Chapter 10 - Idealism for a better world

We have covered a lot in a little over 10,000 words. We have tried to understand and solve the world's problems, after seeing the behaviour of active children, and moving chairs and lunch boxes! We have challenged long established scientific beliefs and engineering principles. We have seen daring designs that are likely to give us unlimited power, leading to unlimited happiness, for the human race. One day, in our lifetimes I do believe, we may witness manned interstellar flights, as a result of this essay.

Millions of years from now, Earth, our world, is expected become uninhabitable as our sun will become too hot. That, if fact, should not bother us. Well before that happens, we would have scattered all over the galaxy.

What a challenge! What great efforts lie before us! What great rewards, in what unknown lands!

Most of the earths manufacturing would be done in space. The zero gravity there would make mechanical assemblies and machining a much easier task, with aid from highly intelligent robots. For instance, perfectly round objects could be made naturally, out of cohesive forces that hold liquids together. The availability of unlimited energy, fast and powerful vimans, and the mining of heavenly bodies such as asteroids would make possible vast self-reliant space stations, containing large human colonies. Life in such colonies would be safe, and free from disease.

For a start the moon could be colonised. Travel to the moon may take only a couple of hours, from the earth. You could go anywhere (your supermarket, Antartica, under the sea, the moon, any planet or even any close star) by just a single spoken command in your personal viman. You would travel in perfect safety - todays quality and reliability engineering is highly advanced. Your viman's movements would be controlled by local, regional, national, international and universal communications systems operating automatically in a fail-safe mode.

I know I sound completely crazy. Indeed, so far only my family knows about all these ideas. To be frank, I am scared to tell them to others. I know that I am liable to be called many unpleasant names, crank at best.

Yet, yet. Perhaps I am completely right, and all the rest wrong. Perhaps the stars exist to guide us to a higher destiny than spending our lives considering they are simply holes letting out the glory of Heaven, as once commonly thought. "A mans reach should exceed his grasp, or what are the heavens for?" asked Browning. Once again, let us consider what actually binds us to this planet other than rather blind belief in some so-called laws established many generations ago?

Please, dear reader, try out for yourself all the simple experiments I described to the best of my ability. Please think for yourself, setting aside all preconceived notions.

My thoughts are written upon wet sand.

Which is silliness all understand.

For the tide is coming, twill wash them away.

They will never see light of another day.

Upon medium firmer did I once write.

Then tore them up cast them out of sight.

Why hang on to memories of old

When gates are ever open to vistas untold?

Such is the message from Goddess most true

Embracing my offerings with ocean deep blue.

Not writing for money, nor writing for fame,

Yet comprehending the wits of those for same:

It is foolish to value what you get for free;

It is wise to pay for the rubbish you see.

I wish I had the resources to make prototypes of the designs I have given in this book. If I had a proper money-making mind, I would have done that somehow, anyway, patented the designs, and tried to become as rich as the legendary Croesus. For a person who holds seminal patents on all new power plants and engines and spacecraft may well be expected to be, in this age of Bill Gates, far richer than Bill Gates.

Provided such designs actually work, of course. I am acutely conscious that I have only given out theories, experiments and designs, not built actual prototypes doing wonderful things. I have no doubt that there are keen people in this world who will given my designs a go. May their tribe increase! May their enthusiasm never wane! Let them carry on this discussion to its logical conclusion! The health of our world, and our future, depend upon their efforts. (If this book ever sells and brings me some money, I shall make a modest workshop, build models, and see for myself whether I am right or wrong.) I am sure that the designs given are easily realisable with modern technology.

Engineers have been pawns in the hands of the unscrupulous elements of society. Their talents have been directed to war and bloodshed, inequality and snobbery. They do not have a high status in society, even though they create the basis for all the comfort and convenience the wealthy enjoy. They do not participate in decision-making processes involving the use of their talents such are left in the hands of those with no knowledge of engineering. Thus the world is such a bad place to live in, and getting worse.

Supposing just supposing that my ideas are correct and that engineers all over the world declare that they have managed to make working Internal Force Engines generating unlimited energy and are well on the way to making vimans. What joy! What good news for the world! Engineers then must ask for a higher position in decision-making in world matters, and undo the harm inflicted upon our world by amoral, selfish and greedy people. The term engineer in this context embraces people in education and health, farming and industry, retailing and social welfare. It means a person who is willing to use arts and sciences for the good of the entire human race, and of the entire world, in the spirit of peace and non-violence. It means a person who will resist the abuse of new scientific ideas for creating such evils as atomic weapons.

It is with such persons that I would entrust the financial outcome for all engineering products arising from my ideas. It must have a moral basis. It must be used to abolish the shameful, and ever increasing, poverty and inequality on our planet. The conquest of space must not take place unless we have solved the outstanding problems on Earth environmental degradation, pollution, over-population, poverty, war, human misery... It must never be undertaken the spirit of escapism. Space must never be misused for instance, convicts must never be jailed or exiled in outer space. Instead, enlightened measures must be undertaken to rid the planet of jails, by taking all steps necessary to eliminate criminal tendencies from humans.

These people must take the political initiative of ensuring that say ten percent of all sales of Internal Force Engines, and vehicles and appliances resulting from the use of Internal Force Engines, must go to an international Trust Fund managed by reputed social workers and environmentalists. The money raised must be spent on repairing the damaged environment, arts and sciences, and most importantly, wiping out poverty, inequality and human misery.

A direct flow of funds, from people to people, as opposed to from financial institutions to governments of poor countries (that lead to corruption and misuse) is necessary. I have seen how relatively small quantities of money, correctly used, can bring a great deal of happiness for people who never even knew the concept of opportunity. My fathers social work in a remote village in Barajuri (near Ghatsila, Bihar), among tribal people, has been most revealing. Simply providing them with free medical treatment, and providing good water by digging deep wells, has drastically improved their health and at the same time money-earning capabilities. With proper job training, scientific agricultural production and product marketing on the way, the regions economic potential is increasing rapidly.

And as for myself what? Do I not want to be richer than anyone around? Since the first of July, 1981, I, just for myself, ceased from this world to want anything, because I got all I wanted.

How did it all begin? Let me recollect.

First time I saw her, as impatient curtains parted

The room spun, the house rocked, stars darted

Away in haste. The Supreme One, the Select,

Entered in pink and silver, proud and erect,

To set me, is she wished, on courses uncharted.

Wits stay, stay - render me not unsmarted

With mouth wide agape, desire dashed, hope wrecked.

Twenty five years led but to this one meeting

With slim long-haired girl of clear eyes and soul.

"Do you drink?" Lady, intoxication permanent

Was ever my aim. Be thus, pour your perfect whole

Without bubble into hallowed niche. Fleeting

Approval I discerned - stars exploded in the firmament.

But I would not mind the fame and financial independence granted by money! I would use it to actually make internal force engines and vimans, and software programming for highly intelligent robots for work in outer space. I have other interests as well. I would like to act on stage. I would like to have more time to translate the works of great Indian writers like Tagore and Sukumar Ray into English and Hindi. Perhaps one day I could even write to my own satisfaction in Bengali, Hindi and Sanskrit. I would like to draft a new constitution for India nice, tight within 10,000 words everyone could understand. I would like to be the first person to go to Mars, and to travel faster than light, in a viman. More importantly, I would like to bring up my children properly.

So many plans, so many hopes! They may all come to nothing, if Newton and Einstein are right after all. But even if we are all thereby condemned to remain on this earth for all time to come, must we forever try to cut each others throats in the name of God, King, Country or Economic Rationalism?

The world needs ideals, values and morals. The alternatives are callous inhumanity, or depression. There is no reason why we cannot make the world a better place with the best of modern technology (telecommunications, not cars). People must reach out naturally to those who are born to more unfortunate circumstances. The basic philosophy of the modern world, economic rationalism, holds that a person is responsible for his own behaviour if he is poor, violent, not good-looking, not socially acceptable, or ignorant, all that is that persons own fault. This is a very big lie. It is also a convenient excuse for the better-off to keep on victimising the rest, or at least, remain callous about the people they are deliberately neglecting.

We find that the vast majority of people who are badly off are so because they never had a chance. If they did have a chance, they did not know enough, or did not have the right attitudes, to do their best.

The model for the future human need not be a television watching creature of selfishness, greed, vanity, violence, bigotry, cynicism, laziness and ignorance, incapable of forming lasting relationships, driven to drugs and other forms of self-deceit. Simplicity of lifestyle, and renunciation of material and hedonistic values, were practised in the not-so-distant past both for spiritual and practical purposes. The last great Hindu king of India, Shri Harshavardhana, according to reliable Chinese accounts, would give away the contents of his vast treasury to the people, even up to his own royal vestments. This example ennobled the people, and also gave the economy a boost. In todays Australia there is still the idea of giving everyone a fair go. Waltzing Matilda, Australias national song, epitomises this spirit it makes us feel for a lonely outcast, with his simple longings and desire for freedom. By including such an outcast into the boundaries of our consciousness, we expand the same, and view the world in a broader and maturer manner.

If Newton and Einstein and their enormous following are right, aliens could never have visited the earth. So they cannot say what they might have, as below:

Fair charioteer, you have brought me to the land of machines.

They work wondrously: give comfort, pleasure and ease.

The two-legged ones, those who work behind the scenes

- Labeled, valued, and numbered, ever so eager to please -

Are they extensions of cams, gears, sprockets or wheels?

Have they any ideas beyond those they see in the reels?

But what if Newton and Einstein are wrong? What if aliens, using the science and technology I have described, have come to earth and seen our ways. How we treat animals, and each other. Can they even comprehend the true extent of the human races lies, hypocrisy and violence?

How little we care for life, animal or human! How much we care for numbers in some bank account!

If they only follow our example, what may they do?

Imagine a twenty-ton viman, dispatched by a simple wish by an alien. It hits Earth with ten times the speed of light. The energy released will be 10²² joules, or several giga-tons of TNT. That is, a thousand times more powerful than the most powerful hydrogen bombs in the US arsenal.

Against such a weapon, there is no defence. The fact that we are still around means that either there are no aliens; or, if there are aliens, they value life far more than we do.

Humanity is at the crossroads. All of us, on an individual basis, have to decide whether to use science for good, or for bad. In a democratic age there is no excuse.