In filling out the form, Corkery mentioned under comments his stay at the Cote. Then he left, feeling positively high—although he hadn’t expected any difficulty. Things generally worked out for him. Besides, who’d suspect a garrulous priest?
58
I’ve made the point before, but it bears repeating: When the Infinite Soul manifests in human form, it is not to “save” anyone. It is to provide a new platform from which to continue our spiritual and social evolution, individually and together. The Infinite Soul will not whisk any of us away from our responsibilities, or from the need to complete the lessons of life on the physical plane.
Devotions will not exempt you. That is wishful thinking. Nor will the Infinite Soul make your choices for you. You make them for yourselves.
In that regard I’ve been asked, what about when your Essence, your inmost being, “speaks” to you? Or a “guardian angel?” But they do not command you, and far more often than not, you, as your personality, ignore them. And when you accept and act on their promptings, it is usual to rationalize, come up with a “reason”—in order to protect your paradigm of the physical universe.
Occasionally, in emergencies, you experience a sudden powerful impulse to comply, but even that is not coercion. It is timing and presentation. The choice remains yours, whether or not there is time for preliminary reflection.
Rather often when this happens, the person, the chooser, is changed by it. Not often transfigured, but nonetheless changed for what you might think of as “the better.”
From The Collected Public Lectures
of Ngunda Aran
Thomas Corkery was surprised to find a stretch limo in Spokane. It didn’t seemed to him a stretch limo sort of city. The town was large enough, but not sufficiently conceited. Still, he reflected, to transport the featured speaker, three bodyguards and five guests, with a policeman in front . . . And they’d hardly ask the man to ride in a van.
He wondered what would happen if he made his try now, in the crowded vehicle. Nothing good, it seemed to him. Assassination was more difficult than most people realized, certainly when the target had professional protection. And this operation was undoubtedly his most dangerous ever. It had started well. The entourage hadn’t been checked with a metal detector before getting into the limousine. It would have been an insult to the host city, and terrible PR. But the greatest danger, should he get that far, would be when he drew and fired. Truly he did not expect to survive the evening.
He would, of course, have just one chance. And there was the bloody damned headrest in the way—steel beneath the padding.
Besides himself, it seemed to him the bodyguards were the only watchful people in the limo. One of them was seated on his right. Could he draw, point his weapon, and put a lethal bullet through the brain of the guru in front of him, before he was shot himself, or his gun arm grasped and broken? The bodyguards would have quick reflexes, and they’d have been drilled in situations like this. Also, he had no doubt they wore body armor. Even the guru might, though he didn’t appear to. Some models were unnoticeable beneath jackets.
His mulling, he told himself, was nerves, nothing more. His best script for success assumed that the entourage wouldn’t be checked at the stadium. The guards and police escort, of course, would all carry guns. And if that many armed men passed through all at once, the detection equipment would melt down from shock.
But if they were checked, it would be off to some American prison for him. Then Ngunda Aran might die of old age for all he could do about it. As for himself—given his British record, he’d doubtless get the maximum punishment allowed under the American Anti-Terrorism Act. The amnesty granted by the Dublin Agreement wouldn’t cover this. And the police would be authorized to kill, if they deemed it necessary to protect the guru or themselves. Or anyone else for that matter.
The parking lot was nearly full. There were no lines at the ticket windows, but people were still moving through the two entrance gates, showing their tickets and passing through detection. The limo drove past them, turning heads, and let its passengers off at another gate, private and somewhat removed, manned by police.