If THEY Are Not Spacecraft, What Else Could UFOs Be?

I just finished reading Jacques Vallee's two books 'Passport to Magonia' and 'Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact', which I found very good reading, especially the last one.

I've had these books sitting on my shelf for a few years now, but a couple of weeks ago my inner book angel seemed to be prompting me that the time to read them for me is now, so I did.
THE PHENOMENON?

And I just happened to finish 'Dimensions' as the Year of the Rat was starting, so I was amused to see the words Jacques had written in his chapter 'The Control System' -
"There is a strange urge in my mind: I would like to stop behaving as if I am a RAT pressing levers - even if I have to give up the cheese and go hungry for a while.
I would like to step outside the conditioning maze and see what makes it tick.
I wonder what I would find[?]
Perhaps a terrible superhuman monstrosity the very contemplation of which would make a person insane?
Perhaps a solemn gathering of sages?
Or the maddening simplicity of unattended clockwork?"
Wonder Woman and the Years of the RATS?

In the last chapter of 'Dimensions' Jacques writes -
"For many years, UFO phenomena have served as a support for human imagination, a framework for human tragedy, a fabrie of human dreams.
We react to them in our movies, our poetry, our music, our science fiction.

And they react to us.
They are not trying to communicate with a few individuals, with any group, with any government.
Why should THEY(my caps there:-)?
The phenomena function like an operational system of symbolic communication at a global level.
There is something about the human race with which they interact, and we do not yet know what it is.
They are part of the environment, part of the control system for human evolution.
But their effects, instead of being just physical, are also felt in our beliefs.

They influence what we call our spiritual life.
They effect our politics, our history, our culture.
They are a feature of our past.
Undoubtedly, they are part of our future."
Shattered Reality Podcast #80: Dr. Diana Walsh-Pasulka American Cosmic

The stuff on top of my fridge, including Our Lady

While I'm not a Roman Catholic I've always been fascinated by the Virgin Mary and her alleged sightings and miracles around the world.

No, it's not a miracle, my statue is magnetic:-)

And while I don't believe in the Biblical reality of the Virgin Mary, I do think that the Blessed Virgin is a powerful archetype in the human mind.
Jacques goes into these famous sightings of The Virgin Mary in his book 'Dimensions', and I thought it was rather synchy that Dr. Diana Walsh-Pasulka, author of 'American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion and Technology' was the latest podcast guest to hit my iPad yesterday.

I also "accidentally" stumbled across a fascinating podcast called 'Spirit Sisters' hosted by author Karina Machado and there was a great podcast episode about a woman who recounts a very Jacques Vallee type account with the "Virgin Mary" that involved sleep paralysis and orbs of light flying about the room -

Spirit Sisters Podcast: Healed by Mother Mary

Karina seems to be a lot like Vallee with the way she approaches ghost stories and apparitions in her podcasts. 

Karina also hosts the podcast 'The Ghost Files', which is worth a listen to, in my book.

I also liked how Jacques wrote in the chapter Conclusion: Exploring Other Dimensions' -
"Most theories advance to explain paranormal phenomena borrow the standard concepts of space and time dimensions from physics.
These concepts seem obsolete to me.
They are not appropriate for understanding telepathy, or the moving of objects at a distance, or ghosts, or UFO abductions."

"Instead, I propose to define consciousness as the process by which informational associations are retrieved and traversed. 
The illusion of time and space would be merely a side-effect of consciousness as it traverses associations.
In such a theory, apparently paranormal phenomena like remote viewing and precognition would be expected, even common, and UFOs would be natural aspects of the reality of human consciousness.

I submit that reports of alien "contact" must be studied at this level, even if we are a long way from being able to channel our speculations into the formal equations of a new physics."