I find it hard to belive that the cosmic economy has ever brought or ever shall bring a planet into existence without the intention that, at some time in its career, it shall bear a form of sentient and intelligent life. According to our instruments, and the calculations based on what they say, the Solar System is a very large place. It is millions of miles from one planet to the next; while from here to the system of which our nearest star is the presiding sun, would require several years’ travelling at the speed of light.
All this is based on the assumption that light invariably travels at 186,000 miles per second, and that the neighbouring system is several ‘light years’ 52 away. But suppose light does not travel at all; suppose that light is ? Suppose that the nearest star is inconsiderably nearer than we imagined; or that there are ways of bridging distance into which the time-factor as we know it, does not enter ?
52/ In outer space where sizes are beyond our comprehension, distances are measured by ‘light years’, or the distance light is held to travel in one year, i.e. 186,000 x 60 x 60 x 24 x 365,25 miles.
Until we have made such a journey for ourselves, I do not see now we can positively make a statement one way or another. Simply because certain things seem to fit into a neat little pattern here on the surface of Earth, it does not follow absolutely that they will fit so neatly out in that mysterious spatial ocean into which none of us earthlings have ever penetrated. Everything We know—or think we know—concerning other celestial bodies has reached us via space, and via our own atmosphere, both of which, conceivably, might be so filled with little-known distortion factors as to invalidate most of our information.
The fish idea of the outside world must be strangely distorted by the watery medium in which he dwells. We live at the bottom of a similar (but far deeper) watery medium called ‘air‘; so until we can venture out and beyond and have a proper look-round for ourselves, we should treat the lofty calculations of astronomers with caution, to say the least. 53
53/ Since this was written Mt. Palomar Observatory has admitted a 100-200 per cent error in its former calculations regarding universal measurements. For example, our own galaxy is now at least 60,000 light years larger than previously imagined. Quite a little difference !
Objections are raised by the rocket devotees against the chances of other worlds visiting us. They complain that the expenditure in weight and fuel would make it almost impractical. I agree. So would the application of James Watt’s original steam-engine to powering a modern bomber.
Rockets are the last word in earthy notions of high-speed travel. One hundred years ago steam held this office. A century or so before that good horse-flesh and well-trimmed sail provided the ultimate in propulsion. So it is not to be expected that a people, even a few hundred years in advance of our own—or a people capable of creating machines that can rush through the atmosphere with a beautiful musical sound, or in complete and mysterious silence—must now look back upon their own rocket age as interesting museum material ?
My grandfather could recall the days when it was held that if a human body were to travel faster than the gallop of a horse it would be disintegrated instantaneously. Trains proved otherwise. A few years ago we can recall being told that nothing could exceed the speed of sound. A supersonic aeroplane would disintegrate. A supersonic aeroplane was built, and another theory of limitation was buried unmourned. Today we believe that the speed of light is the maximum rate a body could travel without being disintegrated into pure energy. Our grandchildren may live to see that, far from disintegrating, a super-luminary body retains its material essence but enters instead into that very interesting state of time-matter known as (because we have no better word for it) the ‘Fourth Dimension’, where time is annihilated and the traversing of near-infinite distance a possibility.
If this proves to be true, then inter-galactial as well as interplanetary travel may become an actuality, even for us.
Suppose now, for the sake of further argument, that the wonderful force that causes the components of atoms to whirl round central nuclei, and moons to spin round planets, planets to rotate round suns, suns to roll round galaxies and, possibly, galaxies to circle, with majestic quadrille, something infinitely greater; suppose that this splendid and colossal primary force (the Cosmic Serpent of the Ancients) could also be used to ‘skid‘ flying saucers from one system to another at speeds beyond our wildest conception ?
As I write this, I am riding on a great green luminous spaceship, some 8,000 miles in diameter, that is rushing through the Ocean of Space at many thousands of miles per minute. For the last two billion years this huge vessel has been careering through the Ocean silently and smoothly, without loss of power, and it will continue to do so until it reverts to its primal condition. Instead of messing about with rockets and jets and other extravagant wastes of fuel we might profitably study this great space-ship (for it is right here under our feet) and try to discover what makes it ‘float’ and what makes it move.
We should then try to float ourselves. After that, we should find out how to move and how to keep moving. When we have done this we shall have solved the secret of space-flight. It is as simple as all that.
I am not going to develop this theme with a pack of quasi-scientific jargon on ‘magnetism’, and I trust that no one will try to disparage it with the same; for not one of us mortals knows enough about it, one way or another, to make the effort worth while. But should anyone feel rash enough to compose a paper flatly denying this obvious possibility, I would like to point out that a similar paper was prepared by an eminent scientist for the benefit of the Wright Brothers in 1902, in which it was proved, for their enlightenment and correction, that heavier-than-air flight was ‘mechanically impossible’.
In 1903 the Wright Brothers flew.
Many things are mechanically impossible. The flight of the bee contradicts every known law of aerodynamics. His wing-area is hopelessly insufficient; his wing-loading is too high to provide the necessary lift. And yet he flies.
Columbus had the temerity to discover America, when all the best people knew (for the Sages had told them it was so) that there was nothing beyond the Atlantic but the ‘Edge of the World‘—a vast abyss over which he and his ship would fall if they ventured too far. And yet Columbus found, not only a new world, but men—men like ourselves—better men, if compared with the rapacious Conquistadores—men, to whom gold was a pretty ornament, and the Great Sun-Father a God of brotherly love instead of a Totem of jealousy and hate.
The obiection has also been made by those who feel that all men should think as they think, that if space-men had wished to contact us, they would have landed years ago. I heartily disagree !
For if we, of the West, complain that we simply cannot understand the Russian or Chinese mentality, how can we presume to probe the minds of humanities even further removed from our own ? We discredit landings from outside, simply because these landings have not been conducted with the same dashing bravado we would display, should we ever succeed in reaching another planet. Because space-men have not come down with glass heads for the natives and silk hats for the local witchdoctors, we feel, alas, that they shall never come down or, taking it one stage further, that they cannot possibly exist. Messrs Arthur Clark and Willy Ley have by now established the correct etiquette for landing on another world. Because our visitors have not adopted this procedure, they must be demoted to the dubious office of lenticular clouds, cobwebs, refractions, and the rest. We are pained that they have not swept down with dash and fanfare and a fleet of high-pressure publicity agents in attendance. We feel that, in deference to ourselves, they should rush in and land like fools where angels fear to tread. Why should they ?
Let us—if it be possible—put ourselves in their position. They know something of our Earth. It has several names in the old Solar Archives that would make the most foolhardy think twice before revealing himself among us. 54
54/ See ‘A Treatise on Cosmic Fire’, page 1178 (Lucis Press.)
In any case, they have no need to land in order to acquire information. Those little controlled disks, 55 those ‘Foo Fighters‘ — ’Flying Eyes‘ sent out from their mother ships—flash back to them close pictures of anything they wish to see. Already they have given them details regarding our internal combustion aircraft. They have rays that will penetrate the planet’s crust and send back information on conditions far below the boiling magma pools, down even to that central and most dense seventh layer. They may have listened somewhat wearily to the outpourings of our radio in attempts to find out how we think; and should this be the only means at their disposal they would by now have come to the conclusion that possibly we do not think at all. They have ways of picking up the thought currents that emanate from our minds. They can focus upon a group of individuals to learn their innermost secrets. In fact, as I write this hopelessly inadequate account of their powers, they may be watching with bemused tolerance.
55/ For example, on 27 January 1953 some United States jets flying over Japan chased clusters of red, white and green ‘Foo Fighters’, tiny disks which were travelling at tremendous speeds and were picked up by radar. One of the small objects made a controlled sweeping pass at one of the planes. It was a bright, cloudless day and the pilot got a good look at the thing. It was a small metallic disk, about eight inches in diameter, very thin, round and shiny. This is the best and closest daylight observation of the little disks yet made. And from Ireland comes the report of a ten-inch red-hot disk landing near Dublin, November 1952, and burning a child, which I am investigating to see if fragments of this disk can be found and analysed.
So why should they risk a public landing ? They have seen what the mob does to that which it fears, and what it does to that which it worships. Their ship would be impounded for evasion of custom duties. Their clothes would be torn off and sold as souvenirs. They would be denounced as saboteurs, anti-Christs, disturbers of the peace, emissaries of Satan, and the rest, as happened on that ill-advised attempt made in France during the reign of Charlemagne. 56
56/ These remarks have since been justified. On 20 July 1953 a crowd of people assembled in the lodestone country of California to witness what they had hoped would be a saucer landing. Among them were immigration officers duly armed with rubber stamps and the McCarren Act to ‘arrest the visitors‘ should their papers be out of order. Naturally enough no public landing took place, nor will one until the authorities and mob at large take a semblance of an adult attitude.
The Comte de Gabalis tells us that on this occasion the famous Quabbalist Zedechias attempted to improve conditions on Earth by suggesting to ‘the aerial peoples’ that they should make a ‘great and wondrous demonstration’.
‘They did so sumptuously’, says de Gabalis. ‘These beings were seen in the air... sometimes on wonderfully constructed aerial ships whose flying squadrons roved at will.’ 56 The result of this attempt to win recognition was no more successful than it is today, assuming that the apparitions seen in our skies relate to the same cause. The people insisted that sorcerers and demons had taken possession of the air (today it is ‘secret weapons’; just as bad). Even the Kings believed it. Charlemagne and his successor, Louis the Debonair, decreed terrible penalties for these ‘tyrants of the air’.
56/ These remarks have since been justified. On 20 July 1953 a crowd of people assembled in the lodestone country of California to witness what they had hoped would be a saucer landing. Among them were immigration officers duly armed with rubber stamps and the McCarren Act to ‘arrest the visitors‘ should their papers be out of order. Naturally enough no public landing took place, nor will one until the authorities and mob at large take a semblance of an adult attitude.
The first chapter of the Emperor’s Capitularies says that the Aeriels were so upset at seeing the people alarmed against them that they came down to Earth in their great flying vehicles and carried off men and women the better to instruct them, ‘determined to dissipate the bad opinion people had of their innocent fleet by carrying off men from every locality... and setting them down again in diverse parts of the world.’ But the unfortunate mortals seen landing from these vessels were mistaken for saboteurs, commandos and ‘sorcerers come to scatter poison on the fruit and in the springs’ and were promptly hastened off to the kind of horrible fate that awaits the doers of such activities.
‘The great number of them put to death by fire and water throughout the kingdom is incredible. One day... at Lyons, three men and a woman were seen descending from these aerial ships. The entire city gathered about them crying out that they Were magicians and were sent by Grimaldus, Duke of Beneventum, to destroy the French harvests. In vain these innocents sought to vindicate themselves by saying that they Were their own countrvmen and had been carried off a short time since by miraculous men who had shown them unheard-of marvels and had desired them to give an account of what they had seen.’ 57
57/ Compte de Gabalis’ Discourses.
So when, in 1952, a strange aerial vessel containing silvery men is reported to have landed in the eastern zone of Germany, the first fear among us is that it was sent by the enemy— Grimaldus, Stalin, or whatever his name may have been.
At the moment our object is to find out from which other globe the true interplanetary saucers originate. The neighbouring planets provide the easiest answer—Mars and Venus. If Mars and Venus, why not also Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and any undiscovered planets far, far beyond ? The objection given is that the surface of any planet beyond the orbit of Mars would be too cold to support life as we know it, and that Venus and Mercury (working inwardly towards the sun) would be too hot; all too much is made of the assumption that heat-as-such actually leaves the sun. The ancient books tell us that the sun produces radiant energy but no heat (as we know it) and that heat is only the by-product of the energy overcoming the resistance of our atmosphere. If such is the case it would certainly explain the recently discovered belt of hot air, forty miles above Earth’s surface, in whose temperature of 170° we would find life intolerable. A planetary atmosphere, according to the ancient teachings, acts in the dual purpose of an energy-converter, and a filter to adjust the amount of heat so formed. The converter and filter ratios are so adjusted that all the planets in our system can have surface temperatures akin to our own. For if we were to take our instruments to Mars and peer back at the Earth, that 40-mile high belt of near-boiling air might give our planet an apparent surface temperature of 170°. And if the Martians had no better instruments that our own, they would be pardoned for stating that human life on Earth was quite out of the question. So until we have actually been to other worlds and seen for ourselves, it is unwise to pontificate strongly one way or another.
We might not find the living beings of any planet so very different from ourselves; except that some of them may be infinitely more pleasant. And if they are that much more pleasant, they would surely feel a certain duty towards the laggard member of the Solar Family: a desire to resume friendly relations—so drastically cut off at one point in the cycle—and to help us back towards a semblance of human civilisation.
Several saucer-research groups with whom I am in contact have quite independently of one another come to the same conclusions. One of them, headed by Dr. Meade Layne in San Diego, California, consists of a group of scientists, engineers and students of the ancient wisdom who have been working on the problem incessantly for the past five years. I hope to dwell at length on their experiments and methods of research in a future book. For the moment I shall only give a resume’ of their findings and leave the explanation until another time. The reason I am prepared to let these findings stand on their own, without aid or comment, is that, since they were first written and privately circulated to Dr. Layne’s associates, there has been a remarkable occurrence which seems to be the first concrete proof that they are fundamentally true—or at least very near the truth. For, in the space of one fantastic hour on 20 November 1952 similar information was divulged by the pilot of a flying saucer himself.
