"ALL THE TIMES IN THE SAME TIME"

PART ONE :

TOWARDS A NEW FORM OF PHYSICS

'And you cannot move at all in Time, you cannot get away from the present moment'. 'My dear sir, that is just where you are wrong. That is just where the whole world has gone wrong. We are always getting away from the present moment.' H. G. WELLS (The Time Machine)

Certain accredit to Eratosthenes and others to Aristotle the idea that the Earth is round. However, it is highly likely that the Pythagoreans were already considering this two or three centuries earlier. After all, the horizon is perceived by the eye as being curved and boats seem to sink into the sea as they disappear into the distance. Is it not also true that when one climbs to the top of a mountain, one can see further and further into the distance, and in all directions?

Yet two thousand years later when Christopher Columbus left to look for what he believed was the new route to the Indies, people still believed that his adventure ... and the World ... would both end at the limits of the Sargasso Sea.

It is not an exaggeration to say that all of the mad ideas that have punctuated the history of mankind, to claim that we live on a sphere was without a doubt the wildest. The Universe had to have a top and a bottom, therefore the Earth had an upper and lower part. However, as everyone knows, things are made so that what is up always falls downwards. Therefore, unless one is lucky enough to be born at the very top of the sphere, we will unavoidably slide and fall towards the infernal abyss. To pretend that men could live on the other side of the World head down and with their feet in the air was so crazy that you would have to be possessed by the Devil not to realise that it was nonsense.

The incongruity of an idea stems from its discord with what is considered as being true. If, however, one can replace this truth with one that is less restrictive, then the notion of absurdity disappears. Thus, when Isaac Newton explained that a force of attraction, called Gravity existed, which meant that "down" was under our feet and above our heads was "up", it seemed totally normal that we could amble so freely on a sphere. Yet to this day we still experience the same gut terror as our ancestors when as children we learn that the Earth is round and also the same inner relief that we were born "on top"!

Indeed, of all the madcap ideas, the Earth being round had to take the biscuit. All of which did prevent it from being true.

The craziness of an idea does not prevent it from being exact. Scientific history is one long succession of absurd ideas only a few of which turned out to be sound. But even then, people had to accept them...

We can already affirm with the greatest of convictions that the idea that we are going to defend here is most probably even crazier than the idea that the Earth is round.

We are talking here about the simultaneity of times.

In other words, together we are going to see that it is totally reasonable to believe that all times exist at once. Or, to be more precise, to accept that whilst you are reading these lines there is another "you" who has just walked into the bookshop to buy this book and another "you" already turning the last page. One is being born and the other dying.... Have I made myself clear?

Every chain of reasoning needs to have a starting point. Ours will be the paranormal. Do not worry, this does not mean that we will ask you to believe in such phenomena. The author has merely chosen this path which he knows well, but others no doubt exist which are closer to your own beliefs or more closely linked to a scientific perspective. All roads lead to Rome, so for those who want to visit the Eternal City, it does not matter which journey leads you there. Once you have completed your visit, you can always take a different route home if you did not enjoy the outward journey.

The paranoramal path could, however, be criticized for developing hypotheses based upon facts which are themselves questionable. Our ancestors who reasoned upon the Earth's roundness were at least sure that the Earth existed. The same cannot be said for our choice here.

However, this should not discourage us. To develop models from purely theoretical data is not a first in science. The family of elementary particles was given coherence due to the idea that they were made up of hypothetical quarks, fundamental particles which it is impossible to isolate because they stick together more strongly when you try to separate them! We suggest that there exists an anti-time unfolding opposite to ours. In all seriousness we imagine that there are parallel universes, with tree-like branches being constantly created. All of which accompanied by a Big Bang or Big Crunch! What can be said about "wormholes" allowing for shortcuts through time? And what should we think of the fluctuations in the vacuum where the "folds" would be creators of matter? Finally, how can we accept the extraordinary quantum mechanics theory which explains so many things but with staggering consequences that would make Einstein shiver?

We could spend a whole book just listing the theories which stem from other theories, which in turn stem from others, and so on... However, this in no way means that science is but a house of cards which could crumble at the slightest breeze. The hypotheses maintain each other and are also based on observation and laboratory experimentation. They are sufficiently entwined so that should a wall fall down, the rest of the building would hardly be affected. The demolished wall will be replaced by another with a more futuristic design and then work will continue.

Some subjects are damned from the outset. The same applies for the most controversial paranormal phenomena. Why is this so? Firstly, because we have such great difficulty in getting them into a laboratory. Secondly, which is worse, because they go against our scientific knowledge and are a real challenge to the most elementary common sense.

But what is common sense? What is reasonable and what is not? In whose name can we declare that one thing is sensible and another folly? We have a terrible tendency to behave as if we had created the universe, as if we knew all about its ins and outs, when in fact our ignorance far surpasses our knowledge. And we pontificate : this is true, this is false...

This attitude has, of course, an explanation. We live in a universe that we do not understand and which is totally beyond us. We ask of science that it reassures us, and scientists want this above all. Is God mad? Does everything that surrounds us have a meaning? Science answers : yes, there are laws; yes, there is a logic; no, God is not mad.

Yet this certainty crumbles when it is presented with a daring hypothesis. Something new means something dangerous. Are you sure that this is but a crack in the building? Maybe everything will collapse? Can you confirm that God is not mad? To tell the truth no one can confirm anything - either that God is mad, or that he is sane, or that the words mad and sane have a sense, or that God exists, or that to exist means anything. We are but puny humans on a small sphere lost in phenomenal infinity. And we scratch our heads.

Scratching our heads is exactly what we shall do throughout this book. After all, what else can we do?

If we disregard the majority of people who make fun of the paranormal, there remains a small core of spirited people divided into two furiously opposed groups, those for and those against the idea. Both parties think that they belong to a privileged elite as opposed to a bunch of inbred idiots. After much thought, and to be totallly unbiaised, I think that it is fair to say that intelligence and stupidity are equally shared between the two groups. All you have to do to confirm this is read the wealth of partisan literature that exists. As for who is right, well....

There are many lines of reasoning that argue for paranormal phenomena, but there are just as many to oppose them. Therefore, instead of inflaming what has always been a sterile debate and which stems more from faith than from reason, we shall follow a very different path. We shall choose, arbitrarily, the side of those "for" the paranormal. And we shall do nothing to defend this choice. Our only goal will be to ask what our choice implies. For nothing is decided gratuitously. Every act and every decision have consequences. If you decide to go and settle in Lapland, no one has the right to judge if your decision is wise or stupid. It is your choice, and that is that. On the other hand, when evaluating the consequences of this choice, no one could be wrong in predicting that you will never be too hot out there.

We could have just as easily chosen the side of those against the paranormal. But then our discourse would have been short-lived. Once you decide that something does not exist, it is hard to talk about the consequences of its non-existence. Consequently, the choice was more or less already made for us.

We shall therefore pretend that we believe in the paranormal and see where that logically leads us.

We have embarked on a very difficult journey. Paranormal phenomena rely nearly exclusively on personal testimony and they seem to have a strange allergy to experimentation, preferring to appear rather dramatically when least expected.What is the troubling, malicious force that can move a piano in a haunted house yet cannot move a match in a lab? I am, of course, exaggerating, but this is the sort of thing that happens. A phenomenon does not let itself be manipulated. However, we could probably say the same for all that pertains to living beings and more particularly matters of the mind.

If we pour sulphuric acid onto copper we obtain copper sulphate and hydrogen gas. This is true and can be checked in any laboratory throughout the world and at any time. However, if I get a fit of the giggles whilst watching a funny film, there is practically no chance that this will happen again if I am shown the same film in a laboratory. I can even assert that the more I see the film, the less I shall laugh. This absence of laughter would lead those undertaking the experiment to logically conclude that I never laughed at all and that my story about a fit of the giggles is, dare I say, hot air. Maybe you think that there is no need to compare real events, such as a chemical reaction, with psychological facts, such as a fit of the giggles? If paranormal phenomena exist and are as we decribe them, we should accept that they are always triggered by the physical presence of a person in a particular mental state. The phenomenon-subject-mind dependence explains alone the difficulties that exist in laboratory experimentation - laboratories are very uninspiring places.

Another obstacle, unique to paranormal activities, is the difficulty that people have in describing their experiences. This is frustrating for the researcher but not really surprising. In everyday life there are more common place phenomena which are already daunting to explain.

For example, nothing is more straightforward than sight. However, this phenomenon is as extraordinary for someone who is blind from birth as the paranoramal is to us. For a blind person, the position of an object is determined by touch. If we tell him that there is a chair at ten metres, he will imagine that sighted people have a mystical sense which allows them to touch things at a distance. We will then explain that this is not so and give the example of a radio that you do not need to touch in order to roughly determine its position. After this he will imagine that all objects have a sound that he cannot hear, apart from radios. All of this does still not explain how we can hear if a table is round or square-shaped...

We know that it is not possible to describe sight to someone who has never seen. Even our vocabulary is ill-suited to the task. Someone born blind can conceive what is round or square, but how can we describe such airtight terms as : bright, dark, shiney, dull, transparent, white, red or blue? How can you explain colours to a blind person when we ourselves do not really know what they are? Seeing colours is so natural to us that we forget to what extent the phenomenon is incredible. Light is made up of electromagnetic waves where different frequencies equal different colours. Normally our brain, which analyses the signals received by the eyes, should tell us that a curtain sends waves of one frequency and that a carpet sends waves of another frequency. The same applies to everything that we see.

Yet instead of receiving a number corresponding to the frequency of the object seen, we in fact receive a colour sensation which is invented by our brain. This strange fact is so extraordinary that we are unable to explain how our brain managed it. Yet the brain we use to reason is the same one that invented the colours! We should therefore not be too surprised if someone who has provoked a paranormal phenomenon cannot tell us how he did so. We should also remember that all of this seems to take place in our subconscious mind.

Unfortunately, the paranormal is more complicated than phenomena which shy away from experimentation or which defy our perception, for it can present itself to us in an unbelievable variety of ways. The following paragraphs illustrate this point.

Let us start with prodigious mental arithmetic. Some see in this a performance based on training. To effortlessly decompose into square or cubed roots, or to the power of five and to many decimal places any number, whilst chatting about the weather, is as unbelievable as watching an athlete jump several hundred feet into the air just because he is supposedly better trained than the others. The same applies for people with a phenomenal memory. To recite a whole newspaper or the trigonometric tables or the complete works of a particular author to the nearest comma, after only one reading, bears no comparison to those who claim to have a good memory.

Then there is telepathy. Amateur radio fans use a CB, but without a receiver, joined by some mysterious waves that convey sounds as well as images, smells, sensations, thoughts and even knowledge, and all of this regardless of obstacles or distance encountered. A person can speak a language that they never studied or even heard of. This is called xenoglossophilia, but is known under the more general term of clairvoyance or metagnosia. A person can also compose music equal to the great composers without being able to read music, or paint like the masters or write in the style of imminent novelists (automatic painting or writing). This can happen either spontaneously or when in a trance, via hypnosis or even during sleep.

There is also retrocognition providing us with memories from before our birth or the opposite precognition, which opens the doors of the future. These two phenomena play with the order of time. And there are also the different phenomena dealing with movement. Telekenesis which means moving objects at a distance, and psychokenesis involving influcencing how dice roll or falling drops of water. And also levitation which alllows us to defy the law of gravity at will.

We can also add to this list the luminous phenomena often associated with levitation and which concern all, or some parts of the body, and the body can either resist flames, or on the contrary produce them. We should not forget stigmata and other physical phenomena such as miracles or paranormal healing. There are also the phenomena linked to hauntings such as poltergeists or ghosts with their knocking sounds, and ectoplasmic activity, a speciality used by the great mediums. We can also mention out of body experiences such as disembodiment, incorporation , bilocation or ubiquity. There are also the cases of materialisation, which involve creating objects from nothing or dematerialisation - sending them back to nothing. Let us finish with reincarnation and disturbing near death experiences (NDE) and a whole series of sub-categories filled with many more "-alogies" and "-ations".

This brief and no-doubt incomplete skimming over the subject shows to what extent the paranormal problem is a confused and complex one. Even with the best will in the world, any mind with a hint of scientific analysis would feel repulsion at the idea of starting on our journey. Not only because the phenomena are surprisingly numerous, but without exception they also have one point in common - they all seem to be irrational.

In order to clear the field slightly, we shall tidy up by removing the subjects which are the least substantiated. Unfortunately, we do not know on which criteria to base this selection. Depending on the criteria chosen, we could just as well keep everything or reject the lot. But we shall try. If we cannot eliminate some categories, we can clean-up differently, just by putting some order into this mishmash.

In order to do so we shall proceed using two different, yet very clear and simple lines of reasoning, which strangely enough will lead us to the same conculsion. We can then start our work proper.

First line of reasoning

It is not totally true to say, as we have just done above, that the only common point shared by paranormal phenomena is their insanity. They have a second, maybe less obvious point in common and that is their age.

Incidences exist throughout history. Whole libraries could be filled just with factual reports of paranormal events. However far back in time one goes, they can always be found. They appear in the most ancient sacred texts from India, in the Bible and in the traditions of nearly all nations. They can in no way be confused with other curious phenomena such as the sun, wind or storms which were attributed to the gods. Paranormal phenomena were perceived as different and were attributed a particular status. In ancient Greece and Rome people would talk about them with fervour, just as we do today.

However, science also exists since time immemorial. It was also cultivated by all peoples at all periods even if for a long time it remained empirical. We know of the incredible development in all branches during the last centuries.

How can it be then that science never encountered the paranormal, not even accidentally? How come that with all of the various paranormal phenomena that exist, no one throughout history has ever been able to explain even one? This seems incredible. In order to help solve this mystery we shall use a comparison.

Let us presume that someone hides twenty or so coins in a furnished room and asks you to look for them. It is obvious that without too much effort you would find at least one, five, or even ten. With a bit more effort you would most probably find nearly all of them, presuming that even after a thorough search one or the other clever hideaway slips your attention. The only unecceptable possibility would be that despite all your efforts you find no coins. Yet this is exactly what happens. How can we explain this absurd result?

There seems to be only one solution. All of the coins have been piled up and hidden in one place! And as we have seen, a clever hiding place can elude investigation. If you do not find the pile, you will obviously find no coins. However, if you so desire you can find all of them at once.

Translated into paranormal terms this means that there does not exist, as we believe, a whole variety of different yet unlinked phenomena, but rather a unique phenomenon which has to this day escaped scientific investigation. This sole phenomenon could, for example, present itself in different ways such as natural electricity which can manifest itself as light (lightening), noise (thunder), shaking (muscle contractions), attraction or repulsion (electrical charges). It was not that long ago that science discovered in the displacement of electrons a single explanation for what seemed to be very different phenomena.

Maybe you are still not totally convinced that there is one unique phenomenon underlying the paranormal. If this is so, here is a second line of reasoning which, although totally different from the first, arrives at the same conclusion.

Second line of reasoning

Paranormal phenomena are many and varied, yet they seldom manifest themselves. It is not every day that one can undergo such an experience. If libraries have been filled with eye witness accounts, it is only due to the vast amount of individuals living on Earth and also the long period of time during which these accounts have been compiled. Yet in statistical terms, paranormal activity is rare. You cannot win the lottery and become a millionaire every day, but if you take into account the number of lotteries that take place on the Earth each year, such millionaires are, in fact, commonplace.

However, more rare are those people who have won the jackpout twice in a lifetime. Even rarer are those that have won three or even more times. Such cases are practically nil.

Nonetheless, when dealing with the paranormal exceptional activities are commonplace. People who only possess one gift are, in fact, few and far between. All of this leads us to believe that talent attracts talent.

Statistics do not admit that people can win all of the time. Calculations help to evaluate precisely the limits beyond which luck is no longer considered as chance. If too many people win too often, then there has to be some trick involved! When dealing with the paranormal, there must also be a trick or hidden explanation if a subject masters several paranormal phenomena. If a man is capable of producing phenomenon A and phenomenon B, one can assume, as these are very rare phenomena, that A and B have a common origin. If another man is able to produce phenomena B and C, we can conclude that B and C also have a common origin. The analysis of these two cases leads us to naturally deduct that as A=B and B=C, then A=B=C. The number of double, triple or greater phenomena encountered in literature on the paranormal enables us to link all observed phenomena. It is therefore logical to imagine that a common origin and therefore a unique phenomenon lies at the base of all paranormal activity. We thus neatly and completely join our first line of reasoning.

We could instinctively already group together some manifestations such as prodigious mental arithmetic and use of memory, or telekenesis and levitation, or even retrocognition and precognition. Now we are able to assert that all phenomena can be linked and we can say that the following statement is true :

IF THE PARANORMAL EXISTS, IT CAN BE EXPLAINED VIA A SINGLE PHENOMENON, which can manifest itself in various ways.

Having established this, we can go on to the next stage.

This fundamental phenomenon, which lies at the base of the paranormal, is of vital importance because it links together all of its different areas. If each part comes from a whole, the study of any one of the parts can help us understand the whole. This idea is inspiring, but confronts us with a difficult choice. How can we choose the best starting point from all of those possible?

When a policeman is presented with a description of a suspect he will, of course, pick the apparently most unusual feature. If the man is described as being tall, with brown hair, grey eyes, thin-lipped and with giant green ears, the policeman will not pick out of a crowd all of the tall men to see if they have brown hair, grey eyes and so on. He will obviously look first for a man with giant green ears. Even if this chap has ash-blond hair and his eyes are less grey than described, the policeman will feel that the giant-eared person he has found is highly likely to be the suspect he was looking for.

Is there a paranormal phenomenon with giant green ears? Or to be more serious, is there a phenomenon that is decidedly more unusual than the others?

We can immediately dismiss prodigious mental arithmetic - not because the subject lacks interest (it is one of the only paranormal phenomena that can be reproduced at will), but because it has to some extent become commonplace. Calculators have turned all of us into arithmetical genius'. Would telepathy be a better candidate? Probably, but due to speech, mail and telephones we can easily do without it. What about telekenesis and levitation? We have remote controls, lifts or even helicopters to move objects or our own body in space, even if these are not exact equivalents, of course. Technical creations are far from replacing the paranormal, but it is true that scientific progress has made us less demanding of the supernatural. What about miracle healing? This would, of course, be ideal, but we have medicine which, rumour has it, is already making miracles. So what do we do? There is no point in going on because the choice is obvious. The most extraordinary, astounding and outrageous phenomenon imaginable is without a doubt precognition!

Precognition is such an outrageous idea that one might wish to dismiss it as unsavoury and strike it off the list of paranoramal phenomena for two reasons. Firstly, because it is highly illogical to admit that you can explore a future which does not yet exist and secondly because the idea itself is frightening. Just imagine what it would be like if we could witness our own, particularly guesome death?..

Nonetheless, this is the subject that we will choose to start our attack on the paranormal fortress. Later we shall see that we must temper any unpleasant ideas that this generates, for our current way of approaching the subject is, in fact, fundamentally incorrect.

Choosing precognition as as a starting point has various advantages. Firstly, because it has giant green ears. It is obvious that such an unruly problem cannot have a straighforward solution. If so, it would have been discovered long ago. We should therefore expect that such a scandalous problem, scientifically speaking, will have a scandalous solution. We are thus at least certain that in choosing precognition as the starting point for our line of reasoning we shall not come up with mundane results. Moreover, precognition has produced a vast quantity of literature, for the subject frightens, but also fascinates people - just ask any fortune-teller. This literature is not just the result of investigators who have collated eye-witness accounts, but also the published results of serious research. Precognition is also interesting because one can instinctively link it to other phenomena where time seems to play an all-important role : retrocognition which is its opposite; phenomenal memory, prodigious mental arithmetic and miracle healing (for their speed) and some aspects of clairvoyancy. Finally, on a personal note, precognition is the only paranormal phenomenon that I have personally experienced. My account is of little importance compared to other more extraordinary accounts published on the subject, but at least it was first-hand. This was not a case of someone's brother-in-law's next-door neighbour's daughter who heard from a friend that it happened to her sister's cousin. Here is my brief, almost mundane story.

At the time I used to play the National Lottery every week with the vain hope that I could improve my existence in some other way than through work. I then moved on to the Loto with the same apalling results. In fact, in over forty years I only won once (which in itself is practically paranormal!), and even then it was not a vast amount (I had correctly selected the last five numbers in the draw). Although this was not a reason to gloat, it brought some spice to my somewhat boring life. The amazing point in this story is not that I won, but that I knew I had done so in advance. I usually bought the newspaper the day after the draw to get the results. However, when I opened the newsagent's door on that particular day, I suddenly knew for certain that I had won. It seemed so obvious that I then experienced what some people call Knowing with a capital K This bears no ressemblance to the sort of subconscious hope that one normally has when one is just about to look at a list of winning numbers. This was pure certainty and (alas) it has only happened to me once.

I am sure that many of you have sensed a similar feeling of certainty about a future event. In this case, you should know that rationalists (of which I am one - even if this displeases those who use the term exclusively to describe themselves), offer two explanations for this experience. The first is to pretend that in some subconscious way I could have heard the winning numbers before going into the newsagents, such as on the radio. I would therefore have unconsciously compared this list with the numbers on my ticket and thus have been aware of the results. This seemingly plausible line of reasoning crumbles because it never came into my mind to look at the number of the ticket that I bought. Once purchased, I would always fold the ticket in two, without so much as a glance, and slip it into my wallet. Therefore, as I did not know my number by heart it would be impossible for me to make the slightest comparison, either consciously or unconcsiously. The second explanation that the rationalists provide is more subtle and is often used in cases of precognition. This involves inversing the order of events. The fact that I played implied a hope of winning. At each draw, one unconsciously believes. Thus when one wins this hope is multiplied to the point that it becomes a certainty. Yet here again the reasoning is spurious, for at the time I was already interested by the paranormal and was perfectly aware of the dangers of auto-suggestion. I was therefore immediately on my guard when this feeling of a "precognitive" certainty hit me when I walked into the newsagents. I can therefore certify that I was not the subject of an illusion due to an inversion of events.

If I have spent so much time on this example it is to show that even in the simplest cases one has to be very cautious. The explanations put forward by psychologists do not have as sole aim to deny the existence of the paranormal, but to limit its boundaries. Our mind loves to believe the wildest things in all fields, for example that the moon is made of green cheese, and we have to harness this desire. With training this quickly becomes second nature.

Before my own experience, I witnessed a case of precognition experienced by a close relative, my grandfather. At 92 he was still as fit as a fiddle. I was therefore horrifed to hear that he warned my father that he was going to die during the day and that he would like to see his family one last time. Apprehensively, I went to visit him with my parents. I had never witnessed a person's suffering and the fact that this was my grandfather only made the experience more painful.

How great was my surprise, therefore, when I went into his room to find him smiling, sitting up in bed propped up by two cushions. He seemed to be in fine form and his mischievous eyes twinkled as they stared at us. He was obviously not dying and I wondered why his warped sense of humour had pushed him to make such a sick joke. We asked him about his health. Did he feel ill? Was he in pain? Did he feel any different from normal? Was there a symptom that made him think that he was going to die soon? No! Nothing at all. He felt fine, but nonetheless knew that he was going to die! We asked him how he could be so sure and he looked at us as if we were idiots asking why one and one make two. "I know", he said, "that is all". It was obvious that for him this statement was self-explanatory.

We listened to him telling happy stories from his life feeling more relaxed, convinced that this was a false alarm. He was usually rather reserved, but surpised us by being talkative and full of energy. At one point he pressed his cheek on the pillow as if to rest a while and moved no more. He was dead!

I had already heard of people who had predicted the date of their death, but I never paid much attention to it. I tended to think that this was due to chance. Many sick people think that their last hour has come and for some of them this is so. These are obviously the cases that we hear about. However, you will have understood that there is a big difference between someone who is scared of dying because he feels the symptoms and a person who feels fine and who "knows" that they are going to die, against all logic, and accepts the fact sereinely.

In his book "Awakenings", the neurologist Oliver Sackx tells the story of a female patient who also suddenly felt that she was going to die. She was so convincing that they gave her a full medical and this showed nothing that could prove to be fatal. That evening, she said goodbye to the other patients in the common room and went to bed. She died during the night. She also said that she "knew" she was not going to be there the next day and that she would die during the night without being able to explain where this feeling of certitude came from. How can you explain this "Knowing" which is so different from ours?

Next to the minor and simple phenomena there are obviously more spectacular cases. The paranormal world seems to revel in isolated and unpredictable manifestations. I will not hide the fact that I am very wary of people who claim that they can predict anything at any time. However, one cannot deny that some people are more "gifted" than others. University experiments undertaken by Rhine in the United States or Tenhaeff in the Netherlands are adamant on this point. The case of the clairvoyant Gérard Croiset studied by Tenhaeff at Utrecht Univeristy is particularly extraordinary and illustrative.

Croiset, like most allegedly genuine clairvoyants, had to be motivated in order to set off his process of "prediction". Whilst having narrowly escaped from drowning when a boy (a common danger in Holland, a country scattered with canals), he naturally felt inspired by the disappearances of children believed to have drowned. He collaborated with the police throughout his life and had a lot of sensational success in localizing bodies. On the other hand, when dealing, for example with cases of theft he generally failed. He admitted of his own free will that he was less motivated by such cases. To this brief portrait, and this is of particular interest to us, we should add that his taste for panache and challenge led him to become the expert in alarming chair allocation experiments. Here is a brief summary of how things happened during such experiments.

Professor Tenhaeff warned Croiset that a chair allocation experience would take place on a particular day in such and such a town. On the alloted day, in a house in the town, twenty-five chairs numbered from 1 to 25 would be grouped into one room, and people were chosen at random to sit on the chairs using the selection process decribed below.

Professor Tenhaeff would then ask Croiset if he could say something about the person who would, for example, be seated on chair number 12. Croiset would think hard and then start to speak : "I can see a woman, she has done this and that, her husband has travelled to such and such a place, etc.." Everything that Croiset said, which was generally very detailed, was recorded, then transcribed and sealed in an envelope, and entrusted to a third party, either a bailiff or scientist.Tenhaeff would then contact the person who was going to organize the experiment and who was totally unaware of Croiset's predictions. This person would then invite people and ask them in turn to invite others. On the given day, the number of guests, which usually out-numbered the number of chairs, would arrive at different times, depending on their mode of transport and on the traffic encountered. In some cases a machine was even placed at the entrance to the house and this distributed tickets numbered from 1 to 25 at random. Each person sat on their alloted chair, depending on either their order of arrival or their ticket number. Croiset would usually partake in the session (due to his thirst for fame). When everyone was seated, the bailiff or scientist would open the envelope and read out loud the contents. Only then would the people present be asked if one of them recognised themselves in the description given. A lady stands up from chair number 12. She confirms that she did do this and that and that her husband travelled to such and such a place, etc.

Unless there was a conspiracy implicating many scientists and lasting several years one has trouble imagining the "trick" that could be involved here. In fact, there are other studies undertaken by different researchers with other groups of people using different methodologies which are just as impressive. Whatever the case, we can subjectively choose and draw our own conclusions from this experiment, for no definite proof exists either one way or the other.

Let us suppose that precognition has been proven and admit that Croiset's case is an honest illustration free from either deliberate or unconscious trickery. What can we deduce from this?

The first idea that comes to mind is that calculation could be involved. The paragnostic would, in fact, be highly gifted and able to calculate future events starting from current ones. However the conditions of the experiment do not allow such a hypothesis. How can he calculate and know who will be invited to the meeting? How can he calculate the precise time they will leave home and take into account the travel conditions on the day, and all of this weeks in advance? How can he calculate which number will come out of the ticket machine?

These few questions show just how impossible the task is. It is not possible to calculate the future.

What is left then? Luck? Gérard Croiset is, in fact, just lucky? He says anything and by luck he is right every time! We must admit that this is not very realistic.

So what should we do? Should we look to one of those wooly theories which claims that ghostly beings living outside time could whisper the anwsers? Or does he have a mystical sphere of timeless knowledge that he can dip into and question at will? Is this the work of God? Such beliefs provide easy answers and we cannot refute them. Unfortunately, they are sterile. They will only satisfy those dreamers who happily believe that you can replace science, which they understand nothing about, with some kind of supernatural philosophy, where everything can be explained without the slightest intellectual effort. They forget that even if we could prove that ghosts exist, the mere fact that they are separate from nothingness makes us ask what they are made of. Here again we look to science. Until we learn otherwise science and its methods are irreplacable. They are essential if we want to make coherent suggestions, even in such a controversial field as the paranormal. Unfortunately, in such virgin territory we know of nothing that bridges the gap between science and the paranormal. Therefore, the only thing we can lean on will be logic. It can be a dangerous tool to use, but we must not forget that in one way or another it provides the medium upon which all of science is based. Basically, we do not have any choice in the matter. It is now time to take the plunge.

If we accept that precognition is a reality, we will then have to admit that in certain circumstances men receive information which comes from the future. Therefore, whether we like it or not we have to admit that THE FUTURE HAS TO EXIST. Now, at this very moment, at the same time as our present!

To admit that some sort of future already exists obviously means accepting that all futures exist simultaneously, from the closest to the furthest away. It is equally obvious that all past times exist in the same way. The reasoning that we have used for precognition also applies for retrocognition. The past can never be more than the future of an even older past.

We therefore accept as a first maxim that :

ALL TIMES EXIST AT THE SAME TIME

The second question which springs to mind is what are these past and futures made up of . The present, we know, is made of matter with molecules, atoms, particles etc. But what about the other time scales?

Man has always liked to feel privileged in the Universe. When he did not know that the Earth rotated, he believed that everything turned around the Earth, in other words, around himself. This geocentric vision then had to make way for the idea that the Earth turned around the Sun with eight other planets. Then man had to admit that the Sun was just another star rotating with thousands of millions of others within a galaxy and that there are a staggering amount of such galaxies, many of which remain uncounted.

Having been ridiculed in space, maybe we can shine in time and make our present a privileged moment?

In this way only our present would be real and all other times would only exist virtually. Things would happen in the same way as at the pictures. The present time is the image of the film that is projected on the screen. The past would be the reel containing the images that have already been shown and the future would be the reel with the images yet to be shown. Only the image actually being projected would represent the present and this alone can be considered as real. Even if the idea is very poetic, it lacks logic. Apart from implying predestination, which is unpleasant to imagine, it also has the fault of unnecessarily complicating the whole issue. Physicians already have enough problems unravelling the thread of material reality, how will it be if we also impose a virtual reality on their work? It is also preferable to attribute an equal reality to all time zones, even if this offends our inbred self-centered vision of the world? This solution is more straightforward and logical. When, for example, a clairvoyant such as Croiset receives a mental image, he lives this as reality. He can describe real objects lit by real light with real photons which cast real shadows corresponding to the Sun's angle relative to the place and time concerned. Contrary to events in dreams, the clarivoyant sees no difference between a vision of the present and one from another time.

We shall therefore accept as our second maxim that :

ALL TIMES ARE EQUALLY REAL.

If all times exist simultaneously and are equally real, a new question comes to mind.

Where can these times be found? Where is yesterday, and tomorrow? In which dimension are they situated? We find space travel easy to understand, yet time travel seems impossible to conceive, even in our wildest dreams. Our brain totally refutes the idea that something material can be situated in a time other than ours. To try and imagine the inconceivable make us feel uneasy and can even make us faint.

Yet as we shall see, nothing can be easier than to situate oneself in all times. You just need to ask the question properly. For this is where the shoe pinches. We have been fed an incorrect vision of the order of time, which makes it impossible for us to approach the issue sensibly. The main unwilling culprit for this unfortunate sidetracking was H.G. Wells.

Wells is best known for his "scientifically inspired novels", as they were called at the end of the last century. As far as we know he was the first to dream of a machine to travel through time. He was, at least, the one who made this amazing machine popular, with such success that science-fiction writers to this day still use it as inspiration, without, unfortunately, changing the basic underlying principle one iota.

With Wells and his followers things always happened thus. The hero goes into a strange machine inside a room. The machine cannot leave the room and in fact it is built so that it cannot move. The traveller then sits down and with a manly determined look moves a cursor in front of him to the year of his choice (in recent works, he types on a computer keyboard and choses the date to the nearest second). Then, gritting his teeth, he pushes the "start" button. The man and machine then just simply disappear, right under the noses of any spectators.

From the traveller's point of view the trip is not usually immediate. The hero has the time to see the room and any spectators dissolve, after which he falls into a peculiar universe where the strangest colours form spinning circles of light. He then dives at tremendous speed into a dream tunnel. The momentum slows, stops and then an unknown landscape appears. He has arrived.

For nearly a century now writers and film makers have been selling the same old story. The idea has been forced upon us to the extent that we no longer see that it is fundamentally absurd.

Let us be logical, even when writing a novel and even if time travel remains but a vision in our minds.

Imagine that I would like to travel back in time twenty-four hours. I live on the Earth, but the Earth moves in space. Yesterday it was in a different place from where it is today. Its position in relation to the Sun and other planets has also changed between yesterday and now. Therefore, if the twenty-four hour old Earth exists at the same time as the current Earth, it cannot, of course, occupy the same position. The past Earth is at exactly the same place as our current Earth twenty-four hours ago. The same can apply for all Earths and all times. Each one has its own place in space. In relation to a summer Earth (where I am now), the Earth that corresponds to winter is on the other side of the sun! Six months, i.e. half of the terrestrial orbit, separate them. We can thus see just how absurd the notion of travelling in time without leaving the current Earth is.

Likewise, even imaginary time travel loses the abstract element that made us feel giddy. To travel in time is above all to travel through space - at least this is easy to imagine. If I want to visit "yesterday", the first thing that I would do would be to climb into a rocket that would take me to the space where "yesterday" can be found, i.e. twenty-four hours away if I travel at the same speed as the Earth. When I get there I will, of course, only be able to see the interstellar void. After all, if all times were visible and tangible, we would already know so! Before we question this part of the problem, we must carefully note our third maxim :

WHEN THERE IS MOVEMENT, DIFFERENT TIMES OCCUPY DIFFERENT PLACES

This raises a new question. If all times are equally real, how come we can only see and touch the present ?

If we imagine that the particles which make up matter can be seen as small solid marbles, it is difficult to imagine that there can be no possible contact between different times. This perception of matter has, however, greatly evolved during the centuries. Initially the marble image was satisfactory and it seemed to solve the problem. At present, the area has become so complex that no one dares to propose another image for the particles, or anything else, for that matter. Everything is governed by a fiendish theory known as quantum mechanics, which to this day cannot be demonstrated, not even intuitively. We shall come back to this in more detail later.

The only thing that can help us now is that this theory privileges the idea that particles, and matter in general, have a wave-like nature. However, one of the most spectacular characteristics of waves is that they deliberately ignore each other when they have different frequencies. This can be illustrated very simply.

The waves used for radio broadcasts are said to be electromagnetic just like light, infrared, ultraviolet, X or gamma rays. The only thing that distinguishes them is their frequency, or their wavelength (same difference). These waves travel in all directions and literally wash over us, without there being any interference between them. This is how we can listen to a radio station of our choice just by tuning our radio into the right wavelength. On the other hand, if two transmitters operate on the same wavelength, we will capture both of them, and the result will be a jumbled mix of sounds. Same wavelengths interfere, they do not ignore each other.

Considering this strange wavelength behaviour, the laws of physics naturally guide us towards a similar solution to help explain the lack of interference between different time zones. It would not be too bold of us to presume that each time is characertized by a frequency which is unique to it and renders it undetectable from another time on another frequency. This implies that all particles which exist in a particular time zone have the same frequency (at least when they interact).

We shall therefore note as our fourth maxim that :

DIFFERENT TIME ZONES EACH HAVE A DIFFERENT FREQUENCY WHICH IS UNIQUE TO THEM.

We have just seen how believing in the paranormal, and particularly in precognition led us to accept the simultaneity of all times. This hypothesis is scientific in the sense that it can be argued either for or against by using facts or other sceintific theories. It is also totally distinct from metaphysical theories (immaterial beings, etc) whose gratuitousness renders any discussion vain. If we accept as our working theory that all times exist at the same time, that they are equally real, have their separate place in space and that the only thing that differentiates them is their frequency, we then have a theory complex enough to provide us with a fairly precise picture of a fundamentally new form of universe.

We know that the whole universe is made up of particles. Let us, for example, consider one at random - the electron.The electron takes up such a small amount of space that one can consider its volume as nil, but this does not prevent it from having a (both gravitational and electromagnetic) influence on an infinite scale. However, even if this image is unsettling, at least the electron only occupies one sole place in time. If we then apply our hypothesis on the simultaneity of times, the image gets much more complicated. The electron is no longer a unique object existing only in the present. It is the sum of all of its chronological entitities. It is no longer a dot, but a continuous series of dots tracing a sinuous line illustrating its existence.

From the viewpoint of current physics (with only one present), we could compare the electron to a single wave on a lake, but with our hypothesis (with multiple present times) we would have to imagine a vast sequence of waves. This is exactly what happens when a stone is thrown into the water. Not a single, but rather a whole sequence of waves are created, one after the other, never catching up with each other. Then, as water is not a perfect fluid, the wave movement progressively weakens and the waves die down until they disappear. We can continue this comparison by adding that the diminishing force means that each wave is different from both the one before and after it. This difference could mean that each wave is unaware of the existence of any of the others, thinking that it is alone on the water. In reality it would, in fact, be part of a whole where each element lives the same experience but at staggered intervals. For example, if one of the waves comes across a cork float (corks are not moved by waves), it will only have done so after the preceding wave, but before the one that follows. Thus, if a wave could receive a message from a preceding wave signalling the presence of the cork float, it would be able to boast that it had the gift of precognition!

An electron could therefore be part of a continuous flow of "signals" whose frequencies are progressively staggered. Only electrons of the same frequency would be able to interfere with one another and recognise that they share the same present. The same would apply for all other particles, for matter in general and all of the wider universe containing galaxies, the Earth and ourselves.

This new way of considering things can trouble us. We would therefore be tempted to stick to the current concept of matter, with its single, unique present. Unfortunately, nothing is ever that simple or comfortable. The unique present is saddled with its own contradictions.

Let us presume that you throw a stone. The law of inertia means that it will want to continue its path forever in a straight line with constant speed. On the other hand, the law of gravity means that the stone will be drawn to meet the ground as soon as possible, following a vertical path from where it was thrown. Stones, contrary to humans, are rather friendly, and your stone will therefore choose a happy compromise and form a gracious curve as the combined result of both movements. All of this is totally logical in relation to the total duration of the trajectory. But if one mentally isolates the stone at a point on its path, things become a lot less clear-cut. The precise point where the stone is marks its present. If this present is the only time that exists, its past obviously no-longer exists. We can then ask how the stone "knows" that it was thrown and how it deduces the speed and direction that it should take in the future. The Earth that we live on is a giant stone thrown into space. However, no experiment has ever managed to establish the material difference that would exist between the "front" and "rear" parts of our planet. Matter does not seem to have any memory of its past where movement is concerned. If this was the case we would have to picture that the present is not the very fine slice in time that we believe it to be. It would, in fact, be rather thicker. We would have part of the trajectory which would enable us to extrapolate the whole curve. Even then the problem would remain complex and whilst we are at it, we might as well concede that the stone knows it was thrown because someone in the past is still in the process of throwing it.

In relativistic physics, we explain the stone's inertia by a distortion of the space time within which the stone "falls". Without going into detail, let us clarify that this distortion happens at a finite speed (the speed of light). We can therefore apply the same reasoning to this as to the stone itself. How can the distortion know where it is going if its past is erased and it does not know where it is coming from?

Up until now we have only mentioned particles, stones or the Earth. These examples of non-living beings have the advantage that we can disuss them calmly. We do not feel directly concerned. But we cannot delay the inevitable forever. The time has now come to talk about human beings.

If all times exist simultaneously, man is not the thin slice of the present that we think we are, but the sum of our past, present and future realities. We are not the carriage, but the whole train. A vast train where brand new carriages are constantly being added to compensate for the dilapidated or damaged ones that are scrapped.

Somewhere on a past Earth, in a precise point in space, we are constantly being born. Further along, in another part of space, we die at the same rate. Between the two there is the story of our lives, eternally repeating itself.

At first glance this is not a very happy picture even if it does provide us with the possibility of near-eternal life. However, things are possibly more subtle than they seem. Let us take the example of a river. It is made up of water which is constantly being renewed at the source. But the river remains the same. Yet the riverbed changes unnoticeably. The water erodes the banks here and deposits sediment there. Little by little the picture changes. After a long period of time the river is no longer recognisable - its course has completely changed. We can therefore say that to some extent the river has two lives. A longitudinal one that is visible, and a lateral one that is hidden.

Similarly, we could possibly have two lives. One that we know well because we are living it now and because it only takes into account one present going from our birth to our death, the other that we are not aware of but which encapsulates all times where lateral changes are possible, not through chance but due to our own will. To be honest I must say that this more comforting theory is quite difficult to defend (as we shall see later), but you can bear it in mind temporarily if you find the idea of constant renewal disturbing.

The above illustrates that when we talk about human beings we easily stray from scientific rigour into philosophical thought, which can more easily be adapted to fit our desires. This is not necessarily a mistake, for philosophy is the only place that our imagination can go to when we arrive at the limits of science. In either case we should not fool ourselves - we cannot accept both simultaneous times and continue to reason in the same old way. The outrageous nature of this hypothesis forces us to radically change our way of thinking. Our reasoning can no longer be that we are part of a whole, but rather the whole itself. It is very difficult to acquire this new way of conceptualizing reality.

Let us imagine that one of our egos from the near future takes a step to the right - of course we will not know this. When the time comes, we shall in turn take a step to the right. (We might dislike and revolt against such an idea.) As we do not know whether the future ego decided to go to the right or left in order to circumvent an obstacle, we cannot consciously decide to do the opposite. However, we could let fate decide which direction we should take, by tossing a coin, for example. We will therefore have a 50 per cent chance of acting differently to our predecessor. If we had to make decisions one after the other, our chances of acting differently would increase accordingly. In this way we could escape from our fate.

Unfortunately, this line of reasoning is wrong for two reasons. Firstly, because if we revolt against our future ego we act as if it were a stranger giving us orders. We forget that it is an integral part of ourselves, and we cannot fight against ourself. It would be as absurd as accusing our left leg of following our right leg when we walk. The second flaw is that the ego that precedes us used exactly the same reasoning before we did and tossed the same coin that landed on the same side. In fact, what terrifies us is that we cannot ecape from our little slice of the present and that we are unable to reason on the scale of our whole existence. Could this faculty constitute the next stage in our evolutuionary process? Or do we possess it already, but are unable to use it.Or could this faculty possibly be the culmination of everything - a sort of super ego which would be our true reality, and which considers that there is no point that the various parts of the whole consider themselves to be the whole itself. Or maybe it is only when we are on the point of dying that a part of us joins the other parts in a spectacular dive into our super ego. Could this be the journey into a tunnel that people who have had near death experiences (NDE) talk about?

As we have seen, the simultaneity of times is a wonderful source of inspiration for our imagination. Whether our theory is true or false, let us enjoy ourselves and follow our dreams. Some astonishing surprises are still lying in store. We will have plenty of time to sort out the wheat from the chaff later. That is, if there is any wheat to be found...

The possibility that all times could co-exist will enable us to find solutions to problems which have none to date, both in acknowledged phenomena or the world of the paranormal. One should not, however, take all of these solutions as gospel. From one hypothesis you can explore many avenues. Maybe this is where the richness of a hypothesis lies, rather than in the suggestion of one or the other solution which can later be proved wrong. We should add, however, that no hypothesis can claim to be a universal panacea. We shall perhaps lift a corner of the veil, but the main mystery will still remain hidden.

If we accept the co-existence of times, a fundamental question comes to mind : was there ever a first time? In other words, is there a future somewhere which itself has no future? Did God throw a pebble in the lake and has the water been rippling ever since? Amongst the ripples there would, of course, be one that would be the first. Only this one could warn the others if there is a cork float on the water whereas nothing could warn this ripple.

At present we cannot answer this question, but in Chapter 8 we shall discuss in more detail the notion of a future without a future. Before then we shall have to get used to this strange concept and see how it can be used.

If we take the simultaneity of times as a base for a line of reasoning, let us see how this can inspire us to find new solutions to some intruiging puzzles.

To make those who do not believe in the paranormal happy we shall now start to consider some down-to-earth subjects such as memory, life, death and evolution.

MEMORY

The brain is a machine of amazing complexity. A whole host of researchers spend their lives trying to understand how it works. The ultimate aim of these people is, of course, to explain the thought process. Some claim that this is a vain hope for the mind is independent of matter (religious and spiritualist theories), or to be more rational, that the subject studied should always be superior to the subject under scrutiny. A human brain could not understand the workings of the human brain because they are both on the same level. Luckily these various objections have never hampered researchers' determination. However, we should admit that we are nowhere when it comes to understanding the human mind. In order to simplify the problem someone therefore decided to start by studying memory as this is the fulcrum for the thought process. We could thus at least hope to understand how pieces of information circulate and are stocked. After all, we already use recording devices and computer memories which function by using different systems.

Unfortunately, no parallel has been brought to the fore. Whatever processes our brain uses to stock information, we would have to admit that these are fundamentally different from any electronic device. Worse still, we cannot even localise where memory lies. Experiments also make you start to wonder.

Planarian worms are freshwater creatures with remarkable powers of regeneration. Like lizards, their head can grow a new tail. But what is more astounding is that contrary to the lizard, the worm can grow a new head! This amazing feature gave researchers the idea to try out a daring experiment. They subjected the worms simultaneously to electric shocks and flashes of light. After a certain amount of time the worms were conditioned to the point that they contracted as if they received a shock when in fact only the light flashed. After this the worms were cut in two and then the researchers waited for the new parts to grow. Once this happened, the worms that had grown a new bottom half were isolated. When subjected to a flash of light, they contracted as expected, for their memory could not have been affected by the loss of the lower half. However, believe it or not the worms that had grown a new head also contracted when they were in turn subjected to a flash of light!

Thus, a tail could generate a new head with a memory! The question they asked next was - is the whole body involved in memory ? When dealing with brain traumas, scientists had already observed that the damaged or missing parts of the brain could be linked by others which initially were not conceived to perform such functions and they seemed to inherit knowledge from some unknown source.

Another problem unique to memory is the complexity and sheer number of pieces of information involved in the process.

In electronics, a machine's performance is expressed in bits per second. The bit is a unit of information corresponding to the simplest piece of information imaginable. It is a case of all or nothing. Either an impulse passes, or it does not. It is either yes or no, 0 or 1, etc. Depending on the complexity of the device used, we can talk in thousands, millions or billions of bits. The cells of our brain, known as neurones, also function with an all or nothing system. Here the information circulates due to an inversion of the electric potential of the neurone's membrane. It is either positively or negatively charged, there is no other alternative.

Therefore, in theory we should be able to calculate in bits the volume of basic pieces of information that our brain receives on average per second, as well as its ability to stock these. Unfortunately we can calculate neither.

It is easy to know how many bits are needed to receive a television programme for we have all of the pieces of information relating to the problem: number of lines; number of dots per line; number of base colours; analysis of the light contrast; sound contrast, etc. On the other hand, a similar calculation to establish the number of bits received by our brain encounters too many unknown factors. We could possibly calculate the approximate number of bits that our eyes are capable of producing, as we know that the resulting nervous impulse is carried by nearly 500.000 optical nerve fibres. We could proceed in the same way for hearing, touch, taste and smell. But what good would this be if apart from these known senses we still cannot calculate the other pieces of information coming from unknown sources. For example, how can we allocate bits to an emotion?

Imagine that you are at a reception and try to imagine the number of pieces of information that your brain picks up per second. You talk with Mr. X, a chatterbox whose wife is wearing a strangely patterned dress and whose perfume reminds you of Mrs. Y who you met in a Greek restaurant where you had an argument with a bald waiter. Whilst cleverly replying to an embarassing quesstion from the talkative Mr. X, over his shoulder you see Mr. Z who is fidgeting by the bar, this reminds you that you are very thirsty and that it is unbearably hot in this room which is definitely too small for so many people. No wonder the air seems charged with electricity and you feel ill at ease. Such pieces of information cannot be quantified. If we tried to count all of the physical and mental images in detail, with their sounds and sensations, this brief adventure when expressed in bits would attain astronomical proportions.

On the other hand, if we cannot evaluate the avalanche of data that enters the mind, we are then unable to have even an approximate idea of the total number of basic pieces of information that our brain could contain. It is not enough to know that our skull contains so many billions of neurones, or how many synaptic links exist between the neurones. The essential thing is to know what system is used for combining them in order to ensure maximum storage capacity . We have no idea what this is, even though theories on the subject abound. No one in the world can confirm with certititude that our brain is able to store all of the information that it receives. We go from the principle that it is obviously able to do so because we have never diagnosed a case of a "saturated" brain. It is from this observation alone that we declare that our brain's storage capacity is amply sufficient for memorizing a whole life. Apart from this, the supposition is unwarranted and is not based on any mathematical theory.

In order to relieve our memory we could imagine that our brain does not stock all that it receives and that in fact it forgets the greatest part. This theory would have the merit of explaining the failures and shortcomings of our memory. Unfortunately for this explanation, it seems as if our brain keeps everything in store, even if it cannot always easily extract the required piece of information. The use of psychotherapy, hypnosis or a psychological shock, has enabled people to rememorize in minute detail episodes from their life that they thought were gone forever. How can we explain the prodigious memory of gifted people who can recite the whole of, for example, Victor Hugo's books down to the nearest comma? Yet such people exist. They must be taken into consideration when preparing a study on memory.

Let us now see how our theory on the simultaneity of times could modify our way of approaching this problem.

Nature tends to do things for a reason. If all times exist at once, then all of our experiences in life are spread throughout our past. Everything is noted, slice by slice, in our successive brains. Why should each of our brains burden themselves with a system of memory when it would be easier to consult the slices that interest us and that already exist. Our brain would then be a machine that consults rather than stores the past. All of which is very different. We do not have to worry if we can commit to memory all of our life, because in fact we memorize nothing. We no longer need to ask ourselves how neurones stock up and restore bits because, in reality, they stock nothing. It is therefore useless to ask where the centre of our memory is in our brain because that centre is spread throughout the past. There is also no point in asking how the planarian worm finds a new head, with memory included, for all the tail needs to do is go back into its past in order to find the composition of such a head.

This way of approaching the problem explains many things, such as free- association. How can we effectively imagine a system of recording information that would differ from one person to the next? Why does the word "tree" mean paper to one person and the hangman to another? How can the data be stocked in such a way that very different ideas can be linked together? If we were to think about the matter in detail we would realize that it is impossible to imagine such a way of classifying data. All of the information cannot be linked together and at the same time obey a code of logic.

On the other hand, things become a lot easier if all times exist simultaneously - for all systems of classification then become possible.

All it takes is a look back in time - linked to the word tree are all of the "trees" from our past in the contexts where we encountered them. If our closest memory is an article that we read on paper making, we will then make the free association between trees and paper. It is the first image that will come to mind. If we go further back, we will come across other associations stemming from the various experiences during our existence : tree-leaves, tree-fire, tree-hangman, tree-family tree, etc. We could even, if we needed to, make a presentation and speak about trees, just by making a selection or compiling all of these ideas that come to us spontaneously. This study will, without any effort, add some slices to our chronological memory and we can consult it later rather than start performing the synthesis each time.

If we continue to use the image of the brain as a recording machine, we could, of course, imagine that all of the events in our life are taped just like a video - this would lead to the same explanation as that provided by the co-existence of times. Yet if we already had the equivalent of such a tape, surely we would have already discovered it. As we know enough about the propogation of nervous impulses, such a considerable and regular movement could not have gone undetected. In fact, the tree-like shape of neurones does not favour this recording theory.

Another difficult problem when considering the brain's memory is how to deal with amnesia, i.e. how can we explain that a man can forget all that happened between two dates? We already cannot conceive a classification which would explain word association, how can we then imagine that each piece of information could be recorded with its precise date? It is possibly easier to suppose that this hole in time corresponds to a non-consultation of the slices relating to this period, whatever the reason for this may be (psychological, or other).

However, all of the above does not clearly explain how our memory works, but at least we can hope and believe that the problem has now become a little less obscure than before. Maybe the dense fog has been replaced by normal fog. We shall once again use a comparison to help define the new data involved in this problem.

Let us suppose that we are linked to cable television, that we can receive a vast amount of channels and that these channels are all showing the same film, but at slightly different times. The first channel started to show the film at 8pm, the second channel at 8.01, the third at 8.02 and so on. If we possess a number of buttons equivalent to the number of channels we can select as we please the part of the film that most interests us. We could also, if we wanted to, see the same passage ten times over, on condition that each time we chose a transmitter with a greater delay, for the film continues to run on each channel. If we take our television set to pieces, we will find no trace of the film inside. The film is not in the set, but in the different television stations that we can access via the buttons we push and which are tuned to a particular wavelength.

By comparison, we could say that our present brain is a receiver. Our past brains are the transmitting stations. As, in fact, all times are equal, each of the brains acts both as a transmitter and receiver. Each one broadcasts its own slice of reality and each one is able to receive the other's slice.

At this stage of our line of reasoning we can ask ourselves how come we have never captured these signals, if such an emission exists. The reply is obvious. We have never captured the signals because we never thought that they could exist and, above all, because we know nothing of the nature of such signals. The only thing that we can be certain of is that they are not part of the electromagnetic waves (such as radio waves, etc) - if this were the case we would already have come across them. This should not, however, make us doubt their existence. If reality is made up of a succession of slices of reality, it would be surprising if an action made on one of them would go unnoticed. We have seen that the simultaneity of times forces us to consider an electron no longer as a small material dot, but as a continual line of dots. Moving one of these dots will necessarily affect the others.

If we string a cable between two trees and hit it with a stick, a line of mechanical waves will go from the place hit all along the cable wire. Each part of the cable will thus be aware of the event that has taken place. If we hit the cable in several places, each part will be aware of the chain of events. If a chain of events represents a coherent message, then it should be possible to capture a coherent message. Maybe the solution to our problem is just mechanical ?

In our brain, each neurone is in direct contact with those from other times. Together they constitute the equivalent of the cable mentioned above. The same parts of the brain are concerned by the same messages at all times, because they are serviced by the same neurones. One of my past egos looks at a picture. This activates a certain number of neurones who in turn "let the other neurones know". These are the same ones that would be activated if it were my present ego that had seen the picture. I therefore have at the origin a picture that triggers off a message, and at the end a message that triggers off the image of the picture. Things could not be easier!

The above can only work if the neurones do not disappear between the two periods to be replaced by others. It so happens that, contrary to the other cells in our body, neurones are unable to divide.We therefore possess the same ones from birth to death. Could we then say that breaks in the line (brain injuries) explain in detail the deficiencies that we have already highlighted?

Whatever the case may be it can clearly be seen, even if only in theory, that the simultaneity of times is a hypothesis that lends itself particularly well to explaining memory. Go and buy a scientific book on the subject and you will quickly understand that the researchers who try to find a solution to this problem using only a single present time have to work in a real quagmire.

As an example, let us see how our visual cortex identifies an object. Experiments have shown that the image of an object is fragmented into various pieces of information (external form, colour, texture, movements etc), each being treated separately by a determined part of the cortex. Recall therefore requires calling simultaneously to mind all of the aspects of the object in order to reconsitute the whole. The image of the object also has to be perfectly situated in time. Thus, for example, if the object is a chair, we have to distinguish between a chair seen yesterday and one seen today. We could, in fact, have repainted it meantimes and covered its imitation leather seat with multicoloured material. The various pieces of information to assemble are therefore different from one day to the next, even for the same object. Above all, many memories slot in between the two dates thus offering a whole range of intermediate stages (half-painted chair, painted but without the material seat, etc), which are inextricably linked to thousands of other details (buying the paint, paintbrushes, material, paint blots on the floor, expletives uttered during the work, cleaning up afterwards, etc).

Just imagine the superhuman task that neurones face when having to explain all of these elements with only electrochemical reactions taking place in a single present. This implies recording each stage in minute detail, however insignificant it may be. It is practically inconceivable.

On the contrary, if we accept the simultaneity of times and the fact that our memory can be spread out along the various realities, the problem simplifies itself considerably. If, whilst looking at the chair today, I want to remember how it looked yersterday, I do not have to torture my mind in order to know where, and how deeply, I buried the desired piece of information within the cortical mess in my skull. All I need to do is tune to the channel that represents "yesterday" and contemplate the image that I see in all its complexity.

How can our brain benefit from fragmenting the visual aspect of objects? It probably makes is easier to perform searches. For example, if someone asks me if I remember a red ball that I had when I was a child, I will filter all of the memories that come from the past of all that is red, round, or rolls or bounces, all that is linked to my childhood far back in the past, etc. Each part of the cortex undertakes its own scan looking for some conformity with the detail that it is responsible for.The first one to find something alerts the others! Or, on the other hand, all of the scans exploring the frequencies are made at once and it is only when the various specialised regions react together that we know that we are in the right part of the past, where the red ball is recorded.

From amongst diverse theories used to explain the same phenomena, there is one that calls upon less assumptions than the others - this is called the "simplicity theory". Researchers generally give preference to the most simple theory for they find it most attractive (the term "beauty" is often used in such a case). This comes from the fact that the great laws of Nature are almost always illustrated by very simple and plain formulae. Such has almost become dogma, to the extent that a very complex theory is perceived as being against the laws of Nature!

When dealing with memory, the simultaneity of times is no doubt the hypothesis which best illustrates the principle of simplicity. But does this mean that we can take it as being true?

HEREDITY

He has his mother's eyes, but his father's nose! A good part of the mechanism for heredity is well known. Once an ovum and a sperm have fused the resulting genetical heritage consists of a random distribution of the parentsí characteristics via the chromsomes which contain their genes - the very base of heredity. We know the story.

What is less clear, however, is how shapes are transmitted. We know that there is a factory that makes building materials, but we do not know which architect designed it. If the child has his mother's blue eyes it is because the gene-factory that he has inherited is coded in such a way as to only make the blue chemical component. We can suppose that such a coding system is not too complicated. Yet the fact that the child has his father's nose is already more difficult. Codifying a shape is no easy task.

If I call a cabinet maker to order an oak chair, he will say no problem, because he has a stock of oak. He will then ask me the sort of chair that I want. I will say that I would like a chair where the armrests join the back in an elegant ascending curve, the back should flare out, but not too much, and the rear feet should be... There is no doubt that he will interrupt my enthusiatic description of the chair of my dreams at this point and say "You don't happen to have a drawing of this, by any chance?".

For nothing is more difficult to describe than a complex form, either in words or even in mathematical terms. The nose is a perfect example of this sort of problem. How can we codify a volume made up of various bumps when none of them even remotely ressembles a known mathematical curve? The genes responsible for shape have, apparently, been discovered. But this does not explain how they work. How do they pass on the image that in turn dictates the piling together of molecules?

When we accept the simultaneity of time, maybe we also have the beginnings of an answer to this quesiton.

After all, this nose really exists in the past - in the flesh, we could say. It is therefore possible that the finished nose could be in contact with the one that is being constructed. Or, even more simply, if we go back in time, it is possible that the father's nose, when it was also in gestation, could be in contact with the son's nose at the equivalent stage of development. The two noses would therefore, to some extent, develop at the same time.

All of the above can seem mad and excessive. However, we should not forget that we are reasoning from a most unusual hypothesis. We should therefore be ready to accept unusual developments. We consider that nature is logical and reasonable because it is there, it exists. But if we take the trouble to observe it more attentively, we quickly see that everything in it is mysterious. Things are not that simple or reasonable and the more we deepen our knowledge, the more we will have the feeling that we live in an amazing world, even if it is governed by certain laws.

If we tap a crystal glass and make it ring, another crystal glass with the same frequency (or sound) will in turn start to vibrate due simply to the resonance created. The first glass passes the vibration onto the air which in turn passes it onto the second glass. If such communication can exist between two glasses, why should it be so mad to conceive that it could happen between two noses? Father and son are linked by all chronological realities. The sonís matter comes from sperm whose matter comes from the father. At most we could say that the link is very slight, but this link would suffice. The instructions have ample time to pass from one generation to another. After all, it takes nine months to make a baby, and nearly twenty years more for it to become a fully-grown adult!

If he does not have his father's or mother's nose, the child could inherit the nose from his father's mother or mother's father. Jumping a generation is not rare. For us this implies more distant communication in time. It does not handicap our reasoning, for we cannot see why it would be more difficult to tune into one wavelength rather than another if, as we suppose, different times have different frequencies. Nothing prevents us from imagining links that go even further back in time...

How far back can we go?

The stable particles which lie at the base of the matter from which we are made are practically immortal. However, as we have seen, what is true of our present should also be true for all other times. The simultaneity of all times must therefore be taken literally. To accept the existence of the past means to accept that all past times exist, however distant they may be. This applies right back to the origins of the universe, if there is such a thing. Somewhere out in space there must be an Earth where man does not yet exist. Further still another Earth is inhabited by giant reptiles. Even further back there is another Earth where life is just starting to appear...

All of these realities transmit constantly and are capable of influencing us. Is this why our fetal life intrigues embryologists, for they see it as a summary of all of manís evolution? Today this recapitulation theory has lost much of its credibility, mainly because it has been used to racist ends (such as to denote inferior races who have stopped at an incomplete stage of development). The fact remains that the fetus is subjected to a succession of transformations which are difficult to explain if we totally reject the idea of "recapitulation". For example, for no apparent reason our heart has had two, three and then four ventricles just like fish, reptiles and then mammals which suceeded each other over successive geological eras. Yet this increase in the numer of ventricles does not consist of additions destined merely to improve the organ itself. At each stage the organ was totally reshaped. It is almost as if contradictory orders were given. This phenomenon is currently explained via genes which would have been inhibited and then reactivated according to a complex process which is far from being elucidated. According to our hypothesis on time, our body would try to obey all of the messages coming from the past in the same order in which they occurred, by progressively scanning the various frequencies received.

However there exists an even more mysterious sort of heredity - the one that governs behaviour.

Instinct makes the spider spin or repair its web, and the bird build a nest or fly without having being taught how to do so. It leads most animals to perform the most unusual mating dances, and makes us stand erect when it is so much easier for babies to move on all fours.

It also governs all of our emotional reactions in life : laughter, tears, anger, the self-preservation instinct, and so on.

Can we imagine that this non-material heritage could be made up of chemical coding? How do genes go about coding such complex activities? Can we even conceive that an answer to such questions exists? The case here is not to convey simple orders in a binary code over a very short period of time. It is an intensely complex film which needs to be projected, a film that brings into play all of the bodily functions over a very long period of time.

Here again, only the simultaneity of times can provide a coherent reply. To act by instinct would mean tapping into a similar situation currently being lived in the past by a predecessor and then copying in chronological order the consequences thereof.

LIFE AND DEATH

We would therefore already possess a receiver tuned into the most distant past time at our conception and the first division of cells. At that moment, a sort of pendulum would be forcefully set in motion. The movement would gradually slow down, and we would venture less far back in time. We have already passed the fish and reptile stage to arrive at that of mammals. The movement slows even more and we become primates, then men. We fly over mankind's history to arrive at eras that are closer to home. The image gets clearer, arriving at our grand-parents, parents and finally ourselves. Then the pendulum prevents us from going further than our own existence. We are already born and have reached adulthood where the rapid decline starts. Small repair jobs are less and less effective. Our cells lose their powers of regeneration, they forget how to function properly. We age more and more. We therefore try to slow the process down, for example by injecting ourselves with young cells (they can still speak to us from a sufficiently distant past). But the effect is only temporary. The pendulum hardly moves now and finally stops altogether. This is death.

In fact, we most probably die due to a lack of memory. In contrast, life would therefore be the gift of all living beings with a memory, or to be more precise, of those that can efficiently consult this memory. The pendulum is just an image. One should imagine a receiver whose ability to capture a whole range of frequencies diminishes with time. It is possible that it does not receive messages continuously, but periodically sweeps the waves just like a pendulum. The waves shown on an electroencephalogram could possibly be an illustration of this periodicity. It is also possible that there is not just one pendulum, but many, each more or less specialised in capturing a particular range of wavelengths. All of the pendulums would be outside our control, apart from those relating to our conscious memory. As soon as we stray onto new ground, anything is possible.

We shall not leave this subject without once more reminding ourselves, and we shall do so often, that when we talk about life and death, we reason in slices. For the whole being made up of all of the chronological realities (all of the slices), the notion of life and death no longer has any meaning.

Let us return now to paranormal phenomena and see how our notion of the simultaneity of times can help us understand them better.

As we have already mentioned; we start from the hypothesis that these are real phenomena. The following lines of text are therefore not here to convince you of their existence but rather to see if their reality could be illustrated via our hypothesis. If one day the future were to show us that the paranormal is but a mistake and an illusion, we would be left with answers to questions that do not exist! This possibility would, however, not call into question the value of the answers themselves. This situation is a common one for theoreticians. Just as physicists imagined a totally hypothetical particle called the graviton as the mediator for gravitional interaction. They were even able to calculate the value of its spin (its own intrinsic motion) and obtained a value twice the intrinsic spin of the photon. If the graviton hypothesis were abandoned one day, it would not invalidate the calculated value of its spin, and would not affect the calculation of spins in general. In the same way, the disappearance of the paranormal would not mean the end of our hypothesis, even if it stemmed from it.

By the way, if paranoramal phenomena make you come out in spots, have no fear, just skip this chapter (and the next one too, just to be sure!).

RETROCOGNITION

This faculty means knowing facts that are too far away from us in the past to form part of our memory. There are many people who remember in detail the first years of their lives. What is less commonplace is to find those that remember their own birth, or even their fetal life. Yet such cases do exist. On the other hand, what is beyond comprehension is how someone can know of facts prior to their conception. However amazing it may appear, such cases seem to occur more often than the former.

It is this extraordinary faculty which has no-doubt given rise to hypotheses such as spiritism or reincarnation. The previous lives are lived with such reality and a wealth of details that the person has the intimate feeling that he is dealing with real facts and not dreamlike fantasies released by his subconscious. From this it is only a short step to imagining that as well as our bodily envelope there exists an immaterial entity, capable of travelling through time. The step is all the more easy to take because nearly all religions teach that apart from the body, we also have a soul. Souls, spirits, ghosts, astral bodies, karma, doubles and other terms in the same vein are thus meant to explain our relationship with the past. The only fly in the ointment is that nobody seems to worry about what these untangible messangers can be made of. For they have to be distinguishable from nothingness. We are just given the word "immaterial" as if this is in itself an explanation. This is not very susbtantial, is it?

The simultaneity of times is also but a hypothesis. Yet it requires the faith of the believer. What you are offered is debatable (in all of the senses of the word). It is suggested that all matter reaches beyond the present, into the past (and future) and that because of this signals can circulate, thus taking pieces of information from one time zone to another. We can decide to disagree with this idea, but cannot deny that its nature is strictly materialistic. There is no side-stepping as in the case of immaterial entities. We are talking here about matter and signals that travel around it.

If retrocognition is real, we have to stick to an explanation in the same style as the one given for memory. But instead of exploring just the near past going back to our childhood, our receiver could sometimes pick up frequencies that come from more distant pasts. Just as our pulse is usually 80 or 90 beats per minute, but can in some situations range from 30 to over 200 beats. We could thus trace our family tree far back, with the number of people doubling at each generation, from two parents, four grandparents, then 8, 16, 32, 64 128, 256, 512, 1024 etc. And by using the collateral branches (brothers, uncles, cousins), we could even obtain a considerably greater number of contacts. If we let our mind freely wonder through the frequencies we could be like jokers who have fun by dialing phone numbers at random. Anything could be possible. We could just as easily come across Aunt Agatha or an Egyptian mumifier or Einstein. This is exactly what happens in all known cases of regression.

PRECOGNITION

As we came upon the idea of the simultaneity of times whilst reasoning about precognition, it would be poor show to get excited about the idea that this same theory could shed some light on precognition.

If, as we suppose, memory is the art of being able to tune into the times that exist in the past, we cannot see why it would not be possible to also home into future times as these exist simultaneously. The principle must be strictly the same for past as well as future memories. Yet we are forced to admit that if the message works well one way, from past to present, the same cannot be said for the other direction, from future to present. We must therefore suppose that there are mental barriers which exist to prevent this sort of link. These barriers are not unknown to our brain, for it uses them constantly for our personal comfort. Our eyes are bombarded with sights and our ears with sounds. Yet our brain is able to isolate one person talking from within a crowd. The slightest touch on our skin can annoy us and this should make wearing clothes unbearable. Yet our brain can disregard this constant agression. On a more psychological plane, the barriers are just as constant and vigilant. We are at the mercy of stress or accidents every minute of our lives. This perpetual danger should normally monopolize our thoughts constantly. Yet we can easily block these troubling thoughts to take great interest in what are sometimes unbelievably trivial everyday matters. This subconscious repression seems to be even stronger than our instinct for self-preservation.

Thank heavens that this is so. Our very existence would be unbearable without it. We should therefore not be surprised to find that the door to the future is locked for us. As long as we live our "slice" of life and reason in slices, we will be unable to accept that our future is unavoidable. On the other hand, if we could live our life globally, we could accept the future serenely. Going to the hairdresser is a traumatic experience for our hair. For our whole being (hair included), it can be a very pleasant experience.

This does not stop messages coming in from the future. For some unknown reason one or the other detail can be captured from a whirpool of signals. As no machine is perfect, maybe our mental barrier is not watertight. Or maybe a particular mental state could transcend our memory receiver and make it work on unusual frequencies. Or maybe we have the right receiver but do not know how to use it properly. Finally, maybe our whole ego decides for its own reasons to deliberately let certain pieces of information filter through. There are numerous alternatives, you can think of some more.

We should note in passing that the most common case of precognition is one that happens in a very short space of time. You suddenly feel that someone you have not heard from in a while is going to call you. This is exactly what happens in the seconds that follow your "feeling".

This should be compared with our memory of the immediate past. If a number such as 8.629.371 is read out to you, you will be able to immediately recite it without error. If one or two other numbers (143.627 and 37.882, for example) were added, you would most probably have forgotten the first one. We cannot explain why, but we know that immediate memory is perfect.

The same seems to be true for immediate future memory. This would therefore prove that the two memories function in the same way, just as we thought they did.

TELEPATHY

At first sight we would be tempted to make a fundamental disinction between retrocognitive or precognitive communication and telepathic communication. In fact, in the first case we can easily imagine that communication can occur between two of our egos, separated by time. The message passes lengthways. When dealing with telepathy, the communication always takes place with another person. The message travels laterally. It links two presents.

Telepathy is a phenomenon that has intrigued humanity since time immemorial, yet it is only recently, since the end of the last century that we have been able perform experiments on it. This is due to the the invention of the radio. Hertzien waves result from a certain manipulation of electric current and as we have already seen, our brain is also home to electric currents. It seemed as if this was the right track. Telepathic waves were, in fact, just Hertzian waves.

Unfortunately, the researchers never managed to capture them, even using the most sensitive receivers and trying out various wave ranges. Moreover, there seemed to exist no obstacle to block a telepathic message, be it a Faraday cage or lead casing. Exit therefore the Hertzian electromagnetic wave theory.

Electromagnetic waves are not the only thing that can link two people at a distance. A simple electric wire can also do the trick. All you need to do is connect to each end a piece of equipment far simpler than a transmitter-receiver, called a telephone. Could the same be true for telepathy? If so, where is the wire?

If all times exist simultaneously, it is easy to imagine such a wire. All of our realities joined lengthways in time make us think of a cable made up of countless strands (molecules), which are in turn made up of even thinner strands (atoms and particles). We can easily imagine the phenomenal amount of pieces of information that could circulate within such a system. This would largely satisfy all of the requirements of memory, heredity, retrocognition and precognition, in other words all that requires a link between different times. But how do we deal with telepathy which involves the link between two present times? Or, to be more precise, how can we use the longitudinal cable to make a lateral connection?

If we look at two electric cables side by side, and if we know that current flows from one to the other, we will naturally conclude that somewhere on their journey there must be a connection. It is therefore reasonable to think that between two telepathists there must also exist the equivalent of a connection in their past (or possibly in their future).

Simple physical contact could suffice. We would therefore just need to go back in time to locate the moment where, for example, we shook hands with the contact person, then go towards that person's present to ensure a present-past-present link. This physical contact would explain why telepathy seems to work better when the protagonists are linked by family or emotional ties. As the chances of physical contact are greater, finding a connection is also made easier.

Any nurse working in a maternity ward can confirm the extraordinary ties that bind a mother to her child and which means that she knows when the baby has a problem, even if they are in separate rooms. Does any physical link between two beings exist that is longer-lasting or stronger than pregnancy?

You might find this path rather tortuous, but that which is complicated to imagine can possibly be simple to perform. Logic dictates that a bolt of lightning should be a straight line, because this is the shortest distance between two points - yet lightning logic is different. It finds it easier to zig-zag along paths of highest ionisation. Believe me, the lightning is right.

When we reason with an unknown phenomenon we must always bear in mind all of the facts observed. Yet with telepathy there is an element that seems to hold quite an important role, and that is psychometrics. This barabaric and ill-suited word refers to using objects to act as a bridge between two subjects. These objects are referred to as relay-objects or batons as an analogy to those used in relay races. They can be considered as equivalent to the object that a police dog is given to sniff before carrying out a search.

In telepathy it is often the case that the mechanism starts at the precise moment when one of the subjects touches an object belonging to the other person. However, it is obvious that the journey subject A-object-subject B cannot be made in one unique present. If A touches the object at the present time, subject B, to whom it belongs, can only have touched it in the past. Consequently there is a clear link between present-past-present and not, as it would more simply seem a present to present link.

A passage through the past seems to be a prerequisite for all telepathic links. We should note, however, that we can use the same reasoning by going via the future rather than the past and this increases the chances of making contact.

A particularly interesting aspect of telepathy is that is also seems to affect the animal world, more particularly domestic animals. Everyone knows an amazing story of a dog or cat that finds its masters after having travelled unbelievable distances.

Expert rationalists obviously have ready-made explanations to resolve such enigmas, and at first gance they seem to be reasonable ones. Given the fact that the masters generally travel by car, train or another form of locomotion, the animal's sense of smell could not have made them follow their tracks. Another more credible reason had to be found.

Rationalists currently favour two hypotheses for such experiences.

The first calls upon astronomy. The animal would orientate itself according to the sun's position at each particular time of the day. This would already be an amazing feat, considering the precision that such a technique requires. But how does this work when the sky is cloudy? There is no explanation. And what about at night? Must we admit that the animal knows the constellations and can pick out the pole star? This is difficult to take seriously.

The second hypothesis relates to the earth's magnetic field. We suppose that unlike pigeons, cats and dogs are sensitive to this magentism and could thus use it to find their way and localize the place where they live. This makes them look clever and, if we do not go into too much detail it can seem credible. After all, why not?

This way of explaining things is, in fact, deeply dishonest. It leads you to believe that every lost animal has always been abandoned a long way from home and that they would therefore always be looking for their home. This covers only half the problem and we dare not consider the other half, for in these cases magentism does not explain anything!

We cannot, in fact, ignore those cases where the masters have moved house and gone to live elsewhere. Then the animal does not have to look for his home, but for a place where he has never lived and no magnetic force (or Pole Star!) can tell him where this is. This way of slicing up the problem in order to keep only the part of it that can be explained is very common with some pseudo-scientists who would sell their souls in order to stop the paranormal interfering in such issues, or rather than admitting their own ignorance.

If we had to choose, although is seems more extraordinary the telepathic hypothesis appears to be less hairbrained than the notion of so-called doctored common sense. We have a lot of physical contact with a pet and this creates a very strong link that fits well into the framework discussed earlier. By going back through the chronology of successive events, the animal could be capable of piecing together in detail the journey that his masters made which he would then just have to follow, with no need for any calculations or deep thought.

TELEKINESIS

Telekinesis means moving objects without having any direct or indirect contact with them - by this we mean "known contact", for there must be contact somewhere if the energy can pass from subject to object. We thus find ourselves in the same situation as in the case of telepathy. We will therefore call upon the same solution, and we shall use the same wire, but this time to carry energy rather than pieces of information. By using an electric wire with two conductors we can transmit a telephone message by using a modulated weak electric current. Yet we can use the same wire to transmit a much stronger current that could, for example, activate an engine. Depending on whether we favour the quality or strength of the message, we have a whole range of possibilities between the electronic brain and the power station. In telekinetic terms this means that it should be possible to transport enough force to make an object move. All we need to have done is touched the object once so that this strength can be propogated in the direction present-past-present.

In this case, it is probable that absolute control of this force is necessary. Some objects have very simple behaviour, for example moving along in a straight line, but others, on the contrary, present signs of complex manipulation, such as a key turning in a lock, or knots coming undone in a rope, or even more subtly, in some hauntings, the traces of an invisible hand that has slapped a witness. It is no wonder that in such spectacular cases people have suggested that evil forces or disembodied spirits exist. The simultaneity of times allows us to approach the problem more seriously. The subject responsible for the phenomenon has in his memory real images of keys turning, knots being undone and slaps being dealt. He has personally lived such scenes and therefore knows all of the details relating to them including the amount of energy deployed. It is therefore possible that there can exist a sort of active recall. The past act and the present energy combine in the object to be affected, be it a key, rope, or cheek.

Once more we must insist on the fact that this is one explanation amongst others that the plurality of times can suggest. We have some ingredients, but we do not know how to use them yet. We are at the ABC of a new way of writing. It might take a long time before we can learn how to read fluently. Also, before we can answer the question, we need to know if we have asked it properly. This is not always easy. If I suddenly feel that someone who I have not seen for a long time is going to call me and he does so a minute later, I can ask myself "how could I see into the future?". Yet maybe this question is not correct. Maybe I should rather ask myself how the person I would talk to in the future managed to warn me that he was going to call. In the first case we have an example of premonition, in the second telepathy. In the first case we have a message from future to present, and in the second there is a message from present to past to present. The quality of my reply depends on the quality of the question asked.

There are also, of course, all of those questions where we cannot even start to think of an answer. How can we explain that very complex experiments are a success when more simple ones fail.

Many laboratory experiments have been made to try and scientifically prove the reality of telekinesis. One piece of apparatus used is a jar that lets water, or another liquid fall one drop at a time on a blade that cuts each of the drops into two equal halves. These half-drops are then captured in two containers placed side by side under the blade. The experiment involves filling only one of the two receptacles purely by will. This is an easy test to perform to show if parakinesis exists. It should be quite easy to intervene slightly. Another piece of appratus often used is a mechanism that can roll a die at random. Each side of the die has exactly the same chances of coming up top. The experiment involves mentally influencing the die's roll so that one side comes up rather than another. Here things are even more simple for it is not possible to isolate the sides of a die whilst it is rolling. If you blow on the drop that falls to favour one receptacle, you will obtain the result that you want. Now try to roll a six by blowing on a rolling die and you will find that your efforts are in vain. Yet after analysing the results from umpteen experiments, it seems as if the test with the die is the one that provides the most convincing results. This is truly remarkable.

Now that you have the details of the experiment, you can try it out yourself, if you so wish.

One last point. As we are talking about telekinesis, let us talk about a similar phenomenon - levitation. In everyday life it is easy to lift an object if it is not too heavy. On the other hand, no one has ever been able to lift themselves, apart from by jumping or using a staircase. It is a matter of having support. If I lift an object, it loses its weigtht and I am heavier by the same amount. If I lift myself, I have to find my weight elsewhere. There also must be something to lean on somewhere. Where? We have a choice, and can select the floor of the present time, for example. The energy that equals the weight moving from me(present) to me (past) to floor (past) to floor (present). Or we could also admit that my weight has disappeared from the present and is distributed between my past egos. All of the past would act as a fulcrum for the present. What is important when choosing a solution is that it must not go against established scientific fact. Nothing is lost nor created is as true for a universe with many times as it is for one with only a single time.

PRODIGIOUS MEMORY AND ARITHMETICAL GENIUS

Prodigious memory is not one that is particularly, but rather abnormally good. There is a world of difference between having a good memory and a prodigious one. One case involves a good performance, the second deals with what can simply be called perfection. After having read a book, most common mortals can sum up the contents more or less efficiently. A mental giant will be able to recite the whole text down to the last sentence, word and comma. If he does not lose his gift, which sometimes happens, he will be able to recite the text thirty years later. If we interview these masterminds they will explain that their performance requires no effort and that all they need to do is read the original text as it unrolls in their brain as clearly as a photograph.

Prodigious memory therefore seems to be more a case of perfect recall rather than perfect memorization, which is the ideal definition if we accept the reality of all times. If we cannot read all of the pieces of information that go through our mind, it is probably because we are unable to concentrate for long enough on the desired frequency. The image is therefore so brief that we cannot take in the detail. All that remains is the general impression from when we read the text, thus our numerous shortcomings. The problem is even greater because the brain only remembers what it can! Experiments made with American students have shown beyond doubt that our brain is very lazy when it comes to recall.

A large number of students were presented with a table covered with objects and they were asked to commit them to memory. After some time, they were asked to draft a complete list of the objects. At first it was clear that no student could provide a complete list, which was not surprising considering the number of objects involved. A few days later, they were again asked to draft the list of objects that they could remember. As expected, the amount of objects remembered dropped again. However, what was surprising is that when the results were analysed they noticed that none of the students remembered an object that they had forgotten in their first list. Our memory is therefore not made up of memories, but of memories of memories. Our brain does not bother going back to the original experience, but goes to the closest and most recent recollection thereof. It is therefore likely that someone with prodigious memory always goes back to the source and that he can maintain this image long enough to observe all of its details. This ability would go back to earliest childhood and it does not, unfortunately, seem to be possible to acquire it later in life.

Arithmetical genius' are often gifted with prodigious mnemonic force, even if in this case the memory is more geared towards numbers. Thus one genius managed to easily memorize all of the logarithmic tables. Having later realised that it was far easier to perform the calculation each time, which provided a greater number of decimal places, he tried in vain to forget these tables. This was impossble - he kept them in his memory for the rest of his life.

The fact that memory and mental arithmetic are linked is no surprise. Our difficulty to perform mental arithmetic comes from our inability to remember all of the partial results. If we write calculations down, we make up for our faulty memory by reading the intermediate results which in time allows us to perform complex calculations.

But memory cannot explain everything to do with arithmetical genius'. The most extraordinary point is the unbelievable speed and ease with which these people obtain the answer. Most of these genius' are able, once they have received the details of some staggering calculation, to disregard it and to hold a conversation whilst performing a minor calculation such as establishing the day of the week for a given date or converting someone's date of birth into their actual age in seconds. The person will then stop and tell you that incidentally the reply to your high-power calculation was such and such. The most amazing thing is that they will always be right. This provides a triple mystery relating to : the speed, the ability to deal with several problems at once and the faultless result obtained.

Regarding the speed involved, we can imagine that our brain distributes the work to our past brains. All or some of the calculations are therefore undertaken by the past brains before the problem has even been set. Even more simply, we could suppose that there is always precognition of the result or a reading via telepathy in the question-master's mind. However, in the latter case the reply would be immediate, and this has never been witnessed. A minimum amount of time (seconds or minutes) appears to be necessary. At least some of the work seems to be undertaken in the present, for example, the compilation of the intermediate results.

The ability to deal with several problems simultaneously is interesting because it leads us to believe that our brain works at different levels : one level for the conscious mind, another for the subconscious and, probably, others for other tasks such as controlling our bodily functions and all that keeps us alive or makes our life easier.

As for the infallibility of the calculations, they could be a direct result of the infalliblity of memory.

We could at first imagine that prodigious memory and mental arithmetic are a positive gift for those that possess them. These people have an advantage over the rest of mankind and their talent could perhaps foreshadow tomorrow's man. They could be ahead of evolution!

At present we know that this is not so and that you pay a high price for this sort of skill. It seems as if these 'priveleged few' are in most cases mentally handicapped people whose intellectual level is generally way below (or should we say outside?) the average. We also know that this "gift" is most often found in autistic people and that there is probably some link between the two.

But what is the cause and what is the effect in such cases?

Could it be possible that some mental disorders have their origins in chronological blockages? Could such blockages favour memory and mental arithmetic but prevent normal brain activity? Could they also explain repetitive behaviour (obsessional blockages) as observed in autists? Or could there be people who could get lost in different times and have trouble concentrating on the present? In short, are there temporal illnesses?

These are new and strange questions which our hypothesis on the plurality of times raises...

MIRACLE HEALINGS

So-called miracle healings are above all unexplainable healings which take place in unusual circumstances. They can take place outside a religious context. Even the Church does not impose a religious connotation to such phenomena. This is why the Church only emits an opinion on such acts very cautiously, according to an opinion given by doctors concerned, usually the medical commission in Lourdes. These doctors are not necessarily of Catholic faith, and come from various religious denominations. When the Church exceptionally, and we stress that this is exceptional, decides that a miracle is genuine, it is usually in cases where no other explanation can apply. However, one should not imagine that this means that miralce healings are mundane spontaneous healings where we do not understand the processes involved. In fact these cases are most spectacular and defy all common sense. The most amazing are those that involve two-part healing. At first there is an instant physiological healing, for example eyes suffering from white atrophy causing incurable blindness suddenly regain their function whilst doctors from the medical commission can see no improvement in the illness. In other words, the person who has been cured sees with eyes that cannot see. It is only in the second phase that the real healing takes place in the days or weeks that follow. Only then can doctors witness that the eyes have become healthy again. Similar cases have been witnessed with bone damage which impedes movement, or tumours or atrophy.

Healing as such could be explained by the memory that we have of the healthy organ. The ill organ is put into contact with the healthy organ from the past and should then take up its old form. Regeneration would take place due to the elimination and production of cells in the same way that the fetus can model its heart by changing the number of ventricles (recapitulation theory, see section on heredity) or make one nose ressemble another (ditto).

Invisible but effective healing is even more extraordinary for those that witness it. How can we see the manifestations of a healing when the healing will, in fact, only happen later? What cannot be read with useless eyes must be read by other eyes, those of the healed person in the past or future or those of another person. It is essential to accept this, unless we want to fall back into the world of those beliefs that we have already dismissed, such as spirits, souls, etc. Immaterial beings cannot have the gift of sight. An invisible and untangible eye cannot provide an image. Where there is no matter there cannot be an eye nor sight. As far as recovering lost mobility, this could at first be explained by a temporary loss of sensations permitting movements that were impossible before due to pain rather than due to a physical problem. This numbness would be due to a disconnection from the present time.

We can once more see that all attempts to provide an explanation inevitably come across the idea on the simultaneity of times. Any attempt at a rationalist solution referring to psychosomatic influence or spontaneous remission is a subjective simplification of a problem where people refuse to take into account all of the details.

OTHER PHENOMENA

We have thus explored the main paranormal phenomena. Some manifestations remain which we should say a few words about even though they are usually just variations of those that we have already analysed.

Metagnosis manifests itself as the spontaneous knowledge of something that usually requires lengthy studies. The subject suddenly becomes able to play an instrument, draw or write 'in the style of a particular author' or to speak a language that they have never learnt. If such phenomena are real, they are no doubt linked to telepathy or retrocognition. Identification with a person in the past or someone in the present who has these abilities takes place.

Apparitions, out of body experiences, appearance of ectoplasm and other purely visual phenomena could just be illusions, but are nonetheless based on real phenomena. A is in telepathic link with B. The impression of a presence can be so strong that A creates a dreamlike image of B. A can see B appear or A thinks that he has travelled to see B. It is not because we are dealing with the paranormal that means that we should forget other more down to earth solutions which can fulfill our criteria. Dreams and hallucinations are a good exmaple of this. When faced with an irrational experience, the rational side of our brain can drum up images or sensations that have no aim other than to provide an explanation, even a lame one, for such irrationality.

People with stigmata are probably linked to miracle healings because these bring physical changes with them. This explanation is not totally satisfactory, for in this case the model does not exist in the past as in healing. The model is, on the contrary, only imaginary. A mystical person with stigmata not only reproduces the marks that ressemble those of Christ, but can in some cases provoke swellings which imitate the heads of the nails on the back of their hands and the bent point of the nail in their palms. In psychiatry different shaped stigmata have been obtained by making the subject believe that they were being branded with an iron of a particular shape. It therefore seems as if some orders coming from our simple memory could superimpose themselves onto our memory of regeneration. Could this not be a possible explanation for some cases of mimicry witnessed in animals?

How can we explain the almost too perfect ressemblance between some butterflies and the leaves of some trees, for example? Could the animal have captured a plant message that was not aimed at it and which superimposed itself onto its own genetic image? The plurality of times does not just apply to man. We should expand our reasoning to all of the animal world (and even the inanimate world, for even the smallest particle exists simultaneously in all eras).

Could a bird's feathers have also copied a plant model by accident? The origin of feathers is an unanswered mystery in the evolution story. They suddenly appear, in all their complexity, in the archaeopteryx, the ancestor of birds, at the Jurassic period. This animal descended from a family of small dinosaurs which were scaly. Feathers and scales are made from the same corneal matter and one indisputably stems from the other. How can a rounded scale suddenly have modified its shape to become branched-out without having apparently having gone through any intermediate stages (absence of fossils)? Where did the order come from for such complex subdivisions? Should we not look for the origins of this in the complex ferns whose leaves strongly ressemble feathers? Is this so hard to believe if we accept the existence of stigmata? Is it more reasonable to believe, as in orthodox theory, that nature favoured the gradual transformation of the scale into a feather as if each stage was a real improvement on the previous one. What advantage would an animal have if it lost the efficiency of its front legs and was yet unable to fly because of its sketchy feathers?

Many similar examples can be given of intermediate forms that are necessary (for 'evolutionism') but irreconcilable with the notion of real progress. Also, there are no fossils to help confirm the assertion that there were intermediate stages (at least not in macro-evolution). Some researchers then thought that nature could work in 'leaps' (saltation theory). This idea is also very difficult to defend. In our example, it would not only imply that feathers would have suddenly appeared (which we can accept), but that at the same time the animalís front limbs would have been stretched enough to act as a frame for what would become the wing, that the muscle structure would have been fundamentally modified in order to ensure the mechanism needed for flapping, that even the respiratory system would have adjusted, and so on. This unbelievable correlation could only be conceivable as part of a pre-determined plan! At this point, we fall into creationism. A superior being would intervene at each important stage of evolution.

It is too early to hope that the simultaneity of times could provide us with a new credible concept. Yet maybe we could hope for something similar to that which is found in quantum mechanics. A particleís trajectory is not determined at its starting point, but at its destination! Before that, all routes are possible. On arrival, only one has been selected. Can we imagine that nature imagined all of the possible routes possible to go from non-flight to flight? It then chose one solution, the one that had the most chance of succeeding? This would imply that nature acts 'intentionally' or that the image to copy already exists in the future!

In recent times, the television has made us used to seeing surprising scenes. An apple becomes a pear, a toaster becomes a rocket or a man becomes a racing car without there being any break in the images. The miracle comes from the fact that we can now manipulate images electronically. The principle in itself is simple. You start with a first image, for example a man, and a second one, which could be a car. The computer is then told to calculate all of the intermediate images needed to go from one to the other.

As the sequence is short, we do not have the time to see the intermediate stages, but we easily imagine that they must be monstrous. Half way between man and car there must be a fantastic monster whose arms and legs are neither limbs nor wheels. A hybrid being which cannot run nor drive!

These are but technical performances which relate to immaterial objects. Yet we cannot be but deeply troubled when we compare this computerised party game to some modifications seen in the evolution of species. Let us take the example of the caterpillar which changes into a butterfly. To start with, there is a living animal: the caterpillar, and at the end, the objective to reach is another fundamentally different animal also perfectly adapted to life: the butterfly. Between the two lie a whole range of hybrid forms, a nightmarish succession of monstrosities, unable to survive more than a few moments in the hostile world. This is why the insects had no other alternative than to isolate themselves completely during the transition period inside a protective cocoon, the chrysalis.

The analogy with the electronic manipulation of images is, you will agree, so striking that we can ask if this is in fact more than just an analogy. Let us take the next step and say that what is true for an insect could also be so for superior animals. Could it be in the egg for reptiles and birds or the uterus for mammals that the greatest leaps of evolution take place? And all within the space of one generation! This would explain the missing links that exist in fossilised forms.

The consequences of this hypothesis open new breathtaking philosophical possibilities. But within the framework of the simultaneity of times, can we let ourselves reject an idea, however astounding it may be, just by shrugging our shoulders?

Some phenomena which concern the physics or chemistry of the human body are more difficult to intepret. This can be said for luminous manifestations, incombustibility or heat phenomena. Hagiography is rich in such examples.

The luminosity of a body or part thereof is often associated with levitation. The mystic rises from the ground and his body is bathed in light. In other cases, no levitation takes place, but only the light phenomenon. If this light does not embrace all of the body, it is usually restricted to the head. The latter case most probably lies at the origin of the halo represented in religious icons of many civilizations. This is a physio-chemical phenomenon that is no-doubt limited to the paranormal which it is most probably too early to try and elucidate. The same applies for people who show an insensitivity to heat or on the contrary those individuals who produce an abnormal amount of heat. An undefined chemical process can apparently produce hypo- or hyperthermia in the body. It may seem improbable that hypothermia can make us insensitive to fire. Try the following experiment: discreetly push your thumb against the ice cube in your cocktail for a minute (without being seen), slowly wipe your thumb and then stub-out a cigarette on it. You will feel no pain and there will be no mark on your thumb - this will amaze the other guests.

A different chemical reaction, unique to the living and of paranormal origin can possibly provide the starting point for explaining biologicial transmutations which Kervran revealed thirty years ago. By using precise quantitative analyses, Louis Kervran proved that simple bodies (elements from the MedeleÔev classification) could transform themselves into other simple bodies without using extraordinary energy. This was as crazy and as anti-scientific as alchemists transforming mercury or other bodies into gold. The only difference here was that for Kervran these changes only took place in living organisms.

Could the exchange of energy between different times be a key to understanding what happens? Could there be a phenomenon of resonance which would make one atom modify its number of protons to conform with the image of another atom from another time? Maybe we should read Kervran again more carefully.

Let us close this chapter with one last subject which is also hard to define. This is materialisation, and its opposite, dematerialisation. These terms are possibly incorrect, for they lead one to suppose that they involve either creation from nothing or total destruction of matter. It would rather seem as if there is appearance and disappearance of objects, which is not quite the same thing. Quite a common occurrence with hauntings involves stones being thrown as if by some invisible hand. In parapsychology this would be considered as a simple case of telekinesis. Yet some witnesses strongly claim that only one part of the stonesí trajectory is visible. Everything happens as if they came from a particular point in space. This does not in itself equal creation. In this case, the nature of the stone would be indifferent to its surroundings. However, investigations made in such situations have shown that the stones concerned always came from the immediate surrounding area. This would therefore be more a case of them being invisible during part of the trajectory. We could therefore suppose, amongst other hypotheses, that these stones would have temporarily changed their own frequency, thus escaping our sight which is tuned into the present. We shall have the chance to consider the importance and consequences of this specific frequency in the next chapter.

To come back to appearances and disappearances, we should note that this phenomenon also intervenes in some cases of miracle healing (as you can see, all of this is closely linked!). Sick people who have puffed and swollen skin due to internal fluids, have suddenly recovered their normal appearance without there being any traces of the aforementioned liquids. Their clothes were totally dry, as the famous doctor Alexis Carrel, amongst others, witnessed at such a healing in Lourdes.

Many books are dedicated to the subject of miracle healings. Others deal with prodigious mental arithmetic, precognition or haunted houses. Others, more numerous, are dedicated to paranormal phenomena in general. This vast amount of literature is of unequal quality, and if the subject interests you it is worthwhile reading as much as possible, to make sure that you come across some of the quality information. You will therefore be better able to judge, from the many details that you will discover, if the idea of the simultaneity of times is backed up by these books, or not. It has not been possible to take all of these details into account here, otherwise the book would have taken on the proportions of an encyclopedia. As a first contact with our hypothesis is seems better to deliberately limit the number of pieces of information in order to have a more panoramic view of the subject at hand. This simplification helped us to quickly bring to the fore the diversity of phenomena concerned by our hypothesis.

We have also been pleasantly surprised to see that an idea born from reasoning on the paranormal was rich enough to provide a possible explanation on how memory works, and other associated phenomena which at first sight seem to bear no relation to the paranormal. The plurality of times does not only interest those that believe in the irrational. We shall soon see that our wild hypothesis can also be used to illustrate the very serious issue of quantum physics. Before that, let us make a quick detour into a realm that will make readers intent on being rational howl : time travel !

Contrary to other chapters, this one does not aim to demonstrate the rational nature of our hypothesis. It should be considered more as a breather. For a few pages we will let our imagination run wild. Yet the exercise will not be uninteresting. It will let us get to know our madcap idea better, to witness the sort of contradictions and delirium that it brings with it. We shall attempt to see, in an ironic sense, just how far over the top we can go.

One of the particularities of manís genius is that he always finds a practical explanation for his theoretical discoveries. Exceptions to this rule are very rare, and often sporadic. Some time is obviously needed to master a theory before it can be put to practical applications. If we accept that all times co-exist, there is no reason why this hypothesis, if it turns out to be true, could not have pratical applications. Such applications could take on very different forms, as suggested by the different paranormal phenomena. We could therefore dream of machines whose power and efficiency would make up for the sporadic and unpredictable human performances. You just need to delve into science-fiction novels to find extraordinary gadgets that could become real. We then start dreaming of levitation cars, chronological telephones or even machines to heal instantly. However, the wildest idea which first comes to mind has to be the ability to travel through time.

At first glance, nothing in theory opposes this notion. We have seen that yesterday and tomorrow are not situated in some strange dimension that the mind cannot conceive, but more poetically in precise locations in space and time. We have also seen that it is reasonable to suppose that each time must correspond to a particular frequency which would explain the invisible and untangible nature of matter from different times. From this double hypothesis we have concluded that to be able to travel through time, one must first travel in space in order to join the Earth which corresponds to the desired period and then tune into the frequency unique to that period. Unfortunately, nothing is that easy for us, mere mortals - even in our dreams !

Let us suppose that our theory on multuiple times is correct. Let us also suppose that one day we manage to build a vehicle able to move through space (which we can already do), pinpoint the place on the Earth that we want to travel to and also tune us into the right frequency. That will be the day when we will be able to travel through time.

But that day already exists! It has to be so, for we have already stated that all times co-exist. This is the very aim of our study. Elementary knowledge therefore leads us to accept that if these vehicles already exist, somewhere in the future, they are already being used and, consequently, they can already come and visit us!

There are moments in life when we would like to go back in time. I consider it a disaster that the term UFO should appear in this work, for it is already hard enough to speak of paranormal phenomena without adding the frenzied problem of flying saucers. But how can we do otherwise? How can I speak of machines from other times and try to hypocritically leave aside these mysterious apparitions in the sky? Let us treat the subject briefly in order not to offend either those who do not believe in UFOs but also the believers who will probably not appreciate the fact that we will highlight the least popular of their hypotheses. However, bringing together UFOs and the paranormal might not be as incongruous as it might initially seem.

The two problems have many points in common. They both, in fact, go back far in time, we find traces of them in the oldest texts. Both remain unexplained since then. They both defy the laws of science. Both are based on eye-witness accounts. From such general comparisons we can see that the two enigmas pose themselves in the same way. The only logical attitude we can have is therefore either to accept or refute them both. We cannot see for what reason we should accept one and refute the other.

The comparison becomes clearer when we bring together UFOs and levitation. In both cases there is no reaction to the act that takes place, no air is displaced unlike when a helicopter or missile flies past. In both cases flight occurs, or can take place in total silence. In both cases we have been told that objects near to the manifestation suddenly lift off the ground. In both cases sudden movements or collisions give an impression of weightlessness. And finally, in both cases there is, or can be, luminous phenomena which appear as secondary manifestations. Taking into account the number of points they have in common, how can we not be tempted to bring together and even confuse the two problems and see in UFOs machines that use the principle of levitation?

But let us not get carried away. The study of UFOs is an area particularly corrupt due the amount of false accounts that have been recorded. The paranormal also has its fakes, but not to the same extent. To claim that you can spark off strange phenomena brings with it the risk that you will be put to the test and therefore unmasked if you cheat. If you want people to take an interest in you, you will also have to multiply your performances, which also increases this risk. With UFOs the case is far simpler. Any Tom, Dick or Harry looking for fame can pretend that he has seen something strange in the sky. How can we know if he is telling the truth? How can you catch him out? His position is even more comfortable for it is in his interest not to act again. He therefore runs pratically no risk. No wonder there are so many unknown people who want to become stars for a day. If the literature on UFOs is riddled with a multitude of useless and unusable witness accounts, the responsibilty must lie with the people who investigate such phenomena. They collect their information mainly from people who are firm believers and they naturally tend to accept everything that they hear. They do not push the witnesses to the edge as a professional investigator would, using a thousand and one tricks or threats in order to try and pinpoint the truth. Rationalists have undestood this and have thrown themselves at this weakness. It did not take them long to confound the liars and throw discredit on the UFO phenomenon. Yet if it was neccesary to clean out the Augean stables, one must not take as gospel all that the rationalists say. Their viewpoint is also subjective, for rationalism is a doctorine (and as such bears the mark of dogmatism).

However, we are not here to undertake the trial of UFOs. When in doubt, we can proceed as for the paranormal, by using the conditional tense. If UFOs exist, what lines of reasoning can we apply to them?

The most popular hypothesis is that we are dealing with flying machines, built by an unknown civilization of extra-terrestrial origin. This is the one that at first sight best adheres to the typical eye-witness accounts collated. Metal with portholes, lights and occupants are arguments that favour the theory that it is a machine rather than an unknown physical phenomenon. As for the extra-terrestrial origin of the machine, it seems as if this idea comes from the extraordinary performances noted : great speed, sudden changes in direction, sudden disappearance etc..

The simultaneity of times and its corollary, time travel, also let us widen our horizons further. The extra-terrestrial hypothesis remains valid, but we should add to it the idea that our visitors could be our descendants, i.e. honnest terrestrials. We are going to develop both possibilities. We shall see that in each case we will have the opportunity to think about multiple times, all of which is good mental exercise. We shall also see how to travel for free and how to visit distant worlds without having to move too far - this will no-doubt make all science-fiction lovers happy.

THE TERRESTRIAL HYPOTHESIS

If UFOs come from the future, and if they are piloted by someone, it is reasonable to suppose that they are piloted by humans. The number of witnesses who attest to this are considerable. Even if we have not been lied to, we must also take into account a more particular breed of dwarves with big heads (the most common description), giants, one-eyed monsters, hairy beings with glowing eyes, robots or androids and other more hideous ones. Dwarfishness or gigantism are known infirmities and do not prevent their victims from being one hundred percent human. For the record, the heights noted vary from 51 cm to 2.85 metres (figures which vary according to sources). Regarding cyclops and other monsters, they are no doubt as human as you or I. You do not need to have read "Star Wars" to know the sort of magic that make-up artists and special effects teams can work these days.

We can thus understand that our descendants might have good reasons for masking their human origins to make us think that they are extra-terrestrials. After all, they know us well. Their choice no doubt takes into account this very knowledge which they have, but which currently escapes us. Maybe they do not want to unduly disturb us. However, I cannot see that it is any more comforting to think that we are being watched by monsters from outer space.

We have seen that if time travel were possible, the first thing that we would need to do is to travel back, via space, to the Earth which corresponds to the period sought after. But this trip can be long if the period chosen is far away and if we take into account the speed of the Earth, which is far from being negligeable. However, a long journey means great speed - this implies great energy and therefore the taking vast quantities of primary matter on board. Luckily, our hypothesis is rich in solutions. Here, as an example, are two very economical possible solutions.

The first is the most obvious. We have seen how telekinesis can be explained by the idea of transporting energy from one matter (us) to another (the object) via a contact point in the past. As the energy source can be situated in a different time, we can easily imagine a power station in our present which fuels a machine that travels in the past. We thus gain space and weight in the machine.

The second solution is even more economical. It is similar to that used currently by space probes which use the gravitational pull of the planets that they travel past in order to increase their speed. The aim of our journey would be very simple. Without leaving the Earth we could place ourselves and our machine at the same frequency as an Earth from the near past, at a thousand kilometres, for example. At the same time, our present Earth disappears - it only exists for us - and we fall under the influence of the new Earth which has just appeared a thousand kilometres away.The gravity of this new Earth pulls us and we fall towards it. Before we crash we renew the operation and change our frequency to that of a third Earth which is also a thousand kilometres from the second one and thus from attraction to attraction we progress with increasing speed towards a more distant past. Another advantage of this system is that we do not need to calculate the trajectory because the different Earths will automatically guide us. We will make the opposite move to slow down. We therefore take up the frequency of an Earth that we have already overtaken and repeat the process until our speed in relation to our destination is nil. It is important not to make a mistake for we then run the risk of materialising in this Earth rather than close to it. We would be instantly burnt to a crisp if we did so.

We shall open an aside here to briefly mention some vary strange cases of autocombustion which will send shivers down your spine (please forgive the pun). From time to time a burnt body is found without the person having been involved in a fire. Only the person is burnt - objects close-by are often unharmed. This is even more extraordinary for the temperature involved must be very high. The bones are burnt to the point of being debris, or even ashes. A crematorium oven does not come close to achieving such a result. Curiously, one part of the body, such as a leg or hand, is found almost intact. None of these cases have ever been solved. Where can such intense heat come from? The different chronological Earths suceed each other at very small distances. We therefore live at the heart of a certain number of Earths from the past or the future according to the orientation of our present Earth. All it would take is that our body, for some unknown reason, tunes into the frequency of one of the nearby Earths for us to be immediately burnt by its incandescent core. The briefness of the phenomenon explains why the combustion is limited to objects closeby.

It is enough to make you shiver!

We shall quickly close this aside and come back to our time-travelling machine at the moment where it tunes into the frequency of the Earth that it is flying over. Someone on the ground would therefore see the machine literally appear from nowhere. It would disappear just as suddenly if it inversed the manoeuvre, for example by going back to its original frequency. If it wants to appear motionless for some time, all it needs to do is tune into the same progressive frequency as that of the Earth. It has to do this anyway, for if it remained on the same frequency it would be stuck in time (with its occupants). If it flies over the Earth in order to visit another place, and at the same time it makes this gap vary in order to differ from the Earthís frequency, anyone watching on the ground will be tricked as to how quickly time passes. The effect would be the same as for someone who watches a film that has been filmed at either high or slow speed. In silent films we could thus see model T Fords shooting off and taking corners at an outrageous speed only to stop as if they had run into an invisible brick wall. By playing with the frequency in this way it would be possible to terrify any unfortunate witnesses who would see the machine disappear from one part of the sky only to reappear immediately elsewhere, or go back and forth violently between these two points. By playing with two frequencies at the same time he could even see the machine in double and then melt back into one entity. It would be possible to perform in reality all of the special effects from films relating to time.

People who believe in UFOs will have recognised here the main sorts of behaviour reported by witnesses. We shall not dwell on these, but will take one case where the role of time does not seem obvious at first. Do you not find that it is strange that people can be glued to the spot close to a UFO, but manage nonetheless to stay standing? Either their muscles no longer function at which point they should collapse or they are in some way paralysed and should tilt over like unbolted statues. What if time, or at least their appreciation of time, had changed? Maybe they never stopped walking. To move extremely slowly can give the impression of total immobility. Could this be the only logical explanation for the cases of drivers who claimed that to their surprise, their car engine stopped and then gradually went back to its normal speed without them doing anything?

Maybe you feel that without the presence of relativist phenomenon "a la Einstein" it is impossible to conceive that there could be changes in the speed at which time unfolds. What should we think then of the extraordinary observations made by Sacks in "Awakenings" (already mentioned in Chapter 2 - Precognition)?

We should note that the patients mentioned in this book who were treated by this famous neurologist all suffered from lethargic encephalitis, otherwise known as sleeping sickness, and had been doing so for decades. When treated with a neurochemical drug, L-Dopa, they all initially went through a period of being practically healed which unfortunately was followed by a state of instability with stupefying or terrifying side-effects. We shall look at the phenomena which involved an acceleration or slowing-down of movements.

Thus, one patient became capable of undertaking simple yet repetitive calculations (such as substracting 17 from 1012, then 17 from 995, and so on) as quickly as it was possible to speak, another could speak at the amazing speed of 500 words per minute. Only a recording (played back slowly) could let one hear what was being said and also witness that not one syllable was missing. Even more incredible was the case of a patient who, suffering from nervous ticks, swung his arms up and down so quickly that it was practically impossible to follow the movements with the eyes! Here again, a tape played slowly gave the speed of five movements per second!

On the other hand, some patients lived at a slow pace, at least to the onlooker, for they were convinced that they were acting at normal speed. One could only see that there was actually any movement when photos were taken of them at regular intervals and then shown quickly by using a film. One of them, "woken up" by L-Dopa, thought that he took one second to scratch his nose when in fact he had taken six hours!

This person was living at a speed ten thousand times slower than normal!

Following an accident or illness, a forced immobilization for a few weeks requires rehabilitation. The body has "forgotten" how to walk and learning this again can take a long time, sometimes months. Yet, after years of being totally immobile (due to the late discovery of L-Dopa), when awoken the patient could start to walk immediately, as if he only stopped doing so the day before. Another could speak instantly, whereas here again rehabilitation was needed. It seems as if lethargic encephalitis has the property of literally stopping its victims in time or slowing it down considerably. In relation to the time that had gone by, these patients also remained remarkably young physically.

To come back to our UFOs, it could not be impossible that a similar phenomenon could have played a role in these cases of "paralysis". By a process that we do not know of, the proximity of a "machine" could accelerate time for a witness, at least in his mind, thus making him believe that his body is immobile, whereas this is not so. The whole experience will have in fact only taken place in the fraction of a second, thus explaining why he did not fall over. This hypothesis, of course, only makes us dive deeper into the depths of perplexity regarding the true meaning of the UFO phenomenon.

If the UFO phenomenon hides some reality and if all of the details about it are not a hoax, one can be sure that the unfolding of time plays an essential role in this matter. We should not, however, conclude that this either real or apparent relativity of time should constitute proof that our visitors come from the future (or why not the past?). Other hypotheses with identical effects are possible.

THE EXTRA-TERRESTRIAL HYPOTHESIS

If the extra-terrestrial hypothesis enjoys such success, it is not just because of the super-human capacities of the machines observed nor even due to their weird pilots, but also and maybe above all because they seem to put an end to our solitude. The idea that man is alone in this immense universe has a sense of lack of proportion and is worrying. We take it almost as a punishment.

Luckily, reason tells us that such isolation is statistically highly unlikely. Astronomy, by using telescopes in orbit, is in its infancy. Unless a major discovery is made meantimes, astronomy alone will be able to tell us if having planets is a constant or rare characteristic for stars. For different reasons which we cannot develop here, current thought is that the first solution is correct. There would therefore be a number of planets within the universe which could possibly be greater than the number of stars. If this is true, the chances of one or the being inhabited are very great (by inhabited we mean inhabited by sentient beings). If amongst the number there should be one inhabited by civlisations ahead of ours and for whom interstellar travel holds no secrets. It is the representatives of one of these civilisations that (could) pilot UFOs.

This line of reasoning seems faultless were it not for one major detail : distance.

If we stick to our galaxy, the number of stars is already colossal, around a hundred thousand million. Its size is proportionally equivalent to that number. Its radius at its greatest measures around a hundred thousand light years by twenty thousand. The result is that the density of stars is very low. A galaxy is above all made up of empty space. We have thus calculated that if two galaxies should collide, they would not even realise it; the chances of two stars meeting being practically nil. All of this explains why our closest neighbour, the alpha Centaur star ambles around at some forty thousand billion kilometres from us (4.27 light years). A simple return journey there at a speed approaching that of light would take at least nine years. Yet no one can say which is the closest star with a planet inhabited by an intelligent life form more technologically advanced than ours. Is it at ten, a hundred or a thousand light years away?

Many people believe that science has no limits and that tomorrow we will be able to do things that cannot be done today. Physics has its laws. These determine what is possible and impossible. If we eliminate the impossible things, all that is left are possibilities. If everything is possible there are obviously no longer any laws and the universe has no reason to be.

One of the laws of the universe is that nothing can go faster than the speed of light. This property as brought to the fore by Einstein in his Theory of Restrained Relativity is proved each day in laboratories throughout the world. It underlies all modern physics. There is no reason for us to believe that it could one day be called into question. It can seem incredible that a maximum speed could exist. We cannot see why, when we are close to this limit, we could not push on the accelerator and overtake it.The answer is very simple and is also part of the Theory of Relativity. The mass (equivalent to the weight on Earth) of a body increases with speed. This increase happens more quickly than the increase in speed, in such a way that at the speed of light the mass becomes infinite. To accelerate further this infinite mass would take infinite energy, i.e. energy greater than all of the energy contained in the universe... The obstacle is therefore not a mysterious wall of light, but the mass of the bodies whoses increase by definition limits their speed. If light can travel at the speed of light it is because its constituents, photons, are devoid of mass. If you now want to know why these photons devoid of mass cannot travel faster than the fateful 300.000 km/sec - you are likely to be dissatisfied. This speed is one of the great constaints of the universe that we are still questioning.

All of this goes to explain that even if we sacrifice whole generations of cosmonautes on dangerous missions, we will only ever be able to explore a pathetically small part of our galaxy.

All of which does not, of course, favour our chances of meeting up with other galactical civilizations.

Our hypothesis on the simultaneity of times could possibly offer a new way forward. It could be possible to visit distant worlds in a relatively short period of time whilst respecting the maximum speed of the speed of light. All of the stars are in movement. They turn around the axis of our galaxy and also have various movements within local star clusters. Rather like an ice rink where everyone goes where they want, whilst respecting a general sense of rotation. On this rink I see my friend X. For the moment he is on the other side of the rink and I cannot speak to him. But as I have a path which is similar to his, I can say for sure that somewhere in his past X was in more or less at the same place that I am at now. In other words, if I could put myself on the same frequency as X in his past, I would see him next to me, in the flesh, and I could talk to him, contrary to the X of my former present who will have disappeared from my sight in this new reality. Similarly, within the flood of stars contained in our galaxy there must exist some whose past or future realities are very close to our current position. If we tune into their frequency we could easily visit their planets, should they have any. Our choice would therefore be dictated and limited by the trajectory of stars that are likely to cross our path. This would already be a good start.

The break is over. After having let our imagination wonder it is time to come back to reality. It is not because our hypothesis opens the doors to the wildest dreams that we should believe that these can become reality. Every hypothesis has its laws and limits. These are likely to greatly reduce our wild hopes.

There exists a brain teaser that science-fiction writers like which is known as the paradox of time travel. There are variations on the theme, but the principle is always the same. Let us take the most straightforward case as example.

A son goes back in time and his aim is to murder his father before he has the chance to beget him. This is what he does. The father therefore dies without having had any children. He therefore did not have a son. This means that the latter could not travel back in time for he does not exist. Therefore he could not have killed his father. Which means that the latter could have had a son. All of which means that the son could travel back in time and kill his father. This can go on forever.

At first glance, if we do not dig deeply, this reasoning seems watertight and contains a paradox. It makes logic run void. But if we look closer we can see that things have been simplified to such a point that certain details have been skipped.

When we say that all times co-exist we must never forget that each one is fundamentally different from the others because of its unique frequency. You cannot therefore take one for the other. However, this is what we did in the above paradox. And that is where the paradox came from. Let us go back to the start of the story and imagine the son before he even starts to travel in time. After all, nothing prevents us from believing that the son still has his father living in the same present as himself. This is his real father. Both of them share the same frequency. Therefore, if the son goes back in time to kill his father it cannot be his own father. It is the one that belongs to another son in another time.

Things are already getting complicated - and we have not finished yet. To reason with the idea that all times exist at the same time is no easy business. It requires the greatest caution, for it is an exercise that our brain is not used to performing. The example that we are dealing with can be a good starting point if our hypothesis should one day prove to be valid. Let us retrace our journey step by step.

We shall start by numbering the actors in our play. Let us call number 1 son the one who takes off into the past. We suppose that he is the first of his kind and that he therefore has no existing future. He does, however, have a past. We shall call the sons that follow one after the other in his past numbers 2 , 3 and so on. Similarly, we shall call number 1 father the first one (relating to number 1 son), and father 2, 3 etc... the following ones.

So, number 1 son, shadowed by his alter-egos, goes into his machine and goes back to the period where one of the fathers from the past has not yet met the future mother (of the future son). So as not to juggle with ridiculously large numbers, let us simplify the problem by calling the future begettor father number 101. Thus, as soon as he arrives in the past, number 1 son kills father number 101. When he arrives at the same point in space a fraction of a second later, number 2 son kills father number 102, then number 3 son kills father number 103 and so the carnage continues - for ever? No! In fact the lines of sons is not infinite. It only goes from number 1 to number 100. There is no number 101 son for, a we have already seen, father number 101 is dead (killed by number 1 son) without having procreated.

Consequently, and for the same reason, there is no 102 son, nor 103 etc. To sum up, there are only sons numbered from 1 to 100 who have killed one hundred fathers numbered 101 to 200. After this there is a quiet period where due to a lack of sons there are no more massacres. The inexistant sons carry the numbers 101 to 200 and the unkilled fathers numbers 201 to 300. And so on. To sum up the whole story we will retain that there are alternate periods of 100 murderous sons and 100 non-existant sons. Corresponding to these periods are identical ones with alternately 100 murdered fathers and 100 unscathed fathers.

This new version of the story is more complicated than the first one but it takes rigourously into consideration all of the realities unique to each of the times concerned. There is no longer a paradox here for the variations follow each other chronologically, they do not superimpose themselves as in the first case. However, we cannot say that this new rehash is particularly appealing to our mind. Firstly there is that eternal kill-you,kill-you-not that is like a nightmare. And it gets worse.

In order to illustrate even more impressively the new obstacle, let us imagine that the son is a terrorist and that to slay his father he has decided to fill his car with explosives. Number 101 father, as well as his successors will therefore be scattered in millions of pieces. But father 100, as well as his predecessors, was never killed by anyone. We will therefore have to admit that for two succeeding times there is on one hand a father who is intact and another one that is pulverised (number 100 father and father number 101). After this, the inverse happens. A pulverised father should be succeeded by one that is intact (fathers 200 and 201). This is a bit too much. So much so that it is unacceptable, and not just for our peace of mind..

When we try to imagine the various realities of one man in our mind, it is easier for our imagination to separate the different protagonists. We therefore obtain an image like a photograph of a Sioux tribe on the warpath. This also comes from the fact that we are reasoning on a too wide scale. The multiplicity of times should be restricted to the particle. This is what gives the order and size between successive realities - a tiny fraction of a millimetre. You have to insert thousands of millions between two Sioux. If we had the ability to see at a glance all of the realities of a man we would see a sort of giant snake. Someone walking in front of a camera switched to pose would provide an image that would illustrate this idea perfectly.

To return to our murders, it is not a question of imagining a father in a million pieces following on almost immediately from one that is intact and vice versa. From one particle to another there cannot be a distance calculated in hundreds of metres as a violent explosion would cause. To accept this scattering would mean tearing asunder two successive realities. Yet everything points to the fact that the power joining these two realities must be immense and therefore their unity is probably indestructable whatever forms of energy may be used. Such a link cannot be seen by the mind. Most of the particles are made up of temporary sub-particles called quarks. The strength that links two quarks increases according to the distance that separates them. It would take infinite energy to separate them totally. The same could be true for two particles which follow each other in time. It would therefore be impossible to break the chain and the messages could circulate regardless of the oddities of time, endlessly and without modification. Our murderer could do nothing against an indestrucible father, neither blow him up, nor give him the slightest flick, nor just simply appear to him for this could modify his behaviour and therefore change the course of history and thus provoke a rift which we believe to be impossible.

But maybe with the same ingredients you could imagine another version of the facts that could at once reconcile the unchangeable nature of history and the possibility of time travel. After all, we are new to this trade. We are likely to have many more surprises, and make many more mistakes!

One of the interesting consequences of our hypothesis on the simultaneity of times is that it allows us to approach even the most unexpected subjects. We have already seen this with UFOs , and now the subject of homeopathy is also included in our quest.

Invented over a century and a half ago by Doctor J. Hannemann, homeopathy is a form of medicine whose basis is the total opposite to conventional medicine, known as allopathy. The latter combats symptoms with medicines which produce the opposite effect, whereas homeopathy uses remedies whose actions are similar to the ailment experienced. Thus, headaches are not counteracted by anti-headache drugs, but on the contrary by a preparation which causes headaches. This preparation is greatly diluted, for according to the homeopathic doctrine the dilution is capable of provoking an inverse, therefore curative effect. This bears some similarity to the use of vaccines.

As everyone knows, traditional medicine, which rallies most doctors, is at war with homeopathy. It accuses it of having no reasoned basis, an uncontrolled experimental nature and refusal to comply to the requirements of a comparative study. Homeopathic doctors retort that no comparison is possible, for their system does not attack the illness but helps man to defend himself against that illness. Also, the therapy prescribed for the same illness varies from one person to another. Only by systematising a remedy can you systemise a study. As for the efficiency of the method, the only proof that you need are the increasing numbers of homeopathic doctors, two thirds of which have converted from traditional medicine.

It goes without saying that we are not going to get embroiled in this argument. Faithful to our policy, we are once again going to use the conditional tense and say if homeopathy is a valid treatment... Let us suppose that this is so. Using a tactic which has already worked well for us, let us touch the most sensitive point in the issue - infinitesimal doses.

The most common preparation for a homeopathic remedy is to dilute a substance (tincture) into a solvent, either water or alcohol, in the proportions of one drop for 99 drops (centesimal). After having shaken this solution, we take one drop and we mix this again with 99 drops of solvent. We shake and then start again. We quickly arrive at a large disproportion between the tincture and the solvent. At first handling the proportions are 1 for 100 parts. Your whisky-soda, if served in the same proportions, would already taste like pure water. By the second dilution the ration will be 1 for 10.000 (100 X 100). By the third dilution it will be 1 per 1.000.000! And this kind of operation can be undertaken up to 30 times! We thus obtain a ratio of 1 for such an immense number (1 followed by 60 zeros) that it totally escapes our understanding. At this stage, as we have calculated, we can be sure that there is not the slightest molecule of the initial product left in the solvent! How can we hope to cure with a product that is not actually in the treatment is the sneering comment that opponents to homeopathy ask? The objection is too important for us to avoid it.

Homeopathic doctors choose the only way out possible, declaring that the solvent had kept the original substance in its memory! It had to be so, they claimed, because experiments showed that the remedy was effective. They added that in medicine it is better to know that something works rather than how it works. One must admit that as far as learning and curiosity are concerned this is not a satisfactory answer. But we cannot see what other explanation they could have provided.

This is where we shall add our contribution.

If all times exist simultaneously, we cannot say that the tincture disappears after thirty successive dilutions.

The product is still there, intact, not in our present, but in the past. The patient who has swallowed the homeopathic medicine is linked to the original product by all of its successive realities. The human body, going back in time, thus finds the increasingly rich solutions right up to the product itself, in its pure state, in the bottle where the first drop was taken. If the body homes into times even further back it will find the agents used to purify the water and even the frogs that frolicked about in it. But it will only take that which is useful, either because it is programmed to do so, or because the brain tells it that it has taken a medicine and this is what needs to be found, nothing else.

If our hypothesis therefore gives a helping hand to homeopathy by eradicating one of the main arguments used by detractors, the matter is not that simple. Why, for example, could a substance from the past be more effective than the same product in the present time? Could there be some unknown chemical reaction between times which we have missed up until now because we have not imagined that it was possible? Can we attach this phenomenon to the biological transmutations that we talked of earlier or to miracle healing? This is highly probable.

Whatever the case, let us note once more that each time we have approached an "impossible" problem leading to absurd conclusions, it is by using the idea of the multiplicity of times that we have been able to solve it.

We still do not know if homeopathy is a valid treatment, but we can be sure that if this is the case, our hypothesis is the only real path that leads to a logical explanation thereof.

What we ask of a new hypothesis is that it places itself within the context of our scientific knowledge. What use is there in having a theory that explains the paranormal if it cannot be accepted by science? A hypothesis based upon a dubious subject by contamination becomes dubious itself.

Of course we have seen that the multiplicity of times could help us to understand memory, heredity and associated problems. Such issues are far from the paranormal. Yet, these are also the ugly ducklings of science, as are all matters pertaining to human beings. Within the living being lies a sort of mysterious aura that is not found in other branches of science dedicated to the study of more down to earth problems. Chemistry, mathematics or physics do not experience such moods.

The perfect situation would be to confront our ideas with one of these forms of science deemed "non suspect" Whilst we are at it, let us go all the way and cast our attention onto the one that underlies all of the others - physics. We have already come into contact with physics - in Chapter Two, if you remember, when we were asking about the stones that were thrown and how they calculated their trajectory. Maybe you thought at that point that these strange questions were born out of the authorís warped mind? You would be doing him too great an honour to presume so. He borrowed them from scientific literature. Not because they are often mentioned, for questions without answers are not the favourite topic of scientific columnists who prefer to write about progress. But enough is said about them for us to understand that any normally constituted physicist has one day asked himself the same questions whilst studying the implications of inertial speed.

We have already seen how we can provide the beginnings of a solution to the principle of intertia by using the simultaneity of times. Each stone from each time is sucked up by the one that precedes it and is pushed forward by the one behind. Each stone is therefore linked to the precise point in the past where the person throwing the stone perpetually suceeds himself. The stone in all of its chronological realities would look like a long javelin linking the hand of the person throwing it to the point where it hits the ground. The stone in the present would be a slice of the javelin that would in some way act as his guide.

But we are going to try and do better by tackling the very basis of modern physics, the all-powerful quantum mechanics.

Our aim here is not to summarize the monument that is quantum mechanics. Born around three-quarters of a century ago, it has remained unshakeable to this day. It is the essential and both complete and perfect tool for illustrating the world of particles, which is its favourite medium. The term "illustrate" used here must be taken in its largest sense and not as if it could provide real images. On the contrary, qunatum mechanics, or QM as it is known, is one of the highest examples of abstraction. Rumour has it that only the most exceptional researchers can manage to instinctively visualise this theory. So it must be difficult !

In order to discourage us even further, QM is also very difficult to study. However, as luck would have it, with QM it is possible to separate the mathematics from the "philosophy". Although the former requires a high level of basic knowledge, the latter should, on the other hand, more easily understood by the uninitiated. If this easier approach is not favoured by the majority of physicists, it is because scientists are usually not too keen to venture into the quicksands of philosophical uncertainty. They prefer to stick to the practical use of the mathematical tool. This attitude has given rise to the expression "quantum cooking", for QM is used, according to requirements, like recipes. This should not be seen as a derogatory term, on the contrary, this cooking is usually very successful.

By now, you are most probably asking yourself what you are doing in this tricky business if you are not an expert. The reason is because this formidable theory has been popularized so that everyone can have access to it, at least regarding its spirit and results. This way of bridging the subject is passionately interesting, for it allows us to paint quite a precise picture of the strange universe that we live in where some of the more extraordinary aspects continue to baffle us.

The easiest way for you to choose your book on QM is as follows. You go into a bookshop specializing in scientific books. Go to the physics bookshelf and there you will find, usually grouped together, some works on quantum mechanics. You take them out one at a time with your left hand on the spine and the right hand opposite. Then gently fold the book backwards whilst pressing your right thumb on the edge of the pages - this will make them quickly flick before your eyes. Two things can happen at this point. Either your horrified gaze will see a flood of mathematical equations, or your will see an avalanche of words. In the first case you will put the book back on the shelf. In the second case, the book is yours. You can never go wrong, for the two styles are never mixed. But whilst waiting to make this essential purchase, let us see what we can already say about this "beast".

Quantum mechanics is a theory designed to explain what happens on an infinitely small scale, and more particularly, at particle level. It is opposed to classical mechanics which essentially governs our macroscopic world (i.e. our daily life). Physicists were shocked when they realised that traditional physics, which is efficient and obvious at our level, becomes useless when you arrive at a certain scale. Were we going to live with two sorts of physics? Yes - this is what happened! We now know, however, that this difference is only apparent.

At our scale, the properties of a particle are erased by general properties. A pull-over has a neck and two sleeves but the stitch of that pullover has neither neck nor sleeves. A stitch is a piece of wool twisted around itself. A jumper is not a thread twisted around itself. According to scale, the nature of things changes without there being any contradiction.

But what makes quatnum mechanics so revolutionary?

Firstly, its energy is continuous. In a car, nothing prevents you from accelerating progressively from 0 to 100 km/hr. If cars existed along the same dimensions of particles, the energy they would have would mean that you could only drive at set speeds, 0, 10, 20, ... to 100 km/h. We would go from 10 to 20 km/hr or 60 to 70 km/hr without any transition. In quantum mechanics these sudden energy leaps are counted in an elementary unit known as a quantum (plural : quanta).

Another unsettling characteristic of this scale is the "uncertainty principle". By using classical mechanics we can easily calculate the precise position of an athlete if we know his starting point, time, speed and direction. This is no longer true if the athlete is a particle. It can no longer be localised. The most that we will be able to calculate is the probability of finding it at a particular place. We must stress that this inderterminacy is not the result of ignorance on our behalf, but due to a basic impossibility that we will never be able to clarify. Forget the picture of a particle sensibly travelling from A to B. Everything happens as if it simultaneously followed various routes and it is only at point B, once it is detected, that it acquires a reality and that one of its trajectories is "chosen". Does this seem mad to you? You are right - it is!

Another even more disturbing property is inseparability. According to QM, two particles who have shared a common experience retain the same properties. They can be separated in the sense that they can be distanced one from the other, but they cannot be separated in the sense that they will no longer have anything more in common. It is in these terms that we should understand the word inseparability. One of the most spectacular consequences of this relationship at a distance is that any action that is aimed at one of the particles will automatically echo onto the other and moreover instantaneously, however great the distance might be between them. To illustrate how wild these events are we shall translate them into an example on our scale.

Imagine a couple. They have been married for a few years (this is their common experience). One day they decide to separate and get divorced. She goes to live in Canada and he chooses Australia, to put the greatest possible distance between them (possibly due to their separation?). For whatever reason, he feels emotions surfacing that he had always suppressed. What if he was not really a man? What if his inner nature was to be a woman? By coincidence, a scientist lives in Melbourne who has delevoped an amazing machine which can perform a sex change in a trice. You push a button, a beam of light appears and bang! the transformation takes place! Convinced that the method is effective, our man makes an appointment and the next day he goes into the machine and everything goes according to plan. In a fraction of a second he has become a fully-fledged woman!

On the other side of the world in a friendly restaurant in Quebec, our newly-divorced lady flutters her eyelashes at a brash fur trader with whom she intends to start a new life. Suddenly, at the very same moment when her ex-husband becomes a woman, she changes into a man in front of her lover who looks on flabbergasted!

This is the sort of alarming adventure that could happen to a couple if they were quantum in nature. The simple fact that they both made a couple means that they are condemned to remain that way forever. Yet a couple is made up of a man and a woman. So, if one of the parties changes sex, the other should to the same, otherwise the couple will obviously no longer exist. The double transformation must take place at the same moment, even if she is on Earth and he is on Mars or at the other end of the Galaxy! Luckily things do not happen this way in our macroscopic world. On the other hand, in the world of particles this is exactly how things work. They do not have a gender, of course, but they have other characteristics such as direction, polarisation, etc. In the latter case, experiments have been held which show the justification of inseparability.

Einstein could never admit that inseparability existed. In his opinion, as soon as two particles were separated by a significant distance they became totally independent. As the father of relativity, he who proved that nothing could go faster than the speed of light, how could he accept the idea that influences exerted from a distance could be instanteneously propogated?

Einstein died too early to know that experiments backed up the idea that he found so deeply absurd. Yet you might say that if physicists accept both the maximum speed of light and the instantaneous influences at a distance, how can they reconcile two such contradictory concepts?

They readily admit that they cannot. However, this does not prevent some of them from imagining that some sorts of signals could exist which would have no material effect and which would therefore escape the laws that apply to the rest of physics.But most researchers have given up hope that they will find a rational explanation (according to our human concept of what is rational) for this problem. The interpretation of these experiments in terms of reality thus remains elusive.

The time has now come to use our hypothesis. We have seen how abstract notions such as locating "yesterday" and "tomorrow" in space, which are overwhelming for our mind, become clear and logical when we accept that all times exist at once. Our intellectual incapacity to conceptualise these came from the false data that we were being fed. Armed with a unique present, localising other times became an absurd idea, whereas with the multiplicity of times we could simply situate in our own space.

Could it be that the same hypothesis could easily illustrate inseparability and thus remove its imprecision? The answer is yes and this is most probably the most determining argument in this book which favours the simultaneity of times.

The insurmountable difficulty faced by phyisicts is to imagine a link joining two particles separated in space in our single and unique present. What telephone line joins them together? Or by which radio do they communicate? And why is their shared past so essential?

Things become easier if all times exist simultaneously. The two particles that were one due to their shared experience and were then separated are like the branch of a tree that separates, giving rise to two seemingly independent branches. Nothing joins the tips of these branches in the present (or in the air), but they are solidly joined by the past via the wood at the junction of the branch. If we cut one of the two branches, the other will grow more quickly, for it will benefit from having more sap. Similarly, a "message" could go from a particle, back in time via all of its successive realities and arrive at the place in the past where there was a common experience. After this, the message will go back through all of the successive realities to the other particle, and right up to the present time. We cannot think of a more obvious path. What we need to know, of course, is what is the nature of this message that joins chronological times. I fear that the reply to this question requires some time. As I have said before, we are only at the start of our adventure and it is difficult to try and do too many things at once.

On the other hand, what we can already do is to reconcile that which is irreconcilable. QM advocates the immediacy of influences at a distance whilst respecting the ban of going faster than the speed of light. We have seen that this situation is uncomfortable. To accept the reality of all times makes things a lot more straightforward.

Let us pick up the incredible story of our quantum couple once again and analyse their misadventures in the light of our hypothesis. All times now exist at once and, consequently, when our hero decided to change sex, all he needed to do was imitate all of those previous realities which already did so before him. Supposing that he and his wife are separated today by a distance of one light year. According to relativity it will take one year for the message to pass from one person to the other. But this can also be said to be true for all other times. Consequently, if we choose a one-year-old reality, the message sent will arrive today and not in a yearís time, thus giving the illusion of being instantaneous! At the moment when our man changes sex, the wife already receives the message given out by her husbandís past self.

Nothing, in fact, prevents her from receiving the message from one of her husbandís even older realities and she could thus be informed before the husbandís transformation even took place. All of this is totally logical if all times exist at once and each constantly emits the same message, which is therefore constantly picked-up by all of the other times.

To go back to our particles, we will therefore admit that they are constantly in contact with those that shared their past, by the means of their successive realities. We shall also admit that messages travel at a finite speed but the moment of their emission influences the moment of reception and can thus seem to provide the equivalent of an instantaneous event.

Let us now consider another mystery of QM, known as the two-hole experiment.

If we throw a stone into water, we create a set of concentric circles going out from the area of impact. If we throw two stones at once the waves from the two points will meet and interfere with each other. We will thus observe an alternance between still and wavy zones. The still areas come from where the crest of a wave meets the trough of another. The trough and crest cancel each other out and leave the level of the water unchanged. In the wavy zones, a crest meets a crest and a trough a trough. By addition we therefore obtain a higher or lower level of the average water level.

A similar phenomenon can be observed with light. But we cannot demonstrate it by throwing stones.We have to proceed differently. If we project monochrome light onto a screen pierced with a small hole, we observe, on a second screen placed behind the first one, the projection of a circle of light with unclear edges. If we pierce a second hole very close to the first, we do not see a larger circle, as we would imagine (due to the addition of the two circles superimposed upon each other), but rather a whole series of lines that are alternately bright and dark. It is by using such an experiment that Young discovered the wave-like nature of light. As for water there was interference, and therefore waves.

Physicists being curious by nature, they then asked themselves what would happen if the light were reduced to a minimum. As light is a current of particles (photons), to reduce it in this case consists of reducing the number of photons - the maximum reduction possible being to a single unit - we will therefore use apparatus capable of producing one photon at a time. Something incredible happened. After a certain period of time spent firing one photon at a time, a photographic plate (put at the same place as the second screen) revealed the same light stripes as before. In other words, each single photon showed interference, but with what?

Interference can only take place when there are two parties.This requires one photon to go through the left hand hole and one the right. Yet there is only one in total. The idea was therefore put forward that the photon was possibly more complex that originally thought and therefore when it went through the hole, a part of it slipped by the other hole and thus played the part of the missing partner. Detecting devices placed close to the holes proved that this was not so. A photon went through one hole or the other but never through both at once. Numerous other hypotheses were put forward but were all rejected because they were incompatible with the facts or the theory. To this day there is no real solution to this mystery.

Let us try our luck with our hypothesis.

As we believe that all times exist simultaneously, a single photon does not exist. A particle is only alone if it is isolated in a unique present. Otherwise it is one of a tribe whose members follow each other in line. We have seen that it is reasonable to believe that one major force joins these chronological realities together and in this respect we compared it to the force that joins quarks. As they are so strongly linked, it is impossible that a photon could pass by one hole and its immediate successor could miss the hole and stay stuck on the screen. If one goes through then they should all do so. One for all and all for one, as they say!

But do they have to go through the same hole? On first sight it would be tempting to say yes. But if we go back to the quarks, we doubt the fact. The quarks are definitely so strongly joined that they cannot go far from one another but this does not prevent them from having great freedom of movement at a very short distance. This would, in fact, explain many of their characteristics.

If the same were true of our photon tribe, we could thus compare them to mountaineers roped together. If the first one steps froward, the others have to follow. They cannot dawdle. On the other hand, if the leader stumbles on a stone, the others will not necessarily do so. The rope slack allows for one or two steps to the side. Depending on each personís mood, it is possible to step either to the left or right of the stone. This does not prevent the expedition from moving forward.

Similarly, we can thus imagine that in the sucession of photons in different times, one or the other could slip through one of the holes by accident. As the two holes are beng used, it is logical that the successive realities of one solitary photon could intefere (with this).

Suddenly, the vagueness that we referred to previously can also be represented by our image of hiking mountaineers. Remember that a photon goes from A and arrives at B and cannot be located between those points for statistically it is everywhere at once!

For a photon to go from A means that an electron emitted it at point A. Similarly, arriving at B means that another electron absorbed it at point B. We shall illustrate these two electrons by two wells. From one comes the roped party of mountaineers (who are also potholers!) and at the other point they enter underground (see the cover of this book). We can therefore situate each mountaineer in A because the well is supposed to be pinpointed exactly; and the same applies for B. On the other hand, chaos rules between A and B. Making the most of the slight slack in each rope, each mounaineer has taken one or two steps to the side. Sometimes these steps have added up if successive mountaineers have chosen the same side which means that the person furthest to one side is at a great distance. However, all of the group will, on the whole follow a straight line from A to B and this will be even more so if the distance AB is great, for the many possibilities (either to the right or left) will have a tendancy to cancel each other out.

This is a perfect example of the amazing fact that quantuim mechanics teaches us : light does not necessarily travel in a straight line, but tends to follow this path if the path chosen is long enough!

 We should not believe that this is a miracle, but we should note that our theory on the simultaneity of times seems to fit well with the requirements of quantum mechanics. We could see in this the possiblity of imagining that which is hard to imagine.

Photons are not, of course, joined by a rope. We could therefore ask ourselves, as we do not know the true nature of light, if we have the right to reason using such a trivial image as that of our mountaineers. We have the right to do so, and logic says we can do so. All of the works dedicated to QM warn the reader : Beware! Do not use examples taken from our macroscopic world as these have no value at particle level. What you will discover bears no relation to what your intuition might suggest. Forget images, for nothing you could imagine will bear any ressemblance to this new reality.

We have, on the contrary shown how an image could be used, and the mountaineers coming from our macroscopic world could behave in a way that is incredibly similar to that of particles from the infinitely minute world.

It is useful to add here that we are not the first to adventure into bold speculation concerning the chronology of events. The physician Richard Feynman already showed that it was mathematically possible to consider an antiparticle travelling in the same direction as time as a particle travelling in the opposite direction to time. If at first he maintained that this was a real possibility, he seems to then have sided with orthodox beliefs, i.e. the more traditional concept of a unique direction for time, from the past to the future.

The same was not true for another great phyisician, Olivier Costa de Beauregard, who was the first to admit (in 1947) that time could be travelled in both directions. He postulated for the existence of a "delayed" wavelength, which travels through time in the usual direction and an "advanced" wave that goes back through time. This allowed him, amongst other things, to solve the paradox of inseparability.

Let us go back to the example of our couple (used to illustrate the shared past of two particles). At the same moment that the hero changes sex (polarization) this causes the inverse change in his ex-wife at the same moment.

The explanation according to the Costa de Beauregardís theory is as follows:

At the same time that the ex-husband changes sex, he unhooks his "temporal telephone" (which works against time, from the future to the past) and dials his wifeís number (that she had when they were married, i.e. his own number for they shared the same phone at the time). He explains what has happened to him and when this happened. From that moment on his wife, who has been warned, knows that she will have to change sex in a precise future time, in order to save the notion of a male-female couple (for the needs of our story, we presume that the message itself is the factor that triggers the process of change).

Our explanation (in summary form) is as follows:

It is the same story as above, apart from it is not the ex-husband himself who gives the phone call, but one of his preceding egos (who has therefore already lived through the sex-change before him). As this action took place before his act, the message follows the normal direction of time, past to future.

If you still doubt the possiblitiy of obtaining information from the future with a time arrow going towards the future, here is a last example that will clear the matter once and for all. We shall once again use the image of a train that aptly situates the different successive times (the carriages) and the events (constant in relation to the train). Remember, as usual, that all of our comparisons are only valid if they are applied at particule level (in this exmaple, the whole train, with all of its carriages, is the image for a single and unique particule).

A bolt lies on the rails - this is a fixed event. The train moves constantly, and each carriage in turn feels the clang when the wheels go over the bolt. In my carriage (containing all of my present world), it is midday. I therefore declare that the time is twelve oíclock for the whole train. In one hourís time I will pass over the bolt, but I know nothing of this because it takes place in the future. Question : how can I now receive, at twelve o'clock, the message regarding this future encounter with the bolt?

Because the train is very long, somewhere before my carriage there is one that is currently going over the bolt. The impact shakes the carriage but also the rail - this sends a shock wave towards the rear of the train, to my carriage. This shock wave represents the message that I hope to receive at twelve oíclock. Unfortunately, as the whole train is at twelve oíclock, the shock wave also started at the same time and if it needs one hour to reach me, I will only receive it at one oíclock, i.e. one hour too late. In fact, the ideal situation would have been if it started one hour earlier, at eleven oíclock. Thus, with the hour needed for its journey it would have reached me a twelve oíclock, as I wanted.

But such a wave was given at eleven oíclock. In all of the carriages that have already gone over the bolt there must be one, towards the head of the train, that was sufficiently ahead of the others so that its own passage over the bolt took place one hour earlier, at eleven oíclock. It is from this past event that the message has come and not from the event that is currently taking place.

Does this message (the shock wave along the rails) travel in the usual direction of time? Yes, of course, because it was given at eleven oíclock and arrived at twelve. Instead of a shock wave, we could have imagined that a passenger in the eleven oíclock carriage passed a message through the window to a pedestrian who was walking back up the train, along the rails. When he got level with my carriage he would have given me the message. Who would maintain that this man got younger with each step, just because he was walking in the opposite direction to the train? If this were so, there would be hoards of strolling alongside railway lines!

The shock given to the rails by the bolt does not just take the form of a mechanical wave towards the rear of the train. An identical wave goes towards the head of the train. We can apply the same line of reasoning to it and conlcude that the message of the impact can come to me after I have experienced the event, therefore giving me the memory (retrocognition) of the event. And, for the same reasons as before, this message would also travel in the usual time direction.

To summarize, any message, wherever it may come from, ALWAYS travels from past to future. This conforms in every way to what science has always maintained on this point - at least we are not talking heresy! The opposite is so if we take the principle that only one present really exists. In this case, our train would only be made up of one carriage. If this carriage went over the bolt at 1pm and I wish to be informed of the fact at midday, then we will have to imagine that a message can go back in time and go from 1pm to midday.

We would thus arrive at the same outcome as with multiple times. We must admit that going back in time is a very hard concept to accept for a rational, Cartesian mind. It is harder to imagine than the simultaneity of times which can be illustrated by a simple train image without requiring any other form of mental torture.

In Agatha Christie novels, the detective Hercule Poirot always explains in the last pages how he came to the conclusion that X was guilty. We then think that the story is finished, but in the last lines he suddenly changes his mind. X is not guilty but he had to say so in order to confound Y, the real guilty party.

Here we will also experience such a turning of tables, with the difference that we might not be able to ascertain who out of X or Y is really guilty. Not everyone can be as clever as Hercule Poirot!

In the paradox of time travel, we have supposed that if we travel far enough into the future we will end up by finding the traveller who will be the first in his kind - the traveller that would, in fact, have no future. On the one hand this is logical, and also makes our reasoning easier. What we did not say at the time, to keep simple what was already quite a confused story, was that this way of looking at things is in contradiction with the concept of precognition. As we are now coming to the end of our journey together, it is time to set the record straight.

Let us call number 1 the man who is at the end of the future. If 1 is the first of his kind, he cannot experience precognition, for no mesage can come to him from a future that does not exist. But 20 (who is one of 1ís past realities) can, for example, experience precognition because 1 is there to inform him. 20 has therefore been able to live an experience that 1 has not known. Yet an experience can change a life. 20, the man who sees into the future, can write a book to explain in detail his prediction and its fulfilment. This book will be written, published, read and commented upon. Many people will be involved, who in turn, etc. In other words, the news will spread like wildfire. For 1, no such luck. No precognition, therefore no book, therefore none of the things that follow. We therefore find ourselves in the same position as the time traveller, and we will have to admit that two totally different realities can follow each other. We have seen that this causes to a break and that this break gave rise to insurmountable difficulties when dealing at particle level.

So what?

So, the situation is very straightforward. There are two possibilities:

In the first case, we must admit that there is no starting point for our history. This implies that everything exists since time immemorial. This can be hard to imagine, but the same can be said for the opposite. If everything does not exist since the beginning of time, it means that before that there was "nothing" since all time. "Nothing" was therefore eternal. But then why would there be "something" one day? Physicists explain that time only exists in relation to the universe. No universe means no time. But what replaced time when time did not exist? The most simple option is to imagine that the universe is eternal, with no beginning nor end. Infinity in time or space are things we cannot imagine, but we have seen how the unimaginable can stem from asking the wrong questions.

For the second possibility, we must admit that precognition is impossible. All of our hypothesis has been built on a phenomenon that does not exist. After all, this is possible.

The situation seems inextricable. Hercule Poirot presented us with two suspects, X and Y who both seemed as guilty (or innocent) as each other. Which one should we choose? Is the story doomed to failiure?

There is a ray of hope. X and Y could both be innocent. It is Z, a third rogue who is the real culprit. But does this third rogue really exist?

To reason using the multiplicity of times is, as we have already seen, a hazardous task. We often forget a piece of information on the way. This could possibly be what has happened here. This piece of information could be memory - let us go back to the beginning again.

1 is the first of his kind. He therefore has no future. Something happens to him. He warns 20 of this who therefore acquires precognition. Why did he warn 20 and not 19, for example? Because there obviously needs to be a delay between the event and its prediction. Otherwise where would the precognition come in? We can decide that in our story the delay is the time that separates 1 from 20. Therefore 20 receives the message from 1 but 19 does not receive anything because there was no one before 1 to send it to him. Thus, 20 experienced precognition and 19 did not. 20 therefore knows the event that will happen and 19 knows nothing about it.

Up to this point our reasoning is exactly the same as used in the first explanation.

But this can be the point in the reasoning where we slip on a banana skin. It is false to say that 19 does not know what will happen. He does know. He knows because it is in his memory. And who is 19ís memory, but 20 ! 20 is the one who had the premonition. Therefore 19 has in his memory the premonition from 20, therefore as this is his own memory, 19 is convinced that he personally experienced this premonition. The same reasoning applies to 18, 17, 16 and so on until we reach 1, for each of them has 20 in their memories. This means that 1, who has no existing future and who therefore cannot experience precognition, is nonetheless sure that he has experienced this because it is in his memory. From then on, it is impossible to think that 20 could write a book that 1 could not have written, thus causing a rift in the sequence of events. 1 and 20 both write the same book, one because he thinks he had a premonition, and the other because he really had one. There is therefore no hiatus.

Our error, once again, came from forgetting that all times are constantly linked. A man can only function in relation to this. When reduced to his present slice of time he represents nothing. He is motionless, still in time - a photo as opposed to a film.

This is just one scenario. Nothing stops you from imagining others. So many combinations are possible when one admits that all times are constantly linked.

Those who believed in the mad theory that the Earth was round were so sure of themselves that two centuries before Jesus Christ they had already calculated its circumference (and were only about 300 km out). Despite this and many arguments as obvious as the Earthís shadow projected onto the moon during eclipses, the defenders of a flat Earth never gave in. Of course the best reasons "on paper" could not equal tangible proof . And the best proof was surely to see for oneself, by going around the world? It was Magellan who later showed that this was possible. Some sad people still had to comment that being able to circumnavigate a volume in no way implied that this was round. One can just as easily go around a cube and even a plateau. A fly can do this. Yet there is no point preaching to someone who does not want to listen and to this day there are eccentrics who claim that the photos of the Earth taken from space have been tampered with, to hide the fact that it is, in fact, flat!

The problem is the same for this other wild hypothesis on the co-existence of times. The arguments that we have used here will definitely not meet with unanimous approval. Considering the volume of the pill to swallow, it would pass more easily if accompanied by something more substantial than words. Ideally we should be able to witness another time with our own eyes. But before we can build a machine that would let us do so, we would first have to know that which differentiates one time from another. We have assumed that each chronological time had its own frequency.

This hypothesis has the advantage of being in harmony with current physics which privilege a wave-like concept for matter (and therefore why not of time?). As well as this idea, we cannot see who or what we should believe. Nothing exists which could be equivalent to a frequency. It would therefore be logical, for example, to start searching by trying to uncover the fundamental frequency of our present time.

The notion of a fundamental frequency which characterizes our present infers that this is a constant frequency. However, the notion of fundamental constants is not unknown in physics. On the contrary, they form the basis to our knowledge. We could therefore possibly discover a new constant which would fulfill our requirements. Unless an existing one could do the job. We shall let the physicists fight this matter out.

Another avenue for research could be astonomy. If all of stars from all times existed at once, the density of this astral population would be immense. On the other hand, when we affirm that different frequencies ensure the invisibility and untangibility of chronological realities, maybe this should be taken with a pinch of salt. A glass will start to vibrate because of resonance if its surroundings vibrate at the same frequency. Yet it is not completely right to believe that it would not vibrate at another frequency. The phenomenon of harmonics exists, where the frequency of sounds are a whole multiple of the base sound. This means that there can be inteference between the harmonic waves. It ensues that different chronological realities could interact on pre-determined frequencies, which would render visible and tangible that which should not be so. What we see in the sky is perhaps the sum of stars and their harmonics. Amongst them we should be able to find one or the other of our sunís chronological realities. The first consequence of this idea would be that the number of different stars that we can see in our present would be smaller than we imagine. But here again we are sliding towards the fantastic. We should, no doubt, think about more unobtrusive interactions (which would not prevent them from being significant in a cosmic sense). Let us leave the astonomists to decide in this delicate matter.

Another possible avenue for exploration could be to study the human mind in light of our hypothesis. It would thus be interesting to research into how it communicates with its kind in other times. What signals does it use? Or rather where are the transmitter and receivers located? Is there an aeriel? Can the communication be influenced? Here it is the brain specialists who will have to work on this idea.

We should also not forget the mental approach. The fact that we believe in the simultaneity of times could possibly lift certain psychological barriers that our unconscious places to prevent us from having access to the paranormal world, or at least to a more intelligent usage of our brain? In the same way as therapy would rid us of a taboo. Maybe we could trap our mind in some way so that it would have to reveal itself? By thinking of our other egos, maybe we could in the long term experience a kind of complicity that would facilitate exchanges between them? We can each fight our own internal battle similar to a game of chess with the difference that we are playing against ourselves.

As we have already said, this book is possibly but a castle built on sand. But as the pages unfurl we have provided so many remarkable and fascinating examples that it would be difficult for us to live without them, should they disappear.

We will therefore have to build another castle.

Also filled with dreams.

But what can be more exhilarating than to dream?

SECOND PART :

TOWARDS ANOTHER FORM OF RELIGION

Joseph was josephying. Someone cut his throat, his blood poured forth and now he josephies no more! LE DANTEC

The phrase from LE DANTEC mentioned on the previous page, perfectly summarizes the materialistic stance. Joseph is dead, therefore he josephies no more! This means : he is dead and there is nothing after death.

Materialism is a doctorine which affirms that nothing other than matter exists. Thought iteslf is a purely material phenomenon. It can only exist if there is matter to create it. Once the organization of the matter is destroyed, life ceases and with it thought. This belief is confirmed by PoincarÈ in one succinct phrase : the mind is but a lightning bolt between two eternities of night.

It is obvious that this philosophical concept is rather despondent. It implies that we are just an accident of nature. Some even prefer the word error and go as far as say that we are the mould of the planet. This is a rather harsh judgement of our presence on Earth!

Yet materialism is not totally negative and many people live with it very well. It is deeply rational and is based on reason. In fact, it is the only attitude that is truly scientific for it uses the same logic and processes for reasoning as science itself. I think. I receive a blow to the head. My circulation is disturbed. I pass out. I stop thinking. Circulation comes back. I come to. I start thinking again.

Is this not the way a machine works? All is in perfect order therefore it works; a piece is faulty and it does not work, or works badly. But can a machine be intelligent (in the human sense of the word)? We should look at the incredible progress in the world of electronics. The expression "artificial intelligence", which initially shocked people no longer does so. Who would have guessed only a few years ago the bounds forward that this form of science would make? Where will we be in a hundred or a thousand yearsí time? Can you swear that artificial intelligence is but a utopic idea?

We could always argue that having artifical intelligence would not stop one from having a soul (meaning mankind and not machines, of course). But such an argument cannot be made to a materialist. Apart from the fact that it duplicates the act of thought (they represent the same ego, donít they?), the soul has the crippling fault of being immaterial. Have we ever seen in science the slightest justification that a thought can exist without any support?

On the other hand, even if we suppose that "life" exists after death, how can we state that it would be more pleasant than the one just left? On this issue, I would like to tell you a story that illustrates this point well.

When I was a student, I had an artist friend who had the talent of entertaining me with his fertile imagination and his taste for the absurd. One day he drew a compass which traced a perfect square! This shows you the sort of person he was. But once I saw him turn up with a look of satisfaction on his face. His face told me that this was a great day. He must have surpassed himself. He smiled and told me that he had just had the most horrible idea that a human being had ever experienced! Eat your heart out Edgar Poe, Lovecraft and the great Hitchcock!

"Imagine", he said, "that one day science manages to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is a life after death and that this life is an unmentionable horror, which makes hell look like a picnic and that no one can escape from it, whatever life they lived on earth - good or bad."

"Imagine the situation. Poor horrified human beings living in fear of dying. The idea of what awaits them would be so unbearable that they would want to commit suicide just to stop thinking about it. But this would be worse still, for it would only bring the inevitable nightmare closer! That ís it", he said, waiting for my reaction. After thinking for a minute or so, I had to admit that I had never heard such an abominable tale and that I doubted whether anyone could do better one day. I congratulated him as one does someone who is the world champion in his field.

I have not told this tale in order to frighten you. Please forgive me if this is the case. As an antidote I shall tell you this : imagine that the opposite is true - the afterlife is marvellous, for everyone. We shall all go to heaven!

To return to materialism, we must acknowledge that the doctorine defends itself well against all the others, but it takes a strong character to practise it daily, especially if your earthly existence is not a happy one.

I often wonder if the best solution might not be to believe strongly in a better future life, even if no such life really exists. If when we die a single minute goes by before we embark on our new unknown life, would it not be better for that minute to last eternally?

Because we must pass by death, what does it matter at that point if there is nothing afterwards? It is during life that this problem has its importance, for that is when we have to make a choice. Or, as some prefer, never think about it ..

About 70% of the Earthís population belongs to one of the six major religions (in alphabetical order): Animist buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Judaism, Muslim, Shintoism, Taoism and Zoroastrianism. We could imagine that it would be relatively simple to know what most people expect after death.Ten religions, therefore ten afterlives? Unfortunately, this simple word does not feature in our worldwide dictionary.

Each religion is divided into a certain number of branches and they themselves have local variations, without mentioning the innumerous sects which surround them. Even within one closed community there can be different views on the doctorine according to the different personnalities of the people within that community. From this explosion of beliefs comes a multitude of afterlives which we could not possibly present here. We will therefore just briefly skip through them, for all we need is a general overview to help highlight the similarities, if there are any.

It can seem surprising that religions such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which are built solely around books revealed by God himself (old and new testament, Koran), and where not one iota can be changed, could have generated different concepts on the afterlife. This comes from the fact that curiously enough this major issue is only touched upon in the texts. The lack of precision concerning our future therefore allows for all sorts of interpretations.

JUDAISM

The old testament is the fruit of various revelations by God running over many centuries. In the most ancient times we only find vague hints of a wretched ghostly survival, with no difference between good and bad and therefore devoid of any notion of reward or punishment.

It is only progressively that we see the elaboration of a belief in the resurrection of the flesh and a happy eternal life for the just, for Godís enemies do not live on. Even later in Danielís prophecies it will be written that at the end of time, "several" of those who sleep in dust will awaken, some for eternal life and others for eternal shame. The orthodox rabbi view, in its popular form, takes as true the fact that at death the just will be rewarded by a happy time in the heavens whereas the bad will have the right to Gehenna where they will be tormented by a fire sixty times hotter than earthly flames! The lucky ones will have the right pass through the diamond gates, radiant angels, rivers of milk and honey, feasts presided by God, etc. In reality, however, the only true reward for the just is to savour the eternal vision of God.

CHRISTIANITY

We could hope that with the New Testament would come more details or precision concerning our future fate. Unfortunately, Jesus did not develop this theme and was happy just to present the orthodox vision from the Old Testament whilst specifying that at the resurrection we will recover a transformed body, namely without the "burden of gender" therefore allowing us to live like the Angels.

The texts do not help us find any more details and we have to address either catholic or protestant theologians in order to help shed some light on the matter. There is a two-fold question which needs to be answered: on Judgment Day will the bodies given be matieral and in what form will we exist between death and this resurrection?

Such formidable questions have provoked bitter discussions between the Doctors of the Church. It would seem that the current less didactic trend favours the idea that the incarnation would not be material in the way that we understand the word, but rather be something fundamentally new, adapted to the future life. At our death our soul would be immaterial and according to past acts would either go up to heaven or down to hell. It is only at the Resurrection that the pleasure or bodily torture would be added, for our destiny would then be fixed forever.

Let us add to this picture the strictly Catholic notion of purgatory where our soul goes to be purified if its sins are not beyond redemption.

As in Judaism, we find a certain popular version of a paradise with earthly pleasures or a hell based on our perception of torture and, on the other hand, a more erudite version where the reward is our own glorification in a communion with God and our punishment remorse and the lack of God, which seems to concord mostly with the notion of infininte good.

ISLAM

There are many common points between Islam and Judeo-Christian beliefs, especially relating to the after life. Here again, on Judgement Day, a single all powerful God attributes the delights of Paradise to the good (Muslims) and the torture of Hell to the evil ones. Here resurrection is perfect and complete, in a body of flesh and blood - this explains why the notion of reward and punishment are also very materialistic. For one group, clothes of silk and gold, shady gardens, gurgling springs, the finest food and the presence of countless beautiful virgins (heaven is reserved exclusively for men). For the others the fires of Hell, seventy times hotter than our flames (slightly hotter than the Jewish Hell), burning pitch, melted sulphur and other refinements that I shall spare you.

Here again we find the same hiatus on the state of the dead person between his death and his future resurrection. Opinions vary greatly as to this intermediate period, but the dominant idea seems to be that the "soul" of the dead person remains in the tomb where he will have a taste of his future through a vision of Paradise or Hell whilst awaiting reincarnation.

Some Muslim thinkers try to offer a more spiritual image of Islam by imitating their Jewish and Christian colleagues.

At this point we shall briefly look at the religions in the Far East, although it would be better to talk here of philosophies, rather than religions, for their beliefs are very different to those found in the west. But can we refer to beliefs that are so different to our western ones as religions? Would it not be better to talk of philosophies?

Western thought is based upon the importance of the individual and all that he represents in relation to the world. His rationalism pushes him to situate the human spirit in the universe. Eastern wisdom is, on the contrary, dominated by the idea of a totally united world in which the individual is insignificant and dependent on the whole. It is not a case of understanding the universe, but of being in harmony with it.

Such fundamentally-opposed concepts could only lead to deeply different religions and to particularly unusual ideas on the after world.

HINDUISM

Hinduism is a philosophical, moral and social system of beliefs, devoid of any doctrinal constraints as found in our religions. It only requires of its adepts the notion of a "moral order" in the world. In this system no act, either good or bad, is lost (law of the Karma). This obviously implies the "transmigration" of souls. According to the quality of life lived, the reincarnation can be more or less painful (rebirth into inferior bodies such as a dog, pig, insect or plant). It is always possible to buy back favour, for the order of existence can be ascending and lead progressively to eternal beatitude. Meditation and severe self-discipline are the best assets for this.

There exists a popular form of hinduism, more inclined to imagine a more material future. Hence notions very similar to ours of a paradise where one drinks soma at the godsí table (which do not have the same level of importance as our god) and where one tastes all of the bodily pleasures, and of a hell where the stay conforms in every detail with what we expect from the eastern imagination. We should note, however, that despite everything, karmic law dominates and these materialistic concepts are only considered as temporary stays between two reincarnations.

BUDDHISM

Bouddha is neither a god, nor a saviour, but merely a guide indicating the way towards the "awakening" of understanding. Buddhism distances itself from human matters for it denies any notion of matter, spirirt or even soul. All is but an illusion, change, non-reality. There is nothing but a karmic flow without any "me" directing it. Despite everything, this cycle can be interrupted by moral and intellectual improvement. To understand that there is no "me" is the key which leads to saintliness and ultimately the supreme reward : the bliss of Nirvana.

You would not be surprised to see that here again many sects have tried to conquer the masses by using once more the statutory notion of Hell and Paradise.

CONFUCIANISM, SHINTOISM, TAOISM

We shall not go into too much detail on the religions practised in China and Japan. They are deeply similar and are based upon the cult of the dead. In Japan, the "Kami" (spirits of the dead ancestors who have become gods) continue to live close to the living and participate in an invisible way in their existence. Possessing supernatural powers due to their passage beyond the tomb, they can be good or evil depending on whether they are honoured or neglected. In China the belief is similar but popular thought has added many gods, spirits and demons which need to be either neutralised or made friendly. With the introduction of popular buddhism came notions of good and evil, reward and punishment. But the Chinese are willingly agnostic and adhere to Confuciusí saying :When one does not know what life is, how can one experience death? Surely this is wisdom itself?

ANIMISM

Animism is the name given to traditional religions. It replaces the derogatory term paganism, the religion of the pagans, and groups together beliefs which share the allocation of a soul to everything, man, animals, objects and natural phenomena. All of these entities can be beneficial or hostile and they must be appeased by the appropriate rituals. The ancestorsí cult thus takes on a great importance, for they are considered as still alive and capable of action. Animism is spread throughout the world but is mainly found in Africa.

The different after worlds described here can be found, with variations, in the innumerble sects that we could not list here. From this enormous amalgam it is possible to draw a lesson. A common point links all religions, be they small or great : DEATH MAKES US LOSE OUR MATERIAL BEING. Even in the cases where resurrection exists, there is at least a transitory period where we exist in an immaterial form, and if we pass from one reincarnation to another, there are also intermediate stages with no material state. Religions make us accept a post-mortem state which no earthly experience can corroborate. Belief in a soul or spirit is a pure act of faith that escapes all criticism or debate. It is more often a matter of oneís social or cultural environment, rather than a personal choice.

Not only relgious minds have looked into what our future existence could be like after death, should such a future exist.

Many thinkers, dissatisfied by the dogmatic affirmations made by religions, have searched either to modify these, or to find a totally different path for investigation. A flourish of more or less reasonable, or blatantly wild ideas were born out of this intense pondering. The most brilliant minds from every age have added their dash of folly to this and the least that one can say is that they are far from being in agreement. In fact, total pandemonium reigns. This observation already means that we can state that to date no single proposal is likely to win favour with a large public, for no one view is more credible than any of the others. As opposed to religions where believers are in their milllions, or hundred millions, a philosophical theory most often only commits the person who created it. The main reason for this is that this kind of literature is usually far from being an easy read. Written by the learned for the learned means that it has no popular audience. We are talking here about written texts on the after world and not general philosophy where some ideas (ideologies) can mobilise the masses (Marxism, Existentialism, etc).

The lack of rules and ceremonials also discourage massive participation. Believers need to get together and comfort each other in a ceremony which highlights their belonging to the group. Finally, the lack of Manicheism opposing the principles of good and evil with their consequent rewards and punishments, badly serves a public generally avid for some compensation for their many earthly sufferings and lack of justice.

Philosophical ideas on the after world are far too numerous to list here - it would be an impossible task. We shall therefore content ourselves by skimming over the subject and presenting some proposals and thoughts picked up here and there, in no particaular order.

There are two opposing concepts for those who believe in life after death. Do we keep our personality and therefore the ability to reason, or do we melt into a supreme being (God, Universal Soul, Absolute Being, etc.) for eternal bliss, thus losing our identity and free will? Is this philosophical on the one hand, religious on the other, or a mixture of both?

The idea that it is possible to perfect ourselves in a future life found much support and lead to the idea of a "tiered" afterlife. We thus progress from one superior sphere to the other towards perfection, never attained but always accessible. For some people these stages are material and consist of reincarnations on other stars in increasingly perfect lives. Others go further and imagine superhuman beings which succeed us and where even God himself would be but a stop on the way to other gods.

To be rational, some have directed their thinking to the nature of the greater spirit (for it must be made of something), and by copying the matter have imagined that it could be made up of pyschological atoms (monads, psychons). Immaterial, but linked to matter, these atoms would be organised into complex groups which make up the personnality and conscience of the individual and they would be able to survive independently of the body. What is their final destiny? Depending on the author there can either be communion with the psychological Great One or, on the contrary, a more individual life leading to new possibilities (paranormal phenomena). To divide the mind up into more elementary parts does not unfortunately shed any more light onto the real meaning of this other life. At most this idea can satisfy a certain need for positivism.

A more rational way of considering the problem involves not isolating the individual from the rest of society. All of the acts in a manís life influence the people he evolves with, in such a way that he is a part of them and continues to live in them after his death. It is therefore not the individual himself but society that survives indefinitely through successive civilizations. If this contribution to society by man is considered as purely cultural or moral, we cannot really talk of a future life. If, however, we can see in this contribution something real, a kind of transfer from our spirit, we then fall back into the realm of immaterial entities.

At the end of the last century rationalists believed that thanks to spiritualism they had found the ideal solution concerning the after world. Spiritual beings, bodiless human spirits, came to "talk" to us via turning tables and other inanimate objects or by mediums in a trance. Surely this was the perfect way of illustrating the paranormal? And numerous scientists witnessed extraordinary manifestations during memorable seances.

According to the spiritist doctorine, man is made up of three elements : his physical body, which is mortal; his vital fluid which accompanies the soul after death and allows him to act on matter and finally his soul, which is immortal and constitutes the immaterial support to thought. Unfortunately, although the "spirits" did their best to make contact with us, they did not have much to say about the after world. Their descriptions are flimsy, vague, foggy, contradictory and basically unusable. They are the ones who discredited the spirit world more than the doctrine itself.

To end, more recently another approach to the afterlife has caused a major stir. This is called N.D.E. (near death experiences) or, if you prefer, the study of states close to death or a pseudo-death. We all know the facts. People who have come close to death or who have been "clinically dead" come back to life and tell a similar tale. They see themselves on their death bed (or on an operating table, or at the scene of their accident) and they "leave" their body and arrive at a "tunnel" at the end of which a "being of light" awaits them. The experience stops when they come back to earthly life and enter back into their body. The experience has psychologically affected them deeply and they state that they have lived something which is in no way similar to a dream.

Has a corner of the veil been lifted on the after world, or can a psychological state close to death trigger in the dying a standard fantasy? The debate remains open. If we choose the first version we will again have "something" able to survive outside matter and the other version is of no relevance in a debate on the after world.

To sum up, the philosophical after world is like that of relgions : the passage from one life to another requires a break between our physical, mortal being and an immaterial entity which survives after it. The obstacle is unavoidable, despite whatever subtleties of imagination the great thinkers might deploy. No strictly materialistic dotorine exists that can back up the idea of a life after death.

It is not up to science to say if life after death is possible. This does not prevent it favouring a doctrine which is as close as possible to our current knowledge rather than one which calls upon new and unverifiable concepts. Science has built physics for its use - this is effective and at present beats all other disciplines and scientists find it satisfactory. Why should science gratuitously burden itself with an immaterial world which it cannot tell head from tail? Also, it prefers pure materialism which simply denies any existence after death - even if many researchers are religious, they readily admit that this is the least disturbing solution in a strictly scientific sense.

This choice is linked to the conviction that the spirit and matter are inextricably linked and that one is the "product" of the other. As of a certain level of complexity and organization, matter would have the peculiarity of being conscious of its own existence. Science cannot, at present, explain such a process or even prove its justification, but it prefers this hypothesis which can be worked upon rather than imagine a separate existence for thought, which it could only accept passively.

This (not official, but tacitally recognized) position, is obviously subject to criticism, but we are not going to enter into an agrument which has been going on for centuries and go through all of the various points involved. Once again we shall do as we have done throughout our questioning, use that precious word IF!

IF, matter and spirit are really unseparable, what happens when we add to this the notion that all times exist simultaneously? This is what we shall now see.

We have seen how one of the consequences of our hypothesis is that events are situated in a fixed place in space. There is a well-determined place where we are constantly being born and another where we endlessly die. Between the two is the meandering line of our existence which flows endlessly as a (more or less) long river from its source to the sea. There is, somewhere, a section of matter made up of particles which follow each other relentlessly and which go to make up our physical "me".

However, we have just seen and accepted as a working hypothesis that this matter also carries our mind. Thus, our mind is also present, permanently, in the same section of space. It does not disappear at our death because our successors in time will in turn use it.

We should remember here that by "our death" we mean the death of the "slice" that we are in relation to the "whole" which never dies (or at least not before the end of the universe). And this is where we have to make a choice. Either we lose this slice and give up any hope of making it to the rest of the section, or on the contrary it is the very loss of this slice which gives us that same access. In the first case the slice has no future and will have to live with the consolation that behind it life continues, and in the second case the story does not end with the death of the slice and there is survival.

As we are talking about the after world, we shall obviously choose the second solution and see how we can picture it.

We have on many occasions mentioned, and especially when dealing with quantum mechanics, that it is necesasry to envisage the existence of "signals" travelling in the opposite direction to normal signals, without this meaning that they went back in time. Our section is a motorway where one can drive both ways. There is the direction birth-to-death which we know well, for it is our memory, and the direction death-to-birth which we do not usually have access to but which we can occasionally use in precognition (or, more systematically, in the realm of particles). It is therefore imaginable that this two-way motorway could be the very route by which our humble (but important to us) slice of life could once again become a part of the whole.

We shall not assume that things happen this way, but we can reasonably state that IF there is something after death, then it is highly probable that this is how it works.

At our death, the one-way street (a mental barrier?) disappears and we start a new existence. This does not mean that we are going to live our life again in the other direction. Our memory does not let us live our life "forwards". It is but a tool that our mind uses. There is no reason why this should be any different for the memory travelling in the other direction, for this is also but a tool. The mind does not follow the traffic in a particular direction, it goes where it wants. The advantage after death is that one becomes a whole which can most probably have movement both ways at once and thus benefit from increased intellectual possibilities (such as access to the subconscious?).

The sort of survival that we have just shown conforms totally with the requirements set by science. There is at no moment a break between the spirit and matter. The after world imagined is as materialistic as could be hoped for. Undoubtedly, if science has felt obliged to make a choice between all of the after worlds put forward to date, this is the one that it would choose!

Yet if this idea satisfies logic, it does not satisfy our dreams. After all, it is not very exciting to imainge that we are going to spend eternity contemplating our life. Luckily, we can imagine better. If we used the image of a section of motorway, it was for a purpose. In fact, the word section leads us to believe that we are dealing with a part of something longer : the whole motorway. After all, our matter is part of our parents and also of our children at the moment of conception (and particularly during pregnancy when a lot of matter is shared)?

The motorway then becomes vast. And nothing can stop us turning off towards brothers or sisters where we share equally strong physical ties (same mother). Thus our motorway splits into all directions and joins other motorways! Thus, whilst never leaving matter for one moment, our mind could little by little encompass the whole of mankind (including the flora and fauna) and at all periods in history !

At this point would we still be ourselves? I hope not! After all, we change throughout life, depending on the people we meet or experiences that we live. Do we reason in the same way when we are ten, twenty or fifty yearsí old? Similarly our progressions into the lives of others would enrich us in a way that is hard to imagine. How could we not change, if we were rich with the wisdom and experiences of the whole planet?

You might think that I am going slightly over the top here, and that this motorway image is not a very plausible one? Yet all I am doing is rigorously applying the principle that we have taken as the base to our reasoning. The mind is dependent on matter. Our personal experience proves that our mind can position itself wherever it wants to in relation to the space which is our existence. Why not widen this to cover the whole of matter?

The point that troubles us is the idea that our mind could wander on the motorways of matter and infiltrate everywhere and even invade the brain of an ant on the premiss that it was eaten by a chicken that we then ate (or that it was part of the animal world and that we are linked to it by some evolutionary misshap). Nothing obliges us to think that this adventure is a journey. We can, on the contrary, imagine that our mind stays in the section that is attributed to us. It therefore just watches the traffic go by (the information) toing and froing from all places and all periods of time.

Considered in this way, it already seems more reasonable. But maybe you do not want to be reasonable? Hold on to your hats, for we are going to speed up/change up a gear.

Imagine a starry sky. Thousands of small bright points scattered in the darkness. Now imagine that you can at once see all of the chronological realities of each of these stars. What a wonderful spectacle! Now the sky is full of stripes of light whose thickness and brightness varies according to their distance at the different periods. Add the sun, with a burning streak fixed in space and the moon and planets. Now imagine that your sight widens and in one glance you can see all of the universe. The stars are now grouped into galaxies throwing out giant tentacles in all directions. The universe is a gargantuan sea urchin of light constantly growing and expanding. In its middle beats a cataclysmic heart with the never-ending beat of successive big bangs. Are you still with me?

Now go to the infinitely small. Each quark, particle, atom and molecule is one or many strands whose length is on a scale to the universe. And each of these unbelievably fine lines endlessly conveys signals from one end to the other of all that exists. How many particles are there in a planet, star, galaxy or whole universe? How many signals does that make? Are you feeling dizzy yet?

This is how the universe would look if all times exist simultaneously. Is it conceivable that this flood of signals serves no purpose? Couldn't "someone" use all of these pieces of information?

Let us return to the "me" that we abandoned, busily absorbing the whole of humanity! Here he launches into an even crazier adventure. This time the whole universe is talking to him!

He is the universe!

Georges Sommeryns

Brussels, april 1994

on Internet : juin 2001