About 2,000 years ago, a star appeared over Bethlehem. It came close to earth, stood quietly in the sky overhead and waited, rejecting the powerful forces of gravity that encircle Earth. It burned luminously and brightly without recourse to rocket fuel, electricity, gasoline, or nuclear energy. The people who saw the 'star' were not savages, not entirely unlearned, not of an ancient civilization but of our own era.
During the intervening centuries there have been other reported and recorded instances, evidence of the reality of the existence of forces that defy our interpretations and definitions.
Shortly after the second World War, a veteran combat flyer with many dangerous missions behind him, made a sortie over Mount Rainer in western Washington. Suddenly he saw singular, luminescent discs flying at a higher altitude a mile or so away. Curious, he attempted to close in on them. But they maintained their distance, never allowing him to close the gap between them. He was at a loss to explain them either to himself or to newspaper reporters who besieged him for a full account of the strange incident. In the months that followed, the term 'Flying Saucer' was conceived.
In a small village in France during the same time period, two ten year old children, a boy and a girl, were playing in a farm field near their father's barn. Around dusk, the boy was greatly startled by a glowing object that looked like a 'glass clothes closet' advancing toward the spot where they stood. Terrified, he whispered to his sister to run, but their legs refused to move. The object came directly over to them and they could feel its coldness against their flesh. In a moment, it lifted into the air and was gone. The parents of the children were not told for a day or two, because the children, who were from a religious family, feared that they would be punished and accused of lying. After finding out about the visitation, the mother of the children withheld the story from authorities for some time. But the story leaked out and the police of the village investigated, questioning the children and looking for any physical evidence that might support the children's story. Some unusual facts were brought out by the investigation that seemed to indicate the children were telling the truth. The children, under intense questioning, stuck to their story. They were known to be good children and the entire village believed they were telling the truth.
As we move into an era of jet fast communication, the sightings of UFO have become more numerous. Many of these sightings are, without question, physical phenomena. Others lack sufficient detail to be relevent. Some are illusions, some downright fabrications, some no doubt cases of mass or individual hysteria. But what about the remainder?
A number of people have attempted to present accounts of apparent sightings to scientists and to governments. Certain scientists have themselves seen something unusual and unexplained and have wondered and probed a little, as have some governments.
Most of the facts that relate to the incidents are obscured in self-adulation or -aggrandizement, or are throttled by the heavy hand of bureaucratic government procedure. The press sensationalizes the word 'UFO' and few if any searchers have progressed beyond the non-comprehension levels of antiquity. Inquiries are usually not objective and are conjecture rather than science. People ask out of ignorance born of fear, just as the ancients did, "What manner of thing is this that comes into our atmosphere from beyond, having neither wings, nor fuel, behaving in a singular manner, not governed by the laws that command our universe. Do they mean us harm?"
Would it not be better, perhaps, to restore to human nature a little of the humility that gives us glory, the candor that ennobles our intelligence? Might it not be wise to invert the question "What are they?" to the still-unanswered "What are we?" And then by holding fast to our old books of science, but not rejecting a new page or two, we might just find the answer to both these questions at once, and a little more besides.
By probing deeply into the matter of UFO I have come to conclusions that I hope will prove significant and relevent. Some of the mysterious facts that presuppose at least a limited understanding of the nature of creation are alluded to but not explained for two reasons. One, it is most difficult to explain the glory of a sunset to those who are sightless. Two, it is nearly impossible to interpret the relative values of human and abstract transmission in a universe governed by the speed of light, unless one is willing to admit of an understanding or translation that supercedes the limits of physical energy. Such an admission, of course, is tantamount to acknowledging the existence of an energy force not subsumed within the physical universe. Most people are willing to acknowledge an overlord to their own existence, but insist on expressing such a force as an image of themselves.
Objectivity in understanding creation has been obscured by fanciful religious hypotheses that withhold or distort the truth. Such ideas are needlessly vain and purposeless. In reality, the overt act of creation is a syllogism of duality, and we are much more deeply involved in life and its creation than we would dare to imagine in our wildest dreams. We are also at the behest of forces delineating intelligence that are not only non-human but are perhaps to some degree anti-human.
Hopefully, the brilliance of human vision and the craftsmanship of human science may lead us forward to an understanding of ourselves and the meaning of creation. It is within our ability to communicate with and to understand the unknown world. To achieve this, we must be prepared to build a new perspective in science, and to search more profoundly than we have ever searched. We must prepare to meet the unknown and to challenge it, whether such challenge leads to an ultimate abyss of despair or to an ineffable understanding of human mind and spirit.
What the Scientists are Saying
Asked to comment on the historic mission to the moon, Charles Lindbergh replied by writing a letter to the editors of Life magazine in which he said, in part,
"Following the paths of science we become constantly more aware of mysteries beyond scientific reach. In these vaguely apprehended azimuths, I think the great adventures of the future lie -- in voyages inconceivable by our twentieth century rationality -- beyond the solar system, through distant galaxies, possibly through peripheries untouched by time and space."
Also by Charles Lindbergh:
"I believe early entrance to this era can be attained by the application of our scientific knowledge not to
life's mechanical vehicles but to the essence of life itself: to the infinite and infinitely evolving qualities that
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