God Works in Mysterious Ways

Lilith’s Dream is in bookstores, officially, on Tuesday, October 8. It will be appearing in stores from today, Sunday. There are only about 30,000 copies going out at the moment, so if you want one, get it in the next couple of days. I am going to be touring for the book, just a little bit. For my schedule, click here. I’ll also be on about 30 different local radio stations on October 9, and on Coast to Coast that night.

I’ll be talking about Lilith on local radio stations, and about the UFO situation on Coast. So this journal is going to be about those two closely related subjects.

People are always asking me why I bother to write fiction when I ought to be writing hard-fact nonfiction about the visitors. The reason is simple: the most important things about the visitors are not hard facts; the most important things unfold in a kind of shadowland of the heart, a place of deep emotion and profound inner meaning.

There isn’t any way to really talk about these things in nonfiction. For example, my vampire stories are about those enigmatic beings known to close encounter witnesses as ‘the blondes.’ They have been about these beings since long before I was conscious of my close encounters. My fiction communicates inner truth–and above all, inner MEANING–in a way that nonfiction just can’t.

You cannot reach the emotional intensity of Lilith’s Dream via nonfiction. But if you want to feel the way close encounter experience burns in the heart and explodes through the soul, then read the fiction. It’s more fun, too.

Overtly, there’s nothing in Lilith’s Dream that suggests alien contact. But my whole life and all of my work is about alien contact. Toward the end of Lilith’s Dream, I reveal what I think is one of the deepest truths of close encounter: the way it makes us–no matter how dark and dangerous it is– grow as human beings. It is about about danger and beauty and, in the end, the exquisite power of ordinary human love. Which, I think, is what is going to ‘solve’ our whole close encounter experience. Good or evil? Dangerous or safe? It is your own beating heart, the love that is in you and in all of us, that will be our fortress and our refuge on the way to the stars.

A couple of weeks ago, the National UFO Reporting Center published a report that made my blood run dead cold: a man had apparently been murdered during a UFO abduction that had been witnessed by two farmers. When I first wrote this journal entry, I stated: “Now, it seems, the farmers were never interviewed by NUFORC staff prior to their publishing of this report. This is a very basic failure of judgment, and regrettable, in view of the fact that the police are now saying that the vicitim died of a cocaine overdose, and nobody seems to be able to find the two farmers.

It looks like another cruel hoax has been perpetrated on the UFO community, this time at the expense of the National UFO Reporting Center. NUFORC interviewed local authorities before publishing its story. But no attempt was made to find the direct witnesses. The first thing that should have been done was to find those witnesses and talk to them. Otherwise, the story should have been reported as ‘allegations.'”

Subsequently, I received a call from Peter Davenport, the Director of NUFORC, stating that the case was by no means resolved in the direction of a hoax, and that he had made strenuous efforts to investigate it. To read the Unknowncountry.com news story with this update, click here.

This means that this case is going to remain unresolved, which is unfortunate because I am very concerned that, in the context of ever-rising UFO sightings, it is going to contribute to an atmosphere of hysteria and unease. However, as usual, the authorities have been less than helpful and major unresolved issues, such as the question of why the dogs put on the dead man’s scent could not find a trail leading away from his off-road vehicle, lead to the conclusion that something strange and awful may indeed have happened.

I well remember the last time this happened. It was the Hale- Bopp controversy. There was a large object following the Hale-Bopp comet, which was reported on Coast to Coast AM by an amateur astronomer. At first, observatories around the world agreed with him. They were seeing the object, too. Then remote viewing instructor Courtney Brown came on Coast to Coast and reported that his remote viewers were in contact with aliens aboard this object. Brown claimed that he had photographs of it made by a professional astronomer who wanted to remain anonymous. There was an upsurge in public interest and, frankly, hysteria.

Art Bell and I immediately began trying to determine what was really going on. I had personally talked to one observatory, and been told that their astronomers were watching the object. But now that same observatory was claiming they were seeing no such thing. The ‘Hale-Bopp’ object became a national laughing stock.

Art and I published the photos that Mr. Brown had sent us– over his objections–and it turned out they were from the University of Hawaii observatory. There was nothing secret about them. We dismissed the matter as a hoax.

Then the Heaven’s Gate tragedy struck. A group of UFO enthusiasts committed suicide in a looney attempt to get to the object as souls. Art was pilloried in the national media and among the UFO community. Lost in the shuffle was the fact that he and I had exposed the apparent hoax. Lost, also, in the shuffle was the fact that the entire astronomical community, worldwide, was lying about the object. It was there. Years later, the community quietly admitted it. For that story, click here.

But was it an alien spacecraft? Aside from the claims of Mr. Brown, there was absolutely no evidence of this whatsoever, as Art and I pointed out. Still, I felt a deep sense of responsibility over the deaths of these poor, delusional people. I know that I did not cause their deaths. I never made any claims about the Hale-Bopp object being an alien spacecraft, and neither did Art. Indeed, the media called on me to make sense of the disaster, and I went on the Today show with former astronaut Edgar Mitchell to explain how important it is that this strange and scary subject be addressed by science before we decide we know what’s going on.

I resolved to pray every day for the rest of my life for those poor people, and I will always keep them in my prayers and in my heart.

Now, I don’t want more to have to pray for. I am deeply concerned that people will take the dark stories that have been circulating recently too much to heart, and decide to end it all out of fear of being abducted. The close encounter experience is deeply troubling. I am troubled by it. I am scared by it. But it is also deeply, enrichingly wonderful. No matter all of the fear I have expeienced, I would not trade it for anything. During my December, 1985 encounter, the visitor I was facing said to me, ‘you are the luckiest of the lucky.’

It’s true. No matter the origin of the experience, the fact remains that, with the debunking of this latest murder story, there is very little hard evidence that people are being hurt by close encounters. Scared, yes. Upset, you bet. But actually injured? No.

So the Pennsylvania case joins the alleged human mutilations in the realm of the unconfirmed and the likely did not happen. Does this mean that the visitors are angels?

Well, let’s take a close look at that question. Lilith’s Dream expresses a great deal of my answer to it. It is possible for something to be awful and beautiful at the same time. That’s why I called my last journal entry ‘Demon Eye of Kowledge.’ The dark side brings us knowledge.

Here’s one example of how this works: the Nazis made unparalleled scientific advances in areas like mind control because they were willing to torture and kill human beings to gain this knowledge. It’s ugly, but it is how the dark side can be made to serve us–but only a fool would take that knowledge, as CIA officials who have spent two generations coping with the awful consequences of its use can certainly attest.

Here’s another: Good people find negative energy in their lives. It’s everywhere, in the form of the cruel, the disappointed, the violent, who swarm around us, and are part of us all. They dance a careful, graceful dance with these dark forces, bringing their compassion and their wisdom to an act of healing. We eradicated Nazisim with guns and bombs, then, through the Marshall Plan extended our good will and the compassion of our great nation to the German people. We transformed Germany from an abode of demons into a society of free souls.

On a national level, this was an example of how good men dance with the devil. We gave lives and blood to the fight. Then, after we won, we did not go the devil’s way and punish the enemy. Instead, we went the way of the gospel, and embraced our enemy, and renewed the whole world on behalf of freedom.

When we are coping with the visitors, if it ever comes to direct contact, we must remember always the words of the pope: we must remember that they, also, are creatures of God. But let’s just be sure we cut the cards, folks.

As I am trying in my new book to show, there is a tremendous force in our world, a force that fills every cell of every human being on this earth: it is love, our love for ourselves, for one another, for God, for our beautiful planet, for the spinning majesty of the heavens. No matter how sensual, how alluring, or how dangerous the dark side becomes, following the path within us to the heart will always rescue us.

I think that the Hale-Bopp hoax started with a man eager to publicize the findings of his remote viewing group. Courtney Brown wasn’t guilty of anything, any more than Art and I were. But the media is powerful: those of us out here on the edge are powerful, because there are very vulnerable people counting on us for strength and wisdom. We have an overwhelming responsibility to struggle toward understanding, always. We have an overwhelming responsibility to tell the truth. I have always striven to fulfill that responsibility, and I intend to continue doing so.

The close encounter experience has a dark side: whatever causes it, it comes out of nowhere. What I have been enduring, for example, for the past few weeks, and have discussed in my previous two journal entries, has been very hard to bear. Is it part of the close encounter phenomenon? Some mental thing? Something involving spirits or ghosts? I don’t know.

And therein lies the secret to how we deal with the dark side and with our own fears: we face the fact that this is all in question, every part of it, from the true nature of UFOs to the reaility of the visitors to the nature of the human mind.

All of it. So if you have a terrifying encounter, please remember this: you survived it, and there is no credible evidence than anybody has ever been taken and not returned, or hurt. That doesn’t mean it is pleasant. It is not pleasant. But it does mean that it is bearable, that we survive.

So then the question must become: what does this give us? Why would a visitor call somebody they’d just kidnapped against his will ‘the luckiest of the lucky?’

And why would I feel, in my deepest heart, that this was true?

You know what’s going to answer that question? The future is going to answer it. Coping with it, living with it, chewing on it–that’s the joy of the struggle. Great questions build strong minds and hearts. In the end, perhaps that’s what the whole weird, inexplicable experience is all about: making us look up and become curious about the stars, and making us ready to meet the challenges we will find when the REAL aliens explode out into the universe.

Because one day, maybe even within our lifetimes, aliens ARE going to land on another planet. They will be us.

Which gets me once again to the issue of angels. IF aliens are actually here, they probably aren’t angels at all, or demons. They are probably just as complex as we are. Say we find an inhabited planet. Creatures who have cars, planes, the A-Bomb, overpopulation, pollution–everything except the ability to get to another star.

When we go there, we will look to them like gods. But, in reality, it’ll only be us–with all our wisdom, sure, but also with all our warts.

Think what their experience will be like. Some of them will be abducted by scientists who will subject them to testing that will leave them confused and afraid, but actually be carefully designed not to hurt them. They will meet Christians, Moslems, Hindus, athiests, corporations trying to exploit them, government officials, gurus, tourists, criminals–and all without having the least idea EVEN WHAT WE ARE.

What will they conclude from all this? They’ll be about where we are now: the ones who have had direct experience will know that something is going on. Their governments, feeling helpless before this appalling power, will deny everything. Their scientists, suddenly being displaced from their intellectual primacy by superior outsiders, will have weird emotional problems that will lead to the same state of denial that our scientists are now in. Their religious leaders will reject the experience, or categorize it as some of ours have done, in the context of their own belief systems. Wiser souls, like our own pope, will make sensible pronouncements, and intelligently prepare their institutions to meet the challenge of contact.

But remember, please, what we need in order to get to another world: antigravity and an unlimited energy source. That’s all. Everything else is in place. In fact, our first real aliens might be the ones we ourselves discover.

In ten years or fifty, when we have this technology working, will we be angels? I don’t think so. But will the people on other worlds we may meet–just a few years behind us technologically–THINK we are angels?

Of course they will. Angels and demons and who knows what else?

But we will be able to reveal ourselves to them as we really are? We will have the means to come into contact with them in ways that are mutually beneficial. We will be able to do this because the contact experience that mankind is having right now will have taught us how.

God works in mysterious ways indeed.

NOTE: This Journal entry, previously published on our old site, will have any links removed.