Apparitions announce themselves to 'visionaries' when the latter are in a state of hypnotic compulsion and what I can only call helplessness. The apparition always safeguards itself by specifying time and place.
'I want you to come here on the 13th of next month,' the vision ordered the three Fatima children. And the Madonna appeared punctually at the promised spot. On 13th July, 1917, 2.30 p.m. was exactly astronomic noon for the geographical position of Fatima. (Why?) Again the beautiful lady summoned the children to a meeting on the 13th of the following month at the same place. The flow of information from the vision (transmitter) to the visionaries (receivers) had been set in motion.
So far, so good. But why are visions tied to time and place? I can only suggest a fantastic possibility which admittedly does not fit very well with the so-called known facts. But I think it is better to put forward a theory than to lurk in the underground like a coward. In doing so I am quite conscious of the warning that the historian Egon Friedell (1878-1938) wrote in the albums of all those who were too bold: These are the real miracles. We take hold of a taboo and burn not only our fingers but also our tongues, and we must not be surprised if we unexpectedly find ourselves on fire.
How could people of the other world get in touch with people of this world, or vice-versa, over many light-years (*) of distance? With Radio waves? By light signals or radar? All electromagnetic waves are tied to the speed of light. Radio or radar communication would take hundreds and thousands of generations.
The waves carrying television images are decimetre waves, [+] which move only in a straight line, like light rays. If we were to put television pictures on a ray of light via a bridge of relay stations in order to reach the star Arcturus in the constellation Bootes, we could expect an answer in 82 years at the earliest, for Arcturus is 41 light-years from the earth.
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[*] A light year is the distance travelled by light in a year, about 6,000,000,000,000 miles.
[+] Electromagnetic waves between 10 and 100 cm wavelengths (3 x 10 9 and 3 x 10 8 Hz).
---- Even for the present-day postal service that's a bit too long to wait!
The stars Riegel and Canopus, to name two more addresses, are 900 light-years away. If we were to take the trouble 'to transmit', we should not even know whether our two stellar 'comrades' still existed.
'Their' light which hits us today is already 900 years old. Meanwhile a great deal can (and will) have happened on those stars! Why should we call them up? Even if they are still in the best of health and possess an adequate technical civilization, an echo could not reach us for 1,800 years. Who would be interested in that? New different systems of interstellar communications must be invented, for even higher frequency astronomy which sends and receives with gigantic parabolic reflectors to observe celestial objects is unsuitable. So far no one knows the right wave-length! In that case is any form of communication possible between such widely separated intelligences?
Yes, through visions.
The first intelligence was formed sometime and somewhere in our galaxy. Astrophysicists know that solar systems incomparably older than ours exist and therefore presumably much older intelligent beings, too. The earliest intelligences began to ask questions in order to extend their knowledge.
Before these intelligent extraterrestrial beings planned space travel, they engaged in astro-physical and astronomical research (as our own experts did before they sent the first rockets into the atmosphere).
When they began to build spaceships their mathematicians and ballistic experts got together and calculated that, given the high velocity of the spaceship, time was different for the launching planet and the crew of the spaceship.
Inconceivable?
It has long been scientifically proved that different times hold good on interstellar flights at high speed.
Time dilation, as this time shift is called, was first 'discovered' in our day, but it is an 'eternal' law, which was equally valid for the first space-travelling intelligences. What am I to do, says Zeus? was the question Friedrich Schiller asked in his poem 'Dividing the Earth'. What are we to do? was also the question the extraterrestrial beings asked themselves. How were they to realize the goal of their expedition, namely increasing their knowledge, if millennia would have passed when they returned from their journey into space? If there was no one left alive at home who could evaluate and benefit from the fruits of their voyage?
Time and space could only be conquered, said the extraterrestrial academics, if they arranged for descendants at various times in as many places in the cosmos as possible -naturally 'in their own image'! So the astronauts were trained and given the mission during the long journey to make for all the planets apparently similar to their home planet and land on them. Having thoroughly explored a planet they had to separate the most advanced form of life and make it intelligent by a deliberate artificial mutation. (*) After what pattern? Obviously 'in their own image'.
Thus time was overcome by a fairly simple trick. From then on intelligent groups of their 'kind' - formed in their 'image' -existed at various times on various planets like their home star. The chronological building up of the planned breeding made it possible to hand on acquired experience and knowledge in a quasi-endless relay race, despite the time shift. The expedition's goal of increasing knowledge was assured.
It would be absurd to claim that human intelligence is unique and alone in the cosmos. There may be millions and millions of forms of intelligence in the universe, but envoys with a different form of intelligence from that to which we owe our development have not sought out our planet. What business would a Jupiter intelligence have on Mercury, if conditions similar to his own did not exist? We can find the extraterrestrials' recipe in Homer's Odyssey:
It's always the same,
A god keeps company with his peers!
Intelligence similar to ours exists in our galaxy because the extraterrestrials carried out their mission and performed artificial mutations on existing life at several strategic points. Even though we do not yet know it, there are other intelligences in our galaxy that think, act and feel like ourselves. These cosmic families, that are closely related to us, have brains that function like ours; after all they have the same origin, being built in the 'image' of the alien cosmonauts.
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[*] Lat. 'change'. Discontinuous variation or sudden inheritable divergence from ancestral type.
---- These brains produce the same reaction to external stimuli as our much under worked thinking apparatuses. Do they ignite the first spark of visions?
Why, someone will ask, has the 'lord of Creation' not become intelligent through Darwinian natural selection, evolution, (*) and mutations, as the anthropologists say? Because the whole of the remaining monkey family (our forefathers!) still live in the jungle! Because they had exactly the same period of time at their disposal in which to evolve. Because the number and shape of their chromosomes (+) is not identical with ours!
Our forefathers, the hominids, had 48 Y chromosomes; we have 46 XY chromosomes. I beseech some geneticist to explain to me (and the anthropologists!) how 48 Y chromosomes turned into 46 XY
chromosomes and how products of the coupling of different numbers and shapes could multiply successfully? I expect I shall be told that two Y chromosomes grew up together by chance and produced an X chromosome. Why not? There is an obvious snag. The being to which this genetic defect happened, whether male or female, could never mate again with any other hominid because of the disparate chromosome numbers.