Are Aliens Actually Angels Attempting to Midwife Us Into the Next Higher Stage of Our Ascension to hOMe? Matter as Metaphor, Part Ten

One at First Sees a God as a Demon

This idea that aliens — whether “channeled” or encountered — are somehow connected with our higher or our “future selves” is common currency in UFO circles into which I’ve stumbled. The important point, however, is that we do not see them that way at first. Initially, these forces are imbued with all the pain and “garbage” from our polluted inner worlds, especially with that emanating from our particularly severe birth trauma. Or, as Jung phrased it, one at first sees a god as a demon until one is “wholly” enough to recognize him.

Thus, abductees may color their experiences with elements of being poked and prodded, of having things inserted into them, of being surrounded by alien medical-type beings in a laboratory setting, of having “samples” removed from them for testing, and of being swooped from one place to another without any control or say on their part. Compare this with what might be an infant’s interpretation of their experience upon coming out of the ordeal of birth into a brightly lit room of masked medical personnel and weighed on cold scales, having thermometers stuck up them, having suctions and fingers inserted into their mouth with their jaws stretched wide, having medical samples taken from them for testing for various indicators of health and possible disease, being roughly scrubbed, and then moved to strange places where they are left for periods before being moved around again. And then there are all the other aspects of the perinatal which color the experience as described by Lawson.

I Called it “Grace.” Not “Abduction.”

This is not, however, to say, as Lawson does, that these experiences are not in some sense real, or that they are entirely derivative of birth trauma. I can say this emphatically for I myself have had at least the one experience described earlier — the “Sure It’s Hard!” experience — which contained many of the elements of a UFO abduction. But it had none of the usually reported painful, perinatal-reminiscent elements at all. It was the most unusual experience of my life, and was incredibly profound. But I called it “vision,” and “grace,” not an abduction.

The Cuttingly Stark Medical Tuxedos in Which We Outfit Our Modern Angels

I am not claiming to be special; my experience was not completely without apprehension and fearfulness. Furthermore, from Mother Mary in the Bible to John Lilly and Terence McKenna currently, people have frequently reported encounters with higher entities — whether termed visitations from angels or experiences of “the Other,” “Logos,” or “allies.” It is also possible that the fact that I had been processing my birth, in a deep experiential way, for several years before my “abduction” may have had something to do with the relative lack of perinatal overlay in my experience.

Elijah Wasn’t Probed. Moses Wasn’t Examined.

Reversing that possibility reveals another dimension: The fact that Western culture is the only known culture to have so perverted the natural birthing process — with high-tech and sterile gadgetry, drugs, and machine-like efficiency — may account for the cuttingly stark medical tuxedos in which we outfit our modern angels. It may also help explain why the encounter would initially seem extra-threatening and painful in modern times — and in that particular perinatal-reflecting way. After all, it is said of Jesus’s disciples that they “fell on their face, and were sore afraid” at the time of the Transfiguration and the appearance of Moses and Elijah. But nowhere do we see anything like being medically examined and probed in these earlier visitations.

Perinatal Past Life Perceptions

Compare also the past-life experiences that people report. In one sense, this explanation supports Janov in his pointing out the personal trauma elements of so-called past-life memories. Yet, in the same manner that one’s pain, and especially perinatal pain, colors and “constitutes” one’s encounter with these other foci of consciousness, might it not also color and imbue one’s past-life memories? That is, is it possible that, contrary to Janov, there actually are memories from other times trying to come through, but that unintegrated pain elements from this life are mixed with them. That is, not that the past-life part is not there or is not coming through, but that one’s remembering of it and one’s interpretation of it is not going to be correct until one clears away the competing and interfering this-life elements.

If You Don’t Hear the Heavenly Rhythm, You Need More Spiritual Experience

Look at it this way: It is like when you are picking up a channel on your radio but there is too much static obscuring it, or, maybe a better analogy, when that particular band is picking up from two channels at once, so that you — and I am sure we have all had this experience at one time or other — are hearing parts of both broadcasts intermingled. Thus, you hear, say, a Beatles tune on one channel at the same time as a fundamentalist preacher on the “religious” channel — an irritating combination, no doubt, from either end of the cultural spectrum.

At times you hear the music clearly, with only some faint rhetorical rhythms in the background; at other times, you hear the heavy pounding of fundamentalist verbiage, with only a sweet yearning harmonious tinge to it.

In this example, if you do not know otherwise, how do you interpret your experience? If you are hearing the pounding rhetoric foremost, let us say, do you not interpret this experience in the cataclysmic, assaultive, and brimstone terms of the punishing preacher talk? Of course you do. Yet does this mean that the Beatles song does not exist? Of course it does not.

Similarly, and this is the way we have observed this process to work, as you clear out and recognize the personal-pain aspects of the bombastic preacher overlay, you are more able to tune-in to and clearly take in and appreciate the harmonious and loving Beatles tunes.

At first all you did was get access to something beyond yourself — that is to say, you turned on the radio. Your interpretation of your radio experience is obviously going to be colored by all aspects of what you pick up at this time. It may be a while before — in looking within, or in gaining access, or in having transpersonal encounters — you are able to discriminate the personal from the transpersonal and to hear the underlying heavenly rhythm.

Demons Can Later Be Seen as Angelic Midwives Helping Us Get Back hOMe

In sum, it is not that the encounters with alien entities or the emergence of past-life memories are either exactly false and derivative of underlying pain — as Lawson and Janov would have it — or that they are entirely accurate, as Mack and past-life therapists would have it. It is possible instead that the truth lies in a “both – and” — a paradox … as is so often the case on these borderlines of the ordinary. It may just be that these realities and memories are real, that these experiences do really happen . . . but that our interpretations and perceptions of them are highly distorted by our individual pain. In the same way Jacob, in the movie “Jacob’s Ladder,” could only see demons hounding him until he had relinquished attachment to his former self and finally saw what they truly were — angels attempting to midwife him into the next higher stage of his ascension to hOMe.

Continue with “The Footprint We Have Discovered on the Shores of the Unknown Is Our Own”: On Science as Idolatry … A Physicist Reports on the Truth Behind Scientific Conjuring

Return to Matter as Metaphor, Part Nine: “One at First Sees a God as a Demon Until One Is “Wholly” Enough to Recognize Him.”

Matter As Metaphor References

Antler. (1991). Proving what? [poem]. The Quest, 4(3) [Autumn 1991], 61.

Baba, Sathya Sai. (1991). Joy of surrender. Sathya Said Newsletter, 15(4) [Summer 1991], 15-18. [Adapted from Sathya Sai Speaks, Vol. VII, pp. 78-86, Second American Printing, 1985.]

Hesse, Hermann. (1951). Siddhartha. Trans. by Hilda Rosner. New York: New Directions.

Judge, Mark Gauvreau. (1993). The outer limits of the soul. Common Boundary, 11(4) July/August 1993.

Jung, Carl G. (1978). Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Laing, Ronald D. (1988). [Interview with R. D. Laing]. Omni, [April 1988].

Lawlor, Robert. (1989b). Sexuality and the universe evolving. New Frontier, November, 1989, 9-10, 43.

Lawlor, Robert. (1992). Voices of the first day: Awakening in the aboriginal dreamtime. New Frontier, April-May, 1992, 19-20, 22, 48.

Lawson, Alvin H. (1985). UFO abductions or birth memories? Fate, 38(3) March 1985, 68-80.

Lawson, Alvin H. (1987). Perinatal imagery in UFO abduction reports. In T. Verny (ed.): Pre- and Perinatal Psychology: An Introduction. New York: Human Sciences Press.

Mack, John. (1992). The UFO abduction phenomenon: What does it mean? Presentation at the Twelfth International Transpersonal Conference, Prague, Czechoslovakia, 25 June 1992.

Mack, John E. (1992). Other realities: The “alien abduction” phenomenon. Noetic Sciences Review, No. 23, Autumn 1992, 5-11.

McKenna, Terence. (1991). The Archaic Revival: Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality, UFOs, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, and the End of History. San Francisco: Harper-Collins.

Schiff, Francine. (1991). The mystical experience: An interview with David Spangler. The Quest, 4(3) [Autumn 1991], 8-14.

Terry, Sara. (1992). Alien territory. The Boston Sunday Globe, The Boston Globe Magazine, October 11, 1992, 20-27.

Thompson, Keith. (1989). The UFO encounter experience as a crisis of transformation. In S. Grof and C. Grof (eds.): Spiritual Emergency: When Personal Transformation Becomes a Crisis. Los Angeles: Jeremy P. Tarcher.

Thompson, Keith. (1991). Angels and Aliens: UFOs and the Mythic Imagination. New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co.

Uhlein, Gabriele. (1991). Hildegard of Bingen. The Quest, 4(3) [Autumn 1991], 48-85.