Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact - Above Top Secret

message was understood.In the six years that followed the incident, over eight million Indians were baptized. In recent times,some fifteen hundred persons still go to kneel before Juan Diego's tilma every day.This case reminds us of several important aspects of the many tales of fairies we have reviewed: themysteious, sweet music announcing that the fairy draws near; the flowers (roses once again) thatgrow in an impossible place; and the sign given to the human messenger, which changes nature ashe goes away, like the coals that changed to gold given to human midwives by the gnomes; thenumerous similar symbols found in countless tales. Indeed, we cannot help but recall here the wordof Hartland in his Science of Fairy Tales: "This gift of an object apparently worthless, which turnsout, on the conditions being observed, of the utmost value, is a commonplace of fairy transactions.It is one of the most obvious manifestations of superhuman power." A final aspect is the cosmicsymbolism, the crescent moon under the Virgin's feet, as in the lines of Revelation:And there appeared a great sign in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon wasunder her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.The Functioning LieWhat does it all mean? Is it reasonable to draw a parallel between religious apparitions, the fairyfaith,the reports of dwarf-like beings with supernatural powers, the airship tales in the UnitedStates in the last century, and the present stories of UFO landings?I would strongly argue that it is – for one simple reason: the mechanisms that have generated thevarious beliefs are identical. Their human context and their effect on humans are constant. Theobservation of this very deep mechanism is crucial. It has little to do with the problem of knowingwhether UFOs are physical objects or not. Attempting to understand the meaning, the purpose, ofthe so-called flying saucers, as many people are doing today, is just as futile as was the pursuit ofthe fairies, if one makes the mistake of confusing appearance and reality. The phenomenon hasstable, invariant features, some of which we have tried to identify and label clearly. But we havealso had to note carefully the chameleon-like character of the secondary attributes of the sightings:the shapes of the objects, the appearances of their occupants, and their reported statements vary as afunction of the cultural environment into which they are projected.As we have seen with the airship stories in Chapter Two, a good number of bearded charactersalighted in the Midwest and elsewhere in 1897 to request water from a well, bluestones, or othersimilar things. The stories witnesses told were believable, if somewhat astounding, to Americanfarmers of the time. The airship itself corresponded to the popular concept of an elaborate flyingmachine: it had wheels, turbines, wings, powerful lights. There is only one detail not yet dealt with:the fact that the airship, though believable to the witnesses of 1897, is no longer credible to us. Weknow that the device as described could not possibly fly, unless its outside appearance was designedto decieve potential witnesses. But if so, why? And what was it? What was the purpose of such asimulacrum?Perhaps the airship, like the fairy tricks and the flying saucers, was a lie so well engineered that itsimage could sink very deep into human consciousness and then be forgotten – as UFO landings areperiodically forgotten, as the appearances of supernatural beings in the Middle Ages are forgotten.But, then, are they really forgotten?Human actions are based on imagination, belief, and faith, not on objective observation – asmilitary and political experts know well. Even science, which claims its methods and theories arerationally developed, is shaped by emotion and fancy, or by fear. And to control human imaginationis to shape mankind's collective destiny.Beyond the question of the physical nature of the UFOs, it is imperative that we study the deeperproblem of their impact on our imagination and culture. How the UFO phenomena will affect, in thelong run, our views about science, about religion, about the exploration of space, is impossible to