This Issue's Featured Story
Why Tesla Probably Didn't
Talk to Martians
An OP-ED
Background
Tesla was a Serbian immigrant, but spent most of his life in the US. From an early age Nikola Tesla showed a curious streak as well as an infinity for creation. It quickly became his dream to work with the greatest inventors, namely Thomas Edison. Despite criticism of Edison from some peers, and later some scholars, Tesla mostly seemed to have a positive opinion of Edison.
Edison’s company was known for lightbulbs and DC power, or direct current. Tesla would contribute immensely to the field with the invention of AC power, or alternating current.
The difference was astonishing. DC power typically has many complexities where, AC power on the other hand, seemed to solve them. Although this would begin a strain on Edison and Tesla.
Most of the money Tesla ever earned in his lifetime was the result of AC power. However it would also mark the end of that particular chapter. Accounts of the invention of AC power also claim that it was the possibly the easiest invention that he created.
The set of endeavors would prove to distance Tesla from the rest of society. Most famously there was a facility in Colorado Springs, during his work in wireless transmission. Although this area of his work would go largely unfinished, it represents possibly his most interesting projects. While his contributions to electricity and lighting can’t be understated, it is next to impossible to prove at this time if his later work was correct in its hypothesis. This time in his life also carries a certain stigma as well, as he claimed to a number of things including communication to martians mentally.
Brief OP-ED
Nikola Tesla represents a figure in history that I personally see a lot of myself in. Motivational speaker Jim Rohn use to joke that there are books written by the most brilliant people and yet for some reason we don’t read them. Tesla represents a figure that taught me a lot not just about science but also what it means to live a healthy life. Nikola Tesla may have been a lot of things and many of them we will probably never know, and perhaps we are never meant to know. But I struggle to adequately connect him to aliens.
On a newer episode of a program on these matters, the content about Tesla’s later claims was the prime subject. This seems counterintuitive as when plucked out of his life, this doesn’t seem like the wildest claim. Our readers will know that I am all for the idea of aliens calling from the mothership. Whether from anyone from Tesla to Voltaire, Arthur C Clarke to Issac Asimov, it is amazing. Furthermore, if I haven’t said it before, I believe that his theories on energy and the transmission of power wirelessly is not altogether wrong, and possibly something that could lead to discoveries beyond even his imagination. But something worth keeping in mind is by the time that these claims are made, Tesla had many failed ventures and little to no contact with people, and virtually no close friends.
While Tesla’s theories on energy and transmission of power deserve their own article, alternating current however, is crucial. Since at the time of these claims AC power was widely used and the money that he received for much of his career came from it. In fact some accounts suggest that he was massively in debt, in part due to the failed ventures. Overall he would hold a great number of patents, not to mention that he had a history of OCD like behavior, the most notable to me was always being in a room that had a number divisible by three. Returning to the point of AC power, it is also worth noting that without it even writing this would be much different. It is a technology that continues to be utilized in one fashion or another.
Tesla’s claims remind me of another similar story, that of Bobby Fischer. Fischer believed at the end of his life that there were Martians contacting him for various reasons. For those people my age that don’t know, he was possibly the greatest chess player of his time. He lived an isolated life style in an effort to train for championship matches and such. At the end of his life he became an old hermit that made very similar claims. Fischer actually has a special place in my heart for the same reasons that Tesla does, and maybe that is why I draw the connection, but I believe that Tesla’s life is easier to explain. People who live in intense isolation can become subject to listening to unconventional thoughts. Isolation, solitude, can be great for clearing the mind but like anything else there is a level of balance that is healthy. I would argue that Tesla did not find it.
"Dreams of Valis"
An Excerpt from an Upcoming Long Report
The night was beset by a thick coat of fog. Cool, but that wet cool that bites at your bones mildly. My eyes held the weight of exhaustion. Leaves haven’t started changing yet, this late New England summer was merely in the midst of a cold front. Rushing through the yard I hopped the fence landing on the neighbor’s estate. The mansion was a historical one from back in the day of the founding fathers. Although I can’t recall which one it was.
My neighbors were sweet but I can’t imagine they wanted me in the yard roaming about. Even if my friend was lost. What I remember most is how there was no sense of how cold it was. Normally a desert dweller like me is instantly stung by the bite of cold, but not on this night. There was something distant and surreal, yet near and familiar.
It was then that I awoke from my bed and looked around. I was home, in Arizona. My dream, despite its realness, was incalculably far from me.
About a year or two ago, I read a series of novels by PKD. In this trilogy, the idea about dreaming was talked about at length. While the Valis books were instrumental in the building of my library and some of the most fun I had reading a series, there was an underlying theme that stuck with me. For the sake of any reader that wishes for me not to spoil these books, I will do my best to talk about it vaguely, while trying to balance the more vivid details.
Throughout the books, the idea came up that we could be living multiple lives simultaneously, or maybe remembrance of a past life might be more accurate. It would take time before any odd events would occur. But slowly I remembered there were times that I dreamt that I was in another place and time. Or I was someone else entirely; but not only that, that I had a history as this person, or people in my life were rearranged. Perhaps even new people would show up and yet I still knew them.
Now I understand the ideas behind dreaming, at least from the psychological realm. Freud and Jung have volumes dedicated to this subject. But really what is a dream? Buddhists and Hindis would say that this place we are now, in the living world, is but a dream. What does it mean to dream? “To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;/For in that sleep of death what dreams may come/When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,/Must give us pause.”
What does it mean to dream? Are we so sure of our facts and sciences that we can color the world precise language? When I question these things I am often reminded of another Hamlet line: “There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
What about life makes us so sure? And how can it whittle away so rapidly once we dream?
These questions are vital in the retelling of my life and the experiences around me. It is easy to recognize that I recognize little at best. The world I thought I knew is as small as my mind allowed me to see, but is filled densely with the memories that my imagination created.
Some scholars argue that the mind is living on a higher plane, and that which we call a soul, a plane above that. While I struggle to definitively agree one way or another, I have come to believe this is as good an explanation as any, only I would say that soul is a clumsy word for it. As I am using it to define that interconnecting state of existence, where it is easy to see all are one and one is all. “God is a circle whose centre is everywhere, and it's circumference nowhere.” As St. Augustine said.
Perhaps dreams are merely a reflection of our subconscious or they are a doorway to other realms of existence. Perhaps they are even both.
Believe it or not I was studying things about the human mind for as long as I can remember. Catholic school wasn’t my choice but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. Those that have stayed in my life have become an extended family. But more importantly the books. Our library was often a haven for me and my daydreams. While I would only look at pictures and read small bits, I was fascinated with the world and words.
181—it might sound random, but this was the code I had to punch in to take out books; and later, access the computers. I had an active imagination, and soon books like the Chronicles of Narnia and the Hatchet filled my time. It was also around this time that the nightmares first began.
It started innocently enough. Asleep one night after 3:00am, I was violently awaken by a deep ungodly voice. “Juh woman.” While to this day I don’t know what that is supposed to mean. It started a series of journeys I will never forget and live with every day and night.
I remember not being able to fall back asleep.