“How would I know? Maybe one of the guys he recruited for it said something to someone, and the army or someone was waiting for them. That’s all it would take. Or maybe Luther said something and didn’t realize it, or one of us. Or one of the guys that kicked in money. Sure they didn’t know much, but there’s always fools that like to seem important. And if one of them let something slip, someone else could have heard it and notified the feds. The feds aren’t all damn fools, you know. They can put two and two together.”
Carl stared worriedly, unseeingly at the set. “The government had something to do with this, some way or other.”
“Probably.”
“What ought we to do?”
Axel grunted. “I’m staying right here. They won’t likely trace it this far anyway.”
Carl nodded slowly. “I suppose you’re right.” He paused. “I’m too old for this kind of shit.” He paused again. “It’s getting so’s you can’t trust people anymore.”
Neither said anything for a long minute. Axel looked at Carl, who sat slumped on the old sofa, seeming mesmerized. What happened to Mr. ‘Rouse the People Down With Government!’ Axel wondered. Maybe you are getting old, Carl. Maybe even smart.
After a moment, Carl spoke again. “I sure as hell hope they didn’t shoot Luther. I’d feel like I had his blood on my hands if they did.”
Axel looked calmly at his brother. “No way to know. But considering the stuff Luther got into and out of all his life, if he was at a gunfight and anyone came out of it whole, it’d be him.”
25
The history of humankind is a valuable study, even with the holes in the knowledge, and the prejudices and assumptions of the people who write it. It provides important information, insights, and understandings.
The history of the individual soul can also be a valuable study. It provides insights and understandings into the dynamics, current condition, and possible futures of that soul. The work of early psychotherapists provided some limited insights, but these were distorted by their prejudices and procedural carelessness. (And more severely by their misconception that one’s personal history begins with birth, or possibly conception.)
(Which is equivalent to a working assumption that the history of humankind, or of a culture, began with the birth of its oldest living person.)
Why is Aunt Ida a favorite of yours? Why do you fear horses? Why does your boss have such remarkable antipathy for Poles? One can imagine various, entirely mundane reasons: Aunt Ida may be invariably friendly. Horses are large and potentially dangerous. And your boss may have been bullied by Tommy Sobleski in third grade.
But rather often, such phenomena result from experiences in past lives, and simply being aware of that can simplify life, while to revisit those experiences in Life Healing can provide powerful insights, as well as dealing with major or minor phobias and psychosomatics.
From The Collected Public Lectures
of Ngunda Aran
“Ben!” Lee half wailed the name.
“What’s the matter?” Her husband called his answer from the bathroom.
“Oh, Ben! Oh, God! It’s too much!”
What now? he wondered, and reached for the roll.
When he emerged, a minute later, she was slumped in her reading chair, a sheaf of papers on her lap.
“Would you care to elaborate?” he asked.
She picked up the sheets and held them out. “Ellen, in Communications, just came to the door and hand-delivered these.”
He took them, and looked them over, frowning. This was a crisis! “Okay if I call Lor Lu about it?”
“Lor Lu?” She’d seen this as a family emergency. “Why Lor Lu? What can he do about it?”
“Sweetie, consider that beautiful operations chart you’re developing. Lor Lu will show this crap to Legal, and if necessary, Mike Shuster will call Conroy, Morgenstern, and Blasingame in New York. They’re as good a legal firm as you’ll find, and Millennium pays them a sizeable retainer each month.” He grinned. “I do work in Accounting, you know.”
Her gaze turned thoughtful, though fear still lay beneath it. “Do you think they can beat this?”
“I have no doubt they can.” Mentally he crossed his fingers. He expected they could, but courts were something of a mystery to him. “You’re an important part of this organization, you know. Lor Lu won’t let this go through.”