that first alerted me to a possible connection between psychedelic trips and communication with non-human intelligences. The book describes Bob’s journey through Chapel Perilous, a metaphor for the initiation and ordeals often experienced by those who attempt to free themselves from a lifetime’s cultural conditioning. After using a creative combination of LSD, ritual, sex, and other mind-altering techniques developed by Aleister Crowley, Bob started to experience flashes of what seemed like telepathic communication with an entity that said it was from Sirius. This entity would tell Bob who was calling on the telephone, what star sign someone was, or give him other information, and was unerringly accurate. Bob also experienced a series of weird synchronicities connected with Sirius at this time - read his book, I highly recommend it. Bob recently died, so I hope he now has some more answers to these vexing questions. I am grieving for Bob. I miss him terribly.

 

 

Robert Anton Wilson

 

Elsewhere in 'Cosmic Trigger 1' (p80) Wilson says that over 100 scientists in the USA have experienced what seemed like telepathic communication with extraterrestrials (Wilson is quoting Saul Paul Sirag I believe). A surprising number of scientists have taken psychedelic drugs, so perhaps there is a connection there too. http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/2783.html

 

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Aleister Crowley

 

Aleister Crowley, who was an early experimenter with mescaline, and was adept in navigating altered states of consciousness, also communicated with non-human entities. One of these is called Lam, and bears some resemblance to what we now call greys. Crowley was enigmatic about whether some of the entities he contacted were separate beings, parts of his own unconscious mind or somehow both at the same time.

 

From: http://www.boudillion.com/lam/lam.htm

 

 

Aleister Crowley's 'Lam'

  

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Timothy Leary is an example of a scientist who had experiences of communication with extraterrestrials:

 

Timothy Leary

Dr Leary’s relationship with psychedelic drugs is well known. You might note that Leary was less than flattering about alien abductees. Leary claimed that middle-aged female abductees are sex-starved spinsters with fantasies of having alien sex.

http://archive.alienzoo.com/alienabduction/timothylearyabductees.html

How he could tell that his experiences were 'real' while others' experiences were fantasies, I do not know.

 

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So a number of people who have taken psychedelic drugs have also experienced what seemed to them like communication with non-human intelligences from outside our solar system. I know that some CEIV Experiencers do not like to connect drugs that cause hallucinations with encounters with aliens because it seems to imply that their experiences are hallucinatory. I would counter that we know that at least some CEIV experiences take place in non-ordinary reality. Some Experiencers are out-of-body during their CEIVs and according to Ida M Kannenberg, some encounters are “semi-corporeal”. We do not yet have the knowledge to understand what this means, say Ida’s informants. Some shamans claim that they use entheogens such as fly agaric, psilocybin mushrooms, peyote or ayahuasca specifically to enter non-ordinary reality, which is just as 'real' as this reality, but exists parallel to this reality in some way.

 

 

It may be that much of what is experienced in a psychedelic trip is not hallucination at all. Perhaps some drugs allow us to tune in aspects of reality that we are not normally aware of. I once found myself able to perceive the auras of humans and plants when under the influence of a psychedelic drug, for example, though this could have been hallucinatory it seemed real to me at the time. Perhaps some aliens are masters of navigation in non-ordinary reality, and using some drugs can allow us to tune into that reality, and communicate with those aliens, just as shamans in some cultures tell us they do. Those who use psychedelics often report contact with particular entities which seem to be the 'essence' or 'spirit' of the plant or substance involved. The experiences of Gracie and Zarkov are of interest here.

 

 

It seems unlikely to me that all phenomena involving apparent contact with aliens are due to EBEs (extraterrestrial biological entities), though I personally think this is the most likely explanation for at least some of them. I think some of 'them' may be ultra-terrestrials, or denizens of a parallel dimension, or human time-travellers, from either our future, or perhaps from Atlantis in our distant past, as Hweig, Ida Kannenberg's contact claims. Some encounters with apparent aliens are very likely the result of human, probably military, interference (military abductions, often abbreviated to MILAB). Those who are especially enamoured of aliens claim that all negative experiences are the result of MILAB interventions. This seems a little dogmatic to me. For an example of this perspective see this website.

 

'They' may even be some extraordinary part of our evolving minds that just seems like an external intelligence to us, as Robert Anton Wilson has suggested, or something that is so far out of our experience we have neither the words nor the mental constructs necessary to understand it.

 

Click the picture for more artwork by Experiencer Jeff Westover

 

It seems possible to me that consciousness has somehow manipulated matter to allow it to experience physicality, so our current scientific paradigm, that consciousness emerged from increasingly complex life-forms may be completely backwards. My current favourite hypothesis is that our brains have a quantum interface with consciousness, which exists in the implicate order described by David Bohm. If this, or something similar, is true, we and the aliens are different expressions of the same consciousness.

 

Whatever the origins of these phenomena, I think one thing is clear - we do not yet have enough information to decide for certain one way or another what is going on. Premature certainty, as Robert Anton Wilson reminds us, can be dangerous. Once we think we understand something we start ignoring data that doesn't fit with our beliefs, or accusing those who disagree with us of spreading disinformation.

 

We should also bear in mind that these entities, or whatever they are, frequently lie to us. Ida Kannenberg refers to them as SBs which she uses ambiguously, as Space Brothers and as Sons of Bitches.

 

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When asked by Joe Eich-Bonni if, in his opinion, abductions were real, John Mack said:

 

"If by real you mean ‘in the physical world entirely,’ I would not say that about these experiences. There are physical elements to them – marks on bodies, UFOs and lights seen by several witnesses, even those observed to be missing by others – but rarely – but the experience as a whole cannot be said to be in this material world. But if real means something that is powerfully significant whether or not it is material or existing in another dimension of reality – if we open reality to all sorts of realms beyond three dimensions, some of which are only accessible to non-traditional states of consciousness – if we mean by real that we live in a multi-dimensional universe of which our three-dimensional world is only part of the whole – than yes they are real." From Boston's Weekly Dig, Vol. 3, No. 6, Feb 7–14, 2001

 

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In his groundbreaking book, ‘DMT: Spirit Molecule’, Rick Strassman describes the experiences of several subjects given injections of DMT (dimethyltryptamine) in a controlled laboratory setting.

 

 

 

DMT is a psychedelic tryptamine that exists naturally in the human brain. When injected or smoked it induces a very intense psychedelic trip that lasts only a few minutes. More than half of Strassman’s subjects reported “making contact” with “entities”, “beings”, “guides” or “helpers”. They described them as looking like clowns, reptiles, mantises, bees, spiders, cacti or stick figures. Some of the descriptions are strikingly similar to abduction accounts, for example:

 

‘I felt like I was in an alien laboratory, in a hospital bed like this, but it was over there. A sort of landing bay, or recovery area. There were beings.. I was trying to get a handle on what was going on. I was being carted around. It didn’t look alien, but their sense of purpose was. It was a three-dimensional space. I was expecting cartoon-like creatures, like a commercial for LSD, but this was ”Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!” It was unlike any other DMT experience I’ve had.

 

They had a space ready for me. They weren’t as surprised as I was. It was incredibly un-psychedelic. I was able to pay attention to detail. There was one main creature, and he seemed to be behind it all, overseeing everything. The others were orderlies, or dis-orderlies. They activated a sexual circuit, and I was flushed with an amazing orgasmic energy. A goofy chart popped up like an x-ray in a cartoon and a yellow illumination indicated that the corresponding system, or systems were fine. They were checking my instruments, testing things. When I was coming out, I couldn't help but think "aliens".'

 

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Shamans in South America who use ayahuasca (which contains DMT) often report contact with aliens:

 

From: http://mutanex.com/ayahuasca.html