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Chapter One
The Arrival
It was difficult to believe. This place called Uranus appeared to be an exact replica of Earth. After years of decoding the Urantian Formulas, I had made my first successful self-transport to another planet, and as luck would have it, I landed in a place that appeared to duplicate home. From all outward appearances, everything on Uranus was precisely as it was back on Earth.
I had assumed that even though I would remain within my own solar system, I would have an opportunity to see something new, something genuinely different, if I traveled to a very distant planet. I thought that Uranus would be far enough from Earth for me to experience a whole new reality creatures made of gases who changed shape, or at any rate something to equal the vivid imagination of the Star Trek writers whose work I admired so much. I had pictured myself moving about in time warps, leaping forward or backward millions of years by some magical ability to transcend my body. The years of anticipation and hard work had not prepared me for this shock: there seemed to be no difference at all!
Authors and researchers who considered the possibility of a duplicate planet usually imagined mirror images, reversals of good and evil and the like. However, never, even in my most fanciful moments, had I expected to find a literal sister planet, a place that exactly duplicated Earth. It was almost as if the residents of Uranus had undertaken to deliberately reproduce our world, step by step in every single aspect. Their great oceans, mountain ranges, and deserts were in exact proportion to those of Earth. They even had identical names. Therewas not only a Sahara Desert, there was even a Sahara Hotel, I suspected they had observed us with a very powerful telescope, and faithfully reconstructed Earth on Uranus. Certainly they had every detail right. Traffic jams took place at five o'clock in the afternoon in all the major cities, there was starvation in the "Third World," there were huge shopping centers and fuel-efficient small cars imported from "Japan." They hadn't missed a thing.
I was beginning to think I had been hoodwinked. Perhaps I had been tricked into believing that I was the first Earthling to visit another planet and in fact I had never even left home. Perhaps my secret research on the Formulas had been penetrated, and I was going to be used as propaganda bait to fool the Soviets-allowing the enemy to think we had achieved some technological breakthrough that did not really exist. I thought I'd seen a movie about this at one time. But somehow I knew better. I had felt the impact of molecular transport. I had experienced myself hurtling away from Earth through the void of space. I was sure, but the doubt lingered. It struck me that the only way to verify that I was truly on Uranus was to stop looking at the external images, and to see if in fact the people themselves were also duplicate Earthlings. From all outward appearances they seemed to be.
I decided to select one of these Uranus people to interview in depth; if he or she turned out to be exactly like all the Earthlings I'd met, I would return home immediately and develop the ability for travel beyond our solar system. I hadn't come billions of miles simply to see my own world. I had begun this project with a desire for adventure and excitement; The prospect of fitting myself into a new world of people identical to those I had left behind was not particularly exciting.
I settled into my room at one of Uranus' finest Holiday Inns, flipped on the television, and began to ponder how I could learn about the inhabitants of this world that was at one and the same time alien and familiar to me. The -irony of my predicament did not escape me. I was in a strange land, and yet I felt as if I'd never left home. Even this hotel room was like those I had seen a thousand times before- miniature soap bars, a tiny ounce of shampoo in a brown plastic bottle, a kind of soiled cleanliness to the bedspread, and an unread copy of the Gideon Bible in the dresser drawer.
My mind was filled with questions, and yet I found myself struggling with the "How-to-go-about-it" thinking that I often employed to avoid taking any action. I had learned a long time ago that the way to make sure that something got done was to start it. But I'd also learned how to combat that notion, which required effort, sweat, and all those qualities I loved to observe in others and to eschew in myself. Instead of taking charge, I used my predicament to keep my mind focused on what I should or shouldn't do. I moved to a more advanced form of evasiveness. I considered the questions I would want to ask. Do you have wars? Are you preoccupied with rules? What about cancer, and how do you see this mystery we call death? Do you have schools and do they emphasize grades and obedience? Do you wear designer jeans, and if so, why? Do you have the same history as we do on Earth? Do you know about us? Will you ever visit, and if you did, would you be friendly? Do you have nuclear weapons and a Jane Fonda?
Are you really the same identical creatures as we are inside as well as outside? Do you have emotions, fears, anxiety, and tranquilizers? The questions were bombarding my consciousness almost as fast as I could record them on my miniature portable tape recorder. (Could I replace the batteries here? I wondered.)
As I said these words to myself into the tape recorder, the word "anxiety" was repeated in the room. I couldn't believe it...
Gifts from Eykis. Copyright © by Wayne Dyer. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.
