They Come to Feast

 You may have read about Stephen Hawking’s new documentary, Stephen Hawking’s Universe. Hawking has warned us to be careful of contact with alien species. They might be very, very nasty.

.. a few life forms could be intelligent and pose a threat. Hawking believes that contact with such a species could be devastating for humanity.

He suggests that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on: “We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn’t want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach.”

He concludes that trying to make contact with alien races is “a little too risky”. He said: “If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans.”

It is an interesting contention. Would aliens want to dominate and control, exploit, rape, and colonise? Maybe they will set up alien-type fast-food outlets.
In UFO culture there are, of course, reports of exploitative behaviour by aliens – abductions, cattle mutilations, genetic experiments and so on. Mystic Stuart Wilde has written about his experiences with the “Greys”, and finds them to be rather hideous creatures who have no interest in the development of human culture or society. Bashar, an entity channeled by Daryl Ankar, says the Greys are not one race, but can travel though time, and there are various versions of them according to the time frame they come from.

What interests me about Stephen Hawking’s viewpoint is the fact that he seems to be incapable of conceiving the possibility that alien behavour might  be psychologically and spiritually more advanced than that of humans. Such an inability might reflect the culture of dominant science, which often retards the capacity for introspection, especially the ability to observe consciousness from a first-person perspective. 

Much of the human predisposition for conquest and control is actually a function of spiritual dissociation. In this sense it is a reflection of a certain phase of cognitive development. The simple version goes like this. Emotional pain runs through the psyche of all human beings. Modern life and culture does not permit the full expression of this emotional energy. A split develops between mind and body, and the pain gets projected outwards, and becomes destructive. (It can also be projected inwards, and become self-destructive, as with some cancers,  heart problems, anorexia, and so on).

The rape of the mother Earth reflects an inner rage and sense of helplessness. The desire to control emerges from a sense of being out of control. Once the mind-body split occurs, the fear of death is exacerbated, because the ego begins to identify with the body. This in turn heightens fear, and behaviour can become greatly distorted.

The simple act of presence alleviates all requirement for projection. This is true of all humans. When the mind is fully present, there is no separation of mind and body, ego and "self'. This will be true of all alien life forms as well. Our greatest concern then, with possible contact with aliens, is their level of self-awareness. It may be that the level of dissociation which we see in most modern day humans has never developed in specific alien races, so their consciousness will remain balanced and “loving”, rather than imbalanced and destructive. Alternatively, they may have gone through the association phase and corrected it.

Stephen Hawking

It is not surprising that Stephen Hawking does not understand this (and this is not meant to be disrespectful of him and his great contribution to knowledge). The awareness of these things emerges from an inner journey. The culture of modern science  - and the educational institutions where it is practiced - have ceased cultivating such awareness. In a certain sense Stephen Hawking is the perfect representation (albeit for reasons beyond his control) of the dissociation process inherent in the culture of modern science, where the mind and the body have become completely dissociated. 

Just as an individual must fully acknowledge and integrate the neuroses within himself before he can evolve psychologically, the human race has to learn from our current phase of spiritual development, at a collective level. And just as a psychiatrist cannot force awareness upon his client, no alien race can force the human race to evolve. We have to do it ourselves. 

If there is one thing that I have learned from my years of inner work, it is that there is an inviolable law of consciousness. Each unit of consciousness, individual or collective, is fully responsible for its spiritual development. There is no saviour.

All this does not mean that there are not nasty ETs out there. Still, I know if I was an alien civilisation observing the earth, I’d be more worried about what we will do to them, than the other way round.