by Dane Bagley
***
“Are you sure, Danny?” Kenny and James looked perplexed.
“She knows a lot about our world; not anything current, but she knows our biblical history—at least some of it. She wanted to know if we are from the same world as Jesus.”
“It doesn’t seem possible; but, perhaps we aren’t the first ones to travel to her world. Maybe this type of travel was discovered eons ago, and they brought bibles with them. Maybe some of those zealots were also high-tech.” James was reaching for some type of meaning.
“I don’t know. Couldn’t she have read some of our bible on her tablet? She’s been studying so hard to read and speak English. She is very intelligent, and understands so much, so quickly. Maybe she’s looking for a way to get through to us, so that we will let her go back home.”
“I showed her my bible today. She was very interested, but she didn’t seem to be familiar with it, per se. She seemed to have an understanding that was different than our understanding. She says that Jesus visited her world after He was resurrected, and that He told her world about us. She says that they have scriptures that tell about all of this. It seemed very sincere; I felt something when she spoke. I believe her.”
“I’m afraid of what this report will bring. A primitive species with minimal technology, that is clueless about us is one thing; but if they know about us, from whatever the source, that would be very disturbing indeed. You said that Steve was there when she talked about it?” Kenny was reflecting very seriously.
“Yes, we were together. He seemed upset, when I brought her back from reading my bible. I didn’t talk with him about it afterwards.”
“I don’t pretend to understand the religious implications of all of this. But, it is so strange that this creature is just like us, and yet, genetically, completely dissimilar. Did you ever read Plato? Do you remember the doctrine of the forms? Plato said that everything that we know, everything that we experience, is an imperfect attempt at a perfect form, from some celestial sphere. The perfect form exists out there somewhere, and then we experience imperfect versions of it. So, I may never be able to draw a perfect circle, but I try; and even though I know that it’s not perfect, because I have an understanding of what the form of a perfect circle is, I can recognize an imperfect circle, as a circle.”
“Kind of like a symbol stands for something else more grand,” commented Kenny.
“Yeah, but it is different than that. It’s more than a symbol. When I see a chair, I know that it is a chair. But chairs may look very different from each other. Still, when we see chairs, we know what they are. Plato says that this is because there exists, out there, the form of a chair, and when we see any particular chair, we recognize it because we have in our mind the concept, or form, of a perfect chair. Any chair out there is just an imperfect example of the perfect chair form.
“So this brings me to Aspiria; she is in the form of a human. I have never seen any human on earth that looks just like her, but she still looks just as human as you or I. She is in the same form as us—as humans. I know that you were both on board the ship, but when we walked on her world, we saw trees. They may not be genetically just like trees on earth, but they were made from the same form as our trees. When I saw her house, I knew that it was a house. Not just because she came out of it, but because it looked like a house; it was in the form of a house. I know what a house is, and that is what it was. I’m not saying that Plato had it all figured out, but he described a world of forms that was beyond the earth, and that we, on earth, participate in this world of forms with our imperfect renditions.
“Now we have found another world, and it seems to participate in the exact same forms that we do. Everything is just like what we know and understand. We are alien to Aspiria, but she is not having much trouble understanding us and our ship. It’s like she understands, because she understands the same forms that we do. We are connected—somehow we are connected. Danny, you and Aspiria see some sort of spiritual connection, and I don’t know about that, but I see that our worlds are connected.” James was on a roll.
“So if our form is the same, what is the difference in content or substance?”
“We are alien from each other; she is from this world and we are not. She is connected, I’d venture to say, genetically to all things living on her planet; but we are not—we are genetically connected to everything living on the earth. I am genetically much more like a blade of grass, on the earth, than I am to Aspiria; yet, I am not in the form of a blade of grass, but I am in the form—the same form—as Aspiria.”
“So the content is our genetic code,” concluded Kenny.
“That’s true; and also the matter, the atoms themselves; the atoms that she is made up of come from her planet. The atoms that I am made of came from the earth. The content is different; she contains her world’s atoms and genetic language, but she is in the same form as we are.”
“I see, but now we are sharing the same air and the same food. Her world’s content, and ours, is being shared. I may have some atoms inside of me, oxygen atoms that were from her world. Now they are a part of me. She has a whole lot more than that in her. She is eating food from the earth. She has lots of earth content in her now. So we aren’t completely separate anymore.”
“No, we are not. We are no longer one hundred percent separate. Genetically we are still separated, and I don’t see how that will ever change, but our atoms, our languages, and our ideas are now connecting.”
Danny was listening intensely. “Maybe this, ‘world of the forms,’ is with God. If we are all created from the same God, then it would all make sense.”
“Maybe so, Danny,” said Kenny.
