Although Judaism has little to say about the idea of extraterrestrial life, the religion, like Islam, should have little difficulty in assimilating it. According to the Talmud, there are at least 18,000 other worlds, although little else is said about them, including whether or not they are physical or spiritual. One kabbalistic book, the “Sefer HaBrit,” even mentions a planet called Meroz, where extraterrestrial creatures exist.
Buddhists, too, will have no problem assimilating the new reality. Buddhism has always understood that there are beings throughout the universe. This was taught by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, more than 2,500 years ago. One Buddhist response to the Peters survey was that “ETs would be, essentially, no different than other sentient beings, i.e., they would have Buddha Nature and would be subject to karmic consequences of their actions.” Another wrote: “As a Mahayana Buddhist, with a worldview that includes in scriptures Buddhas and bodhisattvas from many different world systems, such news would not be shattering theologically, though of course institutions and practices might reverberate.”
The same reactions can be expected from adherents of Hinduism, which also holds to the idea of multiple worlds and their relationships with each other. In addition to these material worlds, there is also the unlimited spiritual world, where all purified living entities live with a perfect conception about life and reality. Indeed, spiritually evolved humans have received guidance and help from these entities of the spiritual world.
New Religions
Given the sheer diversity in worldwide religions, there will be no single religious response to Disclosure. Some already agree with the premise, others are moving in that direction, others have never considered it, some embrace the Others as divine emissaries, and some assail them as the work of the devil himself.
No matter what the disposition of the many religious institutions, standing pat will not be viable. Change will be a bumpy ride, more so for some faiths than others. In the end, most of the world’s faiths will expand their message. God will be seen to rule over all life in the universe, although undoubtedly some faiths will continue to claim that humankind has a special place in God’s plan.
Religion has never been a static human endeavor. We have seen Christianity and Judaism compete for loyalty, and we have seen Christianity fracture into its many permutations. Other faiths, too—such as Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam—have gone through their own historical changes.
Undoubtedly, new religions will be formed in the post-Disclosure world, influenced by who the Others are and what we learn of them. They will also be influenced by some of the adept and facile minds that spring to take advantage of the instability.
At least one of these religions will explode into the public consciousness with the right message at the right time. It is possible that the top religion of the future is one of which you have not yet heard.
The Universal Order
As with all our examples, the claim is not that this particular chain of events will occur. Rather, by outlining one specific possibility, it is easier to understand the post-Disclosure dynamics that will be at work.
Imagine that the Disclosure is murky rather than clear. Authorities only confirm some form of visitation by intelligent non-human beings. Yet, we are not in any tangible contact with them, our knowledge of them is ambiguous, and they seem uninterested in communicating with us. Such a shadow world is perfectly suited for the creation of a new religion.
In this scenario, we focus on a congregational minister in Albuquerque, New Mexico, who uses Disclosure to vault into prominence. The minister, we can call him Reverend Harper, seizes the initiative on the first Sunday following the Disclosure announcement with a stirring speech from the pulpit. Rather than denounce these mysterious beings as being Satan’s army, he announces that he has been called by God to reach out, bringing them to Christian religion if they are not already devoted to Christ.
Reverend Harper puts his congregation to work 24/7. They build a website and send out an e-mail prayer. The message of his e-mail prayer is simple: Harper has received word from God to reach out to these Others and let them know that they are loved and welcome in the greater Kingdom of Heaven. Within days, Harper’s site has received millions of hits and crashed servers. As the first week after Disclosure draws to a close, Harper has been interviewed by the major broadcast and cable networks and been quoted in major newspapers and magazines.
The publicity has caused groups to spring up in cities around the United States and elsewhere, all signing on to Harper’s agenda. Throughout this media blitz, his message has continually refined itself. His small church in Albuquerque has a new sign out front proclaiming itself “The Congregation of the Universal Order.”
Next Sunday, Harper’s sermon is covered live and streamed around the world. That night it is posted on YouTube to million of views. Ready or not, Reverend Harper, the Universal Order and his extraterrestrial connection, has gone viral. He also realizes he needs something more to keep people interested.
Now Harper announces that he is starting a prayer chain to contact the Others directly and speak to them about their feelings about the deity and to communicate to them the love that people of faith have to share. He points out that governments have had more than 60 years to communicate and have failed miserably. It is time now for God to be consulted. Harper says that when the membership of “The Universal Order” reaches 10 million, the prayer chain will focus its holy energy into an attempt to contact the mind and spirit of the Others in the service of the Almighty. They will extend the hand of friendship and ask them to join in common cause to find the greater Glory of God throughout the universe.
It takes two days to hit the 10 million number. At noon the following day, again to massive news coverage, Harper bows his head in prayer as the news cameras record millions of other people world-wide doing so. From Albuquerque to New York to Paris to Beijing to Mexico City, heads bow with him. It is the largest prayer chain ever attempted.
All eyes and cameras turn to Harper to see how he interprets the results. The man who less than two weeks earlier was a mid-level minister with no career prospects now has the ear of the world. He says he has been humbled by the experience and realizes he has been called by God to be his messenger. Harper confirms that, indeed, the Others have spoken directly to him. He has been given a vision to build a church in the middle of the New Mexico desert. It will be large enough to accommodate 100,000 people. It is here, he says, that the Others will reveal themselves.
As the days go forward, Harper’s vision appears to have a price tag in excess of 1 million dollars. His critics argue that there is no way to verify any communication with this other intelligence. Harper’s answer is that the time for soldiers, lawyers, and bureaucrats to handle this affair has passed. Now it is time for men and women of faith to take the lead. Within weeks, ground is broken on property less than 75 miles from Roswell, New Mexico.
Within a year of Disclosure, the Congregation of the Universal Order holds its first services in the new church. One hundred thousand people have seats in the enclosed stadium-like affair, at least that many others are in RVs on the campgrounds surrounding the area, and nearly a billion people worldwide take part, in real time, as the Reverend Harper, the new Prophet of Contact and Channeler of the Universal Order, walks to the microphone. He turns his eyes toward the heavens and says, “We are here Brothers and Sisters. Are you listening?”
The Nature of God
While it may be useful to learn about free energy, an extraterrestrial United Planet, or to peruse the Encyclopedia Galactica, it may not be the first thing on our minds when we begin to engage in honest contact with the Others. If people could ask one single question, many would want to know how these Others conceive of God, followed closely by their attitude toward the afterlife. Energy, flying cars, and genetic manipulation will come further down the list.
Certainly, we may learn something new about God. Either these Others believe in some form of deity o
r they do not. If they do, it may be possible to compare ideas. If they do not, they may have their reasons, just as many of us have ours. It could lead to a spirited debate among humans, if not with the Others.
Most likely, what they think about religion will be related to the other great institution through which we interpret reality: science.
Science
The first great question that Disclosure will raise for scientists will be: How did the Others manage to get here?
Did they cross the incredible distances of the universe to get to us? If so, we would need to ask why most reputable scientists declared such a thing to be impossible. It will either mean that the laws of physics do not operate the way they think they do, or they have closed their collective minds to things that obviously were possible. Have the Others always been here in some manner? Did they traverse dimensions or even time? If so, it still means that scientists have collectively lived with their heads in the sand.
Beneath these issues, deeper trouble will be brewing. The shock experienced by all other sectors of society will be amplified among professional scientists.
Recall the 1961 Brookings Report. It concluded that, of all groups within society, scientists and engineers might be most shocked by the discovery of superior creatures, “since these professions are most clearly associated with mastery of nature.” Although non-religious people tend to believe that Disclosure would traumatize the faithful, it may well be that men and women of science will be most deeply troubled, at least initially. For during times of crisis, faith may be all a person has to rebuild their life. The scientist’s faith in “mastery of nature” will surely be humbled, if not broken, by the Others.
They will also be subject to profound public scorn. For years, scientists had arrogantly ridiculed legitimate inquiries into UFOs, dismissing virtually all contact evidence as hoaxes. The ineptitude of the scientific establishment in detecting such an obvious presence will be of profound significance.
With their record of failure and lack of intellectual rigor so badly exposed, people will begin to study the relationship of science to the national security structure of power. Not in generalities, but in specifics. That will inevitably lead to the clandestine world, the world of secrets, and the breakaway civilization that has grown within its secure confines.
At this point the public will hit upon some answers, one of which is that a portion of the scientific community has known about these things all along. It is just that their work was classified for decades. And the rest of the scientific establishment bought into the “deny and ridicule” concept so deeply that they were forced to simply ignore inconvenient facts for fear of losing grants, prestige, and promotion.
Even in the pre-Disclosure world, independent analysts have concluded that too much of America’s scientific and innovative talent is dominated by national security restrictions and requirements. A 2009 report from the National Research Council argued that “national security controls on science and technology are broken and should be restructured.” Such controls, stated the report, initiated to protect U.S. technological secrets and advantages during the Cold War, have become obsolete, and now hamper America’s global competitiveness.24
Disclosure will bite the world of secrecy in its proverbial ass, and there will be calls around the world to investigate the structure of innumerable scientific establishments.
There will be two other areas of immediate concern and blowback to the post-Disclosure scientific community. One will be the previously mentioned Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). The other will be the NASA space program.
Disclosure of UFO and ET reality means not only have classified elements of the scientific community known about it, but that the SETI program has been nothing other than a diversion. NASA’s controversy will be worse. Most likely, there will be admissions that NASA astronauts were silenced regarding UFO data and sightings, as has been frequently argued. Moreover, what if it also turns out that NASA had concealed anomalies on the surfaces of the moon and Mars, also something that has been argued for years. The result would be an angry public and a call for a complete housecleaning.25
What the public will learn—along with many unsuspecting scientists themselves—is that the management of the scientific community for national security purposes has been a matter of policy, overseen at the highest levels of power.
Many important re-evaluations will be underway. One of them will concern the late Dr. Carl Sagan.
Keeping the faith? We may finally reconcile science and religion. Observing the Milky Way using the laser guide star facility at Yepun, August, 2010. Photo by Yuri Beletsky (ESO) via Wikimedia Commons.
Carl Sagan: They’re Everywhere But Here
Carl Sagan took America by storm during the 1970s and 1980s and became, practically speaking, America’s public Scientist-in-Chief. He first entered millions of living rooms as the affable scientist who appeared regularly on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. The Cornell University professor had a passion for astronomy and a gift of making complex ideas easy to understand.
Sagan’s celebrity increased with the release of the PBS Cosmos series in 1980, when he became famous for his phrase “billions and billions” to describe galaxies, stars, and planets. He pioneered the science of exobiology and promoted SETI through the use of radio telescopes to listen for signals from space.
As an investigative reporter for PBS, specializing in space science, Bryce Zabel met Carl Sagan several times in 1981. Cosmos was still airing on the network, and the unmanned Voyager spacecraft was approaching the planet Saturn.
Sagan gave a live, on-air interview as the pictures came in and were assembled by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. He was effusive about what a great moment it was for humanity. He talked passionately about how this first step beyond Earth would someday lead to manned adventures further into space. He was positive that the universe, because of the sheer number of habitable planets and what he saw as the “bias” toward life, would be teeming with intelligent beings.
After the show, Zabel asked Sagan if given his feelings about a universe filled with life and humankind’s imminent expansion beyond our own Earth—he felt that some of those life forms could have already come here to see us? Might this explain reports of UFOs? Sagan reacted strongly and negatively, citing his famous phrase, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
In a half-hour parking lot debate, an annoyed Sagan made his case. He argued that the chances of extraterrestrial spacecraft visiting Earth were vanishingly small. His explanation for all the UFO sightings hit the basic points. Most were misidentifications of natural phenomena, he said. The rest were from lonely people who created hoaxes in order to feel important.
What about all the police officers and pilots? Sagan shrugged and said not one of them ever got a good photo of what they saw. No extraordinary proof meant it could not be taken seriously. Sagan did allow that the Cold War might have had a part to play in the UFO mystery. Some sightings could be of classified technology, and this most likely explained the suppression of some UFO data.
His bottom line could not be moved. He stressed as strongly as he could that, in his view, there was no strong evidence that aliens were visiting the Earth either in the past or present. Then he got in his car and drove away.
Throughout his career, Carl Sagan continued to advocate for the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence. He even wrote Contact, a novel on the subject that was adapted into a film. He clearly described his own feelings when, in the novel, the director of Central Intelligence (DCI) explained to a cabinet meeting, “There had been more than a million UFO sightings reported worldwide…and not one of them seemed on good evidence to be connected with an extraterrestrial visitation.” Fifteen years later, in his final book, Demon-Haunted World, Sagan wrote, “There are reliably reported cases that are unexotic, and exotic cases that are unreliable.”
Sagan’s twin insistence that the universe was full
of intelligent lifeforms, yet none could ever reach Earth, seemed wildly illogical for a man so open to the idea that intelligent life was thriving throughout the cosmos. This is especially odd, given his contention that we were a young civilization and that most others were likely to be many years beyond us.
One of Sagan’s classmates at the University of Chicago, Stanton Friedman, a nuclear physicist-turned-UFO researcher (and the man who broke the Roswell case), called Sagan out publicly on his dismissive stance. “Every large scale scientific study of flying saucers has produced a significant number of cases which not only cannot be identified,” argued Friedman, “but which clearly indicate that some so-called flying saucers are manufactured objects behaving in ways that we Earthlings cannot yet duplicate with our manufactured objects.”26
Why would a man of Sagan’s brilliance waste his professional life-energy within such a close-minded and contradictory belief system? Why shut your mind to the one thing you most want to discover? It made no sense during Sagan’s life, and it makes less today. What could explain such behavior from a man who fervently believed in alien life and seemed committed to finding it?
There is one answer—speculation only—found in fiction. In 1997, just four months after Carl Sagan’s death at the age of 62, the penultimate episode of the NBC UFO series Dark Skies gave Sagan his own fitting tribute. In that episode, the debunker hired by Majestic-12 to confound the public with radio telescopes searching for signals from space while simultaneously discrediting all UFO reports was none other than Carl Sagan.
The cover-up authorities had given him a choice as to whether or not he could learn the truth. Once he did so, however, he would never be able to speak about it publicly. Just as Harvard astronomer Donald Menzel had done before him in the 1950s and 1960s, he would have to deflect people from the truth. Or he could insist on his right to speak freely—but then the real truth would be withheld from him.
In the TV episode, the Carl Sagan character selected Door #1. Perhaps the real Carl Sagan made the same decision. In the topsy-turvy world of official denial, it is reasonable and possible that some day, in the not-so-distant future, a Freedom of Information Act request will uncover a document that shows Carl Sagan was in on the cover-up. For people who respect his vision and intellect, it would make a great deal more sense.
A.D. After Disclosure: When the Government Finally Reveals the Truth About Alien Contact Page 25