Jacques Vallee - Dimensions - A Casebook of Alien

Page 92 of 151

Page 92 of 151
Jacques Vallee - Dimensions - A Casebook of Alien

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Accounts such as the one I have just quoted abound in a corner of the psychic house that too few people interested in paranormal phenomena ever take the trouble to visit. In the last twenty-five years, at least ten thousand sightings of unidentified flying objects have been filed away unexplained by competent investigators (I am not referring here to the number of cases reported but only to those unsolved, and my figure is a conservative one), but no bridge has yet been built between this body of data and the evidence that exists for psychic phenomena such as precognition, psychokinesis, and telepathy. Such a bridge is needed, not only because current research on parapsychology could shed light on some of the more mystifying UFO incidents, but also because in return, an understanding of the nature of the UFO phenomenon could provide new insights into unusual events that have not yet been duplicated in the laboratory. It would give a clue to the 1 : c a mechanism of some psychic processes. The nature of the problem can be illustrated by another example, a report given to me by a woman living in Berkeley, California, who once observed a series of five round objects crossing the sky over East San Francisco Bay. She immediately thought they must be balloons. Then the first one accelerated and, upon reaching a certain spot, shot straight out of sight at an unbelievable speed. The second object did the same a few moments later. Then the third object dashed ahead and vanished in the sky. And the fourth, and finally the fifth. The sky was again empty. But in the mind of the witness there was a strange thought, the strong suggestion that this "was all right for her to see." This was accompanied by another thought which almost came as an explicit message: this was nothing that she should report. And, indeed, she went home without breathing a word of the event to anyone, until she attended a lecture where I raised the question of the possibility of unconscious or repressed contact. How frequently witnesses decide to withhold this kind of information has already been noted. If we disregard the last part of the woman's testimony, she is simply another person among millions of Americans who believe that, at one time or another, they have seen a UFO. But do we have a right to disregard that section of her report? And what happens if we take into consideration the fact that she distinctly felt a direct imperative message had been implanted in her mind, and that it was as much a part of the occurrence as her sensory observation of five luminous objects? What happens if we examine the files of sightings with an open mind regarding such psychic components? We find that phenomena of precognition, telepathy, and even healing are not unusual among the reports, especially when they involve close-range observation of an object or direct exposure to its light. The following case is among the most thoroughly investigated accounts of the interaction between human percipients (those who have "percieved" the phenomenon by whatever means) and the phenomenon of UFOs. It involves a medical doctor who holds an official position in southern France. What is unusual about this case, which occurred the night of November 1, 1968, is that competent investigators (including an astrophysicist, a psychiatrist, and a physiologist) were able to gain rapid access to the data and to monitor the development of subsequent events without interference from the press or from government authorities. The witness wants absolutely no publicity in connection with his experiences. Neither his patients nor his immediate family know of the events. Shortly before 4:00 A.M., the doctor was awakened by the calls of his 14-month-old baby. Experiencing some pain because three days earlier he had injured his leg while chopping wood and still had a large hematoma (an area of accumulated blood under the skin), he got up and found the baby gesturing toward the window with excitement. Through the shutters, the doctor saw what he first took to be flashes of lightning, but he paid little attention to this, gave a bottle of water to the baby, and went on to inspect the house, for it was raining very hard (though no thunder could be Do Not Report This! The Case of Dr. X