Doctor Esoterica

Non-Technological Intelligence and the Extraterrestrial Question

2011-08-18T00:25:00.000-07:00

In popular culture and various forms of its folklore, mythic entities resembling such animals as gorillas and reptiles are seen as either more primitive, “less evolved,” brutish, or even as outright evil. One thinks of westerners who believe Sasquatch to be a “less evolved” relative of humanity, or who speak of “evil” reptilian or insect-like extraterrestrials, the latter being the opposite of the angelic-like human-looking extraterrestrial specie of “Nordics.” The latter is an obviously racist-related idea reminiscent of Nazi ideology which coexists with the same UFO devotees’ “New-Agey” talk of peace and diversity. In stark contrast to modern westerners, aboriginal and Native peoples often view creatures such as Sasquatch, buffaloes, snakes, etc. as more advanced, more intelligent, and more spiritual than human beings.
The same western arrogance that assumes humans are more advanced, more “intelligent” than other animals with whom we share our world, manifests itself in the scientific “search for extraterrestrial life,” or SETI. To think that life on other planets in other solar systems would be so like human beings as to define higher intelligence in terms of technology in forms such as radios, atom bombs, or spacecraft, this all assumes that “metallic” technology defines intelligence. What if an extraterrestrial life form subsisted in the body of a sentient ocean, such as we find in Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris movie? SETI scientists would not even recognize such an advanced intelligent alien life form even if it manifested itself directly in front of their eyes. What if metallic technology were a sign of ignorance rather than intelligence? Could the Great Silence, that is, the lack of signs of extraterrestrial life in the cosmos, be explained by a scenario that involves an avoidance of metallic technology as a dangerous trajectory that leads to global annihilations? Could elephants, whales, and dolphins be more intelligent than humans by not possessing spacecraft and nuclear bombs?
Is it not facile to think that whatever is “later” is necessarily “more advanced” or “more evolved”? If space and time are cognitive constructs, or reifications that do not factually reflect things that actually exist in the cosmos as such, then the concept of temporal progression and development are ultimately illusory. Ever since scientists discovered that the expansion of the universe is actually speeding up rather than slowing down, which in itself contradicts the second law of thermodynamics, the possibility has been staring us in the face that the origin of the universe may actually be arising from what to our vantage point is the future rather than the past. In view of this, what if other phenomena which we usually consider as representing the end instead might be the beginning? What if birth is actually our end and death the beginning?

Tim Binnall and the Best and Most Intelligent Online Interview with Jacques Vallee: The New Ufology, Part 2

2011-01-19T11:53:00.001-08:00

On 20 July 2008, Tim Binnall of Binnall of America conducted what is without question the best online interview available with the legendary Jacques Vallee. In contrast to some of the other cyberspace interviewers of Dr Vallee, Mr Binnall actually read the entire Vallee Alien Contact trilogy Dimensions, Confrontations, and Revelations, shortly before recording the interview.

Topics often ignored by many Vallee interviewers but broached by the insightful Mr Binnall include the social effects of the UFO phenomenon, the Nazi-like racist ideologies of several UFO groups, UFOs and political globalization trends, the philosophical setting of Occam’s Razor, some UFO researchers’ gullibility with regard to FOIA documents, plus many other fascinating and intriguing subjects.

We include not only Jacques Vallee in the New Ufology, but Mr Binnall as well, because both of these individuals propose that if we are to ever find real answers to the UFO enigma, we will do it by standing back and researching objectively the phenomenon and its effects, and not by emotionally clinging to and promoting beliefs, convinced that we have already found the answers. What I term the New Ufology (a phrase that’s used in different senses by various writers) embraces open-mindedness and suspension of beliefs. As Dr Vallee has said, there are no experts on the UFO phenomenon, none.

One can access Tim Binnall’s brilliant and captivating interview with Jacques Vallee at http://www.binnallofamerica.com/boaa7.20.8.html.

Dr Esoterica

Micah Hanks, Nick Redfern, Greg Bishop, Colin Bennett and the New Ufology

2011-01-13T11:08:00.000-08:00

Colin Bennett, in his “A New Ufology” at http://www.book-of-thoth.com/article1065.html, tastefully critiques some recent scientific approaches to Ufology which attempt to gain mainstream credibility and respectability for the subject, but which remain confined to Cartesian epistemological constraints. Thus such endeavors fail to achieve a “Postmodern New Ufology” which is characterized not so much by the “old mechanistic” duality of true or untrue, as by quantum infrequency and probability. The New Ufology will involve “out-of-the-box forms of Being, Matter and Idea” which transcend the mechanistic concept of “facts.”

Bennett also mentions the possibility of a cosmic matrix simulation program being involved in the UFO phenomenon. It is at this point that we would urge all interested in this particular component to explore the writings of the late French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, whose statement “Welcome to the desert of the real” was quoted in the movie The Matrix. Baudrillard’s concepts on simulacrum and simulation are far more radical and profound than their quite intellectually watered down (we would even argue distorted) representation/s in the Matrix movie trilogy. Not even quantum physics is radical enough to explain what lies behind Fortean anomalies such as UFOs. Eventually one will have to research consciousness, philosophy, and metaphysics (in its broadest senses) in order to begin understanding UFOs.

As we observed in our recent review of Nick Redfern’s Contactees: A History of Alien-Human Interaction, according to Greg Bishop, the reality behind UFOs and the Contactee phenomena is “stranger than we can think” and “probably gets a lot of help from our own brains” (224).

A similar synthesis with a pronounced emphasis on the contribution of consciousness in the UFO phenomenon is found in the judicious and innovative monograph by Micah Hanks, Magic, Mysticism and the Molecule: The Search for Sentient Intelligence from Other Worlds (CreateSpace, 2010). For Hanks, the inner world of mind has as much if not more to do with contacting alien intelligences than travel in outer space. In his foreword to Hanks’ masterful synthesis, Nick Redfern enthusiastically endorses Hanks’ central theses.

A few years ago we heard an interview on Coast to Coast with Jacques Vallee. During the interview he open-mindedly maintained that in spite of his Interdimensional hypothesis, he does not exclude at least some version of the ETH as a possible explanation of the UFO enigma. Immediately after this interview, a quite famous advocate of so-called exo-politics and ‘disclosure’ stated on the same Coast to Coast program that Vallee’s views were outdated, since he belongs to an older time and is not a part of the computer and Internet generation. What a preposterous statement, given the fact that Vallee was one of the many developers of what has now become the Internet.

Contrary to such exo-political claims, it is the old nuts and bolts mechanistic Ufology that is in danger of becoming irrelevant in the Postmodern age with its quantum epistemology which lacks the old mechanistic equivalency of ‘physicality’ = ‘fact’.
Doctor Esoterica

Review of Nick Redfern, Contactees: A History of Alien-Human Interaction

2011-01-10T12:35:00.000-08:00

Nick Redfern, Contactees: A History of Alien-Human Interaction (Franklin Lakes, NJ: New Page Books, 2010).

To anyone who has read this book it will be apparent that the sub-title’s word Alien does not necessarily imply ‘etxtraterrestrial’. And therein lies one of the book’s strengths and one of its centrally intriguing and fascinating mysteries.

The bulk of the book presents us with important new primary source documentation, much of it gained through the Freedom Of Information Act, on a series of quite colorful individuals known as Contactees. These were individuals who beginning in the first half of the 20th century became public figures, to varying degrees, on account of their claims of contact with human-looking extraterrestrials, usually from planets within our own solar system, such as Venus or Mars.

Some of the Contactees seem to have been the unwitting victims of American government or military mind experiments involving hallucinogenic drugs or staged UFO landings. Others seem to have had sincere paranormal and even quasi-religious experiences which they interpreted as involving interplanetary communications. Some were shady criminal figures who concocted and spun wild yarns in order to deprive the gullible and other vulnerable targets from large sums of money. Some perhaps had weak minds or fanciful imaginations. Others may have combined several of the above traits, consciously or unconsciously as the case may be.

Apart from the biographical reconstructions and assessments which Redfern deftly and often quite entertainingly presents, the real intellectual substance of the book begins to come into clearer relief when the author delves into Dimethyltryptamine, or the DMT phenomenon, the use of which seems to induce visionary experiences which resemble Contactee stories in several respects (see pages 166-70).

Redfern quotes Jacques Vallee on page 187 on UFOs’ simultaneous physical and non-physical consciousness aspects, and this serves as a preparation for the reader’s assimilation of the book’s remaining three chapters. The concluding chapter, 22, called “Ghost-Lights,” is alone worth the price of the book. Redfern cites various witnesses who have interacted with balls of light which have transformed themselves into UFOs or even UFO occupants. The author asks at this point: “Might the Ghost-Lights be actual, living, sentient beings?” (209). He goes on to ask whether these lights could produce hallucinations which might be misinterpreted as extraterrestrials.

This ball-light phenomenon might be correlated with Michael Persinger’s theory of “plasmas or earthlights” (210). Redfern asks, what if the earthlights “are sentient beings in their own unique rights?” In this way the UFO and Contactee phenomena may have to do with an earth-based form of life rather than extraterrestrials. Particularly fascinating is Redfern’s comments on physicist Mircea Sandulovicius’ research involving plasma blobs with apparent animate traits which might “be a prerequisite for” earthly life at the biochemical level.

The book’s section “Conclusions” (221-25) alone is again worth the price of the book as a whole. After a reference to Vallee’s groundbreaking Passport to Magonia, Redfern cites Colin Bennett’s musings on UFO occupants as possibly being related to fractal-like computer or Internet data, or to a Matrix world. According to Bennett: “As mystics and prophets know, when desert light strikes the retina, anything that can be imagined can happen” (224).

Redfern ends his masterful study with the words of Greg Bishop, according to whom the reality behind UFOs and the Contactee phenomena is “stranger than we can think” and “probably gets a lot of help from our own brains” (224). Furthermore, “Whatever it is—real aliens, something like Persinger’s theories, DMT, or something from somewhere else entirely—it was screaming to the Contactees. . .: ‘Pay attention here’. Maybe that’s what’s important. . .” (225).

Nick Redfern’s Contactees: A History of Alien-Human Interaction is both profoundly enlightening and entertaining. It is also an indispensable historical study based on previously unavailable primary source documentation. The author is to be commended and we recommend the present title without reservation.
Doctor Esoterica

Review of Mac Tonnies, The Cryptoterrestrials

2011-01-09T19:30:00.000-08:00

Mac Tonnies, The Cryptoterrestrials: A Meditation on Indigenous Humanoids and the Aliens Among Us (San Antonio/New York: Anomalist Books, 2010).

Nick Redfern in his judicious Foreword writes of the “failed” Extraterrestrial Hypothesis of UFOs, and that this failure indicates “that we are looking for the answers in all the wrong places” (12). In his Afterword, Greg Bishop suggests that “UFO ‘reality’ is probably co-creation” (119) consisting of a combination of the phenomenon and “[o]ur cultural background and expectations. . . .”

The sub-title’s phrase “A Meditation” seems to indicate that Tonnies wants to stress that his book is the exploration of a possibility, not a dogmatic or an unbending thesis, which he calls the Cryptoterrestrial Hypothesis. Tonnies was obviously an intellectually gifted and quite articulate thinker. His ability to entertain the possibility of an alternative hypothesis is evidence of his integrity and open mindedness. His main argument, or better, meditation of a possibility, is that UFO occupants may not be extraterrestrials nor even beings from other dimensions, but rather a parallel sister species to homo sapiens, a species in hiding which he calls cryptoterrestrials. His conclusion that it is possible that the cryptoterrestrials “are literally us in some arcane sense” (112) is indeed intriguing and worthy of further research and could be correct even if the entities involved turn out not to be cryptoterrestrials.

Many of Tonnies’ criticisms of UFOs as representing post-Singularity or post-biological ETs (see pages 17-18) can just as equally be leveled against his own contention that they might be cryptoterrestrials who are “a postsingular indigenous intelligence” (71) preparing us “for our own Singularity” (72). Doubtless alluding to Jacques Vallee, Tonnies writes: “But even the most lucid opponents of the ETH . . . offer[] vague (albeit endlessly enticing) references to ‘other dimensions’ and ‘parallel universes’ . . .” (23). Tonnies elsewhere refers to Vallee’s “ever-nebulous Interdimensional Hypothesis, which raises at least as many reality-altering questions as it purports to answer” (27). Similarly on page 37 Tonnies criticizes John Keel’s superspectrum theory and Vallee’s multiverse theory, which “beg for nothing less than a redefinition of the physical universe.” But then on page 32 Tonnies himself, gathering potential evidence for his cryptoterrestrial hypothesis, sympathetically refers inconsistently to “the role of parallel universes in a world governed by quantum mechanics,” to David Deutsch’s “sub-atomic processes in other . . . interdimensional worlds,” and to cryptoterrestrial telepathy as a “technology of consciousness, able to . . . skip back and forth between multiple universes.”

Again on page 94 Tonnies complains that Vallee’s multiverse involves “a revision of our understanding of the way reality itself works.” But one could apply the same observation to Einstein’s theories and to quantum physics as well. Tonnies claims that his cryptoterrestrial hypothesis possesses “explanatory potential lacking in both” the ETH and in Keel’s and Vallee’s Interdimensional theories. Tonnies fails to note that both Keel and Vallee have explained that much of the startling behavior exhibited by the UFO phenomenon might be explained by our present ignorance of advanced interdimensional physics rather than any metaphysical or mystically esoteric theories. Tonnies is therefore once again inconsistent when on page 104 he writes that cryptoterrestrials might be “materializations of the sort postulated by John Keel in such books as The Mothman Prophecies and The Eighth Tower,” for then the cryptoterrestrials would be precisely of the order of Vallee’s Interdimensionals. Again, on page 106 Tonnies alludes sympathetically to “a Keelian interzone,” which extensively parallels Vallee’s own interdimensional concept.

Contrary to Tonnies’ claim, Vallee does not argue that UFOs are non-physical “illusions” (87). In fact Vallee has in his possession metallic slag material emitted by a UFO witnessed in Iowa, and has published an analysis of the material’s composition.

Tonnies avers: “Maybe we’re being taught a new mythological syntax so that, confronted with the specter of planetary disaster, we’ll have the means of rising to the challenge” (70-71). This, however, seems as questionable as the wish that ETs will save us from our own stupidity, despite the same author’s caveat that he’s not “suggesting that we’ll be saved at the last minute in some alien Rapture” (71).

Apart from the above critiques, which we by no means intend as criticisms or attacks, we recommend Mac Tonnies’ The Cryptoterrestrials to any reader interested in the UFO mystery. Tonnies’ work is fascinating, articulately formulated, and refreshingly intelligent in a field unfortunately characterized in general by vitriol and by an unthinking as well as unproductive ideological sectarianism.

Dr. Esoterica

Jacques Vallee, Chris Aubeck: Wonders in the Sky

2010-11-23T00:46:00.000-08:00

After several months of silence (caused by a number international trips), Dr. Esoterica is back...

As we settle back down at home, the most significant breaking news in the world of esoterica is the recent publication of Jacques Vallee's and Chris Aubeck's Wonders in the Sky, which presents convincing evidence that the UFO phenomenon is by no means of modern origin, that it indeed stretches back at least to the beginning of written history.

A number of interviews with Dr. Vallee concerning Wonders in the Sky are now available on the Internet (a simple youtube.com search will take you to a few of these interviews; see also the interview on the Paratopia web site), and we recommend our audience to listen to them all.

Dr. Esoterica

Of Invisibility Cloaks and the Paracast

2010-03-19T08:36:00.000-07:00

This morning I read the story of a new scientific breakthrough in the field of cloaking technology.(1) Then I listened to a Paracast interview with Allen Greenfield on the topic of UFOs.(2) I consider the Paracast to be one of the better paranormal broadcasts on the Internet these days. During the interview, Greenfield was challenged on his view that two photographs of an identical looking UFO separated over time and space (taken on different occasions on two different continents) do not necessarily prove that the UFO phenomenon in itself possesses a physically technological dimension. Greenfield suggested that UFO photographs can be influenced by quantum observer-observed (subject-object) distortion. This view was declared by at least one of the Paracast hosts as having no merit, as a supposed misapplication of quantum-level dynamics onto the larger plane of the observable macro world.

Despite frequent claims of displacement of quantum micro and macro scale levels, the fact is that recent research is increasingly suggesting that there is a greater degree of quantum properties that characterizes the macro scale of our observable world than previously recognized. As Alexei Turchin explains in his article "UFO as Global Risk," this has direct relevance to the study of UFOs: “The strangeness of the manifestations of UFOs also suggests certain fluctuations. In general, the general property of anomalous phenomena is their scarcity, unpredictability and originality. This is very similar to the fluctuations. However, the classic UFO demonstrates some elements of the laws. Classic quantum fluctuations are micro-scale. However, if the whole [of] our world is fluctuation, the fluctuation in the space where it emerged a priori should be comparable in scale with our [macro] world.”

Similarly, information science suggests that there will be correspondences between the micro and macro scales, because everything consisting of matter or consciousness is composed of arrays of information, and all development of life consists simply of data sharing and transfer. Moreover, the Einstein-Podoslky-Rosen setup suggests that information or particles can influence each other instantaneously no matter how large the distance between them. As Ede Freska writes: “The discovery of contemporary physics that every form of matter is able to emit quanta of energy which are coherent and nonlocal and which carry usable information about the object demonstrates that quantum physics pertains to all matter of any size, not just elementary particles. . . . [Q]uantum laws can be applied to macroscale events” (in Inner Paths to Outer Space [Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press, 2008], 191).

With regard to Paracast’s reference to two photographs of a similar (or even identical) UFO, if UFOs do possess a technological dimension, it may not be at the level of a permanent metallic structure. It could be at the level of a holographic projection based upon a non-material technology, that is, mental-visual manipulation. It furthermore seems to us a leap in logic to claim that the photographs in question are of a metallic craft, since neither guest nor hosts have touched the craft or analyzed its material (if it consists of any such thing) in a lab in order to establish the fact of its metallic composition in the first place.

Theoretical physics tells us that despite the shared universal experience of space and time, time and space nevertheless do not exist in an absolute sense or in the actual world, for they are largely products of consciousness or perception. I would suggest that the sightings or even photographs of a similar or even identical UFO does not demonstrate that the object in itself subsists in a permanent technologically metallic or in some other solid state, even though I suspect that UFOs might pass through a temporary solid state as they become manifest to our sight.

Incidentally, the nuts and bolts interpretation of UFOs boarded by flesh and blood aliens who do not establish official contact with earth because of some non-intervention prime directive becomes problematic when one takes into account the following facts: According to the latest data, in all likelihood ET civilizations in our galaxy would be on the average about one billion years older than earth’s civilization. If we are already beginning to discover cloaking technology which hides objects from visual sight as well as from radar, then visiting ETs one billion years beyond our present level of technology who adhere to a policy of non-intervention would never even once be sighted or discovered by us.

Our everyday experience seems to still be bound by outdated or misapplied Newtonian mechanistic assumptions, not only with regard to the illusions of absolute time and space, but also with regard to our jumping to conclusions about the supposed permanent metallic nature of UFOs based simply upon observation at a distance or in photographs.

Doctor Esoterica

ENDNOTES

1: http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1838817/researchers_create_small_scale_invisibility_cloak/

2: http://www.theparacast.com/

Mac Tonnies: An Appreciation

2010-02-03T07:44:00.000-08:00

Mac Tonnies was a brilliant thinker in the Fortean tradition, whose untimely death in 2009 will be felt for years to come.

His book on the Cryptoterrestrial Hypothesis (which attempts to explain the UFO phenomenon) has at long last been published. However, we wish to stress, based on the available Internet audio interviews with Mr. Tonnies, that one of his intellectual strengths was his ability to examine a hypothesis, to point out its pros and cons, without becoming dogmatically attached to the hypothesis.

While he offered the Cryptoterrestrial hypothesis (which extends John Keel's "ultraterrestrial" hypothesis), he simultaneously mused on other possible explanations of the UFO phenomenon. One of the alternative suggestions he raised was that UFOs might be better understood within a framework that suggests that the cosmos itself might function like some sort of computer simulation program; the appearance of UFOs (and other paranormal phenomena) might represent "glitches" in the program.

On a 26 July 2009 Radio Misterioso program, Greg Bishop interviewed Mac Tonnies; the subject of the simulation universe was discussed in the following manner. Tonnies observed that if the cosmos is a simulation program, UFOs could be manifestations created by the cosmic system operators of the simulation. We could exist as a construct for some other intelligence. Anomalies such as UFOs could be intrusions into our reality from the simulation system, an intrusion which exists at an architect level or as a built-in program, built into the mind or even into the universe itself. If the program is built into the system, then we could never catch up with it; it could thus function as a developmental catalyst. That would mean that it might be impossible to ever find an answer to the UFO phenomenon--it would always be one step ahead of us. The operator could function like an Artificial Intelligence (AI) that takes on the form of UFOs and various paranormal creatures. The operator of the simulation could be so advanced that it could erase all traces of its own presence, so that no mystery of the UFO phenomenon could be solved by a crashed disc, a removed implanted chip, "alien" corpses, etc. The so-called exo-political wish for government "disclosure" constitutes a childish wish to have all our questions answered by some metal ship hovering in the sky. How could such a ship be proved to be extraterrestrial? Advanced cultures may have chosen to be non-physical and would in that event not travel in physical ships. The UFO phenomenon, as well as ourselves, may inhabit or come from a domain of pure information, which would mean that we inhabit or come from a cosmic computer simulation. If this is so, then paranormal anomalies can be understood in a new light.

It is unfortunate that Mac Tonnies did not live long enough to author a book that would have explored his musings on the paranormal within the context of a computer-simulation cosmos. But we have at least some of his insights on such a hypothesis, and perhaps others will carry the idea further in his memory and to his honor.

However, that honor would be served best by never forgetting that Mac Tonnies refused to allow himself to be wedded dogmatically to any one hypothesis, and that includes both the cryptoterrestrial and simulation hypotheses. We must be ever open to new emerging evidence and ideas...

Doctor Esoterica