So you say, but if you had read the article(s), it wasn’t just say so, it was repeatably demonstrable experimentation and the people in those studies, just like yourself, also believed they had had their false memories all along, even before reading about the event.

Do not assume that you can reasonably explain away something you never bothered to research or read to begin with. That is one of the differences between an educated guess and an uneducated guess. It possibly indicates that you are not interested in the pursuit of truth, but in maintaining your own version of it.

Your one and only one comment on Whitley was, “Whether Whitney made up his experiances is on thing: but, all I know is he made some very valid points in ‘Communion’ that woke me up to questions of my past, especially why people fear this subject and his own confusion”. That is very possible, afterall, I’ve read the reports on “Simply reading about an event can alter memories”. They are called false memories and they are very easy to acquire.

Now as for the rest of your post, I have no idea where you are going with this in regard to Whitley. All I will say is that there is no evidence that Area 51 and all those underground bases were specifically constructed to study UFOs and ETs. You say you know the difference between imagination and reality, but I believe you cannot do that, not because of something personal about you, but because I have observed that the vast majority of people cannot do that (case in point: Global Warming, Iraq and “we don’t want the smoking gun to be an A-Bomb”, Intelligent Design, etc). There is only one reality and it supersedes all other claims of one. You say you are open to proof that you are wrong, but the problem is what you consider as “proof”. There is nothing wrong with believing in Sasquatch or UFOs or ETs or the paranormal, so long as as it is okay that no one else believes with you. When you start taking non-belief as a personal thing, there is something wrong with you then, not the non-believer.

“Good luck in your search for proof you won’t find it on the net or books”

You are right about that but at least the net and books can give me a great head start on where to go to find proof — presuming there is any to find to begin with.

Preach the word, brotha!

“Have UFOs made anybody a better person yet? UFOs is not an introspective phenomenon so it is irrelevant”.

Some alleged contactees manifested a substancial change in their belief system: they became more focused in a spiritual aspect of life, and they advocated for world peace and end of nuclear threat. The whole “space brothers” movement of the 50s & 60s is filled with such examples. So, one could argue that their experience —even if they misinterpreted it, or was a complete figment of their imagination— caused them to strive to become better persons.

“If one wants to learn some science, should they read Aesop’s Fables or Encyclopedia Brittanica? Which one is more likely to teach you some science? UFO books are no better than Aesop’s Fables for finding science.”

Tell me Sage, did your father use to read you tales of Aesop as a bedtime story, or did he choose to read to you from the Webster dictionary??

Maybe a kid who reads Aesop is later encouraged by his curiosity to learn biology and zoology. Likewise with Ufology. Many of today’s astronomers and engineers were highly inffluenced by sci-fi like Star Trek. So, how can you proclaim that nothing good can come from exposing oneself to a couple Ufology books?

“Then why can’t you name any other tool that has ever worked better than science? Maybe because there is no other?”

Art is one of the greatest tools to learn about men and the world they live in.

“What does your personal experience or emotions tell me about Vivaldi’s 4 Seasons?”

It tells you in a very objective way, that Vivaldi’s 4 Seasons is a musical composition that has the pecularity of povoking a very strong emotional response in some people, and that it could also do the same to you because a)you are not deaf, and b)you happen to be human aswell.

Would you mind answering a question Sage: What would you do if you happened to see a UFO? I mean, not a dull little light in the sky, but something cool like the object seen in LA in 1942, and since it caught you by complete surprise, you weren’t able to get any phsyical experience whatsoever, to validate your experience objectively?

It is impossible to put TOO much emphasis on science.

“Introvertive investigation is equally important; true…but if it helps YOU to be a better person, what the hell do you care?”

Then why study UFOs? Have UFOs made anybody a better person yet? UFOs is not an introspective phenomenon so it is irrelevant.

“You are in the position that no one in his right mind would ever do that, and so put judgement in everything Strieebr has to say”

I have only judged one statement by Steiber. I would believe someone could do what Whitley did, in their right mind, if there were at least one other example like that, but there are none. Unusual behaviors require unusual explanations. Notice how Whitley does not regret being sodomized, he regrets people’s (natural and expected) behaviors for his unusual confession.

If one wants to learn some science, should they read Aesop’s Fables or Encyclopedia Brittanica? Which one is more likely to teach you some science? UFO books are no better than Aesop’s Fables for finding science.

“You posit that science is the ONLY tool to learn something about the world, where I posit that is very useful, but merely one of many”

Then why can’t you name any other tool that has ever worked better than science? Maybe because there is no other?

“What can science tell me about Vivaldi’s 4 Seasons…it would probably not change one hiatus the deep emotion I experience the moment I hear the first part of ‘Spring’”

What does your personal experience or emotions tell me about Vivaldi’s 4 Seasons?

We seem not to reach an agreement about the reason why someone like Strieber would write about being sodomized. You are in the position that no one in his right mind would ever do that, and so put judgement in everything Strieebr has to say. I for one am afraid of reaching such a fundamentalist conclusion. BTW Strieber has recently writeen a new post on his blog, and from what I read and understood, he really regrets not giving double thoughts to the decission of including what he first thought was a secondary detail, but im which the rest of the world has focused is entire attention. He forever will be “the probed man”, and obviously after that no other abductee would dare make the same claim.

We should ask ourselves if such emphasis says more about ourselves and our culture, than about Whitley Strieber as an individual. Would the same have happened if Strieber was say, japanese? I’m pretty sure that if Strieber had been borne in Latin America, he would have never included that part of the experience, for the latin culture is extremely prejudist with sexual roles.

Yes, many UFO books (maybe 99% of them)have a lot of seudo-science, but THAT is precisely why you need to learn about science, to compare and make your OWN mind, outside the points of view of ufologists.

Once again we come to the same crossroads, where you posit that science is the ONLY tool to learn something about the world, where I posit that is very useful, but merely one of many. What can science tell me about Vivaldi’s 4 Seasons? If I learn all there is to know about said composition —historical time frame, metric structure, etc— it would probably not change one hiatus the deep emotion I experience the moment I hear the first part of “Spring”.

Which is exactly why we cannot rely on experience to tell us what reality is like. Ask ten different people what reality is for them and you will get ten different answers — none of them will still tell you what actual reality is like. For that you need logic and reason and a scientific methodology.

“So it can be believed that he also had a few nuts loose so why take his side on something that you and he have not experianced”

I’m not interested if Jung was nuts or not, I’m only interested in his repeatable objective observations, validated experiments, and confirmed data. You on the other hand, do not appear to be interested in objectiveness, repeatable experiments, or valid data. You seem to believe you can know reality simply by filtering through discussions about it — discarding what you don’t like and keeping what you do like to hear about it.

By the way, lots of people have imaginary friends and it is normal and healthy and many circumstances.

“Personally I am not siding with Whitney or Jung because they both probably wrote to make money”

Since you do not know that for a fact, you cannot make that judgment based on sound reason.

“The problem I see is that what ever experiances I’ve ran into or encountered have been real”

How do you know what real is or not? How is that done?

“Assuming everyones’ experiance is fake, due to no proof makes one a fool. Yet, believing everything will also do the same…so I agree with you regarding the need for proof.”

My point exactly. The only logically proper thing to do when presented with a claim given in the absence of evidence is to dismiss that claim. Factless claims are not at all as useful as fact-filled claims.

“So are you [rough] on those that have had experiances questionable to you is all BS”

No experience is questionable to me, only facts are questionable. If an experience cannot be backed up with facts, how could you ever know it was a lie, a hoax, a delusion, an illusion, a hallucination, or a fact? Without facts and reason, you will never be able to distinguish between those things and forever being chasing your tail and getting nowhere.

“By the way are you from the school that believe ‘Those that know don’t talk and those that talk don’t know’”

No, I am from the school that only believes in facts.

“By the way RPJ it appears I am not that worthy as Jung”

That is your decision, and your decision alone, to feel that way, but you will never find me judging your worth as compared to any other person — or even as compared to my own feelings.

Yes and they waited many years before talking about it and even then they did not talk in detail about getting raped and how the rape felt while the other person was inside them.

“Ask yourself this: Why did Picasso paint ‘Guernica’?”

For the same reason that people like to go to the Circus or that rotten.com exists — because people are fascinated by death and violence. Of course, that has absolutely nothing to do with Whitely getting sodomized and then immediately going out and writing a book about it and then thinking, why hasn’t anyone else ever been sodomized and then immediately gone out and wrote a book about it or described it public meetings, etc.

“The idea of linking Ufology with Alchemy WAS allegorical too, my dear Sage”

So what? It still does not change the fact that Alchemy was not a allegory but real life, whereas UFOlogy is not real life but an allegory.

“Ufology forcedly compels you to learn about…”

Nonsense. Of the hundreds of thousands of UFO books out there, maybe only three have any serious actual science in them. The vast majority of UFO books have nothing to do with any of that. I’ve seen lots of pseudo-science (anti-gravity “theories”, over-unity devices, ESP, etc) but extremely few with any science in them at all (usually historical or psychological in nature, such as Carl Jung’s FLYING SAUCERS or Thompson’s THE UFO BOOK OF LISTS).

“I think I disagree with your statement that ‘Experience that cannot be backed up with verifiable evidence, is useless’…Let’s take the example of an alcoholic that sufferes an episode of delirium, and this episode gives him such a scare that he decides not to drink alcohol again; this would be a case where a completey subjective individual experience can be beneficial, if only to the individual itself”

Delirium is a medical condition that is precisely defined and scientifically observable. And the “usefulness” of the experience is still useless to anyone but the drunkard, since it tells us nothing factual about actual reality.

“Perhaps UFO experiences are something like this”

Of course they are, if they are actual experiences and not deliberate hoaxes or lies. If primitive African natives can find meaning and purpose from a discarded Coke bottle, surely meaning and purpose is something we can find with *ANY* experience. But again, each experience will be different, as will the meaning and purpose and therefore the experience by itself will do nothing to help us understand reality, although it will help us much in understanding the psychology of people.