"No," she replied. "Whether I tell you or not, there is only one course of action that you will take at this time."
"Then I can't understand why you won't tell me what it is if it can't affect my future actions," I said puzzled and bewildered.
"Because," she answered, "if I tell you, it will affect your future thoughts, and while this won't change your actions with Elgon it would change your actions later on."
"I don't understand, Rana," I said. "What do you mean?"
"I'm talking about the problem of good and evil," she replied, "which will be your final test for third-level awareness. You'll remember that these concepts, like everything else, depend on the size of your perspective.
"The measure of a mind's evolution is its acceptance of the unacceptable. What may be unacceptable at the micro level is always acceptable at the Macro level."
"Yes," I concurred, "and I remember that everything is perfect from a totally Macro view. But what's that got to do with the solution to my problem?"
She continued her explanation, "I'm saying that ou haven't become aware of your only satisfying solution to Elgon's threat is because you've been using a micro view in which it appears unacceptable and even bad or evil."
"Then you're saying that if you told me what it was I would use it, but for the wrong reasons-because you told me and not because I discovered and accepted it myself, right?"
"That's exactly right, Jon," she replied, "and while this would not affect the distant future it would affect your next ten thousand years and lengthen the time before you and Lea will become one again at the physical and astral levels:"
"I hate to say this, Rana, but thank you for not telling me," I said reluctantly. "I'll have to go back to Elgon's palace and see how long it takes me to discover this solution which you say is already in my mind-the one course of action that I can take."
As I prepared to leave, Rana cautioned me to be careful not to see Lea before returning to Micro Island. I asked why.
"Because," Rana explained, "as your twin soul she will not, at this time, be able to hide from you the solution you're seeking, and the effect will be the same as if you had gotten the information from me."
I thanked her once again and agreed to follow her advice. Then I returned to Elgon's palace without attempting contact with Lea.
I realized that in spite of the constant video picture of Carol in her empty room I didn't know where that room was. I would have to explore the palace to find it. Then I made my big mistake.
I forgot that Elgon had stationed a number of his telepaths outside my room and when I came walking through the walls out into the hallway they saw me immediately and tried to stop me. I visualized myself in the huge dining room and disappeared from their view, but they had already notified the rest of their mind net of my escape into my astral body.
Finding myself suddenly in the dining hall I began running with literally the speed of thought, from room to room hunting for stairs leading down into the lower levels of the palace, because I felt that's where I would find Carol. By the time I located the right stairs and had descended to the level where I felt Carol was being held, Elgon's telepaths had located me.
Once again I felt the increasing power of the crushing vise on my mind, but this time I sought to deal with it by not resisting. I tried to respond to it with Macro loving acceptance. At the same time I continued my search for Carol. The underground cellars of Elgon's palace seemed a veritable labyrinth of rooms, but at last I passed through the right door and found myself in the right place with Carol lying as if dead at the center of the room. As I started toward her, I heard deep booming laughter as Elgon emerged from the shadows at my side.
Almost instantly the pressure of the vise upon my mind multiplied and I realized that Elgon was now personally directing the Macro powers of his thousand-member mind net with crushing force upon me. I have no doubt that Rana or even Lea could have handled their telepathic onslaught, but my level-two powers were no match for this mind net.
The pressure quickly overwhelmed me. I could no longer accept it. Then as I began to struggle against it the end came very suddenly. I lost consciousness and awoke back in 1976.
My room was dark. It was only 4 a.m.
I quickly decided to go back to sleep and see what had happened to me back to 2150. While it took me some time to calm my mind from the vivid memory of the crushing vise, I at last managed to fall asleep and awakened back in the canopied bed with Sela bending over me.
The moment I opened my eyes she said, "You are a fool, Jon Two."
I smiled at her in Karl's wry cynical way and said, "I see you no longer keep up the pretense that I'm a level ten."
"That's right," she replied. "We've discovered that your Macro powers are very limited. You'll hardly be attaining level three in these next few days.
"But that's not why I was calling you a fool. Don't you realize that if you leave your body unprotected while you're gone from it on the astral plane someone who knows how-as I do-can sever the silver cord and separate you permanently from your physical body?"
"Yes," I said. "I knew this, but you want me to become a permanent 'live' resident of Micro Island, not a dead one. My propaganda value would be worthless if I was dead."
Sela gave me her sensuous look in which her tongue touched her lips in a kissing motion before she said, "I don't want you dead, Jon. I want you as my lover, and I know that unless you help us complete your time translation that magnificent body of yours will soon die, and your mind will be lost 174 years in the past."
"Sela," I said, "I no longer desire a micro existence."
'But you have no choice," she replied. "You can either live on Micro Island in 2150 in a well-run micro society or you can live in 1976 in a chaotic micro society."
When I didn't reply to this she finally gave a long sigh of resignation and said, "You leave us no other choice but to release Carol to find her own way back to the Macro society. You realize, of course, that since she will not obey our laws she will be put to death."
"That's murder!" I said.
"It's not murder," she replied. "When a person chooses to break laws that she knows will cause her death, that's suicide. Of course, you can always prevent her death by agreeing to become a permanent resident of Micro Island."
"Give me more time," I said. "Let me think about this."
"You've had plenty of time, Jon," she said, "but to show our generosity we'll give you one more day. If by tomorrow morning you have not decided to cooperate with us we will release Carol and you can watch her cause her own death."
After a long silence Sela left and I began pacing about my prison suite trying vainly to discover the solution that Rana said was already in my mind. What was it, I wondered? What would appear the worst possible decision I could make? Well, from one view point, it would be defying Elgon and refusing his terms. That would humble my pride because I would not only lose Carol, but also my chance to live in 2150.
Yes, without a doubt the hardest thing for me to do would be to watch Carol being executed by the Micro Islanders-especially knowing that I could have prevented it.
I remembered Rana saying, "But nothing is terrible from the Macro view. Things can only be terrible from the micro perspective, which is too limited to see that we live in a perfectly just and balanced– macrocosm in which we experience only what we have chosen."
Then if Carol dies, I thought, she will have chosen it and it will bother me only to the extent that I view her as a possession of mine that I can lose. We can have anything we desire and believe in sufficiently, say the Macro philosophers, and since each soul has free will and absolute Macro power there is no problem.