Reality Checking—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, June 2024
The Absurdity of the UFO Phenomenon
by: Brent Raynes
My friend Bob Davis, Ph.D., a sensory neuroscientist who maintains an insightful and thought-provoking Facebook site called The Consciousness Connection group, in cooperation with one Dave Beaty are together working on a documentary wherein they interview top researchers, scientists, and experiencers of high strange anomalous phenomena, from UFOs, NDEs, OBEs, remote viewing, etc. It is to be called The Consciousness Connection. Here is a trailer for the film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAPpDqlo_CI
One of those people they interviewed last year was the noted Garry Nolan, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Stanford School of Medicine, who is also delving deeply into the UFO question, working closely with researchers like Jacques Vallee and Christopher “Kit” Green.
Bob wrote:
During our interview, we asked Garry Nolan to reflect on what he believed a UAP represented. In response, he immediately referenced Jacques Vallée's work and use of the word "absurd" to describe the phenomena. This suggests that Nolan, like Vallée, views UAPs as something beyond conventional explanation, encompassing both physical and non-physical aspects that defy logical comprehension. He told us:
“I always thought why does he keep using the word absurd? Then it dawned on me, I said, oh, I see what's going on. But I was so naive as to wonder, why is it that he's using this word and why is that the important word? And then later you realize it's because the absurdity is the point. The absurdity is when you finally realize how absurd it is - that's what takes you behind the door of the Wizard of Oz and you pull the curtain aside and you realize that you're being manipulated, right? Not the people to whom it occurred, but to the observer on the outside. And it begs you to take that 30,000 foot view and to realize, ah, okay, the anomaly is the absurdity and the absurdity is the message that you're being manipulated.” Given Garry's unique background and leading role in UAP research, along with his close relationships with prominent UAP researchers, Dave and I couldn't resist asking if he had any direct knowledge of the nature of UAPs. In response, Garry replied:
”Whatever it is, I frankly don't know. I have no inside information about what it is. There is a material aspect to it. There are materials that are left behind. Now, a hundred years ago or so, Charles Fort would've called them apports - things that basically drop out of the sky, frogs that drop out of the sky or rocks that fall from the sky that aren't just meteorites, but there's a material aspect to it. So, maybe to the extent that whatever it is needs to get from point A to point B, it needs an object to do it to carry them. So those are the ships then. But maybe there's also a consciousness that creates these things literally out of the quantum foam.
“So, what allows for this, I mean whether it's artificial intelligence that's doing it, or whether it's consciousness, it's thinking at speeds that we can't really equate to. It makes decisions at speeds that we don't equate to. It's living in a different realm of consciousness and speed of consciousness that we don't normally operate in. I don't know what it is, but let's go back to this whole nuts and bolts versus consciousness. It could be both. It could be either.
“I think it does reference the trickster element that Vallée pointed out many times. The absurdity of some of the observations of a man in a silver suit landing in the field and coming to ask you for water and then walking away or asking what time it is, and you tell them what time it is and they say you're wrong and they turn and walk away. The absurdity is that you remember it. The absurdity is the day after these weird people in black cars show up and tell you not to talk about it. It’s more likely to have you remember something when somebody is telling you not to do it.
“They're using you. They're using your social contract and your social construct of how you observe things. And they're using you as a relay system to spread the message. And so, you don't look at the content of the message, you look at the effect of the message. And that's what Vallée has basically called the control hypothesis. This notion that you can manipulate via puppet strings and accomplish far more goals than just telling people what the answer is.” Personal communication, Garry Nolan, Stanford University, (2023).
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In this issue’s News Links, you may wish to check out Garry Nolan’s YouTube interview. Speaking again of Vallee, he said, “…Jacque uses the word absurd a lot in his discussion of people’s experiences and things that they’ve seen. For example, it’s absurd that a flying saucer lands in a field, some guy gets out in a silver suit and then proceeds to fix it as if it’s a car. Opens the side panel and then gets in it and flies off.” “Look, this is a show. This is meant to make you think and realize that it’s absurd and are you capable of realizing that what you’re seeing is not at face value? What you’re seeing is something which is meant to stimulate you to realize what’s really going on or what might be going on behind the scenes.”
Of course, many report being stimulated deeply by these close encounters, but Vallee and Keel both have long recognized that there are complex “behind the scenes” components to this enigma that most fail to acknowledge and begin trying to process. The surface appearances can be extremely misleading.
“Beginning in 1897, there has been an endless stream of stories and reports, many from police officers, schoolteachers, and other ‘reliable witnesses,’ describing how they encountered a grounded UFO and observed the occupants busily making repairs of some kind,” John Keel wrote in his memorable 1970 book, UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse. “In many instances, the ufonauts deliberately get out of the object and inspect its underside with a flashlight. These instances have been reported in Italy, Australia, Scandinavia, South America, and the United States. The basic details in these stories are so similar that it seems as if the ufonauts are following a carefully rehearsed procedure.”
Keel referred to this reoccurring scenario as the repair gambit. Like what Nolan said of Vallee’s control hypothesis and the absurd nature of many ongoing close-range UFO and being encounters, the implication is that it possibly suggests that there is some complex psychodynamic, psychophysical, or archetypal process happening here. Fifty-four years later, some of us are still struggling to comprehend the same puzzling implications and details. Keel correctly described mainstream ufology as a largely belief ridden infant pseudoscience (and that was well over half a century ago) and he felt that the field would have been better served as a branch of parapsychology. Of course, most in parapsychology haven’t wanted anything to do with UFOs. Alas, the wheels of progress and change in all areas of science [or those fields attempting to reach that status or level of recognition] often grind very slowly. Why should I presume so-called ufology be any exception? Sometimes I feel like myself and others in this field are almost like caught in a SyFy Mobius loop type scenario like you might watch on Star Trek or Doctor Who. We often seem to be going in circles. Very wide, never-ending ones. Keel told me once how ufologists are like a dog chasing its tail.
