An Integral Approach to the Phenomenon
“An irregularity in nature is only the sharp exacerbation, to the point of perceptible disclosure, of a property of things diffused throughout the universe, in a state which eludes our recognition of its presence.” -Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
The human mind is always seeking problems. We pay for the privilege of puzzles and pride ourselves on being the first to discover the hidden solution. We find patterns in the chaos and are offended when others don’t see them too. In a very real sense, we have come to believe that we are our perceptions. This is no surprise, because nearly every human institution since the enlightenment has inculcated in us a belief that our worth lies in our ability to find and analyze fact-truths about everything there is to find fact-truth about. This has been so effective, and so thoroughly ingrained within us, that we spend much of our time attempting to collapse our entire universe and the sum of our experiences into a set of fact-truths.
But what happens when you are confronted with a truth so grand it can’t be named? What happens when you find a puzzle that can’t be solved? What do you do with someone who has access to the same information but comes away with a different conclusion? Perhaps you’ll come to see them as a problem to be solved as well. If they can’t see from your perspective, they must be naive or delusional… they haven’t learned what you’ve learned. Or worse, maybe they’re a liar — a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
In no arena is such a dynamic so clearly on display than UFOlogy… and most specifically… in the search for answers to the really big questions — those which have an immediate impact on all who dare to ask: Who are they? What is their purpose? Should we fear them or welcome them with open arms?
My intent with this piece is not to give hard and fast answers. In fact, I hope the overall effect will be to push those on the edges inward, back towards the perilous questions and away from the firm footing of certainty. In my estimation, the questions are perhaps more important than the answers. This may seem like a paradox, but I believe the highest truths are always paradoxical. The universe isn’t a problem to be solved. It is an unfolding, a becoming, a movement towards something which both includes and transcends everything it contains.
“Mystery is not something you can’t know. Mystery is endless knowability.”
-Richard Rohr
The Big Questions
“No one knows who they were, or what they were doing.”
-Nigel Tufnel
This simple but profound lament, hewn into the living rock of seemingly unanswerable questions, is the telos that blows UFOlogy across the tempests of time and regret. Much like the druids of old, the UFOnauts hide in unseen realms shrouded in the folklore of history and the cold, unrelenting, half-blind materialism of modernity.
Physical evidence, which exists — but which we could obviously stand to have more of — will provide little in the way of help in our pursuit of answers. After all, we have ample physical evidence for our own existence, but fundamental questions as to who we are (and perhaps even more importantly, how we are) haven’t been definitively answered. American philosopher and transpersonal psychologist Ken Wilber, who has been called “The Einstein of Consciousness”, outlines the conundrum this way…
“KW: …The Big Bang has made Idealists out of almost anybody who thinks. First there was absolutely nothing, then Bang! Something. This is beyond weird. Out of sheerest Emptiness, manifestation arises.
This is a bit of a nightmare for traditional science, because it puts a time limit on the chance mutations that were supposed to explain the universe. Remember the thousand monkeys and Shakespeare — an example of how chance could give rise to the ordered universe?
Q: Given enough time, the randomly typing monkeys would manage to type out a Shakespeare play.
KW: Given enough time! One computation showed that the chance for monkey power to produce a single Shakespeare play was one in ten thousand million million million million million million. So maybe that would happen in a billion billion years. But the universe doesn’t have a billion billion years. It only has twelve billion years.
Well, this changes everything. Calculations done by scientists from Fred Hoyle to F.B. Salisbury consistently show that twelve billion years isn’t even enough to produce a single enzyme by chance.
In other words, something other than chance is pushing the universe. For traditional scientists, chance was their salvation. Chance was their god. Chance would explain all. Chance — plus unending time — would produce the universe; in fact, chance is what the universe is laboring mightily to overcome…”
pg. 23 “A Brief History of Everything”
If, at this juncture, we can’t fully establish who we are with empiricism alone, then it stands to reason that finding out who they are will require a truly holistic approach — one which encompasses every angle we can imagine. Ken Wilber, in his pursuit to understand the Kosmos and everything in it, has created just such an approach. And we would be wise to follow his example.
Below I’ve included several passages from Wilber’s “A Brief History of Everything” and “The Four Faces of Truth”. There is really no one better to explain his framework than the man himself. But don’t worry, there will be plenty of my own drivel as well. Even if you are already familiar with integral theory, I encourage you to read the passages I’ve selected if only to provide context for what follows. First up, Holons.
Holons
“Q:… Tenet number 1 is that reality is composed of whole/parts, or “holons.” Reality is composed of holons?
KW: Is that far out? Is this already confusing? No? Well, Arthur Koestler coined the term “holon” to refer to an entity that is itself a whole and simultaneously a part of some other whole. And if you start to look closely at the things and processes that actually exist, it soon becomes obvious that they are not merely wholes, they are also parts of something else. They are whole/parts, they are holons.
For instance, a whole atom is part of a whole molecule, and the whole molecule is part of a whole cell, and the whole cell is part of a whole organism, and so on. Each of these entities is neither a whole nor a part, but a whole/part, a holon.
And the point is, everything is basically a holon of some sort or another. There is a two-thousand-year-old philosophical squabble between atomists and wholists: which is ultimately real, the whole or the part? And the answer is, neither. Or both, if you prefer. There are only whole/parts in all directions, all the way up, all the way down”
“Q: So reality is not composed of, say, subatomic particles.
KW: Yikes. I know that approach is common, but it is really a profoundly reductionist approach, because it is going to privilege the material, physical universe, and then everything else — from life to mind to spirit — has to be derived from subatomic particles, and this will never, never work.
But notice, a subatomic particle is itself a holon. And so is a cell. And so is a symbol, and an image, and a concept. What all of those entities are, before they are anything else, is a holon. So the world is not composed of atoms or symbols or cells or concepts. It is composed of holons.”
Pg. 17–18 “A Brief History of Everything”
While this may seem like a fairly simple tenet, it provides us with a firm footing, a place to begin. The UFOnauts, before they are biological entities, before they are psychological or spiritual manifestations, before they are folkloric concepts, are holons. Like us, and like everything else, they exist simultaneously as wholes unto themselves and as part of something greater.
Key also to our understanding, is the will to resist reductionist approaches to the Phenomenon. This is a sword that cuts in all directions. While it is true that modernity tends to privilege the material/physical universe, we in UFOlogy know well how quickly the pendulum can swing in the other direction. Like the atomists and wholists, in our great haste to plant our flags in every new territory — staking our claim to the real before anyone else has a chance — we inevitably miss out on half of reality.
The Four Quadrants
Wilber has created a map to help us break down any holon into 4 dimensions. These dimensions, visualized as quadrants, were derived from a meta-analysis of all of the various ways of organizing holons (holarchies). Wilber found that each holarchy fell into one of four categories. He explains…
“KW:… Whether it’s realized or not, most of the maps of the world that have been offered are in fact holarchical, for the simple reason that holarchies are impossible to avoid (because holons are impossible to avoid). We have literally hundreds and hundreds of these holarchical maps from around the world — East and West, North and South, ancient and modern — and many of these maps included the map-maker as well.
So at one point I simply started making lists of all of these holarchical maps — conventional and new age, Eastern and Western, premodern and modern and postmodern — everything from systems theory to the great chain of being, from the Buddhist vijnanas to Piaget, Marx, Kohlberg, the Vedantic koshas, Loevinger, Maslow, Lenski, Kabbalah, and so on. I had literally hundreds of these things, these maps, spread out on legal pads all over the floor.
At first I thought these maps were all referring to the same territory, so to speak. I thought they were all different versions of an essentially similar holarchy. There were just too many similarities and overlaps in all of them. So by comparing and contrasting them all, I thought I might be able to find the single and basic holarchy that they were all trying to represent in their own ways.
The more I tried this, the more it became obvious that it wouldn’t work. These various holarchies had some undeniable similarities, but they differed in certain profound ways, and the exact nature of these differences was not obvious at all. And most confusing of all, in some of these holarchical maps, the holons got bigger as development progressed, and in others, they became smaller (I didn’t yet understand that evolution produces greater depth, less span). It was a real mess, and at several points I decided to just chuck it, forget it, because nothing was coming of this research.
But the more I looked at these various holarchies, the more it dawned on me that there were actually four very different types of holarchies, four very different types of holistic sequences. As you say, I don’t think this had been spotted before — perhaps because it was so simple; at any event it was news to me. But once I put all of these holarchies into these four groups — and they instantly fell into place at that point — then it was obvious that each holarchy in each group was indeed dealing with the same territory, but overall we had four different territories, so to speak.”
“KW: So the question then became, how did these four types of holarchies relate to each other? They couldn’t just be radically different holistic sequences. They had to touch each other somehow. Eventually it dawned on me that these four quadrants have a very simple foundation. These four types of holarchies are actually dealing with the inside and the outside of a holon, in both its individual and collective forms — and that gives us four quadrants.
Inside and Outside, singular and plural — some of the simplest distinctions we can make, and these very simple features, which are present in all holons, generate these four quadrants, or so I maintain. All four of these holarchies are dealing with real aspects of real holons — which is why these four types of holarchies keep insistently showing up on all the various maps around the world.
It appears these are some very bedrock realities, these four corners of the Kosmos.”
pg. 66–68 “A Brief History of Everything” [Emphasis Mine]
I’ve included some visualizations of the four quadrants to help us get an idea of what sorts of things are covered in each. Each of these can be found in Wilber’s “A Brief History of Everything.”
In this first visualization, we find the four quadrants defined by their most foundational differences. The quadrants to the left of the y-axis deal with the interior dimensions of any holon. The right side quadrants address the exterior (surfaces) of any holon. The quadrants above the x-axis concern the individual form of the holon, while the quadrants below handle the communal or collective form.
This representation shows various holarchies (hierarchies of holons) in the quadrant they would appear in. Notice the distinction between “I”, “It”, “We”, and “Its”. This is helpful shorthand for remembering the domains in each quadrant. “I” and “We” are subjects. “It” and “Its” are objects. “I” and “It” are individual. “We” and “Its” are plural/collective.
This figure shows various theorists and where their work fits into the framework. Notice that the left-hand paths are described as interpretive, hermeneutic, and consciousness-related. The right-hand paths are described as monological, empirical, positivistic, and form-related.
This figure shows the various validity claims of each domain. Wilber calls them “the four faces of truth”.
The Four Faces of Truth
“The significant point is that each of these four validity claims has its own type of evidence and data, and thus particular assertions within each claim can be adjudicated — that is, can be confirmed or denied, justified or rebuffed, validated or rejected. Accordingly, each of these claims is open to the all-important fallibilist criterion of genuine knowledge.
We are all familiar with how fallibilism works in empirical sciences: maps and models and pictures that do not match empirical facts can eventually be dislodged by further facts. But the same fallibilism is at work in all of the genuine validity claims, which is precisely why learning can occur in all four quadrants: mistakes are dislodged by further evidence in those quadrants.
For example, Hamlet is an interpretive, not an empirical, phenomenon, and yet the statement “Hamlet is about the joys of war” is a false statement — it is a bad interpretation, it is wrong, and it can be thoroughly rejected by the community of those who:
1) perform the injunction or the experiment (namely, read the play called Hamlet);
2) gather the interpretative data or apprehensions (study the meaning of the play in light of the total available evidence); and
3) compare this data with others who have completed the experiment (consensual validation or rejection by a community of the adequate).
Those three strands of all genuine knowledge accumulation (injunction, data, confirmation) are present in all of the validity claims, which themselves are anchored in the very real intentional, behavioral, cultural, and social domains of human beings. In other words, these very real domains ground our quests for truthfulness, truth, justness, and functional fit, each of which proceeds by the checks and balances of injunction, data, and confirmation.
Thus, the epistemological claims of integral studies are, like any other valid knowledge claims, thoroughly grounded in experiment, data accumulation, and consensual justification.”
pg. 23–24 “The Four Faces of Truth”
Right Hand vs. Left Hand Paths
“KW: From virtually the inception of every major knowledge quest, East and West alike, the various approaches have fallen into one or another of these two great camps, interior versus exterior, Left versus Right. We find this in psychology (Freud vs. Watson), in sociology (Weber vs. Comte), in philosophy (Heidegger vs. Locke), in anthropology (Taylor vs. Lenski), in linguistics (hermeneutics vs. structuralism) — and even in theology (Augustine vs. Aquinas)!
Occasionally you find an approach that emphasizes both the Left and Right-Hand dimensions, which of course would be my recommendation, but mostly you find a bitter war between these two equally important, but rarely integrated, approaches. So I think it’s crucial to understand the contributions that both of these paths have made to our understanding of the human condition, because both of them are truly indispensable.”
“KW: Everything on the Right Hand, all aspects on the Right half [of the map] are objects or exteriors that can be seen empirically, one way or another, with the senses or their extensions — microscopes, telescopes, photographic equipment, whatnot. They are all surfaces that can be seen. They all have simple location. You don’t have to talk to any of them. You just observe their objective behavior. You look at the behavior of atoms, or cells, or populations, or individuals, or societies, or ecosystems.
Q: You also call this “monological.”
KW: Yes, all the Right-Hand aspects are basically monological, which means they can be seen in a monologue. You don’t have to try to get at their interiors, at their consciousness. You do not need a dialogue, a mutual exchange of depth, because you are looking only at exteriors.
If you are getting a CAT scan of your brain, the lab technicians will talk to you only if it’s unavoidable. “Would you mind moving your head over here, dearie?” The technicians couldn’t care less about your interior depths, because they only want to capture your exterior surfaces, even if those depths are “inside” you — they’re just more objects. When the lab technicians take this objective picture of your brain, do they see the real you? Do they see you at all?
No, you are being treated merely as an object of the monological gaze, not as a subject in communication — which is what makes empirical medicine so dehumanizing in itself. The lab technician just wants your Right Hand, not your left Hand, not your consciousness, your feelings, your meanings, your values, your intentions, your hopes, your fears. Just the facts, ma’am. Just the exteriors. And that’s fine. That’s completely acceptable. That’s your brain.
But you can never, and will never, see a mind that way.”
“There is nothing wrong with these Right-Hand and empirical and scientific paths; it’s just that they are not the whole story. Living life only according to the Right Hand is like living life perpetually under the gaze of a lab technician. It’s all empiricism, all monological gaze, all behaviorism, all shiny surfaces and monochrome objects — no interiors, no depth, no consciousness.
I don’t want to get too much ahead of the story, but we can now briefly mention that the downside of the Enlightenment paradigm was that, in it’s rush to be empirical, it inadvertently collapsed the Left-Hand dimensions of the Kosmos into the Right-Hand dimensions — it collapsed interior depths into observable surfaces, and it thought that a simple mapping of these empirical exteriors was all the knowledge that was worth knowing. This left out the mapmaker itself — the consciousness, the interiors, the Left-Hand dimensions — and, a century or two later, it awoke in horror to find itself living in a universe with no value, no meaning, no intentions, no depth, no quality — it found itself in a disqualified universe ruled by the monological gaze, the brutal world of the lab technician. And that, of course, began the postmodern rebellion.”
An Interesting Analogy
So how do we take an integral approach to the Phenomenon? First let’s begin with an example, a “typical” contact experience. A subject becomes aware of a strange craft overhead. They find themselves compelled to move toward it. Suddenly they are pulled as if by some unseen force from their environment toward the craft. There is no use resisting now. Once onboard, advanced beings shove tubes down the subject’s throat and stick long needles into the subject’s body. They examine the subject’s sex organs and may even take samples of tissue, sperm, and blood. They attach a small device onto the subject’s body. After the initial experience, the subject is abducted many times over its lifespan. No matter where the subject goes, the beings find him.
To take an integral approach we would examine this experience as we would any other holon. Let’s start by looking at each path.
Let’s start with the right hand path. To do this we will just be examining the “exterior” of the contact experience. For the upper right quadrant we would focus on this specific individual’s experience. So this would be akin to the shark equivalent for MUFON — I propose MUFONBFS (MUFON but for sharks). They would record a detailed breakdown from the witness. They would attempt to establish a solid spatial and temporal chronology of the event. They would be concerned with the topology of the craft, it’s motion, how much time elapsed during the event, and whether there were any other corroborating witnesses in the area. They would want to examine the hook wounds. They might be able to compare it to other easily explainable mouth wounds common to other sharks. They would be primarily focused on the tangible, physical, easily measurable aspects of the case. The shark’s description of advanced beings would be useful from their perspective, but only if it could be correlated or corroborated with other data.
For the left hand path, the shark might find itself connected to a psychiatrist/phsychologist/therapist. The therapist would want to establish that there is no obvious or known pathology behind the shark’s experiences. They would probably want to know more about the shark’s medical history, it’s family history, it’s pup-hood. Is the shark suffering from an inordinate amount of stress? Is it dealing with something else that might make it more susceptible to hallucinations? More open-minded therapists might compare the shark’s experiences to the experiences of other sharks… or even recommend that the shark reach out to a support group like the experiencer group (but for sharks). The shark, with the support of others, begins to make meaning from its experience.
Now… to answer the two big questions. Who were the others and what were they doing? On this, shark theorists don’t agree. Some sharks view the others in a positive light. The beings feed them mouthfuls of free fish attached to a stick and caress them gently as they swim by. They’ve never been harmed by one of the advanced beings. And in fact, they are eager to interact with them again. They become more attracted to divers and boats as a result.
Other sharks — those who were hooked and abducted and poked and prodded — will develop an intense fear of boats and divers. They don’t trust the beings. Even if they do offer food, it’s a trick. The other sharks must be naive. The advanced beings are merely using the sharks for some complex purpose of their own, perhaps related to breeding. They may be studying the sharks’ DNA to learn how to create shark/human hybrids. After all, some of the beings have black fins instead of feet. They swim among us.
It is obvious these two approaches, divorced from each other, have little to offer in terms of answering the big questions. An integral approach would create space for these two groups of researchers to dialogue with each other and compare notes. For instance, MUFONBFS might discover a pattern in their Unidentified Floating Object database… There are quite a lot of sharks who are abducted while eating near the surface. And a large number of them end up with hook wounds. These might serve as reliable patterns… something groups of experiencers can verify, reject, or contextualize.
The key here is that researchers, theorists and enthusiasts who gravitate to the left or right side accept the validity of evidence and the inherent value of each approach. An integral approach does not require one to be an expert in all areas to make headway. But it does encourage us to seek input from those that are, to be informed by experts and evidence in other contexts. We in UFOlogy are quick to welcome scientists to our ranks, as long as they’re willing to “ask the question” that experts in other disciplines have been asking all along.
So where are the philosophers, psychologists and psychiatrists? Where are the mystics and contemplatives? When do they get a serious seat at the table? Only when their claims can be adequately collapsed into the monological gaze of scientism. Only when they stop telling us that our worldview is too small. And this will not do. Counter to the common thinking in my own small corner of the UFO community, I must insist that public discourse is not improved by leaving them out.
Escaping Flat Land
Because the internal domains of any holon have measurable external correlates, it is very tempting to collapse the internal into the external “without remainder” — which is, in effect, to deny their reality and the validity claims that go along with them. When we do this, we not only miss out on interesting data, we miss out on interesting thinkers.
Take for instance the work of the late, great John Mack. Mack was primarily a left-hand theorist. His work with individuals who claimed contact with advanced beings was revolutionary not just because of the data it produced, but because he leveraged the insights gained from his clinical approach to insist that what was happening could not be explained away as pathology. In his estimation, many of the individuals he worked with had actually experienced something, and were not suffering from any obvious delusions which should invalidate their claims. He egregiously told the academic community that it could trust the mapmaker! He insisted that experiencer accounts could and should be taken seriously!
He came under attack at Harvard Medical School, where he was head of psychiatry. Harvard, and the greater academic community, felt he was overstepping his purview. He had gone too far. He was supposed to find out what was wrong with these people. It was obvious what they said wasn’t true because it simply couldn’t be true. Mack’s conclusions suggested that what was commonly accepted in the right hand paths — the flat land approach — was insufficient to account for the whole of reality. This was not a “will to believe” but a will to follow the available evidence someplace new. And it turns out this “new” place was in fact not so new at all. It was only that our faculties for finding truth beyond scientific empiricism had atrophied. Our will not to believe had rendered us half-blind.
“If you want to shatter the Western mental structures. The Western mind, so to speak, which is now permeating the whole earth with its materialist, dualistic philosophy — the way you do it is you take something that is supposed to be in the spirit world. Because even in the West we can make allowance for the spirit world and we can study it through mythology, through religion, through imagination, through poetry. But the one unforgivable sins to the Western mind is when something that should be in the spirit world transgresses and shows up in the physical world. That traffic is a cardinal sin for the Western mind and has great power to shatter the belief structure of the Western mind… when that occurs… and that is precisely what is occurring with this abduction phenomena.”
-John Mack in his 1992 interview with Terence McKenna
Nails on a Chalkboard
Not too long ago, I was having a conversation with a good friend of mine who also happens to be an experiencer of high strangeness. At one point in the conversation I briefly mentioned something related to consciousness and he stopped me. “I love you man, but when I hear “consciousness” it just sounds to me like nails on a chalkboard.”
I understand what he meant. From his perspective, consciousness has very little to offer in the way of making sense of what is happening to him and his family. He wants answers, the objective kind. Who are they and what are they doing? And most importantly, how do I make it stop? Experiencers are often stuck in the middle of the grid, a taut rope in a tug of war between two seemingly disparate realities. To embrace the Left-Hand approach, for some, is akin to denying the validity of their physical experiences. To embrace the Right-Hand approach, for some, is akin to ignoring the effects the experiences have had on their lives.
Just when you think you’ve got a handle on things, the phenomenon cuts the rope and sends you tumbling.
Without Wilber’s exposition, it might be tempting to take a map like this and focus on one half, or perhaps even one quadrant when examining a particular holon. But Wilber insists that every holon exists in all four quadrants, with each dimension being as real as the others. Each domain, in a sense, both gives rise to and emerges from the other domains. If you lose one, you lose everything. Thus, an integral approach to any holon considers all four dimensions. We won’t learn more about the phenomenon by ignoring half of reality. We won’t make progress by denying the interior or exterior of things.
The monological gaze is alive and well in UFOlogy of all places. We are told that witness testimony and experiencer accounts are interesting but not worth our time if we want to learn the truth. This is of course asinine. You will never be able to answer the most important questions with sensor data and materials alone. The UFOnauts are not merely objects. They are subjects which can be communicated with. Any approach which ignores accounts of these communications, and the effects of close encounters with the UFOnauts is inherently unsuitable for answering the most profound questions related to the phenomenon. Nuts and bolts UFO research and consciousness studies are not disparate realities. They are merely two aspects of the same holon.
Intent vs. Effect — A Common Point of Conflict
Jacques Vallee, arguably the greatest living UFO researcher, knows this better than most. He balances experiencer accounts, material science, and quantitative data to examine the phenomenon from as many angles as possible. I would say that he is one of the very few UFO researchers who takes an integral approach to the phenomenon. By taking a “high view” and working with all of the data, he formed an interesting hypothesis: the control system.
“I propose the hypothesis that there is a control system for human consciousness. I have not determined whether it is natural or spontaneous; whether it is explainable in terms of genetics, of social psychology, or of ordinary phenomena — or if it is artificial in nature, and under the power of some superhuman will. It may be entirely determined by laws that we have not yet discovered. I am led to this hypothesis by the fact that in every instance of the UFO phenomenon I have been able to study in depth I have found as many rational elements as I have absurd ones, and many that I could interpret as friendly and many that seemed hostile. No matter what approach I take, I can never explain more than half of the facts.
This is what tells me that I am working on the wrong level. And so do all the believers, and this definitely includes the skeptics, because they believe they can explain the facts as strongly as the most enthusiastic convert to Ms. Dixon’s vision of Jupiterian Amazons! I would argue they are all wrong, even Puharich with his disappearing tapes, and Uri voicing from Rhombus 4-D.
There are ways to gain access to the reference level of every control system I know. Even a child, if smart or daring enough, can climb on a chair, change the dial of a thermostat and elicit a response. (The response in question might be a sound spanking from his father, of course. The road to higher knowledge has such accidents.) It must be possible to gain access to the control of the UFO phenomenon, to forget the spirits and the pranks of Rhombus 4-D, and do some real science. But it will take a very smart approach — or a very daring one.” Jacques Vallee , The Invisible College pg. 196
In the past, I have argued that Vallee’s control system hypothesis has a lot of merit. I can see now the reason it resonated so much with me is that it showed Vallee was working on multiple levels… he was taking an integral approach to the phenomenon. He realized that these sightings were having an internal effect on individuals, and perhaps even greater society as a result. Rather than cast those findings aside, as many scientists would, Vallee decided they were too important to ignore.
I have recently begun to see how control system hypothesis might challenge individuals who see it as a means for determining the intent of the UFOnauts, rather than a correlated effect. Further, if not carefully parsed out, it can even suggest that the UFOnauts themselves aren’t “real” in the empirical scientific sense — that what experiencers perceive comes from the subconscious or, perhaps more charitably, from the anima mundi — collective visions intended to guide humanity to live more harmoniously with the earth and with each other. Both Vallee and Mack left open these options as serious possibilities.
And though I believe both should be heralded for their integral approach, that conclusion can sound quite dualistic (even if it does make traditional academics shudder). In my view, The control system hypothesis highlights the effects of interactions with high strangeness. It does not necessarily deal with the intent of the UFOnauts themselves. If one separates effect from intent, the diversity within the data and the various, often conflicting, interpretations of said data come more clearly into view. Let’s go back to our analogy to illustrate my point.
The marine biologists who captured and tagged our great white abductee were not attempting to alter the consciousness of the shark. They were not even attempting to alter its behavior. Those are not taken into account in the slightest. They presume, perhaps rightly in the case of the shark, that after they’re done with their tagging and sampling, it will simply go on being a shark, and doing all of the normal things a shark would be expected to do.
However, the shark is traumatized (suspend your disbelief for the sake of the analogy). It’s not the same shark it was before. It’s entire cosmology is in flux. It’s perceptions, it’s way of situating itself in the world, are in disarray. It’s undergone some really interesting changes that you can’t see or measure on the exterior, but which are real and valid nonetheless. These changes are profound, and have a much larger impact on the shark than wounds or scars from any hook or tracking device.
And yet…. was this the intent of the “advanced beings”? Was this their mission? Not in the slightest. So we must be careful to separate intent from effect. Even the divers who feed sharks with poles and snap harmless pictures may have an unintended effect… completely separate and apart from their intent.
So why make this odd point… this seemingly unrelated aside? Because I think we can have both conversations at the same time. And the effort to do so, is at the heart of an integral approach of the phenomenon. This is a point of conflict that puts many researchers, theorists, and experiencers at odds (and therefore out of dialogue with one another). We can talk about the interior effects of the phenomenon (left hand path) and the physical realities (right hand path) at the same time.
There are groups who tell experiencers to ignore the “negative aspects” of the phenomenon. Sometimes, this is because they’ve conflated the ultimate effect of the phenomenon with the intent of the UFOnauts. And often, those groups are speaking in terms of consciousness… the domain where the positive effects can most easily be experienced (left hand). And at the same time, there are those who will only focus on the negative. They think any “positive aspects” are overblown, or not worth discussing. They refuse to believe anything good could come out of interactions with the others. In the meantime, both are presuming the other side can’t be trusted to interpret their own experiences.
Nails on a chalkboard indeed.
Remember holons — the concept that all things are simultaneously a whole unto themselves and a part of something greater? That’s a pretty important distinction to keep in mind when having these conversations. In a sense, you can ask and answer the big questions from multiple levels.
Your ideas about who the UFOnauts are, and what the UFOnauts are doing, depend largely on whether you are viewing them primarily as wholes unto themselves or as parts of something greater.
The point is that both parties can actually bring perspectives to the table that are valid and helpful! It is only human that we will privilege our own interpretation — the level at which we choose to ask and answer the big questions. But we must keep in mind that every point of view is a view from a point, and we need all the help we can get. Open dialogue from all parties would require that declarations be checked at the door. The result is a much more nuanced conversation where we can step away from our certainty, and into the questions, together.
The “You Are Not In Control” System
It may be possible that the control system hypothesis applies to certain groups who know the effect their actions have and who intentionally leverage them to bring about changes in consciousness (or to prevent said changes). But it may also be that many groups aren’t concerned with the interior effects of their actions at all, or remain completely unaware of them.
There are some who essentially proselytize on behalf of NHI. At the same time, there are some who approach the subject as harbingers of doom. Both parties superimpose individual interpretations of their own particular experiences onto everyone else’s. And if anyone disagrees, the thinking goes, it is their perceptions that are faulty. This sort of all-or-nothing view leaves little wiggle room for dissenting opinions… or for the serious consideration of any data which might challenge the preferred paradigm. Their truth, conveniently, always turns out to be the truth.
I am not suggesting the absence of a sort of unitive control mechanism at work in these experiences. I do believe there is a control system at work in our reality, irrespective of the group(s) behind the Phenomenon.
The control system is reality itself.
This may not align with the intent of the UFOnauts behind the wheel. They are merely existing, doing things UFOnauts of their ilk are inclined to do. It is this existence, this scandalous existence, this intrusion into our neat and tidy lives, that pushes us to the brink. We thought we had a handle on things. We thought we knew who we were and what we believed. We had a system… and it was a good one! And now here we are, being pulled by an irresistible force toward a craft of unknown origin, piloted by strange beings with nebulous intentions.
Famous ethnobotanist and psychonaut Terrence McKenna spoke of psychedelics as a means for dissolving boundaries. And I wonder… are UFO’s and related phenomena not something similar? Are they not a great contradiction? A great scandal? Do they even serve to dissolve the boundaries of the four quadrants? I think the answer is yes. Much as pain can signal something awry within a homeostatic system, bewilderment may signal something awry within a paradigm — something too bothersome to ignore.
“It is fast becoming quite obvious that if any system of thought (from philosophy to sociology to psychology to religion) attempts to ignore or deny any of the four validity claims, then those ignored truths actually reappear in the system as an internal and massive self-contradiction. In other words, if I refuse reality to any of these truths, then that denied quadrant will in fact sneak into my system — I will smuggle it into my philosophy — and there it will eat away at my system from within, until it eventually gnaws its way to the surface as a jolting contradiction.” — Ken Wilber “The Four Faces of Truth”
So much of our modern lives are built around maintaining the illusion of control — this idea that we have agency in our lives over the things that matter. Entire industries have sprung up to give us more control. And yet is losing control not a normal part of existence for every organism we know of? Losing control is part of growing up. It is part of our becoming. This is not to say it isn’t painful, or that we should seek it out. We don’t need to. Like mice suffocating in the python’s coil, we find ourselves caught in the ever-tightening clasp of reality — merely because we are alive. And let us not lose sight of the fact that more often than not… we’re the ones doing the squeezing.
Suffering is an inevitable part of life — a crucible in which all the imagined things we deem essential are burned away. In the end, all that remains is all there ever was.
We’re not in control. We never were. And the most human response to that most basic and inconvenient truth… is growth. The trick is in seeing that the way up often looks very much like the way down. And in this sense, the phenomenon is merely a microcosm of reality.
One Size Fits All — A limiting factor
Another sticky wicket in these conversations is the insistence on discussing the entire range of high-strangeness occurrences as a monolithic phenomenon. We presume that because correlations can be found between this strange thing and that strange thing, it follows that they must be related — in this instance and in all the others. This is extremely limiting when it comes to our search for answers. It feels as if we must find a solution that accounts for everything, when in actuality we haven’t even firmly established a causal relationship. And even if we had, it wouldn’t be prudent to super-impose a decent solution for a single instance of high strangeness onto the entire spectrum of high strangeness.
Ken Wilber started off his process in the same manner. He predicted that all holarchies were essentially different ways of mapping the same thing. As he went on, he realized this was the wrong approach. There were too many inconcistencies to account for. He nearly scrapped the whole thing as a result. Eventually he discovered that even though a one-size-fits-all solution wouldn’t work, a system of quadrants would. And once he realized that, everything fell into place. There’s a lesson in there for us too. Even if we claim not to, we often argue from a one-size-fits-all perspective. We willingly limit our own thinking. But by striving in this way to come to a “clean” solution we might miss out on fundamental distinctions that are too important to ignore. We may need more categories than we thought.
As I discussed at length in “Star Trek is The Answer”, I do my best to curate my own cosmology to allow for as much diversity as possible… not just because it’s helpful, but because it’s fun:
In Star Trek, reality isn’t so simple. You could perhaps call every lifeform the crew of the Enterprise encounters an “alien” but that would really be one hell of a reduction wouldn’t it? Even if you just stick to biological entities there is extreme, almost unimaginable diversity. Some space-faring lifeforms have very advanced technology… others not so much.
In Star Trek, possessing technology that allows you to travel space at incredible speeds doesn’t have the same implications many UFOlogists presume it does.
Some lifeforms are incredibly smart and perceptive. Others not so much. Some are beyond war and strife. Others are extremely violent and factional. Some stick to the prime directive and steer clear of developing planets. Others intentionally influence less advanced species for good. Some project power on lesser lifeforms, enslaving and exploiting entire planets or solar systems. Some are decidedly atheistic, while others maintain religious beliefs and customs. Some are parasites (there are seriously so many fucking parasites). Some are shape-shifters or invisible. Some are more machine than biological. Some use other species to reproduce or as food. Others are just giant-ass animals like space-stingrays. And that’s just on the biological side of things.
There’s also a whole host of intelligences Starfleet encounters which can’t be categorized as biological. There are sentient clouds of particles that are floating out in space, just waiting to fuck up someone’s day. There are balls of energized plasma whose entire purpose is to transform one or more members of the crew into paranoid maniacs or geniuses with uncontrollable sex-drives (there is no in-between). Other times there is no cohesive purpose… it’s more like art or some cosmic thought-experiment. Then you have the Q Continuum… the members of which can create whatever reality they want in an instant. This isn’t a trick. They can alter space, matter, time… anything really. There are species which worship these non-biologically bound intelligences. And depending on who they are… they may even deserve it.
There is a shitload of diversity within the UFO data we have available to us (and the same is probably true of the data we don’t have available to us). Is there as much as Star Trek? No. But there’s enough for me to believe we’re dealing with a lot of different things here, some of which probably won’t fit into any of the pre-labeled filing cabinets in our brains. Any attempt to distill all of this down to one tidy solution just seems to miss the mark. This doesn’t mean I think everyone who chooses to hone in on a theory is wrong or even misguided.
Whatever theory you subscribe to is probably right. They’re all probably right to some extent. If you don’t believe me… just look at the data. It’s ALL there.
So what if we proceeded as if all of it was real… as if we were in the middle of a Universe that was much more complicated than we ever imagined?
An Integral approach doesn’t just examine things from all quadrants… it also examines things from all levels — which is something I haven’t even scratched the surface of. So in my next piece, I’ll do just that. This is only the beginning.
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