(happy triskaidekaphobia day)
It is with grave disappointment that Blather discovered the writings of one Eamonn Ansbro sullying the pages of *Catalyst* magazine (Autumn ’98), an otherwise worthy publication standing for the triple principles of ‘ecology’, ’empowerment’ and ‘evolution’. The current issue includes coverage on the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s *Multilateral Agreement on Investment*, a matter which, in the past, has given this writer cause to put pen to paper.
But we digress.
Despite apparent yearning for governmental acceptance and scientific credibility, this time Eamonn Ansbro, speaking for the joint venture of the Irish Centre for UFO Studies (ICUFOS) and the Programme for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Research (PEIR) has gone the whole hog by making some remarkable claims…
(Blather has mentioned Ansbro and Co. often enough in the past, evidence of which can be gleaned from the archives, so we shall spare the readership from the meticulous agonies of the total dissection of the rather turgid article in *Catalyst* magazine.)
On August 21st 1997 Blather reported that ‘Eamonn [Ansbro] is inclined to refer to [UFOs] as “constructs”, rather than ‘craft’, as he reckons these objects may be the “beings” themselves rather than a vehicle, or that the objects may not even be vehicular in any sense’.
– which was a not unreasonable concession for a purveyor of the extraterrestrial hypothesis.
CRAFT /kra:ft/ (3) n. a boat or vessel. an aircraft or spacecraft (Oxford Concise Dictionary – other irrelevant meanings of ‘craft’ omitted)
These days, or at least for the purpose of the *Catalyst* article, the words ‘craft’ and ‘vehicle’ are littered about unselfconsciously. Have the ICUFOS given up on their ‘construct’ theory, or do their theories vacillate, and do they just happen to use whatever term suits their needs and the occasion? Because now they seem confident to assume that UFO = Alien Craft. What happened to their theory that UFO = Alien Being?
For example, they now tell us that ‘through a study of vehicular UFO Close Encounter events we can now show that such CE [Close Encounter] activity is satisfactorily explained as being an important element of an astronautical surveillance of Earth by technologically advanced spacecraft.’
No hedging of bets there, that’s for sure.
Also in the article, under a heading of ‘Successful Predictions’, one in particular stands out –
‘*December 14th 1997* – Dublin, Bantry and Boyle Co. Roscommon – simultaneous multi-witness event. Switchboard jammed with callers to FM104 in Dublin.’
Yes, as Dame Chance would have it, the radio interview with the Dublin ICUFOS was carried out using the official Blather cellphone – long time Blather readers may recall this writer’s adventures on a certain section of North Dublin coastline last year, titled *War of the Wetlands*.
If any of the ICUFOS folk who were on Bull Island that night saw something, they certainly didn’t share it with Blather, as it was with a mild air of despondency that we ended the skywatch at 2200 hrs. However, FM104’s radio presenter Chris Barry had managed to drum up a roaring trade in excited phonecalls about a ‘strange star like light hanging directly over Dublin Bay, which seemed to be flickering different colours’.
Alan Sewell of ICUFOS was on the line from Boyle, Co. Roscommon and did his best to explain that it was merely the star, Sirius (he could see it too, half-way across the country!). As Blather reported at the time, ‘this wasn’t good enough for some people… who phoned in maintaining that their UFO was 100 times bigger than any star’.
So… if one wishes to put their faith in Blather’s version of the tale, UFO reports from Dublin *which ICUFOS themselves had explained as Sirius* have now been promoted to successfully predicted UFO sightings.
And that’s not the worst of it, PEIR claim to be in some form of ‘contact’ with the alleged UFOs:
‘Back in 1996 at the landing site, the ET’s (sic) were preparing our bodies, in particular our energy fields, the contact was indirect in the sense that it was not 3-dimensional, but direct in the sense that we all felt, sensed, heard or saw clairvoyantly energies and beings not of our world. At all times they appeared to be benevolent, loving and desirous of lifting us up to a higher frequency – after all, that is in reality the end goal for all of us – the lifting of our vibrations so that we may be more sensitive to theirs as well as more in tune with our own higher potentials’.
‘It’s all a bunch of tree hugging hippie crap’
– Eric Cartman, South Park, Colorado
Although, the Blather battle-shields usually fly up at the mere open-ended use of the word ‘energy’, an almost random consultation of one our century’s most enigmatic explorers of the human psyche, i.e. Carl Gustav Jung, elicits a reasonable assertion of the emotional phenomena described above:
‘…our present-day consciousness possesses no conceptual categories by means of which it could apprehend the nature of psychic totality. It is still in an archaic state, so to speak, in which apperceptions of this kind do not occur, and accordingly the relevant contents cannot be recognized as psychic factors. Moreover, it is so trained that it must think of such images not as forms inherent in the psyche but as existing somewhere in extra-psychic, metaphysical space, or else as historical facts… In other words, the rounded wholeness of the mandala becomes a space ship controlled by an intelligent being. The usually lens-shaped form of the Ufos may be helped by the fact that psychic wholeness, as the historical testimonies show, has always been characterized by certain cosmic affinities: the individual soul was thought to be of “heavenly” origin, a particle of the world soul, and hence a microcosm, a reflection of the macrocosm.’ (*Flying Saucers*)
[Mandala (Sanskrit): ‘Magic circle… symbol of the centre goal, or of the self as psychic totality; self-representation of a psychic process of centring; production of a new centre of personality’ (*Memories, Dreams, Reflections*)]
In essence, what Jung proposes is that the UFO phenomenon, or at least some aspects of it, are caused by the attribution of personal psychic characteristics to a heavenly archetype, e.g. a god or ‘superior’ alien, rather than a recognition of the characteristic as belonging to the self. Such a recognition would apparently result in the individual becoming ‘whole’… becoming, in some sense, a god.
While it may seem rather trite or cocky to lob quotes back at the claims of extraterrestrial proponents such as ICUFOS or PEIR, let it be known that Blather places no direct criticism on the *beliefs* of such folk, it is merely their methodology in rousing support that raises our ire. Neither do we necessarily evangelise Jung’s theories over the those of PEIR. But if Jung is anyway correct in his assertion of the UFO phenomenon, then we would cautiously propose that interpreting claims of PEIR and other such organisations are a matter of how one separates the wood from the trees.
As Jung points out in *Memories, Dreams and Reflections* (p 310) while Buddha preached that by overcoming the *Nidana-chain* – the chain of causality or inevitability of life and death – every human could achieve illumination, Buddhism has today seemed to become an exercise in devout imitation of Buddha’s life, therefore missing Buddha’s point by a good Swedish mile.
Are some aspects of the UFO phenomenon comparable?
*Catalyst* (Autumn ’98)
124 Cork St.
Ireland
catalystmagazine@hotmail.com
C.G. Jung, *Flying Saucers – A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky*, (1959), pp. 32-33
ISBN 0-7448-0062-5
C.G. Jung, *Memories, Dreams, Reflections*, (1961), pp. 310, 415 ISBN 0-00-654027-9
Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Amazon.com)
Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Amazon.co.uk)
Irish Centre for UFO Studies (dead link)
Programme for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Research P.O. Box 6284
Dublin 3
Ireland
peir@connect.ie
MANDALAS:
The Mandala Series (dead link)
Carl Jung
Mandala Drawing