Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (59 page)

74
. “Heretic among Heretics: Jacques Vallee Interview,”
http://www.ufoevidence.org
. Similarly, Targ and Puthoff began their
Mind-Reach
with a definition of “heresy” that described the history of science as “paradoxes becoming commonplaces and heresies becoming orthodoxies” (
Mind-Reach
, 1), in other words, Fort's historical cycles of the Dominants and the damned.

75
. FS 2:480. Vallee likes to quote Churchill on this key point: “In wartime, truth is so precious that she must always be protected by a bodyguard of lies.”

76
. Whitley Strieber, foreword to Vallee,
Dimensions
, vii.

77
. Ibid., 291.

78
. Ibid., 128; italicized in original.

79
. See, for example, Michio Kaku,
Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the 10th Dimension
(New York: Anchor Books, 1994).

80
. Vallee,
Dimensions
, 136; italicized in original.

81
. Ibid., 284–85.

82
. Ibid. 288–89; italics in original.

83
. Jacques Vallee,
Confrontations: A Scientist's Search for Alien Contact
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1990), 217–18.

84
. Ibid., 221.

85
. Ibid., 224.

86
. Ibid., 225.

87
. Ibid., 129.

88
. Ibid., 133.

89
. Ibid., 122.

90
. Vallee,
UFO Chronicles
, 141.

91
. Ibid., 115. Gerald Heard, the British-American visionary who helped inspire the founding of Esalen (and also wrote an early book on UFOs), had speculated along almost identical X-Men or evolutionary lines. See Kripal,
Esalen
, 92.

92
. Vallee,
UFO Chronicles
, 5.

93
. For a lovely treatment of this history, “from Plato to NATO,” see R. A. S. Hennessey,
Worlds Without End: The Historic Search for Extraterrestrial Life
(Charleston: Tempus Publishing, 1999).

94
. For a powerful personal synchronicity or “intersign” that Vallee read in the light of Dick's
Valis
, see FS 2:212–13.

95
. “Dr. Jacques Vallee Reveals What Is Behind
Forbidden Science
,” 4.
http://www.21stcenturyradio.com/ForbiddenScience.htm
, accessed on January 8, 2008.

96
. Murphy adopted the phrase from the scientists who attended the two UFO symposia sponsored by Esalen in 1975 and 1986. The first was held offsite and in secret, partly to protect the reputations of some of the elite scientists who attended. Another invisible college.

97
. For examples of Vallee's precognitive dreams, see FS 2:131, 221, 353, 409–10, 441, and 466. For his experience of “intersigns,” see FS 2:212–13, 330–31, 343, 442, and 491. Freud wrote of dream symbolism as “overdetermined.”

98
. Penciled inscription by Hynek in his personal copy. Both Hynek and Vallee knew Hall, whom they visited at his Philosophical Research Center in Los Angeles (FS 2:64). Indeed, Vallee begins the second volume of his journals with a quote from Manly Hall, whom he describes as an “admirable friend” (FS 2:7).

99
. FS 1:233. According to Vallee, Hynek was also especially fond of Aldous Huxley's
The Perennial Philosophy
. A comparison of Huxley's neo-Vedantic perennialism with Manly Hall's Western esoteric perennialism would be interesting and useful here.

100
. FS 1:206. There are clear allusions here to the science-fiction writer H. P. Lovecraft, whose fictional universe is structured along similar lines.

101
. “Consciousness, Culture, and UFOs,” in Tumminia
Alien Worlds
, 206.

CHAPTER FOUR

1
. Jim Schnabel,
Remote Viewers: The Secret History of America's Psychic Spies
(New York: Dell, 1997), 35–36. For this opening story, I am relying on two communications I had with Méheust: one a personal conversation on May 25, 2008; the other an e-mail communication dated June 12, 2008. He has also read and corrected the present retelling.

2
. This is the sort of thing I was referring to above, in chapter 1,
note 105
.

3
. The counterculture was counter to culture to the extent that it insisted on the primacy of consciousness as metaphysically prior to culture and, subsequently, as the most effective creator of new culture. This was the thesis of the man who invented and first theorized the term anyway. See Theodore Roszak,
The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition
(New York: Anchor Books, 1969).

4
. I am indebted here to Richard Shweder, who has written eloquently of a certain “ontological polytheism,” of “reality posits,” and of a cultural psychology whose goal is to show how psyche and culture “make each other up.” See his
Thinking Through Cultures: Expeditions in Cultural Psychology
(Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1991).

5
. Since 2004, Méheust has also produced a number of works of cultural criticism around the paranormal, including
Devenez savants: Découvres les sorciers: Lettre à Georges Charpak
(Paris: Éditions Dervy, 2004), and a few “popular” works for his publishers, including
100 mots pour comprendre la voyance
(Paris: Les Empecheurs de Penser en Rond, 2005) and
Histoires paranormales du Titanic
(Paris: J'ai Lu, 2006). Space and time (not always absolute in the present pages!) prevent me from treating all of these works here.

6
. For a one-hundred-page essay by Méheust on Michel's life and thought and an unedited collection of this correspondence, see Aimé Michel,
L'Apocalypse molle: Correspondance addressée à Bertrand Méheust de 1978 à 1990 (texts inédits)
(Cointrin, Switzerland: Aldane editions, 2008). For a collection of Michel's essays edited and annotated by Jean-Pierre Rospars, see Aimé Michel,
La clarté au coeur du laybyrinthe: Chroniques sur la science et la religion
(Cointrin, Switzerland: Aldane editions, 2008). See also Michel Picard,
Aimé Michel: Ou la Quête du Surhumain
(Agnieres: JMG, 2000).

7
. Bertrand Méheust, “Le veilleur d'Ar Men,” in Michel,
L'Apocalypse molle
, 12.

8
. For the fullest statement of Michel's understanding of the physical phenomena of mysticism and what they portend about the future of the body, see his
Metanoia: Les phénomènes physique du mysticisme
(Paris: Albin Michel, 1986).

9
. Méheust, “Le veilleur d'Ar Men,” 15, 18.

10
. Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier,
The Morning of the Magicians
(New York: Stein and Day, 1964). Pauwels was the primary author here. The text is written in his voice, with the clear acknowledgment that the ideas were the product of a five-year study and friendship with Bergier. The constant focus of the text on physics as a kind of modern mysticism is one of many features of the text that point to Bergier.

11
. Picard,
Aimé Michel
, ix.

12
. Pauwels and Bergier,
Morning of the Magicians
, 96.

13
. Ibid., ix, 96, 95.

14
. Ibid., 95.

15
. Here cited as SF in its recent second edition, Bertrand Méheust,
Science-fiction et soucoupes volantes: Une réalité mythico-physique
(Rennes, France: Terre de Brume, 2007).

16
. See also Hilary Evans,
Intrusions: Society and the Paranormal
(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982), an excellent meditation on the dysfunctional abyss that separates Western society's general acceptance of the paranormal and the intellectual establishment's dismissal of the same.

17
. Herbert Thurston, S.J.,
The Physical Phenomena of Mysticism
, ed. J. H. Crehan, S.J. (London: Burns Oates, 1952).

18
. This esoteric expression involved a literally esoteric author. Méheust derives the expression from an essay in the
Revue métaphysique
signed by “Xodarap” (SF 307).

19
. This idea, sometimes called “neutral monism,” is a fairly common one, even in the natural sciences. The physicist John Wheeler wrote of reality as “it” and “bit,” that is, as composed of both matter and information, and the evolutionary biologist Julian Huxley thought that there is “one world stuff” that manifests both material and mental properties depending upon whether it is viewed from the outside (matter) or from the inside (mind). I am not sure, however, what either author would have thought about reality manifesting itself as physical-mythical. An electron as a bit of information is one thing. A myth in the sky chased by F-94s is quite another. My thanks to Dean Radin for the Wheeler reference.

20
. Related to Méheust's technologized Hermeticism is his notion that the origins of American and British science fiction in the earlier French genre of
le merveilleux scientifique
display
the same sacred-to-science patterns. What we have here is the return of the marvelous, but now coded in terms of the scientific discovery. The marvel is no longer the supernatural but the technological. In essence, a new form of the sacred, a “technological sacred,” was born under the mask of science and technology (SF 14, 21).

21
. This is also why Méheust rejects the ever-popular ancient astronaut theory, whereby the evolution of human beings and their cultures are seen to have been guided for millennia by space-faring aliens (SF 255–56).

22
. It is also worth mentioning here that Méheust's work on UFOs became the basis of at least two sci-fi novels: former Oxford linguist Ian Watson's
Miracle Visitors
and Michel Jeury's
Les yeux geants
.

23
. This is not quite true, as the biological function of sex is present in and indeed often central to the encounter stories, as Méheust himself notes. Still, the general point stands.

24
. Bertrand Méheust,
En soucoupes volantes: Vers une ethnologie des récits d'enlèvements
(Paris: Imago, 1992).

25
. Thomas E. Bullard, “UFOs: Lost in the Myths,” in
UFOs and Abductions: Challenging the Borders of Knowledge
, ed. David M. Jacobs (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000), 143.

26
. Bertrand Méheust,
Somnambulisme et médiumnité (1784–1930)
(Le Plessis-Robinson: Institut Synthélabo Pour Le Progrés de la Connaissance, 1999); henceforth SM.

27
. I am indebted to David Hufford for reminding me here of this particular feature of Berger's thought (personal communication, April 20, 2008).

28
. A. M. J. Chastenet de Puységur,
Mémoires pour servir a l'histoire et a l'établissement du magnétisme animal
(Londres, 1786), 29; italics as underlining in the original; quoted in SM 1:15.

29
. Consider the case of CSICOPS, the organization ideologically dedicated to criticizing, humiliating, or otherwise shouting down all paranormal claims, and its dubious handling of the alleged findings of Michel Gauquelin that the position of Mars at an individual's birth is correlated with athletic ability (George P. Hansen,
The Trickster and the Paranormal
[XLibris, 2001], 150).

30
. Bertrand Méheust,
Un voyant prodigieux: Alexis Didier, 1826–1886
(Paris: Les Empecheurs de Penser en Rond, 2003), 24; henceforth VP.

31
. Henri F. Ellenberger,
The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry
(New York: Basic Books, 1970).

32
. Adam Crabtree,
From Mesmer to Freud: Magnetic Sleep and the Roots of Psychological Healing
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).

33
. This comes out especially clearly in Méheust's treatment of Durkheim and the latter's appreciative reading of William James's pragmatism (SM 2:271–73).

34
. As such, Méheust's hermeneutic displays strong resemblances to Colin Bennett's reading of the semireal status and interactional nature of the various “imp-happenings,” “rejected design-solutions,” and “half-realized, undernourished systems-doodles” in the data of Charles Fort's shoeboxes. See his “Charles Fort's Degrees of Reality,” in
Anomalist
7 (1998): 95–96.

35
. This “fear of psi” theme is a very strong one in the literature. One of the most insightful treatments occurs in the historical speculations and psychoanalytic analyses of Jules Eisenbud,
The World of Ted Serios: “Thoughtographic” Studies of an Extraordinary Mind
(New York: William Morrow & Company, 1967), chapter 14, “The Anatomy of Resistance.”

36
. Quoted in Bruce Mills,
Poe, Fuller, and the Mesmeric Arts: Transition States in the American Renaissance
(Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2006), xiv. For another treatment of the mystical roots of American literature, see Arthur Versluis,
The Esoteric Origins of the American Renaissance
(New York: Oxford, 2001).

37
. Mills,
Poe, Fuller, and the Mesmeric Arts
, xiv.

38
. Ibid.,

39
.
39.
Ibid., back cover.

40
. I am fully aware of how loaded, problematic, and undefined a word like “real” is in this context. I will address some of these issues below, but I hope it goes without saying that I have been problematizing this term all along through my criticisms of subjectivist and objectivist epistemologies.

41
. Chancey Hare Townshend,
Facts in Mesmerism, with Reasons for a Dispassionate Inquiry into it
(London, 1840).