Alpha Centauri is the nearest star system to Earth and in that system are a few worlds, one of which has sentient life. This is a planet that meets our every criteria for being Utopia. Havalla is the planet's name, which means only "Our Home," and has a beautiful nebula, a starbirth chamber which can be seen with the naked eye on any given night, and an almost indigo ocean. The entire planet is peaceful - they've never known war - indeed they don't have a concept of what war is and their dictionaries have no term for it. Noteworthy, however, is that one of their scientist-sages has "seen" with his inner sight and written of a pale blue planet in a nearby system that has been at war for 6,000 years for one incomprehensible reason or another - but nobody read the book; it was too speculative and philosophical and surely just a totally implausible fiction with implications and suggestions that could sow the seeds of poisonous concepts. (Their scientist-sages are not held in particularly high regard because there seems little need for so-called "higher" teachings. Like children, all they need to know is how they play and treat one another in any given moment.)
Havalla's axis is absolutely stable, so there are no seasons, just a semitropical temperate zone from one pole to the other, but there are mountains where the air is cooler and the vegetation different from the lower climes. The inhabitants relish their differences, because it's those differences that teach them the most about themselves, such as their differing religions and various other dogmas that all - as it is everywhere in every galaxy and universe - are only approximations of Truth. There is no economic system other than that to be found through trade, and therefore there is no necessity for regulation and therefore their government is more or less a token figurehead that also must trade goods and services that have pertinent value in order to justify its existence. Deceit is, by the same token, not even in their sphere of understanding - to cheat another is as alien to them as war, and therefore there is no need for police other than to decide who must provide a good or service to another inhabitant when an accident occurs, so their police are evidence-reviewers and decision-givers.
Their day-to-day activities generally involve creative play - they have 20 times as many sports - but there are specializations of occupation for trade, such as food-growers, home-builders, water-managers, waste-managers, musicians, artists, scientists - all of which subsist through some form of trade. In the end, there are no haves and have-nots, which is essentially the root of all problems in our world. Or, more to the point, the fear that the haves live through every day when faced with losing what they have - this is the root of all problems in our world.
One marvelously strange day one of their scientist-sages looked up at a crude computer screen and saw that there was some kind of "noise" being transmitted from the direction of that solar system with the pale blue planet in it. She was listening via a radio telescope that was not so different than those found here in the 1960s, only it was made of plants that inhaled chlorine gas, exhaled helium, hydrogen and oxygen, and were superconductive. She hit the "record" button and continued working.
Later, after examining the "stream" of information received, she realized that it was in a language that they could decipher - binary code, and the data kept coming and coming. Years (their years, of course, which are only 44 of our days) passed and they had been able to correlate word meanings with what was taking place in moving pictures, and the many dictionaries they had studied helped them to both broaden and narrow their definitions of what words meant. This also meant that they were able to piece together concepts, and it was in this endeavor that they were most confounded, not by the concepts themselves but by the sheer madness that such concepts illustrated.
At a scientific-mystic symposium, scientist-sages gathered from all over Havalla to discuss the implications of what they were learning, and perhaps even more importantly to conduct diplomatic talks regarding whether or not they would release their findings to the people of Havalla. Afterall, it would be arbitrary and presumptuous if they kept the information to themselves, but at the same time the concepts themselves could literally destroy their world. There were many in attendance who were not up-to-speed with this area of research, and so there were sessions set up to present the "Story of the Blue World."
"To illustrate the potential dangers of releasing this information to the people of Havalla," orated our dear lady scientist-sage who made the original discovery, "we have chosen a short list of their word-concepts to present to you as a way to graphically show what their world is like, and what we don't want our world to be like - or so we believe at this juncture. They have what they refer to as 'virtues,' which if we understand their meaning of this word correctly is a desirable property to possess in one's personality array. However, obviously we don't agree. "
The audience waited in silence.
"We shall start with the word-concept 'courage.' Do we have need for such a virtue? The closest we come to a definition is 'strength of character to proceed with one's task or calling even in the face of danger or our own fear.' Having the concept in our understanding automatically implies that we must live in an environment where we are constantly grappling with great hardship and battling with forces that don't have our best interests at heart. Ladies and gentleman, we don't live in that environment."
She went on.
"'Altruism' and 'charity' - service to others. Then we must live in an environment where there is inequality between people. Again, we don't live in such an environment.
"'Hope' - the yearning belief that things will turn for the better. We would have need of this word only if we were being detained against our will, or beaten, or were afraid of dying - any manner of recurrent and intense uncertainty.
"'Faith' - belief in a thing, event or person which is beyond our direct experience or removed from our immediate senses. We would require this concept, what these people seem to deem a virtue, only if we lived in a world where we knew less than we're capable of believing.
"'Loyalty' - exclusive devotion of one's time and affairs to a person or organization of persons. Then we'd have to face the constant potential of losing a brother or sister to an influence that isn't to our liking or preference, itself a concept that, until now, is totally alien to us because we know that a person is always engaged in perfection whether it is with us or someone or something else.
"'Unselfishness' - acting only for the benefit of others. This is only possible in a world where we believe ourselves to be separate and not One, where we would treat one another in a way we ourselves would not choose to be treated. To us, acknowledging 'unselfishness' is the equivalent of acknowledging 'selfishness,' a formula which could be applied to any of these so-called virtues.
"'Pleasure' - a mental or physical happiness. Our wounds, our pain, are happenstance, and not the opposite of pleasure. We would have to live in an environment where pain is the rule and pleasure is always to be sought and captured and won, a constant struggle for the satisfaction of our senses.
"'Beauty' - we have been able to find no meaning for this concept, because if we understand it correctly then it automatically implies that there is anything that is less than beauty. What is its contrasting view? We have no concept of this.
"'Love' - what is this according to them? We can't be certain. To us, it's not a place, or thing, or feeling. If we understand this term, then it implies that there are conditions where it doesn't exist, but for us there is no place that Love is not. It just is. Like the heavens and Havalla, it's the only thing that is constant, unchanging, it's existence itself. Many of their great scientist-sages were said to have Unconditional Love, apparently the highest of their attainments. But we know this is absurd, for if we understand what is meant by Love then we know that Love has no conditions or it's not Love - it's anything but Love. They're mutually exclusive concepts. There is no rule, no level, no degree, no preference, no choosing. For us, it's the ground of all being - not a way of life but our very animation, our Lifeforce. Love is the Center, the Absolute, the One, the Unchanging Existence, the Very Fabric of All That Is, for there is nothing that is not made from it. Its opposites or degrees, according to this other world and whatever they may be, is simply beyond our ability to comprehend. Love is the only concept that is not a concept, for Love conceives all things. There is nothing that did not have its birth from It. For us, we treat everyone the way we ourselves would be treated, and that's our worldly definition of it. If the people of our sister planet make this as intrinsic to them as breathing, then they can dispense with all these other words and meanings and use our term for it."
A small voice rose in the following silence. "You're missing something," the voice almost whispered.
The dear lady who had made the discovery instantly recognized the voice. It was that of Havalla's most revered savant, with an intelligence beyond any system of measurement. The girl had not been invited because her ideas were so outrageous as to be disruptive to any potential of constructive accomplishment.
"Yes, Seashella? Is that you way back there?"
"It's me."
"Do you have something to add?"
Seashella came forth and took the podium. She was six years old.
"Hi, Everyone. I studied these people too, and you know what? They would regard our world as boring."
"Ridiculous!" "Outrageous!" "Preposterous!"
"Their stark contrasts are their beauty. Their pain is their glory. Their initiations to the highest concepts come at the highest prices, and therefore their Finding is all the more rewarding. Their breakthrough realizations have thousands and thousands of times the power of ours. Their lessons wield the power of a billion suns. I envy them. I want to move there. I'm building a spaceship, you know, but I also might have figured out how to dissolve this body and be born in one there, but I might forget what I know here, now, but that's all right because I want to experience their extremes, and if I didn't forget what I know now then I'd learn absolutely nothing. Let me repeat this last assertion: if I didn't forget what I know now then I'd learn absolutely nothing."
"How can you think such things?" "We're going to ban your village from the Council!"
"If that is punishment," the little genius instantly said, "then please subject me to it immediately. We are expectant of a pleasant future, but they . . . their expectancy is exquisite because the pain itself is intrinsic with their being. That is what hope means. What do they have if they don't have a higher place to climb to? We have no down, and therefore no up. We "love" Truth, but we know nothing of its soul-saving qualities, so we lack a dimension that they completely take for granted. They would call us idealists, but this is how we're born; it's as natural to us as eating, and we are therefore totally ignorant of the ecstasy that comes by reaching idealism through making choices. We are loyal, but we have never experienced the thrill of maintaining devotion in the powerful face and oh-so-delicious modes of temptation to be disloyal. We enjoy pleasure, of course, but our lives are almost exclusively pleasant, and that is a monotone screen. We don't comprehend the unspeakable sweetness of the pleasure once having escaped the pain. And Love. You're right. There is no debate as to what it really is, but they have differing colors of it. Not degrees. And they only believe they have conditions, when in reality they're just using the word in senses that only approximate the Truth. Those approximations lay in uncertainty, something we don't experience, and so we have never experienced the heart-exploding love that is felt between people who are on the same wavelength, and neither have we experienced the heart-rending power in our chests that they feel when love is lost, which is only an illusion that they have, but what a wonderful illusion! Or the heart-tearing pain that they feel when they lose someone they love to the passing they call death, whereas we just send them on their way to the next form and go on communicating with the passed ones just as we always did, just in a different way.
"My esteemed colleagues, they're growing up. We've never HAD to grow up, but in toiling through the horror and mire that they have for so very long, they will reach pinnacles of which we can only dream. The power of their emotions is in direct relation to the level of difficulty of their challenges. They have among them people who see things the way they truly are, and they are leading them to a higher level of being, where pain is experienced but not as a result of someone else's intent. They will learn to treat each other the way that they themselves want to be treated on a global scale, but the extremes through which they have passed will bring them a reward we will never know.
"My friends, they have performed their purpose for being beautifully, with unexpected exactitude and startling improvisation, with boldness and daring and even hatred, worrying higher beings from everywhere in the Universe that they had "gone too far," and explored depths of Amgod's being that we will NEVER know unless and until we release our soul civilization from our fear of uncertainty and allow ourselves to plunge to the darkest depths, as have they. They are the reason that Amgod exists, for if THEY are not, Amgod is not, so completely are they bound as One. They believe that something outside of themselves created them and everything else, but they are learning that They created all of it, as did we. Without them, Amgod has no being whatsoever, for they are Amgod, and so are we.
"Our word for Love is Gratitude, but Love would still be Love without Gratitude, while Gratitude would not exist without Love. Our concept for Love is No-Self, but we have never known what it is to be selfish, while they are learning to be unselfish, which opens them to a vista we don't have eyes to see.
"Teach the people of Havalla the meanings of their word-concepts so that we can at least HOPE that we can become as bad and beautiful as they have accomplished. It truly is time for them to grow up, and it truly is time for us to grow down."