Q: What about a soldier in wartime, that kills a lot of people? What about the crew of the bomber that dropped the Hiroshima bomb? How in the world would they ever cancel—extinguish—so many karmic nexuses?
A: War is a special case. A soldier does not create karmic nexuses with those he is required to kill in battle. He does learn powerful lessons, but the process and the lessons are not karmic.
Q: That’s the most outrageous crap I’ve ever heard! It treats killing as nothing more than—than some kind of legalistic game! Jesus would never have said anything like that!
A: To create a karmic nexus requires depriving someone of choice in some major area of their life. If someone chooses to treat it as a game, that is their prerogative, but they will, of course, deal with the consequences sooner or later. As for the teachings of Jesus, they were the teachings most needed by the people of his time, phrased in terms meaningful to them. They established a new platform for the further social and spiritual evolution of the human species. Put another way, Jesus’s teachings produced an important turn in the flow of human history. Which was all the Tao intended.
From The Collected Public Dialogs
of Ngunda Elija Aran
The lights were still on in Art Knowles’ office. He had a secure telecom line with Major Ennerby at Fort Carson, and he’d be informed if there was anything he needed to know. Anything necessary for the safety of Millennium’s people. Still, he wished he had the platoon’s confidential radio frequency, and the necessary descrambler, to hear what was going on. He hadn’t heard the whisper craft pass over the Cote, though it had powered up its quiet engines by then. But later he’d heard automatic weapons in the distance, continuing for about five seconds.
He hoped no one had been killed. He hoped no terrorists had gotten through. He hoped . . . Hell, he told himself, why don’t you just go to bed and leave it to the Tao? What was that line in Luke again? He’d enjoyed it in the exchange between Dove and some pharisee: Who, by worrying, could add an hour to his life? That was the gist of it.
Instead of going to bed, he went to his beverage station and drew a cup of decaf. It was too late at night for real coffee. Then sitting down with a long-unread volume from his Raymond Chandler collection, Knowles leaned back and began to read. He’d stay up awhile and see if Ennerby . . .
His phone rang. Ah ha! he thought, and reaching, switched it on. There were two or three seconds of strange sound, suggesting an ultra-condensed violin concerto, followed by a beep—the descrambler disposing of residual data, and reprogramming itself. “This is Art Knowles,” he said.
“Art, this is Major Royce Ennerby, at Carson. All’s clear. We’ve rounded them up.”
“What are the stats? I’m curious.”
“If I could tell you, I would. And maybe I can, in a day or two. I’ll make a point of asking. We’ll see.”
“Thanks, Major. Remember, I put in a good word for you.”
It was their little joke. The major had asked him to put in a word for him “upstairs,” and he’d said he would. He hadn’t, of course. He considered his sense of spiritual dynamics quite limited, but such as it was, it didn’t accommodate prayer of that sort.
* * *
The White House chief of staff didn’t like to bother the President at breakfast, even when she ate it in the Oval Office, which more and more she did. But she had asked to be informed as soon as he’d heard. It was, after all, a sort of pet project.
So he was there an hour earlier than her receptionist, rapping firmly on the President’s office door. “It’s Heinie,” he said.
“Come in,” she called, and he entered. “Pour some coffee if you want.”
“I had some.” He paused. “The Fort Carson platoon saw action last night.”
She straightened, her eyes sharpening. “Really! What’s the story?”
“Millennium had evidence that someone had snooped the Ranch, so they informed Major Ennerby. He then had the Mid-America geosynchronous satellite instructed to provide a focus on any apparently human activity within a ten-mile radius of the Cote, except for the immediate vicinity of roads, and the hippie camp. Anything outside certain parameters, it would relay to him with visuals.