Ingo Swann or the question: How to believe?

I find it odd that I should have sensed the death of this non-committal prima donna, but I did: 12 hours of headache and heart racing. True, I only made the connection afterwards, looking for somebody who had died during that time, but it's still not arbitrary. I sensed the same thing when Alexander Grothendieck died, only that time for 72 hours, ending a few hours after his death. Then, when his death was reported and I saw how he looked like in his latter days, I wondered whether someone like that had died the first time I sensed this as well, and I found Ingo Swann.

Alexander Grothendieck was of course known to me as a Bourbaki member. After he left mathematics and settled in the Pyrenees he reportedly continued writing, but I guess not much of this effort will ever be published, and if it would, I guess it wouldn't be particularly easy to read.

So, naturally in a way, I've finally decided to take a closer look at Ingo Swann to see what these rather painful episodes might have been about.

And right there lies the first difficulty, for Ingo Swann preferred to pretend that he wasn't about anything.

Assuming the Axelrod encounters described in Penetration: The Question of Extraterrestrial and Human Telepathy took place, I'm almost convinced by the way that Swann has described them that their aim was to suggest to Swann that there were aliens on the moon and that he could see them.

Axelrod never gives a reason, but whenever Swann says I think that's how it is. Axelrod reassures him, even in the case of the patently false twins. When it comes to the moon, Swann first sees patterns in the sand, and at that point I was already thinking: tractor tire tracks, but Swann goes on to liken them to dunes, only to eventually give in to the not quite satisfied stare of Mr. Axelrod and blurt out: tractor tread marks.

Well, Swann expands his journey from there until he sees butt-ass naked alien men trying to telepathically come after him. Axelrod then wishes Swann goodbye.

If this happened, why did it happen?

What was the purpose of kindling paranoia in Ingo Swann? It didn't seem to have had much of an effect anyway. But perhaps he was influenced by it.

Swann's lunar theories are stupid. Density of Mars, granite, length of a lunar day, asteroid shield are some of the notions that show just how stupid they are, not to speak of an utter lack of economical sense.

One thing though Swann did understand, namely that the basis for any kind of transcendent abilities, as I would call them, has to be an action, whose success can be observed.

From the observation of success comes the expectation of further success and expectation is the one thing that controls all transcendent phenomena: If you can't believe it, it won't happen, but if you can, your belief will help you.

And Ingo Swann knew this from personal experience, although it seems that only at the end of his life he understood that this was a general principle and not limited to clairvoyance.

Also, Ingo Swann seemed to be the kind of guy whose expectation isn't based on truth, but on usefulness, thus his tendency to suffer from boredom and financial insecurity.

Yet, limited by pragmatism as he was, he started to see the value of the truth at the end of his life, hence his contemplation of consciousness, although, just to point this out, for a telepathic contact of the sort, where one side makes the other do something, it is a mere question of modeling, whether you assume some kind of transmission from mind A to mind B or you assume that A puts something into the uniting consciousness and B finds it there. Of course there are other forms of transcendence, where the latter model is far more convincing.

But with this I'll end my study of Ingo Swann and turn instead to one of the questions that he studied, namely what people should believe and how this is influenced by the powers that be.

What should people believe?

People should believe what is true and good. However, this takes a lot of time and peace to concretise. So, the more relevant question is: How should people believe?

People should live in an environment, whose shortcomings with regards to their general beliefs they have the opportunity to study and consequently improve. In other words:

People should pursue the good.

The opposite of this is to preemptively advance in order to escape the bad.

But I should make this clearer. Without outer interference people always pursue their idea of what is good. They only embark on something, when they have reached a consensus that change in a certain area will lead them closer to their general ideals. This is the very nature of the Zeitgeist, which focusses on one area today and on another tomorrow. When an issue is controversial, no clear advantages are being seen and no change occurs. This is the undisturbed way of things.

Disturbance comes with fear and it is fear alone that lets people reach a consensus to try something out. The advances thus aiming to escape the bad then become ever less sure of the company of the good.

The race to the moon in the light of the pursuit of the good and preemptive advances.

Reaching the moon was an important stage on the road of progress and whoever got there first could most credibly claim to be its vehicle. Since both the United States and the Soviet Union considered themselves to be progressive, both had to fear ideological defection of their citizenry resulting in refusal to pursue the systemic good.

Hence the preemptive advances to the moon. But these then became social efforts and thus social problems. Hence the phasing out of the lunar enthusiasm after the symbolic successes.

Thus the handling of the whole affair was only sane.

Believing in the light of the pursuit of the good and preemptive advances.

Interestingly, there is another application of this line of thought on Ingo Swann's situation, dealing with our relation to the uniting consciousness, if we take the latter for granted.

If there would be aliens and they would have superior telepathic powers, then the uniting consciousness would be a battleground and its contents would be dubious. Hence our own excursions into it would quite necessarily be advances in order to escape the bad, since the pursuit of the good in the midst of alien treachery seems most unwise. In other words we would have to face a cordon of devils in order to make contact with God.

This view itself is unwise, for it invites miracles at the expense of guidance and does so in a beleaguered spirit.

But although Ingo Swann should have believed then something like that, I don't really think he did. And he said conflicting stuff on the subject, like that malevolence cannot reach the uniting consciousness. But what then is the problem with telepathic aliens?

Also, if he really met Axelrod, did Axelrod try to undermine Swann's guidance? It is possible, people might have been afraid of Swann and rather have him paranoid than probing where he should not. But I don't think that any of that went anywhere, only perhaps as an insurance.

Did God submerge me in fear so that I would know how it is to live in it? As a reproach for turning away? As a reminder that safety is only in duty? And through the timing led me to an example of another path and effort? I can only hope I did the warning justice.