textfiles-politics/regexConsp/ninemen.xml

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<p>  THE NINE UNKNOWN MEN</p>

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

<p>  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 100000 men
  in the battle.</p>

<p>  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.</p>

<p>  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."</p>

<p>  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 2000 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.</p>

<p>  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.</p>

<p>  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
  2000 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.</p>

<p>  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.</p>

<p>  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."</p>

<p>  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.</p>

<p>  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.</p>

<p>  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.</p>

<p>  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.</p>

<p>  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.</p>

<p>  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."</p>

<p>  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.</p>

<p>  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.</p>

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

<p>  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.</p>

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

<p>  The sixth expounds the secrets of gravitation.</p>

<p>  The seventh contains the most exhaustive cosmogony known to
  humanity.</p>

<p>  The eighth deals with light.</p>

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

<p>  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.</p>

<p>  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.</p>

<p>  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?</p>

<p>  -EOF-</p>

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