When as a physicist I address the topic of world peace, I will not speak about new weapons, as one might assume, since physics is always involved in the production of new weapons. What I would like to convey is even more powerful.
Perhaps you are wondering why a physicist wishes to speak about peace. Concomitant with my thermonuclear research I have also occupied myself for more than thirty-five years, with paraphysical investigations. By paraphysical investigations I mean the physical research of paranormal phenomena, e.g., telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, poltergeist phenomena, and many, many other things. But these outwardly spectacular examples are not the main issue. Rather, I have come into contact with questions that underlie these extraordinary events, questions which touch on the existence of human beings, and, as a result, inevitably go beyond the bounds of natural science.
When you experience such things and approach them without prejudice, when you also establish that your measurements are correct, and that there can be no doubt that the phenomena exist yet no explanation in physics is applicable, then you could begin to doubt the Laws of Nature. You then begin to suspect that there must be more to existence than the matter that can be described in terms of our physics, and that there must be a matter which is finer, more ethereal, even though this ethereal matter often seems paradoxical to physics.
There are Laws that govern finer material substance in detail. These Laws, even if they cannot be described by modern physics, are nevertheless logically perceivable by the human spirit. Ethereal phenomena are not something peculiar, separate from the material world, but are part of one great reality. Only this oneness of reality gives us the enormously important possibility of drawing analogous deductions. The laws are the same everywhere; only the forms of the different planes change. We already know of such different planes in matter, especially those in close proximity to us such as solid, liquid, gaseous, and plasma states. These particular states are dependent upon the prevailing temperature. These forms of matter can be permeated by a large variety of wave or radiation types. When this occurs, the various waves propagate in the individual forms of matter in completely different ways. For example, one wave type may pass unhindered through a solid or liquid, whereas, plasma, is impermeable to it. And yet all these types can be described by a single, basic differential equation.
But from this example we can also perceive possible dangers. We can indeed use analogies, but we have to guard against making incorrect comparisons. I would like to mention an example from the sphere of paraphysical phenomena in which such erroneous identifications have led to great misunderstanding. It concerns telepathy. Before anything else I would like to say: laboratory experiments have proven, beyond any doubt, that telepathy exists. Now many people have already had experiences that one can call telepathic, and one frequently hears the statement that "telepathy works like a radio--by electromagnetic waves." This interpretation is inaccurate. Detailed experiments have been conducted that definitely rule out the possibility that electromagnetic frequencies are involved in telepathic transmission of information. The findings of telepathy experiments conducted by my colleague Edgar Mitchell on his lunar flight aboard Apollo 14 are consistent with this conclusion. So while it is legitimate to speak about analogies between radio broadcasting using electromagnetic waves on the one hand, and telepathic transmission of information on the other, particularly where resonance is concerned, it is wrong to equate the two.
More importantly, though, research into telepathy has proven that thoughts are energies. Therefore they can have a devastating effect upon the environment if such erroneous thoughts exist in great numbers. But how are we to research this? Many would say that we should approach this field with none other than strictly scientific methods. But this extreme is also incorrect. If we approach the parapsychical, the ethereal domain, with only the conventional methods of natural sciences, thus strictly positivistically, we will undoubtedly make some progress, but we will never reach our goal. It is the same principle as with a balloonist who wants to reach the moon: he can go higher and higher with each improvement he makes to his equipment. But an observer who knows the underlying laws also knows that however light the balloonist constructs his gondola, and however large he makes his balloon, although he will indeed always go a bit higher, he will never reach the moon. It is true that increased expenditure of effort always brings the attainment of the goal somewhat nearer, but in the end it is no longer proportional to what is thereby achieved. One can apply this paradigm only so far, for in order to reach his goal, the balloonist would need an entirely different paradigm (rocket thrust, in this case.) And so it is with our research into the ethereal: we can reach our goal only if we employ other means, namely the spirit within us. We must use homogeneous material and cannot expect to recognize the ethereal with our intellect, which is something that belongs only to the gross material that we can describe by our physics. Hence, once taking the step, and it is the only one that leads to the goal, our eyes will be opened to the severe and inexorable lawfulness, which is also operative in fine, ethereal matter, just as in coarse, gross matter.
The same also applies to our gross material world. Ignorant of physical laws, we cannot explain many terrestrial phenomena. But with the knowledge of these laws, we can reduce completely different phenomena to one and the same principle, and, what is particularly important, to utilize them. If, for example, you tune a radio to a certain station, or if your car gets stuck in a ditch in the snow and you then rock it out by skillful periodic operation of the accelerator and clutch, then in both cases you are making use of the same basic type of differential equation that describes resonance, although the two examples appear to be completely different.
The great diversity of ethereal happening is described in detail in a book called In the Light of Truth (Grail Foundation Press, 1995), written by Abd-ru-shin (Oskar Ernst Bernhardt, 1875-1941). I discovered this work over thirty years ago, and the astounding thing about it is that the Laws described in it have been subsequently confirmed in all my research. In fact, In the Light of Truthhas become for me the working manual, or "physics textbook" so to speak, of the fine material world. But the work covers much more than the ethereal: it describes the whole of reality. When one tries to unearth the fundamental laws, whether in physics, paraphysics, or also in the spiritual realm, one naturally seeks the truth. And when one has discovered such a law in the physics of another domain, it is indeed a special experience; it is as if suddenly light is present where previously darkness ruled.
We have just spoken of the ethereal and especially of telepathy. But what does all this have to do with world peace? We have seen that a force or energy like thoughts exists even when we can't describe this energy or this kind of interaction by our known physics. And because everybody is thinking something all the time, this telepathic connection is like a huge world-wide web. But it is, at the same time, highly selective. This means that we are connected with other people who are in resonance with us, who have similar thoughts, similar emotions, because the degree of emotion is a measure of the energy, of the force, in telepathy experiments. We create an ethereal environment by our thoughts. Thus, we are able to poison our ethereal environment, for instance, by negative thoughts.
Some of you who have not yet had experiences of this kind will perhaps smile at my depictions of ethereal environmental damage, but I would invite you to consider that much which today is self-evident, was laughed at even recently. For example, someone today can now order whole wheat bread quite normally, yet only thirty years ago he or she would have been ridiculed as a health-freak. And in ecology, many will still remember the reaction to the book Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. We forget that at the time Ms. Carson's work first appeared, the concept of environmental conservation was generally unknown. How far our world picture can be expanded beyond the boundary of fixed conceptions can be seen from the mere fact that, for example, a century ago the findings of the theory of relativity or quantum physics, and other kinds of natural sciences, would have been ridiculed as a flight of fancy or superstition. This may remind you--and I have often spoken with Heisenberg, the founder of quantum mechanics on the subject--of the effort it cost many in the 1920's to abandon the concept of classical physics. And let us not deceive ourselves: for many this first step--the step from classical to modern physics--has not even been made yet. So it happens, for example, in medicine that the philosophical outlook of some doctors, who admittedly use equipment based on quantum physics, is molded by the physics of the last century. There is really no reason to smile. On the contrary, we should learn from the past. But those who perceive within themselves that what I say is true can certainly imagine what environmental confusion has already been caused in the ethereal world through the flood of negative thoughts.
Thus impressions in the ethereal world have been made not only by every one of our words and deeds, but also inevitable repercussions will result from each one of our thoughts. Thoughts are not free as so many try to fool themselves. Thus many treat their thoughts as if they were disposable batteries: things simply to be "tossed away." People are responsible for their thoughts, but since most people are ignorant of this fact, they use their thoughts carelessly and irresponsibly. Thereby they constantly damage and poison their environment, and the amount of insidious pollution surrounding us is hard to estimate.
In In the Light of Truth, Abd-ru-shin writes about the effect of three human manifestations: thoughts, words, and deeds:
"The forms of all three are closely connected with each other, their effects are interwoven. What that implies for you, how incisive and decisive its effect often is in the course of your existence, you cannot estimate all at once.
"It means nothing else than that also a thought, automatically working on according to its nature, can strengthen a homogeneous type in the World of Medium Matter, thereby producing more powerful forms; likewise then, deducing from this, it again continues to work on within this intensification, and arises in a visible active form in the coarsest World of Matter, without you yourselves seeming to be directly concerned with it.
"It comes as a shock to know this, when one realizes how superficial and careless these earthmen are in their thinking.
"Thus without knowing it you participate in many a deed perpetrated by one or other of your fellow--men, simply because he has received the intensification in the way I have just explained to you. It became capable of driving him to the crudest perpetration of something that had hitherto slumbered within him, with which previously he had always merely toyed in his thoughts.
"Thus many a person on earth very often looks with disapproval upon some action of one of his fellow-men, angrily repudiating and condemning it, and yet he is partially responsible for it before the Eternal Laws of God! In this someone who is a complete stranger to him may be involved, and it may concern a deed which he himself would never have committed in the Realm of Coarsest Matter.
"Think yourselves deeply into such happenings for once, and you will then all the more understand why I call to you in my Message: "Keep the hearth of your thoughts pure, by so doing you will bring peace and be happy!
"But when you have become sufficiently strong in this respect through your own purification, far fewer crimes than hitherto, in which many have been unknowingly implicated, will be committed on earth.
"The time and place of such deeds as you may become implicated in are of no importance here. Even if they occurred at the opposite end of the earth to where you live, in places where you have never set foot, of whose existence you have no knowledge whatever. Through your toying with thoughts intensifications will strike wherever they discover homogeneous types, independent of distances, nation and country.
"Thus in the course of time thoughts of hate and envy may thrust themselves upon individuals, groups or whole nations, wherever they find homogeneity, impelling them to actions expressed in forms entirely different from those that first arose through your toying with thoughts.
"The final result may then manifest according to the inner state of the perpetrator at the time of the deed. Thus you may have contributed to the perpetration of such horrible deeds as you yourselves have never really contemplated, and yet you are connected with them, and a part of the reaction must burden your spirit, must hang on it like a weight when it severs itself from the body.
"But on the other hand you can also contribute even more powerfully to the peace and happiness of humanity, and through pure, joyful thinking can have a share in works that develop through total strangers.
"From this the blessing also naturally flows back to you, and you do not realize why."
With this clarification we have a decisive acknowledgment of these ethereal encumbrances. Until now, however, we have been hearing what we should not do, but not about what we can do after we have acted wrongly. What has to be done is to change our inner being and the source of our errors--the "hearth" of our thoughts. Concerning this, however, Abd-ru-shin says:
"Beware of a desperate struggle to enforce this purity of thoughts; for in so doing you would already press them into definite channels, and your effort would become an illusion, would always be only artificially enforced, and could never have the great effect that it should have. Your efforts would bring harm rather than benefit, because they lack the genuineness of the free intuition. Again it would be a product of your intellectual volition, but never the work of your spirit!
"You cannot give the purity that I mean to your thoughts through your thought-volition; but the pure volition, unassuming and boundless, must well up within you from your intuitive perception, not compressed into a word which can only give rise to a limited concept. That must not be; but an all-embracing urge for the good, able to envelop your thoughts as they arise and to permeate them even before they take form, is the right thing which you need."
So we are able to "fuel a war" or to make peace with our thoughts. And such thoughts in yourself may be triggered by secondary sources, like television. Just as illegal and dangerous dumping of poisonous matter into seemingly contained ponds or lakes will then be carried through underground channels only to resurface much later in totally different places, so someone perhaps spiritually indolent, and thereby weak-willed, can, through the thoughts of another, be affected in a way he himself would never consciously perpetrate. Hence only one result from paraphysics, the power of telepathy, gives you a totally new picture of your accountability for world peace!
But there are also other results from my 30-year investigation into the paranormal that can change our view, and which I would like to mention briefly. For instance, the fact that our consciousness--our spirit--survives our body means that there is an afterlife. This fact means that I cannot really kill my enemy. I only can change his habitation from here to the beyond. And it may be that I have to meet him again some day. The core of reincarnation explains that race and country are not very important. German Nazis may have been reincarnated as Israelis and Jewish Holocaust victims as Germans. Blacks may be born white next time, and vice versa. The consciousness of these facts in and of itself precludes all wars based upon race, religion, or nationality. A further protection against war is the consciousness that everybody is responsible for everything he or she does. Even a soldier cannot execute an order or a command without a personal consequence. And when one knows the incorruptible Law of Reciprocal Action, one has the insight that war as revenge is unnecessary...
All this sounds rather Utopian, but I think that when we realize the validity of these facts we must teach them to our children. Then, as a long-term task, they can become the norm for later generations. I am sure that in the future everybody will know that these are factual and fundamental laws, and every politician or expert will have to conform to them if he or she wants to work professionally. Otherwise I am sure we will not survive.
Ladies and Gentlemen, today you have heard things that are new to you, perhaps. You have been introduced to the consequences of non-material environmental pollution, which concern not only our life but our entire existence. You have also become acquainted with the way to redeem a negative situation and thus extricate yourself from it. It is simple and straightforward, for to bring it about we do not need university studies, esoteric techniques, or expensive technical equipment. Neither is money to be made from it; we receive no doctorate, or honors, or Nobel prize because we do it.
Only the incorruptible Laws of Creation record that no more pollution of the ethereal environment is caused when we try to lend purity to our thoughts. A more intuitive person will immediately sense this and will perhaps thereby be encouraged also to do it. And then when many act in this manner, the world will be transformed. Therefore I would like to give you again one of the simplest, but most important ideas to take with you. It contains an entire ethereal ecology and its consequences: "Keep the hearth of your thoughts pure. By so doing you will bring peace and be happy."
Thank you. [Applause.] Are there any questions?
Q1) You were saying that thoughts are energy. Therefore a thought has to be an action of some sort, although not a material action, but an ethereal one. Is it possible to keep your thoughts to yourself, or if you think something, is it resonating with someone around you whether you're conscience of it or not?
Al) Your thoughts are always connected with similar thoughts. You cannot hold them back. When you have a thought, you are already sending it out, because this vibration has already given rise to a radiation. The Laws that govern this process cannot be circumvented. I have seen in the case of the people of Islam, although this touches on religion, that they are not allowed to eat during the Ramadan in the daytime. But some adherents sneak into basements to eat, and think it is not seen by God or by the Laws, but of course this is childish. These Laws are laws like we have in physics, and we have to cope with them: we have to live with them.
Q2) If the thought or the energy always have the same force, that is the same amplitude, do some thoughts reach more distance, and some less?
A2) This is a question of physics! What we found in research into telepathy is that there is no law of distance, like in our physics. As in Edgar Mitchell's experiments on Apollo 14, we have seen that it is possible for telepathic information still to be successful over a very large distance, but we have not seen that distance actually makes a difference. At this point we cannot say whether there is a law of distance for, let's say, cosmological distances. We are also not able at the moment, to determine whether telepathic transmissions travel at the speed of light. The transmission time from the moon, for instance, is only about one second, and this is too short for physical time. This means that at least here on Earth, there is no diminishing of amplitude in regard to distance.
Q3) It seems to be that your approach to World Peace is that we should be pure in our thoughts, individually. What is your opinion of the possibility of interaction of a more formal nature--groups, for instance: organizations and peace groups? I don't want to say "treaties," that's being governmental. What I mean is individuals, potentially, joining together, exercising more influence then they would singly.
A3) Yes, of course. I think it is good that you mention this. I haven't spoken about it, but this doesn't mean that I don't think it's very important. When your thoughts are in the right direction, it follows automatically that you are working for peace. This fact is very important for people who are involved with peace in a professional way; it is also very important and necessary for our world. What is important to stress though, is that everybody, even those people who are not directly involved in professional work of this type, can contribute to world peace.
When you look at recent history, when you count the wars and also the hostile actions, you can see that such an attitude is pervasive. It grows everywhere, because there are hostile and negative thoughts, which again feed more hostilities that break out in hostile actions in every region. When you know that thoughts are real forces and you apply this knowledge, then you can stop negativity before it ever starts--there is a necessity to stop it, and negative thoughts that do exist can very easily be de-stabilized by countering them with positive ones. This could then dissolve an impending catastrophe, which then further increases our chances for survival as a species and planet.
Q4) You say that "pure thoughts" move us toward World Peace. What exactly constitutes a pure thought, and what is the difference between a pure thought and an impure one?
A4) This is a question that is addressed by most religions in the form of doctrine. I don't think this is good, because when you give rules you are bringing forth limitations, and this issue of pure thoughts is not only a surface one. As I have already said, it must come directly from your inner spirit. I think you can intuitively feel what is pure and what is impure. It is not necessary that some authority says to you that this is pure and that is impure. I could only give you the example that there are definite Laws in Nature, and when you live according to these laws, then you are inwardly pure. If you live against these laws, then it is something that is impure. Since you asked the question, though, I would like to give an example from religion. The Ten Commandments, which were given to Moses, mirror the Laws that we have in Creation. When you are living according to these Laws, then you bring peace. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the Ten Commandments. In most cases they are treated as formal words recited by rote, rather than in a living manner as they must.
I don't wish to be caustic like some of the churches where they say you have to do this or that, and therefore you go or do not go to heaven. I would like to say that you have to feel it inwardly. I think women are generally better adapted to this intuitive sensing which is necessary for us in order to determine directly that which we should and shouldn't do.
Q5) You have said that we have free will, but you also said that we can be influenced by the thoughts of others. Is this a contradiction?
A5) This is a good question. Of course we are influenced by the thoughts of others, but we always have the choice "not to be influenced." This means we can protect ourselves, and the best protection is not to "tune in our thoughts" to those that we don't wish to be a part. For instance, when we have bad thoughts, then we are automatically connected with the other bad thoughts, but we have the free will to avoid these type of thoughts. Therefore, we have the free will to be connected with the type of thoughts that we wish to have. However, since we are creatures of Creation and not the Creator we do not have the free will to escape reality. Because we live here on this earth we have to cope with our situations, but we have the free will for everything that we individually do and think, and therefore also the choice of the "stations" with which we connect ourselves.
Q7) Do you believe we have the skill to recognize which are our own thoughts, and which come from others?
A7) We generally do this unconsciously; although we can develop this skill once we have given purity to our thoughts. We have to develop this within us, which takes work. I think it is important for everyone to work on themselves, so that we can evolve to something better; so we can mature and develop ourselves further in our spiritual evolution.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|