Channellers
To a certain extent, the classic contactees of the 1950s had always been channellers: many of their communications were relayed telepathically and not always in the presence of an alien entity or even a UFO. As they became increasingly discredited in the 1960s, so the ‘pure’ channeller became more important and, in many ways, UFO involvement was sidelined (indeed, it is generally absent, at least at the time of communications).
To many, this indicates the true nature of the original contactee phenomenon. Rather than being at the fringes of UFO phenomena, UFOs were at the fringe of the contactee phenomenon, which was more closely related to various spiritualist or theosophical groups. In other words, with the contactees, the message was all-important, not the alien life-form and its technology, which merely served as the vehicle for the message.
On the other hand, might it be argued that the nuts-and-bolts brigade, by pursuing technological questions beyond all others, were symptomatic of twentieth-century materialism? A truly alien culture ought to have concerns very different from human concerns and the spiritual “truths” relayed through the contactees might be a human rationalisation of alien concepts.
Last updated 2 April 2006