"The reason Vallee has irked so many ardent UFO believers for decades is that he doesn't believe UFOs are nuts-and-bolts machines from outer space or spinning silver disks operated by aliens from another universe. Crudely simplified, he was the first scientist to suggest that UFO experiences are in fact interactions with interdimensional beings that have always existed among us -- invisible hands toying with human society from a different level of consciousness. It's not just a physical phenomenon. It's a sociological, spiritual and psychic experience all wrapped up into one."
Jacques Vallee
Note the term "aliens from another universe," which betrays the journalist's ignorance of things cosmological. Ironically, Vallee's position is that UFOs are indeed from other universes; it's the shopworn extraterrestrial hypothesis (which maintains UFOs are craft from neighboring star systems) that Vallee rejects for its inability to account for the phenomenon's strangeness. Vallee has used the term "multiverse" to describe the ufonauts' home-turf; incidentally, "multiverse" is used with increasing frequency among quantum physicists and "parallel universe" theorists.
7 comments:
Have you read his journals "Forbidden Science"? Really amazing and inspiring.
By the way, great introduction to LO!!
"Forbidden Science" was a great behind-the-scenes peek; Vallee has a blog as well -- "The View From California" (see sidebar).
Glad you liked my comments on Fort. It's not so much an introduction as an extended blurb, but it appears on the back cover of the book, so I thought I'd "endorse" it here at PB.
Couple of points, one minor, one major--
My minor point: I've noticed that non-scientific journalists often confuse the terms "Solar System," "Galaxy," and "Universe." This is pretty much of a piece with the popular notion that cavemen and dinosaurs co-existed. It's like the only concepts they have are a vague "whatever-you-call-it out there" or "way back when." With evangelicals getting in on the science "education" act, this kind of confusion will only get worse.
My major point: Define "interdimensional being." I have not read all of Vallee by any means, but I've read enough to feel very dissatisfied with his "explanations." At the risk of sounding like Michael Shermer, they really strike me as being, in the final analysis, non-explanations. I am, on the other hand, perfectly willing to entertain the possibility of what I prefer to call "discarnate entities" (because this term doesn't posit non-verifiable origins) but why try to "sex up" what strikes me as essentially a form of metaphysics to make it sound like science, which it ISN'T?
Re observed and observer: I guess when Jane Goodall was studying her chimps, the chimps were also studying Jane Goodall.
You're talking String Theory -- in particular, M-Theory -- in which there are 10 space dimensions and 1 time dimension (if memory serves). The problem is that most of the space dimensions are curled up so small we can't directly observe them, let alone visit them.
"At the risk of sounding like Michael Shermer, they really strike me as being, in the final analysis, non-explanations."
Vallee's outlined a profoundly useful working paradigm that drags the UFO debate out of the "ET craft vs. misidentification" arena. No, he hasn't pinpointed where his interdimensional visitors come from, but he's made it a hell of a lot easier for others to ask.
My tenuous speculation is better than your tenuous speculation!
Arcesilaus --
Very good points. Personally, I don't think the "nuts-and-bolts" and "paraphysical" interpretations are mutually exclusive. Like quantum phenomena, I think the UFO intelligence can be both at the same time, inhabiting a liminal realm that's often too slippery for the regular tools of empirical science, but nonetheless physical.
I think the very act of observation (coupled with intellectual bias) plays a significant role in what this otherworldy intelligence ultimately looks like.
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