Belgian UFO wave 1989-1992 – Part 3

The 30-31 March 1990 UFO chase

One of the most publicized aspects of the Belgian UFO wave was the 30-31 March 1990 F-16 chase of an unknown radar return. This event constituted an important part of the Belgian wave, as it provided an array of good quality data from multiple credible sources about what was going on in the sky. Furthermore, this led to further cooperation between the Belgian military and the SOBEPS civilian UFO organization. Also, the personal involvement of the military in charge, the then Colonel De Brouwer (who became Major General a few years later) continued through a friendly collaboration with the SOBEPS for a number years afterward. But most importantly, it was further confirmation that whatever was happening, it could not be explained away, and thus re-confirmed the anomalistic nature of the phenomenon.

To understand better the context of that night of March 1990, a general overview of the UFO chase is presented. It is followed by a first assessment of the Belgian UFO wave based on the available data, including the observation spikes previously presented. But first, here is the general chronology of events from the SOBEPS book, in the chapter written by Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991 (with page numbers in parentheses):

On 30 March, around 2300, the Belgian police was called by an off-duty police officer, who observed with his wife and another couple UFOs in formation seen in the night sky in the area general area of Wavre. It was, once again, the “unplanely” appearance and behavior that caught their attention. The objects were described as moving in an unpredictable way, with lights appearing and disappearing, and changing color to include white, blue, red, and green. The witness then called the Beauvechain military base and at that point the lights became slower, and maybe stationary, and turned into a red color. The witness was told to contact Glons NATO radar station instead, as Beauvechain was on minimum manning because it was the weekend, which he did (p. 180). Wavre is about midway between Brussels and Namur, while Glons is about 15 km north of Liege (see map).

At 2305, the Belgian military, in turn, called the police to get confirmation that the call received from the witness was indeed corroborated by the police itself (p. 226). This procedure was established in the weeks prior to the events, given the costs involved in sending airplanes investigating any unknown.

At around 2315, two police officers arrived and met the witnesses. These officers were not only able to confirm the first observation by seeing the lights in the sky, but they also saw two more UFOs with white lights disposed in a triangular formation. Then, an aircraft passed above the UFOs and its lights moved away from each other and turned red. Once the aircraft passed, the lights took back their original formation and color (p. 181). Around the same time, the Glons NATO radar station had a first return with an unknown (p. 226).

At 2325, the police asked other units by radio if they could confirm the observations too, and two other teams (with two and three officers, respectively) corroborated the first observations by visual observations (p. 182-184). The military was then informed by the police that they had more than one visual confirmations, with a total of eight police officers (one off-duty) and three civilians from three different locations.

At 2349, a second ground radar station further west had also a return from an unknown, at Semmerzake (p. 226). Semmerzake is just south of Ghent (please see map).

At 2356, the Belgian military decides that it had enough evidence to warrant further investigation, and two F-16 fighter jets were ordered to scramble and identify the unknown (p. 226). At 0005 (31 March), the two F-16 fighter jets took off (p. 226).

 

From 0007 to 0054, 9 interceptions in total were attempted by the F-16. There were three brief combat radar locks-on from the F-16, which in each case caused a swift change of behavior from the UFO. No visual contact was ever made by the pilots (p. 226). The police on the ground, however, was in constant communication with the Glons radar station to provide them with visual descriptions of what they were seeing during the chase.

• At 0013, the first combat radar lock-on occurred, but in 3 seconds the object went from 150 to 970 knots (280 km/h to 1890 km/h) and dropped from 9000 to 5000 feet. A few seconds later it returned to 11000 feet and quickly to down to ground level (p. 227).

• At 0030, there is the second lock-on for 6 seconds; the combat radar system very briefly showed a jamming signal on the in-flight screen (p. 227). At the same time, police officers and witnesses on the ground saw the lights of the F-16 turning around in the sky, while most of the UFO lights went off (p. 227).

• At 0037, the last lock-on happened, lasting only a few seconds (p. 227).

• Between 0045 and 0100, the fighter jets still tried several interceptions again, but to no avail (pp. 227-228).

• At 0102, the F-16 fighter jets returned to their base (p. 228).

• At 0106, the police informed the military that a similar observation was made at Joidoigne (p. 228). Joidoigne is about 20 km east of Wavre (see map).

• At 0130, witnesses (including police officers) reported that the last lights in the sky were gone (p. 186).

• Beyond the police officers and the civilian witnesses already noted, at least 7 other reports confirmed the observations of the night (pp. 197-190).

After these events, the Belgian military launched an investigation to understand what happened. This led to the drafting of the Lambrechts Report (from the name of the author, a Major in the Belgian military), and an English version is available here. The Belgian military could not find an explanation to what happened. In June of the same year, the Report was publically released and the Belgian military made all their data available for further analysis by SOBEPS and whoever is interested in studying them.[1]

Human and human-made sensing

The Belgian UFO wave, like any such wave, was made of many events that bring a wide array of data that are baffling. The reports from the observation spike days brought a multitude of data that cannot be easily collated into a coherent picture. There were many different shapes observed, different light arrangements and colors, sometime with noise other times without, etc. The UFO chase ended up raising more questions than producing answers. So, is there any pattern that emerged from these strange events?

One pattern emerging from all this is that what the human senses were able to capture and what the human-made sensors recorded is divergent. The Lambrechts Report underlined two particularly interesting aspects of the UFO chase. One is that “Though speeds greater than the sound barrier have been measured several times, not any bang has been noticed. Here also, no explanation can be given”[2], and “Though the different ground witnesses have effectively pointed out eight points in the sky, the radars have registered only one contact at the same time. The points have been seen at a distance one from another sufficient for them to be distinguished by the radars also. No plausible explanation can be put forward”[3].

On the 30-31 March UFO chase, the SOBEPS did some analysis of its own, and a few interesting points emerged there too. The Glons radar station had an unidentified between about 2315 and 0020, and it was moving from East to West in a relatively straight line at an average speed of 41 km/h, between Brussels and Mons. The Semmerzake radar station confirmed these tracking from Glons (Meessen, 1991b: 364-365). The Belgian military officer in charge of the UFO investigation, De Brouwer, wrote in the SOBEPS book that in spite of having a lock-on on their combat radars, the F-16 avionics did not provide a location for what the radars were sensing, as it should normally do, raising the question as whether the jets were chasing electromagnetic perturbations. Yet, in light of the numerous eye witnesses’ reports, it appeared to him that the F-16s were indeed chasing something real (De Brouwer, 1991: 489). 

Hence, we had a situation where:

1.       The ground witnesses and fighter pilots were dealing with several objects with fast and unpredictable behaviors, while ground radars had a return from something moving slow and in relatively straight line.

2.       The fighter pilots did not see anything visually, and their on board equipment were showing something that produced a return (which guided their pursuit) and yet without identifying any actual physical location for it.

3.       The witnesses noted that the phenomenon continued after the jets were gone around Joidoigne, which is further east of the UFO chase events while the UFO was tracked as moving west towards the French border.

4.       The discrepancy between the ground radar stations and the human witnesses actually happened before. On 21 December 1989, the Belgian Ministry of Defense released a public statement that the visual observations reported to the police did not correlate with radar tracking, and F-16 patrolled the areas in question and had no contact with unknown objects, (the Ministry of Defense confirmed that there were no AWACS, US stealth aircrafts, or military drone in the areas where reporting was coming from (Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991: 126)).

The photographic evidence was overall quite similar in terms of what the human eye could see and what was captured by cameras. Many witnesses thought they had a good shot at what they were seeing, and yet the picture never turned out with anything more than vague lights in the sky. Here are some of the comments from the various witnesses who took pictures: the picture taken were incorrectly developed afterward (Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991: 94); the Camcorder inexplicably did not filmed while the witness thought he was filming (Ibid, 98); the pictures taken showed nothing that could be seen after being developed (Ibid., 99); the film showed an indistinct white light, like a distress flare (Ibid., 98); an imprecise picture was taken, but one could see anything he wanted into it (Ibid., 106).

One of the most interesting photographic events of the wave happened at Trooz, near Liege, on 11 December 1989 (second spike of observations) to a family (three adults and the two teenage kids) who saw a white and powerful but strange light at around 1745. After watching it for several minutes, two of the adults decided to drive to get a closer look. They watched it for another 15 minutes from a high point. Then, they decided to go back home. But the lights came back, and they could see a powerful “search light” in front of an object with two with lights at the extremities showing a triangular shaped object, with a row of red lights at the back. The object was by then right above the house, at an estimated altitude of 50 meters. One of the adults took three pictures of the object before it quickly moved away.  And yet, once the film was developed it was showing only a white vapor on one picture, a trace of something on the second one, and nothing on the third one (Ibid., 84-85)!

These numerous discrepancies between what the human senses could capture and what human-made devices could record, led many pseudo-sceptics quickly to conclude that all this was simply mass delusion, and wishful thinking. And as usual, the pseudo-sceptics did not bother trying to explain how several minutes of up close observations from many witnesses, from different locations, oftentimes not knowing each other could have produced a “mass delusion” (let alone detailed military investigations on the UFO chase). Once more, the anomaly remains an anomal

 

Yet, these events remain a full-fledge anomaly, however, only if one key implicit assumption is maintained, namely that reality exists only in one unified strata. Science has long proven that this assumption is actually wrong. For instance, the human eye can only see the visible spectrum of light but this does not prevent other forms of light to exist in the ultra-violent and infrared spectrum, each requiring its own specialized piece of equipment to detect. At the more complex level, one can think of the completely different stratum of molecular biology, bio-chemistry, physiology, living being behaviors, and ecology as representing as many different layers of a same reality that cannot be reduced to one another. Multiple layers of reality co-exist and they require their own sensing and analysis to detect and understand.

 

 

Based on the large amount of evidence collected through the Belgian UFO wave, it is reasonable to say that “something” happened. Yet, that “something” had both a physical dimension that could be recorded by cameras and radars, and another dimension that could be captured by the human mind. The recordings from cameras and radars were analyzed extensively by the SOBEPS, the Belgian military and others, and the main conclusions are that it was something real but ephemeral, elusive, and possibly not even physically “hard” (De Brouwer, 1991: 489). Yet, what the human mind captured during the Belgian wave was described at length but it remains relatively under-studied. It is where an analysis from the perspective of parapsychology and parasociology might actually shed some light on what happened.

Notes

[1] Interestingly, the SOBEPS leadership visited the Glons radar station at the invitation of the Belgian military on 22 January 1990 (Bougard & Clerebaut, 1991: 143).

[2] From the English translation of the report found at http://www.ufoevidence.org/documents/doc408.htm

[3] Idem.

 

References

Bougard, Michel and Lucien Clerebaut. (1991). "Chronique d'une vague". In SOBEPS, Vague d'OVNI sur la Belgique: Un dossier exceptionnel. Bruxelles: SOBEPS, pp. 51-296.

De Brouwer, Wilfried. (1991). " Postface".  In SOBEPS, Vague d'OVNI sur la Belgique: Un dossier exceptionnel. Bruxelles: SOBEPS., pp. 483-492.

Meessen, Auguste. (1991b). "La détection radar". In SOBEPS, Vague d'OVNI sur la Belgique: Un dossier exceptionnel. Bruxelles: SOBEPS., pp. 351-396.

Psychoanalysis and parasociology

The modern and systematic study of the so-called paranormal phenomena has its roots in the 19th century spiritualist movement. Many consider the foundation, in Britain, of the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in the 1880s was the first step. A large number of the SPR members (and sympathizers), as well those from similar organizations created around the world in the following years, were mostly motivated by a quest to prove the immortality of the soul. Their emphasis on medium séance and haunting activities is therefore not surprising. Those who are nowadays interesting in researching haunting are very often referring to the body of literature created or inspired by the SPR, and remain motivated by the belief in the immortality of the soul (even if they may not be willing to admit it).

In spite of the great care deployed in conducting empirical research, the overall psychical research was, and still is, very problematic due to the fact that their fundamental assumptions was essentially improvable. The epistemological foundation of psychical research was based on two inter-related principles. The first one is that if information only available to a deceased person is obtained by a medium, then it is considered as evidence pointing towards the immortality of the soul. The second one is that if there is physical activity (noise, footsteps, knocking, human-shaped moving shadows, etc) near were a person died or was interred, then it is also evidence considered as pointing towards the immortality of the soul. In other words, ghostly activities are assumed to be caused by the spirit of a deceased individual.

Both these principles, however, are actually fundamentally flawed. As research in remote viewing has clearly shown, information about something than only a deceased person would have known can indeed be accessed without any “involvement” of a spirit or ghost. Hence, accessing information cannot be used as evidence of the immortality of the soul simply because the actual source of such information is not known, and the use of mediums to talk or sense spirits is in no way necessary. If fact, an argument can be made that mediums are simply practicing a non-visual form of remote viewing by self-deluding themselves into having a spiritualist communication, while in fact they are simply neutralizing their consciousness—a key enabler for ESP effects. As well, the Jungian hypothesis of the Absolute Knowledge could be invoked to explain every single medium-related gathering of information through paranormal means.

In a similar way, research on PK (like the Philip Experiment) and RSPK has shown that living human beings can create all these physical manifestations, and that invoking a non-human entity is not necessary to explain these phenomena. If anything, it is the livings’ unconscious belief in ghosts that seems to be the key variable for such manifestations.

It is not surprising that already in the 1920s, researchers intuitively knew that the psychical research approach was leading to a dead end, and motivated the creation of scientific parapsychology by people like J.B. Rhine. It is safe to say that the parapsychologists’ rejection of psychical research was fully vindicated by the 1980s.

The above is a very brief, but standard, description of the paranormal research intellectual history. However, there is an important component of that history that is often overlooked: the departure from psychical research was not only the fact of quantitative and positivist scientists like J.B. Rhine, but also due to the emergence of psychoanalysis as an accepted scientific discipline.

The central role of psychoanalysis in studying the paranormal

In reviewing yet another older book, there are a number of interesting issues about the study of the paranormal that emerged, and that can be of great importance for parasociology. The book is:

Fodor, Nandor. (1959). The Haunted Mind: A psychoanalytical look at the supernatural. New York: Garrett.

It is interesting to note, for instance, that Sigmund Freud had an interest for the paranormal since the early days of his career, although the full extent of this interest was only revealed two decades after his death. Carl Jung’s interest was well-known relatively early in his career. A number of analysts followed him afterward, like Eisenbud and Fodor. The fundamental thrust behind this interest, in the case of psychoanalysts, was that many of them experienced ESP and synchronistic events in the course of their practice.

For any analyst, it is important to be mindful of the phenomena known as transference and counter-transference, where the patient might become dependent on what the analyst is thinking, and conversely the analyst might become too emotionally attached to their patient. For the analysts, the experience of ESP events can be interpreted as either being too close to a patient so that both come to think alike or it is a genuine psi effect. For them, it was important to find out which interpretation was the most accurate. It appears that both can occur concurrently. There are many instances where the patient (or the analyst) could not objectively have known the information, but the emotional proximity tends to enhance such ESP activity. Given that emotional proximity can be both an enabler and a proxy for ESP, this makes such research challenging. It is therefore not surprising that those who thirst for clear-cut answers focused almost exclusively on quantitative laboratory-based research. In the end, the issue of emotional proximity was found to be an important issue in the laboratory too, through what is known in parapsychology as the experimenter’s participating in the psi effects.

This is an important reminder for any researcher interested in psi. Not only those who do research on haunting and poltergeist (and UFOs) can be unconsciously full-fledge participants in causing psi effects to occur, but they tend to be offended at the very idea that they and the witnesses are probably more important to study than the physical manifestations. Fodor, although not having UFOs in mind, wrote a very crisp passage on this issue: “Up to that time, psychical research was a singularly one-sided scientific pursuit. The researchers, no matter how intrigued by the mysteries of the supernormal, felt they were upholding the strictest scientific standards by investigating the reported phenomena exclusively. To them, any questions of the mental background or personality of a medium under examination or of a family experiencing a haunting were beside the point—a distracting influence of no bearing on the reality of the psychic event” (p. 6). Fodor wrote this in the 1950s, referring to events that occurred in the 1930s. It is fascinating to see that 80 years later little has changed.

The psycho-dynamics of paranormal research is also quite interesting and important. It is known that ETH UFO researchers have ignored many witnesses reporting cases not fitting the “typical” ET encounters. The same can be said of ghost researchers. Based on my own personal observations of such “research activities”, I can also add that who speaks during a field research has a lot of impact as whether the information will be retained or not. In other words, the internal “pecking” order plays a major role on determining which data that will be reported or excluded. Similarly, the anticipation as whether it is a “haunting” or a “poltergeist” will also determine what is reported. I noticed that during a “haunting” research, “poltergeist” data would be ignored. Lastly, if someone high in the pecking order is performing fraud, or at least is somewhat cheating, that person might not be denounced and the fraud not reported because it would go against the “mood” of the group.

As Fodor noted about a medium that he saw committing a fraud, “…stating it publicly against a crowd of believers was a dangerous thing. Negative evidence must be absolutely overwhelming when pitted against the will to believe, while positive statements are accepted without questioning. Moreover, the moment you permit even the suspicion that you are beginning to doubt to enter a medium’s mind, you are no longer allowed to get near her. I had caught Mrs. Perriman before, walking in the dark and breathing down my neck. I said nothing because I realized that any statement against her would have compromised me.” (p. 251). I wonder how many UFO and other paranormal research have suffered from this group thinking syndrome.

As noted in a previous post, fraud and group thinking are important elements to understand how genuine psi effects can be produced. The key is to investigate the psychological reason behind fraud and group thinking. As Fodor noted, “there is no mystery behind the mercenary exploitation of human gullibility. In a few cases, the trumpet [instrument used in medium scéances for allegedly allowing the dead to speaking to the living] may be the best vehicle for the medium to display the rare gift for obtaining supernormal information about the living and the dead. For some idiosyncratic reason, the trumpet and a ventriloquistic dissociation may be the best means for meaningful telepathic, clairvoyant, and prophetic utterances.” (p. 258).

Collective psi events

Fodor, through the course of his life-long research on the paranormal, developed an interesting concept for parasociology that seems to have been forgotten by most parapsychologists: the family gestalt and by extension what he called the “racial gestalt”. Fodor found that there are certain paranormal events that cannot be explained by solely focusing on an individual mind. In some cases, a serious explanation has to encompass an entire family mindset and can only be understood as idiosyncrasies specific to a family (this view can be considered as a precursor to what will be found later by researchers dealing with RSPK). Fodor gave the example of “[…] the death coaches driven by ghost drivers, and many other human, semi-human, and animal apparitions that in old English families are the heralds of impending death. They add ‘body’ to the Family Gestalt. The older the family, the stronger the Gestalt. Nebulous and ill-defined as it necessarily must be, the concept of the Family Gestalt unites a variety of ill-assorted phenomena of folklore with psychical research.” (p. 51).

Fodor also saw a Gestalt for larger groups. For instance, he wrote that “the Jews had a racial Gestalt for two thousand years. It has changed into a national Gestalt for the people of Israel, but not for those still living in the diaspora. The power of this racial Gestalt is well known to the world. For centuries the Jews tried or were forced to assimilate, and for centuries they resisted or had been rebuffed and were shut into ghettos and concentration camps.” (p. 53). Whether one agrees or not with Fodor’s interpretation, it is clear that the general notion of a collective emotional energy, which can lead to social psi effects, is interesting for parasociology.

It is also interesting to note that Fodor describes the Gestalt effect in ways that are similar to Sheldrake’s concept of morphic field. The longer the field is in place, the stronger it is (i.e. old families, and ethnic group with long shared history). Fodor actually used a metaphorical description of the family gestalt as ionized field. “If a statement of survival is meant by the event, it has a more significant bearing for the family that for the individual son. Continuance of the family as a collective entity regardless of the individual death might well be given a telekinetic emphasis. If we accept the splitting of the ring [every time an oldest son dies] as a genuine phenomenon, we automatically admit that the dynamic means are available at the moment of death for the dying. We may have a conception of the manner of its genesis if we consider death as an event similar to ionization. When an electron, a member of the atomic family, is shot out of its orbit (death), the energy discharged can be photographed as a trail of comet-like light. Ionization means that the air is rendered conducive of electricity.”(p. 48).

Older contactees

A short note to show that the “contactee” phenomenon predates the flying saucer era by at least 20 years. In October 1926, Fodor interviewed someone who claimed to be in telepathic communication with Mars, and that soon the Martians would communicate in clear with us (p. 260). According to that same man, “they [the Martians] want to teach us, to help us. They are far more ahead in civilization than we are. But we cannot expect miracles from them. They will not teach us more than we are ready for … There are different races on Mars, just as on this earth. The cultured ones do not differ much from us. But there are Martians who look like rats. I have been in contact with Mars for ten years. I wanted to leave them alone, but they would not let me. It is my mission to listen to them.” (pp. 264-265). This story has all the narrative structures of the ET stories of today. Clearly, the social and psychological narrative structures, rather than the content, are the key to understand the ET component of the UFO phenomenon.

Eric Ouellet ©2009

Review of François Favre’s Psi and Intentionality

This post is a review of a text by François Favre in French, entitled Psi et Intentionalité (Psi and Intentionality), available on his website at: http://www.sciencesphilo.fr/uploads/doc/psi_et_intentionnalite.pdf.

François Favre is a psychiatrist who wrote about psi and parapsychology since the 1970s. He approaches parapsychological topics from a philosophical point view. What I mean here is that he is asking tough questions about how parapsychology conceptualizes its own field of research, and tries to show the consequences of some serious logical flaws in parapsychological research. Favre, however, goes beyond critique and proposes some answers. In his text, Favre proposes a serious critique of parapsychology, but not the one that people are used to. He does not attempt to deny the existence of psi due to some alleged methodological flaw. Favre has no problem with the existence of psi. His problem, and I agree with him, is that parapsychology has no real definition of what psi is, and thus without having its central concept fully defined it cannot be fully effective in studying it.

Rhine’s terminology at the source of the problem

Without using the word, Favre bases his critique upon the notion of phenomenology. Reality, at first, is what I am feeling and it is what I project my mind into (this is the concept of intentionality from Immanuel Kant). In other words, reality is what I am aware of, and to be aware of something I have to focus on something (i.e., to intentionally projecting my mind on something). This starting point for the study of psi may seem trivial, but it has important consequences for parapsychology.

If psi, as defined by Rhine, is the acquisition of information without any known physical means (ESP), and affecting matter without any known physical means (PK), then psi is simply a “meaningful coincidence”, as Favre underlines in his text. For instance, if I think about a table levitating, and I see a table levitating by itself, then it is a meaningful coincidence without a known cause. For Favre, this way of conceptualizing psi can only lead to a dead end. The underlying dynamics remain unknown, and cannot be known if it is only construed as meaningful coincidences. One can use Zener cards forever, collect tons of statistically significant data, and still not have a clue of what psi is. For Favre, this is a waste of time.

In the same vein, Favre considers that the notion a-causality is also flawed, and this is one of the key issues in parapsychology. Considering these meaningful coincidences as a-causal (i.e., simultaneous but without a direct cause and effect process) like Jung and many parapsychologists would say, is simply compounding the problem. For Favre, psi is instead “anti-causal”. What he means is that the intention of having the table levitating is fully realized in the mind of the individual before it actually occurs, and it is only after that the table “finds a way” to levitate. This is the exact opposite to cause and effect, because the effect comes first (in the mind of the psi agent) and then the cause is found afterward, hence his choice of anti-causal rather than a-causal.

Another point in his critique of the parapsychological definition of psi is that time is not something fixed and imperturbable, but something coming out of the imaginary. What he means is that for us (the humans), from a phenomenological standpoint, time can only be perceived if we have a past, a present and a future. Otherwise, we would be in the eternal present, and therefore we would never notice the passage of time. The past is always gone, by definition, and so we can only imagine it with the help of our memory; the future has not occurred yet and so we can only imagine it, based on what we know; on our experience. Furthermore, the notion of present is also quite problematic, as it is something that lasts just a fraction of a second (as short as the human mind is able to handle it). The implication is that we are always using our imagination to catch up with the present. The present, that fraction of second where we project our mind on something, is guided by our memory of the previous factions of seconds. This same use of imagination of the past is itself projected into imagining the future of what we want to accomplish. In other words, when one takes a phenomenological perspective about time, one can see that our imaginary capabilities are constantly used.

The consequence of this critique is that psi, given that it is anti-causal, it must be construed as an act of imagination, or more properly as an act of creation. Furthermore, as noticing the passage of time requires that the human mind is constantly using its imaginary capabilities, then human beings are constantly creating. From that point of view, therefore, psi has nothing paranormal, because ordinary human life is all about creativity. A mundane action or project is conceived in the mind first, and then we find a way to make it happen, and we constantly use our memory from the past (or experience) to project into the future what we are imagining as the end state of the action or project. Psi, therefore, is no different from any other mental processes. What we call psi effects, then, is something that we can imagine as possible (and truly believe it can be done at the unconscious level). This explains why psi is more common when people believe deeply in magic or the paranormal, and when they are in an altered state of consciousness (because it suspending our normal ways of thinking, and thus more is possible). For Favre, psi is simply a normal act of creation but with an outcome that is rare.

What Favre does not discuss, however, is why psi is rare. Based on my previous posts on the social nature of the human unconscious, it appears clear to me that any belief about what is possible and what is not depends on factors that are sociological in nature. In the so-called primitive societies, magic was not that rare because people were socialized to believe in it. It is rarer in our rationalist societies because we learn from a very young age that these things are not possible. So, psi can be redefined as an act of creation that transgresses Western social conventions. If there is no transgression of social conventions about what is possible and what is not, then it ceased to be construed as psi, and becomes something “normal” or “natural”. This also implies that if social conventions change, then what is psi will change also. An example that Favre gives that can easily be linked to the social dimension of psi is the issue of psychosomatic diseases and healing. Before the 19th century, in the Western world, it was caused by some curse or by miraculous healing. It was a mysterious form psi (to use nowadays terminology). In the 19th century, until quite late in the 20th century, it was a form of pathology (and thus no psi). In the end of the 20th century and early 21st century, the power of the mind over the human body is increasingly recognized by the medical sciences and could become recognized as a non-mysterious form of psi, and ultimately ceased to be seen as psi, but as normal aspect of the human mind. The key here is that the concept of psi in parapsychology is far from being objective and neutral. It is quite specific to our time and to the Western scientific culture.

This broader definition of psi also means that avant-garde artistic creations, which transgress social conventions by definition and express yet unperceived emotions, are also a form of psi. From that point of view, this provides also further justifications for considering the arts as the social-level counterpart to remote-viewing. It can be further linked to the notion that psi is something to be understood within the realm of trickster archetype, as proposed by Hansen (2001). Psi is about transgressing social norms, and it is exactly what the trickster does. This explains in great part the ongoing difficulty of parapsychology, psychic sciences, and paranormal research to be considered as “respectable” in spite of their most meticulous efforts to produce high quality data.

Further critique of parapsychology

Favre is also critical of the concept of ESP. For him, it is none sense to talk about perception with having sensations. What we call ESP is just the reverse of the usual perception process. The brain is sending the signal to the senses, rather than the opposite. It is even possible to go further and say that the brain is always sending a signal to the senses to make sense of what is perceived. I see something strange (signal from the senses to the brain); the brain sends a signal to the senses it is a shadow; the senses sends another signal to the brain about a seeing shadow. What distinguishes psi is the order in which it is done, and once again if it is transgressing social conventions or not. After all, what is the difference between a hallucination (e.g., I feel a presence but there is no one) and a psi effect (e.g., I feel a presence AND there is someone). Let’s repeat the same example in a society like China where the cult of the ancestors is still quite strong. Then both would be amalgamated into the same experience (I feel the presence of an ancestor; I feel the presence of a living person). If we add also the notion that time is, from a phenomenological perspective, part of the imaginary, then the act of creation (feeling a presence) can occur in any portion of the imaginary (the presence may be in the past or in the future). The lack of an actual person in the immediate is no proof that there was no psi effect in the example above, once we accept that psi is creative act with the imaginary realm that transgresses social conventions. It is certainly a key issue in remote viewing, as the images seen are not necessarily about today. The creative act of knowing about a place that is “impossible” to know about is also done in a context of drawing into the imaginary of time. As one can see, this view of psi can have immense methodological implications from parapsychology.

Favre considers that there is no communication of information in ESP, but it is rather symbolic intentions that are exchanged within the imaginary timelines discussed above (hence, it could be instantaneous, or be done across centuries). Instead of communication, he prefers to use the notion of communion where symbolic intentions are shared. I would add that this is very close to the notion of people being “in tune” with the social unconscious discussed in the previous post. Furthermore, he considers that telepathy is when the symbolic intentions of one person are not defined yet, that they are in a state of flux, and thus available for accepting someone else symbolic intentions. This notion is also applicable to collective ESP, according to Favre. When many individuals are lowering their individual symbolic autonomy, voluntarily or involuntarily (e.g. when they are sleeping), then they can be involved in a larger communion of symbolic intents.

Favre proposes also a critique of PK based on a similar analysis. For him, the notion of action at a distance is profoundly misleading because from a phenomenological perspective PK requires that the muscles be involved. For Favre, PK is actually a signal from the muscles to the brain, which is the reverse of “normal” action over matter, as the brain sends a signal to the muscles to act upon matter. In PK, this signal is what brain use to act creatively and essentially feel “as if” it is moving the object. Once again, the psi effect will occur if the social conventions about what is possible or not can be transgressed by the individual within the imaginary realm. This explains, again, why PK was described as something more common in certain cultures and eras. This view of PK implies, as discussed above, that it is not different from the normal process of psychosomatic diseases and cures, and therefore it is part of the normal functions of the human mind. Favre also sees PK as expressing symbolic intentions on physical systems. Although he does not state it as such, physical systems, as physicists are now aware, are also made of information not just energy and matter, and information is something symbolic.

Favre also considers that materialization and dematerialization is a form of PK when an object is symbolically taken from the imaginary realm (materialization) and conceptualized in the present time, or taken from the imaginary out of the present time (dematerialization) and moved away into a different time in the imaginary realm. Hence, there is no materialization or dematerialization per se, but a standard PK movement accompanied with a shift in the imaginary timeline. Metaphorically, it is similar to the cinematographic tricks done to simulate materialization/dematerialization in movies.

Some Comments on Favre

Of his own admission, some of his ideas are speculative, but they are logically consequent with his definition of psi and time, and they can explain quite a few problems with respect to understanding psi. At a minimum, this gives interesting working hypotheses to redirect some parts of parapsychological research. An obvious application of Favre’s analysis to UFO and UFO waves is to explain the cultural and social dimensions of the phenomena, and the “premonitions” of future, but yet imaginable, technologies. Another one is that it allows for collective and even social psi to occur. However, it implies also that there is psi agent(s) that are projecting the creative power while many others are allowing themselves to participate.

An interesting hypothesis would be to look at how the UFO “buffs” and the UFO “sympathizers” are interacting. This same hypothesis could also be tried on the same arrangement found between “ghost hunters” and “ghost hunting sympathizers”. Furthermore, one can construe the social role of UFO buffs, and ghost hunters as redefining what is possible from what is impossible, and hence easing psi effects to occur. If strange things in the sky are understood as aliens from outer space, it is much more acceptable (ironically) than construing it as PK materialization. The ETH, although there is absolutely no evidence of alien life, is easier to accept than PK materialization in spite of the existence of a wide array of evidence and sound research on PK. Same story for ghosts, it is much easier to accept (ironically too) to see the spirit of dead people than accepting that one’s own mind is behind the phenomenon. These assumptions are quite obvious to me when I look at the “paranormal culture”.

Copyright © 2009 Eric Ouellet

Psi, Liminality, Reality and UFOs

After reviewing quite a few texts, it is time for some reflecting. One of the greatest difficulties in dealing with a subject like parasociology is that a common notion such as reality cannot be taken for granted, which in turn raises a series of question about how proof can be established. What constitutes reality and what does not is the key question of ontology.

Phenomenological reality

The approach taken by a few parapsychologists (King 1996) is to define reality in a psychological way by emphasizing the notion of consciousness from a Kantian perspective. This approach implies that what is real is what the consciousness is aware of. Such an approach is not concerned, at first, as to whether what is perceived by the consciousness of one person (subjective reality) would be also perceived by others (objective reality). In fact, Immanuel Kant, rejected the idea that there is a strong distinction between subjective and objective reality. After all, for others to perceive something, they also need to perceive it subjectively at first, and then they must be able to communicate it to others. Furthermore, they also need to agree collectively that indeed something was perceived (and only then it becomes objective).

In the 20th century, other thinkers like Berger and Luckmann, went further and showed that reality is actually a social construct. This means that objective reality is only possible if people have similar prior socialization, norms, values, training, etc., so that they can agree that something is real. In other words, objective reality is a matter of pre-established social conventions. For instance, the rules for scientific validity in a discipline like chemistry will differ greatly from the rules found in cultural anthropology. These rules are based on the internal conventions respective to each scientific discipline. In turn, this means that science is itself a social construct where the notion of what constitutes reality is essentially based on a social convention. When the convention changes in a radical way, then we have a scientific revolution as described by Thomas Kuhn.

Sociologists of science like Bruno Latour, have shown also that the scientific conventions about reality are actually the ongoing stake of bureaucratic, institutional, political, and rhetorical debates and conflicts in and around the scientific community. Therefore, what is accepted as objective reality is also a matter of who is powerful and who is not (for instance having the support of large private enterprises, official recognition by the state, formal status in academia, etc.). The clear example of this is parapsychology, which has shown, using the rules and conventions found in many natural sciences, that psi as a statistically unexplainable deviation from chance is real. Yet, it is not a scientific community with powerful allies, so the objective status of its findings is constantly challenged. As one can see, the question as to what constitutes reality (implicitly understood as objective reality) is not a simple one to answer, and there is no consensus as to how reality should be approached.

To take an example closer to the project, typical UFO cases can easily explained by these concepts. For instance, someone sees a strange object in the sky. It is a subjective reality. Then, that person shares the story with several close friends, and they all agree that it must be true because the witness is someone trustworthy and not into telling tall tales. So it becomes objective reality. Then, a sceptic arrives and states that it must have been a plane because the sighting was made in the direction of an airport. It becomes a subjective reality. Then, an ETH ufologist comes along, and does some verification and found that there was no recorded plane in the sky at the time of the sighting. The overall status of the sighting is now fully contested, and no one can truly claim whether the UFO was an objective reality or not. Within the sceptic community, it is declared a misperception. In the ETH ufology community, it is declared a genuine UFO sighting (that could only be of extraterrestrial origin, of course). In the end, the witness remains alone with his/her sighting.

It is for this reason that a phenomenological approach is useful, as it tries at first to see the world from the point of view of the witness, before attempting to incorporate the sighting into a more objective explanatory structure. To approach reality through the idea that what is real is what the consciousness is aware of, is called phenomenology. This choice of using a phenomenological approach is even more necessary if one suspect that what was perceived was in part the product of a psi effect.

To continue the example above, if it is discovered that the witness was in an altered state of consciousness during the sighting, then what he/she saw might not have been seen by others, but he or she was not lying either. If the description of the object also seems to match symbolically an event happening a few days after the sighting, then the witness was exposed to some sort of external stimulus. Then, to declare the sighting either subjective or objective does not make any sense, as it was both objective and subjective. Without looking at world from the point of view of the witness (altered state of consciousness, symbolism in the sighting), then important elements of the explanation would be missed. Most sceptics and ETH ufologists fall in this trap of having only subjective or objective reality (this is known as ontological dualism in philosophy).

Psi and the paranormal as liminal events

An important concept often associated with phenomenology is the one of liminality. Liminality is an abstract concept to describe situations that are “out of time”, “out of the normal”, where everything seems temporarily indeterminate. Liminality implies also that such situations are at the threshold between two “normal”. Anthropologists have used this concept to describe rites of passage in tribal societies. There is the “normal” reality of an individual being a child in the tribe, and then there is the liminal reality of the rite of passage, and finally the “new normal” of being an adult within the tribe. A rite of passage is a short moment out of the normal time, oftentimes with members of the tribe performing rituals which give them a persona completely different from their “normal” life. As well, the individual going through the ritual has for a short time period an indeterminate social status (neither a child nor an adult).

Most paranormal and psi phenomena can be described as liminal events. They are “parallel” to normality because something “weird,” unusual, supernatural, etc., has occurred. Without the strange, “out of this world” qualities of the event, nothing could be noticed as there is no change to normality. Furthermore, after the event, the status of reality has to be changed so that the paranormal is now integrated into the new normal (e.g., a house becomes a haunted house, an object in sky becomes an extraterrestrial spaceship, some of my feelings are now telepathic impressions from people close to me, etc.). Otherwise, if the old normal is reinstated then no paranormal event occurred (e.g., construed as an illusion, misperception, dream, etc.), and this is independent from whether the person believe in the paranormal or not, as not all strange events are necessarily perceived as paranormal by believers.

In the case of psi effect, an additional form of liminality has been noticed by parapsychologists. Psi seems to be generated through the unconscious parts of the human mind. But to be noticed, it has to reach the conscious mind, otherwise we would never notice. Hence, a psi effect from a phenomenological perspective is something that occurs at the very moment when it reaches the conscious mind. It is intimately associated with this liminal zone between the unconscious and consciousness. Once it reached the consciousness, then it is no more psi; it is either information or a completed effect on matter. This explains why it so difficult to do remote viewing because it is essentially a difficult and exhausting balancing act between the raw information received unconsciously and the efforts of consciousness to make sense of it. This explains also why altered states of consciousness, which is a state liminal between the unconscious and consciousness, is such an important enabler to psi effects.

Liminality of social psi

If my theory about the fractal arrangement of the individual and collective unconscious is correct, then there should be something like liminality between the collective consciousness and the collective unconscious where social psi occurs. Certainly, anthropologists found liminality in small societies, particularly during rites of passage, which incidentally are also moments where magic is being performed by the shaman or sorcerer for the benefit of the entire community. But this is for small communities. What about large complex societies?

One can think of the Global Consciousness Project, where several random number generators (RNG) located across the planet are linked together and monitored by a network of computers to see if there are moments when there is sustained statistical deviations from chance. Such moment occurred when the verdict for O.J. Simpson was read live on TV during the criminal trial for the murder of his ex-wife and her boyfriend. Having so many people waiting for the verdict could have created a liminal moment, where a psi effect could be measured on a social scale. Yet the same effect was noticed by the Global Consciousness Project eight hours before 9/11 (Radin 2006), but there was no liminal moment associated with the event. Once again, the Global Consciousness Project is important and useful to understand social psi, but it is still articulated on the assumption that social psi is an accumulation of individual psi affecting RNGs (i.e., it remains based on psychological reductionism).

To be more effective, social liminality must be understood in sociological terms. Ginach’s text (2004), based on Zizek’s original idea, offers more interesting opportunities to identify social liminality. To borrow from Kottemeyer (1996) and Viéroudy (1977), but also implicit in Vallée (1992), such moments seem linked to shared feelings of insecurity, often perceived to be in relation to matters of national security. In such situations, collective identities are threatened.

For instance, the October 1973 UFO wave in the United States came at the conjunction of three important social events. The defeat in Vietnam was at that point consummated. The troop reduction was near completion and even the capacity of the United States to defend South Vietnam with aerial bombings in the North was denied by Congress in June 1973 with the Case-Church Amendment. The US was clearly a country that could be defeated by a smaller one. Then, of course, October 1973 was the Yom Kippur War where the Arabs had their first military success against Israel (Egypt in the Sinai), and this war was linked to the peak oil price, threatening the car-based American way of life. Finally, there was 20 October 1973, also known as the “Saturday Night Massacre”. President Nixon ordered the dismissal of independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox who was investigating into the Watergate Scandal, which also led to the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. For many Americans, their democracy appeared to sink into dictatorship.

From a sociological standpoint, this can be construed as a liminal moment. Fundamental social representations such as “the nation chosen by God to lead the Free World”, “the American Way of Life”, and “America the Mother of all Democracies” where seriously challenged, and where no more the same after the events of October 1973. A new normal came into force afterward, particularly perceptible in the arts with a much more cynical outlook about the American society, best illustrated by a string of movies like Three Days of the Condor (1975), and All the President's Men (1976). The hedonistic disco era emerged into the mainstream in full force around the same time as well. Although it is not to be construed according to the positivist epistemology with the naive hope of leading to a mathematical type of proof, sociological liminality can be shown through a social constructivist epistemology.

Copyright © 2009 Eric Ouellet

Reading Notes Various on the Collective Unconscious

Here are my notes about three articles from academic journals dealing with the concept of the collective unconscious. They are:

Furth, Hans G. “Psychoanalysis and Social Thought: The endogenous origin of society”. Political Psychology 13 (1992): 91-104.

Ginach, Michal. “War Against or For Terrorism?: The underlying fantasy behind the Israeli pattern encounter with the Palestinian”. Discourse of Sociological Practice 6 (2004): 1-12.

Hayes, Charles. “Black Hole: Jung meets astronomy”. Journal of Religion and Psychical Research 13 (1990): 3-14.


Furth’s article

His article proposes a review of psychoanalytical theory in view of linking it to sociological theory. It is interesting, and unusual, as most people who try to link the two realm are usually reductionists. They try to reduce sociological theory to individual psychology. Furth proposes that the individual’s unconscious is created in relation to social forces. The unconscious is shaped by the “acquisition of societal language, awareness of societal rules and roles, and most significantly, the formation of a mental world (fantasy, imagination, play). All these accomplishment are evidence of a spontaneous societal construction on the part of children. Social pretend play can be most obviously interpreted as the free creation of a symbolic microsociety” (p. 99)

And then again, he underlines that: “societal grouping, symbolic values and ideals, norms of conduct, role of ages and gender, strategies of domination/submission and cooperation, search for mutual respect, a conventional communication, all these are constitutive of a human society and at the same time, are precisely the psychological acquisition that spontaneously come to fore in the age period from 2 to 6.” (p. 99)

Based on the above, it possible to understand that “the personal unconscious as a part element within a more global psychological structure which I like to call the social, or better, the societal unconscious. Since, as we have seen above, children’s chief object in their mental construct is a societal world, primal repression of these constructions takes on a societal character.”(p. 101)

Another important point, he underlines that “Castoriadis (1987), [...] point to the unconscious nature of underlying our most basic social institutions. A societal unconscious is posited alongside the personal unconscious which Freud had described. And insofar as Freud establishes a science of the unconscious to explain its origin and functioning within the individual, this same discipline appear naturally as the preferred, if not the required, method to probe the unconscious forces within society. In sum, unconscious forces (in the Freudian sense) are said to operate within and shape the structure of our societal and political institutions [...]” (pp. 95-96).


Ginach’s article

His article is really about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but what makes it really interesting for my project are the methodology and the concepts he is using to understand the collective unconscious. His main argument is inspired by the analysis of Slavoj Zazek, who argued that the tragedy of 9/11 in the United States was “provoked” by the fantasy produced by Hollywood prior to 2001 about major terrorist attacks against the U.S. mainland. The American collective unconscious came to “wish” for such an attack, and it did occur. Ginach proposes a similar analysis about the Israeli society. This argument is not based on parapsychology, but rather as a sociological and political science application of psychoanalysis. (However, parapsychologists have noted that unconsciously “wishing” for something plays a role in creating psi effects). This type of research clearly fits in with what some call the “depth sociology”, as it involves looking into “people’s social unconscious to search for pre-axiomatic premises that structure their shared knowledge” (p.1).

Ginach also builds on the concept of imagined societies in Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities—Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983) (here a direct link can also be made with Castoriadis’ L’institution imaginaire de la société (Paris: Seuil, 1975)). The key here is that any society, to be self-recognized as being a society, needs to invent itself collectively (hence, the key role of nationalism and of social institutions). For instance, the “Canadian“ is a 19th century invention built on the prior invention of the “Canadien” (i.e., before the word “French” was added by hyphenation to the word “Canadian/Canadien”). The word “Québécois” is, similarly, another invention of the 1950s and 1960s. Before that the word was used only to identify people from the Quebec City. This shows how communities, to exist, need to invent themselves, and people to truly believe in it. What fills the content of these invented communities becomes unconscious overtime. It is shared through innocuous day-to-day activities, through literary work, governmental policies, artistic activities, etc. Parts of its content, however, remains collectively conscious under what is called the collective memory (i.e. historical events that are considered as particularly meaningful). The selection of which events is to be remembered, however, is itself a matter of political power. For instance, in English-Canada events related to the British presence were remembered actively until the 1970s, but were gradually changed for events that underline the multicultural nature of Canada. This shift was due to a major power shift among the elite from more conservative people to more liberal (particularly under Trudeau’s reign).

Ginach, quoting John Gillis states that “identities and memories are not things we think about, but things we think with ... they have no existence beyond our politics, our social relations, and our histories”. (p. 2). Then, he goes further in stating that this identity is both filled with myths, legends, and official history (p.3). This is an important point for parasociology. If the belief in the paranormal plays an important role in creating psi effects, then a collective acceptation of particular myths about the paranormal is an important indicator to identify.

From a methodological standpoint, studying the unconscious is always problematic because it is trying to find what is not said. Ginach proposes some useful methodological tips. He used interviews and focus group with ordinary people, as well as doing narrative analysis of newspaper to “decipher an underlying world-view behind this shared political discourse that may also fit the symbolic meaning of various political actions and strategies of Israel” (p. 1). He uses a psychoanalytic framework in trying to identify what Israelis refuse to know (p. 3). Lastly, he proposes that his “reading takes clues from what is not said, from the timing of Israeli actions and their meaning in relation to the particular situation at the moment, and from the Israeli form of response to Palestinian attacks” (p. 4).

From a parasociology standpoint this is useful. The same concepts and methodology can be used for assessing the collective unconscious of particular communities, and contrast such assessment with the particular personality found in RSPK (see Roll) and the psycho-social dynamics of RSPK (see von Lucadou). From a pragmatic standpoint, it would be probably easier to start with communities which have ongoing Sasquatch and other strange creature sightings. This is closer to RSPK than UFO waves are, as the latter tend to be much more unpredictable. I am starting to think that UFO waves have probably more in common with phenomena like the apparitions of the Virgin Mary, as they are more intense, more public, but also more short-lived. (Joaquim Fernandes and F. D’Armada. Heavenly Lights: The apparition of Fatima and the UFO phenomenon. San Antonio: Anomalist, 2005, is next on my list).

Hayes’ article

Hayes’ article is about comparing the knowledge in physics about black holes to the knowledge of the unconscious. The article is not terribly convincing, and the main topic is outside the realm of my project. However, he has an interesting paragraph about studying the collective unconscious that made me think.

“This is a journey of myth-telling, in which art, science, and psychology are combined into a phenomenon which may or may not exist in literal concrete terms, but which does exist as a matter of the human soul. It is spoken by the soul as a metaphor for what appears to be a collective disease – i.e., an image of ‘anxiety and feeling of one’s self being drawn into a void’. And in most severe forms, it becomes the absorption of the conscious life into deep unconscious recessions brought about trauma or repression of psychic content (archetypes) that are denied conscious acknowledgement and assimilations” (p. 4).

This quote, put in parallel with Ginach methodology, brings further refinement. Parasociology should look for actions that need to be done by a community to improve its lot, but that are not done, and that not doing it (and its implications) is not even discussed. A covert, not acknowledged and not act upon collective anger and frustration should be a key variable in communities experiencing collective RSPK-like events. So, instead of looking at collective actions as Ginach proposes, I should look into counter-productive collective inactions.

Key points to remember

The social, or collective, unconscious can also be studied as a more dynamic reality than what Jung proposes with his system of genetically grounded archetypes. As Furth shows, in the individual unconscious there are a number of constituting processes that can only be understood when put in direct relation with specific social constructs of a given culture or society. But the content of the individual and social unconscious reflect each other, as individuals are also partakers of society. But the correspondence between the individual and the social unconscious is not reducible to one another, nor is it symmetrical. The structure of the individual unconscious is in a way a mini social unconscious, set in a manner that reminds me of fractal structures (forms repeating itself but at a different scale, and while smaller structures are found in an imbricate way within the larger ones. Fractals are a very common structure in nature. Here are two graphic examples of fractal structures.





Then, if the individual unconscious produces psi, there are very good reason to think that the social unconscious is producing psi as well.

In the same line of thinking, some argue that the arts are what give us access to the unconscious of a society. As well, many future social forms are pre-figured in the arts. This is the argument put forward by Zizek (and used by Ginach). I would go one step further, and say that artistic work in a society is what remote-viewing is to individuals. Both draw and describe what they see, both seem to mix the present and the future, both are mixing up “analytical overlay” with the psi signal. The French historian of science, François Favre, stated that psi is actually a very common thing, even something banal. I must say that he may right after all.

To use Ginach’s approach, societies (like individuals) have an identity and the content of such identity informs us of both the collective consciousness and unconscious. The key, to access the social unconscious is to see what is not found in the consciousness (official discourse, common views, etc). Furthermore, collective actions or inaction can inform us of the actual content of the unconscious. For instance, at one point I was an industrial development officer and I went to a community in Northern Ontario that lost its main industry (a mine). The town was depressed and run down, and so were the people. They claimed to be proud people, but they unconsciously did everything to sabotage the possibility to access the funding program I was in charge of managing. Their action (or inaction) spoke a lot about the true self identity that is unconsciously lived by that community. Hence, from a methodological standpoint, Ginach’s approach appears sound to me. Once again, such an approach can be useful to identify “personality traits” of a community, and try to link it up with RSPK-like events.

Copyright © 2008 Eric Ouellet

Interim Summary and First Draft of an Analytical Model – Part 2

The ontological levels cannot be reduced to one another. For instance, physics is not of much use to study environmental ecosystems; biology is not effective to understand cultural variations; psychology is not very good at explaining social phenomena such as social classes, etc. Yet, ontological levels do interact, and at times overlap. Any attempt to provide an analytical model for the study of UFO waves, must also take into account such interactions. In fact, any scientific progress is likely to occur by exploring those interacting and overlapping dimensions of reality. So far, it is possible to envision the following linkages.

Physical and Biological ontological intersections

Following Budden here, it appears that exposure to electromagnetic fields (EMF) can cause biological hypersensitivity to EMF, as well as other diseases like cancer. EMF can also induce altered state of consciousness. Conversely, it is known that living organisms produce also their own, albeit weak, EMF. It is important to underline that the intersection works both ways, as the biological can influence the physical too. Hence, one should expect, at least in theory, that balls of light might also react to living organisms’ EMF. Although this is internal coherent with what is known, there is little empirical evidence available to support this. But this could constitute an interesting avenue for research.

Physical and Psychological ontological intersections

Following the work of Persinger, it is clear that EMF can have an impact on human perception. Research in parapsychology has also shown that the human mind can also have an impact electrical apparatuses like computers, light bulbs, and of course random number generators. Paul Devereux in his research on Earthlights (Earthlights (Wellingborough: Turnstone Press, 1982)suggested that they seem to react to human action and thought. Pierre Vieroudy came to the same conclusions while doing his empirical research on psi generated UFOs. This is certainly an important aspect of the UFO phenomena that the interaction between balls of light and the human mind can go both ways. This also opens the possibility that the actual content of UFO experience is in part objectively created by the human mind.

Another aspect of mind-over-matter, but more controversial, yet with some evidence to support it, is the issue of materialization. As the historian of science François Favre has shown, there was a lot of quality empirical research done in the early 20th century on materialization that is now almost completely forgotten. These materialization included also manufactured objects. Carl Jung in his book Flying Saucer discusses himself witnessing materialization without having any doubts about it. Research on poltergeist also discusses of cases of materialization. For instance, during the famous German poltergeist event of Rosenheim in 1967, bricks were seen coming out of a house while no bricks were found on the front lawn. As well, a police officer claimed that every time he was getting in the house he saw a bucket of water materializing in front of him.

This may appear outlandish, but it could explain the UFOs seen as having a manufactured shape and leaving geometric marks on the ground. There is some evidence to support this view, as shown above, and this would be more consistent with what is known of UFOs, if compared with proposals coming from the ETH.

Physical and Sociological ontological intersections

At a general level, it is possible to say that physical structures can create particular social forms. For instance, easy communications caused be flat terrain tend to create wider social networks of people and more complex social structure than mountainous terrain were the equivalent of insular mentality is commonly found (think of Switzerland). Conversely, people can change physical environment because it serves better it social organization. The Western way of adapting the environment is quite different from the aboriginal way in the Americas, and this difference is due to a difference in social structure and outlook.

There seems to be also an intersection in the psi realm. One can think about the Global Consciousness project lead by Dean Radin. A form of social psi (i.e., that cannot be reduced to individual psi) seems to affect random number generators. This was seen in a very spectacular way, starting 8 hours before the first attack against the World Trade Centre, on 11 September 2001. Carl Jung has also theorized about the collective unconscious, and other have speculated that it is a form of absolute knowledge that individual can access through psi-related means, but the absolute knowledge itself could only be understood as a social object. Others have speculated, but not research it, that UFOs might be a form social psi, gaining a temporary autonomy that cannot be understood in terms of individual psi effect. There is some evidence to support this, as some have noticed that UFO waves tend to occur where there are national or collective tensions, or just before (like the Iranian UFO incident of 1976 – similar to the Belgian one of 1989-1990, a few years before the Islamic Revolution). This would be also coherent with what is known.

This is one of the key contribution that parasociology can make in the study of not only UFOs, but other so-called paranormal events.

Biological and Psychological ontological intersections

At a general level, it is known that brain injury, for instance, can affect perceptions and consciousness. Conversely, it is also known that diseases and illness can be created by psychosomatic disorders. With respect to UFOs, one cannot exclude some report of strange illness and cure caused by aliens/UFOs. There has been research about psi healing, and psi-induced illnesses. Again, this would be consistent with is known.

Biological and Sociological ontological intersections

At a general level, it is known that the biological environment influences social structures. Fishing communities, for instance, are very different from hunter-gatherers’ societies. Social structures can also have an impact on biology like industrialism and environmental pollutions, but also advance capitalism causing epidemics of stress-related diseases.

There is also the Gaïa theory, which assumes that the Earth is a living organism too. By extension one can think that maybe this living organism is also producing psi effects that influence the collective unconscious. This is a popular New Age idea, but it has no supporting evidence. On the other hand, it is theoretically in line with the known interactions between the social and the biological, if it is embedded into a collective psi construct. This would be an interesting project for parasociology, but it requires firming up quite a bit the notion of collective psi. Yet, the implicit idea would be that UFOs are “psi reactions” of the biosphere to human activities. So far, the symbolic meaning attached to UFOs sightings seems pointing instead towards something internal to human affairs and not the issues of the biosphere.
Sociological and Psychological ontological intersections

At a general level, it is known that culture and socialization influence the type of personalities found in a given society. Conversely, so individual can have profound influence on social constructs (e.g., Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Picasso, etc.). The intersection is also possible in the realm of psi effect. For instance, the famous sociologist Max Weber implied that political leadership could be a form of psi (and this has not been noticed by many sociologists). Conversely, the “epidemic” of Gray alien visitations could be explained as individuals being “struck” by social psi.

There is very little research done so far on the intersections between individual and social psi beyond the groundbreaking work done by Carl Jung. But it is clearly in line with what is known. This is certainly the other key task of parasociology, with obvious application to UFO research, if successful in developing an empirical research agenda.

Interim Conclusions

When dissected as above, the UFO phenomenon is indeed complex, as not all the variables are known. Parasociology does not have all the answers, but it certainly focuses on the blind spots, the neglected areas of the UFO phenomenon. From this point of view, it is reassuring that the research agenda is indeed attempting to fill existing gaps in our knowledge, and that this gap has been identified by being as multi-disciplinary as possible.

The two priority areas are intersection between the physical realm and the social, and between the psychological realm and the social. In both cases, “science of the extreme” (i.e., the study of psi) appears more needed than normal social science (the “Newtonian” version of it).

It appears now too early to even propose a draft model, but some questions can be put forward. For instance, should I use “socialkinesis” instead of PK to describe the possible interaction between the social and the physical? Are UFO waves “Recurrent Spontaneous Social Kinesis”? Similarly, should I use “Extra-Sensorial Socialization” to discuss informational psi effect emanating out of the collective unconscious? I am not sure. But I know there is a need to develop a terminology that will help preventing reductionist attempts of considering social psi as simply an aggregate of psychological psi (a common problem already existing in normal sociology when engaging with normal psychologists and physicists and biologists).

Copyright © 2008 Eric Ouellet

Interim Summary and First Draft of an Analytical Model – Part 1

I have covered some ground in terms of what is out there. It is time to do a summary what is emerging so far. However, it is first important to underline an obvious conclusion: UFO and alien sightings might be single events, but from an analytical standpoint they are multi-level realities. Hence, to propose a meaningful summary and a first draft of an analytical model, I need to firm up this preliminary conclusion. To do so, I decided to borrow from Cornelius Castoriadis, a French philosopher of Greek origin, who was very influential in the social sciences in France, and indirectly in North America when the ideas of the post-structuralist (or postmodern) thinkers were massively “imported” to the new world during the 1980s and 1990s (e.g., Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, Jean Baudrillard, Jean-François Lyotard, etc.).

Ontological Levels

Castoriadis proposed an interesting theory of ontology (the nature of reality). For him, “being” is what can exist because we can imagine it. For an object to exist, it has to exist in our mind. To exist in our mind we have to imagine it first. Hence, for Castoriadis the human mind is constantly creating reality. This idea is in many ways similar to Immanuel Kant’s idea that our relationship with reality is always mediated by our language, culture, preconceptions, etc. Direct access to reality is not possible because we need all these mediating elements to access reality, to make distinctions between different objects so that reality is not just mass of confused stimuli; in other words, to make sense of reality we need lenses. Without language and culture we cannot name things, and if we cannot name them then we cannot understand them. An important point here, this is not to say that there is no independent or objective reality out there, it is simply that such reality cannot be grasped without our subjectivity. For both Kant and Castoriadis, a better understanding of our subjective tools to apprehend reality is therefore the key to generate better knowledge.

Castoriadis, however, adds that there are four fundamental levels of ontology that are not reducible to one another, and this constitutes an inherent characteristic of reality. These levels are: the physical, the biological, the psychological (or psyche-soma), and the social-historical. Castoriadis recognizes that this reality out there “reacts” to our gaze and our scrutiny, and that our imagination faces constraints; our creative capacities may be unlimited in theory but when it is time to understand how our environment works we have to answer to reality’s unforeseen “reactions”. The famous French anthropologist of science, Bruno Latour who borrowed a lot from Castoriadis, stated in the same spirit that “reality is what resists” our imagination. In other words, reality tends to contradict what we imagine so that we have to work harder at it.

This is a bit of a long detour, but I wanted to be sure that this distinction in four ontological levels is not perceived as being arbitrary. It is based on serious ontological and epistemological foundations. This categorization of reality in four levels will be useful to classify what I found so far, and it will be useful to establish linkages between findings. It is also useful in order to be reflexive. Reflexivity appears to me as being critical when one studies the paranormal; pseudo-scientific attitudes created out of mimicry, or out of 19th century naive scientism attitude are still transmitted in present-day high schools and universities. It is also useful to deconstruct the excesses of positivist, empiricist and reductionist attitudes found in the scientific community at large, without falling into the trap of the New Age’s extreme relativism.

The classification of the information thus far amassed will be put through two usual epistemological tests. The first one is the external validity, by asking if there are empirical evidences to support the assertion. The evidence can be directly related or indirectly related to similar situations. The second test is about internal validity. Are the findings coherent with other findings? Or is it logically consistent with what is known, or does it requires a separate special explanation? Any special explanation would then require special justification.

The Physical Reality of UFOs

The physical evidence about UFO all points towards balls of lights in their various guises, which tend to be highly charged from an electromagnetic standpoint. As the Hessdalen project has shown, balls of light can be invisible to the eye, and yet producing a radar echo. When they are visible they look like nocturnal light (NL, in the Hynek classification), and silvery discs or balls during daylight (DD, diurnal discs). If we accept the rule-of-thumb that about 95% of all UFO sightings can be explained by more mundane sources (airplanes, meteorites, satellites, optical illusions, etc.), then we have also to underline that the vast majority of the 5% remaining is made of NLs and DDs. This is true for both single UFO observations and UFO waves.

Balls of light can accelerate very quickly to reach 9,000 meters per second (32,400 km/h). They can be produced by natural sources of electro-magnetism, or by man-made ones. As they are often highly charged electro-magnetically, they tend to cause dysfunctions to electrical equipment. There are at least 3 factors involved in the creation of balls of light according to Budden, their various combinations can lead to various types of balls of light with different characteristics. They can produce high degrees of heat and leave burn marks on the ground, and cause various types of injuries to witnesses. It is also possible that square wave radio frequencies make them taking 90 degrees square turns when the conditions for such behaviour are met. They are probably also sensitive to other sources of electromagnetism, like a fighter jet locking its radar on a UFO, might just “push” the ball of light further, and give the illusion that it is engaging in evasive manoeuvres. This explanation has a basis of empirical evidence to support it, and it is coherent with Newtonian physics and what is known about UFO sightings.

The only exceptions are the Close Encounters (CE 1 to 3) sightings from Hynek’s descriptive classification. These sightings are actually the only portion of the UFO experience where the ETH has any possible traction. If we decompose the problem, however, the room left for the ETH becomes even narrower. Most of the CE3 (seeing an ufonaut) and all of the so-called CE4 (alien abduction) occur when the witness is in a state of altered consciousness (or facing the “Oz factor” to use Jenny Randle’s terminology). It is important to note also that someone in a state of altered consciousness is usually not be aware of it. Hence, CE3 are still not offering any tangible evidence for the ETH, as in altered state of consciousness reality and fiction tend to get mixed up (the Kantian issue discussed above). Such situations can be caused by known physical source of energy applied to the brain, as research in laboratory setting shows (particularly Persinger). The physical marks can also be explained by self-action of the experiencer when he/she is a state of altered consciousness, and he or she will have no conscious memory of having done it. They actually tend to attribute, wrongly, these marks to the action of what was seen during the event. Psychiatry has extended empirical evidence about this type of unconscious behaviour.

Most CE 2 (leaving physical traces) can also be explained by what we know about balls of light. The only exceptions are the relatively rare instances where geometric marks (square, rectangles) are found leaving an imprint in the ground. CE 1 that involve seeing a manufactured object can at times be construed as misperceptions caused by altered state of consciousness, but not always, especially when there are several witnesses reporting the same description. As one can see, the room for the ETH is rather much narrower than most people think. From the point of view of physical evidence, there is nothing to support the ETH in these instances, as no materiel, equipment or biological tissues “out of this Earth” was ever found. It still fails the external validity test. As it will be shown in the next post, other explanations with some empirical evidence supporting them and more in line with was is already known can be offered to explain these last elements. The ETH also fails the internal validity test. Hence, given these two test failures and its relatively limited applicability, there are no rational at this point to maintain a special explanation such as the ETH.

The Biological Reality of UFOs

There is a biological component to the UFO experience if we consider “mind postures” more likely to lead to altered state of consciousness as a biological issue. There is now substantial evidence to show that altered state of consciousness plays an important part in the UFO experience, but such states are likely to occur to people predisposed to have a lower threshold between the conscious mind and the unconscious. Such threshold is in part biological, although it can be trained (like a muscle) through various techniques like meditation, yoga, etc. According to Budden’s research, some people have a greater sensibility to electromagnetism due to prolonged exposure to electromagnetic fields. There are also people who neurologically developed dissociative personalities, oftentimes the result of a defence mechanism developed during a traumatic childhood. Lastly, there are people who seem to have an innate lower threshold, and they are oftentimes found in artistic and creative professions. The empirical evidence here is quite strong, and it is in line with what is known about UFO experiences, and parapsychology.

The Social-Historical Reality of UFOs

There is a social and historical component to the UFO experience in as much as its content can be traced back to sociological realities. UFOs are specific to our time, and appear to be closely related to our capacity of imagining flying machines. Some may argue that the Bible and ancient Hindu texts discusses flying machines, and this is quite true. The possibility of imagining flying machine is in itself not time bound, but “seeing” strange objects in the sky on an ongoing basis is unique to our time. The content of UFO sightings seems also to be related to social dynamics. From the Airship story of 1896, to the Kenneth Arnold’s sightings of flying objects wobbling like flying saucers, to the rash of contactees emerging after George Adamski published Flying Saucers Have Landed in 1953, one can only see that the content of UFO experience is at least partially socially constructed.

Only one unusual sighting or experience (actually alleged sighting or experience) is enough to create a series of similar sightings that can last for decades. A case in point is the Betty and Barney Hill experience with the so-called Grey ETs. It was a first, and it became publicly known in 1966 with the publication of Interrupted Journey. Then, the Becky Andreasson case occurred in 1967. But the real “epidemic” of Grey ETs abductions started in the mid 1970s, coinciding with the broadcast of a TV film entitled The UFO Incident, aired the first time on NBC in October 1975, and relating the story of Hill couples’ experience. As well, Bertrand Meheust has provided extensive analyses to show that science fiction impacts the content of UFO experiences. The evidence for a social-historical dimension to the UFO experience is very strong and it is in line what was is known about other paranormal phenomena like the apparitions of the Virgin Mary in Catholic countries or areas, the Chupacabra in Spanish speaking countries, etc.

The Psychological Reality of UFOs

Here it is at times difficult to separate the physiological aspect of altered states of consciousness, and the actual experience. However, to provide an analytical distinction, the psychological aspect of the UFO experience is understood as the intrapsychic component, and this relates to our understanding of both consciousness and the unconscious. This is, in turn, links directly to the question of imagination, as it appears to be the bridge between the two. The conscious mind creates reality through imagining, correcting the creation as it rubs itself against reality. The unconscious processes, stores and sends back the results of the imaginary process to the conscious mind in a subliminal and/or symbolic way. Hence, the distinction between imaginary realm and reality is much more subtle that most people think. An obvious example of this is when people get into an accident and feel no pain until they realized they are injured. It is on this bridge that the question of psi needs to be understood. Psi can be construed as the reverse process described above: reality is created in the unconscious mind, and the conscious mind uses imagination to make sense of it, which in turn may affect reality. Certainly, the remote viewing process appears to work that way and there is some empirical evidence to support this.

It is quite clear that there is an important psi element in the UFO experience. For instance, altered perceptions seem to be telepathically shared when there is more than one witness. There are too many similarities in the experience for a regular psychological explanation to hold. Although there is some research on the “folie à deux”, such research shows that “folie à deux” only occur when one witness is having a particularly strong psychological hold on the other, and thus influence him/her to believe in a particular perception. It is not to say that it cannot happen in UFO cases, but when there are several witnesses, physically apart and not knowing each other, the “folie à deux” cannot be invoked.

Psi research shows that believing in paranormal increases the probability of psi effects, and there is no reason to think that it is any different with the UFO experience. This actually relates directly to the question of imagination. These beliefs play an important part in establishing a bridge between the conscious and unconscious mind, although it is not a mandatory one. Some research empirically supports this statement, particularly the Anamnesis Project.

Yet, contrary to remote viewing and many other forms of psychic experiment, UFO experiences are spontaneous and not predictable. It appears as if an external psi source is involved in creating the psi experience (in one’s own unconscious). It is also contrary to RSPKs experiences, where clearly a particular type of dysfunctional personality is usually involved. Furthermore, in the case of UFO waves there seem to be multiple or no focus persons involved in the event. Certainly, it is this aspect of the UFO experience that also keeps alive the 2nd degree ETH, and the paranormal explanations (PNH) proposed by Jacques Vallée and John Keel. Unfortunately, there is no possible evidence for such approaches. If one assumes that non-human entities are involved, then it also implies that these entities can “play” with the experience at will. Thus, it is beyond the reach of any analysis. This is the analytical position taken by parapsychology, and it paid off, as our knowledge of paranormal has advanced under parapsychology while it remained stagnant with the old fashion psychical research. Following this approach for UFO, is therefore consistent with what is known.

There are a fair amount of empirical evidence to link UFOs and psi effect, and many of the UFO experience characteristics are coherent with was is known about psi effect. However, the issue of an external source of psi appears to not fit what is known in parapsychology. On the other hand, parapsychology tend to shy away from the study of paranormal phenomena that seem to have an external source to a specific individual(s) unconscious mental processes.

Part II

In the second part, in an attempt to answer provisionally some of the questions left pending in Part I, the interaction between ontological levels will be explored.

Copyright © 2008 Eric Ouellet