Return to the Stars: Evidence for the Impossible (17 page)

When we discussed this possibility, Mayor Ropo thought that the hats must have been much larger when they were made in the gravel pit, because they would have lost a lot by abrasion when they were rolled down. That may be so, but even today the hats are a respectable size, with a circumference of 25 ft and a height of 7 ft 2 ins. It must still have been quite a feat to put such headgear on the heads towering 33 ft above the ground.

But why were the red hats put on the strange statues at all? So far I have not found a convincing explanation in the whole of the literature about Easter Island. So I ask myself the following questions:

Had the islanders seen 'gods' with helmets and remembered the fact when it came to making the statues?

Was that the reason why the statues did not seem complete to them without the hat-helmets?

Are they meant to express the same thing that 'helmets' and 'haloes' express on prehistoric cliffs and cave walls all over the world?

When the first white men visited Easter Island, inscribed wooden tablets still hung from the necks of the Moais, but even these first curious arrivals could not find a single islander who knew how to read the writing. So far the few wooden tablets still extant have not yielded up their secrets. Nevertheless, they are proof that the Rapanui of the past knew a script, which, I may mention in passing, is astonishingly like Chinese. The generations who came after the 'visit of the gods' forgot what the others had learnt.

Letters and inexplicable symbols are also found on the Petroglyphs, the large flat stones with writing and drawings that lie scattered about on the beach like carpets. Many of these torn and fissured stones have surface areas of 24 sq yards. They lie about wherever the ground is reasonably level. On them we found fish, indefinable embryonic beings, sun symbols, balls and stars.

To make the drawings clearer to us, Mayor Ropo went over the lines with chalk. I asked him if anyone knew how to interpret the signs.

No, he said; even his father and grandfather had not been able to tell him anything about them. He himself thought that the petroglyphs contained astronomical data. He said that all the temples on the island had also been aligned according to the sun and the constellations.

Then our excursion to Easter Island paid a special dividend. Mayor Ropo took us to the beach and showed us a stone egg of astonishing proportions. While we walked round the stone relic, he explained that in Rapanui tradition this egg had originally lain in the centre of the Temple of the Sun, for the 'gods' had come to them from an egg. (Discovered at Easter, 1722, the least Easter Island could do was to produce an Easter egg as a surprise for us.) I gratefully added this information to my files on strange stone eggs all over the world.

A few yards away from the army of fallen statues, the artificial egg crumbles away on the shore of the island. Only a white catalogue number differentiates the 'egg of the gods' from the hotch-potch of stones on the beach.

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10 - To India To Consult The Sacred Texts

'And I entered the large room that shone as brightly as the interior of a temple. Beings with human faces and human hands were running about everywhere. They were carrying all kinds of apparatus and often cases of different sizes as well. They gave them to other beings who stood behind low walls and wore peculiar headgear with the sign of the eagle. The temple hall was filled with celestial music. I did not know where it came from. Often I heard an angel's voice and once I caught the words: "Flight 101 to New York—gate 12".

'Then a cherub took me by the hand and led me to a seraph who was very kind to me and gave me a small piece of paper and said, "Your ticket". I could not decipher the divine writing on it. And then the cherub stood next to me again and led me to a big gleaming heavenly bird which stood on a large smooth area in the vast park of the heavenly beasts. The heavenly bird rested on eight black wheels that protruded from the metal belly of the motionless monster like calves' feet and seemed to be of tanned leather. The gigantic wings of the gleaming heavenly creature were spread wide. Everyone awaited the god who was to fly with us and whom my cherub called the pilot.

'As I climbed the silver ladder to the bird, I saw on the wings four great boxes, each of which had a large hole in it.

And I saw that many wheels turned in one of these holes. The heavenly bird obviously belonged to the god "Swiss-air", for a brightly shining wall spoke this name often.

'In the belly of the bird of the god the air was filled with the sound of harps and a pleasing smell of jasmine rose to my nostrils. Now another cherub with an incomparably lovely figure came and put me in a throne and fastened a broad band tightly round my waist. The harp music died away; a god's voice announced: "Please stop smoking and fasten your seat belts." The voice proclaimed many more prophecies which I understood as little as I had understood everything else that had been said. Suddenly a terrible noise, like the roaring and thundering of a violent storm, was heard. The bird shuddered, started to move and roared away from the other diving birds faster than the fleeing leopard. And it rushed away faster and faster, as mighty as the surge of the sea, strong as the sons of our first mother the Sun. Fear oppressed my breast like a tightly fitting red-hot band. My senses swam.

'Then the charming cherub stood beside me again, handed me intoxicating divine nectar, raised her hand and opened a sluice above me. A refreshing celestial wind blew in my face. Now I raised my eyes and lo, from out of the belly of the divine bird I could see the wings which were motionless and did not move like the flapping of birds' wings. Below me I caught sight of water and clouds and a jumble of green and brown in strange jagged shapes. I felt very disturbed and I gave a start. Then the cherub stood beside me yet again and made known to me the wisdom of the heavenly one: "Be not afraid, no one has ever stayed up here." '

I have just recounted a plane journey as it might have been told by one of our remote ancestors if he had flown from Zurich to New York in a modern jet aircraft. Apparently an absurd fancy, but we shall see that it is by no means so ridiculous.

The prophet Ezekiel (10:1-19) gives an account that suggests a definite association of ideas after my imaginative attempt to reproduce an ancestor's story of a journey by plane:

1. 'Then I looked, and, behold, in the firmament that was above the head of the cherubims there appeared over them as it were a sapphire stone, as the appearance of the likeness of a throne.

2. And he spake unto the man clothed with linen, and said, Go in between the wheels, even under the cherub, and fill thine hands with coals of fire... And he went in in my sight.

3. Now the cherubims stood on the right side of the house, when the man went in; and the cloud filled the inner court.

4. Then the glory of the LORD went up from the cherub, and stood over the threshold of the house; and the house was filled with the cloud, and the court was full of the brightness of die LORD'S glory.

5. And the sound of the cherubims' wings was heard even to the outer court, as the voice of the Almighty God when he speaketh.

6. And it came to pass, that when he had commanded the man clothed in linen, saying, Take fire from between the wheels, from between the cherubims; then he went in, and stood beside the wheels.

9. And when I looked, behold the four wheels by the cherubims, one wheel by one cherub, and another wheel by another cherub: and the appearance of the wheels was as the colour of a beryl stone.

10. And as for their appearances, they four had one likeness, as if a wheel had been in the midst of a wheel.

11. When they went, they went upon their four sides; they turned not as they went, but to the place whither the head looked they followed it...

12. And their whole body, and their backs, and their hands, and their wings, and the wheels, were full of eyes round about, even the wheels that they four had.

13. As for the wheels, it was cried unto them in my hearing, O wheel.

16. And when the cherubims went, the wheels went by them: and when the cherubims lifted up their wings to mount up from the earth, the same wheels also turned not from beside them.

17. When they stood, these stood; and when they were lifted up, these lifted up themselves also ...

19. And the cherubims lifted up their wings, and mounted up from the earth in my sight: when they went out, the wheels also were beside them ...'

The International Academy for Sanskrit Research in Mysore (India) was the first body to make the experiment of rendering a Sanskrit text by Maharishi Bharadvaya, a seer of an early period, in a way suited to our modern way of thinking. The result that lay before me in black and white was so astounding that during my journey to India in the autumn of 1968 I had the accuracy of the translation checked both in Mysore and at the central College of Bangalore. This is now the modern translation of an ancient Sanskrit text reads:

6. 'An apparatus that moves by inner strength like a bird, whether on earth, in the water or in the air, is called Vimana...

8. ... which can move in the sky from place to place ...

9. ... country to country, world to world ... 10. ... is called a Vimana by the priests of the sciences... 11. ... The secret of building flying machines...

12. ... that do not break, cannot be divided, do not catch fire ...

13. ... and cannot be destroyed ...

14. ... The secret of making flying machines stand still.

15. ... The secret of making flying machines invisible.

16. ... The secret of overhearing noises and conversations in enemy flying machines.

17. ... the secret of taking pictures of the interiors of enemy flying machines.

18. ... The secret of ascertaining the course of enemy flying machines.

19. ... The secret of making beings in enemy flying machines unconscious and destroying enemy machines ...'

Later on in the text the thirty-one main pieces of which the machine consists are accurately described. It also enumerates sixteen kinds of metal that are needed to construct the flying vehicle, but only three of them are known to us today. All the others have remained untranslatable to date.

The experiment that was made in Mysore with this text, the age of which is still unknown, should be set up as an example of what old texts can express in modern translation.

A curiosity that leaves me no rest has always drawn me to the old Indian source books. What a mass of fascinating and mysterious information about flying machines and fantastic weapons in the remote past can be found in the translations of the Indian Vedas and epics. The Old Testament with its vigorous, vivid descriptions pales beside these Indian jewels.

My curiosity about the original sources became even greater owing to a purely chance encounter. After a lecture which I had given to a small circle in Zurich in 1963, an Indian student came up to me and said with disarming candour: 'Do you really find anything new or shocking about what you have told us? Every half-educated Indian knows the main sections of the Vedas and so knows that the gods in ancient times moved about in flying machines and possessed terrible weapons. Really, every child in India knows that!'

Basically, the nice young man only wanted to confirm my theory, and perhaps to calm me down as well, for I easily get excited about my pet subject. He achieved exactly the opposite effect.

In the years that followed I carried on a rather one-sided correspondence with Indian Sanskrit scholars. They answered my specific questions very politely and sent me photostats of Sanskrit texts that I could not read. The only people who profited by my obsession were my stamp-collecting friends. There was no peace left for me. I had to go to India—because of the texts.

In the autumn of 1968 I flew to Bangalore, the capital of the southern state of Mysore. Bangalore is the educational centre of Southern India. Yet at first I did not notice this at all. On the first day of my arrival a kaleidoscope of bewildering impressions passed before my eyes. Beggars and starvation existence—ox carts and moped taxis—women with diamonds in their noses and a red spot on their foreheads—dilapidated wooden huts and white palaces in the English colonial style—bustle in the streets and gaunt holy cows with red eyes—soldiers in bluish-green uniforms and dirty yellow water at the edges of the streets and above all the peculiar smell which seemed to penetrate right into my brain.