No End to Science in Sight

No End to Science in Sight

We often hear that the end of physics is just a few years away – to be described as Michio Kaku once said, “with an equation less than one inch long.” Similarly, Nobel laureate physicist Steven Weinberg published a long essay in the New York Review of Books describing his “search for the fundamental principles that underlie everything.” He added, however, that “science in the future may take a turn that we cannot now imagine. But I see not the slightest advance sign of such a change.”

Scientists have been saying this sort of thing for more than a century. For example, in the late 1800s Lord Kelvin made the now-famous statement that physics was complete, except that “only two small clouds remain on the horizon of the knowledge of physics.” The two clouds were: first, the interpretation of the results of the Michelson-Morley experiment (which did not detect and effects of the widely hypothesized “aether”), and second, the failure of then-contemporary electromagnetic theory to predict spectral distribution of black-body radiation. These little clouds led to the discovery of special relativity, quantum, mechanics, and what we think of today as modern physics.

In 1975, at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, the same Steven Weinberg declared, “What we want to know is the set of simple principles from which the properties of particles, and hence everything else, can be deduced.” Then, at Cambridge University in 1980, revered astrophysicist Stephen Hawking told his audience, “I want to discuss the possibility that the goal of theoretical physics might be achieved in the not-too-distant future, say, by the end of the twentieth century. By this I mean that we might have a complete, consistent, and unified theory of physical interactions that would describe all possible observations.” Not only did this not happen, but I posit that it is unlikely to happen. As I write this, physicists are still struggling to explain newly discovered dark matter, dark energy, and the very surprising accelerating expansion of the universe (or, is it a change in the supposedly constant velocity of light?”).

To my mind, the most shocking example of a brilliant man saying something truly silly is a quote from A.A. Muchelson, after he showed that there was no aether, but before the discovery of relativity and quantum mechanics. Expressing the spirit of his time, he said, “The most important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplemented in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.”

I believe that these “end of physics” statements are not only untrue, but misleading and logically impossible. Illustration by Elena.

The hubris of brilliant and famous scientists is still with us today. The issue is very important, because it shows what terrible trouble we can get into if we are totally lacking in awe, wonder, or spiritual questioning.

Great visionary scientists such as Einstein, Newton, and John Archibald Wheeler had no such lack. At ninety, Wheeler was still asking, “How come the universe?” In his writing, Einstein said that we “use our intellect to solve difficult problems, but the problems themselves come from another source.”

We may well ask: Will there be an end to mathematics? To biology? To history? Will the human mind withdraw from science? Does curiosity ever achieve completion? I think not. A thousand years from now, our current views of physics will seem as primitive as the phlogiston theory seems to us today. (In the eighteenth century, pholgiston was believed to be an element that caused combustion or was given off by anything burning; the notion has long since been discarded.)

Ancient spiritual and philosophical teachings with their roots in India and Tibet assert that consciousness has existed since the beginning of time. However, this consciousness has been unrecognized because of our ignorance of our own true nature. This seemingly radical idea of nonlocal connections is finding increasing acceptance in the data of modern physics, of all places. Thus, it seems appropriate to discuss the ways in which contemporary physics shows that there are “nonlocal” connections called quantum interconnectedness – that is, an instantaneous spanning of space and time. We can relate these data to similar ideas from Buddhism and other ancient mystical teachings, all of which claim that “separation is an illusion.”

Remote viewing is an example of nonlocal ability. It has repeatedly allowed people to describe, draw, and experience objects and activities anywhere on the planet, contemporaneously or in the near future. Although we do not yet know how tjis works, there should no longer be any doubt that most of us are capable of experiencing places and events that appear to be separated from our physical bodies by space and time. We can present the evidence from remote viewing experiments – our own as well as our colleagues' – showing the reality of these psychic abilities. We can describe how you can discover these abilities in ourselves and incorporate them into our lives, including detailed exercises from our remote viewing workshops.

The practice of remote viewing may reveal more to you than simply what's in a paper bag in the other room; it may reveal the nature of your limitless mind – who you really are. We can explore precognition, including what I consider to be the most important scientific fact from psychical research: It is no more difficult to describe an event that is to occur in the future than to describe an event occurring at the present moment – casting into doubt our understanding of causality itself.

We can also describe the data and techniques that people use to intuitively diagnose illness. Psychic diagnosis goes beyond the doctor who can make a correct “snap” decision as soon as the doctor sees the patient (some of them have the ability in certain cases to diagnose illnesses without ever seeing the patient, and in some other cases, distant prayer and distant healing, categorized as Distant Mental Influence of Living Systems or DMILS can be cited, as there exist the relationship between remote viewing and spirituality.

(Excerpt from Limitless Mind, a Guide to remote viewing and transformation of consciousness, by Russell Targ, author of Miracles of Mind. New World Library, California, 2004).

Remote viewing does exist. Photograph by Elena.

Brave to Be a King

Brave to Be a King

By Poul Anderson (excerpt)

Late that day he was in the hills, where cedars gloomed above cold, brawling rooks and the side road ont which he had turned became a rutted upward track. Though arid enough, the Iran of this age still had a few such forests. The horse plodded beneath him, worn down. He should find some herdsman's house and request lodging, simply to spare the creature. But no, there would be a full moon; he could walk if he must and reach the scooter before sunrise. He didn't think he could sleep.

A place of long sere grass and ripe berries did invite him to rest, though. He had food in the saddlebags, a wineskin, and a stomach unfilled since dawn. He clucked encouragingly to the horse and turned.

Something caught his eye. Far down the road, level sunlight glowed off a dust cloud. It grew bigger even as he watched. Several riders, he guessed, coming in one devil of a hurry. King's messengers? But why, into this section? Uneasiness tickled his nerves. He put on his helmet cap, buckled the helmet itself above, hung shield on arm and loosened the short sword in its sheath. Doubtless the party would just hurry on pas him, but...

Now he could see that there were eight men. They had good horseflesh beneath them, and the rearmost led a string of remounts. Nevertheless the animals were pretty jaded; sweat had made streaks down their dusty flanks and manes were plastered to necks. It must have been a long gallop. The riders were decently clad in the usual full white pants, shirt, boots, cloak, and tall brimless hat; not courtiers or professional soldiers, but not bandits either. They were armed with sword, bows, and lariats.

Suddenly Everard recognized the greybeard at their head. It exploded in him: Harpagus!

And through whirling haze he could also see – even for ancient Iranians, the followers were a tough-looking crew.

“Oh-oh,” said Everard, half aloud, “School's out”.

Hid mind clicked over. There wasn't time to be afraid, only to think. Harpagus had no other obvious motive for hightailing into the hills than to catch the Greek Meander. Surely, in a court riddled with spies and blabbermouth. Harpagus would have learned within an hour that the King spoke to the stranger as an equal in some unknown tongue and let him go back northward. It would take the Chilarch a while longer to manufacture some excuse for leaving the palace, round up his personal bully boys, and give chase. Why? Because “Cyrus” had once appeared in these uplands, riding some device which Harpagus had coveted. No fool, the Mede must never have been satisfied with the evasive yarn Keith had handed him. It would seem reasonable that one day another mage from the King's home country must appear; and this time Harpagus would not let the engine go from him so easily.

Everard paused no longer. They were only a hundred yards away. He could see the Children's eyes glitter beneath shaggy brows. He spurred his horse, off the road and across the meadow.

“Stop!” yelled a remembered voice behind him. “Stop, Greek!”

Everard got an exhausted trot out of his mount. The cedars threw long shadows across him.

“Stop or we shoot!... halt!... shoot, then! Not to kill! Get the steed!”

The Gothic Thoughts. Photo by Elena.

Evolution of Evolution

Evolution of Evolution

If we take a look at the process of evolution, many anomalies could crop up, but most have turned out to be explainable. Thus, Piltdown man was always an embarrassment, because he did not fit into onto any reasonable human evolutionary tree. At last chemical analysis showed that Piltdown man was a hoax. Without the great guiding principle of evolution in general, who would have paid attention to him at all?

Likewise, we have seen the evolutionary principle in sometimes tragically practical application today, as pathogenic microbes gain immunity to antibiotics through the selfsame process of natural selection that Darwin found. On a still deeper level, we find that we can best understand the details of protein chemistry as between different species (for instance, cytochrome-c) in terms of their differentiation through geological time; but it was the concept of evolution that caused researchers to look for such divergences in the first place.

So we have very briefly reviewed the development of evolutionary thought – the evolution of evolution, so to speak – and seen how fundamental it has become to biology. Now we must return to the comparison with physics, and to the philosophy of science in general.

As we have seen, theories are subject to disproof. Else they would have no meaning. (Thus, if I told you that space is pervaded by a fluid so subtle that no instrument or experiment can possibly detect it, you could not prove me wrong, but you would not be obliged to take me seriously, either. As a matter of fact, this is precisely what happened to the luminiferous etcher about which 19th century physicists had speculated. It turned out to make no difference whether the ether existed or not; therefore nobody had any further reason to imagine that it did exist).

Voyages from sun to sun will always be few, women's love for the shoes will always exist. Photo by Elena.

Thus many theories have fallen by the wayside. But some reveal themselves, in the course of time, to be more fundamental than that. They become basic principles, by which theories themselves are tested. They become touchstones by which observations are evaluated. They become a context within which everything else, in a given field of science, is understandable.

Examples within physics are the two laws of thermodynamics, already mentioned. Without them, we simple could not make sense of our observations of any process involving energy exchange. With them not only do we comprehend what we see, we are led to new discoveries.

For instance, back in the 1930s, physicists noticed certain curious features of recoil during radioactive decay. The energies and momenta did not balance our as they were supposed to. Either the principles of energy (and momentum) conservation were wrong, or else some ultra-tiny particle was involved, carrying off the excess. Rather than give up their basic principles, which were far too helpful to discard, scientists hypothesized that such a particle did exist: the neutrino. This idea proved fruitful in gaining more knowledge of the nucleus – although not until a generation later was the neutrino actually detected, and then only indirectly.

Granted, basic principles originate in empirical observations. Indeed, the laws of thermodynamics came out of grubby engineering work, and rather late in the history of science at that. Nor are the basic principles Holy Writ. They are subject to modification as our knowledge grows. Thus the separate principles of conservation of mass and energy were unified – modified – into the single principle of the conservation of mass-energy, by Einstein.

However, such principles become so fundamental that the complete overthrow of any of them would mean the complete overthrow of the sciences with which they are concerned. We would be practically back to Square One. It is therefore both understandable and sensible that scientists will not – cannot – set them aside without an absolutely overwhelming, and hence unlikely, body of evidence.

I submit that evolution is no longer a mere theory.

(By Poul Anderson).

Our very survival, let alone our eventual modernization, is in doubt. Where evolution will eventually lead us? Photo by Elena.

What Is a Good Night's Sleep?

What Is a Good Night's Sleep?

Let's define the perfect snooze. Like many people, you may be so used to your own sleep patterns, however imperfect, that you don't know what you might be missing.

For most people, the best sleep takes eight hours, runs from dark to dawn – ideally from ten p.m. Or earlier to six a.m. or so – and leaves you feeling great. You should actually start to feel sleepy within about three hours after the sun sets as your sleep-promoting brain chemicals are triggered by by the reduced light. When you actually hit the pillow, it should take only a few minutes for you to get to sleep. Once you get to sleep, you should stay asleep through the night (without bathroom trips!). Ideally, you'll go through a series of vital sleep sequences that take at least eight hours to complete (children need twelve hours). At least six of those hours should be ininterrupted.

There are five stages of sleep that constitute a sleep cycle, and you need to go through four to five sleep cycles in one night. You'll usually pass through the first two superficial sleep stages in your first half hour of sleep. Then, hopefully, you'll drop into two progressively deeper sleep stages and stay there for most of the next few hours. This first half of the night, literally between ten p.m. and two a.m., potentially provides the most restorative sleep, because only while you sleep deeply can your immune system, your growth hormones, and other repair crews emerge to heal your body from the day's ravages. Finally, you dream in the REM (rapid eye movement) stage, which seems to be designed particularly for psychic repair. These five stages repeat throughout the night, though the second half of the night has more rapid ups, downs, and dreams than the first half.

If you sleep poorly, your mind and body are deprived of crucial cellular repairs that can be made only if you sleep long and deeply. You know what happens when you can't bring your car into the shop for its routine maintenance? You run it into the ground and shorten its “life span”. Same thing here. So you should find out what's really keeping you up. But first let's get clear on what your particular sleep disturbance looks like.

In desperation we look into the hoary old idea of remote-controlled mining. Photo by Elena.

What is your sleeplessness like?

Do you sleep habits include any of the following basic flows?:

Are you a night owl? If so, like many people, you may not think that you have a sleep disturbance at all. You may actually consider your late nights a blessing. It can be fun – you get things done, you get some time alone when everyone else is asleep (unless you've spawned some baby night owls). But it's not fun in the morning if you need to get up so early that you can't get a full eight hours of sleep. Chances are, you are chronically undersleeping and feeling out of sync with your spouse – and the rest of the world. Being a night owl is a key symptom of either abnormally low serotonin or excessively high stress-coping hormones.

On the other hand, you may lie awake in frustration most nights for too long. Do you go over and over worries about the past day or the next day before you can finally get to sleep? Or do you just lie there? Do anxiety, pain, panic, or disturbing dreams wake you up in the night or too early in the morning? Or do you take too long to get back to sleep or not get back to sleep at all? Are you a restless, thrashing sleeper or a light one? Do you wake up at the slightest sounds?

Are you proud to call yourself a “morning person” who wakes up very early no matter what time you get to sleep?

Do you rarely get more than six hours of sleep a night? Do you wake up worried or anxious and have to get up and exercise or work on whatever is bothering you? Finally, are you one of the four million poorly adjusted shift workers who try to sleep during the day? Whatever part of your night's sleep you're missing, you should think about it.

Why aren't you getting enough sleep?

If you answered yeas to any of the above questions, you are likely to ave at least one deficiency in your body's sleep-producing chemistry. Let's start with the most common cause of sleep disturbance. It has to do with the brain chemical serotonin. But serotonin is an antidepressant, you might be thinking, what does it have to do with sleep? What you may not know is that this extraordinary biochemical mood marvel is also the only substance from which your brain can produce its most potent knockout drop: melatonin.

Your sleep is supposed to be induced by a biochemical concert that features gradually increasing levels of melatonin, starting in the afternoon and reaching crescendo at about ten p.m. Melatonin is produced out of serotonin by your pineal gland, a pea-size structure embedded deep within your brain. The pineal gland, which consists of pigment cells similar to those found in your eyes, is light sensitive. Very gradually throughout the afternoon a and evening, as light gives way to darkness, the transformation of serotonin into melatonin is supposed to increase until it lullabies you to sleep. But here's the catch: Melatonin can be produced in adequate amount only if you have enough serotonin on hand from which to make it.

(From The Mood Cure, by Julia Ross, m.a. Author of the Diet Cure).

We can't appreciate the condition of sleep. Photo by Elena.

To Build a World

To Build a World

By Poul Anderson

Fifty floors down, the elevator let him out into a lobby, small and empty despite its polished marble. “Blastula,“ he muttered, « I'd hoped this was a hotel.” But no. You couldn't get away with as much in a hotel as you could in a soundproofed apartment. Baccioco probably maintained a number of those, around the planet. Sevigny debated whether to borrow someone's phone here. If he left this exit unwatched, his enemies could get away before the police arrived.

On the other hand, if he hung around they might well find some way to recapture him. And as for their escape, come to think of it, men as prominent as Baccioco and – he supposed – Gupta couldn't disappear. Rashid didn't matter, was little more than a tool. And he found himself hoping a bit that Maura would go free.

Oscar made comforting noises on his shoulder.

He walked out onto the street. It was wide and softly lit, lined with tall residential buildings. An occasional car went by, the whisper of its air cushion blending with the warm breeze that rustled in palm fronds. He was high above the ocean, which he glimpsed at the edge of the city glitter beneath. The Moon was no longer in sight, but he made our a few stars.

Where was the nearest public phone? He chose an eastward course arbitrarily and began striding. His buskins thudded; the slight jar and the sense of kinesthesia helped shake a little tightness out of him. But his skin was still wet, his stink sharp against a background of jasmine, his nerves still taut.

At the end of the block a pedestrian belt lifted him over the street. From the top of its arc he spied some glowsigns to the north, and headed that way. Before long he reached a cluster of shops. They were closed for the night, but even in his hurry he lost a few seconds gaping at their display windows. Was that much luxury possible on an Earth that everyone called impoverished? Wait. Remember your history classes. Inordinate wealth for a few has always gone along with inordinate want for the many. Because the many no longer have the economic strength to resist -

That recalled him to his purpose. There was a booth at the corner. He went in, fumbled for a half dollar and dropped the coin in the slot. The screen lit. He needed a minute to figure out how the system worked. On Venus and Luna they used radio for distance calls, intercoms when indoors. Finally he punched the button marked Directory and spelled out POLICE on the alphabet keys. A set of station numbers appeared. He dialed.

A face and a pair of uniformed shoulder came to view. “Honolulu Central. Can I help you?”

“I want to, report a theft and a kidnapping,” Sevigny said. It felt odd not to be telling his troubles to a clan elder.

The voice and eyes sharpened. “Where are you?”

Sevigny peered out at the signs and read the off. “I don't know where the nearest station would be. I'm stranger here.”

We are strangers here. Photo by Elena.

The Critique of Impure Reason

The Critique of Impure Reason

By Poul Anderson

The robot entered so quietly, for all his bulk, that Felix Tunny didn't hear. Bent over his desk, the man was first aware of the intruder when a shadow came between him and the fluoreceil. Then a last footfall quivered the floor, a vibration that went through Tunny's chair and into his bones. He whirled, choking on a breath, and saw the blueblack shape like a cliff above him. Eight feet up, the robot's eyes glowed angry crimson in a faceless helmet of a head.

A voice like a great gong reverberated through the office: “My, but you look silly.”

“What the devil are you doing?” Tunny yelped.

“Wandering about,” said Robot IZK-99 airily. “Hither and yon, yon and hither. Observing life. How deliciously right Brochet is!”

“Huh?” said Tunny. The fog of data, estimates, and increasingly frantic calculations was only slowly clearing from his head.

IZK-99 extended an enormous hand to exhibit a book.

Tunny read “The Straw and the Bean: a Novel of Modern Youth by Truman Brochet on the front. The back of the dust jacket was occupied by a coloripic of the author, who had bangs and delicate lips. Deftly, the robot flipped the book open and read aloud:

“Worms”, she said. “That's what they are, worms, that's what we-uns all are, Billy Chile, worms that grew a spine an' a brain way back in the Obscene or the Messyzoic or whenever it was.” Even in her sadness Ella Mae must always make her sad little jokes, which saddened me still more on this day of said rain and dying, magnolia blossoms. “We don't want them”, she said. “Backbones and brains, I mean, honey. They make us stiff and topheavy, so we can't lie down no more and be just nothing ay-tall but worms.”

“Take off your clothes,” I yawned.

“What has that got to do with anything?” Tunny asked.

“If you do not understand,” said IZK-99 coldly, “there is no use in discussing it with you. I recommend that you read Arnold Roach's penetrating critical essay on this book. It appeared in the last issue of  “Pierce, Arrow!” The Magazine of Penetrating Criticism. He devotes four pages to analyzing the various levels of meaning in that exchange between Ella Mae and Billy Chile.”  

“Ooh,” Tunny moaned. “Isn't it enough I've got a hangover, a job collapsing under me because of you, and a fight with my girl, but you have to mention that rag?”

“How vulgar you are. It comes from watching stereovision.” The robot sat down in a chair, which creaked alarmingly under his weight, crossed his legs and leafed through his book. The other hand lifted a rose to his chemosensor. “Exquisite,” he murmured.

“You don't imagine I”d sink to reading what the call fiction these days, do you?” Tunny sneered, with a feeble hope of humiliating him into going to work. “Piddling little experiments in the technique of describing more and more complicated ways to feel sorry for yourself – what kind of entertainment is that for a man?”

The race needs love, to be sure. Illustration by Elena.

Pusha

Pusha, various images from the past and the present

Push - selfie.

Timeless Existence

Timeless Existence

As we learn to open our hearts, we have the opportunity to reside in love, compassion , joy and equanimity – what the Dzogchen masters call “spontaneous equalness.” Heart-opening leads to the experience of freedom and the “truth of the heart.” Dzogchen is profoundly in favor of heart-opening and experiencing this transcendent flow of loving awareness, but it also recognizes that one has a head, a brain, a mind, and, above all, limitless awareness. It is this awareness (which is who you are) that will not be peaceful and satisfied until it has achieved its potential, satisfied its inner need and drive, and expanded into the spaciousness of timeless existence.

Other forms of Buddhism are-heart-centered and emphasize, first, the teachings of the “Four Noble Truths” and the “Eightfold Way” to escape suffering and achieve liberation or freedom, as taught by Buddha in the Deer Park. And, secondarily, the Bohisattva path comprises emptiness and compassion for the removal of suffering for all sentient beings. Dzogchen offers a third path where we have the opportunity to experience the truth of the heart in addition to the ultimate freedom, the truth of the universe. I am finally learning to travel that blessed path each night at bedtime, and each morning as I awaken, in gratitude.

I am convinced that timeless awareness and spaciousness is our goal. If that is too big a step, however, there is always gratitude, which is everyone's salvation. If we can awaken in the morning and, instead of feeling fear or resentment, give thanks to God – or the organizing principle of the universe that gives us our good health and our good minds – we are well on the way to peace and freedom. We are actually giving thanks for grace – the unsolicited gifts we have all been given. I have found that while I am in a state of gratitude, it is impossible for me to be unhappy.

While we cannot always control the events around us, we do have power over how we experience those events. At any moment, we can individually and collectively affect the course of our lives by choosing to direct our attention to the aspect of ourselves that is aware and, through the practice of self-inquiry, tl awareness itself. We can as, “Who is aware?” and then, “Who wants to know?” The choice of where we put our attention is ultimately our most powerful freedom. Our choice of attitude and focus affects not only our own perceptions and experiences, but also the experiences and behaviors of others.

(Excerpt from Limitless Mind, a Guide to remote viewing and transformation of consciousness, by Russell Targ, author of Miracles of Mind. New World Library, California, 2004).

Timeless awareness is our goal. Illustration by Elena.

Brake

Brake

Poul Anderson, excerpt

Many hours later, using orbital figures modified by further observation, a shuttle-boat from Ganymed came near enough to locate the Thunderbolt on radar. After maneuvering around so much, it didn't have reaction mass enough to match velocities. For about a second it passed so close that Devon's crew, working out on the hull, could see it – as if they were the damned in hell watching one of the elect fly past.

The shuttle-boat radioed for a vessel with fuller tanks. One came. It zeroed in – and decelerated like a startled mustang. The Thunderbolt had already fallen deeper into the enormous Jovian gravity field than the boat's engines could rise. 

The drifting ship vanished from sight, into the great face of the planet. High clouds veiled it from telescopes – clouds of free radicals, such as could not have existed for a moment under humanly endurable conditions. Jupiter is more alien than men can really imagine.

Her orbit on reemergence was not so very much different. But the boats which had almost reached her had been forced to move elsewhere they could not simply hang there, in that intense a field. So the Thunderbolt made another long, lonesome pass. By the time it was over, Ganymede was in the unfavorable position, and Callisto had never been in a good one. Therefore the ship entered Jupiter's atmosphere bor a third time, unattended.

On the next emergence into vacuum, her orbit had shortened and skewed considerably. The rate at which air drag operated was increasing, each plunge went deeper beneath the poison clouds, each swung through dear space took less time. However, there was hope. The Ganymedeans were finally organizing themselves. They computed an excellent estimate of what the fourth free orbit would be and planted well-fueled  boats strategically close at the right times.

Only – the Thunderbolt did not come anywhere near the predicted path.

It was pure bad luck. Devon's crew, working whenever the ship was in a vacuum, had almost cut away the after section. This last plunge into stiffening air resistance finished the job. Forces of drag and reaction, a shape suddenly altered, whipped the Thunderbolt wildly through the stratosphere. She broke free at last, on a drastically different orbit.

But then, it had been unusual good luck which brought the Jovians so close to her in the first place. Probabilities were merely reasserting themselves.

The radio said in a weak, fading voice: :Missed y” gain. Do know if we d'n come near, next time. Your period's getting' very short.”

“Maybe you shouldn't risk it.” Banning sighed. He had hoped for more, but if the gods had decided his ship was to plunge irretrievably into Jupiter, he had to accept the fact.

“We'll be all right, I reckon.” 

Outside, the air roared hollowly. Pressures incomparably greater than those in Earth's deepest oceans waited below.

On his final pass into any approximation of clear space – the stars were already hazed – Banning radioed: “This will be the last message, except for a ten-minute signal on the same band when we come to rest. Assuming we're alive! We've got to save capacitors. It'll be some time before help arrives. When it does, call me. I'll respond if we've survived, and thereafter emit a steady tone by which we can be located. Is that clear?”

A space-boat lost in space. Illustration by Elena.

Spiritual and Philosophical Traditions

Spiritual and Philosophical Traditions

In addition to the theories of physicists, the writings of poets and philosophers (some of which originated before biblical times) have articulated the idea that physical separations are more illusory than real. Buddhist teachings, following from the earlier Vedic tradition of 500 B.C., propose that human desires, judgments, and attachments, which arise from distinctions such as “here and not here,” “now and not now”, are the cause of all the world's suffering.

Aldous Huxley describes the many levels of awareness associated with the “perennial philosophy,” a term for the highest common factor present in all the major wisdom traditions and religions of the world. The first principle of Huxley's perennial philosophy is that consciousness is the fundamental building block of the universe; the world is more like a great thought than a great machine. And human beings can access all of the universe through our own consciousness and our nonlocal mind. This philosophy also maintains that we have a dual nature, both local and nonlocal, both material and nonmaterial. Finally, the perennial philosophy teaches that the purpose of life is to become one with universal, nonlocal, loving consciousness that is available to us. That is, the purpose of life is to become one with God, and then to help others do likewise.

In this worldview, through meditation one experiences increasing unity consciousness as one passes through "the great chain" of physical, biological, mental, spiritual, and etheric levels of awareness. Through meditation, one experiences the insight that one is not a body; one has a body. Even the idea of “one” is eventually given up in favor of the experience of expanded awareness.

The lesson that separation is an illusion has been spelled out by mystics for at least 2,500 years. Hinduism teaches that individual consciousness (Arman) and universal consciousness (Brahman) are one.

Ewin Shrödinger considered this observation to be the most profound statement in all of metaphysics. In the Sutras of Patanjali, written 100 years after the Buddha lived, the great Hindu teacher taught that a “realized” being achieves a state of loving awareness in which “the Seer is established in his own essential and fundamental nature (self-realization).” The view of life in which we are all connected with God, and in which the “Kingdom of God” is within us, waiting to be realized and experienced, is part of both the Jewish and Christian traditions – especially in the Thomas gospel. We learn that the loving source we are seeking is immediately available when we make contact with the great “I am” within each of us.

In Judaism, the local community of spirit is often referred to as HaShem (the word), while in Christianity it is called the Holy Spirit, or Emmanuel (the immanent or indwelling God of all). This view of a community of spirit probably arose from mystics on every sacred tradition, whose meditations led them to have oceanic, mind-to-mind feelings of oneness. These realizations may be fleeting or lasting, spontaneous or the product of religious practice, but they are an enduring feature of human life. (When I write about “realizations,” I am describing a state in which a practitioner has wisdom of who she or he is and he embodied that wisdom; it has become integrated into daily thoughts and activities, We often view “awakening” as a first step toward such realization. Awakening can occur in the blink of an eye...).

(Excerpt from Limitless Mind, a Guide to remote viewing and transformation of consciousness, by Russell Targ, author of Miracles of Mind. New World Library, California, 2004).

Memories from the Future. Photograph by Elena.

The Longest Voyage

The Longest Voyage

By Poul Anderson

At length we saw weeds floating on the sea, birds, towering cloud masses, all the signs of land. Three days later we raised an island. It was an intense green under those calm skies. Surf, still more violent than in our hemisphere, flung against high cliffs, burst in a smother of foam and roared back down again. We coasted carefully, the palomers aloft to seek an approach, the gunners standing by our cannon with lighted matches. For not only were there unknown currents and shoals – familiar hazards – but we had had brushes with canoe-sailing, cannibals in the past. Especially did we fear the eclipses. My lords can visualize how in that hemisphere the sun each day must go behind Tambur. In that longitude the occurrence was about midafternoon and lasted nearly ten minutes. An awesome sight: the primary planet – for so Froad now called it, a planet akin to Diell or Coint, with our own world humbled to a mere satellite thereof! - become a black disk encircled with red, up in a sky suddenly full of stars. A cold wind blew across the sea, and even the breakers seemed hushed. Yet so impudent is the soul of man that we continued about our duties, stopping only for the briefest prayer as the sun disappeared, thinking more about the chance of shipwreck in the gloom than of God's Majesty.

So bright is Tambor that we continued to work our way around the island at night. From sunup to sunup, twelve mortal hours, we kept the Golden Leaper slowly moving. Toward the second noon, Captain Rovie's persistence was rewarded. An opening in the cliffs revealed a long fjord. Swampy shores overgrown with saltwater trees told us that while the tides rose high in that bay, it was not one of those roosts so dreaded by mariners. The wind being against us, we furled sail and lowered the boats, towing in our caravel by the power of oars. This was a vulnerable moment especially since we had perceived a village within the fjord. “Should we not stand out, master, and let them come first to us?" I ventured.

Rovic spat over the rail."I've found it best never to show doubt," said he. “If a canoe fleet should assail us, we”ll give them a whiff of grapeshot and trust to break their nerve. But I think, thus showing ourselves fearless of them from the very first, we're less likely to meet treacherous ambuscade later."

He proved right.

In the course of time, we learned we had come upon the eastern end of a large archipelago. The inhabitants were mighty seafarers, considering that they had only outrigger dugouts to travel in. These, however, were often a hundred feet long. With forty paddles, or with three bast-sailed masts, such a vessel could almost match our best speed, and was more maneuverable. However, the small cargo space limited their range of travel.

Limitless. Photo by Elena.

Operation Afreet

Operation Afreet

Poul Anderson

I was nowhere and nowhen. My very body had departed from me, or I from it. How could I think of infinite eternal dark and cold and emptiness when I had no senses? How could I despair when I was nothing but a point in spacetime?... Not, not even that,f or there was nothing else, nothing to find or love or hate or fear or be related to in any way whatsoever. The dead were less alone than I, for I was all which existed.

This was my despair.

But on the instant, or after a quadrillion years, or both or neither, I came to know otherwise. I was under the regard of the Solipsist. Helpless in unconsciousness, I could but share that egotism to ultimate that it would yield no room even to hope. I swirled in the tides and storms of thoughts too remote, too alien, too vast for me to take in save as I might brokenly hear the polar ocean while it drowned me.

- danger, this one – he and those two – somehow they can be a terrible danger – not now (scornfully) when they merely help complete the ruin of a plan already bungled into week – no, later, when the next plan is ripening, the great one of which this war was naught but an early leaf – something about them warns thinly of danger – could I only scan more clearly into time? - they must be diverted, destroyed, somehow dealt with before their potential has grown – but I cannot originate anything yet – maybe they will be slain by the normal chances of war – if not, I must remember them and try later – now I have too much else to do, saving those seeds I planted in the world – the birds of the enemy fly thick across my fields, hungry crows and eagles to guard them – (with ever wilder hate( my snares shall take you yet birds – and the One Who loosed you!

So huge was the force of that final malevolence that I was cast free.

I opened my eyes. For a while I was aware entirely of the horror. Physical misery rescued me, driving those memories back to where half-forgotten nightmares dwell. The thought flitted by me that shock must have made me briefly delirious.

A natural therianthrope in his beast shape isn't quite as invulnerable as most people believe. Aside from things like silver – biochemical poisons to a metabolism in that semifluid state – damage which stops a vital organ will stop life, amputations are permanent unless a surgeon is near to sew the part back on before its cells die; and so on and so on, no pun intended. We are a hardy sort, however. I'd taken a blow that probably broke my neck. The spinal cord out being totally severed, the damage had healed at standard therio speed.

The trouble was, they'd arrived and used my flash to make me human before the incidental hurts had quite gone away. My head drummed and I retched.

On Imaginary Science. Illustration by Elena.

The Queen of Air and Darkness

The Queen of Air and Darkness

One lightyear is not much as galactic distances go. Your could walk it in about 270 million years, beginning at the middle of the Permian Era, when dinosaurs belonged to the remote future, and continuing to the present day when spaceships cross even greater reaches. But stars in our neighborhood average some nine lightyears apart, and barely one percent of them have planets which are man habitable, and speeds are limited to less than that of radiation. Scant help is given by relativistic time contraction and suspended animation en route. These make the journeys seem short, but history meanwhile does not stop at home.

This voyages from sun to sun will always be few. Colonists will be those who have extremely special reasons for going. They will take along germ plasm for exogenetic cultivation of domestic plants and animals - and of human, in order that population can grow fast enough to escape death through genetic drift. After all, they cannot rely of further immigration. Two or three times a century, a ship may call from some other colony. (Not from Earth. Earth has long ago sunk into alien concerns.) Its place of origin will be an old settlement. The young ones are in no position to build and man interstellar vessels.

Their very survival, let alone their eventual modernization, is in doubt. The founding fathers have had to take what they could get in a universe not especially designed for man.

Consider, for example, Roland. It is among the rare happy find, a world where humans can live, breathe, eat the food, drink the water, walk unclad if they choose, sow their crops, pasture their beasts, dig their mines, erect their homes, raise their children and grandchildren. It is worth crossing these quarters of a light-century in preserve certain dear values and strike new roots into the soil or Roland.

But the star Charlemagne is of type F9, forty percent brighter than Sol, brighter still in the treacherous ultraviolet and wilder still in the wind of charged particles that seethes front it. The planet has an eccentric orbit. In the middle of the short but furious northern summer, which includes periastron, total isolation is more than double what Earth gets; in the depth of the long northern winter, it is barely less than Terrestrial average.

Native life is abundant everywhere. But lacking elaborate machinery, not yet economically possible to construct for more than a few specialists, man can only endure the high latitudes. A ten-degree axial tilt, together with the orbit, means that the northern part of the Arctican continent spend half its year in unbroken sunlessness. Around the South Pole lies an empty ocean. Roland

Other differences from Earth might superficially seem more important. Roland has two moons, small but close, to evoke clashing tides. It rotates once in thirty-two hours, which is endlessly, subtly disturbing to organisms evolved through gigayears of a quicker rhythm. The weather patterns are altogether unterrestrial. The globe is a mere 9500 kilometers in diameter; its surface gravity is 0.42x980 cm/sec2; the sea level air pressure is slightly above one Earth atmosphere. (For actually Earth is the freak, and man exists because a cosmic accident blew away most of the gas that a body its size ought to have kept, as Venus has done).

(By Poul Anderson).

Between horizons of the sky deepened from purple to sable. Both moons were aloft, nearly full, shining frosty on leaves and molten on waters. Illustration by Elena.

Persepolis Rising

Persepolis Rising

By James S.A. Corey (excerpt)

He didn't see the catastrophe coming. Even when the scope of it became clear, he struggled to understand it. Blindsided.

The talk in the station – the talk everywhere – was about Sol system and the surrender. Singh watched it play out in newsfeeds and discussion forums, taking the role of official censor more for the joy of being present in the unfolding of history than from any immediate need. The combined fleet of the Transport Union and the EMC beaten and standing down. The newsfeeds from the local sources in Sol System were anguish and despair, with only a few outlets calling unconvincingly for the battle to continue.

For their own side, Carrie Fisk and the Laconian Congress of Worlds proved to be an apt tool for the job, praising the Transport Union's capitulation as a moment of liberation for the former colony worlds. The rules and restrictions on trade are no longer being dictated by the generational politics of Sol. By being outside the system of favoritism, nepotism, political horse-trading and compromise, Laconia is positioned to bring exactly the reforms that humanity needs. He noticed that she shied away from mentioning High Consul Duarte's name. It was always just Laconia.

Which was fine. The two were essentially the same.

But it was the conversation beyond her and other specifically recruited allies that made him feel best. Governor Kwan from Bara Gaon Complex issued a statement of support for the new administration so quickly that Singh was almost certain it had been recorded in advance. Auberon's local parliament also sent a public message to put themselves in place as early supporters of the new regime. New Spain, New Roma, Nyingchi Xin, Félicié, Paradiso, Patria, Asyum, Chrysanthemum, Riocht. Major colonies, some with populations already in the millions, had seen the battle at Leuctra Point and drawn the only sane conclusion. The power center of the human race had shifted, and the wise were shifting with it.

The imminent arrival of the Typhoon also helped. He had known Rear Admiral Song since he'd entered the service. Not that they'd ever been close, but she was a face and a name that carried a weight of familiarity. He'd only traded a handful of messages with her, mostly to arrange the piece for the newsfeeds, but speaking to her had reminded him powerfully of home. The routines he'd had on Laconia, the taste of the tea, the little part where he would sit with Elsa when she was newborn and Natalia was sleeping. Watching sunbirds dive into the pond. Sending James Holden back had begun it, and the coming of the Typhoon would complete it. Traffic to and from Laconia. Proof that the great roads of space were open.

The longing it called forth in him was vast and complex. The open sky that he wouldn't see as long as he remained governor of Medina. The touch of his wife's skin against his, which he could look forward to. His daughter's laughter and the soft sounds she made at the edge of sleep.

There was a way in which every day since he'd stepped off the Storm had been a pause, like holding his breath. And soon, soon, his real work could begin. With the Typhoon in place and Sol system conquered, the empire would be unassailable, and humanity's future assured. He'd ignored his own anxiety and impatience, and now that he could almost relax, he felt them straining for the release.

Taken together, all the good news nearly made up for the bad.

This is the future the way it's supposed to be. Illustration by Elena.