Lor Lu’s Observations

These are lifted and polished from the third draft of The Signature of God: Book Two of Millennium, a novel currently being considered by a publisher. Signature is a “future history” of the decade following the prequel, The Second Coming, and begins immediately after the new messiah, Dove, is murdered. Its numerous subplots and sketches somewhat resemble a collection of related novelets, some sharing characters, and interweaving. (Others do not.) The unifying thread is the Millennium Foundation, created by Dove to keep his teachings intact, and apply them. Lor Lu had been Dove’s chief of staff, and is now the ED of Millennium. His observations appear throughout the Novel, for the perspective they add to the era described.

I was tempted to call this page “The Notebooks of Lor Lu,” after Heinlein’s “The Notebooks of Lazarus Long,” but I decided not to. Too derivative. If you must be seriously derivative, credit the original.

And now, here’s Lor Lu:

.... Reality is far broader, and far richer, than the views provided by science. All descriptions of reality, even mathematical equations, are metaphor, and metaphor invariably falls short, or wide, of the truth. It is stimulating to explore what may lie behind your realities, but while incarnate, your task is to live the life you are in! — and from it learn. Choose, learn and evolve. And as we evolve, the Tao itself evolves."

I've said there is no "destiny," only vectors, but there can be an appearance of destiny. An off-stage essence, the heart of a soul, can act toward agreed-upon ends, and at strategic moments, essences can nudge their players — often bit players. The players then respond as they see fit, free to ignore the nudges or counter them. Essences, however, recognize the whos and whens, thus vectors tend to converge.

....With health care a product for sale, chronic illness becomes a major factor in visits charged for, and medical research tends to be directed at amelioration rather than at cures or healing. (Not that amelioration is undesirable.) It's interesting, though, how health professionals respond to crisis situations — wars and epidemics. Compassion grows, and the importance of payment weakens.

On occasion a person may encounter someone and instantly contact their essence, the heart of their soul. This essence to essence contact is momentary, and commonly subliminal. Then personality takes charge, often in denial, papering the incident over. It can happen at a party, or in passing a total stranger on the sidewalk.

Or seeing or hearing someone perform on a stage, sing, or play a musical instrument, or dance, viewing a painting, or reading a passage in a book — the performance being the point of contact. Such less direct contact is less commonly papered over, and often is sought after.

Aging is not a disease, nor dying a disaster. Age is not ugly, nor illness tragic, nor disability a flaw. They are conditions of life. Living in the physical universe involves wear and tear — mementos of the journey — enabling the bearer to experience particular lessons, aspects of physical reality.

Concerning "ugly": it is natural for cultures and individuals to set parameters of physical attraction, which of course will be whatever they are. Such parameters dictate the form maya takes in that culture, and one of the reasons we ensoul physical forms is to experience maya.

Choices and consequences are what lives are built on. They are the stuff and the story of life. At the most basic level, there is no wrong choice, no wrong act: "Ye makes yer choices and ye lives with 'em," individually and collectively. With consequences, ranging from painful to joyful, from slight to catastrophic, diffusing through the Tao. And including karma and evolution.

Choices aimed at human benefits are good work, but it can be difficult to know the results in advance.

Think of ethics as an aspect of nature, of the Tao, imperfectly perceived, chosen by the individual, and enforced by conscience. Think of morals as also imperfectly perceived, but chosen and enforced by church, government, or public pressure.

People tend to know things to some degree, and suppose things, believe things, to a much greater degree. The larger the difference, the more certain the believer tends to be.

When our beliefs, especially fond beliefs, seem in danger of proving false, we tend to feel threatened, and to fear. Fear that can manifest as worry, anxiety, despair, even apathy; or anger, outrage! But seldom anger toward the faulty belief — we're more likely to alibi it, and blame our troubles on the world.

From the viewpoint of spiritual growth, there is no right or wrong choice or action. You will evolve regardless, and eventually graduate, so to speak, with karma balanced and lessons learned. And ceasing to be reborn, move on to — call it spiritual grad school. All while contributing to the evolution of the Tao.

No right or wrong choice or action! But always growth. There are, however, consequences to our choices and actions, consequences that can go beyond karma. Had the Party Secretary of the Soviet Union, or the President of the United States, say in 1983, chosen to unleash a nuclear holocaust, the consequences would have been far more severe than those of the Rock, if for no other reason than severe radioactive pollution — and the casting of blame! And for many generations, souls would have continued to be reborn, to experience, contend with, with the gruesome results.

Thus the visit of the Infinite Soul. And thus Millennium, an entirely human operation aimed not primarily at spiritual evolution, but more fundamentally at saner and less destructive behavior. Behavior that will produce a world less corrosive, less poisonous, than available alternatives.

There is no destiny. True, you enter life with a guiding plan, sketched out yourself between lives. But in the absorbing, fluctuating sensory environment of an infant, you lose track of it. Essence, the heart of your soul, remembers, but the developing personality grows its own agenda, and modifies that forgotten plan by making choices at the behest of requests, demands, danger, opportunity and temptation. Including the counter and cross-intentions of others.

But with low-key persistence, Essence, which never forgets, nudges you in the direction of your original goals, so far as conditions and false personality allow.

Regardless, whatever you do is food for the soul. Food to grow on. Nothing is wasted.

Religious fanatics are not spiritually enlightened. They are obsessed, driven by terror. And convinced by someone's authoritarian stance on God and behavior. And fanaticism of any stripe can become seriously destructive, especially when coupled with a goal of dominance and a mode of aggression or power.

Efforts to control others commonly express more or less aberrated fears. But regardless of the aberration, control may enable people of different beliefs to co-exist more or less peacefully within a cultural context. In any event, control is a make-shift expedient, subject to breakdowns, violence and karma, and requiring endless tinkering.

In the longer run, ameliorating friction and conflict increases our acceptance of each other's diversity. Reducing intolerance, exercising consideration, enlarging compassion.

Meanwhile there are ancient procedures known as courtesy — C-O-U-R-T-E-S-Y — a famous lubricant of human relationships.

Personality is transient, clothing worn by the soul. It lasts a single lifetime, and after death, dissipates to little more than a shadow. Meanwhile the memories remain "on file," more accurate than they'd been in life, though after rebirth, difficult to access. Fading with the acculturation, the avidities, the anxieties, prejudices, and other aberrations of that lifetime. And of course, with the old programming from ape-central.

Leaving your soul upgraded and ready for another life, ready to assemble a new "true personality," with overleaves, and an opening set of cultural/familial circumstances, selected by yourself for your new goals, new challenges, experiences, lessons. The new body, of course, will come with standard primate wiring and programming, fine-tuned for those new goals, then imprinted by life.

All with only a sketchy, outline sort of plan, subject to heavy and repeated on-stage revisions by yourself and your fellow actors, via accidents, sickness, cross-purposes, war, love affairs, missed airline connections...and sometimes premature death.

A lifetime blessed by new friends — and encounters with old acquaintances, friends and otherwise. Who at some level you will recognize despite your and their changes in appearance, personality, and often gender, since the last time you met wearing bodies. For incarnate souls tend to be attracted by friends — and enemies — from earlier lives, though most often not consciously. Essence knows who and where they are, and may nudge you to contact them, interact with them. Such a connection may not "take" — the situation may not be right — but may be approached again later, when it is.

Essence, the innermost you. Some people think of Essence as their guardian angel, or spirit guide, or the Holy Spirit, or Christ-in-You. It is more accurate to think of it as the heart of your soul.

Justice and vengeance are not the same thing, nor interchangeable.

All humans are interconnected, for "better" or "worse." Decisions that increase love in your life, increase love broadly.

The primary function of a life is to choose and evolve. A function successful regardless of how "negative" the results may seem. The soul evolves, "advances," regardless.

But there can be a secondary function which at times becomes primary in the course of events: That function is to establish or retain a human state of affairs favorable to social evolution, particularly at sensitive junctures in human development. And at times this entails violence! Violence and karma.

In the normal course of events, Youth souls, Fledgling souls, Infant Souls, provide more than enough violence and karma, which as part of the mix, provide "suitable" lessons for social/spiritual evolution. But as we have witnessed in the past hundred years, the process can result in accelerated deterioration. And while holding hands in a prayer circle can in fact be useful, it can also provide a more clearly identified target, and martyrs who may or may not become known or appreciated.

Thus it may become "necessary" for Mature or Old souls to provide "needful" violence and karma. Hopefully! — hopefully on a scale and in a manner that does not lead to escalation; otherwise the results may be painfully negative.

This can require quick decisions, rooted in inadequate understanding and information; we are, after all, speaking of the physical universe. And regardless of good intentions and results, the karmic bills must be paid.

As ensouled primates, humans are not equipped to "understand" the physical universe, let alone the fullness of the Tao. But speaking metaphorically, we can say that the Tao is "all that is," including what is termed its "intelligent creative principle." That much is relatively easy for a human mind to deal with — if that mind is able to operate outside rigid religious limits.

One of the world's major religions, incidentally, is science, whose greatest virtue is skepticism, while its major institutional hostility is toward other religions. Yet in a very real sense, science is the great ecumenical religion, whose virtues in explaining the universe have overridden objections by pre-technological theologians. Though many scientists scorn all religions other than science, many others have a non-scientific sense of a "higher" power, the aforementioned "intelligent creative principle." And of those scientists, many openly espouse both science and some other religion.

An experience much treasured by one person may be anathema to a second and tragedy to a third. One of the most valuable traits a human can have — but not one of the more common — is the gut knowledge that different people experience the world differently. (And that a given individual experiences the world differently at different times in different circumstances.)

To one person, the sight of someone flaunting shapely legs inspires anger, in another admiration, in someone else lust. The feel of chill air sends some to the wood pile or thermostat, or to the closet for a sweater, while others may not even notice. Still another, menopausal, might say "what a heavenly breeze!"

To the extent you recognize that people respond differently, and that their responses are valid for them, you are "guilty" of compassion, and are part of the solutions in the world.

On the other hand, because people respond differently, it is also valid for a culture to legislate punishments for behaviors deemed "destructive.' It is part of the dance, the lessons, the social and spiritual evolution of sapient life.

Spiritually speaking, "good" and "bad" are artificial distinctions. In due time you will graduate from the school of lives and deaths on Earth, as will even the souls who were Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Pol Pot.

Yet we in Millennium act — even conspire! — to favor "good." Is that not inconsistent?

Not at all. To begin with, the physical universe is NOT illusion. It is a vast array of real phenomena, only a small part of which is perceived by our primate aspect. And what we perceive and do not perceive, what we understand and do not understand, affects us, impacts us, like it or not.

While incarnate, we do in fact live in "the real world." Our acts, individually and collectively, affect that world well beyond our intentions, and often crosswise or counter to those intentions.

For an ensouled life form — Homo sapiens for example — to destroy its biosphere is painful to the souls involved, both incarnate and those between lives. And even to the alumni of that world, who no longer recycle, but had a hand in evolving that state of affairs. Because souls/lifeform/planet are a functional unit, and to destroy the biosphere produces broad trauma.

Beyond that trauma, and beyond our joint responsibility for it, those souls whose evolutions are incomplete would have lessons only partially learned over a sequence of lives. Lessons which must be reformatted to fit with later experiences as a more or less different life form on a different world, where those undergraduates relocate to complete their physical universe "education."

A world may also become only marginally habitable, and/or the ensouled species may decline culturally, seriously blocking their social/spiritual evolution. In either case, the soul/life-form units — in our case individual human beings — decline into a prolonged paucity of joy, in which evolution as a process "unravels."

Murphy's Law is commonly stated: "Whatever can go wrong will go wrong." That is incorrect. It should be: "Whatever can go wrong may go wrong." Of course, if you persist in walking through mine fields...

When separate actions come together smoothly, one is justified in suspecting collusion, coordination. But it may simply be actors acting independently toward a common purpose, responding to each other's unexpected moves...

And the subliminal nudges of essence, which never sleeps.