extraordinary%20encounters

72 Cosmic Awareness
believe only in the laws of nature. It is also
safe to say that unlike other contactees,
Meier—a keen businessman—has reaped a
significant, and continuing, financial reward
from his supposed experiences. He has also
been at the receiving end of criticism and debunking
efforts. After divorcing him, his exwife
told investigators that his claims are
without factual basis.
In the United States, a major force in the
movement has been the annual Rocky Mountain
Conference on UFO Investigation, which
has taken up where the Giant Rock conventions
(the last held in 1977) left off. Started in
1980 by R. Leo Sprinkle, a psychologist and
counselor at the University of Wyoming, it
meets once a year, usually in the summer, and
attracts contactees from all over, though most
are from ranches, farms, and small towns of
the Great Plains, underscoring the folk or
ground-level nature of the movement.
Contactees are different from abductees—
whose experiences became known only in the
1960s and did not become a major part of the
UFO controversy until the 1980s—in several
ways. A principal difference is that abductees
tend to fit the profile of ordinary citizens, in
other words, people without a background in
occultism; in that way, they are also like most
witnesses to UFOs. Abductees also report
being taken against their will, and many consider
the experience traumatic. Most do not
claim to have attained superior wisdom from
the experience, and most assert that their
communications with their captors were devoid
of messages of cosmic uplift. Yet in time
contactee-oriented writers and investigators
began to see abductions as contacts by other
means. Some abductees come to accept their
experiences as painful but necessary learning
experiences. Harvard University psychiatrist
John E. Mack, whose study of abduction reports
has convinced him that the aliens have
benevolent intentions, has stated, “If, in fact,
the alien beings are closer to the divine source
or anima mundi than human beings generally
seem to be . . . their presence among us, however
cruel and traumatic in some instances,
may be part of a larger process that is bringing
us back to God” (Mack, 1994).
See Also: Abductions by UFOs; Adamski, George;
Ascended Masters; Ashtar; Bethurum, Truman;
Channeling; Keel, John Alva; Meier, Eduard
“Billy”; Orthon; Sprinkle, Ronald Leo; Van Tassel,
George W.; Williamson, George Hunt
Further Reading
Adamski, George, 1955. Inside the Space Ships. New
York: Abelard-Schuman.
Bartholomew, Robert E., and George S. Howard,
1998. UFOs and Alien Contact: Two Centuries of
Mystery. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books.
Bord, Janet, and Colin Bord, 1991. Life beyond
Planet Earth? Man’s Contacts with Space People.
London: GraftonBooks.
Curran, Douglas, 1985. In Advance of the Landing:
Folk Concepts of Outer Space. New York: Abbeville
Press.
Flournoy, Theodore, 1963. From India to the Planet
Mars: A Study of a Case of Somnambulism. Translated
reprint of 1899 edition. New Hyde Park,
NY: University Books.
Keel, John A., 1970. UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse.
New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons.
Mack, John E., 1994. Abduction: Human Encounters
with Aliens. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Melton, J. Gordon, 1995. “The Contactees: A Survey.”
In James R. Lewis, ed. The Gods Have
Landed: New Religions from Other Worlds, 1–13.
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Reeve, Bryant, and Helen Reeve, 1957. Flying Saucer
Pilgrimage. Amherst, WI: Amherst Press.
Stupple, David W., 1994. “Historical Links Between
the Occult and Flying Saucers.” Journal of UFO
Studies 5 (new series): 93–108.
Cosmic Awareness
“Cosmic Awareness” first spoke in 1962
through a retired army officer, William
Durby, who harbored metaphysical interests.
When asked who or what it was, Cosmic
Awareness said it was a “total mind that is not
any unity other than that of universality”
(Melton, 1996). The following year an organization
was formed around the communications
in response to specific instructions from
Awareness to that effect.
After Duby died in 1967, the organization
split into seven factions, all at odds over which
heretofore-secret teachings should be made
public and which should be kept only among