Course Description

Non-human intelligence is not a new idea. In fact, it has been discussed in detail in the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions for millennia. This course will explore these traditions and what they have to say about UAPs, extraterrestrial life, and other related phenomena.

According to these traditions, originating in ancient India, humanity shares the cosmos with a wide variety of intelligent life forms. Moreover, these life forms, according to these traditions, have been interacting with humanity for eons. Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain texts describe a cosmos not unlike that found in contemporary scientific models: a cosmos that is billions of years old and that is home to countless worlds–worlds, in the words of one Buddhist text, that are more numerous “than the sands on the banks of the Ganges.”

Were the ancient Indians actually aware of and in contact with non-human intelligences? Or were the worldviews developed in the subcontinent merely highly imaginative creations of a very old and sophisticated civilization? Are particular worldviews and ways of thinking more (or less) conducive to the acceptance of the possibility of non-human intelligences in the universe, and even operating here on Earth? This course will explore these questions and many others, including the possible existence of advanced technologies in ancient India and the role of altered states of consciousness in interaction with non-human intelligences. The basic teachings of the Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain traditions will also be covered, as well as the history of India, in order to provide context.