Flying Saucer to the Center of Your Mind: Selected Writings of John A. Keel

by Keel, John A.

  The question before us is simple. Was PKD a flake? He spent the last eight years of his life talking and writing about his “religious experience.” He had learned the true meaning of the ancient phrase, “He has seen the light.” Was he just a plain nut? Had he been reading my books and articles? Was he into drugs?

  God, he told us, had fired a beam of pink light directly at him, at his head, his eyes; Fat had been temporarily blinded, and his head had ached for days. It was easy, he said, to describe the beam of pink light: it’s exactly what you get as a phosphene after-image when a flashbulb has gone off in your face. Fat was spiritually haunted by that color. He lived for that light, that one particular color.

  However, he could never really find it again. Nothing could generate that color for light, but god. In other words, normal light did not contain that color. One time Fat studied a color chart, a chart of the visible spectrum. The color was absent. He had seen a color that no one can see; it lay off the end. (VALIS, p. 12)

  It does sound as if PKD may have had personal experience with the dazzling light that has now been reported by countless UFO contactees, angel witnesses (there are thousands of reports of angels each year), and chimera sighters. The visible spectrum goes from red at one end of the scale to purple at the other end. Beyond these we have infrared and ultraviolet. Some humans are able to perceive those “invisible colors” and peek into the edges of a whole universe that is hidden from the rest of us. That may be the universe that gleefully manipulates us into charging into battle to spew our guts all over the landscape. It is also a universe that grinds away endless propaganda like a broken phonograph to generation after generation of prophets, seers, contactees and, in the 1980s, channelers.

  In a letter written on May 20, 1977, PKD reveals that his mind was picking up signals from that broken phonograph, like most contactees and spiritualists. “Meanwhile I was shaping my cosmology,” he wrote. “When it finally took form in March of 1974, I understood, noetically, that two opposing forces, powers, sides, or entities contended in our world, using it as a gameboard or battlefield. Intellectually, I could then identify these two absolute forces with the two forces I had formerly seen as mundane: my foe, which became identified with the Sons of Darkness, and my friends, the Sons of Light…to use Zoroaster’s terms. I had been part of a cosmic struggle acted out on our Earth. It was a struggle, taking place in the arena of human history. Evidently I was a Son of Light, who had come here, forgotten his origin, identity, and purpose, but regained memory and understanding of all this after I had done my work… I remembered who I was, why I was here, and I experienced my true father, whom I call the programmer.”

  The programmer! Was PKD just ranting, or was he standing on the edge of one universe and peering into another with greater perception and lucidity than most contactees, channelers, and spiritual ding-a-lings?

  Philip K. Dick lived a tortured, paranoia-filled life, hounded by the IRS and the other cruel forces of the 1970s. He may have also (wittingly or unwittingly) summoned up the Sons of Darkness. While I can find no direct references to it, his writings hint that he may have been flirting with pentagrams and sword-waving in darkened rooms.

  In 1970, his home was broken into and high explosives were used to blast open his filing cabinets (which were unlocked at the time). He fled for his life, hiding out for some time from some mysterious enemy. The FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover, was performing all kinds of atrocities against normal, innocent citizens during that period.

  Following the military coup of 1963 (JFK’s assassination), we were all living in an Orwellian police state.

  Everybody’s phone was tapped, or so it seemed. Everybody’s mail was being tampered with. (The CIA has acknowledged intercepting at least one letter Philip K. Dick sent, to a Soviet scientist, in the 1950s.)

  The pointless bloodbath in Vietnam was steadily escalating… The “Black Iron Prison” Philip K. Dick had warned us about seemed to be becoming a reality…

  And then, the “New Age” (a planned diversion?) suddenly came upon us, and Ouija Boards were outselling Monopoly sets.

  CHAPTER 22

  THE SECRET TAPE TO THE CONGRESS OF SCIENTIFIC UFOLOGISTS – CHARLESTON, WV 1969

  The following is not to be reproduced in any fashion… This tape is intended only for the Closed Session of the 1969 Congress of Scientific Ufologists at Charleston, West Virginia…

  This is John Keel in New York City, June 1969. I regret that I am unable to attend this year’s convention; but my three-year safari into the never-never land of flying saucers will soon be ended. From here on, my main efforts will be devoted to historical studies and statistical surveys.

  Some of my controversial conclusions have already been published; other basic material that I have collected will soon appear in London’s Flying Saucer Review and other periodicals… My book, Operation Trojan Horse, which fully outlines all of my investigations, evidence, and conclusions, will probably appear late this fall.

  I have personally investigated approximately 600 cases in total depth. Now, I am not talking about sightings; I’ve investigated thousands of those. I am talking about cases where a definite manifestation occurred. I began with the belief that flying saucers were most probably the product of an advanced technology from some other planet. But by the end of 1966, I realized that the evidence I had collected pointed to another, far more complicated answer. I will try to explain here a few of my basic conclusions.

  First of all, the quantity, scope, frequency, and distribution of the UFO sightings automatically rule out any possibility that the objects could conceivably be of extraterrestrial origin. They are seen year after year, in the same areas, going back as far as 1896. We can trace the sightings even further back. If you collect all the known sightings for any given area, you will find that this basic factor is true.

  Huntington, West Virginia, for example, has a long history of UFO sightings, going back to the early 1800s. The phenomenon has been consistent throughout the Midwest for centuries. The Indians had many legends about the “Sky People” going back long before the white settlers arrived. This means that the phenomenon has been an environmental factor in those window areas for a very long time. Countries such as Sweden, Norway, Ireland, China, and Japan have always recognized the existence of unusual aerial phenomena. UFO-type events are mentioned in their earliest historical records. These records indicate that the UFOs did not represent occasional visitants but, in actuality, originated in some manner in these areas.

  The subject of UFOs assumed no particular importance until 1934, when an enormous flap developed in Scandinavia. Officials in Sweden, Norway, and Finland became concerned because the objects occurred in great numbers over military areas, forts, railways, naval harbors, and other places considered to be of strategic importance. In the past few months, Scandinavian researchers have unearthed hundreds of newspaper reports from 1934. Military spokesmen and officials of that period confirmed the reality of these reports. In 1936 and 1937, there were scores of “weird light” sightings, many of the most sensational nature.

  We are now slowly building up a mass of files of those aerial reports, and find that they conform precisely to the modern UFO sightings. Further back, there were intensive flaps in 1846, 1850, 1866, and so on, including numerous contactee events. The deeper we dig into history, the more we find that these things have always been going on. These events are not governed by the proximity of Mars or some other planet; they are commonplace and consistent throughout history. But they are very rarely recorded, and that is the whole key to our problem. Unfortunately, only a handful of researchers have been willing to undertake the tedious work necessary to locate these early reports in the newspaper files. It will be a long time before we can finally assemble the complete picture but, at this point, it does look as if UFOs are part of a large pattern encompassing the whole world…

  The objects appear to be a complex phenomenon: intelligently controlled, yet paraphysical, comprised of energ
ies of a different order. Some can seemingly defy gravity and travel faster than sound without producing sonic booms… The majority are merely transmogrifications; they exist only temporarily, as illusions – momentary condensations of energy. They may come from beyond our space-time continuum, but not from beyond our atmosphere or planetary format. They are like ghosts, bound to the earth, but mostly invisible to us. Occasionally, they enter the narrow spectrum of human vision and become temporarily visible. This process is fully explained in the Bible and many other ancient references. It is explained again and again to each new contactee. And there are thousands and thousands of contactees that you never hear about.

  I have reason to believe high officials in the U.S. government ascertained the nature of the UFO phenomenon in 1946, a full year before the events of Maury Island and the Kenneth Arnold sightings. In 1946, Scandinavia experienced another, better known flap, and these appeared in the very same areas that had been engulfed 12 years prior, in 1934. A considerable amount of revival UFO data was collected during WWII and in 1946. This data was probably sufficient to lead to the conclusion that the UFO “orb” phenomenon was paraphysical and, thus, practically impossible to explain to the public.

  How could any president or general explain to the public that UFOs were invisible emanations from this planet itself? They couldn’t, and they didn’t try. Between 1950 and 1955, the RAF in England conducted an exhaustive study of flying saucers. In April 1955, an RAF spokesman told the press that the study was complete, but that the official conclusion would not be made public, because that would only create more controversy (and could not be completely proven).

  However, Air Marshal Lord Dowding, the man who led the RAF during the Battle of Britain, gave a series of lectures in 1955, in which he announced that the UFO occupants were immortal, could render themselves invisible to us, and could even walk and work amongst us without being noticed. The UFO organizations of the period ignored his main statements and extracted a few lines out of context, in which he discussed the possibility of extraterrestrial origin. By the time of his death, Lord Dowding had completely rejected the extraterrestrial hypothesis. That same year, 1955, Kenneth Arnold issued public statements in which he also repudiated the ET Thesis, and suggested that UFOs were really living forms of energy. Was he a nut? He was so nutty that he was actually nominated for Lieutenant-Governor of Idaho...

  On May 3rd of this year, RAF Air Marshal Sir Victor Goddard gave a lecture at Caxton Hall in London. Victor is of cabinet rank, and was involved in the RAF’s UFO investigations in the early 1950s. He said, “While it may be that some operators of UFOs are normally the paraphysical denizens of a planet other than Earth, there is no logical need for this to be so. If UFOs are paraphysical and, consequently, normally invisible, UFOs could plausibly be creations of an invisible world more coincident with the physical space of Earth than with any other planets.” He obviously had reasons for believing that UFOs were invisible and paraphysical. Perhaps it was this realization that led President Eisenhower to tell the press in 1954 that flying saucers exist only in the minds of observers. So far as the hard physical scientists are concerned, UFOs do not exist at all. They have never left behind any substantial artifacts.

  UFOs have appeared and disappeared suddenly in front of Air Force pilots, astronomers, physicists, and even me. The Russian cosmonauts described them as “marvelous phantasms.” That may be as good a description as any. In my travels, I discovered an amazing thing: some people could see these marvelous phantasms, and some could not. More than once, I have stood with a group of people in an open field, and watched a low-flying UFO glide silently past. Some of us could clearly see the object in great detail. When we compared notes later, we had all seen the same thing. But others in the group saw absolutely nothing. They thought we were crazy, or were putting them on. Sir Victor offered the following explanation for this peculiar phenomenon:

  Paraphysicality is observable by people with “second sight” (paraphysical perception) and by people who normally lack that faculty but – through the influence of the [second-sighters] – are “enabled” to sharpen their perception to the point of “seeing.” Paraphysicality is imaginable to the point of supposed observation. This tends to frustrate the real validity of both groups.

  What he is trying to say there is something I’ve discovered and have written about. A lot of people didn’t understand it. That is, people who see exceptional UFOs close up – contactees, in particular – have all the same characteristics as people who have supernatural experiences (i.e., psychics and transmediums). The two types are identical. The manifestations differ slightly, but the basics – the personal histories of contactees and psychics – are the same. Therefore, we are forced to assume that it takes a special kind of person to perceive these objects close up – to have a genuine experience with them.

  Now, if these assumptions are correct, then we must reluctantly concede that the government has been telling us the truth all along, and that UFOs do not represent an advanced technology, nor do they come from other planets or pose a threat to national security.

  They do sometimes pose a threat to individuals. But we cannot say, and will never be able to say – or prove – that they pose a threat to national security. The evidence to support the aforementioned conclusions is overwhelming. It fills whole libraries, but the UFO buffs have been blinded by belief and devotion to a cause. They have not studied the whole, but a tiny part of the whole. They began with a premise that flying saucers were real and were extraterrestrial. The UFO organizations actually censored and suppressed cases that tended to prove otherwise.

  We must make a completely fresh start. It is absolutely impossible to prove that flying saucers are real and extraterrestrial; if it were possible, someone would have done it a long, long time ago. What we must do now is completely reassess the situation and admit all of the previously inadmissible evidence. We must collect all the details of all manifestations that surround UFO events, no matter how “far out” or incomprehensible they seem. We must forget the absolutely fruitless and pointless campaign against the government and Air Force. It has succeeded only in draining our strength, stirring the coals of controversy, and keeping the subject mired in ridicule. It has accomplished absolutely nothing.

  We will always be plagued with cults and believers. It is very hard to deny something you think you have seen with your own eyes, or experienced with your own body. Nevertheless, the mounting evidence indicates that such experiences are more psychic than physical, more hallucinatory than real. Instead of condemning those who have the courage to publicly reveal such experiences, we should be studying them, trying to understand the true nature of the experiences. Most of the Men in Black episodes – and I’ve investigated a great many that will never be published or publicized – seem to be a variation of the hallucinatory experience. The black Cadillacs vanish suddenly into thin air, as do the MIB themselves. They are nothing but marvelous phantasms…

  When you study the occult records of the last few hundred years, you are immediately struck by how many phantom horsemen have appeared over the centuries. Before the invention of the automobile, there were many thousands of cases. Sometimes, groups of people would see a phantom horseman appear out of nowhere, and then disappear into nowhere. With the invention of the automobile and the gradual extinction of the horse, it was almost a logical development that the phantom horse would be replaced by the phantom automobile – automobiles that you can chase and that will disappear into thin air. There were many, many cases of this, and many witnesses have told me of these cases...

  You have to see it yourself to believe it. We know that these automobiles exist in a very solid state. On one occasion, a witness actually threw a rock through the window of one of these automobiles and, yet, the automobile later vanished into thin air, in front of their own eyes. So we know that they can seem to be very real, and yet they aren’t.

  I should make clear to you that I discovered, in 1956, th
at at least 98% of all the truly important UFO events are never published anywhere, and they are never investigated. Nobody ever hears about them, because nobody ever goes out searching for these cases.

  They are simply too weird for most editors to take seriously. This means that the published material is, at best, very superficial and not very useful to research, because it is not giving you the real details. At worst, it means that the real truth has been hidden by diversions, nonsense, and totally meaningless sightings of paraphysical manifestations and materializations.

  The real nightmare out there is beyond your belief and comprehension. Until you have taken the time to review the tons and tons of valid, well-documented religious and occult records, all that I have said here will continue to seem like utter nonsense. Many of you suffer from emotional hang-ups over this subject, and have absolutely no sense of objectivity or responsibility at all. Those few of you will always remain in the dark, waiting forever for the Venusians to land on the White House lawn.

  A few contactees eventually figured this out for themselves. Howard Menger finally went on Long John Nebel’s TV program and confirmed that he realized he had been the victim of strange hallucinations. George Adamski, in his final years, told friends that he was aware that he had been tricked and misled, and that much of what he had believed and preached was absolutely false. It has cost me three years of my life, and many thousands of dollars, to sort all of this out and arrive at these same conclusions.

  Flying saucers are primarily a visual, observational phenomenon. They could be the manifestation of another space-time continuum. We have probably never seen the objects or their occupants in their true form. We see only what they want us to see and, to a large extent, believe only what they want us to believe. It is our tragedy that so many of us have believed so much for so long and, yet, believed so little of the real truth. We have been speculating instead of investigating – settling on a conclusion, and then trying to fit the incoming data into the conclusion.