The Haunting Truth

I’ve just finished reading the excellent new book by Richard Dolan “UFOs for the 21st Century Mind” and it’s left me feeling even more philosophical about this whole area than usual. I really recommend you grab a copy - I can’t praise it higher than to say that you’ll spend days reading it and weeks thinking about it. It sits in the spirit of healthy questioning throughout, tapping into the zeitgeist which of course is the whole intention of the book in the first place. It’s essentially Richard Dolans own "Estimate of the Situation” and must have been pretty challenging for him in a few places because the material strays well outside his comfort zone at times. The end result however is that it gets you thinking about the big hitters: what are we doing with this mystery called UFOlogy? What is really going on? And, ultimately, does any of it actually matter to me?

UFOlogy is a weird beast. This weirdness is something that even Dolan himself once acknowledged in an old interview “it does something to the wiring.” For sure, he isn’t wrong. There’s no question that the freaky UFO rewire is, seemingly, not the lightest of touches for most of us - even a cursory read through of the history of modern UFOlogy makes this patently obvious. Let’s be frank here, if you have ever tried to communicate to someone who thinks the Phoenix Lights is an old TV series you’ll find it an often hair-pulling exercise. At the same time, an interest in the subject can often pass through passion and take root in unhealthy obsession, the oft quoted example of Paul Bennewitz still has lessons for all of us. But for these reasons and more, which is admittedly peculiar on examination, I still enjoy the engagement. And this in spite of the fact that bitter, teeth-grinding experience reminds me that UFOlogy is far from being a passion shared or even vaguely acknowledged in most cases. Ultimately, the unpalatable reality is that where some see potential, an enigma, a torch to carry and illuminate - others just look away, past it, beyond it… In fact not long ago in discussion with someone on this subject, as I started to get passionate about finding out more about this mystery I was slapped down with “who cares anyway?”

Traditionally, I’ve always felt a little bit crushed by that kind of indifference. My gut reaction has always been “you what? Don’t you wonder about the implications? Don’t you understand?” and so on, you get the picture. Historically, I’ve always succumbed to taking a lack of resonance personally, now I’m sure that every “UFO buff” (to use the MoD vernacular) experiences this from time to time. It’s that numbing pain of realising that trying to light a fire under someone using a bunch of wet logs and a box of sodden matches is just never going to work. More than that, it gets to a point where it isn’t even fun trying. At least here the debunkers have value for us, at least they have a passion for debunking which lets you have a solid wall to bash your head against.

But there’s another issue with my traditional approach I'm increasingly tired of: it's actually part of the overall problem that afflicts a mainstream discussion of UFOs. Straight up, I used to see it as my “UFO job” to facilitate ET buzz and, boy, it was a crusade I’d embrace with an almost fundamentalist zeal. But these days I find my advocacy work increasingly muted and introspective, I’m not even entirely sure what I am advocating other than to get people to think "outside the box" about these themes. I’m shrugging my shoulders a lot more, not because the UFO “stuff” is any less important, or less impressive or less tantalising to me, but more because as I travel along my own line in all of this I am also changing and becoming ever more uncertain. Sure, I’m getting older and with that does come a certain mellowing and softening of viewpoints – well, at least it does in my case – but it’s also more than this, it’s the inner payload of UFOlogy: it's knowing the rewire is happening.

For example, in the UFO community there are a lot of people who will tell you that the A factor that perplexes you is actually this, that factor B is this, and that factor C is this. Yeah, well, the best I can do is a "maybe." I just don't seem to be able to make that final committment to anyone there - no explanation ever feels vital enough. It's cool that some people seem to have it all figured out but from my on and off reading of the data over the years if you're putting anything other than a big fat question mark in the box then you are on the wrong track. In fact, I don't even know where the edges of the phenomenon are any more, thinking back I'm not so sure I ever really did. I mean, how can you? When you peer down the rabbit hole it's a different world there, one that requires you to refocus and to relearn. This process of sorts is a thoroughly humbling one, something that clearly troubles a lot of commentators on this subject on each side of the fence. I've mentioned this in forums before but one of the things that keeps me going here is the idea that we may be completely wrong in most, if not all, of this area. Securing the right answers begins with asking the right questions after all and can we safely say we're doing that? (One of the things that perplexes me most about the exopolitical movement is that there is an unhealthy pre-occupation with building credibility for what it thinks it knows, and stretching that out as the canvas to paint everything else on.)

When you have the UFO passion you have to acknowledge that such a direction of travel is also working on you. The sheer cosmic uncertainty that sits in the centre of this area is a haunting truth, that's exactly how it feels, a kind of half-knowingness, a shadow over the gaze that gently furrows the brow. In this sense even as a UFO commentator and very, very part-time researcher I always sympathize with many eyewitnesses of more dramatic close encounters, because they are plunged head first often without warning into some bizarre, haunted reality seemingly far removed from their old more certain world. In addition, from a cultural and social perspective, we expect these people to just hop back on the conveyor belt of nine to five survival as though nothing has happened. Further, we need those people to bottle up and sit on what they've experienced because we simply have no metrics for dealing with that kind of, well, dare I say, inconvenience..? Suddenly, when the phenomenon gets up close and personal, wow, then its starts to ruffle the feathers in so many ways.

You see we cannot be certain of anything here. I'm confident enough to say that there's something "in it" and that there may well be some non-human aspect. What I am less certain about is our own ability to comprehend the "what is out there?" Which brings me to the huge problem that still besieges UFO discussion to this day: the existential crisis of sorts within which the subject unfolds in the mainstream. This is just plain awkward, the minds that engage here, ultimately, see what they want to see, hear what they want to hear and say what they feel they need to say (be it personal viewpoints or those opinions informed by duty). In essence it boils down to, can a mind that is so culturally predisposed towards certain viewpoints retain enough neutrality to create a balanced picture of the "what is?" A rule of thumb I have always used in UFOlogy is that the more I can relate to an incident, the more something appears to make sense, the more human fingerprints are over it. If something is going to reach out to me, something alien, something advanced, then I expect to struggle to understand the interface. My expectation is to be utterly bewildered, to be humbly confused - perhaps even to be completely over-awed?

Strangely, the UFO exploration over the years feels like it’s leading me somewhere and somewhere very familiar at that. The general direction of travel is taking me around and back inside, back to the source of the rays as I can perceive them. Framing this in UFOlogy speak, these echoes of personal Disclosure, form somewhat spiritual shapes. The concept of personal disclosure has never felt so creative, vital and alive and I’m acknowledging that now, what it really means to me, turning the stones over in different ways because I can. Aware of seeing how this all affects me and, perhaps, trying to figure out how others might be affected by it? It's getting personal, so I'm content to watch - and not force - my own sometimes stuttering cosmic journey. I don't understand it; I feel it.

Sometimes I wonder whether this is the intended game here? Does something reach out from our mysterious phenomenon to raise us step by step? Perhaps it sits there to remind us of something within our grasp or perhaps something we have let fall through our grasp? In ancient times the UFO phenomenon was indistinguishable from cosmic messaging, in 1897 it was airships, in WW2 it was foo fighters, after the war it was the ghost rockets, in the 50s it was the turn of the anti-atomic war contactees, the 60s saw the start of the abductions with tales of global destruction to boot. In many of these cases, the reflection of intelligence involved may be our own, shining back from an uncertain physical reality that we simply do not have the required capability to understand as is. A phenomenon that stays just far enough ahead to be a wonder, but close enough for us to notice and maintain an awareness. Is this in its own nature? Or, perhaps, this is simply what happens when we catch our own reflection in such a dark and uncertain mirror?

So, should we care? Of course we should. I may see this dynamic in a more relaxed mode these days but that doesn't mean that I'm any less passionate about what it means. We know from FOIA documents released over the years that, while TV hosts were all comfortably laughing the "UFO loonies" off the set our military forces and national security agencies were considerably more perplexed by it all - and continue to be so if The Disclosure Project testimony is anything to go by. We also owe it to the people who, fortunately or not as the case may be, have ventured down the rabbit hole of first-hand dramatic experience and come out the other end thoroughly rewired. Sure, we may not be able to do much about that trauma in many cases, but as the work of John Mack proved, to listen - that in itself is healing. We should also care because whatever the truth turns out to be, we are all cosmic citizens on our cosmic journey, by exploring what may be we might, ultimately, understand our wider place in all things. That such an exploration may involve one or more X factor revelations is a given and something that we should give some thinking too. In broad speculation, the possibility of non-human engagement - perhaps over centuries at least - raises questions around sovereignty that affect us on the most basic human level. Finally, we should care because, as citizens of Earth, if you are not striving for your truth and, by extension, the truth what exactly are you doing (and why?)

You can purchase “UFOs for the 21st Century Mind” by Richard Dolan at Amazon, Kindle version here and paperback version here.