Chariots of the Gods (19 page)

Never did we know so little about so much as today. I am certain that the theme 'Man and Unknown Intelligences' will remain on the agenda of research until every puzzle that can be solved has found an answer.

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At 4 a.m. on 1 April, 1960, an experiment began in a lonely valley in West Virginia. The big 85-ft radio-telescope at Green Bank was trained on the star Tau-Ceti, 11.8 light years away. The young American astronomer, Dr Frank Drake, who enjoys considerable fame as a scientist and acted as leader of this project, wanted to tune in to the radio transmissions of other civilisations in order to pick up signals from unknown intelligences in outer space. The first series of experiments lasted 150 hours. They passed into history as project OZMA, although it was a failure. The experiment was broken off, not because some of the participating scientists expressed the view that there were no radio transmission in space, but rather because it was realised that at the time there was no apparatus sensitive enough to reach the desired goal. OZMA will not be the only experiment of its kind. Possibly a radio-telescope will be erected on the moon that will be able to scan the immeasurable spaces between the stars for radio signals, free from terrestrial interference.

However, it must be asked whether the search for radio signals really helps our space research and whether it might not be more practical for us to do the sending of radio signals into space. Of course, we cannot expect unknown intelligences to understand Russian or Spanish or English and to be sitting there waiting to be contacted.

There remain three possibilities by which we can make ourselves known: mathematical symbols, Laser beams and pictures. The first of these seems most likely to succeed. In order to send such symbols we shall have to discover and fix Intergalactic wavelengths that stand a good chance of being received throughout the cosmos. 1420 megahertz would provide such a frequency, for that is the radiation frequency of the neutral hydrogen that results from the collision of hydrogen atoms. Since hydrogen is an element, this radiation frequency could be known throughout the universe. Besides, 1420 megahertz lies outside the over-crowded scale of terrestrial wavelengths. The possibility of errors and interference factors would be reduced to a minimum. In this way radio impulses could be sent into space and if unknown intelligences exist they would recognise them.

In this connection a news item from Die Zeit for 22.12.67 is most interesting. Under the headline 'The moon will be bombarded by flashes' we read:

'The distance of the moon from the earth is known to the nearest few hundred yards, but astronomers refuse to be satisfied with that. So astronauts on one of the first flights to the earth's satellite will take mirrors with them and set them up there. These mirrors—like the corner of a room— will consist of three reflecting planes standing at right angles to each other and will have the property of returning any light that strikes them back to the source of the light.

'This mirror system will be bombarded from the earth by a Laser emitting flashes of light each lasting for a hundred millionth of a second. The Laser will be used in conjunction with a telescope with an aperture of 1-50 metres. The light reflected from the moon will be picked up by this telescope and led to a photo-copier.

'The distance of the moon can then be determined to one and a half metres from the known speed of light and the time taken by a Laser beam for the journey there and back.'

The same kind of thing is also conceivable in reverse. Radio waves have been traversing the universe for a very long time. If my hypothesis is correct, isn't it credible that unknown intelligences are also announcing themselves to us? For example, the radiation energy of CTA 102 suddenly increased in the autumn of 1964; Russian astronomers informed the world that they had possibly received signals from an extra-terrestrial super-civilisation. This radio star CTA 102 was listed under catalogue number 102 by radio astronomers of the California Institute of Technology—hence its name.

The astronomer Sholomitski said in the lecture-room of the Sternberg Institute in Moscow on 13 April, 1965: 'At the end of September and the beginning of October 1964 the radiation energy from CTA 102 was much stronger, but only for a short time, then it diminished again. We registered this and waited. Towards the end of the year the intensity of the source suddenly increased again; it reached a second peak exactly 100 days after the first record was taken.' His chief, Professor Shlovsky, added that such fluctuations in radiation were very unusual.

Meanwhile the Dutch astrophysicist Maarten Schmidt has found out by exact measurements that CTA 102 must be about 10 milliard light years from the earth. That means that if the radio beams originated from intelligent beings, they must have been radiated 10 milliard years ago. But according to the calculations of present-day research, our planet simply did not exist at that time. This realisation could mean a kind of coup de grace to the search for other living beings in the universe.

But if the search for life in the universe had no chance of success, astrophysicists in America and Russia, at Jodrell Bank and at Stockert near Bonn in Germany would not be concentrating their research on what are known as radio stars and quasars with enormous directional antennae. The fixed stars Epsilon-Eridiani and Tau-Ceti are respectively 10.2 and 11.8 light years away from us. So radio waves aimed at these 'neighbours' would be about 11 light years under way and an answer from them could reasonably reach us in 22 years. Radio communications with more distant stars would take correspondingly longer; civilisations situated at distances reckoned in millions of light years are quite unsuitable for making contact with by means of radio waves. But are radio waves our only technical means of making such attempts?

For example, we could also make ourselves optically noticeable. A powerful Laser beam directed at Mars or Jupiter could not remain unnoticed, provided that intelligent living beings are in existence there. ('Laser' is the abbreviation for 'Light amplification by the stimulated emission of radiation'.) Another, somewhat fantastic-sounding possibility would be to cultivate vast areas of soil so that tremendous colour contrasts appeared which at the same time represented a geometrical or mathematical symbol of universal validity. One audacious but perfectly realisable idea: a gigantic equilateral triangle would have its 600-mile-long sides sown with potatoes; in this enormous triangle a circle would be sown with wheat. In this way a vast yellow circle, surrounded by a green equilateral triangle, would appear every summer. Incidentally, a most useful and productive experiment! But if there are unknown intelligences that seek us as we seek them, the colouring of circle and triangle would be a hint to them that these shapes were no freaks of nature. As I have said, that is one possibility. Someone or other has also advocated erecting a chain of lighthouses which radiate their lights vertically. The resultant sea of light should be arranged to have the shape of a model of an atom. There are all kinds of suggestions.

All the suggestions are based on the premise that someone somewhere is watching our planet. Are we tackling the problem the wrong way by limiting ourselves to the kind of means suggested above?

However sceptical or antipathetic we may be to everything occult, we cannot avoid looking into some as yet inexplicable physical phenomena, for example the thought transference between intelligent brains that is proved on a broad scientific basis but not yet explained.

In the para-psychological departments of many important universities previously unexplained phenomena such as clairvoyance, visions, thought transference, etc., are being investigated with accurate scientific methods. In the process all ghost and bogey stories from dubious occult sources or inspired by religious mania are separated and rejected. In this field of research, which was absolutely taboo until quite recently, we have made important advances.

In August 1959 the Nautilus experiment came to an end. It not only demonstrated the possibility of thought transference, but also showed that mental communications between human brains can be stronger than radio waves. This was the experiment:

Thousands of miles away from the 'thought transmitter', the submarine Nautilus dived several hundred feet below the surface. All radio communications were interrupted, for even today radio waves do not penetrate to any appreciable depth. On the other hand, mental communication between Mr X and Mr Y did function.

After such scientific tests one asks oneself what else the human brain is capable of. Can it make mental communications faster than light? The Cayce affair, which has passed into the annals of scientific literature, stimulates such suppositions.

Edgar Cayce, a simple farmer's son from Kentucky, had no idea of the fantastic capabilities that were hidden in his brain. Although he died on 5 January, 1945, doctors and psychologists are still busy evaluating his actions. The strict American Medical Association gave Edgar Cayce permission to hold consultations, although he was not a doctor.

Edgar Cayce fell ill in his early youth; he was wracked by cramps; high fever was consuming his body; he fell into a coma. While doctors were trying in vain to bring the boy back to consciousness, Edgar suddenly began to speak loudly and clearly. He explained why he was ill, named some remedies which he needed and told them to prepare a paste from certain ingredients and smear his spine with it. Doctors and relatives were astounded because they had no idea where the boy had got this knowledge from and the words which were quite unknown to him. Edgar got progressively and visibly better after treatment with the medicaments he had named.

The incident was the talk of the state. Since Edgar had spoken in a coma, many people suggested that he should be hypnotised in order to 'entice' suggestions for cures from him. Edgar would not have this at any price. Not until a friend of his fell ill, did he dictate a precise prescription using Latin words which he had never heard or even seen before. A week later his friend was better again.

If the first case was soon forgotten as a minor sensation, that was not to be taken seriously scientifically, the second incident caused the Medical Association to set up a commission which was to make reports if anything of the kind happened again and to put down in writing every single detail. In a sleeping state Cayce had knowledge and abilities which would normality only be the result of much consultation.

Once Edgar 'prescribed' for a very wealthy patient a medicine that could not be procured anywhere. This man put several advertisements in widely circulating newspapers, including international ones. A young doctor wrote from Paris (!), saying that his father had made this medicine years ago, but that production had long been discontinued. The composition of this medicine was identical with the detailed ingredients supplied by Edgar Cayce.

Later Edgar 'prescribed' a medicine and also named the address of a laboratory in a town a long way away. A telephone call showed that the preparation was only just being developed. A formula had been worked out, they were looking for a name, but it was not yet on sale to chemists.

The commission of professional doctors were no believers in telepathy; they investigated soberly and objectively, verified what they observed and knew that Edgar had never had a medical book in his hands in his life. Besieged on all sides and from all over the world, Edgar gave two consultations a day, always in the presence of doctors and always without accepting fees. His diagnoses and therapeutical prescriptions were accurate, but when he came out of his trance, he could not remember what he had said. When doctors on the commission asked him how he arrived at his diagnoses, Edgar supposed that he could put himself in contact, with any brain required and gather the information he needed for his diagnosis from it. But as the patient's brain knew exactly what his body lacked, it was all very simple. He asked the brain of the sick person and then he sought out the brain in the world which could tell him what should be done. He himself, declared Edgar, was only a part of all brains.

An astonishing idea, which—transferred to the realm of technology—would look something like this. In New York a monster computer would be fed with all the known data on physics. Whenever and from wherever the computer was interrogated, it would give its answer in fractions of a second. Another computer might be in Zurich with the whole of medical knowledge stored inside it. One in Moscow would be stuffed with all the facts about biology, another in Cairo would have no gaps in its astronomical knowledge. In short all the knowledge in the world, arranged by branches, would be stored in various centres in the world. Connected by radio, the computer in Cairo, if asked for medical information, would pass on the questions to the computer in Zurich in the hundredth of a second. Edgar Cayce's brain must have functioned in much the same way as this perfectly credible and already technically feasible computer link-up.

I now put forward the bold speculation: what if all (or even only a few highly trained) human brains have unknown forms of energy at their disposal and possess the ability to make contact with all living beings? We know frighteningly little about the functions and potentialities of the human brain; but it is known that only one tenth of the cortex functions in the brain of a healthy man. What are the remaining nine-tenths doing? The fact that men have recovered from incurable diseases by will power and nothing else is well-known and scientifically documented. Perhaps a 'gear' unknown to us has been engaged and set an additional tenth or two-tenths of the cortex working? If we assume the fantastic idea that the strongest forms of energy operate in the brain, then a strong mental impulse would be noticeable everywhere simultaneously. If science succeeds in making such a 'wild' idea demonstrable, it could mean that all intelligences in the universe belong to the same unknown structure.