Jacques Vallee and the mystery of UFOs
By Dimitris Argastaras, Unlocking the Truth magazine, Special Issue 1
UFOs remain a major mystery of our time. The constant appearance of random witnesses, combined with the absurdity and naivety of many reports, still makes us wonder what might really be happening.
For some people, this question is treated with sarcasm, suspicion, or simply as an excuse for entertainment. For others, however, it appears to be of the highest importance, as they consider our experience with this phenomenon to be a critical issue regarding what we take for granted about our world…
Many researchers and writers have devoted themselves to solving the mystery of unidentified aerial phenomena and the strange reports that accompany them. And although their theories and honesty may vary, none of them have come close to a comprehensive conclusion that includes the full range of data behind this complex issue.
Thus, when faced with this problem, some cling to fragmented and biased interpretations that force us to take into account only certain pieces of evidence at the expense of others, while others seem to have accepted the incomprehensible as a fundamental and essential aspect of UFOs and propose that we must learn to live with this unsolvable mystery.
Among the various researchers, Dr. Jacques Vallée holds a prominent place. Born in France, Vallée first studied mathematics at the Sorbonne, obtained a master’s degree in astrophysics from the University of Lille, and after moving to the USA earned a PhD in computer science from Northwestern University.
In America, Vallée became a close collaborator, friend, and student of Dr. J. Allen Hynek, who at that time was an academic consultant for the U.S. Air Force’s “Project Blue Book” on UFOs.
Vallée also contributed to the development of the first mapping program of the planet Mars for NASA, later directed a project to create ARPANET (an early form of the Internet), and since 1987 has worked as an investment advisor and business executive. At the same time, as a skilled researcher and author of many pioneering books, Vallée has emerged as one of the most important ufologists and one of the most original thinkers in the field.
At first, Vallée was one of the earliest scientific defenders of the theory that UFOs might be extraterrestrial spacecraft. In his first book, “Anatomy of a Phenomenon”, he argued that “through the activity of UFOs we can already discern what the outline of an amazingly complex intelligent life outside Earth would look like,” while in the next one, “A Challenge to Science: The UFO Enigma”, together with his wife, the psychologist Janine Vallée, he tried to push the scientific community to examine the UFO evidence from that perspective. Later, however, Vallée’s evaluation of the UFO phenomenon seems to change, deepen, and become more complex.
In his following book, “Passport to Magonia”, he gathers many folkloric “myths” from Celtic tales of fairies to biblical references and medieval accounts of “visitors” from elsewhere and argues that they closely resemble modern UFO encounters. Thus, he adopts the view that a modern space age layer has been added onto a timeless phenomenon that appears in different historical periods under different interpretations and forms.
And he suggests that, as far as we can approach it, UFOs constitute a sociological phenomenon, at least in terms of their effects a complex “control system” that has been shaping human society over thousands of years as “an interaction between reality and consciousness.”
The first experience
“I always thought,” says Vallée, “that if UFOs existed, astronomers would see them and would tell us about it, but my first job as an astronomer disappointed me on that point.”
His first job was at the Paris Observatory, as a member of a team tracking satellite orbits. Suddenly, they found themselves tracking objects that were not satellites and not anything else identifiable. One night, they took eleven measurements of the trajectory of one such object, in order to feed them into the computer and calculate its orbit. They then noticed that it was an “retrograde” object it was moving opposite to Earth’s rotation. Yet at that time there was no rocket powerful enough to place such a satellite into such an orbit. The next morning, the project supervisor seized the data and destroyed it.
Vallée says they didn’t know what they had seen it could have been some strange fragment of human technology, but in any case it was a mystery and what scandalized him was that the supervisor refused to even examine it, choosing instead to destroy the evidence.
The reason was fear of ridicule.
The project was being carried out in collaboration with American astronomers, the data would be exchanged, and the supervisor did not want the Paris Observatory to submit a report containing an unexplained object in the sky. As they later discovered, other observatories had made exactly the same observation, and American observatories had photographed the same object, without being able to identify it either. It was an object of significant size and as bright as Sirius. It was impossible not to see it.
The Invisible College
Evidence and data of this kind, which could not be properly classified or discussed openly, led Jacques Vallée, Allen Hynek, and other trusted colleagues to form a “closed club” of scientists and intellectuals who met secretly during the 1960s and 70s and quietly worked in the background.
It was Allen Hynek who suggested they call themselves the “Invisible College”, so as to retain the strong sense that they were following a kind of forbidden knowledge, that they were on the trail of a new form of science not accepted by the powers that be. Vallée would later write that this small group consisted of young scientists “who wandered through the minefield of the paranormal, a taboo subject among academics but also a source of some fascinating questions: What should a small group of researchers do when faced with a phenomenon that does not follow the recognized laws of nature? How far should they go to warn their colleagues and the public without having a definitive proof? Could they truly hope to influence the academic community, which is clearly aligned with the status quo and intimidated by political pressures?”
In his book “The Invisible College”, Vallée summarizes the group’s considered positions. First, he notes that, by our own standards, “unidentified flying objects do not seem to be exactly either objects or flying.” They usually materialize and dematerialize at will, maneuver in ways that violate the most basic rules of possible flight, and often synchronize with the subjective state of the witnesses.
Second, based on the available sources from old books and manuscripts, UFOs appear to have been active throughout human history, appearing and acting according to the cultural terms of each place and era. Third, it seems that the key to the UFO phenomenon “lies in the psychological effects it produces (or in the psychic awareness it triggers) in its observers” and in their bizarre stories.
Vallée characteristically states:
“Everything behaves as if the phenomenon were the product of a technology that follows definite rules and patterns and yet remains supernatural by ordinary human standards. So far, the phenomenon has not posed any obvious threat to national security and seems indifferent to the well being of individual witnesses… But its impact on the long term shaping of human creativity and unconscious influences is probably enormous. The fact that we have no methodology to examine such an impact is only an indication of how little we know…”
Control System
According to Vallée, what we can objectively say about the UFO phenomenon, without getting lost in too many assumptions, is that it consists essentially of three components.
First, there is the physical phenomenon.
At least for some period of time, a physical, material object makes its appearance.
All we know about it is that it represents a large amount of electromagnetic energy in a very small volume.
It leaves traces, interacts with the environment, emits heat and light, and probably microwaves, in very interesting ways.
Then, there is the perceptual phenomenon.
In “close encounters” witnesses report things that are either absurd or so extremely simple as to be misleading. According to Vallée, witnesses are not lying they were exposed to something real, but there is no way to know what exactly it was based solely on their description, because their perception has been affected by the phenomenon itself. Beyond these, there is the third component: the sociological or mythological one. This concerns what happens when the reports are fed into society and enter the cultural space.
Vallée says this is what he finds most interesting. Perhaps what we are dealing with is essentially a “social technology”:
The phenomenon may function as a kind of “trigger” that provides the images which the witness will report, and these images are then used to produce certain types of social effects. According to this theory, if mythologies and beliefs can be seen as the “operating systems” of that knowledge and behavior software we call Civilization, then UFO sightings may be a kind of mythological thermostat on the planet, whose purpose is to regulate and control the belief systems of cultures throughout the ages.
Since we now live in a technology oriented era, when we see something unusual in the sky we think of it in physical terms:
How is it built? How does it work? What is its propulsion system? We assume that the physical phenomenon is its most important aspect but perhaps the most significant effects of UFOs are social and mythological.
The operator of such a control system, as Vallée calls it, could be an extraterrestrial intelligence but not necessarily.
In its alternative possibilities, this theory echoes Carl Jung’s view of psychological projections into the sky during periods of collective shifts in consciousness.
Vallée notes: “I believe that a powerful force has influenced human civilization in the past and is still influencing it today. Does this force represent extraterrestrial intervention, or does it originate solely from human consciousness?” He leaves that question open.
The challenge of research
In this article we have avoided referring to specific cases and pieces of evidence.
Although Vallée mentions quite a few interesting incidents, we chose to focus more on his ideas and conclusions.
Besides, many events and “proofs” are widely circulated today.
What the French American ufologist considers of key importance is the question of research itself, and how it is conducted.
According to Vallée, the phenomenon has not yet been studied as it deserves.
In most cases, the people researching it are either military personnel looking for hostile aircraft and immediate threats to national security, or private researchers, dedicated citizens but with limited time and few resources.
Furthermore, researchers are often biased regarding the nature of the phenomenon and may therefore ignore certain data.
American ufologists, for example, have traditionally looked for extraterrestrial craft, and thus any testimony that doesn’t fit this mold may not be something they are ready to hear or publish, because they think it would harm their credibility.
But every genuine UFO sighting, Vallée says, has some elements that shake our logical view of things.
The advice Vallée gives for research is this:
We do not need to chase every reported UFO case.
If a sighting receives much publicity, it ceases to be particularly useful.
Instead, the researcher should go to cases he himself selects ones that have received very little publicity and that he has heard of through personal channels of information.
He must devote time to his investigation, relate to the witnesses as people, and then become part of the scene, coming as close as possible to what actually happened.
He says he gives higher priority to cases involving eyewitnesses who did not report to the media or to the UFO community, because once incidents become part of the public discussion they become polarized conflicts, agendas, and other factors creep in, or they begin to participate in the construction of a consensual narrative about the subject.
In any case, it seems that the phenomenon that manifests through UFOs is much more challenging than we can imagine.
It raises questions about consciousness, the nature of reality, and human history on Earth.
It is a special case that forces us to question what we call reality, as it casts doubt on the “protective glasses” we have become used to wearing over our minds.
And, according to Vallée, it is our great opportunity to expand our understanding and to be forced to examine the universe around us in other ways as well.
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