When flying saucer buffs think about aliens, a variety
of images come to mind, from Blonde Pleiadians and their giant albino cousins,
to Uri Geller's "Hoova," to 5th Density Sirians, Orion tyrants, Men In
Black, Reptilians, Mantis-types, and on and on... But for the less-informed
general public, the word "alien" has become near-synonymous with "the Greys,"
those diminutive midnight abductors with the wrap-around eyes made famous
by Whitley Strieber, Bud Hopkins, et al, not to mention Pepsi Cola, Kodak
and every T-shirt purveyor at your local shopping mall. Heartless
creatures obsessed with human reproduction and cattle parts, these spectral
Visitors present a perfect screen onto which our society projects its worst
Millennial nightmares, as evidenced in the extreme by FOX TV's Dark Skies,
in which Greys are found lurking behind every conspiratorial twist of modern
history, as they manipulate our species toward global enslavement.
The testimony of literally thousands of abductees leaves
little doubt as to the existence of these beings. They are here. But what
do we know, concretely, about their origin, nature and purpose among us?
Amidst the present flurry of anecdotal accounts, popular misinformation,
intentional disinformation and wild speculation, the facts are hard to
come by.
But, brother, have we got theories...
The Bad Guys
As portrayed in books like George C. Andrews' Extraterrestrial
Friends and Foes, or TV shows like The X-Files and Dark Skies, the Greys
are inter-planetary/interdimensional parasites/predators bent on conquering
Earth and/or enslaving humans as psychic milk-cows for production of intense
agony/ecstasy emotional states on which they feed. They are slaughtering
cattle globally to supplement glandular deficiencies they acquired in a
nuclear war which decimated their planet, and they are interbreeding with
us to produce hybrids capable of inhabiting our world once we've been subjugated.
Many such theorists believe the American government entered into a devil's
pact with these entities soon after the 1947 events at Roswell, granting
them permission to abduct hapless citizens in exchange for alien technology.
A religious version of this position holds that the Greys are fallen angles,
or else the disembodied souls of those killed in Noah's Biblical flood,
souls equally bent on our destruction through the circumvention or co-optation
of Christian salvific events in the End Times.
The Good Guys
Best exemplified by the Steven Spielberg blockbusters Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T.: the Extraterrestrial , as well as by much New Age channeled material on the subject, the Good Guy scenario holds that the Greys are here to
A) Save us from ourselves
B) Bring meaning to our lives
C) Rejuvenate our polluted environment
D) Expand our consciousness and spiritual understanding (maybe darkly, through forcing us to face our fears, but solely for the benefit of our spiritual evolution, of course…), or
E) all of the above.
The only real differences seen between the Greys and the
angelic Blondes or Nordics (such as George Adamski's Venusian friend, Orthon
) is the Greys' planet of origin, and their possession of a stronger sense
of sheer alienness due to their, by our standards, bizarre appearance and/or
higher "rate of vibration." At its best, this view embodies our hopes
for a culturally diverse Star Trek: The Next Generation future, in which
beings of all descriptions join us as equals in a free and democratic federation
of planets. At its worst, it leads to a Heaven's Gate belief system (their
website certainly appeared to portray big-eyed Greys as representative
of the "level above human" they sought to attain), or to smug, ostrich-in-the-sand
attitudes like that of Pierce Brosnan's character in the dark comedy Mars
Attacks! , who insists, even in the face of ongoing, Martian-perpetrated
destruction, murder and mayhem, that beings technologically advanced enough
to reach Earth by saucer simply must be more socially and spiritually advanced
than ourselves, and therefore peaceful…
Shades of Grey
The real problem at the heart of both the Good Guy and
Bad Guy scenarios alike is how neatly each fits our very human categories
of expect-ation and projection. Is it reasonable to presume that
creatures wholly outside ordinary human experience can be understood at
all in human terms? Or that Earthlings might prove in any way comprehensible
to truly otherworldly beings?
Mars Attacks! presents another useful example of this
fundamental dilemma. Scientists build a translating machine which interprets
the "Yip! Yip! Yip!" of the heavily-armed Martian landing party to mean,
"We come in peace! We come in peace!" A hippie releases a "peace
dove," which the Martians proceed to burn out of the sky with their death
rays, and the war is on... Clearly "Yip! Yip! Yip!" did not mean
"We come in peace!" Clearly flinging a live bird is not, necessarily,
a Martian sign of good intentions.
Whether the Greys now carrying out abduct-ions treat
their captives with cold brutality or with heavenly kindness as experienced
by the abductee tells us nothing about what these actions mean to the Greys,
themselves. Equally, the fear and resistance, or the adoration and spiritual
awakening of an abductee in the presence of the Greys may mean nothing
to, or may even go unnoticed by, said Greys. Or these responses may be
interpreted in ways wholly contradictory to the abductee's understanding.
Whitley Strieber, who is arguably the most experience
Grey contactee on Earth, points to the sheer complexity and "high strangeness"
of the encounter phenomenon as proof of the un-acceptability of any easy
answer. He calls us to approach the Grey experience with intellectual integrity,
perseverance, and a near-superhuman effort to think outside ordinary human
categories of Good VS Evil, Black VS White, Us VS Them. Only in this way
can we begin to see our Visitors, Grey or otherwise, as they truly are,
and to divine their true motives.
Good Guys? Bad Guys? In the end, the Greys' coloration
may prove ultimately symbolic. Perhaps the great test we must face before
gaining entry into the Cosmic Community is that of surrendering our need
to impose black and white human labels on the universe, and of learning
to view all beings, humans included, along a wide spectrum of appropriate
shades of gray.