Could Earth be a Prison?
From the Ancient Hindus and Buddhists to Christian Gnostics, to Arthur Schopenhauer, Philip K Dick, and Roswell, strap in folks
What we’ll be discussing in this article:
You’re not from around here, are you?
The Gnostics
Arthur Schopenhauer
Philip K Dick
Roswell
Humans are not from Earth, what?
In 2019, Dr. Ellis Silver released a book called “Humans Are Not From Earth”. Seems interesting eh? Well, the fact is that Dr. Silver was a chiropractor and acupuncturist, and while acupuncture is accepted finally now as a proper medical treatment, chiropractic is nonsense and Dr. Silver wasn’t a medical doctor.
His doctorate was worth as much as mine. I’m a Doctor of Divinity from the Universal Life Church, I think I paid 20 bucks for it.
20 bucks is totally worth it as I can conduct marriages, funerals, etc. in pretty much any state in America, although, I don’t, of course, live in America. But one day maybe I’ll get there and do a few weddings, that would be fun. I’m also a Dudiest priest because The Big Lebowski is one of the greatest films ever
Anyway, in the book, Dr. Silver claims that humans didn’t originate on planet Earth.
Our limbs are awkward and don’t suit our surroundings, our immune system is terrible and we seem to be shrinking in height indicating we may come from a place with ‘lighter’ gravity.
Now, this is pseudoscience gobbledygook. The fact that our DNA is so similar to all life forms on earth pretty much proves we’re all from here but it’s an interesting idea to play around with. He also posits the idea of the ‘prison planet’.
Jail time
This is a theory that humans have been put here to be observed and studied, like in a zoo, we have little hope of escaping, and even in death we’re just reincarnated here again, and again, and again.
Dr. Silver isn’t, of course, the first to come up with the idea.
It’s interesting that so many cultures and societies from all across the globe seem to share myths of beings coming from the stars and either helping or hindering, humans when they visit.
The Gnostics
Just after the death of Jesus, some of the first Christians were called Gnostics. They got the name from the word ‘gnosis’ which means ‘knowledge’ or ‘wisdom’.
There were a fair amount of Gnostic sects with varying weird ideas. Some believed in being chaste and not reproducing because having sex captured God’s light and brought it down to the dark world.
Others worshiped snakes because the snake in the Garden of Eden was from Sophia sent to give knowledge to Adam. More on her below.
One belief they did have in common was that our world was created by the Demiurge, a creator god, “ignorant, malicious, and utterly inferior to the true God who sent Christ to Earth to save humankind from the demiurge’s evil world.”
Sophia
The story goes that God, the ‘true’ God, created Sophia and she was pure knowledge and the syzygy of Jesus. But she got a bit lonely and thinking she was as smart as God, she tried to invent a likeness. But she got it wrong and she made the Demiurge, a lesser god who was the “product of the rebellious and profane desire that had arisen within her.”
And so, poor old Sophia was horrified and kicked him/it out of Heaven. Our Demiurge also got lonely and created the Archons, or rulers, who helped him to create the material world we find ourselves in. One that is not the world of love, peace, and compassion of the ‘real’ God but a world full of desire, suffering, pain, etc. Or, what the Buddhists would call ‘dukkha’ or the Hindus ‘maya’.
The Gnostic belief was that we were imprisoned on this planet and the only way we could stop being reincarnated into this mess of pain and general nastiness until the end of time was through ‘gnosis’ or attaining true knowledge of the true God.
I’m sure that will sound familiar to anyone who knows anything about Buddhism and Hinduism where both traditions are all about attaining enlightenment/nirvana/moksha to break the cycle of rebirth.
Arthur Schopenhauer
If we fast forward things to more modern times, Arthur Schopenhauer, the 18th-century German philosopher, wrote quite a bit about what the driving force of humanity was. We aren’t chasing happiness, we’re chasing alleviation from the constant suffering we experience daily.
Schopenhauer compared our lives to being like living in a penal colony, none of us chose to come here, we’re not allowed to leave (except by committing suicide that is), we’re limited by the constant confines of time, like the walls of a car crusher closing in on us and every day we survive means we’re just one day closer to death when we awake the following morning. He was a cherry chap was old Arthur.
Schopenhauer was an ‘emo’
Anyway, life, according to Schopenhauer, was a constant stream of tragedy, misery, and worry and our need to find pleasure was just a way to temporarily escape the constant pain of existence.
Schopenhauer’s idea of who created this life was more in line with the Gnostics’ Demiurge than that of modern-day Christians who paint a picture of a benevolent and all-loving hippy dude who loves us and never, ever watches us where we’re doing, ahem, alone things.
Schopenhauer wrote that pain was humanity’s best teacher and that it was ever-present and all-encompassing but the way to deal with it was through compassion.
Like the Hindus and Buddhists, when someone is rude to you, do not take it personally because when they live a life surrounded by constant misery how can they not be rude occasionally? It’s like we’re all in a sinking ship, so what’s the point in complaining when we know we’re doomed?
Philip K Dick
We also have the case of science fiction writer, and mystic, Philip K Dick, wrote extensively on the ‘prison planet’ idea.
Dick believed that the world could be seen as a prison because of the hidden orders that govern it. Not exactly in an Illuminati-style thing but more like a ‘class war’ idea of the hierarchy never changing and the poor remain poor and powerless while those in charge will do anything to remain in charge. This can be illustrated with his phrase ‘the empire never ended’.
Old Phil thought that humans were trapped in a world of illusions and lies and these lies and illusions were maintained by those in power (human or otherwise) to control and manipulate humankind.
Our reality
I mean, from a personal point of view, I’d have to agree with both the Buddhist and Hindu ideas of ‘dukkha’ and ‘maya’. We know for a fact that we can’t even see the true reality around us. Human sight only sees 0.0035% of the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
Even wee mice have evolved to see more than us as some of them can perceive ultraviolet light. So can deers and bees and then you have certain birds of prey that can see more again and then there’s the mantis shrimp who…I’ll put it this way, when we see a shade of red, they can see an additional 32, or maybe it’s 64, I forget, shades within that one shade.
We have no idea, really
So, we kind of have to come to accept that we have no idea about what’s going on in the world around us. We’re pretty much blind and all kinds of weird and wonderful things could be happening right in front of our faces and we can’t even see, feel, hear, or feel them.
Before I ask you to take a leap of belief with me, let’s sum up.
The Buddhists, Hindus, and Gnostics all believe that we’re deluded by the world around us and that what we see isn’t true reality.
We are trapped by our vices, and our senses and the only way to get free is to achieve some type of greater knowledge. The Hindus and the Gnostics would say you need to experience a one-ness with God for this, the Buddhists would say to just achieve a one-ness with all. But they’d all agree that this place isn’t what it seems.
Roswell
I’m not saying I believe the following but I feel it’s something worth writing about.
In July 1947, something crashed at Roswell, New Mexico. Ufologists claim that three alien bodies were among the wreckage, one of which was found alive.
Matilda O’Donnell McElroy was a Senior Master Sergeant in the Women’s Air Force working at Roswell at the time. Formally a nurse, she was asked to try to communicate with the living being. Years after the experience she sent all her writings to an editor to be published and the book “Alien Interview” wasn’t released until 2008.
The being would only communicate with O’Donnell McElroy telepathically, according to her. It was called Aril and was female, although her alien body was an avatar for her actual body on her home planet. During different interviews, Aril told O’Donnell McElroy that Earth was a prison colony established by an older civilization. She is reported to have said:
“You asked me earlier why The Domain (her civilization), and other space civilizations do not land on Earth or make their presence known. Land on Earth? Do you think we are crazy or want to be crazy? It takes a very brave being to come down through the atmosphere and land on Earth, because this is a prison planet, with a very uncontrolled, psychotic population.
“If The Domain sent ships to every corner of the universe in search of “Hell”, their quest could end on Earth. What greater brutality can be inflicted on anyone than to erase the spiritual awareness, identity, ability, and memory that is the essence of oneself?”
Also:
“So, when the body of the human dies they depart from the body. They are detected by the “force screen”, they are captured and “ordered” by hypnotic command to “return to the light”. The idea of “heaven” and the “afterlife” are part of the hypnotic suggestion, a part of the treachery that makes the whole mechanism work.”
I don’t know if the Roswell stuff is true but I certainly find it interesting that all these things line up.
However, I’m still hopeful that if all the above is true then the Gnostics, Buddhists, and Hindus came up with a way out of here.
Maybe they have, maybe they haven’t but I guess if you’re going to live you may as well do it with compassion rather than being a degenerate nihilist, so, I’m just going to be over here meditating like a mad eejit in an attempt to, I don’t know, not come back as a tapeworm or at least to try and make things a little easier for whoever comes next.
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So what I’m getting from this: 1. Even gods get lonely 2. If you’re lonely, you should make yourself some imaginary friends who may or may not F things up for centuries afterward :D
Honestly though, your remark about the mantis shrimp reminds me of a conversation I had with my mom when i was about 8. Keep in mind that I was a weird kid who could read at an adult level and had been reading my mom‘s extensive Science Fiction book collection since I was about five years old. ( ended up reading my first Robert Anton Wilson at 10, which explains a thing or two, lol) anyway, I think we were talking about the five senses, and how they all corresponded to a sense organ, but that some people believe in “extra” senses, etc. At that point i wondered aloud “Well what if there’s all kinds of other stuff going on around us that we can’t sense because we don’t have the right organs? It’s still happening, right?” and she gave me a weird look and said “hey, maybe”. LOL. Not the last time I was a weird kid (I’m still a weird kid) :D I mean…it makes as much sense as anything.