The legendary island of Atlantis has inspired philosophical debate since the time of Plato. Medieval writers, receiving the tale of Atlantis from Arabian geographers, believed it true; as did the great seventeenth and eighteenth century thinkers -- Montaigne, Buffon and Voltaire.

Plato's "Tinaeua" describes how Egyptian priests represented the island as larger than Libya and Asia Minor, with a group of smaller islands nearby. It was said to have been an ideal commonwealth nearly 10,000 years before the time of Solan, the home of a great nation which conquered western Europe and Africa.

Legend relates, that to relieve humanity of this conquering race, the gods sent an earthquake to submerge the island into the sea. The shoals and shallows of this particular area of the Atlantic Ocean are cited as proof of the islands former existence.

Readers of THE INNER POWER and THE GLORIOUS RACE are already familiar with Loliad-R-Kahn, the Atlantean metaphysician ... this is the story of his life and times written through the medium of his usual twentieth century instrument.

In those days when Atlantis was the seat of learning, Metaphysics was recognized as both a philosophy and a science. "Meta" -- above and beyond physics, is the study of the ultimate reality of all things, of the real and final nature of matter (ontology); of mind (psychology) and of the interrelation of mind and matter in the process of perception and knowledge.

In recent years metaphysics has been clamouring for recognition as a science. This has created a great deal of controversy, mainly centering around the question of whether or not there could be any "science" of things beyond the natural; the materialist claiming that man could only have vague emotional reactions on such matters; the mystics contending that their personal experiences with the supernatural were indefinable in scientific terms.

The Metaphysician, attempting to prove that Pure Science = Pure Religion has been attacked from all sides: Theology accusing its adherents of impiety; science denouncing its claims as being unscientific; public opinion clinging to its suspicions of hokus-pokus.

This thinking reflects 19th Century opinion. There is a wide contrast between scientific ideas of yesterday and today. The former performed a strictly factual function. Its business was to discover new elements, new substances, new species of flora and fauna, and to carefully record and systemize sensory facts. New discoveries brought forth not only facts, but principles as well. These, like the principle of conservation of energy; of mass; the tacit belief that space and time are infinite, and the universe is eternal, came to be held as indubitably correct. Any suggestion that these facts could be questioned would be rejected by most thinkers as wholly unscientific.

To the man on the street, discoverable facts still exhaust the meaning of science. He looks back to those days when the contrast between science and philosophy, and even more significant, the contrast between science and religion, was extreme. In the light of present day understanding this is not a fair appraisal. Science is becoming more flexible in its estimate of what is, and what is not scientific. Facts are as important as ever, but are now used in conjunction with ideas.

It is not only feasible that scientific accomplishments can provide new ideas for philosophy, but philosophic views can induce a favourable climate for physical discoveries.

For example: For over three thousand years the Hindu scriptures have proclaimed the existence of a coloured aura, scintillating around each human form. The average westerner has rejected this idea as fanciful. Yet recent technological advances in cathode ray and spectrograph instruments now make it possible for any physicist to examine the human aura.

Much of the credit for developing this technique goes to a brilliant metaphysician who lived in the critical days of biased 19th Century science. "Psioneer" Sir William Crookes, born in England in 1832, was a chemist. A prolific writer on both scientific and psychical subjects, he founded the "Chemical Review" and five years later, the "Quarterly Journal of Science". He was awarded the gold medal by the French Academy of Science in 1880, and later knighted for his many discoveries.

Among his inventions was the "Crookes Tube", a vacuum container with electrodes at opposite ends, which produced incandescent light when subjected to an electric current. This lead to the development of the cathode ray screen used today in metaphysics.

In his latter years Sir William's most controversial characteristic was his outspoken belief in the existence of an undetected force which governed both the natural and the supernatural. He was of the opinion that telepathy (derived from two Greek words, "Tele -- at a distance, and "Pathos" -- feeling) is the result of vibrations in the ether travelling from mind to mind, in much the same way that messages are sent by wireless telegraphy. But not between the conscious minds of two individuals, rather at the supra-conscious level; the conscious mind being fed solely by the factual senses.

Psychologists freely admit that experiments with the consciousness-expanding drugs, mescaline, L.S.D., and psilocybin, have induced mystical experiences which pull back the veil of materialism and permit the subject to momentarily comprehend the life-dance of energy, long proclaimed by the metaphysician as the peak of the religio-scientific quest.

Theology, too, is gradually softening in its attitude towards cold logic, and attempting to clarify the parables of creation in the light of ever increasing scientific knowledge. These abstract issues might not have become actual for decades, or even centuries. But the explosion of knowledge, as evinced by man's impertinent exploration of mind and space makes it suddenly worth pondering if the church is to be accepted in the 20th and 21st Centuries.

The Metaphysician might be viewed as the referee in this age-old struggle with the participants slightly less verbose in their cries to "Kill the Umpire..."

And with the expansion of human consciousness it becomes increasingly apparent, that before this century is passed, metaphysics will again be recognized for what it originally represented in the Atlantean Era ... both philosophy and science.

~W.G.B.