Editor: In the
October-November 2001, UFO: The Science & Phenomena Magazine
(Vol. 16, No. 5) your attendance at the 20th annual Society for
Scientific Exploration was detailed. In this article, which was
a summation of a conference that also included perspectives of
scientists in a variety of avenues toward unexplained phenomena,
including crop circles and parapsychology, it was noted how your
public appearance was a rare event.
Furthermore, the article quoted you
saying: "I’m not interested in talking to ufologists any more,
because I don’t learn anything from them." Recently, you made
another rare appearance to talk about UFOs. The UFO conference
sponsored by the Association for Research and Enlightenment in
Virginia Beach, Virginia, on December 2nd and 3rd, 2005.
Could you generally sum up for us the reasons why you have come
to have little tolerance towards mainstream ufologists and avoid
participating in their conferences, but would take part in these
other two conferences just mentioned?
Jacques Vallee: There was another part to what I said at
the time, namely that I learned more from witnesses than I did
from ufologists. That remains true today. When I began this
research in the 1960s I learned a lot from groups like NICAP and
APRO, that were trying to document and publish cases, and
promoted an open minded approach. This changed in the late 1980s
when ufology turned into a set of dogmas (Roswell, abductions)
with little room for open-minded research, and almost no field
investigation any more.
Much independent UFO research today
has gone underground and is done by isolated individuals,
outside of the organized groups, as was the case with the
“Invisible College” in the days of
Allen Hynek.
The A.R.E.
conference was a rare opportunity to compare notes with
colleagues I respect, in a sober setting.
Editor: Speaking of the A.R.E.’s UFO conference, what
significant impressions, thoughts, or experiences did you
perhaps come away with, and would you make any sort of
suggestions or recommendations for future conferences of this
nature?
Jacques Vallee: The phenomenon presented by UFOs is far
larger than current speculation about “aliens from space.” It
raises questions about consciousness, about the nature of
reality and about human history on the Earth. I welcome every
opportunity to meet specialists in these disciplines and learn
from them. That was the case, for example, at the conference on
“Consciousness, Science and Religion” held in Porto two years
ago, where Dr. Eric Davis and I presented a new model for the
study of unidentified aerial phenomena. The ARE conference in
Virginia Beach was a similar opportunity, because attendees
brought a great deal of knowledge about psychic functioning and
spiritual traditions. We must take this knowledge into account
if we are going to make any progress.
Editor: During your A.R.E. presentation you described how
you became initially interested and aware of UFOs after you and
your mother, as I recall, happened to see a UFO in your hometown
in France, when you were a teenager. Would you care to share
with our readers that experience again, and how it may have
shaped your later, evolving interest in things like astronomy
and space exploration?
Jacques Vallee: Our experience was similar to that of
thousands of witnesses in Europe during that period. The
observation lasted about 10 minutes and was verified by a fellow
student who saw the object from his own house a mile away. He
had time to get his binoculars and described it in identical
terms: a silvery disk with a dome on top, hovering about 1,000
feet high. At the time, I convinced myself that the object was a
prototype of some kind. Of course we now know that there is no
such aircraft! I was already interested in astronomy and
physics, but the enigma presented by that sighting certainly
influenced me: it taught me that there was much more to be
discovered.
Editor: From your pioneering Passport to Magonia
(1969) to Revelations (1991), your books have tackled a
wide-range of controversial and complex aspects, taking in a
comprehensive global, cultural and historical perspective on
these reported events, looking at paranormal, spiritual,
folkloric, occult, and shamanic accounts. In Revelations you
presented alternatives to the popular extraterrestrial
hypothesis (i.e., the Earth Light Hypothesis, Control System,
and the Wormhole Travel Hypothesis). You’ve stated something to
the effect that you’d be pretty disappointed if all of this
activity recorded down through the centuries turned out indeed
to be simply E.T. visitations.
Please explain.
Jacques Vallee: When you begin to study this phenomenon
the first-degree ET hypothesis, (namely the idea that we are
visited by aliens from another planet in our galaxy that have
just discovered us), seems like the best one. With the passage
of time and the accumulation of reports, including those from
people reported psychic effects, it becomes clear that it is too
limited to explain the facts. As always in science, when such a
situation presents itself, you must go back to basics and
re-examine the data.
We need to open the full spectrum of
potential hypotheses instead of simply selecting data that fit
our preconceptions. As you know, I have done quite a bit of
study of psychical research and of older traditions, including
Rosicrucian and esoteric literature, in search of related
material. And it is all there, although modern adepts of these
traditions seem to have forgotten all about it! Perhaps your
magazine can reawaken them?
Editor: Certainly over the years you’ve written so many
fascinating, important and thought-provoking books on the UFO
enigma, and have frequently gone to the scene of reported UFO
encounters and personally interviewed witnesses and inspected
the encounter sites for yourself, a task you consider very
important to perform when trying to get to the bottom of these
mysteries and in trying to obtain valid information.
You’ve been to Brazil on three separate occasions to investigate
incredible reports of close encounters and even human injuries
and deaths connected with such reported encounters, as you
described in your fascinating book Confrontations (1990). You
also wrote the foreword to the late Bob Pratt’s book, UFO Danger
Zone (1996). A U.S. journalist of great skill, integrity, and
objectivity, he made numerous trips to Brazil also and his
stories and pictures fill this awesome book. Though it may
understandably not be too easy of a task, can you share with us
the importance of what you perceive has happened in the remote
regions of Brazil?
Jacques Vallee: Anyone who has traveled to that part of
the world and has spoken to local witnesses returns with the
feeling of having barely scratched the surface. Bob Pratt knew
Brazil well, and made more extended trips there than I did, but
he would have told you the same thing. I am very sad when I
realize that I won’t be able to seek his advice any more. One
has to experience the phenomenon in different cultures to really
understand the true dimension of the problem confronting us.
What we say about Brazil would also apply to Russia, or China.
Editor: I was intrigued to also read in Confrontations of
how all of the negatives of UFOs taken by Brazilian journalists
and cameramen during the massive UFO wave in 1977 (in which many
photographs were also taken by the Brazilian Air Force) had been
purchased from the Brazilian newspapers afterwards by some
"unnamed American firm." This information apparently came from
the newspapers themselves? Do we have any idea as to who this
firm was and where the valuable negatives ended up?
And, how soon after the reports and photographs were first
published did these purchases occur?
Jacques Vallee: There are multiple cultural and political
reasons preventing much of the hard data from being published. I
understood this when we were invited to spend an entire day at
the main Amazonian base of the Brazilian air force, and could
speak freely about the reports they shared with us.
Editor: Some of the classified Brazilian military reports
have been leaked out over the years it seems, and presumably the
military there is seriously interested in releasing these
formerly secret documents to the public. Are you encouraged by
these developments, or do you feel perhaps a guarded optimism
considering how such "leaks" or reported public disclosures have
gone in the USA?
Jacques Vallee: I am glad to see that some of the
information is finally coming out, 25 years later. To the extent
that the scientific community is not showing interest in
learning more, however, I doubt if the full story will be
available any time soon. There is no political or social
incentive to raise the issue further.
Editor: At the A.R.E. conference I was interested to hear
during your presentation of how back in the 1980s you had acted
as a consultant to the
Stanford Research Institute’s
remote
viewing program and learned that many remote viewers (a fact
that was never publicized) had ascribed their talents to what we
call UFOs. Please tell us a little more about this, and of your
interest in the remote viewing subject.
Jacques Vallee: I knew the founders of the project at the
Parapsychology Research group in Palo Alto before they joined
SRI. When their work began in 1971 I happened to be a senior
researcher in one of the computer development labs there, so I
became an informal (unpaid!) member of the team. When it turned
out that many of their subjects had experienced UFOs, they
brought me into the project on a strictly confidential basis to
document that aspect of the problem.
Ingo Swann and I had many
discussions when he first came to SRI and began structuring the
program, interviewing some of the Institute scientists. I told
him I thought the problem would be best approached as an
information processing problem rather than a signal transmission
problem, as the physicists and engineers planned to do. I showed
him how software specialists handle data, either by direct
addressing, indirect addressing, virtual addressing, etc. Ingo
gives me credit for orienting him to the idea of coordinate
remote viewing, where geographic coordinates constitute the
“address.”
Later this was expanded to other
forms of targeting, but the project never explored what I
thought could have been the real breakthrough research, because
they were under constant pressure from mission-oriented
sponsors. Ten years later, well after I had left SRI, I was
asked to come back into the project as a consultant. I was
briefed on Grill Flame and formally trained by Ingo. I think I’m
the only one from that team who hasn’t written a book about
remote viewing!
Editor: You have been very skeptical of the process of
hypnotic regression being used to uncover presumably lost
memories of UFO entity and abduction encounters. Can you explain
why you feel this way?
Jacques Vallee: I have studied over 70 abduction cases,
in concert with psychiatrists trained in the use of the clinical
hypnosis. These specialists were uniformly horrified when I
showed them what some ufologists were doing and claiming on the
basis of the regressions they were performing. In case after
case, it becomes obvious that hypnosis is NOT a good way to
bring back true memories.
The psychiatric literature confirms
this. In his famous book “The Fifty-Minute Hour,” Dr. Lindner
explains why he considered, and then rejected, the use of
hypnosis when asked by the FBI to treat a senior engineer who
claimed to travel psychically to other planets. Hypnosis can
turn a possible fantasy into an experience that becomes
irreversible. I have received pathetic letters from famous UFO
abductees asking me to help them find a new form of treatment,
because they continue to experience traumatic experiences that
do not fit into the rigid abduction model.
Unfortunately these people cannot be
re-hypnotized in a professional manner after they have been
subjected to the ludicrous process routinely followed in ufology
today in the name of “research.” Thousands of abductees have now
been regressed hypnotically, and we know nothing more about the
nature of the phenomenon, the alleged craft, or the entities
associated with them.
I still believe the abduction
experience is part of the witnesses’ reality, as Dr. Simon told
me when we spent two days with
Betty and Barney Hill at their
place in New Hampshire, but hypnosis, in most cases, is neither
the therapy of choice, nor the best way to explore what really
happened to them.
