As the universe unfolds, we begin to realize there is more affecting our lives than what takes place within this wrapper of skin provided at birth. For centuries we have been aware that "we are what we eat" and that it is wise to be choose carefully the fuel for our bodies.

We know that the moon affects the tides, and this same force which juggles huge oceans around four times a day must have a strong influence on people. A beyond-body influence. Early science recognized that all bodies attract or repel each other. The gravity that moves comets, meteors, and other heavenly bodies around must also have an affect on us. Faint perhaps, up to now indiscernible, even with our most sensitive instruments. New instruments, not only here on the third planet from the sun, roam the heavens, making observations, shooting pictures, sensing and recording forces far beyond our green blue planet.

During decades to come one of the tags applied to the era before and after the start of the third millennium, may be the Age of the Sensor. Messages and signals received by sensors of all descriptions will astound and shock us. But after the shock wears off we should be better informed. New intelligence changes the way humans think.

One interesting pastime for me recently has been watching the gatherings of the NASA Radarsat Project:

The Mission to Planet Earth. Three radar frequencies mapped our planet for the first time in triple depth as they had done earlier with Venus, Mars, and other more distant residents of our solar system. Thanks to the Mission to Planet Earth we can see not only through snow and ice, but also through water, sand, leaves, and trees. Data collected will be analyzed for years. It will affect your life and mine. For example, the ancient lost city of Ubar, has been found beneath the sands in Oman.

Think of the historical events of the last half of the 20th century: the assassination of President Kennedy, the Korean and Vietnamese wars, the fall of Communism, the emergence of the Pacific Rim, the rise of the Computer Age, the disintegration of the Industrial Age and its society, culture, and economic power. All beyond body.

Some people are not sure whether they look forward to the 21st century or whether they wish the world would stop and stay where it is. Since time appears unstoppable at the moment, we better give up our grip on the past. The past is history and may not be even that for long.

Beyond body will have more meaning tomorrow.

Being There

Ever since the birth of man, our bodies have been fenced in by a protective and permeable barrier of protein that holds the body together and enables us to live. The body, however, has restricted our ability to be greater than what was contained within these vinyl-like layers of dermis. Those days are over.

Since the advent of the telegraph, invented by Samuel Morse in 1837, our written thoughts have been understandable, almost immediately and almost anywhere on the planet. Getting used to this fact and realizing what it meant has taken 150 years. The telephone carried our voices instantly around the globe.

Our familiar point of view can now be the unfamiliar "point of being." If I can be, as I was recently, in a school in Lincoln, Nebraska, with both my image and my voice showing and demonstrating new technologies, answering questions from a class watching my image via an AT&T Picture Phone, has not my being expanded beyond my skin?

On another and more dramatic occasion, I took part in the Australian opening of Telstra, one of the world's most sophisticated fibre optic networks, while comfortably sitting in my Vancouver houseboat at 2:00 a.m. in the morning west coast time. That was "tomorrow" in Australia. I appeared on a psuedo-holodeck before an audience in Sydney (and a week later in Melbourne) while I sat 13,000 km away in another country on another continent floating on another sea. I went into The Land Down Under as their first photonic immigrant. I gave my seminar, participated in the festivities, returned at the speed of light (accompanied by an electronic funds transfer check for my services) and neither the Canadian nor Australian governments were immediately aware of what had happened. If this isn't travelling beyond the body, what is?

If we can be "there" while still "here" what will that mean? How do we learn to handle this new ability? First we must adapt because it's all part of the new reality. It will, I suggest, also change our thinking processes. For instance, now whenever invited to speak in a distant locale while also having an immediate commitment at home, I consider the electronic/photonic alternative. It definitely reduces long distance flights. It also allows me to do two engagements when tight scheduling would formerly have made two talks impossible. This contributes to economic stability, an important factor in a globalized world.

What are the implications when body, mind and machines, alone or cooperatively, become gods?

It will be highly controversial. Gutenberg's printing press provided further impetus to the Renaissance, caused major upheaval in the Christian church and changed the minds of Europe and subsequently the world. The printing press was not a very complicated piece of machinery. Consider the implications, explosions, revolutions and evolutions currently brewing and already forcing us to face new problems and newer solutions than ever anticipated in the past.

If a person can control factory robots in Toronto or Tokyo or blow up a bomb anywhere, what does that do to jurisprudence based on known precedents? New worlds are coming. As in the past people will be frightened, more by what they fear than what they may eventually experience. Fear is a liability that dissipates energy in worry. Energy, that might be better spent in recognizing the patterns and figuring out how to profit from them. It isn't that difficult.

Look for the invisibles. Remember attitude. Accentuate the positive.

Are you hearing Things?

Think about this. All around our planet approximately two percent of the people are colour-blind. They cannot recognize colours as most of us can. Imagine if this were reversed and only two percent could see color and 98 percent could not. Most people would likely think that the two percent were kooks. Right?

Now consider this: A few people around Taos, New Mexico, have for several years now been hearing a strange hum. It has caused some investigation, and what has been found so far is that only two percent of the population around Taos hear this strange sound. The rest of the world is hearing it too, but only two percent of the population. Now many surely think this two percent are kooky.

First, why do we think like this?

Second, what if, just like a hypothetical reversal of the seeing colour syndrome, the two percent are not kooky?

Then what is the explanation? One investigator believes that such people -- those two percent -- could be "hearing" through their skin!

Kooky, right? Look again. And, I quote here from Earthpulse Flashpoints by Dr. Nick Begich: "When in the womb, a fetus's skin serves as the primary sensory organ. From it evolve the eyes, the nose and the ears. While the ears specialize in hearing, Flanagan (another researcher) recognized that the skin is also an organ. Consequently, if a way could be found to transmit information through the skin to the brain, then information could be directly communicated to the brain, bypassing the ears."

Doesn't sound so strange now, does it?

What does all this mean? It may be showing just the faintest tip of a new understanding "iceberg" that is revealing how the human body really works.

Remember that years ago --say, prior to the advent of the printing press which prompted many people to understand our world in a much more sophisticated manner -- most of the population could only explain phenomena with superstition. Discovering that new knowledge changed human understanding of our world was the start of the cornucopia of data now pouring over all of us in the "brain drench."

The other researcher mentioned, Patrick Flanagan, M.D., Ph.D., has invented, what he calls the Neurophone. This device runs radio waves through the body by means of two small electrodes placed on the skin. It essentially uses existing neural pathways to directly access the brain. Coupled with virtual reality body suits, virtual reality fans are going to go ape over the possibilities this development offers.

The Disney organization is famous for "Imagineers," far-out thinking staffers who plan the rides, shows, and buildings for Disney Worlds. The next few years are going to make imagineers out of all of us.