Page Content (OCR)
A major feature in all religious traditions involves a mysterious beam of light emanating from a point in the sky or from a cloud of peculiar shape and focused on a human being. This beam usually is interpreted as a sign of blessing which conveys information from a divine source. I am intrigued by this concept because it is a recurrent one in modern contact cases. Psychic experimenter Robert Monroe has described a similar phenomenon in his own investigations of out- of-body consciousness. On the night of September 9, 1960, as he was lying on his bed, Monroe says (in his book Out of the Body): I suddenly felt bathed in and transfixed by a very powerful beam that seemed to come from the North, about 30° above the horizon. I was completely powerless, with no will of my own, and I felt as if I were in the presence of a very strong force, in personal contact with it. It had intelligence of a form beyond my comprehension, and it came directly (down the beam?) into my head, and seemed to be searching every memory in my mind. I was truly frightened because I was powerless to do anything about this intrusion. The same impersonal probing, the same power, from the same angle. However, this time I recieved the firm impression that I was inextricably bound by loyalty to this intelligent force, always had been, and that I had a job to perform here on earth.... I got the impression of huge pipes, so ancient they were covered with undergrowth and rust. Something like oil was passing through them, but it was much higher in energy than oil, and vitally needed and valuable elsewhere (assumption: not on this material planet). They seemed to soar up into the sky, while I called after them, pleading. Then I was sure that their mentality and intelligence were far beyond my understanding. It is an impersonal, cold intelligence, with none of the emotions of love or compassion which we respect so much, yet this may be the omnipotence we call God. Visits such as these in mankind's past could well have been the basis for all of our religious beliefs, and our knowledge today could provide no better answer than we could a thousand years past. By this time, it was getting light, and I sat down and cried, great deep sobs such as I have never cried before, because then I knew without any qualification of future hope of change that the God of my childhood, of the churches, of religion throughout the world was not as we worshipped him to be — that for the rest of my life, I would "suffer" the loss of this illusion. A case that took place in March 1958, and which was later reported in the pages of The Flying Saucer Review by French investigator Joel Mesnard, provides an opportunity to verify again the strange properties of the lights associated with the UFO phenomenon in modern as in ancient times. The witness here is a twenty-eight-year-old French legionnaire who was on sentry duty at the Algerian camp of Bouahmama, in the desert south of Constantine. Shortly after 12:30 A.M., this man heard a whistling noise that seemed to be coming from the sky, and as he looked up he saw a very large object, about one thousand feet in diameter, coming down some 150 feet away from him. The most remarkable thing about this object, however, was not its enormous size but the intense conical beam of emerald-green light that came down from its underside. The Beam of Light On September 16, at night, again from the verbatim notes of Robert Monroe: On September 30, the same pattern: The Case of the Tranquilizing Light