A Meditation
on the UFO
2007
The
UFO
It confounds
human intellect,
stretches any boundary
we select;
it comes and
goes at will,
and still,
it profoundly
preserves its secrecy—
To our past
and to our future,
it is the enigmatic
key.
The
UFO splashed into public awareness in the late 1940s—‘47 especially
defining the keynote year—and has been appearing globally in our
skies ever since. Contrary to all the debunking efforts made ever since
those early days, reports of the sightings of UFOs have not gone away,
not in the least, and so the UFO has found a permanent, if not yet officially
acknowledged, place in our culture. It has become in fact a familiar icon,
most usually pictured as the flying saucer. It should be clear from the
start, however, that ‘UFO,’ the word, comes with two initial
senses. In the strictest sense ‘UFO’ is any object that is
as of yet unidentified, but could potentially be fully identified and
explained, as something perfectly natural, if even unusually natural;
certainly there are UFOs in this sense. But this is the far less interesting,
less meaningful, in most cases trivial, sense of ‘UFO.’ ‘UFO’ in
the sense that we refer to it here, which had early on come to be the
more commonly accepted use of the word, is a first level interpretation
of its more profound sense—namely, the intelligently guided craft
(or probe of some kind) of unknown origin; it obviously does not have,
in other words, merely a “natural” explanation. Our intent
here, however, is not to present yet another case for the reality of the
UFO as an intelligently guided craft. Our meditation will straightforwardly
grant that that is what the UFO indeed appears to be—a supremely
advanced craft, implying therefore an obvious guiding intelligence.
The
UFO has hovered in the background of our culture for six decades now and
yet is still officially denied. The UFO as an intelligently guided craft
of some kind has likewise not found mainstream media approval. Nonetheless,
the UFO is at the very least a cultural symbol, and as a cultural symbol
it generates its own meme. Sociologists who have considered the UFO story
as a topic of research have naturally focused on it as a social, cultural
phenomenon, as they, too, by and large ignore the possible reality status
of the UFO itself. A burgeoning subculture centered on UFO experiences
and research does accept it as very real, however, with implications for
the future of civilization that have hardly
as yet been publicly explored. Accepting the UFO as a craft of non-human
origin can only suggest a most profound realization—that of an Other Intelligence. It is surprising that
so few serious thinkers have considered this modern day revelation of
an Other as worthy of thought in its own right. Carl Jung was one of the rare thinkers
in the 1950s who did publish a study of the UFO on its own terms. Though
his own thinking on the UFO emphasized a psychological etiology, he was
open to the possibility that the UFO was, in addition, something more.
If it truly implied a physical craft—or could appear as a physical
craft—then it was indeed something more and something other than
simply a visual projection, even if a true Vision, as he suggested (however
remarkable that alone is) out of the collective psyche; it was then something
more and something still other than an emerging symbol announcing a new
psychological wholeness. Now that itself would be significant enough from
a strictly depth psychological perspective, but if we are willing to entertain
the notion that the UFO might actually represent a reality-world from
elsewhere, that multiplies the significance many times over.
We
might look in vain for any Postmodern thinker
who has addressed the advent in our skies of the UFO. For as monumental
as this new revelation for us will prove to be, it is certainly incredulous
that it has been roundly ignored by almost literally the entire intellectual
establishment, Postmodern or not. This is an interesting cultural phenomenon
of its own. We cannot help but note this common stance of overlooking
or blatantly ignoring what is clearly emerging in the world, not necessarily
with a full-on impact that everyone must obviously recognize, but what
here and there is occurring just often enough to cause ripples that are
certainly indicating something new appearing on the horizon nonetheless.
Mainstream, dominant culture defines for its society what is and is not
appropriate for serious public consideration, and we find a similar constriction
of appropriate scholarly focus in the halls of academia too. That which
is worthy of serious consideration is of course tied into careers, social
positions, and economic rewards. Yet, contemporaneous with the dominant
culture might be occurring developments behind the scenes of potentially
great import that future society will eventually look back in hindsight
as having utterly misperceived. We can understand the hegemony of the
mass media whose strings in turn are pulled by officialdom in terms of
determining what the general public will focus on, but it is telling,
on the verge of amazing, that literally all cutting edge Postmodern thinkers
could not see the UFO on their radar screen.
But
perhaps this might not be so amazing after all. Postmodern thinkers were
obviously practicing their thinking craft in the context of a Postmodern world.
More than that, it was Postmodern thinkers
who came to articulate the themes of Postmodernism.
Our Postmodern world can be defined (for our purposes here) as one in
which human reality is all we know and can ever know, with all that that
implies. (“Human reality” is here to be considered a philosophical
term which it would take us too far afield to
fully explicate in this meditation. Hopefully an adequate enough sense
of it will be apparent as we proceed.) There may be assumed a larger Reality
outside of human reality, what tradition had considered a supersensible
or metaphysical reality, but all we can ever really know is a human-defined
reality. Epistemologically, we cannot know of Reality “outside” of
what is always already mentally constructed by the human mind, that is
to say, Reality “outside” of human reality. Our existence
is thoroughly constructed and conditioned and then self-referentially
determined as an ever-changing, living, human artifice. Our language,
our concepts, our theories are all the mental constructs of human beings.
Our naïve everyday consciousness, which is the mode through which
most scientific research is conducted, assumes that we have direct perception
of an external
“reality,” what we call Nature, but this everyday mode of consciousness,
upon critical investigation, is far from understanding the complexity of what
is actually taking place. Modern and Postmodern philosophy is the career of
the relentless analysis and critique of this complexity.
We
apparently cannot know of any Reality “beyond” without ourselves
always already getting in the way. Reality, as only we can know it, is
utterly a human reality. What this results in is that we today live, in
our Postmodern context, in a completely human-incestuous
world. The metaphysical dimension has dropped out. Increasingly, the Modern
era had defined an anti-metaphysical sensibility, which we have been living
with since. A further implication of this is that there is no Other as
an intelligence that speaks to us. It is the by now well-known observation
that our contemporary world is spiritually adrift.
A
worldview that has no metaphysical dimension we call nihilism. Nihilism
is the effective denial of any Reality that can offer meaning that is
larger than or greater than the ego-self and its concerns, which is what
human reality has currently been the focus of. Whether we call the larger,
greater, or higher Reality supersensible, metaphysical, or spiritual,
it has effectively come to have no meaning in a Postmodern context.
Mere belief in some higher Reality, even belief in God, does not guarantee
that one has escaped nihilism either. One does not have to explicitly
deny a higher Reality to be living nihilistically. How one is living,
no matter what one might believe, can reveal an effective denial. Nihilists,
therefore, are not dark trench coat loners lurking in the shadows in the
alleyways of society, but are your good, everyday, average citizen out
on the freeway, shopping in the mall, or sitting rapt before the television
set.
After
Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” in philosophy, what metaphysics
had always assumed could be talked about and therefore naively known (an
assumption still made today for those in the metaphysical/spiritual community
who have not been touched by modern and postmodern philosophy) was declared
no longer to be possible. From this conclusion that it is not possible
to gain any knowledge of what Reality in-itself might
be, it is then but another step to say there is no God, no Spirit, no
spiritual realm, no soul, as they do not appear within human reality.
When the strictly scientific mind does address itself to these old metaphysical
notions, it will attempt to interpret all that is
“supernatural” in natural terms. From historical experience alone,
it was apparent that God (a personal God) had fallen silent and had in fact
been silent for a long, long time. God did not appear to us and God did not
speak. God the Big Father had died. (This was the early Postmodern theme
of Radical Theology.) The few who will always insist that they can hear the
voice of God, or who speak about talking with God, or, today, what is referred
to as channeling God, are of course from the Postmodern perspective utterly
deluded, misunderstanding a fully subjective experience having a psychological
origin. Taking this thinking another step further, perhaps there is no Other
Intelligence anywhere besides human intelligence, period, since we have not
yet encountered it.
The
20th Century culminated with the Postmodern view
that there was no Other Intelligence that we could address ourselves to.
It had also been thought that we were quite possibly alone in the entire
universe. With the death of God already announced (Nietzsche) in the Modern
period, coming into Postmodern times (beginning in the 1950s, with Postmodern
thought clearly emerging in the 1970s), we
came to see ourselves as living, therefore, in a totally human solipsistic
reality. Here again is the expression of nihilism.
Yet,
let us back up for a moment and reconsider the natural world. The natural
world presents itself to us as we perceive it and interact with it, as
we conceptualize it, and as we theorize about it. Now animals, it is slowly
coming to be accepted, do represent another kind of consciousness and
they do display their own, but to us, limited form of intelligence. However
much credit we may genuinely wish to give to animal intelligence, it is
not one which challenges ours, or that can question ours, or that can
threaten the incestuous nature of the human status quo. Animals do not
upset the dominating interpretative stance of human reality. No doubt,
there are individuals who do communicate on some level with animals—pet
owners in particular have always claimed this, and those who have studied
dolphins, for example—but in this relationship it is human reality
which still dominates. Think too that we capture animals, tame animals,
cage animals, put them in zoos, and breed them for sport and food. Even
though we let wild animals be wild, we still thoroughly prevail over the
animal kingdom; it is we who determine what animals are for
us.
Animals
are an integral part of the natural world on this planet we call Earth.
We obviously also live in this natural setting on planet Earth. It does
appear that Nature determines to an enormous extent what we are and what
natural limits we must live within. After all, our very bodies function
in accordance to the natural order. Yet, again, from a more critical perspective,
which all of modern and postmodern philosophy has been at pains to bring
to understanding, the natural world still presences in human reality.
The “natural world,” first of all, is not some pre-given,
universal perception that all cultures experience identically, but is
itself a notion with a history, functioning in a complex cultural milieu.
The “natural world,” such as we experience directly and understand
the sciences to study, is also on another epistemological level, from
the post-Kantian perspective, the projected construct made by the transcendental
nature of the human mind. (We will continue to let the Kantian thesis
stand for the sake of our discussion; the attempt to somehow get around
it has been a constant post-Kantian challenge. Heidegger’s answer
to it in his explication of Dasein (existence), undercutting all the theoretical
transcendentalism of Kant, still posits however an utterly human reality
even as it interfaces with Being, for it is important to keep in mind,
no divine aspect to Dasein appeared in his thought. Essential to Heidegger’s
intent was the philosophical “destruction” of all previous
metaphysics.) This, again, is the Kantian limitation defining what we
can experience and what we can know. It has come to be generally assumed
then that we must live within the confines of an utterly human reality.
Nature, then, is Nature-as-we-experience-it. What Nature is is Nature for us. This goes for the infinitesimally
small quantum level as well as the furthest reaches of the universe.
Another
whole area of experience, however, that is always a potential challenge
to human reality, potentially showing us that there is indeed a greater
Reality, is that broadly categorized today as the paranormal. Here we
must refer to actual, reported experience,
not traditional metaphysical speculation. Out-of-body experiences (astral
travel), near-death experiences, psychedelic experiences, the various
kinds of psychic/psi phenomena, spiritual illumination, Visions, even our
nightly dream life, indicate that the boundaries of human reality are
actually fuzzy. (The UFO certainly falls within the paranormal—and
now including, too, the crop circle phenomenon—, but with a much
stronger implication than most paranormal experiences.) However these
experiences might be shared with others in the everyday context of human
reality, thereby becoming experiences collectively reported and studied
within human reality, they do point to realms that defy the logic and
norms of human reality. Paranormal experiences are commonly known to be
surreal, inexplicable, often almost indescribable,
beyond what language is capable of fully conveying. (Which
is why metaphor and symbol come into play as a “special” use
of language.) Even the most basic physical parameters of space-time
appear not to hold up in paranormal experiences. What makes these experiences
easily dismissed, though, by conventional mainstream thought is that they
are considered merely personal, born out of the quirky nature of the inner
life, therefore “subjective,” and not able thereby to seriously
challenge consensus human reality. Though the indications of Other Intelligence
might also be common in such experiences, they are always subjectively
interior, occurring in the private world of the individual; psychological
interpretations are therefore always available in which to frame and manage
these experiences within human reality. Even allowing that these experiences
might point to realms beyond human reality does not change the dominant
mindset that considers them “fringe,” implying that they are
not especially important in mainstream culture. Such experiences,
which is why they are called “fringe,” take place at
the fuzzy boundaries of human reality, bordering against the conditioning
of human reality as a consensus reality. Here, too, Postmodern thinkers
have followed the dominant culture by keeping their distance from such
topics. We, however, will be bringing this attitude of denial, avoidance,
and of ignoring what we might think to be unworthy, to an end. Those of us who do take these subjects seriously, including the UFO
phenomenon, can no longer consider ourselves in this regard Postmodern.
So
the UFO appeared. The UFO seemed suddenly to appear in our skies and over
the years has been seen in one or another form by untold thousands, if
not millions. It could not be explained away as only a personal experience
out of the inner life; it appeared as a definite object “out there” in
the external world. Misidentifications with perfectly natural phenomena “out
there” in the external world obviously go with the
What
the UFO reveals—and this must truly be seen as Revelation—is
Other Intelligence. This is Intelligence certainly not from within human
reality, as we know it. Now let us keep in mind as we proceed that by ‘Other
Intelligence’
(or ‘UFO’, for that matter) we may in fact be referring to a
number of distinct Others currently involved, or having had previous involvement,
with Earth; we thus use ‘Other Intelligence’ as an umbrella
term within a Big Picture that is far more complex than we can conceive
of at this time. Other Intelligence, however plural then this term might
imply, obviously quite advanced with regard to our own abilities, was coming
and going in our reality at will. In that, it had an immediate superior
advantage.
The
UFO appears, and in that inexplicable moment of appearing, is a magnet
for the human psyche. Even in our contemporary, Postmodern times,
there is yet a very real enigma in the UFO that utterly confounds the
status quo of our human reality. The UFO displays an unearthly capability,
a mastery of physicality, that so far surpasses what we are currently
able to conceive of, that we have no yard stick even by which to measure
it. It is as if it were a magical power that we are allowed only a glimpse
of. Since power (and this can be on any level) attracts and galvanizes
consciousness, the UFO attracts us and pulls out of us, out of our psyche,
a whole range of responses and emotions. For some, it may evoke an uneasy
fear, conditioned in part perhaps by so many science fiction movies; but
there is too the growing literature on the alien abduction scenario, which
cannot be denied. We can obviously be in awe of the UFO; this ethereal
feeling or yearning that comes over us can inspire us, make us hopeful,
that other worlds, our own future someday, might indeed be so wondrous
and cosmic as the UFO reveals. Young minds may daydream about the UFO
as a marvelous futurity. Also comes up for us is soul-searching uncertainty
about who then we are, what our origins
in fact are, and were we indeed always alone, or was Other Intelligence
involved with us going far back? There can come over us an unsettling
uncertainty about the future: Why are they here? and the uncanny sense
that something more profound is going on in Reality than we have suspected.
Is our world, our Earth, human reality itself, perhaps a fish bowl, a
planetary terrarium, to Others? We react to
the UFO and come to realize that we are reacting as humans, as we are “human,
all-too-human.” We realize then that there is a beyond-human; the
UFO announces an Intelligence that exists independent of human psychological
reaction and fantasy-making. The strangeness factor is deeply inherent
in the UFO as a phenomenon. How much strangeness—how much magical
display—can we handle without feeling short-circuited? The UFO is
thus a Reality expander—it stretches the limits of our imagination,
it hovers beyond our comprehension. It is a challenge to the extreme for
us: What are we going to be capable of assimilating, come the future of greater contact? But what we want so
much, first of all, above all, is to pin the UFO down with some definitive
explanation. There are answers we want, which we have not yet been able
to answer for ourselves.
The
UFO appears—it comes to us out of the blue from beyond, from outside,
human reality. The possibility that the UFO is not necessarily only extraterrestrial
but can also be other-dimensional, or represents an extraterrestrial civilization
so advanced metaphysically that its craft can come and go inter-dimensionally,
negating space as we know it, so that it does not have to be from some
distant elsewhere far beyond Earth but is possibly as “close” to
us as we can imagine, does not counter the fact that it is still beyond,
from outside, the dimensions of human reality. Its appearance of course
occurs within our human reality but it just as readily departs again from
our reality, only to escape our grasp, which is the grasp of human dominating
interpretation. The UFO therefore presents a huge, unsettling question
mark; there is no immediate interpretation of it that can definitively
fix its meaning for us. Human reality has apparently come up here against
its boundary, our boundary. Other Intelligence must represent an
other, alternative reality-world. We could say that we are just
coming into the early days of experiencing the end of human reality as
we have known it, which is to say, Reality as completely human defined. It
augurs the end of human dominance, of human self-importance, of human
self-centeredness. (This should not to be construed as a statement against
the evolution of our future spirituality, but about our complete emphasis
on the ego-self as the focus of human reality.) The question is, can
we consider ourselves any longer to be at the center of all the action
in the universe? We will be challenged to literally open a new space in
ourselves for a far larger context defined by the interface with Other
Intelligence.
Once
again we will find that we are not at the center of things. Human reality,
and let us think in particular of these past two thousand years, will
once again be de-centered. At certain pivotal points in our history profound
shifts in our worldview have occurred. Our formerly perceived central
position in the cosmos was de-centered by the Copernican Revolution in
astronomy. All the heavenly bodies did not revolve about the Earth; rather,
Earth revolved about the Sun, in a solar system with the other planets.
Then came the realization that our Sun was but one star among billions
in a galaxy, in which even our solar system was not at the center of it
at all but was positioned out on an edge of one of the swirling arms of
the galaxy; and it then became apparent that there were galaxies upon
galaxies out there in an unimaginably huge universe. This was a further
cosmological de-centering for us. Then another blow: The former pride
we felt as to our own origins, that, according to the Bible, we were created
directly by God, distinct from the creation of the animals, was de-centered
by Darwinian evolution. Apparently there has been a long evolutionary
process of which we are the result, a result strictly of Nature rather
than divine. (That the theory of evolution is controversial to this day
and has certain gaps in its story is here acknowledged.) Our assumption
that the ego-self, the self we all know through self-conscious awareness,
was master of its own interior world was then de-centered by the Freudian
birth of depth psychology positing an Unconscious. The ego-self, it turns
out, is subject, without it even being aware of it (our naïve everyday
consciousness), but for the concerted effort of in-depth self exploration,
to a whole complex of subconscious and unconscious dynamics. Yet, despite
all of these previous blows to our human self-image, the de-centering
that is coming as an outcome of the impact upon us of Other Intelligence
will promise to be the most radical of all. All of these previous shock
waves impacting culture still occurred within the sphere of human reality, however “God,” a
personal God, that is, still continued to play a role as an Other. But
the traditional personal God, it had finally come to dawn on us, had fallen
silent. The personal God had fallen so silent that it seemed indeed that
the Big Father was dead, and perhaps, more scandalous still, never indeed
was (in the way that Tradition presented Him). Come the latter 20th Century,
all we knew for sure was a thoroughly human defined reality, and all it
seemed we could ever know was this human reality.
Now
the UFO has appeared, breaking in at the boundary, the edge, the transcendental
horizon of human reality. There are those of us who are just beginning
to assimilate the advancing shock wave to our global, that is, our all-encompassing
self-referential, boundary. We might think
to get around the unsettling implication of Other Intelligence by saying
that of course our experience of the UFO is still to be defined as a human
experience, therefore “inside” human reality. Any theories
we might have put forward by now about the UFO are human theories, therefore
still “within” human interpretation. Even considering the
evidence that Other Intelligence has communicated something of itself
to certain individuals (contactees, abductees/experiencers, channels),
this whole, however bizarre it may be, scenario still takes place “within”
human reality. Yet, again, however much we might hold on to our Postmodern
insistence on existing within a wholly self-referential human reality, the
UFO shows an Intelligence that is not only not ours but that still escapes
our appropriating interpretive dominating stance. Our concepts cannot really
“grasp” the UFO and therefore cannot control it (as we do animals)
within any human framework. There is some Other Intelligence outside, then,
of solipsistic humanity. The UFO now ruptures that solipsism; there is another
agent of Intelligence that will undoubtedly have a wholly different reality-world
than human reality.
We
might say that for a long time our civilization has been spoiled in having
had no Other that can actively and definitively
question it and challenge it. It is also natural for us to want answers;
we are not comfortable with not being able to fix in place (according
to the consensus view of things) what we do not immediately understand.
Those of traditional faith may have the most difficulty with the UFO as
it does not readily fit into their worldview. Fundamentalists of a certain
bent go so far as to want immediately to interpret the UFO as demonic.
Here we see the Fundamentalist mind in a dominant stance of fixing in
place, with a ready-made interpretation, what is still obviously an unknown.
Others almost grudgingly give Other Intelligence (as an alien race from
beyond Earth) a possibility of indeed being real while assuring themselves
notwithstanding that their faith would remain unaffected. But the UFO
as an indicator of Other Intelligence does bring with it profound theological
questions that will be unsettling, despite the reassurances proffered
by the faithful. What makes the UFO so frustrating to us is exactly this
inability to place it within the comforting picture of human reality.
Other Intelligence, we must come to realize, is originary of
its own reality-world—it breaks into our reality with its own reality-meaning,
its own agenda; it is not a void intelligence that somehow is dependent
upon us to give it its own meaning. To meditate upon the UFO is precisely
to refrain from interpretative closure. We must therefore practice an openness before an undeniable future meaning that the
UFO entails.
Let
us begin to get just a hint as to how genuinely alien Other Intelligence
would be to our way of life. We can certainly assume that Other Intelligence
is not concerned about finding itself subject to human interpretation;
it is not going to submit itself to human peer pressure. In other words,
Other Intelligence exists outside the power codifications of interpretation
that would define it, put it in its place, and fix it there, thereby allowing us to
still remain dominant, as we are in relationship to animals. We cannot “fix” Other
Intelligence in place and then dictate to it what we want of it, again,
as if it were a void or merely passive intelligence. Other Intelligence
is an origin, a monad, of meaning of its own; it, we can certainly assume,
has its own reality-world and reality agenda and is not concerned about
living in accordance with human expectations.
Does our monetary system have any impact on Other Intelligence? Is Other
Intelligence dependent on the stock market? Is Other Intelligence measuring
itself on the scales of human social status? Must Other Intelligence decide
about a career? Does it worry about the price of gasoline? We might reply
of course not, these are absurd questions. Yet, what they do point at
nevertheless is that Reality as experienced by Other Intelligence represents
a wholly other reality-world.
The
coming interface with Other Intelligence opens up whole new philosophical
issues that the Postmoderns never had to concern
themselves with. We can easily see that Other Intelligence will be utterly
foreign to everyday human life and culture on Earth. Yet, when we consider
more fundamental features of human reality—perception, language,
mental functioning and information processing, the physical parameters
of space-time, of causality, the existential structure of being human,
the transcendental conditions that make experience itself possible—we
should realize that Other Intelligence will undoubtedly reveal utterly
different fundamentals of its beingness also.
Let
us ask, Will Other Intelligence present anything like an existential structure?
Is death, for example, an issue for Other Intelligence? We have always
assumed that death is a central, defining fact of our existence. But why
we should refer to death here is not without significance. It is no surprise,
in the context of Other Intelligence appearing to us today, that those
in the current transhuman movement no longer see death as a defining human
fact. Apparently unlimited life extension is only so many years off. Here,
too, is a hint that human reality, as a result of advances made by our
own bio-technologies, will be approaching a radical shift. Our existential
structure may someday not be as human as we today define human. Is it
only coincidence that the Other appeared to
us long ago as the ancient Gods, and that they were considered immortal?
What
would be the dynamic of communication with Other Intelligence? How is
communication with a radically different mind itself possible? (Those
who study inter-species communication, particularly between human and
animal, know of the difficulties implied.) The bulk of the literature
on encounters with Other Intelligence shows an obvious emphasis on telepathy.
According to this literature, Other Intelligence has abundantly demonstrated
its ability to communicate telepathically, implying a mind field that
transcends the private existential island of the ego-self. Our current
scientific paradigm, however, does not recognize telepathy or the notion
of a collective mind field that metaphysically transcends collective psychology,
or what we might also refer to as a collective consciousness. Our science
cannot theoretically account for the notions of telepathy and mind field,
basing it on, first of all, a lack of empirical evidence, despite all
the literature documenting individual experience and the new experiments
on mass consciousness. It is apparent that our science, too, has set itself
up for a major shakeup.
We
should consider the possibility, though, that thought projected through
the mind field by a superior intelligence can be introjected into
the psyche of the ego-self, breaking into its private self world. (Even
here, we cannot let slip by us that thought, as we understand it, would
likely be a wholly different kind of process, a wholly different ontological
mode, for an Other Intelligence.) Is language, as we know it, therefore
necessary? Or does Other Intelligence have an intelligence process that
can mold itself to any language on Earth? Would the thought sent as a
telepathic “thought packet” by the superior intelligence of
the Other be too much for us to comprehend?
If the “thought packet” comes to us structured differently
than the syntax and concept formation of how we think, how does our mind
begin to process an interpretation? There are naturally levels of interpretation
as information is assimilated. Is it that intuition must come into greater
play? It would seem obvious that Other Intelligence would take the dominating
role by the very nature of the dynamic between us, communicating its thought
to us, perhaps simplifying the message, so that we might be able to make
some sense of it. Other Intelligence is always a coming to us and appearing
to us; we do not have it in our power to make an appearance at will to
it. This, of course, is an old theological dynamic: God appears to us
and dictates commandments, and we obey. We were never in the position
to insist on a two-way dialogue with God (whoever that God of the ancient
world might have been). Would a two-way dialogue be possible now with
Other Intelligence? Contactees claim to have
conducted such two-way dialogues with non-human visitors already. Is there
any sense at all in which these encounters had an equal footing of communicative
transparency? What, in fact, is taking place in the full complexity of
these encounters?
We
must note here in passing profound parallel phenomena: The UFO breaks
into the
“out there” externality of human reality; Other Intelligence breaks
into the interiority of the ego-self of human reality. This, we must note,
is not merely an interesting coincidence. We might suggest here that this is
of the essence of psychospiritual evolution, that “outer” and “inner” paranormal
events are synchronous, implying even more then, that numinous events, contemporary
mysteries, Revelations, Visions correspond meaningfully to fundamental transformations
of consciousness. Taken as a unitary process, we can say that human reality evolves.
All
of this points to an inevitable transformation of the ego-self and its
reality-world, for example, that implied as
we saw above by the potential development of telepathy. The question will
loom before us, What, then, becomes of human
reality? Will human reality expand its horizon to include a larger consciousness?
But this larger consciousness will undoubtedly impact the conditioning
of everyday life. What of that fuzzy boundary where the interface with
Other Intelligence takes place? Will human reality be thought to extend
into the interface? Might human reality itself merge into the reality-world
of Other Intelligence, as that Intelligence will certainly impact and
bleed into our reality-world? Is the ego-self destined for a major deflation?
Can human reality manage to assimilate another reality-world into its
reality-world and still remain human? But where is what it means to be
human set in stone?
If
we assume that Other Intelligence (that which can visit us in its UFO
craft) is a superior intelligence and can dominate us with
its own reality-world interpretation and literal power (its advanced technology),
then what is the potential impact upon the collective powers of our world?
The mere fact of the UFO implies a most fundamental challenge to the global
Establishment. Who has power, who commands the means of power and control, are basics in our world. That the UFO is not subject
to worldly power is undoubtedly unsettling to those who manage the global
chess game of human reality.
What
is the possible impact upon contemporary nihilism? Could we continue to
claim that the greater Reality outside of human reality is without meaning?
Could we continue to think that the mind field outside of human reality
is without meaning? For would that not be saying that Other Intelligence,
because it breaks in from beyond human reality, is itself without meaning?
What grandiose arrogance would it be to think to project such a human
interpretation upon Other Intelligence. In total contrast, Other Intelligence may
very well not be metaphysically disoriented and spiritually adrift as
is current humanity. Making open contact with Other Intelligence, we would
likely come to see nihilism as a phase of human psychospiritual evolution
through the Modern and Postmodern eras that would then rapidly fade into
the past. It would have to mark the end of Postmodernism and would bring
about a new dispensation that many of us refer to as the New Age.
By
the very fact of its appearance, whatever the agenda of Other Intelligence
might be, the UFO had become for us early on a symbol of futurity. It
immediately provided for us an image above all of what was possible technologically.
Science fiction has of course provided a wealth of futuristic imagery,
but what the UFO revealed was a futuristic reality—that is to say,
that such a technology as we see displayed as the UFO we now realized
was possible and already actualized by an Other.
If Other Intelligence has the capability of developing and perfecting
such a marvel of technology, no matter how many years far advanced of
us it may be, it had to dawn on us that we, too, would be capable someday
of reaching such a technological level. What we witness for ourselves
as possible, that something marvelous has been in fact already accomplished,
may very well then be possible for
us.
But
let us look at this phrase ‘so many years ahead of us’ for
a moment. Of course, we have to realize that we use it in reference to
our own Earth years; we have no idea what time frame might define the
life of Other Intelligence. Beyond Earth, what might time measurement
consist of? In reference to what? But thinking
within our own time frame, since we cannot do otherwise, imagine that
our particular visitors were merely a few hundred (Earth) years ahead
of us in relation to our own origins. Now that is
hardly much at all in the cosmic scale of things. Yet, given where
we are today, the exponentially increasing pace of our own evolution,
can we even think ahead just a mere few hundred years from now? But that
is nothing. There must be other civilizations out there somewhere in the
vast universe that are easily, the astronomers will tell us, 10,000 years
ahead of us; no, perhaps even more than that, 100,000 years ahead of us;
no, we are equally assured that other civilizations are quite easily 1,000,000
years ahead of us. Is it possible to imagine 10,000 years into the future?
100,000 years? A million years? Oh, we might attempt to fantasize about
it, but, honestly, it is not possible. But we perhaps have still been
too conservative, we are told: Other Intelligence could in fact be 1,000,000,000
years and more ahead of us in the evolutionary process. To suggest that
they are undoubtedly superhuman is a grand understatement. They might
as well be considered Gods, for that matter. This should make us stop
in our human interpretative tracks and humbly make us realize that we
have no idea what advanced level of technology any particular UFO might
represent, and what technological degrees of UFO there might be. To the
silly arguments of the debunker scientists who say that the distances
between star systems in the universe are much too vast to make travel
feasible we can only smile. Certainly Others are
not so limited by the presumptuousness of Earthlings.
We
should indeed pause here, we should ponder to the extent that we can without
getting too dizzy about it, what all of this might truly imply. Given
that the UFO is undeniably showing itself to us, and many times over—and
in recent years associated with the mystery of the crop circles—,
we can only conclude that we have hardly seen anything yet. It might very
well be that the UFO is but the tip of an enormous, inconceivably advanced
community of cosmic Intelligences. It is much much too
easy for the billions alive on Earth today to simply swim in our fish
bowl, to live out entire lives in our Earthly terrarium, and not realize
to what an extent human reality is a particular planetary dream that we
are utterly enthralled to. Our Postmodern world insists on keeping us
inside this incestuous dream—better yet, keeping us in a fog.
Other
implications of a metaphysical nature are also once again brought to the
table by the UFO. The UFO is eminently symbolic of the paranormal per
se. The paranormal as a type of experience, as an empirical category of
what cannot yet be explained at the fuzzy boundary of human reality, cannot
help but inevitably revive metaphysical speculation. Other Intelligence,
existing “outside” of human reality, implying a mind field
that is transhuman, opens us up to, then,
an “outside” to human reality, an “outside” that
has intelligence, potentially representative of what Tradition has called
Spirit. But Other Intelligence does not merely suggest a re-opening to
the metaphysical, it may very well prove to be an active agent
in the transformation of Postmodern consciousness that rediscovers the
metaphysical on a whole new level. Comparative research has shown that
the UFO—contact with Other Intelligence—has correspondences
to nearly the full range of paranormal experience.
Already
in the 1950s, Jung saw that the UFO was generating a whole new living
myth. This, indeed, is the most profound outcome of our encounter with
the UFO—a new Mythos of the Ages is emerging that would transition
us out of the Postmodern into a New Age. There are of course representatives
of our western rational, scientific tradition who are alarmed by this.
The fact is, however, such an emerging new Mythos, if the broad drift
of our meditation is in the flow of destiny, cannot be held back. The
Postmodern mind disparaged the notion of any Great Story, a Mythos,
that could convey the global meaning of humanity on Earth. If the
UFO and encounters with Other Intelligence continue—and there is
no reason to doubt that they will, but, as all reports show, are only
increasing—a new Mythos, a new Great Story of who we are, absorbing
and assimilating all past Tradition into a new global mind, is inevitable.
Irrepressibly,
a radically new future, and in many senses, opens to us with the Revelation
of the UFO. So radical, in fact, is this future—the ending of human
reality as we have known it—that an ultra-secret national security
cover-up has been deadly serious about keeping it from being recognized
as such by the general public. Yet, we must also consider Other Intelligence
itself in this matter. Other Intelligence must also be implied in all
the secrecy regarding its own presence, again, for whatever the agenda
on its part might be, for Other Intelligence could undoubtedly impose
itself on the human scene at any time. However, Other Intelligence must
be acutely aware that with its openly acknowledged
Revelation it would burst the incestuous bubble of human reality. The
implications of a superior, more highly evolved, Intelligence making itself
known to a civilization such as ours that is still struggling to come
to terms with itself, that is, to put it bluntly,
a civilization less evolved, are potentially shattering. Civilization
must not only assimilate the shock of an Other to its collective self-image,
but would have to adjust that self-image and now see itself as still a
relatively primitive civilization in the bigger picture of the cosmos.
The transformation required is breathless; potentially civilization could
come undone in some major ways under such an overwhelming influence. In
either case, the impact of the superior Intelligence is guaranteed to
be unsettling to what we call the status quo. Perhaps a long drawn out
process of conditioning society to the reality of Other Intelligence,
on whomever’s part, is the least disruptive means for bringing about
the coming transformation.
So
we have meditated briefly upon some of the issues inspired by the UFO.
If we were to take into consideration the full extent of the evidence
that is now available on the UFO and the untold thousands of close encounter
experiences recorded, we must be prepared to face an explosion of questions.
Hopefully the suggestive thoughts and questions I have offered here have
helped in opening up the bigger picture. For whenever the event of openly
acknowledged contact might come about, we will know ourselves from that
point on in a future that includes the Other.
We will not be able to define a new cosmic orientation for ourselves,
what in fact must be Mythos, but in relation to an Other.
With
the advent of the Other, in which we must now
see ourselves as truly a particular global sentient species, in other
words as Earthlings, the question is brought into
sharper focus: What, then, is the human project? Is there a human project
defining this Earth existence as distinct from Other Intelligence? Yet,
might there also be a cosmic purpose uniting all Intelligence in some
way? But, then, who can claim to define it? Do we—can we—alone
have the ultimate say in what will likely turn out to be a cosmos teeming
with a multitude of Other Intelligences?
May-July 2007