Why I think extraterrestrial life MUST be an inevitable fact of the Universe

OK, I must've had one of those inspirational moments where you realize stuff you haven't read elsewhere before and you have a little bit of a revelation of your own, unfolding in your mind. Not to say that these are original thoughts in the sense that we are the first to think of these, but it's the product of our own thought processes and as such they tend to become part of our own personal truth. So I just wanted to record these thoughts quick while they are fresh, and what the hell, I thought I might as well share them here at the same time. It all started with me debating UFOs and aliens, that is, the possibility of life elsewhere. I love the end conclusion of my brainstorming, but the way there is just as fascinating. However if you get bored at any point feel free to jump forward, I believe any one part of this reading is well worth pondering, but in the end it's supposed to make a coherent story.

As everything, it starts with the Big Bang. Even before I say anything further, I'd like to make a point that can be most eloquently illustrated by one of my favourite Terence Mckenna quotes:

"The Standard Model that we inherit from physics has..., it opens with something called the Big Bang. Interestingly, the way science operates is, it says, "Give us one free miracle, and then we can explain everything". Well, if science gets one free miracle, then, I think, every ideology ought to be given the same advantage. So, I think, that the miracle of the Big Bang is an unlikelihood so preposterous that it could almost be seen as the limit case for credulity. What I mean by that is, if you can believe that, you can believe anything! I mean, if you believe that the Universe sprang from nothing in a single instant from an area considerably smaller than the cross-section of a gnat's eyebrow, then I'd like to talk to you after the show about purchasing a large bridge across the Hudson river that's been in my family for generations."

So basically, we give science a free miracle unquestioningly and accept that the Universe happened to materialize from nothing. Fair enough, I mean it's not really, but let's move on for now. Let's pretend it makes sense so far. So you have a hot ball of energy that has the mass of all the billions of galaxies in the Universe today and it's not collapsing back into a black hole instantly even though its escape velocity is like a trillion times the speed of light. Fine. So why is it expanding? Is it supposed to? Has it got to? Anyway, there is this hot ball of exotic energy soup that is expanding God knows why. What does it even mean that it's hot. You say it's a property of energy. What gave it a property? How does it know it should have properties, and how many and what kind? So after a while as it "cools down" energy condensates into something the Universe had never seen before - matter. Why energy would do that, no one knows. You say it's the result of the laws of physics. Yeah but where did the laws come from? Why are there laws even? How did the Universe know it was supposed to have laws? And what determined what the laws would be? Was it all an accident that all the constants were exactly what they needed to be for the Universe to be stable? And for matter to appear? As though it had a plan. What was the ultimate plan? Apparently not the creation of matter because it didn't stop there. All these particles formed atoms, which formed stars, which formed galaxies. What a dull picture indeed. Imagine the miracle of a Universe jumping out of nothing just for boring galaxies to form with stars and planets so they can all just fall back together in a Big Crunch or expand forever until it all falls apart and the Universe becomes a desolate place with one atom per square light-year anywhere. Surely there must be something more.

And guess what. So it happened that the Universe had another thing up its sleeve, called chemical bonds! Wow, nice trick. How did it know? Not only have you carbon among many other elements, now you have water and other chemicals as well. So you have a Universe with energy turning into particles turning into atoms forming stars and galaxies and turning into molecules. You already guessed the next step, matter decides it will come alive, for no apparent reason. Guess it's just another law of nature, another accident. And so it happens that this thing called life, whatever it is, it evolves! It becomes more and more complex, eventually being coded into DNA. Hold on, coded? If there is a code, shouldn't be there someone writing it? Apparently not, this code can write itself. Amazing stuff! But not even remotely as amazing as a bunch of atoms and molecules forming an organism that can move and multiply becoming self-aware, by developing something exotic called consciousness, something that has thought processes, not just any kind, but abstract thinking, art, imagination, and something that asks itself questions like "Who am I?", "Where did I come from?" and so on. As Mckenna says, the Universe is a novelty generator. Consciousness is at least as exotic compared to the boring life of instinctual existence as the phenomenon of life itself compared to lifeless matter. A few important questions emerge here that deserve a new paragraph.

Do you really need any measure of a leap of faith to think that maybe, just maybe, conscious life is not the end product of the Universe? This is it. We are the ultimate product, there is no more. Does the Universe seem to you that stupid from what's happened so far that it would "run out of ideas" and stop here? The other question that you must ponder parallel to this is, do you think all the stars that exists today, and the galaxies that they make up, are the first generation since the formation of the first ones? Are these the same ancient original ones that formed 13 billion years ago? Shouldn't we have had one or more generations already some of which went supernova so all these heavy elements making up all these planets all across the Universe (you don't seriously think planets are a local phenomenon now do you?) could and coalesce and solidify and spread across space? Here comes the interesting part, because you laugh when you learn that we humans used to think that we are the centre of the Universe, that everything revolves around us. The irony is, with the number of humans on this planet still believing that we are the only life in the Universe, we are still EXACTLY in that infantile state. A few hundred years from now people will laugh how anyone could be so self-centred and naive as to think that this is it, this is the place, this is where it all started, where life emerged in the entire Universe, for the first time, yes it's us. As I will point out on a side-note, not impossible, just very highly improbable.

Let me illustrate why I think this is absurd. I would take you on a short trip, I would say into the future, but probably even the present will do. You must realize that every time we land a probe or an automated motor vehicle on a satellite or planet there is a possibility of life, microbes, bacteria etc. being transmitted. Even if it weren't, you surely realize that as soon as humans start colonizing space it will be a fact. The nature of life and its evolutionary properties is that it adapts to its environment and develops accordingly. How it knows it's supposed to is another question, as if it were programmed so self-aware beings can develop. Who knows. Anyway, you must admit that cross-seeding of life through meteors etc. and in a massive event in the case of planetary annihilation as would happen if we were to collide with another solid planet, is a definite possibility. As you look further into the future, say only a few billions of years from now, it's quite a high probability scenario that our galactic neighbourhood will be teeming with life, all unique according to the local environment. And 3-4 billion years from now, by which time there will be hundreds, maybe thousands of planets where the development of life will have reached the same level as we are at, those all different and unique beings will be asking themselves the same questions, like where they came from. And you would like to say: "This is it, this is the place, the one and only, where it all started." Wouldn't it be a valid assumption, wouldn't it be a realistic scenario that maybe, just maybe life got seeded here from somewhere else? That we are not THE centre of the Universe. We used to think so in terms of celestial mechanics, but we are still thinking so in terms of emergence of life. If the seeding of life from planet to planet is a realistic thing, why assume it is starting/has started right here? What would make us so special? What if? What if life arrived here from somewhere else? What if you followed the chain back in time and space you would realized there must've been 100s of branches off the main line, and branches off the branches, maybe conscious life has been doing this as a deliberate project, with an agenda, or multiple species with different agendas? How evolved do you think they could be if "simple" conscious life is not the end product of the Universe, which it probably isn't, and their planets got seeded 8-10 billion years ago? It doesn't even have to be much earlier than Earth, see how much human consciousness has evolved in the past 100 years? Where do you think we will be in 1000 years? How much our mental capacities have evolved in the past 10.000 years? Where do you think we will be in 100.000 years? Yet do you think humans are even capable of imagining what kind of exotic development is possible to emerge from conscious beings? Let alone even further steps. Let me quote Mckenna again:

"For monkeys to speak of truth is hubris of the highest degree. Where is it writ large that talking monkeys should be able to model the cosmos? If a sea urchin or a raccoon were to propose to you that it had a viable truth about the universe, the absurdity of that assertion would be self-evident, but in our case we make an exception."

What if there is an even bigger agenda that the Universe is all about? Even if it is just unfolding spontaneously, without a plan, the nature of the Universe seems to be like a playground with infinite possibilities and with an overarching tendency of stuff to become more and more complex, exotic, and novel, as if endlessly trying to exhaust those infinite possibilities. My favourite argument that skeptics like to use trying desperately to deny the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe (not really realizing its vastness, how could they be expected to, with our limited mental capacities) is when they say how inhospitable other planets must be and how special ours must be, and we are the right distance from the Sun, and water, etc. etc. Correct, life wouldn't exist on most of the other planets - life AS WE KNOW IT! But again, how closed a mind must one have to think that ours is the only possible kind of life, or indeed, consciousness that can exist in the Universe? That it is not possible for a different kind of life to emerge in a different environment? We even assume things like the laws of the Universe are all the same regardless of location and time, forever and for always. Who said so? Again I must quote Terence:

"And the basic message of materialism is that the world is what it appears to be: a thing composed of matter, and pretty much confined to its surface. The world is what it appears to be. Now, this, on the face of it, is a tremendously naïve position, because what it says is the animal body that you inhabit, the eyes you look through, the fingers you feel through, are somehow the ultimate instruments of metaphysical conjecture… which is highly improbable."

What if all that we can sense is not all that there is? Well obviously it's not, we can't even guess what dark matter is, let alone dark energy. And if you still think that when we have figured those out the Universe will have run out of surprises and we will have learned everything and gained an ultimate understanding? Sounds much like when Lord Kelvin said in 1900: "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." And we all know what happened within the following few years. So what shall we discover next? Maybe there are planes of existence we cannot interact with, at least not at our stage of evolution. Planes existing at different levels of vibrations, just like the light we see is a tiny section in an infinite spectrum. Like the densities you can read about in the Ra Material. en.wikipedia.org... or in much more detail: llresearch.org... , a 5-book series that changed my life forever. For me personally, it fits perfectly with everything I outlined above when I read things like:

Questioner: You stated earlier that toward the center of this galaxy is what, to use a poor term, you could call the older portion where you would find no service-to-self polarization. Am I correct in assuming that this is true with the other galaxies with which Wanderers from Ra have experience? At the center of these galaxies only the service-to-others polarity exists and the experiment started farther out toward the rim of the galaxy?

Ra: I am Ra. Various Logoi and sub-Logoi had various methods of arriving at the discovery of the efficiency of free will in intensifying the experience of the Creator by the Creator. However, in each case this has been a pattern.

Questioner: You mean then that the pattern is that the service-to-self polarization appeared farther out from the center of the galactic spiral?

Ra: I am Ra. This is correct.

Questioner: From this I will assume that from the beginning of the octave we had the core of many galactic spirals forming, and I know that this is incorrect in the sense of timelessness, but as the spiral formed then I am assuming that in this particular octave the experiment of the veiling and the extending of free will must have started, roughly, simultaneously in many, many of the budding or building galactic systems. Am I in any way correct with this assumption?

Ra: I am Ra. You are precisely correct. This instrument is unusually fragile at this space/time and has used much of the transferred energy. We would invite one more full query for this working.

Questioner: Actually, I don’t have much more on this except to make the assumption that there must have been some type of communication throughout the octave so that, when the first experiment became effective, knowledge of this spread rapidly through the octave and was picked up by other budding galactic spirals, you might say. Is this correct?

Ra: I am Ra. This is correct. To be aware of the nature of this communication is to be aware of the nature of the Logos. Much of what you call creation has never separated from the One Logos of this octave and resides within the one infinite Creator. Communication in such an environment is the communication of cells of the body. That which is learned by one is known to all. The sub-Logoi, then, have been in the position of refining the discoveries of what might be called the earlier sub-Logoi.

My 2 cents for tonight.

reply to post by Rolci


A sound and most logical path of reasoning if you ask me. I feel that on some level people continue to question and question things and they reach a point where their own emotional response to the prospect of possibility retards their process of questioning.

Also i think the theme of "purpose" and brainstorming about it is one of those things that people tend to shy away from. IMO this may be partly because of a standard of proof for purpose that some previous religions may have inadvertantly set up. That standard is quite lacking rather than challenging to be complex, which i beleive more accuratly reflects the "true" nature of the universe.

At any rate, i pretty much agree with you, and put simply it's almost like; "If all this other insanely crazy ish can happen, why is it so unreasonable to assume that there may be other intelligent humanoid and/or non-humanoid forms of life in our own and even other galaxy's?

Awesome ramblings of a not so mad madman! s & f

If the big bang model is correct, then matter should be evenly distributed. Also, the processes for life should apply most places. I have a theory, don't know if it has been postulated before. My theory is that eventually all species over much time, become bipedal. Call it a theory of humanoidism. This would mean that another species could be dominant on there world like us.

reply to post by Oannes


heard that. I feel like much of pop sci-fi draws on a similar hypothesis, and although i find most pop-culture refrences to be less lifelike than personally desired, i feel like that one that is an accurate reflection......or so i'd like to beleive.

Also i feel that evoloution that occurs anywhere follows exactly the same course.........but there is an aspect of the process of evoloution which allows each genetic line to evolve in its own idnividual and unique way.

I think it's a mistake to think that just because something happened once (life somehow appearing and growing on Earth) that it is somehow guaranteed to happen again. That "the odds are with it." The truth is, there are plenty of singular things that happen in the universe that will never, ever happen again.

Take yourself, for example. No matter how big or old the universe is or gets, you will never exist again. The odds against you existing in the first place were astronomical to begin with, and there's no way it will ever happen again. The time is gone. The entire configuration of the universe has shifted. Your existence was a singular event that beat all the odds.

Well, life on Earth could be that same way. A curious fluke. A batch of chemicals that happened to get mixed together in a strange way such that it makes a molecule that when put in a protein bubble can split itself in two and make half-duplicates of itself -- and THEN keep modifying itself to the point where it has a consciousness and intelligence.

That's freakin' crazy! Do you really expect this to be a common occurrence? Something that naturally just happens every day?

Until we actually find ET life (if we ever do), the most we can say is that life happened once, but it's essentially impossible to calculate the odds of it happening again.

reply to post by Rolci


Ive only read half of this OP so far, but i have to give you a star and flag for a brilliant and imaginative piece of writing , genuis man, its not often pieces like this come up on ats any more, im going back to my reading now, btw you have a great sense .of humour, i love the way you communicate your ideas.

Blue Shift
I think it's a mistake to think that just because something happened once (life somehow appearing and growing on Earth) that it is somehow guaranteed to happen again.
That's freakin' crazy! Do you really expect this to be a common occurrence? Something that naturally just happens every day?

Wo-wo-wo, wait a minute. Did you actually read what I wrote? No one was talking about it happening twice. All I was saying is, once it happens, it spread inevitably, I've explained why. You are watching it spread right now as we send spacecraft to other planets and it will spread in a large "helping" if the Earth gets hit and is smashed to pieces hurtling in a million directions until pieces hit planets where it can start again and flourish on a new evolutionary path. Once it exists, it WILL spread, sooner or later, one way or another. All I was saying is, what makes you think that life didn't start somewhere else from where it got seeded to other planets and from there to more, so we could be step 11 or 238 or 3. But you insist this is where it started and this is the moment where it is first being spread on to other moons and planets Mars, etc. with probes, Mars Rovers etc. You are saying we are special, our number can only be 1 and nothing else. Got it now?

thedoctorswife
reply to post by Rolci

 

Ive only read half of this OP so far, but i have to give you a star and flag for a brilliant and imaginative piece of writing , genuis man, its not often pieces like this come up on ats any more, im going back to my reading now, btw you have a great sense .of humour, i love the way you communicate your ideas.

Thanks ever so much, really appreciate an honest opinion especially when it's like yours!

reply to post by Rolci

Dear Rolci,

Very nice work, very impressive. I hope you get a lot of credit for your work.

I don't "know" about intelligent life elsewhere. I suspect it, but I hope we never meet it. I see no good outcome possible. But I'm really interested in your line of thought (as is everyone else).

Just to simplify things in my mind, let me make the assumption that Earth has the only life that has or can develop intelligence. (I know, but I need to start somewhere.) That life gets spread in one of three ways: we put it there through exploration or colonization; some object brushes the Earth, takes some life from it, and deposits it somewhere else; or, instead of being brushed we're smacked and life goes flying all over.

Except in the case of colonization, it's pretty safe to say that "life" is going to passing through some mighty unfriendly neighborhoods. My understanding is that any thing from a single cell up would explode in vacuum. Some chemical compounds would survive, perhaps, but anything "alive" would die or be mutated to a fare-thee-well.

But a compound arrives and begins evolving. It won't necessarily evolve to intelligence, nearly every life form on Earth didn't. And if tales of the Ice Age are correct, even that was a near thing.

Now, how likely is it that Earth will attempt to colonize? Not at all if Islam controls the planet. Not likely if the West does, we're to absorbed in spending our money in other ways. I understand NASA is so underfunded that's is no longer considering it, except in theory. The Chinese? Maybe, but if they control the planet, why would they bother?

I agree it's possible, but I just don't see "Inevitable," and "Must."

With respect,
Charles1952

reply to post by charles1952


Hey Charles, thanks for your post, I have more stuff to add but will answer you first.

Your understanding of what I said seems fairly sound, although I'm sure I've heard of organisms that can survive in space for a long time. But even if colonization were the only way, my thoughts are these. I do not see any one planetary body developing more than one conscious species as any such would have a dominance of animal instincts in its mind initially which means warfare, even among its own kind, but if 2 species were to develop in a parallel fashion I'm sure the stronger would soon eliminate the weaker. As to space colonization, I don't really care about islam or anything, civilizations come and go, if the US or Russia didn't exist then comes a China or an India, if not the something that will be to us that we are to Atlantis. Point is, sooner or later, it WILL happen. I could go on but now I'd love to post my second revelation. Hope I've given some hope though.

Getting back to the original topic I would like to share a second part to my revelation that came to me more recently and is a direct continuation of the 2 pages I started with. The idea itself is so obvious and follows so logically, it's an embarrassment it actually took me time to arrive at it.Basically what it is, once you have realized that the Universe is a perpetual noverty generator producing more and more complex... well, phenomena as it's always something radically new and miraculous compared to what had already been, and then you put this together with the obvious possibility of seeding of life across the universe in which chain we're probably somewhere in the middle, with some worlds having been seeded only recently and life still being at an infant state compared to that on Earth, others that probably seeded us having been at our stage of development billions of years ago, what you get is quite simply... an ocean of worlds that have already been affected to various degrees by the novelty-generating property of the Universe. You're surprised to hear about encounters of the fourth kind involving telepathic communication? A simple exchange of brainwaves achievable with our level of tech is no miracle to me, we can induce states of consciousness that imitate astral projection. Considering forms of life that have developed that capability is nothing more surprising. What you need to do is use your imagination and see how far you can go at guessing what you think the Universe could provide self-conscious beings after, say, 100 milion years of evolution. Humans have only been here a short while and consciousness and self-awareness is a relatively new phenomenon, especially on the cosmic time-scale.

So where are all our friends you ask? The order of the Universe is that higher forms of matter and life are aware of the lower but never the other way around, not beyond a certain width of gap. The rock is not aware of the ant climbing on top but the rabbit knows the hole is there and it can hide, the chameleon is aware of its surrounding and changes colour accordingly. We can see there's and ant climbing on the rock, we know what the rock is or what the ant is, but do you think the ant is aware who or what you are, that the fish knows of cities, the bird of human art? No. And what do you do when you walk in the garden and see a rock in the grass or a caterpillar hiding in the grass? Do you bend down to stroke the rock or kiss the caterpillar and offer them your human wisdom, or try and build them infrastructure, roads for the hedgehog, maybe build a school for frogs? No. You ignore them. You know they'er there but their intellect is no match to yours, you have nothing to talk about, you take no interest in them. Do you think that alien species that have been around long enough to develop tech that takes them across vast expanses of space and in the meantime have evolved far beyond us intellectually and/or spiritually, but in any case in their understanding of the Universe and how it operates, will stop by and say hello to a species that hasn't even left its own planetary environment? One that is still in its spiritual infancy? One that is still killing its own kind? That hasn't come over greed, jealosy and the rest? Yes, some will try and provide assistance, using their telepathic capabilities, contacting a few who are open and ready, but don't expect them to mass land, I sure can't see how that would make you or me a better person, and if I can figure that one out I think they must be well aware of same. Contact is not the solution. We are hostile toward our own kind, you reckon they think we'll welcome them with open arms? An arms race maybe.

So don't be surprised if most of them will ignore us completely and the few who will take interest will only interact in a covert manner. Or if you expect conquerors wanting resources, there are plenty of uninhabited planets for that, but by the time you develop space-faring technology do you think you'll still be stuck at the "how far can we conquer" game? Rather than explore the, by that time realized, infinite possibilities of the Universe? You want them to come for resources? For our oil? Or water? They are far beyond the ability to synthesize anything they want in any quantity they want if they've come this far. If they will want to fight that'll be for something we don't have, and probably with an equal match. Do we rob the beaver for the twigs? Hardly. Although we are still playing the conquering game, spreading and multiplying like a maniac, unable to control our own species (the Chinese are an exception but look at Indonesia where the population has been doubling every 30 years in the past few hundred years, and I just quoted a random country), even though we are aware of the consequences, the havoc we wreak in nature that sustains us, gives our oxygen, our food, we deplete the oceans, pollute the air we breathe. I could go on but these facts are well known yet well ignored, all for the sake of a convenient quick incarnation. we must grow up on our own. ET coming to save us won't teach a thing. You need a WW2 to say "No more of this". But with us humans, even that didn't seem enough. I'm surprised members of the "Confederation of Planets in the Service of the Infinite Creator" still have hope for us. I'm not sure any more. People coming to forums to convince others ETs don't exist will hardly help any of us move forward. Striving for spiritual maturity, taking responsibility for our actions individually and collectively, pursuing an understanding of who we are and what human consciousness is, widening our horizons, our scope of vision, ever broadening our point of perspective, setting goals that matter and make a difference rather than building a career, doing something constructive or creative rather watching TV, seeking challenges rather than entertainment, and then passing on true wisdom by setting a good example to our kids and caring for our elders would seem more fruitful to me.

Would I be correct to assume the following? There is either no ET life like ours in the Universe, or it's full of it? I would like to re-iterate my previous argument for this in a concise manner first and then add a more recent thought I had to further back it up. I have already shared the reasoning that, if you consider life on Earth, not necessarily sentient but any kind, then, if it exists long enough (I don't think there is much that can eradicate an entire planetary ecosystem, short of being engulfed by a red giant, having a star go supernova in the vicinity, or being sucked into a black hole), then while it exists there is a good chance that it will spread on to other planets. The possible means could be various, I'm not a genius but I can think of meteors passing by that pick up life from the atmosphere where the air is thin enough for the meteor to survive but sufficient for life to exist, say 50km above sea level. www.livescience.com... or lower of course. Or, the planet could collide with another planet or moon, be smashed to pieces and the zillion fragments could hit other planets in the same star system while some microbial life, bacteria etc. survives or even be spread to neighbouring star systems. If that happens once and life spreads on to say 5 more planets, from that point on it's shouldn't be considered a miracle if it happens again and again.

Considering the above as the mechanism through which the Universe could be teeming with life seems more plausible than life developing spontaneously, all over the universe. So if it is a valid assumption that the above mechanism, which I call seeding, can work, then what you see is a long long chain event. My question at this point is, do we really have anything to indicate that our particular planet would be the creator of this chain, rather than an insignificant link, probably a relatively young one, as measured in cosmic time, with... well, a large number of planets WELL ahead of us?

Now if you add to the mixture the possibility that sentience is a universal product of evolution, given enough time. Then the above reasoning gets an enormous kick. Let me highlight two major types of possibilities from this point. One is, we inadvertently "infect" other planets, where life starts its own evolutionary path, and develops sentience, who will start colonizing space like us, and in the meantime life from their planet also gets seeded. Or, more likely, I see ourselves, sooner or later, being able to use our knowledge and genetics to create sentient life forms more adaptive to, say, life on Mars and create a colony of them, for whatever purposes. As soon as you have space colonized, which I personally consider unavoidable, for a sentient species to do, for us, if not now then 100 years from now, or 500, 3000, doesn't matter, or if not us because we are smart enough to eradicate our own species, then the next form of life that develops consciousness, lizards for all I care. We have enough time left for even that to occur on this planet I believe. Now once space colonization is achieved and sentient life spreads, then those species will also colonize, developing their tech if we choose to do it for an experiment (let's see how thy evolve on their own while we watch carefully without interfering [familiar?]). (A different question is, how many generations will consider their origins a fact before they start questioning their "ancestors from outer space?) Sooner or later they will also reach a state of technological development where they can also play Or, just give them our tech or even some of us stay with them and then they can further colonize. Now for all this you only need that sentience be universal. And again, with the same line of reasoning, do we have anything to suggest that it starts with us in the entire universe, and believing that we have been put here is nothing but mental problems? We hear so-called channeled stuff about us being genetic experiment and stull. While I do not invest my beliefs in such thing, I must admit, as a possible scenario, it is not as far-fetched as it sounds, if you take the time and entertain the thought in sufficient depth that is. Really, it doesn't take that much for such to be the case. Any thoughts?

I'm not postulating this, simply entertaining the idea at this point, if what you experience during a high-dose trip has anything to do with a reality beyond what we experience. Just to begin making a point here I will quote TM again, just to get on your nerves:

"And the basic message of materialism is that the world is what it appears to be: a thing composed of matter, and pretty much confined to its surface. The world is what it appears to be. Now, this, on the face of it, is a tremendously naïve position, because what it says is the animal body that you inhabit, the eyes you look through, the fingers you feel through, are somehow the ultimate instruments of metaphysical conjecture… which is highly improbable."

If we learned from what Lord Kelvin said in 1900: "There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." then we will humbly assume that maybe there is much more to the universe than we know and, probably, based on what TM just said, than we CAN know with our physical senses, even beyond dark matter and energy, if we even resolve those at some point. I have a feeling this field called "scientific enquiry" is another perpetual novelty chasing enterprise with no attainable ultimate answers. Just a feeling, could be wrong, although even Mr Hawking seems to be unsure about this one.

So, if there is stuff we cannot perceive with normal senses, does that 100% guarantee that we cannot learn of it? Suppose you're born blind. You know the story. You have no concept of colours. Doesn't mean the brain is not capable of processing electromagnetic stimuli. If no one ever tells that child about seeing he will have no idea his brain could, with help (functional eyes), provide further insight into its environment.

I put these in a can, shake it, add the fact that the universe has been inventing higher and higher degrees of complexity, and ask either or both of 2 questions.

1. If it is possible that those features of the universe that you can't detect with your normal senses (say higher dimensions/planes/densities, or anything else that we can't think of but does exist) is accessible, by our brain, which, from the Universe's point of view exists equally to those higher planes. But! Not through the senses we normally use but in different modalities. In altered states of consciousness for example. A relevant question might be, what kind of evolutionary advantage resulted in the presence of '___' in the brain becoming so dominant that now we all have it? Did it always use to be inert or we stopped using it? If you now achieve the same result by smoking it, or other psychedelics, or applying other methods inducing altered states, like meditation, can that possibly be an insight into something that exists outside of us, independent on our existence? If you've done any research into the nature of the impressions you receive after a higher dose, a valid question is, where do the images come from? By images I don't mean a series of static pictures. To have a faint understanding listen to

www.youtube.com...=7266

for exactly 3 minutes or

www.youtube.com...

2. Could the next quantum leap in novelty, the one that beats human consciousness, be a kind of super-consciousness, that mixes what we have now with the ability of sensing these higher planes and interact with them in a fashion that becomes natural to us, maybe by the the activation of the '___' that's already in our brain, probably for a reason, as the Universe's preparation for the next step in the big plan (that we're too small to see due to our limited perspective) as molecules were a preparation for life.

I know I'm going out on both limbs now but isn't the appearance of life a similarly crazy surprise in a lifeless cosmos?

So to summarize, the major questions to answer here are:

-How likely is it that there are portions of this Universe that humans haven't developed senses to detect as they are not affecting our survival?
-How likely is it that human consciousness is not the end product of the Universe but rather one link in a chain of phenomena exhibiting increasingly higher complexity?
-Based on the statement "So, if there is stuff we cannot perceive with normal senses, does that 100% guarantee that we cannot learn of it? Suppose you're born blind. You know the story. You have no concept of colours. Doesn't mean the brain is not capable of processing electromagnetic stimuli. If no one ever tells that child about seeing he will have no idea his brain could, with help (functional eyes), provide further insight into its environment." is it possible that there is a portion of the universe we used to be able to interact with (say by the activation of '___' in our brain) but due to the "use it or lose it" principle we have lost our connection with it as it did not directly affect our survival, so now we consider this an esoteric subject.
-What kind of evolutionary advantage resulted in the presence of '___' in the brain becoming so dominant that now we all have it?
-How likely is it that altered states of consciousness, as a result of normal human activities like meditation, could have anything to do with the next quantum leap in the evolution of the presently probably the most complex thing in the Universe, the human mind?
-Or any intelligent guesses what the next step could be, considering the pattern so far that newer structures build on older existing ones?

The world is not only stranger than we suppose, it is stranger than we can suppose. -J.B.S. Haldane

Why do I mention this? If you've been following this topic you will have become familiar with Terence McKenna's theory (or I would call it an observation) of Novelty. If you're not, basically what it states is that the Universe, in spite of the second law of thermodynamics, has a tendency to develop structures that are more and more complex and that always build on previously attained levels of complexity, and by the way in a way that seems to indicate the existence of a "cosmic plan" to me personally, but what Terence described by coining the phrase "the transcendental object at the end of time. In short, why is it that the energy soup after the Big Bang condensed into particles, and so it happened that there already existed in place "laws of nature" that resulted in particles forming atoms, and as if the existence of atoms had been anticipated, laws for the forming of chemical bonds existed as well, even separate bond for metals, and these chemicals happened to be suitable for being a basis for what later came to be life. And gravity was in place so planets could form for this life to thrive upon and for stars to form to provide the necessary energy, which would just normally dissipate if you know anything about entropy. And then you have self-aware species, you have consciousness. And suppose life is a universal phenomenon across the cosmos and genesis occurred earlier elsewhere in the universe, then it's a fair assumption that this tendency for higher and higher levels of complexity has reached levels elsewhere that we cannot even imagine, just like you can't conjure up the idea of what life could be like in a lifeless universe where it hasn't developed yet. Telepathy and time-travel are just good guesses, but hardly the actual limits of the seeming creativity the Universe has for novelty. So we can assume that human beings as they exist now are not the "final product" and this is the "best" that will ever exist. And the reason I believe this Great Attractor exists and we are not the final product in the development of the Universe? I will go even farther and postulate that there is a kind of road map, and consciousness is just one stop on it, with its own pattern of evolution just like there is evolution of life on Earth, stellar evolution, evolution of the Universe, and so on. It is possible that there are even laws for the evolution of consciousness, like for the Universe we have laws of nature, for life we have natural selection, and so forth. What they are, we don't know. What the next quantum leap from consciousness is, we have no way of guessing. But as I see it, it's inevitable, not only because of the momentum of novelty but also the fact that the laws for the formation of atoms existed even before any particles existed, the laws for chemical bonding existed before there was matter. This tells me that the very phenomenon of consciousness is something that was all planned for, it existed in a potentiated and even anticipated fashion from the birth of the Universe, together with what comes next, each with their own laws. Before atoms existed, the laws of chemical bonds would have eluded any observer - there was nothing for them to bond so no way for anyone to guess. But they didn't just "appear" as soon as atoms formed. They were there. Why? Consciousness is also a thing of the Universe, a property of life, life at our level, life made of matter, of atoms. There sure must be laws and there must be a plan, an ultimate point the Universe is evolving towards, almost like a purpose for its existence. A lot has been but a lot more to come, it's all there but not for talking apes to comprehend.

Why? Our senses and the processing centre for their input (our brain) developed based on the need for survival of the physical body that houses consciousness, whatever that is - food location, threat detection, etc. This has crunched us down into three-dimensional space.

I consider this of primary importance, and to illustrate why I will use a TM quote I also used in my opening post.

"And the basic message of materialism is that the world is what it appears to be: a thing composed of matter, and pretty much confined to its surface. The world is what it appears to be. Now, this, on the face of it, is a tremendously naïve position, because what it says is the animal body that you inhabit, the eyes you look through, the fingers you feel through, are somehow the ultimate instruments of metaphysical conjecture… which is highly improbable."

What it means is, simply, all we see and touch etc. is not necessarily all that exists.

So how do we inchoate the unspeakable mystery of the transcendental object at the end of time with the mundane nexus of real occasions that happens to be our own existence? See what Terence says. (Quotations from here on will all be from him.)

"To my mind the answer is, it lies in the ability to assimilate paradox. And that means, you have to transcend the idea of a closed logical system. You have to live with the idea that there is no intellectual closure. This is in fact the door marked 'freedom'. But you've been taught that it's the door marked 'madness'."

Our mind in general, and especially our world-view, is conditioned by the rigid mechanics of our brain, and the structure of our thought processes, which had been put in place by culture, any culture, and, within that, especially through language.

"What we know about the world is defined by culture. And the way culture does this is through language. You can't know, or perceive, or appreciate what cannot be brought in to the domain of language. You can't publicly know or appreciate these things. You can feel them as the rich contextual embeddedness of your own being but you can't communicate them."

"So the challenge to all of us, I think, is not this one-dimensional chasing after of answers. This is a fools' game. But an actual stepping back to gain perspective."

Without this stepping back, this starting to think outside the boxes we don't even knwow are there, this ability to assimilate to paradox, or should I say our WILLINGNESS to ACCEPT paradox as the actual for of reality, we would have no relativity. "Time speeds up and slows down? Just because something is moving or is in a gravitational field? Are you nuts?" Equally, we wouldn't have quantum physics. "Both particle AND a wave? You're kidding right? You mean at the same time?" or "In two locations at the same time? The same particle? So where is it REALLY? Here AND there? Are you insane?" Yet look at the brave new world our willingness to embrace paradox has brought us. But how can we embrace paradox and learn to accept it as the hallmark of ultimate reality?

This can be done by stepping out of the cultural paradigm.

"Culture is a mass hallucination. And when you step outside the mass hallucination you see it for what it is worth. Language is partially the key here. We cannot move into a reality that we cannot describe. If we can't describe a world we can't be there. And so the interesting place to be is at the cutting edge of language. And it's interesting that the legacy of the 1960s is the legacy of language evolution. I mean, concepts like 'ego trip', 'vibe', 'bummer', and so forth and so on. I mean, we sneer at the concepts but there was no word for these things before. Once there is a word then that word is like a stepping stone out into the fog. And as long as we let the establishment set the language agenda we will be imprisoned in the tiny, rather pedestrian world of consumerism and schloko values that the establishment has prepared for us.

How can we step outside these boundaries set by language, by culture with all its facets, and by the normal workings of our physical brain?

This is attainable in certain altered states of consciousness. Which are attainable by using a number of methods. Like meditation, fasting, ordeal, sexual abstinence, or in any kind of moment of extreme epiphany. Or by what using what seems to be the most convenient method: psychedelic substances that effectively lift all boundaries, cultural or otherwise, dissolves all pre-concived ideas, where you peek a reality which we have not yet evolved to sense but is further along the path to the great attractor - the transcendental object at the end of time.

"So the way I think of these psychedelics is a different way, it's that they're catalysts for the imagination. Catalysts to say what has never been said. To see what has never been seen. To draw, paint, sing, sculpt, dance and act what has never before been done. To push the envelope of creativity and language. And what's really important is, I call it, the felt presence of direct experience, which is a fancy terms which just simply means we have to stop CONSUMING our culture. We have to CREATE culture. DON'T watch TV, DON'T read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your OWN roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are -- NOW -- is the most immediate sector of your universe. And if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered. You're giving it all away to ICONS. Icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that, you want to dress like X or have lips like Y...
This is #-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion. What is real is you, and your friends, your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And, we are told No, you're unimportant, you're peripheral -- get a degree, get a job, get a this, get that, and then you're a player. You don't even want to play that game.
You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's manufactured out of the bones of a dying world. Where is that at?"

More than stepping outside of the boundaries of culture, of your senses, step outside of this whole level of existence, of this dimension, literally think OUTSIDE the box, the box that is our present three-dimensional environment, and step outside into a higher reality. In this higher reality, or higher dimension, you can perceive things that your brain is not normally set to perceive as these things do not relate to survival. What you perceive is highly personal. For a shaman, whose life is spent if service of his tribe, it's seeing who stole your chicken, seeing who will live and who will die (and pretend to be curing the one that will live), predicting the weather, or seeing where the game are. For Terence McKenna it's consciousness-expanding visions. What is it going to be for you? Well, it depends. As Terence McKenna says:

"I think that it has to do with your own intelligence. Truly stupid people aren't interested in psychedelics because they can't figure out what the point of it is. It feeds off intelligence. It's a consciousness-expanding drug. If you don't have any consciousness it can't expand it. And I've met people who say 'yeah, well, all this stuff, and big bugs talk to you, and say strange stuff'. I say, yeah, well, you should've paid a little attention. ... The less intelligent you are the less challenging the psychedelic experience becomes because the less capable of entertaining the implications you are. Cause if you just say 'well, yeah, a lot of bright lights and there's some talking bugs and spaceships and I don't know', I guess it's because those people are so ingrained in cultural values that they assume it's not real. They just, they assume it's a trip, whatever that means. It means you have permission not to take this experience seriously. It's a trip. ... Hallucinations are as real as anything else. I mean, a hallucination is not like a Chevrolet, but, on the other hand, a Chevrolet is not like a hallucination. Why should we demand that these things co-map over each other. A hallucination is a species of reality as capable of teaching you as a videotape about Kilimanjaro or anything else that falls through your line."

What strange thing is before society almost everywhere is not alergic to this. Lots of culture believe that there are some sort of inteligent creature from the sky, some even believe that there are come from sky.
But after WW2, there are almost like systematically effort to make people start not believing it or dont want express it if they believe or have experience of this.
If we learn from history, this believe is almost in the peak before and during WW2. Even in science world, there is almost like someone make them reject the idea of it before it start even.