The Men Who Stare at Zygotes

By Peter Fotis Kapnistos

The Men Who Stare at Goats (2004) is a book by Jon Ronson about the U.S. Army’s investigation of psychic theories and the possible military uses of the paranormal. Its title alludes to efforts to kill goats by staring at them. In a Nov 7, 2009 online Twitter post, the well-known mentalist Uri Geller referred to actor George Clooney, saying, “His latest film is about my work.” In a Nov 12 Twitter post, Geller added:

“George Clooney is Uri Geller in the movie The Men Who Stare At Goats? I believe I ignited the story when I told Jon Ronson about some of my adventures with a certain intelligence agency.”

Jon Ronson’s book examines the links between paranormal military programs and psychological techniques used today. The book follows the development of secret psychic activities over the past decades and explores how they are used today in U.S. security and military operations.  Project Stargate, the CIA-run program that used remote viewing for psychic spying, came to an end in 1995, and thousands of pages of formerly classified material were released. Journalist Gary S. Bekkum has researched those secret government documents, as well as UFO information and psychic explorations.

According to Bekkum, The Men Who Stare at Goats (the 2009 comedy film) is more or less consistent, with polished performances from a first-rate cast headed by George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, and Kevin Spacey. The America government has been involved in using the paranormal since the beginning of the Cold War. Bekkum now has 89,900 pages of documents about the psychic effort provided by the CIA:

In the 1970s, the American Intelligence Community, including but not limited to CIA, DIA, NSA, Army intelligence, the USAF, the Navy, and others, engaged in secret research to determine the usefulness of psychic phenomena. This is true, and this larger effort is mostly ignored by the film, which tells the story from the point of view of the characters, some who were inspired by real persons and events.

In the 1980s, Army intelligence did train operational military psychic spies, who were tasked against real targets of interest, including several high profile cases, such as the hostage crisis in Iran. Tasking for the units was handed down from highest levels of the U.S. government, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to declassified government files.

Jon Ronson’s book focused on one group of psychic spies in the U.S. Army. But if famed paranormalist Uri Geller is somehow related to Ronson’s observations, perhaps we ought to also look into Geller’s military background. Uri Geller was a paratrooper in the Israeli army. He fought in the Six Day War of 1967 and was wounded in action.

Geller’s biographers disclosed a rather intense incident when Uri supposedly tried to “duck and dive” on military service: “His working out of a cunning plan of deception in the paratroopers was not only foolhardy at the time – for what he did, he could have been flung in a military prison for months and suffered a stain on his record for the rest of his life.”

What actually happened to Uri Geller in the Israeli army? According to Uri, a miraculous switchover incident took place, with a machine gun. (‘Ben Gunn,’ says you, ‘has reasons of his own.’) But there was no one he could tell. “His first thought was that God had intervened, and as he has never had any other explanation for it, that tends to remain his belief.”

Although Geller took a bullet through his left hand in the Six Day War, he still headed a crack unit to knock out a pillbox. After being shot at twice, he fired his gun and killed a Jordanian soldier. Shortly later, slices of metal flying off a stricken tank, or possibly bullets, hit Geller again. “He felt a blast, sensed something entering his right arm and the left side of his forehead, and, as he blacked out, assumed with resignation that he was dead.”

Is there anything in the army records to suggest that Uri Geller might be able to stop someone’s heart by staring at him or her? Uri has been filmed staring at fertilized cells (zygotes) and plant seeds in order to make them germinate and sprout. But do certain psychic techniques involve martial arts and self-defense? Why does Geller relate to the men who stare at goats? Should we take a more careful look at Gary Bekkum’s files?

Uri Geller once said he had a dream he would die during a paratrooper jump: “He appreciated that dreaming of dying on a jump was a fairly normal thing for a paratrooper to do.” Did something weird happen to Uri Geller when he jumped as a paratrooper in the Six Day War? Did he in some way set off from this life? Was Uri’s miraculous switchover incident a reference to an out-of-body experience (OBE), or a significant UFO intrusion?

In the Second World War, UFO sightings were called “foo fighters.” Nowadays, if the blip of an unidentified paratrooper shows up on a radar screen, it’s sometimes called a “Mary Poppins” (the one-liner joke is that someone jumped down from the sky).

When the 11th blip abruptly arrived on Israeli radar in June of 1967, it was far more life threatening than a pathetic joke of duck and dive. Ten Israeli soldiers had volunteered for a critical mission to defend Israel’s right to exist. The radar screens showed eleven. Who was the 11th paratrooper of the Six Day War?

For what he did, he could have been put in prison. His mind raced beyond the limits of past and future. His body was a weightless force, faster than a speeding projectile. His right hand was outstretched. A shock wave roared and thundered in the sky behind him. The eleventh paratrooper was descending to the Mount of Olives.

There would be no picnic tables set with refreshments or well-dressed pastors waiting with Bibles at the moment. Jerusalem was a battle zone with heavy fighting –– a desert theater of fortifications and tanks. Pieces of someone’s dismembered leg marked the burning ground. “Where’s your parachute?” asked another soldier. “Over there,” the eleventh replied and pointed to a near graveyard. His shirt was saturated with color, dipped in his own blood.

He projected phases of his life as several dimensions, from a playful child to an elderly peacekeeper. Those aspects he embedded into terrestrial reality –– past and future –– when his feet touched the ground, and his body descended to the Mount of Olives. Who was the 11th paratrooper?

* * *

Cause tonight for the first time

Just about half-past ten

For the first time in history

It’s gonna start raining men.

It’s Raining Men! Hallelujah! – It’s Raining Men! Amen!

(The Weather Girls, 1982)

* * *

The eleventh paratrooper was at last identified and a background check was conducted. The niece of Sigmund Freud became a refugee when book burning and violent outbursts of anti-Semitism began in Vienna. Sigmund Freud and his family received visits from the Gestapo. Many would perish in the Holocaust.

The niece of Sigmund Freud was put at great risk with numerous forced abortion incidents –– enough to bring about female infertility. It would have been a medical wonder for her to be his biological mother.

The “SS Exodus” was a ship that carried Jewish emigrants from France in 1947 with the goal of taking its passengers to Israel. Most of the emigrants were Holocaust survivors who had no immigration certificates. Homeless orphans had no legal birth certificates or given names.

* * *

Uri Geller said that his paratrooper switchover was under the protection of some outside force, which was unfathomable. His first thought was that God had intervened. The American psychic Ingo Swann worked with Uri in the 1970s.  Russel Targ and Harold Puthoff conducted experiments with them at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). They believed that Uri Geller, retired police commissioner Pat Price, and artist Ingo Swann had genuine psychic abilities. The CIA and the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA), directed by Andrija Puharich, allegedly worked with Geller, Price, and Swann to develop psychic powers for the military.

In November 2009, NASA scientists made the thrilling discovery that the moon has lots of water and could probably support life. NASA’s October 9 mission involving the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite provided the stunning confirmation of water in the forms of ice and vapor. “Having definitive evidence that there is substantial water is a significant step forward in making the moon an interesting place to go,” said John Logsdon, a space policy researcher for George Washington University.

In 1998, Ingo Swann wrote of water on the moon and said the moon also supports life. Swann claimed that men in black had taken him into the wing of a covert black ops survey into lunar anomalies to learn what aliens were doing there. Swann said he had made government connections with human looking moon visitors that were living on earth.

“VALIS” is a 1981 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. (The title is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System.) Dick’s theory was that we have been contacted by a transcendental mind he called VALIS:

In 1973 world-famous psychic showman Uri Geller had also been receiving messages and regular UFO sightings from something calling itself SPECTRA, which claimed to be a super computer in orbit around the earth. Not normally reticent about his bizarre beliefs, Geller has been suspiciously quiet about his experiences of SPECTRA – which may or may not relate to the publicly recorded interest the CIA paid to this particular aspect of his unusual career. However, the maverick, but world-renowned physicist, Dr. Jack Sarfatti, was prepared to commit almost certain professional suicide by publicly declaring that he too had been contacted by, in his own words, “a VALIS-like being.” Despite knowing he was going to face ridicule and scientific crucifixion, Sarfatti went on record to recount how, in 1952 at the age of 13, he had received a telephone call from an inhuman, metallic voice. The voice declared himself a sentient computer on a spacecraft from the future and instructed him to pursue a career in science.

After Sarfatti went public about his phone call from VALIS as a teenager, it emerged that he was not the only scientist to have had a similar experience. In recent years, researchers have discovered that at least a dozen other senior players in the international scientific community received a mysterious call claiming to be from a computer or other being from the future encouraging them to study science.

(David Southwell and Sean Twist, “Conspiracy Files: Real-life Stories of Paranoia, Secrecy, and Intrigue” 2004)

Tim Boucher freshly considered Philip K. Dick’s premise and said that Geller is also responsible for stories regarding John Lennon’s UFO contacts. Today, the prospects for life on the moon are better than ever before. “Rather than a dead and unchanging world, it could in fact be a very dynamic and interesting one,” said Greg Delory, a researcher for the University of California.

Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin recently said in an interview that there’s a “monolith” on a moon. Benjamin Creme, a writer of esotericism for Share International magazine, claims that the modern “Messiah” already entered the earth’s atmosphere –– decades ago –– and is now living in England. The modern messiah-figure is making his policies known to the world as the current global systems give way.

As the “megachurch” movement spreads worldwide and “televangelists” make use of home entertainment media to provide teaching and support to believers, a new inquiry has been put forward: “If Jesus had a TV show, what would he broadcast?” The men who stare at quotes think he should probably instruct Bible and Sunday school studies. The men who stare at notes think he should explore lost archeology, ancient biology or stellar explosions in space. But the men who stare at votes think he should perform more miracles –– in harmony with our current laws. Today it is unlawful for a layman to heal without a medical license (very soon, it might also be forbidden for one to offer security related help).

“Another world,” the stranger said to the small crowd of men. “Why do you stand there, looking up at the sky? He will return in the same way that you saw him go.”

According to Benjamin Crème (and maybe Dan Brown), the modern messiah-figure’s intention is to marry and live the dream of Eden. His legendary wedding feast is supposed to last for a thousand years, to mark the “technological singularity” or scientific era of eternal life.

Some critics may perhaps argue that men who stare at goats use the evil side of the mind. But a more angelic inspiration for Jon Ronson’s weird tale can be found in Acts 5:

Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. With his wife’s full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles’ feet.

Then Peter said, “Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn’t it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn’t the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God.”

When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened. Then the young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him.

About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter asked her, “Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?”

“Yes,” she said, “that is the price.”

Peter said to her, “How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.”

At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband. Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.

* * *

http://reporter.blackraiser.com/

(NOVEMBER 2009)  PETER FOT K KAPNISTOS, ICARIAN SEA, GR, 83300.

Strange Things I Don´t Talk About

By Peter Fotis Kapnistos

In my lifetime I have experienced a few incidents that might be described as Fortean because they remain outside the recognized theories of science. Altogether, there were really only four or five such anomalous occurrences in my whole life and they took place years apart. But even so, I remember them in detail because they remain unexplained. I suspect that many ordinary people also experience extraordinary things but don´t talk about them for fear of being laughed at.

I personally don´t have a problem with making people chuckle. The way I see it, it´s a lot better than making people weep. So if you have a psychological need to giggle at something you can´t explain, go right ahead. It´s an excellent fear-repression mechanism. But listen closely to what I have to say.

Paul Dale Roberts, a paranormal investigator and writer recently interviewed me. He put forward a range of questions on the subjects of UFOs and Men in Black (MIBs) that I encountered several years ago. I also touched upon research in remote viewing conducted by the US Navy from 1972 until 1995. L.R. Bremseth, then a Navy commander, described it as a broad-based “transcendent and asymmetrical” research program. But there were some other matters that Paul Dale Roberts didn´t ask me about because they have no obvious link to UFOs. There are a few strange things I don´t talk about.

A most baffling incident happened to me one warm summer evening when I was walking alone. It was somewhere around three or four o´clock in the morning. The streets were empty and the neighborhood was silent as I nonchalantly made my way home after a get-together with a few friends. When I arrived at the intersection lights of two small streets near my house, I carefully looked in each direction to make sure no cars were coming. The junction was undisturbed and the narrow streets were abandoned. Nobody was outside except me. But I suddenly noticed something dim and small rapidly moving toward me from about half a block away. I was standing in the middle of the intersection and thought it could have been a dark cat or perhaps even a large rat running after me. The small dark thing was moving fast and when it approached me I quickly jumped in the air to prevent it from biting my foot. It abruptly stopped next to me. I cautiously crouched down to see what it was and was absolutely amazed by what I saw. It was a big cluster of muddy grapes. Where it came from, I do not know. How it scuttled along the street, I have no idea. There are some things I don´t talk about.

I realize there´s much symbolism to the grapevine. But I´m the type of person who looks for scientific explanations for bizarre experiences. This one really had me stumped. The only rationalization I am able to provide is a long shot. In 2008, researchers discovered single-celled organisms about the size of a grape on the seafloor near the Bahamas. These large single cells (called Gromia sphaerica) can actually scurry along the seafloor. Cosmologist Paul Davies recently speculated that a space-faring civilization could build miniature probes to explore the galaxy, perhaps no bigger than your palm. Such so-called “von Neumann probes” may act as roaming life forms the size of grapes from an extraterrestrial civilization. I told you it was a long shot. But if you can come up with a better explanation that doesn’t involve phantasms, please let me know.

About two years later, I visited Israel during the summer months because I wanted to see the old town of Jerusalem. Entering the ancient walled city was like taking a journey into the past. Unfortunately, there was much political tension in those days and soldiers with machine guns patrolled the streets at night. But that didn´t stop me from slipping past the guards and climbing up to the Mount of Olives where I found a comfortable spot to sit and gaze down upon Jerusalem and meditate every night. After doing that for a few consecutive evenings, one night I saw a small ball of light suddenly materialize in front of me as I sat in the grass. It seemed slightly larger than a ping-pong ball but looked smaller than a tennis ball. It was a bright sphere of continuous white light, not flashing, and seemed to float about four or five feet off the ground. It drifted slowly in front of me, from my right to my left, and traveled approximately thirty or forty feet before it abruptly evaporated.

Unlike the grape cluster, there is scientific recognition of this fact. It´s called ball lightning. According to Dr. Keith Heidorn, a similar phenomenon called St. Elmo’s fire can also appear on leaves, grass, and even at the tips of cattle horns. Prof. Colin Price, head of the Geophysics and Planetary Sciences Department at Tel Aviv University, said thunderstorms are the catalyst for a newly discovered natural phenomenon he calls sprites, described as flashes high in the atmosphere.

The exact cause and nature of ball lightning has yet to be determined; there may be several different types, confusing matters further. But generally it manifests as a grapefruit-sized sphere of light moving slowly through the air which may end by fizzling out or exploding. (David Hambling, “Scientist Looks to Weaponize Ball Lightning,” WIRED, February 20, 2009)

Even though scientists don´t know what causes ball lightning, at least they have a name for it. It seems that it may be a sporadic phenomenon in Israel. Uri Geller, the world´s most investigated paranormalist, said that at the age of four he had an encounter with a mysterious ball of light while in a garden near his house in Israel. He said that he chased after it and was actually hit in the head by the “sphere of light.” This might sound like a childhood flight of the imagination, but many years later an elderly Israeli man named Yaakov Avrahami recalled that while he was once walking to a bus station he witnessed a ball of light. “At that certain moment I noticed a little boy with a white shirt come out from the building to the left. This light ball stopped like it sensed him. Suddenly it moved backwards towards the little boy.”

Journalist Anthony Bragalia says that UFOs are both amorphous and solid. They appear as “lightforms” as often as they appear to be constructed of metal. Bragalia claims that in the coming months newly discovered information will be released revealing that the US government conducted some very interesting studies which, when published, will provide stunning insights.

Some of the aerial “plasma light” phenomena appears to be self-organized and self-directed, even exhibiting some type of intelligence. They can hover, move instantly, morph shape, blink out then reappear elsewhere… or fade into nothingness. Explanations have been proffered that the lights are unknown natural earth or atmospheric events or processes. Maybe they somehow relate to piezoelectricity, ions, earth lights — or unique combinations of these things. Or even still, some feel they may be some sort of unknown aerial life forms. (Anthony Bragalia, “UFOs and the States of Matter,” The UFO Reality, February 12, 2009)

The coincidental timing of my ball lightning experience is what symbolically matters to me. I can now say that “I saw the light” while meditating on the Mount of Olives over Jerusalem. But Uri Geller apparently caught it right between the eyes. Since the nature of ball lightning still remains unknown to scientists, we can´t rule out the possibility of a von Neumann probe in this case either. Observing a celestial probe might be amazing, but having one transferred into your forehead would truly be remarkable.

“The Men Who Stare at Goats” is a 2004 non-fiction book by Jon Ronson, and a movie based on the book, starring George Clooney, about the US Army’s exploration of the potential military applications of the paranormal. The title refers to attempts to kill goats by staring at them. According to David Hambling of WIRED magazine, Dr. Paul Koloc briefly obtained funding in 2002 from the Missile Defense Agency to create stable “magnetoplasmoids” or ball lightning a foot in diameter which would last between one and five seconds and accelerate to two hundred kilometers a second. This would make an idea anti-missile weapon, generating an intense electromagnetic pulse on impact. The USAF´s Phillips Laboratory supposedly examined a very similar concept in 1993.

Shortly before my father´s death, the hands of a small clock in my kitchen started moving counter-clockwise. We assumed that it was because the clock needed new batteries. When my father was placed in an intensive care unit after enduring a heart attack and a broken hip, I remained at home to watch over my ailing mother. As I prayed for my father´s health, I suddenly felt a mild breeze of air move from the left side of my body to the right. I sensed at that moment that my father had passed away. I looked at the clock in the living room. It was eight-twenty in the evening and I said so to my sister. When we later got our doctor´s hospital report, the exact hour of my father´s death was 8:20 PM. A few days later, our next-door neighbor happened to be visiting us. Because she was near the telephone, she answered it when it rang. It was a man´s voice. He asked about a family member. When my neighbor asked who the caller was, he replied that he was my father — and promptly hung up. Unless that was a heartless prank, it resembled various reports of so-called “dead ringers,” or phone calls from the dead. In many instances the cell or landline numbers had even been disconnected. But they still appeared on caller ID.

Every time the living picks up the phone all they hear on the other end is static. There have been instances of those who receive the calls recording them only to find voices in the recording that were not perceptible to the human ear at the time. (Pastor Swope, “Dead Ringers,” The Paranormal Pastor, November 30, 2008)

The Death and Resurrection of Mars

A popular website has built a minor-league reputation regularly nit-picking about “UFOs and the Death of God.” Citing Nietzsche´s schizophrenia and welcoming an existentiality that it presumes to be real, its most recent report claims “some in the UFO community replace God with UFOs for psychological reasons.”

That argument vaguely reminds us of the “Death of Mars” attitude. Scientists have long reflected on the possibility of life on Mars. In the 17th century, after telescopic observation by some observers of apparent Martian canals, it was natural to suppose that some form of life may inhabit Mars. But in 1894, U.S. astronomer William Campbell wrongly showed that water and oxygen were not present in the Martian atmosphere. By the early 1900s, the canal theory was no longer supported. In 1965, NASA scientists unhappily described a parched Mars without rivers, oceans or any signs of life. Mars was officially dead. But today all that has changed. The discovery of abundant sources of water on Mars, together with vast stores of methane gas have most researchers believing once again that Mars is alive and well.

Advocates of the “God is Dead” hypothesis may also be in for a big surprise. According to Paul Davies, there could be microbes that do not have the standard biochemistry of Earth-dwelling organisms. Davies and other leading researchers now think that an amazing realm of “life as we don´t know it” may exist around us. Scientists would never have identified such “weird life” because the techniques they use for studying microbes are based on the familiar biological processes that drive the living things we understand.

Some microbes may also have a means of carrying genetic information and replicating themselves that is not based on DNA, or that has extra DNA “letters.” These microbes could exist in extreme environments such as deep underground or in hot springs, or they could even live inside other organisms, including ourselves. “They might be right in front of our noses, or even in our noses,” Professor Davies said. (Mark Henderson, “Aliens ‘may be living among us’ undetected by science,” Times Online, February 15, 2009)

As one observer noted, the Bible clearly talks about life that is not based in DNA, realms of created beings that are not physical. Over eighty percent of the US population believes in God because that inkling appears to be hard-wired in our genes. The remaining twenty percent don´t believe because they have a psychological need (or guilt) not to. They argue that God is “too good to be true.” It is ironic that the English name God actually stems from the words “the good.” If you remove the possibility of an ultimate good, then you´re left with an ultimate banality. Are you good at what you do? Are you good at your job? Are you good in bed? Twenty percent of the US population has abandoned all trust in “the good” and by extension even attempts to identify the entire universe as an object of banality and mayhem. But they can only speak for themselves.

The “God is Dead” campaigners say God cannot possibly exist because he abandoned his people many times over the millennia, and more unspeakably during the Holocaust. Sir David Attenborough, a prominent agnostic and distinguished BBC television naturalist, recently said he rejects the Bible because a loving God would not allow an innocent child in Africa to have its eye destroyed by a parasitic worm. However, he failed to mention that there is still hope for that child if modern science turns away from warfare and concentrates on the healing arts. Perhaps what Sir David really means is: why would God allow an innocent Jesus to be crucified? The answer to that, we are told, is to teach us the importance of courage. Modern man has become a cowardly creature that destroys innocent life in underprivileged nations with push-button ease, while he gradually becomes a vile object of morbid obesity and banality. God´s death was to teach us the worth of valor — and that death cannot hold Him.

It is argued that many “deranged people in the UFO community” have taken to hallucinating about being taken to Him. But can you think of a medical specialist on appendicitis who has never actually seen a human appendix? Or how about a certified critic of hip hop music that´s never heard a single African American or Latino American song? They would probably be regarded as con artists, not authorities. Why then, are there so many official “UFO investigators” that have never seen a UFO — and really don´t want to because they fear it will make them appear to be unreasonable? Where is the expert common sense in that?

Imagine being a civilian in the Iraqi war (or any war for that matter). One day you look out your front door and see a large armored vehicle parked directly outside your house and perhaps a few soldiers patrolling your street with cameras and searchlights. Would you really suppose that the soldiers don´t notice you and that they don´t know who you are? You´d have to be pretty naïve to think that. It would be far more realistic to assume that they know exactly who you are — and they will probably keep tabs on you from time to time. This is how I interpret UFO experiencers: They are known and made use of by intelligent extraterrestrials to circulate and publicize particular facts of the UFO enterprise.

What is happening now appears to be a bizarre form of psychological warfare. We are being literally bombarded with countless sightings and photographs of unidentified aerial objects to drive home the intimidating point that something beyond the scope of human science is watching over our planet. There are simply too many reliable reports flowing in to be dismissed as hallucinations or frauds. Why then, doesn´t the government just admit that UFOs are real? Perhaps because the largest part of taxpayer money goes to an overwhelming defense budget. The last message the Defense Department wants to convey is the likely fact that it cannot defend us from potential UFO upheavals (as if we didn´t know by now). That would be an outright acknowledgment that billions of our dollars are being wasted. So instead, it plays the flightless ostrich game of hiding its head in the sand. Sixty years ago, the Japanese government chose to ignore warnings that America was developing a secret weapon. Japan´s ostrich game suffered a legendary defeat and the state religion of Emperor worship was banned. I don´t have a problem with making people laugh. But there are some things I don´t talk about. 

(FEBRUARY 2009) PETER FOT K KAPNISTOS, ICARIAN SEA, GR, 83300.