The Invisible College Quotes

“If the phenomenon is forcing us through a learning curve then it MUST mislead us. When Skinner designs a machine that feeds a rat only when the right lever is depressed, this is extremely misleading for the rat! But if the rat doesn’t do it he becomes extremely hungry. Man is hungry for knowledge and power, and if there is an intelligence behind the UFOs it must have taken this fact into account. We also tend to forget that we have no choice. We must eventually study UFOs.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, The Invisible College

“We are, as a society, developing a great thirst for contact with superior minds that will provide guidance for our poor, harassed, hectic planet. In so doing we may be ready to fall into a trap, perhaps a kind, benevolent trap. I believe that when we speak of UFO sightings as instances of space visitations we are looking at the phenomenon on the wrong level. We are not dealing with successive waves of visitations from space. We are dealing with a control system.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, The Invisible College

“The Book of Mormon was first published in 1830. It is a strange document, similar in many ways to the OAHSPE bible or the BOOK OF URANTIA, two accounts of early history similarly “inspired” by divine intelligence. In 1973 Jacques Bergier proposed to me an amusing explanation for the existence of these books which seem to emanate from a cosmic source and, like the Bible, have come to us through automatic writing or some other form of psychic revelation. There exists, he postulates, a civilization in our galaxy which is broadcasting at regular intervals some cosmic education program, much in the same manner as the French National Radio is every day broadcasting selected lectures in philosophy and history from the Sorbonne. Just as the French are beaming these broadcasts to Africa and other remote places, we could well visualize an advanced civilization broadcasting very advanced concepts on psychic wavelengths, to be picked up by gifted prophets on earth and millions of other retarded planets! Such differences as exist between the Koran, the Bible, the Book of Mormon and other sacred texts would be due to the imperfect understanding of the various individuals who pick up these broadcasts, just as four or five sorcerers from different African tribes, playing at night with old radio sets in different parts of the jungle, might obtain very different impressions of the civilized world through the Sorbonne cultural broadcasts … especially if they did not know what the Sorbonne was, and had only a limited acquaintance with the French language!”
― Jacques F. Vallée, The Invisible College

“Is the mechanism of UFO apparitions, then, an invariant in all cultures? Are we faced here with something more than a projection of Jung’s archetypal images, a psychic technology whose applications know few if any limitations in space and in time? I see no better hypothesis at this point of our knowledge of UFO phenomena. Certainly the space visitors hypothesis fails to explain adequately the ancient symbolism. We do not have a simple series of incidents that could be explained as an encounter with space travelers who might have spotted the earth and explored it casually on their way to another cosmic destination. Instead, we have a pattern of manifestations, opening the gates to a spiritual level, pointing a way to a different consciousness, and producing irrational, absurd events in their wake.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, The Invisible College

“Child psychologists know very well that it is better to prepare the child for the idea that his grandfather is not going to live forever than to let him discover it when death suddenly strikes. Similarly, by denying the existence of the mystery the scientific community was taking serious chances with the belief system of the public. In my opinion, such attitudes have contributed to the long-term loss of popular support and popular respect for science.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, The Invisible College

“This is another reminder that one cannot understand the UFO phenomenon without taking into consideration all of its possible symbolic ramifications, no matter how seemingly remote from our technological reality. But the story of UMMO teaches us much more, as we slowly unravel the relationship between the reality of our beliefs and what we like to call the “objective” reality of our physics. The fact is that the beliefs of humanity can be manipulated both by physical and symbolic means. Certainly this is one of the objectives of UMMO, whether it is a prankish game, a psycho-sociological test or a sinister plot. But UMMO is only a small part of the total phenomenon, and the time has clearly come to assess the full impact of our strange, bewildering confrontation with it.”
― Jacques F. Vallée, The Invisible College

“There is an uncanny power in words that appear to issue from a superhuman source, and it would be dangerous to assume that this power cannot still move the world today. It is manifested around us in the charismatic movement, in hundreds of occult groups of one kind or another, and in many UFO-related writings such as those inspired by SPECTRA, AFFA, and others we will investigate. This material is variously received as a manifestation from God, as a sign of lunacy, or as a dangerous form of social deviance. Most often, the words of the “entity,” whether it claims to be of a space origin or to represent some dead person like “Aunt Martha” does nothing more than borrow words and expressions that exist as thoughts, possibly unconsciously, in the minds of the persons who attend the meeting. For this reason, exposure to such phenomena is hazardous to psychic health!”
― Jacques F. Vallée, The Invisible College

“It is becoming technically feasible for sounds and images to be projected into people’s minds at a distance. Is this part of the technology that creates the UFO phenomenon? Could the required equipment be carried on board an ordinary bus? Here again we must ask the question first posed at the occasion of the UMMO investigation: Are we dealing with a terrestrial technology that systematically confuses the witnesses? If so, it must be possible to demonstrate it. If certain areas of the human brain can be remotely stimulated, then it is not impossible to think of broadcasts literally saturating large territories with a flood of symbols. Such a device could be a major tool of social change. If disguised under a preposterous or “absurd” appearance, its effects would be undetected for a long time. I believe this could be a key to the confrontation with UFOs.”
― Jacques Vallée, The Invisible College