4 WAYS TO VISIT A PLANET

 

February 27, 1977

 

     What I saw this afternoon was spectacular, awesome, heart rending – four lions hunting down a cape buffalo.  Left alive were three lions.

     I felt pained, yet privileged, to be here to see it. 

     “What do you mean by ‘here’?” asked Raminothna. 

     “Right here, where I stand.”

     “Where are you standing?”

     “On the Serengeti Plains.”

     “Zoom out.”

     “Pardon?”

     “Back off to the Moon.”

     “Okay.  I think I see what you mean.”

     “What do I mean?”

     “You mean – I’m standing on the planet Earth.”

     “Gives your original statement a new meaning, doesn’t it?”

     “What statement’s that?”

     “You said you felt privileged to be ‘here’ to see it.”

     “I think I see what you’re saying.  From your perspective, ‘here’ probably means ‘this planet’.”

     “Which makes you wonder, doesn’t it?”

     “Yes, indeed.  Since there must be millions upon millions of planets in the Universe, why I am born on this one and not any other?  For that matter, why am I born as this human and not anyone else?  In fact, why am I born a human being at all, and not anything else?”

     Later, after reading a chapter in the novel Dune Messiah, I set the book down and asked Raminothna the same old question, “Just what are you, Raminothna?  Some kind of Earth Messiah?  Come on, Raminothna, just tell me this one thing.  Where are you from?”

     As usual, in response to such questions, she was evasive, at least initially.  This time it was, “The Cosmos.”

     “What planet exactly?”

     “The Earth, you might say.”

     “But, this is the Earth.”

     “Most planets capable of naming themselves name themselves ‘The Earth’, in their own languages of course.”

     “Which Earth is yours then?”

     “When you know which Earth yours is, you will know which Earth mine is.”

     “Alright, how about this, then: By what means did you come to this Earth.”

     “There are at least four general means for visiting a planet, by at least one of which have I come. 

     “The first and most obvious is of course technology, involving space ships, hyperspace-craft, teleportation, creative genetics, robotics, artificial high-intelligence, time machines, and their like, of which the limitations are far exceeded by their possibilities, which, however, are often considered, by the technologically less advanced at least, to be impossible.

     “The second, in certain circumstances a special case of the first, and in certain imagined forms indeed impossible, is telepathy – close encounters of the fourth kind, as it were, where the visitor experiences the planet through a chosen native creature, by seeing through its eyes, walking on its feet, feeling through its heart, thinking through its mind, and working through hands – or whatever other manipulative appendages it may possess.

     “The third, at times indistinguishable from the first and second, and always possible, is imagination – that of a certain highly imaginative native creature, that is, who imagines such fourth-kind encounters with such vividness as to lend credence, in its own mind at least, to the real existence of such visitors as myself.

     “And finally, the fourth but by far the most common and perhaps the best means of all is birth – to be born as a native creature of the planet, naturally, to visit the planet for one lifetime.    

     “Regardless of means, therefore, for the duration of a beamed landing, or a telepathic communion, or a day dream, or a lifetime, as pauper or prince, for good or evil, to give or to take, in war or peace . . ., we are all fellow visitors of a certain planet at a certain time, for a certain purpose.  And therefore, we all share our question in common:  What am I here for?

     “Some come as tourists, others as naturalists.  Some come as destroyers, others as saviours.  Some come to propagate and perpetuate lies, others to seek and speak truth.  Some come to experience the flesh, others to purify the soul.  Some come to learn, some to teach and some to merely sleep.  While some come to Earth to read and re-read Dune, others come back from Dune to live and deliver Earth.  And while some come all this way to find Earth filled with cruelty, injustice, hypocrisy and pain, others, who feel fortunate and called upon in spite of all, hold that for every visit, regardless of circumstances, there is a joyful and meaningful purpose, or an array of joyful and meaningful purposes, from which the visitor may choose one, or more, or, alas, less.  Even for those who see their sojourn on Earth as agonizing, pointless and futile, they still have the purpose to leave.

     “There are numerous means by which one can leave a planet, amongst which one of the easiest and least irreversible is to escape back to Dune, or conversely, as we both know, to die.  But for those who can stand its sheer intensity and unrelenting realism, most of all, its uncompromising truth, there is nothing on Earth to compare with Earth.

     “My dear fellow Earth visitor, I wish you purposeful living, and joyful deliverance,” said Raminothna.