Page 581 - Enders_Game_Full_Book

"Now you're talking about that stuff that came from Ganges a thousand years ago," said Valentine. "Nobody's been able to get consistent results from those experiments." The researchers-- Hindus all, and devout ones-- claimed that they had shown that human philotic twinings, unlike those of other organisms, did not always reach directly down into the planet's core to twine with all other life and matter. Rather, they claimed, the philotic rays from human beings often twined with those of other human beings, most often with families, but sometimes between teachers and students, and sometimes between close co-workers-- including the researchers themselves. The Gangeans had concluded that this distinction between humans and other plant and animal life proved that the souls of some humans were literally lifted to a higher plane, nearer to perfection. They believed that the Perfecting Ones had become one with each other the way that all of life was one with the world. "It's all very pleasingly mystical, but nobody except Gangean Hindus takes it seriously anymore."
"I do," said Miro.
"To each his own," said Jakt.
"Not as a religion," said Miro. "As science."
"You mean metaphysics, don't you?" said Valentine.
It was the Miro-image that answered. "The philotic connections between people change fastest of all, and what the Gangeans proved is that they respond to human will. If you have strong feelings binding you to your family, then your philotic rays will twine and you will be one, in exactly the same way that the different atoms in a molecule are one."
It was a sweet idea-- she had thought so when she first heard it, perhaps two thousand years ago, when Ender was speaking for a murdered revolutionary on Mindanao. She and Ender had speculated then on whether the Gangean tests would show that they were twined, as brother and sister. They wondered whether there had been such a connection between them as children, and if it had persisted when Ender was taken off to Battle School and they were separated for six years. Ender had liked that idea very much, and so had Valentine, but after that one conversation the subject never came up again. The notion of philotic connections between people had remained in the pretty-idea category in her memory. "It's nice to think that the metaphor of human unity might have a physical analogue," said Valentine.
"Listen!" said Miro. Apparently he didn't want her to dismiss the idea as "nice."
Again his image spoke for him. "If the Gangeans are right, then when a human being chooses to bond with another person, when he makes a commitment to a community, it is not just a social phenomenon. It's a physical event as well. The philote, the smallest conceivable physical particle-- if we can call something with no mass or inertia physical at all-- responds to an act of the human will."
"That's why it's so hard for anyone to take the Gangean experiments seriously." "The Gangean experiments were careful and honest."