part0017

T he reports of UFO sightings and contacts during the last 45 years have suggested to some that the human race is being contacted by intelligent beings that are not human but are surprisingly similar to ourselves. This similarity is so great in many cases that the term “alien” seems to be a misnomer. Yet these beings do seem to be aliens in the sense that there is alienation between them and us. The whole subject of UFO contacts and encounters is filled with secrecy and disinformation, and it appears that this cannot all be blamed on the U.S. Government. UFOs seem to behave in an elusive way, and communications with UFO entities are ambiguous and contradictory. They seem intended to influence human society from a distance, without establishing relationships based on clear mutual understanding.

There are no formal, socially recognized relationships between present-day human society and the beings responsible for the UFOs. In most countries, official scientific, academic, and governmental bodies do not acknowledge that such beings might exist and be in contact with human society. As a result, knowledge of UFOs is not regulated by established academic bodies, and the UFO field is a free-for-all in which serious researchers must cope with an outpouring of unscholarly or fraudulent material.

The UFO beings themselves seem to plan their contacts with people in such a way that there is very little tangible evidence that they really exist. These contacts involve phenomena that are very strange from the modern human perspective, but the ufonauts make little effort to reduce this strangeness. Close-encounter witnesses may have a history of encounters going back to childhood, but they are nonetheless given few explanations and practically no opportunities to introduce their otherworldly visitors to a wider circle of witnesses. Although many witnesses seem to be responsible people who have had genuinely unusual contact experiences, the information they have received during their contacts often seems absurd or contradictory, and it does not enhance their credibility.

Surprisingly, it may be that things have not always been this way. Among tribal societies, mystical contacts with higher beings have been standard since time immemorial, and these contacts are said to still go on today. The civilized societies of ancient times also claimed to be in contact with higher beings. In many cases, the available transhuman-contact material from these sources is placed in the category of religious doctrine, and it involves the unique experiences of a few mystically gifted individuals. However, there are reports of earthly human societies that have had regular diplomatic links with a hierarchy of extraterrestrial and higher-dimensional beings.

This is true, in particular, of the ancient Vedic society of India. Voluminous literature exists describing this society, and from it we can learn a great deal about how its people lived and how they interacted with a larger transhuman society. In this chapter, I will give a brief overview of the ancient Vedic world view. I will show that many features of the modern UFO phenomenon can be seen in Vedic accounts of encounters between humans and members of other humanlike races. I will also show how the social organization of the ancient Vedic people allowed for regular contact with higher beings.

To the best of my ability, I will present the Vedic material as it is understood by those who are immersed in the traditional Vedic outlook. This material may initially seem very strange to persons of Western cultural background, and some may feel reservations based on a religious or scientific perspective. However, the only scientific way to understand another culture is to try to enter into the actual world view of people who live in that culture. My advice would therefore be to suspend judgment and simply try to appreciate the Vedic material as it is. I discuss my approach to interpreting Vedic literature in greater detail in Appendix 1 .

As I pointed out in the Introduction, we know that modern UFO accounts can seem very strange. So we shouldn’t be surprised if the stories and traditions of people in regular contact with higher beings should also seem strange to us. They may help us attain a broader understanding of the strange universe which includes our own system of knowledge and culture as a small part in a much larger reality.

The Bhāgavata Purāṇa, the Mahābhārata, and the Rāmāyaṇa are three important works in the Vedic tradition of India. They are well known as Hindu religious scriptures, but they should not be regarded simply as mythology or as presentations of some sectarian creed. Their real value lies in the fact that they reveal in detail a completely different way of seeing the world, and of living in it, which was followed for thousands of years by a highly developed human civilization.

From the viewpoint of modern Indologists, these works range in age from the 9th century A.D . for the Bhāgavata Purāṇa to the 5th or 6th century B.C . for the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa . However, Indologists agree that the existing texts incorporate material much older than the historical periods in which they believe these texts were written. The very word purāṇa means ancient, and according to native Indian tradition, all three texts date back to at least 3000 B.C .

Here I should make a technical remark about the use of the word “Vedic.” Modern Western scholars insist that this word can be applied only to the four Vedas: Ṛg, Yajur, Sāma, and Atharva . However, in living Indian tradition this word applies to a much broader category of literature. This includes the Purāṇas, or ancient cosmological accounts, and the Itihāsas, or historical epics. The Bhāgavata Purāṇa is one of the 18 principal Purāṇas, and the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa are Itihāsas . I will therefore use the word Vedic to refer to these works as well as the four Vedas.

One important point to make about ancient Vedic society is that aerial vehicles, called vimānas in Sanskrit, were well known. They could be grossly physical machines, or they could be made of two other kinds of energy, which we can call subtle energy and transcendental energy. Humans of this earth generally did not manufacture such machines, although they did sometimes acquire them from more technically advanced beings.

There are ancient Indian accounts of manmade wooden vehicles that flew with wings in the manner of modern airplanes. Although these wooden vehicles were also called vimānas, most vimānas were not at all like airplanes. The more typical vimānas had flight characteristics resembling those reported for UFOs, and the beings associated with them were said to possess powers similar to those presently ascribed to UFO entities. An interesting example of a vimāna is the flying machine which Śālva, an ancient Indian king, acquired from Maya Dānava, an inhabitant of a planetary system called Talātala. The story of Śālva is presented later in this chapter, and additional information on vimānas is presented in Chapter 7 .

In Vedic society, it was understood that travel to other worlds is possible. This could involve travel to other star systems, travel into higher dimensions, or travel into higher-dimensional regions in another star system. It was also understood that it is possible to leave the material universe altogether and travel through a graded arrangement of transcendental realms.

The Vedic literature does not use geometric terms such as “higher dimensions” or “other planes” when referring to this kind of travel. Rather, the travel to other worlds is described functionally in terms of the experiences of the travelers, and it is necessary for the modern reader to deduce from the accounts that this travel involves more than motion through three-dimensional space. Since people of modern society are accustomed to thinking that travel is necessarily three-dimensional, I will use the term “higher-dimensional” to refer to Vedic accounts that cannot be understood in three-dimensional terms.

The objection might be raised that surely the ancient people of India had a very naive and unscientific understanding of stars and planets, and so it does not make sense to suppose that they might have actually been in contact with beings from such places. The answer is that the Vedic description of the universe sounds very strange and mythological to a person of Western background because it contains many ideas that are completely foreign to familiar Western conceptions. However, it also contains many ideas about the universe that are found in modern science.

No sun shone there, or moon, or fire, but they shone with a light of their own acquired by their merits. Those lights that are seen as the stars look tiny like oil flames because of the distance, but they are very large. The Pāṇḍava saw them bright and beautiful, burning on their own hearths with a fire of their own. . . .

Beholding those self luminous worlds, Phalguna, astonished, questioned Mātali in a friendly manner, and the other said to him, “Those are men of saintly deeds, ablaze on their own hearths, whom you saw there, my lord, looking like stars from earth below.” 1

This passage displays a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar elements. We expect that if we traveled among the stars we would be far away from the sun and moon, and we wouldn’t see them. We also think that the stars are large, self-luminous worlds that seem small because of the distance. However, we don’t expect to find them inhabited by “men of saintly deeds,” and it seems strange to refer to the stars as men. It appears to be customary in Vedic texts to refer to a star as a person, and this person is normally the ruler of that star, or its predominating inhabitant.

The objection could also be raised that the earth was regarded as flat in ancient India. Actually, in Vedic literature two ideas of the earth are described. The earth is described as a globe 1,600 yojanas in diameter in the Sanskrit astronomical text Sūrya-siddhānta . 2 The yojana is a measure of distance, and it can be argued that this text uses about five miles per yojana . This would make the diameter of the earth about 8,000 miles, which agrees well with modern figures. The same text gives the diameter of the moon as 480 yojanas, or 2,400 miles. This can be compared with the modern figure of 2,160 miles. 3

The earth is also described as a flat disk, called Bhū-maṇḍala, which is 500,000,000 yojanas in diameter. However, a careful study of Vedic texts shows that this “earth” actually corresponds to the plane of the ecliptic. 4 This is the plane determined, from a geocentric point of view, by the orbit of the sun around the earth. This plane is, of course, flat, and thus in one sense the Vedic literature does speak of a flat earth. One has to be alert to the fact that the term “earth,” as used in Vedic texts, does not always refer to the small earth globe.

Higher-dimensional, inhabited realms are understood in Vedic thought to extend within the earth and on it, as well as through outer space. In particular, the flat “earth” of Bhū-maṇḍala is an inhabited realm that extends more or less through the plane of the solar system and is not directly visible or accessible to our gross senses. The general Sanskrit term for such inhabited realms is loka, which is often translated as “planet” or “planetary system.” There are fourteen grades of lokas, seven higher and seven lower. Bhū-maṇḍala or Bhū-loka is the lowest of the seven higher planetary systems.

The sun, the moon, and the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn are called grahas, and they are all regarded as being inhabited. (However, I have not come across any reference to Uranus, Neptune, or Pluto in Vedic texts.) Not surprisingly, the inhabitants of the sun are regarded as having bodies of fiery energy, and the bodies of the inhabitants of other planets are said to be built from types of energy suitable for the environments on those planets.

The Purāṇas speak of 400,000 humanlike races of beings living on various planets and of 8,000,000 other life forms, including plants and lower animals. Out of the 400,000 humanlike forms, human beings as we know them are said to be among the least powerful. This, of course, ties in with the picture that emerges from accounts of UFO encounters.

I have been using the word “humanoid” to refer to humanlike beings reported in UFO encounters, and I will also use it to refer to the Vedic humanlike races. UFO accounts often portray humanoids as looking strange or repulsive, but some have been described as beautiful. The Vedic humanoids also vary widely in appearance. Some of them, such as Gandharvas and Siddhas, are said to have very beautiful human forms. Others are said to be ugly, frightening, or deformed in appearance. One group is called the Kimpuruṣas. Here kim means “is it?,” and puruṣa means “human.”

Many of the Vedic humanoid races are said to naturally possess certain powers called siddhis. Humans of this earth can also potentially acquire these powers, and some people have greater abilities in this regard than others. Here is a list of some of these siddhis. Since they seem to be directly related to some of the powers attributed to UFO entities, I will discuss them in greater detail in later sections.

5. Prāpti-siddhi: the power to move objects from one place to another, apparently without crossing the intervening space. This power is connected with the ability to travel into parallel, higher-dimensional realms.

6. The ability to move objects directly through the ether, without being impeded by gross physical obstacles. This type of travel is called vihāyasa . There is also a type of travel called mano-java , in which the body is directly transferred to a distant point by the action of the mind.

Many different Vedic humanoid races are said to live in parallel, higher-dimensional realms within the earth, on its surface, and in its immediate vicinity. One striking feature of Vedic accounts is that different races such as Siddhas, Cāraṇas, Uragas, Guhyakas, and Vidyādharas are often described as living and working together cooperatively, even though they differ greatly in customs and appearance.

These beings are generally well endowed with the various siddhis. In the past, many of these humanoid types were to be found on the earth, either as visitors or as inhabitants. Indeed, large areas of the earth’s surface have sometimes been controlled and populated by a variety of humanoid species. This is the basic setting of the Rāmāyaṇa, which tells how Lord Rāmacandra rescued his wife Sītā from the kingdom of Laṅkā, to which she had been taken by a Rākṣasa named Rāvaṇa. The Rākṣasas are one of the 400,000 humanoid races, and they were ruling Laṅkā at that time.

There is a wide range of life spans among the Vedic humanoid species. According to Vedic accounts, earthly human beings had much longer life spans thousands of years ago. For example, prior to about 5,000 years ago, the human life span is said to have been about 1,000 years. Typical life spans of humanoid beings living outside this earth are in the order of 10,000 years. There are also said to be beings called Devas, who are administrators of the universe and who live for hundreds of millions of years.

One key feature of the Vedic world view is that living beings are souls dwelling within bodies. The soul is called the ātmā, or jīvātmā, and is endowed with the faculty of consciousness. The body consists of a gross body composed of the familiar physical elements and a subtle body made of the energies known as mind, intelligence, and false ego. These energies cannot normally be detected by our current scientific instruments, and thus the established scientific view is that they do not exist. However, according to the Vedic understanding, these energies naturally interact with gross matter, and when properly controlled they can exert a powerful influence on it.

The soul and subtle body are said to transmigrate from one gross body to another, and they can also travel temporarily outside of the gross body. The process of transmigration is regulated by universal laws, and there are humanoid beings involved in controlling this process. There is a natural process of evolution of consciousness, whereby souls gradually attain higher and higher types of bodies.

At the highest level of consciousness, it is possible for the soul to become free from the subtle body and attain liberation from the material world. The state of liberation, or mukti, involves transfer of the soul to a completely transcendental realm. Broadly speaking, there are two forms of liberation. These are (1) experience of Brahman, or transcendental oneness, and (2) experience of variegated activity in the service of the Supreme in the spiritual planets of Vaikuṇṭha.

According to Vedic philosophy, all manifestations emanate from the Supreme Being, who is known by many names, including Kṛṣṇa, Govinda, Nārāyaṇa, and Viṣṇu. The individual souls are understood to be parts of the Supreme Being, and are compared to sparks within a great fire. They all share the qualities of the Supreme in a minute degree, and for this reason they are all closely related to one another. The liberated souls fully display these spiritual qualities, but those who are encased in material bodies tend to display perverted qualities due to the influence of the material energy.

UFO reports contain many references to the soul, to transmigration, and to out-of-body experiences. This is discussed in Chapter 10 . There are also references to the experience of Brahman, and I will discuss this topic in Chapter 11 .

One idea that often comes up in UFO communications is that there is law and order within the cosmos. Various confederations of planets are mentioned, and these are often said to follow higher authorities who have greatly elevated states of consciousness and live in higher planes or vibrational states. I pointed out in Chapter 5 that these UFO communications do not seem to be very reliable. Nonetheless, it is interesting that the basic idea of a hierarchical universal government is a key element of the Vedic world view.

In the Vedic cosmic hierarchy, there is a graded series of higher planetary systems, each of which is inaccessible to the inhabitants of the systems below it. The topmost authority in the material universe is known as Brahmā, and he lives in the highest material planetary system, called Brahmaloka. Beneath Brahmaloka there are the planetary systems Tapoloka, Janaloka, and Maharloka, which are inhabited by sages ( ṛṣis ) who live as ascetics and cultivate knowledge and transcendental consciousness.

Beneath these planets, there is the realm of Svargaloka, which is predominated by the beings known as Devas. The Devas are organized in a military hierarchy. They engage in politics and warfare, and their battles with lower forces may sometimes have an impact on life on the earth. However, due to the extremely long life spans of the Devas, their social and political relationships tend to be stable.

Although the universe is completely under intelligent control, higher-level controllers such as the Devas and great sages do not generally intervene directly in the lives of subordinate beings, including earthly humans. Rather they make arrangements for these beings to transmigrate from body to body according to their work, and thereby allow for their gradual evolution in consciousness. They also make arrangements for the dissemination of spiritual teachings in various societies so as to guide embodied souls in the direction of higher spiritual development. According to the Vedic perspective, spiritual advancement should be the main goal of human life.

Above the cosmic hierarchy of the material world, there is a spiritual hierarchy predominated by the Supreme Being. Although this hierarchical system places a great distance between the Supreme Being and humans of this earth, the Vedic literature stresses that all spirit souls are intimately related with the Supreme and that the Supreme Being accompanies each soul as the Paramātmā, or Supersoul. Also, the Supreme Being descends personally as an avatāra on various material planets. The story of the avatāra known as Kṛṣṇa is the subject of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, and the Rāmāyaṇa is the story of the avatāra known as Lord Rāma or Rāmacandra.

Among the different humanoid types, there are races who have an essentially self-centered outlook. These are distinguished from those who tend to be dedicated to the service of the Supreme Being and the cosmic hierarchy. Some are like celestial playboys who live in great opulence. Others are characterized by an alienated state of consciousness, and yet others are strongly inimical. The self-centered races tend to be greatly attracted to the exploitation of mystic powers and technology. This is illustrated by Maya Dānava, the being responsible for the construction of the vimāna of King Śālva mentioned above.

All of these different groups of beings are under the control of the universal hierarchy, and thus they are not able to act fully according to their own propensities. This would explain why we are not simply taken over by them. However, there are beings who actively rebel against the cosmic hierarchy and who do sometimes interfere strongly in earthly affairs.

The most famous rebels are the Asuras, who are close relatives of the Devas. The Purāṇas describe protracted wars in Svargaloka between the Devas and the Asuras, and the basic plot of the Mahābhārata has to do with an invasion of the earth by the Asuras. This is discussed in Chapter 10 in connection with harmful activities that have been attributed to UFOs.

Since the Devas are beings of a godly nature who hold administrative posts in the universal hierarchy, the word “demigod,” taken from classical Greek and Roman mythology, is often used to refer to them. In contrast, the rebellious Asuras are often referred to as “demons,” since they tend to be atheistic and to oppose the divine order.

Actually, the word “demon” acquired its negative connotations under the influence of Christianity. This word comes from “daemon,” which in classical Roman times meant a being intermediate between the demigods and man. The Romans and Greeks thought that there were many types of beings in this category, and these were not all regarded as evil or “demonic.” The Vedic literature also describes many races intermediate between the Devas and human beings, and these include the Vidyādharas, Uragas, and Rākṣasas.

The Rākṣasas are demonic and highly inimical to humans. The Vidyādharas and Uragas are essentially neutral—they cooperate with the universal hierarchy, but they have their own agendas to pursue, and they neither favor nor oppose the human race. They belong to a category of beings known as Upadevas, or almost-Devas.

According to the Vedic system of thought, the various species of living beings have been brought into existence by a process of creation and emanation. The spirit souls are all emanations of the Supreme, and so is the body of Brahmā, the first living being within the universe. Brahmā generated various bodily forms by direct mental action, and generations of descendants were produced from these forms by sexual reproduction. Unlike living species in our experience, these beings carried bījas, or seeds, for many different types of beings, and thus they could produce different types of offspring. (The bodies of these beings are composed of subtle forms of energy, and thus the bījas are not made of gross matter, like DNA.)

The different humanoid races were all produced in this manner, and thus they are all related by common ancestry. The humans of this earth, in particular, have descended from the Devas along several lines at different times, and thus they have a very complex celestial ancestry. The Vedic accounts clearly indicate that interbreeding can take place between different humanoid species. In particular, some of the heroes of the Mahābhārata were said to be descendants of a human mother and Deva fathers. This topic is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 8 ( pages 276–77 ).

In the ancient Vedic civilization, contact with various nonhuman races was on a solid footing. Celestial ṛṣis and Devas would regularly visit the courts of great earthly kings. There were established diplomatic relationships and satisfying mutual understandings between leading members of human society and representatives of other societies in the cosmic hierarchy. This is illustrated by the description in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa of the Rājasūya sacrifice performed by King Yudhiṣṭhira, which took place according to traditional dating about 5,000 years ago in the city of Indraprastha, near present-day New Delhi. The winding up of this event is described as follows:

The assembly officials, the priests and other excellent brāhmaṇas resoundingly vibrated Vedic mantras, while the demigods [Devas], divine sages [ṛṣis ], Pitās and Gandharvas sang praises and rained down flowers. . . .

The priests led the King through the execution of the final rituals of patnī-saṁyāja and avabhṛthya. Then they had him and Queen Draupadī sip water for purification and bathe in the Ganges. . . .

Next the King put on new silken garments and adorned himself with fine jewelry. He then honored the priests, assembly officials, learned brāhmaṇas and other guests by presenting them with ornaments and clothing.

In various ways King Yudhiṣṭhira, who had totally dedicated his life to Lord Nārāyaṇa, continuously honored his relatives, his immediate family, the other kings, his friends and well-wishers, and all others present as well. . . .

Then the highly cultured priests, the great Vedic authorities who had served as sacrificial witnesses, the specially invited kings, the brāhmaṇas, kṣatriyas, vaiśyas, śūdras, demigods, sages, forefathers and mystic spirits, and the chief planetary rulers and their followers—all of them, having been worshiped by King Yudhiṣṭhira, took his permission and departed, O King, each for his own abode. 5

The forefathers, or Pitās, are inhabitants of Pitṛloka, a planet connected with regulation of the transmigration of souls. The Gandharvas are a race of very beautiful beings who fall into the category of Upadevas, and the planetary rulers are prominent leaders of the Devas. The phrase “mystic spirits” refers to the Bhūtas, which are ghostly beings with a rather negative, alienated mentality. When it is stated that these various beings took permission from King Yudhiṣṭhira to depart for their abodes, this doesn’t mean that he was their ruler. They were simply observing etiquette in their relation with the king.

There are many parallels between the Vedic view of reality, as described above, and the picture that emerges from UFO reports. Certainly the Vedic literature has not been influenced by UFO lore, since even the most recent dating of key Vedic texts places them at the beginning of the Middle Ages. However, it is possible that Vedic information may have influenced some alleged UFO communications. For example, some Vedic material appears in the works of the Theosophists and other Western mystical writers, although they all rework it in their own way. There are three ways in which some of this material might enter into UFO communications. The first is that people presenting false communications may use some of this material, which is circulating widely in popular circles. There is also the possibility of material surfacing from the unconscious mind and being woven into encounter stories told by sincere people. This is called cryptomnesia.

The third possibility is that UFO entities might take such material from popular human culture and weave it into messages given to people they contact. In Chapter 5 , I argued that material from Western culture, such as the Egyptian myth of the Phoenix, sometimes shows up in UFO close-encounter cases. I also raised the question of whether or not nonhuman beings might be influencing human culture by introducing their own ideas into it. For example, it is conceivable that the myth of the Phoenix could have originated centuries ago in a nonhuman culture.

There is much material in Vedic texts that is practically unknown to Western people who do not have an explicit interest in Indian culture. Some of this material shows parallels with commonly reported features of the appearance and behavior of UFOs and UFO entities. For Western people to consciously or unconsciously fake these reported features using Vedic material, their interest in Vedic subject matter would have to be far greater than it is generally observed to be. Likewise, it seems implausible that UFO entities operating in Western countries would create extensive hoaxes based on Vedic texts. These parallels could therefore indicate a genuine relationship between the experiences of people living in Vedic times and modern experiences involving UFOs. In the remainder of this chapter, I will illustrate this with a number of examples.

A number of interesting parallels with UFO accounts can be found in the story of Śālva in the Tenth Canto of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. Śālva was a king of this earth who developed an intense animosity toward Lord Kṛṣṇa and vowed to destroy Kṛṣṇa’s city of Dvārakā. To do this, he acquired a remarkable vimāna by worshiping Lord Śiva. I will begin by quoting a description of the flight of Śālva’s vimāna, which is referred to by the translator as an airplane:

The airplane occupied by Śālva was very mysterious. It was so extraordinary that sometimes many airplanes would appear to be in the sky, and sometimes there were apparently none. Sometimes the plane was visible and sometimes not visible, and the warriors of the Yadu dynasty were puzzled about the whereabouts of the peculiar airplane. Sometimes they would see the airplane on the ground, sometimes flying in the sky, sometimes resting on the peak of a hill, and sometimes floating on the water. The wonderful airplane flew in the sky like a whirling firebrand— it was not steady even for a moment. 6

It is significant that in his extensive writings, the translator of this passage, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, has never referred to UFOs or flying saucers. Yet the flight characteristics of this “airplane” resemble those of UFOs in many respects. The vehicle glows, and it moves in an irregular fashion, like a firebrand whirled by a dancer. It also appears and disappears. UFOs are well known for this kind of behavior, and they are also described as landing or hovering over water and then abruptly taking off.

As an example of this, consider the case of a UFO observed by Air Force personnel over the south-central U.S. on July 17, 1957. This case was summarized in the journal Astronautics and Aeronautics as follows:

An Air Force RB-47, equipped with electronic countermeasures (ECM) gear and manned by six officers, was followed by an unidentified object for a distance of well over 700 mi. and for a time period of 1.5 hr., as it flew from Mississippi, through Louisiana and Texas and into Oklahoma. The object was, at various times, seen visually by the cockpit crew as an intensely luminous light, followed by ground-radar and detected on ECM monitoring gear aboard the RB-47. Of special interest in this case are several instances of simultaneous appearances and disappearances on all three of these physically distinct “channels,” and rapidity of maneuvers beyond the prior experience of the air crew. 7

One of the apparent disappearances of the object occurred as the RB-47 was about to fly over it. The pilot remarked that it seemed to blink out visually and simultaneously disappear from the scope of ECM monitor #2 (an electronic surveillance device). At the same time it disappeared from radar scopes at ADC site Utah. Moments later the object blinked on again visually and simultaneously appeared on the ECM monitor and ground radar. The observers on the RB-47 also noted that the UFO sometimes generated two signals with different bearings on their electronic monitoring equipment. Although we don’t really know what the UFO was doing, this is reminiscent of the statement that Śālva’s vimāna sometimes appeared to be in multiple forms.

How did Śālva acquire his remarkable vehicle? In view of the controversy regarding agreements between the U.S. Government and aliens, it is noteworthy that Śālva’s vimāna was manufactured by a technological expert from another planet. Here is the story. (Paśupati and Umāpati are two names of Lord Śiva.)

The great Lord Umāpati is known as “he who is quickly pleased,” yet only at the end of a year did he gratify Śālva, who had approached him for shelter, by offering him a choice of benedictions.

Śālva chose a vehicle that could be destroyed by neither demigods [Devas], demons [Asuras], humans, Gandharvas, Uragas nor Rākṣasas, that could travel anywhere he wished to go, and that would terrify the Vṛṣṇis.

Śālva besieged the city with a large army, O best of the Bharatas, decimating the outlying parks and gardens, the mansions along with their observatories, towering gateways and surrounding walls, and also the public recreational areas. From his excellent airship he threw down a torrent of weapons, including stones, tree trunks, thunderbolts, snakes and hailstones. A fierce whirlwind arose and blanketed all directions with dust.

We see from this account that Śālva did not engage engineers to manufacture his flying machine on the earth. As I will point out in Chapter 7 , there are descriptions in Sanskrit of mechanical, airplane-like flying machines that are said to have been built by human beings. However, as far as I am aware, there are no accounts indicating that ordinary human beings ever built vehicles like Śālva’s, which exhibited mystical modes of flight.

It is significant that Śālva dropped such things as snakes, stones, and tree trunks from his vimāna. There is no mention of bombs, and it would seem that even though Śālva possessed a remarkable flying machine, he did not have the kind of aerial weapons technology used in World War II. He did, however, have a quite different technology, which could be used to affect the weather and produce whirlwinds, thunderbolts, and hailstones.

In this story, as in many others, the manufacturer of the vimāna was the being named Maya Dānava. This person was the ruler of a kingdom of Dānavas situated in the planet known as Talātala. The Dānavas were a powerful group of humanoid beings who were known for their expertise in technology. The word māyā means the energy that makes up the material universe, and it also means the power of illusion. Maya Dānava was so named because he was an expert manipulator of māyā .

Umā, the wife of Lord Śiva, is also known as Māyā Devī, or the goddess in charge of the illusory energy. She is also the Mother Goddess who has been worshiped all over the world by many different names. Since Śiva is Umā’s husband, he is the master of illusion and technology. Thus there is a natural connection between Lord Śiva, who Śālva approached to obtain his vimāna, and Maya Dānava, the master of illusion who manufactured it.

It is significant that Śālva asked for a vehicle that could not be destroyed by Devas, Asuras, Gandharvas, Uragas, or Rākṣasas. These are all powerful races of humanoid beings that were openly active on the earth or in its general environs in Śālva’s time, and so naturally he wanted to be able to defend himself against them.

Śālva’s vehicle is described as an iron city, and thus it must have been metallic in appearance and quite large. As we will see in Chapter 7 , many Vedic vimānas are described as flying cities, and one is reminded of the very large “mother-ships” that are sometimes discussed in UFO reports. Also it is described as the “abode of darkness,” or tamo-dhāma. Here “darkness” refers to the mode of ignorance, or illusion, that characterizes the material world in general and is particularly associated in Vedic literature with beings of negative character, such as the Asuras and Dānavas. It refers to a lack of spiritual insight, rather than to a lack of technical knowledge.

The story of Śālva’s vimāna contains a number of features that may give us some insight into the UFO phenomenon. I have already mentioned the power of the vimāna to become invisible. It is interesting to see how Kṛṣṇa, acting as a human warrior in the defense of Dvārakā, dealt with this invisibility. Here Kṛṣṇa is speaking to King Yudhiṣṭhira:

I took my glittering bow, best of the Bhāratas, and cut with my arrows the heads of the Gods’ enemies on the Saubha. I shot well-robed arrows, which looked like poisonous snakes, high flying and burning arrows, from my Śārṅga at King Śālva. Then the Saubha became invisible, O prosperer of Kuru’s lineage, concealed by wizardry, and I was astounded. The bands of the Dānavas, with grimacing faces and disheveled heads, screeched out loud, as I held my ground, great king. I quickly laid on an arrow, which killed by seeking out sound, to kill them and the screeching subsided. All the Dānavas who had been screeching lay dead, killed by the blazing sunlike arrows that were triggered by sound. 9

From this passage, we can see that even though Śālva was a human king, a contingent of grotesque-looking Dānava soldiers was present on his vimāna . This, of course, makes sense if we consider that Śālva obtained the craft from the leader of the Dānavas. There are many Vedic accounts of such alliances between human beings and other humanoid races. Although to modern historians it would seem doubtful that they ever existed, it is clear that the idea of such alliances was prominent in ancient India. And if they did exist then, one implication is that such alliances could also be made today.

The passage also shows that the bows and arrows used by the defenders of Dvārakā were not on a primitive or medieval level of technology. The bow was used as a launching device for many different kinds of arrows. These arrows are often described as “blazing” or “sunlike,” and in this case they were endowed with some kind of guidance system that enabled them to find their targets by sound. Clearly, technological development does not have to be linear, so that all forms of technology higher than our own are further developments of the kind of technology that we have now.

The story of the sound-seeking arrows also shows that when Śālva’s vimāna became invisible, it was still physically present, and sounds emanating from it could be heard. There are a number of UFO accounts that also have this feature. One example is given by the story of a man named Maurice Masse, which I will briefly summarize here. 10

Masse was a lavender grower of the French Provensal village of Valensole. On the morning of July 1, 1965, at about 5:45 a.m., he was finishing a cigarette before starting work. Suddenly he heard a whistling noise and turned to see a machine shaped like a rugby football and the size of a Dauphine car. This was standing on six legs, with a central pivot stuck into the ground beneath it. He saw two boys near the object, but on approaching he found that they were not boys. At a distance of about 5 meters, one of the beings pointed a pencillike device at him, and he was paralyzed.

After some time, the beings returned to their machine, and Masse could see them looking at him from within the craft. At this point, the legs retracted, and with a thump from the central pivot, the machine floated silently away. At 20 meters it disappeared, but it left traces of its passage in the lavender field for 400 meters. It is said that newly planted lavender will not grow at the spot where the vehicle stood.

We can see from this description that the vehicle must have been physically present after it disappeared from sight at a distance of 20 meters. At least, this is a natural inference from the fact that the lavender crop was disturbed for a distance of up to 400 meters by the vehicle’s passage. Thus its invisibility seems to have been similar to that of Śālva’s vimāna . Both seem to have involved manipulation of light or the sense of vision so as to hide the aerial craft, which still betrayed its presence by sound or by disturbances of the air.

The power of invisibility was not limited to Śālva’s vimāna as a whole. Śālva was also capable of personally becoming invisible and traveling in that state to another place. He was also able to project illusory forms:

Lord Kṛṣṇa, in great anger, struck Śālva on the collarbone with His club so severely that Śālva began to bleed internally and tremble as if he were going to collapse from severe cold. Before Kṛṣṇa was able to strike him again, however, Śālva became invisible by his mystic power.

Within a few moments, a mysterious, unknown man came before Lord Kṛṣṇa. Crying loudly, he bowed down at the Lord’s lotus feet and said to Him, “Since You are the most beloved son of Your father, Vasudeva, Your mother, Devakī, has sent me to inform You of the unfortunate news that Śālva has arrested Your father and taken him away by force, just as a butcher mercilessly takes away an animal.” When Lord Kṛṣṇa heard this unfortunate news from the unknown man, He at first became most perturbed, just like an ordinary human being. . . . While Śrī Kṛṣṇa was thinking like this, Śālva brought before Him in custody a man exactly resembling Vasudeva, His father. These were all creations of the mystic power of Śālva.

Śālva addressed Kṛṣṇa, “You rascal, Kṛṣṇa! Look. This is Your father, who has begotten You and by whose mercy You are still living. Now just see how I kill Your father. If You have any strength, try to save him.” The mystic juggler Śālva, speaking in this way before Lord Kṛṣṇa, immediately cut off the head of the false Vasudeva. Then without hesitation he took away the dead body and got into his airplane. 11

Immediately after this, Kṛṣṇa realized that there actually was no body of Vasudeva. This was simply an illusion projected by Śālva using methods he had learned from Maya Dānava. Later in this chapter (pages 236–37 ), I will discuss cases in which UFO entities apparently caused people to see illusions—such as the vision of a beautiful deer in the woods—in order to manipulate their behavior. Examples of this can be multiplied in both Vedic and UFO literature.

The UFO literature also contains cases in which an individual being suddenly disappears and travels to another location. One reported instance of this took place at Nouatre, Indre-et-Loire, France, on September 30, 1954. At about 4:30 p.m., Georges Gatey, the head of a team of construction workers, encountered a strange-looking man standing in front of a large shining dome that floated about three feet above the ground. My concern here is with the way in which these odd apparitions disappeared:

Then I heard a strong whistling sound which drowned the noise of our excavators; the saucer rose by successive jerks, in a vertical direction, and then it too was erased in a sort of blue haze, as if by a miracle. 12

Another story of a disappearing UFO involved Constable Charles Delk, an elected law-enforcement officer of Forrest County, Mississippi. At 8:15 p.m. on October 7, 1973, Delk was watching TV when the sheriff’s dispatcher called to ask him to investigate a nearby UFO sighting. Delk skeptically declined to waste his time on this and returned to his program, but when called again he agreed to check out the complaint. Predictably, when he arrived at the location of the sighting, the UFO was gone.

However, on his way home Delk saw a glowing top-shaped object with flashing lights that floated slowly through the air. While keeping radio contact with his dispatcher, Delk described how the object hovered over an electrical power installation and emitted hissing torchlike jets. After Delk had followed it for several miles, it came closer, and his engine, car lights, and radio failed. The object departed, and after about fifteen minutes the car and radio resumed operation. Delk again caught up with the object and watched it slowly turn upside down. Then, while in full view, it abruptly disappeared. Delk was described as a pragmatic, elected law officer who had a solid reputation and who had nothing to gain by concocting wild stories. 13

In summary, the story of Śālva’s vimāna involves a flying machine with features similar to those reported in UFO sightings. It also involves persons who exhibit unusual powers and patterns of behavior that are typical of those reported in UFO close encounters. In a droll way, this was recognized by J. A. B. van Buitenen in the introduction to his translation of the Mahābhārata . Here are his remarks on Kṛṣṇa’s battle with Śālva:

Here we have an account of a hero who took these visiting astronauts for what they were: intruders and enemies. The aerial city is nothing but an armed camp with flame-throwers and thundering cannon, no doubt a spaceship. The name of the demons is also revealing: they were Nivātakavacas, “clad in airtight armor,” which can hardly be anything but spacesuits. It is heartening to know that sometime in the hoary past a man stood up and destroyed the spaceship and aborted its mission with bow and arrow. 14

Let us return to the story of Maurice Masse and consider his description of the beings that he saw. He said that the creatures were less than four feet tall, wore close-fitting, gray-green clothes, and had pumpkin-like heads. They had high fleshy cheeks, large slanted eyes that went around the sides of the face, slit mouths without muscular lips, and sharply pointed chins. Their movement was described as “rising and falling in space like bubbles in a bottle without apparent support” or “sliding along bands of light.”

References to strange beings that glide or float in the air are extremely common in UFO close-encounter reports. Another example is found in the story of Air Force Sergeant Charles L. Moody of the USAF Human Reliability Program, an elite group whose prospective members are carefully screened by psychiatrists for emotional disorders ( page 185 ). He reported being abducted from his automobile outside of Alamogordo, New Mexico, in the early morning hours of August 13, 1975. He described his captors as dwarflike and said, “It’s going to sound ridiculous and I hope nobody sends me a straitjacket, but these beings did not walk, they glided .” 15

The Vedic literature describes a mystic power called laghimā-siddhi, which enables a person to overcome the force of gravity. There are innumerable references to beings and objects that float weightlessly by this power, and it is commonly used by the Devas and related humanoid races. Thus, it is stated in one commentary on the Bhāgavata Purāṇa: “The residents of the upper planetary systems, beginning from Brahmaloka . . . down to Svargaloka . . . are so advanced in spiritual life that when they come to visit this or similar other lower planetary systems, they keep their weightlessness. This means that they can stand without touching the ground.” 16

I exist within everything, and I am therefore the essence of the atomic constituents of material elements. By attaching his mind to Me in this form, the yogī may achieve the perfection called laghimā, by which he realizes the subtle atomic substance of time. 17

It is curious that weightlessness should be connected with time. It is perhaps significant that in the general theory of relativity, gravitation is connected with transformations of space and time. It is also noteworthy that the idea of atomic particles was well known in Vedic times.

When Śālva disappeared after being struck by Kṛṣṇa, it is possible that he simply became invisible and walked away. However, there are also Vedic accounts in which a person disappears physically at one location and reappears somewhere else without crossing the intervening space in an ordinary way. According to the Vedic perspective, the ability to do this is simply a natural mystic power, or siddhi, which some beings, such as the Cāraṇas and Siddhas, inherit at birth, and which others can acquire by certain practical methods. As with ordinary bodily powers, this mystic power depends on the laws of nature and the gross and subtle organization of the body.

Here is one of many Vedic accounts in which this power is a standard element of the plot. When he was a child, the great sage Vyāsa had made a promise to his mother Satyavatī, saying, “Mother, if ever you need me, just set your mind on me, and I shall appear before you.” Years later, an occasion arose in which Satyavatī needed to consult with Vyāsa. Her youngest son Vicitravīrya, who was king of the Kuru dynasty, had died without issue, and according to the law, his brother Vyāsa could beget children in his wives to continue the royal lineage. After this course of action was approved by the elder statesman, Bhīṣma, “Satyavatī fixed her mind on her son, who at the moment was reciting the Vedas . When the wise sage understood that his mother had set her mind on him, he appeared before her within a moment.” 18

In this case, it seems that Vyāsa disappeared from the place where he was reciting the Vedas and immediately appeared before his mother in a completely different location. The fact that he did this “within a moment” suggests that he traveled to his mother’s location in some paranormal fashion. The telepathic communication between Vyāsa and his mother is also a standard feature of Vedic accounts.

The sage Vyāsa was a human being who was endowed with great mystic abilities as a result of being directly empowered by the Supreme Being. Such a person is known as a śaktyāveśa-avatāra . Vyāsa is famous as the compiler of the Vedas, and he is said to be still living in the Himalayas. In Vedic civilization, sages of his type served to link earthly human society with the celestial hierarchy.

There are many accounts in the UFO literature of beings who abruptly appear or disappear, and who seem to be able to travel invisibly in a mysterious way. In the case of William Herrmann in South Carolina (see pages 175–76 and 180–85 ), two alien beings of the short, large-headed type reportedly appeared in the midst of a blue glow in Herrmann’s bedroom while he was out in the hall talking on the phone with UFO investigator John Fielding. Herrmann recognized one of them as a being he had met on a UFO during an earlier abduction. After a short telepathic conversation in which the beings said they could trust Fielding, they went back into Herrmann’s bedroom and disappeared. Herrmann said that a short while earlier they had caused an inscribed metal object to appear in front of his eyes in the midst of a glowing ball of blue light. 19

In a case in Altrincham, England, in late 1984, a man reportedly encountered a small, ugly-looking being in his bedroom on two occasions. He raised two interesting questions about these experiences: (1) He was nearsighted, and he had to strain to focus on the being, just as he would normally do with real objects. Why should a hallucinatory experience follow the rules of his poor eyesight? (2) The figure vanished in a flash without making any sound. Why didn’t it leave a partial vacuum, and hence make a noise? 20

A somewhat different case is the account given by a twenty-year-old college student of a being he saw in his bedroom when he was a child: “It was short and had big eyes . . . it also seemed to have an aura or some kind of glow around it. I don’t think I could move while it was there. It seemed to speak to my brother, but I don’t know what it said. It appeared to come out of the wall behind the dresser, and that’s the way I think it left.” 21 Of course, one could dismiss this story as a nightmare or hallucination. However, since such stories occur repeatedly and often involve beings of standardized appearance, it is also possible that the reported experiences are caused by visits from actual entities.

In these examples of appearance and disappearance, it would seem that physical objects are not merely moved invisibly through space. They are also moved through, or somehow around, solid matter. For example, the beings who visited William Herrmann seem to have entered his bedroom without coming in through the door of his trailer, either visibly or invisibly. It turns out that there is a Vedic process of travel, called vihāyasa, in which a physical object is moved directly through the ether to another location, without interacting with intervening gross matter. Here the word ether is used to translate the Sanskrit word ākāśa . Ākāśa is space, but it is considered to be a substance or plenum, rather than a void.

The story of the abduction of Aniruddha in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa contains an example of vihāyasa travel. A young princess named Ūṣā was living in the closely guarded inner quarters of her father’s palace in the city of Śoṇitapura. One day, Ūṣā had a vivid dream about a beautiful young man who became her lover. She was certain that the person in her dream really existed, and she engaged her friend, the mystic yoginī Citralekhā, to find him for her:

Citralekhā said, “I will remove your distress. If He is to be found anywhere in the three worlds, I will bring this future husband of yours who has stolen your heart. Please show me who He is.”

O King, among the humans, Citralekhā drew pictures of the Vṛṣṇis, including Śūrasena, Ānakadundubhi, Balarāma and Kṛṣṇa. When Ūṣā saw the picture of Pradyumna she became bashful, and when she saw Aniruddha’s picture she bent her head down in embarrassment. Smiling, she exclaimed, “He’s the one! It’s Him!”

Citralekhā, endowed with mystic powers, recognized Him [Aniruddha] as Kṛṣṇa’s grandson. My dear King, she then traveled by the mystic skyway [ vihāyasa ] to Dvārakā, the city under Lord Kṛṣṇa’s protection.

There she found Pradyumna’s son Aniruddha sleeping upon a fine bed. With her yogic power she took Him away to Śoṇitapura, where she presented her girlfriend Ūṣā with her beloved. 22

The name Citralekhā means one who can make beautiful drawings. In typical Vedic fashion, Citralekhā considered that Ūṣā’s lover might come from a wide variety of humanlike races. Once she identified Him as Aniruddha, she traveled directly through space to Aniruddha’s bedroom, which was located in a palace in another city. Thus, from the point of view of a person in that bedroom, she appeared there out of nowhere, grabbed the sleeping Aniruddha without disturbing Him, and vanished from sight. She brought Him directly into the inner sanctum of Ūṣā’s palace without having to use normal entrances and alert the guards assigned to protect Ūṣā’s chastity. This story is similar to many UFO abduction accounts, with the exception that Aniruddha did not find the experience to be traumatic—at least not until Ūṣā’s father found out what was happening.

There are many examples of UFO encounter stories that seem to involve this kind of mystical travel through space and matter. One example is the abduction case of Sara Shaw (see pages 179–80 ). She noted that her abductors entered her room through a closed window. In response to questions about how this was done, she said, “I feel really dumb, but it seems like they passed through the pane of glass without breaking it.” 23

In another case, the psychologist Edith Fiore was using hypnosis to explore the abduction experience of a person named Gloria. In the course of this, Gloria said, “I floated out of there. That’s how I got to the sidewalk. Went right through the wall and I was on the sidewalk.” 24

During the night, I was awakened. I looked around and there was nobody in the room. The bedroom faced the street. It had a large window, an eight-by-six-foot window, with those old-style Venetian blinds. . . . The blinds were open. I was lying there and I started to move. This is the one thing about the whole experience that I have never been able to fully accept or understand. And I probably never will. I went through those Venetian blinds! I was absolutely terrified. I went through them. They didn’t open. The window didn’t open. I literally went through those blinds. To this day it astounds me! The next thing I saw was a sign saying Church Street. 25

In a case investigated by Trevor Whitaker in the United Kingdom, an ambulance driver named Reg reported encountering strange visitors in his bedroom in February 1976. The visitors were two tall beings, with gray faces and large catlike eyes, who treated him like a specimen. He was told to lay prone on his bed and was paralyzed. He experienced floating up through the ceiling into the sky toward a hovering bathtub-shaped UFO. He underwent a medical examination on board, and he heard a number of Biblical references about the Alpha and the Omega through telepathy. He was told that “a thousand of your years are but a day to us,” and he was informed that a wormlike being like him should not ask the visitors about their identity. He later found himself back in his bedroom with large memory gaps, but his experience was recalled without hypnosis. 26

Betty: No. . . . They came in like follow-the-leader. . . . They are starting to come through the door now . . . right through the wood, one right after the other. It’s amazing! Coming through! And I stood back a little. Was it real? And they are coming, one after another. . . . Now they are all inside. 27

According to the Vedic literature, mystical travel can be done directly by an individual, using the powers of the mind. For example, in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Kṛṣṇa explains one mode of mystic travel, called mano-java, as follows:

The yogī who completely absorbs his mind in Me, and who then makes use of the wind that follows the mind to absorb the material body in Me, obtains through the potency of meditation on Me the mystic perfection by which his body immediately follows his mind wherever it goes. 29

In the case of Citralekhā and Aniruddha, or in the case of Vyāsa in the preceding section, it is clear that travel was accomplished by the direct potency of the individuals involved. Citralekhā was able not only to move her own body through matter, but she was also able to carry along the sleeping body of Aniruddha. This may be a parallel to the UFO accounts in which a person is carried through a solid wall by a humanoid being.

People have sometimes argued that high-tech machinery located in a UFO may be used to move bodies and transform them so that they can pass through matter without interference. There seem to be some UFO accounts that refer to such machinery. For example, Budd Hopkins recounted the story of how close-encounter witness Kathie Davis was positioned on a round platform within a UFO by her alien captors. Then the room seemed to shimmer, and she felt sudden pain in her chest. The next thing she knew, she was lying on the grass in her backyard, and she could see the departing UFO looking like a headband with little lights on it. 30 A similar account was related by Jack Weiner, one of the four witnesses in the Allagash abduction case reported by Raymond Fowler. 31

Teleportation of matter probably cannot be done by mechanisms obeying the known laws of physics, but it is perfectly possible that there exist principles of physics that have not yet been discovered. Apparent teleportation is often reported in poltergeist cases, where objects known to have been in another place are seen to appear suddenly in midair and follow strange trajectories. 32 These phenomena may also be related to Vedic siddhis such as prāpti and mano-java .

Since the siddhis are natural principles, it is possible that machines might be constructed that take advantage of them, and some vimānas and UFOs might operate on this basis. Thus, laghimā-siddhi could be used to make the craft weightless, and mano-java could be used to move it through the ether. Other vehicles might make use of more familiar mechanical or electromagnetic propulsion methods, or they might employ a combination of siddhis and more familiar principles.

The siddhis and the known physical principles are all features of nature, which in Vedic philosophy is regarded as a manifestation of divine potency. A deep understanding of both siddhis and the laws of physics would presumably allow for a unified understanding in which they appear as features of a larger whole.

In the Villas Boas case (see pages 137–39 ), a human being was apparently abducted by ufonauts for the purpose of having sex with one of their female members. The story of Ūṣā and Aniruddha is not really comparable with this, since they entered into a relationship as equals and ultimately got married. However, there are Vedic accounts in which a human being is abducted for motives of lust by a member of another humanoid race.

This is illustrated by an account in the Mahābhārata involving the Pāṇḍava hero Arjuna. The story began when Arjuna was exiled for twelve months because of having intruded accidentally on his brother Yudhiṣṭhira and their common wife, Draupadī. Arjuna, known also as the son of Kuntī, went to visit Haridvāra along the Ganges River in the Himālayas. There he began to participate in sacrificial rites with a number of sages.

While the son of Kuntī resided there among the brāhmaṇas, O Bharata, the sages brought to fruition many agni-hotras, the offering to the sacred fire. As the fires on both banks of the river were roused and brought to blaze, the offerings poured, and flowers offered in worship by learned, self-controlled sages, duly consecrated and fixed as great souls on the spiritual path, then, O king, the gateway of the Ganges shone with exceeding splendor.

When his residence was thus crowded with divinity, the darling son of Pāṇḍu and Kuntī then went down into the Ganges water, to be consecrated for holy rite. Taking his ritual bath and worshiping his forefathers, Arjuna, happy to take his part in the rite of fire, was rising out of the water, O king, when he was pulled back in by Ulūpī, the virgin daughter of the serpent king, who could travel about at her will and was now within those waters. Holding onto him, she pulled him down into the land of the Nāgas, into her father’s house. 33

Ulūpī then proposed to Arjuna, arguing that she felt extreme desire for him and therefore he should be merciful and satisfy her. Arjuna did this in accordance with the code of the kṣatriyas, the Vedic warrior class. Thus, “The fiery hero Arjuna spent the night in the palace of the Nāga king, and when the sun rose he too rose up from Kauravya’s abode.” 34

Kauravya is the name of the Nāga king. Note that when Ulūpī pulled Arjuna down, instead of finding himself on a rocky or sandy river bottom, he found himself in the Nāga kingdom. This is another example of mystic travel, but in this case the travelers entered into a parallel or higher-dimensional world. The Nāgas are a race of intelligent beings that are said to live either in the planetary system called Bila-svarga, or in parallel realities on the surface of the earth. Parallel realities are discussed in greater detail in the next section and in Chapter 8 .

For the moment, recall that UFO entities have been reported to say that they share our world or that our activities directly affect their worlds (see pages 192–93 ). If some of them live in parallel worlds like those of the Nāgas, then this would make sense.

Although sexual attraction seems to play a role in both modern and Vedic abduction stories, there may also be other motivating factors. The abduction of King Duryodhana in the Mahābhārata is an example in which the underlying motives involved politics and military strategy.

King Duryodhana once had an encounter with some Gandharvas, who had cordoned off an area around a lake for recreational purposes and had blocked Duryodhana’s army from entering. When Duryodhana tried to enter anyway, a fierce battle took place, and he was captured by the Gandharva forces. At this point, Arjuna, who was staying nearby, used his political connections with the Gandharvas to free Duryodhana. Arjuna and his brothers had been driven into exile by Duryodhana, but Arjuna intervened to save him from the Gandharvas on the grounds that he was a relative and a human being.

Duryodhana was humiliated at being saved by a person he had scorned and mistreated as an enemy, and he decided to give up everything and fast unto death. However, it seems that some other parties had long-standing plans for Duryodhana, and they weren’t at all pleased by this turn of events:

Thereupon the Daityas and Dānavas, hearing of his decision, the gruesome denizens of the nether world who had been defeated by the Gods, now, in the knowledge that Duryodhana would wreck their party, performed a sacrificial rite in order to summon him. 35

With mantras , the Dānavas summoned a “wondrous woman with gaping mouth,” and asked her to fetch Duryodhana. This woman was a Kṛtyā , a type of demonic being, and she was able to transport the king by mystical travel: “Kṛtyā gave her promise and went forth and in a twinkling of the eye went to King Suyodhana [Duryodhana]. She took the king and entered the nether world and a little while after handed him over to the Dānavas.” 36

The “nether world” is not exactly the region beneath the surface of the earth. According to the Vedic literature, there are three regions known as Svarga, or heaven. These are delineated in relation to the ecliptic, or the orbital path of the sun against the background of fixed stars. There is Divya-svarga (divine heaven), the region of the heavens to the north of the ecliptic; Bhauma-svarga (earthly heaven), in roughly the plane of the ecliptic; and Bila-svarga (subterranean heaven), to the south of the ecliptic. The Bhauma-svarga is sometimes referred to as Bhū-maṇḍala, and it is the “flat earth” mentioned previously (see pages 203–4 ).

The “nether world” is Bila-svarga. It is “out there” in the heavens, but at the same time it can be reached through mystical travel by entering into the earth. 37 The nether regions can also be entered by taking the pitṛ-yāna path, which is said in the Viṣṇu Purāṇa to begin near the constellations Scorpio and Sagittarius and extend to the south in the direction of the star Agastya, or Canopus. 38 This is described in more detail in Chapter 7 ( page 264 ).

Once Duryodhana was in the presence of the Dānavas, they explained to him that his birth on earth was arranged in advance as part of their plan. His great bodily strength and his near immunity to weapons were arranged by their manipulations. He therefore shouldn’t spoil everything by taking his life. Dānavas and Daityas, taking birth as earthly heroes, would assist him in his battle with the Pāṇḍavas. The Dānavas also pointed out that they would use mind control to make sure that this battle had the desired outcome:

Other Asuras will take possession of Bhīṣma, Droṇa, Kṛpa, and the others; and possessed by them they will fight your enemies ruthlessly. When they engage in battle, best of the Kurus, they will give no quarter to either sons or brothers, parents or relatives, students or kinsmen, the young or the old. Pitiless, possessed by the Dānavas, their inner souls overwhelmed, they will battle their relations and cast all love far off. Gleefully, their minds darkened, the tiger-like men, befuddled with ignorance by a fate set by the Ordainer, will say to one another, “You shall not escape from me with your life!” Standing firm on their manly might in the unleashing of manifold weapons, best of the Kurus, they will boastfully perpetrate a holocaust. 39

If this wasn’t enough, the Dānavas also explained that the hero Karṇa and the “sworn warriors” (a band of Rākṣasas) would slay Arjuna. After convincing Duryodhana that he would be victorious, the Dānavas arranged for his return:

The same Kṛtyā brought the strong-armed man back when he was dismissed, to the very spot where he had been fasting unto death. Kṛtyā put the hero down, saluted him, and when the king had dismissed her, vanished then and there.

There are accounts in the UFO literature that parallel the story of Duryodhana’s paranormal transportation from one place to another. For example, Whitley Strieber said he once woke up to find one of his strange visitors beside his bed—a being of roughly humanoid form that seemed to be female and also insectlike. This visitor controlled his movements and proceeded to float him out of the bedroom: “If I walked, everything was normal. But if I stopped, I began to float along. I could feel her pushing from behind. . . . I had no control at all over my direction. I was not moving, I was being moved.” 41

At first, he found himself moving through the interior of his house, which looked perfectly normal. He grabbed his cat, Sadie, while passing by her so as to have some proof that he wasn’t dreaming. But on reaching an outside door he entered into another state:

We moved again, and this time I entered a profoundly different situation. No longer could I see normally. There was a glittering blackness before me. I could still feel Sadie in my arms, and I was very glad for her companionship. The next thing I knew I was standing in a room. It was an ordinary room. I was in front of a big, plainly designed desk. 42

There were three other beings in the room: an ordinary-looking woman, a 6.5-foot-tall blond man in a jumpsuit, and a long-faced character with round, black eyes and a toupee, who “looked like something from another world wearing the clothes of the forties.” 43

One common feature of many UFO abduction reports is that the person being abducted is somehow paralyzed by his captors. This seems to involve a hypnotic power that abductees often associate with the eyes of their strange visitors. A classical example of this would be Barney Hill, who reported feeling overpowered by the gaze of an alien being that he saw through binoculars as it stared at him from the window of a hovering UFO (see pages 124–25 ).

The power to paralyze by glancing plays a role in a story in the Mahābhārata . Leaving aside various complexities of the plot, the story begins with Indra, the king of the Devas, being led to the top of King Mountain in the Himālayas by the goddess Gaṅgā:

Indra followed her as she led the way, and he saw nearby on the top of King Mountain a beautiful and tender boy sitting on a throne, surrounded by young female companions and playing with dice. Indra, king of gods, said to him, “Know that this universe is mine, for the world is under my control. I am the lord.” Indra spoke with anger, seeing the boy completely distracted with his dice.

The boy, who was also a god, simply laughed and then slowly lifted his eyes toward Indra. As soon as the boy glanced at him, the king of gods was paralyzed and stood as stiff as a tree trunk.

The boy turned out to be Lord Śiva, who then punished Indra to cure him of false pride. In this story, the persons involved were all Devas. However, there is a mystic power of long-distance mind control, called vaśitā-siddhi, which is possessed by many humanoid races, and which can be acquired by human yogīs . This power has been described as follows:

By this perfection one can bring anyone under his control. This is a kind of hypnotism which is almost irresistible. Sometimes it is found that a yogī who may have attained a little perfection in this vaśitā mystic power comes out among the people and speaks all sorts of nonsense, controls their minds, exploits them, takes their money, and then goes away. 45

There is some evidence that even “ordinary” hypnosis can act at a distance. This could have important implications regarding the attainability of the vaśitā-siddhi by ordinary people, and it may also shed light on the nature of mind control and induced paralysis in UFO cases.

Here is a possible case of long-distance hypnotic suggestion that was reported by the psychical researcher F. H. W. Myers in the late 19 th century. 46 The story begins at 9:00 p.m. on the evening of April 22, 1886. Four researchers, Ochorowicz, Marillier, Janet, and A. T. Myers, crept quietly through the deserted streets of Le Havre, France, and took up their stations outside the cottage of Madame B. They waited expectantly. “At 9.25,” Ochorowicz wrote later, “I saw a shadow appearing at the garden gate: it was she. I hid behind the corner in order to be able to hear without being seen.” 47

At first, the woman paused at the gate and went back into the garden. Then at 9:30 she hurried out into the street and began to make her way unsteadily toward the house of Dr. Gibert. The four researchers tried to follow as unobtrusively as possible, and they could see that she was obviously in a somnambulistic state. Finally, she reached Gibert’s house, entered, and hurried from room to room in an agitated state until she found him.

This was the planned outcome of an experiment in long-distance hypnotic influence. Madame B. was a person who could be easily hypnotized, and she was the subject of many experiments arranged by Professor Pierre Janet and Dr. Gibert, a prominent physician of Le Havre. In this research, they were joined by F. Myers of the London Society for Psychical Research, the physician Dr. A. T. Myers, Professor Ochorowicz of the University of Lvov, and M. Marillier of the French Psychological Society.

On this occasion, the plan was that Dr. Gibert would remain in his study and try to mentally summon Madame B. to leave her cottage and come to see him. The cottage was about a kilometer from his house, and neither Madame B. nor any of the other people living there had been informed that the experiment would take place. Gibert began issuing mental commands to summon her at 8:55 p.m., and within about half an hour she began her journey to his house. According to F. Myers, out of 25 similar experiments, 19 were equally successful. 48

Experiments like this one by Dr. Gibert and his colleagues may seem unreliable. They were rather loosely organized and did not make use of the kind of strict laboratory protocols that we associate with accepted scientific work. However, many carefully organized experiments in distant hypnotic influence have been performed in laboratory settings.

For example, many experiments were performed by Professor Leonid Vasiliev of the University of Leningrad in the 1920s. In one series of experiments, a subject named Fedorova would regularly arrive at Vasiliev’s laboratory at about 8 p.m. After about 20 minutes of rest and conversation, she would lie down on a bed in a darkened chamber. She was told to regularly squeeze a rubber balloon connected to an air tube as long as she was awake and to stop squeezing it when she began to fall asleep. The air tube was connected to an apparatus in the next room that kept a record of when she would fall asleep and wake up.

Once Fedorova was in the darkened room, she had no further contact with the experimenters. When she entered the room, the experimenter who had been talking with her would send a signal to another experimenter, called the sender, who was waiting two rooms away. The sender would then climb into a special lead-lined chamber and open a letter that had been prepared in advance and had not been read by the subject or the two experimenters. This letter would instruct the sender to do one of the following three things: (1) stay within the lead-lined chamber and mentally order the subject to go to sleep, (2) stand with his head outside the chamber and issue the same mental commands, and (3) stand with his head outside the chamber and make no mental commands.

In 29 runs of this experiment, the average time for the subject to go to sleep when no mental commands were given came out to 7 minutes and 24 seconds. In contrast, the average time when commands were given from inside the chamber was 4 minutes and 43 seconds. When the commands were issued outside the chamber, the average time was 4 minutes and 13 seconds. 49

It seems that the subject was going to sleep faster when a person two rooms away was mentally ordering her to do so than when no orders were being given. Vasiliev performed many other carefully organized experiments of this kind, and he reported similar results. These even included one successful experiment involving sending mental commands for sleeping and waking from Sebastopol to Leningrad, a distance of 1,700 kilometers.

The purpose of the chamber was to ascertain whether or not the long-range influence was transmitted by radio waves, which would be blocked by the lead. Vasiliev concluded from many experiments that radio was not involved, since the sender seemed to get the same results inside the chamber as outside.

This research is relevant to the topic of UFO abductions, since in case after case, the witness or witnesses will report being lured mentally to a certain location where a UFO close encounter takes place. The experience of Madame B., who was mentally directed to the home of Dr. Gibert, is a manmade example of this very phenomenon. The empirical evidence concerning long-distance hypnosis and the Vedic information about vaśitā-siddhi suggest that this kind of mental control may be a natural faculty of the minds of both human beings and related humanoid races.

The projection of illusory forms provides another parallel between the UFO phenomenon and the Vedic world view. There are many UFO accounts in which some kind of illusion is projected. In some cases, it seems that a UFO is disguised as an ordinary object, and in others the UFO entities seem to disguise themselves by assuming or mentally projecting unreal forms, including forms of animals. Here is an example, reported by Jacques Vallee, in which one man reported seeing a strange craft at close range, while his companion reported seeing only an ordinary bus.

On November 17, 1971, at 9:30 p.m., a Brazilian man named Paulo Gaetano was driving back from a business trip, accompanied by Mr. Elvio B. As they passed the town of Bananeiras, Paulo said the car was not “pulling” normally, but his companion’s only response was that he was tired and wanted to sleep. According to Paulo, the engine stalled, and he pulled to the side of the road. A beam of red light seemingly caused the door to open. Several small beings then appeared, took him into a nearby craft, and subjected him to some kind of medical examination, which included taking a blood sample from his arm. He was also shown two panels depicting an atomic explosion and a plan of a nearby town. He could not recall how he and Elvio got back home.

Near Bananeiras, Paulo had begun to show signs of nervousness, Elvio reported. He told him that there was a flying saucer accompanying them, when in fact what was following them was a bus which was keeping at a reasonable distance behind the car. 50

Elvio saw the car pull off to the side of the road, and he remembered finding Paulo on the ground behind the parked car. But he did not remember seeing Paulo get out of the car, and he did not know what had happened to him. He took Paulo by bus to the nearby town of Itaperuna but could not explain why they had abandoned the car. The police in this town observed the cut on Paulo’s arm, and they found the car parked by the highway.

If we accept this story as truthful, we must posit some kind of illusion to account for the reported events. One could suppose that either Paulo’s or Elvio’s experience was illusory, or that both were illusory. If we assume that Paulo saw an illusory UFO (and that Elvio may have seen a real bus), then we must explain why Elvio was so confused, why Paulo experienced an illusory abduction involving a cut on his arm, and how he received his actual cut. Of course, we can always attribute the confusion and the illusory abduction to an unknown agency within or outside the witnesses’ minds. The cut could also have been made by this agency, or it may have been produced in some other way that the witnesses forgot in their confusion.

This is a complex explanation, but we can arrive at a simpler one if we assume that Paulo had a genuine experience. In this case, we can attribute Elvio’s observation of the bus and his confusion to false perceptions induced by the UFO entities. This option has the advantage that it involves a simple illusion, the bus, rather than a complex one, namely the abduction experience. It also provides likely suspects for the perpetrators of the illusion, namely the UFO pilots, rather than attributing this to an unknown agency.

The psychologist Richard Boylan presented another story of a UFO disguising itself as a motor vehicle. In this case, the witness claimed to see the UFO transform into a car: “The light descended vertically to the level of the sagebrush tops, moved horizontally right until it lined up with the oncoming lane of U.S. 93, began moving toward me as a large single light at surface level on the highway, changed in an instant to two conventional headlight beams, then drove past me, 20 seconds later, as a late-model passenger car!” 51

I turn next to an example in which a teenage girl on a picnic with her family reported a remarkable experience of seeing a beautiful deer in the woods—only to find through hypnosis that this was apparently a cover for a UFO close encounter. The witness, now a lawyer with a major corporation, was given the pseudonym Virginia Horton by Budd Hopkins in order to protect her identity. Here is her description of the deer, as recalled directly without the aid of hypnosis:

Well, I just thought about it, but nothing came back to me except to remember again the sense of wonder that I had at the time at the beautiful, beautiful deer that I saw. You know, it was as though I had walked out of the woods and claimed that I saw a unicorn. There was that sense of excitement and wonder. . . . And the way I remember it is that the deer was looking at me and saying good-bye. The deer was saying good-bye telepathically to me. . . . It was as though I was talking to it and saying, “Well, don’t leave yet,” and then it just sort of dematerialized, disappeared. 52

Upon returning to her family after seeing the deer, Virginia found that they had been worried by her absence, even though she felt that she hadn’t been gone for a long time. Her mother also noticed that she had blood on her blouse, as though her nose had been bleeding. This piece of evidence was captured on a home movie made by Virginia’s father.

I’m walking through the woods. There’s a very bright light. There’s a ship just like they have in the movies. It’s round. It’s top-shaped roughly, but I can’t tell exactly. . . . There’s so much light you can’t really see clearly. . . . And then I hear almost like a whisper, “Virginia . . . Virginia,” and I think it was in my head that they were calling me. 53

Virginia then proceeded to describe a highly complex encounter with typical big-eyed entities on the craft. This involved a procedure in which an instrument was inserted up her nose, apparently to take a tissue sample. This, of course, is consistent with the blood on her blouse. The deer episode occurred after she left the craft, perhaps to provide a natural excuse for her prolonged absence.

There are other instances of illusory animal forms that seem connected, directly or indirectly, with visitations by UFO entities. For example, Whitley Strieber pointed out that he has sometimes remembered his visitors as owls, a phenomenon he interprets as a “screen memory” generated by the mind to disguise their actual horrifying form. 54 Ed Walters, the main witness in the famous Gulf Breeze photo case, reported an encounter at age 17, which involved being followed by a sinister, abnormal-looking black dog during the day and being visited that night by a frightening, large-eyed, baldheaded being. 55

In another case mentioned by Budd Hopkins, a friend he called Mary remembered seeing a beautiful hummingbird in 1950, when she was a child of about six. She tried to catch it in a jar and thought she had succeeded. But to her dismay, the jar turned out to be empty, and she discovered that her leg was mysteriously bleeding. Hopkins found on the back of her calf a hairline scar that she had been unaware of, and he noted that this scar was similar to those he had found in a number of UFO abduction cases. 56 She was reminded of this nearly forgotten incident on hearing Hopkins describe the Virginia Horton case at a meeting of friends.

To some researchers, the fact that illusions take place in UFO encounters, coupled with their general dreamlike quality, suggests that the encounters are entirely illusory. The fact that some encounters seem to take place in an out-of-body state also plays a role in this interpretation (see pages 340–43 ). These researchers suggest that the illusion might be due to some poorly understood feature of human psychology, or it might be due to some kind of astral agency. 57 Of course, the presence of physical evidence, such as cuts and bloodstains, suggests that a physically real agency may be involved. One could hypothesize that this agency consists of physically embodied beings who possess the power, through technology or natural endowment, to create illusions in people’s minds.

The Vedic literature tends to support the latter view. Many different races of beings are said to have the ability to create illusory bodily forms, as well as illusory objects of various kinds. In some cases, the illusory forms seem to have physical substance. For example, there are descriptions of cascades of rocks produced on a battlefield—rocks that do real damage when they strike enemy soldiers. In other cases, the illusory form seems less substantial, since it ceases to exist when the being that generates it is incapacitated.

In the epic called the Rāmāyaṇa, there is a famous story involving the latter type of illusion. In this story, Lord Rāmacandra, the heir to the throne of Ayodhyā, had been banished as a result of political intrigue. He was living in the forest, accompanied only by His wife Sītā and His brother Lakṣmaṇa. Although He acted in the role of a human being, Lord Rāmacandra was actually an incarnation of Viṣṇu, the Supreme Godhead, who had appeared on earth to demonstrate the conduct of an ideal king.

At one point in the story, Rāvaṇa, the king of the Rākṣasas, became lustfully attracted to Sītā, and he made a plan to abduct her. The Rākṣasas were famous for having the ability to assume illusory forms, and they put this ability to effective use on this occasion. Rāvaṇa visited his old compatriot Mārīca and asked him to assume the form of a golden deer and lure Rāma and His brother Lakṣmaṇa away from Sītā. This would give Rāvaṇa the opportunity to carry her away. Mārīca at first refused to do this but agreed when Rāvaṇa threatened him with death if he did not comply.

Then Mārīca, in the form of a wonderful deer with silver spots and the sheen of jewels, appeared before Sītā in the forest. His hooves were made of blue stones, and he had a little tail that shone like the rainbow. He walked this way and that, browsing on creepers and sometimes galloping. In so many ways, he drew the mind of Sītā, who asked Rāmacandra to catch him for her. Rāmacandra was, of course, cognizant that this might be the Rākṣasa magic of Mārīca, but He decided to go after the deer, and if it was actually Mārīca, He would kill him. He firmly ordered Lakṣmaṇa to stay behind with Sītā, and then pursued the deer.

It became elusive, and even invisible, and Rāma resolved to kill it. He shot one deadly shaft which entered Mārīca’s heart like a flaming snake. His counterfeit guise gone, Mārīca in the hideous form of a huge Rākṣasa, bathed in blood, now rolled upon the ground. 58

The Rākṣasas were descended from the celestial sage Pulastya, who is said to live on one of the stars of the Big Dipper, a constellation known as Sapta-ṛṣi (Seven Sages) in Sanskrit. They were roughly human in form with huge stature, great muscular strength, and frightening facial features, including prominent teeth and pointed ears. With the possible exception of certain “hairy monster” cases (see pages 303–5 ), they do not correspond in physical form to any of the UFO entities being widely reported today. However, the powers attributed to them are typical both of UFO entities and of many Vedic humanoid races.

The British UFO researcher Jenny Randles has introduced the term “Oz factor” to refer to a peculiar, almost dreamlike, state of silence that often precedes UFO encounters. 59 This phenomenon is very commonly reported. For example, a man described the Oz factor to Budd Hopkins in the following account of the beginning of an abduction experience:

And maybe it’s my mind, but everything seemed to become very quiet at the same time. Do you know how, after an automobile accident, in the city when you hear cars crash, for a split-second after that everything stops? Well, that kind of sound happened, or lack of sound. 60

I can see like a light, sort of pink right now. And now the light is getting brighter. It’s reddish orange, and it’s pulsating. I said to the children, “Be quiet, and quick, get in the living room, and whatever it is will go away.” It seemed like the whole house had a vacuum over it. Like stillness all around . . . like stillness. 61

Jenny Randles has interpreted the Oz factor as an altered state of consciousness induced by the agency behind the UFO phenomenon. In one hypothesis, she conceived of this agency as an intelligence based on another planet that can reach across the void of space by the power of consciousness and influence the brains of psychically sensitive people. The agency manipulates the consciousness of the affected person to create a UFO experience. According to Randles, this experience “is not really happening, yet it is far more than a mere hallucination.” 62

The Vedic literature also refers to experiences of abnormal stillness that are very similar to the Oz factor. These experiences are connected with the production of deliberate and vivid illusions by powerful beings. However, the beings in question are not situated far away in space. Rather they are physically present in the vicinity of the illusioned persons.

My first example of this is taken from the Rāmāyaṇa . After Lord Rāmacandra and his brother Lakṣmaṇa had been lured away from Sītā by the illusory deer, the Rākṣasa king, Rāvaṇa, approached Sītā in an illusory form with the aim of abducting her:

Thereupon Rāvaṇa, in the guise of a mendicant, availing himself of the opportunity, rapidly approached the hermitage with the purpose of seeking out Vaidehī [Sītā]. With matted locks, clad in a saffron robe and carrying a triple staff and loṣṭa, that highly powerful one, knowing Sītā to be alone, accosted her in the wood, in the form of an ascetic, at dusk when darkness shrouds the earth in the absence of the sun and moon. . . .

Beholding that monstrous apparition, the leaves of the trees ceased to move, the wind grew still, the turbulent course of the river Godaveri subsided and began to flow quietly. The ten-headed Rāvaṇa, however, profiting by Rāma’s absence, drew near to Sītā in the guise of a monk of venerable appearance while she was overcome with grief on account of her lord. 63

Here the statement that leaves and river waters became silent on “beholding” Rāvaṇa indicates that Rāvaṇa had a direct influence on these objects. In the Rāmāyaṇa , the unusual silence was not merely an illusion generated within Sītā’s mind but was actually happening in her external environment. I also note that Rāvaṇa is described as ten-headed. His body was endowed with mystic powers, or siddhis, which enabled it to transcend the limitations of ordinary, three-dimensional space.

The second Vedic example is taken from the Mahābhārata . In this highly complex story, the hero Arjuna met Lord Śiva, who approached him in the form of a Himalayan mountain man. An intruding Daitya in the form of a boar arrived on the scene at the same time:

When all the great-spirited ascetics had gone, the blessed Lord Hara [Śiva], who wields the Pināka, absolver of all evil, took on the guise of a mountain man. . . . The lustrous God was accompanied by the Goddess Umā, in the same guise and observing the same vow, and by excited creatures in all kinds of shapes. Garbed in his mountain man guise, the God shone surpassingly with his thousands of women, O King Bhārata.

Instantly the entire wood fell silent and the sounds of streams and birds ceased. As he approached the Pārtha [Arjuna] of unsullied deeds, he saw the wondrous-looking Mūka, a Daitya, who had taken the form of a boar with the evil design of killing Arjuna. 64

Arjuna and Śiva then argued over who had the right to kill the illusory boar. As we might expect, when they shot the boar, the dead body turned out to have the form of a Rākṣasa. The argument between Śiva and Arjuna resulted in a fierce battle, in which Śiva proved to be completely impervious to Arjuna’s weapons. Although Arjuna was defeated, Śiva was satisfied by his fighting prowess and offered him a powerful celestial weapon.

In this story, it is hard to tell whether the “Oz factor” is due to the appearance of Lord Śiva or the Daitya, Mūka. In either case, it is connected with the projection of powerful illusions by beings who are personally present in the immediate vicinity .