1980: Frank Salisbury guesses UFO sightings “are staged to manipulate us in preparation for contact, for directing our evolution, or to excite the gullible in order to turn off those who are not gullible.” Colin Wilson is inspired by Keel to theorize that the spirit world vampirizes energy from humans to achieve temporary material existence. J.N. Williamson views UFO confrontations as a liberating of the right hemisphere of the brain.
1981: Raymond Fowler suggests UFOnauts put people in suspended animation and control their actions.
1982: Jenny Randles argues that consciousness should logically be targeted as the medium of interstellar communication. Their consciousness will act as a radio telescope to beam messages into the complex electro-chemical computer of the human mind by selecting ideograms out of the subject’s memory to form a holographic playlet. Amnesia results from consciousness being shunted aside as the message program switches the mind to the right frequency. Earth mystery sites act as aerials to pull in messages thus explaining certain window areas. (Randles, 1983) Paul Devereux revamps the Geopsyche concept with the Earth mother doing some planetary dreaming and shaping earthlight ectoplasm into UFO displays. (Devereux, 1989)
The control motif is harder to find for the next few years. Budd Hopkins flirts with such notions in his books, but we don’t see any clear advocacy until the premier issue of his Intruders Foundation Bulletin in 1989. Hopkins notes that in abduction experiences, the victim never seems to be embarrassed about nudity. This observation eliminates all blanket psychological explanations of abductions and provides powerful evidence of an “externally caused trancelike experience” endemic to the alien abduction process. Actually, Freud observed many years ago that “Dreams of being naked or insufficiently dressed in the presence of strangers sometimes occur with the additional feature of there being a complete absence of shame on the dreamer’s part.” (Freud, 1900) The use of an influencing machine fantasy to disown the bizarre nature of dream material and uphold the blameless normality of abductee experiences is true to the standard logic of the fantasy.
Randles offers some elaborations of her theory in Abduction (1988) and Mind Monsters (1990) with Sheldrake’s morphic resonance and M-fields thrown in to update the semblance of scientific patter. Given Sheldrake’s own modifications in his theory that morphic resonance applies to events like spontaneous crystallization and not to determinate machines like computers, it is highly questionable it should be applied to multi-hormonally determinate systems like the brain. (Sheldrake, 1989) Devereux returns in Earthmind (1989) to provide a respectable pedigree for the Geopsyche concept, relating it to the World Soul, geomancy, the noosphere, Mind at Large, supermind, and Gaia. The most interesting twist is perhaps the news that people who commune with the Earth learned of psychoactive plants, because the Earth taught them the lessons that natural hallucinogens provided a mind-gate to the World Soul. Light-form UFOs may be a type of energy interface with the Earth field of consciousness. (Devereux, 1989) David Barclay’s revamping of Keel uses cyberspeak in its patter with virtual reality used to make the universe into “God’s Little Arcade.” (Barclay, 1993) Kenneth Ring offers a New Age variant of the supermind borrowing ideas from Michael Grosso, who in turn borrows the Mind-at-Large concept from Aldous Huxley. (Kottmeyer, 1993)
Martin Cannon’s “Controllers” can be viewed as a distant variant of Leon Davidson’s CIA hoax theory or, more properly, a return of the zombie assassin, a recurrent spy fiction plot gimmick. (Cannon, 1990) Cannon left the field in 1997 leaving word that he disowns the controllers theory. He complained, “That damned thing caused me nothing but trouble…Frankly UFO buffs and conspiracy nuts kind of make me ill these days.” (Saucer Smear, 1998) Strieber’s talk of ELF waves as an external control or perception implant modality involving either advanced technology or the Earth itself is an evident recall of research he did for his spy novel Black Magic. (Strieber, 1987)
Helmut Lammer’s Project MILAB looks to be an extension of lore surrounding the Dulce Base and accepts that mind and behavior control experiments are being conducted by one military group on abductees. (Lammer, 1997) Those aware with the failure of the CIA’s efforts to achieve reliable mind control have perhaps grounds to doubts this scenario. (Thomas, 1989) Even a casual look at the descriptions of the military documents cited by Lammer in section V of his 1997 report is enough to show a lack of critical discernment. Bio-chips are mentioned even though they involve nothing more than interfacing technology designed to make interaction with computers simpler, and has nothing to do with controlling minds. Acoustic and microwave weapons are described that essentially disable people in a manner with all the finesse of sledgehammers and mustard gas. Katharina Wilson’s “Project Open Mind,” a 1996 essay, endorsed Lammer’s work and offered an enthusiastic survey of mind control literature in support of the idea of military involvement in abductions. (Her ten-part essay and Lammer’s preliminary work appeared on her Web site, but she closed it down around the start of 2000.) She also testified that she felt herself to have been subjected to mind control activity.
In 1994, Richard Hall endorses the view that aliens are playing a smoke-and-mirrors game with us on several levels and if this is so what can be trusted and what is staged illusion? The Hybrid program is “an alien scam.”
Greg Little builds upon Keel’s superspectrum idea and proposes electromagnetic energy forms are evolving alongside humanity and perpetrating a grand illusion behind which they can indulge obsessions like sex and power trips: “The key to mental interaction lies in rituals that alter brain chemistry” so that harmony of frequencies is obtained. Areas with high geomagnetic energy and brains with higher levels of magnetite enhance contact. (Little, 1994)
By 1998, David Jacobs believes aliens are able to “effect a wide variety of changes in brain function” through a process he calls Mindscan. Jacobs acknowledges that the effect looks supernatural, but offers some bafflegab about aliens using “the optic nerve to gain entrance to the brain’s neural pathways.” He continues: “By exciting impulses in the optic nerve, the alien is able to ‘travel’ along the optic neural pathways through the optical chiasma, into the lateral geniculate body, and then into the primary visual cortex in the back of the brain.” He goes on this way for several lines and tells us aliens are thereby able to inject images into the cortex bypassing the retina. The alien has absolute power over the abductee’s mind and body. (Jacobs, 1998) Jacobs skips over the part that only half of optical nerves pass through the chiasma crossover and that the retina processes a hundred-fold reduction of information between the rods and ganglions before entrance onto the optical expressway. It looks doubtful the retina can be bypassed and it seems peculiar the alien needs to stare into eyes if that is happening.
There is also an interesting paradox in how the uniformly black eye of modern Grays could excite impulses in the ganglion cells at the front of the optic nerve since they tend to remain inactive when the retina is uniformly illuminated. (Luria and Gould, 1981) He also skips over how it comes to pass that impulses excited within the optic nerve are not processed as visual information within the visual cortex but escapes mysteriously to attack other parts of the brain. One needs more than impulses excited within the optic nerve, but some sort of complex animate information transport gimmick like a nanotech neuro-virus that “knows” where it is, where to go, and how to orchestrate myriad molecular interactions. If you can pull off the miracle of making something like that, there is no point in the alien staring at you, however.
EPILOGUE
Ideas of reference and influencing machine fantasies continue to appear but the late-seventies period was its obvious heyday in both prominence and popularity. The decrease had little or nothing to do with any criticism of this style of thinking. John Michell feared the basic idea was over-fanciful and suffered from the flaw that it imputes human ambitions for power to a race presumably superior to, and certainly different from, ourselves. Dominance behavior has a genetic logic that should ma
ke it a common adaptation all over. But in that case, why don’t they dominate more ostentatiously? Take over, blow us away, and maybe leave a few to kick around and laugh at.
Ernst Berger lamented control notions signaled a new age of darkness being foisted by UFO spiritists. The fear of external manipulators seemed to him “a projection of their own fearful way of thinking into our restless reality.” (Berger, 1981) Kevin McClure’s review of control motifs in our Top Three correctly understood they were ways “to offload responsibility” to more deeply explore anomalous phenomena. Such study he felt would lead us to conclude there “was some recurrent quirk in human nature” beneath belief in UFOs and anomalous phenomena. Expressing a distaste for the proliferation of conspiracies and the elevation of paranoia in our top theorists, he proclaims it isn’t cricket to evade our responsibilities to be objective by blaming external agents for our mistakes, intentions, decisions, and achievements. (McClure, 1981)
Daniel Cohen places alien control notions in a wider historical context with ancient fears like those that fueled witchcraft. The 17th century had Cotton Mather’s The Wonders of the Invisible World and we have Keel’s invisible world of ultraterrestrials. (Cohen, 1972) The idea of a historical continuum can be taken much farther. In the 17th century, Angelologists Henry Lawrence and Isaac Ambrose believed angels engaged in a type of secret suggesting that depended on the ability to handle the humors and control man’s fancies internally by tempting, troubling, inspiring, or soothing him. (West, 1955) As early as the 4th century, the theologians Athanasius and Evagrius of Pontus expressed belief in the idea that the Devil and his demons sometimes send dreams and hallucinations to frighten monks. Though they cannot enter souls, they could, by working on the brain, suggest images, fantasies, fears and temptations. (Russell, 1981) Beliefs in spirit possession extend analogous ideas into unchronicled antiquity.
Hilary Evans has added some commonsense objections to these control theories. Why, with all of humanity to choose from, have the claims of influence involved low-status individuals? Why not heads of state, financiers, scientists, educators, movie stars; i.e., people with true power and influence to get things done and spread one’s messages? Why, with such powers at their disposal, do they employ them in such haphazard, ambiguous ways as puzzling UFO visions? If you had an influencing machine, would you use it for such things as implanting abduction experiences or would you make a millionaire shower you with gifts, make your enemies grovel at your feet, or mess with the minds of leaders in the service of world peace and prosperity? UFO experiences make more sense as idiosyncratic psychodramas. (Evans, 1990)
UFOlogists have always asserted that UFO reporters are sincere and trustworthy observers and therefore we must believe them. Flying saucers are real: “Q.E.D.” Take away that syllogism and UFOlogists are out of a job. As the years have passed, UFOlogists have increasingly found themselves in a dilemma. Some strange cases have features that cannot reasonably be believed as true, but the claimants are sincere and honest: they can’t be crazy. Influencing machines resolve the dilemma. It’s not their fault they are reporting these things. Aliens, the superspectrum, the Phenomenon, occultists, the CIA, the supermind; something out there is to blame. The psychology is simple and transparent because the logic is easily recognized. It is the logic of madness.
Specifically, the logic of paranoia in the projection phase is what we have here. Nestled between the hypochondria of the sixties and the conspiracies of the eighties and early nineties, they form a natural stage in the history of UFOlogy. Control theories seem benign for the most part, letting people indulge in fantasies and psychological games without heavy accusations of abnormality. The cost of autonomy lost or some estrangement from reality is probably not felt as tragic. Free will carries responsibilities we may prefer to do without. Better a puppet than a fool.
—MARTIN S. KOTTMEYER
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The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters Page 68
