An excerpt from Chapter 5 of Judy Kennedy's book:  

The Problem of Identity

So what does it mean to be a human being now – an Earth human, no less?   Neil Freer, author of Breaking the Godspell and God Games:  What Do You Do Forever? – says that, “…unless and until we restore our true history, attain a generic, consensual definition of what a human being is and step out of species adolescence thereby, we shall not resolve the current UFO/alien questions fully because we will not have the species maturity and planetary unity to be able to interact gracefully with a strange species, knowing easily what is acceptable and unacceptable for both of us.”[i]

But do we really need to define “human being” in order to do that?  I don’t think so.

To replace one definition with another is futile, for that definition will forever be changing.  Can you really honestly answer the questions – who am I? – what am I? – with absolute certitude?  Any worldly definition, in my opinion, is unduly restrictive and irrelevant, given our modern day perspectives on the nature  of reality.  It is going backwards – not forward.  This is best explained by the Buddhist perspective – a perspective in which the concept of God plays no great role anyway. 

The Buddha said that there are five components to individuality called the Five Skandhas:  form; feelings or sensations; perceptions; intentionality or will; and consciousness.  As individuals, none of us are just one of those things, but instead aggregates of all of them.  Qabalistic teachings support this idea as well, as described previously.  The divine purpose of these skandhas is to illustrate the tenuous, unreliable nature of the shifting conditional reality we call life.  We are not our impermanent, ever-changing bodies.  Neither are we our ephemeral thoughts, feelings, or perceptions.  Conventional existence is not permanent – it is conditional.  However, there is something else that we are that brings us closer to understanding ourselves and also species from other planets – because they are that too.  This truth unites us on common ground that cannot be shaken.  To quote Lama Surya Das:

"On the other hand, your innate, ineffable Buddha-nature is not impermanent; it is not subject to change.  This inner light is unbound, untrammeled, and immaculate.  It can be relied on; it can be depended upon.  It is perfect, inherently wise and warm, free and complete from the beginningless beginning.  Actualizing that luminous, formless, and intangible core is what awakening is all about."[ii]     

That ineffable Buddha-nature, Qabalistically speaking, is not the individual “I” separate from all the others, but awareness of that “I” as the “I” of all humanity.  We are as rays in the central Sun of Spirit, which is cosmic energy – awareness.  What we have in common with all creatures is awareness.  Becoming aware of that awareness is the hallmark of humanity.  As Dr. Greer reminds us,

"Our deepest point of unity transcends race, culture, gender, profession, life roles, even level of intelligence or emotional make-up, since all these attributes vary widely among people.  Rather the foundation of human oneness is consciousness itself, the ability to be conscious, self-aware , intelligent sentient beings.  All other human qualities arise from this mother of all attributes.  Conscious intelligence is the root essence from which all other human qualities emanate.  It is the universal and fundamentally pure canvas on which the dazzling array of human life manifests.  The firmest, most enduring and transcendent foundation on which human unity is based then is consciousness itself; for we are all sentient beings, conscious, self-aware and intelligent.  No matter how diverse two people or two cultures may be, this foundation of consciousness will enable unity to prevail, as it is the simplest yet most profound common ground which all humans share."[iii]

 It doesn’t matter where we came from.  What matters is that we awaken to that divine spark within us all, call it what we may.  It is that spark which animates all things – organic and inorganic.  Organic beings are sentient beings – beings capable of feeling aware.  Inorganic matter is still living – it’s just not sentient in the vegetable or animal sense.  But it’s all life as Ageless Wisdom proclaims.        

Looking back on our extraterrestrial origins is harmless if we don’t get bogged down in the details.  Overindulging in tedious typology tends to perpetuate a separatist view.  Souls or divine “sparks” must eventually travel through all planes or dimensions – especially the physical – in order to achieve mastery over conditioned existence.  “Fully enlightened” means a shedding of density no longer needed and returning to a lighter state literally.  It’s a raising of overall frequency.  Consciousness is frequency -- vibration. 

It doesn’t matter what planet or star system the soul or divine spark decides to take its physical lessons on, just as long as it completes the lessons.  A soul can have a string of incarnations on another star system, and then return to Earth.  In so doing, the individuality might very well appear to identify primarily with that other star system, but that’s still a false identity.  Why not just go to the source in the first place?  The value or merit in determining origin of major cycles of evolution lies in helping us to understand why we have particular affinities, aversions, and karmic reactions to things.  But it is not the most important facet of our beingness.  What’s at the core of beingness is pure being.

Therefore, many Masters and spiritual adepts could truly be souls who have ascended from the animal Earth Sirian/human bodies that once inhabited Atlantis.  There are others who might have evolved directly on Sirius or other systems.  For instance, Jelaila Starr asserts that the Nibiruan Amelius incarnated as Adam on Earth.[iv]  So we probably switch around all the time and just don’t remember, thanks to the blessings of Earth amnesia .  It’s confusing enough trying to figure out who we think we are in this one lifetime without having to take into account countless prior existences on other planets! 

We must be wary of using our ET ancestry as a cloak or instrument of projection so that it doesn’t become just another ego shell of separateness that must inevitably crumble.  We have enough of those in the form of ordinary cultural conditionings to deal with as it is.  How many times have we heard, “Well I was raised a Democrat (or fill in the blank) so that’s who I am.”  We don’t have to stick with our ET conditionings any more than our earthly ones, fortunately.

No matter what we call ourselves, most of us are still in human bodies  at this time, so that makes us all human in one sense.  Therefore we all share that same group karma.  We are all a part of one humanity.  Based on the evidence and the channelings, it appears that Earth is just one great big cosmic melting pot anyway.  We’re all spiritual mutts when you get down to it.  And we all pretty much have to play with what cards got dealt to us – these miraculous combinations of human DNA.  We definitely owe allegiance to the Earth in that regard.  Earth is common ground for all humans.  It’s Gaia who holds us in her arms and nurtures us now.  She is our biological mother in this lifetime whether we like it or not.  She gave us our physical bodies.  Our father is the Sun – literally a star – giving us the energy that fuels those physical bodies.   We are all “extraterrestrial” in that regard.  We are all stars deep down.   Like the CSETI  logo says, “One Universe, One People.”

To look no further than conditioned existence for a handle on what we really are, is continuing to live in the nightmare of the illusion of separateness.  It’s time to wake up – period.  Once that occurs, nobody and nothing can ever enslave us again.  It is possible for all beings of all possible universes to realize oneness.  And finally, the cosmic connection will be renewed, and Oz will not look so strange after all.