Tag: ufo

UFOs over Oregon

moe Leave a comment

I see that several pilots reported UFOs near Eugene and on the Oregon coast some days ago. They saw lights and objects moving at impossible speeds and in several patterns. (I used to live in Eugene, Oregon, so this story caught my attention.)

As is tradition, interviewed officials and scientists try to explain it away with explanations that clearly don’t fit the observations. In this case, they say it’s Starlink satellites. Do Starlink satellites move in a corkscrew pattern? Do they move at extreme speeds? Are they a red sphere? Why do several independent pilots report them on this particular night and not on other nights?

At the same time, there has been a swing of the pendulum from the US government initially taking UFOs seriously (1940s, 1950s), to outright dismissal (1960s-2000s), to recent years where the Pentagon has released videos and information on unexplained aerial phenomena. Even the New York Times reported on it. (I happened to see two tic-tac-shaped UFOs in California headed towards the coast at about the same time these videos are from, long before the videos were made public.)

I have been interested in UFOs off and on since childhood and was a member of the Norwegian UFO organization in elementary school. I especially like the approach of John Mack, Jacques Vallee, and others who take a more open, curious, and cultural/psychological approach to it. And I have been especially impressed by the Ariel school mass sighting and stories like the one in Witness of Another World.

Since I am from Norway, the Hessdalen lights and observations made an impression on me as a kid. I also like that they have received scientific attention and are systematically observed and studied.

WHY AM I INTERESTED IN UFOS?

Why am I interested in the UFO phenomenon?

There are several reasons: The mystery of it. The invitation for sober thinking. The projection aspect. That UFO encounters often are transformative. That just the idea of UFOs challenge us to examine our views. And that whatever is behind some of the reports may well go outside of what’s currently familiar to us. I’ll go into these briefly below.

I should also mention that when I write about how governments relate to UFOs, it’s mostly about the US, partly because I have lived there most of my adult life and partly because my country of origin (Norway) has a similar orientation. I know that other countries are more openly interested in it and publicly take it seriously.

THE MYSTERY OF UFOS

One reason I am interested in the UFO phenomenon is the mystery of it. What’s going on?

Although most sightings have ordinary explanations, some seem credible and genuinely baffling and unexplainable. The US navy sightings, with video and radar data, is a recent example. Nothing known explains what several pilots saw and which is backed up by instrumentation. (The explanations some have put forward don’t match the data, not to mention that they are insulting to the intelligence and experience of the people in the navy genuinely baffled by it.)

Many reports are odd, with a mix of UFOs, synchornicities, unusual animal encounters, animals far larger than what’s possible, sightings of mythological creatures, and so on. These are anecdotal so have to be taken with a big pinch of salt, but there are also patterns across times and cultures in these reports, and they hint at something far odder than scientists from another planet visiting in nuts and bolts vehicles. (Odd for our Western materialistic mindset, that is.)

It’s natural and healthy that we have some degree of interest in mysteries. It’s built into us through evolution, and it’s one of the ways our ancestors learned about the world and gained a survival edge. It’s also natural and healthy that the degree of curiosity differs between individuals.

THE MYSTERY IN EVERYTHING

There is a bigger picture here, and that is that everything is mystery.

We have questions about the world, and that’s it. We don’t know anything for certain.

Life, the world, and ourselves are far more mysterious to us than many like to admit.

This the mystery I am most interested in, which is reflected in the name of this website. It’s the mystery that takes the form of everything. This overarching mystery is also why I don’t spend too much time on what’s conventinally considered mysteries, like UFOs, although I dip into it now and then.

SOBER THINKING

The UFO phenomenon is an invitation for sober thinking, which is another reason I sometimes get into it. It’s a good practice ground for sober thinking, being honest with myself, noticing imaginations as imaginations, and noticing if I get into wishful or fearful thinking.

What’s the data? Would it hold up in a court of law? Would it be accepted in a peer-reviewed journal?

How is the logic? Is it grounded and solid? Am I committing logical fallacies?

Do I pretend to know something that I don’t know for certain?

Our thoughts are questions about the world. Do I pretend that my thoughts are something else?

Similarly, do I pretend that all thoughts about it are equal? That some are not more grounded in solid data and logical thinking than others?

WHEN ABANDONED IT’S OPEN FOR CRACKPOTS

In the US, and several other countries, the UFO topic has largely been dismissed, ridiculed, and put on the margins of government and scientific attention since the modern UFO waves came in the 1940s.

That has left the field wide open for crackpots, which has made it even more of a pariah topic for serious politicians, government officials, and scientists. (Here, I consider those who have strong ideas about UFOs and think they know for certain as crackpots. Their ideas are typically based in poor data and flawed logic.)

With the publication of US navy videos of unexplainable aerial phenomena, and the New York Times article, there is a small shift, an invitation for people to take it seriously.

PROJECTIONS

Yet another reason I am interested is because of the projection aspect of UFOs.

What do we imagine onto the UFOs? Do we imagine beings? If so, do we imagine them as saviors, villains, detached observers? Maybe culturally, technologically, or spirituality evolved beyond us? Something else?

It’s good to notice that these are our own imaginations and find what they point to in ourselves.

What’s my stories about the UFOs? What’s my stories about how people – governments, media, scientists, crackpots – relate to them? What do I find when I turn each of those stories to myself? Can I find genuine and specific examples of how they are true?

If I remember correctly from his book on UFOs, Jung saw them as representing the Self, our mind-body whole at a human level. Since we don’t know what they are, they are good projection objects for just about anything our mind wants to project, which means they can also tell us a lot about ourselves.

TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCES

Several people report sometimes profound transformations following a UFO or alien encounter.

The man in the Witness of Another World documentary had his life profoundly changed. He was able to spontaneously know the future of people he met (touched?), and the future was sometimes revealed to him in dreams. (Just like, it turned out, the shamans of the tribe his ancestors were originally from.)

The children from the Ariel school also reported transformations when interviewed a quarter of a century later, and the ones closest to the UFO seemed to have experienced the most profound shifts. As far as I remember, the shifts were often into questioning the mainstream worldview, open to the mysteries in life and the universe, a deep love and concern for the Earth, and so on.

In the shamanic traditions around the world, it seems that UFO and alien encounters are part of their history and culture. A part of the initiations and transformations of shamans sometimes involve what we think of as UFOs and aliens. (Sky beings.) John Mack writes about this in some of his books.

It seems that UFO or alien encounters serve a transformative function and are in the general category of some other experiences: Near death experiences (NDEs), before-life experiences, some psychedelic experiences, some altered states, mystical shifts, and similar.

My interest in this comes from having had at least two nudges in my life that have been profoundly transforming. The first is the (apparent) flashbacks to the time between lives that would happen in early childhood, before school age. The second is the oneness shift that happened when I was sixteen (and didn’t go away).

UFOS & OUR VIEWS

The UFO phenomenon invites us to notice and question some of our assumptions and explore options that may fit the data better. In this case, we don’t have much solid data, so we can find options that make sense no matter what.

I. WORLDVIEWS

UFOs are a reminder that what we know about the world, ourselves, and the universe, is limited, and that our collective worldview is similarly limited.

We live within a particular Western worldview and mindset, and this worldview and mindset is cultural and temporary. It will be gone. Future generations (if we survive the coming ecological bottleneck) will see it as outdated, quaint, and misguided in many areas.

In the future, knowledge of other beings in the universe may be a core part of our collective worldview.

In the future, we may collectively acknowledge a far richer reality – perhaps one that includes synchronicities, awakening (the consciousness we are awake to itself), distance sensing and healing, and so on.

II. A GLOBAL VIEW

Since we (rightly or wrongly) associate UFOs with beings outside of Earth, they remind us that we are one Earth, one living planetary system, and one species.

Through our ideas about UFOs, we give ourselves a more global perspective.

That’s valuable in itself.

Of course, this happens in other ways as well: Images of the Earth from space, science fiction stories, systems views, and so on. The UFO phenomenon is just one part of this.

III. OUR ROLE IN THE COSMOS

Since we (rightly or wrongly) associate UFOs with beings from other places in the universe, they are a reminder for us about our own role in the cosmos and they invite us to look closer at this role.

Through science, we see the universe as a seamless evolving system, and we are temporary and fleeting expressions of this system.

It’s likely that this is not the only planet – or local system – that has come to life. We may share this universe with many other forms of life, and we are all part of the evolution of this seamless universe. With our reflective and self-reflective mind, we shape our own evolution and, in our small way, the evolution of the universe.

If we ever know for certain we are not alone, it will change how we see ourselves and the rest of the universe. It will shape how we see our role in it. It will invite us to have more of a cosmic context for our lives. And that changes everything, perhaps in a small way with big consequences.

WORTH STUDYING

The UFO phenomenon is worth studying, no matter what’s behind it. (Likely a variety of things – known misidentified phenomena, unknown natural phenomena, maybe something else too.)

It’s worth studying…

…for security reasons. For instance, some sightings may be of drones used for spying.

…for psychological and social reasons. It helps us understand the psyche and social dynamics better.

…since there seems to be something real and genuinely mysterious behind some of the reports.

…since some of it may be unknown natural phenomena. (For instance, some of the lights in Hessdalen, Norway.)

…since some phenomena seems to go outside of what’s understood and acknowledged in our current Western worldview.

…since what we find behind some of the phenomena, whatever it is, may give us a better understanding of the world and the universe. It has the potential to reveal something slightly or dramatically different from what we already know.

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The stories we put on weird experiences

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What stories do we put on weird1 experiences?

What do those stories say about me and my worldview? How do they impact my life? How can I find more kind, accurate, and useful stories?

In many ways, those questions are as or more important than the “truth” about these experiences, and what we can find through regular scientific research into them.

I have experienced and gone through a number of states that can be called spiritual. If I took these as some kind of goal or place to get back into, I would create a lot of problems for myself. I would be on a wild goose chase. Instead, I chose to see them as highlighting aspects of what I am, aspects of my nature. I ask myself if I can find the essence of it here and now. That seems more kind, wise, and useful, and I am sure there are other ways to look at it that may seem even more insightful and useful.

I have periods with frequent and amazing synchronicities. I can try to figure what they mean as if there is some meaning inherent in them waiting to be found. That seems stressful since I can never know if I have found it, and it also looks like a wild goose chase. Instead, it seems to point to me being in a kind of flow state and following my inner guidance. I can see if that seems accurate. I can also see it as a question about reality: Perhaps all is connected in a far deeper way than it looks? Perhaps all these surface expressions are movements within a seamless whole? I can also take it as a reminder that the universe seems like a seamless system.

As a kid, I had what seemed like flashbacks to between lives. I shifted into a state of disembodiment and all as consciousness and love. I was profoundly at home, beyond anything I can imagine in this life. It brought up longing and some grief in me. I can try to figure out if this is how it really is between lives. I can try to tell myself I know this is how it is between lives. Again, that’s futile since I cannot know any of that for certain, and somewhere in me I know that. I cannot successfully deceive myself even if I try. Again, it seem more wise, kind, and useful to use it as a pointer for what’s here now. Can I find it here and now? (The answer is yes, I can find it here and now. The essence is the same although it doesn’t look exactly the same, and it’s generally much easier to find it than it has been at some points.)

I seem to be able to sense to some extent what’s going on in the system of others and invite in healing at a distance. Again, I could try to tell myself I know that this is how it is and perhaps even how it works. And again, that’s futile since I know I cannot know for certain. It’s far more comfortable for me to hold the questions and keep exploring. The sensing and healing seem to work, so why not keep exploring it?

I have precognitions, either through dreams or in waking life. Many of these seem accurate. I dreamt I would live in Oregon fifteen years before it happened2. I dreamt I would live in a neighborhood with a very particular schoolhouse in South America, and that happened roughly thirty-five years later3. I also often have a sense of how situations will unfold, and when that sense has a certain quiet solid feel to it, it often turns out to be correct. (Hopes and fears can muddle it, of course.) I find it useful to see these as questions more than anything else.

My nature seems to be able to recognize itself and this whole field of experience as happening within itself. I could tell myself stories about how this is awakening or enlightenment, or that it’s a full awakening, or that it’s some kind of endpoint. It’s the same with this as with the other examples. It seems obviously not true. Those are stories and I cannot know any of it for certain. On the contrary, it seems that this is an ongoing process of exploration, clarification, deepening, maturing, healing, and so on. I cannot find any finishing line. That’s far more comfortable and it seems more aligned with reality.

I seem to have what could be called insights. I could tell myself these reflect some final, full, absolute truth. That seems stressful and it would require a lot of work to try to talk myself into it. The reality is that I cannot know. They seem provisional and more like questions about the world than anything else. I am sure there are other ways to looking at it that would make more sense to me now or will in the future. Taking it that way is far more comfortable for me. It seems more aligned with reality. (And that too is provisional and a question.)

To me, waking life seems like a dream. It’s all happening within the consciousness I am, just like night dreams. The consciousness I am forms itself into all of it. These too are questions more than anything else. If I got caught up in the mental mirroring (representations) of it and told myself that’s how it is, it would distract from the actual alive noticing. Holding those stories as questions frees up attention to actually noticing.

I could tell myself that having weird experiences with the “spiritual” label on it makes me special. That too seems stressful because it’s not true. Many if not most people have unusual experiences once or several times. Many have had far more experiences than me. (It’s not a competition.) I didn’t choose or create any of these experiences, they just happened. I cannot keep them or make them come back. They live their own life. At most, some of them are pointers for aspects of what I am and what I can find here and now.

I have had ghost and UFO experiences. Again, I could make up stories about these and tell myself I know how things are. I don’t. I can explore and have questions about it, and that’s about it. That’s more interesting and aligned with reality, and allows me to keep exploring.

With the things that relate to something “out there” – ghosts, UFOs, synchronicities, and so on– I take it as only “out there” in the world. That way, I would miss out on the richness of also seeing it in here. I can notice that it all happens within and as my sense fields, and that my sense fields happen within and as the consciousness I am. I can identify my stories about them, turn these stories to myself, and find genuine and specific examples of how it’s true.

These are all provisional stories, and I keep exploring to see if something else may seem more useful for me. Of course, to be useful, they also need to be as sincere, honest, and true as possible – in a conventional sense and in my experience.

NOTES

(1) When I say “weird” it means weird as seen in our mainstream culture. Something that doesn’t fit the mainstream materialistic worldview and the views of our current science. In some subcultures and in most other cultures, it will not be seen as weird. It fits their worldview. (For a couple of hundred years, our culture has worked to shed superstitions, and that’s good. Now, it may be time to include some of it again, and to do so in a more grounded and science-based way.)

(2) I was a teenager and lived in Norway at the time, and had absolutely no intention to go to the US. I didn’t like much about the US so it was very far down the list of places I wanted to visit and even less live in. Through a set of circumstances, I did eventually find myself in Oregon and in the setting described in the dream.

(3) I almost fell out of the car when I saw that schoolhouse while we were in the process of buying the land. At some point, we had given up since it seemed impossible – there was no road access – but the dream suggested that it would happen. Now, I can see that school from our tiny house.

Image by me and Midjourney

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Ale’s cosmic dreams and one of mine

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It’s night and I see long spiral chains (DNA?) coming down from the sky. They are made up of bright radiant golden light. I see them as immensely beautiful. When they reach the ground, they turn into my parents and my aunts and uncles.

– Ale’s dream #1

I am in the hammock on our land in the Andes mountains. It’s night. I open the eyes and I see one UFO in the sky. There are then hundreds of UFOs moving around in the sky creating sacred geometry patterns. My parents and aunts and uncles are there and we all see them.

– Ale’s dream #2 a couple of days later

The night sky is full of UFOs in a kind of grid pattern. They all blink synchronously. The whole world sees it and know that a big shift is coming. It’s a new era for humanity and civilization. We go from only knowing about ourselves to be part of a cosmic community of beings.

– my dream when I was in my late teens or early twenties

These are all dreams with a cosmic flair.

So what do they mean? What processes in the psyche do they reflect?

Ale’s first dream may be the most straight forward. She has worked a lot on healing her relationship with her family and finding healing for family and ancestral patterns. The dream may reflect that healing process. Her DNA is golden (divine) and descends from the sky, and it turns into her close family.

The two UFO dreams are a little more puzzling. My best guess is that they are expressions of a shift in consciousness. Perhaps a visceral shift in our worldview, in how we relate to existence and life in general, and/or in how we experience our own nature. (All of those tend to go together.) These shifts tend to come out of an awakening or healing process, and each one is one of many in the larger process.

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Flying saucers

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flying saucer

When the pilot Kenneth Arnold reported a UFO sighting in Washington state in 1947, it sat off the modern UFO craze. (Before then, we had foo fighters, weird airships, and so on, so it was far from the first sighting.)

This is also where we got the expression flying saucer from.

According to Arnold, he reported that the UFOs skipped like a saucer on water. He referred to the movement of the object, not its shape. A reporter misquoted him which suggested that the object was saucer-shaped.

THE IMPLICATIONS OF A MISLEADING NEWS STORY

That’s the story I have heard a few times, and if it’s accurate, there is something fascinating here.

If Arnold reported on the movement of the object, why did people in the months and years following Arnold’s sighting report seeing saucer-shaped objects?

Why did their reports conform to a misleading news story?

I can think of four different explanations.

The reports were imaginations and hoaxes influenced by the flying saucer description in the reporting. That’s why they correspond to the reporting and not what Arnold saw.

The phenomenon is responsive and mirrors, to some extent, our culture and what we expect. (It can seem that way, especially when we look at how the reports change over time.)

It’s an amazing coincidence.

Or what Arnold saw (or, at least reported) was something that both moved like a saucer skipping on water and had the shape of a saucer.

MORE COMPLICATED

As so often, the story is more complicated. Arnold may have later said he was misquoted. But in several interviews from 1947, he is quoted as describing the objects as saucer shaped. In a preserved radio interviews from June that year, Arnold refers to the objects as shaped like a pie plate (with a triangular part).

LESSONS

Unsatsifactory stories often have lessons in them.

One is to follow and explore the implications. IF the simple story was correct, the implications would be important. And yet, when I have heard people tell the simple story, they haven’t taken it further.

Another is to do a little reading before retelling a story. Don’t say that Arnold was misquoted and leave out that he is quoted in a similar way in other interviews from the time, and that he provably called it pie-plate shaped in a radio interview shortly after the sighting.

Image: Something I extracted from Midjourney v4 some weeks ago.

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Documentary: Ariel Phenomenon

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I finally got around to watching Ariel Phenomenon and can highly recommend it.

THis documentary is about an event that happened at Ariel School in Zimbabwe in 1994, where dozens of children encountered a mysterious craft and one or two alien beings.

Some of the children described receiving a kind of telepathic message from the beings about the ecological crisis we are in. And the experience greatly impacted and transformed the lives of many or most of these children, who are now adults.

This documentary has clips from the 90s intermixed with current interviews with the witnesses.

Many consider it one of the most convincing mass sightings of an encounter with alien beings. (Whatever they may be, alien just means they are alien to us and doesn’t pin anything down about what they are.)

I have read about this event and listened to several interviews (including with witnesses) over the years, so there wasn’t too much new information or new angles in the documentary. But it does give a very good introduction to the story.

With all the material available, and all the angles to explore, this event deserves a series and not just a relatively short documentary. At the very least, I hope the unused material collected for this documentary will be made available online or in book form.

MORE QUESTIONS

Mainly, the documentary refueled my curiosity about several aspects of this event.

How has this transformed the lives of the witnesses? How did it impact each of them? Were the ones closest to the beings the ones who had the most profound transformation?

The local tradition has stories of similar encounters, and it seemed – from some comments in the documentary – that these encounters are ongoing. Is this part of the shamanic tradition? How do the indigenous see this? What role does it play in their lives? Do these encounters transform their lives in a similar manner? Who experiences these encounters? Shamans? Or anyone?

Exactly what did the witnesses experience? They describe black men, lights, sounds, and so on. What was the timeline? In what way were the beings black? (Skin color, clothing?) Did they have other sensory experiences? How does it look when we map out the different experiences of the different children, depending on where they were when they saw the craft and the beings? (This has probably been mapped out by the director of this documentary and/or others, and it was not possible to include it in a short documentary.)

I would love to do something on this but I have a feeling life is taking me in another direction. Although, who knows?

WORLDVIEWS

Part of the documentary is about John Mack and the reactions he received from his colleagues. He was a Harvard psychiatry professor who interviewed the children and took their experience seriously and wrote excellent books on these topics.

Personally, I find it small-minded to dismiss these types of experiences, especially when it was shared by so many. Whatever happened, it’s clearly something interesting to explore and study.

Also, we know how little we know. We know that our current collective worldview is provisional and will be seen as outdated in the future. We know that our collective worldview undergoes periodical revolutions. So why dismiss something just because it doesn’t fit our current worldview?

As one of the interviewed points out, it doesn’t make sense to dismiss something just because we don’t understand it or see it as not matching our current worldview. Also, there is no logic in accepting certain weird possibilities just because it’s part of our culture (e.g. Christianity) while dismissing other things (visits of alien beings) just because they are not part of our mainstream culture or mainstream academic culture. Why are angels OK and not aliens? Why is a belief in God OK but not a curiosity about beings from other places in the universe?

At the very least, we need to take a consistent stance on all of it. Either dismissing all, accepting all, or taking a more curious and grounded approach to exploring it all. And faced with the two first possibilities, the third is really the only one that makes sense. It’s the intellectually honest and consistent approach.

So why do some dismiss this event and these types of phenomena outright? One reason is that we all develop and attach to certain identities and worldviews in order to feel more solid and safe. We may dismiss it because we see it as threatening to their familiar identity and worldview. And this always comes with drawbacks. The drawback here is that we dismiss whatever doesn’t fit our identity and worldview.

Of course, some “UFO-believers” do the same in reverse. That too limits our exploration and prevents a more grounded and receptive approach.

I prefer to explore this in a more open way and remember how little we know and understand.

Would it hold up in a court of law?

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This is the question I ask myself when I am faced with a piece of information.

Would it hold up in a court of law?

If yes, I assign it a little more weight in a practical sense. It’s a bit more likely to be somewhat accurate.

If not, I put it on the “likely nonsense” shelf. Or, if I feel generous, the “maybe” shelf.

CONSPIRACY THEORIES AND UFO STORIES

Nearly all conspiracy theories fall short of this test. They are typically founded on bad logic and bad data, and would not hold up in any court of law.

The same goes for most UFO stories and similar. A few are supported by multiple sources of apparently solid data. (For instance, the Ariel school phenomenon and the US Navy UFO sightings in recent years.) And most would not hold up in a court of law.

WHAT ABOUT AWAKENING?

So what about awakening? Would it hold up in a court of law?

Maybe. And, in reality, no. And that’s not a bad thing.

Maybe, because it’s been reported by many people across times and cultures. If described logically and without relying on too much jargon, it makes sense to a receptive mind. And it’s something we all can check out for ourselves with some guidance. (Sometimes even relatively quickly, for instance using the Big Mind process or Headless experiments.)

And likely not. It’s not something that can be “proven” outside of logic and our own immediate noticing. It’s not something widely accepted in our culture, which also plays a role. And it hasn’t been thoroughly explored and described by science yet, although that can and maybe will happen in time.

In many ways, it’s a blessing that it likely wouldn’t hold up in court. It means we have to rely on our own explorations and check it out for ourselves. We cannot take anyone’s word for it.

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Dream: Jaques Vallée & befriending the alien(ated) parts of ourselves

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I am spending some time with Jaque Vallée and we are going for a walk while talking.

At some point, we get to the question of what motivates our desire to find or know about alien life.

I say that since my background is in psychology, I am biased. So for me, the question is not: “Are we alone”. The question is: “am I alone”.

For this, finding aliens is not the solution. The solutions is something we can only do for ourselves. By being with ourselves, by befriending the different part of ourselves, and especially the lonely and alien-ated parts of ourselves.

The day residue for this dream is seeing that the long-awaited documentary about the Ariel school incident (Ariel Phenomenon) is coming out later this month.

Of the different people talking about these things, Jaques Vallée is one of my favorites, not the least because of his interests in patterns and archetypes, and in looking at similarities between UFO stories and fairy tales, and so on.

The conversation is initially about the phenomena in general, and then switches to why we are interested in the topic. What are some of the motivations? A part is obviously a general curiosity and wanting to know about the world.

And for me, with a background in psychology, I am also interested in another motivation: The wish to not be alone. A wish for connection. If that’s a drive for us, it points to that we feel alone. And apart from the conventional solutions to this (making friends etc.), a root solution is to get to know and befriend the exiled, alienated, and alone parts of ourselves.

Finding aliens is not the solution to feeling alone. Befriending ourselves is. And it’s far easier and closer at hand than finding aliens.

Another side to this dream is that in waking life, I would likely not have this conversation with Jaques Vallée. I wouldn’t feel confident enough. I am much more free in my conversations in my dreams than I am in waking life.

Image: From Close Encounter of the Third Kind where the main scientist is modeled on Jaques Vallée.

Having perspective on current blank slates

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UFOs or AUPs are in the mainstream news these days. This is mainly from the released video footage from the US military, and partly because a congressional (preliminary) report is due shortly.

From what we know today, it’s likely that some UFOs are real and unexplainable, as suggested by the US military footage and similar data. And it’s clear that it deserves serious and grounded investigation and research.

FASCINATION & SPECULATION

At the same time, it’s understandable that some get fascinated with what UFOs may be. Some go into speculation, get caught up in the speculation, and have trouble differentiation what we know (very little) and what is speculation.

This is partly because of our natural curiosity and wanting to know more about the world.

And it’s partly because the UFO phenomenon is a relatively blank slate and a perfect projection object. We can project our hopes and fears onto it without reality interfering and ruining our fantasies.

REMEDIES FOR GETTING CAUGHT UP IN PROJECTIONS

When we get caught up in projections, we perceive, think, feel, and act as if our fantasies are real.

So what is the remedy? How can we find a more sober and grounded approach?

One remedy is to be very honest with ourselves and differentiate what we know and what we project onto it. In the case of UFOs, what we know is mostly that someone said something (witnesses) and that someone has video footage and radar data. Anything else is speculation if we relate to it in a sober way, or projections if we get caught up in it.

Another remedy is to have some perspective on our current blank slate.

These phenomena are natural phenomena. What seems mysterious to us now has a natural explanation. It may be an explanation we still don’t know, but it is knowable, and we may know what it is at some point in the future.

Also, IF some non-human beings are behind it, and that’s a big if, they are aliens only to us. To them, they are not aliens. They know themselves as we know ourselves. And if or when we get to know them, they too will eventually become ordinary to us. They will become part of our life, culture, and history.

If these are non-human beings, they are not a blank slate to themselves. And if or when we get to know them, they will no longer be a blank slate to us.

Seeing it in this way helps to make UFOs a slightly less good projection object. It helps us see that much of the fascination comes from the blank slate quality of the phenomena, and this can help sober us up.

And there is a more thorough remedy, which is to work on projections more directly, through whatever approach works for us. This helps us relate to the phenomenon in a more grounded and sober way, and also to find a more conscious wholeness as a human being. We find in ourselves what we imagine out there.

Reflections on society, politics and nature XXXII

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This is one in a series of posts with brief notes on society, politics, and nature. I sometimes include short personal notes as well. Click “read more” to see all the entries.

From 2001: A Space Odyssey

AN ALIEN INTELLIGENCE WILL BE ALIEN TO US

I saw someone commenting that he doesn’t like the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey much because he doesn’t understand the alien aspect of the story. For me, that’s one of the brilliant things about the movie. The story is shrouded in mystery.

An alien intelligence will be alien to us. It will be mysterious. We won’t be able to make sense of it based on our own experiences, and our own experiences is all we have. It’s easy to imagine an initial alien encounter that’s a complete mystery and completely baffling to us. And even if we gather more information and think we understand more, we may discover we don’t understand it as well as we thought.

In most sci-fi, the aliens are us in another form. They have human drives and motivations, and they represent sides of us and are mirrors for us. Since that’s the explicit intention of most sci-fi, that’s completely appropriate.

If we want more realistic sci-fi stories, then we have movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Arrival. The alien intelligence here is alien to us. It’s mysterious, baffling, and confusing. It doesn’t quite make sense to us.

This is also one of the problems I have with some of the traditional alien-encounter stories. The aliens are too often just us in another disguise. They are scientists traveling through space to probe and examine us and tell us we need to take better care of Earth. In other stories, and especially the more shamanic or fairy-tale like ones, the encounters are truly mysterious and inexplicable, as I imagine is closer to how it may be in reality.

Click READ MORE to see more posts on these topics.

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UFO reflections IV

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Documentary: Witness of Another World

My interest is more: what happens to these witnesses? How can we help them? The witnesses, when they grow up, will integrate their experience within their life, as Juan has done. That process is very interesting, and these people have something to teach us.

– Jacques Valleé in Witness of Another World, 59:04 – 59:24

I enjoyed Witness of Another World very much and also listening to some interviews with the director Alan Stivelman (Podcast UFO, Open Minds, Richard Dolan). It’s a deeply moving story of a young boy experiencing something inexplicable, being traumatized by some of the consequences (people not believing him, precognitive dreams), and finding some healing through the process of participating in this documentary and meeting shamans from his ancestral tribe.

I share Jacques Valleés interest in the witnesses and how the experience – close encounters with something or someone alien – transforms them. It’s similar to the transformations people often go through following space travel (overview effect), shamanic journeys, using some psychoactive drugs, near-death experiences, spiritual openings or awakenings, and so on. I would love to see a more systematic study done on this, and the similarities and differences between people and between the categories of experiences.

January 2020

A oneness view on UFOs, synchronicities, and psychic sensing

I am listening to Mike Clelland’s Stories from the Stories from the Messengers: Owl’s, UFOs, and a Deeper Reality. I like it very much as it explores the connections between UFOs, alien encounters, synchronicities, shamanism, spirituality, and the personal transformation that often takes place following UFO and alien encounters. (This is a follow-up to The Messengers: Owls, Synchronicity and the UFO Abductee which I equally enjoyed.)

One thing I notice is how puzzling these connection are to many people. Of course, there is something inherently puzzling and baffling in many of these stories. They definitely elude conventional explanations. They make sense more the way mythology and dreams make sense. And we don’t know much about what UFOs and the reports of alien encounters actually are about.

And yet, from a oneness view, these stories do make sense in a certain way.

Synchronicities are movements within oneness and within the seamless system of the universe that we are inherent parts of. The different parts of the synchronicities only appear to be separate because thoughts can make it look that way to us.

It’s the same with psychic sensing. We are part of the oneness of all of existence so, naturally, we’ll sometimes pick up information outside of our physical senses. I suspect we all do it, now and then, and some of us may be more tuned into it than others for whatever reason.

From a conventional science view, it’s very unlikely that this planet is the only living one in our galaxy or the universe. More likely, the universe has developed itself into life many place, including what we see as intelligent life. And if so, some of these civilizations will likely be far more advanced than ours and possibly able to travel across or even between galaxies. (Using an understanding of physics and technology that is beyond what we can currently imagine.)

And from a oneness view, these civilizations and galaxies happen within and as the same oneness as we do. They too are expressions of the same oneness. They too are expressions of Spirit. They too are Spirit exploring, expressing, and experiencing itself in always new and different ways.

If some humans encounter some of these aliens, and if or when we officially and collective encounter an alien civilization, that too will happen within and as this oneness. And that too will be Spirit exploring, expressing, and experiencing itself in that particular way.

Note: In his two books on owls, UFOs, and synchronicities, Mike Clelland wonders about the connection between synchronicities and aliens. Perhaps the aliens somehow create the synchronicities? This is, in some ways, a natural question if we live within a mostly materialistic worldview.

But when we begin to notice that all is Spirit, or the divine, or consciousness, and that it’s all One, then it looks a bit different. Then synchronicities becomes a natural expression and consequence of oneness.

It’s a bit like watching seaweed moving with the waves along the shore. If we are unaware of the water, we may wonder what makes the seaweed move in synchrony. It may seem very puzzling and we cannot find a reasonable mechanism. When we notice the water it’s all moving within, it makes more sense to us.

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Own UFO experience: Tic Tac UFO sighting in California 2015

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UFO sighting Dec 2015

I thought I would share my only UFO experience so far.

Driving west on Fred Waring in Palm Desert, I saw two oval-shaped objects in the clear sky. They were headed relatively fast almost directly west in the direction of the coast, seemed to be quite high up in the air, and I couldn’t hear any sound. (I was in a car in traffic.) The two objects were close to each other and kept the same distance and configuration. They were both identical in appearance: Oval, dark in color, somewhat metallic looking. I assume they were round in three dimensions but saw them as oval. They eventually disappeared over the mountains in the west.

I and the driver of the car were equally baffled by them. They didn’t look like anything we had seen before, and we couldn’t think of anything known they could be. They went much too fast for being balloons. They were definitely not birds. It was daylight so they were obviously not planets or meteors. They were not civilian drones since they went fast and continued over the mountains. They did not have the shape of any airplane I have seen. They were not helicopters since they were large enough for us to have seen the shape and protrusions typical of helicopters.

It is theoretically possible that they were military drones with flawless surfaces, flying in perfect formation, and with no visible or audible form of propulsion. Although I don’t know if military drones come in such a perfect oval shape and with a perfectly smooth surface. 

I filed a report with the UFO Reporting Center a couple of days later. 

An additional note: I know it’s common for people who see UFOs to not take a picture of it, even if they have the opportunity. I knew that long before this experience and had told myself to take a picture if I would ever see something unusual. In this situation, I had my phone (w. a good camera for a smartphone) in my lap, I thought I should take a picture of it, and I didn’t…! At the time, I had the thought “they are featureless ovals, so why take a picture”, which in hindsight doesn’t make much sense. I could very easily have taken a photo, but I didn’t.

The image above is created in Photoshop and is an approximation of what we saw. I guess that each one could be covered by the tip of the little finger. They moved fast towards the west and seemed quite high up in the sky.  They had the perfect oval shape shown in the drawing above. 

Update 2017/18

In 2017, the existence of Pentagon’s formerly secret UFO investigation program was made public. They also made a few short video segments public, including from the USS Nimitz UFO incident. Some call it a tic-tac UFO, and the reason I am mentioning it here is that what I saw fits the pilots’ description of this object. 

Both Fravor and Slaight later described the object as a large bright white Tic Tac 30 to 46 feet (10 to 14 meters) long, with no windshield nor porthole, no wing nor empennage, and no visible engine nor exhaust plume

Wikipedia article on USS Nimitz UFO Incident

The shape and smooth surface is exactly what I saw. The size fits what I would guess, although it’s famously difficult to estimate the size of objects in the sky. They describe it as bright white, and I saw it more as grey, although it’s possible that seeing it from above – as they did – it would have appeared white, and for me – seeing it from below on a bright sunny morning – it appeared more grey. 

It could have been the same type of object. Or it may just be very similar. 

I want to mention again that the most inexplicable part of my experience was not what I saw, but that I didn’t take a photo. Whenever I remember back to this experience, I cannot believe I didn’t take one. I had my phone in my hand. I had time. I even thought “I should take a photo”. But I didn’t. It seems completely bizarre. In the past, when I heard people reporting seeing UFOs and not taking photos, I secretly judged them but now I have to count myself among them. 

Note: I updated the title of this blog post.

Update June 14, 2019

I just listened to a podcast about the tic-tac UFOs, and they mentioned that Santa Catalina Island outside of California was (is?) a hotspot for these UFOs. I thought that for fun, I’d look at the map and see if the UFOs I saw were headed in that direction. And yes, they were! It’s perhaps one of those perfect coincidences, or what I saw was one of the tic-tac objects reported by the US military. (The podcast was UNKNOWN: Raining UFOs, and the episode addressed episode two of History Channel’s Unidentified series.)

I saw the oval UFOs in Palm Desert, heading towards the coast.

UFO reflections III

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See previous posts on this topic. I have backdated this post so it will show up alongside the others.

September 29, 2017

How we approach it. As with anything else, how we approach the UFO topic makes a big difference. It’s the difference between seeking truth or emotional satisfaction. It’s the difference between being taken seriously or not. It’s the difference between creating a field that scientists will want to approach or not.

If we latch onto beliefs and take them as true even if we cannot really know, it will be obvious – to ourselves and others – what we are doing. We are acting out of reactivity and an emotional need. We allow emotional reactivity override rationality. Many do exactly that in this field, and that’s why it’s often viewed with suspicion or even ridicule by others. (When I say it’s obvious to ourselves, I mean that a part of us knows what’s going on, and we are still doing it. We are also aware of others doing the same but may chose to not say anything.)

If we approach it with honesty, groundedness, and sanity, it’s quite different. Then, it’s just an investigation into something mysterious. We are open about what we may find. We are more invested in finding and reporting on what’s really going on than supporting a particular view or theory. We hold off on drawing conclusions. We practice generating and exploring a wide range of possible solutions including the ones that would be disappointing to us. (We may even practice favoring the most boring solutions.)

In the first case, we are more interested in a short-lived emotional satisfaction than truth. And in the second case we are more interested in truth than in satisfying wishes, fears, or identities.

Of course, for most of us, there is a mix of the two in how we relate to most areas of life.

And it’s helpful to be honest with ourselves when we do one or the other. We can look for the signs.

Do I feel invested in a particular answer or interpretation? Do I feel or act defensive? Do I feel or act reactively? Are there particular interpretations I particularly want to dismiss? Do I feel an emotional charge around the topic? Do I feel a charge around wanting to back up my view and get others over on my side? Do I use word such as “I know….” even if I cannot know for certain? If so, I am most likely caught in emotional neediness and may favor satisfying that over a more rational approach.

The more rational approach also have some signs. Do I practice generating a wide range of possible solutions, including the ones I don’t personally like? Do I keep an open mind? Do I acknowledge that I don’t know? Do I acknowledge that any interpretation is an interpretation, and that there are other ones out there – including many none of us may be currently aware of – that would fit the data equally well or better?

I am aware of only a few in the UFO field that takes such a dispassionate view. Jaques Vallee is one, and Clas Svahn is another (although their approaches are quite different from each other). Most are somewhere further along the spectrum towards being emotionally invested in a particular answer, whether it’s pro- or -anti-alien. (Whatever they understand as alien, whether it’s beings from another part of the universe or something more “supernatural.)

I personally have an interest in the field for two reasons. One is that it helps me see the difference between rational and emotional approaches more easily, and I get to see and examine my own approach in that light. The other is that the different UFO phenomena likely have different types of solutions and each of them are quite interesting – whether it says something about human psychology and sociology, about unexplored natural phenomena (Hessdalen), or something else that falls outside of our current modern and scientific worldview.

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UFO Reflections II

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Some reflections on UFOs and related phenomena.

See part one of this post for more. (I decided to split it since the first post became longer than expected.) This second part is started on May 18, 2016, although I back-dated it so it would show up next to the initial post.

Magic wand. If I could wave a magic wand, how would I like the UFO topic to be approached? Not so different from what most would like to see, I think. Taken seriously by scientists, media, and politicians. Approached in a sober way using scientific methods. Open minded.  Open to a wide range of possible answers and findings, and actively practicing generating and exploring multiple possibilities. Being comfortable with knowing we don’t know. (Until we do know more.) Studying the phenomenon from multiple angles and within and across multiple disciplines.

As it is now, the topic is taboo in mainstream science, media, and politics in many countries, perhaps especially the US.  That leaves a vacuum that’s filled by amateurs (which is OK since most professionals currently won’t touch it) and by people with a less than sober and scientific approach (which understandably tends to further scare off the mainstream).

It does seem odd that we (a) know something is out there we don’t understand (from a few seemingly good cases), and (b) the answers are possibly very important and may change our worldview dramatically. And at the same time, the field is shunned by most professionals. It’s a strange situation we find ourselves in.

Aliens that look like us. I was very interested in astronomy as a kid and also the possibility of alien life. I read a good deal of books on the topic (mostly by Carl Sagan) and watched sci-fi movies as I still like to do. Even early on, it didn’t make sense to me that aliens were depicted as very similar to us. Why would they be? Of course, in fiction it makes sense. As someone said, central casting is short on actual aliens so in older movies humans in costume had to do. We find it easier to relate to stories about humanoids not too different from us. And even alien infections, which requires them to be similar to us to be plausible, do make for good fiction stories (Andromeda Strain).

But outside of fiction, why would anyone think that aliens would be anything similar to us? It seems extremely improbable that they would be similar to us in real life. They developed in an environment that’s likely to be different from ours in significant ways. They developed among other creatures likely to be very different from the creates we co-developed with. The innumerable accidents of evolution, and their particular path of evolution, must have been quite different from ours. So why would they end up so similar? It really doesn’t make sense. And the possibility of being infected by their infections seems close to zero. Our biology would have to be extremely similar to that to be within the realm of the possible. (Even among closely related mammals, only some germs infect across species.)

Only a few answers make some sense to me. (a) The aliens visiting, if they exist, are created specifically to visit our planet and us. They are bio-engineered for that purpose. (b) There are so many different ones out there that some of them happen to look like us, and these are the only ones visiting us. (Seems very implausible.) (c) There is some galactic panspermia going on where the seeds of life are spread among planets in different solar systems. (Seems unlikely, and evolution is still likely to be very divergent.) Or (d) they are all created for us in some other way, which includes through human imagination.

To me, this is one of the big questions in ufology and one that’s not addressed nearly often or seriously enough. Among those who do address it is Richard Dolan who suggests the bio-engineering possibility, and Jaques Vallee who talks about it as possibly a display or performance created for us for an unknown reason. Of course, the easiest answer is that it’s all created by human imagination, but that doesn’t account for the stories that do seem to have some basis in reality.

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UFO reflections – long

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As I mentioned in a previous post, I have been interested in UFOs off and on since my childhood. It’s part of my general curiosity about the world, and I like to take a mostly scientific approach to it. Here are some brief thoughts on the topic:

(a) There seems to be something going on that we cannot explain from our current mainstream worldview. Leslie Kean and others have documented several cases with multiple apparently reliable witnesses and multiple sources of data. It seems that some of these cannot very easily be explained away as something known, imaginations, hoaxes, or disinformation. (Although some of the apparently reliable cases very well may be.)

(b) Mainstream media and science tend to dismiss the topic without taking a closer look first. Especially in the US, and partly in Europe and perhaps other places too. This is a very unjournalistic and unscientific approach. Why does this happen?

(i) It may be due to an existing culture of dismissing and ridiculing this topic. Many journalists and scientists may buy into and accept this culture, without questioning it.

(ii) It may come from a fear of being associated with something that doesn’t fit into our current mainstream worldview. As we know, there is sometimes a cost to go outside of and question the mainstream views. It may lead to opposition and criticism, and possibly being seen or treated as an outcast. For scientists, it may reduce their funding opportunities.

That’s how it is, sometimes, even if we know the mainstream views are provisional. They will be replaced by other views. And any view is ultimately wrong. If there is one thing history – and common sense – tells us, it’s that our current worldview will be replaced with another, and will in the future be seen as limited and even misguided. We don’t know exactly how, but we know it will.

We also know that humanity – and our civilization and science – is still in its very early infancy. And what we don’t know is always and inevitably infinitely more than what we do know, and what we “know” is always and inevitably up for revision.

(iii) How was this culture of dismissing the topic created in the first place? Some say it was an intentional policy by the US government. Initially, in the 40s and partly the 50s, they – and the media – did take the topic seriously. Then, there was a shift towards dismissing and ridiculing it .This may have created a culture which has been continued and is partly self-perpetuating.

In any case, it’s often strange to see scientists taking the decidedly unscientific approach of dismissing the topic without first seriously looking into it.

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Starseeds, comforting ideas, synchronicities

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I have had a brief period where I again have read and listened to podcasts about UFOs, and came across the starseed idea. The description certainly fits me, and although the idea may seem outlandish and airy-fairy new-agey, is it really so impossible or unlikely?

What’s most amazing is that something is at all, and that consciousness is. Anything else pales in comparison. (That doesn’t mean that we should embrace any weird idea as true!) Also, is it stranger if we have several lives than one? And if we do have several lives, why wouldn’t the incarnations be at different locations – including different planets? After all, it’s very likely that the universe is teeming with life, including some that we would consider intelligent. If reincarnation happens, it’s likely to be many opportunities for incarnation throughout the universe.

I also see that there is no solid support for the starseed idea. It’s mainly speculative and supported by anecdotal data which can easily and reasonably be interpreted in other ways. My sense that it fits is just that – a sense, and it doesn’t necessarily reflect what may be real in a conventional sense.

I also see that the starseed idea is a projection. It says something about me. It’s a mirror. As anything else.

For some, it’s a comforting idea. A way to find safety. Just like any other belief. That’s good to notice. (It’s perhaps also a way to feel valuable, that we are OK.)

In the future, this may be a topic for research and science. Who knows. I would like to see reincarnation and other possibilities researched more seriously.

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UFOs

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For the record, what Pitts endorses is the “unidentified” aspect of an unidentified flying object. “I have never seen a UFO myself,” he says, “and I am not saying that UFOs are ET spacecraft. I am saying [that] here, there is some mystery, and we should be able to address it scientifically, without all the stigma involved.”
– Astronomer Derrick Pitts quoted in ET, Phone Derrick Pitts

As most boys, I was quite interested in UFOs and was even a member of the UFO organization in Norway. In my teens, the interest shifted into exploring UFOs as projection objects (especially after I found Jung’s book on the topic), and later on, I have occasionally read up on what’s happening in the field.

UFOs are interesting to me for a few different reasons:

Some appear to be natural phenomena not very well understood by science, or entirely unknown to science.  The Hessdalen lights in Norway may be one example.

They are excellent projection objects – unknown, rare, ephemeral, mysterious. They are great for putting our fears and hopes on and create beliefs around. (They will save us, they will eat us, I will dismiss it and don’t take it seriously.) This in itself is a very interesting phenomenon, and well worth exploring.

Some – a few – may be crafts of nonterresital origin. The universe may be populated by many different civilizations, and although the chances of any one actually visiting us may be miniscule considering the huge distances and enormous space, it could happen. After all, our modern scientific exploration of physics is very young, what we don’t know will always be infinitely more than what we do know, and what we have discovered so far, through for instance quantum physics, shows us that reality seems much stranger than what we could have imagined. It’s worth keeping an open mind, take the possibility of visits seriously, and do some serious investigation.

And then there is the military and national security reasons. Independent of origin, some may be crafts. This is one reason most or all governments take UFOs seriously, whether or not they admit to it.

The rational approach is to take and investigate the more well documented reports seriously.

UFOs clearly exist. People see unidentified flying objects all the time. The question is, what is it in each case? The answers may range from the mundane to little known natural phenomena, and may also include possible ET visits. I don’t think I would be surprised either way. If we are visited, the implications are significant. And if there eventually is contact – in the open and at a large scale – then it’s the beginning of a new phase of human civilization.

Here is a good interview of author Leslie Kean by Michio Kaku.

One of several documentaries, I Know What I Saw:

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Flying Sasser

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flyingsaucer.jpg

Few things are as interesting as UFOs.

Not because of what they may or may not be, although that can be interesting enough, but because of what they say about us.

The world is our mirror. Whatever we see out there is something we recognize from in here.

And in the absence of real data about UFOs, they become a blank slate for us to fill in with our imagination. UFOs become the perfect all-purpose projection object. A nice ready-made rorschach test. Just as it is with other things we may not know much about, like crop circles, ghosts, reincarnation, awakening, other cultures, or whatever it may be.

We get to fill it in with what is alive here now, but doesn’t quite fit our self image, so we put it out on UFOs – or something else – instead. They will save us. They will eat us alive. They represent a galactic brotherhood.

Can I find each of those qualities in myself? Yes, very much so. And if I get really familiar with it here, UFOs are suddenly not so interesting anymore, at least not as saviors or man-hunters or an evolved brotherhood or whatever else it may be.

We also get to see how we relate to unknowns. Are we OK with it? Fine with acknowledging that we don’t know, and that there are many possible explanations for it? (Without closing the door on any of them.)

Or do we right away cling to a story about it, telling ourselves and others that this story – somehow, magically – is true? Do we tell ourselves they really are aliens? Angels? Beings from another dimension?

Or do we tell ourselves it is all bogus, delusions, fantasies, daydreams, wishful thinking?

In each case, we cling to a story as if it was true, even in the absence of real data. In both cases, we find something to believe in just because we want to, because it is – somehow – more comforting that way.

And finally, how do we deal with it in the real world?

It is a world-wide phenomenon, so why doesn’t it yield more serious research?

Why do scientists shun the subject? Are they are afraid of being associated with crackpots? Do they let fear get in their way of research that would reap insights into psychology and sociology, and possibly other areas?

If so, what does that say about science?