 |
There
was a major marketing effort behind Communion which proved
to be very successful. True, it's a powerful book, but Communion
has also touched people who have never even read it because
it also has a powerful cover. That face on the cover has become
our society's standard for what aliens are "supposed to look
like." This standard has reached the point where any witness
that doesn't report something that looks like the cover of Communion
is dismissed as a hoaxer. People who see things that don't look
like the cover tend not to be believed by UFOlogists. |
Those sightings are not
followed up, and they don't go into the database. So, scientific analysis
tends to retrieve more and more patterns that correspond to those
patterns that we expect in the first place.
There's a self-fulfilling
prophecy involved which is very tricky.
[...]
|
I studied Greek
in school, and of course, the Greeks accepted a mythological
universe in which all of that [giants, small people and so
forth] was possible. They believed in multiple powers, some
of which were called "gods." They also accepted other kinds
of spirits. I've spent much time reading the available esoteric
literature, especially the medieval literature, where these
entities are called "elementals" and thought to be
the agents of much of the physical phenomenon. Now, of course,
we have physical laws that explain much of the phenomena so
the little beings are dismissed out of hand, but there is
a body of folklore of people who have actually seen
those beings.
I think there
is an obvious parallel with people describing UFO entities
today.
|
|
I think that the basic
breakthrough for me is to understand that the UFO phenomenon is
not a system. If it was a system, we could probably understand it.
We're very good at analyzing systems whether they're social systems,
hardware systems, or physical systems. I think we're not getting
anywhere because we need to look at a phenomena not as a system
but as a meta-system.
In other words, it's
a system that generates systems. To offer a simple analogy,
let's suppose that we were going to study a civilization that we
knew very little about. So, we get there on Saturday night and find
these crowds coming out of certain buildings. So, we ask these people,
"What did you do there?" And they say, "Oh, it was great. We saw
'Bambi'." Well, we write that down and note that it is consistent
because, basically, they all describe the same thing.
Then we go across
the street and there's another crowd coming out of another similarly
constructed building, and we ask them, "What did you see?" And they
say, "Oh, it was great. We saw this character called 'Rambo'." This
information is also consistent, but it's completely different from
what the people across the street report
So, the next step
is to go inside the buildings to check the reports for ourselves.
But all we see is a blank wall and rows of chairs facing that blank
wall. The obvious theory is a psychological theory -- these people
like to get together and their consciousnes creates myths out of
their own fantasies. Some people like to see Bambi, others like
to see Rambo, but we assume there is no physica reality for either.
We would be completely wrong in that assumption, but it would be
a logical theory to develop.
 |
People do exactly
the same thing about UFOs. They say, "It's mythology. It rose
out of the unconscious of the people at a certain time. At
certain times they like to see the Blessed Virgin Mary;
at certain times they like to see fairies, and at certain
times they like to see spacecraft.
Now, if you
go to the movies while the movie is playing, it' suddenly
different because now it is a sensory experience -- you see
it; you react! It speeds up your heart, and does all kinds
of physiological things to you. But does it mean that Bambi
exists?
|
Of course not. There
is a basic flaw in that level of analysis, and I think that's a
pitfall in which the whole of UFOlogy, especially American UFOlogy,
has fallen. There is only a first-level reading.
I think that's happening
with the abduction research being done right now. When they hypnotize
these witnesses, and they regress them to the experience, what they
get is what was on the blank screen. I don't think they get the
reality.
Instead of looking
at the screen, what I want to do is to tur around and look the other
way. When we look the other way what we see is a little hole at
the top of the wall with some light coming out. That's where I want
to go. I want to steal the key to the projectionist's booth, and
then, when everybody has gone home, I want to break in. And what
you find there is a meta-system.
It's a system of wheels
that can generate anything you want -- Bambi, Rambo, "Close Encounters"...
That's my next project; I would like to play with the projector.
One way to do that would be to interfere with the phenomenon itself.
I think if you did that you would force it to react...If it's a
control system, then there is a feedback loop somewhere. Once you
find the feedback loop then you can screw around with it.
[...]
If you can't have
war anymore, then you're faced with the terrible consequences of
long-term peace. In other words, our economi system is disorganized;
our industrial system is disorganized; the mechanism for technical
innovation is thrown out of balance, and you have to replace all
that with something else. Now, if there is an enemy coming from
outer space, then that would provide new motivations that provide
an outside focus. It would be interesting to speculate on that.
There was a report
in the fifties in a book called, "The Report From Iron Mountain."
It was a hoax, but it was a very interesting literary hoax that
people suspect was created by a sociologist or a school of sociologists.
[One of our earlier experiments in metaprogramming; designed
to impress upon the profane the need for our Most Holy National
Security -B:.B:.]
I don't know who it
was, but it was somebody who was involved in government long-term
planning. It's presented, overtly, as being the summary of a government
workshop at Iron Mountain on the impact of long-term peace. One
of the main conclusions of it is that we manufacture a hypothetical
threat from outer-space to unite the earth in order to keep innovation
going and to continue something that serves the same role as war
production but in a peaceful world.
[...]
I've been accused
of not accepting the fact that the extraterrestrials are coming.
The last thing that I published is called "Five Arguments against
the Extraterrestrial Origin of UFOs." Of course, one of the
conclusions I reach is that they (whatever they are) could be from
outer space. But they could be from anywhere and anytime. They could
be from inside this coffee pot.
If you can manipulate
time and space, then you can be from anywhere you want.
[...]
| I
feel that I could go before a committee of scientists and convince
them that there is overwhelming evidence that the UFO phenomen
exists and that it is an unrecognized, unexplained phenomenon
for science, but something that I think I could prove. My personal
contention is that the phenomenon is the result of an intelligence,
that it is a technology directed by an intelligence, and that
this intelligence is capable of manipulating space and time
in ways that we don't understand. I could convince a committee
of my peers that the phenomenon is real, that it is physical,
and that we don't understand it. I could not convince them that
my speculation is correct; there may be alternative speculations.
The essential conclusion I'm tending to is that the origin of
the phenomenon of the intelligence is not necessarily extraterrestrial. |
|
I think it's an opportunity to learn something very fundamental about
the universe because, not only is the phenomenon or technolog capable
of manipulating space and time in ways that we don't understand, it's
manipulating the psychic environment of the witness.
I tried to introduce
that idea when I wrote "Invisible College." At that time,
the UFO community was not ready for it. The New Age and the parapsychology
communities interpreted my conclusion to mean that UFOs are devas
from the dream world -- that they are not physical, or that the
physical aspect is unimportant. In truth, I think we are dealing
with something that is both technological and psychic, and seems
to be able to manipulate other dimensions.
This is neither wishful
thinking nor personal speculation on my part. It's a conclusion
that comes from interviewing critical witnesses, and then listening
to what they have to say. And what they have to say is not that
they've seen space craft coming down from the sky and then returning
to the sky.
More often, what they
have reported is that they have seen something appear on the spot,
take on a physical shape, sometimes even changing shape, and then
disappear, sometimes faster than the eye can trace. On occasion,
it will disappear in a closed space by either becoming transparent
and then vanishing or by concentrating into a single point. An example
that's often given is like turning off a television set; the image
goes "zoom!" to a single point.
I don't have a good
explanation for the question of why the technology seems to appear
in a form that uses images from our own unconscious. I'd be kidding
if I said that I understand that. There are cases of repeated observations
where the phenomenon begins by being amorphous and then starts matching
the expectations of the witnesses.
There are two ways
to deal intellectually with that: One is to say it's a phenomenon
of the brain which is very good at reading recognizable images in
amorphous things like clouds and ink blots. So, perhaps the witnesses
are getting used to this phenomenon and are starting to read things
into it. But that's not the only explanation.
It may be that the
phenomenon itself is using our reactions to it in order to turn
into something that we expect or understand. We may be carrying
a matrix of imagery that it somehow picks up. A good example of
that is Fatima. The apparitions witnessed at Fatima did not
start in 1917. They started two years before. Some of the same kids
were involved, and there were also other witnesses. What they saw
was a globe of light.
Then they saw a globe
of light with some type of being inside. Then they started calling
the being an angel, and then the angel stated communicating with
them and gave them a prayer. It developed in stages, and culminated
in 1917, but even then the virgin Mary wasn't seen by everyone who
was present
[...]
 |
There are certainly
occult groups that claim they can invoke or evoke beings
that do some of the things that UFO entities do. I've looked.
I've contacted a number of those groups. [Indeed, we at
the Lodge have compiled a sizable array of dossiers on neo-Enochian
practitioners who have enjoyed a great degree of success invoking
such "space alien extraterrestrials." -B:.B:.]
[...]
|
We know more today
than we did five years ago about the manifestations of the phenomenon.
You could say that, if it's a superior type of consciousness we're
dealing with, that consciousness is engaging us in certain
games.
They can throw whatever
phenomena they want at us, and we will not be the wiser. So, it's
like being in school and having somebody give you tests all day
long; you try to do the best you can. That's all I can do. And I
have to believe there is a way to graduate from this. How? That
depends on the kind of control system we are operating within.
There are two kinds
of control systems. There are control systems that are open, like
a university, where you take tests for what seems to be a long time,
but eventually you graduate, and go out into the real world a little
bit better equipped to deal with it.
Then there are closed
systems like jails. If I was going to build a control system, it
would be an open control system because I don't think I would derive
much pleasure out of running a jail. If I assume the UFO phenomena
represents some kind of consciousness out there, then I would also
assume it would be dealing in terms of an open system. That assumption
may be wrong. Maybe this a jail, and there is no hope. But I'm going
with the assumption that if we respond to these tests, we will learn
something. There is a feeling that I get in the course of my investigations
of being in the presence of a form of consciousness that is truly
remarkable.
That consciousness
has a great sense of absurdity, and also a great sense of
humor. The bottom line is that I feel that I've learned something
out of this whole exercise, and as long as I'm continuing to learn
something I'm going to continue to do it.
Brother Jacques at
Crowleymas
As told by Frater Robert
Anton Wilson; Holy Discordian, OTO Initiate and CAW Water Brother
in his Outstanding Masterpiece of Speculative Illumination "Cosmic
Trigger." Recalling Crowleymas (October 12) 1974, Brother Wilson
stated:
...And then Jacques
Vallee arrived.
I had wanted to talk
to Doctor Vallee for several months now and I immediately kidnapped
him into a room which the other partygoers were not informed about.
On the way, we spotted Hymenaeus Alpha (Grady McMurty), Caliph of
the Ordo Templi Orientis, and his wife, Phylis.
The Skeptic had heard
Jacques Vallee talk at a conference on Science and Spirit, sponsored
by the Theosophical Society, earlier in the year. He had taken a
new approach to the UFO mystery and was systematically feeding all
the reports of extraterrestrial contacts into a giant computer.
The computer was programmed to look for various possible repeated
patterns. Jacques said that the evidence emerging suggested to him
that the UFOs weren't extraterrestrial at all, but that they seemed
to be intelligent systems intent on convincing us they were extraterrestrial.
[Indeed, even as our Dear Brother Terence McKenna hath said,
"We are part of a symbiotic relationship with something which disguises
itself as an extraterrestrial invasion so as not to alarm us." -B:.B:.]
Now the Skeptic started
pumping Jacques about his evidence that they weren't extraterrestrial.
He started to explain that, analyzing the reports chronologically,
it appeared that They (whoever or whatever they are) always strive
to give the impression that they are something the society they
are visiting can understand. In medieval sightings, he said, they
called themselves angels; in the great 1902 flap in several states,
one of the craft spoke to a West Virginia farmer and said they were
an airship invented and flown from Kansas; in 1940s-1950s sightings,
they often said they were from Venus; since Venus has been examined
and seems incapable of supporting life, they now say they are from
another star-system in this galaxy.
"Where do you think
they come from?" I asked.
Doctor Vallee gave
the Gallic form of the classic scientific Not-Speculating-Beyond-The-Data
head-shake. "I can theorize, and theorize, endlessly," he said,
"but is it not better to just study the data more deeply and look
for clues?"
"You must have some
personal hunch," I insisted.
He gave in gracefully.
"They relate to space-time in ways for which we have, at present,
no concepts," he said. "They cannot explain to us because we are
not ready to understand."
I asked Grady McMurty
if Aleister Crowley had ever said anything to him implying the extraterrestrial
theory which Kenneth Grant, Outer Head of another Ordo Templi Orientis,
implies in his accounts of Crowley's contacts with Higher Intelligences.
"Some of the things
Aleister said to me," Grady replied carefully, "could be interpreted
as hints pointing that way." He went on to quote Crowley's aphorisms
about various of the standard entities contacted by Magick. The
Abramelin spirits, for instance, need to be watched carefully. "They
bite," Aleister explained in his best deadpan am-I-kidding-or-not?
style. The Enochian "angels," on the other hand, don't always have
to be summoned. "When you're ready, they come for you," Aleister
said flatly.
(The Enochian entities
were first contacted by Dr. John Dee in the early 17th Century.
Dr. Dee, court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth and also an important
mathematician, has been controversial from his own time to ours,
some writers regarding him as a genius of the first rank and others
as a clever lunatic According to two interesting books, "The World
Stage" and "The Rosicrucian Enlightenment," both by a most scrupulous
historian, Dr. Francis Yates, Dee was almost certainly a prime mover
in the "Illuminati" and "Rosicrucian Brotherhoods" of that time,
which played a central role in the birth of modern science. The
alleged UFOnaut from Uranus which communicated with the two Naval
Intelligence officers gave a name, AFFA, which is a word in the
"angelic" language used by the entities Dee contacted. It means
Nothing. George Hunt Williamson also got some words in "angelic"
from his Space Brothers, remember.
"The outstanding quality
of UFO contactees," Jacques Vallee said at this point, "was incoherence.
I now have grave reservations about all physical details they supply,"
he said.
"They are like people
after an auto accident. All they know is that something very serious
has happened to them." Only the fact that so many cases involve
other witnesses, who see something in the sky before the "contactee"
has his/her strange experience, justifies the assumption that what
happens is more than "subjective."
"Largely," Doctor
Vallee summarized, "they come out of it with a new perspective on
humanity. A religious perspective, in general terms. But all the
details are contradictory and confusing." He regarded green men,
purple giant men, physical craft with windows in them, etc., as
falling into the category psychologists call "substitute memory,"
always provided by the ingenious brain when the actual experience
is too shocking to be classified.
I asked how many in
the room had experienced the contact of what appeared to be Higher
Intelligence. Grady and Phylis McMurty put up their hands, as did
two young magicians from the Los Angeles area, and myself. Jacques
Vallee, curiously, looked as if he might raise his hand, but then
evidently changed his mind and did not. I said I inclined to believe
the Higher Intelligences were extraterrestrial, and asked what the
others thought.
Grady McMurty-Caliph
of the Ordo Templi Orientis said, in effect that the theory of higher
dimensions made more sense to him than the extraterrestrial theory
in terms of actual space ships entering our biosphere.
The two Los Angeles
magicians agreed.
Tom, who had been
a witch for five years and hadn't raised his hand when asked for
contactee testimony, said that the Higher Intelligences are imbedded
in our language and numbers, as the Cabalists think, and have no
other kind of existence. He added that every time he tried to explain
this he saw that people thought he was going schizophrenic and he
began to fear that they might be right, so he preferred not to talk
about it at all. Tom-who is a computer programmer by profession,
a witch only by religion-later added a bit to this, saying that
all that exists is information and coding; we only imagine we have
bodies and live in space-time dimensions.
Doctor Vallee listened
to all this with a bland smile, and did not seem to regard any of
us as mad.
(A few days later,
in discussion with the former Vacaville prison psychologist, Dr.
Wesley Hiler, I asked him what he really thought of Dr. Leary's
extraterrestrial contacts. Specifically, since he didn't regard
Leary as crazy or hallucinating, what was happening when Leary thought
he was receiving extraterrestrial communications? "Every man and
woman who reaches the higher levels of spiritual and intellectual
development," Dr. Hiler said calmly, "feels the presence of a Higher
Intelligence. Our theories are all unproven. Socrates called it
his daemon. Others call it gods or angels. Leary calls it extraterrestrial.
Maybe it's just another part of our brain, a part we usually don't
use. Who knows?")
Since everybody in
the room at this point had either had the required experience, or
was willing to speculate about it and study it objectively rather
than merely banishing it with the label "hallucination," I went
into my rap about the parallels between Leary and Wilhelm Reich.
"The attempt to destroy both Dr. Reich and Dr. Leary reached its
most intense peak right after they reported their extraterrestrial
contacts," I said. "I keep having very weird theories about what
that means..."
Grady McMurty nodded
vigorously. "That's the $64,000 question," he said emphatically.
"For years I've been asking Phylis and everybody else I know: why
does the gnosis always get busted? Every single time the energy
is raised and large-scale group illuminations are occurring, the
local branch of the Inquisition kills it dead. Why, why, why?"
Nobody had any very
conclusive ideas.
"I'll tell you what
I think," Grady said. "There's war in Heaven. The Higher
Intelligences, whoever they are, aren't all playing on the same
team. Some of them are trying to encourage our evolution to higher
levels, and some of them want to keep us stuck just where we are."
According to Grady,
some occult lodges are working with those nonhuman intelligences
who want to accelerate human evolution, but some of the others are
working with the intelligences who wish to keep us near an animal
level of awareness.
This is a standard
idea in occult circles and it can safely be stated, without exaggeration,
that every "school" or "lodge of adepts" that exists is regarded,
by some of the others, as belonging to the Black Brotherhood of
the evil path. Grady's own Ordo Templi Orientis, indeed, has been
accused of this more often than have most other occult lodges. I
have personally maintained my good cheer and staved off paranoia,
while moving among various occult groups as student or participant,
by always adhering rigidly to the standard Anglo-Saxon legal maxim
that every accused person must be regarded as innocent until proven
guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This obviously spares me a lot
of worry, but the more guarded approach is very well argued by Isaac
Bonewitz, the author of Real Magick. "Paranoid magicians
outlive the others," Isaac says
Somehow the conversation
drifted away from Grady's concept of "war in Heaven." Several times,
Grady tried to steer us back there, but each time we wandered on
to a different subject. Tom said later that he felt a presence in
the room deliberately pushing us away from that topic...
Dr. H. -- the psychiatrist
whose bad acid-trip had started the Crowleymas party off so jumpily
for me -- dropped by the next day, to thank me for "talking him
down" from his anxiety attack.
He also, it soon appeared,
wanted to tell me about his accelerating experiences with magick.
It had started over two years earlier, after an intensive seminar
at Esalen. Dr. H. suddenly found that he could see "auras." (The
aura of the human body, known to shamans and witches since time
immemorial, has been repeatedly rediscovered by scientists, most
of whom were thereupon denounced as "cranks." Franz Anton Mesmer
called it "animal magnetism," in the 16th century. In the 19th,
Baron Reichenbach called it "OD." In the 1920s, Gurvich named it
"the mytogenic ray." Wilhelm Reich rediscovered it in the 1930s,
called it "orgone energy," and was destroyed by AMA bigots who charged
that he was hallucinating it. Kirlian photography has now demonstrated
beyond all doubt that this aura exists.) Dr. H. soon found, further,
that he could use the aura as a diagnostic tool in analyzing new
patients. This experience, Leary's books, and a lecture by me on
Crowley's magick, led him to further experiments.
On a beach in Sonoma
County, after taking LSD the day before and programming an opening
of the self to higher beings or energies, Dr. H. (no longer under
the direct influence of the drug) had an experience with Something
from the sky. "It wasn't exactly a Higher Intelligence," he said
carefully, "or, at least, I didn't receive that aspect of it, if
it was Higher Intelligence. To me it was just energy. Terrible energy.
My chest was sore for hours afterward. I thought it would kill
me, but I was absolutely ecstatic and egoless at the peak of it.
If the chest-pain weren't so intense, it would have been a totally
positive experience."
(MacGregor Mathers,
Outer Head of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and the first
occult teacher of such worthies as Aleister Crowley, poet William
Butler Yeats and novelist Arthur Machen, once recorded a meeting
with the Secret Chiefs. These ambiguous entities, known in several
schools of occult training, are variously believed to be discarnate
spirits of the great Magi of the past, living Magi who can teleport
themselves about as easily as you or I telephone a friend, "angels"
in the traditional sense, or merely "beings we cannot understand."
In any case, Mathers noted that the meeting, although pleasant,
left him feeling as if he'd been "struck by lightning" and he also
suffered chest pains and extreme difficulty in breathing. Dr. Israel
Regardie has also noted that Alan Bennett, who was Crowley's chief
teacher for many years, developed asthma, a chest disease. Crowley
developed asthma himself as his contacts with the Secret Chiefs
occurred more often; and Regardie finally "caught" asthma for several
years after studying with Crowley, a condition which was only cured
when he went through the bioenergetic therapy of Wilhelm Reich.
