We put blinders on a horse to keep him from being frightened by what he would see if we broadened his vision, and we do the same thing to ourselves. We keep our blinders pulled in close enough to block out or condemn things that are different from what we're used to. This leaves us with an extremely limited, but very comfortably microscopic, view of reality instead of a limitless, but. more challenging, macrocosmic view of ourselves, others, and our relationship to the universe."
   "What you're saying, Jon, is that micro man is the normal average 1970s person like you and me."
   "I guess so."
   Karl went on, "This approach would support the theory about mental illness occurring in direct proportion to the degree of separation one feels from his fellow man. You know, the blinders separate us from other people-protect us, so to speak, from what we fear. Ha!" Karl delighted in his new conclusions. "So we protect ourselves right out of our mind! Tell me, oh great 'wizard of dreams,' what's the religion of the future?"
   "As I understand it, Karl, it's not a religion as we know them-you know, churches peppered all over the land worshiping some all-powerful, judgmental God who peers out of the sky to shake a finger or throw a bolt of 'lightning at those who go astray.
   "It's more a way of life," I explained. "They call it Macro philosophy; and I understand it contains the essential core of the Taoism of Lao-tzu, the Buddhism of Siddhartha Gautama, and the Christianity of Jesus of Nazareth."
   "Great! The best of all possible mystics we 'micro men' have never been able to understand. How do they train everyone to become a great mystic philosopher so they can understand this Macro philosophy?" There was more than a touch of skepticism in Karl's voice.
   "That's where the Macro society comes in. You see, the basic metaphysical premise of Macro philosophy is that– all is one perfect, macrocosmic, indivisible whole. It's the ancient idealistic concept that all is perfect, all is mind-one universal mind. However, in 2150, according to C.I., they don't just talk about it, they live it, by organizing their society on this premise." I raised my hand to delay Karl's interruption.
   "It's obvious that the Macro society could only work if people accepted the basic premise of Macro philosophy, that all is one. So the Macro society is set up to teach its children about this Macro perspective from which they can practice the one commandment of Jesus-to love one another."
   "Jesus H. Christ! Jon, man is an animal We can condition, reinforce, and program almost any type of behavior, but we can't change the basic animal nature of man. We can't pump out a whole generation of little Jesuses!"
   "That's true, Karl," I said soothingly. "They don't disagree with you. C.I. emphatically states that the Macro society could not exist until micro man, with his limited perspective, his limited beliefs, became almost extinct. Micro man is an animal because he views himself as an animal. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, Karl. We become that which we believe ourselves to be. Our beliefs limit us to the short span of time between the birth and death of our physical bodies and the 'accidents' of genetic and environmental inheritance.
   "Macro man, however, does not see himself as an animal. He understands that we are constantly creating our selves with every thought we think. He knows that his every cell responds to his every thought, thereby making of him that which he believes himself to be. Macro man knows that he is not the victim of circumstances, but rather the designer of his own destiny, the creator of his own reality. He knows that his life holds only those experiences which he himself chose for his own growth and-"
   "Wait a minute," Karl interrupted, waving his hand to slow me down. "What, may I ask, is Macro man? Is he the same as 2150 man?"
   "No, I don't think we could presume that. A person is beginning to be Macro emotionally and spiritually when he starts caring about others-when he starts breaking down the barriers of prejudice and fear that separate men from each other. A person is beginning to be Macro mentally when he has evolved to a level of awareness in which he remembers his origin as an immortal soul within the Macro self, the macrocosm. He then realizes that he lived many lives as he devolved down what they call the microcosmic-macrocosmic continuum of awareness toward amnesia, or less awareness. He then begins his evolutionary trip back toward even greater awareness of his macrocosmic oneness with all that is, all that was, and all that ever will be."
   "Why the hell would a soul choose this trip into amnesia, Jon? Or does a soul have any choice?"
   "Yes," I replied, "C.I. was very firm on every soul having free choice, but I was given a number of answers to your first question, and, frankly, I'm almost as confused as' you are in this area."
   "One answer," I continued, "was that devolution and evolution are part of the cyclic process in which the macrocosm experiences itself. Another answer was that only some souls, not all of them, choose devolution-evolution to experience the thrill of fear, uncertainty, separateness, and the excitement of conflict and, of course, all the physical pleasures and pains."
   "You mean the old saw about how dull perfection would be," Karl interjected.
   "Maybe," I replied. "We know that man can accept pleasure only to the extent that he is willing to accept pain-that the rejection of either eliminates both. While the static concept of a micro Christian heaven of all peace and. pleasure would be truly hell, the macrocosm is a perfect balance of all opposites, a totally accepting experience of all pain and all pleasure, all hate and all love, all ugliness and all beauty, all fear and all conflict, with all calmness and all peace. In other words, the ultimate in excitement, – enjoyment, variety, creativity truly heaven."
   "Heaven for whom?" Karl asked sarcastically.
   "Why, for the Macro self, I suppose. It's only when we have evolved to the awareness that we are the Macro self that we can experience this acceptance of all that is, all that ever was, and all that ever will be as perfect."
   I could almost see Karl's razor-sharp mind racing furiously. "Are you saying that to this Macro self everything is perfect? Things like poverty, disease, injustice, death, and even selfish micro men Like us?"
   "Yes," I nodded, "because they are perfectly balanced, and a positive and a negative that are equal cancel each other. Such things as poverty, disease, injustice, and death only exist at the micro levels-never at the Macro level of awareness. That's what the mystics meant when they said that all is illusion or maya."
   "But it's a damned real illusion to all us micro beings!" Karl retorted.
   "Of course," I replied. "Who could enjoy an exciting play unless he could temporarily forget that he was just watching actors and actresses playing parts written by an author whose purpose was to entertain?"
   "So you agree with. Shakespeare," Karl inserted. "All the world is a stage and all the men and women only players who, in their time, play many parts."
   "Yes, I do. The essence of a good actor is that he temporarily loses himself in his part. The same with micro man. He has temporarily lost himself in a part and forgotten that he is the only one who chose it! That's why there is no injustice from the larger perspective, because each soul has chosen every part it plays."
   "Are you sure, Jon, that everyone is eventually going to wake up from their amnesia and realize that their true identity is God?-what you call the macrocosm or Macro self?"
   "Well, that's what all the mystics have been saying as far back in history as we have any record."
   "And do you really believe in this sort of philosophy?" Karl questioned. He looked anxious and concerned as he said, "Let's be practical, Jon: If you believe in reincarnation, astral bodies, and time travel, how are you going to be a social psychologist? Our professors sure as hell aren't going to accept these wild ideas."
   "Okay, I'll answer those questions," I said and realized I was pacing the floor again. "First, the basic concepts of Macro philosophy are not new to me and have always appealed to me. My greatest objection was the micro one that they didn't seem practical. Now I think that a Macro philosophy might be, in the long run, the most practical philosophy I've ever come across.
   "As for being a social psychologist-I don't deny the validity of the micro view of man as a highly evolved symbol-thinking animal completely determined by his heredity and environment. However, I am not going to reject a Macro dimension which includes the micro one but adds the concepts of soul, karma, reincarnation, and the ultimate macrocosmic view which sees all as one indivisible universal mind.
   "Now, for my professors and fellow behavioral scientists, I accept the fact that in their opinion no one can be a real scientist and believe in a Macro philosophy. So, if they find out I'm even considering these concepts, I won't be a social psychologist as far as they're concerned. I'll be a mystic nut who can't tell the difference between hallucinations and reality."
   "But," said Karl, "you don't have to let anyone know that you're dabbling with ideas like reincarnation and Macro philosophy. You've been hitting the books for almost three solid years, and you haven't once taken a vacation. It's no wonder you get an escapist dream."
   "Then, you think my dream is part of a mental breakdown due to overwork. So you're going to supply psychotherapy for me if I'll just keep my mouth shut and not talk to anyone else about my deranged ideas."
   "Now, Jon, put yourself in my place," Karl pleaded. "Just imagine that I came to you and told you all the things that you've told me today, and I admitted they were all based on a dream that I'd had the night before. Be fair, Jon. How would you react?"
   I couldn't help laughing at the thought of Karl talking as I had. I said, "Okay, Karl, you made your point. If you came to me with the same story I'd say you were nutty as a fruitcake. But you've always been the hardheaded realist. I've been the philosopher.
   "Besides, I've always been fascinated by dreams, and you've never even bothered to remember yours."
   "What you're saying, then," Karl replied, "is that you've always been the type to go off the deep end over some crazy dream. Jon, you're too close to finishing your doctorate to take chances like this. I'll be glad to listen to you, no matter what you want to talk about, but don't discuss this with anyone else yet. Okay?"
   "All right," I said. "Maybe you're right. Maybe it was all just a wild dream. I'll test that hypothesis tonight when I go to sleep."
   "Now that makes sense," Karl said with relief. "Look, I have to go. I've got an appointment with one of my students, then a date with Cindy tonight. If you're asleep when I get home, I won't wake you up."
   "By all means, don't wake me up! I'm going to bed early tonight to see what happens.
   "By the way," I continued, "I wrote down most of the details of my dream. I thought the organizational structure of the Macro society might interest you. It's all in the notebook over there on my desk. If you don't some in too late, you might glance through it."
   "I'll do that," Karl said, and left for his office.
   The blowing snow held an invitation that I couldn't resist. I hate the snow, and I love it. So I bundled up and went for a walk that ended in the university library. There I spent a couple of hours looking for books to support my hope that there was more to my experience than just an escapist dream fantasy. I failed.
   Around nine-thirty I went to bed, yielding to an almost embarrassingly strong desire to see Lea again, if only in a dream. As I lay there waiting for sleep to come, I amused myself by reviewing the' strange details my dream computer had given me on the structure of the Macro society and its strange metric. time system:*
   *See C.I. Data Excerpts.
   The more I thought, the more I wondered if maybe Karl was right. I had read about people making up their own world when they could no longer cope with their existing reality. Maybe I should take a vacation.
   No matter what position I tried, sleep simply would not come.
   About midnight Karl and Cindy slipped quietly in. I faced the wall and feigned sleep so as not to intrude.
   Soon I drifted toward sleep and was awakened by Cindy's muffled giggles. "Damn it!" I thought and moved my pillow over my head as Karl, said, "Quiet, Honey," in a hushed voice.
   The sound of their rustling about on his bed across the room was hard to ignore, but I did, and once more slipped into the edge of sleep. I sat up startled in my bed. Cindy had let out a shrill squeal.
   There they were, stark naked. Karl was nibbling on her ticklish inner thigh-right there with me in the room.
   "Damn it, Karl!" I cursed angrily. "Don't you have any respect for the act?"
   Karl looked up, as startled as I had been, and, as Cindy gathered the blanket about her, his expression changed from surprise to amusement.
   He grabbed Cindy, blanket and all, and said playfully, "Hell no, Jon! We're ballin', we're not in church!"
   Cindy's apology was drowned by the voice of my own inner conflict. "Karl's right, you know," my evolved self was saying. "There's joy and laughter to be shared making love with someone you care for. It's wholesome. It's healthy. It's good."
   Then my judgmental unevolved self came on with its rebuttal. "There's nothing wholesome about Karl out there naked with someone he's not even thinking of marrying. Or for that matter, her naked in front of him here in his-no, our!-bedroom. What kind of girl is she– anyway?"
   Then the response, "Oh, get with it, Jon. She's a super person, bright, thoughtful, and fun. You know that. There's nothing wrong with them sharing a perfectly natural expression of caring and sharing. If you were as bright as you think you are, you wouldn't judge them. You'd just be happy for them."
   "Happy for them, indeed! I'd never do that sort of thing," the argument continued.
   "Oh, you wouldn't, huh? Maybe you're just a little bit jealous of Karl's lack of inhibition, his freedom of expression."
   And so the contest went till either they got quieter or I fell asleep, or both. Anyway, I– woke up Thursday morning at. my usual time with no memory of even the trace of a dream.
   January is miserably cold in New York, and this month was no exception. It had been eleven, snow and slushfilled days since my strange dream experience, and while I had remembered a few dream fragments, none of them ever approached the level of my 2150 experience.
   Did this fact support Karl's "escapist dream" theory or negate it?
   He was worried at first and spent a little more time at home than usual for the first few days. When my nights failed to turn up any more such bizarre responses, I guess he finally decided it was all just a very therapeutic escape technique.
   I, on the other hand, was having a lot of difficulty getting it off my mind. While I went through my usual daily routine, I was not quite with it. A part of me lingered with my unusual experience and longed to return to it.
   I decided to do a little research on dreams and dreaming. Bundling up against the biting cold, I headed for the bookstore, where I went straight to the dream books.
   Scanning the shelves, my eyes fell on a single word.
   Macro!
   My eyes seemed to jump from my head! There it was. The light brown booklet I had seen before. The word I couldn't remember from its title was Macro! "Incredible!" I thought. "Interpret Your Dreams from a Macro View."
   I promptly bought it and spent the evening hours studying it and applying it to dreams I remembered.
   By ten-thirty I retired convinced that 2150 and Lea were a valid reality-perhaps a parallel reality or something like that which I didn't really understand, but which I, none the less, was now sure existed somewhere in our universe; our macrocosm.

CHAPTER 3: Carol

   I awakened, to my delight, in my library room back or should I say forward?-in the year 2150. The pleasantly feminine voice of Central Information broke into my awareness and I realized that she was still answering the last question I had asked before falling asleep. While I had spent eleven days back in 1976, I had returned to a moment in 2150 time only a few seconds later than when I had left. Did C.I. know what had happened to me?
   "Excuse me," I interrupted, "can you tell me how long I was asleep and what happened?"
   "You fell asleep," C.I. answered, "three seconds ago approximately ten seconds in 2150 metric time. However, during that three seconds you experienced a time translation of approximately eleven days in 1976 time."
   "How do you know this?" I asked, perplexed and somewhat uneasy.
   "Your chair," C.I. responded, "monitors all your major physiological changes. Also, Lea, 7-927, and others use this computer to make your time translation computations."
   "What's the 7-927 for?" I asked.
   "When Lea was born she was the seventh child to be given the name Lea in Delta 927.
   My curiosity being fully aroused, I asked the next logical question, "How do you assign names?"
   "The Macro society has thirty thousand names which fit the major soul patterns, or vibrations. When a soul incarnates into the Macro society, its vibration pattern is calibrated and the name most closely fitting this pattern is then assigned."
   I thought about this for a moment, then asked, "Can you tell me how closely the name Jon fits my vibration pattern?"
   "It fits very closely indeed," C.I. responded. "But this is no accident, since your mother had a talent for this type of name selection. She was very highly evolved. What you, in 1976, call psychic."
   Since Mother had died during my early childhood, I really couldn't remember her too well-psychic or otherwise. I was just going to ask C.I. how it (or she) had known about my mother when Lea came bouncing into the room looking even more beautiful than I had remembered. Before she could say anything, I blurted out, "Why couldn't I come back? I've missed you."
   "We tried every time you slept, Jon, but your anger at Karl prevented translation the first night. After that your belief in this reality was not strong enough to make translation possible until tonight."
   "Well, how could I be in 1976 for eleven days and return here only three seconds later than when I left?"
   "You were never really gone from either place, Jon. But I think that the concept of time as simultaneous flexible subjectivity is beyond your current comprehension."
   "Speaking of time, how old are you, Lea?"
   "Hmm," she said, "that's at least one question you forgot to ask Central Information. Before I answer I'm going to ask you how old you think I am."
   "Well," I said, "I'm not sure, but you must be somewhere between eighteen and twenty-five, and I'm hoping over twenty-one."
   "You'll get your wish and then some," she replied. Then with an impish grin she said to the computer, "Please tell us my age."
   C.I. promptly replied, "In 'time' as understood by Jon, Lea 7-927 will have forty years in three weeks and three days."
   "You were born in 21101" I exclaimed incredulously. I couldn't believe that Lea was almost 40 years old. Or to say it in their Macro way-they speak of years of a lifetime as we speak' of years of study-she has had almost forty years.
   "That's right," she replied. "We have learned to arrest the physical aging process. The only elderly-looking people you will see in the Macro society are the very few who were born before the year 2000."
   "Wait a moment," I interrupted. "Do you mean there are people living over a hundred and fifty years?"
   "Yes. Theoretically level tens could have as many years as they want, for greater mental awareness means greater physical control. Unlike micro man, our high Macro beings can move at will between their physical and astral bodies. They only remain in physical bodies as long as there are lessons to learn at the physical level. Our goal is to free ourselves completely from the limited, low vibration, physical existence."
   "But, my physical body is enjoyable. I don't want to give it up as long as it's still young enough to bring me more pleasure than pain," I complained.
   "Naturally. Nobody does," Lea replied. "That's the major reason we inhabit physical bodies; we want to. But, like all children, eventually we grow up and tire of our childish activities and seek new, more satisfying experiences. Thus, all souls evolve inevitably toward greater awareness."
   "But I don't–"
   "I know," Lea interrupted. "You aren't ready for that yet. But you are 'ready to start experiencing one of our students Alphas. Let's go. I'll answer more of your questions on the way to your Gamma building."
   As we walked hand in hand around the lake I said nothing for a while, and Lea respected my silence. I was contemplating what C.I. had told me about the social structure of the Macro society.
   "It seems to me," I said, "that this is a terribly regimented and over structured society if everybody remains a student for the first thirty years of his life and must live in a student Alpha, Beta, and Gamma. One of the problems of the 1970s is that most young people in the industrial societies are kept much too long as students-'nonproductive' members of society."
   "Yes, that's true. But our students are learning how to live satisfying, productive lives. They're not wasting their time memorizing facts and studying irrelevant materials which they'll soon forget because they don't use them in their daily life. Perfect examples would be memorization of historical or geographical details, or your society's devotion to learning foreign languages, algebra, and geometry, which most people never need to use.
   "In order to survive," Lea continued, "we learned that we had to remove from out lives the nonessentials and the divisive concerns of micro man. These included his micro family, economic class, religion, nationality, language, cultural and racial divisions."
   "That's what I meant by massive regimentation," I said. "There's no freedom left!"
   "You mean," Lea answered, "freedom to feel separate from and better than others. Freedom to be selfish and to put your own welfare above that of others. Freedom to compete, to fight, to destroy others. Freedom to pollute by over consuming and overpopulating and by refusing to cooperate."
   She looked at me searchingly for a few seconds, then continued. "You see, Jon, for man to survive on this planet in these bodies he had to learn to cooperate, which meant giving up his micro freedoms. I know you feel our society is too regimented; but live in it for a while and see if our Macro society doesn't supply freedoms that your micro society could never guarantee. Freedom from fear, disease, hunger, loneliness, crippling frustrations, and self-hate."
   "If it can do all that, I sure want to see-how it works!"
   We were surrounded by the beauty of a day filled with sunshine, a sparkling blue lake, a cool breeze, and the lovely park replete with shade trees.
   "Who does all the work to keep this paradise running?" I asked.
   "Servo-mechanisms," Lea answered. "What you would call robots do all of our repetitious, boring tasks. However, helping things grow is a joy to many people. We do the work that pleases us, so you'll find some of us working in the gardens."
   We approached the first of the large residence buildings, and Lea informed me that this was the student Gamma building in which I would be staying.
   "I'll introduce you to your Alpha mate," Lea said, "then I must leave you to return to my own work. You'll learn about 2150, then you can decide whether or not you want to make the effort to stay here."
   "Wait a minute," I said. "You mean I'm actually going to live in an Alpha and share a bedroom with some other. girl?"
   "Of course, Jon. If you're going to learn how to live in our Macro society you've got to experience it."
   "Yes, but I thought I'd be living with you," I objected.
   "You can't live with me until you've reached at least seventh level and finished your tenth student triad."
   "My God!" I exclaimed. "That'll be years from now, Lea!"
   Lea laughed and said, "Wait until you meet Carol, your Alpha mate, and I'm sure you'll soon be happy at the prospect of sharing a bed with her for the next few years."
   "But... but," I sputtered, "you can't be serious. I love you. I don't want to bed down with some other woman."
   "Love," Lea replied," is determined by the level of one's awareness. With a micro level of awareness love is a neurotic dependency relationship characterized by jealous possessiveness."
   "Oh, great," I growled. "The classic rationalization for free love, otherwise known as promiscuity."
   "Contrary to your micro society," Lea responded, "sex is not a dirty word in 2150. You'll find we share much more than just an orgasm. And we don't use another person as a sex object.
   "But please, Jon, before you condemn us as moral degenerates, get to know us. Treat us just As fairly and without prejudice as you would a research-'hypothesis.
   "Now, are you ready to meet your Alpha mate?"
   I had been so preoccupied with our conversation that I had been only vaguely aware of entering the building, passing several young, children, swiftly ascending to the seventh floor, and walking down a long, glass-enclosed' outer hall. It was lighted both by the outside sunshine and by overhead lighting which seemed to radiate equally from all parts of the ceiling. We had turned down an interior hallway and were now standing before a large blue door. I recalled that all the doorways we passed had been the same electric blue, while the walls were a pleasing shade of green. I remembered that we were on the seventh floor which held the seventh triad student Beta and that green was the seventh level color.
   To postpone answering Lea's question about my readiness to meet my Alpha mate I asked about the blue doors.
   "Blue is the eighth-level color," Lea answered, "and the seventh level is the door to the eighth level, so, doors on the seventh level are blue. Of course, these are student triad levels, which are entirely different from levels of awareness, but they share the same colors."
   "Do the colors themselves have any special meaning?" Lea smiled her tantalizingly mischievous smile and said, "Carol will be glad to explain it to you."
   I was startled when the door in front of us slid silently open. Lea, sensing my surprise, drew my attention to a button beside the door saying, "Most of us use the Macro power of psycho kinesis (PK) to activate electronic circuits. You'll have to push the buttons until you develop PK."
   I wanted to think about Lea's statement but the unusual room before us commanded my attention.
   We entered the huge deeply carpeted Alpha common room, thirty feet by ninety feet long. I was impressed by the three-dimensional murals on the walls depicting outdoor scenes so realistically that I felt I was looking through windows instead of at works of art.
   The absence of furniture contributed to this feeling of oneness with the out-of-doors, for the only furniture in this gigantic room was a circle of ten large sitting devices at one end of the room. They didn't look much like chairs, but their purpose was obvious. The fifteen foot ceiling was lit by some concealed source, creating a luminescence closer to that of sunshine than any I have ever experienced. The fact that there was no one in this room reminded me that we had seen no one since we reached the seventh floor.
   "Where is everyone?" I asked.
   "It's such a lovely day," Lea answered, "almost everyone is outdoors. We don't confine learning to the inside of classrooms as your society does."
   A moment later a door at the end of the room opened, and a young girl came running toward us. It was Carol. She was wearing the universal short tunic and, while Lea and I were wearing our stocking-like boots, her feet were bare.
   She placed her right hand on Lea's face. Lea returned the gesture, and they looked into each other's eyes for what seemed to be a very long time as I grew increasingly self-conscious. Then, without speaking, Carol touched my face and began the same smiling, but silent, encounter. I felt as if I was drowning in her magnificent hazel eyes, set in as pretty a face as I have ever seen. Reluctantly I broke our eye contact to become aware of a beautifully formed body cast from a giant mold. Carol was as tall as I, and I'm six feet three

CHAPTER 4: Alpha Mates

   Suddenly Lea was gone and L was alone with Carol. Why did I feel so nervous? I hadn't felt that way with Lea. What was it about Carol that made me feel like a gawky adolescent on his first date?
   I suddenly remembered that, as a telepath, Carol could read my mind. I found myself blushing. In my desperate attempt not to think anything embarrassing, I became inundated with thoughts about Carol's magnificent body which her pink well-fitted tunic did little to hide.
   "You're discovering," said Carol, "that it's impossible not to think of something by trying not to think of it. In fact, the more you try not to think of my body, the more you think of it."
   My voice seemed to be strangled as I croaked out, "I... uh, I'm sorry."
   "You certainly needn't be. It would be sad, indeed, if you didn't appreciate the beauty of our bodies!" With these words Carol tugged the top of her tunic, which caused it to fall to the floor, leaving her wondrously naked.
   "Carol!" I gasped.
   "Please, Jon, go ahead and look at my body," she said-as if I could have looked at anything else!
   "I know it's difficult and embarrassing for you. Your being a Virgo-the virgin of the Zodiac-only multiplies your 20th-century sex guilts, so we might as well deal with them right now if you're going to live comfortably in a 22nd-century Alpha. Let's see, bathing together should be the perfect beginning for a Virgo."
   "You believe in astrology, then?" I jumped at a safe topic to diminish my self-consciousness.
   "Only as an influence, Jon-not as a determinant. Now, about that bath." She took my hand and we entered the most spacious bedroom I've ever seen.
   The room was thirty feet square. In one corner was a huge nine-foot-square pad about a foot high, while in the opposite corner was a sunken pool ten feet wide by fifteen feet long. A couple of soft oval cushions in the center of the room faced a three-foot-square video screen. Carol led me to the sunken pool and, releasing my hand, made a shallow dive into the water.
   My evolved adventurous self won a quick victory which led me swiftly out of my tunic and into the water after her. I found the water very warm and clear. The floor slanted down until at the far end of the pool, which I went to immediately, it was about eight feet deep. Carol was apparently using her PK power, because a clear plastic partition, slid out of the wall and completely surrounded our pool-bath.
   "There," she said, turning to me. "Now we can splash to our heart's content. Let's wash each other!"
   With these words Carol surprised me with another PK demonstration as the floor beneath us began to slowly rise until we were standing in water that barely covered our knees.
   I felt very naked.
   A wall panel slid open revealing two retractable hoses, one dispensing sparkling, slippery cleansing bubbles, the other clear water. Carol invited me to stretch out on a cushion that extended out from the shallow end of the pool. There she began spraying me with one hand while slowly lathering my body with the other.
   She covered every square inch of my body with the utmost care. Once again, I tried not to think or feel sexually and ended up with one hell of an erection.
   As her hands slid over me I listened to her softly telling me of the joys of sharing a bath with your Alpha mate. She admired my shoulders and my firm abdominal muscles. When she came to my penis she made a number of casual remarks about its esthetically pleasing composition and its remarkable tumescence. This last was too much for me, and I broke my long silence.
   "For God's sake, Carol, help me," I pleaded: "I don't want to be sexually aroused."
   "Why not?" Carol promptly asked.
   "Because," I replied lamely, "it makes me feel like a child who can't control himself. Besides, I don't want to be unfaithful to Lea."
   "If you're worried about Lea, she's at ninth level," Carol said in her deep soothing voice, as if this should immediately put my mind to rest. "I mean," she continued, "that Lea is so adequate that she has no neurotic need to possess any part of you and so she could not be offended or jealous, no matter what you do."
   "But, I don't-"
   Carol interrupted, "Lea asked me to help you in every way I could and that specifically included dealing with your sexual neurosis."
   "I'm not neurotic!" I defended vehemently. "I am perfectly normal."
   "Maybe, by 1976 standards," Carol replied calmly, "but it's not normal in a 22nd century Alpha to feel inadequate or in conflict with yourself over a perfectly normal, healthy enjoyment of out beautiful bodies."
   "Well," I replied righteously, "in 1976 I didn't take baths with girls I had only just met five minutes ago."
   While we were talking, Carol had finished washing me, then used the other hose to rinse. Now she handed the hose to me and, raising her arms above her head, began to turn slowly and seductively about. I took a deep breath and gingerly began to apply the sparkling bubbles while I held the hose with both hands.
   Carol smiled impishly. "That's not how I washed you, Jon. Are you really afraid that you'll lose control if you touch me?"
   "Oh, hell!" I exploded and began to feverishly rub the bubbles over her satin smooth skin.
   "Hardly hell," Carol answered with a laugh. "It feels to me more like what the 20th century might have called heaven!"
   She was right. I recognized my guilt-ridden judgmental self shaking its frightened finger at me. It was so limited, so one-sided, like a white-line figure drawn on a blackboard. I erased it and began to enjoy a truly heavenly experience. I covered her with bubbles, then, with both hands, lovingly explored every delightful curve and valley. I was in no hurry and would have stayed in that bath all day if Carol had not, after some time, caused the floor to descend, taking us back down into the water. After a few moments of splashing, and playful wrestling, Carol led me out of the pool. Activating another circuit, she removed the plastic shield and emptied the pool, refilling it with fresh water. Streams of warm air quickly dried our bodies. Taking my hand, she ran and flopped across the huge pad in the corner.
   For the next hour I abandoned myself to the joy of a romping physical emental union with Carol.
   By the end of that hour I had learned that sexual intercourse, when it is emental intercourse as well, can open two people to a oneness that I had never before thought possible.
   As we lay in each other's arms I told Carol about my guilt and fear concerning pregnancy. I told her that I had not been able to freely enjoy a sexual relationship since my high school days. As I talked about my guilt concerning Valerie, I relived the most unpleasant experience of my teen years when my father had angrily denounced me– for my "animal selfishness:" It was then that Carol told me that no female in the Macro society could ever have a child without special emental preparation. Even then it required permission from the Deltar.
   I didn't understand her technical explanation of how the female reproductive cycle had been modified so that no female experienced menstruation unless she was going to bear children. However, I knew it would have been welcomed by most 20th-century women-and men!
   We talked about the Macro society policy of permitting only their finest members (physically, ementally, and spiritually) to produce children. They restricted births so that the student population was approximately 10 percent of the total population. When I realized how few women would ever have an opportunity to bear children, I was shocked.
   "Carol," I asked, "do you honestly feel it's fair to deny nine out of ten people the right to become parents?"
   "Fair?" Carol questioned, then laughed. "For a moment I forgot you're from the 1970s, Jon. Creating and giving birth to a child was the most physically destructive ordeal that woman put herself through. It's no longer necessary. The incredible conceit of couples thinking the world needed little copies of themselves was just a sad symptom of micro man's limited perspective.
   "I studied the history of micro man," Carol continued. "For thousands of years anyone could have children, and they were treated as possessions. By the 20th century, in your country, they could no longer be put to work at an early age, so the micro family began ignoring them. The drug cults and youth revolts of your time were partially the result of micro man's compulsion to create far more offspring than he/she was at all prepared to guide into effective adulthood."
 
   "And your solution," I said, "is to parentally disenfranchise ninety percent of your population."
   "Oh, Jon," Carol, said shaking her head and giving me a wry smile. "You don't understand. Anyone can have a child if they prepare themselves for this purpose. It may take a few lifetimes for some, but we're not imprisoned in one lifetime as micro societies thought they were. Micro man's motto was 'you only live once, so eat, drink, and pollute, for tomorrow you may die.' And, of course, his frantic selfishness not only destroyed him but almost destroyed our whole planet."
   I had to admit that by 1976 we had seriously polluted most of our lakes and rivers and were affecting the oceans as well.
   I wondered how bad it had gotten between my "time" and Carol's.
   Obviously perceiving my thought, she paused for a moment, her eyes saddened as if remembering something very unpleasant. Then she continued, "You polluted your oceans, your air, and your land until almost all animal and fish life was gone. Then you caused geophysical imbalances in the earth which produced-earthquakes, and tidal waves so destructive that when you look at a map of our world today you will not recognize it.",
   "Well," I said lightly, not really comprehending. the magnitude of the disaster, "I guess that solved our overpopulation problem. How many people are alive in the world of, 2150?"
   "Approximately 303 million," Carol said. "There would have been a lot more, in spite of the physical disasters, if micro man could have at last cooperated and helped each other. Unfortunately, he accentuated all the traditional divisions-nationality, race, religion, language, educational and socioeconomic levels-and fought over the fast-dwindling resources of his ravaged planet."
   "Did micro man really become as extinct as the dinosaur and dodo bird?" I asked.
   "Almost," Carol responded. "There are only about three million micro beings in existence today, and they
   all live on one island, which we call Micro Island. If anyone in our Macro society gets tired of our life, they can move to Micro Island and live selfishly and in fear of their fellow micro neighbors-the way your society lived in the 20th century."
   "You mean," I said, "your Macro society keeps three million people on a prison island?"
   Carol shook her head. "No one has to live on Micro Island if he is willing to live in the Macro society by our Macro standards. You must understand that every person who lives on Micro Island has chosen to live there."
   "Even the children?" I asked.
   "Yes," Carol nodded. "We know that every child, prior to his birth, chooses his parents, as well as the environment he will grow up in."
   "You mean," I added, "you, too, believe in reincarnation?"
   "Yes, I do," Carol responded. "We all do. Just as exploration of the earth proved the theory that the world was round, exploration of the mind proved the theory of reincarnation.
   "When we explored the subconscious mind we discovered the soul and its memory of past lives on this planet as well as in other dimensions. We learned that the first human souls to enter this planet inhabited the bodies of various animals and got trapped in animal flesh. Then other human souls decided to help their brothers by preparing a way out of this animal-life trap.
   "To achieve this they hovered over the bodies of apes and, working with Macro powers, manipulated the gland centers of the apes to change their evolutionary pattern. This is how the five races of man were produced, black, brown, red, yellow, and white, at approximately the same time in different parts of the world. As these apes developed more human-like bodies, they were used as vehicles for human souls to experience this physical dimension and to provide human bodies for those trapped in animal flesh."
   "And are there still human souls inhabiting animal bodies?" I asked. "In my life in 1976... could I have met a fellow human soul trapped behind bars at our local zoo?"
   Carol was amused by my question. "No. Not quite. There is an evolution of souls, with some almost human souls still incarnating in other forms of life. Some of these are using mental powers that outreach those of man in specific– areas. But all truly human souls trapped in animal flesh were free to inhabit human bodies long before recorded history began. That does not, however, mean that they were not trapped."
   "What do you mean?" I queried.
   "I mean that in human bodies most souls could only conceive of pleasure in the limited, scope of physical. existence. Afraid of giving up or losing these pleasures, they became victims of their own desires-their own limited perspective-and kept incarnating again and again. In an attempt to avoid the law of karma they tried to forget their past. They lived in a kind of delusionary amnesia."
   "I'm familiar with the concept of karma," I said. "As I understand it, it's the same as the Christian concept of 'what you sow you must reap.' Is that right?"
   "Essentially, yes," Carol answered, then went on to clarify. "Karma, you see, reflects the Macro truth that all is one, and, thus, anything we do to others we do to ourselves. Of course, this isn't apparent at the limited micro perspective, so souls take refuge in micro lives in an attempt to avoid the painful consequences of their own past actions and thoughts. This is the delusionary amnesia I spoke of.
   "From a purely micro view, karma doesn't exist because it is not perceived as existing.
   "From a mid-point of evolution karma is acknowledged as the logical explanation for one's fortunes and misfortunes. It is believed to be real and is, therefore, real as a cause-and-effect element within a continuous time perspective.
   "From a more Macro view, however, time is simultaneous, and karma is understood to be a valid element of a limited perspective regarding time. Fortunes and misfortunes are seen, from the broader perspective, not as cause and effect, but as learning opportunities specifically and carefully chosen by each soul for its own development."
   "Wait a minute," I interrupted. "Let me go back a bit. You said that some souls try to forget their past in an attempt to avoid the consequences of their actions and thoughts. What's this about thoughts?"
   "Thoughts are things, you know, and they are just as important as actions," Carol added. "The way you think makes you what you are and profoundly influences the world around you."
   "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."
   I looked at Carol and said, "What can I say except that the world of the '70s was divided, not united, and, couldn't cooperate enough to resolve its major social problems."
   "Your society," Carol said, "functioned in the only way it could, based on its micro perspective of life. People can only behave in terms of how they perceive themselves and the world about them. And these perceptions are completely determined by one's beliefs or philosophy of life, which were, prior to the 21st century, generally unconscious."
   "Okay," I admitted. "We needed a broader perspective so we could see the larger picture. We needed a Macro perspective-a perspective large enough so that we could see that the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount provided the best of all practical advice."
   Carol smiled and quoted, " 'For whatever measure you deal out to others will be dealt back to you.' "
   "Yes," I responded, "but that doesn't make sense in everyday human affairs unless the individual is aware of this macrocosmic oneness."
   "In the 1970s," Carol added, "you lived in a world in which at least one out of every three people lived in abject crippling poverty, and you people, in your proud United States – united indeed! Hmmm, but that's another story you people had a welfare system so politically corrupt and inadequate that it not only ignored the worst cases of human neglect and poverty but actually perpetuated poverty and ignorance from one generation to the next.
   "At the same time," she continued, "you dedicated your major national energies and resources to war and paranoid preparations for war. If, in the 1960s and '70s, you had devoted the same amount of money and national effort to solving your social problems that you did to waging your nation-dividing Vietnam War, you could have ended the poverty cycle forever in your country and gone a long way toward resolving many of your nation's other social problems."
   "I know," I said, "but our political leaders were ignorant, if not corrupt."
   Carol shook her head. "Every nation deserves its leaders," she said. "You're trying to avoid your own responsibility by placing the blame on others. Please, Jon, don't think I am sitting in righteous judgment of you or your micro society. I don't blame or condemn micro man for acting like micro man. It is the only way he can act, because it is the only way he has learned to act. But I must help you see this broader perspective."
   "But," I objected, "how can you not condemn human beings for selfish, cruel, and even vicious behavior toward others? Especially since that behavior became so selfish and shortsighted that it almost wiped out our whole planet?"
   "It was the only way," Carol answered, "that man could learn the consequences of his own actions. Mistakes are absolutely essential in the learning process. Besides, Jon, it's only terrible from the short-term micro point of view. From the Macro view it's all perfect. Everything has a purpose and a happy ending because everything is evolving toward perfect Macro awareness."
   "I know," I said "that from your Macro view we are all responsible for our every experience. But tell that to someone who is suffering from poverty or disease, or some other kind of human injustice."
   Carol smiled and said, "I don't speak to children about things they're not ready to understand. But I don't forget that in time every child becomes an adult and everyone eventually will understand everything."
   I decided that we had gone as far as I felt I was ready to go on this subject, so I asked Carol when I would meet the other Alpha members. She immediately asked C.I. to contact her, or should I now say "our," Alphar. In about fifteen seconds we heard the voice of our Alpha leader who informed Carol that the rest of our Alpha would be back in about two hours.
   After Carol had thanked him for this information she terminated their contact and told me how C.I. can contact any Macro society member by using the communications cell contained in the bracelet which each of them wore. She showed me what she called her mib (for Macro identity bracelet). It contained a timepiece, a communications cell, a bionic monitor, and a nutrition compartment. I was fascinated by the fact that the bracelets supplied C.I. with the heart and brain patterns for everyone in the Macro society. Any danger was immediately relayed, via C.I., to those closest and best able to offer help even if the person in trouble was unconscious and, thus, unable to call for help.
   Carol told me that I would soon receive my own mib. Then she asked me if I would like to see pictures of our other Alpha members. Of course I did, so she asked C.I. to present them.
   Suddenly I was looking at a picture of our leader, Alan, whose voice I had just heard. At the same time C.I. was telling me about him.
   "Your Alpha leader, Alan, is 20.6 years old, six feet five inches tall (this, along with his weight, was given in metric equivalents, then translated for My benefit), 240 pounds, and is presently residing in the student Gamma of Delta 927."
   Carol interrupted C.I. at this point to tell me that we could listen for days to the accumulated information that C.I. had on every individual member of our Alpha. This information, she said, even included data on past lives. However, she felt that I probably was not ready for too much information on each member yet.
   It was here that she pointed out that all information on every person in the Macro society was available to everyone. There was no such thing as secret, hidden, or confidential information.
   I commented that my government in 1976 could not possibly function without massive secrecy. Then I looked at a video tape of Alan leading a discussion group, running, walking, swimming, playing games, and sleeping. He looked tremendously vital and intelligent. When I commented on this, Carol said he was a Six, as if that explained it all.
   We next saw pictures of Bonnie, who was Alan's Alpha mate. She was six feet two and weighed 160 pounds. Next was six-foot-seven Adam with Nancy who was six feet three. They were followed by Diane and David who were six feet one and six feet five respectively. Then came the tallest man of all, Steve, at six feet nine, and his Alpha mate, Joyce, who was six feet three. Finally C.I. presented pictures of Carol and Jon, and I realized the pictures of me had been taken while I was in the library and walking with Lea.
   I was impressed with the sheer physical size and beauty of my fellow Alpha members. I was also surprised at the lack of hair. Of the five males my hair was the longest, and it was short by 1976 standards. Even among the girls the longest hair was Carol's, which was no more than four inches at most.
   When I asked Carol about this she informed me that they did not value hair because they were not vain about their appearances. It was simpler, she assured me, to keep their hair short.
   "Tell me, Carol," I asked "are there any fat or ugly people in the Macro society?"
   She laughed and said, "How could there be, when we control the complete genetic, physical, and mental development of all our children?"
   "All right, but why, then, do you have your different levels of awareness? How come everyone isn't level ten?"
   "Because," Carol answered, "we can not change the learning experiences of past lives. However, no soul can incarnate into the Macro society who has not evolved to Macro potential."
   "Even me?"
   Carol smiled. "Oh, Jon. Even our wisest ones could not have succeeded in helping Lea bring you here if you didn't have the Macro potential."
   "Let me try to understand these levels of awareness," I said. "I'm level one because I'm a beginner at Macro awareness."
   "That's right, Jon. You're well on your way back toward applied awareness of your oneness with all that is, all that was, and all that ever will be."
   "And Adam and Nancy have demonstrated second level awareness," I continued. "You are at the third level along with Steve, while Bonnie and Joyce are level four. Then we have Diane and David at level five and Alan, our leader, at the sixth level. Now, tell me, what's the difference between these levels?"
   "I'll let C.I. answer that," Carol said. "And while you are getting your questions answered, I will go back and pick up your mib from the administration building."
   I had a mental picture of the map which C.I. had shown me of the Delta and I suddenly realized Carol was talking about a ten-mile round trip. "You mean you are going to walk ten miles?" I asked.
   She said, "Oh, I could have it sent by underground pneumatic tube. right here to our Alpha, but since I missed our exercise period today I'll run the distance. I'll be back in less than an hour."
   "Ten miles in less than an hour?" I asked incredulously.
   "Don't worry, Jon. Our Macro powers help us run lighter, faster, longer, and more joyously than would ever be possible for micro man."
   "Don't you have any kind of local transportation?" I asked incredulously.
   "Unless it's a great emergency," Carol replied, "we walk or run everywhere in the Delta and sometimes even between Deltas. Sure, we have transairs that will take us very quickly anywhere we want to go on this planet, but we believe in a balanced life free from the neurotic rushing of your micro society. We believe in exercising the body, the mind, and the spirit equally so they can remain in balance."
   With those last words she blew me a kiss and literally ran out of the room. Not because she was in a hurry, but from sheer joy of exercising a magnificent healthy and vital body. I was pleased that she shared my joy in running, and I understood better why no one would become fat in this energetic society.
   Turning back to the video screen, I began asking my questions about levels of awareness and found that C.I. kept an almost total record on every person in the Macro society from birth to death. This was done by means of the Macro identity bracelet and the yearly evaluation performed by C.I.
   One's level of awareness was indicated by the color of his tunic. The tunic, I learned, was a perfectly accurate reflection of one's aura, which was an unfailingly accurate indicator of one's state of being, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically.
   Level one was predominantly gray: two was lemony orange for energy; three was pink for control of that energy; four was purple for empathy and leadership; five was violet for joyous acceptance of what is; six was yellow for love in its most total sense; seven was green for healing; eight was blue for balanced use of the intellect; nine was aquamarine for wisdom; and ten was white for leadership, the perfectly balanced blend of all other levels.
   According to C.I. there were currently only one hundred and twenty-seven persons in the Macro family who were evaluated as having demonstrated ten degrees of Macro awareness. This was out of a current Macro family population of 300 million.
   These degrees of awareness were based on the extent to which a person demonstrated the three Macro qualities: love, wisdom, and leadership, in that order of importance, and the seven Macro powers: clairvoyance, telepathy, precognition, retro cognition, psycho kinesis, telekinesis, and astral projection. [See C.I. Excerpts].
   As C.I. presented more and more information about the highly complex process of developing degrees of awareness I found myself becoming very drowsy and having difficulty keeping my eyes open. Finally I gave in to my desire to rest, closed my eyes, and was soon asleep.

CHAPTER 5: The Test of Reality

   I awakened, Saturday the 17th, to another cold, dreary January morning and remembered what C.I. had told me about the controlled climate of 2150. Things were just too good to be true, I thought.
   How could all those incredible social and scientific changes have taken place in only 174 years? Of course, I had to admit that going back in time 174 years from 1976 would have 'taken me to 1802, a time when the world of 1976 would certainly have been considered a completely impossible dream.
   I thought about some of the predictions for the future made by 20th-century prophets such as Huxley and Orwell. They had viewed the future of man with great skepticism. Of course, they were writing about micro man who, according to C.I., was even now in the process of doing away with himself. I wondered how it would have affected the writings of Orwell and Huxley if they had had a larger, broader perspective which would have enabled them to envision Macro man.
   Then I remembered that I, in fact, had no concrete proof whatsoever that the world of 2150 was anything more than a product of my own imagination.
   I suddenly felt a strong need to be concrete, to check out and reaffirm my present state of existence, to touch something, to talk to someone, to hear a voice.
   I looked across our apartment room and saw that Karl's bed was neatly made, as usual, and my journal was lying there on his pillow.
   I got out of bed and, losing my balance, almost fell on the floor. I had forgotten to strap on my artificial leg. That was confirmation enough of my present state of existence. I was here, fully awake, in 1976-minus one leg.
   I hobbled over to Karl's bed, retrieved my journal and saw the note saying, "We'll talk at noon," signed Karl.
   According to my watch it was almost 9 a.m., so I had slept late again. I wanted to write down all I could remember of my most recent experiences in 2150 or my dream world, whichever it was-before Karl came back at noon. I hurriedly dressed, had a quick breakfast and was soon writing furiously in my journal.
   When Karl came in at 12:15 p.m. I was almost finished, so I pulled out the pages I had completed and handed them to him so he could get caught up on my latest dream experiences while I finished writing.
   Karl finished about the same time I did and for a few seconds we just looked at each other. Then Karl broke the silence.
   "Hey, man," he grinned, "you've got to be the all-time super dreamer. You aren't content with one beautiful superwoman in love with you-no, you got to have two of 'em, one blonde and one brunette, even if they do wear it short."
   "All right," I said. "Any other comments? Aren't you at all impressed with the continuity? The fact that the dream picked up right where it ended before? And how about the continuing wealth of detailed information about the society of the future?"
   Karl's face became serious and he frowned. "Yes, Jon," he said, "I am impressed with it. I honestly don't know what to think except that if we take it seriously, we are both candidates for the loony bin. Think of that, Jon. Just imagine the headline, 'Two aspiring young psychologists, just one year from that big degree, break under load of studies and are admitted to State Mental Hospital.' "
   It was amusing, but uncomfortably possible. "Okay, okay, I'll be careful, Karl, I promise."
   "I'm not sure that even keeping it secret will end our problems, Jon. This dream has become an obsession with you."
   I thought about this and had to admit that he was right. "I guess you're right, Karl. I've never experienced anything so satisfying, so completely and irresistibly engaging in my entire life.
   "I'm still a bit skeptical of its reality," I added. "What I plan to do is test it out, like any other hypothesis. The ultimate test will be whether I can learn to liberate myself from this micro existence, as Lea suggested, and live in the Macro world of 2150 permanently."
   "Good God, Jon!" Karl came to the edge of his chair, his voice harsh with alarm. "Do you know what you're saying? If this dream is a mental aberration, an escape from unpleasant reality, then you'll end up like a vegetable-permanently off in your dream world while cooped up in some hospital and fed intravenously in the real world of 1976. Just one more catatonic schizophrenic!"
   Karl got up and began pacing about the room. He didn't say anything. The silence grew as I seriously considered the possibility that I might be becoming psychotic. Would I eventually deteriorate into the vegetable existence of the catatonic schizophrenic? What would happen to my body here in 1976 if I managed to stay permanently in the world of 2150? Would it become a vegetable? Would it just disappear? Would it die?
   These were questions I couldn't answer, and I found myself wishing I could ask Central Information.
   "I've got it, Karl," I said. "I'll ask C.I. when I get back what will happen to my body here in 1976 if I stay permanently in 2150."
   "Oh, that's just great," Karl answered in a voice dripping with sarcasm. "Now let's solve the problem by asking Satan to help us stop sinning!"
   "But, Karl, I-"
   "Listen to me, Jon," he interrupted. "You've got to realize that a society, even a real one, that would let itself be run by some giant computer has got to be sick! Sick! SICK!"
   "Now wait a minute, Karl," I replied. "Let's be fair. Let's be pragmatic. Let's compare the results."
   "Our micro society of 1976 is dedicated to selfish exploitation of others in the interest of short-term material pleasures. This selfish behavior is performed and perpetuated in the name of our freedom, our family, our city, our state, our nation, our religion, or in the name of communism, socialism, capitalism, of some other damn ism, and it has produced inconceivable amounts of human misery.
   "The world of 1976 is a world of selfish divisions breeding suspicion, distrust, hatred, and endless conflict both internally and internationally. It's a world so divided and so unable to cooperate that it has polluted its land, its water, its animal life, and even the air we breathe, to such an extreme that our planetary survival is in question.
   "As for our people, at least one out of three lives in poverty, disease, and semi-starvation. This, Karl, in spite of the fact that we have the resources and the technology to provide adequate food, clothing, shelter, medical care, and education to each and every person on this entire planet!"
   "My question, Karl, is why aren't we doing it?"
   "Probably because we're too damned self-centered, Jon," was Karl's response. "But the solution isn't to turn all our problems over to some bloody machine to solve. Now that's a real cop-out!"
   "They don't cop out in 2150," I answered heatedly and suddenly realized that I had a desperate need to convince Karl, and maybe myself, of the truth, the value, and the rightness of my strange experiences.
   "Okay, Karl," I said, forcing myself into calmness, "listen to me with as open a mind as you can, because if we get lost in our emotions we'll really be in trouble.
   "Everything I've learned about the society of 2150 indicates that its people care about each other and are deeply involved with helping others. Now, that's not a cop-out."
   "Moreover," I continued, "they have developed a philosophy of life which provides such a large perspective that they can see the long-term destructive results of selfish behavior. In other words, from their Macro perspective they can see that we are all one interdependent whole and, therefore, the welfare of the apparently least important individual is the concern and the welfare of all. Only from this larger perspective is there any practical value in words like 'love one another,' 'you are your brother's keeper,' 'what you sow you must reap,' or 'treat others as you would like to be treated.' "
   "But what about that damn machine?" Karl began.
   "Screw the machine!" I shouted. "It wasn't C.I. that developed Macro philosophy or a Macro society which could attract highly evolved souls! It wasn't the machine that provided love, patience, kindness, and understanding help for every living being! No! It was the people of the Macro society who chose an unselfish, Macro lifestyle."
   "And the results?" I continued "The results are 300 million people free from war, pollution, poverty, selfishness, and hatred-every one of them educated and healthy, with a roof over their heads and three square meals a day."
   "If this is sick, sick, SICK," I shouted as I slammed my fist down on the table, "then, by God, I choose to be sick!"
   Karl stared at me in disbelief. Then he said, "Jon, I've never seen you so-so-I'm not sure what. Maybe passionately involved. You're shouting, you're arguing, you're slamming your fist around, and you're swearing. This is all new to me. I don't know what to think."
   "How about realizing that I've been an uninvolved spectator in this life up till now? I've prided myself on never losing my, cool, but actually I was just copping out. Now-at last-I'm concerned, involved, committed, and I'm not going to back out, no matter what happens. I'm going to give all I've got to exploring and learning about this world of the future."
   Karl slowly shook his head and I could see that his face was taut with strain. "I'm afraid," he said. "You know that I feel closer to you than to anyone else on Earth. That I'd give my life to help you.
   "I remember," he continued, "there's some philosophy that says if you save a man's life you are thereafter responsible for it. Well, I saved your life in Vietnam, and now I can't let you destroy it over some psychotic hallucination."
   "But, Karl– " I began.
   "No, damn it, you listen to me now!" Karl insisted as he shook his fist at me as though he were planning to physically wrestle me to my senses. "You know as well as I that sudden massive personality changes are classic signs of mental disturbance, and you just admitted that you've got a whole new personality!"
   Karl paused and looked at me carefully to see if I had registered this bombshell.
   Obviously satisfied that he had gotten through to me, he continued, "Now, Jon, I'm not going to argue with you over the merits of your dream world versus reality. I'm in favor of goodness and mercy and justice for all, and I'm opposed to selfishness, wickedness, and evil of all varieties. In spite of all that, I'm going to deal with the unpleasant reality of 1976, not escape into some dream world of the future."
   There was a silence now as Karl let me think over what he had just said.
   I thought about the points he had made concerning sudden personality changes and running away from unpleasant reality, and I had to admit to myself that they scared me a little, too. However, I was still convinced that for me there was no going back to the Jon Lake who existed prior to my dreams of 2150. I was committed to exploring my dream world of the future to its conclusion whatever that might be. Now, how could I get Karl to accept this?
   "All right, Karl," I said finally. "I concede your points. Maybe I am going insane. Maybe I am running away from the unpleasant reality of my Ph.D. grind. But, truth can be demonstrated sooner or later. If I can learn to develop Macro powers such as clairvoyance, telepathy, and so on, then I should be able to demonstrate them to you here in 1976. Right?"
   Karl looked surprised and said, "Are you saying that if you dream you've developed these powers, and can't demonstrate them to my satisfaction while you are awake, that you'll give up this massive psychotic delusion?"
   "Yes, Karl," I answered. "That's exactly what I'm saying.
   "I'm willing to put my dream world to the test, and if it fails to pass this test, to hell with it."
   "Now you're talking sense," Karl said, patting me on the shoulder with smiling relief. "Since you're willing, to let me be the final judge in your test of reality I can hardly object to your continuing interest in these weird dreams. I'm convinced, however, that it won't be long before your dream world fails your test of reality."
   By unspoken agreement we dropped the subject and talked of other things for the rest of the afternoon. Then we went out for dinner followed by a movie featuring the youth drug culture.
   On the way back to our apartment we discussed the tremendous increase in drug usage among our generation and agreed that this was certainly a desperate attempt to escape from, or find something better than, the unpleasant reality of our very micro society.
   Later, while lying in my bed waiting for sleep to come and, hopefully, transport me to the future, I wondered if my motivation to dream of a beautiful future was similar to the motivation of those who use drugs.
   It made me uncomfortable and I called across the room to where Karl was lying and, once again, repeated my promise to forget about my dream world if it didn't pass our test.
   He expressed his satisfaction with this agreement, saying that now we had it licked.
   I was still reassuring myself when I, fell asleep.

CHAPTER 6: Jon's Alpha and Rana

   Once again I awakened to the voice of Central Information. I immediately interrupted to ask how long I had been asleep. But this time C.I. said it could not give me this information since the Alpha room chair was not designed to be a body-mind monitor, as were the chairs in the library.
   I decided, however, that since Carol was not back yet I must have, once again, returned within only seconds of 2150 time.
   I decided to ask C.I. some of my troublesome questions.
   "You know, C.I., all of this switching back and forth in time is playing havoc with my life in 1976. My brother thinks I'm heading for some kind of psychotic break. When he presented his arguments I had to admit that he made a strong case.
   "We decided to settle the matter once and for all by devising a test of the reality of 2150. If I can develop some of the Macro powers you described and demonstrate them back in 1976, then Karl, and I, will accept 2150 as reality. If not, then we'll just accept my 'dreams' as a massive escape device which I designed to relieve the tensions created by uninterrupted years of study.
   "Tell me, is it possible for me to develop some of these Macro powers, and if I do, will I still have them when I go back to 1976?"
   C.I. answered with one unqualified word, "Yes."
   "Is it possible for me to stay in 2150 permanently?" I asked next.
   "Yes, if you attain third-level awareness you can stay in 2150 permanently," was her answer.
   "When will that be?"
   "That depends entirely on your desire, and your belief that it is possible."
   "Well, how long will it be before I develop some Macro powers?" I asked.
   C.I.'s response could have been a recording of her previous one, for she said, "That depends entirely on your desire, and your belief that it is possible."
   Thinking that perhaps some mechanical failure had caused this identical response I asked C.I. my name to see if her "tape" was stuck.
   Her response was, "Jon Lake is your 1976 name. Your 2150 name is Jon 8-927 since there have been seven other Jons born in Delta 927."
   "How long will it be before I develop some Macro powers?" I persisted.
   "That depends entirely on your desire, and your belief that it is possible," was still the response.
   While I was disappointed in not being able to find out how long it would take me to develop some of the Macro powers, I was delighted that they could be demonstrated back in 1976, and kind of tickled somewhere inside to hear my 2150 identification.
   The knowledge that I could stay permanently in 2150 if I did attain third-level awareness brought me deep pleasure and relief. Yet there was something unanswered that bothered me. It was my concern for my body back in 1976.
   I asked C.I., "If I reach third level awareness and stay permanently here in 2150, what will happen to my body back in 1976?"
   C.I., who was a woman of few words, said simply, "It will die."
   I was trying to cope with this prospect of dying and living all at the same time when Carol returned with my Macro identity bracelet.
   "Here's your own personal mib, Jon," Carol said with a smile as she slipped it onto my wrist.
   I marveled at its lack of weight for in spite of its multiple functions of timepiece, nutrition dispenser, heart and brain wave monitor, and communications cell (for those with limited telepathic power), it weighed considerably less than my 1976 wristwatch.
   Carol explained that it was waterproof and practically indestructible. When I asked about its power source, she replied that all equipment, from mibs to their largest transportation vehicles and servo-mechanisms, receive their power from what she called a Central Information power broadcasting center.
   I asked her if this was an atomic power center, and she responded with an emphatic denial, explaining that atomic wastes had contributed greatly to the pollution problems of micro man. Then she explained how cosmic radiation was combined with the forces created by the movement of the earth. These were captured, reactivated, reflected and amplified by a crystal, then broadcast, creating a central power source. Power was obtained, through electro-acoustical tuning to this energy source.
   Once this had been accomplished, man was no longer dependent on any other power source and the world's fuel pollution problems were over.
   When I asked more about the crystal and how it worked, Carol said that the tunics we wore employed a very similar crystal structure and process in miniature.
   She went on to tell me how they had learned to recycle and use all waste products so that the planet Earth was the cleanest in recorded history. I remembered the sparkling clarity and sweetness of the air of 2150 and tried to imagine rivers, lakes, and oceans free of refuse and wastes. Carol asked C.I. to show us pictures of the Earth as it existed in 2150.
   I spent the next few minutes looking at an Earth transformed into a garden of Eden. No longer the vast ugly oil slicks on our waters. No longer the dirty yellow air or the deadly unseen gases saturating our atmosphere. No longer the ugly sprawling cities functioning as planetary sewers. All of micro man's ugly slough had been removed.
   "How did we ever clean it all up?" I asked Carol.
   She smiled and said, "It wasn't difficult for Macro man. Just as it was inevitable that micro man would turn his world into an open cesspool, it was also inevitable that Macro man would turn this same world into an earthly paradise."
   "You see," she went on, "the soul of micro man evolves into Macro man. Then the adult cleans up after the child. We must not forget that we were all once children once the very same micro beings who fought and polluted and destroyed everything, including our micro selves.
   "We don't condemn micro man," she said, "for that would be to condemn our own childhood, which would force us to forget it. We don't want to forget our past because we don't want to have to repeat it."
   I admired Carol's strong convictions concerning personal responsibility, but I asked, "Can you really remember your past lives?"
   "Yes, of course," she replied calmly. "I can remember living as a man during your 20th century. Planetary pollution was the major cause of my death in the 1990s."
   I started to say something, but she interrupted me by saying that when I was ready to remember past lives I would be given the help I needed, then I would more fully understand the truth of reincarnation and karma.
   Then she changed the subject by asking me if I was familiar with how the timepiece portion of my mib worked according to metric time.
   I told her that I remembered C.I. explaining the metric time system to me as part of an answer to one of my questions, but I wasn't too sure of it. So we spent a few moments reviewing metric time, with C.I. providing helpful illustrations and charts.
   I won't use this journal to present all the intricacies of the metric time system. However, briefly, the 2150 calendar year began in the spring with the vernal equinox and was divided into ten months of 100 days each. A metric day was approximately 8.6 1976 hours and was divided into ten metric hours which would have approximately 51.8 1976 minutes each [see C.I. Data Excerpts].
   As I was adjusting to 100 minutes in an hour and 100 seconds in a minute, Carol suggested that it was time to meet the other Alpha members in person. We found them sitting in the circle of chairs at our end of the common room.
   The most unnerving thing to me, without the Macro power of telepathy, was the complete silence which greeted us as we joined the circle. The eight minds probed my own, which felt powerless to resist.
   I tried to return their eye contact but found myself repeatedly lowering my eyes self-consciously.
   Alan, our Alphar, took my left hand and placed his right hand firmly on my cheek. His eyes engaged mine silently for a few seconds, then he said, "Welcome to our Alpha, Jon. I'm Alan Six. Forgive us for not speaking sooner. It is our custom to meet first with our eyes and minds, then with our touch, and lastly with our voices, if that seems desirable.
   "Soon you will develop the Macro power of telepathy, which will make it easier for you. You'll still have another important barrier to overcome, though, before you'll be comfortable with our traditional affectionate greeting."
   "I noticed," he continued, "that when I touched you your aura retracted. That, of course, indicates that you're uncomfortable sharing through touch.
   "This may be a reflection of your culture's archaic taboo against men touching one another. However, it could be an indication of your submission to astrological influences. You've read enough astrology to know that most Virgos prefer that people stay their distance. This would be a cripplingly divisive astrological influence. It should be overcome through mental control and practice.
   "Whichever influence is causing this retraction response will be overcome soon, and we'll all help you do it. As we introduce ourselves, keep in mind that we intend no harm, and see if you can give something of yourself to the greeting. Imagine the atoms that make up your being reaching lovingly, joyously out toward this person you're greeting. This establishes electro-molecular paths which will make it easier for us to communicate with you."
   "Let's start with my Alpha mate, which brings me to another point, Jon. You'll find that we, in 2150, present ourselves to you, as opposed to being 'introduced' by a third party. We find it more honest, more clear, and simpler. Perhaps most importantly, it permits people to communicate at will anytime, anywhere, for any reason, without the cumbersome burden of archaic formalities. We just engage eyes, extend our hands, pronounce our names, and communicate our thoughts either telepathically or verbally."
   As he said this, he turned and gestured to the beautiful girl sitting next to him. Her sweet face broke into a smile that was reflected by the sparkle in her eyes.
   She said, "I'm Bonnie. Welcome to our Alpha, Jon." Kneeling beside me, she took my left hand with hers while pressing her right hand warmly against my cheek. She was back in her chair before I had recovered; then she gestured to the handsome dark-eyed young giant sitting beside her.
   As he approached I prepared to stand up, feeling self-conscious about the fact that I had not paid Bonnie this courtesy.
   "Please don't stand, Jon. I'm Adam. You'll find we, in 2150, do not burden our lives with unnecessary social protocol to 'show respect' or to 'honor' one person above another. We each know our own value and presume. mutual respect without formalities to proclaim it."
   Lost for what to say, I played it safe and simply said, "Thank you," using my voice for the first time since I joined the circle. "You're very kind. Looks like I have a lot to learn." Gingerly I returned his gesture of affection.
   Then Adam's Alpha mate, Nancy, was kneeling before me introducing herself while I yielded to the depths of her liquid brown eyes.
   This was followed by meeting a smiling David, who possessed the shoulders of a Hercules, and his Alpha mate, Diana, whose body was the smallest, at six feet one, but in magnificent feminine proportions.
   Then I met the Goliath of our Alpha, six-foot-nine-inch Steve, whose giant body was balanced by a face that radiated a paradox of mischief and patient kindness.
   The last member was vivacious Joyce, with lovely green eyes and dark auburn hair which made me wish they wore their hair longer in 2150.
   Perhaps the most striking physical qualities were their penetrating, all-knowing eyes, their short-hair, their giant statures, which made me at six feet three the shortest male by two inches, and their remarkable physical beauty. Like idealized Greek statues, the women were lovely and the men were handsome. However, unlike the 20th century, where physical beauty was rare and sought after, no one here was self-conscious about his appearance. Carol had told me that they valued the beauty and power of the mind more than that of the body.
   I remembered, however, that C.I. had stated that the body reflected the mind and the mind reflected the spirit. So I knew they would not ignore or take lightly their physical health and beauty.
   I was surprised at how warmly and positively they responded to me and I to them. Overcoming my typical 1970s aversion to touching was coming along nicely, partly, I suspect, due to the fact that I honestly liked them all, and not with the usual superficial type of regard that I generally felt on first meetings back in the 20th century. It was surprising, but I felt a deep personal involvement with all of them. Somehow they radiated a quality of trust and positive regard that made it impossible for me to feel indifferent or defensive. I could relax with them, for they were my friends already-my very best of friends.
   Someone entered the room, and I turned to find an absolutely perfect, beautifully sculptured man. I had thought of Greek statues of women, and here was one of a male, vibrantly alive. His tunic was a glistening white with the faintest suggestion of iridescent colors playfully showing here and there.
   I wanted to burst with joy just looking at him and feeling his incredible strength, his power.
   He took my hand and, placing his huge but gentle hand on my face said, "I feel your thought, Jon. And the joy is returned. It's so good to have you with us at last." He squeezed my hand affectionately. "Happy growing, Jon! We are one!" And was gone before I could respond.
   "What happened? Where did he go? Who is he?" my questions almost tripped over one another.
   "That was Eli, our Ktar. He, like other level tens, travels about on thought. He had to get back to what you think of as the planet Uranus, where he's been very busy helping clear up some problems in their magnetic field. This leaves him very little time to spend here on earth, but he did want very much to greet you and welcome you to 2150."
 

*******
 
   I groped mentally for a frame of reference into which I could fit what I had just heard.
   "You mean that he just thinks himself from planet to planet?"
   "That's right," Joyce answered. "Level tens spend a lot of time away from Earth helping others and growing. Evolved souls from other planets spend much time here helping us, too."
   Alan suggested something that at first made me think I had misunderstood, for it sounded like he had said, "Let's dance!"
   His suggestion was immediately received with shouts of agreement. He took my hand and we ran after the others down the long living room.
   What happened during the next fifteen or twenty minutes was almost unbelievable to me. Suddenly the great room was filled with the most exciting music I had ever heard.
   Imagine strenuous folk dancing like a spirited polka or Offenbach's Gaite Parisienne numbers, or the twirling dervishes combined with the Virginia reel, square dancing, gymnastic tumbling, and a relay race of sprinters at a track meet and you'll have only a part of what they call the Macro dance.
   They leaped, they tumbled, they ran. They joined together, they separated, they joined, they twirled, they cart wheeled, they pyramided, and they helped me join in all of these and more until my heart pounded like a sledgehammer and my breath came in whistling gasps. Then we all threw off our tunics and ran naked out the door of our Alpha and down the halls to the giant swimming pool on our Beta floor.
   We plunged laughing into a pool thirty yards wide and ninety yards long.
   My unspoken, question of why the pool was so large was soon answered as we were joined by the rest of our seventh triad Beta-90 more naked, laughing youths of 18, 19, or 20, who had just finished the Macro dance in their Alphas.
   Again I was struck by their physical beauty, joy, and friendliness.
   There was no shallow end to this pool so we all swam in the ten-foot-deep water either above or below the surface, since everyone seemed to be as at home in the water as a herd of sea lions.
   Only a few minutes passed, however, before Carol told me it was time to leave. We climbed out of the pool and I suddenly realized that we were the only ones out of the water. As I turned to see if the other members of our Beta were going to join us I heard their voices shouting, "Welcome, Jon, welcome!"
   A lean muscular giant with piercing dark eyes vaulted out of the water, took my hand in his, and touched my cheek firmly but gently. Immediately there was total silence. He was at least five inches taller and – seventy pounds heavier than I in spite of being six years my junior. He looked long into my eyes, but this time I did not feel uncomfortable and returned his look with confidence and a powerful feeling of contentment.
   "Welcome, Jon, to our 7th triad student Beta," he said in one of the deepest voices I had ever heard. "My name is Leo and I am the Betar of our floor. I speak for all when I say we are glad you have joined us."
   "Thank you," I replied. Then raising my voice so all could hear, I called, "Thank you all for this wonderful welcome. You can see with your minds how happy I am to be here. No words can express my joy."
   Then the rest of my Alpha was about me. We ran back to our rooms to put on fresh tunics, then met in the dining room for dinner.
   It was a leisurely meal with lots of laughing and talking, and I had an opportunity to appreciate the remarkable intelligence, broad knowledge, and varied interests of my Alpha. I also had the opportunity to try some strange new foods that I found delicious, but I didn't ask what they were made of. Everyone cooperated, seeming to sense that I would enjoy the meal more if I was not forced to consider the content of the food I was eating.
   Perhaps the most satisfying experience was their understanding and reassurances concerning my fears about my sanity back in 1976. I told them of my conversations with Karl and how we had set up our test of the reality of my experiences in 2150. They were unanimous in approving of this kind of test.
   It was Alan who told me that the whole Macro society was aware of my time translation and very interested in
   whether or not I could learn to remain permanently in 2150.
   Then Joyce, of the lovely green eyes and short auburn hair, said that while I was a world celebrity I would experience none of the invasions of privacy that 20th-century celebrities experienced. Since C.I. contained any and all information about me and the experiment of which I was a central part, anyone desiring knowledge concerning me or the experiment could simply ask C.I.
   I told them that I appreciated this and added that I could get rich fast if I could offer this convenience to famous people back in 1976.
   "There are dozens of questions we'd like to ask you, Jon, if you don't mind," Alan requested.
   "Not at all," I replied. "And I'd like to ask all of you some questions, too."
   Steve explained that while there were no taboo questions for them, they realized that in 1976 there were many subjects that people avoided because of their feelings of guilt associated with these subjects.
   I thought about this for a moment and then said, "Feel free to ask me questions on any subject, no matter how uncomfortable it makes me. My reason for this is that I want to become a permanent member of your Macro society, so I'd better learn to be as aware of myself and as clear as you are."
   For the next few minutes I was overwhelmed with questions about my life in the 20th century and my feelings toward my parents, my teachers, my government, and the many churches and religions. They were interested in my feelings about cultural, economic, racial, religious, language differences-all the things that divided micro man.
   I felt no restraints in answering these questions and realized that, as yet, they had not asked anything that made me feel uncomfortable. Before they got around to that, David suggested that I be given a chance to ask them some questions.
   I thanked him and began with general questions concerning their feelings about the Macro society. They were genuinely surprised that I should think their society over regimented and restrictive. Alan seemed to summarize their answers in this area.
   "In the Macro society we have more freedom to experience ourselves and the world about us than ever before in the history of man. As for repressive over regimented societies, we have no policemen, no armed forces, and no government to pass silly laws that people want to break."
   "What do you mean?" I asked.
   "I mean," Alan replied, "that we don't have all those laws that almost everyone broke. Laws against alcoholic drinks, gambling, various sexual acts, and drugs, for examples. You people in 1976 had so many laws which were conflicting and confusing that your people had to hire lawyers to protect them from their own neighbors as well as from their own government. Consider the maze of laws that governed marriage, divorce, and taxes. Of course, these would not have been perpetuated if your lawyers had not had a vested interest in keeping them on the books."
   "But you have to have laws or everything would be chaos." I replied.
   "We have no laws, and we have no lawyers," responded Nancy, "and we don't have chaos."
   "But you do have laws," I insisted. "You must have. How about stealing? What if I steal your belongings?"
   They all laughed, and lovely little Diane, the smallest at six-feet one, said "Go ahead and take anything we have. All material possessions are free and we'll be glad to give you anything you want, so you can see that there is no need to steal."
   "All right," I said, "but how about murder? You must have laws against that."
   I thought I had them with that one, but Bonnie smiled revealing her charming facial imperfection-dimples. She said, "In your 20th century you had no laws against flying to the stars because no one believed it possible." She paused and seemed to overwhelm me with her intense blue eyes as she continued, "We in the 22nd century believe it is impossible for Macro man to murder anyone. There are no laws against it."
   She so distracted me that I momentarily forgot about laws and asked whether the science of 2150 made it possible for people who were not yet level ten to visit other planets.
   She explained that Macro man just used astral projection to explore the universe.
   I was reminded of my astral body traveling to 2150 and then informed that some eighth and ninth levels and all tenth levels were able to use astral travel not only in our physical universe but in other dimensions beyond the fourth one of time. That was more than I could grasp, so I went back to laws.
   "All right," I said, "how about your educational laws. All 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds have to live in a 7th triad student Beta, and until you reach 30 you must live in a student Gamma. How about that?"
   Again they laughed, and darkly handsome Adam said, "But no one forces us to live in a student Gamma. The Macro society is set up so that our needs for companionship, love, learning, exercise, recreation, and everything else are best served this way. We are free to leave any time we want to. But we are not masochists, so we seldom go against our own best interests."
   Now Alan got up from our long dining table and said, "Because the Macro society lives according to the one Macro imperative-loving acceptance-we cooperate and, thus, conflict is impossible. However, we still have micro people living on Micro Island who dedicate their lives to amnesic forgetfulness of the Macro oneness of all. Only in this way of deliberately forgetting our Macro origin can we behave in micro selfish ways that damage others and ourselves.
   "Well, then," I said, "you at least have laws against micro man, since you force them to stay on a prison island."
   "Not at all," Alan replied. "It's only their lack of desire and belief that keeps them there. In fact, we maintain free training on the island for anyone who wants to remember his Macro origins and, thus, return to the Macro society. And we don't interfere with them in any way that would restrict or punish any of their activities on Micro Island. They are free to do anything they like as far as we are concerned. They stay pretty busy just passing laws and enforcing them so that they can survive selfishly and competitively."
   I changed my tactics now and decided to ask a very personal question. "Did you vote for Alan as Alphar and Leo for Betar because you thought they would be the best leaders or because C.I. says they are level six and seven?"
   My Carol had been allowing others to supply questions and answers for me; but now I looked directly at her for her response.
   She glanced at the others and obviously decided she had their permission to speak for them, for she said, "We voted for Alan and Leo because as long as we have known them, since our first and second triads, they have demonstrated superior Macro qualities. C.I. only reflects what we already know. No one can possibly fool anyone else about his level of awareness because our tunic colors make no mistakes. C.I. only formally confirms what our tunics have already told us."
   "I see," I responded, switching ground. "Well, how about jealousy? What if you have sex with someone else's Alpha mate?"
   Once again I heard their amused laughter as giant Steve answered for the group. "Sexual relations must have been one of micro man's most exciting and challenging diversions. The popular 'Eleven p.m. Syndrome'-waiting for the late hour to bring enough drowsiness for soft music and quiet talk to lower a woman's resistance so you can conquer her taboos-isn't needed here in 2150. We have no taboos, no hidden dark areas, and, thus, no desire to use others as possessions for our own selfish micro purposes."
   "Are you saying you wouldn't be jealous if Adam or David began having sex with your Joyce?"
   Steve smiled a kind and patient smile, "First of all, she is by no means my Joyce. She is her own Joyce. Secondly, it would be surprising if Adam or David wanted a sexual relationship with Joyce, since it would be totally out of character with their lifestyles. But I couldn't be jealous because if it made them happy it would make me happy, too. If it did not make them happy, they would have learned a valuable lesson and we would all rejoice in their new growth."
   "But why would you be surprised?" I asked, not understanding this part at all.
   "He'd be surprised," Joyce answered, "because by the 7th triad we are focusing on greater-depth dyadic relationships with our Alpha mates. We've explored polyadic sexual relationships from the first through the 5th triads, and by the 7th triad, we are no longer interested in childish activities. Not because they are bad or wicked, but because we've simply outgrown them."
   "You've outgrown being sexually attracted to each other?" I asked incredulously.
   "Oh, never!" They laughed, then Joyce explained with the analogy that admiring a painting or statue was very different from wanting to take it home, hide it away where no one else could see it, and keep it all to yourself.
   I was thinking that her analogy didn't do much for me when Diane said that they realized I had not had their early triad experiences and so of course, any of the girls in my Alpha or Beta would help me with whatever sexual problems I might have.
   I was stunned. "Are you telling me that any girl on this floor would be willing to have sex with me?"
   "That's right," Carol replied. "If you approach someone in 2150 who doesn't feel it's in the best interest of both of you for you to spend time together, she'll just say, 'Thank you. I care, but I don't feel we're harmonic. However, there is no girl in the whole Gamma or even Delta who would refuse you, so it won't be fear of rejection that will stop you. And, I assure you, neither Lea nor I will be jealous."
   I shook my head, trying to clear its conflicting thoughts and feelings; then I said that with all my sexual frustrations and guilts they would be taking an awful chance with me. They might feel like they were being raped.
   But rape was impossible in the Macro society, Bonnie said, since no one would resist and, since Macro beings could not enjoy the micro use of sex, the Macro society would not satisfy micro man's twisted sexual needs.
   "It's incredible," she observed, "how often during the 20th century blackmail and political scandals could have as their focal point some person's sexual behavior. Your ridiculous social sanctions against homosexuality and extramarital sex did far more to encourage these behavioral patterns than to extinguish them."
   "Do you mean that you people don't object to homosexuality-a man making love with a man, or a woman with a woman?" I asked incredulously.
   "Of course not. You will find, however, that there is a much lower incidence of homosexuality here in 2150 because of a few factors.
   "First, we have eliminated the social situations that often caused homosexuality-like loneliness, unfulfilled needs, pernicious social myths which tell you that if you enjoy the touch of someone of the same sex, then you must be homosexual.
   "Second, when a soul incarnates into the physical body of one sex while still carrying with it emotional, spiritual, or mental selves that are overwhelmingly the opposite sex, you must, naturally, expect expression of the predominant sex. This is neither abnormal nor undesirable. It is true, natural, and logical.
   Third, as we evolve to higher levels of awareness, the masculine and feminine forces within us become more perfectly balanced till we ultimately reach a point where we are once again emotionally, spiritually, and mentally androgynous. Your micro society, in its isolationist ignorance, would call this state of total 'at-one-ness' sick."
   "I don't know much about androgynism, but homosexuality is sick isn't it?" I questioned.
   Steve explained, "In some cases, yes. In some, no. Just like heterosexuality which is, in some cases, what you would call very sick and, in some cases, not. As with all else, it depends totally on the motivation."
   We talked some more about the problems of our micro society and their Macro society's solutions to these problems. Then Alan said he must leave to visit his Personal Evolution tutor. Carol looked at her mib and said it was time for some Macro counseling, popularly called Personal Evolution tutoring.
   We said our goodbyes and everyone left the Alpha together in pursuit of his or her tutor.
   I asked Carol about Personal Evolution tutoring. C.I. had told me that P.E. tutoring was the core of formal education in the Macro society, but it hadn't meant much to me.
   Carol explained that P.E. tutoring was a learning relationship between a tutor, with a larger viewpoint or life perspective, and a student with a smaller perspective who wanted to learn a larger one. While all triads had P.E. tutors beginning with the 7th triad, and continuing through the 10th, students are assigned to the wisest tutors in the Macro society who had a minimum of 7th level awareness. This meant that most of these tutors were beyond the age of 50.
   The eleventh and twelfth floors of the student Gamma building were devoted to comfortable tutoring rooms large enough to accommodate both individual and group work. There were also exercise rooms and an auditorium big enough to hold the entire Gamma.
   We arrived at our Personal Evolution tutoring room after walking through multicolored halls with gleaming white doors.
   Carol reached out to open a door, but before she touched the button the door slid quietly open. We entered a room with a carpet-like floor of deep blue which contrasted with the soft yellow walls and the three large forest green chairs. The room was at least twenty-five feet square and seemed huge with just the three chairs and no other furniture.
   One of the chairs was occupied by the smallest woman I had seen in 2150.
   As we walked toward her she rose from her chair and stretched. out her arms to us. Carol immediately slipped into her arms and they gave each other a silent embrace. Then, as Carol stepped back, I realized that our tutor was even shorter than I had first thought, being no taller than five feet ten at best.
   As she stepped forward and took my hand, I became aware of her age. Her face and body were those of a very healthy and extremely attractive woman in her mid forties, but somehow her pale blue eyes gave me a feeling that she was much older.
   She touched my face and said, "Welcome, Jon, to the Macro society. I'm Rana and I'll answer your question by saying that I have inhabited this body for 125 years."
   As I was trying to adjust to this fact Carol said, "And to answer your question about how the door opened by itself, you were experiencing Rana's' demonstration of psycho kinesis (PK), preceded by telepathy."
   Rana's tunic was the same gleaming white as Eli's. Level tens were so highly evolved that their tunics reflected a perfectly equal balance of all colors, resulting in the illusion of no color at all.
   I felt awed when I remembered there were only 127 level tens in the whole Macro society at present, and I wondered if I was getting some special treatment.
   Rana smiled at me and said, "No... no special treatment. I was Carol's tutor long before you arrived, and since you are Alpha mates you can choose me as your tutor or ask for someone else."
   "I... I guess I'd probably choose you," I stammered.
   "Then let's sit down, and get growing!" she responded cheerfully.
   We sat down in the soft body-contoured chairs and I began wondering what would be expected of me.
   Carol came to my rescue when she asked Rana if she could see into the future and tell us how long it would be before I could become a permanent member of the Macro society.
   Rana looked intently at Carol for a moment and then shifted her intense gaze to me. Finally she said, "I'm having difficulty with the future for Jon because it seems there is a very important decision that he must make which will completely determine the rest of his life. This decision will be his choice between the micro life of 1976 and the Macro life of 2150."
   "I've already made that choice," I insisted. "I've chosen the Macro life of 2150."
   Rana looked at me and I felt her tremendous strength of patience, understanding, and courage. I suddenly realized that from the moment I had entered the room I had been mentally and physically bombarded by the power of her being. As I write this I feel frustrated that I cannot find words to describe her. Perhaps an electrical essence stimulated me in so many ways that I felt overwhelmed. It was Carol who broke the silence.
   "You don't think he's totally really made the choice yet," she said to Rana.
   Rana looked at Carol and then back to me before she said, "I think that Jon has not had time to really take inventory of himself. He feels confused and in great awe and tends to see us as being too impossibly perfect for him to become one of us."
   As I thought about what she had just said I realized that she was right. I did feel that everyone I had met so far in 2150 was impossibly perfect compared to me. In fact, I could see no weaknesses and no imperfections. I nodded my head in sad agreement with Rana.
   "You're right," I said, "I feel like a first-grade kid who finds himself accidentally in seventh grade. The lessons look impossible. My fellow students must look down on me, because, while they're years younger than I am, they're miles ahead of me in their evolution."
   "Oh, Jon, it isn't true," Carol said in an imploring tone. "We all love you and accept you as you are. We don't judge you any more than we judge each other. We're all of equal value and we all have to be first level before we can evolve to second, third, or beyond."
   When I didn't say anything to this, Rana said, "You see, Carol, Jon feels you're patronizing him. He doesn't want to be accepted as a midget among giants. He wants to become a giant, but doesn't think it's possible."
   "How could it be possible? Your educational system provides a totally stimulating, loving, accepting, perfect environment for developing Macro man. I, on the other hand, have spent twenty-seven years learning how to be a micro man."
   I paused, realizing the enormity of what I was saying. I was admitting to myself the impossibility of ever being equal in awareness to my Alpha mate or to any of the other Alpha members, much less Lea.
   Coming from my little fantasy of a permanent translation to 2150, to the harsh reality that it was totally impossible drained, every ounce of energy from me. My body ached with its own weight. My throat hurt. Suddenly my face was wet with tears. I could see Carol and Rana only dimly.
   Rana was saying, "Whenever you really ask for help, and not just pity, you will always receive it."
   But I was tired, very tired.

CHAPTER 7: The Unlimited Self

   The smell of bacon cooking; the click of our pop-up toaster; snow piled against the windowsill. A very ordinary morning. So why did I feel so depressed and miserable?
   Then I remembered, and wished I hadn't.
   For a few moments I struggled desperately to blot from my memory the conversations with Rana. Failing this, I replayed it a couple of times trying to find some flaw in my argument of futility, in my feeling of impossible inadequacy.
   I kept remembering the Macro society's educational system and comparing it with my own early years. I remembered the incredible vitality, joy, beauty, intelligence, superhuman awareness, love, understanding, kindness and patience that had been demonstrated by my Alpha... and I was seven years older than their oldest!
   Lea made a mistake, I thought. She should have created for me the body of a newborn baby. Then I could have started out in the first triad and eighteen years later be on an equal footing with others in the 7th triad. How could she have made such a mistake and still have demonstrated 9th-level awareness? And what was it Rana said just before I lost consciousness? Something about asking for help-that whenever I really wanted help, and not just pity, I would always receive it.
   Obviously Rana, at the highest level of awareness in the Macro society, was trying to tell me that it wasn't impossible.
   Could she and Lea be so wrong? Was I only asking for pity? If there is no hope, pity is all you can ask for! But how could I have hope? They were so perfect-I was imperfect, and never the twain shall meet.
   I began laughing softly to myself at the ridiculous nature of my predicament. I was a perfect example of micro man who sees himself as limited, inadequate, and doomed to ultimate failure.
   I searched my mind for hope, a way out.
   One of the greatest Personal Evolution tutors of all time said, "Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door shall be opened."
   He couldn't have put it much stronger. And, of course, he also said, "If you have faith the size of a mustard seed you can move mountains."
   That's all right for Macro giants, I thought, but how the devil do micro midgets like myself ever get up enough faith to even ask, much less. move mountains?
   But... if I want help-really want help-how could I have selected a better environment than the Macro society? Obviously they knew and understood far more than I did. Maybe they even knew how to help me become a giant, too, so I could live with them on an equal basis... maybe.
   My thoughts were interrupted by Karl insisting that I get up and join him for breakfast.
   I looked at the clock and saw that it was almost eight-thirty. "Hey, Karl!" I called. "How come you're not in class this morning?"
   His fuzzy black hair preceded his face around the doorway-he always wore it natural. "You've really lost track of it all with your shuffling back and forth 174 years every night. It's Sunday here in 1976, and if you try real hard you'll remember that this micro roommate inhabiting this micro society doesn't work on Sunday, he just goofs off all day."
   "Okay, okay," I said. "You'll find me very humble this morning. I've been dreaming about just how micro I really am. I'll be right with you."
   A few minutes later I was sitting across from Karl at the breakfast table telling him about my latest experiences in 2150. Somehow as I talked to Karl my depression lifted and I became hopeful again.
   It was a long breakfast because I seemed to. have an awful lot to say and Karl seemed to have even more than his usual number of questions. He was particularly interested in the other members of my Alpha and in my description of Rana. He kept asking me for more detailed descriptions and I began to realize that after I had used up all my personality superlatives I didn't have much more to say about them.
   Finally Karl said, "You know, Jon, it seems to me that you're describing gods and goddesses, and not the ancient Greek or Roman variety, either, because they all had their share of weaknesses or imperfections. Not so with these you– describe. Tell me, are these people really that perfect, or are you just demonstrating your lack of Macro awareness?"
   "You're right, Karl," I admitted. "That's my problem. They appear so perfect, so superhuman that I can't see how I could ever be like them. And I can't imagine how I could be happy for very long being a midget among giants for the rest of my life, either.
   "In other words, Jon, you've found the snake in your garden of Eden... and it's you!"
   "Well," I said reluctantly, "I hadn't thought of it quite that way, but I guess you're right. It was the poison of my own self-doubt that made me want to run away from 2150 and its impossible challenges."
   "Are you saying that you're ready to give up your dream world?" Karl asked.
   I realized that I wanted to avoid the question. I didn't want to have to answer it. I said, "I don't know how to answer you right now. All I really want to do is get drunk and forget the whole problem."
   "You what!" Karl's face was lined with concern. "Is it that bad, Jon?"
   Karl knew that I had only been drunk once in my life, back in Vietnam. "No, not really, Karl. Nothing is that bad except living in a world where killing women, old folks, and children is a patriotic duty. No, I'm not going to get drunk. I'm going to write it all down. Maybe that will help clear my mind. Then I'm going to do a lot of thinking."
   For the rest of the day Karl left me to myself while I wrote in my journal and did a lot of very hard thinking.
   By late evening I had a much better realization of the strength of my micro self, which sounded like a drum beating out the refrain, "I can't, I can't, I can't."
   These old habitual limiting thought patterns were so easy to disguise, to ignore, or to rationalize away. And yet, in moments of crisis, micro man (myself) must reap the consequences of his limiting beliefs-failure.
   Strangely, however, my long struggle to confront myself honestly left me feeling hopeful. Again I was joyfully looking forward to returning to the Macro society of the future. I had again discovered that if I was honest with myself, and refused to run away from a difficult self-confrontation, I would sooner or later see a balanced picture in which there was both light and dark. It's not easy to see both sides of a coin from a micro, one-sided view.
   Just before I went to bed, Karl finished reading my journal and, without saying a word, walked over to me. Tears glazed his eyes, which shocked me, knowing how Karl hated sentimental weakness, which included masculine tears. Then, obviously too caught up with feeling to speak, he took my left hand with his, hesitated a moment, then put his right hand gently on my face.
   Before I could collect myself, Karl was noisily running the water in the bathroom with a closed door between us. I thought again how difficult it was-in our micro society to deal openly and honestly with our thoughts and emotions. We were taught to be ashamed of such large portions of our minds that we devoted whole lifetimes to denying them, thus depriving ourselves of some of the greatest joys available to man.
   Later, as I was drifting off to sleep, I heard Karl call across our darkened room to me. "Good luck," he said. Then after a pause, "I believe in you, Jon."
   I murmured my thanks and decided that the hardest thing for micro man to do was to believe in himself. But then, how can anyone believe in himself when there is so much of himself that he condemns?
   My last thoughts before dropping off to sleep involved a conclusion that before I could ask for help, I had to believe that success was possible. That meant I had to accept and believe in myself as unlimited except by my own thoughts.

CHAPTER 8: Macro Contact

   I awakened again in 2150 with the wetness of tears still on my face and the sound of Rana's voice saying, "He's returning."
   Opening my eyes I surprised a look of worry and concern on Carol's face. But, turning my gaze to Rana, I found again the wondrously serene and confident expression that was oddly at variance with the almost electrical excitement or joy that seemed to radiate from her. Now her eyes became even more brilliant as she smiled at me.
   "There, you see," she said, "you've already discovered that at least your Alpha mate isn't perfect. She's demonstrating concern and worry, which are always a reflection of something less than total Macro awareness."
   I reached over and touched Carol's face as Rana continued, "You're learning some of our customs very quickly. It won't be long now before you'll be seeing occasional imperfections in the rest of your Alpha members."
   "Will I ever be able to see them in you?" I asked.
   She laughed and said, "You won't see me looking worried or becoming upset over any of the problems you're struggling with right now. However, until I am totally macrocosmically aware, there will always be greater lessons for me to learn."
   "You mean," I said, "that there are problems that bother even you?"
   "That which is a problem to the child with one year is no longer a problem when that child has had three years," she answered. "Yet the three-year level has its own problems, most of which are not even perceived by the child with just one year. And so it goes, with level seven problems not apparent to a level three. Be assured, though, that every level has its challenges. Seen as problems, they become increasingly more complex, more difficult. Seen as elected opportunities for growth, they are a joy to solve, to deal with effectively, to grow from in this game of life."
   "But it eventually all ends when one attains total Macro awareness?" I asked.
   She laughed. "Total Macro awareness is the experience of all problems, all sorrows, all frustrations, all pain, all ignorance, all ugliness, all disease, and all other negativities in all times and in all places. Now, that's hell to anyone who isn't completely Macro. But from a state of absolute Macro awareness it's completely balanced by all the positive qualities that ever were or ever will be, and that's perfection, which is the opposite of a frustrating, dull, and fruitless micro existence."
   "All right," I said, "I'll take your word for it. How can I, at my very limited micro level, learn to grow as fast as possible?"
   "We learn by doing, by taking risks, by failing, and, only then, by succeeding," she said. "We grow from our mistakes and from our failures. If we cannot see that failure is the essential other half of success, then we try to avoid failure and, in so doing, we avoid success."
   "Then I guess I should get as deeply involved with everyone as I possibly can, which means taking lots of risks and having lots of failures." I shuddered. "Sounds pretty frightening."
   "There is really only one fear," she said, "and that is the fear of failure, which is the same as feeling inadequate to do whatever you want to do."
   "But you must look to your unlimited self for help," Carol said. "Then you can see the larger perspective in which failure and success are one."
   Considering this, I responded thoughtfully, "To turn to my unlimited self, by 1976 definitions, would be to turn to God. That would mean prayer, which I never could really get into."
   "It's no wonder, Jon. Prayer, as consciously used in your time, was actually an intense pleading for something that the person actually felt he didn't deserve to have, or was afraid he would not get. Since our predominant thoughts materialize to become our reality, people usually don't get what they consciously pray for because their predominant thought is that they don't and won't have it!
   "From another point of view, however, every thought we think is a prayer, since, once thought, it is a permanent part of the universe and addresses the macrocosmic whole. All prayer," Rana continued, "indeed, all thought, expresses desire for something.
   "Call it prayer or call it thought. It's all the same, and it's the tool with which we create all that we experience.
   "Since your mind is an indivisible part of all mind, your desires are all-powerful. You will receive whatever you desire and 'believe' you will receive. However, if you desire to run away from the light, from Macro awareness, into the darkness of amnesia, which is micro awareness, then you will receive that request also. So you see, Jon, prayer-as seen from a broader perspective works. Prayers are constantly and unfailingly answered. We' just don't always like the answers!"
   "In other words," I said, "since our minds are all powerful, our problem is to learn how to use them positively rather than negatively."
   "Not quite, Jon," Rana answered. "You can't have positive without negative any more than you can have up without down, or success without failure. Thus, the problem is to learn to use our minds with perfect balance – that is, with total acceptance of everything – both success and failure, knowing that every failure leads to success."
   "And how do you do that?" I asked.
   "Every lesson to be learned," Rana explained, "requires mistakes or failures. This varies with each person in terms of his past learning in all his incarnations and excarnations and multidimensional experiences."
   Seeing my puzzled expression, she added, "This is because no experience is ever forgotten by the soul mind or subconscious mind. It is all cumulative. Thus, if for one child-it takes 10,000 failures to learn to walk, the sooner he makes those failures the sooner he learns to walk. Since micro man does not understand this cumulative effect, he becomes easily discouraged and often thinks he is as far, or even further, from solving the problem after 9,999 failures as he was at the end of ten."
   "But, of course, this is not true," Carol injected, "because at the end of 9,999 failures he has only one more to go to have complete insight and success."
   "But I thought you said that every failure is a success?" I queried. "Yet you mention the 9,999 failures and not the 9,999 successes. How come?"
   "Because," replied Rana, "micro man is not worried by successes, only by failures. Since he is not aware of the cumulative effect, he doesn't realize that every failure is a necessary and successful step toward complete insight. In other words, each failure is a small insight success bringing one that much closer to total insight success."
   "Hmm, I'll think about that," I said. "But how do I specifically go about learning or developing my Macro powers?"
   Rana answered, "You don't start out to develop Macro powers-you start out to develop Macro awareness. The powers develop as the awareness increases."
   "However," Carol added; "you need to remember that there are two necessary factors in all learning: sufficient desire and sufficient belief."
   "One example," Rana said, "is when a person desires to learn to swim but does not believe he can learn without drowning. He, obviously, will not learn to swim as he lacks the necessary belief."
   "Or the opposite," Carol continued, "when he believes he could successfully learn to swim but would rather play tennis. Now he lacks the necessary desire, and, again, he will not learn to swim."
   "Thus," Rana added, "with both sufficient desire and sufficient belief, anything is possible."
   "That seems simple enough," I said.
   They both laughed, and Rana said, "It is simple, Jon, because you grew-you expanded your perspective-took a broader point of view. The universe and its functions are all very basic and incredibly simple. It's man's limited perspective that makes them look complicated. BUT! It's in the doing that one learns, not just in the talking about it.
   "So why don't you go back to your Alpha and desire growth, and accept all that you experience as an opportunity chosen to offer that growth." She smiled gently as she added, "When one has already successfully transcended 174 years and acquired a new body, it should be difficult indeed to doubt anything-least of all future successes!"
   During the next few minutes before we left, Carol and Rana talked of incomprehensible things while my mind was feverishly occupied with trying to understand all that Rana had said.
   Carol touched my shoulder, and we all walked to the door in silence. As we reached the threshold I took Rana's hand and touched her face gently in appreciation. Then we left with the memory of Rana's electric eyes stirring something very deep within my mind.
   As we returned to our Alpha I asked Carol why Rana chose to appear middle-aged since, I assumed, she had the mind power to mold her body into any form. Carol replied that when she had asked Rana the same question, the answer she had received was but one word variety.
   Back in our Alpha room Carol explained that while the evening hours were devoted to Macro tutoring, the last hour before sleep was devoted to Macro contact. She explained this as a letting go of all micro identity and experiencing the awareness of total macrocosmic oneness.
   After a relaxing bath we lay naked on our bed, and Carol asked C.I. to provide Macro contact stimuli. The video screen was immediately filled with ever-expanding and evolving geometric patterns. The room was filled with soothing resonant sounds that seemed to cause my whole mind and body to resonate in similarly evolving and enlarging patterns.
   At first I was leery and tried to resist the strange sensations caused by the incredible visual and audible stimuli. But Carol kept murmuring, "Desire and believe... experience and accept... let go, and let's grow!" Finally I gave up all resistance and found myself flowing on a gentle river of multiple sensations until I seemed to enter an infinite ocean of unspeakable unity, oneness, and balance accompanied by the most soul-satisfying feeling of harmony imaginable.
   When I returned to what I thought was my normal limited awareness, I heard Carol saying that it was morning and that I had experienced my first Macro contact. I turned to look at her beautiful naked form beside me and realized that her eyes were closed and that she was lying quietly as if still asleep.
   I wondered if she had really spoken and suddenly, without moving her lips, I heard her voice saying, "Good morning, Jon. You're experiencing your new Macro power of telepathy."
   "My God!" I said aloud. "I must be dreaming."
   A merry peal of laughter came from a Carol who was obviously very much awake and suddenly rolling happily about in my arms.
   "You're not dreaming," she said with her lips this time pressed against mine. "You're just beginning to experience your Macro powers. Now push the top button so we can experience the morning light."
   I started to rise, but she refused to release me saying, "Do it with your mind, Jon, not your body."
   "How?" I wondered.
   The answer came, "Reach out with an imaginary finger and touch the button."
   I did this and the light came pouring in on us.
   "There, you see," Carol glowed, "your first demonstration of psycho kinesis. Now, push it again."
   I did and once again the room was in darkness.
   "It's true!" I said, pushing the button again to let the morning light back in. "I can do it! But how?"
   "Did you ever experience Macro contact before?" Carol asked rhetorically, then added, "Well, that's what happened. You'll never be so limited again."
   "You mean that because I was able to let go of my micro identity last night I can now experience the beginning of Macro power?"
   "Yes," Carol replied. "While everyone experiences Macro contact, the micro person, suffering from self imposed isolation from the rest of the macrocosm, does not consciously remember these experiences and, thus, cannot profit much from them. You have chosen to remember your oneness and, thus, your Macro contact. To the extent that you can remember your contact with your Macro origin you will have Macro awareness and all the powers that go with it."
   "I feel like a giant!" I said and covered her with kisses that soon led to a complete joining of our bodies. Then I heard Carol's voice ask C.I. to again provide our individual soul notes. The same notes that had resonated through our room last night as we prepared for our Macro contact once again filled our room.
   "What was that you asked for? Our individual soul notes?" I inquired as they faded away at the sound of my voice.
   "Yes," she responded. "Each soul has a unique vibration. Yours and Lea's are exactly the same. Mine is very similar to yours. That's one of the reasons I was selected to be your first Alpha mate. C.I. knows each person's soul note, or vibration, and, by playing both of ours together, can help us attain complete immersion in each other and our oneness with all that is, was, or ever will be."
   "Is that the same as Macro contact?"
   "No," was her answer. "Macro contact is achieved through total merging of minds, not just bodies.
   "Sex, used with a Macro motive, can help us attain Macro immersion, merging with each other, or Macro contact, merging with the macrocosm. Use it with a micro motive and you have all the micro divisions and misery that micro sex can cause."
   "Then sex is neither micro nor Macro?" I asked.
   "It depends on your motive," Carol answered. "Sex is a part of the natural rhythm of the macrocosm like everything else. It has many very positive functions for people of all ages. Used to relax, to relieve tension, to express love, or just for fun, it enriches life. Used to control, coerce, abuse, or used against the wishes of either participant, it results in negative vibrations which can be extremely hard to balance.
   "Whether sex, like any other thought or act, is more Macro than micro is determined by one's motivation in that time and space."
   Then Carol asked C.I. to supply Macro stimuli. Our room was once again filled with exciting resonances. This time one glorious note was repeated over and over in an evolving pattern until my body and mind vibrated as one in exquisite joy that kept mounting in intensity until again I experienced myself as a mighty river. This time, however, I experienced the river as being two great rivers that had united to make one. While we did not join the infinite ocean I find that I still have great difficulty selecting words to describe this exhilarating experience.
   When our rivers crested into one huge, tumultuous wave I held her tightly and moaned ecstatically as Carol cried out. The sound of our soul notes gently receded in volume and intensity until the room was at last silent once more.
   As we lay peacefully joined together, I began to realize that I would never again desire less than a Macro sexual union. I heard Carol say in my mind that I would probably now limit myself to only those whose soul vibration was almost or totally identical to mine. All other unions would be hollow imitations of the real thing.
   "But how many females would that include?" I asked.
   "Out of all people in the Macro society, approximately a thousand could achieve Macro contact with you.
   "Here in our Delta, which has 5,000 females, there is Lea, one of your twin souls whose vibrations are identical to your own, myself, seven other females, and two males whose soul notes are similar enough to attain Macro contact with you."
   "Two men?" My mind boggled at the prospect of what I would/should do in this 2150 culture if I met a man who made me feel the way Carol and Lea do.
   "Of course, Jon. You know that we can incarnate as either male or female. That doesn't change our soul vibration.
   "C.I. carefully determines its Alpha mate recommendations on the basis of soul note similarity. The final decision is then left to the parties involved.
   "You'll know a soul mate or a twin soul by the harmonious vibrations. However, it is only with your twin souls that you will experience perfect harmonic balance at all times."
   "Don't you have a twin soul here?" I queried.
   Carol smiled and said, "Don't worry. You aren't depriving me of a twin soul. In fact, it's extremely rare that twin souls incarnate at the same time and place. They usually decide that they can learn faster in this dimension when they are separate. It tends to spur them on to greater learning efforts so they can be reunited sooner."
   I wondered why Lea, my own twin soul, had brought me to her own time and whether, perhaps, what Carol had said didn't apply to us.
   "Of course it applies to you," she responded. "You came together because your learning could be accelerated faster this way than any other way. You've met her and know that you cannot become her Alpha mate until you finish your Macro society education. To completely sever your mind-body connection with 1976 you must demonstrate third-level awareness, and you must do this within three months of your 1976 time."
   "Three months! That's impossible!"
   "We hope not," Carol responded. "But you'll have to work very hard, and it must be completed within the three-month time period."
   "Why?" I demanded. "And why didn't someone tell me this before?"
   "The answer to your second question," Carol replied, "is that you would have thought it completely impossible before your first Macro contact. The answer to why only three months is that it takes great energy on Lea's part to not only bring you here but to keep you here. Last night was the first rest she has gotten during your stay here. As long as you were in Macro contact you were free of all time-space restrictions, and, therefore, needed no help in maintaining your time-space translation."
   "You mean that if I can ever demonstrate third-level awareness, then I can help her keep me here?"
   "That's right, and C.I. has calculated that Lea can only transcend the time-space barriers without your help for three months."
   "My God! What an assignment. What if I can't make third level in three months, what happens then?" I asked. "You return to your time period for the rest of your present incarnation. Lea will have used up all her present incarnation's life energy possible without becoming discarnate-dead-as would be the case if she tried to continue transcending time-space barriers by herself, or if she tried to re-establish contact later."
   "But couldn't some of the other level nines, or even tens, help her?" I asked.
   "They are helping her," Carol replied. "Every level nine and ten who is incarnate on this planet or any of our neighboring planets is helping-and quite a few discarnates too. However, no one but a twin soul can supply the final link energy, and as long as you are incarnate, this is limited. You've got three months in which to demonstrate third-level awareness-that's all."
   "I'm glad I didn't find out about this sooner," I said. "While my initial response was outrage at the impossibility of the task before me, I realize that after what happened this morning, nothing is impossible."
   "Now you know why we brought you here," Carol said. "We feel that nothing is impossible."
   She glanced at her mib and said that we had fifteen minutes, translating from metric time, before joining the rest of the Alpha for breakfast.
   We bathed and dressed and were in our Alpha dining room just as the rest of our Alpha was beginning to eat. They looked up as we entered and without speaking said, "Welcome, Jon, to the Macro powers."
   As we ate breakfast I asked Carol how the others had known about my Macro powers demonstration. She suggested that I ask them, but before I could voice this question, I found eight pairs of eyes looking at me and a message ringing in my mind: "We are all in telepathic contact, and now you've really joined us."
   Then they reassured me that they would do all in their power in helping prepare me to demonstrate level-three awareness within three months. We talked about ways in which my awareness growth could be accelerated by increasing the number and frequency of learning experiences. This led to a discussion of how the normal 7th-triad experiences could be broadened to include more opportunities for experiencing Macro contacts. Alan explained some of the requirements for transcending the micro world.
   He began by saying that since the two factors in all learning, desire and belief, are developed by cumulative failure-success experiences, obviously the more of these I could have, the faster I would learn. However, the problem with Macro contact for beginning students was that the experience was so pleasant that it tended to make them want to hold onto it in order to escape unpleasant micro experiences. This would immediately end the upper level contacts, because they are made possible through joyous pursuit of learning experiences and their consequences, not retreat from them. They all admitted their own Macro contacts had been extremely limited, since this ultimate experience requires total acceptance of everything which, obviously, not only includes all the positive experiences but all the negative ones as well.
   At this point Carol said that our recent Macro contact was only the fifth time in her life that she had attained this level, although she had attempted it every day since she first entered the 2nd triad at the age of three. Alan said that while he had demonstrated 6th-level awareness and attained Macro contact more times than anyone else in our Alpha, this was only ten times.
   The problem was desire and not belief. Since they had all experienced Macro contact at least once, they no longer doubted it was possible. However, their desire tended to be limited and selective rather than the necessary all-accepting. Paradoxically, then, the more often they attained Macro contact, the more difficult the next contact became. The less one's awareness the more one tends to grab, to cling, to attempt the impossible feat of holding on to-holding constant-a part of the macrocosm. It sometimes takes a tremendous number of little failures to lead to one great success.
   "Well, then," I said, "if it takes a thousand failure successes to reach level three awareness and I currently have only five hundred, the solution is to experience five hundred more failure-successes-and fast."
   "Exactly," she said, "but it's a thousand degrees of failure-success which means that one huge failure-success may equal a hundred small ones."
   "That gives me a fighting chance. I don't think I'd have time for five hundred little failures in three months. But, I can keep hoping until the very end for, one monumental failure that will completely fill my quota."
   They laughed and told me that a sense of humor was always a sign of expanded awareness. Then Alan said that they usually spent their mornings at the C.I. center or in their rooms using C.I. as a learning machine. The afternoons were spent playing learning games with the other triads, and the evenings were spent with their Personal Evolution tutors.
   This daily schedule, I learned, was not inflexible but broadly applied to all triad levels. The older triads, however, particularly the eighth, ninth, and tenth, spent more time with the younger triads-especially the first and second. They felt the early years were crucial ones, for they contained the greatest number of critical learning experiences or developmental lessons.
   Steve used the analogy that the taller the building the stronger its foundation has to be. Thus, once the foundation is laid, the maximum limits for a building's size are established by the strength of its foundation.
   Joyce continued, pointing out that micro souls chose micro families to be born into and receive early micro learning experiences which severely limit the rest of their life's learning. Thus, there is literally no hope for micro man from a micro view. Only the Macro view, which includes joyous acceptance of total responsibility for all that exists within our lives, offers ultimate success and hope.
   After breakfast Carol suggested that we walk to the C.I. center, where we could obtain separate rooms in order to work on separate problems. As we left our Gamma I noticed that again the weather was beautiful and remembered that C.I. had told me that it was controlled. I began wondering when it rained or snowed and realized that I knew very little about our geographic location or, for that matter, the new world geography of 2150. There were just so many questions to ask and so many things to learn. I envied Carol having grown up in the Macro society and having used C.I. for so many years.
   We arrived at the C.I. center, and I went again to the room overlooking the lake while Carol chose an adjoining room. For the next four hours I forgot everything else in my enthusiastic questioning of C.I. over as broad an area as possible. I began with geography and discovered that one of the reasons the world maps of 2150 had changed so greatly was the shifting of the poles.
   According to C.I., micro man's interference in the ecological and geological balances of the world had caused such tremendous chain reaction pressure build-ups that great land masses had sunk into the oceans and vast areas previously below water had risen. As a consequence the north and south poles had shifted, producing vast climatic changes. Delta 927, in which I was living, was located in what was formerly northern Canada and the climate was semi-tropical although controlled temperature limits were between sixty degrees Fahrenheit at night and a maximum of eighty during the day.
   Lea had been right when she said I would not recognize a world map of 2150. Every continent was drastically changed and there were two new continents, or subcontinents, as large as Australia, in the North Atlantic and South Pacific oceans. Since all of these great Earth changes had taken place by the early part of the 21st century, I could understand how the earth's population had shrunk so drastically to only a little over three hundred million by 2150.
   As a social psychologist, however, the bulk of my questions were in the social areas. I was fascinated that there were no businesses as I knew them in 1976. Since the Macro society valued expanded mental awareness so highly, the vast array of material artifacts, such as several hundred different brands of soap, toilet paper, toothpaste, or pet foods, were nonexistent. (Concerning the latter, I'll digress just enough to mention that there were no pets, since Macro man lives in harmony with all animals and, thus, keeps none of them in domestic bondage for food, protection, or friendship.) Without a wastefully polluting competitive economy there was no need for salesmen or advertisements. And since all factories were ran by servo-mechanisms, there were no worker-manager divisions, and, thus, no labor unions.
   Because there were no laws requiring litigation, there were no lawyers or courts of law. Because there were no illnesses that could not be controlled by Macro mind powers, there were no doctors and no hospitals. Because there was universal agreement in the Macro society on the values of love and cooperation, there were no vast governmental bureaucracies.
   The thought of no government was incomprehensible until I realized that the governmental functions of a micro society would obviously not be needed in the Macro society. There were no police or armed forces because there were no micro divisions or inequities. There was no money or private property because all physical needs were provided free. There were no taxes because everyone owned everything and contributed everything to fulfill the means. No need for welfare agencies to take care of the victims of micro competition or indifference. No need for legislatures and legislators with their endless micro biases and acrimonious debates. No need for lobbies to protect the vested interests of big business and labor. No need for politicians, the C.I.A., or the F.B.I. No need for micro bureaucracies at all!
   Then I thought of a world of competing religions and my own U.S.A. of 1976, professing Christianity but practicing micro separation. I remembered the tens of thousands of church buildings constructed at immense cost with their tens of thousands of church officials attempting to help micro man attain salvation and social acceptability through membership in some narrow religious sect. The world of 2150 had no churches and no priests, ministers, or rabbis.
   Could there really be a time when there would be no more religious fanatics and separatists? No groups of people claiming to be the "chosen" people of God? It seems that micro divisions had low survival value particularly in religions, which were so important to man's beliefs or philosophy of life. Only an all-accepting philosophy of macrocosmic oneness had long-term survival value.
   I knew Karl would be fascinated by C.I.'s description of the end of racial differences. By 2150 drastic physical changes in the earth had caused drastic weather changes which caused drastic economic changes, which caused drastic social and spiritual changes. The final result was an almost total blending of the races with the added benefit of greater mental and physical -health, strength, and beauty. There were no longer any racial divisions because there were no extreme differences in any physical characteristics, including skin color. Macro man was a combination of the best genetic qualities of all the races, which left only one race-Macro man.
   I was not really surprised that a modified type of English was the only universal language of the Macro society, since even in 1976 English was spoken as either a first or second language among a majority of formally educated people throughout the world. The Macro society had its origins in predominantly English-speaking North America in the latter part of the 20th century. Then, of course, a majority of the people surviving the global catastrophes of the late 20th and early 21st centuries spoke at least some English, if only as a second language.
   There are two reasons why the Macro society movement succeeded: It attracted highly evolved souls who had Macro potential; and micro man, who refused to cooperate, became almost extinct.
   While the early Macro society did not refuse membership to persons who used tobacco or alcohol or even drugs, no one who consciously attained even one Macro contact and, thus, at least some Macro awareness, ever desired them again. Thus, only level ones, who had never experienced Macro contact, ever felt the need of chemical stimulants or depressants. The goal was to free yourself from all physical dependencies. However, no one above level two in the Macro society ever condemned any micro dependency or attempted to convert others to accepting a Macro philosophy. They were interested in quality of membership, not quantity.
   I thought of all the utopian societies that had been envisioned and how they had all failed and wondered again at the amazing success of the Macro society. It was here that C.I. had reminded me that there is a time for everything-even Macro man. According to the Macro society, the souls of men are evolving back to total Macro awareness. At the micro level of evolution a society based on love and cooperation is impossible. But finally enough souls evolved to Macro potential so that the Macro society was possible. For those souls still at the micro level of evolution there were other Earth-type planets in the physical universe as well as other dimensions in a nonphysical universe.
   The great problems for Macro man were no longer in the physical universe, but existed in the various dimensions of the nonphysical universe. While C.I. gave me a great deal of information on these other dimensions, I found most of it beyond my comprehension, so I went on to questions about my own personal plight.
   I decided to ask C.I. how to attain level three in three months, but discovered that I had finally found an area in which C.I. did not know the answer.
   It was discouraging to find that no one had ever expanded their awareness from level one to level three in only three months. However, C.I. insisted that this did not mean it was impossible, for there was an entirely new factor present which had never occurred before. This new factor was what C.I. called twin-soul time-space translation.
   According to C.I. the very fact that they had succeeded in bringing my astral body to 2150 and having it incarnated in a specially created physical body indicated my Macro potential. In other words, it could not have happened if I had not been sufficiently evolved along the m-M (microcosmic-Macrocosmic) evolutionary continuum.
   Furthermore, since Lea was my twin soul and had demonstrated level-nine awareness, it was thought highly probable that I could soon develop at least level-three awareness. The problem was the length of time it might take me. C.I. could find no way to extend my three-month time limit. However, since I was linked to Lea and she was linked to the mind powers of all other level nines and tens, this was calculated as a tremendous advantage for intensifying both my desire and my belief in Macro contact.
   Then there was the fact that I had attained my first Macro contact so swiftly. Because of this, C.I. indicated that the probability of swift level-three attainment was greatly increased and suggested that I make another effort at Macro contact as soon as possible. I thought that over for a while and then asked if C.I. was suggesting that I make the attempt immediately. The answer was affirmative. It was at this point that Carol entered.
   I didn't have to tell Carol about C.I.'s suggestion since she had telepathically picked up my thought and come to help me.
   She sat down beside me and immediately indicated her willingness to join me in my attempt at Macro contact. I asked C.I. to provide the Macro stimulation and again began experiencing the hypnotic line and color patterns on the video screen along with the incredibly exciting, yet (paradoxically) relaxing tones that seemed to penetrate and expand every cell of my body, every level of my mind.
   I soon found myself flowing as a mighty river with the powerful feeling of peace, joy, and contentment.
   Suddenly the river lost power, washed back on itself, and became murky. The tones grew ever more distant as the backwash seemed to carry me away from them. I broke out in the cold sweat of fear, frantically grabbing for the tones. The more anxious I became, the faster they disappeared.
   Somewhere from the back of my mind came an ancient Confucian definition of love-something about two fish in a pond. The pond went dry. Through joining together the two fish made it over the vast desert to another pond. Arriving there, they let go of each other and went their separate ways. It was said that their ability to let go was love.
   Why had I thought of that? What did it have to do with my present state? Was the letting go a kind of acceptance of what is, as perfect-that fine level-ten trait? Was my own anxiety for the experience driving it away?
   I was losing ground so fast that I had little left to lose, so I bet all my chips on acceptance, commanding my body, mind, and emotions to stop struggling to relax, and to appreciate the absolute perfection of all that is, all that was, and all that ever will be.
   Some cubbyhole of my mind was amused at the paradox and laughed at me for having the audacity to think I could keep anything by frantically hanging on. Laughter relaxed me. I stopped resisting the backwash and began to appreciate its power and beauty.
   It whirled me around then, lifting me to the top of its crest, hurled me forward. The river was clear, sparkling, and powerful.
   Was it-had it always been that way? Was my mind playing tricks on me? Was its change actually only within my own mind, a product of my own anxiety?
   More laughter overflowed the corners of my mind. I had always loved philosophic puzzles, and this one was a beaut!
   Yielding myself totally to the emental (a 2150 contraction of emotional and mental) movement, I flowed joyously on and on through what seemed an endless series of dimensions. Finally I reached the infinite ocean and experienced the unspeakable joy of Macro contact.
   When at last I opened my eyes again, Carol was smiling radiantly.
   "You attained Macro contact a second time, Jon, in less than a day," she beamed.
   "But I have a feeling," I said, "that I almost didn't make it." Then I realized that Carol had not succeeded. I was deeply touched by her happiness for me.
   "Things happen in their own time, Jon. We have to learn to understand and accept that. You can't push the river. Come on, I'm starved!"
   Extracting two tiny tablets from her mib, she handed one to-me.
   "What's this?" I inquired.
   "That's our lunch!"