The Strange Case of Giordano Bruno

Concerning the Bomb

Plutonic Problems

Concerning Information Technique

Doctor Sandy on the Drug Situation

Concerning Drug Liberalization

The Strange Case of Jonathan Swift

John Westerberg Concerning UFO

The Consumption Society

Concerning Einstein, by Doctor Sandy

One of the Most Exciting Books of Our Time (Podvoll)

The Strange Case of Giordano Bruno (1548-1600)

He was definitely the bravest of all the 16th century pioneers within astronomy and the only true martyr for empirical science. Yet he began as a Dominican friar and was even ordained a priest. His home town was Nola close to Naples, where he already as a young man began to have some doubts concerning Christian dogmas and was even accused of heresy. As a result, he left Church and commenced his most remarkable life as an itinerant philosopher all over Europe. In Paris he was at the court of king Henry III; in England he was a friend of Sir Philip Sidney (1554-86) and probably appeared at the court of Queen Elizabeth. In England he felt comfortable enough to publish his most important writings and applied for a professorship at Oxford, which regrettably was denied. He spent two years at the university of Wittenberg, Martin Luther's Vatican, where he enjoyed the highest appreciation; but also at the court of Rudolph II in Prague he found a safe environment. He also spent some years in Geneva studying Calvinism for a possible conversion, but also there he met some conflicts with established dogma.

He was the first astronomer to point out that the stars were other stars like the sun, and he also discovered the poles to be flattened at the poles. He embraced the Copernican theories as soon as he first became familiar with them, which of course brought him into an everlasting conflict with the Church. Copernicus himself had got away with it: he published his revolutionary theories and succeeded in passing away before the Church had had time to organize a proper excommunication with demands of their withdrawal. Also Leonardo da Vinci dabbled with astronomy and got away with his heretical findings by never publishing anything and by only experimenting in secret. Giordano Bruno preferred to take a stand for the new astronomy openly, never be afraid of speaking his mind and never show any sign of weakness or fear. The only thing you can blame him for is incautiousness.

In Prague he received an invitation to Venice by a nobleman, which offered a situation in which he could move and teach freely in Venice and Padua. In the belief that the Republic of Venice was out of the Vatican grasp, he accepted and taught science and astronomy liberally for years; but his host, the noble Giovanni Mocenigo, was not satisfied with Bruno's activities and denounced him to the inquisition. This treason is probably the most shameful in academic history since the first university was founded. Mocenigo not only betrayed Giordano Bruno but even acted as his prosecutor, improving his carefully considered accusations after that Bruno had been arrested.

This happened in May 1592, and the trials of Giordano Bruno started off at once. In July two months later Bruno regretted and withdrew all his teachings and theories probably after sessions of torture. In spite of this he was not released but instead sent down to Rome for further investigation.

The process in Rome against Giordano Bruno went on for seven years behind barred gates, during which period he was kept imprisoned in Castel Sant'Angelo, originally the mausoleum of the most liberal and tolerant of Roman emperors, Hadrian, which the popes had converted to dungeons. We know nothing about this process. The end result, however, seems to have been, that Giordano Bruno towards the end of 1599 regretted and withdrew that he had ever regretted and withdrawn anything he earlier had professed. Thus he rectified his break-down in Venice in July 1592. For this he was condemned to be publicly burnt at the stake. The execution took place on the 17th February 1600.

Unjustly, Giordano Bruno has been shaded over by the other great astronomers of his age, particularly Galilei, who at Bruno's death was in his middle 30s and kept busy in Pisa. Also Kepler and Tycho Brahe, who met in Prague three days before Bruno's execution, have been awarded greater fame, since they managed to survive. Today it seems absurd that Bruno should have had to be executed because he believed Copernicus was right. That was not the reason, though, why he was executed. His greatest thrust in life was something much bolder.

Giordano Bruno presented a new theology, which made a clean sweep with all superstition. To Giordano Bruno, God was as impersonal as to Buddhism and Hinduism and just as ubiquitous and omnipresent in all forms of life in the whole universe. This could hardly be regarded as very sinful or irritating either. The consequence, though, was for Bruno, that Christ was not the Son of God. This daring thesis galled the Church and its inquisition into madness and hysteria. Professing such a thesis was about the most provocative and forbidden thing that any thinker could apply himself to in the 16th century. By Bruno's extremely solid basis of knowledge and education, universally acclaimed in the whole academic world as a universal man, his uncompromising adherence to this one impossible thesis made the Church shake in her very foundations. It was worse than the whole reformation.

The Vatican tried her utmost to silence him down and almost succeeded. By neither executing nor releasing him during a process of seven years, he was kept buried alive and in death's silence while the world in total ignorance of his fate dared to speak no word about him. There was only one way out of this dilemma, which Bruno finally found himself: by standing up to his own belief in what he felt to be the truth, angering his judges and provoking the Church to blind fury, he tempted the Church to complete digging the grave of its own credibility by committing the worst judicial error of the age. Bruno was not guilty of anything except freedom of conscience and speech.

Bruno was unique in that he had to stand completely alone. No one before him or after him dared to tread in the boldness of his footsteps. To many, his world of thought became immeasurably important and influential, particularly to the astronomers Galilei, Kepler and Brahe, but also to philosophers like Spinoza, Goethe, Schopenhauer and Rudolf Steiner; but none of his followers showed the same consistency and courage in his life's work. Galilei withdrew anything at the mere sight of the instruments of torture, Spinoza enclosed himself in safety within the soft frames of theoretical philosophy, Goethe was terror-struck at the mere idea of challenging the existing order of the world, Schopenhauer protected himself by veiling himself in pessimistic resignation, while Rudolf Steiner followed Goethe's safe policy of restricting himself to constructivism. The boldness of Giordano Bruno is still unmatched today, and he is still waiting for a lawyer to defend him against the Roman inquisition.

The supreme responsibility was partly held by Einstein. Three years before the second world war he insisted on the development of the atomic bomb considering the development of Germany. His motive was the risk of Germany developing the same bomb, which would be the ultimate world nightmare scenery. President Roosevelt approved of Einstein's views and arguments and launched the Manhattan project.

Some years before Hiroshima, it became evident that Germany would not and could not develop the bomb. The great crime concerning the bomb was committed when the general in charge of the Manhattan project withheld this vital information to Robert Oppenheimer and his colleagues. The general decided to proceed with the bomb although the only justifying reason for developing it had vanished.

When the bomb was used the official motive was to save human lives, that is American lives. In America the only possible alternative was considered an invasion of Hondo, the heartland of Japan, which would cost an enormous amount of American lives, at least an estimated million. What they didn't know in America was that Japan already before the bomb was used had appealed to Russia for peace negotiations. Since Russia was not yet at war with Japan, the Japanese found Russia (Stalin and Molotov) a proper peace negotiator. But Stalin closed the door and said nothing about Japan's pleadings to America, since Stalin looked forward to the pleasure of invading Japan and occupying a few of her strategic islands.

If Russia had accepted Japan's effort to make peace, a quick end to the war could have been achieved without any further loss of American lives and without the use of any atomic bombs. Stalin's responsibility concerning Hiroshima and Nagasaki is therefore terrible and almost total, since he knew about the bomb. After Truman having released the bomb, Stalin occupied southern Sakhalin and the Kuril islands.

Nothing, however, can excuse the second bomb on Nagasaki. One bomb was more than enough and utterly unnecessary and inhuman as an enterprise. In a matter of seconds, 130,000 civilians of Hiroshima were killed for nothing out of 250,000, while another 114,000 were injured for life, most of whom died from the consequences of radiation. Nagasaki saw another 120,000 civilian victims.

The pilots dropping the bombs considered the mission a great honour and quarrelled about who was to press the buttons. Like French Mururoa soldiers much later, who sank Greenpeace ships and harassed environment activists, they were officially decorated and awarded public honours.

One of the first to turn against the use of the bomb after Hiroshima was Robert Oppenheimer, its chief manufacturer. He considered the Manhattan project a necessary experiment, but after the tests and the use of the bomb in warfare with results horrifyingly unspeakable and unsurveyable in timeless destructiveness, he pronounced further development unpardonable.

All the same, the world proceeded with the USA, Russia, France, Britain and China leading followed by India, maybe Israel and maybe other countries. And China is still exploding bombs 50 years after Hiroshima, and even France, charming intelligent France, who made the film "Hiroshima mon amour", the strongest of all film protests against war.

Einstein's supreme world nightmare scenery finally came true. The bomb was never acquired by a dictatorship like Hitler's Germany, but it was acquired by the dictatorship of both Stalin and China, which latter nation still remains the world's greatest and most oppressive autocracy.

This is the problem. In Japan they tried to whisk the problem away by insisting that the Plutonic danger was exaggerated, that Plutonium wasn't all that dangerous and that it even could pass through the digestion canal without causing any problem. To prove this, a famous Japanese scientist had a drink with the smallest thinkable touch of Plutonium in it, which was broadcast on television all over the country. He died. Then the Japanese had to reconsider the matter.

There are four possibilities to dispose of Plutonium. The first choice is the worst: to blow it off with the nuclear weapons which contain it. The second is to send it with rockets to the sun. If then a rocket explodes after take-off, like the "Challenger" space shuttle, a whole continent could be polluted by radioactive rains, which is not so good either. The third way is to store it. This is the most common way to keep the problem alive, and there are a number of vast Plutonium depots with the Plutonium in great barrels of steel stored in bunkers, which are guarded day and night, just waiting for a terrorist or thief to break in and steal a barrel or two. In Russia the surveillance is unsatisfactory or doesn't exist. The fourth alternative is to re-use it in nuclear reactors, but this method is expensive, and it takes many reusing processes before it is neutralized.

What this fabrication of Plutonium has cost economically during 50 years you can get a vague idea of, when you learn, that it costs 300,000 dollars just to disarm and dismantle one single nuclear missile. It is a topic of discussion what is more expensive: to produce Plutonium and nuclear weapons or to dismantle them. It is probably more expensive to dismantle them.

And this production the leading political powers of humanity have been extremely busy with for 50 years and that unpunished, while they have ignored the world environment crisis, the world starvation and all human values. It speaks for itself, that the most pressing task in the world for scientists and scientific research would be to find a more efficient way of disposing of the world's most poisonous element. If man himself managed to find a way of producing it, then surely he must also be able to find out a harmless way of getting rid of it.

And then comes the IT-society. What's it all about? Information technique. What is information technique? It is the technology of surfing on the net. How can that technology solve the problem of unemployment and starvation in Zaire and Rwanda among other places? Can you provide starving multitudes with food by surfing on the net? Hardly. Can anyone be fed or have some more icecream by surfing on the net? No way. Whatever can you gain then by surfing on the net? Oh dear, you can have lots of fun. You can learn how to build your own bombs and grow your own cannabis. And what's the use of that? I mean, both the agricultural society and the industrial society imported some common good for everyone, so that everyone in the world at least could have cheap canned baked beans. But the Information Technique Society? Who can eat his fill on that? Can it do anything about the growing unemployment problem in the world, where fewer and fewer have any kind of salary while more and more grow ill and have to be taken care of? Is the IT-society by its constantly increasing investments in computers able to give the sick and the unemployed food and money and constantly more expensive anti-depressive medicines? We just wonder.

"The situation is grotesque and only grows worse. Drugs have been accepted all around the world (except in Moslem countries) as something as common as coffee or tobacco, and it's nobody's fault. You can only blame that untouchable temporary god called Fashion. Taking dope of any kind in any way has become accepted by Fashion, and there is no reasoning with Fashion, because she is never ruled by common sense.

The arguments against this morbid tyranny of Fashion are overwhelming. Heaviest is the fact, that the use of drugs of any kind causes irrepairable brain damage - in fact, schizophrenia is one of the most usual results. The increased use of synthetic drugs ("safe" drugs or "smart" drugs) also increases the rate of schizophrenia, the most terrible of brain diseases, because it is the only disease which you never yourself can evaluate or detach yourself from.

Although this is the heaviest argument, it is almost never used. Like in the case of Aids, people in social positions with some responsibility prefer not to scare people and rather silence awkward truths which never can become popular.

But the unsurmountable difficulty in the war against drugs is the unreasonable dictatorship of Fashion. As long as Fashion allows the abuse, which makes it not only acceptable à la mode but even popular, it is quite impossible for common sense to do anything about it. Common sense can never be silenced, but Fashion, the capricious Queen of history, can never be overruled.

On the other hand, this abuse is not only of drugs. There are more medicine addicts than drug addicts, and I personally regard the manufacturers and salesmen of medicine as the greatest drug mafia in the world, in accordance with my own definition of health: a healthy person is someone who has no need of taking medicine and who does not take any.

- Doctor Sandy"

It's innocent. It's as innocent as drinking beer. It's as innocent as the first big booze in youth. It's as comme il faut as the first whisky. It's not worse than the first hang-over. You get used to it. There are more hang-overs, and you get used to them. But alcohol is base and degrading. It's more sophisticated to smoke. Most people start smoking because it's smart. Most people start smoking cannabis because it's thrilling since it's forbidden. Most people continue to drug themselves since it's thrilling and dangerous. Everything dangerous and forbidden is attractive to youth, for that is part of human nature. Sooner or later you get bored by just cannabis. There is heftier stuff. You get on with it. You try all kinds of things. You get higher every time. And then comes the first backfire trip. And by then you are already hopelessly hooked.

What you never suspected before then was that it would prove so difficult to get out of it. Once a junky always a junky is unfortunately a rule the only remedy against which is that there are exceptions. But even the exceptions maintain their stamp for life, just like in Alcoholics Anonymous.

This was a description of the black hole, its anatomy and how it works. It's characteristic that the urge constantly increases, the whirlpool grows by its own natural force and inevitably expands, the more that are involved, the greater its power and expansion potential, it's not an octopus but an irresistible natural force, like an avalanche never reaching its bottom. From whence comes this overwhelmingly irresistible power?

It's good business. That's how simple it is. Illegal drugs is the greatest business in the world today. Ask the Colombia cartels, the US Mafiosi, the Hongkong triads, the Russian Mafia, the Turkish Mafia and all others profiting from this booming business, for that's what it is. It's a multinational enterprise constantly reaping greater harvests and accelerating profits which can't be controlled by any politician or political power. On the contrary: this business is more and more controlling them. How many stock dealers, mayors, governors and company directors are not dependent on drugs in the USA, and what American family does not have a drug addict in the family? The answer to that question is too obvious to be voiced.

There you have your next Empire of Evil, which will culminate next century. That will be a good start for humanity on the next millennium. When that empire of evil will have been coped with, there will be another Empire of Evil of another sort. Humanity will never get rid of it, since they always develop from human nature.

The situation is very much like that of communism a hundred years ago. Many were those who sympathized with the communists before the first world war mostly because their movement was thrilling and smelt of danger. Through this alluring image of semi-criminal underground subversive power, communism achieved an air of irresistible attraction. The same phenomenon you observe today in the world of drugs. The escape from reality by drugs is experienced as an irresistible temptation to all the suppressed ones in society attracted by the dangerously criminal, completely underground and subversive character of the uncontrolled freedom through drugs. In his weakness man has always fallen to temptations of that kind and historically never learned anything from the consequences.

One who perhaps scrutinized the problem most carefully of all was Dostoyevsky, who lived with the problem all his life. He took part in socialism in his youth, it was for his subversive socialism that he was sent to Siberia, this ruined his life, which gave him reason enough to ruminate upon the problem. The result was the extremely poignant investigation of the mentality in "The Possessed", where he categorically denounces socialism and that part of human nature which gives rise to such phenomena. It's his most important novel. It's a perfectly honest settlement with his own part in the phenomenon: the fascination of evil, the temptation to fanaticism, the redeeming self-sacrifice for the mass movement and the moral bankruptcy and unavoidable surrender to the principle of infallibility in the mentality of "the end justifies the means". The mentality in 19th century pioneer communism was exactly the same as in the first rebel drug movements in the 1960's."

Laputa is described as the island that floats in the sky. It hovers strangely far above the earth and has a completely blank underneath, which has led some to suppose, that the description of Laputa is nought else than the author's own experience of a rendez-vous with a flying saucer.

As we all know, Jonathan Swift was quite bizarre. He stayed a bachelor all his life, and the worst thing he could ímagine was to be obliged to accept a state of being dependent. His boundless imagination demanded complete freedom of mind without encroachments and infringements. Born Irish, he could only find this vital freedom on that savage island, although he found it necessary to accept a dean's position in order to support himself. "Gulliver's Travels" appeared when he was about 60 and is more than any of his other works a flamboyant proof of his reckless freedom of thought and imagination, which to some felt offensive and unhuman.

Dean Swift was above all a ruthless satirist with such a sober detachment from reality that the keenness of his satires almost alienates him from human society. Although the journey to Laputa is the mildest episode in "Gulliver's Travels", it can well be regarded as maybe the most significant, since according to modern experts it could explain Swift's later case of mental illness.

Last autumn were transmitted two American programs about people who claimed to have been kidnapped by UFO:s and never quite afterwards have become the same again. They asserted that they had been used as guinea-pigs and experimented on by ET:s, who then had eradicated the victims' memories of the experience as unwilling guests in the saucer in a sort of brainwash shock therapy. But the trauma had stuck in the brain anyway, and they had been alienated from human society for the rest of their lives.

Certain experts in that field claim that the same thing could have happened to Jonathan Swift and that he himself testifies of this in his journey to Laputa, and that this would have alienated him and in the course of time resulted in his mental illness.

In the American film the "Gulliver case" had been dramatized most exaggeratedly, so that an extra Gulliver drama had been invented, in which Gulliver himself is experimented on by 18th century psychiatrists and locked up in an asylum. Strange in this version is, that Gulliver with all who believe in him are Americans while all his doctors and enemies are English. But that is quite another topic not relevant to our discussion.

You can't escape the fact, that the theory of Laputa having been a flying saucer, and that this episode then could be the most realistic one in the entire "Gulliver's Travels", is interesting. That reminds you of the prophet Ezekiel's most intriguing description in the Old Testament:

"And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire." (1:4)

"The appearance of the wheels and their work was like unto the colour of a beryl; and they four had one likeness; and their appearance and their work was as it were a wheel in the middle of a wheel." (1:16)

"And the likeness of the firmament upon the heads of the living creature was as the colour of the terrible crystal, stretched forth over their heads above." (1:22)

"And above the firmament that was over their heads was the likeness of a throne, as the appearance of a sapphire stone; and upon the likeness of the throne was the likeness as the appearance of a man above upon it." (1:26)

"As the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness round about." (1:28)

Nowhere in the world is the commitment and interest in UFO phenomena as vivid as in Israel.

Our theologician in the Himalayas, mr John B. Westerberg, has the following interesting views on the UFO issue:

"The UFO problem is that he who observes it can never count on anyone believing him.

How convinced he is himself is of no matter.

As unidentified flying objects the UFO have namely a disappointing habit of never leaving any visiting-cards behind.

They appear from the sky and disappear in the sky.

They land without wheels and so never leave any traces on earth.

How difficult it is for them to prove themselves is shown in the fact that not even photographs of them can be taken seriously.

They have appeared on earth since the beginning of time, they are described in the Bible, but since only a very small number have actually seen them, only a very small number can really believe in them.

I will never tell anyone that I have been in contact with UFO since I know that no one will ever believe me.

There are different theories that they come as tourists, as kidnappers on a hunt for guinea-pigs, or as protectors and benefactors. I can only say that none of the different theories can be proved wrong.

Perhaps my only comfort is, that even if no one can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that UFO exist, no one has neither ever been able to prove that they do not exist.

So it appears to be a question of faith, just like God, who neither can be proved to exist or not to exist, but with a difference: the faith in UFO and science fiction can never be made a religion, since, in contrary to God, we are here dealing with concrete creatures and palpable objects.

Therefore man prefers to believe in God, who never can be made manifest, than in UFO, which can turn out too manifest for their pleasure, so that people even suppress their experience of them.

All things real and tangible can be suppressed, but never the essence of God."

The greatest problem about UFO seems then to be, that those who have experienced UFO never can make themselves understandable to ordinary people who have not experienced UFO. They seem to have reached some kind of insight into an extra dimension which we ordinary people can not fathom. The phenomenon is the same as when an astrologer tries to explain his reality to a materialist. Judging from his experience, the materialist must reach the conclusion that the astrologer is out of his mind, while the astrologer feels the painful loneliness of having a certainness of knowledge which he can't make understandable to others, the so called "Cassandra syndrome". (Cassandra was the prophetess in ancient Troy who prophesied the fall of Troy while the Troyans just laughed at her. As we all know they found reason to regret this later on when it was too late to do anything about it.)

Diagnosticized schizophrenia does then not necessarily have to be a state of mental alienation but could sometimes be the opposite: insight into a higher reality which for ordinary people is incomprehensible.

Perhaps one day we shall have good reason to withdraw all doubts in UFO. But until today it has not been possible to scientifically prove that one single documented UFO observation actually has taken place.

".....

I am no materialist, but I don't think that anyone ever has understood God. As a comment on your most interesting UFO article I would like to express my belief, that Moses was guided by UFO and was finally fetched by one, just like Elijah and maybe even Jesus. The most part of the Old Testament I regard as a UFO story. That's why I think Israel, believing the presence of UFO to be the face of God, always has been more materialistic than truly religious.

But my first invective against Mr Westerberg concerns his chief hobby-horse "the holy obligation of silence". I feel fully convinced that only backward underground movements like satanic sects really need such an obligation of silence to conceal their own lies. The strictest observer in the world today of this religious "obligation of silence" is Islam: fundamentalistic terrorists never reveal anything; while you can only trust and have faith in what is open to discussion, investigation and criticism. So I have to doubt Mr Westerberg's "holy obligation of silence". He uses this sign of respectability to conceal the weakest of all soft spots: a gap, maybe a black hole. What is he afraid of will become known?"

"Of all the queries you have sent me, your friend John Bede's invectives arouse my greatest interest. (....) Since you have dared to publish a rather comprehensive article on UFO including some lines by me, I will dare to go one step further.

We are here dealing only with theories. Nothing can be proved. Although Americans and Russians for 50 years have run different UFO investigation projects, there is still after these 50 years not one proven UFO manifestation in the entire world history. The only certain thing about UFO is that the UFO theories exist, and all these extremely varying UFO theories can not be explained away. Many of them have been proven false, most of them can be refuted, but there always remains a small portion that can not be explained away.

We have the Nazca plateau in Peru with its inexplainable mysteries. We have the historical fact that giant pyramids of the same kind were constructed suddenly and almost simultaneously in Egypt, Babylon and Mexico. We have the ineradicable stories of Atlantis, Mu, Lemuria and other lost civilizations. I will not deal with any of these vast subjects. Instead I would like to go further away and further back in time to other planets in our solar system.

Further away from the sun than the earth we have the smaller planet of Mars, which is very similar to Earth, since it has an atmosphere and water. But the atmosphere is very thin, and the water is drying out. You can't deny the probability that the planet Mars once had more water and a denser atmosphere. This gives rise to the theory that Mars long ago was like Earth with oceans of water and fertile continents, but that somehow the water ran out and the atmosphere vanished, which is now also gradually happening on earth by the expanding deserts and the increasing ozone holes by the poles.

Between Mars and Jupiter we have a number of small heavenly bodies called the asteroids. There is no other explanation to these asteroids than that they once were a planet. How then could this planet have become so many asteroids? There is a creepy theory that it was once a planet like Earth with the same developed technology as we have today, but that they committed the mistake of pressing the red button for launching a nuclear war, and so the whole planet was blown to pieces, a theory which is scarily plausible. Earth has had this technological capacity and has it still. This theory about the asteroids could also explain the otherwise unexplainable strange location and twisted orbit of the small planet Pluto far away beyond the solar system, where it could have been thrown out from en earlier orbit closer to the sun by the explosive world suicide of this X-planet by nuclear reactions comprising the whole planet blowing it all into bits and pieces.

The consequence of these theories is the desirability that Earth does not commit the same mistake of blowing itself into pieces or transforming itself into a red desert dying planet like Mars. We don't have an affluence of living planets in this solar system, we seem in fact to be the only one, since we can't trust Venus. So it turns out to be vital that Earth does not enter into an atomic war, suffers from too many ocean draughts or loses its atmosphere.

How then could this be avoided? A nuclear war was avoided with difficulty in 1962 but has since then been avoided with increasing success, but we still run the risk, although the processes of eliminating the danger continue in right directions. The security risks are mainly autocracies like China and Iran. That these autocracies first of all are transformed into democracies is a necessity for greater world security on the nuclear front.

The oceans are not exactly running the risk of drying out, but the ozone holes by the poles are increasingly risking life on earth by letting through lethal radiation from the sun, which is a result from the global environment destruction. This must be stopped. The deforestation of the planet must cease, especially the rain forests have to be protected, and you have to stop the world population explosion. The worst environmental crisis of all must be stopped: the uncontrolled urbanization, causing monster cities of more than 10 million inhabitants, where everyone feels sick and no one can breathe properly. These are poison centres to all humanity, breeding a new kind of human animal which is completely denaturalized and artificial and damaged by the environment from his birth. I regard these monstruous eight-figure slum cities as the world's greatest danger to humanity and civilization, and no one has any idea how to solve this problem.

First of all I think these great cities must be rehumanized. Environments like Los Angeles, Tokyo and Johannesburg are not human environments but monster environments causing vicious circles of criminality, violence, sterility, cancer and what is worse. Such environments contribute to the dehumanization of humanity, more irresponsibility and power abuse, greater apathy and unwillingness to do anything about it.

What is then the obstacle to this utterly necessary global assuming of responsibility, which everyone living on this planet should partake in, since their mere presence on it demands their responsibility? The greatest hindrance is human self-love. In practice this self-love is the supreme law for the human being. If you in the least hurt the self-love of anyone and breaks this unwritten law, you are an outcast from the human society.

Therefore you have to do away with this self-love with all its expressions like prestige thinking, ideologies, presumptuous religions, greed, thirst for power, fixed positions, partiality and so forth. To accomplish this we need a universal revolution consisting of each one's own private settlement with his own self-love, which is pure narcissism, which when allowed free reins only will lead to suicide, dissolution and extinction.

My secret, to return to the query of John Bede, is maybe then my self-negation, which I think every human being should apply himself to in order to in the long run save the life of this planet."

JBW. (March 1997)

Comment. The above mentioned theories concerning Mars and the asteroids have earlier been advocated by Jules Verne and Dennis Wheatley among others. If there is something to them, one of the most interesting professions of the future would then be space archaeology.

Who cares what sources of water are contaminated, what if rain forests are turned into deserts, of what consequence are the garbage mountains of New York growing higher than skyscrapers, as long as man undisturbedly may continue abandoning himself to unlimited consumption of unimportant luxuries? Who cares if the whole atmosphere is poisoned by the oil fumes of man, so that the global warming constantly increases its pressure, as long as we may peacefully continue drive to work every morning alone in our cars, getting stuck all the time in queues of other cars with equally lonesome drivers? Who cares where all the waste dumps of uncomsumable plastics grow as long as we don't have to see them?

What would life be without Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola, hamburgers and MacDonalds, sexy trash on television every night and day, beer, liquor and smoking with all the other neediest intoxications, noisy music everywhere and constant ubiquitous brainwash indoctrination through mass media? The answer is, that without all that, life might for a change become worth living.

The lethal blind alley of the artificial uncontrolled consumption society is that all things natural and human must suffer. The mortal stress of the consumption society leads to human relationships becoming predominantly aggressive, ending up in violence. The individual gets burned, isolates himself and is pushed by the hard society to criminality or mental problems. Natural communities disappear, by stress the aggressions take over the social domination, the hard urban society of concrete and asphalt is enforced, sterilizing the environment, and people in cities don't even notice how they gradually are poisoned by their own consumptive gases.

What then is to be done? There is only one thing to do. Abolish the whole consumption society with its unsound stress and bolting environmental destruction, the absurd hunt for meaningless luxuries, the incurably vulgar and ridiculous media publicity business and everything that can't be recycled. Of course, this can't be done all at once. First of all we must find alternatives to the energies, but these are on their way. It's only a question of time until the problem of making solar cells remunerative is solved, wind power is constantly increasing as a sensible source of energy, and also fusion energy, the cleanest possible energy form, only needs some time to have its problems solved and reach full workability. We are on the right course. Germany has already decided to dismantle all her nuclear power plants, and all since Greenpeace started their actions in 1971 the grass root movements all over the world have constantly grown more vital. More and more people realize that Non-Governmental Organizations do more good in the world than any chatterbox politician, and this tendency keeps expanding. More and more people realize that you can be of more constructive and practical use working on your own together with other idealists of the same mind than by any imbecile political apparatus whose primary function is to foster its own bureaucratic complacency.

What we need is a thorough world revolution in the field of energy. Solar energy, wind power and fusion energy must replace the environmentally destructive energy sources we are comfortably misusing today. And the exaggerated self-indulgence of the insane consumption society must be called in question. We can't allow that such a world and future destructive phenomenon be held sacred and blindly obeyed as an infallible bolting holy cow, which in its disastrous avalanche course drags the whole human society with it into maybe another deluge.

Concerning Einstein, by Doctor Sandy.

"To find Einstein the person of the century was something of a surprise although I am inclined to agree. He might have been the most influential man of the century as well as the most controversial. Although he undoubtedly was a very good man personally, his achievement was for good and for worse.

His greatest achievement no doubt was his solution of the world of materialism, his proving the inadequacy of materialistic empirical science based entirely on logic and mathematics, thus opening the doors of science to the necessity of almost metaphysics.

More debatable was his enforcement of the development of the atomic bomb. He believed the Nazis were developing it and therefore insisted on America doing the same. The Germans never came close to the A-bomb. The Americans manufactured it and used it against civilians, well aware of that the Germans never had a nuclear program and that the Japanese were utterly defenceless against it. All this could be assigned to Einstein's debit side.

This brings us to the greatest problem of the 20th century - the necessity to assume responsibility for both good and evil with the risk of turning inhuman. In many ways Einstein was the first to enter the world on this precarious ground. The problems of humanity today transcend the human faculty. We are faced by global crises of the environment which man has no known experience of. These crises will force man to take unhuman stands against himself. I know how critical you are against the unhuman population regulation of China, and the whole world is enraged for human and very natural reasons, but we must face the fact that such unhuman measures might be the only possible way to ensure a future for humanity.

We are 6 billion today. 40 years ago we were only 3 billion. In 20 years we will only be 12 billion. In 10 years after that we might be 20 billion, and then it will no longer be 'only' 20 billion. We might get crowded even in countries like Scotland and Sweden, and a majority of our northern populations might then be Negroes, Chinese and other Asians.

Nature herself might intervene and cause global destruction by tempests and epidemics, for instance Aids, malaria or TBC. That would in my opinion be the best solution, because then man would be less traumatized than if the population explosion resulted in berserk terrorist wars.

I am just making hints, sketching possible outlines.

Concerning your interesting question whether Jesus could have survived his crucifixion, I would estimate his chances at 10%. Of course, the blood-and-water-phenomenon indicates his survival, but then he was entombed for about 24 hours. That reduces his chances to 5%, left without any medical care in a cold dark and probably damp room. Could he have opened the grave himself from the inside? No chance. If he came out alive he must have had assistance. The chances for this to happen and for his possibility to carry on a somewhat normal life after such a trauma I would estimate at a maximum of 2%.

You may publish this under my signature.

Your old doctor

The greater part of his book deals with authentic examples of real mental cases, which differ from ordinary cases by their having documented their own cases. Thereby they can be analysed in their minutest details, which Doctor Podvoll does with astonishing results. Very much in his book is directly sensational in its pioneering research, and one of his boldest conclusions is that everyone (without any exception) can become mentally ill. All you need is circumstances arranging that kind of upset balance which results in the psychosis. Heredity would then be of no significance whatsoever.

The first case is the son of Prime Minister Spencer Perceval, John Thomas Perceval. Spencer Perceval was unique as a British Prime Minister since he got murdered. His murderer was a maniac who displayed the same kind of symptoms which were later manifested in the Prime Minister's son, wherefore the family's treatment of the patient became mildly speaking exaggerated. John Thomas Perceval's entire life was then dedicated to rehabilitating himself and thereby reforming the entire mental health care system of Britain, and he succeeded. He died 75 years old in 1876.

The second case is John Custance, who in 1951 went to Berlin intent on settling a world peace and uniting the world from then the most divided of cities. His intentions were the best and most constructive imaginable, but he was no politician and not even a realist. If John Thomas Perceval was schizo-affective, then John Custance was mano-depressive but could also resolve his own problems. He died in 1990 at the age of 90.

The third case is perhaps the most interesting one. Donald Crowhurst (1932-69) was a technical genius who could solve all problems. In 1969 he was supposed to sail alone around the world in a technically extremely advanced and well equipped sailing-boat. But soon after the start one technical fault occurred after the other, and Crowhurst got lost in the Sargasso Sea. There he started to sail in circles while he faked a log according to which he succeeded in sailing around the world alone setting world records. His illness was megalomania, he thought he was God or at least something close to it, in which speculations he neglected his sailing completely. After much dreaming and log-faking he finally saw through his self-deception; and to avoid losing his face before all England and his sponsors he disappeared over board somewhere outside Brazil but left all his logs and diaries on board - to the immense delight of psychic research.

The fourth example is the French painter, poet, composer and scientist Henri Michaux (1899-1984) who during some ten years of his life (1957-66) experimented with drugs in order to chart their psychic effects on himself, while he carefully documented his own case. He was a hermit nature who sought anonymity, and he still has not received the acknowledgement for his accomplishments as an artist which he deserves.

Doctor Podvoll documents and analyses these four different mental cases constructively - he is constantly looking for the practical cure. He criticizes all conventional methods, like hospitalization, electro-shock treatment, lithium medication and all else but admits there are risks in demedication. He advocates 10-percent progressive demedication or less, and if it doesn't work out well it has to be interrupted. He denies the existence of chronic cases and recommends as the best cure simply to make the patients physically well by good human environment, good relationships, fresh air, long walks and everything else which is good for everyman.

But the best remedy of all he claims is the doubt. If there is no doubt about anything the mania has taken charge, and then anything might happen. The faculty of doubting is like a mental thermostat, regulating, balancing, bringing clarity and sober detachment. Where doubting is not allowed insanity rules, and doubt also then implies criticism and self-criticism. Only by constant purge you sort out the golden dust from the clay, those "islands of clarity" which is Doctor Podvoll's favourite expression.

How then does Doctor Podvoll suggest that mental illness occurs? It's very simple: egocentricity, self-fixation, egoism, self-love, - all that exaggerates the self so that the real perspective to reality gets distorted imperils the ego with risks of derailment. Therefore the best cure of all is always natural relationships with other people, - quite simply to have company.