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Of Martians and The Theft of Thought
We find ourselves in the situation that Alan Watts once described as "...Yet awareness of time ceases to be an asset when concern for the future makes it almost impossible to live in the present, or when increasing knowledge of the future makes it increasingly certain that, beyond a brief span, we have no future." This post is about the past in the present as it impacts the future in a series of mirrors, whether those mirrors are the work of fertile imaginations or those of a decidedly non human provenance.
In the alchemical quicksilver of the paranormal, when we go seeking our shadows, or those we suspect are cast by others, there is both the hope of a revelation in the nature of our purpose but more likely it is we are the embodiment of Poe's William Wilson, who finds the reflection of himself as an agent of his own self destruction, as the reliance upon the surface of these matters exacts a premium of cost. The revelation we seek may not be all roses, roses, but one of self deception, aided and abetted by our desires.
The working theory of a terrestrial basis of the phenomenon embedded within Ufology is most closely associated with John Keel and then most recently with the late Mac Tonnies,but our story begins nearly sixty years ago in a book by Ray Bradbury entitled "The Martian Chronicles." Consider that Keel's Ultraterrestrials, and Mac Tonnie's Cryptoterrestrials are both a native sentient species that predate the arrival of a human strain and although Bradbury's novel takes place on Mars, it is easily transposed to Earth. Also interestingly there is a further connection to Mars in Mac Tonnie's novel "After The Martian Apocalypse"
In a chapter of Mr Brabury's novel, first published in August of 1948,entitled "The Earth Men" which, in the context of the book, chronicles the events on Mars that takes place during the "Second Expedition" to Mars. The astronauts arrive to find the Martians to be strangely unresponsive to their presence. The one exception to this is a group of Martians in a building who greet them with a parade. Several of the Martians in the building claim to be from Earth or from other planets of the solar system, and the captain slowly realizes that the Martian gift for telepathy allows others to view the hallucinations of the insane, and that they have been placed in an insane asylum. The Martians they have encountered all believed that their unusual appearance was a projected hallucination. Because the "hallucinations" are so detailed and the captain refuses to admit he is not from Earth, A psychiatrist, declares him incurable and kills him. When the "imaginary" crew does not disappear as well, The psychiatrist shoots and kills them. Finally, as the "imaginary" rocket remains in existence,our completely overwhelmed psychiatrist concludes that he too must be crazy and commits suicide.
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