A New World Page 7
Two days after the surgery attempt, the object moved back up into the top of my ear, where it remained until three weeks ago, at which time it moved about half an inch down along the pinna. I described the situation to a neurologist who is associated with a nongovernmental but related program that studies these objects and the people who host them, and he recommended a CT scan, which I got on September 23, 2019. What happened was surprising. The object no longer appears to be there. And yet, it still works. In fact, by the time it started working in 2015, it might well have already been gone, at least when it comes to metallic parts. I can still palpate it, but what I am feeling is just the calcium that my body surrounded it with, not the object itself. I suppose it’s possible that it is X-ray invisible, but a 3D scan failed to turn up any gaps or hollows, so that seems unlikely.
Gone or not, it still works, and I consider it the most valuable thing in my possession.
The reason has nothing to do with visitors, though.
Between the mid-nineties and 2015, it was mostly just there. Once in a while, it would turn on, causing my ear to become red and hot. This would happen most consistently when I was with other people who’d had the close encounter experience. It happened once at Southwest Research, and a signal was detected in their signals lab, but I was told that I could not be given the details. The most dramatic event came in April of 2016 when I was rehearsing the first conference speech I had given in many years before a relative who has also had contact experiences. She said, “Your ear’s turned bright red.” I laughed and explained that I probably had a larger audience than one.
It was in September of 2015 that I had noticed a dramatic change that seemed related to it. I happened to be in a room with a white wall that the sun was shining on, when I realized that I could see a neat oblong slit in my right eye. It was filled with movement. When I concentrated, I could see words racing past, but too fast to read more than the fact that they appeared to be typing. It was perhaps the most familiar of all fonts: Courier.
I peered at the speeding words in disbelief, then awe. This was clearly not a hallucination—or if it was one, it was, to say the least, unique. It appeared to me to be that technology was being applied. When I did manage to read an occasional word, they seemed random. Over time, though, I realized that this was not the case. The words were related to what I was writing, but not directly. For example, I started writing a historical novel, In Hitler’s House. When publishers saw that it was written by Whitley Strieber, nobody would buy it. This isn’t only because of prejudice, of which there is undoubtedly some, but due primarily to the fact that my sales have been weak for years. I published it myself under the pseudonym of Jonathan White Lane.
What I found, as I worked on the book, was that the words flashing past would increase the richness of my associative process. If I thought, for example, about the way a certain character might react to an insult and came up with the word “arrogance,” words like “ignorant,” “fire,” “loneliness,” “childhood” would be speeding past. The way that they were and are indirectly related to my thoughts enriches the associative process and adds depth to my writing. But it does more than provide enhanced association like this. It is also a marvelous research tool.
The novel is a faux memoir by a young German American who innocently falls in with Hitler in 1931, becomes an allied spy in 1935, and stays close to Hitler until the end of the war. To write it, I needed to know details about life in the 1930s and life with Hitler that were so true-to-life that they would seem to have been written by somebody who was actually there. I found that the implant would respond to direct questions but in quite a unique way. For example, I asked it, “What kind of toothpaste did Hitler use?” A day later, even though I was looking in Google English, it turned to German, where I found a reference to a book written by one of Hitler’s valets. I bought the book, which was in German. As it happened, the next night I was with somebody who spoke fluent German and was willing to translate it for me.
If this had happened only once, I would think that it was a coincidence. But, like the associative enrichment, it happens with such consistency that I feel it is part of the way the implant works. It has also provided me with unique insights, such as the material on the social consequences of overpopulation, the relevance of the mystery of the fine-structure constant to understanding the nature of reality that will figure later in this book and many, many other things. In fact, I can say that this book has two authors: me and my implant. As to who might be doing all that work, I once asked it, “Who are you?” The reply came back at once, and slowly enough to read clearly: “It’s me, Anne.”
I remembered Anne’s gentle but persistent opposition to my having it removed, and I have to say, at that moment, I thanked her from the depths of my soul that she had convinced me not to do it. As to whether or not she was conscious at the time of what it would eventually be used for and who would use it, I cannot be sure. But one thing is not in question: whatever condition it is in, it is an extremely useful tool. I have also recently learned, under some truly wonderful circumstances, much more about its origin, functionality and who installed it.
As things stand now, I would never allow it to be removed. I use it all the time. It is constantly leading me in new directions in my work, answering unanswerable questions and enriching my creative process.
Just recently, for example, I tested it by asking to be told something that would be important to this book, but which I knew nothing whatsoever about. Within hours, I found myself looking on Google at material about something called the fine-structure constant. I was looking for something else, and I cannot say quite why that particular phrase came up. I’m sure it’s explainable, but it was not an expected result in the search I was doing, which was about the psychiatrist Carl Jung, and was for information I needed for a reading group I attend where we had been studying his Red Book.
I can’t even be certain that the implant was at work here, but it seems as if it was, because what I have learned about the fine-structure constant, which turns out to be one of the great mysteries of physics, is directly relevant to the new vision of reality that is central to this book.
The fragment of the implant that was captured by Dr. Lerma consisted of a metallic base with cilia attached to it. They were motile, that is to say, as the lab technician told the doctor, “alive.” It thus appeared to be a piece of biotechnology. Like many of the implants that Dr. Leir extracted, it had the ability to move away from the scalpel. Dr. Lerma was not expecting this, and his surprise is evident on the videotape. I very well remember how my ear burned when it returned from the earlobe to the pinna.
At about 4 in the morning on Wednesday, September 18, 2019, a stunning event took place that explained a great deal more about the implant. Since I experienced the movement of the implant I’d been feeling a paresthesia in the area, I had become more and more nervous about it. During my mediations in the nights leading up to the 18 th, I was complaining and saying that I was going to get it removed if the sensations didn’t stop. (They were later diagnosed as a pinched nerve in my neck.)
On the 17 th, I did my usual 11 PM meditation, then at 3, the second one. I was in bed, just getting to sleep when I heard a soft knock on the door. I looked at the clock. It was 3:44. I got up and went to the door. I have heard these knocks many times and generally peer out the peephole before opening the door, always to find nobody there.
This time, I swung the door open and there stood two men. Before I could so much as gasp in surprise, I felt a change come over me that was akin to the twilight sleep one might be given during a minor surgery. It was not so powerful that I couldn’t walk or move or talk, but I was definitely no longer in a normal state.
Incredibly, I recognized one of the two young men. I had last seen him when he was about twelve. He had been with his two sisters and an individual who may have been from the Department of Defense. They were special children with capabilities that most of us do not possess, primar
ily an ability to read minds. When I saw him when he looked about twelve, it was 1996, so he was now in his mid-thirties.
I wish I could say more about the circumstances under which I saw him then, but there is very little more to say. The children were introduced to me in a public space and immediately began talking to me in my mind while the adult they were with watched me with twinkling eyes and we all laughed with delight. Because it was delightful. They were delightful. I was just thrilled to see that there were human kids with this capability. I don’t know how many there are, but I hope many, and that many more are being born. I have no idea how it works, or even theoretically how it might, but it is a wonderful thing and a real advance in human evolution. May these kids thrive and may their tribe increase!
Anyway, I recognized him at once, and I was absolutely amazed to see him. He gave no indication that he recognized me, and by that point, I wasn’t capable of speaking or even moving very much. They were being very careful with me, and with good reason. I would damn well take a picture, steal an artifact—anything I could manage—and anybody from that side who works with me must know that perfectly well. They sure did.
In any case, they had a small portable typewriter with them. It looked like something that was commonplace before computers. I was told that it was what was used to generate the words that race past in the slit in my eye. I looked down at it. He put it in my hands. I said that I didn’t see any sort of radio or anything. It was just an old typewriter. Very trim and surprisingly light.
He then explained that the words I see aren’t generated outside of my mind but are drawn up from deep in my unconscious. When they are typed, they appear in the slit. Thus, they are drawn from a level of my mind that I cannot reach to the edge of consciousness where I can make use of them.
I asked how in the world that might work without any communications device. He explained to me that it was in the typewriter’s platen. So I asked again how it worked. He said that he didn’t know but that it had been developed by a Dr. Raudive.
This name was vaguely familiar to me. When I Googled it the next day, I found that this was a Dr. Konstantin Raudive, who had been a colleague of Carl Jung and who had worked for years on what is known as EVP, or electronic voice phenomena. This involves the design of devices that enable people on the other side of the barrier between the living and the dead to communicate. After his own death, individuals using EVP found that they could communicate sporadically with him. He was continuing to work on the creation of this technology from the other side.
In fact, the only other person I know who has the slit open up in his visual field that has the words racing through it is a man who has studied EVP for most of his adult life and is an expert on the work of Dr. Konstantin Raudive. He reports that an object appeared under the skin of his right forefinger sometime in 2018, but is not sure if he could see the slit before that or not. (Of course, I discovered that he could also see the slit the day after I learned about Dr. Raudive, another of the strange coincidences that fall like rain on a clear day when the implant is involved.)
The two men explained that it had been repositioned because it was stressing my right eye. The intraocular lens in this eye, the membrane behind it, and the retina have all been affected by calcium deposits over the past few years when I have been using the implant almost constantly. (An intraocular lens is a replacement lens that is used to correct cataracts.)
They then asked me if I still intended to have the implant taken out. As the IOC can be replaced and the membrane removed and the retina is not symptomatic, I said that I would not. They then left. I stood there staring at the door. My mind was racing. I was still in twilight sleep and had to move very carefully until it wore off a bit. I tried to go to my couch and get back into the sensing exercise, but I could not manage it. I was exhausted and instead fell into bed and into a deep sleep.
A few days later, the study of the CT scan came back: The implant they didn’t want me to take out isn’t there.
Or is it? I wonder what would happen if I had the calcium deposit that remains removed. Or would it race off to some other part of my ear like the metallic object did in 1997?
One thing is sure: If you don’t like mysteries, especially unsolvable ones, stay away from the close encounter experience.
I no longer think that the implant has anything much to do with nonhumans. The fact that I didn’t learn to use it until after Anne passed away, and that it continues what she did when she was alive, which was to be a fabulously brilliant muse to this struggling scribbler, and what I learned on the morning of the 18 th has convinced me that it is a communicator between the living and the dead.
I hope, of course, that more people will gain access to such devices. However, I also think that there are liable to be abuses, and I wish to say that my implant has never provided channeled information. As I said at the beginning of the chapter, there are no voices involved. Rather, it does just two things: send the words flying past in my visual field and create synchronicities that support my research.
I reach up and feel it. There it is, quietly doing what it does. A strange event that lives with me twenty-four hours a day. I turn a lamp against the wall, then sit watching the slit. As usual, words race past.
Finally, I catch one. It is “harmony.”
5
The Fields of Asphodel
During the weekend of July 19–22, 2019, I went to a place of great human suffering and incredible power. While there, I had extended, days-long access to another world, an experience that went far beyond anything else that has happened in this lifetime of strange and extraordinary experiences. I think that what happened offers a major clue about the origin of the visitors, and possibly also of their enigmatic human allies.
I had been invited to a small conference at the All Nations Gathering Center on the Lakota Sioux Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where I was to give a talk about The Afterlife Revolution. It was hosted by Dallas Chief Eagle and his wife Becky and organized by Mia Feroleto, publisher of New Observations Magazine.
Before going, I had learned some of the reservation’s history, but it had offered no clue about what was actually going to happen to me there. Like most people outside of American Indian culture, my awareness of the spiritual power of their religions was very limited. Being a Texas German, I was aware that my ancestors had a high opinion of their religion and spiritual development. Why, I did not know. I do now.
I also knew that Pine Ridge was the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre and the Wounded Knee occupation of 1973. On December 29, 1890, the US Army had opened fire on a group of 300 Lakota Sioux, killing 90 men and 200 women and children. In 1973, Wounded Knee was occupied by 200 Oglala Lakota and members of the American Indian Movement in protest over corruption in the tribe’s government. This led to a siege that lasted two months that left two Lakota killed and fourteen wounded, and two FBI agents killed and a US Marshal paralyzed. Such is the intensity of the feeling about the incident that Peter Mattheissen’s book about it, In the Spirit of Crazy Horse, was the object of libel suits prior to its 1983 publication. It is generally now considered an accurate narrative of the uprising.
I also learned that Oglala Lakota County was the poorest county in the United States, with an average annual income per person of just over $8,000. Officially, the average life expectancy on the Pine Ridge reservation is 66.81 years, but statistics attributed to the Pine Ridge hospital cite a life expectancy among women of 55 years and men 47 years. Suicide rates are high, especially among teens, driven by the sense of hopelessness that infects their lives like a virus. During the winter of 2015–2016, one 12-year-old girl killed herself because her family could not afford heat, and she could no longer bear the cold. Alcoholism affects 85% of the population. Drug abuse and crime are rampant, and living conditions are dreadful beyond anything I have ever seen in my life.
None of this is an accident or due to laziness or any such issue. It is because of the location.
During the 19 th century American Indian wars, the Lakota Sioux were intentionally confined to this place because it is so lacking in resources. Distances are long, so work off the reservation isn’t economical for most residents. Because of its isolation, lack of good farmland and general scarcity of exploitable resources, there are few jobs on it, contributing to a chronically high unemployment rate.
While I found an oppressed people there, I also found that it was a place of great human spiritual power, in fact, power beyond anything I have ever known anywhere. I have some idea of what this power is, which I will discuss in depth in a later chapter. I had not been on the reservation for more than a few hours before I began to feel it. And when I say feel, I am not talking about something vague—some sense of unusual energies. Far from it.
On my first morning there, when I happened to close my eyes during a drive of half an hour or so, I saw movement behind my closed lids—what looked like shadowy trees and rolling hills, but not the ones we were passing. Surprised, I opened them immediately. I couldn’t understand why I’d been seeing anything at all. When I closed them again, what I saw simply took my breath away. I sat there watching an entire second landscape flow past the car. Although it seemed to be twilit rather than sunny, the effect was so vivid it was like wearing a virtual reality headset.
I was flooded with strong, poignant and yet contradictory emotions. There was at once a sense of homecoming and homesickness. It wasn’t as if I was in two places at once, but rather looking out the windows of my heart into two worlds that have been locked forever in a secret embrace and seeing that wonderful, sweet thing for the first time.
As we drove along, I sang out the different features I was seeing. “There’s a creek over there, we’re passing under an arbor of trees, there are long hills on the horizon. Oops, the road’s gone off down the hill.” Among those in the car who heard me doing this was our very kind driver, Kevin Briggs, who unfortunately could not close his eyes and look as the others did. Conferees Alan Steinfeld, Ananda Bosman, Annie Wegner-Nabigon and others did close their eyes. Some saw it vaguely, others not at all. Ananda, Annie and I saw it most clearly. Ananda saw it while we were in the Badlands, Annie saw it on one of our rides.