Aliens On Earth.com Resources for those who are stranded here Our Bookstore is OPEN Over 5000 new & used titles, competitively priced! Topics: UFOs - Paranormal - Area 51 - Ghosts - Forteana - Conspiracy - History - Biography - Psychology - Religion - Crime - Health - Geography - Maps - Science - Money - Language - Recreation - Technology - Fiction - Other - New Search... for keyword(s)   in Page Titles in Book Title/Author in Contents of Pages ---other searches--- Metacrawler Yahoo FAST Search Google Altavista Dogpile Inference Find Northern Light IWon.com MSN Search Las Vegas Sun Location: Mothership -> UFO -> Updates -> 1997 -> Dec -> Au revoir

UFO UpDates Mailing List

From: DevereuxP <DevereuxP@aol.com>
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 1997 23:56:06 EST
Fwd Date: Wed, 10 Dec 1997 03:42:35 -0500
Subject: Au revoir

Dear List,

My stirring of the pot has certainly brought forth a lot of froth
and bubbles!

As this will be my last statement on this list for a while, and
perhaps for ever, I trust you will allow me to leave you with the
main points I was trying to make, lest they be lost amid all the
kerfuffle. They were modest enough.

* FOLKLORE.
I was not saying that the UFO event, whatever it is, is folklore.
I was saying that ufology is comprised of folklore, and we ought
to recognise that. The folklore might well point to a real
phenomenon - or, more likely, a set of differing occurrences that
get lumped together under the umbrella of "UFO" - in the manner
indicated by my "Old Bill" folktale, but is unlikely to be
literally true. It is important to become aware that most
versions (at least) of the ETH are folklore - and that is so even
if it turns out that things-seen-in-the-sky are physically real
craft. If we are not aware that the nature of ufology, the human
penumbra surrounding the UFO enigma, is essentially folklore, we
get seduced into belief systems and waste years, decades, going
down conceptual cul-de-sacs.

It is clear from the generally hostile response that has met this
modest observation that this is a real issue. It's a problem.
After 50 years, we should perhaps more actively and consciously
address it. It is such a problem that even people like Jerry
Clark, who dismisses the observation of the presence of folklore
in ufology as of no value, is a victim of it too. Invisible
folklore can damage your understanding. Visible folklore can
perhaps be used to reach greater understanding.

*THE ETH.
As ufology has now turned 50,  I suggested that it might be a
good idea if we did a stock-take of ufological assumptions, and
especially of the ETH as it has been unproductive and slippery
over the course of that half-century. I suggested that it should
stay on the table as an option for explaining
things-seen-in-the-sky, but that perhaps we should lessen the
mental  energy that goes into it. I called for a deepening and
widening of thinking within ufology that did not rely so heavily
on the ETH, and one way of doing that was to put the ETH aside
for a while, as an experiment.
I further pointed out that there was not, in any case, such a
thing as the ETH, and that it amounted more to a motif. Its
insidious nature is such that we do not always notice how it
drives apparently other aspects of ufology. (For example,
government UFO conspiracies are subjects in their own right
within ufology, but they revolve around the issue as to whether
the government is covering up alien bodies, craft and technology.
This strand of ufological research is therefore *informed* by the
ET motif. Another example would be the discussions about the
"alien autopsy" footage: the technical matters concerning the age
of film stock, types of suits and equipment used by the
characters shown on the film, the arts of Special FX model
making, etc. are not in themselves anything to do with the ETH,
but they revolve around the question as to whether or not a real
alien body was involved, whether or not an alien flier had been
obtained from a crashed saucer by the government decades ago.) I
offered this suggestion in order to enhance ufological thinking,
and did not presume to state what UFOs were. I assure you I did
all this in good faith, and it is false characterisation to make
me out to be "out to lunch",  "bombastic" and all the other names
I have been called.

If a suggestion that we take stock, and  put less reliance in one
particular explanation, is met with such hostility, how can the
subject area move forward? If people like Jerry Clark find
themselves unable to come out from behind their emotional
barricades, fruitful discussion cannot even begin. I am
particularly disappointed that Jerry could not respond in the
manner of a scholar and take part in some model-building, at
least in the spirit of experiment. But he is so far away from
such a possibility that he actually denied that the ETH still
dominates ufology in one form or another. I therefore  attempted
to move this disagreement outside the scope of mere opinion,  and
presented a 100-sample tester of this list, UpDates. The result
of this indicated that the majority  of postings were concerned
in one way or another with  the ET motif. This was not my opinion
but a methodological demonstration. It can be repeated by Jerry
Clark or anyone else. Yet Clark refused to accept the result, and
continued to make his denials.

Jerry did make the point that ETs should not be confused with
aliens, and that they could be dimensional as well as spatially
extra-terrestrial.  I accept this, but we are still dealing with
the hypothesis that physically real non-humans in physically real
craft are involved. This is a rose by any other name.

*ALIEN ABDUCTIONS.
I have argued that the literature in a range of other areas of
human experience, such as lucid dreaming (especially), sleep
paralysis (to some extent - it is a precondition of a certain
state of consciousness), ecsomatic or out-of-body travel,
shamanic traditions of spirit flight,  narcolepsy,  and other
conditions, can leave no doubt in the minds of anyone who studies
them that the same class or group of experiences are involved. I
have had what I took to be OOBEs, and I am actively and
experientially studying lucid dream research. In the course of
that research, using carefully developed techniques, we
successfully had an experiment in which I was able to approach
within 20 feet of what appeared to me to be a flesh-and-blood
alien (if aliens have blood!) while what I call waking
consciousness was replaced by another mental reality, another
sensorium, of equal realism.  Jerry Clark claimed that this was
anticlimatic, and of no relevance to the abduction exprience. It
is difficult to credit such an attitude in any serious
researcher, let alone a man who claims to be an agnostic with
regard to alien abductions. His  claim and his behaviour do not
match, and I made it clear that I consider him an apologist for a
literal interpretation of the  alien abduction experience, and
not an agnostic. When the truth of all this comes out, I will not
let him forget his stance, and I put him on notice of that here
and now.

Whatever one's beliefs about alien abductions, to not merely
dismiss but to angrily abuse me for the information I impart
means that there can be no serious discussion concerning the
alien abduction experience within the confines of ufology as it
currently exists, if Updates is a fair cross-section of
ufological thinking.

I specifically left my views open about the aliens encountered in
this profound, bizarre and important experience - this is because
I do not (yet, at any rate) know their nature, though I have some
ideas. The nature of the experience and the aliens encountered
need and deserve intense study, and that is beginning to happen -
but not inside ufology itself. We do not understand the nature of
the experience, but of one thing I am certain - it is a mental
reality situation, not a physical one (though it might, possibly,
have physical side effects).  I am therefore not debunking the
experience (indeed not, I am fascinated by it and suspect it
holds great teachings for and about us), but I am trying to get
at the experience without the hindrance of labels such as alien
abductions (or, for that matter, OOBEs - a more useful
interpretation, but an interpretation nontheless). I am just
asking that we try to understand what is happening, and I am
further saying that enough literature and research already exists
to at least determine that we are dealing with a mental situation
(and I mean neurological wiring, not merely "psychological" as
some critics have complained on this list) - even though we do
not yet know for sure what lies beyond that mental gateway.

If people are not acting from a belief posture, but a genuinely
investigative one, there should be no antagonism towards what I
am suggesting. Especially as research can show my viewpoint to be
backed up by powerful evidence.  It seems, however, judging by
the  main response on this list (but thank you for the more
thoughtful postings),  that an investigative posture does not
exist. Only postings that support a favoured view can be
tolerated, it seems.

* GENERAL.
Jerry Clark, who has been the most vociferous in these exchanges,
stated that my work does not figure in the  references of the
major debunkers such as Phil Klass. This is because I am not a
debunker, and I am saddened that Clark is unable to make the
distinction.

I do, however, feel that those of us within ufology do need to
take more stock of where we are going, make visible assumptions
and attitudes that may currently be transparent to us, and to try
to broaden and deepen our field. But that brings me back to where
I came in.

In the exchanges of the past weeks and months, I have become
conscious that a relatively small number of us have been hogging
the cyberwaves, so to speak. I apologise for my part in that.
My only defence is that I have stayed silent for long periods
when others were discussing other matters, and I chipped in this
time - and then, really, unintentionally - first because of a
point made regarding folklore, a subject I am published on and
can offer some opinion on,  and then because I thought I could
make a difference by suggesting some fresh avenues that might
prove fruitful.  I must declare that I have never experienced
such a torrent of abuse or sarcasm for my efforts, however
imperfectly I may have carried them out.

The silent majority of you out there in list-land will have to
decide what kind of ufology you want. As it stands, as far as the
alien abduction theme goes, the classic experience, Betty and
Barney Hill's interrupted journey, involves what we are to take
to be an encounter of two ordinary people with a physically real
alien craft and occupants, which traversed unknown interstellar
reaches or inter-dimensional warps, with a technology beyond our
capability and possibly beyond our imagination, which then used
equally magical technology to abduct these human beings, in order
to ask questions like: "What is a vegetable?"

If this type of interpretation satisfies you, then so be it. If
it does not, then you might find that you will have to forego
being silent in order to help fashion a ufology more worthy of
the enigma involved. That will also necessitate going outside the
literature that currently gets labelled "ufological".

Anyway, enough. Thank you for allowing me to re-iterate my
position.

Now it only remains for me to grant Jerry Clark his Christmas
wish, and to "get out of the kitchen". I am travelling for the
next few months, so would  be unable to to take part in
discussions on Updates in any case, so I am asking Errol to
unsubscribe me - for the time being at least. I thank him for his
sterling service in maintaining this list.

Some of my  travels involve further practical research on the
alien abduction experience, with workers and laboratories in
different parts of the world. So, though I am leaving this
particular kitchen, I'm certainly still cookin', let there be no
doubt about that.

My best wishes to all of you for a happy holiday season.

From your legal alien in the USA,
Au revoir.


Paul Devereux