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By writing the 26 letters of the alphabet in a certain order one may put down almost any message (this book is written with the same letters and the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Winnie the Pooh, only the order of the letters differs).

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"A deeper understanding revealed the quixotic fact that a particle like an electron only has a certain mathematical probability of being found in anyone spot. This probability has a ripple or wave-like form, but it is more like a 'crime wave' - a statistical distribution - than a physical undulation.

The basis of matter, then, when examined intimately, dissolves into a ghostlike intangibility; the quantum wave is a mathematical wraith, a ripple of possibility. Here is where choice enters the picture. The quantum wave only has this wraithlike character when it is not being looked at. When an observer intrudes, when a scientist, for example, tries to measure the properties of an electron, the ghostly wave function collapses. The particle becomes real. It can now be specifically assigned a fixed location, with a probability of 1, i.e. a certainty.

This is a staggering conclusion. It means that consciousness is not an observer in the dynamics of the universe; it is an active participant. Consciousness, literally and factually, creates reality, by summoning forth material particles, definable certainties, from the elusive quantum wave. Objective 'reality', in this perspective, falters on the brink of a profound ambiguity. Subject and object, mind and matter are not separate; they interact and interlock. To discuss time truthfully we have to discuss the mind.

The quantum world is so strange that any attempt to interpret it in terms of familiar models or examples is doomed to fail. The paradox of the quantum wave is often described in terms of a riddle, thought up by the physicist Erwin Schroedinger, whose mathematical formulation of the quantum wave remains, to this day, a cornerstone of physics.

Schroedinger invites us to imagine a closed box inside which are a cat, a poison capsule, a lump of radioactive material and a Geiger counter. The radioactive material is what links us to the quantum realm. Radioactive decay occurs when an atom disintegrates but, in a manner typical of the quantum world, this decay is utterly unpredictable. Over time we can estimate the average probability of a given decay event but the genesis of the event itself lies buried in the fuzzy uncertainty that is the core of the quantum.

The Geiger counter links the quantum world to the world of the human observer; it will record any radioactive disintegration when / Page 27 / it occurs. The box is set up in such a way that any such disintegration will break open the poison capsule, releasing enough poison to kill the cat; in the time interval allowed for this 'thought experiment' there is an exactly 50:50 chance that the atom will or will not decay.

This is the basis of Schroedinger's paradox. The observer outside the box cannot know whether an atom inside the box has decayed (opening the capsule and killing the cat) unless he looks. The condition of the cat (alive or dead) is therefore a litmus test of reality itself. According to the strict interpretation of the quantum wave, in the absence of observation, the cat in the box is neither alive nor dead but in some indeterminate, wave-like, in-between state. It is only when the consciousness of an observer enters the picture that the complex ripple of possibility that is the indeterminate 'alive and dead at the same time' quantum cat crystallises into one of the two possible real outcomes: either the cat is alive (no atom has decayed) or the cat is dead (an atom has decayed).

In short, it is the observer's decision (his choice) to open the box that summons forth a real cat, dead or alive, from its ghostly quantum state of non-being.

Many physicists, shrinking from the implications of the cat paradox, have tried to rescue reality from this apparent trick state. One escape route has been tried successfully but, to most physicists, the price paid to regain reality is higher than the cost of the original dilemma. In the 1950s the physicist Hugh Everett 'solved' the cat paradox by suggesting that both possibilities (a live cat and a dead cat) are equally real but that they exist in different universes. At the moment of choice, when the observer opens the box, the entire universe splits into two identical copies, alike in every detail except that in one the cat dies and in the other it lives.

It is critical to recognise that this 'many universes' concept applies to the world we live in, not just the paradoxical example of the cat. If it is true-and it is completely consistent with all the evidence-then whenever we make a choice, whenever, like the camel driver, we decide between two options, the act of observation cuts the twine that binds the two alternative realities together, creating two separate universes, each having its own time and its own space, and each containing its own copy of the consciousness of the human observer.

The 'many universes' theory has both advocates and critics among prominent physicists. While I cite the 'many universes'

/ Page 136 / To conclude this chapter, I would like to weave the various strands of my argument together. Consider again the biological perspective. The evolutionary trajectory that led from ancient fish to modem man has been characterised by a dramatic increase in brain size and complexity and by an improvement in the data-gathering power of the senses. In particular, the eyes in primates have rotated to the front of the head, giving stereoscopic depth of vision. The quality of the input channels has been upgraded while the information-storing and processing capability of their computer terminal has expanded enormously.

This means that the brain's ability to model reality has improved sharply during the last 400 million years of evolution. The nervous system of animals is like a mirror which natural selection has polished down the ages so that it reflects with greater and greater accuracy the structure of the world around it.

However, death is a part of the real world. It is a fact of life. The increase in brainpower that led to the emergence of man did not, at first, present death as a disruptive challenge to the improved correlative 'fit' that nature had forged between the internal and external realities. As we have seen, during the Dreaming ages, man's subliminal fear of death was largely annulled by the regenerative promise of cyclic time. However, now that Eden has faded into myth, we face something unprecedented in the story of life on earth. The contemporary foreknowledge of death as the end of life has broken a fundamental rule of nature-that survival capacity is enhanced by improved awareness of the environment. Now, for the first time in evolution, enhanced awareness of reality is life-denying, not life-promoting.

Thus, in our time, humanity has reached the testing cross-road, where truth and illusion separate. I believe this is the greatest challenge that life has faced on earth, for unlike the threats posed by nuclear war or the greenhouse effect, it comes from within the psychology of the dominant species.

To appreciate the dimensions of this existentialist crisis, it will help if I recap my argument to this point. Purposeful human life is impossible if the future is denied because purpose, by its very nature, is future-oriented. Death denies the future and so death denies life. Man has coped with this problem in differing ways throughout the course of his evolution. In the prepersonal phase of evolution, the problem did not exist because archaic man, like the animals from / Page 137 / which he sprang, was unaware of time. As humanity struggled towards self-consciousness, a temporal sense was born but during the Dreaming ages and far into historical time, man's natural resonance with the cyclic patterns of nature, embodied in the ingrained belief in reincarnation or resurrection, quietened and tranquillised his fear of death. While the memory of Eden lasted, man was safe.

The memory of Eden has dimmed only recently, for it is only during the last century or so that Western science has stripped the last protective veils of faith from our eyes. This is the second time human psychology in the West has 'fallen' from a state of welcome ignorance to one of unwanted knowledge. The realisation that death is the inescapable end of life becomes particularly acute in the mid- life phase of the modem life cycle. Far from facing death, the contemporary mind denies the existence of the problem, displacing activity into side-issues and self-gratification. At the core of the psyche, there is now an emptiness, a 'gap at the centre' disguising the bottled genie that is the cause of so much of the modem angst.

Nonetheless, the problem of death cannot be suppressed forever. In dreams, in anxieties, the serpent reappears, exposing the threadbare armour of the rational mind in the face of primal terror.

Evolution on earth is therefore at a crossroads, finely balanced between hope and despair. In the longer perspective of psychology, the serpent within is a greater threat to our continued survival than the dangers posed by our runaway technology, because foreknowledge of death eats away at the foundations of the life machine itself, sapping the psychic basis of our will to live.

I believe, passionately, that this is a 'darkness before dawn' time, that every mode of evolution that struggles up to this level of consciousness must face this challenge-and be judged by it. It is, in the language of metaphor, a test of 'worthiness' to inherit the future.

Arthur C. Clarke captured the perfect spirit of this challenge in his short story 'The Sentinel', which was the basis for the magnificant movie epic, 2001: A Space Odyssey. 'The Sentinel' describes the discovery of a black monolith on the far side of the moon. This artefact is clearly of extraterrestrial origin, a beacon left by an alien race to watch over the evolving life on the planet below. However, its location puzzles its human finders-why was it put on the moon (earth's satellite), not on earth itself?

/ Page 138 / Clarke's answer is worth listening to:

Perhaps you understand now why that crystal pyramid was set upon the Moon instead of on the Earth. Its builders were not concerned with races still struggling up from savagery. They would be interested in our civilisation only if we proved our fitness to survive-by crossing space and so escaping from the Earth, our cradle. That is a challenge that all intelligent races must meet, sooner or later. It isadouble challenge, for it depends in turn upon the conquest of atomic energy and the last choice between life and death.

I believe then that it is no accident that we have awoken to a knowledge of our own mortality at precisely the moment we have stepped into space. The science that has sent the Voyager spacecraft out of the solar system is the same agent that has forced man out of Eden's protecting sanctuary. Just as we shrink from the immensity of space, whose frontier we have just crossed, so we recoil from death, whose presence we have just acknowledged.

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The concept that the cosmos existed briefly in an unstable quantum vacuum state, while answering one question, merely uncovers another. For we must now face the final, decisive issue. Where did the energy of the vacuum come from in the first place? Can we start from nothing at all? Absolutely nothing?

Here, we reach the very limits of human knowledge and imagination. Only one field of science holds the possibility of an answer; once again, it is quantum mechanics. At first sight this seems strange. Quantum mechanics deals with the micro-world of subatomic particles-the realm of the very small. Yet, the question we are asking relates to the universe-the realm of the very large. This contradiction vanishes when we realise that, in its initial seed-state, the cosmos occupied a space much smaller than an atom. In this speck of infinitesimal smallness, quantum effects were not just important, they dominated and directed the course of events.

In this quantum world, the unimaginable somehow happened, courtesy of quantum effects which, as we have seen, go a long way towards uncoupling cause and effect. To explain Genesis, all we are required to do is make that uncoupling complete. Then the 'creation' becomes a spontaneous event, without prior cause. Like a dream . that suddenly flowers into reality, spacetime itself erupts into / Page 149 / existence. But not the familiar spacetime of today. According to an attractive theory, the seed of the primordial universe is structured in ten dimensions of space. Three of these dimensions explode outwards into the false vacuum condition, while the other seven implode into a near-invisible 'hyperball'. However, they do not vanish, but continue to influence the fate of the cosmos as forces of nature. We have already seen how gravity, which we commonly think of as a force in the three-dimensional world of everyday space becomes a crinkling of geometry in the four-dimensional world of spacetime. In similar fashion, the dimensions which 'compacted' early in the evolution of the cosmos remain 'visible' as electromagnetism and the strong and weak nuclear forces, the other three forces which shape the world.

English physicist and author Paul Davies has expressed what is thought to happen superbly:

Thus a microscopic quantum blob of ten-dimensional space suffers a spasm which inflates three dimensions to form a universe, and traps the remaining seven in a permanent micro-cosmos from which they are manifested only indirectly, as forces of nature.

If this glimpse gives us some faint feeling for the beginning of time, what does it tell us about its end? If we are living inside a black hole, then our only protection is the primordial momentum that the galaxies still carry as a legacy of the false vacuum 'inflation' that preceded the hot Big Bang. When this outward stretching of spacetime stops, the cosmos will pass from an expansionary phase to a contractionary phase. The cosmic background temperature will start to rise until the night sky will be as hot as our present day sky. As the contraction accelerates, structure on various levels will begin to 'melt' and stars and planets will disintegrate into a soup of radiation and subatomic particles. The nuclei of atoms will dissolve into their constituent protons and neutrons.

As the cosmos shrinks beyond atomic dimensions, the matter it contains will become dense beyond imagination and the radius of spacetime will contract towards zero. At its ultimate limit, this process leads to a spacetime singularity in which the curvative of spacetime becomes infinite, enfolding in its vanished embrace a universe of imploded matter. Like an image fading in the mind of God, reality itself dies and the sum of all things ceases to be.

/ Page 150 / Some faint hint of what this means can be garnered from an examination of Figure 7.2, which shows that an ordinary black hole is smoothly connected to the 'flat' spacetime structure of the surrounding universe. It is this matrix of surrounding spacetime that enables science to measure properties of black holes such as mass. However, if the cosmos is closed, everything is 'inside' a black hole. Thus, as the cosmos implodes inwards, there is absolutely no frame of reference to serve as a guide.

Here, then, is the Shiva of cosmology, the destroyer of worlds. Nothing can survive transit through a singularity. The spacetime fabric with its embedded 'memories' of past events (in which billions of human lives lie encrystallised) is annihilated. The fine structure of matter, everything which gives form to physics, is unremittingly 'ground out of existence'. By this, I do not simply mean that it is destroyed in a physical sense, overwhelmed by the colossal tides of gravity: rather, infinitely warped spacetime sunders us completely from anything that might have gone 'before', just as it does from anything that might come 'after'. The present incarnation of the cosmos can never remember its parents (if there were any) or transmit a legacy to its children (if it has any).

Mathematics, the tool which has carried the human mind back to within a micro-millisecond of Genesis, cannot complete its backwards journey to zero. All our imaginative powers fail us at the Genesis point itself. It is not just that science cannot explain what happens at this time of mystery because it lacks the right tools. Rather, the laws of physics themselves break down at a singularity.

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A tumbled down, and hurt his Arm, against a bit of wood.-

B said, 'My Boy, O! do not cry; it cannot do you good!'

C said,' A Cup of Coffee hot can't do you any harm.'

D said,' A Doctor should be fetched, and he would cure the arm.'

E said, 'An Egg beat up with milk would quickly make him well.'

F said, 'A Fish, if broiled, might cure, if only by the smell.'

G said, 'Green Gooseberry fool, the best of cures I hold.'

H said, 'His Hat should be kept on, to keep him from the cold.'

I said, 'Some Ice upon his head will make him better soon.'

J said, 'Some Jam, if spread on bread, or given in a spoon!'

K said, 'A Kangaroo is here,-this picture let him see.'

L said, 'A Lamp pray keep alight, to make some barley tea.'

/Page 202 /

M said,' A Mulberry or two might give him satisfaction.'

N said, 'Some Nuts, if rolled about, might be a slight attractIon.

0 said,' An Owl might make him laugh, if only it would wink,

P said, 'Some Poetry might be read aloud, to make him think.'

Q said,' A Quince I recommend,-a Quince, or else a Quail.'

R said, 'Some Rats might make him move, if fastened by their tail.'

S said, 'A Song should now be sung, in hopes to make him laugh !'

T said, 'A Turnip might avail, if sliced or cut in half !'

U said,' An Urn, with water hot, place underneath his chin !'

V said, 'I'll stand upon a chair, and play a Violin!'

W said, 'Some Whisky- Whizzgigs fetch, some marbles and a ball !'

X said, 'Some double XX ale would be the best of all !'

Y said, 'Some Yeast mixed up with salt would make a perfect plaster !'

Z said, 'Here is a box of Zinc! Get in, my little master! We'll shut you up ! We'll nail you down! We will, my little master ! We think we've all heard quite enough of this your sad disaster!'

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In all there were two-and-seventy conspirators privy to the plot. It was a proper and a pregnant number, for there had been just seventy-two when red Set lured Usir into the chest. And these seventy- two in their turn had had good cosmic ground to be no more and no less than that number. For it is just that number of groups of five weeks which make up the three hundred and sixty days of the year, not counting the odd days; and there are just seventy-two days in the dry :fifth of the year, when the gauge shows that the Nourisher has reached his lowest ebb, and the god sinks into his grave. So where there is conspiracy anywhere in the world it is requisite and customary for the number of conspirators to be seventy-two. And if the plot fail, the failure shows that if this number had not been adhered to it would have failed even worse.

/ Page 968 / eternal ages be held in honour. But we are speaking of two different things. My Majesty speaks of the fetters which the teaching puts upon the thoughts of God; yours refers to priestly statecraft, which divides teaching and knowledge. But Pharaoh would not be arrogant, and there is no greater arrogance than such a division. No, there is no arrogance in the world greater than that of dividing the children of our Father into initiate and uninitiate and teaching double words: all-knowingly for the masses, knowingly in the inner circle. No, we must speak what we know, and witness what we have seen. Pharaoh wants to do nothing but improve the teaching, even though it be made hard for him by the teaching. And still it has been said to me: 'Call me not Aton, for that is in need of improvement. Call me the Lord of the Aton!' But I, through keeping silent, forgot. See now what the Father does for his beloved son! He sends him a messenger and dream-interpreter, who shows him his dreams, dreams from below and dreams from above, dreams important for the realm and for heaven; that he should awake in him what he already knows, and interpret what was already said to him. Yes, how loveth the Father his child the King who came forth out of him, that he sends down a soothsayer to him, to whom from long ages has been handed down the teaching that it profits man to press on towards the last and highest!

"To my knowledge," Tiy coldly remarked, "your soothsayer - came up from below, out of a dungeon, and not from above."

"Ah, in my opinion that is sheer mischief, that he came from below," cried Amenhotep. "And besides, above and below mean not much to the Father, who when he goes down makes the lower the upper, for where he shines, there is the upper world. From which it comes that his messengers interpret dreams from above and below with equal skill. Go on, soothsayer! Did I say stop? If I did, I meant go on! That wanderer out of the East, from whom you spring, did not stop at the sun, but pressed on above it?"

"Yes, in spirit," answered Joseph smiling. "For in the flesh he was but a worm on this earth, weaker than most of those above and below him. And still he refused to bow and to worship, even before one of these phenomena, for they were but witness and work, as he himself was. All being, he said, is a work of the highest, and before the being is the spirit of whom it bears witness. How could I commit so great a folly and burn incense to a witness, be it never so weighty - I, who am consciously a witness, whereas the others simply are and know it not? Is there not something in me of Him, for which all being is but evidence of the being of the Being which is greater than His works and is outside them? It is outside the world, and though it is the compass of the world, yet is the world not its compass. Far is the sun, surely three hundred and sixty thousand miles away, and yet / Page 969 / his rays are here. But He who shows the sun the way hither is further than far, yet near in the same measure, nearer than near. Near or far is all the same to Him, for He has no space nor any time; and though the world is in Him, He is not in the world at all, but in heaven."

"Did you hear that, Mama?" asked Amenhotep in a small voice, tears in his eyes. "Did you hear the message which my heavenly Father sends me through this young man, in whom I straightway saw something, as he came in, and who interprets to me my dreams? I will only say that I have not said all that was said to me in my seizure, and, keeping silent, forgot it. But when I heard: 'Call me not Aton, but rather the Lord of the Aton,' then I heard also this: 'Call on me not as "my Father above," for that is of the sun in the sky; it must needs be changed, to say: "My Father who art in heaven"!' So heard I and shut it up within me, because I was anxious over the truth for the sake of the teaching. But he whom I took out of the prison, he opens the prison of truth that she may come forth in beauty and light; and teaching and truth shall embrace each other, even as I embrace him."

And with wet eyelashes he worked himself up out of his sunken seat, embraced Joseph, and kissed him.

"Yes, yes!" he cried: He began to hurry once more up and down the Cretan loggia, to the bee-portieres, to the windows and back, his hands pressed to his heart. "Yes, yes, who art in heaven, further than far and nearer than near, the Being of beings; that looks not into death, that does not become and die but is, the abiding light, that neither rises nor sets, the unchanging source, out of which stream all life, light, beauty, and truth-that is the Father, so reveals He Himself to Pharaoh His son, who lies in His bosom and to whom He shows all that He has made. For He has made all, and His love is in the world, and the world knows Him not. But Pharaoh is His witness and bears witness to His light and His love, that through Him all men may become blessed and may believe, even though now they still love the darkness more than the light that shines in it. For they understand it not, therefore are their deeds evil. But the son, who came from the Father, will teach it to them. Golden spirit is the light, father-spirit; out of the mother-depths below power strives upward to it. to be purified in its flame and become spirit in the Father. Immaterial is God, like His sunshine, spirit is He, and Pharaoh teaches you to worship Him in spirit and in truth. For the son knoweth the Father as the Father knoweth him, and will royally reward all those who love Him and keep His commandments - he will make them great and gilded at court because they love the Father in the son who came out of Him. For my words are not mine, but the words of my Father who sent me, that all might become one in light and love, even as I and the Father are one. ..."

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Whenever communication is opened up between this world and the next, with an earnest desire to serve mankind thereby, it is generally believed that the "instrument" or medium is protected by wise and helpful souls called "Guides": spiritual beings qualified for the duties by virtue of their greater / Page 29 / knowledge of psychic science, and by the possession of power to give protection and guidance, not only during the medium's development, but subsequently, when the medium- ship is put to practical use. And, for reasons not always apparent to the lay mind, those highly evolved guides are in many cases men and women who belonged to races other than our own. North-American Indians, Persians, Hindus, for instance, whose natures have not been spoiled by modem culture and materialism, are among those who choose to come down from the upper reaches of the Beyond to serve humanity in this way.

They are the souls who, in this life, lived so close to nature that they gained a greater knowledge of nature's laws, and are thus more ready to absorb the higher knowledge when they pass to the spirit-world, where culture and intellectualism count so little. So many people in the world are getting further and further away from nature; we are becoming too artificial and entangled in a network of conventional superficialities which we shall have to throw overboard when we leave this life and enter upon the next phase of our evolution. Our cloaks of modem culture must drop from our shoulders, revealing us as we really are, not what we appear to be or think we are. Communication with the other side of life teaches one to realize that colour, caste and creed make no difference, where the realities of life are concerned.

After a time, table-tilting gave place to another form of communication which was less tedious.

A sheet of paper, stretched over a board measuring about twenty inches square, has printed on it in fairly big characters the letters of the alphabet, arranged in the form of a circle. Also, in convenient spots within and without the circle, short words of common occurrence may be inserted. An inverted medicine-glass serves as an indicator. Each sitter places a finger on the inverted glass; and, when the power develops, / Page 30 / the glass moves about the board, stopping over the required letter or word for a moment and then going on to the next, and so on. The principle on which this method of communication works appears to be similar to that used in the well-known planchette.

It proved to be a much quicker method, with the added advantage of greater comfort for the sitters. Another advantage was that it left one of the sitters free to use the disengaged hand for writing the messages. As in the table method, results were entirely negative without our Medium's co-operation: unless her finger was on the glass there was no movement.

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miles to reach the next great orb in the system, Which is JUPITER. This magnificent planet, attended by four satellites, sweeps round the Sun at the distaoce of 495,000,000 of miles, moving at the rate of 29,000 miles per hour, and accomplishing its revolution in 4,332 days, a period of nearly twelve years. Its dimensions are on a scale of equal grandeur; its diameter being not less than 87,000 miles, and its bulk more than 1,300 times that of the earth. It is composed of lighter materials, however; but on account of its surpassing magnitude, is of a weight 333 times that of our globe. This is the largest body connected with the planetary system, the sun only excepted. When nearest the earth it is 400,000,000 of miles distant from us; yet, after Venus, it is the most brilliant star in the heavens. This stupendous sphere rotates upon its axis, which is very nearly perpendicular, in 9 hrs. and 56 min.; thus carrying round whatever beings or objects may be on its equator, at the rate of 28,000 miles an hour, or twenty-seven times more rapidly than are those on the equator of the earth. Hence, Jupiter has a rapid alternation of days and nights, varying but little if any in length; and a slow round of seasons, each season nearly three years long, and varying as little in their temperature.

Such is the distance of this planet from us that nothing like mountains or the outlines of continents and oceans have been discovered in it. Its whole disk, however, is traversed by light and dark belts; running nearly parallel to one another and to its equator, though they have often been known to change both their form and number. These are regarded by astronomers as lines of bright clouds alternating with darker belts of the planet's surface, as seen between them, and having their direction detemined by currents analogous to our trade winds, but of a much more steady and. decided character, in consequence of the great rotary velocity. But the existence of clouds implies and proves several other important facts-that there is an atmosphere in which they float, that there is water from which they arise, that there is heat by which that water is evaporated, and rain or snow into which they condense. The apparent diameter of the sun from Jupiter is not more than one-fifth what it is to us; consequently the light and heat it derives from him are only about one-twenty-fifth of what we receive; but this deficiency of light is made up in part by the reflection of its four moons, and that of heat may be by the higher temperature of its own body.

/ Page 888 / was hushed up by the authorities in a cloud of circumlocution and secrecy, a screen of words about flies and pieces of chalk and unidentifiable made-up names like Hated of God and Scum of Weset. Nevertheless it was soon talked of through the length and breadth of the whole kingdom. Everybody, whether he used the prescribed circum- locutions or not, knew what was behind these minimizings and palliations. The story in all its shockingness did not lack popular appeal; one might even say that it had a ritual character, seeming as it did like the repetition in the present of events whose foundation lay far back in the past.

To put it bluntly, somebody had been conspiring against Pharaoh's life - this although the days of the majesty of that elderly god were well known to be numbered anyhow, and it is common knowledge that their inclination to unite again with the sun could not be arrested either by the advice of the magicians and physicians of the book- house or even by the mediation of Ishtar of the Way, which His Majesty's brother and father-in-law of the Euphrates, Tushratta, King over Khanigalbat or Mitanniland, had solicitously sent to him. But that the Great House, Si-Re, Son of the Sun and Lord of the Two Crowns, Neb-ma-Re-Amenhotpe, was old and ailing and could scarcely breathe was no reason at all why he should not be conspired against; indeed, if you liked, it was a very good reason why he should, however dreadful, of course, such an enterprise remained.

It was a universally known fact that Re himself, the sun-god, had originally been King of the two lands, or rather ruler on earth over all men; and had ruled them with majestic brilliance and blessing so long as his years were still young, mature, or middle-aged, and even for some considerable period of time into his beginning and increasing age. But when he had got very old, and painful infirmities and frailties, though of course splendid in their form, approached the majesty of this god, he had found it good to withdraw from the earth and retire into the upper regions. For his bones gradually turned to silver, his flesh to gold, and his hair to genuine lapis lazuli, ,a very beautiful form of senescence, yet attended with all sorts of aliments and pains, for which the gods themselves had sought a thousand remedies but all in vain, since no herb that grows can avail against the diseases of gilding and silvering and lapidification, those troubles of advanced old age. Yet even under these circumstances the old Re had always clung to his earthly sovereignty although he must have seen that owing to his own weakness it had begun to relax, that he had ceased to be feared and even to be respected.

Now Isis, the Great One of the Island, Eset, a millionfold fertile in guile, felt that her moment was come. Her wisdom embraced heaven and earth, like that of the superannuated old Re himself. But there was one thing she did not know or command, and the lack of it / Page 889 / hampered her: she did not know the last, most secret name of Re, his very final one, knowledge of which would give power over him. Re had very many names, each one more secret than the one before, yet not utterly hopeless to find out, save one, the very last and mightiest. That he still withheld; whoso could make him name it, he could compel him and outdistance him and put him under his feet.

Therefore Eset conceived and devised a serpent, which should sting Re in his golden flesh. Then the intolerable pain of the sting, which only great Eset could cure who made the worm, would force Re to tell her his name. Now as she contrived it, so was it fulfilled. The old Re was stung, and in torments was forced to come out with one of his secret names after another, always hoping that the goddess would be satisfied before they got to the last one. But she kept on to the uttermost, until he had named her the very most secret of all, and the power of her knowledge over him was absolute. After that it cost her nothing to heal his wound; but he only got a little better, within the wretched limits in which so old a creature can; and soon thereafter he gave up and joined the great majority.

/ Page 966 / of the morning star - and she indeed was surpassing lovely, of two- fold nature and rich in tales, yet weak, too weak for that which she heralded; she paled before it and vanished away - poor morning star!"

"Spare your regrets!" ordered the King. "Here is matter for triumph. For tell me what it was she paled before, and who appeared, whom she had heralded?" he asked, making his voice sound as proud and threatening as it could.

"Of course, the sun," Joseph replied. "What a temptation for him who so longed to worship! Before its cruelty and its benignity all peoples of the earth bowed down. But my ancestor's caution was un- limited, his reservations endless. Peace and satisfaction, he said, are not the point. The all-important thing is to avoid the great peril to the honour of humanity, that man should bow down before a lower than the highest. 'Mighty art thou,' he said to Shamash-Marduk;'Bel, 'and mighty is thy power of blessing and cursing. But something there is above thee, in me a worm, and it warns me not to take the witness for that which it w:itnesses. The greater the witness, the greater the fault in me if I let myself be misled to worship it instead of that to which it bears witness. Godlike is the witness, but yet not God. I too am a witness and a testimony: I and my doing and dreaming, which mount up above the sun towards that to which it more mightily bears witness than even itself, and whose heat is greater than the heat of the sun.' "

"Mother," Amenhotep whispered, without turning his eyes from Joseph, "what did I say? No, no, I did not say it, I only knew it, it was said to me. When of late I had my seizure, and revelation was vouchsafed me for the improvement of the teaching - for it is not complete, never have I asserted that it was complete - then I heard my Father's voice and it spoke to me saying: 'I am the heat of the Aton, which is in Him. But millions of suns could I feed from my fires. Callest thou me Aton, then know that the name itself stands in need of improvement. When you call me so, you are not calling me by my last and final name. For my last name is: the Lord of the Aton.' Thus Pharaoh heard it, the Father's beloved child, and brought it back with him out of his attack. But he kept silent, and even the silence made him forget. Pharaoh has set truth in his heart, for the Father is the truth. But he is responsible for the triumph of the teaching, that all men may receive It; and he is concerned lest the improvement and purification, until at last it consist only of the pure truth, might mean to make it unteachable. This is a sore concern which no one can understand save one on whom as much responsibility rests as on Pharaoh. For others it is easy to say: 'You have not set truth in your heart, but rather the teaching.' Yet the teaching is the sole means of bringing men nearer the truth. It should be im- / Page 967 / proved; but if one improve it to the extent that it becomes unavailable as a medium of truth - I ask the Father and you: will not only then the reproach be justified that I have shut up the teaching in my heart to the disadvantage of the truth? Pharaoh shows mankind the image of the revered Father, made by his artists: the golden disk from which rays go down upon his creatures, ending in tender hands, which caress all creation. 'Adore!' he commands. 'This is the Aton, my Father, whose blood runs in me, who revealed himself to me, but will be Father to you all, that you may become good and lovely in him.' And he adds: 'Pardon, dear human beings, that I am so strict with your thoughts. Gladly would I spare your simplicity. But it must be. Therefore I say to you: Not the image shall you worship when you worship, not to it sing your hymns when you sing; but rather to him whose image it is, you understand, the true disk of the sun, my Father in the sky, who is the Aton, for the image is not yet he.' That is hard enough; it is a challenge to men; out of a hundred, twelve understand it. But if now the teacher says: 'Still another and further effort must I urge upon you for the sake of truth, however much it pains me for your simplicity. For the image is but the image of the image and witness to a witness. Not the actual round sun up there in the sky are you to think of when you burn incense to his image and sing his praise - not this, but the Lord of Aton, who is the heat in it and who guides its course.' That goes too far, it is too much teaching, and not twelve, not even one understands. Only Pharaoh himself understands, who is outside of all count, and yet he is supposed to teach the many. Your forefather, soothsayer, had an easy task, although he made it hard for himself. He might make it as hard as he liked, striving after truth for his own sake and the sake of his pride, for he was only a wanderer. But I am King, and teacher; I may not think what I cannot teach. Whereas such a one very soon learns not even to think the unteachable."

Here Tiy, his mother, cleared her throat, rattled her ornaments, and said, looking ahead of her into space:

"Pharaoh is to be praised when he practises statesmanship in matters of religious belief and spares the simplicity of the many. That is why I warned him not to wound the popular attachment to Usir, king of the lower regions. There is no contradiction between knowing and sparing, in this connection; and the office of teacher need not darken knowledge. Never have priests taught the multitude all they themselves know. They have told them what was wholesome, and wisely left in the realm of the mysteries what was not beneficial. Thus knowledge and wisdom are together in the world, truth and forbearance. The mother recommends that it so remain."

"Thank you, Mama," said Amenhotep, with a deprecating bow. "Thank you for the, contribution. It is very valuable and will for / Page 968 / eternal ages be held in honour. But we are speaking of two different things. My Majesty speaks of the fetters which the teaching puts upon the thoughts of God; yours refers to priestly statecraft, which divides teaching and knowledge. But Pharaoh would not be arrogant, and there is no greater arrogance than such a division. No, there is no arrogance in the world greater than that of dividing the children of our Father into initiate and uninitiate and teaching double words: all-knowingly for the masses, knowingly in the inner circle. No, we must speak what we know, and witness what we have seen. Pharaoh wants to do nothing but improve the teaching, even though it be made hard for him by the teaching. And still it has been said to me: 'Call me not Aton, for that is in need of improvement. Call me the Lord of the Aton!' But I, through keeping silent, forgot. See now what the Father does for his beloved son! He sends him a messenger and dream-interpreter, who shows him his dreams, dreams from below and dreams from above, dreams important for the realm and for heaven; that he should awake in him what he already knows, and interpret what was already said to him. Yes, how loveth the Father his child the King who came forth out of him, that he sends down a soothsayer to him, to whom from long ages has been handed down the teaching that it profits man to press on towards the last and highest! "

"To my knowledge," Tiy coldly remarked, "your soothsayer came up from below, out of a dungeon, and not from above."

"Ah, in my opinion that is sheer mischief, that he came from below," cried Amenhotep. "And besides, above and below mean not much to the Father, who when he goes down makes the lower the upper, for where he shines, there is the upper world. From which it comes that his messengers interpret dreams from above and below with equal skill. Go on, soothsayer! Did I say stop? If I did, I meant go on! That wanderer out of the East, from whom you spring, did not stop at the sun, but pressed on above it?"

"Yes, in spirit," answered Joseph smiling. "For in the flesh he was but a worm on this earth, weaker than most of those above and below him. And still he refused to bow and to worship, even before one of these phenomena, for they were but witness and work, as he himself was. All being, he said, is a work of the highest, and before the being is the spirit of whom it bears witness. How could I commit so great a folly and bum incense to a witness, be it never so weighty - I, who am consciously a witness, whereas the others simply are and know it not? Is there not something in me of Him, for which all being is but evidence of the being of the Being which is greater than His works and is outside them? It is outside the world, and though it is the compass of the world, yet is the world not its compass. Far is the sun, surely three hundred and sixty thousand miles away, and yet / Page 969 / his rays are here. But He who shows the sun the way hither is further than far, yet near in the same measure, nearer than near. Near or far is all the same to Him, for He has no space nor any time; and though the world is in Him, He is not in the world at all, but in heaven."

"Did you hear that, Mama?" asked Amenhotep in a small voice, tears in his eyes. "Did you hear the message which my heavenly Father sends me through this young man, in whom I straightway saw something, as he came in, and who interprets to me my dreams? I will only say that I have not said all that was said to me in my seizure, and, keeping silent, forgot it. But when I heard: 'Call me not Aton, but rather the Lord of the Aton,' then I heard also this: 'Call on me not as "my F:ather above," for that is of the sun in the sky; it must needs be changed, to say: "My Father who art in heaven" !' So heard I and shut it up within me, because I was anxious over the truth for the sake of the teaching. But he whom I took out of the prison, he opens the prison of truth that she may come forth in beauty and light; and teaching and truth shall embrace each other, even as I embrace him."

And with wet eyelashes he worked himself up out of his sunken seat, embraced Joseph, and kissed him.

"Yes, yes!" he cried: He began to hurry once more up and down the Cretan loggia, to the bee-portieres, to the windows and back, his hands pressed to his heart. "Yes, yes, who art in heaven, further than far and nearer than near, the Being of beings, that looks not into death, that does not become and die but is, the abiding light, that neither rises nor sets, the unchanging source, out of which stream all life, light, beauty, and truth - that is the Father, so reveals He Himself to Pharaoh His son, who lies in His bosom and to whom He shows all that He has made. For He has made all, and His love is in the world, and the world knows Him not. But Pharaoh is His witness and bears witness to His light and His love, that through Him all men may become blessed and may believe, even though now they still love the darkness more than the light that shines in it. For they understand it not, therefore are their deeds evil. But the son, who came from the Father, will teach it to them. Golden spirit is the light, father-spirit; out of the mother-depths below power strives upward to it, to be purified in its flame and become spirit in the Father. Immaterial is God, like His sunshine, spirit is He, and Pharaoh teaches you to worship Him in spirit and in truth. For the son knoweth the Father as the Father knoweth him, and will royally reward all those who love Him and keep His commandments -he will make them great and gilded at court because they love the Father in the son who came out of Him. For my words are not mine, but the words of my Father who sent me, that all might become one in light and love, even as I and the Father are one..."

/ Page 970 / He smiled, an all too blissful smile; at the same time grew pale as death; putting his hands on his back, he leaned against the painted wall, closed his eyes, and so remained, upright indeed, but obviously no longer present.

 Page 78

"Deep in an underground chamber a solemn group of men is seeking guidance from death. They are dressed in white robes and chanting softly around a casket that is sealed with wax. One of their members is steadfastly counting to himself, carefully marking the time. After about eight minutes, the casket is opened, and the man who nearly suffocated inside is revived by the rush of fresh air. He tells the men around him what he saw. As he passed out from lack of oxygen, he saw a light that became brighter and larger as he sped toward it through a tunnel. From that light came a radiant person in white who delivered a message of eternal life.

The priest who is attending this ceremony is pleased with the results. "No man escapes death," he says. "And every living soul is destined to resurrection. You go into the tomb alive that you will learn of the light."

The man who "died" but is now reborn is happy. He is now a member of one of the strangest societies in history, a group of civic leaders who induced nearly fatal suffocation to create a near-death experience.

Sound like a cult from some place in northern California? ex-hippies looking for a new high, perhaps? Not at all. This was the cult of Osiris, a small society of men who were the priests and pharaohs of ancient Egypt, one of the greatest civilizations in human history. This account of how they / Page 79 / inspired near death is an actual description of their rites from Egyptologists who have translated their hieroglyphics.

One of the most important Egyptian rituals involved the reenactment by their god-king of the myth of Osiris, the god who brought agriculture and civilization to the ancient Egyptians. He was the first king of Egypt who civilized his subjects and then traveled abroad to instruct others in the fine art of civilization. His enemies plotted against him. Upon his return to Egypt, he was captured and sealed in a chest. His eventual resurrection was seen as proof of life eternal.

Each new king was supposed to be a direct reincarnation of Osiris. An important part of the ceremony was to reenact his entombment. These rituals took place in the depths of the Great Pyramid and were a prerequisite for becoming a god-king. It is my guess that many slaves perished while the Egyptians experimented to find exactly how long a person could be sealed in an airtight container and survive.

Nonetheless, these near-death experiences were more important to the Egyptians than the lives of a few slaves. After all, this was the age of the bicameral mind, a period in which men believed that their thoughts came to them from the gods and were not internally generated. For the Egyptians, thoughts and dreams were gods speaking to them.

 Page 254

"On that August morning his 'Leftist' colleagues were also, no doubt, quite pleased to see him go, For, while defending Marxist biology, Haldane nevertheless was in favour of extending the field of science and of observing phenomena which did not conform to rationalist ideas. 1n reply to criticism, he answered coolly: 'I study whatever is really strange in physical chemistry, but I do not neglect anything in any other field.'

He had been urging for a long time that science should make a systematic study of the notion of an 'awakened state'. As early as 1930, in his books The Inequality of Man and Possible Worlds, in spite of his official position in the world of science, he had de- clared that the Universe was certainly stranger than was generally thought, and that poetic or religious testimony relating to a state of super-consciousness ought to be a subject for scientific research.

It was inevitable that such a man would one day go off to India; and it would not be surprising if his future works treated such subjects as: 'Electro-Encephalography and Mysticism', or 'The Fourth State of Consciousness and the metabolism of carbonic gas'. This could be expected of a man whose works already include a Study of the application of 18-dimensional space to essential problems of genetics.

Our official psychologists admit the existence of two states of consciousness: sleep and waking. But from the earliest times down to the present day there is abundant evidence as to the existence of states of consciousness superior to our normal waking conscious- ness. Haldane was probably the first modem scientist to examine objectively this state of super-consciousness.

It was only logical, in the period of transition in which we are living, that this Man should have been considered by his spiritualist enemies no less than by his materialist friends as an expert in the art of putting spokes in wheels.

Like Haldane, we ought to remain entirely aloof from the old controversy betweenspiritualists and materialists. That is the really 'modem' attitude. It is not a question of being 'above' the dispute, because there is no 'above' and no 'below'; in fact there is no sense in it at all.

/ Page 255 / The spiritualists believe in the possibility of a super-consciousness, and see in it an attribute of the immortal soul.

The materialists are up in arms against the very idea, and brandish Descartes. Neither side is willing to approach the subject with an open mind or give it serious study. There must be another way of considering this problem; a realistic way, in the sense in which we understand the term, implying an integral realism which takes into account the fantastic aspects of reality.

It may well be, too, that this old controversy is not philosophical at all, except on the surface. It may be nothing but a dispute between people who, according to their natures, react differently towards natural phenomena - just as one person may revel in the wind, and another detest it. A conflict between two human types is not likely to lead to any illumination! If this were really so, how much time would be wasted in abstract discussions, and how right we should be to withdraw from the debate in order to approach the whole question from a 'barbarian' point of view!

We may proceed on the following hypothesis:

The passage from sleep to a waking state produces a certain number of changes in the body. For example: the arterial tension is different, and there are variations in the nervous impulses. If, as we think, there is another state, which we may call one of super- wakefulness, or super-consciousness, the passage from our normal waking to this super-state must also be attended by transformations of various kinds.

Now, it is well known that for some people the process of waking up is painful, or at any rate extremely disagreeable. Modem medicine is aware of this phenomenon, and distinguishes two types of human beings according to their reaction to the process of waking up.

What is this state of super-consciousness, of a really 'awakened' consciousness? Men who have experienced it have difficulty, on their return to normality, in describing it. It cannot be expressed in ordinary language. We know that it is possible to attain this state voluntarily; and the mystics' exercises are all directed to this end. We also know that it is possible, as Vivekananda says, that 'a man who is not versed in this science (mystical exercises) may attain this state by chance'.

There are a great many instances in the poetry of every nation of sudden illuminations of this kind. And how many people, who are neither poets nor mystics, have not felt for a fraction of a second that they were on the brink of such an experience?

Now let us compare this singular and exceptional state with another exceptional state. Doctors and psychologists are beginning to study, for military reasons, the behaviour of human beings in a state of weightlessness. Beyond a certain degree of acceleration, weight is abolished. A passenger in an experimental plane travelling at such a speed floats for a few seconds. For some the sensation is one of extreme well-being, for others one of extreme anguish and horror.

Similarly, it may well be that the passage from the ordinary / Page 256 / waking state to one of super-consciousness (illuminative, magic) is attended by certain subtle changes in the organism, disagreeable for some, and agreeable for others. The study of the physiology of states of consciousness is still at a rudimentary stage. Some progress has already been made in connection with hibernation. The physiology of a state of super-consciousness has not, with a few exceptions, attracted the attention of scientists. If our hypothesis is valid, we can readily conceive the existence of a positivist, rationalist human type who, in self-defence, becomes aggressive as soon as there is any question, whether in literature philosophy or science, of going outside the sphere in which consciousness normally functions. We can equally well imagine the spiritualist type in whom any allusion to a state beyond reason produces the sensation of a lost paradise. May not the basis of a fundamental scholastic dispute prove to be, in the last resort, a question of: 'I like, or I don't like'? But what is it in us that likes or does not like? In point of fact, it is never 'I' ; merely: 'something in me likes, or does not like', and that is all. Let us therefore get rid altogether of the false 'spiritualism versus materialism' problem, which is perhaps nothing but a question of allergies. What is essential is to know whether Man possesses in unexplored regions of his being, superior instruments, enormous amplifiers, as it were, of his intelligence - a whole equipment to enable him to conquer and comprehend the Universe, to conquer and comprehend himself, and to shoulder his whole destiny.

Bodhidarma, the founder of Zen Buddhism, one day while he was meditating, fell asleep (i.e. he allowed himself inadvertently to relapse into what is for most men their normal state of consciousness). This failing seemed to him so horrible that he cut off his eyelids.

According to the legend, the eyelids fell to the ground and there gave birth to the first tea plant. Tea, which is a protection against sleep, is the flower that symbolizes the desire of wise men to keep awake; and that is why so it is said, 'The taste of tea and the taste of Zen are much alike.'

This notion of an 'awakened state' seems to be as old as humanity It is the key to the most ancient religious texts, and perhaps the Cromagnon man already sought to enter that state. The radio- carbon method of dating has shown that six thousand years ago the Indians to the south-east of Mexico used to absorb certain mushrooms to induce a state of hyper-lucidity. It is always a question of getting the 'third eye' to open and of escaping from the ordinary level of consciousness where everything is illusion, a prolongation of the dreams belonging to deep sleep. 'Sleeper awake!' In the Gospels as in fairy-tales, it is always the same admonition.

Mankind has sought this 'awakened state' in all sorts of rites, in dancing and song, by mortification of the flesh, fasting, torture and various drugs. As soon as modem Man realizes the importance of what is at stake - which must be very soon - other means will / Page 258 / certainly be found. The American scientist J. B. Olds has imagined an electronic stimulation of the brain.*

The English astronomer Fred Hoyle** suggests the projection of luminous images on a television screen. Already H. G. Wells, in In the Days of the Comet, had imagined that after colliding with a comet, the atmosphere of the Earth was impregnated with a gas that induced a state of hyper-lucidity. At last men could cross the frontier that separates truth from illusion. They were awakened to eternal realities. Of a sudden, all problems - practical, moral, spiritual, found their solution.

This state of an 'awakened consciousness' seems to have been sought until now only by mystics. If it is possible, to what is it to be attributed? Religious persons speak of 'divine grace'; the occultists of 'magical initiation'. But what if it were a natural faculty?

According to the latest scientific discoveries, considerable portions of the brain are still terra incognita. Are they the seat of powers we do not know how to use? Machines of whose purpose we are ignorant. Instruments in reserve with a view to future mutations?

We also know that normally a man, even for the most complicated intellectual operations, uses only nine-tenths of his brain. The greater part of our faculties therefore is still virgin soil. The im- memorial myth of the 'hidden treasure' has no other meaning.

This is what the English scientist, Dr. Gray Walter, says in one of the most essential books of our time: The Living Brain. In a second work, Farther Outlook, in which anticipation and observation, philosophy and poetry are mixed, Walter affirms that there are doubtless no limits to the possibilities of the human brain, and that in our thought we shall one day explore Time, as we now explore Space. He shares this vision with the mathematician Eric Temple Bell who endows the hero of his novel The Waves of Time with the power of voyaging through the entire history of the Cosmos.***

* The centres of pleasure in the brain: Scientific American, October 1956.

** In his novel, The Black Cloud. Black clouds in space, between the stars, are higher forms of life. These super-intelligences propose to arouse the inhabitants of the Earth by sending luminous images which produce in the brain a state of 'awakened consciousness'.

*** 'I discovered by means which I only imperfectly understand, the secret of going backwards through history. It is like swimming. Once one has learned the stroke, one never forgets it. But to learn it calls for constant practice, and a certain involuntary tightening of the mind and muscles. One thing I am sure of: no one knows exactly how, the first time, he overcame the difficulty of swimming; and doubtless even the most expert clairvoyants would be unable to explain to others the secret of voyaging backwards through the waves of time.' Like Fred Hoyle, and many other British scientists, Eric Temple Bell writes fantastic stories and essays (under the pseudonym of John Taine). Only the most naive reader would imagine that these merely represent a relaxation for great minds. It is the only way to disseminate certain truths that are inacceptable to official philosophy. As in every pre-revolutionary period, all advanced thinking is published in disguise. The 'jacket' of a work of space-fiction is the cloak of the 1960s.

/ Page 258 / Let us stick to the facts. The phenomenon of the super-conscious state can be attributed to the existence of an immortal soul. This notion has been advanced for thousands of years without ever having done much towards solving the problem. But if, so as to keep within the facts, we confine ourselves to saying that the notion of an 'awakened state' is one of humanity's constant aspirations, that is not enough. It is an aspiration, but it is something else as well.

Resistance to torture, the mathematician's moments of inspiration, the observations recorded by the Yogis' electro-encephalogram and other instances as well, oblige us to admit that man can enter a state other than his normal waking state. As to the nature of that state, every man is free to propose whatever hypothesis he chooses - the Grace of God, or the awakening of the Immortal Self. He can also be a 'barbarian' and seek a scientific explanation.

Note that we are not pretending to be scientists. We are simply determined to neglect nothing that is of our own age in order to explore what belongs to every age.

Our hypothesis is as follows:

Communications with the brain are effected normally through nervous impulses. It is a slow-motion process: a few metres per second on the nerves' surface. It may be that in certain circumstances another, but much more rapid form of communication is established by an electro-magnetic wave travelling at the speed of light. We should then obtain the extreme rapidity in the recording and trans- mission of information that is peculiar to electronic machines. There is no Law of Nature that would exclude the existence of such a phenomenon. Waves of this kind would not be detectable outside the brain. This is the hypothesis we put forward in the preceding chapter.

If this 'awakened state' exists, how is it made manifest? The descriptions given by Hindu, Arab and Christian mystics have never been systematically collected and studied. It is extraordinary that among the very numerous anthologies of every kind published in this age of catalogues and classification, there is not a single anthology devoted to the 'awakened state'. The descriptions that exist are convincing, but not at all clear. And yet, if we want to evoke in modem terms what is the outward sign of such a state, this is what we should have to do:

Normally, thought travels at a walking pace, as Emile Meyerson has clearly shown. Most of the achievements of thought are, after all, the fruit of a very slow advance towards something that later appears self-evident. The most admirable discoveries in mathe- matics are nothing but equalities - unexpected, perhaps, but still equalities. The great Leonard Euler thought that the sublime summit of all mathematical thought was expressed in the equation: (calculation ommitted)

This relation, which joins the real to the imaginary and is the basis of natural logarithms, is an 'evidence'. As soon as it is explained to an advanced student, he invariably declares that it is, of / Page 259 / course, glaringly obvious. Why did it require so much thought for so many years to arrive at something so patently self-evident?

In physics, the discovery of the wave-mechanism in particles is the key that has opened up the modern era. Here, too, something self-evident is involved. Einstein had declared that energy = mc², when m = mass, and c = the speed of light. That was in 1905. In 1900 Planck stated: energy = hf, when h is a constant, and f the frequency of vibrations. But it was not until 1923 that Louis de Broglie, a man of exceptional genius, thought of combining the two equations and writing: hf = mc².

Thought moves at a snail's pace, even in the greatest minds. It does not dominate the subject.

One last example: since the end of the eighteenth century it has been taught that mass figured both in the formula of kinetic energy (e : mv²) and in Newton's Law of Gravity (masses attract one another with a force varying. . . inversely as the square of their distances apart).

Why was it left to Einstein to comprehend that the word mass has the same meaning in the two classic formulae? The whole theory of relativity can immediately be deduced from it. Why did one mind alone in the whole history of human intelligence see that ? And why not immediately instead of after ten long years of intensive research? Because our thought travels along a winding path on one level which often turns back on itself. And no doubt ideas disappear and reappear periodically, and inventions are forgotten and then rediscovered again.

And yet it seems possible that the mind can rise above this path and no longer have to plod along - that it can have an over-all view and speed from point to point like a bird or an aeroplane. That is what the mystics call an 'awakened state'.

But are there one or more such states? There is every reason to believe that there are several, just as there are several altitudes at which one can fly. 'The first stage is called genius. The others are unknown to the masses and thought to be only a legend. Troy also was a legend, before the excavations revealed that it really had existed.'

If men have in them the physical possibility of attaining one or other of these states, the quest for the best means of doing so ought to be the principal aim of their lives. If my brain is equipped with the necessary machinery - if all this does not belong exclusively to the domain of religion or mythology - if it is not all a question of divine 'grace' or 'magical initiation' but depends on certain techniques and certain internal and external attitudes capable of setting this machinery in motion - then I am satisfied that my only ambition and most urgent duty ought to be to reach this 'awakened state' and attain these heights at which the mind can soar.

It is not because they are 'frivolous' or 'wicked' that men do not concentrate all their efforts on this research. It is not a question of morals. And in an affair of this kind a little goodwill and a few / Page 260 / attempts here and there are quite useless. Perhaps the superior instruments in our brain can only be brought into use if our whole life (individual and collective) is itself an instrument to be lived and looked upon exclusively as a means of establishing a connection and switching on the current that will put this machinery in motion.

The reason why men are not exclusively concerned with attaining this 'awakened' state is because the difficulties of social life and the necessity of earning a living leave them no leisure for such pursuits. Men do not live by bread alone; but up till now our civilization has been unable to provide everyone with this necessity.

In proportion as technical progress will gradually allow men time to breathe, so will the quest for the 'third state' of awareness and lucidity take precedence over all other aspirations. The possibility of taking part in this research will finally be recognized as one of the 'Rights of Man'. The next revolution will be a psychological one.

Let us imagine a Neanderthal man miraculously transported to the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton. In the presence of Dr. Oppenheimer he would be in a situation comparable to that in which we should find ourselves when face to face with a really 'awakened' man, whose thoughts no longer plod, but can range at will through three, four or n dimensions.

Physically, it would seem that we could become such a man. There are enough cells in our brain, and enough possible inter- connections. But it is difficult for us to imagine what such an intelligence could see and understand.

The alchemists claimed that manipulation of matter in their crucibles could provoke what the moderns would call radiation, or ' a field of force. This radiation would transmute all the cells in the operator's body and turn him into a truly 'awakened' man - a man who would be alive, both here and on the 'other side'.

Let us now accept this hypothesis, this superbly non-Euclidean psychology. Let us suppose that one day in 1962 a man like our- selves, while manipulating matter and energy in a certain way, suddenly becomes entirely changed - in other words, 'awakened'.

In 1955 Professor Singleton showed to some friends during an atomic conference in Geneva some carnations which he had grown in the radio-active field of the great nuclear reactor at Brookhaven. They had been white; now they were a purply-red, a hitherto unknown species. All their cells had been modified, and they would, whether by grafting or reproduction, continue in their new state.

So it would be with our new man. He is now superior to us; his thought no longer plods - it flies. By integrating in a different way what all of us know in our various specialities, or by simply establishing all possible connections between the scientific facts contained in textbooks and University manuals, he could form concepts which would seem as strange to us as chromosomes would have been to Voltaire, or the neutrino to Leibnitz. Such a man would have absolutely no interest in trying to communicate with us, nor would he seek to dazzle us by trying to explain the enigmas of light, or / Page 261 / the secret of genes. Valery did not publis:h his thoughts in La Semaine de Suzette. This man would be above and beyond humanity. He could only communicate to advantage with minds like his own.

There is substance here for meditation.

It is conceivable that the various traditions connected with 'initiation' have resulted from contact with minds on other planets. It may be that, for an 'awakened' man, time and space present no barriers, and that communication is possible with intelligences on other inhabited worlds; this, incidentally, would explain why we have never been visited.

We can dream about these things - on condition, as Haldane reminds us, that we do not forget that dreams of this kind are probably always less fantastic than reality.

Now follow three true stories. They will serve as illustrations. Illustrations are not proofs, but these three stories oblige us to believe that there are other states of consciousness than those recognized in official psychology. Even the vague notion we have of genius is not enough. We have not chosen these illustrations from the lives or works of mystics, although this would have been easier, and perhaps more efficacious. But we maintain our claim to approach these matters in a spirit of complete freedom and as honest 'barbarians'. "

"WE TAKE GREAT PRIDE IN OUR MAZE AND ENCOURAGE YOU TO ENJOY YOUR VISIT, PLEASE OBSERVE THE FOLLOWING RULES:

1. BE CONSIDERATE, COURTEOUS AND CAUTIOUS OF OTHER MAZE RUNNERS.

2. GOING UNDER THE MAZE WALLS IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN EXCEPT IN AN EMERGENCY.

3. IN CASE OF AN EMERGENCY, PLEASE CRAWL UNDER THE MAZE WALLS TO THE PERIMETER.

4. VIOLATION OF RULES OR MISCONDUCT WILL RESULT IN REVOCATION OF YOUR MAZE TOKE WITHOUT REFUND.

AUSGANG, USCITA, FINISH, LLEGADA"

/ Page 24 /

"In the year 999, in the tenth day of the Fifth Moon, at the Imperial Palace of Kyoto, a cat gave birth for the first time recorded here, and to five little kittens. The emperor so marvelled at this that he charged his ministers with the care of them; they were to bring the kittens up exactly the same way as they had been nursed as children. When the kittens were grown, he made it known at Court that he wished the breeding to continue."