Are we the only intelligent life in the universe? Some people would think so, others not. If there is intelligent life on other planets and possibly more intelligent than we, have these intelligent beings visited our planet before? Many people believe they have.
UFOs and alien encounters became the stuff of legend in the 20th century. Books, YouTube videos, newspaper articles, journals, websites and Hollywood blockbusters abound on the topic of UFOs and alien encounters. Occasionally a report or sighting of UFOs from the highest levels of government, particularly the military, hits the evening news causing a big stir but then vanishes and is forgotten almost as quickly and mysteriously as the illusive UFO itself. It is sometimes hard to figure out just what this is all about. Are these the tricks of hoaxers out for a good laugh? Could alleged UFO sightings be the delusions of paranoid schizophrenics? Or is the plot more sinister? Are governments hiding the facts about UFOs and alien encounters?
What is actually going on? What can we believe regarding the UFO and alien phenomena? Some researcher have pointed to ancient world civilizations such as those in Egypt and Mesoamerica and concluded that aliens definitely visited Earth people in the past and possibly passed on to them a superior technology. When looking at those research materials it seems that the argument for alien visitation is stronger than the evidence itself, which is usually an obscure stone etching found somewhere in an ancient Egyptian temple or Mayan tomb.
Of course, researchers could be correct in their speculation about tomb carvings but a more compelling evidence of intelligent life in the universe, other than our own, are the ancient Vedic and Puranic literatures of India. In many instance these literatures clearly state that there is intelligent life on other planets. For example Bhagavad-gita states that Sri Krsna spoke the science of self-realization in a previous time to the ruler of the Sun, Vivasvan.
imam vivasvate yogam proktavan aham avyayam
vivasvan manave praha manur iksvakave’bravit
"I disclosed this imperishable knowledge of yoga unto Vivasvan, ruler of the Sun. He then taught it to Vivasvata Manu, who then instructed the same knowledge to Iksvaku." (Gita 4.1)
Similarly, the Bhagavat Purana records the following:
deva-dvisam nigama-vartmani nisthitanam
purbhir mayena vihitabhir adrsya-turbhih
lokan ghnatam mati-vimoham atipralobham
vesam vidhaya bahu bhasyata aupadharmyam
"When the atheists, after being well versed in the Vedic scientific knowledge, annihilate inhabitants of different planets, flying unseen in the sky on well-built rockets prepared by the great scientist Maya the Lord will bewilder their minds by dressing Himself attractively as Buddha and will preach on sub-religious principles." (Bhag. 2.7.37)
The renowned India scholar and acarya Jiva Gosvami while commentating on this verse has stated that this incident of Buddha is not the same as the Buddha in our historical context but a Buddha from another Kali-yuga. However, it is important to note from this verse of the Bhagavata that intelligent life from other planets may travel to various planets in space ships that are invisible to the naked eye. Could the same be a clue to the UFO phenomena today?
In Vedic cosmology there are higher and lower planets in the universe, the higher planets being inhabited by pious intelligent life and the lower planets being inhabited by atheistic intelligent life. The atheists are known in the Vedic literature more for their destructive and evil tendencies than for their humanistic and philanthropic tendencies. This is stated in Bhagavad-gita as follows:
etam drstim avastabhya nastatmano’lpa buddhayah
prabhavanty-ugra-karmanah ksayaya jagato’bitah
"Atheists with deprived and small intelligence flourish and engage in malicious activities for the destruction of the world." (Gita 16.9)
The atheists become expert in yantra-vidya or the science of machines where as the Devas (intelligent life from higher planets) are expert in mantra and do not need the assistance of machines such as fire combustible engines or even electrical ones to move about from planet to planet. Nor are they destructive and violent wherever they go.
tara-hema-maharatna-vimana-sata-sankulam
justam punyajana-stribhir yatha kham satadid-ghanam
"The airplanes (vimanas) of the celestial beings are bedecked with pearls, gold and many valuable jewels. The celestial beings are compared to clouds in the sky decorated with occasional flashes of lightning." (Bhag. 4.6.27)
To continue stating Vedic literature as evidence of interplanetary travel and intelligent life on other planets would turn this article into a sizable book — so let is suffice to say that from the Vedic point of view, intelligent life exists on other planets and may have the technology for interplanetary travel either thru yantras or mantras.
That said of the ancient references, what are the most reliable references that we can find today to support the existence or UFOs and alien intelligence?
From my research I found that the most profound UFO event in modern times was that of a supposed UFO crash in which alien bodies were reportedly recovered near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947.
On July 8, 1947, the Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) public information officer Walter Haut in Roswell, New Mexico, issued a press release stating that personnel from the field's 509th Bomb Group had recovered a crashed "flying disk" from a ranch near Roswell, sparking intense media interest. The following day, the press reported that Commanding General of the Eighth Air Force (Roger M. Ramey) stated that, in fact, that a radar-tracking balloon had been recovered by the RAAF personnel and not a ‘flying disc.’
The Roswell incident was quickly forgotten and almost completely ignored, even by UFO researchers, for more than 30 years. Then, in 1978, physicist and ufologist Stanton T. Friedman interviewed Major Jesse Marcel who was involved with the original recovery of the debris in 1947. Marcel expressed his belief that the military had covered up the recovery of an alien spacecraft. His story spread through UFO circles, being featured in some UFO documentaries at the time.In February 1980, The National Enquirer ran its own interview with Marcel, garnering national and worldwide attention for the Roswell incident.
Additional witnesses added significant new details, including claims of a huge military operation dedicated to recovering alien craft and aliens themselves, at as many as 11 crash sites,and alleged witness intimidation. In 1989, former mortician Glenn Dennis put forth a detailed personal account, wherein he claimed that alien autopsies were carried out at the Roswell base.
Reports of the Roswell crash varied from the crash simply being that of a high altitude weather balloon, to the crash being that of an alien space ship in which bodies of dead aliens were recovered. What followed for decades was a flurry of information, misinformation, disinformation, books, testimonies and Hollywood movies. In the end, although many people in the UFO community believed the crash was that of an alien flying saucer and the government was covering it up, most thoughtful people were simply left scratching their heads or just wrote the incident off as per the RAAF version.
The Roswell incident was 65 years ago and although certainly one with many intrigues it was trumped in 2004 when the Mexican Department of Defense acknowledged a profound UFO sighting. The sighting was a high level incident in which a Mexican Air Force plane and its crew were involved in a situation with several UFOs while doing routine surveillance in an antidrug operation.
When details including video and radar tracking data were release to the mainstream media by the Mexican Department of Defense confirming the existence of UFOs the doubts of may were swept away. Yet the skeptics remain.
Another astonishing support which I came across for the existence of UFOs in modern times and to support the allegations that the American government suppresses and hides such information from the public comes none other than from the American astronaut Edgar Mitchell who during the Apollo 14 mission became the sixth human being to walk on the Moon.
Mitchell has publicly expressed his opinions that he is "90 percent sure that many of the thousands of UFOs recorded since the 1940s, belong to visitors from other planets"and that UFOs have been the "subject of disinformation in order to deflect attention and to create confusion so the truth doesn't come out".
This is quite a statement – especially coming from a man who was an American astronaut, who walked on the Moon and who holds science degrees from Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT], Carnegie Institute of Technology and the U.S Naval Postgraduate School. Indeed, an impressive set of credential.
Dateline NBC conducted an interview with Mitchell in 1996, during which Mitchell discussed meeting with officials from three countries who claimed to have had personal encounters with extraterrestrials. He offered his opinion that the evidence for such "alien" contact was "very strong" and "classified" by governments, who were covering up visitations and the existence of alien beings' bodies in places such as Roswell, New Mexico. He further claimed that recovered UFOs had provided "sonic engineering secrets" that were helpful to the U.S. government.
In 2004 Mitchell told the St. Petersburg Times that a ‘cabal of insiders’ in the U.S. government were studying recovered alien bodies, and that this group had stopped briefing U.S. presidents after John F. Kennedy. Mitchell stated, "We all know that UFOs are real; now the question is, where they come from?"
In 2008 Mitchell was interviewed on Kerrang Radio. Mitchell claimed the Roswell crash was real and that aliens have contacted humans several times, but that governments have hidden the truth for 60 years stating, "I happen to have been privileged enough to be in on the fact that we've been visited on this planet, and the UFO phenomenon is real." In reply, a spokesman for NASA stated, "NASA does not track UFOs. NASA is not involved in any sort of cover up about alien life on this planet or anywhere in the universe. Dr. Mitchell is a great American, but we do not share his opinions on this issue."
In an interview with Fox News of that same year Mitchell clarified that his comments did not involve NASA, but quoted unnamed sources, since deceased, at Roswell who confided to him that the Roswell incident did involve an alien craft. Mitchell also claims to have subsequently received similar confirmation from an unnamed intelligence officer at the Pentagon.
If one does a Google search for UFOs one will receive approximately 4,120,000 returns — many of those are affirmative. As Edgar Mitchell has said, "We all know that UFOs are real; now the question is, where they come from?"
For many people there is hope that these aliens from another world come to us in peace with greater knowledge than our own. But from the Vedic point of view it would be expected that the supposed alien visits to our planet in flying saucers are from lower, not higher planets and thus would be more apt to be hostile than friendly or benevolent.
Not to sound the alarm, but such malevolent visitors have been here before…
