On the likelihood of finding sentient life elsewhere in this universe:
It is the clear sense of this observer that sentient life exists in massive abundance across this universe.
If there is a problem, it concerns the ability of our current version of it to detect it. The facts that we have so far summoned are that the ingredients of this phenomenon are almost everywhere we look, but the limits on our ability to identify it per se, arise from two factors.
First it requires hundreds of millions of years to evolve into a form where we’d recognize it and, second, its continued rapid evolution moves it in an almost breathless speed beyond our ability to recognize it. In other words, it is constantly zipping right past.
Of course this is looking at it in terms of current modes of our own existence. The principle deterrents to our ability to even look in the right place are fundamentally associated with the factor of time and our still very primitive way of assessing that.
What we count as millions of years in time are to a better appreciation of reality as only the blinkings of an eye. Once we begin to get a handle on this, we will see so much more than we do now.
But culturally we are not advanced enough to know this. Why do we measure time from a standpoint of years, for example, when a year is a very limited and imperfect form of measure defined by the time it takes for this infinitesimally small grain of sand, Earth, to cover a certain distance?
Are our notions of past, present and future valid? Do we not in our heads, where the root of real knowledge truly does lie, commingle these concepts constantly such that we really don’t know yet how to identify them yet?
But we don’t yet know how to listen to ourselves, to our heads, where core realities and their possibilities hang out. I am not suggesting that we start trying to do it in some weird way, but there are those who are better tuned in than others, and they tend to be the ones who have better insights into what we should be doing to make sure we don’t just kill ourselves off by accident, or something like it, as I think the case may be. The best insights have something to do with the linking of science and deeply personal appreciations of beauty.
Our greatest seers usually share their insights in non-traditionally verbal ways, like through music or poetry.
In my experience, I would point to key persons who I think may have had insights into this, and it may sound strange, but I suggest we count among them Elton John and Walt Whitman. John’s greatest self-revelation is in his putting Billy Elliott to music, clearly an autobiographical exercise. There is one song, Electricity, where he goes beyond himself to touch something from another world.
“It’s like that there’s a music playing in your ear, but the music is impossible, impossible to hear, but then I feel it move me like a burning deep inside, something bursting me wide open, impossible to hide, and suddenly I’m flying, flying like a bird, like electricity, electricity sparks inside of me. And I’m free, I’m free.”
Whitman’s poetry is saturated with it. He was, as they say, plugged in. Some day, in a few hundred million more years or so, we will all get this. As for now, just stay open to whatever comes.
In fact, that could be a legitimate spiritual mantra, “Just stay open to whatever comes.” Look for it, sing to it, pray to it, await it. You may be surprised by what happens.
We know enough already to be able to affirm without question that our universe is alive and humming with expressions of pure beauty, even if way beyond our grasp for now. Stay open to it. Love it.
