Reassessment of The Key

In recent weeks I've been dipping back into Whitley Strieber's "The Key" for a number of different reasons. Like the Seth material, it seems to have meaning on several different levels, and re-reading imparts different nuances to it. As an example of "unofficial" information (what Seth described as information received by means other than the traditional human methods of discovery and transmission), I think it's worth analyzing. And when I get time (impossible for me to predict when), I'd like to write more on it.

The work seems to be a combination of veridical information about the greater, non-physical world, mixed with elements of Whitley Strieber's peculiar cosmology. To an extent, this mix is a characteristic of all "unofficial" (channeled, inspired, intuited or otherwise) works. The better material has more veridical elements; the poorer works have small grains of truth but seem to have meaning only to the channeler; while the truly bad stuff (I'm thinking primarily of the self-selected doom prophets and UFO contactees) seems largely untethered from consensus reality.

I'm beginning to think that this mix is a defining characteristic of all unofficial works... Here, physically incarnated, we can generally agree on what is real and not real (unless one is participating in a Republican Presidential debate); and if there's any confusion, we have devised a scientific method, which the vast majority of us accept as a valid means of defining reality, to clear up any misunderstanding.

However, physical laws and causality are not preeminent outside of the physical. The scientific method does not work in the astral realm, nor do physical laws govern the non-physical (or, more precisely, what we currently accept as non-physical). I believe that there will always be a strong element of bias in any non-official information; discerning what is undistorted, valid information, is the challenge.

I'm finding some strikingly specific correspondences between "The Key" and the Seth material. Some of them are fairly obscure and arcane. This is interesting to me because I seriously doubt that Strieber has read much of the Seth material. (In fact, I'm reasonably sure that the vast majority of people who pick up "Seth Speaks" immediately throw it down.) So when I see some obscure correspondence here, I notice it.

On the other hand, I see elements of "The Key" that I find nowhere else, or in writings that I question. Almost, anyway. For example, Strieber has a peculiar notion of what is defined as a "soul," and I am not sure that his definition of "soul" is the same that is in most metaphysical texts. In Strieber's cosmology, the soul is essentially a physical construction that can be destroyed; it can be obliterated in a nuclear explosion; it can be executed; it can be electrically imprisoned, eternally; it can be harvested and used in "intelligent machines."

The only other place that I find this belief is in certain fringe UFOlogical circles. So I wonder... Is this a distortion or fundament misperception? Or is this a belief that is emerging among those obsessed with UFOs? Or, is this a belief that is implanted by whatever intelligence is behind some of the more malignant UFO presences?

Is this belief, therefore, "wrong"? I'm not entirely sure. I have run across some obscure references in other unofficial works that seem to describe realities where souls are actually enslaved--but these cases are specifically identified as originating in distinctly non-human (alien) realities... specifically, in Michael Newton's description of "hybrid" souls.

So, as much as I would like to dismiss these references as "wrong," I really can't. It may be that what we have come to define as a "soul"--as a unit of consciousness that incarnates physically as a human--describes something that operates only in our particular part of the universe. Intelligent constructions outside our greater nonphysical reality may obey laws that seem truly alien to us.

And, I hasten to add, ought to remain alien.