Some preliminary thoughts...
I haven't listened to the post-interview portion yet, but I was struck by one significant aspect of the Kim Carlsberg experience--the two-dimensional quality to it. It's the same two-dimensional quality that I found in the string of "abduction" episodes that the Paracast recently, and inexplicably, aired. Even Coast To Coast, which strives to be the modern equivalent of a traveling county fair medicine show, features abduction accounts that rarely depart from the script.
When I first began about these accounts in the early '80s, beginning with Budd Hopkins' "Missing Time," these abduction scenarios intruded into my psyche with brutal chilliness. Practically everyone who studied these accounts (except maybe Phil Klass) were likewise terrified. The Human Abduction Syndrome (as it's now called) was possibly our worst human nightmare, and it brought forth a new breed of researchers (Hopkins, Jacobs) to confront them.
What's remarkable to me now--beyond the lack of terror that these accounts evoke--is that these abduction account all sound alike now, and they no longer strike me as being "real." Which is not to say that they are total confabulations; just that they do not come across as flesh-and-blood, time-and-space experiences. Sorta like the Wicked Witch of the West, after she's had some water tossed on her. The accounts are strangely uniform, which does not make a lot of sense. Physical experiences are messy, prone to mistakes. They disrupt; not only should they leave traces, they ought to leave gaping holes, particularly after thirty years of mass abductions.
One aspect of the abduction experience that goes largely unnoticed now is that, at the time, there was a specific timetable mentioned by several abductees. Several abductees pointed specifically to the year 2000 as the time when the "aliens" would accomplish their tasks. This dovetailed nicely with date cited by a slew of New Age prognosticators who foresaw an "axis shift" and a general worldwide calamity that year (which might still occur, in any event).
It's possible that when 2000 came and went without a crisis (the election of George Bush notwithstanding), we stopped paying attention.
But I think something else is going on.
There were--and still are--core experiences of a few people that take the appearance of "abductions." These core experiences resonated with a large segment of the Western public, creating a sort of mini-hysteria, and an empathetic response by anyone who has suffered some psychic trauma.
Or, to interpret it in "Sethian" terms, there was an intrusion in the mass consciousness of an event that was essentially non-physical, but quite profound, and reverberated in the dreams and nightmares of quite a few people for a number of years.
(I noted that Ms. Carlsberg had read "Seth Speaks," but unlike her, I am very skeptical of "channeling.")
Ms. Carlsberg defended herself by saying that whole swaths of the human experience (such as love) are very real, but also intangible and non-physical. She is correct, but she curiously does not apply this insight to her own abduction experiences.
If she and other abductees were to dig a bit deeper, we might be able to advance our understanding of the Human Abduction Syndrome.
Despite this, I am actually believe that progress is being made in understanding this phenomenon. We can be reasonably sure what the phenomenon is not--it is not a mass human breeding program conducted by biological entities from another physical planet. It is not a conservation attempt at saving the human race in advance of a planetary disaster. (It *might,* however, be a type of forced evolution of the human race, a sort of accelerated evolution, but it may not be physical in origin.)
Epic history changes in human history are likely presaged by all sorts of psychic manifestations and trauma; we only understand these changes much later, long after the fact. We may, in fact, be well down the path of change and simply not know it.
Future developments in the human consciousness will, I believe, explain (or allow us to understand) the Human Abduction Syndrome... what it actually is, what it actually means. Just as today, we no longer see it as terrifying; perhaps tomorrow, we will no longer regard it as alien.
You refered to Kim reading Seth Speaks, and you say unlike her you are skeptical of channeling... yet under your profile you have Seth Speaks listed as one of two of your favorite books. You better modify the statement in your post or remove Seth as one of your two favorite books.
ReplyDeleteI have read the Seth Material. I didn't care if it is channeled or not, the information and concepts were interesting and rang true to me. Truth can come in any form if you are open to it.
Beautifully put.
ReplyDeleteStrangely enough, Anonymous, I agree with you about the Seth material, but I decline to alter my opinion about "channeling," per se. I was extremely skeptical about the Seth material in the beginning, but after years of study, research, and practice, I decided that not only was Jane Roberts quite a brilliant thinker in her own right, but the material that she presented from Seth was valid. But I arrived at this conclusion after several years of study.
ReplyDeleteI haven't encountered any channelers who strike me as being what they claim to be--discarnate intelligences of a higher order.
If Jane Roberts were alive and Seth could speak through her, I would imagine that Seth might say that information *can* speak through a human personality, but there is no way to determine who is speaking, or the quality of the information. Seth mentioned an instance or two of channeled-type material that originated, instead, from aspects of the individual's personality. As Westerners, we think that our specialized and highly-focused ego-awareness to be our entire personality and consciousness, but Seth argued that, instead, it's only a small slice of our total personality. Those aspects of our greater personality that we do not include in our specialized ego, we treat as "alien" or outside. This is, in my opinion, the origin of much "channeled" or "contactee" phenomena. The problem is, we have no way of validating this. As for Seth, I'm comfortable that, after many years of study of the Seth material, Seth was, indeed, who he claimed to be--a discarnate personality who shared a deep connection with Jane and Robert Butts, and who was able to use that connection to transmit information that originated from the non-physical realm. I cannot vouch for any other channelers (although I think that the "Michael" information may be valid--I just haven't studied it in depth).
You wrote:
ReplyDelete"Epic history changes in human history are likely presaged by all sorts of psychic manifestations and trauma; we only understand these changes much later, long after the fact. We may, in fact, be well down the path of change and simply not know it."
Considering human history, what would you define as an "epic history change?" I would think that such changes "presaged by all sorts of psychic manifestations and trauma," if having occurred in recorded human history, would be evident in changes in the art and literature of the era and should be easy to spot.
Of course, there are caveats, but i was curious as to your definition of epic history change.
The one that I was thinking about when I composed that was the Black Death, which was a very traumatic event to those participating, but ultimately ended feudalism and led to the middle class (which appears to be disappearing). So when I look around at some of the world traumas today and threatened for tomorrow, I wonder, "Are we in a similar sea change?"
ReplyDelete