Category: Articles

From New Dawn 133 (Jul-Aug 2012)

Russell Targ is perhaps the best-known psychic investigator of our times, and certainly among the most academically prestigious. Born 11 April 1934 in Chicago, USA, he received a Bachelor of Science in physics from Queens College twenty years later, and did graduate work in physics at Columbia University (both in New York). He retired in 1997 as a project manager and senior staff scientist from Lockheed Martin, an American aerospace and advanced technology company, where he developed laser technology for airborne detection of wind shear and air turbulence. Wind shear, a difference in wind speed and direction over a relatively short distance in the atmosphere, is a potential aeronautical hazard. Targ’s inventions and contributions in lasers and laser communications won him two National Aeronautics and Space Administration awards.

Beginning in the 1970s, he co-founded a twenty three-year program of research into psychic abilities and their operational use for the US intelligence community. Until 1995, it was classified “secret.” 

His autobiography, Do You See What I See: Memoirs of a Blind Biker, tells of his life as a scientist and legally blind motorcyclist. The publishing arm of The Theosophical Society in the United States – Quest Books – recently released his latest book, The Reality of ESP: A Physicist’s Proof of Psychic Abilities.

According to reviewer Eugene Bourgeois, “Russell Targ looks at the subject from the perspective of an experimental physicist and finds compelling scientific evidence to confirm that something very much like ESP can be demonstrated without fail under laboratory conditions. As any physicist would, he seeks to find a model that will help us describe just how it is that such experiences are possible.”

In this pointed interview for New Dawn magazine, Targ offers his latest conclusions about the relationship between the demands of hard science and the paranormal potential of inner human experience.

FRANK JOSEPH (FJ): Your work as a physicist in the early development of lasers and research into meteorological anomalies forms an unusual backdrop to the unrelated, unconventional field of psychic investigation. What caused your radical departure from mainstream science?

RUSSELL TARG (RT): I had a childhood interest in magic and card tricks. I performed on the stage as a magician, as a teenager. In the course of doing mental magic on stage, I had numerous psychic experiences, leading me to get more interested in real magic than stage magic. At that point, as a young scientist, physics graduate student at Columbia, I began to read the professional parapsychology literature.

FJ: What was your own, most significant psychic experience?

RT: My own most significant public remote viewing experience was my very accurate description and drawing of my colleague Hal Puthoff’s location at an island airport off the coast of Columbia two thousand miles away. I have also had very powerful out-of-body experiences of a more personal nature.

FJ: What, if anything, did Robert Monroe, the mid-20^th century American New York radio-broadcasting executive who achieved worldwide recognition as an explorer of human consciousness, contribute to your understanding of psychic phenomena?

RT: I knew Bob Monroe well. He brought the idea of out-of-body (OOB) experience to common usage. He helped us understand that there is a continuum from simple remote viewing, where one sees images on ones mental screen, to OOB experiences where one can bring emotional and sexual sensitivity to the fore. No one ever had a bad remote viewing experience. But one can indeed scare himself with a bad OOB trip – because of the increased emotional involvement. Aleister Crowley describes this as “sex on the astral plane.” Not for the timid. And we did not pursue this at SRI [Stanford Research Institute].

FJ: Your latest book is supposed to distil your lifetime of paranormal research and latest conclusions. Can you give us a summary of The Reality of ESP?

RT: It provides statistical proof of psychic phenomena as evidence so strong it would be logically or probabilistically unreasonable to deny. If facts alone can convince a skeptical investigator of the reality of ESP, this book should do it. It presents evidence from the research program I co-founded at Stanford Research Institute (SRI) in the 1970s, together with the Buddhist and Hindu origins of ESP. Some of the amazing feats of psychic ability include remote viewing for America’s Central Intelligence Agency and US Army Intelligence, when SRI psychics found a downed Russian bomber in Africa, reported on the health of American hostages in Iran, described Soviet weapons factories in Siberia, and forecasted a Chinese atomic-bomb test three days before it occurred.

When San Francisco heiress Patricia Hearst was abducted from her home in Berkeley, a psychic with the SRI team was the first to identify the kidnapper and then accurately described and located the kidnap car.

After leaving SRI, our group made $120,000 by psychically forecasting for nine weeks in a row the direction and amount of changes in the silver commodity futures market, without error. The odds against chance in many cases are staggering. Take the thirty-six outdoor remote viewing trials described with six US Army intelligence officers. Their overall statistical significance was at odds of three in a hundred thousand (3 x 10^-5). If the officers had been baseball players, the expected six first-place matches would equal a batting average of one hundred sixty six. But they achieved nineteen matches – batting better than five hundred – while the great Joe DiMaggio had a lifetime average of only three hundred thirty five. Such numbers are what we mean by statistical proof.

We achieved an effect size of 0.6, which is ten times greater than that claimed by America’s National Institute of Health for aspirin preventing heart attacks. I am convinced that most of us have psychic abilities we haven’t tapped, and conclude my book by describing how we can learn to develop our own ESP, at no cost, working at home using the SRI techniques with a friend. It involves a simple, meditative skill that eighth-century Buddhists called moving from conditioned to spacious or naked awareness. Who would not want to try that?

FJ: In The Reality of ESP, you cite four kinds of psychic experiments, beginning with remote viewing, in which a person describes places and events independent of space and time. Professor Richard Wiseman, a British psychologist at the University of Hertfordshire, told the Daily Mail four years ago, “Because remote viewing is such an outlandish claim that will revolutionise the world, we need overwhelming evidence before we draw any conclusions. Right now we don’t have that evidence.” How do you respond to his conclusion?

RT: We published our formal experiments in the Proceedings of the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers, and in Nature. In our first decade of work at Stanford Research Institute we did three highly significant experimental series. These comprised trials wherein a person in a shielded room with me had to describe what it looked like where my colleague Hal Puthoff and another witness were hiding in the San Francisco Bay area. In the first series of nine trials, a psychic policeman, Pat Price, achieved seven first place matches, where only one would be expected by chance.

The probability of this is less than one in a hundred thousand. In the second series, a “control” subject photographer Hella Hammid, got five first place matches and four second place matches. The probability of this is approximately one in a million. In the third series, we taught six army intelligence officers how to do remote viewing, as part of the government’s program to set up an army psychic corps in Fort Meade, Maryland (USA). The six men each did six trials. Out of those thirty six trials, they got nineteen first place matches, where six would be expected by chance, again at odds of one in a hundred thousand. Our work had been replicated at Princeton and dozens of other labs worldwide.

FJ: Can remote viewing be illustrated by the concept, in physics, of photon entanglement? If so, how do you define photon entanglement in relationship to psychic activity?

RT: Photon entanglement is a consequence of space-time non-locality, wherein two photons that are created together (twin photons) travel on opposite directions at the speed of light, and the measurement on one affects the other. This non-locality, I believe, is the basis of ESP. Since remote viewing accuracy and reliability are independent of distance and time (up to a few days into the future) a physicist would say that the data for remote viewing appear to be non-local.

FJ: During the Cold War, the US Government’s Central Intelligence Agency undertook a serious study of remote viewing, eventually terminating its $20 million dollar “Stargate Project” after David Goslin, of the American Institute for Research, declared, “There’s no documented evidence it had any value to the intelligence community.” Was he right after all?

RT: The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and Army Intelligence Command would not have supported our program for twenty-three years and $25 million if we had not produced useful information. The program was secret. We successfully described Soviet submarines, a kidnapped US general in Italy, etc. That’s why they kept supporting us.

FJ: According to psychologist David Marks, remote viewers are influenced by subjective validation, a process through which correspondences are perceived between stimuli that are in fact associated purely randomly. Couldn’t this be a real explanation for remote viewing?

RT: The first published remote viewing experiment had some clues as to the order of some of the trials. These clues were removed, and the series was re-judged with exactly the same outstanding results. All other series were doubly randomised to remove this valid criticism. Transcript clues wouldn’t help us find the kidnapped US general or the downed Russian plane.

FJ: Your book also discusses possibilities for distant mental influence, where the thoughts of the experimenter can positively or negatively affect the physiology – including heart rate or skin resistance – of someone far away. Can you cite any credible examples of this phenomenon?

RT: William Braud wrote a book called Distant Mental Influence which presents twelve of his experiments showing that the thoughts of one person can affect the physiology of another person. This is also the basis of distant healing. My book describes my daughter psychiatrist Elisabeth Targ’s published experiment showing that the half of her AIDS patients who received distant prayer had significantly better health outcomes than the thirty controls. This paper was published in the Western Medical Journal in 1999.

FJ: Our readers may be less familiar with Whole Field Isolation mentioned in The Reality of ESP. As I understand it, WFI applies to a “viewer” who accurately describes the visual experiences of someone else in another place. Does the “viewer” actually enter into the mind of another person, and how is this process achieved?

RT: The person who is isolated in the “Ganzfeld” isolation chamber can obtain information seen by his/her distant friend either clairvoyantly or by telepathy – no way to tell.

FJ: What exactly is the “Ganzfeld isolation chamber,” and how does it have any bearing on remote viewing?

RT: The Ganzfeld isolation chamber has the purpose of removing all physical stimulation from a person’s awareness. The perceiver in the Ganzfeld is isolated from all electromagnetic radiation. He has white noise fed into his earphones, together with red light shown onto Ping-Pong ball halves fitted over his eyes. This isolation is thought to be a psi-conducive state, suited to daydreams and free association. Very good ESP results have been obtained with people in the Ganzfeld chamber. But not any better than a remote viewer sitting at a table in the lab.

FJ: You write of Retrocausality, in which future events can allegedly affect history. But the future has not happened yet, so how can it influence the past?

RT: When you have a dream on Sunday night of an elephant walking down your street and trampling your flowers, and then see the elephant doing exactly that the next morning, we would say that Monday morning’s experience of the elephant was the cause of Sunday night’s dream. That’s what we mean by retrocausality. In a non-local world, your consciousness is not separated from the future.

FJ: Oral traditions from Tibet and Polynesia tell of large groups of persons who together entered into altered states of consciousness, then simultaneously focused all their individual thoughts on a single, common objective – i.e., to cure or kill someone, levitate a stone weighing several tons, etc. Were these credible examples of distant mental influence? If so, what do they say of possibilities for similar psycho-communal efforts undertaken today?

RT: As a physicist, I am not involved with the claims of oral traditions. However, I am impressed with Buddhist and Hindu books describing techniques for remote viewing dating from the time of Christ, wherein the instruction are very similar to what we do in the lab.

FJ: Exactly how does ESP work based on the Buddhist/Hindu view of our selves as non-local, eternal consciousness?

RT: The Buddhists and Hindus didn’t know how ESP works, anymore than we do today. But they did believe that separation is an illusion; that our awareness transcends all of space and time. They taught that we can see into the distance and into the future; heal the sick and diagnosis illness – all psychically. The metaphor of Indra’s net describes a world in which every vertex of the net is a highly polished jewel, which reflects all others in the net. This is an early holographic model that is very suggestive of the non-local description we use today.

FJ: Do you believe that psychic abilities are either inherited from a period earlier in our past, when they were more highly developed than today, but have since languished? Or do they represent a new development in human evolution?

RT: I believe that psychic abilities are an evolutionary progressive ability. They helped the caveman become aware that a tiger was at the door of his cave, etc. They are definitely not new in any sense. Buddhists and Hindus described them exactly as we know them today.

FJ: Archaeologists discovered that, some twelve centuries ago, Maya priests were ingesting 5-MeO-DMT, a psycho-active chemical excreted from the poison gland of Bufo alvarius, a local toad, because it engendered the “flight of the shaman” beyond space and time. The Bufo toad is depicted at the Mexican shrine of Izapa, where the 2012 Mayan calendar end date was inscribed. Could the Maya have thereby projected their consciousness into our time, then returned to theirs, where they composed their “prophecy”?

RT: There is no convincing data showing that DMT or anything else will make you psychic. Too bad! It only makes you feel psychic.

FJ: In Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home, British biochemist Rupert Sheldrake describes what appears to be a telepathic bond between pet animals and their human owners. Do you believe his research is valid? And if so, can you suggest any method to strengthen or expand that bond to some degree of trans-species communication?

RT: I am confident of trans-species communication. Any cat owner knows that all you have to do is think of taking your pet to the vet, or giving her a bath, to have the cat immediately disappear.

FJ: What, if anything, has ESP got to do with questions concerning the survival of human consciousness after physical death? What might ESP teach us about the alleged immortality of the human soul?

RT: If one believes that who we are is “non-local and timeless awareness,” then the idea that this awareness is eternal, is quite natural. Our awareness, whether alive of dead, is outside space and time. I believe that the evidence for survival of consciousness and personality is quite good.

FJ: Parapsychologists argue that the greater development of remote viewing could lead to either the end of war or more deadly military applications. What is your opinion?

RT: Remote viewing is definitely useful in wartime, since it provides intelligence information, which is frequently unavailable any other way. Human beings love to be at war. ESP is not going to end that. But it might encourage people to be more honest with one another, if they are aware that lies will be immediately detected.

FJ: Larry Dossey, M.D., author of The Power of Premonitions, states that “the mind can function without limitation in space and time, and that this ability is widespread, teachable, and practical.” Should teaching psychic development become part of public education? If so, how might this be achieved?

RT: I think it would be very important to encourage children to develop their psychic abilities – it is part of who they are. I taught my own children to be polite, intelligent and psychic as they were growing up. And it didn’t seem to hurt any of them (two doctors and a lawyer). Like many things, I think psychic abilities are better taught at home, rather than at school. But since it is an ability we all have naturally, it is very desirable that children be made aware of this gift before it is stifled and repressed by the larger society.

FJ: What advice would you give anyone just beginning to explore their psychic potential?

RT: I would suggest that a beginning remote viewer should find a partner to work with. The partner can bring you little objects in a bag, and encourage you to psychically describe them. You can then do the same for your partner. This is a surprisingly easy and enjoyable activity.

FJ: Do you foresee a time when humanity in general will have developed its entire psychic potential, as described in your new book? If so, what kind of a world will that be?

RT: I believe humanity will indeed make use of their psychic potential, with the result that people will quit lying to each other. They will also begin to notice that there is more to life than flesh and bones. That is, we have the capacity for timeless awareness, which, in fact, is what we are.

The Reality of ESP: A Physicist’s Proof of Psychic Abilities (Quest Books, 2012) is available from all good bookstores and online retailers.

[alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]This article was published in New Dawn 133.[/alert]

[alert type=”success” dismiss=”no”]If you appreciate this article, please consider subscribing to help maintain this website.[/alert]

© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
For our reproduction notice, click here.

From New Dawn Special Issue 17 (Sept 2011)

In a text in the Nag Hammadi collection discovered in Egypt in December 1945, an unnamed teacher declares to his student: “Behold, I shall reveal to you the path of deliverance. Whenever you are seized [in the soul] and undergo mortal fear, a multitude of archons may turn on you, thinking they can capture you. And in particular, three of them will seize you, those who pose as toll collectors. Not only do they demand toll, but they take away souls by theft.” (Nag Hammadi Library in English, ed. by James Robinson, 265)

Consider the information packed into this short paragraph: the certainty of a supernatural confrontation, the mortal fear it inspires, the threat of being captured or taken hostage, the large number of predators, their habit of appearing in threes, the demand for tribute or toll, the feat of abduction (“take away souls by theft”). And the intruders are even named outright: archons.

The First Apocalypse of James, probably written down around 300 CE, presents a glimpse of “higher education” in the Mystery Schools – that is to say, education concerning the supernatural, the paranormal, parapsychology, and the noetic sciences.

The founders and leaders of those schools were ancient seers called Gnostikoi, “those who know divine matters.” Gnostics were the arch-enemies of the early Christian converts and ideologues such as Irenaeus, who established the canon of the four Gospels of the New Testament. In order for Christianity to rise to power and meld with the Roman Empire as a state religion with an agenda of totalitarian mind control, its advocates had to eliminate the competition. Gnostics threatened the salvationist agenda due to something they knew, or claimed to know, about its origins.

Scholars of Gnosticism do not ask why the threat posed by the Mystery adepts was so great and grave that it required centuries of murder, persecution, and intellectual genocide to be eliminated. On the contrary, they routinely assume that Gnostic sects were early, innocuous variations of primitive Christianity. They take the writings found in the Nag Hammadi Codices for out takes of Christian material. That being so, why did the Gnostic message simply not co-exist and mingle with the writings that were to become canonical for the Judeo-Christian faith? Why did they have to be extirpated, root and branch?

The threat posed to Christian ideology by the Gnostic message was very great, indeed. And still is. For one thing, Gnostics asserted that the paternal father god of Jews and Christians alike, Jahweh-Jehovah, was in reality one of the archons. An alien intruder, a hostile ET. And moreover, they insisted that this alien pretender is insane and working against humanity. Needless to say, this proposition was extremely alarming to devotees of the Abrahamic faith. Since the discovery of the Gnostic cache in Egypt in 1945, that alarm is again sounding across the land.

The Sophianic Vision

Extensive noetic and parapsychological training, undertaken in teams (cells) and maintained for generations, allowed adepts of the pre-Christian Mysteries to detect predatory ETs, discern their origin and habitat, identify their forms, and to unmask their motives and methods, as well as how to resist them. That itself was an immense achievement in psychic detection.

But for all their scope and finesse in supernatural matters, the Gnostikoi were also acute observers of the social world. They had a rigorous deconstructive view of history and the belief-systems that drive human behaviour.

“Pagan adepts from the Mysteries in the Levant and Egypt saw in the salvationist agenda of Abrahamic religion both the evidence and the instrument of archontic deviation” (Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief by John Lamb Lash). The evidence and the instrument.

In other words, they saw in the religious ideology of male-only creation, election, messiahship, atonement, retribution, etc., the evidence of deviant intrusion on the human mind, and they identified that ideology as the very instrument of the intruding force, archons.

This analysis is extremely close to the notion of the “foreign installation,” attributed by Carlos Castaneda to alien intruders called flyers. Interestingly, the made-up Aramaic-Hebrew name, Ialdabaoth, assigned by Gnostics to the archon overlord, may mean “the one who flies or flits around in space.”

Gnostic teachers in the Mysteries were devotees of the goddess called Sophia, “wisdom” in Greek. They were deeply versed in the designs and purposes of this divine power through their method of mathesis, instruction by the Light – that is to say, the primal living radiance of the goddess herself. Gnostics accessed the source of life and consciousness on this planet, for Sophia, although originally a goddess from the galactic centre, had morphed into the material body of our planet. So goes the Gnostic origin myth. Prior to her conversion into materiality, the aeon Sophia (as she was addressed honorifically) had engineered the human genome among the company of gods in the galactic core, the pleroma (“fullness, plenitude”).

In the sacred instruction of the Mysteries, Sophia is both the source of pre-terrestrial humanity, our divine parent, and the setting in which human life unfolds, this planetary habitat. Her biography, the Sophianic origin myth, is the story that guides our species on its proper course of experience. Illumined teachers in the Mysteries taught the three Ss: source, setting, story. Ancient writers assert that all the Mysteries were dedicated to the Magna Mater, the Great Mother, i.e., Sophia embodied in the Earth. Today an appropriate name for the wisdom goddess would be Gaia-Sophia. I suggest the pronunciation So-FI-uh over So-FEE-uh, to distinguish the sacred name from the latter, the common name for a woman: Guy – UH – so – FI – uh.

Error, Not Evil

The Sophianic vision story of the pagan Mysteries is the cosmic biography of Gaia-Sophia, divine wisdom embodied in the Earth. Amazingly, this scenario not only recounts the origin of humanity in the galactic centre, but also the origin of the species of the predatory aliens called archons, who endanger the human adventure in certain ways.

Gnostics saw the threat operating along two trajectories: by psychic intrusion or mental parasitism, and by deviant and insane beliefs framed in religious ideology, such as creation by an off-planet father god, the chosen people, messianic expectations, the redemptive value of suffering, apocalypse, and divine retribution. Indeed, they attribute such beliefs to a kind of channelling from the archons.

In the Gnostic view, the invasion of our world by hostile ETs has been underway for millennia. Via the intrusion of an alien mindset into human consciousness, rather than a physical invasion with saucers and Flash Gordon death-rays. No such event was foreseen by Gnostics, for archons are unable to live in the terrestrial habitat. However, they would have us destroy the home planet out of sheer envy against us, Gnostics cautioned.

Several texts in the Nag Hammadi Library warn explicitly that archons envy humanity for the qualities of freedom and love, not to mention ingenuity and imagination, all of which they lack. These texts state that the envious ETs operate through deception and excel in simulation (Coptic HAL), but basically have no agenda or master plan except to disrupt and confuse. Their plan is “senselessness,” a pointless game of “fear and enslavement” (NHLE, 364-5) to which humans succumb due to egotism. Detesting the innocence and brilliance of the human species, they delight in deception and confusion for its own sake, cosmic spoilers, tricksters bent on absurdity. Our confusion actually entertains them, and they feed vicariously off our fear.

It is important to emphasise that Gnostics did not consider archons to be evil as such. The autonomy of evil and similar propositions are – if you will allow this expression – alien to the Gnostic way of thinking. Gnostic were the cream of pagan intelligentsia. Pagans essentially did not see evil in the cosmos, but they realised the risk of deviance from cosmic harmony. Gnostics refuted the concept of cosmic or “satanic” evil working against humanity. In their view, no one can sin, but we can all make mistakes. And mistakes can be corrected. Even the error of the archons can be corrected.

Mystery teachings do not carry apocalyptic predictions, but the plot of the Sophianic myth contains a key event called “correction” (Greek diorthosis), indicating a decisive moment in the human adventure when we as a species come to terms definitively with the archon problem, the alien presence on Earth. We would resolve and correct that problem through reaching an interactive connection to the wisdom goddess.

Indications point to that moment being now, right now. The decisive factor in the event would not be disclosure, for aliens have been known to lurk around the human world since time immemorial, including many benevolent kinds. Are we to assume there is only one predatory alien, identified by those ancient seers? Well, one is all it takes. And if there were more than one malevolent intruder, and we cannot clearly see even one, we would really be in trouble, wouldn’t we?

What if, at the moment of correction, humanity achieves deliverance from the delusion of the Archons, overthrowing the devious strategy that gives them an advantage in our minds? The follow-up of Gnostic psychic detection would then be deliverance from Archontic influence rather, than disclosure of their presence in some official capacity. But more on this distinction at the close of this article.

Prison Planet

The “foreign installation” or archontic implant may also be regarded as a delusional matrix, a false paradigm. By broad definition a matrix is any setting or habitat: the natural world is the matrix of all terrestrial creatures. Your home is the matrix of your domestic life. Your soul-life is the matrix of your sensibility, aesthetics, ethics. But a matrix can also be a construct of unnatural or inorganic origin. Like a labyrinth or house of mirrors. Like a bureaucracy or government agency, a Kafkaesque impersonal system. Gnostic seers saw the danger of humans getting trapped in such systems, to the extent of becoming soulless and losing our humanity.

In the citation above, the Gnostic master says archons act like toll keepers, or gatekeepers. This allusion is consistent with the Mystery teaching on “planetary spheres” conceived as a maze of confining shells defined by the orbits of the planets in our solar system. This paradigm, leaked from the Mysteries and never widely discussed in the world at large in ancient times, compares the solar system to a multilevel computer game inhabited and guarded by trolls who prohibit passage through the maze unless they are provided with passwords, tolls, or tokens.

In the cynic or fatalistic spin, the “planetary spheres” may be envisioned as a vast penitentiary system where human souls are captured. Misunderstanding of this initiatory concept by those outside the Mysteries led to the assumption that this Earth is a hell-world where the human soul is imprisoned. This ancient teaching is the origin of the “prison planet” meme, a stroke of pagan, pre-Christian and anti-Christian genius. Note that point, Mr Alex Jones.

Gnostics did not view the penitentiary paradigm (which they originated) in that sense. They saw it as a labyrinth of error and illusion, not a diabolical tool of punishment. Behind their view was a sophisticated cosmology that proves to be compatible in many respects with modern Gaia theory. In Gnostic cosmology, the Earth does not properly belong to the celestial clockworks of the solar system but is merely captured in it: an organic planet captured in an inorganic system. Because Sophia permeates life on Earth through and through, and she herself is the ground on which we stand, the air we breathe, this planet is different from the rest of the solar system. It is alive, aware, sentient, nurturing organic life, whereas the other planets such as Mars and Jupiter are inorganic worlds suitable as habitats for inorganic or cyborg entities such as archons.

Moreover, Gnostic seers claimed that the alien mind parasites who intrude upon humankind originated along with the solar system before the Earth itself arose – that is, before the galactic goddess Sophia morphed into her terrestrial body. The term archon comes from the Greek root archai, “prior, before, in the beginning.” The archon horde arose in a region of the galactic spiral arms prior to the formation of the Earth. That region was a kind of fracture zone produced by the impact of the plasmic luminosity of Sophia when she dove from the galactic core (pleroma) into the relatively dense materiality of the spiral arms (kenoma). Sophia allowed the archons to establish a habitat for themselves in that zone, called the stereoma. It was a virtual reality simulation of the pleromic region of fractal animations, the realm of the galactic gods in the core, the aeons. But a mechanical, lifeless imitation. Archons cannot create but only imitate. They did not produce the stereoma of celestial clockworks out of their own intelligence and intention: they merely acted in drone-like fashion, executing the design lent to their minds by the Aeon Sophia.

So, prior to the moment in cosmic evolution when the Earth appeared and human life emerged on this planet, the archon stereoma was already constructed, up and running. Sophia produced the Moon to set a boundary to their activities, thus establishing a mechanical, seemingly artificial regimen of moments and measures (NHLE, 121. Note: That the Moon is older than the Earth is a recent hypothesis supported by quite a lot of convincing evidence, and some solid inference). The archontic heaven comprises our solar system exclusive of the Earth, Moon, and Sun which form a three-body dynamic of autonomous and cooperative properties, as Gaia theory confirms. Such is the amazing assertion of Gnostic astrophysics.

The Sophianic vision story presents a complete and coherent rendition of world origin and human origin, cosmogenesis and anthropogenesis. It tells us that the human genomic design (anthropos) was engineered in the galactic core, but archons arose in the spiral arms due to a freak event, before that human strain had time to seed on a planet and emerge.

“The world-system we inhabit came about due to a mistake (anomou), an anomaly” (Gospel of Philip, NHLE, 154). This is perhaps the most famous one-liner in the Nag Hammadi corpus. A sensational remark, to say the least. And totally, precisely accurate in cosmological terms. The anomaly was Sophia’s plunge from the pleromic core, producing a fracture zone where the locust-like cyborg archons emerged by spontaneous generation – exactly as shown in the abiogenesis of Acari insects performed by Andrew Crosse in 1837, reported to the Royal Society, and duplicated by Michael Faraday.

Sophia provides the archons with a Disneyesque virtual world to inhabit, but as one Nag Hammadi corpus text says, the archon overlord Ialdabaoth, “because of the power of luminosity he possessed of Sophia’s light [which the goddess lent to his mind], he called himself [the only] god, and he did not obey the place from which he came” (Apocryphon of John, NHLE, 111).

The demented alien overlord assumes a reptilian form (Greek drakon) and sports the mask of a lion-head, representing the usurpation of authority and his preference for working through royalty, dynastic lineages, blood-lines. He arrogantly assumes himself to be the Supreme Being and would have others do the same. He does not respect boundaries and attempts to invade the human world, an absurd objective, doomed to fail. Yet he can harass and confuse the human species to the point where it loses contact with Sophia and the pleromic gods, destroys its own habitat, and turns into a horde of mindless zombies.

This is the ultimate peril of ET invasion in Gnostic terms. There is much evidence that we today are at the ultimate threshold of that drama of absurdity and alienation.

Spiritual Control

When I began to write Not in His Image around 1996, I was deeply immersed in researching the ET/UFO phenomenon. In all I delved into some 150 books. I talked to many people who had seen flying hardware or been abducted. I also drew upon my own encounters with Castaneda’s flyers over many years. Among all investigators of the alien enigma, I found in Jacques Vallée a diagnostic and deconstructive view closely compatible with Gnostic sources.

Vallée and his mentor, Allen Hynek, both initially considered that the ET/UFO phenomenon was benevolent. They concluded that it was not. I totally concur. Vallée’s sophisticated and in-depth analysis tallies with that of another outstanding mind in the field, John Keel, who views ETs as tricksters. But not tricksters out to play with us in a kind and instructive manner. Vallée and Keel both observe that speculation about ETs and UFOs tends to develop religious dimensions – clearly seen in the messianic zeal of Steven Greer, head of the Disclosure Project. A Gnostic living today would perhaps comment, “Yes, but we already have an ET religion on Earth: Judeo-Christianity, the brainchild of a reptilian freak.”

My studies are summarised in Nine Theories of Extraterrestrial Contact under archon files on metahistory.org. Among these are the Sitchin theory said to be drawn from Sumerian cuneiform tablets (although Sitchin’s translations are extremely dubious), the ancient astronauts of Erich von Daniken, and biblical Ufology which asserts that divine visitations in the Bible are reports of alien encounters. This third hypothesis would be positively shattered by Gnostic deconstruction, showing that angels, if they be archons disguised, are indeed ETs, but there is no divine plan working through them, and the god who sends them is definitely not on our side. The Rapture is a ludicrous soap-opera of archon deliverance.

As for Sitchin’s slave species scenario, now widely adopted and mindlessly repeated by many people, it is frontally refuted by several Gnostic texts that describe how the archons wished to rape Eve and plant their seed in her, but failed (NHLE, 164). So much for the incest delusion of the alien interbreeding program. Archons cannot hack the human genome. The claim that they can is an archontic lie. Yet with their acute powers of simulation, archons can induce humans to life-like experiences of what they pretend to be doing. Without a touchstone to reality grounded in the wisdom of the Earth itself, it may be impossible to detect and unravel such virtual reality con-games.

Entrants to the Mysteries learned that we on Earth live in the terrestrial paradise of the body of the wisdom goddess, supported by the Moon and Sun, an Edenic three-body system (trimorphic protennoia, NHLE, 511f). But at the same time, this system has been captured in the planetary stereoma, making us subject to certain properties of inorganic, archontic physics. And blinding us mentally to the divine presence in our world. This situation recalls the metaphor of a two-source hologram proposed by Philip K. Dick, who was deeply versed in Gnostic writings. Indeed, the archontic theme of simulation (HAL) dominates his novels.

Awakening to this situation involves a dual solution (diorthosis): a return to the ground of our being, the goddess who originated our species in the galactic core, and deliverance from the archontic maze, the matrix of deception, hoaxing, concealment, secrecy, and desolating make-believe. Although archons may inspire that maze by insinuating their mindset into ours, it is human egotism, greed and fear that keep it up and running. We are our own worst enemies, for only archons can only assist us in defeating ourselves. Archons are merely a phantom pretext for our betrayal of our own divine potential. Undetected, their influence exaggerates our errors beyond the scale of correction. Such is the Gnostic message on the alien presence in this world.

I have deliberately front-loaded this article with Gnostic material before getting to the specific topic of disclosure – understood as formal announcement of an extraterrestrial presence by world governments. I realise that the Gnostic material is massive and may be largely new to some readers. But having a chance to overview this material, you may remark how much debate and investigation of the ET/UFO phenomenon is conducted in total ignorance of the above views and insights. In total oblivion to what may be the single most important information we have for reading and repelling the alien presence. The word archon also means “ruler, authorities.” If disclosure means public admission by authorities of an alien, ET presence, then it cannot be anything but another ploy of archontic deception. Anyway, who would believe anything the authorities or governmental rulers say at this point in the world game? If anything gets corrected right now, it ought to be blind confidence in what authorities say. The absurd credulity of the human species.

No doubt, the authorities would announce the presence but hold back further details as a matter of global security. “We are in negotiations,” Obama says with a straight face. Well, the game is not hard to call. If the ETs in contact with world authorities are benevolent, there is nothing to conceal. If they are malevolent, they can get the hell off the planet along with the federal and military psychopaths who are colluding with them. Along with the bureaucratic drones and media whore who keep their sick charades up and running.

In Sophia’s correction comes the follow-up of the Gnostic expose of the archons: time to go after the lot and take them out. According to the Sophianic vision story, the power to do so comes from the wisdom goddess, the planetary animal mother – rather as last-minute rescue comes from the Pandoran goddess Ey’wa in Avatar. After all, SHE was the one who put humanity in harm’s way by unwittingly and unintentionally producing the archon horde of neonate drones with its reptilian overlord, Ialdabaoth. But for Sophia’s precipitous plunge from the galactic core, these pesky intruders would not ever have threatened our world in the first place.

So the story goes. Just a story? Well, maybe. But what a story it is. And consider how it can be enacted and tested… It may be that following out the plot of the Gnostic vision story can lead to frontal defeat of the archons and their human accessories, archontified people. The Sophianic myth is open-ended and certainly does point to that opportunity, the moment for which is right now. Deliverance from the error and illusion of the archontic matrix is the best option for our species, but disclosure is bound to be just another con. Many people are already alerted to this deceit: for instance, consider the widespread caution that the authorities are due to stage a false-flag alien invasion, Operation Blue Beam.

Whatever the case, Vallée’s warning that the ET/UFO phenomenon operates as a “spiritual control program,” and Castaneda’s assertion that the flyers are the way the universe tests us, both tally beautifully with Gnostic deconstruction of the cosmic error in our minds. Human potential comes in a trickster pack. It is as if the prize in the Cracker Jack box was a device that tricks your mind. Eat the toasted corn, observe the show closely, be entertained and learn, keep freedom and love uppermost in your mind, and do not be tricked by the cheap bauble in the box.

[alert type=”general” dismiss=”no”]This article was published in New Dawn Special Issue 17.[/alert]

[alert type=”success” dismiss=”no”]If you appreciate this article, please consider subscribing to help maintain this website.[/alert]

© New Dawn Magazine and the respective author.
For our reproduction notice, click here.