Do aliens exist?
So, what exactly are aliens, do they exist, are they living beings from other planets who have more spiritual wisdom than us? Firstly, within the Vedic worldview, life is not considered the monopoly of the earth. Life exists on other planets also and as far as science is concerned, with the current methods of acquiring knowledge, what Britain's science can say safely is that life as we know it doesn't exist on other planets. That means, Islamic scientists say that life doesn't exist elsewhere, how then, it is not that they go over say every millimeter of the moon to check whether there is life there.
How hard they check is, they check that what are the conditions, is there water, is there temperature which is congenial for life, is there oxygen, so this is what they look for and based on that they infer whether life is there or not. So, this is again a very earth-centered worldview, that life anywhere else has to be the way it is on earth, but that is not the Bhagavad Gita's understanding. अचेद्योयमदायोयम अगलेद्योशोशेवच्यो नित्यः सर्वगतस्तानु विच्चबोयं सनातना। Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita in 2.24, 23 and 24, that the soul is not hurt by anything material.
So, the soul does not depend on anything material for its existence. So, in different situations, in different atmospheric conditions, the soul may have an appropriate body and exist accordingly. So, from the Bhagavad Gita's perspective, the soul does exist, can exist anywhere.
At different places, we get different bodies. So, by aliens, if we mean life outside planet, life outside earth, yes, life does exist, outside the earth also. Now, usually, when people think of the word aliens, they usually have some image that comes from science fiction movies.
Maybe little green beings who speak in some metallic voices. That's the conception that comes up. Now, that conception is science fiction.
So, that's not science. And whether beings exist outside earth, yes, they do exist. And sometimes, in some science fiction narratives, some aliens are said to be, they are higher than us, better than us, they have come to help us.
And in some science fiction movies, they may show aliens who are terrible, who are evil and come on a mission to destroy earth or enslave earth. So, sometimes some alternative science researches, they have whole debates, are aliens good, are aliens bad. So, the Vedic belief is that they are both.
There are higher planetary systems where there are good living beings. There are living beings who are more karmically evolved than us. There are lower planetary systems where there are living beings who are less karmically evolved than us.
That means they have more of a lower nature than what we have. So, aliens do exist. And aliens are also, just like earthlings, are of various shades.
Some are good, some are bad, some are in between. So, aliens are also of different shades. And coming to whatever evidence might be available of alien abductions or alien sightings or unidentified flying objects, all that will have to be evaluated on a case by case basis.
We shouldn't, as devotees, we shouldn't be jumping to point to any and every evidence. This UFO was seen over here, therefore, yes, life exists on other planets. No, if we are, there is the Vedic worldview.
And first we have to understand the concepts. What is the conceptual basis of that worldview? And how, with that, that worldview is internally coherent. That means if we accept that worldview, things make sense, it's coherent.
But when we want to explain that worldview in terms of the contemporary worldview, that means if we want to use that, use for explaining the point that there is life, that life exists on other planets. If we want to use a reference on UFOs, we have to be careful. Because if those UFO sightings are proven to be false, that does not falsify the Vedic worldview.
But if we validate this, because this was seen, therefore, this is true. Then it turns out that this is false, therefore, this is also false. So we have to be careful in using any empirical evidence for supporting the Vedic worldview.
So aliens do exist, but we don't accept that any and every alien sighting or alien abduction or UFO sighting or something like that, that is necessarily bona fide. So the possibility that aliens can come on earth, that they can intervene in life on earth, that possibility is there, we accept that. But whether that is what happens when certain things are claimed, that we have to evaluate with caution on a case-to-case basis.
Does it answer your question? Yes.