Erich Daniken - Miracles of the Gods

It can be proved from the small selection of visions I have described that in several cases the visionaries did not 'see' the complete apparition spontaneously or suddenly: if anything they were confronted with a 'hazy indefinable greyish-white mass'. They only perceived the visionary image in this 'mass' after an intensive effort (autosuggestion!). The Heroldsbacher girls 'saw' only a 'white gleam' during the vision of 12th October, 1949 - not until later did it assume the form of 'a white lady', and then it was visible only to the boys. Mama Rosa of San Damiano also said that at first she saw only a 'hazy figure' which later 'solidified' into the Mother of God. (Let me remind you of the Jesuit Athanasius Kircher who considered 'mists and vapours' helpful when water-divining in likely spots.)

The official records of the visions seen by the children at Fatima entitle us to conclude that physical events were concerned. The visions always announced themselves with 'lightning', whose electric discharges were accompanied by roaring and cracking noises. The little Lucia said that whenever a vision disappeared she heard a noise as if a 'firework rocket had exploded in the distance'.

----

[*] ESP = Extrasensory Perception

---- When the Fatima children had their fifth vision on 13th September, 1917, several thousand spectators clearly saw a ball of light floating slowly and majestically heavenwards. On 13th May, 1924 pilgrims observed a 'strange white cloud' above the oak tree where the visions always appeared. They said that objects like snowflakes fell from it that dissolved into nothing just above ground-level. Lucia wrote later that the vision of the Blessed Virgin had always approached slowly in 'the reflection of a light', and that the children had always seen the Madonna for the first time when the point of light stopped still above the oak. When Lucia was asked at the official inquiry why she frequently lowered her eyes during the visions, instead of looking the Blessed Virgin straight in the face, she answered: 'Because she often blinded me [19].'

In the case of Lourdes the idea of the materialization of an alien form of energy is literally served up on a silver platter! In the first as yet unembellished accounts, Bernadette Soubirous explained that originally she had seen only something indefinite ... something 'like a fluttering white cloth or a floursack

[20]'; in addition she had heard a muffled noise 'like a gust of wind' in front of the grotto. (Record

'by Doctors Lacrampe, Balencia and Peyrus, dated 27.3.1858.) Bernadette also gave these details to other personalities [21].

Three possibilities occur to me:

1. A vision does not appear suddenly; it must first arrange its atoms into a visible 'image'. (The frequent occurrence of the word 'suddenly' in the records is explained by the indifference of the visionary's examiners to the 'preliminary play' [haze, veil, white cloths, etc.]. By insistent questioning they push forward to the goal, the description of the vision. That is how visions 'suddenly' come into being - at least in the official records!)

2. An electromagnetic, probably highly ionized, field comes into being during the appearance of the vision. Air is compressed very rapidly. This causes sound vibrations of varying volume and strength like a 'dull roaring wind'. Air is sucked out of the grotto as if through an exhaust and compressed.

3. If the apparition collapses, air rushes into the vacuum which is burst open by the spontaneously dissolving magnetic field. That is why even passive, spectators hear a 'bang' at many visionary shrines.

Even this brief resume allows us to conclude that physical laws lie at the root of the unknown causes of visions. Would Almighty God, if he were informed of these phenomena by trusty messengers, simply bow down to these lapidary laws?

The psychiatrist's couch is the place for explaining and curing accounts of ostensible visions feigned by charlatans, would-be visionaries and religious cranks, or cooked up in the brains of hysterics ripe for the asylum. The causes of visionary phenomena that we can take seriously must lie outside human reason and the functions of the human brain. Ionized air, loud bangs, ball lightning etc., offer such hard fact that you can break your teeth on them. Who is the great Manitu, the mighty 'spirit' who gaily produces the phenomena? Am I daring to claim that genuine visions exist?

Yes, I am.

The thousands who heard an explosion, saw lightning or observed the solar miracle were not out of their senses. When the visionaries were followed to the scene of their visions by other people, they were not exclusively a flock of dyed-in-the-wool religious bigots. They often included sceptical scientists, generally critical journalists and always a number of unbelievers who had not been inoculated with the religious virus.

But it is always the devout, the undisputed faithful, who insinuate themselves into the mass suggestion of 'holy events' - in a way described by Jacques Hochmann [22], psychiatrist and psychologist at the University Clinic in Lyons, France, in connection with the psychodrama performance: There is the theoretical model of a 'sociometry' at the centre of which is the social atom. This atom is to be understood as the nucleus which is formed by the attracting and repelling relations in an individual environment. These relations consist of a network of interrelational (*) chains, which are aroused by affective currents.

But a homogeneous society of 'social atoms' is only formed at places of pilgrimage such as Lourdes, where the pilgrims are definitely bound to each other by 'affective currents'.

----

[*] From relationalism. The doctrine that relations have an objective existence.

---- It does not exist at places where curiosity and the human mass hope for miracles are thrown together.

Apparitions announce themselves to 'visionaries' when the latter are in a state of hypnotic compulsion and what I can only call helplessness. The apparition always safeguards itself by specifying time and place.

'I want you to come here on the 13th of next month,' the vision ordered the three Fatima children. And the Madonna appeared punctually at the promised spot. On 13th July, 1917, 2.30 p.m. was exactly astronomic noon for the geographical position of Fatima. (Why?) Again the beautiful lady summoned the children to a meeting on the 13th of the following month at the same place. The flow of information from the vision (transmitter) to the visionaries (receivers) had been set in motion.

So far, so good. But why are visions tied to time and place? I can only suggest a fantastic possibility which admittedly does not fit very well with the so-called known facts. But I think it is better to put forward a theory than to lurk in the underground like a coward. In doing so I am quite conscious of the warning that the historian Egon Friedell (1878-1938) wrote in the albums of all those who were too bold: These are the real miracles. We take hold of a taboo and burn not only our fingers but also our tongues, and we must not be surprised if we unexpectedly find ourselves on fire.

How could people of the other world get in touch with people of this world, or vice-versa, over many light-years (*) of distance? With Radio waves? By light signals or radar? All electromagnetic waves are tied to the speed of light. Radio or radar communication would take hundreds and thousands of generations.

The waves carrying television images are decimetre waves, [+] which move only in a straight line, like light rays. If we were to put television pictures on a ray of light via a bridge of relay stations in order to reach the star Arcturus in the constellation Bootes, we could expect an answer in 82 years at the earliest, for Arcturus is 41 light-years from the earth.