Reveries Revisited: Part One
"Cosmic Tarot and the Coming Millennium" . . .
Hello everyone. This week I am sharing a section from my second book The Tarot: Methods, Mastery, and More. It was published thirty years ago—and looking at it now, I see both echoes of the 1960s and premonitions of our present reality.
Which makes it worth another look, I’ve decided.
So—reminded/intrigued by the recent release of material related to “UAPs” (Unexplained Aerial Phenomena)—I’m reprinting a section of MMM that was originally sparked by public fascination with UFOs.
The explicit Tarot connections come late in the section, but I decided to begin at the beginning and share the whole thing in three parts. Not sure how I feel about the writing style (?) but here is the unedited original text, with the note numbers left in. The citations will be in Part Three.
As you read, I invite you to remember this was written three decades ago, balanced on the edge of a world-shift that we are only beginning to appreciate . . .
Cosmic Tarot and the Coming Millennium: Part One
I wasn’t sure why—after many years of paying almost no attention—I recently became intrigued by the current public interest in UFOs. But of course, synchronicity being what it is, I found out why.
The catalyzing experience occurred when I (and someone else, thank goodness) heard a local news report of UFO sightings. The news story seemed very detailed and potentially interesting: widespread, similar pilot reports, traffic controller reports, and claimed supportive documentation. How exciting! And how surprising, since we’re told by UFO buffs that such things are routinely hushed up.
Well, sure enough, the report did disappear, and within an hour. It was on the five o’clock news but vanished from the six o’clock news and from all subsequent news reports for the next twenty-four hours. I kept bringing it up with everyone I talked to, and finally someone told me he had heard, a day and a half later, a news story explaining that the reported sightings had actually been precipitated by an “unusual comet.”
This struck me as an insult to people’s intelligence (something I find particularly irritating). Since comets visible to the unaided eye appear only about once every three years on the average, and considering that we typically odd that this one should appear unannounced. Also, since it’s rare for a comet to approach closer to earth than three million miles, how exactly could a comet cause the “blue lights” reportedly following pilots in different parts of the state—or the radar tracks purportedly seen by air traffic controllers? I’d really have liked a better explanation, but it seemed there was nowhere to get one.
My curiosity thus piqued, I checked into a few books on UFO phenomena. Several merely reinforced my skepticism, but among the books I found The Omega Project by Kenneth Ring. A seemingly sober fellow, a Ph.D. and professor of psychology at the University of Connecticut, Ring had been carefully conducting research into the conditions and consequences of near-death experiences (NDEs) when his editor persuaded him to read Whitley Strieber’s now-famous UFO abduction account Communion. And much to his surprise, Ring found significant parallels between the psychological and physiological effects of near-death experience and UFO “abduction.”
After conducting some detailed studies of these parallels and incorporating the ideas of several other theorists, Ring came to a startling conclusion. But before I tell you what Ring decided, I’d like to double back and tell what path of my own speculations had been taking. Some months before UFOs came to the forefront of my attention, I’d been investigating the deep ecology already discussed [earlier in the chapter] and reviewing several books—such as The Runaway Brain and The Brainmakers¹¹—which raise (scientifically rather than philosophically) some very fundamental questions about the nature of human being.
During this process I had begun to wonder just what the meaning of consciousness really is in the cosmic context. Though we are very proud of the conscious awareness that separates us from the rest of nature, when you stop to think about it, consciousness serves no useful purpose.
Of course, it’s useful to us, because we’re accustomed to it and dependent on it. It produces things we are proud of: knowledge, science, technology, literature, art, amenities, et cetera. But none of its qualities or products is the least bit useful with respect to anything but consciousness itself. We like consciousness (and by this I really mean self-awareness) because we have it.
At the same time, however, consciousness has brought nothing but harm to the planet. Plants, animals, oceans, air, and even the rocky infrastructure of the earth have all been irreparably harmed by the fruits of consciousness. Aggression, competition, nationalism, greed, selfishness, and a hundred other characteristics of ego-centered consciousness are responsible for the violence we perpetrate against one another, our fellow species, and the earth itself.
So it’s worth asking: What--if anything--is valuable about consciousness in the great scheme of things?
As I read more and more about the biological and computational aspects of consciousness, I sank deeper into a rather gloomy reflection on the notions of self-as-illusion and consciousness-as-disease. But one day at the gym (endorphins at work) I suddenly realized that the distinctive thing about human consciousness is its ability to transcend itself. We have the potential to evolve beyond our limitations. Consciousness is not a dead end but an open door.¹²
This realization cheered me up a good deal, but it was still rather thin and unsubstantiated. I tabled the matter and didn’t revisit it until I read the final chapter of The Omega Project. Only then did I make the connection between my exercise insight and the work of a number of thinkers with whom I was passingly familiar. As so often happens, I had known about their ideas but had never taken the time to understand what they were actually saying. Some of them—like Timothy Leary and Terence McKenna—do not make their ideas easy to comprehend. Others, like the Jesuit anthropologist and philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, were simply filed in my mind under some other category.
And what is the connection?
Ring concludes in The Omega Project that the increasingly frequent occurrences of both NDEs and UFO encounters can be understood as messages we are sending to ourselves—experiences projected from the imaginal realm of human consciousness as catalysts of a new evolution. He has borrowed the term “Omega” from Teilhard de Chardin, who theorized that widely different human cultures around the earth are now approaching a convergence (the “Omega Point”) in which consciousness can find a new unity. Already, according to Teilhard de Chardin, humankind has covered the earth’s surface with a noosphere—a kind of web or membrane of consciousness formed by our collective human mental activity and superimposed on the biosphere.¹³
A complement to Ring’s hypothesis can be found in philosopher Michael Grosso’s theory that a new level of human consciousness is developing, aided by a “helping intelligence” that he calls “Mind at Large.”¹⁴ Grosso, too, sees in the current wave of extraordinary encounters something like a message-to-ourselves concerning the kinds of changes we must undertake as a species if we are to survive the threats of nuclear and ecological disaster. Abduction stories, he points out, have a dreamlike character, but the consistent themes and details of the stories told by abductees suggest that they are part of a collective dream, perhaps a product of the collective unconscious.¹⁵
Just as a dream relates in some way to the dreamer’s life, Grosso reasons, the symbolism of abduction stories may be interpreted in terms of its relevance to the conscious life of our culture; for example, the pale and spindly appearance characteristic of the purported aliens is very similar to the pictures of starving children that appear with poignant frequency in our news, suggesting a connection with the fearfulness engendered by our recognition (perhaps still largely unconscious for most people) of the dwindling of planetary resources and the uncontrolled increase of our planetary population.
Similarly, the “scientific” examinations said to be conducted by the aliens may reflect the fright we feel at the invasive and frequently inhuman practices of medical science, and possibly even guilt over our own scientific use of animals. Some abductees report that they were given messages, instructions, or warnings that make explicit the general critique of mankind implied in the symbolic themes of their stories. (The term abductee, by the way, is being used here simply to refer to those people who believe themselves to have been abducted and isn’t meant to suggest that I personally think they were.)
The idea that extraordinary encounters are somehow connected with an evolution of consciousness is suggested by the fact that people very often display substantive changes of behavior and sensibility following UFO and near-death experiences. They become more sensitive to the plight of the planet, more psychically aware, more inner-directed. This pattern of change has been noted in several research projects, including Kenneth Ring’s study, and has also been observed by Harvard Medical School professor John Mack, who has established an extensive psychiatric initiative among abductees.
In his book Abduction,¹⁶ Mack explains that “many abductees . . . appear to undergo profound personal growth and transformation. Each appears to come out of his or her experiences concerned about the fate of the earth and the continuation of human and other life-forms.” Furthermore, according to Mack, abductees who “confront and integrate” their experiences seem to become especially intuitive. “They sometimes demonstrate strong psychic abilities, including clairvoyance or the ability to perceive at a distance.” (Mack adds, however, that further research is needed to document these capabilities.)
Like Kenneth Ring and Michael Grosso, John Mack says forthrightly that he does not know exactly what “alien abductions” are or what they might mean. But each of these researchers contends that something real and important is happening—though not, perhaps, in the dimensions of space-time that we’re familiar with.
Ring adds a fascinating dimension to the study of extraordinary encounters by suggesting they may be . . . .
Find out in Part Two. C
I am engrossed by this report which you have so eloquently written Cynthia. I have had a near-death experience in childhood but find this research into both that experience and "galactic intervention" fascinating. Looking forward to part 2.