2001: Human versus ET Superpowers

THE SUPERPOWERS OF THE HUMAN BIOMIND

vis a vis

THE PROBABILITIES OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL SUPERPOWERS

ORIENTATION and INTRODUCTORY

Ingo Swann (08Feb01)

 The first purpose of this Section 5 is to provide a function within this Website in which exploratory hypothesis and speculation can be indulged and expanded upon.

This is in contrast to Section 1, the Ingo Swann Database Regarding the Biomind Superpowers, in which hypothesis and speculation are held to the minimum.

 As most realize, HYPOTHESIS refers to “a tentative assumption made in order to draw out and test its logical or empirical consequences,” and SPECULATION is defined as “to meditate on or ponder a subject.” 

Speaking in the ideal, the basic function of hypothesis and speculation is not to make conclusions, but to juggle and contrast information packages and numerous topics, so that new, better, or even unsuspected understanding might be achieved.

The second purpose is to continue to point up that average definitions of the human mind (including its superpower components) are inadequate, if not useless, in the full face of the human mind itself.

 Indeed, the instrumental nature of the human mind is so remarkable as to be awesome, and so it is easily discovered that mere words fail to bring fuller description to it.

 A dispassionate survey of definitions of the human mind reveals that although a small variety of its aspects are identified, the sum of all of the definitions leaves many more refined aspects in the shadows.  This includes modern scientific definitions, and even occult and esoteric definitions as well. 

None of the definitions of the mind are wrong per se, but the definitional process of identifying the larger nature of the mind is incomplete, and probably vastly so.

One reason for this is that such definitions are NOT derived from or based upon visible functions and attributes of the mind itself.  Instead, and as will be elaborated in Part 1 to follow, the definitions that do come into existence are set up by this or that societal order, and so the definitions usually reflects the limits of knowledge within each of those orders.

This clearly implies that definitions of mind on Earth are little more than socio-determined ones.  They are based on societal concepts and not on impartial and full observations of mind itself, which transcends all such concepts. 

The human mind, both in essence and in manifest functions, DOES transcend all socio-determined situations – BECAUSE all such situations are products of the overall human mind itself.

In the larger perspective of this, it can therefore be understood that ANY definitions of mind that are socially derived merely reflect some kind of socio-control agenda regarding how the mind should or should not be thought of, as contrasted to what mind actually is in all its magnificence and potential powers.

If we can think that any definitions of mind that we learn about via education have been established merely within self-limiting contexts of various kinds of socio-control agendas, then we would expect to discover that mind has NOT been examined and defined at the all-inclusive human species level. 

In fact, there would be no apparent reason to undertake such an examination – in the absence of factors that might make it NECESSARY to do so.

This is much the same as saying that Earth societies would separately continue to identify and define mind only via the thinking-lenses of those societies, for there is no obvious reason to do otherwise.

However, it could occur that Earth societies might encounter ANOTHER species having powers of mind at least commensurate with, but perhaps advanced beyond our own species. 

Of course, this kind of encounter is, and has been, a pure speculation – with the exception (discussed in Part 1) of recent and remarkable developments in advancing astrophysics that are in process of converting the speculation into something akin to a semi-concrete hypothesis of actual possibility.

In any event, if mind, mind powers, and intelligence within the context of another species, perhaps more powerful than our own, needed to be understood, the process of doing so would ALSO mean that deeper knowledge of the mind quanta of our own species would have to be illuminated more clearly and intimately.

“Another species,” of course, can easily refer to one that is extraterrestrial, largely because we do not experience here on Earth another species equipped with mind-power-intelligence that is commensurate with our own.

The historical human experience on Earth has merely been to encounter other social orders, the various patterns of which all download from the mind-mental-intelligence attributes of our species as a whole.

Since many aspects of our species mind have been denied authenticity within the limiting contexts of this or that societal order, it cannot really be said that fuller knowledge packages of mind itself have been achieved beyond the limited sum of those contexts.

If, however, our species were to encounter another species, especially an extraterrestrial one “more developed” than ours, then it would have to be concluded, at some point, that our own mind-mental-intelligence attributes are, well, “less developed” BY COMPARISON.

It is this COMPARISON, and evidence for it, that can be explored by hypothesis and speculation – from which no conclusions need be drawn.

Part  One:

OUR HUMAN POWERS OF MIND
vs
THE POSSIBILITY OF ET INTELLIGENCES

Ingo Swann (21Feb01)

There are a number of pathways by which we can approach the subject of how Earthside knowledge of MIND would stack up against similar kinds of knowledge developed by life forms elsewhere in the cosmos.

Of course there is yet no absolute certainty that extraterrestrial entities equipped with minds do exist.  Thus, in order to proceed, one has to imagine, speculate, or hypothesize that they do.

The principle justification for making such an effort is that IF mind-developed species do exist elsewhere in the universe, then perhaps our own human species emanating or traveling from Earth could encounter them, or perhaps those species emanating or traveling from some cosmic elsewhere might encounter ours.

It is by considering the ways and means of such “traveling” that a very significant situational problem can stand revealed:  The species that first achieves the traveling capabilities would be considered “advanced” by those species that had not yet achieved anything along such lines.

Something now depends on what the “advanced” connotation is thought to refer to.  It is clear that Earth people seem justified in thinking in terms of advanced technology that bestows the capabilities of negotiating deep cosmic reaches of space.  But this thinking principally refers to the 3-dimensional contexts of physical space and whatever matter and energy is involved in it.

On Earth, the idea that ET technology would be advanced is arrived at by comparison with Earth-based technology that is neither commensurate to nor on a match with ET space-travel capabilities.

We do not know, for certain, what such ET technology might consist of.  But it can be hypothesized that perhaps some ET civilization achieved the necessary space-travel capabilities in the terms of 3-dimensional physicality.

It is clear that Earth people have not yet matched the ET capability.  And so the ET capability must be seen as technologically advanced in comparison to Earth’s space technology – and especially so IF any evidence for ET space-travel and arrivals in near-Earth proximity can be discovered.

ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY IMPLIES THE EXISTENCE OF ADVANCED MINDS

The foregoing seems to hold water, but it does so only to a certain degree, and then only with regard to a physico-energetic technology brought into existence within 3-dimensional matter, energy, and space.

Within their specific materialistic contexts, ideas concerning a physical-energetic space technology are sufficiently rational, and so confidence is placed in such materialistic ideas by the conventional sciences and by UFOlogists alike.

But one of the implications of this is that Earth people will tend to interpret ET via Earth-based ideas of a physico-energetic technology – in other words, via 3-dimensional equipment.

However, just behind this physical, 3-dimensional interpretation is a rather unavoidable reality:  no technology can come into existence in the absence of minds to innovate it.  Even physical 3-dimensional technology does not magically produce itself. 

If, therefore, one hypothesizes (a) the existence of ET advanced technology, one is also supposing (b) the real existence of ET advanced minds that innovated and produced their technology.

As indicated above, the idea that something is “advanced” is arrived at by comparing two relatively similar things and finding that one of them performs and produces far better, and perhaps amazingly so, than the other one.

Implicit in this comparing, however, are what might be referred to as information and knowledge packages.  Things do not of and in themselves become advanced or inferior with respect to each other unless some kind of function or activity is established within their perspectives. 

For example, the possibility of planetary and stellar space travel could be hypothesized by any number of ET civilizations, and, indeed, this notion has even emerged on Earth.  In this sense, the basic hypothesis of space travel would probably be relatively similar everywhere in the universe.

However, AFTER the hypothesis is established, THEN comes the universal reality of what information and knowledge packages are required to convert the hypothesizing into a functional activity whereby space travel is actually achieved.

And, one may as well add, achieved not merely in the light of experimental attempts to do so, but with sustainable and predictable certainty. 

MIND DEALS WITH INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE PACKAGES

Via the foregoing considerations, it can appear that the real make-break point between any recognizable advanced or inferior status of something has to do with the existence of minds that can deal with information and knowledge packages. 

Such are, of course, the workhorses of mind, so much so that if mind does not fundamentally deal with information and knowledge packages, then it is rather difficult (1) to identify what it does deal with, and (2) to comprehend why it is even needed.

In this sense, it can be hypothesized that mind anywhere in the cosmos fundamentally deals with information and knowledge packages. 

It can therefore be suspected that minds that deal with greater, even vast volumetric amounts of information and knowledge (1) could probably be thought of as “advanced” over those minds dealing only in lesser amounts, and (2) could probably have developed and engineered “advanced” technologies.

EARTH-HUMAN IDEAS OF WHAT MIND IS

The term MIND has been utilized rather liberally here.

Doing so has permitted hypothesis regarding the fundamental possibility of ET mind(s) elsewhere in the cosmos.

Doing so has also permitted speculation that mind dealing, to one degree or another, in information and knowledge packages might be a universal constant wherever mind is found.  However, ET comprehensions of what mind is could be quite different from our own ideas of it.

There are nine basic ways that MIND is officially defined and considered here on Earth.  Although a very large literature exists regarding the topic of mind, discussions seldom extend too far outside of the nine definitions.

There are, of course, many unofficial and semi-official variants upon these definitions, but in combined meaning they more or less constitute the background framework for how MIND is conceptualized here on Earth. 

At first take, it seems that at least definitions (1) through (7), when taken altogether, do constitute a neat knowledge package about what mind is.

But if those definitions are contemplated even slightly more deeply, it turns out that they are mostly describing PRODUCTS of mind, not mind itself, and indeed, describing only a very few mind’s many possible products. 

Furthermore, there is no direct reference to information and knowledge packages – although such can be thought of as somehow implicit among the definitions.

It can also be noticed that although “intellectual ability” is mentioned, INTELLIGENCE is not.  (And even more surprisingly, as will be discussed ahead, the definitions of INTELLIGENCE do not incorporate any of the definitions of MIND.)

Last, but not the least of it all, the official definitions of MIND give no hint or clue as to the real existence of the remarkable powers of mind, and which, it might be said with some certainty, are absolutely necessary for a mind to call itself a mind. 

Indeed, it can easily be conceptualized that a mind cannot be thought of as one if it just sits like a bump on a log.  Clearly, mind MUST have powers to function at all.

ONE PROBABLE REASON WHY HUMAN DEFINITIONS OF MIND ARE NOT VERY EXTENSIVE

The foregoing human definitions of MIND might not be considered a total flop within average Earthside frames of reference.

But if and when those definitions might be utilized to consider and analyze the possible dimensions of ET advanced minds elsewhere in the cosmos, the success rate of such an analysis might not be very high.

Therefore, it is worthwhile, as a brief aside, to discuss one probable Earthside reason having to do with why mind is so poorly and inefficiently defined within the context of our species.

On Earth, the real existence of the human mind and its extensive powers has long been treated this way and that within different contexts.

Those contexts are usually SOCIETAL in purpose and function, and so the ways in which the mind is treated usually have more to do with societal structures and controls, and less to do with the fuller and bigger nature of the human mind itself.

This clearly means, at least in some full part, that human societal arrangements on Earth are NOT built upon a fuller and more extensive appreciation of the human mind and its powers.

Rather, the various kinds of societal structures are far more likely to be built ONLY upon so-called “normalizing” patterns of thinking that reinforce the presumed authenticity of the structures themselves.

It is because of this normalizing utility within societal groupings that patterns of thinking are usually seen as far more important than trying to discover the larger nature of the human mind itself. 

The whole of this becomes abundantly clear when it is realized that all social ordering is principally based upon ratios of tolerance and intolerance between what should be and what should not be thought.  And this is more or less the historical case within Earth’s manifold societies.

Thinking is, of course, a product or an output of the human mind.  But if the societal and cultural emphasis is on the product or output of the mind, then the larger and more intimate nature of the mind itself will not come into view.

In fact, it is CONVENIENT within most societal contexts on Earth that the larger and more intimate nature of the mind itself should NOT come into view.  Indeed, in some past societies, inquiring into the larger nature of the mind has been prohibited.

The best reason for this has two easily observed parts.

The first is that most societal structures tacitly and unofficially admit that there is much more to the human mind than meets the average eye or even the average intelligence.

But the second part has to do not with what the mind IS, but with establishing what a mind should and should not think in order to fit more appropriately into a given societal structure.

It is thus seen more useful that minds be fitted into the parameters of societal structures, and the pursuit of this takes precedence over what the mind is.

The reason for this aside is to point up that within Earth-human frames of reference, the larger and more intimate nature of the human mind is NOT anywhere understood.

The most obvious reason for this is that achieving any larger understanding of the human mind is NOT REALLY NECESSARY in the light of societal contexts that are largely dependent upon what IS and IS NOT to be thought.  Indeed, if, for societal ends, thought-thinking can be managed, it does not really matter what the mind IS.

Earth societies probably know much more about thought management than they know about what the human mind actually is.  The goal of most societal orders is to mutually integrate the thinking of many individuals so that the desired societal structure will manifest and (hopefully) stay in place thereafter.

THE HUMAN MIND IS UNIQUE (ON PLANET EARTH)

The human species mind on Earth can be thought of as unique – as long as it does not encounter another species mind that is equivalent or more advanced.

Furthermore, as long as such encounters DO NOT come about, humans will not feel much need to discover more about what mind fundamentally consists of.  Indeed, a mind species on a given planet having no equivalent mind competitors, so to speak, can afford the societal luxury of not discovering too much about its own mind.

If, however, such encounters should come to pass, then a necessity for information and knowledge packages about MIND would become explicit enough. 

THE POSSIBLE EXISTENCE OF ET MIND-INTELLIGENCE

If one begins to hypothesize the possibility of ET intelligences, one necessarily sets into motion, without realizing it, subtle changes having to do with how we think of ourselves.  We will ultimately have to wonder if and how the formats of our own Earth-based intelligence stack up against ET formats which might be encountered elsewhere, or FROM elsewhere.

A number of unfamiliar, and rather complicated, problem-like situations would download from this kind of hypothetical inquiry.

Among the first of these is that our own Earth-based ideas and/or knowledge regarding MIND and INTELLIGENCE would have to be studied more objectively, and examined in the larger contexts of our species as a whole. 

If ET civilizations should give evidence of being advanced over our Earth-based civilizations, then various kinds of cognitive crisis would begin to unfold on our part having to do with our own limited, and thus inefficient, ideas-knowledge of mind, etc. 

Earth-based thinking about civilizations more or less equates them with particular societal formats that not only achieve long-term existence, but also produce constructive order in various departments of communalizing activity. 

It is thus understood by literate Earth people that Earth has experienced numerous societal civilizations that have arisen and declined.  However, the idea of instituting constructive and communalizing order has not yet been applied, by humans, to their species as a whole.

As indicated earlier, it is thus that Earth-based ideas of mind and intelligence are left to various kinds of societal orders, each of which shapes those ideas in limiting ways that serve the societal frameworks, but none of which can be completely applied to our species as a whole.

It is because of this that the nature of mind and intelligence at our species level has been left unexamined.

One of the obvious results is that although “mind” can be thought of within the contexts of various (and always transitory) socio-cultural levels, the nature of our species mind has been left unexamined.

This kind of thing permits two major options regarding the possibility of ET mind-intelligence elsewhere in the cosmos.

      For more complete clarity here, it needs to be stressed that examination of mind-intelligence at a species level would require study and identification of ALL of the mind, the whole of it – whereas establishing ideas of mind-intelligence in a given societal context need not involve anything of the kind.

      The point of the foregoing discussions has been to illuminate a probable fact regarding mind-intelligence found anywhere in the universe. 

This point can best be stated in the following way:  a species that understands MORE about mind-intelligence would naturally be thought of as ADVANCED by those species that have a lesser understanding of same.

      This is more or less to say that the advanced species would have achieved mental contact with abundant information dimensions appropriate to mind-intelligence, and therefore will have codified and established more knowledge packages regarding same.

PROBLEMS WITH CONCEPTUALIZING THE EXISTENCE OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL MINDS

      During the last six decades of the twentieth century, a kind of conventional scientific consensus came about having to do with the possibility of life elsewhere in the cosmos.

The “elsewhere” specifically referred to great light-year distances not only from our planet Earth, but also from our local solar system. 

Great efforts were then set going to figure out how to project Earth-based “radio” signals into those deep reaches of space, with the hope that “someone out there” might receive them and respond.

However, the UFO epoch of the twentieth century began during the same six decades, and is still ongoing.  This UFO epoch has since been chiefly characterized by thousands upon thousands of witnessed objects in Earth’s skies and in near outer space. 

The “best evidence” for the real existence of the unidentified flying objects is their early and continuing appearance on radarscopes worldwide, and thereafter upon videotapes from Camcorders, also worldwide.

The UFO epoch must be referred to as “non-conventional.”  The reason is that Earthside conventional attitudes continue to insist that the technologically documented appearances of the UFO’s have not been “officially accepted,” and that therefore the UFO’s do not exist.

This rather simplistic contrivance has of course led into a continuing soap opera mishmash characterized by rather remarkable cover-ups, misinformation, and reality manipulations, the exact purposes of which are not at all clear.

Despite the confusions between them, the conventional and non-conventional positions very early began sharing an important concept that is openly stated, but which has not really been given the extensive consideration it deserves.

In attempting to send Earth-based signals into the far reaches of space, the conventional sciences were, in essence, stipulating that extraterrestrial life would not only be technologically advanced enough to intercept and understand them – but probably also much MORE advanced than Earth-based technologies.

With regard to appearances of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) that could be documented by some kind of Earth-based technology, it quickly became clear that certain things about them COULD be identified.

For one thing, they showed up on radarscopes, but often remained invisible to eyesight; they possessed extraordinary speed, size, dimensions, and maneuverability.  Indeed, everything about them was dissimilar to any Earth-based technology. 

And so it was easy enough to conclude that the crafts were not only vastly more technologically advanced than any Earth-based technology, but also that they could not originate from Earth.

It is thus that the conventional and non-conventional ideas about ET life coincide, based on the shared assumption that ET not only IS, but also will be found to be, more technologically advanced.

In one form or another, the assumption briefly outlined above is accepted just about everywhere, and so it is not all that surprising.

What is surprising, though, is that not very many efforts have been made to enlarge and expand upon its DIRECT implications.  And of these there are quite a number.

For example, the idea of ET being technologically advanced seems to be tolerable and even admissible, whether in conventional expectations or in non-conventional UFO fact. 

However, it is rather meaningful and logical to notice that ET advanced technology MUST be the result of, and download from, ET advanced minds and intelligence.

Thus, although ET advanced technology is interesting, the nature and extent of the ET minds, mental abilities, and intelligence that produced it SHOULD be of even more interest, even if only in some theoretical sense.

As another example, Earth people think whatever and however they do through their own frames of reference, especially with regard to their own ideas not only about Earthside technological matters, but also about mind, mental abilities, and intelligence.

In the light of this, if ET advanced technology is to serve as some kind of marker between their technology and Earth-bound technology, it has to follow that such also serves as a marker that clearly separates the ET advanced intelligence from the not-as-advanced Earthside intelligence.

In this sense, Earthside intelligence does not at all match whatever ET intelligence must consist of – at least with respect to those intelligences responsible for the UFO advanced technology against which Earth’s technological status is no match.

THE INCREASING CHANCES THAT MIND-INTELLIGENCE EXISTS ELSEWHERE IN THE UNIVERSE

      As this essay is being written, Earthside astrophysicists are in process of beginning to realize that most of the 466 Sun-like stars within 325 light years of our Sun have planetary-terrestrial type material orbiting them.

The implication is that there are Earth-like bodies in orbit around most of the “stars within the galaxy.”

Well, millions upon millions of galaxies are known to inhabit the universe, and which are farther and farther distant from our own.  And so the possibility of Sun-like stars having terrestrial-like stuff in orbit about them implies the existence of millions upon millions of planets through the whole of the universe. 

It can be remembered that only a short while ago no planets had been detected beyond those of our own solar system, and lack of such planets was often seized upon to deny the existence of ET.  Now planets are everywhere, and in some rather large and significant numbers. 

Two questions arise from this:

AN AVOIDED IMPLICATION REGARDING THE DIMENSIONS AND THE DURATION OF THE UNIVERSE

      Earth-based astrophysics technology is a very recent development, especially with regard to the Hubble telescope and the ways and means of locating and analyzing the light signatures of distant Sun-like stars.

      Prior to those recent developments, it is easy enough to see why Earth-based cosmologies primarily consisted of metaphysical extrapolations, even within the contexts of early scientific thinking.

      Furthermore, if from antiquity onward historical evidence of UFOs was deleted from conventional cultural notice (which it was), there has been no compelling reason to consider the probability of intelligent cavitations elsewhere in the cosmos.

      As it has turned out, the recent developments in astrophysics technology have made it possible to have a larger grasp of the dimensions and duration of the universe.  That technology has made it quite necessary to understand: 

The presence of planets in the vicinity of billions of Sun-like stars must now be added into the contexts of the universe’s dimensions and duration – and it thereby becomes at least 50 per cent foolish to assume that our Earth-bound human species is unique in the universe.

So far, our human species is dated as “appearing” on Earth somewhere between about 100,000 to 35,000 years ago.  This is such a small fraction of cosmic duration that it wouldn’t even show up on a universe time-scale of billions, trillions, or even quadrillions of light years.

As a result, it is now to be wondered what has gone on elsewhere in the utterly super-gigantic, super-long-enduring universe now understood to be thickly populated with planets everywhere.

Is the universe entire devoid of life and life forms, with the sole exception being the third planet of our local Sun?  Does the rest of the universe exist only as 3-dimensional inanimate matter, energy, and space – i.e., is its enormous vastness merely a super-extensive life desert?

Or has whatever is responsible for animate matter and energy (physical life forms) occurred elsewhere in the universe, and perhaps done so millions, billions, or quadrillion years ago?

As it is, the novel problems and situations downloading from recent, Earth-based, technological instruments and achievements can be left, thank goodness, to astronomers, astrophysicists, and exo-biologists.

However, a survey of those interesting and now increasingly dynamic fields shows that another new field may be required and ultimately increase in overall importance – the field of exo-intelligence.

LIFE FORMS vs INTELLIGENT LIFE FORMS

If the existence of mere millions of Earth-like planets in orbit around Sun-like stars is even theoretically accepted, then the theoretical possibility emerges that at least some of them might have sprouted life forms of some kind, or even some kind of quasi-intelligent or broadly intelligent life forms.

During the last twenty years the cutting edges of our Earth-based sciences have become somewhat comfortable with such possibilities, but with one proviso.

If such life forms have remained contained within the environments of their local planets, then they remain passively awaiting, so to speak, ultimate discovery by Earth-based explorers of the cosmos at some future Earth date.

But, if some of those planets have sprouted intelligent life forms that have achieved requisite technology enabling them to venture beyond the confines of their local planets and even their local star systems – well, that is altogether a different matter.

Indeed, such ET technology might enable them to flit about here and there throughout the super-sized universe.  THIS prospect does not inspire too much comfort, especially if the flitting is achieved by exo-intelligences with advanced ways and means totally unknown and unreal to our Earth-bound species.

Be that as it may (and apparently IS), there is yet another factor lurking just between the exo-technological scenarios.

THIS factor has to do with the levels of advanced exo-intelligence from which the exo-technological achievements are downloaded.

Here is another prospect that does not inspire too much comfort, because it clearly downsizes the appreciation that Earthsiders have long maintained in their own intelligence ratios and levels.

Only about sixty years ago, modern Earth peoples in general still assumed that our human species, together with its inherent faculties of intelligence, was unique in the universe.  But indeed, advanced ET technology does NOT come into existence by itself. 

One of the upshots of all of this is that while Earth peoples might become (as they have) theoretically agreeable to the idea of ET advanced technology, the ET advanced intelligence factor remains avoided.  One reason for this avoidance is that it implies that Earth-based human intelligence may be quite inferior to ET counterparts originating in space and time elsewhere in the cosmos.

Thus, a large literature, partly logical and partly confusing, has unofficially come into existence about the possible or probable nature of ET advanced technology.

Yet, ET mind-intelligence is equally, if not more, important.  With the exception of science fiction manufacturing, it remains an issue that has accumulated very little serious discussion.

There seem to be at least two principal reasons for this, and neither of them has much to do with the possibility of ET intelligence.

The first reason has to do with the failure of Earth peoples to more fully appreciate the larger scope of their own intelligence.

The second reason has to do with Earth-bound ideas basic to materialism – that the physical quaternity of matter, energy, space, and time is all that exists anywhere and everywhere.

This is particularly the case regarding the modernist age of science and technology, during which hard-core materialists supposed that the quaternity constitutes the only fundamental, universal make up of the cosmos.

This supposition seems logical and rational enough, but only within its own self-limiting context (i.e., that physical matter, energy, space, and time are all that exists).

There is, however, the problem of matter and energy (which are inanimate) somehow being converted into animate matter and energy, which results in life forms.

This problem, quite inconvenient to the adherents of philosophical and scientific materialism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, was handled quite neatly. 

As was reiterated many times in print, scientific answers to the problem of animate matter will ULTIMATELY be found to have materialistic explanations, and so no other explanations need be looked for.

It therefore followed that intelligence, as an attribute of animate higher life forms, would also be found to have materialistic explanations.

End of story, at least with regard to Earth-based philosophical and scientific materialism.

And so although the important distinction between non-animate and animate matter/energy was neatly made to disappear within the contexts of the modern sciences, there remained many unresolved obvious issues, as well as invisible issues yet to be discovered.

However, with regard to ET life-intelligence possibilities, there are some Earthside issues that have become at least halfway visible. 

For example, if the documented existence of UFOs is to be admitted into evidence, then it is to be observed that their flight, speed, dimensions, and maneuverability DISOBEY the laws of physical matter, energy, space, and time as those LAWS are so far understood by our sciences.

That THIS might be so constitutes something of an intellectual embarrassment, to be sure.  But more importantly, the nature of the UFOs demonstrate that our own scientific understanding of matter, energy, space, and time is at least inadequate, and quite possibly not even applicable within the contexts of exo-technological knowledge that may have developed elsewhere in the very long-enduring cosmos.

The nature of the exo-technological knowledge more or less constitutes Problem One (at least within the contexts of Earth-based materialism.) 

But by implication, Problem One leads directly into Problem Two:  the possibility that our Earthside understanding about intelligence is at least inadequate, and quite possibly not even applicable within the contexts of ET knowledge of intelligence.

After all, some kind of INTELLIGENCES built the inexplicable UFOs that pester Earth’s skies and near space environments – and, furthermore, those intelligences apparently have utilized knowledge of forces that are alien to Earthside knowledge packages.

If the foregoing factors are considered, the combination of them provides numerous embarrassments to Earthside people, especially to those who are supposed to know what they are doing and what things are all about.  And so the best conventional way to save some kind of face is NEVER to OFFICIALLY admit that the irksome and troublesome craft exist.

IS ALL THAT EXISTS EVERYWHERE THROUGHOUT THE COSMOS
COMPOSED ONLY OF 3-DIMENSIONAL MATTER, ENERGY, AND SPACE?

The philosophy that achieved high-profile visibility during modernist times was that of MATERIALISM.  This is briefly defined as:

As long as materialism is considered a theory, i.e., akin to hypothesis or speculation, it can be considered an option of free speech, etc.  As a doctrine, however, problems can come into visibility – for example, having to do with ideas about well-being and furtherance of mind-intelligence progress. 

As has been discussed earlier, it can be seen that definitions of mind depend on societal erections within which mind is defined only in ways that give service to them. 

It is certainly true that a societal erection can be built within the contexts and auspices of a philosophy, such as that of materialism.  The basic theory and doctrine of materialism, however, makes no reference to mind-intelligence, and so the implication has to be that these are irrelevant, at least to some large degree.

Therefore, one would not expect that the inner and outer workings of a materialistic societal structure would become too involved with mind-intelligence, as long as the structure is fully erect, upstanding, and unchallenged.

The inner strength of philosophical and scientific materialism fundamentally rests upon the idea-theory of the ubiquitous existence of matter as the ONLY omnipresent constituent of the universe.

Verifiable UFOs, however, bring challenge to materialism in principle, in that those craft also bring challenge to the Earthside understanding of the “laws” of matter, energy, space, and time – which the strange dynamics and phenomena of the craft apparently do transcend, or, perhaps even obviate. 

As long as those craft persist in doing so, then the craft also transcend Earthside mind-intelligence locked into materialistic terms, even if scientific.

After all, crafts that register on radar, but not on eyesight, cannot really be completely thought of as ubiquitous matter, and certainly cannot be “politically correct” with respect to Earthside laws of physicality.

If, then, verifiable UFOs are of ET origin, then whatever mind-intelligence(s) innovated the craft probably cannot even be approximated by anything here on Earth – with one or two exceptions to be discussed ahead.

Something now depends on whether the physical matter of materialism actually DOES constitute the fundamental ingredient of the cosmos entire.  Within the last ten years of cutting edge of astrophysics, the answer to this is an unambiguous NO.

During the latter two decades of the twentieth century, it was slowly discovered that the traditional physical aspects of the cosmos accounted for only about 9 percent of the entire volume-mass of the universe, while the remaining 91 percent was invisible and did not register on Earthside physical equipment or eyesight. 

The larger volume-mass was first referred to as “dark matter,” but more recently is being referred to as “Quintessence, the mystery of the missing mass in the universe.” (See the book of this title, by Lawrence Krauss, published in 2000 by Basic Books.)

Of course the “missing mass in the universe” is not really missing in the universe, but only missing within Earth-based realities that can neither account for nor recognize what it consists of.

About the only sure thing about this “mass” is that it is NOT the same as, cannot be fitted into, or is radically different from, our Earthside precepts of physical matter, energy, space, and time – and which precepts have dominated our modernist Earthside sciences.

Now, a few implications of this really do need to be pointed up, if only in some theoretical sense.

First, there is a rather serious discrepancy between 9 per cent of something, and 100 per cent of it.

Second, there is the beginning of a comparison that may or may not be justified, but which is none the less worth some tentative speculating.

For some time scientists have opined that Earthside humans in general appear to be utilizing only about 9 to 12 per cent of their brains.  Again, there is a serious discrepancy between 9 percent and 100 percent of brain usage or utilization.

Although this phenomenon may turn out to have no relevance within the cosmic scope of all things, it is quite obvious that most Earthside humans devote most of their active brain time to dealing within the Earthside contexts of physical matter, energy, space, and time.

Third, if ET civilizations do exist elsewhere in the far, far reaches of the cosmos, it can theoretically be thought that those civilizations could have begun, evolved, grown, and super-technologized themselves many millions, and even perhaps billions, of years ago.

Fourth, if so, then it is also theoretically possible that such ET civilizations have not confined their activities, their knowledge, or their brains, to working only within Earthside knowledge packages that can only identify 9 percent of cosmic universals.

To state this more bluntly, it is theoretically thinkable that ET has, some very long time ago, sorted out what the other 91 percent of the universe consists of.

The nature of the 91 percent of the universe that presently remains occluded from Earthside knowledge packages MIGHT contain the basis of indigenous and generic universals that have not been recognized as such by our modernist Earthside sciences, whose knowledge packages are limited to the physicality of the materialistic quaternity.

DOES THE COSMIC UNIVERSE EXIST IF THERE IS NO MIND-INTELLIGENCE TO WITNESS THAT IT DOES?

Even if not officially endorsed on Earth, the verifiable existence of at least some UFO craft can lead toward at least two tentative hypotheses:

One of the bottom lines of all this it that if ANY microscopic evidence of protein structures that are made only by life organisms are found anywhere except on Earth, then the idea of a universal life force must be extended to include the cosmos entire, even if only theoretically so.

By extension, if exo-evidence of life forms is encountered, then the principle of life force turning into life forms must be extended (theoretically) to include the ultimate possibility of turning into some kind of life mind-intelligence.

Thus, and ONLY speaking theoretically to be sure, life force and life intelligence COULD ultimately be understood as indigenous and generic within the universe.

In other words, wherever the universe IS, then there is also matter, energy, space, and time – AND life force, life forms, and life intelligence.

The enormous light year distances between various emergences of life phenomena have no real meaning in this regard, except that the distances are very great (as measured within the scope of current Earthside frames of reference.)

What has far greater meaning are the time elements involved – for example, the difference between 4 billion years and 1,000 billion years before that.

Our own small solar system is not very old when computed against hundreds of billions of years.  Thus, based on the 50-50 speculations that life could occur elsewhere in the universe, there is a significant chance that it might have occurred billions of years BEFORE Earth ever came into a life-bearing condition.

The whole of the immediately foregoing discussions can be considered as highly theoretical or speculative.

But as surprising at it might seem, those speculations are helpful toward enlarging upon the nature of INTELLIGENCE – IF it can be considered a generic potential in the whole scheme of cosmic goings on.

The Modern Earthside Definition of Intelligence

To begin getting deeper into this, we of course have to start with the conventional Earthside definition of INTELLIGENCE, which is thought to be complete and correct in psychological and scientific terms.

In most dictionaries, this definition is given as “The capacity to apprehend facts and propositions and their relations and to reason about them.”

At first take, this definition seems logical and rational, and so its portrayed meaning and usefulness are not usually inspected too much.

One cannot say that the definition is wrong, but one can suggest it could be put in a more useful and thus more meaningful manner as follows:

Most dictionaries define to REASON (as the verb) as “to use the faculty of reason, i.e., to think.”

As a noun, however, REASON is defined in several ways:

These definitions of reason do not indicate that reasoning always takes place within frames of reference.

It is important to observe this, because, with regard to the first definition just above, comprehending something can have different results because of different frames of reference.

As but one slightly amusing example, the power of comprehending the sum of the intellectual powers depends on the frames of reference being used (1) to define the sum of the intellectual powers in order (2) to think about them.

Since Earthside knowledge of what the intellectual powers are is not very massive, any Earthside thinking about them cannot be too massive either. 

Indeed, Earthside definitions of mind-intelligence are established in ways that afford societal satisfaction rather than on any in-depth examination of mind-intelligence phenomena themselves.

There are thus a number of special difficulties surrounding the topic of reason.  These will be further outlined in Part 3, entitled “Human vs ET Reasoning.”

The foregoing descriptions lead to the commonly shared understanding composed of four factors: