The Government to Release All Files On Aliens & UFOs

Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson is sort of like the Carl Sagan of the 21st Century.

Just like Sagan was the star of the PBS series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage and he was often on the The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, Tyson is now so often the face you see on TV and social media talking about the most recent discoveries and theories in astronomy.

I remember it was Dr. Tyson on Comedy Central who pointed out to John Stewart that the planet Earth globe on the show was spinning the wrong way. Dr. Tyson is also the director of the prestigious Hayden Planetarium in New York City.

In a recent column in The New York Times, Dr. Tyson claimed that the federal government would soon be releasing all of the files that it has on aliens and UFOs. After reading this I wondered if the federal government would really be releasing all of it’s files related to this subject, and, if so, would the names of many of the aliens be redacted?

Of course this brings up the alleged 1947 events in Roswell, New Mexico and other incidents. Dr. Tyson points out that some claim we obtained advanced alien technology that has been reverse-engineered (and withheld from the public for various reasons).

I remain skeptical that everything is going to be released. My old home church is Unity of Fairfax, which is just outside of Washington, D.C. One of our members, who I very much respected, told me about the project that the Defense Department and other federal agencies sponsored during the Cold War on the paranormal, aliens, and UFOs. I remember one time he said to me, “It was much larger than what is depicted on the X-Files.”

Who knows? … and who may ever know for certain? Dr. Tyson said that as a kid he used to fantasize about being in some sort of alien abduction plot.

But what I really enjoyed reading about in Dr. Tyson’s column were his views on the frequency of aliens in the universe, what they might look like, and their essential nature. I also think that all of the above has some major spiritual implications.

Back in the day, Professor Sagan was very sanguine about life all over the place in outer space. He didn’t believe that we had so far made “contact” with extraterrestrial life, but he felt it was very much there. For example, he fantasized and wrote about winged creatures that lived on Saturn or Jupiter and flew on waves of gas clouds. Needless to say this doesn’t appear to be the case.

Dr. Tyson believes that extraterrestrial life does exist given how many stars with planets (with moons) are possible in our universe. But the number with life on them might be far fewer than dreamed of by Professor Sagan.

I agree with Dr. Tyson, but there is another factor that might work to increase the multiplicity of life in the cosmos. Professor Sagan always used to say that he was a “carbon chauvinist.” By this he meant that life — and particularly intelligent life — had to be founded on carbon-based molecules. This would limit where you would find life — and what it would be like.

But recent advances in artificial intelligence and other areas is showing that you can have “intelligent life” that is not based on carbon molecules. Dr. Tyson points out that in most depictions of extraterrestrial life, the aliens look a lot like humans (i.e, one head, two arms, two legs, etc.). Don’t be surprised if the aliens look far different from homo sapiens. This opens up many more possibilities of where “life” could be found in our universe.

However, this gets to the $64,000 question, as they said in my childhood: What would be the essential nature of aliens?

I remember many years ago my two oldest children — who were about 10 and 14 at the time — got into a big discussion about what it would be like if aliens landed on Earth. My two sons, Josh and David, expressed pretty gruesome scenarios. Then the younger son, David, turned to me and asked, “What do you think, Dad?”

I said that if aliens landed on Earth, they would obviously have far superior technology to ours. “If that is the case, then I would hope that their spirituality would be far advanced compared to ours.” I added.

“Well, I hope you're right Dad,” David said. “But all I can say is that if aliens land on earth, I hope they treat us better than the way we treated the Native Americans.”

The track record of how civilizations with superior technology have treated civilizations with less advanced technology is often not a pretty picture among humans.

Intelligent life on other planets raises the possibilities of enlightened teachers on these distant globes. What were their Jesus, Buddhas, etc. like? What were they teaching? How closely does their central messages align with our Golden Threads on Earth?

As the English poet, Alexander Pope, wrote, “Hope springs eternal.” The evolution of human spiritual consciousness is a continuous journey. As J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, “The road goes ever on.”

Given the vast distances in our universe, may we have time to grow up before contact is made.

Many blessings,

Rev. Rick