February 6, 2013 By admin
For nearly twenty years, I have been researching UFOs.
It has been the most challenging subject of my life.
Understanding ufology is like understanding any person
of genius. Such people do not come to you. Beethoven, Charlie Parker, Rodin,
Shakespeare, Tolstoy: they do not sacrifice their artistic vision for the
benefit of random numbskulls demanding easy entertainment.
You must approach them. But you do not stroll in as if
you own the place. You enter as a respectful student before a new Master. You
take your time and, above all, you seek to understand.
Such is ufology. As you enter the temple, I suggest
that you hold your preconceptions loosely, and be prepared to release them.
Unlike many others, I entered this field not from
having been a UFO witness (although I did see what I believe was a UFO in 1999,
the year before my first book was published). Rather, my motivation was sheer
curiosity, the need to resolve something in my mind that would not go away.
That something was the stark contradiction of an
apparent unexplained reality (with obvious military interest) and its complete
denial within our world’s official structure of power. That is, everyone from
major media representatives, academic leaders, political leaders, right up to
the President. UFOs seemed to be everywhere, yet they were nowhere. They were
orphans traversing the skies with no agency willing to acknowledge them.
I recall my feeling of excitement and naivete in those
early years of research. Knowing full well that there were strong forces on the
side of secrecy, I nearly convinced myself that, if only I could prepare the
most airtight case, presented calmly and dispassionately, I might just fashion
a weapon to crack the wall of secrecy. That was one of my preconceptions.
I knew I had not been the first person to try such a
thing, but I felt my first book constituted a good effort. Yet, the wall of
secrecy did not fall. It turns out that knowledge, while a necessary step
toward “Disclosure,” is not sufficient. Proper action must follow, lots of it.
Into the Weird
With each passing decade, ufology grows in complexity.
Consider how researchers of the 1950s and 1960s understood the matter of
“flying saucers.” At that time, the phenomenon was believed, often quite
literally, to be a case of human-looking men and (sometimes) women from another
planet who had arrived in metallic craft, most probably Venus or Mars. There
were a few descriptions of beings said to be operating these craft. Some were
perfectly human looking, only much wiser and wearing jumpsuits. Others were
“humanoid,” sometimes very short, others quite tall.
Even then, the variety of beings was confusing, if
still somewhat comprehensible. After all, it would not be outrageous to suppose
that a variety of beings were visiting Earth. Yet, somehow it did not seem
quite right. Why would some aliens be ten feet tall, others only three or four
feet tall, and those in South America all be short and hairy? It would not be a
stretch to argue that cultural preconceptions, or even hallucinations, were
involved, even if considering there might be an important truth at the core of
such claims.
Since then, encounters have become stranger still. Through
the 1970s, 80s, and beyond, reports of “grays” surfaced, along with insect-like
creatures, reptoid-like creatures, and — as in the early years — completely
human-looking beings. In the case of this last group, although they often
looked like supermodels, they did not act or seem human like the rest of us.
Telepathic claims became more common, too, to the point where today you would
have to work very hard not to encounter such claims. Along with this has been a
pronounced emphasis on beings that are not even physical, but somehow spiritual
or “interdimensional.”
Such variety is enough to cause any reasonable mind to
wonder, how can all of this make sense?
But it is not simply the variety of these beings that
may confuse us. It is their actions.
Recognizing that the lion’s portion of UFO sightings
are conventionally explainable, there are still an enormous number of reports.
In North America, this number exceeds 10,000 per year, (judging from the
databases of MUFON and the National UFO Reporting Center). Go through some of them. You will find some truly
incredible encounters, some of which have received good follow-up examination.
And yet, very few of even the best sightings have
lasted long enough to affect our broader cultural consensus. In only a very few
cases have there been mass sightings of actual alien beings during daylight.
The 1994 Zimbabwe school children encounter comes to mind, and
it’s certainly compelling. But even here, we are talking about children, and in
the minds of most adults, there will always be certain doubts about what even
intelligent, articulate school children have to say on this matter. You never
know.
When encounters with alien beings are reported in an articulate
manner by seemingly credible people, we can ask, what are these beings doing?
How do their actions make sense? Where do they go when they depart? What is
their infrastructure like? What kind of culture? Do they hope and dream? Do
they have fears? Do they despise us? Do they love us? I have asked such
questions many times. Perhaps they simply live here and cannot easily
communicate with us or otherwise enter our reality. Even so, many of their
actions simply fail to make much sense. Of course, this is one reason we refer
to them as alien.
Coming to Reason
Yet, despite the illogic of the phenomenon, despite
the incomprehensible nature of so many encounters, there remains an undeniable
reality: thousands upon thousands of reports, and witnesses numbering in the
millions.
Accounting for the fact that 90 percent of UFO
sightings have been and are explainable, there are too many that are not.
Enough of these are confirmed encounters by the United States military,
encounters that generated reports, were classified as secret, and were hidden
from the public until revealed by the unexpected Freedom of Information era of
the 1970s.
Such reports remain unanswerable, and are unanswered.
They constitute the core of the mystery, at least insofar as this is a public
policy issue.
To give one example of many more that I could give
(and have given elsewhere many times), how do we make sense of an FBI document from January 31, 1949, in which the reality of
the flying saucer phenomenon is discussed as something “considered top secret
by intelligence officers” of the Army and Air Force? This, at a time when
government spokespersons had been assuring the public that it was all a
combination of hoaxes, hallucinations, conventional aircraft, and
misidentification of natural phenomena.
The memo answered this clearly enough: these objects
were dangerous. Furthermore, they were up to something. It mentioned how,
during the summer of 1948, a commercial airliner had nearly collided with a
large object traveling at thousands of miles per hour. It also explained that:
“recent observations have indicated that the
unidentified phenomena travel at the rate of speed estimated at a minimum of
three miles per second and a maximum of twelve miles per second, or a mean
calculated speed of seven and one-half miles per second, or 27,000 miles per
hour.”
The memo noted furthermore that several times “a
definite vertical change in path was indicated.” Whatever these things were,
they were not only incredibly fast, but had maneuverability that was off the
charts.
But there was much more within this classified memo.
It described incursions of unknown objects over Los Alamos throughout December
1948 (on the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 11th, 13th, 14th, 20th, and 28th). The
witnesses of these “unexplained phenomena” included Special Agents of the
Office of Special Investigation, airline pilots, military pilots, Los Alamos
security personnel, and private citizens. A few sightings were of multiple
craft, and analysts had rejected the notion of meteorites as an explanation.
Some wondered whether or not the objects were Soviet in origin, but this seemed
to be a stretch.
An interesting memo, and one of many. On the basis of
reason and logic, we can conclude that there is a reality to the UFO phenomenon
that is interesting and powerful.
A Matter of Faith
But how does faith enter into the picture?
Well, think about it. In our daily lives, actual UFOs
don’t normally intrude upon us. For over 30 years of my life, I was nearly
oblivious to them. If, tomorrow, I chose to ignore UFOs for the rest of my
life, I could do it and carry on just fine. There are many people in the world
who have had sightings, but many more have not. For most of these people, this
is a topic that is just not real for them.
Of course, some of us are persuaded by the evidence.
In such a case, without having had an experience that makes it a rock-solid
reality, something you feel inside your bones, you must walk a fine line. On
one side of that line is knowledge. That is, knowledge of a UFO reality.
But on the other side of that line are questions.
Questions and an uncertainty of whom and what we are facing. An uncertainty of
the ultimate meaning of it all.
This is where faith enters. Not because we want to
have faith in statements from gurus, statements which have no basis in fact,
which do not deserve our adherence or belief. There is so much of that, these
days — the unsettling development of a kind of Messianic Ufology.
But that is not the kind of faith I am talking about.
What I mean is a faith that strengthens you through days of uncertainty. Anyone
who has spent enough time in ufology has had days like that.
It’s not a faith that there is a reality to UFOs,
since the historical evidence shows that there is indeed a reality. You don’t
need faith when you have knowledge.
The faith I am speaking of is one that allows you to
believe that, somehow, you yourself will attain a better understanding of this
subject. That you are on the right path. Yes, I think that’s the faith.
A Brave Light in the Darkness
We’re not the first people to be like this. Explorers
and free thinkers throughout history have had to employ reason and faith
simultaneously. Do you think Columbus, during those long weeks going across the
vast unknown ocean in his tiny little boats, did not have occasional quiet
moments of doubt? Or any scientist who has developed a new concept, or any
inventor who has built a new product, or any thinker who has developed a new
theory of society or psychology — do you think for a moment that they, too, did
not have moments of doubt? Moments when they wondered whether or not they were
on the right path?
It is during those moments of doubt when faith can
come to the rescue.
Clearly, I do not mean blind faith. Faith is more than
mere wish fulfilment and the creation of fantasy to patch and prop a worldview
that dispenses with reason, logic, and science. But when you are on a path that
does have support from important facts, when you have employed your reason,
critiqued your own ideas mercilessly, and have still come back to a knowledge
that there is validity in what you are doing, then you must push aside the
multitudes who are telling you how wrong you are. You must press forward.
Remember. You may be a minority of one, surrounded by
shouts that denounce you, ridicule you, and seek to silence you. Yet, if you
pursue truth, if you value justice, if you seek goodness in this world, never
let them silence you. Be strong. Have courage. You will find more inside you
than you realize.
There are mysteries enough in this world. I believe
that divining the answers to all of them is probably not part of humanity’s
destiny. We delude ourselves into thinking we can attain omniscience, that we
can be as the gods. That, my friends, is hubris, a very bad thing.
But faith that we can unravel some of these mysteries,
that we can shine a light ahead and move forward, despite the darkness that so
often seems to engulf our world, is a most necessary quality for the gentle
warrior of truth that all good people seek to be.
In this sense, faith — let us say, courageous faith —
plays its part, just as reason does.
In the work of any great mystery, reason must lead. We
must consider the facts and develop theories that conform to what we know. But
within ufology, that most stern and inscrutable taskmaster, even the most
dedicated students sometimes find themselves groping in the dark. We don’t have
all the answers. As I like to say, and as one of my favorite authors has
written, we must become comfortable
with uncertainty.
If we are to press ahead, we need faith in ourselves
and in our ultimate destination. That is, the truth. That’s what it’s all
about.
RMD-Feb 6, 2013
(This was adapted from a chat I gave during one of my
recent radio shows, at http://kgraradio.com)
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