Sunbeams and Airships

(haven't posted on here for awhile so I'm cross-posting an old piece on Aurora and demons I wrote for the C-Section a dozen years ago... enjoy!)

An interesting episode of TV's 'UFO Hunters' described the trouble and 'blocking' Ufologists received at the hands of Aurora, Texas residents when trying to exhume an alleged 100+ year old little Martian body from the local cemetery. The researchers even detected radio active metal under the ground by the grave, which was allegedly removed in the night through some tubing (?) by some agency or local weirdo, so that the next day the detectors detected nothing. All this intrigue made me think of Lovecraft stories like "The Shadow over Innsmouth," wherein the few non-sea monster-hybrid-townsfolk are tight lipped and standoffish to curious visitors, lest they find themselves washed up against the docks the next morning, apparently drowned, their lungs filled with seaweed.

So what non-Lovecraftian elder god's threat reason could the Aurora townsfolk's have for refusing the Ufologists? Is it that the locals are afraid there's some truth to the legend, that hellfire will rain down on the desecrators for their blundering scientific disrespect? Where does disrespect end and legit quest for understanding begin? It's a bit like those old 'tests' to prove witchcraft, like throwing the alleged witch in the lake and if she sank and died, she was innocent. The ufologists want to prove 'the truth' to themselves over all, and to help write a new history of tomorrow with physical evidence. Meanwhile, the evidence is already in and overwhelming if you're willing to accept it, to make the connections. What good is one more smoking gun or man going to do? What's wrong with the smoking gun of Dr. Leir's alien implants? What more do you want?

Another analogy on hand is a recent short film I saw recently on TCM, wherein a journalist is sent to cover a magic act, and ordered to get photos explaining how each trick is done. It doesn't occur to him or his editor that they'd be destroying the magician's livelihood. Who cares? It's the old western compulsion to cut everything open and see how it works, robbing every last corner of the world of its foreboding mystery.

So what does it take to make you/us switch out paradigm to accommodate the truth of extra-terrestrial visitors? Or to let somethings be a mystery? Or to heal the wound between science and supernatural? To stop trying to do the math, to see the ancient astronaut writing on the wall, and stop waiting around for 'how the trick is done'? Imagine the average layman being told that finally, no the earth is not flat like we thought, does he instantly demand evidence? What good would lectures on magnetic fields and revolution matter to an illiterate 17th century servant?

Another last example of the importance of mystery is the spiritualist's use of props and intentional fakery--projections, crystal balls, plastic skulls, etc.--to create real magic, the rift where genuine strangeness may seep through. Or at any rate, its sometimes easier to hear the ugly truth if it comes from Tarot cards and not a 'worried' friend. I'm always using the analogy of a dog trying to understand physics by chewing up a math book. Not only can't the dog understand it that way, but in chewing it up destroys the book that might have illuminated others.

I support the Aurora choice to let their demon stay buried, in other words, rather than let the dogs chew up the math book. And as far as Ufology goes, I understand the need for it, and I feel indebted to researchers and cutting edge thinkers on the subject... but at a certain point each seeker needs to stop searching for more evidence and ask him or herself on an individual basis: how much is enough? What do YOU believe? And in the end, do you really need everyone else to believe it first? Are you afraid to pick a truth and make the jump, to just answer your own multiple choice rather than spying on all your neighbor's papers? In the end, the universe is subjective and, as science gets closer and closer to this realization, science itself begins to disintegrate, so it quickly backs up, like a polar bear on a melting ice floe.

Similarly, the more ufologists bicker over their own hypotheses, the more they  sound like regular bullshit scientists... the ufologist becomes like Uncle Tom in the ghetto of para-science, trying vainly to impress the mainstream by being rigorous and empirical rather than intuitive. But alas, this is one butterfly that can't be pinned to any board, for in examining it clearly one must first through away the pin, the board, the jar, the net, and even one's own two eyes... transcend space and time through meditation, lack of sleep, entheogens, madness, only then can you can get a horrifying (third eye) glimpse of it - the terrible void around which all the spiderweb illusions are spun as bedeviled protection and the only thing that can possibly float us past the mandibles of the Other is love and complete surrender.

How do we know when we have achieved this complete surrender, trust, and universal love? My final metaphor of the evening involves camping in the jungle and waking up in the middle of the night in your tent to find a giant tiger on top of you, licking your cheek. If your knee-jerk automatic response is to scream in terror and try to push it off yourself (who would blame you!?), you will be ripped to shreds, but! If your first waking knee-jerk response is to rub it behind the ears and go "aww pretty kitty" you will gain a fuzzy ally. The tiger is merely responding to your energy. This is something you can't 'fake' - it takes surrender. You might say yeah but what if it still attacks? There's nothing wrong with fighting back, just fight back with love in your heart, respect for this beautiful worthy opponent.

Can you go do the same when moving in your astral body past the demonic gatekeepers of the eternal moment? It's hate and fear that make us dense enough to be eaten. Not even the hungriest of tigers can eat a sunbeam. And that, my friend, is what you are.