Category Archives: Stilling, Dennis

Missing Time, Missing Links.
Dennis Stillings

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From Magonia 28, January 1988

After the first day’s sessions of the fourth annual meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE) several ufologists and I repaired to the motel bar to continue a variety of discussions begun earlier in the day.

After a few minutes it became quite clear that I was the only one present who did not accept the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) to account for certain aspects of the UFO phenomenon. I brought up a few of mu arguments against the ETH with the result that the rest of the group tended to shuffle their chairs away from me and lean in toward one another to exchange meaningful anecdotes. I got the impression that I was odd man out in a living replay of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. (‘Go back to your room. Dennis, your pod is waiting for you!’)

Perhaps my reference to Lawson’s ‘birth memory’ theory [1] amountedto a kind of intellectual B.O. Lawson proposes that UFO ‘abduction’ cases are ‘…archetypal fantasies] involving belief or deception in which an individual’s birth memories play a central role’. Mentioning this theory provoked loud scoffing and snorts. (In my experience, the mere mention of Lawson’s theory has provoked, without exception, excessively emotional responses from ETHers.) I replied that name-calling would not suffice. In what way, precisely, was Lawson incorrect? f was ignored.

As I sat there in my self-induced loneliness, I heard, from the corner of my ear, references to Budd Hopkins Missing Time. I have the book, which I obtained at the last Fortean meeting in Nebraska. I decided to read it through.

BUDD HOPKINS

BUDD HOPKINS

Hopkins’ book is quite readable. He believes in the ETH, and his thinking clearly reflects his choice of position. One of the mainstays of the ETH rationale is that the ufonauts are so far beyond us in their advanced thinking that what to us appears as absurd [2] is merely the result of our intellectual inadequacies in the face of overwhelming mental superiority – rather like confrontations with cosmic Zen masters.

Such thinking, of course, has its analogies in religion (Q? ‘Why were the innocent children killed?’ A: We cannot understand such things. Only God, in His infinite wisdom…’) and in politics (‘You can’t question LBJ’s policies on Vietnam. He has access to special information…’). In other words, this argument might be true, but it gets us nowhere. We have to operate with the information we have – what you see is what you get.

Actually, there is a symbolic reason for the popularity of the ‘higher reason’ argument. Khidr is an important figure in Islamic mysticism. [3] He appearss in the Eighteenth Sura of the Koran, entitled ‘The Cave’. Interestingly enough for our discussion here, the entire sura is taken up with a rebirth mystery. The ‘cave’ is a place of transformation where people experience ‘missing time’. Khidr, also known as ‘the Anagel of the Face’, who is a symbol for the self, takes the form of a ’round fish lacking bones and skin’.In the legend Khidr changes from the fish form to his original form and sits on an island on a throne consisting of light. [4] Khidr indulges in ‘incomprehensible deeds’ that are meant to puzzle the observer. In the end, his mysterious behaviour is explained by him in reasonable and comprehensible terms.

Jung remarks that these “… incomprehensible deeds.. show how ego-consciousness reacts to the superior guidance of the self through the twists and turns of fate. To the initiate who is capable of transformation it is a comforting tale; to the obedient believer, an exhortation not to murmur against Allah’s incomprehensible omnipotence. Khidr symbolizes … the higher wisdom …”

The symbolism of Khidr is replete with analogies to the UFO phenomenon and to the mental states of ETH believers. One may scoff at the reasoning of those who hold to the ETH, but their attitude is one of piety and submission [5] in the face of what appears to be transcendent power and wisdom — qualities never far from foolishness and the absurd. It is even probable that the UFO phenomenon is related to the resurgence of Islam. [6]

The second linchpin of typical ETH reasoning is the ‘anthropocentric argument’. When people raise the question: ‘Why don’t the ETs land on the White House lawn and ask to see the president?’, this is anthropocentric. When the ETHer comes up with his own ‘explanation’, it is not. Let me give you just one example from Hopkins (page 218): “It is irrelevant to raise the kind of objection that goes like this: ‘If extraterrestrials are really here, why do they bother with six-year-old children when they can land publicly and talk to our presidents and our scientists?’ [7] As if Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter, or, for that matter, Carl Sagan or Robert Jastrow, must inevitably be central to their concerns. Maybe yes, but equally conceivably, maybe no. Perhaps their kind of preliminary investigation requires monitoring a wide range of people over their entire lifetimes…”

As you can see, the relatively commonsense notion of the ufonauts contacting our heads of government is considered anthropocentric and worthy_ of sarcasm, while Hopkins’ pro-ETH ‘explanation’ is not.

We have to start somewhere, and – inadequate though they may be – our own reason and experience must be applied to such problems before we go soaring off into the ozone or endless speculation. Hopkins’ book is full of this kind of double standard. There is no need to multiply examples. Suffice it to say, the logic of the matter is this: if you object to an argument because it is anthropocentric, you automatically remove the subject from discussion. All human explanations are ‘anthropocentric’, strictly speaking. Again, a useless approach.

I am convinced that, for many people, concern with the phenomena of UFOs induces a non-rational state of a typical sort. Let me give you an example. Hopkins’ book ‘documents’ several cases in which people have been abducted against their will, hypnotized, operated on, scarred for life, terrorized and subjected to the investigations of ufologists. To all this, Hopkins remarks: “For all any of us knows the whole UFO phenomenon may be ultimately, blissfully benign – there is firm evidence for this position – and so having been abducted may have turned out to be a peculiar privilege. No one knows”. Damned peculiar privilege, I’d say.

The ‘absurd’ birth memory theory

Of course the ‘birth memory theory’ is ‘absurd’. When Hopkins subjects, under hypnosis, report “The walls around the room are curved … It’s like a big oval. It has a really calming effect, being in this room … It’s almost like being hypnotized…you feel as if you could float. It’s very peaceful. And there is not a sound. Nothing. I think it’s the quietest place I was ever in. This table … grows out of the floor. And … it’s a perfect temperature, so I’m perfectly comfortable’ (page 80). And, on Page 173, “BH: You say this face had a foetus-like look? P0: Yes … sort of like an embryo … and also, I did have the impression of blood vessels…’”

And on page 139 we have the following abductee report of sensations in the UFO laboratory: “I have a visual image of soft colours, pearl-grays with some blue or mauve … but a kind of textured feeling, like leather and velvet, you know those kinds of nice, smooth comfortable textures, but I don’t have … it
could be that somebody was in a different room and talking to me but, um — it was though I was in a room by myself…”

Now, Lawson may be wrong, but his suggestion that birth memories might be involved is not absurd and deserves consideration.

The surgical skills of the ETs

The surgical skills of the ETs are poor. For all their advanced science, they seem to be unable to perform the simplest procedures without creating severe pain and anxiety. They scar patients for life, both emotionally and physically. Yet they are to be considered ‘benign’. According to Hopkins, ETs may have a ’20,000-year’ jump on us. Considering the advances we have made in less than 100 years, an uninterrupted 20,000 years of technological and spiritual progress should produce surgical techniques of the order of teleporting of tissue.

Certainly pain-free surgery should be old hat. Even we poor benighted humans can perform quite serious surgical procedures with little or no pain. The implantation of a cardiac pace-maker, for one example, can be accomplished with local anaesthesia on an outpatient basis. The stories of bleeding cuts on the bodies of abductees after the experience do not impress me. I have received cuts on many, occasions, even deep, ‘surgical’ ones, that were painless and without apparent cause. I simply assume that I came in contact with something sharp while my attention was elsewhere. On one occasion, when there was a particularly long, deep, mysterious cut in my elbow and forearm, I figured out the cause – it was not obvious, but it was not anomalous either. In the profoundly altered states in which the ‘abductees’ experience their ‘encounters’, it requires no great strain of the imagination suppose that these ‘stigmata’ are self-inflicted, either accidentally, or in such a way as to correspond to the symbolic nature of the experience.

The putative ETs have all the earmarks of human psychic components in symbolic form, which are in the proceess of manifesting in the psychic economy of a person undergoing a psychological transformation of a typical sort — perhaps that very transformation traditionally referred to as ‘rebirth’.

The ancient and collective nature of this type of experience is symbolically indicated by the uniformity of the physical appearance of the ‘ETs’ (they are quasi-instinctive). Their constant dingling around with the earth and with human (and plant and animal) bodies is symbolic of the fact that they have not attained full manifestation ‘in the flesh’ and have not as yet entered into the individual’s new adaptation to the world. The ‘ETs’ are, metaphorically speaking, testing the new, unaccustomed waters of physical existence in space and time.

Such ‘births into the body’ may be compared to the image of Christ in the manger — the cave, the abode of animals (instincts). This timeless image for the birth of a new principle in the human psyche precisely corresponds to much of the symbolism of ETHer ufological speculation, hence the ‘birth imagery’ and all the glorious crank speculations about Christ being an extraterrestrial. Since these ‘components’ come from a region where ordinary concepts of space, time, pain and death do not exist, they have no way of relating to the problems of the ‘abductee’. This is a symbolic process at the deepest level.

Anyone who finds himself a centre for this kind of attention will be in the midst of some remarkable events. That stigmata may be produced would not be too surprising.

The ‘abduction’ fantasies: dreams and ‘active imagination’

The accounts of the ‘abductees’ are replete with descriptions of the ETs silently acting out scenes without paying particular attention to the observer. This is a characteristic of dreams.

There are distortions of time and space, often accompanied by lacunae in the sequences of events. In describing his tour through the inside of a UFO, one subject remarked (page 78): ‘It’s funny, this thing didn’t look that big from the outside’. One is reminded of the Charles Finney story of the Circus of Dr Lao. The circus tent (= UFO?), from the outside, is of quite modest proportions. Inside, it becomes almost a small cosmos. Hopkins cites one of the lacunae in a sequence of events: “When he first entered the … room, hewalked towards the table. …The next moment, he was seated on the table nearly naked, and his clothes were nowhere to be seen. One can speculate either that he has repressed the disturbing experience of being stripped and lifted onto the table, or that he may have been, in fact, unconscious during that operation. (page 85)

My explanation would be that we are dealing with a dream mechanism where such sequences are quite common. I need scarcely point out the relevance of this scene to the ‘birth memory’ hypothesis. It is of special interest that the subject in this abduction case reported: ‘I feel like a frog’ (page 84). One is reminded of the foetal leg positions as well as those of the neonate. Women often refer to infants affectionately as ‘little frogs’. The subject also felt ‘physically dirty, and wanted very much to shower’ (pacge 86). Hint. hint. One of Hopkins’ subjects even says: ‘It seemed like a dream sequence. That’s what it seemed like. It seemed like a dream sequence. It didn’t quite oil come out together’. What you see is what you get. You have here a remembered dream. Let’s give the abductee some credit and take what he reports for what it is.

It should be pointed out, however, that these are not average dreams. They are archetypal dreams, or ‘big dreams’ as primitives call them. Therefore, the subjects who have these very strong and impressive dreams feel them to be different in quality from ordinary dreams. They are quite right. Another of Hopkins’ subjects puts this experience this way: “It’s almost like it’s a dream. In fact, maybe I thought it was a dream except, except – I’d never had a dream like that! … The place is like a dream…”

Dozens of examples of dreamlike qualities can be found in the accounts given by the abductees examined by Hopkins. Nevertheless. Hopkins refuses to entertain this quite obvious alternative explanation. That many people present essentially the some dream is no problem. The meaning of UFOs and ETs is archetypal and may be expected to repeat a very similar pattern.

Some of Hopkins’ subjects appear to have hit upon the technique of ‘active imagination’. This techniques [9] allows one to go into a kind of ‘waking dream’, in which an imaginary play is carried out before one’s eyes, having the same sort of autonomous character as a movie or living diorama. One of Hopkins’ subjects, giving his impressions of an ET medical examination. reports on an ‘eye-like’ device as follows (page 171): “I never have just a stationary image. but I get a sort of initial quick impression and then it starts degrading into all other kinds or things”. This is a typical subjective experience in active imagination.

The subject continues (page 175): “I was just trying this time to tell you wherever just sort of popped into my mind. It was very much just kind of a collage of impressions … There was not any kind of sequential thing … There was not any involvement, really, or the feeling I was reliving anything … rather that I was acting as an observer”. And, further on: “It was not a bright room, and, ah, I don’t recoil any brightness at all, but that’s the image my mind is creating now”. This is active imagination pure and simple.

The experience of active imagination is initiated by a sort or abaisssement du niveau mentale, a lowering or ‘relaxation’ of consciousness. Certain exterior conditions are very favourable for the production or such states. Waking through the area where one ‘abduction’ took place, Hopkins himself remarks on the ‘eerie, slumbering quality’ of the grounds (page 183). A second subject of Hopkins reports on hearing her name called in the woods [10] (page 202).

I have had this experience myself in the deep woods of Montana. The ‘unconscious is, in compensatory fashion, reaffirming the person’s identity. This reaction is brought forth from the unconscious to counteract the well-known tendency for consciousness to fragment under conditions of isolation. Such a reaction, and its strength are relative to the degree of isolation experienced and to the strength of the individual ego-consciousness. These conditions cited by Hopkins are optimal for inducing active imagination.

Once one becomes familiar with these altered states of consciousness, the ETH as supported by cases such as those presented in Missing Time loses considerable credibility. Anyone who stumbles onto this technique is very impressed by it. I know I was at first, and I spent one whole night just recording the incredibly vivid images that forced themselves on my mind. You con do active imaginations about dragons, unicorns – what have you, and you will find that they are very typical and a slight personal variation on something that can be looked up in a fairy-tale book. Nowadays we have high-tech fairy tales.

ETs: cockroaches of the cosmos, or, when the world gets the DTs we start seeing ETs

The UFO phenomenon, broadly speaking is a monstrum compositum. Within the range of UFO phenomena, we see the organic, the inorganic, psychic events, and physical traces: also myths and fairy tales. The UFO phenomenon covers the full range of meaning and aesthetic appeal from the banal and ridiculous to the highest spiritual levels. At times aspects of the phenomenon can be described as fishlike, [11] birdlike, [12] insectlike, [13] and any combination of these features. It is of no avail to try to find out which of these things the UFO is. It is all of them. The composite nature of UFO imagery indicates that it arises from the deepest layers of the collective unconscious. [14]

This does not mean it is merely psychic. At some point in the collective unconscious the psychic meets the hylic. [15] and the usual categories disappear. Somecne once said: ‘A trick, if it’s done right, doesn’t look like a trick, it looks real’. If the UFO phenomenon were exclusively psychic or exclusively physical in nature, it would not capyure our attention the way it does. It is part of ‘the message’ that the phenomenon cannot be clearly categorized. When one does clearly categorize the phenomenon, one begins to suffer from UFO-lobotomy: one loses the ability to think critically about the subject, one falls into self-contradiction, forgets contradictory data, develops quasi-theological sophistries to ‘explain’ the absurd behaviour of the UFOs — in effect, one meets his pod. In my opinion, there is no small evidence that this fate has befallen the ETHers.

If we look at the ETs with any kind of objectivity at all, we see them as buzzing, expressionless, more or less indistinguishable creatures with little or no feeling for their human victims — like large insects with rudimentary tools for probing the bodies of the abductees as the probe the ground for soil samples – leaving their peculiar insect bites and ‘traces’.We are living in stressful times, not just for us, but for the whole planet. If nature has access to our minds – and she does — would not consciousness be the most vulnerable point at which to attack and disable the species threatening the entire natural world? For the first
time, perhaps, in the history of the world, there is a universal threat of extinction. We should expect the strongest sort of evolutionary response to this emergency.

This response cannot extend over the long periods of time usually available for such changes. The changes must occur within decades. The vulnerability of consciousness makes it the prime target for fast evolutionary change, a change so rapid that it has to overload the circuits, producing a vast array of overdetermined imagery with a wide spectrum of effects. The effects produced may result in higher consciousness, but not necessarily.

When I see some of the responses to the UFO phenomenon like, for instance, the ETH, I suspect that nature may be creating false fascinosa that keep our eyes glued upward until we fall of some cliff into the sea. Then the world will once again be at peace.

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References

  1. Alvin H, Larson, ‘UFO abductions or birth memories?’, Fate, March 1985, pp, 68-84, See also Magonia new series 10.
  2. The behaviour of UFOs and their pilots is truly a ‘dance of the absurd’, for important comments on the function of the absurd in general, see my ‘Note on
    the function of nonsense’, Archaeus, 3, 1 (summer 1985), and for observations on the ‘absurd’ in relation to UFOs, see Jacques Vallée, Messengers of Deception; UFO Contacts and Cults, Berkeley, And/Or Press 1979, passim.
  3. For a full discussion of the Khidr legend see Carl Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Collected Works, 9,1. New York, Pantheon Books, 1959, pp, 135-147.
  4. Jung’s Sufi headman of his safari through Kenya told him that Khidr might appear to Jung as a ‘pure, white light’. The headman himself reported he had dreamt of Khidr as a ‘bright white light near the door’, Ibid., p. 143.
  5. As the nuclear crisis is a backdoor reinstillation of the original ‘fear of God’, the UFO phenomena seem to be designed to reacquaint us with a wide range of other religious virtues.
  6. Undoubtedly, Islam is possessed of a new dynamism, This is negatively expressed in Khomeini but Islam, as the youngest of the world’s great religions, has its fulfilment still in the future, Jung has commented on this, and Anthony Burgess in his novel 1985 predicts an Islamic Britain by the end of the century, Wild, you say? Have you noticed our change in attitudes towards virginity pornography and alcohol?
  7. That UFOs do not manifest definitively to the organizational power structures is part at the archetypal ayth, there is no room for the, ‘principle of salvation’ in the Inn. It appears first to shepherds in the fields.
  8. See also Stanislav Grof, Realms of the Human Unconscious, New York, Viking Press. 1975, The possibility of the remembrance of the birth process, especially in connection with violence, is supported by Edward C Whitmont in his book Return of the Goddess, New York, Crossroad, 1982, pp, 17-18.
  9. For the original discussion of the concept of active imagination (term not used), see C. G. Jung, ‘The transcendent function’ in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, Collected Works, 8. New York, Pantheon Books, 1960, pp, 57-91) Discussion of the nature and function of active imagination can be found throughout the Jungian literature.
  10. A book was written years ago on this subject: Max Lowy, Uber sine Unruhe erscheinung; die Halluzination des Anrufes mit dem eigenen Namen (ohne und mit Beachtungswahn), Separatabdruck aus den Jahrbuchen fur Psychiatrie und Neurologie, XXXIII Band, Leipzig u, Wien, Franz Deuticke, 1911. The title translates: On an Anxiety Manifestation; the hallucination of being called by one’s name without and with pathological disturbances of attention).
  11. UFOs have been seen rising from and returning to the sea, Jung discusses the UFO as fish in Flying Saucers: a modern myth of things seen in the skies, in Civilization in Transition, Collected Works, 10, New York, Pantheon Books, 1964, See also Lyall Watson’s highly suggestive ruminations on underwater lights, squid and their large eyes and ETs in his book Gifts of Unknown Things, New York, Simon and Schuster, 1976, pp, 18-37.
  12. Greta Woodrew, On a Slide of Light, New York, Macmillan, 1981 – Hawks
  13. Gerald Heard. The Riddle of the Flying Saucers, London, Carroll and Nichdlson, 1950. – Bees.
  14.  At the deepest levels of the unconscious, everything is everything
  15. The region currently under investigation by several leading quantum theorists.

     

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The American Way: A Cock-and-Bullard Story. Dennis Stillings

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Originally published in Magonia 35, January 1990

As editor of Artifex, like most editors, I have become something of a clearinghouse for gossip, rumor, and inside information about all sorts of things relating to anomalies, witnesses, and those who investigate them. In regard to the extraterrestrial abduction scene and those involved, I have heard many impressive anecdotes from very reliable sources that have led me to regard many of the abductionist claims and claimants as highly suspect. Furthermore, in my personal interactions with some of the abductionists, I have observed behaviours and heard statements made that have led me to believe that their claims must be taken with a very large grain of salt indeed. A sampling of these statements and observations follows:

Item: Reliable. Source (RS) and Well-Known Abductionist (WKA) went to investigate the report by members of a family that they had seen “aliens in yellow space suits on the road.” There were “several flashing lights.” It was rainy and misty. RS checked on this by calling the county highway department to see if they had any people out at that place and time. Sure enough, a crew had been doing emergency roadwork. They had several Caution signs with them and were wearing the traditional yellow slickers due to the wet weather. RS passed this information on to WKA, who categorically refused to accept the explanation.

Item: RS (with Ph.D. in psychology) witnessed one of WKA’s hypnotic regressions for the purpose of confirming an abduction experience. It was clear to RS that WKA was recursively leading the subject, subtly suing him according to a predetermined programme, which WKA had written out on a notepad held in his hand.

Item: RS told me of a case of a New York woman who became extremely upset over WKA’s attempts to coerce her into believing that she had been kidnapped by aliens when she knew better; she was so upset, in fact, that she flew out to California to see a recommended therapist in order to recover from what amounted to a brain-washing experience.

This particular case, as well as the one just above it, is highly relevant to the issue of who really “homogenizes” the reports of the abduction experience. In spite of claims that these reports – coming directly from the victim – are essentially identical, we have this only on the word of the abductionists. As far as I know, no proof of this exists.

The purpose in bringing these anecdotes to the reader’s attention is to indicate that the level of reliability of American researchers in these areas might not be as high as Bullard implies. In relation to some of these items, Bullard’s invocation of Hufford’s important book [1] and its conclusions seems inappropriate – unless he wishes to apply its lessons to the abductionists themselves. I see little reason to believe that the abductees are “taken at their word” by the abductionists, or that the abductionists are giving us the pure, untouched reports of their subjects. A moderately close reading of Hopkins’ Missing Time and Intruders reveals that the subjects very often try to indicate that their experiences had a dreamlike or imaginary quality.

This is always glossed over or reinterpreted. Jungian explanations for the alleged similarities among the abduction reports depend on the reliability of what we are told by the investigators. I no longer believe that what is claimed by the investigators is reliable, therefore the similarities can probably be accounted for by a much more parsimonious explanation: the similarities are merely an artefact of the Procrustean techniques being used by the abductionists. In addition, much is made of the claim that typical abduction reports have been obtained by individuals not subjected to regressive hypnosis. For some reason, which is not at all immediately obvious to me, this is supposed to be proof of the objectivity of the experience. I am afraid that the significance of this claim needs to be spelled out more clearly.

The as yet ill-defined altered state of consciousness obtained by means of formal hypnotic induction is but one of several altered states available to the individual on his own. Autohypnosis, as well as altered states induced by more or less chance interactions with the environment, must be considered. The entire psychological history of the individual must also be taken into account.

Item: WKA has said to a number of people that he is “on a mission,” and that the abduction problem “is why I’m here.” Actually, having watched him say this myself, he really says it to no one; he sort of gazes upward with unfocused eyes as he says it. Item: I told a Well-Known Skeptic (not specifically a UFO sceptic) that I had heard no reports of abduction cases from any of my paediatrician friends. It seemed to me unlikely that these professionals would not have heard of abduction cases if they are of the ubiquity claimed by the abductionists. WKS said “It’s a cover-up!”

I know a number of paediatricians pretty well. They are sensitive, imaginative people who listen sympathetically to what children have to say, no matter how bizarre the story might be. Paediatricians frequently deal with the wild tales of children and use the imaginative content as part of therapy. It is unlikely that a paediatrician would take a story of alien abduction at face value. They would, however, not suppress such material.

Item: WKA (who is not a professional psychologist or counsellor) cautions victims about whether or not they should have children (due to the genetic experiments done on them by aliens), or whether they might not have to terminate intimate relationships because their ‘significant other’ “will not be able to understand the experience.” Aside from the prosaic fact that such counselling by unlicensed persons is illegal, unethical, and irresponsible, these abductionist recommendations are highly reminiscent of suggestions made by cult leaders to their recruits.

Item: In the little-known ET Bag Lunch Case, Well-Known MJ-12 person finds mysterious items that he is sure resulted from the visitation of an alien spacecraft. Having access to a UFO-buff high up in the administration of an aerospace corporation, he manages to have their laboratories do an analysis. The items turn out to be aluminium shavings, an old insulator, and part of a brown paper bag.

Item: Long before William L. Moore debunked himself at the 1989 MUFON meeting in Las Vegas, he got off to a strong head start, in 1972, by publishing, in consultation with Charles Berlitz, the perfectly fantastical book The Philadelphia Experiment. [2] This book speculates that, during the war, the U.S. Navy was in possession of some sort of relativistic electromagnetic device that would not only render an entire ship and its crew invisible, but teleport it to a distant location as well! Ufologists who have been reminded of the fact of this book have looked at Moore’s claims and reliability through new eyes. (The prominent biophysicist Otto Schmitt was heavily involved in electromagnetic experimentation with the navy during World War II. He has some 60 patents in this area, many of which are still classified. When I mentioned the Philadelphia Experiment to him he claimed [between chuckles and head-shaking] that he had never heard of such a thing, even by way of rumour. For various good reasons, I do not think he was hiding anything. Conspiracy buffs will, of course, think otherwise.)

The above items, in combination with the unwarranted enthusiasm among some American ufologists for the moribund MJ-12 and Gulf Breeze cases seem, in my opinion, to justify European ufologists’ dismay at the current condition of American ufology.

Along these lines, I also do not completely share Bullard’s characterization of European ufology vis-à-vis American ufology. Bullard claims that Americans “work from – the bottom up, wallowing in facts, often content just to accumulate and enumerate them.” They are often “satisfied to cobble together a few unsystematic generalizations and prefer to isolate phenomena rather than relate them.” On the other hand, European ufologists work from the top down, conforming data to theory. With regard to Europeans, I tend to regard this as somewhat true; however, the recent work of Hilary Evans [3] and Terence Meaden [4] – of singular importance to current ufology – do nothing of the sorts. [5]

Persistent objections from sceptics are met with the response that the sceptic is an ‘armchair ufologist’, yet nothing is presented that is the least inducement to get out of one’s armchair.

Both of these investigators proceed by way of gathering data, constructing models, and then allowing fresh data to strengthen or modify their hypotheses. In the case of American ufology, it is hard to see in what way the ETH, which dominates American UFO thinking, is not a ‘top down’ approach. The ‘top down’ approach is also characteristic of the abductionist method. It also characterizes recent American books on abductions that dismiss objections based on the problems of hypnosis, folkloric and mythological parallels, science fiction sources, and psychology, with a mere snort and a wave of the hand. Such objections are never raised by the abductionists themselves in their strongest possible form and then systematically refuted. They are scarcely raised at all. One is instead requested to accept the abductionists’ word that such objections are utterly irrelevant. Persistent objections from sceptics are met with the response that the sceptic is an ‘armchair ufologist’, yet nothing is presented that is the least inducement to get out of one’s armchair.

Budd Hopkins’ paper on ‘stewpot thinking’ [6] which Bullard cites, is an undistinguished and poorly thought-out critique of the use of traditional comparative methods (dismissed as ‘stewpot thinking’) in elucidating UFO and ET cases. Hopkins’ fundamental error in this paper is to compare problem-solving within a paradigm (discovering the source and cause of Legionnaires’ Disease) with problem-solving, where no paradigm exists (ufology). In the former case, one has a well-established and agreed-upon methodology; controversy may revolve around details, but the investigators pretty much all agree on the direction that solution of the problem will take. ‘Stewpot thinking’, in this case, might be inappropriate, but not always. Very often, the ‘stewpot’ thinker, seeing both the trees and the forest, perceives relationships unnoticed by his more linearly thinking colleagues. In nascent science, such as the development of electrical theory in the 18th century, analogies and comparisons with earlier models (hydrodynamics and alchemy were favourites) often prevail until the paradigm is established. It is in no way extraordinary or defective to lay the groundwork for clarifying and understanding a problem by using ‘stewpot thinking’.

Actually, the most important aspect of Hopkins’ essay is that it palingenetically models one of the first steps a cult or religion takes after it becomes established: it denies its relationship to any past religion. The Church Fathers were at pains to deny any relationship between Christianity and the Egyptian religion, but even the Church Fathers had a hard time maintaining this position and finally developed the theory that the Devil had caused other cultures to mimic Christianity in order to undermine the faith. Because of Hopkins’ remarkable recreation of this theological pattern, I strongly recommend that his paper be read.

Bullard’s arguments often seem to undercut his own discipline. As he says, “if the only evidence is a text, fiction counterfeits truth to perfection.” This may be so on occasion, but as a matter of fact, fiction rarely counterfeits truth to perfection, or to anything approaching it. We may not be able to provide an absolute, definitive proof that the story of Little Red Riding Hood is fiction, but there are several criteria of comparative method, long used in textual analysis and literature studies, that may be applied internally to any text that will lead us to regard it as either true, partly true, or mainly fictional. I do not understand what Bullard could mean here, and I sincerely hope that I have misread him. He appears to be making an unjustifiably strong statement that can be true only in the most absolutist sense.

One of the very best criteria for distinguishing between fact and fiction in abduction reports (as in many other kinds of anomalies reports) is the criterion of “information richness.” Let me give you a homely example. A drunk of no great intelligence, teetering on a bar stool, leans over to his buddy and grumbles, “If Tommy Kramer hadn’t busted his knee, we could all be going to the Super Bowl.” If this were overheard by a Martian, he would obtain, in this one sentence, (1) immediate, useful information about the nature of human beings and (2) a number of puzzles that would motivate further investigations, which might lead to additional real information.

The Martian would at least know, or soon be able to know, that a ‘Tommy Kramer’ had something called ‘knees,’ that they get broken, and that circumstances surrounding the physical condition of a ‘Tommy Kramer’ determines whether or not these humans will all go somewhere called ‘Super Bowl’. This level of information richness – and this is a pretty minimal example in human terms – is not to be obtained from ET contact. Nor is much ordinary information about contemporary human life obtained from myth and folklore which, like ET contact reports, tend to have an abstract, formalistic, and timeless character.

It is extraordinary that Bullard, as a folklorist, should fall prey to expressing such a concretism as, “In comparing folklore and abductions, many features fit but at the same time many do not. … Fairies do not fly spaceships or use eyelike scanning devices.” Don’t they? Representations and reports exist in which creatures, not fairies, perhaps, but certainly, creatures very similar to one or another variety of the ‘Little People’ do fly spaceships. [7] And eyelike scanning devices can be traced back a very long time indeed. They have significant representation in early myth and folklore, and have been used by mythical entities for ‘scanning’. [8]

I fully agree with Bullard that merely pointing out mythological or folkloric parallels does not prove that – very strictly speaking – something didn’t really happen. And if a single parallel were the only criterion for distinguishing fact from fiction, we would have great difficulties in certain cases. For instance, the tale of the flight of Mary and Joseph into Egypt with the infant Jesus could well be true, and it is almost a certainty that many ordinary families of three have had to make similar perilous journeys. Yet we also know that the traditional details surrounding Jesus’ birth and childhood closely parallel the circumstances surrounding the birth of many mythological or semi-mythological heroes. Thus one archetypal motif – the flight to avoid persecution by the representatives of the old order – is brought into connection with another theme: the birth of the hero. [9]

The ‘success’ of the rationalizations of the ETHers derives from the fact that once an arbitrary will behind a phenomenon is assumed, anything can count as evidence

Other folkloric themes and motifs may be assembled around a story, each severely reducing the probability of the story being a true and literal account of an historical event. From pursuing this exercise, we can even come up with why such stories are structured the way they are. (Needless to say – I would hope! – such themes and motifs abound in the abduction material.) Furthermore, comparative material having the very same motifs may even be obtained from the dreams of modern people. And if such motifs are the persistent stuff of dreams, I would suggest that they do not deal with matters of objective external reality. There are several other relevant tests for distinguishing real reports from mythic and folkloric confabulations. Bullard is blowing smoke from Freud’s real, cigar here.

At bottom, the ‘success’ of the rationalizations of the ETHers derives from the fact that once an arbitrary will behind a phenomenon is assumed, anything can count as evidence. This, combined with what Norman Mailer once referred to as “a logic that doesn’t know where to stop,” takes the ETHer wherever he wants to go. The ETH is extremely difficult to falsify, making it a fertile breeding ground for every sort of fantasy. The knowledge vacuum we confront in contemplating ETs and UFOs stimulates the imagination into providing ‘answers’ derived from psychological and cultural sources. If the imagery has a strong archetypal component, it will be driven by energies that arise from the very roots from which myth and folklore grow. The unconscious always tends to personify its contents and express the psychodynamics involved in dramatic form.

In closing, I would like to address the specific criticisms made against me by Bullard. First of all, I have never articulated to myself, much less published, a comprehensive Jungian theory of UFOs and ETs. I doubt very much that it could be done. The attempts I have seen have been virtually complete failures. I merely believe that there are certain aspects of UFO reports that lend themselves readily to Jungian treatment. Even if the ETH turned out to be true, this would not invalidate a Jungian approach to certain aspects of the subject. Human psychology is, after all, involved.

Contrary to Bullard’s hopes or fears, I do not have any fundamental ‘answers,’ and I have never claimed to have any – nor do I know where Bullard got the idea that I did. Jung, not I, first asserted that the world was in such dreadful shape [10] that a salvation myth, such as the one developed from extraterrestrial beliefs, was needed. I would, however, second his opinion. Nor am I the originator of the idea that there might be a parapsychological component to the UFO and its associated physical evidence. This idea has been entertained by, among others, Jung, I. Grattan-Guinness, Manfred Cassirer, Michael Grosso, Peter Rojcewicz, George Owen, and last, but not least, Jerome Clark. Clark, who now wishes to distance himself from his book on the Jungian/parapsychological explanation of UFOs and UFO reports, is one of only two people I know of who has attempted to put forward such an interpretation in a full-length book. [11]

Not only did Clark write an entire 272-page volume in this vein, but in the course of the work (in addition to putting forward a vigorous defence of the reality of the Cottingley Fairies) he formulated actual “Laws of Paraufology.” The First Law of Paraufology is: The UFO mystery is primarily subjective and its content primarily symbolic; the Second Law is that the ‘objective’ manifestations are psychokinetically generated by-products of those unconscious processes which shape a culture’s vision of the otherworld. Existing only temporarily, they are at best only quasi-physical. [12] Laws, no less!

Now, I appreciate the fact that Clark has disavowed this book, although I believe that this was due mainly to his intuition that its superficial and formulaic use of Jungian ideas for an understanding of UFOs was weak and unsatisfactory. But the point I really want to make is that, if Bullard wants to critique a substantial statement of the Jungian/parapsychological interpretation, why doesn’t he take aim at Clark’s book, rather than at the few very sketchy and tentative remarks I made in the Magonia article? Never mind that Clark no longer believes in what he wrote in The Unidentified, it is still the best example of what Bullard doesn’t like. If I didn’t know better, I would suspect that both Clark and Bullard want to hang Clark’s book around my neck!

I consider my ideas about the role of archetypal psychology and parapsychology in understanding UFO and ET reports to be merely attempts at opening up, and keeping in mind, alternative perspectives – no more than that.

In summary, I have to agree with those European ufologists who consider American ufology to be a frightful mess. Bullard’s paper goes far, in my opinion, toward supporting this view. It does nothing to refute it. I certainly would like to see the American Way return to action: Truth, not uncriticized fantasy; Justice – for the abductees; and the return of the empirical, pragmatic American ufological brain, the real victim of Abduction. There are signs that this is happening.

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References:

  1.  David J. Hufford. The Terror that Comes in the Night: An Experience-centered Study of Supernatural Assault Traditions. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982.
  2.  The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility. Grosset & Dunlap, 1972
  3.  Alternate States of Consciousness: Unself Otherself and Superself. Aquarian Press, 1989.
  4.  The Circles Effect and Its Mysteries, Artetech Publishing, 1989.
  5.  Actually, when it comes to the gathering of facts, it is rare indeed that no ‘top-down’ hidden agenda is involved – rare enough that may be seriously doubted whether pure fact-gathering ever takes place.
  6.  Budd Hopkins, ‘Stewpot Thinking’, MUFON UFO Journal, 251, March 1989, pp.8-9,12
  7.  Bullard Might well benefit from a perusal of Michel Meuger and Claude Gagnon’s excellent book, Lake Monster Traditions, (Fortean Tomes, 1988). Meuger documents, by actual field studies, the transformation of traditional folklore creatures into machines.
  8.  See Tony Nugent’s discussion of the three Graea in relationship to the Pascagoula case in his paper ‘Quicksilver in Twilight: A Close Encounter with a Hermetic Eye’, in Cyberbiological Studies of the Imaginal Component in the UFO Contact Experience, Archaeus Publications, 1989, pp.109-124.
  9. A very recent example depicting the birth of the hero and the flight into the wilderness may be seen in the television special, Shaka Zulu.
  10.  I leave it to our European friends to evaluate Bullard’s counter: “when has the world ever not been in dreadful shape?” Nietzsche once remarked that “if there was a God he would not allow the twentieth century to have happened”.
  11.  Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman, The Unidentified: Notes Towards Solving the UFO Mystery, Warner Paperback Library, 1975. The other full-length Jungian book attempting to account for UFOs is by Gregory L. Little, The Archetype Experience, Rainbow, 1984
  12. Clark and Coleman, pp. 235ff, 242

   

 

The Curious Connection Between Helicopters and UFOs.
Dennis Stilling

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First published in Magonia 25, March 1987

During the past three or four years, as I was reviewing the more recent literature on UFOs and the cattle mutilation phenomenon, I became aware that so-called ‘phantom helicopters’ were often seen in connection with these phenomena. In addition these usually unmarked, usually black, helicopters demonstrated some rather remarkable properties: they move silently or with sound unlike those of normal helicopters: they fly at abnormal, unsafe, or illegal altitudes: they appear both shy and aggressive.

They are reported to carry ‘oriental-looking’ people; their passage sometimes ‘blisters’ the dead and mutilated animals; they direct abnormal brilliant beams of light; the hover over missile sites and military bases; often they are heard distinctly and very loudly but not seen; sometimes they look like helicopters but sound like airplanes; they sometimes flash multi-coloured lights; they are observed in association with nocturnal lights; they are sometimes seen flying at abnormally high rates of speed.

All of this sounds very much like the sorts of behaviour typically reported of flying saucers. Strangest of all is that UFOs are occasionally reported to change into helicopters, or the helicopters are seen shortly before or after sightings of UFOs.

It was this combination of reported abnormal characteristics, and especially the reports of apparent transmogrifications, that prompted me to ask myself the following question: if such phenomena were reported as occurring in a dream, how would such a dream be interpreted? Such a dream would indicates that in some sense, an equivalence or, at least, a very close relationship between helicopters and UFOs was being suggested. In reality, of course, helicopters are not identical with UFOs, and so the relationship must be of a different sort.

It was my hypothesis that, if there was a deep-rooted psychological connection between helicopters and UFOs, evidence of this connection would appear in the experience and activities of individuals preoccupied – not with UFOs necessarily – but with helicopters. Since the work of these individuals predates the so-called modern era of UFO sightings, reliable naive material could be expected.

It so happens that one of the engineers most involved in early helicopter design was Arthur Young and, as luck would have it, Arthur Young published in a book called The Bell Notes, the record of his thoughts and activities during the time of his most intense efforts to design the Bell Model 47 helicopter.

In Peter Dreyer’s forward to the book, and in the very first paragraph he states that Arthur Young “had come to see the helicopter chiefly as a metaphor for the evolving spirit – the winged self which he now began to call the ‘psychopter’.” In Young’s own words “the many headed dragon of the helicopter seemed to be growing more heads all the time, and “I am working on the psychopter within the helicopter. I experimented with the self instead of with the machine.” Using an image borrowed from alchemy he writes: “Bell has become a laboratory in which I try to distil myself. The helicopter is only the vessel … I am constantly directing myself towards attainment of the psychopter”. Arthur Young went on to become intensely involved in psychic phenomena and metaphysics.

I also checked on Igor Sikorski. In 1900, at the age of 11, Sikorski had a dream that affected him deeply. The details of the dream are very much like a Jules Verne conception of being aboard a UFO:

“I saw myself walking along a narrow, luxuriously decorated passageway. On both sides were walnut doors, similar to the staterooms of a steamer. A spherical electric light from the ceiling produced a pleasant bluish illumination. Walking slowly, I felt a slight vibration under my feet and was not surprised to find that the feeling was different from that experienced on a steamer or on a railway train. I took this for granted because in my dream I knew that I was onboard a large flying ship in the air.”

Sikorski wrote several books of a theological and metaphysical nature. In 1947 he published The Invisible Encounter, a rather despairing book on the morals and fate of the twentieth century.

Another, very suggestive, dream illustration of the connection between UFOs and helicopters may be found in a letter to C.G. Jung in 1959. The writer was not, as far as I know, deeply involved with helicopters, but this is not certain. The dream is as follows:

“An aeroplane appeared from clouds of smoke or fog [The appearance of smoke or fog is often reported to be seen prior to encounters with UFOs and UFO abductions]. Then a contraption like a helicopter descended towards the dreamer to fetch him [There is an apparent transformation of the aeroplane into a helicopter, a type of phenomenon also reported in the UFO literature]. He saw shadowy figures which he knew to be higher types of man, with greater knowledge and absolutely just, visitors from another world”.

The years 1946 and 1947 were notable for other events of relevance to this discussion. On March 8, 1946, Arthur Young’s machine, the Bell Model 47 helicopter, was awarded the world’s first commercial helicopter licence. The helicopter thus became part of the general culture.

Considerable speculation was given to the possibility that everyone might own their own device for “genuine three-dimensional travel”. In the very next year, 1947, atmospheric straight-line flight achieved another sort of freedom: the sound barrier (sometimes referred to as a demon in the sky) was broken by a Bell X-15 rocket plane. In addition the world groundspeed record was established in 1947. Following Churchill’s ‘Iron Curtain’ speech of the previous year, 1947 was termed the ‘Year of Division”. And 1946 – 1947 marks the beginning of the modern era of flying saucers.

The theme of splitting was not only a feature of post-war science and politics, but manifested in the technology of the time as well. It seems as though the flight characteristics of the UFO – enormous straight line velocities combined with the ability to hover and move at right-angles and in all directions – were reproduced by us in the best way we could, by means of our rockets and helicopters. Unable to combine the astounding performance characteristics of the UFO in a single device, we produced two quite different technologies, each of which mimicked only one set of UFO flight characteristics.

One is tempted here to view the UFO as the visible representation of a background dynamic that is stimulating us to produce technologies that are partial representations of something that is, in its essence, irrepresentable and paradoxical.

This is reminiscent of the behaviour of the hero in Close Encounters of the Third Kind who feels compelled to reproduce in material form a vague and elusive unconscious image. One may further speculate that the level of accomplishment achieved by the production of supersonic rocket planes and reliable helicopters in some sense caused this background dynamics to reveal itself in the form of the irrational and myth provoking UFO. It was as if this hidden element were saying “No, that is not exactly it, that is not the whole picture. A merely technological representation is not ultimately satisfactory, so here is something for you really to think about!’. The UFO thus emerges as a sort of tertium quid, a transformative element of the mind related to human creativity.

Arthur Young addresses himself to this point several times in his book. He writes:

“What is the psychopter? The psychopter is the winged self. It is that which the helicopter usurped – and what the helicopter was finally revealed not to be. Fundamentally, I am trying to get out of the helicopter not because of what it is but because I believe in the psychopter. The construction of the psychopter is not advanced by plunging again into the helicopter. It is advanced by trying to distil the helicopter. So that from the point of view of the psychopter, which is the important one, the only commitments toward the helicopter which should presently, be stressed are indirect ones”.

Young refers to The Bell Notes as:

“[A] notebook on [a] machine that is much more complicated and subtle than the helicopter. The machine is my mind and body, with which I experiment every day, through which I will eventually achieve the end I seek, for I always knew it was not the helicopter. Here is a great experiment indeed.”

From these quotations we rather gather that this individual, Arthur Young, who was deeply involved in the problems of designing the helicopter, felt machine to be an inadequate external representation of an inner driving force to which he was totally committed. He saw the psychopter/helicopter problem as related to the nature of his own mind and body It is of interest here that Jule Eisenbud has referred to the UFO phenomenon as an “into-the-body-experience”.

The biophysicist Otto Schmitt asks us to consider such experiences as apports, and, by extension, the phenomena of UFOs, to be considered as examples of what he terms “matrix-inversion” – i.e., that instead of arising from the action of an external object on the sensorium, the ‘perception’ event may be primary, with the external object arising as a secondary phenomenon – a point of view not inconsistent with traditional teachings of Eastern philosophy.

We already know that certain forms of mental disorder are accompanied by the loss of the sense of bodily boundaries. Often this condition is accompanied by a view of the body as an extended machine or as being invaded by a machine. This condition has been well conceived by the UFO-naive artist who produced this lithograph.

airmachine

 

This UFO-like image has clear resemblances to a machine, yet it is obviously of a very organic nature. It is composed of sinews and skeletal tissues that strongly suggest the parts of one or more human bodies. This ‘flask’ or vas hermeticum of tissue is surmounted by a pair of wings in the position of the rotors of a helicopter. The whole of the object seems to be emerging out of the metaphysical background of existence. The work was done in 1973, and is entitled Air Machine.

A very interesting mythology has been built up around the helicopter in popular culture. Recently a surrealist novel has been published called God’s Helicopter in which a demonic god terrorises the main character by means of a helicopter and its disembodied noise. Ron Westrum reports an ‘abduction case’ in which the sound of a helicopter figures as a fear-provoking element.

The helicopter has taken on near-mythological proportions in television and movies. Blue Thunder and the spin-off TV series Airwolf come immediately to mind. In these shows the helicopters possess such advanced technology that they take on a kind of personality. In the movie Apocalypse Now! helicopters are portrayed as Valkyries who attack the Viet Cong to the music of Wagner. In this film a cow is hoisted by helicopter to supply a barbecue held by the fliers of the machines, clearly mimicking reports of cattle abductions and mutilations. I doubt if this was the conscious intent of the film makers.

Perhaps the most outstanding of the many examples of modern helicopter mythology comes from the movie Iceman. In this, a resuscitated Neanderthal shaman sees the helicopter as a divine being. The consulting anthropologist in the movie attempts to explain the relationship of a helicopter to the Neanderthal as follows:

“The helicopter is the bird, the messenger of the gods, but also a Trickster – supposed to take you to heaven, but if you’ve done wrong, it takes you somewhere else, where you’re judged for your sins.”

Here the helicopter is given the alternate roles of devil or angel as expressed in the Trickster figure, prominent in the folklore of North American Indians for his considerable ability to change into many forms. In this way he is analogous to the alchemical figure of Mercurius, who may be said to stand for the collective unconscious itself. Trickster/Mercurius is the source of both creative activity and gross deception.

I am not claiming a complete solution to the problem of UFOs or cattle mutilations. The UFO problem is far too rich to be encompassed by one solution. I am suggesting that there are fruitful areas of investigation, not usually explored, that may give us a different perspective on what we are trying to see. The peculiar relationship between UFOs and helicopters may well provide such a different perspective.

 

REFERENCE: Arthur Young.  The Bell Notes: A Journey from Physics to Metaphysics, Delacourt Press, 1979. (Click on the title to order from Amazon)

bellcov