Orientation

Husband to wife: Look at this, honey. It says here that the Earth travels 595 million miles around the sun every year at a speed of 66,000 miles per hour. At the same time, the Earth is rotating around the center of the galaxy. The galaxy is traveling endlessly through space and is pulling the Earth along with it. Now how can you say we never go anywhere? HELLO, AND WELCOME. This is our planet Earth. Before starting our journey through history, let us take a brief look at our little space orb from the vantage point of newcomers undergoing a brief orientation. "Spaceship Earth," as some people like to call it, is a relatively small celestial body. The American space shuttle can completely orbit the Earth in only ninety minutes. In modern aircraft, the crossing of once-formidable oceans has become little more than a dull routine for many an airborne businessperson plying his or her trade between continents. By merely picking up a telephone and dialing, one can speak instantly to someone on the opposite side of the globe. We are all witnesses to the remarkable manner in which high-speed travel and telecommunications make contact between distant points on Earth quickly and easily manageable. Earth is not only small, it is also quite remote. If you and I were to take a position outside of the Milky Way galaxy, we would see that Earth is near the galaxy's outer edge. In addition, the Milky Way is dwarfed by much larger galaxies. This isolated location might help explain why Earth has so few contacts with extraterrestrial civilizations, if such civilizations exist. Earth is afloat in the distant boondocks of a minor galaxy. Despite its isolation, Earth is pretty, and it is inhabited. As of this writing, the human population numbers over five billion people. Add to that figure all of the other large mammals, and we find that the lands and waters of Earth are occupied by an enormous population of intelligent and semi-intelligent creatures. What kind of animals are human beings? As a student of biology can quickly tell you, humans constitute that animal species known as Homo sapiens. The work Homo comes from the Latin word for man, and sapiens means being wise or sensible. The label Homo sapiens therefore denotes a creature possessed of wisdom or sensibility. Most Homo sapiens do live up to their title, by and large, although a small number obviously do not. When dealing with a human being, are we only confronting an animal? As it turns out, we are not. It appears that we are faced with something much more important: a spiritual being. The idea that there is a spiritual reality to life is ageless. Some religions have held the belief for millennia that human bodies are mere puppets animated by spiritual beings. Often accompanying this tenet are doctrines concerning "reincarnation" or an "afterlife." In the Christian religion, the word "soul" has long been used to denote a spiritual entity which survives the death of the physical body. Some people claim that an ancient wisdom about the spirit had once existed. If such a wisdom ever did exist, it long ago became hopelessly bemuddled by countless false ideas, strange mystical beliefs and practices, incomprehensible symbolism, and erroneous scientific teachings. As a result, the subject of the spirit is today almost unstudiable. On top of that, many scholars trained in Western scientific methods reject the idea of a soul entirely, apparently because they cannot put a spirit under a microscope and watch it squiggle, or plant electrodes in it and give it a jolt. As good fortune would have it, some breakthroughs on the subject have been made within recent decades. Evidence that every person is a unique spiritual being is strong indeed. Volumes of fascinating testimony have been gathered from people who have undergone so-called "near-death" experiences. During such episodes, many people undergo the sensation of leaving their bodies, especially as their bodies approached death. Some psychiatrists argue that this phenomenon is nothing more than a self-protective illusion of the mind. It is not as simple as that Many near-death victims are able to perceive their bodies from an accurate exterior perspective. They retain their complete selfawareness and personal identity even though their bodies are unconscious.* In light of such testimony, it is not surprising that a few religions, such as Buddhism, believe that people are immortal spiritual beings which become enmeshed in bodies during life. Buddhists conclude that this is caused, at least in part, by the spirit's long-term interaction with the physical universe. In sharp contrast to psychiatric theory, Buddhists teach that spiritual separation from the body is the healthiest state for human beings and Buddhists seek to attain that separation without suffering physical trauma or death. Their 

*A short but interesting article entitled, "A Typology of Near-Death Experiences," by Dr. Bruce Greyson, is found in the August 1985 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry. Dr. Greyson presents a statistical breakdown of the different types of "near-death" phenomena and notes, "Individuals reporting these three types of near-death experiences did not differ significantly on demographic variables." (p. 968). Dr. Greyson did not speculate as to what causes the experiences. 

goal is encouraged by the belief that a spiritual being can operate a body as well, or better, from outside a body as from within. The definition of a spiritual being shared by several religions appears to be the most accurate one: a spiritual being is an entity possessed of awareness, creativity, and personality. It is not composed of matter or of any other component of the physical universe; it appears instead to be an immortal unit of awareness which cannot perish, although it can become entrapped by physical matter. The spiritual being is fully capable of understanding itself. The modern trend, of course, is to view the brain as the center of awareness and personality. Scientists have been able to electrically stimulate specific parts of the brain to produce the physiological manifestations of many human emotions. This, however, reveals the brain to be nothing more than a sophisticated switchboard capable of being activated by a variety of external sources, such as by an experimenter with his electrodes or even perhaps by a spiritual being with its own energy output. The interaction between a spiritual entity and the body's central nervous system appears to be so intimate that a change in one can often influence the behavior of the other. From all of this emerges a picture indicating that human beings are spiritual entities who enjoy a certain spiritual immortality, but who are usually unaware of it until an unexpected separation occurs. During life, spiritual beings tend to utilize, almost exclusively, the perceptions of the physical body. Death, according to this analysis, is little more than spiritual abandonment of the body during a time of intense physical, or sometimes even mental, injury. What does all of this have to do with human warfare? Almost everything, as we shall see. That brings us to the third and final topic of our orientation: UFOs. There are few subjects today as full of false information, deceit, and madness as "flying saucers." Many earnest people who attempt to study the subject are driven around in circles by a terrific amount of dishonesty from a small number of people who, for the sake of a fleeting moment of notoriety or with the deliberate intention to obfuscate, have clouded the field with false reports, untenable "explanations," and fraudulent evidence. Suffice it to say that behind this smokescreen there is ample evidence of extraterrestrial visitations to Earth. This is too bad. An in-depth study of the UFO phenomenon reveals that it does not offer a happy little romp through the titillating unknown. The UFO appears more and more to be one of the grimmest realities ever confronted by the human race. Keeping the points of our brief orientation in mind, let us now begin a deeper probe.