[2 of 5] THE KEY [Commentary]
Subject: [2 of 5] THE KEY [Commentary]
From: harlow@k.st (Harlow)
Date: 29/11/2003, 22:57
Newsgroups: alt.alien.visitors,alt.paranet.ufo,alt.paranet.abduct,alt.alien.research,alt.paranormal.crop-circles

The Key, Part II 
Copyright © 2003 Unknowncountry.com 

This is Whitley Strieber. Welcome to the continuation of my 
discussion of The Key and thank you very much for being a 
subscriber to the Unknowncountry.com website. Previously we 
ended by talking about the danger of remaining on the wheel 
of life, and ending up in a situation where our souls could 
never achieve the kind of ecstasy that is actually available 
out there. Ecstasy is like heat: It has no upper limit. 
Evil, sadness, sorrow, like cold, they have an end. 
Absolute zero is the end of cold; the stopping of everything 
is the end of evil. Evil is directed toward disintegration, 
absolute end, the cessation of all life, and ultimately, the 
cessation of all movement.
The Master mentioned the "radiant body" a couple of times, 
by this point. (I'm on page 17 of The Key.) And I began to 
see that the way out, the way to get off the Wheel of Life 
(which this book is really about; it's what my book The Path 
is about; it's what I'm about. I'm about getting off the Wheel 
of Life and not recurring again in this world, moving on not 
only as an individual, but as a whole species. We can move on. 
That sounds amazing, but a great deal of change is possible.) 
So I asked him, "How does a person evolve this radiant body?" 
He got into a lot of detail about what a radiant body was, and 
we'll go into that eventually.
He answered me, "The imprinting of essence with experience 
requires effort and attention. It is the object of all paths 
and ways to higher consciousness; it is the object of real 
prayer. To begin, you must meditate. Who does not meditate, 
disintegrates." This is one of the extremely, amazing and very, 
very compact statements he made. It's just five words! "Who does 
not meditate, disintegrates." But it tells so much. It gives us 
a reason for mediation that is different from what we're usually 
told. I wondered immediately, 'What does that mean?' One of the 
reasons I was letting him stay in my room was because he kept 
saying these things that were just "off the scale" in terms of 
their excellence. 
I asked him, "Any specific recommendations?" And this is when I 
began to come to understand the radiant body a little bit. He 
said something very critical here: "Paying attention to physical 
sensation is paying attention to energetic sensation. Physical 
sensation is energetic sensation." He didn't really see the body 
and soul as being different. Well, he did see them as being 
different, but not in the same way that we normally do, and 
we'll see the importance of this as we go on. 
He then said, "Being awake to one's self and one's surroundings 
increases the intensity of the impressions, so they affect the 
spin of the electrons that are present in the nervous system." 
In other words, noticing things makes us bigger and stronger. 
My meditation method is very simple, you don't even need to sit 
to do it. The point is to be in this state of awakenedness all 
the time. After meditating nightly for over thirty years, I've 
gotten to the point where I more or less remember to go back to 
this state all the time. You can too, and it probably won't take 
you as long as it took me, because I can assure you, almost 
anybody is better at this stuff than I am. I think they picked 
me because they figured if I could do it, anybody could, so don't 
be disheartened by the amount of time this stuff takes me. 
"An increase in spin, and enrichment of the complexity of the 
pattern of being that results, brings more and more form to the 
radiant body." In other words, by meditating and by opening 
ourselves and being aware of and awake to the world around us, 
we actually enrich the quality of this so-called "radiant body"; 
we make it more complex, form it, we spin it. It's more like 
making a sculpture than it is a birth. Being born is a natural 
process, but enriching your soul is a craft and an art. 
Now, he got a little bit here into after death: "You will remember 
yourself after death. Who and what you were, why you existed and  
what you intend for your future. You will, in short, acquire a true 
aim, enjoying the companions of God in their journey towards 
ecstatic and conscious union with one another and All That Is. 
It is the difference between being a plant and being Rembrandt. 
The plant has a certain fragment of self-awareness, but Rembrandt 
is vastly complex; a being rich with fully-realized talents and 
self-awareness that make him a worthy companion in higher form."
I thought, 'Rembrandt? What about some Saint?' I didn't quite get 
this. I said, "Rembrandt was a Saint?" 
He said, "He was conscious. As far as being a Saint is concerned, 
though, forget it. Radiant Being and Sainthood are not the same 
thing, believe me." He then said one of his very important statements: 
"After death, you cannot be blind, and therefore you cannot change. 
There you wait." 
I wanted to know what that meant, so I asked, "Wait for what?" 
Then he said something fabulously interesting: "To understand that, 
you must first understand that the living and the dead share the 
same world." Remember all those 'orb' pictures people take and the 
evidence that people like Dr. William Roll have amassed showing 
there is something physical happening in areas where there are 
ghosts? And all the work of Dr. Gary Schwarz and various mediums 
and so forth? So it's logical we share the same world; the dead are 
all around us. The dead are not off somewhere in space, their lives 
and beings are intertwined with yours. They see all that passes here, 
but can only affect it indirectly, if they can make themselves heard 
in the minds of the living. We have all kinds of ways of doing that: 
There's channeling, mediums, electro-spiritual communication. If you 
go into the Ghost section of the Unknowncountry website's Other Websites 
section, you'll find lots of information. Here's the way you go to that: 
Click on Mindframe and down the right-hand side, where there will be a 
section towards the bottom that says Other Websites. Then go to the 
section that I believe is called Ghosts, and I think you'll find a lot 
of very good websites about spirit communication.
In any case, the dead see all that passes here. "However", he then said, 
"you, the living, are changing now. As this change proceeds, you are 
better and better able to feel the presence of your dead. You will find 
your dead in the immediate surroundings of their lives, for the most 
part, clinging to what they can of their memories, attempting to preserve 
their selves despite the magnetic attraction of what would envelope them." 
At that point, I thought immediately of "going into the light," and that 
this is what we all believe we're supposed to do after death. I've always 
wondered whether or not that was really what we were looking for, and 
I said, "So the light is not our friend?" 
He replied, "The light is the fate of sleeping man. A wakened man makes 
his own light as part of the radiant choir who sing forever the song of 
God, which is the Word." And once again, at this point, there are very 
interesting echoes of the Gospel. They are very subtle, like, for 
example, the material about regaining contact with the dead. 
It relates to the reappearance of the dead as mentioned in the Book 
of Revelation. And of course the Word is represented by the Gospel of 
John, and I guess, also, of course, in Genesis. 
And I thought to myself, 'If everybody's lingering here, what about 
Julius Caesar, and so on and so forth? Are they all still around?' 
So I asked him, "But what about people from the distant past? Surely 
they don't linger here?" 
He said, "There's no other place for you to linger. If you're not an 
independent being after death, you remain engaged in the life of the 
Earth, awaiting your chance to recur and increase your being." 
Now I believe in reincarnation, because of experiences I've had; I was 
counting the number of lives I've spontaneously remembered (I've never 
had a past-life regression or anything like that). This started happening 
to me about seven or eight years ago, and I've remembered a whole lot of 
them. My guess is that most of you, also, remember lots of past lives, 
but it's not something I want to continue doing. I think that a lot of 
us here on this Earth are finished, and goodness knows, I've seen and 
done practically everything that you can see or do here, as I've 
realized just from my own memories. It's interesting that these 
past-life memories kind of pop into your head unexpectedly. For me, 
they've been very vivid visual flashes, usually when I'm relaxing for 
a couple of minutes in the afternoon. Maybe one of these days I'll
write a book about them; that would be interesting, at least for me.
Well, he then began to get into the "how" of doing this, of creating a 
soul within you, or feeding your soul in such a way that you can be free 
when you die. And for this reason, I think this is probably the most 
important book I've ever had the privilege of writing, and ironically 
I didn't really write it. Anyway, he said, "Lives in elemental form change 
the patterns of electrons that form the soul, and intensify their spin.
The 'Great Dead' have lived lives consciously devoted to the evolution and 
growth of the radiant body, but most of you, in the state of death, bear 
only fragmentary bits of what you were in life. Simple patterns, weak 
spin, no clear form to the radiant body and no ability to maintain it. 
You are subject to a process of recurrence so powerful that there are 
none from the distant past, except the Radiant." In other words, if you 
aren't "radiant," as he puts it, you always come back to life. I didn't 
ask him about coming back to life on other planets, but I wish I had. 
Unfortunately it didn't occur to me at that time, so I'll just have to 
pass over that except to say I'll bet that happens. I certainly have 
some memories that suggest it might have happened to me. 
Now here's an interesting thing: I asked, "How do we access past lives?" 
because I was very interested in this. I had already, at that time, in
1998, remembered some of past-life stuff--quite a bit of it, actually. 
And he didn't say what I expected him to say, at all. He said, "All may 
remember all. You do not realize what you are." 
And I thought, whoa! That was a big answer to what felt like a little 
question. But I thought I understood it, so I said, "What of death, 
itself? What should we expect?" Because I thought, 'Here ias a man who 
has an open door into the world of the dead.' He knew what it was like 
to be dead; he knew it in detail. He understood it, even the science of 
it, the science of the soul. And that was what I was really after: 
I wanted to get enough information to where I could understand this, too. 
He said, "A death is as unique as a face. You die into your expectations, 
but you generally survive them." There was a little twinkle in his eye, 
and I thought of all of the expectations about what will happen after 
death that mankind has had over the thousands of years of our history, 
and everybody who has ever thought, 'My idea is the right idea.' It is 
going to be heaven or hell, a judgement, a this, that, the other 
thing... It's interesting, though, that the most consistent thing of 
all in the afterlife legends and myths throughout the world is the 
judgment of the soul. So maybe that is what happens. 
I've always wondered: What happens to people who don't believe in the 
soul? When a member of the skeptics group community dies, and absolutely 
doesn't believe he has a soul, what happens to him? So I said, "What 
about somebody who doesn't believe in the soul?"
He said, "They make a great discovery." Well, I should say so! 
So some become radiant bodies, some linger and try again and some 
enter the memory of God. Who enters the memory of God? Because this 
seemed to me to be both the best and the least good of the things that 
could happen. It was the best, because I want to be very close to God, 
I really do. I want to be part of God, and I am part of God; I know 
that, we all are. But I want to feel like that. He said, "Those who 
have no further potential and have not grown into anything, enter the 
memory of God. But recall their experience does not go anywhere; it 
dies with the elemental body, because it's insufficiently potent to 
survive." In other words, you forget everything if you go into this 
state. "What survives is generally nothing but a tiny essence, a spark 
that would be barely recognizable as the person who had 
previously existed." 
"Essence" is a huge word. We all talked about essence in the Gurdjieff 
work. A lot of religious practices talk about the essence, meaning 
something other than the soul. So I said to him, "What is essence?" 
He said, "Taste. The way a certain specific being 'tastes.' Essence 
is foundation." I was fascinated by this. "Tastes!" And that's when 
it crossed my mind: This man has walked in the world of the 
dead--this man knows that world. Maybe this man was from that world, 
maybe I was talking to a dead man. 
I asked, "So the bad essences go back to God? God gets the dregs?" 
His answer was very interesting. He said, "Every life is an 
experiment; not all succeed. But most do, to enough of a degree 
that the being-body will remain coherent, clinging to the Earth in 
the region of its memories. When a body is created that fits its 
essential attachments, it will be drawn to that body by a magnetism 
that it cannot resist. Birth to this world is death to the other, 
and vice-versa. The recurrence is a great breathing." 
Wow. And suddenly I understood what great teachers like Jesus and 
Buddha meant when they intimated that there is no death: That we are 
going in and out, back and forth between these worlds, gaining energy 
by the effort that we make. So I thought to myself, 'Well, since this 
guy seems to know a lot about the world we live in, he can tell me 
what it's like.' So I said, "What do the souls do while they're waiting?" 
And he said, "They experience peace, some of them only coming slowly 
into an awareness of what they need to continue on. Others are frantic 
because of the nature of their lives; there can be great anguish as 
loved ones are witnessed in their nakedness, and often the horror of 
their own lives. There can be obsession and the lusts of life can be 
endlessly indulged but never satisfied, for the physical world can be 
seen but not touched by these beings. However, there is also kindness 
among them, in a world where there are no secrets, only truth. The 
compassion for one another is very great." What an awesome picture of 
the world of the dead this paints! It is an incredibly powerful, 
energy-filled world full of people. It's filled with love and 
compassion for each other, seeing each other as they really are in 
their naked truth. It must be a place of extraordinary beauty and 
agony and love beyond anything that we can, in this world, possibly 
imagine. What it must be like when long and deep lovers are reunited 
on the other side! The amazing intensity of that experience, as they 
finally see each other as they truly are, and either come to terms 
with that or do not--Wow! And this process of planning for future 
lives: The energy and the care that must go into it! You know what 
I thought about the going back into God, the becoming of a tiny 
particle of essence? I have a feeling there are people who can live 
lives so unworthy of them, not necessarily evil lives, that they end 
up essentially being nothing except a kind of potential. He didn't 
suggest to me that this potential ever recurs, but I think it does. 
He didn't suggest it because I didn't ask it. 
There are a million questions I wish I had asked this guy, but when 
I read the book, I thought did okay. I kept to the business at hand 
of learning how to live in such a way that we, in death, are in 
control of what then happens to us. But I do know this: From what 
he said about the world of the dead, it is essential to be prepared 
for a powerful shock after death, of knowing and understanding the 
Truth, but also of not being able to say or do much of anything in 
the physical world. The dead must be trying hard to reach us, and 
that's what these experiences of ghosts and so-forth must be about. 
He also said that this is going to become easier. We will eventually 
have a relationship with the world of the dead, and that'
 going to 
make life interesting, I'm telling you. You think life is complicated 
now--when that starts happening on a regular basis, it will get real 
complicated. 
At this point I was thinking about psychics and what that all is. 
He was talking about the world of the dead, and he was describing 
the way it was, and it was a very emotional thing to listen to his 
description of it. His voice was very steady; it never trembled, 
but I could feel the emotions at times. He said, "In a world where 
there are no secrets, only truth, the compassion for one another, 
is very great." Those words very great, because I could feel the 
compassion pouring out of him.
So I asked, "Can the dead influence the living?" 
He said, "Not these little ones; not much. They have not the 
knowledge or wisdom to make themselves heard." We can't hear them, 
and maybe we don't need to hear the ones he's describing because 
they don't have too much to offer us. You know how you get into 
contact with the dead sometimes, with a Ouija Board or something, 
and they're not particularly forthcoming about anything. 
This Spiricom thing is the same: They record these voices, and if 
they are spirit voices, in general they don't have much to say at all. 
So I asked him, "What are psychics?" 
And surprisingly, he got into something very extraordinary here, which 
led to probably the most amazing single sequence of ideas I have ever 
heard. After I asked the question, his response was, "A part of the 
electromagnetic field that fills the nervous system rests a few 
centimeters above the skin, outside of the body. This field is an 
organ, just like the heart or the brain. It is in quantum 
superposition, the electrons effectively everywhere in the universe, 
and nowhere specific. It may be imprinted by information from anywhere 
at any time. With it, you may see other worlds. You may see the past 
and the future. You may see into the lives of those around you. 
You may haunt God. However, the process of imprinting itself causes the 
organ to cease to be in superposition, and thus, to cease to be 
accessible to further imprinting. In psychics, there is either an 
inborn or learned ability to balance the attention in such a way that 
these impressions do not cause this organ to become focused into 
particulate form. The ability to control this organ can be developed." 
I immediately asked how. "Many practices will work, but the best is to 
meditate in such a way that the mind is concentrated on physical 
sensation. This relieves the pressure of impressions coming in from the 
physical world on the electromagnetic body, and enables it to expand." 
This is why I wrote The Path. I realized, when he said this, that I 
have been doing this for a long time, and that's maybe why I have 
experiences like meeting him. Meditation is like balancing on a bicycle: 
You let everything come in, but you don't grab anything. In other words, 
you're silent to impressions, so to speak. He said the electromagnetic 
field fills the nervous system as an actual organ. The field itself is 
the organ. Not only is the nervous system an organ, but the field of the 
electrons that are in it are an organ! It's a completely different way 
of thinking about us, but it makes so much sense. I was thinking that it 
enables this electromagnetic body to expand, meaning that, by the 
electrons being unfocused, and not going out to things and identifying 
things, that they stay in an unfocused state. You are in superposition; 
that means you are essentially Everywhere, and that's what this expansion 
is. I was well aware of the works of physicist Roger Penrose and the work 
he's done on superposition, and exactly how big the field is of an 
electron in superposition, and it certainly doesn't fill the whole 
universe. But apparently it contacts everything else in superposition, 
and in effect, becomes one with it. Is this the "ecstatic union" that 
the mystics speak of, reinterpreted in scientific terms? So I asked him, 
"How far can it expand? Where can we go?" 
He didn't answer it directly. Instead, he said, simply, "Anybody can 
become God." Anybody can become God! I thought, is this blasphemy of the 
most extreme kind? Or is it truth so great that it's beyond blasphemy? 
I wondered, 'Does he mean the world of the dead or the world of the living?' 
I said, "In life?" 
He said, "In life." 
And I said, "How can a mere imperfect human being become the Master of 
the Universe?" because I thought that was a weak answer. 
His response was, "What is imperfect is your vision. You can find your 
perfection right now, this moment, always." And then I remembered the 
words of Jesus: "The Kingdom of God is within you." 
"What is this marvelous 'seeing' that you allude to?" I asked him. 
I was thinking about seeing other worlds. I've done this, but I've never 
been sure if it was my imagination or not. I wanted a definition of this 
"seeing," so I could identify whether or not it was just my head playing 
games when I saw some of these marvelous other worlds and other things 
that I see all the time in my mind's eye, my third eye. 
He said, "You must understand the difference between sight and 
imagination. Real inner vision unfolds with an unmistakable spontaneity." 
Now that immediately rang a bell with me, and I suddenly knew the 
difference between my imagination and what was really coming into me 
from the outside, which unfolds with the spontaneity as if it's happening 
in the world around me--the same spontaneity of a car passing in the 
street or the wind blowing a leaf. It's not something I feel that I am in 
touch with, in terms of its creation. The other things, that are my 
imagination, are more dreamlike. Often they're pretty elaborate, too. 
But then I realized I have seen other worlds, mostly in little snatches 
and pictures. While writing my book Majestic, I had some of those visions, 
and there's a journey in it to another world, that I experienced as a 
vision. When I was a boy back in the early 70s, and Annie and I were just 
married, I had a very powerful vision. I might have been in my bedroom, 
but in any case it doesn't matter, we were living in Manhattan, and I had 
my eyes closed. It might have been at night, but I wasn't asleep, that I 
do know. In other words, this wasn't not a dream. 
Suddenly I had a vision of f a field with very tall trees that looked 
like Cedars of Lebanon off in the distance. And closely cropped grass, 
an archway with a path going under it, curving under the arch and off 
into the distance. In the distance was a precipice and a round, dark-blue 
building with shaded windows with awnings on them, so obviously this was 
a place with a lot of sunlight, very hot place. I was with some beings 
that I later would see in real life. They were these little blue creatures 
that came on the night of the Communion experience in 1985, along with the 
tall gray ones that I've described. They were taking me through the 
archway, which was a symbol of all the achievements of somebody (I don't 
know who), and into this building, which turned out to be a university! 
And it was really tumble-down and I said, "It's a wreck!" And one of them 
said, "Well, they aren't any good at keeping it up, and it's a million 
years old." And I wanted to go to this university, and I went to up to 
it, and there was, a little curved door down at the bottom. And there 
were all of these doorways leading off this arched door, and I felt such 
a hunger to go in there! But then two of the other beings I met 15 years 
later, in 1985, appeared. They were tall, with very arresting black eyes, 
and they looked at me and into me and told me that I was not ready yet, 
and I had to return. And then the vision ended.
And so now I'm here making myself ready, and I hope the rest of you, 
who are listening to this, are also people who want to make themselves 
ready! What are we making ourselves ready for, though? Well, I don't 
know, I'm kind of like a big old dog, I guess; I'm ready, up for 
anything, as long as it looks like fun, and this does look like a lot 
of fun to me. I'm ready to go anytime! We're talking about death, here.
After this, he added, "What is seen is also the same from person to 
person." In other words, more than one person will see this type of world,
and indeed, when I was getting letters by the tens of thousands from 
people after I wrote Communion, I got quite a few descriptions of this
same, very desert-like world with a little oasis here and there. When I 
was talking to the Master of the Key, I realized this vision fit his 
criteria. He said, "The universe is so vast that only the most adept will 
be able to see the same thing, one as another. It is even hard to go back 
to a place you have seen before, unless there is a line of communication 
open between yourself and somebody who is there." There's a profound line 
of communication open between me and whoever was at that university. 
My life is that communication on one level. But it's interesting that he 
implies that the universe is a vast treasure trove of intelligent life, 
and I've suspected always this was the case. I think the reason we can't 
hear, for example, radio signals from other worlds is that we're not meant 
to. There have been quite a few signals found that have seemed to be of 
intelligent origin found by SETI over the years, but when they go back 
and look again, they're never there. I think it's called "radio jamming," 
and I think it's because it's not time, yet, for us to see the extent of 
life in the universe. Maybe this discovery would be too painful for us. 
Maybe we just wouldn't be ready for it, and I have some ideas about why. 
In fact, I know we're not ready for it, having lived what I've lived 
through with the skeptics community and so forth. The latest thing one 
of them wrote in a column in some newspaper that somebody sent me was 
that my publishers should be punished for even publishing my books! 
He sees the new, more restrictive, kind of post-911 world we're in, 
and he thinks to himself, maybe we should get into punishing people 
for even thinking about this stuff, and talking about it at all! 
Okay, let's us take the energy of that negative statement that's 
resonating in us all right now...take it right down into our solar plexus. 
Just let it open there, dissipate, become something else. Behind every 
anger, every act of anger, there is the potential for an act of compassion. 
Then I asked him, "Can this become a scientifically valid means of 
communication?" In other words, if it was repeatable, if we could find out 
how to go to the same place again and again, if we get to meet people on 
other worlds in this way, maybe we could begin to travel to other worlds 
even before we could do so, physically, if we ever will be able to. 
Then I asked him if it could become a scientifically valid means of 
communication. He said, "It already is, even here, although you do not 
presently understand the true meaning of the indeterminacy. What you refer 
to as 'quantum physics' offers a useful, partial view of the inner workings 
of the physical world. Quantum instruments of communication, as your 
scientists now understand them, depend upon the entanglement of particles. 
You think now that you must separate two photons physically for them to be 
entangled, so your faster-than-light communications are limited by how far 
apart you can physically place the photons you entangle." 
That means, basically, that you take two photons and put one of them in 
Peoria and one of them in Kansas City, and what we do to the one in Peoria 
is going to happen instantaneously to the one in Kansas City, but how far 
apart they are is up to us, so we think. He says, however, "But, there was 
a time when all particles were in communication, and so all are entangled." 
That means that not only two photons that are side by side in an instrument 
are entangled, all photons everywhere are entangled! They are all always 
touching each other in this mysterious, spooky quantum way! He said, 
"When you realize this, it will also be true that your quantum 
communications devices will be able to communicate instantaneously across 
all worlds." In other words, it's up to our minds to open themselves to 
this; we have to say it's possible and understand that it's possible in 
order to make it possible. There's very little difference, I think, 
between creating and using quantum machines, and what used to be called 
making magic. And then he added, "But until you realize it and understand 
it, it will not be true for you. Vision, in the manipulation of quantum 
reality, as in the perfecting of your being, is everything I said, "You 
seem to be referring to scientific progress and spiritual growth in the 
same breath." 
And he replied, "They are the same. Your science progresses toward 
communication with all worlds only as fast as your spirit evolves. 
Animals may not leave their worlds because they lack the ability to 
see the needs of others." And doesn't that really define, in many, 
many ways, the difference between what we may potentially do and what 
unfolds in the animal world? An animal, a little bird can certainly see 
the needs of its chicks, but it's entirely indifferent to the needs of 
another bird's chicks, even of the same species, with a very few 
exceptions. And this is true throughout the animal world--except when 
helping others has been encoded into the animal, it just isn't there. 
I then asked, "We are animals?" thinking, 'I hope that we've gotten 
beyond that.' 
He said, "A true human being has four levels of mind. Most of you have 
only three and perhaps a vestige of the forth. Your destiny is to enter 
the humanity of the universe, but you may not fulfill it." 
At that rather scary point, we're going to come to an end. Next time 
we're going to be talking about opening the third eye, and the idea 
that things like machines can be created using this organ, this super 
organ that we're going to start to talk about. He laid out how to do 
this, how to become a new kind of human being and what that all means. 
I wish I knew in a final sense who he was. I know I never will, and 
I'm not meant to, but each time we do this, I'm going to tell you a 
little bit more about how I think of him. I thought that he must've 
been a member of the Templars. I think that the Knights Templar went 
to Newfoundland sometime in the late 14th century, maybe the 1380s, 
about a hundred years or so before Columbus discovered the Caribbean. 
I think that they were there long before other Europeans arrived in 
Canada. And I think that's why he said, "I'm a Canadian, but I don't 
pay taxes." because he is European, sort of a tribal Canadian, if you 
will, and I think they just never identified themselves to the Canadian 
government, and are still living up there. I think that's the reason 
that the Canadian Masonry is so powerful; I think a lot of the Canadian 
Masons are probably in touch with these guys, maybe without knowing 
exactly who they really are, but I think in Canada, the secrets of the 
Templars have, to a large extent, been preserved. 
Now, I'd like to add something else: I also think this man I was 
face-to-face with was dead. I do not think he was a living man. 
I think this man was dead, even though he was as physically real 
to me as you would be, if you were sitting across from me. I knew 
from my own close encounter experiences and my life with this stuff, 
that after this happened, my mind would start telling me it had not 
happened, because the mind rejects these impossible encounters even 
though you know they're real. First thing the next morning, I called 
Anne from the hotel room and I said, "Annie, this happened, and you 
keep me honest; you do not let me decide it wasn't real, you do not." 
And over all these years since then, she has never ceased to remind 
me of that phone call, and boy, has it been necessary sometimes, 
because this book almost did not get written, because I was just 
so sick of being called a liar, so sick of people saying, "Ah, it's 
just Whitley; he made it all up," demeaning the work and demeaning 
the words of this great man. Whoever he was and whatever he was, 
it's something close to a miracle that the guy came to us, and that 
his words were actually remembered, especially by a relative doofus. 
I mean, let's face it, I am not a guru. Well, I don't know, maybe 
it was meant for ordinary people.