Jeremy -- you give Meier more attention than anyone I know. He can never be put to rest if you keep making films. :-)

I suspect you're trying to make too much out of these guys yourself, too, hosser. Excising these guys from from your credulity is to deny entirely that germ of high strangeness likely at their root and giving the energy to anything likely (?)confabulated later on —perhaps pathetically— trying to keep that high strangeness alive. I can't say.

Though, I suspect that many of these contactee, exsperiencer, bigfoot, cropcircle, crypto-mundo, concrecence and UFO people are all the shadows they cast on the ufological cave wall ultimately created by the unspeakably brilliant light only seen in relief on same.

This is the strange light or better anti-light or darkness unknown and is highlighted not just by reason, by definition falling short, but by intuition, imagination, and call it intra-cognition.

As to where blame really lies? Look first to the authority denying the existence of that which invalidates its bottom line, a knowledge and information vacuum which sucks in that which you find most offensive. If we don't start there we're just spinning wheels and your finest works are as filthy rags in the eyes of that lord.

Nah, I don't buy that I'm giving them too much publicity by arguing against them/making parody films. They are there either way making their bogus cases on shows like "Coast To Coast" where millions of listeners get to "make up their minds" based on unchecked proclamations by proponents. So let's not pretend this little drop in the bucket voice of mine is equal to the roaring echo of the mainstream.

"Excising these guys from from your credulity is to deny entirely that germ of high strangeness likely at their root and giving the energy to anything likely (?)confabulated later on —perhaps pathetically— trying to keep that high strangeness alive. I can't say."

Right. You can't say. So what does it take for you to be able to say? There is no high strangeness likely at their root. That's the point of the article. In fact, how about you defend the word "likely." How do you back that up?

"As to where blame really lies? Look first to the authority denying the existence of that which invalidates its bottom line, a knowledge and information vacuum which sucks in that which you find most offensive."

Not sure which authority you mean. If you mean the government/military establishment....

I called out Bassett for having Jeff Peckman speak at his X-Conference this year. The man is a charlatan. The Metatron, anyone? Bassett said exactly what you just wrote. Peckman's not the problem, the government is the problem and until I figure that out I'll always be chasing my tail. But no, both are a problem. Saying that is just passing the buck. It's also insane to think that A.) anyone in government is going to take your movement seriously when obvious cartoonish frauds are at the fore and B.) that you really want a Jeff Peckman (god forbid) talking to the president about how to handle "ET."

Hey big J!

Sorry dude, I am with Al Lehmberg on this one. Not because there are some really obviously fake elements to certain contactee stories and "evidence". But because there are some big huge assumptions you are making about the nature of ultimate reality going on here.

Does reality have to conform to our materialist assumptions about what can be "fake" or "real"? Let's get real about those words: where does the assumed "real" of our human material senses stop, and the liminal consciousness of the unknown and unquantified universal morphogenetic field begin?

At a line neatly drawn between phony dinosaur "photos", hilarious spray painted "wedding cake" models and utterances and predictions which have shown themselves to be accurate and true, if a little hard for "smart" people to swallow? Does the universe only speak to us through our narrowly focused post-modern lenses and culturally vetted views of what we call "real", or does it have a larger agenda that speaks to us through any number of agencies, both (seemingly) concrete and others as wobbly as an "economy" based solely on the gaseous whims of unfettered selfish avarice? Could all of those various modes of communication be specially attuned to people with a wide variety of belief systems and tolerance levels for the things that you (and only you and people like you) think are as "phony" as Donald Trump's hair-do? Before you answer that, remember that quantum physics have unequivocally shown us that "matter" is little more than a mirage cleverly projected onto the "screen" of our conscious experience. It is no more real than Trump's hair.

As Einstein said, "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a persistent one." The Hindu Vedas say the same thing: the "Maya", the world of man, is illusory.

And, what of those contactees who have been "proven" to be charlatans? Yeah, bad photos are not very convincing. And solemn admonitions against the dangers of nuclear weaponry and human arrogance are bogus too. But wait! The latter things are dead-on right. They are as true as the yummy taste of chocolate. They laugh in the face of Trump's self conscious comb-over!

In the world of consciousness, only truth prevails. And truth can be found as easily in the bottom of a dumpster as it can behind the stuffy ivy walls of the "higher learning" institutions of our present post-modern delusion. In fact, I would say that with the right frame of mind, you are FAR MORE likely to find truth in a dumpster, in the innocent utterances of children, the insightful observations of the "mentally challenged" and in the philosophical truisms of "flaky" contactees - than you will in our narrow, culturally approved focus groups.

In another culture or another time, those contactees would be celebrated shamans. They are men who claim to have treaded the hallowed ground of alternate realities and have come back to deliver their messages to us. Even if they were "complete phonies", those ideas had to come from somewhere. In our culture we tend to spurn that which does not conform to our materialist expectations of what is real. But reality itself has a different agenda.

I might suggest that you have a look at Graham Hancock's "Spernatural", Rick Strassman's "DMT, The Spirit Molecule" and the writings of Terence McKenna before deciding where to draw those sharp distinqguishing lines. I think the gray area is a lot wider than you are willing to admit.

I'm just saying......

And oh yeah, I too think Peckman is a bozo.

Hi Jeremy,

You know I love you but I too am with Alfred and Mike here. They've both said things better than I could, so I'll be lazy and quote them. From Alfred:
Excising these guys from from your credulity is to deny entirely that germ of high strangeness likely at their root and giving the energy to anything likely (?)confabulated later on —perhaps pathetically— trying to keep that high strangeness alive. I can't say.

Not untypical in high strangeness events. Too, the manipulation by government cannot be ignored. And what do we make of international contactees? The expeirience isn't limited to the U.S. Daniel Fry, a contactee, continued his story and spiritual exploration the rest of his life. He made no money from this, in fact, suffered a lot of financial hardships.

And Mike said:
In another culture or another time, those contactees would be celebrated shamans. They are men who claim to have treaded the hallowed ground of alternate realities and have come back to deliver their messages to us. Even if they were "complete phonies", those ideas had to come from somewhere. In our culture we tend to spurn that which does not conform to our materialist expectations of what is real. But reality itself has a different agenda.

Trickster arrives. We question the reality, the truthfullness, of these at times ridiculous events. When you see the black and white footage from Giant Rock, California back in the late 1950s or early '60s with people dressed like American Indians, or somberly showing off their drawings of spaceship interiors they've visited, complete with their advanced toliets, it's ludicrous, sure. But that's part of it as well.

Addes to the titles Mike recommended I'd suggest Colin Bennett's book on Adamski: Looking for Orthon.

But wait a second, how is Peckman a bozo? He's presenting something that's every bit as true and valid as anyone else. So is Greer. So was Cheney when he said the CIA WMD info was good intel.

In fact, how do we know that Oswald acted alone? Even if he was the only shooter, it's likely that aliens who were big LBJ faif ns remotely influenced him to shoot Kennedy. Heck, I don't even know if I'm writing this or my keyboard has come alive and now demands my fingers type on it coherently. I cannot say for sure.

In fact from now on we shouldn't even write about any of this stuff anymore. UFO Magazine should shut its doors for it is all too possible that these aliens went back in time and changed the Adamski photos with chicken gizzards and glowing models with irradiated paint because we were too close to the truth. I think they fiddled with the face on Mars too because Hoagland was just too smart.

So I guess you guys and gals are right. There is no such thing as human psychology. Everything is part of this mystery. I'm narrow-minded. I see that now. Clearly.

Why contactees should still mystify:

It's fun and weird.

What's up with the involvement of government agencies?

In what ways did the government manipulate and use/dupe the Contactees? And the public in general?
And why?

It's a golden part of UFO history.

Why a world wide event?

What's the military connection?

Why did non-contactees but witnesses nonetheless see and experience UFOs and related events in regards to any given contactee?

What's the relationship with the segue from loving sexy Space Brothers and Sisters to asexual insectiod robotic emotionless beings performing intrusive clinical examinations on humans?

What was going in cultures, in the world, that made people believe/think/experience they were in often telepathic contact with aliens?

Even if suddenly a large group of individuals the world over became suddenly deluded and made up the whole thing: why?! And why did it seemingly stop and we moved on to other scenarios?

Why are large open areas, like the desert, a common stage for the meetings with human and alien?

Etc.I have to cook dinner now.

I think we pursue this because the trip is educational. I suspect we're incapable of remotely understanding the destination.

Regan, what you've just outlined there seems more along the lines of psychology/sociology, which is interesting. And that's far different than the fundamentalism disguised as open-mindedness I'm reading above. I don't see much difference between believing the earth was created in 7 days and believing in liars who have made a life of flipping us the middle finger. To believe either takes a type of zealous retardation my adult brain does not compute.

I think the adult brain is a Commodore 64 trying to wrap itself around a quad-core reality set. Closure? I suspect there _is_ no closure, eh?

Jeremy, in some ways, true. But questions about the government's complicity, not so much psychological or sociological but (gasp) political. For if the government had anything to do with any of it in terms of mind control, black ops, manipualtions, conspiracies and all the rest, then that's something to deal with. And all that aside, why does it have to be an either/or thing: they're all true believers the Space Brothers do exist vs. they're out and out liars?

I don't think is has to be either/or.

Jeremy,

I may be a lot of things but gullible is not one of them. To be honest, I am in many ways an agnostic, a skeptic who does not have any hard or fast rules or beliefs about what any of this stuff means. But there is one thing that seems very clear to me: There is something out there communicating with us.

It talks through the agency of little gray space trolls with their intrusive agendas, it speaks through channelers and new-age love muffins, it speaks through contactees and their philosophical space brothers, it speaks through cultural prophets like Gandhi and King and Buddha and Jesus and popular music and poetry and art and if you look at the posting just previous to this one, I point out where it speaks through popular movies and even in "rogue transmissions" on English TV sets.

What is real? The limited cultural assumptions we were taught in school? Fugetaboutit. Not matter. Quantum physics killed that assumption. Objectivity? Ditto. Rational materialism? Get serious.

To me consistency is real. Why do all of these various modes of communication keep repeating the same messages to us? The messages are like a broken record that keeps playing the same small core of ideas. And if you have studied these things and the UFO phenomenon itself, you find that this round of message delivery greatly intensified when we ignorant humans started blowing up nuclear bombs in the late '40s. For that story take a look at the posting following this one.

We can argue about the "reality" of the messengers. We can put a nice materialist box around our thinking and decide which messengers we are willing to allow into our personal concepts of reality and which ones to exclude. But while we busy ourselves slaying messengers with our assumptions, the messages keep coming. They come in any number of different forms, specially designed for those who have ears for their particular "acceptable" delivery systems. But the message wavers very little: It is consistent and persistent.

Being a natural skeptic, I do not know if any of the contactees actually had the experiences they claim. I do not know if any materialist assumptions about UFOs can hold water in the face of something so foreign to our limited human experience and understanding. But I do know when I am being spoken to by something bigger than the answers to any of those small, unanswered questions.

The big picture item is the messages. They speak loud and clear. Slay the messenger if you will. The cosmos has spoken and there are many other messengers and modes of communication that you may be more willing to listen to. Or not. Me, I don't discriminate so much. I never thought it was about the messenger. If that makes me fundamentalist or retarded, I can live with that. Those things are all relative anyway.

"To be honest, I am in many ways an agnostic, a skeptic who does not have any hard or fast rules or beliefs about what any of this stuff means. But there is one thing that seems very clear to me: There is something out there communicating with us.

"It talks through the agency of little gray space trolls with their intrusive agendas, it speaks through channelers and new-age love muffins, it speaks through contactees and their philosophical space brothers, it speaks through cultural prophets like Gandhi and King and Buddha and Jesus and popular music and poetry and art and if you look at the posting just previous to this one, I point out where it speaks through popular movies and even in "rogue transmissions" on English TV sets."

Wow. Where to begin. I'd love for an actual skeptic to read this and not do a rim shot after every third sentence.

So you're saying what's clear to you is there is an outside intelligence speaking to us via gray "aliens" and Black civil rights leaders? That through some alien influence and not the needs of the day coupled with a man for the times, that Gandhi and MLK rose to power respectively? And you're saying their message is the same as the grays and the same as New Age woo-woos? Really? And then you're saying you're not gullible and a skeptic?

Priceless... and kind of offensive.

I think you do have a hard and fast rule. I think you named it. Everyone alive and even some inanimate objects are the finger puppets of another intelligence. And here we are back at religion.

"Here we back at religion."

Jeremy, when you say this, what do you mean exactly?

It's obvious there's an intelligence (not neccessarily more intelligent) that expresses itself in many weird ways. It's been here forever. Duh. So, humans come along and interact with this (these?) intelligences, and put their own spin on it and it's called religion.

Whether or not we call it something and stick it in a box and surround it with saints and candles or dance around it -- "it" is still there. It's still there, regardless of our belief in it or not.

Acknowledging the presence of this stuff, and believing in it, are two different things.

Hey pardner... you're not going to go all sneery and sarcastic on us, are you... require others pay for your personal inability to adjudicate the cosmos or have it make perfect sense to you? If so, what a shame; I thought you were made of more flexible stuff. Are you to be the latest unfortunate casualty to homocentric pride? That's the ego's wage, hoss.

Wow -- hope I don't end up calling you Mr. Vaeni -- mortars in rear corners and blades at close quarters! [g].

No, Alfred. You guys go on pretending charlatans are all part of god's great plan. I'll wander away now.

...Doesn't seem like you to stride off snapping insults over your shoulder at, I paraphrase, "poor, deluded, and self-involved inferiors," either, dude. That's the feeling.

BTW, are you going to be as dismissive of Dr. Sprinkle who, on the recent Paracast show, made every indication _his_ jury was still out on the at least controversial Meier affair (as Vallee did to a degree on the Binnall program). After that the Paracrats abruptly stopped talking about it, but where was the disgusted recrimination, the outraged opprobrium, the stern lecturing? We're not playing favorites, are we? We're going to aspire to a consistency, right?

God's plan? I think that's pretty absurd on its face.

I dunno, Alfred, I didn't hear the show. But if Sprinkle believes there's something to it then yes I will be just as dismissive. And I don't recall Vallee saying anything positive about Meier unless you think saying he displays a schizo personality disorder is positive.

Unfortunately I have no other recourse than to stride off. I said my rational piece and got the Mad Hatter's Tea Party response. If you want to continue to support criminals, hoaxers, and delusional folks, have at it. There is nothing left to say. I've hit my wall. I'd quote somebody famous but then that was really just alien influence anyway so why bother.

By the way, I never did get a defense of the word "likely" from you or from Mike how it's possible Peckman is a bozo if he's just as much a finger puppet of alien god as the rest of them, you, and me.

I don't create what's going on around me, do not pretend to any control of it, and I try my damnedest not to judge whatever it is, Jeremy. Additionally, my 60 years of divergent world experience and education is such that the certitude you seem to prefer to have about things is generally not rewarded. Take that with all the salt you need, eh?

My "likely"? ... I misspoke, perhaps. My use of the word likely was to have indicated that the longevity of some of these contactee affairs would be explained by some aspect of the highly strange at their core. That it might still be there to educate us about something useful.

Too, whatever that something could be might be obscured in a key way from our perception, at its minimum, by the braying sneers of errant ignorance prosecuted by persons consumed with that gloomy certitude brought about by their over-adherence to an equally gloomy Cartesianism. This excludes yourself, of course. I know you aspire to be one of the good guys.

Finally, my observation and reportage of these things is far from support. I can have no apology if I see these things as apart from the easy to discern blacks and whites you seem to be able to perceive. That pesky experience again giving its counsel that there is a lot more gray than black and white. In fact it's the black and white that is the myth.

Lastly, for my part I resent the too easily made charge I support criminals and hoaxers. Them's mortar and blade words, nes't ce pas? [g].

Jeremy,

Speaking only for myself, I understand that many of the contactees (the original topic of discussion here) were goofy as all hell. Deluded, in part, in ways.

And, speaking only for myself, I don't believe in God's Great Plan, since I don't believe in God.

But as you well know, weird stuff abounds, It seethes. It's been with us since the dawn of time. Whatever "it" is. We know it is. Some dressed it up and put a God onto it. Whatever. Remove all that dressing and you still have "it." What's nut case fruit loops about that?

Back to the contactees: I think, with all individuals, even the Billy Meirier's, something of this "it" nature got to them. With the high strangenss stuff comes the clowns as well; all the hucksters and frauds and liars. That's a part of "it" too.

That doesn't mean it's okay. That doesn't mean we have to like it or approve of it. It does mean it's to be expected.

Like I said in an earlier post; it's a mistake, in my view, to toss out the entire so-called Contactee Movement completely, because "Adamski lied" or photos look hokey or the truly off kilter join in the fray.

You don't agree with that, okay. So what do you propose? Ignore 'em utterly, completely? Absolutely?
What if some of them were telling the truth? Remember my story of Stan Johnson and his Bigfoot-UFO encounters? Goofy sounding as hell. AND he wrapped it all up in New Age Chrstian trappings. But high strangeness followed him, and others, including me, that can't be denied. Johnson may have gotten things mixed up, even lied about some of it, who knows, but this much is so damn obvious: something really really weird happened, weird enough and for him and others profound enough, to change his life. That part isn't a lie. I suspect it's so with many contactees, ....take Betty Andreasson, who also put her experiences into a Christian context. That doesn't mean she's a liar or her experiences didn't not happen. (yeah, I know, double negative.)

I may be at the tea party, but I ain't drinking no Kool-Aid.

Sorry I missed the fire works, although I seem to have powder burns on my face! 8-O

Nobody is a finger puppet. Nor do I advocate some mysterious alien god. Those are your statements. If we were mere finger puppets, we would already be living in that promised utopia laid out by the admonitions of the prophets of old. Didn't happen. That is because we ALWAYS get to choose. They keep telling us how to do it, and we keep not listening.

But there is one over-riding factor that does make us finger puppets: It is our mindsets: Mine, yours and everybody else's. Those suckers will wave you around like a midget on a bucking Brahma bull - maybe even cause fire crackers to blow up in your face. This is why it pays to not get too invested in them. But we always get to choose there as well.

Only things is, sometimes we forget that our mindsets are choices. Finger puppet city there.

The reason Peckman seems irrelevant is because he adds nothing to the mix but his unwavering belief in whatever passes before his eyes. He is a finger puppet only of his own unchecked credulity: He never questions anything.

I know you think I don't, but you would be wrong there. I have been questioning from the beginning. If I didn't question conventional assumptions, I would probably be right with you laughing at those silly contactees. Just because I think (not believe) there might be more to this universe than meets the eye doesn't make me wrong or you right. It just means we have chosen different fingers to puppet us.

Well, guess I better wash those powder burns off my face......

"Lastly, for my part I resent the too easily made charge I support criminals and hoaxers. Them's mortar and blade words, nes't ce pas?"

It's too easily made. You said it :)

"So what do you propose? Ignore 'em utterly, completely? Absolutely?"

We're not talking about Stan Johnson we're talking about demonstrable liars. Yes, they get to be ignored.

I love how I'm the one being taken to task here and not hoaxers and not the dude who essentially puts Gandhi and Greer in the same category. Typical ufological tom-assery. I'll not be reading this thread anymore as it's painful to my sense of the common. You know--COMMON SENSE.

If that's offensive to you, Alfred, I suggest you watch "The Life of Brian" again and ask yourself if you're one of the people worshiping a shoe. Then watch "The Silent Revolution of Truth" again and ask if that's not cult indoctrination you gushed over in a 2-part review.

What does Billy think about abortion?

What does Billy think about marriage?

Billy says don't believe any religion except what he has to say about religion.

What does that have to do with ANYTHING other than believing in a cult leader with an arsenal of guns?

Sorry you're offended. Wake up. And stop fighting me and supporting that crap simply because you are kind-hearted and want to stick up for poor beaten-up Michael Horn.

I have tried to behave myself and simply watch this post, but as most of you know -- I have a hard time ignoring things.

Jeremy said --

"Sorry you're offended. Wake up. And stop fighting me and supporting that crap simply because you are kind-hearted and want to stick up for poor beaten-up Michael Horn."

I fail to see how having a different POV is fighting you. Is this a Bush concept? We either totally agree with you or we are totally against you? We are sane or crazy, patriot or trader with no middle ground?

And really more so than that, I have a hard time understanding the importance of whether someone finds Contactees interesting or whether they don’t feel comfortable calling Meier a fraud. Really, are there that many respectable Ufology researchers who base their research and theories on what Contactees and Meier have to say? Funny because I don’t know of any that do. In fact, I hardly ever see Contactees mentioned in reference to Ufology, it is normally conspiracy. Aside from Michael Horn, The Paracast and Jeremy -- I never see Meier mentioned. I do scan hundreds of blogs and news stories a day -- these are not the big topics influencing Ufology.

I have never understood the importance of taking a side either way and I still don't.