a few more glimpses of the extraordinary

The last few days, I've done a number of hypnosis sessions that turned out much differently than expected. In a number of cases, I hadn't planned for them to be close encounter regressions, but in several, they turned out to be just that. In all of these cases, I knew that the person was interested in UFOs, as that's the context in which they found and hired me. So it's entirely unsurprising that there would be CE4 material lurking underneath the surface. Yet in most cases, the person had little or no overt indication of CE4 activity.

In more than one such case over the last little while, quite plainly put, the person has turned out to be an extensive experiencer. They have had a lifetime of encounters buried beneath the surface of their awareness and appear to have been a focus of the phenomenon. In most cases, they were largely unaware of this.

In at least one case, the person involved had had only a couple of events in their life. In each case like this, it appears someone they knew was an experiencer and apparently, they were what I would call "collateral" experiencers.

In a third category, the person turned out to have seen entities, apparently doing something not involving the witness. In many cases like this, the witness tends to be at least somewhat of a psychic/sensitive, and thus, they may be able to see through the veil. I wonder if in cases like this, the witness was able to see the Visitors nearby, possibly a glimpse of someone else's encounter.

In each of these cases, of course, there is only the anecdotal account of the event. Most of these events happened many years ago and any potential evidence has long since been lost or degraded by time. In addition, the people involved were interested in UFOs and thus had had many years of exposure to material on abduction in the media. Yet in each case, I asked some of the 'check' questions which CE4 researchers keep in their hip pockets. And in each case, the person passed the test. If they were making it up, they did a damn good job of it.

Of course, the other possible hypothesis is more metaphysical; perhaps there is a field-consciousness or psychic group-think effect associated with any given group social group or thought movement. The more people think and feel in a similar way, the more the members experience this group mind-field, eventually resulting in a critical mass of like-minds linking together. The mind-field, in turn might reinforce the person's own consciousness, showing up as archetypal thoughts, metaphors, ideas, etc. And during hypnotic regression, perhaps they show up as experiences. This is one possible null hypothesis for the spate of abduction events, though it makes them no less real to the experiencer. In each case, fear can be just as deeply felt and in such cases healing is needed just as much as if the beings were physical aliens in physical spacecraft.

The Jungian paradigm simply makes them even more extraordinary. In fact, such a Jungian archetypal or mind-field effect might even be more interesting than a nuts-and-bolts alien presence. It would teach us far more about the reality of the world we live in. And further, it does not mean that the Visitors are not real - it only means that the effect of a critical mass of close encounters might just take a parapsychological life of its own.

On a related note, I recently read the book, The Alien Abduction Survival Guide by Michelle LaVigne-Wedel. The book has some very interesting points. However in it, she pretty much tends to 'side with' the aliens. The author describes how she actually consults with her alien 'teacher,' a being named Hatar - of which I was a bit skeptical. However in a larger sense, what she suggests tends to be a relatively healthy approach to the Visitor phenomenon. In short, it is one of acceptance and cooperation, forgiveness and healing. Many experiencers (though certainly not all) have found this to be a useful approach.

Though she does not specifically say so, Wedel appears to take the viewpoint that these are physical events, and they are largely benevolent. Even though they certainly don't seem very benevolent to experiencers at many times during their abductee 'careers,' in the end they are somehow 'for our own good'. This is definitely one school of thought, though there are many other points of view that are far less positive. When I read the reviews of her book on Amazon, I found that there were two distinct reviews - the 5-star reviews, very supportive, and the 1-star reviews, harshly critical of her ideas. In short, I think that nearly any viewpoint on the phenomenon will probably have a host of experiencers identifying with it.

Another thing Wedel describes is the different classes of experiencers - the collateral experiencers [my term, CL], the 'in and out' experiencers who have 'quick' medical procedures done than are returned to their homes, and the 'extensive' experiencers who are deeply involved in the phenomenon. These groupings do not include the contactees and other groups who are involved in the phenomenon in very different ways. For the moment, I'm only talking about abduction events. Still, the resemblance between what Wedel described, and what I noticed in the last several encounter narratives were striking. In these cases, the 'collateral' or 'single event' encounter, the 'quickie' and the 'extensive' experiences seemed to be quite clearly defined, pretty much as Wedel described.

In many cases, I think the literature is reinforcing what I have found, or vice-versa. Yet in other cases, what I have found is very different indeed. As I describe in The Cosmic Bridge, there are a large number of 'nonstandard' cases that don't seem to fit any mold, while there are others with varying degrees of conformance to what I call the 'standard model' of close encounters. And in the case of the events surfacing in the last few weeks, I think I have again seen this spectrum of conformity. Many appear to be closely conforming, falling into the categories I described above. Yet others, like the 'ten-tentacled creature from Andromeda' that I described in The Cosmic Bridge, some seem to fly in the face of the standard alien-abduction model.

Each case gives me pause for reflection. Each case is another data point, another pixel in our picture of the phenomenon. Like always, I find that picture confusing - lately perhaps more confusing than ever. Yet distinct, if shifting, patterns seem to emerge. Whether they are illusory clumps in what is really random data, or whether they truly represent a pattern, I think we still need to sort out. Still, the large number of people that appear to be remembering their encounters gives me encouragement.

Hypnotic regression will probably never tell us how the alien warp drive works, and it will probably never even tell us whether the events are physical, metaphysical or something else entirely. But I believe they will tell us increasingly more about the nature of the phenomenon that lurks in the shadows of our experience. Each encounter narrative brings us closer to some form of understanding, each providing us with a few more glimpses of the extraordinary.

An evening of synchronicity, apocalypse, and dog toys

The ending hours of a day in the life of - well, this week, I'm not sure what of...

In part, I have a strong impression of what a single parent feels like. While Gwyn is away for a few days, it's just me - and our two "wild" shelti-poo puppies. And I once again realize that whoever told me about dogs being high maintenance was truly spot-on.

Originally I had the fantasy that, while Gwyn was away visiting her mother for a few days, I would be free to get a bunch of writing done. No television, none of the general domestic background activity that keeps one's attention occupied throughout the evening; I envisioned several days of uninterrupted concentration as I (hopefully) begin a new stretch of creativity. I have slowly and grudgingly gotten going on Children of the Stars, having plugged away at it for several months. At times I feel like great progress has been made. Other times, well, the feeling is different. So I the last two evenings, I greatly looked forward to a few days of uninterrupted writing. Time to get to work and make some great literary progress.

Wrong....

As I write this, I have to pause to pick up a dog toy and throw it down the front hall. Libby (our smaller sheltie-poo) has dropped the small rag bone at my feet. She has been yipping for the last minute, as I have been hashing through the previous paragraph. This is her less than subtle way of demanding that I do my duty as a human and throw the toy so she can fetch it. Such "help" has been plentiful all evening - and as a result, I have gotten next to nothing done on Children of the Stars.

Excuse me for a moment, while I toss the dog toy again...

As I was driving home from work this evening - in the midle of a light snowfall and a resulting traffic jam - a fragment of an idea came to me. Possibly as a result of several crises, disasters, etc., throughout the world, many people I have talked to describe a feeling of impending apocalypse. I hve to remind myself that this sense is nothign new. We've been getting prophecies of doom for tha last several thousand years, and l'm sure this trend will only accelerate, at least until some time after 12/22/2012. However, the sword-of-Damoclese feeling is palpable, and I have to admit, I often feel the same feeling - something is about to happen - somewhere out there.

When I got home, I started to concentrate on the thought. Whether true or not it does make a fantastic scenario in Children of the Stars. As I was sitting there munching on some supper and starting to put my thoughts into words (at that point only mentally), I suddenly got an e-mail from the person who is one of the models for one of the characters in my novel series - the psychic in my previous book named Andrea. The basic idea - without giving too much away - is that Andrea senses something catastrophic in the near future. And sure enough, only an hour or two after the thought popped into my mind, I received an e-mail from my friend. In it, she said that she senses something major about to happen. She indicated that she had heard this from several other psychics as well. They say there are no coincidences. Hmmm.

What this means, I certainly don't know. Recent history has been replete with predictions of events that never came to pass. Whether the predictions were wrong, or whether they were merely relating an increased probability of such an event is a topic of great debate among parapsychologists. But suffice it to say that we've heard such predictions many times before, seldom with enough detail to be useful. So for now, the best we can do is to keep our eyes and ears open for confirmation or refutation of - well, of whatever we're being warned about.

Meanwhile, Libby is yipping at me again. It's time to throw the dog toy once more.

As I sit down and plink away on this article, the contrast strikes me as both amazing and amusing. Synchronicity, apocalypse and dog toys; what a wide spectrum of experiences in the span of a few minutes. What a diverse and fascinating world we live in? And so far, thank God, of the three, only the synchronicities and the dog toys have turned out to be real. Let's hope it stays that way...

Back to basics: A skeptical moment and some intellectual housecleaning

This week I feel like I've heard it all. In all of my adventures in UFO land, I have heard about conspiracies by Reptilians and Masons to take over the world, I have heard of plots to spray toxins over the world causing a population crash - somehow to enable world domination by - well, not sure. Figure that one out for yourself. At the same time, I learned that we have secret bases on the moon and Mars, and deep underground (operated jointly with the aliens). We also have a secret fleet of space ships run by the US Air Force. But now, this week, my favorite story reared its delightful head once again. You see, I had forgotten that we didn't actually go to the moon (I think I have heard one person tell me at one time that we have a secret base on the moon and another time that we never went there - go figure...)

I had blissfully assumed (imagined?) that the moon-hoax idea had died out, receding back to its well-deserved oblivion. Unfortunately, ideas of all stripes - both those with merit and those without - tend to maintain a life of their own. In this case, one of the members of Minnesota MUFON asked to present a set of material at a future meeting (and I agree that he has the right to do so, our meetings are open to the public). Unfortunately, his material turns out to be less than useful from the point of view of serious anomaly research. His material is on some studies he has done on the Van Allen radiation belts - a topic interesting in itself. However his 'stealth' intent was to prove that we couldn't have gone to the moon. Furthermore, from this he claims that the radiation hazard makes human crewed spaceflight above low earth orbit impossible. To his credit, my friend did provide references, which I followed up on. Unfortunately, the numbers were wrong (see links). They were originally stated by James Van Allen, but later retracted. It turns out most of the radiation theories are quite off base.

The biggest sense of annoyance with the moon-hoax idea is the same as I get when I hear arguments that the world is only 6000 years old - created at 9AM on Oct 23 4004BC. The issue to me is that these 'endeavors' waste a lot of time and effort. We get so wrapped up in things like chem-trails, moon-hoaxes and creationism that we lose track of what could be potential scientific pay dirt in what seems to me to be some bonafide scientific mysteries.

On some days, I need to recoil from all of the BS and ask if ANY of this material is really valid. If some people accept creationism, moon-hoaxes, secret space fleets, etc. - things I think are garbage - then could other ideas that I think are valid, UFOs, close encounters, parapsychology, etc., also be invalidated as well? Sometimes a sense of guilt by association takes over. What's the real difference between UFOs and the above items I am decrying?

At times like these, when the challenge to my own personal discernment gets too great, for a time I have to slam the door on all of it. At times like that, I can clearly see what motivates some of the debunkers - a backlash against the - well, whatever it is...

After a short time of skeptical backlash, I find myself reopening my eyes and with a fresh perspective, stepping back to re-examine some of the classic UFO physical evidence cases: the Delphos, Kansas and the Trans-en-Provence ground trace cases, some of the classic radar/visual cases in the literature, and other well-established cases (see the Sturrock Report or the book The UFO Enigma, by Peter Sturrock). Then I look at some significant unexplained cases in my own files - the extensive encounters of Evelyn, Carolyn, Susan, and others I describe in The Cosmic Bridge. These reassure me that there truly are significant mysteries represented in the sighting and encounter data. There really is a phenomenon present and it represents one of the biggest questions in the pantheon of human mysteries. Ultimately, we can see the UFO mystery as just that, a mystery. It is a legitimate scientific enigma worthy of serious study.

The result of this intellectual exercise is a mental housecleaning. Cleaning out the dirt and grunge and getting back to the basics. We have an unexplained phenomenon and a long-standing history of anomalous encounters. With so many unanswered questions, one sometimes has to focus on what the data shows - throwing out the conspiracy theories and endless speculations and getting back to what we can or cannot establish scientifically.

After our intellectual housecleaning, after we have cleared out the hoaxes, the channeled revelations, the world-domination conspiracies and the claims of hoaxed moon landings, perhaps we can finally get down to the business of investigating the mystery. The phenomenon of visitor encounters and sightings of weird stuff in the sky is real and at least to me, it represents one of the biggest mysteries of our day.

Hancock, Hameroff and Halucinogens - Notes on the new book, 'Supernatural'

I'm about 3/4 of the way through the book Supernatural by Graham Hancock. Like every other of Hancock's books, this one is fascinating. It is well researched, extensively referenced and provocative in its ideas. I'm not sure I agree with everything the book says, but I recommend the book to anyone who is interested.

The basic gist of the book is that the human mind is essentially a receiver, in everyday life tuned to what Hancock calls 'Channel Normal'. In years of study of shamanic traditions - including considerable first hand experience with shamanic hallucinogenic ceremonies - he describes many experiences similar to other hallucinogen experiencers. He compares this to cave art going back about 40,000 years to what he describes as the human revolution in consciousness. At this point, he indicates that humanity discovered shamanic journeying, either through drugs, physical stress, deep meditation, or other means of altering consciousness.

He builds the case that trance states are means to access an expanded universe of experiences. Rather than brain generated artifices, states of altered consciousness actually open the mind/brain to receive expanded reality. This reality has many common aspects between experiencers, across cultures, times and locations.

Hancock states that many of the experiences have extensive correlates in fairy and folklore, UFO abduction literature, etc. He argues that this implies that, at least in part, UFO abduction can be seen as a metaphysical phenomenon, closely aligned with these other-cultural experiences. This accounts for several instances in which prehistoric art depicts grays and flying saucers along with shape-shifting animals, etc. He draws other parallels between UFO abduction and the shamanic experience, but I think you get the idea.

The biggest thing I have taken away from the book so far, is his argument that DMT is a naturally occurring molecule in the human endocrine system. In about two percent of the human population, there is enough DMT to provide spontaneous glimpses into other realities - i.e. spontaneous paranormal or metaphysical experiences. He draws a connection that this is roughly the percentage which the 1991 Roper poll of unexplained personal experiences cites as being possible experiencers.

Hancock also argues that the shamanic experience is wired deeply into our very DNA, and cites comments by Francis Crick that the DNA molecule seems to be designed from day-one to contain certain information. He speculates that perhaps this information was only intended to be accessible by a consciousness sufficiently advanced to access it - i.e. a collective process leading to mass psychic awakening.

While I found his DNA arguments really interesting, I wonder if/how they might relate to some of the research of Stuart Hameroff, of the University of Arizona Dept of Consciousness Studies, who has claimed that (all) hallucinogens act on the tubulin protein within the cellular cytoskeleton. According to the Penrose-Hameroff model, this is the site of quantum computing within within the cell, affording even a rudimentary degree of consciousness at any level down to even the simplest single-celled protozoan.

In his model, the tubulin molecule provides a superposition of quantum and classical behavior, alternating between the two by a process he and penrose call Orchestrated Objective Reduction. This allows for both quantum and classical functioning of a cell, providing non-locality , one of the requirements of consciousness. The primary function of anesthetics is to decrease quantum properties of the tubulin, allowing classical processes to continue, while hallucinogens such as DMT, LSD, etc. shift tubulins toward quantum behavior. Lots more could be said on this, but I will simply invite the reader to go to the site: www.consciousness.arizona.edu to read up on this material. It will be a fascinating read, indeed.

Hancock states that the primary component in many organic compounds, such as the bases within DMT, DNA, LSD, etc. all contain a similar component (which I don't recall at the moment). I don't know enough organic or physical chemistry to know if this has a similar quantum/classical superposition behavior such as the tubulin. But if so, it would go to great lengths to explain some of the current mysteries around how genes are expressed, how genetics and memetics appear to be somehow related, etc.

In short, while I don't necessarily agree with everything Graham Hancock says in Supernatural I think that he has some truly fascinating and deeply provocative ideas. Anyone looking for a great read and a new insight into the mysteries of consciousness and human prehistory needs to read this book.