In the Timaeus of Plato, details of a 'strange story but true,' contain much opaque language mostly intended not to give offense to uneducated ears, especially regarding the transition of planetary objects seen from the Earth-bound person's perspective.
(This is a very complex text, and modern understanding of it is not helped by the problematic translations made in times when we did not have anywhere near the technical advancements that we do today).
...But thus we must not confuse the narrator's account which is designed to reference human seminal perception of the passage of time as it is taken from the apparent movement of the stars, with either the narrator's actual understanding or that of Plato himself. The related passages themselves begin with the statement that 'God made it appear' (so that Man would witness a daily/nightly movement symbolic of the passage of time) and then also -, 'but these forms which seem to move faster than the others in fact are taken over by the others in reality' (thus showing us the reader, that he well understands the difference between simplistic appearance and actual celestial motion of distant objects separated by very great distances of depth between 'near' and 'far' from us and our eyes).
This text is highly unusual when considered using the most modern of mindsets that we can appropriate, since some of the text could be interpreted to say or to suggest that this version of material and even of metaphysical reality as set out in the text includes ET Alien beings as what the terminology says is 'the third tribe of creatures in the Universe, without the existence of which the Universe itself would not be complete.' These are the actual words employed; that is, the English translation of the words and phrases.
The narrator in the text (who is not Plato himself, but the highly-placed political figure Critias, who is about to embark upon his account of his relative's story about Atlantis, as learned from priests in a cultic establishment in Egypt) - first in this text (IE Timaeus) lays out the three 'tribes' of creatures as being 1. humans, then 2. animals made by the strata of gods who are only the children of some unique Supreme Being, and then 3. beings who are either the residents of very advanced virtually perfect civilizations located in (near to/around) various stars plus humans who 'graduate' to there.
The strata of gods are un-created and Eternal, being simply 'engendered' somehow directly from the Unique Supreme Being.
There have been, down through the centuries, secretive sects devoted to deeper understandings of the particular texts in question, and in these sects or cults, they extend Plato's own concept of the 'therapeutic lie' to this specific text the Timaeus - due to the fact that were it to be thought widely for example, that the 'soul' of a human, were an actual physically witnessed object, then inquisitive but rash people might go literally digging into human flesh and bone and brain (which of course some did do in the Dark Ages and even long into the Middle Ages of Western progress) to find it!
Thus the text says the 'soul' part of a human is 'invisible.' But then goes on to describe it anyway - and at a point makes mention, just as the Book of Revelation does in the Christian Bible, that certain places in very remote and distant 'cities' have a glow and a light emanating both from within the city itself as well as from its inhabitants - and it is this light that allows people to see there, rather than a resident 'sun.'
Of course, most people today think they are very advanced... |
To cut a long story short, effectively Plato says that there are Aliens, meaning ET beings, and that these must of a kind of a 'Cosmic necessity,' be highly advanced.
And he says that in a number of places not just in the Timaeus where he does so via the mouth of its general narrator, who is one 'Critias,' whom all scholars and historians say is the same as the historical pro-Spartan, Athenian statesmen and eventual oligarch, Critias.
But if there are Aliens, ET Aliens -, and they are very highly advanced, then presumably their food and drink would also be equivalently much more sophisticated than what we are used to here on our own planet Earth -, for the moment, at least.
You might be one of the many 'richest people on the planet' and you will naturally believe yourself to be well-schooled in knowledge about wines, the great wines, the expensive wines, the best wines.
You know nothing.
Those of you familiar with the source of this music in the video below, will likely have a greater appreciation of this version of it.