PART III

AT WHAT MOMENT IN HISTORY...
 

A First Test: A Stable Civilization

"It is easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them."
--Alfred Adler

While not failing to recognize the human life and cultures lost in the process, the past two centuries have seen the rise of the greatest nation ever known to have existed on Earth.

From the humblest beginnings as pilgrims left persecution behind in Europe, through the pre-nationhood decades as an independent identity began to emerge, and finally through the birth pains of a Revolutionary War, the United States has realized a vision of freedom and equality never before seen.

From a most potent intent encapsulated in a beautifully simple Constitution, a powerful and wise system of large scale human community has emerged.

As this system of community approaches the millennium, it may be confronted with its greatest challenge and opportunity yet: reinventing itself in the face of fundamental change.

Is it possible to replace the old ladders upon which we stand with new ones, better crafted for the next millennium?

Together we will answer this question.
 

A Second Test: Maturation of the Culture

Despite the scientific opposition to the concept of UFO visitation, the phenomenon is clearly real and present. Fortunately, the public at large has a far more receptive attitude. Polls have consistently demonstrated that a majority of Americans believe in the existence of advanced forms of life in space, and a large minority believe that the UFO phenomenon is real. In this realm, the public is well ahead of science.

No longer is the subject of UFO experiences relegated to the simplistic terms of "little green men" with Martian credentials. That stereotype is expiring as a figment of ridiculous disinformation.

Apart from the fact that millions of people around the world have witnessed UFOs in the past 50 years, there is another factor which has greatly contributed to a growing belief in the plausibility of the phenomenon: science fiction. And not only has it made the concept more comprehensible, it has reduced the fear factor for a perpetually-fearful human imagination. According to an Associated Press poll taken in late 1997, 86% of Americans believe that intelligent life "out there" is friendly rather than hostile.

Science fiction has also managed to successfully impact the attitude of religiously-minded people toward this question. In the groundbreaking 1994 Alexander UFO Religious Crisis Survey, a key question was posed to 1000 Fathers, Pastors, and Rabbis from Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish religious bodies in the United States: "Would official confirmation of the discovery of an advanced, technologically superior extraterrestrial civilization have severe negative effects on the country's moral, social, and religious foundations?" Of the respondents, 77% said no. Asked "Would your congregation perceive any contact made with a technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilization, direct or indirect, as a threat?" 67% of the respondents said no. Only 15% said yes.

Science fiction has indeed had a profound impact on our psychology. We've come a long way since the fright of Orson Welles' 1938 broadcast of The War of the Worlds.

Since then, what have seen?

In 1950, The Flying Saucer, about an advanced human airplane.

In 1951, The Thing from Another World, opening with the American military finding a crashed saucer buried in the Arctic ice.

Also in 1951, we learned that humanity is not quite ready for what is out in space, in This Island Earth.

But the most important science fiction film of 1951 was The Day Earth Stood Still. In this film, Klaatu --the alien visitor here to investigate Earth --is shot while trying to give a gift to the President. Eventually, the military hunts down the alien and kills him, after which he is resurrected by his powerful robot, Gort.

But amongst the drama, Klaatu gives a message to a meeting of scientists gathered from around the world:

"I am leaving now. You'll forgive me if I speak bluntly. The universe grows smaller every day and the threat of aggression by one group anywhere can no longer be tolerated. There must be security for all or no one is secure. This does not mean giving up freedom, except the freedom to act irresponsibly. Your ancestors knew this when they made laws to govern themselves and hired policemen to enforce them. We of the other planets have long accepted this principle.

 

We have an organization for the mutual protection of all planets and for the complete elimination of aggression. The test of any such higher authority is of course the police force that supports it. For our policemen, we have created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets in spaceships like this one and preserve peace. In matters of aggression, we have given them complete power over us. This power cannot be revoked. At the first sign of violence, they act automatically against the aggressor. The penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk.

The result is that we live in peace without arms and armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war. Free to pursue more profitable enterprises. We do not pretend to have achieved perfection, but we do have a system and it works. I came here to give you these facts. It's no concern of ours how you run your own planet, but if you threaten to extend your violence, this Earth of yours will be reduced to a burned out cinder. Your choice is simple, join us and live in peace or pursue your present course and face obliteration.

 

We shall be waiting for your answer. The decision rests with you."

This film had a profound effect on the public's view of possible extraterrestrial visitors.

In 1953, It Came from Outer Space again referenced a crashed spaceship, this time in the American southwest.

In 1956, Forbidden Planet imagines that superior beings left behind technology to turn pure thought into action, as they left the Earth after repressed human emotions --desire, jealousy, and anger --wreak havoc.

In 1958, I Married a Monster from Outer Space presents a woman who discovers that she is married to an alien.

After a relatively slower period in science fiction feature films, a stunning film by Stanley Kubrick was released. 2001: Space Odyssey was not received well by critics, but with an advertising campaign like "The Ultimate Trip", it appealed to a new mindset.

The remarkable image that the film is remembered for is the Monolith --a device of extraterrestrial origin somehow involved in the actual early evolution of humanity. Information was alleged to be published, from various unnamed government sources, in years following the release of 2001, suggesting that there was indeed alien intervention in human evolution in our distant past, 30,000-50,000 years ago.

In 1966, perhaps the most influential series in science fiction history was presented: Star Trek. Today, Star Trek is broadcast over 200 times per day in this country alone. There are about 70 million Star Trek books in print. The most recent Star Trek feature film is still in theaters. Like many of the Star Trek feature films, its storyline speaks to the ability to influence time itself.

In hindsight, episodes of Star Trek bear striking resemblance to only-recently-uncovered aspects of the UFO phenomenon. Concepts such as time travel, the significance of thought and psychic functioning, the Prime Directive, warp propulsion, a galactic "federation", and innumerable other ideas have sprung up as parallels between fiction and emerging conjectures of reality.

Some would argue that the cause and effect have been reversed here, but that simply does not account for the overwhelmingly vast array of consistent UFO evidence from around the world, from countries without exposure to sophisticated science fiction of any kind.

Whatever its genesis, Star Trek has left an enduring legacy of a positive vision of humanity in space in the minds of countless millions of young adults, myself included.

In 1977, Steven Spielberg released the first of two ET masterpieces. Close Encounters of the Third Kind was a stunningly sophisticated account of how contact might be established between humans and visitors from above. Again, the concepts communicated in the film are strikingly parallel to many of those reported in actual witness testimony.

A few years later, the movie ET personalized the phenomenon to the level of human children.

As a frequent guest at the White House, it would be interesting to know if information was ever passed in Spielberg's direction.

Perhaps the most sophisticated space science fiction films of all time belong in the Star Wars trilogy by George Lucas. In presenting concepts such as an all-pervasive "force" subject to command through meditative intent, Lucas is, knowingly or not, directly describing what many researchers are openly proclaiming: we do indeed have powers of the mind that impact external physical reality.

Framed within drama on a galactic scale, between the forces of "light" and "dark", there are few more wondrous visions of the mystery and wonder of the Cosmos. And with the trailer now showing for the first of the next installments --the earlier three prequels --interest is rapidly spreading among the space-faring imaginations of millions. Indeed, the trailer's images spark the imagination. We may see a story told later this spring more important than we realize.

As Michael Mannion so effectively argues in his book Project Mindshift, it is overwhelming likely that as a direct result of the confrontation of American government with the reality of extraterrestrial life, some kind of very rare and fleeting seeding of knowledge is likely to have occurred between the group responsible for the UFO secret and a select few in Hollywood.
 

A Third Test, Part 1: Engineering Gravity

"Gravity. Surely this force must be capable of an experimental relation to electricity, magnetism, and other forces, so as to build it up with them in reciprocal action and equivalent effect."
--Michael Faraday (1791-1867), Laboratory Diaries

"(Gravity's) independence of the factors that affect other phenomena and its dependence only upon mass and distance suggest that its roots avoid things superficial and go down deep into the unseen, to the very essence of matter and space."
--Paul R. Heyl, Scientific Monthly, May 1954

"Since the magnetic moment and the inertial moment are combined in an atom, it may be possible to convert time-varying electromagnetic fields into time-varying gravitational fields."
--Robert L. Forward, 1963, American Journal of Physics, p. 166-170.

"The experimental method to alter the properties of the vacuum may be called vacuum engineering..... If indeed we are able to alter the vacuum, then we may encounter some new phenomena, totally unexpected."
--Nobel Laureate T.D. Lee, 1988

"In constructing our theories of gravitation, we should be wary about accepting too glibly many of the prejudices of the present scientific thinking."
--Richard Feynmann, Feynmann Lectures on Gravitation, 1995, Addison-Wesley, p. 17

"Despite its omnipresence, gravity remains the least well tested of all the fundamental forces."
--Executive Summary, Task Group On Gravity Probe B, Space Studies Board, Board On Physics And Astronomy, Commission On Physical Sciences, Mathematics, And Applications, National Research Council, Washington, D.C. 1995

"...essentially all experts believe that gravitomagnetism must exist."
--Executive Summary, Task Group On Gravity Probe B, Space Studies Board, Board On Physics And Astronomy, Commission On Physical Sciences, Mathematics, And Applications, National Research Council, Washington, D.C. 1995

"By 2020, high temperature superconductor technology could become a $240 billion industry."

--Jack E. Crow, Director National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Chemical and Engineering News, March 17, 1998, p.38

One of the most fundamental advances in the history of science would be the discovery of the means to engineer gravity. Would it astonish you to learn that open science is on the verge of such a discovery?

First, some basic questions should be answered.
 

What is gravity?

Gravity is the force of attraction between two objects, which is proportional to their masses and inversely proportional with their distance of separation. You feel gravity in the form of pressure on your butt as you sit reading this document. Either the Earth is pulling on you, or space is pushing on you, whichever way you prefer to imagine the force.

Why is gravity important to the universe?

Gravity is the basis for the rotation of the planets, the disk shape of galaxies, the speculative existence of black holes, the birth and collapse of stars, the roundness of planets and stars, the orbits of planets, moons, asteroids and galactic motion.

Why is gravity important to life?

Gravity is the cause of ocean tides, the force holding the right atmospheric density for biological life to breath, the force condensing the early Earth from gaseous protoplanetary material and dust, and the basis for calculating all satellite orbits (for technological innovations, such as weather forecasting, cellular and telephone networks, global internet communications, navigation such as global positioning systems, etc.).

Like turning a master control knob, if gravity were slowly enough adjusted to sustain life, then taller, more spindly plants and animals might arise under reduced gravity and shorter, more sturdy and squat architectures might arise under higher gravity. This slow biomorphism might lend itself over many generations to both a different shape, size and habit of life.

For example, with high gravity, land mobility becomes restricted. As an example from the rain forests, a fundamental limit on the upper canopy of tall tropical trees is their capability to maintain sufficient water pressure to reach the top leaves for continued growth. How high water can be pumped against gravity sets the cap on the tallest heights sustainable by water nutrients.

How can we detect gravity?

In our sensory world, the influence of gravity is seen readily in the fall of objects towards a bigger mass like the Earth. Thus, gravity gives a sense of up and down for human senses, or perhaps more accurately, "outward" and "inward". However for strong gravity, near a very massive object like a star or galaxy, there are some other means of detection for scientific instruments.

What influences gravity?

Gravity is a property of mass and distance. Most scientists believe that nothing other than mass and distance can influence gravity, and therefore they have long since reached the common conclusion that we are forever bound to our gravity well. Because of this presumption more than any other, we have been led to believe that extraterrestrial visitation is impossibly impractical.

What is mass?

There are two kinds of masses: gravitational mass, from the influence of accelerating forces; and inertial mass, from the persistence of or resistance to a change in motion. The strong motivator for Einstein's theory of relativity was the equivalence of inertial and gravitational mass. A simple way to understand this is through an experiment that uses a simple spring pendulum, sometimes called the Wilberforce pendulum. It was invented by the Englishman, Wilberforce, in the 1800's. To build one, simply put a block or test mass on a spring, which is hinged at the top like a grandfather clock pendulum.

Now imagine that there are three kinds of motion that this spring pendulum can undergo:

1) side-to-side motion like a stiff pendulum

2) up and down motion like a spring

3) twisting motion which pulls up and pushes down the block at the end

These three modes include examples of both gravitational and inertial mass. To understand the differences, consider doing the same experiment in the space shuttle, without the presence of gravity. The spring pendulum does not swing from side to side, because there is no gravity. The spring pendulum does however oscillate and twist in space if extended like a toy spring or 'slinky'.

This effect demonstrates inertial mass, or the resistance to changing from a stop or start without the effect of acceleration, except for the tension of the spring itself.

What is the origin of gravity?

Newton did not outline the origin of gravitational attraction, except to describe it as a kind of 'straight line' attraction between two masses. Newton's gravity traveled faster than light, since attraction was instantaneous over great stellar distances.

The triumph of this description was prediction of the elliptical orbits of the planets, including a complete explanation of Kepler's famous laws for the orbits in our solar system.

Einstein described that gravity travelling faster than the speed of light might lead to certain unresolvable experimental problems, mainly associated with what was called the 'ether' or medium for light and information to travel between stars and scientific instruments like ticking clocks.

To Einstein, gravity originated in geometry itself, a kind of 'curved line' attraction between two masses. To understand this view, just consider two ships travelling north from the equator. Although to the ship captains, the ships may appear to be moving on a straight line to the pole, the two ships will eventually meet up as if mysteriously attracted to each other like gravitational attraction. The straight line motion on a sphere, if viewed from space, is a good analogy for how space and time themselves can derive from a curved geometry.

The English physicist, Paul Dirac, solved a set of equations describing the gravitational field, and proposed what kind of particle might transmit gravitational attraction --called the graviton. Despite enormous creative energy, solutions to these gravity field equations remain scarce. One innovative approach to unifying gravity with other kinds of fields, such as electromagnetism, begins with an explanation of what mass itself might be.

The thing to remember is that the equivalence of gravitational and inertial mass (a strong motivation for Einstein) leads to a relation between the origin of mass itself and the tiny (quantum) oscillations that cannot be gotten rid of (even approaching zero temperature). These oscillations, if they are charged particles, give rise to a formulae for relating quantum forces (zero point forces) to the origin of mass and gravity itself.

The Russian Nobel Prize winner, A. Sakharov, first described what such a relation might look like for Newton's gravity. Quite simply, this picture tries to give meaning to the otherwise vague scientific description, called inertia: why does a passenger fall backwards when a bus or train begins to move forward?

How does gravity change around large and small objects?

Gravity tends to bend light around large objects, as first proposed by Einstein. A description of gravity bending space itself, as well as light, gives rise to a description of such dense and compact stellar objects that light cannot overcome the pull of gravity. These collapsed stars are called black holes.

What is a more difficult question, and what may eventually unlock the origin of gravity and mass itself, is the behavior of how gravity changes around small objects. This field is sometimes referred to as 'quantum gravity' or the study of how to reconcile gravity at a subatomic level, where quantum events and probabilities make Newton's certainty appear as probabilities. If gravity has an origin in small, quantum events, then mass itself may arise as a resonant or interference effect between closely spaced subatomic particles, which yields a net attraction from an electromagnetic origin.

Because this view of gravity is a quantum phenomenon, has a characteristic frequency, and has its foundation in oscillation of an electromagnetic source, there is the intriguing possibility that these factors may unite or unify gravity with the major forces familiar to most technologists and engineers.

It would take probably one of only three of these factors to be true (quantum scale, frequency effects or electromagnetic origins for gravity) to begin the scientific community on a bold path: to detect, engineer or predict changes in gravity in ways not previously imagined.

Why do we want to engineer gravity?

In considering this question fairly, the only implausible conclusion is outright dismissal of the premise: gravity is the law, therefore understanding its origins, causes, or consequences is not a topic to entertain. That answer is not in the spirit of any true explorer.

As Einstein himself ventured:

"Of all the communities available to us, there is not one I would want to devote myself to, except for the society of true searchers..."

The explorer wanting to understand gravity must want to travel. Gravity is a great constraint on travel, either on or off the planet. Ninety-plus percent of the mass of current chemical rockets is fuel, the majority of which is burned in the first few minutes to low altitudes.

The Saturn V rocket used to propel 95,000 pounds to the moon required a disposable mass (nearly entirely fuel) of 98.4%. During the first 9 seconds following ignition, the mass equivalent of all the payload energy (the capsule plus astronauts) was burned prior to even leaving the launchpad. Even an average large jet passenger plane carries one ton of mass (2,000 pounds) per passenger.

Although the nearest star (Proxima Centauris) is 4 light years away, the Pioneer spacecraft launched in the 1970s will not enter that star system until the year 28,000. To travel to the 15 nearest stars would require a 100 year round trip, even if 0.1 times the speed of light was possible.

In an energy economy, one person travelling would thus require the labor of a few million people to support that travel.

Even this relative kingdom for the traveler comes not without risks to the voyage. For example, travelling at 0.2 c, a collision with a mere 4 ounce micrometeorite carries the force of two Hiroshima bombs to a craft.

Clearly, overcoming the force of gravity is a necessary step if humans are ever to navigate the ocean of space.
 

Engineering Gravity

I believe there is a course to engineer gravity, just as scientific endeavors in the last two centuries have actively engineered electrical motors and powerfully driving turbines and pumps.

Human perceptions of gravity are as a pull, with its direction determined by a somewhat vague and ill-defined property called the center of mass. Based on their observation of the stars and navigation in ancient Greece, Eratosthenes and Aristarchus, proposed that the Earth must be round, but the absolute up and down direction for gravity continued to dominate European thought through the Middle Ages.

The argument presented verged on ridicule, because the prevailing view of only an up or down (and no basic concept of 'around') could not sustain any people on the opposite side of the globe. The underworld would seem to fall into deep space. The oceans would even seem to empty into space.

When confronted by the constant tug of gravity, prevailing strategies to overcome this pull lend themselves to some kind of counterforce, a push. Modern science is full of machines that levitate using air and acoustic pressure or electromagnetic and light pulses. Yet one need only recall that an astonishingly short period, less than a hundred years, have passed in the realization of Leonardo Da Vinci's sketches of human flight and the previously thwarted plans for overcoming gravity through strategic use of air pressure. While arguably the basis for the global energy economy and transportation web, counterforces do not reach beyond rocketry or helicopters to the basis for gravity and propulsion itself.

A cursory view of gravity treats this singular force as immutable and constant. The precise position of the stars themselves and even the narrow biological limits for life to develop in the universe seem to hinge on gravity not ever wavering.

The intuitive link was compelling enough that the great astronomer, Johannes Kepler wrongly proposed that the gravitational pull of planetary motion was fundamentally magnetic:

"...all the manifold movements are carried out by means of a single, quite simple magnetic force, as in the case of a clockwork (where) all motions (are caused) by a simple weight."

In this spirit of analogy and experiment, the engineering of electricity created the industrial revolution. Familiar electrical and magnetic motors have not spawned a parallel engineering of gravity. Unlike the electrical revolution in this century, no comparable gravitational revolution has allowed mechanical innovation. No obvious prescriptions have developed for gravity modification. Gravity remains bendable only in the realm of large stars or enormous speeds. The next revolution in space travel, power generation and long-distance communication, all may well hinge on this generation's capability to engineer gravity.

Among all the physical forces, gravity and inertia remain omnipresent, but reported almost exclusively as a body of descriptions. In the hunt to unveil the source of gravity, one must keep a close eye for very large and very small numbers. These extremes of nature are the first clues for how one might get a real handle on modifying gravity, primarily because gravity seems to dwell amidst large and small numbers itself.

In a laboratory, changes in gravity seem very small, infinitesimal in fact, over the distances from floor to ceiling. Typically, an experiment must appeal to very high speeds or very huge masses to see a noticeable change in gravity. But in the universe of billions of stars, changes in gravity seem very large, enormous in fact, over the distances measured in millions of light years when a star explodes or collapses. In the universe, the masses of entire stars like the Sun can redistribute themselves with the flash of light from a supernova.

This large and small scale of gravity serves as an important clue to its unveiling. However large or small, it must remain finite, never actually going to zero. Because gravity cannot arbitrarily be turned up or down like a knob or switch, then other competing influences of gravity that might tend to zero become significant candidates for modifying gravity's effects.

No matter how strict the requirements for modifying gravity, whether an apparent physical barrier like the constant speed of light or an engineering barrier like large or dense masses, a "true zero in nature" ultimately is the trump card in the deck. For whatever the numbers for engineering or physical barriers, they remain finite, while dividing by a zero is fundamentally infinite. The search for a true zero in nature is the first clue.

The special case in superconductivity, for which this century has recognized seven Nobel Laureates, is one of those rare cases of a true zero in nature. Superconductivity is self-perpetuating motion of electrons. Once launched under cold or cryogenic conditions, the electricity never dissipates or decays.

This 'real zero' forces a reconsideration of how gravity and electromagnetism can be approached in the laboratory and not just in the realm of colossal stars, near the speed of light, or science fiction.

The second clue is to look at other forces which might couple to gravity. This coupling, whether between electromagnetism or nuclear forces, is not an easy unification to achieve. The multiplicity of forces in the universe seem not to match well with gravity, as the history of science has played out in a series of probative experiments. A link between electromagnetic motors and any kind of proposed gravitational engine began with the British physicist, Michael Faraday, and his laboratory notebooks.

This century of physics has taken its calling from several generations of scientists who sought to engineer the workings of atoms as quantum steps and to this day, still hold out the elusive goal of unifying electricity and gravity. Just as the current energy and information economy relies finally on plugging a device into a power source, drawing either AC current from the wall socket or DC current from a battery, no comparable equivalent to AC gravity exists to balance what is the constant pull of DC gravity. We feel the pull, but cannot push back except through elaborate strategies based on air or acoustic pressure and electromagnetic or light pulses.

A plausible case can be presented for understanding the boundaries of what AC gravity, or gravity modification, might look like. There is also now a factual account of experimental data and consistent explanations based on what little open science currently can claim to understand about either quantum effects on gravity or the coupling between electromagnetism and gravity.
 

The Finish Experiments

Experiments with rotating superconductors in high-frequency electromagnetic fields have reported anomalous effects on weight measurements (Podkletnov, 1992). The experimental conditions are complex, but for large (>30 cm) diameter, bilayer superconducting disks, rotation introduces a frequency dependence in both the excitation field (2-10 MHz) and in the rotation frequency (linear to ~5000 revolutions per minute, rpm).

The experimental sequence introduces a resistive current, then levitates magnetically the disk under the influence of a low-frequency (60 Hz levitation field) and a high frequency RF (2-10 MHz) modulation. For a three-phase AC field (>150 Watts), the disk rotates without significant friction or flux pinning.

A reduction in the force of gravity of up to approximately 2% was observed.
 

Status Report on Independent Replication

While not yet in scientific print, the author has access to groups conducting independent replications of the original Podkletnov experiments.

An interim report from one such source is provided below.

Gravitometer Results to Date

The hypothesis to test is not only whether a gravitational anomaly is detectable above ceramic superconductors, but also to explore the nature of that anomaly, in particular how it depends on distance, superconducting state, and its relative changes upon electromagnetic variation both in the environment and the superconductor.

This path differs from the exploration undertaken by the Finnish group which measured large changes in gravity (peak value, 2.1%) above a particular two-layer superconductor of large diameter. The instruments reported included a pressure detecting barometer and an optoelectronic balance. The balance scale had a counterweight which could be any variety of non-magnetic material and the opposite side of the pulley rested on a spring mechanism common to standard balances.

Three peculiarities feature in these observations in addition to the measurement of gravity change alone. First, a fall in gravity which showed little or no distance dependence (one part in 1000) over a relatively large height (3 m). By comparison any purely gravitational effect or electromagnetic artifact would have diminished by a factor of 100 to 1000 over this distance (from floor to ceiling).

The speculative aspect of this finding is that by definition, such a reading virtually eliminates the presence of artifacts (other than a systematic error) since most thermal or electromagnetic interferences would not have this slow decay with distance. The less understandable aspect of this finding is that this same slow decay does not fit any standard view of how gravity either might be shielded or how a gravitomagnetic counterforce might be generated. All gravitomagnetic forces would diminish according to the standard inverse square distance law.

Second, a fall in gravity appeared to have a cylindrical boundary centered on the disk itself, rather than a conical volume with a point of diminishment along the lines of sight for any force distributed from the much larger projection of the Earth's mass. The conical shape or at least a parabloid should appear for any ordinary models that might be constructed for how a gravity shield might work. This tapered shape is the result of summing all the mass of the Earth, which should have angular components that erode the boundaries of any apparent field from the sides due to mass "in the line of sight" from the horizon of the earth.

Thirdly, the gravity signal was not apparently steady, but fluctuating both with the type of electromagnetic sources applied to the superconductor and the speed of rotation of the superconductor. A peak in gravity change corresponded with maximum deceleration of the disk rotation and with particular frequency values for the excitatory field.

This time dependence is at least comprehensible for a gravitomagnetic source, since an alternating (sinusoidal) current for either mass or electric currents is a requirement for variation in observed gravity. The influence of rotation is a complex geometry problem except with perhaps unrealistic simplification. The introduction of torsion or rotational effects in general relativity is a current challenge in astrophysics, as in this case.

In summary, the test instrument should measure at least three simultaneous values in any experiment, the field decay with space and time and its corresponding 3-dimensional boundaries. The precision of the original experiments was reported to 2 significant figures, but relative to the background force from the Earth's gravity, represent one part variation per 10,000 (0.1 milli-G, where G is the acceleration of gravity, 32 feet per second, or 9.8 meters per second).

The gravimeter reported in the present configuration, by contrast, measures one part variation in 10 billion (0.1 nano-G), and in addition eliminates a host of competing possible artifacts, such as thermal and electromagnetic variations. The gravimeter is actively temperature controlled at approximately 50 C, thus removing any buoyancy or thermal convective influence on the test mass.

Most amateur experiments in this field are not actively temperature controlled and thus subject to the column of heavy air above a cold superconductor and liquid nitrogen vapors. This colder air is heavier that its warmer surroundings and thus more dense. The denser air would make a suspended object appear lighter above a superconductor. Thermal effects in the Finnish experiment however were controlled by test runs conducted in a vacuum chamber, along with the mysteriously long distance for force decay that no thermal source could account for.

The importance of controlling electromagnetic artifacts may be less obvious. Rapidly fluctuating electromagnetic stimulation would tend to create complex fields and a version of some electrostatic suspension or inductive effects on the surrounding air and test mass. The requirements for time-varying fields is well-known to produce levitation of conducting objects, such as eddy currents. Electromagnetic artifacts are removed in the gravimeter, however, by shielding the test mass using a highly magnetic plate, called mu metal, that provides not a shield of electromagetism but instead shunts the magnetic field lines away from any influence on the test mass.

To date, successful gravity measurements on the superconductors have ranged in magnitude from 1-3 parts per million, a much smaller values than the original Finish experiment. However, this variation is not part of a replication for conditions precisely similar to the Finish experiment, with its high speed rotation of superconductors and the very high power levels used.

The magnitude of gravity variation observed is comparable however to a large change in potential energy, such as might be induced by masses far bigger than the actual superconducting disk. No current explanation exists for why the gravity readings are apparently time-varying (such as brief pulses or spikes) and much work continues to examine the absolute precision and reproducibility for each case: both when the superconductor passes through its temperature transition to normal conductivity and when input electrical contacts are added as alternating current of different frequency.

In conclusion, the preliminary results of this ongoing experiment are cautiously encouraging, principally when one considers the inherent complexity of the setup and the potential for previously unforeseen artifacts contributing to any gravitational anomaly."
 

Breaking Through the Barrier

Three apparent coincidences brew an anomaly. For gravity changes above a superconductor, the significant points are a reported change in weight (0.2-2.1%) of test masses made of different materials, including wood, plastic and silica glass, and a spectacular peak in the gravity signal precisely at the point at which the superconductor begins to manifest quantum effects.

This correspondence is invitingly characteristic of a gravitational instability arising from atomic or sub-atomic behavior. A significant frequency reported in gravity observations is a peak modification (2-5 MHz) at or near the reverse Josephson frequency (3.6 MHz). This relatively narrow frequency band is not dissimilar to what the Sakharov condition predicts for a resonant effect with Newton's gravitational constant (particularly when reconciled with the size of the observed universe, or Hubble constant).

Finally, this experimental case has been subjected to a consistency check with the equations of quantum gravity and proposed as initial evidence for a gravitational instability.

Taken as a group, these considerations particularly sum up overlapping and independent calculations for a gravity frequency. If only one method is correct among the scenarios here proposed, then a realizable method of gravity modification may exist. That is the natural and proper science-speak concerning only one of several remarkable and as-yet privately reported observations.

But based upon what I have seen, I would say this: Gravity modification has been demonstrated. I have seen the experimental apparatus myself. It is in operation in several labs around the world and at one of the most reputable government organizations in the United States.

It's implication is simple and utterly profound: gravity is subject to engineering, and we must dispense with 100% of our scientific predispositions against the possibility of interstellar travel and, by direct implication, extraterrestrial visitation.

What does this really mean? Take Frank Drake's famous equation and equip the calculated number ofadvanced civilizations with the means for gravity propulsion. What does this yield?

Precisely the kind of UFO phenomenon we observe.
 

A Third Test, Part 2: Overunity Energy

A continuing search for alternatives to fossil and nuclear fuels as energy sources has intensified over the past few years. This search includes a national commitment of several billion dollars to develop high-energy ("hot") fusion, still controversial in the physics community as to probable success. Complementing this are the so-called renewable energy resources, such as solar and wind energy alternatives that have been under development for several years.

A recent addition to this list, which looks exceptionally promising once viable engineering embodiments can be developed, are environmentally-benign, zero-point energy (ZPE) sources.

The ZPE alternative derives from the fact that quantum theory predicts, and experiments verify, that so-called "empty space" is not truly empty, but rather contains an enormous background of residual electromagnetic energy known as quantum zero-point energy (ZPE). The energy density of this untapped reservoir is conservatively estimated to be on the order of nuclear energy densities or greater. If the ZPE can be "mined" for practical use, it would constitute a virtually ubiquitous energy supply, a veritable "Holy Grail" energy source.

As utopian as such a possibility may seem, proof-of-principle has been demonstrated in the scientific literature. The most-discussed approach exploits a phenomenon called the Casimir Effect, an attractive quantum force between closely-spaced metal plates, named for its discoverer, H. G. B. Casimir of Philips Laboratories in the Netherlands.

The Casimir force, recently measured with high accuracy, derives from partial shielding of the interior region of the plates from the background zero-point fluctuations of the vacuum electromagnetic field. This shielding results in the plates being pushed together by the unbalanced ZPE radiation pressures. The result is a corollary conversion of vacuum energy to some other form such as heat. Proof that such a process violates neither energy nor thermodynamic constraints can be found in the literature as well.

Attempts to harness the Casimir and related effects for vacuum energy conversion are ongoing in laboratories around the globe. Even the U.S. Air Force has considered this possibility as an energy source for propulsion, as can be seen in its request for proposals for the FY-1986 Defense SBIR Program.

Under entry AF86-77, Air Force Rocket Propulsion Laboratory (AFRPL) Topic: Non-Conventional Propulsion Concepts we find the statement:

"Bold, new non-conventional propulsion concepts are solicited.... The specific areas in which AFRPL is interested include.... (6) Esoteric energy sources for propulsion including the zero point quantum dynamic energy of vacuum space."

Four approaches to ZPE energy extraction have been identified to date. An early one of interest is based on the idea of a Casimir pinch effect in non-neutral plasmas, basically a plasma equivalent of the Casimir plate-collapse effect.

A patent issued on this process contains the descriptive phrase,

"... energy is provided... and the ultimate source of this energy appears to be the zero-point radiation of the vacuum continuum".

Another intriguing possibility is provided by the phenomenon of sonoluminescence, bubble collapse in an ultrasonically-driven fluid which is accompanied by intense, sub-nanosecond light radiation. Although the mechanism of light generation has yet to be determined, Nobelist Julian Schwinger has argued for a Casimir interpretation.

Yet another approach for ZPE extraction is described in a recent patent which proposes use of resonant dielectric spheres, slightly detuned from each other, to provide a beat-frequency downshift of the more energetic high-frequency components of the ZPE to a more easily captured form.

Finally, an approach utilizing micro-cavity techniques to perturb the ground state stability of atomic hydrogen is under consideration. It is based on the concept that the nonradiative nature of the atomic ground state derives from a dynamic equilibrium process in which radiation emitted due to accelerated electron ground state motion is compensated by absorption from the ZPE.

Under this model there exists the potential for energy generation by the application of the techniques of so-called cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED). In standard cavity QED, excited atoms are passed through Casimir-like cavities whose structure suppresses electromagnetic cavity modes at the atom's transition frequency between excited and ground states. The result is that the so-called "spontaneous" emission time, being driven by vacuum fluctuations is lengthened considerably. In its application to energy generation, mode suppression would be used to perturb the hypothesized dynamic ground-state absorption/emission balance to lead to energy release.

We will soon know which of these remarkable ideas will be most effectively engineerable.
 

A Third Test, Part 3: Powers of the Mind

"The psyche's attachment to the brain, i.e. its space-time limitation, is no longer self-evident and incontrovertible as we have hitherto been led to believe... It is not only permissible to doubt the absolute validity of space-time perception; it is, in view of the available facts, even imperative to do so."
--Carl Jung

"When a scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; when he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
--Arthur C. Clarke

There is now conclusive proof in well-executed scientific studies demonstrating the ability of human intention to directly impact certain types of complex physical systems, such as random number generators. The implication of this is that consciousness can influence space-time directly and at a distance spatially and temporally.

I believe the single most important book ever written on this subject was published in 1997 by Dean Radin, Ph.D., titled The Conscious Universe. It is a stunning book.

Quoting from the introduction...

"The eventual scientific acceptance of psychic phenomena is inevitable. The origins of acceptance are already brewing through the persuasive weight of the laboratory evidence. Converging theoretical developments from many disciplines are offering glimpses at ways of understanding how psi works. There are explorations of psi effects by major industrial labs, evaluation of claims of psychic healing by the Office of Alternative Medicine of the National Institutes for Health, and articles about psi research appearing in the "serious" media.

As acceptance grows, the implications of psi will become more apparent. But we already knowthat these phenomena present profound challenges to many aspects of science, philosophy, and religion. These challenges will nudge scientists to reconsider basic assumptions about space, time, mind, and matter. Philosophers will rekindle the perennial debates over the role of consciousness in the physical world. Theologians will reconsider the concept of divine intervention, as some phenomena previously considered to be miracles will probably become subject to scientific understanding.

Theses reconsiderations are long overdue. An exclusive focus on what might be called "the outer world" has led to a grievous split between the private world of human experience and the public world as described by science. In particular, science has provided little understanding of profoundly important human concepts like hope and meaning. The split between the objective and the subjective has in the past been dismissed as a nonproblem, or as a problem belonging to religion and not to science.

But this split has also led to major technological blunders, and a rising popular antagonism toward science. This is a pity, because scientific methods are exceptionally powerful tools for overcoming personal biases and building workable models of the "truth". There is every reason to expect that the same methods that gave us a better understanding of galaxies and genes will also shed light on experiences described by mystics throughout history."

One of the best individual reports discussed in the book was published by the Journal for Scientific Exploration. I would encourage you to subscribe to this excellent, mind expanding, and rigorous publication.

In the report, conducted by the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research team at Princeton University, statistically significant psychic-to-physical effects have been reported arising from pre-stated human intention alone, throughout studies conducted over a 12-year period.

Here is the abstract...

"Strong correlations between output distribution means of a variety of random binary processes and pre-stated intentions of some 100 individual human operators have been established over a 12-year experimental program. More than 1000 experimental series, employing four different categories of random devices and several distinctive protocols, show comparable magnitudes of anomalous mean shifts from chance expectation, with similar distribution structures. Although the absolute effect sizes are quite small, of the order of 10e-4 bits deviation per bit processed, over the huge databases accumulated the composite effect exceeds 7 o (p = 3.5 x 10e^-13).

 

These data display significant disparities between female and male operator performances, and consistent serial position effects in individual and collective results. Data generated by operators far removed from the machines and exerting their efforts at times other than those of machine operation show similar effect sizes and structural details to those of the local, on-time experiments. Most other secondary parameters tested are found to have little effect on the scale and character of the results, with one important exception: studies performed using fully deterministic pseudorandom sources, either hard-wired or algorithmic, yield null overall mean shifts, and display no other anomalous features."

Or consider another abstract regarding psychic studies over 10 years conducted by the Stanford Research Institute in Palo Alto, CA, as disclosed by the CIA in July 1995.

"In July 1995 the CIA declassified, and approved for release, documents revealing its sponsorship in the 1970s of a program at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, to determine whether such phenomena as remote viewing "might have any utility for intelligence collection". Thus began disclosure to the public of a two-decade-plus involvement of the intelligence community in the investigation of so-called parapsychological or psi phenomena. Presented here by the program's Founder and first Director (1972-1985) is the early history of the program, including discussion of some of the first, now declassified, results that drove early interest."

And...

"Research on psychic functioning, conducted over a two decade period, is examined to determine whether or not the phenomenon has been scientifically established. A secondary question is whether or not it is usefu l for government purposes. The primary work examined in this report was government sponsored research conducted at Stanford Research Institute, later known as SRI International, and at Science Applications International Corporation, known as SAIC.

Using the standards applied to any other area of science, it is concluded that psychic functioning has been well established. The statistical results of the studies examined are far beyond what is expected by chance. Arguments that these results could be due to methodological flaws in the experiments are soundly refuted. Effects of similar magnitude to those found in government-sponsored research at SRI and SAIC have been replicated at a number of laboratories across the world. Such consistency cannot be readily explained by claims of flaws or fraud.

The magnitude of psychic functioning exhibited appears to be in the range between what social scientists call a small and medium effect. That means that it is reliable enough to be replicated in properly conducted experiments, with sufficient trials to achieve the long-run statistical results needed for replicability.

A number of other patterns have been found, suggestive of how to conduct more productive experiments and applied psychic functioning. For instance, it doesn't appear that a sender is needed. Precognition, in which the answer is known to no one until a future time, appears to work quite well. Recent experiments suggest that if there is a psychic sense then it works much like our other five senses, by detecting change. Given that physicists are currently grappling with an understanding of time, it may be that a psychic sense exists that scans the future for major change, much as our eyes scan the environment for visual change or our ears allow us to respond to sudden changes in sound.

It is recommended that future experiments focus on understanding how this phenomenon works, and on how to make it as useful as possible. There is little benefit to continuing experiments designed to offer proof, since there is little more to be offered to anyone who does not accept the current collection of data."

Most scientists ignore these studies and hundreds of other similar research initiatives. Most scientists are very wrong. They are ignoring one of the most important realms of science that will emerge in the third millennium.

How is "magic" like psi possible? Almost all the candidate theories point towards one of two possibilities. The first is some kind of information communication backward and forward in time, compatible with the Feynmann view of "advanced" and "retarded" electromagnetic waves. In this view, the mind is able to somehow tap and information field outside of the "present moment". The second category of theories point towards the stunning, mysterious but verified characteristic of "quantum mechanics" known as non-locality. Some theories even combine the two approaches.

From The Conscious Universe...

"One of the most shocking events in twentieth-century science – an event so outrageous that its repercussions are still barely understood – was quantum theory's prediction and subsequent verification of non-locality. This idea challenged the long-held classical assumptions that objects separated in space are strictly isolated. Instead, non-locality shows that physical objects that appear to be separate are really connected in ways that transcend the limits of space and time. This may seem like a stark violation of common sense, but that is what the theory predicts and the experiments show.

At the leading edge of science we see the undeniable fact staring us in the face that the Cosmos itself may possess a certain form of consciousness – at the very least that the potential energy that pervades the Cosmos is directly responsive to conscious intent at arbitrary distance in space and time.

These are stunningly significant discoveries. They deserve reams of coverage across the media. They foretell a fundamental revolution in our comprehension of the role of consciousness in the Cosmos. For modern scientists to institutionally reject such assertions is a sign of how deep and complete the fundamental disconnection within science between experience and fact, between meaning and truth. The culture of science has raised a generation of skeptics who look at new and anomalous data and, considering 100% of it emotional or imagined fantasy, summarily conclude that the concepts are "spooky" and worthy of derision. Indeed, such concepts are spooky, as now-accepted phenomena in quantum mechanics were also once believed to be. These concepts are considered mystical only because we do not understand them fully at this time, but at the core of them we will find profound truths that will soon completely revolutionize science.

The experiments described above are definitive. There is an undeniable power of the mind to directly influence the "random" substrate of the Cosmos. What would such a capability mean when cultivated through a million years of evolution beyond homo sapiens? Can it be enhanced through genetic engineering? Could the oft-repeated spiritual admonition to "believe sufficiently and you will move mountains" be ground in emerging scientific fact as well?

Those who have encountered our visitors first hand uniformly report telepathic communication.
 

A Fourth Test: Saving the Environment

In my opinion, the most courageous, wise, and ethical human beings on Earth are those who volunteer their time in the service of their world and their fellow humans. These people are also some of the happiest people in society today. For in service of the Earth, they have unlocked a great secret: Earth serves back.

Since the Apollo space missions and publishing of Silent Spring, an awakening sense of our unity with nature has caught hold in the hearts of people all over the world. What have they done to forward the cause of restoring the health of Gaia?

These wonderful organizations speak for themselves...

Sierra Club Greenpeace National Audobon Society Nature Conservancy World Wildlife Fund Environmental Defense Fund National Wildlife Federation Wildernes Society League of Conservation Voters Worldwatch Institute Natural Resources Defense Council Rainforest Action Network Surfrider Foundation Earth Island Institute Earthwatch Institute Union of Concerned Scientists Friends of the Earth

Join one and act!
 

A Fifth Test: Emergence of Species Mind

See if you can guess who wrote this article...

"The real heart of the matter of selection, however, goes deeper than a lag in the adoption of mechanisms by libraries, or a lack of development of devices for their use. Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing. When data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. It can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having found one item, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path.

The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature.

Man cannot hope fully to duplicate this mental process artificially, but he certainly ought to be able to learn from it. In minor ways he may even improve, for his records have relative permanency. The first idea, however, to be drawn from the analogy concerns selection. Selection by association, rather than indexing, may yet be mechanized. One cannot hope thus to equal the speed and flexibility with which the mind follows an associative trail, but it should be possible to beat the mind decisively in regard to the permanence and clarity of the items resurrected from storage.

Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library. It needs a name, and, to coin one at random, "memex" will do. A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.

It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading. There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers. Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.

In one end is the stored material. The matter of bulk is well taken care of by improved microfilm. Only a small part of the interior of the memex is devoted to storage, the rest to mechanism. Yet if the user inserted 5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill the repository, so he can be profligate and enter material freely.

Most of the memex contents are purchased on microfilm ready for insertion. Books of all sorts, pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus obtained and dropped into place. Business correspondence takes the same path. And there is provision for direct entry. On the top of the memex is a transparent plate. On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, all sorts of things. When one is in place, the depression of a lever causes it to be photographed onto the next blank space in a section of the memex film, dry photography being employed.

There is, of course, provision for consultation of the record by the usual scheme of indexing. If the user wishes to consult a certain book, he taps its code on the keyboard, and the title page of the book promptly appears before him, projected onto one of his viewing positions. Frequently-used codes are mnemonic, so that he seldom consults his code book; but when he does, a single tap of a key projects it for his use. Moreover, he has supplemental levers.

 

On deflecting one of these levers to the right he runs through the book before him, each page in turn being projected at a speed which just allows a recognizing glance at each. If he deflects it further to the right, he steps through the book 10 pages at a time; still further at 100 pages at a time. Deflection to the left gives him the same control backwards.

A special button transfers him immediately to the first page of the index. Any given book of his library can thus be called up and consulted with far greater facility than if it were taken from a shelf. As he has several projection positions, he can leave one item in position while he calls up another. He can add marginal notes and comments, taking advantage of one possible type of dry photography, and it could even be arranged so that he can do this by a stylus scheme, such as is now employed in the telautograph seen in railroad waiting rooms, just as though he had the physical page before him.

All this is conventional, except for the projection forward of present-day mechanisms and gadgetry. It affords an immediate step, however, to associative indexing, the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another. This is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing.

When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. At the bottom of each there are a number of blank code spaces, and a pointer is set to indicate one of these on each item. The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined. In each code space appears the code word. Out of view, but also in the code space, is inserted a set of dots for photocell viewing; and on each item these dots by their positions designate the index number of the other item.

Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space. Moreover, when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn, rapidly or slowly, by deflecting a lever like that used for turning the pages of a book. It is exactly as though the physical items had been gathered together from widely separated sources and bound together to form a new book. It is more than this, for any item can be joined into numerous trails.

The owner of the memex, let us say, is interested in the origin and properties of the bow and arrow. Specifically he is studying why the short Turkish bow was apparently superior to the English long bow in the skirmishes of the Crusades. He has dozens of possibly pertinent books and articles in his memex. First he runs through an encyclopedia, finds an interesting but sketchy article, leaves it projected. Next, in a history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the two together. Thus he goes, building a trail of many items.

 

Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either linking it into the main trail or joining it by a side trail to a particular item. When it becomes evident that the elastic properties of available materials had a great deal to do with the bow, he branches off on a side trail which takes him through textbooks on elasticity and tables of physical constants. He inserts a page of longhand analysis of his own. Thus he builds a trail of his interest through the maze of materials available to him.

And his trails do not fade. Several years later, his talk with a friend turns to the queer ways in which a people resist innovations, even of vital interest. He has an example, in the fact that the outraged Europeans still failed to adopt the Turkish bow. In fact he has a trail on it. A touch brings up the code book. Tapping a few keys projects the head of the trail. A lever runs through it at will, stopping at interesting items, going off on side excursions. It is an interesting trail, pertinent to the discussion. So he sets a reproducer in action, photographs the whole trail out, and passes it to his friend for insertion in his own memex, there to be linked into the more general trail.

Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities.

 

The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client's interest. The physician, puzzled by a patient's reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. The chemist, struggling with the synthesis of an organic compound, has all the chemical literature before him in his laboratory, with trails following the analogies of compounds, and side trails to their physical and chemical behavior.

The historian, with a vast chronological account of a people, parallels it with a skip trail which stops only on the salient items, and can follow at any time contemporary trails which lead him all over civilization at a particular epoch. There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record. The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world's record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected.

Thus science may implement the ways in which man produces, stores, and consults the record of the race. It might be striking to outline the instrumentalities of the future more spectacularly, rather than to stick closely to methods and elements now known and undergoing rapid development, as has been done here.

 

Technical difficulties of all sorts have been ignored, certainly, but also ignored are means as yet unknown which may come any day to accelerate technical progress as violently as did the advent of the thermionic tube. In order that the picture may not be too commonplace, by reason of sticking to present-day patterns, it may be well to mention one such possibility, not to prophesy but merely to suggest, for prophecy based on extension of the known has substance, while prophecy founded on the unknown is only a doubly involved guess.

All our steps in creating or absorbing material of the record proceed through one of the senses --the tactile when we touch keys, the oral when we speak or listen, the visual when we read. Is it not possible that some day the path may be established more directly?

We know that when the eye sees, all the consequent information is transmitted to the brain by means of electrical vibrations in the channel of the optic nerve. This is an exact analogy with the electrical vibrations which occur in the cable of a television set: they convey the picture from the photocells which see it to the radio transmitter from which it is broadcast. We know further that if we can approach that cable with the proper instruments, we do not need to touch it; we can pick up those vibrations by electrical induction and thus discover and reproduce the scene which is being transmitted, just as a telephone wire may be tapped for its message.

The impulses which flow in the arm nerves of a typist convey to her fingers the translated information which reaches her eye or ear, in order that the fingers may be caused to strike the proper keys. Might not these currents be intercepted, either in the original form in which information is conveyed to the brain, or in the marvelously metamorphosed form in which they then proceed to the hand?

By bone conduction we already introduce sounds: into the nerve channels of the deaf in order that they may hear. Is it not possible that we may learn to introduce them without the present cumbersomeness of first transforming electrical vibrations to mechanical ones, which the human mechanism promptly transforms back to the electrical form?

 

With a couple of electrodes on the skull the encephalograph now produces pen-and-ink traces which bear some relation to the electrical phenomena going on in the brain itself. True, the record is unintelligible, except as it points out certain gross misfunctioning of the cerebral mechanism; but who would now place bounds on where such a thing may lead?

In the outside world, all forms of intelligence whether of sound or sight, have been reduced to the form of varying currents in an electric circuit in order that they may be transmitted. Inside the human frame exactly the same sort of process occurs. Must we always transform to mechanical movements in order to proceed from one electrical phenomenon to another? It is a suggestive thought, but it hardly warrants prediction without losing touch with reality and immediateness.

Presumably man's spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems. He has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his records more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion and not merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited memory. His excursions may be more enjoyable if he can reacquire the privilege of forgetting the manifold things he does not need to have immediately at hand, with some assurance that he can find them again if they prove important.

The applications of science have built man a well-supplied house, and are teaching him to live healthily therein. They have enabled him to throw masses of people against one another with cruel weapons. They may yet allow him truly to encompass the great record and to grow in the wisdom of race experience. He may perish in conflict before he learns to wield that record for his true good.

 

Yet, in the application of science to the needs and desires of man, it would seem to be a singularly unfortunate stage at which to terminate the process, or to lose hope as to the outcome."

In the idea of the "Memex", Dr. Vannevar Bush, Ph.D., Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development Agency and later Chairman of the alleged Majestic-12, gave birth to a precise and beautifully prescient vision of the Internet. In his 1945 article in the Atlantic Monthly titled "As We May Think", Dr. Bush correctly set forth a clear vision for technology inventions that would fundamentally advance the knowledge and sophistication of human beings.

He described the ultimate advancement, enabling humanity to accelerate the acquisition of knowledge, equipping every human being with an electronic library accessing the complete store of human knowledge, constructed on associative links exactly like the human brain.

His vision for the public was realized 5 years ago. Since 1993, the Internet has risen to become a literal mind in and of itself --the mind of humanity. The Web browser is your personal portal with a view into the first global library built by the human animals on Earth, the Internet.

The Internet is not only our library. Today it is a circulatory system for knowledge, dialog, passion, hate, agreement, law, decision, news, services, products, and money. It will ultimately carry every telephone conversation and every broadcast program.

In the end, the Internet accomplishes three things:

• Provides all human knowledge to everyone with access

• Establishes the first mechanism enabling us to ensure that knowledge can be preserved over time with high fidelity

• Democratizes and speeds the flow of information

One day the Internet will become a voting booth for every citizen, a chapel for every faith, a classroom for every child, and perhaps even a connection back to our common heritage, as we venture into the depths of space.

Now, consider this idea: what if we could connect our Internet to the equivalent knowledge system of our visitors? What wonders would we then learn? Such a concept has never been possible, until now.
 

A Sixth Test: Reunification of Science and Spirituality

Throughout the centuries since the time of Christ, Christian churches have guided hundreds of millions of people along an evolving path of faith. The most prominent of Christian faiths, the Roman Catholic Church, has felt the teachings of numerous important theologians: St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, Popes Leo XIII and John XXIII among others, who have shaped the faith and thought of the Church.

In the life span of the most recent generation, Pope John Paul II has been a powerful voice for Catholics worldwide calling for social justice in the capitalist system, the fall of communism and conformity in doctrinal matters.

In late 1998, in perhaps his most powerful statement to date, Fides et Ratio, Pope John Paul II calls for reconciliation between faith and reason to promote a rebirth of humanity as we head into the third millennium.

"Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth -in a word, to know himself -so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves"

(cf. Ex 33:18; Ps 27:8-9; 63:2-3; Jn 14:8; 1 Jn 3:2).

"This is why I have felt both the need and the duty to address this theme so that, on the threshold of the third millennium of the Christian era, humanity may come to a clearer sense of the great resources with which it has been endowed and may commit itself with renewed courage to implement the plan of salvation of which its history is part."

A constant theme of Christianity, every moment is a time to rejoice in the love of Christ and not for despair and nihilism. Yet, as we stand at a time of greater change than ever before, society seems unable to articulate a vision for the future, which can give meaning to today’s youth and provide the foundation for tomorrow.

I too believe it is through the detachment of faith and reason that society and culture have lost the universal truths which give meaning to life.

"One of the most significant aspects of our current situation, it should be noted, is the 'crisis of meaning'. Perspectives on life and the world, often of a scientific temper, have so proliferated that we face an increasing fragmentation of knowledge. This makes the search for meaning difficult and often fruitless. Indeed, still more dramatically, in this maelstrom of data and facts in which we live and which seem to comprise the very fabric of life, many people wonder whether it still makes sense to ask about meaning. The array of theories which vie to give an answer, and the different ways of viewing and of interpreting the world and human life, serve only to aggravate this radical doubt, which can easily lead to skepticism, indifference or to various forms of nihilism."

"These considerations prompt a first conclusion: the truth made known to us by Revelation is neither the product nor the consummation of an argument devised by human reason. It appears instead as something gratuitous, which itself stirs thought and seeks acceptance as an expression of love. This revealed truth is set within our history as an anticipation of that ultimate and definitive vision of God which is reserved for those who believe in him and seek him with a sincere heart. The ultimate purpose of personal existence, then, is the theme of philosophy and theology alike. For all their difference of method and content, both disciplines point to that "path of life" (Ps 16:11) which, as faith tells us, leads in the end to the full and lasting joy of the contemplation of the Triune God."

The search for truth is intrinsic in every man, woman, child, society, science, culture and religion. It is through this common pursuit that we arrive at meaning in our lives. Reason gives order to thought and to man's understanding of existence.

With the Pope's statement, the Church has officially recognized this and moves to support rationality alongside faith.

"On her part, the Church cannot but set great value upon reason's drive to attain goals which render people's lives ever more worthy. She sees in philosophy the way to come to know fundamental truths about human life. At the same time, the Church considers philosophy an indispensable help for a deeper understanding of faith and for communicating the truth of the Gospel to those who do not yet know."

Reason allows humans to discuss matters of faith in the context of universal truths, which, if the hypothesis of this book is true, can unite countless major cultures and religions.

Without reason, we have little common ground to discuss and agree upon the universal truths that shape human consciousness.

"Philosophy's powerful influence on the formation and development of the cultures of the West should not obscure the influence it has also had upon the ways of understanding existence found in the East. Every people has its own native and seminal wisdom which, as a true cultural treasure, tends to find voice and develop in forms which are genuinely philosophical. One example of this is the basic form of philosophical knowledge which is evident to this day in the postulates which inspire national and international legal systems in regulating the life."

Reason alone, however, cannot answer all of the mysteries of life. It is more commonly intuition that allows us to pierce the veil of truth into meaning.

As has always been the case for the humble and true Christian, it is through living love and freely returning that love that we begin to know more deeply the mysteries of life.

"This means that they acknowledge fully and integrally the truth of what is revealed because it is God himself who is the guarantor of that truth. They can make no claim upon this truth which comes to them as gift and which, set within the context of interpersonal communication, urges reason to be open to it and to embrace its profound meaning. This is why the Church has always considered the act of entrusting oneself to God to be a moment of fundamental decision which engages the whole person. In that act, the intellect and the will display their spiritual nature, enabling the subject to act in a way which realizes personal freedom to the full."

Thus, it is through faith that we realize the potential in our free will, and reach meaning in the truth we understand.

"Men and women can accomplish no more important act in their lives than the act of faith; it is here that freedom reaches the certainty of truth and chooses to live in that truth."

One without the other can result in an equally disturbing emptiness. Reason without faith brings nihilism, while faith without reason is mythology.

The Church is now recognizing that through the union of the two, the mysteries of life are more fully appreciated and resonate more clearly in our lives.

"Faith sharpens the inner eye, opening the mind to discover in the flux of events the workings of Providence. Here the words of the Book of Proverbs are pertinent: “The human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps” (16:9). This is to say that with the light of reason human beings can know which path to take, but they can follow that path to its end, quickly and unhindered, only if with a rightly tuned spirit they search for it within the horizon of faith. Therefore, reason and faith cannot be separated without diminishing the capacity of men and women to know themselves, the world and God in an appropriate way."

Thus, reason contributes to the theological method to substantiate proper moral conduct and discourse, while faith brings us closer to the mysteries and love of God. Therefore, Christian philosophers must pursue intellectual discourse, but ground it in the faith of God's love.

It is through precisely this kind of union that we ultimately arrive closer not only to God by to our fellow man. It is through love and respect, faith and reason that we can begin the renewal of humanity in the third millennium.

"Reflecting in the light of reason and in keeping with its rules, and guided always by the deeper understanding given them by the word of God, Christian philosophers can develop a reflection which will be both comprehensible and appealing to those who do not yet grasp the full truth which divine Revelation declares.

 

Such a ground for understanding and dialogue is all the more vital nowadays, since the most pressing issues facing humanity -ecology, peace and the co-existence of different races and cultures, for instance -may possibly find a solution if there is a clear and honest collaboration between Christians and the followers of other religions and all those who, while not sharing a religious belief, have at heart the renewal of humanity."

Ancient religious scriptures represent knowledge passed down to us from our ancestors. The very fact that these books have moved people to form and destroy entire empires across the millennia is astoundingly obvious confirmation that the history they recount records generally authentic events, however imperfectly recorded and passed down.

These most sacred books represent the imperfect retelling of the most sacred memories of our fathers and mothers. In the case of the New Testament, the events related therein are less than 100 human generations old.

In this time of great moment, more and more of us are turning again to these books for guidance. But from a scientific point of view, if any one of the great books of scripture truthfully retells of human interaction with great beings from above, then at least a few other such books are almost surely grounded in history as well.

If the hypothesis of this work is true --that both religion and science are grounded in historical fact --then the Pope is not only right, but is providing to the Christian faithful one of the most profound instructions of the legacy of the ministry of Jesus Christ. Humanity then faces its most important test: will the faiths of human religions and the disciplines of human sciences pause to teach among each other the purest of their truths, apologize for their crimes against each other, settle down in peace, and enjoy each other's company?

Within this hypothesis, that is what faith now compels us to do. Those who have offended must apologize to those who were injured. We're all in need of giving and receiving apologies derived from our endemic short-sightedness.

The best way to apologize is to ACT. I do not hold hope for those who cannot see the simple and profound logic in making these kinds of statements of apology and repentance to those who our societies have harmed.

As we consider the profundity of recent discoveries of science, and consider the real possibility that we may face teachers involved in the history of our faiths someday soon, every one of us will seek predictions for the future. What will these miracles do to civilization? To governments, and our economies? To our churches and our families? To us as individual people?

I am as anxious to know as you.
 

A Seventh Test: A Successor to the Consumer Society

One year ago, in my position as the CEO of one of the largest, fastest growing Silicon Valley Internet companies on Earth, I began to realize the extremely dangerous trends emerging in the world around me --trends which indeed we all are unknowingly helping to perpetuate.

I saw a Western economy blissfully ignorant of massive swings in the fortunes of nations. I saw us asleep as our primitive approach to medicine creates lethally resistant strains of microbes. I saw us painfully short-sighted in silently witnessing the flattening of vital preserves of ecology. I saw us unconscious of the frightful life to which we have condemned our brothers and sisters in inner cities.

But most disturbingly, I saw that we in the United States have become the architects of the single greatest challenge to the survival of humanity: the consumer society.

The consumer society has fueled the rise of a great and powerful nation, but it has done so by extracting fuel from the foundations upon which it rests within and around the world. Such fuel is quickly running dry.

Once again, the extraordinary research of Eugene Linden in The Future in Plain Sight communicates the impending catastrophe best...

"The genius of the consumer society is that it captures religious needs largely disenfranchised by modern Western life, and translates those spiritual longings into material appetites, the satisfaction of which through purchases further expands the consumer society's reach. In effect, the consumer society is a system that integrates both religion and economics into a culture in which material wealth is valued far more than spiritual wealth. Cultures can and do change, but the question is, Can the consumer society evolve into its successor without upheaval? I believe that it cannot.

One of the perverse laws of the universe is that we least understand those phenomena that have the greatest bearing on our lives and future. So it is with consumer societies -along with population growth, one of the two great phenomena to emerge in this century. For all the scrutiny the consumer society has received over the decades, it is all too easy to focus on the materialistic aspects of consumer behavior, particularly the consumer society's surface manifestations of waste, greed, conspicuous display, and a host of other unattractive activities and values. This is what happened at the 1992 Earth Summit, which became a futile exercise in finger pointing as emerging nations argued that rich-nation consumption, not the exploding populations and rising aspirations of developing countries, were what had put the world in its current environmental pickle.

The arguments are not trivial: the average American has roughly eighty times the impact on the global economy than the average person from India. Environmentalists fear that, as billions of peasants around the world adopt the consumer values of the West, the world's already overburdened ecosystems will collapse under the weight of expanding human numbers leveraged by ever-increasing material consumption. If China develops its vast coal reserves to meet its energy needs, that nation will soon be putting as much CO² into the atmosphere as the entire industrial world, nullifying whatever steps the rich nations take to limit greenhouse-gas emissions.

There is no question that rising consumption combined with rising human numbers poses a profound problem for the world, but upon examination, the spread of consumer behavior cannot be so neatly reduced to an indicator of increased consumption and waste. For one thing, as the world has seen in Eastern Europe in the years since the fall of the Soviet Union, the spread of consumer societies can have the effect of reducing waste and making a society more efficient. Communism in Russia and the Eastern bloc managed to produce all the ills of the consumer society, but almost none of the benefits. The Trabant, the people's car of now defunct East Germany, produced as much as thirty times the polluting emissions of the equivalent-sized cars sold in West Germany. In fact, by closing antiquated East German factories and converting other coal-fired plants to natural gas, Germany has been able to lower the nation's overall C02 emissions by 10 percent since 1990. The consumer society cannot be dismissed as wasteful.

The consumer society is also something more than a society made up of people who want to buy consumer goods. Given the opportunity, nearly everybody on earth wants to buy goods that make life healthier, easier, and more convenient. Nowhere was this proposition more powerfully demonstrated than in New Guinea during World War II, where Stone Age indigenous peoples became so enamored of the bounty brought along by invading armies that many would build airstrips with the belief that such signs of devotion would prompt the gods to deliver more cargo. Noble as their efforts were, the Cargo Cultists failed to grasp one important aspect of consumer societies: true consumers not only buy goods, they also organize themselves to produce them. When Cargo Cults flourished, only a handful of industrial nations -the U.S., Canada, Australia, followed by Japan and most of Western Europe -had the necessary markets, political structures, and values to qualify as consumer societies. With the triumph of capitalism and democracy over communism, however, the entire world is busily trying to join the club.

India is trying to free its markets and eliminate red tape so that it can hop on the global merry-go-round of buying and producing consumer goods. In such a religious and tradition-bound country, this process has been halting. The protesters who stoned Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets in several cities did so in part because they felt that the Western enterprise would induce the poor to abandon their healthy and inexpensive vegetarian diet for fast food that would put a strain on peasant pocketbooks and health, and would place additional burdens on Indian food production, which even today must strain to feed nine hundred million mouths. At the same time, video vans that roll through rural villages urging the poor to buy Colgate toothpaste instead of using traditional cleaners such as charcoal and the bark of the neem tree have for the most part been greeted with enthusiasm. Are these transformations necessarily bad?

Neo-Luddites, so-called deep ecologists, and a burgeoning crop of radical Christian thinkers led by Jesuit priest and writer Thomas Berry would emphatically argue yes. One attribute of a consumer society, goes this argument, is that it treats nature as raw material to be manipulated by technology for the short-term benefit of humanity, which believes itself to be separate from the rest of the natural order. With no appreciation of natural limits, the consumer society ultimately will destroy earth's life-support systems and itself in the process.

Values, however, are a crucial component of the consumer society. Because consumer spending amounts to so much of the U.S. GDP, buyers can have an enormous effect on what gets produced. As the power of advertising makes clear, most of these purchases are profoundly influenced by the buyers' values and aspirations. Since the early 1970s, automobile buyers have shifted from purchasing ostentatious gas hogs to simple economy cars and then back to ostentatious, gas-hog sport-utility vehicles as the American self-image has interacted with notions of scarcity, confidence in the future, and considerations of comfort and safety in unpredictable ways.

It is worth considering what would happen if people around the world suddenly awakened to threats to the biosphere and demanded that industries protect ecosystems and adopt clean technologies and sources of energies. What would happen if technological progress brought us abundant sources of clean, cheap energy? Could the consumer society become sustainable, to use the word that has become the mantra of the eco-conscious community?

This future is unlikely. It is in the nature of businesses to optimize efficiency, and the consumer society is supremely adaptable to buyer tastes, but the consumer society is unsustainable. At its core, the consumer society functions more as a religion than as an economic system.

A look deep into the workings of the consumer society reveals a startling paradox, involving the relationship between reason, the irrational, and religion in a consumer society. Antireligious in its nature, and ostensibly built upon reason and technology, the consumer society actually draws upon both religion and irrational forces. This paradox is what makes the consumer society Such a formidable presence in the late twentieth century, even if many of its converts find its fruits empty and unrewarding.

One of the broad trends of Western history has been the gradual diminution of religion as an influence on behavior. In the so-called primitive religions, gods and the spirits of the ancestors encoded in ritual and taboo influence every aspect of life, ensuring that people follow the lessons of survival worked out over millennia by trial and error. The ancient Greeks exiled the gods to Olympus, allowing themselves a much freer hand to do business. Monotheism and then Christianity went the Greeks one better, pushing God off the planet altogether and up into the heavens. With the gods and God out of our hair, all of creation was at man's disposal. When the religious codes of the Roman Church still proved an impediment to business (prohibiting interest, for instance, which put Christian diamond merchants in medieval times at a competitive disadvantage to Jews in the Antwerp marketplace), the Reformation solved the problem by equating worldly success with godliness. Add the factors of progress and willingness to break with tradition and the elements were in place for the emergence of the consumer society, the most supremely adaptable culture the world has yet encountered.

What vast purpose has been served by the inexorable diminution of religion as a force in daily life? Clearly one result has been to allow humans greater latitude to intervene in nature and otherwise take control of the way we conduct our affairs. As humanity has turned away from religion for guidance, it has turned to reason and science, attempting to impose rational management on aspects of life formerly determined by tradition, taboo, or some other expression of cultural authority.

If reason has sapped the passion from modern religion, it has also channeled that power in surprising directions. One signal artifact of consumer societies is that more and more people define themselves either through purchases, through their role in producing goods, or through their role in persuading other people to make purchases. Each of these activities has become invested with aspects of devotional duty, completing the long slow trend toward sanctifying commerce that began with the dawn of monotheism. If the Reformation made it acceptable to strive for worldly success, the advent of the consumer society made holy the acquisition of worldly goods. The true heroes of the consumer society are not those who save but those who spend.

Each consumer purchase -in the aggregate, $6.8 trillion yearly in the United States -helps expand the hegemony of the consumer society and, by extension, the hegemony of the rational management of human behavior and resources. This is what the consumer society is about; its accomplishment, if that is the appropriate term, is the increase in the power of reason as a force in life. The consumer society does this by capturing religious needs pertaining to such profound needs as the urge to understand one's place in the universe, and translating them into material appetites, the satisfaction of which further extends the hegemony of reason.

Everybody knows that the promises of advertising are false and its logic is specious, but it still works, because advertising and marketing -the connective tissue between the productive side of the consumer society and the inchoate realm of needs and wants -tap into deep and powerful needs. A vast panoply of products are sold through the implicit promise that the purchase will connect the buyer to some desired community or attribute. Rather than actually test himself in combat or in the wild, the corporate bureaucrat can try to satisfy the inner warrior through the purchase of a Humvee or a luxury hunting package tour in Alaska. Even the intangible satisfactions of religion itself are up for sale. Faith becomes an image of faith, in the form of a crucifix worn as an accessory.

And, of course, redemption can be purchased through philanthropy as well. In this transaction, a tycoon can in one gesture erase the sins of a lifetime of marauding and self-interest by making gifts in his declining years, and then find himself celebrated for his goodness far more than humble souls who limited their material ambitions and tried to honor their God in their actions on a day-to-day basis. The consumer society is thus built on a substrate far more complex than a simple desire for convenience and material wealth.

But there is more. The true genius of the consumer society is in its relationship to discontent. As volumes of monographs, books, and articles on the alienation of modern life and the emptiness of materialism have told us, it is impossible to satisfy religious needs through material purchases. The attempt to do so only leads to discontent that manifests itself on the individual level through various forms of anomie, and on the societal level through recurring outlaw movements -protest movements, the counterculture of the late 1960s, New Age mysticism, etc. These periodic explosions of discontent are intrinsic to the consumer society, a product of the basic engine that makes the whole system go in the first place. Rather than suppress these inevitable eruptions, it harnesses them as new forms of consumer interest. Outlaw energy that would bring down the system becomes domesticated into purchasing decisions that help expand the system.

This is the paradox alluded to earlier: the consumer society taps as a source of energy the discontent it helps create. This is what makes the system so supremely resilient and adaptable. Unfortunately, a system that transforms all attempts to change it into consumer interest loses the ability to recognize danger and adapt. If every public expression of fear, anger, or outrage is assimilated as a market opportunity, the system cannot change.

Such a system is both stable and unstable. It is unstable because it produces turmoil and indeed requires it to function, but it is stable because, like the Greek demigod Proteus, it continually changes form without altering its basic substance. What does it mean for the world as the consumer society conquers new cultural frontiers and brings ever more people and ever-larger pieces of the world under its control?

The consumer society is a pyramid sales scheme on a global scale. It is about growth and the exploitation of new markets. Its hallmark is its extreme adaptability. Over the decades, the managers and marketing geniuses who tend the consumer society have optimized corporate abilities to identify, target, and exploit eruptions of consumer interest wherever it surfaces. The result is the Orwellian situation in which one division of a corporation can respond to consumer concern about inner-city violence in its publications, while another division promotes recording artists who celebrate murder and call for killing cops.

Like George Soros, conservative thinker William Bennett believes that the best way to restore some balance is to bring non-consumer values back into the system. Soros is more concerned with emerging economies around the globe, whereas Bennett worries about the decline of the moral sense at home in America. Both firmly believe that it is possible to have commerce and values, and they are right, although some of the recent precedents, such as the awkward marriage of religion and markets in Iran, would hardly gladden the heart of a capitalist.

Difficult as is the fit between Islamic fundamentalism and a market economy, it is much more difficult to imagine the merging of a consumer society and the values necessary to make peace with the biosphere. Try to imagine the consumer economy without growth. Even the President's Council on Sustainable Development cannot do that. In their wisdom, they define sustainable development as "Sustained economic growth." Try to imagine the impact on today's economy if consumers no longer defined themselves through material possessions, and instead returned to religion, nature, and other traditional nonmaterial sources of satisfaction.

Since the system depends on spending and perpetual growth, it is difficult to imagine that the consumer society can ever become sustainable, perpetual growth being impossible on a finite planet. The consumer society can embrace an ethos that seeks efficiency, but any value change that fostered the simple life and a search for nonmaterial satisfactions would ultimately bring it down.

The market system that underlies the consumer society is amoral. It is also blind, since there is no way of knowing what humanity will need in the future to survive. For decades, the market regarded the Pacific yew tree as nothing more than a nuisance. Rather than sell the yews felled during timber operations, companies would burn them. Then researchers discovered that the bark contained a compound called taxol that helps treat various types of cancer. Unfortunately, the market's recognition of the value of Pacific yews has not yet led to a resurgence of the tree. Now the scarce remaining trees are in danger from timber pirates lured by the high prices the tree's bark commands.

There is no way the market can know what humans might need in the future, or what ecosystems might need right now. Economic activities convert natural systems into capital in almost complete ignorance of the real costs and benefits. Though nature is readily converted into capital, the reverse is not so easy to accomplish, even when the value of the natural resource finally becomes recognized.

Around the world today, from the rise of Islamic fundamentalism to other expressions of radical religious discontent, there are stirrings of a reaction to the consumer society and a search for something beyond material satisfactions. Do these stirrings represent a true threat to the consumer society, or are they just another manifestation of the discontents that the consumer society produces and then domesticates?

Humanity will make the transitions to stable population growth, to an economic system that neither beggars the earth nor marginalizes the great bulk of humanity, and to a value system that recognizes the limits of materialism, but these transitions will not come about smoothly. One thing we can know about the future is that it will be less stable for more people than it is today.

Paleontologist Richard Potts of the American Museum of Natural History argues that, since humanity is adapted to instability, as a species we are well prepared to deal with instability in the future. He also notes that we have become creators of the circumstances that created us: that our pollutants affect the climate the way volcanoes did in earlier times, and that human-induced global warming may bring about rapid shifts that humans have lived through many times during our evolutionary history. In effect, humanity has become a stimulant to the endocrine system of the planet.

That humanity has survived, however, leaves the impression that humanity sat out the cataclysms of fire and ice that periodically devastated the planet suffering no more than inconveniences. in fact, the history of the human ancestral line has been for hominids to appear, flourish for a couple of million years, and then yield the stage to a more adaptable descendant. Even during the more recent past, there have likely been repeated population crashes within the histories of Homo erectus and sapiens as climates careened from wet and moist to dry and vice versa.

A temporary 40-percent reduction in human numbers, which might have been the norm during periods of extreme instability in prehistoric times, might seem like a small blip on a long, successful evolutionary journey when viewed from the distant future; but our children may take a different view if they live through a period during which 2.2 billion people succumb to various calamities and plagues. I am not suggesting that this is going to happen, but only that we should not take comfort from the fact that, more than any other species save the insects, humans, as Potts put it, "are adapted to that aspect of nature that is most volatile."

Humanity finds itself at a remarkable conjunction. Present-day humans have been the beneficiary of a rare syzygy: fifty years of political stability on top of 150 years of good weather that falls into an eight-thousand-year period of relative climate stability. It could be argued that civilized man has never really known true instability, and that the industrial and information ages have flowered in a period of almost uncanny tranquility. Humanity has taken advantage of our long respite from climate instability. We have invented technologies and social systems to insulate us from the vicissitudes of nature. We have bet the world that our fortress will protect us when climate and the environment again become temperamental. We never imagined that our very success would hasten the return of bad times.

What can be done? It is very late in the game. I chose the clues described in the first part of this book precisely because they represent long-wavelength, difficult-to-reverse phenomena. if a doubling of carbon dioxide carries with it climate chaos, we are likely stuck with these consequences, if only because, given the momentum of the global economy, there is very little time left to halt the increase in CO². The lifetime of these molecules in the atmosphere is roughly one hundred years, which means that once CO² finds its way into the atmosphere it tends to stay there for a very long time. Similarly, the destruction of the world's ancient forests and the fragmentation of its ecosystems cannot be reversed easily, and humanity will have to deal with whatever upheavals accompany this global ecological imbalance.

Despite this, there is no cause for despair. The global climate is such a complex system that some unanticipated reaction of its many components may mute the predicted impact of ever increasing greenhouse gases. Even now, some as yet unidentified mechanism seems to be taking a small amount of CO² out of the atmosphere, so that the buildup of greenhouse gases is occurring at a slightly slower rate than was predicted based upon known levels of global emissions.

Moreover, there is much that people and nations can do. We may not be able to head off some measure of instability, but humanity has the power to moderate the impact of the coming upheavals. Nothing will happen, however, unless people around the world recognize the dangers lurking just beyond the turn of the millennium.

We have seen in this century how bad ideas, turbocharged by the integrated global market and the heft of six billion people, can transform the planet. Something so seemingly innocent as a health-conscious interest in sushi has virtually stripped the North Atlantic of bluefin tuna. Asian folk beliefs in the aphrodisiac properties of tiger parts and rhino horn have driven both great animals to the verge of extinction in the wild. Misunderstandings about natural systems embedded in classical economics have encouraged nations to destroy most of the world's original forests and wetlands and view the results as a positive contribution to gross domestic product. We have reached a point in history where we can no longer afford the luxury of bad ideas. To paraphrase Sigmund Freud, the character of our ideas is now the destiny of the planet.

If bad ideas can transform the globe, so can good ideas. Even before Congress acted, public outcry over tuna fishing methods that inadvertently drowned thousands of dolphins forced the world's largest tuna canning companies to boycott fish caught by those methods. Even if Congress acts to end the boycott, it is likely that consumer pressure will continue to enforce the ban. Now a number of prestigious restaurants are employing a similar boycott to give some relief to beleaguered stocks of swordfish in the North Atlantic. More and more people seem to care about not only what they eat, but where it was raised and how it was caught. Consumers seem to be creating an ad hoc and ecological analog to kosher dietary restrictions.

The extraordinary reversal in attitudes toward family size shows how attitudes can change rapidly in vastly different cultures at the same time. As indicators of environmental stress and climate chaos become more compelling, and as people wake up to the threat of an unstable world, it is possible that there will be a sudden shift in values.

Even if the world enters a period of economic instability, the pain of straitened material circumstances might be muted if this rocky time strengthened family ties and renewed interest in things spiritual. To the degree that such an awakening translates into altered purchasing decisions and political action, the face of various societies might change very rapidly. Something as simple as renewed respect for the workings of natural systems, awareness that the weight of six billion people has made humanity the most consequential creature on the planet, would work wonders in tempering humanity's self-destructive tendencies.

Throughout humanity's history, ecological lessons have been culturally encoded as taboos. Around the world, aboriginal peoples protected certain forests and creatures not so much because they had developed a sophisticated science of ecology, as because they felt that violations of taboos would produce empty harvests and barren wives. This fear of the consequences did more to protect natural systems than any biodiversity treaty, and today it is surfacing again in more modern form as more and more people around the world recognize that heedless tampering with earth's life-support systems is a very dangerous game. This represents a healthy reversal of the trend to view nature as an infinitely stocked refrigerator created solely for man's pleasure and needs.

Over the millennia, humanity has proved to be an artful dodger of fate, a defier of limits, a surmounter of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and a master escape artist from traps laid by nature. Only the very brave or foolhardy would assert flatly that our resourceful species has finally exhausted its bag of tricks.

Still, it is very late in the game."

The God of Society

I am attacking the God held in constant view by the investor: unbounded consumerism is no longer a sustainable institution, and it can no longer serve the interests of humanity.

Such a statement will be the equivalent of blasphemy to many. This fact is the single greatest clue that consumerism, its commandments of unrestrained growth, and its infrastructure on Wall Street have indeed become dangerously overpowering idols of Western society.

Why else would so many be fearful as I simply write and publish a book?

But let us not preoccupy ourselves with blame, for there is plenty to go around. Let us move on, having learned a valuable lesson.

In order for civilization to mature to the next level, we simply MUST reorient our self-perception of our place in the Cosmos. As Carl Sagan maintained, the declared existence of extraterrestrial beings will without question ultimately cause a worldwide movement for unity, and begin a fitfull process to correct the errant ways of our species.

Confronted with the reality of a more advanced race of beings, we would recognize our common humanity, and begin a process of building a truly coherent and sustainable global civilization.

A scripture comes to mind...

"20 The young man saith unto him, All these things have I kept from my youth up; what lack I yet?
21 Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come and follow me.
22 But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful; for he had great possessions.
23 Then said Jesus unto his disciples, Verily, I say unto you, that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.
24 And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
25 When his disciples heard this, they were exceedingly amazed, saying, Who then can be saved?
26 But Jesus beheld their thoughts, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but if they will forsake all things for my sake, with God whatsoever things I speak are possible.
27 Then answered Peter and said unto him, Behold, we have forsaken all, and followed thee; what shall we have therefore?
28 And Jesus said unto them, Verily I say unto you, that ye who have followed me, shall, in the resurrection, when the Son of man shall come sitting on the throne of his glory, ye shall also sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.
29 And every one that has forsaken houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name's sake, shall receive a hundred-fold, and shall inherit everlasting life.
30 But many of the first shall be last, and the last first."
--Matt. 19:20-30

AT WHAT MOMENT IN HISTORY WOULD THESE VISITORS WANT US TO JOIN THEM...

Our life is frittered away by detail... Simplify, simplify."
--Thoreau

"My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there."
--Charles Franklin Kettering

One of the purposes of this Internet book is to share with each of you fundamentally new ideas – ideas that one day could transform the world.

In this work, I wish to propose a way to completely restructure over time our economic institutions to operate in a manner compatible with a living Earth, while preserving the proven entrepreneurial creativity that has built a remarkable modern civilization.

I propose that consumers assert control of the economy and rebuild our economic system to serve non-profit organizations, instead of a small concentration of wealthy individuals.

A corporation in this model would continue to exist to maximize profits – but for the benefit of the non-profit institutions which they serve. Corporations would continue to make investments in their business strategies, but all within the long-term interests of maximizing a 'natural profit motive' --profit driven to genuine non-profit causes. Individual compensation structures and organizational models would be considerably flatter, the economic motive purified, and the betterment of life for all the principal urge of everyone.

Is this a radical proposal? Absolutely. Is it insane? Yes. Is it a utopian fantasy? Totally. Radical and insane proposals are necessary to save a short-sighted and dangerously hubris nation from self-destruction.

As a motivator to carefully consider this option, I am forming a catalyst organization called EarthCity. EarthCity will be the non-profit of non-profits: the ultimate collaborative e-commerce Internet site whose profit motive is dedicated entirely to the interests chosen by the individual citizens who become its members.

At www.EarthCity.org next year, you will be able to purchase virtually any good or service online. When you first visit the site, you will register your name, credit account information, and then you will designate which subset of the top one-hundred leading non-profits to which you wish to contribute your share of EarthCity's profits. It will be the ultimate portal and commerce web site, but with the fundamental purpose of restoring power to individual citizens of Earth, who wish to reclaim their world from a dangerously materialistic economy and liberate themselves from the shackles placed around their necks by investor motives.

What Earth-conscious citizen would not choose to purchase from such an institution? What young individual would not choose to work for such an institution?

My business partner and I built USWeb Corporation, the largest Internet services company on the planet, so I know what I am talking about creating here.

I welcome people to contribute their ideas to this most remarkable undertaking as it begins in earnest in coming months, and I ask for your support once EarthCity is launched next year.

Fundamentally, this initiative will use the frictionless Internet economy to put to the test a very simple, fundamental question: is the individual or collective profit motive the stronger one in a frictionless economy?

We should remember that sustainable natural equilibrium processes are always circular: we must return profit derived from the Earth back into the Earth. In a completely literal sense, this economic model would create an "ecological cycle" for corporate profits, analogous to the biosphere's carbon and water cycles. Any good scientist will agree that such a profit cycle will eventually dominate, because it is on its face compatible with the kind of natural equilibrium which nature ultimately demands of everything she supports.

A comprehensive business plan for this initiative will appear in this section of The Truth in early 1999. I presently expect the site to launch no later than 2000.

Back to Contents

Part V

THE TRUTH

What a wonderful feeling it must be, to take that first trip in a craft of the future. Step inside and see nothing but metal and panels. Sit down, touch a control, or perhaps just think a thought, and something magical happens.

Covering all the walls, upon all the flooring, there are advanced illuminating materials that fade on, displaying a sweeping 360 degree, spherical, completely enveloping real time image. Every pixel is integrated into the most magnificent virtual reality screen of all time. A predecessor to the holodeck.

The ship rises on artificial gravity, and floats like a leaf in a weightless pond of energy. You feel nothing. No acceleration. Within the field of warp propulsion, the energy of time is bent around the craft, to cause motion to occur with no inertial resistance. You literally fall towards your destination. During the first moments of your flight, as remarkable as the image surrounding you is, the more immediate senses of touch and balance clue you to the totally unique and organic feel of the motion of this amazing new craft. After a moment, the overpowering fear of such height fades away into your imagination.

Acceleration without inertia. What a strange discontinuity of sensation. Your eyes say one thing, and your inner ear, skin, and muscles say nothing. Finally to fly like an eagle! This must be how Einstein imagined he would have traveled through space, without the noisy Model Ts of Newtonian mechanical propulsion. The gift of your soul to your body, a star ship.

Zipping below you are the skyscrapers of New York. But just a moment or two later, St. Paul's Cathedral snaps into view along the Thames. WHAT AMAZING POWER! The sprawling countrysides of the Netherlands flow by underneath you, like an ocean of meadows. And you turn right.

A large body of water, it must be the Mediterranean. So blue this ancient sea really is. And now, in a sailing ship of the stars, powered by the wind of the Cosmos, we may cross it in three seconds, instead of 3 weeks. As the shore of Africa lights the interior of the craft with a dingy yellow hue, you slow down towards Cairo. You have never seen the Great Pyramid with your own eyes. And there it is.

Two million two-ton blocks, placed together with the care of a watchmaker. The dimensions of this mammoth construction are squared to within inches, and its orientation to the headings of the compass, precise. It must be a great construction of intelligent life even on the scale of the heavens. Such perfect construction of such an instructive symbol of intelligence. In its day, its smooth white limestone sides, polished nearly to optical precision, glistened in the light of the sun -or the moon, or the stars.

There is now no doubt that this great construction was, at the very least, a testimony to the heavens, if not a construction thereof.

But Africa, the birthplace of humanity, is full of wonders. At one time, the desert of Africa was as green and perfect an oasis as Amazonia today. Creatures of all variety roamed these jungles and plains, a few still remain today. The largest roaming beasts, the most savage hunters, the most poisonous reptiles, the most gentle grazers, the largest and smallest of the insects, fish that survive in dry land and mammals that swim through floods. And the earliest of human beings.

From the tip of Cape Town rises the Great Southern Ocean. Unfettered by land, the southern latitudes have an attitude all their own. The wind blows tempestuously through day and night, in a circle around the globe, driving gigantic, 50 foot ocean waves as common and routine as ripples in a stream. This place is for the bravest of sailors, many of whom met their fate face to face, shoulder to shoulder with nature, not too far from the ice world of Antarctica.

Colder than the deepest winter, home only to the sturdiest of creatures, Antarctica is a world only a few men and women have seen first hand. It is a desolate place, an example of many a world where the mean temperature is just a few degrees cooler. It's a continent of glacial ice, storing a reserve of pure water for warmer times, absorbing it during cooler times. The poles are the sponges of Earth, as they equalize the depth of the oceans in insurance of a balance between land and sea. What wonderful, rare simplicity and complexity both.

How can anyone say that Earth is not a living being in the truest sense?

Past the Strait of Magellan, where in the early 16th century a world was circumnavigated by humans for the first time, the last remaining forest continent of Earth emerges. Life in terms most people cannot comprehend lives here. Millions of species dancing to the music of evolution, eating, sleeping, learning, competing, evolving, loving. The forests, jungles and rivers are the crucible of evolution, and we cut and burn them away.

Then you see them. Living mountain peaks, the chapel spires of Earth rising out of the foggy mist, but not touching your feet. Waterfalls from the heights, into lush forests below. What majestic creatures mountains are. Driven by the geologic life of Earth, they are born, grow, and die as well. Not far from the mountaintops, you are swallowed into a billowing cloud. And you sense the water, gathering together, ready to fall and replenish the life in the forest and rivers below. The gift of the ocean to the land, the cool rain.

As you ascend through the clouds, piercing beyond the lung of your world, a silence strikes every sense of your soul. Your gaze shifts from the blue light below, and you look up. A black blacker than sudden blindness hits your senses, or rather doesn't, as your eyes adjust to the silent night of heaven. And ever so gracefully, the campfires of the Cosmos begin to sparkle.

Millions and millions of diamond colored lights are painted across time, shining with their infinitely narrow rays the brightest of lights directly into your eyes. How real the stars now are, without the veil of nitrogen and oxygen to cloud your vision. The life of the Cosmos is staring at you from those points of light.

The love of the Cosmos is striking your retina.

As the patterns in the heavens gently turn, showing the motion of your ship, you are overwhelmed by the realization that you're floating in space, in a four dimensional ocean as vast to you now as the ocean must be to an amoeba in a tide pool of the Pacific. Indeed, you realize that we are all amoeba, embarking from a tide pool we call Earth. The vastness crushes your imagination with energy. It is the ultimate frontier, your ultimate purpose. It is the life of the Cosmos.

A profoundly humbling feeling overwhelms you as you realize that you are the truest of explorers, a sailor to other worlds. And then the greatest wisdom settles peacefully in your mind. The sense of time disappears. You were always on your way to this place, to every place, ever since you were like a green blade of grass on the sandy beach. The gift of the land to the ocean, the warm surface of the shore.

As you leave that beautiful, glistening blue Earth behind, you can't help but think how foolish we all have been, caught up in our trivial attentions, to ever have lost humility before nature. All that we have ever really known is locked up on that small blue globe, a vanishing speck of dust in the sea of space.

Some day soon, we shall all venture into the depths of space-time. But first, we must build an understanding of how we arrived at this place we call the present. We must acquire an understanding of the truth within ourselves, the truth of our souls.

The secret, I believe, rests in a reinterpretation of the nature of the Cosmos. I propose that we consider reinterpreting everything known to science in terms better understood in biology, under the hypothesis that the entire Cosmos is single being of life. I know that this kind of idea is anathema to most scientists, who may consider it "metascience", something like a religious faith and therefore unacceptable to reductionist logic.

However, reductionist logic taken to its extreme has surely failed to cure the ills of society, and indeed contributed to most of them, at the same time as it has provided wondrous advances for us all.

Since no human could ever understand the details of every specialization of science, must we not have a metascience in order to master the most important teachings from the collection of disciplines of truth? Surely we must make room for a science of holism, and my guess is we will come to think of it as a holy science, with new rituals all its own to ensure its passage to our children.

On July 4, 1994 the United States of America awarded the Liberty Medal to the Czech president, Vaclav Havel. In his speech he took the theme "We are not alone nor for ourselves alone."

He observed that the modern age has ended, the artificial world order of the past decades has collapsed and a new more just order has not yet emerged. He went on to say that we are now where classically modern solutions do not give a satisfactory response. We need to anchor the idea of human rights and freedoms in a different place and in a different way than has been done so far.

Paradoxically, he says, inspiration for the renewal of lost integrity can again be found in science: a new science that allows itself to transcend its own limits. He gave two examples of this: the anthropic principle, where science is confronted with a mystical implication in that our creation purely from anomaly is difficult to defend. The second idea was James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, where Earth is defined and described as literally a living being.

The words of such a holy science would not be laden with abstract nouns and the passive tense, they would be simple, active words. Words that convey precise reality, emotional meaning, and motive as concisely and powerfully as possible.

In the vision I suggest we consider, the Gaia hypothesis is extended in every direction possible. I call it the One Hypothesis. It is not a fundamentally new idea. Various aspects of it have been taught in various forms across history, by minds far greater than mine. In my version, evolution extends back far further than the double-helix of biology, but to space-time itself. In this vision, space-time is not machine, but rather life itself, and the power of evolution rests in a force called love.

From these things, so I imagine, springs the Cosmos.

Love evolves to reproduce physics, physics evolves to reproduce astrophysics, astrophysics evolves to reproduce chemistry, chemistry evolves to reproduce geology, geology evolves to reproduce ecology, and ecology evolves to reproduce you. We evolve to produce books such as this, to pass on our truth to our distant children.

What distant children shall you evolve to reproduce?

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Conclusion

"A perpetual trend toward richness, the outcome of which cannot be foreseen, may be the true fate of the universe."
– George Musser, Staff Editor, Scientific American, January 1999

If I were to concentrate the meaning of my book down to two pages, what would I say? Scientists are close to discovering the physical nature of consciousness, and that origin appears startlingly fundamental to the nature of the Cosmos itself.

There appears to be a very basic truth to the concept that the Cosmos is collectively conscious, comprised of a seething potential out of which individual beings of reality have formed, everything "material" simply a pattern of energy in time, deeply interconnected into one macrosystem at a quantum level. This has direct implications for the veracity of the ancient concept of the soul, and to a vanishingly young ability in each of us to communicate telepathically and to use the power of intent to literally create reality with our minds.

Physicists are also close to discovering the means to derive energy and gravitational propulsion from this same seething vacuum energy. Serious contemplation and study is due to frame with great care the use of these fundamental new abilities.

We do know as scientists now, in just the last part of the last century since the birth of a being named Jesus, that there is unambiguous design in the nature of the Cosmos. It is coming to be understood that consciousness cannot be regarded as an accident. The layers of the onion of cosmology, physics, astrophysics, chemistry, geology, ecology, and biologist cannot be regarded as merely unintended order within chaos. There must at least be the principle of intent at work within the machinery of nature.

I believe that each of these orders within time is like a student of the next higher order, one day to be "promoted" to teacher, in a perpetual process of learning and advancement. It is a continuous pattern of intent, with each order gaining new powers of choice. Every order has its laws, and every order has its freedoms. Every choice has its consequences, which must be learned.

Once the lessons of the order are completed, an advancement occurs. A new order emerges. A phase transition in time presents itself, where fundamentally new choices are opened. And the more fundamental the revolution in the history of any species of order, the more lengthy is the period of revolution beyond what that species may expect it to be. We are witnessing one of these ultra-long-wavelength revolutions now.

What is the soul? What are you? Who are you?

The answer represents the ultimate significance of my hypothesis:

Every faithful person from a Western culture believes that God said: "I am that I am." Every scientist in the world could agree with Carl Sagan's first statement in his book Cosmos: "the Cosmos is all that is". I am that I am. It is that which is.

The mutual exclusivity of the scientific and religious accounts of creation is now clearly without basis.

Every deeply faithful person from a Western culture believes that God said: "Let there be light." Every scientist in the world could agree with the following logical sequence: Time has made all things. Time has yielded the Cosmos, through order upon order. The Cosmos is made of light. Light ordered is matter.

These descriptions are nearly identical. The former, however, contains no duality. The name science has given to God is Cosmos.

I believe that every one of us is made of light, and every one of us matter. We are made of God. We are children of Cosmos, each a light in time. I – the truth of observation – am – the love of experience. The son and the father and the daughter and the mother are one, in each of us.

Time is a function, not a single linear dimension. The more general word for time is change. Patterns of temporal change – electromagnetism – form matter when organized into shapes called space, hence the compound word space-time. All orders of the Cosmos are built upon this function. The homo sapiens mind has a well-developed grasp of spatial change, and is just now comprehending the experience of temporal change.

You are entirely and completely a function of the Cosmos. The Cosmos wrote this book. The Cosmos is reading this book. Everything we make, the Cosmos makes. Everything we think, the Cosmos thinks. We are truly individuals within One. Imagination and thought are intent, and intent has the power to directly cause physical change.

Every being has this power. This is a sacred power. It is the true "force".

We are always the student of the higher order and the teacher for the lower order, along a fractal ladder of intent in a field of change. Perhaps one day we will become teachers of younger beings on this world or another, in ways similar to our experience of evolutionary history. One day we may even become the origin of religions for animals lower in the order of biology.

You and I, whether good or evil, right or wrong, black or white, rich or poor, human or alien or snake or tree or ocean or stone or mountain or world or galaxy, are the children of Cosmos. You and I are animals of Cosmos called homo sapiens on the being of Cosmos named Earth, our Mother, a blue green speck of truth sparkling in the seething potential of the heavens, the infinite possibilities of change.

One day we will experience open contact with animals from other worlds. Perhaps the first ones we meet will turn out to have helped to guide us along, intellectually and perhaps occasionally even genetically, throughout human history. Or perhaps they may be grander beings still than animals, having taken further steps in evolution we can't yet understand.

As that day approaches, we would do well to remember the significance of the most important single word in human language, the word that I believe will ultimately break us into the next epoch of our saga:

The word is TRUTH.

 

Truth experienced, however painful or joyous, is a form of LOVE.

THE END

Afterword

Many reporters have asked "where are the credible eyewitnesses to these alleged secrets? Why won't they step forward?" I have met with many of them. I know the answer to this question. The answer to this question is obvious.

It is your own fault. Look at how you have treated my story in just the past 7 days!

If the sensationalized and trivialized articles appearing recently about my story were to have been written about their stories, their careers would be over and their families ostracized. Those in a position to know interesting things do not, as I do, have millions of dollars to spend to communicate their ideas. They do not necessarily have the resumes to command the attention of the press, as I do.

Treat this subject seriously and you will get the eyewitness testimony you ask for.

In the final analysis, there is one way to determine whether there is truth to the tale that I have told in this book. We must succeed in the quest to demand that our leaders – most of whom are as uninformed on these subjects as the general public – allow those bound by secrecy oaths regarding these subjects to speak freely.

Then we will all – me included – start the long process of learning the rest of the story.

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