“AND WHERE IS EVERYBODY?”
That was the question posed by physicist Enrico Fermi, one afternoon during lunch at the Los Alamos Laboratory, in the summer of 1950.
He had been wondering why the earth had not yet been visited by aliens, or why evidence of previous visits has not been found. A few reasons have been advanced for the absence of intelligent life anywhere else in the universe, despite probability studies suggesting otherwise.
The observable universe contains an estimated 70 sextillion stars (7x1022). Chances are a tiny fraction of these stars should contain planets capable of supporting life, and so civilizations of different kinds should be scattered across the universe. Yet years of relentless search for extra-terrestrial intelligent life has thus far yielded no results, and it’s starting to appear as though we are all alone in the entire universe; or are we?
The question of what life is has been a notoriously contentious one and there currently is no agreed upon criteria for defining it or what should constitute life.
So, what really is a living system? What is life? Who are we? Should life be described in biological terms alone or should consciousness – a property that could be non-biological – be an important criterion?
Should biological activity be regarded to be the same as life? Could our search for extraterrestrial life and civilization have been fundamentally impaired by us continuing to stick to the ‘it’s-life-only-if-it’s-organic’ narrative, and us not recognizing that life could be inherently non-biological?
Could it be that the more advanced ‘life’ becomes, the more it tends towards its more perfect, more sublime energy form, and that life could exist purely as an energy in its purest, most advanced form?
Perhaps there are countless energy life forms out there in the universe impossible for us to detect by our current methods because of our stereotyped view of what life should be.
Maybe they exist in different dimensions of space-time, and our civilizations were never meant to meet.
If energy can neither be created nor destroyed but only changes form, as enshrined in one of the cardinal laws of nature, and ‘life’ in its purest form is regarded as a form of energy, what then happens to ‘life’ when we ‘die’?
What happens to ‘us’ when biological activity ceases?
Do ‘we’ somehow continue to live on perhaps in a different form?
Can life in its purest energy form then be regarded as fundamentally perpetual? Immortal? Since energy cannot be destroyed.
If life in its energy form can exist as a fully independent and autonomous intelligent entity, what then could be the purpose of its association with a biological system?
Could this be nature’s way of keeping within this dimension of space-time an entity that otherwise was not meant to exist there? How and why did nature erase all awareness of ourselves as a perpetual sublime energy, and replaced that awareness of ourselves with that of an impermanent biological entity instead?
Nature has incorporated the energy lifeform into the biological so thoroughly and has in the process also ensured that the properties of this energy are completely assumed by this biological entity so much so that an extremely convincing illusion of the self as a biological entity has been created and perpetuated for a long time, and this perhaps is nature’s strategy of ensuring that we take full ownership of this biological system and value it as appropriate, and to also take ownership of the world we now find ourselves in and to dedicate ourselves fully to the task of creating it into an ideal environment for the optimal existence of our biological lifeform, a task which otherwise would have been made impossible by the longing for the universe of origin of our true lifeform that would have occurred should we have been imbued with such awareness.
If energy was not meant to be created, and life in its original energy form was not fine-tuned for existence within this dimension of space-time, where then did it originate from, and how did it end up inside this dimension of space-time?
Why would a conscious autonomous intelligent energy leave its own universe and decide instead to start another existence in a universe where its existence normally wouldn’t have been supported? Was it an accident? Was it a deliberate decision of this intelligent energy? Did an adverse event force it to abandon its universe and cause it to take refuge in another universe? Was its association with a biological system an adaptation to the conditions in a different universe? Could it be that conscious life, we, are the aliens inside this universe? At what point did its association with a biological system start, and how? Could this intelligent energy have found a way to make biological systems, just to serve its own purpose? Could death then merely be a natural process meant to liberate this conscious energy from its biological association permitting it perhaps the freedom to return to its universe of origin?
If this were to be the case, what will this other dimension of space-time look like?
Will it be inside this universe, or in an entirely new universe?
What sorts of physical laws will be operable within this new dimension?
Will light have the same speed there as here for example, and will the laws of thermodynamics hold true in that universe just as it does here too, or will the workings of that universe make the necessity for such a law superfluous? What technologies will be possible in these other universes? What sorts of creatures will exist there? What will they look like? Will they be energy life forms too? Will they speak our language, and will we understand theirs?
What will the source of light there be? Will stars be there? Is this other dimension what some ancient books refer to as a paradise and is this paradise part of a multiverse?[1]
The questions could go on and on, and it would be fun trying to provide answers to them if our minds could comprehend what goes on in these other dimensions. Or if we could at least sneak a peek inside these dimensions of space-time if really there are other dimensions.
[1]In 2 Corinthians Paul the Apostle writes, "I know a person in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows. And I know that such a person—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know; God knows—was caught up into Paradise and heard things that are not to be told, that no mortal is permitted to repeat."
The concept of parallel worlds is also mentioned in Jewish Kabbalah:
"There are five worlds between the Creator and our world. Each of them consists of five Partzufim and each Partzuf of five Sefirot. In total there are 125 levels between us and the Creator. Malchut, moving through all these levels, reaches the last one, and in this way, Behina Dalet, the only creation, merges with the four previous phases." http://www.kabbalah.info/engkab/book_1/book1eng_les06.htm
There are seven verses in the Quran describing seven heavens. One verse says that each heaven or sky has its own order, possibly meaning laws of nature:
“Then He made them seven heavens in two days and revealed to each heaven its law. And We adorned the lower heaven with lamps, and firmly secured it. All this is the firm plan of the All-Mighty, the All-Knowing.”
Quran 41 verse 12.