Page Content (OCR)
least one occasion, experienced levitation without being able to control it. Clocks and electrical circuits have been affected, apparently without cause. Such phenomena are not unprecedented. Cases of uncontrolled levitation or gravity effects have been reported in connection with UFOs. In one case, which took place in 1954 in the French countryside, a man who was coming back from the fields with his horse had to let go of the bridle as the animal was lifted several feet into the air — a dark, circular object was flying fast over the trail a eu they were following. Neither is the change in life patterns an uncommon fact among witnesses of close encounters with such objects. An awareness of the paranormal has been inspired by such sightings in men like Edgar Cayce. As a child, Cayce met a woman who appeared out of a sphere of radiant light and told him that he would be able to heal the sick when he grew up. In the words of Thomas Sugrue: As soon as the weather was good he went back to his retreat in the woods. There, one afternoon in May... he became aware of the presence of someone else. He looked up. A woman was standing before him.... "Your prayers have been heard," she said, "tell me what you would like most of all, so that I may give it to you." "Most of all I would like to be helpful to others, and especially to children when they are sick." Suddenly she was no longer there. He looked at the place where she had stood, trying to see her in the beams of light, but 1 she was gone. Edgar Cayce's sighting is reminiscent of several cases that fall into the category of religious experiences, although the initial observation is often linked to an unusual flying object, as in the "miracles" of Lourdes and Fatima, which we will analyze in Chapter Seven, and in the visions that led to the founding of the Mormon Church. Such miracles often give to the precipients healing or Metalogic What do we know of the nature of the communication that is reported to occur between human witnesses and the occupants of the UFOs? I have earlier commented that, on the surface, such communication appears to be simply absurd. The word absurd, however, is misleading; I prefer the expression metalogical. When a witness meets a UFO occupant who asks, "What time is it?" and replies, "It's 2:30," only to be bluntly told, "You lie — it is 4 o'clock" (this actually happened in France in 1954), the story is not simply absurd. /t has a symbolic meaning beyond the apparent contradiction of the dialogue. Could it be that the true meaning of the dialogue is "time is not what you think it is," or "any measurement of time can only be relative"? In 1961, similarly, Barney Hill found himself trying to explain to the humanoid examining him that time was an important concept for us on earth. The humanoid appeared not to understand what he meant. The point of these incidents seems to have been to convey the fact that consciousness transcended time itself. Situations such as these often have the deep poetic and paradoxical quality of Eastern religious tales ("What is the sound of one hand clapping?") and the mystical expressions of the Cabala, such as references to a "dark flame." If you strive to convey a truth that lies beyond the semantic level made possible by your audience's language, you must construct apparent contradictions in terms of ordinary meaning. In the above contact case in France, the next question was about space and again was absurd ("Am I in Italy or Germany?" asked the UFO pilot). What scientist would take such a story seriously? Even a priest might avoid it, for fear of demons! In fact, some witnesses have thought they had seen demons because the creature had the unpredictability and mischievousness associated with popular conceptions of the devil. If you wanted to bypass the intelligentsia and the church, remain undetectable to the military system, leave undisturbed the political and administrative levels of a society, and at the same time implant deep within that society far-reaching doubts concerning its basic philosophical tenets, this is exactly how you would have to act. At the prophetic powers. 7