
Just an old man sitting alone in the dark writing stories for you. Many of my stories are strange. You might say they live in the shadows on the weird side of the street. Most of the tales start life as fragmented ideas that come to me from reading articles on quantum physics, climate change, human origins, or the birth and death of the universe. The thoughts generated by the articles are the seeds that become a Strange Story if I'm lucky. rmannon@outlook.com.
Tiny Letter Newsletter
Monday, June 20, 2016
Monday, June 6, 2016
Is There Life Out There?
Is
there life out there?
That seems like a pretty good question to me. The answer, I suppose, might depend on
exactly what you mean by ‘out there.”
The extra-solar planets we are now discovering by the
hundreds.
Unrecognized intelligences right here amongst us,
sharing the earth.
Or, maybe, there is another realm, close by, unknown
and unreachable to most. A place we can
only find in that strange in-between place that lives between what we see and
what we feel, a place that is not quite real and not quite imaginary, where
creativity and magic exist. Call it a crossroads
to mystical places almost always found entirely by chance.
Planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy or way out
there somewhere else in the known universe?
Almost certainly would be my answer.
There are more planets than stars in the Milky Way galaxy. Some portion (perhaps a significant portion)
of those must be life sustaining. Can we
find these others, recognize them for what they are, and maybe even speak with
them someday? All much harder questions
to answer. What, exactly, is
intelligence, for example? Is tool
making a required element of intelligence?
Verbal communication? Radio
telescopes? Thermonuclear bombs? Our
scientists can’t agree on these questions. So how about these others that might
exist? How would they communicate? Would they be inclined to communicate with
the human species? No one knows the
answer to that.
Maybe “life out there” includes Earth itself. Are we faced with intelligences right here on
the same planet that we discount, don’t understand, are unable to speak
with? Are dolphins unintelligent simply
because they have no hands, no tools, no TV shows to watch? How about cephalopods, the eight legged
beasts that thrive in our oceans, are they intelligent? They use tools, speak to each other in the
language of color. Elephants mourn their
dead, talk with each other using low frequency vibrations. Most important, there are three and only
three creatures on earth that look into a mirror and recognize themselves, the
Great Apes, Elephants and Humans. Again,
our scientists cannot agree on what does or does not constitute
intelligence.
There is place Sir Thomas Moore called the “Liminal
Narrows.” These are the places in the
world “that are neither here nor there, neither up nor down, neither real nor
imaginary. In these liminal narrows, a
kind of life takes place that is out of the ordinary, creative, and once in a
while, genuinely magical.” Can it be
these places sit side-by-side with everyday reality, very close but hard to
find? Can they be populated with
creatures, unknown and unknowable entities, persons such as ourselves? Again, I say almost certainly. I know because I encountered such an
intelligent creature very briefly in an altered state of consciousness, a place
anyone can reach if they know the way.
He (I am sure it was a he) was warm, beautiful and, for a brief instant
in time, my friend. I tell the tale in
chapter 12 of my book, Secret Warriors, Psychic Spies.
Intelligence exists all around us.
We will find it “out there” if we only look and if we realize they are
not required to be us either in looks or thought patterns or communication
methods. If we open our minds to the possibility of an infinite variety of
intelligent life form then, and only then, will we find what we seek.
We are not alone.
Secret Warriors, Psychic Spies – Amazon.com
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