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 paper 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."

"One answer," I continued, "was that devolution and evolution are part of the cyclic process in which the macrocosm experiences itself. Another answer was that only some souls, not all of them, choose devolution-evolution to experience the thrill of fear, uncertainty, separateness, and the excitement of conflict and, of course, all the physical pleasures and pains."

"You mean the old saw about how dull perfection would be," Karl interjected.

"Maybe," I replied. "We know that man can accept pleasure only to the extent that he is willing to accept pain-that the rejection of either eliminates both. While the static concept of a micro Christian heaven of all peace and. pleasure would be truly hell, the macrocosm is a perfect balance of all opposites, a totally accepting experience of all pain and all pleasure, all hate and all love, all ugliness and all beauty, all fear and all conflict, with all calmness and all peace. In other words, the ultimate in excitement, – enjoyment, variety, creativity truly heaven."

"Heaven for whom?" Karl asked sarcastically.

"Why, for the Macro self, I suppose. It's only when we have evolved to the awareness that we are the Macro self that we can experience this acceptance of all that is, all that ever was, and all that ever will be as perfect."

I could almost see Karl's razor-sharp mind racing furiously. "Are you saying that to this Macro self everything is perfect? Things like poverty, disease, injustice, death, and even selfish micro men Like us?"

"Yes," I nodded, "because they are perfectly balanced, and a positive and a negative that are equal cancel each other. Such things as poverty, disease, injustice, and death only exist at the micro levels-never at the Macro level of awareness. That's what the mystics meant when they said that all is illusion or maya."

"But it's a damned real illusion to all us micro beings!" Karl retorted.

"Of course," I replied. "Who could enjoy an exciting play unless he could temporarily forget that he was just watching actors and actresses playing parts written by an author whose purpose was to entertain?"

"So you agree with. Shakespeare," Karl inserted. "All the world is a stage and all the men and women only players who, in their time, play many parts."

"Yes, I do. The essence of a good actor is that he temporarily loses himself in his part. The same with micro man. He has temporarily lost himself in a part and forgotten that he is the only one who chose it! That's why there is no injustice from the larger perspective, because each soul has chosen every part it plays."

"Are you sure, Jon, that everyone is eventually going to wake up from their amnesia and realize that their true identity is God?-what you call the macrocosm or Macro self?"

"Well, that's what all the mystics have been saying as far back in history as we have any record."

"And do you really believe in this sort of philosophy?" Karl questioned. He looked anxious and concerned as he said, "Let's be practical, Jon: If you believe in reincarnation, astral bodies, and time travel, how are you going to be a social psychologist? Our professors sure as hell aren't going to accept these wild ideas."

"Okay, I'll answer those questions," I said and realized I was pacing the floor again. "First, the basic concepts of Macro philosophy are not new to me and have always appealed to me. My greatest objection was the micro one that they didn't seem practical. Now I think that a Macro philosophy might be, in the long run, the most practical philosophy I've ever come across.

"As for being a social psychologist-I don't deny the validity of the micro view of man as a highly evolved symbol-thinking animal completely determined by his heredity and environment. However, I am not going to reject a Macro dimension which includes the micro one but adds the concepts of soul, karma, reincarnation, and the ultimate macrocosmic view which sees all as one indivisible universal mind.

"Now, for my professors and fellow behavioral scientists, I accept the fact that in their opinion no one can be a real scientist and believe in a Macro philosophy. So, if they find out I'm even considering these concepts, I won't be a social psychologist as far as they're concerned. I'll be a mystic nut who can't tell the difference between hallucinations and reality."

"But," said Karl, "you don't have to let anyone know that you're dabbling with ideas like reincarnation and Macro philosophy. You've been hitting the books for almost three solid years, and you haven't once taken a vacation. It's no wonder you get an escapist dream."

"Then, you think my dream is part of a mental breakdown due to overwork. So you're going to supply psychotherapy for me if I'll just keep my mouth shut and not talk to anyone else about my deranged ideas."

"Now, Jon, put yourself in my place," Karl pleaded. "Just imagine that I came to you and told you all the things that you've told me today, and I admitted they were all based on a dream that I'd had the night before. Be fair, Jon. How would you react?"

I couldn't help laughing at the thought of Karl talking as I had. I said, "Okay, Karl, you made your point. If you came to me with the same story I'd say you were nutty as a fruitcake. But you've always been the hardheaded realist. I've been the philosopher.

"Besides, I've always been fascinated by dreams, and you've never even bothered to remember yours."

"What you're saying, then," Karl replied, "is that you've always been the type to go off the deep end over some crazy dream. Jon, you're too close to finishing your doctorate to take chances like this. I'll be glad to listen to you, no matter what you want to talk about, but don't discuss this with anyone else yet. Okay?"

"All right," I said. "Maybe you're right. Maybe it was all just a wild dream. I'll test that hypothesis tonight when I go to sleep."

"Now that makes sense," Karl said with relief. "Look, I have to go. I've got an appointment with one of my students, then a date with Cindy tonight. If you're asleep when I get home, I won't wake you up."

"By all means, don't wake me up! I'm going to bed early tonight to see what happens.

"By the way," I continued, "I wrote down most of the details of my dream. I thought the organizational structure of the Macro society might interest you. It's all in the notebook over there on my desk. If you don't some in too late, you might glance through it."

"I'll do that," Karl said, and left for his office.

The blowing snow held an invitation that I couldn't resist. I hate the snow, and I love it. So I bundled up and went for a walk that ended in the university library. There I spent a couple of hours looking for books to support my hope that there was more to my experience than just an escapist dream fantasy. I failed.

Around nine-thirty I went to bed, yielding to an almost embarrassingly strong desire to see Lea again, if only in a dream. As I lay there waiting for sleep to come, I amused myself by reviewing the' strange details my dream computer had given me on the structure of the Macro society and its strange metric. time system:*

*See C.I. Data Excerpts.

The more I thought, the more I wondered if maybe Karl was right. I had read about people making up their own world when they could no longer cope with their existing reality. Maybe I should take a vacation.

No matter what position I tried, sleep simply would not come.

About midnight Karl and Cindy slipped quietly in. I faced the wall and feigned sleep so as not to intrude.

Soon I drifted toward sleep and was awakened by Cindy's muffled giggles. "Damn it!" I thought and moved my pillow over my head as Karl, said, "Quiet, Honey," in a hushed voice.

The sound of their rustling about on his bed across the room was hard to ignore, but I did, and once more slipped into the edge of sleep. I sat up startled in my bed. Cindy had let out a shrill squeal.

There they were, stark naked. Karl was nibbling on her ticklish inner thigh-right there with me in the room.

"Damn it, Karl!" I cursed angrily. "Don't you have any respect for the act?"

Karl looked up, as startled as I had been, and, as Cindy gathered the blanket about her, his expression changed from surprise to amusement.

He grabbed Cindy, blanket and all, and said playfully, "Hell no, Jon! We're ballin', we're not in church!"

Cindy's apology was drowned by the voice of my own inner conflict. "Karl's right, you know," my evolved self was saying. "There's joy and laughter to be shared making love with someone you care for. It's wholesome. It's healthy. It's good."

Then my judgmental unevolved self came on with its rebuttal. "There's nothing wholesome about Karl out there naked with someone he's not even thinking of marrying. Or for that matter, her naked in front of him here in his-no, our!-bedroom. What kind of girl is she– anyway?"

Then the response, "Oh, get with it, Jon. She's a super person, bright, thoughtful, and fun. You know that. There's nothing wrong with them sharing a perfectly natural expression of caring and sharing. If you were as bright as you think you are, you wouldn't judge them. You'd just be happy for them."

"Happy for them, indeed! I'd never do that sort of thing," the argument continued.

"Oh, you wouldn't, huh? Maybe you're just a little bit jealous of Karl's lack of inhibition, his freedom of expression."

And so the contest went till either they got quieter or I fell asleep, or both. Anyway, I– woke up Thursday morning at. my usual time with no memory of even the trace of a dream.

January is miserably cold in New York, and this month was no exception. It had been eleven, snow and slushfilled days since my strange dream experience, and while I had remembered a few dream fragments, none of them ever approached the level of my 2150 experience.

Did this fact support Karl's "escapist dream" theory or negate it?

He was worried at first and spent a little more time at home than usual for the first few days. When my nights failed to turn up any more such bizarre responses, I guess he finally decided it was all just a very therapeutic escape technique.

I, on the other hand, was having a lot of difficulty getting it off my mind. While I went through my usual daily routine, I was not quite with it. A part of me lingered with my unusual experience and longed to return to it.

I decided to do a little research on dreams and dreaming. Bundling up against the biting cold, I headed for the bookstore, where I went straight to the dream books.

Scanning the shelves, my eyes fell on a single word.

Macro!

My eyes seemed to jump from my head! There it was. The light brown booklet I had seen before. The word I couldn't remember from its title was Macro! "Incredible!" I thought. "Interpret Your Dreams from a Macro View."

I promptly bought it and spent the evening hours studying it and applying it to dreams I remembered.

By ten-thirty I retired convinced that 2150 and Lea were a valid reality-perhaps a parallel reality or something like that which I didn't really understand, but which I, none the less, was now sure existed somewhere in our universe; our macrocosm.