Strange Reports From Zones Unknown

News Flash!!!

Changes, they are a-comin’!” sang Bob Dylan one day when he smelled changes in the air. But now changes are here!

So it’s time to redirect traffic, folks! From now on, the newest and latest articles for this blog will be posted at the new site, The Outer Edge of Reality, and the rest will be archived here at Bamblebrush. But since most of the info in Zones Unknown is never really out-dated, all the old articles are still relevant and just as fascinating and bizarre and strange as ever! I suggest you check out the various categories and find the topics you want to read.

Alright, go to the link below for the latest Strange Reports!

http://www.outeredgeofreality.com/ZonesUnknown.html

 

The Work of the White-Lighter!

Stark: What other kinds of experiences have you had in using the light?

Sara: Okay. There was a coworker, Kevin, and he had a habit of not telling the truth. So I used one exercise that I learned that you use when a person is not being honest, or sometimes they’re verbally abusive. So in the exercise you envision a purple light around the mouth, and ask that the only words they utter is the truth. So one particular day it seemed Kevin didn’t do a certain task, and I confronted him about it, and so he was just lying about it, making up a bunch of excuses. But when I did the purple light thing around his mouth, he kind of paused, then he did the whole cough and stutter kind of thing.

Stark: Really? (Laughing)

Sara: Yeah. But then he said, “Was there anything else, ‘cuz I gotta go.” But it was an immediate reaction. But in my dreams, that’s where I use the white light a lot, and I use it everyday, of course. Sometimes when I’m having a nightmare, one thing I’ll always do is call on the Mother God in my dream, or I will surround myself with white light, and I always get an answer. I’ll either get help from the Mother God, or I’ll be able to fight off whatever it is with the white light. So the most profound and enlightening things that happened to me with the light were mostly in my dreams. But I’ve had experiences where some shady character comes up next to me for instance, and I’ve pushed the light out to get rid of him. Fortunately I haven’t had anything bad happen to me yet, so it must be working. But dreams are where I see it working a lot, because I can really feel it in my core when I push the light out.

Stark: Whether it’s in dreams or the physical world, I believe it’s just as valid.

Sara: Sometimes I’ll look for proof. But oftentimes I end up frustrating myself. So when I use the light, I’ll be looking for this immediate reaction that I won’t always get. So sometimes what I’ll do is fill a whole room with white light, that’s my big thing, or I’ll put it around people if it seems they’re having a bad day. So I’ll white-light ‘em. Even if it’s an enemy, I’ll white-light ‘em. It protects me from them. That’s what I’ll do, I’m kind of a white-lighter. Sometimes I’ll white-light a room and walk away because if I sit there and look for the change, I’ll end up frustrating myself.

Stark: Yeah. Looking for results.

Sara: Yeah. It’s like, I just put white light on everybody, and let’s see what happens. I want this wonderful spiritual experience to happen. Then there were a few times when I would white-light somebody and they would feel better, like they would have a headache, and an hour later the headache’s gone. I used to be pretty good with plants. At this one job there was this one plant that was about dead, so I pulled the dead leaves off it and watered it, and then I pushed a lot of green light and purple light into it for about ten minutes straight, and I even talked to it, “You’re a beautiful plant.” And a month later Donald told me, “Oh hey, I was gonna tell you, that plant at work look so healthy!” And so it just blossomed.

Stark: Some things do take a lot of work. You got to plug it with a lot of light.

Sara: Yeah. I try not to sit there and look for results. I just frustrate myself. So I just put white light out and see what happens.

Stark: Sometimes we never see the result.

Sara: Sometimes.

Stark: This is something we can both relate to, because it’s tempting to want to see the results of our actions.

Sara: Yeah. When you’re putting light around somebody, you want to see them go through a change. Or sometimes somebody’s sitting there yakking his head off, getting annoying, so you white-light him, and then all of a sudden he has to leave. Like, whoa!

Stark: The light was too intense for him.

Sara: Yeah. But then there’s those times when you fill the whole room with white light, but you don’t really know if anyone’s feeling better. There’s been times that I directed white light at somebody for healing purposes and the next day they say they’re feeling better.

Stark: I tried an experiment once when I was working as a janitor at this one office building. I was using a technique where you extend your aura out, and letting the light shine out as I walked around getting trash at different people’s desks. Now I was pretty familiar with some of the people there, so some were more friendly, and others were just like cold fish and never spoke a word to me. But the idea of the technique is to shine your light through extending your aura out, and sending positive vibes, like peace and joy or whatever, and as I went along getting trash, I would try to see if I could get results by doing this to certain people, bumping up against them with my aura. But one time, there was one person that never noticed me or spoke to me, well, he suddenly noticed me, said something like, “Oh, hi there! How you doing?” And so we talked for a little bit. He opened up for the first time. It seemed like a coincidence, but I think doing that aura technique triggered something in him. And a few other people responded too.

Sara: Yeah.

Stark: But something happened, that’s for sure.

Sara: That convinces me.

Stark: But it happens to them on the subconscious level, because they don’t know what’s going on consciously.

Sara: Right. They had no clue what you were doing.

Stark: But I was doing this technique consciously just to see if I could get results.

Sara: That’s really good that you did that.

Final Thought:

Stark: You can write reams and reams on the white light, and certain spiritually-minded people have done so. I’ve read several such books, and so has Sara. I recommend searching them out because Sara and I both believe, from first-hand experience, that using and working with this spiritual light will not only improve the quality of your own life, but it will affect the lives of others you touch as well.

Happy white-lighting to you all!

* * * *

Note: In these interviews, certain names of individuals have been changed for their protection.

 

Applying the White Light in Your Life

Stark: Do the Wiccans use term like enlightenment or illumination and such?

Sara: No, just light, that’s what I’ve always used, like for visualization.

Stark: There’s something I’ve noticed about the light when I was involved with mystical groups, and that’s that there’s a lot of resistance that’s caused when the light is flowing through a person’s body, because when there’s a lot of crap inside, it’s causing resistance. It’s like a clogged pipe, and the more it gets clogged, the water flowing through it causes more pressure, causing resistance. When the pipe is cleaned out, there’s no resistance because it’s a clear channel now. It’s the same thing with the spirit moving through the body, or the light flowing through the body.

Sara: Yeah, you’re like a sieve.

Stark:Yeah. And if you have a bunch of crap you’re carrying around with you, then

you’ve gotta force it out somehow, you gotta release it.

Sara: You get constipated, spiritually constipated.

Stark: There you go! (Laughing)

Sara: You’ll need a spiritual laxative, or a spiritual enema.

(Both laughing)

Stark: So what are the various ways you’ve used the light? How have you experimented with it?

Sara: Using the light, the different colors of light, I believe that’s helped a lot. I’ve seen significant things happen. I put white light around anybody that I might think they need it or if I need to protect myself from somebody. So I’ll create a bubble of light when I do this, or put it around an entire room. I use the white light constantly.

Stark: Great.

Sara: There’s nothing wrong with putting good energy out. But I also use other colors too, depending on what I’m trying to do. I do feel like I’ve seen it actually work, as far as like keeping darkness at bay. When I’m in a situation that appears to be scary out in the middle of somewhere at 2 o’clock in the morning, and something bad might happen, I know that I have that tool there for protection, and I also use other forms of visualization. And hey, I’m still alive. So far I’ve been lucky. So using these forms of imagery I have a tool or a weapon I can use. So it’s opened up peace of mind and it’s opened me up to more experiences. I have seen it work as far as driving bad things away, which is interesting. Even my sister Angie. She’s had times when someone bad was in her room and she put a light around them and boom — they left.

Stark: Have you used this for protecting your house? Like creating some kind of form or structure of light around the house, a protective barrier.

Sara: Yeah, around my whole house. I’ve done that. But when it comes to like a hard-core form of negativity, I always do something more ritualistic. But if I feel like something bad is in the house, something kind of lingering, I’ll do a full-on sea salt, incense, herbs, candles, friends, the whole deal.

Stark: For protecting the house I’ve used four pillars of light, four walls of light between them, and a pyramid of light on top of that, then fill the whole structure with more light. That’s just one form, but of course there are many forms. You can put a sphere of light around your house. Or whatever works.

Sara: Yeah. You can visualize inverted mirrors. You put mirrors around your house and so any negativity that would be directed at your house will be bounced back to the sender. I don’t use the pillars so much, my sister does. My sister is also very spiritual.

Stark: Did she get into Wicca too?

Sara: Yeah, a little bit. She’s really into astrology, and so am I. I think astrology is a foundation for a lot of religions. Because a lot of religions can be followed back to the stars, like Christianity, Paganism, Wiccan, the others. Even the Egyptians. The way the pyramids are placed, it all revolves around the stars.

Stark: From what I’ve read, the Magi were astrologers, the three wise men. And of course they followed a star to find Jesus.

Sara: Yeah. The whole Christ reality revolves around the stars.

Stark: One of these times we’ll have to do a session on astrology.

Sara: I’d love to do that.

* * * *

Note: In these interviews, certain names of individuals have been changed for their protection.

 

Astral Projection, the Silver Cord, and Walk-ins

Sara: Okay. From what you just described to me, the way I translate this in my mind, this could be a way to teach yourself how to astrally-project, like on a commandable basis. Like you’ll learn how to concentrate for a few minutes and pop yourself out of your body and control you’re astral body. What I’m trying to say is, from what you’ve just described, you keep yourself in this egg of light and then you eventually lose some of the density in your body, so that you can have more control over your spirit, so that you will be able to pop out of your body voluntarily.

Stark: That’s interesting, and of course that’s most likely an aspect of this egg of light technique, and it could be used for astral projection if that’s your particular direction. Naturally, all these things are interconnected, but this particular exercise essentially has to do with increasing the light within you, or your realization of light within. But due to this, quite possibly you might find yourself popping out of your body.

Sara: Yeah.

Stark: But eventually this exercise gets you centered into your central Self, or inner Self, because the light brings you to your inner Self. When there’s more light, you can see your true being. But in the beginning you’re just getting used to the light, seeing it and experiencing it, feeling it, healing your body, and so forth.

Sara: Okay. You were talking about building your light body?

Stark: Actually, developing your light body. We’re talking about self-unfoldment and growing in the light. But in some schools they talk about different bodies within yourself, or different levels, like you have your dense physical body, you’re astral or spiritual body, and then your soul-being, and finally your inner Self, who you really are. Some schools discuss seven different bodies, but I don’t like that terminology, it’s probably better to call it different levels. It reminds me of those plastic eggs, where you have an egg within an egg within an egg, but that’s a real awkward illustration of describing these bodies or levels. But in this kind of exercise, the egg of light, you’re developing your light body, or dissolving the denseness and increasing the light within yourself, so that you become a light-being. But there are many different groups that discuss these things, and they all have different terminology.

Sara: Okay. I’ve read where they talk about your subconscious mind, your conscious mind, and then you have your superconscious mind, but it’s using the inverted pyramid. That’s what I learned, and it’s basically three levels, three levels of consciousness.

Stark: That’s another way of looking at it.

Sara: And I think that your spirit is above your body, not in your body, even though you feel like you’re inside your body.

Stark: I’ve heard this, but I always wondered whether this is symbolic or literal.

Sara: I think it’s better to think of yourself not being stuck inside your body all the time, but being above it. Because people get way too attached to their bodies.

Stark: Yeah. Perhaps your spirit above your body thing came from the idea of astral projection, and the idea that you should learn to not be stuck in the body but to be able to freely move out from it, or even go off and have astral adventures.

Sara: Have you heard of the aka thread?

Stark: No.

Sara: Supposedly it’s the thread that connects your soul to your body.

Stark: Oh, you’re talking about the silver cord.

Sara: Yeah, the same thing. Aka thread.

Stark: I’ve never heard that term before.

Sara: That’s a Hawaiian term apparently. And it only disconnects when you die.

Stark: Yeah. And that’s the factor that decides true death of the body. As long as that cord is attached you’re not really dead.

Sara: Right.

Stark: You can have a near-death experience, but you’re not really dead. Some people have apparently died on the operating table, their breathing and heart stops completely, and the doctor announces the time of death, so they’re clinically dead, but then they seem to miraculously come back to life. So it wasn’t true death, but a near-death experience.

Sara: But then the question is raised, what happens when somebody’s in a coma? Maybe just the machines are keeping him alive. Is the dude forced to stick to his cord or is he gone?

Stark: Yeah, that’s a good question. Maybe the soul detached and skedaddled out of there, or maybe it’s just hovering over the body if the cord is still intact, or maybe it’s joy-riding around the place till the body wakes up, I dunno. If the body’s being artificially kept alive, but it’s brain dead, why would the soul hang around? But I’ve heard that some people snap out of the coma after ten or more years. My question is, is that a different being, or is that the same person that was in that body before? Could it be a different soul?

Sara: But don’t they still have their old memories?

Stark: I don’t know. But this whole thing gets into what’s called “walk-ins.”

Sara: Yeah, absolutely.

Stark: So in the case of a long-term coma, there could be a different soul that enters the body when it regains consciousness.

Sara: But if they remember all their old memories, from the body itself — the only thing I can think of is recovering cell memory.

Stark: Yeah, most likely. Which would be in effect false memories for the new soul that entered the body. So it would be pretty disoriented for a while.

Sara: But if he comes out of a long term coma with full recollection, it’s probably the same soul. But if the person wakes up with no recollection, like has amnesia, now that’s interesting, then I absolutely believe it was a soul walk-in.

Stark: Yeah.

 

To be continued . . .

* * * *

Note: In these interviews, certain names of individuals have been changed for their protection.

 

Another Fascinating Interview with Sara L Bendt

Learning about White Light

Stark: We’re back with our old friend Sara Bendt, who has provided us with scads of cool information on many fascinating subject, based on her past experiences in various intriguing and strange areas of her life. We’re going to discuss her work in the light. That is, spiritual light, or what she calls “white light.” Alright, Sara. How did you first encounter the white light? Did someone tell you about it or did you read about it? Did it happen in a dream?

Sara: The first experience I had with light was probably when I started reading a little bit about auras. I kind of dabbled in auras, trying to learn how to read them and whatnot, but I didn’t really have any luck with it.

Stark: Did you try any particular techniques or exercises?

Sara: I did exercises on how to read auras. Like you have someone stand against the wall and you do this certain thing with your eyes and see what kind of colors you see. And I didn’t have much luck.

Stark: You can try it with plants and trees, or anything alive.

Sara: Absolutely. So anyway, I read about how you can meditate on your aura, and try to change its color. Like if you feel like you’re ailing or whatever, you can meditate on having a purple aura, or whatever.

Stark: How about green with orange polka-dots?

Sara: Yeah right. But that opened me up for the different possibilities as far as meditating, changing light and whatnot, but auras aren’t really light; it’s an actual emanation from the body.

Stark: When we’re first opening our spiritual sight, we might see something, it may be a little hazy and whitish, like around a person’s head, or around a plant, but when our sight is opened up fuller we can see more, we can probably see all those colors.

Sara: Supposedly children can. But when I first started using the white light for various purposes, this actually came from one of Sylvia Browne’s books, when I was about 21. It talked about using healing light, and I became absolutely interested. And then I bought a few more of her books and she goes into a little more detail on light and it just enthralled me. Wicca had a little bit of it, but that was more using it for colored candles and herbs and oils and whatnot, but at that time I didn’t read a whole lot about the light in any Wicca books, so it’s possible that I just didn’t have an interest in the light when I was doing Wicca, so maybe I just wasn’t paying attention.

Stark: Alright, so your getting into the light actually happened a little bit later after your Wicca phase.

Sara: Right.

Stark: So while practicing Wicca, it was mostly just working with energy?

Sara: Yes. It was more energy and visualization. But I really started getting into the white light and using it and applying it when I was reading Sylvia Browne’s books. I thought what she had to say made a lot of sense to me. And ever since then I’ve been hard-core using the white light. Everyday I use it.

Stark: It sounds like she must be right-on if she’s into this.

Sara: Yeah. I also heard about the light on Coast-To-Coast AM, so I got different people’s viewpoint on it other than Sylvia Browne.

Stark: Whether it was from Sylvia Browne or other sources, have you used any certain techniques in developing it?

Sara: She had a lot of different suggestions on how to use it. Remember Glenda the good witch in the Wizard of Oz?

Stark: Yeah.

Sara: Sylvia says when you see the bubble that Glenda comes down on, she says that’s how you want to visualize the white light around you. So like that she gives you some little tools for visualization to help you. So that’s what I try to do. And she has a lot of different visualization techniques for pillars of protection, for your spirit animals, your totems, and such.

Stark: I used to try this technique called the auric egg of light, similar to what you’re saying about the bubble, but it probably doesn’t matter whether you visualize a sphere or an egg-shape. But when you’re doing this egg of light technique, you’re increasing the light inside yourself, and literally making yourself lighter. You’re raising up your vibration, in your physical body and your consciousness, so that you won’t be as vibrationally dense as you used to be, so you’re going to have a spiritually lighter body. So this is one way to help build or develop your “light body,” as some call it.

Sara: So you’re using mind over matter.

Stark: That’s one way to look at it.

 

To be continued . . . .

Coming up is Strange Interviews from Zones Unknown, once again featuring Sara L. Bendt. We will discuss her discovery and development in the "white light" as many spiritual people call it. We had a very fascinating discussion on not just working with this spiritual light, but other esoteric phenomena, so I believe this will be a very enlightening interview, or good old-fashioned spiritual discussion, whichever.

Coming up next:

Light Work and other Esoteric Phenomena

 

In Search of The Designer of the Cosmos

There’s an awful lot of people who are not necessarily searching for any kind of intelligent designer, frankly because they don’t believe that one exists. They would rather believe that everything sprang into being by sheer accident, by a rather chaotic absolute non-intelligence. Does that make sense? So everything flowered into being by some mindless accident instead of an intelligent force. Tell me, did the automobile just spring into being, or was there some kind of an intelligent designer behind it? Actually, we’ll call this the human inventor. So, the invention of the automobile was a marvel based on human intelligence, and this invention evolved into the sophisticated, innovative vehicle that it is today. However, as ingenious and complicated as this marvelous machinery is, compare this to the intricate design and function of the human body. This particular organism is infinitesimally far more sophisticated and ingenious of a creation than an automobile, something that can’t possibly have sprung from non-intelligence, or sheer accident. So you can see the foolishness of atheistic thought even here.

So, at the risk of hideously offending deity-debunkers, we’re going to forget about all this moronic nonsense, not waist out time with non-intelligent thinking, and plug on ahead to address those who are actually in search of an intelligent designer of the Cosmos. You don’t have to call it a deity or God or Maker or Supreme Being or higher power, or whatever.

Alright folks, exactly who is this designer with a ton of intelligence? Where does he hang out? How big is he? And is he a she? Actually I don’t think God is a he or a she, but more of an “It,” because make it. Realize that it’s a human compulsion to label things as he or she, even inanimate object, such as ships, airplanes, other machinery, hurricanes and major storms, planets, and even deities. This is most likely because we don’t even know what a deity really is, so we haphazardly call God a he in most cases, probably because back in the day chauvinistic men thought they were in charge, and women were furniture. They couldn’t fathom God being a piece of furniture I guess.

Anyway, to the frustration of these same male chauvinistic pigs, to some ancient cultures God was considered to be a she, or a goddess. For essence, Wicca is one of those old-time religions that revolves around the Goddess. Most likely this revolves around the idea of Mother Nature, and later the name Gaia was applied to Earth, as some people began to see our world as a living organism. This idea demands an article all its own, so let’s not digress just yet.

How are we going to conduct a search for an intelligent designer? First we find clues and evidence that there is one. Hard to do for deity-disbelievers who keep their eyes and ears closed. But I’d say there’s an awful lot of evidence just on our planet alone, not to mention the rest of the Cosmos. All you have to do is look at a tree, or a rock, a human being, any animal, or a cloud, the stars in the night sky, the sun, so on and so forth. Look at a sunset or a sunrise, like wondrous paintings by a master artist. All of these are obvious clues. They’re more than that, they’re clear evidence that an intelligent designer exists. Because existence itself is the fact of God, and likewise God is the fact of existence.

Evolution and creation or actually two part of one function. These are aspects of how this smart master craftsman works. The intelligent designer speaks, or projects what is called the Word, and energy is activated to manifest in a denser form of vibration. It’s all about higher or lower vibration.

Alright, I could wax metaphysical for hours, so let’s not digress. Each life-journeyer has to decide for him/her -self whether or not they think there is some kind of a sentient intelligently designing presence behind it all. I think if there wasn’t, then even if something started to barely begin to spring up, it would dissolve into nothingness very soon. If chaos and randomness rule all existence, nothing would be stable enough to hold together for all these billions of years. But I could be wrong, maybe there is no rhyme or reason, no intelligence designing anything, just a series of continual accidents keeping things going. Yikes! That’s scary!

In conclusion to this series of articles – just draw your own conclusions for a change. But I hope you will think outside the box – and burn the box so you don’t go back to it!

 

A Cosmic Thread Through the Microcosm and the Macrocosm

There’s another cosmic idea that philosophers and scientists ponder alike. I’ve heard it in various different ways, but it reflects the ancient Hermetic principle of "As above, so below." There is a cosmic thread flowing through the infinite levels of the microcosm and the infinite levels of the macrocosm. In other words, the structure of the solar system is similar to that of an atom, according to certain theories. I’m not saying they’re identical, but each structure reflects this familiar model. The atom’s nucleus is composed of protons and neutrons, and then the electrons circle this point, and scientists usually refer to a cloud of electrons, perhaps because they move so fast, and so all we see is a cloud. If we sped up time as we observe the solar system, let’s say observing it in a million year stretch but contained within a few seconds, the planets would be moving so fast that we would see clouds of dust and vapor, or some kind of mysterious haze circling the sun. But then since planetary orbits change to varying degrees from cycle to cycle — because a planet’s orbit does not repeating itself exactly as the sun journeys through the galaxy on its own eternal orbit — then we would see wide bands of clouds around the sun. But then would these bands be along a similar plane, or would they go quite far beyond this common plane, as the solar system moves through the whole galaxy? You have to stretch your imagination to envision images like this. I could be way off, of course, but I’m just speculating.

Anyway, what I’m trying to get at is that solar systems are very much like atoms, and when you observe billions upon billions of these solar system/atoms, they will eventually form a large object, a galaxy/cell. Perhaps, if you were to observe far enough out, you would see a millions upon billions of these galaxy/cells, and the question is, what would it form? Would we see the structure of some kind cosmic organism in a larger reality, a greater macrocosm? If this is the case, would we be observing the very body of God? And is God a being that lives in a world of billions of other beings, which exists in a very different solar system, existing in a very different galaxy, in a very different universe, and the process continually unfolds outward, larger and larger and larger unto infinity? “As above, so below.”

How about your own body, which consists of billions and billions of cells, each cell consisting of billions of atoms, and you can keep going down further, infinitely. So your body is a whole universe, and you are the god of that universe. Perhaps you are an intelligent designer in your own right, because through free will you design your own destiny.

These may be profound, thought-provoking speculations, but as far as we know, they are just ideas to ponder, not solid beliefs you want to accept right away. Although they could be right, it’s very possibly they could also be quite incorrect. We really don’t know. It’s all speculation. And just because you believe in something very strongly, doesn’t mean it’s true. People believe things all the time that aren’t true. For instance, superstitious beliefs. The truth is that the truth is the truth, and if we believe in something else strongly, that’s not going to change the truth. Whatever the truth is concerning the nature of the universe, and the nature of God in the universe or as the universe, whatever we think or believe or do about it, won’t change that fact; it will still be the truth, whatever that is.

Remember what Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, "What is truth?" Perhaps this is one of the greatest questions of all time. But I think the answer is found beyond mere words. I think the truth is something to be experienced.

 

The Philosophy of Grand Cosmic Cycles

Alright folks, let’s continue with further mindless drivel of a demented mind, that being mine. But let’s take a more serious direction now.

So, let’s talk about the origin of the universe, using the Big Bang for an example. I had an astonishing revelation some time ago. I read a science-fiction story once which gave hints to a different kind of universe. It was the seed of an idea that blossomed into something bigger. It was a story of a time traveler who was stuck in a groove of perpetually forward moving time when he was trying to go back to his own time where his loving wife remained, but his machine would not allow it. So he had no choice but to go forward, although he wanted to go backwards. But as he continued traveling forward in time, he kept hoping he would run into an intelligent race of people who had the technology to travel into the past, but he found no luck in that pursuit. So he traveled to the edge of the universe, or perhaps the edge of time itself, to that mysterious place of entropy where the universe literally peters out. Then he discovered that after the entropy phase, another Big Bang incident occurred, and the universe proceeded to expand and re-created itself. He had the hopeful notion that the exact timeline he was familiar with would repeat itself, for his wife’s sake. So you could say, theoretically of course, that the universe exists in a Mobius strip type scenario, which means where it appears to end, it begins anew again, and unfolds exactly as it did before with no change. Sure enough, he traveled billions of years ahead, and found that world history unfolded exactly as he hoped it would. And so he returned to his own time and to his loving wife once again. And they lived happily ever after. The end.

Such is the stuff that time travel romances are made of, for isn’t it true that love forces you to continue on a quest until you fulfill it, or find what you’re looking for? Anyway, I suppose astronomers are on a similar quest, searching for the origins of the universe, but is it possible they may find this at the end of time itself, at the very end of the universe? This is what I began to think after reading that charming story, realizing that the universe that we are familiar with is only the product of one cycle amidst countless cycles, a series of ebbs and flows. Perhaps you could call it a reincarnating universe. There is an apparent void, then a big bang explosion, an expanding universe, then it contracts into itself or implodes, and then it explodes and expands again, a cosmic ebb and flow, over and over and over again, like some cosmic organism exhaling and inhaling, exhaling and inhaling. God perhaps? Hmmmm.

I began naïvely wondering if anyone else had thought of this idea other than my own vain self. Then I was glad to have discovered that some scientists actually do ponder such an idea, particularly the late Carl Sagan, author of Cosmos. He calls it the "oscillating universe," which originated as an ancient Hindu idea. Yikes! They were certainly progressive in their thinking! We know there are many different cycles in nature, and even in our own solar system, and the galaxy as well, and we can dare say that the universe is part of a greater cycle also. So the universe wasn’t born to live and die someday, possibly countless billions of years from now, and then absolutely nothing beyond this point. So the idea of final entropy and then total nothingness is absurd. Let me quote Carl Sagan, "The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths." A little later he continues, "If we live in such an oscillating universe, then the Big Bang is not the creation of the Cosmos but merely the end of the previous cycle, the destruction of the last information of the Cosmos . . . . In the oscillating universe, the Cosmos has no beginning and no end, and we are in the midst of an infinite cycle of cosmic deaths and rebirths with no information trickling through the cusps of oscillation. Nothing of the galaxies, stars, planets, life forms or civilizations evolved in the previous incarnation of the universe oozes into the cusp, flutter passed the Big Bang, to be known in our present universe."

In other words, does the universe reflect the human cycles of reincarnation, (also a Hindu idea) to wear each person has no memory of the previous incarnation? Of course, there are reports that some advanced individuals have. So we have a reincarnating Cosmos which acts a lot like reincarnating people! Actually, it’s probably the other way around, our puny lifecycles reflect the much larger cosmic cycles. "As above, so below," says the ancient Hermeticists.

Incidentally, this discounts that sci-fi story’s idea of a Mobius strip universe, if the proceeding cycles unfold much differently than the preceding one. A time traveler would stumble upon a vastly different configuration of the whole universe – hence, Earth and our solar system would not exist in it. Yes, sad, but true.

At any rate, Carl Sagan offers two theories, the first one suggesting a continually expanding universe, perhaps forever, and the second one suggesting that the universe exists through an infinite series of cycles. But the idea of entropy doesn’t fit into the first idea, because that would end the universe and then there would be nothing after that. So the second theory makes a lot of sense to me. These theories are completely different from the Mobius strip universe where time repeats itself, a concept that I doubt very highly. It makes more sense that each universe within its cycle has very different patterns of evolution and unfoldment, very much like each person’s life cycle; in other words, each time he incarnates into the earth plane, he has very different experiences and events taking place, although there may be certain things that carry over, perhaps lessons he must learn until he reaches some type of perfection.

Is this the actual process of the infinite cycles of the universe? Is the universe a cosmic living organism that is reaching perfection? And will it some great cosmic day reach that place and then stop reincarnating? Will it ascend to a much higher level beyond our comprehension? We can say this about the human soul which eventually reaches some form of perfection and then steps off the wheel of reincarnation and karma, and then enter a higher level of life experience beyond the earth plane. So, does the Cosmos reflect this idea as well?

I’ll leave you with these profound questions, and perhaps you will come up with your own profound ideas, if not profound answers.

 

The Questionable yet Obvious Possibility of Life Beyond the Earth

Alright, folks. There are rather radical arguments concerning whether or not life exists beyond our Earth, such as, for instance, on other planets. I’ve heard a few schools of thoughts on this, from atheists and theologians alike, and strangely some of them coincide. Oddly, some groups of evolutionary atheists and Fundamentalist Christians agree that there could be life on other worlds, but each with very different premises. But there are other groups that are diametrically opposed to life out there, whether they be atheists or fundamentalists. We’ll address both cheesy camps, but let’s start with the Fundies.

So certain Fundamentalist Christian churches believe there CAN’T possibly be life out there, because it’s something only found on Earth, ordained by the Almighty. Seriously! I reckon God rested on the seventh day after he fixed Earth up with that precious commodity called life, then, due to exhaustion, He took a long nap for several millions of years — or 6000, take your pick. Which means the rest of the planets in the universe were forgotten. So the whole of the universe, except for Earth, is a vast waste of space if it has no life anywhere in it. Hence, God must be horrifically limiting his powerful creative ability, or just lacks imagination. How sad.

So, why don’t these narrow-minded Christians think life can’t thrive elsewhere?

From what I’ve learned, there’s a whole slew of Fundamentalist Christian who say there simply can’t be life out there because Jesus can only save people here on Earth. . . . Yeah, right. Okay, so I guess that means all those innocent aliens are going to hell in a flying saucer. Sorry, we ran out of hand-baskets. That’s too bad that the Messiah isn’t allowed to convert aliens to Christianity because their very existence is denied. Strange rules! So the Fundamentalists say there’s only "one true church," that doesn’t extend beyond the Earth. I suppose that puts these poor aliens in a pretty bad place – particularly, the fiery lakes of hell, which is probably somewhere far beneath the Earth’s surface, I imagine. So they can’t very easily go to heaven, which is some ambiguous place beyond the Earth, which is ironically where the aliens came from in the first place! Hey, something’s not consistent here!

Alright, here’s a thought. Perhaps we’re having all those UFO sightings and alien encounters because these heathen ETs want to be converted to Christianity! But what if Islam turns out to be the one true religion and they convert to this? I guess we’d have a lot of alien terrorists running around with bombs strapped to their waists. Oh well. . . .

But then, maybe those aliens have their own religions. Maybe they have their own Messiah’s that save them. If anything, they’re being saved from our stupidity.

There are also certain evolutionary atheists that do not believe in life beyond the Earth, simply because life was an accident, and that it only exists here on Earth

Some atheists deny there’s life out there, because it’s a fluke that it even developed on Earth, so it’s a near impossibility. Yep, life was a big accident, a freaky mistake, a radical byproduct extruded out while the universe was painstakingly forming, and should have never occurred. Well, I reckon if life did thrive on most of the other planets, then it would be too coincidental to think that life was that ginormous of an accident. That would be one humongous mistake! Does that mean, by evolutionary standards, there can only be small accidents that can happen and not big ones? But what about the Big Bang? That was a pretty big accident, wasn’t it? Amidst all those billions and billions of planets and stars, and galaxies let’s not forget, this bizarre strange phenomenon called life, that gooey sticky watery thing that often has sentience, just happened to magically appear only on Earth. What a miracle! Except my understanding is that evolutionary theories don’t include miracles. Well, there’s another hole in the theory. As soon as it appears to be a miracle, it’s immediately translated as an accident. Go figure. Actually, all they do is change the word from miracle to fluke, and that covers it. Miracles are too God-like and unatheistic, whereas flukes are chaotic and random, hence, cool and acceptable.

There are probably some overly zealous Christians that not only believe life exists on other planets, but they desperately want to convert all those heathen worlds so their inhabitants don’t go to hell. That would be quite a stupendous missionary operation for Christianity! The problem is, our space program is too primitive to get us out there, plus it’d be far too expensive, so I guess all those poor aliens are going to hell — and it’s our fault!

I’ve heard some new radical theories of progressive atheistic thought (they’re finally thinking again! And a little bit outside the box this time!) that has to do with the intricacies of intelligent design behind some little thing called DNA, which can be called the blueprint of life, or the building blocks of living organisms, and even the storage facility for genetic information about life, and others such quaint descriptive ideas. Anyway, this one harebrained atheistic theory reluctantly grumbles that there’s probably life out there after all. So, that just goes to show us that there were a lot more accidents happening in the universe then people originally thought. But the hypothesis suggests that DNA was planted, like seeds, I suppose, on the Earth by intelligent aliens. But I’m wondering, did these smart ETs spring into being mere seconds after humans discovered DNA, so that these atheist theorists could begin to come up with such a harebrained theory? Or were the alien life-planters there all along, hiding somewhere in the deep recesses of dark matter? I’m going to assume they were already somewhere around the universe, probably for millions of years.

Anyway, obviously there was no intelligent life down here on Earth (which begs for one of the visiting aliens to cry, “Beam me up, Scotty!") So, some clever alien, a Johnny Appleseed type, came along and planted DNA seeds all over the place; maybe he stuck them in bubbling pools of amino acids, or perhaps he’s the one who put the amino acids here in the first place. Whichever, the point is, life was supposedly put here on Earth by intelligent aliens, because DNA is too intelligent of an idea to have been a fluke, these overly freethinking theorists are saying. But they deny that a godlike intelligent designer was the mastermind here. For some reason, the idea of a cosmic deity, a pretty intelligent one in fact, was too absurd for them to consider. So obviously intelligent extraterrestrial creatures planted life here, that being the Johnny Appleseed type characters from the Andromeda Galaxy probably, or even from the far side of the universe. Perhaps they traveled to a lot of other planets and did the same thing, populating the whole universe!

Fine and dandy. Swell and good. There’s only one problem; just a little hole in the theory. Where the freaking heck did these intelligent aliens come from in the first?! They are intelligent life forms, right? Were they a fluke of evolution too? Did they come into existence by some accident? And don’t they have some kind of DNA that acted as the intelligent blueprint that formed them? Why do we keep running into some kind of intelligence, no matter how remote it is, if intelligence didn’t cause existence to come into being? Do we need to come up with yet another crazy theory to fix the big hole in the previous one? How far back should we go, and how many holes do we have to fill up in order to make this theory a sound one?

When it comes to scientific theories or conspiracy theories, with its creationist fundamentalists or evolutionary atheists, and nut-jobs in general, matters can only get more complicated. There is a principal I like to stick with, which is called Occam’s Razor, and it’s essentially this: Keep it simple, stupid!

And there’s no bones about it!