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.
Let me give an example. If a strong electrical impulse is released at any point in a tank full of millions of bacteria, it is felt everywhere and by every species of bacteria. The surge of current is perceived everywhere at the same moment. I quite realise that this comparison is imperfect, for electricity is a known form of energy and dependent on the speed of light. I am concerned with a form of energy that is available and effective everywhere simultaneously. I imagine simply an as yet unidentified form of energy which will one day make the incomprehensible comprehensible.
In order to give a semblance of probability to the extraordinary idea, I shall quote the report of an experiment carried out on 29 and 30 May, 1965. In its scope and nature, it must be unique. On these two days 1,008 people concentrated at the same time, indeed at the same second, on pictures, sentences and groups of symbols, which were 'radiated' into the universe by them with concentrated power. The fact of this mass experiment is not the only astonishing thing, the results are strange, too. None of the participants knew any of the others; they lived hundreds of miles apart. Yet 2-7 per cent of the participants answered on ready printed forms that they had seen a picture, namely the model of an atom. Since collusion on the part of the 'guinea-pigs' was impossible, it is surprising that as many as 2.7 per cent should have seen the same 'mental picture'. Telepathy? Hocus pocus? Chance? Admittedly, the whole thing is a science fiction subject, but the experiment, organised by scientists, did take place. It is quite obvious that we don't know everything yet. The result of an experiment by a group of physicists at Princeton University is equally inexplicable. While investigating the disintegration of electrically neutral K mesons, they reached a result that was theoretically impossible because it contradicted a long established principle of nuclear physics.
One more extraordinary example. One part of the relativity theory says that mass and energy are only different forms of one and the same phenomenon. (E=mc<2>.) Put simply, mass can literally be produced from the void. Supposing a strong beam of energy is shot past a heavy atomic nucleus, then the beam of energy disappears into the strong electrical field of energy of the atomic nucleus and an electron and a positron appear in its place. Energy in the form of a beam has changed into the mass of two electrons. To the mind that has not been trained scientifically the process seems crazy and yet it takes place exactly like that. There is nothing to be ashamed of if you cannot follow Einstein; one scientist called him the great solitary because he could only discuss his theory with a dozen or so of his contemporaries.
After this excursion into the still unexplored fields of thought transference and the functions of the human brain, let us turn back to our theme again.
It is no longer a secret that in November 1961, in the National Radio Astronomy Observatory at Green Bank, West Virginia, eleven authorities met at a secret conference. Here, too, the theme of the conference was the question of the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence. The scientists, among them Dr Giuseppe Cocconi, Dr Su Shu Huang, Dr Philip Morrison, Dr Frank Drake, Dr Otto Struve, Dr Carl Sagan, as well as the Nobel Prize winner Melvin Calvin, collaborated at the end of the conference on what is known as the Green Bank Formula. According to this formula there are at any moment in our galaxy alone 50 million different civilisations which are either trying to get in touch with us or waiting for a sign from other planets.
The terms of the Green Bank Formula take into account all the aspects in question, but in addition the scientists allotted two values to each term; a normal value admissible according to our present state of knowledge and an absolute minimum value.
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In this formula:
R+ = the average annual number of new stars that are like our sun.
fP = the number of stars with possible living beings.
ne = the average number of planets which orbit the ecosphere of their sun and so have adequate premises for the development of life by human standards.
fi = the number of planets favoured in this way on which life has actually developed.
