"in Mesopotamia. Kings up to this point were regarded as gods, and

carvings show them sitting on a throne beside the god.

{In dreams, the dreaming mortal may be there beside anyone, who may be regarded as a deity located there.}

But a carving of 1250 BC shows the Assyrian king Tukulti-Ninurta

kneeling in front of

the empty throne of a god. ...

{In the waking world, however, deities are not likely to appear visibly, but considered invisibly praesent.}

A cuneiform text of the period contains the lines :

[quoted] One who has no god, as he walks on the street

Headache envelops him like a garment."

{It is perhaps implied that mortals have become to needful of being accompanied by invisible divinities while awake in order protect them from headache-inducing spirit-fiends who have began invading this world from some hostile world.}

p. 299

"we lose all sense of 'meanings beyond'. ... So our cosmic visitors would have noticed that the human race has entered a kind of spiritual cul-de-sac ... . ... Our visitors would be able to uderstand the deep, underlying problem ... . ...

p. 300

Religion, on the other hand, has a tradition of high-pressure consciousness. That is why yogis sit ... focusing and concentrating the attention. That is why monks spend hours on their knees in prayer. That is why ascetics devote their life to meditation. It gives them a glimpse of higher levels of {spiritual} power which makes ordinary living seem futile in comparison. ...

Many contactees have received the impression that they are in the presence of a more highly developed form of life."

"the mind -- without knowing it consciously -- has some sort of control over the material universe.

{Mortal mind hath some unknowing communication with the divine networked deity-committees which control their respective sectors of the universe. In arranging events in the universe to fulfill mortals' desires, the deities may give the false impression that mortals themselves somehow "control" the universe.}

But how could human beings begin to achieve a conscious grasp of this control?"

{Mortal may achieve a conscious grasp of this control by worshipping the deities more conscientiously and more devoutly.}

"William James ... in a little book called The Energies of Men (1899) ... remarks :

[quoted] Everyone is familiar with the phenomenon of feeling more or less alive on different days. Everyone knows that on a given day there are energies slumbering in him which the incitements of the day do not call forth, but which he might display if these were greater."

{Some of these possible stimulants ("incitements") to mental-emotional energy include : litterature, art, music, colored lights, incenses/perfumes, spices, and nutritional supplements.}

"the Tibetan {b}lama Nyang-Pas, encountered by John Keel, ... was able to hold a conversation while sitting in midair, and was able to read Keel's mind. He also explained to Keel how to practise 'travelling clairvoyance', ... elsewhere ... called remote viewing.

{All these sort of miracles (levitation, mind-reading, etc.) were being performed for the mortal human practitioner by various praeternatural deities whom the mortal had evoked and had prayed to perform such miracles for the sake of enhancing the religious faith of thusly-awed righteous mortal visitors (including John Keel).}

In fact, 'miraculous' powers are so commonplace among Hindu holy men that ... they are too easy to achieve".

p. 304

"H. G. Wells's ... Star Begotten (1937), presents ... a writer of popular history books who notices that more and more exceptional children are being born ... . These children he calls 'Martians'. They seem to see the universe in a slightly different way from other people. ... The hero asks, 'Suppose there are beings ... like ourselves, in another planet, but far wiser, more intelligent ... . Suppose for the last few thousand years ... they have been trying to alter mankind in some way, through the human genes.' ... But when, at the end of the book, his wife asks whether he believes he is one of these

p. 305

'fairy changelings', 'everything became coherent and plain to him. ...' Suddenly it became obvious ... he is a Martian."

"Some crystals are extremely difficult to crystallise in the laboratory; but once a single lot has been crystallised, others also crystallise more quicly, even in distant laboratories. Sheldrake suggested that this ... was due to a kind of ... induction, and called his theory 'the hypothesis of formative causation'."

p. 305

"During the writing of this book I have been experiencing an odd kind of synchronicity. Beside my bed there is a digital clock. And when I look at it in the night, it often shows numbers in treble figures : 1.11, 2.22, 3.33, 4.44 and so on. ...

p. 306

This could be explained by ... some sort of 'outside intervention', perhaps 'spirits', or even UFO entities, trying to tell me that I am on the right track -- that bizarre phenomena and coincidences should not be dismissed ... . This strikes me as just possible,

{This is the correct explanation. The only possible alternative would be that the material clock is itself alive and conscious, and is co-operating with him.}

but the principle of Occam's razor -- which warns against the multiplication of entities -- makes me view this as unlikely. ... we are living in an 'information universe' ... that ... I think." {But every traditional religion preacheth multifarious divine entities (angels etc.), ascribing to them all praeternatural power! That which all religions refute is the unwarranted allegation that mere mortals possess extraordinary talents.}

{More actually, the principle of Occam's razor warns against multiplication of unwarranted hypotheses and speculations : speculations such as, that mortal mind can appraehend information from the "universe" magically without such information's ever being praesented to it.}

"the effect of reading two hundred or so books about UFOs ... left me in no doubt that something was trying to communicate with us, but that direct communication would be counterproductive.

{Direct communication of mortal beings inhabiting material bodies, with shape-shifting immortal beings inhabiting interchangeable immaterial bodies, would pretty much tend to be counterproductive. (Even communication with elemental-spirits is hardly productive.)}

It seemed to be an important part of the scheme to create a sense of mystery."

{It is true that "a sense of mystery" is helpful in inducing enquirers to approach metaphysical problems -- which enquiry the extraterrestrials may be muchly-intent on encouraging.}

"When I read Miracle Visitors, I felt that Ian Watson had come the closest so far to suggesting a plausible solution, and this was because he had been willing to consider that the answer might lie in the realm of the 'mystical'. {cf. "1RMV"} ...

Now ..., ... the Hindu saint Ramakrishna {Rama-kr.s.n.a} had occupied a central place in the {C.W.'s} first book The Outsider, while the {likewise C.W.'s} second, Religion and the Rebel, was largely devoted to mystics."

"In the early 1980s, I had formulated the notion that there are, for practical purposes, eight levels of consciousness." {But he hath altogether omitted mentioning how to attain the higher of them, not even mentioning such well-known methods as music, bright colors, and perfume/incense!}

{N.B. These levels (3rd through 6th, anyway) describe increasing degrees of elation, not general "consciousness". Increasing elation can most readily be achieved through mood-enhancing drugs, such as spices : these drugs automatically transform mental depression into mental elation.}

"In Level 3, the mind ... feels a helpless pawn of ... its environment.

Level 4 ... still has a strong underlying feeling of ... pessimism.

But Level 5 is ... when the world seems to sparkle with meaning. This tends to last a few hours at most,

{This is instantly achieved through ingesting psychedelic drugs on any occasion.}

so Level 6 was a more permanent version of Level 5 ... .

{This state of mind anyone can readily keep in, simply by remaining at all times "high" on psychedelic drugs.}

Level 7 is what I have called (in Chapter 9) 'Faculty X', the strange ability to grasp the reality of other places and times by some kind of imaginative effort.

{The effort of continuating while awake communication commenced in shamanic dreaming, can accomplish this through means of dream-divinities who are personally acquainted with "other places and times".}

And Level 8 is mystical consciousness, about which it seems impossible to speak without contradicting oneself."

{Indeed, the author (C.W.) is guilty of contradicting himself where, though on p. 307 he writeth that higher levels are "all active", on p. 308 he quoteth (approvingly) that higher levels "cannot" have "originated inside" one's self [i.e., cannot be one's own active doing], but must be "tapped" [i.e., passively accepted] from some external source.}

It will be noted that, below Level 5, all states are basically passive;

{Self-contradiction! By the author's own description, Levels below the 5th involve resistance (a faculty which is always active) against the environs.}

after Level 5, they are all active."

{Another self-contradiction! By the author's own description, Levels beyond the 5th all involve passively accepting one's being controlled by external forces.}

"In a book called Seeing the Invisible (1990), a collection of religious and mystical experiences submitted by ordinary readers, I had been impressed by how often the 'glimpse' seems to come from 'outside'. For example, a wireless opertor described how ... a 'torrent of ideas' began to flow through his mind, insights about the universe, the meaning of reality ... . ... He states that he cannot believe that what happened originated inside him. 'Perhaps, unwittingly, I tapped some universal source of knowledge.'

And, as I came upon more and more people whose vision of reality had been transformed by contact with UFOs, it seemed ... that what he had experienced was ... what Jung called 'UFO consciousness'. ...

I once experienced it ... this ... had made my mind glow with a new kind of intensity ... it had never reached before.

Everything I looked at seemed immensely interesting ... . ...

{This experience is typical of bodhi. I have experienced it.}

I have not achieved it on a regular basis, although I have succeeded on half a dozen occasions".

{These subsequent stages are the bhumi-s, or jn~ana-s, of bodhi.}

p. 311

Edward Ashpole : The UFO Phenomena. Headline, 1995.

Ronald N. Bracewell : The Galactic Club, Intelligent Life in Outer Space. Heinemann, 1974.

Cathie Bruce : Harmonic 33. A.H. & A.W. Reed, 1968.

Cathie Bruce : The Pulse of the Universe : Harmonic 288. Reed, 1977.

C. D. B. Bryan : Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind. Knopf, 1995.

David Clarke & Andy Roberts : Phantoms of the Sky : UFOs ... . Hale, 1990.

Beth Collings & Anna Jamerson : Connections. Wild Flower Pr, 1996.

p. 312

James Trevor Constable : Skycreatures : Living UFOs. Pocket Bks, 1976.

Michael Craft : Alien Impact. St Martin's Pr, 1996.

Raymond W. Drake : Gods and Spacemen in the Ancient Near East. Spearman, 1968.

Brian J. Ford : The Earth Watchers. Frewin, 1973.

Raymond E. Fowler : The Watchers : ... UFO Abductions. Bantam, 1990.

Timothy Good : Beyond Top Secret. Sidgwick & Jackson, 1996.

Timothy Good : Alien Contact. Morrow, 1991.

Graham Hancock : Fingerprints of the Gods. Heinemann, 1995.

Betty A. Hill : A Commonplace Approach to UFOs. 1995.

p. 313

Stuart Holroyd : Prelude to the Landing on Planet Earth. W.H. Allen, 1977.

Hans Holzer : The Ufonauts. Granada, 1976.

Arthur David Horn : Humanity's Extraterrestrial Origins. 1994.

Linda Moulton Howe : An Alien Harvest. 1990.

David M. Jacobs : Secret Life. Simon & Schuster, 1992.

John A. Keel : Jadoo. Julian Messner, 1957.

John A. Keel : Our Haunted Planet. Spearman, 1971.

Donald A. Keyhoe : Flying Saucers, Top Secret. Putnams, 1960.

Coral & Jim Lorenzen : Flying Saucer Occupants. Signet, 1967.

Duncan Lunan : Man and the Stars : Contact ... . Souvenir Pr, 1974.

Macnish : Cropcircle Apocalypse. Circlevision Publ, 1993.

John Michel : The Flying Saucer Vision. Abacus, 1974.

Ralph Noyes : A Secret Property. Quartet Bks, 1985.

p. 314

Brian O'Leary : Miracle in the Void. Kamapua>a, 1996.

M. A. Persinger & G. F. Lafreniere : Space-Time Transients ... . Nelson-Hall, 1971.

Nick Pope : The Uninvited. Simon & Schuster, 1997.

Bruce Rux : Architects of the Underworld. Frog, 1996.

Arthur Shuttlewood : The Flying Saucerers. Sphere, 1976.

John Spencer & Hilary Evans : Gifts of the Gods? ... UFOs ... . Virgin, 1994.

Whitley Strieber : Communion. Century, 1987.

Whitley Strieber : Transformation. Century Hutchinson, 1988.

Whitley Strieber : Brekthrough, the Next Step. Harper Collins, 1995.

p. 315

Brinsley le Poer Trench : The Eternal Subject. Souvenir Pr, 1973.

Richard L. Thompson : Alien Identities : ... UFO Phenomena. Govardhan, 1993.

Jacques Vallee : Forbidden Science, Journals 1957-1969. Marlowe, 1996.

Harold T. Wilkins : Flying Saucers on the Attack. Citadel, 1954.