The Trojan Horse

The story of the Fall of Troy is well known: sheltered behind the walls of their city, the Trojans were able to defy their aggressor. Greed and curiosity, however, enticed them to pull into their city a wooden horse that had been left outside their walls. Enemy warriors stealthily emerged from its belly and overwhelmed the inhabitants. The "Trojan horse" became the epitome and symbol of self-destructive behaviour that wantonly gives a harmful agent the opportunity to operate destructively inside prudently existing defenses.

This timeless and peculiar behaviour of humans only changes its form. This Cosmos, with this earth, conforms precisely to our existence and needs. The life-maintaining radiation of the sun originates at a distance of approximately 93 million miles; only its weakened effect reaches us. Additionally, the sun's radiation is filtered by the protective cover of the atmosphere, which keeps away those components of the radiation that could seriously threaten our lives. In the sun begins a tremendous conversion process starting with the simplest primordial element: hydrogen. There it is transformed into helium, and all earthly light, warmth, and life is a result of the radiation liberated by this transformation.

In wonderfully ordered steps, a diversity of elements arose upon the earth. All that is material, however, moves through a great cycle of development and then disintegration. Thus, at the end of the earthly series of elements, the natural process of disintegration sets in with uranium, deep below the surface of the earth, quite gradually, over years, decades, and centuries. And being so powerful, just as with the radiation from the sun, uranium would threaten and destroy earthly life were it not for this natural subterranean protection. It is not possible for man to exist close to the radiation pressure of either end of the conversion cycle. Its weakened effects are only tolerable for us because we are protected from the radiation processes at the beginning of the conversion —the nuclear fusion inside the sun — by the vastness of space, together with the earth's atmospheric covering. We are protected from the radiation at the end of the cycle through the disintegration of the energy by the layer of earth, and the boundary of time.

But what has man done? He brought the radiation up from the depths, intruding into a natural, long-term process in order to force this disintegration into a fraction of a second. He went so far as to alter the natural presuppositions for his existence. The atomic nucleus was split, and a nuclear chain reaction triggered.

The annihilating power of the atom bomb, obtained by nuclear fission (the splitting of nuclei), was still too insignificant. The next goal was to emulate on earth with the hydrogen bomb the process of nuclear fusion (the combining of nuclei) that also takes place in the sun.

Man drew the death-dealing enemy, atomic radiation — like the Trojan horse — within the protective walls. With nuclear fission, he broke through the protecting wall of time; with nuclear fusion, that of space. He transferred here and condensed into seconds processes which very wisely do not occur on earth in this form.

The Trojans had no inkling of the danger that concealed itself within the seemingly marvellous horse, and were surprised by the enemy. Those, including politicians and scientists, however, who wanted to realise atomic fission and atomic fusion here on earth knew what they were doing and why. The tremendous concentrated power of atomic energy was demonstrated immediately with the dropping of the first bomb.

The "Trojan horse" stood within the protective walls, but the hostile, threatening army was supposed to disappear again into its belly, and, contained therein, to perform peaceful tasks; atomic reactors and nuclear fuel reprocessing plants, in which, it is believed, the mythical "genie" has been bottled to work according to the will of the "lord," man.

Twenty years ago in Chernobyl, Ukraine, the disastrous power was unleashed with massive radioactive fallout. Man stood frightened and helpless before the alien menace, an unseen and incomprehensible enemy insidiously stretching an invisible, long-lasting, poisonous net over the earth, threatening the necessities of daily life, contaminating the fruits of nature together with the food supply. Lastly, pollution of the human body breached the last protective wall against such radiation from within.

On the basis of short-term mundane power, man wishes to usurp power over the earth. Graciously, the earth, was given over to the human spirit in need of development, as a loaned abode, so that, through the experience in the vale of the world of matter, he could mature.

Should now the fate of Troy repeat itself in earth-embracing magnitude? The warning voices are indeed increasing... yet, was Cassandra, who at that time warned against the Trojan horse, heeded?









[Richard STEINPACH]