A few years ago, I asked if religion could survive first contact. Answer: It probably already has done, if we include indigenous medicine practices reaching all the way back into prehistory. The recent discovery of alien looking beings depicted in ancient stone art in India has rekindled debate over just what indigenous peoples have been painting on stone walls. According to archaeologist JR Bhagat, these ancient paintings accord with local legends about something that sounds an awful lot alien contact and abduction.
There are several beliefs among locals in these villages. While few worship the paintings, others narrate stories they have heard from ancestors about "rohela people" — the small sized ones — who used to land from sky in a round shaped flying object and take away one or two persons of village who never returned.
Many not human-looking beings and things that look like flying saucers have been discovered in cave paintings and these have given rise to questions about alien contact. But are these beings from other planets or other dimensions or, perhaps, both? Graham Hancock addressed this most recent discovery on his Facebook page the other day:
Aliens from other planets coming here in high-tech space ships? Or visitors from other dimensions? http://bit.ly/1oWXhn4. A few years ago when I asked Amazonian shaman Pablo Amaringo what the flying saucers were that he saw in his Ayahuasca visions, and painted in his extraordinary art (http://bit.ly/1oKnVfW), he told me they were vehicles for entering and leaving the spirit world. When a shaman speaks of the spirit world he's not far from the quantum idea of a parallel universe. I think the UFO and "aliens" mystery documented in rock and cave art all over the world may be MUCH more mysterious and intriguing than many believe. In my opinion these phenomena are real, but precisely WHAT they are remains to be established.
In my estimation, many of these otherworldly beings may indeed be from other planets and other star systems, but when one is moving through fourth dimensional space (or fifth, or sixth, etc.), the distance between worlds might not be so great. Some of these strange looking beings may be Earth energies, which again, are not third dimensional beings. We see them when we pierce the veil in some way.
Hancock has also explored the idea that there is some correlation between ufology, faerie lore, and shamanic experience. He makes a very convincing argument, one that really connects a lot of dots for me.
Some of the most intriguingly alien looking beings can be found in the rock art of the Kimberley region of Australia, where the Aborigines have maintained an ancient tradition of reverence for the Wandjina. (alt. Wondgina, Wanjina) The Wandjina are part of their creation mythology.
The Aborigines see the Earth as the great serpent Ungut. The Milky Way is seen as another serpent called Wallanganda. Between them, these two Serpents gave birth to the Creation by dreaming all the creatures that live on the Earth, including the spirit ancestors of the Aborigine people, and also the Wandjina who bring both rain and fertility.
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The Wandjina's are divided into two groups, which are the originators of all human customs, and the inventor of all implements. The Wandjina can change from one form to another at will, now a Wandjina, now a human, and now an animal. The Wandjina live today at the bottom of the watering place associated with each particular painting. According to the Aborigines, when the Wandjina lay down, they entered the Earth, leaving their imprints on the stone, so they were believed to be the originators of the rock paintings.
The original images date back to at least 3800 B.P., but are refreshed by tribal elders, specifically "the oldest living member supposedly descended from its originator."
In a new episode of his show Revelations, William Henry speculates on some of the possible correlations between these recently discovered paintings in India and other mythical constructions, such as Hopi Kachinas and the Watchers.
It becomes harder and harder to ignore that there is, not only a long historical and prehistorical record of something that looks and sounds an awful lot like contact with non-human "visitors," but that there are strong correlations between these experiences. We can keep calling them myths and hallucinations, but at some point we might need to consider that this doesn't mean they aren't real.
As for how our religions would survive conclusive evidence of alien contact, Christian fundamentalist Ken Ham is so threatened by the possibility that he's calling for an end to the space program. Why would we spend "hundreds of millions of dollars" looking for beings who are just going to end up in hell anyway?
“You see, the Bible makes it clear that Adam’s sin affected the whole universe. This means that any aliens would also be affected by Adam’s sin, but because they are not Adam’s descendants, they can’t have salvation,” he explained. “Jesus did not become the ‘GodKlingon’ or the ‘GodMartian’! Only descendants of Adam can be saved. God’s Son remains the ‘Godman’ as our Savior.”
I take a very different view, obviously. I think many of our religions are actually based on exactly these kinds of contact experiences.
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