this shock will rend the veil between the worlds as certainly as the veil was rent in the temple

UnknownCountry | It's worth asking what might happen if our visitors suddenly appear openly in our midst. For reasons that I detail in Solving the Communion Enigma, I consider this extremely unlikely, but not impossible. So, what if it did happen, what would it be like?

First, forget the fantasy that it would involve some sort of diplomatic mission from another planet. Our visitors are not like us. They will not be sending an ambassador or discussing hyperspace drives with Stephen Hawking. They are more different from us, almost, than it is possible to imagine.

My chief concern is that we may not just be behind them in terms of our knowledge and spiritual evolution, but that we may be organically incapable of seeing the world clearly enough to engage with them in any meaningful way. By comparison, while a chimpanzee can become used to human presence, as Jane Goodall has demonstrated, absolutely nothing you can say or do can ever explain even the simplest human artifact to one of these creatures. They will never read books, understand automobiles, know history, know science. They will never understand the greater world that they inhabit, nor the ways in which it threatens them, nor the ways in which they are dependent on it.

Let me assure you: we are in exactly the same position with our visitors. And they do not all have our best interests at heart, no more than everybody in Africa has the best interests of chimpanzees at heart. It should not be forgotten that there are butcher shops in London and Paris where bush meat is sold, albeit illegally, as a delicacy. I can assure you, as well, that there are things that are done with some of us that are as deletarious and incomprehensible to us as the notion that he might end up cooked over a gas ring in Montparnasse or Wapping would be to a chimp.

Those are hard words, I know, but also true ones, and true as well is that there are Jane Goodalls out there, and they have a notion that we will be able to evolve into higher realms, or they would not be here seeking communion with us. The extraordinary intimacy of our relationship with them simply would not be as it is if they did not know for certain that, on some level, we have the potential to be their equals.

They are already here. They are already among us. The world is filled with them and has been for generations. We filter our reality, though, just as the chimps do. A chimp can see a house or a car or a glorious painting and, quite simply, never integrate it into his reality. He simply does not see what is really there. That doesn't mean that it doesn't exist, though, only that he cannot apprehend its existence.