SUBJECT: VISIONS OF COSMOPOLIS FILE: UFO2252
ARTICLE BY ANTHONY MANSUETO for OMNI
Great wheels of light appear over the high desert at night. Spinning against
the starry sky. Messengers from the heavens come to ordinary people. Bearing
new wisdom and warnings of cosmic catastrophe. Men and women are taken from
their beds at night and return with stories of intercourse with strange
beings, their bodies scarred with circles and triangles. Like so many aspects
of our culture, the UFO is the cause of controversy, a controversy which
extends to the very existence of the object in question. Like God, the UFO
divides our society into believers and nonbelievers, cautious hopefuls and
equally cautious agnostics. But whether we believe in the UFO or not, its
presence in our culture clearly has a great deal to tell us about ourselves-
about where we are as a species and where we are going. This kind of cultural
observation does not rule out the possibility that UFOs really do exist, nor
does it require such existence. It merely asks what we can learn from the
phenomenon regarding the current state of human civilization.
While the biological and metaphysical explanations vary and contradict one
another, there seems to be at least one constant about our nature as human
beings-and that is that we are not alone. We have a drive toward wholeness
and completion which is apparent in everthing we do. For instance, we join
together in intimate union-and produce a new whole, the child. We live in
groups because we can accomplish more together than a single individual ever
could.Even our intellectual history is one of endless struggle to make what
we know of the world fit into a larger pattern of significance.
But our desire for unity and completion is, perhaps, nowhere more clearly
expressed than in our need for religious experience or understanding. Derived
from the Latin religio, which means to reconnect, religion is the process by
which we strive to link ourselves to the divine or cosmic order of things.
Similarly, salvare, to save, originally meant to make whole. Salvation, the
ultimate aim of religion, is the moment of reconneciton-with God, with
Christ, with the Universe, with the sublime. It is a moment of mystery and
reverence, terror and fulfillment. It is the experience of connection,
touching, and becoming a part of something alien-something outside of us and
very different.
Whatever the physical reality of UFOs and aliens may be, it is easy to see
the religious dimensions of the phenomena. Carl Jung, as early as the 1950s,
noted the resemblance of flying saucers to the amndala, an ancient symbol of
wholeness and salvation. More recently, tales of abduction and alien
encounters suggest that finding the Other-a being from beyond-connects these
experiences to our underlying religious need for contact which transcends the
daily intercourse of human existence.
This said, it is necessary to point out how the symbolism surrounding the
UFO phenomenon differs from other types of religious symbolism. At least in
its original form, the UFO was a machine, a technological artifact. While the
technology which it embodies may be far in advance of our own, it is,
nonetheless, something which beings like ourselves might eventually be able
to create. The UFO literature is full of stories of attempts by the
government to reverse engineer UFO propulsion systems. If only we could get
our hands on a piece of their equipment, then, well, with a little bit of
Yankee ingenuity....Similarly the aliens-even as their otherness has
intensified over the years and they have manifested such paranormal powers as
the ability to walk through wall, to levitate, and so on- have remained
finite, humanoid beings who have real limitations and who, in some
inscrutable way, seem to need us as much as we need them.
All this suggests that we humans are beginning to see ourselves as real
participants in the process of creating unity and organization. Where older
myths regarded humanity as the plaything of the gods, or as the essentially
powerless subject of a transcendent divine sovereign, the myth which has
emerged around the UFO treats humanity as a real partner in the creation of a
cosmic society. The scientific and technological advances of the postwar
period brought with them grave dangers to be sure. But they also made it
possible, for the first time, for humanity to end its earthbound existence,
to visit the heavens and return to tell of the journey, and to imagine
someday, on our own efforts and through our won merits, to become citizens of
the great heavenly city.
There have, however, been a number of distinct-and even mutually opposed-
reactions to the mythic character of the UFO phenomenon. It is possible to
distinguish among these responses along three distinct axes. There are those
who believe that the UFO comes to us, whether from another star system or
another dimension, and those who regard it as merely a product of the
collective psyche. There are those who interpret the phenomenon in language
which is drawn from the scientific tradition, even as they stretch the limits
of official science, and those who express open hostility to the scientific
establishment. Finally, there are those who see in the UFO a sign of hope and
a catalyst for growth, and those who sense something evil and profoundly
destructive.
The dominant response to the UFO in the larger culture has been one of
tentative, hopeful anticipation. Broad layers of the population either
believe, or want desperately to believe, that the UFO represents the real
presence of a superior technological force, probably form another star system,
interaction with which is a catalyst for human social (and spiritual)
progress.This trend is connected to a fascination with the new science with
unified field theories and complex systems theory, holistic biology and
ecology-disciplines which are pushing us beyond the old worldview which
regarded the universe as a system of externally related atoms, toward an
understanding of the relationality holism, and self organizing character of
the universe. There is, at the same time, a desire to respect scientific
norms, and to avoid explanations which lack scientific credibility.
Probably the clearest and most powerful expression of this vision came not
from the UFO movement at all, but rather from Steven Speilberg, whose two
films, Close Encounter of the Third Kind, and E.T. both articulated and gave
form to powerful popular images of the phenomenon. In Close Encounters, a
series of UFO sightings disrupts the stifling routine of small town life and
the loveless marriage of a utility company worker, drawing him and newfound
companion into the Wyoming wilderness for an encounter with benevolent aliens
whose mother ship descends from the skies like a technological New Jerusalem.
He is chosen over the best and the brightest to accompany the aliens on a
journey in to the heavens. The score by John Williams is a clear expression of
the cultural myth at work in these films. Built around a series of complex
and often highly abstract variations on the theme from Pinocchio, it relies on
a common cosmic connection echoed in the refrain, When you wish upon a
star/Makes no difference who you are.
Moving out from this mythic center, there are two other trends which see the
UFO as a sign, or at least an expression, of hope, but differ in their
attitude toward official science-and thus in their willingness to regard the
phenomenon as objectively real. On the one side are the secular, humanistic
skeptics closely aligned with official science, such as the cosmological
principles championed by Carl Sagan. These skeptics share the UFOlogists quest
for an inhabited universe, but regard UFO as little better than a modern
superstition. Contact, when it comes, will be in binary code and will be
received by a large radio telescope operated by a consortium of universities.
The message will be interpreted by an interdisciplinary team of scientists and
conveyed to the secretary general of the United Nations.
The hard since approach here, however, is not devoid of a sense of awe at the
vastness of the undertaking of establishing contact. Keith Thompson, while
conducting research for his book, Angles and Aliens, visited with a scientist
working on the SETI project in the California desert. He was Harvard Ph.D.-
type, cream of the crop, Thompson recalls, and he sat there and told me with
an almost religious kind of astonishment, how many channels they had open, and
how much of the heavens they were searching.
At the other end of the spectrum are those who reject more or less completely,
or are willing to ignore, the limits of occicial science. Rather, these
believers borrow scientific concepts to explain social psychological
phenomena. David Stupple, in an article published shortly after his untimely
death in 1983, documented the continuities between the Theosophical movement
and UFO contactee and channeling cults which developed in the 1950s and 1960s.
Not infrequently UFO groups in the theosophical tradition will see themselves
as drawing out the implications of new developments in relativity and quantum
mechanics. Much of what Charles Spiegel, currently director of the Unarius
Educational Foundation, says-phrases such as The universe is an inner
dimensional energy system, or the mind is a giant computer running off of this
system, or We misunderstand the universe if we think only of the finite factors
of the infinite creative intelligence-sounds surprisingly like popular
accounts which treat the philosophical implications of the new physics.
The bibliographies of Unarius tracts are filled with references to Desecrates,
Spinoza, and Einstein. Indeed, Dr. Spiegel, who received his degree in psychic
therapeutic science from the Unarius Academy of Science, wrote his doctoral
dissertation on the political structure of the Interplanetary Confederation
which had bee transmitted to him by the chief scientist Alta of the planet
Vixall. He informed me that his immediate predecessor, Unarius cofounder Ruth
E. Norman, had recently made her transition to a nonatomic state where she
functions as the archangle Uriel. One Unarius film depicts the trails of an
aborigine contactee who suffers persecution at the hands of his tribe's high
priest whose name, interestingly enough, just happens to be Seti.
More recently, theosophical contactee and channeling cults have given way to
New Age interpretations of the phenomenon which are less audaciously offensive
to a scientifically trained audience, but perhaps even more profoundly at odds
with the whole scientific enterprise than their theosophical predecessors.
Ethnobotanist and psilocybin guru Terence McKenna writes in his book, The
Archaic Revival, that the UFO is an idea intended to confound science, because
science has begun to threaten the existence of the planet. At this point a
shock is necessary for the culture, a shock equivalent to the shock of the
resurrection on Roman imperialism. This shock is being applied by the
overmind...a level of hierarchic control being exerted on the human species as
a whole....Our destiny is not ours to decide. It is in the hands of a weirdly
democratic, amoeboid, hyperintelligent superorganism that is called Everybody.
Where the technophiles seek wholeness in a continuation of the scientific
project of our own civilization, the New Age movement rejects the whole
enterprise of rational knowledge and technocratic control in favor of a
religion centered on the maxim let go and let the UFO.
This theme of letting go has also found resonance among evangelically oriented
abductees. Betty Andreasson Luca, the subject of several books by UFO
investigator Raymond Fowler, told me that her abduction experiences had taught
her how real God is and how he is a control of all things. Even those
abductees who regard their experience as a catalyst for growth report initial
fear and resistance which they overcome only through what amounts to an act
of religious submission to their captors.Whitley Strieber repeatedly
challenges the right of his captors to abduct him and perform medical
operations without his consent. Their reply: We have the right. It is only
after he has accepted this that he is able to come to terms with the
experience and learn from it.
Not everyone, however, sees in the UFO a sign of hope. Once again the
original, and perhaps definitive, perception in this regard comes from popular
culture rather than the UFO movementitself. Ever since the publication of H.G.
Wells War of the Worlds and Orson Welles famous broadcast of the same, we
have had a fascination with alien invasion. We are desperately afraid that we
are being taken over by a force more powerful than ourselves, the motives and
modus operandi of which are too complex to be apparent to merely human reason.
The notion that the phenomenon is somehow malevolent cuts across the lines
between technophile and technophobe, and even across the lines between
believer and nonbeliever. Visions of a technological New Jerusalem find their
counterpart in an emerging countermyth of secret invasion by gray aliens from
Zeta Reticuli, who are breeding hybrids in underground bases hidden beneath
the mountains of New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona. This countermyth has found
resonance both among abductees who, far from felling healed and challenged by
their experiences, are more inclined to say that they have been raped and
violated, and among political conspiracy theorists convinced there is a
history of secret contact between the aliens and a secret government centered
in a high level group known as the MJ-12.
One partisan of the Reticulian invasion hypothesis is physicist John E.
Brandenburg, who claims to have worked on directed energy weapons and other
space defense projects. He says that the Star Wars program in which he served
was actually intended as a defense against the Reticulian invasion. His
prescription: God, GUTS, and Guns. GUTS refers to the Grand Unified Theory of
Science which he hopes will allow us to control gravity with
electromagnetism. He has also proposed a Rainbow Declaration which declares
that on all matters concerning extraterrestrial peoples, the nations of the
earth shall be as one.
The theme of political conspiracy, however, is not confined to those who
believe we are actually undergoing a secret alien invasion. William Cooper,
author of Behold the Pale Horse, is a former military intelligence and
defense research personnel, claims to have been shown documents relating to
government contact with extraterrestrials. Originally he, too, took the
documents at face value. Gradually, however, he came to the conclusion that
the phenomenon is one great big hoax, exclusively of human origin...designed
to bring into being One World government. The religious overtones of the
phenomenon are all part of the plot. One World government requires a New Age
One World religion. Mr. Cooper, whose answering machine informs callers that
they have reached something called the Intelligence Service, traces this
conspiracy back to John Dewey who, according to Cooper, noted that the
prospect of extraterrestrial invasion might serve to unify earth's warring
nations. The conspiracy, so the argument goes, is promoted by a secret
government which includes the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign
Relations, and other organizations.
Outwardly it might appear that this sort of negative reaction to the UFO
phenomenon represents a kind of resurgent Yankee individualism that seems at
odds with the religious unity incorporated in more positive versions. However,
there is an underlying need even in these conspiracies to connect the
individual experience to a larger whole. The conspiracy theorist searches for
the pattern which will make his experience of the world a coherent whole. The
intelligence officer, who maps out these secret networks, is the high priest
of this peculiar antireligion. Salvation comes from knowledge of the
conspiracy. Indeed, one often gets the sense that many conspiracy theorists
actually hope that there is a secret government operating behind the scenes,
holding together what often seems like an increasingly fractured and fragile
social reality.
What are we to make of this complex range of responses to the UFO? When he
first addressed the phenomenon in the 1950s, Jung wrote that the presence of
the UFO signaled fundamental changes in our culture-the passing of one era and
the beginning of another. This is indeed what is happening. Science is
beginning to grasp the relationality, holism, and purposeful self organizing
complexity of the universe. New technologies enable us to tap into the self
organizing dynamics of matter and to end our earthbound infancy and go out
into the cosmos. New means of transportation and communication have drawn the
planet together into one tightly knit, interdependent global civilization.
The powerful images of holism and integration which lie at the heart of the
UFO phenomenon serve as a testament that we are becoming real participants in
the life of the cosmos.
Ed Conroy, author of Report on Communion, says that the UFO is a mirror of
individual and social psychology...people tend to get the UFO experience they
deserve. A careful look in this mirror can tell us a lot-the ways in which we
are growing and becoming whole, and the ways in which we are still fractured
and even disintegrating. What do you see in those wheels of light over the
high desert, spinning against the starry sky? A New Jerusalem? A pale horse
which heralds apocalypse? Or the memory of very ancient dreams clothed in a
technological symbolism which speaks of new tools with which to make all our
dreams come true?
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