Intelligent Life

In 1960 Frank Drake began his search for extraterrestrial intelligent life. Using the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) 26-meter radio telescope in West Virginia, he started listening for signals from possible planets around the stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani. This Sunday will be the 50th anniversary of those efforts.

The search for intelligent life has greatly expanded in these fifty years, but it has yielded no results.

However, we do have evidence of intelligent life in the universe. Sixty-six messages have been received and recorded by forty different people over a period of 2,000 years.

These messages introduce their author as the first intelligence. They consistently present him as a spirit of perfect light, perfect love, perfect justice. They speak also of other intelligent beings who are his messengers and servants, moving between him and the people of earth, and another set of intelligent beings who are in rebellion against him and who try to hinder his plans for the people of earth.

These sixty-six messages are full of wisdom that so perfectly accords with our needs that one wonders why anyone would feel the need to search elsewhere. They have been collected into one convenient volume available in hundreds of languages—and at little cost, in contrast to the great sums required by the SETI project.

You probably have a copy of that volume in your home. It is a very special book, and I hope you realize its value in directing your life.