Life Beyond The Solar System

Ruby Lilaowala with astronaut Rakesh Sharma at a seminar on ' Science and Spirituality' — Ruby Lilaowala with astronaut Rakesh Sharma at a seminar on ‘ Science and Spirituality’

Is there any form of life beyond our planet Earth? And if there is, are those forms, creatures and people, more advanced and evolved than us? A fascinating lecture on extra-terrestrial life was organised in the city of Pune some time ago by the ‘Inter City University Centre of Astrophysics’. The main speaker was the astrophysicist, Shri Jayant Narlikar, who began thus:

“Astronomy has revealed the existence of organic and inorganic molecules in space, the inorganic substance being something like alcohol.” Before any Devdas in our community could visualise ‘Parsi- Pegs’ or ‘Patiala-Pegs’ floating around in space, the speaker revealed that the “molecules of alcohol are so tiny that you need a powerful microscope to monitor most of them.”

Speaking about galaxies and solar systems in the universe, Shri Narlikar said, “Though there are billions of stars in the sky, only one star is born every year”. On what this calculation was based, he did elaborate but on a lighter note added, “See, they are more conscious about their reproductive numbers than human beings”.

He continued, “Suppose there is life beyond Earth, if we send a message like: ‘Hello! Anyone there?’, it will take over eight years for it to reach the nearest planet and another eight years for their reply (if any) to reach us!”

This made me think! Perhaps on some unchronicled pre-historic night, a Palaeolithic man must’ve raised his head and gazed at the boundless immensity of the star-filled sky overhead and his thought would’ve been the same as that of today’s man when he glazes reflectively upon the most mysterious canopy under which he lives, moves, frets and thinks himself to be an ‘advanced’ human being! Both men must’ve thought: does extra-terrestrial life exist?

In ancient Egypt’s occult literature, in the chapter on astronomy, there’s a reference to Sirius or the Dog-Star that pierces the sky on the very edge of horizon at times. Egyptians called it ‘Sirius, the Queen of Heaven’, because its mid-summer sighting marked the beginning of the annual inundation of the river Nile, which irrigated their lands, bringing food for all.

In Egyptian carvings, scripts and hieroglyphics, Sirius is represented by the figure of a triangle (which is also a mystic emblem in Masonry as well as Theosophy). Another striking correspondence between Sirius and the pyramids is that the Priest-astronomers took it as their basis for measuring epochs of universal history. By observation and calculation, they named the ‘period of Sirius’ and calculated millenniums by epochs.

Each epoch was 1,461 years and the number of stones at the base around the four sides of the pyramid is always 1,461 – the same as one Sirius-epoch!

Sirius doesn’t belong to the multitudinous company of our Solar System -it is a mere stranger who comes momentarily close to us, but actually flickers off into the depths of space, at high speed. Ancient Egyptians believed that highly-evolved, advanced beings who inhabit Sirius are far superior to us in intelligence, healing, creative-powers and spirituality. They possesed extra-sensory perceptions and had detected our existence even then, whereas us Earthlings, even today don’t know if our neighbouring planets are inhibited!

Our narrowness of vision is ant-like. Just as an ant thinks that the stone beneath is her entire world, we humans think there’s life only on Earth. We have measured equinoxes, calculated eclipses, sent man to the moon but we haven’t yet detected a single intelligent race in space. Theosophical literature says that these advanced-beings know us, some pity us and some serve as ‘invisible-helpers’. I am sure that when higher intelligence sees our greed, chaos and war, they must be thinking that the planet Earth is the lunatic-asylum of the Solar System!