Start building new temples

The US military confirmed the image of a triangular, pyramidal, Doritos-like, shape as one of the UFOs that was photographed by a navy pilot.

Despite all our interest in UFOs and aliens, the military is trying its best to stall the report that it has been asked by Congress to prepare and present to the public.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the director of national intelligence to work with the Defense Department to provide a public accounting by June 25 on unexplained sightings of advanced aircraft and drones that have been reported by military personnel or captured by radar, satellites and other surveillance systems.

The request came after revelations in 2017 that the Pentagon was researching a series of unexplained intrusions into military airspace, including high-performance vehicles captured on video stalking Navy ships.

The truth is out there, as Mulder always told us ;)

I, for one, am not really looking forward to an alien encounter because history overflows with groups totally wiped out of existence, or nearly eliminated, by alien population.

But, curious I am about aliens.  I am way more interested in what any evidence of aliens might do to religions.  The grand faiths that tell their followers about how all these on earth came to be, and what happens after the faithful die, will suddenly have to account for an unexpected plot twist that we on earth are not alone in the universe nor are we special.

As Carl Sagan has pointed out in (the now out-of-print book) The Cosmic Question, “space exploration leads directly to religious and philosophical questions”. We would need to consider whether our faiths could accommodate these new beings – or if it should shake our beliefs to the core.

What happens to the faiths that are built on a narrative of Adam and Eve and their original sin?  The children of Abraham will have to deal with Alf and Mork!

The old Hindu faith in all its variations--the local, the Vedic, and the offshoots like Buddhism--will easily work with the evidence that there is life out there.  

The Vedic philosophy discusses multiple lokas and the mahavakya says तत् त्वम् असि (You are that.)  The alien life and you are all manifestations of the same Brahma.   A framework that is not built around the divinity of a person, but instead uses concepts like reincarnation or a gazillion gods, will point to aliens as our relations.  A different incarnation.

So, get ready for a few Paralokaswamy temples!

But, at the end of it all, we will never know how all these came to be.  I will quote, again, from the Rig Veda:

Who really knows?
Who will here proclaim it?
Whence was it produced?
Whence is this creation?
The gods came afterwards, with the creation of this universe.
Who then knows whence it has arisen?

Whence this creation has arisen
- perhaps it formed itself, or perhaps it did not -
the One who looks down on it,
in the highest heaven, only He knows
or perhaps even He does not know.