CHAPTER THREE
THE IMMORTALISTS

Another "miracle" that also happened in Los Angeles involved two Englishmen, Neil and Ken, both actors.  During the late 70's and early 80's, they toured the United Kingdom for several years performing a two-man play called The Immortalist.

Leonard Orr heard about the play when he was Rebirthing in England, and went to see it in London.  He asked to meet the actors and told them about Rebirthing and its connection with immortality.  When they told him that they were leaving London shortly to come to Los Angeles, Leonard suggested that they contact me.

The morning that I first heard from Neil was a strange one.  I had been working very hard on amending and correcting my basic negative personal law, namely, that the whole world would be better off and everyone would be happier if I would just drop dead and disappear.

I wasn't depressed or despondent.  I just was seriously and logically trying to figure out on what basis did I have the right to stay alive.  Who needed me?  Who benefited from my being alive?  My children were grown, almost strangers because of the thousands of miles that separated each of us from each other.  I had been teaching for years without making much of an apparent dent in the world at large.  Books that I'd written had been well-received but again made no significant difference that I could notice.

Fundamentally, I was trying to decide if I served the Universe in any way by being alive or was my desire for life just another selfish projection of mine?

At that instant, the phone rang.  An English voice asked, "Hello, is this Dr. Eve Jones, the immortalist?"

Well, of course, I laughed.  I'd never been called an immortalist before (although I love the idea).  We talked for a while and made arrangements to meet when he and his friend Ken brought their play to Los Angeles a week or two later.  I realized that a stranger's voice from across the ocean was answering my existential question: just by staying alive and teaching Rebirthing I served.

We became good friends, and I even had the pleasure of playing Ken's role when the play, The Immortalist, was presented to a conference of Rebirthers in San Francisco, a conference that Ken had not been able to attend, therefore giving me the opportunity to perform with a professional actor for the only time in my life-how's that for a realization of an old daydream?

However, that's not a miracle.

Instead, the miracle concerns something that happened several months later when Neil, Ken, and I stopped by Ken's apartment for him to go in and get a book.  Neil was in the back seat, I was in the passenger seat, and Ken said, "I'll just pull the car in here, it's not really my parking space, but I'll be out again in a moment."

He went off into the apartment house, taking the car keys with him.  Shortly afterward Neil and I saw a car drive up the alley to the driveway into the parking area.  It looked as if it were headed toward the parking stall that we were occupying.  Just at that moment, I exclaimed, "Oh God, I hope that car isn't coming in here."

At that point, our car proceeded to move!  It moved in a perfect half-circle so that the front end went out from the parking stall, turned to the left, and entered, heading in, into the only empty space down the row, missing the roof columns and all of the parked cars, and stopping just in time to miss the garage back wall.  Meanwhile, the approaching car made its turn and pulled into the space we had so mysteriously vacated.  The driver got out of the car, said, "Thanks a lot, that's my space."

How had the car moved?  We were on level ground, the keys were out of the car, the motor was not running, and yet the car moved and rolled into the only other available parking space perfectly!

Perhaps all miracles are just the immediate response of objective material reality to a pure, heart-felt thought of not wanting to inconvenience anyone.  Maybe the Universe is serving the highest spiritual thought.  Maybe the logic of magic is love.