THE WORD: DOG

An essay about scientific and spiritual observations

Revised at various times since 1985. 1998 Edition

INTRODUCTION

This introduction began as a journal entry. After entering my thoughts, I sat back and marveled at the words and images left behind on the page. I wondered, "Where do these ideas come from...and where they go to after I leave this planet?"

In essence, this question is the premise of this essay. On one level I ask, "Where does the word 'dog' come from? How did it enter my consciousness?" I also ask, "What physical form does the word 'dog' take inside my cranium?"

We can probably agree that the word "dog" is a learned vocabulary word. But we must also consider that it exists inside the brain in some physical form, perhaps as part of an electro-chemical entity.

I believe that at some point in time we'll be able to go into the brain, find the electro-chemical entity known as the word "dog" and transfer it from one person to another. The process will look a lot like mental telepathy. I also believe that this transfer or communication will take place in entities or transmitters which are much smaller than genes. The larger apparatus of the gene serves a much simpler role, as an archive of information--transferring data from one generation to the next.

These kinds questions and speculations began forming in my own mind around 1985, after my father died. You see, my father was a very fascinating person. He was a scientist who also studied art, poetry, rock collecting, photography, foreign cultures, politics, technology, and gourmet cooking. I knew that he was gifted but we never discussed where such gifts ultimately came from.

Then I wondered: After he died, did his gifts die with him, or did they return somewhere to be re-cycled through a larger cosmic sphere? I knew from both my intuitive sensations and my study of physics that ultimately everything is connected perhaps along the lines of what a physicist might call a "general, unifying theory" or belief system.

After my father died, I extended my studies of reincarnation, psychic phenomenon, physics, and genetics. I now believe that we inherit or are born with certain "background" information. In other words, we acquire at birth far more information than we originally thought possible.

Today, I firmly believe that we receive ideas or gifts from somewhere "out there" and that when we die the gifts are returned. Our talents return to a cosmic source or reservoir, sometimes referred to by the name God or "higher being." In this essay I use both the spiritual term "God" and the technical-sounding phrase "information reservoir" as I attempt to connect my spiritual and empirical or scientific beliefs and experiences.

In the larger essay that follows I include many examples to support my various speculations. In this short introduction let me offer a brief example. Why or how does a newborn child know how to "suck" at birth? No one taught the baby, yet all infants generally possess this skill. Traditionally, we call sucking an "instinct." But couldn't we also describe sucking as an "inherited skill" or "inherited information?"

Just where this "instinctual" information originates, I do not know for sure. In my ignorance I call the source where all information resides by the name "information reservoir." I further conjecture that authentic mystics, ministers, and other spiritual individuals are the direct descendants of the ancient tribe which possessed the ability to tap in directly to the godhead or information reservoir.

I've also come to view today's scientists as members of this ancient tribe. Scientists now speak about chaos, strings, and models which defy our comprehension. They attribute universal powers to invisible entities like quarks and black holes. Whether the speaker be a scientist or the high priest, they both describe tend to describe an unseen world--in terms I do not fully comprehend.

Somewhere in the future, if we live long enough, I am certain that the spiritual tribe and the scientific-technical tribe will meet on a common plane and embrace a single community of thought... They will wonder about the cosmic order which allows the words 'dog' and 'god' to co-exist in the same human cranium as simple permutations of three letters. And once they cross over onto a common threshold, they'll be able to describe a truly unified universe. Deep down inside, I know that the scientist and the spiritual leader will one day collaborate very closely. They will describe a universe that conserves both energy--and information.

I believe this event will take place on the day that someone transfers the word "dog" (or the word "god") from one sentient being to another.

This suggests that the purest or highest form of energy might be preserved in a form we call "information." In other words, perhaps information is nothing more than "intelligent energy." If this is true, then it is time to re-think Einstein's original equation E=mc2. Perhaps a better equation for the end of our millennia is I = (em)i. This equation states that information (I) is equal to the product of energy and mass (em) multiplied by an entity called intelligence (i).

In the end, the formula I = (em)i may be nothing more than a unifying symbol, like a cave painting writ across the night sky, at the end of the 20th century...at the end of 2000 years of recorded history...at the end of 4000 years of civilization...at the beginning of a brand new era opening upon a new science invested with spirit.

Let me end with a confession. I ask sometimes myself, "Is this equation nothing more than a formula for my God and my love of mystery? Is this simply my attempt to project a love and warmth upon a hostile, and often unknowable, cosmic night-sky?" Maybe, I am simply trying to endow the cosmos with the same ability to comfort me, just as my dog comforts me when I pet her... I invite you to read further, challenge me and let me know what you think of these ideas. My thoughts are constantly in flux, changing, and improving with the contributions of others.

Martin Kimeldorf 6705 Gold Creek Dr SW Tumwater, WA 98512

INSTINCTS and PARANORMAL MYSTERIES

When we observe a behavior like thumb sucking in every culture we call this behavior an instinct. The universal appearance of thumb sucking suggests that it is not really learned, but programmed into us--it is an instinct. And because these reflexes appear globally, we can assume that these behaviors are inherited or transmitted genetically. In the past, we accepted the notion that instincts are inherited or automatically learned.

Anthropologists have shown that just like thumb sucking, more complex behaviors also appear universally "inherited" in the human family. Complex behaviors like the taboo against incest , the way numbers are used, how language is acquired or used, and how colors are categorized also are found to have remarkable similarities across many different cultures. These almost-universal behaviors have been observed in primitive and advanced societies.

New research shows that even more complex behaviors like specific temperaments, preferences, and aptitudes may be transmitted to our offspring. This has been observed in twins raised by different families, in different locations. Years later, the adult twins raised in different environments appear to share the same preference for jobs and mates, as well as having similar temperaments and values--as if they had been raised together. What connected these twins across time and space?

This mysterious phenomenon forces us to re-define the word instinct. Instinct is often defined as behaviors that are inherited rather than learned. In other words, we transmit not only the biological instructions for human development but also information or rules for a host of different behaviors from simple to complex. The genes become merely conveyors or transmitters of the information.

Research into the unexplained, para-normal experiences, including psychic phenomenon and reincarnation, amplifies upon the transmission metaphor. Several investigators have validated children's recollections from past life experiences. For example, one researcher documented a peasant child's recollection of a theft and subsequent hiding of a stolen object in a past life. The investigator then visited a home resembling the description in the past life recollection and discovered the stolen object in a hiding place described in the past life recollection. (The child lived in a village far removed from where the object was found. The investigator felt that it was doubtful that the person had any first-hand knowledge of the hiding spot. This type of investigation was successfully repeated with many more case studies.)

Other examples include children who possess the ability to speak a foreign language they had no way of learning in their isolated village. Some young children were observed speaking in a dead language they could not possibly have ever heard! Where did they get the information or aptitude?

All of these investigations into seemingly unexplainable phenomenon reverberate with a similar mystery or a similar set of questions:

How did the children or adults acquire this knowledge or language?

Was the information transmitted genetically from one generation to another, like an instinct?

Can the transmission metaphor explain the phenomenon of the twins sharing similar lifestyle preferences?

Does the transmission of information take place on another level far below (or far above) the genetic code?

Perhaps, instead of trying to re-define or expand the term instinct, the term should be abandoned. The word instinct simply reflects our ignorance and thus remains an impoverished term.

At first, this discussion sounds like an earlier debate between nature verses nurture. Are our behaviors a product of education or genetics? In reality, we are talking about behaviors that appear to come from neither nature nor nurture! It is more complex than this.

Once we were content with the idea that instincts were automatically acquired behaviors which were fixed and limited. Today, the evidence suggests that behaviors far more complex than thumb sucking are being transmitted from one generation to the next. The information being stored and transmitted exists in a form that is different from everyday speech or written language. This information probably exists in a non-verbal, non-language, non-written form. This information storage and transmission model or metaphor could help unify observations from many different realms including physics, psychology, philosophy, metaphysics, genetics, and brain research.

BRAIN CELLS...

I extended the examination of my hypothetical paradigm by asking, "How is non-verbal, non-language, non-written information stored and transmitted?"

I attacked this question by trying to figure out how a new brain is created. This naturally leads to more questions. Is the new brain simply built according to a general blueprint found in the genetic code? Does this blueprint simply contain the directions for manufacturing a collection of empty brain cells?

When we consider the previous examples of unexplained aptitudes, knowledge, and skills I conclude that something beyond empty brain cells are being manufactured at birth....

Perhaps, the brain cells store information like little computer disks. The information written into our brain-disk-cells might be specific knowledge. However, I think this would be too constricting in a changing world. Perhaps the information is nothing more than the rules for processing or interpreting different sensory inputs.

For example, what is transmitted is not so much the rule or sentence "red means danger," but rather the association of red with danger, excitement, or heat. We might not have inherited a specific incest taboo rule like: "thou shall not marry one's sister or brother." Instead, we may have inherited a basic preference for marrying outside one's biological family.

The transmission process is complex. A transmission defect can have disastrous effects. People who operate outside of accepted behavior patterns may be products of transmission-interruptus. Those who commit incest may have only received at birth a partial transmission of the (taboo) message, or none at all. It appears that one could make the same argument for defects found in intelligence, personality, and various disorders.

This notion is supported by some of the recent brain studies. Research on left-right brain functions, learning styles, and brain mal-functions show that our intelligent organ is not just a mass of empty cells. Different hemispheres, lobes, and regions of the brain are highly specialized, yet they share information and seem to often carry out a task collectively, or are able to transfer functions when one area is damaged.

For example, brain damaged or stroke victims reveal how brains cells differ in function. One damaged brain region may result in using incorrect words. Another region allows one to use correct words but limits one's ability to make sense with words. It appears that each brain region serves a specific purpose or contains a certain set of instructions for processing stimuli and carrying out actions. This leads to questions about the brain's various functions and how it evolved.

EVOLVING BRAIN POWER

We have given our evolutionary ancestors, various mythic names like Homo Habilis or Homo Sapiens. These names allow us to distance ourselves from a past that intrigues and terrifies us. We are fascinated by the differences and similarities with our biological ancestors. Our intrigue propels us in the search for the missing link.

Perhaps this link will be found in our cranium. Beneath our larger, modern brain, sits a primitive brain. In this instance primitive refers to an "ancient" brain which served a different function long ago. It may possess dormant powers that we are on the threshold of re-capturing.

Before this link can be fully understood, consider how the brain might have evolved. The study of brain evolution is complicated by the fact that pre-humans lacked records of any written or oral language. Yet they must have possessed some mechanism for sharing complicated skills of hunting, cooking, and tool building to younger generations.

It appears that they may have relied on visual and sometimes invisible means of communication. Some anthropologists suggest that pre-humans lived in a non-language tribe where communication was largely governed by instinct and gesture. (And, as we have discussed, instinct is merely our contemporary statement of our limited understanding of inherited behaviors or knowledge.)

I would guess that our primitive brethren relied on a variety of communication tools or gifts (talents we have generally failed to retain). On the instinctual level pre-recorded information pertaining to tool making, cooking, hunting, child rearing might have been transmitted genetically. Homo Habilis did not go to school to study survival. Rather, the process of maturation involved developing the ability to "recall" information learned slowly and retained by "previous generations"... stored at the most profound level: below the gene code.

But, there must have been more. I suspect that Homo Habilis relied on other powers of communication which might today be called "telepathy." Their world was governed not only by instincts, but was richly endowed with psychically transmitted information. The psychic information helped round out the communication repertoire in the savage environs and freed this early culture from relying exclusively on instinct or genetically transmitted information.

If this form of telephath communication were sufficient, perhaps our more elaborate written languages systems would not have evolved. One can therefore conclude that the instinctual and psychic forms of communication were very limited. For example, it could be assumed that primitive (wo)man had a large repertoire of pre-recorded knowledge or instincts.

As a result, the information was more fixed than fluid and centered upon a certain habitat or life-style. If the migrations took the group far afield they could only slowly find new ways incorporating the new conditions into a language based on psychic skills and genetic material. Changing the pre-recorded information might take generations before a new behavior was learned, retained, and passed on genetically as a superior adaptive trait. Changing this rigid pattern was as essential as changing location in order to survive.

The nomadic qualities might have coincided with the evolution of our modern brain with the capacity to store and retrieve new information quickly. This flexibility and storage-retrieval capacity becomes the foundation for a new kind of shared knowledge called learned behaviors. Perhaps this storage ability evolved into what we today call long-term memory. A whole new power and dimension was added to the brain.

This new power expanded the horizon where one could hunt, dwell and travel. One was no longer a prisoner of inherited information. Just as one could hunt and gather food, now information could be gathered in any place and stored immediately to everyone's advantage. Ultimately, as new skills such as fire making and agriculture emerge the population develops the ability to survive by staying put in one place. This stability leads to permanent populations and eventually the beginning of larger populations living in fixed communities. Just as nomadic traditions became obsolete, instinctual forms of knowledge and telepathic forms of communication lost their importance.

However, there would be no advantage to merely having a larger (and emptier) storage device (brain) if it had to re-learn an enormous amount of information in each generation. The success Homo Habilis found was not solely dependent upon brain size, but rather the utilization of the increased brain size.

Eventually this new brain would best the other intellectual organs when it could create a way to transmit, record, and re-learn information quickly. One might suspect that the birth place of language, art, and sophisticated tool making coincides with the larger and more flexible brain. In this light, art, language, and tool making are extensions of the modern brain's power--and need to constantly feed itself information. This advancement had a cost. We traded our instinctual, telepathic, and psychic capacities for increased intellectual or information processing abilities.

Modern man and woman distinguished themselves by their ability to learn vast amounts of new information; and at the same time, losing the ancient ability to recall and use non-verbal, non-written genetically stored information. Speech and language would replace the functions of instinctual knowledge and telepathic transmission.

The result was that learned behavior would triumph over instinctual and intuitive behavior, just as the modern brain triumphed over the primitive one.... Today the human species predominates on the planet Earth. Today, that triumph haunts us in the form of overpopulation. As a result, people are calling for a greater balance between humans and environment, between science and spirit, and between logical and intuitive forms of thinking and communicating. Today, some people seek to get in touch with our lost intuitive and instinctual brain. At the end of 2000 years of recorded history, we know that we are limited and must bridge or evolve into something else if we are to flourish in the next 2000 years.

How did this transformation occur? I offer only a speculation. I suspect that the newer, more powerful, more flexible brain had to suppress the older instinctual, primitive brain stem. Freud alluded to this suppression many years ago with the model of a Super Ego (e.g.; new brain) suppressing one's more primitive desires or libido (older brain).

It may be time to re-examine Freud's models in a new light. It has long been known that both a primitive and modern brain co-exist in our cranium. Perhaps, the story of old and new brains can explain other phenomenon such as mental illness. I would hypothesize that the struggle within a bruised psyche is really the re-enactment of the struggle between the primitive and modern brains.

INFORMATION STORAGE AND TRANSMISSION...

Do we have the potential to simultaneously use our old and new brain together? Can we store and share knowledge in more than one way? We can explore these questions by comparing the experiences of psychotic and psychic individuals.

Psychotic Experiences--using the two brains chaotically
Perhaps the psychotic person receives too many messages from the old and new brains simultaneously. The older brain contains messages and voices, fears and "instincts" from a time beyond. When mentally ill people hear other voices, perhaps they are victims of an older brain drowning out the more organized modern brain. This process suggests that an older brain (libido) surfaces and regains a degree of dominance over the new brain (super ego and possibly ego). The outsider observes a sick person hearing voices; and this strange behavior earns the labels of anxiety, paranoia, or psychosis.

The messages one receives from the older brain are incompatible with one's current experience. The messages from a strange and distant (unconscious) past don't fit the new world, or the new brain. Psychotic people often take drugs to calm down the message sending-rate. Drugs will suppress the amount of information transmitted, but it may not alter the basic conflict or condition. Recovery must be based on restoring dominance to the modern brain.

Psychic Experience--orchestrating the two brains
Unlike the psychotic, the psychic person benefits from using both brains simultaneously. These gifted people appear able to tap into information from past, present and future events.

The psychic first learns to quiet or tame the modern, intellectual brain and it's skeptical nature. This is called the trance state. The quieting gives the psychic individual a chance to tune in and receive messages stored in another medium. Using the long dormant abilities of the older brain, the psychic becomes a channel for the information that cannot be accessed by the normal functions of the modern brain.

Unlike the psychotic, who is a victim of the older brain; the psychic has learned to consciously cultivate and control the older brain to his or her benefit. Instead of hearing a cacophony, the psychic is privy to an orchestrated event, a symphony played in the chamber of the information reservoir. Unfortunately, the confused psychotic is thrust into war-against-self.

Psychics develop their skills in two stages. First they learn how to read the information and instructions stored in their own primitive brain. After re-learning this telepathic aptitude, they can branch out and begin to travel across space or time. They learn how to project their own thoughts.

The ability to coordinate both brains may become an essential survival skill in the next evolutionary stage. It goes beyond the computer metaphor of information management, and yet that is what the skill boils down to. Ironically, we use the powers of our modern brain in order to gain access to an ancient truth.

Jung struggled with this dialectical relationship of old and new ways of thinking when he tried to balance modern science with his interest in psychic phenomenon. Jung's concept of a collective consciousness was a valuable first step. The next step must link our perceptions of the brain with our study of genetics and physics.

FINDING THE TRANSMISSION CHANNEL

What carries the messages between people, time and space? We might ask. "How is information stored and transmitted?" On the surface one might suspect the answer is genes, but this may not be an adequate explanation. My hypothesis suggests that the transmitter lies beyond the observable genetic structure. I further speculate that the information is stored in a wave-energy form. Possibly, all information is ultimately stored and transmitted as an oscillation or vibration of energy. Like a radio message, the information is encoded or piggy-backed onto a signal frequency which can be picked up and decoded by a receiver.

If this is true, then information could be passed from one person to another just as we transmit radio oscillations or frequencies. If this is correct, then the model for genes would have to be expanded to include other functions. This modified genetic model pictures genes as tiny radio stations which store and transmit specific forms of information. This might account for the origin of instinctual behavior. While the actual structure has yet to be observed, labeled, or understood, the model could explain some phenomenon in terms compatible to both scientific and spiritual communities.

What would these this sub-genetic information-energy structures look like? What physical or concrete form does information or the word dog take when it is stored in the brain or transmitted? What would it be like to capture, to pick up and hold the word Dog?

Once we can find, "hold," or manipulate an actual thought or word, perhaps we could then "freeze" or store it. As a result, one could pick up this frozen thought and implant it in another being or medium. We could then use this ability to send information between people, place, and time.

PROPHETS, PHYSICISTS AND PHILOSOPHERS, FIND COMMON GROUND

Prophets supposedly peer through the constraints of time and see the future. This is compatible with the modern physicist's notion that time and space are relative and not fixed. In other words, time and space may be constructs of the mind. Time and space may be products of the observer... and not actual phenomenon cemented to labels of past, present, and future.

Plato postulated that we see only the shadow of a deeper, concealed reality. The secular version of Plato's hidden reality was called the "unconscious" by Freud, and "dialectics" by Hegel. For Einstein and others, this hidden reality took the form of E=mc2, the principles of uncertainty and chaos. What may be hidden from us is the fact that time does not actually exist but is simply another way of organizing information about matter. Time then becomes one of many possible ways of perceiving the reservoir of information.

To use an analogy, one might think of all the events in the past, present, and future as existing together on a giant film strip or movie. As the film passes before us, the events appear to happen sequentially in time. We view life as only a moving image in time's movie house. We cannot see the individual frames all at once. We cannot see what just came before or just after the blurred image. But a prophet is able to view the entire film strip at once... and see the contents of each picture frame. As a result, the prophet sees into tomorrow and yesterday while in the trance state.

Holography can be used to extend the analogy. A hologram can never really exist without the individual pictures that compose it. If we look at the individual pictures we lose the three-dimensional effect which is the sum of the different one-dimensional views. The prophet can take the hologram-of-time apart and view the segments individually. Someday, physicists might learn how to do this.

Poetically, we can say that man tries to count time with an hour glass, and measure the infinite with a yard stick. But, the measuring tools are now it doubt. We may be measuring only the impression of sequence, only the impression of time. The physicist, philosopher, and the psychic might all agree that time, the perception of past and present, is only an illusion! (The physicist and psychic might also feel that space has it's own illusory qualities.)

Messiahs are prophets with even greater powers. The messiah not only understands these illusions, he or she can manipulate the space-time continuum as well. The messiah sees beyond the hidden reality and penetrates a universal messages found in the information reservoir.

The messiah fulfills his or her mission by translating the universal message into terms the rest of us can understand. The need to find a more universal message, a promise, is very compelling today. We will definitely need a messiah if we are to cross over into the next evolutionary stage.

The messiah communicates the message partly through miracles. Miracles demonstrate the messiah's ability to manipulate time and space. The miracle-worker re-organizes the raw stuff, this primal information in the reservoir, with the power of his or her thoughts. Using both ancient and modern brains, the messiah creates a change in time and space, a change in the way information reaches us... it is miraculous!

GOD IS ELECTRON ENERGY

When I asked a psychically endowed person to explain his perception of God, he explained that I was using the wrong term. He said this force was really called Electron. In writing this paper, the psychic's definition became a bit clearer. The idea of an unseen, universal force existing in a sub-atomic form (e.g.; strings or quarks) harkens back to Plato's cave analogy which suggests that we perceive only the shadows or images cast by a hidden truth or reality.

As we probe these hidden or shadowy truths, we'll discover that each penetrating scientific theory parallels a deeply felt spiritual tenet. And example of this thinking is found in the physicist's notion of entropy and the belief in reincarnation.

The theory of entropy suggests each tangible body requires a certain amount of energy to make and sustain its organization or structure. As the energy force is used up the body or structure breaks down and decays. Thus, the very real and concrete world we know eventually dissolves into a pure energy state.

The energy is not lost, it simply returns to the larger reservoir. The spiritually minded person takes this cycle a bit farther and suggests that the energy returns again in another form. This is the cycle which religious people call reincarnation. And, a majority of the Earth's population believes this philosophy.

Most religiously oriented people believe that the cycle of life and death oscillates between two different energy states: a highly structured organization called life and a less organized form belonging to the heavens. Death is simply the process of informational-energy returning to its less structured source. This energy remains intact in the form of a soul...

People believing in reincarnation feel that the soul-energy begins in an impure form. Our mission in life is to gain more perfect knowledge or information through repeated life experiences. Thus, the spirit returns to earth in a material or human form until it achieves this perfect wisdom.

Most people endowed with a spiritual outlook, feel that we participate in the great wheel or circle of existence. It's a circle without past, present, future... rotating between night and day, between life and death--and all of it journeying towards a galactic heaven.

At the close of this spiritual journey the soul becomes united with the pure spirit-energy or informational reservoir. This purified energy enters in the final stages of what the scientist calls entropy. This final stage may also be known to others as nirvana, and still others believe to be the mystery of heaven.

THE WORD......

The force that shapes this chaos into the texture of earth, sun, sky may exist in the form of pure, intelligent energy. It might be thought of as a single entity, a unifying formula, a unique musical note, or a single word. It is simply the final summation, the totality, the emptiness that contains everything. It is infinite and powerful enough to be called God. Its beauty or truth flows from its utter simplicity.

This vision of God could appear to an Einstein as a profound mathematical formula. It might find expression in a melody played by a Beethoven. This formula or melody, this language of the soul, is simple enough to be contained in a phrase: "In The Beginning Was The Word And The Word Was God." And this is why one must be suspect of very long religious tracts like the Bible, Talmud, Koran, or even this manuscript. While each of these longer explanations may contain truths, the final truth resonates with a simple vibration. It is something which guides you every day, though it may take a lifetime to discover.

The Word , the language of God, creates life out of the chaotic pools of pure energy vibrations. The word of God makes elements of the reservoir visible or comprehensible. We increase our spiritual powers by learning to read more of the spiritual word . This sacred meaning can be accessed through various pursuits of wisdom including meditation, prayer, science study, psychic readings. The word God takes a million different forms... including the word "dog" spelled backwards.

OUR CREATIONS WILL RE-CREATE US

Einstein postulated that humankind would one day discover a great unifying principle of the universe. Today, scientists search for an exquisite order or purpose... a tabernacle of elegant formulas. When they return from their holy pilgrimage, they will offer us testaments and answers written in the language of mathematics. Like mystics, scientists place a great faith in the unseen world.

Their explanations will sound as if they speak in tongues. Their insights will sound no less mysterious and far reaching than the words of any other spiritual guide. As scientists try to pull back layer after layer of mystery, they may find themselves staring into the face of God [or the universal message]. But if their questions are to remain profound they must retain a spiritual echo.

Perhaps we will witness a merging of spiritual and scientific world-views in the next millennium. I believe that this will happen when we are able to decode, see, and "touch" the word dog in it's pure form, in the human brain. Once we gain control over the sub-genetic and sub-atomic realities, we will be able to transmit information between people, and across time or space. Perhaps, we could store a hundred years of knowledge and transmit it to an embryo just as though we were downloading information from a satellite to an earth station. When this happens we will hear the voice of god. When we can touch this magical word in a concrete fashion, the world as we know it will change forever.

What information shall be stored and coded? Who shall receive it? What kind of "Brave New World" should we attempt to create? These questions imply the ability to engineer the unborn; the ability to design their inherited physical and mental attributes. It means we'll be able to engineer their perception of the world, along with their communication abilities. It will include the power to create and destroy knowledge. It could also includes the ability to manufacture a messiah (or a devil).

We may now be standing at the foot of a journey which leads to the ultimate power. During the next 2000 years this discovery will set in motion the forces which will change forever the face, the name, and the word for of our existence. As we re-create human nature, we'll transform the species into something no longer recognizable as Homo Sapiens.

This creative ability is told over and over, in a reincarnated story. The plot revolves around a species always reaching beyond it's grasp. With the creation of tools we reached beyond our limb-dwelling existence. Stretching ever-upwards, we hooked our thumbs around atomic power. Next, we'll reach out to touch the train of God's vibrational gown.

Today, we look out into space and begin to ponder the word of the cosmos...

What came before was an instinctual creature.

What will follow could only be described as a spiritual creature.

Our mission is temporary. We shall return closer to our god.

Homo Sapiens... The Bridge

We are the bridge.

Home Sapiens is a pathway
between two great epochs.

One side of the bridge
anchored on the ancient salt sea shores...
from which life first crawled.
The other side gently, silently climbs upwards
towards tomorrow's sea of stars.

We are the bridge of salty tears........
tears of pain, insight and promise.

A Post Script for Homo Sapiens: Promise or Problem?

An alternate view of the future doubts the survival of our species. In this despairing scenario, Homo Sapiens are seen standing near the end point of their evolution, their purpose having been fulfilled by the year 2000 AD.

We have reached a point where our ability to create tools has outstripped our ability to use our creative powers wisely... for the benefit of the planet's inhabitants. Our ability to harness energy (fire, carbon fuels, electricity, and atomic reactions), our ability to grow biological and agricultural entities in new ways (fertilizers, breeding, and genetic engineering); our ability to build on land, at sea, and in the skies... all are monumental achievements!

While human nature sometimes appears to be limited, the products that flow from human creativity are unlimited. We sit justifiably in awe of our creations without realizing that it matters little if we succumb to the powers of war and violence, or drown in the effluence produced by our affluence. We have conquered Mother Nature... yet failed to tame Human Nature.

In this same vein, one might conclude that the current forms of science and religion are still in their infancy. Our traditional scientific and religious experiences or perceptions may be limited in the same way Homo Sapiens is limited. To journey beyond the current techno-scientific, social-religious cul-de-sac a new way of viewing the world must come into being.

The next species that follows us (or the next reincarnation of life itself) will be either the product of our own creation or self-destruction.

Either way, Homo Sapiens will be known as a unique species because we consciously participated in creating the conditions which determined our evolutionary progression.

This is another way to view Homo Sapiens as a bridge to tomorrow.

Revised periodically; 1996 Edition

About the author

Martin Kimeldorf, *author* kimeldorf@amby.com	� 1997, 1998 *All Rights Reserved.*	Amby Duncan-Carr, *page designer* webmaster@amby.com
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