UFOs: When Science Fiction Meets Spirituality
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BY HARV BISHOP
In the 1970s, a middle-aged insurance underwriter living in the suburban foothills west of Denver spent the evening watching Hee Haw after a dinner of tasty Mexican food. That night after going to bed he experienced something extraordinary: a lucid dream experience in which he was out of body and aboard a UFO. Inside the UFO he was telepathically conversing with the classically shaped bald, child-sized beings. It was clear to him that they were trying to explain how their craft operated, but he was unable to comprehend their complex, multi-layered communication.
It would be easy to write this off as a man who ate too many chili rellenos for dinner and had one weird-ass dream or worse, that he was delusional.
I can’t write it off. That man was my father.
The next morning’s paper showed that several witnesses, including local police, had observed a UFO near Morrison, Colorado, just a few miles from our home.
Of course, this will raise the often-invoked skeptics’ fallback argument when dealing with anomalous phenomena: the law of large numbers. The odds of any particular suburban dad having a spicy food- induced dream about UFOs the same night multiple witnesses see a UFO in the area are small. The odds that it will happen to some dad among the countless dads in the world are higher.
I recognize this anecdote is beyond weird. My dad recognized that too. You see, my dad lived in two realities, one as an entirely “normal” suburban head of household and ordained Catholic deacon, and the other as a lifelong experiencer of psychic phenomenon. He was unflappable and level-headed about both realities.
I have to take my dad’s claims seriously given the timing of the sighting by multiple witnesses, and my dad’s paranormal track record. He didn’t think of this as any more significant than some of his other anomalous experiences. It all was no more than passing everyday dinner conversation in our house. Even with that psychic ability, he in no way was a “UFO nut.” In fact, he had no more than a mild interest in UFOs at the time. I’ve had a few less colorful experiences of my own in the years since. I’ll pass on going into more detail on those experiences for now, admittedly at the risk of throwing my beloved dad under the bus to preserve my own reputation. I want to underscore that in all these cases, his and mine, I accept that they are legitimate head-scratching mysteries while remaining agnostic as to explanations.
Those experiences have come back to mind with the recent revelations that there may indeed be something as yet unknown there. Former President Barack Obama recently said, “…what is true — and I’m actually being serious here — is that there’s footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are. We can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern. So, I think that people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is.”
The mystery formally known as UFOs is becoming almost impossible to ignore with the release of Pentagon admissions that video and photographs of unidentified aerial phenomenon (UAPs) are genuine. Add to that the military’s candor that they have no explanation. Not that our pandemic-fatigued country didn’t try. Initial revelations rated a shrug from the public last year, but a recent 60 Minutes segment featuring the video and crystal-clear photographs of the objects nicknamed Tic Tacs by military pilots because their shape is reminiscent of the ubiquitous mints, have only deepened the mystery.
The military’s public stance is they have no evidence these are alien craft. A university scientist interviewed on CNN said they are likely terrestrial (earthbound) objects rather than extraterrestrial, perhaps of US, Russian or Chinese origin. These are glib explanations that beg several questions. Most obvious, the absence of evidence isn’t equivalent to disproving something unless credible evidence points to another explanation. Second, given their apparent physics defying capabilities, what would be the fate of our seemingly advanced jets if these UAPs were armed and hostile? Third, it is disingenuous as there are many other possible explanations available that have nothing to do with extraterrestrials. Whatever the source of these disowned objects, now no longer denied, they represent at the least a genuine mystery that bears further investigation. A recent even-handed piece in The New Yorker noted that militant UFO sceptics fall victim to confirmation bias in roughly equal measure to ardent believers.
The Penn-award winning historian of alternative spirituality Mitch Horowitz recently said it is no longer intellectually defensible to refuse to take UAPs as a subject of serious inquiry.
Getting serious about what is out there
I am beginning to survey different perspectives and well-reasoned books about these disclosures and what it may mean for our spiritual culture. I have no conclusions about these mysteries, but in this article, I am summarizing the best of what I have found about serious intellectual inquiry into UAPs so far. The New Yorker April 2021 article noted that UFOs were no longer “a punchline.” The piece focused on investigative journalist Leslie Kean, one of the authors of a recent series of New York Times articles about government programs studying UAPs. The article’s author, Gideon Lewis Kraus, carefully separated the genuine mystery– there probably is something there we don’t understand– from the speculative and sometimes logic-defying narratives about the what and the why of UFOs. The latter, he wrote, unnecessarily discredits the former. I think that point is well-taken and yet I find both tracks interesting as long as it is understood that the second path remains an area filled with open questions.
The major differences in UAP theories are explanations that focus on the technological “nuts and bolts” explanations and explanations that focus on the possibility that these are beings or objects from other dimensions or parallel quantum realities or higher spiritual realities. They may be physical, non-physical or some blend of the two. It’s possible that some, all, or none of these explanations may hold. These differences aren’t easy to navigate. It can be a minefield. As with any disowned or ignored area, the UAP community includes paranoia, the conspiracy minded, and people capable of vitriolic social media turf battles. But it also includes seekers with serious intellects and open-minded inquiry.
Despite the differences, there is some consensus. Although this phenomenon has been recorded throughout human history, many agree that sightings increased following the use of the atomic bomb at the end of World War 2 and that many sightings are proximate to military facilities. Second, it is agreed that there is more than one shape for UAPs, going beyond the stereotypical notion of Frisbee-shaped saucers. Third, while there are commonalities in descriptions of the occupants of UAPs, there appear to be more than one type or species (if those are even the proper words to use). Beyond these areas there is no consensus opinion.
Are UFOs contact experiences mystical experiences?
First, I’ll touch on some of the major thinkers that have looked at this once-fringe area.
The insightful Rice University professor of comparative religion Jeffrey Kripal has written about the similarities in UFO contact experiences and ecstatic mystical experiences from world religions. Whatever the source of those experiences may be, he argues that people interpreted their anomalous experiences through the lens of the local culture and religions of the experiencer. In other words, mystical experiences should be taken seriously, but the culturally specific symbols should not be read literally. He addresses this crucial point in his classic 2011 book Mutants and Mystics [#comissionsearned] where he shows the influence of alternative spiritual ideas on the development of science fiction and comic books. Many sci-fi and comic authors and artists have had mystical and paranormal experiences. Writers in the 1800s describe encounters with beings that resemble ETs long before contemporary understandings of the UFO phenomenon existed. Kripal’s virtuoso 2015 collaboration with writer Whitely Strieber, The Super Natural, [#commisiionsearned] is a deep dive that places Strieber’s extraordinary contact experiences into the context of ecstatic spiritual experiences. Both books are highly recommended as are any work by Jacques Valee and Diana Pasulka’s American Cosmic.
Jacques Valee, is one of the foremost advocates of viewing UAPs as non-physical phenomena. He is a PhD and tech venture capitalist. The French Ufologist played by the great French filmmaker Francois Truffaut in Close Encounters of the Third Kind was based on Vallee. Valee’s newest book is Trinity [#commissionsearned]. In that book, he is candid about the questions raised by both the physical and non-physical UAP theories. The non-physical theories have trouble accounting for apparent crashes and recovered artifacts. The physical theories have trouble explaining why sophisticated craft that can apparently navigate the galaxy end up crashing in a farm field in Iowa.
The book Trinity tells a fascinating story about a pre-Roswell UFO crash on a New Mexico ranch one month after the infamous A Bomb test near Alamogordo, New Mexico. That the case is little known is a consequence of racism and government secrecy. The area’s Latino ranchers weren’t warned of the dangers of the July 1945 test and their stories of a UFO sighting and crash in August 1945 were discounted. Inez Padilla, heard the sound of the Trinity test blast in July and was blinded in one eye when she peaked through a door to see what was happening. Her son, Jose Padilla, 9, and his friend, Remigo Baca, 7, witnessed the UFO crash one month later. Jose Padilla later became a California state trooper. For Trinity, Valee and journalist Paolo Leopiizza Harris visit the site and interview Baca and Padilla. The book is also a fascinating look at Valee’s meticulous research methods.
UFO belief as a form of modern religion
University of North Carolina omparative religion professor Diana Pasulka’s American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology [#comissionsearned] explores the commonalities between religion and cultural beliefs about UFOs and how people explain the unexplainable. In short, she argues that UFOs are best understood as a form of modern religion for a technological era. Belief in UFOs meets many of the same human needs as religion, she writes. In addition, our beliefs about UFOs are mediated and shaped by exposure to movie and reality TV representations of the phenomena. That then can shape how experiencers interpret what happened to them. In one of the most fascinating parts of the book she breaks stereotypes by interviewing UFO believers who are successful high-tech entrepreneurs rather than loners going down conspiratorial online rabbit holes. One anonymous interviewee credits communication with otherworldly beings for his creation of patented medical devices that have saved lives.
Alternative spirituality historian Mitch Horowitz turns his clear-headed, penetrating analysis to UFOs and other examples of high strangeness in this free online talk. Esoteric scholar David Metcalfe tracks the intersection of UFOs and popular culture at his Liminal Analytics blog where we learn among other fascinating lore that high public awareness and curiosity about UAPs and UFOs is not new.
Spiritual dimensions beyond the physical
Alan Steinfeld’s anthology Making Contact [#commissionsearned] brings together many researchers to make the claim that UAPs are increasing activity to wake people up to spiritual dimensions beyond the physical. The anthology approach and variety of perspectives (that sometimes disagree) makes this an excellent introductory text to the open questions.
Whitley Strieber is a living Zen koan. Take what my dad experienced and multiply it by 100 fold and you won’t begin to scratch the surface of what Strieber says he has experienced and endured as an alien abductee in his 70-odd years on earth. His recollections are chronicled in the book and the film Communion [#commissionsearned]. By his own admission Streiber has put up with more rectal probe jokes that he can count. He has always been fully brutally open about his experiences and has faced shunning and ridicule as a result. Many people interpreted his encounters as caused by space aliens. Streiber himself has never made that claim and is rigorous about maintaining an open, but questioning stance about his life.
Why are Strieber’s experiences a koan? From his lifelong encounters with the visitors, to their implant of some type of device near his ear, to experiences of parallel realities you’ll find something in his canon of strange experiences that won’t fit your existing worldviews be they scientific, cultural or religious. Even if you count yourself as an open-minded explorer of alternative spirituality or a confirmed UFO believer, I will wager there is something in Stieber’s experiences that will step on your toes.
His trilogy of recent books– The Afterlife Revolution,[#comissionsearned] A New World, [#Comissionsearned] and Jesus: A New Vision [#Comissionsearned]— raise many interesting questions. Why do the visitors often appear with the human dead? He and people who have visited his home would often see deceased loved ones in the company of the visitors. Are the visitors what some have referred to as angels? Since there are apparently something like five major types of visitors do they all have the same agenda? Do some mean to help and some mean to harm? (I’ll admit I rushed quickly over those latter speculations in A New World. I want my visitors to be the cozy “ET phone home” variety.) How can we communicate with these visitors safely and productively? Strieber turns to the teachings of G. I Gurdjieff, Jesus and messages from Streiber’s late mystic wife Anne for possible answers.
Contact, he says, whoever these visitors may be, will be difficult. The visitors, he relays, communicate in holistic symbols not unlike hieroglyphics so misunderstandings could occur. Reading this resonated with my dad’s comment that he was unable to track the complexities telepathically communicated to him by whatever beings he encountered. Strieber believes that conflict with the visitors would be disastrous. Still he believes there is great potential for good to come if contacts, such as his, occur on a broader scale.
Most importantly, he urges us to live in the questions and not jump to conclusions. Strieber, Kripal and other’s call to embrace the questions is a way forward to address the unusual without losing our way and most importantly to engage in serious inquiry while steering clear of the extremes of arrogant dismissal or blind acceptance.
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