Why Should Anyone Be Interested In UFOs?
Actually, there isn’t really any obvious reason to care about the UFO subject, which is why most people don’t, at least not very much. Only a small percentage of the population know about the most famous cases, and usually just the most recent ones. What is really interesting though, is that almost anyone perks up when the subject is mentioned in a relaxed setting. Why is this?
One good reason is that UFOs speak to the maverick that lives in the back of most of our minds. They are outside every ontological barbed-wire fence that the authorities have staked around our psyche. Along that fence are guard towers filled with fundamentalist skeptics, most academics, some of the news media, and others who consider themselves no-nonsense types. When something truly unexplained flies over our heads (or digs under the fence) we are told to laugh or look away. No one with a working brain really likes to be told what to think, so some of us look and wonder. The UFOs (and whatever causes them) are cheerleaders urging us along an intellectual evolutionary path. At least, that’s what I like to think.
There are very few other things in our existence that have the power to do this. Some esoteric spiritual philosophies, such as Zen Buddhism, Western Occultism and Sufism offer a chance to look inward for answers. Another path that offers this in a quick and sometimes dangerous way are psychotropic/ psychedelic drugs. Some use a combination of these to seek personal truth.
The study of UFOs, if taken in its entirety, produces some of the same results. An endless cataloging of cases for its own sake is little more than hobbyist pornography, but looking deeper for patterns and trends sometimes opens the door to not only a deeper appreciation for the subject, but a peek from the outside of our own current views of existence and its obvious limitations. Why can’t we agree on what causes UFO sightings, or what controls the phenomenon? A few authors have already pointed out that there is little or no evidence that UFOs are interplanetary craft piloted by aliens from other star systems. Still, the hardcore believers continue to dance to this enticing tune.
What is interesting is the myriad of other possibilities. This opens up a whole Pandora’s box (from the fundamentalist skeptic point of view) of forbidden ideas: time travel, manifested thoughtforms, apparently unknowable existences, intelligences other than corporeal humanity, etc. What these ideas all have in common is that there is currently no way to measure them or “prove” their claim to existence. It seems that the UFOs are urging us along–trying to open new pathways in our species’ tunnel vision.
When some of these new ideas and viewpoints take hold, it is almost certain that the intelligence behind the UFOs will change its modus operandi yet again, and always remain beyond the current understanding. Almost 60 years after Kenneth Arnold saw those silvery thingies skipping above the peaks of the Cascades, most people are still thinking along the same “aliens from other planets” path. There are a few (like John Keel, Jacques Vallee, Whitley Strieber, Michio Kaku, Gregory Little, Keith Thompson etc. etc.) who have listened to the UFOnauts and more importantly to their possibly inscrutable message.
Sometime in the future, when the old guard dies out and cutting-edge science shows us incontrivertible evidence that “unbelievable” things are possible, we will realize some of the things that the UFOs have been whispering in our ears for millenia. The world will change in spite of neanderthals like James Randi, Joe Nickell, and Penn and Teller. Most people like new ideas. They’re exciting and affirm that we’re here for more than just a few decades of meaningless toil or materialistic acquisition.
Try that theory at your next party.
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Apr 19 2007 
April 19th, 2007 at 1:27 am
Greg:
Well said!
Paul
April 19th, 2007 at 4:24 am
“They are outside every ontological barbed-wire fence that the authorities have staked around our psyche.”
I’ve been wondering why I’m so badly scrathed up!
Excellent piece Greg, and stated exquisitely. Thanks.
Kind regards,
Greg
April 19th, 2007 at 5:49 am
My short answer?
http://alienviewgroup.blogspot.com/
~~~
alienview@roadrunner.com
> http://www.AlienView.net
>> AVG Blog — http://alienviewgroup.blogspot.com/
>>> U F O M a g a z i n e — http://www.ufomag.com
April 20th, 2007 at 1:29 am
Greg, it could be said in this blog you’ve identified something ultimately far more important than the matter of who, or what – or even IF – UFOs are: namely, the effect they have.
Even setting aside such outright and ‘obvious’ “extraterrestial” culture-bringers and ‘civilizers’ as Oannes, you only have to think of the likes of the ‘pillar’ of fire and smoke that went before the Israelites during their travails in the wilderness, and the ’star’ which guided the three wise men, to realise “UFOs (and whatever causes them)” do INDEED function as “cheerleaders urging us along an intellectual evolutionary path.”
Nice one, my son!
April 20th, 2007 at 5:29 am
Just some thoughts about the crucial importance of the subject of UFOs and aliens from a slightly different perspective:
I often tell people that of all people who never wanted to know anything at all about UFO’s and aliens, I deserve a place at the head of the line. I spent 25 years as a mother, social worker, hypnotherapist, and seeker of knowledge. At the age of 41, I thought I had things pretty well sorted out. There was, of course, a line beyond which I would not go and that line was between my categories and UFOs/aliens. In my world, people who “believed in” UFOs were geeks who believed in little green men and who probably wore plastic pocket protectors, coke-bottle glasses, and kept Mad Magazine rolled up in their back pockets.
In short, I was a flaming skeptic about aliens. I had spent so much time poking around in people’s heads in therapeutic contexts, that, with only a cursory examination of the issue, I’d decided that sightings and claims of abductions were strikingly similar to past life dramas. After reading Whitley Strieber’s Gothic book “Communion” and Ruth Montgomery’s patently ridiculous “Aliens Among Us,” I refused to give any serious consideration to the subject. The stories were so crazy I simply could not consider them to be real in any context other than as useful metaphors for subconscious conflicts.
At the same time, I was trying to keep an open mind from a clinical and scientific viewpoint. I wasn’t sure that our whole existence, as we perceived it, wasn’t simply a series of chemical reactions in the brain of the Cosmic Dreamer.
In short, stories of aliens and abductions seemed an archetypal drama of the subconscious mind. I called it the Millennial Disease, and saw it as a form of mass hysteria. I attributed the physical scars and traces of abduction to stigmata-like effects, or poltergeist type events. Clearly, there was very little about UFOs and aliens that couldn’t be explained by these theories.
And that was were things stood until I (along with 4 of my 5 children) experienced a sighting of such strangeness that I still shake my head to think of how it all transpired. (This story is covered in Thomas French’s article about my work as a hypnotherapist: “The Exorcist in Love” on the St. Petersburg (FL) website.)
At that point I was galvanized to begin researching the subject. The thing that drove me was the realization that here was a phenomenon that was NOT factored into all of my carefully constructed categories of reality (which were pretty liberal, I can tell you!) I realized with a sense of absolute horror that I’d spent years studying and digging for answers, only to have it all trashed in one night by a stupid black boomerang.
And that’s when the real weirdness began. And all kinds of questions. What kind of madhouse had I opened my eyes to see? Was the fact that I had seen it the very source of its existence? I was truly passing through the valley of the shadow of death. I had thoroughly convinced myself that UFOs and aliens could not possibly exist. Upon seeing the thing itself with my own eyes, I had pronounced it to be a flock of geese.
What I knew that the average person does not know (and this was because of my work and research in the paranormal) was that down through the ages people have been visited by all sorts of strange beings. Some of these creatures have been utterly fantastic in description as well as activity. By far the most common type, however, have been humanoid – having some semblance to the human physical configuration – although their powers have been distinctly super-human.
I had read stories going back hundreds of years that told of these humanoid beings.
A creature with strange, glowing or compelling eyes comes in the night and somehow drains the energy, blood, or life force from a victim unable to call out for help and paralyzed in body and mind. Their presence often is heralded by unusual lights or freezing temperatures. The strange beings have powers that include the ability to disappear, to fly, to control weather, to direct the behavior of animals, to change into the form of animals, to pass through solid objects. The beings can produce hybrid offspring by having sex with their victims.
This belief in supernatural beings is to be found in every society around the world, a common theme in all religions as well as folklore. The reports are as frequent in our own day as they have ever been. And the numbers and types of visitors are legion. I realized that this historical assessment was quite consistent with the UFO and alien abduction situation. There is a tradition stretching back thousands of years, of otherworldly beings abducting humans and their children.
Along with most rationalists, I had always considered these stories to be “psycho-dramas,” or “artifacts of consciousness”. The study of anomalous experiences, the paranormal, and related psycho-spiritual fields has occupied many of the brightest minds of our race for millennia. Endless theories and their variations have been proposed to explain them and, for the most part, such ideas are even behind most of the world’s religions.
Jacques Vallee’s control system hypothesis is interesting in this regard. He writes:
“I believe there is a system around us that transcends time as it transcends space. The system may well be able to locate itself in outer space, but its manifestations are not spacecraft in the ordinary ‘nuts and bolts’ sense. The UFOs are physical manifestations that cannot be understood apart from their psychic and symbolic reality. What we see in effect here is not an alien invasion. It is a control system which acts on humans and uses humans.”
The very idea that this might be a reality that dominated or controlled our own was staggering. What made the problem so terrifying was the fact that my studies and experiences in working with “spirit attachment” and demonic possession were reflected in the so-called UFO and alien phenomena.
The fact that modern alien abductions mirror demonic infestation and vampirism is part of a historical pattern. This, according to Vallee, implies a pattern maker.
The first thing I noticed in deeply studying this phenomenon was that some encounters with alleged entities – and even just sightings – seem accidental, but others clearly are directed at a specific person. This led me to wonder whether the seemingly accidental encounters were as accidental as they appeared to be.
In such a case, I had to ask again: did the manifestation occur in response to some hidden need, a psychological state that calls for outside intervention of some kind?
French ufologist Jean-Francois Boeded, in his book Fantastiques recontres au bout du monde (1982), suggests that UFO sightings start long before the actual experience. He noted many cases in which the witnesses had premonitions that something was about to happen, or for some reason they went home by a different route, or took an unaccustomed walk. Somehow, it seems, the witnesses were being prepared for the experience they were about to undergo. In many cases, the abductee claims there is a sensation of a presence before an actual encounter takes place.
I can’t say that any such “premonition” occurred in my experience. But that may simply be due to a lack of sensitivity or awareness to certain subtle clues. Perhaps my rational approach acted as a barrier?
However, Boedad has a point. Many so-called “attached entities” I conversed with during spirit release hypnosis claim that their host was chosen “before he was born”. In most cases, a line of contact and the gradually building assault can be traced back to childhood. It can be said, in general, that the process of possession has already begun before the target or those around him are aware of the signs.
Again, this flew in the face of many religious and philosophical teachings.
Many “abductees” have reported that their abductors were benevolent beings. At the same time, other abductees reporting “abductions”, when the surface or screen memories have been probed in a competent way, reveal memories of events so chilling in their implications that the first interpretation must be looked at carefully. The fear evoked in these experiences is tangible. Yet, these other beings somehow convince that all they do is for “the good of the planet” or “the enhancement of our race”. These stories seemed designed to perpetuate a dangerous and cunning lie.
In my examination of the standard religions as well as the many and varied New Age teachings, I saw these systems being used as the very means of propagating such a lie. I could see individuals with no extensive knowledge of historical metaphysics being fooled by a belief in the “benefits” of alien abduction. We repeatedly see terms describing “light” or related phenomena.
Even the esteemed John E. Mack seemed to have been taken in by such a view. This view is rooted in emotional beliefs that cling desperately to any straw offered that those more powerful than we are “good”.
After several years of study, I began to realize: “The Alien presence on our planet is real. Those who choose to close their eyes to this reality do so at their own peril.” And I was terrified.
If there is a psycho-spiritual or even literally physical “invasion” taking place before our very eyes, under our very noses, represented in the symbolic system of our lives and experiences, interacting with this “control system” at some deep level, what kind of protection do we have?
Well, in thinking about it deeply, it does appear that these beings – whatever they turn out to be – can plunder our world, our lives and our very minds at will. But I also have observed that they seem to be going to an awful lot of trouble to conceal their activities and to confuse observers with hundreds of crazy stories of different “races” and groups of semi-mythological “good guys and bad guys”.
Many people who think they are psychic, have prophetic “dreams” or visions, channel “space brothers,” are contacted by beings who are here to “help” us or to “save us” if only we will let them, or have other psychic experiences may, in fact, be unconscious “agents” of this control system. These stories are spread around, increasing the level of confusion. But the greatest deception of all is the idea that negative forces do not exist. And even if negative forces did exist, there’s no need to worry. If we just think nice thoughts, meditate regularly, and repeat our affirmations, nothing icky will ever enter our reality.
We are not dealing with materialistic, earth-based technology here! For God’s sake, these critters walk through walls, float people out of their bodies and control minds – the abilities we have historically attributed to angels or demons or vampires.
In the past, we dealt with ghosts and “gods” and demons. We are dealing with the same entities now, only we are calling them “aliens”. They probably always WERE “aliens!” And maybe they want to be “gods” again.
One thing I knew for sure from hypnotherapy for many years, evil insinuates itself into our lives in the guise of goodness and truth. This problem is made even worse by the acceptance of the New Age teaching that “evil” simply does not exist unless an individual “creates” it in their reality. Evil follows the line of erosion of our free will through the erosion of knowledge. What better way to protect evil activities than to deny that they exist?
The New Age types say that putting one’s attention on these ideas “gives them energy”. This is true only if one focuses in this way with the intention of participation. However, a comprehensive understanding of these forces is absolutely necessary in order to know how to give them less energy.
It was a stunning and grotesque prospect for me to consider that humanity, as a whole, has been used and cunningly deceived for millennia. The UFO and alien business is truly nothing new. We have historical records of these phenomena stretching back thousands of years. If these beings could get what they want simply by moving in and taking it, would they spend so much time creating terror and confusion?
Alternatively, perhaps the terror and confusion is exactly what they want to generate because they feed on it. But that makes me also wonder why they are going to so much trouble to persuade us to willingly accept their total control if they could take it at will? These guys would not be spending so much time terrorizing us and trying to sneak in the back door if it were possible for them to walk in directly.
Standing back from the problem in overview, there were the hints of some sort of pattern maker, and it wasn’t God in any sense that I had ever conceived of Him. Yes, I could see both positive actions and negative actions; a dynamic interplay of forces, but exactly what it was, and precisely how it operated, I couldn’t tell. It was like a shadow show where the shadows are produced by certain angles of light behind objects which, when finally revealed, bear no resemblance whatsoever to the form of the shadow.
For those who think it is some kind of secret government program, let me say the following:
If the government is behind all the abductions, surely they would have screwed up at least once in 45 years and we would know that fallible human beings were doing it!
The fact that not one single incident, not one single abduction, not one single purported kidnapping event has ever resulted in a screw-up that led to anyone seeing the “man behind the curtain,” not one, should give us pause to think.
It’s just preposterous to believe that the US government can pull off an enterprise of this kind, with evidence of world-wide activity, for over 50 years, involving possibly millions of individuals, the logistics of which make the machinations of WWII look like the planning for a picnic? I’m sorry. I can’t buy that.
I think that we have to look for a hypothesis that explains and predicts the phenomenon, and part of that hypothesis may be that the nonsense of the “aliens are here to help us” schtick is deliberately planted in the mind of the public for the very purpose of hiding a dreadful and sinister secret.
We can also see that, if the government is not involved, then public officials would be most interested in maintaining the cover-up: to admit that our leaders really are NOT in charge could lead to world-wide chaos and anarchy. If we are, as Charles Fort was wont to say, “property,” if we “belong” to some race of advanced beings who use us for food and resources, then there is no point to anything we believe in at all. It is all a lie; a sham; a grand illusion; an enormous cosmic fraud. Who can live with that thought?
But clearly, we MUST consider it. As I mentioned above, I don’t think we are helpless, but we ARE screwed without accurate knowledge.
April 20th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
Paul and Greg,
Thanks. It’s always a pleasant surprise when someone actually reads and appreciates something you write.
April 20th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
Alfred L,
Does your “answer” mean that you completely support the ETH (which I doubt,) or that the universe and existence is more vast than we can know yet?
April 20th, 2007 at 10:40 pm
Alan,
Funny you should bring up biblical references, as I am in the process of re-reading William Bramley’s “Gods Of Eden.”
April 20th, 2007 at 10:52 pm
Laura,
Points well-taken in your comments. I prefer to leave the question open as to the intentions of our non-human “visitors.” Like you, I am pretty sure that the powers that be have little idea what’s going on, but know how to use it to control the populace.
If some believe that the “good” actions of the “aliens” mask a more sinister agenda, I can only theorize that these intelligences may evince much of the same spectrum of philosophies and methods as we do in our interactions with each other.
April 22nd, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Perhaps a reason that “almost anyone perks up when the subject is mentioned in a relaxed setting” may be because at some level we recognize what we do when we encounter entities that are significantly less evolved than us: we control, experiment on, farm and eat them.
April 22nd, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Laura,
I could never have said it that eloquently. Very good points.
So from a therapists point of view what help is out there for the abductee to try and deal with these problems?
jess