It had been uttered on a little hill in Palestine, by a tired man with a matted beard, the last public practitioner of the lost science. He was an itinerant Jewish carpenter and sometime preacher who had met an old Egyptian priest, who had given him white powder gold of the true form, confected at one of the great time temples, all of which were dedicated to Hathor. This one was in the Sinai, and it was here that he was taught the secret laws of reality, which enabled him to raise the dead and heal the sick, and see clearly along the dim halls of time.
He had gone far in his studies, and seen much. And so it was that there came a day when he saw a chance to speak a sermon that would contain the deepest human meaning that there is. So he set forth, in a few hoarsely shouted verses on a hot afternoon, the whole journey of the human soul, and the inner meaning of mankind.
In that sermon was contained the most important prophecy ever made—ten words shouted out while people ate and chatted, and listened with the same casual wonder they might give to a bird of surpassing voice, or a street-corner mountebank with a deck of cards.
After he had been speaking for a while, he saw that he was not gaining their undivided attention, and he therefore tried this: “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” He had shouted it at them, but still there was little attention paid. What did it mean, anyway? They did not understand that he spoke not of the spiritually impoverished, but of those who share in spirit the suffering of the poor, and give of themselves to lift others.
He tried again, crying out, “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.” This had immediately regained the attention of the crowd. In that hard era, when the Jews were chained to the Roman yoke, there was not one of them who did not have reason to mourn.
So he had what he needed, the crucial moment of attention into which he would utter words that would define a future that was still over twelve thousand years away.
He then cried out, “Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.”
That had brought silence and questioning glances, then a confused murmur.
Soon after, he had gone down and taken a meal of bread and oil, and some thick wine. Nobody had recorded the words, but they had stayed in many hearts, and, in time, were given to the ages.
Today, though, those of whom they had been spoken had no time to think on them. And they weren’t thinkers, anyway, most of them. They were workers, and the sun was full up and the day was growing warm, and there was a very great deal to be done.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The World of
What if the world really did end? What would we do? How would the human species come to a close—in terror and chaos, or according to some sort of hidden plan?
If there is a plan, there will also be chaos, that’s clear enough. No matter how sublime the plan, people are likely to be quite upset, so I am happy to report that I don’t have any specific information that the world will end in 2012, 2020, or, for that matter, anytime soon. But I can assure you that, one day, for one reason or another, planet Earth will become unable to sustain human life, and there are people, or will be people, who will face this distressing inevitability.
So, what happens? Is it all simply random or is there some sort of meaning? Is there an afterlife, perhaps, or some other place we can go, or is our species condemned to join all the others who have emerged here, lived for a while, then died out and been forgotten?
Or, put another way, is the universe essentially random and chaotic, but so large that the emergence of conscious life here and there is more or less inevitable?
Modern science says that human beings are biological machines and that we emerged out of a long period of evolution that is mechanical and random. To make matters even more dolorous, the fossil record demonstrates with terrifying eloquence that gigantic, devastating extinctions are the norm on our innocent-seeming little planet. Add to that the fact that modern science says that death is the end of everything, and a pretty dreary picture emerges.
However, modern science’s vision is quite a new approach to the meaning of life, and there are reasons—a few—that enable legitimate speculation that it may not be correct. My own life has unfolded so far outside of what science tells us that we should expect, I really do wonder if we might not be having, as we live, quite a different experience from what appears to be the case, and one that is only partially explained by a mechanistic view.
Over the course of this little essay, I’ll tell some of the stories from my own experience that suggest—at least to me—that life may be much more than it seems, and there may be good reason for our inability to perceive the whole truth of it. Of course, I would be the last person to assert that I’m right and the entire scientific establishment is wrong.
In fact, I’m more than a little embarrassed at ending up so far outside of the mainstream. In terms of getting things like book reviews, for example, it’s been quite inconvenient. But I love quiet, and being an outsider certainly brings plenty of that. It also brings undeserved opprobrium and spittle-hazed rage. In my career, I have encountered many pumping carotids, and I confess to taking an evil pleasure in inducing bluster and outrage.
I’m annoying and, unfortunately, I enjoy this. But there’s a larger reason. I don’t think that I’m wrong about the marvels that have filled my life, and I do want others to enjoy them, as well, and to find the same delightfully light and deep meaning that they have brought me.
It is incredibly freeing to know—as, in my heart, I do—that human life is indeed part of a vast continuum of consciousness that persists after death, and that is woven into the extraordinary glory that is intelligent life in the universe.
So I’m full of joy, because I have had, and am having, a marvelous adventure that suggests that the secular and essentially mechanical vision of ourselves that has become a shorthand and core belief in scientific and intellectual circles, is not true, and that what is true about us is so far beyond even the most optimistic imaginings of the ancients that we actually live on a hidden frontier. Just beyond the lowering clouds that choke the present horizon lies a world of wonders, and the electrifying discovery of what we truly are.
I don’t think that, at any time in recorded history, we have been right about our true nature. Certainly, the old Western theocracy that arose out of the dismal Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325 is wrong, and probably even more wrong than modern science.
I suppose that leaves me more or less out on a limb—or, more properly, a plank. Without science or religion, I certainly have no established allies. Maybe secret societies could take up my cause, but so far, no cigar.
It’s quite fun on my plank. Out here, if you jump you may just fly. Out here, we are a delicious mystery that goes far beyond the intricacies of physical life, but is also divorced from the guilty weight of conventional religion.
I do not think that we live in the highest civilization ever known, and I think that the modern intellectual enterprise has failed in two fundamental ways. It has been unable, or unwilling, to look at the past objectively, and it has been unable to devise any means to detect the existence of the soul as a part of the physical universe—a measurement that, I think, must be possible. If I am correct, it must also be the foundation of a much truer science than we now know.
I think that the modern failure to realize that energy can itself be conscious is as fundamental to our progress as was the failure of the ancient world to understand the potential of steam power.
Around A.D. 120, Heron of Alexandria invented a device called the aeolipile, a simple steam engine, which was used to open the doors of a temple, and also showed up in Roman playrooms as a toy. The potential of the technology was never understood by the Roman world. Without any ability to see the soul, and penetrate into its reality with technology, modern science is at least as far from understanding the truth about human life as the Romans were from understanding steam power.
If the experience gained from lives like mine is at all true, then we have two forms, one that is active and embedded in the physical body, and another that is contemplative and lives on when the body dies, in an energetic state. I believe that consciousness cycles back and forth between the two, but both are essentially part of physical reality. The soul is not in any way outside of nature, but human death is a transformation into another form, in the same way that a caterpillar becomes a butterfly.
