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February 14, 2016 — Whitley Strieber
- Thread starter Gene Steinberg
- Start date
Randall
J. Randall Murphy
Sorry to digress, but would you be interested in participating in a spinoff roundtable podcast focused on critical thinking with respect to topics in ufology?Wow. Pretty odd incident. Thank you for the info
Creepy Green Light
Paranormal Adept
Sure - do you have any further details?
Burnt State
Paranormal Adept
yep, a good fiction writer.Wow. Pretty odd incident. Thank you for the info
@Liminalist has to be the most focused person on Whitley Strieber's life as an "outsider" on planet Earth! I've never come across anything like Jasun's website that is so creatively focused on someone like Strieber. His podcasts are very well done, and he is very artistic with much of the artwork done himself posted to his website. I think Jasun is a very nice person too, highly intelligent, but I just can't agree with some of his analysis of Strieber's stories, especially, when considering Strieber's childhood memories. I think he's been fooled and/or misled by Strieber's Labyrinth of Dead Ends.
Here is the story he tells how he first learned about Strieber's Communion, and how he was totally captivated by this book. Free podcast, direct download link below, only 34 minutes that's worth listening to.
This guy is spooky and fun to listen to...
Quoting Jasun: "If you summon these entities eventually they [will] come [...] It's like an email. You can't call it back once you've sent it. [...] You may have decided it was a bad idea. You're not interested. But. By then it's too late. You set these forces in motion. [...] I did all those years of [lucid] dreaming, and invoking, and summoning, and longing, and calling to those entities."
Do you think Jasun met them? Listen to find out...
Here is the story he tells how he first learned about Strieber's Communion, and how he was totally captivated by this book. Free podcast, direct download link below, only 34 minutes that's worth listening to.
This guy is spooky and fun to listen to...
Quoting Jasun: "If you summon these entities eventually they [will] come [...] It's like an email. You can't call it back once you've sent it. [...] You may have decided it was a bad idea. You're not interested. But. By then it's too late. You set these forces in motion. [...] I did all those years of [lucid] dreaming, and invoking, and summoning, and longing, and calling to those entities."
Do you think Jasun met them? Listen to find out...
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Burnt State
Paranormal Adept
i agree with a lot of that and also feel his artwork is very smart and witty. i feel bad that I didn't come back at him after all that SRA and abuse material he uploaded, but work has just been off the handle these past weeks. maybe on the weekend...
the focus on Streiber is too problematic for me as there's very little confirmed facts to start with. the starting point is a fictional writer who is on an explorer's journey, who like Castenada, has fictionalized much of his life's tale. so on one hand you have the icon of fiction spinning a reality version and then there are the acolytes who do work with their variables. whether is the grail quest you are interpreting or the prophecies of Nostradamus, these investigatory narratives that move around odd facts & fctions into constellations of discovery all just spell words like 'conspiracy' or 'secret truth' to me. they do not advance the paranormal field.
these two authors are self-aggrandizing hucksters posing as shamen. they have done sincere damage to other humans wth their mythos, just as Jacobs does. while the stories are written with some truths, and Castenada certainly presented very viable and transformative truths that connected with the masses, the only way to properly see them is as fiction writers. that's what they do best as their work as personal gurus merely reveals the truth of their disturbed egos.
so i suppose in some ways they are tricksters, but beneath the metaphor of these powerful narratives lies simple men looking for their different strokes from different folks, nothing much more than that. what neither understood is that the true power lies in the narrative and not in themselves. that must be such a head trip to know that your words mean more than you do. such power needs to belng to humble people not plagued with urequited desires lest they abuse it to brainwash others in their inner & outer circles.
I'm not sure what you mean by "advanc[ing] the paranormal field." I think 'the paranormal field' is much advanced by the contribution of psychological insights to human ideations and compulsions of all types, including those termed 'paranormal'.
You seem to want to rule out such insights regarding Strieber by interpreting his persistent ideations as 'fiction' -- not only in his novels but also in his narratives of his own reported abduction experiences in nonfictional works. It seems that by defining him as a fiction writer you hope to define everything he has written as 'fiction', a category of expression which you seem here to define as 'imagination' severed from the common, shared, 'reality' that humans experience in the world. But works of fiction are necessarily connected to, grounded in, a world recognizable by other humans. If this were not the case, works of fiction (including cinematic works in the modern period) would not continue to draw us to read and watch them. It is, in fact, narrative that draws humans to it, as it did in earlier narrative forms in human history -- legends and mythologies passed by word of mouth before they began to be written down.
Narrative interests us, in biographies, autobiographies, and historical works, as well as in novels and films, because it places us as individuals within a representation of the world we exist in. Works of science fiction and fantasy take us farther afield from the 'world' we are accustomed to, but they always retain core structures of the world as we interpret it in day to day life. Accordingly, narrative is a powerful tool in the hands of writers of many persuasions who hope to use their fictional works to change the perceptions of their audiences concerning the nature of the political, sociological, economic, interpersonal world we live in as a species, and also in the hands of writers who seek to take us forward into projected social futures or inward into examinations of our own consciousness.
Strieber seems to me, based on @Liminalist's interpretation, to be a writer consumed by his own inner struggle to distinguish what is real from what is not real in his lifelong 'paranormal' experiences. I think he has written book after book as possible aids to discovering the meaning of what he has experienced. He is a confessional writer as well: he confesses his own confusion about his experiences, searching for ways to interpret what they signify -- and also their origin. This is why I think it is a mistake for anyone to take him as a guide to his or her own experiences, dreams, fantasies, fears, etc., no matter how similar they might seem to Strieber's. I think it's clear that he was 'messed with' and manipulated by a series of mind-control agents and functionaries, early on to make him immensely suggestible and deeply fearful, and later on to mold him and support him as the agent of a destructive mythology by which to control mass thinking about the ufo/eth phenomena. I doubt any publisher gave Strieber a $1-million advance to write one of his major alien abduction books. Who do you think was likely to fund that project? And why was it considered to be worth such an investment?
Liminalist
Skilled Investigator
@HoneyPot: Thanks for the kind words.
@Constance: Prisoner of Infinity part two explores the military-entertainment memeplex which an in-depth inquiry into Strieber's oeuvre revealed to me over time. It strongly indicates (to me) that, far from there being an attempt to cover-up or misrepresent an ET presence, there has been a long-term indoctrination plan to foster the belief in one. A close look at alleged moonwalker Edgar Mitchell is enough to banish any doubts that the powers-that-be (even leaving Hollywood out of it) have been directly involved in propagating ET-mythology, good & bad. Mitchell was involved with "psi" research since the 70s and worked with Willis Harman, social engineer behind Changing Images of Man (which Joseph Campbell also worked on); he also started the Institute of Noetic Sciences, where Kripal is listed as a "luminary," and which was useful as a front for the CIA when they were doing early remote viewing research.
One of Mitchell's primary agendas was promoting the idea of a benevolent ET presence on Earth. He participated in a John Mack-like org for the "assisting" of "experiencers" to "understand" their experience of "contact" (can't find link now, will add later). For forty years, with NASA's full support, he was riding the "ETs, space travel & psychism will save us" bandwagon like there's no tomorrow without it; which is maybe true for the Capitalist Block anyhow.
: 'Peaceful aliens tried to save America from nuclear war,' astronaut claims
The area of overlap between NASA, "scenario planning" & the work of someone like William Sims Bainbridge with ET/paranormal proponents whether Hubbard, Mack, Strieber, Vallee, or Greer is massive. Enough to suggest that it is all of a piece.
'
As for this:
@Constance: Prisoner of Infinity part two explores the military-entertainment memeplex which an in-depth inquiry into Strieber's oeuvre revealed to me over time. It strongly indicates (to me) that, far from there being an attempt to cover-up or misrepresent an ET presence, there has been a long-term indoctrination plan to foster the belief in one. A close look at alleged moonwalker Edgar Mitchell is enough to banish any doubts that the powers-that-be (even leaving Hollywood out of it) have been directly involved in propagating ET-mythology, good & bad. Mitchell was involved with "psi" research since the 70s and worked with Willis Harman, social engineer behind Changing Images of Man (which Joseph Campbell also worked on); he also started the Institute of Noetic Sciences, where Kripal is listed as a "luminary," and which was useful as a front for the CIA when they were doing early remote viewing research.
One of Mitchell's primary agendas was promoting the idea of a benevolent ET presence on Earth. He participated in a John Mack-like org for the "assisting" of "experiencers" to "understand" their experience of "contact" (can't find link now, will add later). For forty years, with NASA's full support, he was riding the "ETs, space travel & psychism will save us" bandwagon like there's no tomorrow without it; which is maybe true for the Capitalist Block anyhow.
: 'Peaceful aliens tried to save America from nuclear war,' astronaut claims
The area of overlap between NASA, "scenario planning" & the work of someone like William Sims Bainbridge with ET/paranormal proponents whether Hubbard, Mack, Strieber, Vallee, or Greer is massive. Enough to suggest that it is all of a piece.
'
As for this:
A conversation I had with literary agent Gary Heidt confirmed something I have long suspected, that the publishing industry is essentially an extension of the intelligence community, and maybe always has been. There's probably no need to make a distinction there. Strieber even let slip that his Communion editor Bruce Lee was "an old intelligence hand."
I'll read Prisoner of Infinity part two to see how you construct your military-entertainment 'memeplex'. If you believe, as you seem to believe, that the ufo phenomenon and the ETH are inventions of a monolithic mind-control project all working toward the same end, I'm most interested to know what that 'end' is and I hope you will define it in a responding post.
I'm afraid I can't agree with you that psi research, remote viewing research, or other research of the Institute of Noetic Sciences (and of Edgar Mitchell in particular) have been motivated by pernicious intentions to misrepresent the nature of reality to the masses of humankind. If you can provide grounds for those claims, I look forward to reading those as well.
Strategic Deception
Paranormal Novice
I'd also like to hear Liminalist's take on all that. And I'd also like to add that I've listened to the first 7 or so episodes of your podcast, Liminalist, and I'm really enjoying it. I really like your style & subject matter----very interesting stuff, and well done! It's my favorite new podcast (new to me anyway): Podcast - AUTICULTURE
Constance, my take on answering your question as to why social engineers would seek to create such a UFO/ET mythos, is based on points made in Jacques Vallee's book _Messengers of Deception_, and the 6 social effects of belief in UFOs which he presents there:
1) Demeans society's sense of human ingenuity with ideas of 'ancient aliens.'
2) Widens the gap between the public and scientific institutions, making many regard scientific reasoning as impotent.
3) Promotes the concept of "political unification" of Earth.
4) Promotes a new high-demand religion.
5) Promotes irrational motivations & explanations based on faith.
6) Degrades democratic structures/processes, while promoting the concept of "higher races" & totalitarian ideology.
These goals make sense if you're a greedy oligarch eager to hang on to your privileges & advantages, and want average citizens to be too dumb, confused, mystified, illogical and unaware to ever understand or accept the grim, unfair socio-political realities unfolding around them. This new zeitgeist helps misdirect their attention onto a pacifying, sci-fi fantasy that's more sustainable in the 21st century than the old major religions, which are growing increasingly outmoded & irrelevant.
How can you possibly suggest there is a "clear" connection to "a series of mind-control agents and functionaries" all the way back to 1949-1950 with the imaginary, imo, Stalin teddy bear experiment, and the preposterous and ridiculous Mexico school [impossible] connection to the Finders, etc. to 45 years later with Strieber's ET Abduction story known as Communion? MKU did not even start until 1953, so "they" had one year to damage an 8 year old boy. It's laughable on the face of it. The children's Summer camp? The Nuns at his Catholic school?
When Jasun uses Strieber's childhood "memory fragments", only recalled 50 years later and not before, [those snippet fragments can't explain even one event] it's definitely pure disinformation and imagination speculation that never happened in any coherent way as written five decades later to even make-out any kind of sensible understanding of what actually happened 50 years beforehand. It's strictly written to be a labyrinth of confusion and conspiracy. It's too incoherant. Look what Strieber wrote about his childhood Mexico [Summer] school: "My wife tells me that I have mentioned seeing Jewish babies there..." Do you understand just how "crazy" this statement is? It's meant to provoke and elicit a witch hunt. How could a young Whitley, between 5-8 years old, distinguish and identify Jewish babies??? How could Strieber as an adult even write that? Why?
Imo, Jasun is doing himself a serious disservice that totally destroys what would otherwise be a decent argument [about trauma] in that chapter linked below, especially, when he allows in Strieber's total BS about the Finders.
Jasun's seriously flawed chapter is here:
A Life Full of Holes: Daimonic Defense and National Security (Prisoner of Infinity III)
Jasun, seriously, please edit out that whole usage of the Finders and redo that chapter if you want to be taken seriously! Imo. Why?
There is absolutely zero connection of any kind with the Finders to Strieber. Also, the Finder leader, imo, was obviously a CI for various government contacts kept at arms length. There is a very high likelihood he was gathering intelligence about child trafficking in order to infiltrate such international operations -if- there was really any evidence that was leading to such matters. It's impossible to know, but they were never prosecuted for anything! Strieber pulls this crap right out of his anal probes; a wild hare "chase" made perfect for the paranoid and conspiracy theory people. It's not sane, imo, but Strieber is doing this blame game because of his hostility towards "the government" that many people will fall in line with. Anyone connecting these Strieber conspiracy random dots can and will believe anything! Jasun!? You need to rewrite this whole chapter. Eliminate the Finder BS that supports the idea there is any connection whatsoever to Strieber about this. There is zero connection! Zero.
Constance, the million dollar advance is all Strieber needed to advance the ET Abduction disinformation that had nothing to do with his childhood. It had everything to do with Ufology disinformation in the 1980's already well under way [Budd Hopkins, Jacobs, etc.] before Strieber even wrote Communion. Strieber used Hopkins and Jacobs for his books! Hopkins personally asked many of the hypnosis questions in several different sessions with the psychiatrist and Strieber.
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Burnt State
Paranormal Adept
Myths Incorporated
those fictional narratives that teach us about the processes of the world are done so through the lens of imagination which builds its own structures. so, yes, there are forces of creation and destruction that loop around and around that can be personified and fictionalized. Blake would see those processes inherent in all aspects of the world and then form his own conceptions of reality based on the dualities of binding and generative forces. he would then imagine a pantheon of figures that he would populate his mythos with and in essence be the high priest poet who imagines the form and function of the world through his writing. Blake would say after having conversed with various biblical figures in his bedroom (in his mind) and identify what they got wrong in the bible and why he was right. he lived in an alternate reality in his mind, imagining figures and processes to be real and tangible just as Whitley does (not that he is anywhere near the artist that Blake was). but just as Blake claimed he saw the hallelujah chorus when looking at the sunset, Whitley lays claim to alien abduction and the probing of his soul.
the Bible and the Koran and the Torah all do the same fictionalizing of the world; Hinduism, Satanists, and pantheists all have their own dynamic structures of personified forces that become gods in their systems of design. however, it does not mean that any of it is real. but it gives some people things to believe in to create structure in their world view, to have reasons for the quest, and find purpose in their own psycho-emotional movements through their life. some call this spiritual and others say your babies will go to hell if they are not baptized. other writers will counter these systems of belief and attempt to create new lenses to see the world.
this in fact is the essence of the conspiracist (or re-creationist) way of seeing the universe and they have their patterns also visible in any new refit and response to previous systems to create new religions and new art movements based upon the failings and purported untruths of the previous system.
while i understand that belief systems are central to how we navigate the universe, and have the great feeling and essence of truth about them for the believer, it does not mean that any of it is real. so yes, Constance, i do not see him advancing anything in the paranormal field because he is building fictions upon fictions, as are his acolyte descendants, who believe in some of his work as reality and dispute others in favour of the reality that they have discovered to be true through THE EVIDENCE. no offence, but you can see how Jasun fits into this part of the picture and you can also see how almost all of Ufology is based upon the narratives of the past. these become their own metaphors and their stories are aggrandized in an age of repetition and replication online. almost every single powerful narrative of ufology has been transformed in the same way that any kernel of true story in the bible was then over time aggrandized, rewritten, had new "facts" magnifying and implicating truths that in fact were never there.
so says the severed goddess head: Orpheus may keep singing his song even after decapitation and the sounds he makes are sweet enough to transport me to melodious skies not seen here on earth - but it's all happening in my head, and nowhere else.
p.s. this does not mean i want to invalidate the whole of art history, for i too have taken many truths from the creation and destruction loops in the art that i love, that binds me to the earth and its processes in ways that i identify with. we all have our artists that we love, who name a phenomenological narrative that we can take strength from. so i don't want to nullify all of our creative impulses and products but just identify how they work. some people hate certain art forms and they ban, burn and censor them. i prefer to critique and have open dialogue about them. but if you are going to ask whose worldview has more critical value about how i understand reality then i'll take Dylan Thomas over Whitley Strieber any day because Dylan speaks to my soul whereas Whitley speaks out his ass.
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Thanks for your response, SD. Vallee has certainly provided us with a wide spectrum of speculative sources for the ufo phenomenon, but it seems that he has not yet come to any conclusion about which is most creditable. I also find unsatisfactory his theory that a 'control system' composed of supranatural minds has been responsible for the ufo phenomenon (including its physicality) in order to produce unspecified changes in our species' mentality. I find it somewhat inconsistent that he postulates such unknown powers as having access to our psyches and guiding us toward some transformation in consciousness while having deplored that type of 'religious' effect as one of the six key ways in which the ufo subject has already 'damaged' our societies and will damage them further. I also don't think that many people on earth have been overwhelmed by the ufo phenomenon.
Such motives can well be imputed to the controlling classes on this planet, but I don't see how those people could have dreamed up and executed the modern ufo phenomenon beginning even before WWII, then carried it out in the heat of battle in two theatres of that war, and continued the pretense to the present day around the globe. I do think that mind-controllers in various agencies and perhaps in several countries have used the ufo phenomenon for their own purposes at times, but I don't see how they or their associated militaries could have produced all the manifestations of the phenomenon.
I can't tell what premises lead you to react so extremely to Liminalist's research and writing. I read the chapter you linked and found it impressive and persuasive. There were only two claims I questioned. Liminalist is a careful and well-prepared thinker and writer who seems to me to have his thesis re Strieber and mind-control well in hand.
Strategic Deception
Paranormal Novice
Well H.G. Wells's _The War of the Worlds_ was written during 1895-1897, and was published in 1897/1898, so the idea of aliens coming here in spaceships was around well before WWII. And Wells's book _The New World Order_ was published in 1940, so the idea of uniting the world's nations under a "one-world government" already existed as well.
What I question is how many "manifestations of the phenomenon," as you put it, really manifested at all. Some ghost rockets & foo-fighters? Some of that could be explained as secret testing of classified technology, or totally fabricated stories. Weird lights and some high-flying rockets don't mean aliens were visiting.
People always link the advent of nuclear weapons with the arrival of UFOs, as if they attracted or prompted the ETs to start showing themselves to help prevent nuclear war. But here's a different interpretation of why those historical events could have coincided:
With the advent of nuclear weapons, it's possible that world leaders understood that they each had more to lose than to gain through all-out nuclear war, and realized that they had to start co-operating, at least on certain, limited levels or risk total destruction of all players involved. The elite members of any nation have always had more in common with each other than with their own citizens, and I think it's likely that they could appeal to each other in that regard. If they didn't work together, at least to some degree, they all risked losing their privileged, elitist positions.
But they could each retain their privileges if they kept their antagonisms limited to more coordinated forms of competition (each seeking managerial dominance in the hierarchy, as opposed to totally eliminating the other team, so to speak). And they still needed nationalism's "Us vs. Them" mentality as an organizing social force to retain control of their citizens, so certain controlling groups or factions could have tentatively begun this sci-fi mythology, to be tested & studied behind the scenes in trial runs, gradually evolving as the years went by, and not even necessarily known by many people in whatever governments were involved----not all sides necessarily partook of it with equal knowledge or influence. (It's a separate issue, but this could provide a sort of answer to the people who argue against the Apollo Moon Hoax by saying, "Russia would have called the U.S. out on such a lie!"---would they? What if the super-powers were already cooperating, at least in the realm of space mythology, by that point?)
It reminds me of the alleged interview supposedly conducted by Walter Bowart (author of _Operation Mind Control_, 1978) with Dr. Timothy Leary, "Timothy Leary and the CIA -or- The Spy Who Came in from the Ergot Mold"
(I'm not sure if this interview is legit, I've seen it on the internet but have never found its original source cited---if anyone can verify or debunk it, I'm all ears):
"He [Leary] lit his half-smoked joint and continued. 'Yeah. I saw in nineteen sixty-two or three, that there was a world struggle for the control of minds. That's a crude way to say it....I saw, after Hiroshima, there would never be a big world war. World war would be at the neurological level, not at the level of tanks and planes and bombs....I proceeded as an intelligence agent since 1962, understanding that the next war for control of this planet and beyond, had to do with the control of consciousness. So I had to think very carefully about that....I wanted my side to win the war....There's no winning or losing... but I wanted my side to stake out enough territory.....I'm talking about time territory, not space territory...."
http://files.shroomery.org/attachments/7677615-TIMOTHYLEARYANDTHECIA.pdf
Such a scheme would require long-term planning & conspiring of a sort that average citizens are not accustomed to considering, , and I'm not saying I'm totally convinced of it, or totally closed to other possibilities----but I still find it to be a more down-to-earth, plausible avenue of explanation than Benevolent Space Brothers suddenly appearing on the scene to help save us all. Why resort to something so novel & unsubstantiated as the Extra-Terrestrial Hypothesis when human scheming could explain it? Is the ETH really more likely than the possibility of coordinated human lies & trickery? Perhaps the super-power nations realized that they needed new paradigms to retain power & control in the face of the existential threat presented by nuclear weaponry, and realized that a new, modern zeitgeist would have to be initiated to help guide & control humanity.
Jasun, referencing that same chapter, I linked above in my previous post, did you see this in the comments from Daisy Jane? Quoting below:
"I ran across an old high school buddy of Whitley’s online by the name of Toby Johnson who is also a writer, mostly gay spirituality. Whitley and Toby attended the same Catholic school, car pool mates, both loved science fiction. A written transcript of an interview I found online, Toby says he believes Whitley’s contact was in his head, not an actual abduction. Toby thinks we are being influenced by say ‘radio waves’ or such from outer space. He also, speaking as a gay man and proudly finds the much mentioned alien ‘anal probe’ a big interest."
You should contact this person to find out all about his relationship with Strieber, and what else he might know. This could be some of the pay-dirt you keep looking for.
Imo, Strieber's trauma, including his ongoing spiritual "need to suffer" rantings, is strongly linked to his Catholic upbringing along with the Catholic schools he attended. That's what you should be suggesting in that chapter, rather than the meaningless memory fragments or the Finders.
Do you know that San Antonio is the largest majority Catholic city from east to west in the entire south of the USA? Yes, that was even far far more true back when Whitley attended those Catholic schools. I'm willing to believe his trauma issues are all rooted in those religious schools he rebelled against.
"I ran across an old high school buddy of Whitley’s online by the name of Toby Johnson who is also a writer, mostly gay spirituality. Whitley and Toby attended the same Catholic school, car pool mates, both loved science fiction. A written transcript of an interview I found online, Toby says he believes Whitley’s contact was in his head, not an actual abduction. Toby thinks we are being influenced by say ‘radio waves’ or such from outer space. He also, speaking as a gay man and proudly finds the much mentioned alien ‘anal probe’ a big interest."
You should contact this person to find out all about his relationship with Strieber, and what else he might know. This could be some of the pay-dirt you keep looking for.
Imo, Strieber's trauma, including his ongoing spiritual "need to suffer" rantings, is strongly linked to his Catholic upbringing along with the Catholic schools he attended. That's what you should be suggesting in that chapter, rather than the meaningless memory fragments or the Finders.
Do you know that San Antonio is the largest majority Catholic city from east to west in the entire south of the USA? Yes, that was even far far more true back when Whitley attended those Catholic schools. I'm willing to believe his trauma issues are all rooted in those religious schools he rebelled against.
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You've apparently been misled about Blake. He was a man intensely aware of and angered by the conditions of his society and others in the age of British imperialism and colonialism. He was an astute social critic and a poet of ideas, humane values, and liberation, the first of the great revolutionary poets of the Romantic Period in England. The essay on Blake linked below is a good introduction to the scope and character of his productivity as a visual and poetic artist and recognizes his continuing influence on artists into our time. The author of the essay is apparently the founder and editor of Hypertexts.com, a website where you will find much to value.
London
by William Blake
I wander thro' each charter'd street,
Near where the charter'd Thames does flow.
And mark in every face I meet
Marks of weakness, marks of woe.
In every cry of every Man,
In every Infant's cry of fear,
In every voice, in every ban,
The mind-forg'd manacles I hear:
How the Chimney-sweepers cry
Every blackning Church appalls,
And the hapless Soldier's sigh
Runs in blood down Palace walls.
But most thro' midnight streets I hear
How the youthful Harlots curse
Blasts the new-born Infants tear
And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse.
Burnt State
Paranormal Adept
You can call it misled if you like but I was referring to some of the fairly standard interpretations and content of his material, not his political values. While those are apparent in the work on occasion he is much better known for being fully delusional about his contactee and visionary experiences - these are routinely expressed in his works i.e. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. As his wife used to say about him, "William never uses soap to wash his hands for he has told me they are already immaculate." My critique stands.
Are you referring to the same chapter I linked to that had the garbage on the Finders, etc.?
What two claims did you question?
Whitley Strieber responds to Jasun's @Liminalist comments below:
Jasun wrote:
I have not yet read the book, but I’ve followed Strieber for decades and to a lesser extent Kripal, who seems to be bent on providing Strieber with the legitimacy he feels he has until now so sorely lacked. I will be interested to see if the book touches on Strieber’s involvement in MKULTRA-style psychological torture as a child and his later, off and on, admission to having been recruited by the CIA, not to mention his involvement with the Process Church of Final Judgment in the late 60s and the massive amount of evidence that, whatever was interfering with Strieber, was of all-too-earthly origin. I imagine not, since that would rather detract from Kripal’s attempt to put Strieber in the Holy Prophet box of Moses and St. Paul. Apparently, both he & Strieber believe that trauma-based dissociation resulting from extreme forms of abuse are valid means to some transcendental end. A belief they share with those individuals responsible for creating MKULTRA and related programs, as it happens…. As always, the truth is stranger and far more disturbing than the (“non-“)fiction.
Strieber replied:
Whitley Strieber
I don’t get what seems to me an obsession with MK-ULTRA. I wonder if you believe yourself to have been affected by it somehow? I have no evidence that what happened to me as a child was related to MK-ULTRA. The only suggestions that children were involved in this program are sketchy at best.
Also, it’s not apparent to me that Jeff puts me in any sort of “holy box.” And to claim that I was “involved” with the Process Church of Final Judgement strikes me as an intentional, and entirely inaccurate, mischaracterization of what I have written on this subject. (I refer here to the review of Super Natural that you have been posting in various places.)
The “all too earthly origin” of my experiences isn’t a possibility that I would reject, or have ever rejected. Generally ignored is the large-type statement in the frontispiece of Communion: “…Instead of shunning the darkness, we can face straight into it with an open mind. When we do that, the unknown changes. Fearful things become understandable and a truth is suggested: the enigmatic presence of the human mind winks back from the dark.”
Us, in other words, contemplating ourselves in a way that we do not understand. Across our history, we have formed thousands of different systems of belief around this presence. Most recently, we think of it as aliens or, in your case, as something generated by some sort of secret conspiracy.
But what is it, really? My life is about asking this question. That is a “holy box” which I am proud to inhabit.
Original Online article is here:
Unidentified Scholarly Subject - Texas Monthly
Jasun wrote:
I have not yet read the book, but I’ve followed Strieber for decades and to a lesser extent Kripal, who seems to be bent on providing Strieber with the legitimacy he feels he has until now so sorely lacked. I will be interested to see if the book touches on Strieber’s involvement in MKULTRA-style psychological torture as a child and his later, off and on, admission to having been recruited by the CIA, not to mention his involvement with the Process Church of Final Judgment in the late 60s and the massive amount of evidence that, whatever was interfering with Strieber, was of all-too-earthly origin. I imagine not, since that would rather detract from Kripal’s attempt to put Strieber in the Holy Prophet box of Moses and St. Paul. Apparently, both he & Strieber believe that trauma-based dissociation resulting from extreme forms of abuse are valid means to some transcendental end. A belief they share with those individuals responsible for creating MKULTRA and related programs, as it happens…. As always, the truth is stranger and far more disturbing than the (“non-“)fiction.
Strieber replied:
Whitley Strieber
I don’t get what seems to me an obsession with MK-ULTRA. I wonder if you believe yourself to have been affected by it somehow? I have no evidence that what happened to me as a child was related to MK-ULTRA. The only suggestions that children were involved in this program are sketchy at best.
Also, it’s not apparent to me that Jeff puts me in any sort of “holy box.” And to claim that I was “involved” with the Process Church of Final Judgement strikes me as an intentional, and entirely inaccurate, mischaracterization of what I have written on this subject. (I refer here to the review of Super Natural that you have been posting in various places.)
The “all too earthly origin” of my experiences isn’t a possibility that I would reject, or have ever rejected. Generally ignored is the large-type statement in the frontispiece of Communion: “…Instead of shunning the darkness, we can face straight into it with an open mind. When we do that, the unknown changes. Fearful things become understandable and a truth is suggested: the enigmatic presence of the human mind winks back from the dark.”
Us, in other words, contemplating ourselves in a way that we do not understand. Across our history, we have formed thousands of different systems of belief around this presence. Most recently, we think of it as aliens or, in your case, as something generated by some sort of secret conspiracy.
But what is it, really? My life is about asking this question. That is a “holy box” which I am proud to inhabit.
Original Online article is here:
Unidentified Scholarly Subject - Texas Monthly