Gerry Forster - About Me!
There’s not a lot to tell you regarding my background, except to say I was born and raised in Britain, midway between the two major world wars, and educated to grammar-school level. My working-career began during the Nazi Blitzkrieg years, as an apprentice engineering draftsman. I really wanted to be an artist, but Dad didn’t see it my way. He felt that all artists were effeminate pansies! In those days, draftsmen learned about machinery the hard way by getting their hands filthy and coming to grips with engineering design on the factory floor. I only used a drawing-board at night-school, four nights a week, in between Nazi air-raids.
However, the exigencies of war, and looming military service disrupted all that, and it wasn’t until the war ended that I found myself free at last to choose my own career and order my own life-interests. My artistic life began as a storyboard-artist in an animation studio, where I was fortunate to be tutored by one of Disney’s top creative story-men, Ralph Wright. The whole studio was supervised by David D. Hand, who had directed such great box-office hits as “Snow White” and “Bambi”. Several key Disney chiefs were then “on-loan” to the Rank Organization, to help get a British cartoon-film industry going. Sadly, the studio folded, but at least I‘d been introduced to the creative world. After that I pursued my artistic leanings in several commercial fields, including technical-illustration - thanks to my wartime draftsman-training – which has many times stood me in excellent stead! But my real career in art began when, together with my beloved wife and three children, I migrated to Australia in the early 1950s. Before long I had my own commercial art studio, and even managed to find time to hone my skills as a fine-artist in oils and water-color.
However, along the way, I also rediscovered one of my boyhood passions for books on the ancient past. When I was a youngster, I read several books in school that were to fire my imagination for life! Conan Doyle’s “The Lost World” was one of them, as well as Jules Verne’s “Journey To The Center of The Earth”. On my forays into the local public library, I discovered Rider Haggard’s fascinating books about the adventures of “Allan Quatermain” and friends. They were full of wonderful verbal images of lost cities and ancient hidden civilizations, and who could forget “She”! Around that time, I also began reading Rice Burroughs, and found his “Pellucidar” stories of the Inner Earth utterly absorbing. In fact most of my free time as a growing youth were spent with my nose buried in such books, while my pals were outdoors playing sport and other such healthy pursuits!
But it wasn’t until my mid-years - when I discovered religion and spirituality - that I really awoke to the possiblility that these fantasies might possess a grain of truth in them. As a new overnight-convert to Christianity, I suddenly became aware that there is much more to this world and universe, than we can ever sense with our normal faculties. It was then, when I’d become seriously imbued with the notion of an invisible “Otherworld”, that I began considering alternative planes of existence, physical and spiritual. I found myself trying with my inner mind, to probe into realms of existence that lie far beyond our normal physical or mental reach. I had always been an outspoken skeptic of anything psychic till then, but one cannot embrace a theistic religion without acknowledging the existence of a spiritual aspect to oneself and thus of the entire universe. This was my “turning-point”, and after that, I began to look at the world and its tremendously mysterious past through newly-opened, inner eyes.
It soon dawned on me that much of the “knowledge” I’d gained via a normal orthodox education was purely secular, and that it was founded on theoretical preconceptions. These notions and ideologies had been passed down unquestioned through so many generations that they had first become traditions, and then, by constant repetition and blind acceptance, had evolved into “facts”. To my horror, I realized that even the religion that had roused my spirit from its torpor was also traditional and thus possibly false! But I had to draw the line somewhere, so I decided to cling, if not to the letter of my new belief, at least to the Spirit.
Being convinced that our universe was designed by a Super Intellect, and is not the result of blind chance, I’m still comfortable in that belief. Although this amazing new revelation came to me later in life, I had been mentally prepared from my youth to accept the wonderful possibilities I now gladly embrace. When I was a young man, I read many learned tomes on scientific things such as astronomy, archaeology, ancient history, Darwinian evolution and geology. I had also read whatever ancient classics I could get my head around. I guess that, In my youthful arrogance, I thought I knew everything worth knowing!
I recall how, in my mid-twenties, I wrote a series of articles on astronomy for a magazine, blithely expounding the then undisputed theory of how the stars and the solar system were formed. With neatly-drawn diagrams and illustrations, I confidently explained the formation of the Solar System from a cigar-shaped extrusion of matter drawn out of the Sun by a closely passing star. And, likewise, the composition of the Earth, from its nickel-iron core outward, and how a near-miss by a giant meteor had torn out a great chunk of the Earth’s still-semi-molten crust to eventually create our Moon, leaving a great depression to fill with water and become the Pacific Ocean. I pointed out the volcanic “Ring of Fire” around the Pacific as undeniable proof of this occurrence. Today, of course, I regard it to be more possibly the residual proof of the catastrophe that overtook James Churchward’s ancient continent of Mu, when the subterranean gas-chambers blasted out their contents and collapsed, causing that fabulous continent to subside beneath the waves.
So there, friends, you have my motivation for writing these articles. I don’t profess to have the full answers to any of the mysteries I’ve explored, but I do try to offer alternatives to some of the currently-accepted theories. (Which orthodox science still persists in ramming into the minds of children as concrete facts.) My objectives are simple. I’m trying to get people to think for themselves; to formulate hypotheses and theories of their own, and to make them known. By studying the ideas of others, whether trained in science or simply employing intuitive common sense, we, or those who follow us, will surely one day discover the truth of many of these baffling mysteries.
For your guidance and understanding - whether you think me a crank or a misguided fool, I care little - here are some of the tenets of my personal belief-system. I believe that a Creative Intellect whom many call God does exist, and that He is responsible for all the Universe(s). I believe that Atlantis existed. I believe that Mu existed. I believe that there was once (and may still be) humanoid and other familiar life-forms on the planet, Mars, and upon (or within) other planets, too. I also believe that all the planets may eventually prove to be hollow, and contain developed life upon their inner surfaces. I believe, too, that there have been many other ancient civilizations on Earth than we can even begin to imagine. And that they possessed ancient, highly-developed, but far less cumbersome technologies, far beyond our modern comprehension! I firmly believe, that the poles have not always been frozen, but were once homes to abundant and luxurient life! These are just a few of my deep inner convictions - as will become more apparent as my articles continue!
However, with Agent Mulder of “X-Files” fame, I believe not only that “The Truth Is Out There!” but that it’s also “In Here! Inside our Hollow Earth, our hearts and our minds. All we have to do is to find it and dig it out! I wish you all “Good Hunting and Good Digging!”
Sincerely yours,