In today’s episode of Healing from Within, your host, Sheryl Glick, author of The Living Spirit: Answers for Healing and Infinite Love welcomes Professor Ted Peters, author of UFO’S: God’s Chariots; a look at science spirituality religion and UFO history.
Ted Peters has been investigating UFO’s for four decades serving previously as the Louisiana State Director of Mufon, the Mutual UFO Network. He is currently Emeritus Professor of Systematic Theology and Ethics at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkley California. He has authored and edited more than 2 dozen books on theology and the dialogue between faith and science.
Ted answers questions - Are UFO’s replacing the angels of past cultures? Will flying saucers bring new hope and redemption from the sky? What could be the impact of the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence on religions and what could this contribute to the religious and spiritual structures at work in relation to the UFO phenomenon as well as discussing a new field of research called Astrotheology. We will discuss the documentation of many incidents and reports of UFO’s beginning to escalate around 1947 and the implications of these events for educating the public of the possibilities of Extraterrestrial Life and preparation for receiving this knowledge with moral and intellectual curiosity rather than fear.
Philip Coppens once said, “Civilization was indeed guided by gods, by a nonhuman, extraterrestrial intelligence, though today we consider this to be the bailiwick of religion, it is not; it is about directly experiencing another reality and contacting this intelligence.” Ted says UFO generated theologies seem to be developing surrounding themes of ancient alien theology and contactee theology. These are both secular theologies: they belong to no church. UFO theology appeals to those who are Spiritualists But Not Religious. UFO theology looks like science but may actually be a vehicle for expressing displaced religious or spiritual hopes.
Ted suggests that the ancient astronaut theory and UFO theologies offer us a respectable way of talking about our deeper religious needs. Ted explains those theologies and how they may guide us to understand our human nature and the world we live in. Our religious feelings urge us to think about our spiritual or inner reality and to translate our spiritual concerns into naturalistic or scientific terms and a UFO theology may help with this. UFO’s have a way of making us aware of more than our physical life and the Earth…while searching the Universe and the stars to answer age old questions about life death immortality and a higher source for Guidance. Thoughts about self-destruction and death create anxiety and even those who are not religious may ask for help from above or the government, the good luck charm, the crystal, psychic or astrologer or even UFO’s.
Sheryl asks Ted “How does the belief there are no ghost or not believing in the supernatural relate to our understanding of God and the laws of nature which assume things must be seen to be believed?” Ted replies by saying God, which is transcendent eternal and unseen like ghosts transcend the time and space worldview of finite things but spiritual needs which wish to make sense of death and a place which may be better than this world make us seek answers to these eternal questions in hopes of overcoming our fears and limitations. Natural creatures in a UFO from another world, could by technological means answer our deepest inner needs and desires. God is beyond the nature of a physical world and as such must be taken on faith which for many is difficult if not impossible.
Ted tells an amazing story of Dick Jackson who related a meeting with three Humanoids and how civilized it was and what he was offered if he helped them and himself. Ted tells us something of this event and what ly happened to Dick on October of 1975 in Florida at around two am. Dick Jackson walked out of his trailer and saw a stairway leading to the doorway of a flying saucer. He was told by three beings that no harm would come to him and as he entered the ship he felt a suction action over his body, like he was being vacuumed clean or sterilized and though they spoke a foreign language to each other to him they spoke perfect English. Jackson described the beings as 5’2” tall and Jackson told the being he looked about 65 years old but Jackson was told by the being that he was considerably older. The beings said they were from a planet called Planteh and how his people were preparing an uninhabited planet for colonization by earthlings..he was also told they came from a highly technological world much more advanced than ours. Jackson who was not a particularly religious man and not superstitious and felt that like many of us dominated by the worldview of science we do not want to believe in supernatural things such as ghosts that transcend the laws of nature in our physical world Though the thoughts of the invisible world of energy God angels and other beings of life are not seen by many, they are seen by some sensitives and mediums, but still are not accepted by the masses. Though we all have deep spiritual needs and a longing that this world cannot fulfill, Dick Jackson did desire a better world and relief from his fear of death. People may be able to interpret UFO’S and bring some unity to the 4 models politics science religion and a hybridizing composite as they overlap that Ted talks about, and be able to believe and put their trust in all the other philosophies by actually visualizing an advanced form of life as represented by visitors from another physical world rather than an energetic or spiritual conception of otherworldly life or the Afterlife.
Ted describes that close encounters, abduction reports, and contactee cases examined in the book seem to fall into four basic belief subsystems.
- Interstellar Diplomat (a political model)
- The Research Scientist (a scientific model)
- The Celestial Savior (a religious model )
- The Hybridizer a model that combines the scientific and the religious.
All four of these models are part and parcel of a larger single belief system shared by all of us in Western culture but can add to our understanding of UFO”s.
- The Interstellar Diplomat considers the possibility of an encounter or our own civilization and that of an alien world utilizing our centuries of political wars, international diplomacy so we may ask intelligent questions surrounding the extraterrestrials.
- The Research Scientist is involved in the collection of samples of soil and rock and the fact that we assume aliens from space are observing different worlds the same way.
- The Celestial Savior concept sees the space alien as a messianic messenger from a heavenly civilization where there is peace and no more war..here we might believe the alien will help us achieve the same utopian civilization they have and teach us to do it for ourselves rather than do it for us.
- The Hybridizer revolves around abduction childhood abuse or rituals using hypnotic regression and retrieval of forgotten memories and perhaps rape or invitro fertilization and the birth of hybrid babies. An example would be the new TV series Extant with actress Halle Berry as an astronaut who brought back an alien life force who used those methods to get people to protect him and destroy those who were after him.
Ted talks about the Movie The Day The Earth Stood Still which was first made in 1951 and then remade in 2008. Sheryl tells Ted she saw the new version with actor Keneau Reaves as the visitor from another place in the Universe named Klaatu and how he was ill- received by the political establishment and the scientific establishment. The film was disturbing to Sheryl because of the way this visitor was viewed and treated showing a lack of compassion and the moral fiber of our world.
Sheryl reads something written by Steven Greer of MUFON, a leader in the field for exposing cover-ups in the government of information about UFO sightings over an extended time frame. “UFO’s are real, they are of extraterrestrial origin; they have been around for decades if not centuries; there is no evidence they are hostile; there is probably more than one type of life form visiting us; and aspects of government have known this for 50 years at least…”
Greer and other realists suggest we begin to prepare for when communication is finally established between life forces by recommending that the US Congress “Develop a special diplomatic unit to interface with these extraterrestrial civilization, foster communication and peaceful relations..”
Sheryl says she believes that should be the approach in all issues between nations here on the planet, religious groups and organizational groups families and individuals. We must seek our uniqueness and understand our spiritual or energetic essence or soul being and EVOLVE Change and embrace the oneness of all things and life. In her new book, The Living Spirit: Answers for Healing and Infinite Love, Sheryl shares stories and messages from a higher realm of informational energy and life that as a medium and energy healer she is able to download from Spirit. In sharing these stories of people who have managed to go beyond their ego orientation or physical life to access their internal life force wisdom, we can see that we can be brought back into alignment with the Universe find a commonality between us instead of focusing on the differences..that is what we must do to prepare for the future world and peace must begin within each of us before we can unite our planet and welcome hopefully the visitors from other planets who may one day present themselves.
We know there is more to science than the gathering and assessment of data..Science improves life in the long run through discoveries and new tools and equipment to help us function in a healthy capacity in our daily lives . Ted writes, “Will man become more accepting of his fellow human beings once he realizes he is not alone in the Universe. Will human understanding reach a new improved level where war ceases and mankind begins to look at others as their equal and brother to be taken care of rather than destroyed. This is the hope and the mission of MUFON. Isn’t this what all religions strive to impart to their followers and if Science can deliver the next step of our evolution for a Higher Conscious State of Being that would seemingly be a worthwhile outcome of the study of all life including extraterrestrials.”
Kathie Davis, a mother of two, contacted Bud Hopkins after reading his book Missing Time and reported her UFO experience and through hypnotic regression found she had had numerous abductions and been monitored by alien scientists. In 1977 she became pregnant but experienced a miscarriage and Hopkins believes she was artificially inseminated in December and the fetus was removed in March In 1978. After marrying, she became pregnant and abducted again. In 1981, she divorced and in 1983 she was abducted and after a physical exam she was shown a small child whom she believed was her daughter. The child was five years old, small for her age, had patchy hair, very large eyes, and an unusually shaped cranium. Sheryl wonders if it was a hybrid child…
Ted tells us of a skeptic who thought anyone interested in the topic of UFO’s must be not well educated. Dr. Margaret Buckley, whose hobby is archaeology, was converted into a UFO believer. A year after meeting Dr. Buckley, she had her own UFO experience on Interstate 26 west of Columbia South Carolina where she and others stopped their cars to see a ball shaped object- bluish-white in color with a yellow to red tail perhaps of fire that moved at a speed faster than a plane and in a long horizontal flight path.
Ted and Sheryl have explored the theme of Universal Life and the hope that should we begin communication with life forces from other planets that we will both be in an evolved and compassionate state of being to recognize our differences and build on our similarities for the highest good of all as human and humane citizens of a larger complex of reality. In that sense it would seem that the best philosophies accumulated in the scientific and religious communities would unite us in truth courage and the forgiving of unexplained data or fears so we can learn and share the best of all worlds of knowledge and being.
As Ted wrote and may we conclude from his statement that our reason for a human life is to learn greater love and compassion for all living things.
Ted writes “The abiding theme of the contactees delivered to us by our benevolent visitors from the sky: We earthlings must put away our nuclear weapons of war and cultivate a planet-wide brotherhood consisting of mutual understanding and love. It is out of heaven’s love for us that the space messengers have come to our fallen realm in order to deliver this teaching which can be related in this poem by Hukar to John Hoffman in 1958.
“Our reason for coming is to try to recover from old Mother Earth, our dear long lost Brothers…There are many things of value, some of which the eye can see. But the priceless gift that we offer you, is the Redeemer’s love for free.” |
