Ruwa and its Message

[Mulvaney]

The recent appearance of one of the Ruwa schoolchilden, Emily Trim, at the last IUFOC and the subsequent conference discussion on Robert Sheaffer's BadUFOs blog made me think more about the incident. I don't want to get into whether the event involved Alien craft - primarily since we may never know one way or the other, and nothing at the conference made it any clearer.

The effect of the contact might be more interesting than whether the contact occurred. The general consensus is that a small creature with long black hair telepathically warned the children about polluting the planet. It is similar to the telepathic messages that the early contactees reported, who said they were told that we should stop building nuclear bombs and live in peace.

If this is true, then perhaps the talk at UFO conferences should focus on that. Instead of just being convinced that it proves the ET hypothesis, what do people do with the message? Do people consider the message to be important or is it just a false flag to lure us into a new age complacency while hubrids take over the planet?

I heard that the experience was life-changing for the children, but nothing was said about whether they have heeded the warning. Are they working to stop pollution and environmental destruction? Are they part of a project to bring alternative energy and sustainable resources to Zimbabwe - if the presenters had focused on that rather than the nondisclosure agreements and the upcoming Ariel film, I would have made a contribution.

The environment certainly has not gotten better since the Ruwa incident. If the contact did not lead to any practical change, perhaps the little beings should try another approach and figure out how to get the message across. It seems to have gotten lost.

And maybe it's a challenge to us all - if we believe that otherworldly beings have warned us to live in peace and take care of the earth, what does that mean in practical terms - less UFO conferences and more environmental awareness projects? An experiencer group that joins Habitat for Humanity? Occupy rather than Disclose?

 

[Mulvaney]

I guess to be fair, if I were a young child in a small school in Zimbabwe and a strange being told me that humanity should stop polluting the earth, I would think "What are you telling me for? Tell it to the kids at the Lawrenceville school and leave me alone." Except in stronger terms.

Arguably, they did not choose to be told about pollution or to become environmental leaders. But even that would make an interesting story.

 

[Polterwurst]

Yeah. It's one of these things in Ufology that make absolutely no sense while at the same time the witesses seem quite honest and stay with their stories. When I first heard about the incidence some time in the 90s (before I had internet), I immediately dismissed it. Even when I heard that Dr. Mack thought it wasn't just the kids conspiring to perpetrate a hoax, I remained sceptical (as I was with his work in general). Only after seeing the footage of the witnesses a few years ago, and comparing it with a documentary about the Westall 1966 case I had watched before did I start to become a little sceptical of my dismissal (I guess there have been more of this kind of "encounter", at least the Broad Haven and the Voronezh incidents).

Ariel Phenomenon

http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread871551/pg1

U.F.O. Landing Is Fact, Not Fantasy, the Russians Insist

I mean, it's quite hard to believe that none of the kids, especially the youngest ones, wouldn't eventually give it away, repeating a made-up story for the umpteenth time, if it was all just a great prank. But if it's not a prank, if it happened the way the kids say it did, what's the point in appearing or talking to some school kids? It's built-in disbelief (especially with the Voronezh case, but the others all have that too), as if someone wanted to make sure no one believes the witnesses. Which of course seems to be true for the majority of all the cases.

 

[Mulvaney]

Yeah. It's one of these things in Ufology that make absolutely no sense while at the same time the witesses seem quite honest and stay with their stories. When I first heard about the incidence some time in the 90s (before I had internet), I immediately dismissed it. Even when I heard that Dr. Mack thought it wasn't just the kids conspiring to perpetrate a hoax, I remained sceptical (as I was with his work in general). Only after seeing the footage of the witnesses a few years ago, and comparing it with a documentary about the Westall 1966 case I had watched before did I start to become a little sceptical of my dismissal

There are some things that make me skeptical - of the 62 children on the school yard, Cynthia Hind, the original investigator, interviewed 10-12 of them. She had mixed stories about a landing, but could not find any physical evidence to suggest a craft had touched ground. By the time Mack got there, she reports that he was able to uncover "many former hidden memories." That alone raises a number of red flags.

Randall Nickerson states that he was asked to make the Ariel Phenomenon movie by the Mack Institute and had access to the raw footage of interviews that Mack did. Instead of making that material available, he has spent several years on the film project. The talk at the IUFOC was filled with reference to nondisclosure agreements and hints about all the things he will not reveal until the movie is done.

I don't want to see his edited version of the events and I do not necessarily trust him as a storyteller. While I do not think it's a hoax, I also don't know enough to believe that it's evidence of an alien encounter.

That is why to me the fascinating part of the story is the message that was said to be telepathically received. We can look at that objectively and see if it changed the lives of those who received it.

If it did not, the message was lost and whatever was meant to happen by warning children about pollution would not to have worked.

If it did - and if it inspired others to greater environmental awareness and action - that would be more interesting than the pictures that have been drawn of the craft, whether there is a small being with long black hair, or what Mack did or did not do to recover hidden memories.

If that was the film that Nickerson was making, there would be no need for nondisclosure agreements. Quite the opposite. And one thing that we should have learned from the Slides is the limitations on both secrecy and the big reveal.

 

[Sue]

That is why to me the fascinating part of the story is the message that was said to be telepathically received. We can look at that objectively and see if it changed the lives of those who received it.

If it did not, the message was lost and whatever was meant to happen by warning children about pollution would not to have worked.

If it did - and if it inspired others to greater environmental awareness and action - that would be more interesting than the pictures that have been drawn of the craft, whether there is a small being with long black hair, or what Mack did or did not do to recover hidden memories.

Good point. The story has always been told as if the children are just the conduit for the message. I suppose that's the shape of classic contactee claim (and also that of your desert-variety prophet): God has given me a message for y'all. The classic contactees retain some measure of control over their own message by lecturing, writing books, etc. but in the case of women (most abductees) and children (Ruwa) they become the vehicle for a message which is then interpreted and promoted by men.

The same dynamic comes across in the Hill case. In Forbidden Science, Vallee writes about a contact experiment he is invited to participate in: "Betty believes she has become a 'transducer.' She thinks she can make a flying saucer appear in the sky and land." (p 269). The same experiment is discussed in Captured (p. 219) in a way that refers to Betty's role as that of a piece of equipment subject to the precise instructions of a scientific team. In other words, she is stripped of any agency or meaning-generation capacity of her own. That's simply how you made things look sciencey back in 1967.

Of course I think it's clear that Betty Hill did exert a fair amount of control over her own narrative at least broad outline, even if in the end it was a narrative about loss of personal agency. Hence her role as the transitional figure between contactees and abductees. The 1967 experiment I just use as an example of how the received conventional 1950's era science of Ufology often strained after elusive objective events, overlooked the importance of subjective experiences and perhaps missed the point of contact occasions entirely.

 

[Jimi]

If you believe the children of Ariel school, and in my opinion having watched some of Dr Mack's interviews their testimony seems genuine, then we are certainly talking about beings with which humanity is unfamiliar.

In that respect, they must be 'alien'.