There is a metaphysical connection
to the most significant technological breakthroughs.
Ramanujan describes how he was asleep
and he saw these numbers being written in front of him,
and he had no idea what this was all about.
The meeting of John von Neumann and Alan Turing
changed history.
Maybe Steve Jobs was receiving information
beyond the physical realm.
Is it possible that extraterrestrials
are somehow guiding certain people
to bring them to their higher levels of knowledge?
It appears that these beings are guiding humanity
into a new age of super-advanced technology that will ultimately
allow us to interface with the cosmos.
Since the dawn of civilization,
mankind has credited its origins to gods
and other visitors from the stars.
What if it were true?
Did extraterrestrial beings
really help to shape our history?
And if so, could there be a connection
between aliens and our greatest visionaries?
Houston, Texas.
July 20, 1969.
At NASA Mission Control Center,
the massive IBM System/360.
Model 75 computer, which boasts processing power
of 16.6 million instructions per second
and up to eight megabytes of main memory,
is employed to accomplish the greatest feat in human history...
putting a man on the moon.
Houston, uh, Tranquility Base here.
The Eagle has landed.
People across the world
marveled at this technological achievement.
But incredibly, only six decades later,
a handheld device weighing less than half a pound
dwarfs the total technology NASA possessed in 1969.
Today's smartphone contains
a staggering one million times the computing power
used to carry out the moon landing.
What we had when they went to the moon is like nothing
compared to what an average teenager carries around now.
I mean, the kind of computing power,
the ability to access information,
the ability to reach people.
An astonishing technological achievement.
You can only imagine what's gonna happen
in 30 years from now.
What we think is so advanced is gonna be so not advanced.
How is it that mankind's technology
has advanced so rapidly?
According to ancient astronaut theorists,
at specific points in history,
extraterrestrials have influenced certain individuals
to allow humanity to make major leaps forward,
and they propose that this has continued
up until modern times.
As evidence, they point to the visionary
who jump-started the microcomputer revolution,
Steve Jobs.
San Francisco, California.
January 9, 2007.
Apple's annual Macworld Conference and Expo.
Thank you for coming.
At the center of a worldwide media frenzy,
Apple cofounder and CEO, Steve Jobs,
takes the stage to announce a revolutionary new product,
the iPhone.
What we want to do is make a leapfrog product that is
way smarter than any mobile device has ever been
and super easy to use.
And we are calling it "iPhone."
Steve Jobs was one of the greatest visionaries
in Silicon Valley.
The idea of what he was doing is how you popularize computing.
A lot of people who were early in computing
didn't think about people using them,
and he managed to deliver into the hands of consumers
a device that was usable, it was intuitive,
it was easy to use, it was easy to understand,
and-and that is not a small thing.
In the simplicity and the beauty of it,
he made something that was, um, just perfect.
Steve Jobs and his team of engineers at Apple
harnessed technology that connected society digitally
and put all the world's knowledge
literally at mankind's fingertips.
But the seeds of this technological revolution
were planted in 1973,
when the 19-year-old college student dropped out of school.
Jobs was attending Reed College in Portland, Oregon,
when he, along with one of Apple's first employees,
Daniel Kottke, made a decision that would change
not only the course of their lives,
but ultimately the course of humanity.
I met Steve at Reed College the first month,
but our friendship developed because a week or two later,
I must have been walking around with a copy
of Be Here Now, and I was eager to talk about it,
and Steve was familiar with it.
That book quickly led to Autobiography of a Yogi,
and then led to Ramakrishna and His Disciples.
Like many of his generation,
Jobs became caught up in the spiritual enlightenment movement
that was sweeping through America in the 1970s.
And according to those who knew him best,
he considered it not just a passing interest
but a calling.
Steve got ahold of the book Cosmic Consciousness.
That's probably what pushed him over the edge.
It had chapters about great geniuses through history
and how they were enlightened, and that was the whole thesis.
That's how we ended up in India.
Fueled by his desire to find spiritual enlightenment,
Steve Jobs traveled to India,
with Daniel following a few months later.
Together they discovered a Hindu guru
known as Haidakhan Baba.
He was discovered at about the age of 18
doing yoga in a cave.
But there are legends going back that the same figure
had appeared all the way back into the 1800s.
Haidakhan Baba claimed
that he had no mother or father.
But who was this character
who had no known history before the age of 18
and was said to have manifested out of thin air?
He professed that he was an immortal being
known in Hinduism as Mahavatar Babaji.
Mahavatar means, uh, "the great avatar."
"The great incarnated being."
Mahavatar is eternal, and he can appear anytime, anywhere,
taking forms of another human being.
So he was here to change
the humanity, uh, in-in a better path,
in-in a path of understanding, a path of greatness.
Steve Jobs did spend some time with him.
Haidakhan Baba actually gave him an initiation
by giving him a spiritual name.
This is a traditional kind of initiation,
so they were formally initiated by this guru.
Babaji had said that he was a celestial being
who had come to Earth to help enlighten our planet
and to advance us forward.
And we have to wonder, is it possible that Steven Jobs
was being influenced telepathically
by an extraterrestrial entity named Babaji?
Haidakhan Baba claimed
that he had "come to guide humanity to a higher path"
and referred to himself as the "messenger of the revolution."
Shortly after returning to the United States,
Steve Jobs embarked on a revolution himself,
the development of the microcomputer,
along with Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak.
Steve was not in it for money.
He was in it for the mission
of transforming the world.
The Apple II was the first mass-market personal computer.
Woz of course was the all-around genius
who created the whole design and all the software.
But the thing that Steve gets huge credit for
is having enough passion for what he saw the future bringing
that he just did not give up.
And the iPhone of course is the computer now
that is taking over all our lives.
Transformed everything, everything.
Steve Jobs continued to practice meditation
throughout the rest of his life,
often finding refuge at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center
in California's Los Padres National Forest.
It was here, while deep in meditation,
that Jobs thought he received much of the inspiration
that transformed the modern world.
Meditation does help
to connect with a higher source, a higher force,
because then one becomes one with the divine,
so they could, you know, in-in a sense, uh,
download the knowledge, wisdom directly from them.
Is it possible that Steve Jobs
received guidance from an otherworldly source?
And if so, could it be that he was just one
of a number of key visionaries
who were chosen by extraterrestrials
to lead humanity into the future,
as ancient astronaut theorists suggest?
Perhaps further answers can be found
by examining an Indian mathematician
who was decades ahead of his time.
Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia.
December 2012.
After years of work,
mathematician Ken Ono and two of his former students
come up with a groundbreaking mathematical formula
that will allow scientists to study black holes
in an entirely new way.
Incredibly, they achieved this feat
by studying a single paragraph written
by an Indian mathematician over nine decades earlier...
Srinivasa Ramanujan.
Srinivasa Ramanujan was an Indian mathematician
who is unlike any other genius in world history.
Ramanujan's work has now formed the basis
for superstring theory and multidimensional physics.
Some of the most advanced math
that all the high-end scientists are still using today
is called "modular functions,"
which could lead to time travel, antigravity,
limitless free energy, all of this futuristic technology.
He was able to take a little that he knew
farther than most mathematicians would be able to take them.
He had the vision to see what was important.
There are just so many beautiful ideas that he had,
some of which are just waiting to be developed.
Ramanujan made breakthroughs
in integral calculus,
which can be used to determine the drag force buffeting a wing
as it slides through the air
or the gravitational effects of the Earth
on a man-made satellite.
But perhaps what is most noteworthy
is that Ramanujan insisted these baffling theorems
were not simply the product of his own genius.
He claimed they were communicated to him
by an otherworldly being.
Srinivasa Ramanujan was born
in Erode, India, on December 22, 1887,
and was considered a miracle child
because he was the only one of his mother's four children
to survive infancy.
Even as a young boy, he was obsessed with numbers.
From a very early age, just instinctively,
he was thinking about numbers, he was calculating.
He was fascinated by numbers.
Numbers, he said, have personalities for him,
that they had a kind of life for him.
There are a lot of stories
about how he was so focused on mathematics
that he would ignore a lot of his other subjects.
Ramanujan grew up in the town of Kumbakonam,
in a house within view of the impressive Sarangapani Temple.
The mathematical prodigy
spent much of his childhood at the temple
among thousands of carvings of Hindu gods.
According to Ramanujan's childhood friend,
he would often go to the temple and work on mathematics.
The friend had a memory of coming into the temple
and finding Ramanujan
with all these inexplicable figures surrounding him.
The figures that surrounded Ramanujan
were in fact complex mathematical equations
that he had written in chalk on the stone slabs
of the temple floor.
He would often say
that they were communicated to him in his dreams
by the Hindu goddess Namagiri Thayar.
He always insisted, and he was very adamant about this,
that the mathematical discoveries he made
came to him in dreams and visions
provided by the goddess Namagiri.
In these visions,
he would see these fantastic, beautiful mathematical formulae
un-scrolling before him.
Numerous times throughout Ramanujan's youth,
he would abruptly vanish for days at a time,
then return home without explanation.
His neighbors considered him to be psychic.
And he suggested that numbers connect us
to higher powers in the universe.
Could it be that Ramanujan really was
receiving information from an otherworldly being?
Ever since he was a little child,
he was having these visions of the Hindu goddess Namagiri,
and on his own, in poverty in India,
he re-derives over a hundred years' worth
of Western mathematics.
But then the goddess Namagiri is giving him
all this other information
that goes way beyond where Western mathematics had gone.
For someone like Ramanujan,
who grows up in a devout Hindu family in southern India,
everything that-that he experiences has to do
with Hindu gods and goddesses.
But is it possible that it was really
some kind of extraterrestrial
who was helping him develop these mathematical theorems?
There is abundant evidence
of extraterrestrial intervention that is involved
in many of the most significant technological breakthroughs
that we see in our world,
and these could come through the form of dreams
or actual contacts with some sort of intelligent beings.
Could Srinivasa Ramanujan,
who practiced meditation and studied Hinduism,
much like Steve Jobs,
have received guidance from otherworldly beings
that have been directing the course of humanity
for thousands of years?
Is this why he was able to devise theorems so complex
that the world's greatest mathematicians
are still struggling to understand them 100 years later?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes
and suggest further evidence can be found
by examining the man who helped bring about
the end of World War II,
Alan Turing.
London, England.
June 23, 1912.
In the residential district of Maida Vale,
Alan Turing is born.
By the age of six,
his teachers identify him as a genius.
By 16, he is studying
the most advanced work of Albert Einstein.
And much like the Indian mathematical genius.
Srinivasa Ramanujan, he has a single-minded focus
and thinks differently from his peers.
Alan Turing was
the other great mathematical genius of the 20th century,
but of a completely different stripe
than Srinivasa Ramanujan.
His vision was born
out of an extraordinary literal-mindedness.
By taking things literally, he was able to go places
that people who were less literal-minded
would never be able to go.
In fact, Alan Turing was so literal-minded
that there has even been speculation
he had Asperger's syndrome.
But some ancient astronaut theorists propose
his unique intellect may reveal an otherworldly influence,
one that intervened during mankind's deadliest conflict.
Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England.
March 18, 1940.
Six months into the Second World War,
British military intelligence sets up
a top-secret base in Bletchley Park,
50 miles northwest of London.
Known as "Station X,"
it is home to a handpicked team of mathematicians
led by Alan Turing that work tirelessly to crack
the infamous Nazi encoding device
called the Enigma machine.
The Enigma machine was an encryption machine
that worked very simply,
at least for the person operating it.
You would have a message to convey,
and you would type the first letter.
Its gears would turn.
And then a light would illuminate
with another letter.
And that letter you would write down.
The machine was putting the letter
through a huge range of substitutions.
In 1940, Turing accomplished
what nearly every expert at the time had deemed impossible.
He solved the Enigma code.
At Bletchley Park, Turing conceived
of a way of reverse engineering an Enigma to run it backwards.
It wasn't easy, but they built
this very complicated machine called the bombe.
If you could separate out the hardware
from the sequences of operations...
what we now call software...
you could create a machine that could decode messages,
but it could also do other things, including mathematics,
and I think that he realized that this machine could be made
into something that was quite, uh, a bit more capable.
In the process of creating this machine,
Turing also developed a technology far more significant
than anyone at the time could have imagined:
the world's first computer.
It's particularly interesting
how some of these visionaries think differently,
so you have to wonder if these people
are tapping into some kind of universal mind,
and even that somehow telepathically
extraterrestrials are giving them information
so that they can see these universal truths.
Curiously, in one of his papers,
Turing wrote that telekinesis and extrasensory perception
should be taken seriously
and questioned the existence of free will.
Is it possible,
as ancient astronaut theorists suggest,
that he wrote this because he himself was somehow in contact
with extraterrestrial intelligence?
Perhaps further clues can be found
by examining a meeting Turing had
before the war with another mathematical genius,
John von Neumann.
John von Neumann was a Hungarian mathematician
who emigrated to the United States
and took a position at Princeton University.
He had an incredible talent
for mathematics and physics in all kinds of fields.
Like Turing, von Neumann contributed to ending.
World War II through the development of technology.
He came up with a way to use machine calculation
to determine how to compress plutonium for the atomic bomb.
This technology was essential to the success of the project,
and it might never have been realized
had von Neumann not crossed paths with Alan Turing.
We know that Alan Turing,
uh, met John von Neumann at Princeton.
Von Neumann was familiar with Turing's theoretical papers.
What we don't know
is the substance of their conversations.
A lot of that was very highly classified.
Very, very little information ever leaked out.
It has been argued by some historians of computing
that John von Neumann absorbed the fundamental idea
of the universal machine from Alan Turing.
According to historians,
Turing and von Neumann were largely responsible
for inventing the first computers
and accelerating the advancement of technology exponentially.
But is it possible the meeting of these two geniuses
was more than mere chance?
It could very well be
that extraterrestrial intelligence was involved
in making sure that von Neumann and Turing
met each other in 1935
and steered their development to ensure
that the computer would be brought out on schedule
at the right time, which is exactly what we see.
Is it possible that extraterrestrials
brought together Turing and von Neumann
to accelerate the development of computer technology?
Ancient astronaut theorists say yes
and suggest that at the same time
aliens were helping mankind
to develop another important technology,
a rocket that would reach the stars.
Kaluga, Russia.
December, 1903.
Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
publishes the article.
"Exploration of Outer Space by Means of Rocket Devices."
Most scientists of the time consider
the topic of space exploration
highly speculative and even far-fetched,
considering the Wright Brothers had just achieved
the first powered flight that same month.
But many of the major points
contained in Tsiolkovsky's article,
such as the proposal that the speed required
for orbit around the Earth is five miles per second
and that this could be achieved by means of a multistage rocket,
would be proven to be incredibly accurate.
He's a fascinating character
and the father of Soviet rocketry,
who actually designed the rockets
that put the first man into space,
that put the first dog into space,
that launched Sputnik, the first satellite, into space in 1957.
Tsiolkovsky's main source of inspiration
was his friend and mentor, Nikolai Fyodorov,
a Russian Orthodox Christian philosopher.
Fyodorov was one of the founders of "cosmism,"
which was a precursor to ancient astronaut theory.
The cosmists began with Nikolai Fyodorov
in the 1870s and 1880s, and they believed
that human civilization actually had origins, uh, in outer space
and that it was our destiny as human beings
to move back into space,
and we would go back to our origins from whence we came.
Like Fyodorov,
Tsiolkovsky came to be a cosmist himself.
And he not only inspired Soviet rocket scientists
but also the genius responsible
for putting the first man on the moon,
Wernher von Braun.
Germany.
May 1945.
After six years
of the deadliest warfare the world has ever seen,
the Nazis surrender to the Allied Powers.
Germany's top rocket scientist,
Wernher von Braun, predicted the defeat months earlier
and by deceiving his superiors has managed
to move his team of scientists south into Austria
to surrender to the American forces.
Acquiring von Braun was considered
a major coup by the United States.
His work in rocketry was so important
that the Soviets scoured his former headquarters
at Peenemunde Army Research Center
in search of any information he may have left behind.
What they discovered
were the writings of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky
and found that almost every page
was embellished by von Braun's comments and notes.
Wernher von Braun
was heavily influenced by Tsiolkovsky.
Tsiolkovsky himself had this concept
of human beings being birthed in the stars.
And if you really think about it,
could it be that these scientists coming out of Russia
had some kind of advanced knowledge?
Could they have been communicating
with some form of advanced extraterrestrial intelligence
that was influencing the space race
and influencing this push
to get humanity to go back to the stars?
As a young boy, Wernher von Braun was fascinated
with the science fiction of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells
and was convinced that he could make
their visions of space travel a reality,
even going so far as to tell his mother
that he would build a machine that would take man to the moon.
But when von Braun actually achieved this in 1969,
it was such an extraordinary technological leap
that some people believed, like Tsiolkovsky,
he too was guided by extraterrestrial beings.
Wernher von Braun
was utterly captivated by the idea
that we belong in the stars.
It's as if the Earth is a seed,
and if that seed never germinates,
then it could just die.
We need to go out into space.
And that vision of a new tomorrow
is what fueled him to want to succeed even further.
That leads me to suggest the possibility
that some sort of extraterrestrial contact
might have happened with Wernher von Braun.
Something or someone might have reached him
and saw where we needed to go as a civilization
and gave him the tools and the insights that he needed
to be able to build our way out into space.
Is it possible,
as ancient astronaut theorists suggest,
that Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Wernher von Braun
were aided by extraterrestrial beings?
And if so, why?
Perhaps the answer can be found by examining the predictions
not of science but of science fiction.
How far out can you get?
That's the big question in television today,
and CBS has the big answer.
Its fabulous new series, Lost in Space.
In 1965, the CBS network announced
the debut of what would become
television's first prime-time science fiction series.
Wouldn't Dad like to use this gadget
to beat that thruway traffic?
Set in the far-future of 1997,
Lost in Space told the story of a family of space colonists
who become marooned on an alien world.
It underscored America's growing acceptance
that mankind's future was not here on Earth
but out in the vast reaches of the galaxy.
This trend continued
when the following year NBC premiered Star Trek,
the epic saga of a futuristic starship
whose crew is charged with exploring the galaxy,
seeking out new life and new civilizations,
and going where no man... or woman...
had ever gone before.
Interestingly, both programs would appear
in America's living rooms
years before mankind would even step foot on the moon.
It is amazing that today we are living in times
where only 40, 50 years ago,
people were fantasizing about the future.
And here we are experiencing that said future.
Not all of it, but many things.
Where do we stand 50 years from now?
I think science fiction is a part of disclosure.
Over time, science fiction has become science fact.
Ignition sequence start.
Of course, science fiction's role
in pre-envisioning what would ultimately become
the world's "science fact" was nothing new.
Space stations, intelligent robots,
extraordinary communication devices,
Even Star Wars-type space weapons
were all pre-envisioned in the creative minds
of authors like Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke,
Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury.
And their works later formed the basis
for countless films and television series.
Great innovation has come from science fiction literature.
Arthur C. Clarke imagined the satellite before the engineers.
They were reading science fiction
when they came up with the idea to do that.
This has happened repeatedly where a creative artist
will come up with a new idea just to tell a story,
but it's coming from the unconscious.
I mean, look at Jules Verne. Go back and read Jules Verne.
It's really interesting.
Like, a lot of the stuff we made,
like, he just thought it up.
And these ideas sprung out of a man's mind,
and it has become reality.
And I think that they've turned to reality
because of young kids reading these stories
and eventually growing up and realizing,
"Wait a second.
"We have all these technological capabilities.
"What if I can bring it
to the next level with a new invention?"
So science fiction can serve as a direct path to science
that has been inspired by fantasy.
But are many of today's scientific wonders
merely the product of fertile minds and wild imaginations?
Or do they have their origins elsewhere,
possibly light-years away?
There's an interesting theory,
the idea that certain profound science fiction writers
may not have just simply come up with the ideas
for their stories on their own, albeit they may have thought
they came up with the ideas on their own.
Perhaps there was an outside force
presenting it to them.
Have science fiction authors and writers
been inspired by extraterrestrials?
Could extraterrestrials have given
humanity glimpses of its own future through science fiction?
And if the creative minds of the past
have been able to pre-envision
the incredible technologies of the present day,
then should we also regard the science fiction of today
as a guide to where mankind is headed next?
Where do we stand 50 years from now?
And if we're talking about science fiction today,
one recurring theme is what happens
if we gain the ability to upload our consciousness
to some type of a computer?
Is it possible that our future may lie in a digital realm?
I would not want my thoughts to be uploaded to a computer,
because then we really become glass.
This planet will cease to exist within two seconds
if we all know each other's thoughts.
So there's a fine line we have to walk
between what can and will ensure our future
and what can and will be our assured annihilation.
According to many ancient astronaut theorists,
the visions of a bleak future...
as depicted in today's science fiction...
could, if realized, prove as perilous
as they once seemed profound.
But they also suggest
that the messages that mankind's visionaries receive
may not be dire predictions as much as they are warnings.
Warnings intended to help mankind
avoid annihilation.
Today the theorems of Srinivasa Ramanujan
are being applied in branches of physics that may allow us
to unlock the greatest mysteries of the cosmos.
The computer models
established by Alan Turing and John von Neumann
have advanced human technology by leaps and bounds.
The advances in rocketry
made by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Wernher von Braun
have allowed for greater exploration of space.
And Steve Jobs' contributions to the microcomputer revolution
have put all of the world's collective knowledge
at our fingertips.
But has the work of these visionaries and others
really been directed by an extraterrestrial intelligence?
And if so, to what end?
We have been the experiment of, I believe, extraterrestrials.
I think they have nurtured us to see how we develop.
And they're probably saying,
"Gosh, look at these humans, look how fast they can advance."
And we're getting better and better and better
with technology.
But Elon Musk from Tesla and physicist Stephen Hawking
all warn us, "Be careful of artificial intelligence."
It could go too far."
I agree with them. We need to be careful.
Something too that comes out
of a lot of the UFO literature of the '50s and '60s,
that extraterrestrials were
allegedly contacting certain people
and warning them of the dangers of nuclear power
and that what we were doing with our atomic weapons
was very destructive
and that we could destroy our own planet with this technology
and that the extraterrestrials themselves
were very concerned about this.
And so, in many ways, we must be very careful
of how we use our own technology.
There's a reason why we are where we are today.
We have made these advances in technology
for one and one reason only...
to return to the stars,
because that's where we came from.
And now the question is:
are we going to fulfill our destiny or not?
Is it possible
that humanity's greatest visionaries
have been unknowingly carrying out
some sort of extraterrestrial master plan?
One intended to prepare mankind
for the ultimate "close encounter"?
And if so, does this mean
that our future has been somehow predetermined?
Or are we simply being given the tools
with which to shape our own destiny?
Perhaps the answer can be found
in the pages of a science fiction book,
in the palm of our hand within a simple cell phone,
or in the latest robotic technology.
Perhaps it is carved on the stone walls
of an as-yet-undiscovered tomb.
Or even as we sit,
right before our eyes.