New Worlds of Body, Mind & Spirit Since 1901
| When someone asks if you believe in UFOs, they’re not asking if you believe there are occurrences in the sky which remain unidentified. They’re asking if you believe that Unidentified Flying Objects, UFOs, are piloted or controlled by intelligent beings not of this Earth. UFOs have been a common sight over the last 35 years or so, and may have been seen since time immemorial. And although many UFOs are simply misidentified natural phenomena, until a better explanation comes along it seems probable that some of the objects which cannot be identified are probes from another planet or dimension and are controlled by intelligent beings. Unfortunately, the amount of physical evidence remaining from close encounters with these objects is minimal. Some claim that it has been been confiscated by various paragovernmental authorities.
Certainly the belief in extra-terrestrial intelligence is not cause for alarm. But there is an opening for psychic fraud. There is no way to tell if any of the people who claim to have had a close encounter of the third kind, meeting an alien being or ship, or a close encounter of the fourth kind, being taken aboard an alien vessel, are telling the truth. There is no proof. Some may be lying. Some may be fantasizing. Polygraphs (lie detectors) can only detect what you believe. If a man fantasizes that he has been on a UFO, a polygraph may show that he is telling the truth because he believes he is telling the truth, not because it happened in fact. Much of the information that is supposed to be about UFOs from contacts is downright senseless and silly. But if they want to believe it and it doesn’t hurt anyone, there is no problem. Problems develop, however, when people who claim to be contacts start to form cults. In the late sixties and early seventies, such a group was formed by two alleged contacts. They started to gather converts in the southwest of the U.S., especially in California. These two said that aliens were soon going to be picking up the faithful and take them to a beautiful planet of peace and love and abundance. They had their followers sell all of their belongings (turning the proceeds over to the two leaders, of course) and join them out in the wilderness. The original two are no longer around. They fled with the money. Interestingly, it has been reported that several of the defrauded people were still out in the wilds waiting to be picked up by the aliens. That UFOs may be crafts from alien cultures seems like a logical assumption. We certainly do not need new cults and psychic frauds when the real evidence of contact with aliens, such as in Extra-Terrestrials Among Us requires no cults and no fictionalization. |
