Will the Real Whitley Strieber Please Stand Up?

[guruilla]

it's the third hypno-session that discusses the summer of 68

http://www.unknowncountry.com/whitleysr ... -session-3

subscribers only of course!

[guruilla]

I though this was one of the best installments yet, and interestingly, the first chapter is one of the most explicity personal passages. The Process / hypnosis material was the meat that will stick with me.

Has WS contacted you yet?

The closer I get to Strieber's secret, the more sensitive I need to be, the more helpful, or essential, it becomes to include myself in the narrative, to look at/expose whatever demons are driving me to expose Strieber's, in tandem. That way we can go skinny-dipping in the dark waters of the psyche together! (In for a penny, in for a pound of flesh, sorry about the imagery!)

No word from WS, whether he knows about the project yet or not, I can't say.

Schnabel's Dark White makes the very dubious, aka barely empirically tenable, conclusion that Hopkins and Jacobs essentially created the entire phenomenon. Along the way, he was the first to expose and map the completely disgusting and egregious abuses of power being perpetrated by those two "researchers."

It's unfortunate that often the best research and discoveries are being made by people with an axe to grind, not only because the research gets cheapened by being framed this way, but also because there's a sort of "guilt by association" - anyone who wants to look more deeply into these matters is seen as being a debunker with an axe to grind.

I don't see any point in debunking - or even any way to be effective at it - unless a new, richer, more meaninful interpretation is being offered up in place of the old.

People believe in these narratives for a very real reason, and it's not a rational one either. They believe because they want/need to believe in magical solutions, and that psychological drive is inseparable from whatever it is that's being put forward as "truth" (and it's always "out there" - sigh). Needless to say, that includes the disbelievers too (who need to disbelieve).

Schnabel is the same cat who seriously advanced the thesis that two guys with sticks are responsible for all crop circles

Ha ha, case in point. Lots of people believed this without noticing that, by doing so they were being far more gullible than the nuttiest New Ager!

[guruilla]

[Wombaticus Rex]

curious find:

from "The Communion Letter"
Whitley Strieber's cover letter from the Spring Issue, 1991; Volume 3, No. 1.

Dear Reader:

I would like to thank you for your patronage of the Communion Letter. Your subscription ends with this issue, and we are not taking new subscriptions or renewals. A list of available back issues is printed on the reverse of this letter for those who may be interested in collecting.

I had always intended to run the newsletter about two years, and that amount of time has now passed. During this period the Communion Letter has gained a large circulation and, I believe, published some remarkable articles.

But all good things must come to an end. I am not a UFO researcher and do not wish to endure the continued media attack that is associated with being involved in this field. In addition, the so-called "UFO-ologists" are probably the cruellest, nastiest and craziest people I have ever encountered. Their interpretation of the visitor experience is rubbish from beginning to end. The "abduction reports" that they generate are not real. They are artifacts of hypnosis and cultural conditioning.

What we are experiencing is a perceptual anomaly that is sufficiently ambiguous and intense that it demands explanation. It is something that human beings have been experiencing for a long time. It is the cause of religion, of mythology, of folklore. Presently it is the cause of the "alien abduction" belief.

What is *really* behind our experiences? We are. This is a human thing. However, I would also say that it indicates that we--and our world--are vastly different, and far more strange, than we have ever dreamed, or dared imagine.

With that I leave you.

[guruilla]

Yep, that's the lucid Whitley. He makes regular appearances only to vanish and be replaced by the guy who writes whole books (fiction and nonfiction) about aliens engineering our evolution by trauma.

[justdrew]

guruilla - some of the stuff he's said, like those samples used in the SC clip above, seem heavily influenced by an 'underground' publication that started circulating long before the big C was published.

take a look here at parts 1 and 2 at least...
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/vida_alien/warinheaven/warheaven-III.htm

[guruilla]

ah the notorious WIH document!

[justdrew]

ah the notorious WiH document!

well, I go on about it sometimes. The modeling of things with concepts from thermodynamics and living systems is a really good angle of approach I think, after all, as below so above.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissipative_system
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-equili ... modynamics
remember as energy flows from system to system, it can change form along the way.
I'm not so sure about the specifics of things as presented in the WiH book, but so it goes.

[guruilla]

thing is that a) it was released post Communion (1988)
b) the ideas WS puts forth in "Pain" are not exactly new, they go back to ancient Aztec culture via the Nazis and Moses and Jehovah knows who else

But, they do seem to be more closely related to Processean philosophy than your usual kind of alien abductee narrative, so if WS picked them somewhere other than from "the visitors" 1968 seems a logical place to start.

It was a couple of years later that he joined the Gurdjieff foundation.

[guruilla]

Just when you thought things couldn't get any darker: http://auticulture.wordpress.com/2013/0 ... of-trauma/

side note, I dreamed about finding an old copy of WIH in my cat's traveling case! It was fascinating stuff.

[justdrew]

In the story, this being is an angel who purifies the soul by inducing great suffering.

a wrathful deity from the Bardo?

Anyway, I personal hit the wall on the whole thing a long time ago. Baring a 3rd-5th kind encounter of my own, I can't really believe in any of it. WS is just kicking the can around. I wouldn't have a problem with ANY of it if he would just be honest and write fiction, but ever since the Shaver Mystery a small subset of imagineers have insisted on the "truth" of their stories. I'm quite sure it's damaged a lot of lives, brought some 'wonder' into others, it's a mixed bag, but I really feel sorry for the folks who take it too seriously and get actually terrorized by the stories. It's also possible he's a victim of 'MILAB' - IIRC didn't the French get semi-caught putting a guy through an abduction experience?

vimyanas? ancient human imagination at work.
the phantom-airships? human imagination at work, selling newspapers.
the modern UFO myth-cycle? human imagination cross-fertilizing and probably a component of cold-war era psiwar strategies, with many possible benefits to the US.

humans love to tell and hear Tall Tales.

in the end, yeah, I still think there could very well be a large polity of many species near and interested in Earth, but I don't think they're wrecking their craft left and right or playing catch and release with the planets dominate primate. I suppose there was perhaps a time when such sampling would be required. Maybe he was randomly chosen as a subject by aliens, followed-up for many years, but I just don't see how full credence can possibly be given to any of his text, pending full open contact and revelation of all the details. No reason to think that's going to happen soon. There's a few things here and there tech-wise that suggest we might soon 'qualify' for open contact, but I expect there may well be social qualifications to be met as well, and I don't think we're doing too well on that front.

Probably any real contact will be a generation or two AFTER we establish a decent humane civilization, and no longer present a grave war risk to the rest of the galaxy. (remember self-assembling robots are VERY dangerous, and there's many other ways in which just a little more tech could conceivably render us into a real threat)

[peartreed]

When I worked as a System Operator on CompuServe’s UFO Forum many years ago, Whitley Strieber was invited on staff to be a Section Leader of his own arena, and he participated only long enough to learn how to set up and run a forum before leaving to launch his own forum as Unknown Country, where I soon became permanently banned for inciting acrimony amongst his believing fans, critiquing his past and criticizing his often contradictory commentary, credo, claims and contributions.

But ufology has always been a hotbed of internecine warfare, like most religions.

The insights by Jason and others have confirmed my view that Whitley is his own worst enemy in his quest to be an intermediary between our species and “The Visitors”, where he would have been better off openly writing fiction and admitting, despite his confusions, illusions and delusions, that that was all it was. Horror fiction featuring his own demons, prophetic dreams and fantasies to promote his own cult, a collection of accounts originating deep in his own dissociated identity and disturbed, traumatized psyche. But mostly he has been a frustrated opportunist who also happened to be a very talented and convincing writer when it was needed.

Thinking about Whitley Strieber had me thinking of The Pilgrim. Sing along:

(The Pilgrim; Chapter 33 – Kris Kristofferson – Lyrics)

“See him wasted on the sidewalk in his jacket and his jeans
Wearin' yesterday's misfortunes like a smile
Once he had a future full of money love and dreams
Which he spent like they was going out of style

And he keeps right on a changin' for the better or the worse
And searchin' for a shrine he's never found
Never knowin' if believin' is a blessin' or a curse
Or if the going up is worth to coming down

He's a poet he's a picker he's a prophet he's a pusher
He's a pilgrim and a preacher and a problem when he's stoned
He's a walking contradiction partly truth and partly fiction
Taking every wrong direction on his lonely way back home

He has tasted good and evil in your bedrooms and your bars
And he's traded in tomorrow for today
Runnin' from the devils Lord and reachin' for the stars
And losin' all he loved along the way

But if this world keeps right on turning for the better or the worse
All he ever gets is older and around
From the rocking of the cradle to the rolling of the hearse
The going up was worth the coming down

He's a poet he's a picker...
There's a lotta wrong directions on that lonely way back home.”

[justdrew]

hmmm, you know who might have had some 'contact' with WS back in the day...

[guruilla]

heh; wait till you see chap 10; nothing concrete but yep, same circles, same place, same time

[justdrew]

I bet the pomegranate was loaded with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scopolamine of some sort, maybe a few other things, maybe some 'twilight sleep' - I'm assuming it would have a bitter flavor.

Because of its anticholinergic effects, scopolamine has been shown to prevent the activation of medial temporal lobe structures for novel stimuli during spatial memory tasks. It has also been shown to impair memory in humans to mimic the cognitive deficits found in Alzheimer's dementia.