It's All In the Playing (38 page)

I told the camera crew about my earrings. They looked at my ears. They looked up at the sky. They looked at one another, shrugged, and we got the shot. When it was over, John Heard said, “What is it with you and your ‘guides’ anyway?” The script girl’s knee returned to normal and the camera batteries were recharged.

   The return to Lima was different from our original arrival from the United States. We had not known that the American Embassy had been bombed until someone in Los Angeles told us, and the lilting tropical climate that met us now seemed to belie the fact that a curfew was still on. Of course we were staying in the Miraflores district at the El Condado Hotel, which diverted one’s attention from any kind of trouble.

They had a nice suite for me with a Jacuzzi and a television set, which pointed up clearly how out of communication we had been for so long in Cuzco.

One of my primary pleasures became breathing with ease once again. My rapid heartbeat and blinding-swift altitude headaches were gone. Instead, at sea level my sore throat developed into a full-fledged flu. Still, I could drink two pisco sours and not be drunk, and the sun shone all day.

The mood of the crew changed. They were more comfortable on some levels, yet on others they were alarmed at how swiftly and easily they returned to old habits that city life naturally promulgated: too much booze and rich food, excessive shopping, and a demanding rhythm that tended to dissipate the inner peace they had partially achieved in the mountains. There was only a day-and-a-half layover before departing for the States, so some elected to stay longer. We shopped, went to the Gold Museum, sat on the terrace watching ourselves and Peruvian life go by, and thought, each immersed in what
we had learned or what we somehow couldn’t bring ourselves to learn. Every individual on the picture had experienced a drama, a novel in itself, the lessons not quite clear yet. And so we avoided discussion as we encountered each other drifting in and out of the restaurants and shops in the Latin quarter.

We gave John a big fortieth-birthday party in a dinner club with dancing and elaborate interior decorations. He was sweet, embarrassed, and very sober. We exchanged gifts and I thanked him deeply for being so superb at interpreting David. He thanked me for insisting that he play the part.

I did my press conference relating to the UFO controversy. Straight-faced I said I was sorry that anyone in this beautiful country should feel I was a Nazi. I had been called many things, but never that. Then I said something about the extraterrestrials.

“If they had come,” I said, “they never would have cast their pearls before swine. They would only have imparted higher knowledge to a civilization which could have comprehended it, such as the Inca.”

The press thought that made sense somehow. Actually, they were far more interested in whether I thought I had been a reincarnated Inca princess. I said, why not? I’ve played all kinds of parts.

I went to the beach, to a nightclub, and to as many restaurants as I could fit into two days. Sometimes I went with people from the company and caught up on show business gossip. But most of the time I was still preoccupied with the passing of Gerry. I tried to call Bella to see what was going on, but I couldn’t reach her.

And before I knew it, all the people who had made up the professional group interpreting my life story were on their way back to the home base of a profession that would send them out to another far-flung dot on the planet to do it all again with somebody else who believed he or she had something to say.

Simo and I stayed behind. I had people to talk to about Unidentified Flying Objects. It wasn’t long though before I believed they should be called IFOs: Identified Flying Objects.

Chapter 24

   O
ne of the most interesting people I spoke with who claimed to have extraterrestrial contact was Vitko Novi, a Yugoslavian gentleman of about seventy-five years of age. He was a retired businessman who said he not only enjoyed going to his office every day to dabble, but also was devoting his life now to writing about the UFO contacts he had had.

He came to my hotel room with slides and Spanish translations of his books. We sat together with Jenny Gago, an actress who played Maria (the psychic) in my film. Jenny translated and did not seem at all surprised at what Vitko was saying. I recorded what he told me.

“My first encounter was on March 10, 1960,” he said. “Late one night, while I was working at a power plant high in the Cordillera Blanca, the power went out. I went to a window and looked out. The night was bright even though there were no lights. I went outside. There, hovering over the power plant, was an oblong craft emitting light so bright that I couldn’t look up into it for long. I didn’t feel afraid, because there was a worker with me who said he had seen craft like it many times.
Together we watched the craft descend silently until it landed. I stood transfixed as two very tall human-looking men, with shoulders that sloped more than usual, exited from the craft. They were dressed in tight bodysuits made of fabric that was shiny, almost like the wet skin of a seal. It was all one piece with very fine threads. And they wore no shoes because the bodysuits covered their feet.

“Their faces looked as though they were combinations of many races, a mixture of coloring and features I had never seen before.

“The two beings peacefully walked toward me, sat down, and materialized a fire to warm us up in the cold night!”

As Vitko talked he was calm and matter-of-fact. No matter how many stories of this kind I heard I was always astonished, slightly suspicious, and yet somewhat envious because nothing like that had happened to me. Vitko said that at this point he looked into the fire, with the two space beings beside him, trying to give himself time to get sorted out. He said he wasn’t frightened and didn’t want to leave but was hardly able to credit what was happening. Then one of the beings spoke to Vitko in his own language. Vitko quoted the gist of what they said for Jenny, who translated to me.

“We sense in your cellular structure that you are rejecting us,” said the spokesman. “That is your right. But our greeting to you is ‘all for others.’”

Vitko didn’t know what he meant.

“We mean,” said the being, “that we want nothing for ourselves. That is our creed where we come from. We do everything for others.”

Suddenly the two beings touched something on their bodysuits, and Vitko saw them hanging in the air. Then they moved themselves around in various directions. He said it was like looking at James Bond. But they explained that when they reversed the positive ions in the
atmosphere around their suits, they could control their movements by degravitating themselves.

Vitko said the two beings gave him a pyrotechnical display of degravitation and then came back to earth and sat beside the fire. Vitko said he was ready to believe he was going crazy, but his friend was comfortable and laughing because he was used to them.

As Vitko told me his story, I remembered the David character in my own book and screenplay—a composite of several people who had had their own space being contacts. How prevalent was this stuff? Was it true or did they simply want it to be true? Vitko flashed his color slides from a projector onto the white wall of my hotel room. I was fascinated by the pictures. I had seen so many like them. The craft (saucer-shaped) hung over the mountains above a power plant below. Were they real or somehow faked? And were there actually beings inside? So many people around the world were relating stories similar to this. What did it mean? Were they all making them up?

Vitko told me that the beings said they were from a star called Apu and had been visiting the Andes for centuries. They were legendarily known as “angels” because they could make rain (by manipulating the negative ions in the atmosphere) and they were very sought-after as healers.

“The Apunian angels,” said Vitko, “often landed their craft and called for the sick and maimed to come aboard. Each of their patients always returned to their homes cured.”

“How did they do it?” I asked. “Explain it to me.”

“Well,” said Vitko, “they said they disintegrated the diseased cells and then reintegrated them again with Divine energy. When they first learned to reduce the atom they learned how body atomic structure works too. They said we are all capable of doing this if we could understand and utilize the component parts of the atom,
but that requires a knowledge of the Divine energy, the understanding of the physics of the soul, and a willingness to accept that each being in the cosmos is made up of that energy. He said if we feel hate or fear for ourselves or others, we will not be able to do it.”

This was the spiritual technology that I was hearing more and more about. It was as though we were on the threshold of understanding that the success of outer technology depended entirely on the success of understanding our inner technology. It felt as though we humans were spinning close to the center of our own energy transformation if we’d just allow ourselves to embrace the potential. We were in a metamorphosis because we had exhausted our old mode of consciousness. The winds of change were upon us; everybody could feel that. So why wouldn’t those winds bring higher and more aware beings to help us raise our own awareness of the infinite potential we possessed.

Some of the beings were in physical bodies, and came in craft of various kinds; and some were without physical bodies, such as those using mediums as instruments. In either case the message to us always seemed to be the same. We defined ourselves by our limitations and fears. We experienced poverty because we had not yet understood that we deserved abundance as a matter of right. And the creation of abundance was within our conscious and
aware
control, and could, if we really wanted it for everybody, be created. We created wars and killing and greed for ourselves because we were deeply afraid that otherwise we would be deprived: of sustenance, of freedom—of many things. The result of fearful consciousness was that most of our energies were channeled into destructive enterprises. The most amazing human truth of all was that killing and the destruction of life actually still existed as part of our human experience.

By this time in my life Vitko’s story of space teachers was not something I felt inclined to scoff at. In fact,
more than ever I wished that his encounter had happened to me.

“The beings asked me if I would like to go aboard their craft,” Vitko went on. “So I did. To tell you the truth, I thought they were spies or something, so I was curious even though I was afraid.”

Vitko and his co-worker followed the two beings into the craft.

“I noticed,” he said, “that when they walked ahead of us, the grass didn’t bend under their weight. When I asked them why not, they said they would harm nothing on this gentle earth and took great pains to control their weightlessness.”

Vitko said the room he entered was round, with no angles. There were soft fat sofas to sit on.

“Immediately,” he went on, “I had a strange sensation of degravitation. My body had weight, but something inside of me felt lighter. Suddenly I saw that I was surrounded by screens. The two beings asked me if I wanted to see my life enacted in front of me. I didn’t know what they meant. Immediately, before my eyes on the screens surrounding me, I saw the story of my life. I saw everything. My birth, my childhood, scenes that I remembered that affected me deeply. It was incredible. I saw myself acting out events that had actually occurred in my life. In fact, everything I
thought
showed on the screen as well. I was watching my life in emotional Three-D.”

Vitko stopped talking and turned to me.

“I found it very disturbing,” he said. “I didn’t understand anything. So I was sure they were sophisticated communist spies. I went to the police. I told the sergeant what had happened: everything, along with my deduction that the craft carried enemy spies. The sergeant said I was crazy and should seek psychiatric help. I knew I would have to pursue it alone after that.”

Vitko then outlined how his life became a series of encounters.

In the next year he had several more visitations. On June 4, 1960, he was hiking alone in the Sierras when the craft landed again. He was afraid because he knew he had reported them to the police. But they were not upset at all.

“You must pursue your truth however you wish,” they said.

And the same two beings invited him in. There were books, magazines, flower petals, herbs, and various other paraphernalia of human life, along with a cap made of rabbit fur. One of the beings held the cap up and, while shaking his head sadly, said, “You still take the life of another being.” Vitko said he felt so embarrassed and sat back on one of the fat sofas. The screens went on again. This time he saw a retrospective of the natural earth changes that had occurred in that part of the world. He said he saw the formation of the Andes Mountains plus the construction of the original city of Cuzco. The city was built by the people of Apu and the construction was accomplished with degravitational techniques to lift the monstrous stones. The original design of the city was patterned after a flying butterfly. There were no angles.

Then he saw Cuzco destroyed by a cataclysm—a cataclysm that also destroyed and re-formed part of the Andes. It disturbed and affected the atmosphere in space so much that extraterrestrial craft had difficulty landing.

By now Vitko was afraid that what he had seen was real. He left the craft.

Two months later, on August 21, 1960, he encountered the craft again. They invited him in, and the beings discussed their past incarnations. One of them had had 504. They discussed the family unit on Apu and revealed that there really was no such thing. A child was born into the family of the ALL; all loved and nurtured equally. There was no feeling of proprietorship. The discussion of
the family led to a problem that Vitko was having with his daughter.

“You are possessive of your daughter,” the beings gently chided him. “You have the right to those thoughts and feelings, but it would be better for you to share the love of all beings—that is your noble mission of birth.”