Earlier this afternoon (Saturday 5/8/2010), I attended another fascinating Minnesota
MUFON meeting. The topic this time was the Jim Sparks talk at the International UFO Congress in which he described some of his abduction experiences. He described a legion of events including the oft-described medical experiments, reproductive procedures, etc. But more than that, he described something which I feel is critically important in our day & age - messages for humanity. Specifically, he referred to warnings from the visitors to clean up (literally) our act and stop despoiling our world. Environmental issues being one of our present day's biggest (though often ignored) concerns.
Also in the news, comments from Steven Hawking have emerged in
which he has stated that, if the aliens are out there, we should not try to contact them. He stated that it might turn out something like first contact between
Europeans and natives in North America, which did not turn out so well for the North Americans. In short, we do not know the intentions of the aliens out there, so it is best to be cautious. Hawking's comments have, of course, stirred up a firestorm of protest. Many of the folks in the UFO community have decried his comments, especially those folks who are strong advocates for the disclosure of government-held knowledge regarding the ET presence on Earth.
To most of the disclosure community,
ETs are assumed to be benevolent. Steven Greer (founder of
CSETI and The Disclosure Project) has stated that any alien race who has survived this far in order to reach the stars will have moved beyond its
belligerent stage. In short, he believes that they would be magnanimous, or at least, no-hostile. Similarly, James
Deardorff in his article
A possible extraterrestrial strategy for Earth, assumes that the cosmic civilization, whatever it is, would be at least somewhat
benevolent and altruistic. But is this actually the case? At the same time, is Hawking right in saying that we need to be cautious about ET contact?
This week, Whitley
Strieber published a new article in Whitley's Journal entitled
The Dangers of Disclosure, in which he sounded warnings somewhat similar to those of Hawking - though in my view, considerably more credible. Why? Because he is among the community known (or if you are a skeptic, alleged) to have actually had contact. In his article, he states that full and
complete disclosure and/or open contact with the visitors would be a dangerous thing. This is not because the visitors may be hostile (we don't know), but because of the effect that disclosure and contact would have on our collective psyche. Whitley is clear that he is hot referring to the panic scenarios of the the fabled Orson Wells War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938. Rather he is referring to what I have often heard described as the "shattered reality" of the
experiencer (see Bryant and
Seebach,
Healing Shattered Reality).
Most
experiencers describe going through a phase in which the rug is effectively pulled out from underneath their reality. At some point, they find themselves beginning to recall things our society has no way to understand. "Magical" technology, beings from another world, telepathic communication, these are just a few of the mind-bending aspects of the close encounter phenomenon - and each deals a body blow to the consensus reality in which the
experiencer was raised.
Nearly every
experiencer describes the mind-shattering fear that accompanies the onset of the close encounter experience. At the moment the visitors appear, paralysis and 'your-worst-nightmare' fear grips the
experiencer's mind, body and soul. This experience seems to be characteristic of the onset of the visitor interaction - and according to at least one
abductee, it is endemic to the experience.
Whitley has indicated on more than one occasion that fear is an innate element of the visitor interaction. Why? we don't know. But in his talk, Jim Sparks suggests that it is simply because of the difference in psyches and energies between the visitors (grays) and our own mental makeup. In short, the visitors are so different from us that we do not have a reference frame in which to comprehend them. Thus, the mind rebel
s against the experience, protecting the
experiencer in the only way the primal unconscious knows - with fear.
I have found that through hypnotherapy and related healing work, it is quite possible for the
experiencer to transcend the fear response. I have seen many accomplish this very task. By getting to the source of the fear response, either through hypnotic regression, hypnotic parts work or some other means, it is possible to find, release and heal the origin of the fear. This origin may end up being something inherent in our own lives, perhaps unrelated to the UFO/CE4 phenomenon. When healing of this fear response occurs, I have observed a sense of peace and resolution fill the
experiencer. It is visible on their faces and it is a joy to behold. Suddenly there is a level playing field and the
each can now interact with the phenomenon without seeing his/her self as a victim.
Now let's extrapolate this scenario to the level of our entire society. Precious few
experiencers have come to terms with the idea of alien contact - and its reality in their lives. And beyond the
experiencer community, few others in the world today even accept the idea of a real present-day alien existence, much less presence in our world. Thus, even though alien contact has become a prevailing idea in our collective folklore, any notion that it might be more than speculative science fiction is still not acceptable. While nearly all of us can comprehend and accept the possibility of finding simple single-cell organisms on Mars or Europa, to most of society, the idea of real, present-day alien visitation is still terrifying.
Thus, save for the fraction of a percent of all humans that are close encounter
experiencers, I suspect that humans are not yet ready for contact. Many of us know that. I suspect the visitors know that and I suspect that some of those in the government also feel that way. In short, full disclosure of government-held UFO secrets and large-scale open contact would probably not be in our best interests at this time.
This is not to say that the
cover-up should continue unabated, however. In his Journal entry, Whitley advocates a slow, steady process of scientific study and gradual disclosure. He suggests that NASA acknowledge the presence of unknowns in some of their video, that the FAA and the military acknowledge similar detections on radar. He also suggests that highly respected scientists begin to take the topic of anomaly (I use the term anomaly, rather than UFO) research seriously, accepting the existence of - and conducting valid scientific study of - physical evidence from UFO encounters. This includes analysis of ground traces, implants, etc. In addition, Whitley suggests a thorough medical study of
experiencers, building a detailed and extensive portrait of their lives and their interaction with the phenomenon.
Thomas Kuhn, in his book
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, says that the first stage of understanding any phenomenon is to characterize it's visible nature and behavior. when we
acquire data on the phenomenon, what do we notice? What measurements or other data can we acquire about it? It is only with a clear understanding of what we already know that we can begin to hypothesize about what the phenomenon might be. I believe that we already have plenty of data with which to characterize the phenomenon. We can thus begin (or continue) to develop hypotheses about what the phenomenon is and why it is here. As with any valid scientific endeavor, the result of such conjecture must ultimately be testable predictions. What MUST we see for the hypothesis to be true. When we have done this, and when we have verified our hypotheses about the phenomenon, we may well be on the way to being ready for contact.
Meanwhile, the phenomenon is very busy in its own right. It is pursuing contact on its own - one person at a time, one abduction at a time. Nearly every
experiencer I have met, in some way describes how they have evolved as a result of their contact experiences. Their perspective and their consciousness has shifted, opening as a result of their reality-shattering encounters with the unexplained. I suspect that at some point, this maturation will reach a critical mass; enough humans will become
acclimated to the
visitor presence to permit increasingly open appearances of the visitors. Then and only then will we be ready for contact - and only then will we be ready for full and complete disclosure of the full truth behind the UFO/CE4 phenomenon. Ultimately, I suspect that the phenomenon will disclose itself at its own pace, regardless of what governments do or want.
When will this take place? I certainly don't know. While I hear whispers of disclosure and impending contact, I tend to be quite skeptical of them. We hear these predictions nearly all the time and few if any predictions of disclosure have borne out - at least in the USA. What would be the consequences be of disclosure - and of contact? I believe they would be non-positive and probably unpredictable, and thus probably not a very good bet for our authorities in the present day.
So until our society matures enough to join the Cosmic Kindergarten (to quote Stanton Friedman), I believe that we will continue to hear both whispers and warnings of contact, yet the ambiguity, paradox and frustrationswill continue. Life in the world of Ufology will go on, occasionally punctuated by rumors of disclosure and by the whispers and warnings of contact.
