by Dr. David Fialkoff, Editor / Publisher
Photos, Jennifer Shaw - opening June 6, PhotoGraphic Gallery

UFOs exist. There have been 10s of thousands of well-documented sightings. Even the government admits it. These mysterious objects violate the laws of physics as we understand those. We've all felt pressed back into our seats on a ride at an amusement park. That's G-force. 1G is normal gravity. 17G would rip the wings off of our most advanced jet planes. UFOs have been measured accelerating at 9000G, without making any sonic boom, and stopping on a dime. That sudden stopping, that abrupt change in energy state, ought to cause a massive explosion, but it doesn't.

They Flew: A History of the Impossible (Yale University Press):

I happen to not believe that the Nazarene was the son of God, except in the way that we are all children of God. (Scholars report that the early Church edited out the second part of his two-part statement, "I am the son of God, and so are you.") But I do believe that prayers to him made by las abuelitas, the little old ladies who pass by my house on their way to church, are answered, sometimes miraculously.

There are university departments dedicated to studying paranormal phenomena: people guessing the next 25 cards in the deck; children remembering things from previous lives; precognitive dreams... Professor Jeffrey Kripal, from the Rice University, wrote a book on the subject, titled The Superhumanities. (Listen to him.) He argues that Neitzche's Superman refers to individuals: saints, seers, shamans..., who have transcended our conventional little view of the world, claiming that the world's religions have been started by such non-ordinary revelations. He holds that the psychedelic experience is a glimpse into that non-ordinary state of being. And that as impossible as it may be to retain these peak experiences, to integrate them into our ordinary perspective, they are in fact the true state of things. Say what you will, but 100s of thousands of people who have had near-death experiences report them to be transformational, the most valuable moments of their lives.

The early scientific worldview held that things had "humors," natures. The nature of smoke is to rise. The humor of solid objects is to fall. Newton did away with that earlier worldview when he proposed that it was gravity, the attractive force between things (especially very large things), that caused the apple to fall.

The claim made by French farmers, that rocks fell from the sky, was for centuries dismissed by French scientists, because they believed, as anyone who throws a stone can attest, that it is the nature of rocks to be earthbound, not in the sky. In a very real sense, Newton's theory of gravity allowed meteorites to exist. John Bermon, one of my philosophy teachers back there at the Loomis-Chaffee prep school, would say, "It's not, 'I'll believe it when I see it.' It's, 'I'll see it when I believe it.'"

Belief limits the believer in the sense of "I believe this and not that." But belief also opens up a world of possibilities with the belief system. Nor can we get away from believing. Cognitive psychologist Donald Hoffman challenges the distinction we make between fact and fiction, between reality and belief. Based on his research he informs us that our most basic neural impulses are conditioned: "Nothing you see is real."

I'm not saying that there is no objective reality. I am saying that living our lives as though spirit doesn't exist, as if matter is all that matters, is a recipe for personal and societal disaster.

What you think is going on is (to a very large extent, at least for you) what is going on. Of course, it's not just what you believe, but how you believe it and who believes it with you. Inclusivity is another critical factor; what you don't look at keeps biting your ass. Freud, "The repressed remains primitive." James Hilman, "You find that, paradoxically, what you've been running away from turns out to be your authentic self."

Professor Jeffrey Kripal believes that UFOs do not come from far away spaces, but from a far away time. He believes they are our future selves, lovingly come back to make sure we don't make a complete mess of things. In support of this he notes the UFO's particular interest in our nuclear arms, most sightings of them taking place in military areas.

I have a certain craziness that opens me up to the supernatural. Usually my experience of such is limited to synchronicities. I'm not saying that I'm about to launch a new religion, and maybe it's just little green men communicating with me telepathically. But I believe that my extraordinary insights could usher in a new dispensation, a new worldview.

What happens when you apply the most successful business model ever (Facebook, Google..) on the local scale, and channel the profits into the local community through microfinance and charitable giving? Local people get happy. And if, after starting here in San Miguel de Allende, we go on to do that in towns and cities around the world, then people get happy around the world.

As I wrote above, who believes something along with you is very important in making your belief come true. And, in that regard, the really exciting thing is that a whole group of prominent, talented people have just joined Lokkal, just come aboard this ship of dreams. But more about that next week.

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Dr. David Fialkoff presents Lokkal, our local social network, the community online and off, Atención robustly reborn for the digital age. If you can, please do contribute content, or your hard-earned cash, to support Lokkal, SMA's Voice. Use the orange, Paypal donate button below. Thank you.

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