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Video Presentation by Jamie Maussan - A Discussion on Anomalous Phenomena

  
  

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Papess
17:39 / 19.06.07
I would really like to discuss the contents of this video. recommend watching it, in full.

A friend of mine, who knows more than I do about these things, sent me that link. I am rather undecided what to make about anomalous phenomena (also: AP). It is even hard sometimes, to recognize, what is and isn't what one "should consider" anomalous phenomena. Personally, I don't discredit the likelihood of extra-terrestrial beings, not at all. I have just been watching throughout my life, somewhat emotionally removed from the hype and various speculations and culture of all this. After all, I would like to think about this as clearly as possible. I am not discrediting any other explainations, however.

The implications of these anomalous phenomena is quite profound and shocking for many. Let's not be too casual about that. Even if this is just normal to you, befcause you have alreay accepted, and are settled with your own explaination, please respect that not everyone has this privileged view on the matter. Myself, I have had experiences that I feel are anomalous phenomena, but just to mention them gets a reaction of incredulity and bemusement. Basically, I am then thought of as a nutter.

Therefore, I can tell you that this is very hard for me to talk about, at all, in the first place. It is taking me an incredible amount of courage to post this for fear that now, what I had previously experienced as scoffing (throughout my life) from others for discussing now, (surprise-surprise), i have shied away from getting too invovled in this. So, I appologize if I am not presenting everything properly.

The Video Presentation:

What I found incredible about the presentaion of Jamie Maussan, other than some of the footage he had shown, were some of the points that he brought up:

Firstly, the point of racism in investigations. This is a shameful reaction. AP is world-wide phenomenon, and just that fact in itself convinces me that is not very plausible that these are all hoaxes.

Secondly, Maussan mentions that a lot of these sightings are reported by professionals, who most likely, would not want to put their jobs in jeapordy for some "joke" on the job. This doesn't seem very likely to be the case, either.

With that ruled out, here is a point form of some of the explainations given in Wikipedia (Italics are my comments.):


Propopent Explainations:

-The Extraterrestrial Visitation Hypothesis (ETH) (most popular)
-The Interdimensional Hypothesis \
(Included here: various ancient wisdom traditions)
-The Paranormal/Occult Hypothesis /
-The hypothesis that they are time machines or vehicles built in a future time. (Included in this theory is that the aliens are actually ourselves, the human race, returning to this point in time for various possible reasons.)


Skeptic Explanations:

-The Psychological-Social Hypothesis (The psychocultural hypothesis is not a single, all-encompassing explanation of the UFO phenomenon, but explains different cases in different ways, all centering in some way on human behavior. Examples of PCH explanations are wishful thinking, hallucinations, hoaxes and misidentification of mundane objects. Because of its emphasis on human behavior, it attempts to explain why such a phenomenon is interpreted the way it has been, sometimes through pre-existing motifs and memetic selection.)

-The man-made craft hypothesis (see Military flying saucers) (Government conspiracies?)
-The unknown natural phenomena hypothesis, e.g. ball lightning, sprites

-The Earthlights/Tectonic Strain hypothesis


Other explanations:

-The "shiny-bodied insects"[37] (i am not touching this one)
- The Extraterrestrial energyzoa theory (Atmospheric beasts (also sky beasts or sky critters) are organisms which could hypothetically exist off of the surface of Earth or other planets with an atmosphere. These could fly (or float) without wings as they weigh less than air.)

SO...those are some of the generally proposed explainations that I am trying to apply to the reports presented by Maussan.

There are also a few other things I would like to consider:

- Throughtout history it is suspected by some, that there have been recordings of sightings of AP, which can be found in ancient texts and edifaces.

- That AP sightings are worldwide and not dependant on any one specific socio-cultural system.

- Anomalous Phenomena does not just come in one form, even if the video seems centralised on just one or only a few of the forms.

Now, considering all these explainations, just for starters, what can we make of the various reports presented at the 2005 UFO Conference? I am especially interested in expainations of the siting of the thousands of "craft" recorded in Guadalajara, June 10th, 2004.

It is just a start, a foundation for discussion. We shall see where we go from here.

Some more links:

XK's book reccommendation: Daimonic Reality: A Field Guide to the Otherworld

Disclosure Project

The Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence
 
 
grant
19:36 / 19.06.07
I generally subscribe to a more internalized view of phenomena like UFOs - there's some thing that makes people perceive something they remember as a disk in the sky.

But I used to work with (and soon befriended) Bob Pratt, who'd been researching this stuff for years.

He said: "So what do you think about UFOs?"

I said: "Well, I generally subscribe to a kind of Jungian view..."

He said: "Jungian? What does that mean?"

I said: "Well, you know, that kind of Jacques Vallee thing - people have always seen them, and always seem to see them when the time is right, so there has to be something subjective or psychological about it."

He said: "Psychological? What's psychological about getting your face half-burned off?"

More or less. It turned out Vallee had written the foreword to one of his books....

Then he told me about how he wound up believing UFOs weren't all hoaxes or hallucinations. He used to, but then, in the mid-70s, he was sent by the National Enquirer to investigate some weird stories coming out of Brazil. Farmers in this area around Crab Island in Sao Marcos Bay kept being attacked by flying saucers. Some were lifted off the ground. Some were badly burned. Some of their houses caught fire. One guy died - Bob interviewed his brother. Nobody had any explanations. And there were some details that would've been *very* hard to hoax.

At best, it could've been some kind of weird military experiment. But whatever it was, it was definitely physically real and not random - people were targeted. By bright lights that hovered, then zoomed away. Large groups witnessed them moving from place to place.

There's a more succint version of Bob's paranormal beliefs here:

Almost immediately, Joe asked me what, after years of research, my conclusions were about the UFO phenomenon.

"In a nutshell?" I asked.

Both nodded and I said: "We don't know anything about the phenomenon."

This obviously ridiculous statement was met by stunned silence, so I tried to explain: "In spite of all the mountains of data we've collected over the years, I don't think we know anything about UFOs yet."
 
 
Papess
12:01 / 20.06.07
More from Mr.Pratt, from the last link Grant gave:

It wasn't the first time I'd been captured by "true believers." These are people whose views of the UFO phenomenon are so alien to mine that we might as well be living in separate worlds. I do not comprehend what they say and they simply reject what I say.

There are only a few hundred serious UFO researchers in the United States, and most cannot afford to attend the half dozen or so major UFO conferences held each year. Most conferences lose money and must attract the general public to pay expenses.

Too often, many of those people are "contactees" who believe they are in constant communication with space beings or have come to believe in all sorts of things – faith healing, astrology, channeling and so on – that, in my opinion, have nothing to do with UFOs. They, of course, would vehemently disagree with me.

Thank you for this, Grant. I think it is good to realise the differences of opinion involved here. You know, I reckon there are connection between occult and religious studies, and the anomalous phenomena. Personally, I would like to be very careful about how I approach this. The possibility of percieving everyone as an alien is not a good place for me to be. I need to find a harmonious way for My Deities, myself and the (various?) aliens to co-exist (in my mind, first, at least). Are aliens the same as humans, the gods, or something else entirely? That is something that would be great to discuss also. I guess I want to be careful not to usurp The Goddess and The Buddhas for aliens and spaceships. That is a very real fear for me. I wonder if a "true believer" would think that I am being "racist"?

Thank you for that link, Grant. I just want to say, that every veiwpoint is appreciated by me. I think we can all respectfully state our own POV, and allow others theirs.

So, I am gathering that a lot of people here don't think these things (in the video link, in particular) are hoaxes?
 
 
My Mom Thinks I'm Cool
13:44 / 20.06.07
I definitely believe that if these phenomena are, in fact, aliens, then it's aliens in some kind of weird sense which is much more complicated and poorly understood than just guys from Venus who look like us but with pointy ears and green blood. Sort of like how I think God is probably a more complex idea than just a giant invisible old man who lives in the sky with all our dead pets. Whatever is going on does seem to have *some* psychological or even mystical attributes to it, linking seemingly unrelated events with a common theme of surreal similarities.

I think it's highly likely that some of these events are, in fact, due to experimental government craft or experiments, or due to not-yet-understood EM phenomena. I also believe that there is something else going on and that whatever psychological factors may be involved, it's not all in our heads.

that said, I've never experienced anything that really falls into this category of stuff, and I'd really like to.
 
 
Closed for Business Time
14:34 / 21.06.07
XK- when you read this, could you give us some more info on what you meant by "Keelian constructs" over in the stupid questions thread? I've read a bit of Keel (The Mothman Prophecies way back) and Vallée, and feel reasonably up to date on the broad features of the most prevalent UFO/Forteana paradigms, but I'd love to hear a short expo or be given some links on Keelian constructs.

The wiki article says this:
In UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse Keel argues that a non-human or spiritual intelligence source has staged whole events over a long period of time in order to propagate and reinforce certain erroneous belief systems. For example, the fairy faith in Middle Europe, vampire legends, mystery airships in 1897, mystery aeroplanes of the 1930s, mystery helicopters, anomalous creature sightings, poltergeist phenomena, balls of light, and UFOs. But ultimately all of these anomalies are nothing but a cover for the real phenomenon.

Keel takes no position on the ultimate purpose of the phenomenon other than the UFO intelligence seems to have a long-standing interest in interacting with the human race.
But that doesn't do much to slake my thirst for knowledge..

That said, I think I'll wanna give that Harpur book a go some time soon when I'm not so swamped with work (I say whilst spending work time typing this).

PS: Googling Keelian constructs gives me very little...

Anyway, if you feel you have more to add, thanks a mill.
 
 
Papess
14:44 / 21.06.07
Agreed Nolte. I would love to hear from XK, and others who have more understanding about this. I have been calling a few anglophone used bookstores looking for the Harpur's book.

There is nothing online either, as far as a preview goes. But there is some related work, which sites Harpur.
 
 
EvskiG
14:50 / 21.06.07
Almost immediately, Joe asked me what, after years of research, my conclusions were about the UFO phenomenon.

"In a nutshell?" I asked.

Both nodded and I said: "We don't know anything about the phenomenon."

Sounds about right to me.

Weird lights in the sky. Bogies. Foo fighters.

Strange burns after a sighting. Crop circles.

Seeing funny beings. Elves. Grays.

Abduction experiences.

(Ooo -- close encounters of the first, second, third, and fourth kind!)

Some may be hoaxes, some may be lies, some may involve hallucinations or mental illness, some may be swamp gas, Venus, experimental aircraft, weather balloons, or God knows what. Or some may be military experiments, time travelers, space aliens, the "good folk," magnetic fields acting on the brain, or manifestations of the collective unconscious.

And there's no reason to automatically assume that any two encounters are caused by the same phenomenon.

Who the hell knows?
 
 
Papess
16:35 / 21.06.07
Understood, Ev.

There is a lot of obscurring of facts, to begin with. Then there is the seemingly subtle nature of these beings and their craft(s), leaving little evidence behind, sometimes. Sometimes not, but combined with idiots, who get a kick out of sick and twisted practical jokes, (or worse,) it is a hard field to sort out which cases that are authentic. If indeed, any of them are - but indeed, I do believe some of them are. I am beginning to think more are, than not.

For example, in the video, Maussan frequently admits that, "...they could be dummies...". He does go on to add some flimsy supporting argument that "It would be very expensive.", to make such an alien dummy. I think that is pretty weak as an argument, for various reasons. Still, there are all these people, unrelated, taking pictures of creatures that can only be seen through over-exposure.

So, I have questions about that technique, as a friend of mine, the one who gave me the video link, took some pictures of a nightsky by accident, and applied that photoshop technique to it. Presto, not actual beings, but floating spheres that I would hesitate, ATM to call "craft". Is it possible that these patterns are part of the digital nature of the information?

Also, in the video of the thousands of "craft", could that be trickery? Just some digital imaging? Is there some way to check these things, and are they checked? I would assume that if the Mexican government has admitted they do not know what these things are, they would have tested the footage...i am guessing.

There is another argument that Maussan puts forth about the pixelation of photos; that the pixels are "the same" as the rest of the photo. I think this can be reproduced this way, very easily, in fact. Then again, I have my own friend's photos to consider. In her case, I could only say that it was something inherent in digitization of images. And perhaps the use of over-exposure just brings that out in the image. I dunno...Anyway, I may post those up for everyone to see, if she doesn't mind, and if people here wouldn't mind.


I also believe that there is something else going on and that whatever psychological factors may be involved, it's not all in our heads.

Pants, I concur. The idea that aliens or unidentified beings are "only in our head", is not holding water. I think it is ego-centric nature of humans, generally, to minimize the strange and unknown as a hoax, "figment of the imagination". It is just easier to deal with then.

And, from my understanding of group consciousness, we would have to accept that a) we always created our own reality (debunking God?), and b) just because "it is all in our collective mind" doesn't mean that it isn't real - at least, not if we consider point a.


Book review on "Daimonic Reality". Looks interesting, indeed.

BTW: I am sure at some point we will talk about Mayan prophecies, which I forgot to mention in the summary.
 
 
Ticker
18:46 / 21.06.07
an early post of mine in which I babble about Keelian Constructs

It's important to note that some manifestations are quite real like the Kellas Cat. Others however are more like props being used in a drama.

To give a bit of perspective here Charles Fort and later investigators have collected an enormous amount of data. Staggering huge amounts of eye witness reliable people saying the strangest things. Fort suggested much of what was being done seemed to have common themes and patterns. If you read his books and the later Forteans (and even the non Fortean lit) you'll see what they mean about fairy tale real/unreal behavior.

In many cases the MO seems to be the same. Show up and fuck with people. Patrick Harpur points out the Fey are always leaving, dwindling away, and the aliens are always coming, getting closer to mass acceptance. Yet accounts show this same promise of revelation from the 1800's. Fort called this operating princible generating confusion the Cosmic Fishmonger, the agency or Agent responsible for some of the more elaborate weird events.

This may very well be a giant reflection of our own need to order data into some form, an ominous shadow cast forward by our imagination onto a fog like the Grey Man. Or it could be manifestations of the Daimonic nature of the world, or the Trickster.

Ultimately we each need to look at the body of data and see what we think is happening.
 
 
grant
20:19 / 21.06.07
What makes it even more vexed than that is that there's a set of - let's call them genuine paranormal events - that fit a certain profile. But that profile overlaps with genuine normal events (like, say, military tests and weather balloons - I have an engineer friend who *knows* he's responsible for UFO sightings because he was flying over the desert testing laser beacon systems, projecting quickly-moving triangular or circular patterns of light from the belly of an unmarked helicopter), and with physically unreal events (which would include hallucinations but also things like Rick Strassman's endogenous DMT/sleep paralysis theories and the kinds of confirmation bias things RAW was talking about with "reality tunnels" and programming your mind to expect to find quarters on the sidewalk, except instead of quarters, it's strange lights in the sky), which will both also intersect with each other. (Is that a plane with broken winglights, a flock of birds in clouds, the aura signalling the beginning of a migraine headache or is it THE UFOS I HAVE EXPECTED?)

So any given event will have multiple plausible explanations (but not necessarily any definitive ones).

Which is confusing, to say the least.
 
 
Papess
20:29 / 21.06.07
I was eying that Hansen book earlier. It rather gave me a chuckle, considering...and yet, this field is imbued with that quality. Curious.

More later. XK, do you classify a whole lot of different phenomena together, in some manner? I might be misunderstanding something. Well, most likely.
 
 
grant
21:07 / 21.06.07
I just wishlisted that Hansen book - I like what he was saying about Henry Louis Gates.

By the way, Maussan and the Mexican UFOs have been on Barbelith before.

The link I stuck in that thread for the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) protocol for UFO reporting seems not to work any more, and I *suspect* the FAA has distanced itself from the National Institute for Discovery Science, to which all witnesses were being referred. The folks at NARCAP (who prefer UAP - unidentified aerial phenomena - to UFO - unidentified flying object) seem a little more with it (or at least don't have a website with yellow type on a black background), but I doubt the FAA much cares.

They try to avoid that stuff, and it's technically out of their purview anyway. More on that in this letter, which is strictly about the UFO sighting over O'Hare last November (again, plenty of puzzled witnesses), but describes who is in charge of what information on an official level.

The official level, of course, being the version that gets repeated by news outlets and gets made into true and accurate histories of events for future researchers to pore over and make conclusions from.
 
 
Papess
23:36 / 21.06.07
From Hansen's "The Trickster and the Paranormal".

"Many of the above questions seem totally unrelated, or at best, only vaguely so. What do the funding sources for psi research have in common with liberal churches downplaying miracles? What is the connection between the MUFON headquarters and mysticism? Why discuss tabloids’ front pages along with controversies within religion? These questions seem to be a random hodgepodge, unsuited for any single book or reasonable discussion. It appears preposterous to lump them together. They are out of place, and I will show that this is indeed the nature of the phenomena. They do not fit in our logical world."
-From the introduction here.

That is assuming, of course, that our world is indeed, logical. Many of those questions that were above the paragraph I quoted, are some of the same ones I have.

Apparently, Barbelith cannot escape teh trickster.
 
 
EmberLeo
08:06 / 22.06.07
Okay, I would like to dig into this more, and yet I find I'm not sure I want to know. That's a weird place for me to be, because normally I want to know everything I can.

But for some reason certain aspects of this terrify me. And yet other aspects don't bother me at all - it doesn't much bother me to think of this stuff as fey-related glamour tricks, or whatnot. That the zooming ball of light I saw might be a will-o-wisp doesn't bother me. That it might be a spirit, a ghost, or human technology doesn't bother me. That it might be beings that have been connected with Earth via other planes of shared reality doesn't bother me.

That it might be aliens from elsewhere in this physical reality bothers me tremendously.

I want to ask, because I'm sure it's related to my fear: Are men in black suits with round reflective glasses who show up to scare people in this general category as well? That whole devil/fey/alien/ghost/government agent, always in black clothes with mysterious eyes? Is that part of this subject?

--Ember--
 
 
Ticker
10:31 / 22.06.07
More later. XK, do you classify a whole lot of different phenomena together, in some manner? I might be misunderstanding something. Well, most likely.

Well as grant points out there is a hefty chunk of genuine normal events parading about. Cryptozoology is a great one for this as we just haven't cataloged every beastie yet and so many folks claim weirdness when it is not the case. grant's laser test example is excellent.

IMO the category opposing the genuine normal events isn't as simple as genuine paranormal events I'm afraid. I'd split it into sub categories of WYSIWYG, yeah that really was the ghost/spirit/soul of your childhood dog visiting, and WYSIWYW/WYSIWYNTS/and WTFWT.

WYSIWYG = what you see is what you get
WYSIWYW = what you see is what you wish
WYSIWYNTS = what you see is what you need to see
WTFWT = what the fuck was that


IMO what Patrick Harpur describes as the Daimonic is the mechanics and deliver system for all of these events. What differentiates them for me is intention/desired effect and point of origin. If you imagine a postal system of the weird I'm looking at who is sending the message, who is receiving it, what's the recipient's and sender's addresses (do they match or conflict with who is claiming to send it/receive it), the contents (do they match the supposed MO if the sender/recipient relationship/etiquette), and impact.

There is a certain aspect of the Daimonic which appears to serve the purpose of breaking down structures and firmly held beliefs. The event shows up and smashes your reality tunnels. So much so that a good number of people encountering these events are pushed out of their normal lives into spiritual quests to figure it all out. IMO it is less about achieving the end results and more about reawakening the wonder and awe of WTF is going on.

Mind you some of it gets pretty damn ugly. Ted Holiday was a Fortean researcher who did not have a good time of it at all. Plenty of folks become mentally unstable or non functional after an encounter or repeat encounters. Fort's Cosmic Fishmonger and the weird shit generated out of It's workshops has broken families, destroyed lives, and driven people to suicide. Conversely the same types of events have shaken people out of life long depressions, given them the courage to pursue their dreams, and set them on the path to become compassionate healers.

That it might be aliens from elsewhere in this physical reality bothers me tremendously.

I'd challenge your perception of the Fey then. Not all who come from the Otherworld are coming from the same Otherworld.


I want to ask, because I'm sure it's related to my fear: Are men in black suits with round reflective glasses who show up to scare people in this general category as well? That whole devil/fey/alien/ghost/government agent, always in black clothes with mysterious eyes? Is that part of this subject?

Yes the original Men In Black show up in the work of notable Fortean researchers, Keel's works are particularly excellent sources on the topic. It was quite hysterically funny to see the comicbook adaptation up on the big screen. Yet it was also educational about the process these events go through in the collective. Fairytales are taken for granted as unreal children's stories for entertainment even though in many cases the original source was possibly horrific.
 
 
Closed for Business Time
10:35 / 22.06.07
Thanks a billion, XK. Very interesting to hear your thoughts on this.
 
 
Quantum
10:54 / 22.06.07
That it might be aliens from elsewhere in this physical reality bothers me tremendously.

That's the one explanation I don't give any credence too, personally. Beings from Sirius etc. physically flying here doesn't really fit the MO as far as I'm concerned, and the practical obstacles are tremendous.
I've got a Jung book on flying saucers I'll dig out, actually, because it's pretty interesting what he had to say.
 
 
Closed for Business Time
11:00 / 22.06.07
Herder of lolcats - do you mean that you don't believe there exists ET life, or that you don't believe ET lifeforms are responsible for UFO sightings, abduction experiences etc?
 
 
EvskiG
13:54 / 22.06.07
Can't answer for Quantum, but it seems to me that while extraterrestrial life seems pretty probable (given the odds), the idea that such entities have traveled and are traveling to Earth -- given (1) the requirement that the relevant entities develop to the point of having interstellar travel, (2) the time it likely would take (given the probable top speed of the speed of light), and the difficulties that probably would be involved, and (3) the vast number of places other than earth such entities have to visit -- seems pretty unlikely.
 
 
grant
14:49 / 22.06.07
I've got a Jung book on flying saucers I'll dig out, actually, because it's pretty interesting what he had to say.

Half burned to death, man!
 
 
Ticker
14:51 / 22.06.07
Well like grant said upthread sometimes the phenomenon is genuine. It's the mix that makes it interesting.

Von Neumann


Von Neumann Probe

Back in the late forties, a number of very intelligent men, among them Dr. John von Neumann, the father of cybernetics, were exposed to the question, 'what if aliens were present?' Dr. von Neumann, in particular, reacted with some very innovative thinking. He first conceived of a way that they might get here. This device became known as the Von Neumann Machine.

He postulated that one way for a species to traverse the universe would be to build machines that perfectly replicated it in every detail of its being, and then to send these machines off in random directions, programmed to stop and replicate the species whenever an appropriately congenial planet was located.

In this way, a species that could achieve travel at an appreciable percentage of the speed of light, could populate an entire galaxy in a fairly reasonable time. Von Neumann thought that it might be five million years.

So you look for the Von Neumann machine and end up with some strange books/movies like 2001.


Imagine if you will traveling across the galaxy finding a planet full of people who seem to be involved in some sort of strange denial about their reality and their actions in it. Complete with tiny mock ups of you or what they think you are like. It might be like watching mad puppeteers unaware their hands inside the socks were creating the show. Maybe they just enjoy being the audience too much...
 
 
Ticker
15:10 / 22.06.07
these folks think it is a rescue operation and I snagged the quote above from the site.

I personally don't think it is a rescue operation, a war, or the cosmic fishbowl. For me the Daimonic is a reflective quality of human reality. It is a part of who we are and what we generate with our companion spirits. Our culture - note not all of humanity just the dominant current culture - has divorced itself from this process.

It is MO that one can clearly trace the grey alien manifestation to the lineage of magical work of one Alistair Crowley. Basically his personal Daimon Lam got imprinted onto the collective and started xeroxing as the template of the time for a certain section of the Daimonic delivery system. If you read the UFO lit, before the greys the Nordic blond superhumans were the popular model of aliens trotted out of spaceships.
The David Icke's reptile aliens can be traced back to very old models.
I'm personally on the fence about Dagon/Oannes alien, merperson, construct, God or what?

Sometimes it is fun to not really invest in a single outcome... ALIENMERGOD!!!

ok I'll stop being silly now.
 
 
grant
15:35 / 22.06.07
Oh, and IMO the category opposing the genuine normal events isn't as simple as genuine paranormal events I'm afraid.

I wasn't opposing them, I was more making a Venn diagram.

Like this (whipped up quickly & without enough thought):



And in case you missed it, Jellyfish UFO over Shanghai. Maybe a night-light kite.
 
 
---
15:40 / 22.06.07
Beings from Sirius etc. physically flying here doesn't really fit the MO as far as I'm concerned, and the practical obstacles are tremendous.

(given the odds), the idea that such entities have traveled and are traveling to Earth -- given (1) the requirement that the relevant entities develop to the point of having interstellar travel, (2) the time it likely would take (given the probable top speed of the speed of light), and the difficulties that probably would be involved, and (3) the vast number of places other than earth such entities have to visit -- seems pretty unlikely.

Although this is a possibility that might seem highly unlikely, I don't really see why it should be cut out of the picture. Agreed, it does seem like a slim chance to us, but when we have no idea of the type of life other planets might support, and what that life might be capable of, I don't like dismissing it. Yeah it must be immensly hard to physically travel so many light years here, but we have no idea of the range of methods there are for travel either. So where there's people saying they'd have to travel at 299,792,458 metres per second x (insert number) and there's hundreds of thousands of other obstacles, etc, an advanced race might've found ways of getting around that are a lot easier.

It's easy to slip into the realms of science fiction, but if they know how to teleport through space or move in a related way, many problems will be gone, so I can't discount it.

I really didn't want to get involved in the whole craft side of things though as it's not the part that I'd want to spend so much time and energy on, so will come back to the thread if it's moved on and there's anything I can add in another area. I'm personally more interested in questions like : what are they doing here? what are they trying to tell us? how closely are we related to them? (looking from a dependant-origination angle.) how are we going to learn to communicate with them? how are we going to learn what pisses them off and what doesn't? are they split into a groups helping us and groups trying to expliot and manipulate us? are they entering and leaving other dimensions/vibrations, and how can we learn more about that? are people in different continents seeing what they've been conditioned to see, so we're seeing the same thing under different lenses when it comes to craft and images of lights/beings/etc?

There's just so many questions. The 5 aspects I have in my head though are : UFO's, crop circles, entity encounters, how they all relate, and finally what the planned and potential outcomes of all this are supposed to be. I'd happily cut the first two out of the picture, but when that video is showing this, supposedly from a field, I'm all of a sudden a lot more interested :

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket



I mean, whoever the fuck's doing this, they've certainly moved on a bit, haven't they? (note : to get the actual detail on this part, you're way better off forwarding to 1:18:19 on the actual video from the thread starter.) I admire the artwork there if nothing else, it can be pretty breathtaking considering the scale it's done at. Personally I'm starting to think that some of this crop stuff might've been made by Humans over a long period of time, and the whole "it appeared overnight!" just isn't true in some cases.

Erm, sorry for any ranting and going off-topic if I did. Will probably post back over the next day or three, if I think anything's worth adding.
 
 
---
15:41 / 22.06.07
ah, that venn diagram is awesome aswell grant.
 
 
Quantum
16:05 / 22.06.07
do you mean that you don't believe there exists ET life, or that you don't believe ET lifeforms are responsible for UFO sightings, abduction experiences etc?

The latter. I think the theories I hear explaining the weird experiences are made up by people to try and explain what happened. Sirians/Venusians/Martians seem like an explanation that appeals to us as human beings, but isn't borne out by what evidence we can muster.
Basically, I think the world is much stranger than we normally assume. There are dozens of possible explanations for the weird stuff that happens, and real live aliens seem like one of the least likely to me. I'm a sci-fi fan and I've always thought that actual aliens would be much stranger than those described in fiction, stranger than we could possibly imagine, and that their motives and actions would not be similar to our own. Grey abductors don't seem like plausible alien beings to me.

On the other hand, nobody knows. Lots of really weird shit goes on and is ignored, it's not all in people's minds (burny face etc) and like miracles it's pretty hard to explain these things away.
 
 
grant
16:39 / 22.06.07
Crop circles I'm much more skeptical about, actually -- I'm fairly sure work like that is done by a few humans with a decent graphics program. I think the simpler ones would be more likely to have something strange about 'em -- those are the kind that "reaping devils" or whatever have been making for years and years.

The more elaborate ones have progressed in much the same way I'd expect the mastering of a new art technique to progress - simple geometric shapes building up to larger, more ornate forms. One of the reasons they seem to use "sacred geometry," I think, is because these are mathematically simple ways to create interesting shapes, especially when dealing with physical limits, like a length of rope (which can be halved and halved again) and a set of stakes.

---------

On a whole other tack, by the way, it would also suit any discussion of the history of UFO phenomena to point out that UFOs AS UFOs (Kenneth Arnold names "flying saucers", Roswell crash - both in 1947) coincide nearly exactly with the U.S. government's official decision to fuck with people's heads for national security using, in part, psychological/propaganda research from Nazi head-fucking professionals.

And that the head-fuckers were steeped in UFO stuff from almost Day One (1947!).

As if it wasn't confusing enough without people making it more confusing on purpose.
 
 
Ticker
16:48 / 22.06.07
My favorite part of crop circles is the evolution of the paranormal/scientific community standing about shouting the need for evidence. Measurable, definable, we can all stand about and poke it with a stick proof, and then we'd be able to say something concrete once and for all!


'POOF'

Crop Circle.

You can get as many people to argue over them as fleeting UFO's anyday. Even poking it with sticks.

grant I think you and I are using 'genuine paranormal events' in different ways.
My categories would be an event ascribed to the paranormal that has a nonparanormal source (laser testing), paranormal events that are what they say on the tin, paranormal events that are not what they say on the tin, and normal events reinterpretted as paranormal due to the witness' state (drugs/hallucinations/etc).

With sleep paralysis/the night hag syndrome I'm leaning toward the hypnogogic suppression of the physical systems of the body corresponding with an occassionally valid noncorporeal experience thrown in.

Very rarely do these things stay in one box.
 
 
grant
16:51 / 22.06.07
Yeah, I'm using "paranormal" in that diagram to mean something that has no known explanation (whereas some things that are investigated as paranormal are actually explained by things along the way, like giant squids).
 
 
Ticker
17:18 / 22.06.07
sometimes I like using Known, Unknown, Unknowable as causes and having things be movable between.

I think working towards moving things in the Unknown category to the Known is a Good Thing, however for sanity one must be aware that there are some things that are actually rooted in the Unknowable.
 
 
EmberLeo
20:39 / 22.06.07
I'd challenge your perception of the Fey then. Not all who come from the Otherworld are coming from the same Otherworld.

That's probably justified, though in my defense, I was oversimplifying for the sake of at least some brevity. I don't assume all of the things I percieve as Fey are from a single, monolithic Land of Faerie. I can think of at least four distinct otherworlds I'm a bit familiar with that have locals reasonably referred to as "Fey". And not everything I might percieve as Fey is actually from otherspace at all - landwights are from here. But that's a distinction I'm still working on that's only maybe a tiny bit related to this thread.

[edit yet more processy blather]

I realize that I have a lot to say, but I'm not sure what I have to say actually contributes to the thread, so maybe I should just go process in my LJ or something.

I will toss out the two things that concern me relative to this, on a slightly more concrete level, so if they interest you folks they can be chewed on more here:

1: When I was a child my sister and I each repeatedly saw a fellow who fits the description of a Man In Black better than I'm comfortable admitting. I remember Him as being transparent from the waist down. Ultimately I concluded as an adult that the Man in the Window was actually a Ghede - possibly my ghede (that is, the spirit of my own eventual death). I stopped seeing Him in the window when my father moved out.

2: Some years later I saw a very BRIGHT ball of light zooming across the water while camping at Yosemite. Nobody else saw it because it just happened to occurr while all the teenagers from my camp had gone into the tents and out to find the bathrooms and such, leaving me alone for about 10 minutes. My sister is the only kid from the camp who believed I wasn't lying when I told them all as they returned. She got my Father, who believed I saw exactly what I said I saw, and told me it was probably ball lightning. I had no idea Ball Lightning was concerned a debateable phenomenon until you guys brought it up here.

Basically, I think the world is much stranger than we normally assume. There are dozens of possible explanations for the weird stuff that happens, and real live aliens seem like one of the least likely to me.

That's pretty much exactly where I'm coming from, but I question how much of that is because I'm really really uncomfortable with the alternative.

--Ember--
 
 
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22:27 / 22.06.07
That's pretty much exactly where I'm coming from, but I question how much of that is because I'm really really uncomfortable with the alternative.

That's the essence of it though as far as I can tell. The fact that if we're going to be serious about this, we shouldn't sweep the 'aliens in this physical reality' under the carpet. It's like, we're ok as long as they're in some other dimension fucking around doing this and that, but when it comes to the idea that they could be here, physical, and affecting the substance of our reality, people don't want to pursue it as much.

Will try and post back later, but I have a decent bit of related personal stuff that I have to seperate from my ideas, so I have to formulate something apart from that perspective.
 
 
Quantum
01:05 / 23.06.07
I question how much of that is because I'm really really uncomfortable with the alternative.

Why are you not uncomfortable with the idea of Angels, Faeries, Sea Devils or Ghosts in exactly the same way?
 
 
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00:22 / 24.06.07
Now, considering all these explainations, just for starters, what can we make of the various reports presented at the 2005 UFO Conference?

After spending most of today regathering info on the whole UFO/Extra-Terrestrial subject that I used to be so obsessed with, and trying to work out what I was going to post back here, I found that the scope of it is just too big to cut down into a single and short post any time soon. I ended up watching something a couple of hours ago though, and after just finishing watching it, it's kind of in-line with a lot of ideas I have about this whole subject. It lasts 115 minutes, and is one of those things that reminds me how insane the situation regarding this area really is, and how much we're probably in the dark about it. I'm sure some of you will have seen this already. If you haven't though, and you're interested enough in this area you'll probably find it worth watching :

UFO Disclosure Project

If what is said in this video is true, then I guess that a lot of the UFO's and their inhabitants are probably concerned about the military industrial complex moving it's weapons and war obsession into space, and a general concern about how long we'll all survive on this planet when the military is beyond the law.

There's also a radar controller from Mexico city in that video, who's apparently seen a lot of UFO's, and yeah, the way they seem to have so many sightings in that country is something that's interesting to say the least. The main aspect that boggles though is the lack of coverage from the media in general, and why people are still seen to be a bit insane by so many others if they're interested in this.
 
 
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06:36 / 24.06.07
Yarrr, I found something else relevant to the discussion we've already been having about whether or not these UFO's are in our physical reality or not. It's from the same person (Dr. Steven Greer) that leads The Disclosure project in the previous post of mine here, and it's part of a transcript from a radio show interview on Coast to Coast AM Radio with George Noory, broadcast April 4/5, 2005 :

GN: Steven - personally, how do you feel about this UFO craze in the investigations of what they may be? I mean, there's no question people are seeing *things*, no question we're being visited from somewhere. Have you made a decision personally whether you think that this is physical craft coming from other planets in the solar system, in the universe, or perhaps are they dimensional, coming from parallel universes? Have you come to any theories yourself?

SG: Well, they're both and this is the big debate I had with Jacques Vallee when we were doing something for Noetic Sciences a few years ago. People say, "Well, they're interdimensional" and I say, "Yes, and they're also extraterrestrial and physical. Those are not two mutually exclusive things if you understand the full spectrum of nature and reality and how there are folded within every dimension access points to every other dimension and in fact, when you go through interstellar space at multiples of the speed of light, you are dropping out of 3-D material form and moving into a form that the mystics would have called the astral, or the near-physical and this is what these are. They are extraterrestrial but they're also transdimensional. They're both. This is clearly the case and the evidence, but you have to have a comprehensive cosmology and physics understanding to get your mind around that. This is one of the things that we -- I'm going to be giving a talk at Arizona State University on April 22, in Phoenix, and one of the things we're going to go into on a whole daylong discussion is what the nature of these objects are and what it's telling us about reality, what it's telling us about the human future in technologies and I think that the debate of whether or not they're interdimensional or extraterrestrial and physical is like saying is an orange round or is it the color orange? Well, it's both, and I think that you get into these sort of dialectics and this either/or discussion and the truth is somewhere between the two, and it's usually not either/or but it's and/and.


linky and obviously, check out the site if you're interested in what this guy is doing, because I'm not wanting to derail the thread by adding any more of what he's doing, when we're talking about the other video in the first post.
 
  

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