We’ve long known that Art Bell, night radio’s paranoid propagandist, knows how to rave and rant. What we didn’t know was whether or not he could read and write. An organized rumor that he is, indeed, literate comes to us in the form of an alleged “book” titled The Quickening: Today’s Trend, Tomorrow’s World. The question of Bell’s literacy is not fully settled, however, because on the title page we are told there was an editor, one Jennifer L. Osborn, who had a prominent role in this publication. Quickening, unfortunately, was released this year by a firm labeled Paperchase Press of New Orleans, Louisiana. Added suspicion is cast upon Bell’s claim to authorship by the presence of Ms. Osborn’s name right under Bell’s in a very suggestive position. After one dips into the book’s pages, however, it becomes crystal clear from the chapter titles, the gloom-and-doom themes, as well as the litany of errors and misinformation — plus the hysterical and repetitive exaggerations — that the ideas, if not the words, are, indeed, classic Bell.

Just as he does in his nightly radio diatribes, Bell in this word-assembly, is out to terrorize anyone naive enough to read him. Each chapter of this “book” begins with a little “story” whose intent is to frighten one into believing the human race has had it. Although each tale is designed to scare us into calling our Senator, all come off just about as chilling as a Halloween pumpkin.

In one story a couple is no longer able to have children because the wife has a venereal disease. In another, a man catches a drug-resistant form of malaria. In others, two terrorists blow up an oil field, two teenagers poison themselves by inhaling upholstery cleaner, and a bunch of German skinheads catch and torch a Turk. Each of these grotesque tales is Bell’s way of assuring us that our individual and collective future is going to be pure hell. Even worse, our prophet tells us, is the fact that everything around us today is moving so fast, i.e., “quickening,” that none of us Simple Simons is able to keep up with these fast-moving times. This is especially true for simple Art, who apparently never misses a single issue of The Weekly World News and seems to believe every word he reads. “Every aspect of our lives is accelerating and changing at a faster and faster pace,” Art tells us; and since he can’t keep up, then no one else can either! So there!

He or Osborn (or both) are thoughtful enough, however, to give us a warning at the beginning of their book:

Warning: The following material may not be suitable for those of you not prepared to face the realities of the future. These may seem like isolated snapshots of some far-off world. In truth, they are all symptoms of the same cause: The Quickening. . . .

Looking at the chapter topics, we can easily see just what is ringing Art’s bell. First, there is the world’s booming technology, with the Internet, fiberoptics, virtual reality, smart computers, cloning, and all them other goblins the scientists are creating. Next we have the economy (which is America’s heavy load and which nobody understands), the European Union, Asia’s cheap labor, and the disastrous road we're on to a global economy! Then there’s the government, which is fragmented and in decline as we are moving daily to that horror of horrors: global government! And look at society, in particular, our society with its rampant crime and immorality and weakened fabric due to militia groups, terrorism, and hordes of illegal immigrants. Then, of course, there’s the shame of shames — our religion and spirituality. Are your spiritual? Is your neighbor? Look at all those weird New Agers, all that crappy modern psychology. This is what has brought on all the UFOs and alien attacks and abductions and talk about a crazy one-world religion!

Behold our messy environment with its out-of-control consumerism and humongous garbage piles, smog everywhere, lead in all the kiddies cereal, chemical spills and leaks, global warming, ozone holes, and fallout of all kinds from massive overpopulation! The latter, of course, causes horrible disease and famine. Not only are there a lot of new and scary diseases but all the old plagues are coming back and our antibiotics are no longer working. Only prayer can save us! Then there’s our old Mother Earth, who seems to be undergoing menopause with all her earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tidal waves, tornadoes, hurricanes, droughts, and floods; and don’t ever forget all those mountain-size asteroids and comets heading our way. Worried about the future now?

Within each of his woe-filled chapters, Bell manages to get off some real cobs of wisdom and advice. For example, Bell tells us, “We have children we do not know how or have the time to raise.” We are also advised, “We have to learn self-discipline and stop reproducing. There're too many people already.”

Art is also concerned about our freedom, and he notes, “The world now has more freedom than in the past but at what price? The trouble is that increased political and social freedom has had a degenerative effect on the moral fiber of humanity” (p. 306). Chinese, North Korean, and Cuban citizens thank their lucky stars every day for their firm moral fiber.

We are then told that “Secular humanism is the trend of ‘the Quickening,’ but this has had the backlash of creating a narcissistic population bent on having its own way” (p. 306). Of course, none of the other religious and sectarian groups are ever interested in “having their own way.” In another religious revelation, Bell passes on the shocking, humongous news that “homosexuality [now can be found] even in the church.”

Bell also tells us, “We must save more of our earnings. We should learn to do with less . . . to continue to live as we do will yield people — our children and their children — who will not know how to adequately take care of themselves, to take care of each other, and to care for the world upon which they must depend for resources” (p. 308). Then in the same voice Bell tells us, “We can’t change.” He informs us that there is ethnic hatred everywhere; there is a great disparity between the rich and the poor; we still live under the threat of nuclear war; we are destroying our environment; and, since we cannot change some things, “We should change ourselves as individuals.” “My hope,” Bell says, “is that we as humans will come to our senses. Believing things are ‘not really that bad’ will doom us.” Answering his own rhetorical question “Where is the Quickening taking us?” Bell says, “To a global government with a benevolent dictator. If this is what it takes so be it.” The plague of pompous pieties, platitudes, and propaganda never ceases!

It is very difficult for us to believe that Art Bell (or anyone else for that matter) would have the unmitigated gall to ask the public to pay $24.95 for 336 pages of childish inanities or to have them read such drivel as, “Ghosts and apparitions exist and houses can be haunted. Of that there is no doubt. . . . Psychic abilities are all spiritually based and occultic” (p. 193). Bell’s chapter-by-chapter exposure of his massive and seemingly inexhaustible ignorance and his utter lack of scientific background and training, as well as his total inability to present a respectable rational argument, is embarrassing, even for a grade-school reader.

It is highly unlikely that this silly essay will be reviewed by other critics, since the kindest thing one can do for the author of a “truly bad book” is to ignore the social boo-boo and find something more worthy of criticism. Reviewers, nevertheless, also have a duty to protect the potential reader from nausea and intellectual indigestion. My only justification for spending this much time and effort on The Quickening is to warn any and all unwary readers that it is even worse than Bell’s self-congratulatory newsletter After Dark. Somewhere toward the end of this distressing work Bell confesses, “writing a book is no easy task.” In Bell’s case the chore is well beyond his abilities, and despite Osborn’s help, he still hasn't done the job. The best that can be said about The Quickening is that it is, indeed, sickening!

It was, therefore, somewhat surprising in the face of all this upbeat hype to open the March/April 1997 issue of Psychology Today and see a special report from Dossey informing us that both words and prayer not only have a negative side, but in many situations words and prayer can actually harm! According to Dossey, the old nursery rhyme “Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me!” is wrong. It should be changed to “Sticks and stones can break my bones and words can also hurt me!” Moreover, Dossey says he has the proof.

In a series of allegedly “scientific” studies, Dossey argues that negative prayers from human beings can harm microorganisms. He stresses that while most everyone is familiar with the placebo effect, few are aware of the nocebo effect — the ability of negative beliefs and expectations to actually cause harm. Though far more complex, we humans share many identical biochemical processes with microorganisms and we harbor billions of microbes within us. Therefore, if negative prayers can harm lower organisms, would it not be possible to exert a nocebo effect on humans as well? Dossey says, “Yes, indeedy!” and he even goes so far as to suggest that negative prayer not only works but that everyday ordinary “harm-meaning” folk regularly engage in it, especially in athletic contests, where the opposing teams gather in their respective locker rooms, praying that they will beat the BeeJesus out of their opponents. In such a situation, God must be very puzzled, but Dossey tells us such prayers work, citing a comment from Michael Murphy, founder of the New-Age Esalen Institute in California, as proof:

Witness the many hexes aimed at games via radio and television sets. If rooting channels or triggers powers of mind over matter, it is no wonder that during certain contests balls take funny bounces and athletes jump higher than ever or stumble inexplicably. . . .

Although scientific studies of the effects of purposeful negative prayer on human beings have not been attempted because of their obvious illegal and unethical implications, there is little doubt that the range of negative power is enormous, especially in the form of curses on those we hate and those who have done us wrong. Referring to primitive cultures where hexes, spells, and voodoo can have tremendous negative effects — even death — on those who are victims of such powerful suggestion, Dossey says that “after years of study, I'm convinced that the malevolent use of prayer is quite common, woven into our society and our lives. In a 1994 Gallup poll on the prayer habits of Americans published in Life magazine, five percent of people confessed they'd prayed for harm to come to others. And that was only the number that admitted it.” Dossey goes on to suggest that diseases such as the Guillain-Barrë syndrome and other illnesses of unknown origin are due in part to the negative wishes and prayers of others!

Dossey summarizes his position by suggesting that negative prayer is nothing, after all, but the devil in us and the evil side of the two-headed human coin we keep flipping, hoping that good will turn up. He discusses the case of Eddie Rickenbacker, who, according to Dossey, was adrift in a lifeboat during World War II when, as the result of a prayer, a bird dropped by that he captured and ate. Dossey also tells us about the prophet Elisha, who caused forty-three children who made fun of his baldness to be devoured by bears.

While Dossey seems to believe that the eaten children were the direct result of an answered negative prayer, I can think of a different explanation. Odds are that Elisha had some very specific extra help with the bears, and, should he have actually pulled off such an atrocity, even in his time Elisha would have been lynched, gassed, hung, injected, and electrocuted by a jury of peers for such a humongous crime against innocent children over a mere tease. I would also bet the outraged curses of eighty-six vengeful parents would more than outweigh anything Elisha could ever conjure up.

Dossey’s illustrative examples do raise some very intriguing questions. What happens when the same number of people pray for something as pray against it? How does God decide whose prayer to answer? Does the total number of people praying for or against something matter? How about the righteousness of the supplicants? Are positive prayers answered more frequently than negative ones? Does God take the positive ones and Satan the negative? Does the intensity of the praying have any effect on the outcome? Does the length of time one devotes to praying have any effect on the frequency with which one’s prayers are answered? Do the words and phrases used in the prayer — either positive or negative — have any bearing on the success rate? Does the nature of the thing or things prayed for have any bearing on the prayer’s success rate — either positive or negative prayers? Why or why not??

All of these questions, and more, have a very particular relevance and application when we come to the realm of athletics. Just for example, this spring when a small Kentucky town in Eastern Kentucky won the State High School Girl’s Basketball crown, the town’s newspaper, as well as the largest newspaper in Kentucky, gave credit for the victory to God’s answering their prayers. Why their prayers were answered and the prayers of the losers were not remains unknown. One possibility is that the Hazard team had a better “pray-er” — in the form of their principal, who was also a minister. If it turns out that the higher one stands in the religious hierarchy the better the chances that one’s prayers will be heeded, then it certainly behooves every athlete and every athletic team to employ the most religious “pray-ers” possible. Certainly no one should ever enter any contest unpre-prayered!

If Dossey is right then we have an exciting future ahead of us! Not only will we have the game itself, but the prayer game within the game — another exciting and dramatic contest between the opposing praying ministers and the opposing praying fans. Special prayer meetings will be held before every game, featuring the top clerics striving to outpray each other and guarantee victory for their team. In fact, I think this is what Dossey had in mind all along — a movie epic with Spielberg as producer and Chris Carter as director for a billion-dollar blockbuster called Prayer Wars.

In the 1998 Super Bowl, on one side of the field we will have Billy Graham, praying that the AFC champion will destroy the NFC champion. On the the NFC side, praying equally hard, if not harder, we will have Benny Hinn sending up a heavenly beseechment urging every man on the NFC team to break various parts of their foe’s anatomy. To add to the excitement we could have the nation’s huddled watchers vote electronically to determine the winner of the prayer game independently of the winner of the ball game. Then, if the prayer-game winner is also the football-game winner, we will know once and for all whose side God was on. If it turns out that the prayer-game winner is the football-game loser, then we will also know once and for all that God does not put a very high price on the game of football or the other mindless games that humans play. We will also remember what we seem to have forgotten somewhere down the line, that humans have engaged in wishful thinking and have asked for help from above since the beginning of time, with only chance results.

If you take the time to ponder this issue, you may come to the surprising conclusion that maybe we are all better off if many of our prayers are ignored and never answered, especially the negative ones.

As for Dossey’s thesis, I'm afraid he has not thought it through and has not even begun to answer any of the questions posed earlier regarding winners and losers. If Dossey is correct, then I would certainly hate to be in his shoes, because the number of negative prayers launched against him since he started this campaign to promote superstition and misinformation and to misinform and mislead the masses is bound to have such harmful effects upon his person that he is already in the emergency room. And if he only knew about the white-coated doll with “Dr. D” stenciled on the back and the twenty-five pins. . . .We can rest assured, however, we've no cause for concern since the last thing on earth Dossey is, is superstitious! He is, after all, a medical doctor and a medical scientist!

Looking at ETs historically, Huyghe notes that they are well over one hundred years old. In 1896 one Colonel Shaw and a Miss Camille Spooner reported a near abduction by alien creatures with large black eyes who stood three feet tall. Similar reports came out of England in 1901, Baltimore in 1919, Australia in 1925, and Spain in 1944. All of these cases preceded Betty and Barney Hill’s "abduction,” George Adamski’s Venusian flights, Antonio Villas Boas’s alien party in Brazil, and police officer Lonnie Zamora’s encounter with little folk in white coveralls. Following the UFO-sighting classification work of J. Allen Hynek of Project Blue Book, we received in 1987 the alien cover on Whitley Strieber’s Communion, which made the “little grays” very popular. People began to see these fellows everywhere, and there were also many variants. Some grays turned out to be five, six, and even seven feet tall instead of the usual three or four feet. Moreover, people began to report many other aliens of every shape, form, and variety, as the abductions and human/alien encounters began to proliferate and prosper publicity-wise.

Huyghe’s classification effort is not the first — both Linda Moulton Howe and Thomas Bullard made earlier efforts to deal with this alien avalanche. Huyghe, however, believes his taxonomy is the best because all of his entities are closely associated with an alien craft and a good encounter story. Huyghe states his classification doesn't pretend to be scientific but is based solely on how the aliens looked to the human observer, i.e., their phenotype. Huyghe has been able to distinguish four separate classes with several types within each class. The largest class, as one might expect, is the humanoids with five sub-types: nordics, short grays, short non-grays, giants, and nonclassics. Under the animalian category are also five types: mammalian, reptilian, amphibian, insectoid, and avian. Under robotic we find two types: the metallic and the fleshy. And in the fourth category, the exotic, we have again two types: the physical and the apparitional (ghostlike creatures).

Short stories and drawings of all the reported aliens accompany each of the classes and types. As Huyghe notes, if you are a UFO buff, you need this book: "Don't get lost in space without it!” In closing, Huyghe quotes David Jacobs who believes that only the grays are genuine, while all the rest are confabulations of the witnesses. Eddie Bullard, the folklorist and neo-skeptic, also reports that in his opinion the alien humanoid is nothing but “a malicious fairy in technological trappings.” Other folklorists, however, are not so sure.

For example, Michael Craft, staff member of the Omega Institute and a student of Tibetan, Taoist, Native American, and other magical traditions, believes that not only are the aliens very real but, “Something deep inside us appears to love or require the existence of incomprehensible beings and forces, both hostile and friendly. Whether they are there because we need them or because they need us, they are there for us. Whether or not these things are ‘real’ is another question, perhaps one without a single answer.”

In his 1996 book Alien Impact: A Comprehensive Look at the Evidence of Human/Alien Contact (St. Martin’s Press, cloth, 302 pp., $23.95), Craft assures us: “The myth of the alien is as old as humanity. Angels, elves, dragons, talking trees, demons, and trolls are the ancestors of our modern Grays, Bigfoots, Poltergeists, and Channeled spirits.” Craft became interested in aliens, it seems, because of his own strange, UFO-type encounters. Hearing stories of others over a twenty-year period has convinced Craft that “belief is the enemy.” He says, “The UFO community, and its vast literature, is a creaky house built from many different materials” — disappearances, abductions, alien animals, celestial portents, false memories, time distortions, flashbacks, and so on. The fact that the number of people who report seeing UFOs and meeting alien beings is constantly increasing and that over fifty percent of the population believes in aliens has convinced Craft that such a “belief system” is not only real and powerful but mirrors the chaos of modern civilization.

Craft then proceeds to review the entire history of human/alien contact according to reporters such as George Adamski, Billy Meier, Betty and Barney Hill, Travis Walton, Budd Hopkins, Whitley Strieber, participants in the Roper poll, David Jacobs, John Mack, as well as the infamous “men in black.” Every occult, paranormal, folkloric, or pseudoscientific phenomenon or concept — past and present — is trotted out by Craft in a maximum effort to make the reader take him seriously. These include cattle mutilations, crop circles, MJ-12, Area 51, Roswell, black helicopters, Erich von Däniken and Zacharia Sitchin and the Monuments on Mars, the Ashtar command, the Aetherius Society, Findhorn, Swedenborgism, Madame Blavatsky, channeling and science-fiction themes in Philip K. Dick’s VALIS and Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, the Shaver mystery, and more.

Craft also treats us to modern experimentation in the field of parapsychology, including the work of Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne and some of those remote-viewers who report seeing alien-powered UFOs. Digressions into the belief systems of such sober scientists as John Keel and Terence McKenna are also provided. Keel believes that God is causing people to see UFOs, and McKenna says that an energy field — “the spinning vortex is the UFO . . . UFOs are intended to confound science and reason” — causes us to see and experience UFOs.

According to Craft, what all of the UFO alien lore really means is that reality itself is changing. In Craft’s words, “[H]umanity is headed toward a drastic reordering and restructuring of what we call reality. Paradigm-shaping scientific discoveries appear almost daily just as UFO encounters seem to. Those crazy ‘confoundings’ are on the rise. Perhaps we are headed toward a casual collapse, or a reshaping of reality that ignores all the old rules, except those found in old fairy tales . . . whether we go to the stars or oblivion, UFOs — our oldest friends — are along for the ride.”

If while reading this you have been hearing a buzzing noise, don’t be alarmed. Its just my baloney detector acting up. It goes crazy now every time it hears the words alien impact or the name Michael Craft. It is truly a shame that so very many intelligent and semi-educated people have failed to receive any basic training whatsoever in the sciences. Any general familiarity with one or more of the scientific disciplines would end once and for all the writing, publication, and dissemination of such unmitigated nonsense as Craft’s Alien Impact and the dozens of other books about visitors from beyond. Illusions, delusions, hallucinations and the need to feel important and to be heard and sympathized with, as well as the human proclivity to perpetuate "terminological inexactitudes” can easily and sufficiently account for all reports of contact between humans and aliens, not to mention contact between humans and dragons, elves, demons, fairies, or Elvis. Pompous, pretentious, and contrived accounts of the “social impact” of nonexistent entities are unacceptable. Can one even conceive of writing a book titled The Social Impact of Fairies?

Despite Craft’s labors and the hysterical maunderings of Hopkins, Mack, Strieber, Jacobs, and the credulous media, valid and scientifically acceptable evidence of the existence of either aliens or alien spaceships remains unavailable and will, in all likelihood, remain so for centuries to come. Independence Day is science fiction, not science fact. True believers will, of course, think me a pawn of sinister governmental forces or part of the reactionary establishment’s plot to keep the Truth from the masses. As Chris Carter knows, the Truth is, indeed, “out there.” Like Carter, Craft has discovered that paranormal and paranoid fiction is both more entertaining and financially profitable than dull and mundane fact.

We must not nitpick, however. Dr. Brown informs us that the farthest reaches of the universe are now open to us and can be reached in short order using his rigorous and exacting remote-viewing protocols developed by the US military for espionage purposes. Although these methods are new, they are “valid and exceptionally reliable research instruments, regardless of whether many other scientists yet accept them or are familiar with them” (p. 2). That takes care of that! Brown goes on to inform us that: 1) there is extraterrestrial life, lots of it; 2) this is not a book of speculation about ET life but a volume of results; 3) there is always a study that is the first of its kind and this is such a study; 4) widespread acceptance of his methods will come and we need not be ashamed of using these methods now; 5) his methods are as rigorously controlled as those in any other social science study, although the methods are not the same; 6) he is able to replicate his results, in other words, he can do his SRV over and over and go back where he was before; 7) a wide array of psi phenomena exists; 8) remote viewing — the ability to accurately perceive information at great distances across space and time no — longer needs to depend upon a few gifted individuals because now we know that SRV can be taught and learned, and the reliability of trained individuals is “generally much greater than that of the best natural psychics” (p. 4).

Brown next informs us that he discovered SRV after making contact with several of the Pentagon’s ex-psychic warriors who successfully spied on the Kremlin during the Cold War. Brown became interested after these warriors turned their attention to the enigma of UFOs and ETs visiting Earth. Brown then quickly learned how to use SRV to investigate the ancient Martian civilization that flourished on Mars at the time dinosaurs roamed the earth. Next he learned how to use SRV to study the little Greys and to visit them on their home world. Once Brown mastered the technique, wonder after wonder began to unfold. Things got so wonderful, in fact, that Brown had to stop and insure his readers that “what I discovered in the process of my research was more unexpected than the plot of any science-fiction novel. I never could have dreamed up a story more amazing than the reality that I have perceived” (p. 6).

As the reader turns the pages what strikes the eye is, indeed, amazing. Following a brief history of the U.S. Military Psychic Warfare Program, we are informed about the work of Robert Jahn and Harold Puthoff and Robert Monroe and Ingo Swann and how important meditation and the work of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is in teaching one to use SRV. After learning how one uses the mind and imagination to sail off into the wild blue yonder and how to master the seven stages of SRV protocols and the six different types of remote-viewing data, we are then introduced to the UFO literature as provided us by those good doctors — Dr. John E. Mack and Dr. David Jacobs — who tell Brown about the reality of the little Greys and send him forth to pursue them to their own planet. After a brief excursion to the Transcendental Meditation-Sidhi program and the Monroe Institute, Brown takes us on a journey through Akasha — the home of that fount of universal knowledge, the Akashic Record.

Brown is now ready to get down to business and he does. He next takes us to Mars. Then we visit a UFO-abduction and follow this with conversations with the present-day Martians who have survived and discuss Martian civilization with them. Brown now has us visit subspace, where all SRV occur, and introduces us to the subspace helpers as well as other members of the Galactic Federation. We then visit the home of the Greys and learn along the way that, believe it or not, the ETs helped write many of the Star Trek episodes, which are previews of what we will become in the future. A little further along the way we meet Jesus, God, and Guru Dev and study Earth’s future environment. Following a delightful conversation with Buddha and a study of the Martian culture now present here on Earth, Brown urges us to make official diplomatic contact with the Martians but not before we launch an all-out program to carefully train our human diplomats so that they can bring about the desired results with the Martians, the Greys, and other members of the Galactic Federation. Brown closes his astounding, incredible, and scientifically amazing book by informing us that there is already a Martian underground base in New Mexico and that we should use it as a “processing center” to receive the waves of Martian citizens that will be coming after the president contacts the Martians and begins negotiations. In Brown’s words, “I suggest that the president of the United States authorize (with United Nations sanction) the transmission to Mars of an invitation to begin direct talks between Earth-based humans and the chosen representatives of the Martians. The transmission would indicate that humans are warmly receptive of the idea of working with the Martians with regard to issues of mutual concern” (p. 260). As for the Greys, Brown feels they are not yet ready to work physically with large numbers of humans on an equal level. Nevertheless human diplomats should start working with them, using SRV in subspace, and win them over. Brown thinks we should even help them with their UFO-abduction genetic project. Brown is also convinced that neither the Martians nor the Greys will do anything to further communication with us. "They are waiting for us to act first Let us speak, finally, to those who have waited so long and patiently for us, out there.” Readers who would like to communicate with Dr. Brown can do so by writing him at The Farsight Institute, P.O. Box 49243, Atlanta, GA 30359.

As for the conquest of time, this marvelous accomplishment has also been made with SRV, and exact procedures for doing so are set forth in a lovely book with the intriguing title Future Memory: How Those Who “See the Future” Shed New Light on the Workings of the Human Mind. The book is authored by Phyllis M.H. Atwater, L.H.D. (Doctor of Humanities) and published by Birchlane Press (Carol Pub. Group, New York, 1996). According to Atwater many people “are able to live life in advance of its physical manifestations and remember in detail of having done so when something triggers that memory.” As a child Atwater suffered from synesthesia — hearing colors and seeing sound — and has had at least six near-death experiences thus far. She also believes that we humans invent reality as much as we discover it and that reality is loose and flexible and occasionally “shifts.” We call these shifts coincidences. All such things as prophesying, forecasting, precognition, clairvoyance, and clairaudience are models and proof of our futuristic awareness. Moreover, we all have future memories and Atwater interviewed over 200 people who gave her examples of seeing ahead. Everyone having dj‡ vu experiences, for example, can attest to “seeing ahead.”

The best way to travel in time, however, is to learn the sure-fire future memory technique of “Remote Viewing.” Atwater learned it from an electronics design expert, James Van Avery, at the International Conference on Paranormal Research a year or so ago. Van Avery believes all of us can live the future in advance “by merely deciding to, then practice and practice and hone the skill until it becomes natural to us.” Van Avery says that once, as a child, he knew every turn of the roulette wheel in advance and that he then finally developed his present jim-dandy procedure for “remembering the future.” Jim and Atwater provide the reader with a detailed how-to-do-it, step-by-step procedure in the book and it is, indeed, very simple and something everyone can learn. Boiled down to its essentials it consists of quietly closing your eyes and concentrating on what things will look like in a few minutes; checking a few minutes later, closing your eyes, and imagining again; and gradually going further and further into the future, concentrating on specific details until you can describe the future precisely. While persistent practice is mandatory, the absolute essential ingredient, Atwater tells us, is the matter of belief. “You must,” Atwater says, “make a drastic change in your belief system that what you’re doing is real and that Future Memory is possible and can be controlled.” Most important of all, we are told, “Beliefs do not rely on logic for justification. Once you accept that Future Memory is possible and you can do it, something wonderful will happen. Being conscious of future events will seem almost as easy as remembering what you ate for lunch yesterday. You will actually wonder why visualizing future events was so difficult” (pp. 49-50). Atwater also tells us not to let wrong results discourage us but to use them as means of learning how to improve.

If any of you skeptics are considering taking up remote viewing and, thereby, conquering both space and time, we advise you to do it quickly; otherwise you are likely to be crushed in the mad dash of millions of gamblers and horse players and stock brokers beating new paths to the doors of Brown and Atwater. And you must also take into consideration all those millions of Martians and Greys camped out in front of Brown’s and Atwater’s doors asking for a handout. As for self-deception, we can confidently conclude that on planet Earth today, it is alive and well and flourishing nicely among those with advanced degrees.

Last month, for example, Frank Tipler, a professor of physics at Tulane University, published a book with the fascinating title The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God, and the Resurrection of the Dead (Doubleday, 1994). Normally a sane and sober scientist, Tipler, who is a reviewer for Nature and co-author (with astrophysicist John Barrow) of the respected 1986 book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, in this latest work seems to have lost his bearing. Tipler, of course, demurs and insists that his mathematical model of the end of the universe proves irrefutably not only the existence of God but also the fact that every human being who has ever lived will be resurrected from the dead in the far distant future. According to Tipler, there is no other possibility. Then, asked to reduce his “Omega Point” theory to one sentence, Tipler replied: “God, who is a personal being who created the universe out of nothing, exists, loves us, and will one day resurrect us all to live in heaven forever.” If this sounds to you more like theology than science then you are in good company. Needless to say, it will come as no surprise to learn that Tipler is also a Roman Catholic as well as a physicist. Most reviewers of Tipler’s book claim he is daft and deluded or like a wily fox, out to sell theology in a new way. If you have the stamina, training, expertise, and patience to follow Tipler’s arguments point by painful point you may be persuaded that some of his arguments are sound. Nevertheless, you will really need God’s wisdom and the help of many of his angels merely to follow Tipler’s arguments and conclude that everything that has ever lived will be resurrected as it formerly was.

If you are sincerely interested in such weighty and wild speculations you will be much better off and more comforted with David Lindley’s more modest and humble little book The End of Physics: The Myth of a Unified Theory (Basic Books, 1993). Lindley does a superb job of deflating all such vast and half-vast claims recently set forth by speculative physicists that we are now on the verge of a Theory of Everything that will explain everything and end human questioning. Incredibly, the same claims were made around the turn of this century, just before Einstein and Planck and relativity and quantum theory. Tipler, however, is not alone. Professors from one end of the nation to the other (and even overseas) are becoming more and more willing to crawl out on the end of some very thin and shaky limbs. At the University of California in Berkeley, for example, a professor of environmental psychology has started a $100 per hour House Counseling Service. The Professor has his clients “role play” with their homes. The owner or owners speak to their houses airing all of their feelings about what they like and do not like about them. Once all their feelings have been aired, they shift roles and play the house—talking back to the owners, telling them what is wrong with their behavior. According to the prof, “Just as some people perpetuate destructive relationships—some people keep finding themselves in unsuitable houses.” Eventually, if a divorce is the only solution because of irreconcilable differences between house and owner, a realtor is reached and the two parties part. If disagreements are small then renovation or behavior changes can patch up the quarrel. One can only assume that the professor also has a share of the realtor’s profits and a hand in the decorator’s business.

In case you have ever been concerned about human and animal rights, you now have, according to the British botany professor Malcolm Wilkins, a third area of concern: the rights of plants. Plants, like other living things, have feelings and are sensitive to injury and pain. How does the good professor know this? Well it seems that plants make inaudible crackling noises when they want water. Just how Wilkins knows they make noises that are inaudible is an entirely unrelated question. Perhaps Wilkins has been consulting with Cleve Backster, the scientist who a few years back was attaching electrodes to stems and leaves and getting feedback he interpreted as emotions. If plants do have feelings and emotions, we are in deep trouble. What, pray tell, will we eat if we can neither be herbivorous nor carnivorous?

Next, we were recently made aware of the work of Felicitas Goodman, a professor of English and folklore at Indiana University. In her 1990 book Where the Spirits Ride the Winds: Trance Journeys and Other Ecstatic Experiences (Indiana University Press, Bloomington) Goodman tells of her discovery of special trance states that lead to all sorts of supernatural powers and contact with spirits both living and dead. The secret lies, Goodman tells us, in following native shamanic techniques, which seem to consist of placing the human body on a slanted board tilted at exactly 37° from the vertical. Once you are tilted you then have to be rhythmically stimulated. This can be done with a tape recording of a drum or a rattle or preferably both. The beat, however, must be even and rather fast: 200 to 210 beats per minute for a 15-minute session will suffice when accompanied by proper breathing exercises. During one’s time on the board, the right arm should be bent at the elbow with the left arm straight and the left hand pointed toward the body. What are the rewards for time on the board? Why, goodies galore! If one keeps at these spirit-journeys one can contact the spirits, access the chakras, learn divination, acquire the gift of healing, learn to shape change, acquire paranormal skills, and attain life everlasting! It is also important that all beginners have a companion, preferably Goodman, who understands the process. In fact, she has been at the slant-board business since 1977. So far, she has held more than 80 workshops and has had a total of 890 participants—592 women and 298 men, with repeat attendances of 159 women and 68 men. Goodman’s posturing is specifically designed to take the believers to the world in the sky, the middle world where other humans live, to the lower world, or out to sea. One can’t help but wonder what would happen if Goodman tilted her board to, say, 38° or maybe even 50?

Then there is the anthropology professor Grover Krantz, of Washington State University in Pullman, who collects Bigfoot-prints and has just published the fascinating book Big Foot-prints: A Scientific Inquiry into the Reality of Sasquatch (Johnson Books, Boulder, Col.). Krantz apparently believes in Bigfoot and will not accept no for an answer. Although most anthropologists flatly reject the idea that a primate (as big as Bigfoot is supposed to be) could live undetected in North America, Krantz attempts to prove the creature’s existence with neither a corpse nor a live specimen. Not only is Krantz easily fooled (see “Bigfoot Evidence: Are These Tracks Real?” in SI, Fall 1994, by Michael R. Dennett) but he goes so far as to claim there are literally millions of Bigfoot tracks. Of course there are not. Krantz also argues that logging companies are paying people to spread wild tales about Bigfoot to discredit the search. According to Krantz, if Sasquatches are found they will be declared endangered and logging will be restricted.

We must also mention three other noted academics who have some deep and very unusual convictions with regard to people being abducted by little gray aliens. Both John Mack, the Harvard professor of psychiatry, and David Jacobs, the Temple professor of history, have become somewhat famous, along with Leo Sprinkle of the University of Wyoming, because of their continuing insistence that UFOs are real and that thousands— even millions—of our citizens are being taken by extraterrestrials for various and nefarious purposes. Maybe, just maybe, there is something psychedelic seeping into the academic offices; something that the union of ivy and brick exudes into the campus air that affects the cerebral vortices of older intellectuals. Mm, maybe this should be looked into. To parody Mike Royko, brains that work like those mentioned above should be thoroughly examined by scientists. On the other hand, perhaps wild speculation among the professorial class is now de rigueur! As all good scientists know and say, “Further research is needed.”

Alarmed by the impending disaster, most of the farmers asked the governor to proclaim a Day of Prayer and to ask God to intervene and save their fields from the plague. Governor John Pillsbury agreed and set aside Thursday, April 26, as a statewide day of fasting and prayer. Many less religious citizens denounced the governor’s actions and proclaimed that it was a discredit to the intelligence of the people of Minnesota. In fact, a group called “The Liberal League” went so far as to publicly denounce the governor’s action as nonsense with these words: “We hold that this belief in the power of prayer is palpably untrue, its influence pernicious and in this day a marked discredit to the intelligence of Minnesotans. From the beginning down to this day, outside of so-called Sacred History, there is not one well-authenticated instance of such prayer having been answered-not one.”

Priests and clerics, however, were not dissuaded and held masses and prayer vigils to appeal for heavenly assistance. Not only did the entire nation watch these events, but newspapers across the country sent reporters to cover the story. Other states also pitched in and prayed like mad in sympathy with Minnesota’s plight. Prayer Day, April 26, turned out to be warm and sunny over most of Minnesota and predictions were that the same sort of weather would prevail on April 27.

As midnight approached, however, the sky clouded over and a cold rain began to fall over most of the state. Then the wind shifted from the south to the north and the cold rain turned to heavy snow. Throughout the day the snowstorm raged, alternating between rain and snow and a heavy sleet. The ice storm continued through most of the following day, April 28, as well. Surveying the outcome of the storm, the state’s grain farmers discovered that the vast majority of grasshoppers had been frozen and destroyed just as they were hatching. Even the few eggs that did hatch gave forth hoppers who immediately flew away. No eggs were deposited in Minnesota that summer, and the year’s grain harvest turned out to be the most bountiful in the state’s history. Entomologists were astounded. Some Minnesotans were so grateful they built a church to honor the event and in gratitude for God’s answer to their prayers.

While Dossey might be inclined to attribute this miracle to the wondrous power of prayer, most meteorologists are much less certain. Minnesotan springs are notoriously unpredictable and, like the rest of the nation, April is a particularly treacherous month for growing things. One has also to keep in mind that the number of people praying (versus the number of people who were not praying or maintained a neutral stance) were definitely in the minority. We must also consider the literally millions of times that similar sorts of prayers were sent up to the Heavenly Father and were either rejected or ignored. For example, there’s the fact that a considerably large number of people prayed for weeks last year that the Mississippi Valley would not flood and that the heavy rains would stop. Their prayers were clearly never answered.

Dossey’s book is, nevertheless, very entertaining and is filled with delightful anecdotes and some wonderful sound bites, such as this quote from Susan Ertz: "Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.” Most of the time Dossey stays on terra firma but in Chapter 7, titled “Time-Displaced Prayer: When Prayers Are Answered Before They're Made,” he walks over a cliff and tries vainly to make us believe that we “may be mentally able to shape our medical past in order to bring about health not illness now in the present and in the future” (p. 122). William G. Braud of the Mind Science Foundation of San Antonio, Texas, believes we can reach back into the past and shape subatomic processes in the past in order to influence our health now. Can prayers be answered before they're made? Dossey says, “Yes. Why not?” (p.127).

For a book whose stated purpose is to convince the reader that prayer can heal, Dossey amasses a tremendous amount of negative evidence. In Chapter 11, devoted to reviewing the research on prayer and healing, Dossey notes that prayers for kings and clergy never proved to be effective, nor did Sir Francis Galton’s experiments pan out. Dossey also cites Sheldrake’s observation that in spite of millions of Indian parents’ prayers for sons rather than daughters, the sex ratio remains fairly even. As for nearly all of the laboratory studies, Dossey admits that most are either poorly done or logically flawed. Studies like those of Randolph Byrd and his coronary-care- unit patients are filled with holes, and whenever skeptical scientists try to replicate such work they are never able to obtain positive effects. Only true believers in the effect of prayer are so lucky. “Mind shoves the data around,” Dossey says.

Dossey, however, is honest enough to present a list of nonsupernatural reasons for the positive effects of prayer. To wit: (1) Many spiritual practices demand certain austerities that are healthful, e.g., diet, no alcohol, hygienic practices, et al.; (2) social support is gained from the belief and its attendent rites; (3) the psychodynamics of the rites and beliefs can also promote health, in that prayer can release emotions and affect the immune and cardiovascular systems and reduce anxiety; (4) the psychodynamics of faith are indistinguishable from placebo effects; (5) the healer’s presence fosters a sense of belonging and social support; (6) being the object of prayer or the laying on of hands stimulates the endocrine and/or the immune system; and (7) the physical preparations for healing, e.g., meditation, feasts, diets, and abstentions-all may promote “healing.”

Despite some very impressive tables in Dossey’s Appendix #1, one can’t help but note that out of 131 laboratory experiments on prayer effects, only 56 obtained statistically significant results at a probability level of .05 or better, and only 21 at the .01 level. However, when we consider the quality and credibility of these studies we find that 10 of these are unpublished doctoral dissertations, 2 are unpublished master’s theses, and all the rest were published in parapsychological journals. One can only hazard a guess as to the strength of the “file drawer” effect-that is, filing away all the negative outcomes-in all such investigatory efforts.

In the last analysis, however, when they're in a really tight spot-when people are between a boulder and an I-Beam-most individuals tend to go along with Pascal’s rationalization for believing in God: If God exists and you don’t believe, you lose; If God exists and you do believe, you win. Ergo: you'd best go along with prayer and belief since its your only chance to win. The most peculiar thing about Healing Words, however, is that Dossey can’t seem to make up his mind about whether Pascal is right. We'd all be better served-Dossey, his patients, his readers, and the general public-if Dossey would take his head out of the clouds, plant his feet on the ground, and stop talking nonsense. Everyone knows that evil looks won’t kill you. We also know that sticks and stones will break your bones and a doctor’s words alone-no matter how kind or gentle-will never heal you.

“Perry,” I replied, “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Well, you’re only fooling yourselves if you really think you've fooled the nation. I've been onto you people from the beginning!”

“What people are you talking about? Who have we been supposed to fool?” I queried.

“I’m talking about that organization of yours,” Perry answered, “That Psy-Cop bunch.”

“You mean CSI-COP, not PSY-COP,” I corrected.

“Well, whatever you call it. It really doesn't matter. I know exactly what you've been doing!”

“You do?” I smiled, “Well what is it that we've been doing?” I queried. “You can’t fool me,” Perry sputtered into my face. “I know that you’re working for the government and that you’re a tool of the CIA.”

“Oh, really?” I replied, my face showing my amazement.

“Yessiree. And I even know the year that the boys in Virginia created you. It was in August 1947, right after the Kenneth Arnold affair in which he reported those silvery objects in the air. They created you as a disinformation agency!”

All I could say to this was, “Oh, really, tell me more.” And he did.

“I figured it all out. And things really picked up after people started to contact and then started getting abducted. To keep the public off balance they had to create an entirely independent organization that would debunk everything the public was learning on its own. That’s when they created your group. And I know what your name really stands for too. It really means Committee for the Subversive Insemination of Counter- Offensive Propaganda. Our boys in Virginia are no dummies. They know that the best way to keep a secret of this magnitude, to really convince the public, is to pretend there is no secret and buy off the smartest and best people in the country-stooges, in a word-who will work on the public and persuade them that anybody who screams ‘Cover-Up’ is stark raving nuts!”

“Perry,” I remonstrated, “I have never heard anything more ridiculous in my life. I know these people and their-” He wouldn’t let me finish, but answered: "I know how they work! They get a bunch of scientists and scholars like Asimov, Sagan, Paul Kurtz, and Nobel laureates and have them debunk the truth and the real secret. The more educated, influential, and intelligent members of the general public will buy this in a minute and laugh their heads off at all the little ignoramuses who believe in the TRUTH that is alleged to be nonsense. You did manage to fool some people, but not me!”

“Perry, I hate to tell you this, but you are very, very wrong and you are talking crazy talk.” I tried to reason with him in vain.

“You can’t fool me. I’m onto all your scams. Even going back to that Orson Welles thing in 1938. Then there was that Jim Jones thing in Guyana in 1978. Then the space shuttle disaster thing that fooled the public into believing that the O-rings caused it. Well, none of these things fooled me for a moment! I knew all along what was really going on!”

Still trying to use logic and reason, I asked, “Well Perry, what was really going on?”

“Experiments designed by the best psychologists and media experts in the country to test the public’s credulity. That’s what! As if you didn’t know all along!”

“Perry, old man, you may be right, but this is the first I've heard about it. Believe me!” I put on my best mask of sincerity.

“Come on now. I know you’re on the inside and are playing footsie with all those psychologists and magicians from all over the country. Why you have managed to get even the media on your side. Every time they have a show where some poor but honest, uneducated slob gets on the tube and tells the truth about seeing ghosts or angels or extraterrestrial aliens or people bursting into flames spontaneously, the program always has one of you guys there to make a fool of him and sway the public not to believe these things really happen!”

“Do you really believe this my friend, or are you just pulling my leg?” I responded.

“Now don’t you try this ploy on me. I know what’s going on. This latest game of yours, where you all are trying to shift the public’s interest in alien abductions and UFOs to false memories of sexual abuse to see just how easy it is to manipulate them. Your attack on that poor Harvard professor who is trying to save us is not going to work either. I have been watching all of you very, very carefully, and I can tell you now that just because you are attracting more and more attention doesn't mean you will succeed. Sooner or later the public will catch on just like I did.”

Changing my tactics, I decided to go along. “Well,” I said, “What gave us away?”

“Oh it was almost obvious,” Perry sputtered. “I realized that you people went overboard. Methinks they protesteth too much! It was patent that Carl Sagan’s efforts in support of the U.S. Space Program were at base subversive and that he was secretly undermining it all along. That’s why SETI was canceled. And look at what Asimov did. Why, he fooled people into thinking he was dead! We both know that he is hiding out in Miami and writing propaganda for the secret service under an assumed name. And look at Paul Kurtz and his religious connections with the Soviet Union. Under the guise of humanistic atheism he has been building and strengthening the religious revolt behind the former Iron Curtain. Phil Klass’s secret efforts on behalf of the U.S. Air Force, the FBI, and the CIA to convince the public neither UFOs nor aliens exist has been wildly successful! Moreover, everyone knows all about Randi’s many, many trips to foreign climes and his success in undermining people’s belief in the facts of parapsychology and true magic which Randi knows better than anyone on Earth. And no one can ever deny that Joe Nickell’s efforts to demean and discredit the Shroud of our savior have been wildly successful, when Nickell himself knows it is Christ’s burial cloth! Then, if you look at the people in your organization’s front office: take this Barry Karr, who is obviously a KGB conspirator. His real name is probably Karr-ensky! Or something similar. And people with names like Doyle and Hays-obvious aliases for Doyavronsky and Haysanova.”

By now I was beginning to feel very anxious, and I guess it showed in my astonished expression because Noyeyuh then outdid himself.

“Now as for that other CIA tool of yours-the Weekly World News- it’s not working either!” Perry practically spit at me.

“It isn’t?” I asked incredulously.

“Of course not! We both know the aliens have already seized control and that you and yours now control the government and most corporations on earth. We also know that years ago you kidnapped Elvis and are holding him hostage. We also know that wealthy alien LBJ supporters had Kennedy shot, and that you aliens have already established bases on the Moon, Venus, and Mars. That’s how those WWII bombers and those faces and monuments got there. I know all about it, you see, because I am an alien too!”

With these terrible words he started ripping his clothes off, frothing at the mouth, and spilling his briefcase full of Prozac capsules all over the sidewalk. Fortunately, there were some of my alien friends nearby, so we managed to get him sedated and into one of our isolation wards before any harm was done. I really don’t think anyone else knows about either our mission or our true identity. I really don’t think anyone even suspects. I certainly hope not. But one never knows, does one?