|
UFOs and the Evolution of Man
by Scott Corrales
Visitors to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History often find themselves standing in front of the “evolutionary column” or “geological column” to ponder the development of life on Earth—from protozoa to Homo sapiens—passing through a motley and often terrifying array of prehistoric creatures such as eurpteryds, dinosaurs of various kinds, and carnivorous mammals. Humankind sits at the very top of the column, its eyes on the stars and with no predators to fear, aside from its fellows.
Early writers and thinkers of the UFO phenomenon rejected the role of evolution in humanity’s appearance on this planet, suggesting the belief that extraterrestrials either biologically engineered prehistoric apes to produce us or brought us wholesale from another world to this one. Landmark books, such as Brinsley LePoer Trench’s The Sky People and Otto Binder’s Unsolved Mysteries of the Past, were joined by the collected works of Erich Von Däniken and more recently those of Zecharia Sitchin.
An even more disturbing hypothesis concerning the presence of non-human visitors in Earth’s past appeared in the mid-1970s in Gods of Air and Darkness by Richard Mooney (Fawcett, 1976). The author suggested that the creatures considered monstrous in terrestrial traditions—ogres, satyrs, werewolves, vampires, and so on—appear to originate from a single source at a given time in history, much in the same way that religions show a commonality. Mooney posits that these aberrations may have been caused by proximity to a starship’s nuclear-powered engines.
Inconsistencies in evolutionary theory’s explanation for the vast diversity of life forms are perhaps responsible for this attempted revisionism. The belief that nonhuman intelligences steered evolution to give rise to intelligence on this world was fueled by humanity’s own power to direct genetic development in recent times. The alleged aliens would have deposited certain species on Earth that eventually led to the early hominids or somehow “triggered” intelligence some 20,000 years ago in likely, pre-existing candidates. Reports of UFO activity throughout the ages were then construed as efforts by our creators to monitor our progress—especially as our ability to destroy their careful handiwork became evident.
But are humans truly the end-all and be-all, the terminus of an evolutionary process, or has obsolescence been built into us? Or more tantalizing still: what order of beings will replace humans on this earth?
About Gods and Demigods
In recent years, authors like Salvador Freixedo and Juan G. Atienza have written extensively about the possibility that certain forces are trying to cause humanity to evolve for their own reasons. In La Gran Manipulación Cósmica, Atienza refers to the notion that there may be “bellwethers” among us who are the spearheads of evolution, moving among us in secret societies to avoid detection and perhaps annihilation by their less-advanced fellows, much like missionaries dealing with primitive cultures. It is also possible that advanced beings, whether human or not, have been in contact with certain gifted humans throughout time, inspiring new ways of thinking and inventions that have helped humankind up the evolutionary ladder. Late medieval tradition made much of beings of light in shining garments who would visit alchemists and occultists and discuss at length matters of science, theurgy, and philosophy. Were they space visitors, time travelers, or fictional sources of inspiration created by the medieval mind?
Jacques Bergier suggested an even more daring theory than Atienza’s bellwethers. In his Extraterrestrial Visitations from Prehistoric Times to the Present (Signet, 1974), the French scientist speculates that at some point in the 18th century, one such advanced human (or nonhuman), whom he identifies as “information source X,” began the dissemination of concepts in chemistry and physics that would spur the Enlightenment.
Salvador Freixedo’s ¡Defendámonos de los dioses! (Beware of the Gods!, translated by this author and still unpublished) takes a different approach. Freixedo begins by acknowledging the existence of noncorporeal intelligences far greater than humanity whom we have chosen in our ignorance to dub “gods,” and who have played a role in human evolution for their own ends. “Gods are not human,” he writes. “Some have the ability to manifest themselves as such and have in fact done so on numerous occasions, and have even lived intimately among us when it suits their enigmatic purposes, but as soon as their mission is accomplished, or their wish fulfilled, they return to their own plane of existence, where they can live more naturally and according to their own psychic and electromagnetic qualities.” To say that these non-human intelligences come from another world therefore does not mean another planet in space, but an entirely different kind of world, as Whitley Streiber has observed in his works—levels of existence coexistent with or even overlapping our own.
These “gods”—Freixedo is careful to differentiate them from the Creator God of the universe—can create what we would term “supermen” by endowing ordinary humans with unusual powers to perform specific assignments on this world. These beings become known to us as avatars, messiahs, and so on. Superficially this may appear to be a positive thing, but Freixedo is of the opinion that this meddling in human evolution has been largely unwholesome.
Freixedo points to cases in UFO literature in which the development of an individual human has been tampered with by supposedly alien creatures. In the 1970s, Freixedo researched the experiences of Heriberto Garza, a man from the Mexican city of Puebla who had allegedly experienced repeated contact with extraterrestrials. One evening, Garza was confronted within his own home by a slender blonde figure with feminine features that addressed him in Spanish. The nonhuman explained that it could walk through solid matter, and that its reason for visiting Garza was to give him “an experience that many would wish to have.” The entity claimed the planet Auko as its place of origin.
Shortly after this encounter, Garza began to be bombarded by telepathic messages from the non-humans at all times, to the extent that the man was forced to seek out psychiatric help. When Garza was visited by UFO researchers Ian Norris and Jorge Reichert, he told them, “I want to show you what is happening to me,” and proceeded to unbutton his shirt. The researchers were astounded to see a number of nipples growing randomly across Garza’s abdomen, some of them small, others larger and with abundant hair. Reichert and Freixedo would later conclude that the man’s DNA had been tampered with, but a more thorough study of the case became impossible after the experiencer “vanished,” a casualty of tampering by an uncaring higher intelligence.
Not all physical transformations induced by involvement with nonhuman presences have had such a catastrophic result. Whitley Streiber mentions a young man whose night vision was completely changed after an abduction experience, making it possible for him to see clearly in pitch blackness (Confirmation, p.129). Others have acquired new sets of teeth and enhanced mental ability, such as in 1972’s Ventura Maceiras case.
Freixedo mentions interference by another diminutive blond entity in the life of a young Mexican businessman known only as “José Luis,” whose education, marriage, and career choices appear to have been guided by a being he has come to know only as el rubio (“the fair-haired one” or Fair). In his evaluation of the life of this young human, Freixedo suggests that his nonhuman mentor has even resorted to causing the deaths of those who may have stood in the way of his protegé—sheer fantasy, or proof of the capricious nature of these “gods”?
To Replace Man
Certain contact experiences with nonhumans straddle the uncomfortable divide between contactee lore, eldritch being folklore, and bona fide extraterrestrial encounters. One such case, little known in the United States, involved an encounter with a blond, androgynous entity in the 1950s in the Pyrenees Mountains which separate Spain from France.
The protagonist’s name was legendary in European UFO circles for many years: Jaime Bordas Bley (rendered in French as “Jacques Bordas”). A former meteorologist, Bordas turned to the management of a bed-and-breakfast known as Hotel del Isard in the village of Casteil, at the foot of Mt. Canigó.
In the summer of 1951, in a Europe recovering from the Second World War, a strange character wandered into Bordas’ life. The man greeted him courteously in French while the hotelkeeper rested in his backyard. Bordas would later describe the man as unusual in his dress, wearing skin-tight clothing of an iridescent, unclassifiable color (resembling the properties of modern Lycra-based sportswear half a century later) tucked into calf-high boots. The man spoke in resonant tones that did not match his delicate appearance and platinum blond hair; but even more striking were his long, almost feminine hands.
Bordas invited his unexpected guest to join him; the man accepted politely and made a request: would it be possible for Bordas to supply him with milk and bread on a daily basis? He professed a lack of identifying documents, which would represent a source of trouble if he procured these items in town. In a continent filled with displaced persons after the war, Bordas did not find this request unusual and agreed to it. However, when he asked the blond visitor where he came from, all he would reply was “from above,” evidently not referring to the mountain villages high in the Pyrenees.
Much more could be said about the fascinating exchanges between Jaime Bordas and his visitor (the unusual “campsite” resembling what we would term a flying saucer, the advanced ideas offered by the stranger, the photos taken of the “visitor” by Bordas’s son, which came out blank upon developing, and the gold nuggets he would give Bordas as a reward for his assistance), but what is of interest to us in this article is their disturbing conversation regarding the future of mankind. The text of their conversation appears as retold by Bordas himself to the late Antonio Ribera, who featured it in his book De Veras Nos Vigilan los OVNIS? (Barcelona: Plaza y Janés, 1975).
“Man considers himself to be alone on Earth,” said the man, “and is not aware that he is one of evolution’s many elements. With his boundless pride and alleged wisdom, he does not know that there exists on Planet Earth an animal that will replace him in the fullness of time. He cannot imagine that something that will surpass him is currently being prepared.”
When Bordas, his curiosity piqued, tried to find out more about this revelation, the strange being gave him a glance that silenced him—the only mention of a sense of menace in the entire strange experience. After a while, the nameless man offered the following by way of explanation: “Man has been given many extraordinary attributes to dominate a vast array of extraordinary forces, but he does not know this. If he misuses them, he will not only bring about his own holocaust, but also the appearance of this thing which shall come afterwards. Man must wait. He must learn to mark time without burning stages futilely. Only then shall it be possible for Man to establish a link with that future thing.”
Fifty-three years later, we can only sit and ponder the meaning of this disturbing information, given by a being that Bordas realized only too late was not human and which Antonio Ribera compared to the Adamski-era “Venusians” in appearance and demeanor. Indeed, the fair-haired, effeminate visitor appeared to belong to the same androgynous coterie that brought grief to Heriberto Garza in Mexico.
Bordas himself was told many years later—through a telephone call from his mysterious visitor—that he would begin to undergo a mutation and cease aging altogether. An astonishing claim, to be sure, but Jaime Bordas had never lived the most normal life anyway. According to Jacques Vallée’s Messengers of Deception, Bordas had been an incredibly fat child due to a hormonal deficiency, but an encounter with a “being of light” who emerged from a “miniature airplane” changed the course of his life. He became strong, athletic, and a talented mountaineer. “Now that we have adopted you,” the being of light had allegedly told him, “we will never forsake you.” Was Bordas one of these humans whose development had been spurred by nonhumans? One of Atienza’s bellwethers or one of Freixedo’s unfortunate victims of alien tampering?
More importantly, what could this thing be? A mutation created accidentally by a laboratory? A new, improved human being produced as a result of scientific research into the human genome? Could it be the ubiquitous chupacabras, believed by many to be a genetic chimaera of uncertain origin, or even the hybrids produced from the blending of human and “Grey” DNA, reported so often in abductee accounts?
A nightmarish scenario could easily involve the 1.0 version of humanity turned into a servitor species of some sort, as in the worst science fiction nightmares, or else deleted altogether by the new dominant species. Colin Wilson believes that the alien Greys reported during the 1990s are actively involved in the creation of the new species, since they are themselves stuck in an evolutionary dead end.
Each hypothesis is more frightening than the previous one.
|
