contactees

CONTACTEES, SIGHTINGS AND SYNCHRONICITY

Suggested Online Synopsis. Contactee groups call for initiating interactions with Extra-terrestrial Intelligence(Et I). They attempt to make contact in the context of field investigations with multiple witnesses present. The pattern of encounters experienced however also includes individual researchers having personal sightings of UFOs while not doing field work. Three original case reports of this phenomenon are described in both synopsis form, more detailed narratives are available from the author on request. The implications of this apparent consciousness link between contact groups and Et I is discussed. Copyright 1999, Joseph Burkes, MD. Posted with the author's permission.

Introduction

Contactee organizations like CSETI and Rama attempt to carry out prospective field investigations of the UFO phenomenon by sending skilled observers into remote locations to attract Et spacecraft. A little known aspect of their work is that once a team is organized, individual researchers start having their own personal sightings of UFOs while not carrying out field work related activities. Three original case reports of this phenomenon are described.

As former CSETI Working Group Coordinator of the CE-5 Initiative in Los Angeles from 1992 to 1998, I had ample opportunities to observe unusual occurrences. According to official CSETI documents "High Strangeness" is defined as "The inexplicable effects and often synchronicity of events related to and occurring before, during and after various Close Encounters or UFO/Extraterrestrial Spacecraft sightings." By definition one can not explain the inexplicable, nevertheless one can endeavor to describe the inexplicable.

Contact work increases the probability of a personal sighting.

As unbelievable as it may appear, once individuals join a contact team, they are far more likely than the general population to have a sighting of a UFO. These personal sightings and other experiences are often linked, not only in time, but may also coincide in a variety of other important details, thus indicating that they are not likely random events. In their totality the patterns of personal interactions tend to confirm the notion that contact groups have entered into a kind of collaborative relationship with Extra-terrestrial Intelligence. This relationship is not limited to the interactions during field work, but more strikingly take place during everyday activities not necessarily related to UFO research.

As unsettling as it may be, these personal encounters imply the existence of an operational consciousness link between individual members of contact research teams and the intelligence they are trying to contact. A frustrating irony of these bizarre individual sightings is that they are typically not multiply witnessed. Instead researchers experience sightings often when they are alone, and strangely enough when they are in their own neighborhoods far from the field work sites. After you read these accounts, I'm sure you will agree that this phenomenon falls into the category of "high strangeness."

CSETI training documents describe a hierarchy of Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind designated, level one through five. A level one CE-5 is defines as a simple flyby of an ET spacecraft with only limited interactions, usually this means signaling back and forth with lights. A level 5 CE-5, the highest level, involves a team actually going aboard an ET spacecraft and having an off planet experience. My initial expectation after becoming Working Group Coordinator in 1992 was that contact would unfold as an exclusive function of field work. I anticipated that as my team mastered the contact protocols, we would experience higher and higher levels of CE-5s during field work in a step wise fashion. To my surprise however, as soon as our Working Group started to carry out field investigations, a number of individuals started reporting personal sightings of UFOs. The witnesses to these sightings were members of the team, or as in one case the wife of a LA. CSETI researcher. In that example her interest in the phenomenon went from nil to enthusiastic as the result of her daylight sighting of a metallic disc. ( For confidentiality purposes, all researchers other than Dr. Burkes will be identified by pseudonyms.)

I will describe three personal sightings. These events transpired while the observers were driving home, and remarkably all occurred within a close distance from the witnesses' homes. It is important to note that the first series of sightings occurred during the initial month following the CSETI workshop in August of 1992 which founded the Los Angeles CSETI Working Group. Just 2 days after Dr. Greer's demonstration of field work techniques, the first personal sighting occurred.(To understand the personal significance of these events it may be helpful to review a brief account of the genesis of, and how I came to serve as a coordinator for a Et contact team. Please see document, "My Contact Work Begins."

Individual Sighting 1, Sept. 1, 1992; Synopsis

Joseph Burkes MD, while driving home on the 405 Freeway South, at approximately 11:30 PM, had a sighting of an anomalous nocturnal light. It appeared over the highway as a brilliant blue-green light that silently flew by the witness in a northerly direction. It had a slight oscillating movement. At its closest approach it was less than 700 feet away. There was no discernible superstructure associated with the object. This impressed the observer because of the considerable amount of ambient light present. The sighting occurred immediately after Dr. Burkes had carried out a vigorous defense of CSETI's contact program to a group of prominent ufologists.

Individual Sighting 2, September 23, 1992; Synopsis

At 2:30 PM a broad daylight sighting of a metallic disc occurred in Woodland Hills California. It was seen hovering two to three miles away over the Santa Monica Mountains by physician Dr. Maria ...(a pseudonym) as she was driving home on surface streets. She is a partner in Dr. Burkes' medical group and is married to one of the members of the original Working Group who happened also to be a physician. Accustomed to identifying conventional craft as the result of her husband's status as a private pilot, Maria reported feeling confident that the silently hovering disc was a true unknown. The object was approximately 30 feet in length. The sighting lasted under about 1 minute.

Individual Sighting 3, September 24, 1992; Synopsis

While driving home at 9:30 PM after attending a two-hour meditation workshop, a 25 foot in diameter metallic globe-like craft was sighted hovering directly above the witness' home in Palos Verdes Peninsula. Greta ..(a pseudonym) too was a founding member of the Los Angeles CE-5 Initiative team. An experienced skywatcher, as the unknown maneuvered in her vicinity, she reported having no doubt that it was not a terrestrial craft. The sighting lasted approximately one minute, at its closest approach the silent object was less that 200 feet from the observer.

Discussion

As the months rolled by from those early days in 1992, I started to muse over the details of these personal sightings. I looked for possible hidden meanings within those details to figure out whether they might contain some kind of message relating to the on-going field work. Like a detective in a mystery novel, I kept mulling over the details of the sightings. If those particulars were clues, then I was going to use them to start solving the mystery. My hypothesis was that perhaps these consecutive sightings in the LA team were not random events, that they might in fact be the product of conscious decisions by intelligent and technologically sophisticated Extra-terrestrial beings.

If this were true, they might represent a form of communication between members of our team and the Extra-terrestrial Intelligence we endeavored to investigate. Like Native Americans who embrace the philosophy of everything being related, at the risk of appearing foolishly speculative, I opened my mind to the possibility that the specifics of each encounter contained a message, albeit not an explicit one. The source of the message was presumably Extra-terrestrial in nature. I wondered whether factors like the choice of individuals selected for the sighting, or perhaps even more minute details, like the direction in which the UFO was flying, might contain specific lessons for our team.

One Should Never Attempt to think like an Alien

Michael Lindemann, a prominent student of non-human intelligence, has cautioned ufologists to never attempt to think like an alien. I interpret his position as implying that we should never try to impose what passes as common sense or conventional wisdom on beings who have evolved on different star systems. Such Extraterrestrial civilizations would undoubtedly have entirely different cultures, different value systems, different social organizations as compared to Earth. With such infinite possibilities, perhaps a technologically advanced civilization for their own purposes unknown to us, might choose to communicate via outlandishly subtle means.

During my tour of duty as Working Group Coordinator for the Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind Initiative I have shared with fellow working group members what I perceived were patterns of interactions that possibly contained subtle messages for us from an intelligence of a presumed Et origin. It was my judgment, after several years as Working Group Coordinator, that individual sightings are valuable data acquired by contact groups for understanding Et I. During regular field work outings, contact groups deploy still cameras, video and other electronic equipment to document their encounters. Obviously these three individual sightings, are not as rigorously documented as those occurring during the more controlled conditions of regular field work . Nevertheless the importance should not be discounted. This is especially true because similar synchronous events, sightings and other types of encounters, are an on-going phenomenon within the UFO community.

Mere Coincidences Versus Amazingly Congruent Characteristics

So what can be learned from this cluster of sightings? First of all, the fact that they occurred within a few weeks of our LA Working Group's christening has significance. It should be remembered that approximately 10% of the US population claims to have had a sighting of a UFO. In terms of an individuals lifetime of experiences however, a sighting is an exceedingly rare event for most people. The fact that these 3 individuals all had a sighting within a brief period of just under a month, on face value would should diminish the odds that they were mere coincidences. Also we should not forget that these witnesses were all closely associated with our Working Group which had just initiated efforts to contact the intelligence presumably responsible for this type of sighting. Even less likely to occur by chance is the fact that the circumstances of the sightings were highly congruent. The observers were all traveling home in their vehicles. Even the direction was congruent, they were all traveling south when the encounters took place.

What can we say about the observers themselves. By virtue of training as sky watchers, their maturity and/or professional standing, it is reasonable to consider them as credible witnesses. Two of them are practicing physicians, cases 1 and 2, and the third witness has much experience observing the skies during her travels on the open sea while competing in yacht races. If the sightings are not just random events, but rather indicate a form of indirect communication by the intelligence responsible for them, what additional associations might we make.

Sightings Occurred After Activities Related to Contact Work

In the first sighting, I had just left a meeting after engaging in a heated polemic defending CSETI's program of human initiated interactions with Extra-terrestrial Intelligence. One can speculate that the sighting which immediately followed was a message of support, not only for me personally, but also for the larger contact program which I had just so vigorously defended. I should report that this sighting gave me a big personal boost that helped sustain my enthusiasm for our project during the difficult months that followed. Considering the enormous organizational and personal challenges that face any new CE-5 Initiative Working Group, I will gladly testify that every new coordinator needs all the support she/he can get.

Concerning Greta's close encounter with a luminescent globe like UFO, she had just left a meditation workshop. I should now point out for those unfamiliar with contact protocols, contactee groups employ on-site thought projection methods. Usually this involves a guided meditation technique. In preparation for thought projection, individuals in the team are expected to reach an expanded state of consciousness through meditation. In Greta's report she asserted her belief that there was an association between her meditation and the subsequent sighting. If the non-human intelligence responsible for the flying saucer phenomenon were attempting to send my team a message concerning the importance of advanced meditation technique, what better way to do so than to precipitate a close encounter just after a prolonged meditation session by an experienced practitioner.

Thus two of the three sightings described in this document occurred immediately after the witnesses were involved in activities integral to the CE-5 Initiative. As a Working Group Coordinator for Los Angeles, I was responsible for promoting the contact program in the Southern California area. My sighting took place after fulfilling my commitment by engaging in a debate with several skeptical UFO researchers.

Greta's encounter took place after she attended an advanced meditation workshop. I might add that her sighting was the closest encounter of the three, with a structured craft hovering over her home and then flying down her driveway past her as she stared in amazement. Her experience underscored for the entire working group the importance of a disciplined approach to meditation and following a regular personal practice of it.

It is my assessment that chance alone should not be evoked to explain away these synchronous characteristics. These sightings and other on-going experiences that members of contact groups are having, are consistent with their being the results of conscious decisions made by the intelligence responsible for them, i.e. Extra-terrestrial Intelligence.

One should not overlook the staged quality of these interactions that appear to maximize the didactic effects. In promoting this notion of a consciousness link between contact teams and the Extra-terrestrials, I am well aware of how controversial this is. Not only do I confront the mind set of a larger society, enmeshed in psychological denial about the high probability of an Et presence , but I also face an argumentative and divided UFO subculture which appears to be at constant war with itself.

Of course skeptics would point out that much of what I have stated here is the result of a highly speculative analysis. Debunkers would assert that these sighting reports, like all UFO experiences, are merely the result of imagination, misidentification, or even worse, deliberate deception. Detractors within the saucer subculture would likely chime in to dismiss these accounts as the product of wild eyed idealists, of contactees drunk on wishful thinking. Nevertheless this pattern of personal sightings that occur in association with initiating research activity, is an on going phenomenon within contact organizations.

These types of strange experiences should not be dismissed because they may just hold the key to help us understand the contact drama that is unfolding all around us. It is a process which just might be ushering in a new era for human/Extra-terrestrial relations.

Why was Dr. Maria ... singled out for a sighting?

The most intriguing aspect of this series was the question why was Maria apparently singled out for a sighting. Although her interest in UFOs soared after seeing the metallic disc, prior to the event her contact with the UFO phenomenon was indirect. It was her husband Dr. Daniel... who was the activist in the family. He had played a vital role in the search for suitable research sites when my contact team was just getting started in August of 1992.

During the autumn months of 1992 our team frequently convened at Maria's and Daniel's house for our business meetings. Meditation is not an easy chore for all researchers, and Daniel was having considerable difficulty meditating. He was very restless, as many of us are, when we first attempt to still the mind. He was not able to follow the recommendation of meditating daily. Maria on the other hand was far more open to meditation practice. It was not until several months later, in December of 1992, that she was to undergo formal training, and as a result she was officially not part of the Working Group when we first held meetings at her home. During the months of September and October I was quite perplexed as to why she had received a sighting? Greta and I were active and official members of the team, why was Maria, a non-member, selected for such a spectacular daylight sighting of a metallic disk?

A possible explanation appeared one night as we conducted our business meeting at Maria's and Daniel's home. The phone rang. It was for me, a call from the hospital. Maria was in the family room practicing her harp. An accomplished amateur, she often gave recitals. I excused myself and asked Daniel where I could pick up an extension away from the meeting. Daniel suggested I take the call in the family room. "No," I replied, "I don't want to disturb Maria." Daniel reassured me by saying, "Don't worry. She practices at least a hour a day. When she's playing her music she's in a total trance."

It was then that it hit me! That was the clue which I had been looking for. Maria although not yet part of the Working Group, was still able to access consciousness in its most unbounded form while she was practicing the harp. In that relaxed state of being carried away by the divine music she was playing, a trance like state of deep meditation was achieved. Her meditation equivalent probably was her music. It seemed to me this was possibly part of the message that I was supposed to learn from her sighting. If my hunch was correct, I was impressed by its subtlety.

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