A Ufological 50th
Fifty years ago this week, strange things were afoot in the skies over Britain. How do we know? Well, the now-declassified files of the Royal Air Force and the Air Ministry tell us so!
The following is extracted from a formerly “Secret” report prepared for the Air Ministry that outlines two intriguing cases covering the period 19-26 March, 1957:
A report was received from Royal Air Force Church Lawford on 26th March, 1957 of a sighting of an unusual nature. The object moved at a speed timed at exceeding 1400 mph. This in itself was unusual as the object had accelerated to this speed from a stationary position. No explanation has yet been found for this sighting but a supplementary report, including a copy of the radar plot, was requested and has been received from Church Lawford this afternoon.
Signals from Royal Air Force Stations Bempton and Lakenheath of 19th March reported unusual responses which did not resemble those from conventional aircraft. Aircraft sent to find the object made no contact with anything in the area of response. The Meteorological Office are at present trying to find whether any unusual phenomena were observed by their stations in that area.
Of course, the skeptic would say that these encounters - that were strictly non-visual - merely resulted from flaws in early radar systems. And maybe that is the answer. Then again: perhaps UFOs, whatever their origin, really were zipping around British military bases fifty years ago this week.
And if the latter scenario is the correct one, it’s still potentially troubling that the intent remains uknown.
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Mar 21 2007 
March 21st, 2007 at 5:37 pm
INTENT UNKNOWN?
[OR A COMPULSORY COURSE IN STRETCHING THE KNICKER ELASTIC OF THE MIND?]
Nick, [in what follows I’m undoubtedly teaching you, at least, how to suck eggs], but speaking of ‘Intent’, in the ‘A Structural Analysis Section’ of ‘The Teachings of Don Juan’, for instance, Carlos Castaneda makes certain observations about the purposes of what he was being taught:
“At a very early stage of my apprenticeship, don Juan made the statement…the goal of his teachings was, ‘to show how to become a man of knowledge’.
This process of becoming a man of knowledge consisted of seven concepts/’proper components’:
the matter of:
1) learning;
2) unbending intent;
3) clarity of mind;
4) strenuous labour;
5) being a warrior;
6) unceasing process;
and, [hopefully making the relevance of all this to ‘A Ufological 50th’ start
becoming apparent]
7) having an ally, i.e., a being or ‘power capable of transporting a man beyond the
boundaries of himself’, “that is, an ally…allowed one to transcend the realm of
ordinary reality.”
Castaneda then goes on to imply one of the significant stages – but also barriers - on the way to becoming a man of knowledge is attaining the level where one can perform the acts of, or even permanently become, a ‘diablero’ or ‘black magician’, i.e., an individual who, having transcended mere man of knowledge ‘theory’, has come to understand, not only is what ‘ordinary’ people take for reality nothing more than a commonly ‘agreed’ set of rules, but these rules can be disregarded, torn up, or even substituted for with rules belonging to other ‘realities’.
[For any tabloid readers unfamiliar with Castaneda but living in, say, Africa, South America in general, or Mexico in particular, the above paragraph probably reads as a common everyday statement of the fr*gg*ing obvious!]
Castaneda then states how, in theory, the possibility of becoming a man of knowledge is open to anyone, but that in practice not even the ‘fully-qualified’ man of knowledge gets to select his apprentices: rather, an ‘impersonal power’ decides, signalling its choice of ‘escogido’ by allowing the ‘chosen one’ “to perform a deed of extraordinary nature, or by creating a set of peculiar circumstances around the person”.
[Here, insert the 1st, 2nd or 3rd kind of UFO-type ‘close encounter’ of choice, not to mention any of innumerable run-ins with Nessie, Mothman, chupacabra, Bigfoot, ghosts, blah, blah, blah.]
However, even the fact of being chosen doesn’t automatically mean an escogido is guaranteed to make the grade as a man of knowledge, because man of knowledge learning isn’t so much a process as an unending quest, [cue the history of Chivalry in general, the legend of the Grail Knight in particular, not to mention the Spielberg movies ‘Close Encounters’/’Jaws’], consisting of unceasingly and tirelessly striving for the next in an ultimately unending sequence of stages, at any one of which the apprentice/candidate/student/initiate/UFO witness/paranormal experiencer could fail to make the requisite progress or even become permanently defeated, the latter signalling the permanent ending of all possibility of any further progress.
Hence the need for the man of knowledge to be permanently on the lookout for omens or continuous inexplicable – initially even to the man of knowledge himself - signs surrounding his apprentice signalling the continued favour and interest of the ‘impersonal power’ that originally selected him.
The above information is remarkable because it shows how the need for ‘fluidity’ [a sub component of 'matter 3) clarity of mind’], applies not only at the level of the disciple but continues applying - ad infinitum - even at the level of the fully-fledged man of knowledge.
The reason, according to Castaneda, being, “It created a sense of direction by giving one the feeling of being malleable and resourceful†and prevented the compulsory and involuntary nature of one’s acts – especially when confronted with the manifestations of what don Juan called Infinity - becoming imbued “with a sense of stiffness or sterilityâ€.
I could go on, of course, but the point I’m trying to make, Nick, is whilst what Castaneda wrote about concerned individuals or small groups of individuals, and whilst there are clear parallels between the experiences Castaneda underwent with don Juan and those of individual and group experiencers of the ufological or paranormal, every one of don Juan’s teachings – as with the teachings of Buddhism, Sufism, Esoteric Christianity, etc. – can be taken as being explicatory of the mysterious behaviour of UFOs, etc., when viewed as devices for what I call stretching the knicker-elastic of the mind of humanity as a collective whole.
Everything about the history of humanity as a collective screams, as soon as we give something a label we immediately become lazy and stop asking further questions about it.
Someone spots the operation of something he labels gravity, and it’s immediately collectively assumed for centuries he’s explained it: but he hasn’t, he’s only DESCRIBED it, (something that’ll almost certainly prove true of the graviton – the particle supposedly explaining gravity – if it’s ever found; and after decades of looking, it still remains undetected).
Ditto Evolution. ScienT*TS tell us it’s an indisputable scientific fact. ScienTISTS however point out the distinct difference between a process observed and the explanations FOR that process.
The point being, everything about the whole UFO/paranormal continuum seems deliberately designed to challenge human beings’ collective tendency to think they have everything tied down neat and pat.
It also seems, don Juan style, to be posing a whole host of other challenges to us, challenges we as a collective may be perfectly capable of rising to, in the way Carlos Castaneda as an individual found himself perfectly capable of rising to his own challenges, if only we – like him – could bring ourselves to sufficiently open our minds to enable ourselves to wrap our heads around what exactly those challenges are.
All of which means, Nick, if it really IS the dolphins holding out the next stage of human evolution available to us, then you’re the b*st*rd who’s holding all the rest of us back!
And all of which makes me extremely sorry to have to do this, Nick, but…Let’s ge’im, everybody! Rush the b*st*rd for our dolphin masters and overlords. But watch out, though, he’s a Norfokkerunian, which means he might try something dirty like using the gleam off his bald head to blind us!
March 21st, 2007 at 6:27 pm
Ooh, Nick, lest I forget!
You’ve got a new fan - my younger brother Adrian.
I’ve been telling him about you for a while now, and the bit about you he most approved of is your inherent hostility to playing the suit and tie game of respectable appearances and doing the done thing.
He doesn’t have that much free time to visit blogs on a regular basis though, so I bought him your movie-to-be book ‘Three Men…’ and he’s now alternating between rave reading that and performing his various endless Buddhist genuflections and chants, etc.
The thing is, I mentioned to him the other day how I’d told you about that triangular UFO me and a load of other kids saw in the early ‘Seventies.
I actually thought he’d been there at the time, but he reminded me how he’d gone back to ours earlier than normal, though he clearly remembered me coming in and excitedly telling everyone about this big black triangle just sitting there unmoving in the sky for at least half an hour, and how I’d said it might be some sort of experimental sputnik because it didn’t look like a normal sputnik, although I was pretty sure the sputniks’d been discontinued, etc., etc.
The thing is, until I mentioned it to you, I’d never mentioned it since the time it happened (until my extremely spooky daughter* came along I’d basically decided to keep all these sorts of things to myself) and so I was amazed he remembered it at all, never mind in so much detail.
I’m actually fabled for my videographic memory to remember in terrific detail stuff like what people were wearing even when I was a tiny baby - I was walking at six months and talking at one - but Adrian reckons his own visual memory has come on incredibly since he started meditating seriously.
*Once when Alana, (yes, Alana! [When her mother's pissed off with her, which is quite often, she says, much to my delight, things like, "You're your father in knickers!"]) was only just three, she suddenly turned to me with a swirling chessboard-like pattern of millions of tiny little black and white checks filling the space where her eyes should’ve been, and said, “O, by the way, Daddy, you’re not really my father. MY real daddy was a doctor and when I was seventeen he wouldn’t let me keep my baby so I killed myself!
And no, I’ve never even so much as smoked pot - I’ve never needed to!
March 24th, 2007 at 2:56 am
Alan,
Sometimes you worry me.
Jess
March 27th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
I got a headache trying to follow all the intricacies of the Castaneda stuff but man it sure was cool sounding!!!!!