Where Are All These 2012 Doomsday Theories Coming From?

Most people have realized by now there is a serious countdown to the apocalypse going on around the world. The idea that the end of the world, according to many seemingly normal people, even has a specific date, which is December 21, 2012, is either appalling or laughable depending on your frame of mind. Intelligent people and otherwise solid citizens are writing books and making movies about these doomsday prophesies for 2012.

Many people might see this as just another way to rile people up and make money off the fascination over this supposed credible prediction for catastrophe, where a confluence of natural and possibly even super natural forces will bring about the demise of our most favorite planet. But as always, we need to ask: is there any science behind these claims? So first of all we’re going to explore two obvious issues we need to address:

1. Where did this specific doomsday date of December 21, 2012 come from, and

2. Is this truly an accurate prediction we should all start preparing for?

First of all though, another obvious question should be, even if these predictions are true, how do you prepare for the end of the world? Should you even bother to pack a bag; or even a little sweater maybe? Where are you going to go? There are no other Earths we can simply relocate to. So if the end is really going to happen five days before Christmas 2012, then we may as well just relax and perhaps even start enjoying the life we have left.

When you think about it, if we really only have a little over two years left, what in the world do we have to worry about? Scrimping and saving for retirement? No, that’s really not much use. Finishing your doctorate, MBA or some other really important credential? Nope, that’s no longer important. How about going to work so you can afford the car and mortgage payment? Alas, that’s really not really much use–unless of course your car lease ends well before the world does. You’ll still need a car unless you plan on WALKING around until the world ends.

In all seriousness though, man has been consumed with concerns for the end of the world almost as long as we’ve been trying to figure out our beginnings. Religion of course has very definite ideas on the subject and in fact a whole department of religion was created called Eschatology, which is a branch of Theology concerned with the final events in the history of the world; or of humankind.

All the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) describe the end times as a cessation of the human existence and the beginning of our afterlife in a plane of existence beyond Earth. In fact all religions describe the beginning and end of human existence. But none are so specific as to name the day, month and year like the current 2012 prophesies. So how did we suddenly become so good with numbers? Most humans can’t even balance a checkbook much less figure out the end of the world after roughly 4.5 billion years of our planet’s existence.

It turns out the actual source of that date can be traced to translations of the Mayan Long Calendar. The Long Count calendar identifies a date by counting the number of days from a starting date of what they considered to be the mythical date of creation and they considered that to be August 11, 3114 BCE, in the Gregorian calendar, or September 6 in the Julian calendar. The completion of 13 b'ak'tuns (from August 11, 3114 BCE), marked the creation of the world of human beings according to the Maya. A b’ak’tun is roughly equivalent to 144,000 days or 394 solar years. None of this is particularly important. What is important is that the Maya considered the end of the first 13 b’ak’tuns to be the end of the creation period of mankind. And that from Creation, August 11, 3114 BCE, this period of 13 b’ak’tuns ends on the 20th day of December 2012.

Thus the end of the world as we know it was prophesied to occur on that date. People became electrified upon realizing the Mayans had predicted the date of the end of the world. However, the 13th b’ak’tun was to be followed by the beginning of the 14th b’ak’tun, on the 21st Day of December. Thus the beginning of a new era the Mayans believed would be one following the beginning Creation period. Not the end of mankind, but the end of the beginning phase of the creation of mankind.

Despite the publicity generated by the 2012 date, Susan Milbrath, curator of Latin American Art and Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, stated that "We have no record or knowledge that [the Maya] would think the world would come to an end" in 2012.

"For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle," says Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies in Crystal River, Florida. To render December 21, 2012, as a doomsday event or moment of cosmic shifting, she says, is "a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in."

"There will be another cycle," says E. Wyllys Andrews V, director of the Tulane University Middle American Research Institute (MARI). "We know the Maya thought there was one before this, and that implies they were comfortable with the idea of another one after this."

So obviously these cycles defined by the Mayan Long Calendar were meant to continue on. Just as any of our modern day calendars end each year, only to begin again the following year. It’s that simple.

Now another source of the 2012 doomsday theories centers on the writings of Zecharia Sitchin, an Iranian born American author of books promoting the origins of man to be the result of ancient astronauts mingling with humans here on Earth. He derived his theories from translations of myths contained in ancient Sumerian texts. The Sumerians, or the original people of Sumer, meaning land of civilized lords, can be traced to the earliest Mesopotamian settlements roughly 6000 years ago. Mesopotamia loosely translated, means land of rivers and was situated around the Tigris and Euphrates river system in modern day Iraq. This was also the area many believe was the location of the mythical Garden of Eden described in the Bible and indeed the Sumerians were the first people to practice year round agriculture and Sumer was the birthplace of written language. They left behind a carefully chronicled history written in cuneiform on clay tablets, which comprise the body of work we refer to as the Sumerian Texts. Clearly the Sumerians were technologically superior to any other civilized tribes in the region during that period of time.

According the Sitchin, the Sumerian texts suggest Earth was populated by inhabitants of a twelfth planet of our solar system that circles the sun on an extraordinarily wide elliptical orbit every 3600 years. This planet Sitchin refers to as Nibiru, is due to return to our solar system from its long swing out away from our sun and will be closest to Earth again sometime near the end of the year in 2012.

According to his translations of the Sumerian texts the inhabitants of Nibiru, referred to as the Anunnaki, originally arrived on Earth approximately 450,000 years ago bringing slave labor with them to mine for gold - which was apparently also very valuable on their home planet. Their workers eventually mutinied due to horrible working conditions after long indentured service to these human like aliens, who then proceeded to create clones to take the place of their slaves. These clones were apparently genetically created from both their race from the planet Nibiru and the DNA of Homo Erectus which of course were primitive ape-like hominids and the closest genetic matches to their race. Homo Sapiens became the genetic hybrids created from these Anunnaki clones and were then used for the labor needed to mine the minerals and gold the aliens then transported back to Nibiru. These clones were not stupid and some of the females were also fairly attractive resulting in the Anunnaki mating now with these hybrid humans and creating a third generation of humans that supposedly ended up jump-starting human civilization once the aliens finally left Earth for good still thousands of years ago.

But now that Nibiru is supposedly making a return visit in 2012, the prophesy supposes there will be another imposition of the aliens upon Earth’s inhabitants. Thus the concern for the end of humanity as we know it and resultant doomsday scenario.

The scientific criticism of Sitchin and his predictions would fill much more space than I should in this post. Suffice it to say that they fall loosely into the following arguments:

1. His translation of the Sumerian texts are considered to be faulty and he takes much of the myths in those translations too literally, while stretching the data to conform to his preconceived beliefs about alien influence

2. The planet Nibiru simply doesn’t exist – for it to be on the return lap and arrive near Earth again by the end of 2012 would mean it would certainly be visible to astronomers by now and it would have been creating observable gravitational effects on distant planets such as Uranus and Neptune well in advance of its passing; see NASA astronomer Phil Plait's: The Planet X Saga: The Scientific Arguments in a Nutshell on his "Bad Astronomy" website for the final word on this


3. Nibiru would also be a brutally cold world traveling out beyond the warmth of the only star in the region except for allegedly brief periods of time it passed through our solar system – certainly it would be too cold to support anything approximating human life

4. Claims by Sitchin that all primitive languages originated from ancient Sumerian dialects is also simply not supportable; disproving his theory that the Sumerian civilization was the incubator for all of humanity

As you can easily see, the Mayan Long Calendar translations that many would use as proof of the end of the world in December 2012, simply boil down to the Mayans defining the 20th to be the end of the old era and the 21st the beginning of a new one. In fact, in other Mayan translations, there are clear references to ceremonies and other important dates well beyond the 2012 date using the Long Calendar to calculate them.

And as for ancient aliens being the source of the “missing link” between Homo Erectus and Homo Sapiens, there is no credible evidence for it from Zecharia Sitchin’s voluminous writings about his translations of ancient Sumerian texts, or suppositions about genetically altered homo erectus by inhabitants of the fictional planet Nibiru.

The Strange Case Of Philip Corso And The Roswell UFO Incident

We're all familiar with the alleged UFO crash at Roswell New Mexico in 1947.  A lot of people believe it was a UFO and the government covered it up by recasting that event as merely the site of a weather balloon crash. There is certainly enough evidence on both sides of the argument to create doubt we will ever know the truth.

However, most people do not know about COL. Philip J. Corso (Ret), who was an intelligence officer serving in the United States Army from 1942 to 1963 and was secretly ordered to disseminate alien artifacts and technology recovered from the Roswell site to trusted defense industry contractors for research and reverse engineering of any useful technology.

Those technologies reportedly resulted in the development of: accelerated particle beam devices, fiber optics, lasers, integrated circuit chips and Kevlar material, among others; including top secret experiments on anti-gravity propulsion rumored to have been conducted at a government facility at Groom Lake Nevada (otherwise known as Area 51).

In 1998, Corso's book The Day After Roswell, was published wherein he claims the government covered up the Roswell incident, not because they were afraid of civilian populations panicking over the discovery of an alien spaceship, but rather to thwart foreign intelligence services from getting their hands on Roswell's treasure trove of material the US could use as a significant technology advantage in the ongoing Cold War against the Soviets.

Corso reported that in 1961, he became Chief of the Pentagon's Foreign Technology desk in Army Research and Development and worked under Lieutenant General Arthur G. Trudeau. In this role, he stewarded alien technology mining that would later be used to create the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also known as "Star Wars" by it's detractors. Corso shockingly reveals that SDI was apparently not intended just for defense against Soviet anti-ballistic missile launches, but also for American planetary defense in a possible all out war with Extraterrestrials.

The Day After Roswell rapidly became a best-seller and remained on the New York Best Sellers list for several weeks. Soon after however, it was roundly panned by critics such as Publisher's Weekly;  and The Guardian even listed it in it's top ten literary hoaxes.

But a quick review of Corso's resume reveals little if any tendency toward fringe activity in his background. If anything, he was uniquely qualified and clearly entrusted with defense department secrets of the highest priority. He was the chief of the US Counter Intelligence Corps in Rome just before the end of WWII in 1945. During the Korean War (1950-1953), Corso served under General Douglas McArthur as the Chief of the Special Projects branch of the Intelligence Division, Far East Command.

He also served on President Eisenhower's National Security Council for four years (1953-1955). It was after he became the Chief of the Pentagon's Foreign Technology desk, working directly under Lt. Gen. Arthur Trudeau that he was assigned the Roswell project.

In his book, Corso explained his role as part of a covert government group under the first Director of Central Intelligence, Adm. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter. Among his many tasks, he was to compile all information on off-planet technology, while the US administration simultaneously discounted all reference to the existence of flying saucers to the general public.

Corso's book is detailed, chronologically specific and exceptionally credible. You would think everyone would know about and have read his book by now given the extraordinary volume of material concerning Extraterrestrials and alien technology it reveals.

COL. Philip Corso (Ret.) died in 1998 in Jupiter Florida. His boss Lieutenant General Arthur Trudeau died in 1991. They took their secrets to the grave with them.

What do you think of the fantastic events he described in The Day after Roswell? Fact, or fiction? Read the book and you decide.

Michio Kaku Discusses Faster Than Light Travel With Warp Drive Inventor

Discovery Channel's Michio Kaku interviewed theoretical physicist, Miguel Alcubierre Moya who has found a way to travel faster-than-light (FTL) without violating the Einstein's Theory of Relativity - the so called "Alcubierre drive".

Alcubierre's theory of a warp-drive, trans-light propulsion model, is right out of pages of Star Trek. The theory essentially proposes developing a "warp bubble", that once formed, creates a wrinkle in space-time with an expanding rear wave that seeks to "catch" a collapsing forward edge. Once established this wrinkle can effectively travel infinite distances across the universe, carrying a space ship positioned between the waves at trans-light speed due to the folding of space between the wrinkles.

The ship isn't really moving faster than light, but due to the reduced distance from the rear to the forward edge of the wrinkles, the ship is effectively traversing twice the distance (or more depending on the size of the space-time distortion created by the wrinkles) in a fraction of the time required to travel normally in a smooth, flat plane of space.

Theory aside, is this really possible? Apparently creating a warp bubble that is capable of distorting space, effectively folding it to create less distance from point A to B, checks out mathematically. However, there are at least two wee little problems to solve before we can start rolling Warp Drives off the Alcubierre Motor Company assembly line:

1. The energy requirement for establishing the initial warp bubble is rather gargantuan ("absurdly gigantic" as quoted in Wikipedia) and well beyond our present technology - after all, we're still trying to figure out how to make fossil fuels more efficient, let alone creating an exotic energy power source capable of running a small city we would have to cram into the engine room of a space ship
2. Even assuming one now had the power to create this "space warping" bubble, the space ship would also need to be be surrounded by an anti-gravity field, creating an inertia-less environment to safeguard both the structure of the ship and it's inhabitants. Otherwise acceleration to warp speeds, even if it were fractions of sub-light speed, would effectively transform the ship and it's inhabitants into a thin molecular paste, from the ultra-violent forces of both the instantaneous jump to and back out of warp speed.

There are probably a few more issues we could no doubt mention, but minor details aside, it's exciting to know that warp-drive capability would enable man to travel the vast distances of the universe at will within a single life time.

Were Earth's Early Visitors Here Just To Visit?

It appears that the end-of-the-world theorists have settled on a definite date. In roughly two years and some change our mother planet is planning to cash in her chips. Mature, rational sounding people stand around over cocktails proclaiming December 21st 2012 as not only the probable end of our world, but the end of mankind as well. I’m thinking there must be something to this. After all, solid citizens are writing books and making movies about it. People are actually going on talk shows in front of millions of viewers, looking the camera in the eye and saying the end of the world will come just before Christmas 2012. Yep, there’s no doubt about it. We’re doomed.

First of all, scheduling the end of world before Christmas is just rude, even if we do get two years notice. That should be plenty of time to pack our bags at least. But, wait a minute, that’s right – we have no place else to go! Now I’m starting to feel a little verklemmt. But kidding aside for just a moment, we’ll get back to it, why do mature adults suddenly think they have the date for oblivion figured out? A little research points to a number of cryptic passages from ancient religious texts and even the Mayan Long Calendar, as clear evidence.

On a hunch, I rolled my iPhone calendar forward to the end and discovered a new date mysteriously lurking within this top-of-the-line silicon oracle I religiously rely on for all my important future appointments. There it was: December 31st, 2068. As I stared at the unblinking digital characters ominously displayed there, it occurred to me that maybe the Mayans just got tired of chiseling new days and months into stone. I mean it took me almost a whole minute to hold down the arrow key and scroll my calendar all the way to the end. I could only imagine sweaty stone cutters toiling away until their little fingers were practically worn to the bone. Somebody must have eventually piped up with the idea that several thousand years into the future should be enough to work with. That’s on the big clunky Long Calendar. I’m thinking they also probably had a more manageable Short Calendar they could pull out of their wallets, pouches, togas (whatever) that were a little handier for penciling in important human sacrifices and so forth.

Just imagine for a moment if I happened to stumble off some cliff out in the desert by mistake (probably looking down texting), of course gripping my iPhone tightly above my head to prevent cracking the screen when I hit (because Apple still doesn’t see fit to provide a replacement insurance plan). Some nomadic people might happen along and discover my hand sticking out of the sand there in the future still clutching my iPhone. They too might read something ominous into that last date on my calendar if they could manage to decode the interface and of course assuming the battery lasted more than 20 minutes much less years.

But seriously, the bigger issue is that we really can’t know for sure when the Earth might be hit by a planet-buster comet, or our population wiped out by a plague of Avian flu. We do know the Sun won’t last forever, although we still have a few million years left we’re told. There's a relief. I definitely want to be around to spend all that Social Security money I paid into! But what about a sudden unforeseen gamma-ray burst from a near star system super nova that fries our atmosphere? Of course we could always manage to wipe the place out all by ourselves with nukes, or greenhouse gases, poison the water supply, or god forbid run out of landfills making such a stink nobody would want to live here anymore.

But where else can we go? There are no other habitable planets in our solar system so we’ve got to look outside the neighborhood. Actually, good news! NASA’s just found a new planet for us they named Gliese 581. They’ve been thinking all this through apparently and with gobs of tax payer money they embarked some years ago on the Planet Quest Project to find us another home when Earth croaks. Not only that, they think this may be only one of thousands they can find with a little finer telescope tuning; so they can even see longer distances. Oh that’s the bad news by the way. Gliese 581 (they need a better writer who can come up with some homier names for these things don’t you think?) is over 20 light years away.

For those of you struggling to do the math on your fingers already, it would take us way more than twenty 20 years to get there because currently our fastest spaceship is not much of a light-speedster; more like a light-scooter actually. So, at present we would probably need more than 2,000 years to get there. Not to mention another 100 years just to get packed and ready to go. Oh yeah, we need to build some pretty big ships too. And we’ll need room for a lot of luggage.

Like Noah, we’ll probably want to bring a few pets and some livestock along too. One thing is sure, all those endangered species like Gnat Catchers and Horny Toad Owls (whatever) would be the first ones to get the boot. If they can’t survive on a whole planet they damn sure won’t make it on the trip to a new star system crammed into little cages. And Grandma/Grandpa, basically anybody over 35 probably – boot! We’ll need good livestock for people, not just animals to use for bearing progeny during the trip.

This whole train of thought about finding new planets so that humans can outlive their cradle, in this case Earth, got me thinking more deeply about the possibility that we may have already done this once before. Well there’s Noah of course and the ark he had to build to save people from the flood. Boy, talk about your discrimination. He probably had to make some pretty tough choices about who got to go and who had to swim. Of course Mrs. Moses got a pass. You think there wasn’t some payola going on there to get the last tickets on that boat?

This train of thought triggered some research on my part and it wasn’t long before I started digging into all the “Ancient Astronaut” theories and pre-Earth history you find out on the Internet pretty easily. Even the History Channel is running a series now entitled: "Ancient Aliens". Wow! And I always thought the history channel was just about the Wild West and WWII documentaries. On the other hand: Ice Road Truckers? What the heck is that all about? Nevertheless, their series did raise a lot of questions, didn’t provide many real answers, but did get me to seriously wonder if Earth might not possibly be the lifeboat some other extraterrestrial race may have discovered through their own long range telescopes. It’s at least conceivable that if their planet went flat-line at some point, they may have made the trek to Earth to resettle. This of course assumes:

1. Extraterrestrials even exist

2. That extraterrestrials somehow managed to discover Earth orbiting our sun among hundreds of millions of other stars in our galaxy alone

3. They somehow managed to figure out trans-light speed so they could get here without spending thousands of years en route - why'd they have to bring those Gnat Catchers with them?

I’m sure I could find a few more of these improbabilities to list out. But you get the idea. Still, there may be something there to give us pause for careful consideration. At the very least, consider this: if we can find them, i.e. NASA’s Planet Quest successes of late, then why couldn’t they find us? Especially when you consider that many planets we will discover are no doubt much older than Earth. Our civilization might still be in diapers compared to their historic timeline elsewhere. It certainly makes you wonder, hmm?

In The Very Very Beginning

Excerpted from the book: A View Beyond the Stars, on Amazon, iTunes, Lulu and Barnes & Noble

There are many legends from indigenous peoples of every continent on Earth, which relate ancient tales of the beginning of the world and the first emergence of mankind. You might think they could only imagine their origins arising from the earliest human prehistoric times, well before the written word and born entirely in the mud of this planet. After all, what else could they know than what their aboriginal ancestors had experienced first hand and could pass along to them?

We are all familiar with Classical Mythology, of Roman and Greek origin, which describes various ages of man beginning with a Golden Age of living in a divine, non-corporeal state among the gods from which man supposedly experienced a steady decline into lower awareness. As thousands of years passed we are thought to have descended from the heavens through a succession of heroic eras, ultimately to dwell on the Earth as merely higher animals in what amounted to a rather complete fall from grace and consciousness.

This of course flies in the face of evolutionary theories which relate a Darwinian path from pond scum to the highest form of mammal we know as modern man of today. These persist without any reference to such a mythical pre-history of more eloquent times for man. Still, according to such mythology, Darwin could really not have known of this earlier supernatural time if he were only observing physical biological evidence; thereby easily missing whole chunks of this pre-dawn era of humanity. Or on the other hand, as many would point out thoroughly disproving any notions of such fantasy concerning the origins of mankind.

Our earliest recorded evidence of hominids, believed to be our first biological ancestors, is plotted at between 7 and 8 million years ago; which leaves more than 4 billion years of our planet’s existence unaccounted for. And yet, most of these native legends speak about a time well before our planet was born, before the stars and even before the heavens emerged. They speak of things beyond the possibility of their vision and as simple people, surely outside their scope of imagination.

However, most relate an eerily similar experience in these tales, certainly beyond human knowledge, of super beings emerging from an impenetrable and eternal darkness to suddenly create the first light, or a cosmic egg that burst forth to disgorge a primordial dimension of time and space. Still others describe awesome creatures that arose from a boundless sea beneath an infinite sky to form the firmament which ultimately became what we now know as Earth; and then created all the creatures upon it. And from these first mysterious eternal beings there sprang forth all that has become the many worlds of our vast universe and this one tiny world among the stars which has spawned the only known source of human Life.

These are the creation myths of our earliest ancestors, which have seeded man’s consciousness about other mystical possibilities for the appearance of human beings, juxtaposed with scientific facts which clarify biology, but still fall far short of helping us understand an equally important spiritual heritage. Yet, while they have been reverently passed down through the ages surviving tens of thousands of years from generation to generation, most people now consider them with only mild interest and even some amusement. Unless of course you consider that the world’s major religions are among these many creation myths as well.

Today, in our modern age of finite sciences and many religious faiths, there is still great disparity of opinion about what this oddity of nature we call intelligent Life truly is. In 1944, Nobel Prize winning theoretical physicist Erwin Schrödinger wrote a book entitled, What Is Life?; which was intended for the lay reader’s better understanding of the subject. Among the many liberally quoted passages in his book was this one that sheds some light on his opinion about the ability of science to understand the essence of Life:

“…the vital parts of living organisms differs so entirely from that of any piece of matter that we physicists and chemists have ever handled physically in our laboratories or mentally at our writing desks.”

Where Life originates from, and it’s ultimate purpose for existence are vital questions that need definitive answers. As a single race of humans living on this speck of rock speeding through a daunting expanse of the cosmos around us, we need to understand how we came to be. The mold from which we have all emerged as humans, how we view ourselves and how we treat our fellows is intimately cast from this great mystery. Many explanations abound even into our present 21st century. But we do mostly agree on one common theme: that the essence of all Life was somehow formed along with the creation of our Universe and that human beings, after billions of years in the making, finally appeared on the scene to top the evolutionary scale. It is the “why”, the meaning for it all which yet divides us. And it this great divide which has made Life on planet Earth rather interesting for us all, to say the least.

No matter your preference for an explanation, evolution by chance, or creation by God, there is no irrefutable proof of either. I make the claim here that there is sufficient evidence to suggest another, a third even more incredible yet compelling possibility and invite you to explore it with me. I also contend that surprisingly it will not invalidate the many truths contained within both science and religion.

The single source and reason for Life however, cannot be proven by any means we possess at present; therefore both science and religion are also belief systems concerning its origins. And so they are not so different from these earlier creation myths on this subject; no matter how staunch and like minded their followers. Yes, even science with all its vaunted facts and formulas has no definitive answer for our primal questions about the essence of Life and its ultimate purpose. Religion of course makes it clear that we are to be divinely tested by a leap of faith to embrace the story of creation passed down through the ages, describing the decisive formation of Earth and its earliest stirrings of Life.

This third ideology, actually builds upon each of the core beliefs of the other two as supportive evidence for the one proposed to you here. It should bring a refreshing change of perspective and fill in the gaps left in each of the other dominant beliefs. For while scientific happenstance and the wonder of fulfillment in nature alone is comforting to some, it presents a cold and pitiless world without purpose to others. And for the others, the warm embrace of the gods of religion give purpose to our struggle, offering hope for eternal existence and peace to assuage our fear of death, but requires that we set aside all scientific understanding. Each directly contradicts the other and leaves the world in perpetual dismay as to who we really are and why we are here.

Truly, not allowing for the possibility of a god as the author of the Universe is no more an egregious intellectual crime than proclaiming divine miracles incapable of ultimate scientific explanation. In other words, there is no more proof of a godless Universe than there is for a god-full one. But depending on your viewpoint, you may believe one is preferred over the other. That simply doesn’t make it truer.

In fact, God could create a Universe without leaving fingerprints just to provide scientists an esteemed and life long profession searching to discover the truth. On the other hand, if the awe inspiring machinery of our Universe is so perfect without intelligent design, we should want to invent God to explain a higher purpose beyond mere amusement of a few humans on a small rock out on the rim of a minor galaxy.

What you will read in the book A View Beyond the Stars will stretch your imagination. Whether you ultimately decide to agree with me or not, hopefully you will come away with a new appreciation for your own limitless personal potential, as well as for those around you who share this voyage, huddled together on a tiny vessel called Earth amidst the majesty of an endless sea of stars.

“Life has come to be mis-defined as a conditional state of existence. To the extent this misunderstanding has been perpetuated, humanity has suffered under the misguidance that death is the end of Life. The notion that laws of the physical Universe also apply to Life is a created illusion.

Life’s source has come to be misidentified with physical bodies, as individuals have come to invest power in them, beyond their original purpose. As mans understanding of the true essence of Life and the nature of spirituality have withered, so has he clutched more tightly to an altered reality. So, he has come to accept a limiting state of existence. So, he has come to be humbled by the fear of death.”

-- DC Musgrove

Is There Any Science Behind The Claims Of "The Secret"?

In 2006, a little video called The Secret exploded onto the scene and created a tsunami wave of fresh enthusiasm for new age spirituality and personal empowerment.

The Australian producers of The Secret included a few scientists to bookend the usual cast of self-help gurus and pulled off what many would claim as a product marketing coup of the decade. Their claims were scientifically astounding. Quite simply, according to these mostly self-credentialed authors of self-help books, anyone can create and have any reality they want in our world merely by visualizing it to be so.

Since the initial release of this documentary style, feature length infomercial, millions of people began a quest to change the laws of physics and create fresh new realities that would sweep the globe, drowning out the voices of any naysayers standing in their way.

Now, almost seven years later, and millions in profits to the producers, what will history say about the benefits gained by purchasers of all those CD's, books and tapes? Surprisingly, the consensus is very encouraging. Regardless of whether The Secret actually helped people create any new reality they chose, most people seemed to feel their lives were better for having embraced the tenets espoused by The Secret line of products. And to be fair, there are endorsements by people who cite specific examples of life changing events they attribute to their investment in what The Secret revealed to them.

So that's not a bad thing right? Right. And furthermore, I say more power to them! But, is there any science to these claims or is everyone just feeling good about deciding to feel better about themselves? Let's take a look.

The "science" behind the claims are tied to what people have now come to accept as "the law of attraction". First of all, that's not new and it's hardly a secret. And notwithstanding the clever marketing twist in the movie that suggested there was some heinous plot to keep this information from the masses, thus benefiting only those horribly capitalistic captains of industry who needed uninspired cheap labor for their factories, nothing could be farther from the truth.

Siddhārtha Gautama Buddha, who was born somewhere near 563 BC, was quoted as saying:

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought. If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him, like a shadow that never leaves him."

Sound familiar? So now Buddhism has been talking about this "law" of attraction for a lot longer than the producers of The Secret. But even if that's true, is there any science to the - breaking it down into other words here: transformation of one reality through the visualization of another? In fact there is!

Science is now able to finally illustrate that reality itself is a condition, or state of existence that is constantly in flux, not something hard-wired into relentless evolution of the universe. Energy moves in and out and around the voids between fixed states of existence, or reality, which has become stable enough to appear solid, thus forming the tangible world around us. And then just as quickly it disappears again to be replaced by another new reality, to take the place of the "old" reality.

From moment to moment reality moves in and out of existence at a level and a frequency that we cannot perceive as individual units of reality, but rather what appears to be an unbroken stream of existence similar to a motion picture. We don't see the separate frames of film in a motion picture either - but they

are there nonetheless.

The "flicker effect" or a slight awareness of individual spaces of blackness between frames of film through a movie projector is subliminal. They pass by your eyes so quickly you begin to consciously overlook them; so they disappear as your brain compensates for them and no longer appear as individual still pictures anymore. Now they become a moving picture and the still photos simply blur as individual scenes that would otherwise be just a series of single frozen pictures in time.

But the really cool part is how WE make up the movie as we go along! Almost any outcome is possible. Letting that one creation play out without fiddling around with it and creating a new one in it's place is the trick. You just need to decide what movie you want to see and stick to it. In effect you are then choosing the outcome you want to experience. Click on the picture above and see what I mean (from a sample clip of the movie entitled: "What the Bleep do we know?")

So now that you're back, let's continue. What I'm illustrating here is that reality is a transformative illusion you move through on a daily basis pretty much on autopilot. You just live it and it moves you around as if you really weren't in control - when if fact you are. You just don't see yourself doing it anymore. You've lost that perception now over a very long time of living at Effect, rather than from Cause. And the worst part is that you keep changing your mind about what reality is really going to be for you. You second guess yourself and overlay the first reality you imagined, with a second and a third, on and on. So what you get is at worst a total surprise and at best a pretty good average of all the different realities you imagined.

So popular mind-over-matter theories marketed by products like the The Secret (2006), The Greatest Secret in the World (1972 by Og Mandino), PMA(Positive Mental Attitude) and Psycho-Cybernetics from the 60's (authored by Napoleon Hill who also authored the earlier seminal book on the subject entitled Think and Grow Rich and W. Clement Stone),  all relate the power of visualization to creating your future reality. To that extent they are supported by the latest scientific theories about how reality is being created at the base levels of subatomics, or the quantum level as it's now frequently referred to.

And therefor they ARE fairly well rooted in our new understanding of physics. And what is that exactly? It means that consciousness does appear to have influence on the fluid edge of reality. If that is true, then personal reality can be influenced by people thinking thoughts about what they want it to look like.

So The Secret is actually in good company with many other methodologies sold as remedies for your underperforming expectations for your life. It's just not much of a secret really. So go forth and conquer! Visualize your new life just the way you want it! Make of it what you will, but also know it will be as good or bad as you can focus on what you want - and stick to it.

History Channel's The Universe Season 5 Has Begun

One of my favorite futurists is author Michio Kaku, a Harvard grown theoretical physicist and frequent host of the History Channel's The Universe series, which is now in season five.

Michio brings the difficult subjects of physics and cosmology down to us Earthlings so we can actually understand much of what he is talking about. The Universe series, also does a great job of unraveling the science behind fantastic new revelations for Parallel Universes, Time Travel, and Nanotechnology. These subjects promise greater changes for mankind over the next few decades than has taken place over the last two thousand years. It is truly a brave new world in the making.

I highly recommend the series and watch for any episodes that feature Michio Kaku. You'll find him charming and eloquent despite the fact that he is a complete science geek and has a list of published works that would instantly knock fluff readers out for the count.

Be prepared to be awed by the special effects and drop-dead gorgeous graphics used as a backdrop to entice the lay person into a realm they may not want to return from.

There are also frequent video uploads to YouTube you can watch out for in case you miss the prime time show and are too cheap to Tivo or DVR the series.

Enjoy! And just remember, science can be fun so long as you can understand what the hell they're talking about. You can quote me on that.