The Invisible News
Welcome! The Shamcher Bulletin brings you snippets from Shamcher’s writings that might help frame and context our experience of the world we live in today.
We begin the new year with a long read. Today’s article is not directly “Sufi” per se, but shows more of Shamcher’s approach as a wide-ranging generalist, and his appreciation for other generalists in the age of increasing specialization, in particular—those who can make the quantum jump. In the mid-1970’s, Shamcher’s article The Invisible News praises the work of Julius Stulman and his magazine, “Fields Within Fields … Within Fields”.
The Invisible News
by Shamcher Bryn Beorse
In Vietnam, the Middle East, in Moscow, Beijing, Tokyo and Washington, D.C. the visible news is about one nation overrunning another, forcing its power and system upon another. Visible books portray with haunting emotions our follies of the past. Visible events feature games in which one team beats another in output, in athletics, in armaments, in locker room jokes.
There is another type of news.
A private letter from Alexander Sachs to Julius Stulman of 8 March, 1963, was visible only to the writer, the recipient, and their secretaries. Alexander Sachs who had moved President Roosevelt to build the atomic bomb had been eminently in the visible news for a long time. But he could not make visible news of the contents of this letter: In glowing terms it commended Julius Stulman for his creation of and progress on his World Institute. This organization was then already twenty-one years old.
Julius Stulman, was a seasoned businessman, the inventor of containerization transport system, and the inspirer behind India's first five-year plan. He watched the drama of Pearl Harbor, an event that created heat and hate in some quarters, constructive thought in others. Mr. Stulman saw the need for getting together a team of men and women dedicated to the world as a whole, its cooperation, economy, manufacturing, organization—a world lobby, if you will.
He knew that this could not yet become "visible news;" he knew that he faced the hardest, most agonizing task of his life: trying first to make this invisible news visible, then to make it a reality that would count in the lives of men and nations.
Mr. Stulman sought out promising publications that needed a shot in the arm to thrive. He provided that shot in the arm, then sought to promote his World Institute through the revivified publications.
Fields Within Fields … Within Fields
He did this again and again, until he started his very own magazine with the haunting title Fields Within Fields ... Within Fields. It is located within the same offices as the World Institute itself at a mind-stopping address: 777 United Nations Plaza. Fields Within Fields has been around now for —you guessed it — seven sacred years. It is an exciting looking magazine in a most tasteful format, yet compared to the “big names” in the magazine world, it is still invisible news, for reasons only angels may know.
The first few numbers featured Man—Mankind—the Universe, economic fluctuations, Climbing to Mankind Solutions: the black man, the white man, oceanography, cargo cities, strip cities, medical health, education, housing; all authored by one single man, generalist Julius Stulman who also founded "Integrative Education,” was advisor to the Society for Systems Research while all along making a bundle in industry.
Later on distinguished contributors flavored the magazine: pioneering Stanley Krippner and Elmer Green in the medical-psychological field; Gopi Krishna and Balthasar Staehelin on the Transcendental and Transformation of consciousness; Kai-Loo-Huang on ecology, economics and Taoism; noted specialists on housing, interdisciplinary planning, urban development, global economics.
In No.11, Spring 1974, Mr. Stulman summarizes the purpose and status of the World Institute, Key to Mankind’s Emergence. In this summary is quoted part of a letter about the World Institute, written in 1949 by Albert Einstein:
What is needed is an all-out act of will which cannot be brought about by mere understanding and knowledge of causal interrelations. If there would be such a will and enough determination behind it, then it would not be too difficult to find effective means.
Stulman adds:
We must recognize that it is we, after all, who by our own preparation and conditioning are to bring into being the next stage of our evolution.
In an age that faces the prospect of hydrogen destruction it becomes imperative to bring about a quantum jump in human evolution.
He goes on to call for “a new type of social brain, higher levels of awareness and creativity in practical, global problem-solving."
Viewing this hope, or prediction, in the light of the many parallel efforts that have been going on in about the same timespan amply demonstrates that the World Institute is urgent, that its time is now.
Parallel Effort: Full Employment
In 1941 Dr. John H. G. Pierson, then a young economist at Yale, wrote his first book about full employment. The then Yale president praised it as “not merely the best book of the year but one that will stand out through the coming decade..." It didn't happen that way. The book was relegated to the "invisible news.” The nation was not ready for the concept that its first duty to its citizens (since we gradually have changed from an open to a closed society) was to offer each one a chance to serve the nation, in challenging employment, of which there is more than enough to go around and will continue to be at least for the next hundred years. (Wrote Pierson: "This is what America is all about.”)
Dr. Pierson did not give up. Throughout a wide-ranging career in business, government and as Science and Economics Advisor to the United Nations, he honed and sharpened his presentation, wrote more books and a million articles. His idea still remained barely visible news. Only six months ago he mused that he felt freedom of speech was not yet his, considering the difficulties he encountered placing his articles and getting through to the people.
In 1945, Harvard's John Philip Wernette wrote Financing Full Employment, and later in the forties Leon Keyserling sang the same theme as Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors to President Truman.
Now, today, finally senators and congressmen are touring the nation advocating a policy of guaranteed full employment. One may hope that they may have the wisdom to secure the advice of the pioneers. The Piersons, Wernettes and Keyserlings understand what full employment will do for the entire U.S. and world economy. They know the pitfalls and dangers that must be avoided and overcome during the practical application.
Parallel Effort: Energy and OTEC
Another parallel effort is in the field of energy. About a hundred years ago American, French, and Italian engineers became aware of the vast energy present in the difference of temperature between ocean surfaces and deeper layers—trapped solar energy. In 1927, the technology was far enough advanced for George Claude to build a plant in Cuba. A heavy storm tore it apart before it could be tested. However, George built a smaller plant in Belgium and one aboard ship. The worth of his idea was proven.
It took years for the French to forgive George Claude's dickering with the Nazis, though in 1942 the government began building a plant in Abidjan in Africa and this is when the undersigned caught up with the idea. I contacted the U.S. Navy. A man was sent out to talk to me. He eventually revealed that he was a psychiatrist. The Navy had found the idea not merely invisible news but so unacceptable that it had to be handled with a psychiatrist's gloves. (For revenge, I later joined the Navy.)
In the National Bureau of Standards, Dr. James Joffman built two small plants and showed them to Congress, who then voted funds for our national Saline Water Office. At the University of California we built plants in three sizes and then proposed a real life-sized practical plant—for desalination which was then the basic need. It was voted down by engineers who felt more comfortable with the status quo.
The matter lay dormant as invisible news while gushing oil wells and dancing atoms developed into overgrown energy systems, depending on dwindling supplies or hazardous radiations. Even today people believe these to be our only choices. Then, mysteriously, only three years ago, the inexhaustible energy source of the oceans was remembered by the National Science Foundation and some of our largest industrial firms and universities. Yet it is still invisible news as far as the public and politics are concerned, just like the World Institute.
Professor William E. Heronemus of the University of Massachusetts, a principal worker in this field, writes in his March, 1975, report:
There are clear-cut pathways to make ocean thermal difference plants economically preferable, not just feasible or competitive. The world has never seen another industrial effort so easy to get started and so capable of producing prodigious numbers of high class products. This economy could flood the world if there were simply a desire to do so and the effort would spread from the waterfront back into every portion of the industrialized hinterland like the wildfire of prosperity if we so desire. Any competent man with a broad gauge industrial sense of what can be achieved by 1975 U.S. industry using the material, energy and financial base available for the next three decades will agree that ocean thermal difference energy systems is that which can be done best.
The World Institute
How are these parallel efforts recognizing and being recognized by Mr. Stulman's World Institute? John Pierson, who knew Mr. Stulman from the United Nations, the Pugwash conference, Club of Rome, wrote me,
You know, Mr. Stulman is a sort of genius. His early efforts certainly contributed to the formation of such groups as the Pugwash conference, the Club of Rome and even the United Nations itself.
When I told Mr. Stulman about Pierson's views he responded, "Well, you know, Pierson already has made his quantum jump.”
As to the energy parallel, well, it may be obvious from this article what I, the first and original American Ocean Thermal Difference energy system worker, think of the World Institute. And as for Mr. Stulman's thoughts about me, I am too shy to even dare to think about that.
The World Institute is governed by a Council of fourteen members from United States, Canadian and French business enterprises or universities. Guided by the World Institute are eight projects in progress: Cargo City International with project leader Errol Haker; Industrial Development, project leaders Israel Gal-Edd and Haim Roet; Housing systems, project leader Samuel Aroni; Budget studies, David Klein; Social Welfare, Joseph Ben-Or; World Institute Findings, Edward Luttwak; Science Application studies, David Caplin;. Brain Center, Integrated Computer Information, David Caplin.
These project leaders are recruited from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the University of California and the Israel Ministries of Finance, Development and Welfare. Each of these projects may be considered a catalyzer for parallel efforts in the society at large. In housing, for example, there have been matching projects by the University of New York and various townships, some of them highly successful in providing safer and more attractive housing for families and single people.
A quantum jump
With the demand for a "quantum jump" and the emphasis on developing consciousness, Mr. Stulman—well known in India as well as in the Middle East—has naturally sought contributions from Yogis, Sufis and Zen practitioners. Refreshingly, many of the contributors were born in the traditions they write about, such as Gopi Krishna writing in Fields within Fields No. 11.
Equally noteworthy is a piece by Balthasar Staehelin, psychotherapist with the Department of Internal Medicine at Zurich University in No. 14, Confronting the Transcendental. This issue reported the account of a thirty year old woman who had not concerned herself with mystical, religious, meditative, philosophical or parapsychological questions. Just having given birth to her first child, she described her experience:
Time, space and eternity blended into one another.
I was united with my ancestors, future generations of my family, with all human beings and all living creatures. I was in the midst of them and part of eternity.
Time stood still and I stood outside it. It was as though rays of light were concentrated in me and at the same time shining forth from me.
It made me more joyful than joy, more contented than contentment, more blessed than bliss.
It left me with a feeling of loving humility and intense responsibility toward all life, together with the knowledge that for one moment I had lived and seen in totality.
To many the above means nothing. That does not matter.
What matters is that those who, whether men or women, feel attracted to such faculties or sentiments diligently pursue them, make their "quantum jump." Even if only a few succeed, these few can guide the rest of us toward continued development.
Astronomers Carl Sagan and Frank Drake write in Scientific American, May, 1975, about possibly a million other civilizations in the universe at the level of our technology or further advanced. And, they add, at just this level there is an uncomfortable probability of self-destruct.
Yes. And it is the invisible news, only, that may prevent that and help us develop an acceptable future. The visible news, on the other hand, is a thief stealing the attention of an unwary public, so the invisible news remains ignored and we may self-destruct.
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