NEW APPROACH PART SEVENTEEN: WHO WE REALLY ARE

SEVENTEEN: DETERMINING WHO WE REALLY ARE

© Copyright 2022, Edward R. Close, PhD

“That whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent.” - Ludwig Wittgenstein

This is one of my favorite quotes from Wittgenstein’s Tractatus. There certainly are a variety of reasons why there are many things of which one cannot speak, but that doesn’t mean that those things are not important. On the contrary, often they are very important. And I think it is appropriate to begin this post by paraphrasing Wittgenstein’s famous quote in this way:

Things of which we cannot speak, because words are completely  inadequate, thereof we must remain silent. But, conscious of their truth, we must point to their existence with the best analogy we can muster.

I think the reader will understand why and how this paraphrase is appropriate in the context of this post.

A prerequisite for solving the problems of spiritual awakening mentioned in the last post is knowing exactly who you are. “Who are you?” is not a trivial question in the context of these discussions, and answering it properly is not a trivial task. Most people, when asked who they are, provide an answer like “I am a teacher, a writer, a computer programmer, a sales person, a mother, a senior citizen, … whatever that person’s current occupation or role in this life may be. This kind of answer is encouraged more than ever in today’s toxic culture of “identity politics”, where those who want to control you think they can do so by demanding that you conform to the standards of a specific group that they define so that they can either control you, or in some way eliminate you. This kind of shallow identification is not what we are talking about here.

Determining who you really are is done by a consciousness focusing process that I have referred to in earlier posts as “Self-Inquiry”. The logic of Self-Inquiry is a process of sequential elimination of non-essential identifications, allowing you to move deeper and deeper into the heart of consciousness, until only one thing is left: the essence of your existence. The process is analogous to the mathematical process of infinite descent, a method of proof developed by the French mathematician Pierre de Fermat. It shouldn’t be too surprising that the process of Self-Inquiry is analogous to the mathematical process of the quantum calculus of transcendental physics and TDVP, that led to the discovery of gimmel, because the nature of the end result in both cases, is the same: Discovery of the non-physical essence of reality.

In the quantum calculus of dimensional distinctions, expressions describing quantum phenomena, are nine-dimensional Diophantine equations (equations whose real-world solutions are quantal). They are called Diophantine equations in honor of Diophantus of Alexandria, who introduced the concept around 255 AD. The method of infinite descent was developed in modern times by Pierre de Fermat about 1635 for the purpose of identifying solvable Diophantine equations. And the application of the method to analyze the combination of quarks to form protons resulted in the discovery of the non-physical essence of reality present in every stable atom was first accomplished by this author in 2011 and amplified in co-authored works with Dr. V.M. Neppe during the next few years. In this post, we shall see that application of the method of infinite descent in the form of Self-Inquiry results in the discovery of the non-physical essence of consciousness.

Diophantus and Fermat are just two of many evolved souls who reincarnated from past periods of higher mental virtue from time to time, specifically to help humanity survive the dark ages of materialism. As we go on in this series of posts, we will see how all things are intimately and ultimately connected by the all-encompassing field of the non-physical essence of reality, revealed in the logical process of infinite descent, the analytical method of the last apex of conscious reality in the cycles of solar time, in 12,501 BC. More about this later. For now, let’s get back to the process of determining who we really are.

Let’s suppose that you are a carpenter. Have you always been a carpenter? No. After you retire from a lifetime of building things, are you still a carpenter? No. The point is that the word carpenter is inadequate to describe the real you. You existed before you were a carpenter, and you still exist when you are no longer a carpenter. The word “carpenter” is not you, it’s only a useful role you play for a certain period of time. Replace the descriptor carpenter with butcher, baker, or candlestick maker, - anything – and the result is the same: remove the name and the activity, and you still exist.

Now let’s move a little deeper. Each of us identifies intimately with our own physical body and its relationship to a certain line of souls reaching all the way back into the completely forgotten past. Your body consists of a combination of complex interacting semi-autonomous organic structures, formed and stabilized by gimmel in the same way that Primary Consciousness forms and stabilizes all atomic structures including organic lifeforms. At this point in time, most people believe that they are the physical body, no more and no less. But is this true, or just a belief arising from life-long identification, similar to the identification with a profession or any other group of sentient beings, like a profession or a family?

There is a growing body of empirical evidence strongly suggesting that individualized consciousness survives the physical destruction of the body it inhabits. In fact, there is a wealth of very convincing observations and data, from both scientific experiment and personal experience that I have gathered and written about, proving that individualized consciousness is immortal, existing before physical birth and after the death of the physical body. However, I am not going to take up valuable time and space here repeating details of that evidence because most of you who are likely to read this, already know about this evidence. For further information on this subject, see the works of Dr. Ian Stevenson of the University of Virginia, Dr. Vernon Neppe of the Pacific Neuropsychiatric Institute, Dr. Gary E. Schwartz of the University of Arizona, Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove of New Thinking Allowed, Dr. Alan Ross Hugenot, Publications of the Academy for the Advancement of Postmaterialist Sciences. and many more.

The purpose of this blogpost is not to convince anyone that consciousness exists independent of the physical bodies it temporarily occupies. That is simply a fact that everyone will eventually experience. The purpose of this post is to present a cogent picture of the comprehensive model of reality we call TDVP and suggest practical applications within the context of TDVP that can help those who are ready to expand their own individual consciousness beyond material identification, and farther, for those who have already experienced OBEs or NDEs. To that end, let’s continue this exploration of Self-Inquiry.

Because of intense identification with the ephemeral physical bodies that we inhabit during this lifetime, and the trauma of birth, physical life, and death, we almost completely forget who and what we really are. To regain that lost memory, we have to reverse our attention and abandon our hypnotic fascination with physical stimuli. We must turn the spotlight of our mental focus around from the distracting events in the world, events that are beyond our control, to the ever-existing multi-dimensional field of consciousness to discover who we really are. This is a lot easier to say than it is to do! This deliberate turning around from the singular focus on our involvement with the material world, to focus on the pure consciousness of the spiritual world, is identical from an objective point of view, with repenting in the Biblical sense. See Revelation 2:3–5:

And you have perseverance and have endured for My name’s sake and have not grown weary. But I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Therefore, remember from where you have fallen, and repent …

While you may not remember it, every one of us now alive has actually asked to be born. We choose to brave the temporary pains of birth and death again and again, in order to experience physical existence, and we forget that our “first love” was the Infinite Love we experienced in Pure Consciousness, the place from whence we fell.

The proper frame of mind for effective Self-Inquiry is one of alert attention, free of imaginary expectations and random thoughts. Most of the prayerful meditation techniques taught in the various spiritual traditions are designed for calming the mind so that we may connect with the transcendental reality of Pure Consciousness, so prayerful meditation is the best way to prepare for Self-Inquiry. But for anyone who does not already have a well-established meditation practice, I would like to suggest the following: Start by making yourself as comfortable as you possibly can, avoiding the position you habitually assume for sleep. As you probably know, distracting localized physical discomforts are sure to arise, but they can be mitigated by alternately tensing and relaxing the muscle or muscle group involved.

The next two steps are very important. They are simple and easy to describe, but difficult to accomplish: First, withdraw your attention completely from everything outside of your skin, especially including sensations on the surface of your skin. Difficult? Yes, but absolutely achievable. You already know it is achievable because it happens every time you go to sleep. You just have to learn to do it without going to sleep. Second: Focus with increasing intensity on feeling the reality of your existence within the world encompassed by your skin, from head to foot, in all your body’s cells. It is helpful to study anatomy and learn where every organ, bone, and muscle is located in your body. This is not absolutely necessary for successful Self-Inquiry but will make the process easier to master.

It is likely, when first attempting this, that as you try to intensify the feeling of conscious existence within the boundaries of you own skin, you will find yourself tensing certain muscles in your hands, feet, jaws, neck, and stomach as part of the effort. Avoid this. It will block your progress into Self-Inquiry. As soon as you realize that you are tensing up as part of attempting to increase the intensity of your awareness, back off, relax those muscles, and refocus on the simple awareness of  existence. In this way, as you intensify your focus on the existence of consciousness, you will be able to disconnect mental effort from physical effort.

When you are fully focused on the reality of your conscious existence, in this relaxed, alert state, you are ready to initiate conscious Self-Inquiry. Notice that the rhythmic movements of air in and out of your lungs, and of blood circulating throughout your body, will begin to slow down and become more natural and regular. Notice also, that your body, a complex combination of symbiotic living organisms with which you were identified, continues to function very well without your conscious involvement.

When you have successfully completed the steps of infinite descent described above, you will have moved beyond shallow identification with the temporary roles and titles of earthly life, including name, family, profession, position in society, etc., and you will have repented of your love affair with the external world by withdrawing the energies of your conscious attention from it and focusing them on the conscious life existing within your physical body. And finally, you will have realized that you are not actually part of the complex of organisms that make up the physical body.

At this juncture, it may seem that you are left with only two options, both of which appear to end badly. You can continue the descent, in a very real sense, into the bowels of the physical body, descending from the largest organ to the smallest organ, to the largest complex molecule, to the smallest molecule, to the largest cell, to the smallest cell, to the most complex stable atom to the simplest atom, and on to nothingness, without ever finding out who or what you are. Or you can just return to the vicinity of the surface of your skin, where “the wages of sin is death.” – Romans 6:23.

The conclusion in either case is that there is no such thing as consciousness. But consciousness is the only that thing we experience directly. How can it not exist? So, we have reached a Reductio ad absurdum, and I can hear Niels Bohr saying: “Hvor vidunderligt! Vi har et paradoks! Nu kan vi måske gøre nogle fremskridt!” How wonderful! We have a paradox! Now perhaps we can make some progress! And I agree! In fact, I am happy to report that the paradox has already been resolved. To understand how, we must go back to the next-to-last step of the descent traced through the organs, cells, molecules, and atoms above. That smallest atom happens to be the simplest atom, the ionized hydrogen atom, also known as the proton.

The proton, composed of two up-quarks and one down quark, is the most stable object in the physical universe. In 2011, I applied the dimensional quantum calculus I had developed in 1986 to the quark combination to determine why it takes three quarks to form a proton, and why the result is so stable. To my surprise, I discovered that the proton could not be stable, and wouldn’t have the mass it has, unless there were several quanta of something non-physical present in each of the quarks. This became the basis of the mathematical-physics proof of the existence of gimmel, the non-physical third quantized essence of reality. The paradox is resolved when we realize that consciousness is non-physical and non-physical gimmel is the logical end result of Self-Inquiry.

Here, at last, we see that the infinite descent to gimmel, the non-physical essence of reality that makes the stable proton and the physical world possible, and the infinite descent into the essence of what you and I really are, is actually the same journey! The first is a description of the journey in symbols of mathematical logic, while the latter is a description of the actual direct experience of making a personal journey into the essence of consciousness.

I am very much aware of the fact that understanding something intellectually after hearing or reading about it, and actually experiencing it for yourself, are two entirely different things. I have written about the discovery of gimmel and the process of Self-Inquiry before, both on this blogsite and in peer-reviewed papers and other publications. Both Dr. Neppe and I have speculated that gimmel must be related to consciousness for a variety of reasons, but in this post, I am saying something quite different:

In this post, I am saying that the quantum-physics infinite-descent demonstration that proves that gimmel exists, is actually a mathematical analog of the first-person infinite-descent process of Self-Inquiry that proves that consciousness exists. Gimmel and individual awareness exist as finite quantized forms of the essence of consciousness embedded in the infinitely continuous field of Primary Consciousness, and you have access to that field. Everything that exists is immersed in it, and you become aware of it through the process of Self-Inquiry.

The structural forms that make up physical reality are finite logical patterns that exist in the infinitely continuous field of Primary Consciousness, and the laws of form that govern those patterns to be discovered by sentient beings like us, are the natural laws of science.

In future posts, I plan to discuss questions 2 and 3 listed at the end of Part Sixteen.

ERC – 3/25/2022
 

NEW APPROACH PART SIXTEEN - PRACTICAL APPLICATION

 

SIXTEEN: THE PARADIGM SHIFT and PRACTICAL APPLICATION

© Copyright 2022, Edward R. Close, PhD

Visionary thinkers have dreamt of the expansion of science into the realm of humanity’s spiritual experiences and growth potential for hundreds of years; but it is the discovery of gimmel, the quantifiable non-physical content of reality that marks the end of the false doctrine of materialism and the beginning of the paradigm shift from dark-age mechanistic science to the more comprehensive enlightened-age science of mental, physical, and spiritual awareness. But because we are only a relatively short distance past the lowest point in our solar system’s cycle of spiritual development, as explained in previous posts, progress is frustratingly slow, especially for those who are just beginning to awaken on or near the leading edge of consciousness expansion.

I’ve written about the widely believed erroneous assumption that time is uniform throughout the universe many times before this, and, of course, the correction of that false assumption was Einstein’s major, most important contribution to science, but the relationship between relativistic time and consciousness still eludes mainstream science and most of humanity, so it’s worth emphasizing it again here. Just as the experience of visible light, the passage of time and the attendant entropic physical effects are localized phenomena, so is the expansion or decline of individual consciousness. The importance of this fact cannot be over-emphasized because the implications are so profound and far-reaching.

While the effects of planetary and solar-system time affect consciousness expansion in general, individual sentient beings can progress individually because their progress or lack thereof also depends upon their individual choices of what to believe and their willful actions. So, not only will the average mental, physical, and spiritual evolution vary from galaxy to galaxy, solar system to solar system, and planet to planet, but also from individual to individual on a given planet.

Individual progress is frustratingly slow, especially for those who are just beginning to awaken, because once you understand what the purpose of existence really is, you want to reach the ultimate goal as soon as you possibly can. This is perhaps the hardest paradox of spiritual awakening to come to grips with, because at that point, you know that the evil which causes so much suffering in the world is an illusion of darkness that will disappear as soon as there is enough light, but most of the world around you is still enthralled in the delusion of ego aggrandizement, and the least spiritually developed human beings often fight their way to the top of the rat race, where they feed their false egos by trying to control everyone else.

This evil game of domination continues until a majority of individuals are enlightened. In the meantime, those who have begun to sense the real goal, and perhaps have even glimpsed its glory, seek practical ways to mitigate the negative effects of ego attachment, including envy, hate, and greed, human traits that almost always lead to corruption, violence, pain, and suffering. Life often becomes stressful for spiritually awakening souls, as the world slowly exits the dark ages of materialism, and evil desperately tries to hold on to the rule of the physical world that it has enjoyed for so long, while we yearn for justice, freedom, and the joy of the ultimate goal of Cosmic Consciousness.

Those of us alive on this planet right now are influenced to a greater or lesser extent, depending upon our individual level of spiritual consciousness, by the still predominantly mechanistic mode of thought in this world, and we often think there should be technologies that we can employ to change the world. Because of this, there are many books and online courses from gurus or life coaches who claim to be able to teach us how to manifest the kind of world we wish to experience, or somehow move our consciousness miraculously into a parallel universe where we can be healthier, wealthier, wiser, and happier than we are in this one. While some of them offer good advice with tips for better living, most fail to transform our consciousness very much, and fall far short of solving the problem of evil in the world.

Traditionally, we have turned to religion to combat the evil of the world, but there is also a major problem with religious organizations at this point in planetary time. The evil “sufficient unto the day” spoken of by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, has infiltrated the organized religions of the world during the dark ages of materialism. History is full of examples. Perhaps the most obvious example in Western Civilization is the infiltration and control of Christian Churches by evil forces. It has happened to most, if not all of them, on many different levels.

The Roman Catholic Church is a good example, not necessarily because it is the worst, but because it is the oldest, well-organized Christian Church. It was infiltrated by evil from its very beginning. The Romans crucified Peter in 67 AD during the reign of Nero, and replaced him with a Roman puppet designated as Pope, i.e., the head of the Church, so that the government could control the growing threat that the followers of Jesus posed to the self-proclaimed divinity of the Roman Emperors. And, even though it is a matter of record, most people don’t realize that the Vatican actually backed Hitler during WWII and helped fund his war efforts. In return for its support, the Church would be the official State Religion of the third Reich upon world domination. For more details about this, you can research historical records, or see Secrets of the Sacred Cube, Part VI, Patterns of Good and Evil, pages 177-228.

Most religions that have gained world-wide recognition started with the best of intentions, based on the teachings of a fully realized Spiritual Master and that realized one’s immediate disciples, but lesser beings who subsequently gained control as protectors and organizers of the faith, out of ignorance and the evils of ego and greed, subverted part, or all of those organizations into the exact opposite of what the spiritual master they claim as their founder actually taught. The evil hid behind the façade of righteousness.

What is the answer to this conundrum of spiritual awakening in a world in which the majority of the population is still held under the sway of dark-age evil and even threatened with extinction? Is there a way to transform the prevalent darkness of this moment of planetary spacetime into light, at least locally, for at least one or a few individuals, for at least a significant period of time? Yes, there is, but it is not as easy as reading a book, taking a pill, or learning a mantra, and the “evil sufficient unto the day’ is still working to undermine and subvert it. Almost as bad as it was in the first century AD, as a conscious being in this world, you are in a divided and bewildering place and time, thanks to the efforts of evil whose modus operandi is to divide and conquer.

So, as a spiritually awakening soul who has had a glimpse of the goal, you are confronted with a problem composed of at least three complex and challenging questions: 1) Exactly who are you? 2) How can you recognize what can help or hinder your physical, mental, and spiritual progress? And 3) how can you find the path leading to the ultimate goal? The TDVP model of reality provides the scientific basis for answering these questions, and if you can find the answers, then you will be able to find practical solutions to all the problems of your life, including the problems of spiritual awakening.

Discussing each of these questions in meaningful detail will require a lengthy blogpost, so I will pause here, with the intention of starting with the first of the three questions in the next post.

ERC – 3/20/2022

NEW APPROACH PART FIFTEEN

 

FIFTEEN: TIME AFTER TIME

 Copyright 2022, Edward R. Close, PhD

My last blogpost was entitled “Messages from Reality”. The main point of the post was to say that your life, your personal reality, whether it consists predominantly of the fulfillment of hopes and dreams, or failures and disappointments, is the result of your day-to-day interaction with the world of human drama that has been going on for centuries within the space-time structure of the eternally expanding universe. That on-going world of human drama, with all of its joys and sorrows, treasures and rewards, dangers, and discomforts, may be happy and uplifting one day, and distressing and depressing the next, but, make no mistake about it, you, yourself have played the major role in making your life what it is. Your actions in the past are the cause of your present experience of life, and your actions in the present are the cause of your future state of being. You are the architect of the fate of your soul.

Sometimes, you might believe that you are an innocent victim of cruel, random circumstances, but there is no such thing as an innocent human being. The Apostle Paul spoke about this in the first century AD, when he said: “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God…” - Romans 3:21-23. “All have sinned …”  What about an infant who dies a horrible death? What about those who suffer and/or die as unavoidable collateral damage from war or other violence, in which they are not active participants? Why are some people born into poverty, disease, and depravity, while others are born into lives of health, wealth, and happiness?  The answer to questions like these is the very best kept secret of the world of human travail; but the answer is obvious once you see it: We are immortal spiritual beings who evolve spiritually over long periods of time with a modicum of free will.

Do you imagine that you were created out of nothing just a few years ago, when your mother gave birth to you? If so, then you might also imagine that you will just cease to exist when your body is no longer able to function. But that would be a miracle of the first order, since it would violate every bit of empirical evidence attesting to the general truth of the conservation of everything that exists in some form. You may ask: if consciousness is immortal, then why do most of us not consciously remember everything we have experienced in the past? The blocking of the memories of birth and death, and other traumatic experiences is simply a forgetfulness of convenience. Your subconscious mind has devised a way for your ego to protect itself from being confronted with the painful memories of past horrific experiences and regrettable actions that would overwhelm.

To resolve this paradox, we must discover the hidden history of the endless cycles of planetary time. The timeless Masters of Spiritual Consciousness have preserved the truth about the relative cycles of planetary time for us through the darkest ages of this planet and have revealed it to those who have ears to hear and eyes to see; and now science is beginning once again to uncover the subtle clues hinting at the true nature of reality, as the average mental virtue slowly increases. We, you and I, dear reader, are living in a time when science and spirituality are beginning to converge again. A wonderful time to be alive!

Humanity as a whole, however, is still a long way from the optimum point of physical, mental, and spiritual enlightenment, and the road ahead is not easy. The evil side of duality does not give up easily. Jesus underlined this sad, unfortunate truth of his time and ours, when, in the Sermon on the Mount, he advised us:

"Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."

Another way of saying this is: Worrying about what might happen tomorrow is a waste of time. Not only that, wasting your valuable time and attention by thinking about an evil that you believe is likely to happen based on the facts at hand, will make it even more likely to happen, because the evil of the world is like the consciousness of a vicious animal, it senses your fear as weakness and is emboldened to attack. Focusing on the potential for good, on the other hand, however remote it may seem, repels the forces of evil. We also find this theme in the book of Job:

“For the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me.” Job 3:25

Evil and suffering are things we must deal with as part of the dualistic reality of human experience on this planet in order to grow spiritually, and the story of Job is a stark example of how we are tested by it. In this story, Job represents human consciousness, the concept of God represents the ultimately good purpose of reality, and the fallen angel Satan represents the evil that can befall us. Even though Job cursed the day he was born, when good allowed evil to bring pain and suffering into his life, he would not denounce the ultimate good purpose of life, and because of that, in the end, he was blessed. The moral of the story is: No matter how horrible the pain and suffering that you must endure in this life may be, never lose sight of the ultimate good and the unfathomably wonderful purpose and goal of existence and your life.

The nature of reality in this elementary school we call life on Earth, is a repetitive pattern of suffering in spacetime that seems endless. The good news is that things are slowly improving, and the fact that there is a way to transcend the patterns of planetary time all together, through the expansion of consciousness by intent, is even better news. Understanding this will help us to see the value of persevering through the pain and suffering of physical life, as Job did. To this end, a brief review of the ancient concept of planetary time cycles should be helpful.

The illusion that the progression of time is linear is an illusion of locality. It is created by the fact that the average human lifetime, whether one month, or one hundred years, is very short relative to the slow spiral of planetary time within galactic time. Like the illusion of locality of the flat earth, it is dispelled only by an expansion of consciousness, and the average awareness of human consciousness rises and falls in cycles of 24,000 years: 12,000 rising, and 12,000 falling. We are presently still 10,477 years from the next peak of human virtue, and only 1,523 years past the last lowest point in this cycle. For more detail concerning the determination of the world’s position in the cycles of planetary time, see The Holy Science, written by Sri Yukteswar Giri in 1894. The Eighth edition of this book (1990) is available from Self-Realization Fellowship. Also see Secrets of the Sacred Cube, A Cosmic Love Story, Part X, Cycles of Consciousness and Time, pages 364 – 382, Close, E.R. and J.A., 2019.

Fleeting glimpses of memories of past lives, future lives, and between lives, seen in dreams, meditation, and prayer, are products of consciousness expansion, and the increasing number of reports of near-death out-of-body experiences, heralds the beginning of the awakening of humanity to the larger reality within which the physical universe exists. And finally, the discovery of gimmel, the non-physical part of reality in the scientific framework of the TDVP quantum mathematical model, presages the expansion of science beyond the dead end of the mis-guided doctrine of materialism.

ERC – 3/17/2022 

A NEW APPROACH: PART FOURTEEN

 

FOURTEEN: MESSAGES FROM REALITY

Most of the time, I don’t know exactly what I am going to write until I sit down to write it. Often, after a good night’s sleep, I wake with an outline, some very specific thoughts, or even a paragraph or two in mind. This morning is no different. Where do these thoughts, words, and phrases come from? Let’s talk a little bit about how consciousness functions. I’ve hinted at it in previous posts, but maybe I can articulate it a little better today. Your awareness and mine exist on the borderline, a threshold of many facets, where the infinitely continuous and the finitely quantized, the non-physical spiritual and the physically embodied aspects of reality meet.

There’s only one consciousness. Many bodies and many objects, but only one consciousness. Here’s the paradox: At the deepest level of reality, the One and the many are the same. On the surface of reality, they appear to be separate, but it’s an illusion. As your consciousness expands, over millennia, you gradually become aware, growing from a meager flickering spark of waking consciousness, barely aware that you exist, eventually to know that everything around you is part of you, and that you are a part of everything around you.

Dr Harley Rutledge, and perhaps a few members of his team working on Project Identification, mentioned in the last two posts, were interacting with the consciousness of everything around them. That’s why the more involved in trying to identify the UFOs’ structures, movements, intent, etc., Dr. Rutledge became, the more the UFOs responded to him. This is a difficult thing for a physicist to deal with. Perhaps when my friend and one-time mentor, Dr. Harley Rutledge left his physical form in 2006, his consciousness was expanded to the point where he now knows that consciousness exists in every atom of the universe. I hope so.

But what does that have to do with today? More than you might think, of course. To explain, I will have to tell you about some of my activities over the past two days, March 10 and 11, 2022. On Thursday, March 10, I left home about 9:30 am, to drive to Cape Girardeau Missouri on a short business trip. Yes, that’s the same town where Dr. Rutledge, Chairman of the Physics Department of Southeast Missouri State University launched Project Identification in 1973. It’s a distance of about 160 miles by the shortest route. I took that shortest route, which is also a scenic route, winding through some of the most remote parts of the Missouri Ozarks, in order to visit with a cousin and her husband who were living in a town right on that route.

There’s not much traffic on this particular route, especially on a week day, but about half-way through the winding two-lane asphalt state highway, in the Mark Twain National Forest, I came upon a flagman and a couple of cars waiting for guided passage around something up ahead. It turned out to be a huge crane, planted on the right-hand lane of a sharp curve, reaching down into a deep ravine to retrieve something. I couldn’t see down into the ravine to see what was being lifted out, and I just drove on, thankful that the short delay didn’t impact my schedule much.

On the way to my cousin’s house, I passed through the St. Francois Mountains, less than one-fourth mile from the spot in the valley where I was born. I mention this because this was a trip that awakened memories in more ways than one. I have several cousins still living in that area, but I had never met this cousin. Her grandmother and my grandmother were sisters, but she is a number of years younger than me, and my parents and I left the valley when I was twelve years old, several years before this cousin was born. We discovered each other ‘accidently’ through Ancestry.com when independently, we were learning about our family DNA.

After a very good visit with my cousin and her husband, reminiscing and talking about a lot of things, I drove on to Cape Girardeau, where I had four business appointments the next day. Needless to say, it was a busy day, hastened by the weather forecast. A late Spring storm, not unusual in the Ozarks, was on it’s way, with up to three inches of snow. In the late afternoon, I sent a text home saying that I might stop and spend the night in a motel somewhere, if the storm got too bad.

I took a different route home, knowing that the hills and curves of the highway I had travelled the day before would be very treacherous with even a light snowfall. The alternate route was a little longer, but with fewer hills and curves, and it was a US four-lane divided highway almost all the way home. The trip went well until I after had passed the last town of any size with motels. Then, just south of Piedmont, - yes, the same Piedmont that was the location of Project Identification more than forty years ago - the storm hit me.

Conditions went from overcast to foggy, to white-out, in just a few minutes. When I couldn’t see the other cars on the road, and I could just barely see the edge of the highway, I had a quick mental flash of the huge crane I had seen the day before, hauling something up out of that deep ravine. I knew there was one more truck stop on the road I was on, and then steeper hills and hollows until I reached Van Buren, in the deep valley of the Current River. I knew that truck stop was my last chance.

I managed to slide into the driveway and get up the hill to the gas pumps. I topped my gas tank, and went into the store to get warm, as the snow was falling at an alarming rate. There was no motel there, and only the truck stop employees, and a few other travelers like me, who were happy to get in out of the storm. I didn’t talk to anyone except the cashier when I paid for the gas, and when I got back to the car, I asked the consciousness, which I know surrounds me: “Should I go back to the last motel, more than 20 miles away to spend the night? Or go on?” When I drove down the hill, I automatically turned right back onto the highway, toward home, still about eighty miles away.

Before I reached the Current River, the snow had stopped, the pavement was dry, and it was smooth sailing the rest of the way home. The last 20 miles into the remote area where I live could have been treacherous, if there was snow cover, but the roads were clear and only a light dusting of white adorned the grass and leaves when I got home. I arrived home tired and hungry, but happy to be home, and thankful for the Spirit that guides and protects me!

This short story of guidance and protection might be trivial by itself, but it is one more example of the many times that I have been aware of the protection and guidance I have been blessed to receive throughout my life. There has been least a dozen more, some involving the likelihood of immanent death and destruction, far more threatening than this. I have written about some of them, and the danger and guidance in this case was minor by comparison.

Examples of past events during which I was protected include being struck by lightning, surviving a direct hit by a quarter-mile-wide tornado, a couple of major earthquakes, two hurricanes, being on a commercial transatlantic flight with a bomb on board, and several other major brushes with death. Of course, many of these would not have happened had I not been willing to take some pretty significant risks. And here we have another chicken-or-egg puzzle, or maybe even a paradox: Have I had these experiences because I am a risk-taker, or have I taken a lot of risks because I know I have been protected? The truth is: both are right.

Let me bring the events and ideas presented in these posts together here in this way: Application of the TDVP with its quantum calculations is ultimately of great use and practicality because of what it reveals. It reveals a physical universe that is part of a much larger reality whose purpose is to provide a stable, protected environment for infinitely continuous consciousness to experience itself through the individual manifestation, growth, and expansion of mental, physical, and spiritual virtue. Because we are eternal beings who are capable of becoming images of the intelligence from which all things emerge, we have a limited amount of free will to choose that will slowly increase as our consciousness grows and expands. With that free will we can speed this process up, cause it to stagnate, or slow it down. But, most importantly, we can develop a direct personal relationship with the highest form of divine individualized consciousness that reveals itself to us.

 

ERC – 3/12/2022

PART THIRTEEN SCIENCE OR PSEUDOSCIENCE?

 

THIRTEEN: SCIENCE OR PSEUDOSCIENCE?

Dr. Harley Rutledge was of the opinion that physics is a calling, and that having the ability to be successful in the field of physics is a gift. Most people who call themselves physicists would probably agree with him, at least in principle. Most successful physicists have above-average intelligence and a special type of analytical mind. So, most physicists are intelligent, but not all physicists are geniuses, and not all geniuses are physicists. As someone with a score on standardized IQ tests significantly higher than Stephen Hawking’s 155, I am of the opinion that anyone with an average, or above-average IQ can be successful in almost any field they may choose, because IQ scores are not actually as important as inspiration, dedication, and application. In fact, the most successful people are more likely to be normal, well-adjusted people than people with IQs in the 150 to 200 (standard deviation =15). People with super high IQs are often mal-adjusted misfits.

Once someone who was a vocal critic of Transcendental Physics, TDVP, and of me personally, said: “You may have been a physicist, but you no longer are one!” It wasn’t meant as a compliment, of course, but I actually agreed with him. Not for the reasons he was saying it, but because I choose not to identify myself with the limited point of view of a physicist. In my opinion, someone who believes that everything can be explained in terms of physical mechanisms and calls attempts to apply the scientific method to the non-physical aspects of reality “pseudoscience”, doesn’t understand what science is.

Scientific truth is a moving target. It is a mistake to set arbitrary boundaries for science based on metaphysical beliefs and a priori assumptions. The most revered theories and basic axioms of science should always be open to question, examination, and alteration, or even replacement, if new observations warrant it. If non-physical phenomena are observed, and falsifiable hypotheses can be formed regarding their nature, then they are legitimate subjects of scientific investigation.

Mathematical physics was my first academic love, but becoming a physicist was never the end game, it was just one step, an important one, I think, in what I see as an on-going process of education and natural consciousness expansion. Even before I discovered the coincidence of the logical structures of mind and matter, and the primacy of consciousness, as described in the last installment, I had reason to believe that the nature of reality is such that everything that exists obeys laws that are either absolute and unchanging, or that change so slowly relative to the span of human history, that they can be considered to be constant in practical application. Science would be much more difficult, if not impossible, if this were not true.

Physical phenomena are easy to investigate because they obey relatively simple mechanistic laws of cause and effect, most of which were discovered by people who applied their average, or above average, intelligence a few hundred years ago. Non-physical phenomena, on the other hand, are more subtle. That does not mean that they are any less real. In fact, people who have gone very far to investigate and experience the non-physical directly, have pretty much unanimously reported that it is more real than the physical.

A Very Subtle Phenomenon  

We know that physical phenomena exist. And some of us know that non-physical phenomena exist too. Some people apply the term “supernatural” to the non-physical. I suggest that we should not do that. Here’s why: There is ample proof that there are physical and non-physical phenomena, and they are both natural. Along with the term supernatural, we also need to reject the term “pseudoscience.” A scientific hypothesis can be found to be either true or false, but there is no such thing as false science any more than a child is a false human being. A hypothesis that is proved to be false is not pseudoscience, it’s simply a theory that turns out to be incorrect, a model that does not coincide with reality. The terms “Supernatural” and “pseudoscience” are terms that people who either cannot, or do not want to think for themselves use to describe things they don’t understand. These terms are products of unjustified belief, not logical thought, or scientific investigation. When we realize that reality is simply that which exists, we understand that the value of existence is truth and concepts that do not coincide with anything that exists in reality are false.

Let’s revisit phenomena that might be called borderline, something that may be physical, nonphysical, or a combination of both. Such phenomena may exist in the realm of NDEs, OBEs, and perhaps even ghosts: verifiable, but very subtle. Such phenomena have definite measurable impacts on physical reality. In Operation Identification, Dr. Harley Rutledge concluded that the UFOs he investigated and documented in Southeast Missouri from1973 until he passed away June 5, 2006, impacted physical reality in a very subtle and unusual way. During my visit with him in 1982, he indicated that after the observation posts were set up on Pyle’s Mountain near Piedmont and sightings were happening every night, the UFOs started following him around, showing up everywhere he went. It was as if the intelligence behind the strange lights was saying: “If you spy on us, we will spy on you!”

Dr. Rutledge talked about the impact of these phenomena on his life in Chapter 19 of his book, titled: A Very Subtle Phenomenon. The chapter begins as follows: “Unbiased, disinterested physical scientists usually measure the properties of inanimate matter. Biological, medical, and behavioral scientists, on the other hand, study intelligences less than or equal to their own. In this project we dealt with an intelligence equal to or greater than that of man. We interacted with the phenomena under study.” – Shades of quantum physics! - As the number of sightings increased and the data piled up in the form of recordings, pictures, calculations, and event timeline determinations, Dr. Rutledge began to suspect that the intelligence behind the phenomena was toying with him, and that some of the sightings were staged in response to his actions and the activities of the team of investigators. He cited several events that suggested this.

After recording hundreds of sightings over a five-year period, most of them at night, a sighting in broad daylight of a dull grey bullet-shaped object, over 200 feet long, flying low over the Mississippi River about two miles from his home in Cape Girardeau, was the event that prompted Dr. Rutledge to say: “Tuesday, June 19, (1978) was one of those I’ll never forget.” After watching the object long enough to work out a way to estimate its size and velocity, he looked down for a second to reach for his binoculars, and when he looked up, the object was gone. But he had no doubt about what he had seen. “Any lingering doubt I had about the existence of UFOs had vanished with the object.”

A Successful Project

Project Identification was a success from the stand point that it had convinced a skeptical physicist and a number of his colleagues that UFOs are real. But, like many scientific investigations, it raised more questions than it answered. It is clear from what Dr. Rutledge shared with me during our visit in 1982, and what he had written in the Final Report, that he had concluded that there was no doubt that the UFO activity he observed was directed by an intelligence. But who, or what, was the source of that intelligence?

I was not aware of the true scope of Project Identification until I read Chapter 18: Project Summary: A Final Report. It turns out that Project Identification was a much larger and more significant study than the original plan set up on Pyle’s Mountain near Piedmont. When the book Project Identification was published in 1981, it contained information collected over the seven-year period from1973 to1980. A total of 158 viewing stations were set up and the skies over southeast Missouri were watched for a grand total of 427 hours. But that was just the beginning as far as Dr. Harley Rutledge was concerned. In the last paragraph of the book, he said:

UFOs will come back to southeast Missouri again… I plan to be ready with more sophisticated instrumentation, adequate facilities, and sufficient technical help. If we are to learn their secrets, they must be studied scientifically …when most of the world’s inhabitants accept the reality of UFOs, then we will meet them face to face. And we will know their mission.

At the end of Chapter 19, Dr. Rutledge speculated:

I suspect that UFOs actually dart about in daylight at speeds at which they cannot be seen. I base this on a few cases of reflected sunlight and the circumstances of the disc that hovered within viewing range of my office. Possibly a great deal of UFO activity is subliminal – which, if true, could have serious ramifications.

In future installments, I plan to share information from some of my experiences with UFOs and other “borderline phenomena”, including the NDEs in the Great Pyramid, and discuss how TDVP and the quantum calculus of dimensional distinctions (CoDD) provide a deeper understanding of reality that can lead to practical methods of conscious expansion.

ERC – 3/10/2022

PART TWELVE: ANALYSIS OF THE OBVIOUS AND THE NOT SO OBVIOUS

 

TWELVE: ANALYSIS OF THE OBVIOUS

Copyright 2022, Edward R. Close, PhD

“It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious.” - Alfred North Whitehead (a quote worth repeating)

Max Planck: An Exceptional Mind Questions the Obvious

What could be more obvious than visible light? It illuminates our reality, bouncing off of everything we see. What is more basic? Matter, perhaps? In 1874, a very gifted young man named Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck, entering the University of Munich at the age of 16, sought some guidance about what to do with his life. He was interested in music, mathematics, and physics. A well-meaning professor of physics at the university advised him against pursuing a career in physics. The reason Professor Phillip von Jolly gave for his advice was simple: “In this field,” he declared “almost everything has already been discovered; all that remains is to fill in a few insignificant gaps.” Despite this discouraging advice, Max Planck decided to pursue a career in physics.

In an essay, A Scientific Autobiography, published in 1948, Planck wrote:

“My original decision to devote myself to science was a direct result of the discovery… of the far from obvious fact that the laws of human reasoning coincide with the laws governing the sequences of the impressions we receive from the world about us; that therefore, by pure reasoning, man can gain insight into the mechanism of the latter. In this connection, it is of paramount importance that the outside world is  something independent from man, something absolute, and the quest for the laws which apply to this absolute appeared to me as the most sublime scientific pursuit in life.”

I agree with this Platonic view of reality. A similar discovery early in my life also inspired me to embark on the study of mathematics and physics, but my discovery included a deeper fact, also far from obvious, that underlies the coinciding laws Max Planck described in the statement above, the fact that consciousness is a primary aspect of reality. That realization is the most basic axiom upon which transcendental physics and TDVP are founded. It can be stated as follows:

The laws governing the internal structure of finite consciousness and the external structures of objective reality coincide with the laws of primary logic governing finite reality existing within the infinitely continuous field of Primary Consciousness.

Discovery of these laws is the goal of science, and the expansion of finite consciousness to experience the logical structures of infinite reality is the purpose of life. Recognition of these facts gives value and meaning to all physical, intellectual, and spiritual existence.

Planck was fascinated by the elegance and predictive power of the basic laws of physics that were known at that time, including laws governing the motion of solid objects (Newton’s laws of motion) and the laws governing the motion of energy, like Boltzmann’s constant and the laws of thermodynamics. His conviction that the laws governing the internal logic of human reasoning actually coincide with the laws governing the external world inspired him to look for clues to additional absolutes hidden in plain sight in experimental data. He knew that such absolutes would resolve conflicts between incomplete scientific formulations that worked for some dynamic relationships between matter and energy, but not for others.

Planck found one such clue in a fact that was obvious to anyone who had ever watched a blacksmith work with heated metal. The color of the glow of heated metal changes from black to red, and red to white, as the metal is heated to higher and higher temperatures. Wilhelm Wein’s law relating the frequency of emitted light to the temperature of heated metals worked well for high frequencies but failed at lower frequencies. Because of this, other physicists had proposed laws governing specific portions of the energy spectrum. In an intuitive leap, Planck wrote a simple equation combing equations that worked for low frequencies with Wien’s law for high frequencies. It proved to be so accurate at predicting experimental results, that it was quickly accepted and became known as Planck’s law.

A lesser scientist would have rested on his laurels and basked in the success of having a “law” bearing his name. But Planck, like Plato, knew that the laws of nature reside in the absolute realm of the perfect logic of mind and matter, and that a true law could be validated by derivation from first principles. So, he set about the task of deriving the new law from first principles underlying the laws of thermodynamics.

Validation of Planck’s law, combined with the experimental verification of Einstein’s theory of relativity almost two decades later, led to proof of the quantum equivalence of mass and energy. It is safe to say that Planck’s findings undoubtedly surprised professor von Jolly. Not only had “almost everything” in physics NOT “already been discovered”, in fact, scientists had not even suspected that something so fundamental was still waiting to be discovered. To be fair, Professor von Jolly is not the only scientist who has made the mistake of thinking that science can explain everything. There are a number of examples of this unwarranted confidence in materialistic determinism, but I will mention only two very prominent examples here.

In 1814, Pierre-Simon Marquis de Laplace, impressed with the successes of the calculus introduced by Newton and Leibniz just 100 years before, said: “We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future.” He believed that the initial conditions of the universe would soon be known, and that a single formula would be derived to describe the physical existence and movement of everything from the most “massive object to the tiniest object in the universe”, so that, in his words, “nothing would be uncertain and the future, just like the past, would be known”.

The second, a more recent example of this unverified confidence in physical science can be found in the writings of the late theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking. In his first book written for the general public, A Brief History of Time, published in 1988, Professor Hawking predicted that we would have a complete theory of everything by the year 2000, or soon thereafter. He boldly declared that the long-coveted theory of everything “would be the ultimate triumph of human reason - for then,” he said, “we should know the mind of God.” And he also reiterated his belief that he had proved that the universe originated in the explosion of a mathematical singularity, i.e., a dimensionless point more than 13 billion years ago.

A Brief History

Prior to writing for the general public, Professor Hawking had achieved a remarkable amount of recognition and acclaim in the mainstream scientific community, despite the fact that he was horribly afflicted with a rare, early-onset, slowly progressing, lethal form of amyotrophic lateral Sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. Much of his well-justified acclaim resulted from the extension of the central concept of his doctoral thesis, which was application of the mathematical singularity theorem to physical cosmology.

In an essay co-authored with Sir Roger Penrose In 1970, Hawking published his proof. He declared that, if the general theory of relativity is a valid model of the universe, then the entire universe must have originated from the sudden explosion of an infinitely dense mathematical singularity. Even though I disagreed with many of Hawking’s assumptions and conclusions, because of his confident belief that a theory of everything was just around the corner, in 1989 (coincidentally the year I received my doctorate) I sent him a pre-publication copy of the manuscript of my second book, Infinite Continuity, respectfully asking for peer-review comments.

Who was I to imagine that a famous scientist like Stephen Hawking would actually bother to read something from someone he had never heard of? I would not have been surprised if the manuscript had been returned unopened, but I reasoned that he might be intrigued by some of the results I had obtained by applying the calculus of distinctions to the Hubble redshift, and the big-bang expanding-universe model of physical reality, revealing logical paradoxes in the mainstream theory known as the standard model of particle physics.

I was familiar with the Hawking-Penrose proof and had read A Brief History of Time from cover to cover before I sent my Infinite Continuity manuscript to Professor Hawking, so I knew there were several things in the manuscript that he would be likely to disagree with very strongly. For example, I disputed the very idea that a physical “theory of everything” was possible, based on Kurt Gödel’s proof of the incompleteness theorems, and based on the universal law of conservation of mass and energy, I concluded that there was, and could be, no absolute beginning of, or end to physical reality.

After about two months, Professor Hawking returned my manuscript with a brief note saying that he was too busy to do a thorough review of it, but he made one short comment, proving that he had at least scanned it. He said: “I can’t imagine three-dimensional time.” A few months later, in a public lecture, he mentioned that someone had suggested to him that time might be three-dimensional; and in his writings and lectures published since A brief History of Time, he publicly revised his claim that we would soon have a complete theory of everything. He also said: “It may be a mistake to talk about a beginning or end of the universe”. The reasons he gave for revising the bold predictions and conclusions stated in his first popular book were the same reasons I had outlined in Infinite Continuity.

Did exposure to my ideas have anything to do with Professor Hawking’s about-face on these basic issues? Maybe. I don’t know. But, while I still disagree with some of his assumptions, especially his self-proclaimed atheistic metaphysical position, I respect and admire him because of the intellectual honesty and integrity he exhibited by reconsidering the evidence and revising the very ideas that had brought him fame and fortune. That is the undeniable hallmark of a real scientist.

The Analysis of the Obvious

So, why have I spent time and space here sharing my thoughts about Max Planck and Stephen Hawking? Because sometimes the obvious is not obvious at all until the accumulated complexities built on unwarranted assumptions are cleared away. In Part Ten of this series, we saw that the seemingly reasonable assumption that spacetime is infinitely divisible leads to paradoxical results. This unwarranted assumption is corrected with the establishment of the CoDD, TRUE quantum units based on the mass and volume of the free electron, and the principle of quantum equivalence. Validated by rigorous mathematical proof and statistical analysis of data from numerous meticulous Large Hadron Collider experiments, the principle of quantum equivalence applies to all measurements of the basic variable parameters of physical reality, namely time, space, energy, and mass.

In plain English: All of the dimensions of the stable structures of the physical universe are quantized at an unimaginably small scale. This means that at the very smallest scale possible, all measurements are whole-number multiples of the most basic units possible. Those units are the triadic rotational units of equivalence (TRUE). Because of this, descriptions of reality in the arithmetic, algebra, and calculus of the CoDD are in the form of multi-dimensional Diophantine equations.

Diophantine equations are equations whose variables and solutions are limited to integers, in this case, whole-number multiples of TRUE (3-D quantum units based on the rest mass and volume of the free electron). These equations are called “Diophantine” in honor of Diophantus of Alexandria, who wrote about them around 250 A.D. (More about this later.)

The beauty of the TDVP quantum calculus is the way it enables us to identify and clear away the clutter of the misleading conceptual debris of things that actually do not exist in reality, like dimensionless points, one- and two- dimensional objects, and massless particles. By doing so, we become able to have a clearer, more direct awareness of quantum phenomena that cannot be accessed through the limited functioning of the physical senses and their technological enhancements.

Max Planck and Stephen Hawking were knocking on the doors of the absolute truths that Diophantus and Plato hypothesized about 2000 years ago; but they were focusing on the opposite ends of the scale of physical measurement. Planck’s work has extended human awareness down to the smallest possible physical reality at the quantum scale, while Hawking’s work attempts to expand consciousness all the way to the greatest possible physical extent, the cosmological edge of  the expanding universe.

What does all this have to do with analysis of the obvious and the goals of this series of posts? I’m glad you asked. The remarkable discoveries of these two brilliant scientists prove that we can investigate aspects of reality that exist beyond the range of ordinary observation and measurement. The threshold leading to expanded states of consciousness, mentioned in earlier posts and publications, invites us to take the next step, which is investigation of non-physical phenomena. Like the infinitesimally small, the cosmologically large, and consciousness itself, the non-physical part of reality becomes obvious once you are aware that it exists; but, due to our habitual identification with our physical bodies and incomplete conceptual models of reality created from the limited data provided by our physical senses, it is hidden in plain sight.

It is one thing for me to tell you that the analytical methods of the TDVP have proved that the physical universe is only a small fraction of a much larger reality consisting of higher-order non-physical dimensional domains that shape and sustain everything, and that as human beings, we are capable of gradually expanding our consciousness to become aware of it and interact with it, and quite another thing for you to experience it for yourself. It is my intention in these posts to peel back at least a small corner of the façade of materialism covering the true nature of reality and suggest ways that you may be able to experience more of the depth and elegant beauty of the non-physical aspect of reality for yourself. One way to do this is to share some of my own firsthand experiences of OBEs, NDEs, consciousness expansions, and time travel, in addition to providing the paradigm shifting results of TDVP TRUE analysis.

Expanding the Boundaries of Science

It was final exam week at the end of the first semester of my second year as an undergraduate physics/math student. I was making the rounds of my final exams with a full schedule of classes in physics, mathematics, German, and logic. I wanted to finish each exam quickly, in order to have as much time as possible to shift my focus to the subject matter of the next exam. When I sat down to take the thermodynamics final, I was shocked, along with everyone else in the class, to see that the whole exam consisted of just one sentence written in large block letters on the blackboard. It said, “Derive the Laws of Thermodynamics from first principles using the finite difference method.”

This was a closed-book exam, so we were not allowed to use reference books or notes, students were separated by the distance of at least one unoccupied desk, and the exam was closely monitored by the professor and his assistants. The purpose of exams in math and physics in those days before the internet was to find out if you knew the course material, not to see if you knew how to look things up. Professors in the math and physics departments seemed to be competing to see whose classes could be the most difficult, and this was before hand-held calculators were available and a long time before i-pads and smart phones. We were allowed to use slide rules, but I preferred to do calculations by hand, especially on exams, to avoid misplacing decimal points and to make sure I understood the logic of the process. Final exams were stressful. We knew that our scores could count for up to 50% of our grade for the semester.

I knew that the first law was the conservation of energy law, the second law stated that the entropy (disorder) of an isolated system increases in natural processes, and the third law said that entropy approaches zero at the temperature of absolute zero. I also knew that these laws were expressed in terms of infinitesimal differences, and that the finite difference method involved approximating derivatives using Taylor series expansions. but I didn’t have a clue about how to derive the laws of thermodynamics from first principles using the finite difference method. So, after a few minutes of panic, I composed myself and simply wrote “I give up!” on a single sheet of paper, folded the paper, signed my name on the outside, and dropped it into the final exam basket at the front of the room on my way out.

The laws of thermodynamics arise from some “obvious” things about physical reality, like 1) You can’t make something out of nothing, 2) things generally deteriorate over time, and 3) nothing moves at absolute zero. When I thought about the statement on the blackboard, I had nothing. So, instead of sweating for an hour, trying to make something out of nothing, I decided that I should conserve my negative entropy and seek thermal equilibrium by moving on to my next exam.

The next day, on my way to the calculus final, I ran into one of my classmates who was also a physics major.

“What in the world did you do on that Thermo exam?” He asked.

“Not much.” I answered - I didn’t want to tell him what I actually wrote on my exam paper! “What did you do?”

“I wrote down everything I could remember about conservation of energy and entropy from the lectures and the reading assignments, but I don’t recall anything about finite difference derivations. - I don’t think I did very well!”

“You and me, both!” I thought, as I hurried on to the calculus exam.

After the semester break, students were crowded around bulletin boards all across campus looking to see if their final exam scores had been posted. On the lists posted in the physics department, under Thermodynamics, I was surprised to see an A after my name!

“That’s got to be a mistake!” I thought. I had an A going into the finals with a 98% average on tests and homework, but the average of 98 and zero is 49, eleven points below a passing grade. I was hoping to see a D, which would indicate that I would be allowed to do extra work to raise the grade and avoid the embarrassment of having an F on my record. By what miracle did I get an A for the semester?

Dr. Harley Rutledge was a “new” PhD, just out of Graduate school, teaching undergrad physics for the first time that year. When he saw the response (or lack thereof) on the exam papers, he realized that he had given an exam problem that would have been challenging for senior physics students, to a class with only first and second-year undergrad students who had not yet had an advanced course in vector analysis or matrix algebra. On the first day of the second semester, Dr. Rutledge apologized to the class, explaining why he had thrown the final exam out. The entire class breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Connections:

The miracle of existence is gradually revealed in the resolutions of paradoxes. The deeper the paradox, the more miraculous the resolution, and the more obvious the truth that is revealed will be. The miracle of consciousness is the greatest paradox of all, and the central paradox of consciousness is the co-existence within it of both isolation and unity, separation and oneness, the co-existence of the finite and the infinite. The deepest connections are hidden beneath the noise of daily life, but opportunities for re-connection with the realities of consciousness are there, if you are alert. During the twelve years we called 1955 – 1967, I connected with a number of remarkable people who helped me to expand my consciousness by awakening memories of the past and the future. Harley D. Rutledge was one of those people.

When my Central Methodist College roommate and I began investigating psychic phenomena in 1956, Dr. Rutledge was one of the two professors on campus who supported us. After witnessing one of our experiments, he made a physics lab available to us after hours and on weekends, and he interpreted some very cryptic messages we had received, ostensibly from the consciousness of Albert Einstein, who had died in 1955. Descriptions and symbols that were completely meaningless to us, were immediately recognized by Dr. Rutledge as specific notations in the advanced language of theoretical physics consistent with the work Albert Einstein was doing during the last year of his life.

My roommate and partner in the “psychic science” experiments, David M. Stewart, and I were honor students, but in the middle of the first semester of our third year, we did the unthinkable, we dropped out. Before we left Central to embark on a very different chapter of our lives, I stopped by Dr. Rutledge’s office to tell him goodbye. He knew that I was dropping out of college to pursue more metaphysical truths, but the last thing he said to me was “Good luck Ed! I think you will probably find what you are looking for out there, but because you are a natural-born physicist, I predict that you will return!” He was right.

My roommate and I both returned after a few years. We married two brilliant women. David, who had been a philosophy/English major planning to be a Methodist minister, earned a doctorate in geophysics from the University of Missouri, went on to medical school, and eventually earned an ND, and became known internationally as the polymath founder of two very successful health-care organizations. And, yes, he also became an ordained Methodist minister.

I, on the other hand, after completing my physics/math degree at Central, went on to pursue a master’s degree in theoretical physics at the University of Missouri, to teach mathematics, become a computer programmer, systems analyst, hydrogeologist, certified environmental professional, and registered PE. I eventually earned my PhD in environmental engineering with course work in several universities, including UCLA, UC Davis, Pacific Western University, and Johns Hopkins University.

In February and March of 1973, there was a spate of UFO sightings in the San Francois Mountains of Southeast Missouri, not far from the valley where I was born. Strange colored lights, moving in unusual ways through the hills around the town of Piedmont Missouri and nearby Clearwater Lake were reported by dozens of people, including the Piedmont High School basketball coach, high school students, credible adults, local woodsmen, and farmers. Some of the people reporting UFO sightings were interviewed on the local radio station, and within a short time, even while the UFO activity was still being reported every night, the story was picked up by the national news media.

In 1973, Dr. Rutledge was Chairman of the Physics Department at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau Missouri on the Mississippi River, about 75 miles east of Piedmont. A couple of his colleagues made the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that maybe Dr. Rutledge should investigate the UFO sightings in Piedmont. He laughed and responded: “I wouldn’t touch that with a ten-foot pole!”. Dr. Rutledge was at the height of his academic career. As a tenured professor at the largest university in Southeast Missouri, Chairman of the Physics Department, and President of the Missouri Academy of Science, he knew that getting involved in a UFO flap could damage his reputation as a scientist and jeopardize his career. But less than two weeks later, something changed his mind.

What changed his mind was his natural curiosity, the same curiosity that he exhibited during the first year of his teaching career at Central Methodist College in 1956, in relation to the experiments in parapsychology that my roommate and I were conducting. Citing curiosity as “the hallmark of all scientists”, in the report of his investigation of the Piedmont UFO phenomena, published in 1981, he said: “My own curiosity about UFOs dated from the early fifties when I read a couple of books by Major Donald Keyhoe: Flying Saucers From Outer Space (1953) and The Flying Saucers Are Real (1960).”

I did find what I was looking for, and I did return to Central to finish my degree in physics and math, and in 1981, my career brought me back to Southeast Missouri, and in the Summer of 1982, I enrolled in classes at Southeast Missouri State University to update my teaching credentials. When I learned that Dr. Rutledge was Chairman of the Physics Department there, I couldn’t wait to visit with him. When I walked into his office at the university - unannounced - between classes, even though it had been 25 years since we had seen each other, he jumped up from his desk, called me by name, and greeted me like an old friend! We both had classes we had to attend to that day, so that meeting was brief, but a few days later, we met again and talked much longer. After reminiscing about the “old days” at Central, he told me about the Piedmont investigation, and many things that had happened since the investigation.

We were both recently published authors, so, after the visit we exchanged books. His book was Project Identification: The first Scientific Study of UFO Phenomena, Prentice-Hall, 1981 (ISBN 0-13-730713-6). The book tells the story of the Piedmont UFO flap and documents the 21-month-long investigation that Dr. Rutledge and a team of professors and students from the university planned and carried out using the most sophisticated equipment available at that time. They collected a lot of very intriguing data, including a number of photographs and recordings of moving UFOs taken from multiple locations with cameras and recorders anchored in place to avoid the shaky images and recordings of hand-held equipment. Knowing the exact distances between the equipment locations, they were able to determine the size of some the UFOs and exactly how far away from the cameras they were by triangulation.

Project Identification consists of 265 pages of description and narrative plus 16 pages of photographs with 36 photos, and numerous drawings and tables. When I saw the photographs of one UFO taken from two different locations at the same time, the difference between the photos suggested to me that I was looking at two-dimensional images of a phenomenon that actually existed in a multi-dimensional domain at least six dimensions. After reading the book, I realized that Dr. Rutledge had related more information about his experiences with the UFOs to me during our meetings than exists in the book. It was quite evident to me that this investigation had had a profound effect on Dr. Rutledge. This was also reflected in a talk he presented at the MUFON symposium in Michigan in1986: Project Identification: Thirteen Years and One-Hundred and Sixty Sightings Later.

The following description of Project Identification is from Wikipedia ( Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Harley_Rutledge&oldid=993620430 (accessed March 4, 2022):

Challenged to explain sightings of unidentified lights and luminous phenomena in the sky around Piedmont, Missouri, Rutledge decided to subject these reports to scientific analysis. He put together a team of observers with training in the physical sciences, including a large array of equipment: RF spectrum analyzers, Quasar telescopes. low-high frequency audio detectors, electromagnetic frequency analyzer, cameras, and a galvanometer to measure variations in the Earth's gravitational field.

The resulting Project Identification commenced in April 1973, logging several hundred hours of observation time. This was the first UFO scientific field study, able to monitor the phenomena in real-time, enabling Rutledge to calculate the objects' actual speed, course, position, distance, and size.

Observation of the unclouded night sky often revealed "pseudostars" - stationary lights camouflaged by familiar constellations. Some objects appeared to mimic the appearance of known aircraft; others violated the laws of physics. The most startling discovery was that on at least 32 recorded occasions, the movement of the lights synchronized with actions of the observers. They appeared to respond to a light being switched on and off, and to verbal or radio messages. The final results of this project were documented in the 1981 book, Project Identification: The first Scientific Study of UFO Phenomena.

Dr. Harley Rutledge was born January 10, 1926, in Omaha Nebraska, and left his physical body on June 5. 2006, at the age of 80 years, in Cape Girardeau Missouri. My autographed copy of Project Identification, with a personal note dated July 12. 1982, has a special place in my library, and Dr. Harley Rutledge, a friend who contributed significantly to who and what I am, holds a special place in my memory, and in my heart.

In the next installment of this series, I intend to continue connecting the dots related to the evolution of Transcendental Physics and TDVP, resulting from consciousness-expanding experiences and encounters with the people of many lives, past, present, and future.

ERC- 3/04/2022