A New World

by Whitley Strieber

  Even though the image was shadowy, it was extremely detailed. I could pick out individual trees, fields, even a narrower version of the road we were on. After a few moments, I realized that I was watching not another world altogether, but another version of the landscape we were passing through. It was a bit more rough, with occasional gorges and generally wider streams. The other road was not only narrower, it wasn’t graded. The result of this was that it sometimes wound off down a hill while we continued along the graded version in our world. This would leave me with the uncanny sensation that the car had taken flight.

  The vision didn’t go on for just a few minutes, but for the entire time I was on the reservation. It continued whether I was riding in a car, walking, sitting or standing. For those three days, I was living in two landscapes at once. After I closed my eyes, it would take about thirty seconds for the other world to appear, but it did so reliably. When I was standing somewhere, I could look down and see grass and gravel that was not present in this world. I could bend down and look closely, even to the point of being able to count the number of petals on flowers and observe the details of grasses and the discolorations on stones. I could touch and smell nothing of the other world. In this sense, it was very much like out of body travel, which detaches you from those senses. I was not physical in that world, and I have to wonder if that might not be how our visitors experience this one. I tried using the sensing exercise as a tool for physically moving into the other world, but it didn’t work. Nevertheless, it is my strong sense that what we think of as technology is not what enables things like this to happen. I think that it’s something to do with attention, concentration and the brain, and possibly also requires the cooperation of an outside energy that is itself conscious. My thought is that my lifetime of doing the sensing exercise and the changes in my brain that have resulted have made me more able to see this other universe and, to a limited extent (so far), interact with it.

  The changes I am referring to involve a brain area called the dorsal striatum. It contains two regions, the caudate and the putamen, which are connected by an area of white matter called the internal capsule. There is a study under way that suggests that the density of the white matter region may govern the degree to which an individual possesses intuitive sensitivities.

  I have thought that meditation might somehow increase this density. The authors of the as-yet unpublished study don’t see any indication of this so far, but another study, published in Psychiatry Research in January of 2011 and entitled “Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional gray matter density” states, “Analyses in a priori regions of interest confirmed increases in gray matter concentration within the left hippocampus. Whole brain analyses identified increases in the posterior cingulate cortex, the temporo-parietal junction, and the cerebellum in the study group compared with the controls.”

  If the dorsal striatum is also affected by meditation, it might explain why, over years of doing it, people seem to become so much more intuitive, as has happened in my case. My own brain has been observed to have a very dense internal capsule between the caudate and the putamen, but there is no premeditation MRI to compare with the one that is available. I do feel that fifty years of meditation has made changes that involve opening my mind to new areas of vision and new ways of seeing.

  However, I would not ignore the power of the heart, either. While we now attribute thought and feeling exclusively to the brain, I think that the older vision of the body, with the heart as the emotional center, should not be dismissed. I say this because the whole experience was so emotionally powerful, and like we do so many emotions, I felt it in my heart, and it is in both head and heart that I carry it now.

  There is energy involved, which I think is conscious and capable of deciding exactly what it wants and does not want to do. A big part of coming into communion with the visitors, I feel, is opening ourselves to the wishes of this energy and attempting to understand what it might need from us and that will help it fulfill its great aims for the unfolding of space-time.

  The mindfulness practice researchers found that the changes they detected came about rather quickly, after only eight weeks of meditation, so perhaps building a brain that is receptive to contact is not all that lengthy a process. The longer time, I think, would involve waiting for one’s little glow to be noticed. My experience of this is that determination counts. You have to want it a lot and work hard for it before anyone will show up to work with you. To get darker, more exploitative aspects to appear, such as happened to Matt, all that is needed, it seems to me, is curiosity. Lack of preparation, though, is clearly not a good idea.

  That preparation should include reading material about what it is like to live with the visitors. Authors such as John Mack and Kathleen Marden offer carefully researched texts, and Anne Strieber’s Communion Letters is a treasury of personal accounts. I would avoid channeled material, as there is never any way to know where it actually comes from, an outside source or the author’s imagination.

  Beyond that, later in this book, I will explore the importance of coming to this with a strong, healthy soul. This conscious energy, as I have experienced it, is very reflective. If you feel fear, it will be fearful. If you conceal guilts, it will look right into you and at them. Having been face to face with the grays when I was still an unregarded soul, I can assure you that this is an incredible shock. Those glittering pop eyes burned into me. It was like facing goblins, and I felt like some deep part of me was about to be devoured. The ancient Greek aphorism “know thyself” is of critical and foundational importance to establishing a relationship with the visitors and all that comes with them. Later, I will go into some detail about how one uses it to build the sort of strong soul that will have no reason to find those penetrating eyes frightening.

  I am purposely being a little vague here about who I mean—is it the strangely formed visitors I’m talking about, our own dead, or a sort of field of disembodied consciousness?

  I don’t think that it’s useful to make such differentiations. Whatever aspect of it comes into contact with you, so does it all. Best to think of it as a vast field where different sorts of flowers grow, some of them appearing one way, others another way. No matter which way you go, you remain in the field.

  A specific event that causes me to suspect that we are dealing not only with specific entities but a conscious field took place at the Contact in the Desert Conference on June 2, 2019. As I was heading to a lecture by Dr. Jacques Vallee, I noticed an odd change in the atmosphere. It was as if the air pressure had dropped. My ears popped. Sound faded. I said something to the person beside me, who acted rather strangely. He seemed to be pretending that I wasn’t there. I thought perhaps he disapproved of me in some way. I went on to the lecture, and by the time I arrived, the sensation had faded.

  Some weeks later, an attendee at the conference wrote me, “I was on my way to Jacques Vallee’s lecture when I saw Whitley coming down a side path in my direction, looking deep in thought. Our paths were totally going to cross. Just before we were about to intersect, I glanced down to check that I had my phone in my bag. A bright flash from Whitley’s direction caught the corner of my eye. Oddly, I thought, ‘That’s him flashing to another dimension.’ In the same instant, I looked up—sure enough, no Whitley. He was there, and then he wasn’t. It’s hard to describe how confusing and odd it felt. The atmosphere suddenly felt heightened, and the sound seemed to drop away. At the same time, a sense of immense great benevolence came over me, as if someone with kind good humor was reassuring me that everything was ok. It felt like a gift, meant for me. It felt like magic.” She then spent some time looking for me without success and moved on to the lecture. She and a friend were taking seats “when the next person entered. It was Whitley Strieber!” For my part, I only felt the change in atmospheric pressure that also affected her. I had no sense of moving through another universe, but perhaps when this happens, we leave any memories we have gathered there behind when w
e return. This would be one explanation for the ubiquitous experience known as missing time that is reported by close encounter witnesses. We are not being taken aboard spaceships at all but moved into the companion universe, and our memories of events there return with us only in fragmented or suppressed form, or not at all.

  It is important, I feel, to note her comment that “a sense of immense great benevolence came over me, as if someone with kind good humor was reassuring me that everything was ok.” I think that this may have been a moment of direct communication with the conscious field itself, rather than specific entities that are part of it. When I am in touch with it, there is always a sense of joy, even hilarity. Those moments never fail to remind me of Anne’s love of the 14 th century mystic Meister Eckhart and his statement that “God laughs and plays,” and of her own central teaching: “Have joy.” She adopted this because it was one of the very, very few things that the visitors have ever said to me in ordinary language. She felt that it was what lay beyond our suspicion and fear, just out of reach.

  I think that my vision was opened to this other world at Pine Ridge by the action of conscious energy, not specific entities. I will say this: I have never had more fun in my life than I did while my mind was open to this vision. It was so fascinating, so tantalizing, so extremely interesting. It has absolutely inspired my curiosity and made me want to somehow walk in those fields. Maybe I’d be unwelcome to the inhabitants or even devoured by something, but maybe also by passing through the wall between our worlds, I might make a door that others could enter. I have been asking the energy for a chance to give it a try.

  Having asked many times in my life for impossible things to happen and seeing them proceed to unfold (always to my great astonishment), I don’t think that this entirely unreasonable and absurd request is at all impossible to fulfill. We shall see.

  The other world was just as complex as this one, with streams, trees, fields, gorges, grasses and flowers and a sky complex with flowing clouds. In general, though, I didn’t see many structures, and no people. From time to time, I’d see a house or cabin. Sometimes a white square would flash on the distance then quickly blink out. Was that a person, perhaps distorted by some quirk of consciousness that we don’t yet understand?

  When I looked up with my eyes closed in the car, I saw the sky and passing clouds. When I opened them, there was the ceiling. The weather in the other reality was similar but not the same. It seemed more unsettled. There were storm clouds there that were not present here. The moon was waning and gibbous in both realities, but in the other seemed to me to be a bit less gibbous, as if it had been full starting on about the 13 th rather than the 16 th, which was true here. Over the weekend that I was on the reservation, it was rising late at night, but when I closed my eyes, it was well risen in the other reality by about half past nine. Even stranger, when I opened them, for a few moments there was a sort of hazy glow where the moon had been in the other world. This would slowly fade into the normal night sky. I wondered, then, how close I was to slipping into the other reality.

  On my second day on the reservation, I had the privilege and honor of being allowed to witness an hour of a private family ritual that I found to be among the most sacred things I have ever experienced. It involves chanting and drumming and dancing. It was deeply moving to me.

  The dancers fast and dance over a period of days. In the hour I was allowed to be there, I danced as well, entering the ceremony as best I could. The chanting stirred my heart and my soul, the drums shook my blood. When I closed my eyes, the area where the ritual I was watching was taking place became an empty meadow. I could still hear the drumming, but it seemed to now be coming from the right, not the left. When I looked to my right, where the new source seemed to be coming from, I could see the edge of a low hill. The sound seemed to be below it. When I opened my eyes, the hill was no longer there, the meadow was again filled with dancers and the only drumming was coming from the left.

  At one point, I noticed people looking up and pointing. But what could it mean? How could they not pay attention to such an event as this? Still, I was curious. I looked up, too, and there at the top of the clear blue sky was a small object. It was light tan in color and seemed quite high. Was it a balloon? I watched it for a few minutes, but it didn’t go anywhere or do anything—just hung there, motionless and silent.

  I kept my feelings inside, but I did think that this was the visitors. I can’t say that I felt their presence, which has sometimes happened in the past when I have seen their devices, but my initial reaction was that they were there to honor the ritual. They would have known that I would write about it.

  I asked around about the object. Some of the people thought it might be an FBI drone, but others said that they were seeing beams and little balls of light coming out of it. However, the FBI keeps a close watch on these people. The Wounded Knee Occupation of 1973 was viewed as an insurrection against the United States. So maybe the FBI was watching and maybe they would have used a drone. As for me, I watched the object off and on for a total of about fifteen minutes but did not see any unusual phenomena associated with it, except for the fact that it was motionless to the point of being uncanny. The eye expects things in the sky to move, however slightly. This did not. I was reminded of the UFO footage taken by fighters from the carrier Nimitz in 2004 and released in 2017. The objects on those videos are not aerodynamic but held aloft in some other way. This object looked exactly like that. Others saw similar objects at various other times during the conference, so my thought here was that this was indeed the visitors. In September of 2019, the US Navy admitted that the objects recorded by the Nimitz fighters were indeed unknowns.

  The one remained motionless for too long to be a balloon. Even if it was motionless only for the time I observed it, that would be too long for one. There were balloons being released as part of an experiment in Sioux Falls, but that city is to the east of Pine Ridge, and the winds that day were out of the west.

  When I left, it was still there, still motionless. Individuals who left after I did confirmed that it was still in the sky at that time. When it did finally depart, it moved away slowly and was seen again over other parts of the reservation.

  That is also quite a long time for a drone to be hovering without being returned for a recharge. When they hover, they aren’t absolutely still. Neither are they completely silent. I have been unable to find any commercially available drones that can remain aloft more than two hours. This was the limit, as of the summer of 2019, of the longest duration drone, the HYBRiX.20.

  Still, although I do believe that the object was an unknown, I can’t rule out the possibility that the FBI has silent, long duration drones that can hover for hours. I don’t believe it, but I can’t rule it out.

  This was all pretty strange, even for me. Strange and wonderful. What happened next, though, was even stranger. Led by a member of the American Indian Movement, who was also one of the last direct descendants of somebody who had survived the 1898 massacre, a group of us went to the Wounded Knee memorial on the reservation. As I stood looking down at some of the graves, another member of the conference stood beside me, also looking down at them. I was vaguely aware that he had moved away then returned. I thought nothing of it until later when he came up to me and explained that, when he stood beside me, he could see down into the graves and could see the broken skeletons that were lying there in the earth.

  As he explained this to me, I could see the puzzlement on his face. I don’t blame him, as I have never heard of anything like this, not in all the literature of high strangeness that I have read in my life. There are a few cases where people were said to be able to see through objects. In Greek myth, Lynceus of the Argonauts was supposedly able to see though walls and into the ground. But nowhere is there a story of somebody who could somehow confer this power on another person while not possessing it themselves. The visitors can pass through walls. When out of the body, so can we. But X-ray vision, especially X-ray
vision by proxy—no, I believe that this may be the only such story that has ever been told. I think that all three stories, though—seeing into the other world, apparently popping into another dimension and conferring this power on the person standing beside me—all have to do with the presence of the same energy. I have to say, though, even as I write this, I can see those broken skeletons in my mind’s eye and feel the cruelty and shame of the massacre.

  When we went to the nearby Badlands one evening, I found myself still able to see the other world there, too. I immediately noticed that hills were not as dramatic. This would mean that there has not been as much erosion there as here. When I looked down at the ground, I could see more grasses there than here, also. So the geologic history of the other world might be less violent, but at the same time, it also appears to be less populated. I say this because the roads on the reservation in this world are graded and in the other world they are not. I kept hoping that I would see a vehicle, but I never did. Had I done so, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that it was horse drawn. This is because the roads in the other world were sometimes unpaved, and the tracks in them were narrow, suggesting wagon wheels. The paved areas were black like macadam.

  As I left the reservation on Monday, I also left the other world behind. By the time we were twenty miles from Rapid City, I could no longer see it. On the plane back to Los Angeles, I gazed out the window at the gentle landscape far below and thought long thoughts about my strange life and the strangeness of life in general, as it was being lived in the cities and towns we were passing over. I had left the greatest mystery of my life behind. I’d be a fool, though, if I didn’t live a “never say never” life, so for all I know, it’s going to return to visibility sometime. I regretted not being able to enter it. To do that, however, I knew that I was going to need to find out more.