Quiet Times & the spiritual answer to the Fermi paradox

Here’s another story for you.

Suppose Captain Kirk and the Starship Enterprise set out on their five-year mission to chart all the systems in this galactic sector (50 lightyear radius, about 1500 stars – obviously they can’t really visit all of them at warp factor seven (343 times lightspeed), but let’s say humanity sent out some other exploratory ships as well, each covering a quadrant). In all their travels, they don’t encounter a single spacefaring lifeform.

And that confuses them. At least at first, anyway.

They do, however, come across around a hundred intelligent, tool-making species with varying levels of simple technology and, bizarrely from the captain’s point of view, all of them are perfectly contented with their lives. They all live peaceful, spiritual lives in harmony with their environment and each other. In fact, most of them are older than humanity. And wiser, too, many of them. Indeed, maybe some of these lifeforms tell the captain (once the translation issue has been resolved) that once upon a deep time in their own history, say a few million years ago, they did go through a phase of building spaceships and the like but it didn’t actually last much longer than a few hundred thousand years and then they settled down to the spiritual life they now enjoy.

Sure, some of these lifeforms would be curious about the starship and the humans’ technology, but tell the confused captain that they have no desire for any of it or to ride around in starships and all the rest of it. They are happy as they are.

Now, leaving aside any satirical humour about imperialist humans (or Americans, rather) doing their colonisation thing and exploiting these brave new worlds for their resources and cheap labour, one can well imagine how flabbergasted the captain is.

I love that word ‘flabbergasted’ by the way. Note to self – use it more often.

“What?” says the captain, “Why don’t you want all our consumer items?”

I’ll leave it there. But after talking with these lifeforms the humans discover that spirituality is the most common shared purpose amongst intelligent lifeforms. Evolution, in other words. You don’t need to fly around in spaceships to evolve. In fact, in many ways, advanced technology could be seen to prevent evolution. Especially spiritual evolution.

What I mean by spiritual evolution – think reincarnation and souls – essentially means increased understanding of the nature of reality and existence, and ultimately moving into the non-physical phase of existence. Evolving into outer time, as we Paschats might call it.

And these (time) travels into outer time can, and indeed do, happen before that final transition. It could be argued that you won’t have that final transition until you do that kind of thing. There are meditational practices for travelling in time (and space) without any need for technology. Shift into outer time, set your inner-time destination, then go there. Then back again, hopefully (do please remember your personal symbols – take your anchor with you).

Technology, indeed, as I say, can get in the way of such things. Besides, I have a personal nervousness when it comes to time-ships (but that’s another story).

A similar thing happened with our species. The Karidel, as I’ve previously suggested, were already very spiritually evolved by the time Nebthwt became uninhabitable. Some of them had travelled around in time-ships but they were soon to evolve into outer time, so the idea of expanding out into the galaxy and establishing colonies and so on didn’t really occur to them.

We Paetri, however, were not so evolved. We understood that we still had quite a way to go before we got to that stage. So when we came here to Danuih and learned about the Capellans’ advanced technology it really was quite fascinating. We are, after all, nothing if not curious. And there is certainly an undoubtable romanticism in flaying around in starships exploring new worlds and making new friends.

But eventually, you start longing for home again. And so you return, and you settle down, and you follow the Karidel’s path. All of this happened a long time ago in linear time terms, that is, which is why you won’t be seeing us if you venture out there in this time-zone. At some point, soon enough, however, I shall be going back home – which is to say, back to a different time-zone, a long time before that asteroid came along and allowed your little scurrying mammalian ancestors to evolve a bit more. It’s interesting to see what you came to be, for sure.

But we shall go back home and be happy there.

If I remember correctly, that time – some 120 million years ago – was what is known as a ‘Quiet Time’ in our galactic sector. This is one of the other answers to your Fermi paradox.

Galactic sectors fluctuate between quiet and busy times, each lasting several million years, sometimes longer. By quiet and busy, of course, I’m not referring to the number of intelligent, tool-making species alive in the sector at any one time, but rather to the number of spacefaring species. Remember also that species come and go – and on any selected planet, too. A lifeform might evolve, spend a while spacefaring, go back home, live simple, spiritual lives and then evolve into the next, non-physical phase of existence – what you would call ‘extinct’. And then, assuming a stable environment (often artificially maintained, of course) another ten or twenty, say, millions of years later another intelligent, tool-making lifeform evolves on that planet and the cycle begins again.

Add all this up, and inevitably you will end up with quiet times and busy times. That’s just the way of things.

Likewise, many lifeforms never feel the need to develop the kind of advanced physical technology which you humans have. At least, not in the same way or along the same pathway. Atlantis is a case in point. One of the reasons you don’t see much in the way of archaeological evidence of an ‘advanced’ civilisation is because they didn’t use the same kind of technology as you do. Yes, they did reach an extremely advanced level, but not in the way you would think it. They didn’t need to build skyscrapers and ICBMs to prove to themselves how wonderfully clever they were. In fact, I would say – and most people who remember The Old Country would doubtless agree with me – that the people of Atlantis reached a higher level than present-day humans. And not just because they didn’t build weapons of mass destruction or televisions or shareholder value – it wasn’t just because they were spiritual. Their technology was more subtle. They saw the world, the universe and everything – and therefore the ‘laws of physics’ shall we say – in a different way. Their technology was more practical, rather than consumerist. And as a spiritually communist society, with a fully functioning welfare state and little need for money, or patriarchal power structures, the idea of an ‘industrial revolution’ would’ve seemed somewhat absurd to them.

Today, I sometimes get the feeling that given the vast range, or discrepancy, between the levels of intelligence (emotional and psychological) and spiritual evolution of human beings – that’s to say how evolved the soul is – perhaps one answer to that question is that the older souls are the ones who did live at least several lifetimes in Atlantis. And this explains their superiority. And, indeed, their ‘ill-fitting’ to this present-day society. These are the ones for whom petty little materialism and social climbing and the pathetic machinations of the globalist cabal are all beneath them. They do not allow themselves to be tempted or manipulated and deceived by propaganda and lies.

And many of them, I am sure, probably see the vast mass of modern humans as an alien species.

These are higher souls. Perhaps the problem with today’s world is that the vast majority of human beings are lower souls. I don’t think I’m the only one to have suggested that. It makes sense.

That’s not to say, however, that ‘lower’ means ‘barbarian’ or ‘brutish’ – not at all. Just simpler and younger. We older souls were young once too, remember. So this is not intended to appear patronising. All of us are somewhere on the evolutionary pathway.

But if our captain Kirk and the crew came across Atlantis, would they see themselves as more, or less intelligent and advanced? Would they have the emotional intelligence to answer that question?

So there’s your answer to the Fermi paradox.

Most species, far from developing technology and destroying themselves, just like to lead simpler lives.

You’ll find that out soon enough.

And hopefully, when that time comes, you will understand diplomacy.