7
THE SPARK
Factoring In the Human Spirit
Two entities hast thou—that which is flesh, and that which is spirit.
OAHSPE, FIRST BOOK OF THE FIRST LORDS 3:17
Alone of all the animals on earth man is twofold, mortal through the body, immortal through the essential Man.
THE DIVINE POIMANDRES OF HERMES TRISMEGISTUS
MY SPECIAL HERESY
There is a ghost in the man machine, unseen but potent. Homo sapiens, a kind of man-god, has something of the transcendental in his makeup. Anthropologists deploy words like cognitive, symbolic, ritual, imagination, or abstract as an acceptable substitute for outright soul and spirit, which designates the incorporeal component of our being. Though they do not believe it themselves, ethnographers have found, among the ancient tribes, detailed eschatology and grasp of the afterlife. This knowledge of immortal life is also inferred from burial sites with grave goods and other tokens of the Ongoing (the life beyond). Were men of past ages deluded (as the archaeologists’ subtext often implies), or were they on to something we have lost?
Should we look toward ape or angel, god or gibbon, for the secret of our beginnings? Hermes, Zoroaster, Homer, Aristotle, Plato, Pythagoras, and many other sages of the ancient day believed the human soul to be an emanation of the divine. It is not only recent religions or fundamentalists that think this way. The spirit part can be understood as something distinct from biological life; evolutionists, however, do not hold this vision: “There was nothing special about how Homo sapiens came to be.”1 In other words, Homo darwinensis is an animal, a talented, intelligent animal. Evolutionism talks of “our place in nature,” ignoring our place in supernature, in the cosmos, in the invisible world. Entirely disengaged from any subtle or intangible factor, evolutionism labors under the one side of life—the physical, corporeal side. Only.
If all life is material, what is the mind and what is the soul?
KEITH THOMSON, THE WATCH ON THE HEATH
Charles Darwin and Karl Marx, double-handedly pulled off what Jacques Barzun called “the final separation between man and his soul.” Darwin, Marx,*94 and Freud were among the most influential thinkers of the late nineteenth century and all atheists. But then came Einstein who, though mistakenly called an atheist, believed somehow and explored the great mystery. He knew that a science that ignores the intangible would never be complete. His vision of the all one cosmos required beauty and purpose, design, order, and majesty.
Figure 7.1. Charles Darwin. Outdoorsman in his youth (he loved shooting birds), country squire in his prime, independently wealthy, ungregarious, sickly, voracious reader, great naturalist, and mad scientist (ingenious botanical experiments), Darwin was able to work out his theories at his own tempo.
Although Darwin ended up with all the credit for evolution, his countryman, the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, was actually a codiscoverer. A complicated and well-documented set of circumstances put Wallace in the shade. But that’s OK; he had his own destiny to fulfill, for all this was happening in the great age of spiritualism, in the mid-nineteenth century. The fact is, Wallace became a confirmed spiritualist by the 1860s, and when it came to man’s true origin, his whimsy was that the first human beings were “plucked spiritually from nature.” Whatever evolution was, it was “divinely directed”; human thought was the one thing that could not have been the result of natural selection (the subject of chapter 9). Some higher power had to be behind it. There was to Wallace an unknown reality. Up against Darwin, this was, as Wallace put it, “my special heresy.” Since consciousness was to him “completely beyond all possibility of explanation by matter,” there must be “an unseen universe—a world of spirit, to which the world of matter is altogether subordinate.”2
Why wilt thou, O man, search forever in corpor [material world] for the cause of things? Behold, the unseen part of thyself ruleth over the seen.
OAHSPE, GOD’S BOOK OF BEN 2:9
This was not unlike Charles Lyell’s position, which rejected evolution or natural selection as an explanation of mind. “I rather hail Wallace’s suggestion,” Lyell wrote (to Darwin’s dismay) in 1869, “that there may be a Supreme Will and Power . . . guid[ing] the forces and laws of Nature.”3
Figure 7.2. Alfred Russel Wallace (as quoted in Jeffrey Goodman’s The Genesis Mystery) thought “a superior intelligence had guided the development of man . . . and for a special purpose, just as man guides the development of many animal and vegetable forms.
Though Wallace invoked “Great Mind” overall as something beyond material measurement (“disconnected from a physical brain”), the bone people steadfastly maintain there is no separate moral realm or ground of consciousness, and even if there is, it has nothing to do with the actual ascent of man. Yet Wallace stood his ground, insisting that the rapid development of the human brain demands a force of transcendent power at work. Today, evolutionists smugly call this Wallace’s “vague and goofy” ideas of human origins4; perhaps he “had simply gone mad.”5 Stephen Jay Gould sniffs at “Wallace’s error . . . the fallacy of Wallace’s argument . . . [which is] deeply wrong”6—lording over all the fools who believe the human spirit is a unique endowment.
But no one has yet to figure out why consciousness, if it is a by-product of evolution, “seems to spring into existence full blown.”7 Why is it that man’s rise is so “explosively short” (Loren Eiseley) and all other animals’ ploddingly slow and gradual?
St. George Mivart, biologist, zoologist, and acquaintance of both Darwin and Wallace, did not see human beings as part of physical evolution; the acquisition of a soul or mind must be by some spiritual agency, some higher power. How else could intellect or psyche have been gotten? Not through natural selection.
To sever consciousness from its source (albeit unseen) is, in my view, the most soul-deadening act of materialist science. “The existence,” says a team of Hungarian ethologists, “of nerve cells in itself is not an explanation for consciousness. Consciousness is a characteristic of the soul.”8 And that’s the problem: It pertains to something independent of matter; no wonder theorists wash their hands of consciousness, pegging it an “impenetrable mystery” (best left to “goofy” metaphysicians).
Science can tell us a zillion things about the brain but nothing much about consciousness. And when agnostics try to deal with it, it becomes a nonsensical string of words, a tangle of empty jargon: “Perhaps the extraordinary phenomenon of modern consciousness is . . . a chance combination of exaptations that were locked into place as an unexpected functioning whole by a final keystone acquisition that appeared . . . independently of any functional role. What that acquisition was . . . will have to await a more profound knowledge of the . . . human brain.”9 This is an example of obscurum per obscuris—explaining the unclear by means of the more unclear. Sentences like this make me swear out loud.
Prophet of materialism, Darwin was a child of privilege, though fashionably liberal and nonconformist; he was a cautious, thorough, methodical, diffident, and reclusive man. Although a blameless figure in most respects, he behaved rather badly to the spiritualists, calling their work “rubbish,” their mediums “scandalous.”10 Committed to strict materialism (animal behavior was his particular niche), he made man simply an improved animal, a glorified baboon. A clerical and medical dropout, Darwin’s real interest was natural history—bugs and barnacles. Early in his career, he had come to question the existence of a soul; now he called consciousness (in his notebooks) “a secretion of brain.” Thought, then, must be the flux of cerebrum, as bile is of the liver. Unlike Wallace, Darwin dismissed any ethereal component behind mind and the founding of our species.
And so, from Darwin’s time forth, evolutionists have busied themselves with the distinguishing physical features of humans—most notably bipedalism and our almighty brain. Man’s almighty soul doesn’t even get honorable mention.
I came to the earth to develop the soul of man chiefly.
&
nbsp; OAHSPE, THE LORDS’ FIRST BOOK 1:23
CHILD OF THE STARS
Evolutionists do not believe we possess a soul, or if we do, it is irrelevant to our origin. The theory of evolution is designed and tailored by and for the agnostic or frankly atheistic position. Yet, we call ourselves Homo sapiens, and sapiens means “wise.” Homo sapiens sapiens: man the double wise. And so, it is mind that principally distinguishes us from animals, and while brain is certainly the vehicle (the apparatus, the housing, the machine), it is not brain that moves us to think. Man, unlike all the animals, is something more than a zoological phenomenon. A meta-explanation is in order.
Humans appeared on the scene suddenly and without evolutionary ancestors.
MARVIN L. LUBENOW, BONES OF CONTENTION: A CREATIONIST ASSESSMENT OF HUMAN FOSSILS
There is a reason why our species had AMH genes from the beginning, yet no one seems to know where those genes came from! Significantly, Louis Leakey thought the only proper ancestor for humanity would be an ancient “true man”—quite an un-Darwinian idea. Mind and AMH were concurrent, thought George Frederick Wright, and came about without evolution; the intelligence of man, he said, implies “creative interference . . . a direct ingrafting of divinely related qualities.”11
I spent a lot of time in my last book (The Lost History of the Little People) explaining the phenomenon called euhemerism, which is the deification of the ancestors. But why were they—these AMH ancestors—deified? Because they were a holy people. The Ihins, now a lost race, were invested with soul force (and even immortality) from the beginning. A revered race, they were “capable of prophecies and miracles to such an extent that all other people called them the sacred people.”12
What is man and his destiny?
Born of the earth: earthly. Freed from the earth: his inner part, the soul, ascends
and dwells in the soul of things.
What, shall a dead man live?
—Yes, and rejoice that he so lives.
SUN DEGREE CEREMONY,
OAHSPE, BOOK OF SAPHAH
Called the immortals, the sacred little people simply continued on after death. Immortality did not come packaged with the first race, Asu man; he did not have the spark of eternal life. Some (writing about the Atlantean age) identify this creature (with scarcely any forehead, no frontal development of brain, and just a slope from eyes to pate) as a being without light, called ong in the Panic language.
Early religion can usually be traced to traditions of the Great Ancestor. Tellingly, the oral history of the world’s people sharply contradicts Darwinian anthropogenesis, for the true ancestor was thought to be a kind of divine personality—not an animal—with an off-planet origin. World mythology, with remarkable consistency, portrays the tribes of men as children of the gods (or stars).
People of the Light
Ong signifies spiritual light in both Algonquian and Hebrew. Ong varies with ang as in angel or the Batek T’angoi. These little Malaysian Batek people named themselves after their angelic helpers the T’angoi, the name intriguingly similar to the Algonquian word for medicine man: ang’hoi. The earliest meaning of ong/ang is, simply, “Light from above.” By extension it came to represent intelligence or people of light, specifically denoting that segment of humanity in touch with celestial beings, their ancestors, their teachers—who are then called Or-ang Hidap, meaning “the immortals.” North America, Malaysia, Asia, Africa, and Oceania are chock full of ang/ong-named places and tribes.*95 Orongo is the ceremonial center on Easter Island. In the Orient are Hongshan (Chinese culture), Hong Kong, Mongol (M’ongol), and the Onge Andamanese, and in America are Monongahela (Pennsylvania) and Ongwee: “Behold, the Ongwee had the gift of prophecy; and of seeing visions and of hearing the voice of the angels.”†96
In the Mohawk language, ongwe means “person,” indicating a being of light. In the time of Apollo, in America about 18 kya, the Ongwees came suddenly into the world, possessing all the symmetry of the Ihin and the savageness of the Ihuan: “for the Lord caused his chosen [Ihin] to display the mold of their thighs and their short shapely arms, and together they brought forth heirs of more shapeliness. . . . And they were called Ongwee-ghan, signifying, good-shaped men.”‡97 “The Ongwees came into the world by the thousands and thousands . . . in the north, south, east and west. They had long hair, black and coarse, their skin was brown, copper-colored, and their arms were short, like the Ihins.”§98
The Honga or Hoanga priesthood of ancient America also took its name from ong, “spiritual light.” For it came to pass that he who heard the Voice was made high chief prophet for the tribe and was called Hoanga. Through him, the voice was heard for many, many generations in North Guatama.
A perplexed professor . . . I look up across the moon and Venus—outward, outward into that blue-white glitter. . . . And as I look and shiver I feel the voice in every fiber of my being: Have we come from elsewhere?
LOREN EISELEY, THE IMMENSE JOURNEY
To the ancient Hebrews,*99 it was the “daughter voice” that made God’s will audible on Earth. Their sages said that the voice issues from the glory with great force. An angel receives it in his hands, flies with it to the seven heavens, voice after voice. And the last angel takes it, now faint, and transmits it to the angel messenger. This is the daughter of the voice, the voice of the voice. It is eternal and powerful, full of majesty. It is only when it arrives at the ear of the prophet that it is a subtle voice, a murmur.
Behold, I come not as a sound to the ear; My voice hieth into the soul from all sides.
OAHSPE, BOOK OF APH 1:8
As Jim Dennon, the late Oahspe scholar, summarized these teachings: Via a starship we would now call a UFO, etherean angel volunteers were brought to Earth to teach the Asuans to walk upright. Materialized with mortal bodies, in innocence they (the volunteers) mated with Asu.
This scenario resonates with the theosophical description of incorporeal beings, also volunteers, who incarnated in human bodies. Called Lords of the Flame, they brought immortality and all the high points of culture to the ancient Lemurians. In fact tribal myths all over the world describe contact with a foreign entity who came from somewhere else in the universe to fecundate Earth. In Ottawa Indian tradition, for example, it is said that the inhabitants of Earth were first on other planets; all human beings descend from people of distant worlds.
The Voice
In the olden day the spiritual standard for those humans with “blood of the gods” was the ability to hear the Voice (of the angels). In the time of Apollo, “the Ihuan was first capable of hearing the voice understandingly.”*100 (But they lost the voice by retrobreeding.)
My voice is in all places. The light of the soul of man hears Me. I speak in the vine that creeps, and in the strong-standing oak. . . . Hear the voice of your Creator, O angels of heaven. Carry the wisdom of My utterance down to mortals. Call them to the glories of the heavens and the broad earth. . . . That which speaks to your soul, O man, teaching you wisdom and good works; reproving you for your faults, and enchanting you with the glories of all created things, is the voice of your Creator. . . . As a man among you employs a thousand men to do his bidding, so do I, your God, have billions of angels to speak in my name. . . . Do not put off my words, saying: It is only your conscience speaking. My angels speak to you in spirit, with my very voice and words.
OAHSPE, BOOK OF APH 1:6,
THE LORDS’ FOURTH BOOK 2:4,
GOD’S BOOK OF ESKRA 4:17–18
Genes are to be regarded as cosmic.
FRED HOYLE AND N. C. WICKRAMASINGHE, EVOLUTION FROM SPACE
However, they were not, as recent theories have enthusiastically proposed, ancient astronauts, helmeted and strapped up in their space suits. As no one seems to know the actual source of sapient man (the suddenness of Cro-Magnon and the Great Leap Forward), it’s open season for extraterrestrial proponents and ancient cosmonauts, various writers suggesting a deliberate genetic intervention by aliens. One favorite spacema
n is the (cuneiform) Anunnaki—“those who from heaven to earth came,” or the Watchers described in the Book of Enoch. These visitors are interpreted as a master race from another world, who came to mix their divine genes with the indigenous apelike people of the planet.
Maybe it’s a minor point, but angels are different from ETs; writers have portrayed angels as spacemen, god as the captain of the spaceship, and ethereal fireships as spacecraft. In this connection, Paul Von Ward’s book We’ve Never Been Alone has chapter 5 titled: “Are ETs Angels by Another Name?” The answer is yes. The human race, as one Canadian mystic believed, may have been approached by beings from another region of creation who wanted to interbreed, perhaps to upgrade humanity.
In The Genesis Mystery, Jeffrey Goodman proposes that “instead of evolution through natural selection, some sort of outside intervention was responsible for modern man’s most distinctive characteristics. . . . One must ask whether man’s sudden appearance was truly the result of random gene mutation or the design of some outside force, some purposeful intervention.”
There is a legend from India and Afghanistan relating that an immense “spacecraft” (an angel fireship, not material, but made and powered by the finer etheric currents) came to Earth bringing perfect human beings who mixed their genes with the first earthly race of man. In the beliefs of many other ancient peoples, the stars of other worlds are inhabited by celestials who long ago contributed to our genesis. For example, in the Hebrew Midrash, angels from an ethereal realm descended to Earth, thus accounting for anthropogenesis; these were called Elohim, those who came down from above and interbred with humans.
TIP OF THE RAY
Of earth and starry heaven, child am I.
Mysterious Origins of Hybrid Man Page 24