Genesis: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: 27  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

For thousands of years, man has gazed into the night sky and wondered what those lights were. Ancient civilizations saw gods and monsters in those patterns of light.

The Chaldeans, who lived in what is now Iraq, developed one of the original forms of astrology as early as 3000 BCE, and the Chinese were practicing astrology by 2000 BCE. Other varieties formed in ancient India and among the Maya of Central America. They saw that certain astronomical bodies, particularly the sun, affected the change of seasons and the success of crops. Based on these observations, they developed a broader system by which the movements of other bodies such as the planets affected or represented additional aspects of life.

By the 500s BCE, astrology had spread to Greece, where such philosophers as Pythagoras and Plato incorporated it into their study of religion and astronomy. Astrology was widely practiced in Europe through the Middle Ages; many scholars viewing astrology and astronomy as complementary sciences until about the 1500s, when at that time, the discoveries made by such astronomers as Copernicus and Galileo undermined some of the foundations of astrology. Since then, few scientists have accepted astrology as a science; but then few scientists accept Spiritual Healing, alternative therapies, and Spiritualism!

There is an Inuit saying that says, “Those lights are windows into the Spirit world through which our ancestors watch our lives here on earth.”

Today we know that those lights are suns, just like our own – some are bigger, some are brighter – but they are suns; but how many are there? Except for the comparatively few stars visible to the naked eye, stars are named by numbers according to the various star atlases and catalogs issued by astronomical observatories. The first such star catalog was compiled by the Alexandrian astronomer Ptolemy in the 2nd century CE. Called the Almagest, it listed the names and locations of over 1,000 stars. The first modern star catalog, issued in 1862 by the observatory of Bonn, Germany, contains the locations of more than 300,000 stars. In 1887 an international committee began work on an elaborate star catalog. The charts were compiled from photographs taken by about 20 collaborating observatories and comprised some 21,600 individual plates. From these photographs an exhaustive catalog listed between 8 million and 10 million stars. More recently NASA scientists pointed the Hubble Telescope on a section of space that was thought to be empty. When the photographs were examined they showed that the supposedly ‘blank’ part of space was actually filled with hundreds of galaxies – not individual stars, but whole galaxies. Before this discovery, astronomers estimated that there were about 50 billion galaxies in the universe. The Hubble photograph increases that number even more.

If we take that conservative figure of 50 billion (that’s the US billion, or 1,000 million) and multiply that by the estimated number stars in the average galaxy – say 500 million – we get the unimaginable number of 25 with 18 zeros after it, or twenty five billion billion stars!

Now, taking a deep breath; if we suppose that only one star in one million has planets, and only one planet in one million of those has the conditions to support life, then that would mean that there are still 25 million planets, at the very minimum, that are capable of supporting life; and we have already discovered several planetary systems within the neighbourhood of our own galaxy.

What would be our reaction if the latest Mars probes find evidence of life? It would mean, in the first instance, that we could no longer assume that life in the universe is unique to our planet, and therefore, human beings with their consciousness, intelligence, and moral sensibility are not the culmination of creation, and therefore we would have to question our long-held belief in a special relationship with our creator.

If such evidence is found, it will mean the an impact on religious belief comparable to the sixteenth century revolution that was brought about by the discoveries of Copernicus which showed that Earth was not the centre of the universe it was assumed to be.

In some ways, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism would be more profoundly affected than Buddhism and Hinduism, because Buddhism and Hinduism rely largely on individual enlightenment rather than salvation by God. The rationale being that if life can be shown to exist (or had existed in the past) on Mars, than it is reasonable to assume that life in some form or other is fairly common throughout the universe. That, in turn, would beg the question – is life the creative act of the Great Spirit, as related in all the religions of man, or is life the result of random, favourable conditions?

To digress and play, ‘what if?’ What if the story of the Garden of Eden is a dim race memory of a dying planet, and its inhabitants having to find somewhere else to go? What if, if we wanted to see Martians, all we had to do was to look into a mirror?

Many theologians have taken the view that if intelligent life were discovered “out there” it would merely deepen our understanding of the wonder and mystery of God. In “Many Worlds, One God” Catholic priest, Kenneth Delano, said that no one should be afraid to examine this question, because it would simply demonstrate the “limitless love and care that God has for all his intelligent creatures.”

And, as C.S. Lewis noted, religion survived Copernicus, as well as Darwin and Freud.

But what would be the reaction of the ordinary human population, were visitors from another planet to make themselves known? Remember the ‘Cargo Cult’ of the 1940’s and 50’s in Papua and some Pacific Islands.

You can guess what would happen by looking at the racial problems we have already. There would be the usual growling conversations in hotels and the like, such as, “I don’t want the little purple so-and-so’s living next door to me!” or “I’ve got nothing against them, some of them are my best friends, but…” and “Well, I’m sure they are very nice people, but would you want your child to mind-meld and co-create with one?”

It would not be long before the civil unrest started, either. If you thought that the reaction to the ‘boat people’ is bad, can you imagine the reaction that orange and green star-ship refugees from the planet “%@&^%#*” would cause!

As Spiritualists, some of us already know that there are, indeed, other intelligences “out there” and Mediumship or Trance Mediumship may well be the only way that our race will ever have to contact these other intelligences. Does that make us any the less loved by the Great Spirit? Of course not. Rabbi Norman Lamm, of New York’s Yeshiva University said that a God who could look after a billion of us could easily look after 10 billion times that number, without necessarily affecting our unique “spiritual dignity”.

As we welcome and embrace the different races on our own Earth, we should welcome the other races scattered throughout the universe: have they not been created in the “image of God”, no matter what their physical form. They too, have souls as immortal as ours; they too, return to the Spirit World when their corporeal bodies cease to function; and they, too, know of the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of His Creatures, and the continual existence of the soul.