UFOs As Metaphors
Someone will say: “I saw A UFO.” What is it that they saw?
They may have seen a light moving erratically in the sky, or they might have witnessed a silvery cylinder hovering outside their hotel room window in broad daylight. Most people will assume that this object is piloted by gray aliens sitting at some inscrutable control board. This is of course because we have been told to think this in differing ways for the past 50 years or more. The phenomenon has told us this, and more importantly, we have reinforced it for the sake of our psychological comfort. No one sees hairy dwarves, beer-can shaped robots, or one-eyed giants anymore, at least not very much.
By looking at the subject in this way, the majority of UFO researchers are buying into a convention. Perhaps the objects or entities seen are a representation of something else, and our minds do what they do so well and fill in the blanks.
Since we have heard countless stories of weird creatures stepping out of silvery disks, we can comfortably assume that this is what is going on whenever something strange is seen that seems to fall into the “UFO” category, but we have no objective proof of this. No one can produce this phenomenon on demand, or wait around for a few weeks, months, or years expecting a flying saucer to appear. Of course, something might turn up using this method, but let’s accept that the current methods of science and other ways that we gather objective information are not useful for the study of UFOs.
So we have a problem: When an unfamiliar image hits our awareness, we look to the reigning convention for answers or closure. The problem is, we accept the convention (which is sometimes a metaphor) for “reality.” Is it possible to escape this trap?
It’s only a trap if we assume that metaphors are objective reality. I am not original in stating that this sort of error has been the source of much pain and misunderstanding between humans. Religious and political systems are based on models and metaphors of that unattainable “objective reality,” and we have seen that when people mistake the model for an inviolate law or even a deity, there are sometimes violent clashes.
This is not to say that the metaphor is false, but we often use symbolism to objectify something which is intangible. In his most recent public interview Jacques Vallee said something very important just before he was cut off for a commercial. If I am remembering correctly, the quote was “What we are finding is that our universe may be a subset of something else.”
The UFOs may be a “subset of something else” as well. They may be a projection into our awareness of something that is immediately seized upon and molded by our expectations to become silvery disks and bug-headed aliens. Of course, the UFO enigma may be exactly what we expect and believe it to be, but we have no objective way of proving this as yet.
I always find myself going back to an explanation of conscious awareness put forth by remote viewer Joe McMoneagle in his 1993 book Mind Trek. McMoneagle’s words should resonate well for those who study the UFO enigma:
We reside and operate in a constantly fluctuating past of our own creation…By the time our processing is of any use to us, we are already dealing with past events. Our reality is one we in fact invent or make up as we go.
Processing Sequence as a Function of Time
TIME 0: We recognize incoming information about our current reality.
PLUS 00000: We begin to make sense of the input from our five senses.
PLUS .00001: We fish out additional information from our hard-wired brain memory modules.
PLUS.0001: We reason a little about the information and decide we lack certain essentials to make any decisions.
PLUS .001: We insert additional overlay, inaccurate assumptions, and prejudice in order to make it more palatable.
PLUS .01: We reach a conclusion regarding our surrounding physical reality.
PLUS .1: Assured of the accuracy of our reality understanding, we make corrections to our hard-wired memory, file the conclusions for quick reference in the next check to make sure nothing changes too drastically, and begin the process all over again.
Overlap these processing sequences and perform them at fifty times per second and you can see that not only is the accuracy somewhat questionable, but no matter how fast it operates, it will always be just a tad behind reality as it can be observed. We will always be subject to our own observations as well as our own belief systems.
If we accept this model as a good one for human awareness, it is no wonder that our interaction and understanding is limited and garbled with something that is not going to stop by the lab to be measured and examined. In essence, we are dealing with something that literally changes its character in lock-step with our expectations. Therefore it may be useful to look upon the UFO as a metaphor for something or a source of information which remains hidden to us for for now.
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Jan 16 2008 
January 17th, 2008 at 11:13 am
Brilliant post Greg. It not only applies to Ufology, but to any human endeavour in general.
Would there be a way to stop the process of constantly comparing the flow of information that we receive from reality against our own preconceptions and expectations?
To “stop the world” as Castañeda put it?
Strieber seems to think so, from what I read of his novel 2012 (almost done!)
January 17th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
“…science and other ways that we gather objective information are not useful for the study of UFO’s.”
I’m not so sure about that, but I get your point. Take Harley Rutledge’s 1981, “Project Identification The First Scientific Field Study of UFO Phenomena”. A dry read but he found UFO’s just by looking for them. Maybe researchers these days are more interested in lore.
Speaking of which, I’ve been fascinated by the persistence of the “Space Brother” story. Still alive and well after over 100 years. Even Doris Lessing’s “Canopus in Argos” series seemed inspired by it. Stranger still, western society appears to be heading slowly in the Space Brother direction just as “they” predicted.
January 17th, 2008 at 7:13 pm
“If we accept this model as a good one for human awareness, it is no wonder that our interaction and understanding is limited and garbled with something that is not going to stop by the lab to be measured and examined”
Models are only useful so far as they describe reality, and that is one is model that is unproven and I am not willing to accept until it is, but it is a truism that our interaction and understanding is limited and garbled with something that is not going to stop by the lab to be measured and examined. That ’something’ is called the mind. The mind is not a simple thing to figure out, because if it were that simple to figure out, we would all be simple minded. Furthermore, the mind is something that cannot yet be put in a lab to be measured or examined.
The UFO metaphor reminds me of the Central American Indians when they first saw Columbus and Cortez approach them via ship. The Indians had no concept and no word for something like a ship so they could not perceive the ships — even with something obvious to us like ‘big canoe’. One second the object was over there on the horizon, and later on when they went to look at it again, it was somewhere else on the horizon. When a ship finally pulled up to dock, the Indians could see all these people come pouring out like magic from this thing sitting in the water. People living in a ship? Unheard of! When the Indians finally interacted and understood what a ship was, they suddenly were no longer oblivious of them and could even describe them as ‘big canoes’. Interesting.
And that is why I say that when reporting UFO events, do not embellish them because they are already embellished by the witnesses. Adding or repeating drama of the event will only alienate us from the mystery even further. Just objectively describe the UFO itself — not the people who ’saw’ it, not what the people said or felt when they saw it — just the UFO itself. The message behind UFOs is for everyone, not just the people who want their five minutes of fame and fortune, so make the message for everyone. Maybe then the message finally will have some meaning.
January 17th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
euphemystic,
I’ve heard about that study. What did Ruteledge prove? I would suspect that he guessed that UFOs represented some kind of actual phenomenon which had heretofore not been recognized as such by science, and proceeded to offer his data to support this.
The problem I think is that this was as far as he could take things with the theories and instruments available.
Wikipedia says:
Observation of the unclouded night sky often revealed “pseudostars” - stationary lights camouflaged by familiar constellations. Some objects appeared to mimic the appearance of known aircraft; others violated the laws of physics. The most startling discovery was that on at least 32 recorded occasions, the movement of the lights synchronized with actions of the observers. They appeared to respond to a light being switched on and off, and to verbal or radio messages.
Amazing stuff, but how would science take this further?
January 17th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Sage,
We do have a model for the mind and how it processes things. It may be inaccurate, but we’re able to study, examine and test it, and change the model as new data and theories become available. UFOs were what I was referring to as the thing that won’t “stop by the laboratory.”
Good analogy with the Indians and their first encounters with new objects, and it does have validity in the UFO/ human equation. However, the ships were there for more than a few minutes or seconds, the Indians could board them, and they carried men just like themselves. Therefore I think it was relatively easy for them to work the new concept into their world view.
I believe that most UFO reports are filed with as much objective information as can be gathered. I still think subjective impressions should be used in addition to the objective facts, at least as close as we can get to objectivity. Unfortuantely books, movies, and other media place their own meaning on the events. The “message,” if any about UFOs may be partially embedded in our individual reactions. But I agree that this message is for all, not just UFO buffs.
January 18th, 2008 at 10:14 am
Great comment Sage
January 18th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
Re: Rutledge, I don’t think he proved anything since it was only one study. Has this experiment been repeated, if not why not? It seems simple enough and if it were successfully repeated many times then there would be lots of well documented evidence, maybe proof that UFO’s exist. Nothing fancy, no aliens, but an important step.
If there’s a proactive and sensible approach to studying the phenomena who knows, maybe they will behave more sensibly, and in any case be better understood, even if only at an elementary level.
January 18th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
Greg: I agree that time is the fundamental issue but what the West needs to realize is the ability for the future to be perceived in the present, as a vision that is “more real” than typical modern waking state. The past is also stored as an emotional or electochemical function of time - a holograph - which can also be changed.
I’ve been researching this issue a lot lately, on a forum that has had lots of enquiries about my “psychic music” analysis. Essentially time in the West, since Plato, has been defined geometrically as a “postive coupling” using symmetric-based logic. This started with Archytas but was picked up again by Descartes, Galileo and Newton whereby time was defined as speed. So twice the time meant twice the speed.
This is exactly the opposite of how time was measured in nonwestern logic. Before Plato time was measured as the INVERSE ratio of distance — not a “positive coupling.” So if a distance is twice as long the speed as frequency is half as much. So twice the frequency is 1/2 the distance for a distance or vibrating string length of 1. This is called the “law of Pythagoras” and is expressed as the diverging harmonic series.
Anyway to achieve a “positive coupling” of time, the West needs to rely on logarithmic-based math, using a “one-to-one correspondence” of letter, as geometry (side and area) to number as distance length. This is the commutative principle. The positive coupling is achieved using weights as tension so that 4 times the weight, as distance, equals twice the frequency or speed — the inverse square law.
This meant that momentum could be changed to mass as a constant by Newton but then Einstein showed that at high frequencies (speed of light) the mass changes back into momentum.
Einstein still relies on symmetric-based measurement of time but the original “inverse ratio” of distance and frequency was based on complementary opposites, not a “one-to-one correspondance” or the commutative principle. The complementary opposites shows up again in quantum physics, not just in the Uncertainty Principle, (whereby momentum times position does not equal position times momentum) but also in the Time-Frequency Uncertainty Priniciple.
The Time-Frequency Uncertainty Principle is essentially a restatement of the original “inverse ratio” Law of Pythagoras — as the frequency increases the amplitude spreads across the whole energy spectrum. But, again, this “uncertainty” is statistical and relies on a symmetrical analysis, using “divide and average” math. In contrast nonwestern harmonics uses inverse induction logic stating that the frequency of the harmonic series as the octave or 1/2 and the perfect fifth 2/3 and its complementary opposite perfect fourth or 3/4, continue to resonate through the whole energy spectrum, precisely because they are asymmetric. 2/3 is yang and 3/4 is yin in Taoist alchemy.
The logic is pure inference which means that we can infer that the source of the original or fundamental frequency is pure consciousness — beyond space and beyond time — and this consciousness is actually female, because it’s the complimentary opposite source of one or the source of the I-thought. 2/3 and 3/4 is expressed as inherent attraction because of the asymmetry.
With practice of this knowledge, through ancient exercises utilizing the complimentary harmonics of the body aka the small universe exercise and the full-lotus, etc., then a trance vision is experience which actually is precognition. There is also an immediate translation of information through electromagnetic fields processed in through the pineal gland — creating telepathy and telekinesis, as the expression of these harmonics.
Position paper #34 abstract of the Minnesota-based Center for Reichian Crypto-Anthropology, anti-copyright.
January 21st, 2008 at 1:43 am
Reminds me of a classic Jacques Valle quote,
“The visitors seem willing to conform to whatever mythology or beliefs they find; they become what we want them to be and tell us what we want to hear. Modern mythology having shifted from the magical to the scientific, it’s only logical that the visitors would pose as scientifically advanced beings from space.”