THIRTY YEARS AGO, when the U.S. space program was just entering its formative stages, one of the first questions that required consideration was whether man was physically and mentally capable of traveling in pace- Would his body continue to function normally when subjected for long periods to a condition of zero gravity, or as it is usually called, "free fall?" What would happen to the orientation mechanisms of the body, most of which depend upon the pull of gravity as their point of reference?

When discussing a person who is unusually dense or stupid we have a habit of saying, "He is so dumb he doesn't know which way is up!" To the astronaut in free fall however, there is simply no such thing as up or down. His body will float as freely in one direction as any other! It was at first feared that the loss of the gravity reference point for long, periods of time, might so confuse the rind of the astronaut that he might lose all sense of reality, thus rendering him incapable of the proper control or guidance of the craft. This problem has not proven to be nearly as

UNDERSTANDING 2

severe as was originally feared, although in the early flights, there were a few cases of the astronaut reached a point where he was reluctant to follow some of the instructions of the Ground Control group.

When manned interplanetary trips undertaken, in there may well he considerable periods of time when dependable communication between the space craft and the ground control group may be difficult or impossible to maintain . What will happen when the stabilizing and reassuring influence of Ground Control is not available to the astronaut is not yet known, but it is a problem which must be considered by every person who is in charge of planning long space flights.

It is perhaps significant that almost all of the original team of astronauts chosen by the U. S. space authorities were men who had substantial backgrounds of religious training, belief and understanding. Such men have available to them an orientation that is not dependent upon the gravity of the planet or the continuity of earthily communication. They have reference points among the stars and a raster control center that is always available and is both stabilizing and reassuring.

It is a point which we should consider in its application to our own lives, especially to those of us whose natural curiosity and need for understanding takes us far out into space and time. We have all known people who, in their over eagerness to learn and in their driving need for understanding, have journeyed so far and so fast into unknown areas of the mind, metaphysics and the occult, that they have become disoriented, and in some cases t have lost almost all contact with earth; reality. We feel pity for these people be-cause they are unable to chart or direct the course of their craft correctly, and so are in constant danger of becoming hopelessly lost, or of coming into collision with others.

MAY 1977 7

Whether we are astronauts, research scientists, metaphysicians or just curious voyagers into the unknown, let us, before we embark upon the journey, be sure that we have established at least a few solid and dependable reference points as aids to navigation and that we have a ground control that is available for guidance and encouragement at all times and under all circumstances.

LETTER CONCERNING LEARNING

by Juliana Lewis

Dear Dad,

About that F on my grade report -- I appreciate the sacrifices you are making for my education and I do study, but this Zoology! Well, maybe you can help me with answers.

Just the other day our class, was discussing speed and Mir. Phylum Exacto, our teacher, told us that the fastest land animal is the cheetah, with a stop-watch record of 70 miles per hour, The Mongolian antelope and American pronghorn are second, keeping ahead of a car doing 60 . He said the fastest speed recorded for a race horse is 48, for hares and kangaroos 45 rn.p.h. The greyhound can streak along at 40 and drone bees at 25 m.p.h, Pat the record speed for any animal is held by a bird -the frigate with a flying speed of over 100 miles per hour -- while the. top speed for man is the least of these -- only 22.8 m.p.h. It would seem, then, that two wings, are better than two legs, and four legs are better than two legs, but two wings are better than four legs, or something . Anyway, everybody knows it's the whirlybird that gets the worm, and what good is a whirlybird without man?

Mr. Exacto says that the coati is a long-fanged, odd-looking creature whose tail points upward in a sharp curve, and that it has a light brown mask on its face like its brother raccoon of the robber band. It

4 UNDERSTANDING

grasps almost anything edible, he says, rats , mice, insects, worms, fruits and seeds, and when one of this upward climbing, staunch fighting, harem-scarum lot is about, even a bird isn't safe in the tree-tops. Now I know there are red coatis and there are brown 2 coatis and there are ring-tailed coatis-and there some that have gene to live with people . Are these, then, turn coatis?

We spent a whole period, after feathers, on horse facts and feats, and learned that horses are a good example of now some strange and weird looking mammals of the past developed into the familiar modern ones. In other words, we have the tall and stately horses of today that advanced front the "Dawn Horse, a little, fox-like creature only eleven inches high. We found that all Thoroughbreds are purebreds but not all Purebreds are Thoroughbreds and that probably a trot-ting horse can have all its four feet off the ground at the same time; that the Somali Donkey is a more mettlesome creature than the African Wild Donkey; and that there are several standardized horse colors--black, cream white, brown, bay, chestnut, dun; roan, pinto, appaloosa and palomino. We asked Mr. Exacto if the zebra was black with stripes or white with black stripes but his answer wasn't clear just a mumbled something about that being a face of a different color.

Then we got to the stalking, springing family Felidae and found that cats have the longest and sharpest claws of all the mammals, however, the leopard, we learned is the most the most malevolent and savage of all the big cats, a wary, treacherous beast given to climbing and lurking in trees, resorting to the subtlest and wiliest subterfuge to make a kill. And that if his growl seems otherwise to you, he's changed his spots or he's a lion.

MAY 1977 5

Mr. Exacta says that on the island of Madagascar we find a group of strange insect eaters known as spiny tenrecs, which bear a close resemblance to the isolated solenodons of the West Indies and are a cousin to the champion swimmer of the insectivores; the potamogale of western equatorial Africa as well as to the cinereous or masked shrew. He said these spiny tenrecs could be considered the mole of Madagascar. Now, I usually have no trouble whatsoever with this one on a written test, except for one thing. I misspell mole nearly every time.

Whales, we learned,. coming under the two

Whales, we learned, coming under the two main categories of toothed whales and whalebone whales. may be blue whales, finback whales, humpback whales, sperm whales, pigmy sperm whales, killer whaler, beaked whales, goose-beaked whales, cowfish whales, bottle-nosed whales, beluga whales, narwhales, pilot whales and gray whales. Maybe to you this just sounds like a whale of a tale.; but believe me, Mr. Exacto expects us to tell one from another.

Love to Mom.

Herbert

SHARP START

Madolyn F. Jamiseson

I packed the lunch safe and securely
Between the cokes and the beer,

I carefully toted out golf clubs
And checked all his fishing gear

He asked, "is everyone ready?"
And I counted noses to see,

Then when I went back for my handbag,
They drove away without me!

6 UNDERSTANDING

INDIVIDUAL AND MASS SUCCESS

TODAY, MASS SOCIETY measures success as material wealth, a standard of living. Independence is deemed important, not interdependence. The need to co-operate is mired under the glory of individuals. Movie stars, sports figures, business executives and even assembly line workers are the heroes for mass society. The cast, the team, the corporation and the crew are there al heroes. Nothing would have been. accomplished without then...

But it is difficult for a mass audience to identify with a mass hero. Since very early time the single image has been recognized as powerful. It has been exploited, so that mass society is faced with a set of detached single images. Society suffers from lack of unity and a sense of human co-operation.

Some groups are redefining mass society. A construction firm has reorganized from a foreman/crew situation to several production teams. Each team must co-operate within itself and with other teams.

Many communes and co-operative living arrangements are organized to re-emphasize the interdependence among people. These types of situations may re-establish the importance of interdependence.

--Debra A. Bougie

♦ ♦ ♦

Love does not consist of gazing at each other but in looking together in the same direction.

-St. Exupery

♦ ♦ ♦

The mystic hears the music within himself; the unawakened person merely plays another man's phonograph record.

-Vernon Howard

poet’s corner

My FATE

I often wonder who I am

And how I came to be

A human mass of bones and brain

A complex entity.

Am I a mixed conglomerate

Of my fore-fathers' genes,

or a new individual

With separate routines?

I know that there has never been

Nor will there ever be

Another person just the same. . .

Exactly just like me.

How is it that my life began

At this explicit time?

I might have been an inert thing

In some far age or clime.

Do I relate to friends who care

And to my family

In ways that they and God above

Expect and hope of me?

But even though my days on earth

Are ordered and decreed,

I have the unique option

To fail or to succeed.

May my choices be the best ones

And wise judgment be the key,

As unerringly I realize

My fate is up to me.

8 UNDERSTANDING

PRAYER FOR "JUST ENOUGH" FOR THE MIDDLE-AGED

Aleta Lister

Lord, you have been called the great mathematician. Could you therefore grant me license to address you in somewhat mathematical terms as the great problem solver? For I have miles of problems to solve before I sleep, and I hope you have promises to keep.

When I was a child, and thought, spake, and understood as a child, I probably asked you for just enough peppermint ice cream to top a cone and just enough cake with layers and candles to celebrate birthdays, praying for it all with barely enough care for the morrow to fall into dreamland reciting, "If I should die before I wake . . ."

When I reached adolescence and put away childish things, what I prayed for was, I remember, to have just enough invitations come to me to dance that I wouldn't be considered a wallflower, and just enough of the right words come to me at the right moment before company for it not to be remarked that "the cat has her tongue."

In my early forties, I know what I prayed for. It was for just enough contentment with what I had to enjoy it in the "now moment" and need it instead of casting it all away in trying to keep up with the Joneses, as we said then.

Now, at the far side of fifty, having made my peace with things-as-they-are, I pray for survival - for just enough success in the survival game to be rewarded with continued playing.

Could I die with honor at 55, when science has prolonged middle age to seventy? It would be premature and also I couldn't afford it, like the high cost of living, of getting an education, of having a baby, of most anything. So it's survival study I'm into, survival techniques I'm after, in my problem solving.

Nations now possess unprecedented instruments for national action in the form of their ideologies and weapons for annihilating themselves and others - but then there's the Security Council of the United Nations to step in and head them off from destruction.

There are endangered species of plants and animals, but also someone to make up a list and enforce their protection, so that the alligators go on to have a ball and a population explosion.

MAY 1977 9

If a creature should die and its interior fill with sand that compacts rock hard to leave its inner imprint forever on the outside of the mold when the outer shell dissolves, you can bet your immortality there'll be an Ogden Nash and a Saint-Saens around to commiserate and commemorate the fossil with word and music and a wink to say cheer up, it's kind of fun to be extinct.

But it is unlikely that any song is to be written over my demise, nor while I'm here will anyone hold a General Assembly to insure by debage or truce or Security Guard my continued existence. There wouldn't even be the crowd that attends a Protect-the-Seals Rally. So survival is up to me - and you, Lord. If I drew up a shopping list of what would help, it might include such items as these.

Just enough of a sense of proportion and of human history to know an ideal from a realistic alternative in problem solving. I have trouble in striking up a live-and-let-live working type arrangement with reality. While I opt for, and wait for, the ideal, time passes me by and it titillates to think that no one will ever write my epitaph as "Her modus operandi was the same as her modus vivendi." Yet waiting for the ideal is a cop-nut and at middle-age I should know better.

Lord, right now we'd better add the request for just enough, not too much, acceptance of my own sense of internal contradictions, which I'm a mass of, rather than the carte blanche I generally allow myself. You see, ! started off telling you that at forty I had made a pact with things as they are, and now I'm admitting that I by-pass realistic alternatives in my decision making process to wait for the romantic ideal that seldom comes. Haven't I then broken the pact with things-as-they-are? Please make me read the bottom line of what I say I do, before I magically resolve all the contradictions on the page of my life - even if what I really meant in the past was that when I accepted things-as-they-are that included my tendency readily to resolve all contradictions - like stains doused in Chlorox.

Help me to see that if one pursues the philosophizing moment far enough, everything can be neutralized. The Spaniards I read are great philosophers, and their philosophy is that death resolves all problems. Is that what I want?

No. This is a prayer for survival techniques. Just go on letting

10 UNDERSTANDING

me get zapped by reality, Lord, and I'll take my chances. Job did it. You made me for better or for worse, but I'm still hoping for better.

Just grant me enough cohesion to withstand the stresses and strains, support the disequilibrium and resist disruption - and brains enough to know by testing my material in advance, the way an engineer tests what a bridge can stand up under without collapsing on itself.

May my "error-average" be just average enough to be acceptable.

But may I have just enough perception of the future to stay in league with it - not too much, the same as I want to remember just enough, not too much, of the past -- to remember it all, or of foresee it all, might be heartbreaking or un-bearable. Let me identify just enough with the past to learn from it but avoid the rule of its dead hand, to escape "past trauma," and just enough with the future to avoid "future-shock." Then I won't push the panic button.

Grant me just enough self-enforcement through bitter experience, and just enough self-restraint through foresight, to avoid the most fateful failures of perception, foresight, and control.

Into my decision making, may there go just enough feed-tack combining new information with old memories. Each of my activities generates a rather distinct network of information flows, images, and memories, as well as a network of material expectations and rewards. From that continuous mixing, blending, analyzing and selective use of the contents of three separate streams of information (i.e., the outside world's stream of messages, my system's, and memory's recall) - which sounds worse than the three witches' caldron in MacBeth -- may my organism nevertheless be able to find, gain. and maintain just enough autonomy, selfhood, and freedom to entitle me to claim the patrimony of my own soul.

May I continue to find just enough operationally testable tasks on this beautiful green earth such as maintaining my own peace, attaining greater multi-purpose capabilities, accomplishing some specific tasks and keeping a self-image and role identity I can live with. May I have the key to fit my own lock and form an integrated system within me, so that the function of self-transformation within me suffices to keep me transformed by the renewal of my mind.

MAY 1977 11

May that just-enough goal attainment and just-enough integration keep my different activities compatible, my expectations and motivations compatible with the roles I have to play, and the time I have in which to play them.

Lord, at middle-age it sounds out of phase to ask for just enough adaptation to my environment to derive my nourishment from it and adjust to its changes. But sometimes life is so rocky you have to draw sustenance from a stone. May I remember at such times that half a stone-ground loaf is better than none. May I persist with enough learning capacity to "learn" how to behave and to respond to events in my environment in new ways or at least in ways that are ever different and more rewarding ways from those of the first fifty-five years, which indeed would be out of phase now as well as impossible.

May just enough power be granted me for an understanding of the dimensions of power and of the techniques for making myself the sole and stable domain in which it is to be exercised by me. May my empowerment be just sufficient to change the distribution of results, i.e., results of my own behavior, and the outcome of events in the direction of legitimacy and freedom - legitimacy as the expectation of the compatibility or the consonance of values, and freedom taken not as that early American myth based on the pursuit of happiness, but the only real freedom, which is that of growing up and relating directly to the raw and rugged and rocky quality of my life.

Lord, we're all down to the wire in one survival game or another - even you are, to hear the God is Dead folks - so bless us all. Start with the cattleman who is eating off his equity because it costs him more to produce an animal than he sells it for, leaving him to go forth into the streets of Laredo like the new Don Quijote, from the tips of his highly-polished boots to the tip of that toothpick his mouth is holding to show he has eaten that day - he may be worse off than Don Quijote, who stuck bread crumbs to his face to brush off in public.

We might just make it a blanket blessing for the entire middle class, who can be heard clear across the U.S.A. furtively chopping down their cherry orchards in forced sales to meet their tax assessments.

The technique we'd all like is just enough "drown-proofing" to enable us to float it out and eventually kick our way up to safety when we're less tired, or the waters are friendlier! Our modus vivendi-modus operandi notwithstanding.

12 UNDERSTANDING

At least, Lord, in this bull fight of life against death in the big arena, help keep us to minimum involvement in zero sum or fixed sum games, where the gains of one player must necessarily always be at the expense of other players - though we may suspect that this is the setup: when Rome goes up, Carthage comes down, or even further back, that deep down in our aboriginal heart each of us is born a Greek or a Trojan. If that is the case, may there be just room enough in our thinking for fruitful error to save us from a worldview of zero-sum games and merciless and irreconcilable conflict to produce grist for the biological mill.

A final small "At least," Lord: may we hold an eye focused just long enough on that grand matador Reality to keep from getting clobbered at 5:00 o'clock in the afternoon, that being the great bull fight hour.

Now may I listen with just enough attention so that I won't interrupt, won't criticize, and won't amend what you have to say?

WORLD REPORT

AREAS OF AGREEMENT

By Samuel Koo, Associated Press Writer

UNITED NATIONS, N.Y. (AP) - President Carter in his first speech to the United Nations urged the world organization to take more vigorous action to advance the cause of human rights. Afterward he shook hands with a representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization, but they did not talk together

The President's defense of his human rights policy drew praise from such diverse delegates as those of Niger, the Bahamas, the PLO and Israel.

A Soviet representative declined comment on human rights questions but praised the President's statements on U.S. Soviet relations and disarmament.

A capacity audience in the General Assembly hall interrupted Carter four times during his 30-minute speech Thursday night, twice to cheer his statements on human rights, and gave him a prolonged standing ovation at the end.

Outlining his administration's broad foreign policy aims, the President made these points

MAY 1977 13

- No U.N. member nation "can claim that mistreatment of its citizens is solely its own business." He called for strengthened international machinery to help close the gap between promise and performance in protecting such rights, but said the effort should not Work progress on issues affecting security and world peace.

- The U-S. government would like to negotiate a Soviet American treaty freezing or controlling the development of new types of weapons, along with a "deep reduction" in the nuclear arms of both sides.

- The U.S. Congress is being asked to provide $7.5 billion in foreign assistance in the coming year.

- The United States believes the change to black majority rule in southern Africa can be achieved peacefully.

- The United States will work for a "flexible framework" in Arab-Israeli negotiations, stressing the areas where agreements already exist.

The brief encounter between the President and Hasan Abdel Rahman, PLO observer to the U. N., occurred at a reception given by U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, to which the Palestinian was invited along with all other chief delegates and official observers accredited to the United Nations.

Rahman said he though it was important because "it is the first time that a PLO representative shakes hands with the President of the United States But Carter said the meeting would lead to nothing "until they change their attitude."

Carter's speech was the first at the United Nations by an American president outside a regular General Assembly session. American diplomats said Carter asked for the special meeting rather than wait until the assembly meets next fall because he wanted to demonstrate his administration's commitment to the United Nations and to multilateral diplomacy.

AT WIT ZEND

by Ron LeMaster

We recently visited a place advertised in no travel brochure. The place is located in the State of Mind. it offers complete peace for recreation. Time and space are not used by this resort. The entrance to this retreat lies just beyond the margin of any road map. One needs only to follow his longings past the veil of ignorance.

14 UNDERSTANDING

Packing a bag is quite simple for the journey. The following items are sufficiently unnecessary: prejudice, preconceived notions, hatred, grudges, the senses, the emotions, words, memories, ego. In fact, whatever bag you're in should be left behind.

Nothing stands in the way of your taking this trip. And yet nothing holds so many back from this particular vacation spot that volumes could be consigned to the subject.

The lovers of opposites, who forgot to pack their libido, need not be concerned for both sexes blend together as one. As a substitute for one's usual diet of propagation, the menu offers eternity.

Accommodations for the non-days, weeks, months, or even years spent at this resort include non-rooms. The non-walls are covered with the scenery of a thousand day dreams. The ceilings are infinitely decorated with the stars of a thousand galaxies. The non-rooms are heated by the sun and cooled by the evening breeze.

A typical non-day's itinerary ends with worry, fear, un-fulfilled longings, and begins with absolute love, peace, harmony, and wisdom. Optional excursions to the unvisionable non-homes of past sages (saints) are offered on each third Thursday of every non-week.

Classes of instruction in Flowing Like The Gentle Waters are offered non-daily. An inspection tour of the spiritualistic properties of the breeze is available. Visits to the Forest of the Trees of Wisdom are possible for those travelers returning to Wit Zend for a second time.

Since the cost is nothing and the trip leaves the before wearied traveler in a state of bliss until the next vacation slot is available, we feet confidence and pleasure in suggesting it for your timely and thoughtful approval. For further information contact your own Higher Consciousness (Holy Spirit), 77 Peaceful Place, City of Hope, State of Mind.

MAY 1977 15

Book reviews

When Stars Look Down, by George W. Van Tassel, The Kruckeberg Press, Los Angeles, Ca., 1976 is a small book of much wisdom liberally interspersed with the wit of the author who takes kindly pokes at both science and religion for their failure to appreciate each other as two sides of one coin.

There is much of Bible prophesy related to the times in which we live and much also of the role which spaceships from the universe at large have played in the past and will continue to play in the very near future.

Confirmation of life on the moon is stated on page 115, in the verbatim conversation of astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin. Pictures enhance the chapter, 13 and 14. You won't want to miss reading this.

Suzie's Sudden Saucer, by Dorris, Publisher, Total Graphics 1976 is a delightful little book for children (and adults) who delight in colorful and imaginative writing. As a little child Suzie saw the saucer every day and as she grew up the saucer people spoke to her of their wisdom and she became a source of profound Truth for all who would listen.

Pictures by illustrator Robert Benson are delightful too. The little book ends with a question "For Suzie knew her saucer And maybe you can too. Many are scheduled Earthside. Is there one that's sent for you?

The book, written in lilting poetry will delight both young and old saucer fans.

16 UNDERSTANDING

Beauty Unknown, transmitted through Daphne and Nelson, Claude Stark & Co., Cape Cod, Mass is a beautiful volume of color portraits of those great souls who guide our path - if we let them. It is dedicated "To all of the Ageless Ones living outside the bounds of Space, Time and Form whose tireless efforts on behalf of mankind will now bear fruit, this volume is lovingly dedicated." A colorful and lovely little book. It may be ordered direct from the publisher, Box 431, West Dennis, Cape Cod.

THE SPARK

By Pete Bohnert

Age 16

Somewhere down under a great, dark, mass

A coal is glowing

A coal is glowing, burning with the truth

That at one time had lit the whole mass

Into a great fountain of light.

But somehow darkness had overcome the light and had extinguished

All but this one coal.

But now, the tiny coal, that spark of Truth, finds a bit of fuel,

A triumph that sparks it to burn brighter.

It lights other scattered pieces of coal and it is growing.

The light that was nearly gone is now growing.

The tiny pieces find more and more fuel, more and more triumphs over darkness.

More coals are lit up. It is spreading rapidly now.

The entire mass of darkness now detects lights from one side.

Soon from all sides, That little spark of Truth has given

Light to a new cause, a new revolution that is shutting out the darkness.

The Light is spreading and soon, very soon, will overcome all

darkness ... and that, will be the New Age.

MAY 1977 17

Bulletin board

Needed! Some ideas - and help to carry them out - about what to do with 10,000 more or less volumes of the Understanding Magazine. The Library shelves are bulging. The space under the book shelves is gone. The magazine racks are full and running over. Surely there must be someone somewhere who could enjoy the writing in the magazines even tho it dates back a few years. (History buffs ought to enjoy it, if no one else!) But others too would enjoy it if we could find there. Please write and make suggestions!

A new tape by the editor is now available. Power of the Mind on one side and Physical Aspects of ESP on the other. Both for $4.00 A second tape, Science and Superstitution and The Relativity of Reality is also available now for $4.00.

Some very wonderful memberships and contributions have come in this past month. Especial thanks to Wallace and Marilyn Davis and to Vivian Calderhear! With costs of paper and postage going up and up, Understanding, Inc. has great need for contributions. Almost all other non-profit organization: make continuous pleas for contributions, Dave fund drives and bake sales and what-have-you to raise money for the organization’s needs. Understanding has not done that __ yet. But if this headquarters Center is to become a place of real beauty for you, the owners, money must come for trees and shrubs, Paint and plaster and all the rest that growth and development requires.

Are you listening, Understanding Members? Please help!!

18 UNDERSTANDING

U.F.O. DEPARTMENT

UFOs Many scientists say they should be investigated

The transition has been a gradual one or Dr. J. Alien Hynek, main UFO authority extraordinaire.

Once he was considered so comfortably establishment in his views that the Air Force saw fit to make him its scientific consultant to Project Blue Book - the official government investigation of Unidentified Flying Objects.

Now he's the scientific consultant for director Steven Spielberg's (of "Jaws" fame) upcoming movie, "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

Close encounters of the Third Kind are UFO experiences in which alien entities or beings are sighted is part of a UFO classification system Hynek developed.

Once Hynek achieved notoriety for dismissing the saucers-que visions of residents of Ann Arbor, as "swap gas."

And, in later years, even after embracing the cause that UFOs constituted some "unexplainable phenomenon" which deserved to be scientifically examined, he still wouldn't venture a guess as to just what their origin might be.

But in recent years he as become less reluctant to take the plunge, admitting a belief there must be some kind of "intelligence" responsible for the phenomena of thousands of UFO sightings that can't be explained.

Hynek is a little man with distinguished grey hair and a perfectly manicured Vandyke beard.

Combined with a touch of the disheveled scientist about him, he so looks the part of an astronomer it is a wonder Spielberg didn't cast him as such.

At age 66, he still continues the fight for respectable study of the UFO phenomenon.

The long-time chairman of Northwestern University's astronomy department is the organizer as director of the Center for UFO Studies in Evanston. ILLl.

And though the path to acceptance still lined with skeptics, he finally sees it making some headway.

MAY 1977 19

He a was in West Palm Beach Saturday to make two speeches at the Science Museum and Planetarium.

One, happily he said, was on astronomy "I am still an astronomer you know,' he reminds you.

And the other, inevitable, is a speech on UFOs. Equally inevitable was the second speech, with over 150 people in attendance, outdrawing the first by over two to one.

Earlier in the day he spoke of why UFOs draw such great public interest and why Gallup Polls show that a majority of the American people believe in UFOs.

In the face of the evidence, there's just too much coming in for it to be dismissed by saying that all the witnesses are suffering from some strange malady," he said. "The misconception that only kooks and ding-a-lings report UFOs is not true.

"People don't understand the scope of the problem," he continued.

"They think sightings are maybe just once a month. But that just isn't the case. " A newsletter published by his Center for UFO Studies (available for $12 a year --- the money used to keep the financially strapped center going, he said) examines dozens of UFO reports from all over the world each month. And though 90% of UFO.'s can be explained, he said, (which makes them IFOs - Identifiable Flying Objects), it is the 10% that concern hint as a scientist.

He said the basic uniformity of description among the 10% of true UFO sightings lends further credence to the phenomenon.

"At Stanford University (a professor, got the idea of surveying all the members of the American Astronomical Society. He got a 52% response. And 53% of those indicated that the UFO problem was worth scientific investigation . . . Though that may represent only a quarter of the profession. it's still an absolutely fantastic change in attitude."

The need for continued inquiry is still great, he said. "We may be as far away from the answer as Galileo was from discovering the TV set.

"I think there may even be a psychic component to it, After all, the supernatural is only that which we don't yet understand.

"The television would have seemed supernatural to Plato."

20 UNDERSTANDING

CLASSIFIED DEPARTMENT

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"WHY WAS I BORN?" The question that so many of us have pondered. Life is a constant bewilderment to some, even those with good educational backgrounds. LEARN, from people that are 2500 years ahead of us in time, about life then live. THE ANSWER TO LIFE IS KNOWLEDGE Become OBJECTIVE! Read THE REASON FOR LIFE -- VISIT VENUS John L Langdon Watts. Dixie Venus Books - P.O. Box Venus 275 - Port Orange, Fla. 32019.

YEAR BOOKS AVAILABLE
1968-1971

Understanding Magazines for

1968-1969-1970-1971

Are now available in convenient Yearbooks.

Price: $2.00 per volume, plus 25c for handling.

Issues 1958 through 1967 at $1.00 per volume, plus 25c handling.

Understanding, Inc.

Star Route Box 588F

Tonopah, AZ. 85354

BOOKS BOOKS

Once-in-a-Lifetime

by EUGENE E. WHITWORTH

NINE FACES OF CHRIST-Inspired book of a Messiah crucified 57 years B.C. Search for The Meaning of Life in ancient and Sacred Mysteries. Explains deeper meanings of the Bible, Yoga, Metaphysics and Mysticism.

(290 pp. $10.50)

SONG OF GOD-Poetic setting of 4,500 year-old Hindu Sacred Book Bhagavad Oita for Modern Americans. Mystic teachings of ancient Yogis. In free-verse, poetry and sonnets. For readers with Christian background.

(108 pp. $4.00)

DIARY INTO THE UNKNOWN-ESP experiments of Great Western University. Transmental adventure from tamper-proof diaries. Subjective conclusions.

(170 pp. $5.00)

PRICELESS INGREDIENT - Psychology of human control, man's relationship to man. Guide to leadership, personality and spiritual development.

(50 pp. $2.00)

TECHNIQUE OF EFFECTIVE PRAYER - Prayer technique and philosophy on which one dares risk life itself. Guide to man's relationship to God.

(50 pp. $2.00)

TO: WHITWORTH BOOKS

P.O. BOX 3601, RINCON ANNEX

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF. 94119

Enclosed is $20.00 for ALL FIVE BOOKS.

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Understanding, Inc.

Star Route Box 588F

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