First of all, stop and consider this amazing fact: YOU are living, with all your family and loved ones, living upon a huge ball of stone, four-fifths of which is covered with water. This gigantic globe of water and rock is revolving at a speed of over a thousand miles per hour. It is also hurtling through the skies in its great journey around the sun each year with a speed that is beyond your comprehension. Yet of this you are completely unconscious; you are aware of no movement of your earthly home through the skies or on its own axis. From the standpoint of the unusual do you not agree that this is an almost unbelievable situation???
There are thousands of highly technical “miracles” taking place upon your globe every hour; but these are scientific propositions which you can not grasp theoretically unless you have taken special training in such ideas. I shall not, therefore, go into any of these profound problems of your life on this whirling planet. I shall just remind you of several astounding conditions in the experiences of earth’s men and women which could not in any way be more amazing and disturbing than the idea of Peoples from other planets, other worlds, seemingly from far out in the cosmic spaces. YOU may be shocked, and disturbed, with this idea of the “Flying-Saucers” and what kind of beings, or creatures, they contain. But with just a little patience I can introduce you to creatures, living right in your own midst; to beings, not far from your great civilized cities, who deserve, in every respect, to be regarded as monsters – beings from another world than yours.
(If you knew and understood the true nature of some of your friends, your relatives – possibly even of one in your own family – you would never regard the “Space-People” as peculiar or unusual to the point of being fearful of them or the civilizations from which they come, these “Space-Men.”)
Each time you fill your lungs with air, somewhere on this globe, life in a new body begins – and life in an old body ends. Yet of this YOU are hardly aware, save perhaps in the mental act of reading statistics which tell you such facts. It is an overwhelming process, this living, this dying that takes place each time you draw in your breath and then exhale.
YOU cannot comprehend the living and dying of 2000 million human bodies. Nevertheless you are a vital part of this gigantic aspect of Nature – and you cannot escape these great tides of life and death. You put out of your mind any thought that might make you aware of the endless suffering which, at this moment, millions and millions of human beings, like yourself, are enduring. (Some people call these ‘negative’ thoughts!)
The breath you are taking NOW may be your last – for all you know about it. You have never known from one day to the next, indeed one hour beyond the present moment, how much time, destiny, or fate, held in store for you.
You accept this state of affairs because you believe you can do little if anything about it. All mankind does not so believe, however. Take those ‘peculiar’ people in the jungles who believe that by killing and eating the body of another person they will absorb not only his physical strength and mental powers, but also gain an additional number of years of life, those years the body, they have roasted and eaten, had before its normal death was to be experienced. They also have the delightful religious belief that in thus killing and eating the body they have freed the soul of their victim much sooner and released it into their particular kind of Paradise. (The curious resemblance to some of our own christian rationalizing must, of course be ignored lest we disturb delicate sensibilities in these hectic times!)
Speaking of eating: Each year the normal famines of India kill 8 million. In times of unusual famine the millions are beyond counting. Two years ago 40 million men, women and children starved to death in China. Did YOU hear of this, did it touch YOUR little family circle? Or did anyone in YOUR home endure a single day without food, unless they chose to do so?
Are you aware of the existence of some 400 million followers of the prophet Mohammed who believe that Christians and dogs are brothers in the sight of God? 400 million intense human beings, whose hearts and minds burn with irresistible zeal to destroy, violently, every other human who is not a member of their vast brotherhood of the Prophet, 400 million fanatic Orientals pray each day, and five times each day, that Allah will shortly be merciful (to the Mohammedians) and hurl us infidels into the pits of death.
A thousand million human men and women live upon this globe in a state of daily existence which you, in your great civilized nations, can never understand unless you travel in their countries. These millions believe the stars are holes in the sky, and that the earth is flat, and that they would probably die should they dare take a bath. They believe many things so utterly fantastic as to strain your imagination, yet they are also human.
We feel sorry for such unenlightened people, and with a pardonable, perhaps, sense of pride we turn to our own great civilization and give thanks for the possession of so many wonderful luxuries and conveniences. However, few of us realize at what price these great inventions, discoveries and blessings have been given to mankind.
Today, in spite of our great enlightenment in things scientific, anyone who dares to offer the world a new idea must do so only after carefully preparing the way for his new idea to be accepted. Fortunately, it is no longer possible for humanity to seize its benefactors and burn them at the stake, to hang them on the gallows, or throw them to the lions. But the public mind has changed little since those terrible days of Nero and the early Christian Inquisition – when it was death to own a Bible.
I have a clipping from the City Beacon, a New York paper, dated 1864 which I cherish greatly. It says: “A gentleman, giving the name of J. Bateman, was arrested yesterday for attempting to extort funds from ignorant and superstitious people, by showing them an absurd machine which he calls a ‘telephone’. He claims that it will carry voices, over metal wires, to almost any distance. It is, of course, understood by sensible and well-informed people that it is IMPOSSIBLE to transmit the human voice, or any voice for that matter, over wires. But even were it possible to do so, the apparatus would have no practical value whatsoever.”
Recently, in New Orleans, the writer saw a large poster, carefully framed in class and exhibited in The Cabildo, a museum in the Old Town. It showed a locomotive tearing across the country with smoke flying and fire rushing out of the stack. “Do you want New Orleans to become a suburb of New York? Do you want your wives and children to be molested by the scum that will find its way from the gutters of New York’s slums? We MUST STOP this godless creation from invading the peace and purity of our fair city of New Orleans – and at any cost. Etc…etc.” There was, in times not so distant, an attempt to have Congress declare these engines and their trains as “treasonable and immoral contraptions which threaten the very foundations of our Republic.” It is an old, old story, this eternal fear mankind has always had of that which it does not understand. And what mankind does not understand, it rejects. We will believe only that which we want to believe – but events are very close at hand which will compel us to ACCEPT certain new and strange things whether we wish to believe them or not.
The mental and emotional state of the masses is a highly unstable thing. It believes and accepts one thing today. Tomorrow it rejects that thing, and if permitted, will tear to pieces the person, or government, which gave them the first idea. And the second idea, or personality, will suffer the identical fate when a third idea or condition is offered humanity that seems better than the first two. Verily, the jungle beasts live in more harmony and mutual freedom than do our so-called “civilized masses.” (The man who first installed a bath tub in his home was arrested for, of all things, “violating the public morals and endangering the health of his own little family, and constituting a serious public menace.”)
All too frequently, when we are reading the pages of history, we blame these: we blame the churches, the governments, the leaders, for the inhumanity men have heaped upon each other. The governing powers, both religious and political have unquestionably had great influence upon how mankind has acted – but it is upon the people themselves that the blame must be laid. NO government, religious or secular, has ever ruled without the consent of the people – who have permitted the government in the first place.
In America there is more personal freedom, more intellectual liberty than is to be found anywhere on the globe. But this is only a recently developed privilege. The question of morality does not enter into our fashions in dress, for example, as it did not so long ago. Twenty years ago the Bikini bathing suit would have produced an instant reaction from the police (as from many public circles as well!) We could remind you of many things in this respect which does not exist today because of “an enlightened public attitude.” And so there is great personal freedom in most of the things we choose to do in this Twentieth Century of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
Even the religious groups are extremely liberal in their attitude toward the things of everyday living, tolerant of our social and fashionable concepts. But, and a very big BUT, there is great intolerance, great hostility and deep bitterness in the ranks of certain groups which regard themselves as “especially enlightened and particularly advanced.” These are the so-called New Thought Groups, the Christian Scientists, Unity, Theosophists, Rosicrucians, and the various Metaphysical Societies flourishing today.
There was a time when it was possible for these Metaphysical groups to complain, not too heroically, about the intolerance of the “Orthodox Churches” toward the New Way of Life. That time is passed! For the modern, and highly successful, New Thought Groups are today, in every sense, equally as intolerant and bigoted, as orthodox as ever were the “old-fashioned churches.” In the words of one of the leaders of a very rich and powerful metaphysical society, “we have become even more orthodox than the churches of old; we have become more bitter, hostile, intolerant and vicious then Nero himself!”
And this is the grave situation which confronts anyone who dares to attempt to present mankind with a new metaphysical or spiritual idea. The entrenched “authorities” of the established occult and philosophical groups will try to squelch him immediately, if not destroy him socially, politically, legally and every other possible way. Today, the once poor, struggling metaphysical societies have become rich and powerful; they are great political forces to be reckoned with. These humble pages will not meet with their approval, and every possible method of silencing their message will be employed. But be not dismayed at this, for the writer is an old hand at the game of dealing these “authorities” the kind of cards that always lose in this fascinating Lottery of Truth. Great Spiritual Forces are with me, behind me, and FOR me! No one can stop Their Great Message from reaching the hearts of the sincere seeker of the Truth. And Their Message is for YOU – or you would not have these pages in your possession. Truth Them, the Lords of Light! They will never fail you; They will guide, guard, sustain and supply YOU, morn and night, however fearful may grow the conditions on this ancient Planet of Light.
Excerpt from Signs In The Skies
To continue reading, see full pdf download here.
This is the book referred to in the above publication: Flying Saucers Are Real by Donald Keyhoe (doc), can be downloaded from here.