The Secrets of the Lands Without is a novel about Religion meeting Science, a literary exploration into the latest theories of physics, biology and cosmology, as well as their relation to the World’s religious and esoteric beliefs.
Around twenty billion years there was the beginning of Time, when the Word of God -according to the Judeo-Christian tradition -, or Brahma (according to the Hindus), created our Universe. And there will be an end, the “Second Coming”, the Apocalypse. The Book of Genesis and the Book of Revelation signify the beginning and the end of the Biblical concept of time and space, corresponding respectively to the Big Bang and the Big Crunch of modern cosmology. Within that enormous span of time Intelligence appears. It constructs civilisations, searching for answers, contemplating the meaning of its very existence. Is there a reason for all this? For life on Earth? For Intelligence? Or is it all a coincidental and unimportant quark of Fate, totally brief and sadly insignificant within the vastness of a dark, lifeless and unfriendly Universe? Should we be concerned for our future as a species? Is there a future?
The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, a theory developed in the 1980s by scientists Barrow and Tippler, answers
emphatically yes. They claim that the Universe was created in order to bring forth intelligence, a claim also proposed by the Jesuit mystic Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (see photo). It is as if Intelligence was built-in the various physical constants and forces which define the way our Universe functions. Most scientists would agree to that notion. It is a indisputable fact that if the physical constants were but a small fraction different Life would be impossible. But why? Why should there be Life? Tippler says because in the very distant future, when planet Earth would have long evaporated, our very distant grandchildren, in the form of intelligent self-reproducing spacecrafts, will colonise the Universe to such a degree that they will be able to control its evolution. They will, in fact, stop it from ever getting too cold, by thus becoming Universe’s self-defence mechanism against its own self-destruction. And at the time of absolute end, at theOmega Point (a term coined by de Chardin from the famous Christian saying “I am the Alpha and the Omega”), the infinite energy – abundant within that future singularity – will enable an infinite-states computer containing information about every being that ever lived, resurrect us all. In fact, it will upload us onto a higher plane of digital existence. And this will truly be the Judgement Day!
The Secrets of the Lands Without take their main lead from this cosmological theory. It
blends with the mathematics of chaos and genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, the evolution of society in the next century, time travel and its philosophical consequences, as well as world-wide religious archetypes of the eternal battle between Good and Evil. It travels into the world of esoteric wisdom, of the ancient sciences of alchemy, astrology and numerology, of the Gnostic path of true knowledge inherent to secret societies throughout history. The novel thus spans through the tradition of every culture on Earth, of all races and creeds. The Secrets of the Lands Without was written as a truly world book. After all, it is the totality of this planet that is contributing to world civilisation; when we begin to stretch our wings out of the solar system and into the stars, it will be that world civilisation which will fly out into distant space…
