Introduction
I came across a remark that equated our physical bodies to spacesuits. My immediate reaction was “That’s silly, why not Earth suits?”
This random thought arose from a mess of influences in my mind in the past few months. The idea that ET might be interdimensional. The idea that our reality is the product of multiple minds in a massive co-creation. And the meaning of idea of being human.
There’s an old saying from my hippy days – We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience but spiritual beings having a physical experience.
So, does being human sit on the spirit side the physical side? Is it a fusion of both? Strictly speaking it seems that human is physical in its original meaning – from humus, apparently. This means we have an essentially materialistic conception of being human – even if it has a religious foundation as well. In Christian terms human creation is certainly physical – red clay. But Genesis has two creations. The first not being physical. Now I am not suggesting Genesis is history – just a story with complex themes.
The alternative story is that we are incarnating spirits – essentially inter-dimensional beings whose presence in this physical world is anchored via our donning of an Earth suit.
We become human when we are wearing our Earth suit.
Evolutionary biology and psychology tell us useful things about our primate Earth suits. Just in case you struggle with this notion I’d like to remind you that tech geeks dream of creating smart clothing – perpetuating our passion to animate our creations. The idea of a living organic ‘suit’ is not utterly ridiculous.
The thing about one’s Earth suit being homo sapiens is that it’s essential behaviour is reasonable consistent with our spiritual needs. The fit isn’t perfect – just a reasonable one. However, cognitive science suggests to some that our ‘stone-age’ primate minds are ill-suited to our ‘space-age’ circumstances. Looks like we might have to inject more ‘spirit’ into the flesh.
Another useful observation is that when we dress, we often signal identity. This is true especially when we put on uniforms. Advertisers know putting an actor in a lab coat will make them appear credible sources of ideas about a product. So, donning an Earth suit triggers an identification with others in their Earth suits.
My purpose here is to disrupt our habituated thinking, not to push an idea.
Why an Earth suit?
This question is often answered in myriad unsatisfactory ways that conform to dogmas rather than meet skeptical needs.
Stewart Edward White, in the Unobstructed Universe. notes that the material physical experience is obstructed. In the spirit of time flying when we are having fun, being in one’s Earth suit isn’t fun. Time plays out relatively slowly. Buddhism talks of escaping desire and the wheel of rebirth – the aspiration to not feel it is necessary to don an Earth suit. Identification isn’t essential, though it might be compulsive.
Robert Monroe observed myriad spirits clamouring to enter the physical realm in order to experience ‘sensation’ in that slowed down state. Christianity echoes Buddhism in the sense of attending to the aspiration to escape desire and ignoble conduct. It also has a lot of guilt associated with its teachings.
The consensus is that we are here in our Earth suits for ‘sensation’ but we become so immersed in that craving we lose track of our essential nature and purpose. We must redeem ourselves.
I think this is wrong headed. The Genesis story gives an explanation in a moral sense because doing so works psychologically – to a degree. Myth isn’t history. Stories serves purposes in context.
It’s all much more complex than that. The material physical reality is a medium of experience. It is one among many. Some argue we visit other non-material realms routinely. I can say only that I have had not many conscious experiences of such, and none have been evidentiary. Its hence only a plausible idea to me.
A useful parallel might be our relationship with water. Whether we dive, swim or sail there are ways of behaving that aren’t the same as being on dry land. There are skills and strengths that particular to the water medium and which are not directly translatable to dry land – but confer benefits which may be utilized on dry land.
The point is that functioning in a radically different medium can be beneficial. In White’s sense water is more obstructive than air yet you can do things in water you can’t do in air – like float.
It’s hard to answer a ‘why?’ question other than to observe that there seem to be multiple dimensions with their own characteristics. Material reality has attributes others don’t. So, if you want to be well rounded getting experience across the range of environments is advantageous.
If what we understand about the necessity of sleep in relation to our psychological wellbeing it could be that we need to engage with non-physical realities to stay psychologically healthy. Hanging up our Earth suit and enjoying being naked might be something important?
We are focused on what we see through our Earth suit because that is sensible. If we are diving in water, it makes sense to concentrate on where we are rather than what’s going on in the air or on the ground – unless this is relevant to where we are.
My point here to observe that how things are for us might be entirely ordinary from a certain perspective, but we have been induced to think in complex and mysterious ways that make it all so very elaborate.
Shamans who go on spirit journeys have a singular ability which is remarkable to others, but this doesn’t mean that where they go is inherently remarkable.
Likewise conscious OOBErs are relatively uncommon but that doesn’t mean the experience is itself remarkable or the places they go are inherently out of the ordinary.
The mystification we are used to arises, I believe, for several reasons.
The first is that the ability to have experiences in the non-physical realms may be limited in terms of personal capacity. The experience is non-ordinary rather than extraordinary. Natural, not supernatural.
Second this politics of perception and social conformity. The difference between genuine shamans and ordained priests is that latter have the influence of the former upon a given population but not necessarily the capability. Hence the non-ordinary is subject to obfuscation to preserve influence and control that is not merited.
The third resulting from the second, is there are social structures and discourses that benefit those seeking power. This power comes from elaborating on mysteries or denying them. Mystification is a power game intended to distract, deflect and deflate.
What is our environment?
What we can sense via our Earth suits is very limited relative to what is possible even on the physical plane. Other creatures use ultrasound, infrared or ultraviolet ranges of the spectrum of senses. Indeed, even a casual survey of capabilities of other Earth creatures reminds us that we function within a narrow band of sensory and other bodily capabilities.
We make a big thing about people with other than normal abilities – intelligence, strength, speed, artistry and so on.
Over the past half century or so we have become aware of how complex and interconnected our physical environment is. Other sciences are driving our sense of the complexity of reality deeper and deeper.
Materialistic science insists that what is real is only what can be sensed, including via the mediation of technologies and intellect. Hence there’s a restriction on how our inquiry progresses.
Despite efforts to insist otherwise our religious foundations are soundly rooted in Earth suit experience. They claim authority over the non-physical which is not warranted.
So, what is beyond the sensory Earth suit awareness? Our Earth suit bias extends our imagination into ‘outer space’ and the seemingly unfathomable dimensions of physical reality. We struggle with the notion of a quantum reality. But interdimensional realities are not on our menu of respectable options.
Human consciousness has always understood the presence of an ecology of lives inhabiting a non-material dimension. But this authoritative information is not part of our cultural narrative. This is despite an abundance of accounts of such extra-dimensional experiences going back to ancient times and richly in the present.
This absence from our cultural narrative is recent, and primarily because neither religious nor materialistic authorities want to adapt to their inevitable loss of power should this wider dimensional reality become accepted as a cultural truth.
If Earth ecology is any guide the non-physical dimensions are just as complex. This is a guess on my behalf based on research and experience. It is inferred rather than asserted as a fact.
What does interdimensional mean?
Let us allow that reality is inherently interdimensional. That is the physical is inherently entangled with the non-physical. We might then be thinking in terms of awareness of what is, rather than what is in absolute terms. The full spectrum of realities exists whether we are aware of it or not.
The complexity of physical ecologies didn’t emerge because we became aware of it. It was there all along. We are becoming more aware of that complexity partly through advances in science and partly through changes in attitude.
Shamans, OOBErs, and evidence from non-physical agents provide at least fundamental evidence of the interdimensionality of our reality. It is basic, at least at a public level. Who knows how sophisticated it is in private.
The idea that ET is interdimensional can provide us with the idea of an unsensed elsewhere – but not as though this suggests a vastness of nothing between our here and that unsensed elsewhere. It could rather be a vastness of complexity – such as exists between Sydney and Paris.
Conclusion
I have no doubt that interdimensional interaction is going to become more apparent, but how long before it becomes part of our normal cultural discourse isn’t something I can’t guess at with any confidence.
We have natural habits of editing out thoughts that don’t fit our expectations. We have all had intuitions we dismissed when they arose in our awareness, only to be later confirmed experientially.
Part of that habit of dismissing awarenesses is how we frame ideas, and the language we use. We can act to fix habits of mind and accidentally activate denial when we what we intended was doubt. What we need is curiosity unencumbered habituated thinking.
I have lived with a steady stream of confirmation of a complex interdimensional reality since childhood, and even so I have been captured by our sticky cultural discourse. This has led me to wrongly imagine there are separated fixed categories of experience. It’s been only the past few years that I have been thinking in terms of ordinary and non-ordinary rather than categories like spiritual, occult, or esoteric.
Interdimensionality is our birthright. It was once normal and still is in some cultures. We are interdimensional beings. Our bodies, our Earth suits, are our vehicles of manifestation on the material plane. Our attention is focused here, through those Earth suits when we are awake and active. When we are asleep, not so much.
We exclude interdimensional awareness mostly because we are told it isn’t real or isn’t a good thing to do. It is real and it is something we engage in to some degree naturally. There are hazards, of course, if we indulge recklessly or excessively.
My argument here is to think differently about it and don’t censor awareness reflexively. Choose freely, and wisely.