Cosmic Sex and UFOs:
On December 26, 1985, weird creatures carried Whitley Strieber naked and paralyzed from his upstate New York cabin. He perceived flying above trees, then didn’t know where he was. They “manhandled” him, shoved an object up his butt. It felt like a rape. “What can we do to help you stop screaming?” one entity asked. The following day his “abduction” faded from memory, yet rectal soreness and vivid impressions of a needle being jammed into his head persisted. Strieber was so freaked-out he nearly jumped from his Manhattan window, but fortunately found abduction researcher Budd Hopkins who assured him others shared his experience. Hopkins encouraged Strieber to explore suppressed memories. With hypnosis, he recalled a lifetime of traumatic events.
What really happened? Research indicated the phenomenon was vastly more complex than abduction by space-traveling aliens. It manifests in many ways, including fairies and ancient gods. It’s existed throughout human history, and appears differently to different cultures. Whatever its ultimate reality, science hasn’t yet discovered it.
Strieber published his book “Communion” in 1987. Rice University’s Professor of Philosophy and Religious Thought, Dr. Jeffrey
Kripal, called Communion the “finest and most widely read autobiographical abduction account of the twentieth century.” Letters arrived, over 10,000 a month, from around the world. Strieber stopped counting at 200,000, but believes by the late-90s he’d received nearly 500,000. The phenomenon’s scope was immense. Others had similar encounters. One woman wrote her two year old son recognized the creature on Communion’s cover. It swiped his toys. Some levitated in the presence of the phenomenon. Strieber did that. Strieber’s wife Anne analyzed many of the letters, no easy task. She observed that encounters often accompany perceptions of dead people. Strieber donated the Communion Letters to Rice University’s Archives of the Impossible.
From 1972 to 1995 the U.S. government ran a secret ESP spying program. Project Stargate’s military and civilian psychics performed psychic espionage or “remote viewing” to detect enemy weapon systems. Nuclear physicist Dr. Edwin C. May joined Stargate in 1976, then served as its director from 1985 to 1995. After Stargate was declassified in 1989, May published books and articles about the program’s telepathic spying missions, and his own parapsychological research. Psychic spying uncovered a Russian radar defense system, an Iranian airbase, and a Chinese nuclear air-drop test. Soon, May was downing vodka with former KGB dudes and Russian psychics who told tales of the KGB basing Yeltsin’s travel plans on psychic information. Like Strieber, May deposited his research into Rice’s Archives of the Impossible.
Dr. Jacques Vallée helped Strieber direct his search beyond propulsion and lights in the sky. “Wasteful” speculation. Vallée opened Strieber’s mind to parallel realities. For Vallée, the UFO phenomenon is a hidden part of the natural world. He meticulously traced its many guises back to antiquity and noted affinities with the world’s mythologies and religions. He envisions a form of non-human consciousness beyond time and space that projects symbols. Vallée called the phenomenon “a window toward undiscovered dimensions of our own environment.” Framed against multidimensional reality, the UFO, or apparition of the virgin for that matter, approximates a portal. You probably recall Vallée consulted on Spielberg’s 1977 film “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Spielberg based the French scientist who greeted the extraterrestrials on Vallée. Vallée disliked the plot. The meet and greet between humans and ETs he “argued” was a dumbed-down handling of the phenomenon. Spielberg pandered to Hollywood’s expectations regardless.
Vallée kick-started Rice’s Archives of the Impossible. He needed a venue for his valuable collection of research, manuscripts, photos, videos and recordings. It should be available to all who understand the historical, cultural, religious, and scientific implications of the on-going UFO mystery. Jeff Kripal finagled the collection entering Rice’s Woodson Research Center and Department of Religion, then lassoed Strieber’s Communion Letters and May’s Stargate documents. “The intellectual gravity of Vallée, Strieber, and May’s gifts created a kind of black hole effect,” Kripal said. More donors got sucked in. Rice now hosts an enormous document collection related to the study of paranormal experiences, which includes thousands of firsthand abduction accounts.
Dr. Diana Pasulka is sneaky. She’ll use phrases like “post three-dimensional.” Initially you assume intellectual blabber, then realize it’s a killer word for the paradigmatic shift away from a materialist worldview. Scientists are combining empirical investigations with esoteric practices. Pasulka wrote about some. Like the renowned Stanford geneticist and UFO experiencer who analyzes alleged UFO debris, and found isotope ratios unknown in nature. And the space shuttle engineer with biomedical patents who “downloads” technical messages from entities, and studies spirit and consciousness as new frontiers in space travel. I’m reminded here of Dr. John Mack advising MIT physicists who search for intelligent life to underpin their radio wave detection with states of consciousness. “Consciousness may not be limited by the constraints of space/time that plague the search for extraterrestrial intelligence,” Mack wrote.
As a professor of religious studies, Pasulka explores how human perceptions of supernatural events morph into religions. She traipses over UFO debris sites and translates Vatican accounts of levitating mystics. Others in her field chase luminous orbs. Some grapple with string theory. Pasulka donated to the archive. And lectured at Rice’s Conference of the Impossible, a 4-day scholarly shindig held in March.
Vallée was high priest of the conference. He slammed the government for renaming UFOs UAPs, and scornfully reminded he possesses “material fragments recovered from crash sites.” The phenomenon leaves physical traces. Its objective truth though surely rests in multidimensionality and extended consciousness. Vallée applauded Kripal and Rice’s Humanities department for its visionary grasp of “what the continuing UFO mystery means to our models of reality.”
Nobody flinched when Strieber told the audience Anne communicated less than two hours after she died (2015). Existence after death is a consistent theme. I re-read four of his books, it’s stupid to fear death. Then Strieber dissected a Communion Letter. An entire family witnessed preposterous things. All blatantly symbolic. The weirdo that bounced gravity-free across their yard symbolized our cosmic nature. Once we ditch fear. If manifestations are absurd, it’s to annihilate comfy notions about mind, how the universe operates, and our place in the cosmos.
On absurdity, the enigma’s heavy sexual component is totally absurd. Philosophers use the words ontological shock for something so bat-shit crazy it shatters one’s worldview.
In May, a Congressional hearing was held on UFOs. Defense Department bigwigs admitted they were clueless about objects with no discernible means of propulsion maneuvering in ways that defy the laws of physics spooking Navy pilots in protected airspace. Leslie Kean helped instigate the Congressional inquiry. In 2017 she coauthored a game changing “New York Times” series that disclosed the government secretly studied UFOs, videos included. It blew the lid off. A rush of experiencers spoke up. Congress funded a UFO detection agency. Kean’s conference lecture however wasn’t on UFOs. She lectured instead on life after death. Kean’s considerable investigative skills uncovered physical evidence of post-death survival. She’s not blowing smoke, real proof.