Interview-Alternate Perceptions Magazine, September 2016
An Interview with:
Venus Rising author Dr. Raymond A. Keller, a.k.a. "The Cosmic Ray"
by: Brent Raynes
Dr. Raymond A. Keller is an adjunct professor of Greek and Roman Culture and Civilization and Greco-Roman Mythology at West Virginia University in Morgantown, West Virginia. Dr. Keller has lived and worked in 44 different countries and has been writing about UFOs and paranormal activity since 1967. He was the founder and director of the Outer Space International Research and Investigations Society (OSIRIS) of Hilmar, California, as well as the publisher and co-editor of the New Millennial Star, a monthly pre-Internet tabloid newspaper with a circulation of 7,500 copies.He received his doctoral degree from West Virginia University in 2011, focusing on various aspects of the Basque settlement of Venezuela and his master's degree from the same institution in 2004, majoring in foreign language with an emphasis on magic realism in Latin American literature.
Brent Raynes: Your recent and lavishly illustrated 8.5 x 11" 312 page book, Venus Rising: A Concise History of the Second Planet, is a thoroughly comprehensive, scholarly volume that delves in depth into a full spectrum of Venus-related information throughout human history. As a retired adjunct professor of Greek and Roman Culture, Civilization and mythology at West Virginia University in Morgantown, the numerous allusions to Venus from historical myths and legends, modern science and speculations, and even science fiction is a perfectly acceptable academic accomplishment. However, you've gone much further than that. As Sweden's leading Ufologist Hakan Blomqvist noted, "The really controversial part of the book is the study of Venus in relation to the UFO enigma and contemporary claims of contact with people from other planets, especially Venus. Most mainstream 'scientific' ufologists dismiss the first generation 1950s and 60s contactees as frauds and cultists; but my 40+ years of research into contactee cases indicates that some of these individuals actually were in contact with a group of benevolent alien visitors, trying to influence our culture at a critical time in history. Venus Rising is a comprehensive and exciting scholarly endeavour that can inspire further research into this most fascinating subject."
Even more than that you yourself claim to have had personal encounters and contacts with extraterrestrial "Venusians." Can you please share with us how that came about, and what those experiences were like and what they consisted of? And, of course, how the modern and historical all fits together in your view?
Dr. Raymond A. Keller: When I first lived with my Aunt Dolly in Los Angeles, California, at the age of ten, she gave me a book about the solar system and the search for life on nearby planets. I couldn't put that book down and became obsessed with everything extraterrestrial. I picked up some used paperbacks, George Adamski's "Flying Saucers Have Landed" and Howard Menger's "From Outer Space to You." I also convinced my aunt to drive me out to a meeting of the main unit of the Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs of America out in Yucca Valley. After the meeting and speaking to the president of the organization, Dr. Gabriel Green, I was sure that flying saucers were real and mostly coming from our nearest planetary neighbor, Venus. But my first encounter occurred a few years later, in an Ohio state park back in 1967, where I was camping out with a Boy Scout troop. At my insistence, a fellow scout and I broke from the encampment and went into the woods to explore the area around a creek and overhead railroad trestle when we sighted an Adamski-type flying saucer at close range, hovering above it.
Following this incident, I began to write a series of UFO articles in my hometown newspaper, the "Bedford Times Register." This brought me into contact with the director of the Cleveland Ufology Project (CUP), Earl J. Neff, who came out to my home to interview me and invited me to participate in the activities of the group. Neff was a former sketch artist for the real Elliot Ness and the Untouchables. He was also the representative of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), to which I also became a member; and the premiere Ohio UFO researcher gave me $30 to start a mimeographed, eight-page monthly newsletter, the "Flying Saucer Report." It was a huge success and many prominent ufologists contributed articles to its pages: Gray Barker of the Saucerian Press, who published Menger; Gene Duplantier of Canada's "Saucers, Space and Science" and University of Arizona astrophysicist Dr. James E. McDonald, to name a few. By 1972, I was living back in California, in the Navy and stationed in the Long Beach area, where I had the opportunity to get back to some of the meetings of Gabe's group before being deployed overseas.
I have since come to understand that I was being drawn to that flying saucer encounter in the state park and that unseen forces were guiding my path in ufology all along. One of the contactees intimately tied to Venus, visiting from overseas, became a very good friend during this time, before I was deployed out of California. Unfortunately, I can't tell you too much at this time what I learned from our meetings; but a full and photo-documented account will appear in the sequel to "Venus Rising," that should come out in January 2017 from Headline Books, my publisher. Ever since, no matter where I have been in the world, I enjoyed heightened physical and paranormal experiences with Venusians and craft, culminating in the foundation of the Outer Space International Research and Investigations Society (OSIRIS) in Hilmar, California, in 1986, along with its 14 chapters worldwide and monthly publication of the "New Millennial Star" for over 160 consecutive issues, before I moved to Africa to work as a teacher in Ghana. The most impacting encounter was the meeting of Lady Encara with the members of our Salt Lake City chapter, who made a pilgrimage to Mt. Shasta in 1987, the details that are found in "Gods of Aquarius," the last chapter in "Venus Rising." This is where the more intimate mythological connections can be found to the more contemporary Venusians.
Brent Raynes: I understand that for quite sometime you kept your experiences and findings pretty much to yourself, but then something powerful and life changing happened. You described to me recently that you experienced a transformative Near Death Experience, too. I found that story amazing and hope you won't mind sharing it with our readers. It was an event that pushed you to write Venus Rising.
Dr. Raymond A. Keller: That's right, Brent. All of this happened while I was undergoing a quadruple by-pass open heart surgery at the VA hospital in Pittsburgh and the immediate hours afterward while awaiting arousal from this procedure. After my NDE, I wasn't afraid of death. I can see a lot more clearly now, where before I was just looking through a glass darkly.
As for the NDE, the craft I was in had the outward appearance of a Venusian scout, much like Orthon's transport in "Flying Saucers Have Landed." But inside it was all a glowing white along the inner circumference ring- even beyond radiance; it was almost blinding, etheric, but tapering off into transparency at the ceiling and floor, where there was just the blackness of outer space and the twinkling of distant stars. So in that respect, it was quite different than the physical ship I rode in up to the Isis mothership over the Tibetan Plateau when I worked in China, that was a true Adamski scout both inside and out. That one's interior was more like Klaatu's in the 1951 sci-fi classic, the "Day the Earth Stood Still."
Well, back to the etheric ship. I groped around in the intense light and found a bench that curved around the circumference ring and took a seat. There was no one in the scout but me; but when I turned around there was a gentleman there, all in white, like an angel, who greeted me in the traditional Venusian fashion of extending his left palm and pressing it against my own left palm. His clothes had the style of a 13th century Italian nobleman, but I felt like I knew this man for my whole life- this current incarnation at least- and my heart was filled with a loving warmth. In some way, I perceived that I was in touch with my higher self, at least above the level of an archon, an angel from the Pleroma, perhaps, or one of the higher celestial dimensions. We didn't need to verbally speak, either, for I just automatically knew why I was summoned there. I chose to return to Earth and finish the "Venus" book, but felt I needed to rewrite some of the chapters, and somehow knew just what was to go there and where I could find the information. Just a few days later, I was given full access to the Gray Barker collection, which is only 30 minutes from my home in Morgantown, and as if by magic found all that was needed immediately upon opening any random folder. The book was completed in record time. An interesting aside is that right before I woke up in the recovery ward, I was turning around to say thank you and good-bye to my guardian angel, where he now looked like an ordinary human being, a version of myself as I appeared in my late teens or early 20s. He was wearing a Lady Ga Ga t-shirt and this time he audibly spoke, "Have a safe journey, my friend."
Brent Raynes: You've also, I learned, feel that other dimensions are involved. Can you explain your thoughts on this too?
Dr. Raymond A. Keller: Like Dante, Swedenborg, Adamski and others, there are times when I feel like I am both interdimensional and time tripping. Dante and Swedenborg referred to Venus as being an angelic or spiritual realm, primarily, because this estimation was based on their cultural background and frame of reference, as you so aptly stated earlier on the phone. This vaguer feeling, however, is especially true in areas largely outside the magnetosphere of planetary and other celestial bodies. Of course, when on solid surfaces, in most interdimensional states, one still is cognizant of remaining in the physical universe. With NDEs, one already has one foot in Dimension X, so this Dreamland offers the perfect opportunity to meet your celestial guides and ready yourself for the next step in cosmic adventures. The work of the Borderland Sciences Research Association in the late 1940s to mid-1950s provided impactful insight into the etheric realms. Thinking this way, outside of the box in celestial paradigms, you can see why Kurt Vonnegut is my favorite author.
Brent Raynes: What do you hope that readers will take away from reading this book?
Dr. Raymond Keller: I was finishing up "Venus Rising" and pondering if I should publish it or not, or just seal it up in a time capsule for opening at a later date, long after I had transitioned on to another celestial sphere. I wasn't sure if the masses were ready to accept the powerful information in its pages about the Venusian presence here on Earth or the avatars sent by the Hierarchy of Light, working behind the scenes for countless millennia and indirectly influencing the progress of all humankind. But then I thought about all the contention and turmoil on this planet, and was reminded of the first "Superman" movie with Christopher Reeve where Clark's father Jonathan tells him that, "You were put here for a reason." The people of Earth show great possibilities and will one day- albeit in the far future, assume their rightful place in the constellation of galactic communities. Right now they just lack the vision to see it; so they need people like you and I to light the way for them. I recalled the account in Dante's writings about Lady Beatrice appearing to Virgil on a road outside of Rome, urging him to complete his epic work, the "Aeneid," of how the Goddess Venus directed her son, the refugee Trojan warrior's path to Italy in order to lay the foundations of the Roman Empire. I believe that Lady Encara chose to appear to me and some of the other members of OSIRIS assembled on Mt. Shasta for a similar reason. In the first "Venus" book, I provide a brief commentary on Helena Blavatsky's vision for a future America, where I see the emergence of the Island Republic of California that will one day become the center of intercosmic peace and harmony.
