I think one of the interesting things to
mention about you is the fact that you
were the person that Steven Spielberg
modeled the character of a UFO
researcher on in his classic movie Close
Encounters of the Third Kind I think he
was intrigued with the idea of a French
scientist running around the United
States investigating the UFO phenomenon
you've been looking at this phenomenon
for a long time you work closely with
dr. Allen Hynek and other UFO
researchers you've written many
authoritative books and yet your
perspective on the UFO issue seems
rather unique in the sense that you
don't seem to be jumping on the
extra-terrestrial visitors bandwagon
that's what what was the main point of
disagreement with Steven Spielberg when
I met Steven Spielberg II was about
halfway through filming Close Encounters
and we had a long discussion about what
UFOs could be and of course for him the
main point of the of the movie was
entertainment and it was appropriate for
the UFOs to be extraterrestrial visitors
I think that from my own point of view
I'm going to be very disappointed if
UFOs turned out to be nothing more than
visitors from another planet because I
think that could be something much more
interesting something from another
dimension of space or time I think what
the UFO phenomenon is teaching us is
that we don't understand time in space
here are objects I think we have to call
them objects that are physical that
interact with the environment that cause
effects on the witnesses on the
psychology and the physiology of the
witnesses and leave traces on the ground
and yet are capable of appear to be
capable of manipulating time and space
in ways that go beyond what our physics
understands today in your books
particularly your most recent book
messengers of deception which is many
years old you suggest that UFOs are
deliberately trying to
manipulate our subconscious mind to
create a mythology in our culture about
themselves which is one of the reasons
that they're both physical and concrete
yet very elusive and at the same time do
you still feel that way I think to
answer that I'm not trying to evade your
question but to answer that you have to
step back a little bit farther the what
we know today about the UFO phenomenon
is considerably more than we knew twenty
years ago or ten years ago and we have
to understand it at three different
levels the first level is the physical
level and all we can say about UFOs and
the physical level is that it's a lot of
energy in a small space in the space of
this if we could take the energy of a
nuclear reactor and contain it within
this studio for example you'd have
something that would approximate what a
UFO does it's a lot of energy in a small
space emitted through light energy and
through pulsed microwave energy the
second level is what happens to
witnesses what would happen to you and
me if we were close to that source of
energy and again now we were beginning
to understand the physiological and the
psychological correlations of close
encounter and those have to do with a
loss of the sense of space loss of
orientation I've had witnesses tell me
we were driving north when they were
everybody knows they were driving south
they were disoriented at the time loss
of a sense of time people thinking that
only ten minutes went by and three hours
went by a very often effects on the skin
sunburns I think that was quote shown in
Close Encounters effects on the eyes
going from conjunctivitis to blindness
to temporary temporary blindness in some
cases sometimes you've mentioned people
have actually been healed of diseases
there have been cases where the after a
UFO close encounter it seems that the
healing process had been sped up know
there are known techniques now using
electromagnetic radiation that will heal
the fractures for example or will heal
superficial wounds on the skin but
nothing that will heal as fast as you
know the the reported effects so we're
beginning to understand at least the the
descriptions symptoms of of the exposure
to whatever UFO is and then there is a
third level which is where I were the
level I was addressing in messengers of
deception which is a social level the
impact on our culture yes the the impact
on our belief systems and at that level
and that's something that's very
difficult to to convey to the believers
in UFOs or believers in the green men
from space you know that at that level
it really doesn't matter whether UFOs
are real or not if enough people believe
that something is real then it is real
in its in its effects in social reality
in terms of the social reality in terms
of what people act according to their
beliefs and that opens a question of
whether two levels could the UFO
phenomenon be manipulating us could it
be a teaching system of some sort they
have something that we are creating
ourselves perhaps a series of images
that we are projecting I think Carl Jung
came very close to expressing that idea
in one of his books or could it be
manipulated purposely by people who have
the technology to simulate UFO sightings
and people say well of course not who
would do a thing like that well I will
remind you that during Watergate during
the Watergate investigation it was
discovered that there was a time
originated in the White House to surface
a submarine of the coast of Cuba and
paint the second coming of Christ over
the island of Cuba using Holograms which
is well within our technology today the
idea was that since there is a large
Catholic population in Cuba they would
be so upset by this
that this was saturate the communication
channels you know the telephone system
in Cuba wrong enough on invasion to take
place how interesting I never heard of
that well I think that's you know a
classic in psychological warfare but
that kind of manipulation is is well
understood and I have personally
investigated civil apparently genuine
UFO cases where there was in fact
manipulate my conclusion the conclusion
of scientists working with me was that
there was in fact a manipulation taking
place and that it was not a hoax on the
part of the witnesses but it hoax on the
part of somebody much better organized
so they're possibly all of these levels
going on simultaneously today that today
was the current technology that would be
possible one of my interests as you know
has been to look at ancient sightings
old sightings before World War two for
example when there is really no
confusion with modern technology and if
people describe say in 1925 or in 1825
and a disc flying through the air and
you know it can only have been very very
few phenomena could have produced it and
there been some well documented
sightings going back to the 19th century
for example there was starting in 1896
and going into the spring of 1897 there
was a remarkable wave of sightings of
ashes those were described as oval
objects flying through the sky with
lights on them and of course by the
people in those days could only compare
it to the originals only compare them to
airships and those objects were capable
of doing all the things that UFOs do
today including taking off very quickly
and making 90-degree turns and landing
and occupants coming out
and if any if nothing else I think this
is part of our folklore this is
something that we should be studying as
far about hello and welcome I'm Jeffrey
Mishlove throughout recorded history
human society has been haunted by
reports of unidentified flying objects
in our skies many of which have defied
all attempts at scientific explanation
or understanding what are these
phenomenon and how can they be explained
with me today is Terence Mckenna a
philosopher and thinker of note in the
area of altered states of consciousness
and alternative realities Terence is the
co-author with his brother Dennis of the
invisible landscape and also psilocybin
the magic mushroom growers guide he is a
founding member of botanical dimensions
a nonprofit organization devoted to
preserving and studying psychoactive
plants used by native cultures
throughout the world and he is also the
developer of a computer software package
called time wave zero designed to
augment interpretation of the ancient
Chinese book of prophecy the II Ching
welcome Terence it's a pleasure to be
here with you it's a pleasure to have
you here with me also you know the UFO
phenomenon is striking because it's so
bizarre it seems as if the the reports
that come in about UFOs defy any attempt
whatsoever to categorize them I guess
from my point of view I can only assume
that there are probably many different
interpretations of this event I think
given your background as a student of
shamanism and altered states of
consciousness and alternative realities
you have some unique perspectives on the
UFO phenomenon I wonder if we could get
into that material yes well the ordinary
approach to the UFOs has been to view
them as visitors or intruders from a
nearby star system that have come in
metal ships for reasons of trade or
scientific investigation or military
conquest additional reactivity or
mission high activity to the vicinity of
our planet and this
was a myth that sprang but concomitant
with the modern wave of sightings that
began shortly after World War two as
time has passed and the number of
sightings have gone from hundreds to
thousands to hundreds of thousands of
instances as the myth has fleshed itself
out with sub-themes the theme of
abduction the theme of telepathic
contact it's become much more difficult
to fit all the known facts into the
simple model of spacefaring visitors
from another world so what we are left
with then are a number of more exotic
competing theories in the so-called
postmodern phase of thinking about the
UFO probably the best-known of these
alternative explanations was the one
pioneered by the Swiss psychologist Carl
Jung who in 1953 wrote a book called
flying saucers a modern myth of things
seen in the sky and Jung was at great
pains to without passing judgment on the
reality of the saucers of the things
seen to interpret them psychologically
to interpret them as one would interpret
a dream and he saw in their circular
form in their scintillating shining
alchemical brilliance a symbol of human
wholeness and felt that they were a
symbol of our collective yearning for a
kind of totality and individuation now
in a way this kind of explanation is
very satisfying however it is not
satisfying to the person who has
immediately undergone a very strange and
a very real seeming experience unless
such a person we're told great messages
of hope for the planet well and this is
a persistent part of the flying saucers
that people who have close contact with
the saucers return with messages of
universal brotherhood and benevolence
with the stories of the beneficent
hegemony of organized intelligence we're
wiser older worlds and civilizations
help younger and and less mature worlds
toward a kind of galactic citizenship
however that's just one thread of the
evidence it's one thread of the evidence
and it isn't really well supported by
the evidence Jacques Vallee who is one
of the foremost commentators on the
phenomenon has been at great pains to
point out that with the Flying Saucer
phenomenon we're dealing with thousands
and thousands of incidents per year
throughout the world
it's very hard with even at our own
primitive level of scientific
sophistication we can learn a great deal
about a planet by sending a single probe
to that planet
what kind of scientific program of
Investigation requires thousands and
thousands of appearances and if we make
the assumption that not all appearances
are observed but that in fact only a
small number are observed then the
number of appearances that must actually
be going on soars toward an astronomical
number suggest we're dealing with an
inner penetration by an alien dimension
on an almost industrial scale of course
a single probe could cause thousands of
appearances if it were of a
sophisticated enough nature that's right
the approach that I have taken that has
character mark characterized my work
with this phenomenon was first of all to
say we have not carried out a
sufficiently in-depth survey of the life
already on this planet to be able to say
that at some time in the past life did
not arrive here and thrive here that is
not part
of the general heritage of life on this
planet but that is somehow coming in
from the outside my candidate for that
kind of an intrusive extraterrestrial
would be probably a mushroom of some
sort or a spare bore a spore bearing
life form because spores are very
impervious to low temperatures and high
radiation the kind of environment met
with in outer space in other words a
mushroom spork who conceivably even waft
itself up through the atmosphere of our
planet and enter into empty space oh
there's no question but what this is
happening that through what's called
Brownian motion which is sort of random
percolation spores do reach the outer
edge of our atmosphere and they're in
the presence of cosmic rays and meteors
and rare highly energetic events
occasionally a very small percentage of
these biological objects are wafted into
space we even possess meteorites that
are believed to be pieces of the Martian
surface thrown out by impacts on the
Martian surface of asteroid or material
in fact I think part of the grappling
with the UFO mystery is going to lead to
the conclusion that space is not an
impermeable and insurmountable barrier
to biology that in fact planets are
Islands and life does occasionally wash
in from distant places and if conditions
are correct can take hold however let me
say in the UFO phenomenon we are dealing
or we presuppose that we are dealing not
simply with phenomenon of
extraterrestrial biology but with the
phenomenon of extraterrestrial
intelligence and this is a hair hackle
raising notion and with more than
mushroom spores we're dealing with more
than mushroom spores at least as
ordinarily conceived and I
creations out of hollywood condition
sometimes are long enough and varied
enough that I admit that the real task
with extraterrestrial intelligence will
be to recognize it you see we have no
conception of how species bound our
images of life and biology are this is a
place where we have never been asked to
confront to degree the monkey within us
is channeled our expectations and
perceptions well it is the case that on
this planet virtually all known life
forms are based on the same DNA molecule
well except that have all life-forms
been examined to see to what degree they
deviate percentage-wise from let's say a
standard DNA molecule the answer is no
the sequencing of DNA is a very
expensive process and is only carried
out on laboratory organisms with an
extensive history of involvement in
medical research like e.coli or or the
ordinary laboratory rat no there's a
great deal we don't know about life on
Earth we don't know when the fungi
entered into the evolutionary chain we
don't know what kind of intelligence is
really possessed by the cephalopods the
shell-less mollusks that include the
octopi the intelligence of dolphins has
been studied by lily and others the
intelligence of the large primates other
than man one way of looking at nature is
that it is entirely
Quist intent that DNA is in fact a way
of uttering protein syntactical
structures into matter and it was at all
of nature is like a poem
yes nature is a communicating system of
some sort and the the problem that we
have is to transcend cultural languages
historically created languages with very
limited applications and instead fall
into phase with the communication
systems that nature has placed all
around us one possible view of the
Flying Saucer is that it is a kind of
projection from the consciousness of the
planet that it is Gaia that it is in
fact a kind of alchemical object
haunting human historical time with a
symbol of totality the kind of totality
that our religions and our mystical
yearnings are so at pains to concretize
for us but unless we as egocentric
beings clarify our relationship to the
unconscious and I think the Flying
Saucer is going to remain
quintessentially mysterious and this was
Janos view one of the things that Jung
pointed out in this book is that we must
pay attention to the research which dr.
JB Rhine was doing at that time at Duke
University in ESP and psychokinesis and
that even if UFOs had a physical reality
could be photographed or could be
weighed and measured but they still
might in some manner be projections of
the human mind oh yes this is an
important point to make which the Flying
Saucer people are forever
misunderstanding and that is saying that
the Flying Saucer is a psychic object
does not mean that it is not a physical
object a young and mysterium canyon the
illness is at great pains to say that
the realm of the psychic and the realm
of the physical
in a strange kind of never-never-land
that we have yet to create the
intellectual tools to explore this is
where the mystery of synchronicity is
going to come to rest the mystery of all
kinds of paranormal activity on the part
of human beings and the mystery of the
Flying Saucer it's interesting you see
that if you take the broad world of the
so-called mysteries parapsychological
shamanic extraterrestrials so forth and
hypothesize another spatial dimension
one more spatial dimension then suddenly
all these mysteries become trivial they
are easily done locked boxes our open
future events are discerned lost objects
are found this sort of thing becomes
quite the ordinary run of things if we
hypothesize dimensions hidden from
ordinary of course there's serious work
at this point in the field of the
unified field theory in physics to
postulate other dimensions of space then
then we normally think of that's right
the current physical models of the
universe require 11 dimensions 11
integrated variables to describe and
that's physical models in the universe
if we then turn our attention to mind
and realize that having no definition of
what mind is why then is there any
mystery in the fact that we have no
definition of what the UFO is the mind
is present at hand in every conscious
moment it has been our constant
companion for fifty thousand years and
we haven't a clue as to what it is so
therefore a manifestation of the other
the super ego or the extra-terrestrial
other like the UFO is it is not
surprising that it is a mystery
I always hark back to the words of JBS
Haldane the great british enzym on
just who said reality is not only
stranger than we suppose it may be
stranger than we can suppose
well that that suggests to me that if we
look at some of the most bizarre most
anomalous cases that we have such as
UFOs and we begin to ask ourselves not
so much what are they because that's a
mystery but what is their function how
are they affecting us that's like
holding up a mirror to ourselves and it
tells us a great deal about the basic
mystery of our mind and yes this is the
so-called postmodern approach to ask the
question not what is the UFO but what is
it doing to us and Jacques Vallee
pioneered this approach and the answer
is fascinating what the UFOs are doing
to us to global society is they are
eroding faith in science by casting
directly in the path of science a kind
of gauntlet to challenge crack this
almost as though the cosmic giggle had
shown up at the bachelor party of
science to spoil the bash in the same
way that the resurrection of Christ
posed a tremendous problem for the
intellectuals of late Roman antiquity
because they had no place in their
worldview for someone rising from the
dead
they were Greek materialists atomists
essentially in that same way the UFO
challenges the assumptions of science
and I think in that way in that sense
Jung was really on to something when he
saw it as coming from the unconscious it
is like an object coming from the
unconscious with a compensatory function
to turn us away from the rational and
toward the intuitive to turn us away
from the paternalistic Apollonian solar
masculine view of things and toward a
kind of watery
lunar mysterious intuitively felt
feminine force almost as though the the
UFO is a manifestation of Gaia as mother
goddess science as the proudest part in
the word erection of the rational mind
then is challenged by something from an
entirely other dimension an entirely
other realm that concretize us for us
the culture crisis and that's why I've
gotten into UFOs I think they are
important for a resolution of the
culture crisis they concretize the
struggle between the paternalistic
masculine and the lunar feminine to
between a Dominator society and the kind
of partnership society that we require
to survive and yet it seems as if that
challenge is not a direct confrontation
it's is Valley points out the UFOs are
operating almost at the mythological
level of our culture they're they're not
landing in the white house they're
they're not really challenging the
military or NASA no they're very
mercurial very watery when you reach out
toward them there is nothing there what
they chiefly have or have become is an
intellectual force in human thinking
about the future but when you reach out
to grasp the hardware to read the
message to meet the alien there is
nothing there I've come to the
conclusion both from talking to
contactees and having had a contact II
experience that whatever lies behind the
UFO mystery it is a force which can
literally do anything so it is fruitless
to talk about the size of the objects or
their composition or color or the size
of the entities and their dress and
weapons and accoutrements because it can
appear literally any way it wants to it
can appear as the Virgin Mary it can
appear as Galacta Rhian overlords it can
appear as gnomes elves sprites this sort
of thing it is
not to be caught in the rational net
know your description is strikingly
actually give parallel to the to the
with one exception to the view of many
fundamentalist Christians who say this
but UFO stuff is all the work of the
devil well I don't know about the work
of the devil Young's criticism of
Christianity was that it had not made a
place for what he called the shadow and
he said the production of the
productions of Christian culture will
always be neurotic because the shadow
has not been included so there's a lack
of psychic balance
perhaps the UFO carries compensatory
psychic energy from the realm of the
shadow some people are very frightened
of it some people see it as an almost
millenarian salvation elope the savior
of mankind I think that it's very
powerful that it haunts time like a
ghost that the Messianic anticipations
of fundamentalist Christianity and Islam
are in fact a picking up on the shock
wave that the image of the Flying Saucer
casts backward through time that this
image of the New Jerusalem the four
gated city descending from the sky to
whisk be elective a to a better place is
a kind of prophecy yearning toward a
fact in the act of becoming you know hit
Christianity and Islam are the most
history obsessed of all the world's
major religion along with Judaism along
with Judaism and all three of them have
this notion of the transcendental object
at the end of time and alchemy in the
16th century was an outbreak of an
expectation of a transcendental object
in the nearby here and now there's a
later point of history yes would cure
all ills confer longevity fertility
virility and more time
and I think that the Flying Saucer is an
airborne Philosopher's Stone the Suffolk
Hydra lift of Paracelsus haunting the
skies of modern America with a promise
of man Dalek cohesion for the future
that science has not given us science
has been a very sadly disappointing
religion in the realm of the heart the
Flying Saucer comes from the heart but
it bears the very strange energy of the
other in its manifestation as planetary
goddess I'm often struck by the psychic
powers that seem to be associated with
people who have had intensive encounters
with UFOs
that's right the thing research on many
of these cases myself it's both material
and psychological it anticipates the
future it seems as the memories of the
contactees are transparent to this force
it can reach deep into their lives and
confront them with information taken
from forgotten incidents in their lives
it is an awesome kind of force that
transcends space and time for the
individual now it may be that we will
never have a general theory of flying
saucers it may be that this is something
that addresses the individual in the
same way that I don't think we will ever
have a general theory of falling in love
that too is something which addresses
the individual we have been mistaken to
expect Time magazine or the New York
Times to explain the flying saucers to
us they will not explain the flying
saucers to us any more than they will
explain ourselves to us this is
something that haunts the membrane of
experience very close in to the
experiencing ego and therefore it is
threatening and this is one of the
reasons that I think it relates to the
psychedelic experience
because the psychedelic experience is
like a UFO encounter on demand you know
it's where the will of the person having
the experience enters him they decide to
have this curious Cemetery breaking kind
of experience what I have tried to say
to the UFO community is that we will not
really have a deep understanding of what
the contact experience is until we
include data from the psychedelic
experience as a legitimate data to be
included when looking at the problem
well you have talked earlier about our
need to make an extensive survey of all
of the biological manifestations on our
planet it almost seems that in order to
really get a handle on UFO phenomenon we
need to make a comparable survey of all
of the psychological manifestations of
which we are aware and it seems to me
that it's some level you would agree
with me the the UFO phenomena is one of
our psychological manifestations yes I
agree you know got about two minutes
left so if we can sort of summarize your
view in that regard yes I think that the
UFO phenomenon is a modern manifestation
of a phenomenon which has been with us
for thousands of years
that is the partial penetration of our
own cultural space by others Pixies
elves fairies sprites demons whatever
you wish to call them angels angels in
the past we had a professional class for
dealing with these go-betweens we called
the professional class shamans and they
mitigated these comings and goings and
had a lure and a mythology about them as
we have lost contact with our shamanic
roots the things which go on at a low
frequency out in the wilderness and
deserts of this planet have become to
seem like us either like invasions from
another world or virtual impose
abilities I think that the Flying Saucer
is knocking on our door to remind us of
the depth and strangeness and animate
intelligence that is resident with us in
nature on this planet Terence Mckenna
it's been a very eloquent presentation
extremely thought-provoking thank you
very much for being with me it's always
a pleasure to talk with you and thank
you very much for being with us
I'm bubbling with questions to ask you
but the the first one that I want to
come back to it you use the word
spacecraft how would how would they or
you know that what they saw was actually
a spacecraft often the person has not
actually seen the spacecraft but often
they have a number of these cases when
they're floated through the wall of
their home through the window through
the door again this so many of the
details of these experiences make no
sense in our and what the Newtonian
Cartesian Western whether you want to
call it notions of reality and yet the
stories are consistently described with
again the self-critical attitude that
the people have and they may see a
typical unidentified flying object a
saucer shaped or cigar shaped vehicle on
the ground of their home emanating
bright light so they may be taken by a
small craft up into the sky to a kind of
mothership which they see very clearly
so so many of them actually see the UFOs
that it's and the insides are so
uniformly described as rounded curved
walls and complicated instrument panels
that that it's become clear that it's
just some kind of craft in the sky which
they would naturally call a spacecraft I
think people would naturally draw that
inference but to me it's still an
inference I think you might agree we
don't really know exactly what these
things are you fair enough I mean you
could have
as we do have very this gets really into
the the way of how we know anything yes
our use of language but we call
something which is seen in the sky and
which seems to be moving from one place
to another we call it a spacecraft now
again this has to do with where our own
technology has come to it could be
created as a virtual reality and is
similar appear similar to what we
already know as airplane or certain type
of aerospace vehicles so we call it a
spacecraft but again you know if you
want to get down to the very core of the
way language structures reality for us
you could even question whether their
spacecraft it isn't it the case that
you've described in your book cases that
were reported let's say a hundred years
ago back in the nineteenth century of
people who talked about airships well
the the articles there by Jerome Clarke
who's been a student of the UFO
phenomena for many years and he went
back and looked into the newspaper
accounts of the airship craze of the
last decade of the of the nineteenth
century and many of those vehicles would
look kind of like balloons or looked
like the technology of the time but he
went further than that he actually did
an exhaustive search of all of the
photographs he could find in the
descriptions and lo and behold many of
them did appear very much like the
current modern-day UFO but the people of
the time did not have in the in our
culture the technological knowledge to
actually see them as what they were
so he's concluded that these were
probably UFOs not so different from what
we're seeing now but our perceptual
development hadn't reached the point
where they could be perceived the way we
now can see things in this guy more or
less as we at least think they are and
again you're raising the question
whether even that's a actual or
constructed reality well we could take
this in so many different
let's let's go back further into the
past because the the accounts don't just
begin even in the 19th century do they
well again if you go back into the early
times you know Ezekiel's wheel which is
now many UFO's I think that was a UFO or
chariot seemed in the sky or you go back
to the fairies that kidnapped people in
Ireland and other countries there is a
some similarities but you're dealing
there with oral traditions and it's it's
an easy leap of mind to say well we've
had this going on all through the
centuries and through the millennia even
the problem with that is the methods of
knowing then we're so different you you
need to compare a phenomenon you have to
use more or less the same investigative
method and our methods now as well as of
course our perceptual our perceptual
capabilities are so different for
example just take the matter of clinical
study the people that were reporting
those experiences weren't being studied
clinically now we have a tradition of
when somebody's had an unusual
experience or something that doesn't fit
or you want to investigate you talk to
that person in great detail you get
other witnesses what they've seen so we
have a kind of body of investigative ooh
tradition now that can document what's
going on so from that point of view this
appears to have some distinct features
and it also appears now I'm getting more
into my own kind of sense of this that
this thing is entering into our reality
in a more hard-edged way you know
there's that the first case that we have
is the Betty and Barney Hill cases
interracial couple that was coming back
from their vacation in Montreal and they
saw a craft that emanated this bright
light they actually saw the creatures in
the craft they were confronted by these
creatures they were terrified
they were taken in each reports various
experiments that were done on their
bodies skin scrapings proteins and the
the accounts compared and since that
time more and more cases are being
reported and it appears
the phenomenon is occurring with greater
frequency now than in the past but again
we don't know that their reasons if
that's so why it might be so but we're
still trying to establish how distinct
is this from earlier report the Betty
and Barney Hill case was made into a
motion picture and a very popular book
back in the 1960s that's right and the
movie came out in this in the mid 70s
with James Earl Jones playing the black
bunny hill yes well you're a Harvard
trained psychiatrist or a professor of
psychiatry at Harvard to be exact we
haven't gone where your training was but
you mentioned that when you first heard
about Budd Hopkins who was a an amateur
researcher in into that phenomenon you
wondered whether he was crazy and now
you're doing clinical work yourself how
do your colleagues accept this again
there's no generic response here the the
range is extraordinary as I have on the
one hand a very prominent astrophysicist
at Harvard who has become a kind of
comrade-in-arms colleague about this and
he's actually going on record saying
that he believes that the work of people
like Ken ring in my cells works with a
near-death experience and myself in this
area will teach us more about the nature
of the cosmos than anything scientists
will discover in the next twenty years
using telescopes to explore the heavens
it goes from on on that and all the way
to the acting chair of my department it
says I wish John weren't doing this so
in between our all kinds of people who
array themselves from letters of support
from psychiatrists I've seen these cases
or continued it this is good work to
people that think I've gone off some
kind of deep end mm-hmm well the obvious
counter hypothesis would would seem to
me to be sort of a sociological one that
this is a myth in the making that there
there's there's a belief system that is
somehow being engendered in the
subconscious mind within
within the culture itself perhaps like a
new religion or some other sort of
social movement if that's really not a
counter hypothesis that's quite
consistent with what I'm finding because
increasingly folklorists like Peter Roy
savage at Thomas Bullard Eddie Bullard
are looking back now into myth making
yes and seeing what was the experiential
reality that was the kernel of truth in
the physical world it was whether people
actually see an experience from which
myths came near this notion in the West
that the myth is a kind of invented
imagination which comes out of the
psyche in some way which is a a very
kind of culture centered notion of myth
was a cultural center in terms of that's
what our culture would tend to see right
but actually what they're finding is
that there may actually have been some
kind of visitations or that there are
actual physical basis for myth making so
in that sense this may be indeed a myth
the religion could evolve from this but
that doesn't go against the fact that
something physical something actual is
occurring in our material universe
John Mackey the author of abduction dr.
John Mack to thank Chris for taking this
on and being a willing to show up here
in Boston and with a couple of
disreputable characters like bud and me
and shows his courage and pioneering
spirit I also want to express my
appreciation to bud for I don't know if
I really feel this way actually I'm not
so sure I am appreciate that he
introduced me to this field I mean it's
been a lot of trouble actually but I
have deep fondness and admiration for
his pioneering role and spirit in this
well what I'd like to see happen here
tonight is that we really deepen some
questions I happen to be very interested
in the reality question or the
ontological question as its formally
called in in philosophy and I hope to
arouse and deepen your curiosity about
all of this now what happened to me with
with bud is that somebody asked if I
wanted to meet him this was the fall of
1989 and I had never heard of him and
they said well he's this guy that works
with people who think they've been taken
by aliens into spacecraft and I said he
must be crazy if he believes that and
this must be some new form of psychosis
well I had a couple of three hours and I
went to see him and I liked him and he
seemed sincere he didn't seem crazy at
all
and he was telling me about people who
were telling stories that they didn't
believe themselves that they were
questioning they sounded like pretty
healthy people which I've seen now now
worked intensively with about a hundred
and thirty of these people is if the
stories are consistent they are
described with intense feeling
appropriate self-doubt they are shocked
when they hear other people have had the
same experiences because that tends to
affirm that it's real they have nothing
to gain by this and they don't seem to
fall into any category whatsoever and as
I've gone more deeply into this this is
held up now the fact
what they are describing isn't possible
in our reality is not my fault the what
you then have a choice of trying to
stretch what you might consider to be
possible at that point first you have
the event level element now I say I'm I
believe overall this is a phenomenon of
enormous complexity meaning and value
for understanding of ourselves who we
are in the universe and we're just
beginning to grasp what this is about so
there aren't any answers here tonight
just deepening questions first is the
event level aspect this is the sort of
traumatic part of this mixture of
subjective and objective elements that
have to do with the intrusive rape like
aspect for some people the physical
evidence is there it's part of the
picture and it works together with the
subjective evidence to create this
picture the trauma is not just what has
happened it's also what I call
ontological shock in other words to the
person having that experience this is no
more possible for them than it is for us
so we struggle together with that
question
the second important element from in my
perspective is the information that
occurs and a great deal of this does
have to do with the ecological aspect
now there's the showing of the images
panorama of the planet destroyed vast
pollution the earth destroyed on
television like monitors through the
eyes in voice mind-to-mind communication
by the beans and this has an enormous
impact on the consciousness of the
individuals and so much so that it
affects deeply their choices in their
lives and I do believe this is not just
deception but I believe it's an
important part of the phenomenon itself
and I see this in case after case next
you have what I call the spiritual
aspect of this phenomenon this is the
sense that people have that they're
somehow being open to source returning
to their what they call home with a
capital H the the spiritual origin of
all that is and they feel that they are
brought closer to that
many experiences feel that that's a
fundamental part of this experience that
they're brought closer to the depth of
being the the Godhead whatever you want
to call there's different language for
this there's one young woman's way of
describing this she said I think sources
purpose for letting that happen that is
allowing the aliens to come is to bring
back memory of us of source to empower
ourselves I think it's almost like a
baby going from crawling to walking and
realizing that I am
that's what I think sources reason for
this I am and a fourth element which is
again something where I think button I
differ is the relationship between the
and there is not one type of alien
perceived the most common of these greys
with a big black eyes which I never
heard of when I started this work but
there are also various other kinds of
beans and bud sees the relationship as
cold and different in his autobiography
which he's sharing with me he wrote at
the very first page he said the mystery
of those cold creatures who have come
here from God knows where subverting our
truths and violating our planet well
there is that element in the beginning
but in my experience if you work with
the terror with the person you use you
work with the mystery you have them sort
of put the nose of the prow of the self
into the phenomenon but it does
transform that it does become more
spiritual that the growth does occur and
sometimes there can be this in not just
this sort of transient sense of loving
connection that is manipulated but some
deepening bond that lasts throughout
this relationship across these
dimensions and that this is is a very
deep powerful phenomenon why is there so
much resistance to accepting or at least
realizing what's going on and I think at
the heart of this even more fundamental
than the terror of other helplessness
the lack of control we know that it
represents that and people don't we're
afraid that they can't protect their
children and and the
that this is a kind of intrusive
overwhelming kind of phenomenon but I
think even deeper than that is is this
ontological problem in that this
absolutely defies our categories and
those if if we are if our worldview is
one that can master knowledge through
experiment through the methods of basic
science this doesn't fall into a
category that allows us to do that it
crosses over you can't locate it
it is both physical and it is as if in
another dimension at the same time we
can't get at it the clients although
they'll make it clear this is it's not a
dream it's real it's altogether real I
know a dream I wake up to from a dream
this is different I have knowledge of
this but they'll say but it's not this
reality it comes through as if through
the scrim of a theatre front and enters
into our reality and it is in that
reality altogether real and it
introduces them to a deeper under a
deeper fabric of reality that lies
beyond this one it seems to me at the
heart of what is called for now is that
we allow this phenomenon to through the
questions we asked to expand our notions
of reality to include unseen realities
as perhaps even a deeper reality but an
other reality not they simply the
objective physical world and that we
learn to value knowledge that comes from
those realms I was an invested
psychologist in Mexico recently said to
me and he was only half Jew he says if I
can't measure it it doesn't exist and he
was quite serious about that but what
this phenomenon I think along with many
others like the near-death experiences
and out-of-body experiences does it
invites us to value knowledge that comes
from the subtle realms in others it it
asks us to credit our experiences to
develop criteria for how do we judge
whether an experience can be taken
is it because thousands of people are
having the same experience you could say
we're all having the same delusion well
how do we decide
I think these these people haven't known
each other but they're doubtful about
these experiences I have certain
criteria by which I decide this is these
experiences are to be taken seriously it
goes along with the physical evidence
it's that combination but we don't have
a methodology yet and I think I'd like
to close with the point that I don't
think that this phenomenon is going to
be proven in other what I think that the
deepening of our understanding and
knowledge the expansion of ourselves in
relation to it and other similar
phenomena is going to occur by crediting
and allowing other ways of knowing about
reality and those expanding the way we
know and what we credit as important I
don't think it's going to yield its
secrets to the frameworks of proof that
we have developed to apply to phenomena
that are purely in the material world
Thanks
thank you by the Hopkins as you probably
all know is the author maybe most
famously of intruders it's a book it's
also a general theory of what's going on
here but Hopkins I am I'm very pleased
to be here and flattered to be here and
I would like to express my appreciation
to John and to his associates and Karen
and those who planned this I would just
like to also say something about my
respect for John Mac for his courage for
the difficulties that he's undergone in
bringing a very unconventional subject
to the attention of a university that
perhaps it's overly frightened by
something as new and dramatic as this
but I think any human being in this room
would have to admit that if the UFO
phenomenon is occurring as the report
suggests it's the most important event
in human history
and if that's the case I don't think any
institution or organization is being
very wise to oppose the investigation
the serious investigation of such a
phenomenon in order to discuss this
intelligently we must know that the data
we're relying on is reliable the data is
solid the data of course comes mainly
from the reports of the people who have
had these experiences plus a whole range
of attendant physical evidence which I
don't want to go into at this point now
what do we know about the UFO experience
in terms of the reliability of what the
aliens say and I use the word aliens for
one of a better term the first thing is
that the aliens are extraordinarily
deceptive and operate in a covert manner
there was no doubt about that there's no
possible way that anyone who's looked
into this phenomenon can say anything to
the contrary of that simply because we
have a whole history of what we have to
call a screen memories when the UFO
occupants make us see things that are
not there
in order to hide the way they actually
appear the way the memory of the
experience very very often has been
stolen from us which is not only an act
of theft it's an act of deception and it
can't possibly really be defended so far
as I'm concerned now there are all kinds
of wonderful stories to illustrate this
sort of control that they can have over
our perceptions I was working with a
woman once who was recalling an
experience she's on the table inside a
ship there's a physical examination
taking place it's extremely painful
demeaning and so forth and she is not
only enraged and furious but she's
scared to death and she's undergoing
pain and they had a alien as we know
from these accounts often happens walks
over puts his hand across her forehead
and she said the pain disappeared she
felt waves of the most profound love she
has ever felt in her life she said she
would sacrifice her own children for the
love that she felt for this being it was
just beyond anything she had ever known
no pain no anger and total love he
walked away from her took his hand away
of course the pain came back she began
to get angry again she was hurting again
she was furious again and he came back
and he put his hand on her head and she
would have again sacrificed her children
for that love not kind of manipulation
is of course something that's part and
parcel with the alien means of operating
any rate this kind of deception goes on
and on
people have been made to feel that they
were themselves aliens in an early life
they'd to see themselves as if they have
the alien hands and so forth all kinds
of imagery seems to be played into
people's heads I know this totally
sounds crazy you have to read the
background information supporting this
but I'm trying to start with what I
assume many of you already know about
the phenomenon so the basic first point
here is that we can't trust the data
that we can't trust what the aliens are
saying to us under any conditions as the
second major fact we know what happens
to individuals who were reporting
abduction experiences psychologically we
know that they are psychologically
scarred the only set of psychological
tests which so as far as I know were
ever done
this matter we're done I was partly
involved in this in 1981 dr. Elizabeth
Slater a psychologist tested a group of
abductees or people reporting these
experiences she was not told the nature
of the sample she was testing anything
about their UFO experiences but she
found that all of them shared three
deficits psychologically all had low
self-esteem all had a certain
dissociation and their attitude towards
their bodies the physicality their
sexuality and all had a lot of trouble
trusting people well any rate she
pointed out when we later told her after
she wrote a report the nature of the
sample that she had tested and what they
had experienced and she said though this
doesn't prove anything
if these people had had the experiences
they reported then these are precisely
the kinds of deficits one would imagine
would accrue and she said it's very much
like what happens when you get a rape
victim now the next thing is are these
experiences and I'm trying to be very
brief all are these experiences
transformational in any way and of
course they can be transformational in a
wonderful way provided they meet
therapists and a support group and other
people who are associates in this field
who can lead them through their
experiences in such a way that they
understand that they're not crazy that
there's no blame to be ascribed to them
and so forth the therapist the support
group and friends and family provide the
safety net that can create that
transformational experience I don't
think there's any doubt about it
we want these people to become much more
whole we want them to feel a sense of
healing it's an extremely delicate and
difficult new kind of procedure of
therapy that has to be developed really
at this point I'm not a therapist myself
unlike John but I feel that what we do
if we work with these people is a kind
of its kind of de-facto therapy will you
sum it up by describing the nature of
the reality plane that you think okay
you know that this is real in a very
good the nature of the plane is this
the UFO phenomenon runs at a tremendous
180 degree gamut from being totally
physical nuts and bolts when the thing
comes down it could break the tree
branches down from the top leave marks
on the ground people are floated out of
buildings are scarred their bodies are
marked the craft can show up on radar
they can be photographed etc totally
physical and on the other end
totally paranormal all the communication
is telepathic the craft can be
apparently unseeable at some points we
know that people can be floated through
walls and they're actually missing this
is not an out-of-body experience it's an
out of the house experience the hardest
thing the hardest thing for scientists
to accept is the idea that it is both
physical and so totally paranormal the
whole paradigm of what's possible of
course has to be expanded and the last
thing I'd like to do Chris if I may I'd
like to read a short statement that a
woman wrote an abductee about her
attitude she's a psychotherapist how she
has dealt with this kind of
transformation
she said we of the earth are in
possession do protect perhaps to our
biology have an innate humanist which is
often translated into a deeply spiritual
humanism it's the basis of our moral
sense of the feelings of caring empathy
love and responsibility we have for one
another for our children and for the
planet for my experiences with the
aliens that come to believe that their
entire paradigm is radically different
from ours and that our sense of right
and wrong good and bad does not apply
for them they're very different from us
not only physically but in their
understandings motives goals and
purposes I do not believe that they are
the great redeeming power some may wish
for but only beings with a different set
of principles
therefore we must assume responsibility
for ourselves and each other it places
the burden of care for one another and
for the planet squarely with each one of
us for what can we gain from them if not
the understanding of our own nature as a
species using them for comparison my
curiosity about them is unbounded as is
my grief confusion and fear but what I
have found what I returned to each day
be a coping mechanism
Tiffany is that I want to immerse myself
in my humanity in my humanism in my
caring for other humans or life on our
planet and for the earth itself and this
statement of hers is a statement which I
absolutely 100% endorse thank you very
much of the differences to probe here
are the things you want to ask about
each other's presentations okay I had a
question John when you talked about when
you work with people and it takes on a
deeper more spiritual level and so forth
the model that presents itself to me is
that we know these experiences happen
from childhood on let's assume a giant
pyramid of individuals so let's assume
at the bottom of this pyramid or all the
people who either too high along the way
we have terrible psychological problems
become human substance abusers or
whatever it is up a little further are
people who have had more understanding
counselors parents whatever then
listening to them perhaps they were
stronger and perhaps they're handling
these things a little better with fewer
psychological problems you go higher in
the pyramid and you find a few people
fewer who are lucky and they have run
into a John Mac or David Jacobs or many
of the people doing this kind of work
and have been helped by them and let us
support you and they're doing much
better and finally at that top we find
the group a small group that has managed
to somehow transform themselves with all
of that support and in a certain sense
at that top of that apex of the of the
triangle are those lucky few have
survived intact more or less and down at
the bottom are the vast majority who are
having a lot of trouble with this I
can't look at that myself with and get
granted any kind of moral approval
I find that extraordinarily upsetting
and if this is what the alien phenomenon
is putting human beings through I don't
want any part of it
my feeling has always been that they may
be here ultimately for
purposes or the ecologically concern to
what not their doctors to heal the
planet but I don't like the bedside
manner in the meantime and so that's why
I find it very difficult to to look at
that in any kindly way I think I've seen
over the 22 years I've been doing this
I've seen far too much pain far too much
damage far too much psychological even
physical damage done to people and I
don't think that this is deliberate I
don't think the UFO occupants are
intending it but I've just seen too much
pain to indulge it with the idea that
somehow it's going to all turn out ok
that's my basic issue I guess I'd like
to try to take the discussion out of the
question of whether these this is benign
or malevolent I don't really see it that
way and I don't don't for a moment deny
that people have had deeply troubling
traumatic disturbing experiences of rare
occasions have contemplated suicide
there's an irony here in a way but
because I I'm supposed to be the
psychiatrist here right I'm supposed to
see the the really trouble disturbed
people and it almost seems as if you're
seeing the worst cases if from the
mental health standpoint and I'm seeing
the sort of more sort of seeking ones
which may have to do with who we are and
how we work and what goes on so I I
don't want to get into I don't want to
give the impression that I think this is
as sometimes I'm quota said it's also a
good and it's enlightened and it's all
going to turn out for for the better and
it's simply God like no this is highly
traumatic for many people it is deeply
disturbing first of all it's traumatic
and simply the helplessness being taken
against the will it's traumatic because
it's this is still not acceptable in
this culture so people are isolated they
talk about it they don't get sympathy
like they would for more generally
considered forms of abuse alien abuse is
not something that you can go talking
about with your even with your parents
and colleagues although this may be
changing some then it is ontologically
traumatic this just can't be it shocks
everything people believe about the
world and then finally it isn't over
when it's over it can recur at anytime
or parents are trouble that they can't
protect their children well that is true
but at the same time I don't find that
the people that have these experiences
they tend to be way over on the healthy
end of the spectrum of people that I've
seen I mean it in terms of their ability
to handle it
the fact that a little goes a long way
that they seem to be able to integrate
it with a minimum of help that they
often will feel themselves part of some
life-giving process it's not simply
traumatic and that if they stay with it
the whole quality of the experience
changes the quality of the relationship
with the beans again in quotes changes
so again I don't want to leave the
impression that I don't know the
suffering that goes on but I but
something else occurs right yeah
starting with blood but you started by
saying that if the UFOs are real this is
the most important event in the history
of the species big if but it's a
plausible conclusion however I find it
somewhat you you've got the telescope
pointed in the wrong direction here you
talk about wanting to help heal the
people who received the message that
seems to me elderly illogical in terms
of your premises this is the most if
it's the most important event in human
history if we're getting a message from
someplace else about the fundamental
nature of reality I mean to be blunt
about it who cares that it hurt a few
people on the way what about the message
what is the message how do we know it's
true you know what's the story here if
it's important if if they're real and
this is the most important news
of you know of human history what the
hell is the news well of course the
reason we do investigations is to find
the answer to those questions we're in
the middle of an investigation I'd be
the last person to sit here and say we
know the answers to those questions what
is going to happen we don't know what
the term is so I'm urging an
investigation but it's kind of amusing
as John probably knows that they've been
several different people who had both
been seeing and one young man said to me
that he said funny bud I come to New
York to see you when I need to feel
stable and grounded and I go to see John
when I need to feel excited and uplifted
and we could just end the evening right
there I think I think that's funny
considering that I'm the artist and he's
a psychiatrist here I think there's a
mix-up there but the point is obviously
I work with people in the terms in terms
of a certain attitude of triage
whoever's bleeding the worst gets seen
first by me as you work with them and as
they come to see this and so forth then
the spiritual interpretation comes in
then they feel better about it but that
against do to John's intervention what
you have to ask yourself is if these
people have been dealing with the aliens
on their own for 25 or 35 years or
whatever and they're devastated and
there's a there's a final ultimately
very good outcome then I think John
should get the credit not the aliens
well there's something a little weird
going on here because I mean I I come
from a very secular rationalist
background you know Peter well this is
John sort of religious spiritual
viewpoint or seeking or whatever that's
not how I least not how I saw myself
growing up I saw myself my father was an
English professor very academic the
whole notion of God was rather treated
as we know better than that that's we
read the Bible in the household as
surely as literature not as a spiritual
document now you could say well I had
this sort of hidden hunger for spiritual
so that you know emerges but but I I was
very slow to see this phenomenon in
those terms I my mind senses I learned
this from the people not that I bought
that to them your whole sense as you
said was that this is this is a kind of
information that defies our basic
categories that we think in certainly
you in the medical scientific world I
gotta say I'm struck that this is
extremely familiar in terms of the
categories that most of us live in you
say it's counterintuitive but the images
of aliens that people report to you are
very familiar stuff on television and
popular movies what if these things
aren't really counterintuitive or
countercultural at all but they're
basically the oldest myths of humanity
just reappearing in fresh form now there
are a thousand reasons why that's not
the case and it has to do with the fact
that UFOs were studied first by the Air
Force as a Nazi secret weapon during
World War two nobody thought they were
but doesn't oddly well out of space that
makes no no that made them physical okay
physical okay so we start with the idea
that there are physical things flying
around that accompany planes but and
then we find that they can be
photographed they turn up on radar and
no one knows what they are there's no
religious belief attached to them
there's nothing of myth attached to them
these things leave marks on the ground
when they land they have a total
physicality now you talked about the
image of the aliens being familiar why
and that's because those images were
presented very strongly and clearly in
the film Close Encounters the Steven
Spielberg movie because his
special-effects people went to Allen
Hynek and the Center for UFO studies to
get an account of what these things
actually look like and we get the same
drawings from people in countries that
are people are totally illiterate and so
forth John will you take a crack at the
whole question of whether this and
counterintuitive or in fact deeply sort
of culture affirmative the abduction
phenomenon doesn't fall nicely into any
kind of judeo-christian mythic structure
with which I'm familiar from my reading
of the Bible it it actually goes against
it it's it's rather at at the most
obvious manifest level in fact it's
often called that must come from the
devil because it's so unimaginative Lee
sort of real and crude your little guys
with big black eyes or luminous beings
or reptilian ones or insect-like ones
coming in taking people against their
will leaving marks on their bodies at
the first blush it's rather anything but
the glorious mythic narratives of a
formal religion it doesn't resemble it
at all it I think it does defy
categories and it does call for a
discipline that as brothers saying that
is rather new now I want this media
thing comes up all the time well people
are getting it from the media let me ask
you if you see somebody who is deeply
depressed for instance and they watch a
program on say Nightline or they on one
of the self-help programs and they talk
about depression would you will argue
and that person comes in deeply
depressed that they invented the
depression because they happen to see
something on their television no what
they might do is they bring in a few
terms that would help them give language
to what they had seen but I don't have
the experience as a clinician of people
inventing a powerful deeply held
experience from which you cannot shake
them because they happen to see a few
images on the television said it doesn't
work like that and as bud said in this
phenomenon the media follow the research
somebody once said to me oh this whole
abduction phenomenon is it's like a cult
and I said it's very interesting to
bring down that because this is the
precise opposite of a cult I called like
let's say the Reverend moon
something like that is all beliefs and
no miracles and we're all miracles and
no beliefs because we literally do not
know what this entails what is going to
happen next we don't know really the the
physical nature of this we know it has
it has totally physical properties at
least some of the time it is the the
basic thing is that all of humanity I
think wants to put this phenomena into
the gods or Devils category we we have a
the old paradigm is that there are
demons out there and there are godlike
beings out there and this my god we're
gonna make it fit it doesn't fit
we're gonna end up a green and fighting
with him doesn't this is the point on
the connection we'd go to phone calls
which is to say look go to you know
Linda and we'll burn we're gonna ask
people to if there are questions and I
hope there are or brickbats or
experiences or whatever would like you
to feel free to join the conversation on
this mic please I want to ask for you to
kind of summarize and synthesize from
the reports that the abductees tell you
of the behavior of the aliens what the
motivation and the modus operandi of the
alien seems to be from what I know of it
it seems as though these are scientific
expeditions that treat the abductees
like we treat laboratory animals and
partly partly breeding expeditions which
again treat the people they gather as
sources of biology rather than feeling
creatures have can you add to that
casual impression of mind after all you
said there were 600 cases you know what
is it sum up to be ie the question what
you've been saying of course i 100%
concur with this is people do feel like
they're laboratory specimen involuntary
specimen in someone's ongoing experiment
and the breeding issues and so forth
they're interested in human DNA
all of this is is part and parcel of the
reports that we've gotten from around
the world but I think there's another
issue that's also interesting they are
extraordinarily curious about human
emotions our interior life and emotional
life that they don't seem to have
themselves and very very often they will
demonstrate they will present imagery or
little scenes or something
he knows how this is done as if they are
creating kind of projective tests to see
how human beings respond many human
beings think that many abductees think
that when they're shown things it's
predictive it shows the future but
essentially it seems more logical
although who knows that rather than
predicting anything they want to see our
reaction for instance as John said
they'll show us images of devastation of
the earth they might be extremely
curious to see how we respond to the
idea of a damaged planet they seem to be
very very curious about how human beings
relate to one another they seem to be at
the most basic human level they're most
interested it would seem in all the
things that make us particularly human
they're not interested in our water
supply or our atomic weapons or anything
like that they seem to be thank God
interested in the things that most make
us human John do you want to take a
crack at that again I'd like to stress
that this much of this really has to do
with kind of different experiences with
the experiencers I know that many of the
is kind of cold and different that bud
described where were just kind of
laboratory animals that's there there's
no question and yet at the same time
I've had very discriminating people who
describe actual evolving deep profound
loving bonds between the humans and
these beings that last over time that
some experiences describe as many times
more powerful than anything they can
feel on earth they have someone will
describe a mate that is occurring in
this other in this other reality and
again in my experience this showing for
example of apocalyptic scenes of
devastation of the environment of the
earth of the pollution is not simply to
test our reactions but is a kind of
desperate effort to communicate
something about us to ourselves it is
not apparently the way the universe
works that we're going to be saved as
people always whether they save as if
they can see all that what doesn't work
like that it works to open up our
consciousness in some way to what's
going on now I have a funny feeling just
here with you and that we're gonna have
to go further with this ontological
question because we're slipping from a
litter into a kind of literalism about
this one of our most fundamental
categories is is this inside is it
outside is it us is it then and even
that category is up for questioning it
seems to me in this phenomenon back to
the colors please I just feel if the
flying saucers exist we stand to lose a
lot more by not taking them seriously
than we lose by taking them seriously
should they prove not to exist and it's
a really shame on all of us that we
don't take agree I just have a brief
statement and a question first I'd speak
for myself and I believe most other
people here we thank you for your
courage and bringing this topic to the
mainstream and my question is this
you folks seem to be examining this
issue on a psychological level have you
given any thoughts or have others that
you're aware of given thoughts to why
these individuals are targeted for
abduction on a physical level DNA or
chemical thank you I have seen no
nothing that I could pinpoint that would
suggest a particular person has been
abducted other than we do recognize that
children of abductees are likely to at
least some of them be abducted as if
this particular bloodline is being
studied but we don't know why that
particular group
I have people from all races people from
the Orient from the West from South
America North America from Europe one of
the most recent people have been working
with had all of his experiences in
Israel abduction experience it is an
international global phenomenon and
there's no way that anybody has been
able to figure out anything it would
suggest why particular people are
targeted but we do know the
psychological damage is pretty similar
no matter where the people are abducted
hi it seems to me that there's two
issues here one is the detail of how
these abductees are abducted and what
the motivation or goal is of the aliens
but I don't really know if we can ever
know that answer and can actually
distract from the bigger question which
is this changes our whole worldview and
it changes our way of interpreting
reality and I'm wondering from John you
keep bringing up the issue of our the
ontology of it and what is it that you
want us to take away from this evening
of how since we're agents of
interpreting life we can't there is no
objective reality it's it's us as
interpreters so what do we take away
from this evening that is part of your
understanding of this experience I
suppose is its curiosity to ask to
deepen the question - perhaps - to be
open to the idea that there may be other
realities that this Grand Canyon we've
created between the so called other
realms the fourth dimension the subtle
around the implicit order that that
world is not forever separate from our
world
that there are people that I'm not
saying that that it's separate for all
of us but for what we've been using this
term mainstream and the mainstream
that world is the world of the
subjective it's the world of myth it's
the world of religion but it doesn't
show up it isn't supposed to cross over
and manifest physically in our world and
when it does do so then the person who
says it's physical said well the
evidence isn't good enough or it isn't
real that that barrier that that those
domains are supposed to be separate and
I guess one of the things I'd like to
have this evening so create for us is
that those are not separate domains that
there there is interchange that it can
show up physically but says was how much
it takes to convince somebody I don't
think the physical evidence by itself is
going to give us it's not going to give
us a smoking gun it's inviting us to
stretch to reach it I sometimes call
this an outreach program from the cosmos
to the spiritually impaired in other
words it it it is cracking our
consciousness to open to the fact that
there's a vast range of realities out
there that we can experience if we can
crack this shell that we've created
through the constrictions of the of our
of our mindset I yeah I'd like to add
some of this in terms of whether we
would like people when I worked with
people and we're doing say hypnotic
session and they're in the middle of the
experience perhaps they're on an
examining table in there reliving it I
will say to them very often just as a
kind of therapeutic device if you could
speak to the aliens right now what would
you ask them what would you say to them
in other words you have now total
freedom what would you say to them this
is of course very important what they
generally want to say is leave me alone
leave us alone and then they will say
explain what you want from us what you
need I would help you if you tell me why
are you doing this why me and one of the
reasons I do this is I'm essentially
wanting people to feel empowered in
their own humanity as I read in that
statement one of the most wonderful
things is people really rediscover their
the richness of the human spirit under
their own spirit and their own resources
by contrast
to the UFO occupants who it seems to me
are the spiritually impaired that are
here to let's say absorb what they can
of the things that are the most
wonderful things about human beings the
fact that we love one another we have
emotions we have jokes we make love we
have sex we care for our babies we care
for our planet they seem to be in awe of
those human resources and if there's
anything I would like people to come
away with tonight it's the fact that
they have a new sense of the specialness
of being human beings and the fact that
whatever this is from the outside or
whatever its ultimate goals are it's a
poor thin spiritual being in relation to
human beings and the richness of the
human spirit but I'm a humanist I'm not
saying that aliens are these spiritual
beings I'm saying that the for complex
reasons that were so struggling with
tonight the effect of this is often some
kind of spiritual growth or expansion
I'm not saying the aliens are these
wonderful spiritually
no no way you know it's interesting I
heard what you just said I sort of have
a yet no and then yes you know like I
sort of half agree with you like leave
us alone no some people yes leave us
alone others feel deeply aggrieved when
their experiences stop
if the experiences are of the more
deeply bonding connected way where I
totally agree with you is that they are
absolutely fascinated with our
physicality our spirituality our love
our sexuality our sensuality I also see
us learning a lot from opening our
consciousness to this other realms right
I think it's I just wanted to say one
more thing is it I think that we're
equally fascinated with them and
hopefully there's an imbalance here I
mean we're all here because we're all so
curious and maybe we would do the same
thing and I'm really interested in the
aliens at all I'm interested in us but I
really don't care about the aliens I
don't like what they do you know there's
a term for this actually you know
a lot philosopher Michael Zimmerman you
know him right he causes anthropocentric
humanism and which is a good thing in a
way my name is Karen I'm an experiencer
and I just for the record and working
currently with with John but bud my
question is mostly or my statement is
mostly for you well I have all due
respect for John and his talents as a
therapist no psychotherapist
he's a very wonderful man and a
wonderful listener in the professional
relationship that I've come to know him
he has not by any standard been the one
responsible for my spiritual growth in
this experience what he and his
colleagues provide for me is an
opportunity to stand or sit down in a
room for a couple of hours and get rid
of a lot of stuff that I can't tell to
anybody else I don't think that we're
ever going to know or at least for a
long time what this experience is about
I was a rush limbaugh watching
right-wing very square box very
three-dimensional very much I don't
think you know maybe somewhere out in
Arizona somewhere thirty years ago some
guy maybe got abducted I don't know it
didn't have anything to do with my
reality I think that each experience or
who's going through this knows that this
is very much an individual experience
and each person depending on where they
are in their life where they were with
their parents where they were with their
relationships with everything is going
to come out with something different for
as difficult as it as it is for us as
human beings to not have boxes it's very
important in this experience to not have
a box because we don't have any answers
we have nothing but questions and I
experienced terror and I experienced joy
and I experienced them simultaneously in
one minute I'm this and the next I'm
that and I know you're familiar with
that but I think it's very important
that something is obviously definitely
happening and if we close ourselves to
it we will be missing perhaps one of the
most incredible experiences that mankind
is to develop and I think it's important
that we stay open period thank you
and I know that you bud and I think John
you also realize that that there is a
long research tradition in new ethology
before Bud opened up this field of
abduction studies in the early 80s and
there's been a lot of criticism and
controversy within the field of ufology
about the research paradigm that you
both follow especially in that you rely
too much on hypnosis John you want to
comment particular on the hypnosis
question well I've tried to so demystify
the hypnosis question there are
traditions in and Knossos that go back
to mesmera which has sort of
theatricality related to it the deep
trance a person lying down a certain
kind of power the hypnotist has over the
person the idea that they're being
suggested to and these traditions die
hard and it may be even the practice of
them dies hard what I try to do is I
don't even use the term anymore first of
all the great bulk of the information I
get is from ordinary what is called
ordinary conversation not from hypnosis
I will do sometimes do what is called
regressions or hypnosis but really is
nothing more than a simple relaxation
exercise you simply try to stop the
flood of social stimuli that let the
person just relax and say and open to
the recall of some event in their lives
it's not particularly hokey and what
comes up in that context as bud says is
no more or less consistently reliable
than or consistently distorted then the
efforts to make themselves look good and
to speak to what makes sense to them in
ordinary conversation and also one thing
can be said is it in every hypnotic
regression session that I do I build
into it
dozens of test questions that can help
me try to lead the person to see if
their Leederville away from what happens
to be truth that I know about the
patterns or about
witnesses in the same case and what not
so you can test it internally and I do
this consistently please please have you
looked into any of the channel so-called
channeled writings or telepathically
received information my my issue of
sometimes I've I've had people begin to
channel a couple of times and typically
once a woman began to channel and she
started speaking in a very strange voice
and she was sort of an alien from
wherever and I of course did what I
usually do in a case like that I said
this is very important I need to know
this what can you tell me about the UFO
base and the waters of lake Ola Naoko
which I had just made up there's a name
that wasn't the name whatever it was and
she gave me a full account of the base
down there every channel or will tell
you don't listen to the other channel is
you know I've got the truth I really
don't I don't use channeling because I
have enough trouble already okay but but
I'm not but I think we need ways of
trying to sign how to use that
information and be critical about it
because we don't have any way to access
whatever that other if it isn't other
intelligence is how do you evaluate the
perfect for example if the person is
channeling something that they you can
show that there's just no way they could
have known that from their earth reality
that would be that's interesting but
people don't usually take the trouble to
establish that I'm really grateful that
the three of you are here and peer has
gotten us all together because I think
this is just certainly stretching my
mind a lot and really interesting and
one of the things that just keeps coming
to me as a theme is I noticed the way I
keep going back to wanting to find the
answer and figure out the thing and it
seems like that's a theme that we keep
coming back to in different forms like
who are these people why are they here
what's their goal what are we supposed
to learn from them if there were a being
of some sort coming from somewhere other
than the earth that wanted to like do a
reconnaissance you get to know these
two-legged creatures on this planet
well if they came with this idea that
they were gonna find out the answer
about these two-legged creatures and
what they're about and they'd send a
little committee they'd probably have a
debate much like this one where they'd
be going well what they're really about
is they're really about something
they're calling science and some sort of
study and somebody else would say no
they're really about using everything up
there as fast as they can and somebody
else would say it's all about emotions
and and maybe those people out there are
at least as diverse as we are only more
so because they've got these
interdimensional awarenesses that we
don't that they're kind of knocking on
us and saying hey but there's more you
can do this too not exactly a question
but I wonder if more coming at that
state of sort of uncertainty confusion
stretching questions kind of like what I
would have like to answer to the person
s what I wanted people to get out of it
evening is they haven't so to end up
where you are right now
I wish you both sort of give us a minute
wrap some up what we've learned and what
we ought to be thinking about as we
depart I've taken a complete place for
myself against any judgment of my own
part I love to hear judgements from you
though about what kind of ground we've
covered and where we are in terms of
what we've accomplished tonight I think
one thing is that we've shown that in
terms of the raw data
Johnna really have exactly the same
kinds of material presented by the
populations that would work with over
these many years I think that the basic
difference comes in terms of the
interpretation the spin put on the
experiences and I think that in general
I suppose Jones is urging a more a
greater curiosity on the part of the
people he works with about the aliens
themselves and about what their
intentions may be and the whole issue
that he's mentioned about ecological
concerns and so on I tend to by contrast
I think try to accent Living Well is the
best revenge so to speak trying to get
people to face the richness of their own
lives their own resources their own
inner strengths and to put the aliens as
much out of their minds as they possibly
can to try to live a normal life there's
no way of course when you tell somebody
who's been through this to put the
aliens out of their mind no one ever
possibly can because it's too enormous
of fact but I think that I want this to
be a world in which the human spirit is
central and it's our deepest and most
important value and we're not looking in
a needy way to some external force that
is as mysterious and elusive and
misleading as the auto occupants I
simply don't trust them and I feel that
what we have to learn is what we have
within us to begin with and what other
humans can give us and that's as simple
as I can state it as my position on this
whole crazy business yeah I think I feel
less I have protective and
anthropocentric than than blood dozen
was I I think that I don't see the I
don't feel that this is is unwelcome in
general I know that it's traumatic for
many people and I think that as we've
said that we need to work with people's
the stresses but I think that the
phenomenon has such vast implications
for us in terms of who we are in in our
universe and it seems to me that in a
certain sense anything that can kind of
shatter this arrogance around the notion
that we're the superior intelligence
alone in the cosmos is in general a
rather good thing in other words that
that that it can open us to vast other
realms of reality that are far beyond
this immediate however Pleasant Earth
environment I think that this phenomenon
insofar as it undercuts in and does some
damage to that anthropocentrism is a
good thing that doesn't mean I don't
think human beings can be wonderful and
have a wonderful resilient spirit but I
think we we also have a tremendous kind
of cosmic egoism which this phenomenon
has a way of rather challenging to say
the least so that's kind of where I am
with it ok excellent
I think those are two eloquent summation
here please a lot of the peoples of the
people that you seem to have interviewed
you know honor aren't don't expect to be
abducted and it seems that there's a lot
of trauma etc what about people like me
who sometimes feel like hey I might want
to meet an alien have you ever
interviewed people like that are there
any people that you've interviewed that
have actually wanted to meet them yes
but I've never been able to arrange it
for anybody off the coast of Cuba and
paint the second coming of Christ over
the island of Cuba using Holograms which
is well within our technology today the
idea was that since there's a large
Catholic population in Cuba they would
be so upset by this vision that this was
saturated the communication channels you
know the telephone system in Cuba wrong
enough for an invasion to take place how
interesting I never heard of that well I
think that's you know classic in
psychological warfare but that kind of
manipulation is is well understood and I
have personally investigated several
apparently genuine UFO cases where there
was in fact many my conclusion the
conclusion of scientists working with me
was that there was in fact a
manipulation taking place and that it
was not a hoax on the part of the
witnesses but a hoax on the part of
somebody much better organized so
they're possibly all of these levels
going on simultaneously today that today
with the current technology that would
be possible one of my interests as you
know has been to look at ancient
sightings old sightings before World War
two for example when there is really no
confusion with modern technology and if
people described say in 1925 or in 1825
and a disc flying through the air
and you know it can only have been very
very few phenomena could have produced
it and there been some well documented
sightings going back to the 19th century
for example there was starting in 1896
and going into the spring of 1897 there
was a remarkable wave of sightings of
ashes those were described as oval
objects flying through the sky with
lights on them
of course way the people in those days
could only compare it to the originals
only compare them to airships and those
objects were capable of doing all the
things that UFOs do today including
taking off very quickly and making
90-degree turns and landing and
occupants coming out of them and if any
if nothing else I think this is part of
our folklore this is something that we
should be studying as part of our four
o'clock
thinking aloud
conversations on the leading edge of
knowledge and discovery with
psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove
hello and welcome I'm Jeffrey Mishlove
throughout recorded history human
society has been haunted by reports of
unidentified flying objects in our skies
many of which have defied all attempts
at scientific explanation or
understanding what are these phenomenon
and how can they be explained with me
today is Terence Mckenna
a philosopher and thinker of note in the
area of altered states of consciousness
and alternative realities Terence is the
co-author with his brother Dennis of the
invisible landscape and also psilocybin
the magic mushroom growers guide he is a
founding member of botanical dimensions
a nonprofit organization devoted to
preserving and studying psychoactive
plants used by native cultures
throughout the world and he is also the
developer of a computer software package
called time wave zero designed to
augment interpretation of the ancient
Chinese book of prophecy the II Ching
welcome parents it's a pleasure to be
here with you it's a pleasure to have
you here with me also you know the UFO
phenomenon is striking because it's so
bizarre it seems as if the the reports
that come in about UFOs defy any attempt
whatsoever to categorize them I guess
from my point of view I can only assume
that there probably many different
interpretations of this event I think
given your background as a student of
shamanism and altered states of
consciousness and alternative realities
you have some unique perspectives on the
UFO phenomenon I wonder if we could get
into that material yes well the ordinary
approach to the UFOs has been to view
them as visitors or intruders from a
nearby star system that have come in
metal ships for reasons of trade or
scientific investigation or military
conquest additional reactivity or
mission high activity to the vicinity of
our planet and this was a myth that
sprang but concomitant with the modern
wave of sightings that
shortly after World War two as time has
passed and the number of sightings have
gone from hundreds to thousands to
hundreds of thousands of instances as
the myth has fleshed itself out with
sub-themes the theme of abduction the
theme of telepathic contact it's become
much more difficult to fit all the known
facts into the simple model of
spacefaring visitors from another world
so what we are left with then are a
number of more exotic competing theories
in the so-called postmodern phase of
thinking about the UFO probably the
best-known of these alternative
explanations was the one pioneered by
the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung who in
1953 wrote a book called flying saucers
a modern myth of things seen in the sky
and Jung was at great pains to without
passing judgment on the reality of the
saucers of the things seen to interpret
them psychologically to interpret them
as one would interpret a dream and he
saw in their circular form in their
scintillating shining alchemical
brilliance a symbol of human wholeness
and felt that they were a symbol of our
collective yearning for a kind of
totality and individuation now in a way
this kind of explanation is very
satisfying however it is not satisfying
to the person who has immediately
undergone a very strange and a very real
seeming experience unless such a person
we're told great messages of hope for
the planet well and this is a persistent
part of the flying saucer phenomenon
that people who have close contact with
the saucers returned with messages of
universal brotherhood
benevolence with stories of the
beneficent hegemony of organized
intelligence we're wiser older worlds
and civilizations help younger and and
less mature worlds toward a kind of
galactic citizenship however that's just
one thread of the evidence it's one
thread of the evidence and it isn't
really well supported by the evidence
Jacques Vallee who is one of the
foremost commentators on the phenomenon
has been at great pains to point out
that with the Flying Saucer phenomenon
we're dealing with thousands and
thousands of incidents per year
throughout the world it's very hard with
even at our own primitive level of
scientific sophistication we can learn a
great deal about a planet by sending a
single probe to that planet what kind of
scientific program of investigation
requires thousands and thousands of
appearances and if we make the
assumption that not all appearances are
observed but that in fact only a small
number are observed then the number of
appearances that must actually be going
on a source toward an astronomical
number it will suggest we're dealing
with an inner penetration by an alien
dimension on an almost industrial scale
of course a single probe could cause
thousands of appearances if it were of a
sophisticated enough nature that's right
the approach that I have taken that has
character Marc characterized my work
with this phenomenon was first of all to
say we have not carried out a
sufficiently in-depth survey of the life
already on this planet to be able to say
that at some time in the past life did
not arrive here and thrive here that is
not part of the general heritage of life
on this planet but that is somehow come
in from the outside my candidate for
that
kind of an intrusive extraterrestrial
would be probably a mushroom of some
sort or a spare bore a spore bearing
life form because spores are very
impervious to low temperatures and high
radiation the kind of environment met
with in outer space in other words a
mushroom spork who conceivably you even
waft itself up through the atmosphere of
our planet and enter into empty space oh
there's no question but what this is
happening that through what's called
Brownian motion which is sort of random
percolation spores do reach the outer
edge of our atmosphere and they're in
the presence of cosmic rays and meteors
and rare highly energetic events
occasionally a very small percentage of
these biological objects are wafted into
space we even possess meteorites that
are believed to be pieces of the Martian
surface thrown out by impacts on the
Martian surface of asteroid or material
in fact I think part of the grappling
with the UFO mystery is going to lead to
the conclusion that space is not an
impermeable and insurmountable barrier
to biology that in fact planets are
Islands and life does occasionally wash
in from distant places and if conditions
are correct can take hold however let me
say in the UFO phenomenon we are dealing
or we presuppose that we are dealing not
simply with phenomenon of
extraterrestrial biology but with the
phenomenon of extraterrestrial
intelligence and this is a hair hackle
raising notion and with more than
mushroom spores we're dealing with more
than mushroom spores at least as
ordinarily conceived and
creations out of hollywood condition
sometimes are long enough and varied
enough that i would bet that the real
cast with extraterrestrial intelligence
will be to recognize it you see we have
no conception of how species bound our
images of life and biology are this is a
place where we have never been asked to
confront collectively the monkey within
us is channeled our expectations and
perceptions well it is the case that on
this planet virtually all known life
forms are based on the same DNA molecule
well except that have all life forms
been examined to see to what degree they
deviate percentage-wise from let's say a
standard DNA molecule the answer is no
the sequencing of DNA is a very
expensive process and is only carried
out on laboratory organisms with an
extensive history of involvement in
medical research like e.coli or the
ordinary laboratory rat no there's a
great deal we don't know about life on
earth we don't know when the fungi
entered into the evolutionary chain we
don't know what kind of intelligence is
really possessed by the cephalopods the
shell-less mollusks that include the
octopi the intelligence of dolphins has
been studied by lily and others the
intelligence of the large primates other
than man one way of looking at nature is
that it is entirely linguistic in ten
that DNA is in fact a way of uttering
protein syntactical structures into
matter it was at all of nature is like a
poem yes nature is a communicating
system of some sort and the the problem
that we have is to transcend cultural
languages historically created languages
with very limited applications and
instead fall into phase with the the
communication systems that Nature has
placed all around us
one possible view of the Flying Saucer
is that it is a kind of projection from
the consciousness of the planet that it
is Gaia that it is in fact a kind of
alchemical object haunting human
historical time with a symbol of
totality the kind of totality that our
religions and our mystical yearnings are
so at pains to concretize for us but
unless we as egocentric beings clarify
our relationship to the unconscious then
I think the Flying Saucer is going to
remain quintessentially mysterious and
this was Jung's view one of the things
that Jung pointed out in this book is
that we must pay attention to the
research which dr. JB Rhine was doing at
that time at Duke University in ESP and
psychokinesis and that even if UFOs had
a physical reality could be photographed
or could be weighed and measured that
they still might in some manner be
projections of the human mind oh yes
this is an important point to make which
the Flying Saucer people are forever
misunderstanding and that is saying that
the Flying Saucer is a psychic object
does not mean that it is not a physical
object young and mysterium can you be
honest is it great pains to say that the
realm of the psychic and the realm of
the physical meet in a strange kind of
never
Neverland that we have yet to create the
intellectual tools to explore this is
where the mystery of synchronicity is
going to come to rest the mystery of all
kinds of paranormal activity on the part
of human beings and the mystery of the
Flying Saucer it's interesting you see
that if you take the broad world of the
so-called mysteries parapsychological
shamanic extraterrestrials so forth and
hypothesize another spatial dimension
one more spatial dimension then suddenly
all these mysteries become trivial they
are easily done locked boxes our open
future events are discerned lost objects
are found this sort of thing becomes
quite the ordinary run of things if we
hypothesize dimensions hidden from
ordinary of course there's serious work
at this point in the field of the
unified field theory in physics to
postulate other dimensions of space than
than we normally think of that's right
the current physical models of the
universe require 11 dimensions 11
integrated variables to describe and
that's physical models in the universe
if we then turn our attention to mind
and realize that having no definition of
what mind is why then is there any
mystery in the fact that we have no
definition of what the UFO is the mind
is present at hand in every conscious
moment it has been our constant
companion for 50,000 years and we
haven't a clue as to what it is so
therefore a manifestation of the other
the super ego or the extra-terrestrial
other like the UFO is it is not
surprising that it is a mystery
I always hark back to the words of JBS
Haldane the great british entomologist
who said reality is known
a stranger than we suppose it may be
stranger than we can suppose
well that that suggests to me that if we
look at some of the most bizarre most
anomalous cases that we have such as
UFOs and we begin to ask ourselves not
so much what are they because that's a
mystery but what is their function how
are they affecting us that's like
holding up a mirror to ourselves and it
tells us a great deal about the basic
mystery of our mind and yes this is the
so-called postmodern approach to ask the
question not what is the UFO but what is
it doing to us as Jacques Vallee
pioneered this approach and the answer
is fascinating what the UFOs are doing
to us to global society is they are
eroding faith in science by casting
directly in the path of science a kind
of gauntlet to challenge crack this
almost as though the cosmic giggle had
shown up at the bachelor party of
science to spoil the bash in the same
way that the resurrection of Christ
posed a tremendous problem for the
intellectuals of late Roman antiquity
because they had no place in their
worldview for someone rising from the
dead they were Greek materialists
atomists essentially in that same way
the UFO challenges the assumptions of
science and I think in that way in that
sense Jung was really on to something
when he saw it as coming from the
unconscious it is like an object coming
from the unconscious with a compensatory
function to turn us away from the
rational and toward the intuitive to
turn us away from the paternalistic
Apollonian solar masculine view of
things and toward a kind of watery lunar
mysterious intuitively felt feminine
force almost as though the the UFO is a
manifestation of Gaia as mother goddess
science as the proudest pardon the word
erection of the rational mind then is
challenged by something from an entirely
other dimension an entirely other realm
that concretize us for us the culture
crisis and that's why I've gotten into
UFOs I think they are important for a
resolution of the culture crisis they
concretize the struggle between the
paternalistic masculine and the lunar
feminine to between a Dominator society
and the kind of partnership society that
we require to survive and yet it seems
as if that challenge is not a direct
confrontation it's is Valley points out
the UFOs are operating almost at the
mythological level of our culture there
they're not landing in the White House
there they're not really challenging the
military or NASA no they're very
mercurial very watery when you reach out
toward them there is nothing there what
they chiefly have or haven't become is
an intellectual force in human thinking
about the future but when you reach out
to grasp the hardware to read the
message to meet the alien there is
nothing there I've come to the
conclusion both from talking to
contactees and having had a contact II
experience that whatever lies behind the
UFO mystery it is a force which can
literally do anything so it is fruitless
to talk about the size of the objects or
their composition or color or the size
of the entities and their dress and
weapons and the coot remnants because it
can appear literally any way it wants to
it can appear as the Virgin Mary it can
appear as Galacta Rhian overlords it can
appear as gnomes elves sprites this sort
of thing it is not to be caught in the
rational
No your description is strikingly
actually give parallel to the to the
with one exception to the view of many
fundamentalist Christians who say this
but UFO stuff is all the work of the
devil well I don't know about the work
of the devil Jung's criticism of
Christianity was that it had not made a
place for what he called the shadow and
he said the production of the
productions of Christian culture will
always be neurotic because the shadow
has not been included so there's a lack
of psychic balance
perhaps the UFO carries compensatory
psychic energy from the realm of the
shadow some people are very frightened
of it some people see it as an almost
millenarian salvation elope the savior
of mankind I think that it's very
powerful that it haunts time like a
ghost that the Messianic anticipations
of fundamentalist Christianity and Islam
are in fact a picking up on the shock
wave that the image of the flying saucer
casts backward through time that this
image of the New Jerusalem the four
gated City descending from the sky to
whisk be elected a better place is a
kind of prophecy yearning toward a fact
in the act of becoming you know hit
Christianity and Islam are the most
history obsessed of all the world's
major religions on with you to zoom
along with Judaism and all three of them
have this notion of the transcendental
object at the end of time and alchemy in
the 16th century
I think one of the interesting things to
mention about you is the fact that you
were the person that Steven Spielberg
modeled a character of a UFO researcher
on in his classic movie Close Encounters
of the Third Kind I think he was
intrigued with the idea of a French
scientist running around the United
States investigating the UFO phenomenon
you've been looking at this phenomenon
for a long time you work closely with
dr. Allen Hynek and other UFO
researchers you've written many
authoritative books and yet your
perspective on the UFO issue seems
rather unique in the sense that you
don't seem to be jumping on the
extra-terrestrial visitors bandwagon
that's what what was the main point of
disagreement with Steven Spielberg when
I met Steven Spielberg he was about
halfway through filming Close Encounters
and we had a long discussion about what
UFOs could be and of course for him the
main point of the movie was
entertainment and it was appropriate for
the UFOs to be extraterrestrial visitors
I think that from my own point of view
I'm going to be very disappointed if
UFOs turned out to be nothing more than
visitors from another planet because I
think that could be something much more
interesting something from another
dimension of space or time I think what
the UFO phenomenon is teaching us is
that we don't understand time and space
here are objects I think we have to call
them objects that are physical that
interact with the environment that cause
effects on the witnesses on the
psychology and the physiology of the
witnesses and leave traces on the ground
and yet are capable of appear to be
capable of manipulating time and space
in ways that go beyond what our physics
understands today in your books
particularly your most recent book
messengers of deception which is many
years old you suggest that UFOs are
deliberately trying to manipulate our
subconscious mind to create a mythology
in our culture about themselves which is
one of the reasons that they're both
physical and concrete yet very elusive
and at the same time do you still feel
that way I think to answer that I'm not
trying to evade your question but to
answer that you have to step back a
little bit farther the what we know
today about the UFO phenomenon is
considerably more than we knew 20 years
ago or 10 years ago and we have to
understand it at three different levels
the first level is the physical level
and or we can say about UFOs and the
physical level is that it's a lot of
energy in a small space in the space of
this if we could take the energy of a
nuclear reactor and contain it within
this studio for example you'd have
something that would approximate what a
UFO does it's a lot of energy in a small
space emitted through light energy and
through pulsed microwave energy the
second level is what happens to
witnesses what would happen to you and
me if we were close to that source of
energy and again now we were beginning
to understand the physiological and
psychological correlations of close
encounter and those have to do with loss
of the sense of space loss of
orientation I've had witnesses tell me
we were driving north when they were
everybody knows they were driving south
they were disoriented at the time loss
of a sense of time people thinking that
only ten minutes went by and three hours
went by a very often effects on the skin
sunburns I think that was close shown in
Close Encounters effects on the eyes
going from conjunctivitis to blindness
to temporal temporary blindness in some
cases sometimes you've mentioned people
have actually been healed of diseases
there have been cases where the after a
UFO close encounter it seems that the
healing process had been sped up know
there are known techniques now using
electromagnetic radiation that will heal
the fractures for example or will heal
superficial wounds on the skin but
nothing that would heal as fast as you
know the the reported effects so we're
beginning to understand at least the the
descriptions the symptoms of of the
exposure to whatever UFO is and then
there is a third level which is where I
were the level I was addressing in
messengers of deception which is a
social level being an act and our
culture yes the the impact on our belief
systems and at that level and that's
something that's very difficult to to
convey to the believers in UFO so
believers in the Green Man from space
you know that at that level it really
doesn't matter whether UFOs are real on
that if enough people believe that
something is real then it is real in its
in its effects in social reality in
terms of the social reality in terms of
what people act according to their
beliefs and that opens a question of
mania to levels could the UFO phenomenon
be manipulating us could it be a
teaching system of some sort you have
something that we are creating ourselves
perhaps a series of images that we are
projecting I think Carl Jung came very
close to expressing that idea in one of
these books or could it be manipulated
purposely by people who have the
technology to simulate UFO sightings
