What Ufology Has Come To Mean To Me

Like many people, when I was first snagged by Ufology I mulled over the usual questions like, “who are the ETs and where did they come from?” Then those questions progressed to, “what can I learn about ET civilizations by reading close encounter reports”. Finally my questions evolved toward wanting to know how ET societies survived themselves and progressed towards a more advanced way of existence than where we are in our current progress here on Earth.

I became a scrounger, looking for crumbs of insight that would shine the light on the steps between the crevices of failure and extinction, and success and evolution, thereby taking humanity on it’s greatest quest to overcome itself. For me Ufology is no longer about ETs but about human progress. What we can glean from contact accounts provides us with a model for our future and success as a cosmic society. However it’s a challenge to bring this idea to UFO researchers who seem to be hell bent on stalling Ufology’s progress, calling for “evidence”, scientific input and government acknowledgement before they will do what they know is right. If there were no ETs, no spaceships, no sightings etc, we still know that at some stage “we”, both individually and collectively, are going to have to make some major decisions about our current direction, values, and beliefs, particularly those that have expired past their use by date. The need for change which is the antidote for our sick society, is highlighted by contactee accounts and this might well be the subconscious reason for their fierce derision and dismissal.

If we study close encounter reports we learn that some ET societies are far more advanced than we could ever imagine. ET lifestyles have progressed past war, disease, the need for religion and monetary systems, areas of Earth society that are heavily invested in emotionally and financially. The ET message is simple, change your ways or perish and the inference is that ETs have witnessed many other societies on our current path that have ended in destruction.

There are many areas of our current lifestyle that are highlighted by ETs in order to cause us to question the validity of our choices. For example, we have created religious organizations whose teachings we have never lived up to and have in general, failed to save us from our destructive creations. In fact, Earth religions have been responsible for some of the worst wars and greatest crimes in history. ET concepts point us towards notions of Man as creator on every plane of consciousness and therefore responsible for all actions and subsequent effects. This challenges our sense of choice and responsibility in all spheres of existence.

ETs also present a way to run societies without the need for political parties and governments guiding our hearts to value choices that only have constructive input to the running of our planet. Extend this concept and you have a self-regulating movement of people who work towards making the best choices always. This may be foreign to our way of thinking but on a smaller scale you can liken it to a group of friends who want to push a vehicle out of a boggy patch of road. They work together to achieve a common goal through cooperation because in the end they will all win when they succeed in getting the vehicle out of the bog, and no one will have to walk home. Self-interest and cooperation is the incentive here, not government.

ETs also offer words of advice about personal health and ways to extend our lifespan. Although not as specific as we might hope, their concept of longevity is more closely linked to consciousness than what we eat. That is not to say that food choices don’t play a part in physical health, and in some cases the choice is to be vegetarian. However, this seems to be a choice about conscience and reverence for all life rather than detrimental impacts on the physical body.

Education is an important factor in ET society too, but not as we understand it. The focus is on developing natural gifts and interests that pertain to the individual rather than teaching the same knowledge to every person. The former style of education diffuses and suppresses personal talents while the latter enhances them. The focus is also on exploration of other worlds and systems, whether they be ecological, social, psychological, geological importance etc, and again depend on personal interest and natural talent.

These are just a sample of areas within our lifestyle that might be challenged by ET concepts and possibly reflect areas of Earth societies that need to be reevaluated. It has become crystal clear, at least to me, that placing contactee accounts under a magnifying glass reveals our own shortcomings and brings us face to face with the need to make better choices. ETs aren’t going to save us from ourselves, they just ask us to consider what future we really want.

Starry Starry Night

If you’ve ever listened to Don Maclean’s song Starry Starry Night you could be forgiven for thinking that it was dedicated to the UFO subject.

“Now I understand what you tried to say to me, and how you suffered for your sanity…..”
I have a particular interest in the contactee era of the 50s and 60s and I felt the words to the song were so relevant for the contactees personal mission to educate the world that we are not alone in the universe, in fact, we are far from it.

The contactees probably did suffer deeply for their sanity and felt very alone in their plight. The ostracism, ridicule, sense of abandonment, the huge sense of personal responsibility to pass on a message of such profound importance, the frustration of having experienced something that words could not truly describe, the daunting challenge to bridge the gap to people from where they themselves had been in their previous understanding to where they were now in an expanded state of knowing, the loss of personal standing among friends and family, and the downright heartache from feeling they had sacrificed their lives only to be shunned by those who should have truly wanted to understand what they had to offer, the UFO community.

“They did not listen they did not know how, perhaps they’re listening now.”
It’s true, the UFO community did not listen to the contactees with the necessary willingness to make an accurate assessment of their contacts. If our mindset is closed against a body of information we miss the nuances, the writing between the lines and misunderstand what is left. That’s what is consistently demonstrated by people who deride the contactees. They become the skeptics that they themselves vilify and in turn close an important avenue of research.

“Now I think I know what you tried to say to me”
In researchers defence, it took me years to understand what the contactees spoke back to me from the many books I’ve devoured and studied, and they’re still talking. Opening my mind to their experiences long enough for me to give them a fair hearing was not an easy task. There were times when I threw their books back on the shelf too, purely because I couldn’t be bothered with the whole frustrating, hair pulling, confusing subject. It was time consuming and hard work and I had a life to live. But after a while the same frustration, confusion and ostracism reached out at me through the hundreds of people I interviewed who reported close encounter experiences over the years, and eventually I gained an insight and appreciation of what the contactees went through. That helped me to help others who live similar lives on the rim of society.

“And how you tried to set them free”
The contactees tried very hard to set us free from our closed mindsets and subconscious fears about ET contact. It seemed they were quite successful with the general public who bought their books endlessly, but not so with UFO researchers. The idea that anything or anyone who vaguely resembled a human being coming from outer space seemed utterly absurd to them. They typically followed the “scientific” line that each living organism is a product of their environment so they expected great divergence in anything from other planets. There seemed to be no room in their thinking that we might be descendents of human space-dwelling societies that had left earth millennia ago. This was just a bit over the fence. Yet this type of fixed mindset was what contactees had to face every day from UFO researchers wherever they went.

“They would not listen, they’re not listening still”
Recently I’ve come to appreciate the huge chasm that exists in the UFO community and the taboo area of contactees. Many modern day researchers are as stubborn as they ever were and their minds seem to have rusted shut. I don’t understand it. The contactees are a group of people who offer us information about ET civilizations yet researchers want to close that door good and tight. I can only think that there might just be something in the whole professional debunking scenario after all or else there is a collective mindset that is hell bent on shooting itself in the foot and they have come to call the UFO community home.

“Perhaps they never will……”
Maybe most UFO researchers will never listen to the contactees voices echoing from the past, but maybe not all of them have to. The contactees are dead and gone but the next generation who have the ears to listen, the eyes to see and the heart that answers their call are here now. Perhaps it’s time we did so.