Dr JJ Hurtak – A Man Ahead of His Time

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We live in an age where everything has its place! Science is one thing, quite separate from religion which is another. Dr. J. J. Hurtak, however, has integrated these seemingly disparate fields of study and uncovered the harmony between them.

The best-selling book “The Da Vinci Code” prompted many scholars to look to the similarities between science and religion and how they may complement each other. Dr. Hurtak has been doing this for years.

Prior to Dan Brown’s best-seller, Dr. Carl Sagan discussed the conflicts between scientists and theologians in his book “Contact” and the movie made from it. This discussion has raged for over a century between academics of different disciplines, with no one giving an inch.

For over 35 years, Dr. J.J. Hurtak has been pointing out the commonalities and reinforcing nature between comparative religion and the social sciences. Disciplines like anthropology, archaeology, history, linguistics and the hard sciences of mathematics, physics, biology, neurology, astronomy and cosmology are complementary, Hurtak claims – and he has spent his professional life proving it. Often when experts in different fields are brought together, they feel at odds with one another. Dr. Hurtak, however, through his diverse scholarship and study, has worked to bring divergent disciplines together. He builds consensus in an evolutionary move toward synthesis, hoping that bridging these disciplines will introduce a more harmonious life for all humankind through the synergy and insight of multiple disciplines.

In other words, what Hurtak is asking us to do is to open our hearts and minds to other academic disciplines, other cultural ideas and different religious and political viewpoints for the mutual benefit of creating a better future for all of us. What follows is my interview and interpretation of Dr. Hurtak’s work and why some of it is misunderstood.

One of his positive visions for planet Earth is to see the unity of peoples and a movement to establish peaceful relationships among all of us. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called out this same message in church and from the head of protest lines during the peace movement of the 1960’s, and other progressives did the same. Some people are now carrying that same banner into the new millennia, and Dr. J.J. Hurtak clearly is one of them.

Hurtak is not just a beauty pageant contestant spouting platitudes about unity and world peace. He is a world renowned scholar asking other experts and scientists to see the similarities between religion and science and to consider how they can work together for positive change.

Yes, he’s trying to get science and religion to work together! Historically, anybody who has supported the more speculative sciences or tried to combine multiple disciplines and theories met with considerable resistance and malice from the general academic community.

How hard was it to get doctors to consider the germ theory of disease, after hundreds of years of agreement that disease arose spontaneously from the ether. Although the germ theory was resisted at first, it is now a cornerstone of modern science.

Dr. J.J. Hurtak, Ph.D., Ph.D. (University of California and University of Minnesota) is opening minds to new ways of looking at the world, and this includes religion, science, history and the human condition.

Hurtak is a scholar and academic with no particular axe to grind, but if you were to try to distill his work into a short phrase, it would be that he is a futurist working to bring people together and raise consciousness. And he is meeting with considerable success with this all over the world.

In his desire to bring people together Dr. Hurtak taught courses on African studies at the California State University, Northridge (CSUN) and was privileged to be a participant at the historical reception of the Chinese Ping-Pong team at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1972 with Governor Edmund Brown. This was the start of open door relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China.

In a side chapter on American-Far Eastern relations, Dr. Hurtak worked to bring Chinese acupuncture texts to America. He helped to advance Chinese acupuncture medicine, which is now a serious and acceptable discipline, acknowledged by the American medical profession and a legitimate practice recognized by legal and medical experts throughout the world.

Also in the 1970’s, Hurtak was able to work with scholars behind the scenes in helping to microfilm sacred Tibetan texts, an important historical move in preserving some of the world’s most ancient texts of astronomy and medicine. This has helped to further the understanding of an important early chapter in global history.

For 30 years, Hurtak has visited South Africa and worked with the Zulu Shaman, Credo Mutwa, to promote and preserve African culture and music, long before the end of apartheid.

Hurtak’s work has continued to span many disciplines in seeking ways to create a positive dialogue for our future. In the 1980’s he was a director of Technology Marketing Analysis Corporation (TMAC) and helped to establish a strong dialogue between engineers, scientists and government leaders looking for answers to the oil embargo and the need for real energy alternatives. With Hurtak’s encouragement, TMAC became well-known through its creation of the annual Renewable Energy Technology Symposium and International Exposition (RETSIE) Conference at Anaheim, California, where thousands of leading engineers and businessmen were brought together to look ahead and to honor Nobel Prize winners like Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg who changed the meaning of the energy equation. Hurtak took action to meet the energy challenge and to help young and old to see the importance of sustainability.

More recently, Dr. Hurtak along with his organization The Academy for Future Science (AFFS) has been helping the Xavante people of Brazil with ways of improving agriculture and educational futures, working to provide for genuine sustainability with new agricultural centers and opportunities for preparing their young people to go on to higher education.

Working with many musicians around the world, Hurtak has introduced humanistic and spiritual musical themes. Some of these musicians have included Gilberto Gil from Brazil and Alice Coltrane, wife of famous jazz saxophonist John Coltrane. Hurtak’s work with Alice at the New Jersey Center of the Performing Arts was written up in The New York Times (2006) in an article regarding the introduction of “supersoul” music, but Hurtak prefers to see it as a spiritual renewal of unity through song and the celebration of “mantric” language.

In the field of literature, Hurtak consulted with the internationally known writer, Sidney Sheldon, on changes within the human psyche for the novel “The Doomsday Conspiracy”. Sidney Sheldon’s books have sold millions of copies throughout the world.

Sheldon came to Hurtak because Hurtak was the first to confirm extraterrestrial experiments with the human race. In 1979, in an El Universal news conference (Mexico City), he pointed out the need to talk openly about these and other important issues facing humanity. In 1995, he was a speaker at the historic first disclosure conference in Washington D.C. “When Cosmic Cultures Meet” sponsored by the Human Potential Foundation. This special gathering discussed the reality of cosmic visitations. Hurtak continues to encourage scholars, governments and scientists to talk openly about these controversial subjects.

As a well-known lecturer and author, Hurtak is respected for his knowledge of anthropology, future science and social science. Hurtak is working hard all over the world in an effort to unite rather than divide. As with all who preceded him in this endeavor, he has found many detractors. Some people misstate Hurtak’s words to forward their own position. Others have misunderstood Hurtak’s meaning because they do not have the background to be able to understand his writings.

Hurtak has always respected and found points of mutual agreement in his comparative religious studies and other studies. It is the misinterpretations of his religious scholarship that detractors have criticized him for the most.

For example, while teaching classes on the Dead Sea Scrolls, in the 1960’s, Hurtak pointed out that it was the Muslim world’s academics and scientists who helped to pass on the heritage of the Classical and Hellenic world to Europe.

Hurtak has unceasingly worked to build bridges between peoples. This task is no small undertaking. He travels the world as a lecturer, speaking publicly together with his wife who shares his philosophy and environmental concerns.

Inclusion not Exclusion

He is the author of over fourteen books. His latest book is “The End of Suffering” with co-author Russell Targ.

His books are sociological and rarely political. In fact he tries to steer clear of politics to avoid the divisiveness and polarity that is attached to politics.

Hurtak’s most recent travels show what he has accomplished lately. Much of his fame stems from work he did years ago in comparative religion, and while he still works in this arena, he is now very involved in more comprehensive things. He just returned to the United States from the Parliament of the World’s Religions in Australia, where he was an honorary ambassador, as well as a speaker.

Hurtak has achieved recognition through this worldwide organization as well as through his ongoing scholarly contributions in comparative religion with an emphasis on commonalities between different religions. Yet his detractors attack his reputation regardless of his good works.

Much of Hurtak’s work is of a metaphysical nature. He uses concepts involving ancient history and languages. Part of the problem with his critics is that they often misinterpret Hurtak’s work by trying to simplify concepts that are not simple.

His extensive work in comparative religion cannot be reduced to simplistic phrases and cliches. Hurtak speaks, for example, of the black stone in Mecca as representing the energies of our changing life and changing three-dimensional universe, an assessment that is in accord with Muslim legends that the black cube contains something sacred that fell to earth at the time of Adam and that has absorbed the sins of humanity. Misrepresenting Hurtak’s words out of context, detractors have tried to use this statement from his book as a charge against him: Rather than relating his statement to the world’s traditional mythologies and religions and to modern science, with its ongoing investigation of the nature of dark energy and dark matter of which more than 95% of our universe is composed, they label Hurtak as critical of the Moslem faith.

His position, stated in the voice of a metaphysicist, is not a political opinion. Hurtak’s statements, taken in context, point out similarities in the major religions of the world: European Christians make pilgrimages to one of the Black Madonnas, to be cleansed of sins and to make a new start on their spiritual paths, while Moslems make the rigorous pilgrimage to Mecca to the presence of the black stone, housed in the Kaaba, for purposes of worship and purification.

Visions and Revelations

The misstatements of Dr. Hurtak’s critics create the divisions he is trying to heal. When challenged as to specifics, these critics become evasive. Some critics and detractors have tried to characterize the source of Hurtak’s mystical writings as “channeling”. For the student of comparative religions there are many synonyms for wireless communication with something God like. “Channeling” can be used as a catch-all term for any and all revealed extrasensory messages coming from some unexplainable source. Yet, in reality, channeling is only one method of receiving information; a vision is another. And there is another way of gaining higher knowledge, called by the ancients a “Revelation”.

A vision may be anything from a physical and mental experience induced by drugs – i.e., Carlos Castaneda and the Piute nation (as well as other Native peoples who use drug assisted experiences) – to that of a greater understanding given as a Divine Gift. Visions may be induced by physical stress, fasting, physical exhaustion or fevers, but they can also be induced by religious disciplines: yoga, meditation, etc.

A “vision” is clearly a more general term than a Revelation. Revelation, be it by the presence of an angel or higher entity, such as a religious epiphany, is an inspirational awakening that imparts an understanding or knowledge. A vision can be a revelation. Channeling, in contrast, is the receiving of information given to a person by means of a controlling entity spoken through the party that is channeling.

Regardless of whether it was a vision, an epiphany or a revelation, Hurtak had such a wakeup call and tried to explain it in a book, over three decades ago, called “The Keys of Enoch “. His book is a scholarly work that does not lend itself to easy, glib explanations.

It has been suggested that Dr. Hurtak would be well served if he wrote up something along the lines of Dr. J.J. Hurtak Explained so it would be clearer what he is getting at.

When I interviewed Dr. Hurtak in California he had just returned from lecturing in Australia and was heading out to speak at universities around South Africa to try to bring a positive future. My goal was to get a clearer handle on this guy and then try to put in plain language what causes the confusion about him, his writings and his positions in the public consciousness.

People with doctorates, from my experience, sometimes isolate themselves by using a specialized language that attends their field. Dr. J.J. Hurtak has two doctorates and is an expert in several disciplines and has even muddied the waters further by mastering many languages both modern and ancient.

Unfortunately, complicated language or the technical use of terminology may be used against any author to further an agenda or to discredit the scholar.

As stated above, the terms vision and channeling have often been misapplied with regard to Hurtak who has openly and publicly stated that he does not support channeling.

Therefore, it is very easy, when dealing with the work of scholars such as Hurtak, Carl Gustav Jung, Carl Sagan and others, for conmen, charlatans, pundits and academic spin doctors to take catchphrases out of the context of a scholarly work and misunderstand the meaning of the author.

More often than not, disinformation is not necessarily used for disinformation purposes alone, but for slandering a topic and those who support that field who are trying to make a positive move forward in society. In reality, disinformation is false information or damaging information, generally untrue, used to discredit enemies.

In analyzing Hurtak’s work it is important to understand that as a lawyer may use a specialized vocabulary, the anthropologist, archaeologist, or comparative religion specialist (Dr J.J. Hurtak) will likewise use terminology with a more precise meaning than that meaning generally understood by the public.

Dr. Hurtak wrote his book “The Book of Knowledge: The Keys of Enoch” based upon a revelation he had regarding: mathematics, history, comparative religion, archaeology, anthropology and linguistics for the future of humankind.

Revelation

Specifically, in 1973 Dr. Hurtak had what I would define as a “revelation” which means that a supernatural or rather, an infinite source “reveals” some information to the natural man who may then try to explain that information to others. This notion of getting insight from the supernatural, or God, if you will, was accepted during earlier eras as a given by many people that God or the gods revealed His (or their) will to humankind in some form or another. Since the dawn of classical modern philosophy, philosophers such as Kant and Plato have had discussions on the Noumena world (meta-physical real world beyond the five senses) vs. the phenomenal world (known by the five senses”). Nonetheless, especially since the Age of Enlightenment, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, this belief in metaphysics has become less well-accepted among a growing segment of the population.

Hurtak had a personal revelation or epiphany and wrote a book to explain it. The subtle difference between channeling and revelation is important.

Neither Hurtak nor his organization, the Academy for Future Science have ever endorsed channeling. Though Dr. J.J. Hurtak is familiar with several famous channelers and may even respect their work, he does not endorse the process of channeling. Not surprisingly, there are just as many individuals who use Hurtak for their own credibility by tying their views, writings and opinions to Hurtak’s work or to Hurtak himself, oftentimes without any real association with Dr. J.J. Hurtak or the Academy for Future Science.

Although Dr. Hurtak explained his experience in The Book of Knowledge: Keys of Enoch, this revelation and experience have been loosely described in various books by Hurtak’s detractors in pursuit of their own interpretation and agendas. But these same people fail to point out the amazing facts he had in this book that were unknown at the time of writing.

For one, he calls our sun a ‘variable star’ in his book over thirty-six years ago. This important data was just recognized by NASA this past year (2010).

Second, he points out that there will be an unusual recognition of a change in the rotation of Saturn. This was noted by NASA with its comparison of the Voyager and Cassini probes, conducted in 2004. He also was the first to point out that star shafts of the Great Pyramid point to specific stars, “Mintaka, Aniltak, Anilam” in Orion, a point that Robert Bauval’s co-author Adrian Gilbert from the book The Orion Mystery takes note of in his subsequent books. These are just a few of the myriad details that were written by Dr. Hurtak in the early 1970’s that are now accepted and understood.

Consequently, Hurtak can be seen as a type of scientific prophet who is finally being understood by a humanity no longer dissuaded by scientific thinking having to be at odds with religion. In fact, he points out that the Name of God as the Tetragrammaton (Hebrew name of God) has a corresponding relation to the codons of the human DNA.

Certainly, there are those who completely do not understand what Dr. Hurtak is trying to say especially in the re-evaluation of important symbols. And The Keys use myriad symbols and pictures to illustrate consciousness development.

I like to think that is where the conflict and confusion comes in. For example, The Keys of Enoch speak of such terms as “Christ race” which is describing a people who have compassion and demonstrate a culture of peace just as Christ attempted to show. This represents an avant-garde people who use the Light of Christ consciousness as a spiritualized people of Light. Those who don’t understand this have said Hurtak is speaking of a “Master race.” The term “Race” has such a loaded meaning today that had Hurtak written the book today he may have used “Christ consciousness” since he was talking about the outlook or mindset of a group of people, not their genetic, religious, or national heritage.

Sometimes in discussion of the supernatural very important ideas get blurred. The popular press tries to make the controversy as accessible as possible to the widest audience. Hurtak and other scholars have entirely different audiences and are not necessarily seeking populist acceptance. He is not trying to answer the questions for everyone but is posing the question for everyone. Academics process their experiences through their training and come out the other end with their version of what happened, explained in their own words.

I have concluded that The Keys of Enoch is not a channeled work. It is a scholarly reporting of an experience the author had with a higher being wherein he experienced a great deal of information with his conscious mind (higher consciousness), and then reported it as filtered through his scholarly background.

It seems reasonable to any educated person that the reason Dr. Hurtak was chosen for this experience was that he, through hard work, scholarship, and willingness and openness to spiritual development, was qualified to reveal this experience to the world.

Being a somewhat skeptical reporter, I take all of the philosophical and metaphysical schools of thought with a grain of salt. However, I do take exception when journalists use sloppy writing style, poor or no fact checking and broad stroke characterization of other people’s work; especially when they inject colloquialisms and imprecise language to explain spiritual matters.

Stargate Nonsense?

In researching this article I read many articles that had pros and cons about Dr. Hurtak. One of the most “uninformed”, in my opinion, is “The Stargate Conspiracy” (by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince) which lumped together a bunch of people who separately decided to investigate some of the archeology in Egypt as being involved in some ‘secret conspiracy.’ They took out of context fragments of Hurtak’s work along with misstating his views to come to a conclusion that was more in accord with their own agenda as expressed in their multiple writings.

In my view, the irony about discussing “The Stargate Conspiracy,” is that it elevates the authors’ mis-interpretation as if it were a work of fact-checked scholarship. It is not!

Throughout the book, there is a lot of this kind of free associative writing in this genre. And correcting the conclusions is frustrating because they don’t concern themselves with accuracy. The tabloids come to mind.

Why should anyone care? The only reason scholars try to set the record straight is that the record is their reputation.

A scholar and lecturer’s reputation must be kept clean and highly polished to maintain credibility in order to continue working in the field.

Hurtak takes the trouble to guard his reputation regardless of the seemingly futile nature of the battles he has to fight to bring unity between the scientific mind and religious viewpoint.

Most careful readers of Hurtak appreciate his integrity. His detractors seem to disregard integrity in favor of hoped for mass audiences.

The “Nine” Confusion

A perfect example of this is the use of the terms “The Nine”, “Lab Nine”, “Council of Nine”, from which the Stargate authors and others have determined, due to a reference in The Keys of Enoch, that Hurtak is associated with “THE NINE”.

Strangely, Stargate wants you to think that “THE NINE” are some human governmental conspiracy group. Hurtak uses only the term “Council of Nine,” in a very normal religious, scholarly context as relating to a Jungian archetype comparable to the nine Egyptian gods as mythological teaching figures and the nine ancient Greek gods again as Jungian archetypes.

Specifically, it is a metaphor or at least a description of angelic realities that probably would have nothing to do with governments on earth!

Hurtak’s reference must be taken in context of scholarly writing. Hurtak is an academic in comparative religion, mythology, and anthropology, not a conspiracy buff. Hurtak defined the Council of Nine “as a tribunal of teachers governing our immediate super galactic and galactic region subject to change in evolving ‘new programs’ of the father’s kingdom. ” Although I struggle to understand his definition I am clear that he ain’t talking about a quasi-governmental committee of humans.

In simple language, Hurtak is writing about an experience with an angelic or infinite type of being expressing knowledge from a creator source. We are talking about the infinite with our finite mind and limited language.

Further, Hurtak, through hard work earned two Ph.D.s, a fact that any journalist could confirm, if they would bother. Hurtak’s background is not only comparative religion but anthropology and history. He is putting this group of nine teachers in the context that we have historically put messengers of the gods, or archetypes in.

Dr. Hurtak’s metaphor is not “the Nine.” Dr. Hurtak does not use that term in his book. He uses the term “Council of Nine.” It makes no sense to conclude that he is talking about nine extraterrestrials or corporeal beings pulling the strings on humankind or that he, Dr. J.J. Hurtak, would qualify or choose to be one of this council since he considers himself a man, not an incorporeal being.

If one goes on the internet and types in “The Nine” or “Lab Nine” they would get many hits for a video game. They also might get a reference to the nine original gods of Greek Mythology or a whole set of conspiracy sites that confuse Dr. J.J. Hurtak’s work with science fiction writers such as Gene Rodenberry and popular psychics such as Uri Geller and other writers such as Phyllis V. Schlemmer, who did write about “The Nine “.

Since Phyllis V. Schlemmer, Uri Geller, and a man named Puharich did work in parapsychology in the 1960’s and 1970’s, some authors jump to the conclusion that because Hurtak associated with and ran in the same circles of academics studying parapsychology; that they all had the same agenda, same beliefs, and are working with words of art in the same manner. This is obviously not true. He is trying to educate and inspire our world to think in terms of not only global ethics and human understanding, but an outlook that can embrace other galaxies and universes in their consciousness. Toward this end, he is concerned and active with both earth science and space law. He has published papers on a new set of space laws for peace on the “high frontier” and discussions about the multinational colonization of space.

Optimistically, I believe Hurtak is part of a new movement toward environmentally and socially active public consciousness.

If one reads the news, they could infer that over the past thirty years the Western world has lost its bearings and has begun to wager its future and lost its moral values. Ethics have given way to cynical opportunism in business, in finance, in politics and in life in general.

Guilt by Association

Finally, I cannot close this article without also laughing at the assertion that Hurtak worked for the C.I.A. based upon his association with Puharich.

It is alleged that Puharich worked for the C.I.A. I cannot say as he has been dead for over 15 years. In a recent interview and in discussion with people who have known Hurtak for several decades; it becomes clear that Hurtak was unaware of any association that Puharich may have had with the C.I.A. when they worked together.

Further, Hurtak’s work in parapsychology included reviewing work by scholars all over the world, not just the U.S. He reviewed the works by other scholars in Russia, Sweden, Brazil, South Africa, Britain and all available information in the U.S.

If we were to believe modern movies, or just general common sense, we might conclude that our government and every other modern government in the world monitor the work of research scientists in various fields without ever directly contacting those scientists. Particularly if they knew that a scientist wouldn’t feel comfortable working for a government intelligence agency.

Fact Checking

That is why good journalists try to talk with their subjects, check facts, and attempt to derive reasonable conclusions based upon facts.

Readers need to do the same and not believe everything written on the internet because it might be disinformation to keep them from delving deeper into the ideas of those who herald positive steps for making the world a better place.

Society prefers to keep the status quo, which means keeping you blocked from moving forward in your thinking. If we are blocked by not discerning “disinformation” when we see it, you remain locked in the old box of perpetual negativity. That is something I learned from Dr. Hurtak, who prefers to move people out of the old box into an informed and creative understanding.

In conclusion, Dr. J.J. Hurtak is a free-thinker, not anti- any religious group! He never worked for the intelligence community. And, he is working in a capacity to unite divergent philosophies not dominate them or lead them.

Hurtak is a scholar, a teacher, a lecturer and a man who should be honored for his contributions throughout the world. Although he challenges the normal paradigms, he goes to pains to offer explanation of his writings or ideas when asked.

He’s a visionary and a good guy working for unity from east to west, north to south and should be given the respect he has earned. Pieces like this one, I hope, merely attempt to clarify any unintentional misunderstandings and direct the reader to make up their own mind after going to the source.

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By Andrew Morgan Copyright 2010 Andrew Morgan

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Source by Andrew NMN Morgan