part0019

A lthough the main theme of this book is to explore the parallels between the UFO phenomenon and Vedic ideas, there are also close connections between this phenomenon and ideas found in other traditional systems of thought. These connections have been studied extensively in the case of old European folklore by Jacques Vallee in his books Passport to Magonia and Dimensions . Not surprisingly, there are also parallels between these traditions and the Vedic tradition. In this chapter, I will explore the triangle of mutual interrelationships connecting UFO reports, Vedic tradition, and other old traditions.

The empirical data on UFOs and related phenomena is extensive, but it tends to be incompatible with modern theoretical ideas, and therefore it is difficult to interpret. In contrast, the ancient Vedic world view is a consistent, meaningful system of philosophy and cosmology, but it does not include up-to-date observational data. My thesis is that these two things tend to complement one another: The UFO phenomena tend to corroborate the Vedic world view, and this world view, in turn, may help us understand UFO phenomena.

Vallee has made a similar point about UFO phenomena and old European folklore, but his presentation suffers from the fact that European folklore tends to lack clear-cut examples of UFO-like flying objects. His parallels are concerned mainly with the behavior and powers of the humanoid beings described in folklore and in UFO accounts. His case is therefore strengthened by the observation that there are strong parallels between the Vedic world view and the ancient world view of Europe. Since the Vedic literature contains many descriptions of flying machines, these parallels remedy the weakness in the UFO/ European-folklore comparison.

I should note that similarities between stories in two old traditions do not have the same meaning as similarities between accounts of distinct events by two contemporary witnesses. In the case of the two contemporary witnesses, one may be able to argue that they have not communicated with one another. One may then conclude that the similarities between their accounts indicate they have both had similar real experiences.

One cannot say this about similarities between ancient traditions. The very fact that the traditions are old means that there has been a great deal of opportunity for them to influence one another through ordinary means of human communication. In fact, I suspect that the ancient cultures of Europe and India had very strong ties and that much communication took place between them. Many similarities between Vedic literature and European folklore can be accounted for on this basis. At the same time, it is quite possible that some of the particular views of reality that have survived for centuries in Europe and India owe at least some of their staying power to ongoing experiences that tend to corroborate those views. According to this idea, UFO encounters would simply be contemporary examples of such experiences.

Here is one of Vallee’s examples of a UFO sighting that shows a connection with old European traditions. The time was about 4:00 p.m. in the summer of 1968. A British woman was driving near Stratford with her companion when they saw a shining disc in the sky. They stopped to watch it dart and dodge, and another car also stopped to watch. After it disappeared behind the trees, she drove on, and during the drive she experienced amazing insights on the nature of reality that she said transformed her personality. After supper that evening, she then encountered a strange apparition, which she later spoke of as a “Scorpion man”:

The light from the room shone in an arc of about ten feet around the window. In that area I saw, as soon as I came to the window, a strange figure. My perception of it was heightened by the state of frozen panic it produced in me. It was for me without any doubt, a demon, or devil because of my Western oriented interpretation . . . It had dog or goatlike legs. It was covered in silky, downy fur, dark, and glinting in the light. It was unmistakably humanoid, and to my mind malevolent. It crouched, and stared, unblinkingly, at me with light, grape-green eyes that slanted upwards and had no pupils. The eyes shone and were by far the most frightening thing about it. It was, I think retrospectively, trying to communicate with me, but my panic interfered with any message I might have received. If it had stood to its full height it would have been about four to five feet tall. It had pointed ears and a long muzzle. It gave the impression of emaciation; its hands and fingers were as thin as sticks. 1

Here the goatlike legs and the silky fur seem to connect the being with traditional European demon lore, while the eyes and emaciated appearance are typical of entities reported in UFO encounters. Are the traditional European demons real in some sense, and do they have some relationship with entities encountered on UFOs? Vallee extensively discussed similarities between UFO visitations and both pagan and Christian folklore regarding humanoids with paranormal powers. These include the succubi and incubi mentioned in medieval Roman Catholic writings, and the fairies and elves of old Celtic and Germanic tradition.

The Celtic humanoids are generally called fairies in English. It is clear that this term refers to several different types of beings, although it would be difficult to arrive at clear descriptions of all of them. Some are said to have beautiful human forms, and others are said to be ugly. Some are very small, and others are as tall or taller than modern humans. The Irish word for the fairies is Sidhe (pronounced Shee), and they are also referred to as the Good People or the Little People. The Bhāgavata Purāṇa, uses the similar phrase Puṇya Jana or Pious People to refer to beings (such as the Yakṣas) that roughly correspond to the Celtic fairies. 2

The Tuatha de Danann are an important type of Sidhe in Ireland. The name Tuatha de Danann means the descendants of the goddess Dana. This Dana was known as Brigit in middle Irish times, and she was apparently assimilated into Christianity as St. Brigit. According to tradition, the Tuatha de Danann were in full possession of the country when the sons of Mil, the ancestors of the Irish people, first came to Ireland. As humans invaded the island, the Tuatha de Danann remained, but they concealed themselves by their powers of invisibility. However, they continued to have intercourse with human society by communicating with seers and making themselves visible to selected humans. 3

The ethnographer Walter Evans-Wentz made the observation that the Sidhe were sometimes thought to take birth as human kings among the Celtic people. Indeed, he pointed to literary evidence showing that the famous King Arthur was believed to be such an incarnation, and he pointed out that many of the people connected with Arthur in the Arthurian legends were either raised by the fairies or were members of their race. For example, Arthur’s sword Excalibur was said to have been made in Avalon, the otherworld of the Sidhe. He was protected by a fairy woman called the Lady of the Lake, and his sister Morgan le Fay was a fairy. 4 ( Fay is the French word for fairy.)

This shows that in early Celtic tradition human beings were thought to be in extensive and intimate contact with superhuman races that lived either on this earth or in invisible worlds directly connected with it. The same can be said of the ancient Vedic world view.

In ancient times there may have been direct cultural links between the Celtic and Vedic societies. For example, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa describes a race of beings called the Dānavas, or descendants of the goddess Danu. The Dānavas include several groups I have already mentioned, such as the Nivāta-kavacas, Kāleyas, and Hiraṇya-puravāsīs (inhabitants of Hiraṇya-pura). According to the linguist Roger Wescott, there is a cultural connection between the Vedic Danu and the Irish goddess Dana. 5

Vallee showed that there are certain parallels between UFO accounts and the stories of the Sidhe in Celtic tradition. For example, UFO entities are known to mysteriously appear and disappear before people’s eyes, and the same is true of the fairies. Thus Evans-Wentz heard the following from one John MacNeil of Barra, an island in the Western Hebrides of Scotland.

The old people said they didn’t know if fairies were flesh and blood, or spirits. They saw them as men of more diminutive stature than our own race. I heard my father say that fairies used to come and speak to natural people and then vanish while one was looking at them. . . . The general belief was that fairies were spirits who could make themselves seen or not seen at will. And when they took people they took body and soul together. 6

The fairies evidently seemed physical because they could carry people off physically, and yet they seemed ethereal because they could appear and disappear at will. This apparent contradiction comes up repeatedly in connection with UFO abduction cases. It also comes up in Vedic accounts, and I will discuss this in detail in Chapter 10 .

In Vedic literature, there are many accounts of humanoid beings who can appear and disappear, and who sometimes take people away to another world. They are said to do these things by means of specific powers, or siddhis, that involve interactions between the mind, the ether, and the gross physical elements. The stories of Duryodhana and of Arjuna and Ulūpī in Chapter 6 show that the Vedic humanoids are also said to abduct people in ways that have parallels in some UFO cases.

Abduction is a standard theme in traditional fairy tales (which must be distinguished from the expurgated versions intended for modern children). In these stories, men and women are often abducted out of lust by fairies of the opposite sex. Children are also taken, and it is said that a fairy child, called a changeling, may be substituted for a human child. Just as we find in UFO cases, it seems that both sex desire and genetic considerations are involved in these abductions. In support of this, Vallee cited Edwin Hartland, a scholar of fairy traditions, as to the reasons people in northern European countries gave for this abduction of children:

The motive usually assigned to fairies in northern stories is that of preserving and improving their race, on the one hand by carrying off human children to be brought up among the elves and to become united with them, and on the other hand by obtaining the milk and fostering care of human mothers for their own offspring. 7

This interpretation was discussed by nineteenth-century mythologists on the basis of their studies of folklore. It is, of course, very similar to the explanation given by Budd Hopkins, Raymond Fowler, and others for UFO abductions, in which women are said to be impregnated—and their fetuses prematurely removed—by alien entities.

Hartland’s comment about the fostering care of human mothers is especially puzzling, since one wonders why elves would need human mothering. However, a similar point comes up in studies of UFO abductions. David Jacobs, an associate professor of history at Temple University in Philadelphia, has written a book on UFO abductions that includes detailed descriptions of “presentation scenes,” in which a UFO abductee is asked to come in physical contact with alien or half-alien children:

Abductees are also required to touch, hold, or hug these offspring. . . . Apparently it is absolutely essential for the child to have human contact. Although the aliens prefer that the humans give nurturing, loving contact, any physical contact seems to suffice. 8

In the Vedic literature, there are many accounts of sexual relations between humans and members of nonhuman races that give rise to offspring. One example is the union that took place between Bhīma, one of the human heros of the Mahābhārata , and Hiḍimbā, a Rākṣasa woman. Hiḍimbā had approached Bhīma out of lust for him, and to make love with him she assumed the illusory form of a beautiful human woman. The result was a child, who is described as follows:

And while she loved Bhīma everywhere, nimble as thought, the Rākṣasī gave birth to a son by the powerful Bhīmasena. He was a terrifying sight, squint-eyed, large-mouthed, needle-eared, loathsome-bodied, dark-red-lipped, sharp-tusked, and powerful, born a great archer of great prowess, great courage, great arms, great speed, great body, great wizardry, tamer of his foes. Inhuman, though born from a human, of terrible speed and great strength, he surpassed the Piśācas and other demons as he surpassed human beings. 9

In this case, Bhīma and Hiḍimbā remained together when the child was young, but she soon departed and took the boy with her. When he was newly born, Bhīma commented, “He is shiny as a pot!” So he was named Ghaṭotkaca, which means Shiny-as-a-Pot. Bhīma and his brothers, the Pāṇḍavas, were very fond of the boy, even though he strongly resembled his mother and looked distinctly nonhuman. His appearance is typical of Rākṣasas, and it is quite different from that of both human beings and the UFO humanoids that are commonly reported today.

No genetic manipulations were carried out by Bhīma and Hiḍimbā, but the Mahābhārata points out that Ghaṭotkaca had been created by Indra, the ruler of the Devas, so that he might destroy a certain warrior named Karṇa. This suggests that Indra engaged in genetic (or other) intervention at the time of Ghaṭotkaca’s conception.

Indra’s motive for this was to protect his own son, Arjuna, since he knew that Arjuna would eventually have to fight with Karṇa. Arjuna was one of the Pāṇḍava brothers, and as Indra’s son, he was the offspring of a Deva father and a human mother named Kuntī. All of the five Pāṇḍavas were the sons of various Devas and two human mothers, Kuntī and Mādrī, who were wives of a human king named Pāṇḍu.

The Vedic accounts indicate that the various humanoid races in the universe are generally able to interbreed and produce fertile offspring. This suggests that they must all be genetically related to one another, and according to the Vedic literature, this is indeed the case. All of the humanoid races descend from male and female forms generated by Brahmā, the original created being. The Devas are among the descendants of these forms, and earthly human beings are descended from Devas along a number of different lines of ancestry.

However, the meaning of the word “genetic” needs to be extended. All living organisms known to modern science contain genes made of DNA that specify the organisms’ hereditary traits. The bodies of Brahmā and the Devas are made of subtle forms of energy, and thus they do not contain DNA. However, they do carry genetic information in the form of bījas, or seeds, that are also made of subtle energy. 10 For humans to descend from Devas, a systematic transformation is required that converts subtle energy into gross energy. This same transformation must convert the subtle bījas into gross genes made of DNA.

This partially confirms and partially contradicts the genetic intervention theory for human origins that I discussed in Chapter 5 ( pages 186–89 ). The Vedic version is that earthly humans did descend from higher humanlike beings from other planets, but this was not by genetically engineered crosses between the higher beings and primitive ape-men living on the earth. Rather, it involved mating between Devas that generated human offspring through preplanned genetic transformations.

In general, the descendants of Brahmā on the level of Devas and higher were able to produce offspring that were not of their own bodily type. I have not seen specific descriptions of how this was done, but I gather that it was preprogrammed by Brahmā. There is no indication that it was done by independent scientific research by the Devas. Rather, they seem to have simply made use of powers invested in them by Brahmā at an earlier stage of creation.

The Vedic conception of the origin of living species is not Darwinian. As I pointed out in Chapter 4 ( pages 134–37 ), if humanoids of the kind reported in connection with UFOs are real, then their existence likewise poses a challenge to the Darwinian theory of evolution. According to the current understanding of natural history, such beings could not have evolved on the earth. It is also highly improbable that beings so similar to ourselves could have independently evolved on another planet.

The genetic intervention theory presented by Zecharia Sitchin proposes that humans arose from a genetically engineered cross between extraterrestrials and ape-men that had evolved on the earth. In this theory, the extraterrestrials themselves presumably evolved on another planet. However, it is difficult to explain why such beings should be close enough genetically to the ape-men to make crossbreeding a worthwhile proposition.

To illustrate this point, suppose we want to produce a new computer program by combining independently written machine language programs from two different computers. Even if the two programs did similar things, they would probably do them using completely different internal coding, and thus they would be incompatible with each other. In such a situation, even the most advanced computer expert would find it easier to create the new program from scratch than to get the two incompatible programs to work together. (Or he might prefer to produce the new program by modifying one of the existing programs.)

The Vedic account avoids the genetic incompatibility problem by starting with Devas and positing a transformation that alters the Deva form. The resulting human form is different from the Deva form but is apparently close enough to it that crossbreeding between humans and Devas is possible.

Note that the need to convert genetic information from a subtle form to a gross form does not constitute an insurmountable barrier. Information is abstract, and the same information can be stored using different types of energy. Converting information from subtle to gross is comparable to converting text from computer-coded electrical signals to print on paper.

Although the Deva-to-human transformation seems to have been preprogrammed by Brahmā, there are Vedic descriptions of the creation of human races by genetic manipulation. In one account, a king named Vena turned out to be a cruel tyrant, and he was killed by great sages. His mother preserved his body “by the application of certain ingredients and by chanting mantras.” 11 Later on, the sages reflected that the king’s hereditary qualities were valuable, and to preserve them they acted as follows:

After making a decision, the saintly persons and sages churned the thighs of the dead body of King Vena with great force and according to a specific method. As a result of this churning, a dwarflike person was born from King Vena’s body.

This person born from King Vena’s thighs was named Bāhuka, and his complexion was as black as a crow’s. All the limbs of his body were very short, his arms and legs were short, and his jaws were large. His nose was flat, his eyes were reddish, and his hair copper-colored. 12

I should point out that this story should not be used to support any theories of racial superiority or inferiority. According to the Vedic viewpoint, all persons are equal as spiritual beings, and it is a mistake to try to judge them on the basis of the material body, which is simply an external covering for the soul.

It would seem that the sages produced Bāhuka by carrying out an operation very similar to what is now known as cloning. According to current scientific understanding, the chemically intact DNA from any cell in a person’s body contains the genetic information specifying that body. This means that it would be theoretically possible to produce a new living body using tissue from a dead body, assuming that the tissue had not begun to decay.

In this case, it would appear that a transformation of the genetic material was also carried out, and thus a dwarflike person was produced who had features quite different from those of King Vena. The sages later churned the arms of Vena’s body and produced beautiful male and female persons, named Pṛthu and Arci, who were different in form and quality from both Vena and the dwarf.

In the UFO literature, in Western folklore, and in the Vedic literature, there are accounts of sexual relations between humans and humanoid beings that seem to be motivated by lust and that generally do not result in offspring. In this section, I will give some examples taken from these three sources of information.

Whitley Strieber wrote of meeting a strange-looking female being with huge eyes and emaciated limbs that, in his description, sounds like a cross between a human and a praying mantis. Strieber said that he had encountered this being more than once, and he felt that he had some kind of erotic relationship with her. He described her as follows to the journalist Ed Conroy:

She is a human being, like all of her kind. But she is of the next level of man. What we call “unconscious” is among her kind full of light. I would like to take her away, for my own self. . . . She can be as innocent as a baby and as sensual as a fox. . . . When you’re angry, it’s like she’s physically being hurt, and you have to reach into the depths of yourself to find a level of serenity that is deep enough to enable her to be calm in your presence. And when her passion comes on her, she appears out of the night. . . . I’m afraid that my succubus is quite real. 13

The being that visited Whitley Strieber is rather different from the Celtic fairies. Typically, the fairies are described as being much more human in appearance, and many are said to be quite beautiful by our standards. However, her behavior seems to be foreshadowed by the teachings of the Catholic Church regarding succubi and incubi. Consider the following statement by St. Augustine, written in about 420 A.D.:

There is, too, a very general rumour, which many have verified by their own experience, or which trustworthy persons who have heard the experience of others corroborate, that sylvans and fauns, who are commonly called “incubi,” had often made wicked assaults upon women, and satisfied their lust upon them. That certain devils, called Duses by the Gauls, are constantly attempting and effecting this impurity is so generally affirmed, that it would be impudent to deny it. 14

Consider the “Scorpion man,” mentioned above, that was seen by a British women in connection with a UFO sighting. This being resembled a traditional faun in that it had goatlike or doglike legs. With its frightening, slanted eyes and emaciated appearance, it also resembled Strieber’s visitor.

A succubus of more human form appears in a story from recent Celtic tradition related by Evans-Wentz. He said that an informant in Barra related a tale told by his grandmother Catherine MacInnis. She used to tell of a man named Laughlin, whom she knew and who was in love with a fairy woman. This woman would visit Laughlin every night, and finally he became so worn out with her that he began to fear her. To escape, he emigrated to America, but apparently she haunted him there also. 15

Stories of this kind are still current today in South India. A man from a brahmin family in Tamil Nadu told me that as a young man he had been dabbling in tantric occultism. In the course of this, he had a frightening encounter with a naked, not-quite-human female being who appeared before him suddenly while he waited at a midnight rendezvous. A tantric expert later explained what he had seen:

You saw Mohinī, a demon from the underworld. Had you known how, you could have entered a pact with her for the next cycle of Jupiter (twelve years). You promise to satisfy her lust once a month, and she will do your bidding in return, protect your property, destroy your enemies, whatever.

But a pact with Mohinī is very dangerous. When she comes for sexual satisfaction, she may assume eighteen forms in the course of the night, expecting you to fulfill the demands of each one. If you cannot, it will cost you your life. And if during the twelve years of your relationship with her you have an attraction to another woman, that will also cost you your life. You suddenly vomit blood— finished.

In recent years, a great deal of evidence has accumulated suggesting that some UFO abductions may have more to do with sexual exploitation than scientific research in genetics. Sexual encounters between UFO entities and humans range from Harvard psychiatrist John Mack’s “blissful merging” 16 to abductee Leah Haley’s encounter with a loathsome reptilian. 17 There are even reports of apparent marital relationships between humans and extraterrestrials. An example is the story of Denise and Bert Twiggs about their subconscious, four-way marriage with benevolent beings from Andromeda. 18

There are two striking parallels between descriptions of sexual encounters in Vedic traditions and in modern UFO stories. First, as we have seen in the cases of Hiḍimbā and Mohinī, the Vedic stories typically involve the projection of attractive illusory forms. For comparison, UFO researchers David Jacobs 19 and Richard Boylan 20 have described the projection of illusory forms of human loved ones in UFO-related sexual encounters. There are also cases in which forms of beautiful women or famous personalities were apparently projected.

According to Indian tradition, beings of low consciousness such as Mohinī exploit humans with the motive of drawing energy from human emotions. This is paralleled by UFO researcher Karla Turner’s comment that “a certain group of these beings in some way “feed’ off our emotions, especially the strong ones that come from fear, pain, depression, and compulsive actions.” 21 Ed Walters of Gulf Breeze, Florida, has also described how abducting entities somehow forced him to repeatedly recall highly emotional experiences in his life, perhaps for the purpose of enjoying them vicariously. 22 This, of course, is one way to explain the motivation behind the sexual element in UFO abductions, the display of apparent half-breed babies, and the frightening “medical” procedures.

In traditional Celtic stories the abduction theme is often combined with a visit to another world. In one such story, the hero Ossian was enticed into the mystical land of Tir na nog by a beautiful Sidhe princess. He married her and lived for three hundred of our years in her world. Finally, however, he felt an overpowering desire to return to Ireland and participate in the counsels of the Fenian Brotherhood. He set out on the same white horse that had taken him to the otherworld, and his fairy wife warned him not to lay his foot on the level ground.

On reaching Ireland, he searched for the Brotherhood but found that all his old companions had passed away and the country was quite changed. Only then did he realize how long he had been away. Unfortunately, at a certain point some incident caused him to dismount, and on touching the earth he immediately turned into a feeble, blind old man. 23

In European folklore there are many stories with similar elements, including the entry into another world and the aging or death of the protagonist when he realizes how much time has passed in our world during his absence. Here is a similar story dating back to the early 19th century. In the Vale of Neath, Wales, two farm workers named Rhys and Llewellyn were walking home one night. Rhys was attracted by the sound of some mysterious music, but Llewellyn heard nothing. So Llewellyn continued home while Rhys stayed back to dance to the tune he had heard. The next day, Rhys didn’t show up, and after a fruitless search, Llewellyn was jailed on the suspicion of murder.

However, a man learned in fairy lore guessed what had happened. On his advice, a party of men accompanied Llewellyn to the spot where Rhys was last seen. At this spot, Llewellyn could hear the music of harps because his foot was touching a “fairy-ring.” When each of the other members of the party put his foot on Llewellyn’s, he could hear the music too and could see many Little People dancing in a circle. Rhys was among them. When Llewellyn pulled him out of the circle, Rhys declared that he had only been dancing for five minutes. He could not be convinced that so much time had passed, and he became depressed, fell ill, and soon died. 24

The otherworld of the Celts has various names, such as Avalon, Tir na nog (Land of Youth), and Plain of Delight. Examination of the stories makes it clear that this realm would have to exist in a higher dimension. To reach it, one must go to the right place in three-dimensional space, and then one must travel in a mystical fashion that we do not understand. We can speak of this as an extra dimension of travel in addition to the three we are familiar with.

Since the otherworld can be reached by mystical travel from this world, we can speak of it as a parallel reality. This idea can be understood by imagining jumping back and forth between two parallel planes that are close together. The planes represent the parallel realities, and the jumping corresponds to the higher-dimensional travel.

If we turn to Chinese folklore, we find a parallel to the story of Ossian, with its time lapse of hundreds of years. There is a book entitled The Report Concerning the Cave Heavens and Lands of Happiness in Famous Mountains, by Tu Kuang-t’ing, who lived from 850 to 933 A.D . This book lists ten “cave heavens” and thirty-six “small cave heavens” that were supposed to exist beneath mountains in China. Here are the reported experiences of a man who entered a passageway leading to one of these cave heavens:

After walking ten miles, he suddenly found himself in a beautiful land “with a clear blue sky, shining pinkish clouds, fragrant flowers, densely growing willows, towers the color of cinnabar, pavilions of red jade, and far flung palaces.” He was met by a group of lovely, seductive women, who brought him to a house of jasper and played him beautiful music while he drank “a ruby-red drink and a jade-colored juice.” Just as he felt the urge to let himself be seduced, he remembered his family and returned to the passageway. Led by a strange light that danced before him, he walked back through the cave to the outer world; but when he reached his home village, he did not recognize anyone he saw, and when he arrived at his house, he met his own descendants of nine generations hence. They told him that one of their ancestors had disappeared into a cavern three hundred years before and had never been seen again. 25

Here we find the same time dilation effect that repeatedly appears in European folklore. This effect, plus the fact that the man found himself in a land with a blue sky and clouds, indicates that the cave passageway led him to a parallel world.

In the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, there is a description of a parallel reality called Bila-svarga, or the subterranean heaven, which is clearly related to the Chinese story of the cave heavens. Bila-svarga is described as a very beautiful place, with brilliantly decorated cities, lakes of clear water, and extensive parks and gardens. 26 At the same time, the sun and the moon cannot be seen there, and the inhabitants have no sense of the passing of time. Bila-svarga is subdivided into seven worlds called lokas, and thus it is more than a mere cave within the earth fixed up with artificial lighting.

If a man enters the planet of Atala, these women immediately capture him and induce him to drink an intoxicating beverage made with a drug known as hāṭaka [cannabis indica ]. This intoxicant endows the man with great sexual prowess, of which the women take advantage for enjoyment. A woman will enchant him with attractive glances, intimate words, smiles of love and then embraces. In this way she induces him to enjoy sex with her to her full satisfaction. Because of his increased sexual power, the man thinks himself stronger than ten thousand elephants and considers himself most perfect. Indeed, illusioned and intoxicated by false pride, he thinks himself God, ignoring impending death. 27

It is significant that Atala is referred to as a “planet” in this translation. Sometimes the word loka is translated as “planetary system,” and the seven lokas of Bila-svarga are referred to as “lower planetary systems.” The Bhāgavata Purāṇa indicates that Bila-svarga extends throughout the plane of the solar system, and for this reason it is called a svarga, or heaven (see pages 228–29 ). However, it can be reached by entering into the earth, using higher-dimensional modes of travel, and in this sense it is bila, or subterranean.

In Vedic literature, it is said that there is a hierarchy of planetary systems, which we can think of as parallel worlds. The highest system is Brahmaloka, the world of Brahmā, and it exhibits the most extreme degree of time dilation relative to the earth. Other, intermediate planetary systems exhibit intermediate degrees of time dilation.

The time dilation in Brahmaloka is illustrated by the following story. This story begins with mention of a submarine kingdom called Kuśasthalī that may involve a parallel reality in its own right. The people in the story are members of the Sūrya-vaṁśa, a dynasty descending from Sūrya, the presiding Deva of the sun. They are considered to be human, but they were endowed with mystic powers not possessed by ordinary humans of today. One of them, a king named Kakudmī, was able to travel to the world of Brahmā, where he experienced Brahmā’s scale of time:

O Mahārāja Parīkṣit, subduer of enemies, this Revata constructed a kingdom known as Kuśasthalī in the depths of the ocean. There he lived and ruled such tracts of land as Ānarta, etc. He had one hundred very nice sons, of whom the eldest was Kakudmī.

Taking his own daughter, Revatī, Kakudmī went to Lord Brahmā in Brahmaloka, which is transcendental to the three modes of material nature, and inquired about a husband for her. When Kakudmī arrived there, Lord Brahmā was engaged in hearing musical performances by the Gandharvas and had not a moment to talk with him. Therefore Kakudmī waited, and at the end of the musical performances he offered his obeisances to Lord Brahmā and thus submitted his long-standing desire.

After hearing his words, Lord Brahmā, who is most powerful, laughed loudly and said to Kakudmī, “O King, all those whom you may have decided within the core of your heart to accept as your son-in-law have passed away in the course of time. Twenty-seven catur-yugas have already passed. Those upon whom you may have decided are now gone, and so are their sons, grandsons and other descendants. You cannot even hear about their names.” 28

In traditional Sanskrit texts, one catur-yuga is 4,320,000 years. With this information, we can estimate the rate of time dilation on Brahmaloka. If the concert given by the Gandharvas took about one hour in Brahmā’s time scale, then that hour must correspond to 27 times 4,320,000 earth years. It turns out that this estimate closely matches a time dilation calculation based on another story involving Brahmā.

This is the story of the Brahma-vimohana-līlā, or the bewilderment of Brahmā by Kṛṣṇa. Several thousand years ago, Kṛṣṇa descended to the earth as an avatāra and was playing as a young cowherd boy, tending calves in the forest of Vṛndāvana (which is to the south of present-day New Delhi). To test Kṛṣṇa’s potency, Brahmā used his mystic power to steal Kṛṣṇa’s calves and cowherd boyfriends and hide them in suspended animation in a secluded place. He then went away for a year of earthly time to see what would happen.

Kṛṣṇa responded to Brahmā’s trick by expanding himself into identical copies of the calves and boys. When Brahmā returned to see what had happened, he saw that Kṛṣṇa was playing with the boys and calves just as before, and he became completely bewildered. On checking the boys and calves that he had hidden away, he found that they were indistinguishable from the ones playing with Kṛṣṇa, and he couldn’t understand how this was possible. Finally, Kṛṣṇa revealed to Brahmā that these latter boys and calves were actually identical with Himself, and He allowed Brahmā to have a direct vision of the spiritual world.

Now, it turns out that even though Brahmā was absent for one earth year, on his time scale only a moment had passed. The Sanskrit word used here for a moment of time is truṭi. 29 There are various definitions of a truṭi, but the Vedic astronomy text called the Sūrya-siddhānta defines a truṭi to be 1/33,750 seconds. 30 This tells us that one year on the earth corresponds to 1/33,750 seconds in the time of Brahmā.

As I pointed out, King Kakudmī’s visit to Brahmaloka took 27 times 4,320,000 earth years. If we multiply this by 1/33,750 we find that in Brahmā’s time, King Kakudmī’s visit lasted 3,456 seconds, or just under an hour. This is consistent with the story that the king had to wait for a musical performance to finish before having a brief conversation with Lord Brahmā.

By the way, after Brahmā had his meeting with Kṛṣṇa, he brought the original cowherd boys back to normal consciousness. They found to their amazement that they had one year of “missing time.”

There are contemporary reports of experiences in which a person seemingly enters briefly into another world and then returns to our ordinary world to find that much time has passed. Like the story of Rhys and Llewellyn, these stories typically arise in the context of traditional belief systems involving beings with mystical powers.

For example, in June 1982 in Malaysia, a twelve-year-old girl named Maswati Pilus was going to the river at 10 a.m. to wash some clothes. Suddenly, she encountered a strange female being of her own size who invited her to see another land. “She felt no fear and found herself in a bright and beautiful place. . . . It seemed as if time had whizzed by.” Two days later, she was discovered lying unconscious on the ground by relatives who had been frantically searching that very area for the whole time. 31 Malaysian tradition assigns the strange female to a group of beings called Bunians, who are known for abducting children. UFOs are not associated with them, however, and Jenny Randles reported that a search for UFO abduction cases in Malaysia turned up nothing.

The story of Ossian is typical of Celtic fairy lore in that it takes place in a parallel reality and features a time dilation effect in which time passes more slowly in the parallel world than in the ordinary world. We see the same thing in the Chinese cave story and in many Vedic accounts. The story of Rhys and Llewellyn and the story of Maswati Pilus both involve a parallel reality and a moderate time dilation effect.

As far as I am aware, in UFO accounts there are no direct parallels to the stories of Ossian, Rhys and Llewellyn, and Maswati Pilus, in which there is explicit entry into a parallel world. However, John Mack observed that “Quite a few abductees have spoken to me of their sense that at least some of their experiences are not occurring within the physical space/time dimensions of the universe as we comprehend it. . . . They experience the aliens, indeed their abductions themselves, as happening in another reality, although one that is as powerfully actual to them as—or more so than—the familiar physical world.” 32 Kenneth Ring’s idea of an ontologically real imaginal world also places UFO abductions in a parallel reality. 33

The events reported in many UFO abductions are suggestive of a transition to a parallel reality. People undergoing abductions are sometimes shifted to a state in which they can pass through walls. They are sometimes taken on UFOs to very strange, unfamiliar places, such as the subterranean realm described by Betty Andreasson. 34 But it is hard to say whether these places are on this earth, on another planet, or in another dimension. Even out-of-body experiences on UFOs could be taking place in ordinary three-dimensional space, since OBEs in which a cardiac patient views his own unconscious body plainly do take place in ordinary hospital rooms. (OBEs and UFOs are discussed in Chapter 10 .)

Since Betty Andreasson spoke of going through a closed door of her house and then through a normal, open door in the UFO parked outside, 35 one can argue that perhaps the UFO itself existed in another dimension. This could help explain why it is so rare for other people to witness UFO abductions from a distance. Of course, it is also possible that Betty resumed a normal physical state after passing through the door and entered a UFO made of ordinary matter in ordinary three-dimensional space.

Perhaps the strongest argument linking UFO reports with accounts of parallel realities is that both involve beings with similar mystic powers and similar modes of behavior. If certain beings can operate in a parallel world, and other, similar beings pass through walls and operate flying machines that seem to violate the laws of physics, then perhaps the flying machines can also cross into parallel worlds. Perhaps they also originate in such worlds.

Once this step is taken, an additional argument can be made as follows: The total number of reported, authenticated UFO encounters is very large, and the total number of encounters actually occurring must be much larger. It would seem that these operations must impose a great burden on the UFO entities if they have to commute regularly to the earth from another planet by ordinary three-dimensional travel limited by the speed of light. But if they live in a parallel reality, then they do not have to travel very far to reach us.

Of course, one could argue that they might travel from other stars in a quick, convenient way that avoids the limitation of the speed of light. But this would make other star systems, in effect, parallel worlds that are directly connected to our own world. The Vedic idea of the subterranean heavenly planets is perhaps similar to this. These are planets ( lokas ), and they are in the heavens. But they can also be quickly reached by entering into the earth.

In this section, I will try to establish an explicit link between the European fairy folk and some of the humanoid races mentioned in Vedic literature. One key to establishing such a link is to note that fairies were traditionally connected with the harvest of grain. Thus, Robert Rickard has observed, “Throughout the range of Indo-European cultures, the fairies were given their tithes of corn and milk at harvesting, over which they presided.” 36

In his book Dimensions, Jacques Vallee discussed a 9th-century French text which seems to describe a UFO abduction. 37 According to this text, three men and a woman were seen descending from aerial ships at Lyons in France. They said they had been taken on board these ships by beings called Sylphs and had been shown many wonders. Unfortunately, the local populace regarded them as evil magicians. The locals were about to cast them into the fire when Agobard, Bishop of Lyons, saved them by denying the reality of both Sylphs and magicians.

We have seen and heard many men plunged in such great stupidity, sunk in such depths of folly, as to believe that there is a certain region, which they call Magonia, whence ships sail in the clouds, in order to carry back to that region those fruits of the earth which are destroyed by hail and tempests; the sailors paying rewards to the storm wizards and themselves receiving corn and other produce. 38

Turning to India, we find that a race of beings called the Nāgas are connected with the harvesting of crops. These Nāgas should not be confused with the tribal peoples of present-day Nagaland. The Nāgas are said to be a nonhuman race descended from the celestial sage Kaśyapa and his wife Kadrū. They are sometimes described as having serpentine form, and at other times they are said to be human in form. Apparently, they have the power to assume or project various forms. The Nāgas also have standard mystical powers, such as the ability to travel through solid matter, and to appear and disappear. They live within the earth or in bodies of water, and they may be related to the dragons of Chinese tradition.

The Rāja-taraṅgiṇī of Kalhaṇa is a history of Kashmir that was written in about the 11th century A.D . It contains the following story about the Nāgas. The story took place in Kashmir in a beautiful city founded by a king named Nara or Kiṁnara:

In one of the cool ponds in the main park of the city dwelt Nāga Suśravās and his two beautiful daughters. One day a poor brāhmaṇa named Viśākha was resting in a grove near this pond. As he was about to have some refreshments, two beautiful girls came up from the spring and, apparently ignoring him, began to hungrily eat pods of kacchaguccha grass which grew in abundance there. The brāhmaṇa, taking up his courage, asked them the reason for their poverty. He learned that they were the daughters of Nāga Suśravās, and even though they were entitled to a share of the rich crops growing around Kiṁnarapura, they could not touch it until the field-guard partook of the new harvest. But as ill luck would have it, he had taken a vow not to eat a single grain of the fresh crops; hence their miserable condition.

The brāhmaṇa boy was moved to pity. One day he stealthily put some fresh corn into the field-guard’s cooking vessel. As soon as the guard partook of this, the Nāga carried off, through thunder and storm, the rich harvest all around the city. In gratitude, the Nāga granted the brāhmaṇa one of his daughters in marriage.

The happy couple lived peacefully in the city for some time, until King Nara learned of the beauty of the brāhmaṇa’s wife and tried to seduce her through his emissaries. When this failed he tried to carry her off by force, and Viśākha and his wife ran for their lives and jumped into the pond occupied by Nāga Suśravās. The Nāga was furious, and he destroyed Kiṁnarapura with a severe thunderstorm. The Nāga and his daughter and son-in-law then created for their residence a lake of “dazzling whiteness resembling a sea of milk,” which is known to this day as Śeṣanāga. 39

This story has three features that link it with European fairy lore. These are (1) the Nāgas partake of human crops, (2) human men can marry Nāga women, and (3) a human being can live with the Nāgas in their world. Since the brāhmaṇa was able to live with his Nāga wife under a lake, we can understand that they were living in a parallel reality connected with the lake, and not simply living in the lake water. It is also interesting to note that the Nāgas could create storms to take crops, and Archbishop Agobard spoke of storm wizards who apparently did the same thing.

There has been some controversy about whether UFO entities come from other planets or from higher-dimensional domains on the earth. According to the Vedic texts, both possibilities could be true. There are humanlike beings who live on other planets and sometimes visit the earth, either in vehicles called vimānas or under their own power. There are similar beings inhabiting various earthly realms that are inaccessible to most humans. Also, some groups of beings have lived both on the earth and on other planets throughout their history.

The Nāgas fall in the last category. A partial account of their history on the earth and their relations with human beings is contained in the Nīlamat Purāṇa . 40 This Purāṇa is devoted to the history of Kashmir, and it presents the ordinances given by Nila, the son of the celestial sage Kaśyapa, and the king of the Kashmir Nāgas. It gives an interesting perspective on the Vedic view of ancient human and transhuman history.

Today, Kashmir is a valley surrounded by mountains that are unbroken except for a single gorge to the south, which provides a passage for the river Jhelum. According to the Nīlamat Purāṇa, at one time the gorge did not exist, and the valley of Kashmir was a lake called Satīsaras. It was so named after Satī, the wife of Lord Śiva, who would sometimes enjoy boating excursions on its surface.

At one time, a demonic being called Jalodbhava (meaning “arisen from the water”) took up his residence in the lake and would emerge at regular intervals to devastate the surrounding regions. The Devas asked Lord Viṣṇu to destroy the demon, and He agreed to do so. To accomplish this, His brother Balabhadra drained the lake by cleaving the mountain range bounding the valley on the south. Then, as the Devas looked on from the surrounding mountain tops, Viṣṇu attacked the demon, who was at a disadvantage due to being deprived of his natural element.

After the death of Jalodbhava, the Piśācas and the descendants of Manu (human beings) were settled in the newly drained valley by the sage Kaśyapa. The Nāgas, who were the original inhabitants, took up their abodes in lakes and springs, and other beings took up posts as the goddesses of the newly formed rivers.

The Piśācas were adapted to the conditions of extreme cold that prevailed in the valley at that time. Due to the severity of the climate, humans could initially live there only during the summer months. Finally, however, the brahmin Candradeva acquired a number of rites through the favor of Nila Nāga. These freed the country from the Piśācas and the excessive cold, and thereafter humans were able to live there permanently. Later on, the valley became known as Kashmir, a name deriving from “Kashaf Mar,” meaning “the house of Kashaf.” 41

It turns out that the valley of Kashmir really was a lake in the Pleistocene period of geological history. The valley is filled with sedimentary layers called Karewas, which have been interpreted by many geologists as freshwater lake deposits. Although some geologists have interpreted these layers as river deposits, the following statement seems to sum up current opinions on the subject: “It can be stated here for certain and without hesitation that the Karewa sediments under this investigation belong to fresh water lacustrine origin of cooler climate.” 42

According to geologists, the lake continued on the Himalayan side of the valley until late Pleistocene time, after which it was drained by the formation of the river Jhelum on the valley’s southern side. Radiocarbon dating indicates that this happened over 31,000 years ago. 43

This is before the time when human beings of modern form are thought to have first arrived in the region. How then can we explain the tradition that the valley was once filled by a lake? One suggestion is that early peoples living in Kashmir deduced the previous presence of a lake on the basis of geological evidence. However, the disagreements between present-day geologists indicate that the interpretation of such evidence is far from obvious. (And some of the evidence consists of the shells of microscopic water creatures called ostracodes, which people without microscopes wouldn’t be able to see.) Thus, it is just possible that the traditions have been passed down from actual historical experience of the draining of the ancient lake.

Whether this can be demonstrated or not, the main point is that the Nīlamat Purāṇa refers back to a time when Kashmir was an abode of Devas, Nāgas, and other nonhuman intelligent races that possess superhuman mystical powers. All of these beings were descendants of celestial sages, such as Kaśyapa, and these sages in turn were descendants of Brahmā, the first created being in the universe. The human race was similarly descended from celestial beings, and at a certain point humans were introduced into the valley by Kaśyapa, the presiding sage of that region.

This story is similar to the Celtic story of Ireland. There, too, the land was once in the possession of a race of mystically empowered beings—the descendants of the goddess Dana. Human beings entered at some point in history, but the original inhabitants remained, living in their own higher-dimensional realms and interacting in a variety of ways with their grossly embodied human cousins. The only difference between the Celtic and Vedic accounts is that the latter are more exhaustive and philosophical, with detailed descriptions of the relationship between the hierarchy of living beings within the universe and the transcendental Supreme Being. Of course, the Celtic stories are fragmentary, since the main body of Celtic teachings vanished with the advent of Christianity in Europe.

Christianity is a source of a great deal of evidence for encounters between humans and humanlike beings endowed with mystic powers. The Roman Catholic Church, in particular, has developed a vast literature on this subject, and I have already alluded to some Catholic views regarding succubi and incubi. Here I will briefly discuss one example of an encounter with beings of a more positive spiritual nature. This is the story of meetings that took place in Fatima, Portugal, in 1917, between three children named Lucia, Francisco, and Jacinta and a brilliantly effulgent lady whom they understood to be the Virgin Mary. As we shall see, this story is relevant to the UFO question, and it is backed up by an unprecedented amount of eyewitness testimony.

The meetings occurred on the 13th of the month for six successive months in a natural amphitheater called the Cova da Iria near the town of Fatima. Revelations were made to the three children in the presence of a large throng of onlookers, which increased greatly from month to month as news spread. The actual visions of the beautiful lady could be seen only by the three children, and so our knowledge of these visions is limited to their testimony. However, during the revelations there occurred related phenomena that were witnessed by large numbers of people.

These phenomena included the appearance of a glowing, globe-shaped vehicle and the occurrence of a shower of rose petals that vanished upon touching the ground. 44 Showers of flower petals are often mentioned in Vedic accounts of celestial visitations. For example, here is an excerpt from the description of Kṛṣṇa’s rāsa dance in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa:

The demigods and their wives were overwhelmed with eagerness to witness the rāsa dance, and they soon crowded the sky with their hundreds of celestial airplanes. Kettledrums then resounded in the sky while flowers rained down and the chief Gandharvas and their wives sang Lord Kṛṣṇa’s spotless glories. 45

To my surprise, I see clearly and distinctly a globe of light advancing from east to west, gliding slowly and majestically through the air. . . . Suddenly the globe with its extraordinary light vanished, but near us a little girl of about ten continues to cry joyfully: “I still see it! I still see it! Now it is going down!” 46

In his report about what happened after these events, Quaresma said, “My friend, full of enthusiasm, went from group to group . . . asking people what they had seen. The persons asked came from the most varied social classes and all unanimously affirmed the reality of the phenomena which we ourselves had observed.” 47

During one of the revelations, the child Lucia had requested that a miracle be shown so that people unable to see the divine lady could believe in the reality of what was happening. She was told that this would occur on the 13th of October, and she immediately communicated this to others.

On this date, it is estimated that some 70,000 people congregated in the vicinity of the Cova da Iria in anticipation of the predicted miracle. The day was overcast and rainy, and the crowd huddled under umbrellas in the midst of a sea of mud. Suddenly, the clouds parted, and an astonishing solar display began to unfold. I will describe this in the words of some of the witnesses:

Dr. Joseph Garrett, Professor of Natural Sciences at Coimbra University: “The sun’s disc did not remain immobile. This was not the sparkling of a heavenly body, for it spun round on itself in a mad whirl, when suddenly a clamour was heard from all the people. The sun, whirling, seemed to loosen itself from the firmament and advance threateningly upon the earth as if to crush us with its huge fiery weight. The sensation during those moments was terrible.” 48

Dr. Formigao, a professor at the seminary at Santarem: “As if like a bolt from the blue, the clouds were wrenched apart, and the sun at its zenith appeared in all its splendour. It began to revolve vertiginously on its axis, like the most magnificent firewheel that could be imagined, taking on all the colors of the rainbow and sending forth multi-colored flashes of light, producing the most astounding effect. This sublime and incomparable spectacle, which was repeated three distinct times, lasted for about ten minutes. The immense multitude, overcome by the evidence of such a tremendous prodigy, threw themselves on their knees.” 49

Similar testimony was given by large numbers of people, both from the crowd at the Cova da Iria and from a surrounding area measuring about 20 by 30 miles. The presence of confirming witnesses over such a large area suggests that the phenomenon cannot be explained as the result of crowd hysteria. The absence of reports from a wider area and the complete absence of reports from scientific observatories suggest that the phenomenon was local to the region of Fatima. It seems there are two possibilities. Either remarkable atmospheric phenomena were arranged by an intelligent agency at a time announced specifically in advance or coordinated hallucinations in thousands of people were similarly arranged at this time. By either interpretation, it is hard to fit these phenomena into the framework of modern science.

Although there seems to be a remarkable amount of testimony attesting to the unusual phenomena at Fatima, it is also relatively easy to dismiss them, if that is what one wants to do. For example, consider the following statement by a skeptical newspaper reporter:

According to what we heard, there were people who seemed to see the sun leave its supposed orbit, break through the clouds and descend to the horizon. The impression of these seers spread to others, in a common effort to explain the phenomenon, many crying out in fear that the giant orb would precipitate itself to the earth on top of them, and imploring the protection of the Holy Virgin. The “miraculous hour” passed. 50

Here simple suggestibility and crowd hysteria are used to explain how a few people’s imaginary ideas were spread and amplified by frenzied believers. However, this doesn’t explain how it came about that many people in surrounding communities also witnessed the solar spectacle. For example, in 1960 the Rev. Joaquim Lourenco, a canon lawyer of the diocese of Leira, described what he saw as a boy in the town of Alburitel, some nine miles from Fatima:

I feel incapable of describing what I saw. I looked fixedly at the sun, which seemed pale and did not hurt my eyes. Looking like a ball of snow, revolving on itself, it suddenly seemed to come down in a zig-zag, menacing the earth. Terrified, I ran and hid myself among the people, who were weeping and expecting the end of the world at any moment. 51

Scientists have also offered skeptical explanations of the Fatima phenomena. For example, the British meteorologist Terence Meaden has devised a theory explaining the famous English crop circles on the basis of natural ionized vortices of air (see pages 70–71 ). According to his theory, the ionized vortices can derange the mind and senses by electrically agitating the brain. Thus, ionized vortices can generate all kinds of hallucinations, and they can be invoked to explain any eyewitness testimony whatsoever. Here is how Meaden dealt with Fatima:

In our theory of the luminous vortex we find an answer to the miraculous visions of the past which “faith” has supported on the part of the religious but which have gone unbelieved by the non-religious. An obvious case is the mountainside apparition of 13 May 1917 near Fatima in Portugal. The vision that the three young witnesses claimed to see could have been a plasma vortex. 52

Meaden explained Moses’s burning bush and the Star of Bethlehem in the same way. Of course, he didn’t explain why ionized vortices should appear punctually at the same place for several months on the 13th of each month. Nor did he explain how they could cause people to see the spectacle of October 13, 1917, over an area of many square miles. However, the vortices may sound scientifically plausible, and thus they can be used to bring disturbing observations within a familiar framework.

The manifestations at Fatima were strongly connected with religion, and with Roman Catholicism in particular. I should emphasize, however, that all testimony regarding communication with the effulgent lady and other paranormal beings comes solely from the three children, since only they could actually see these beings and hear them speak.

The lady would appear to the children as a dazzling, beautiful figure standing directly above a small holm oak tree that grew in the Cova da Iria. According to Lucia, “She was more brilliant than the sun, and she radiated a sparkling light from her person, clearer and more intense than that of a crystal filled with glittering water and transpierced by the rays of the most burning sun.” 53 Her message to the children was couched explicitly in the terminology of the Catholic Church, and it consisted mainly of warnings that unless people give up sinful life and turn back to God, there will be terrible divine punishment, and various nations will be annihilated.

Before their meetings with the lady, the three children also had encounters with an angel. At the time of the first encounter they were tending their sheep at a rocky knoll not far from their home. They saw across the valley a dazzling globe of light like a miniature sun, gliding slowly towards them. As it approached, the ball of light gradually resolved itself into a brilliantly shining young man, who seemed to be about fourteen years old. He identified himself as the “Angel of Peace” and enjoined them to recite the following prayer: “My God, I believe, I adore, I hope, I love Thee. I ask pardon for those who do not believe, nor adore, nor hope, nor love Thee.” 54 Then he disappeared by fading away.

How should we interpret these experiences? Of course, one approach is to dismiss them as illusions or attempt physical explanations similar to Terence Meaden’s. Another is to propose that they are UFO encounters. For example, Wendelle Stevens did this straightforwardly in one of his books, in a chapter entitled “The Fatima UFO Sightings.” 55 Jacques Vallee also argued that the events at Fatima are UFO encounters and not divine miracles as understood by the Catholic Church.

My response to this proposal is to say “yes and no.” On the one hand, the events at Fatima have many features that are also seen in UFO accounts. There are glowing globes of light that might be vehicles and were regarded as such by some of the people who saw them. Stevens and Vallee even interpreted the spectacular spinning solar disc of October 13 as a disc-shaped UFO. This may be valid, since it moved about in a zig-zag pattern, gave off colored beams of light, and could be looked at directly without hurting people’s eyes. It may well have been a flying device, which finally departed by flying in the direction of the real sun when the latter became visible through the heavy overcast.

On the other hand, there is some danger of creating a stereotyped idea of UFOs and UFO encounters, and imposing this on the evidence. Our ideas about UFOs are empirically based, and they tend to expand and transform as we learn more about the full range of relevant empirical evidence. Clearly, not all UFO encounters are the same. Both the entities involved and the technology they employ show considerable variability. Thus to force Fatima into a preconceived UFO theory might block us from getting an understanding of what was really going on.

To support his view that the Fatima events involved UFOs rather than religious revelations, Vallee stretched some of the evidence. Thus he said that the lady appearing to the children “had not said she was the Virgin Mary. She had simply stated she was “from Heaven.’” 56 She, indeed, said this during her first visitation on May 13, but she added that she would reveal her identity on October 13. On that date she identified herself as the “Lady of the Rosary”—an explicitly Catholic designation. 57

The children’s encounters with the Angel of Peace are consistent with this: “Through the white radiance of his presence the children could see that he held a chalice with a Host above it, from which drops of Blood fell into the cup.” 58 If this is an honest statement of what the children saw, we must conclude that whoever the angel may have been, he was making use of explicit Catholic symbolism.

After seeing the angel with the chalice, the children experienced a sense of utter weakness and remained prostrated on the ground, praying, until evening. Vallee spoke of this as paralysis and compared it to the paralysis connected with many UFO encounters. 59 However, there are forms of weakness, including hysterical paralysis, that are caused by powerful emotional experiences and may have nothing whatsoever to do with UFOs. This seems to be the kind of weakness that is involved here. The children’s experiences can be contrasted with those of UFO abductees, who describe the terror of being immobilized by weird beings who lay them out on tables and stick probes into their bodies.

There is a striking contrast between the Fatima visitations and many UFO encounters. In a large group of these encounters, the beings involved are said to have gray, pasty, or mushroomlike complexions, terrifying slanted eyes, slit mouths, and vestigial noses. They come in the night, carry people off helplessly, and subject them to sexual molestation. The victims experience psychological trauma, and in some cases develop physical diseases.

Of course, there are other cases in which people have claimed to have relatively friendly contacts with humanoids of various descriptions, including some who looked completely human. In some cases, these beings have conveyed messages to people, and some of these messages were quite complex. As in the case of Fatima, these messages have often been critical of human behavior, and they have often predicted disasters of various kinds ( Chapter 5 ). They have also sometimes contained philosophical and theological material ( Chapter 11 ).

Witness exclusivity is another feature that Fatima shares with many other UFO cases. The angels and the effulgent lady were seen only by the three children, although thousands of other people present in the Cova da Iria witnessed aerial light displays that tended to back up the children’s story.

UFO cases can be regarded as falling along a broad continuum of types. This continuum is not linear. Rather it should be defined by several variables, which might include (1) the degree of friendliness of the contacts, (2) the degree of humanness of the contacting beings, and (3) some measure of the quality of the communicated material.

The Fatima case can certainly be added to this continuum, but I would suggest that it constitutes an outlying point that is quite far removed from the majority of other cases reported in the existing UFO literature. Thus it would rate very high in (1) and (2), especially if we measure humanness in terms of attractive qualities such as beauty. It is hard to define measure (3), but it is clear that the Fatima communications are unusual in the sense of being strongly oriented towards Roman Catholicism. Apart from this, they display an emphasis on spiritual devotion that is rarely seen in UFO communications, including those of a philosophical nature.

One interesting project would be to make a general survey of all cultural traditions in search of cases in which people have claimed to meet beautiful, effulgent beings that conveyed spiritual teachings. Many of these cases would probably display typical features connected with the UFO phenomenon, although these would often have more to do with the behavior and powers of the beings involved than with UFOs per se. Thus the UFO continuum might be seen as part of a larger mystical-humanoid continuum. Fatima would probably appear as a typical point in this larger assemblage.

Vallee summed up his viewpoint by saying, “In many UFO stories of the olden days, the witnesses thought they had seen angels from God. . . . Others thought they had seen devils. The difference may be small.” 60

On the contrary, the difference seems quite large to me. The various kinds of encounters in the UFO continuum may all be similar in that they involve similar powers and technologies lying beyond our present understanding. But the extreme points of the continuum are strikingly different with regard to the behavior and, by implication, the consciousness of the beings involved.

If the manifestations at Fatima were not “typical UFO phenomena” and did use Christian symbolism, does this mean that we should interpret them in an exclusive Christian sense? The answer is no, because the same reasoning that would induce one to take the Fatima manifestations seriously can equally well be applied to other meetings with divine beings occurring in non-Christian contexts. Some may argue that only the Christian (and specifically the Catholic) meetings are genuine, and all others are the work of Satan. However, if beings demonstrating divine qualities in all non-Christian traditions are actually clever deceptions created by a cosmic trickster, then surely the same thing can be said of the divine beings of Christianity. This brings us back to Vallee’s position that the angels and devils are all the same.

The point should also be made that while the communications at Fatima were expressed in explicitly Catholic terms, they also added something new to Catholicism. In his discussion of the Fatima revelations, Francis Johnston made it clear that they have caused a great deal of controversy within the Catholic Church, and the new material (including, for example, the idea of consecrating Russia to the Heart of Mary) has not been immediately and universally acceptable. Protestants will declare that the Catholic cult of Mary is a controversial addition to Christianity, and, of course, Christianity itself arose at a certain point in history. It would seem that at Fatima a new revelation was made in the context of an older tradition, and this has also been done many times in the past.

Here is another example. In the sixth century A.D ., a man in Arabia experienced a vision of the Angel Gabriel “in the likeness of a man, standing in the sky above the horizon.” 61 The man was ordered to become a prophet, and over a number of years he would periodically go into trance and dictate messages that were carefully noted and memorized by his followers. The man was named Mohammed, and the messages he delivered in trance were later compiled to form the Koran.

The story of Mohammed is in one sense a typical contactee case. There is the meeting with a nonhuman being, followed by the dictation of elaborate channeled communications. As in the case of Fatima and some recent UFO cases, the being made use of existing cultural traditions, in this instance traditions of angels that were well known to the Arabs.

At the same time, Mohammed’s teachings have had an enormous impact on world history, and they are clearly on a different level of quality than the teachings transmitted by many UFO contactees. I would suggest that many different communications are continuously being injected into human society using the subtle technology of the mystic siddhis. These revelations vary greatly in quality. They frequently make use of existing human cultural material, and they may also result in far-reaching transformations of human culture .