Jacques Vallee, We Salute You

We’ve mentioned the fruity genius several times now, once as “the only guy we trust on UFOs”. 

Why do we trust Jacques Vallee?  Because he admits he has no idea what’s going on with UFOs. There are a lot of people who do research on UFOs, but that’s not science, because they’re doing research with their conclusions already drawn. Jacques Vallee dug as deep as anyone, but he kept an open mind, and he kept his eyes focused on the evidence --- not his brain’s own pattern recognition reflexes. 

What he found is some of the most disturbing and interesting material you’ll find anywhere.

This post will, from here on out, consist entirely of quotes from Jacques.  If this material seems opaque or trite to you, I would urge you to return to it later --- six months to a year from now.  Once you “get” what Vallee is saying, viscerally and not intellectually, you will be very much a changed human.

“When I speak of a control system for planet earth, I do not want my words to be misunderstood: I do not mean that some higher order of beings has locked us inside the constraints of a space-bound jail, closely monitored by psychic entities we might call angels or demons. I do not propose to redefine God. What I do mean is that mythology rules at a level of our social reality over which normal political and intellectual action has no power.

I think that the basic breakthrough for me is to understand that the UFO phenomenon is not a system. If it was a system, we could probably understand it. We’re very good at analyzing systems whether they’re social systems, hardware systems, or physical systems. I think we’re not getting anywhere because we need to look at a phenomena not as a system but as a meta-system.

“The phenomenon presented by UFOs is far larger than current speculation about “aliens from space.” It raises questions about consciousness, about the nature of reality and about human history on the Earth. I welcome every opportunity to meet specialists in these disciplines and learn from them. That was the case, for example, at the conference on “Consciousness, Science and Religion” held in Porto two years ago, where Dr. Eric Davis and I presented a new model for the study of unidentified aerial phenomena. The ARE conference in Virginia Beach was a similar opportunity, because attendees brought a great deal of knowledge about psychic functioning and spiritual traditions. We must take this knowledge into account if we are going to make any progress.”

Watch My Hands Closely

Now, if you go to the movies while the movie is playing, it’s suddenly different because now it is a sensory experience—you see it; you react! It speeds up your heart, and does all kinds of physiological things to you. But does it mean that Bambi exists?

Of course not. There is a basic flaw in that level of analysis, and I think that’s a pitfall in which the whole of UFOlogy, especially American UFOlogy, has fallen. There is only a first-level reading.

I think that’s happening with the abduction research being done right now. When they hypnotize these witnesses, and they regress them to the experience, what they get is what was on the blank screen. I don’t think they get the reality.

Instead of looking at the screen, what I want to do is to turn around and look the other way. When we look the other way what we see is a little hole at the top of the wall with some light coming out. That’s where I want to go. I want to steal the key to the projectionist’s booth, and then, when everybody has gone home, I want to break in. And what you find there is a meta-system.

It’s a system of wheels that can generate anything you want—Bambi, Rambo, “Close Encounters"… That’s my next project; I would like to play with the projector. One way to do that would be to interfere with the phenomenon itself. I think if you did that you would force it to react...If it’s a control system, then there is a feedback loop somewhere. Once you find the feedback loop then you can screw around with it.

Usually there is a consensus on the major aspects of the physical parameters of it [the abduction experience], but people can disagree on, for example, when there is interaction with entities. Different people may be perceiving different things.

There is a social, mythological aspect to it also, and that can be very tricky. I think it’s important to bring this out so that people can be alerted to it, especially since the publication of “Communion.”

There was a major marketing effort behind Communion which proved to be very successful. True, it’s a powerful book, but Communion has also touched people who have never even read it because it also has a powerful cover. That face on the cover has become our society’s standard for what aliens are “supposed to look like.” This standard has reached the point where any witness that doesn’t report something that looks like the cover of Communion is dismissed as a hoaxer. People who see things that don’t look like the cover tend not to be believed by UFOlogists.

Those sightings are not followed up, and they don’t go into the database. So, scientific analysis tends to retrieve more and more patterns that correspond to those patterns that we expect in the first place.

There’s a self-fulfilling prophecy involved which is very tricky.

For the interested reader, we also quietly note this unassuming passage from Strieber’s bio:

“Whitley Strieber is a Roman Catholic and was formerly associated with the Gurdjieff Foundation. He left the Foundation shortly before the experiences reported in Communion, but remains interested in the mystical teachings of G. I. Gurdjieff and P. D. Ouspensky and makes frequent references to them in his non-fiction writings.”

How to Chew Your Own Food

Clark: What do you think of the abduction cases?

Vallee: Again, I’m interested mainly in their symbolic contents.

Let me explain what I mean. We live in a society that is oriented toward technology, so when we see something unusual in the sky we think of it in physical terms. How is it manufactured? What makes it tick? What is its propulsion system? We tend to assume that the physical phenomenon is its most important aspect and that everything else is just a side effect and much less important.

But perhaps we’re facing something which is basically a social technology. Perhaps the most important effects from the UFO technology are the social ones and not the physical ones. In other words the physical reality may serve only as a kind of triggering device to provide images for the witness to report. These perceptions are manipulated to create certain kinds of social effects.

If that’s true, then the abduction cases are quite revealing. I am not concerned with how many switches there were on the control panel or whether the percipient felt hot or cold when he was inside the flying saucer. Those questions may be totally irrelevant because maybe that person never actually went inside the object.

But the report is extremely important for its symbolic content. It can help us understand what kinds of images are coming through. One might illustrate the difference in this way:

An engineer observing a computer would want to look at the back and open up the boxes. He would want to take a probe and examine the different parts of the computer. But there is another way of looking at it; the way of the programmer, who wants to sit in front of the computer and analyze what it does, not how it does it. That’s my approach. I want to ask it questions and see what answers I get. I want to interact with it as an information entity.

In the case of the abductions I think we’re dealing with the information aspect. I came to that conclusion because abduction cases, in close encounter cases in general, what the witness is saying is absurd.

Clark: What do you mean?

Vallee: I don’t mean simply to imply that the account is silly. I mean it has absurdity as a semantic construction. If you’re trying to express something which is beyond the comprehension of a subject, you have to do it through statements that appear contradictory or seem absurd. For example, in Zen Buddhism the seeker must deal with such concepts as “the sound of one hand clapping” - an apparently preposterous notion which is designed to break down ordinary ways of thinking. The occurrences of similar “absurd” messages in UFO cases brought me to the idea that maybe we’re dealing with a sort of control system that is subtly manipulating human consciousness.

Clark: But how do you prove that one is operating in a UFO context?

Vallee: I’ve always been unhappy with the argument between those who believe UFOs are nonsense and those who believe they are extraterrestrial visitors. I don’t think I belong in either camp. I’ve tried to place myself between those two extremes because there’s no proof that either proposition is correct. I’ve come up with the control system concept because it is an idea which can be tested. In that sense it’s much closer to a scientific hypotheses than the others. It may turn out that there is a control system which is operated by extraterrestrials. But that’s only one possibility.

There are different kinds of control systems - open ones and closed ones - and there are tests you can apply to them to find out what kind of control system you’re inside. That leads to a number of experiments you can do with the UFO phenomenon, whereas the other interpretations don’t lead you to anything. If you’re convinced that UFOs are extraterrestrial, then about the only thing you can do is to climb to a hilltop with a flashlight and send a message in Morse code. People have tried that, I know, but it doesn’t seem to work very will!

The control system concept can be tested by a small group of people - you don’t need a large organization or a lot of equipment - and you can start thinking about active intervention in the phenomenon.

We know more today than we did five years ago about the manifestations of the phenomenon. You could say that, if it’s a superior type of consciousness we’re dealing with, that consciousness is engaging us in certain games.

They can throw whatever phenomena they want at us, and we will not be the wiser. So, it’s like being in school and having somebody give you tests all day long; you try to do the best you can. That’s all I can do. And I have to believe there is a way to graduate from this. How? That depends on the kind of control system we are operating within.

There are two kinds of control systems. There are control systems that are open, like a university, where you take tests for what seems to be a long time, but eventually you graduate, and go out into the real world a little bit better equipped to deal with it.

Then there are closed systems like jails. If I was going to build a control system, it would be an open control system because I don’t think I would derive much pleasure out of running a jail. If I assume the UFO phenomena represents some kind of consciousness out there, then I would also assume it would be dealing in terms of an open system. That assumption may be wrong. Maybe this a jail, and there is no hope. But I’m going with the assumption that if we respond to these tests, we will learn something. There is a feeling that I get in the course of my investigations of being in the presence of a form of consciousness that is truly remarkable.

That consciousness has a great sense of absurdity, and also a great sense of humor. The bottom line is that I feel that I’ve learned something out of this whole exercise, and as long as I’m continuing to learn something I’m going to continue to do it.

Further and Beyond for the Curious Reader

Vallee wiki

Vallee books --- We especially recommend “Messengers of Deception” and “Invisible College”, which inspired the DJ Multiple Sex Partners album “Invisible Collage”.

Vallee interviews