Posthuman Blues

Alien visitation: a global quantum event?

In my recent posts on the nature of apparent "aliens," I've been assuming that the UFO intelligence adapts to fit the prevailing psychosocial matrix, effectively camouflaging itself by insinuating itself into a given culture. But there's the equally appealing possibility that manifesting in terms comprehensible to witnesses reflects the perceptual constraints of the contact experience.

"Aliens," whether perceived as gnomes or fairies or demons or even humans (as in the case of the mysterious airship sightings of the late 19th century) may be forced to appear as they do by the cultural biases and limited expectations of the witness. Thus we have a pageant of fantastic beings of all descriptions: robot-like monsters, winged entities such as the infamous "Mothman," furry giants, all manner of "little men," and, of course, the ubiquitous "Grays." However, most if not all of the above may share a common psychical origin; only by appealing to our collective unconscious can they take form at all. As such, they constitute an ongoing waking dream; they are "true hallucinations" -- quantum composites that, while objectively real (as revealed by physical effects on the environment), demand a level of unconscious participation on behalf of their wide-eyed spectators.

Jacques Vallee conducted a noteworthy study of reports in which UFO occupants were seen outside their craft, usually engaged in such bewilderingly innocuous tasks as taking soil and plant samples. He concluded that, given a statistical distribution of apparent UFO landings, there are simply too many landings for the extraterrestrial hypothesis to remain tenable. But if in fact UFO events require the presence of at least one observer, then Vallee's rogues' gallery of "absurd humanoids" makes more sense: Landings aren't as numerous as they may seem because they only occur when witnessed. From this, we can only conclude that at least some close encounters are staged events.

Similarly, the genetic hybridization program supposedly conducted by Gray aliens, recounted in Budd Hopkins' "Intruders" and David Jacobs' "Secret Life," makes more sense when viewed as a paraphysical agenda. Abductee Whitley Strieber has famously described the abduction experience as an attempt at "communion" between two radically different kinds of intelligence. From his narrative and others, it indeed seems as if "they" want or need something from us. But I doubt that that "something" is genetic material in the usual sense; it seems more likely to me that encounters with hybrid children and distressingly intimate "exams" are attempts to encourage belief that Grays are flesh-and-blood ET anthropologists. Their antics, while horrifying, may be as bogus as the many sightings of alien beings taking soil specimens (an activity that, as Vallee notes, echoes the itinerary of the Apollo astronauts).

I think the "aliens" are waging the equivalent of a "psy-ops" campaign on the human species. It's doubtful their ultimate goal is anything so quaint (or comprehensible) as transgenic offspring, but neither is it necessarily malign. Simply, our "visitors" appear to be striving to become adept at accessing our reality, in effect becoming "more real" and thus increasingly compatible with us. We nourish them with our attention, and as they penetrate the barrier separating them from consensus reality (in which the subject of aliens and UFOs is systematically marginalized), they finally begin to loom above the bunkers of myth -- incidentally, in the case of the Grays, becoming rather like ourselves in the process.

Whether they come to us from the upper tiers of John Keel's "superspectrum" or from some other parallel reality, their activities betray an apparent need for attention to which ufology has been essentially blind, despite case after case of "playful" UFO behavior (especially pronounced during aircraft encounters). Perhaps by engaging our psyche, they pass the burden of their arrival onto our collective shoulders.

The UFO intelligence seems curiously out of its element, a fact that should arouse extraordinary suspicion; one would think, given the time it's had to observe us, it should be thoroughly familiar with us and able to "pass through" without risking curious bystanders. But as even a summary examination of the UFO literature demonstrates, curious bystanders seem to be the whole point -- and therein, I suspect, lies the ultimate identity of our unlikely guests.