"WHO ARE YOU?"
by Dr. Deepak Chopra

Public lecture in 1993

"What I would like to do, if I can, is give you an idea of who you are. The usual idea of who we are conies from the superstition of materialism. We usually think of ourselves as a physical body that has learned how to think, and as some kind of skin-encapsulated ego that is confined in a bag of flesh and bone and lives the span of a lifetime squeezed into the volume of a body. This idea of who we are comes to us because we interpret reality through our senses. Our senses, we think, gives us an accurate picture of the world. We have this idea that sensory experience is the crucial test of reality, that only if I can touch something, or see something does it really exist - otherwise it is "just in my imagination’’.

 

Even from the viewpoint of "common sense", we know that this is not true. My senses tell me that the Earth is flat, and nobody believes that any more. My senses tell my that the ground I am standing on is stationary, but I know that it is moving through space at dizzying speeds. My senses tell me that certain things have a certain texture, color and smell - but it turns out that what I sense of these things is really not its intrinsic nature, it is the response of the observer. It is how my senses decode something which is much vaster, more abstract and quite ineffable.

An experiment was done at Harvard Medical School about twenty years ago where they took some kittens and brought them up in a room that had only horizontal stripes. When these kittens grew up, they could see nothing other than a horizontal world. They took some other kittens and brought them up in a room that had only vertical stripes, and when these kittens grew up they could see nothing other than a vertical world. Of course, it had nothing to do with the belief system of these cats. Their brains were examined and they did not have the inter-neuronal connections to see the "other type of world". In other words, the way these kittens experienced their senses when they were small programmed their nervous system in such a way that it served only one function - to keep reinforcing that initial interpretation. So what what they saw was ultimately an interpretation, which is what psychologists call premature cognitive commitment. The perceptual apparatus is shaped through early experience that locks the neurological structure into a fixed perception of reality.

Right this moment, 99% of the people in this room are taking in less than one billionth of the stimuli that are present in this room. What stimuli that people do receive is governed by your concept of what you think exists "out there". If you don’t have the concept, you will not perceive it. In effect, it doesn’t exist for you. What we call reality is really the result of a collection of our subjective experiences. If we happen to agree on those subjective experiences, we call it "objective science". But, "science" is nothing but a method of exploring our map of what we think the truth is. Science is not a method for exploring the truth. Science is an extension of our reality map.

 

So far, our reality map (based on science for the past 300 years) described by sciences is entrenched in an obsolete mode. It is entrenched in the superstition of materialism. It looks at the human body as a physical machine that has learned how to think, if you believe in Communism. Capitalism, feelings, drives, God, Heaven, salvation or anything else, it is because of the dance of molecules. According to "modern science", bio-chemical phenomenon somehow produces a phenomenon called consciousness, and thought is a by-product of matter.

 

This materialistic model leads to a host of strategies in science that are completely materialistic - "magic bullets" to cure illness - allopathic medicine, and taking external substances to do what the body can do anyway. As we look at how these "magic bullets" work, we find that most of these measures are symptomatic in nature, or at best they interfere with mechanisms of disease - mechanisms of disease are not origins of disease. The origins of disease have to do with life and how it expresses itself in terms of physiological processes.

 

Consciousness expresses these processes. One can effectively interfere with mechanisms of disease through the use of drugs, but usually the disease finds another way of expressing itself. So, in the case of antibiotics, we have the evolution of antibiotic resistant organisms which are acquired in hospitals. According to one study, disease acquired from going to the hospital kills more than 100,000 people each year. The number one cause of drug addition in the world is not street drugs, but prescription drugs given out by doctors.

 

According to a study published by the New England Journal of Medicine, it is estimated that 36% of hospital patients suffer front iatrogenic disease acquired as a direct result of bio-technical and medical intervention. Disease a person acquires because they happen to see a doctor. Although more people are doing research on cancer in the United States than have cancer, the incidence of cancer has increased over the last 30 years by as much as 300%. More people live off cancer than the of it Eighty percent of the people in the United States swallow a medically prescribed chemical every 24 hours. Despite that, the overall incidence of disease increases. Bio-technical and medical intervention now rivals traffic accidents, industrial accidents and war-related activities as a cause of mortality. Medical intervention is one of the most rapidly spreading epidemics of our time.

All this is not necessarily because scientists have wrong intentions - it is because the model of who we think we are is frozen in an obsolete mode - mode that looks on the body as a frozen anatomical structure. In fact the human body (as well as everything else in creation) is a river of intelligence, energy and information that is constantly renewing itself during every second of its existence. The real you, which is permanent, cannot step into the same body twice. Every second, you are renewing your body more easily than before.

 

The physical body you have now is not the same one you had twenty minutes ago. One can examine a number of physiological processes to see how literally this is true. Just the act of breathing, with each bream you inhale 1022 atoms from the universe. It is an astronomical amount of raw material that comes from everywhere and ends up as renewed cellular structure in the body. With each exhalation you are breathing out 1022 atoms that have their origin from everywhere inside the body. You are literally breathing out pieces of your organs, tissue and DNA structure.

 

Technically speaking, we are intimately sharing our internal structure with each other all the time. You cannot claim exclusivity over your body. Right now, in your physical body, you have over a million atoms that were once in the body of Christ, Mohammed, George Bush, and everyone else. Anyone that has ever existed. Parts of their raw material are in your body. In just the last three weeks 1 quadrillion atoms have gone through your body that have gone through the bodies of every other living species on the planet. According to radioactive isotope studies, you replace almost your entire body in one year. Ninety-eight percent of all the atoms in your body are replaced in less than one year.

 

You literally make a new liver every six weeks, a new skin once a month, a new stomach lining every five weeks, a new skeleton every three months, the brain cells every year and the DNA (which holds the memory of millions of years of evolution) comes and goes every six weeks. If you want to account for every atom in the body, it is all replaced in less than two years. If you think you are your physical body, you certainly have a problem. Which one are you talking about?

What happened to the body from last year? It went back to the dust from whence it came. It’s dead, and yet "I" haven’t died. This is the first major insight that science is beginning to understand. I am constantly outliving the physical death of the body. Right this moment. Perhaps the body is a place that my memories call "home" for the time being. In other words, it is not matter which produces consciousness - ifs the other way around It is consciousness which produces matter.

 

Consciousness which constructs and becomes physical matter. Is this just a philosophical Eastern speculation? I would like to say that this is a scientific insight. If you went to a physicist and asked "what is the true nature of physical reality?", the physicist might tell you that the true nature of physical reality is that it is not physical. If you look at anything "material" you will see that it is made up of atoms, which are made up of particles moving at high speed around huge empty spaces - these particles are not material objects at all, they are fluctuations of energy and information which lie in a huge Void of information and energy.

 

Seen through the eyes of a physicist, and not through the artifact of human sensory experience, the human body (or anything else physical) is proportionally as Void as inter-galactic space. If you could see anything as it really IS, you would see a huge empty Void with a few scattered dots (themselves being energy} and a few electrical discharges (more energy). The fact is that 99.99999% of the human body or anything else is mostly empty space. The 0.00001% which appears material is also empty space.

The whole thing is made out of nothing. The essential material of the Universe is that it is not material at all The essential "stuff of the Universe is "non-stuff. The most interesting aspect of it is that not only is it "non-stuff, but it is thinking "non-stuff", because our inner space is not just an empty Void - it is the womb of Creation - nature goes to the same place to create a galaxy or a human body that it does to create a thought, because what is a thought other than an impulse of energy and information coming out from the same Unified Field that structures and engenders all the forces of nature that are ultimately experienced as "material reality"?

We all come from the same place, and those quantum events - those basic vibrations of nature that structure the flowers, the trees and the stars appear in my own awareness as linguistically-structured verbally elite thought that speaks to me in the English language - and usually with an Indian accent. In other words, thought is a quantum event. It is a fluctuation in that Unified Field, and it transforms itself (as all quantum events do} into sub-atomic reality, molecular reality and ultimately "the whole world". My physical body is part of that world. It’s recycled raw material.

 

If there is Intelligence in me then intelligence is pervasive everywhere - there are hierarchies of Intelligence, or levels of intensity of expression of that Intelligence. It’s everywhere and non-local. Thought is just an impulse in that field that creates reality. There is a lot of interesting work that shows that this is the case. When you think thoughts, you are actually practicing brain chemistry. Every thought, feeling and emotion (no matter whether you are thinking in Danish or Sanskrit) translates into the same bio-chemical event These bio-chemical events are called neuro-peptides. They are "messengers from inner space".

 

There are receptors to neuro-peptides in every cell in the body. Every cell also generates neuro-peptides. The immune ceils, which protect you from degenerative disorders, are constantly eavesdropping on your internal dialogue. The question is, if there is an internal dialogue going on, who is having this internal dialog? The immune cells make the same peptides that the brain makes when it processes thought In other words, the immune cells also process thought Ask a good neuro-biologist what the difference is between the immune system and the nervous system and they will tell you there isn’t any difference.

 

The immune system is a "circulating" nervous system. To make matters more interesting, this is the case everywhere else in the body. When scientists look at stomach cells and colon cells, they find the same things going on now. When you say that you have a "gut feeling", you are not speaking metaphorically but literally’, because your "gut" makes the same chemicals the brain makes. In fact, your "gut" feeling may be a little more accurate because gut cells haven’t yet "evolved" to the stage of self-doubt.

The body and mind are connected in every aspect of physiology. When we experience quantum events (intelligence and information) "subjectively", we call it "the mind", When we experience those same quantum events "objectively", we call it "the body". It all comes out of the same field of pure potentiality which engenders within itself all these information and energy stales that are experienced "subjectively" as the "mind" and "objectively" as "the body".

 

By itself, the field is beyond both "body" and "mind". The "thinker" is not in the realm of the body or the mind - the field is the "thinker" behind the thought, as well as the cause of mind and body. A great Sufi thinker once said "Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field - I will meet you there". Einstein talked about the field. He said that it is not an actual model for space-time ’ events we call "material reality*, but a field of potentiality. It is a continuum of all possibilities and energy-information states that subsequently manifest into space-time events.

Coming back to this idea that the physical body is nothing other than a field of ideas, we can extend this and see that even in the Universe that lives inside the body is created out of the same field of ideas. There is an interesting group of hormones called pheromones, which are messenger-molecules. If you infect a plant with a virus, the plant will release hormones into the atmosphere to let other plants of its own species that there is an infection going on.

 

The plant is a localized concentration of awareness in a much larger field of awareness. It knows how to share its awareness with other localized concentrations of awareness (other plants) which carry similar energy and information states (of the same species). Animals do this. There was an experiment conducted at Stanford University in California where scientists gave some mice electrical shocks. They took the mice out of the area and brought in fresh mice, who panicked, because they picked up on the hormones emitted by the fear in the previous batch of mice.

 

Every emotional state that we have has a bio-chemical milieu which is released by the body through the skin, sweat and on the breath. Our minds extend outside the body, although the consciousness of the body is within that of the mind - the mind is within something much more pervasive, and we call (hat field the "Spirit", which creates the mind, the body and the objective Universe.

In the Vedic literature, the Rishis said,

"When I found out who I really was, I discovered that I am not in the Mind, but the Mind is me; I’m not in the body, but the body is me; I’m not in the World, but me World is me; curving back within myself I create again and again; in essence, I am That which creates all of That - I am That, you are That, All this is That, and That’s All there Is; if you find That, then you have it All."

This is where everything comes from - not only energy and matter, but even space and time. We tend to think of time as something "external" and real but as one physicist said,

"there is no such thing as linear time. Linear time is a purely psychological event in a Universe where all time happens at once".

Another physicist said,

"time is just Natures way of preventing us from experiencing everything all at once".

Our senses decode that into "linear time". Time is something that we engender through our own self-interaction in exactly the same way as we engender the bio-chemistry of our bodies or the environment.

A few months ago I met a friend of mine on a flight to London, and we "had such a good time" that "time flew". We forgot to eat and go to the bathroom, and when we got there we didn’t have the usual "jet lag". All the so-called "fixed biological cycles" were restructured as a result of a different internal dialog relative to psychological time.

 

Perhaps you know people who use the expression "I’m running out of time". When you look at these people, you find that they have accelerated biological clocks. They have faster heart rates, higher levels of insulin, growth hormones and glucose, etc. When they suddenly drop dead from a pre-mature coronary they’ve truly "run out of time". You may also know people who have another internal dialog that "have all the time in the world".

 

They have a different experience and a different physiological process. Many people are familiar with the experience of being "in love" or walking on a beach and slipping "into the timeless", as has happened when we use the expression "the beauty of the mountain was breath-taking and time stood still. Notice the expression. In the experience of unity consciousness (where the "observer" and the "observed", during the process of "observation", resolve into One unified wholeness of experience and there is no time) - there is only Eternity’. Time is a concept. The reality is Eternity.

If you read Stephen Hawkings book "A Brief History of Time", you will see that the introduction (by Carl Sagan) says,

"Stephen Hawkings set out to understand the Mind of God and came to the conclusion that we live in a Universe that has no beginning in time, no ending in time, no outer edges in space and nothing for a Creator to do.¹"

Try and conceptualize this. It’s impossible.

 

1 Here, the third-brained rationalism of Carl Sagan is quite apparent.

 

How can you imagine something that never began? If you compromise and say, "perhaps there was a beginning’’, the immediate dilemma is "what was before the beginning?". If you say there is "an Ending", the immediate dilemma is "what is there after the Ending?". If you say mere are "outer edges in Space", the dilemma is "what is there outside the outermost edge?". In this sense, "the universe is stranger that we can think", because linguistically-structured verbally elite logical thought (called "rationality") is nothing other than a justification of a reality map. It’s a rationalization that attempts to justify a realty map that is built on a superstition of materialism. We are today in the midst of the overthrow of that materialism.

 

All of the technology around us attests to the materialistic approach to life. The telephone, fax machine, television, radio and everything else in technology is based on one premise’ ironically - the material world is not material at all. The "unit of matter" called an "atom" is not a solid entity -it is a hierarchy of states of information and energy within a huge Void of information and energy.

 

Each force of nature is not just a simple force, but a field of information and energy. Atomic "particles" are naves and fluctuations that define the statistical probability of "finding a particle" at a certain point during the "time of observation", which "freezes the continuum of reality" into the "frozen particle", which is a space-time event that we call physical matter. We are neither the physical body or the mind - we are the Eternal Spirit, the Consciousness, the Unified Field that interacts with itself and creates everything. This has some great implications that can make the crucial difference between "survival" and "death" - the understanding that consciousness is fundamental to matter (and not the other way around).

There are some experiments that I would like to talk about because they are quite crucial to this understanding. One experiment was published by Dr. Herbert Specter at the National Institutes of Health, wherein he gave mice an injection of a chemical called "poly-IC" that stimulates the immune system. He had these mice smell camphor at the same time. After time had gone by, he discovered that whenever these mice smelted camphor, they would stimulate their own immune system.

 

Other scientists have verified this work. If you gave mice disease bacteria and had them smell camphor, they would not get sick. The crucial difference between life and death is the interpretation of the memory of the smell of camphor. The interpretation of memory. Does this have any meaning to us? You bet it does, because that is all we do. We are constantly interpreting our memories. The average human thinks about 60,000 thoughts a day. What is disconcerting is that about 95% of the thoughts you have today are the same ones you had yesterday.

 

Humans have become "bundles of conditioned reflexes" constantly re-stimulated and triggered by media, people and circumstances into the same quantum events, biochemical events, behavioral outcomes and life experiences. We become the "victims" of the same repetition of worn-out memories. The irony is that your tormentor today is yourself leftover from yesterday.

Imagine if the building we are in is made of brick, and you had the ability to change every brick in the building once a year - which is what we do with our physical bodies. You ask, "well, if I am really replacing my entire body every year or so. then why am I still stuck with this back problem and this arthritis?". The answer is that through conditioned response and bondage to the known, we engender the same quantum events through our own self-interaction that results in the same outcome. If we read the ancient Vedic literature of India, in one place Lord Shiva says,

"see the world as if for the first time; see it through the eyes of a child and you suddenly find that you are free".

Bondage is none other than seeing the world through the camouflage of pre-conceived ideas, notions, expectations, interpretations, labels, descriptions, definitions, evaluations, analyses, and ultimately with judgment. If you could see the world without judgment, you would see it as a child - fresh, with infinite possibilities all contained in a Eternal continuum. What you need to be free of is not the unknown - what you need to be free of is the Known. Freedom from the Known is what we need. We need to step into the Unknown during every second of our lives, because the Known is nothing other than the rigid patterns of past conditioning - the memories and burdens of the past.

 

The Known is within time-bound awareness. Time-bound awareness is the Awareness of the Self-Image. Thorough our own interpretation, we relinquish the Self for the Self-Image. The Self-Image is nothing other than the social mask, the protective veneer and the mask behind which we hide. The Self-image has only one goal: it wants to reinforce itself all the time. The Self-image has a time-bound awareness, where every behavioral action is triggered in anticipation of a response or in pursuit of a memory.²

 

2 This is the state of social consciousness that the self-designated cultural elite would have you remain in so that they can pursue power-oriented goals and objectives.

Go beyond time-bound awareness and you find the Self. The Self is Timeless Awareness, because the Self is beyond the corridor of space-time, energy and matter. The Self has a timeless awareness in which Life is supremely concentrated in the Present. In the Vedic literature, the Rishi says:

"I do not worry about the Past, I am not burdened by the Guilt and Memories of the Past, I do not anticipate the Future or Fear it, because my life is supremely concentrated in the Present - the right response to every situation happens to me as it occurs - because built into my Self is a process that is far more accurate than can be found within the boundaries of rational thought - there is no fate worse than to be caught in the clutches of rationality".

When one escapes the clutches of rationality, then one escapes the prison of conditioning, space-time and causation. You must go beyond the Intellect. Sensory experience is not the crucial test of reality.

Scientists at Ohio State University published a study of cholesterol metabolism in rabbits. They were giving rabbits diets high in cholesterol. To their amazement, they found one group of rabbits that did not manifest high levels in their bodies. After investigation, they discovered that the technician that was feeding this one group of rabbits was stroking them, singing to them and cuddling them.

 

As a result of that love (flow of information) these rabbits made a different set of neuro-peptides that transmuted the cholesterol into a completely different metabolic pathway, making the crucial difference between life and death from what is known as the number one killer condition in our culture. Perhaps the answer is cuddling and touching - strategies not employed in any hospital that we know of.

A few years ago, a study came from the Miami school of Medicine in which scientists took two groups of ore-mature infants and stimulated one by touching and caressing them. They called it "kinesthetic tactile stimulation". The other group received nothing. The first group receiving the attention gained an average of 49% more weight per day over the other group fed on the same formula.

 

Now we know that the procedure of touching resulted in the additional release of growth hormones. The scientists had to conclude that "tactile kinesthetic stimulation" (touching) is a cost-effective strategy, because they could save $3000 per admission. You can bet that soon there will be a Blue Cross billing code for it. Finally, I want to draw you attention to something else. In Massachusetts, the Department of Health.

Education and Welfare published a study which looked at risk factors for heart disease. The study pointed out that the majority of people who have fatal heart attacks before the age of 50 do not manifest any of the standard risk factors. They found that the number one predictor of fatal-coronary events was that these people had no apparent purpose or meaning in their lives. The number two factor was how happy the people were. One of the more interesting statistics was that more people in the United States the from heart attacks on Monday mornings around 9 am. It is a stunning accomplishment for which only the human species can take credit Presumably no other creature knows the difference between Monday and Tuesday.

So, if our bodies are self-engendered ideas, the question is, Who is having these ideas? I would like to offer to you that this "choice-maker" is not local - you cannot pin it down anywhere, because it is everywhere and no where at the same time. You cannot find the location of the One who decides to more your arm. You can find in the brain the execution of the command,³ but not the one who decides to move the arm. Where is me "choice-maker"? The choice-maker is in the gap between our thoughts. This gap contains infinite choices, and in every little gap between every thought there is me sitting there, as part of the "thinker behind the thought".

 

3 And the "executor" of the command - the genetic entity, over which the conscious ness of the "decision-maker" is imposed.

 

My individual soul is nothing but a continuum of probability amplitudes, because each gap is different from all other gaps by virtue of the quality of intention that engenders the next space-time event which constitutes the next thought. That gap is the window and transformational vortex through which the individual Mind communicates with the Cosmic Mind. This process is the restoration of the memory of wholeness - who we are. If you find this concept of the Cosmic Mind spiritual and funny, then you could call it " a non-local field of Information with self-referencing cybernetic feed-back loops".

 

If you find the word "Soul" uncomfortable, then you can call it "a continuum of probability distributions for possible measurement of functions of time"⁴.

4 Although the Soul, per se, is the container for experience, which gives rise to wisdom and personal truth.

 

But there is such a thing, and its dimension-less and time-less. It does not have any boundaries - it is Who we are. That’s a liberating piece of information, because it breaks us free. I AM the unbounded Spirit that is present in every bit of manifestation. I have Just chosen this one for the time being - a space-time event in the continuum of Eternity. To have the restoration of that memory, at the level of experience, is to be free and whole. You can accomplish anything and everything, as Nature does, effortlessly, just by Being - the world will offer itself to you, for it has no choice.

NOTE: Now that you have read Deepak Chopra’s interpretation, read Magnum Organum and decide where he is really coming from. Val

An Alternative Version of Man's Development and Religion

From Lobsang Rampa’s books

From "The Hermit" ...

 

"‘The Ark appeared in the screen before me vast and cumbersome. A vessel which would have engulfed the Potala and the whole of the City of Lhasa complete with Sera and Drepung Lamaseries. It bulked so huge that the humans streaming from it were by comparison as small as the ants which work in the sand. Vast animals were unloaded, and crowds of new humans. All appeared dazed, doped, presumably so that they should not fight. Men with strange things on their shoulders flew about as the birds fly, herding the animals and men, prodding them with rods made of metal.'

 

"Around the world the ship flew, landing at many points to leave behind animals of different types. Humans who were white, those who were black, and some were yellow. Short humans, tall humans. Humans with black hair and those whose hair was white. Animals with stripes, animals with long necks, some with no necks, never had I known there could be such a range of colours, sizes, and different types of living creatures. Some of the sea creatures were so utterly immense that I could not for a time comprehend how they could move, yet in the sea they appeared as agile as the fishes in our lakes.'

 

"Constantly through the air there flew small vessels which had in them people who were keeping check on the new inhabitants of Earth. On their forays they dispersed large herds and made sure that animals and humans were spread over the globe. The centuries passed and Man still was not able to light a fire nor even to shape crude implements of stone. The Wise Ones held conferences and decided that the “stock” must be improved by introducing some humanoids who were more intelligent, who knew how to light fires and work flint. So the centuries went on with the Gardeners of the Earth introducing fresh, virile specimens to improve the human stock. Gradually mankind progressed from the flint-chipping stage to the fire-lighting level. Gradually houses were built and towns formed. Always the Gardeners moved among the human creatures and the humans looked upon them as gods upon the Earth.'

 

"The Voice broke in, saying 'No useful purpose would be served in merely following the endless troubles which beset this new colony of Earth. I will tell you of the salient features for the sake of your own instruction. While I speak we will have before us suitably phased pictures so that you may also see any point of note.'

“The Empire was great, but there came from another universe violent people who tried to wrest our possessions from us. These people were humanoid and upon their head they had horny growths projecting from the area of the temples. They also had a tail. These people were of a surpassingly warlike nature, it was their sport as well as their work. In black ships they poured into this universe and laid waste to worlds which we had so recently seeded. In space cataclysmic battles took place. Worlds were laid desolate, worlds erupted into gouts of smoke and flame and their debris clutters the spaceways as the Asteroid Belt even to this day. Previously fertile worlds had their atmosphere blasted away and all that lived there perished: A world struck another world a glancing blow and threw it against the Earth. The Earth juddered and shook and was pushed into another orbit which made the Earth-day longer.'

 

“During the near-collision giant electric discharges leaped from the two worlds. The skies flamed anew. Many of the Earth-humans perished. Great floods swept the surface of the world and compassionate Gardeners hurried around in their Arks trying to load aboard humans and animals that they should be safely conveyed to higher ground and safety. 'In later years,' said the Voice, 'this would give rise to incorrect legends throughout all Earth lands. But in space the battle was won. The forces of the Empire defeated the evil invaders and made many of them captive.'

“The Prince of the Invaders, Prince Satan, pled for his life, saying that he had much to teach the peoples of the Empire. Saying that He would at all times work for the good of others. His life and that of some of his leading men was spared. After a period of captivity he expressed himself as anxious to co-operate in the rebuilding of the solar system which he had so desecrated. Being men of good will, the Empire admirals and generals could not imagine treachery and evil intent in others. They accepted the offer and set the Prince Satan and his officers tasks under the supervision of Empire men.'

 

“On the Earth the natives were crazed by the experiences they had undergone. They had been decimated by the inundation and by the flames from the clouds. Fresh stock was brought from outlying planets where some humans had survived. The lands were now different, the seas were different. Through the complete change in orbit the climate had altered. Now there was a hot equatorial belt and ice formed very heavily on the polar areas. Icebergs broke away from the main masses and floated in the seas. Huge animals died in the sudden cold. Forests collapsed when their living conditions changed so drastically.

“Very slowly conditions became stabilized. Once again Man started to build a form of civilization. But Man was now excessively warlike and persecuted all those who were weaker. Routinely the Gardeners introduced fresh specimens that the basic stock should be improved. The evolution of Man progressed and a better type of creature slowly emerged. But the Gardeners were not satisfied. It was decided that more Gardeners should live upon the Earth. Gardeners, and their families. For convenience mountain tops or high places were used as bases. Over an eastern land a man and a woman descended in their space ship and made their base on a pleasant mountain rise. Izanagi and Izanami became the protectors and founders of the Japanese race and' — the Voice sounded both rueful and cross at the same time — 'once again false legends were woven; because these two, Izanagi and Izanami, appeared from the direction of the sun, the natives believed they were the sun god and goddess come to live among them.'

"On the screen before me I saw the blood red sun shining full in the sky. As from it there descended a shining vessel colored red by the reflected rays of the setting sun. The ship descended further, hovered and then lazily circled around. At last, as red rays from the evening sun were reflected on the snow-covered mountain top the ship descended on to a level slope high on the mountain side. The last beams of sunlight lit up the man and woman who descended from the ship to look about them, and then to re-enter. The yellow skinned natives lying prostrate before the ship, overawed by the glory of the sight, waited in respectful silence and then melted away in the darkness of the night.

"The picture changed and I saw another mountain in a far-off land. Where, I knew not, but that information was soon to be given to me. From the sky there came spaceships which circled about and then slowly descended in a regular formation until they too occupied a mountain slope. 'The Gods of Olympus!' said the Voice in a sarcastic tone.

 

“The so-called Gods who brought much trial and tribulation to this young world. These people, with the former Prince Satan among them, came to settle upon the Earth, but the Centre of the Empire was far away. Ennui and the promptings of Satan led astray these young men and women who had been given this Earth assignment that they could gain experience.

 

“Zeus, Apollo, Theseus, Aphrodite, the daughters of Cadmus, and many others, formed these crews. The messenger Mercury sped from ship to ship throughout the world carrying messages — and scandals. Men became overwhelmed with desire for the wives of others. Women set themselves to trap men they desired. Across the skies of the world there were mad chases in speeding craft as woman chased man or husband chased eloping wives. And the ignorant natives of the world, watching the sex antics of those whom they deemed to be gods, thought that THIS was the way in which THEY should live. So there began an era of debauchery in which all the laws of decency were flouted.

“Various wily natives, more alert than the average, set themselves up as priests and pretended to be the Voice of the Gods. The ‘Gods’ were too busy with their orgies to even know. But these orgies led to other excesses, led to murders so numerous that at long last news of them filtered back to the Empire. But the native-priests, those who pretended to be the representatives of the Gods, wrote down all that happened and altered sayings that their own powers might be increased. Ever it has been thus in the history of the world, that some of the natives wrote down not what happened, but that which would enhance their own power and prestige. Most of the legends are not even an approximation of that which really took place.

 

”I was moved to another screen. Here were another group of Gardeners, or “Gods”. Horus, Osirus, Annubis, Isis, and many others. Here too orgies were occurring. Here too a former lieutenant of Prince Satan was at work trying to sabotage all efforts to produce good for this little world. Here too were the inevitable priests writing their endless and inaccurate legends: Some there were who had wormed their way into the confidence of the Gods and had so obtained knowledge normally forbidden to the natives for their own good. These natives formed a secret society designed to steal more forbidden knowledge and to usurp the power of the Gardeners. But the Voice continued to speak.

 

“We had much trouble with certain of the natives and had to introduce measures which were repressive. Certain of the native priests, having stolen equipment from the Gardeners, could not control them; they loosed plagues upon the Earth. Vast numbers of the people died. Crops were affected.

“But certain of the Gardeners, under the control of Prince Satan, had established a Capital of Sin in the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Cities in which any form of vice or perversion or depravity was considered as virtue. The Master of the Empire solemnly warned Satan to desist and leave, but he scoffed. Certain of the better inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah were advised to leave, and then, at the appointed time, a solitary craft sped through the air and dropped a small package: The cities were erased in flame and smoke. Great mushroom shaped clouds ascended into the quaking sky, and upon the ground there was naught but devastation, rubble of stones, melted rocks, and the incredible debris of human habitation in decay. By night the area shone with a sickly purple radiance. Very few escaped the holocaust.

“Following this salutary warning, it was decided to withdraw all the Gardeners from the face of the Earth and to have no more contact with the natives but to treat them as specimens from afar. Patrols would still enter the atmosphere. The world and its natives still would be supervised. But no official contact. Instead it was decided to have upon the Earth natives who had been specially trained and who could be ‘planted’ where suitable people could find them. The man who later became known as Moses was an example. A suitable native woman was removed from the Earth and impregnated with the seed having the necessary characteristics. The unborn child was telepathically trained and given great — for a native — knowledge. He was hypnotically conditioned not to reveal the knowledge until an appointed time.

“In due course the baby was born and further training and conditioning was given. Later the baby was placed in a suitable container and under cover of darkness was deposited securely in a bed of reeds where he would speedily be found. As he grew to manhood he was in frequent touch with us. When necessary a small ship would come to a mountain and be concealed by the natural clouds or even by those which we made ourselves. The man Moses would then ascend the mountain and come aboard, leaving after with a Wand of Power or specially compiled Tablets of the Commandments which we had prepared for him.

“But this still was not enough. We had to go through a similar procedure in other countries. In that land which now is known as India we specially controlled and trained the male child of a most powerful Prince. We considered that his power and prestige would induce the natives to follow him and adhere to a special form of discipline which we had formulated that there should be an improvement in the spiritual state of the natives. Gautama had his own ideas, however, and rather than discard him we allowed him to produce his own form of spiritual discipline. Once again we found that the disciples, or priests — usually for their own gain — distorted the teachings in their writings. Thus it ever was upon the Earth; a coterie of men, self-styled priests, would edit or re-write scriptures that their own powers and wealth should be enhanced.

 

“There were others who founded new branches of religion, such as Mohammed, Confucius — the names are too many to mention. But each of these men was under our control, or trained by us with the basic intention that a world belief should be established, the leaders of that religion would then lead their followers into GOOD ways of life. We intended that each human should behave to others as he himself would wish others to behave towards him. We tried to establish a state of universal harmony such as existed in our own Empire, but this new humanity was not yet sufficiently advanced to put aside Self and to work for the good of others.

“The Wise Ones were very dissatisfied with progress. As a result of their cerebration a new scheme was propounded. One of the Wise Ones had remarked that all those sent to Earth so far had been introduced to the wealthier type of family. As he correctly stated, many of the lower classes would reject automatically the words of such a higher-class person. Thus it was that search was made, first using the Akashic Record, for a suitable woman to bear a son. A suitable woman from a suitable lower-class family and in a country wherein it was considered that a new religion or doctrine might be expected to flourish. Researchers assiduously devoted themselves to the task. A fair number of possibilities were presented. Three men and three women were secretly landed upon the Earth in order that they could pursue their investigations so that the most suitable family should be selected.

“The consensus of opinion favored a young woman who was childless and married to a practitioner of the oldest trade on Earth, the trade of carpenter. The Wise Ones reasoned that the majority of people were of this class and they may be more willing to follow the words of one of their own. So, the woman was visited by one of us whom she took to be an angel and told that she was to have a great honor. That she was to bear a male child who was to found a new religion. In the fullness of time the woman became pregnant but then occurred one of those events so common in that part of the world; the woman and her husband had to flee their home because of the persecution of a local king.

“They made their slow way to a middle eastern city and there the woman found that her time was full upon her. There was no place to go except in a stable of a hostelry. There the baby was born. We had followed the flight, prepared to take all necessary action. Three members of the crew of the vigilant vessel descended to the surface of the Earth and made their way to the stable. To their dismay they learned that their ship had been seen and was described as a Star in the East.

 

“The baby grew into boyhood, and through the special indoctrination he constantly received by telepathy, he showed great promise. As a youth he would dispute with his elders and regrettably he antagonized the local priesthood. In early manhood he withdrew from those he knew and traveled to many other lands in the middle and far east. We directed him to travel to Tibet, and he crossed the mountain range and sojourned for a time in the Cathedral of Lhasa, where even now prints of his hands are preserved. Here he received advice and assistance in the formulation of a religion suitable for western peoples.
 

“During his stay in Lhasa he underwent special treatment in which the astral body of the Earth-human was freed and taken away to another existence. In its place was inserted the astral body of one of our choosing. This was a person with very great experience in spiritual matters — far greater experience than could be obtained under any Earth conditions. This system of transmigration is one we frequently employ when dealing with backward races. At last everything was ready, and he made the long journey back to his homeland. Arrived there, he was successful in recruiting certain acquaintances who would assist with the dissemination of the new religion.

 

“Unfortunately, the first occupant of the body had antagonized the priests. Now they remembered the fact and carefully arranged an incident under which the man could be arrested. Having control of the judge who tried the matter the result was a foregone conclusion. We considered effecting a rescue, but came to the conclusion that the overall result would be bad for the general population and for the new religion.

 

“The new form of spiritual discipline spread. But once again there were those who subverted it to their own ends. About sixty years after its inception a large convention was held in the middle east city of Constantinople. Here many priests foregathered. Many of them perverted men who had depraved sexual desires and who looked upon heterosexuality as unclean. Under their majority vote the real Teachings were altered and made women appear unclean. They now taught –quite erroneously — that all children are born in sin. They decided to publish a book about the events of sixty years before.

“Writers were hired to compile books on the same lines using as far as possible the tales and legends which had been passed down (with all their inaccuracies) from person to person. For year after year various committees sat to edit, delete and alter passages which did not please them. Eventually a book was written which did NOT teach the real Belief, but which was in effect advertising material to enhance the power of the priesthood. Throughout the centuries which followed, the priests — who SHOULD have been assisting the development of Mankind — actively hindered it. False legends have been propagated, facts have been distorted."

(Full text of " The Hermit")

From "The Cave of the Ancients" ...

 

"... This was the world of long long ago. When the world was very young. Mountains stood where now there are seas, and the pleasant seaside resorts are now mountain tops. The weather was warmer and strange creatures roamed about This was a world of scientific progress. Strange machines rolled along and flew inches from the surface of the Earth or miles up in the air. Animals and men talked telepathically together, but all was not bliss. Politicians fought each other, and the world was a divided camp in which each side coveted the lands of the other. Suspicion and fear were the clouds under which the ordinary man lived. Priests of both side proclaimed that they alone were the favored of the Gods, and taught that it was a "holy duty" to kill the enemy. Almost in the same breath they preached that Mankind throughout the world were brothers. The illogic of brother killing brother did not occur to them..."

"... One sequence of pictures showed a group of thoughtful men planning what they termed a "Time Capsule" wherein they could store for later generations working models of their machines and a complete pictorial record of their culture. Immense machines excavated the living rock. Hordes of men installed the models and machines. We saw the cold-light spheres hoisted into place, inert radioactive substances giving off light for millions of years. Inert in that it would not harm humans. Chambers such as this were concealed beneath the sands of Egypt, beneath a pyramid in South America, and at a certain spot in Siberia. Each place was marked by the symbol of the times - the Sphinx. We saw the great statues of the Sphinx which did not originate in Egypt and we received an explanation of its form. Man and animals talked and worked together in those far-off days. The cat was the most perfect animal for power and intelligence. Man himself is an animal, so the Ancients made a figure of a large cat body to indicate power and endurance, and upon the body they put the breasts and head of a woman... "

"... We saw oceans with great floating cities which moved from land to land. In the sky floated equally large craft which moved without sound. Bridges stretched across the cities carrying what appeared to be roadways. As we watched, we saw a vivid flash in the sky. Another flash, and most of the city itself vanished into incandescent gas. Above the ruins towered a strangely evil-looking red cloud, roughly in the shape of a mushroom miles high... Our pictures faded, and we again saw the group of men who had planned the "Time Capsules". They decided that now was the time to seal them. We saw the ceremonies. and saw the "stored memories" being fitted into the machine. We heard the speech of farewell which told us - the people of the Future, if there be any - that Mankind was about to destroy itself, or such seemed probable, ’and within these vaults are stored records of our achievements and follies as may benefit those of a future race who have the intelligence to discover it and having discovered it, be able to understand it..."

"... We sat in a rough circle, each facing each other and with our fingers interlocked in the appropriate pattern. Slowly we lost our Earth identities and became as one floating in the Sea of Time. All that has ever happened can be seen by those who have the ability to go into the astral and return - conscious - with the knowledge gained. Any scene in history can be seen as if one were actually there. The Akashic Record is merely the ’memory’ of the whole world. Everything that has ever happened on this Earth can be ’recalled’ in just the same way that you can remember past events in your life ..."

"... We saw the procession of men and women, file out of the Cave. Machines with vast arms slid what appeared to be half a mountain over the entrance. Cracks and crevices were carefully sealed... We saw a high priest standing on the steps of an immense Pyramid, exhorting his listeners to war. Time moved on. We saw streaks of white vapor in the blue of the skies, and men those skies turned red. The whole world trembled and shook. The darkness of the night fell over the world. Black clouds, shot with vivid flames, rolled around the whole globe. Cities briefly flamed and were gone. Across the land surged the raging seas. The Earth shook and thundered in agony, and great chasms appeared and closed up like the gaping maws of a giant. The Earth itself stood still, stepped its direction of rotation, and then turned in the opposite direction. Deep in holes, or in the lava-tunnels of extinct volcanoes, a scattered handful of Earths population, driven insane by the catastrophe, cowered in their terror. From the black skies fell a whitish substance, sweet to the taste, sustaining of life. In the course of centuries the Earth changed again; the seas were now land, and the lands that had been were now seas. Over the face of the Earth wandered wild tribes who, by the light of their camp fires, told of the old legends, told of the Flood, of Lemuria and Atlantis. They told too, of the day the Sun Stood Still."

"... This is the world of Illusion, wherefore we call souls to hear us, for they alone are in the World of Reality. People not sufficiently evolved must have a belief which sustains them. and makes them feel that a benevolent Father or Mother is watching over them. Only when one has evolved to the appropriate stage can one accept this which I shall now tell you. We are creatures of the Spirit We are like electric charges endowed with Intelligence. This world is the testing place wherein our Spirit is purified by the suffering of learning to control our gross flesh body. Just as a puppet is controlled by strings manipulated by the Puppet Master, so is our flesh body controlled by strings of electric force from our Overself, our Spirit. A good Puppet Master can create the illusion that the wooden puppets are alive and act of their own volition. In the same way we, until we learn better, consider that our flesh body is the only thing that matters. In the spirit-strangling atmosphere of Earth we forget the Soul that truly controls us, and we think that we do things of our own free will and are answerable only to our conscience. So, we have the first Illusion, the illusion that the puppet, the flesh body, is the one that matters. When we are in the physical world we tend to think that only the physical world is what matters. That is one of the ’safety devices’ of the Overself, if we remembered the Spirit World with its happiness, we would be able to remain here only by a strong effort of Will if we remembered past lives when, perhaps, we were ’more important1 than in this life, we should not have the necessary humility..."

"... We keep the Secret Knowledge secret in order that Mankind may be safeguarded. Many men, particularly those of the West, think only of money and power over others,.."

"... The Christians call us heathens. In their Bible it is written that ’Christ wandered in the wilderness’. In our records, it is revealed that Christ wandered through India, studying Indian religions, and then he came to Lhasa and studied at the Jo Kang under our foremost priests of that time. Christ formulated a good religion, but the Christianity practiced today is not the religion that Christ produced..."

"... There is a God; there are Gods. While upon this Earth we arc in no position to appreciate the Form and Nature of God. We live in what may be termed a three-dimensional world. God lives in a world so far removed that the human brain, while on Earth, cannot hold the necessary concept of God, and this men tend to rationalize. ’God’ is assumed to be something human, superhuman if you prefer the term, but Man, in his conceit, believes that he is made in the image of God. Man also believes that there is no life on other worlds. If Man is made in the image of God and the peoples of other worlds are in a different image - what is to become of our concept that Man only is made in Gods Image? Every country of every world has its God, of Guardian Angel. We call the God in charge of the world the Manu. He is a highly evolved Spirit, a human who through incarnation after incarnation has been purged of the dross, leaving only the pure behind. There is a band of Great Beings who at times of need come to this Earth that they may set an example whereby ordinary mortals may be enabled to lift from the mire of worldly desires ... I knew that Buddha, Moses, Christ and many others were of that Order. I knew also of Maitreya, who it is stated in the Buddhist Scriptures, will come to the world 5,656 million years after the passing of Buddha¹, or Gautama as he should more accurately be named. "

1 Which doesn’t say much for the fellow masquerading as the current "Maitreya", does it?

"... If people have not reached the stage where they can accept the Overself and the Manu of the World, then it may be a comfort to them to adhere to some formal system of religion. It is a mental and spiritual discipline; it makes some people feel that they belong within a family group, with a benevolent Father watching over them, and a compassionate Mother ever ready to intercede on their behalf with the Father. Yes. for those in a certain stage of Evolution, such religion is good, but the sooner such people realize that they should pray to their Oversoul the sooner they win evolve. By prayer, even when that prayer be not property directed, one is able to reach a higher state of vibration..."

"... Upon Earth, we are as puppets, puppets made of vibrating molecules surrounded by an electric charge. Our Overself vibrates at a very much higher rate, and has a very much higher electric charge. There is a definite relationship between our rate of vibration and that of our Overself. One can liken the process of communication between each one of us on this Earth and our Overself elsewhere to a new process on this world, the process analogous to the one where radio waves are sent across continents and seas, thus enabling a person in one country to communicate with a person in a far distant land. Our brains are similar to radio receivers in that they receive high frequency Messages’, orders and instructions from the Overself and turn them into low frequency impulses which control our actions. The brain is the electro-mechanicals-chemical ’device’ winch makes us useful on Earth Chemical reactions may cause our brain to function in a faulty manner by perhaps blocking part of a message, for rarely on Earth do humans receive the exact message broadcast by the Overself. The Mind is capable of limited action without reference to the Overself. The Mind is able to accept certain responsibilities, form certain opinions, and attempts to bridge the gap between the ’ideal’ conditions of the Overself and the difficult ones of Earth ..."

(Full text of " The Cave of The Ancients")

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