IMAGINATION, SCIENCE FICTION AND UFOS

 

1940

The UFO phenomenon is a "mirage" produced by our mind trying to decipher the content of an unknown but highly immersive reality. Our unconscious, in line with the paradigm, reconstructs a scenography based on our sociocultural stereotypes. Science fiction prior to 1947 is evidence that these manifestations are based on the human imaginary. They only show a distortion of our own reality transferred to a fictitious scenario of extraterrestrial visitation. Nothing shown is really alien to the human mind.

 

1934

1942

JOSE ANTONIO CARAVACA

ARCANE ENCOUNTERS WITH UFOS

The interpretation of the genesis of ufology has undergone a remarkable evolution over the years, from the extraterrestrial hypothesis (Keyhoe, Friedman), to a redefinition of the origin of the phenomenon, with the possibility of UFOs coming from parallel universes or unknown dimensions (Vallée, Keel, Michel), all in an attempt to find a place for the anomalous and paranormal component present in many of these experiences. However, both positions still shared the same general points: the existence of intelligent entities alien to human beings, and the presence of strange unknown airships interacting in our environment. Subsequently, the possibility arose that flying saucers were a phenomenon radically different from everything we had established to date, and as a result of the approaches of the famous psychoanalyst Carl Jung, other approaches arose that contemplated that UFOs were neither vehicles nor extraterrestrial intelligences behind these appearances (collective unconscious and psychic phenomena). The Distortion theory follows to a certain extent this last stele by considering UFOs and their occupants as a sort of artificial sociocultural screen raised by our psyche and that hides, in an involuntary and not premeditated way, a mysterious and disconcerting paradigm of cognitive order.

JOSE ANTONIO CARAVACA

ARE UFOS TECHNOLOGICAL OR SOME OTHER KIND OF PHENOMENA?

To date we have no evidence that the extraordinary and unknown capabilities and properties exhibited by the UFO phenomenon are due to the existence of an extraterrestrial technology deployed before our eyes. In fact, the evolutions of strange luminous spheres in the sky, the appearance and disappearance of humanoids, electromagnetic interference, paralysis or that some objects or entities can pass through matter, have been described in many other supernatural contexts for hundreds of years without having been thought to date to be the product of an unknown science, but rather as the manifestation of a reality that normally seems forbidden to the ordinary senses. So it is clear that the similarity of UFOs with these other strange phenomena could indicate that we have been reinterpreting, perhaps influenced by our cultural filters, a series of paradigms that since the dawn of history have been present in different human cultures and that seem to react to our presence by changing and metamorphosing their external appearance. Curiously, telepathic communications are not an exclusive resource of UFO crews either, but practically all entities that have come our way, have used this means to communicate with us. But only from the second half of the 20th century experts began to consider that the anomalous manifestations could conceal a lavish alien technology, but are we sure about this?

Can we be sure that UFOs, their occupants and collateral phenomena are a consequence of the irruption of a science from other worlds on our planet? And even more taking into account that very soon the ufologists noted that, together with the manifes- tations of flying saucers and ufonauts, phenomena such as poltergeist, precognitions, strange dreams, etc., which were not unprecedented for the investigators of other heterodox subjects, were making an appearance. So, in reality, none of the UFO paradigm, except for its particular aesthetic scenography (with certain nuances), has been completely unknown to us, but obviously what has changed is the inter- pretation we have given to these apparitions. That an unexpected nocturnal visitor bursts into our bedroom has never been considered an extraterrestrial interference for scientific purposes until our civilization has contextualized these apparitions under a certain explanatory framework in line with a supposed technology that would allow extraterrestrials to go through walls to reach us. But obviously this approach ignores the fact that all kinds of entities have performed these same tasks since the dawn of history, in fields as diverse as the religious, the mystical or the philosophical. In the last seventy years thousands of people have described incredible apparitions that seemed to simulate in their appearance to be the result of an unattainable extraterres- trial science, although on the other hand, the similarity with our own evolutionary development (anthropomorphizing of the occupants) and technological development (scuba diving suits, autonomous respirators, ray guns, ladders, antennas, windows, control consoles, etc.) led many other researchers to suspect that it could be some kind of mirage or socio-cultural distortion of our own civilization raised by a phenomenon that we do not know how to decode properly.

Therefore it cannot be ruled out that what we have erroneously labeled to date as close encounters with extraterrestrial beings is the product of other types of phenomena or issues related to human perception of unknown chinks in our reality or our own mental universe that sometimes assaults us outside the walls of the psychic with a rapturous force.

JOSE ANTONIO CARAVACA

THE DICHOTOMY BETWEEN UFOS IN THE NEAR AND FAR DISTANCE

 

Since practically the beginnings of modern ufology, the behavior of the UFO cases has only made evident that distant sightings do not have many points in common with the so-called close encounters. It is in the closest experiences with the Unidentified that the paradigm reveals itself in a much more ambiguous and disconcerting way, moving away from our assumed presumptions about the origin of the phenomenon. And we cannot deny that there is an abysmal and substantial difference, in form and substance, between both facets of the UFO paradigm, and although both share obvious common features, it does not seem, after a thorough analysis of the issue, that they fit exactly the same phenomenon, at least in the way of experiencing it. But how is this possible, and did the distant sightings engender the birth of a different phenomenon? The doubts and questions that arise from the study of the ufological literature are wide and diverse, and until we do not get to delimit which is the true dimension of the close encounters with UFOs we will not advance in the understanding of the phenomenon. 

JOSE ANTONIO CARAVACA

WHEN ART LEADS THE UFO PHENOMENON

Someday, if we want to understand what is behind the UFO phenomenon, we should value the true role and influence exerted by many graphic artists who, in countless books, articles and illustrations, have captured their particular vision of the UFO manifestations based mainly on cultural and imaginative stereotypes rather than on what the witnesses actually described. The proposal of these cartoonists offers a defined and delimited image of the paradigm, almost photographic, that in the majority of occasions does not correspond at all with the reality contained in the reports, but that obviously transferred a series of very deep visual archetypes that fit with certain beliefs that could be sponsored, in a strange and paradoxical feedback, by these same images...

JOSE ANTONIO CARAVACA

WHAT IS DISTORTION THEORY?: CLARIFYING CONCEPTS...

Over the years I have experienced that some readers find it difficult to accept or understand the Distortion Theory. Some reject the idea out of hand, with no attempt to comprehend it as if it were sheer nonsense.

I can only speculate that much of the inhibition to accept or understand my thesis derives from the use of the term distortion, which somehow evokes in many an hypothesis linking UFO visions with hallucinations or mental disorders. I have commented on countless occasions that my approach does not detract one iota from the mystery of UFOs. But this has not been enough for many people to continue thinking that the Distortion Theory defends the non-existence of UFOs. I suppose that some of these detractors don’t waste their time reading my articles, beyond the, also ignoring my books about the hypothesis. These people make clear that they think I’m little less than a skeptic or even an avowed denier of the ufological paradigm who is convinced that the witnesses are somehow mentally "distorting" when they claim to have had a UFO encounter. And they are so sure of this, that time and time again they ask me a series of questions as if they had discovered the Achilles’ heel of my approach.That is why in my lectures or comments in my articles I usually find, as in an eternal deja-vu, some repetitive questions: How do you explain that UFOs are detected on radar screens and can be photographed? What happens when a UFO is seen by many people at the same time? They are all distorting at the same time? Can distortions leave traces and marks on the ground? Can a dog detect a distortion? All such queries based on the premise that distortion equals mental derangement, as if the Distortion Theory restricts the UFO phenomenon to a mere mental state that makes witnesses dream with their eyes open of flying saucers and extraterrestrial beings. But obviously these people are wrong in their judgments and opinions. One can only legitimately disagree with an idea when one knows it in depth.To begin with, I would like to clarify that the Distortion Theory was born with the intention of trying to decode how close encounters with UFOs occur, or in other words, why do people experience these kind of strange visions and why do they see them in a certain way?

My analysis does not go so much into assessing or uncovering the ultimate nature of the phenomenon, as trying to put on the table a series of clues that seek to understand the mechanisms that could be behind these manifestations and that could explain why the witnesses explain these phenomena in such a personal, subjective and non-transferable way. But that is one of the keys of the Distortion Theory, to banish preconceived ideas based mostly on serious errors of analysis perpetrated on the UFO cases.It is also essential to keep in mind that my area of study focuses on close encounters with UFOs, which evidently exhibit a higher strangeness than distant sightings, so for many readers, it is difficult to understand the enormous leap that occurs in research of this type of incident  in comparison with observations of unidentified objects at a distance. The so-called close encounters of the third type demonstrate that we are not before a stable phenomenon with an "aesthetic" memory that we can trace or follow from one event to another. Regardless of the fact that sometimes these apparitions are physical, which is indisputable at this point, UFOs have never presented continuity, that we have been in the presence of the same craft and the same crew-members. This is already a very suspicious fact.

To deny the reality of the phenomenon while undertaking alternative ways to find an explanation in the extraterrestrial hypothesis supports the idea that the main ingredients of the UFO paradigm-- i.e. the alleged spacecraft and their occupants have varied ingredients both in their typology and anatomy respectively, and in their behavior towards witnesses -- indicates the manifestations are restarted with each witness encounter from scratch. And this would demonstrate, among other things, that the UFO phenomenon, whatever its origin, modifies and reacts interactively to the presence of observers.Therefore, it has been a mistake on the part of a great majority of researchers to try to transfer a template of a coherent and uniform phenomenon about which different witnesses from all over the world gave an account. UFOs have never possessed a fixed photograph. Like dreams, these apparitions have been subject to a wide range of personal interpretations and decodings, as well as a filtering under socio-cultural conditions that would point out that the observer has a decisive or prominent influence on what is observed. If we do not accept that our psyche modifies and interferes in an active way in the scenographic content exposed in the UFO experiences, we will be very far from reaching a correct interpretation of the paradigm. And this adds another important fact: all the analyses that we carry out on the casuistry have to take into account this active interference on the part of the witnesses in the content exposed by the phenomenon.Otherwise our hypotheses will be confused because the psychic architecture resulting from our interaction with the paradigm projects a fictitious composition that adorns the real phenomenon with elements and characteristics that have nothing to do with its true essence.To conclude, I will say that these anomalous manifestations seem to stand in a liminal territory between our reality and the place from which these phenomena come (which may even be unexplored chinks of our own reality), and this could explain the complex amalgam of paraphysical factors recorded in ufological apparitions.

But we have to keep in mind that only by understanding the modus operandi of UFOs in their closest encounters with witnesses can we take the next step. To venture to discover the cause of these fascinating apparitions. 

JOSE ANTONIO CARAV@CA

UFOS: 9 KEYS THAT INVALIDATE THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL HYPOTHESIS

Although many researchers continue to defend the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis as the most accurate answer to explain the UFO phenomenon, its coherence has been much in recent years. And only by disregarding a large part of the informative material gathered by ufologists is it possible to maintain, to this day, that the visions of these artifacts and their occupants may be caused by the arrival on our planet of a troop of extraterrestrial scientists. In my opinion, there are nine key factors that we must take into account when analyzing this paradigm:

1.- Infinite diversity in the descriptions of airships. (Not even in basic shapes such as "saucers" or "spheres" there is unanimity in sizes or colors).

2.- Infinite diversity in the descriptions of humanoids.

3.- Exclusivity of each incident. No repetition in the casuistry of most of the elements and characteristics observed.

4.- Absurd elements (fairies with scandals, cooking aliens...).

5.- "Paranormal" characteristics of the incidents.

6.- Total absence of weighty evidence confirming the existence of these "extraterrestrial" visitations.

7.- The non-existence of a global plot that could unite all the incidents in a big story.

8.- That they appear to be phenomena that move between two antagonistic universes, the physical and the psychic.

9.- Elusive information that does not determine the true origin, nature or purpose of the occupants of the UFOs.

The sum of these factors gives us an uncertain and disturbing result. How is all this possible? What can explain the infinite capacity of the phenomenon to vary from one episode to another? Why does it restart in each encounter? Why is it, often, so absurd and hilarious? Why have we not been able to obtain a single irrefutable proof? How is the phenomenon regulated to remain "clandestine", despite its numerous appearances? How can they "move" between the real universe and the psychic one?

JOSE ANTONIO CARAVACA