Analysis of the discourse of abductees consistently reveals a breakpoint in time, after which the percipient leaves normal reality behind. On the “other side” of this boundary, ordinary space-time physics no longer seems to apply, and the percipient moves as if within a lucid dream (or indeed a lucid nightmare) until returned to the normal world. [Jenny] Randles calls this phenomenon “the Oz Factor.”
—Jacques Vallee, Revelations

When the individual encounters the Ufo, his world collapses and is immediately replaced by a new one in which nothing is familiar to him. Like Alice, he is propelled through the looking glass and into a land of wonder; once there, there is only one law that seems to apply: anything can happen. This, which amounts to no law at all, leads invariably to an absolute loss of certainty, conviction and clarity in the mind of the percipient: he is freed to sink or swim into the great Beyond.  There is no doubt that whoever or whatever conceived of this acid-test-cum-cosmic-prank encounter adhered to the fundamental laws of evolution, and came up with the human “rite of passage” par excellence.  It is an order of experience that, like the god Mercury, makes use of truth and deception with equal indifference, and that most assuredly “has no respect for persons.”
As Don Juan Matus tells Carlos Castaneda, in The Fire Within: “Something out there is effecting our senses. This is the part that is real. The unreal part is what our senses tell us is there.” The experience that the Ufo percipient undergoes is no ordinary hallucination but rather a translation—from one “reality line” (or tunnel) into another. Once “contacted,” the percipient finds himself in the presence of a force that is by definition impersonal, indifferent, and completely incomprehensible, but which appears to have some specific “business” with the witness. As it proceeds to play upon his perceptions in true trickster fashion, it first blinds him, and then ushers him into another kind of vision. The vision, whatever its nature, is invariably tied to the percipient’s own personal beliefs, expectations, hopes, fears, and so forth. “This personal link has also been reported as the ‘OZ’ factor or ‘bell-jar effect’ where the witness and the UFO seem to be enclosed in their own private world, or ‘bubble of influence,’ and are ‘melded’ together in isolation.”  From this perspective—suitably solipcist in its paranoia—the Ufo might best be understood as a sort of autonamous psychedelic agent that zips about the stratosphere, choosing its own guinea-pigs and affecting each one in a different manner, but always in a dramatic and fantasmagorical fashion. Like all good psychedelics, the Ufo knocks the subject off her feet and out of her world, while allowing him to retain essentially his sense of self throughout the “trip” (even if her idea of this “self” will, almost invariably, be drastically and permanently altered upon his “return”). If this is the case, then the experiencer of the Ufo has effectively been reprogrammed, in much the same way that hypnotic subjects or LSD-users are being steadily reprogrammed by their own or others’ experiments. John Keel describes the ear-marks of this “fundamental reprogamming process”:

No matter what frame of reference is being used, the experience usually begins with either the sudden flash of light or sound—a humming, buzzing, or beeping. The subject’s attention is riveted to a pulsing, flickering light of dazzling intensity. He finds he is unable to move a muscle and is rooted to the spot. Next the flickering light goes through a series of colour changes and a seemingly physical object begins to take form.

Such factors are basic to the hypnotic or entrancement strategy of the Ufo, and leave the percipient wide open to suggestion, prior to the ensuing alteration of consciousness. There is, of course, an essential complicity between the percipient and the perceived (the Ufo), just as there is between the hypnotist and his subject, or the shaman and his drug. Seeing as the human body is itself a sort of Electro-magnectic Light Form (ELF),  it follows that his relationship with the enigmatic Ufo might be considerably more intimate than has hitherto been supposed.  If the bio-field of the Earth is found to correspond with that of the human body, then the Ufo might be serving as a kind of intermediary, a “bridge,” between the two. Paranoid awareness—which attempts to track the events of the actual, back to the realm of the Imaginal—seeks always the most empowering interpretation in every myster. It is thereby drawn to perceive the Ufo as a kind of window—a doorway through which the percipient, simply by the act of looking, may pass back into the land of Oz, and know the place at last.

Any quest must begin at one’s own front door, and the quest for the truth behind the Ufo mystery is no different; the solution is to be sought not beyond the stars, or even inside the Earth, but in our own bodies. It has been claimed by mystics throughout history but only recently discovered by science that each and every human being is contained inside a bio-electrical field of energy, popularly known as the aura.   This “aura” (referred to by Carlos Castaneda as “a luminous egg”) extends outward beyond our visible bodies by several feet, and is a kind of energy grid, or field, that corresponds, thread for thread and wave for wave, with that of the Earth (and, by extension perhaps, of the entire Universe). In other words, the human body is but one energy field existing within another energy field, inside another, and so on, ad infinitum, each of these fields acting upon the other, in ways both apparent (menstrual cycles, etc) and obscure.  When a person comes into contact with a type of energy alien to his own, he will be directly, however subtly, affected and influenced by this energy, even as he would be by drugs or other foreign substances that enter inside his body. During encounters with other people or animals, the effect is so minimal that we generally fail to even observe it: were our eyes closed and ears blocked, we would perhaps not even be aware of the arrival of an “other” into our space at all.  When man comes in close proximity to a largely alien or unknown form of energy, however, the effects upon his own energy field are so severe that he actually feels the approach of this “other,” internally, possibly even before he apprehends it with his ordinary senses. Likewise, and for the same reason, its influence may linger with him long after it has apparently “gone.”  This suggests that the arrival of the alien energy has been anticipated by a corresponding reaction in the human body, which is being subtly altered by the contact. Dr Gregory L. Little, in Grand Illusions, writes in some detail about the relationship between this mysterious Ufo energy and the human brain, referring specifically to the chemical known as magnetite, which, as Little notes,

aligns itself to the field of whatever electro-magnetic—or geo magnetic—force that the person is in. The alignment of magnetite subtly alters the ionic flow in the brain’s cells and thus can increase the flow in the other areas. . . .  Our brain chemistry aligns itself to the archetype’s magnetic field almost instantly. Then it’s too late and the experience will take its course until the archetype has dissipated the energy that it uses to stay in physical form.

If, as geomancy claims, there are certain spots on the Earth—called places of power—where the consciousness of living beings undergoes subtle alterations, then it may be that the Ufo energy field functions, intensely, as a moving power spot of unparallelled influence upon our nervous systems. Just to be near it—sometimes even to see it from a distance—seems enough to cause the percipient to be flooded by—to tap into—an alien source of energy; yet it is an energy which is, for all this, particular to the Earth. As directly linked to man’s perceptions, it seems designed or directed towards specific ends, namely: an altered state of consciousness, which is accomplished by manipulating the energy field of the human body.  Carlos Castaneda writes extensively of “the point where perception is assembled,” or simply “the assemblage point” (see appendix C), the knowledge of which he claims to be of singular and paramount importance to humanity at this time. The goal of paranoid awareness—one with that of the Surrealists—to discover or reassemble the bridge or channel between actual and Imaginal, between perception and “reality”—may finally be found to hinge upon the existence—the awareness—of this “assemblage point,” posited by Castaneda. If such a point exists at all, and is to be found not in the brain but in the energy field outside the human body, then the whole question of Imaginal and actual, hallucination vs. experience, begins to open up like a wound onto a whole new landscape of possibilities. It hints of worlds within worlds waiting to be explored by anyone whose imagination and will is intrepid enough to take the plunge. Where reasonable men fear to tread, there does the paranoid rush in.
         *

The UFO is a reflection of a future event that promises humanity’s eventual mastery over time, space and matter... It is like a god; it is the human god. It is something that will happen to human destiny some time in the future, and because it will happen, it is happening. Nothing is unannounced... The alien is teaching something through its reinforcement schedule: It is preparing us to confront the God facet of ourselves.
—Terence McKenna, True Hallucinations

Ufo energy—termed Orgone by that martyr of paranoia, Wilhelm Reich—is pure, primal energy that by its mere presence activates or awakens atavistic sensations and impressions (we might even say “memories”) in the body and mind of the percipient.  The Ufo, as a symbol for the externalized soul, is beginning to fit rather snugly into the paranoid’s acceptance as none other than the agent of his long-pending “atavistic resurgence”—or archaic revival—which has lately been dressed up in the gaudy rags of the “New Age Movement.” The “movement of the assemblage point,” says the paranoid, whether due to duress, sickness, pollution, despair, or whatever, is now happening on a global scale to mankind: a change in perception—as typified by paranoid awareness—is now not merely desirable but necessary for the survival of the race.  This movement is occurring first of all within the body of the Earth, as a side-effect of which all manner of “magikal” phenomena are being brought to the fore, on a wave of this primordial energy. The “resurgence,” which must occur first of all in Nature and only then—by extension—in society, is naturally having a profound effect upon individuals. It is causing a steady and inexorable change in their perception, which in turn leads to a corresponding awareness of the new-old energy configurations. This accumulated energy gives added weight to the movement of the race assemblage point, which thereby adds momentum to the Earth shift, releasing ever greater bursts of energy, or paranormal phenomena; and so on, and so forth... There are essentially two basic directions that this movement of perception can take: above and below. The two directions or states of consciousness are curiously equivalent, complementary, and even synonymous, at the deepest level, and yet they are not the same. For these movements—above and below—both result from and give rise to an alignment with two distinct kinds of energy, which can be related to Reich’s (suitably paranoid, as befits a justified persecution complex) descriptions of Orgone and—its black twin or shadow-side—negative or dead Orgone, or DOR. As with the matter and anti-matter particles of the physicists, it follows, by the most scientific of deductions, that neither can exist in isolation. The one is needed in order to complement and balance the other, hence they are finally understood as two facets or poles of a single energy. As a vehicle or aggregate of this primal energy which informs the Universe, the Ufo is not a thing in itself, but rather a state of fluctuation that exists—like fire—between things.
The important point about opposing poles, then, is to recognize them as such and thereby to separate them, so as not to confuse their functions.  As Little notes, in Grand Illusions, the Ufo travels freely

up and down the electromagnetic energy spectrum assuming a visible form when in the narrow, visible light portion of the spectrum. When the energy moves into the physical form, it often appears from the ultraviolet end of the light spectrum, while the other forms come from the infrared end. When it is in its most “solid” form, it is in the middle of the visible light spectrum, appearing as a luminous or intense white light . . . The two types of energy forces involved appear to be totally separate and unique from the perspective of their intentions; however, their physical appearance can be similar.  Ancient texts say that these two sides oppose each other indirectly by influencing affairs on earth.

This force seems every bit as comfortable masquerading as the angels of God as it does the agents of Satan; simultaneously, in fact, if we imagine that they are united by a common spectrum or source. At this point, the Ufo has taken us squarely into the eschatologist’s terrain and begins to embody perfectly all the central tenets of paranoid awareness. As a dynamic, organic agent in the grand enactment of “Armageddon,” it appears that the Ufo is a true “game player,” and as such can be found to be working on both sides at the same time. If the Ufo holds sway over divine gnosis, however, there can be little doubt that currently we are being presented largely with the “satanic” aspect of things, for the very good reason that it is this aspect of ourselves that we, as a race, have been manifesting.  The energy of “the adversary”—much to the grim delight of the paranoid—has come to claim us for its own, as dramatized by the satanic/abduction scenarios so prevalent at this time, all of which insist on perceiving the Imaginal from the point of view of prey in a predatorial Universe. Because we are unaware of its true nature—and of what it is really after—we have let the Ufo run wild; and any runaway force is necessarily harmful to those who have failed to master or harness it. So is the devil through and through—an unruly god with no will of his own who must be mastered, not only if he is to be made to serve us, but if we are to survive meeting him at all.

We have defined the Ufo, in its purest manifestation, as an unknown form of Earth energy, both terrestrial and extra-terrrestrial at the same time. It is a cosmic force based in the Earth’s stratosphere that, by coming into contact with the human body, triggers a reaction which we have termed “the movement of the assemblage point,” and which invariably entails an in-rush of new or alien energy.  This energy floods the system of the percipient and causes certain profound alterations in his nervous system, hence the in-coming energy is met by a corresponding resurgence, if you will, of out-rushing energy. It is a veritable explosion of the primal life-force within the individual, the awakening of the “beast” within, or, more esoterically, the kundalini force, which is traditionally represented by the serpent. The “double current,” like the two hands of the healer—or more poetically the two horns of the devil (Pan)—represents the dual nature of Man, as both receiver and transmitter, both perciever and articulator. Besides the horns of the goat, this idea can be illustrated by the tail of the dog—and likewise the phallus—when up, erect, it is tuned into the Sun, when down, flacid, it points to the Earth and serves to connect to the source of all terrestrial power.  The Ufo is a god- (or goddess-) form conjured up from the darkest depths of the human psyche; it is exceptional for being seemingly self-conjured, appearing to be not just a fragment or emmissary from the collective psyche, but rather that very psyche itself, in symbolic, “aggregate” form.  This is why it appears in the shape of the disc, saucer, or lens-shape, signifying wholeness and perfection, both portent and portal of (and onto) the next evolutionary step of humanity.  It is the final end of alchemy: the realization of spirit as matter.
In Flying Saucers—A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky, Jung writes on the phenomenon as follows:

On the antique level . . . the UFOs could easily be conceived as “gods”. . . They are impressive manifestations of totality whose simple, round form portrays the archetype of self... uniting apparently irreconsilable opposites . . . to compensate the split-mindedness of our age. . . . It creates the image of the divine-human personality, the Primordial Man . . . an Elijah who calls down fire from heaven, rises up to heaven in a fiery chariot, and is the forerunner of the Messiah. . . . In these symbols we have a prototype of the Ufo vision, which is vouchsafed to the illuminati.  They cannot be heavenly bodies belonging to our empirical world, but are projected “rotunda” from the inner, four-dimensional world.

The disc shape relates to the eye, of course, to the egg or ovary of the Female, and to the vesica piscis (or “vessel of the fish”) formed by two interpenetrating circles, which is a mystic (gnostic) symbol of Christ, as mediator between worlds.  This relates to the Earth itself, and to the perfected soul of the earth-born Man; it is the fusion of god with beast within the soul of man. Such an idea—as profound and disturbing as it is empowering in its implications—meets all the requirements of paranoid awareness by drawing from one mystery a far greater and more beguiling mystery. There is a scene from Carlos Castaneda’s Tales of Power, for example, in which brujo Don Juan appears to actually turn into a Ufo:

His body kept on twirling a few feet above the ground. The circles were very rapid at first, then they slowed down... Then he began to ascend; he gained altitude until he reached the top of the cliff. Don Juan was actually floating as if he had no weight. His turns were slow and evoked the image of an astronaut in space whirling around in a state of weightlessness...  He moved away from the cliff and as he gained speed I became utterly sick... I felt that the speed which his floating body had gained was blurring his shape; he looked like a rotating disk and then a light that was spinning.

Such a concept blows the whole Ufo mystery to bits and rearranges it into a delirious new image. Squinting at the mystery thus, the paranoid begins to imagine that some Ufos spinning about the Earth’s stratosphere are neither space-ships nor time-machines, angels nor dragons, but simply men of prodigious talent! In a sense, they would be men of the future, beings who have evolved to such a degree beyond us as to be no longer bound by space or time as we are. They have become what they always were, luminous balls of energy, “stars,” spinning their way through the labyrinth of matter, signalling to us the way to follow.

What this ultimate “self-realization” scenario entails is—true to the mythic tenets of paranoid awareness—crudely but astutely presented in the 1950s sci-fi movie, Forbidden Planet, the story of which is roughly as follows. An Earth party is on a reconnaissance mission (in a flying saucer) to rescue a group of fellow earthlings stranded on an alien planet, but find on landing only a single survivor and his daughter. The race of beings native to the planet, the Krell, died out millennia ago, but the human castaway has since discovered and mastered the technology left behind by these beings. The Krell had evolved beyond technology by developing (with the aid of this very technology) their brain power to the extent of being able to manipulate matter directly; “No instrumentalities—true creation. . . . Operated by remote control, the Eon impulses of individual Krell brains project solid matter to any point on the planet, in any shape or colour they could imagine—for any purposes!” In a word: “Creation by mere thought!”  A power without limits, indeed: anything that the mind might conceive of summoned by the sheer force of imagination, amounting to godlike omnipotence in the field of nature. Predicatably enough this led to anything but utopic ends. The ancient race, we discover (when it is already too late), finally destroyed itself through this same power: “the Krell forgot one deadly danger—their own subconsious hate and lust for destruction... The beast! The mindless primitive. Even the Krell must have evolved from that beginning.”  The result, famously, was: “Monsters from the Id.” The Krell, we are told, “could never have understood what power was destroying them.”
It seems both inevitable and fitting that the ramifications of the Ufo—and all that it portends—should sooner or later be attributed to the works of Satan (the energeia satanica). Does the Ufo’s whisper not amount to, that most ancient of promises, that of the old serpent: “Ye shall be as gods”? Since the very first appearance of Ufos, they have been attributed by certain groups to demonic or satanic forces. In medieval times, witches were accused of consorting with demons or succubi that behaved in more or less similar fashion to todays’ “greys.”   In recent times also, American fundamentalist Christians such as Jerry Falwell, Tex Marrs and Hal Lindsay have seized upon the Ufo phenomenon and been quick to denounce it as satanic in both origin and intent, an early manifestion of Antichrist. The arguments are simple enough, and to be found in most “End Times” propaganda on the market:  UFOs are seen in the air, and Satan is said to rule over all things of the air. Biblical quotations and obscure apocrypha combine to present a fairly profane paranoid case for the malevolence of the Ufo. This area of “research” is generally ignored or dismissed by the more “serious” ufologists as being unworthy of consideration, but the idea of Ufos somehow reperesenting or embodying the (female) kundalini energy of Satan or Lucifer, the “Old Dragon,” has proved to be a clue of singular significance to the paranoid, serving as it does to tie together most if not all the scattered strands of the mystery into a single apocalypse patchwork.  Seeing as the strands are so many and so various, and seeing as the patchwork is even now being spun about him, it behooves the paranoid at this time to draw any clearer a picture than he has already. As a parting shot, however, we may cite the words of Jesus Christ himself, who in Luke 10:18-20 makes a curious parallel between the Ufo, the adversary, and the individual empowerment of the apostles:
“And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy... the spirits are subject unto you.”