The Tower — Excerpt from “The Ancient Astronaut”
I emerge in a fertile land nestled between two parallel rivers. It is nighttime and the sky is dark blue with an infinity of shiny stars scattered around it, like a giant celestial dome made of lapis lazuli adorned with countless little sapphire gems that light up the night. A group of people in colourful robes with braided hairs and beards are assembled outside a big, charming house. They are watching and studying the marvelous night sky, recognizing familiar shapes and patterns formed by the stars, likening the shapes they see to bulls, lions, fish, scorpions and other creatures, and trying to understand the hidden meanings behind the various star formations.
I concentrate on their minds, the starry sky is another dimension, a realm out of reach, out of comprehension to these people. Like the faraway stars and celestial bodies, I very likely exist in a parallel universe from these humans’ perspective. That is why I can only communicate with them through ideas and fables. Maybe they can step into my realm and see me in the same fashion in which they see each other?
To the assembled crowd looking at the sky I transmit two images: a foot, and a star. Walk to the stars, travel to the otherworldly realm. They start drawing feet and stars on clay tablets, pass them around, and study them carefully for a long time. They finally conclude to actually walk to the stars. They decide to build a tower so high that it reaches the starry sky.
Before they lay down the first building brick for their ambitious tower, I already know how the endeavour will progress and how it will end. From their perspective, the tower will gradually, brick on top of brick, grow in height and reach an impressive altitude, but it will ultimately collapse after a particular number of bricks is assembled upon each other and a certain height is reached.
Does this make me bad? Having the prescient knowledge that their tower will grow then collapse as a direct result of me whispering in their spirits to walk to the stars. Does this mean I am the direct cause of the collapse of their majestic tower? Am I supposed to prevent them from building the tower altogether by transmitting more images? Or at least prevent them from reaching the specific number of bricks at which the tower will undoubtedly collapse?
From my perspective which is outside of what they perceive as time, the building of the tower progresses in a completely different manner when compared to their perspective. They perceive it as progressively placing brick on top of brick, while the tower is taking shape and gaining height. A succession of minuscule, consecutive brick placing events, that finally culminates in putting one last brick, which causes the ultimate collapse.
From my perspective that is beyond what they perceive as time, the whole scene of the tower building, from beginning to end, is shorter than one instant. I see all the events related to the tower unfold at the exact same moment, all the bricks being placed not successively, but simultaneously, as if the tower instantly and magically takes shape and collapses. It’s because I perceive the tower building scene from outside of the succession of moments that they call time. I have to try and visualize this concept to them, so they have an idea how I see their progress, to make them understand that I am not purposefully guiding them to the collapse of their tower. So, I dream up and project the hologram of a high tower that magically takes shape, just to collapse right away. The assembled people watch the collapsing tower spectacle only to devise a new building plan and a new type of bricks. I need to explain the way time works from my perspective in a different manner.
On a meadow nearby, I notice a bull eating grass that I can use to explain my perspective that is beyond time. To the humans’ minds, I transmit the bull growing broad powerful wings, sprinting in the meadow, then taking flight and soaring to the skies. But I project this scene as I perceive it, so not as a succession of individual events, not a stationary bull eating grass, that then grows wings, then step by step sprints in the meadow, then takes flight, then progressively soars to the sky, but rather as a side-by-side juxtaposition of countless images or scenes portraying the bull’s states and locations as it progresses through the events. The humans see a continuous stack of bulls, which are really the same bull, originating at a meadow, and ending high in the sky, and a pair of wings growing along the stack of bulls before it arises to the heavens.
The humans marvel at the flying bull scene. They finally conclude to worship a winged bull that they call El and Lamassu and proceed to building a high tower to follow him to the sky. Once again, I leave the humans to their laborious task and step into my celestial portal to another location where people might have a shot at understanding my imagery, and I conclude once again that my way of communicating needs improvement.
