Esoterica

“There is a strange urge in my mind: I would like to stop behaving as a rat pressing levers — even if I have to go hungry for a while. I would like to step outside the conditioning maze and see what makes it tick. I wonder what I would find. Perhaps a superhuman monstrosity the very contemplation of which would make a man insane? Perhaps a solemn gathering of wise men? Or the maddening simplicity of unattended clockwork?”

–Jacques Vallee, “The Invisible College”

“If there is a universal mind, must it be sane?”

–Charles Fort

I suspect that the UFO phenomenon represents a form of nonhuman intelligence that insinuates itself into our belief systems. Likewise, the “alien abduction” phenomenon is certainly real, although possibly in a sense of “real” we’re not able to properly address. “Abductions” and similar extraordinary experiences seem to signal an intrusion into our reality by an intelligence existing outside spacetime as we understand it. I would be surprised if abductions were “merely” due to aliens from some other planet. Then again, I’m open to prosaic explanations, granted that they encompass the phenomenon’s complexities.

If discovery commences with the awareness of anomaly, as suggested by Thomas Kuhn, then there is no better place to look than the realm of unexplained phenomena. The prospect of UFOs and alien visitors is an excellent springboard for discovery, and I’ve devoted the following pages to thinkers, concepts and speculations that threaten to undermine our anthropocentric certainties.

The notion of contact with nonhuman intelligence quenches an implacable existential thirst. The trick is to walk the edge without succumbing to banality.