The following is an excerpt from GODS OF AQUARIUS: UFOs and The Transformation of Man by Brad Steiger, copyright 1976, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016. ISBN 0-425-05512-4. Berkley Books paperback edition June 1981 by The Berkley Publishing Group at the above address. Permission has been granted.

From pp. 256-267:

“Tom Bearden is a most fascinating man. A retired lieutenant colonel as of December 31, 1975, he was most recently Chief of the Evaluation Branch, Military Studies Division, SAM-D Missile Project, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama. He has published papers such as “Quiton / Perception Physics: A Theory of Existence, Perception, and Physical Phenomena”; several articles in Air Defense Trends; a book on martial arts principles; and twelve country-western songs. The six-foot, five-inch, 250-pounder is a military strategist, a holder of a black belt in Aikido, a guitarist, a professional songwriter, and a student of the UFO mystery.

Because of the synchronicity of our thought processes, I am permitting Tom Bearden to have the last word in this book. It is my conviction that the “gods” of Aquarius, the Olympians of the New Age, will be transformed humankind. Such a plan as the one Tom presents herewith could bring my vision and the insights of thousands of Starseeded men and women into realization.

(following written by Tom Bearden)

The evolution of a life-bearing planet may be divided into stages, the first five of which are: (1) The formation of the planet itself and some billions of years of cooling, so that a primordial atmosphere and ocean are gradually evolved; (2) the fomenting of amino acid structures in the violent convulsions of the primeval sea and planet; (3) the formation of the self-replicating supermolecules, DNA and RNA; (4) the formation of one-celled organisms; (5) the formation of multicellular organisms. At the upper end of the fifth stage of evolution, the intelligent mobiles emerge, as do eventually tool-using intelligent mobiles. This is the level on which man finds himself on the planet Earth.

What are actually evolving are competing control systems, and their natural competition for control surgically excises the less competitive.

An organism uses two basic mechanisms to control its behavior; one type is genetically programmed and the other is genetically unprogrammed. Thus one control mode is nonadaptive and one is adaptive or learned. That fraction that is unprogrammed is available for experiential or learned programming. Now intelligence may be viewed as the ability to adapt behavior; e.g., to use tools. Thus an increase in intelligence represents a decrease in the portion of behavior control that is genetically programmed, and a corresponding increase in the unprogrammed portion available for adaptive learning.

Each organism must possess a mixture of both types of control. If it were completely programmed, it could not make any change at all in its responses to external stimuli; and random environmental changes would quickly present it with death-dealing stimuli not in its genetic catalogue. On the other hand, if the organism were completely deprogrammed, it also would be quickly destroyed. Adaptive behavior must be learned by trial and error, and fatal errors (e.g., forgetting to beat the heart) would occur frequently unless there were many preprogrammed responses.

Variations, mutations, and natural selection result in the different species having differing ratios of programmed versus deprogrammed behavior control. A "more intelligent" species is simply one which possesses more deprogrammed control and less programmed control. For example, on Earth, Man is the species of land mammal possessing the least programmed control and the most unprogrammed control.

Eventually, one or more species will deprogam significantly and become extremely adaptive, i.e., highly intelligent. But if this species does not possess a highly manipulative body member, its use of external physical tools will be limited or nonexistent, and it will remain nontechnological. Examples of such Earth species are the bottlenosed dolphin and the killer whale. However, if the species has a highly manipulative body part, it can readily adapt external tools. It is then inherently technological, and its tool-using abilities will continue to develop due to its "intelligence" or adaptive ability. The use of tools intervenes in the statistics of survivability, and itself becomes an evolutionary determinant. That is, tool-using skill becomes a survival trait and a selection mechanism for the species. Man is such a technological species on planet Earth.

With the development of clothing, fire, and fabricated shelter, the technological species will become less environmentally limited. Further, it will become dominant over all other species because of the increasing power of its tools. Its "tool-teeth" will eventually be sharper than any other animal's teeth; its "tool-muscles" will be stronger; its "tool-feet" faster. The technological species will dominate its biosphere; and as its natural enemies are overcome, its numbers will dramatically increase. But ironically, its developing technology causes it to accelerate toward its own self-destruction.

When programmed animals fight for territory, females, or food, the "fight" is usually conducted in a rigidly stylized manner. The victor rarely kills or seriously wounds the vanquished, because the victor is programmed to stop fighting when the loser retreats or yields. This is not benevolent, but programmed.

But the deprogrammed animal is not rigidly hardwired to relent when it defeats another member of its own species, and it will very often kill the loser. Being highly adaptive, it can, and does, adapt a much greater variety of reasons for killing its competition. To its own species, the deprogrammed, intelligent, technological species is a self-competitor and a self-killer. Since its ability to compete is a function of its developing technology, its internal competition thus is increasing. Technology feeds back to increase its own rate of development, and thus the species conflict has positive feedback.

Viewed as a servomechanistic complex, the technological species is actually out of control, highly unstable, and it is headed pell-mell exponentially toward resonance and biospheric explosion. Unless its servoamplifier gain and competitive positive feedback can be dampened, the technological species will catastrophically expire.

But the significant reduction of adaptive, deprogrammed behavior would constitute the loss of intelligence per se and would be a giant leap backward in evolution. Genetically, there is no return for the deprogrammed technological species, which has crossed a one-way threshold in evolution. The species will go into destructive resonance and explode within perhaps tens of years, while evolutionary changes to genetically reintroduce behavior control would require hundreds of thousands or even millions of years.

The natural evolution of Man is finished now, within the lifetime of the average reader. The fifth stage of planetary evolution of life is the final stage of evolution by natural selection.

Thus, any "next step" in evolution must be taken technologically by the species itself if it is to be taken at all. Any such step to a sixth stage of evolution must paradoxically involve the reimposition of positive internal control somehow without giving up genetic deprogramming.

The fact that rigid and foolproof control must be established to eliminate destructive competition, while at the same time genetic control must remain relinquished if intelligence is to be retained, is the precise, contradictory, solitary human problem. It is this hard nut that all systems, organizations, governments, societies, sciences, theorists, religious leaders, megalomaniacs, dictators, pontificators, and well-meaning, but ignorant, visionaries and humanitarians have failed to chew and swallow since time immemorial.

The usual solution advanced is this: "If everyone would just be a perfect citizen, behave ideally, and love and help everyone else always, then the problem would be solved."

Any fool will agree with that; the proposition is incredibly naïve and a tautology. The question is, "How, pray tell, can one get all persons to be perfect?" Law, logic, philosophy, creed, religion, practice, love, sacrifice, money, the ballot, and the bullet--all of these have empirically proven that they cannot solve the human problem for all humanity. Since none of the solutions advanced to date can solve the problem, we must discard them all and search for a new approach.

And a Teilhardian solution emerges if one ponders diligently. The solution can be synthesized into two parts: Each individual human must possess an internal mechanism for generating appropriate limits to personal behavior, and there must exist a totally reliable external process to implant or induce the internal mechanism. (And one would also hope for the "maximum individual freedom within the constraints of minimum essential inter-individual control.")

The only viable solution is to link the brains of all men into one giant superbrain. It is the entire species which has been developing, and it is the entire species which now must be linked into one superbeing.

Jung's collective unconscious must acquire a single integrated consciousness, instead of the fragmented billions it now possesses. Each mancell must function individually within its own sphere, but in inter-mancell harmony under the control of a single linked-species nervous system.

This linkage must be accomplished technologically by creating and installing a system of direct communication links between all men's individual brains. A most curious phenomenon occurs whenever two nervous-system brains are directly linked together so that each can perceive no temporal delay between the two: the beings, egos, and personalities of the two brains integrate and merge into one being, one ego, and one personality. Thus linkage admirably ends the destructive competition between the formerly separated brains.

For example, suppose you and I have linked our brains. If I am you and you are me, then "we" shall find it impossible to disadvantage "each other" since "we" and "each other" no longer exist. That is only one "I" remains in the two linked brains, integrated in both of them. So the "one" cannot kill the "other" because no "other" any longer separately exists.

In fact, absolute proof of the "single-being" identity of two linked brains unequivocally exists. The human brain (cerebrum) is composed of left and right hemispheres, completely separated except for a thick connecting cable of nerve fibers called the corpus callosum. Essentially the left cerebral hemisphere controls the right side of the body, and the right cerebral hemisphere controls the left side of the body. With two brains in charge, one half (usually the left) almost always dominates, and each of the two halves specializes. However, signals from one half are immediately transmitted to the second half, preventing the second half from detecting any difference or time delay between itself and the primary half. That is, the second half gets an immediate "wiggle" and perceives that it, the second half, originated the wiggle.

When consciousness can perceive no difference, identity results, just as separate movie frames appear continuous (each two appear one) when flashed at 22 frames per second. Thus, in one's own body, two brains are integrated into one functional brain and one perceptual personality. There is no conscious separation of the two-brain hemispherical perceptions, and one consciously is aware of only one being or continuity--himself. In humans whose corpus callosums have been severed, the two brains exhibit separate consciousness and separate "personalities."

If one holds up both hands and observes them, one is perfectly aware that there are two separate hands, but is only aware of one being to whom the two hands belong, even though each hand is being controlled by a different cerebral hemisphere. Two complete human brains linked together would experience something analagous. There would be complete awareness of two separate bodies, but awareness of only one being to whom the bodies belonged. The linked being in two bodies would be aware of a "right body" and a "left body" just as one human now has a sense of a right hand and a left hand.

Linkage is a straightforward technical problem. It is a problem of great magnitude, but it is within the reach of technology to solve it. For example, work on biological radio communication has been underway in the Soviet Union some fifty years or more, and direct mind-to-mind linkage has probably been achieved, as reported by Kazhinskiy, Lisitsyn, and others.

As early as 1939-40, the Soviets were experimenting with telepathic induction through, or modulated upon, an electromagnetic signal, directly from mind to mind, or from nervous system to nervous system. Their experiments found the concomitant interception, by the nervous system of one animal, of bioradiation waves emitted by the organism of another animal or man, and the conscious or unconscious analysis and synthesis in the receiver's brain of the stimulating signals. The Russian work revealed the transfer and intercept of bioelectromagnetic and bioradiation waves accompanying every thought process. Animal and human experiments clearly demonstrated that biofield interception from two or more minds may be cyborged, even in the mind and body of one person or one animal, just as the two hemispheres of the human cerebrum are presently cyborged in one human brain.

The biofield wavelengths emitted by the human nervous system were determined to be within 1.8-2.1 mm. An electromagnetic theory of brain activity that incorporated direct unconscious brain connection was developed. The use of hysteresis concepts was invoked. Hysteresis is a lag effect; that is, an action followed by a time delay, followed by a reaction. This is precisely the type reaction one would need for subliminal brain communication. Memory was theorized in this manner, to pursue interrogation of it directly and unconsciously. After all, that is what a normal brain does anyway, when it recalls something from memory.

Not only was it possible to induct images and sensations from one brain to another at a distance, but it was also possible to artificially postpone the emergence of mental images and sensations, received by the percipient, to a predetermined moment. The received information first formed subconsciously. A process of subliminal probing was working out, and how this can be done brain-to-brain was theoretically explained.

In sophisticated EEG signals, the purely informational part was isolated and the brain was viewed as communicating with itself holographically. Twenty-three EEG rhythms were worked out, and experimentally fitted formulas developed. Frequency ranges were tabulated, along with the complete EEG frequency scheme. The frequencies extend up to 8.1 X 10²⁰ hertz, an incredibly high frequency. This wavelength is in the neighborhood of 4 X 10^-13 meters, which is less than three orders of magnitude from the Fermi length, 10^–15 meters.

Thus the brain exhibits frequencies that can slightly interact with the strange, noncausal world of quantum physics. This directly suggests the operational connection of thought and consciousness with quantum events (i.e., it suggests inception and psychokinesis). In fact, if quantum geometrodynamics and the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics are correct, a direct mechanism for psychtronics is indicated. Eleven EEG rhythms had nonmultiple frequencies and appeared as independent oscillating processes. The biological code of the EEG signals was of prime interest, and the number of digits of the code was found not to exceed 44.

In evolution, perhaps the human population had its own genetic language phonemes, and each distinctly separated population developed its own language superimposed upon them. If this premise is true, then the often striking use of a word or its close derivative to mean the same thing in widely separated cultures has an underlying genetic explanation. The demonstrated ability of two minds to telepathically communicate, even though the two humans speak sharply different languages, could also then be explained.

From the viewpoint of this genetic language code hypothesis, the Soviet work on 44 EEG code digits or less is of fundamental importance. It may only require 11-23 channels and a 44-digit code to directly link human brains. And this could be determined in animal experiments in communicating through a severed corpus callosum to its connected brain half.

It also appears that the Soviets either have broken the 44-digit code or are very close to it. Thus one can surmise that either direct brain-to-brain linkage can already be accomplished, or that capability is imminent. It is exciting to visualize the rapid, short-term development of a brain linkage system using, say, scanning skullcaps mounted on the head, centrally connected by a biowave-modulated, electromagnetic datalink system. Sixth-stage brain-to-brain linkage may already be emerging as these words are written.

Once the species is linked, the problems that man causes man simply vanish. All of these problems depend upon the conscious differentiation of being between two individuals, and this differentiation no longer exists. A single, integrated being does not rob, cheat, hurt, kill, or abuse himself or any of his body cells.

The needs of each individual mancell in the linked species are constantly attended to. This is indeed absolute and perfect democracy; not only is each mancell participating in his government, he is his government! Selfishness, greed, hate, prejudice, discrimination, murder--all have simply disappeared. One does not hate himself; one cannot be selfish except with respect to another, and no separate "other" now exists. One does not discriminate against himself or part of himself; one is not prejudiced against himself, etc. The standard of living is automatically far higher; there is no loss to crime, waste, and duplication. Poverty, war, crime, hunger, fear, intolerance, and misery are gone. All the problems that man causes man disappear because mancell no longer causes them to mancell.

Another immediate advantage of linkage is personal immortality. The personality is totally operational, and it can be totally recorded on physical media. Indeed, it is exactly so recorded on, and in, the physical nervous system "medium" of the body itself. And in the linked species, it is recorded numerous times, holographically, throughout the entire species nervous system. Death of a particular physical body is of no more consequence than the death of an individual body cell or brain cell is to a present human being.

No personality, experience, memory, or feeling is ever lost! If desired, a new body of exactly the same type (e.g., a clone) can be "reoccupied" by reactivating the "personality recording" and installing it. This already happens each time one reawakens from unconsciousness or coma. Giant banks of brains for the superorganism would be practical. Specialized mancells and nonmancells for every conceivable task and purpose would be genetically engineered. Nature organizes; that is the master plan, and the linked technological species represents master organization.

The gigantic expansion of consciousness and intelligence is indescribable. Any mancell can recall anything from total linked memory and think it directly, complete with all its shadings and ramifications. The consciousness, intelligence, knowledge and memory of the entire species are in each mancell and directly available to it. For example, by linking only two monocular retina patterns in the brain, binocular vision and the third dimension are attained.

Can the fantastic dimensionality of linkage of even 1,000 perceptions of the same concept or idea be imagined? With linkage, insight is immediate and unbelievably multidimensional. The entire capability and dimensionality of the species is brought to bear, and such insight is incomprehensible to our present understanding.

Now the entire theory behind psychotherapy is for the patient to gain insight into his personal "hang-ups," repressions, etc. With total insight, all psychological problems are resolved. Rapidly the linked species becomes totally sane, something which has never before existed for mankind. Insanity and severe neurosis no longer develop because the insight is always available in the first place.

The thousands of harmful games humans play on, against, and to each other no longer exist. The species-wide insight and identity result in the loss of all ideological and dogmatic absurdities, which are immediately revealed for what they are. The eyes of each person are literally opened in the strictest sense of the word.

With integration of all humanity into a single coherent consciousness, the inceptive (psychokinetic) actions and capabilities of all the mancells are also coherently integrated. Thus, given enough cells linked together, the superbeing begins to acquire a direct power and dominance over time, space, and matter. That is, it begins to exhibit "godlike" powers. The linked, sixth-stage being thus develops into multiple dimensions, overcomes limitations of time and space, and becomes independent of matter and matter-changes. These characteristics indeed constitute the seventh stage of evolution, the penetration above and beyond all stages.

The struggle to comprehend stages six and seven accounts for all metaphysics, philosophy, religion; and the total lack of direct experience with, or on, those stages accounts for the forbidding difficulties involved in their comprehension. These stages are noncausal, and causal experimental methods cannot be applied, so the gaps in our ability to comprehend them are formidable indeed.

The seventh stage is the "return to allness" or to pure being, or simply to "nothingness" or "no-thing-ness" in its absolute meaning. This is the void that is devoid of void. This is the nature of the Ultimate God, pure being. Omega is alpha, the end is the beginning, and the beginning is zero (the absence of all differentiation). Thus all is indeed holographically "closed upon its tail" and identical, including being itself.

Being is undifferentiated, that is its total definition. Since it is totally undifferentiated, in being there is not even any differentiation between "being" and "not-being." Being is a total identity operator, and can even identify with its own opposite. All-being, the Ultimate Godness, is simply totally undifferentiated. Since it is undefined, it encompasses all things and nonthings. Without definition, there can be no defined (perceived) difference. That is why all things are, and why any particular thing is. It is why a thing can also not-be, that is, cease to exist. To be perceivable or not perceivable is totally operational; such terms have no meaning except relative to an operation, perception. Removing the limitations of the perceptive, comparative operation removes all distinction between "being" and "non-being" -- and this is the solution to the age-old ontological problem, and also to the problem of change, that the philosophers have sought in vain to solve.

The final evolution of the living process is godness itself, pure being. Unlimited godness can both be and not be; such is the nature of unlimitedness. With the seventh stage, transcendence of all stages and all limitations, thus ends the life model of Earth and Man.

Thus for the unlinked, fifth-stage technological species, there are only two alternatives:

First, and more likely, its intraspecies conflict will simply reach critical mass and the species will convulsively destroy itself and its biosphere. Humanity may be within 25 years or less of this asymptote now (1976).

Second, and less likely, the species may link into a sixth-stage superbeing and eliminate its internal competition, friction, and suicidal bent. Linkage appears extremely unlikely unless outside assistance and intervention are received.

But there may, after all, be evidence of such intervention. The phenomenon loosely classed as "unidentified flying objects" appears to fit the strange characteristics to be expected of a linked sixth-stage superbeing engaged in giving prenatal assistance to the embryonic human species and preparing for linkage "birth" of the species into a new superbeing.

If, for example, we assume from the latest archeological findings that man in essentially his present form has existed about five million years on planet Earth, and if we roughly assume that modern science represents a window of less than 0.3 X 10^–4 times the width of the total human experience. The search in the cosmos for intelligent life exhibiting our particular technical characteristics would appear to have little chance for success. Any other species at man's present technical level is progressing so rapidly toward destruction (or linkage) that man's detection of its "narrow window" will very likely not occur--or occur only after it has already vanished as a fifth-stage species. Either alternative for a fifth-stage species eliminates it as a fifth-stage species. It is no accident that man's universe appears devoid of other fifth-stage species!

On the other hand, contact with sixth-stage beings (that is, with the fifth-stage species who linked, survived, and transitioned) is much more probable. Perhaps half of the inhabitable planets involve species more advanced than our own; if so, then the window of sixth-stage beings is indeed vast. For example, if we assume that the universe is at least 20 billion years old, then that is about three times as old as Earth itself, about 4,000 times as old as man, and about 2 X 10⁸ times as old as the narrow window of man's modern science. In a window of such relative magnitude, the probability of sixth-stage being(s) appears to be quite certain. Granted even the tiniest probability of linkage, so many trials on so many planets have occurred that the probability of at least one success approaches closer to certainty by far than the discriminatory accuracy of the data assumptions used to set up the estimation. From the window viewpoint alone, one can essentially assign a probability of unity to the assumption that the UFO phenomenon represents the contact of the human species with a sixth-stage being.

Thus the UFO phenomenon can be fitted to the hypothesis that they represent the prenatal care of the Earthman by a linked superbeing, in preparation for the forthcoming linkage of the human species and the birth of another linked superbeing.

One thing, however, is clear: from our viewpoint, the final crisis is here. For Man, it is now or never. Of course, nature is patient--another billion years or two is all right, because in the end, time itself is a part of her creation, and is of little or no consequence to her. But for man, a single technological species on a secondary planet of a medium-sized star in the remote rim of the galaxy, time has almost run out.

Man is merely one more of nature's experiments, a species which happened to opt for a little more genetic deprogramming of behavior, and now is his moment of truth. If he can successfully link before he destroys himself and his biosphere, then the ultimate solution is his; if not, then nature merely scraps this biosphere called Earth and begins again somewhere else.

The next three or thirty years will most assuredly tell.