Opening the door

I’ve been noodling a little more on the subject of UFOs after reading a second book by Jacques Vallee, The Invisible College, and part of a compendium of UFO reports edited by Leslie Kean, UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record.

What strikes me most strongly about the subject are the many similarities between UFO encounters and certain paranormal phenomena, such as mediumship and channeling, automatic writing, premonitions and prophecy, and even PK and ESP. There seems to be too big an overlap to be merely coincidental. Here are some of the parallels: 

1. There is often a baffling “personal” connection between UFO sightings and the people who report them. The same individual may report multiple UFO sightings over a period of years. Some people have reported that when they stopped to look at a distant UFO, it quickly approached them. Drivers who flash their headlights at a UFO sometimes see the UFO flash its lights back. Just as poltergeist phenomena are typically associated with a certain individual, or religious manifestations like the Fatima appearances of the Virgin Mary are associated with a core group of people, some UFO cases seem to revolve around a particular person or group.
2. People often report being in a state of altered consciousness during a UFO encounter, and sometimes even prior to it. They report a trancelike state, or numbness and paralysis, or sudden intense emotions like euphoria, peace and love, or crippling fear. Altered consciousness is, of course, a feature of many paranormal experiences, including trance mediumship, out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, deathbed visions, and crisis apparitions.
3. Some people have premonitions about UFOs. They dream about the encounter one or two nights before it takes place. Or they find themselves unaccountably moved to venture outside and look up at the sky, where they discover a UFO hovering there as if waiting for them.
4. Some people feel they are in communication with the occupants of UFOs. In certain cases they believe that vast knowledge has been transmitted to them in some telepathic fashion, sometimes while they were transfixed by a beam of light from the hovering vessel. In other cases they take up automatic writing or trancelike communicating in order to convey messages from the aliens. This phenomenon has obvious similarities to trance mediumship and “spirit-directed” automatic writing, as well as to reports of a download of universal knowledge during an NDE (often when transfixed by "the Light"). Another parallel is that the content of these communications is often disappointingly trite or nonsensical. Although the recipient of this knowledge believes he has been gifted with deep wisdom about the nature of reality, consciousness, and the future, the actual communications are often extremely unconvincing and even absurd, as is often (though not always) the case with other channeled messages and with some NDE prophecies. 
5. There is a dreamlike quality to many UFO accounts, which is at least superficially similar to the dreamlike narratives often recounted by people who’ve experienced OBEs and NDEs — a magical, fairytale-like quality where events unfold with the baffling logic of a dream. Many of Robert Monroe’s OBEs are of this type.
6. As with most paranormal phenomena, UFO phenomena have proven frustratingly elusive, impossible to nail down. UFOs typically register only dimly and fleetingly on radar, and in some cases they show up very faintly even in time-exposed photos, though witnesses reported the UFO’s lights as very bright. The memories of observers can be vague or contradictory, and are sometimes lost altogether and recovered only under hypnosis – a methodology that may very well introduce false memories. The physical evidence of landings is never conclusive. Critical items of evidence have been known to inexplicably disappear. There is a tricksterish quality to many of the investigations. Even those who accept the validity of many UFO reports are split on the question of whether the observed phenomena are physically real objects or occupy some other category such as thought-forms or holographic projections.
7. One fairly consistent feature of UFO sightings is that they are introduced by a humming, buzzing noise or sensation that has been compared to a swarm of bees. Humming, buzzing, and other vibrations are typically reported at the onset of OBEs and are associated with other changes of consciousness. The whole idea of “raising vibrations” is central to the terminology of spiritualism and mysticism.
8. Finally, UFO sightings tend to come in waves or “flaps.” There is a period of excitement, with many reports coming in from various areas; then the excitement dies down; sometime later, it starts up again. The same pattern is detectable in the progress of the spiritualist movement, which quickly attained astonishing popularity in the mid-19th century, with thousands of people engaged in table-tipping and automatic writing, only to die down for a while and then periodically flare up. This up-and-down trend continued through the 1920s. (Today, spiritualism has largely morphed into other forms like the channeled “higher entities” popular in the 1970s and the fascination with near-death experiences and ghost-hunting today.) The patterns of near hysteria seen in both UFO and spiritualist movements are suggestive of “social manias,” as described by Charles Mackay in his famous book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. That’s not to say there is no reality underlying either UFOs or spiritualism. Instead, what I’m getting at is that the excitement tends to come and go in repetitive fashion. At key moments, it’s as if a match has been struck to dry tinder, causing a sudden flareup of public interest and high emotion; then the flames are doused and interest subsides. 

It’s hard to account for all these similarities. A skeptic would say that the same psychological aberrations – whether individual or communal – responsible for paranormal and spiritualist beliefs are also responsible for UFO sightings, and therefore the similarities are to be expected. This, of course, discounts all evidence for the reality of both categories of phenomena. Still, there may be some truth in it.

Perhaps there’s a deep well of irrationalism, a collective unconscious, that can be tapped at certain times, and which communicates through confusing symbols: what F.W.H. Myers called “the subliminal self,” which constitutes not only the subconscious but also the superconscious mind – a higher mind to which we are ordinarily denied access.

Suppose certain persons have the ability (usually without realizing it) to focus on or manifest the contents of this subliminal self. Suppose most such manifestations require the energy of many people, just as materializations in a séance room are said to require the combined “ectoplasm” of all the sitters, as well as the medium. I’m not saying there is such a thing as ectoplasm, only that there may be some kind of power or agency that can access the subconscious/superconscious mind and reify part of its contents, at least temporarily.

It may also be the case that more and more people can access this faculty as barriers to belief are broken down. It’s been reported that when Uri Geller came on the scene with his spoon-bending displays, ordinary people who watched him on television suddenly discovered that they, too, could bend spoons. Jack Houck, who for years has hosted “PK parties” where people bring their own cutlery and learn to manipulate it via PK, has said that the energy of a group is needed to, in effect, raise the vibrations in the room, and that the group’s initial skepticism and doubt must be broken down before dramatic effects will take place. Similarly, the spread of spiritualism in the 19th century seems due, in part, to the fact that people really were getting inexplicable results – and the more results people reported, the more likely other people were to get results. As barriers to belief were broken down, the phenomena snowballed.

This does have the appearance of a social mania or mass hysteria, but it could also be seen as the escalating activation of latent powers that are ordinarily unsuspected. (In fact, one might ask whether mass hysteria in general has a paranormal component, a kind of subliminal transference of thoughts and emotions that allows a certain state of mind to spread like wildfire and override rational restraints.)

None of this addresses the actual nature of UFOs and their occupants. Are they, in fact, thought-forms generated by the collective unconscious and manifested as temporary, quasi-real entities that come and go with the speed of thought? If so, it might explain why these sightings seem to keep pace, more or less, with the cultural and technological features of the societies observing them. A raft of UFO sightings in 1897 pretty consistently involved a vessel described in terms of a rigid airship. The first actual rigid airships were not manufactured by the Zeppelin company until 1900, but in 1897 the idea was already  "in the air," so to speak, having been patented and publicized. 

Since 1947, sightings have usually involved spinning saucers, vast triangular craft, and other futuristic machines. The saucer imagery appears to have originated in a misinterpretation: a pilot said the ten unidentified objects he'd seen moved "like a saucer if you skip it across the water." He did not actually say they were saucer-shaped, but the idea caught on, and suddenly people everywhere were seeing "flying saucers." The triangular craft and other shapes seem to owe much to science-fiction illustrations and movies. 

The (relative) regularity in the physical characteristics described any given wave of UFO sightings is perhaps attributable to their common source in the collective unconscious. When rigid airships are the coming thing, people see rigid-airship UFOs. When the saucer imagery has entered the public imagination, people see saucer-shaped UFOs. 

The subliminal self might also shed light on the bizarre, irrational, dreamlike nature of many encounters and the often nonsensical behavior and statements of the “saucer people” themselves. The pseudoscientific ramblings attributed to these purportedly super-advanced spacefarers do not inspire confidence in the extraterrestrial hypothesis. But nonsense, paradox, and nightmarish or dreamlike qualities are characteristic of the unconscious mind.

And then there are the reports of hapless humans coerced into having sex with aliens – or the well-known and often lampooned accounts of abductees forced to submit to rectal probing. Suppressed sexual desires and anxieties (penetration, whether desired or feared) are a generally acknowledged feature of the unconscious mind. If UFO experiences originate in the individual or collective unconscious, it would not be surprising to find sexual overtones in them. Certainly, Freud would have expected no less.

Perhaps the subliminal self has far greater capabilities than we commonly suppose, notably the ability to get in touch with other realities or even to manifest pseudo-realities. Perhaps it takes a certain key individual, who is in some way a generator or facilitator of the phenomena, to get the ball rolling. Then, if other individuals happen to perceive the results, their own belief systems are knocked askew and they are able to contribute to the phenomenon and keep it going or even cause it to escalate. After a while, emotions die down, the mechanism (whatever it might be) is worn out, and the sightings subside – until such time as another portal to the subliminal self, another of "the doors  of perception" (to use Aldous Huxley's phrase) is opened, and another series of sightings is inaugurated.

Is this hypothesis correct? I don't know. The problem is that it attributes so much power to the collective unconscious as to call into question any sort of facts or knowledge we might claim to have. It’s much like the super-psi hypothesis, which attributes vast creative abilities to the unconscious mind, capable of weaving a convincing illusion of contact with the dead, among other things.

Like the super-psi argument, the collective-unconsciousness idea feels like a bit of a copout – an attempt to explain these phenomena by saying they all emerge from an inexhaustible, infinitely powerful, yet unknown recess of the mind. Still, it could be true.

An alternative is that UFOs and their occupants are real, independent existents that are invisible to us under ordinary circumstances, but which become perceptible when we activate our seldom-used ability to perceive other planes of reality.

Or perhaps there is no contradiction between these two possibilities. If we could see things from a higher perspective, like a Flatlander lifted off his sheet of paper and looking down at his world from above, we might see that the same phenomenon can be both a subjective, symbolic thought-form and a real, independent entity in its own right.

Actually, I suspect something like this is probably true. I also suspect that my regular mind, as opposed to my higher-dimensional subliminal self, cannot possibly make sense of it.

Comments

[Amos Oliver Doyle]

I have been waiting for someone to mention crop circles, which at one time an idea was promoted that they were made by alien life forms or UFOs. Consensus 'scientific' opinion today is that the crop circles are apparently hoaxes. (Well, probably many of them are, the scientists don't want to commit to saying that they all are.) One might agree that many of the crop circles are feats of engineering and moreover of beautiful artful design. Some people have admitted to creating the designs, although the admitted designs seem to me to be crude in design and implementation when compared to the more stellar unclaimed designs.

The crop circles may be a classic example how a phenomenon takes root in the public mind. - AOD

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/crop-circles-the-art-of-the-hoax-2524283/

[Matt Rouge]

Two great posts on a very interesting topic, Michael.

I think UFOs are actually a very important topic when it comes to the Afterlife. Why is that? Precisely because it's such a big but seemingly *unrelated* set of phenomenon.

Put another way, a very wide range of phenomena--NDEs, ADCs, mediumship, channeling, psi, etc.--seem to converge upon a common narrative of how things work. In contrast, UFOs are the outlier.

I've actually wanted to deal with this very issue in perhaps a guest post or something, but you have gotten that ball rolling very nicely.

With respect to your interpretations, I think you are being savvy. You suggest some possibilities but then warn about the "universal unconscious" being a catchall for what we don't understand.

If I had to give my best explanation, it would be this: throughout history, it's actually been the norm for myths to seem real to their believers. We have gone through a relatively short period of time in which we have interpreted the stories of people seeing gods and so on as being either 1) not actually believed by such people, i.e., "mere myths" or 2) believed but the product of primitive, superstitious minds.

But what if UFOs and associated phenomena are simply modern myths come to life in the same way that myths did so in the past? That is what I think is actually going on.

So what could possibly separate UFOs as a phenomena from Afterlife phenomena? Perhaps it is all "mere myths," and though we tell ourselves a good story about life after death and Aunt Mabel telling us she is "doing OK" over there, etc. etc., when we die we actually just go poof and that's it.

Perhaps. Or perhaps there are different levels of myth, with different levels of "solidity" and "continuity." Perhaps UFOs are like a TV show, here for some current meanings we wish to explore, whereas the physical Universe and the Afterlife are more deeply "meant" stories, the product of a much more extensive and powerful Universal Consciousness.

One may speculate...

[Eric Newhill]

Matt - "Perhaps it is all "mere myths," and though we tell ourselves a good story about life after death and Aunt Mabel telling us she is "doing OK" over there, etc. etc., when we die we actually just go poof and that's it.

Perhaps. Or perhaps there are different levels of myth, with different levels of "solidity" and "continuity"

Or perhaps there is no afterlife, but there is no current earthly life either. We are just perceptual units in a sea of infinity, creating worlds via a lock/key type mechanism (connects what is us to what is the realm of perceptual possibilities in the universe....like a simulation.

Myths are the glue that helps bind the perceptual lock and key arrangement and make solidity and meaning out of that arbitrary creation. The myth keeps it from appearing arbitrary or chaotic.

The myth is like an important string of code that presents the extracted data in a coherent format.

[Kamo]

Another thing I’m just randomly throwing out about materialists. Some skeptics and materialists like to say “Don’t believe everything you see and read on the internet. Think critically and remain skeptical!” and “Memories are usually inaccurate. Don’t rely on them.” to believers.
Yet they seem to “believe everything they read on the internet”, when it comes to seeing ‘evidence’ or ‘scientific papers’ that fit their materialistic beliefs.
They readily accept it without thinking critically. What happened to “remaining skeptical” and “questioning everything”?
They’re not immune to it. And atheist/materialists are not the only ones who use critical thinking skills, as they like to believe.
I see that behavior on the UncommonDescent comments threads and even on PsychologyToday.
I think the appropriate thing for them to say is “Question everything and remain skeptical. As long as you don’t question materialism”.

There. I just fixed it for you, atheist/materialists. You’re welcome! ;)

[Bill Ingle]

I have no direct experience with UFOs or ETs.

I wonder whether there may be three types of vehicles: 1.) Actual physical vehicles; 2.) Vessels that _appear_ to be physical in nature but likely are not; and 3.) -- closely related to 2. -- Vessels that take on genuine physical attributes within our physical reality such that we can perceive them, photos can be taken of them, etc., but
that are actually quite different from, say, a terrestrial jet or satellite, in some way that is nearly impossible for us to understand.

Judging from all I've read, there is evidence for all three types, although I've never personally examined it.

(If substantial ancient ruins actually exist on the dark side of the moon, maybe some long vanished terrestrial civilization engaged in physical "space travel" not so different from our own space efforts and got to a quite advanced stage compared to our own efforts, but none of us have any way to examine such ruins. If governments are aware of these ruins as some suggest, they have classified all information about them. What then became of those who built them? Who knows? Some channelled information suggests they continued, their DNA gradually changing in major ways, expanding their activities outwards in the solar system and then beyond it. That information is of course not the same as "solid evidence."

Occupants and creators of any of these vessels will necessarily be privy to advanced knowledge concerning the nature of time and space -- the nature of physical reality, without even touching on what we think of "advanced technology" of a physical nature.

I can imagine a great variety of such occupants and creators from any number of different "places", whether physical or some "inner dimension", but so far as anyone knows, no human has the knowledge to do this today.

What I have experienced, directly, is a being that I could perceive who was clearly from some other "place", but no vessel was involved.

This took place in 1972. I was living alone in the woods and encountered this being late at night. I had no suitable photographic equipment and no one was with me to witness this. (I can't prove that I had this experience, in other words.)

The being was the size and shape of a man and transparent -- I could see through to the woods behind it. It was as though it was made of glass, but filled with a kind of golden brown light that was evenly suffused through its body.

I seemed to know that it was aware of me. It was positioned at the center of an old curving wagon road that went up as it curved.

I was freaked and didn't approach closely, didn't ask: "Who or what are you?"

Instead, I kept walking up the curve, periodically glancing back at this being, who remained stationary, until it was out of sight.

I don't know who or what this being was. In the years afterward, I searched for any references to similar experiences, beings, etc. At one time having access to about 3-dozen folks actively experimenting with trance communication, I asked for and received "autotyped" answers.

These varied somewhat, but what they had in common was the idea that the being in question was not physical in nature but knew how to appear within physical reality -- to become sufficiently "physical" for me to see it with my physical eyes. This was accomplished, supposedly, by the being adjusting its "frequency" to a "between planes" degree.

Ten years later I had the experience mentioned in my previous comment -- I meditated for the first time and perceived an inner image of the cover of a Seth book (Seth Speaks).

I was unemployed and used some of what I learned from various Seth books (after experiencing some dramatic alterations in consciousness while doing some of the exercises found in the books) to "create" a job. The job was so demanding, however, that I had to put the Seth books away for some years.

Eventually, I refocused on Seth's teachings after subbing to the world's first Internet mailing list devoted to those teachings, in the early 90s; I interacted with other formerly solitary Seth readers, first on-line, then in person, as we began to "meet up." Many "adventures in consciousness" ensued. (Those all wound down after 9/11, as though connected with a climate of fear in the wider world. Today's "social network" enabled Seth readers are a different bunch, in many ways. One thing we learned in those vanished dot com days was the advantages made possible by pursuing consciousness altering activities in groups -- "the energy" could get "amped up" in a way that was difficult for a lone individual to attain. Fortunately, we did not create any odd cults, although I suppose that was always a possibility. Most of those involved, then, are either dead or too old to care much about such things today.)

How might any of this be possibly relevant to the topic at hand?

If investigating UFOs/ETs -- particularly those emanating from "inner space" -- were high on my list of priorities, I would convene a group, meeting physically, to "tune in." Physical meetings would be supplemented by using Skype or something similar when travel was impractical.

Seth calls physical reality "camouflage reality." He details in various ways how we create it, physically and en-mass, and provides, through his exercises, ways to penetrate it, to an extent.

Many areas and concepts are covered in his books, most of which (not all) can be connected to endless other material by both physical and non-physical authors -- the teachings are actually another form of the "perennial wisdom."

One idea that I believe is highly relevant to ETs/beings from "inner dimensions" is that of the "entity."

Per this, each of us is an "aspect" of our own entity, a kind of extension into physical reality. Our entities are not physical beings; they exist outside of time and space. They have immediate access to all of their aspects -- us and both "probable" and "reincarnational" selves.

This would be mostly useless information except that there are ways to connect with our entities, involving various methods, techniques, exercises, etc. I'd say that learning to enter a mind quieted state is the first step.

I imagine that any number of "visitors" have much in common with our own invisible entities.

[Kris]

Materialists tend to be too trusting of their own side in my experience. They rarely are familiar with actual research into parapsychology; when pushed on this they tend to say something like if it was real Randi would have paid out. ( oh please) They certainly embrace weak arguments; such as NDEs being hallucinations or embracing views such as the Jesus Myth.

[Bill Ingle]

Kris:

I have several arguments that I use when dealing with stark materialists, including some referring to the history and philosophy of science, but few of them have the patience or desire to respond -- their beliefs in "Scientism" or materialism, similar to the actual foundational assumptions, formally stated or not, of science proper are too strong; they have invested great emotion in their beliefs and tend to hold on to them no matter what. (I'd say we all do this, to an extent.)

Randi and Carl Sagan, when he was alive, held such beliefs, among many others; they were part of group including Martin Gardner that actively "dissed" any and all evidence for "psi."

Not too long ago, the U.S. government declassified documents relating to some of its "psychic" work. (Maybe this has already been discussed here -- I don't know.)

Per these, "ESP", "psychokinesis", and related phenomena exist.

Annie Jacobsen's _Phenomena: The Secret History of the U.S. Government's Investigations into Extrasensory Perception and Psychokinesis_ tells the tale.

The recent movie "Third Eye Spies" adds some color.