Thea Alexander - 2150 A.D.

At this point Neda interrupted asking, "But, Jon, didn't you say that all actions are perfect from the Macro view? How can suicide be perfect?"

"At the Macro level," he answered, "every negative action is balanced by a positive action and, thus, they cancel each other, leaving perfect balance. From the Macro view one can see that every failure is a success in the long run because it leads to the insight necessary for learning. If a soul has to commit micro suicide, once or a thousand times, in order to learn that there is no escape from its own responsibility for its state of being, then that is necessary and perfect for that soul."

"I see," Neda said nodding her head. "Then what is altruistic suicide?"

"A good example of that kind," Jon explained, "was demonstrated when the Titanic sank. Some of the people aboard went down with the ship rather than deprive someone else of a seat in the very limited number of lifeboats. History is filled with examples of altruistic suicide in which people consciously give up their lives so others can live or profit from their example."

"Suicide as an example...," Neda hesitated. "Is that what the members of the Macro society are doing when they permit the Micro Islanders to kill them? Maybe they're trying to show by their example that physical life is not the ultimate goal."

"That's part of it," Jon responded. "The most famous example of this was the suicide of one of the greatest Macro philosophers ever to be incarnated on this planet, Jesus of Nazareth. He permitted himself to be killed to demonstrate that the Macro self is the master of the microphysical self and that it can even recreate or resurrect a body that has been killed. I think he was also demonstrating his belief that physical existence, while necessary for micro man, is only one very limited perspective along the m-M continuum."

"So the evolutionary goal," Neda added, "is to not get stuck forever at the micro-physical level, but to journey onward toward ever greater awareness until each soul returns to full awareness of its macrocosmic origin."

"That's right," Jon said, "and that leads us to a third type of suicide that micro man is not yet aware of evolutionary suicide. What the Macro society calls evolation."

"I think you've mentioned that before, Jon," I said.

"Yes, you'll remember that when I was in the hospital trying to save lives I was thwarted by some of the patients whose subconscious minds had decided on death," Jon said. "Remember Bruno who told me that he had incarnated to balance his vibrations. Now that he had accomplished this purpose he was graduating from this life and evolving on to a new dimension. You may recall that our Deltar, Hugo, also planned to consciously terminate his physical existence-to evolate.

"No one dies until he is convinced at the Macro or sub-conscious level that he has learned all he can or all he wants to in that particular life. This applies just as much to the baffling problem of crib deaths as to deaths due to cataclysmic earthquakes or tidal waves."

"Are you saying that the sub-conscious mind knows what will happen in the future and could avoid an accident if it so desired?" Neda asked.

"That's exactly what I'm saying," Jon nodded enthusiastically. "From the Macro point of view there are no accidents."

"But getting back to evolutionary suicide," I said, "isn't that as big a cop-out as anomic suicide? If you've learned your lessons you'd ought to stick around and help those who haven't."

"That's like saying that everyone should stay in first grade forever so they can help teach the lessons there," Jon replied.

'But someone's got to teach them," I protested.

"There has never, in the history of our universe, been a shortage of teachers-only of students willing to learn. As the Macro philosophers have said-when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. Ask and you will receive is another way of stating this Macro truth. It reflects back to prepotent desire and predisposing belief. If you desire something more than learning or if you don't believe that you can learn, or that you deserve to learn, you'll have to wait until your desire and belief are greater before you succeed," Jon explained.

"I still don't see how you could tell the difference between a cop-out suicide and evolutionary suicide," I said, shaking my head.

"It's a question of motive, Karl," Jon explained.

"Was the motivation for death to escape the past or to embrace the future? A cop-out suicide is escaping his past and/or present-an evolutionary suicide is embracing his future,"

"That's a hard one to handle," I complained. "Wouldn't a person tend to lie to himself about his desire to escape life?"

"Sure, that happens a lot," Jon answered. "In each life there are lessons that must be learned, but if you lie to yourself about having learned all there was to learn in first grade, then commit suicide, you wake up right back in first grade. You see, in this planetary schoolroom it's impossible to be a drop-out for very long. You can't run away from your own greater self."

"Micro man views physical life on this planet as the final stage, rather than just a preparation for experiencing the next dimension. With that sort of philosophy he naturally tends to think that suicide would end it all. He becomes the victim of his own micro philosophy."

"Then is suicide a sin or not?" Neda asked.

"It's hard to generalize about suicide, Neda, since all death is either conscious or unconscious suicide," Jon replied thoughtfully. "As for sin, there is only one sin, and that is to deny the perfection of our macrocosmic oneness with all that is, was, or ever will be. But even that is only a sin from the micro view. From the Macro view there can be no sin, for all is purposively and evolutionarily perfect. The key then, is to accept the perfection of what is by responding to everything with loving acceptance, thereby freeing yourself from the bonds of anxiety, fear, and condemnation which bind you to physical existence. Then, and only then, is evolation possible."

"Ok. If I was Macro I'd know who was living by the rule of loving acceptance and who wasn't, and I'd know everyone's motive for ending their life. Then I'd be able to tell if it was suicide, as we popularly think of it, or evolation. The problem is, I'm not Macro!" I protested, "So I still don't know how to tell the differences!"

"Remember that monograph we read back in Cultural Anthropology? The one on that Indian tribe whose old people, when they were ready to die, just said goodbye to everyone, went up on a hill, and died?" Jon asked.

"Yeah. Kind of like your Hugo's plan to...' I began.

"That's it exactly, Karl," Jon interrupted. "If you use anything to do the job with, you committed escapist suicide. If you wrapped up the details of your life then just laid down and died, that's evolation."

That's as close as Neda and I could come to a total recall of that evening's conversation.

It was Jon's comments on evolation, combined with our dreams of him, that ultimately modified my view of Jon's death by broadening my perspective.

I still miss Jon terribly. But Neda reminds me that nothing is terrible from a Macro viewpoint, so I know what level I'm at.

However, I can remember Jon saying that our level of awareness is constantly fluctuating, and that in one twenty-four-hour period an average micro person like myself can run the gamut from micro awareness to low level, or even high level, Macro awareness-the latter occurring mostly when we're asleep and dreaming.

I'll end this epilogue with such a dream.

It was the last of a series of dreams I've had about Jon. In most of them we just talked in our usual manner, but this one was different. We know it was symbolic because Jon had told us that 2150 has neither graves nor tombstones since discarded physical bodies are vaporized.