Sometime during this information orientation or instruction, we were taught how to eat and enjoy food, and this was a great discovery. We were told that we could survive quite well without food as we absorbed nutrients through our skin, but we could also utilize food and drink, and our bodies would dissolve every particle of it. We had no need to eliminate. Now this was important to understand, they said, because everything that happened on Earth had to do with eating and drinking, and the species of Earth not only craved food and drink, but could die quickly without it, and all creatures of Earth which we saw in the films excreted waste as the result of eating and drinking and this too had immense significance on Earth.

“All the violence you see amongst these mammals,” said the Parents. “All of it stems from the drive to live, to survive, and to have offspring to survive and to obtain all the food and drink necessary to survive and procreate. That is the basis of life on Earth. And self-aware human mammals—intelligent mammals—are the most savage and cruel and vicious of all the beings on the planet, or any planet in the ‘Realm of Worlds.’ ”

The Parents gave us to know that planets ruled by the intelligent descendants of reptiles or birds or insects were far more reasonable, peaceful, loving, and harmonious. Indeed, for the most part these species were seekers of harmony by nature, and had a very different attitude towards time than human mammals did, a very different attitude towards love, and towards the Maker.

“Self-consciousness should never have developed in mammals,” said the Parents. But at the same time as they told us these things, they also told us that our longing for love, our seeking of knowledge, our response to various patterns, our noticing of traits and similar structures, our excitement at realizing certain things—all of this had to do with our minds being made to resemble human mammalian minds.

Derek in particular wanted to know why this was inherently “bad” and I think he surprised the Parents with some of his questions. They never reproved him or criticized him or any of us, though they did seem stunned at times, and at a loss for an answer.

But they did give answers. “The mammalian mind is entirely shaped by emotional needs,” they said, “by wild and intense feelings. And because of this it invents invisible personalities that do not exist and longs to communicate with such personalities. It attaches absurd and destructive attitudes towards feelings. Its idea of the ‘Maker’ has to do with emotions. Ideas of the Maker on planets on which reptiles, insects, and birds had developed into the ascendant species did not reflect anger or love or vengeance as did the human mammals’ vision of the Maker.