It seems to me eminently clear that these guys have capabilities—as the only simple term I know—to do things that we don’t look upon as being respectable. Such as mind-reading, mind control, and getting people to forget.11
In short, telepathy is regarded as consensus gentium among N&B/ETH ufologists, as well it should be. If we tossed out every account involving telepathic communication, we would be left with only a tiny fraction of the cases reported. The question stands, however, whether or not those in favor of the N&B/ETH solution have wrestled fully with the implications raised by telepathy in UFO and abduction reports.
The Slippery Slope
The most obvious repercussion of a belief in telepathy is how it normalizes a host of other psi phenomena in a domino effect, which in turn busts the perceived N&B/ETH ufological monopoly. After all, it seems arbitrary to draw a line in the sand at telepathy, which is but one point on a robust spectrum of psychic abilities. The UFO literature is rife with witnesses who experience such activity, from the comparatively mundane (precognition, clairvoyance) to the dramatic (psychokinesis, astral projection). Telepathy, a phenomenon whose existence is roundly accepted by N&B/ETH advocates, accompanies nearly all such examples.
Wrote Jacques Vallée in the mid-1970s:
I have long had an interest in both UFO manifestations and such psychic manifestations as telepathy, poltergeists, and psychokinetics, but I have refrained (until a few years ago) from attempting to build a bridge between these two fields. To be sure, I have been aware that many UFO cases contained elements indicative of psychic phenomena. At the same time, I have found in the literature of psychic history many observations that were suggestive of either the presence or the interference of UFOs. It would have been impossible not to recognize these connections and yet, to give just one example, when I was recently invited to speak about UFO research at a University of California extension course on psychic phenomena, my decision to accept the invitation was greeted with disbelief among astronomers privately interested in the subject. One of my physicist friends who was studying the material aspect of the sightings even called me to ask, ‘Why are you getting such a solid field as UFO research mixed up with the disreputable area of psychic phenomena?’ implying that by speaking of the analysis of UFO sightings before specialists in brain research, meditation, biofeedback, and brainwave analysis, I might jeopardize my chances of ever capturing a real, material flying saucer!
At the same time, it was amusing to observe the initial reluctance of those who had spent all their lives studying poltergeists, telepathy, and the human aura to consider the subject of UFOs.
But once the connection was established, there could not be any more doubt that we had to deal with one, not with two, subjects; not with two sets of phenomena but with a single universe of events in which a single set of laws was in force.12
It is easy to illustrate how this inevitable connection declaws the traditional N&B stance. Starting in the 1970s, the United States government began pouring funds into research on remote viewing, an alleged psychic ability wherein a sitter is given a series of coordinates and asked to articulate what impressions and sensations come to mind. The Stargate Project, as it was called, cost Americans at least $20 million before it was shut down in 1995 for “failing to produce any actionable intelligence information” (one suspects that if this official narrative were true, the project would have been terminated after one, five, or even ten years rather than twenty, but that is a topic for another day).13
A list of those attached to this endeavor reads like a rogue’s gallery of 1970s parapsychologists and psychics: Russell Targ and Hal Puthoff spearheaded the research, enlisting the help of individuals such as Joseph McMoneagle, Pat Price, Uri Gellar,14 and Ingo Swann in various capacities.15 Swann is of particular note for an anecdote he related in his 1998 book, Penetration: The Question of Extraterrestrial Telepathy.
Just prior to Stargate’s formation, a mysterious government agent calling himself “Mr. Axelrod” contacted Swann and asked him to remote view a set of coordinates on the far side of Earth’s Moon. Swann was initially frustrated with his results, which seemed to produce visions of very un-Moonlike things, including artificial structures and evidence of some sort of mining operation. After Axelrod assured him these results were consistent with their intelligence of activity on the Moon Swann, gobsmacked, continued with his session.
There were “nets” over craters, “houses” in which someone obviously lived, except that I couldn’t see who—save in one case.
In THAT case, I saw some kind of people busy at work on something I could not figure out. The place was dark. The “air” was filled with a fine dust, and there was some kind of illumination—like a dark lime-green fog or mist.
The thing about them was that they either were human or looked exactly like us—but they were all males, as I could well see since they were all butt-ass naked. I had absolutely no idea why. They seemed to be digging into a hillside or a cliff…
But there in my psychic state, as I felt I was, some of those guys started talking excitedly and gesticulating. Two of them pointed in my “direction.”
“I think they have spotted me, Axel. They were pointing at me, I think. How could they do that… unless… they have some kind of high psychic perceptions, too?”16
While the story is likely fanciful, it raises a host of compelling possibilities if true. We have no idea how these moon inhabitants would have described Swann to their peers.
Was there a visual component? Did he appear like a ghost to them? Or perhaps Swann appeared to the Moonites as an anomalous light in their sky, or as a flying saucer? Perhaps when we observe such things in our skies, we do not see physical extraterrestrial spacecraft, but manifestations of advanced intelligences remote viewing Earth. Perhaps only the psychically sensitive among us can see them—those of us receptive to telepathy.
Why build a clunky metal disc and travel 40 light years to observe Earthlings when you can do it from the comfort of your living room? N&B spacecraft are not fait accompli. This is one of a myriad of possibilities rendered plausibilities when ufologists endorse psi phenomena.
Rejecting Materialism
Less obvious but far more profound is how this endorsement of telepathy in UFO encounters draws irreconcilable battle lines between ufology and materialism. In the eyes of modern scientists, belief in telepathy and psychic abilities further degrades the already-sullied topic of ufology; they despise these concepts and reject them outright, because they directly threaten the scientific method.
Scientific literature is littered with sentiments such as those espoused by philosopher-physicist Mario Bunge:
Precognition violates the principle of antecedence (“causality”), according to which the effect does not happen before the cause. Psychokinesis violates the principle of conservation of energy as well as the postulate that mind cannot act directly on matter. (If it did no experimenter could trust his own readings of his instruments.) Telepathy and precognition are incompatible with the epistemological principle according to which the gaining of factual knowledge requires sense perception at some point.
Parapsychology makes no use of any knowledge gained in other fields, such as physics and physiological psychology. Moreover, its hypotheses are inconsistent with some basic assumptions of factual science. In particular, the very idea of a disembodied mental entity is incompatible with physiological psychology; and the claim that signals can be transmitted across space without fading with distance is inconsistent with physics.17
Lest we assume this is an isolated opinion, consider the conclusion of a 1988 panel commissioned by the United States National Research Council to study the paranormal: “Despite a 130-year record of scientific research on such matters, our committee could find no scientific justification for the existence of phenomena such as extrasensory perception, mental telepathy or ‘mind over matter’ exercises… Evaluation of a large body of the best available evidence simply does not su
pport the contention that these phenomena exist.”18
It doesn’t matter that this statement is demonstrably false (more on that in a moment). What matters is that ufologists make no friends in these circles—the circles they so desperately wish to be included in—by endorsing telepathy.
How do N&B/ETH ufologists seeking mainstream acceptance hope to reconcile extraterrestrial visitation with something science declares a fundamental impossibility? Who cares about evidence like burn marks on the ground, radar data, radiation effects, or government documents when the eyewitness adds, “The aliens spoke to me without their mouths moving”? Inadmissible by association.
Any ufologist worth his Fortean salt will point to recent advances in the field of consciousness studies as legitimizing such data. It is true: while plenty of dreck exists as “evidence” of psychic phenomena, a handful of well-qualified researchers are tearing down the materialist paradigm brick-by-brick, producing top-notch research and even publishing in highly regarded peer-reviewed journals.
Rupert Sheldrake has conducted a great many consciousness research projects, but perhaps none more famously than his “pet telepathy” work. His rigorous experimentation, conducted with utmost dedication to the scientific method, suggested that dogs rush to wait by a door or window the moment their owners begin the return journey home. One dog in the study, Jaytee, boasted an 85% success rate, despite Sheldrake randomizing departure times, drivers, and vehicles.19
Dutch cardiologist Pim van Lommel conducted one of history’s largest longitudinal surveys of cardiac arrest patients with the express purpose of examining their Near Death Experiences. His subsequent article, which appeared in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet in 2001, concluded that no current medical explanation satisfactorily explained the patients’ experiences.20
Before his 2007 death, University of Virginia School of Medicine psychiatrist Ian Stevenson practically ended the reincarnation debate. Just one of his works, 1997’s Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects, chronicled the past-life memories and anomalous birthmarks of over 200 children, each corresponding to the lives and wounds of the deceased they claimed to have once been.21
Cornell University professor Daryl Bem published a paper in 2010 suggesting that intense emotions may directly enhance psi phenomena. In his research, over 1,000 subjects exhibited greater aptitude in guessing the location of erotic images over neutral images (53.1% versus 49.8%—statistically significant).22
This is but a taste of the reputable work currently underway in consciousness studies. It is required that if you are unfamiliar with any of the individuals above—who are but a handful of the researchers pushing back on materialism—you avail yourself of their work posthaste.
In light of this admittedly stellar research, some will counter that the N&B/ETH approach will be exonerated if psi abilities are one day accepted within the scientific establishment. In that event, these human capacities will not be regarded as supernatural phenomena, only poorly understood natural phenomena.
These individuals could not be more wrong, at least in the way materialism has forced us to define “natural” over the last few centuries. Materialism holds that only the tangible is real. Extended consciousness effects have no place in a materialist paradigm, period.
At the same time, remember that non-materialist does not equal non-scientific. Science is nothing more than a set of guidelines and tools to evaluate reality honestly and objectively, whereas materialism is an assumption based upon the notion that only things replicable in a laboratory setting are worthy of labeling “real” (though, as illustrated above, not even controlled repeatability satisfies this arbitrary standard). Confirming the objective reality of telepathy, remote viewing, clairvoyance, or any other psi effect would devastate our understanding of natural laws, which would in turn cripple the surety with which the scientific method operates. It would shatter materialism.
Alex Tsakiris deftly explains this in his book Why Science is Wrong… About Almost Everything.
If my consciousness is something—anything—other than a product of my brain, then science is out of business until it figures out exactly how my consciousness interacts with this world. If my consciousness is more than my physical brain, then consciousness is the X-factor in every science experiment. It’s the asterisk in the footnotes that says, “We came as close as we could, but we had to leave out consciousness in order to make our numbers work.”23
The good news is the tide of consensus is beginning to favor researchers like Sheldrake, van Lommel, Stevenson, Bem, and company. Scientists are speaking and behaving less like materialist drones and more like open-yet-critically-minded truth seekers (in other words, more like actual scientists). There are well-placed individuals in the materialist establishment entertaining ideas like the multiverse, or the notion that we may be living in a simulation. Granted, they’re still banging the antiquated drum of eighteenth century materialism, but at least a dialog is starting.
For a more specific example of how mainstream thought is sounding weirder by the day, consider the sentiment expressed in a 2015 press release from The Australian National University. Upon confirming that particles exist in a state of abstraction until they are observed, quantified, and measured (basically saying that events at the quantum level are defined by the future, not the past), Dr. Andrew Truscott said, “At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it.”24
Talk like that from a ufologist in the 1990s would have been greeted with men in white coats.
Once the last tile falls in the “psi acceptance domino chain”—and it will, through fits and starts—it will be patently obvious that materialism is, if not outright falsified, at least undermined to an irreparable degree. From materialism’s ashes, a new model of reality will arise wherein the scientific establishment accepts that the completely intangible, wholly interiorized phenomenon of human consciousness can manifest measurable effects in our physical world.
Does this sound like any unexplained aerial phenomena you may have run across?
Either materialism is correct or materialism is incorrect. If it is correct, how can N&B/ETH researchers believe in telepathy? If it is incorrect, then why do so many still feel obligated to explain UFOs using the exact materialist paradigm that telepathy’s existence refutes?
Telepathy in UFO accounts or scientific materialism—one must be rejected. No middle ground. No half measures. In for the penny that is telepathy, in for the pound that abandons materialism. Why continue playing by scientific rules when you’ve already broken them by ascribing to telepathy and, more to the point, the rulebook is being rewritten in your favor as we speak?
Granted, none of this precludes the possibility of telepathic extraterrestrials visiting Earth in sophisticated spacecraft; nor is it suggesting that plenty of N&B/ETH researchers have not already adopted a post-materialist, consciousness-based paradigm. But it is fatiguing to read convoluted descriptions of crash site “memory metal” nanotechnology or hear lecturers suggest elaborate proposals on how faster-than-light travel could be achieved. Such materialist apologies become completely unnecessary when operating in a consciousness-based paradigm.
A magical paradigm.
A Consciousness Paradigm or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Magic
Orthodox ufologists will likely recoil from the term “magic.” Admittedly, it sounds like the least scientific thing possible. But to take an Arthur C. Clarke-ism and turn it on its head, if any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic then it follows that magic is indistinguishable from any sufficiently advanced technology.
Those straddling the magical-ufological line are in good company. The United States government, as evidenced by The Stargate Project, has a long history of keen interest in both UFOs and magic for decades (perhaps the big secret of UFO Disclosure, should that day ever come, is that they’ve been studying the two as a singl
e phenomenon). The dynastic families of America have long been rumored to empty their pocketbooks into a variety of occult projects. A quote apocryphally attributed to J.P. Morgan says, “Millionaires don’t use astrology—billionaires do.”
To make the term “magic” further palatable, let us turn to the perennially articulate chaos magician Gordon White, who said in a 2015 interview:
Magic is a culture-specific response to naturally occurring consciousness effects like telepathy, and precognition, and all these normal things that as humans, with a normal-functioning mind, we experience … If you look from Australian Aboriginal tribes to chaos magicians in 2015 London, the quote unquote “powers” or the quote unquote “effects” that you can achieve with magic pretty much boil down to the same four or five things: telepathy, precognition (so seeing the future, clairvoyance, whatever you want to call it), visiting the Otherworld, and in some way, trafficking with the spirits.25
Much less frightening, no? It is easy to entertain the objective reality of magic once we cast aside the restraints of materialism, to which magical practice stands diametrically opposed. It is but another domino. If you believe in telepathy, you have a de facto magical worldview—in a manner of speaking, hardline N&B/ETH researchers have endorsed magic for decades.
It is difficult to imagine the well-read ufologist arguing against White’s description of magic. The greatest amount of pushback would likely focus on his last two points—visiting the Otherworld and trafficking with the spirits—but doesn’t that perfectly describe alien abductions? If the magically operant have been correct about the reality of psi effects for millennia, while science tumbled down materialism’s rabbit hole, perhaps we should give that community the benefit of the doubt when it claims that disincarnate spirits exist?
UFOs- Reframing the Debate Page 10