I must say that I continue to be mystified by the Key. It's
so ironic that so much paranormal experience would come to
me, a person easily convinced by the
paranormal. Before my 1985 close encounter, I was pretty
skeptical about such things. Knowing of my tendency to
dismiss even the most vividly physical of my unusual
experiences, I called my wife the morning after my 1999
encounter with the Master of the Key and asked her to be
sure not to let me decide that it was all just some dream.
The fact that she remained faithful to her promise not to
let me do that is the reason that the Key was even written.
The exchange happened in Toronto in 1999. It was not until
2001 that I actually sat down and wrote the book. What was
so odd about this process was that I had nothing but a page
of cryptic, seemingly irrelevant notes that I had taken
during the meeting, and yet I was able to remember, just by
looking them over from time to time, all the details of what
was said.
Unless, of course, I was making the whole thing up. Frankly,
from that day to this, the possibility has always troubled me.
There are strong reasons to believe that the event was real,
though, the first one of which is that the man's words are
so sublime and brilliant and, above all, so darned original,
that I don't, in all honesty, think I could have created
them myself.
And then there's the global warming stuff in the book, and
the way it has expressed itself into the world. As I
transcribed it, I realized that this man had explained one
of the great mysteries of science to me, which is--or
was--the cycle of ice ages.
Over the years, I watched as science confirmed one of his
assertions after another. I came to understand the
large-scale thought he put forward about mankind having
evolved during a vast extinction event, and how it is that
our intelligence is a response to an adverse, harsh and
radically unstable climate.
But still in all, somewhere in the back of my mind, I held
out the possibility that I, and I alone, might be the author
of the Key.
Until last week.
I was in a bookstore the other day when I chanced to see the
latest issue of Astronomy magazine. I assumed that the
heading, "Why you live in multiple universes," referred to a
familiar theory that there are many universes in one--in
effect, that we live in a large number of universes that are
all in the same place.
But then I noticed, in smaller type, the sentence, "Multiple
universes, separated like bubbles, may populate the cosmos,
our universe being only one among many."
This stopped me, left me staring at the magazine in
amazement. I opened it to discover that astrophysicists and
astronomers, including the Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin
Rees, whom I admire greatly and who I have interviewed for
Dreamland, are coming to believe that there are universes
out there beyond our own. Not interdimensional universes,
but real, physical universes.
I bought the magazine immediately and took it home, because
I very well remembered sitting for a long time and staring
at this very computer screen, while I was writing the Key,
and wondering if I should include the master's comment that
there are "many universes."
I remembered the statement distinctly, but, at the time, I
was aware of no scientific grounding for it at all. We had
one universe, which had been formed in the extreme moment of
the big bang. There were no other universes beyond its borders.
This was dogma. And yet I remembered what the MOTK had told
me: that there are other physical universes out there.
I thought to myself that I shouldn't put this in the book.
It would make it even less creditable, and the ethical parts
of his statement were, it seemed to me, of immense value.
But there was the issue of honesty. For a man who is
generally considered to be a liar, I am actually
pathologically honest. So I included the statement.
Of course, the book went entirely unreviewed and unremarked.
Why should it be any different, just another piece of drivel
coming from the liar Whitley Strieber?
Still, I believe that there will come a time, maybe in my
life and maybe after, when it will be discovered that I
never lied about anything, and, in fact, that the work I
have left behind, as well as the records, are of significant
value.
It is toward that time that I am "banking" things like my
conversation with the Master of the Key. And it is with that
time in mind that I was hesitant to include what I saw as an
obvious shibboleth about there being more than one universe.
To be specific, he said, "There are more galaxies in your
universe than there are stars in your galaxy, and more
universes in the firmament than there are galaxies in your
universe. There will come a day when mankind will learn how
to detect universes beyond. But most are so far away that
their light has not yet reached your universe, since the day
of its inception."
Now, in the October Astronomy, there appears an article to
the effect that reality appears to be a sort of foam, with
potentially an endless number of physical universes, each
contained in its own ?bubble.?
I did not know this when I wrote the Key. In fact, the
master?s comment seemed so absurd to me that my inclination
was to leave it out. (I once thought to publish a revised
version that contained everything I left out, only to
discover that I had omitted just a few repeated sentences
and so forth. The existing book contains virtually
everything I remember him saying.)
I do not believe that I could have come up with this
statement about there being multiple universes on my own. I
did not believe any such thing at the time I wrote the Key.
In fact, I staunchly believed the opposite.
So I have new respect for this mysterious man and his words,
many of which, to me, are transcendent. His definition of
sin, for example?that it is ?denial of the right to
thrive??is the most ethically pure definition of evildoing
that I have ever heard. It is, quite simply, the best
definition of sin in the world. Additionally, it is
incredibly useful, especially in this complex modern world,
with all of its ambiguities and gray areas. All you need to
do if you wish to understand the ethical content of your
actions is to view them in the light of his definition.
This gets me to two things. First, I am going to return to
my commentaries on the Key in the subscriber section of this
website. These commentaries are valuable, because they
consist, in my opinion, of a description of what it was like
during one of the great ?contact? experiences of all time. I
do not believe that the Master of the Key was any ordinary
person. I don?t know what he was, but I think that my
meeting with him was the peak experience of my life, and
that his words are intended to be spread far and wide.
Ironic, that every publisher I have shown the book has
looked down their nose at it, which is why it is published
on my website only, and why only a few thousand people have
read it. I cannot get it into stores, it seems.
But there will come a day when its value is realized, and
then perhaps his message will enter the world in a new way,
and have the impact that it deserves to have.
I look forward to that day with all my heart and soul.
