

    THE NINE UNKNOWN MEN

    From _The Morning Of The Magicians_
    By Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier
    Published by Avon Books. 1968. pp 67 - 71.


    This [legend] goes back to the time of the Emperor Asoka, who
    reigned in India from 273 B.C.  He was the grandson of
    Chandragupta who was the first to unify India.  Ambitious like his
    ancestor whose achievements he was anxious to complete, he
    conquered the region of Kalinga which lay between what is now
    Calcutta and Madras.  The Kalingans resisted and lost 100,000 men
    in the battle.

    At the sight of this massacre Asoka was overcome.  Forever after
    he experienced a horror of war.  He renounced the idea of trying
    to integrate the rebellious people, declaring that the only true
    conquest was to win men's hearts by observance of the laws of duty
    and piety, because the Sacred Majesty desired that all living
    creatures should enjoy security, peace and happiness and be free
    to live as they pleased.

    A convert to Buddhism, Asoka, by his own virtuous example, spread
    this religion throughout India and his entire empire which
    included Malaya, Ceylon and Indonesia.  Later Buddhism penetrated
    to Nepal, Tibet, China and Mongolia.  Asoka nevertheless respected
    all religious sects.  He preached vegetarianism, abolished alcohol
    and the slaughter of animals.  H.G. Wells, in his abridged version
    of his _Outline Of World History_ wrote: "Among the tens of
    thousands of names of monarchs accumulated in the files of
    history, the name of Asoka shines almost alone, like a star."

    It is said that the Emperor Asoka, aware of the horrors of war,
    wished to forbid men ever to put their intelligence to evil uses.
    During his reign natural science, past and present, was vowed to
    secrecy.  Henceforward, and for the next 2,000 years, all
    researches, ranging from the structure of matter to the techniques
    employed in collective psychology, were to be hidden behind the
    mystical mask of a people commonly believed to be exclusively
    concerned with ectasy and supernatural phenomena.  Asoka founded
    the most powerful secret society on earth: that of the Nine
    Unknown Men.

    It is still thought that the great men responsible fro the destiny
    of modern India, and scientists like Bose and Ram believe in the
    existence of the Nine, and even receive advice and messages from
    them.

    One can imagine the extraordinary importance of secret knowledge
    in the hands of nine men benefiting directly from experiments,
    studies and documents accumulated over a period of more than
    2,000 years.  What can have been the aim of these men?  Not to
    allow methods of destruction to fall into the hands of unqualified
    persons and to pursue knowledge which would benefit mankind.
    Their numbers would be renewed by co-option, so as to preserve the
    secrecy of techniques handed down from ancient times.

    Examples of the Nine Unknown Men making contact with the outer
    world are rare.  There was, however, the extraordinary case of one
    of the most mysterious figures in Western history: the Pope
    Sylvester II, known also by the name of Gerbert d'Aurillac.  Born
    in the Auvergne in 920 (d. 1003) Gerbert was a Benedictine monk,
    professor at the University of Rheims, Archbishop of Ravenna and
    Pope by the grace of Ortho III.  He is supposed to have spent some
    time in Spain, after which a mysterious voyage brought him to
    India where he is reputed to have aquired various kinds of skills
    which stupified his entourage.  For example, he possessed in his
    palace a bronze head which answered YES or NO to questions put to
    it on politics or the general position of Christianity.  According
    to Sylvester II this was a perfectly simple operation
    corresponding to a two-figure calculation, and was performed by an
    automaton similar to our modern binary machines.  This "magic"
    head was destroyed when Sylvester died, and all the information it
    imparted carefully concealed.  No doubt an authorized research
    worker would come across some interesting things in the Vatican
    Library.

    In the cybernetics journal, _Computers and Automation_ of October
    1954, the following comment appeared: "We must suppose that he
    (Sylvester) was possessed of extraordinary knowledge and the most
    remarkable mechanical skill and inventiveness.  This speaking head
    must have been fashioned 'under a certain conjunction of stars
    occring at the exact moment when all the planets were starting on
    their courses.'  Neither the past, nor the present nor the future
    entered into it, since this invention apparently far exceeded in
    its scope its rival, the perverse 'mirror on the wall' of the
    Queen, the precursor of our modern electronic brain.  Naturally it
    was widely asserted that Gerbert was only able to produce such a
    machine head because he was in league with the Devil and had sworn
    eternal allegiance to him."

    Had other Europeans any contact with the society of the Nine
    Unknown Men?  It was not until the nineteenth century that this
    mystery was referred to again in the works of the French writer
    Jacolliot.

    Jacolliot was French Consul at Calcutta under the Second Empire.
    He wrote some quite important prophetic works, comparable, if not
    superior to those of Jules Verne.  He also left several books
    dealing with the great secrets of the human race.  A great many
    occult writers, prophets and miracle-workers have borrowed from
    his writings which, completely neglected in France, are well known
    in Russia.

    Jacolliot states catagorically that the Soceity of Nine did
    actually exist.  And, to make it all the more intriguing, he
    refers in the this connection to certain techniques, unimaginable
    in 1860, such as, for example, the liberation of energy,
    sterilization by radiation and psychological warfare.

    Yersin, one of Pasteur and de Roux's closest collaborators, was
    entrusted, it seems, with certain biological secrets when he
    visited Madras in 1890, and following the instructions he received
    was able to prepare a serum against cholera and the plague.

    The story of the Nine Unknown Men was popularized for the first
    time in 1927 in a book by Talbot Mundy who for twenty-five years
    was a member of the British police force in India.  His book is
    half-fiction, half scientific inquiry.  The Nine apparently
    employed a synthetic language, and each of them was in possession
    of a book that was constantly being rewritten and containing a
    detailed account of some science.

    The first of these books is said to have been devoted to the
    technique of propaganda and psychological warfare.  "The most
    dangerous of all sciences," wrote Mundy, "is that of moulding mass
    opinion, because it would enable anyone to govern the whole
    world."

    It must be remembered that Korjybski's _General Semantics_ did not
    appear until 1937 and that it was not until the West had the
    experience of the last World War that the techniques of psychology
    of language, i.e., propaganda, could be formulated.  The first
    American college of semantics only came into being in 1950.  In
    France almost the only book that at all well known is Serge
    Tchocotine's _Le Viol des Foules_ which has had a considerable
    influence in intellectual polical circles, although it deals only
    superficially with the subject.

    The second book was on physiology.  It explained, among other
    things, how it is possible to kill a man by touching him, death
    being caused by a reversal of the nerve-impulse.  It is said that
    Judo is a result of "leakages" from this book.

    The third volume was a study on microbiology, and dealt especially
    with protective colloids.

    The fourth was concerned with the transmutation of metals.  There
    is a legend that in times of drought temples and religious relief
    organizations received large quanities of fine gold from a secret
    source.

    The fifth volume contains a study of all means of communication,
    terrestial and extra-terrestial.

    The sixth expounds the secrets of gravitation.

    The seventh contains the most exhaustive cosmogony known to
    humanity.

    The eighth deals with light.

    The ninth volume, on sociology, gives the rules for the evolution
    of societies, and means of foretelling their decline.

    Connected with the Nine Unknown Men is the mystery of the waters
    of the Ganges.  Multitudes of pilgrims, suffering from the most
    appalling diseases, bathe in them without harming the healthy
    ones.  The sacred waters purify everything.  Their strange
    properties have been attributed to the fact that they contain
    bacteriophages.  But why should these not be formed in the
    Bramaputra, the Amazon or the Seine?  Jacolliot in his book
    advances the theory of sterilization by radiation, a hundred years
    before such a thing was thought to be possible.  These radiations,
    he says, probably come from a secret temple hollowed out in the
    bed of the Ganges.

    Avoiding all forms of religious, social or political agitations,
    deliberately and perfectly concealed from the public eye, the Nine
    were the incarnation of the ideal man of science, serenely aloof,
    but conscious of his moral obligations.  Having the power to mold
    the destiny of the human race, but refraining from its exercise,
    this secret society is the finest tribute imaginable to freedom of
    the most exalted kind.  Looking down from the watch-tower of their
    hidden glory, these Nine Unknown Men watched civilizations being
    born, destroyed and re-born again, tolerant rather than
    indifferent, and ready to come to the rescue -- but always
    observing that rule of silence that is the mark of human
    greatness.

    Myth or reality?  A magnificent myth, in any case, and one that
    has issued from the depths of time -- a harbinger, maybe, of the
    future?

    -EOF-





