Flying high

This will probably not be a very well thought-out post. I'd like to present a few ideas and send then see if there's a way of stitching them together. I'm not sure if it will work.

My inspiration for this train of thought is Passport to Magonia, by Jacques Vallee,  a well-known UFO researcher who served as the model for the character played by Francois Truffaut in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The book, originally published in 1969, was initially unpopular with both skeptics and "ufologists" alike. In it, Vallee tries to associate modern-day reports of flying saucers and their occupants with much older reports of fairy folk, elves, leprechauns, angels, giants, and other "tall tales." (The subtitle, from Folklore to Flying Saucers, makes this point clear.) He sees all of these various accounts as part of a single phenomenon. As he puts it:

The phenomenon has stable, invariant features, some of which we have tried to identify and label clearly. But we have also had to note carefully the chameleon-like character of the secondary attributes of the sightings: the shapes of the objects, the appearance of their occupants, their reported statements, vary as a function of the cultural environment into which they are projected.

Vallee is clearly dubious of the assumption that flying saucers are actual physical craft that have arrived from another planet, and seems to lean toward a different hypothesis, but though he allows himself a few conjectures, he does not commit to any of them.  After recounting an event that supposedly took place near Tripoli, Libya, on October 23, 1954 at three in the morning — a farmer saw a flying craft shaped like an egg land near him, saw six men in coveralls and gas masks inside, and was hit by an electric shock when he touched the vehicle – Vallee writes:

If it were possible to make three-dimensional holograms with mass, and to project them through time, I would say this is what the farmer saw. And with that theory we could explain many of the apparitions: in numerous UFO cases and in some religious miracles, the beings appeared as three-dimensional images whose feet did not actually touch the ground. But what about the other physical actions, such as the electric shocks?

I'm not sure electric shocks are an insuperable impediment to the hypothesis; who knows what sort of capabilities a time-traveling interdimensional hologram might possess?

Later, Vallee indulges in a different conjecture:

There exists a natural phenomenon whose manifestations border on both the physical and the mental. There is a medium in which human dreams can be implemented, and this is the mechanism by which UFO events are generated, needing no superior intelligence to trigger them. This would explain the fugitivity of UFO manifestations, the alleged contact with friendly occupants, and the fact that the objects appear to keep pace with human technology and to use current symbols. The theory … also, naturally, explains the totality of religious miracles as well as ghosts and other so-called supernatural phenomena.

He does not endorse this conjecture either; he simply mentions it among several other possibilities. It strikes me as reminiscent of the super-psi hypothesis sometimes used to explain mediumship and apparitions.

The most interesting – I might even say disturbing – aspect of the book is the similarity of some of the older reports to the more contemporary UFO sightings. People in past eras reported contact with visitors, sometimes described as dwarfs or "little men," and reported seeing celestial chariots that behave very much like today's "flying saucers."  The sheer strangeness of many of these encounters from earlier centuries is matched by distinctly strange elements of some modern UFO accounts, such as one in which the occupants of a UFO baked a biscuit for their human visitor and let him eat it, or another incident in which a hapless human was brought aboard a UFO and encouraged to have conjugal relations with a not-quite-human female.

Naturally, the more outlandish stories, both past and present, can be dismissed as the products of aberrant psychology, false memories, hoaxes, or urban legends and their premodern equivalents. But perhaps it is a little too easy to simply wave away the strangest stories without further consideration. When dealing with a phenomenon that is not understood, are we really in the position to know which reports are too strange to be believed? Maybe a high degree of strangeness is exactly what we ought to expect.

In any event, Vallee  makes a compelling case that the UFO phenomenon, whatever it may consist of, is not new. The idea of UFOs as products of advanced extraterrestrial technology may be new, and the visitors today may resemble science-fiction aliens rather than leprechauns or fairies, but the basic ingredients of the standard UFO sighting can be found in much earlier reports.

So that's one thing to consider. Now here's something else.

Mediumistic communications over the past century or more have pretty consistently said that departed persons will find themselves in an earthlike environment at least for a time. The nicer neighborhoods are sometimes called Summerland, and they consist of the kind of scenery the person knew on earth, shorn of its imperfections. The explanation usually given is that Summerland is the product of the collective unconscious of the spirits inhabiting it. The scenery is taken from the earthly memories of the inhabitants. The deceased F.W.H. Myers, purportedly speaking through Geraldine Cummins, called Summerland the "Land of the Lotus Eaters," meaning a place in which people were lost in a blissful fantasy. He also called it "the realm of illusion" and said that as the spirit progressed to higher planes, the essential falseness of Summerland would become apparent.

In short, Summerland is a consensus reality created by common elements in the unconscious minds of the deceased. This is why people of different backgrounds and life experiences end up in different environments. Apache warriors of a hundred years ago don't share the same world as NASA astronauts. The Apaches have one set of earthly reminiscences to draw on, while the astronauts have a very different set. With few overlapping values, the two environments are separate and distinct. We might visualize the many different planes as a vast Venn diagram, with many different circles overlapping at different points, but no two circles sharing precisely the same space. At least in the initial phases of afterlife existence (which also includes the less desirable neighborhoods, the so-called hellish worlds that are also products of unconscious thoughts made into thought-forms), the environment is a function of material residing in the unconscious.

On earth, we like to think that there is a clear line of demarcation between the objective and the subjective, and that the world we inhabit is objective even if our experience of it is, by definition, subjective. But this line of demarcation blurs when we examine it closely. Since all experience is and must be subjective, and since we cannot know anything except by experience (either our own direct experience or our experience of learning about it from some other source), it's tempting to say that our reality is purely subjective. And yet there needs to be some distinction between the kind of subjectivity that's classified as hallucinations, madness, or simply imagination and fantasy, and the "normal" experience of everyday life. As a rule of thumb, we tend to assume that if the same experience is shared by multiple people, then it has a high degree of objectivity, while if the experience is purely personal and nobody else is able to access it, then it falls into the realm of subjectivity.

But if so — if what we call objectivity consists essentially of shared experiences — then our "objective reality" becomes something more like a "consensus reality." And in that case, it starts to look more like Summerland, which is also a consensus reality. The difference between our experience and the experience of the Summerlanders would then be only one of degree, not of kind. Their environment would be, in some way, more immediately malleable, more open to the influences of mental action, than our own. We might imagine a succession of planes of reality – perhaps "planes of experience" would be a better term – rising from the earthly level, in which there appears to be a fairly clear distinction between mind and environment, to higher levels, in which that distinction becomes increasingly ambiguous, and perhaps finally to the really rarefied levels, in which there is no such distinction, and consciousness simply is everything there is.

Now, with this in mind, we can look again at Vallee's remarks. He notes that "the shapes of the objects, the appearance of their occupants, their reported statements, vary as a function of the cultural environment into which they are projected." He likens the UFOs and their occupants to hypothetical "three-dimensional holograms with mass, [projected] through time." And he wonders if "there is a medium in which human dreams can be implemented, and this is the mechanism by which UFO events are generated." All of this seems directly relevant to the idea of a consensus reality in which our experience is bounded by parameters set by the contents of the collective unconscious mind.

This notion might be a little clearer if we consider my favorite analogy, the experience of playing a virtual-reality game. Suppose you're playing a game set in the Middle Ages. You are fully immersed in a computer-generated environment that is constructed out of a data set of possibilities. These possibilities include typically medieval features like castles, armored knights, longbows and battle axes, cowled monks and hooded wizards. But because it is a medieval game, the data set does not include such elements as 747 jumbo jets, skyscrapers, cell phones, sunglasses, or machine guns. These options are not part of the package of information that is used to construct this particular reality.

By analogy, the data set of the game corresponds to the collective consciousness of people in any particular era and culture. The game environment itself corresponds to the consensus reality of those people.

Now let's say that a different person is playing a completely different game that is linked in some way to the same computer. This other game takes place in the 21st century. Its data set includes all the things that were not included in the medieval data set (jumbo jets, skyscrapers, etc.).  Ordinarily the person playing this game would be unaware of you and your game, but suppose the other guy has sufficient computer skills to to hack his way into your game as  an uninvited visitor. He will then be able to operate in your medieval environment by projecting an avatar into it (just as you operate in the game world through your avatar).

But what kind of avatar will he project? If he's using the data set of the medieval game, he won't be able to "materialize" in any distinctly 21st-century form. In his own game he might be a pilot flying a Cessna, wearing Ray-Bans and a flight suit, and carrying a semiautomatic pistol. But when projecting himself as an avatar into the Middle Ages environment, he must construct (or have constructed for him) a "physical" appearance out of the available options. There are no Cessnas in the medieval data set, but perhaps the nearest equivalent would be a nautical vessel. There are no Ray-Bans, but there are cowls. There are no flight suits, but there is armor. There are no pistols, but there are magicians' wands.

And so your visitor, appearing in the medieval game, might seem to be a mysterious figure indeed – a cowled man in a suit of shining armor, wielding a magician's wand of great power, and operating a magical sailing ship that flies through the air!  

In short, the intruder could become part of your world only by manifesting himself in terms of the options available – the data set underlying the game, or the  shared contents of the collective consciousness, depending on how you want to look at it. 

As I said, the idea is not really developed. But it's something to think about. 

Comments

[Jack]

Are you thinking that these entities are unique and independent of our minds? Projections from the collective unconscious gets my vote

[Art]

In the book The Holographic Universe Michael Talbot says that he thought that such things as Marian visions, Leprechauns, UFOs, gnomes, ogres, etc. Sasquatch, Yetis, etc. are all holographic projections from the collective unconscious.

There is no telling how far back these memories go so what we call a Yeti or Sasquatch may very well be ancient memories of Gigantopithecus and/or Neanderthal encounters? I have long wondered why we assume that Neanderthals were as hairless as we are? To live and exist in a cold glacial climate I'm not so sure but that they may have been extremely hairy, perhaps even hairier than African Gorillas or Chimpanzees?

[Bruce L Siegel]

Interesting, Michael! I find this especially helpful:

"In short, Summerland is a consensus reality created by common elements in the unconscious minds of the deceased. This is why people of different backgrounds and life experiences end up in different environments."

I was just reading Pim van Lommel's book. He presents NDE reports from other periods of history, and remarks on how similar they are to contemporary accounts. But I was thinking just the opposite: how different, and particularly with regard to their stressing judgement by an all-powerful, external authority.

Early NDE’s warn us of eternal damnation for those whose lives don't measure up, whereas (in an age when Therapy has largely usurped Religion) this is absent from contemporary accounts, which emphasize forgiveness, growth, and *self*-evaluation.

Is it possible that *all* those ancients (as will hopefully be the case with all of us) eventually found their way to Summerland, though it may have taken a while to release the hell-vs-heaven paradigm in which they had been indoctrinated? For a variety of reasons, I think so, and your post gives me further cause.

At any rate, I find it reassuring to think this way. I haven’t exactly led the saintly life myself.

[Eric Newhill]

Michael,
Every time I think I'm enjoying a state of mind that can no longer be boggled, I get boggled. Thinking about what you said sets off the boggle alarms.

I think you make good points.

My one big problem with Vallee - besides the unfalsifiableness of his hypothesis - is that we know with a high degree of confidence that UFOs effect supposedly objective technology - like radar and cameras. For example, some of the UFO sightings recently released by the military have highly trained pilots seeing the UFO(s), which maneuvers like an intelligently guided craft, the pilots takes photos of the UFO with onboard cameras, while, simultaneously, the UFO is seen by personnel aboard Naval ships (who are trained to recognize all known aircraft) and the same UFOs are captured on radar doing exactly what the pilots say they are doing.

So that is a lot of consensus reality being impacted - and it implies that our technology (such as cameras and radar) are also somehow tied into the consensus reality and are not objective independent measurement/recording devices.

I'm actually OK with that notion, to some extent. I've seen PK and I've seen things like a watch stopping at the moment of its owner's death. I can believe that there are deceased spirits that can impact watches and other devices.

That said, the ramifications may be, as you say, deeper. The idea of living in a simulation, essentially The Matrix, really bothers me. It makes me think that someone or something must be controlling the matrix. For what purpose?

Or maybe I'm taking the analogy too far. Maybe it's as I always suspected; spiritual entities (us) drawn to like entities and building consensus realities (that are actually beyond, or outside, of the illusions called 'time" and "space" that eventually consume almost all of our free perceptual energy to the point where its all we can perceive, becoming "reality".

I've always thought that the earth dimension is a weird place. Somehow the physical plane seems to be one where "diversity" happens; often to disastrous consequences. People with different consensus realities colliding and bashing each other over the head in a war to become the dominant reality.

A need a drink

[Art]

\\"Is it possible that *all* those ancients (as will hopefully be the case with all of us) eventually found their way to Summerland, though it may have taken a while to release the hell-vs-heaven paradigm in which they had been indoctrinated?" - Bruce//
--------------------------

In Howard Storm's book, which is essentially his NDE description, "My Descent Into Death" he was attacked by demons but at the point that he calls out to God or the Light he is rescued from these demons. Howard Storm was a famous former Atheist that had an NDE when he had was on vacation in France (I think) with his wife. He died (I think) from something like some kind of stomach or intestinal inflammation. Anyway he remembered stuff from his childhood and started singing those songs and at the point he called out to the Light, or God, the Light appeared.

https://www.near-death.com/experiences/exceptional/howard-storm.html

Almost every single negative NDE I've read eventually turns positive if they last long enough. I think the negative aspects of the NDE were because they were afraid and it was projected into what they were experiencing.

In the Tibetan Book of the Dead it tells the newly dead to not be afraid of the demons they encounter because they are only projections from their own mind.

[Kris]

It seems like the Summerlands has culture etc just like we do down here. That explains the varied NDE content.

[Michael Prescott]

Eric wrote, "... we know with a high degree of confidence that UFOs effect supposedly objective technology - like radar and cameras. ... So that is a lot of consensus reality being impacted - and it implies that our technology (such as cameras and radar) are also somehow tied into the consensus reality and are not objective independent measurement/recording devices."

In this scenario there are no objective, independent devices. Radar and cameras are tied in to consensus reality because everything is tied in to consensus reality. Consensus reality = reality. There is nothing else.

From this perspective, the key point is that what we call "reality" is always our experience. Whether we experience something first-hand or by report, it exists for us only because it is part of the content of our awareness. Something entirely outside our awareness is not part of our reality. Something entirely outside anyone's awareness isn't part of any reality.

The radar systems and cameras exist as our experience of radar and cameras.

Also, the "visitors" are really part of the consensus reality, in the same way that the hacker's avatar becomes part of the game we're playing. The hacker's avatar has just as much of an effect on the game environment as any other avatar. But because it's only an avatar cobbled together from the game's preset data collection, it does not represent the form taken by the visitor in the game he usually plays, which has a different data set.

Of course, our own avatar is also dictated by our game's data set and is, in that sense, arbitrary and disposable. And the visitor's avatar in his usual game-environment is likewise a product of the available data in his program. The visitor's original game-world is just as much a product of arbitrary parameters (consensus consciousness) as our own.

What's "really" (ultimately) real is not any of the avatars or environments or even the underlying data sets and algorithms, but consciousness. Consciousness wrote the program, crunches the data, and animates the avatars. Stephen Hawking asked, "What breathes fire into the equations?" In this conjecture, consciousness does. The data (or ideas) would remain abstract if not rendered (instantiated) by consciousness.

“Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe? The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?” - Stephen Hawking

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/4104-even-if-there-is-only-one-possible-unified-theory-it

[Eric Newhill]

"In this scenario there are no objective, independent devices. Radar and cameras are tied in to consensus reality because everything is tied in to consensus reality. Consensus reality = reality. There is nothing else."

Yep. I understand. I used to be ok with that idea. In fact, I was a proponent of it. Now it bothers me; not for reason of any evidence presented to the contrary, but just because...I dunno...in my increasing old age I have narrowed down the amount of "wild" ideas I can process and maintain...or something... and this forces me to invest energy into considering more fantastic ramifications. Maybe that's it. It really is a trickster thing. It seems to me that, if true, then we can never "understand" anything because our understanding is always based on our subject minds creating reality. I guess that's what's upsetting me. At a certain age you want to believe that you've figured out a thing or two and this blasts that comfort to pieces. But, perhaps, we can rest on the knowledge that all that matters is consciousness itself and the rest is all capricious window dressing (a small solace that I could handle when young and adventurous).

On the bright side, it also means that we can build realities (as Silver Birch insists) with the power of our souls and thoughts. And now I realize that the idea bothers me because I'm tired from years of brain sucking work that have rendered me feeling like my ability to build realities is compromised - I don't want to be a to the mercy of some other people's perceptions and get sucked into their consensus reality! Unless they're really stellar people and it's more like a team environment wherein we all get to contribute something cool and beautiful (I used to believe that was kind of the goal and the truth about what happens here and, even more so, in the next world).

So there is this curmudgeon's not well thought out response and confession.

[Douglas]

Vallee's work is a classic. There's definitely something to be said that the modern stories of alien abductions are not that different to medieval accounts of fairy encounters, and fairy abductions specifically.

The strangeness factor seems to be reported in both versions of the narrative.

Another piece of evidence is that the modern UFO phenomenon has followed developments in technology.

At the turn of the 20th century, when the great airships were first built, there was a rash of 'Airship UFOs', known in the literature as 'the great airship flap'. These objects seemed to resemble airships but acted or performed in ways impossible for craft at the time.

With the later advent of biplane and rocket propulsion, there was again a wave of rocket shaped UFOs' the so called 'ghost rocket' UFO flap of the early to mid 20th century.

Then, during WW2 we have 'foo fighters' and 'ball of light' style UFOs which then evolved into the disk of the modern 'flying saucer' type from Kenneth Arnold's 1947 encounter onwards. It is this last development which is most puzzling, as there is no 'flying saucer' equivalent in use by human beings, so this must be tapping into something else, perhaps the very alien/sci fi trope brought about by the dawn of the atomic age and the space age.

I think Vallee does give a convincing case that what we're seeing is something that has always been here, perhaps some ind of parallel world which occasionally interacts with our own, and when it does it dons the guise of what is current in the cultural and technological zeitgeist of the time.

Perhaps they don't do this consciously. Rather it is a 'translation' on our part whenever artifacts and beings from this parallel world interact with ours. Their true form may be untranslatable into our own reality as they are.

[Lawrence B]

This youtube video may be of interest. There are dozens. If not hundreds, of these direct to camera testimonies of NDE experiencers, but this man's account is truly distinct and impressive. Not for its content but for how articulate and analytical he is. Unlike the majority of such accounts which speak in the language - as he points out - of the world we already know, when they talk of "going" to a "place" and of "seeing" this or that, he's very careful to explain why these experiences are often termed "ineffable"...because its not literally any of the things its described as, but a realm of thought and imagining essentially, all descriptions being merely by analogy. In the process he has observations to make about the "problem of evil", the malleability and unrealness of the physical world, psychic matters etc. His awareness of this, and his clarity of thought and description about his own experience is to me really unusual and worth listening to.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W-PLmMwl2o

[Art]

Article I just read yesterday about objective reality that I think it is related to what we are talking about here?

A quantum experiment suggests there’s no such thing as objective reality

"Physicists have long suspected that quantum mechanics allows two observers to experience different, conflicting realities. Now they’ve performed the first experiment that proves it."

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613092/a-quantum-experiment-suggests-theres-no-such-thing-as-objective-reality/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=tr_social&utm_campaign=site_visitor.unpaid.engagement&fbclid=IwAR18AF_8iDzZtRyyDx31DErvF1C0zzB7DnM_ytDDwZhWj5ZDcF2HlDYI-Zg

[Roger Knights]

Here's a mind-blowing UFO-related quote from a big recent book on Bigfoot encounters in the 1970s.
-------------------

Upstairs in his Evanston, Illinois home, Dr. J. Allen Hynek leaned back in his office chair, puffed on his pipe and explained his thinking on the theoretical presence of UFOs in our world to Quinlan.

Between the nucleus of the atom and the outside electrons there is relatively as much space as between the sun and the planets. There is a lot of space in matter. Matter is almost a vacuum really.
There could be interlocking universes. The cultists have been saying that for centuries but that’s not science.
If I had to be pressed to the wall for a hypothesis I would say we live in a multi-dimensional spacetime continuum and the typical world we see around us represents a cross-section through that.
Look at the evidence that these things are reported to do. They appear very suddenly and disappear very suddenly. The question is where are they right now? Where is this thing that visited these two in Mississippi [Pascagoula Abduction] right now physically?
Time and again I’ve had reports of where a sort of fuzzy cloud appears around them and then the whole cloud disappears. Almost like ectoplasm disappearing into another dimension.
They violate gravity. They take off with enormous acceleration without any sonic boom. A physical object can’t do that. They make right angle turns. Any object with appreciable mass can’t do that.
They behave more like holographic images, like projections, more than physical things. Yet they produce real physical effects, stop cars, frighten animals, break branches, leave marks on the ground, and in that sense they are almost like poltergeist phenomena. Nobody knows what they are but they’re pretty well documented.
That is why I say think the UFO phenomenon is a signal of another domain of nature that we haven’t explored yet.

[Cabby]

It seems to me that you're converging on Thomas Campbell's account( My Big Toe trilogy) of the metaphysical realm. He thinks of our brains as receivers capable of tuning into different data streams.

[Kris]

This video should help explain Wigner's thought experiment that Art discussed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AodzEpvzZw

[Eric Newhill]

Lawrence, "...but this man's account is truly distinct and impressive. Not for its content but for how articulate and analytical he is"

Listened to the vid. I see what you're saying, but I'd caution that the "clarity" is bound together with the content. The content is also an outlier. The man is describing a reality that is similar to what Nanci Danison - once discussed and butchered at length on this blog - was preaching.

Both describe an amoral universe in which Hitler and Mother Teresa are equal. They are, after all, just playing roles in the cosmic game. "Nobody really died". All the suffering in the concentration camps was just a temporary illusion experienced by people that had decided and agreed, pre-incarnation, to be Jewish "victims" of a Holocaust. Hitler and the "victims" were no doubt sitting around in the next world, circa 1946 earth time, laughing it up together. "Hey Adolf, remember how your Storm Troopers forced me and wife and children to the edge of a ditch full of stinking bodies and then machined gunned us? Ha Ha Ha. You slay me...I mean literally...bwaha ha ha.. you're such a card" ..."Oh but you Benjamin, the way you cried and carried on, you almost had me convinced that you were truly upset over your family's fate. Well done!"...."Cheers Adolf. Cheers Benjamin!"

You really think that's how it is?

This is in stark contrast to what the bulk of NDEs and ADCs tell us. Most of the time, the being of light, the life review and other features are very concerned with how people expressed love and truth. It is usually somewhat painful to see the impact of negative deeds and emotions on others.

IMO, a certain % of the population are psychopaths/sociopaths and, thus, a certain % of the NDE experiencing population are psychopaths/sociopaths. This whole business of, "What the heck? No one really died, right bro?" sounds horribly close to psychopathic excuse making for their inexcusable behavior - now watch as someone who gets totally bent out of shape over something as banal as Donald Trump and BS like global warming, etc comes to defend the theory proposed by the man in the video and Danison. I mean no one's really dying and everyone agreed before birth to be who and where they are in life, right? It's just their role in the big fun game. So what's the big deal?

It's a stupid facile view of the universe that no one really believes (except for psychopaths) because they don't act like they believe it (see Trump, etc, etc)

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

Eric,
I understand the point you are making about the video of Rich Kelley and I agree with you with one caveat. I think that Rich Kelley provided a rather dramatic account of his NDE and his interpretation of the meaning of it all.
Apparently he understands life to be a kind of a theatrical play where it doesn't matter what one does in life or how it all turns out, God doesn't really care and everyone and everything will be OK.

Well, maybe so!

I too have used the metaphor of a play to come to grips with what life may be and the significance of what may happen to us during our performance on stage here this time. But, I think that what Mr. Kelley is leaving out is free will. It could very well be that each life is somewhat foreordained but with free will as part of the mix, the eventual outcome, except in special cases, may not be foreordained. Just like in multiple universes there may be many possible outcomes depending on one's choices. And that's really what life is all about---choices!

I do think, however that there are individuals (actually most of us) who are destined to accomplish something on earth; often relatively unimportant from a world view but occasionally of wide import. Abraham Lincoln, for example, seemed to me to be destined to do what he did, to play the role he played in emancipation of the slaves in America and the Civil War. Could Lincoln have been redirected by his free will to a life as a poor law clerk on the Illinois prairie, or perhaps could he have committed suicide after the death of his beloved teenaged Ann Rutledge? Yes, I think so! Free Will allowed him those choices and many more.

A possible example of someone who did use his free will to go in another direction, in my opinion was Colin Powell, who probably was destined to become the first black president of the United States. He (and his wife) used their free will to not run for the presidency for various reasons and as a result, another actor stepped in to fill the roll as the first black president. That's just my fabrication of course but you understand what I mean by example.

I have found that life is easier when one follows one's destiny. Things seem to work out right! Things fall into place. Sometimes we call that luck, but I think there may be more to it than just luck. To stray from one's life plan only presents obstacles and sometimes produces a stagnant life, never accomplishing anything and never going anywhere. One is just stuck until the next go-around when another plan will be agreed upon. - AOD

[Matt Rouge]

Eric wrote,

||The man is describing a reality that is similar to what Nanci Danison - once discussed and butchered at length on this blog - was preaching.||

I had seen this video before and rewatched most of it.

His experience is indeed similar to that of Denison, and it's also similar to that of Natalie Sudman, who experienced an NDE after her vehicle was hit by a bomb in Iraq:

https://thesearchforlifeafterdeath.com/2016/08/28/the-implications-of-natalie-sudmans-unusual-near-death-experience-in-iraq/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Wjx-dF-qWs

All three have something very important in common: they didn't experience a cardiac arrest and arguably were never "dead." (Denison was never, apparently, in any danger at all but had her experience under anesthesia.)

Does that invalidate their experiences? Not at all. I think they are arguably a different type of experience, namely that of cosmic consciousness and don't actually tell us what happens to us when we die. I.e., they are not experiences of dying and beginning to move toward the Afterlife *as a continuation of their lives on earth* but rather of having their minds shift to a different perspective unrelated to their personal continuity.

All three also seem a little overconfident and overly willing to say, "This is the ultimately reality, folks, so get used to it." I don't think it's because they're psychopaths, however.

At the same time, there is a lot of overlap between their experiences and what we might call "traditional NDEs." I don't feel comfortable replacing their interpretation of things with my own just remove any contradictions. It's all quite complicated, and any Being who has the complete owner's manual is not handing it to us at this point in time. I think all we can do is continue to collect stories and see if a larger and more consistent pattern emerges.

(FWIW, I've had otherworldly and profound spiritual experiences myself that did not involve dying or any personal danger. It may be that danger can be a trigger of these and then these become thought of as NDEs because of the context.)

[Eric Newhill]

"Not at all. I think they are arguably a different type of experience, namely that of cosmic consciousness and don't actually tell us what happens to us when we die. I.e., they are not experiences of dying and beginning to move toward the Afterlife *as a continuation of their lives on earth* but rather of having their minds shift to a different perspective unrelated to their personal continuity."

Great point, Matt!

"All three also seem a little overconfident and overly willing to say, "This is the ultimately reality, folks, so get used to it." "

Yep. That hit me too.

"I don't feel comfortable replacing their interpretation of things with my own just remove any contradictions. It's all quite complicated.."

Agree. I'm just calling out that they seem to be outliers. There is something different about their cases.

I'm not saying they are psychopaths either. Just that their perspective represents an eerie similarity to what psychopaths say. If you're personally familiar with psychopaths it would cause alarm bells to go off.

[Bill Ingle]

Michael: "This will probably not be a very well thought-out post. I'd like to present a few ideas and send then see if there's a way of stitching them together. I'm not sure if it will work."

I found this clear and cogent; well done!

I also found some of it consistent with the Seth material. Per Seth, each of us continuously creates a "unique physical continuum." These are telepathically coordinated -- we agree, telepathically, on physical parameters of all that is in common in the primary personal realities that we create -- Seth's example uses a table with a glass on it and several people sitting around it, pointing out that there are actually as many tables and glasses as people, although they consciously each see but one.

Seth also discourses upon "UFOs" in several places in his published writings.

Despite my admiration for his work, the unusual "inner" way I first came across it, long ago -- I "saw" a persistent mental image of the cover of _Seth Speaks_ the first time I ever meditated -- and the fact that a few Seth quotes serve as inspiration for my meditation+ practice, I thoroughly enjoy the writings of many entirely physical authors, including Vallee -- being fond of the material is one thing; being a fanatic something else.

On the topic of UFOs and their nature, I very much wonder about the credibility of Dr. Steven Greer.

He put together a great conference held at the National Press Club in 2001 (video is easily found on-line) and has periodically offered intriguing witness interviews, but seems to have become one of those personalities who is perpetually speaking of an about to happen "disclosure" that never seems to occur.

He speaks of both physical craft and those that are more in keeping with Michael's post.

One witness interview that has always intrigued me -- but regarding physical artifacts -- is this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4hycqDNnPE

(Looking this up on YouTube, I see that Wolfe died after a vehicle hit his bicycle, in 2018. This means that any future interviews of Wolfe will require mediumistic skills.)

[Bill Ingle]

I've been looking for additional information at odd moments and came across this video, an interview of Rey Hernandez:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3EN5wvx6v

This led to a book, _Beyond UFOs: The Science of Consciousness & Contact with Non Human Intelligence (Volume 1)_ by Hernandez, Rudy Schild, and Jon Klimo,

and an organization, apparently the second foundation in which Edgar Mitchell was involved in founding (in addition to The Institute of Noetic Sciences):

FREE: "FREE is a scientific organization focused on consciousness and contact experiences. In addition to our founders, we also collaborate with nearly a dozen Ph.D level professors, scientists, neuro-scientists, and researchers."

https://www.consciousnessandcontact.org/

The "modalities" discussed in the video include areas such as NDE, OOBE, "lost time," etc., very different from the flavor of the witness testimony in Dr. Steven Greer's 2001 conference, although some of Greer's current material is perhaps closer.