Anomalous Phenomena Quotes

“If the phenomenon is forcing us through a learning curve then it MUST mislead us. When Skinner designs a machine that feeds a rat only when the right lever is depressed, this is extremely misleading for the rat! But if the rat doesn’t do it he becomes extremely hungry. Man is hungry for knowledge and power, and if there is an intelligence behind the UFOs it must have taken this fact into account. We also tend to forget that we have no choice. We must eventually study UFOs.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, The Invisible College

“This is another reminder that one cannot understand the UFO phenomenon without taking into consideration all of its possible symbolic ramifications, no matter how seemingly remote from our technological reality. But the story of UMMO teaches us much more, as we slowly unravel the relationship between the reality of our beliefs and what we like to call the “objective” reality of our physics. The fact is that the beliefs of humanity can be manipulated both by physical and symbolic means. Certainly this is one of the objectives of UMMO, whether it is a prankish game, a psycho-sociological test or a sinister plot. But UMMO is only a small part of the total phenomenon, and the time has clearly come to assess the full impact of our strange, bewildering confrontation with it.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, The Invisible College

“Child psychologists know very well that it is better to prepare the child for the idea that his grandfather is not going to live forever than to let him discover it when death suddenly strikes. Similarly, by denying the existence of the mystery the scientific community was taking serious chances with the belief system of the public. In my opinion, such attitudes have contributed to the long-term loss of popular support and popular respect for science.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, The Invisible College

“Is the mechanism of UFO apparitions, then, an invariant in all cultures? Are we faced here with something more than a projection of Jung’s archetypal images, a psychic technology whose applications know few if any limitations in space and in time? I see no better hypothesis at this point of our knowledge of UFO phenomena. Certainly the space visitors hypothesis fails to explain adequately the ancient symbolism. We do not have a simple series of incidents that could be explained as an encounter with space travelers who might have spotted the earth and explored it casually on their way to another cosmic destination. Instead, we have a pattern of manifestations, opening the gates to a spiritual level, pointing a way to a different consciousness, and producing irrational, absurd events in their wake.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, The Invisible College