LIFE BEYOND EARTH

MJ-136-860
 LIFE BEYOND EARTH
by

Ralph M. Lewis, F.R.C.

(All rights reserved by Rosicrucian Order, AMORC, San Jose, California)

Who has not, at some time, stood transfixed under the midnight
canopy of the heavens and with upward gaze speculated upon the myr­
iads of shimmering specks of light? They seem to hang in the vast
reaches of space. These great, silent, luminous bodies fire the
imagination. Questions flood the mind. Are these vast worlds like
our own? Have they upon themselves great rolling seas, towering
mountains, and bleak deserts? Are they the habitat of living, con­
scious beings, able to think and to reason as we do?

Such thoughts are comparatively modern in relation to the whole

age of man. Before man could entertain such ideas as these, it was
first necessary that he rid his mind of many of the beliefs held by
his ancestors.

When the intelligence of man at some remote time was equal to his
curiosity, we can presume that he then made inquiry into his origin.
It was plausible that man should have doubt that he had merely sprung
from the earth. Though birth may have still remained a mystery to him,
yet he could perceive the difference between himself and other animate
things. Furthermore, the distinction between his coming into existence
and the manifestation of the plant life of his environment was apparent
Therefore, whence came man, and why? Perhaps these are the earliest
questions to have plagued the human mind. Centuries of inquiring have
since thrown much light upon these questions. However, even in our
times they are far from free of mystery and obscurity.

The skeletal remains of the Aurignacian man have been found sur­
rounded with a collection of utensils and weapons. The Aurignacian
lived in the last part of the Middle Stone Age, This was some thirty
thousand years ago! A circle of crude stones was placed about the
body, and then within this circle were placed the treasured possessions
of the deceased: flint knives, bone needles, and throwing sticks.
There was every indication by this arrangement that there was a con­
cept of an afterlife. In such burials as we have described were the
rudiments of the belief in immortality. We must reach the conclusion
that this Aurignacian man of three hundred centuries ago thought that
he would live again after death, somewhere and at some time. Further­
more, he would need in this next life what had been so necessary to
this one. Undoubtedly, it was for thi3 reason that his treasured pos­
sessions were buried with him.

Certainly the Aurignacian could not believe that the corpse itself
the dead body, survived this life. An intelligence capable of having
thoughts of an afterlife, as the artifacts of the Aurignacian displayed
would have observed the disintegration of bodies after death. Con­
sequently, something other than the body itself must have suggested to
him the idea of immortality. History, long following the Aurignacian
man, gives the clue to the answer of what he presumed to be the
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immortality of his own being. It reveals that ancient man associated

air and breath with life force. Even contemporary aborigines, as those
in Australia and in the South Pacific region, confer an immortal quali­
ty upon the breath. Tyler, the noted anthropologist, in his renowned
works on primitive culture, relates that the western Australians have a
word for "spirit." They call it wang, but this word is to them also
synonymous with their words for breath and soul. The natives of
Nicaragua say that when men die a phantomlike body is seen to leave the
mouth with the breath. Obviously then, the phantom has been associated
with the breath of life. These Nicaraguan natives called it julio.
The Hebrew word nephesh means "life," and likewise, "spirit" and
"mind." We know that the Sanskrit words atman and prana mean "breath,"
"air," and "soul." Likewise, the Greek psyche and pneuma mean "soul"
and "breath,"--in Latin, "animus" and "spiritus." All of these words,
then, came to represent breath and the immortal element of man.

The locale of man’s immortal being, where it resided after death,

has often varied with the passing centuries. The abode of the soul,
or the spirit, after death, has shifted to extremes in man’s under­
standing, Sometimes this abode was thought to be in great caverns
under the earth; at other times, it was believed to be in the reaches
of the celestial realms. Apparently, however, the infinity of the
sky caused it to become more commonly accepted as the realm of the soul
or the world after this one.

It is only recently that man has been able to journey into the
sky. Before that, he could only speculate as to what it was actually
like. We know that the ancients, as the Greeks, believed that the sky
above the peaks of the towering mountains was quite different from that
over the lowlands. Furthermore, these ancients were not certain
whether the celestial bodies they saw at night were really quite small
and close to earth, or whether they were extremely large and far
distant.

The luminosity of these heavenly bodies was also very puzzling.

Did they possess some eternal fire which caused their light? These
people also wondered if the light of the stars might not be etheric,
that is, of a divine substance of some kind. It was even suggested
that the brilliance of the stars might be the result of the divine
nature of the deceased humans, or that the deceased themselves were
the stars. In the ancient Pyramid Texts of the Old Kingdom of Egypt,
some five thousand years ago, the stars depicted departed human beings.
In these papyri scrolls, they were referred to as "hosts of imperish­
able ones." It was further thought that these immortals dwelt in the
sky to traverse it as did Ra, the sun-god. The Eskimos, too, have a
legend that the stars were once animals and men that inhabited the
earth. Even the Christian father, Origen, said that the stars were
animate and that they were rational beings, because, he reasoned, it is
impossible that irrational creations could move with such order in the
heavens as do the stars.
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With the subsequent development of formalized theology, questions

about the soul, its nature and the like, became more and more impor­
tant. These questions particularly centered about the origin of the
soul and its afterlife, where it went and what it did following death.
The Jewish theologians conceived of man as a son of a great spiritual
father. There was a relationship between this divine father and man
not unlike the relationship between an earthly father and his son. In
the Old Testament, we are told that this divine father selected the
earth to particularly become man's habitat. According to this theology
men were not evolved beings from lesser living things. Rather, man was
thought to be a spontaneous creation brought into existence in the very
twinkling of an eye. Humanity was a fusion of the spiritual quality or
nature of this divine father and the gross dust of the earth.

Christianity, in its most orthodox form, continues to expound the

early Judaic conception of man. It, too, recognizes the duality of
man, the divine quality on the one hand, and the elements of the earth
on the other. At death, Christianity expounds, the immortal element,
the divine quality, is separated and leaves the body. If this divine
quality or element is worthy, it is then thought to ascend into what is
called heaven. Heaven is a region somewhere above earth where the
divine element, or the immortal part of humans, dwells indefinitely.
This same theology also conceives a spontaneous creation for the whole
universe as well as for man. It, too, came into existence as relative­
ly sudden, as the snap of a finger. These ideas of creation, or cos­
mology, are set forth in the Book of Genesis. Prior to the year 1859,
the people of Christendom felt very certain that they knew the exact
time of creation. This confidence arose from the date that was
associated with the first chapter of Genesis--"4004 B.C," It was
thought to be the beginning of all existence.

From the foregoing, it may be plainly seen that it had been

thought that the earth was chosen for the great human drama. All
earthly resources, all the natural phenomena, animate and inanimate
substance, were subordinated to the human ego. In the human concep­
tion, which to some extent prevails today, man is the virtual hub
around which the universe revolves. Man, in his exaggerated self-
consciousness and conceived supremacy, sincerely has believed that he
is the incentive for all creation]

For Jews and for Christians, alike, the soul is not the result of
an evolved state of consciousness. They do not think of it as being
a state of sensitivity which, having developed through lesser beings,
has finally reached that point where man, being aware of it, calls it
soul. Rather, they contend, the soul is a kind of endowment, a kind
of substance that is conferred upon man from on high. It is like some
precious gem which, if he is not cautious in his use of it, may become
damaged.
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St, Augustine said: ,!God then made man after His image, for he
created him a soul by which, through reason and intelligence, he should
have dominion over all things on the earth," We see in all of this the
desire on the part of the human to consider himself as just beneath the
eminence of God. All divine effort, everything that occurs, has been
fashioned according to this viewpoint--that it is particularly for
human welfare. This sort of reasoning, or lack of it, satisfies man’s
inherent, but not admitted, sense of inferiority to nature. He
realizes his subordination to many things but refuses to admit it.

This kind of thinking influences the attitude of the masses of

people toward all life's experiences. In many ways, it distorts its
viewpoint. Men were, and still are, reluctant to consider any ideas,
any teachings or doctrines, which tend to threaten the egocentric
sense of security and supremacy which they have. At the end of the
Roman period, the Christian church sought to preserve the remnants of
culture. The decadent Roman civilization had degenerated most of the
great culture which it had inherited from the East. Then the bar­
barians from the North swept down over them in a great wave of conquest.
Their minds were fresh and open and the Church was easily able to
indoctrinate 'them with such culture as it retained. However, most of
the great cultures that had descended from Egypt, and from Greece,
Babylonia, and Persia, had been forced underground by the Church itself.
Typical of such Christian fanatics were the Emperors Justinian and
Theodosius. History has left an indelible record of how they closed
the great schools of philosophy and suppressed their teachings as being
pagan. They ordered the destruction of the ancient temples--monuments
to a tremendous culture and learning as displayed through their art and
architecture. I have personally seen what the Emperor Constantine did
in his campaign in Egypt. On the walls of Luxor Temple, which he con­
sidered a pagan site, he destroyed much of the beautiful art work. He
had plaster smeared over it, and then had that painted with crude
portraits of the saints. In one of the beautiful little sanctuaries,
an equally crude and out-of-place altar was set, on which still appears
an inscription honoring his name.

Let us glance at the period between 400 and 1000 A„D. This is
generally referred to as the Dark Ages. This period amounted to a
virtual intellectual black-out. Many of the people of this period
denied that the earth is a sphere. The following is typical of their
arguments: if the earth is a sphere, "no one could remain on its
Southern part without falling off." It was generally thought by the
masses at the time that the universe was enclosed in space, and that
this space was like an envelope. Therefore, according to this concep­
tion, the universe was definitely limited in its size. They held that
it was created by God, but believed to have been created not very long
ago. Then, into this envelope in which the universe is contained, they
thought God placed the stars and the sun and moon, but that most prom­
inent of all was the earth. According to them, it held the unique
position in this envelope. The earth was the stage for the unfoldment
of the vast human drama.
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The majority of the people, too, were of the opinion that beneath
the earth was a region known as "Hades" or "Hell." Outside the en­
closure of the universe, this imaginary envelope which contained it,
was "Heaven," the abode of God, All the saints, too, were in heaven.
However, let us realize that it was believed that this abode of God and
of heaven was outside of the Universe, Men expected and greatly feared
that the enclosure of the universe, this envelope, was to be destroyed
and this was to occur in not too remote a time. The destruction was to
be by a great catastrophe, and God would either sanction such a
catastrophe or he would institute it himself.

During this same period, the Arabs were inspired by their prophet,
Mohammed, Fired by this new religion, a sword in one hand and the
Koran in the other, they conquered the East. Yet, at the 3 ame time
they became the preservers and the exponents of the ancient wisdom;
they appreciated its significance. They cherished it as a treasure--
the same wisdom which the West and which Christianity rejected and
sought to destroy. The Mohammedans in their learning were taught the
arts, sciences, and philosophy of Egypt, Greece, and Babylon,

Among the notable works that the Arabs preserved and translated
was Ptolemy's Almagest. The word Almagest literally means a "collec­
tion" or "gathering'.'Most certainly, that is what it was because it
contained all that the Greeks had gathered about astronomy since the
time of Aristotle. The Almagest, as well, included Ptolemy's own
astronomical and cosmo 1ogicaf" ’theories, This work was written during
the second century A.D. The Mohammedan conquest swept westward along
the Northern portion of Africa and finally it spilled over into Spain,
making its first contact with the Western world. There, too, it first
reached the Christian world about 1000 A.D. At that time, as now, the
East and West faced each other as rivals for supremacy of the world.
It was then, too, that the early Christian scholars, and they were very
few in number, first received the translations of Ptolemy's Almagest,
with the startling knowledge it contained. To these few scholars it
was an amazing revelation; it was like cool water to a thirsty man.

At this time in Europe, signs were apparent of the beginning of

the struggle of rationalism. There was an undercurrent of freedom of
thought. The Crusades had not accomplished their desired end. The
Church had failed in her brutal campaign in the East, which had been
conducted in the name of the Cross. In fact, the Crusades, instead
of bringing Christianity to the East, had really brought great foreign
learning to the attention of the Crusaders. The amazing knowledge
these humble and, in many cases, ignorant Western people had contacted
in the East shook their faith in the bigoted views of the Church.
These Christians found that the East was not as ignorant as they had
been taught. They found that the Easterners were not sniveling cowards
as had been alleged. Many of the Crusaders returned with great zeal
for the new knowledge they had experienced. This zeal had been
stimulated by the magnificent art, the great architecture, and the
inspiring literature which had been revealed to them during the
Crusades.
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Abelard, a French scholastic philosopher of the twelfth century,

boldly criticized the scholasticism of the Church. The Church had
sought to confine all knowledge merely to dialectical arguments con­
cerning its own dogmas; men were not allowed to go beyond the doctrines
of the Church. Their analyses, their thoughts, were limited merely to
splitting hairs about these dogmas. The situation was like that of a
child with a number of building blocks. All that he could do was to
continue to rearrange these same building blocks. Abelard declared
that it is not ungodly, it is not unchristian, to doubt and to wonder,
nor to seek beyond what we now possess in the way of knowledge.

More and more the men of the West turned to the ’

writings of
Aristotle, for, to them, Aristotle seemed to open the door to a vast
world of learning. The Church was alarmed at this, but it could not
stem the surge toward rationalism. It could not dampen the ardor for
knowledge. Finally, the Church decided upon a saving and very adroit
move. It found that by making relatively slight changes and deletions
in the writings of Aristotle, points which were not quite consistent
with its dogma, it could then adopt Aristotle's writings wholeheartedly.
It had previously used Aristotle's logic, but had now taken into its
embrace his entire science, with of course certain deletions to its own
advantage. It then declared that Aristotle stood for the acme of all
knowledge. It was intended that men would seek no further than
Aristotle; they should not go on and on but should be confined to
Aristotle.

Since the Church now appeared to be liberal, ostensibly so, at

least, many persons ceased their independent inquiries and returned
to the Church and those teachings of Aristotle which it extended.
Actually, the Church had made Aristotle become the limitation of
knowledge in order to serve its own restriction of man's mind. The
Church sought to keep men's minds harnessed to what she, alone, doled
out. Thus, Aristotle, once the great light of knowledge, had now
become, through this method, an instrument for the suppression of
knowledge.

Some thinkers, however, resented any restrictions being placed

upon them. They resented any subjects or any classification of knowl­
edge as being a boundary for their thoughts, and they continued in
increasing numbers their independent search. The postulations of
St, Thomas Aquinas once again saved the Church's position. Aquinas
made a definite distinction between faith on the one hand, and reason
on the other. In substance, he declared that in the temporal world,
in the world of science, men should and must use reason, and without
limitation. Conversely, however, in divine matters, there blind
faith and belief transcend reason. Thus, Christians must not at any
time apply reason to the theology of the Church. This permitted men
a pursuit of knowledge in worldly fields. They were free to participate
in any science and the Church could help them in that regard. On the
other hand, however, it bound men not to question with reason the
doctrines or the dogmas of the Church. Today, this continues to be one
of the basic precepts of the Roman Catholic Church.
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On February 19, 1473, Nicholas Copernicus was born. He ivas a man

to shake the smug import which men had attached to themselves and which
they had assigned to earth. He entered the University of Cracow in the
year 1491. Later he studied law, astronomy, and medicine in Bologna
and Padua, Italy. In 1500, he was called to Rome to occupy the Chair
of Mathematics. In about 1507, he began to believe that the earth
moved about the sun, and xvorked on the exposition of this theory until
the time of his death. He delayed publicising his theory because he
feared, and rightly so, the Church’s charging him with heresy.

If the earth is the center of the universe, then man, by residing

on the earth, might well be the principal object of God's attention.
In fact, the theology of the Church had long taken this position. Man
is important in the universe because the earth is important. The
earth's existence as the center of the universe and its being the
human habitat would make man the principal object of God's attention.
On the other hand, suppose the earth is only one of the planets and
that it is not the largest.' In such a case there would be no reason
to believe that man is so important in the scheme of the universe. It
was along these lines that the Church subsequently attacked Copernicus.
He was charged with belittling the dignity of man and his divine status
by postulating a theory that the earth was not the center of the uni­
verse. Copernicus died May 24, 1543, just as his heliocentric theory
(the sun as the center of the universe) was being published.

We cannot dwell here upon the marvels of the reasoning of

Copernicus. It is necessary, though, that we touch briefly on a few
of the highlights. Copernicus suggested that the universe is spherical
because the sphere is the perfect whole. The sphere, he contended,
is unjointed and it is most capacious. He also stated that everything
tries to attain the form of a sphere: drops of water as well as other
fluids, even the heavenly bodies appear to be spherical. It is amazing
that Copernicus was making statements which are contiguous to points
in the modern doctrine of relativity. He declared that movement de­
pends upon relationship of the observer to the object. If the observer
on the one hand, and the object, on the other, are moving together at
the same velocity, then the movement is not noticed. For analogy, if
we are riding in a train, and another train is beside us, traveling at
the same rate of speed, neither we nor the other train seem to be
moving. The canopy of the heavens, Copernicus said, does not move;
the planets do, however. At times these planets seem to be at varying
distances from the earth: sometimes closer, sometimes farther. Thus,
it would appear that their dependence--because of this variation--Is
upon some body other than the earth. He proposed that the sun was most
probably the center of the attraction of these planets.

Unfortunately, available knowledge was insufficient at that time

to support Copernicus' theory. It required another great thinker, as
profound and as courageous as he, to provide the empirical proof for
the Copernican Theory. This man was Galileo, born in Pisa, February
18, 1564. We note that Galileo was born in the same month but one day
earlier than Copernicus--though ninety-one years later. His father had
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destined him for the profession of medicine. The older Galileo was a
mathematician, but desired his son not to pursue the same profession.
Nevertheless, young Galileo chose his father1s profession of mathematics.

After appointment to the University of Pisa, Galileo devoted him­

self to a study of the laws of motion. One of the first things which
he did was to disprove Aristotle's theory that objects fall at a speed
proportionate to their weight. Aristotle had presumed that all heavy
objects fall at a greater speed than lighter ones and no one had ever
taken the time nor the trouble to find out whether that was true.
Galileo demonstrated that objects fall alike, regardless of their
weight, if they are not impeded by air or other conditions. His doc­
trine of inertia was an outstanding contribution to science. He proved
that bodies when once set in motion remain so, and that they continue
in the same direction, the only exception being the possibility of
their having been affected in some way by other forces. This doctrine
of inertia refuted the claims of the anti-Copernicans. They had at­
tacked Copernicus especially on the grounds that, if the earth revolved
about the sun, as he had claimed, then objects thrown into the air
would remain suspended in air.

Contrary to general opinion, Galileo did not invent the telescope;

rather, he perfected the first one, made it much more efficient. In
1610, using one of these early instruments, he proved that the Milky
Way was not a solid mass of light but consisted of myriads of stars.
Likewise, he demonstrated that Venus has sides and he used this as an
argument to show that Venus revolved about the sun. In 1613, Galileo
began to show his support of the Copernican Theory. Immediately, he
was warned by the Catholic theologians not to teach, defend, or ex­
pound the Copernican doctrine--that such was heresy. In spite of this,
Galileo published in 1632 his Dialogues on Systems of the World. This
was nothing more than a thinly disguised definition of the teachings of
Copernicus which had intrigued him and aroused a great admiration. The
book became the best seller of its time. It was exceedingly popular
among the intelligent, inquiring minds.

A year later, as a result of that publication, Galileo was called

before the Church's Inquisition. Following the hypocritical trial, he
was forced to recant his views. He died January 8 , 1642. Strangely
enough, this was the very day that Sir Isaac Newton was born, and who
came to carry on where Galileo left off. It is also significant that
the dates of the birth and death of Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton,
men so much alike, men who brought new knowledge to the world of
mental darkness, were so unusually linked together.

Copernicus and Galileo became the champions, or, we may say, the
heroes of all those who sought to break with the old theological
restrictions. Men were fired with -the thought of a vast, infinite
universe. They were thrilled by their conception of a cosmic kinship
between all the heavenly bodies, and the earth's being one of a family
of such bodies.
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Giordano Bruno, born 15^8 (?) and burned at stake in 1600, was an
outstanding representative of this new spirit, of this new fired
imagination. To him, the universe was alive; it was a great organism,
like a vast cell through which pulsated a mind, an intelligence. Life
was possible elsewhere, rather than just on earth. The pattern of
conscious beings was no longer to be limited nor was it designed for
just one celestial sphere.

Bruno said: "Only one bereft of reason could believe that those
infinite spaces, tenanted by vast and magnificent bodies, are designed
only to give us light, or to receive the clear shining of the earth."
In substance, he reasoned that even if the whole universe were accepted
as being one starry globe, and the sun and moon made only for earth
and for man, as many were wont to believe, would not such conception
in exalting humanity abase God by its limitations on His Powers?

Bruno also said: "What, is a feeble human creation the only

object worthy of the care of God? In extending the universe as men
are now inclined to do and in pushing out its boundaries or in denying
that it has boundaries, men are not abandoned by God. Rather, man
becomes elevated, because he has the pride, the privilege of realizing
himself as a segment of a vaster universe. Intelligence was no longer
to be confined to a region beneath the sky, to the atmospheric bounds
of our own world. Men now were to be brothers with intelligence every­
where, no matter where it existed. They were to be united with all of
God’s expressions.

It is not necessary or appropriate to enter into a comprehensive

discussion of the Rosicrucian conception of life. It is sufficient
without revealing confidential matters, to say that the Rosicrucians
understand life to be a unity of two primary cosmic forces. One of
these is the essence of energy which underlies all matter, or substance.
And this, then, is wedded with another cosmic energy--the consequence
of which is the phenomena we know as "life," The forms of life may be
varied and innumerable, but the essence of life is the same in all
forms.

The Rosicrucians have long claimed, and in their teachings have

made the point quite comprehensible, that there is a universal sub-
stratum--are we to presume that life alone is limited to earth?
Figuratively, is life to be confined as a phenomenon to the head of a
pin? After all, this globe is no more than the head of a pin in an
infinite sea of an infinite number of worlds. We know that matter,
even here on earth, is not always receptive to life. It is not always
prepared to wed that other primary cosmic essence, out of which unity,
life comes forth. However, whenever the conditions are favorable, a
wedding of the two cosmic forces occurs, resulting in life. It is not
conceivable that our small globe alone has been designed for the
phenomenon of life. In fact, each day there are new discoveries which
make it less probable that life is a mere caprice, or a chance mani­
festation on earth. That unity which is life is possible wherever
conditions are favorable to it. The manner of our earth's formation
and its development must be common to other bodies in the other
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universes as well. In the infinity of time, there must be other bodies

that have been the locale, and that are now the habitat of life and of
intelligence.

Just as all objects do not cast the same shadow, so too, all forms
of life elsewhere would not be the same. Life on other worlds would
necessarily portray, in its form and organic development, its environ­
mental influences. In some instances, such life would be less intelli­
gent than man; in others, it might exceed that of homo sapiens. In­
telligence is an attribute of life. Its development depends upon its
exposure to environmental conditions.

There is not reason to believe that other beings would have the
same sense receptors that we do. For example, the eyes, the ears, and
nose are an outgrowth of an organism’s adjustment to its earthly,
physical surroundings They are essential to its welfare. In fact,
they are a product of such surroundings. For analogy, if we take a
soft ball of clay and press against its two sides two hard objects,
what are the results? The clay ball on those two sides begins to as­
sume the contour of the objects pressed against it. It adapts itself,
in other words, to its environment, to the forces with which it is
brought in touch. So, too, life elsewhere would have its sense organs,
its whole organism, conform and be of a nature necessary to its en­
vironment. It is, then, quite possible that the sense faculties and
organs of Intelligent beings elsewhere would be quite unlike ours.
This might make it very difficult for a common medium of communication
to develop between conscious beings elsewhere and ourselves.

In our times, man has proved and taken out of the realm of
speculation the fact that there is a unity of many forces in the uni­
verse. We have been shown that elements which are common to the earth
exist elsewhere. These chemical elements, heated to a gaseous state,
produce what is known as bright line spectra. This is a series of
bright lines which appear against a black surface. It has been found
that the bright lines of these incandescent elements all have specific
wave lengths. This means that they have definite vibratory rates,
which rates are invariable. The bright line spectra of distant stars
correspond to those of the earth's elements. We know, therefore, that
other worlds have a similar composition to that of the earth. This
method for determining the spectra of stars and all their elements is
known as spectroscopy.

Bruno said that there is a soul that is common to the whole uni­
verse. He meant by this that the universe is alive with a permeating
intelligence. All living things have a self-consciousness, a condi­
tion of being aware of themselves. As a conscious being is aware of
self and of this universal intelligence, to that same degree it has
possession of the soul. Thus, earth and man have no monopoly over
soul. Man shares soul as a Cosmic phenomenon with beings yet unknown
to him.
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