2003 could bring some dramatic changes in the way we perceive the UFO phenomenon. Certainly, the stage is being set.

Bill Clinton’s former Chief of Staff John Podesta has called on the Pentagon to release classified UFO information. Steven Spielberg has committed himself to the idea that abductions are real with his new series, “Taken.” Vivendi/Universal and the Science Fiction Channel have called for disclosure. A new Roper poll indicates that 72% of the American people believe that the government is hiding UFO information. While I cannot give details without violating the personal confidentiality of close encounter witnesses, which I never do, I can also say that over the past few years there have been a number of high-level close encounters that are changing the way the government has regarded this phenomenon.

Last August, one year to the day after the Chilbolton crop formations that showed a human face and a replica of an image transmitted by the Arecibo radio telescope in 1974, a formation showed up at Crabwood containing an eerie message: “Beware the bearers of FALSE gifts & their BROKEN PROMISES. Much PAIN but still time. (Damaged Word). There is GOOD out there. We OPpose DECEPTION. Conduit CLOSING. Acknowledge.? The damaged word appears to be “Believe.” There was enough space after the word “acknowledge” to have impressed a short message. Unfortunately, the word was decrypted incorrectly, and no acknowledgement was forthcoming from us.

There are researchers who think that the message may have additional layers to it, and are continuing to explore it. Some observers have maintained that both Chilbolton and Crabwood are fakes because they are so far outside the norm for crop circles. However, leading researchers think otherwise. In the case of Crabwood, the chief reason for this is the sheer perfection of the lay, which was accomplished without even disturbing the grains of wheat on the stalks.

It is possible that these two formations were not made by the same presence that produces the other crop circles, because they are so very different. However, they also offer a clearer message. In fact, the message could not be more clear. First, they respond to our transmission from Arecibo. Then, they follow up a year later with a statement. It would seem logical that, next August, they may communicate again at around the same time of year. This time, the communication is likely to go beyond the level of crop circles, or to involve the production of a formation so incredible that it cannot be counted as hoaxed?for example, a formation that has elements spread over many square miles.

In 2003, there will be an astronomical phenomenon that has been, in the past, associated with heightened UFO activity. Mars will draw steadily closer to the earth. On August 28th, 2003, there will be an astronomical event of a kind that has traditionally been associated with heightened UFO activity: a Mars opposition will take place on that date. This will be one of the closest oppositions ever, certainly the closest in 500 years, and it is not hard to speculate that a remarkable event could therefore happen next August, most probably in the second half of the month.

One might think that Spielberg and Podesta, both presumably privy to inside knowledge, have certain information that another, more publicly accessible, level of contact is coming. They probably don’t, but they may be acting as they are because they sense something in the wind, just as I do. Last May I received a communication from the visitors that they were going to make their presence here undeniable in 2003. I recorded this in my May 18 Journal.

It would be a wonderful thing if the visitors made their presence indisputably known. This would give our best minds a chance to apply themselves to the problem of the visitors and of contact, which they have not yet done. We need the worlds leading biologists, anthropologists, physicists, religious and political leaders, writers and intellectuals to start tackling this question. Who are the visitors? What do they want? Above all, how do we respond to them in a manner that?s useful to us.

But if they come into actual, open contact with us, it will be, at best, a mixed blessing. The shock among our intellectual and cultural elite, who are the people whose clear thinking we will need the most, will be shattered. They have dismissed the whole phenomenon as nonsense and they are not in any way prepared to have their assumptions thrown back in their faces like that. I wouldn?t mind seeing it, having been so marginalized by them, but my personal feelings don?t matter. In fact, we will need them to approach contact from a position of empowerment, not in a state of fear and confusion-induced stupidity.

There is little evidence that the visitors are going to be ?nice,? or in any way forgiving of mistakes. Throughout my entire relationship with them, there has been a strict ?once chance? policy followed. If I didn?t get something right the first time, I lost that chance forever. And I generally had very little time to decide. It?s one thing for this to happen to a single individual, another thing entirely for it to happen to a whole society, or even a whole species. It must not happen that way. There must be no mistakes, because there will be no second chances.

Even worse than the intellectual and cultural disempowerment, humanity will redirect itself toward the visitors and their possessions in the same pitiful way that indigenous populations in places like Papua-New Guinea directed themselves toward the possessions of western soldiers when they appeared unexpectedly in their midst. A religion sprung up around the comings and goings of airplanes and the movement of supplies. Natives built ?runways? and tried to lure planes to land by making full-scale models of them out of bamboo and leaves. They made wicker ?refrigerators? and moved around them uttering sounds that they thought were like English, then opened them in hopes that beer would come out.

Imagine this same pitiful display on a larger scale, when we find ourselves observing their technology but having no idea how it works. Will we end up trading the wealth of our world in return for a handful of beads, like the Native Americans did?

Meeting a more advanced culture is dangerous. If they are as tough and uncompromising as I think the visitors are, it could be downright catastrophic. No, if they have any compassion for us, they will reveal themselves in an indisputable way, and give us a chance to assimilate the idea of their existence before they actually appear.

I suspect that there is a great deal more to the phenomenon than we know. For example, some of our most ancient religions have the appearance of a cargo cult. Egyptian religion sought to enable the dead to return to the stars. Could it be that they had seen somebody actually do that? And why is it that so many of the most ancient of human monuments are the best of their kind, such as the Pyramid of Cheops or the great platform at Baalbek? And why are the most ancient Vedas so well constructed?

Recent underwater archaeological discoveries are making the answer clear: there was a great civilization here once, that had wonderful capabilities, but now it is gone.

One of the strangest close encounter descriptions I ever received came from somebody who was walking in the woods when a little creature dressed in dark blue came out of a cave. He said that he was a rebel, and wanted to let the truth be known. The truth was that there had been a war between advanced civilizations on Earth and Mars many millennia ago. Earth had wrecked Mars, but Mars had gained control over our souls. They had condemned us to a perpetual cycle of rebirth and forgetting, of rising and falling civilizations, of always losing track with our past, going on and on forever. They called our world ?Dead Forever.?

When I read the Crabwood message, I was struck by its subtlety and complexity. The face that illustrates it is fearsome. It isn?t even a soft rendition of a visitor?s face. I have seen much softer, gentler looking visitors than that. It is a face that has been intentionally rendered as ferocious. The message itself is also intended to confuse. It makes a promise that there is truth out there. The implication is that the truth is not present here, either that we are in a state of confusion or being intentionally misled. But is the message meant to imply that the being pictured represents the ?good,? or is this a mug shot of the deceiver?

I am reminded of a statement that famed abductee Betty Andreasson Luca reported that she heard a visitor make. She remembered it in Gaelic (a language she did not know). In fact, before an expert in that language came forward, nobody had any idea what it meant. The statement was, ?children of the northern peoples, you wander in eternal darkness.?

Taken in concert with the Crabwood statement, there is an awful kind of sense: we are disconnected from the truth. We do not understand. Worse, somebody is actively trying to deceive us.

This is not the sort of communication that would be emerging from first contact. On the contrary, the Crabwood message represents an ongoing communication?a piece of propaganda, as it were, from the beyond. As an additional level of ambiguity, it is also possible that, despite all appearances to the contrary, it is some kind of fantastically artful hoax. In which case, the question must be asked: could it be that the hoaxers are, themselves, under the influence of the visitors?

I have to say that I am taking the Chilbolton and Crabwood formations to be “real” in the sense that I think that they were initiated by, and are communications from, a non-human intelligence. How they were generated, whether with the help of human intervention or not, I am not sure. The Crabwood message is deeply concerning to me, especially along with that fearsome portrait.

I think that whoever created it is following a much deeper and more complex agenda than would be the case if this was straightforward first contact. And, given than, there are a number of questions that need answers right now.

Among them are the reasons for cattle mutilations, an explanation for the waves of housecat mutilations that have periodically swept the world, and a final determination about whether or not human mutilations are occurring, or the permanent removal of human beings. Granted that these problems may not be connected with the close encounter and UFO phenomena at all, but they do appear to be connected, and the way in which they are connected needs to be understood. If they are integral to the phenomenon, then it is urgent that we understand them and prepare some kind of response to them, because they mean that there are elements of the phenomenon that we do not want to continue to unfold unchecked.

Another question that needs to be answered is if there is more than one other-worldly intelligence involved with us, and whether or not they have different agendas. There are many stories of different types of alien, including human form. I myself have seen numerous types, some working in concert, others alone. Were they all different species from different world with different objectives? Or was I not seeing aliens at all, but some other phenomenon that took these various different forms, or was it a combination?

For example, I meditated for some years with a man who would come into my home at night. I got to know him quite well. He was one of a group who would appear in this way, but this particular individual took the greatest interest in me. He was extremely elusive, but my wife and I were both aware of his presence. After some time, when I had seen him appear and disappear many times, I asked him if I could see him in his true form. What I saw was a radiant ball of light. It?s rays seemed to penetrate my very soul. It was at once appalling and incredibly wonderful. And for weeks thereafter, visitors to my cabin reported seeing balls of light moving through the woods around the house.

Were these aliens? Were they souls? He indicated that he was from the afterlife. Was he, really? He was certainly not a product of my mind. So what was he, and if he was not an alien, then why was he there? He must have had some relationship to the close encounter phenomenon.

There are so many questions. Too many. They are there because a combination of factors have prevented our best minds from addressing the close encounter and UFO phenomena. It is to be hoped that 2003 will bring not only answers from our visitors, but a concerted human effort to solve the many riddles of the phenomenon. If it is something dangerous to us, let?s hope that we can react as a species to protect ourselves before it makes a response from us impossible. If it is what it appears to me that it is: a phenomenon of inestimable value no matter what its own motives and objectives are, let?s hope that we do not let what we can learn from it go to waste, or allow it to overwhelm us because of the same kind of helpless passivity that affected the Inca when the Spaniards appeared.

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