Posted on 12/02/2002 11:04:08 PM PST by vikingchick
If you were assigned to make a fantastical 20-hour, 10-part series about alien encounters, you'd think you'd concoct the freakiest, funkiest extraterrestrials ever conceived.
Not so.
Not if you're making "Taken," the alien-abduction saga that premieres at 9 tonight on cable's Sci Fi Channel.
"Steven said we had to respect the lore," says Jim Lima, the project's visual-effects supervisor. "We had to be faithful to what was said the most by people who had encounters."
Steven is Steven Spielberg. He is not only one of the most powerful people in entertainment, but also the man who gave the world "E.T." and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." The man who can green-light so many projects gave birth to this one four years ago. It's on cable because no network could commit such a massive chunk of its prime-time schedule.
Because of Spielberg's decree, the aliens in "Taken" are rather standard issue: gray, about 4 feet tall, long fingers, skinny bodies, oversized heads with huge black, almond-shaped eyes. Spielberg scored with the acclaimed World War II miniseries "Band of Brothers" on HBO, and now he's out to see if an audience will stay with 10 two-hour, movielike episodes over two weeks.
The series follows three American families - the Clarkes, Keys and Crawfords - over four generations, from 1945 to the present day and slightly beyond.
It pays homage to major alien encounters reported in America's postwar history, including the most pivotal event: the supposed crash of a spaceship near Roswell, N.M., in July 1947.
"It's the coolest thing that I've ever seen," says Tobe Hooper of the series. Hooper directed the pivotal first episode (each episode has its own director). Hooper knows about "cool," not to mention strange, having directed "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" and "Poltergeist" (co-written by Spielberg).
Although it was up to Hooper to integrate "the grays" into the story, it was the Earth-bound humans who received most of his attention. The director said he was hooked because the story was so character-driven.
"I liked that it wasn't sci-fi-y," he says on the phone from his home in Southern California. "It was like the real thing."
The real thing begins in the skies over Germany during World War II. Capt. Russell Keys (Steve Burton) is leading an Allied bombing mission. His bomber gets hit and is headed down in flames but is saved by some mysterious blasts of blue light. He and his crew are mysteriously healed and wake up in a field in France. But who really saved them and what was done to them after they were "taken"?
Keys returns home to a sepia-toned America to reunite with his parents and his best girl, something out of "The Best Years of Our Lives."
"I tried to give the characters that subtext, to give it that Norman Rockwell feel," says Hooper.
Hooper said no expense was spared.
"We had 60 locations and more than 60 actors. I had every lens, every cinematic toy," he says. And he had Lima.
The visual-effects guru, who had worked previously with Spielberg in television on "SeaQuest DSV" and "The Others," also had created outer dimensions for films such as "Space Jam" (he also designed the Green Goblin for "Spider-Man.")
"It was like doing 10 movies," says Lima on the phone from his home in Pacific Palisades, Calif. "We had 16 months of production. In my earliest discussions with Steven, he explained that science fiction is 'Minority Report.' Science mythology is UFO sightings, close encounters of the first kind." (Close encounters of the second kind are defined as physical evidence; close encounters of the third kind are alien sightings.)
Lima used a cavalcade of computer-generated digital tricks; there are no puppets or animatronics. But there is a human element. He took a digital photograph of his wife's eye, enlarged it, stretched it out, colored it and used that for the aliens' eyes.
"The iris is still in there," says Lima. "I wanted to show thought, to have these digital characters show emotion."
The grays also can take human form and read minds.
If "Taken" is groundbreaking for its length and visual effects, it also must set some sort of record for script-writing. Les Bohem wrote the entire 20 hours. A former member of the band Sparks, Bohem ("Dante's Peak") emphasizes the human relationships and family interplay.
The ensemble cast includes Catherine Dent, Joel Gretsch, Eric Close, Ryan Hurst, Matt Frewer and Michael Moriarty as the stern colonel who covers up the initial Roswell crash in tonight's episode. Some characters span several nights. Eight-year-old Dakota Fanning (the daughter in "I Am Sam") narrates all 10 episodes and appears in the final four.
Her voice is at once innocent and filled with wisdom.
"It's very much 'To Kill A Mockingbird,' " says Hooper. "It has that sensitivity, that kind of elegance."
As for the phenomenon itself - the long lists of people who claim to have been abducted, poked and prodded by aliens and returned to Earth - Hooper says he has studied it more than half his life. He finds it valid.
"I'm definitely a believer," says Hooper. "There's something out there."
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:
coconnor@plaind.com, 216-999-4456
I did start reading, one leads to another.
I have never thought about being "abducted" nor do I EVER want to be (lol), but it was interesting to read all the symptoms a person might have if they suspect abduction. I don't have any of those, thank the Lord.
The only aspect of sleeping that has ever troubled me, is awakening at the same time in the middle of the morning...it's always a little after 3 am..I glance at the clock, and go back to sleep, so I have to start paying attention to the EXACT time, according to the charts, to find out the psychic meaning behind that, I guess..ugggh.
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Here's my take on the alien/UFO stuff for what it's worth.
Personally, I've never seen a UFO, but there are many witnesses to unexplained cases, and I don't think all of them were strung out on drugs or alcohol. This suggests that something is going on.
Also, the gov't appears to have an interest in witholding this information. Or at least pretending to do so, such that more people believe that aliens really do exist.
Having said all that, I believe these UFO's/aliens are either demons and/or a plot on the part of the globalists to bring about a world government. If the latter is the case, it's likely a backup plan (one of several) they will use to scare us into giving them power. They are having so much success right now, it looks like they won't even have to use that approach, however.
Whatever they are, if one of the space goblins ever tries to "take" me, it will be a "close encounter of the last kind. After all, there is nothing wrong with a space turd that a 12 guage shotgun can't fix.
. . . that something is going on.
Nice that you agree!
Also, the gov't appears to have an interest in witholding this information. Or at least pretending to do so, such that more people believe that aliens really do exist.
I don't think the government is that refined & THAT clever in the ways necessary for them to be doing the secret thing for clever paradoxical mass population manipulation reasons.
I think power mongering and raw fears and now reportedly guilt over such and fear of being prosecuted or crucified by the citizens--that those are the reasons for the extensive prolonged secrecy.
Having said all that, I believe these UFO's/aliens are either demons and/or a plot on the part of the globalists to bring about a world government. If the latter is the case, it's likely a backup plan (one of several) they will use to scare us into giving them power. They are having so much success right now, it looks like they won't even have to use that approach, however.
I don't think it's an optional backup plan. I doubt that even the human puppet masters behind the scenes realize what all the parts are that the ET's will play in supporting, helping bring about the world government. I believe that THEY believe they know all about it. But I am convinced satan and the evil ET's have plenty of their own destructive agenda kept very close to their chests. Tyranny often shreds first those first most helping it into power.
I believe the ET/globalist agenda will APPEAR to be a wonderful masterplan for peace and prosperity that the world's citizens will acclaim much as Dilldo and Skullery were acclaimed for 8 years and even now--kind of a gah gah mindlessness . . . dreamy fantasies of hedonistic--do whatever one feels like doing without paying any price sort of future beginning, of course by the death of all those rigid old conservatives and especially Christians who are holding the world back from being transformed into the everything wonderful NEW AGE, OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER.
Some sort of dictatorial power will arise in North America and other power centers in support of the global head tyrant. Either ET's will be construed and seen as supportive of the world government or threatening to it or some of each. Either way, citizens will be pressured into support of it under threat of human world and other world consequences of terminal sorts for noncompliance.
Whatever they are, if one of the space goblins ever tries to "take" me, it will be a "close encounter of the last kind. After all, there is nothing wrong with a space turd that a 12 guage shotgun can't fix.
Supposedly the biological android types so supposedly key in most abductions--doing most of the getting & returning "dirty work" etc. . . . supposedly they are fairly fragile in their bodies and are fairly terrified of humans unless the mind control is firmly in place.
Reportedly fierce INSTANT anger at THE FIRST SLIGHTEST HINT of an abduction is key to being ABLE to be angry enough to prevent it. Evidently practice helps. Even taking the nearest object of any sort to swing or throw at them with fierce anger is useful--the key seeming to be the fierce emotion of anger and the deep visceral demand that the ET's leave you alone and not come back.
A number of Christians have prevented abductions with the same sorts of commands "OUT, AWAY FROM ME; LEAVE! In Jesus' Name" that they use in deliverance from/of demon situations. Some have reported angry praying in tongues to be helpful.
Evidently if one tries in usual ways to think of the gun, get the gun, prepare to use the gun--it's too late--the mind control is already in place and off you go. ONE HAS TO BECOME INSTANTLY ANGRY AT THE FIRST SLIGHTEST HINT OR PREMONITION that an abduction is coming.
In all of these posts no Freeper has noted the central theme that was "taken" ;-) from the recent movie based on Philip K. Dick's short story "Minority Report".
Guess I'll have to look it up.
"Minority Report" is a story about psychics who can tell the future. They are hired (drafted? kidnapped?) by law enforcement to prevent crimes before they happen. However, not all the psychics agree about the future--thus the "minority report". We are left to ponder the issues of free will vs. determinism.
Sounds like quite a plot.
"Taken" is narrated by a little girl who for most of the episodes hasn't even been born yet. We also learn the aliens and part-alien humans can manipulate time. These are big clues, folks.
There are a few scattered reports of some governmental either access to ET manipulation of time or government's own mechanism for time manipulation--at least in one direction and or/informationally and/or with a probe. We shall see.
The aliens in "taken", I would argue, have not just taken individual abductees as part of their genetic experiments. They have "taken" time itself, the future of the human race.
I'm skeptical--exceedingly skeptical about how much leeway God would give even ET's in terms of mucking around with Earth time lines. God is still the ultimate string puller, contingency setter.
They know all human futures in advance thus creating a deterministic human universe where (presumably?--that is the central mystery until the last episode) none existed before.
I'm skeptical the real ET's know as much about all possible future timelines as they might want us to believe. Besides that, God has more options in terms of sheilding, withholding, manipulating time and everything else than ALL the created ET civilizations combined . . . in HIS LITTLE FINGER so to speak.
I also believe the ET's claims even "demonstrations" about earth timelines & even purported "historical holographic movies or windows on historical events & characters" could easily be part and parcel of their wholesale deception--perhaps the GREAT DECEPTION for our end times era that the Bible speaks of.
When the aliens or part-aliens share that knowledge of each individual's future with that person the person freaks out because each human finds out in advance what their remaining life will be like including the nature and time of their death. In the case of evil characters they learn all about their future evil deeds in advance but they are powerless to prevent them.
Given that this bootcamp called earth has an evidently super ordinate priority of FREE WILL affording AUTHENTIC CHOICE including authentic consequences for such choices allowing authentic Love . . . in behalf of training those who will RULE AND REIGN throughout the future eternal ages and all galaxies, dimensions, universes . . .
GIVEN THAT SUPERORDINATE PRIORITY OF ALMIGHT GOD, I'm extremely skeptical that God is going to toss His turf or currency or perogatives aside for even all the ET's from all the galaxies possible. God is not stupid. He's an excellent general. He WILL trap satan and ALL his hosts ET and non. Their days are numbered regardless of the measure of time used.
I also just can't see God being less than strict about monitoring and protecting man's freewill--particularly as a whole but alson in virtually every individual case as well. There might be occasional exceptions on an individual level. But a lifelong exception--I don't buy it. I've seen God go to extreme lengths to protect people's free will from abuse by one another.
If the "aliens" know our future then that means we have no free will. Either we never had it or we lost it when the aliens made contact with us and their reality established its domain over ours.
I don't believe alien's reality HAS superceded our own. God is the guardian of our reality. This bootcamp called earthly life is HIS priority; HIS MISSION; HIS HOBBY; THE APPLE OF HIS EYE, THE DESIRE OF HIS HEART FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE JOINT-HEIRS OF HIS ONLY BEGOTTEN SON.
I DO BELIEVE the ET's and certainly satan in cahoots with them would LOVE to give us the holographic illusion that our free wills have been flushed; that it's all over and the best we can do is go meekly like lambs to the slaughter.
One alien in the show explains at one point that the aliens don't know the difference between right and wrong. They don't realize it is immoral to destroy free will.
I believe that's wholesale satanic/ET sponsored hogwash; outright lie; wholesale distortion etc. It's the same garbage he sold to humanists; the so called political correct crowd; millions of teens in the land; leftists university profs by droves, etc.
In the end one alien has his own "minority" view and allows the little girl to have her free will and therefore her life back.
I believe God is ready to help insure the free will of anyone who will TAKE HIM AT HIS WORD AND ATTEMPT TO FOLLOW HIM FAITHFULLY AND WITH AS MUCH FAITH AND EARNESTNESS AS THEY CAN CHOOSE TO MUSTER. I've persistently found in my own life that exercising such increases it. Caving-in wimpishly to the enemy's lies robs me of increasing amounts of free will to become a slave to one's lusts, habits, addictions, fears etc.
P.S. The alien artifact imho would best be viewed as an encyclopedia or archive of all human history since the aliens first made contact with us. The version that humans have on Earth automatically updates itself as time passes, but I believe that the aliens have the :whole thing" in their possession.
Welllllll, certainly satan and demons have timeless awareness of earth's history. It's completely plausible that ET races in cahoots with him or even good ET races "just" observing earth--as part of the ALL CREATION WAITS, GROANING IN ANTICIPATION OF THE MANIFESTATION OF THE SONS OF GOD" observer masses--All such would reasonably have accurate and exhaustively detailed awareness of earth's history--even of family lines in that history.
That's one reason it's so easy for demons to make reincarnation or channeling to look so convincing. They can impersonate anyone from history; anyone in anyone's family etc. flawlessly down to voice tones etc. I've never heard an adequate answer though why 100's of thousands of people have "been Cleopatra in a past life" for example--but rather few claim to have been a nameless sewer cleaner in Imperial Rome. Anyway . . .
I would like to encourage any interested in this and related topics to check out Ted Chiang's brilliant short story "The Story of Your Life". I don't know if this story influenced the writers of Taken but it has several subtle themes that are reflected in the show.
Sounds interesting. I hope to check it out in due course.
Thanks for your thoughtful response.
What do you believe the objective of the "abductions" to be? Are they more generalized goals, such as putting fear in people; or more specific?
Perhaps fallen angels or demons. Perhaps hybrid creations of disembodied spirits.
There is some doctrine which suggests that the bodily demons were bound in the Abyss during the Great Flood. For the time between the flood and the release of Apollyon (given the key prior to the woes in Revelation), some hold that only disembodied demons influence or possess man.
Note the common themes regarding alien abductions and disembodied demons. Ability to communicate with either the soul or spirit,...secularly referred to as 'telepathy'. A preoccupation with being occultic, yet unscrupulous in how they interfere with their abductees, infatuated with genetics and supposedly advanced science, yet unable to glean their information with anything mre advanced than MRI in a nondestructive fashion.
Prompts the query, if the information is so damned important so as to justify isolated, remote, unverifiable abductions, then why isn't there more attention paid to insuring no remembrance at all and insuring no trauma during the events? Especially if they're biyyuns and biyyions of eons more advanced than ourselves?
The phenomenon smacks of spiritual domain convoluted with the physical, yet occultic and no respector of Christ. For this reason, if real they fall closer to the domain of either fallen angels or from that domain.
Some UFO lore suggests that certain species use 'greys' as their workers. Consistent with perhaps a fallen angel cloning attempt to produce bodies for disembodied spirits.
Note the references in UFO literature to the eyes (gateway to the soul) and common reports of abductees being frozen, such that they are unable to move. Consider that there is no temptation too great than which may be resisted in Scripture. Accordingly, if forbidden volition by creatures outside our domain intrude upon our domain, man might indeed be inherantly frozen or unable to act so as becoming simply a victim to the volition of others and therefore not accountable for physical acts conducted upon abductees.
The 'Taken' series has one very important unresolved theme. Why is it implied that another created being can intrude upon the domain of man and into the most private domains of body, soul, and spirit, in painful, intrusive, raped fashions, and yet the series presents a 'feel-good' attitude that a part genetic offspring is better off removed from her mother and sped away without recourse? Note also that theologically, the spirit of man was created in God's image by God. The body today is the temple for the Holy Spirit. Christ remains as the Kinsman-Redeemer. Intrusion into this domain by any outside party attempts to present a substitute to God's plan for man, hence adversarial, not in the domain of good holy works.
Best advice, if ever engaged in an encounter test by Scripture and remaining faithful to Christ. Gauge their response. Interesting to note, that some such responses are extremely emotional, yet if they were secular and not effected or answerable to such Holy power, then why their adverse response? They tip their hand as to their domain.
Las Vegas Dave rightly suggested the following from Whitley's site. URL:
http://www.unknowncountry.com/journal/?id=107
FROM WHITLEY STRIEBER'S JOURNAL at his UNKNOWN COUNTRY SITE 20 DEC 2002
Taken by Taken
20-Dec-2002
Taken was one of the most popular programs ever aired on the Science Fiction channel. It depicted an attempt at alien contact that failed due to a wrong-headed and violent human response. In the end, the beautiful young girl who was part human and part alien had to return to the alien world because we were just not capable of handling a relationship with her.
This was primarily due to the activities of a violent, vicious and power hungry government group, who sought control over the situation and, most especially, the little girl. They were depicted as people to whom the lives of other human beings meant little, who were willing to murder in pursuit of their sick agenda.
The abductees in the story all had implants, which sent out signals that were designed to locate them. When the aliens left, the implants dropped out.
Prior to broadcasting the program, the SciFi channel did promotional documentaries about the Roswell Incident and the abduction phenomenon. Both documentaries took their subjects seriously.
Overall, Taken was a boost for the UFO community. It was especially interesting that major advertisers did not hesitate to support either the documentaries or the program itself. I can recall, however, when we did the Confirmation special on NBC, major advertisers had no problem with it, either. Taken was the highest rated show the SciFi channel ever put on the air. It received an average rating of 1.9. Confirmation was the second highest program in its time period, with a far higher rating of 8.5. But this is, in part, due to the difference in audience access between one of the big three networks and the much smaller SciFi channel. Still, both programs were hugely popular and successful, because the public has a very high level of interest in the UFO phenomenon.
But was Taken’s premise an accurate reflection of the situation that actually exists? Is there a vicious government conspiracy to suppress UFO evidence and gain control of alien technology and knowledge? Are we, in fact, failing to make the grade as a species worthy of contact?
The program did not answer any of these three questions correctly, but the answers were certainly available from the community of close encounter witnesses and in other places. Actually, the situation is extremely complex, but evidence supporting the Taken scenario is just not there.
The first deficiency with the program was that it essentially repeated Steven Spielberg’s continuing premise that wonderful aliens are here but being resisted by a government obsessed with power and control. The problem with this is that whatever is here—and it is by no means decided that an alien presence is definitely involved—has a dark side, and without addressing that, you cannot really make a meaningful statement about the situation. Secondly, the government’s position is much more complicated than Spielberg would have us believe. Third, the abductee community is not as it was portrayed, nor is the close encounter experience nearly as simple as it was made to seem.
In addition, the idea that the visitors do not have emotions is simply false. They have extraordinary emotions, and I say that as a person who has been involved in the emotional life of the beings called ‘greys.’ They are not androids, or creatures with vast intelligence and no feelings. On the contrary, they are rich, immeasurably complex personalities. In my relationship with them, there has been anger, joy, love, terror—every extreme of emotion you can name, including jealousy and desire and longing, and all of it writ large. The truth is, when they are seen by witnesses as cold or robotic, it is because they are afraid. Sometimes, they are afraid of the witness. Sometimes, they are afraid of their own desires, which can overwhelm them and endanger them, in the same sense that uncontrollable desires can lead, among us, to all sorts of violent and criminal activity.
I do not know exactly why there are aspects of the close encounter experience that are so awful, and so unlike what, for example, I have experienced. Once I got over my fear, my life with the visitors was tremendous fun. I got to do things and see things that I do not think anybody else has ever gotten to do and see, at least, nobody who has been willing to write about it. I had a fabulous adventure in inner work and outer discovery.
In fact, it’s still going on. And there is no evidence whatsoever that the visitors are about to leave. On the contrary, they are both so compassionate and so greedy that I doubt that they will ever leave. In fact, they are as much a part of our world as we are.
I have wondered, however, if some of them might not be insane, or defective in some other way. Mr. Spielberg was right when he postulated that they were trying to make people that mix their being with ours. To some extent, it’s about DNA, indeed—but only in the sense that a sign is about paint. The mixing that is being attempted goes deeper, much deeper. There are elements of being that we have not yet named—that we vaguely refer to using the old Egyptian concept of the soul—that are very much a part of nature, and that are governed by natural laws just like anything else. There is no supernatural. There are only elements of the conscious world that we can detect and elements that we can’t.
[Q NOTE: I DISAGREE STRONGLY WITH THE LAST HALF OF THE ABOVE PARAGRAPH in terms of it's accuracy about the reality I know. I believe there IS a supernatural. I'm very wary of deception about "soul technologies etc."]
The visitors not only understand the science of the soul, their technologies penetrate into levels of being that are hidden to us. Some of the things that they can do are completely incredible and appalling. Souls are vastly informed. The nature of consciousness is holographic. The brain is not a repository of intelligence but a filter of intelligence.
This world is not an accident. It was constructed intentionally by conscious creatures who devised it as a place in which eternal being, infinitely informed, could experience the one thing that it does not have: the new. We filter out knowledge and awareness so that we can taste the full energy of our discoveries and our mistakes.
The real reason that we fear the visitors is that they are not like us in this respect. They cannot make discoveries or mistakes. They have reached the limits of knowledge. What they want from us is innovation: they are here to taste the excitement of the new. This is why some of the astronauts who went to the moon saw strange things. They were on a cosmic stage, engaged in one of the purest and most sought- after experiences in the whole history of consciousness: touching a new world, truly, for the first time. (And please don’t write me with crap about us never going to the moon. I know a number of the lunar astronauts personally, and I can assure you, they went. I also know, from the visitors, that they went, because I have seen and tasted what the visitors saw and tasted in those days.)
But how do you reconcile all of this sublime material with things like cattle mutilation, the sadistic destruction of housecats, and grotesque murders? I will tell you this: I have also been with beings who literally radiate evil. I have been face to face with such beings, and seen in their faces a lurid greed for me that was absolutely terrifying. It is possible to become addicted to emotional extremes, and I think that this has something to do with what makes some of the visitors go so wrong. Also, they very much desire to overcome certain barriers to their walking among us, and this has led some of them to do quite horrible things. I have met and had in my life people who were created out of a mixing of species, so I don’t think that Mr. Spielberg was wrong about that, either. Such people do exist. But my experience of them was not anything like Taken. I have not met any angels, I can assure you. What I have encountered were complicated, almost deranged, chain-smoking, frantic beings who were obviously suffering. One of these beings spent years with us, living on the periphery of our lives. He was the most terrible person I have ever encountered. The idea that he was near us, was obsessed with us, was able to move around the country when we did, was able to participate in our thoughts and was avidly interested in our most private experiences—which he invaded at will—all of this was disturbing.
As needful and intense as he was, he was also protective of us. Back when we had our old cabin in upstate New York, Anne and I once went skinny-dipping in our pool behind our house. It was absolutely private. Nobody could see us and nobody was around. But he was there, in the woods just behind the pool, and he was absolutely appalled at what we were doing. He raced back and forth in the leaves breaking branches, slapping trees, grabbing limbs and shaking them, until finally we went inside. Later, I went walking in the woods. He appeared at a distance, hands on hips, glaring at me.
Later, when we moved to a condominium in Texas, he came too. But a condominium in a city was not the same as a house in the country, and he was soon the source of tenant complaints. They saw what they thought was a boy looking into windows and climbing on balconies. Finally, he left, huffing away down the middle of the street, never to be seen again.
He was an awful mess. He pried into our personal lives. He oppressed us. But it was all out of a zeal for a companionship that he could never quite achieve.
The reason that he could not achieve this level of total contact felt emotional, but its actual origins lie deep in the mysteries of physics, and lead me to the issue of what the government is actually doing and why, and why there cannot at this time be direct, open contact with the visitors, and why any sort of final, absolute government disclosure is unlikely.
The government and the visitors both have the same problem: there is a barrier in physics to direct contact that will remain in place until the human mind makes room in its fundamental reality for their existence. At the highest levels, the intelligence officers who work on the problem of the visitors believe that official disclosure would lead to general acceptance, most notably among the most highly potentiated human minds—the scientists and intellectuals who now believe that the whole thing is utter bunk.
What is this mysterious issue in physics that controls contact? It is succinctly stated by J.A. Wheeler in his participatory universe hypothesis: “All things physical are information-theoretic in origin and this is a participatory universe…Observer participancy gives rise to information; and information gives rise to physics.” Conversely, this means that, if there is information which a constructing observer does not participate in, its physics will not be available to that observer.
This concept originated in the work of John von Neumann, who was profoundly involved in the original decision to keep the whole matter of the apparent alien presence a secret. For an interesting discussion of both Wheeler and von Neumann’s ideas, click here. I have also written a novella about von Neumann’s ideas entitled “The Open Doors” that appears in the retrospective of my shorter fiction, Evenings With Demons. Unfortunately, the book is rare, but the story will be reprinted in a new anthology of alien-related writings this year that will be made avavilable over this website.
The fact that we do not include the visitors in our version of the universe is why we have missing time when we are in contact situations. Nothing is done to us. In fact, the visitors are fighting missing time. They are fighting our minds for space in our reality. This is what the theatre in the sky is all about, it is the primary reason for the attempts at contact and interaction. They are fighting what is for them a very real war, and the elements that are here are a tough military force: they are fighting to get the human mind to include them in the basic information out of which it assembles its reality.
If—or when—this happens, there will be fundamental and absolute change. The visitors won’t invade. They will simply be here, all around us.
There are two ways that this could happen: one would be, presumably, if the government disclosed the fact that they were real and the leaders of our scientific and intellectual communities agreed. This might conceivably bring a weight of acceptance that would fundamentally alter the fabric of perception to include the visitors. But nobody is certain that it would actually change anything, and nobody wants to find out, for the simple reason that the door, once opened, can never again be closed. Without understanding what that would mean, the government will never make this sort of disclosure. And given the horror of some of the things that have been observed, obviously it cannot take the risk.
The other would be if the efforts of the visitors make it happen. Every close encounter, every UFO sighting, every program like Confirmation or Taken—all of these things play into the visitors’ hands. It is possible, as I have stated in these columns before, that the balance could be tipped in 2003. The simple reason for this is that the closest Mars opposition in years will occur in August, and Mars oppositions enable the visitors to bring much more equipment, as it were, to bear on the situation. Using this oppostion, could they create such an extensive theater in the sky that official disclosure will become irrelevant? Possibly. The greater question is, do they want to, and only time can tell us that.
But is the fusion of perceptual systems that I am talking about really to be desired? It has happened on other planets, and in the cases I know about, been interestingly successful. But if there have been failures, I’m fairly sure they would have been concealed from me, especially if they resulted in particularly dreadful situations, as would probably be the case.
In the process of interacting with the visitors, I have been able to taste the sense of annihilation that comes from allowing oneself to be subsumed into their perceptual universe. It evokes a fear much worse than death, because the part of one that is eternal senses it as a threat. The shattering of reality is a much greater threat to the mind than death. The mind knows that it survives death. It has no way of knowing what will happen to it if the reality upon which it counts for its contact with meaning should suddenly be undercut.
But there are layers and layers to all this, and this gets me to another failing of Taken: it is not based on insider information, but rather on suppositions gained from talking to people who are not in possession of such information, or reading books that do not contain it. I do not define ‘insider’ here as a member of one of the secret government communities who know for certain that the visitors are real, but rather as a person who has had direct and viable contact—in short, an abductee who has overcome the crippling effects of missing time enough to include at least some of his encounters in his ordinary reality.
When he does this, he finds that he has another, separate self who possesses extensive knowledge of his hidden life. It’s why witnesses often report knowing their captors. It’s why, during my second hypnosis session, I unexpectedly flashed back to a childhood encounter with the same being I met on the night of December 26, 1985.
These millions are the insiders I mean, because they are the foundation of contact. It is their lives that will change first— that have already changed, in some cases—and they who will appear from the social backstreets and hinterlands to lead the new movement of mankind toward a life reconciled with the visitors, and at last extending the reach of human being beyond the confines of this one planet and into the cosmos where it belongs.
In this, also, Mr. Spielberg was wrong: we are not going to be abandoned by the visitors because we’re not ready. We’re ready as soon as we can correctly understand what’s going on. Our history, our violence, our greed, our beauty, our achievements and failures: none of these will cause us to pass or fail the test.
So I was very disturbed by the depth of negativity in Taken. Beautiful aliens were driven off by the greed of an evil government. But it just is not so. A very complicated, multi- layered event is unfolding here. If I managed to do anything right in my previous work, it was to say that the visitors are what the force of evolution looks like when it is applied to a conscious mind. Growth and change are not necessarily pretty. If you were a dinosaur, the objects that hit the earth and shattered their world would have seemed demonic in origin. But to one of us, looking back and contemplating that if the dinosaurs had not been killed, we never would have been born, those same asteroids seem guided by the hand of a benevolent God.
So it is now.
and NOW is nap time before i fall on my face on my keyboard.
Blessings,
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