The aliens (part 2)

In yesterday’s blog post I described the basis of the Seti programme (search for extra-terrestrial intelligence), and outlined some of Seti chair Paul Davies’ ideas related to the programme and the idea of initial contact with alien life. Today I am going to go a little deeper and say why I believe that Davies is most likely wrong on several accounts. Most importantly, I’m going to outline the significance of this for the future of science and the future of possible human-alien interaction. Many of my critiques are founded upon my first-person exploration of the human mind, and working with other extraordinary individuals who have spent time doing the same. This gives me a rather different slant on the problem of human/alien interaction than Davies. All argument is only as valid as the soundness of the presuppositions upon which it is founded. In Davies case, there are certain givens which (by definition) he assumes to be true, but which are not.

Professor Davies argues that mathematics will be the only common language that we will have with the first alien civilisation we contact. His error is that there are cognitive processes which transcend language.

First-person approaches to the evolution of consciousness have brought forth some very interesting evidence for human consciousness evolution. This includes levels of consciousness where mind-to-mind communication is possible, at least to some degree. (see books by Ken Wilber, and more layman-friendly texts by David E. Hawkins). Information is capable of being passed from one entity to another this way. My experience is that it happens all the time, only most of us are unconscious of it. I say this not so much from a conviction that the growing scientific evidence is confirming it, but because I have experienced some of these states of consciousness myself, as I wrote in Sage of Synchronicity. I have also met many others who have experienced, and demonstrated the same capacities. There are countless people walking the earth who are living this consciousness connectivity, to lesser or greater degree. 

The problem is that they are not permitted a voice in contemporary science, academia or education. 

And this is where the real problem lies with the Seti programme, as I see it. 

Seti sits within an implicit hegemony, a hierarchy of valid/invalid realities, and this mediates the acceptance/rejection of knowledge and ideas according its own self-limiting understanding of the real. Dominant scientific society has established itself as an effective priesthood, which then excludes others, including many who might otherwise contribute important or even essential information.

Concluding his interview with Jon Ronson, Paul Davies enthuses:

“What we are doing is a fantastic and challenging task. It compels us to think about all the things we should be thinking about. What is life? What is intelligence?”

Unfortunately, while it is possible to think about our gaps in education and thinking, it is not possible to think about what we don’t know that we don’t know. An added problem is that the very mental processes that dominate modern science, philosophy and education are incapable of gleaning the kind of higher knowledge that Davies seeks.

 Newton observes light through a glass prism - experimentation is an "extroverted" way of knowing.

“Rationality” as it is defined in modern education, is a delimited cognitive set which restricts certain vital human perceptions. It is not simply that these perceptions are trivia left off after efficiently trimming the fat from the knowledge bone. It is that the intuitive mind, and in particular integrated intelligence, is capable of accessing qualitatively transcendent knowledge that potentially revolutionises the context of human life on this planet, indeed all life on the planet, or other planets for that matter.

Given that the Seti programme is thus delimited in scope, it is not overly surprising that aliens have not bothered to contact Professor Davies. Maths and physics are nice, but the capacity for a relatively advanced mathematical and physical investigation of the universe is not in itself evidence of a cognitively balanced – let alone “evolved” – species. Higher order math does constitute a kind of advanced intelligence, but tricky number crunching in itself is not enough. Maths and physics are a reflection of the culturally-mediated values and ways of knowing of dominant science, but they have to be balanced with other humane values and intelligences before they can be expressed as part of a greater wisdom. John Watson, for example, the father of behaviourist psychology in the first half of the twentieth century, was rather good at maths and analysis. He also recommended that babies never be hugged, because this conditions them into being needy. Despite his considerable academic achievements, I suspect that Watson didn’t understand that love is central to life and consciousness, because he’d become hopelessly dissociated from his emotional body. 

If I was an alien, I think that emotional and spiritual intelligence would be of just as much importance as being able to do math. Intelligence includes the capacity to explore inner worlds, and to come to a deep understanding of ourselves and our place in the universe. If I was an advanced alien lifeform, I’d probably have figured that out by the time I was able to communicate with other star systems.

 Insight through introspection can deliver knowledge not currently on the map of dominant mind science.

This is very, very important.

And if I were to send a message to a potential alien group communicating with this plant, it would be this:

“I am.” 

In these words - a kind of mantra the Buddhists employ as means to enlightenment - there is timeless wisdom. The aliens are not going to grant us that wisdom. We have to discover it  again and again for ourselves, until we finally "get it". In turning outwards and expecting help from alien civilisations, we are expressing, yet again, the human hubris of wanting to be saved,thus giving our power away to the other. This is one of the prime issues of the human race at this time. The only alien race that would venture forth to play such a game would be one with an intention to play a power game. This is an understanding that only one who has done a deep inner journey can appreciate fully. 

Sadly, the world of science and  modern education have discarded introspection, making us a decidedly unattractive prospect for any spiritually evolved alien species.

Finally, the major factor which renders Seti largely obsolete, and a projection of a rather undeveloped level of human cognitive development, is that the dominant science which has created the programme is built upon an erroneous model of the cosmos -  the mechanistic paradigm. Despite the fact that modern physics has shown that the cosmos is multi-dimensional, it is not fully appreciated that consciousness itself also exists within multiple dimensions; and much of it transcends the constraints of 4-dimensional space-time. Mind is essentially non-local - or integrated, as I prefer to call it. The human body too, has a trans-dimensional component. I suspect that John Mack of Harvard was moving in the right direction when he concluded that a big part of the alien abduction phenomena was occurring in these domains, which has not been fully appreciated by modern science. I have had several experiences which lead me to believe that such "interactions" occur. 

Until this multi-dimensional  nature of consciousness is better understood in mainstream science, organisations like Seti will continue to misunderstand the problem of human-alien interaction, because the scientists involved do not understand the full context of life, nor of "mind" itself.

This will happen in time. But not yet.