MUFON-LA - Report a Sighting

In June of 1989, when the Soviet Union was still very much an active power in our planetary world order, Professor Francis Fukuyama, then a Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago, wrote a nationally-distributed article in Public Interest Magazine entitled: “The End of History”. In this now very widely-discussed article, Dr. Fukuyama startled the leaders of the Western World by boldly predicting that the Soviet Union was going to collapse in the very near future, much sooner than any of the so-called “experts” in Western Civilization were then predicting. He predicted, as well, that this soon-upcoming sudden collapse of the Soviet Union was going to confront the political, economic, academic, religious and cultural “Leaders” of Western Civilization with a very serious, but still entirely unanticipated, dilemma.

This dilemma, Professor Fukuyama predicted, was going to be the fact that Western Civilization - while cheering the collapse of Communism - was going to suddenly find itself, at the sudden conclusion of The Cold War, deprived of its last credible “enemy” upon whom it could credibly continue to blame any further delay on the part of Western Civilization in “delivering on” its “promise” to bring to our planet the long-alleged “special benefits” of Western Civilization.

Professor Fukuyama, in this now-famous 1989 article, therefore, issued a “clarion call” to all leaders of Western Civilization to immediately take up the task, in 1989, of self-consciously attempting to “identify” the most essential “defining Principles” of Western Civilization and to then come to an express agreement as to the concrete social-ethical Public Policy Principles and Programs which would naturally flow from such Principles – in order that Western policy-makers might be concretely prepared to move into action to put into immediate effect those Principles, Policies and programs immediately upon the up-coming collapse of the Soviet Union.

This “crash program” was necessary, Professor Fukuyama argued, because the “window of opportunity” which would open immediately at the conclusion of The Cold War [1][1] would remain “open” for only a very brief period of time following the end of The Cold War. And, when it closed, Western Civilization, Dr. Fukuyama argued, would have “lost” its opportunity to place the lasting “stamp” of the Principles of Western Civilization on human civilization.

Few world leaders paid any real serious attention to Professor Fukuyama’s prediction in 1989 – simply because they believed, in 1989, that the Soviet Union was going “to be with us” for a very long time indeed... even if it might be going to be so only in a considerably weakened condition from its condition at the zenith of its power in the mid 1960’s – when it and the United States threatened to blow up our planet.

However, in December of 1991, a mere thirty months after the publication of Professor Fukuyama’s then largely-ignored article, the Soviet Union did, in fact, “collapse” - suddenly and dramatically, just as Professor Fukuyama had predicted - leaving the leaders of the Western World literally agasp...and (exactly as Professor Fukuyama had also predicted) totally unprepared to cope with the “vacuum” which was, in fact, immediately created by the sudden disappearance of “The Last Enemy” upon whom leaders of Western Civilization had for historically depended for the entire previous century to “blame” for their failure to deliver to the world their long-promised “Ideals”.

Into this 1992 “vacuum” would immediately step the most prominent advocates of the traditional “Liberal” and “Conservative” Western human worldviews.

Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor to the “liberal” 1976 American Democratic Party Administration of President Jimmy Carter, was the first to set forth his “prescription” for a “New Organizing Principle” to replace the now-outdated organizing principle of mere “Anti-Communism” of the West - which, alleged “New Organizing Principle” he argued, would generate a “New World Order” on our planet.

Dr. Brzezinski set forth his prescription for this New World Order in a nationally-published June 1992 White Paper entitled: Out of Control: The Threat of Global Chaos on the Eve of the 21st Century.

Professor Samuel P. Huntington, the conservative Olin Institute Professor of International Relations at Harvard University, a well-known spokesman for the cause of the conservative Council on Foreign Relations of Chase Manhattan Bank owner David Rockefeller and also the President of the conservative American Association of Political Science, immediately responded to Dr. Brzezinski’s “offering” by setting forth his own, alternative, “Conservative” prescription for such a purportedly superior “New Organizing Principle” which, new organizing principle, he argued, would generate an even superior “New World Order” to that offered by Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski and his “Liberal” associates.

Professor Huntington set forth his prescription in a highly controversial June 1993 Foreign Affairs Magazine article (and, later, in a 1996 full-length book of the same title) entitled: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of The World Order.

However, upon close examination, neither the “Liberal” prescription offered by Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski nor the “Conservative” prescription offered by Professor Samuel Huntington for such a supposedly “new” “Organizing Principle” for our planet at the conclusion of The Cold War, offered any really “new” Principle at all.

Dr. Brzezinski’s 1992 prescription, with all due respect, was nothing more than a sophisticated restatement (in somewhat softer and “fuzzier” 1990’s terminology) of the classic “Liberal Ethic” enunciated decades earlier by Harvard Professor Louis Hartz in his 1955 book entitled The Liberal Tradition in America and again, in 1973, by Harvard Professor John Rawls, the Chairman of the Department of Philosophy of Harvard University, in his now very famous book on the Liberal Ethic entitled A Theory of Justice.

At base, Dr. Brzezinski called for the adoption of an “Organizing Principle” which recommended nothing more revolutionary than the mere “supplementing” of the continued pursuit of the Western Ideal of “Permissive Cornucopia” (i.e., the pursuit of crass commercial material self-interest, greed and avarice) by the application, as a mere “afterthought” (while still pursuing crass material self-interest, greed and avarice as the primary “organizing principle of one’s actions) of “doing, at the same time, at least something for the least well-off”. This “something”, Dr. Brzezinski advocated, ought to be directed toward the “better addressing of” [though conspicuously NOT to the actual “solving” of] our major planetary human problems of: the still-unjust distribution of our world’s natural resources; the still-accelerating destruction of our planet’s environment through the materialist exploitation of our natural resources to serve, again, the private interests of personal greed and avarice; and the potential permanent destruction of our entire human race itself through the uncontrolled and un-“nettered” pursuit and application [again, for immediate personal private financial gain] of untested technological advances in the fields of genetic engineering, biochemistry and weapons and energy technology).

Professor Huntington’s Conservative proposal was, if anything, even less satisfactory.

For, in his 1993 proposal, Professor Huntington proposed drawing a virtual “Maginot Line”, tracing the physical boundaries of the “high-water mark” of Western Civilization (which he identified, with maps, as the physical boundaries of Western Europe delineated in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia), and then establishing a veritable “Fortress America” within these physical boundaries within which the “pure” “Western Values” of State Capitalism; Private Property; Bi-Cameral Representative Parliamentarian Democracy and constitutionally-enumerated Individual Rights would be practiced to the self-conscious exclusion of all other alternative Principles (especially Asian or Islamic values). He argued, further, that, within these specifically-identified physical boundaries, these uniquely “Western” values should be unabashedly promoted and strengthened, to the intentional exclusion of all other values, through the creation and enforcement of a conscious program of official government policies and practices. This “prescription”, Professor Huntington argued, was absolutely essential if “Western Civilization” was going to prevent the uniquely “Western” values of Western Civilization from being “overrun” and eventually “overwhelmed” (socially, culturally, economically – and, eventually, even militarily) by the “alien” values of “The New Asian Empire”... which, Professor Huntington insisted, was going to be led into existence by China during the first 50 years of the New Millennium.

This allegedly “new” Conservative governing “Paradigm”(or “New Organizing Principle”) advocated by Professor Huntington is, of course (again, with all due respect), as old as the principle of “Dialectics” itself within Western Civilization and represents nothing more than a simple restatement of the most “Conservative” of all possible organizing principles for a culture: that is, the principle of simple nationalistic, even “racial”, dialectical conflict between the racial and cultural majorities within nation states.

As a former undergraduate student of American Foreign Policy and International Relations at Harvard College who took my Harvard degree during the reign of Dr. Henry Kissinger at Harvard College in the 1960’s; as a Masters Degree and Ph.D. student of Comparative Social Ethics who studied under Dr. Ralph Potter (the Social Ethicist of the World Council of Churches) at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Divinity in the 1970’s; and as a graduate of Harvard Law School in the field of American Constitutional Law who studied under Professor Lawrence Tribe who later became General Counsel to the United States Jesuit Headquarters’ National Office of Social Ministry in Washington, D.C. during the 1980’s under global Jesuit Father Superior General Pedro Arrupe, I was privileged to be invited by President Mikhail Gorbachev (the man who actually brought to reality Professor Fukuyama’s extraordinary 1989 prediction) to participate in the international dialogue stimulated by Professor Fukuyama among Western political, business, academic, religious and cultural leaders seeking to attempt to identify just a genuinely “New” New Paradigm – a “New Paradigm” genuinely “newer” and more promising than either of those that were being offered to our new post-Cold-War-World by the spokespersons of the old and threadbare “Worldviews” of Classical Liberalism and Classical Conservatism.

This 1995-to-Year 2000 dialogue in which I was privileged to participate with our World Leaders was designed to discern and to identify a genuinely new human “Worldview” which was to be a genuine alternative to all of the old “tried-and-tested” traditional human Worldviews of our past and present human civilizations on our planet – including the Worldviews of: “Liberalism”, “Conservatism”; “Capitalism”; “Anti-Capitalism”; “Communism”; “Anti-Communism”; “Fascism”; “Socialism”; “Royalism”; “Theocracy” and all others.

The most promising potential “Candidate” for the position of such a genuinely “New” New Paradigm for our Post-Cold-War World, to me, seemed to be obvious.

At the outset of these discussions among our global leaders of the 1999’s, there seemed, to me, to be three primary “candidates” for the position of this new “Master Identifier Principle” of a genuinely “New” “New Paradigm” for our 21st century following the conclusion of the Cold War.

Each and every one of our past historical Human “Worldviews”, upon close examination, have shared one common underlying supposition:

No matter how “different” from one another might be the respective Cosmologies; Teleologies; Epistemologies; Modes of Ethical Reasoning; Ontological Theories; Philosophies; Theories of Social Organizing or their variant Modes of Spiritual _Expression of these past historical human worldviews on our planet, one common underlying supposition of each and every one of these traditional Human “Worldviews” has been the factual assumption that our human species is the one and only self-conscious, intelligent sentient material life form which exists within our entire physical Universe.

All of our former historical Human Worldviews have agreed that WE ARE ALONE in the Universe as intelligent, thinking, self-reflective, sentient Beings.

What, then, could possibly be more truly “revolutionary”, as the genuinely “new” underlying and “defining” Principle of a truly “New” Human Paradigm for The New Millennium, I believed, than the explicit, self-conscious affirmation of the now virtually-scientifically-undeniable fact that other sentient and intelligent species OTHER THAN OUR HUMAN SPECIES do, in fact, inhabit our Universe - indeed, our very Galaxy – and that there virtually certainly exist, at least somewhere in our Galaxy, one or more species who are actually superior to our human species, technologically, intellectually...and even, more than likely, “spiritually.”

Taking this revolutionary FACT as the a priori “Master Identifier” Principle of a truly “New” New Human Paradigm, one immediately discovers emerging – literally towering above the previous paltry efforts put forward by proponents of such a “New” Organizing Principle as Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski and Professor Samuel Huntington purporting to identify an allegedly new “Master Identifier” Principle of a “New Paradigm” - a genuinely “New” New Human Paradigm capable of replacing the old war-generating, poverty-generating and anguish-generating “Human Paradigms” identified, to date, by our human family emerges.

In April of 1968, the Chairman of Harvard Department of Intellectual History, Professor Crain Briton, in the final lecture of his life, at the close of fifty years of intellectual research and teaching at Harvard University, was asked to identify, in his final lecture, the single most important “idea” that he had ever discovered to be present in Western Intellectual History. In response to this specific inquiry, he stated:

“I am convinced that the most astute intellectual leaders of Western Civilization subtly believe that our human species is in the very process of evolving a new “sixth” biological sense – exactly like seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touch – and that they believe that this new “sixth” biological human faculty will enable members of our species to directly experience – (in the exact same manner that we directly and personally “experience” the physical vibrational phenomenon of light by the direct experiential means of our biological “sense” of sight and in the exact same manner that we directly and personally “experience” the physical vibrational phenomenon of sound) the physical phenomenon (which is like “gravity” or “magnetism”) which bonds every single ultimately irreducible integer of matter in our physical universe (whether this unit is ultimately determined to be a “quark”, a “neutrino”, a “meuon or simply an ultimately non-divisible “inchoate quantum field” into one unitive harmonious whole.

And I have concluded that these intellectual leaders subtly believe that by direct physical means of the exercise of this specific new “sixth” biological human faculty, members of our species will ultimately be able to experientially discern (just like “seeing” light waves or “hearing” sound waves) what specific human actions are either “in harmony with” or are “disharmonious to” the NATURAL UNITIVE ORDER OF THE UNIVERSE.

Indeed, I believe that, in this very Generation, we are seeing the reality of this long-developing belief within our human family coming to full fruition. This is why so many of our young people in this Post War Generation will not go fight in this war. [2][2]

With this, Professor Craine Brinton closed his notes and left the podium in Lowell Hall at Harvard. He neither took nor answered any questions from the several hundreds of his students from over his 50-year history of teaching at Harvard University (who had gathered from around the world to hear Dr. Brinton’s final lecture). Nor did he ever expound upon his stunning April 1968 observations - for he died within a few weeks after delivering his Final Lecture.

While every one of the seven historic “Worldviews” or “Human Paradigms” assumes that our human species resides, alone, at the very “apex” of all biological evolution in the Universe, careful research reveals that Professor Crain Brinton was correct in observing, in his famous “Final Lecture”, that the intellectual leaders of our human civilization have subtly recognized that the recognition of the centrality of the role played by a phenomenon identified as “human intuition” in the evaluation of human conduct plays an absolutely central role in distinguishing one human “Paradigm” from each other.

Indeed, it is the thesis of The Cambridge Center of Psychology and Social Change, located at Harvard University, that this concept comes to its full fruition in the “SIXTH PARADIGM”.

Thus, the identification of the role of this biological faculty of “Human Intuition” as central to the most proper “Mode of Ethical Reasoning” is the second “Candidate” as the “Master Identifier” Principle of such a genuinely “New” New Paradigm - rather than as simply “supplemental to” the more traditional “Utilitarian” (i.e. self-interested) Mode of Ethical Reasoning (as is advocated by Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski.)

It seemed obvious to me that an absolutely primary fact was being overlooked by all of the human Worldviews that had been articulated prior to 1923 - when Louis de Broglie and Erwin Schrodinger discovered the basic facts underlying Quantum Reality.

The major operative human paradigms of the Post Enlightenment Period of human culture have simply not yet been “adjusted”, modified, or systematically “qualified”, to take into account the factual discoveries of de Broglie and Schrodinger made in 1923.

The pioneering work of Niels Bohr, Werner Heisenberg, L. Rosenfeld and David Bohm have merely just begun this task.

Such an undertaking, it seemed to me, offered to generate a potentially entirely new and unique Human Paradigm.

However, upon closer examination, it became clear to me that both the second and third of these three “Candidates” may well have been historically taken into account – at least intuitively - by the SIXTH PARADIGM historically identified by our human family.[3][3]

For this reason, I ultimately identified only the first of these three potential “candidates” as the most appropriate potential “Master Identifier” of a genuinely new New Paradigm (to be distinguished from an only relatively new “New Paradigm) ... a genuine “EIGHTH” Paradigm. This Principle was the full realization that we, as a species, are NOT ALONE in our Cosmos, or even in our Galaxy, as the only highly-evolved sentient, “intelligent”...and highly-technologically-advanced biological species.

It is to the characteristics of such a new EIGHTH Human Paradigm that I wish to address my remarks before this International Convention of the Mutual UFO Network in this White Paper.

Every student of Western Civilization knows that the publication, by Galileo Galilei of his famous Dialogues Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in 1632 set forth his Paradigm-altering conclusion that our Earth (and, therefore, our human species) is NOT located in the physical center of the Universe... and that the entire physical Universe (including our Sun), therefore, does NOT revolve around our Earth.

Every such student knows, equally, that the discovery of this fact marked the end of the “Old Medieval Worldview” of Western Civilization and ushered in a new, “Enlightened” Worldview, one which recognizes that our Earth is located somewhere far out and away from the “center” of our Universe...and that our Sun is located at the center of our solar system...with our Earth revolving around it.

Galileo was, of course, sentenced to life in prison by the Holy Roman Catholic Church in 1633 for this “discovery” and his book was forbidden ever to be published or read by Catholics under the pain of excommunication.

This dramatic reaction to Galileo’s 1632 observations was, of course, because his “discovery” - if it were to be accepted in its full implications by the population of our world - threatened to shatter the then-existent dominant “Human Worldview” which located our human species at the exact physical center of all created reality... a Worldview upon which the power and influence of the Roman Catholic Church was at least thought to depend and upon which Worldview, in turn, the authority of all of the Royalist governments of Western Civilization nation states was also thought to derivatively depend.

Indeed, with the collapse of this Earth-centered (i.e., human species-centered) pre-17th Century Human Paradigm, the world-dominating power of the Roman Catholic Church – and the world-dominating power of the Royalist families of Western Civilization who derived their power and influence directly from the Midlevel Church – did, in fact, immediately began to wane.

It is not surprising, therefore, that any similar effort to alter the present Dominant Human Worldview which governs “reality” in our time will be resisted, with equal vigor, by the legal guardians of our present legal and cultural institutions and “World Order”.

However, the 17th Century guardians of human culture succeeded in limiting the effect of Galileo’s discovery.

They did this by eventually conceding the fact that our Earth – and, therefore, our species – is not located in the physical center of our Universe – but, at the same time, preserving the fundamental premise that our species was still the sole “Being” in our physical Universe who are located at the meta-physical “center” of Reality – that is: at the very “nexus” between “matter” and “consciousness”.

By means of this only partial concession, the secular and ecclesial guardians of Western Culture of the 17th Century succeeded in salvaging the unique “centrality” of our species within the unfolding reality of our physical Cosmos.

We now, however, stand at the very threshold of a human discovery, within our very lifetimes, that is so overwhelmingly momentous that it is more threatening to the most fundamental common underlying upon which are based our present human institutions than was the discovery of Galileo in 1632.

This, of course, is the discovery of the existence of an other highly-intelligent, highly-technologically-advanced, sentient material lifeform within our physical Universe.

This is the human discovery which threatens, once and for all, to finally remove us, as a species, from our perceived unique “centrality” at the center of the created material order, and to remove us from our fervently-desired position of “Absolute Superior” within our material Universe atop the pyramid of all other sentient life forms.

This discovery that we, as a species, do not reside alone at the meta-physical “center” of our material Universe is potentially even more ultimately dis-“locating” for us, as a species, than was our 1632 “discovery” that we did not abide at the physical material center of our Universe. This now-threatened discovery is the ultimate religious, spiritual, and metaphysical revelation which was only the potential threat which was implicit in Galileo’s 1632 discovery – but which was temporarily avoided by the philosophical slight-of-hand performed by the guardians of our planetary culture in the 17th Century.

For the insistence upon the physical location of our human species in the geographic center of our material Universe was, in fact, nothing more than the mere “outward sign”, or metaphor, of the presumed metaphysical “location” of our species at the center of the matrix between the material and the spiritual world.

The belying of this fact was the “Dire Threat” which was only “posed” by Galileo’s discovery in 1632. But this “threat” is now upon us.

For, as was pointed out above, the cultural and religious leaders of our species successfully “adjusted” our cultural “Worldview” to the 1632 discovery of Galileo – successfully designing a “compromise” of our Old Worldview which was required by Galelio’s discovery to compromise simply the mere outward material “symbol” of our “location” at the very center of created reality. We, thereby, temporarily succeeded in preserving our species’ belief in our central “location” at the meta-physical “center” of created reality (between “consciousness” and “matter”) by continuing to insist that we, as a species, are the only “self-conscious”, sentient, intelligent entity in our entire physical Universe --- thus postponing the recognition of the truly potentially Paradigm-“shattering” fact that the very substance of our species’ alleged unique “centrality” to the interplay between “matter” and “consciousness” in our Universe is simply NOT FACTUALLY TRUE.

For this reason, the most important unfolding historical event of our lifetime - our growingly-obvious public encounter with an Extra Terrestrial Intelligent Lifeform and its Civilization within our physical universe - by revealing that we, as a species, are NOT located at the “Apex” of the biological evolution of all known sentient life in our physical Universe, and that we, therefore, are NOT THE species which is uniquely the most “central” species in the drama of the physical “unfolding” of the phenomenon of “consciousness” within our physical Universe, is now squarely upon us... once and for all.

This upcoming potential revelation is, therefore, now presenting our species with the “clear and present danger” of undermining and altering the most fundamental “premise” of every single one of our historically-developed “Human Worldviews” identified to date which have served our human family as the historical underpinning of all of our known civilizations.

Indeed, as occurred in the case, in Western Civilization, with the birth of Jesus Christ, it is likely that time itself - for the entire future of our human species in our Universe - will be measured in relation to the date of the event of the official contact between our species and Extra Terrestrial Civilization.

For a most threatening possible “Contender” to the title of “Absolute Universal Superior Sentient Being” in the Universe has suddenly thrust itself into our human “Reality” within just the past 50 years of the many Millennia of our past-recorded history.

This “Contender” is, of course, the “E.T.” species – whoever, or whatever this is.

What is the reason for the emerging, into full fruition, of a new “sixth” human biological faculty, within just the past few human generations (that is, within the very same period of the recent “acceleration” of “encounters” with Extra-Terrestrial Beings? [4][4]

And how do the implications of these two new human discoveries compare to the implications raised by Galileo’s threatened paradigm-shattering discovery of 1632 - which so dramatically transformed the Human Worldview of our species 400 years ago?

To begin to answer such profound human questions, we must, first, clearly identify the specific sub-categories of human belief which are integrally “part and parcel” of a single, uniform, integrated Human “Worldview”.

For, only by answering this sub-question can we fully appreciate exactly how thoroughgoing a change in human thinking is going to be required by the up-coming “Paradigm”-shift.

Dr. Ralph Potter, the Chairman of the Department of Social Ethics at Harvard University, concludes that there exist four separate and distinct identifiable subcomponent “human beliefs” that go into making up a thoroughly unique and distinct integrated Human “Worldview”. These are, he argues:

(2) a distinctly unique “Teleology” (or systematic Theory of the Potential Perfectibility [or “Unfolding Role” or “Mission”] of our Human Species within our physically unfolding Cosmos);

(3) a distinctly unique “Ontology” (or theory as to how “Consciousness” arose from otherwise presumably non-“conscious” matter); and

(4) a distinctly unique “Epistemology” (or systematic Theory as to exactly what “means” are at the disposal of our Human Species by means of which we are able to gain “access” to The Truth of such Ultimate Questions, or to ultimate reality.)[5][5]

These “Pillar Beliefs”, taken together, will generate a distinctly unique “Mode of Ethical Reasoning”, (or distinctive method of intellectually processing and comparatively evaluating data and “values” in order to determine what is “right” or “wrong”, “good” or “bad”, “better” or “best”, etc.)

A new discovery by our human family which radically “alters” any one of these four essential sub-component “elements” of a truly integrated Human Paradigm threatens the bona fides of the entire Human Paradigm of which such an elemental belief is an integral part.

However, a discovery by our human family which radically alters all four essential underlying sub-component elemental human beliefs of a truly integrated dominant World Paradigm transforms such a mere “threat” to such Worldview into an absolute death sentence - thereby striking at the very heart and foundation of the entire human civilization which is built upon the four basic presumptions of that specific dominant Human Worldview.

We must, therefore, fully appreciate the “threat” which is posed to our present human civilization on our planet here at the beginning of the 21st Century by the potential irrefutable “discovery” of the existence of Extra Terrestrial Intelligence - especially another highly-technologically -advanced Intelligent Civilization capable of traveling to our planet from a distant Star System potentially tens of millions of light years away.

This present “threat” looms so large because, as we noted above, our post-Enlightenment Civilization which has been “grown” by the leaders of our species to replace the pre-1632, pre-Galileo Worldview of the Middle Ages has chosen to root the “uniqueness” (i.e. the purported supremacy) of our human species in all of our physical Universe squarely in the purported absolute “uniqueness” of our sole possession of the specific faculty of self-conscious “Intellect” among all sentient lifeforms in the Universe.

Thus, the discovery of any “OTHER” species in our Universe which also possesses this allegedly uniquely “human” faculty of self-consciousness, or Intellect, instantaneously destroys the uniqueness of our “place”, or “role”, in the Universe.

This discovery, therefore, strikes squarely at the root of the Teleological “Pillar” of our present Human “Worldview”. For, it is perceived that our unique human “role”, or “mission” in the Universe is to play the unique role of the being the ONLY Central Character (or Protagonist”) in the “Mystery Play” of the unfolding of “consciousness” within the material reality of the physical Cosmos.

This “role” is directly threatened by the up-coming discovery of other Intelligent Life in our galaxy.

Moreover, this specific pending discovery strikes, as well, at the root of the Epistemological “Pillar” of our present dominant Human “Worldview” – because our “encounters” with these “Extra-Terrestrial Beings” do not confine themselves to revealing themselves solely through the normal “epistemological” means which we believe to be presently at our human disposal by means of which we normally experience material reality.

These Beings, instead, appear and disappear seemingly “out of thin air”. They pass through solid objects. they travel faster than the speed of light. They even seem to enter and exit our “minds” at will.

We are also proving unsuccessful in applying to these “encounters” our present dominant Human Paradigm’s “Mode of Ethical Reasoning” in our effort to try to determine whether these Extra Terrestrial Beings are “good” or “bad” or potentially “helpful” or “harmful” to us. These Beings certainly do not seem to respect our value of “privacy”, our value of “national security” – or even our value of “human decency” (when it comes to potential inter-species breeding and human fetus manipulation.)

Finally, we are also struggling to try to determine what the “Cosmological” implications are of this discovery.

Thus, all four of the fundamental “Pillars” of our present dominant “Human Worldview” are under direct attack by this phenomenon.

Therefore, until all four of these fundamental “Paradigm-determining” questions have been satisfactorily answered about the Beings from this (or these) Extra Terrestrial Civilization(s), the specific human beings who are intermittently charged, by us, with legal and political responsibility for making our human civilization on this planet function effectively and efficiently under our presently-dominant Human Paradigm will - quite predictably – vigorously resist so much as even acknowledging the existence of these Beings (unto the point of actively concealing dispositive information verifying their existence and presence on our planet from “the masses” – whom they assert cannot possibly cope with such a mind-shattering discovery.)

This being so, it will be up to US – the “civilians” of our culture - to discern and articulate satisfactory “answers” to these four critical Worldview-defining questions – without being able to expect any meaningful assistance from our official governmental and cultural “superiors”.

This fact would follow, entirely logically, from all of the assumptions upon the basis of which we have asked them to “govern” us.

In short, it will be up to US, as non-government civilians, to construct the four “Pillars” of a genuinely “New” fully-integrated “New Human Paradigm” which fully integrates the fact of the existence of an Extra Terrestrial Intelligent Civilization into a “New” Human Worldview BEFORE we can reasonably expect those in charge of our planet’s legal, cultural and political institutions to “let go” of the “old paradigm” upon which our human civilization presently functions – and on the basis of which we have asked them to “govern” us – only after which they can then publicly acknowledge the existence of this new sentient civilization.

For this is what they believe their “Job” is which we have assigned to them.

For this reason, the unexpectedly early conclusion to “The Cold War” (which has caught the leaders of Western Civilization “with its Paradigms down”) is the most propitious possible time which will ever exist during our entire lifetimes in which this most important of all possible human tasks can be accomplished ...before the “Champions of The Dialectic”, who root their entire worldview in fear, in personal greed and in commercial avarice and militarism successfully “re-group” and succeed, within our lifetimes, in collectively re-defining some allegedly “new” Paradigm (which, in fact, does nothing more than re-rationalize their same “old” Order – either “Conservative” or “Liberal”.)

Given these four “elemental” categories of human belief which underlie and define a truly integrated Human Worldview, what, then, are the “specifics” of such a genuinely New “New Paradigm”, or Human Worldview, which not only accepts, but which actively welcomes and positively “integrates”, the discovery of an additional sentient and highly-technologically-advanced Civilization of Sentient Beings, within our Galaxy ?

Each uniquely discrete historical Human Paradigm possesses its own distinctive “Cosmology”.

By this, we mean that adherents to each genuinely distinct Human Paradigm (or “Worldview”) believe that our material Universe originated in the past, is presently physically maintained pursuant to, and will develop and operate into the future in accordance with a uniquely distinctive set of operative physical principles.

Adherents to the First Paradigm Worldview believe that our physical Universe is a strictly “material” Universe, made up of a fixed, and finite, number of explicitly non-divisible, i.e. irreducible, “units” of matter.

Whether this ultimately irreducible “unit” of matter turns out to be an “atom”; a “quark”; a “neutrino”; a “meson” or some other, still-smaller “unit”, is not of ultimate concern to such First Paradigm Worldview adherents.

What matters to adherents to this First Human Worldview is that all “matter” which makes up our strictly “material” universe is progressively dis-integrating from its larger composite “forms” of galaxies, star systems, stars, planets, compounds, mixtures, elements, quarks, neutrinos, mesons etc. down into this ultimately “finite” number of its total constituent sub-component non-divisible “units” (through the process of “entropy”). AND they believe that our physical Universe is, at the same time, expanding out and away from the “locus” at which it originated.

The adherents to this First Paradigm Worldview, therefore, adhere to a “Cosmology” which postulates that our entire material physical Universe is in the process of expanding – and dis-integrating into its constituent sub-component ultimately non-divisible “units”...and that there will, one day, come a point at which every ultimately irreducible integer of matter in our entire physical Cosmos will stand separate and apart from every other such “unit” of matter (thus existing in a state of “Absolute Energy”). The key element of this First Paradigm Cosmology is that adherents to this First Paradigm believe that, at that specific point in time, the “units” of matter will continue to move out and away from every other such unit, expanding infinitely, out and away from one another, until no-“Thing” exists at all, no-thing except “Chaos”.

Members of our human species who are adherents to the Second Paradigm Worldview adhere to this same Cosmology – with the exception that adherents to this Second Human Worldview believe that, at the very moment in time at which our entire physical Universe dis-integrates and expands to reach this state of “Absolute Energy”, the impetus of the “Big Bang” (which imparted to each such “unit” of matter its original “outward” and “away from” impetus) will be totally “spent” – thus allowing the degree of physical attraction which every such irreducible “unit” of matter always has for every other such “unit” to cause the totally-expanded and dis-integrated Universe to stand in a state of Absolute Energy for only one brief micro-milli-second...before this attraction among all such “units” of matter causes every single irreducible “unit” of matter in the Universe to start moving back inward, and toward every other such “unit” of matter inn the Universe ...thus initiating the “collapse” of the Universe back in upon itself ...causing the ultimate total re-“integration” of the entire physical Universe back into “mesons”, “quarks”; “neutrinos”; “atoms”; “elements”; “molecules”; “mixtures”; “compounds”; planets; stars; star systems; galaxies, etc....until every such ultimately irreducible integer of matter has collapsed back in upon each other, ultimately coming into direct physical contact with every other such “unit” of matter in the entire Cosmos, thus constituting a state of “Absolute Mass”.

According to this Theory of Cosmology, at the very next micro-milli-second, every single ultimately irreducible integer of matter within this “Absolute Mass” would then reverse its “polarity” – and would then, suddenly and immediately repel every other such “unit” of matter out and away from itself...thus re-creating “The Big Bang” and re-initiating the expansion and dis-integration “phase” of The Cosmos.

According to this specific Second Paradigm Worldview, this process of “expansion” and “contraction” repeats itself over and over again... eternally and un-endingly, repeating the exact same history over and over again, without change.

This is the Paradigm of the Radical “Dialectic”, or the “Infinitely Oscillating Cosmos.”

Adherents to the Third Human Paradigm adhere to a Cosmology which is identical to the Cosmology of the Second Paradigm Worldview except that they believe that the phenomenon of MIND (which materially “evolves” up out of the merely purely physical interplay of mass and energy) enables each Human Being to exert an effect upon the otherwise “mindless” repetition of the purely mathematically-predictable interaction among the physical “units” of matter in the Universe.

This action on the part of individual human beings is, thereby, potentially capable of altering the otherwise entirely predictable, eternally-repetitive mindless expanding and contracting of the physical Universe.[6][6]

At the opposite end of the Seven Human Paradigm spectrum, adherents to the Seventh Paradigm Worldview adhere to a Cosmological Theory which postulates that there has eternally existed an INFINITE “Sea” of Undifferentiated “CONSCIOUSNESS” – and that this Infinite and Eternal Sea of Undifferentiated Consciousness somehow “enfolds into being” the original manifestation of material “matter”, which, in turn, then sets up a “perturbation” within this Infinite and Eternal Sea of otherwise Undifferentiated Consciousness which “perturbation” then, in turn, generates still further “perturbations” in this Infinite Sea of Undifferentiated Consciousness more material “matter”...until an initial “Quantum Field” manifests itself into physical, material being, creating, in turn, other such “quantum fields” of “matter... thus generating the entire physical Cosmos (out of no-“thing”, indeed, out of Pure Consciousness).

Pursuant to this unique Seventh Paradigm “Cosmology”, the entire physical Universe IS Consciousness, indeed, is ONE Consciousness, merely “manifest” in only apparent “separate” forms...including individual Human Beings.

In the same manner in which this “material” manifestation of the Universe “began” as a completely unconditioned and unexplainable gratuitous act of Infinite Consciousness, so, too, will it either end – or NOT end – through an equally unconditioned and unexplainable gratuitous act of Infinite Consciousness. This is the unique Cosmology of the Seventh Human Paradigm. This, of course, is the “Theistic” Paradigm expressed by Theistic Mystics.

Adherents to the Sixth Paradigm Worldview adhere to a Cosmology pursuant to which the entire external physical Universe is nothing more than the external manifestation of Consciousness which resides, eternally and infinitely, at the very center of consciousness which abides within you, the present reader of this article.

Pursuant to this Cosmology, there is NO Infinite Sea of Undifferentiated Consciousness “out there” which is in any way whatsoever “other” than YOU. There IS no “there”. There is only a “here” and “now” within you – which is NOT “you” at all, but merely a “manifestation” of Infinite Being (which is not a “noun” but merely a “verb” [indeed, an eternally non-“transitive” verb]).

This is the “Radical Monist” Worldview expressed through Buddhism in the East and through the Stoical Philosophers of ancient Greece in the West.

Adherents to the Fifth Paradigm Worldview adhere to a Cosmology pursuant to which they assert that there exists a “Realm of The Forms” which exists somehow non-“contiguous” to our materially-observable physical Universe (as if in some co-existent “parallel” dimension to ours).

Our observable physical Universe, pursuant to this specific Worldview, is a mere “reflection” (or physical “shadow-play) of this “Ideal”, non-material realm.

The Fourth Paradigm - being located squarely in the “center” of the Spectrum of Human Paradigms - adheres to a “Process Cosmology”- which holds “open” the question of exactly what Cosmology obtains, insisting, instead, that, for “operational purposes” only, adherents to The Fourth Paradigm acknowledge the physical Cosmos which we are able to see, measure, discern with our technological instrumentation, reach and/or photograph with our interstellar spacecraft and space-based telescopes and project through mathematics and scientific principles...but they still hold open the possibility that what lies beyond the present reach of our physical senses and our technology may comport with the Cosmologies intuited by adherents to the Cosmological theories to the left of the Fourth Paradigm but might also comport, instead, more accurately with the Cosmologies to the right of the Fourth Paradigm. Thus, it is a Cosmology rooted in materialist scientific-logical-positivism - subject to “open” in the direction of the intuitive, even the spiritual.

However, playing it on what they perceive to be the “safe” side, adherents to the Fourth Paradigm Cosmology work, practically, from a point of view rooted firmly in the “materialist” (first Three Paradigms’) Cosmological Worldviews, standing open to potential persuasion that the Cosmologies espoused by the Fifth, Sixth or even the Seventh Human Worldviews might possibly be true. However, they are not willing to bet on it.

Fourth Paradigm Worldview Adherents are, therefore, the “Doubting Thomases” of the Human Paradigm Spectrum. They are willing to believe...but only after they have been able to “place their hand in the side” of the Reality espoused by adherents of a Fifth, Sixth or Seventh Paradigm Worldview.

What, then, might be the “Cosmology” of a genuinely “New” Human Paradigm – an “Eighth Paradigm”, which accepts, indeed actively welcomes and fully integrates, the now veritably undisputable fact that highly-technologically-advanced intelligent civilizations in addition too our own exist within our galaxy ?

First of all: the fact that Beings from some other Star System – even within our own galaxy – can travel here to our planet utterly destroys one of the absolutely essential premises of our presently dominant Worldview’s Cosmology.

This is the premise that Beings who are made up of “matter” (i.e. mass and energy) and whose vehicles (such as the widely-reported “UFO’s”) which are made of “matter” as well, could not possibly travel to our planet from any vastly distant foreign Star System – because this would violate the absolutely bedrock principle of the “Cosmology” of our presently-dominant Human Worldview which postulates that matter can not possibly be accelerated to a rate of speed in excess of the speed of light...and the nearest possible Star System from which such Beings might possibly travel to our planet would require a travel time of many thousands of years!

If these Beings ARE “material” and they ARE able to travel faster than the speed of light, then the “Paradigm” of which they are a part would be grounded in a “Cosmology” in which “time” and “distance” were NOT in any way “absolute”.

Or - if some method of “folding” space-time has been discovered by such an Extra Terrestrial civilization - then this, too, would fundamentally “alter” fundamental premises of our present “Cosmology”.

Thus, the “Cosmology” of The “New” Paradigm which will be mandated by the acknowledgment of Extra Terrestrial Intelligence will have to acknowledge that “matter” can, indeed, be accelerated to speeds greater than the observed speed of light within our Cosmology and/or that “space” and “time” can be “folded” in some as-yet entirely undiscovered manner.

Thus, within the “New Paradigm”, both time and distance will no longer be strictly “linear” - and travel, both over “distance” and through “time”, will be understood to be able to be accomplished effectively “instantaneously”.

This destroys two very important former “absolutes” of the “Cosmology” of our present dominant World Paradigm.

Pursuant to this “New” Worldview, it is possible that there even exist one or more additional “Universes”, entirely “outside” of (or even exiting in the same physical space as) our “known” physical Universe...but somehow vibrating simply at a different “frequency”, thus making this “Other”, or “Parallel”, Universe effectively “invisible” to us – but, from this “other” Universe, Beings have somehow learned how to transit into and out of “our” Universe at will.

This is a “Cosmology” which is truly radically different from any Cosmology recognized by any of the presently-operative Worldviews.

As discussed above, perhaps the foremost among the four indispensable elemental “Pillars” of our present dominant Human Worldview which is under the most obvious “assault” by the potential discovery of Extra Terrestrial Intelligence is the “Teleological” premise of all of our past and present operative human worldviews which postulate that, somehow, our human species resides at the absolute “center” of whatever cosmologically “unfolding of consciousness” is underway within our physical cosmos, and, therefore, at the “Apex” of all biological evolution within our physical Universe.

This essential “Pillar” of our present dominant Worldview is totally “shattered” by the discovery of a highly-intelligent sentient civilization which is so technologically superior to ours that it has conquered the scientific mysteries of space and/or time travel to the extent that members of their species are capable of traveling through time and space to our planet in transparent defiance of what we still view to be absolute scientific barriers to our inter-stellar travel out into space.

Indeed, as was discussed above, this aspect of the discovery of Extra Terrestrial Intelligence throws into complete confusion our previous absolutely unique place and role in our physical Universe.

From a “teleological” point of view, our “New” Paradigm, therefore, requires that we either identify that special unique human quality or characteristic which we possess (other than mere “intelligence”) which makes us EQUAL to members of this conspicuously-superior intelligence (thereby entitling us to equal respect by and participation in whatever form of galactic governance obtains within the Extra Terrestrial civilization of which these Beings are members) – OR that we prepare ourselves to play a self-consciously subservient role to this intellectually and technologically superior species ( a “role” which is totally contrary to all of our human training and history). [7][7]

I believe that the “New Paradigm” to which we must move, as a species, in preparation for our official encounter with this Extra Terrestrial Civilization requires that we “shift” the placement of our teleological “uniqueness” as a species in our universe from our “Intellect” to our human ability to directly effect material reality through the application of our directed human intention “ethically” informed and guided directly by our unique “intuitional” access to the Infinite Sea of Undifferentiated Consciousness as the “source” of “normative” principles.

The “Ontological” Theory of the Seventh Human Paradigm which is presently operative on our planet (but which, however, has been actually adopted and is presently being actually utilized as the operative Ontological Theory on the basis of which real people actually make real daily decisions by less than 1% of our entire human population) is that each seemingly “individuated” experience of human “consciousness” is merely a “droplet” of the overall Unified, Infinite and Eternal Sea of Un-differentiated Consciousness which has been “incarnated” into an again only seemingly “material” body. This Ontological Theory is most commonly articulated in the aphorism, “We are NOT material beings having a ‘spiritual’ experience. We are, instead, spiritual Beings having a ‘material’ experience.”

The origin of human “consciousness”, pursuant to our present Seventh Paradigm Ontological Theory, is, therefore, this: that each only “apparently” separate and distinct “noun” of individuated individual human consciousness is, in fact, nothing more than the on-going action of a verb (indeed, an eternally non-“transitive” verb, the only “action” of which is engaging in the act of “being”) which “verbal being” always has been – and will always continue to be. Thus, pursuant to this Worldview, the “Ontological” Question of the “origin” of Consciousness is misplaced, since there is no “origin” of this Consciousness...and, since your “consciousness” is not a “separate” consciousness from this one, single Universal Consciousness, “it”, too, had no “origin”. This query is akin to asking at what point a circle “begins”

To attribute to this verbal phenomenon of “being” the noun-like quality of a “beginning” is, pursuant to this Ontological Theory, to commit the ultimate error, indeed, the ultimate “heresy” – which threatens the party committing this particular error to “perdition” (or the eternal “loss” of the essential reward of right knowing).

Each of the other seven human paradigms possesses its own unique “Ontological” Theory.[8][8]

One might assume that it is impossible to ascertain any Ontological Theory which is more all-encompassing than the Ontological Theory of The Seventh Paradigm. However, this new “Eighth Paradigm” raises a distinct possibility that we, as “conscious” beings, may be the created “product” of an ingenious genetic engineering project having been (indeed, even still being) undertaken by this seemingly almost infinitely more “intelligent” and more technologically-advanced Extra Terrestrial Species. [9][9] This thought had occurred to us, previously, only in purely “Theological” terms prior to our “encounter” with this new species of material Beings. It is, of course, also equally possible that both we and our newly-discovered Extra Terrestrial neighboring species are the co-end-products of some even more “esoteric” process of creation than that which has been imagined by adherents to The Seventh Human Paradigm.

It is even possible that we and our newly-discovered Extra Terrestrial neighbors are the same “species” [10][10], simply “separated” from one another by some, as-yet, entirely undiscovered event in “our” distant past – or even possibly in our distant future.[11][11]

This is one of the most important possible areas into which we must direct our human inquiries over the next decade.

The encounters, to date, which members of our species have had with members of the Extra Terrestrial Species have exposed the limited number of the members of our species who have directly encountered them to experiences which not only challenge the Epistemology of our presently dominant Human Worldview, but totally alter this Epistemology. For, it is entirely clear that something is going on in the presence of these Beings which is part of a “Reality” which lies utterly outside of the present means which we have at our human disposal by means of which to “access” this Reality.

These Beings (and what we believe to be the vehicles in which they come and go to and from our planet) “appear” and “disappear” in ways that totally defy our ability to “track” them to and from their place of origin.

What we believe to be the vehicles in which these Beings come and go from our planet maneuver in directions, and at a rate of speed, which function on a plane, or in some “dimension”, which lies totally beyond our present human means of apprehension or comprehension.

And the means by which these Beings engage in apparently “telepathic” communication, both with us and between and among themselves, constitutes an epistemological phenomenon which extends our present level of understanding about “extra-sensory perception” considerably beyond the boundaries of the Epistemology of our present dominant human Paradigm.

In short, the epistemological phenomena displayed by these Beings demonstrate that there exists a means by which sentient Beings can directly “access” realms of “Reality” (such as the direct personal internal states of an other Being’s personal “consciousness”) which lie totally outside our presently dominant Human Paradigms.

From our answer to the “Teleological” Question presented above, it would follow that the answer to the “Epistemological” Question” of the New Paradigm will be that we, as a species, must direct our attention to the further development of what we presently understand to be our “spiritual” faculty – but which is, almost certainly, a biological faculty which has been evolving within us over the recent-past 10,000 years.

If we accept the full logical implications of the data which effectively shatters all three other elemental “Pillars” of our presently-dominant Human Paradigm, then we must, logically, be prepared to amend the fourth primary “Pillar” of our present Human Paradigm: our present dominant Mode of Ethical Reasoning.

Whichever of the presently-operative seven human paradigms one endorses or adopts as the proper container of the referent one uses to determine “Right” and “Wrong”, “good” or “bad”, “better” or “best”, it is clear that the Extra Terrestrial Beings whom we have been encountering over the past 55 years (or, more accurately, who have been “encountering” us over the past 55 years) are operating on the basis of a Mode of Ethical Reasoning which is entirely different than any of ours.

Indeed, IF what appears to be going on IS, in fact, going on, then WE must prepare ourselves to adopt an entirely new Mode of Ethical Reasoning.

Pursuant to the operative principles of the Mode of Ethical Reasoning which would be generated by the data making up this “New Paradigm”, we, as a species, “ought” no longer to attempt to discern and select (from among potential alternative choices for our individual or collective human conduct): (1) that choice which most directly and immediately serves only the immediate and obvious short-term best personal individual interests of each one of us; (2) that choice which most directly and immediately serves the immediate and obvious short-term best interests only of the Family to which we, as an individual, belongs; (3) that choice which most directly and immediately serves the immediate and obvious short-term best interests of only the specific “Extended Family, or Tribe”, to which our Family belongs; (4) that choice which most directly and immediately serves the immediate and obvious short-term best interests only of the State or Nation to which our Tribe belongs; (5) that choice which most directly and immediately serves the immediate and obvious short-term best interests of the specific Continent on which our State or Nation is located; (6) that choice which most directly and immediately serves the immediate and obvious short-term best [12][12] interests of the Trans-Continental Racial Alliance of which our Continent is a member; or, now, even (7) that choice which most directly and immediately serves the immediate and obvious short-term best interests even only of our planet.

For, if the data are correct which are presently “coming into us” from our encounters with this Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, then the time has arrived for us to make a crucial choice which directly serves the immediate and most obvious both short and long term best interests of our human species as a whole – whether confined to this planet or not.[13][13]

This is the Mode of Ethical Reasoning which, I believe, must be generic to this “New” Paradigm.

What, then, in sum, does this new “Eighth Paradigm” Worldview suggest that we do in light of what we are experiencing at this moment in human history ?

First: I would advocate that we “flesh out” this new “Eighth Paradigm”, identifying all of the other major sub-component “belief systems” which are, in my opinion, also “part and parcel” of a wholly-integrated “Worldview”, or Human Paradigm.

I believe that these include at least four additional categories of essential human belief in addition to the four identified by Dr. Ralph Potter and other traditional professional Social Ethicists identified and discussed above. These four additional essential categories of human belief are: (4) one’s Ontological Theory (or Theory as to the origin and nature of human “consciousness”); (5) one’s Psychological Theory which derives from this Ontological Theory ; (6) one’s “Philosophy” (or the entire tapestry of understanding into which one “weaves” all seven of the other sub-component parts of one’s overall human belief system; (7) the “Spiritual Manifestation” of one’s Worldview; and (8) one’s Political Theory and the specific Social Order into which this translates.

I believe that the four additional essential belief systems which would flow from the above-identified principles of the “New Paradigm” or “Eighth Paradigm” are the following:

We are obviously looking toward the discovery of a potential “School” of Psychology which eclipses the seven schools of psychology which have been generated by our seven present Human Worldviews.[14][14]

This might be an entirely “Genetic” School of Psychology, a “School” of psychology which postulates that we, as a species, are genetically “programmed” by the intentional insertion into our physical genetic “coding”, by biological scientists of this Extra Terrestrial Civilization, of specific “chip”-like “genes” which “signal” us to unconsciously have certain thoughts and to carry out some specific set of tasks which are of ultimate “usefulness” to the galactic civilization of which we are a part - indeed, of which we may be mere “servants” (in either the good sense of this term OR in the “bad” sense)...like the “Replicants” produced for “off-world” assignments in Philip Dick’s future-fiction novel “ Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” (the more well-known motion picture version of which was entitled “Bladerunner”). This is the same issue that was being addressed in the motion picture THE MATRIX .

At the other end of the spectrum of possibilities, the generic School of Human Psychology which might be generated by this new Eighth Paradigm might require us to “adjust” to some as-yet entirely inconceivable “reality” which is analogous to the Seventh Paradigm realm of Infinite Consciousness “enfolding” us into being “squared” in its complexity which we can not possibly grasp in our present state of consciousness.

This, of course, opens onto the potential “Theological” Pillar of the New Paradigm.

What might be the ultimate “theological”, or “spiritual” manifestation of our full realization that there exists one – or even hundreds of millions – of other sentient, highly-intelligent, highly-technologically-advanced civilizations right here within our own galaxy of 500 billion Star Systems – and literally billions of other such civilizations in the vast reaches of the 500 billion trillion other galaxies which surround us within our Universe ?

Some theologians (rather too casually, I believe) assert that such a discovery should have no great impact on altering our basic “theological” outlook upon our “being” at all. Others (equally too casually, I believe), assert that the discovery of even one such additional other highly-intelligent species of sentient life in our Universe will utterly “shatter” our theological outlook upon our Universe.

I believe that the development of this “theological” Pillar of our new, post-“Discovery” Paradigm constitutes one of the most important challenges of human endeavor facing our Generation (and the Generation of our children) in the 21st Century. This I believe to be true because – like a complete “Psychology” or a complete “Philosophy” –

a complete “Theology” provides a “ground”, or foundation, upon which each individual thereinafter “builds” his or her “Reality” from which all of his or her other conduct, thereinafter, springs.

Based upon the “evolution” of our human “theologies” over the span of the several millennia of our recorded history, it is my considered judgment that there is a full 25% chance that our human family will attribute “God”-like qualities to the members of the much more highly-intelligent and much more highly-technologically-developed species which we are just beginning to consciously encounter within this century. Such a development (if it develops into the truly “dominant” theological interpretation of our “encounter” experience) would, eventually, generate, I believe, a “spiritual manifestation” within our new civilization very similar to that which obtained during the Golden Age of The Roman Empire.

At that time, the “gods” were revered by the citizens of Rome, but they possessed very “human-like” attributes: alternatively loving and fighting; drinking and throwing temper tantrums or conducting themselves driven alternatively by jealousy, lust or sympathy for us, their “children”.

Given my presumption that members of the Extra Terrestrial Species whom we are presently encountering are almost certainly less than totally perfect (even if they are so vastly superior to our species, intellectually, technologically – and, perhaps, even spiritually, that a significant percentage of our human family will attribute “god”-like qualities to them), it is my assumption that members of this new species, like all imperfect Beings, will, eventually, strive to take some form of improper personal advantage of the “worshipful” response which they might receive from our species and will, therefore, at some time in the future time, conduct themselves in such a way that our human family will, eventually, begin to place this species in a less “elevated” position – thereby eventually generating a condition very similar to that which obtained in the late Roman Empire – when the “gods” were “revered” but, at the same time, were seen to be very much “flawed”, and, thus, they grew to be more and more ignored by the people...as “gods”.

There is also, in my considered judgment, a distinct possibility – at the other end of the spectrum of “theological” possibilities - that this species IS in fact, OUR “GOD” and that all of our historical human “Theological” ruminations have, in fact, been mere fictionalizing and fantasizing rooted in this disquieting fact.

While I do not personally believe this to be true, this thesis has been expressly adopted by researchers in this entirely new field of human thought ranging from Erich Von Daniken, to Zecharia Sitchin to William Bramley. And it might, just possibly, be true.

I personally believe, however, that the higher probability is that something like the present Seventh Paradigm theological view of our Universe is true ... with the “amendment” that the particularized “enfoldment” into material manifestation of Infinite Consciousness which took place to “create” our physical Universe has generated conscious, sentient life forms on literally trillions of planets within trillions of galaxies throughout our Universe.

I also assume that many of these sentient species have gone through – and are still presently going through - a “theological process” which is very similar, if not indeed identical, to the very process which our species has been, and is presently, going through - during which our awareness of exactly what the biological/spiritual experience is that we are undergoing will gradually unfold within us.

So, I, therefore, assume that we will eventually meet species that are at various “levels” of what we would call “spiritual consciousness”, or spiritual evolution, as we proceed out into our galaxy...and, then, out of our galaxy into our Universe.

The specific “level” of spiritual consciousness that has been achieved by the specific species (or species) whom we are presently encountering is a “fact question” (or, at least, a specific “judgment call”) which will have to be determined based upon the “data” which we are able to accumulate concerning this species, or these species, over the coming decades.

This, indeed, was the topic of a three-hour, closed-door Seminar which I was privileged to attend with the top 50 scientists of SETI (the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence Project) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California back in 1977.

There is also, however, the possibility that the “theological” position which has been taken by The Mormon Church, by The Church of Scientology, and, to a somewhat modified degree, by Dr. J. J. Hurtak and by others is true.

This is a variation on Theological Option #2 above which asserted that this Extra Terrestrial Species may be OUR “GOD”.

Pursuant to the Theological Position of The Church of The Latter Day Saints and The Church of Scientology, our “god” ideas are mere human discernments of the actual activities which are going on in the relationship between us and these Extra Terrestrial Beings. Our Earth is, therefore, a “battlefield” where there is being “fought out” a gargantuan “struggle” between “The Powers of Darkness” and “The Principalities of Light” – which are, in fact, simply two competing Extra Terrestrial sentient species (the former being “Beings of Light” and the latter being a “Reptilian” species.) This, of course, would be a graphic material-plane manifestation of the purported “Struggle Between The Powers & Principalities” of which The Bible (The Book of Mormon and the Scientology Publications by L. Ron Hubbard) all speak – which most members of our species believe simply to be a “myth” or a mere allegorical tale.

This Theological Thesis asserts, in the “concrete”, that this “Struggle” is real and that it is going on – “out” in outer space - between two warring planetary Extra Terrestrial cultures consisting of two entirely different material Extra Terrestrial species...and that this struggle is for the loyalty of our species (to one or the other of these galactic Opponents).

On the “Theological” plane, what we see going on, pursuant to this theological interpretation – as we begin to consciously acknowledge the “reality” of the existence of this other intelligent Extra Terrestrial Species – is an attempt to “incorporate” their “reality” into our presently-existent “theology”...by interpreting these Beings, “out there”, as our “God”, or a material explanation of all of our “god”-related ideas.

Conversely, adherents to these theological theories might be merely “projecting upon” these Beings several of our prior and existent “theological” ideas...such as “Armageddon”, “The Garden of Eden”; Christ (as “Alien”) etc.. This would cause our people to “project onto” these species qualities of “good” and “evil” which we have historically developed relating to “Angels” and “Satan”. This is dangerous “theologizing” indeed, generating a potentially disastrous Armageddon Fixation.

My own personal belief is somewhat similar to that of Dr. J.J. Hurtak’s (if I understand Dr. Hurtak’s work correctly as it is set forth in his The Keys of Enoch and his Pista Sophia). This is: I believe that there exist entirely “material”, mass-based Extra Terrestrial Beings, from different planets within different Star Systems within our own galaxy – (who may, or may not, be “competing” with each other over the ultimate “loyalty” to one or the other of their two competing civilizations of our species “down here” on our planet); there exist certain non-“mass” Beings within our galaxy made up entirely of “energy” (or “light”), which is still, of course, “material” – but whom we would perceive as being “Beings of Light” (who may even exist is a different “dimension”, or vibrational frequency, than we do). And I believe that there exist, separately and distinctly from these two categories of “material” Beings, purely “spiritual” Beings who exist in some entirely non-“material” realm or dimension which is not included in the “material” realm.[15][15]

Therefore, I believe that there exists entirely sufficient “grist” for the “mill” of our future human “theological” ruminations, thus assuring that some, entirely new and distinct Theological Belief is going to be developed by our human family to “integrate” and to “context” the existence of this (or these) Extra Terrestrial Beings into a New Human Paradigm...while still not totally eliminating the separate and distinct category of the “spiritual” world - which is the realm of “Theology”.

We, as a species, are just beginning to discern the vague contours of the specific sub-component elemental “belief systems” which might go into making up “The New Eighth Paradigm” which will arise within our human civilization as we fully and consciously embrace the presence, within our Universe – and within our galaxy - of another fully intelligent, highly-technologically-advanced...and even “spiritually” mature ...other sentient civilization.

I hope that, with the “discovery” of this other intelligent and highly-technologically-developed civilization within our galaxy (which appears to be developed vastly in advance of ours) will NOT cause our civilization – or our species – to go the way of other cultures (such as those of the Native North American Indigenous Culture, the cultures of the remote Amazonian Rain Forests, or the cultures of only recently-discovered primitive tribal cultures discovered on tiny remote islands in the South Pacific Ocean) when they were “encountered” by the vastly more highly-developed, technological and intellectual cultures of our Western Civilization.

For any Extra Terrestrial Civilization which is capable of traveling to us from the distant stars may exceed the development of our civilization on our planet by many millions of years. And those cultures identified above – and those peoples – were totally decimated, dispersed and destroyed by their encounter with our Western Civilization which was only mere hundreds of years more advanced than theirs.

On the other hand, those of us who are cognizant of the almost unimaginable advances that might be offered to us by such an inter-stellar civilization, also hope that our human civilization will not respond to officially-confirmed contact with this civilization with a undue bellicose and potentially self-destructive show of attempted military force or hostility.

Some “Third Option” must surely be open to us...a path into this other civilization.

It is the task of those among us who recognize the extraordinary positive potential of this momentous moment in our human history, but who are also aware of its potential dangers, to set about doing the difficult and disciplined work that will be necessary to discern and identify the ways in which our present dominant human “Worldview” will have to be “modified” to accommodate this “new reality” without shattering us and leaving us, therefore, defenseless and unduly subservient to this new Extra Terrestrial Species – or, on the other hand, instigating us, through fear, to conduct ourselves in an unduly bellicose and hostile manner to their approach to us.

This task will require long and difficult work. But this task can, and will, be accomplished – if we focus clearly on: (1) identifying exactly what the component elemental beliefs are which go into making up a fully-integrated Human “Worldview”; (2) identifying the dominant Human Worldview(s) which are presently operative within our human culture at the present time (which will have to be “supplemented” or “modified” in order to integrate the “reality” of Extra Terrestrial Intelligence into them; and (3) objectively constructing new beliefs pertaining to each of the component “elements” which are essential to the construction of a new, fully-integrated Human Worldview.

This must be accomplished within the lifetimes of those of us who were born in the 20th Century and are presently reading this essay - in order to prepare our human family for what is coming to us in the 21st Century. If we perform our task well, our human species will survive and we will successfully take our place, as equals, among the numerous civilizations which populate the stars.

If we do not, we shall surely perish – through either our complete subservience to and dissolution into a much more vast and sophisticated civilization than ours which has been created, over millions of years, by a species, or by numerous species, of Beings so far beyond our human comprehension and appreciation that we prove to be totally incapable of offering to this civilization that quality of being which makes us, as a species, uniquely “worthy” to participate in that larger civilization as equals...or through a vain and senseless effort to engage this highly- advanced civilization in war, through the construction, deployment and utilization of some new generation of what we view to be “sophisticated” human weaponry - perhaps “back-engineered” from devises seized or recovered from members of the early expeditionary forces of this Extra Terrestrial civilization to our world whom we have encountered over the past 50 years.

As former General Counsel of The United States Jesuit Headquarters’ National Office of Social Ministry in Washington, D.C. and a Candidate for the Catholic Priesthood in the Jesuit Order, I share Jesuit Priest Teilhard de Chardin’s optimism about the evolutionary potential of our human species. I do not wish to see our species “swallowed up” in the vastness of space or dissolved into a larger and ultimately “alien” species or civilization. Nor do I wish to see us destroy ourselves through the wrong-headed attempted application of “advanced” human technology (nuclear, “zero-point”, cold-fusion or other) in a vain effort to isolate ourselves from this species and from this larger civilization.

As a believer in the ultimately spiritual “mission” of our human species “incarnated” within our physical Universe, I wish to see (and to participate in) our human family’s “earning” of our rightful and unique “place” among the pantheon of sentient species in our Universe who have, like us, been “incarnated” in our Universe.

To this end, I dedicate myself – and my remaining years within this “incarnation”- to the task identified in this essay.

I hope that you will join with me in this endeavor – and with my brothers and sisters, here on our planet and out among the stars – who join with us in this noble task.

May God (whatever you might believe this phenomenon to be) bless us all in our going forward to achieve this important mission.

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[1][1] during which short “window” of time the people of the world might stand open to the “leadership” of the nation states of Western Civilization in identifying the Principles, Policies and Programs of a “New Paradigm” (or a “New Organizing Principle”) pursuant to which a new global civilization and a set of new global institutions might be organized and “powered” after the conclusion of The Cold War to replace the by-then 75-year old “Western” organizing principle of “Anti-Communism” and the “Eastern” organizing principle of “Anti-Capitalism” as our planet’s two 20th Century dominant global organizing principles

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[3][3] The explication of all of these Seven Human Paradigms will, hopefully, be the subject of the work of The Cambridge Center for Psychology and Social Change at Harvard Medical School’s teaching hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts between the Year 2003 and 2004 during which time The Center may explore the relationship among the potential on-going physical evolution of a new “Sixth” biological human faculty, human intuition and the principles and characteristics of Quantum Physics as the defining criteria of the classical Sixth Human Paradigm.

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[4][4] This is one of the questions which will, hopefully, be the subject of the work of The Cambridge Center for Psychology and Social Change over the next two years.

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[5][5] i.e., these “means” have been argued to be: only our five human senses of sight, touch, hearing, taste and smell; the technological means of the “amplification” of our five human senses, such as telescopes, microscopes, radio-telescopes, etc.; our human “mind”, or “intellect”; our human “intuition”; and our human “spiritual” faculty

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[6][6] Adherents to this Third Paradigm Worldview do not, however, believe that our Human Species has at our disposal any form of experiential access to any “referent” in harmony with which any given individual might determine the “direction” in which to direct or guide his or her physical effect upon the otherwise “mindless”, physically predetermined, expanding and contracting interplay among these irreducible integers of matter. (This, of course, is an “Epistemological” Question.

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[7][7] There is, of course, a “Third Option”. We could undertake a military effort to repel this new species from coming to our planet and seek to isolate ourselves, and our planet, from this Extra Terrestrial Civilization, thus attempting to “artificially” maintain our ultimate planetary superiority through artificial means. This possibility will be addressed below.

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[8][8] For example: adherents of The First Paradigm Worldview believe that the phenomenon of human “consciousness” is simply a random phenomenon generated by the random interaction of the finite number of ultimately non-divisible “units” of matter which make up the dis-integrating and expanding Universe. Adherents of The Second Paradigm Worldview believe that the phenomenon of human “consciousness” (i.e. our individuated consciousness of our “selves” as separate and distinct from all of the rest of the Universe) is simply an illusory manifestation of the “dialectic” (or the Tao) which underlies the all-determining physical reality of the physical oscillation of our universe between the stage of Ultimate Mass and Ultimate Energy. Etc. on through the seven Human Paradigms.

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[9][9] Indeed, this is the express Thesis of certain scholars in this new field of the study of this Extra Terrestrial Species. See, e.g. Zecharia Sitchen’s Genesis Revisited, Avon Books, New York, 1990 and William Bramley’s The Gods of Eden, Avon Books, New York, 1990.

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[9][10] After all, they certainly do look an awfully lot like us: two arms; two legs; a trunk; a head; two eyes; two feet; two hands with digital fingers, etc.

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[11][11] This theory poses the possibility that our Extra Terrestrial “visitors” are, indeed, “US”, coming back in “time” to try to warn “us” to avoid engaging in certain specific potentially dangerous activities which might result in “our” becoming “them” (such as: genetic engineering; nuclear weapons research; zero-point energy research; time travel...or even extra terrestrial space exploration and/or settlement itself.

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[13][13] While this choice might strike one as “pulling up short” of the “Ideal Paradigm” of measuring, or “valuing”, our potential human conduct according to the standard of inter-planetary, “galactic brotherhood” (or “inter-galactic sentient Being-hood”), the logic of our historical human progression to date argues strongly on behalf of our making this strictly tactical decision at this time – rather than “over reaching” and failing entirely to bring our human family to its next logical step of ethical evolution. This prescriptive principle is consistent with he concept proposed by Donald Beck and Christopher Cowen in their 1996 work entitled Spiral Dynamics, Blackwell Publications, Malden, Mass.

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[12][14] These are: The Lorenzian (Instinctual) School of Psychology; the Skinnerian (Behavioral) School of Psychology; the Existential School of Psychology; the Gestalt School of Psychology; the Freudian School of Psychology; the Jungian School of Psychology and The Theological School of Psychology.