HUBBARD: Well, it came after my planetary birth experience, and then my becoming a futurist, and I began to see that Homo sapiens is evolving, and that the power of science and technology will either radically destroy or transform us -- not only our consciousness, but our technology. And I wondered, what could be a human type that could handle this power? Because we see that we mainly misuse power, so the more powerful we get the worse we become. And I was asking another question of the universe: "What is the future human like?" I was in Santa Barbara to write a book on it, and had a writer's block. One day I got lost, and I was driving through the Santa Barbara hills. I saw a little sign that said Mount Calvary Monastery, and I had actually an experience of light. I went up the mountain, followed the sign, went to a little Episcopal monastery, and there was a hang gliders' club jumping off a higher mountain, about 50 people in butterfly wings above Mount Calvary, and I had an image of human metamorphosis, that we would all be changed. And I had an inner experience of the Christ not as Jesus of Nazareth, but as an omniscient, omnipresent field that was actually pulling us forward toward the total and radical fulfillment of our divine human potential. And I heard the words, "My resurrection was real. It is a forecast of what the human race will do collectively when you love God above all else, your neighbor as yourself, your self as a Godlike being, combined with science and technology. You will all be changed." And I suddenly thought, "Oh my goodness, Western civilization was built on a story of the radical transformation of the person to life everlasting, and through science and democracy and technology and industry we're hitting up against the limits of the biosphere. We are learning to extend our life span. We're learning to build new parts. We're learning to go live in outer space. And I made a quantum jump which I think nobody else has really made, between the high technology of Western civilization and the promise of Jesus.
MISHLOVE: That is unusual.
HUBBARD: I mean, it's never done. And I saw that part of the mystery is the science of matter, whereby the physical world is being transformed. And then I went back to people like Aurobindo and the Mother, who were working on cellular immortality.
MISHLOVE: In India.
HUBBARD: In India; and people who were studying the aging process, and people who were looking at regeneration and cryonics, and even these far-out things like cloning and taking DNA and resurrecting a whole being. Those are very weird for a biosphere; but what if the human race is to be a cosmic species, and what if Jesus is a template of the cosmic human, and what if our new powers are actually to transform and transcend creature human conditions? And so I was guided to the New Testament, and I opened up on my favorite passage: "Behold I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep. We shall all be changed." And I started to write, and I feel I was inspired by a kind of whole-system consciousness -- not to interpret the New Testament, because I'm not a scholar or a theologian, but as a futurist, to unpack it for our generation, as a guide to universal life.
MISHLOVE: In other words, to take a look at the coding of the ancient myths and the deep vision of the prophets and apostles and mystics, and to interpret it in the light of what is possible today with our science.
HUBBARD: Exactly.
MISHLOVE: And what is our greatest possible hope for ourselves as a species.
HUBBARD: And you know, many scholars are going back to try to get the historical Jesus, and they're saying, "This didn't happen, that, and all the myths are probably untrue." My thesis is we will never know what really happened back there, but whether or not, Jesus' life may be coming true, through us being able to do what he did. In other words, if the human race advances to the point of being able to do it -- and I had a wonderful conversation with an Indian guru, Yogi Amrit Desai of Kripalu. I was telling him about my Christ experience, and I said, "You know about the Resurrection." Well, he said, "Our guru's guru, Babaji's guru, was able to do this." Like Yogananda, and Sai Baba.
MISHLOVE: Sure, these things are known in mystical traditions throughout the world.
HUBBARD: And Michael Murphy's book, The Future of the Body. He uses scientific language like extrasomatic capabilities. But is it possible that actually we are not having to be bound to this physical body, but that through our advanced consciousness, and possibly extended technologies, that thought can create bodies more sensitive to thought?
MISHLOVE: Barbara, we're out of time, but you've certainly laid out an incredible vision for us, and I can see from the gleam in your eye and the smile on your face that it is a living truth for you, and a radiant, joyful truth, and that you offer promise to everyone who hears you. Thanks so much for being with me.
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