Page 109 - ECOlogic Book

“The Art of the Possible.” “We need to transform our enemy into someone
toward who we feel respect and gratitude,” 131 says the Dalai Lama. Easier
said than done, we think, as we observe how quickly demonization occurs
when we disagree with someone. The Dalai Lama doesn’t tell us where the
transformation is to occur – in myself or in the Other. I suspect this is
because it must occur in the interaction between both.

Aliens
Is it only a coincidence that now, just as the dawn of a new consciousness is
breaking, we are presented with another challenge to our assumed
dominion? I am speaking here of “aliens”, whether they be of
extraterrestrial origin or figments of our imagination, or some psychoid
phenomena we do not yet comprehend, where the psychic and the material
worlds interblend in unique manifestations. Whatever they are, I believe we
will have to deal with them up front, and soon. They represent the most
profound Otherness we have yet encountered; one which threatens all of our
most cherished assumptions about what it means to be human. Whitley
Striber describes one of these “visitors:”
. . . one of the blue beings looked up at me with his
wide face. I saw it clearly this time, and it was really
startlingly horrible. Awful! The eyes glittered as if they
were shiny, black membranes, with something moving
behind them that made lumps and pits as it seethed
within the eyeball. He smiled, showing the tips of his
gray, spongy-looking teeth. 132
Despite the terror of encountering such radical Otherness, Striber concludes
from his experience with these “beings” that:
The visitors are sweeping up
from where we buried them
under layers of denial and false assurance
to deliver what is truly a message
from the beyond:
There is something more
To us and our universe,
And it is rich with
The potential of the unknown.
It will be incredibly hard for us
To achieve real relationships
With the visitors.

131 Thurman, Robert, the Politics of Enlightenment.

132 Op. Cit., Striber.

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