Caroline squeezed his hand. "Of course you do."

Which, he realized, was true. All of them did. They knew in their blood why they were still here on Earth, because they had wanted to partic.i.p.ate in the building of the next great cycle.

But they weren't the sort of people who were likely to think on such things. If you put one of them in a room, they would clean the room. Give them a file, and they would organize it, or an empty field on a summer morning and they would think ahead to winter, and start a house.

They were already stirring among themselves, seeking aim and direction, looking for work to do.

The immeasurably conscious presence that is the ascended wing of mankind was never wrong and could not be wrong. These were the ones who would put their shoulders to their task, and create the foundation of a new and better world, that would emerge out of the compa.s.sion that was common to all of their hearts, and it would be better than the old world, because in it there would be no more souls devoted to greed and all its cruelties. The last phase of history had been designed to cause them to reveal themselves, so that they could be removed forever. Mankind was not going to experience another cycle of evil and ruin, but this time would work on ecstasy, so that, somewhere along the vast halls of time, when this age ended, everyone would ascend and the species, finally, would leave the physical world entirely behind.

Eventually, other earthly species would gain intelligence, but that would not be for a billion and a half years, and by then even the least trace of human works would be gone, and mankind would have joined the journey into ecstasy which, like heat, has no upper limit.

In the deep redoubts that Mack had striven so to save, death had been slow, for they had been built to last, and to the people imprisoned within there came bitter hatred and violence, and finally madness, and they all sank away, all of those people, into the same darkness that had consumed Mack.

The G.o.d with whom David had been identified from his childhood, the great plumed serpent Quetzalcoatl, manifested in him not as a grand presence, but rather as a practical one, concerned less about the mysteries of time and the grandeur of its cycles, and more about making sure the water was fit to drink and shelter could be found, and food gathered during the plenitude of summer.

As some got water, others were already scouring the shrubs for berries, others heading in groups toward the ruined city, to find what might be of use there.

From across a far hill, another group appeared, people waving, and here and there joyous reunions took place, wife running to husband, child to mother. Over the whole of the restored Earth of all those thousands of years in the future, this same scene was being repeated.

But it would not be all joy. There would be struggle and suffering here. This was going to be hard.

David would do his best at his job, and become famous among them for his tirelessness, but time would wear on him as it does on us all, and one day he would leave them, and his beloved Caroline, and the family that they would make in a small house that was yet to be built, in a village that was not yet, on this first day, even an idea.

The secret of Quetzalcoatl's power is that he is a humble G.o.d.

In many stories and religious traditions, and even in the science of the lost world, this time had been predicted. But there was one statement about it that turned out to be the clearest and the most profoundly true, which had been made over two thousand years before the old cycle had ended.

It had been uttered on a little hill in Palestine, by a tired man with a matted beard, the last public pract.i.tioner of the lost science. He was an itinerant Jewish carpenter and sometime preacher who had met an old Egyptian priest, who had given him white powder gold of the true form, confected at one of the great time temples, all of which were dedicated to Hathor. This one was in the Sinai, and it was here that he was taught the secret laws of reality, which enabled him to raise the dead and heal the sick, and see clearly along the dim halls of time.

He had gone far in his studies, and seen much. And so it was that there came a day when he saw a chance to speak a sermon that would contain the deepest human meaning that there is. So he set forth, in a few hoa.r.s.ely shouted verses on a hot afternoon, the whole journey of the human soul, and the inner meaning of mankind.

In that sermon was contained the most important prophecy ever made-ten words shouted out while people ate and chatted, and listened with the same casual wonder they might give to a bird of surpa.s.sing voice, or a street-corner mountebank with a deck of cards.

After he had been speaking for a while, he saw that he was not gaining their undivided attention, and he therefore tried this: "Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." He had shouted it at them, but still there was little attention paid. What did it mean, anyway? They did not understand that he spoke not of the spiritually impoverished, but of those who share in spirit the suffering of the poor, and give of themselves to lift others.

He tried again, crying out, "Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted." This had immediately regained the attention of the crowd. In that hard era, when the Jews were chained to the Roman yoke, there was not one of them who did not have reason to mourn.

So he had what he needed, the crucial moment of attention into which he would utter words that would define a future that was still over twelve thousand years away.

He then cried out, "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth."

That had brought silence and questioning glances, then a confused murmur.

Soon after, he had gone down and taken a meal of bread and oil, and some thick wine. n.o.body had recorded the words, but they had stayed in many hearts, and, in time, were given to the ages.

Today, though, those of whom they had been spoken had no time to think on them. And they weren't thinkers, anyway, most of them. They were workers, and the sun was full up and the day was growing warm, and there was a very great deal to be done.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

THE WORLD OF THE OMEGA POINT THE OMEGA POINT.

What if the world really did end? What would we do? How would the human species come to a close-in terror and chaos, or according to some sort of hidden plan?

If there is a plan, there will also be chaos, that's clear enough. No matter how sublime the plan, people are likely to be quite upset, so I am happy to report that I don't have any specific information that the world will end in 2012, 2020, or, for that matter, anytime soon. But I can a.s.sure you that, one day, for one reason or another, planet Earth will become unable to sustain human life, and there are people, or will be people, who will face this distressing inevitability.

So, what happens? Is it all simply random or is there some sort of meaning? Is there an afterlife, perhaps, or some other place we can go, or is our species condemned to join all the others who have emerged here, lived for a while, then died out and been forgotten?

Or, put another way, is the universe essentially random and chaotic, but so large that the emergence of conscious life here and there is more or less inevitable?

Modern science says that human beings are biological machines and that we emerged out of a long period of evolution that is mechanical and random. To make matters even more dolorous, the fossil record demonstrates with terrifying eloquence that gigantic, devastating extinctions are the norm on our innocent-seeming little planet. Add to that the fact that modern science says that death is the end of everything, and a pretty dreary picture emerges.

However, modern science's vision is quite a new approach to the meaning of life, and there are reasons-a few-that enable legitimate speculation that it may not be correct. My own life has unfolded so far outside of what science tells us that we should expect, I really do wonder if we might not be having, as we live, quite a different experience from what appears to be the case, and one that is only partially explained by a mechanistic view.

Over the course of this little essay, I'll tell some of the stories from my own experience that suggest-at least to me-that life may be much more than it seems, and there may be good reason for our inability to perceive the whole truth of it. Of course, I would be the last person to a.s.sert that I'm right and the entire scientific establishment is wrong.

In fact, I'm more than a little embarra.s.sed at ending up so far outside of the mainstream. In terms of getting things like book reviews, for example, it's been quite inconvenient. But I love quiet, and being an outsider certainly brings plenty of that. It also brings undeserved opprobrium and spittle-hazed rage. In my career, I have encountered many pumping carotids, and I confess to taking an evil pleasure in inducing bl.u.s.ter and outrage.

I'm annoying and, unfortunately, I enjoy this. But there's a larger reason. I don't think that I'm wrong about the marvels that have filled my life, and I do want others to enjoy them, as well, and to find the same delightfully light and deep meaning that they have brought me.

It is incredibly freeing to know-as, in my heart, I do-that human life is indeed part of a vast continuum of consciousness that persists after death, and that is woven into the extraordinary glory that is intelligent life in the universe.

So I'm full of joy, because I have had, and am having, a marvelous adventure that suggests that the secular and essentially mechanical vision of ourselves that has become a shorthand and core belief in scientific and intellectual circles, is not true, and that what is true about us is so far beyond even the most optimistic imaginings of the ancients that we actually live on a hidden frontier. Just beyond the lowering clouds that choke the present horizon lies a world of wonders, and the electrifying discovery of what we truly are.

I don't think that, at any time in recorded history, we have been right about our true nature. Certainly, the old Western theocracy that arose out of the dismal Council of Nicaea in A.D. A.D. 325 is wrong, and probably even more wrong than modern science. 325 is wrong, and probably even more wrong than modern science.

I suppose that leaves me more or less out on a limb-or, more properly, a plank. Without science or religion, I certainly have no established allies. Maybe secret societies could take up my cause, but so far, no cigar.

It's quite fun on my plank. Out here, if you jump you may just fly. Out here, we are a delicious mystery that goes far beyond the intricacies of physical life, but is also divorced from the guilty weight of conventional religion.

I do not think that we live in the highest civilization ever known, and I think that the modern intellectual enterprise has failed in two fundamental ways. It has been unable, or unwilling, to look at the past objectively, and it has been unable to devise any means to detect the existence of the soul as a part of the physical universe-a measurement that, I think, must be possible. If I am correct, it must also be the foundation of a much truer science than we now know.

I think that the modern failure to realize that energy can itself be conscious is as fundamental to our progress as was the failure of the ancient world to understand the potential of steam power.

Around A.D. A.D. 120, Heron of Alexandria invented a device called the aeolipile, a simple steam engine, which was used to open the doors of a temple, and also showed up in Roman playrooms as a toy. The potential of the technology was never understood by the Roman world. Without any ability to see the soul, and penetrate into its reality with technology, modern science is at least as far from understanding the truth about human life as the Romans were from understanding steam power. 120, Heron of Alexandria invented a device called the aeolipile, a simple steam engine, which was used to open the doors of a temple, and also showed up in Roman playrooms as a toy. The potential of the technology was never understood by the Roman world. Without any ability to see the soul, and penetrate into its reality with technology, modern science is at least as far from understanding the truth about human life as the Romans were from understanding steam power.

If the experience gained from lives like mine is at all true, then we have two forms, one that is active and embedded in the physical body, and another that is contemplative and lives on when the body dies, in an energetic state. I believe that consciousness cycles back and forth between the two, but both are essentially part of physical reality. The soul is not in any way outside of nature, but human death is a transformation into another form, in the same way that a caterpillar becomes a b.u.t.terfly.

To me, the physical world is far richer than would be suggested by a mechanistic model of reality. I do not believe that religious traditions such as that of resurrection, which emerges in earliest times in the form of the story of Osiris, and continues to the promise of Christ, involve the supernatural at all. They are about living in the physical world in a way that leads to the preservation of individuality when the body dies and consciousness enters the energetic state.

From Osiris to Christ, I wonder if the resurrection stories might not reflect an ancient science of the soul that was lost as our increasing focus on the material world caused us to become soul-blind and thus G.o.d-blind and therefore also blind to the most vividly alive aspect of our own being?

As a result of this change in focus, we no longer live to die, we live to live. On the surface, this seems nicer, of course. But that's only on the surface. In that it a.s.sumes that death has no meaning, it also a.s.sumes that life has no meaning.

I think that it has led to a situation where most of us are completely unprepared for death. So we enter the other world in confusion, clinging to the residue of our physical lives. It has also led us to our fantastic obsession with material existence, and our addictive habits of consumption.

It's interesting to contemplate just how awkward it must be for some people when they arrive on the other side. Christians who find no Saint Peter, or Muslims who are not greeted by dancing virgins-except, perhaps, for the women. Or people like Jean-Paul Sartre or, say, Nietzsche, whose embarra.s.sment must have been quite fantastic. The truth, I suspect, is that on dying we enter another kind of life, but it is, also, ordinary life. Chiefly, it offers an immeasurably detailed reconstruction of our physical experience that can enable us to rise above the whole process altogether and, seeing ourselves with true objectivity, ascend into unimagined realms.

This is what is happening in The Omega Point, The Omega Point, to the vast numbers of people who are ascending into the enigmatic higher reality. David Ford never quite understands what is happening to them, or why it doesn't happen to him, so he soldiers on in his elegantly unsure way, trying to find the sense of his own very different mission. to the vast numbers of people who are ascending into the enigmatic higher reality. David Ford never quite understands what is happening to them, or why it doesn't happen to him, so he soldiers on in his elegantly unsure way, trying to find the sense of his own very different mission.

Certain parts of the Bible, and traditions such as the ancient Egyptian religion, suggest that there may once have been more objective understanding of this other reality, and that it may have been addressed with the lost science of the soul. Among the relevant doc.u.ments in the Bible, the Gospels are a chronicle of how to live to die in a state of compa.s.sion and forgiveness that enables us to let go of the concerns of physical life and ascend, rather than cling to them and end up eventually returning to this state-a fate which cannot possibly be considered as other than a pretty mawkish outcome, once one has become aware of the greater potential that one might have realized.

This is why, in The Omega Point, The Omega Point, Christ is seen as a scientist. I think that's exactly what he was, and his miracles reflect not supernatural powers but scientific knowledge of the way the energetic world actually works, and an ability to apply its principles to physical reality, thus effecting cure and defying death. Christ is seen as a scientist. I think that's exactly what he was, and his miracles reflect not supernatural powers but scientific knowledge of the way the energetic world actually works, and an ability to apply its principles to physical reality, thus effecting cure and defying death.

Developing this a.s.sertion, it would therefore be probable that he learned his techniques during the time he spent in Egypt, and that he was specifically chosen because of his Davidic heritage, by pract.i.tioners who understood that their own world was coming to an end, and were seeking to bequeath their knowledge to the future. When the Romans tacked that sign on his cross, KING OF THE JEWS KING OF THE JEWS, they weren't just being sardonic but also stating a fact: he was the heir to the House of David and thus the mortal enemy of Rome's client-king Herod.

If this knowledge still existed in Jesus' time, it must have already been quite isolated from the central and public stream of Egyptian culture. For example, what we know of Egyptian religion suggests, in its elaborate use of magical implements and ritual, that it was enacting something that had lost its true meaning, somewhat like what happens when children who have observed an adult drive a car play at doing the same thing.

As a child I did this-unfortunately, though, with a real car. I was no more effective at driving down the street at the age of ten than the Egyptians were, I suspect, at engaging conscious energy with their rituals.

During World War II, natives in the mountains of New Guinea were exposed to Western technology for the first time when the U.S. Air Force began building bases in the area. When they saw planes landing and disgorging an unimaginable cornucopia of supplies, they responded by using sympathetic magic. They cleared jungle air strips. They built airplanes out of bamboo and leaves, and wove objects that looked to them like the refrigerators the airmen had. Then they devised ritual movements and sounds that to them mimicked the movements of the U.S. personnel back and forth between the airplanes and the refrigerators.

But when they opened the doors to their "refrigerators," no beer came out, and I speculate that this could be what was happening when Egyptians concluded their rituals, which mimicked the operations of a much older lost science, but were no more functional than bamboo airplanes.

All was not lost, though, not entirely. Here and there, some traditions had retained at least some of that knowledge, and later in the discussion we will speculate about who and where.

Nevertheless, for the most part, the science that once gave these rituals potency had been lost, I believe, in a phenomenal upheaval that swamped the world thousands of years before Egyptian civilization even appeared.

Around twelve thousand years ago, the last Ice Age ended. And, as is not uncommon on planet Earth, this was a violent event. As the Laurentide glacier melted, sea levels around the world rose precipitately, and other upheavals caused further chaos.

There is enigmatic evidence-necessarily ignored by modern science-that a much more potent human presence existed then, probably hugging coastlines which are now submerged to a depth of hundreds of feet, and in some cases actually swept into the abyssal deep.

At the same time that this civilization was flourishing in the lowlands of the late Pleistocene, in the highlands of that world, human life was primitive. But go into a mountainous region today. Almost everywhere, you will find there the poorest people in the world. And where are our greatest cities? Hugging the coasts. If the future had only the remains of life in the Himalayas and the Andes to tell us about this world, it would not realize that our civilization had even existed.

Many books have been published about the evidence of a lost civilization, but I would like to mention here just one telling piece of it that is rarely referred to, but which I find fascinating. It is that there are seventeen ancient ritual sites and cities around the world, all situated on the same great circle, with a southern axis point that falls about five hundred miles from the coast of Antarctica, and a northern axis in British Columbia roughly fifteen hundred miles from the present geographic North Pole.

In itself, it is remarkable that places as diverse as the first Sumerian city, Ur, the Giza Plateau, Easter Island, Nazca, and the ancient Indian city of Mohenjo Daro would all be on the same great circle, but they are.

Modern science has no real explanation for this, except that it must have been just random happenstance. But surely that isn't enough of an answer. It's satisfactory only if you want to cling to cherished theories and ignore evidence.

I no longer ignore evidence. The last time I did that, I ended up being dragged out of my house by aliens. The evidence that such things could happen was abundant, but I a.s.sumed that it was absurd. So what might have been a fascinating meeting turned into a screaming confusion for me. It could have been more civilized, surely, but I will never forget the ghastly shock that coursed through me a few days later when my doctor said, "You've been raped." It was so humiliating that it took me twenty years to actually utter those words. To this day, I suffer pain from the injury I sustained on that night, which I mentioned only in pa.s.sing in Communion Communion as the "rectal probe" that has made me such a laughingstock. Rape and laughter don't actually go together all that well, though, at least not to the victim. as the "rectal probe" that has made me such a laughingstock. Rape and laughter don't actually go together all that well, though, at least not to the victim.

Had I been aware that such things could happen, I would certainly have been more calm, and perhaps the experience would have been less chaotic. Over the eleven years of contact that followed, I ended up in a sort of school, the lessons of which were glimpses into the greater reality in which we actually live. In short, what started out pretty badly became the most precious of treasures. Even the fear became entertaining and profoundly instructive, especially when I realized that the outre little beings I have called "the visitors" found me every bit as terrifying as I did them.

It's too bad that science has not acknowledged their presence, because, even without direct contact with them, there is a wealth of physical evidence available for study. But they don't fit our theories of the cosmos. According to modern theory, it is impossible for there to be physical travel across the universe because the distances are too great. But there is also no evidence of where they are from. Maybe they are far stranger even than aliens from another planet.

As our rational culture has matured, it has also become, as is inevitable, more decadent. In science, this decadence finds expression in the fact that we've slipped into the trap of putting theory before evidence, which is the core reason that we are missing so much of what is real all around us.

Given the evidence of all the sites along that great circle, for example, it is also likely that, in very ancient times, somebody knew that the Earth was round, had an awareness of its size, was in planetwide communication, and intentionally built these sites on a great circle measured from the physical North and South poles, which, during the cataclysm, moved when the earth's crust shifted on its mantle.

If such a movement were to have taken place, as Charles Hapgood first postulated and Rand Flem-Ath developed in his book When the Sky Fell, When the Sky Fell, the consequences would have been fantastic destruction, a catastrophe beyond imagining. the consequences would have been fantastic destruction, a catastrophe beyond imagining.

But what's so unusual about that? This is planet Earth, where catastrophes beyond imagining happen pretty darned frequently.

An earth movement that great and that sudden would have changed the planet's coastlines-as, in fact, it did. But underwater archaeology is in its infancy. We have barely explored the ancient coastlines of the planet, but what we have explored, as Graham Hanc.o.c.k demonstrates in his book Underworld, Underworld, seems to be populated with enigmatic ruins. seems to be populated with enigmatic ruins.

Great catastrophes are ordinary events on Earth, and even ma.s.s extinctions are relatively common. Much more common are the smaller disasters that are not cla.s.sifiable as ma.s.s extinctions, and there have been at least two of these just in the past fifteen thousand years.

My story refers to the infamous upheaval that ended the Ice Age 12,600 years ago.

Whether or not a sequel to that disaster is building now is unknown, but certainly something is causing persistent changes in our solar system, and has been for about forty years, and possibly longer.

A Dr. Alexey Dimitriev allegedly published an article in 1997 suggesting that charged particles were entering the solar system from the outside, resulting in changes to all bodies within the solar system. I say "allegedly" because I have been unable to contact Dr. Dimitriev, and there is some evidence that the paper may be a fabrication.

But, in this case, that isn't important. The Omega Point The Omega Point is fiction and, frankly, I would be flabbergasted if the world in 2020 was anything like what appears in the book. At the same time, though, more than one ancient calendar points to the immediate future as being a time of great change. is fiction and, frankly, I would be flabbergasted if the world in 2020 was anything like what appears in the book. At the same time, though, more than one ancient calendar points to the immediate future as being a time of great change.

Whether Dimitriev's paper is real or not, there is evidence of increased planetary heating not only on Earth, but also on Mars and Jupiter. Planetologists observed an approximate 1 degree Fahrenheit warming on Mars between 1970 and 1990, and in recent years the Martian polar cap has retreated. An increase in the number of red spots of Jupiter, and other signs on various planetary bodies and moons in our solar system, point to the widespread presence of this phenomenon.

As of this writing, the sun is also acting in an unusual manner, but rather than increasing solar activity, which would be expected if it was being bombarded from the outside, it has become unexpectedly quiet.

At the same time, the amount of observed cometary and asteroid activity in the solar system may have been increasing. Because the amount of observation and the sensitivity of instruments is also increasing, it's difficult to be certain. But when the Shoemaker-Levy comet struck Jupiter in 1994, it was thought to be a thousand-year event. Just fifteen years later, though, another large object struck Jupiter, surprising astronomers. It would never have been noticed, except that the scar it left was photographed by an amateur astronomer. A day before the object's scar was seen on Jupiter on July 20, 2009, a similar scar appeared on Venus. Whether this was the result of an impact is not known, but if it was, then the object that produced it was a large one. Had it struck Earth on July 20 instead of Venus, it would have resulted in a ma.s.sive planetary catastrophe very much like the one that overtook us 12,600 years ago.

So, are we more than ordinarily exposed to an asteroid strike right now? Truthfully, n.o.body can be certain, but observation does suggest that there is more debris in the solar system just now.

In my story, by the time 2020 has come around, the amount of material entering it has increased exponentially from where it was in 2012, and as a result the sun has begun to be affected by it.

It is difficult to imagine the scale of what is happening, certainly for those living through it in the story, but as author and readers, we can visualize matters more clearly. A supernova emits two forms of material. The first is a radiation burst that moves at about 90 percent of the speed of light. This generally spreads through s.p.a.ce as a gigantic expanding ball of energy. The second is a ma.s.s of debris, which moves much more slowly and unevenly, with the densest parts expanding most slowly.

As a result, this expanding cloud has an irregular front, and it is this fact that gives rise to the fundamental premise of the story, that our solar system pa.s.sed through one node of it 12,600 years ago, and is now entering another.

While there is no certain evidence that this is actually happening, something must be causing the changes we are seeing in the solar system at the present time.

One thing has become clear in the past few years: 12,600 years ago, there was indeed a tremendous upheaval on planet Earth. It hit North America the hardest, and was responsible for the ma.s.s extinctions that took place then, including the destruction of the entire human population of North America that existed at that time, the Clovis culture, and the extinction of no fewer than thirty-five animal genera, including most large animals in North America, such as the American horse, the mammoth, the mastodon, the American camel, and many others.

There are dozens of myths about a time of flooding and upheaval in the world, some of which may date to this very early period.

On May 23, 2007, in the General a.s.sembly of the American Geophysical Union in Acapulco, Mexico, the work of a multiinst.i.tutional twenty-six-member team proposed the theory that just such an impact caused the upheaval that ended the last Ice Age.

They presented substantial evidence of the event, and three of them also published a popular book on the subject, The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes, The Cycle of Cosmic Catastrophes, which lays out their evidence for the nonscientific reader. which lays out their evidence for the nonscientific reader.

But the event that took place 12,600 years ago was hardly unique in Earth's history. In fact, it is simply one of a continuum of such events.

Approximately 5,200 years ago something extraordinary caused the collapse of Mediterranean civilizations from archaic Greece to Egypt. Terrible drought struck the area. At the same time, in Peru, leafy plants were frozen so quickly that they did not wither-in other words, in a matter of seconds, like frozen food. Subsequently they were covered over by glaciers that remain intact even now.

The climate there went from temperate to extremely cold in a matter of minutes or even seconds, and has remained extremely cold ever since in the area where Professor Lonnie Thompson of the Byrd Polar Research Inst.i.tute studies these glaciers, in the Andean highlands.

During the same period a man running through an alpine meadow in the Tyrol was overtaken by a blizzard and frozen. He-and the meadow-were then covered by a glacier that melted enough to expose his remains only in 1991, when the mummified form of Otzi the Ice Man was discovered lying in the frost of the retreating glacier.

What sort of event would cause changes this sudden and yet long lasting across the globe? The simple answer is that the universe is a very messy place and even though Earth happens to be packed with a mind-boggling ma.s.s of sensitive, intelligent creatures who urgently seek to survive, it is still subject to arbitrary and random catastrophes, and-in terms of geologic time-they are relatively frequent.

This book started with a thought: what if it happens? What if the world really does end for us?

Teresa McDonald of the University of Kansas Natural History Museum says that 99.9 percent of all species that have ever lived are extinct right now, so extinction is certainly the norm-and, in fact, unless we happen to establish ourselves somewhere else in the universe, our time on planet Earth will sooner or later run out. And not only that, there is, in fact, no way at all to determine when this might happen.