THE GOLDEN SPRINGTIME E-Book

Steffen Pichler

• Herausgeber: ZEIS Publishing
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

It is the year 2038, when life on our once so beautiful planet is nearing its end. Famine, disease and escalating ecological destruction rage as an unstoppable avalanche of extreme viruses, fungi and other parasites rule freely, capitalising on mankind’s misguided agricultural practice and genetic engineering. Civilisation is on the brink of collapse, but a desperate lie told by world leaders, offering a fantastic future to the condemned, creates a bizarre euphoria: The Golden Springtime of Man. While terrified humanity is temporarily appeased and exhilarated, in the background of the events every word, every theory and every equation ever written down in the history of civilisation is desperately re-examined for fresh wisdom by using a high-performance supercomputer. This search for salvation eventually leads all the way back to 1890 and unearths writings of a spoilt, aristocratic, English adventurer, who once journeyed to Australia to boost his ego and capture the biggest of all crocodiles. What he found instead, as one of the few white men to make deepest contact with Aboriginal hunter-gatherer tribes, was enlightenment that would radically expand humanity’s knowledge and perception of the laws of nature and demand life as we know it to change. All eyes are wide open now, but is there enough time left to change everything and stop the apocalypse? Although the story is fictitious, its basis is not grounded in fantasy. The author himself has spend many years in nature, partly in far-north Australia. And shortly after its 2019 release in Germany, civilisation has already been brought to its knees by a devastating pandemic, of the type predicted in the book.

Leseprobe

2038, and life on our once-beautiful planet is nearing its end. Famine, disease and ecological destruction rage as an unstoppable avalanche of extreme viruses, fungi and other parasites rule freely, capitalising on mankind’s misguided agricultural practice and genetic engineering. Civilization is on the brink of collapse, but a desperate lie told by world leaders, offering a fantastic future to the condemned, creates a bizarre euphoria: The Golden Springtime of Man.

While terrified humanity is temporarily appeased and exhilarated, in the background of the events every word, theory and equation ever written is desperately re-examined for fresh wisdom by using a supercomputer. This search for salvation eventually leads all the way back to 1890 and unearths writings of a spoilt, aristocratic, English adventurer, who journeyed to Australia to boost his ego and capture the biggest crocodile known to man. What he found instead, as one of the few white men to make deepest contact with Aboriginal hunter-gatherer tribes, was life-changing enlightenment that would challenge humanity’s perception of the laws of nature and demand life as we know it to change … ancient wisdom that has accordingly been murderously supressed throughout the history of civilization.

The humbling truth silences humanity as blinkers on reality are removed and the superiority of mankind is pulled under the spotlight. All eyes are wide open now, but is there enough time left to change everything and stop the apocalypse?

www.the-golden-springtime.com

STEFFEN PICHLER

THE

GOLDEN

SPRINGTIME

NOVEL

ZEIS Publishing

1. Edition, May 2021

ZEIS Publishing

AG Frankfurt a. M (Germany).

Reg. - Nr.: HRA 49701

Postal address:

ZEIS Verlag c/o Steffen Pichler

Kurmainzer Str. 161

65936 Frankfurt am Main / Germany

Website: www.zeis-verlag.de

E-Mail: [email protected]

Editor: Hayley Sherman

Editors (German original):

Jürgen Hornschuh, Miriam Rathke

Cover: David Krüger (Icon made by

Freepik from www.flaticon.com)

Layout: Claudia Waigel

© Copyright: Steffen Pichler

ISBN (Epub): 978-3-947430-50-5

FOREWORD

Although the work that you are about to read is fictitious, its basis is not grounded in fantasy. Since its 2019 release in Germany, civilization has already been brought to its knees by a devastating pandemic, of the type predicted. The 2038 setting of The Golden Springtime of Man escalates causes that already exist in our relationship with nature, taking them to a devastating conclusion, but the catastrophe is examined through a lens of hope and enlightenment. The author himself has spent several years away from civilization in nature, subsisting on hunting and gathering, and has discovered connections that are central to our relationship with the other species of Earth.

Consequently, the book includes easy-to-understand, ecological and psychological correlations that have never been described in this way before. It contains hope, and a call to action. Within the pages of this novel, the often-disturbing, catastrophic errors and perceptions of civilization are revealed and challenged, but you are urged not to take these things personally. You, as an individual, were born into this system and none of it was your responsibility. Every new day offers hope for change, and perhaps you can even play an active part in that, by spreading the word and helping to enlighten humanity.

CONTENT

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

PART TWO

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CLOSING REMARKS

INTRODUCTION

Huxley’s Arrival in Reality

On 13th September 1888, a young man named Albert Huxley debarked the RMS Towner steamboat, which had just arrived from England, at the thriving gold mining settlement of Cooktown, far up on the tropical northeast coast of Australia. His journey was soon to take drastic turns, which he had not planned in any way. Neither he nor anyone else could have the slightest clue that certain records of his adventures would be sought with greatest desperation by the entire human population of the planet Earth in the distant future, namely in the year 2038, and that they should eventually become the basis for the first real enlightenment of so-called civilized humanity.

Albert Huxley was far from being a bearer of hope when he arrived in Australia. Rather, he was an arrogant braggart from a wealthy family, who had never really achieved anything worth mentioning in his life. Even the journey itself was, at first, part of a bravado.

Huxley had spent the entire twenty-four years of his life in the higher society of London. His privilege came from the fact that his wealthy merchant family had, for generations, used the widely dominating position of the powerful colonial state of England for their worldwide trading business. Sitting in finely panelled offices, his great-grandfather had already bought and sold all kinds of goods from the subdued countries of distant continents via a large network, without ever having to travel there himself. It hardly mattered which goods were involved. These could be ores, precious wood or rubber, but also wool, spices or gold. What was always important was the largest possible cash gain.

In London, Albert Huxley lived with his fiancée, Claire Singleton, also a product of these higher circles, in a luxurious penthouse floor in the best city location. Every friend of the couple was a son or a daughter of the wealthy upper class. They belonged to a scene of young people who were called ‘snobs’ at the time and whose reputation was such of extreme arrogance. One always wore the most expensive and modern clothing, spent the evenings in equally expensive and noble places and indulged in amusement there. In this society it was a natural assumption to be the elite of humanity in every respect. And because humanity was just as undoubtedly the crowning glory of all creation, they were immediately the pinnacle of all life and even of the whole world.

Albert Huxley also called himself a merchant. But since he lacked the necessary discipline, he had basically been weeded out early by his family as far as real participation in the larger deals was concerned. Instead, in exchange for a princely salary, he performed tasks for which an employee would have been paid a few pounds. After school, Huxley attended university for several years, reading a series of subjects, including commercial law, architecture and philosophy. In none of them did he even come close to graduating. His two older brothers, on the other hand, had mastered their studies with bravura and, as commercial lawyers, quickly and successfully integrated themselves into the merchant guild.

If there was anything at all that Huxley could show to be at least halfway conclusive as a real achievement of his own, it was some small success in boxing, to which he had devoted time since his youth. At the age of twenty-one, he had even won a fight for his London club, which made him the champion of amateurs in the middleweight of the western inner-city district for almost two months. However, everyone knew that the opponent was weakened by a flu. In the rematch seven weeks later, Huxley lost and sank, except for a few victories in hardly noticed tournaments, into insignificance.

Among the young men of the scene, it was customary to get drunk often and violently. At the age of twenty-three, Huxley had to appear twice in court because he and his cronies had fought each other and other snobs in a drunken frenzy. One of these incidents resulted in serious damage to the inventory of a favourite bar. And now his once-so-certain self-image began to waver. He started to realize what had long been openly pronounced among his relatives: that he was a good-for-nothing corrupted by the inherent lure of money and the black sheep of the family.

Around his twenty-fourth birthday, Huxley began to ponder for hours what he could do to gain a proper and honourable standing. He had to find something that would give him a real reputation and recognition. But the more he thought about it, the more painfully his own conviction grew that he was nothing without his family’s money. It was also not his own merit that, with his appearance, his blond hair, sporty figure and attractive face, he had been very well received by girls since his youth. Just like the money, everything was just bestowed upon him.

Huxley now often felt an unbearable emptiness in his head. But then, one morning at breakfast, on the penultimate page of the London Telegraph, he discovered a short message that brought him to a certain idea within a few minutes. The report featured statements by English gold prospectors from Cooktown. They had claimed that in the rivers and in the sea along the largely unexplored coastline north and south of the village, there were huge saltwater crocodiles that were far larger than all the findings of nature research had thought possible. It was also said that these creatures were true monsters coming directly from hell, and that even the bravest man was afraid of them.

Albert Huxley read the article more than thirty times in a row. And by the evening of the same day, the plan was completely outlined in his head: He would travel to Australia to find and kill the largest of the hell monsters. He would bring its skull back to London to present it there to the reverent admiration of all people. No one would ever see him as a good-for-nothing again. He would be a true hero who had achieved something really great.

Huxley was not in any way deterred in the three months that led up to the departure of the RMS Towner; he was extremely determined, and when Claire told him that he had lost his mind, he simply stopped discussing it with her. He studied maps and books, trained in the shooting club on the heavy rifles and searched for information on saltwater crocodiles, which were actually the largest of all types of crocodiles on Earth.

Later, only a few documents were found about what happened after his arrival in Australia. The most important of these was a book Huxley had written himself. This was printed in London in 1890, but hasn’t been published for certain reasons. It was not until the year 2038 that a single copy of this work reappeared in the great search mentioned previously. And they also found four letters. Huxley had sent three of them from Australia to his fiancée. And the fourth was an angry response, in which Claire, with his three letters attached, broke the engagement and ended the relationship. She, who was already very angry about the journey itself, could not bear it when he expressed in his third letter, completely surprisingly, an extremely pejorative attitude towards his former circles and even towards the whole of civilization and instead raved in high tones about his existence in nature and about his new friends, who were now all suddenly native hunters and gatherers.

When Albert Huxley wrote his last letter to Claire, he had already been away from civilization for several months. It would have been possible for him to have more correspondence, because his new friends offered to bring mail to Cooktown and pick it up at any time. But for reasons that will become clear later, he soon lost interest in connecting to his old world.

Huxley never received the returned letters. He spent almost a year and a half uninterrupted with the natives, without once having contact with civilization. During this time, the German head of a Christian mission in Cooktown, who took care of his mail, died. And so the letters ended up in the back corner of the windowless basement of a church building that still existed in 2038. They lay there dry and protected under a heap of old roof tiles and, therefore, remained untouched for almost 150 years, until they were finally found in the course of the great search.

In the first letter that Huxley wrote only six days after his arrival in Cooktown, the attitude that he had brought with him from his old world in London can still be seen:

“Dearest Claire,

believe me, you don’t know how I consume myself for you, the immeasurable pain it causes me that we haven’t been able to see each other for so long. (...)

I will do everything I can to kill the hell monster as quickly as possible. Maybe I will return sooner than we both thought. (...) In addition to the two gold prospectors, I will hire two natives as trackers. The German mission will help me to find those who are well-behaved and speak English. I told the head of the mission, Steiner, to make sure that not only do they really know where there are big crocodiles, but they can also find out where the biggest of these terrible creatures lives. I got myself another strong rifle. (...)

Oh, my dearest, it will not be easy to travel with these natives. You cannot imagine what a low level of existence they are at. They know nothing about the great things of the world and of life. When you see them, you realize how far we civilized people have lifted ourselves, with our enormous knowledge, our precious literature, our fine music, and our noble manners. From my terrace in the hotel I can observe such a group. They look so neglected. And they often sit under a tree for hours just talking. What could there be in such a miserable, primitive life that one can talk about for so long? Perhaps the mission helped them to at least find a meaning, and they can now talk about the Bible.

They have so much catching up to do, these poor human beings. Steiner has told me how difficult it was to get the natives on the right track. Only a few would come to the mission school to learn voluntarily. And there are probably still barbaric tribes in the wilderness who completely elude real life and instead continue to wander around in the undergrowth, poor and aimless. The authorities have a big plan for the next few years, to missionize as soon as possible at least all children of the natives and to lead them into the real and true life. (...)

I’ll be on my way in a week. If everything goes as I plan, I’ll write to you in a month. (...)”

If one looks at these lines of Huxley, one must bear in mind that his views on the Aborigines were by no means extreme in relation to those times. In most of the letters that were sent from Australia to Europe during the nineteenth century, the authors avoided calling the natives humans at all. So Albert Huxley was, in this one sense, not even at the summit of arrogance. And that was exactly what was soon to play an extremely important role and ultimately turn his entire life upside down.

Just nine days after the first letter, he writes his fiancée the second. Later, in 2038, the dating made it possible to reconstruct that he was in a prison cell at that time. He had been arrested for an attack on a police officer. Huxley had punched the other man so hard that he suffered severe injuries. He didn’t tell Claire about this. Instead, he reports alleged delays in the departure for hunting by a broken rudder. Here are just a few sentences:

“Oh, my dearest, so I will have to wait until they have finally repaired the ship. They can’t even say how long this is going to take. (...) And you know, I now have time to think and something makes me quietly doubt our greatness. There are even English men here who hardly behave better than the savages (...).”

According to Huxley’s later notes in the found book, the brawl had happened as follows: Shortly after sunset, the drunken police officer had approached the group of Aborigines under the tree mentioned in the first letter. For no apparent reason, he shouted at them to drive them away. One of the people was an old man who could only get up very slowly. The policeman apparently saw it as a provocation. He gave the old man a violent kick, whereupon he fell to the ground and remained motionless.

Huxley watched the scene from an armchair on the terrace in front of his room, also in a clearly drunken state. He felt disturbed by what was happening because he had been observing this group, often sitting under the tree, with some curiosity since his arrival. So he got up, went quickly to the officer and told him to leave. A loud and aggressive battle of words developed on both sides. When the policeman raised his hand and instructed Huxley in the command tone to retreat on his part, he stood still for few seconds. But then, all of a sudden, he punched his fist right into his opponent’s face with full force. He was still a trained boxer, and so the officer collapsed unconscious on the spot and was brought to the hospital with a bleeding head shortly afterwards.

Huxley describes that his behaviour, in retrospect, was initially not explainable to him and that he considered the blow to be an ill-considered reflex action. Only later should this give way to the conviction that his fist was actually guided by a deep reason hidden in his innermost being.

That the events first of all posed a big problem for him was mainly due to the fact that his opponent had been living in the town for years and had close contact with other important people. So Huxley was arrested that same evening and taken to the local prison. The policeman had probably suffered a severe concussion as well as a broken nose and had also lost the two middle incisors of the upper jaw.

For Huxley, the incident meant that his whole plan had failed, which involved boarding a smaller transport ship the day after in order to be dropped off at a previously selected estuary. There already existed a basecamp for gold prospecting expeditions with some stable huts. He had already brought together the hunting team, which consisted of two English gold diggers and two men of the indigenous people who had been engaged by the German missionary Steiner and who otherwise hired themselves out inside the village as helpers. The ship commuted monthly between Cooktown and a camp further away. It was agreed that it would stop every two weeks when passing through that estuary to bring provisions or, if the hunt was successful, to return the five men.

At this point, however, the following must be observed: Huxley describes that it had already become clear to him in the first days after his arrival that the crocodile expedition was a completely ill-considered and unrealistic idea. He had spun something together in London as a city dweller without even knowing what it was all about. The extent of his previous destinations was Paris, Berlin and some English cities. Huxley had never hunted before and, with the exception of a few short tent holidays in his youth, had spent hardly any nights in nature under the open sky in his entire life.

After the long crossing with the ship, which had seemed bad enough to him despite a large cabin of his own, he looked in horror at the wide mouth of the Endeavour River in tropical heat on the first day in Cooktown. He hadn’t run out of courage at all, but when Huxley imagined searching somewhere out there for a giant crocodile, he realized that he would be very unsuitable for such things due to the lack of almost any experience of nature. He summarized his present thoughts in the first days in a passage of the book as follows: “What have I done? What have I got myself into? How do I get out without shame, without embarrassing me to the death?”

He then decided to at least keep up appearances. So he wanted to somehow orchestrate a return to London after a shorter time than planned, maybe even after two or three months, but he would at least have the skull of a somewhat big crocodile with him. After various discussions, he decided to rent one of the huts in the base camp in question, to make himself comfortable and to return there at least every evening. He himself would try to hunt in the surroundings of the camp, but mainly the assembled team would take over. However, the team wasn’t made up of people who were best suited for it. Neither the two gold prospectors nor the two natives seemed reliable to him. They were actually four men from the day labourer scene who, when they didn’t have a job, usually started drinking in the morning and lingered all day.

They were also much more expensive than Huxley had originally intended, and he had to pay them half the wages in advance. Finally, he furthermore learned that the two Aborigines were those who were stranded in Cooktown shortly after the village was founded in the early 1870s, when they were still children, with their uprooted relatives, and who did not really have much knowledge about the bush.

A successful hunt for the largest crocodile was, therefore, practically impossible from the outset. But with the blow to the police officer, the whole expedition had become impossible. Huxley became aware of this with great desperation in the first days of imprisonment as he awaited an uncertain time for his release, conscious that he now had an influential enemy.

The detention lasted a total of three full weeks, and he also had to pay a fine of 400 pounds, most of which went to the injured officer. This sum was a fortune at the time and almost equalled all the cash Huxley had left after paying the hunting team, rifles and other equipments. When he was released, it was also declared that treatment costs of the victim were still outstanding. A policeman presented a doctor’s bill, which was well over the top: 240 pounds. After paying the fine, Huxley had barely a pound of cash in his pockets. This was left to him, and he was led under police escort to the two banks of the town. There, nobody gave him money, although he had a high guarantee sent by telegraph to Cooktown via the Bank of New South Wales before leaving London. He realized that this was also based on the tactical intervention of his enemy. Because now Huxley was heavily in debt. He was therefore no longer allowed to leave the town and was obliged to report to the police station every day at exactly twelve noon. He realized that he was trapped and that the officer would do anything to destroy him.

The situation was very dangerous, there was no doubt about it. Huxley dragged his luggage from the most expensive hotel, where it had been stored during his imprisonment, to the multi-bed room of a shabby hostel inhabited mainly by failed gold prospectors, day labourers and prostitutes. The barracks were located next to the largest and cheapest brothel in the village. He wondered if there might be a way to make money through work. But he didn’t see any. The search for halfway lucrative employment was hopeless for him, because his enemy could sabotage practically every chance in this place. Even becoming a gold prospector was no solution either. On the one hand, he was not allowed to leave the town, and on the other hand, he knew that most of these men were poor people and remained so. An attempt to escape to the south of Australia, for example to the then already large Sydney, would have attracted attention as soon as he tried to buy such a passage on a larger ship. Besides, he didn’t have enough money for it anymore.

Huxley didn’t even think about the crocodile plans anymore. He was desperate. There had never been such a hopeless situation in his whole life. At one point in the book, he describes that he actually saw himself at the end of his existence. But then something happened that he didn’t expect in the least. Without knowing it, he was at a turning point that couldn’t be more radical. He describes this in the first chapter of his work under the heading ‘Arrival in Reality’:

“I stepped out of the door of this filthy hostel in desperation. The stench in there disgusted me; the bed was soaked with dried-up liquids and full of fleas. I just didn’t know what to do. I walked down the road to find a place to sit somewhere on the bank of the river and to think about it further. It was just after sunset. When I was sitting there, I was just looking at the water. And I was overcome again by this terrible and painful emptiness, but worse now than ever before. The whole world seemed grey and pointless, and I was sure that the sun would never rise in my head again.

Suddenly someone was behind me and said in a soft, almost whispering tone: ‘Sir, sir.’ I turned around and recognized in the advancing twilight a young man, a native, whom I had never seen before. I asked him what he wanted. Then he replied in a little broken English:

‘Sir, you are looking for the largest crocodile. We can take you there. We’ll show you the largest of all crocodiles. It is very big.’

At first, I didn’t know what to do with it. The next moment I thought the man had probably heard of me somewhere and that I had a lot of money and that he now thought he could trick me into profiting from it. However, he seemed to be completely sober and clear, which was very unusual in the evening hours. Practically all the younger men in Cooktown, whether gold prospectors, businessmen, policemen or natives, were usually drunk by this time. He carefully approached and squatted next to me. Then he made it clear that I had misunderstood the situation. And very thoroughly:

‘Sir, all of us, all clans and all tribes in the bush, even those far away, know the story of you and the officer. We know the officer’s friends took the money from you. But where the big crocodile is, you don’t need money. It’s very beautiful there. It is the paradise.’

Well, that he was talking about paradise irritated me so much that I couldn’t answer anything. I didn’t put this together. He probably had contact with the missionaries and therefore knew the story of paradise. But why should the one be where the great crocodile was, the hell monster? That made no sense at all to me. I was also amazed that the brawl might actually have gotten around among many natives in the wilderness and that they might have talked about me at great distances. At that moment, my thoughts flashed for the very first time with a hint, at first quiet, that would later be confirmed very comprehensively: that my blow to the officer’s face could have opened the door to another world that I had never known before. And that I would have the chance to enter there.

I suddenly realized what an immense effect the event must have had on the natives. One of the most powerful whites in town kicks one of their old men to the ground. I cut down the man, went to prison and lost my money for it. Although I had almost no contact with the natives until then, it seemed possible to me that I could actually trust them now. And that they might really be able to take me to the biggest crocodile. So I asked the young man how far it was to the place where the animal lived. And I wanted to know how to get there and how long the journey would take.

I won’t reveal his complete answer here, but I learned only a part of the distance could be covered by ship. It would be a very long journey. And I’d probably have to walk long distances. The man said I didn’t have to worry about that at all. The people who accompanied me would do everything they could to make my stay safe and comfortable. If I wanted to, I would never have to carry anything myself. And if I had any wish, they would do anything to fulfil it, no matter what.

Actually, the offer immediately captivated me. On the other hand, the thought of entrusting myself completely to these people I didn’t know was almost outrageous at the time. I would probably be far away from everything I knew for months, and instead I would find myself in a world I knew absolutely nothing about. I finally told the young man that I wanted to consider the matter and he explained to me that if I decided to travel, I could let the people from the group I had observed from my first hotel know. He himself would still be in town in the next few days and I would certainly find him. Then he advised me to avoid such natives who had become addicted to alcohol and not to talk to them about the offer.

The next day, I met Steiner. The German missionary was the only one of the whites I trusted to some extent. All the others, and especially my own countrymen, I couldn’t judge since the matter with the officer. I didn’t tell him everything, but just enough to make him understand that I was thinking of going to the bush alone with the natives. And he immediately advised me against it:

‘You know, Huxley, these people are not all evil. But they live in a very primitive world. Imagine that there is no God in their faith! They are godless! And so they are, of course, also unpredictable, almost like the wild animals. Every week we hear stories of them attacking white men and then slaughtering them bestially. You can never trust the savages in the bush! Never, you understand, Huxley! Believe me, I’ve got the natives all figured out. The stories they tell each other are of the simplest structure and completely absurd. When they dance, they jump around imitating kangaroos and all kinds of animals. No, Huxley, I strongly advise you not to do that!’

I was thinking about it two more days. Steiner had cast doubt on me, but he had not really convinced me. Something did not fit between his portrayals and the impression the young native had left on me on the riverbank. Besides, there was actually no real choice in that situation.

When I woke up in the early morning of the day after next, because the drunken man and his equally drunken whore were arguing loudly in the bed diagonally opposite, the time had come. The decision had been made. I immediately started to pre-sort my stuff so that I would only have to take those things with me later that I really needed. I could put anything else under Steiner’s control, there was no doubt about that. While I was sorting, a great excitement began to rise in me. And when I walked down the street four hours later to look for the native who had made me the offer, my heart pounded so strongly that I was worried that I would faint immediately.

When I found him, from a distance, my gaze met his, and it seemed like he was expecting me. He got up and came towards me. We sat down and talked for about a quarter of an hour. Only he himself would accompany me first, he said. I had a map with me. After I knew which direction to take, I suggested trying to buy a ride on one of the smaller fishing boats that arrived and departed from Cooktown every day from my last money. Since these fishermen, for various reasons, usually did not have closer contact with the police, it would be possible to disappear from the village inconspicuously.

The young man explained that he could organize for us to be received at a certain estuary not far away. I wondered how he would manage to inform the natives there, because the distance was not that short. But I just relied on it and on everything else. I learned that we would have to walk through the bush for a few days until we reached a small settlement. There I would get a comfortable cabin and I could rest. After that it would go even further through the territories of other tribes. And finally we would reach a certain clan that could take me to the biggest crocodile. That group even has a name, which translates as ‘Great Crocodile Clan’.

I was overwhelmed to really imagine what was coming my way. That’s why I just switched off and didn’t ask any more questions. In the afternoon, I actually managed to buy two passages on a small fishing boat for a very reasonable price, which left in the early morning hours of the following day and whose route led past the selected estuary. So I spent half a night in the stinking hostel, not knowing that I wouldn’t see a solid house from the inside for almost a year and a half from then on.

Early in the morning, three hours before sunrise, I walked down to the pier in the dark. The young native was already waiting, and we immediately got on the fishing boat. During the following trip, I got to know Sebu, as I call him here, better. This was the first time ever that I had a long conversation with a native. And my impression was far from what I had expected. No matter what we talked about, all statements and opinions seemed to be of a very deep and stable rationality.

Once I told him openly that I had almost no experience of life outside the cities and that I would not recognize a poisonous snake or a dangerous spider lurking somewhere for me. He said that there would be not even a single snake and no spider in the whole bush lurking for me, because they do not eat people at all and would have no interest in a fight with us humans. In addition, one should never begin the journey into the bush with a fear of the animals, just because such an anticipating fear is pointless. The snakes and spiders and also the other animals will be explained to me well and then I would know how to avoid them so that there is no quarrel. For me, the most important thing is to make sure that I don’t hurt myself. In the beginning, sharp branches or twigs at eye level could be dangerous. Therefore, in denser bush, part of the concentration must always be in the exact direction in which the face moves. In time, I’d get used to it.

We also talked about the mission and about Steiner. Sebu said this was a difficult topic for him and for most of the natives in Cooktown. Some said that Steiner was actually a good person. But much of what he and the other missionaries taught was completely nonsensical. That there was a God, for example, who like a single wise man created everything only for human beings and controlled everything. And that one must constantly worship him, that this cannot be so:

‘Such natives, who still have contacts into the bush, know that this is nonsense. But we can’t just say it like that. We have to pretend all the time. We don’t have another option.’

Then Sebu explained that the crucial problem was the white man’s rifle. This alone makes mutual understanding impossible:

‘When we perform traditional dances at encounters and even a single white person watches, these are usually the ones we use to explain the animals to the small children. If we were to perform dances that would pass on the old stories of our ancestors’ hunts and battles, perhaps even in the dark, the white men would become afraid, and then they would shoot even more of us.’

Sebu said that almost all of the natives who currently stayed in Cooktown were from clans and tribes who had their territories around the town or near the Palmer River, where the first gold discovery was made in 1872. Their original way of life was quickly destroyed after the arrival of the whites. Many males were killed by the rifles, so most survivors were women, children and elderly. By the loss of their territories, their men and the demolition of their traditions and knowledge, they could no longer exist in the bush and would be supplied with food by the missions. The native males of younger age would today predominantly be those who came to Cooktown as children in the early days of the settlement and who grew up there in the environment of the missions. Most of them are addicted to alcohol and have no idea what to do with themselves.

With every context Sebu explained to me, it became clearer to me that my initial look at the natives and what was going on in Cooktown must have been very ignorant and twisted. In fact, there were indeed great misunderstandings between my own culture and that of the natives. And above all, I slowly began to suspect that the superiority of the whites might indeed have been based exclusively on the rifle and in no way on a more rational being.”

The descriptions of this conversation with Sebu stretch over eighteen pages in Huxley’s book. The trip with the fishing boat lasted several hours. Then begins a passage about the first perceptions, after he had finally left his old world behind him and entered the space of nature unaffected by civilization:

“Among the many moments that are difficult, if not impossible, to describe with words were those hours in which I finally distanced myself from everything I had ever known and in which I arrived in a completely different world. With a dinghy, we were brought in the morning over a large distance to the shore. One of the two fishermen asked me, while rowing, if I was sure about what I was doing. Well, I could not provide an honest answer. I was extremely tense, but more, I felt as if I had discovered a huge bird somewhere, climbed up and now the animal was flying away with me. I could not know what it was like up there, nor where the bird would land or how it would go on with me in every respect. But I managed to keep my composure and stayed with my lie that I was on my way to a nearby gold-prospecting expedition.

When the dinghy had left, I looked after it briefly. I was not aware that for almost a year and a half this would have been my very last review of the white man’s world.

Sebu said that the people picking us up were already nearby. But they’d wait until the fishermen were out of sight. They were hunters from a tribe that had very little contact with the whites. We walked a good distance from the beach and sat down in the shade of a tree directly above a swell in the sand. From here, the entire estuary and the last part of the river could be seen, whose banks were lined with dense, green vegetation. The sun-drenched water directly in front of us seemed to be quite shallow in the vicinity of hundreds of yards, and because the ground consisted of light sand, I could see dark water animals. Some were tall and dived very slowly. Others flew around in swarms and frequently broke through the surface.

Sebu explained to me that the large oval creatures are turtles, of which there are several varieties here. They are looking for different small animals or certain plants. Last but not least, there are so many of them here because the shallow water is very warm. He pointed to one of the animals that suddenly stretched its head out of the water just a few dozen yards away. ‘It’s breathing now,’ said Sebu, and I could actually hear a noise that sounded like a human being taking a deep breath. The longish, big animals, which swam a little faster and sometimes made a slightly winding movement, these are sharks, Sebu explained. They tried to track down dead or injured animals. And the many other, obviously very nimble creatures are fish, of which there are many varieties in different colours and shapes.

If the sharks could, Sebu said, they would also eat some of the healthy fish. But the latter are much too fast and agile for a shark to catch them. In fact, based on the explanations, I could now see that the smaller creatures often passed by the large, winding creatures very closely and seemingly without any shyness or fear. Only those that the sharks moved directly towards scattered, so quickly that the great predator made no effort to chase them.

Sebu said: ‘The sharks notice it immediately if one of the fish is not healthy, and only then it is worth it for them to pursue him.’ He explained more and more connections that hardly anyone in civilization would deal with and of which I knew nothing at all until now. After perhaps half an hour, I suddenly felt as if the contours of a parallel world, which I had not seen before and probably could not have seen at all, were slowly and schematically emerging in front of me. It seemed to me almost as if Sebu intended to draw a cloudy veil from my eyes with his stories. And that’s exactly what he did.

The deep blue sky, the fiery shimmering water in the distance and the crystal-clear water nearby, with all the animals in it, looked so colourful and, above all, so beautiful as I didn’t even know it. For the first time in my life, I saw nature from a new point of view, in which it does not seem like a chaotic mess with constant struggles for survival, but, on the contrary, like an arrangement of great perfection, in which all forms of life develop freely and in great joy of their existence.”

In the further explanations, Huxley describes how finally the announced reception committee, consisting of three men, arrived. And to his next surprise, this contact went off without any stress. The people were very friendly, and as Sebu translated the conversations, it became obvious that they would do anything for him:

“It was amazing and surprising how little effort this encounter put me through. Often people say that when they have met strangers, the ice is broken at some point. With me and these people, it was different. There just wasn’t any ice between us. I clearly felt that I could trust them. Their entire behaviour was completely different from that of those male natives who were in Cooktown, where they were apparently corrupted by alcohol and other influences of civilization. We sat for another hour, and as we started walking, the hunters insisted that they carry my rather heavy luggage and that I only take my rifle.

The hike that followed was not to be imagined as a strenuous march. It was very different, like a casual and easy stroll. Again and again, we stopped, and I was shown plants that I could just eat. Within the first two hours, I had tried over a dozen different fruits, nuts, flowers and even leaves. There were thick blades of grass whose pulp was as sweet as sugar. And nuts, which were small and hard to crack but had an excellent aroma. Some things that looked attractive tended to taste dull, such as the sun-yellow plums hanging from the trees in thousands and thousands. But there was also the opposite case, like a dark, blotchy fruit, which was inconspicuous but had a very intense, sweet, tropical taste.

The directions in which we walked changed many times. Among other things, this was to avoid dense bushes and, at the same time, pass water points. They explained to me that an experienced hunter knows every single small water hole, every pond, every stream and every spring in the big surroundings. He would also be able to find something to drink through animal traces and various other signs of nature. In the interior of larger sand dunes, for example, the water from the rainy season is stored. And if you dig it in the right place on their base, you can win it all year round, even if the dune looks completely dry from the outside. (...)

In the late afternoon, quite shortly before sunset, we reached a river bend and set up camp there. One of the hunters started a fire. He laid plucked, dry plant fibres on a piece of branch, pointed a stick into a small hole in the wood and turned it quickly back and forth between both hands. After less than one minute I recognized a small smoke plume and, shortly afterwards, the first tiny flames. With the burning fibres, the hunter sparked another dry plant material he had prepared. And soon thereafter the folded woods blazed in a stable fire.

I had already heard about such methods, but witnessing this process made me aware of what a solid ability this was and how many other solid abilities these people utilized to exist completely independently in the space of nature. If, on the other hand, I lost my purchased matches myself or if they just got wet, for me there would be no chance to start a fire. I’d be helpless in that respect, and I hadn’t even created the matches myself and wouldn’t even be able to.

We then went down to the bank of the river. This was only easily accessible on that section, because a seam of dense, tropical forest extended on both sides. From everywhere, I heard loud songs of birds and crickets, while at the slowly flowing water surface there were all kinds of circles and splashes of small and big fish. The river triggered strange and powerful feelings in me, which I had never experienced before when I was standing at a river. It seemed as if this water was radiating an enormous force, which you can feel physically.

The hunters explained to me that they would now procure fish and crabs for our dinner. They said that while watching, I should keep a good distance from the water edge. The reason would be that there are crocodiles in every river. They notice it from a long distance when something is approaching. Then they hide under the water’s surface and it would be impossible for me to see them before it was too late. The hunters themselves were able to hunt on such waters, but there are various rules of caution and attention that they have learned since childhood.

One of the men held his spear slightly over his shoulder with his right hand and went to a place where aquatic plants and reeds touched the shore. Then, with extremely slow and steady movements, he took five steps into the water, which now reached his calves. He remained motionless, and I realized that he was concentrating strongly. After a few minutes, he lifted the spear a little. And all of a sudden, at such a speed that I couldn’t really see it, he stabbed into the water. Shortly afterwards, he pulled out the weapon with both hands and threw a large perch to the shore. It was a barramundi that was very popular in the white world because of its tasty meat. It didn’t take more than half an hour for the hunters to get enough for dinner. Those were beside four stately fish, also three crabs, the size of which I have still nowhere ever seen.

In the meantime, part of the fire at the campsite had turned into a pile of embers. Sebu gave me a paste wrapped in leaves and advised me to rub it in a little, because then the mosquitoes would not bite me. As I later found out, this was indeed a very effective agent. Then dinner began. The fresh fish and crabs, as well as almost a dozen different vegetables that we had collected on the way, were simply placed on the edge of the embers and on some hot stones. As plates we used big and stable leaves, and everybody took what he wanted. After just a few minutes I got along with eating everything with my fingers and some small sticks. And no matter if I tasted the crispy fried fish, the white meat of the red roasted crabs, the braised fruits, the thick salt leaves or the roasted tubers, everything was of such an enormous delicacy that I couldn’t decide what to take next.

I can say without any exaggeration that never before in my life had I experienced such an enormous and rich palate as this evening. And this, despite the fact that I had always eaten in the most expensive and allegedly best restaurants of London. That which one feels when sitting in the closed room at finely set tables is nothing at all against the fireworks of the senses produced by self-procured food, if one takes it fresh out of the embers, sitting completely bound in nature under the open sky at the fire.

During this pleasurable and sumptuous meal, I asked more and more questions. And with each answer, something came to light again that I really wanted to know more about. While Sebu was busy translating, he and the others were eager to answer everything as accurately as possible. Even looking back today, it is amazing how these people managed to lead me so quickly into their world, which was so different from the one in which I spent my entire life. And I could now already see that this world had to be a space for the developing of all the senses in immeasurable greatness and that it was filled with an enormous wealth that had been completely hidden from me so far.

The men especially liked to talk about hunting and gathering. I could feel their burning, tangible enthusiasm as they reported on their daily adventures during their expeditions through nature. In between, I thought back to my old world. And then I realized that there was no such state of deep enthusiasm and fulfilment at all. Nobody, whether rich in money and luxury or destitute, was as enthusiastic about his everyday life as these people here. The next moment it became clear to me that the natives obviously even perceived their entire existence in nature as a single great and exciting adventure.

When it was time to sleep, I went to my unrolled camp at the foot of an ancient tree. Sebu had recommended this place to me before. He said that for many generations it has been a tradition for every hunter of the surrounding tribes to spend the night here at least once in his life. Before I lay down, I formed myself a headrest, so I could see a large part of the sky, as well as the wide bend of the river. Immediately, I felt a deep comfort and relaxation. And then, suddenly, I felt like I was in a miracle world. The sky had become so wide and strewn with such a vast multitude of stars as I had never seen before. The scents of the many eucalyptus blossoms and other plants gave my nose extremely pleasant and strong sensations, which I did not know at all in this form and intensity. And all the many different animals around me seemed almost like mythical creatures that I discovered for the first time in my life.

While the evening songs of the birds in the trees slowly faded away, the flying foxes, which had been explained and shown to me an hour before, circulated in large numbers. As I watched them against the background of the bright starlight, I perceived them as beings like humans who have wings to roam through the warm air of the night. This completely new look at the animals for me was a consequence of the fact that the hunters had explained their own perceptions over and over again throughout the day. There are no such boundaries and differences in that world as civilized man thinks he knows them.

Everywhere in the bush, it rushed, and the crickets continued to organize their many-voiced and sometimes loud concert. Meanwhile, the constant splashing of the jumping fish in the river was now interrupted by violent water waves, which undoubtedly came from massive creatures that become active at night. Everything was full of most exciting life, and the whole space around me, indeed, the whole world, became bigger and bigger, more colourful and deeper. I tried to somehow grasp all that my senses were giving me. But it was too much for that. My existence and my view of the world had changed drastically within only one day at a furious pace. And it had expanded many times its previous size.

Looking back, it seemed incredible to me what a crazy illusion I must have been in a few weeks ago when I wrote the first letter to Claire. What a curious deception to think that these people here in nature did not experience anything great and did not know real life, while in London and in other parts of civilization we stood above them in these respects. From the present point of view, there was no doubt that it was exactly the other way around. I couldn’t think of anything left in the society from which I came that would surpass this extremely intense and great world of experience here in pure nature. What’s more, I realized that there was even nothing there that could come close to it.

I wondered how this deception could have come about. Because before I had no real knowledge at all of the point of view of a hunter and gatherer in the space of nature. Throughout my life, I must have been led astray by a highly distorted and mutilated worldview, in which, for some reason, everything that does not belong to civilization is humiliated and denigrated.

Then, from one second to the next, a strong shiver came over me. I suddenly had the serious suspicion that now, after escaping the illusion of civilization, I had landed in real paradise. And in the next minute I noticed that it was by no means an illusion, but reality. What an inconceivable thing!

There was no doubt at all that without the hunters I would never have succeeded in all this in my life, not even if I happened to have taken exactly the same paths and set up my camp for the night in the same place under the old tree. From the closely tied and confused point of view of civilized man, the paradise of nature is like an oversized parallel world, which is located directly around him in the physical sense, but whose existence he no longer perceives.

Without the hunters, I would have missed the natural offering of all kinds of edible plants. For me, it would all have been one worthless thicket. I couldn’t possibly have experienced what a great and exciting adventure hunting and gathering in the space of nature is for the men here. Nor would it have been possible to perceive that one obviously does not need anything artificial if one knows nature and can get fully involved with it.

My senses could not have freed themselves and found their way into this immeasurably large space of development. Instead of seeing paradise and enjoying the great adventure of life, I would have found all of nature threatening. The noises that now fascinated me would have been unpleasant and disturbing. I wouldn’t even have perceived the pleasant scents as such. The exciting, mythical creatures would have been disturbing creatures that I might even fear. And instead of looking with great astonishment into the stars of this unfathomable sky, I would now hope to return as quickly as possible to the small, artificial, illusory world of civilization. The heavy slap in the face of the officer was really the best thing I had ever done in my life. My quiet suspicion during my first short conversation with Sebu in Cooktown, after which I could have opened the gate to another world with this act, was now confirmed in a previously unimaginable way.

Then something else struck me: During the many conversations of the day, I had the diffuse feeling that my hosts were not only interested in my wish to find the biggest crocodile. There was something else involved. It was obvious that the natives would literally grant me every wish if it were possible somehow. And they wouldn’t hesitate to risk their lives for me. For a white man. Of course, the reason for the friendliness at first lay in the matter with the officer. I could easily understand that this had created a great deal of trust in me. But just before I fell into a long and equally deep sleep on that first evening, I came to the conclusion that these people wanted to show me something very important for many more reasons: fundamental things of the greatest importance, hidden in the paradise of nature, invisible from the tiny perspective of civilization, although their recognition would be of the utmost urgency, even for its own existence.

For if civilization misses the enormous pleasures of free life in this great reality and wastes its time spinning around itself in a musty chamber of residual perception formed by arrogant self-lies, then it cannot be otherwise than that this limitation also affects the knowledge of the greatest contexts of life and the whole world. And I shouldn’t be wrong.”

At this end of the very first evening of his journey into pure nature, Albert Huxley had actually not been wrong. So civilization had indeed missed the most important and greatest possible knowledge about life and the whole world, which includes many of the most scientifically observable phenomena. And because nothing more changed in this regard over the following 150 years, inside civilization there was no real understanding of the very great connections of reality, while at the same time, the shallow half-knowledge suitable for creating technologies, and, thus, also destructive power, grew ever further and faster. So, mankind headed for a gigantic catastrophe with increasing speed.

In the year 2038, it was then so far. The aimless blind flight had in many respects reached a height at which it could no longer continue and from which it had to come to a fatal crash. The castle built with arrogant lies into the vacuum severed from real knowledge had now been pumped up once more for a few months into a bizarre giant structure, to then collapse abruptly in a brutal way. Only in this situation did the collective of civilized mankind realize that it must have overlooked something of the utmost importance and that this was the reason for the terrible events unfolding before its eyes. And so began the desperate quest to catch up with the first real enlightenment.

For a thorough understanding of the missed connections and the consequences that resulted from this oversight, it is necessary to leave Albert Huxley and the Aborigines in the first part of this documentation. Later, in the second part, they will return and take centre stage. But now there will be a leap in time directly to the beginning of the year 2038, to concentrate only on the great catastrophe and to look in detail at how it came about and how it happened. In doing so, the view is also directed from time to time into the immediately preceding decades before the collapse. For during this period, civilization took an ever faster and madder approach to the already visible abyss.

In some places, the first part may require some effort. It is particularly important to reflect upon the relationship of civilization to those living beings that it had taken under its control within the framework of so-called agriculture, even in some areas of genetics, evolutionary biology and microbiology. Why and how this fits together with the former knowledge of the Australian natives will become clear in the further course. And in the end, the two parts of the documentation complement each other and together open up a clear view of the overall context of nature.

In the process, natural laws of the utmost importance will emerge that had not even been defined by the sciences of civilization. The organic and ecological mechanisms, which have already been described earlier, can then be recognized as subordinate structures of these overlooked natural laws. In the totality, a stable foundation becomes visible, which for hundreds of millions of years formed the basis of the free development of living beings on this planet in the space of nature, which Albert Huxley discovered, and thereby felt enormous pleasure, on the first day of his stay there. And finally, by itself and without effort, the solid answer to a question that is often posed but still unanswered within civilization comes to light, namely that of the meaning of life.