Hi again Thanos5150

Thanks for your involvement and interest. I appreciate it. Because I’m very pressed for time I’ll confine myself to what has to be a fairly hasty reply to a few main points raised by your latest responses:

(1) The Mars Mystery – actually I did, as a speculation, “take the next logical step” and consider that if the Cydonia structures were artificial and made by a spacefaring civilization then that civilization might indeed have come to earth as well. Indeed that was the whole point of the speculation! But we do not know that the Cydonia structures are artificial (you yourself say you are skeptical about them) and until we do I await, as I did before, “more good evidence (beyond that I considered in the Mars Mystery 16 years ago) in favour of the palaeocontact hypothesis.”

(2) What is compelling evidence? For me the answer to that is very simple – any artefact or monument or system of ideas that couldn’t have been the work of a human civilization. I agree with you that circumstantial evidence is enough to warrant serious consideration and I intend to give the palaeocontact hypothesis serious consideration in my forthcoming sequel to Fingerprints of the Gods, but so far I don’t know of any artifact or monument on earth, or of any system of ideas in circulation amongst ancient civilisations, that could only be attributed to spacefaring aliens. Even the Great Pyramid, that enigma of enigmas, contains inaccuracies that speak of human workmanship rather than the workmanship of beings who had the technology to cross interstellar space.

(3) Statistical probabilities. You base much of your argument on statistical probabilities, and I agree with you that the universe is likely full of life but the only place we know for sure there is physical life is planet earth. We also know for sure there have been human civilisations on planet earth. And we know for sure they have been capable of creating amazing things and thinking amazing thoughts, and that they had every capacity and potential that we ourselves have. When we know all this I don’t see the point of invoking statistical possibilities to persuade ourselves that “aliens did it” when we have human civilisations that were perfectly capable to creating every artifact, monument and idea that we would like to attribute to those statistically possible but unproven aliens.

(4) You obviously don’t like the notion of spirit worlds, altered states of consciousness and the effects on consciousness of psychedelic drugs (in this you are in company of the vast majority of UFO enthusiasts who also prefer mechanistic rather than consciousness-based explanations). However just as it is a fact that every “anomalous” artifact, monument and idea that the palaeocontact lobby would like to attribute to aliens lies well within the capacity of human beings and human civilisations, so also it is a fact that in altered states of consciousness “beings” and “entities” are encountered and believed by those who encounter them to be real. For the purposes of this argument I actually don’t care whether they are real or not; what matters is that they are experienced as real and believed to be real by those who encounter them in visionary states. I think, because you have not researched the subject and clearly have no understanding of it, that you grossly underestimate the importance of induced visionary states in ancient cultures. It is not just the blue lotus or that the ancient Egyptian tree of life was the DMT-rich acacia nilotica, but also that virtually every ancient culture we know of sought out ways and means to induce visionary states in which their shaman priests believed themselves to be communicating with gods, spirits, etc. Consider the Soma of the Vedas (again you will have to do some serious research to get up to speed on this) or the potion used in the Eleusinian Mysteries in ancient Greece, or the psilocybin mushroom cults of the ancient Maya and Aztecs. And what about the "Monument Ponce" at Tiahuanaco? Do you imagine those are alien ray-guns that statue is holding in its hands? Probably you don’t but there has been much wild speculation from the ancient alien lobby about what those objects are. Most of the AA lobby aren’t aware that Dr Manuel Torres has recently put this matter to rest – the objects are snuff trays for holding DMT snuffs, virtually identical to such snuff trays found in use amongst Amazonian tribal cultures today.

My point is that again I don’t have to invoke nebulous statistical probabilities. I can simply invoke established facts. We know that ancient cultures highly valued and used various means, chemical and otherwise, to induce visionary states. We know that in visionary states “beings” and “entities” are encountered and give what are construed as teachings, and we know that these beings and entities are believed by those who perceive them to be real. It is irrelevant whether they are actually real or not. Belief that they a real is enough to make it much more likely that such visionary encounters with beings and entities were the inspiration for many of the intriguing passages about entity contact in ancient texts rather than physical encounters with physical “aliens” whose existence can be argued for only on the basis of “statistical probabilities”.

You really need to dust off and read my book Supernatural! It will give you much food for thought. But there is compelling evidence from 40,000 years ago or more and through all known civilisations, that our ancestors were not nearly as “sober” as you would like to think and did indeed go to great lengths to induce altered states of consciousness and valued those altered (trance) states every bit as much as shamanistic cultures value them today. Since the phenomenology of visionary states universally features entity encounters you are missing a HUGE trick by not factoring all this into to your thinking about the descriptions of encounters with entities – interactions between Gods and men -- left to us by the ancients.

(5) Mesopotamia and Egypt. I’ve already made my point on Egypt. I will indeed put a lot of emphasis on Mesopotamia in the sequel to Fingerprints of the Gods, and it (and the Sumerian and later texts) feature significantly in my research. But you can’t simply dismiss the ancient Egyptian testimony and rely on the Mesopotamian testimony alone. Both need to be taken into account. Both, I suspect, will prove to be better explained by (1) visionary encounters with entities and (2) physical encounters with the survivors of a lost civilization than by (3) aliens from other planets. Honestly, though, I remain open minded. If I find material in the Mesopotamian texts that can only be explained by statistically possible but unproved physical aliens then I shall be pleased to say so. But in my research I will NOT be relying on Zecharia Sitchin’s translations I knew Zecharia personally and liked him but his translations are highly suspect and should never be counted on as an authoritative source.

(6) We live in a material universe? Yes, and know very little about it, including its such concepts as “dark matter” the “big bang” etc. Within this universe human consciousness is the biggest mystery of all.

(7) Flying machines, etc. You say the ancients associated them with the “Gods” and for you this has to mean aliens. But the survivors of an advanced lost human civilization could have been construed as “Gods”. And the entities encountered in visions could have been construed as “Gods” (and indeed are construed as “Gods” in surviving shamanistic cultures today). Since we know there are such things as human civilisations, and that some get lost to history, and since we know that entity encounters (believed to be real) are routine phenomena of visionary experiences highly valued by the ancients, why do we need to invoke physical aliens whose existence has never been unambiguously confirmed at any point of history and for whose presence we must rely on statistical probability alone? I think statistically possible aliens who MAY have got here from another planet are much less likely to have built flying machines with fixed wings etc, than the survivors of a lost civilization. And if we are talking statistical possibilities the possibility that there was a lost human civilization whose survivors were responsible for the anomalies you are interested in is surely orders of magnitude higher than the possibility that “aliens did it”?

In summary where you see the fingerprints of aliens I see the fingerprints of a lost human civilization, and where you see Gods from the stars I see the typical entities and beings encountered in visionary states.

So we will have to agree to differ until I find some solid and convincing evidence that persuades me of your point of view. And I am actively looking for such evidence and hope I find it because it would be GREAT for my forthcoming sequel to Fingerprints of the Gods!

Warmest wishes
Graham