We give here the information presented by George Meek on his press conference followed by the Press Release.

Press Conference remarks by George Meek -- April 6, 1982

Good morning. Thank you for coming. My name is George W. Meek. I am an engineer, and an inventor. More than 40 years of my life have been spent in industrial research and development.

By the way, at the end of my remarks -- which will be fairly brief -- you will receive a transcript of what I've said. And a press kit that contains explanatory information.

I hope that years from now, you will look back and say to yourselves: You know, a funny thing happened to me on the way to my funeral. Back in 1982. I went to a press conference during Easter week and was told that my funeral would not be a very big deal -- even for me!

Seriously, we all have one thing in common -- as do your readers, listeners, and viewers. We are all traveling a road that has a funeral at the end. Because of that fact, people everywhere need the information we are announcing here today.

The same information is also being released today by our research colleagues in London, Paris, Rome, Zurich, Frankfurt, Tokyo, and Manila.

We have chosen Easter week to make this announcement -- for reasons that will shortly become apparent. For many Christians, this may be one of the most significant Easter weeks in 2,000 years.

Twelve years ago I stopped my professional career. I decided to devote the remainder of my life to intensive research into the basic nature of Man. That research has taken me all over the world.

I have built up a network of colleagues in the fields of physics, medicine, psychiatry, psychology, religion, and electronics. Fourteen of those colleagues joined me in 1978 to report on one phase of our work. We described it in a book called HEALERS AND THE HEALING PROCESS.

That research led on to still more significant study, in which our research went far beyond former levels. It was aided by the information explosion in many fields, particularly in physics. Western Man has received more light on the mysteries of health, life, illness, death -- and what happens after death -- during the last 40 years than in all of recorded history before that.

So we have called this press conference to make two rather startling announcements about our research at Metascience Foundation in Franklin, N.C.

Of course you -- as journalists -- have a nagging question in the back of your minds right about now. Who says so? Is this guy Meek some sort of crackpot?

To address that question, let me introduce my colleagues at the table here with me. You'll be getting their names and addresses in the information handout later.

On my left: Cerney, Dapkey, Heckmann, Jones, O'Neil, Senkowski

On my right: Tiller, Jeffries, Uphoff, Osis, Fuller, Swain (whom you should contact for any further information after today). At the close of my remarks please feel free to fire questions at any of these men as well as at me.

Okay, that takes care of the preliminaries. Now for the announcement.

As a result of 12 years of research, I as president and director of research for Metascience Foundation, Inc., report these two accomplishments:

1. For the first time in the history of Western man we have electronic proof that the mind, memory banks, personality and soul survive death of the physical body.- Let me repeat that: For the first time in the history of Western man we have electronic proof that the mind, memory banks, personality and soul survive death of the physical body.

What is our proof? During the past four years we have had many hours of conversation with some among the "so-called dead." Most useful have been the extensive conversations we had during the year 1981 with an American scientist, Dr. George Jeffries Mueller, who suffered a heart attack and died thirteen years before.

2. An elementary start has been made toward the eventual perfection of an electromagnetic-etheric communications system that will someday permit those living on earth to have telephonelike conversations with persons very much alive in higher levels of consciousness. Let me repeat that statement, too:

"An elementary start has been made toward the eventual perfection of an electromagnetic-etheric communications system that will someday permit those living on earth to have telephone-like conversations with persons very much alive in higher levels of consciousness.

All right, let's face it. In making public these two  accomplishments we have three very serious problems.

• First, there will be charges of fraud.

• Second, there is the troublesome fact that the energies we are using are at least in part outside the four energies recognized by present day science-- electromagnetic, gravitational, nuclear, and radioactive.

On both of these points we are in the precise position described by the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr. Let me read you what Bohr said:

When the great innovation appears, it will almost certainly be in muddied, incomplete and confusing form. To the discoverer himself, it will be only half understood; to everybody else it will be a mystery. For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy, there is no hope.

Bohr's keen insight would have been appreciated by Thomas Edison. When he created a device to make it possible for Man to permanently record his spoken words, he only dimly understood the spin offs that would result in the next 100 years.

And Edison certainly mystified both laymen and scientist. A member of the French Academy of Science investigated Mr. Edison's new phonograph and then with confidence reported to his colleagues, " I have examined Mr. Edison's phonograph and can assure you that the effect is accomplished by ventriloquism."

Mueller, O'Neil, and Meek are also in the position in which two bicycle mechanics found themselves in 1903. The New York Times carried an editorial on December 8 insisting that man would not fly for a thousand years.

Only nine days later the Wrights had the first successful powered flight. The New York Times did not deign to report the event to its readers until eight days after the flight and crash!

I'm not telling you that story to pick on the New York Times. I'm just pointing out that the problem we face today is-not unlike the one the Wright brothers faced.

• The third of our problems is even bigger than the first two. We frankly admit that our present crude devices do not work every day.

In fact there may be many weeks or even months between successful communication. Here again we take solace in the tribulations of the Wright brothers. Man's first powered flight lasted only 12 seconds and covered only 160 feet.

While we have logged many hours of two-way conversation over many months with the so-called dead, as of this date we are in the position of being temporarily out of communication. Here again our progress parallels that of the Wright brothers. That is, we currently are not flying, but we are at work building our airplane -- our communications system.

So, like the scoffers in the spring of 1904 who stoutly maintained that the Wrights could never fly again, scoffers in the spring of 1982 will most certainly say that Mueller, O'Neil, Meek, and their associates will never get their fool communications contraption working again.

We few researchers who have succeeded in having many hours of useful communication with the dead know what to expect. We can expect charges of fraud. We can expect skepticism from the scientific Establishment.

We can expect derision and disbelief. Someone will probably even say it's all ventriloquism, as they did of Edison. Neils Bohr was remarkably cogent with that insight of his:

The inventors of this "crazy new system" have a somewhat muddied comprehension of the underlying laws of nature that must be involved for it to work. It does work, but we don't fully know those underlying laws yet.

So, there you have it. Let me say here that I'm glad I'm not in your shoes. You are now in the same predicament we have been in for the past three years. Can this possibly be true? Many times we shook our heads in disbelief when we seemed to be talking to persons who had died years ago.

Only after the most exhaustive investigation did we conclude that we had indeed achieved the goal we had set 10 years ago -- instrumental communication with the so-called dead. The fascinating story of this decade of research will soon be told in a book by John Fuller.

As for this press conference today, all we hope to accomplish is to share knowledge of these accomplishments with the general public of all races and creeds.

We have spent one year writing and preparing materials to help people -- even those with a grade school reading level -- readily comprehend this work. They will get answers to specific questions about life after death. Questions that have remained largely unanswered by their ministers, priests, and rabbies. They will be able to hear via tape and records the actual conversations with the so-called dead.

But the materials we are releasing don't just tell about our work. They include a technical manual, for the electronically inclined. The manual contains photos of our equipment. It contains full wiring diagrams.

And it explains  the need for combining electronic technology with certain unusual psychic energies such as those  utilized by our associate William O'Neil. He is the only member of our research team who possesses such energies to the required degree. That is the reason we now want to encourage other researchers around the world to try to duplicate our results -- and go beyond.

Today we are releasing all of this technical material without charge to the world through the press. We have filed no patents, partly because the really great inventions still lie ahead. Most of these will probably be made by other inventors.

We seek no personal profit from the eventual use others will make of our research to date. Our only financial interest in the matter relates to the fact that we need funds to expand our own research and make grants to other laboratories. That is why we plan to sell recordings and printed material to the general public.

Speaking of recordings, let me now play for you one of the excerpts from our conversations with the so-called dead that will be on the cassette each of you will receive in the press kit.

Our researcher William is talking to Dr. Mueller. George Jeffries Mueller was an American physicist who died of a heart attack in 1967. But in 1980 and 1981 he worked with us - - from the other realms -- to help us develop the equipment that made this recording possible.

Let me caution you that you will hear a very loud and objectionable background sound. At this early stage of our work that sound is still a necessary condition. Prior to this excerpt Dr. Mueller and William have been discussing their joint video research, which we hope will some day accompany the audio communication. In this two-minute excerpt Dr. Mueller is giving specific technical instructions to William.
(2-minute taped conversation with Dr. Mueller)

I hope you noticed how very specific Dr. Mueller was in pinpointing the problem regarding the experimental video device on which he and William were working: . . . "near the third transistor in the pream unit.

There was an impedance mismatch, which could be corrected by using a 150 ohm half-watt resistor with a .0047 microfarad capacitor." What better proof could there be that Dr. Mueller's mind, memory banks, and personality are still alive and functioning in a useful and dramatic way?

Is this really two-way voice communication with a scientist who had his funeral almost fifteen years ago? Preposterous, you say? Well, now you can sense the disbelief I experienced almost 60 years ago when, with a piece of galena crystal, a wire cat's whisker and a small piece of wire, I could just barely detect in my earphone the call letters of one of the less than a dozen radio stations then existing in the USA.

Now I want to share with you another taped voice -- some two minutes of a longer conversation from the 1½ hour cassette included in the press kit. A man who calls himself Fred Ingstrom says he died in 1830 in a rural area of Virginia. Records of that area during that time are scanty, as you can well imagine.

So we have not been able to prove that he lived when he says he did. With Dr. Mueller, on the other hand, we have been able to verify all the facts of his life he has told us about. We know that he is who he says he is. Or, he was who he says he was! You will be receiving his resume. Okay, here is Fred Ingstrom.
(2-minute taped conversation)

As the months wore on, we reduced the level of background sounds. The communicator's voice became more natural, as you will note in this next sample. Dr. Mueller is inquiring about a small book he said he had written for the U.S. Army in 1947. He had earlier suggested that we locate a copy and read pages 66 and 67. (37-second taped conversation)

Did you notice how much clearer Dr. Mueller's voice was than in the preceding sample? I have now located the book, in the Army section of the archives of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Dr. Mueller's home state. The pages he referred to were prophetic with respect to the electronic achievement we are announcing today.

Let me make a brief and very blunt aside at this point. I have said that we expect charges of fraud. We are not going to spend even ten seconds refuting any such charges. Why not? Because we are in the research business, not the debating business. Instead, we issue this challenge to all electronics laboratories, scientists and inventors around the world:

• First -- Obtain our 1½ hour recording which includes 14 excerpts from many hours of conversation with Dr. Mueller, and

• Second -- Obtain a copy of our 100-page technical manual describing our present equipment and giving suggestions for research by others.

• Third -- After analysis of the above items, publish your findings. Incidentally, while I'm on that point, may I make the suggestion that you members of the press show the manual to your organization's science advisor for his opinion.

The only other thing I will say about fraud is that after almost half a century of building a reputation, internationally, for integrity in research and engineering, I am not about to perpetrate any hoax. In this instance it would be a cruel and senseless hoax indeed.

So, that's the way I see it. For the first time Western man has electronic proof that death is not the end of life. The dead are still very much alive. After your funeral your mind, memory banks, personality, and soul will be as much alive as those of Dr. George Jeffries Mueller.

I find this to be comforting news, and I hope you will share it with your readers and listeners and viewers. Maybe during these days before Easter you can steal some space from stories about murders and wars and rapes and robberies and drugs and natural disasters to share the news that man is far more than the highly trainable pigeonor rat with which he is equated by our behavioristic psychologists.

What we have announced here today may be likened to the early work of those two bicycle mechanics, the Wright brothers, who laid the foundation for the exploration of outer space. The research findings we are unveiling may have opened up whole new worlds of inner space. The mapping of those new worlds may be one of the most significant developments in human evolution.

Thank you. Are there any questions?

FOR RELEASE April 6, 1982 at 10 a.m.

PRESS RELEASE (featurized version)

WASHINGTON -- This may be the most significant Easter week in some 2,000 years. Christian beliefs concerning immortality got an unexpected boost Tuesday when Metascience Foundation researchers announced they had combined an electronic instrument with certain psychic energies to achieve sustained contact with the "so-called dead."

No visions, no seances with mediums, no random voices from the beyond. A machine -- which they 'have named Spiricom.

"For the first time in the history of Western man, we have electronic proof that the mind, memory banks, personality, and soul survive death of the physical body," foundation president George W. Meek said at a press conference held at the National Press Club.

There was more good news. The Spiricom machine, Meek said, is only an elementary start toward the eventual perfection "of an electromagnetic-etheric communications system that will someday permit those living on earth to have telephone-like conversations with persons very much alive in higher levels of consciousness." Beyond that, there is the distinct possibility of a television-like device.

Meek sounded one cautionary note: perfection of the instrumentation may take quite some time. For one thing, Meek and his colleagues at Metascience find themselves "temporarily out of communication" with the "so-called dead."

That fact, and the realization that the use of psychic energies by Spiricom's only operator to date had been somehow essential to the success of the experiments, prompted Metascience to release full details of the instrument -- including wiring diagrams. (That way, other researchers around the world could duplicate the work,  and go beyond, Meek said).

The proof for all this? It comes in the form of hours and hours of taped conversations that took place in 1981 between Spiricom operator William J. O'Neil and a man named Dr. George Jeffries Mueller. The point to note is that Dr. Mueller, an American physicist., died of a heart attack in California in 1967.

There have been other contacts, Meek told reporters, but the conversations with Mueller proved to be most useful. After exhaustive investigation of the details of his life he provided via Spiricom -- including some details that were known to only a few living people -- Metascience researchers were finally convinced of the authenticity of the contact.

At first even the researchers could not believe their success. "Many times," Meek told reporters, "we shook our heads in disbelief when we seemed to be talking to persons who had died years ago."

Some of those could provide few documentable facts about their lives -- as was the case in a taped excerpt Meek played reporters from a man who claimed to have died in rural Virginia in 1830. Few records exist in that area from that time.

But aside from the verifiable credentials Dr. Mueller offered, his earth-bound conversationalists had another very good reason to take him seriously: He provided them invaluable technical advice about the instrumentation they were trying to build.

And it was often rather specific advice. In an excerpt Meek played for reporters, Mueller was heard saying, "...near the third transistor in the pream unit there was an impedence mis-match, which could be corrected by using a 150 ohm half-watt resistor with a .0047 microfarad capacitor."

Commenting on that excerpt, Meek asked, "What better proof could there be that Dr. Mueller's mind, memory banks, and personality are still alive and functioning in a useful and dramatic way?"

For many who hear Tuesday's news, however, that won't be sufficient proof, as Meek is well aware.

There will be charges that the whole thing is wishful thinking, or made up. Meek met that possibility head-on, telling reporters, "We are not going to spend even ten seconds refuting any such charges. Why not?

Because we are in the research business, not the debating business." Instead, he issued a challenge to inventors and electronics laboratories around the world: obtain the Spiricom specifications, build a machine, and report the results obtained.

"After almost half a century of building a reputation, internationally, for integrity in research and engineering,  I am not about to perpetrate any hoax," he added. "In this instance it would be a cruel and senseless hoax indeed."

Meek, an engineering graduate of the University of Michigan, worked with Willis Carrier in the late 1930s developing the Weathermaster air conditioning system and served on the staff of Ambassador Averell Harriman in London during World War II.

The founder and president of the Munters Corporation, he retired in 1970 to devote full time to the research projects he directs for Metascience, a small organization based in Franklin, N.C.

Some of his earlier research has involved unorthodox healing techniques around the world. Fourteen prominent researchers joined him in a report on that research in 1978 in a book, Healers and the Healing Process, published by Quest Books.

At least one charge Meek and associates will not have to face is that they are attempting to acquire personal wealth by means of Spiricom. No patents have been filed, and the 100-page technical manual was released free to the press on Tuesday. Additional copies of the manual can be purchased for $15 from Metascience Foundation, Box 747, Franklin, N.C. 28734.

In order to help the general public comprehend the full implications of Tuesday's announcement, Meek and his colleagues have also prepared a packet that includes a booklet of explanatory information about the concepts of immortality presented and one and one-half hours of recorded excerpts from the conversations. The packet is available from: "Living Forever, Box 790, Asheville, N.C. 28802.

Prices are $9.95 with tape cassette and $11.95 if two long-playing records are preferred. There is a money-back guarantee. Meek said money from those sales will be used to expand research.

Purchasers, he said, will get "answers to specific questions about life after death -- questions that have remained largely unanswered by their ministers, priests, and rabbis."

Still, the researchers at Metascience are not trying to start a new religion, or to attack any existing ones. The explanatory booklet contained in the packet begins with this reminder:

"This material does not attempt to preach any new Gospel, dogma, creed, religion, or 'ism.' It does not attempt to convert you to the concepts presented. If any portions ring true to your 'Still, small inner voice,' fine. If not, reject them."

What will scientists say of Tuesday's announcement? Meek is not overly optimistic. "We can expect skepticism from the scientific Establishment." he acknowledged at the press conference. "We can expect derision and disbelief. Someone will probably even say it's all ventriloquism, as they did of Edison."

He reminded reporters of an observation by nuclear physicist Niels Bohr: "When the great innovation appears, it will almost certainly be in muddied, incomplete and confusing form.

To the discoverer himself, it will be only half understood; to everybody else it will be a mystery. For any speculation which does not at first glance look crazy there is no hope."

The inventors of Spiricom, he admits, are utilizing energies outside those now recognized by science. And their understanding of those energies is still muddied, incomplete, and confusing. "It does work," he said of the instrument, "but we don't fully know the underlying laws yet."

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