EYES IN THE SKY
‘THE IWISTBLE COLLEGE
By Jacques Vallee
E. P. Dutton, 216 pp., $9.95
Reviewed By Robert Anton Wilson
Being a Gontactee myself, 1 am
always curious about new Flying
Saucer books, although most of them
relate to serious science about as
Closely as 2 Ronald Reagan speech
Telates to an essay by Bertrand
Russell, which is to say not at all,
The whole subject is kitsch: Unin-
ventional Low snp. One can bare
Iy discuss the matter with a straight
fice, and if serious debate is some
“Engaged, one expects it will be
interrupted’ by the Three Stooges,
if not by the egregious Reagan hin-
Self and his old co-star, Bozo the
Chispanzee
Nonetheless, the Cantactee ex-
rience 1s one of those dreadful
perrenials, like political
brawling and head colds in winter.
No matter how many skeptics try to
brush it under the rug or bury it in
ridicule, the experience continues.
It must be at least a5 common as
flashes of ESP, clairvoyance, haunt
Ings, Oneness with God, nenories
of past incarnations,” incest,
homosexuality or any of the other
taboo things that have alsays hap
pened in every human society and
Sontinund inure even suring he
8 when everybody was trained to
Pretend they weren't there
‘The standard UFO book will prob-
abty sound as naive. in twenty ears
(or in Five...) as Freal's writings
on semuality already sound.” Like
Freud breathlessly announcing to
the smug Victorians, "My Goldy in-
fants do have sex drives” and "Ho-
1y Gosh, almost everybody has mas-
turbated, maybe even the Pope,
the UFO journalist bursts out, oft
en in italics and reinforced by ex
Clamation marks, "Gee Mhillikers,
Sigheings-conflimed-on-radar keep
happening” and "oly Com, fellers,
Glte’ contacts are bs} going on
oe is tempted tO aah, i
UFOs, today, are Like donestic
espionage by the C.1.A. was in the
"60s: everybody knows about it ex:
cept the Government and the Estab-
Lishment press. Ask the first three
people you meet on the street, and
two at least will tell you, with
great assurance, "Uh, they're alien
Space-ships, but the Government and
the media are trying to cover it
me
All this is rather pathetic, be-
cause actually nobody knows any’thing about "it" at all, not even
the Contactees, who are’ scientific
ally as much if the dark as those
who've only seen one of Them at such
a great distance that it might have
been a weather balloon, after all.
Jacques Vallee, with a Master's
in astrophysics and a Ph.D in cyber-
netics, cones on to this scene with
a refreshing mixture of scientific
skepticism, bold imagination and
Gallic irony. THE INVISIBLE OOL-
LEGE is unlike any other UFO book
ever written. Dr. Vallee questions
what everybody else takes for grant-
ed, doubts what everybody believes,
drenches us with data that doesn't
“fit” any of the theories of eith-
er the True Believers or the dic~
tap! nop bellevers, and then offers
4 hypothesis of his own -- a hypo-
thesis that is both plausible and
maddeningly inconclusive.
The UFOs, Vallee proposes, are
a. control systen, her ‘oni tor fi
Systens In a strategic and tactical
Hy: t9 fe even mare Dine aboot
they “shape” our behavior in
precisely the sane way that 3.F
Skinner shapes" the behavior of
experinental animals in his: labor
story
ee is quite Literal about
this. He even has 2 graph denon-
Strating that UPO/human contacts
follow 3 cycle similar to that of a
"schedule of reinforcement" in Skin-
nerian Behavior Mod
More inclusively, Dr. Vallee
relates UFOs to other forns of hu-
man contact with the Unknown -- the
appearances of the "Blessed Virgin
Mary"" at Guadalupe, Lourdes and Fa-
tina (which contained 43 parallels
vith modern UFO sightings, careful-
ly enumerated for the reader in
chart form); the encounter between
Joseph Sith and the “angel”, Mo-
toni, which resulted in the Mormon
Church; the dislogues betwen Dr.
John Tee and several different "an-
gels"; the Gnostic and Dionysian
mystery-cults of ancient tines; the
“fairies” or “Little people” of
various cultures from Ireland to
Tiber; and, by implication, all the
territory of what used to be called
"oceultisn'' or, in religion, "mira-
cles."
The entities which have inter-
acted with himanity in all these
cases, and in modem URDlogy, are
uusing’a technology which allows them
to manipulate the perceptions of the
Insansubject any way they wish.
‘Their strategy reasins constant,
Vallee insists: the “revelation”
piven the Contactee is always one
Step beyond the current Bel fet-sys~
tem in the Contactee’s society and
alvays includes an elenent of "
Hbetate abeurdity" to guarantee
that it will be rejected by the
more skeptical and "educated" class-
es. And, almost alvays, the Con
tactee has sme “evidence” to prove
that the experience was not "totally
subjective.” The evidence nay vary
fron place to place and tine to
tine (a gift for prophesy, a power
of healing, 9 confirming radar
sighting, etc.), but it only con-
fims that sonething has 5
not that the highly spocalyptical
and deliberately absurd events de-
scribed by the belazsTed and mind-
blown Contacte happened.
In aany cases, Vallee demonstra-
tes, the Contacteo vas given sesu~
ane *- senetines repeatedly, es
pecially’ in nediunistie contocts ~~
that nore evidence, of an irrefue-
able character, willl soon be forth-
coring, to, convince the wost bigot
cd non’believers. It never happens.
Sonetines, asin the Uri Geller ex:
travagenss, evidence Js shawn to one
Selentist (Dr. Pujarich, in that
Case) and then destroyed before’ an-
other scientist can confine it.
The Contactee is eventually is0-
rated from mainstream society, tt
In'most eases acquires @ group of
believers who quickly take on calt-
Tike characteristics, “(Some today
are whispering that Geller is the
Misclah."-) these cults can grow
to considerable sizes; indeeds If
tone of Dr. Vailee's deadpan tnder-
Statements are taken to their logic:
al conclusion, this nay well be the
origin, not fist of Mormonism, but
Of all’ the wajor religions. Al”
tholgh modern Contacts blend in &
lot of science-fiction with the
Standard ethical messages’ (peace,
Sharing, the nity of ail Living
Bongos ete), the style of the
Message is altays apocalyptical.
By means of such Contact exper-
8
|
fences -- more in one century, less
in another, but alsays escalating
when vast Social change is needed
human behavior, Inman belief,
fuman hopes have been manipulated,
conditioned, shaped, all through
history. | "They'” are our control
systen, the cybemetic that
keeps Us within the lines of the
grand INA strategy for our planet. {
‘This will seem extravagant to
everybody, except those who have
already had ittering, ego-
blasting, apocalyptical Contact
with Higher Intelligence. It is to
be expected that those who have had
the experience will imediately
vide into two groups: those who be-
lieved what they were told in these
epistemological psycho-dranas, ant
who will therefore indignantly re-
Ject Dr. Valleo's cool’ and sone=
what sinister analysis; and those
who have retained Sone normal hinan
rationality even after the exper-
ence, who will probably agree with
Dr. John Lilly's enthusiastic ver-
dict on the dust-jacket, "the first
Feasonable hypothesis about, these
Phenonena that T have read.”
To accept, at least provision:
ally, that"They" are a control. sys-
‘tem need not imply any infal libil:
ty on their part. THe foxes are a
control system, regulating goose
population in an ecological sense,
but the foxes remain primitive max:
alian life-forms. Fumaity has un-
doubtedly functioned as a control.”
system on the rest of Earthian Life +
forms -- a donesticated ape bright
enough to invent tools and redesign 7
the environment more relentlessly’
than any beaver pack or ant colony
== but ecology is little but a hor-
ified record of how often the hu-
wan interventions in nature have
menaced humanity itself. The UR0s,
if they are part of the seamless web
of an intelligent ocosphere, may
still be, on their ow, no more oa-
niscient’than the average fox or
average hunan.
It would be premature, however,
to accept any particular UFO absurd-
ity as evidence that the control
system has necessarily goofed. As
Vallee shows with brilliant detail,
the most nonsensical aspects of UFO
‘Mruman conmmication are best des-
ribed as neta-logic rather than
illogic. Vallee"s paradigm is the
following dialogue (from a real
Close Contact case):
UPO “hunanoid'': “What time is it?"
Hunan Contactee: "Iwo-thirty.
UFO: "You lie. It is four 6
clock. |
It was actually two-thirty. Hhy |
should the UBD ask the tine if they |
imew it?” Why should they Lie about |322i accuse the human of tying?
Wy engage in such horse-play at
all, when the Inman subject was ca-
‘of discovering the real tine
and discovering the pointlessness
fof the whole dialogue?
This is not iNogic, Vallee a
es, but a deliberate nind-fuck,
‘entirely sinilar to the koans of the
Jan Masters, the inexplicable jokes
‘of the Sufis, the tine-warps and
} tine-scranbles of fairy-lore in the
(eltic nagick tradition. Another
Contacte was given a version of
this basic epistemological hotfoot
being taken “aboard” a "ship"
bere Re tas manipulated ints Yac-
‘cidentally" seeing a clock with no
hands on it.
Many Contactees suffer partial
Fsmesia. Others stop their story
fat one point and say, "They made me
pranise not to tell the next part,"
pani won't tell it. Another group’
Jeention something’ that they then
Selves, without orders from the
PUD, decided not to tell to other
‘umans,
Vallee recognizes meta-logic in
ail such blank-outs: what is "con-
fed” is that which the current
igeality-map will not find tolerable.
Hee neglects to note the paral-
Hel with persons who have survived
longed isolation, all of hon
experiences sitilar to tradi-
mystic Illumination and to
“Contact” Many iso-
tes refuse to talk at all, or
Ik very Little, during the week
‘two woeks after rescue. Often,
The plain fact is that social
ponsensus-reality (as Dr. Lilly
falls it) is maintained for each
}of us entirely by continuous rein-
Fforcenent through association with
Jother conditioned subjects molded
the sane social imprints. A
sro-dot of LSD, ten days in a
loset, or a few shananic or yogic
‘exercites, and thewhole charade col
Hlapses, ai least temporarily: @
}doren, a thousand, alternate "reali-
‘ties’ appear, each as “real” as the
Jothers and soae of them indisputa-
bly more "real" than the social "re-
lity." Nobody but a totally con-
[ditioned robot, for instance, would
respond lustfully to green pieces
[of paper, blessed by the Federal
Reserve and called "money", as the
"sane, normal” citizen does.
If the Reality Gane is imposed
bby social conditioning, and if the
‘are part of an ecological con-
1 system monitoring slow-to-ab-
ss in that Reality, we
t
HLL vant to know, Who or What are
They?
Vallee is singularly unhelpful
with this, the ulfimacey question,
He approaches his climax with £ur-
ther questions, rather than with
answers: "I would like to step out
Side the conditioning maze and see
What makes it tick. I wonder what
T would find. “Perhaps a terrible
supethuman monstrosity the very
contemplation of which would mike a
span insane? Perhaps. a solean gsth
ering of wise men? Or the madien-
ling Simplicity of unattended clock-
work?"
Porhups wo can do a Little bet-
ter than thet.
‘The parties-of-the-second-part
in Contactee experiences (i.e. Then)
are, at ninimm, versatile, invent-
ive’ and highly deceptive. They talk-
ed a high grade of philosophy with
Dr. John Lily, and an equally high
grade of ethics with G. 1. Gurd-
jieff. They enable Uri Geller to
bend metal, jam geiger counters, and
perform sinilar Grade B science”fic-
‘tion stunts. tine, be-
stow ‘wild talents" of a psionic na-
ture on favored Contactees, and re-
main, at each step of human cultur-
al evolution, one step in technolo-
gy ahead of Us, at least.
‘The fact that their behavior,
when analyzed by Dr. Vallee with the
assistance of computers, reveals &
pattern of cyhomette control ary
e interpreted to mean that Dr. Val~
ee, ike Uri Geller, is getting
what his mind is prepared to "yet."
Vallee, a cybernetics expert, finds
a control system. Geller, who hat=
e5 to read, gets euctly the kind
of moral preachnents and psionic
“niracles” featured in Universal
Studios kid-oriented sci-f1 films
widely distributed throughout the
world when Geller was a child
‘Those who are ready for Little Green
Men get LOS in their Contact ex-
periences. Over a hundred Gontac-
tees by now have reported sexual. in-
tercourse with beautiful space-von"
en. The Catholies get @ now ap-
Pearance of the Virgin, when it is
necessary to stir them up.
The highest mystics, 1f we care
to consider thea as ESP’ Contactees,
"get" experiences of Cosnic Love,
usually, and often of Omiscient
Wisdom.” Tt is important to note
that other very high mystics have
"gotten'” Cosmic Indifference. (Sone-
thing for everybody?)
‘The Control System, if we accept
Dr. Vallee's metaphor, is also pro-
gramed with the persona of an fde~
41 Parent, when that. is required.
Indeed, the Contactees who ‘come back
Tanting about an “Almighty Father,"
19
are, historically, the single larg-
est group -- evidently because the
search for an Almighty Father is a
deep human compulsion, as Froud not-
ed.” Right behind then are the sec-
ond largest group, raving about the
ideal female, sexy or maternal ot
both, as the case may be.
Dr. Vallee is well enough read
in the occult to note that the "an-
gels" of Dr. Dee in the 17th Cents
Fy and Aleister Crovley in the ear~
Ty 20th had a 2ot In comwon with
each other and with UFO "hananoids."*
fio even notes that AFFA, the extra
terrestrial from "Uranus" who com
mnnicated with two naval intelli=
gence officers ina particularly
food aediunistic contact (and Kind-
4y provided a "space-ship" sight in
akeonvande, for tebjective” yeriei®
Cation) bears a nane, which in Dr.
Dee's angelic" Tanguage neans "N-
thing." One senses adinbrations of
the-Cod-uho- # 5"Nothing in Cabala
and St. Dionysus, the Void of Tibet-
fm and Zen Buddhise.
Vallee should have gone further
and dug into HEAVENLY BRIDEGROOM by
Ida Craddock, which was published,
under the thin pen-nane "Ida C."" a-
round the turn of this century.
Ms. Craddock hed a love affair with
an “angel” that lasted over twenty
years. Her account of this extra-
ordinary erotic experience later
fell into the hands of a Dr. Theo-
dore Schroder, who re-published it
with a long introduction by himself,
explaining her "delusion" as a clas”
sic case of sexuality sublinating
into religious mania. Aleister
Crowley, who knew a lot more about
“angels” than Dr. Schroder, review-
fed the book and pronounced that Dr.
S didn’t know anything about angel:
ology. As the foremost expert on
angelology and denonology of our
tine, Crowley declared, in brief,
that’Ns. Craddock's heavenly lover
was real.
A comic father to the celebrat-
a Nassrene, a Control Systen to UE.
Vtlee, # clom from the cosric cit
cus to'Discordlans, a Lictle Green
fn to a Mississiopi farser or an
Tish peasant of the Oth Century, a
Siper-fex:partner to somebody else
ne yerare obviously dealing with
dammed” good touring magickal the-
Stroy to Say the least.
“To paraphrase biologist J.B.S.
atuaney "the universe Cincluding
the UFCS) aay be, tot only stranger
than we think, bit’ stranger than we
an think." fo paraphrase ayselfy
“he tniverse (anclusing the UFOs)
nay bey not only more hte igent
han wo thingy but more intelf gent
than we canthinks* "And to pars:
fies sone Ley roroprabing
eh Dr. Haldane anda The i=verse (includin gthe UR0s) may be,
not only more erotic than we think,
but mote erotic than we can think
Aven.
But the neat of Dr. Vallee's
book is not just in opening this
very fruitful line of speculation;
it is in the detailed examination
Of what he calls Contacts of the
7th degree of strangeness. Here,
in the raw data of humans \confront-
fed by that which transcends their
notions of “reality,” is the evi-
dence which indicates that theor-
ies as bid as Vallee's (and may:
be even as bold as my extrapolations
from Vallee) are very rough sketch-
£3, of iat the ultinate explanation
will be.
1 leave you with ay ow favor-
ite of Dr. Vallee's 7th degree Con-
tacts. Two men were driving in a
car. ‘Suddenly, tine warped and
they were out Of the car and it was
parked; they were, in fact, stand=
ing behind it. One of then "remen-
bored’ a classic UFO contact during
the tine warp, in which he had been
taken aboard and experinented upon
Nie hada cut on his am, where the
UFO "people" had taken a skin. sam-
ple, [The other nin "remembered on-
{y‘a large bus pulling up behind
them, an no UPD. Neither of then
“remgabered! atopping the car and
getting out.
The cut on the am sas quite
real when exanined by police, doc~
tors and UFO investigators later,
The rest is the standard blend of
science-fiction, absurdity and con-
tradiction that They are Currently
using in Their latest campaign to
hodify human belief and behavior.
‘The incident happened in 1971.