Walk In Someone Else’s Shoes
While talking to Peter Robbins last night on Radio Misterioso and with Nick this morning, the subject of believability came up. Asked about his 30 years of work with abduction researcher Budd Hopkins, and the wild stories that he and Hopkins had studied, Robbins said that it was easy for him to conclude that there was some sort of alien presence on the planet, and that “they” were interested in our physical and emotional makeup.
To most people, the idea of aliens coming from other planets and taking people in the dead of night for sperm samples and breeding programs seems far-fetched. It is. When someone makes a claim that is within almost anyone’s ability to experience, there are ways to check on it. UFO abductions do not fall into this category. There is no everyman yardstick to measure this against.
Yet people report strange encounters over periods of years and sometimes generations that sometimes defy conventional explanations. Where is the yardstick for perception of the anomalous? By definition, “anomalous” events are outside the ability of most people to experience on demand. Collared with this definition, abductions, UFO sightings, cryptids, ESP and ghosts are left in the “maybe” box for most people.
Those who choose to study these subjects have a huge uphill battle on their hands if they decide to convince others that things outside of our current understanding do in fact exist and are worthy of scrutiny. That is probably why many who have been looking into paranormal mysteries are either never heard from or drop out of the public eye after awhile, and some of these individuals have privately expressed some of the more profound revelations about the subject.
I once spoke to a researcher who used his own system of study to gather information and make educated guesses about what is important and what is best ignored. His method would sound very strange and unreliable to many people who consider themselves intelligent and methodical. In a sense, he was advocating inspired guessing and “non-linear deduction” as valuable tools. It wasn’t as simple as that, but the basic idea sounded a bit like evocational magick, such as the kind practiced by western occultists, although he was not a member of any group. The idea was to present your findings after the mundane and formal research has been done. The “inspired guessing” involved as much effort and background work as any normal method. It also resembled a sort of zen reasoning, inasmuch as the paranormal may be like a meta-koan for existence.
This is one example of why I got into this crazy stuff in the first place. This sort of wackiness is not taught in schools, and it shouldn’t be, but I find it fascinating and valuable in my personal quests.
Robbins (and most others) don’t work like this as far as I know, but in his case the concatenation of years of exposure to strange stories which seem to have an internal consistency will often have an effect on your ideas about reality and the world. An offhanded question from a friend or stranger about “this UFO stuff” and your beliefs is hard to answer in a way that the questioner would like to hear, and without sounding like a kook.
The problem is that the researcher has been delving into the issue for many years, and the twists of mind and personal revelations are almost impossible to explain to others who have not trodden the same path. This becomes even more difficult when people want a sound-bite version of how you come to your conclusions. Of course, this is no excuse for anything but a complete and well-researched presentation to those who are not in the choir. The flip-side of this coin are arguments with those who have fixed ideas on something they cannot prove to anyone but themselves and those who agree with them, and are driven by transparently emotional motivations. This sort of willful stupidity is particularly annoying.
Since we are dealing with subjects that are not generally agreed upon as “real,” there is perhaps no good way to convince a reasonably intelligent and unbiased person that the anomalous is worthy of serious consideration and study. All it presents us with are questions, many of which may never be answered.
That doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try, and remember that we should be looking for answers that satisfy our personal curiosity first. Issues of whether to share this publicly are up to our own discernment. Once someone goes public, they are automatically put in a position to defend themselves, which may derail the original inspiration and end up as an emotional issue or worse, a crusade.
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Jun 15 2009 
June 16th, 2009 at 5:38 am
Greg,
I just finished reading your excellent article, “The Magus of Delaware” in Dark Lore Volume III.
You may have already noticed this, but I’ll point it out just in case: While looking over the example of alien writing on page 138, channeled by Dr. Pazzaglini, I noticed the third or fourth letter from the left, on the second line, strongly resembles Hebrew letter Bet, except backwards. On the next line, a letter resembles Aleph, and on the fifth line, the script form of the letter Tzadi, but again it’s backwards. There are also several symbols which look like vowel symbols and a couple upside down, backward Reish(es) thrown in as well.
Although I could not see the drawings in the middle of the page very well, what I could see looked a lot like circuit diagrams.
Interestingly, to me anyway, one of the drawings, about a third of the way from the top, looks exactly like a doodle I repeat almost every time I’m on the phone. Maybe I’m in touch with them, too.
Sorry to be off topic.
June 17th, 2009 at 12:52 am
Excellent thoughts, Greg. I’ve caught myself over the years, beginning to accept ideas which at first I’d laughed at. Then somewhere down the road I came to the realization that not only was I not laughing anymore but that I was seeking ways to validate and support those same ideas. Then I wondered by what twisted path I’d gotten from point A to point B. Often I couldn’t exactly recreate that pathway, but I certainly could not deny I’d walked it.
Where is that fine line of demarcation between profound, useful insight, and delusion or, as I sometimes think of it, FMS (Fox Mulder Syndrome) “I want to believe”?
~Raven~
June 18th, 2009 at 9:29 am
curious,
It would not surprise me that some of the letters look like Hebrew. Pazzaglini told me about the complications of the human mind filtering messages from “outside.” The drawing you see is unfortunately reproduced in b/w, which does the image a disservice.
It is something that Mario channeled himself in his own “alien language.” He was well-versed in arcane written languages, especially those used in ritual magic.
Maybe you’re channeling the same info!
June 18th, 2009 at 9:35 am
Raven,
I really tried to put some thought into this post, and I’m glad you enjoyed it. It’s based partially on frustrations I’ve had with people who have had problems with things I’ve written, but it’s difficult to explain how I came to my conclusions without giving them a textbook on how I came to those conclusions.
So what do you do? I suppose take the info you’ve come up with and your opinions and use them for your own satisfaction and steps to personal learning. If others don’t like it, too bad. My problem is that I have to write something about it from time to time!
June 19th, 2009 at 1:48 am
Greg,
Blogging. That would make it more difficult to be discreet with some of your more…speculative, ideas.
Your post made a lot of sense to me and threw light on the process of how we get from believing point A to point B. I guess the conclusions of personal experience are what they are, and don’t always conform to Aristotialian reasoning.