Our focus is a diverse selection of books spanning five millennia, and including the realm across the river. The oldest of the books, The Epic of Gilgamesh, is still available although no longer in clay tablets! The others are relatively recent, and our first one, The Monuments of Mars: a City on the Edge of Forever, has just been reprinted in a second edition.

Since 1983, Richard Hoagland has been a man possessed of and by a purpose. That purpose has two aspects: firstly, to learn as much as possible concerning certain anomalous features on an area of Mars. This region has been characterized by astro-geologists as stripped plains and called Cydonia. Secondly, to get NASA, the federal government and the scientific community to take seriously the possibility that these anomalous features were constructed by intelligent beings, perhaps even 500 million years ago for some purpose that we don't yet know. One might think that this second goal would be easily achieved, as genuine progress towards the first goal was being made. After all, shouldn't compelling arguments (for the intelligent-construction hypothesis), based on painstaking examination of the data, dissolve the skepticism of open-minded, sensible and empirically oriented people? The scientific method is empirical. It's a method to test a hypothesis or theory deriving from limited experience and the scientists thoughts and hunches about this: we call this inductive reasoning. In the light of relevant, coherent data supporting a hypothesis, continued skepticism must be considered closed-mindedness. Thus, Hoagland's efforts of a dozen years have included confrontation with the closed minds of people in positions of scientific and political authority who summarily refuse impartial examination.

The story of the discovery of the face, the D and M pyramid and eventually the city by NASA researchers and later Hoagland himself is interesting if not entirely gripping. For some, its autobiographical nature may diminish the account somewhat. Hoagland's being neither an academic nor a Ph.D. exacerbated his difficulties dealing with this establishment, no doubt he's proud of his successes. He certainly deserves credit for his perseverance, ingenuity and spirited diligence.

Gradually, Hoagland was able to enlist various (usually independent) scientists into the Mars project. Their different, often remarkable contributions lead clearly, in my opinion, to a conclusion: that the Cydonia plains are the Site of some astounding structures whose authenticity and demonstrated relationship to one another (their organization) should be fully examined. Any self-respecting scientist who has impartially examined the data, the analyses of the data and the subsequent interpretations derived from them cannot avoid this conclusion.

A great deal hinges on a mere two frames among thousands of photographs taken by the Viking Orbiter 1 spacecraft in 1976. Frames 35A72 and 70A13 together are probably the two most examined photographs in history. From exhaustive computer imagings and re imagings, enhancements, colorings, overlayings, etc., reasonably clear structures are visible. Further, studying these has uncovered various mathematical relationships (called constants) that indicate their relationship to one another. The position asserted by Hoagland and his colleagues must be well taken: a mathematical constant might arise once randomly; even twice, or perhaps three times. But repeatedly? And then, to find these same mathematical relationships among the great pyramids and sphinx of Egypt, that is, I think, asking more of Lady Luck than by her very nature she can deliver. Oh, I also was surprised to learn that the original name for Cairo was El-Kabira, from the Arabic for Mars. An interesting coincidence, I suppose.

The last chapter of Monument... was, for me, the most interesting. Hoagland presents hypothetical relationships, speculations, scenarios and ruminations in an effort to understand the why and wherefore of this possible monument. Five hundred million years definitely is a long time. If the possible beings were humanoid, what is our relationship to them? Even more, I wondered about the two forces identified in everything by the ancient Egyptians: an involutionary force and an evolutionary force. In modern physiology, for example, we identify these processes by the terms catabolic and anabolic. Have we descended (literally) from what had once been a consciousness elevated far beyond our own today? Is our comprehension of evolution in humans incomplete, inaccurate, distorted, rather like the conceptions of those blind men, each who rubs an elephant in a different region and draws valid but limited inferences from his necessarily different experiences?

Arrogance is a human attribute. Unwillingness to be influenced by fact and empirically based rational conjecture is a form of arrogance. It is everywhere in the history of science because it is everywhere in humanity. Open-mindedness is unnatural. Possibly, it was an aspect of the consciousness of the pyramid builders, the Sphinx builders, the Face builders. It seems that only by striving for this mental attitude will we ever be able to answer any of these questions.

Hoagland mentions that Carl Sagan, at a time when he was more able to entertain disturbing thoughts open-mindedly, presented a corroborated myth concerning human contact with extraterrestrial beings. These beings had come to earth to teach humanity civilization. Their area of intervention and activity was (by coincidence?) the land of Sumer between the Tigress and Euphrates rivers, in Mesopotamia. So I left Mars and journeyed to Sumer.

The list of Sumerian firsts is a long one and it includes the oldest epic poem known to us, The Epic of Gilgamesh. Inscribed in cuneiform on numerous clay tablets, these were found around the turn of this century, translated, and then made public about 1915. Archeologists have hypothesized that the epic, as a whole or in parts, was composed and kept alive by word of mouth through the generations. Concerning this epic and this means of transmission, a remarkable story is told by G.I. Gurdjieff in Meetings with Remarkable Men.

As an ashokh (a bard, poet and narrator), Gurdjieff's father knew by heart hundreds of songs, poems, legends and tales. Gurdjieff had learned the Gilqamesh epic by heart early, from his father. He describes his excitement upon seeing the recently translated verses in a magazine, in almost the same form of exposition as in the songs and tales of my father. Through thousands of years of transmission from one ashokh to the next, they had reached our day almost unchanged. Ordinarily, we would not think this possible. Elevated beings, on the other hand, would have known that it was.

Gilgamesh, King of Uruk, greatest of men. Conceived by the gods, he was, in fact, only one-third man. Wise, able, physically magnificent and courageous, he possessed also lesser attributes, including arrogance, a love of wine and a prodigious sexual appetite. He had a great capacity for friendship too.

His friend, Enkidu, although entirely human, was created by the goddess Aruru as his equal. She ...conceived an image in her mind then ...dipped her hands in water and pinched off clay, she let it fall in the wilderness and noble Enkidu was created.

After a great joust, barely won by Gilgamesh, the two became as brothers. Together, they accomplished great feats, including the slaying of the ferocious giant, Humbaba, guardian of the great Cedar Forest. In language that, today, would surely fail any creative writing class, we are told of their journey, their fears, their strategies and their eventual success in this and another great venture. Gilgamesh and Enkidu complement one another mightily, together they appear to be invincible. However, because Enkidu is Gilgamesh's servant, it is easy to forget that the two were created equal.

Alas, Enkidu dies. Following their slaying of the Bull of Heaven, Gilgamesh is cursed by the goddess Ishtar. Hearing this, Enkidu, in response, offends her vanity deeply. The next day he recounts a dream from the previous night to Gilgamesh, from which he realizes, O my brother, so dear as you are to me, brother, yet they will take me from you. He becomes sick. During his sickness, he curses various beings, for he does not want to die. He converses with Shamash (the sun god) and conveys to Gilgamesh realizations and dreams. The depth of feelings, the anger and the love between them both cannot be adequately described. Mighty Gilgamesh is crushed by his friend's death.

Gilgamesh, still grieving and now fearful of his own death, embarks on a journey, searching for Utnapishtim, a man to whom the gods had granted everlasting life. His journey is arduous and when he finally speaks to Utnapishtim, he is told that there is no permanence. Then Utnapishtim tells him...a secret of the gods. This secret is the story of the flood including a variety of numbers, ideas and personal experiences, for it had been Utnapishtim who had constructed, loaded and launched the ark on the instructions of a god, Ea. The gods had agreed to rid the earth of men (their clamor had become intolerable) but Ea had contrived to save a good one.

Further challenges and disappointments await Gilgamesh. But eventually, after terrific hardship, he returns home to Uruk where shortly,

On the bed of fate he lies, he will not rise again,

From the couch of many colors he will not come again.

We need to bear in mind, this writing is not an ancient predecessor of a John Le Carre novel or Ian Fleming's 007. You can feel it deeply: There is unplumbed depth to every aspect of the story. In Jungian terms, it validates and activates archetypes. One might call it conscious art, true literature whose potential impact was fully appreciated by its creators when it was written. Read enough (once or twice a year for a few years) it could beneficially impact any reader, help a younger one grow up and an older one to mature. It's filled with humanity, wisdom, love and power beyond words.

Interest in the near-death experience and the beings who meet the dying in this other realm has grown considerably, of late witness works like P.M.H. Atwater's Beyond the Light (see page 28), Dannion Brinkley's Saved by the Light and Betty Eadie's Embraced by the Light. Today, these subjects are discussed in 30 or so popular books. But I want to tell you about two older and excellent books of which you've probably not heard, that can still be bought.

The first, The Boy Who Saw True, author anonymous, is simply the journal of a young British boy growing up in a family of some means. This book is charming, delightful, sometimes marvelous, and fun to read to youngsters. Why?

The boy, who wished to remain anonymous and would only allow posthumous publication of his book, saw spirits and angels all the time, regularly. Naturally, he presumed others did as well. Learning that others did not was a rude awakening. Since both his mother and grandmother received his stories with closed minds, he literally had no one to turn to.

Eventually, his family found him a tutor, Mr. Patmore. He was an open-minded, decent and kind old man we later learn the boy had known in a previous life, along with the fellow who tells them this, an elevated spirit referred to as Elder Brother (and E.B.).

Many instructive conversations occur between Mr. Patmore and E.B. through the boy. Frequently, however, he doesn't know what's being said (by his own lips) and Mr. Patmore has to explain it to him afterwards.

There is more to this book than I've indicated, including talks with deceased spirits the boy had known, synchronistic events and even some misfortune. Everything is related with such an ingenuous quality (not to mention sincerity, simplicity and purity), one cannot avoid feeling gratitude toward this anonymous fellow who allowed his late l9th century journal to be published posthumously.

Many years before, a remarkable scientist who had forsaken science to write only on spiritual topics, had published Heaven and Its Wonders and Hell, from Things Heard and Seen (1758); this also was done anonymously and not-for-profit. The man was Emanuel Swedenborg, whose extraordinary experiences in the spiritual realm subsequent to a period of preparation at age 57 led to some of the greatest spiritual books ever written.

By entering an altered state of consciousness (which he meticulously describes and that we now call the hypnogogic state), he was able to converse with spirits and to be educated by the angels. They showed him, he says, the entire organization of the spiritual realm, how it runs and how it gives rise to the natural domain in which we all live.

Over a period of nearly 30 years, he recorded their teachings to him, saying that God had prepared him for this by means of his extensive scholarly and scientific education. (He wrote ground breaking works on the brain, physiology, biology as well as other scientific disciplines.)

To suppose, as seems natural to me, that Heaven and Hell deals with those phenomena of the spiritual world is a mistake, for the book is much more than that. Indeed, H & H is absolutely filled with a thousand statements of wisdom, knowledge and what has been much later found to be fact. Few men, far less only one, understood or knew all that is written in the 63 chapters of this amazing book.

Swedenborg's exceptional intelligence and knowledge of all the science of his day serves us well. Everything was observed carefully and penned (literally) with utmost precision. Occasionally, his writing becomes a trifle tedious. Even so, not all the books on near-death experience, angels and channeled books taken together constitute a fraction of the wealth contained in only this one volume. Now and then, one's brain may tire, for Swedenborg, although clear and precise, cannot make the new, intellectually awkward and strange something else. It is good to expand the limits of one's intelligence, however, so one must read it slowly, digest the pages and read it again.

The spiritual realm consists of positive planes (heaven) and negative ones (hell) that are maintained in equilibrium. Virtually everything occurs by influx, he says. Life, love, knowledge all flow into humans and angels. Angels (as did ancient peoples in Sumer, Egypt, Mars?) thought in correspondences, a mode of thought unfamiliar to us now. Its currency is intuition, which may be conceived as the influx of man's internal (higher) mind into the external (natural and lower) mind.

The speech of the highest, wisest angels, whose abode is celestial heaven, has no consonants and ...has much of the tones of the vowels u and o: because ...the vowels are not essential to a language, but serve by means of tones to elevate the words ...; ... it is especially in tones that affections express themselves.... An angel speaks to a human by turning to him or her, at which time the thought is insinuated into the person's mind. Hearing us speak, these angels know us entirely, as open books!

Swedenborg tells us that a person's life is comprised of the primary love of one's will and the acts, through life, given rise by the will. Everyone is free to choose what to love, i.e., the natural or the spiritual, truth or falsity, perception or obfuscation, confirmation or rationalization and so on; anyone wishing to can understand truths but many choose not to. Hypocrites: ..: talk like angels, but interiorly have acknowledged nature alone and not the Divine.... One must be vigilant about oneself, for hypocrisy is easy.

When a person dies, the... inmost communication of the spirit with the breathing and with the beating of the heart... ceases and separation results: The actual experience was granted to me that I might have a complete knowledge of the process. Topic number 449 of chapter 46 is his description of the process. It is essentially what we read in near-death experience books, only more detailed and focused.

The entire Bible, says Swedenborg, is written according to the science of correspondences. Thus, the literal (lowest) meaning hides and contains the truer (middle) and finally the truest (highest) meaning. For example, precious stones signify truths of heaven, a garden or grove corresponds to intelligence, trees stand for perceptions and knowledges. There are thousands of these significations, all of which can be known through influx from one's internal mind to one's external mind. When read, the Bible must be delivered to the higher intelligence which can understand its interior meaning. The external mind with its literal comprehension results from brain activity and must be still. The angels showed him how to meditate, a practice he commends.

The principles of right living, says Swedenborg, are not complex. Love God and don't do to anyone that you wouldn't want done to you. This seems straightforward enough. But the task seems to be more difficult by the alignments of today's world, in which unenlightened self-interest and materialism have infiltrated themselves throughout everything in our society. But then, I remember a quotation of a great sage: Where there is great evil there is also great good. Assistance is available, and comes mysteriously through synchronistic events and other inexplicable phenomena.