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Look at us, look at us: Are
we worthy of contact?
From the editor, by Tim Miejan
"Sign, sign. Everywhere a sign." -- Five Man Electrical Band
Let me be honest. I expected more from the recent film Signs than I received. Or
perhaps I should have known better.
Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan, otherwise known as the up-and-coming new Hitchcock, film
director M. Night Shyamalan, calculatingly swept up a public thirsting for insight
into the intriguing mystery surrounding crop circles and quickly placed them in theater
seats. And while succeeding on many levels with a powerful human drama, his story
also short-changed theatergoers who may have expected this filmmaker to be more original
in his depictions of how we interact with extraterrestrial life.
Did Shyamalan have to resort to using standard Hollywood interpretations of aliens
as scary, clicking monsters who attack the planet and terrorize the citizens of Earth?
No, but that was a convenient and effective way to move the cast to a place of fear
and force the lead character, a small-town pastor named Graham Hess (Mel Gibson),
to restore his faith in a Higher Power.
I wouldn't presume to suggest that this director should have written
his story differently. However, this was the perfect opportunity
for Shyamalan -- a filmmaker who is receiving critical acclaim
for producing quality drama with a touch of spirituality
sprinkled in for good measure -- to approach the alien issue from
a consciousness based on oneness rather than separation.
I went to Signs to see just that: How will this director not only interpret the meaning
of the crop circles but represent those who are responsible for creating them? Based
on this film, crop circles are scary and are made by ominous, unknown forces who
move through corn so fast that we cannot catch them. They later become part of a
legion of ETs who are reported worldwide. CNN dedicates its entire programming to
documenting signs that it may be the end of the world as we know it.
Hitchcock was the master of creating suspense in ordinary situations and ordinary
places, and the usual was interpreted as scary in the minds of his characters and
viewers. Shyamalan's use of such cataclysmic drama was very un-Hitchcock-like and
unnecessary.
Signs also fails to document the presence of crop pattern and ET researchers who
approach their work with a scientific method and a Oneness consciousness. In line
with Elisabet Sahtouris' perspective on the maturity of the human species (see the
interview on the cover of Section B this month), they not only view our continued
killing of each other, individually and militarily, as a sign of our immaturity but
believe it is keeping more intelligent species from even wanting to confront us in
any way other than through occasional sightings or geometric patterns placed in crop
fields each summer.
In my mind, I keep returning to one of the most poignant essays on conscious contact
with extraterrestrials that I've ever read, a piece entitled "One Universe,
One People," by Steven M. Greer, M.D., founder and international director of
the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence. In that piece, he concludes:
"As there is one God which manifests one creation, so there is one God which
is the source of all conscious beings, whether on earth or elsewhere. The great Universal
Intelligence has sent a ray of this light of consciousness throughout all conscious
beings, and we are united to God and to one another through its subtle and all-pervading
effect. It is for these reasons that I state that the reality of man and the reality
of other extraterrestrial peoples are one. Viewed with the eye of differences, we
are diverse and unrelated, but viewed with the eye of oneness, we are more alike
than dissimilar, more kindred than alien. And so it is that we must look to our inner
reality to find not only our oneness with our fellow humans, but our oneness with
other intelligent life in the universe as well. While ephemeral differences may confound
us, our essential oneness in consciousness will never fail us. For there is one universe
inhabited by one people, and we are they."
Dr. Greer's essay, "One Universe, One People," is available here for
you to read: See
One Universe, One People
Tim Miejan is editor of The EDGE. Contact him at (651) 578-8969 or e-mail editor@edgenews.com
Copyright © 2002
Tim Miejan
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