The greatest detriment to serious research of UFOs and the Paranormal is extremist belief by investigators. Too many researchers limit themselves and others by claiming to know "The TRUTH about UFOs!" Belief is the enemy. Rational, open minded skepticism balanced by intuitive perception can help us make our way through the maze of claims associated with these subjects.

Most people looking into these subjects are on a spiritual quest whether they realize it or not. The UFO has become a sort of Holy Grail; the philosopher's stone. "If we could only catch one we could surely cure all our ills!" Still, the UFOs and their occupants elude our grasp like mercury through our fingers. Many authors have noted this elusiveness and equated the quest for the "Truth about UFOs" with humanity's quest to know the mind of God. It may be that we are incapable of seeing the whole picture; perhaps the intelligences will continue to play their games, not wishing to be apprehended. Nuts and bolts UFOlogists don't like such thoughts. Though I tend to agree that the phenomena will remain elusive I hope that humanity does have the capacity or can evolve the ability to comprehend these mysteries. We must have faith in humanity or we are lost.

If there is some ultimate truth to UFOs then we must learn how best to interact with its reality. Far too often our society's histories have been manipulated by our blind belief in what the intelligences behind the phenomena have told us. If UFOs are behind the creation of most of the world's religions and belief systems, as I believe they are, then one can clearly see that either by accident or design we have been made to war upon each other in the name of these "gods." Which is more frightening? That humanity has misinterpreted the messages of these visitations and thus we are at fault? Or that the messengers themselves have sought to deceive us in an effort to control and dominate us? Humans always seek a scapegoat. Maybe there is one to be had, or maybe the fault lies closer to home.

The point is that we should not be so easily led / misled! We have the capacity to do better. We must, or we shall perish! By looking at all the possible interpretations of these myriad phenomena we can gam a wider perspective and thus have the potential to respond in the best possible way. If we limit ourselves to one belief system we are limiting ourselves in the ways that we can react to any given stimuli. These are simple evolutionary concepts. This is how we came to where we are today. Paradigms, i.e., belief systems, come and go. Those that last are the most adaptable to change. Change is one of the only constants that we can be certain exists.

Those of us who sense the coming paradigm shift will probably fare the best for we will feel the least shock. But we must remember what Robert Anton Wilson has said: a new Paradigm is as bad as the old, for ALL paradigms are limiting. That is what paradigms do. They establish the boundaries of what is accepted as reality. It was for this reason that I changed the sub-title of this journal from "Journal of the New Paradigm" to "Journal of Possible Paradigms." What we really need is a model agnostic approach to a pluralism of paradigms. Each paradigm helps us understand certain phenomena. We are unlikely to find THE PARADIGM that will explain everything. We cannot continue to mistake the map for the territory. The menu is not the meal. Our models of reality are simply that-models, not true reality.

It is the creative writers and artists to whom we should look for insight into the nature of UFOs and related phenomena. That is not to say that we don't need scientists and investigators. I seek balance, and at present we lack the intuitive insight that is to be had within the creative community. Whitley Strieber, as fiction writer turned reality explorer, is the most prominent recent example of a rational yet intuitive chronicler of these phenomena. He, more than any other writer or experiencer, has advanced the level headed approach to UFO research. The debate over his being a fiction writer and possibly having "created" his stories of abduction only side steps the real issue. He has never stated that he knew the definitive origin of these experiences. He has offered us an intelligent exploration of his experiences and has looked at a number of possible interpretations. Very few have done this. Some modern examples of writers dealing with their experiences through both fiction and non-fiction have been Robert Anton Wilson and Philip K. Dick. These writers have explored this phenomena with an open mind, often questioning their own sanity. Few have explored this intimate relationship between the creative element and tales of the fantastic. Ed Conroy's Report On Communion and Terence McKenna's Definitive UFO Tape are among the few that come to mind.

"British science-fiction author Ian Watson wrote a delightful novel called Miracle Visitors . It concerned a teenage boy in Yorkshire who dredged images from his mind and somehow created pseudo-real creatures from them.

In Watson's story, one of the first apparitions to emerge from the youngster's mind and cavort over the Pennine landscape was a pterodactyl -"

"...Paul [had] experienced all manner of strange creatures from hairy beasts to robots and angels to ufonauts. They were in his bedroom or on the Yorkshire moors. The case was extensively researched and documented, mostly by investigator Nigel Watson (note the surname!) I've met Paul myself and have little doubt he is sincere...

The Yorkshire pterodactyl seen briefly soaring over the glorious hills of the Pennines was innocently reported to him [Nigel Watson] by some friends in a sort of 'club' of strange observers. Paul Bennet had just created a magazine entitled Earth to bring his newfound philosophy to a wider readership. He argues that there is a kind of bond between all living, breathing consciousness on this planet and many of our mysterious phenomena emerge from that matrix.

It is the same concept coined (yet again simultaneously - in a book published in 1979) by a scientist who has written several excellent popular studies of what he came to call the 'Lifetide'. This he perceives as a sea of planetary consciousness into which all souls contribute, rather like drips from a tap filling up the bathtub. It ought not to surprise us that, by another of those 'coincidences', this scientist's name is Dr. Lyall Watson."

Idle speculation perhaps. But the book was called Janus (after the two-faced god, chosen to reflect our sick and healthy sides). Almost exactly as it was released a family in Oxfordshire had a UFO encounter, lost time, were put under hypnosis by a Gloucester practitioner and a Birmingham University lecturer and from this an amazing 'memory' poured out. This epic case was later compiled into book form. I spoke to the witnesses. They were sincere.

The aliens in this encounter claimed that they were once of earth and were returning to live here and to warn us, after having destroyed their own planet through nuclear mishaps and pollution. The symbolism is clear-especially when we learn that the alien moon which triggered the destruction was called Saton and the planet from whence they had fled like interstellar refugees was Janos.

Jenny Randles says she has found this in a number of cases and sees "this symbiotic link between fact and fiction" as a clue to the origins of the imagery experienced within many UFO encounters. Once again, this is not to dismiss the encounters as being hallucinations of idle minds. It is simply pointing out the complexity of these phenomena and their apparently intimate relation to the collective consciousness of our species. These are the ELF Infested Spaces accessible through shamanism, altered states of consciousness, mystical visions, UFO encounters, etc. This is the Imaginatrix, the Dreamtime, where all is possible, however improbable.

In the famous Schrodinger's cat paradox the feline in question is considered to be both alive AND dead at the same time. This is one of the strange postulates which led to speculations on the possibility of multiple universes existing simultaneous to our own.

The Roswell Incident is a dead end investigation. Rallying behind it as the quintessential case to prove the origin of UFOs will always be indeterminate and irresolvable. Just as there are a faction of believers who think that Elvis is alive and well, there are also many people who believe that a space-craft crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. I used to believe this whole-heartedly myself. Now I tend to believe the latest cover-up: that it was a special balloon that crashed. The Elvis Lives and Crashed Saucer Myths are firmly in place. They have become living examples of the Schrodinger's cat paradox. Elvis is both alive and dead. The Roswell debris is both space-craft and balloon. Yet as I have suggested, perhaps if belief reaches critical mass, then perhaps we will see incontrovertible evidence one way or the other.

I've read countless conspiracy theories, from those that tell of the CIA's involvement in the assassination of JFK, to all encompassing world-controlling networks like the Illuminati. Yet I've not been convinced of the truth of any of them. There are certainly smaller events and organizations which I feel safe in believing in ,but these are the exception and not the rule. Nowadays I'm more inclined to believe in what I call Synchronicity Conspiracy; that reality itself engineers coincidences which can be seen as synchronous by observant / visionary paranoids. Any complex conspiracy theory becomes a distinct cosmology / mythology. Some are more spiritual and mystical, while others are political and sinister. But the majority of conspiracy mythology is predominantly negative, building off the innate human fear of loss of control.

Many UFO researchers have posited that these phenomena act as a control system regulating belief and thus manipulating societies through culture. Civilizations have their own institutions (read Inquisitions) of control which often seek to suppress experiences which contradict their sanctioned belief systems. Even today we have PsiCops (CSICOP) trying to regulate what we can think about.

Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson have cleverly and humorously explored the potential of ALL conspiracy theories in their ILLUMINATUS! trilogy. George Johnson has also explored the myriad theories in his perceptive book Architects of Fear: Conspiracy Theories And Paranoia In American Politics. Humans are always looking for someone to blame for misfortunes and conspiracies provide a mythology within which feelings of persecution are explained. There are undoubtedly real conspiracies and networks of people to fear. Americans have been manipulated, deceived, investigated, and experimented on by our own government and its intelligence agencies. Agencies which have very sinister histories and workings that qualify them as true secret societies.

The UFO cover-up and the suppression of specific technologies suggests that there are in fact Machiavellian forces at work within the politico-economic structures that presently run the planet. John Keel, Brad Steiger and William Bramley have all penned books which investigate historic conspiracies which seem tied to the UFO phenomena.

In various theories the supposed ruling elite have been identified as entire races, religions, international bankers and industrialists, etc. All of these parties can be said to have had significant impact upon the history of humanity. All have exacted degrees of control over our collective behavior.

"The war is between the old selfish instructions and the new self-awareness, between genotype and aspects of the phenotype, between the needs of the replicators to keep on doing their thing, which is replicating, and the desire of the organism for indentity. The battle lines are drawn between the orders and ideas. Where the two coincide, a truce is declared and progress takes place by leaps and bounds. But where they disagree, skirmishes are fought in the no-man's-land of the mind, and ambivalent we, with all our special strengths and peculiar frailties, are the result."

"The contingent system is Jung's collective unconscious extended to include biological effects and factors, and given the possibility of a physical location connected in some way with the symbiotic nature of all nucleated cells. It interacts with consciousness and with the dictates of hereditary factors to produce the oceanic effects which I have identified as those of the Lifetide."

Jung coined the term synchronicity to define those events which qualify as meaningful coincidence to the individual. History synchronisticly conspires to create mythology. It is our individual aspects of the contingent systems mat piece together, create, and decide which is meaningful coincidence (synchronicity) and which is mere co-incidence.

Watson goes on to invoke the UFO/muse connection while also paralleling the sociological control implications Jacques Vallee expressed in books like The Invisible College and Messengers of Deception -forces wielding control of our most uncharted, repressed unconscious recesses but ultimately on a grand, planet-wide scale of competing cultures, competing archetypes. Watson states:

"The archetypes are, it seems, the great decisive forces in history. It is they that bring about events, not our thin skin of personal psychology, our individual reasoning, or our practical intent. Knowing this, and probing daily into the collective unconscious through his patients, Jung in 1918 was already able to warn that 'the blond beast is stirring in its sleep and something terrible will happen in Germany."'

"By setting up something as sacred, the needs of society are presented to the individual as though they were his own goals, and possible disruption is easily and quietly replaced by unquestioning compliance. This makes it sound as though there must be some godlike figure manipulating evolution towards a distant but divine goal. There may indeed be, but it is not necessary to make such an assumption. The programs which acquire sanctity and do come to be followed can have purely ecological origins."