Free Return to the Stars: Evidence for the Impossible by Erich von Däniken

will realise what a decisive say this Jesuit has had in forming the twentieth-century world picture with his Palaeontological and anthropological researches, in which he wanted to combine Catholic teaching about the creation with the findings of present-day natural science. In 1962, seven years after his death, it was decided, after a violent theological dispute, that Teilhard's views violated Catholic doctrine.
     
    I know of no concept that expresses so clearly what is meant by the cosmic processes. The primordial part of matter is the atom. The atom is also the material primordial part in the cosmos. But there are other primordial parts, for example, time, consciousness and memory. In ways as yet unexplained all these primordial parts are related and connected with one another. Perhaps one day we shall track down other primordial parts, i.e. forces, which cannot be defined as classified either physically, chemically or in other scientific categories. Yet even though they cannot be defined or conceived of materially, they have an effect on the cosmic process. And as far as I am concerned the frontiers where all research will and must end lie in the cosmos.
     
    I sincerely hope that my observations will set up new signposts leading eventually to convincing results. Two cases which Pauwels and Bergier mention in their book Breakthrough into the Third Millennium are directly in line with my conviction that primitive memories await their discovery in the human consciousness. There is nothing occult or esoteric about either of them. The first concerns the Danish Nobel Prize winner Niels Bohr (1885-1962), who laid the foundations for present-day atomic theory. This world-famous physicist related how the idea of the atom model he had sought for many years occurred to him. He dreamt that he was sitting on a sun of burning gas. Planets rushed past him, hissing and spitting, and all the planets seemed to be connected by fine threads to the sun around which they revolved. Suddenly the gas solidified, sun and planets shrivelled up and became motionless. Niels Bohr said that he woke up at this moment. He realised at once that what he had seen in his dream was the atom model. In 1922 he won the Nobel Prize for his 'dream'.
     
    The second case mentioned by Pauwels and Bergier also concerns two natural scientists who figured both as dreamers and men of action. An engineer of the Bell Telephone Company in the USA read reports of the bombing of London in 1940. They upset him badly. One autumn night he dreamt he was drawing the design of an apparatus that could train anti-aircraft guns on the previously worked out path of an aircraft and ensure that their shells would hit the aircraft at a specific point regardless of its speed. The next morning the Bell engineer made a sketch of what he had already drawn in his dream. He finally built a set in which radar was used for the first time. The celebrated American mathematician Norbert Wiener (1894-1964) was in charge of the project for manufacturing it commercially.
     
    I believe that what these two brilliant natural scientists 'dreamed' already rested on the basis of their 'age-old' knowledge. In the beginning there is always an idea (or a dream) that has to be proved in practice. I think it quite likely that one day the molecular geneticists, who already know how the genetic code functions, will also find out how much—and even which—information was programmed on the punched cards of our life by unknown intelligences. It sounds fantastic, but one fine day we might even discover by which code word a specific piece of knowledge for a specific purpose can be summoned up from the primitive memory.
     
    In my opinion cosmic memories penetrated more and more strongly into our consciousness in the course of man's evolution. They encouraged the birth of new ideas, which had already been realised in practice at the time of the visit by the 'gods'. At certain fortunate moments the barriers separating