by Mac Tonnies
I think the “aliens” are waging the equivalent of a “psy-ops” campaign on the human species. It’s doubtful their ultimate goal is anything so quaint (or comprehensible) as transgenic offspring, but neither is it necessarily malign. Simply, our “visitors” appear to be striving to become adept at accessing our reality, in effect becoming “more real” and thus increasingly compatible with us. We nourish them with our attention, and as they penetrate the barrier separating them from consensus reality (in which the subject of aliens and UFOs is systematically marginalized), they finally begin to loom above the bunkers of myth—incidentally, in the case of the Grays, becoming rather like ourselves in the process.
Whether they come to us from the upper tiers of John Keel’s “superspectrum” or from some other parallel reality, their activities betray an apparent need for attention to which ufology has been essentially blind, despite case after case of “playful” UFO behavior (especially pronounced during aircraft encounters). Perhaps by engaging our psyche, they pass the burden of their arrival onto our collective shoulders.
Dreams have their own geography. Not merely a participatory sense of place, but a palpable topology, an underlying spatial structure that challenges dogmatic concepts of “reality.” As I revisit the locales in my psyche, I’m tempted to ascribe them to genuine places only half-seen (if at all) while waking.
Our “normal” lives are flimsy, incomplete. We should fully engage the dreaming self instead of denying or deriding it; illusions are endemic to perception—sleeping, waking, or inhabiting that barely remembered interzone that straddles the border.
I’m drawn to the concept that the universe needs consciousness, either to succeed in some “utility function” or simply to keep itself intact. If so, could it also need directed awareness in the form of technology?
The UFO intelligence seems curiously out of its element, a fact that should arouse extraordinary suspicion. One would think, given the time it has had to observe us, it should be thoroughly familiar with us and able to “pass through” without risking curious bystanders. But as even a summary examination of the UFO literature demonstrates, curious bystanders seem to be the whole point—and therein, I suspect, lies the ultimate identity of our unlikely guests.
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Why don’t the “aliens” make open contact? Why do they seem content with taunting our aircraft and haunting lonely night roads? Why the elusiveness that’s characterized the UFO phenomenon since the modern era of sightings began in the late 1940s?
There are a multitude of reasons a visiting civilization would refrain from “landing on the White House lawn,” foremost among them the potentially debilitating effect open contact might wreak on terrestrials. History shows that relatively advanced sea-faring cultures topple less developed cultures, in part by collapsing defining assumptions and rendering cultural self-hood obsolete. If we’re of any research value to a visiting civilization then interfering at the macro-sociological level might threaten to destroy thousands of years of patient work. The paradox is that UFOs do exhibit an interest in our activities. But it’s a cryptic, behind-the-scenes sort of interest: clandestine-seeming at first take but, on closer inspection, almost alarmingly conspicuous, like a silent plea for attention.
One idea to account for this behavior is that the UFO intelligence somehow hinges on our belief in it (a notion that assumes an esoteric origin instead of the more common “nuts and bolts” extraterrestrial hypothesis). In this scenario, the UFOs are engaged in an elaborate act of psychic propaganda, preparing our collective unconscious for the idea of “others,” ET or otherwise. It’s well worth remembering that humanity’s interaction with apparent visitors is hardly limited to alleged space travelers in the 20th century; Jacques Vallee’s classic Passport to Magonia offers strong support to the (admittedly slippery) prospect that the UFO intelligence was functioning under the guise of faerie lore in Europe centuries before the idea of spaceflight became fashionable.
It’s possible that UFOs would like to initiate something like formal contact but are restrained from doing so by the physics of perception, as Whitley Strieber has suggested. So the pageant in our skies might be an ongoing indoctrination, an attempt to become more substantial (in our universe, at least) so that a more meaningful dialogue can be reached at some indeterminate point in the future. One way of achieving this might be to cultivate a milieu of incipience, in which nonhuman contact (or disclosure) seems inevitable. In fact, this illusory notion of an impending ufological “smoking gun” has left a pronounced signature on the history of UFO research, often forcing investigators to take sides in a fruitless (if colorful) ideological battle that reduces the UFO enigma to trite discussion of galactic federations and Orwellian government oversight.
If UFOs are attempting to breach our universe, our ingrained sense of disbelief might be preventing them in some arcane quantum mechanical sense. Strieber has argued that official denial of the phenomenon is designed to thwart a potential invasion of nonhuman intelligence, in which case it seems an enduring stalemate has been reached (with occasional power-plays made by both the UFOs and earthly officialdom). This idea is similar to the citizens of the Planck Brane in Rudy Rucker’s science fiction epic Frek and the Elixir. In Rucker’s novel, the inhabitants of a parallel universe must accumulate a critical level of prestige and notoriety or else cease to exist. The ruling class consists of six individuals who are so well-known and casually accepted by the other Planck Braners that they persist with their individuality intact while their fellows vanish during periodic “renormalization storms”; only when the main characters deride and purposefully ignore them to they fade into the quantum background. Strieber takes a related idea and runs with it in his horror novel The Forbidden Zone, which depicts a reality-bending alien presence set loose upon a small town in the wake of a quantum experiment gone awry.
The overriding theme, prevalent in occult literature, is that our universe is permeable and can, under specific circumstances, provide a channel to unseen realms (an idea that’s remarkably similar to contemporary thought on wormhole travel). Of immediate interest is Aleister Crowley’s “Lam,” a “magickal” entity who bears an uncanny resemblance to today’s “Grays.” Unlike Lam, who functioned as a mentor and paraphysical guru, the Grays are typically assumed to be dispassionate ET scientists; if Crowley were practicing his consciousness experiments today, would he be greeted by dome-headed beings in skin-tight jumpsuits? (Perhaps it pays for aliens to stay in touch with predominant memes if it entails making a lasting impression. The presence of awkward, quasi-human “Men In Black,” chronicled in detail by John Keel and Jenny Randles, suggest that aliens may have already infiltrated—perhaps in order to refine the art of passing as typical Earthlings. If so, what’s the ultimate agenda?)
We’re left with a surreal residue of encounters and sightings that describe an intelligence operating at the periphery of human consciousness. Whether this is due to deliberate intent or can be attributed to obstruction (willful or innocuous) remains one of ufology’s most significant unanswered questions.
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But if an alien intelligence is accountable for even a small degree of our collective preoccupation with the “other,” it’s conceivable that we have, in fact, established a dialogue of sorts. Maybe we’re being taught a new mythological syntax so that, confronted with the specter of planetary disaster, we’ll have the means of rising to the challenge.
I’m not suggesting we’ll be saved at the last minute in some alien Rapture. But the UFO phenomenon’s symbolic importance shouldn’t go unrecognized. Perhaps, as Carl Jung mused, UFOs signal a change in the collective unconscious. The UFO intelligence might be attempting to hasten that change, if only for ultimately selfish reasons. It might be devastatingly lonely and need us to keep from withering away in the long interstellar night. Or the truth could be more immediate: just because we might be someone else’s property, an idea espoused by Charles Fort, doesn’t mean we’re not valuable pro
perty.
In almost any scenario, the sort of peaceable contact foreseen by the contactees of the 1950s is extraordinarily unlikely. The evidence indicates that life on Earth will become increasingly severe; we may or may not survive intact. But it’s just conceivable that someone or something hopes we make it.
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If I’m right, such a postsingular indigenous intelligence would eschew formal contact for the simple reason that such disclosure would destabilize us, possibly to the brink of existential obliteration. Theorists have attacked the trite assumptions of mainstream SETI for the same reason. If our own history is any example, technologically robust civilizations inevitably subsume less sophisticated cultures, not merely by violently dismantling them, but by introducing a virulent strain of apathy. (The infamous Brookings report to NASA, recommending that the discovery of extraterrestrial artifacts be covered up for fear of paralyzing research/development enterprises, stands as perhaps most explicit elucidation of this idea.)
The UFO/”alien” phenomenon described by Jacques Vallee, John Keel, and Whitley Strieber is alarmingly congruent with the CTH. We appear to be interacting with an exceptionally patient intelligence which, despite its advantages over terrestrial science, seems limited by a steadfast refusal to make itself widely known. (Whether this indicates a guiding morality or pragmatic necessity remains to be seen.) Contrary to mainstream expectations, our visitors have opted for a much more gradual form of contact, evidenced both by the often theatrical nature of the apparent vehicles in our skies and by the behavior of the presumed occupants (who seem to enjoy letting us assume they hail from outer space).
I propose that this intelligence has played a significant role in occasionally hastening our species’ development as well as keeping us in a periodic “standby” state, rendering us less likely to destroy ourselves. In a way, the human legacy has been scripted to conform to an alien template about which we know little or nothing. But the available historical, mythological and experiential evidence tends to support a largely benevolent raison d’etre. Perhaps we’re being groomed in preparation for our own Singularity, after which the “others” could have no choice but to deal with us as equals.
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If we’re dealing with aliens—regardless whether or not they originate in space or on Earth—maybe their clumsy, oblique interactions with us can be explained if they’re endowed with intelligence but devoid of sentience. They could have taken an evolutionary route that bypassed awareness entirely, or they could have achieved a form of sentience only to lose it, perhaps by recklessly merging with their machines.
“Ufonauts” are often described as behaving in a military or insect-like manner, even moving in lockstep. Maybe they’re interested in us because we’re aware in a way they aren’t, and they’re determined to acquire our capacity for self-reflective thought in order to communicate with us. In essence, our interaction with the UFO intelligence could be a dialogue with a complex but myopic machine. Maybe “they” have never encountered a species like us and are genuinely baffled—insofar as a distributed computer can be “baffled.”
Ardent Singularitarians will doubtlessly point out that our brains are effectively distributed computers, in which case the aliens, if they’re here, should possess sentience even if mechanical. But a sophisticated intelligence doesn’t necessarily need to be aware of itself to perform a task. If we’re observing beings created by someone or something else, sentience might have been deliberately excluded from their repertoire for fear of losing control of a useful tool.
Our visitors seem both wildly sophisticated and limitlessly stupid. If they’re collectively lacking what we commonly term “spirit,” it might be possible to resolve this seeming paradox.
CHAPTER 7
The Superspectrum
Given that radiation like that used by cellphones can infringe on human consciousness—and I think it’s very probable it can—we have to question our role in this emerging electronic ecology. If John Keel is correct, and we share the planet with “ultraterrestrials” who occupy higher realms of an unseen “superspectrum,” one wonders if we could be upsetting the superspectral hierarchy by marinating our world in a stew of microwaves.
Conversely, maybe the advent of widespread cell communication is analogous to the role of fungi according to Terence McKenna. Instead of viewing ubiquitous cell towers as intrusive and harmful, maybe we should look at them as totems through which we might communicate with unseen intelligences. (I’ve always thought it interesting that so many UFO sightings have been witnessed over military installations with advanced radar technology; some alleged UFO occupants have even ventured the idea that radar somehow interferes with the operation of their craft—one proposed explanation for the Roswell incident.)
In any case, there appears to be a link between artificial radiation and “alien” visitors. And since some UFOs possess documented microwave properties, we’re left with the possibility that we’re only now (inadvertently) acknowledging their arrival. What this means in the long-term is anyone’s guess. Maybe, by inundating the skies with our collective voice, we’re offering the “ultraterrestrials” a sort of Trojan Horse—a technological substrate through which they can penetrate our reality with unprecedented ease.
I find broadcast towers oddly frightening. Maybe they’re not tinfoil-hat scary, but they sound a quiet alarm. We seldom take the time to look up and actually see these things—which is perhaps understandable, since they’re everywhere: anonymous spurs skewering the clouds and filling the sky with unknown chatter.
If we’re evolving faster to meet the demands of an increasingly compromised planet, I suppose it’s not out of the realm of possibility that our brains are being forced to adapt to the ubiquitous electromagnetic fog spawned by the telecommunications industry. Maybe some UFOs are a way our minds have developed to make sense of the onslaught of radio and microwave radiation that permeates modern culture. Radio inundation might be ripping holes in the collective unconscious, leaving conspicuous voids to be filled.
Albert Budden has speculated along similar lines; he describes “abductions” as the psyche’s way of maintaining identity when faced with acute allergic distress. I’m actually quite interested in the esoteric neurological effects of EM exposure. One of the most original UFO books of the last two decades is UFOs: Psychic Close Encounters: The Electromagnetic Indictment by Albert Budden, who hypothesizes that EM “hotspots” can result in a variety of troubling “paranormal” experiences, including evident “hauntings” and—you guessed it—alien abduction. (It’s worth remembering that ufologist Jacques Vallee has credited genuine UFOs with emitting microwaves, which may play a similar hallucinogenic role in some close encounters. And debunkers are fond of citing the work of Michael Persinger, whose experiments with EM fields and human subjects suggest a link between the “sense of presence” associated with altered states of consciousness and seismic stress.)
Close encounter witnesses almost invariably describe electromagnetic anomalies both in the presence of UFOs/entities and in mundane surroundings. I’m drawn to the possibility that some abductions are energetic intrusions of some sort, a hypothesis that “nuts and bolts” pundits are likely to deride. Perhaps instead of focusing on recovering memories of events occluded by “missing time,” researchers should attempt a comprehensive electrical profile of the witness’ nervous system and vicinity.
To my knowledge, the only researcher to undertake a rigorous survey of the electromagnetic environment’s impact on the experiencer is Albert Budden, who has come to accept that alien visitation and “hauntings” alike can be attributed to EM “hotspots” interacting with the human brain. Budden’s model hinges on the human brain’s ability to conjure convincing hallucinatory states. And while there’s no doubt the brain can be remotely stimulated to produce otherworldly imagery (through both EM and chemical means), laboratory tests have thus far failed to produce anything comparable to an archetypal “abduction” experience.
/> This frustrating lack of repeatability in a clinical environment invites the possibility that we’re dealing with an external phenomenon of considerable power and complexity. Could we, in fact, be dealing with a form of nonhuman consciousness that takes the form of plasma?
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“I sometimes see these entities during meditation (eyes barely open, soft focus),” writes Kartott, author of the Postreason blog. “They stand (float) about me, seeming to modulate a field of energy around me (I especially sense their hands, ‘combing’ the energy). There always seems to be one primary entity, usually right in my face, others are more in the background. I don’t get any verbal communication from them.”
As this description illustrates, the “Gray” archetype seems to possess the ability to manifest in a “visionary” manner. If so, who’s responsible? We could be dealing with a hardwired neurological phenomenon, as argued by researchers like Michael Persinger and Albert Budden. Conversely, recurrent images of the Grays—in varying stages of physicality and in a multitude of contexts—beg the idea that they exist independently of the brain (at least temporarily).
The close encounter literature is rife with accounts in which “abductees,” convinced their visitors are flesh-and-blood, encounter their assailants in apparent “out-of-body” and similarly altered states, suggesting that the Grays (and their kin) can maneuver in and out of our ontological framework at will. What might this say about the origin of our visitors (if indeed we’re dealing with an externally imposed intelligence)?