Refuting the ETH: Angels/Aliens/Archetypes

[Christopher O'Brien]

I've lately been on a Terence McKenna tear. Re-visiting his brilliant thinking across a wide-range of subjects, I've stumbled upon a couple of presentations he gave at UFO conferences. To my knowledge he only spoke at two or three before he died in 2000. IMO, his outsider insight into the phenomenon is a matter-of-fact breath of fresh air worthy our attention and I'm interested to hear what this sophisticated group here has to say....
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3163231789026536985&q=mckenna&total=2591&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2#3[/URL]

 

[Trajanus]

I agree that contactee information is often foolish and that the instruments and methods of abductors sometimes appear outmoded. But ETs are still real, just deliberately deceptive IMO. And I don't think UFOs are eroding science or that the latter has brought the world to the brink of catastrophe. It's not science per se, just irresponsible individuals.

 

[Xylo]

I agree that contactee information is often foolish and that the instruments and methods of abductors sometimes appear outmoded. But ETs are still real, just deliberately deceptive IMO. And I don't think UFOs are eroding science or that the latter has brought the world to the brink of catastrophe. It's not science per se, just irresponsible individuals.

I agree with you, for the most part...but I don't agree with the ET part; depending upon your definition of ET. I just don't know where these entities come from and I don't want to pretend to think that I know what they are.

 

[Double Nought Spy]

Thanks for the link, Chris. I don't think I'd ever heard Terence speak. He was a brilliant pioneer, and his books are well worth hunting up. They used to be easy to find in libraries, but I haven't looked for them in a long time. The audio keeps stopping, so maybe I'll try again later when the innernets aren't so busy.

I am very happy to see ufology's center of gravity shifting away from the old Nuts and Bolts paradigm, but I am troubled by what I see as the brightest and bravest heading toward another dead end. It seems to me, and I could be wrong, that the most popular line of thinking these days is a search for some "grand unifying theory" that takes care of all the discrepancies and contradictions found in the better ufo reports, if not the paranormal as a whole. I don't think anything so tidy will ever be found.

I suspect we live in a universe that is far weirder than any of us dares imagine, and that what we interpret as a set of "ufo encounters" is a motley collection of experiences brought on by many different things. I suspect that there are aliens who have "flown" here in manufactured craft, from other planets, in spite of our insistence that such a thing is impossible. Others might have made a fifteen second trip from some dimension whose existence we don't yet even suspect, in a conveyance we would find comical. Still others might be walking around in what we perceive as human form after coming here without the aid of any technological device of any sort.

Just as a rustic barnyard might be home to everything from donkeys and goats to chickens, bugs, bluejays, slugs, bacteria, ghosts and mice, with fish and all manner of other critters in the pond over yonder, our universe contains more wonders than we can make sense of in our present mindset. We keep trying to apply our scientific classification system to things that don't lend themselves to our conceits. I have long believed we are defined as much by our classification system as by anything external to us. That system has served us well in our exploiting of the predictable, physical environment, but reality refuses to be confined by any of our mental constructs. Just the history of our culture's model of the atom down through the past several centuries demonstrates that.

After having spent the better part of my youth exploring spiritual and psychic landscapes, it brings me great amusement to see physics--Physicists!--discovering things that were long ago described by psychics and channeled entities. Of course you won't find very many physicists acknowledging that, but you can't hold that against them given the political realities scientists have to deal with.

 

[Trajanus]

I am very happy to see ufology's center of gravity shifting away from the old Nuts and Bolts paradigm

I don't know if there is a discernable shift either way. Vallee's and Keel's views have been around a long time, but "nuts and bolts" advocates like Randle and Friedman are still here.

It seems to me, and I could be wrong, that the most popular line of thinking these days is a search for some "grand unifying theory" that takes care of all the discrepancies and contradictions found in the better ufo reports, if not the paranormal as a whole. I don't think anything so tidy will ever be found.

Well, look at progress toward unifying some of the fundamental forces of nature. Forming a coherent overview of the phenomenon is a daunting challenge if ever there was one, but possible IMHO. The fact that all aspects of the phenomenon intensified more or les simultaneously, since WWII, is suggestive of a single basic source.

what we interpret as a set of "ufo encounters" is a motley collection of experiences brought on by many different things. I suspect that there are aliens who have "flown" here in manufactured craft, from other planets, in spite of our insistence that such a thing is impossible. Others might have made a fifteen second trip from some dimension whose existence we don't yet even suspect, in a conveyance we would find comical. Still others might be walking around in what we perceive as human form after coming here without the aid of any technological device of any sort.

All aspects might be the work of a higher civilization, which in some cases projects weird holograms or induces strange hallucinations.

Just as a rustic barnyard might be home to everything from donkeys and goats to chickens, bugs, bluejays, slugs, bacteria, ghosts and mice, with fish and all manner of other critters in the pond over yonder, our universe contains more wonders than we can make sense of in our present mindset

We know that a civilization can arise on a planet, and slowly progress, based on our own history. I don't think bizarre life forms or other dimensions have even been verified.

 

[Double Nought Spy]

Ah, synchronicity! Damn you, Carl Jung! Or is that thank you? I'm all corn-fused now. Anyway, here is a link Mikec posted on another thread. It's the same talk Chris posted, but in video form. This is to the first of four parts, which has links to the other three.

Shamanic Approaches to the UFO Pt. 1/4 Video

I had only heard the first few minutes, in fits and starts, before posting my thoughts above. After watching all four parts of the video, I am amused at some of the words, concept, and analogies I used up there. McKenna had used the same ones in the same context long ago. Then Mikec posts a link to the same talk on another thread. Hmm. Something is going on here.

One of many things that struck me in McKenna's talk is the notion that ufo experiences often seem to contain a built-in aspect that makes them unreportable or at least unusable to the researchers who might be interested in them. My own experiences fall into that category. I'll describe that chapter in my life in general terms.

Twenty or more years ago, I decided it was time to let my spiritual quest and experiences simmer while I did something else. Let it brew without constant stirring. I decided it was time to take a serious look at the UFO realm, and maybe get a handle on what it was all about. Like many, many others I naively assumed I could read a few good books on the subject and give it some serious thought, and in a year or so come to my own sensible conclusions about what was going on. Of course I was pulled immediately into the rabbit hole and have yet to find my way out. The book Communion began leering at me in the supermarket checkout aisle. When I got a copy of it from the library, I kept it face down when I wasn't reading it. I read two of Budd Hopkins' books, and started sleeping with the lights on.

Suddenly, in the middle of the summer, I began to have my own weird experiences. I had seen strange things before, but this was my own personal wave and appeared to be anything but random. Each experience was just on the edge of sensible reality. Once I saw a bright light "hovering" above the town I was approaching on the highway. I had no doubt it was something artificial, but there was no way I could report it without sounding like an idiot. I was driving west in the evening, about dusk, so Venus was back there somewhere behind the thick overcast. It wasn't venus, a helicopter, or a balloon but who would believe it? (I went back two nights later when the weather was clear, and venus was quite a ways away from the location of my mystery light and behaved as it should when I drove around the curves in the road leading to the town, unlike my mystery light, and so on.)

The best sighting in this series was on a beautiful summer night in a small city, when a friend and I saw a craft of some sort at close range, at treetop level, slowly and silently cruising past (a block away) with an array of lights that would be impossible for any aircraft I am aware of. We couldn't make out the shape, but there were elements of its appearance that seemed to be intended to disguise the thing as an airliner. A silent airliner 100 feet up, going about 50 mph, and displaying a set of lights that made absolutely no sense. Wow! That was weird. And what were we doing when we saw this thing on a quiet weeknight? Well, we were on our way from one bar to another. Neither of us was anywhere near drunk, but we were in fact bar hopping. Case closed.

This sort of thing went on for weeks, getting more and more "up close and personal" along with scaring the crap out of me a couple of times. Then one day as I pondered the fact that nothing about this batch of experiences added up to anything that made rational sense, it occurred to me that someone or some thing was screwing with me. Just like a human teasing a cat, a form of torment I was guilty of in my youth. The more I thought about that, the more it seemed to fit. That was the end of it. The experiences stopped as suddenly as they started.

 

[Christopher O'Brien]

Modern cultures are made up of individuals representing those who pay them. The results of their actions create a control structure that becomes static and prime for attention by a trickster force that invariably supplies the change and anti-structure that brings the structure tumbling down.
All through the talk, McKenna talks about the trickster but never makes the connection.

 

[Rudolf Steiner]

Sure the Universe is weird, I always remember the words of Arthur C. Clarke, My God is full of Stars, indeed, the Universe is full of possibilities. That's the reason I left the debunkers credo, it looks so tiny, so cheap, so small minded.

 

[Double Nought Spy]

McKenna had many interesting things to say. That does not mean, of course, that I agree with all of it.

The problem I see with the idea that every weird thing that happens is the work of Gaia's immune system, or the Trickster, or whoever, is that it is far too similar to the following line of "reasoning:"

Nothing in the universe exists that is not made by God. Therefore all this weird crap is the work of God. No further explanation is needed.

Of course that is an oversimplification, which is precisely my point.

The nuts and bolts crowd does not seem to be gaining new members fast enough to keep their numbers viable. I think that is because, like McKenna and Vallee and others have pointed out for years, what the aliens appear to be doing doesn't make any sense. But just because it doesn't make any sense to us, that somehow means they are not aliens? I think a lot of the current thinking-outside-the-box is too much like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Concluding that aliens exist only to nudge, influence, cajole or otherwise change the course of human events seems to me to be... terribly self-centered.

I'm very much looking forward to reading Chris's new book, and I think that studying the Trickster has a lot to tell us. It's just that the only new thinking I see on the net about what aliens are seems to be headed toward a theory that might as well be religious. I hope I am wrong about that.

 

[mikec]

Hey - Chris O'Brien really DID post this same video. I posted the same one here on the PARACAST site too. This page is better, it's all in one 44 minute video.

I was blown away by the perfect clarity of Terence McKenna's talk (that we both posted). I wanted to point at my computer screen and cry out: "Yeah! what he says!"

 

[CapnG]

I'm interested to hear what this sophisticated group here has to say....

Well since you asked so nicely... I spit on McKenna and everything he stands for. As far as I'm concerned drug induced hallucinations are a step backwards to primitive, shamnistic, magical thinking, they reflect an era of unscientific ignorance and have no place in serious, SOBER discussion.

McKenna's following drives me nuts. "Take drugs and see crazy some shit!" Wow, thanks for the insight, professor, what's your next great discovery going to be, "Water is wet!"?

 

[Don Keyhoe-Ti]

I find McKenna to be an absolute wanker who's in love with his own voice and mostly talks utter shite, (hang on, did he have his own podcast before he croaked? )

Does he talk about this "Twitster" rubbish as well? "Twizzler"... whatever it is.

 

[Christopher O'Brien]

I spit on McKenna and everything he stands for. As far as I'm concerned drug induced hallucinations are a step backwards to primitive, shamnistic, magical thinking, they reflect an era of unscientific ignorance and have no place in serious, SOBER discussion.

Dang dude, spit on the man's grave? I can tell YOU remember the sixties! At least he attempted to look at the phenomenon from a new and different direction. Obviously you didn't watch to his presentation, but if you had, you would have seen a brilliant outside-of-the-box thinker not content with grossly oversimplified ETHes that have taken us NOWHERE for over 60 years. As far as your drug comment, perhaps when science gets down off its ivory tower throne and starts to rejoin the rest of civilization, then we can work with the arrogant bastards. Until then I smile on all close-minded, self-rightious, know-it-all assholes who think they know all the answers, but in reality they don't have a freakin clue! What some call superstition and magical thinking others call being in tune with the magical Gaian environment that doesn't abide what science is doing to it.

 

[Double Nought Spy]

Some people freak out about any kind of mind altering substance. I have some relatives like that. Talk about unscientific and superstitious! I've been told by some of these "enlightened" types that I'm doomed to burn in hell because I drink. I tell 'em that's okay, then, because that's where all the interesting people will be.

Anyway, the first thing one finds out upon reading McKenna's work is there is nothing recreational about his drug research. Not that there would be anything wrong with it if there were, as long as he could handle it, but that's beside the point because what McKenna did was approach the shamanistic use of various substances as a scientist. If some fundies don't like that, then it's their loss.

 

[Kieran]

I think you be a fool to dismiss any theory in regards to the origins of UFOs. Everybody has a opinion,But one persons theory is not better than another persons theory to the origins, if you claim all the answers to the origins, are you saying then that this UFO occupants told you about their agenda and origins.I have a theory myself to the origins, i have not got a clue really, if i am right, i could be completely wrong in everything. I am very open minded to the whole trickster theory put forward by Chris, and the theory put forward by Mckenna. I don't think, you can dismiss any theory really.

 

[Double Nought Spy]

Good point, Irish. None of us has a clue, so we are all guessing really. Just as we have done for more years than I have been alive. There are plenty of reports of UFO occupants telling people where they were from, but they never seem to say the same thing twice, and usually what they do say about it is silly.

The problem most people have with the ETH, it appears to me, is that it has "timed out." In the 40s and 50s, it was assumed we were seeing something new, probes from other planets maybe. After that was given time to sink in, it was allowed that maybe there were actual creatures inside the saucers. Then the Hill case came along, and we learned the aliens were finding out all they could about us, apparently. Then we waited for diplomatic relations to be established. I know, it sounds outrageously simplistic now, but that's the general outline, and the expectations and development of what came to be known as the ETH. The people promoting the ETH were essentially the same people who described themselves as Nuts and Bolts researchers. No silly contactee nonsense for them, no space brother inspired tree hugging spiritualism allowed. After several decades, people began to notice that the UFOs and the occupants were not behaving as they should under this model. Or at the very least, it didn't make any sense to us in those terms.

So we are back to square one, for the most part. It's a frustrating business.

Chris mentioned that Roswell might be an example of Trickster involvement in the field, in response to a question on the recent show with him and Ray. That reminded me of something that was postulated about Roswell at various times, though I have not heard it mentioned lately: Could the events we know as the Roswell Crash have been staged? Intriguing thought. High theater intended to hook the US military by its nose and lead it around on various relatively harmless missions in order to keep it busy and out of trouble? The US military was probably the single most dangerous thing on the planet in 1947. And what a great way to introduce a useful framework for aliens (or apparent aliens) to intervene directly in various ways. Hmmm.

 

[Kieran]

There was a book written by monks in the 12th century, some of the monks who wrote the book lived in Ireland, where very influential in Europe at the time, they produced many scholarly manuscripts and books for the Church.This particular book was called the book of invasions or book of conquests in English, and in Irish, the name of the book was Leabhar Gabhala Eireann(meaning takeing of Ireland. Historians believe the book was fiction rather than non fiction.It deals with a whole serious of battles, that took place long before recorded history. Now everything in this book, is said to be myth and folklore, and who can say they are wrong for sure. They describe many different groups of beings , and will i not go into everything here in this post. I will talk about a battle, that might interest people.

The last recorded battle in the book, was between a King called Mileus, in the book, it is said he came from Spain and also in the book, his Army was said to be a human, they landed in Ireland and fought the Tuath de Dannann or Tribe of Dan, for control, many battles happened, but eventually the King of mileus and his Army won. A treaty was agreed between them, and the tuatha who were said to be similar to humans, but not, agreed to live in the otherworld or world beside us. So the book hints that we humans got the planet under this treaty.Now everybody is going to look at this post, and say ya right, but i am just telling u what the books details.

 

[CapnG]

Dang dude, spit on the man's grave? I can tell YOU remember the sixties!

Being born in 1975, that would take some doing...

Blah blah blah drugs are cool, maaaaan don't be such a square...

Tell it to the pink elephants.

You want some science? Here's some: McKenna died of a brain tumour, a condition known to induce hallucinations WITHOUT the addition of drugs. Now add drugs to that equation and I'm sure it all seemed very real and magical. Only it wasn't. The man was sick and he was wrong and now he's dead. End of story.

 

[Double Nought Spy]

Maybe you should actually read some of McKenna's work before passing judgment with such authority. I think it's pretty obvious you have not done that.

 

[CapnG]

Maybe you should actually read some of McKenna's work before passing judgment with such authority. I think it's pretty obvious you have not done that.

On the contrary I've listened to several of his commentaries and interviews. I found none of it impressive. That he had the balls to consider his work "scientific" is hilarious.