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ORIGIN Mysterious objects in our skies and on this earth have apparently been with us since men first recorded history. It is no longer fanciful to suppose this heritage extends even further back, long before man's first appearance on the planet. Throughout this eternity, only wonder has remained constant. Physical appearance of strange craft and their occupants would seem to change according to era, as if to "suit" the sensibilities of the percipients: airships with propellers in 1897 and "pilots" in suitable attire of the day ... certainly not out of place enough to prompt complete shock. Fifty years later, after we'd grown in technology beyond our own slow-moving dirigibles, there were no more airships in the sky. Now, they were sleek silver disks, "like saucers skipping over the water," as Kenneth Arnold put it in June of 1947. Much has been written of this adaptability, and it serves our purpose here only to note the larger issue: Whether one speaks of elves, ikals, Bigfoot, aliens, UFOs, anomalous lights, craft or creatures ... a common thread of the paranormal weaves through all. It's not simply a matter of "seeing is believing," for the reality of these phenomena is elusive. They don't appear to be fixed in our earthly perception of time and space. To accept such things as real is to accept that their reality 2 is not the "reality" we've long been limited to. For they can disappear, or fade in and out ... dancing between dimensions, as it were. For those who study these phenomena, it has become a polarizing issue. Die-hard realists, as we might label them, are skeptical of attributing dimensionality to the mystery, for the craft and their occupants are obviously a nuts-and-bolts reality. Physical. Tangible. After all, there are traces left behind. Vitrified sand or rocks in the scorched-earth rings, footprints, photos, residue, stalled engines, body marks, repressed memories, etc. But for authors John Keel, Jacques Vallee and others, there's a lot more than meets the eye. It's that other quality -- the mysterious, capricious, logic-defying nature which doesn't meet the eye -- which has convinced "dimensionalists" against the nuts-and-bolts concept. Keel puts it this way in Mothman Prophecies, his IllumiNet Press book of 1991 (page 44): "My long and very expensive excursions into the borderland where the real and unreal merge have failed to produce any evidence of any kind to support the idea that we are entertaining shy strangers from some other galaxy. Rather, I have come to realize that we have been observing complex forces which have always been an essential part of our immediate environment. Instead of thinking in terms of extraterrestrials, I have adopted the concept of ultraterrestrials -- beings and forces which coexist with us. 3 but are on another time frame; that is, they operate outside the limits of our space-time continuum yet have the ability to cross over into our reality. This other world is not a place, however, as Mars or Andromeda are places, but is a state of energy. ... The flying saucer/extraterrestrial visitants are not real in the sense that a 747 airliner is real. They are transmogrifications of energy under the control of some unknown extradimensional intelligence. ... A small knot of nuts has talked to you year after year on interview programs, telling you how the sinister Air Force has been keeping the truth about flying saucers from the public; that 'truth' being that UFOs are the product of a superior intelligence with an advanced technology...." In this hotly-disputed debate, both the realists and dimensionialists cling tenaciously to their convictions, firm in the polarity of their positions. But each side may yet be forced to concede ground to the other, for the eventual answer may include both. Keel and Vallee and others who dismiss the physical reality of E.T.'s and their craft must have found it unsettling when Fox TV in mid-'95 aired archival footage of an alien autopsy. Or when Robert Lazar revealed his government employment to "back-engineer" the disk at Area 51. Granted, there may be other dimensions from which these entities come and go, parallel universes. Even the dimension of Time, forward or back, may offer a partial explanation. 4 But the final answer may not be that these beings come from simply another dimension, another time, or another planet. Perhaps the source is not just one or the other but all three! In this scenario, equally as likely as any other, those beings who effortlessly defy the physics of this earthbound plane may not actually reside in the world of some quasi-mythical "parallel" dimension at all. Perhaps those unseen dimensions are less a matter of place than portal. Not "residential," but transitory in nature. Less a parallel than passing plane. "Any sufficiently advanced technology would appear indistinguishable from magic," said Arthur C. Clarke. This "magic," as we conceive it at the moment, is simply the evidence of an advanced intelligence capable of manipulating factors in an equation beyond our current grasp. Our burden of linear, sequential time, when coupled with gaps in our knowledge of its relation to electromagnegravitics and the quantum quandary -- this, alone, maintains our current perception as "magic." Such childlike misapprehension has been long surpassed by others, who know the magic. Nor are they all from the same "place," whether one views this as a function of time, dimension, or physical locus. Eyewitness accounts provide a wealth of disparate possibility for origin. Despite the convictions of Keel and others, an extraterrestrial hypothesis cannot be ruled out. 5 Brad Steiger, for one, has not made such exclusion. As an author of over 130 books on the paraphysical reality, Steiger is adequately aware of the futility of certainty in this field. That the lightspeed limitation of Einstein is no longer accepted as gospel would appear to allow at least a tentative embrace of distant origin. But an extraterrestrial hypothesis may not require lightspeed ability for validation. If E.T.'s can travel via dimensional space rather than the long way around -- physical space -- then the lightspeed issue would be moot. Neither distance nor time would pose a bar to interstellar travel -- it would be accomplished in a relative fraction of physical time and space. Monuments of Mars and the Moon, faithfully recorded by NASA cameras and revealed by the tenacious Richard Hoagland, would also appear to diminish arguments against the E.T. hypothesis. One could imagine that the intelligence and resource to build such astounding constructs might preclude an equal talent for space travel, though such presumption would seem most naive, even if the travel is dimensional. Many accounts of these creatures attest their ability to pass unobstructed through solid walls, or to suddenly appear or vanish from earthly sight. This would seem to suggest three possibilities: that such operation is effected beyond our range of vision, beyond our range of time, or that they actually rearrange molecular structure at will. It's perhaps even further 6 defined than that: atomic structure. It is acknowledged that some of us can often see these phenomena while others decidedly cannot. It is not yet known, however, whether such earthly adepts have therefore observed some deeper secret or whether they see only what's visually apparent -- a passage through walls. An unearthly ability to control Time would allow for such instant appearance or departure, and would not necessarily require the added submolecular talent. However, if a being with Time mastery could therefore appear instantly in your bedroom, it would seem pointless to emerge through a wall. Why bother? Just appear in the room. Why bother to go through a wall? Since wall breaches have been observed, therefore, such instant appearance would not seem a function of Time mastery, though this is not to otherwise imply an absence of such ability. If it is a distant future time that explains these visitors' presence, it is presumably to monitor an experiment begun long ago. Some even suggest we are visited by those in our own future -- what we will eventually become. But this would appear unlikely if the Roswell alien autopsy is any guide -- we'd have to develop a sixth finger and toe between now and that future. Perhaps the function of time travel is not of leaping great eons into the past, but limited to a smaller span of less than a century or so. Even the shorter span of mere hours or minutes 7 would appear of greater practical value for popping in or out of this continuum. In the all-inclusive hypothesis, it is not inconceivable that visitors from at least one other sphere may utilize an intradimensional network to conquer otherwise impossible distances and, once here, maintain the cloak of time or dimension when necessary to their purpose. We are left, then, with a question: If the magic of technological advancement allows one to rearrange molecular structure at will, transposing from a solid state into a transitional "mist," in which world would such a talented creature reside? In the "ethereal" world, poised for instant change into physical form when required? Or in a physical state, with its tangible environs? If one has an ability to breach matter in transitional application, but only then, one must naturally return to a physical state within a supposedly prescribed parameter of time ... becoming "ethereal" would thus be presumably transitional. Admittedly, this is a large presumption. But what evidence might offer more definite suggestion? Consider: living bodies require sustenance. Billions of active cells must be regularly refreshed and relieved, for such is an apt description of physical life. As for non-physicality, one must naturally presume no sustenance is required for that state. But as it is a world of energy in which physical beings survive, and that no ethereal being can long or broadly 8 influence the physical world, one might presume that no ethereal body can therefore achieve as much as a physical counterpart. No spirit or ghost or vision could ever do as much as a physical being, nor as much as reported of E.T.'s. True ethereal entities, whether interpreted as ghosts or spirits or devils or angels, have never been associated with the manifestations attributed to extraterrestrial intelligence. No "ghost" was ever reported as taking a human on board a mysterious craft, conducting "medical" experiments, and returning that befogged victim to his reality. Few, in fact, are any reports of decidedly "evil" or "devilish" behavior by E.T.'s. Misunderstood, perhaps; unwanted and unbidden. But rare is the abductee who attributes the experience to a ghost or ethereal entity. Most come to realize nothing less than an actual physical invasion of their personal world. And this returns us to the question: could a physical being choose to live in a non-physical world? Regardless of a talent for transitional ethereality, could a solid and living entity maintain that non-physical state, living in the "ether," as it were? Could any living species long deny the urge of physical reality or the cellular demand for physical sustenance? It would appear impossible for such denial. It would also appear that these creatures have indeed made their continual presence known by way of a technology at present beyond us; and that the most likely origin, at least for some, is not some nebulous dimension contemporary herewith but a physical planet whose distance away has long since failed to confound a greater science. Whatever the ultimate definition, nothing in this hypothesis would preclude that of Keel, Vallee, or any other who insist upon a dimensional explanation. But to limit oneself to the consideration of dimension alone would appear as equally myopic as to exclude it. |