floating in a tin can far above the world, with only a fishbowl between your
head and the Earth rushing silently by at twenty-five thousand miles per
hour. In this way, he spoke for Earth and helped us to realize the signifi-
cance of our cosmic moment.
In 1974, describing the identity shift that comes with seeing Earth
from space, Rusty said:
When you go around it in an hour and a half, you begin to recog-
nize that your identity is with that whole thing. And that makes a
change. You look down there and you can’t imagine how many bor-
ders and boundaries you crossed again and again and again. . . .
You know there are hundreds of people killing each other over
some imaginary line that you can’t see. From where you see it, the
thing is a whole, and it’s so beautiful. And you wish you could take
one from each side in hand and say, “Look at it from this perspec-
tive. Look at that. What’s important?”
Of the Earth viewed from the Moon, he said:
It becomes so small and fragile, and such a precious little spot in
that universe, that you can block it out with your thumb, and you
realize that on that small spot, that little blue-and-white thing, is
everything that means anything to you. All of history and music
and poetry and art and war and death and birth and love, tears,
joy, games, all of it is on that little spot out there that you can
cover with your thumb.
You ask yourself, he said:
Have you earned this in some way? . . . You know the answer to
that is no. . . . You know very well, at that moment, and it comes
through to you so powerfully, that you’re the sensing element for
man. . . . I’ve used the word you because it’s not me, it’s you, it’s
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us, it’s we, it’s life. We’ve had that experience. And it’s not just my
problem to integrate, not my challenge to integrate, my joy to inte-
grate—it’s yours, it’s everybody’s.
He’s right—we need to integrate this experience. I don’t know of
anyone who has gone into space and come down more filled with
hatred and misunderstanding of others, or gazed from a spacecraft win-
dow and thought, “Hey, let’s pave those rain forests and put up a park-
ing lot.” The view from space seems universally to invoke a feeling of
oneness with humanity and life, and reverence for our planetary home.
Technology has provided us with the perspective that triggers this
unforeseen spiritual reflex. By entering space, we begin the transition
into Homo cosmicus.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, humanity seems to be in somewhat of a
pickle, at least partially of science’s making. The age of nuclear
weapons, environmental poisoning, and modern ethnic and religious
warfare has sapped our hope and confidence, made us fearful and
uncertain of the future, even afraid of the air we breathe and the water
we drink.
Science has been regarded as our saving grace, the skill that will open
up a glorious, safe, long, equitable future for humanity. It has also been
cast as our doom. Which will it be? That may be determined by our
success at the reunification of science and spirituality.
In some scientific circles religion has a pretty bad name. We get hung
up on the specifics, on the stories that, taken literally, are incompatible
with the beautiful truths science has allowed us to uncover. The differ-
ences in the story from religion to religion make them all seem arbi-
trary, just as the sniping between different groups of avid UFO believers
casts doubt on all of their theories. Many of us also associate religion
with murderous crusades, persecution of insightful thinkers, and—
especially these days—suicide bombings.
Often, scientists are suspicious of spirituality in general. Ironically,
this attitude helps fuel those belief systems that bother us the most. We
often complain about New Age irrationality, but through an overreac-
tion against religion, we have contributed to a gaping spiritual void in
our culture. The result is a hunger for beliefs, any beliefs, and this need
has helped create the New Age. Yet science, too, can fulfill spiritual
needs. We blame spreading irrationality on scientific illiteracy. Yet, in
my opinion, it is alienation from science, not science illiteracy, that is
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the root problem (one breeds the other). If we want the world to see us
as wizards, not muggles, then we can’t sell our services to the highest
bidder, and we need to spread the magical (and spiritually evocative)
story of Cosmic Evolution.
What is spirituality, anyway? How should I know? Do I look like the
Dalai Lama? But what I mean by spirituality is the religious impulse
stripped of religion. Spirituality is what’s left when you peel away all of
the inconsistencies in the lessons and stories.
Teilhard de Chardin believed in love as a cosmic principle. Even
though he represented this as a Christian concept, and monotheism has
never been my cup of tea, I find his writings meaningful, intelligent,
and inspiring. I believe the phenomenon of humanity on Earth is a local
example of a trend toward higher consciousness and spiritual enlight-
enment that transpires all over this universe.
Emerging complexity is the pattern linking together all of Cosmic
Evolution. Complexity is a clinical-sounding term, but the principle
allows us to see where the structure, the beauty, and perhaps even the
self-awareness of the universe comes from. I see spirituality as an intu-
itive awareness of the internal and external forces impelling us to real-
ize our place within this complexifying, unfolding, self-seeking, beauty-
reeking cosmos of ours. Emergent complexity is all about the power to
manifest surprising changes at higher levels through forming new con-
nections. Spirituality is embodied in the connections we make with one
another and the potential for wider group identification, for human
love and unity.
Natural selection can act on a much larger scale than we’re used to
thinking about. Imagine one hundred thousand worlds, all with some
form of “intelligent life” at roughly our current level. Certain qualities
will aid survival, and these will be selected for. Eventually some worlds
will live to reproductive age and spread life to other worlds, as Gaia may
soon start to do.* Technical advancement without spiritual progress cre-
ates a dangerous and unstable condition that will be selected against.
Natural selection on a galactic level will favor those living worlds where
technical and spiritual advancement proceed together. Cosmic spiritual
advancement by Darwinian natural selection!
For me the “living worlds” idea I described in chapter 17 expresses a
viewpoint that is at once spiritual and scientific. I can get away with
*As discussed in Dorion Sagan’s 1990 book Biospheres.
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that, since it is not supposed to be science, but natural philosophy. Like
tific, mechanistic way of thinking about planets (in terms of self-
regulating global patterns of cycling fluids, evolving organisms, and
exchanges of energy and matter) with a spiritual intuition of our
world’s basic wholeness and aliveness. An awareness of Earth’s essen-
tial aliveness seems to have appeared independently in so many cultures
that I have to wonder if it was not part of the spiritual system of the
first humans. Science, in moving forward, has caught up with some
ancient wisdom: an appreciation that we are cells in something larger.
I don’t know if that is what anyone else means by spirituality. I’m
just a planetary scientist, what do I know about it? But this view—spir-
ituality as an intuitive internalization of the universe’s urge toward
emergence—makes me see humanity’s current predicament—a world
rich with technical know-how but rife with inequity, scarcity, and vio-
lent conflicts—as fundamentally a spiritual crisis. Paradoxically, and
sadly, contemporary versions of ancient religions seem to have mostly
inflamed it. Some of my best friends and relatives are monotheists, but
given current world events, it appears that monotheism is failing us
when it comes to the all-important goal of world peace and unity.
Where else can we look for new solutions? One answer is to search
the skies. If we’re lucky, we may actually learn of another technological
species. This could happen in a few years with the Allen Telescope
Array coming on-line. I don’t know how that would change us, but I
definitely think it would. The discovery of other intelligent life visiting
or residing within our own solar system would, of course, carry the
most potential for changing our existence, but even radio contact might
precipitate a sea change in human actions and values. I don’t really buy
anyone’s predictions of what this would be like, but it seems obvious
that we do need some kind of transformation, and I’d love to see the
experiment play out. Maybe I’ve read too much SF, but it could be
pretty damn freaky. Still, you don’t want to miss it, do you? If it’s going
to happen someday, I’d like it to be on my watch. Might I suggest this
coming Thursday?
SETI is a long-term, multigenerational, transnational quest. Thus
even in the absence of a signal it serves as an example of the kind of
effort we need to make in order to survive to take a place on the galac-
tic stage.
In SETI literature a “more advanced” civilization implies one with
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more powerful technology. Sometimes it seems that the ultimate goal of
SETI is to commune with other galactic nerds and compare notes about
our machines. Ironically, this obsession with hardware may limit our
longevity as a species, decreasing the chance that we will ever make
contact. But SETI is also a spiritual quest that, by keeping us aware of
the possibility of other sentient species, promotes a perspective on our
role within the cosmos that can only help us.
We are at a curious and frustrating stage of our evolution. We can
conceive of a truly intelligent, sustainable, communicating society. But
we don’t know if we can become one. So we search the skies for confir-
mation of a hopeful image of ourselves. Any aliens sending us signals
have most likely been technological for thousands, if not millions, of
years. They survived the moment we seem stuck in, and they may be
immortal. If we only knew that somebody else had survived this stage,
even if we didn’t know anything else about them, it would serve as a
“proof of concept,” giving us reason to hope that we might become
that which we seek.
If we hear from them, it confirms the possibility of the “good
future.” Could it be ours? I mean a future in which we are not just lis-
tening for signals, but proudly sending them, comfortable with technol-
ogy, at peace with ourselves, secure against the capriciousness of a
well-known cosmos, rich enough to send commercial-free broadcasts
around the galaxy, confident enough to reveal our location to other
species of unknown motivations and capacities.
Unfortunately, we can’t count on any help from above and beyond.
We shouldn’t wait around for a teacher from the stars. For all we know
they may be waiting to see if we can do a bit better on our own. We
have no choice but to do our best to become the wise ones ourselves.
It’s either that or become another cosmic statistic. While we search for
our brothers from another planet, why don’t we just assume they are
out there and act accordingly?
Will our core spiritual values of love and compassion be a part of
alien religions? Will they even make the same distinction between reli-
gion and science or will it all be mixed together? Remember, they are a
lot more advanced than we and they’ve had a long time to think about
all this. If an integration of scientific and spiritual capacities is the key
to long-term survival, then advanced ETs will long ago have accom-
plished this. Maybe, among humans, they’ll relate best to Buddhist
monks or Native American elders and regard SETI scientists as merely
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the switchboard operators who allowed them to make contact with the
knowledgeable Earthlings.
As I’ve discussed, many arguments over the galactic prevalence of
intelligent species, and the likely success of SETI, hinge on whether
intelligence is an evolutionary development that, in most cases, actually
aids or hinders survival. We don’t really know whether our big heads
will increase or decrease the longevity of our species, but one thing is
clear: intelligence is obviously something you have to learn to use well.
Our intelligence is a gift, but it’s complicated and it came without an
owner’s manual. It would be nice if we could just call tech support and
ask exactly how we are supposed to work this global civilization thing,
but we don’t know the number. So, if there is anybody out there with
experience in how to get a planet to chill out and solve problems, with-
out everybody wanting to kill everybody else, we could use a little help
right about now. We’ve been trying it by trial and error without great
success. How about some tips?
If I met an ET, that would be my first question (after the usual pleas-
antries). Not “How do you build your wonderful machines?” but
“How did you learn to live with yourselves? How do you survive the
transition to being a global, technical species? Do you have a spare
manual?” Thinking about aliens in this way can help us to confront
ourselves. How would we measure up? Do we have what it takes?
My belief in aliens is inseparable from a certain unavoidable, foolish,
naturalistic optimism about our own ultimate prospects. Everything
that I’ve learned about the nature of our universe and our biosphere
tells me that life will find a way to thrive. Gaia, as Lynn
Margulis has
said, “is a tough bitch.” If her noosphere chops off its head, she’ll keep
grooving along. In time, she may grow another noosphere, giving a dif-
ferent proto-intelligent species a chance at reaching the big time. I see
our proud little spurt of technical invention as a little eddy in a whirling
universe that is evolving, self-organizing, and moving inexorably
toward more life and more intelligence. Our little whorl could wink out
in an instant, or it could grow into a deeper, more stable mind-storm.
Is psychogenesis limited to Earth? I doubt it. Will there be a psy-
chozoic age of the universe? Has it already begun? If we believe even in
the possibility of the transformation to wisdom and immortality, then
we must live in a universe increasingly permeated with intelligence, and
suffused with love. I proved it mathematically in the last chapter, and
equations don’t lie. ⁄
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What do I really believe? I think our galaxy is full of species who
have crawled up from the slime of their home worlds, evolved self-
awareness and started to tinker, passed beyond the threat of technolog-
ical self-extermination, and transcended their animal origins to move
out into the cosmos. The vasty deep is thick with spirits. The wise ones
are out there waiting for us to join them.
Notes on Sources and
Suggestions for
Further Reading*
S E C T I O N I : H I S T O R Y
In these pages I have only scratched the surface of the rich and varied history of ideas regarding extraterrestrial life. My historical account is highly selective, with examples chosen for the way in which they presage or illuminate modern
thoughts and trends. For the reader wanting more, there are two comprehen-
sive and complementary books: Michael J. Crowe’s The Extraterrestrial Life
Debate, 1750–1900 (New York: Dover, 1999) gives a detailed account up to
the dawn of the twentieth century. Steven J. Dick’s The Biological Universe
(Cambridge University Press, 1996) presents a thorough and thoughtful history
of ideas about ET throughout the twentieth century.
Another good general history is Planets and Planetarians: A History of
Theories of the Origin of Planetary Systems by Stanley L. Jaki (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1978).
As for original sources from the seventeenth century, my favorite—as you
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