part0009

Today, if we scan the shelves of a university bookstore, we find many books describing the triumphs of science. These books tell us that physicists have understood the laws governing ordinary matter and molecular biologists have explained life in terms of these laws. Although some scientists still find consciousness perplexing, we are told this problem will soon be solved by studying the brain. The books assure us that modern science has understood the evolution of species, the origin of life from the primordial soup, and the processes that formed planets, stars, and galaxies. The frontier of fundamental physics has been pushed back to the beginning of the Big Bang, and we are on the verge of the final advance that will give us the Theory of Everything.

Yet these same shelves occasionally display books about anomalous evidence that contradicts accepted scientific theories. There are several categories of anomalous evidence, including psychical phenomena, out-of-body experiences, past-life memories, cryptozoology (e.g., Bigfoot), and archeological anomalies.

In recent years, however, the most prominent anomalous category has been UFOs—Unidentified Flying Objects. Covers proclaim that thousands of responsible people have seen something inexplicable flying in the sky. Other covers announce visitations by strange-looking aliens, and still others hint darkly at sinister conspiracies and cover-ups. These books say that for decades people have been observing unknown flying objects that drastically violate the known laws of physics. They also declare that people have encountered humanlike beings that pilot these strange craft and exhibit powers contrary to both science and common sense.

For years I have been interested in the relationship between modern science and the ancient Vedic world view of India. I have been particularly concerned with the contrast between the mechanistic model of life developed by modern science and the animistic (or soul-based) conception of life that lies at the foundation of Vedic philosophy. 1 The scientific model of life is based on experiments and careful reasoning, but by reducing life to a combination of atoms, it deprives it of all higher purpose and meaning. It reduces human values to behavioral patterns produced by cultural and physical evolution. These behavior patterns are contingent on accidental historical circumstances, and they have little to do with the fundamental nature of things.

In contrast, the Vedic philosophy gives meaning to life by linking it with a transcendental level of reality, but in the process it brings in phenomena and categories of being that have no place in the theoretical picture of modern science. This naturally gives rise to the question of where the truth lies. Has modern science given a complete outline of life’s fundamental principles, or has it perhaps given only a detailed but narrow account of certain limited aspects of life?

With these interests, I was naturally somewhat intrigued when books on UFOs (such as Intruders , by Budd Hopkins) first began to appear prominently in the science sections of university bookstores. These books seemed as though they might shed some light on the nature of life, since they reported encounters between human beings and other intelligent life forms. But were any of the UFO reports credible?

Like many people, I had always regarded the topic of UFOs as disreputable. But on reading some of these books more carefully, I saw that they seemed to contain substantial, though anecdotal, evidence for some very unusual occurrences. In particular, they seemed to be giving contemporary eyewitness accounts of many different life-related phenomena that are described in ancient Vedic texts. This led me to investigate the UFO phenomenon in greater depth and finally to write this book.

This book is a comparative study of UFO literature and the Vedic literature of India. In the first five chapters, I give a broad survey of the material written on UFOs from the late 1940s up to the present. I have included this survey in an effort to give the reader an overview of the reported UFO phenomena.

The remaining six chapters introduce the Vedic literature and present detailed comparisons between phenomena reported in Vedic accounts and corresponding phenomena mentioned in UFO reports. The Vedic material is taken mainly from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and the Mahābhārata . I also draw on the Rāmāyaṇa and various late medieval texts that follow Vedic tradition.

For Indologists I should point out that the Purāṇas , the Mahābhārata , and the Rāmāyaṇa are called the fifth Veda in text 1.4.20 of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa . Therefore, I will freely use the term “Vedic” to refer to them, even though some scholars insist that this term can be properly applied only to the Ṛg Veda .

The idea of comparing UFO accounts with Vedic literature is not new, but generally this has not been done in a scholarly way. The first attempt that I am aware of is the 1953 book entitled The Flying Saucers Have Landed, by Desmond Leslie and the famous contactee George Adamski. In the first part of this book, Leslie quoted a number of passages from the Rāmāyaṇa and the Mahābhārata describing vimānas, or Vedic flying machines, 2 and a number of passages describing remarkable weapons that were used in Vedic times. 3 Unfortunately, many of these passages are badly mistranslated, and Leslie’s account is practically worthless.

Similar mistranslated passages from the Mahābhārata have appeared in a number of popular books that follow in Leslie’s footsteps. Here is an example showing how misleading these bad translations can be. Leslie quotes the following passage from the Karṇa Parva in Pratap Chandra Roy’s edition of the Mahābhārata :

Karna took up that terrible weapon, the tongue of the Destroyer, the Sister of Death, a terrible and effulgent weapon. When the Rakshasas saw that excellent and blazing weapon pointed up at them they were afraid. . . . The resplendent missile soared aloft into the night sky and entered the starlike formation . . . and reduced to ashes the Rakshasa’s vimana. The enemy craft fell from the sky with a terrible noise. 4

. . . that fierce weapon which looked like the very tongue of the Destroyer or the sister of Death himself, that terrible and effulgent dart, Naikartana, was now hurled at the Rakshasa. Beholding that excellent and blazing weapon capable of piercing the body of every foe, in the hands of the Suta’s son, the Rakshasa began to fly away in fear. . . . Destroying that blazing illusion of Ghatotkacha and piercing right through his breast that resplendent dart soared aloft in the night and entered a starry constellation in the firmament. Having fought . . . with many heroic Rakshasa and human warriors, Ghatotkacha, then uttering diverse terrible roars, fell, deprived of life with that dart of Sakra. 5

Instead of reducing a vimāna to ashes, the weapon killed the Rākṣasa Ghaṭotkaca, and instead of an enemy craft falling with great noise, the Rākṣasa fell while uttering terrible roars. I don’t know how Leslie came up with his mistranslation, but it is typical of his book and others of its genre.

Nonetheless, there is a great deal of material in Vedic literature about flying machines, called vimānas, that show striking resemblances to UFOs. Even more important are Vedic accounts of the behavior and powers of humanlike races that use these flying machines. There are many parallels between specific details in these accounts and corresponding details in UFO close-encounter cases. These parallels provide my main impetus for writing this book.

Parallels between UFO cases and old Celtic and Germanic folklore have been explored by Jacques Vallee in two books, Passport to Magonia and Dimensions . In a sense, this book is an extension of Vallee’s comparative method to the domain of ancient Indian culture.

Many people regard UFO research as something that is not intellectually respectable, and this includes many who are interested in Vedic thought either from a scholarly or a traditional religious point of view. At the same time, many serious UFO researchers feel that to bring old mythology into a discussion of UFOs is unscientific and can only lead to useless mystical speculation. It is therefore important for me to give some justification for writing on the theme of UFOs and Vedic literature. I will begin by making a few observations on the shortcomings of UFO evidence, and then I will point out how the study presented in this book might help overcome them.

One notable weakness in this body of evidence is that there appears to be no way of performing a reproducible experiment that will give us reliable information about UFOs. The problem is that UFOs are connected in many reports with humanlike beings that seem to have superhuman technological powers. If this is true, then we can study these beings only to the degree that they are willing to reveal themselves to us. But if “they” exist, they have shown little willingness to cooperate with human investigators. There is even evidence suggesting that they may try to deliberately keep people in the dark about their activities and their real nature. Thus UFO phenomena may be inherently difficult to study by standard scientific methods.

Yet even if a phenomenon is completely unpredictable and uncontrollable, it might still be expected to leave some “hard” evidence that can be scientifically evaluated. Where are the photographs and instrument readings that record the flight of UFOs? Where can we find UFO hardware or tangible physical evidence of UFO landings and other activities?

Interestingly enough, there are many reports of hard UFO evidence in the form of ground traces of landings ( pages 66–69 ), photographic records ( pages 73–77 ), and physical injuries suffered by UFO witnesses ( pages 129–30 and 346–48 ). In addition, books have been written arguing that government authorities have collected a great deal of high-quality UFO evidence, which they keep hidden on the grounds of military secrecy. I myself have been told by an engineer involved in military weapons testing that high-quality UFO photos were regularly taken in the 1950s by technical personnel known to him, but that these photos have never been revealed to the public ( pages 29–30 ). I discuss this controversial topic in Chapters 1 and 3 .

Although hard evidence for UFOs does exist, the evidence readily available to the public says very little by itself. It can only take on significance in the context of a complete story involving witnesses whose honesty and competence can be evaluated.

This is illustrated by the following example. In 1987, a building contractor named Ed Walters claimed to have videotaped a UFO flying near his backyard in Gulf Breeze, Florida. Dr. Bruce Maccabee, a physicist and UFO investigator, made the following evaluation of this videotape:

If the only information about this sighting were Ed’s testimony and the pictorial information contained within the videotape itself, . . . I would seriously consider the hoax hypothesis in spite of the demonstrated difficulty in duplicating the videotape. However, taken in the complete context of the sighting, with the other witnesses testifying that they saw Ed videotape the UFO, I conclude that Ed did not produce his videotape using a model. Rather, I conclude that he videotaped a True UFO. 6

Maccabee was able to rule out the hoax hypothesis only by interviewing the people involved in making the tape and evaluating their character and motives. If his judgement was right, then the tape provides useful information about the appearance and flight of UFOs. But whether he was right or wrong, most people must depend on his report in order to assess the validity of the tape. The only alternative would be to go to Gulf Breeze and conduct one’s own investigation. But as time passes this option becomes less and less feasible.

We can conclude that most readily available UFO evidence takes the form of reports in which the testimony of witnesses and investigators is of crucial importance. Since one cannot arrange to see UFO phenomena at will, and hard evidence is meaningless without accompanying testimony, one has no alternative but to rely on such reports or make one’s own investigations. And one’s own investigations simply result in more reports for people to read.

In this book, I will take UFO evidence mainly from a wide variety of available reports, but unfortunately I will not be able to prove the truth of any of the reports that I cite. Proof, in so far as it is possible, can come only from in-depth investigation of particular cases. Of course, some of the cases I present have been extensively investigated, and the investigators have concluded that the cases are genuine. However, I am not in a position to prove that they are right or show that their investigations were really carried out properly.

Since my survey of UFO material is intended to be comprehensive, it inevitably combines material that is relatively well attested with material that seems particularly dubious. I have included some dubious material because suppressing it would result in a false picture of the UFO evidence. An artificially sanitized picture of the UFO scene would not be realistic, and I should warn the reader that when I present the evidence for certain claims, that does not necessarily mean that I regard those claims as valid. In some cases, my aim is to alert the reader to the kind of false material that can be found in the UFO field.

Some doubtful-looking UFO-related material is certainly phony. Yet we should be cautious about superficially rejecting things as false simply because they seem absurd. Information that initially seems absurd or meaningless may prove to be highly significant when seen later on in a broader context. Absurdity is defined only in relation to an accepted theoretical view, and as theoretical insight develops, the status of evidence as absurd or anomalous may also change.

It has been said that to listen sympathetically to “absurd nonsense” compromises one’s credibility as an objective, scientific thinker. Perhaps this is so, but I would suggest that sympathetic attention to evidence is essential if real advances in scientific knowledge are to be made. As science advances, ideas once regarded as absurd may later become orthodox. Examples would be the idea that continents drift across the surface of the globe, or the idea that electrons tunnel through energy barriers. Of course, other ideas may prove to be actually invalid, including some that are accepted by mainstream scientists.

To keep this book from becoming too large, I have inevitably given emphasis to some UFO cases and neglected others. The same is true of my treatment of Vedic material. Hopefully, the sample of cases I have chosen is representative, and the same points could be illustrated using a different representative set of cases. Although certain cases are repeatedly mentioned, this does not mean that I regard them as being uniquely significant.

Since I am concerned with tracing patterns in collections of modern and ancient reports, this book can be regarded as a comparative study of folklore. It is certainly legitimate to study folklore, and for many readers this may be the best way to make an initial approach to the subject matter of this book. However, in the background of any study of folklore, there is always the question of how the folklore really originated. Is it simply a product of imaginative storytelling motivated by psychological factors, or does it have a basis in objective reality? In the next section, I will make a few preliminary observations on this topic.

There is a saying that “amazing claims require amazing proof.” This commonsense idea creates a problem in the interpretation of UFO evidence: a report of amazing proof is itself an amazing claim which, in turn, requires more amazing proof. The ironic result of this is that a case with elaborate proof may seem less credible than a case with relatively little in the way of proof.

For example, suppose that someone claims to have seen a flying object unlike any known manmade vehicle. This is an amazing claim. But if he offers a photograph of the object as proof, then that photograph constitutes another amazing claim. We can always suppose that the photograph might have been a hoax.

If he offers a large number of high-quality photographs as proof, then his claim becomes even more amazing, and our suspicions of fraud may become even greater. For example, Ed Walters of Gulf Breeze, Florida, published a book containing many remarkable UFO photos that he claimed to have taken with a Polaroid camera. 7 These photos were judged to be genuine by an optical physicist (Bruce Maccabee). But many readers reacted by saying that because of their very quality, they must have been faked. As one reviewer put it, “I am reminded of the warning frequently given by bunco squad detectives: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.’ Gulf Breeze sounds too good. . . .” 8

To make things worse, there is evidence suggesting that there have been massive UFO hoaxes on a scale requiring considerable amounts of manpower and money. A possible example is the case of the Swiss contactee Eduard Meier, which is supported by—among other things— high-quality photos and movies, eyewitness testimony, photos made by eyewitnesses, UFO sound recordings, UFO ground traces, and professional analysis of UFO samples by a prominent IBM engineer. 9 , 10 As far as I am aware, no one has actually proven that this case is a hoax, but it is a definite possibility. Such cases simply add more weight to the idea that large amounts of high-quality evidence are a cause for doubt rather than confidence.

If UFO reports become more doubtful the more evidence there is to support them, then why should any reports of this kind be taken seriously? The reason is that there are large numbers of apparently independent UFO reports from around the world, and these tend to be very similar in content. These reports are often made by respectable people who have no obvious motive for making up a bizarre story and exposing themselves to ridicule. Roughly speaking, five possible explanations are generally advanced to account for this:

2. There is a mental aberration that causes large numbers of people to report UFO experiences, even though these experiences are not veridical. The content of these people’s UFO stories is derived either from information transmitted by normal means (such as news media) or from delusory mental processes.

3. There are substantial numbers of people who sometimes lapse into dishonesty, even though they have reputations for being honest. During these lapses they sometimes make up UFO stories, drawing on normal sources of information for guidance.

4. There is a massive hoax organized on a worldwide scale. The perpetrators of this hoax induce people to report UFO experiences, using methods ranging from bribes to the skillful use of Hollywood special effects and mind control techniques.

5. Although liars, frauds, and lunatics do exist, many people who report UFO encounters are experiencing real phenomena, which are worthy of careful observation and analysis.

It is widely acknowledged that explanation (1) applies to many (but not all) UFO reports involving objects or lights seen at a great distance in the sky. However, it cannot apply to close-encounter reports, in which people have a close view of strange craft and even stranger beings. If these reports are not lies, the only conventional explanation for them is that they involve highly abnormal mental states.

Explanation (2) suffers from the drawback that many UFO reports, including those of close encounters, are made by normal people who are considered to be sane and responsible by their peers. In many cases, people reporting extremely bizarre UFO encounters have been tested by psychologists or psychiatrists, who judged them to be free of mental illness ( pages 61–63 and 152–58 ). To me, this is one of the strongest arguments for the reality of UFO phenomena. Large numbers of simple, direct statements by normal, levelheaded persons carry much more weight than a few sets of fancy photographs.

One skeptical reply to this involves the false memory syndrome (FMS). In recent years there has been great controversy over techniques of psychotherapy which supposedly enable people to recover repressed memories of childhood sexual abuse. Adults confronted with accusations of such abuse have countered that these accusations are based on false memories generated in the accusers’ minds by the therapeutic process.

One can argue that UFO close encounter stories are based on false memories generated in people’s minds by zealous UFO investigators and by UFO stories circulated through books and the media. My own impression is that there is some truth to this hypothesis, but I do not think that it can explain all UFO close encounter reports. After all, even the most vigorous proponents of FMS do not claim that all recovered memories of childhood abuse are false. I discuss this topic in greater detail in Chapter 2 ( pages 50–53 ).

There are many real or alleged quirks of the mind which can be invoked to explain UFO phenomena. These include fantasy proneness, temporal lobe lability, dissociation induced by abuse in childhood, and ambulatory schizophrenia. Although it is legitimate to consider that such mental conditions may give rise to UFO reports, it is important for researchers to demonstrate the existence of a real causal link between the hypothesized conditions and the reported experiences. Otherwise, there is the danger that scientific progress can be hampered by allowing a false, blanket explanation to block real inquiry and understanding.

The way is also opened for people in positions of authority to use charges of mental malfunction to persecute persons holding unwanted beliefs. For example, consider ambulatory or “sluggish” schizophrenia. In the Soviet Union this alleged disorder was used to imprison political dissenters:

The principles established by the Serbsky Institute of Forensic Psychiatry in Moscow have an important place in Soviet psychiatric method. Particularly relevant to psychiatric abuse are the theories of Dr. A. V. Snezhnevsky, a leading psychiatrist at the Institute and a member of the Academy of Science of the USSR. Dr. Snezhnevsky’s concept of “sluggish schizophrenia”—a mental illness with no visible symptoms—has been used in psychiatric diagnoses that have secured the compulsory confinement of scores of known dissenters since the 1960’s. 11

The key point here is that sluggish or ambulatory schizophrenia has no symptoms other than the unwanted thinking that it is invoked to suppress. One could similarly invalidate UFO testimony by interpreting it as symptomatic of a disorder which discredits both the testimony and the persons making it. But we should avoid this, since it is both unscientific and unjust.

We should also avoid the temptation to label someone as a fraud or a liar simply on the grounds that they have made a claim that strikes us as implausible or absurd. In the course of this book, I will introduce a great deal of testimony that will strike many people (often including myself) as absurd. Any of this testimony could be fraudulent, but I will only argue that this is so in cases where I am aware of definite evidence of fraud.

There is not a single case cited in this book in which I can prove that the testimony was not fraudulent. This is inevitable, given the fact that I am simply reviewing reports written by others. I presume that a certain percentage of the material that I cite is phony, but I cannot say what that percentage might be. I can say only that I have not seen enough evidence of fraud to justify explanation (3), which maintains that UFO reports from ostensibly responsible people are generally (or always) lies.

Jacques Vallee has advocated explanation (4)—the worldwide hoax theory—for many UFO incidents, although he thinks some UFO cases involve genuine paranormal phenomena. 12 In recent years there has been an increase in testimony linking the U.S. military and intelligence establishments with the UFO abduction phenomenon ( page 47 ). There is also reason to think that some purported UFO documents connected with these establishments may be part of an organized campaign of disinformation ( pages 110–15 ). However, I have not yet seen evidence indicating that UFO reports in general are due to a hoax organized on a global scale.

This leaves us with explanation (5), the hypothesis that many UFO experiences are due to a real but unknown phenomenon. As I have already mentioned, one of the most compelling reasons for adopting this explanation is that many ostensibly sane people from widely separated parts of the world have made UFO reports. Even though these reports seem to originate independently, they are linked together by standard features that appear repeatedly in report after report.

Of course, one can argue that reports made within recent years cannot be proven to be independent, because there are many ways in which UFO information can spread from one person to another. It is here that comparisons between UFO accounts and Vedic literature become useful.

It turns out that there are many detailed parallels between typical UFO close-encounter reports and certain accounts from Vedic texts. Most of the UFO encounters I will be discussing took place in Western countries, where most people are almost completely unacquainted with Vedic ideas. Thus we can rule out the possibility that most UFO accounts have been influenced to any significant degree by Vedic literature. Likewise, the Vedic literature was written long before the modern period of UFO reports, and could not have been influenced by this material.

Thus far I have defended the study of the UFO phenomenon, but I have said little to justify the introduction of Vedic literature into such studies. I will now offer a few suggestions as to how Vedic material could be approached by readers of this book. I also make some additional points on the interpretation of Vedic texts in Appendix 1 .

People have many different perspectives on Vedic literature, but since this book has been written in America, we should discuss the typical American or European response to the Vedic world view. To put it briefly, this response is often one of culture shock. This is a consequence of the overwhelming strangeness of Vedic thinking to the Western mind, combined with specific objections arising from religious, ethnic, political, and scientific considerations.

The religious and ethnic objections are unfortunately based on exclusivism and charges of exclusivism. In response, I can only recommend an open-minded approach to other people’s religious and ethnic ideas. Perhaps the study of the UFO phenomenon will help us overcome barriers based on cultural differences within human society, since these differences may be dwarfed by the differences between human societies and those of nonhuman intelligent beings.

Perhaps the best way to overcome misunderstandings based on ethnic and religious differences is to openly discuss all aspects of the world views of different peoples. To do this effectively would require a massive cross-cultural study. My own conviction is that such a study would result in a unified picture of human cultures that attributes much greater reality to each culture’s world view than modern science allows.

Such a study lies far beyond the scope of this book. But as a starting point, I can ask the reader to compare the ideas presented here with those of Barry Downing, a Christian minister with a Ph.D. in science and religion, who has written extensively about UFOs and the Bible. 13 One point made by Downing is that UFOs may provide evidence for the reality of Biblical phenomena, such as visits by angels, that seem mythological from our modern perspective.

A similar point can be made about the Vedic literature. According to Vedic accounts, ancient peoples used to be in regular contact with advanced beings from other worlds. If this is true, and if contemporary UFO reports seem strange to us, then shouldn’t we expect the Vedic world view to also seem strange? The strangeness of the Vedic world view should not be taken as an immediate reason for dismissing it as mythology.

This brings us to the scientific objections to the Vedic world view. These come from several scientific fields, including physics, biology, archeology, and cosmology. In this book I cannot discuss all of these objections, but I note that some scientific objections to the Vedic world view also apply to UFO reports. These are the objections to the “physically impossible” actions of both UFOs and their reported occupants. It turns out that many of these actions are paralleled by corresponding impossible actions described in Vedic accounts.

These remarks are in defense of the reality of the Vedic world view. But just as the reader can approach UFO reports as folklore, he can also view the Vedic literature as folklore. The parallels pointed out in this book can be studied from a strictly literary viewpoint. However, it is natural to ask if something real may underlie these parallels. I would suggest that just as UFOs may be more real than our scientific and cultural conditioning may have allowed us to believe, the same may be true of the world view presented in the Vedic literature .