Unidentified Flying Objects

In this subsection we will discuss some modern empirical evidence suggesting that we are part of a larger world of humanlike beings that is largely inaccessible to our senses and that may involve higher-dimensional inhabited realms. Before we begin, we should emphasize that all empirical evidence is faulty, since it is subject to the four defects of sensory imperfection, mistakes, illusion, and the tendency to cheat. This is particularly true of empirical evidence regarding phenomena that cannot be readily controlled or subjected to systematic experimentation. It is even more true of the evidence we shall consider here, which may involve the independent actions of living beings possessing human or superhuman powers. Evidence of this kind will tend to be controversial no matter how strong it is, since it contradicts fundamental assumptions lying at the root of modern Western civilization. Unfortunately, such evidence will also tend to be imperfect and fragmentary, since we are unable to control the phenomena involved and there is a natural tendency for people to suppress reports of these phenomena.

Thus far in this book, we have presented arguments that are intended to show that Vedic cosmology might be true. These arguments can be divided into two categories: (1) explanations that clarify Vedic cosmological ideas and hopefully make them more plausible and understandable, and (2) refutations of objections to Vedic cosmology raised by modern scientific theories. (Chapters 6 and 7 and Appendix 2 contain additional material in this category.) Although these arguments may remove various objections to Vedic cosmology, they do not provide any direct empirical evidence indicating that Vedic cosmology is true. Of course, according to the paramparā system, Vedic cosmology should be accepted simply on the basis of śāstric authority. However, the doubt may arise that if Vedic cosmology really is true, then it would seem strange if no empirical evidence could be adduced that directly supports it.

We suggest that there is actually abundant evidence for the existence of realms of intelligent living beings operating almost entirely outside the range of our ordinary senses. This evidence is what we would expect to find if Vedic cosmology is true, and it is definitely not what we would expect to find on the basis of accepted scientific paradigms. It can therefore be interpreted as giving support for the Vedic world view, although it does not refer directly to the structure of Bhū-maṇḍala and other features of Vedic cosmography.

This evidence falls into three broad categories: (1) folklore and traditional world views, (2) psychical phenomena, and (3) the evidence regarding unidentified flying objects, or UFOs. Each of these categories provides direct testimony indicating that interactions have occurred between human beings and other intelligent beings possessing paranormal or superhuman powers. In this chapter we will discuss category three, although, as we will see, these categories are interrelated and show considerable overlap.

There is extensive documentation on the subject of UFOs, which is largely generated by three groups of people: empirical investigators, debunkers, and UFO cultists. One prominent characteristic of this field of study is that the evidence tends to generate strong emotions, both positive and negative, in the people involved. This makes objective discussion of the evidence difficult. Nonetheless, the UFO evidence can be potentially useful in helping people understand the overall validity of the Vedic world view, and therefore we will briefly consider it here.

We will begin by considering two examples of sightings of unidentified flying objects. The first sighting took place during the evening of July 14, 1952. Second Officer William Nash was at the controls of a Pan American DC-4 flying at 8,000 feet in the vicinity of Norfolk, Virginia, and Third Officer William Fortenberry was acting as copilot. It is described that the night was clear, with unlimited visibility, and the lights of Newport News could be seen out of the port window.

Shortly after 8:00 P.M. (EST), both men spotted a reddish glow off in the distance, apparently east of Newport News. As the glow resolved itself into six bright points, it became obvious that the objects were approaching at a very high speed. Within seconds, the objects could be clearly recognized as reddish, glowing discs, as they streaked under the airliner. Then, abruptly, the entire group flipped on edge, made a sharp-angled turn, and reversed direction. As this was happening, the procession of six discs was joined by two more identical objects coming from under the plane, and all eight blinked out, back on again, and then off for good, while heading westward north of Newport News [RS, p. 138].

Both Nash and his copilot had been military pilots, trained in observing and identifying aircraft. They maintained that the discs looked solid, with sharp, well-defined edges. Based on their observations of the flight paths of the discs, they estimated that they had been traveling at least 12,000 miles per hour.

A closer sighting of what seemed to be a strange flying machine was reported by several witnesses near Exeter, New Hampshire, during the early-morning hours of September 3, 1965 (RS, pp. 176-78). At 1:30 A.M. Police Officer Eugene Bertrand investigated a parked car and found a distraught woman who claimed that her car had been followed for some 12 miles by a spaceship with red lights. Bertrand rejected this story, but was soon summoned back to his police station to investigate a similar story by 18-year-old Norman Muscarello. The teenager had burst into the station at 2:24 A.M. “in a state of near shock.” He stated that while he was hitchhiking along route 150, a glowing object with pulsating red lights suddenly came floating across a nearby field in his direction. He said that the object was as big as a house and that it was completely silent as it moved toward him. After he dove for cover, the object backed away, and he flagged down a car, which took him to the police station.

Bertrand and Muscarello returned to the scene, and at about 3 A.M. both saw the object rise silently from behind two seventy-foot-tall pine trees. As Bertrand later described it, it was a “large, dark, solid object as big as a house…. It seemed compressed, as if it were round or egg-shaped, with definitely no protrusions like wings, rudder, or stabilizer” (RS, p. 177). The object had a row of five blinding red lights that blinked cyclically, casting a blood-red glow over the field and a nearby farmhouse. As nearby horses kicked in their stalls and dogs howled, it floated about two hundred feet off the ground with a fluttering motion, like a falling leaf.

This testimony was confirmed by officer David Hunt, who arrived on the scene in time to observe the object for five or six minutes as it departed in the direction of Hampton. The police also received a phone call from an excited man in Hampton, who reported seeing the object.

Here we will briefly touch upon some of the interpretations that have been proposed for such sightings, but we will not try to resolve the many controversial issues they involve. Broadly speaking, these sightings have been interpreted as involving (1) illusions or hoaxes, (2) secret military vehicles, (3) alien spaceships from other planets, and (4) vehicles piloted by beings from higher-dimensional realms. Without going into great detail, we would evaluate these interpretations as follows.

There are, of course, many instances in which sightings of strange phenomena turn out to be illusions or even deliberate frauds. However, there also seem to be many reports-such as the two we have summarized here-that are not amenable to this interpretation. If we dismiss either of these reports as the result of illusion or fraud, then it would seem that we must cast grave doubt on the reliability of human testimony in general. Let us therefore consider what consequences follow if we give at least as much credence to human testimony as is customarily done in courts of law.

The hypothesis of secret military vehicles may explain some sightings, but it seems doubtful that it can account for all of them. For example, if the flying discs seen by Nash and Fortenberry in 1952 were the product of human military technology, then one might ask why no technology of an even remotely similar nature had been used by any nation during World War II, only seven years before. Of course, it might be argued that technology had advanced by leaps and bounds in the post-war period, as shown by the example of computers. But this does not seem to be true of aerospace technology. For example, in the 1980’s the space shuttle is being propelled into earth orbit by dangerous, unreliable solid-fuel booster rockets quite similar to the rockets used by the ancient Chinese, and atmospheric flight still depends on conventional propellers and jet engines.

We should also point out that more is involved here than mere technology; many sightings seem to involve phenomena that are incomprehensible in terms of the known principles of physics. Secret military developments certainly take place, but we know of no example in which fundamental scientific advances were made that were unknown to civilian scientists. For example, the basic scientific principles underlying the atomic bomb were well known to European scientists prior to World War II, and the Manhattan Project was devoted to routine but expensive engineering developments. It is difficult to see how government scientists working under conditions of secrecy could make spectacular advances in fundamental physics that remain inconceivable to scientists in the world at large.

The hypothesis of aliens from other planets also has its drawbacks, when presented in conventional form. Let us examine this hypothesis from the perspective of modern science. According to modern scientific thinking, the other planets of our solar system are devoid of life. Many scientists think that intelligent life may have developed on planets circling other stars, but they believe that this could happen only by a process of evolution similar to the process that has produced life on the earth. It is therefore important to note that prominent evolutionists have ruled out this possibility. These evolutionists point out that many random events are involved in the production of human beings, and the chance that something even remotely comparable to ourselves could evolve independently on another planet is essentially zero.

The evolutionist George Gaylord Simpson has raised this question in the following form: “Even in planetary histories different from ours might not some quite different and yet comparably intelligent beings-humanoids in a broader sense-have evolved?” (GS, p. 268) His answer is that the essential nonrepeatability of evolution makes this extremely unlikely. A similar conclusion was reached by the evolutionist Theodosius Dobzhansky (TD).

In fact, we agree with the analysis of Simpson and Dobzhansky, and we would go further by noting that, according to their reasoning, the probability is nearly zero that evolutionary processes would produce humans on the earth. By a probability of nearly zero, we mean a probability of the form 1 out of 10 to the power N, where N is a number in the hundreds or thousands. If an event occurs on one planet with this probability, then the probability that it will occur independently on two planets out of a billion possible planets is about 1 out of 10 to the power 2N-18. (Here we are assuming the existence of one billion planets suitable for life, and the 18 is the log of one billion squared.) In short, it seems highly unlikely that the evolution of matter would produce builders of flying machines on the earth, and far less likely that it would do this independently on other planets. (For a detailed discussion of the low probabilities associated with the evolution of advanced life forms, see the book Mechanistic and Nonmechanistic Science (MN), by the author.)

Of course, we can depart from the scientific hypothesis of extraterrestrial aliens by proposing, say, that one superintelligent being (i.e., Brahmā) may have created humanoids on other planets. However, we are still confronted by the fact that, according to modern astronomy, the nearest star is several light-years away, and most stars in this galaxy are hundreds or thousands of light-years away. Given the limitations imposed by the known laws of physics, a vehicle traveling between the nearest star and the earth would take several years at the very least to make the trip.

Many thousands of sightings of unidentifiable flying vehicles have been reported in the period following World War II, and practically all have involved brief encounters followed by no significant developments. Since it is inconvenient to make many journeys, each of which lasts for years, these observations suggest that either (1) the aliens have established local residences or (2) they are able to travel faster than the speed of light. Our point at this stage in the argument is that in making necessary modifications of the scientific extraterrestrial-alien hypothesis, we have brought it closer, step by step, to the Vedic world view. According to Vedic cosmology, there are 400,000 created humanoid life-forms in the universe. Many are locally based (such as the Yakṣas and Vidyādharas), and many are capable of unusual modes of travel (such as travel at the speed of the mind).

Another aspect of the UFO phenomenon is what could be called its psychic component. UFO sightings are frequently accompanied by telepathic impressions that observers tend to interpret as communications transmitted by UFO occupants. Psychic healings are reported in connection with UFOs, and UFO encounters are often followed by the appearance of typical psychical phenomena. Here is one case that illustrates some of these features (JV, pp. 173-76):

On November 1, 1968, a French medical doctor was awakened by calls from his 14-month-old baby shortly before 4:00 A.M. On opening a window, he saw two hovering disc-shaped objects that were silvery-white on top and bright red beneath. After moving closer for some time, the two discs merged into a single disc, which directed a beam of white light at the doctor’s house. The disc then vanished with a sort of explosion, leaving a cloud that dissipated slowly.

The doctor testified that he had received a serious leg injury while chopping wood three days before. After the departure of the mysterious object(s), the swelling and pain from this injury suddenly vanished, and during subsequent days he also noticed the disappearance of all the chronic after-effects of the injuries he had received in the Algerian war.

During a two-year period following this incident, there was no recurrence of symptoms associated with either the war injuries or the leg wound. However, strange paranormal phenomena began to take place around the doctor and his family. According to the French scientist Jacques Vallee, “Coincidences of a telepathic nature are frequently reported, and the doctor has allegedly, on at least one occasion, experienced levitation without being able to control it” (JV, p. 176). The doctor apparently did not experience such things prior to his UFO sighting.

Psychical phenomena are a standard feature of human societies in all times and places, and they are referred to almost continuously in the Vedic literature. In modern human societies there seems to be an almost inverse relationship between the development of mechanical technology and the development of various psychic powers. However, in the Vedic literature we read of beings, such as the Dānavas of bila-svarga, who possess both advanced mechanical technology and mystic siddhis, and who are apparently able to combine the two. The UFO phenomenon seems to involve something similar, and this is another reason for thinking that this phenomenon can be better understood in terms of Vedic cosmology than in terms of standard theories involving high technology and interstellar evolution.

In addition to sightings of UFOs from a distance, there are many reports of close encounters with UFO occupants. These beings are often reported to communicate directly by telepathic processes, and they are also said to be able to project illusions through some kind of hypnotic power. Here is a typical example of this kind of report (JV, pp. 191-92):

On November 17, 1971, at 9:30 P.M., a Brazilian man named Paulo Gaetano was driving back from a business trip, accompanied by his friend  Elvio. Paulo informed his companion that the car was not pulling normally, but his companion reacted by saying that he was tired and wanted to sleep. The engine then stalled, and after pulling to the side of the road, Paulo saw some kind of craft about twelve feet away. Next, he later maintained, several small beings appeared, took him into the craft, and subjected him to some kind of medical examination, which included taking a blood sample from his arm. He could not recall how he and Elvio got back home.

For his part, Elvio did not remember seeing a strange craft, but only an ordinary bus following the car at a normal distance. He saw the car pull off to the side of the road, and he remembered finding Paulo on the ground behind the parked car. But he did not remember seeing Paulo get out of the car, and did not know what had happened to him. He took Paulo by bus to the nearby town of Itaperuna, but he could not explain why they had abandoned the car. The police noticed the cut on Paulo’s arm and later found the car parked on the highway.

Of course, there is a natural temptation to dismiss stories such as this as crazy nonsense. However, there are evidently many cases in which events of this kind are reported (including many that do not involve the questionable procedure of hypnotic regression). One possible explanation is that these stories involve delusions caused by some kind of mental disorder. However, there is psychiatric testimony indicating that common forms of nervous and mental disease do not involve delusions of seeing UFOs. For example, the psychiatrist Berthold Schwarz has stated,

In thirteen years of private practice … I have never noted symptoms related to UFOs. A similar finding was confirmed on questioning Theodore A. Anderson, M.D., a senior psychiatrist, and Henry A. Davidson, M.D., then Medical Director of the Essex County Overbrook Hospital. Dr. Davidson recalled no patients with gross UFO symptoms out of three thousand in-patients, nor among all those presented to the staff while he was superintendent; nor of the thirty thousand patients who have been hospitalized since the turn of the century [ET, pp. 23-24].

It is possible that UFO close-encounter cases may involve the action of beings endowed with Vedic mystic siddhis. We do not wish to insist on this point, but we note that such a state of affairs would be consistent with Vedic cosmology. Śrīla Prabhupāda describes the vaśitā siddhi as follows:

By this perfection one can bring anyone under his control. This is a kind of hypnotism which is almost irresistible. Sometimes it is found that a yogī who may have attained a little perfection in this vaśitā mystic power comes out among the people and speaks all sorts of nonsense, controls their minds, exploits them, takes their money, and then goes away [NOD, p. 12].

The story of Paulo and Elvio clearly involves some kind of illusion (either of the bus or of the strange craft). We should also note that many people reporting close encounters with UFOs maintain that the UFO occupants overcame their will with some kind of telepathic power.

The appearance of humanoid beings in UFO reports enables us to strengthen our remarks concerning the theory of evolution. The literature on UFOs is filled with reports of a wide variety of humanlike beings. These beings often exhibit recognizable emotions, and sometimes are said to communicate various philosophical teachings. If such beings actually exist, then it is very hard to see how they could have arisen by evolution, either on this planet or elsewhere. Paleoanthropology has no place for them on the earth, and the probability that beings so similar to ourselves would evolve independently on another planet is certainly infinitesimal. They fit consistently into the Vedic world view, but their existence is strongly incompatible with the theory of evolution.

Our final topic in this section is the tendency of UFO phenomena to abruptly appear and disappear from the viewpoint of human observers and their electronic instruments. Here are two cases illustrating this. The first case involved Air Force observations of a UFO in the south-central U.S. on July 17, 1957, and was summarized in the journal Astronautics and Aeronautics, as follows:

An Air Force RB-47, equipped with electronic countermeasures (ECM) gear and manned by six officers, was followed by an unidentified object for a distance of well over 700 mi. and for a time period of 1.5 hr., as it flew from Mississippi, through Louisiana and Texas and into Oklahoma. The object was, at various times, seen visually by the cockpit crew as an intensely luminous light, followed by ground-radar and detected on ECM monitoring gear aboard the RB-47. Of special interest in this case are several instances of simultaneous appearances and disappearances on all three of these physically distinct “channels,” and rapidity of maneuvers beyond the prior experience of the crew [AAA, p. 66].

One of the disappearances of the object occurred as the RB-47 was about to fly over it. The pilot remarked that it seemed to blink out visually and simultaneously disappear from the scope of ECM monitor #2 (an electronic surveillance device). At the same time it disappeared from radar scopes at ADC site Utah (a radar station on the ground). Moments later the object blinked on again visually, and simultaneously appeared on the ECM monitor and ground radar.

Abrupt appearances and disappearances of this kind are reported in many UFO accounts (including the Nash and Fortenberry sighting, with which we began this section). Although one might propose that invisibility was being produced through techniques involving known physical laws, this behavior of UFOs has suggested to many observers that they are illusions or projections of some kind, rather than physical objects. This is also suggested by the ability of these entities to accelerate abruptly to remarkable speeds without generating noticeable sonic booms. Of course, the hypothesis of illusion raises the question of how radar-reflecting illusions exhibiting intelligent behavior are generated.

The idea of illusion is also suggested by our second case, which took place at Nouatre, Indre-et-Loire, France, on September 30, 1954. At about 4:30 P.M. Georges Gatey, the head of a team of construction workers, encountered a strange-looking man standing in front of a large shining dome that floated about three feet above the ground. Our concern here is with the way in which these odd apparitions disappeared:

Suddenly the strange man vanished, and I couldn’t explain how he did, since he did not disappear from my field of vision by walking away, but vanished like an image one erases suddenly.

Then I heard a strong whistling sound, which drowned the noise of our excavators; the saucer rose by successive jerks, in a vertical direction, and then it too was erased in a sort of blue haze, as if by a miracle [VJ2, p. 68].

Mr. Gatey, a pragmatic war veteran, maintained he was not used to flights of fancy, and his story was corroborated by several of the construction workers. Although such stories seem bizarre, they are not uncommon, and they are consistent with the more prosaic long-distance sightings reported by pilots and military personnel. They are also consistent with the mystic powers attributed to the Kiṁpuruṣas and other intelligent beings described in the Vedic literature.