Stanley Krippner, Ph.D., on UFOs and Shamans

Dr. Stanley Krippner, a professor of psychology at Saybrook Institute in San Francisco, Calif., past president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology as well as the Parapsychological Association, delivered a wonderful and thought-provoking presentation at the Association for Research and Enlightenment’s Virginia-based conference center on Friday evening, December 2nd. It was entitled “Shamans and Shamanism: The First Healers & Healing System.” As this was during the ARE sponsored “UFOs: The Full Spectrum” conference (Dec. 2 & 3) and my own presentation on the 3rd was entitled, “Visitors From Hidden Realms: Perspectives from Star Elders, Shaman, & UFO Visitors,” I was very pleased when Dr. Krippner, a man who has studied numerous shamans all over the world, was asked to address this matter.

“We already have a question, and that is whether or not the shamans ever work in any way with UFOs, or what we now call UFOs, which of course were called other things thousands of years ago,” Dr. Krippner began. “Well actually I’ve heard many reports of UFOs from shamans over the years. Shamans will report experiences themselves, some shamans will say that they’ve been taken into a UFO, some will say that they have been cooperating with UFOs to help heal people, or have gotten power from UFOs. To be very frank with you, I have not heard a negative statement about UFOs from shamans, although there might be something to the stories about malevolent UFO aliens and all of that. I just haven’t heard it from shamans. But in many of the shamanic traditions there are stories of extraterrestrials who come to earth and who interact in one way or another. So there’s not much on that in the literature, but you will find something on it, and the reason that there’s not much in the literature is because people haven’t asked that question. Anthropologists simply haven’t gone into that area of experience with the shamans.”

To learn more about Dr. Krippner and his work, go to: www.stanleykrippner.com.

Jacques Vallee

The one speaker who no doubt drew the most attention at the ARE’s UFO Conference was Jacques Vallee, the distinguished French born scientist who authored such classic UFO works as Anatomy Of A Phenomenon, Passport To Magonia, Messengers of Deception, Confrontations, Revelations, Dimensions, and others. Jacques was also accompanied by his wife Janine, who co- authored with her famous husband one of his first books on the UFO subject, entitled Challenge To Science: The UFO Enigma, published back in 1966. Trained in astrophysics and computer technology, Jacques Vallee has made very few appearances in connection with his UFO work in years. His wife Janine, it should be mentioned, was described in their book as a psychologist by training and a data analyst by profession. Both of them attended the conference’s lectures and seemed interested in what was being presented.

“I wanted to come here for several reasons,” Jacques Vallee began his talk on the evening of December 3rd. “First of all, I have a lot of respect for this organization. I believe that among other things there is a spiritual component in the phenomenon that we are studying here. Edgar Cayce himself had mentioned that some of his gifts came after an incident when he was a teenager. I think he was in the forest, where there was a globe of light, and inside the globe of light there was a figure that he took I think to be a lady who asked him what he wanted....He said he wanted the power to help people, to heal, and after that incident his life started changing. That is a fairly common occurrence among people with special psychic gifts. I was a consultant on the S.R.I. [Stanford Research Institute] project on remote viewing for awhile in the ‘80s and this was never published or acknowledged in the reports that were published but many of them ascribed their talent to an incident that had to do, generally speaking, with what we would call a UFO.”

Betty Andreasson Luca

Betty Andreasson Luca, one of the most famous UFO abductee experiencers today, also was a speaker at the ARE’s UFO Conference. Noted Ufologist Raymond E. Fowler first presented her incredible story back in 1979, in his book, The Andreasson Affair. Other books soon followed.

Betty attended my own presentation in which four replicas of the Peruvian whistling vessels were blown by members of the audience. She later shared with me privately a very profound “vision” that she had during that event.

“I have done a pencil illustration for you of the visionary experience I had when the audience played the Peruvian whistles at your lecture,” Betty wrote in an email dated Dec. 20th. “It is so much easier to see what I saw and spoke to you of. To review the vision, it seemed like a dark mountainous and forest area. There were stone steps that led upward where there was dim light from a fire. Closer, there was a ring of fire surrounding a huge conical dark stone. The fire seemed to flare up and down in places. And then I saw huge wings from what looked like an eagle in back of the stone. I saw an odd symbol engraved on the lower left base of the stone, and there was another portion of a symbol beside it, but could not make it out. I’ve drawn the symbol on the illustration but unfortunately it is not exact.”

“Now here is the intriguing part. My daughter called me from Virginia to tell me you had emailed her. During our conversation, she mentioned a friend she’s been communicating (by) email with (who) told her Jerusalem was the NAVEL or center of the earth. They have been researching things about the yellow star, the bull, etc., and asked if I had any (of) Dr. Sitchin’s books she could borrow. I have The Stairway To Heaven purchased at John White’s UFO Conference way back on October 5, 1994. After we hung up, I hunted for the paperback, found it and decided to thumb through it. Remember I told you I thought the stone seemed like an ancient zigguret? But it was not smooth. Well, it is more like an omphalos! “Stones that whisper”!! An ancient oracle stone!!”

Betty then directed me to pages 186 and 187 of Dr. Sitchin’s book, wherein I read of how reportedly various sources stated that an omphalos stone was Delphi’s holiest object in ancient Greece. One tradition has it that the site of Delphi was located by Zeus who, wanting to find the center of the world, released two eagles from opposite ends of the earth, and where they met was Delphi. An omphalos stone was promptly erected. According to Greek historian Strabo, the images of two eagles were perched on top of the omphalos, which also means navel stone. Though that original stone has long since disappeared, ancient replicas and images of it, and apparent eagles in connection with it, have survived, and Dr. Sitchin presents several of these in his scholarly book of Greek and even centuries earlier Egyptian depictions.

In a more recent email from Betty she wrote, “I wouldn’t be surprised to one day hear that the different vibrational levels from those whistles breaking into other dimensions have the ability to summon the Beings and craft. Especially seeing what I saw...”

It’s always fascinating to see how different people can be profoundly affected and moved by the Peruvian whistling vessel experience and how that experience can lead them on seemingly significant new pathways of discovery. Such accounts always remind me of my Native American friend Dove’s profound experience with the vessels, as described in my book Visitors From Hidden Realms.

Above: Brent Raynes talking to Betty Luca at ARE Conference about her whistling vessel experience.

Right: Betty Luca's detailed drawing of her experience with the whistling vessels.

Jon Thunder explains the Apache concept of human’s as Energy Beings

“There was a time that we were all energy,” Jon began, trying to explain to me the Apache concept of human’s as energy beings. “We were just energy.” Then Jon described how the Apache equivalent of a Creator spirit had the perception “that everything is good, but then he realizes that there’s limitations to the experiences of this energy, and so he said...well, I used the word he but there’s no gender there. A woman could tell the story and say she and it would hold just as much weight. But we didn’t have boundaries. So that’s where the human shape came from. It captured that energy and it is our purpose in life now to experience and obtain as much knowledge while in bondage, and that is our explanation of why when you meet someone sometimes you feel like you’ve known them forever, you know what they’re going to do next. You just know them. It’s because that energy is a connecting point. Like when you meet somebody and they say ‘hi’ and you don’t like them. The deja vu, so to speak, comes from energy because we’re just one big mass of energy. It’s been broken up into boundaries. So we have residue from other energies and so we pick up on that.”

At this point in our conversation I interjected and told Jon, “There are actually scientists now who are exploring theories like this called the morphogenic theory and so on.” “Oh really?” Jon said. “Well I know that, if you look on your Internet, you’ll see that Native Americans have stories and maps of star systems and things....” I then added, “I know there was one legend about an old man that came from like the center of the galaxy or something in kind of a disc looking thing. Had you heard that one?” Jon begins to laugh, “That sounds like one the Hopi boys would be spreading around. The Hopi are always seeing flying saucers. Those aliens like Hopi’s. You run into the Hopi’s every once and awhile and they talk about stuff like that. And I’ve experienced stuff like that too, but I was on Hopi grounds! They don’t like Apache’s I guess.”

“I’m not crazy,” Jon begins, before telling a UFO Story of his own

At this point I asked Jon for an example. “I’m not crazy, man,” Jon began. “There’s a place out in Arizona and western folklore that has a reputation of unexplained things. The Haunted Mesa. There’s a lot of things that happen up in that area, and I was going up that way one time and I was with this girl, and you don’t go across the desert on an unreliable vehicle. You just do not do it. So everything on my motorcycle at that time was tip top and it just died on me. ...I was trying to see what was wrong with it and stuff. What we were going to do was we were going to climb up to this certain plateau and we were going to eat some mushrooms and follow that with a little peyote, and I had no good up my sleeve. I grew up in the desert, in the middle of no where. I was a young kid, but things like that got out of my mind real quick because when I came over this top, I don’t know why I had the reflexes to duck because I ducked before I saw anything, but as I looked over the lip of it...I don’t know how really far I was from distance. I really don’t. But it was kind of shaped like a cigar and from where I was looked like the size of a school bus. Right around that size, and there was nothing sticking out of it.

“We were going there to eat peyote and mushrooms and have a good time. We hadn’t done it yet. The girl that I was with was kind of scared. She was so scared that she started crying. I didn’t feel threatened or anything like for me to try and stifle her cries. I was captivated by what I was seeing. But I didn’t go forward. Instead I went backwards. I crawled back down and...there was a, it’s like I can’t explain to you a color, I can’t explain to you a sound that it was. It was a whirring sound, but it wasn’t a whirring sound. It was a whooshing sound, but it wasn’t a whooshing sound. It was a sound. And the thing was gone. I thought, ‘We’re getting out of here!’ My bike cranked up, my watch was working.”

“Your watch stopped too?” I asked. “Oh yeah,” Jon said. “And the compass was off. When you cross the desert, and if you’re not real familiar, and as I said I was not on Apache grounds. I like the Navajos and I’ll party with the Navajos and I’ll have a good time with the Navajos. I like to mess with the Hopi’s.”

I laughed and told Jon, “It sounds like they messed with you!” He laughed too, and then said, “Now come to think of it every time I’ve gone up around those old boys I always get the short end of the stick! But the Hopi are spiritual. What is spiritualism? Is it in the worship of God or in the belief of something unseen. A force. I think, and this is a personal belief, I think religion is for people that are scared of hell and spirituality is for people who have already been there. I embrace spirituality, and the Hopi’s are the most spiritual of all. They have the most, if you want to define the word superstitions, they have stories that even us Apaches go, ‘Oh man,’ and we’ve got some wild stories ourselves. If you ever want to get around a crazy Indian go mess with the Hopi’s. You’ll never be the same!” (Jon laughs)

I then asked Jon about the compass. “A compass always points north. It was off center. It just didn’t work.” I asked about the distance from the cigar-shaped object and how far off the ground the object was, and Jon replied, “Off the ground I’d say, I don’t know, 10 or 15 feet off the ground. The distance, from the ledge to it, maybe half of a football field. But I’m looking down and you’ve got to remember that at high elevation distance plays tricks. Something that looks five miles away can be 40 or 50 miles away.”

I then added, “And then you said it was about the size of a school bus, and then suddenly it was gone.” “Well, ah, I didn’t see it get there,” Jon explained. “Like I said, you know, looking back at it I can see the things that were happening that I should have known that something was not right, but the curiosity, at that point, I was not thinking. Yeah, it was there, it was a metal, or it looked like a metal. It was just there hovering. ...I was trying to take in a lot of things.”

I asked Jon if he remembered looking back and seeing the UFO leave or anything. “Well we heard that whistling sound,” he said. “I didn’t look so I don’t know why I’m saying it was gone. I just knew it was gone.” I then said, “You didn’t look back?” “Would you?!” Jon replied, and then we laughed.

More stories later!

Saying Good-Bye to Bob Pratt and Bob Warth

As everyone in ufology must know by now, and as I reported in this column back in December, well-known UFO author Bob Pratt died in a Florida hospital on November 21, 2005, following a brief illness. He was 79 years old. He had retired back in April 1999, after 48 years working variously as a newspaper and magazine reporter and editor. However, he never stopped thinking about and researching and interviewing people about UFOs. I just came across this letter that Bob had written to Jim Moseley some years ago, and which appeared in the February 10th, 1995 issue of Saucer Smear magazine. Bob wrote: “When I’m king of the world, I’m going to have a couple of dozen of the world’s best investigators (and Brazil has some of the best) fan out across that country for a few weeks. Then we can get a decent picture of what has been and is happening. I’ve investigated cases in about half of the country’s twenty-seven states, sometimes on my own but more often with the help of very generous local investigators. I’ve gathered some truly fantastic material, but I suspect it is nothing compared to what is yet to be discovered. Sort of like on a scale of a bucket or two of water to the ocean!”

Of course, Bob never became “king of the world,” and of course he didn’t really expect to, but if he had, I’m absolutely sure (unlike the vast majority of our present crop of politicians) that he would have done exactly what he told Jim Moseley he would like to have done. Bob Pratt will certainly be missed throughout the Americas...throughout the world. I’ve recently been in touch with two Brazilian ufologists who have expressed deep sorrow, remorse, and loss over Bob’s sudden demise.

Meanwhile, sadly enough, another Bob has passed from our midst. Bob Warth, who had taken over the SITU (Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained) organization and editorship of the Pursuit publication of the late Ivan Sanderson, passed away himself on October 31, 2005, from a hemorrhage secondary to undiagnosed colon cancer.

Synchronistically enough, right after Bob Pratt’s letter in the 1995 Smear publication was one from Bob Warth, writing about his intentions of reviving the Pursuit magazine. Unfortunately, those efforts proved unsuccessful.