Aliens and ancients, opinions and opinions.

Let me preface this post by saying that it's full of personal ideas and beliefs, many of which are not exactly mainstream. It's also full of ideas that I think are crazy and don't agree with. Let's hope, at the very least, it's an entertaining, if not wholly interesting read.

After reading a lot about the subject of aliens over the years, and laughing at a lot of the most ridiculous crap ever, and just recently seeing a special on the History Channel about aliens in ancient religions, I have come to a point where I can't remain passively silent anymore. I choose to be passively vocal.

First thing's first. I do believe in "aliens," though I am in no way convinced of alien sightings, contact, and technology. It's fairly simple logic, which while being straightforward, may lead to me being ultimately wrong. If the universe is infinite, conceivably and practically, and has a really large number of galaxies, filled with stars and other matter, then I think it's safe to say there's probably a really large number of planets out there. The more planets there are, the more likely there is to one that is like ours, and can support life. Given the vastness of the universe, there's probably some sort of life out there somewhere.

Also, assuming we don't know everything there is to know in the universe (which is a really safe assumption to me), then there's a chance that there is a way for life to exist outside of our limited experience with it. That is to say, non-carbon-based life may be possible somewhere and under some conditions. After all, most of what we put forth (in invention, concept, and theory) is based on what we know or have experience with. It's extremely difficult, and some may argue impossible, to put forth an idea that has no basis in something we don't already know. When children draw weird animals, rarely do you see animals that are completely unlike what we actually have. Upon explanation, you'll see parts of animals that the child is familiar with put together. Just an example. So let's say it's a possibility, however remote it may be.

So we have aliens. But do we really have "proof" from antiquity? We barely have "proof" now, when sightings are photographed and recorded in video. To say with any sort of certainty that the vimanas (Deva: विमान) that are described as "flying vehicles" are in actuality flying machines not unlike modern aircraft is completely absurd. Yes, there's a lot of stuff in religious texts (especially Hinduism) that may seem really crazy. Actually, there's a lot of stuff in there that IS crazy, depending on who you talk to. But really, that doesn't mean that it's necessary.

Ancient ideas aren't always so remote and fanciful. The same fascination that the ancients had with flight motivated the Wright brothers to create, motivated many of the science fiction and fantasy writers from all eras, and motivated many others to dream. It's much less far-fetched to think that perhaps people from antiquity really just used metaphors or believed in less complicated things, and there was some really huge game of telephone that reached beyond their time. And I'm not necessarily saying that those from years gone by elaborated and exaggerated their own stories. Instead of always arguing how accurate things are due to their source, sometimes it's more prudent to argue how accurate things are due to their transcription. When you think about this through the ages, it adds up. To what degree are WE perverting what came before us?

To me, I don't think you can really call everything cut and dry without being there. A lot of historical inference is based on context, without which you cannot assert that something actually happened. Then again, I don't have a degree in History, or Archaeology, Anthropology, or whatever else. I suppose that while some people will say, "Show me the proof!" when it comes to debatable ideas and theories, I'm the type who'll take it as true in its context. I don't mean that I'll take it for granted; I always want to see the support. I mean that I won't take it as absolute if at all possible. Occam's razor is useful, but from what I've experienced in real life, the whole truth is nowhere near as simple as the first conjecture made.

Anyway, the show mentioned one thing in particular that I thought was note-worthy. "And, each time [the aliens] leave, they make a promise: to return in the distant future" (quoted as accurately as I can remember from a few hours ago). That statement really struck me with the stupid stick. Suppose that aliens did exist, and visited us. Suppose that when they visited us, they visited various different groups/cultures/societies of humans. In all likelihood, they ended up visiting different groups on each subsequent visit, each time promising that they'd return in the future. In that case, they wouldn't be very smart. If each group of people wasn't busy trying to take over the others already, then it surely would try to after "the Gods" visited earth. They'd be just plain dumb to continue to come back, regardless of how much more advanced they were. And, perhaps they were more advanced, but does that prove that they were smarter? Maybe their planet just allowed them to exist earlier than ours did.

To some degree, I think it's better to believe in the "ancient alien contact" theory than in our own religions. Inevitably, some idiot thinks it's a good idea to go literal. Also inevitably, some idiot thinks it's a good idea to go in a completely different direction. It's not so much that their actions make them idiots (also in some cases it's true), but more that they end up with idiot followers who need power, can't think for themselves, and/or are just bigots to some degree. If God exists, and aliens contacted us, who would you rather blame for the horrible paths that some of us have taken?


I don't often speculate on things, especially things that can't be proven in any degree. I also don't get so misanthropic and deterministic. But, I thought that some post is better than none. I also thought that any argument one tries to make about aliens visiting, the same can be said of a time traveler coming back. O Futurama velut luna statu variabilis (an O Fortuna reference, for those that didn't get it).


I mentioned vimanas, but in addition, you have the devas themselves, their various forms and incarnations, the divine weapons, and the "psychic" phenomena classified as divine and/or magical that can be questioned for being alien/extra-terrestrial(/from the future) in origin. Now, your homework for this lecture is to compare and contrast if you are not Hindu, and if you are, then come up with one MORE thing that hasn't been covered that can be construed as such.

Metaphysics, related branches, and spiritual physics

Prompted by a conversation I had not so long ago, I will postpone my entry-in-progress in favor of this one. I'll finish and post that one later.

Also, if I haven't mentioned this before, I will be attempting to stick to the ITRANS transliteration of Sanskrit. However, I will be changing a few rules to suit me (ITRANS: saMskR^ita, my rendition: saMskRta), and as such, to prevent confusion, I will utilize Google/Blogger's unicode devanaagarii/Hindi rendering.

Metaphysics is a branch of Western philosophy which originally sought to answer questions relating to the nature of reality. After science developed and branched off, "metaphysics" continued to attempt to answer questions relating to reality that were not answerable by science, probably due to the fact that science was empirical in its process.

The interesting thing about metaphysics is that in conjunction with religion, it essentially becomes mysticism. Metaphysics, at least in the Western Classical sense, is about coming to terms with the nature of reality and life as a whole, and so requires "following" it, or applying knowledge gained in the study of metaphysics to one's actual life. In order to fully appreciate metaphysics, the argument can be made that you must practice, not just study.

However, this is not always the case. I'll illustrate an example from Western tradition, before I go into the relevance in Hinduism. While people may fully follow the Hermetica and its associated practices (what exactly they are I don't very well know), it was not uncommon for people to study it without the intention of applying it. Passing interest in it is one matter, but it is quite another for someone to study it with the intention of better understanding the imagery and inspiration in the Tarot.

(On a different note, Tarot actually isn't Egyptian, as is commonly claimed. Most of the imagery, aside from Christian references, comes from the Hermetica, which is considered akin to the Egyptian book of Thoth. The Moors translated the old texts and re-introduced them to Europeans via Spain. Cards came from China, and the Tarot imagery and reading techniques itself developed in Italy.
The Tarot: History, Symbolism, and Divination - Robert M. Place)

To take a different example, let's take a look at the Hindu philosophical schools. One of the three pairs of sister-schools is "saaMkhya-yoga" (Devanaagarii: सांख्य-योग). SaaMkhya is usually translated as "enumeration." It describes a dualist view on reality, consisting of puruSha (Deva: पुरुष) and prakRti (Deva: प्रकृति), with puruSha being "consciousness" and prakRti being "matter/nature." From there, it goes on to describe how puruSha interacts with prakRti, i.e. how consciousness interacts with and is entangled in matter, via the senses and mind.

I am making it a point to note that in saaMkhya-yoga, the "consciousness" present in all of us is often referred to as a "soul." However, this is not a "soul" by Western standards. What is considered the "soul" by Western standards differs from the "draSTuH" (Deva: द्रष्टुः, "seer/one who is seeing") referred to in the yoga sutra's. In the West, ideas like the "mind," "intellect/reason," and "thought" are elements of the soul. In Hindu thought, the mind is material in nature, as are thoughts and intellect. Only pure, unadulterated consciousness is considered the "soul."

Yoga, however, is the application of that knowledge in order to free one's self from the bondage of matter. Yoga, whose English cognate is found in the word "yoke," expounds on how one can go about separating the inner consciousness from the outside world. As the consciousness cannot be turned off, when it no longer gets input from the senses it turns instead to itself. This "self-awareness" process is what yoga is about. By today's lingo, we'd call this "raaja yoga" (Deva: राज योग) and its process that of "meditation"; the popular use of the word "yoga" revolves around haTha yoga (Deva: हठ योग) which focuses on different postures (aasana's, Deva: आसन's) to make the body full of vigor.

Another example, for those of you who know or would like to research stuff on your own, is that of the nyaaya and vaisheSika (nyaaya, Deva: न्याय ; vaisheSika, Deva: वैशेषिक), the sister schools of logic and proper metaphysics, respectively.

There's a good deal of practicality in studying something without the intention of applying it. It allows you to access related studies and become deeply involved with them and remain focused with them. Studying chemistry allows you to deal with particle physics and biology, without having to become a chemical engineer. You would hardly expect to see yogi's at proper debates between the different schools of Hindu philosophy. The yogi's would pretty much sit and say, "Why bother arguing each other? Why not see for yourselves?" Advocates of saaMkhya would take over for them and debate. And before you say that they were right, think about this: had they not participated in those debates, there would be very sources alive today from which we could understand their school in any tangible way. Participation in debates is what legitimized them, financially and academically. It's well and good to stick to you guns, but if everyone is just sitting and meditating, who's going to provide a means for them to continue doing that? And while we can learn about meditation from Buddhism and Tantra, Yoga is an entirely different beast, especially when you get down to the nitty-gritty details of life, souls, methods, etc.


In addition, for those that merely dabble in studying metaphysics and/or mysticism, without actually practicing it, there's also a purpose. They bring the ideas of the few to the mainstream, regardless of how muddled and riddled-with-defects they may become.

The Beats' understanding of Eastern spirituality was much more accurate than the Hippies' (which isn't saying much, but it's really the fault of the Easterners). However, it was the latter who made much of the overall message available to the general population. And, once you have the idea and a few terms in people's vocabularies, you don't have to do much for people to genuinely become interested and take hold of practice.

Another example was Einstein's Theory of General Relativity. Even before it was "properly" confirmed by an eclipse in Australia in 1922, Eddington's calculations from a solar eclipse from Africa brought initial news of the theory's success (despite Campbell's news of failure). British papers - and, indeed, newspapers across the world - ran headlines about how his theory proved what they thought previously of gravity as wrong. Einstein, and his theory, were household names across the globe, despite the fact that most people didn't know what in the universe it was actually saying.

And so, on many levels, it's important to understand that the study of metaphysics without any touch of practice, while seemingly contradictory, provides many uses.

And, the next time I'm cursing some fallacious, self-proclaimed know-it-all, I'll do my best to remember that even incorrect knowledge finds ways to teach people the truth.