Report from the Field (Close Encounters!)

[Balder]

Before I join back in the various discussions here, I want to make a report on my recent “close encounters” in the UK.  As some of you may know, years ago, I worked as a transcriptionist for Dr. Steven Greer, transcribing the testimony of numerous witnesses (NORAD employees, other government and military officials, pilots, etc) for what eventually became known as the Disclosure Project.  Although I’ve never been fully convinced we’re being visited by extra-terrestrials, some of this testimony was quite interesting and compelling, and seemed to be coming from credible sources, so I’ve kept an open mind on the subject.  (I believe without doubt that life exists on other planets; I’ve been less sure that any of it has ever made it to the Earth.) 

But while I’ve kept a generally open mind about the possibility of our having been visited by ETs, I approached this recent UK trip with Greer with a good bit of skepticism.  The basic purpose for our week-long excursion was not only to go out UFO-watching, but to attempt to initiate or intend “contact” experiences.  Most “close encounter” experiences are passive; these events just happen.  A close encounter of the fifth kind, however, is active: humans actively attempt to communicate with ETs, to initiate an interaction or relationship of some kind.  Going into this event, I only knew that the protocol was to use meditation to attempt to open contact or communication with ETs, and that Dr. Greer used various electronic devices to detect anomalous energy signatures and such during these “events.”  This seemed like a far-fetched proposal, but the opportunity had presented itself to me to do this (at no cost), so I decided to approach it openly and to perform the exercises in earnest.  And coming back now from this experience, I have to admit that something unusual did happen.   I don’t know how to interpret everything that happened, but neither can I write it all off as New Age wishful thinking or fantasy.

There is a lot I could write about, from various experiences that happened over the week, to the strange and interesting amalgam of paradigms that were presented (Vedic non-dual spirituality, UFO/ET culture and narratives, and alternative / open-source energy initiatives, among other things), but for now I will focus just on one of the nights’ experiences.  (We visited various crop circles and ancient historical sites during the day, and then in the evenings – from about 9 am till 2 am – we would be out in the field doing meditation and attempting to initiate contact).

About midway through the week, we went to visit Stonehenge and the nearby barrow mounds during the day, and then returned to the barrow mounds in the evening to do our practice.  We set up camp at the base of one of the barrows, in order to stay out of the wind.  (It sometimes rained or got very cold at night, so we dressed in layers, had rain gear, and did our best to weather the elements).  The day before, Dr. Greer had closed our nighttime practice session by instructing us to ask in our dreams or subsequent meditations if there were any “messages” that we might receive about what would happen the following day.  An Australian lady reported that she had gotten quite a detailed message:  1) a lot of activity would be observed at the zenith of the sky; 2) we should watch out for sudden changes in temperature; 3) there would be beings present with us on a subtle level; 4) these beings would do “open heart surgery” (metaphorically / spiritually) on Dr. Greer, who used to be an emergency room surgeon.  While she was talking, several people, including Tom Clearwater, were taking pictures.  Right after she finished talking, Tom exclaimed that something unusual had shown up on one of his photos: a pink light was emerging from Dr. Greer’s chest in his heart area.  He passed his camera around and we all were able to see the light on his chest.  As the evening progressed, we watched the skies and saw a number of unusual moving lights, most at the zenith of the sky but some elsewhere.  There was a group of lights, for instance, that moved together for awhile in a perfect triangle formation, which then separated and went different ways. 

Several people reported seeing various lights or luminous spheres appearing in the group, including a large sphere that appeared between and behind me and my wife.  (This had also happened previously).  I didn’t see anything, but some photos that people took did show strange lights in the midst of our group. 

At one point, Dr. Greer led a meditation and asked us to enter a causal state and then to just open to whatever presented itself on a subtle level.  I found myself seeing a very sharp and clear set of rooms or structures of some sort, nested together and leading deeper and deeper into some hidden core.  I felt energy and excitement mounting as I approached the core, but then the meditation ended.  When we were asked to report what we’d experienced, several people described having seen or sensed a pyramid-like structure; some saw a single structure, while others saw two pyramids meeting at the point.  The sky throughout our meeting had been very clear – Dr. Greer was able to fire a powerful green laser about 2 miles up into the sky – but suddenly there was a very low, thick cloud right over us.  The laser only went up about 30 feet and then was blocked.  People started feeling warm.  When I turned my face to the sky, I felt a powerful heat on my face, as if I was turning my face towards a heater or a fire (though the night was quite cold.)  A deep stillness had settled all around us.

Eventually we finished between 2 and 3 am and went home.  The following day, we went out to the countryside to eat dinner at a famous pub.  One of our members started talking to a local in the pub and it turned out she was a crop circle expert who ran a crop circle website.  She asked him if he knew that a crop circle had appeared yesterday.  He said he hadn’t heard that, so she told him that it had appeared in a field next to the barrows by Stonehenge, nearby where we had been meditating all night.  News of this spread quickly to the rest of our group (we were sitting outside at some picnic tables) and she came out to show all of us a picture of the crop circle, which had been discovered at 4 am when the farmer went out to his field.  It was in the shape of a pyramid.  This is it:

 

The following day, we decided to go visit it.  The farmer refused to let anyone onto his field, so we were only able to go down a public access road (really, a dirt path) that ran along the fence to his property.  From there, we could see there was an area of the field where the grass appeared to be missing, but couldn’t make out much of a pattern.  We sat on the trail by the field for our afternoon session, and a number of helicopters, both military and commercial, circled over the field, apparently observing and taking pictures of the crop circle.  At one point, my wife snuck away from us and actually went into the field.  She found the crop circle and walked around inside it.  She said it was huge, pristine, and beautifully made.

[Balder]

Interesting -- yes, I can see that, too.  The people who had described the pyramids had described them as ascending in steps, rather than in a smooth line, so this crop circle design seemed to reflect that.  But I can see fractal cubes in there as well (which is how a pyramid of multiple steps would appear from above).  My own spontaneous imaginal display at the time had been of moving through incandescent, complexly nested chambers, towards a hidden space at the core of some vast structure.

[Balder]

Speaking of cubes, a cube-based crop circle appeared in the same area (Wiltshire) on the day after we left the UK, among others that have appeared this summer:  see here.  The lady we met at the pub apparently helps administer this site.

 

[Joseph Camosy]

Regardless of whether or not UFOs exist (in the way most of us would imagine), your experiences, the experiences of your group, and the synchronicity with the crop circle phenomena may be indicating something significant about the presence of these symbols in the collective consciousness. 

Something's percolating.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Crop circles, no matter how complex, are man-made. That they (or some) occurred during your group meeting can be accounted for by pranksters knowing of your outing, possibly even having an infiltrator. I look to such explanations first, second...and last. I know, bah humbug.

[Balder]

Yes, of course I've considered that, and agree that on the surface it is obviously a more reasonable explanation than anything "paranormal."  However, if this one was made by pranksters, one would think we would have heard them at work or would have seen other evidence of their presence, which we did not.  We left between 2 and 3 am and the farmer found it at 4 am, so it could have been made then, but it seems unlikely to me that this large structure was made in such a short time.  Given the synchronicity between the meditation experiences and the form of the crop circle, I don't think random pranksters who knew of our outing is likely -- also because we decided as a group where to go each day, and this wasn't posted anywhere for other people to access.  The possibility of an "infiltrator" also should be considered, but just based on my own impression of the events, persons, and interactions that night and over this week,  I personally am doubtful about that.  So ... critical thinking and cautious skepticism, yes, but (for me) a priori dismissal, no.

[Mary W.]

What remarkable experiences, Bruce! Even if that crop circle is man-made, the other phenomena that you and the group experienced (the photographs, the luminous spheres, the lights in the sky, the synchronous images during the meditation, the sudden cloud with the sensation of heat) are intriguing! 

While most crop circles are man-made, I've also heard that a small number of them have unusual features that cannot be explained or replicated. Man-made crop circles are created by using a board or some other flat surface to push and flatten the plants. Anomalous crop circles, however, feature elongated plant stem nodes, expulsion cavities in the plant stems (as if each stem had burned or seared at a specific height), and magnetized iron spherules deposited linearly throughout the circle's soils. These unusual phenomena have been reported in peer-reviewed scientific papers.

In the early 2000s, three MIT grad students did an experiment to see if they could replicate the unusual features discovered in the anomalous crop circles. It required a lot of noisy, flashy equipment and a lot of time -- including work during daylight hours and loud machinery and manpower that would have been noticed by anyone in the vicinity. And they were actually unable to fully reproduce the abnormalities. There was a 2002 Discovery Channel documentary about this experiment: "Crop Circles: Mystery in the Fields." Here is a detailed article about it by Nancy Talbott of the crop-circle investigating BLT Research Team (who is disgruntled at MIT's conclusions on the experiment): "M.I.T. Kids' Crop Circle Attempt Yields an Interesting (And Totall...

[Edward theurj Berge]

FYI I just noticed the following on the SyFy channel tonight in my area, which I'll likely watch:

Invasion Roswell(2013)

Elite commandos come out of retirement to battle an extraterrestrial onslaught.

Denise Crosby, Greg Evigan 9:00 - 11:00 PM Syfy

[Mary W.]

Dude! Syfy's movies generally suck. Although they have whipped up surprising successes at times, like Sharknado -- which already has a sequel coming in 2014.

[Edward theurj Berge]

It sucked so bad I quit watching after 15 minutes. Syfy though has had 2 hit series that I really like, Continuum and Defiance. In the latter earth has been invaded by ETs and several species thereof are living among us.

[kelamuni]

I'm not sure why this kinda stuff needs to be interpreted as having to to with space aliens. Some alternative scheme. The 'fifth kind' idea sounds a bit like channeling. The surgery theme" we find in encounter narratives sounds like some forms of shamanic initiation. Personally, I'm interested in how the ET, encounter, abduction, surgery narrative parallels the older "faerie faith" and its lore.

[Edward theurj Berge]

Sookie Stackhouse is a faery.

[Balder]

I also have noticed some interesting overlaps between the ET-phenomenon and ancient faerie (and shamanic) themes.  As to your question, though, the ET element wasn't arbitrarily overlaid on a random series of events; rather, these events occurred in the context of a deliberate attempt to "contact ETs."  This doesn't mean that what happened has anything to do with ETs, of course.  I just wanted to note that the "orientation towards ETs" came first and was the (enactive?) context for the rest. 

An ET-oriented person might say that faerie lore is an ancient mode of interpreting ET phenomena.  A traditionalist might say that ETs are just a modern re-packaging of faerie and spirit-world experiences and beliefs.  A Jungian will note common archetypes, dressed up in images appropriate to the time...

If just from a sociology of religion perspective, an interesting aspect of Greer's presentation is the way he fuses ancient and modern elements in his own interpretation.  He argues that, given the limitations of light-speed travel and the distance between stars, the only way for beings to "go interstellar" is to discover nonlocality, which he relates to causal consciousness.  He argues that mastery of subtle and causal consciousness allows beings to communicate across vast distances using thought, to shift into subtler states of being themselves, to move inter- or transdimensionally, etc.  Thus he appeals to an ancient Vedic worldview to explain the abilities of ETs to move between worlds.  This is fused with more modern UFO lore with his claim that ETs have consciousness-assisted technology and technology-assisted consciousness -- meaning that UFOs are "machines" which can stabilize and amplify modes of consciousness, allowing for nonlocal "travel," and which themselves are responsive to thought or consciousness.