Child: daddy, what is karma? Father: karma... is a harmonic imbalance in the cardinal frequency of your personal oscillation pattern within the life continuum, that carries a concomitant attenuation of the vibratory force in other organisms or their inter-dimensional appearances Child: oh. But daddy... that could only result from divergences in the orientation of my aetherial plane with respect to the aesthetic posturing of the present zeitgeist... and I'm thinking... aberrations like that could only lead to critical impairment of my own metabolic pathways... The child looks puzzled Child: I mean, that would require presence in a universe with many standard deviations of detachment probability from Amber, no? Father: yes. indeed. Child: ok, but why would anyone exhibit there? Father: well, honey... Amber's shadows are all inhabited, even the really chaotic planes, and all kinds of things happen there The child's eyes open wide with curiosity Child: Really daddy? like what? Father: Well, in the outer realms all kinds of karma gets generated, for example from people killing each other and poisoning their planets and eating animals The child looks horrified Child: Eating animals??? you mean like Crunch (the family leopard)? Father: Well... not exactly. in those realms people and leopards aren't friends. The child puzzles over the notion Child: But daddy, doesn't it hurt the throat to eat an animal? Father: no dear... before a civilisation learns to drink sunlight, its members have throats that allow them to pass solids... I know it sounds bizarre but keep in mind that this all happens on the very thin edges of the probability curve Child (continues): ...so they kill leopards? Father: Sometimes, I guess Child: You mean... to eat them? Father: I suppose, but mostly because they're beautiful The child's confused again Child: ...and they want everything to be ugly? Father: Well, no. Remember that at every level, no matter how dark, there's always a desire for light. A leopard skin carries light - far less than the light carried by a leopard, of course, but in such places even a scintilla of beauty seems brighter than the sun. The father continues. But of course, the repercussions of taking the leopard skin are vast. In our own history, whole continents have sunk with the weight of the karma generated, and entire races like the Lemurians have vanished. Child: oh... I haven't heard of the Lemurians! what were they like? Father: it's ok. you'll remember all this stuff soon - when you're 2. The Lemurians existed before the Atlanteans - from whom we descend. They were descended from reptiles - unlike us - and came into existence as eggs. The child giggles at the thought (the father thought she might). He continues. Atlantis too sank under the oceans and very few of us survived, but eventually we learned organisation and grew into many races: the Chaldeeans of Ur, the Aryans, the Sumerians, the Mayans, the Chinese. Eventually we learned to clean up our karma. It took hundreds of thousands of generations, even though we had help, to repair the damage done to Earth and its peripheral dimensions but we learned how to shift ourselves closer to Amber. Child: Daddy, I hope I _never_ have to visit the shadows! Father: it's ok honey, when you grow up you'll understand that the shadow worlds are where all the work is done. Daddy himself visits those realms quite often! The child's eyes open so large the father laughs. Child: You do daddy??? what do you do there? Father: Well, daddy sits on the Courts of Chaos and helps with transitions... nothing too exciting really. Child: Oh wow! I can't wait to tell Crunch! Child runs off in search of the leopard. Curtain falls. [3 X 2012]