Q: Well, suppose someone breaks into my house, and I'm afraid he'll kill me. So I shoot him, and he dies. Am I guilty of karma?
A: You may or may not be guilty of manslaughter, but you're never guilty of karma. Karma is a mechanism provided by the Tao to help learning take place. And when we choose certain actions, we create or extinguish karmic nexuses.
Let's suppose you do kill him, and that prior to that moment, you shared no karmic nexus with him. Now you've created one, even though you may have felt compelled to it by a perceived danger to your life. And someday you'll have to cancel that nexus with him, with both of you learning lessons in the process.
On the other hand, if you choose not to kill him, and he kills you, then he creates a karmic nexus. And if neither of you chooses to shootif he flees, or if you let him rob younormally no karmic nexus is created. But lessons result nonetheless.
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 cancelextinguishso 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 thanthan 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 beepthe 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.
"Last evening about dark, it showed five humans start out of the woods, eight miles away, on what appeared to be a compass course for the Cote. He sent out a squad in a whisper craft, and they took a terrain position to intercept. When ordered to stop, the intruders broke for nearby cover. The rangers opened fire, killing three and wounding one. The fifth was captured. I can't imagine they have a clue to how they'd been found out. The two prisoners have been kept apart, so they can't compare notes. They're being, or will be, interrogated by the Bureau, but I haven't been informed of any results."
"What about evidence? What did they find?"
"Contraband M-16s, fragmentation and concussion grenades, and shriekers. Each man had a sketch map of the Cote, sketched on aerial photo blowups, with Ngunda's cottage circled. Their van contained assorted other military contraband, including electronics."
"I suppose the squad had an advocate along?"
"One jumped with them; I've talked to him. He assured me that everything was done by the book."
"And none of our people were hurt?"
"None. I asked."
"A success then."
"A success."
The President sat frowning. "Then why don't I feel good about it? This project is my baby, or one of them, and its very first operation has been a success."
"Maybe because the AT platoon conceptthe whole Anti-Terrorism Actcrowds the Bill of Rights pretty hard. Now if you were to declare martial law . . ." He shrugged.
"That again. You know where I stand on that. Martial law is like morphine; it requires larger and larger doses. Use it for anything short of a deadly emergency, and you're asking for addiction."
"Agreed."
"That's it then?"
"There's one thing I haven't gotten to yet. There was a CNN news team at the Cotethey'd just completed a special thereand they heard the gunfire, obviously automatic weapons. They don't know what the situation was, but they heard the racket. Millennium declined to comment on what it might have been, but carrying honesty to an extreme, they didn't deny knowing. They only said it wasn't them. And the army isn't commenting.
"However, there's nothing in law to prevent CNN's reporting the gunfire, and speculating about it."
The President shook her head in annoyance. God damn Murphy's law! "Keep informed of the interrogation results," she said, "and let me know anything interesting."
Andy was working on the President's back before supper, when there was a knock at the massage room door. "Madam President, it's me. Heinie."
"Just a minute." Andy threw a large towel over the president's bare backstandard procedurethen disappeared out another door. "Okay, c'mon in."
Her chief of staff entered, closed the door behind him, and came over to the rubdown table. "Ennerby just called. There are developments in the Millennium firefight. The fifth man they got wasn't with the other four. He hadn't made that clear to me before. A man had been left at the intruders' carryall, and a different squad captured him. Now it seems he was actually a sixth man, and there'd been a different one with the four they shot. A man that got away."
The President frowned. "How the hell did that happen? If the satellite reported five? Did the troops see five out there, or didn't they?"
"They thought they had. The casualties were scattered somewhat in the tall grass, and at first no one realized they'd only bagged four. When they gathered them up, the lieutenant in charge sent men looking around for a fifth, assuming he'd been hit too, and crawled off. By hindsight, what he should have done was send the chopper back up right away, but he didn't. He'd called it down right after the shooting, to load prisoners and casualties, and held it on the ground to load the additional casualty he expected his people to find. Which actually was sound thinking, but this time . . ." He shrugged.
The President lay there trying to keep the story elements straight in her mind.
"When they didn't find anyone," Heinie continued, "he sent it up wounded and all, to hunt for him. And radioed the larger copter, the one with the backup squad, calling it in. Earlier he'd had it backtrack the intruders and see if it could find the vehicle they'd come in. For evidence. It backtracked them to the forest and a truck trail, spotted their carryall through gaps in the trees, and put its men down. No one was there; there had been, but he'd heard the chopper and run. Walked, actually; he's got a bad leg, presumably from some old mercenary contract.
"Anyway, the squad leader left three men there to watch the carryall, and took off again. They spotted the guy hiking along the edge of the woods, and picked him up. He'd been armed; carried an Uzi. Illegal of course. Fortunately he'd thrown it awaytrying to dispose of the evidencebut they saw him get rid of it, and found it." Heinie realized how bad it might sound to her, but he continued. "When the big chopper picked the guy up, they'd radioed the lieutenant and told him. So when the small chopper didn't find anyone, he decided his men hadn't really seen five out there. They'd expected five, because that's what the satellite reported. And he decided the fifth was the man with the carryall. That he'd probably stood with the others outside the edge of the woods, and been reported by the satellite as one of them."
"He hadn't trusted his own eyes? Or his men's?" The President sounded as much disbelieving as exasperated.
Heinie blew through pursed lips. "Not after the small chopper didn't find anyone. It should have, you know, if there was one."
The President frowned again. "So how do we really know there was? Maybe the lieutenant's right."
"No, he's not. Because the data cube shows five intruders, all the way from their carryall to the Ranch."
"Wouldn't the satellite have seen anyone running away?"
"I'm afraid not. Ennerby had cancelled the program as soon as the lieutenant called in that they'd bagged the targets. Cancellation's required when a special program's not needed anymore. Programs like that tie up onboard computer capacity, which runs all the orders and feedback, and has a lot of routine demands on it, typically complex as hell. It gets lots of special jobs requested by everyone from sheriff's departments, Forest Service, BLM, DTF, INS . . . Hundreds of requests, for the DTF and INS especially, each requiring a customized and complex program. It gets backlogged sometimes, and can't handle all the approved requests."
Heinie Brock brought himself back to their problem. "Everything received by the data analysis mainframe at Carson is on cubes, of course. Not just our project. And they've reviewed the one from last night. But enhanced cubeage like they need, the satellite doesn't transmit in real-time. Ordinary cubeage is, but when the data require massaging, it gets transmitted in pulses, scheduled by the onboard computer to accommodate overall demands. There can even be backlogs for transmission.
"Anyway, the sequence they needed didn't get transmitted before Ennerby disengaged the program. The satellite doesn't store 'unwanted' material."
Brock looked unhappily at his boss. "The unenhanced material is available, but it won't show the detail we need. It's just not there. There's a program that can enhance raw cubeage after the fact, and they're working with it, but it's not very promising."
The President scowled. "But the satellite transmissions show they did have a fifth man. Huh! And there's no chance that's a mistake?"
"None at all. The cube shows five intruders all the way to where the shootout took place. What's lacking is cubeage that showed what happened to the fifth."
"Did anyone think to go back out on the ground and see if they could track him?"
The thought startled Brock. It hadn't occurred to him. "I don't know. They didn't mention it. I'll check."
"Do that. Now. Muy pronto." She fixed him with a flinty eye. "I need to do some creative swearing, and I don't want to shock you."
He turned and went to the door, then looked back, trying for humor. "Not in front of Andy, I hope. She's a lady, after all."
"So am I, but there are things you don't know about ladies. Now git!"
She watched him leave. Hopefully the missing fifth man wouldn't be heard of again. If he keeps his mouth shut, she thought, then God bless him.
In a log farmhouse in Blair County, Montana, two men drank coffee and watched Headline News. Watched a brief report on, and speculation about, automatic weapons fire on the Millennium Ranch. When it was over, Carl turned to Axel.
"You suppose it was Luther?"
"I expect so."
"What do you suppose happened?"
"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."