there is life. There is no exception. Life may be a cosmic imperative.” And it may well go far beyond this, for there’s a growing suspicion among many researchers that the universe itself is alive! As the radio astronomer Gerrit Verschuur expressed it, “We must think seriously about relocating the dividing line between living and non-living organisms. I no longer believe that it is at the edge of the body’s epidermis or at the edge of the atmosphere. It is at the edge of the Universe.”
In his superb fictional novel The Black Cloud, the late British cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle wrote one of the most brilliant and amazing accounts of such a possibility. As one of the very few works of science fiction that ever ended up actually being reviewed in the various astronomical periodicals, it’s so technically sound and convincingly written that many astronomers (including the author) believe Hoyle was attempting to share something he knew to be so sensational yet true through the safe medium of fiction. Many other famous names have also been thought to have done the same, including the late astronomer Dr. Carl Sagan in his novel and movie Contact, and Sir Arthur Clarke himself (particularly in his short story The Sentinel mentioned above).
But it’s not just scientists that suspect this. Visionaries and poets have also frequently hinted at such a profound possibility. Among them, Harry Elmore Hurd opened his haunting poem The Irreducible Minimum with the lines “Wonder of wonder, here am I, sentient to Earth and sea and star;” and concluded it by saying that we “… guess, although we cannot know, that Earth and stars and men are all one.” That was back in 1944. At the rapidly accelerating pace of modern astronomical, astro-physical, and astrobiological research, we may well know if this exciting concept is indeed true within our lifetimes. If proven to be so, the implications and ramifications for humanity will be utterly mind-blowing!
Cayce and Extraterrestrials
Given all of the above, what did Edgar Cayce himself have to say about life on other planets? While today’s popular terms “extraterrestrials,” “extraterrestrial life,” and “aliens” (this last in the context of other life forms) do not appear in any of the Cayce material, he did comment on this subject in several readings found under the search headings of “life in space,” “life on other worlds,” and “other worlds.” His negative response in two of these is often quoted when this topic comes up among ET skeptics. But as we’ll see, these must be taken in context. And in the others he does indeed indicate that there are other beings in the universe! (In fact, one reading contains a reference to other civilizations that’s nothing short of amazing for all of us who believe in or recognize Christ.) Here are the corresponding readings:
(Q) Are any of the planets, other than the earth, inhabited by human beings or animal life of any kind?
(A) No.
3744-4
(Q) Upon what planets other than the earth does human life exist?
(A) None as human life in the earth. This has just been given.
826-8
For, much might be given respecting those environs and as to how or why there have been and are accredited to the various planets certain characterizations that make for the attractions of souls’ sojourns in that environ. But these are places of abode. As in the earth we find the elements are peopled, as the earth has its own moon or satellites enjoined in its environ, so is it with the other planets. The earth with its three-fourths water, with its elements, is peopled; yes. So are the various activities in other solar systems.
541-1
The entity was among the priestesses of the Mayan experience. It was just before that period when those as from the east had come, and there were the beginnings of the unfoldments of the understanding that there were other portions of the same land, or those that were visiting from other worlds or planets. [GD’s note: Psychic experiences of prehistory? Space Ships, flying saucers?]
1616-1
(Bracketed remarks are often by the stenographer of the reading; in this case, Gladys Davis.)
Man may become, with the people of the universe, ruler of any of the various spheres through which the soul passes in its experiences.
281-16
It’s important to recognize in the first two readings that it is the planets of our own solar system that were being discussed. While those about other stars were speculated about in Cayce’s time, it’s only in the past two decades that they have been proven to actually exist and have become accepted as commonplace by the general public. So in these readings concerning life on other planets (as well as planetary sojourns), he was being asked about the familiar nine primary worlds of our own solar system. (Officially it’s now only eight since the demotion of poor Pluto to the status of a “dwarf planet” by the International Astronomical Union in 2006!) And modern research from both ground-based and orbiting telescopes, and especially from flybys of these worlds by spacecraft, certainly supports the fact that there are no others like us on the various planets of our solar system. There may well be aquatic life forms on the satellites of several of them that have ice-covered liquid water oceans, like Europa, or microbial life under the surface of Mars, or organisms floating in the atmospheres of one of the four gas giants, like Jupiter. But the Earth is the only body that can support humanoid life as we know it.
However, in the third reading, Edgar Cayce did speak about other solar systems as actual abodes of life—about their planets being “peopled”—and in the fourth reading he even talked about visits by beings from other worlds! The fifth reading actually refers to “people of the universe,” clearly implying that life exists throughout the cosmos. In these readings he was surely correct, for there is now very solid evidence that at least one planet in each solar system will lie within the so-called “zone of habitability” of its sun, where liquid water can exist and life-giving “solar” energy is plentiful. Had he been asked about the existence of physical beings on the planets orbiting some of our bright stellar neighbors—about their presence in the case of such well-known stars as Vega or Arcturus or Capella or Betelgeuse—his response might well have been most enlightening. But sadly, no one at that time thought to ask such a question!
A Cosmic Christ
So the Cayce readings on this subject (relatively limited in number as they are) do not rule out the existence of life elsewhere in the universe, but rather they accommodate and support the growing awareness that we are certainly not alone in this vast cosmos. And there’s still at least one other fascinating reading by Edgar Cayce that not only allows for the possibility that other worlds are populated—but strongly implies that they indeed are inhabited! We find this amazing statement: “Not the Christ, but His messenger, with the Christ from the beginning, and is to other worlds what the Christ is to this earth.” (262-71) The implication is that the Christ Spirit has enlightened many other civilizations throughout the long history of the universe. As the poet Alice Meynell so beautifully expressed it in these lines taken from her 1913 poem Christ in the Universe:
Nor, in our little day,
May His devices with the heavens be guessed
His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way
Or his bestowals there, be manifest.
