McKenna vs. Vallee: The Oversoul as Saucer
Posted Sep 12, 2007 10 comments
This is a curious find and I wanted to put this into context, since someone recently asked on the Brainsturbator Forum if Jacques Vallee and Terence McKenna had ever collaborated. I'd heard McKenna mention Vallee -- and praise his work -- in the speech you can watch on Google Video as "Shamanic Approaches to the UFO." (As one commentator puts it, "This will be boring as hell if you're not REALLY INTO what's being discussed.")
I was surprised to find I'd forgotten about this passage, from a chapter which was cut from True Hallucinations
. Titled "The Oversoul as Saucer," it contains a surprisingly paranoid condemnation and dismisal of Vallee's book Messengers of Deception
It is curious that McKenna would rage so eloquently against the materialist viewpoint that consciousness was an "epiphenomenon," yet he's still willing to insist that a gigantic spacecraft appearing within Earth's atmosphere and working miracles would be an "epiphenomenon" of consciousness, or a projection of the....something:
"The saucer, no matter how alien it appears, no matter how advanced its demonstrations of power, is NOT a vehicle from some other star system, it is the oversoul of humanity up to its oldest trick. If one knows this one can live through the revelation and the destruction of our scientific world and yet evade the immense power of this most powerful of all transference phenomenon and thereby maintain the integrity of one's own soul and spirit. Remember, I am not a debunker of flying saucers or a defender of science, I am a contactee, and this book is the painstakingly told story of my own involvement with the UFOs. I am one of those Vallee has pinpointed as being a carrier of ideas that pave the way for the scenario I have just described. Yet from it all I have learned that there is no religious revelation more satisfying than the hard won fruits of simple understanding. And there is no liberation to compare with freeing oneself from the illusions and delusions of the age in which one lives."
Not only does he dismiss a precise thesis -- intelligent ET spacecraft -- for the vague and frankly meaningless "oversoul of humanity," but he goes on to voice grave doubts about Vallee himself:
"Vallee's recent book 'Messengers of Deception' vibrates with fear of the unconscious and alienation from the matrix of the larger psyche out of which rational thought has emerged. He fears the destruction of rationalism and scientific thought, yet never once does he mention the potential world wrecking crisis that the undirected development of science and technology has brought into being. He paints himself as an open-minded investigator of UFOs, yet never questions the motives of the retired and unnamed intelligence officers in which he places so much faith. It is impossible that the CIA is unaware of the social impact belief in UFOs is having? If they were unaware of it before then surely the recent writings of Vallee himself must have alerted them to the potential challenge UFO beliefs pose to orthodox institutions.
Based on Vallee's own ideas of an informational struggle between rational and irrational elements, how was he able to ignore the possibility that the mutilations which he is so eager to connect with UFOs are nothing more that a govenment agency's clumsy attempt to discredit the genuine UFO phenomenon? It is a typical method of the intelligence community to discredit human groups it opposes by faking atrocities in such a way that they appear to have been committed by the group whose discrediting is sought. Vallee gives examples of this but never suspects that some government agency might be using this technique to impede the transfer of loyalties from political institutions to the UFOs. He mentions the proximity of animal mutilations to high-security government installations but never suggests this might be because such installations are the source of these mutilations. Few UFO sightings involve confusion among witnesses over whether or not what they saw was a UFO or a helicopter. Yet in the animal mutilation cases many witnesses insist a helicopter was involved.
Vallee is at pains to say no physical evidence of a UFO has ever been collected. Yet later he passes over the fact that a quite ordinary surgical scalpel was found at one cattle mutilation site. It seems possible to me that some people in government have read Vallee and are familiar with his theories regarding UFOs as a factor introducing shifts in belief systems and institutional loyalties on a global scale. Without knowing what UFOs really are these persons and agencies have launched smokescreen operations designed to cast doubt on the motives and harmlessness of UFOs and so to retard or halt the shift of loyalties and beliefs now reaching epidemic proportions.
I suspect that Vallee's book may be the opening shot in a media war whose purpose will be to connect the occult, right-wing fanatacism, and animal mutilations to the UFO, all in an effort to cast doubt on the vast power and benign intent of the saucer phenomenon. Vallee's title 'Messengers of Deception' bears a curious resemblance to J. Edgar Hoover's 'Masters of Deceit'. There the boogey man was communism. In Vallee's book we are told the new boogey man is UFO phenomenon. Who chose the title for Vallee's book? Was it Vallee or the mysterious major who was so helpful in guiding Vallee down these new avenues of speculation? I believe that Vallee whether wittingly or unwittingly is himself a messenger of deception and has become the spearhead of a conscious effort to sow even deeper confusion in society regarding UFOs.
We might say it is an effort foredoomed to failure. The collective overmind of our species is the source of the UFO and its designs cannot be deflected or turned aside. Its viewpoint is one of thousands of years and its means visionary and charismatic belief systems which act to restore the balance between understanding of and reverence for the universe is a message more powerful than any offered by the profane materialist societies that have grown so foolish as to imagine themselves the stewards of human destiny. Humanity alone and each of us individualy is the steward of human destiny. This is the real meaning of the UFOs and the experiment at La Chorrera."
If this passage interests you, of if you didn't know there were two "missing chapters" left out of True Hallucinations, you can check them both out at Deoxy, which has been providing great information for many years now. Their collection of McKenna articles and documents is unsurpassed.
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Commenting is not available in this weblog entry.1. TC on Sep 13, 2007 at 12:14 AM permalink
McKenna, in that passage, is 100% sure about what the UFO is and is not. So to him, any opposing theory is wrong. It’s almost as if he expects Vallee to “Know Better”, hence the seemingly paranoid claims against the man.
2. prunesquallor on Sep 13, 2007 at 5:38 PM permalink
Not only does he dismiss a precise thesis—intelligent ET spacecraft—for the vague and frankly meaningless “oversoul of humanity,”
Careful with that ax, Eugene! What McKenna is referring to here is the ONE (al-lah) described in countless ways by neoplatonic/hermetic/everybody authors. Remember Barbelith from the Invisibles? It WAS the visitation, the saucers and little men were like subsidiary aspects of the main thing. The “oversoul of humanity” (Brahma) is not a vague and meaningless concept to Hindus, for example.
There’s a line from a Can song I love: “when I saw/mushroom head/I was born/and I was dead.” Depending on the internal orientation of the visited human, the visitation can appear beneficient or malevolent.
My personal theory re: cattle mutilations is that occult groups (possibly w/ gov. ties) are attempting contact, probably with some kind of success, considering how long it’s been going on, but that doesn’t mean they’re in communication with the ONE, more likely they’re calling on some particular aspect(s).
3. Thirtyseven on Sep 13, 2007 at 6:10 PM permalink
A lot of people have talked about “God” over the centuries, too, but I don’t think that makes the term “God” any more precise or useful. I’m interested in the details and mechanics more than the labels—what is the Oversoul composed of? How is it generated? How does it manifest a gigantic UFO—or anything else for that matter?
I realize those questions are, to say the least, difficult to answer. That’s also my point—until we can use precision and ground our terms in real meaning, I don’t see the value in a discussion of “the oversoul” or “the One.” Because there’s no way to be sure we’re even talking about the same thing.
I especially don’t see how McKenna can act like he’s got an explanation for the UFO phenomena on his hands if he can’t even explain his terms concretely.
4. prunesquallor on Sep 13, 2007 at 6:42 PM permalink
Well, I felt the same way until I saw it.
Not trying to be snotty or dismissive at all here. I was a fairly hard-core scientific materialist until the visitation, the apocalypse, which I had no words for whatsoever and no way to assimilate it into my worldview. I made all the connections afterwards, trying to make sense of it.
I’m just saying that what McKenna says makes perfect sense to me, but only because of certain experiences I have had. That doesn’t mean that’s the right point of view, maybe he and I have both made similar grevious errors in logic! I certainly changed my mind drastically before, who can say I won’t do so again after learning more.
You’re right, calling IT “God” in this day and age will obfuscate more than clarify for most people, due to our different perspective from our ancestors. But that doesn’t mean it’s hokum, it just means it’s very difficult to talk about.
I don’t see the value in a discussion of “the oversoul” or “the One.” Because there’s no way to be sure we’re even talking about the same thing.
OK, this is going to sound very pretentious: if you’ve seen it, you can recognize when other people are trying to describe it, but only because of the common point of reference. Thank goodness that this is the case: otherwise, you’d have to decide that you’re crazy.
You can’t ground discussion of it in anything but it, because it is THE ultimate ground of all other things. It can only be spoken of precisely by denying properties: It is composed of nothing, it was not generated, it has no end. To ask how it manifests a UFO, or the world, you would have to ask the kabbalists, Vedantists, or other advanced “theo"-logians.
I’m not saying all this to try and convince anyone that McKenna’s view is correct, no person could have convinced me. But I do feel that I understand his POV in a non-fuzzy-new-age way, a rational way, for whatever that’s worth.
(btw, the view that UFOs are “really” psychic phenomena seems to be common in traditionalist circles, Charles Upton has written at least one book on the matter, as has Fr. Seraphim Rose, but I haven’t got ahold of either one yet.)
5. TC on Sep 13, 2007 at 10:35 PM permalink
Like McKenna said, “That too!”
Two people seeing the same UFO simultaneously are significantly less crazy than one person.
6. CŕM on Sep 14, 2007 at 5:46 AM permalink
Anyone who is quick to debunk something that McKenna says is cleary out of touch with ideas of the non-culturally influenced nature.
There is absolutely nothing “meaningly” about the oversoul idea, in fact its far far more meaningful than the typical (culturally manipulated) idea of being visited by other beings in domed shaped space craft. Did Valle ever get loading on psilocybin or LSD or perhaps DMT and experience the power of the mass psyche?
Why then should we take his position over someone that spent their whole adult life exploring the frontiers of consciousness. Sure, Vallee does a lot of research and emphasizes the state we are in with this issue, but I think its going to require a change of thinking using next paradigm ideas in order to grasp what is going on, because personally I couldn’t give a rats about physical aliens and their craft unless they are gonna show themselves on my front lawn, especially given that I can meet with better beings made of pure light through the use of entheogens.
McKenna’s ideas and hence dismissal of Vallee was influenced by experiences far stranger than what the idea of physical UFO’s/ aliens could ever compete with. Not that I’m against the idea of physical aliens, and they probably do exist, its just lame to go all government conspiracy about it, by doing that you give power to those pathetic government institutions that withhold such information. Anyways physical aliens are lame compared to the ones we can connect with at higher frequencies of consciousness that impart wisdom. Of course the physical ones could also be something of the nature of cognitive dissonance. Sure, this sounds like epiphenomenalism, but humans are always full of cognitive distortions and thinking errors so why the hell can’t this be? That doesn’t mean that the idea that consciousness is all that is can simply be debunked in favour of epiphenomenalism, it simply means that what is being shown as projected from the higher mind is being misjudged. I might not have explained that terribly well but meh, I don’t have time to write a thesis right now!
7. CŕM on Sep 14, 2007 at 5:48 AM permalink
Correction: “there os absolutely nothing ‘meaningless’ about the oversoul idea is what I meant!
8. Thirtyseven on Sep 14, 2007 at 7:19 PM permalink
By “meaningless” I mean this:
1) It cannot be accurately defined, and thus cannot be discussed with any meaning.
2) It is a concept, without morphology or mechanics, so it cannot be understood.
“Oversoul” is just another term for “God”, UNTIL IT’S NOT. And McKenna’s work definitely took us closer to that time when it does mean something—but it’s not here yet, not by a long shot.
9. porkyoupine on Sep 14, 2007 at 7:23 PM permalink
uh have any of you actually read Vallee’ books? he’s not a believer in UFO’s as literal extraterrestrials.
10. Thirtyseven on Sep 14, 2007 at 7:40 PM permalink
Exactly why this is so odd to me—in the footage I linked to at the beginning, there’s McKenna at a UFO conference, referring to Vallee and praising his work—they seem to be on the same page. In their written work, they seem to be on the same page—except for this one chapter by McKenna, where they’re clearly and emphatically not.
Really, the biggest, most confusing aspect of this is McKenna’s paranoia and accusations. It just seems very uncharacteristic for someone who’s tuned into Gaia—accusing people of being disinformation agents is more like something a mere conspiracy theorist or cult leader would do.