9/25/34 Richard Barron's article in a New York newspaper:
[Pertinent to the Radio-Active or the Wet Cell Appliance?]
'PHANTOM CURRENT' AND LIFE [October 1934 sent to A.R.E. by
Mr. [
531]]
To the Editor of the New York Times:
A story by William Laurence reporting the discovery of a
mysterious electric current which keeps on flowing after its
external source has been cut off was published in THE TIMES
the other day. In the words of its two discoverers, this
current so far appears abstract and intangible, terms
heretofore alien to the scientist's lexicon.
Along with this comes to mind the parallel laboratorial fact
of the astounding conductivity of lead, when cooled to the
temperature of liquid helium, so that within a ring of such
lead an electric current will course uninterrupted for some
two years after its initial source had been shut off. A
third phenomenon, perhaps not unrelated: the fragrance of a
flower persisting in a room for some time while that flower
is no longer there.
To one addicted to occasional mild speculation regarding the
nature of things, it is difficult to resist the temptation to
view these phenomena from their philosophical aspect, perhaps
to synthesize them; although in these days, when the major
concern of millions is how best to keep alive and exhibit
some grace under pressure of the process, such speculation
may well be a lethal luxury.
ENCOURAGEMENT FOR LAYMEN.
It is little wonder that the Marxian dialecticists, committed
to strict materialism, declare metaphysics anathema and
mysticism taboo. However, with James Jeans, as devout a
scientist as one my wish for, recently finding refuge in mind
as the ultimate and sole reality for him, with Eddington not
far behind him in this anchorage to certainty, the laymen who
has looked to the stars for that certainty in vain may begin
to be less timorous about turning to the mirror of his own
mind for a true reflection of reality and of his own place,
if any, within it.
Given this new freedom, the thought that will not down is
this: Is there perhaps a kinship between the fact of the
"phantom current," the current in the ring of lead, the
fragrance of the flower and the phenomenon of life itself?
Can it be that to those in quest of a first cause we can now
safely say that life is in all truth a phantom current; a
waning fluid force; a dynamic power of limited duration
coursing through a frozen ring of cause-effect, while the
initial source of it is somewhere outside the ring, otherwise
employed, not at all concerned with what occurs within it;
or, poetically put, the faint but still persistent fragrance
of a flower long removed from this enormous room of our
cosmos?
Rather hard to take, this hypothesis, for many of us. The
professional religionist will reject it altogether; yet at
least it has the virtue of making plausible the lamentable
idiocy of the tale being told through the centuries, by
ourselves. For under this hypothesis we are truly characters
in quest of our author to tell him we are in desperate need
of a plot - blunder stupidly without it.
ALSO FREE NOT TO BLUNDER.
However, there is this much comfort to be derived: If we now
appear to possess sufficient free will to blunder, we must be
equally free to will not to; so if we define the human soul
in arithmetical terms as the sum total of unattained ideals
of a given individual at a given moment and extend that
definition to the composite race soul as well, we observe
that, blunder though he did, blindly through the centuries,
man has none the less managed to grope forward in the
direction of certain ideals of truth and beauty. Such
distance as he has achieved in that direction justifies the
hope that he may achieve still more, and ultimately perhaps
approach the goals, attain the divine stature to which he
aspires.
All of this leads one to this somewhat startling summation:
"While there once was a "deity" outside of man, it is now, so
far as man is concerned, non-existent. Man contains the dim
beginnings of a new "deity" now within him; he is himself,
collectively, God; his destiny is in his own hands; his sole
faith must be in himself; his religion, Man. To the
out-and-out atheist we can say then, there is no God - but
there will be!
Is this after all a restatement in modern terms of the
ancient creed of Christianity? Perhaps. At any rate, to
those of your readers who are faithfuls of Bragdon, Hinton
and Ouspensky this letter should prove a fruitful diversion.
RICHARD BARRON. New York Sept. 25, 1934.
9/02/93 Laboratory Testing Inc., Certificate of Conformance
on 1 test piece of carbon steel submitted by Bruce Barr:
...The above referenced sample was submitted to chemical
content evaluation by Spectroscopic Analysis and it was
found to be in conformance to AISI 1060 (Alloy 1060).
The results are as follows:
ELEMENT REQUIRED ACTUAL
Carbon 0.55 - 0.65 0.58
See Source File Key #1800 for complete Certificate of
Conformance (above) re 1800-5. See also
1800-8, 1800-24 and
1800-25 re carbon steel.
Edgar Cayce Readings © 1971, 1993, 1994, 1995 by the Edgar Cayce Foundation