Oooh! Touché! Cochran thought. He decided Ngunda had more to recommend him than he’d realized.
The journalist became aware, then, of a new quality in the silence of the crowd. As if most had been unprepared for such blunt iconoclasm. It affected the professor, too. He paused for a troubled moment before introducing the next student.
The young woman got up and stepped to the microphone. “Mr. Ngunda— Excuse me, Mr. Aran, I mean. What—what good is karma? Why would a god ever invent it in the first place, except as punishment? And I’ve read some of your stuff in the New Age Wonks’ Club House. You say the Tao doesn’t punish. You said it here tonight.”
Her initial diffidence had fallen away, replaced by a tone of challenge.
“Karma,” Ngunda answered, “uses the positive and negative energies of the games people play to make sure each of us learns certain lessons. In order eventually to cycle out of the Earth School, and into what you might think of as the graduate curriculum. Which, I might add, is much less traumatic.”
The girl still stood at the microphone, and spoke again, upset now. “You said ‘inevitably.’ But you’ve also said and written that ‘all is choice.’ How does choice go with inevitable? Suppose I don’t choose to balance off some karma? And anyway, saying ‘all is choice’ is bullshit! My older sister was hit by a car last year, and killed! She certainly didn’t choose that! She was happily married, with two neat kids!”
The girl was glaring now. Cochran’s gaze shifted to the professor in charge, who sat looking as if he didn’t know what to do.
“Ah,” Ngunda said, “from some viewpoints it can certainly seem like bullshit. But suppose that in the year 1606, you were galloping on a horse recklessly and ran someone down, killing them. Without ill intent. Unless it was a karmic payoff, that incident would create a karmic nexus. One which sooner or later you would deal with, for it was your decision, your choice to ride as you had. Thus at some future time, often centuries later, you would either be killed by your earlier victim, or in some manner save a later incarnation of that victim. In either case extinguishing the nexus.
“Each of us, between lives, decides what karmic nexuses, if any, we’ll undertake to cancel in our next life. Then we make between-life agreements with other parties to cooperate. Between lives, the troubles that often go with living as humans—the griefs and fears, the anxieties and pains—seem rather academic. So we plan boldly.
“But reborn again, things seem quite different, and in addition we rarely remember, consciously, the karmic act or the agreement. Our Essence, our core self remembers—our offstage prompter so to speak—but Essence does not compel. Or explain, for that matter. It nudges, sometimes lightly, sometimes more forcefully, but it does not compel. One or both persons may avoid the connection, perhaps choosing to be elsewhere, or simply rejecting the act. Or other events may intervene; that is common. But over subsequent lifetimes, the pull of the nexus will strengthen. Sooner or later, the principals will choose to extinguish the nexus.”
Cochran watched, frowning. He didn’t feel well, and wondered if he was coming down with the flu. Still unhappy, the girl returned to her seat. One by one, the other students rose and spoke. The eleventh abandoned karma as a topic. “Mr. Aran,” she said, “if you died tomorrow, what one effect would you want to have had on the world?”
Ngunda’s grin was wide and electric, startling Cochran. “I would wish to see materialism and gain replaced as the focus and orientation—the focus and orientation—of human beings and human society. Replaced by compassion, and awareness of our oneness of spirit. For we all are part of the Tao—of God, if you will—and the Tao is present in each of us, as our Essence.”
Again there was a moment’s silence. Then applause began, building, spreading through the arena, people rising to their feet till most were standing. Cochran too found himself on his feet, without knowing why. The guru’s words hadn’t impressed him.
The hairs prickled on his forearms, his nape. He’s powerful, Cochran told himself, and wondered again what this man was really after. Perhaps Aran himself controlled Millennium after all, rather than some behind-the-scenes manipulators.