December 14, 2008

Life Here and Out There

By Matt Moniz



The thoughts of every person on this planet has at least one time or another wondered if there was life on other planets. From that very first cognitive human who looked up and saw that great expanse, and on to the everyday person alive today that question still plagues us. We have not come any closer to finding the answer now than we did then. More than a few would say that is due in part to us imposing the willful choice of not wanting to know the truth despite our technology if it was applied with a serious and unbiased effort. Stories, legends, and every manner of musing has made their contribution to the views we have today, and science has done only a small part so far in our understanding, but may yield more in times to come, though right now, it sits impudent and mute on the subject.

From cave wall pictures, to those early days when blazing shields would be seen in the skies of the old world by the likes of pharaohs, Alexander the Great, and the throngs that served them. Replete is history with reports of strange sky chariots, right up until today with the regular sightings of metal craft that defy all we know about the physics of flight. We have always been in watching and wondering, "What could they be?," "How do they do that?," and "where are they from?," right from the start.

There have been entire cultures that have their creation mythos based on the belief that their origins stem from the stars. Like the Dogon, in Africa who say they are descendents of a twin star system, who's verification of not only the accuracy of the second star, but its length of orbit occurred only in the last 50 years. Or to the Aboriginal tribes of Australia that believe that a few pair of siblings came from the sky and seeded the lands with their offspring.

In one way or another, there is some form of entry in every belief system that can be considered by some to have hints in it that life from elsewhere has played some form of guiding as to who we have become. Each person must make that difficult choice themselves, as to if these claims are true or affect the way they see their own beliefs viewed. Regardless of belief, or race, social stature, gender, education, and any other means of dividing our population, humanity has seen these strange sky plying wonders without deviation across time and our globe.

What has been happening in the last couple of decades has been the change of attitude toward truly understanding what we all have been seeing around the planet. Some people still wish to hold out, and hide in the comfort of denial and dismissal. That choice is theirs, and those who wish for more substantial answers will continue to ask the pointed questions though those answer are still forthcoming.

I will now try to enlighten you with the knowledge I have gleaned from a few decades of searching for those answers. One must first except that not all the things that have been seen or recorded are visitors from some distant world. We are human and with that comes all our faults as well. Mistakes are part of who we are, and that has been a perpetual fact we must live with. There were objects seen in days long past that were only later found to be of mundane origin. I refer to comets and meteors along with a host of whether conditions. However that still left a vast number of those mysterious objects seen, unexplainable with those now known things.

Most people are relatively sure that the modern history of UFO's started in the forties. Well, that is not completely true. Along with ancient accounts, there were credible sightings made in 1492 while crossing the Atlantic by Columbus. In the 1600 and 1700's in the Boston area several times. In the 1890's there were "airships" seen from Maine to Texas, where one had even been said to crash, and the pilot given a burial by the local townsfolk. Even before the start of the second World War, there were craft of unknown origin traversing the skies. During the war itself, there were vast numbers of pilots on every side seeing what came to be called "FOO Fighters." Each side thinking they belonged to the other, as some form of secret weapon.

It was only after the war that it was discovered that these fantastic craft belonged to none of the forces involved in the conflict. After the atomic bomb was tested in the deserts of New Mexico, only a few scant years later as if watching the bomb's development, a series of these object were said to have impacted the floor of a few valleys and onto mesa tops nearby. Anywhere from one to four fell from the skies out there it is told by some, and then collected by military and secreted away for study by a war machine with a hungry appetite for new technology that it could use to its own ends.

The cold war was rife with incidents that almost brought us to nuclear obliteration. On several occasions at launch facilities in both the former Soviet Union and US, a strange airborne vehicle was sighted hovering silently above the bases as the entire launch system went fully active and then a complete lock down and out of the system. The missiles in the silos were rendered un-launchable afterward and required their internal guidance gimbals to be recalibrated.

Planes with "Hot Ordnance" onboard were approached and subjected to something similar to what happened with the missile instillations. These "Hot Birds" made it back to their respective bases unharmed, but their payload it is rumored, was not as it should be and required attention before returning to functional status. Some missiles test fired had their payloads knocked right off the booster it was riding on by an energy beam emanating from a structured vehicle pacing the skyward bound rocket. This was recorded on film, that was immediately impounded and forwarded onto the higher levels of the government without haste.

Ships at sea were not immune to harassment if they carried a nuclear source of some form. Carriers and submarines powered by the forces of the atom, found themselves face to face with these same objects coming out of and returning to the sea after their encounters. Remember, sighting at sea go far back into history and contain much the same stories then as now regarding how these things move and look. Sailors in every sea have been witness to objects of an unearthly origin light up the deep only to break the surface and flyaway to the horizon.

Around the world in every country and county, province, state or region, there have been countless sightings of things in the skies that logic and common sense would left wanting, as to the answers for those who were to view them. Private pilots would see these unknown fellow skyward travelers accompany them on flights across skyways both day and night. Police would be dispatched to the homes of many citizens who would return to summit their reports to station logs of the residents claim that a strange light or unknown aircraft was hovering above their property. On a few occasions, these things would land and effect the grounds they rested on. These cases have yielded a good deal of information on the undeniable effects these objects have on soil and plant matter. These results will be discussed in the future during other presentations of this topic.

It was only a matter of time before the inevitable reports of contact between the operators of these other worldly craft and the population at large would surface. These "Contactees" would regale the populous with tales of our galactic "Space-brothers" come to show us the error of our ways and plead with us to end our nuclear madness. The ever-present air of fantasy in their stories, were in a stark contrast to the still unanswered questions of how they had the photos and movies that looked with all world and the intent to be genuine. The archetype "guiding figure" who is worried for our development and warns us of our self-destructive nature was recounted over and over. If history holds to being repetitive, as it is often prone to do in the case of humanity, it will repeat itself here yet again. Maybe someday humanity will get its act together, but it is doubtful it will do that in the near or foreseeable future.

The reports of the visits from our loving "Space Savior Brothers" would eventually give way to a more harrowing experience that has come to be known popularly as the "Alien abduction phenomenon." The Betty and Barney Hill case was one of the most well-known of the transition cases. The human looking "Space Brothers" slowly gave way to the current day depiction of what we know now as "The Gray." What this means is still debated in the circles that investigate these claims. Some are of the opinion that the first group of visitors were a human-like race that may have been our ancestors and others that see them as only posing as human. There are others who see the arrival of the little grey beings as recent visitors to our world and still others feel them to be "US" from an as yet unknown time, that lays ahead for humanity.

The human mind can play a large role in perception of these beings as well. Our minds use information that they have gained over our development and growth and in those personal experiences and exposures that help to shape what we see. In the 15th century, the natives in the Americas that meet the first European explorers could not "see" the ships that arrived on their shores, because they had no reference in their minds to put the pieces together. Over a few days of observation they would be seeing waves break out on the water and birds perching in midair, the shape of the ship would be only slowly perceived by the natives. So how would that differ in reality to what we have today? This is food for thought, as we are not so much in different shoes than those natives who watched in wonder back then and struggled to understand an unknown to them.

This also further begs the question: "Do they have the same motives as the Conquistadors?" Time and experience has taught us that any visiting culture that has a higher state of technology will absorb the less advanced one. I cannot say that this will be the result of full and open contact with others from beyond our solar system, though history has a way of repeating itself over and over with a different casts of the same play. Yet I personally doubt this will be the case and hope that there is a more benign and less dramatic agenda at work.

My reason for this thought is the example of Jane Goodall and her work with primates. She was non intrusive and kept to the peripherals of both the physical and social structure of the primate groups she was studying. Only after a long period of her presence on the outskirts of the group was she approached by them and accepted into their social structure. The primates then continued unfettered and did not lose their identity as a group and acted the same way they were before her arrival, only now including a strange looking being whom they came to "trust" or at least except and tolerate regardless of her difference.

I liken the current actions of UFO occupants we see today, as being similar to those methods being used to study the primates as Jane Goodall did in her work. If they were like the Conquistadors, then we would have been largely eliminated as a people by now and the remainder enslaved and forcibly worked, removing our planets resources for them to sail across the vast seas of space back to their shores. The riches from all these plunders filling unearthly coffers to finance some celestial despot bent on conquest and domination of the heavens.

For the time being, we can only wonder and speculate about the thoughts and intents of beings we are not even sure of who they are, or what they are and even in some cases, if they are. You are all people on the front lines. It is that you are just unaware that there was a large battle being waged and the victor will control the perceptions of the masses that dwell on this planet of how others from outside our world will be viewed. Will we see them as invading hoards bent on domination, or as a curious race with little interest in absorbing us into their culture, but rather awaiting for us to except them into ours.

One thing that can be truly said is that one day we will know for sure that we are not alone, and it is up to us to determine how we react to that fact. The math and materials out there make it very clear that life beyond our world is out there, and we as a people need to be sure we can except that we are not alone, or as it would be self evident, never were alone in this universe. Maybe as a dialog develops over time with these beings, we will get a better idea about what we are "all" doing here. Do not mistake my thoughts here as being that "they" have all the answers to that great mystery. I just feel that together we could help each other get a little closer to that goal.

I want everyone to keep an open mind when it comes to the topic of civilizations that stem from beyond our solar system. One day we will be a part of those throngs that navigate the seas of space to foreign shores that we will one day set foot on. Maybe even greeted by some less advanced beings who will look on us as we did those that came to our little neck of the galaxy and found us standing there looking at them. Many other cultures here on earth already have taken this to be truth and just a fact of life, and are dumfounded that we are struggling with this notion. When you venture outside and look into a star filled sky, just stop for a moment and realize that you only see a small fraction of what is out there. Keep in mind as well, that as you're looking up into that great vastness above us all, that there just maybe a life form from somewhere else looking back.


Matt Moniz is the science advisor and co-host of Spooky Southcoast Radio and a paranormal researcher based in Massachusetts.