2150 AD Read online

  *Emental: Contraction of emotional and mental.

  “That’s enough,” I said. “You’ve lost me again. I always thought there was only one twin soul for each person. And what is this Macro society you spoke of? And can you give me more on the macrocosm?” The questions pouring out of me were barely representative of the hundreds I kept within. I was so anxious to learn, so much, and I didn’t know which questions to ask first.

  “We will start by presenting the basic concepts of the macrocosm,” C.I. began.

  I won’t try to include here everything that C.I. said during the following hours, but a few of the highlights are important and should be mentioned here.

  C.I. began by saying, “The human soul is an integral part of the perfectly balanced macrocosm. Thus, in the beginning, each human soul was part of a soul matrix which was perfectly balanced in positive and negative polarity‑masculine and feminine traits. However, to experience complete devolution and microcosmic awareness, each soul matrix mentally separated itself into seemingly individual entities which, in periodic incarnations on this planet Earth, function as either male or female.

  “The entity you think of as Jon Lake, like other soul matrix entities, temporarily forgot its oneness with all that is, all that was, and all that ever will be, as well as its macrocosmic origin. However, since you completed your devolution into the microcosm and began evolving back toward awareness of your macrocosmic origin, your soul matrix entities‑your twin souls‑have been seeking each other.”

  Trying to comprehend the fascinating things C.I. was saying, I began to sense a relieved rightness about it all. It was almost as if these words were touching some deep hidden memory within me that was now slowly beginning to emerge into consciousness.

  “Please continue,” I urged. “What you say somehow feels very right to me, though I’m not sure I really understand it all.”

  “You’re remembering,” C.I. replied. “In time you will begin to remember fragments of other lives. You dream of them often. Ever since you were born, Lea has been visiting you on the astral plane, but you didn’t remember, since you had not yet learned the importance of your dreams.”

  “Is that why . . .” I hesitated. “Is that why I woke up so many times feeling full of joy and hope for something that seemed to be there just beyond my reach?”

  “Yes,” was C.I.’s reply. “It was all you could remember of your contacts on the astral plane where Lea reminded you again of your oneness and that she was working to bring you to 2150.”

  C.I.’s voice was fading, though I listened intently.

  “Your time translation is our most advanced ‘continuity of life’ project. It has been achieved through the joint efforts of the most highly evolved minds in our galaxy, with your own budding belief in macrocosmic oneness playing a . . .”

  CHAPTER 2: Was It a Dream?

  I awoke fresh and alive, as though I had just come in from a brisk walk.

  My big round alarm clock read 7:41.

  Where had I been? What had I been hearing?

  A female voice seemed to echo back into my dream. Some kind of a formula . . . or a process. A sentence, half finished.

  Pulling my pillow over my head I tried to go back to sleep, mentally stretching back into my dream.

  Then it hit me as though I was still dreaming.

  But I wasn’t!

  I could hear the pleasant voice of C.I. presenting so many new ideas that my mind was reeling under their impact.

  Then there was that girl, Lea. What clarity!

  “Clarity”? Where did that word come from? “Clarity.”

  It had a nice feeling attached to it, yet it now meant something new‑something it had not meant before last night’s dream.

  Lea was “clear.” There was no game‑playing, no being what she thought I wanted her to be, no pretense, no expectations, no defenses, just a very bright, capable, honest, straightforward woman joyously experiencing and respecting herself, others, and life itself.

  Hers was not the shallow, brittle beauty of a Holly­wood starlet, but a deep almost spiritual essence that seemed to radiate from her. While her physical beauty was obvious, it was the sparkling multifaceted depths of her mind which aroused and excited me with a com­pleteness that I had never quite reached before.

  Hugging my pillow, I felt Lea warm against me and, once again, argued with myself. Why cover my bare body? Just so I wouldn’t be embarrassed? Why be em­barrassed? If the body is just the outer garment of the essential self.

  And there was another new term. “Essential self.” It, too, meant something new; something more complex. This dream was a more interesting education than any class I’d ever attended!

  Why?

  The question brought my mind’s focus from a fantasy world of the future back to the prosaic present. Mentally I moved into this new day. Physically, or was it spiritu­ally?‑some deep core of my essential self reached for­ward into 2150 and stayed there.

  The feeling of loss was strong in me as I sat up in‑bed and strapped on my artificial limb. Karl had already left to teach his 8 a.m. Introductory Psychology class. I was glad that I had given up my teaching assistantship this semester to work full‑time on our dissertation. This left my time relatively free of demands, so I could let this incredible dream drift about the edges of my mind as I pursued my day’s activities.

  Was it just a dream? Just. Maybe that was the wrong word. That booklet I had scanned‑a light brown book­let‑said something about dreams being much more important, a reality of their own. What was it? Maybe I could find it again. Just a little booklet, "Interpret Your Dreams from a . . . . " something or other.

  Finishing my breakfast, I cleaned up our small kitchen absorbed in conflict. Never had I experienced a dream so clear and vivid and with such an incredibly detailed story.

  Yet if I took it seriously, I might just as well forget about becoming a respected social psychologist. Anyone in my field who spoke of time travel, astral bodies, parapsychology, or other forms of intelligent life contacting us here on Earth, would be ostracized by his colleagues.

  Still, I decided to write down what I could remember, and as I slowly recorded this strange experience, I began to live it again:

  As I puzzled over that last statement of C.I.-something about my belief system-the door opened.

  "Man, am I hungry!" Karl shook the snow off his fuzzy black hair as he pulled off his fake fur overcoat and boots.

  Seemed like I had just begun, and here it was 1:30 already!

  "You look like Big Foot with that coat on!" I said. Karl was not a small man. While I was the runner on the team, Karl cleared the way so I'd have an opening to run through. And he was built for the job!

  "I could eat like Big Foot right now!" he answered. "Let's have some lunch. What are you doing?" he added.

  "Been writing down some ideas I got from a dream last night."

  "What?"

  “I said I've been writing down some ideas I got from a dream last night.”

  “That's what I thought you said. What the hell are you talking about?” Karl peered at me with that intense green eye of his.

  Sometimes I think that Karl's eye was taken from him not to keep him out of pro football, as he sometimes postulates, but rather for the protection of the people he looks at. He has enough power in that one eye to make up for the one he lost and then some!

  Feeling a shade intimidated by his look and the hint of sarcasm in his inquiry, I began, “Last night I had the most ‘real’ dream.”

  “A wet one, I trust.”

  “Damn it, Karl! I’m serious!”

  “And I’m dying of starvation. You’ll have to wait a minute or deliver your oration to a dead audience!”

  He disappeared into the kitchen, emerging a moment later with a pint bottle of carrot juice in his left hand; peanut butter, jelly, salami, brick cheese, and lettuce sandwiched precariously between two oversized slices of wheatberry bread in his right hand; and a pa
per towel with a freshly rinsed carrot inside it tucked between his forearm and his chest. He was big on carrots.

  “Okay,” he said, “lay it on me.” His beanbag chair cringed briefly before yielding to his 240‑pound onslaught.

  Pacing the floor, I told him of the fantastic freedom I had experienced a mere seven hours ago. His angular face remained impassive, but as I finished, it broke into a huge grin.

  “Well, now,” he chuckled. “I can understand why you were sorry to wake up. Leave it to you to produce the summa cum laude dream of all time!”

  I shook my head slowly. “But I don’t think that I, Jon Lake, could produce a dream like that. Really, Karl. I mean, the new words, the detail . . . I can’t even imagine that kind of stuff, much less dream it.”

  “Okay, Jon. Maybe it was the Jon Lake of 2150 who produced the classical wish fulfillment dream for the crippled Jon Lake of 1976. After all, that’s what your dream girl, Lea, said, wasn’t it?

  “And by the way, did you think of asking your dream computer how they were able to develop a utopia like 2150 in just a hundred and seventy‑some years? Like how was it possible to go from a world of competition, conflict, distrust, hatred, overpopulation, pollution, ignorance, and monumental selfishness to a world of cooperation, love, and wisdom? Did you think to ask that question, Jon? Sure would be nice to know the secret.” Karl laughed. “Maybe we could change the topic of our dissertation, put you to sleep for a week or two, and get your C.I. to write it for us!”

  “Seriously, Karl, I did ask about some of those things. C.I. said that our society, which she called the micro society, perished sometime around the year 2000, along with most other micro societies of the Earth, due to their inability to cooperate with one another.”

  “So, it ended,” Karl paraphrased, “not with a whimper, but a bang.”

  “No, C.I. spoke of factors which worked over a long period of time to bring about the destruction of micro society. It wasn’t sudden.”

  I hesitated with a new thought. “Hell, we’re right in the middle of it! C.I. said the Macro society of 2150 had its beginnings back in the 1970s. That’s right now, Karl!”

  “Oh, great,” Karl scoffed. “We can expect it any time now. How’s it all going to happen?”

  “I don’t know, Karl. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? Whichever came first, the chain broke a link somewhere along the line ‘cause they don’t have the same theories regarding human behavior in 2150 as we have here in 1976.

  “C.I. disagreed with our theory that most of human behavior is completely determined in. the first few years of a child’s life. C.I. , granted that early inadequacies in nutrition or intellectual, emotional, or physical stimula­tion can do great damage, which, bolstered by our limit­ing belief systems, could preclude further significant development. According to C.I.,, though, all the fears and hang‑ups that we blame on our treatment during childhood are open for restatement, redefinition, and remodeling by our ‘applied and practiced belief system.’ We are not the pawns of our upbringing any longer than we want to be! We are free agents to be whatever we decide we want to be as long as we believe it’s possible and are willing to put in the effort and discipline necessary to bring it about,” I explained.

  Karl whistled, “That’s a pretty heavy statement, Jon, and a pretty heavy dream.”

  “That’s not all, Karl,” I continued, anxious to test more ‑ of my new data. “C.I. called us 1970s people ‘micro man.’ Says we see life and reality through the limiting view of a microscope‑making mountains out of molehills‑while almost completely ignoring the unify­ing, harmonizing macrocosmic realities that lie just beyond our limited view.”

  “Micro man, hum,” Karl thought out loud. “And these . . . what I’d think of as ‘peace‑creating’ realities are right there, but just out of reach?”

  I was delighted to see Karl caught up in C.I.’s “future” philosophy. “I wouldn’t say really out of reach, Karl. It’s more like we’re wearing blinders. We put blinders on a horse to keep him from being frightened by what he would see if we broadened his vision, and we do the same thing to ourselves. We keep our blinders pulled in close enough to block out or condemn things that are different from what we’re used to. This leaves us with an extremely limited, but very comfortably microscopic, view of reality instead of a limitless, but. more challeng­ing, macrocosmic view of ourselves, others, and our rela­tionship to the universe.”

  “What you’re saying, Jon, is that micro man is the normal average 1970s person like you and me.”

  “I guess so.”

  Karl went on, “This approach would support the theory about mental illness occurring in direct proportion to the degree of separation one feels from his fellow man. You know, the blinders separate us from other people‑protect us, so to speak, from what we fear. Ha!” Karl delighted in his new conclusions. “So we protect ourselves right out of our mind! Tell me, oh great ‘wizard of dreams,’ what’s the religion of the future?”

  “As I understand it, Karl, it’s not a religion as we know them‑you know, churches peppered all over the land worshiping some all‑powerful, judgmental God who peers out of the sky to shake a finger or throw a bolt of ‘lightning at those who go astray.

  “It’s more a way of life,” I explained. “They call it Macro philosophy; and I understand it contains the essential core of the Taoism of Lao‑tzu, the Buddhism of Siddhartha Gautama, and the Christianity of Jesus of Nazareth.”

  “Great! The best of all possible mystics we ‘micro men’ have never been able to understand. How do they train everyone to become a great mystic philosopher so they can understand this Macro philosophy?” There was more than a touch of skepticism in Karl’s voice.

  “That’s where the Macro society comes in. You see, the basic metaphysical premise of Macro philosophy is that‑ all is one perfect, macrocosmic, indivisible whole. It’s the ancient idealistic concept that all is perfect, all is mind‑one universal mind. However, in 2150, ac­cording to C.I., they don’t just talk about it, they live it, by organizing their society on this premise.” I raised my hand to delay Karl’s interruption.

  “It’s obvious that the Macro society could only work if people accepted the basic premise of Macro philosophy, that all is one. So the Macro society is set up to teach its children about this Macro perspective from which they can practice the one commandment of Jesus‑to love one another.”

  “Jesus H. Christ! Jon, man is an animal We can con­dition, reinforce, and program almost any type of be­havior, but we can’t change the basic animal nature of man. We can’t pump out a whole generation of little Jesuses!”

  “That’s true, Karl,” I said soothingly. “They don’t disagree with you. C.I. emphatically states that the Macro society could not exist until micro man, with his limited perspective, his limited beliefs, became almost extinct. Micro man is an animal because he views himself as an animal. It’s a self‑fulfilling prophecy, Karl. We become that which we believe ourselves to be. Our beliefs limit us to the short span of time between the birth and death of our physical bodies and the ‘accidents’ of genetic and en­vironmental inheritance.

  “Macro man, however, does not see himself as an animal. He understands that we are constantly creating our selves with every thought we think. He knows that his every cell responds to his every thought, thereby making of him that which he believes himself to be. Macro man knows that he is not the victim of circumstances, but rather the designer of his own destiny, the creator of his own reality. He knows that his life holds only those experiences which he himself chose for his own growth and‑“

  “Wait a minute,” Karl interrupted, waving his hand to slow me down. “What, may I ask, is Macro man? Is he the same as 2150 man?”

  “No, I don’t think we could presume that. A person is beginning to be Macro emotionally and spiritually when he starts caring about others‑when he starts breaking down the barriers of prejudice and fear that separate men from each other. A
person is beginning to be Macro mentally when he has evolved to a level of awareness in which he remembers his origin as an immortal soul within the Macro self, the macrocosm. He then realizes that he lived many lives as he devolved down what they call the microcosmic‑macrocosmic continuum of awareness toward amnesia, or less awareness. He then begins his evolutionary trip back toward even greater awareness of his macrocosmic oneness with all that is, all that was, and all that ever will be.”

  “Why the hell would a soul choose this trip into amnesia, Jon? Or does a soul have any choice?”

  “Yes,” I replied, “C.I. was very firm on every soul having free choice, but I was given a number of answers to your first question, and, frankly, I’m almost as con­fused as’ you are in this area.”