Alien Nation
The following essay was originally published in Conscious Choice Magazine.
While writing my books, I discovered that I was able to keep an open (if skeptical) mind, while exploring subjects that make most people flinch, whether shamanism, psychedelics or crop circles. These days, I continue to find myself curious about ideas and possibilities that lie even further out on the fringe, partially because of personal experiences I have had, ranging from UFO sightings to inexplicable manifestations. I seem to go through a process in absorbing a new pattern of information, first entertaining it as a vaguely humorous possibility and then slowly acclimatizing myself to it with increasing seriousness.
Lately, two new books have been tantalizing my worldview, suggesting new vistas of possibility. The books are Steven Greer’s Hidden Knowledge, Forbidden Truth, and Dark Mission: The Secret History of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration by Richard Hoagland and Michael Bara. Both books discuss extraterrestrials, alien technology and secret government cover-ups, but from different angles. While Hoagland and Bara offer the perspective that NASA is an occult organization that has concealed its findings of alien artifacts on the moon and elsewhere, Greer makes the case that there are numerous benevolent species of intelligent alien life, at a much higher stage of development than us, surrounding the Earth and ready to make contact when we are ready. Hoagland and Mara’s book is a weird, yet fascinating compendium of geometrical postulates and jarring details. Greer’s work, if true, is the best news that humanity has ever received.
Hoagland is well known for his previous work studying the "face on Mars" as a possible artificial construction, while Greer launched The Disclosure Project, getting military officers and intelligence agents to speak about classified encounters with UFOs and extraterrestrials. These accounts include that of Lieutenant Colonel Bob Salas, who was on duty, sixty feet underground at an ICBM missile base, on March 16, 1967, when a UFO appeared overhead, and the control systems for launching the missiles were suddenly deactivated. “Our missiles started shutting down one by one,” Salas reports. “By shutting down, I mean they went into a ‘no-go’ condition meaning they could not be launched.” The same thing occurred at another base, sixty miles away. “So that morning we lost anywhere from 16 to 18 ICBMS at the same time UFOs were in the area and were observed by airmen,” continues Salas. Greer proposes that the intelligences behind the UFOs were testing their capacity to neutralize the destructive capabilities of the military, and perhaps also indicating that the military was not going to be permitted to blow the planet to bits.
In Hidden Truth, Forbidden Knowledge, Greer tells an extraordinary personal story of his quest for understanding and his efforts to spread the word. He claims to be able to utilize meditation and psychic protocols to call in UFOs, which can be seen by himself and the people around him. “Any effort to contact ETs peacefully is greatly respected,” he writes. He notes that these ships — and the beings that inhabit them — can appear in fully materialized, semi-materialized, or astral form. He describes his meetings with major political figures and his interactions with a shadowy cabal that operates in secrecy and conceals their knowledge of the extraterrestrial presence and their advanced work reverse-engineering alien technology that could solve the world’s energy problems, along with many other applications.
I probably speak for many readers when I admit that I still find it hard to imagine that we are on the cusp of a new paradigm of extraterrestial communion that would literally usher the human race into a new world. Even if I allow myself to imagine it, I still find it a difficult psychological leap. This is the case, even though my own research into the crop circle phenomenon, detailed in 2012, led me to the hypothesis that the virtuosic formations were not human made, and had to be a communication — a teaching — from other levels of galactic intelligence. The accelerated development of our technology in the last decades suggests that we cannot imagine what a conscious species hundreds of thousands or millions of years more advanced than our own might be capable of creating, or what mechanisms they might use to travel across interstellar distances.
Having noted that, I also admit to being persuaded by the direct simplicity of Greer’s book and message, and delighted by his vision of an enlightened future for humanity, where the Earth has become a light-ship guiding us on a galactic mission of peaceful exploration. Near the end of Hidden Truth, Forbidden Knowledge, Greer offers this meditation: “Sitting quietly now, we see that we are joined by the angelic realm, the celestial beings, the astral worlds filled with our ancestors and with the beings from diverse worlds. And we see that there are extraterrestrial peoples joining us… And we hold within us this thought, and this vision of suffusing the earth in this golden light as it is brought in to this time of peace, and all the wars will be silenced and all the suffering will end.” If reality is somehow a co-creation of our consciousness, and we can determine which path to take, then I hope to join Dr. Greer in his reality tunnel.
Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism (Broadway Books, 2002) and 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006). His features have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Wired and many other publications.
- 12-10-07
- Daniel Pinchbeck's blog
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Comments
Doublethink
It is indeed fantastic to imagine; the slew of information available to us on this subject is also accelerating. Of all the books I've read though, I still go back to Jim Marrs' 'Alien Agenda' - what a terrific wealth and breadth of information, and his perspective is yet again another to contemplate. 'The Stargate Conspiracy' by Picknett & Prince is another point of view.
I do often wonder at the preponderance of 'visions' and 'points of view' on this subject; once the psychological jump has been made that this is, or at least could be, then what are we to make of it? How can we be sure to trust them - surely if they were trying to trick us, they wouldn't come costumed in horns with pitchforks, but in loving, glowing forms, right? One cannot help but remember that old Twilight Zone episode, "To Serve Man". Much 'evidence' also points to there being certainly many different 'races' - which confuses the issue even further.
I am personally suspicious of both Hoagland and Greer. I don't doubt they believe it, or even that there is quite a bit of truth in both - the whether isn't the issue; it's the why and how that still bother me - as well as the who, in terms of which ones have made contact with our governments, etc. The masterminding of our present condition has taken decades - if not centuries - who's to know who was involved in keeping us from, say, alternative energy, or peace, all of these years, in order to offer us their alternative now and seem the saviors, to take a bit from Hegel, or perhaps dear old Machiavelli.
Homo sapien Chauvinism
From Where do They Reign?
This also brings me into contemplation with Christopher M. Bache's book, Dark Night, Early Dawn, where he shares his own and the work of Robert Monroe––discussing the outer dimensions of the "rings" (as Monroe defines through his work and books). In Ultimate Journey, Monroe discusses the entirely different approach to "Being" found in OOB experiences and non-ordinary realities in that there's a transparency and melding of Beings––as he puts it, it is hard to distinguish even between one and another at that level, or even to establish a "count" or quantity, as at that level "we" are not thought of in that capacity.
One of the interesting things he found was that,
. . . as he transcended the influence of material conditioning, he [Monroe] found that the restrictions of linear time also fell away. He learned, for example, that persons can reincarnate in any historical period they choose. The perception that one must follow the track of history in one's subsequent incarnations appears to be a lower bardo distortion, which yields at a higher level to a rich field of multi-temporal possibilities.
. . . One gets the imprression that as we move into these reralms, we become increasingly transparent to each other. Private thoughts seem practically impossible to keep, or perhaps they simply become unnecessary or even silly. . . . If our minds become exceptionally transparent to each other at this level, might this not suggest the existence of comprehensive patterns of integrated awareness rahter than simply separate souls in telepathic dialogue? . . . [M]ight it not be the case that the soul yields to still more encompassing and inclusive forms of consciousness at still higher levels?
. . . In The Ultimate Journey, for example, he describes a large assembly of souls that appeared to him as a multidimensional carpet of lights. . . . [H]e leaves us with an inspiring image of a vast assembly of separate luminous beings, companion voyagers gathered at a meeting point beyond the outermost ring, perparing to leave spacetime together in one massive exodus.
All of these interdimensional Beings, "Aliens" and encounters of all magnitude and manner of consciousness––I believe we may very well be on the verge of transcending our hertofore understanding and grappling with what's always been along with us for the ride. This is an exciting time––and our dimensions of existence may well be coming together . . . hopefully for an elevating benevolent trans-(this)-reality transformation.
mushroom ambassadors
"re-consider the psilocybin mushroom, i say, it may be the extraterrestrial itself. or consider the earthly plant spirits with which the native people have not lost contact yet. is it not reasonable to suggest that western culture has become so divorced from nature that certain natural phenomenon might come to be perceived as alien?"
i definitely agree with this assessment of the mushroom. from my own experiences, i've gotten the message that the mushroom is a very, very ancient inter-galactic intelligence which has been interacting with humans on a mental, physiological, and genetic level for quite some time now. of course, maybe i'm overly influenced by mckenna in this regard... but also perhaps his theory was accurate.
its very interesting to consider the whole idea of "alien" and what we regard as "foreign" these days when you can make a phone call across the world and talk with someone in another country instantaneously.
it seems that the moments when we realize the "other" as ourselves are some of the most sublime moments of consciousness.
Pre-McKenna Mushroom Trips
As a naive young lad from a remote mountain town, I had taken p.semilanceata mushrooms dozens of times before I heard of McKenna. While I certainly explored the galaxy, I never felt the mushrooms were from another planet. They have a distinct intelligence yes, wise and mischievous, but they always seemed to me to be, literally, the fairies, and deeply rooted to this planet Gaia. I was quite young, and interpreted the word "fairy" in the old folk stories to encode "mushroom," and the mushrooms didn't contradict me. According to tradition, the fairy folk left our dimension and went "underground," to live in the ancestral burial mounds.
Since reading McKenna and taking p. cubensis, I've had the Mayan off-world-mushroom trip. But p.semilanceata are still the fairies. Weird.
Does one have to see an ET to believe in them?
As a former consummate skeptic of the James Randi ilk (I do prestidigitation and know -- or thought I knew --how easily people are fooled), I always appreciate Daniel Pinchbeck's open mind. I believe he _IS_ skeptical, and comes to his conclusions -- even if they seem bizarre to those reviewing his books -- after much research and probably a good deal of (painful?) self-searching. I am in the unique category of being very open to the existance of ETs though I have never seen one. The main reason is that I know people of high credibility who have claimed to have had intense encounters -- these include friends who did not want to have them and refuse to talk about it in detail. But it was pointed out to me that such research could be a dangerous obsession, preoccupying a person's mind to the exclusion of all things. In the case of Richard Dreyfuss in CEotTK, his leaving his family and being known as the local nutball reaped great rewards. But I can see how a lust for God and peak mystical experience could manifest in a constant look skyward. As for Greer, one can conclude only one of three things, I believe: 1) that everything he is saying is true, and in this case, humanity may be saved from a self-inflicted disaster of gargantuan proportions. 2) that he is certifiably insane, or a snake-oil salesman of insane proportions. 3) that what he writes is essentially true but he relies on the New-Testament type use use of metaphor and parable to explain things beyond the understanding of those of us trapped in four dimensions. Such "leaps" of faith would be easier for us if we, too, not only saw a strange UFOs but were sun-burned by them.
One last thing: How typical of the MSM for jumping on Dennis Kucinich for mentioning UFOS in a debate. (Shirley MacClaine mentioned his sighting one from her house in her new book, followed by the presence of black helicopters; this couldn't have helped him.) Of course, the MSM does not jump on Brownback for believing one can eat the body and drink the blood of Christ for transubstantiation. And Romney's belief that the angel Moroni appeared to an illiterate Upstate New Yorker and presented him with two never-again-seen golden tablets, is only seen as a liability because of the reliable acidic judgment of the evangelical Christian Right.
mediums/abductees and abuse
Many abductees and mediums seem to be people who experienced some sort of abuse, primarily sexual, as children. I don't know that this invalidates their testimonies, however. It may be that those experiences create the capability to enter into dissociative/psychically receptive states and to have experiences "beyond the veil" of the ordinary world. Jung wrote, "God enters through the wound." It may not just be God, but other dimensions of psychic existence that also enter through the wound.
I don't know whether or not the Montauk Project was "real," but purportedly the experiment used child abuse to tear open holes into other dimensions.
"Will the transformation."-Rilke
Phillip Pulman and Montauk
A curiously refracted portrayal of the Montauk story can be glimpsed in Phillip Pulman's His Dark Materials. In the first book of the trilogy, abducted children are forcibly cut off from their "daemons," or souls, in a secret experimental project conducted by the world's oppressive religious government. A rift is opened at the north pole, and travel between the dimensions becomes possible.
It'll be interesting to see how this scene appears in the recent film version.
physical abuse-emotional abuse
My experiences lead me to believe that when one has torture experiences, whether physical or emotional, they then have an expanded spiritualconsciousness that enables them to relate, to a greater degree, to the spiritual side of our being.
My bottom line thought is that whatever we believe and have is what we have created through thought processes. To me it is interrelated to electrical synapses that travel freely through what we perceive as space, or our current reality. The computer age is moving us at what could best be described, for our reality, as warp speed toward our new reality.
I find it interesting that there are not more posts on this the first day after the winter solstice of 2007. My prediction is that we will move, in small increments, toward a world that is not as we now know it. Yes, this will be true regardless of what the world is in 2012.
The writing of this and sending of it through cyberspace is but one unseeable factor in bringing about the change, or more likely the enhancement, of the universal concsiousness.
I have not done psychedelic drugs in 40 years.
Beyond Belief
Food for Thought
The Possible Significance of Alien Implants in the Nose
The nose is affected by any devise that can import negative ions. In the bones forming the wall of the sinuses or the deep-seated sphenoid-ethnoid sinus complex, in close contact with the brain, there is an embedded layer of high ion content. It reacts to high doses of negative ions by connecting to the temporal lobe, itself sensitive to electromagnetic influences. Otherwise known as the hippocampus (Ammon's Horn of the Brain)its functions include dreaming and memory, consciousness and subconsciousness. Consequently any person exposed to anything properly charged with negative ion flow generated by tectonic action could undergo mind-altered phenomena and psycho/spiritual experiences, bodily sensations of physical euphoria, time-space alterations, apperitions or other psych/spiritual phenomena.
Frank Joseph, Ancient Historian speaks of the above in his work as he references the history of the pyramids, megalithic stone structures and stone statues left behind by the ancients.
Would all this be about a lost advanced science?
Would this be about the technology an alien species might agree to share with gov, scientists and military in exchange for permission to study human beings further through abduction, experimentation and implants?
Is this about a lost advanced science about energy and technologies concerning states of highly magnified consciousness?
Is this connected to the fact that, those who experience higher consciousness, OBE's or astral travel and those who experience alien abduction share the strange commonality of electro-magnetic alterations and the loss of main electrolytes if examined in the hospital after both experiences?
More Significances to Ponder
All Eastern Methodologies involve breath control, breathing techniques...again the nose, picking up energy and making changes to the bio-electromagnetic body---holding as P. Gardiner speakes of as changes which can be for.."good or bad."
Papers involving scientific studies have been presented to the United Nations (Ingo Swann and others)which when read and examined reveal studies into the bio-internal body substrates and bio-information transfer networks at the atomic, moleculor and neurological levels. Again references to the vemeronasal system in the nose.
P. Gardner discusses how the ancient Shaman, medicine man or mystic knew about this bio-internal body substrate and bio-information transfer networks. He states that "ancient structures were built with electromagnetism in mind just as Frank Joseph states that the composition of ancient stone megalithic structures functioned to affect human consciousness.
Since the 1930s science has discovered sensors and receptors that go into an understanding of David Bohm's "implicate order" of the holographic universe.
P. Gardiner in Gateways to the Otherworlds presents a list of 31 sense receptor systems in the bio-internal body substrate.
We are being studied by scientists and it seems to be of particular interest to the UN. Is it good? Is it bad? Are any "whys" hidden? I am not being paranoid here, I am wondering and questioning if the alien abduction phenomena has some subtle connection to all of this.