Jacques Vallee: Implications of UFO Phenomena (excerpt) - Thinking Allowed w/ Jeffrey Mishlove

Transcript

I think uh one of the interesting things to mention about you is the fact that you were the person that step Spielberg modeled a character of a UFO researcher on in his classic movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind I think he was uh intrigued with the idea of a French scientist running around the United States in investigating the UFO phenomenon you've been looking at this phenomenon for a long time you've worked closely with uh Dr alen hinck and other UFO researchers you've written many authoritative books and yet your perspective on the UFO issue seems rather unique in the sense that you don't seem to be jumping on the Extraterrestrial visitors bandwagon that's what uh what was a main point of disagreement with Steven Spielberg when I met Steven Spielberg he was about halfway through filming Close Encounters and we had a long discussion about what UFOs could be and of course for him uh the the main point of the of the movie was entertainment and it was appropriate for the UFOs to be extraterrestrial visitors I think that uh from my own point of view I'm going to be very disappointed if UFOs turn out to be nothing more than visitors from another planet because I think that could be something much more interesting something uh from another dimension of space or time uh I think what the UFO phenomenon is teaching us is that um we don't understand time and space mhm uh here are objects I think we have to call them objects that are physical that interact with the environment that cause U effects on the Witnesses on the psychology and the physiology of the witnesses and leave traces on the ground and yet are capable of appear to be capable of manipulating time space in ways that go beyond what our physics understands today in your books particularly your most recent book messengers of deception which is many years old you suggest that UFOs are deliberately trying to manipulate uh our subconscious mind to create a mythology in our culture about themselves which is one of the reasons that they're both physical and concrete yet very illusive at at the same time uh do you still feel that way I think to answer that I'm not trying to evade your question but to answer that you have to step back you know a little bit farther the what we know today about the UFO phenomenon is considerably more than we knew 20 years ago or 10 years ago and we have to to understand it at three different levels and the first level is the physical level and all we can say about UFOs at the physical level is that it's a lot of energy in a small space in the space of of this if we could take the energy of a nuclear reactor and contain it within this studio for example you'll have something that would approximate what a UFO does it's a lot of energy in a small space emitted through uh light energy and through pulsed microwave energy MH the second level is what happens to Witnesses what would happen to you and me if we were close to that source of energy and again now we we we're beginning to understand the physiological and the psychological correlations of of a close encounter yes and those have to do with a loss of the sense of space loss of orientation I've had Witnesses tell me we were driving north when they were everybody knows they were driving South they were disoriented at the time uh loss of a sense of time people thinking that only 10 minutes went by and 3 hours went by uh a very often uh effects on the skin sunburns I think that was close shown in Close Encounters effects on the eyes going from conjunctivitis to blindness to tempor Temporary blindness in some cases and sometimes you've mentioned people have actually been healed of diseases there have been cases where the after a UFO close encounter uh it seems that the healing process had been sped up now there are known techniques Now using electromagnetic radiation that will heal uh the uh fractures for examp example or will heal superficial wounds on the skin but nothing that would heal as fast as you know the reported effects so we're beginning to understand at least the the the descriptions you know the the the symptoms of of the exposure to whatever UFO is and then there is a a third level which is where I was the level I was addressing in messengers of deception which is a social level the impact on our culture yes and the the impact on our belief systems and at that level and that's something that's very difficult to to convey to the Believers in UFOs or Believers in green men from space you know that at that level it really doesn't matter whether UFOs are real or not if enough people believe that something is real then it is real in its in its effects terms social reality in terms of the social reality in terms of what people act according to their beliefs yeah and uh that opens a question of already at two Lev s could the UFO phenomenon be manipulating us could it be a teaching system of some sort perhaps something that we are creating ourselves perhaps a series of images that we are projecting I think Carl Jung came very close to to expressing that idea in one of his books or could it be manipulated purposely by people who have the technology to uh simulate UFO sightings and people say well of course not who would do a thing like that well I would remind you that during Watergate during the Watergate investigation it was discovered that there was a plan uh originated in the White House to uh surface a submarine of the coast of Cuba and paint the second coming of Christ over the island of Cuba using Holograms and which is well within our technology today the idea was that since there is a large Catholic population in Cuba they would be so upset by this Vision that this will saturate the communication channels you know telephone system in Cuba long enough for an invasion to take place how interesting I never heard of that well I think that's you know a classic in psychological warfare but that kind of uh manipulation is is well understood and I have personally investigated several apparently genuine UFO cases where there was in fact manipul my my conclusion the conclusion of scientists working with me was that there was in fact a manipulation taking place and that it was not a hoax on the part of the witnesses but a hoax on the part of somebody much better organized than so there possibly all of these levels going on simultaneously today the today with the current technology that would be possible um one of my interests as you know has been to look at ancient sightings uh old sightings before World War II for example when there is really no confusion with modern technology uh and if people described say in 1925 or in 1825 a disc flying through the air um then uh you know it can only have been very very few phenomena could have produced it and there have been some well documented sightings going back to the 19th century for example there was uh starting in 1896 and going into the spring of 1897 there was a remarkable wave of sightings of airships those were described as oval objects flying through the sky with lights on them uh and of course they the people in those days could only compare it to durables only compare them to airships and those objects were capable of doing all the things that UFOs do today including taking off very quickly and making 90° turns and landing and occupants coming out of them and if any if nothing else I think this is part of our folklore this is something that we should be studying as part of our folklore t