Modern Media and the Preparation for Contact
by Peter Farley

In a recent sample poll of 15-year-old freshmen at a Roswell, NM, high school, 85 percent of those polled said they would try to kill an alien being if they met one, call the police or military, or simply run away in fear. Of course, this scenario was based on a meeting with a beast-like alien, not one that was more human-like and somewhat less fearsome.

What we would do in the same event is a question that each and every one of us who have ever watched an episode of The X-Files or seen the movie Independence Day has asked ourselves in the quiet of our own being. It?s also a question that may require a more definite answer one day soon. Will we meet the ultimate stranger with all the calm and diplomatic aplomb of a Captain Jean Luc Picard venturing forth into the farthest reaches of the galaxy? Or, will we turn tail and run as we once did during Orson Wells? 1939 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds ? Perhaps we won?t really know how we?ll respond until that real situation arises, but until then, we have the movies and our science fiction to help prepare us for that moment.

In fact, much of the current literature about aliens suggests that mankind has been going through an intense period of preparation for contact over the past few decades, and in particular, over the past few years. Even the Vatican has come out recently with a proclamation that extraterrestrial contact is a ?real? phenomena.

Much of this preparation for contact has come in the form of a consciousness-raising exercise through the movies we all watch, the television series and documentaries, videotapes and magazine articles on strange happenings, and a great deal of published work on the internet.

Despite the fact that just about every culture and every nation has its own individual stories of ?flying boats,? chariots of the gods, angelic figures dressed in strange apparel, and contacts with metaphysical beings, most people still think of UFOs and the search for extra-terrestrial life as pretty much a recent phenomena, and this is only because of the broad influence of the media.
The modern media in fact plays a pivotal role in creating both a certain level of fear, and a certain level of curiosity, in all of us as to what it will be like when mankind first meets with aliens in a public forum situation, not in the secret government dealings that are so much a part of alien literature.

More and more people are being led to go beyond the mundane question of Is there intelligent life in the universe? and on to deeper and more significant questions such as What form does other life in the universe take? And Is it friendly toward man or not? In their search for answers to these questions, people are frequently turning more to science-fiction writers than to the scientists.

Thirty years ago, a then middle-aged man sat with a group of people who were listening to a woman named Phyllis Schlemmer as she channeled the thoughts and answers of a circle of beings called the Council of Nine. This group say they exist outside the universe of space and time, and are communicating with Earth at this time to prepare us for our coming-out party, a time in which we will join the cosmic family of the universe. The understandings the man got during his attendance at those channelings helped lead him to create a futuristic television series that would, during its three year run back in the 1960s, find only mediocre success. The series that man created still lives with us today as one of the truly great phenomenons of television. The man?s name was Gene Roddenberry. The series, of course, was the original version of Star Trek.

Star Trek was Roddenberry?s way of sharing the information he was receiving in these channeling situations. It is indeed interesting to hear some of the questions he asked, as well as to some of the answers he received. One question and its answer that pertain directly to our topic is as follows:
Gene: There?s a question that I cannot avoid asking: why you do not give strong and definite signs of your existence or proximity, on top of approaching humanity by indirect means such as these channelings, or other ways? Obviously you have your reasons, but this question does matter to me.
Tom (an acronym for the spokesperson for the council): It is of great importance for you to understand that your governments of your world of Earth have refused to publicly believe, or to convey to the people, our existence. If there were an attempt by the (alien) civilizations to land upon Planet Earth in a mass situation, which in truth will come to pass in the course of time, the people upon Planet Earth would panic, for they have not the understanding, the knowledge, that we would mean no harm to them.

Remember this: there are also certain civilizations, not of the Twenty-Four or their helper civilizations (Roddenberry?s model for the Federation in Star Trek), that have a great desire to control Planet Earth, to keep souls in bondage. And these civilizations have landed at times upon Planet Earth and have created difficulty, which they forced on Planet Earth people.

It is important that there is no panic amongst those that exist on the planet Earth: that the knowledge be brought to them in gentleness, that those of the Twenty-Four civilizations mean no harm to them.

A broad range of these questions and answers can be found in the book, Only Planet of Choice: Essential Briefings from Deep Space by Phyllis Schlemmer and Palden Jenkins

Other creative efforts at science fiction such as a movie like Steven Spielberg?s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, might seem kind of ?out-there,? until one hears the story of a lecture given by renowned physicist and UFO researcher Stanton Friedman in Roswell a few years ago. During the course of the question and answer session, many of the people in the audience admitted to being led by inner visions and strong impulses to pack up there homes and move to Roswell, much like the hero of Spielberg?s movie is led to seek out the meeting place with the aliens at the Devil?s Tower in Wyoming.
More than a hundred years ago, science-fiction writer Jules Verne envisioned the submarines and flying machines that are today a part of everyday life. Later, at the turn of the century, H.G.Wells envisioned time travel, journeying to the center of the earth, and an invasion of Earth by Martians who are eventually killed by a virus in our planet?s atmosphere.

All these things are now talked about with a growing sense of reality, especially if one has read much on the Philadelphia Experiment, the Montauk Project, and the underground alien bases that are said to exist in many different regions of the world, especially in New Mexico.

One other thing Wells envisioned at that time was a horrific experiment that turned animals into human-like creatures through the use of genetic manipulation. This story was written at a time when only the very basics of human anatomy and physiology were known, but it has now formed the basis for at least three movies, the latest being the intriguing version of The Island of Dr. Moreau, starring Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer. The mixing of human and animal genetics, or even that of aliens, may not be just science fiction according to archaeological scholar and theorist Zecharia Sitchin. Indeed, it is his premise that such ideas come from the historical texts written as long ago as ancient Sumeria and beyond.

Arthur C. Clarke?s is another science-fiction writer who seems to have been able to forecast the future long before it happened. His short story, The Sentinel, the basis for the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, was written years before man officially set foot on the moon. It was also written years before NASA?s Martian probes would bring back pictures of what Richard C. Hoagland and many others claim to be faces and monuments built on the surface of this supposedly dead planet. It was also Clarke who wrote stories revolving around the use of world-wide satellite systems, 20 years before NASA launched their first Early Bird synchronous satellite in 1965.

The person who started it all may be Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, whose novel Frankenstein is considered to be the first science-fiction story ever written. The story Shelley wrote has more to do with the abilities of science to create life and the subsequent moral dilemmas involved, than has to do with horror. Again, the book mirrors recent developments in modern medicine such as organ transplants and tissue reconstruction, as well as bringing up recent headline news about the moral issues involved with cloning humans. It also further echoes the ideas suggested by Sitchin on the creation of man as we know him.

Other movies such as Twelve Monkeys, Dark City, Star Wars, The Matrix and Stargate, may all contain certain kinds of warning for anyone astute enough to see the similarities in them to what is being written about in the current literature on extra-terrestrials and UFOs. In the movie Twelve Monkeys, a man is sent back to prevent a nightmarish future from happening to the planet. The first Star Trek Generations movie also repeated this theme. Star Wars, The Trilogy, dealt with the ongoing war amongst various participants in the universe, and even uses names of planets talked about in galactic histories compiled by UFO buffs and currently available on the internet. The movie Stargate dealt with the control of portals into and out of our dimension, a key element in the conspiracy theory involving the New World Order and its contact with aliens.

X-Files creator, Chris Carter admits that he gets much of his inspiration for episodes and for the X-Files movie from the current literature on extra-terrestrial contact and abductions. Even many of the old B-grade science fiction movies from the 1950s such as The Day the Earth Stood Still and Invasion of the Body Snatchers have achieved cult status simply because they do have the ring of truth to them if one takes into account the literature out there on alien life forms and their interaction with this planet.

Even the recent sudden return to disaster movies such as Volcano and Dante?s Peak might have a more awful ring of truth to those who are followers of current earth changes prophecy. This might be especially true for residents of towns such as Mammoth. CA, where continued rumblings are projected in earth-change literature to be the early signs of more significant happenings. The last spate of disaster movies in the 1970s was also supposed to be a precursor of major earth changes, although, according to current literature, those changes were said to have been avoided by the rapid changes in consciousness of people on the planet over the past two decades.

Where do all these creative people get there ideas? Is it just a case of an overactive imagination, or is it, as many suggest, a seeding of ideas in the fertile minds of artists, directors, and writers for later sharing through all their various outlets? Writers such as Stephen King and Richard Bach says they get many of their ideas from their dreams. Where is it though that dreams come from when they seem to contain so many elements of truth? Some science fiction writers suggest that what they write are simply memories of other lifetimes lived on other planets in other galaxies far, far away.

And where does the mega-blockbuster movie, Titanic, fit into this whole picture anyway if it is not simply a metaphor for what is happening to the planet at this particularly crucial time in its history? Who will stay, and who will go? And how will we deal with the coming changes? In an organized, loving, and united way? Or with panic, despair, and a self-serving interest for our own little worlds? In the end, is it only love that will keep any or all of us afloat?

If you were to ask me, the message behind all these works on aliens and their interaction with our planet is simply an extension of the old Native American saying: We are all one. However, in this version there is one more line: We are all one, there is no ?other.? But consider too that it?s just as true that some of us are nicer to be around than others.

And finally, in all this pondering one other question is raised, a question that needs to be answered, and answered soon, and that is: How do we tell a friendly alien from an unfriendly one?

Stay tuned.

2006-12-12