The Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained

«we are already and always have been living in a super natural world, that we ourselves are highly evolved prisms or mediums of this super nature coming into consciousness» — la tesis del título, en plural por los dos.

«We work in tandem. We read each other. We rewrite our chapters in the light of what the other has written. In the process, we rewrite ourselves.» — declara el procedimiento de escritura del libro.

«a seasoned (take that either way) professor of comparative religion» — así se describe a sí mismo, frente a Strieber como «one of the most widely read figures in UFO and abduction literature».

«far from being what he has been portrayed in the media—that is, an advocate for belief in alien abduction—reveals himself in his chapters as a questioning and self-critical nonreligious but spiritual man» — declara qué NO es Strieber, en su lectura.

«Both of us have known professional rejection, religious hate campaigns, censorship, and outright character slander» — consigna la recepción de ambos como dato del propio libro.

«We want to model a different sort of conversation about the importance of experienced anomalies» — enuncia el propósito como cambio de conversación, no como respuesta.

«Superpowers have been with us for millennia» — sitúa lo extraordinario en escala histórica larga.

«I compare fantastic states of mind and energy in order to catch a glimpse of our own super nature» — formula su propio oficio.

«if Communion is not a piece of modern erotic mystical literature, then I do not know what it is» — adjudica género literario a la obra de Strieber.

«Out of existential necessity and the transcendent traumas of his own immediate experience, he was implicitly, intuitively practicing the comparative study of religion.» — atribuye a Strieber una práctica comparativa implícita.

«I have come to consider him and Communion as litmus tests for my field» — declara a Strieber prueba de fuego de su disciplina.

«UFO” is an umbrella term that encodes a particular cold war military history and encompasses very diverse historical facts, institutions, and experiential events» — el término como categoría-papelera.

«millennia-old folklore currents, particularly around the abductions and otherworlds of faerie lore, as famously pointed out by Jacques Vallee» — parte del inventario de lo que la papelera mezcla; adjudica la conexión feérica a Vallee, sin tilde en la obra.

«various ancient Gnostic and early modern esoteric teachings; more recent Theosophical and New Age beliefs and channeling practices» — continúa el inventario; el esoterismo entra nombrado.

«helped shape the earlier language of the “channel,” from medical clairvoyant Edgar Cayce, into its contemporary use» — data el vocabulario del *channeling* en las comunidades de contactados de los años 50 y en Cayce.

«Whatever the ultimate origin of such events might be» — la fórmula con que se abstiene de decir qué son los visitantes.

«setting these aside in order to move beyond and past them to the much older and deeper roots of the encounters in the global history of mystical and esoteric literature» — segunda mitad de la maniobra metodológica: reconocer la capa militar y apartarla.

«It is very easy to explain everything on the table if you have just taken off the table everything that you cannot explain.» — objeción al *debunker* ideológico.

«best exemplified in figures like Erich von Däniken, author of Chariots of the Gods? (1968), and his followers» — así nombra la comparación reductiva, que lee el pasado desde el presente.

«best exemplified in the writing of various Evangelical and fundamentalist authors who interpret UFOs and aliens as portents of the end of the world and/or as demons» — así nombra la comparación religiosa, que lee el presente desde el pasado.

«whatever the prophet saw within his own “abduction” experience, it was no chariot. Not even close» — objeta la lectura de Ezequiel como carro.

«the biblical book itself never uses the word “chariot.”» — el dato con que sostiene la objeción anterior.

«Basically, they are invoking chariots.» — extiende la misma objeción a los rabinos y cabalistas que leyeron ahí la Merkabá.

«shoot the arrow both ways» — la regla comparativa del libro: no privilegiar ni el pasado ni el presente.

«Not a straight arrow but an upward spiral» — la figura temporal con que corrige la flecha.

«our future changes the meanings of their past» — el *futuro del pasado* como operación hermenéutica.

«There is a kind of recurring time loop, a constant return to the past in order to reassess and recalibrate the present toward a different kind of future.» — la formula como bucle, no como progreso.

«we move beyond both the flatland materialism of scientism (the natural) and the naive literalisms of certain types of religion (the supernatural)» — justificación del título separado en dos palabras.

«As John Keel put it with respect to his own paranormal researches: “Belief is the enemy.”» — cita a Keel y en la misma página matiza: «I would not go that far.»

«Fundamentalism, of whatever stripe, is the curse and cancer of religious belief.» — su formulación sobre la creencia fija.

«the ideological debunker is also a fundamentalist, if of a very different stripe» — iguala las dos posiciones por su estructura, no por su contenido.

«The debunker makes a liar out of a truth teller» — el efecto que le adjudica.

«the entire history of religions can be summed up this way: strange superbeings from the sky come down to interact with human beings, provide them with cultural, technological, legal, and ethical knowledge» — su tesis sobre la historia de las religiones; sigue con guiarlos, aterrarlos, exigirles sumisión y tener sexo con ellos.

«Others had suggested something similar» — enumera precedentes de la lectura folclórica: John Keel, Jacques Vallee y Eddie Bullard.

«there is something more “physical,” “realist,” or “biological” about Strieber’s suggestions.» — marca en qué difiere Strieber de esos precedentes.

«The same god also gave us the words “Hermetic” and “Hermeticism,” both referring to an ancient Egyptian-Greek stream of secret teachings about the deepest nature of the human mind» — única página donde la obra usa la palabra *hermetic*, y lo hace derivándola de Hermes junto con la hermenéutica.

«Whitley’s visions mostly fall into this camp» — las adscribe al imaginal simbólico (visión salvaje), no al clarividente (talento salvaje).

«Here the human imagination is not so much clairvoyant as it is an organ of revelation» — define así el imaginal simbólico.

«I must add that we cannot treat these two forms of the imaginal as mutually exclusive.» — la reserva con que impide leer su propia distinción como tipología cerrada.

«What if what we so naively call “sex” is not some dumb instinct but a conscious cosmic energy in its own right that is super-intelligent» — lo plantea como pregunta; sigue con que esa energía *escribió* y *coescribe* a los humanos vía ADN.

«This is a modern translation of what Plato was getting at when he called eros a god» — adjudica el linaje de esa erótica a Platón.

«I am not saying: “Whitley Strieber is a shaman.” Nor am I saying: “Whitley Strieber is a prophet.”» — negativa triple; añade que tampoco dice que chamanismo y profecía sean funciones de abducciones.

«Gurdjieff and Ouspensky are central, for example, to his convictions around the paradoxes of “the third”» — adjudica a Strieber ese linaje como clave de lectura.

«there is almost certainly only one world, of which our mental and material experiences are two dimensions or modes» — la ontología del un solo mundo, con el modalizador «almost certainly» que la obra sí escribe.

«the English “to narrate” is based on a Greek root (gno-) that means “to know” and from which we get the word “gnosis”» — enlaza narración y gnosis por etimología.

«As knowing subjects, we are not one but two» — enuncia el Humano como Dos.

«Consciousness is not ego. Consciousness is not culture. And yet no ego or culture can exist without “It.”» — la formulación completa de esa dualidad.

«I confess. This central notion of the Human as Two makes sense of pretty much everything for me.» — es confesión de Kripal en su propio capítulo, no de Strieber.

«Here the soul is a conscious star gently blazing inside a skull.» — sobre la lectura antigua del alma como astro.

«Here the soul is a UFO that has landed for a time in a body-brain» — la identificación alma/ovni, atribuyendo a Strieber la fórmula «a sort of biological technology».

«By a “spiritual body,” then, Paul did not mean an “immaterial” one. He meant a real immortal body that shines like the stars» — lee el *soma pneumatikon* de 1 Cor 15:45–49 como cuerpo sutilmente material.

«The early Christian Gnostic texts are filled with similar convictions about our true home among the stars, about the secret spark of divinity that sleeps in us all» — sigue con la naturaleza estelar del alma y el salvador venido de las estrellas.

«I think Chris is right.» — suscribe la fórmula de Christopher Knowles sobre el gnosticismo cristiano temprano como primer culto del platillo volador.

«rejected belief, ritual, sacrifice, and martyrdom» — así caracteriza esa espiritualidad gnóstica, que proclamaba un conocimiento místico directo del *pneuma*.

«The ancient Gnostics did not know what we know. They did not have evolutionary biology, modern cosmology, and quantum physics.» — marca la distancia que impide la identificación simple.

«Here God is not like light. God is light.» — glosa las *energías* de Dios en Gregorio Palamás, con los deificados vueltos *homotheoi*.

«I would go so far as to suggest that we need the older mystical ideas of the subtly material “spiritual body,” the “energies of God,” and the deifying light to really understand the contemporary UFO encounters.» — su tesis de continuidad más fuerte.

«Which does not mean, of course, that we must adopt the older understandings and belief systems. We do not.» — la reserva que acompaña a la tesis anterior.

«contemporary abductees do experience “becoming a god” within these illuminations» — Añade que callan por vergüenza o miedo.

«He was talking about pneuma, the subtly material “spirit” of the Gnostics.» — así lee el «homoplasmate» y el «bio-linguistic plasma» de Philip K. Dick.

«Whitley, or so it seems to me, often appears to think that science is the way forward» — abre el desacuerdo con su coautor; sigue «I am very skeptical of this».

«because it is not a military or technological object, because it is a mythical object» — el ovni como objeto mítico.

«I mean a friggin’ story that shows up on radar.» — la formulación paradójica con que define ese objeto.

«it was foolish to turn to engineers in order to understand something in the sky whose true meaning lay in the souls of the contactees and the rich history of Western esotericism» — adjudica el argumento a Keel, *UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse* (1970).

«People who study mythology and comparative mystical literature, people like me, are almost universally allergic to accepting the possibility that these subjects might be real objects» — autocrítica gremial.

«Whitley’s faith in science and my faith in the humanities are probably both misplaced. Neither can really deliver the goods here.» — cierra el desacuerdo sin resolverlo a favor de nadie.

«If you are worshiping a god, any god (including “God”), you are basically “worshipping Zeus.”» — su posición sobre el culto.

«I don’t do conspiracy» — se desmarca de la teoría conspirativa.

«Every culture is a trance state. Every ego is a cultural production.» — En la misma página: «mythologies are also always ideologies».

«we are not the artists but the drawings» — lo cita de Philip K. Dick.

«Whitley and I have done our best in these pages» — apéndice, rotulado `JEFF`, hablando por los dos; añade «We have failed, of course, to arrive at any “realness or final awakening.”»

«an approximation to realness or final awakening» — el título del apéndice sale de Charles Fort, *The Book of the Damned* (1919), que llama a eso «the gossip of angels».

Las nueve reglas del método, en versalitas: COMPARE · MAKE A CUT · HISTORICALLY CONTEXTUALIZE · INTERPRET AND DOUBLY IMAGINE · PRACTICE AN EROTICS · SAY AWAY · LISTEN FOR THE TRAUMATIC SECRET · THINK IN TERMS OF AN ENERGETICS · SAY AGAIN.

«Hone your Hermes practice, your hermeneutics.» — cierre de la cuarta regla, INTERPRET AND DOUBLY IMAGINE.

«this is a book about a new world, the next world that has already arrived, that has always been here, whether we have recognized its presence or not.» — Kripal enuncia el Already World: no un mundo por venir sino uno que ya llegó y siempre estuvo.

«The religions, for example, have been attempts to look at and engage this conscious reality as if it were primarily concerned with us, but we don’t really know that, and in fact we cannot know that. Not at least yet.» — Kripal lee las religiones como intentos de tratar con esa realidad consciente suponiéndola ocupada de nosotros, y acota que eso no se sabe.

«To venture outside the present houses of faith without forgetting those family homes or leaving the spirit behind. To embrace science in a new way, by promoting a more generous vision of the full human experience of reality that can embrace and ponder “more stuff,” especially the wild, fantastic stuff that shouts, glows, and zaps in these pages.» — la propuesta de Kripal en dos movimientos, salir de las casas de la fe sin renegar de ellas y ensanchar la ciencia para que quepa más material.

«The moment I do, the person puts me, consciously or unconsciously, in a box of his or her choice: the box of the preacher, the believer, or the kook.» — Kripal sobre lo que sigue a nombrar su materia en una conversación cualquiera: el encasillamiento y el fin del intercambio.

«Still, there is an answer to the question of what I do. I compare things. To be more precise, as a historian of religions, I compare fantastic states of mind and energy and their symbolic expressions in human history, literature, religion, and art.» — Kripal define su oficio como comparación de estados fantásticos de mente y de energía y de sus expresiones simbólicas.

«These fantastic expressions often appear to issue from, point to, or even try to conjure some other realm or dimension. As such, they commonly violate our assumptions about how the world works.» — Kripal sitúa ese material como algo que viola los supuestos corrientes sobre el funcionamiento del mundo.

«First and foremost, they commonly challenge our most basic assumption that the human being is a subject “in here” looking at a world» — el supuesto que Kripal ve desafiado en primer lugar, el del sujeto adentro que mira un mundo afuera.

«In every culture of which we have some adequate historical record, we encounter spiritually radiated individuals with miraculous healing capacities, telepathic gifts (what was once called the “reading of hearts”), precognitive abilities (traditionally known as divination or prophecy), clairvoyance (seeing objects or events at a distance in space or time), even, believe it or not, apparent literal floating or flight (levitation).» — Kripal inventaria los superpoderes que dice hallar en todo registro histórico, con el nombre antiguo de cada uno.

«Some of the remembered effects of these fantastic states of mind and energy have been taken up by extremely elaborate social, political, and artistic processes and have been fashioned by communities into mythical, ritual, and institutional complexes that have fundamentally changed human history. We call these» — Kripal deriva las religiones de los efectos recordados de esos estados, elaborados después por procesos sociales, políticos y artísticos.

«Rather, I collect and compare the earlier building blocks, the anomalous events or extraordinary experiences that may (or may not) eventually lead to a religious belief or institution.» — Kripal precisa que su objeto no son las religiones ya hechas sino los sucesos anómalos previos, y deja abierto si llevan o no a religión.

«These anomalous building blocks, these tiny personal religions before religion, are historical facts, as real and as important as any other recurring historical fact. They happen. What they actually are is quite another matter.» — Kripal los toma como hechos históricos y separa esa condición de la pregunta por su naturaleza, que deja sin contestar.

«If you resist the temptation to believe these events (that is, provide them with some definite religious category, judgment, or interpretation) but instead collect them, arrange them into patterns, and put them all on a flat, fair table to analyze, they remain» — Kripal propone suspender la categoría religiosa y ordenar los casos en patrones, con la creencia puesta entre paréntesis.

«Quite the opposite, these super states begin to look like universal, if always morphing, attributes of a shared human mindspace. They begin to look, well, natural.» — lo que a Kripal le resulta de ese procedimiento: no rarezas anecdóticas sino atributos de un espacio mental compartido.

«these types of extreme events lie at the neurological, psychological, perhaps even electromagnetic origins of many basic religious beliefs that are distributed around the world and have become the building blocks of the religions themselves for millennia.» — Kripal sitúa el origen de muchas creencias religiosas básicas en sucesos extremos, y nombra entre sus capas la electromagnética.

«I am thinking here, for example, of the countless mystical encounters with “light,” “fire,” “radiance,” or “power,” of the magical or parapsychological capacities attributed to shamans and religious prodigies, or the widespread belief in a separable soul and its ability to leave the body.» — los ejemplos con que Kripal llena esa afirmación: encuentros con luz y fuego, capacidades atribuidas a chamanes, y el alma separable.

«In his pioneering book UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse (1970), John Keel encouraged us almost a half-century ago to stop focusing on the light shows in the sky and start looking closely at the effects that these phenomena have on the witnesses and contactees. The real meaning and purpose of the UFO phenomenon, Keel felt, is not in some machine in the sky. It is in the people who encounter these strange lights and are transformed by them. The secret of contact lies in the contactee.» — Kripal adopta de John Keel el desplazamiento del objeto al testigo, con la obra y el año declarados.

«we know of no religious experience, scriptural text, or revelation that did not come through a human being or human community.» — el compromiso de Kripal con el contexto humano de toda experiencia religiosa, dicho como límite de lo que se puede estudiar.

«as researchers, we must begin somewhere, and it is better to begin with what one does know and can study than with what one does not know and cannot study.» — la regla de método con que Kripal justifica empezar por el contactado y no por el objeto.

«Something like the UFO phenomenon is not a single thing. It is a broad set of things that are constantly being confused and mixed up.» — Kripal enuncia el problema del cesto de basura: bajo un solo término conviven cosas distintas.

«the physiological condition of sleep paralysis and what my colleague David Hufford calls the “supernatural assault”; elements of traditional Catholic and now Evangelical demonology» — dos capas del inventario de Kripal; adjudica a su colega David Hufford la fórmula del asalto sobrenatural.

«Are all of these things really the same thing? No. Are they somehow nevertheless related? Sometimes.» — Kripal contesta a su propio inventario con un no y un a veces, y deja el reparto como problema abierto.

«These two sets of events can be related within a particular narrative or mythical framework, but this does not require any universal causal relationship between the two, as if the former were somehow always causing the latter.» — Kripal separa lo visto en el cielo de los encuentros eróticos en la cama: puede haber vínculo narrativo sin relación causal universal.

«The UFO phenomenon is confusing, then, first and foremost because we are using a single very loose comparative category to collect, classify, and interpret what are probably completely different things.» — Kripal localiza la confusión en la categoría comparativa, no en los hechos.

«acknowledging the obvious presence of various military-, intelligence-, and security-state measures at work in the cold war history of the UFO phenomenon (the acronym does, after all, come from the American military» — primera mitad de la maniobra de Kripal: la capa militar y de inteligencia se reconoce, y el propio acrónimo viene de ahí.

«It takes us out of areas that this author has no authority over, no knowledge of, and no interest in. It also cleans up a lot on our table. Moreover, it allows us to focus on those subjects that we really do know something about and that we can actually study.» — Kripal declara su falta de competencia sobre la capa militar como razón de apartarla, no como juicio sobre ella.

«Five of the most common are: (1) the automatic conflation or unconscious identification of science with materialist interpretations of science; (2) the invocation of the adjective “anecdotal” to dismiss these events as somehow meaningless and not part of the real empirical experienced world; (3) a naive understanding of mind that classifies all visionary phenomena as simple “imaginary” products of brain matter (without the slightest clue how this works); (4) the public shaming of sincere and serious people, from all walks of life, who see or say otherwise» — cuatro de las cinco estrategias que Kripal le imputa al escéptico ideológico para dejar el material fuera de la mesa.

«scientists and intellectuals who have been fascinated by the unexplained and have seen these phenomena not as meaningless anecdotes to dismiss and demean but as important clues to a future superscience.» — la quinta estrategia según Kripal, la amnesia sobre los científicos que vieron ahí indicios de una superciencia futura.

«one confronts the true believer who naively literalizes or mechanizes the UFO visionary encounters and so further confuses what is on the table.» — el segundo problema que Kripal identifica, en dirección contraria al del escéptico: el creyente que literaliza el encuentro.

«I have learned a great deal from these writers. I am grateful, particularly for how they often venture into ideas and areas that no professional historian would dare go, not at least in public. I love that about them.» — Kripal reconoce deuda con los comparatistas no profesionales de la cultura popular antes de objetarles.

«So let us call these two strategies reductive comparison and religious comparison. Reductive comparison can be pictured as a straight arrow moving from right to left, that is, from a present worldview to a past one. Religious comparison can be thought of as an equally straight arrow moving from the left to the right, that is, from a past worldview to a present one. As the reversed arrow imagery suggests, these two comparative practices are really not so different from each other. Which is another way of saying that they make the same mistake, if in opposite directions.» — Kripal bautiza las dos comparaciones que va a discutir y las hace simétricas: el mismo error en direcciones opuestas.

«This kind of comparison uncritically assumes the truth and completeness of the present Western worldview and so reads all religious phenomena of the past as misinterpretations of what can only be properly understood from the modern Western scientific worldview.» — en qué consiste para Kripal la comparación reductiva: el pasado religioso leído como malentendido de lo que hoy se sabe.

«So the universally attested phenomena of magic—whereby a mental event “in here” is astonishingly correlated with a physical event “out there”—becomes nothing more than the misinterpreted effects of an advanced technology.» — Kripal define la magia como correlación entre un suceso mental y uno físico, y muestra en qué la convierte la comparación reductiva.

«Gods descending from the sky to bestow cultural or practical knowledge become ancient astronauts. Chinese dragons become misperceived spaceships. Mayan funerary art illustrates a rocket ship taking off.» — los ejemplos con que Kripal ilustra la reducción, del astronauta antiguo al dragón chino.

«the way that this approach handles ancient religious texts and artifacts, that is, as relatively unproblematic records of real historical events (records which few if any of the reductive comparativists can actually read in their original languages) is extremely naive» — la objeción filológica de Kripal a los comparatistas reductivos: leen los textos como registros llanos y casi ninguno los lee en su lengua.

«I mean, why read ancient religious texts through the prism of the UFO as ultramodern machine? Why not read modern UFO encounters through the prism of ancient religious texts, that is, as discarnate souls, modern gods, or revelation events?» — Kripal invierte la dirección de la lectura y propone leer el encuentro moderno con la clave del texto antiguo.

«In the end, there is no good reason to assume that we just happen to be living in the historical moment that has the privileged view of things. Indeed, there is every clear and good reason to assume that this is not the case.» — el principio con que Kripal niega privilegio al presente como punto de vista.

«They uncritically assume the truth and completeness of a past worldview (in this case, a diverse collection of ancient Near Eastern cultures embedded in the biblical texts) and read all the UFO phenomena of the present from these past mythical and religious assumptions.» — la operación inversa según Kripal: el mundo bíblico antiguo tomado por completo y aplicado al fenómeno de hoy.

«The ancient biblical worldview was dominated by the assumed presence of invading spirits and demons, which functioned as the standard explanation at that time for disease and mental illness. Hence possession was understood to be the cause of the illness and exorcism was the cure.» — Kripal describe el marco de posesión y exorcismo como explicación estándar de la enfermedad en ese mundo.

«In these early comparative practices of popular culture, the gods of other peoples and cultures were not genuine gods or sincere expressions of some greater God. They were demons. They were evil.» — Kripal lee la demonología cristiana temprana como una práctica comparativa que volvía demonios a los dioses ajenos.

«This same demonic reading of other people’s religious experiences would also lead to later historical horrors, like the early modern persecution of witches in Europe and colonial America.» — Kripal continúa esa lectura demónica hasta la persecución moderna temprana de brujas, y añade que no exagera.

«it is remarkable and surely significant that particular religious visions of the past look like visions of some kind of living machine or conscious technology.» — lo que Kripal sí concede a la comparación reductiva: hay visiones antiguas que parecen máquinas vivas.

«The Jewish traditions have understood those chapters as revealed descriptions of a divine “chariot” and have made them central to their own versions of the mystical life, hence the “chariot mysticism” of ancient Judaism.» — Kripal recuerda la lectura judía de Ezequiel como carro divino y la mística de la Merkabá que salió de ahí.

«It is also worth keeping in mind here that the Jewish tradition has long recognized that the first chapters of Ezekiel are among the strangest and most dangerous chapters in the entire Hebrew Bible. Moreover, it has often sought to restrict access to them, particularly among the young and unprepared.» — Kripal añade que la propia tradición trató esos capítulos como peligrosos y restringió su acceso.

«There is even a well-known rabbinic text that tells about a child who accidentally read these chapters and was consumed by fire that burst from the holy pages.» — el relato rabínico con que Kripal ilustra ese peligro.

«They are drawing the same straight arrow from their own relative present to some past event or text. They are misreading the past through the lens of the present.» — Kripal iguala la operación del rabino que ve un carro y la del moderno que ve una nave.

«do we need to be reminded that a text is not the same thing as a historical event, that stories in texts, even biblical texts, often never happened at all?» — la cautela textual con que Kripal frena la lectura de Ezequiel como registro de un suceso.

«But then what to do with the simple facts that these things in the sky do things that no machine can do, that they behave more like thoughts than things?» — la objeción de Kripal a la lectura de tuercas y tornillos: el objeto se comporta como pensamiento.

«Are not all of these abilities traditional magical powers? And are not all of these powers common features of the gods in cultures like ancient Greece and traditional Hindu India?» — Kripal identifica los poderes de los humanoides con los poderes mágicos tradicionales y con los atributos de los dioses.

«But any adequate understanding of their past will also inevitably challenge our own present assumptions about the world and so change the meanings of our present.» — la otra mitad del bucle según Kripal: entender bien el pasado obliga a cambiar el sentido del presente.

«These sorts of interpretive paradoxes and historical loops are integral features of the contact experiences themselves.» — Kripal traslada la paradoja hermenéutica del historiador al fenómeno mismo del contacto.

«In many of these events, after all, the implication is that we are in the past being visited by future humans, who are contacting and abducting us toward, we can only assume (or hope), some kind of recalibration or adjustment.» — la hipótesis del visitante como humano futuro, que Kripal enuncia con su propio margen de suposición o de esperanza.

«Hence the Already World, the natural world that is really and truly a super natural world.» — Kripal cierra su capítulo devolviendo el Already World a lo natural, no a un más allá.

«a kind of religious prodigy without a religion who cannot help engaging classic religious questions and themes, since that is what his experiences clearly invoke.» — Kripal define así a su coautor al abrir el capítulo 3, como prodigio religioso sin religión.

«What Whitley really seems to want is not a new religion but a new science, one that can take extreme religious experiences (out-of-body and near-death experiences, precognitions, moments of clairvoyance, and visions of the dead) as privileged data about the deepest nature of mind or consciousness, which is to say about “what we are, where we are, and why we are here.» — Kripal lee el proyecto de Strieber como demanda de ciencia nueva que tome la experiencia extrema por dato privilegiado sobre la mente.

«I think he is right about that. I have said as much many times in very public places.» — Kripal suscribe esa demanda y remite a lo que ya ha dicho en público.

«We are not anti-science. Quite the contrary. We simply want a science that is honest and brave enough to take in all that human beings experience without immediately explaining away that “all and everything” by some easy pat answer that is really no answer at all.» — Kripal habla en plural por los dos y desmarca la propuesta de un rechazo de la ciencia.

«The Harvard psychologist and philosopher William James had a wonderful expression for such a future science. He dreamed of a “radical empiricism,” that is, one that took every human experience, however strange or apparently impossible, under its careful gaze without prejudice or assumption.» — Kripal toma de William James el empirismo radical como nombre de esa ciencia futura.

«Whitley’s intellectual orientation, “lost in a forest of hypotheses,” is a very good example of what one of my colleagues, Alex van der Haven, calls the “hypothetical supernatural.» — Kripal adjudica a su colega Alex van der Haven la fórmula del sobrenatural hipotético, nombre de quien tiene visiones propias y no quiere darlas por ciertas.

«This is why these modern mystics care so little for religious institutions and care so much for professional science. They literally want to be tested (hence Whitley’s various submissions to MRIs, psychiatric examinations, and temporal lobe tests).» — Kripal explica el poco apego de esos místicos a la institución religiosa y su apego a la ciencia, y pone los exámenes de Strieber como caso.

«The modern visionaries embrace science, but the conventional scientists too often respond with a sneer.» — el desencuentro que Kripal señala: los visionarios abrazan la ciencia y reciben desdén.

«the adjective appears to have been coined by British and French intellectuals and scientists shortly before and around the turn of the twentieth century, first as the British English supernormal, then as the French paranormal, in order to describe things like telepathic and poltergeist phenomena.» — Kripal data el acuñado de paranormal, primero como supernormal en inglés y luego como paranormal en francés.

«As they were carefully crafted and originally intended, the supernormal and the paranormal meant something like “of the natural world but not yet explainable by our present science.” They meant “normal,” but normal on the extreme end of the spectrum, an end which we do not yet have the tools to model and map but someday will.» — el sentido original que Kripal le restituye al término: natural, en el extremo del espectro, y todavía sin herramientas para modelarlo.

«These adjectives did not mean “supernatural,” that is, they did not signal the presence of a ghost, deity, or anything necessarily outside the natural world and its workings. Quite the contrary, both the supernormal and the paranormal signaled exactly the approach that Whitley has long advocated.» — Kripal niega que paranormal significara sobrenatural, y hace coincidir su sentido original con la posición de Strieber.

«Perhaps, then, it is time to retire a word like “paranormal.” Or at least use it much more carefully. Whatever we decide, it is certainly time to clean up our language and make it more precise again. It is time for the super natural.» — Kripal propone jubilar el término, con la reserva de un quizá, y quedarse con el del título.

«Certain types of belief—particularly literalist ones that do not understand the symbolic or coded nature of religious expressions—can quickly make a fool out of one, since religious experiences interpreted literally are often patently absurd.» — Kripal acota su objeción a la creencia literalista, la que no lee lo simbólico o cifrado de la expresión religiosa.

«To the extent, moreover, that literalist beliefs lead people to identify themselves with their culturally relative religious ideas, local ethnicities, and historical cultures, they can also lead to real social conflict, even horrific violence, as we see again and again in our modern world.» — Kripal deriva del literalismo la identificación con lo relativo y de ahí el conflicto social y la violencia.

«I also think that there is something potentially occult or magical about belief. Belief can function as a naive literalism or serious obstacle to serious thought, to be sure. But belief can also conjure. Belief can make real.» — Kripal le concede a la creencia una función mágica de conjuro, además de la de obstáculo.

«Belief might even act as a kind of psychic portal through which other beings can enter our world, as Whitley has speculated in some of his most visionary moments. It all comes down to how one believes, not whether one believes.» — Kripal recoge de Strieber la creencia como portal por donde entran otros seres, y desplaza la pregunta del qué al cómo se cree.

«To the famous motto of the 1990s hit television series The X-Files, “I want to believe,” Keel would have shot back immediately» — Kripal enfrenta el lema de The X-Files con la respuesta que le atribuye a John Keel.

«He means to refer to all of those modern individuals who have known their own personal revelations but do not want to believe or accept them prematurely. Rather, they want to question them, test them. Put most simply, they want to turn their own mystical “experiences” into scientific» — lo que ese sobrenatural hipotético nombra según Kripal: quienes convierten su propia experiencia mística en experimento en vez de creerla.

«A “phenomenon,” from which the practice gets its name, is simply the Greek word for “appearance.” Here it refers to an awareness of something that appears as an object of experience, whatever that object of experience might be.» — Kripal traduce el término desde el griego y lo deja en la aparición, sea cual sea lo que aparece.

«German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) is normally credited as its founder, even if the method has deeper roots, as we will see in a moment.» — Kripal le da fundador a la fenomenología y de una vez advierte que el método viene de más atrás.

«The fundamental idea here is to begin any inquiry by taking a set of experiences on their own terms and setting aside, for the time being, the question of their possible external source, cause, or truth value.» — la regla del corte fenomenológico según Kripal: tomar la experiencia por sus propios términos y aplazar la pregunta por su fuente.

«The method encourages us to “make a cut” between the appearances themselves and what may, or may not, lie behind them.» — Kripal nombra la operación como hacer un corte entre lo que aparece y lo que pudiera estar detrás.

«Kant made a famous distinction between phenomena (again, “appearances” in the mind) and noumena (things in themselves allegedly “out there,” apart from how they appear to us).» — Kripal remonta el corte a la distinción kantiana entre fenómeno y noúmeno.

«Kant taught us that we do not know the world as it really is. We only know the world as it is filtered through and shaped by our senses and the structuring categories of the human mind (very basic unquestioned categories, like space, time, and causality).» — Kripal resume la lección kantiana: el mundo llega filtrado por los sentidos y por categorías no cuestionadas.

«None of these mental filters or innate categories of understanding are necessarily reflective of what is really “out there,” although Kant thought that the appearances were reflections of something real.» — Kripal consigna el límite que el propio Kant le puso a esa tesis, que las apariciones sí reflejan algo real.

«cannot assume from any of this that our perceptions are absolutely true, only that they are relatively and practically true. All we can assume is that our perceptions of the world are true enough.» — Kripal reduce el alcance de la percepción a lo relativo y práctico, y a lo que basta para sobrevivir.

«We are now being told that 95 percent of the physical world is completely invisible and unknown to our young science. We know nothing about this “dark energy” and “dark matter.” We only know that the vast dark is there.» — Kripal usa la materia y la energía oscuras para medir cuánto queda fuera de la percepción.

«Indeed, our senses are pathetic when it comes to the full range of the electromagnetic spectrum. We are almost totally deaf, dumb, and blind in this Already World of energy and light. Nearly everything about the cosmos is occult to our evolved (or unevolved) perceptual system.» — Kripal declara oculto para el aparato perceptivo humano casi todo el cosmos, y usa la palabra en sentido llano.

«This cut, then, between “what appears” and “what is” is not just a function of some difficult ideas from some dead German professors. It is a very reasonable and appropriate response to our actual situation in the cosmos.» — Kripal defiende el corte no como tecnicismo filosófico sino como respuesta razonable a la situación perceptiva humana.

«The same distinction between experience-as-appearance and the possible object or source of such an experience has been central to the study of religion, where scholars routinely “make the cut,” or suspend judgment about the truth value of a religious phenomenon, as a means to study religious experiences they have not had, mythical worlds they do not share, and belief systems that they do not hold.» — Kripal traslada el corte al estudio de la religión, donde permite estudiar experiencias no vividas y creencias no compartidas.

«Once one makes such a cut, one can, in principle, take any religious experience or mythical world seriously and sympathetically without adopting any particular interpretation of it, much as one suspends disbelief to enjoy a good novel or watch a science-fiction movie.» — la comparación con que Kripal explica el corte, la suspensión de la incredulidad ante una novela.

«The word was invented by Otto in one of the genuine classics of the study of religion, The Idea of the Holy (1917). By “the holy” Otto did not mean “the good” or “the ethical.” He meant» — Kripal data lo numinoso en The Idea of the Holy de Rudolf Otto, 1917, y separa lo santo de lo bueno y lo ético.

«What I think Otto was really writing about is the deeper nature of consciousness itself beyond the ego—a form of extended or cosmic mind that when manifested to the human ego, appears as Other or Alien.» — la relectura que Kripal propone de Otto, con lo numinoso como consciencia extendida que al ego se le presenta como ajena.

«Otto went to great lengths, mostly with biblical materials, to show that this numinous energy or alien presence might be experienced as positive or negative, or both at the same time. The numinous might in fact invoke a whole range of physiological, emotional, and spiritual responses: dread and foreboding, awe and mystery, eeriness, terror, reverence and worship, even ecstasy and mystical union. The angel is an expression of the numinous, but so too is the demon.» — Kripal recoge de Otto que lo numinoso puede ser positivo y negativo a la vez, con el ángel y el demonio en el mismo registro.

«Otto was very much a follower of Kant. He did not think that human beings generally have any direct access to the numinous presence as it really and truly is. He thought rather that this mystical presence is always filtered through and shaped by the categories of the human mind and the cultures that largely determine its functioning. Otto, in short, had “made the cut,” and at about the same time as Husserl.» — Kripal alinea a Otto con Kant: tampoco él concede acceso directo a la presencia numinosa.

«In the pages of this book, as in his other books, Whitley often invokes the language of the “numinous” to capture the feel and sensibilities of his experiences.» — Kripal observa que Strieber usa el vocabulario de lo numinoso aquí y en sus otros libros.

«asks us to consider a particular duality or twoness in the human being, at least in the functioning of the human psyche and how it knows the world.» — Kripal deriva del corte una dualidad en el sujeto humano, al menos en cómo la psique conoce.

«Like the prisoners of Plato’s Cave, we are all locked down tight to the cave floor of our senses and brains. We are locked into the cave of the skull, as it were, and condemned to witness only flat, sense-based shadow shows in the dark—mini-movies inside our head.» — Kripal traduce la clausura kantiana a la caverna de Platón, con el cráneo por caverna.

«The history of mystical literature strongly suggests something else or more. Indeed, the whole point of Plato’s parable is that we can crawl out of the cave and see the multidimensional world outside» — contra esa clausura, Kripal invoca la literatura mística y el final de la parábola, donde sí se sale de la caverna.

«In rare but real cases, it very much looks as if individual human beings can know, even become, something of reality as it really is, as opposed to what their cultural, religious, and sensory scripts tell them.» — Kripal admite casos raros de conocimiento de lo real, y modaliza con un se parece a que.

«Meister Eckhart (1260–1328), the great medieval mystic, recognized this already over seven hundred years ago in a little sermon that sounds like a chapter out of Edwin Abbot’s Flatland (1884).» — Kripal pone a Eckhart como precedente y lo lee junto a Flatland de Abbot; las fechas que da aquí no coinciden con las del epígrafe del libro.

«Eckhart is preaching of an inner light that makes humans divine and of a power beyond space and time that he called the eternal Now.» — lo que Kripal encuentra en ese sermón: luz interior que diviniza y un poder fuera del espacio y del tiempo.

«is so potent that it is not merely in itself free of time and space, but . . . this light takes away time and space.» — la línea de Eckhart que Kripal cita, en la traducción que él usa.

«In our own modern terms, we might say that this light grants a type of consciousness that is outside space-time. To employ the traditional religious terms, it is infinite (beyond space) and immortal (beyond time).» — Kripal traduce esa luz a consciencia fuera del espacio-tiempo, y de ahí a los atributos tradicionales de infinito e inmortal.

«would be as far superior to another man as a living man is compared to one painted on a wall.”16 The painted human lives in only two dimensions, we would say today. He is “flat.” The illuminated human now lives in three or four or more. He or she is hyperdimensional, we would say.» — segunda línea de Eckhart que Kripal cita, y su relectura del hombre pintado como criatura de dos dimensiones.

«This, I take it, is what Whitley is getting at through his own movielike visions, which admittedly astonish him and have even tempted him to accept them as literally true, but which he can never quite bring himself to fully believe.» — Kripal adscribe las visiones de Strieber a ese esquema y subraya que él nunca acaba de creerlas.

«When one reads him carefully, what one finds is a very modern version of what one finds when one reads classical mystical literature—what I have called the Human as Two.» — Kripal nombra el Humano como Dos y lo hace versión moderna de la literatura mística clásica.

«This, it turns out, is a very old idea that can be found in any number of forms, including the medieval European notion of the anima mundi or “soul of the world.» — Kripal remonta la idea a la noción medieval europea del anima mundi.

«Such a soul-of-the-world or cosmic mind, after all, would be us and not us at the same time. And it would behave much like the lights dancing on the movie screen: it would take on any cultural narrative (or myth), any subjective form (or ego), including some really cruel and really stupid ones, but it would remain, despite all of this, pure white light—without a form, without a story, and without a religion.» — Kripal describe esa mente cósmica como nosotros y no nosotros a la vez, capaz de tomar cualquier mito y de no ser ninguno.

«Such a mind beyond brain would also carry real implications for what is clearly the central religious question throughout human history: What happens to us when we die?» — Kripal enlaza la mente fuera del cerebro con la pregunta que llama central en la historia religiosa.

«If mind is a product of brain, then mind goes away when the brain dies. Period. If, however, the human brain is more like a highly evolved receiver, transmission station, or local neural network that limits, reduces, and shapes mind into a cultural and subjective container that we know as the self or ego (which is itself not the producer of mind either), then when brain dies, the self may or may not go away (or it may stick around for a while, and then go away), but mind almost certainly does not go away. Mind as mind, after all, would be completely unaffected by the death of an individual brain, much as the Internet is not the least bit affected when you turn off your laptop or “drown” it in the swimming pool.» — las dos ramas que Kripal deja abiertas, cerebro productor o cerebro reductor, con la metáfora de la laptop y la red.

«It all comes down to this, then: Is the brain the producer or reducer of consciousness?» — Kripal reduce la disputa a una sola pregunta y no la contesta ahí.

«Where they presume too much is when they conclude from these obvious facts that mind equals brain, or that brain produces mind. This may be the case, of course, but this possibility does not necessarily follow from the facts. It only follows from a particular interpretation of the facts.» — Kripal concede los hechos neurológicos y objeta el salto a la identidad mente-cerebro.

«The materialist scientists presume the materialist interpretation because they presume materialism, not because the facts require that particular interpretation. In essence, they are confusing an interpretation of the results of science with science itself.» — la acusación de Kripal: se confunde una interpretación de los resultados con la ciencia misma.

«It is easy enough to dismiss a vision of a dead friend who one knows is dead as a subjective hallucination. It is not so easy to dismiss a vision of a dead friend one does not know is dead. The latter suggests, though hardly proves, some kind of survival and postmortem communication.» — la distinción con que Kripal pesa el episodio del amigo muerto, y el límite que le pone en la misma frase, donde la visión sugiere una supervivencia sin afirmarla.

«Still, perhaps it was all just a coincidence. Whitley, after all, did not know the friend was dead in the vision, and he may have simply put the two things together afterward, like this: vision of friend, news of his death, interpretation that the earlier vision of the friend was a vision of the dead.» — Kripal expone la lectura deflacionaria del episodio, montada después del hecho, antes de contestarla.

«This kind of coincidental reading, though, loses much of its power when we put it in a larger context. Hence the discovery of Anne, who noticed a spate of similar reports among the letters they received in response to Communion.» — Kripal contesta esa lectura con el volumen de casos que Anne Strieber encontró en el correo de Communion.

«Whitley is a fine comparativist here, particularly when he notes both the similarities of these different reports, but also their real and genuine differences, which number into literally hundreds of types or patterns. In his own words, he wants “to expose the large-scale structures that are present beneath the immediate narrative surface. For such structures most certainly exist.” That is exactly how comparativists and phenomenologists talk.» — Kripal le adjudica a Strieber oficio de comparatista por atender también las diferencias entre relatos.

«They are called “Peak in Darien” experiences after a book of the same title published by Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904) in 1882. Cobbe adapted the expression from a poem by John Keats in which the poet describes the Spaniards climbing a peak in Darien (now Panama), expecting to see a landmass, but instead seeing another ocean, in this case, the Pacific Ocean.» — Kripal le da nombre técnico a la aparición del muerto no sabido muerto y lo remonta al libro de Frances Power Cobbe de 1882 y a un poema de Keats.

«Over four decades later, the knighted English physicist Sir William Barrett (1844–1925) called systematic attention to these cases again in his classic study, Deathbed Visions: How the Dead Talk to the Dying (1926), in his opening chapter, “Visions Seen by the Dying of Persons Unknown by Them to Be Dead.» — Kripal continúa la genealogía con Deathbed Visions de William Barrett, de 1926.

«In actual historical fact, there is nothing anecdotal about these visions at all. They are part of a stable and consistent pattern in the history of visionary experiences around death that has been reported for a century and a half» — Kripal le quita a esas visiones el rótulo de anecdóticas y las declara patrón sostenido.

«And that, of course, is only what we know in the modern West. The real landscape seen from a higher cross-cultural peak is no doubt much more vast and impressive, if only we would take the time and spend the resources to look.» — Kripal marca el límite de su propio muestreo, restringido al Occidente moderno.

«The language of “spirit” and the “spiritual” appears quite a bit in Whitley’s writing, and usually in very positive ways. The language of “religion” and the “religious” also appears, but usually in much more critical ways.» — Kripal contrasta el uso positivo de lo espiritual y el crítico de lo religioso en la escritura de Strieber.

«They are sometimes called the “spiritual but not religious,” a phrase that emerged from, of all things, a set of questionnaires that sociologists were using. People would check the two boxes marked “spiritual” and “not religious.” Hence the expression.» — Kripal cuenta el origen del rótulo en un cuestionario sociológico con dos casillas.

«One is the location of religious authority. The traditionally religious place that authority outside the self in a scriptural text or institution. The spiritual but not religious place that authority inside the self.» — primer marcador de Kripal para separar lo religioso de lo espiritual: dónde se pone la autoridad.

«The traditionally religious locate full revelation in the past and understand the religious life to be a faithful remembering and reliving of some singular revelation.» — segundo y tercer marcador de Kripal, el momento y el carácter de la revelación; en lo tradicional está entera en el pasado.

«on religious authority: outside/inside on the nature of revelation: singular-perfect/multiple-partial on the temporal locus of full revelation: past/future» — los tres marcadores en la forma esquemática que imprime el libro.

«Whitley displays all three markers. He does not think of any of this, of course, as “being spiritual.” He thinks of it as “being secular,” but in a very special, soul-filled way. Obviously, secularism does not preclude spirituality. If anything, it makes such an orientation possible.» — Kripal adscribe a Strieber los tres marcadores y aclara que él se llama secular, no espiritual.

«We do not have an adequate vocabulary, much less a worldview or a set of institutions, to come to terms with such a human future. Maybe we never will. Maybe the super natural is just too much for us. I doubt this is the case, though. I doubt that the super natural is too much for us for one simple reason. I think we are an expression of it. I think we are it.» — Kripal cierra su capítulo admitiendo que falta vocabulario e instituciones, y apostando a que somos eso mismo.

«Certainly its meanings change as we engage it differently. Piffle of the past—odd things in the historical record that make no sense to us because of our convictions about how the world works. Until, of course, those convictions pass and the piffle of the past appear as the unrecognized codes of some future knowledge.» — Kripal glosa el piffle of the past de Fort: lo que hoy no encaja puede ser código de un saber futuro.

«When it comes to these sorts of things, I am a veritable genius of nonexperience. I am an amazing spiritual dud.» — Kripal declara su falta total de experiencia propia, sin ovnis, sin fantasmas y sin trolls azules.

«These are not simply professional reasons. They are also methods or practices, that is, they are highly developed “tools” with which to make some sense of otherwise impossible things.» — Kripal presenta sus razones como herramientas de oficio, no como convicciones.

«We call it simply comparison. This is a deceptive word, mostly because it is so familiar and seems so common. Consequently, we always underestimate the power of what this mental technology can do.» — Kripal nombra la comparación como la primera práctica del estudio de la religión y la llama tecnología mental.

«We also underestimate the sheer havoc and embarrassing mistakes this tool can create, if it is not handled expertly and used well. As we shall repeatedly see, everything depends on what you “put on the table,” that is, everything depends on your comparative practice: what you compare with what to conclude what.» — la advertencia que acompaña a esa herramienta, y la regla de que todo depende de qué se pone en la mesa.

«They are “natural,” as we say, even if each of them is also rare with respect to any particular individual, and all of them are “super,” that is, beyond how we presently understand how this natural world works.» — Kripal reparte el título entre lo natural y lo super, y define lo segundo por el límite del saber actual.

«we can only begin to perceive and understand these super natural things through a careful comparative practice.» — Kripal hace depender la visibilidad misma del material de la práctica comparativa.

«This cut allows us to take seriously even the most fantastic appearances of human experience without naively equating them or their interpretations with the truth of things (and the truth of things may well be weirder still).» — lo que el corte le permite a Kripal, tomar en serio la aparición sin igualarla a la verdad de las cosas.

«Anne took up the comparative method again when she read through the Communion letters, created a chart and classification scheme on the wall, recognized patterns in the data, and came to the working hypothesis: “This has something to do with what we call death.” Actually, Anne had moved beyond collection, classification, and comparison, beyond the phenomenological cut, and beyond historical contextualization with such a sentence. She had moved into the act of theorizing her comparative data.» — Kripal le adjudica a Anne Strieber las cuatro operaciones del oficio y una quinta, teorizar el material.

«As we will now see, robust historical contextualization, like robust comparison across historical contexts, does not always end up explaining everything. Sometimes it ends up making our world much weirder than we thought.» — el resultado irónico que Kripal le atribuye a la buena contextualización, que a veces vuelve el mundo más extraño.

«What they mean by this is that every human experience takes place in a very particular historical context and so is profoundly shaped by that place and time. Think about who you are. You are who you are largely because of where and when you were born, who your parents were and how they raised you, what language or languages you speak, and so on. Change any of these variables and you would be a different self, a different person.» — Kripal enuncia la tesis del contexto histórico en su forma aceptable, la experiencia moldeada por lugar y tiempo.

«But many humanists often want to push this obvious truth further. They want to replace my carefully chosen “shaped by that place and time” with another expression: “constructed by that place and time,” by which they really mean: “completely determined by that place and time.” For them, everything about human experience and expression is not just shaped or mediated by a historical context. It is constructed out of that historical situation and, or so it is implied, is nothing but that historical situation. Everything human can finally be reduced to and explained by “history,” which is to say: by its historical context.» — Kripal marca dónde deja de aceptarla: cuando moldeada se cambia por construida y de ahí por determinada del todo.

«It also sucks any bigger meaning out of the world. No single experience now can be taken as a sign or expression of some larger cross-cultural reality or shared human nature, much less as a revelation of some cosmic truth. It’s all history. It’s all context. It’s all constructed. Put in the terms of our earlier analogy, it’s all appearance. There is no projector behind or above us. There is no real behind the show.» — lo que Kripal le imputa a esa versión fuerte del constructivismo, un mundo sin proyector detrás de la pantalla.

«The ideological debunkers of anomalous phenomena have a very similar strategy in mind when they label the extraordinary data of this realm anecdotal.» — Kripal hace equivaler el rótulo de anecdótico al constructivismo, invertido: sin contexto mayor, nada que atender.

«There is a real insight here. The meaning of something, after all, does depend on its context, be that a text, a grammar, or a social event. To take a simple, mundane example, I know that a long flowing piece of cloth attached around a person’s shoulders and neck is interpreted differently in a superhero comic book than it is at an elite social event. The meaning of the “cape” is determined by its literary, artistic, and social contexts.» — la parte que Kripal le concede a esa objeción, con el ejemplo de la capa que significa según dónde se lleve.

«Sometimes, after all, what initially looks anomalous or “without a context” turns out, on closer historical inspection (that is, with better history), to be neither. A truly robust historical perspective here does not relativize or dismiss. Sometimes it ends up confirming the anomalous experience as part of a much larger pattern or context. In this way, good history, like good comparison and good phenomenology, makes the impossible possible.» — la vuelta de tuerca de Kripal: mejor historia puede confirmar la anomalía como parte de un patrón mayor.

«The visitors, of course, are not anomalous at all. They possess countless precedents in the general history of religions.» — Kripal le quita al visitante la condición de anomalía por la vía de los precedentes religiosos.

«This history of religions is the broadest context and grammar of Communion. Nothing anomalous or meaningless there, even if it is all, of course, impossible in our modern materialist register and assumptions, themselves all very recent, and no doubt very temporary.» — Kripal hace de la historia de las religiones la gramática de Communion, y llama reciente y pasajero al registro materialista que la vuelve imposible.

«The geographical locale of Strieber’s abduction experience is a well-known and well-documented hot spot for UFO activity throughout the twentieth century.» — Kripal sitúa el lugar del episodio como zona documentada de avistamientos durante todo el siglo XX.

«The first major “UFO flap” in the United States was the airship mystery of 1896–97, during which hundreds of sightings of craft flying over major U.S. cities, often with spotlights or “lanterns” no less, were reported in the newspapers from California to New York.» — Kripal fecha la primera oleada estadounidense en el misterio de las aeronaves de 1896 a 1897.

«This was six years before the Wright Brothers managed to get their first dangerous contraption a few feet off the ground in Kittyhawk, North Carolina. The nature of these sightings remains controversial and ambiguous, and many of them were no doubt hoaxes or misreported, but one thing is clear: they were widely reported, and these reports are part of the historical record and so a part of the larger historical context of the later sightings.» — Kripal fecha esa oleada antes del primer vuelo de los Wright y concede que hubo fraudes, sin que eso quite el registro documental.

«Another major wave of sightings occurred about a decade later, in 1909–10, this time centered in the Hudson Valley region.» — segunda oleada según Kripal, hacia 1909 y 1910, centrada en el valle del Hudson.

«A mysterious airship which flies only at night is causing considerable excitement and keeping the people of Orange county residing between Goshen and Newburgh up nights in their efforts to get a look at it.» — nota de The Sun de Nueva York que Kripal reproduce, del 1 de agosto de 1909; voz del periódico.

«Otto Pushman, Newburgh’s champion cusser, had been sent to jail for thirty days for using sulfurous language. During the nocturnal hours of Tuesday he was discovered on Grand Street looking for that ding-blasted airship that the Newburgh papers tell about and cursing fervently at the blankty-blanked moon.» — pieza del Goshen Democrat que Kripal reproduce como su favorita, del 5 de agosto de 1909.

«one can see “all the elements of denials, ridiculous excuses, hoaxers, and belittled witnesses already in place, more than 100 years ago!» — conclusión que Kripal cita de Linda Zimmerman: la burla y el descrédito del testigo ya estaban ahí hace un siglo.

«Zimmerman has written two books tracing the UFO phenomenon in the Hudson Valley region from 1909 to the present. What she finds is a dizzying array of phenomena not unlike those we find later in the century: “airships” and later “spaceships” in the sky ranging from baseball size glowing balls to huge floating Vs (including her own sighting); an immense circular metallic craft with colored lights and symbols that hovered just above the heads of a mother and her twelve-year-old son close enough to hit with a rock; two early abduction reports (from 1929 and 1937) involving things like time standing still, floating humanoids in “diving suits,” and a sense of being in two worlds at once;» — lo que Kripal recoge de los dos libros de Zimmerman sobre el valle del Hudson, con dos reportes de abducción de 1929 y 1937.

«encounters that result in the witnesses developing various psychical capacities, particularly telepathy and precognition (an extremely common pattern in such encounters to this day); a bizarre vision of two immense “wheels” on their side (vaguely reminiscent of Ezekiel’s “wheels” and also reported as a spinning “ferris wheel” in the 1980s);» — continuación de ese inventario, con capacidades psíquicas aparecidas tras el encuentro y las ruedas que Kripal acerca a las de Ezequiel.

«The spooked dogs, cats, and birds are also especially interesting, as they strongly suggest that these events had some kind of biological or physical existence outside the subjective psyches of the witnesses, that is, outside the phenomenological cut.» — Kripal usa la reacción de los animales como indicio de existencia física fuera de la psique del testigo.

«The Northwestern University astronomer and air force scientific consultant J. Allen Hynek, the researcher Philip J. Imbrogno, and the journalist Bob Pratt dedicated an entire volume to this subject, with a later edition (after Hynek’s death) claiming some 7,046 reported cases in the Hudson Valley from 1982 to 1995.» — Kripal remite al volumen de Hynek, Imbrogno y Pratt y da su cifra de casos en el valle del Hudson.

«Particularly important here, since it temporally wraps around the Strieber case, is the three-year flap—beginning on New Year’s Eve, 1982, and petering out throughout 1986—that featured something that came to be known as the “Westchester Boomerang,” basically an immense triangular-shaped craft repeatedly floating over the region.» — Kripal encierra el caso Strieber dentro de la oleada del Boomerang de Westchester, de 1982 a 1986.

«The thing was described variously as “a flying city,” “as large as an aircraft carrier,” “as big as a football field,” and like “something out of the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”27 As is so often the case, the sci-fi references were irresistible.» — las comparaciones de los testigos que Kripal recoge, y su observación de que el vocabulario venía del cine.

«Not that the immense thing behaved like a thing. It could appear and disappear instantly, vanishing, as one witness put it, “like the Cheshire Cat’s smile.” It was often described as completely silent. Or in uncanny religious terms: “It just hung there motionless in the sky. It was like seeing a ghost.» — Kripal subraya que el objeto no se comportaba como objeto, y recoge las descripciones en clave espectral.

«as well as unidentified planes flying in formation, which the witnesses believed were sent up by the military to confuse the matter and provide a bogus explanation to the public.28 The public was not tricked, or amused.» — Kripal consigna los aviones sin identificar que acompañaron a los avistamientos y la lectura que los testigos hicieron de ellos.

«And it was here that Whitley Strieber had his own abduction experiences over the Christmas holidays of 1985, right smack in the middle of the most active decade of the twentieth century, during a spike in that same decade, and after at least seventy-seven years of similar encounters in the same area that included not one or two reported sightings, but thousands.» — Kripal cierra la contextualización situando el episodio de 1985 dentro de setenta y siete años de reportes en la misma zona.

«Such cultural and geographical contexts do not explain these experiences or offer us any definitive answer. I am certain that the reports are not all of the same quality or reliability, and, as we have seen, some of them were simply mocking.» — el límite que Kripal le pone a su propio ejercicio: el contexto no explica ni contesta, y no todos los reportes valen igual.

«Accordingly, I do not wish to take a particular position on these records, much less on this or that individual sighting. We simply have not done the hard historical, textual, ethnographic, and scientific work that would warrant or authorize any such definitive position. As a culture, we have barely begun such a project.» — Kripal se abstiene sobre los casos concretos por falta del trabajo histórico y científico que lo autorizaría.

«But, taken as a whole, such historical materials certainly dispel any notion that Strieber must be a kook, or that his honest descriptions and dramatic sufferings can somehow be brushed aside as lacking any meaningful context, as anecdotal or anomalous. They were in historical and contextual fact nothing of the sort.» — lo único que Kripal sí concluye del expediente: que no cabe tratar a Strieber de chiflado ni su relato de anécdota sin contexto.

«Albany, New York, was the birthplace and childhood home of the man who did more than anyone to shape the American paranormal: Charles Fort. Jim Steinmeyer has given us a wonderful biography of Fort.29 I have done my best to summarize Fort’s sophisticated comparative practice.30 Here I can only sketch the barest of outlines.» — Kripal añade a la geografía del valle del Hudson el nacimiento de Charles Fort, a quien atribuye la forma de lo paranormal estadounidense.

«In four weird and wonderful books written between 1919 and 1932 (The Book of the Damned, New Lands, Lo!, and Wild Talents)» — Kripal enumera los cuatro libros de Fort escritos entre 1919 y 1932 y les adjudica la naturaleza a la vez real e irreal de lo paranormal.

«It was Fort again who began to speculate about the meaning and purpose of what he called “super-constructions” in the sky. There were no “UFOs” or “flying saucers” yet, although many of Fort’s descriptions are astonishingly close, like the man’s in 1871 who saw a thing fall from the sky, “oscillating from side to side like a disc falling through water,” that is, exactly like flying saucers would be seen descending in the next century.» — Kripal le adjudica a Fort las superconstrucciones del cielo y una descripción de 1871 que ya se parece al platillo.

«Whether spacarians have ever dredged down here or not, or ‘sniped’ down here, pouncing, assailing, either wantonly, or in the interests of their sciences, and I have strong objections against lugging in the fourth dimension, because then I am no better off, wondering what the fifth and sixth are like.» — pasaje de Fort que Kripal cita sobre la abducción, con su sintaxis y su objeción a la cuarta dimensión; voz de Fort.

«It was this man’s speculations that were picked up by the pulp-fiction subculture of the 1930s and ’40s (the pulps even serialized sections from his books), which in turn morphed into modern science-fiction literature in the 1950s and ’60s. Fort is one of the fathers of all of this.» — Kripal traza la línea de Fort a las revistas pulp y de ahí a la ciencia ficción moderna.

«Indeed, he was extremely critical of two common ways of demonizing or dismissing anomalous events: what he called the Dominant of Religion (related to what I have called religious comparison) and the Dominant of Science (related to what I have called reductive comparison). He made fun of both by simply demonstrating how they really didn’t work to explain the full scope of the data and how they both took certain things off the table so that they could pretend that they were explaining everything.» — Kripal hace corresponder los dos Dominantes de Fort con sus propias comparación religiosa y comparación reductiva.

«It is worth repeating. It is very easy to claim a theory of everything if you get to decide what that everything is. It is very easy to explain everything on the table if you have put everything you cannot explain underneath it in the wastebasket.» — Kripal repite su objeción de fondo, ahora en boca del cesto de basura.

«Fort sought to move beyond these two dominant ways of knowing into a third Dominant, what he called (not so eloquently) “Intermediatism” or (a little better) the “philosophy of the hyphen,” by which he basically meant to refer to events that were physical and mental or real and unreal at the same time.» — el tercer Dominante de Fort según Kripal, la filosofía del guion, para sucesos a la vez físicos y mentales.

«For example, he often invoked the experience of the Native Americans around 1492, when they first witnessed those immense, anomalous ships floating in the bays. It would not go well for them, Fort noted.» — la analogía de Fort que Kripal recoge, las naves de 1492 vistas desde la playa, con su desenlace.

«Then he got darker (and weirder). Earth might not be a “new land” or a galactic colony. It might be a farm. This would certainly explain why the visitors do not establish any open contact or attempt communication with us. Why should they?» — Kripal expone la hipótesis de la granja de Fort y la usa para explicar la ausencia de contacto abierto.

«Would we, if we could, educate and sophisticate pigs, geese, cattle? Would it be wise to establish diplomatic relation with the hen that now functions, satisfied with mere sense of achievement by way of compensation? I think we’re property.» — bloque de Fort que Kripal reproduce, con la gallina satisfecha por sensación de logro; voz de Fort.

«I should say that we’re now under cultivation; that we’re conscious of it, but have the impertinence to attribute it all to our own nobler and higher instincts,” which is to say: to our religious instincts and beliefs.» — segunda cita de Fort y la glosa de Kripal, que traduce esos instintos superiores por instintos religiosos.

«In spite of rationalism’s disdain for the particular, the personal, and the unwholesome [the modern debunker’s anecdotal], the drift of all the evidence we have seems to me to sweep us very strongly towards the belief in some form of superhuman life with which we may, unknown to ourselves, be co-conscious. We may be in the universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.» — pasaje de A Pluralistic Universe que Kripal cita, donde James propone una vida sobrehumana con la que seríamos coconscientes sin saberlo; voz de James.

«In any case, James’s “superhuman life” is precisely what Fort was writing about. Hence his affection for the prefix super-, which he attached to pretty much everything: super-constructions, super-vehicles, super-mind, super-sight, super-imagination, super-religion, even super-sociology. Hence also his extensive focus on the “wild talents” or superpowers of paranormal people.» — Kripal junta a James con Fort y deriva de ahí la afición del segundo al prefijo super y sus wild talents.

«Although this is pure speculation on my part, I cannot help but wonder if behind (or above) all of this super-writing floated some personal sighting in those haunted Hudson Valley skies, or even some private “abduction” experience. Charles Fort certainly would not have been the first to see things in that sky or experience such an encounter in that haunted valley. Nor would he, of course, be the last.» — Kripal se pregunta si Fort tuvo su propio avistamiento, y marca de antemano que es especulación suya.

«By far, the most difficult aspect of Whitley’s “structure in the air,” for a traditional academic anyway, is his suggestion that these experiences might represent an encounter with other actual species, invisible life-forms existing in some other dimension of the natural world that overlaps with ours» — lo que a Kripal le resulta más difícil de admitir académicamente: otras especies invisibles en una dimensión traslapada con la nuestra.

«This, of course, is not simply a theory about the visitors. It is a radical, and deeply critical, theory of religion as well, since it implies that these invisible life-forms have been interacting with us for millennia under various mythical forms that we have traditionally (mis)framed in supernatural terms.» — Kripal convierte esa propuesta de Strieber en teoría crítica de la religión, con los mitos como encuadre equivocado de esas formas de vida.

«Later in this same text, and again in this one, Whitley compares himself and his terrified reactions to the presence of the female visitor to a wild, frightened bucking ranch horse. He was being “broken.”» — Kripal recoge la comparación que Strieber hace de sí mismo con un caballo cerrero al que se doma.

«What sets Whitley’s model apart is how interactive it is, how it relies on us to manifest the other species.» — el rasgo que Kripal usa para separar el modelo de Strieber de los de Keel, Vallee y Bullard: nos necesita para manifestarse.

«In this interpretation of quantum physics, the result of an experiment is partially determined by what the physicist decides, that is, how he or she chooses to set up the experiment. The result then is not simply “objective.” It is “subjective” and “objective” at the same time. The entire system is interactive.» — la lectura de la física cuántica con que Kripal apuntala ese modelo, con el resultado a la vez subjetivo y objetivo.

«He is not after simple belief here. He is not a fan of the contactee “eager to see the phenomenon as a dimensionless cartoon of space friends.” He is after something much more complex and interesting.» — Kripal desmarca a Strieber del contactado que espera amigos del espacio.

«Note that there is no stable subject or object here. There is a weird, mind-bending, mirrorlike moment in which the viewer and the viewed bring each other into existence through their mutual intentions and gazes. This is what Whitley means by “communion.”» — Kripal lee la comunión de Strieber como momento especular en que quien mira y lo mirado se traen a la existencia.

«Keep observing. Keep turning the pages. Keep letting go. Keep the apocalypse going. The Already World is shining through.» — Kripal cierra su capítulo 5 con cuatro imperativos y el Already World asomando.

«We have carved out a middle ground—a version of Whitley’s “spiritual practice without religious belief.” First, we have brought our comparative practice into sharper focus through a discussion of religious and reductive comparisons, neither of which quite work with the striking similarities and real differences that we see across cultures and times.» — Kripal resume las tres primeras prácticas y llama a lo obtenido un terreno medio, con la fórmula que toma de Strieber.

«Let us call this fourth practice hermeneutics. You can translate the word simply as “interpretation,” but it is way weirder than that. Fundamentally, hermeneutics is the art and practice of deciphering meaning or message.» — Kripal nombra la cuarta herramienta y la define como arte de descifrar mensaje, más que como interpretación.

«The word itself is derived from the Greek god Hermes, a trickster deity who oversaw the mysterious middle realms of divine speech and revelation, doorways, crossroads, language itself, and the afterlife. Hermes was also a liar and a cattle thief, and he was worshiped in a simple form that commonly sported two features: a beard and an erection.» — Kripal deriva la hermenéutica de Hermes y le consigna al dios sus atributos completos, embustero y ladrón incluidos.

«One is the key concept of secrecy or hiddenness. Hermeneutics is the art of interpretation that deciphers the hidden meanings of some enigmatic symbol, text, dream, vision, or striking coincidence.» — primera idea que Kripal retiene de la tradición hermenéutica, el sentido oculto que hay que descifrar.

«Freud was practicing just such a hermeneutics when he argued that the human mind censors itself and then indirectly expresses that which it has censored in the puns and symbols of dream and the slips of the tongue in everyday conversation (hence the famous “Freudian slip”); or when he argued that repressed and sublimated sexual desires drive a whole range of cultural, artistic, and religious expressions (and now, I would add, much of American humor).» — Kripal pone a Freud como practicante de esa hermenéutica, con la censura y el retorno cifrado del deseo.

«Whether it’s a Freud or a Strieber, the human Hermes encounters a code and reads it out with the “clicks” of a particular key. Unsurprisingly, but importantly, one of Whitley’s most beautiful books is called The Key.» — Kripal iguala las dos operaciones y remite al título de un libro de Strieber como cifra de ese oficio.

«Sometimes the hermeneut finds herself in a paradoxical “circle” or “loop” in which the reading transforms both the read and the reader.» — segunda idea que Kripal retiene, el bucle donde la lectura cambia a lo leído y a quien lee.

«In hermeneutics, as in quantum physics, there is a single process that co-creates both the subject and the object at the same time.» — Kripal hace equivaler el bucle hermenéutico al problema del observador en física cuántica.

«Our confusions are a function of the fundamentally paradoxical ways that our very subjectivities are constituted: as cultural scripts, as texts written before us as us. It is confusing being a novel, a piece of fiction that considers itself a simple fact.» — Kripal sitúa la confusión en cómo está hecho el sujeto, escrito como guion cultural antes que él.

«They tell us that we are writing our own stories, even as we are also being read by them (since we are born into stories that we did not write). They also tell us—and here is the real point—that it is time to take more responsibility for this world-writing, to claim our own imaginative powers. In the words of one of the members of the adjustment team that we hear at the very end of The Adjustment Bureau, spoken to us, the viewers, “Maybe one day we won’t write the plan; you will.» — lo que Kripal saca de tres películas que nombra: que escribimos la historia y a la vez somos leídos por ella.

«I once heard him at a private symposium speculate on how his visitor experiences were likely shaped by the “bad sci-fi movies” he had seen in such abundance as a kid in the 1950s. In other words, what he saw in the cabin on that terrible night may not have been what was actually there, but what his imagination had been trained to see. Nevertheless, something was really there.» — Kripal recoge de viva voz a Strieber sobre el cine de ciencia ficción de los cincuenta, y conserva la reserva de que algo sí estaba ahí.

«And then the Hermes-like flip. “What we need to do now,” he mused, “is make better sci-fi movies so that we can have better contact experiences.” That is hermeneutics.» — la consecuencia práctica que Kripal le atribuye a Strieber en esa misma conversación.

«The subject and object of the practice of Hermes is the human imagination, which works like a magic mirror.» — Kripal pone la imaginación como objeto y sujeto de la hermenéutica, y la compara con un espejo mágico.

«we might think of the imagination as that mode of human knowing that intuits the unknowable “what is” and turns it into the knowable “what appears” so that a primate can make some sense out of that which its sensory system was not previously evolved to know or see, not at least on any regular, practical basis.» — la definición de Kripal: la imaginación traduce lo incognoscible a algo que un primate puede percibir.

«When the individual goes further and comes to recognize that these interpretations are both reflections of something real and human creations, that one is being interpreted as one interprets, being seen as one sees, then we call this paradoxical practice “hermeneutics.”» — Kripal separa interpretación de hermenéutica por el momento en que uno se sabe interpretado mientras interpreta.

«I have never been able to shake off that line, as if it somehow wanted to be written about. So I will. I want to employ the line as a kind of prism to engage Whitley’s invocation of “the imaginal” in the previous chapter.» — Kripal declara qué va a hacer con esa frase de Strieber, usarla de prisma para el imaginal.

«Whitley is not making up this word. It is thrown around quite a bit in the UFO literature, seldom, if ever, with an understanding of where it comes from or what it was first intended to express. Whitley’s use of it here is quite faithful to the term’s historical origins and original meanings, but both these origins and meanings need to be more fully explained so that the public conversation around the encounter experience can move forward and not keep stumbling over the same obstacles again and again.» — Kripal defiende el uso que Strieber le da a imaginal y le achaca a la literatura ovni usarlo sin conocer su origen.

«Debates about the imagination and its role in human knowledge go back in the West to ancient Greece around the secrets and enigmas of the revealed “symbol” and its relationship to the more plodding ways of reason and rational knowledge.» — Kripal remonta la discusión sobre la imaginación a Grecia y al enigma del símbolo revelado.

«The most recent chapter of that larger conversation goes back to the eighteenth century and what we now call the Romantic movement. The poets and philosophers of the latter asked: What is the imagination? Is it simply a spinner of fantasies? Or can it also become a “window” of revealed truths from some other deeper part of the soul or world?» — Kripal fecha el capítulo moderno de esa discusión en el romanticismo, con la imaginación como fábrica de fantasía o como ventana.

«is the imagination both, depending on whether one is looking at or through its reflecting surface, that is, depending on which side of it one is standing? Can one stand on both sides?» — la figura del espejo de doble vía con que Kripal deja las dos respuestas abiertas a la vez.

«example, why do we encounter near-death experiences in numerous cultures but notice that these are normally painted in the mythical colors and populated by the personalities of the local folklore? A Buddhist child in Sri Lanka does not see Jesus on a white horse, but a boy from the American Midwest has. What is the same from culture to culture? And what is different? Or for that matter, why do some UFO encounters look like some near-death experiences in American culture?» — las preguntas comparativas que Kripal usa para exigir una teoría de la imaginación, con el niño budista y el del Medio Oeste.

«I want to propose the idea that a rare but real form of the imagination may be what the conscious force of evolution looks like. And by “looks like,” I mean two things: how the evolutionary force appears to a human mind in a particular culture; and, with a bit of a trippy twist now, how the evolutionary force itself “sees.” I mean both sides of the two-way mirror. I mean both the reflecting back and the seeing through.» — la propuesta de Kripal, con sus dos sentidos: cómo se le aparece la fuerza evolutiva a una mente y cómo ve ella misma.

«That new territory involves the possibility that, in very special moments, the human imagination somehow becomes temporarily empowered or “zapped” and functions not as a simple spinner of fantasies (the imaginary) but as a very special organ of cognition and translation (the symbolic), as a kind of supersense that is perceiving some entirely different, probably nonhuman or superhuman order of reality but shaping that encounter into a virtual reality display in tune with the local culture» — lo que Kripal añade por su cuenta: la imaginación como órgano de cognición y traducción, no como fábrica de fantasía.

«I also cannot stress enough how damaging the inadequate models of the imagination have been to the public discussion. Take my two-way mirror analogy again. If you are working—consciously or unconsciously—with a model of the imagination as a mere projector of fantasy (if for you it is all reflecting back), then you will, then you must interpret the visions of the encounter experience as simple reflections of the visionary’s own psyche and culture. You think that we are all standing before a simple mirror, and that there is no other side to the mirror, much less beings on the other side looking in at us.» — la consecuencia que Kripal deriva del modelo de la imaginación como puro proyector: la visión queda reducida a la psique del visionario.

«I am suggesting that both sides of the mirror contain a piece of the truth but that each is incorrect if taken as the only perspective. I am also suggesting—and here is the really trippy part—that in extreme experiences like the contact or encounter experience both sides are in play at once.» — la propuesta de Kripal: cada lado del espejo tiene parte de razón y en el encuentro juegan los dos a la vez.

«This double model allows us to appreciate “what appears” without naively taking it literally as “what is,” but it also enables us to entertain the possibility that there is another side to the mirror, and that we can, as it were, see, and maybe even step, through it.» — lo que ese modelo doble le permite a Kripal, no literalizar la aparición sin cerrar el otro lado del espejo.

«His whole paradoxical notion of “communion” is about this same trippy idea of imagining a presence that is imagining us.» — Kripal lee la comunión de Strieber como imaginar una presencia que a su vez nos imagina.

«Some think this expression goes back to the French scholar of Islamic mysticism, Henry Corbin, which is partly true. Some think it goes back to C. G. Jung, which is partly true as well. Corbin borrowed it from Jung, who in turn borrowed it from a Swiss psychiatrist by the name of Theodore Flournoy, who used it in his classic study of the Swiss medium and visionary Catherine Elise Müller, From India to the Planet Mars (1900).» — Kripal traza la genealogía del imaginal, de Corbin a Jung y de Jung a Flournoy y su estudio de la médium Catherine Elise Müller.

«This particular book (written over a century ago) actually bears directly on the later alien-abduction literature for its careful engagement» — Kripal enlaza ese libro de 1900 con la literatura posterior de abducción, y aclara enseguida que la palabra tampoco es de Flournoy.

«The word “imaginal” was first brought into broad use in the early 1880s by the Cambridge University teacher of Latin and Greek, education reformer, and Victorian psychical researcher Frederic Myers (1843–1901).» — Kripal fecha el término en los años ochenta del siglo XIX y lo adjudica a Frederic Myers.

«Behind the imaginal, then, lay another new word inspired by this newfangled technology: “telepathy,” which Myers coined in 1882. He intended to express through this new word the fact that most dramatic psychical communications occur between loved ones within extreme emotional states, often in dangerous or deadly contexts.» — Kripal deriva telepatía de la misma pluma y del año 1882, y recoge de Myers que esas comunicaciones ocurren entre seres queridos en estados extremos.

«At first, they used the patently paradoxical expression “veridical hallucination” (if you haven’t noticed, paradox is everywhere when one ventures into these realms). The expression was meant to capture the simple fact that in the cases they were collecting the individuals know perfectly well that they are imagining, dreaming, or seeing a “hallucination,” but they also know that the dream or vision is “veridical,” that is, that it corresponds closely to something actually happening in historical and physical reality.» — Kripal explica la fórmula previa de Myers, la alucinación verídica, donde quien la tiene sabe que imagina y que lo imaginado ocurre.

«He noticed that telepathic communications were often accompanied by altered states of energy, or what he called (probably after the great Swedish clairvoyant Emanuel Swedenborg) an “influx” of spiritual energy. He began to speculate that these altered states of energy somehow fundamentally change how the imagination works.» — Kripal recoge la noción de influjo energético de Myers y le atribuye la fuente probable, Swedenborg.

«Supernormal meant “further along on the evolutionary spectrum.” It meant natural but highly evolved. Myers thought that in telepathic communications and precognitive dreams we are witnessing the early signs or buds of a still-evolving future super nature—ours. He meant the super natural.» — Kripal identifica lo supernormal de Myers con el título de este libro, y lo lee como naturaleza en curso de evolución.

«A word used of characteristics belonging to the perfect insect or imago;—and thus opposed to larval;— metaphorically applied to transcendental faculties shown in rudiment in ordinary life.» — definición de imaginal que Kripal cita de Myers, tomada de la entomología; voz de Myers.

«In entomology, an imago is the final adult form of an insect’s metamorphosis. This final stage is also sometimes called the imaginal stage, whereas the insect’s immature feeding form is called the larval stage. The larval stage of an insect, of course, generally looks nothing like its adult form or imaginal stage, although the latter develops from the former.» — Kripal explica el préstamo entomológico, con el estadio larval y el imaginal que no se parecen entre sí.

«Myers was also working in an era that commonly held, after the German comparative anatomist, defender of Darwin, and evolutionary mystic Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), that the development of an organism “recapitulates” or repeats its deep evolutionary history: Haeckel’s famous “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.» — Kripal sitúa a Myers en la época de Haeckel y de la recapitulación de la filogenia por la ontogenia.

«He even told a humorous parable about some “humble larvae” dissecting each other as they argue about their destinies and real natures. Everything about their wormy forms looks like it was made for the cabbage leaf. And yet they also appear to possess budding or potential features that look like they might be adapted to the air. One brave caterpillar points this out, but the rest don’t believe him. How silly. How ridiculous. Then, suddenly, a butterfly lands on the cabbage leaf. The brave caterpillar points out all of the features on the beautiful winged being that look like advanced developments of their own squishy bodies. The butterfly then flies away.» — la parábola de las larvas y la mariposa que Kripal resume de Myers.

«is exactly what I hold to have happened in the history of human evolution.”49 The imagination is now evolving into the imaginal. We are about to fly. The wormy munching stage of the larval will someday evolve into the perfect insect of the imaginal.» — la conclusión que Myers saca de su parábola, y la que Kripal le añade: la imaginación en curso de volverse imaginal.

«There are at least two different modes of the imaginal, which correspond to the two sides of the two-way mirror analogy (and it is only a rough analogy). There is what we might call the empirical imaginal, and there is what we might call the symbolic imaginal. Following and expanding upon Charles Fort, let us call the first a “wild talent” and the second a “wild vision.” Whitley has known both.» — Kripal parte el imaginal en dos y toma de Charles Fort los dos nombres, talento salvaje y visión salvaje.

«The empirical imaginal, or wild talent, names those moments when the dream or waking vision corresponds closely (but not always exactly) to an event in the objective world. Myers’s early “veridical hallucination” falls into this category: the visionary knows, instantly and firmly, that a loved one is in danger or has just died. Often, even the mode of death is known and described in the vision or dream.» — Kripal define el imaginal empírico por su correspondencia con un suceso del mundo, y acota que no siempre es exacta.

«Here the human imagination is, in a word, “clairvoyant.” It seems to work like a camera and a video projector: it somehow “sees” and then projects what is happening at some distance along the space-time continuum within a mini-movie in the mind of the visionary. Little or no interpretation is needed in this type of imaginal event. The visionary often knows instantly what the vision is about. The vision is about what it says it is about.» — Kripal describe ese modo como cámara y proyector, sin necesidad de interpretación.

«Finally, note that there need be only one world or order of being in play here. There is no invocation of an “otherworld” or another side of the mirror.» — el rasgo con que Kripal separa el talento salvaje: no hace falta otro mundo para explicarlo.

«They were talents because of their potential pragmatic usefulness; they were wild because they generally manifest only spontaneously, and we have not yet cultivated and integrated them into our lives and cultures.» — Kripal desglosa el nombre de Fort, talento por útil y salvaje por espontáneo y sin cultivar.

«By a wild talent I mean something that comes and goes, and is under no control, but that may be caught and trained.» — definición de Fort que Kripal cita, con la posibilidad de adiestrar la facultad; voz de Fort.

«The simplest of thought experiments can show how even a little precognition or clairvoyance could make a warrior nearly invincible or a hunting party astonishingly successful. And, indeed, we find various divinatory practices around military and hunting activities throughout the historical and anthropological records.» — Kripal deriva de la utilidad de la clarividencia la existencia de prácticas adivinatorias en la caza y en la guerra.

«The symbolic imaginal, or wild vision, works very differently. Here the dream or waking vision is experienced as mediating some other world or metaphysical truth.» — Kripal define el imaginal simbólico por mediar otro mundo o una verdad metafísica.

«Rather, the imagination is intuiting or sensing something Other or Alien and then translating, mediating, or picturing what it has known to a human psyche, but always in code. Hence interpretation is necessary. Note that there are at least two worlds or dimensions at play here.» — en ese segundo modo la imaginación traduce en clave, según Kripal, y por eso exige interpretación.

«Wild talents and wild visions clearly overlap and are probably functions of some deeper human capacity still, perhaps consciousness itself (whatever that is).» — Kripal deja las dos formas como funciones de una capacidad más honda que no nombra.

«As has been noted in the neuroscientific literature, the “movies” we see in dreams and in everyday sensory awareness are not entirely different, and everyday sensory consciousness can be thought of as a kind of dream that is constantly controlled and guided by sensory input from the external environment.» — Kripal acerca el sueño y la percepción ordinaria apoyándose en la literatura neurocientífica.

«So Whitley’s experience mixed or fused the symbolic (the trolls in overalls and the almond-eyed visitors) and the empirical (the recently deceased friend). The wild talent was the wild vision was the wild talent.» — Kripal encuentra las dos formas fundidas en una sola noche de Strieber, los trolls y el amigo muerto.

«Third, we can also be more open to what the visions are trying to say. For example, we need not now shy away from visionary phenomena that are bizarre or strange simply because they appear absurd or outrageous to our rational egos and ordinary sensory experiences. Indeed, we might well expect with our new notion of the symbolic imaginal that this absurdity is a necessary function of the translation across the border or threshold between two radically different forms of mind and being. How else is the farmer going to talk to the pig, or the library owner to the cat?» — Kripal convierte el absurdo de la visión en función necesaria de la traducción entre dos formas de mente.

«Fourth, we can be more suspicious. Maybe the farmer doesn’t want to communicate too much to the pig. Maybe the being on the other side of the two-way mirror doesn’t want to say too much to the being on this side.» — la cuarta consecuencia de Kripal, que del otro lado pueda no haber voluntad de decir demasiado.

«One morning, Adam awoke and began to chat, quite out of the blue, about a recent troubling encounter he had experienced during a kind of sleep paralysis episode, a fairly common state for him» — Kripal introduce el caso de su colega Adam Crabtree, historiador del mesmerismo, en un episodio de parálisis del sueño.

«Adam proceeded to describe hearing knocks on the ceiling or slanted roof (which happens to be just above his bed) and becoming aware of two malevolent “hypnagogic visitors,” working in tandem.» — lo que Crabtree le describió: golpes en el techo y dos visitantes hipnagógicos actuando a la par; voz de Crabtree.

«This caught my ear, of course, since it sounded like he was describing Whitley’s experience. Actually, it sounded exactly like Whitley’s experience. I asked him how many knocks there were. “Three,” he answered immediately. Well, shit.» — el detalle que a Kripal le hizo saltar el paralelo con Strieber, el número de golpes.

«So were Whitley and Adam separately “imagining” the same things? Is there some module or code in our brains for “ugly short troll in overalls” and “three knocks on the roof”? That seems unlikely. Or are there actual invisible trolls in overalls who mess with us while we sleep and like to knock three times on our shingles? That seems unlikely. Are we in the realm of the symbolic vision or the clairvoyant vision here? Wild vision or wild talent?» — Kripal descarta las dos salidas fáciles, el módulo cerebral y el troll real, y deja el caso sin adjudicar.

«I am always reminded here of the alien that appeared to Nebraska law officer Herbert Schirmer many decades ago. The alien is said to have left the good law officer with this piece of paradoxical, and funny, advice: “We want you to believe in us, but not too much.”52 That, it seems to me, is wise counsel for those of us who venture into the wild talents and wild visions of the imaginal realm. Believe them, if you must, but not too much. And keep a smile and a chuckle about you.» — Kripal cierra la sección con el consejo que se le atribuye al alienígena del policía Herbert Schirmer, y lo adopta como regla.

«The alien in the visions of Whitley and countless other abductee accounts is often described as insectoid in form. These haunting figures are frequently compared with an immense praying mantis or a human-sized insect. They communicate with humans telepathically. The immense almond-shaped eyes are compared with those of bugs.» — Kripal recoge la forma insectoide como rasgo común de los relatos de abducción, con la mantis por comparación frecuente.

«And the visionaries repeat again and again their intuited sense that what they saw was us coming back from the future.» — la intuición que Kripal encuentra repetida en los testigos, que lo visto éramos nosotros llegando del futuro.

«The modern abduction visions thus replicate, in precise and eerie detail, the thought of Frederic Myers: the same perfect insectoid form (Myers’s imaginal stage), the same telepathic powers (Myers coined the term), the same implicit call to become active participants in our own evolutionary advance (Myers’s sense of the supernormal as the superevolved and the imaginal as our future form).» — Kripal alinea punto por punto la visión moderna con el sistema de Myers, forma insectoide, telepatía y llamado evolutivo.

«What was a metaphor and a parable in Myers’s system over a century ago has become a literal visionary form in the contemporary scene.» — el desplazamiento que Kripal señala: lo que en Myers era parábola aparece hoy como forma visionaria literal.

«How do we explain such precise resonances between this Victorian psychical researcher and our contemporary abduction literature? Did Myers himself, like my imagined Charles Fort, have some sort of proto-abduction experience or insectoid vision? We will never know.» — Kripal plantea la pregunta por esa coincidencia, se pregunta si Myers tuvo su propia visión y se abstiene de contestar.

«Like Myers’s beautiful butterfly, these perfect insects have taken flight off the cabbage leaf before our wormy eyes, this time in a glowing machine that we call, with much too narrow a vision, a UFO.» — Kripal cierra su capítulo 7 con la mariposa de Myers y le reprocha al término ovni su estrechez.

«Put most simply, he was too honest. Put more complexly, he followed the cardinal rule of psychoanalysis, which is to speak exactly what appears in one’s experience without self-censorship or concern about what others might think.» — la respuesta de Kripal a por qué se condenó a Strieber, con la regla del psicoanálisis por medida.

«He has also traced much of his visionary life back to his dream-life, his childhood, and his sexuality—all classic psychoanalytic themes. In psychoanalysis, of course, this is all done in the professional confidence of the analysis: the secrets are shared by just two people with the presumption that speaking secrets is ultimately healing. Shockingly, Whitley did the same in broad daylight in the glare of the public page» — Kripal encuentra en Strieber los temas clásicos del psicoanálisis y señala que él los dijo en público, no en el consultorio.

«As in psychoanalysis, I think he did this to help us heal our public culture, mired in a materialism so deep that it can only be haunted by the numinous.» — el propósito que Kripal le atribuye a esa exposición pública, sanar una cultura que solo puede ser rondada por lo numinoso.

«Not only did he speak his secrets in public, but he also spoke reverently and fearfully of a divine presence that was feminine, that broke and rode him like a horse, an erotic presence into which he disappeared in waves of terror and pleasure so overwhelming that they literally washed away his personality.» — Kripal describe lo que Strieber puso en la página como presencia divina femenina, en registro a la vez reverente y aterrado.

«By so doing, he spoke of a presence at the very heart of the unconscious of the religious West, a presence that has been repressed and denied for three millennia. He spoke of Her.» — la tesis de Kripal sobre lo que hace escandaloso a Strieber: nombra lo femenino reprimido del Occidente religioso.

«Comparison. Phenomenology. History. Hermeneutics. Scholars of religion have another practice for thinking about religious phenomena across great stretches of space and time. That practice is sex. Well, okay, it’s not actually sex. It’s thinking and talking about human sexuality, gender, and sexual orientation in more and more precise ways. Let us give this entire complex of modern thought and practice a new name. Let us call it erotics, as in the expressions “physics” and “optics.”» — Kripal enumera sus cuatro prácticas y bautiza la quinta, la erótica, con sufijo de disciplina.

«Erotics, as we shall see, is a very big word. It encompasses everything from the microchemistry, biology, and neurology of sexual arousal, through the immeasurable stretches of time (and countless sexual acts) of evolutionary history, to the socially shaped natures of sexual desire and gender identity, to the sublimation, or “making sublime,” of erotic energies into thought, art, and civilization, even, if we are to believe the reports, into the highest flights of mystical ecstasy and metaphysical vision. Erotics, finally, is also deeply related to another topic to which we will arrive soon enough: the energetics of the soul.» — la extensión que Kripal le da a esa disciplina, de la bioquímica a la sublimación y a la energética del alma.

«We can thus use our bodies to understand one another across cultures and times. We may not speak the same languages, and we certainly hold different beliefs and values and even, no doubt, differently nuanced sexual desires and genders. But we were all conceived in a sexual act (at least until very recently with the new fertility technology). We were all “born of a woman.” And we all have experienced sexual desire, if, yes, in incredibly different ways.» — el argumento comparativo de Kripal: el cuerpo compartido es el terreno común entre culturas y tiempos.

«Its invisible lightning cracks and arcs from the lowest reaches of human cruelty, violence, and aggression into the highest reaches of the human spirit. It is a bit like nuclear energy: it can be used to power a city, or melt one.» — Kripal describe el alcance de esa energía con la comparación nuclear, sin lado bueno ni malo asignado.

«Eros for Plato was not some simple reproductive instinct. It was the secret driving force of reproduction, for sure, but it was also the secret driving force of (male-to-male) education, of culture, and of the arts. And, most important of all, it was also the secret driving force of the search for wisdom and divine vision.» — Kripal recoge de Platón un eros que mueve la reproducción, la educación, las artes y la busca de sabiduría.

«Indeed, if eros could be redirected from the “vulgar” objects of heterosexual reproduction and the “heavenly” objects of homoerotic desire, it could become “winged” for ecstatic flight and take the eroticized philosopher into the highest realms of the cosmos.» — el mecanismo platónico según Kripal: el eros redirigido se vuelve alado y sube al filósofo.

«Freud, in the last century, would pick up on Plato and pursue the nitty-gritty specifics of how human sexual energy, which he called “libido,” morphs through the human life cycle and body (from the entire body, to the mouth, to the anus, to, eventually, the adult genitals) in specific family constellations. He also showed us, again, how this energy can be sublimated into various cultural works of art, literature, and religion.» — Kripal continúa la serie con Freud y su libido sublimada en obras de arte, literatura y religión.

«Whenever, for example, one is looking at extreme religious experiences, the sexual elements are probably not far behind. Sometimes they have been repressed or censored, or sublimated almost beyond recognition, but they are usually there, burning in the background, like a halo glowing on a saint or a flame dancing on the tip of a demon’s tail.» — la regla de oficio que Kripal declara: donde hay experiencia religiosa extrema, lo sexual anda cerca aunque esté censurado.

«I think Anne was central to all of this: as Whitley’s lifelong intellectual partner, as his co-writer, as his co-researcher, but also as his wife and lover.» — Kripal le da a Anne Strieber lugar central en la comunión, en sus cuatro papeles.

«We never imagine sex “writing” these genetic codes in any conscious or creative way. Quite the contrary, we are asked by conventional science to think of all of this as ultimately meaningless, without any goal or purpose, and certainly without any conscious intention or internal intelligence or agency.» — Kripal describe el supuesto corriente que va a poner en duda, el de una sexualidad sin intención ni agencia.

«Most human cultures before our own have understood sexuality as sacred, that is to say, they experienced a terrifying and terrific divinity in it. Many traditional cultures went even further and saw it as a means to deify the human being.» — Kripal sitúa lo sexual como sagrado en la mayoría de las culturas, y en algunas como vía de divinización.

«The story clearly links the two forbidden trees—the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the Tree of Life—within a single narrative. Eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil produces immediate sexual shame, and so the young couple covers their genitals after tasting it. The same “eating” or “knowing” (a biblical euphemism for “having sex”) also invokes a set of punishments that fit the crime, in true biblical style. So Eve will suffer in childbirth, which is the direct result of the original “crime,” and Adam will have to toil in the fields, “plowing,” “seed,” and “soil” being what they were in ancient agriculture—heavily sexualized metaphors in the male imagination.» — Kripal lee el Génesis con los dos árboles en una sola trama y los castigos como castigos sexuales.

«The fruit of the Tree of Life is not sex. It is deification. If the couple eats of this fruit, they will become gods. The couple, of course, is banished from the garden for their sexual disobedience before they can eat of the second tree, but the story stands: sexuality and divinization are the two (forbidden) trees of our original mythical home.» — Kripal identifica el segundo árbol con la deificación y deja los dos frutos prohibidos como el par fundacional.

«We are morally tortured by our sexual desires and broken gender relations (all that Adam lording it over Eve), and we have hardly begun to struggle with our potential deification.» — el balance de Kripal sobre esos dos frutos, con la deificación apenas empezada.

«we can easily see that human beings have been experiencing themselves as the sexual objects of gods, goddesses, and other discarnate beings for a very long time. Witness the “sons of God” taking human wives to produce hybrid heroes just a few chapters later in Genesis 6. Witness the sexual nature of the djinn of Islamic folklore. Witness the nineteenth-century American Spiritualists engaging spirits erotically and, in the process, imagining entirely new gender and sexual relations. Witness the British lore around intense sexual emotions temporarily “lifting the veil” between this world and the other.» — Kripal alinea los hijos de Dios del Génesis 6, los yinn del folclore islámico y los espiritistas americanos como casos del mismo trato erótico con lo incorpóreo.

«pages, and we would not come to the end of examples.54 The history of religions is a history of strange sex.» — la fórmula con que Kripal resume ese inventario.

«The problem is this: in the monotheistic West, the divine can only be imagined as male. Exceptions aside, at the end of the day God is a He, a Father, a Lord, a King, a male Creator without a divine partner or a wife. There is God, but no Goddess. There is some good evidence that the biblical God once had a spouse, a Goddess, as it were, but She was long ago banished from memory and proper belief.» — Kripal formula el problema de fondo del capítulo y añade que hay indicios de que ese dios tuvo esposa.

«My colleague April DeConick calls this ancient pattern “holy misogyny.”55 By this phrase, she means to point out that this basic disregard for women is not something tangential to the biblical traditions. It is something fundamental to them. It goes very, very deep.» — Kripal toma de April DeConick la fórmula de la misoginia santa y subraya que no es accesoria a la tradición bíblica.

«Another consequence of the all-male gender grammar that is seldom commented on is that it results in a spiritual world in which human males have no “Her” with whom to commune, much less with whom to unite erotically and lovingly.» — la consecuencia menos comentada según Kripal: al varón no le queda una Ella con quien comulgar.

«This is why Jesus asked his closest male disciples not be married and to “castrate” themselves for the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 19:12): apparently, he wanted them to reject (hetero)sexuality and take on a feminized relationship to the divine.» — Kripal lee el pasaje de Mateo 19:12 como pedido de una relación feminizada con lo divino.

«This is why some of the greatest saints of the Catholic tradition were called “bridal mystics.” They had—man and woman, alike—wed the god-man, become his spouses. Put in contemporary terms, a kind of spiritual or sublimated “gay marriage” was the norm among male Christian mystics for centuries.» — Kripal describe la mística nupcial como matrimonio con el dios varón, y lo llama en términos de hoy un matrimonio del mismo sexo.

«I am thinking of traditions like the medieval Movement of the Free Spirit, who were known (or said to be known) for any number of spiritual and sexual excesses, including ritual nudity, the practice of free love, and the attempted sublimation of orgasm into mystical ecstasy, and who spoke, at least according to the heresy records, of sexual intercourse as “the joy of Paradise.» — Kripal pone al Movimiento del Libre Espíritu como excepción, con la cautela de que lo sabe por actas de herejía.

«I am also thinking of more modern figures, like William Blake, the Romantic poet-painter who drew angels caressing immense phalli and a holy chapel in and as a woman’s vagina. Or the French paleontologist and priest Teilhard de Chardin, who saw the evolution of the cosmos as a divine incarnation spread out over billions of years and dreamed of a day that Christian couples could encounter a God of love within their heterosexual intercourse.» — las otras dos excepciones de Kripal, Blake y Teilhard de Chardin, con la evolución del cosmos como encarnación divina.

«Hence my humorous memory of the kind monk who once told me how they sold Teilhard’s books in the Catholic seminary bookstore in the 1960s and early ’70s. Since these books were all incredibly popular but also frowned upon by Rome (they could not be published during the priest’s life), the monks hid them under the counter and handed them over to eager readers in brown paper bags—exactly like (heterosexual) pornography was sold at the time in drugstores. That’s what a spiritualized heterosexuality or sexually active evolutionary mysticism is in a monotheistic world: pornography, heresy, impossible.» — anécdota con que Kripal ilustra la marginación de Teilhard, con los libros vendidos en bolsa de papel.

«In the context of a religion like Christianity in which God is male, any erotic relationship with this God for men will be, by definition, homoerotic in structure. I am not suggesting anything genital or even conscious here, nor am I passing any moral judgment.» — la tesis estructural de Kripal sobre lo homoerótico en la mística cristiana, con la reserva de que no habla de conducta ni juzga.

«This is Whitley’s real crime and the deeper reason that Communion was so vehemently rejected by fundamentalist Christians. He was offering what is essentially a feminine divine and a male heterosexual spirituality, neither of which can fit into the gender grammar of the monotheistic West.» — la explicación de Kripal para el rechazo fundamentalista a Communion: un divino femenino y una espiritualidad heterosexual masculina.

«Go ahead and track the uses of “communion” in Communion. You will see that, in almost every case, this communion signals some profound emotional connection to another human being, and that human being is usually Anne.» — Kripal propone un recuento de la palabra en el libro de Strieber y adelanta el resultado, que casi siempre remite a Anne Strieber.

«For whatever else or more it may be, Whitley’s “communion” is fundamentally about human emotion and a married, procreative heterosexuality. It is about a profound cosmic love between a man and a woman.» — Kripal define la comunión de Strieber como emoción humana y heterosexualidad conyugal, sin cerrar qué más pueda ser.

«As I read him, Whitley is not saying in this passage that the goddess and the alien are “nothing but” human sexual instincts. He is not reducing the spiritual to the sexual, as, say, Freud might. Rather, he is saying that there is something fundamentally “divine” or “alien” about human sexuality itself.» — Kripal marca la diferencia con Freud: Strieber no reduce lo espiritual a lo sexual sino que le encuentra algo divino a lo sexual.

«He is not reducing the gods and goddesses to sex. He is raising sex to the gods and goddesses. He is “flipping” the whole thing around.» — la operación que Kripal llama el vuelco, con la dirección invertida respecto de la reducción.

«I call these expressions of human sexuality “super sexualities.” By such a phrase I do not mean to suggest that Whitley and Anne’s sexualities are or were somehow better than ours, somehow “super” in relationship to our “not so super.” I mean to suggest that there is something super about sexuality itself.» — Kripal acuña el término del capítulo y aclara que no compara sexualidades sino que califica a la sexualidad como tal.

«I mean to suggest that, in rare but real moments, human sexuality can “flip over,” “reverse itself,” or “turn inside out” and thus be revealed as something uncanny, something that earlier cultures identified as “supernatural” but we might just as well recognize, with a single careful pause, as “super natural.” That’s the flip.» — la definición del vuelco: la sexualidad que se invierte y aparece como lo que otras culturas llamaron sobrenatural.

«Sexuality, of course, is not just connected to our most intimate loves. It is also connected to our most violent cruelties, our most severe repressions, and our worst fears. Little wonder, then, that the monster and the demon often show up in our sexual lives.» — Kripal conecta lo sexual con la crueldad y el miedo, y de ahí saca la presencia del monstruo y del demonio.

«Consider, as a single eccentric case, the Mothman of Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Here was a red-eyed, seven-foot winged monster who displayed a disturbing preference for terrifying menstruating women and whose multiple spectral manifestations in 1967 were accompanied by numerous UFO encounters. The latter UFO phenomenon, John Keel notes in his famous book on the Mothman, “displays an almost pornographic preoccupation with our mating practices.» — Kripal usa el Mothman de 1967 como caso y cita a John Keel sobre la preocupación del fenómeno por el apareamiento.

«I knew that UFOs often zero in on lovers in parked cars,” Keel explains. He also knew that many men and women who have encountered these things often find their marriages on the rocks, “after they begin their liaisons with the space people.» — dos observaciones de Keel que Kripal reproduce, la de los autos estacionados y la de los matrimonios rotos; voz de Keel.

«of his erotic occult encounters were hardly unreasonable ones. They fit into a much larger pattern.» — Kripal absuelve de irracional la inquietud conyugal de Strieber por la vía del patrón documentado.

«I would put all of this in the form of a rhetorical question: Is there something cosmic about human sexuality, something at once erotic and daimonic, something that can only reveal itself to us in spectral forms, like humming blue balls of conscious fire, UFOs, winged monsters, and almond-eyed sci-fi goddesses? It’s not really a question. I think so.» — Kripal plantea la pregunta por una sexualidad cósmica y a la vez daimónica, y la contesta él mismo.

«Whether we are dealing with canonized Catholic saints or an American monster folklore, one thing is obvious enough in these accounts: sex is not just sex. Sex is “divine.” Sex is a “demon.” Sex is dangerous. Sex is a glowing blue ball of light. Or a giant man-bat. Or a feminine presence that drags a professional writer out of his comfortable life and beats him into a spiritual awakening.» — Kripal reúne santos y folclore de monstruos bajo una sola afirmación, que el sexo no es solo sexo.

«The dark side is important. We should not look away. Why? Because it is one of the faces of the same presence or power.» — Kripal se niega a apartar el lado oscuro por ser cara de la misma potencia.

«There is a reason for this. There is sex only because there is death. If there were no death, there would be no need for sexuality. Sex and death are two sides of the same biological coin, and we are that flipping coin.» — el argumento biológico con que Kripal enlaza sexo y muerte como caras de una moneda.

«Some of these traditions, and particularly the Catholic tradition into which both Whitley and I were born, have too often implied or openly claimed that the sexual and the spiritual are opposing forces, that sex must be left behind, renounced, or denied for the life of the spirit.» — Kripal nombra la herencia católica de los dos autores como fuente del supuesto de que lo sexual y lo espiritual se oponen.

«Allow those fluid forces to flow out “down there” and they would not go “up.” Seems simple enough.» — la metáfora hidráulica antigua que Kripal reconstruye para explicar esa oposición.

«One suppresses the sexual to get to the spiritual not because these two movements are completely different, but because deeper down they are the same. Sex and spirit are two ends of the same human spectrum (and the same spine). They are not really opposed. They are part of the same living system—us.» — la vuelta de Kripal: la represión funciona porque los dos extremos son lo mismo, no porque se opongan.

«The sacred captures the very ancient sensibility that that which is holy or sacred manifests in two different ways: in a positive, “right-handed,” beneficent way» — Kripal recupera de Otto la doble manifestación de lo sagrado, con la mano derecha por lado benéfico.

«To see or touch God in the Hebrew Bible does not lead to warm fuzzy feelings or ethical social behavior. It kills you. God in this ancient sense is not a nice person, much less someone to date. God is a fierce and powerful presence that is alluring and beautiful but also terrifying and deadly. God is awe-full.» — Kripal describe al dios bíblico como potencia temible, no como persona amable.

«So, too, was a writer like the great Irish poet W. B. Yeats (1865–1939), who took this name when he was initiated into a magical society: Demon Est Deus Inversus. The Demon Is God Reversed.» — Kripal cierra con el lema que Yeats tomó al iniciarse en una sociedad mágica, traducido en la misma línea.

«since it allows us to embrace both the positive and the negative experiences, and—and this is the real point—to see these seeming opposites as two ends of the same spectral phenomena, or as reversed mirror images of each other. We no longer need to deny one for the other.» — Kripal usa lo sagrado ambivalente para admitir a la vez el arrobo y la violación en el relato de Strieber.

«It is time to stare into the mirror and step through. It is time to shift the conversation around sexuality, too.» — Kripal extiende a la sexualidad el programa de cambiar la conversación.

«A student asked me afterward how I determined which of these stories are true. Behind his polite question I detected another edgier one: Why believe any of these outrageous tales at all?» — la pregunta de un estudiante que Kripal usa para introducir su razón personal.

«That is a fair question, but it has a simple answer. That answer involves the fact that I have been in such a super sexual state myself. Because of this, I often recognize, immediately, the details and nuances of that remembered state in the reports of others. I accept the reports I accept because I recognize my own experience in them. I know that my own state really happened, so why doubt the reports of others when they were structured like my own, often down to tiny weird details?» — Kripal contesta declarando haber estado él mismo en ese estado, y hace de ahí su criterio de aceptación.

«Put differently, I look for correspondences and energetic resonances. I compare. Such a method is not perfect, of course. I may be wrong in this or that case. I am certain I am, actually, although I do not have any way of knowing when and where.» — Kripal nombra su criterio y admite en la misma línea que se equivoca sin saber dónde.

«Moreover, is not this the same method of those who reject such states? Do individuals not reject the authenticity of this or that fantastic state because they can find nothing in their own experiences with which to compare it? Everyone compares. Everyone finds, or does not find, resonances and correspondences.» — Kripal devuelve el argumento: quien rechaza también compara, contra su propia experiencia.

«The correspondences started with a painting and a book cover. Like so many of the hundreds of thousands of readers Whitley and Anne heard from after Communion hit the bookstores, I recognized the face on the cover.» — Kripal se pone entre los lectores que reconocieron el rostro de la portada de Communion.

«Those large almond-shaped eyes are iconic in the esoteric religious tradition to which I gave my first academic love and attentions: Bengali Shakta Tantra.» — Kripal adjudica esos ojos al tantra shakta bengalí, la tradición de su primer trabajo académico.

«Shakta Tantra is an esoteric tradition that emphasizes the erotic conscious energies (shakti) of the goddess Kali and the ways that these energies can be awakened in the human body through the right yogic or sexual techniques, or through the touch of an awakened and empowered Tantric teacher.» — la definición que Kripal da de esa tradición, con la shakti de Kali despertada por técnica yóguica, sexual o por contacto del maestro.

«Toward this end, he had taken up a particular practice recommended by the out-of-body researcher and technician Robert Monroe: “mind awake/body asleep.» — Kripal adjudica a Robert Monroe la técnica que dice que Strieber adoptó para profundizar el contacto.

«This simple description, at least, is very familiar to the folklorist and the reader of mystical literature as a consciously cultivated form of sleep paralysis, a physiological condition in which the body is indeed asleep or paralyzed but the mind is on-line and, often, engaged in elaborate visionary displays of (or encounters with) discarnate beings.» — Kripal identifica esa técnica con una parálisis del sueño cultivada a propósito.

«Whitley put himself in such a state in order to leave his body. Almost immediately, he witnessed a vision of the “long, gray hand of a visitor pointing at a box.” Such an abstract vision had a most unusual and surprising effect on him. It caused “an explosive sexual reaction» — Kripal resume el episodio de Transformation, con una visión abstracta que dispara una reacción sexual.

«So what do we have here? We have a mind-awake/body-asleep state that results in an incredible blast of supersexual energies, which in turn catalyze an out-of-body experience and some subsequent ideas about the electromagnetic nature of the human soul outside the body/brain.» — Kripal reduce el episodio de Strieber a cuatro pasos encadenados, del estado a la idea del alma electromagnética.

«Somewhere in the middle of the celebration, I “woke up asleep” one morning, that is, I found myself to be conscious and awake but also physically paralyzed. I could not move. Looking back, I would say that I was in some sort of trance state» — Kripal fecha su propio episodio en el Kali Puja de noviembre de 1989 y lo describe como despertar paralizado.

«As I puzzled over my odd condition, I felt some eerie presence enter the room, or emerge from some other occult dimension, or come out of my own body (I have no idea which it was).» — Kripal deja las tres procedencias posibles de esa presencia sin elegir ninguna.

«Whatever they were, these energies were alive. They knew what they were doing, and I was the object of their power and intention. Or their prey.» — Kripal le atribuye a esas energías intención propia y se pone como objeto, o como presa.

«these are not mesmerist, Spiritualist, contactee, or New Age metaphors to be mocked by some arrogant intellectual who has never known such altered states of mind and energy and so has no idea what he or she is talking about.» — Kripal defiende el vocabulario energético como descripción y no como metáfora de época.

«But, on some deep, unspoken level, I assumed—no doubt from my years of reading both psychoanalytic theory on sublimation and South Asian Tantric literature on the redirection of sexual energies from the genitals into the cranial cavity—that, if I came, the fantastic states that I was experiencing would go away. I thought that it was a matter of either “going out” or “going in.”» — Kripal atribuye su decisión de aquel momento a sus lecturas previas, psicoanálisis de la sublimación y literatura tántrica.

«I intuitively held my breath (breath and energy are linked in Tantric yoga) and “went in.» — la maniobra que Kripal describe, con la vinculación tántrica de aliento y energía dicha entre paréntesis.

«The conscious electricity responded with what I can only describe as an ecstatic implosion. It felt like I was being sucked into some kind of invisible portal or black hole that paradoxically went “in” to go “out.” It was as if a cosmic orgasm suddenly turned inside-out or outside-in (such three-dimensional metaphors are useless here). I was now being helplessly pulled out of my body by some powerful, invisible “magnet.” I felt and saw myself floating to the ceiling of the room. Now I was really scared.» — Kripal describe la implosión extática y la salida del cuerpo, con las metáforas espaciales declaradas inútiles.

«I am not claiming any kind of literal levitation, although that may have been the case. I really have no idea what an external observer would have seen (or not seen) in that room on that Night. I am simply describing what I experienced. I am describing, as best I can, the phenomena—what I sensed, knew, and “saw” with my temporarily electrified imagination.» — Kripal se abstiene del hecho físico y se queda en el fenómeno, lo que él sintió y vio.

«I vaguely remember a gap at this point, although I do not know if that is correct or a function of my later reading of the pattern of “lost time” in the UFO literature.» — Kripal duda de su propio recuerdo del lapso y considera que se lo haya puesto su lectura posterior.

«I woke up with what felt like a buzzing body, as if some kind of weird electromagnetic gnosis had been transmitted into me. I wrote my first three books directly out of that whatever-it-was and have spent most of the last decade or so trying to convince my professional colleagues that mind has something to do with a superconscious energy that is not produced by the brain» — Kripal hace nacer sus primeros libros de aquella noche y resume la tesis que sostiene desde entonces sobre mente y cerebro.

«The correspondences between these two stories are precise and obvious: awake/sleep state, supersexual implosion, out-of-body experience, and a subsequent conviction in an independent electromagnetic soul or cosmic mind.» — los cuatro puntos en que Kripal hace coincidir su noche de Calcuta con el episodio de Strieber.

«Ramakrishna was famous for “zapping” his disciples with a hand or a foot while he was alive, exactly like this. My own experience even has a well-established name in Tantric culture: shakti-pat, literally, a “descent of Power.”» — Kripal le da nombre tántrico a su propia experiencia, shakti-pat, y la pone en el linaje de Ramakrishna.

«The notion of shakti carries the sense of an energy, at once palpably physical and spiritual, that is transmitted, like an electric current, from a spiritual master to a disciple. There is also a rich tradition of receiving such a transmission in dream or sleep states.» — la definición de shakti que da Kripal, energía a la vez física y espiritual transmitida de maestro a discípulo.

«Transmission or no, I am not spiritually gifted. I have had only one such experience. I suppose it was enough, though. I have written about this experience many times, as it lies at the origin point of my writing career and all of my books, each of which is a halting, stumbling, imperfect stuttering of whatever (or whoever) was downloaded into me that Night.» — Kripal acota su propio caso a un solo episodio y hace de él el origen de toda su obra.

«When I chose to go “in” instead of “out,” the same energies that I thought were electrocuting me and were certainly sexually arousing me now pulled me “up” and “out” of my body. The erotic morphed into the mystical. Sex flipped over and revealed itself as spirit. Not that it lasted. Not that I remember it in all its details. Not that I know what it all means. But the energetic equation had been drawn by the event, and I would never forget it: sex and spirit are two expressions of the same conscious energy. Our sexualities, with the slightest flip, can reveal themselves to be super sexualities.» — la ecuación que Kripal saca de esa noche, sexo y espíritu como dos formas de una misma energía, con tres reservas seguidas.

«We cannot make naive equations. We cannot take our experiences as boilerplates into which to force fit the rest of humanity. But just as certainly, we can identify similarities, sometimes even uncanny similarities. We are not Martians to one another. We are human beings, all.» — Kripal pone la cautela antes de comparar tantra y abducción: ni ecuaciones ingenuas ni la experiencia propia como molde.

«The correspondences between Indian Tantric traditions and American abduction literature are quite striking—striking enough to raise the eyebrows of the comparativist who happens to know something about both traditions. Central to both, for example, are a broad range of paranormal powers or siddhis initiated by the Tantric practice or yoga and the spontaneous abduction experience. Telepathic communications, channeled revelations, and levitation or spiritual flight are some of the most commonly reported. Also central to both are the production of trance and a broad range of possession states, both positive and negative—bliss and terror abound.» — los paralelos que Kripal enumera entre las dos literaturas, los siddhis, el trance y los estados de posesión.

«Sex with discarnate beings is also a central concern of both literatures. These erotic encounters might be completely spontaneous or unsought and lead toward a kind of human-alien hybridity, as we see in much of the abduction literature. Or they might be ritually and contemplatively cultivated toward a communion or union with a particular deity figure, even an explicit human deification as a deity, as we see in the Hindu and Buddhist Tantric traditions.» — Kripal separa las dos versiones del trato erótico con lo incorpóreo, la espontánea y la ritualmente cultivada.

«Both the Tantric and abduction literatures are also filled with various kinds of strange photic phenomena, spiritual bodies of light, unearthly radiances, and exotic forms of energy awakening at the base of the spine, shooting up (or down) the spinal column, and floating just above the head, often as a conscious ball or blossom of light.» — tercer bloque de paralelos según Kripal, los fenómenos lumínicos y la energía que sube por la columna.

«Whereas the powers and energies appear to be uncannily similar, their cultural and mythical expressions remain dramatically different.» — el límite con que Kripal cierra esos paralelos: coinciden los poderes, no las expresiones culturales.

«My colleague David Gordon White, in my own mind the most eloquent and learned interpreter of the Indian Tantric traditions writing today, has explicitly invoked what he very carefully calls “UFO-like” language to make sense of ancient» — Kripal remite a Kiss of the Yogini de David Gordon White y subraya la cautela con que ese autor usa el vocabulario ovni.

«In sections with titles like “Early South Asian Aviators” and “Men Flying Spacecraft,” David writes of flying temples (vimana), royal airships, and the “landing fields” and “launching pads” of open-air, circular temples, where contact with the fierce female beings from the sky (the yoginis) were believed to take place.» — lo que Kripal recoge de esos capítulos, los templos voladores y los templos circulares al aire libre como sitios de contacto con las yoguinis.

«More or less exactly like the female visitor of Whitley’s account, these yoginis were described as descending from the sky to abduct, terrify, sexualize, and spiritually awaken the aspirant.» — Kripal hace coincidir el descenso de las yoguinis con el de la visitante de Strieber, rapto y despertar incluidos.

«The yoni or sacred vagina of the Goddess—the second “mouth” to be kissed, as it were—has been widely worshipped in India, along with the lingam or divine phallus, for millennia for many reasons, but one of them particularly evident in the more secret practices of the Tantric traditions is especially relevant here: sexual fluids were considered to be spiritually potent power substances.» — lo que Kripal retiene de las prácticas secretas tántricas: los fluidos sexuales como sustancias de poder.

«Whitley’s otherwise bizarre story of finding himself forced into kissing and, I assume, consuming the fluids of the glowing vagina of a feminine alien presence makes remarkably good sense in this context. The scene reads like something straight out of a medieval Tantric ritual. Kiss of the yogini, indeed!» — Kripal lee el episodio de la vagina luminosa de Strieber como escena de ritual tántrico medieval.

«White’s careful comparisons between the two bodies of literature are playful and poetic. He is not drawing any literal identification, much less is he offering some ancient astronaut idea.» — Kripal marca que ese autor no identifica ni propone astronautas antiguos, y atribuye el acierto a que las resonancias existen.

«To take just one pattern, it is again striking to observe that bodily substances like semen, blood, and even feces are sometimes said to be collected in both the mythologized Tantric rituals and the reported abduction events.» — otro paralelo que Kripal señala, la recolección de sustancias corporales en los dos corpus.

«Obviously, something at once biological, sexual, and spiritual is being articulated in both cultural contexts. In the ancient South Asian context, this something is coded toward a human-divine union, deification, and experienced flight. In the modern American context, it is coded toward an evolutionary transformation, a spiritual mutation, and various out-of-body experiences, that is, another kind of flight.» — Kripal separa las dos codificaciones del mismo material, unión divina en un caso y mutación evolutiva en el otro.

«To take this comparative practice one step further, yoginis in South Asia were sometimes depicted as avicephalic, that is, bird-headed. David reproduces a photograph of a statue of such a bird-headed yogini. The face of the yogini strongly resembles the famous long-faced, pointed-chin, tiny-mouthed female being of Whitley’s Communion cover.» — Kripal acerca la yoguini de cabeza de ave a la figura de la portada de Communion.

«Whitley himself recognized the same iconic resonance in the pages of Communion and even names Kali and the Indian Tantric traditions there, along with the ancient Sumerian goddess Ishtar, as especially close to what he saw and knew as Her. He sees the resonances, although he does not draw any kind of simplistic equation.» — Kripal consigna que Strieber ya había nombrado a Kali y a Ishtar en Communion, y que tampoco él hizo la ecuación simple.

«Nor am I. I am not arguing that: “The modern contactee experience is about Indian Tantra.” Nor am I saying: “Indian Tantra was inspired by aliens.” These simplistic claims are species of the religious and reductive comparisons that I rejected in chapter 1. Neither can work in the end.» — Kripal niega las dos lecturas simples de su propia comparación y las adscribe a los dos vicios que ya había rechazado.

«What can work is an honest and systematic observation of the very clear comparative resonances between the two cultural traditions.» — lo único que Kripal reivindica de su ejercicio, la observación sistemática de las resonancias.

«The project of “comparing communions” might also eventually lead to the development of a new mystical practice, a western “contact yoga” in deep conversation with our religious pasts (all of them), our evolutionary biology, our quantum physics, our cosmology, and our new understandings of human sexuality. Certainly such a future practice will require a much richer and more generous imagining of the divine presence. He must also become She.» — Kripal propone un yoga de contacto occidental y le pone por condición un imaginario de lo divino que incluya lo femenino.

«I do not know what those deeper processes might be. I am only suggesting them, pointing toward them. But, clearly, something is flying around in our folklore. And it’s something super sexual.» — Kripal cierra su capítulo 9 admitiendo que no sabe cuáles son esos procesos y que solo los señala.

«the thing in Whitley’s ear is important, but probably not for any of the reasons that are ordinarily offered. For example, it is probably not important because it was put there by aliens. What is the evidence of that?» — Kripal concede importancia al objeto y le retira de entrada la explicación alienígena por falta de pruebas.

«I am also skeptical that there were living human beings in the room doing this to him, although I know Whitley disagrees with me here. I am skeptical for two basic reasons: first, because of what Whitley describes as “a flash of light from outside and a great crashing in the woods” from which the intruders appeared to be running away; this suggests something more spectral or UFO-like than military professionals.» — Kripal discrepa aquí de su coautor, lo declara y da su primera razón, el destello y el estrépito en el bosque.

«I take the human figures of Whitley’s narrative, then, to be projected apparitions in some sense, which leaves the door open to their true nature and whether their projectors were in fact human, nonhuman, or future-human.» — la lectura de Kripal, apariciones proyectadas, con la naturaleza del proyector dejada abierta en tres ramas.

«I could be very wrong. Other aspects of the event look very much like a military-style abduction. Or were these individuals—I don’t know any other way to say this—real human beings from the future? The crashing light in the woods suggests a strange presence of some kind. Clearly, there was also an electromagnetic signature, suggestive of some advanced technology. I am willing to be wrong, spectacularly wrong.» — Kripal admite la lectura contraria, la de una abducción de tipo militar, y se declara dispuesto a equivocarse.

«It also seems highly unlikely that the implant is important because it works as some kind of tracking device. Given the recent advances of nanotechnology (which are no doubt mere baby steps into some major leaps on the horizon that will involve creating minuscule intelligence technologies that are completely invisible to the naked eye), why sophisticated aliens, or even technologically savvy human beings for that matter, would need to resort to crude skin scoops and chunks of metal painfully embedded in an ear or leg in order to spy on a human being is simply beyond my powers of sympathy. It makes no sense.» — Kripal descarta la hipótesis del rastreador por argumento técnico: quien tuviera esa tecnología no usaría un trozo de metal.

«Whatever was interacting with Whitley was also interacting with the technologies of his cabin (in particular the security system and the garage door). But, again, for anyone who knows the parapsychological literature, this is hardly surprising, since spirit-interaction with technology is “old hat.” In an earlier era, candles would go out when a person died. Then mechanical clocks stopped. More recently, the spirits (and UFOs) have moved on to interact with telephones, television sets, radios, tractors, cars, trucks, computer systems, billion-dollar fighter jets, and, allegedly, even nuclear missile sites.» — Kripal inscribe la interferencia con la alarma en una serie vieja, de las velas y los relojes a los aviones de combate.

«I want to be very clear and humble about that “some light,” however. I really cannot explain Whitley’s apparent implant, much less the feral boy. Both may be explainable through entirely different strategies than I offer in the present chapter. In any case, my strategies here are not dependent on Whitley’s object, which may turn out to be something entirely different, or nothing at all. In any case, the four strategies set out below would remain as viable ways forward elsewhere, whatever the particular status of Whitley’s own “implant” turns out to be.» — Kripal declara que no puede explicar ni el implante ni el muchacho, y desliga sus estrategias del caso.

«In the end, I think my highly speculative “explanation” (that Whitley’s mind, or, better, that Mind in which Whitley’s mind is embedded, teleported the implant into his ear and messed with the technology of his cabin home) is more fantastic than the alien implant hypothesis. But this often happens when one tries to explain the unexplainable. The “explanations” just get more and more outlandish.» — Kripal juzga su propia hipótesis más fantástica que la alienígena y la deja sobre la mesa igual.

«That is also a clue, though, and maybe the clue. Maybe there is no explanation. Maybe the unexplained remains unexplained because explanation is the wrong way to think about such events. Maybe an entirely different way of knowing is being called for here. Maybe these events cannot be explained because they are not caused through any ordinary physical channels.» — el giro de Kripal: que no haya explicación puede indicar que explicar es el modo equivocado de acercarse.

«Maybe they are expressions of something. Maybe we should be reading them. And maybe, if we tried this, what we would finally read is not some positive truth to measure and prove (a technological object with the ability to receive radio signals) or some new piece of folklore to believe (extraterrestrial implants to track us), but a playful reminder that our present cognitive hardware and cultural software are simply not up to the task of understanding who we are and what (or who) the world is.» — Kripal propone leer esos sucesos en vez de explicarlos, y lo leído sería un recordatorio del límite cognitivo propio.

«What if the secret message of these inexplicable things is to call us out of our present worldview? What if they are here to frustrate and say away all of our present explanations and beliefs so that we can, as it were, start anew? By now, you know me. You know that this is not really a question. You know that this is precisely what I think.» — Kripal plantea la función de esos objetos como llamado a salir de la visión del mundo vigente, y contesta su propia pregunta.

«“Shamanism” is a comparative construct, a word anthropologists made up to talk and think about a great deal of ethnographic material from around the world that is very different but also, they thought, related somehow» — Kripal declara el chamanismo una construcción comparativa de los antropólogos, no una cosa del mundo.

«The word “shaman” comes from the Tungus language and culture of Siberia. It means “sorcerer” and has come to name a religious specialist or magical prodigy in different indigenous cultures. These prodigies might fill any number of roles, including healer or “medicine man,” medium, out-of-body traveler, psychic military scout, community storyteller, and spiritual leader.» — Kripal da la etimología tungusa de chamán, hechicero, y enumera los papeles que el término cubre.

«It is also important to remember that shamans can be very ambiguous figures. Their magic, after all, can often be used for positive or negative ends, for healing or cursing and killing. Much like “the sacred,” as a category the shaman possesses both a bright and dark side. Hence the original Tungus “sorcerer.”» — Kripal conserva la ambigüedad de la figura, con la magia igual de disponible para curar que para matar.

«In truth, the category of shamanism is probably way too broad and general. It has come to name so many disparate cultural practices that it itself has become virtually meaningless.» — Kripal desconfía de su propia categoría por demasiado amplia, antes de usarla.

«Still, the category does give us a way of noticing particular resonances or similarities between the traditional cultures and our own contemporary materials. As long as we do not “essentialize” the category, that is, confuse it with a single, unchanging religious meaning, we can use it as a helpful, comparative lens with which to focus our gaze.» — la condición con que Kripal la conserva, no esencializarla y usarla solo como lente comparativa.

«The calling of the shaman is often signaled by what Mircea Eliade, in his classic study Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (1964), called an “initiatory illness,” a severe psychological trial or physical illness» — Kripal toma de Eliade la enfermedad iniciática como señal del llamado chamánico, con la obra y el año declarados.

«the ability to leave one’s body and travel in the interworld; a proclivity for trance states and robust visionary experience; erotic contact or marriage between the shaman and a particular deity, spirit, or discarnate being; and the use of psychoactive sacred plants to catalyze and supercharge these various magical powers.» — el resto de los rasgos que Kripal enumera, del animal de poder al matrimonio con un ser incorpóreo y las plantas psicoactivas.

«Sometimes, particularly in Australia, the calling of the shaman is announced by a god or spirit inserting (we would say “implanting”) a magical stone or crystal into the individual’s body.» — el rasgo que Kripal hace equivaler al implante, la piedra o cristal insertado por un dios o un espíritu.

«Eliade, for example, cites the ethnographic literature on Australian indigenous religions, where we find stories of a supernatural being named Nagatya consecrating the medicine man by opening up his belly and inserting rock crystals that will bestow magical powers on him.» — caso australiano que Kripal cita de Eliade, con el ser llamado Nagatya insertando cristales de roca.

«Another Australian tribal culture is reported to take the neophyte to a cemetery, bind him up, and leave him there for several days. It is said that animals come and lick his wounds, after which a man appears, inflicts a wound in the initiate’s head, and inserts a magical stone the size of a lemon into the wound. Afterward, the spirits arrive in order to teach him the healing songs.» — segundo caso de la misma fuente, con la piedra del tamaño de un limón puesta en la cabeza del iniciado.

«Note that we find here exactly what we find in Whitley’s narrative: an ordinary “man” appearing in the middle of an otherwise completely fantastic narrative.» — el detalle que Kripal hace coincidir entre el material etnográfico y el relato de Strieber, el hombre común dentro de lo fantástico.

«Rock crystals are particularly important to the Australian shamans, since they are believed to have been “thrown from the sky by Supreme Beings or to have fallen from these divinities’ celestial thrones.» — la procedencia celeste que la etnografía citada por Kripal le da a esos cristales.

«Whether purely symbolic or actually material, or both at the same time, the message is clear enough: the inserted magical stone or rock crystal symbolizes, indeed materializes the newfound vocation of the shaman. There is literally something “special,” “different,” or “other” in him now. He has been set apart, called to a special place in the community. He has been chosen.» — Kripal deja sin decidir el estatuto de la piedra y retiene su función, materializar la vocación del chamán.

«The entire drama of Communion, for example, can be seen as a kind of initiatory trial or illness. His famous owls and wolves can be seen to function as power animals or guiding totemic spirits. His proclivity for trance, out-of-body travel, and visionary experience are patently obvious to anyone who cares to look at his books with an open mind. And the sexual encounter, even “sacred marriage” elements are both graphic and central ones. Hence his deep moral concerns about “cheating” on his wife (a theme also found in the literature on shamanism).» — Kripal aplica esa rejilla a Strieber punto por punto, de la enfermedad iniciática al matrimonio sagrado.

«As support for such a reading, consider the simple fact that much of his initial abduction experience as recounted in Communion revolved around a single word» — el apoyo textual que Kripal aduce para leer el implante como llamado.

«Whitley resists this ominous word, and for very good moral reasons. But the calling does not go away by virtue of that oh so reasonable rejection. And that rejection, of course, is also a classic response to a religious calling, including the prophetic calling in the Western monotheistic cultures, which are no doubt culturally closer than the shamanic examples (although, as many have pointed out, the biblical prophets display any number of shamanic-like elements). Indeed, it is what every other prophet does: deny or run away from the calling.» — Kripal lee la resistencia de Strieber a ser elegido como parte del propio patrón profético.

«The fact that Whitley has in turn been rejected by the official cultures of the public media, the scientific establishment, and conservative religion for his prophetic voice does nothing to challenge such a vocational reading of the “magical stone” in his ear. Indeed, it only strengthens it, since this is what often happens to the prophet in Western culture: he or she is rejected by the cultural elites.» — Kripal convierte el rechazo público a Strieber en confirmación de la lectura vocacional.

«Whitley, of course, cannot say any of this. But I can say it. And I just did.» — Kripal se adjudica a sí mismo la afirmación y declara que su coautor no puede hacerla.

«The Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack realized quite quickly that his abductee patients (another kind of “initiatory illness” again) had close analogues in the comparative literature on shamanism. Indeed, in his Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens (1994), Mack invokes Eliade’s comparative study of shamanism as one means of trying to understand the abduction phenomenon.» — Kripal declara que la comparación no es suya y remite a Abduction de John Mack, que ya usaba a Eliade.

«What the modern abductee or patient lacks, of course, is any adequate cultural framework or mythology for making sense of his or her experiences. This “disconnect” or “cultural ignorance,” it seems to me, is the most important point to emphasize. We lack a paradigm to make sense of our own spiritual experiences, and so these events can only appear bizarre, anomalous, or even just crazy.» — lo que a Kripal le parece el punto central: falta el marco cultural, no la experiencia.

«Note the move here. Note how Halperin does not fetishize either the ancient Jewish materials (Paul was a Jewish rabbi) or the modern UFO phenomena but suggests that both are expressions or manifestations of “some transcendent human experience” known both to the ancients and to us in different codes (there is the spiral up).» — Kripal describe la operación de Halperin, que no privilegia ni el material judío antiguo ni el ovni moderno.

«Rather, he is concerned to identify similarities across the centuries and the cultures toward some deeper and more adequate theory of the human being, which we do not have yet.» — Kripal aclara que ese ejercicio no propone causa ni mecanismo, y que la teoría del ser humano que lo justificaría todavía no existe.

«I mean, it’s one thing to speculate about an ancient “thorn in the flesh,” which may well have been a metaphor for something else, like sexual temptation (other expert readers, for example, have speculated that it is a coded reference to Paul’s illicit homoerotic desires, which were eventually sublimated into his wish to become a “virgin of Christ” and “married” to the god-man). It’s quite another to make sense of a living crawly thing in an ear.» — Kripal marca la distancia entre la espina de Pablo, que pudo ser metáfora, y el objeto de la oreja de Strieber.

«Dan is an extremely accomplished academic teaching at a prestigious institution. He is a historian adept at reading in multiple ancient and modern languages. He has written numerous books and is a recognized authority in his field. So this is not “just another story.” It comes from a source of unimpeachable integrity, honesty, and historical precision.» — Kripal presenta la fiabilidad de la fuente del caso del frasco antes de contarlo, y no da el nombre.

«One morning in August of 1980, at the age of twenty-four, Dan was making a large batch of blueberry muffins in his kitchen. He had just finished mixing the wet ingredients with a cup of honey. Honey being honey, he got some on the lip of the jar and so washed the jar off in the sink and sat it down to drip dry. He then turned to the business of the dry ingredients. Walking over to the pantry, he reached for one of those old-fashioned metal flour tins. As he pulled the tin off the shelf, it suddenly got heavier. His unprepared hands could not hold on to the new weight, and the tin dropped to the floor.» — Kripal fecha el episodio del frasco de miel y describe la lata de harina que se volvió pesada.

«He went through all of the usual skeptical rebuttals: that this feat was a trick or show designed for an audience (where was the audience?); that he had somehow hypnotized himself and put a wet jar at the bottom of the flour tin himself (the latter is a nearly impossible feat he later learned—he tried); that his unconscious mind had played a trick on him and somehow traded places with his conscious mind for the duration of the experience (then how to explain the fully conscious and fully remembered sensation of the tin suddenly becoming heavier?). None of these “explanations” really resolved anything, of course. They were more unbelievable than the event itself, which was already outrageous enough.» — Kripal enumera las refutaciones escépticas que el propio testigo ensayó, y por qué ninguna le sirvió.

«When Dan told this same story to a group of us at a private academic gathering, he added his own immediate conclusion at the time of the original event. “I knew at that instant,” he explained to us, “that materialism is false.» — la conclusión que el testigo sacó en el momento, según Kripal.

«I like Dan’s conclusion because it does not go too far. It does not overreach. Indeed, it is not a positive claim at all.» — Kripal aprueba esa conclusión porque no se excede: no es una afirmación positiva.

«What they intend, I want to suggest, is provocation, confusion, and offense. More specifically, they intend a provocation to our settled certainties of who and what we are, a confusion of our cognitive categories, and an offense to our otherwise perfectly material world. What they intend to do is mess with us.» — la intención que Kripal les adjudica a esos sucesos, desarreglar las certezas y no informar.

«They seem intentionally open-ended and inherently plastic, as if they want to be picked up and shaped by different people and communities into different worldviews. Hence the long history of religions; our dramatically different worldviews and cultures; and our present popular folklores around flying saucers, alien implants, and UFOs.» — Kripal explica por esa plasticidad la variedad de religiones y de folclores construidos sobre el mismo material.

«If the latter folklores would have us “sailing away,” what I am suggesting is that we instead should be saying away. I am suggesting that we recognize that these events and objects are designed to take things apart, really to take us apart, so that we can put things back together again in more creative and flourishing ways. That’s really two steps or stages: saying away and saying again, if you will. I want to focus on the first of those steps here and the second in my last chapter on mythmaking.» — Kripal nombra la sexta herramienta, el decir-quitando, y la parte en dos pasos.

«There are many forms of saying away in contemporary thought, but the deeper roots lie in the history of comparative mystical literature. Any reader of this literature will recognize this idea of saying away immediately as a very old and powerful technique for transcending one’s ego and its various cognitive and cultural constructs. Hence the famous “apophatic” theology of the Christian mystics: apo-phasis is a Greek technical term for “saying away,” that is, taking apart anything and everything that can be said about “God” in order to arrive at a kind of dazzling, divine darkness beyond all names and forms.» — Kripal remonta esa herramienta a la teología apofática cristiana y da la etimología griega.

«I have continuously been struck by just how often Whitley invokes classic and contemporary mystical literature in his books on the alien and the UFO. This is significant.» — Kripal señala la frecuencia con que Strieber recurre a la literatura mística en sus libros sobre el ovni.

«Eckhart, it turns out, was the consummate “Sayer Awayer” of medieval Christianity. He also sounds a lot like Whitley Strieber» — Kripal hace de Eckhart el practicante mayor de esa técnica y lo acerca a Strieber.

«The ground of all this professor’s teachings was a basic distinction that he drew between “God” and the “Godhead beyond God.” “God” is the personal deity that comes into being when human beings pray, worship, and believe in Him (more or less precisely like Whitley’s “communion” coelacanth). This “God,” however, can always be said away, deconstructed as a historical and social construct and a psychological projection, because that is what “He” in fact is.» — Kripal expone la distinción de Eckhart entre Dios y la Deidad, con el Dios personal como construcción que puede decirse-quitando.

«The Godhead, however, is no such thing. Indeed, the Godhead is no thing at all. Hence one of Eckhart’s most common descriptions of this Godhead beyond God was nicht, or “nothing” (recall Whitley’s description in chapter 5 about how Gurdjieff used very similar language in the twentieth century). By such a provocation, Eckhart did not mean “nothing” in the nihilistic sense. He meant that the Godhead was beyond space and time and so could not be identified with any single thing or act located in space and time.» — Kripal explica el nicht de Eckhart y aclara que no es nihilismo sino falta de lugar en el espacio y el tiempo.

«There is no ego in such an eternal Now. There is, as the professor put it, “neither Henry nor Conrad there,” that is, there are no egos or personalities there. As egos, of course, as Henrys and Conrads, we can hardly understand such things. But we can well recognize the saying away that is going on here.» — Kripal cita la fórmula de Eckhart sobre el Ahora eterno sin personas y la lee como decir-quitando.

«We should not be surprised, then, when we read Eckhart begging his listeners to “take leave of God for God,” that is, to abandon their simplistic and naive notions of God as an objective person “out there,” so that they might experience true divinity in and as the Ground of their own souls.71 Today we might say that we need to stop projecting the supernatural and realize it as the super natural, that is, as us on some deeper level than the constructed ego—as consciousness itself.» — Kripal traduce el tomar licencia de Dios por Dios de Eckhart a su propio programa, dejar de proyectar lo sobrenatural.

«That is a negative conclusion, not a positive one. It is about something that is not the case.» — Kripal precisa el estatuto de esa conclusión, que solo dice qué no es el caso.

«They are saying away what Dan thought his honey jar was saying away: materialism. It is not that materialism is wrong. It is that it is half right.» — lo que esos objetos desmontan según Kripal, y el matiz que le pone al materialismo: mitad correcto, no equivocado.

«If we were really serious about all of this, we would not speak about a “mental world” influencing or affecting a “material world,” as if these were two different, stable things.» — Kripal descarta el planteamiento de una mente que actúa sobre una materia como dos cosas estables.

«This deeper “one world” is why material events can behave like mental events and why mental events look like material events. Because they are. Both have “split off” from a deeper super-reality that is both mental and material, or neither mental nor material, at the same time.» — la consecuencia que Kripal saca del mundo único, con lo mental y lo material desprendidos de una realidad anterior.

«We grossly underestimate the power of narrative in the modern world, mistaking it mostly as pure fiction, when in actual fact narrative carries all sorts of forms of knowledge, including and especially esoteric or secret forms.» — Kripal reivindica el relato como vehículo de conocimiento, y nombra el esotérico entre los saberes que transporta.

«For now, consider the material of the present chapter. These sayings away are all stories acted out in the physical world. They are all stories that rely on objects in the physical world to tell their tales and transmit their “punch-line.” Hence the crunching driveway, the people in Whitley’s bedroom, the screwed-up security system, the open garage door, and the thing in his ear.» — Kripal describe esos sucesos como relatos actuados con objetos físicos por utilería.

«Apparently, that is what the human mind-brain does when it is participating in a dimension of reality that is quite beyond our primitive “mental” and “material” categories of thinking (and our primitive science, which assumes the same division to work at all). It tells itself a story that involves otherwise impossible things and then acts out that story with physical objects.» — la hipótesis de Kripal sobre el mecanismo: la mente se cuenta una historia imposible y la actúa con cosas.

«If those objects are available in the immediate environment, it uses them as props, like Dan’s honey jar. If they are not, it creates them “out of nowhere.” Hence the implant in Whitley’s ear. These are all magical objects that say away our own sensory and cognitive habits of separating “mind” and “matter” in a super natural world where no such distinctions exist.» — Kripal cierra el capítulo con la diferencia entre usar un objeto que ya está y fabricarlo, y la función común de ambos.

«adequate modeling of super natural experiences like those of Whitley must not only throw light on these experiences. It must also explain why the rest of us do not have these experiences. The model must explain both the experiencer and the nonexperiencer, both the believer and the doubter. Put a bit differently, any model of the super natural must not just explain the rare experiences of the super. It must also explain the vastly more common experience of the simply natural.» — la exigencia con que Kripal abre el capítulo: un modelo tiene que explicar también a quien no vive nada.

«This is where what I call the traumatic secret comes in. The phrase “the traumatic secret” is a poetic expression for another tool or technique for our toolbox. In truth, this tool, like the notion of an erotics, is really not a single tool. It is more like one of those Swiss army knives. It is (at least) three tools in one. The phrase encodes three separate but related notions: trauma, trance, and transcendence, each of which we will treat below. So now we have seven basic tools or techniques to make sense of the unexplainable: comparison, phenomenology, history, hermeneutics, erotics, saying away, and the traumatic secret.» — Kripal nombra la séptima herramienta y la desglosa en tres, trauma, trance y trascendencia.

«At its most basic, the traumatic secret is a function of the reduction model of the mind-brain relation that we looked at in chapter 3 under “Producer or Reducer?” This model, recall, suggests that the human body-brain does not produce consciousness but reduces it. The body-brain crafts consciousness into a human form though a vast network of highly evolved biology, neurology, culture, language, family, and social interactions until a more or less stable ego or “I” emerges, rather like the way the software and hardware of your laptop can pick up a Wi-Fi signal and translate the Internet into the specificities of your screen and social media. The analogy is a rough and imperfect one, but it gets the basic point across.» — Kripal apoya el secreto traumático en el modelo del cerebro reductor y da su analogía de la señal y la pantalla.

«Sometimes, however, the reducer is compromised or temporarily suppressed. The filtering or reduction of consciousness does not quite work, and other forms of mind or dimensions of consciousness, perhaps even other species or forms of life, that are normally shut out now “pop in.” In extreme cases, it may seem that the cosmos itself has suddenly come alive and is all there. Perhaps it is.» — lo que Kripal propone que ocurre cuando el filtro falla, con otras formas de mente entrando, y un quizá al final.

«In any case, such a model would certainly explain quite easily why experiences of the super natural world so often occur in or around trauma, illness, suffering, and death (all situations in which the brain-filter is compromised or suppressed).» — la primera cosa que ese modelo le explica a Kripal, la concentración de estas experiencias en torno al trauma y la muerte.

«It would also explain why telepathy ends with “pathos”—deep suffering is precisely what it often takes to spark a telepathic communication between two emotionally entangled loved ones.» — segunda cosa que el modelo le explica, por qué el término de Myers lleva pathos dentro.

«It would also explain why the rest of us commonly experience only a natural world: our evolved systems have not yet been compromised or breached. That is not a bad thing, of course. It is simply what bodies, cultures, and egos do, and must do. They filter most of mind out so that we can be our little social selves, so that we can be us.» — tercera cosa, y sin juicio negativo: el filtro es lo que permite que haya un yo social.

«Trance induction is probably humanity’s oldest technique for “hearing the gods,” that is, for accessing altered states of consciousness and activating special powers—what Charles Fort called wild talents and today we call human potentials.» — Kripal declara la inducción de trance la técnica más antigua para oír a los dioses, y la enlaza con los talentos salvajes de Fort.

«production and establishment of new cultural narratives, otherwise known as revelations, myths, and religions.» — la segunda función que Kripal le da al trance, producir los relatos culturales que después se llaman revelación, mito o religión.

«Historically speaking, the shamans, bards, sages, prophets, seers, and poets were the trance experts who “knew” the secret truths, “heard” the revelation, or “saw” the gods of the culture. It was the same religious prodigies who could pass all of this on in poetic speech, which was then, generally much later, set down in writing. These trance-seers and trance-speakers were the original “novelists” or Writers of the New. Little wonder, then, that today trance states and new cultural narratives arise anew among professional writers, poets, and channelers. Little wonder, too, that we can detect profound comparative resonances between a figure like Whitley Strieber and the folklore of shamanism and the history of religions.» — Kripal hace de los expertos en trance los novelistas originales y de ahí deriva la resonancia con Strieber.

«It takes more than trance states and writers to make a religion, of course. Political powers, religious elites, artists, and architects must all take up elements of these states and stories and create stable social institutions and the elaborate theater of ritual, art, and architecture around them. Entire communities must then reenact these “revealed” stories over and over again until their narratives and images seem eminently obvious and real to a majority of the people.» — Kripal añade lo que hace falta además del trance para que haya religión, instituciones, arte y repetición.

«This is where it gets “loopy.” These same repeated rituals and reenacted stories are in turn designed to induce mild trance states in their participants in order to “return” them to the events of the myth—to establish them as characters in the sacred story of the culture.» — el bucle que Kripal señala: el rito reinduce el trance que produjo el mito, y devuelve al fiel a su interior.

«Put most simply, the religious self is a story. And trance induction, as the original ecstasy of a religious prodigy or the repeated ritual of the devout community, is all about hearing and seeing this story, becoming this story, remembering it, and transmitting it to others as the way things really and truly are. They never quite are, of course.» — Kripal define el yo religioso como relato y le retira, en la última frase, el estatuto que ese relato reclama.

«End of the world or no, there is no doubt about it: writing and reading are trance inductions. As my colleague in the study of Indian religions Lee Siegel has so eloquently put it in his recent book on mesmerism in colonial India: “the relationship between a reader and listener is analogous to that between a hypnotist and subject.” And hypnosis is, “by its very nature, about the power of stories.» — Kripal declara escritura y lectura inducciones de trance y cita a Lee Siegel sobre hipnotizador y sujeto.

«His point? That nearly everything we think, feel, desire, and do, that nearly everything we are—from our romantic relationships to our ethnic, national, and religious identities—is a result of some kind of trance induction; that culture entrances us, makes us believe all sorts of things about the self, society, and the world that are useful enough but are not necessarily true.» — lo que Kripal retiene de ese autor: que la cultura misma es una inducción, útil y no necesariamente verdadera.

«As Jacques Vallee has taught us in his own books, if a form of mind wanted to really influence, shape, or direct a culture, it would not bother with the culture’s public arguments or politics. It would choose to work on the culture’s deepest operating system. It would go to the place of dreams and vision. It would choose to work on the cultural imagination.» — Kripal toma de Jacques Vallee la tesis de que una mente que quisiera dirigir una cultura trabajaría sobre su imaginación, no sobre su política.

«I am asking you to consider the possibilities that both society and the self are stories, trance-formations generated through the hypnotic inductions of language and social scripts, and that every culture and religion is fundamentally an illusion. I am asking you to wake up.» — Kripal enuncia la parte dura de su propuesta, sociedad y yo como relatos y toda religión como ilusión.

«Once we wake up out of our respective psychological and social trances and recognize, as if emerging out of a long dream, that all of our cherished cultural and religious convictions are illusory trance-formations, just who has realized this? Who has woken up out of these trance inductions?» — la pregunta que Kripal le pone al despertar mismo: quién es el que se da cuenta.

«One day in 1984, Seong was staring out a window in a high school classroom, watching the sun dance off of a white building. The movement of the light did something to him. Hypnotized him? What does that mean? In his case, it meant that he felt his body fill up with thousands of intensely pleasurable, hot “energy worms” before “It” happened. “It” was some vast supermind, infinite and eternal, beyond space and time, and utterly indifferent to the insignificant human ego.» — caso de Haeyoung Seong que Kripal relata, con la luz sobre un edificio blanco y una supermente indiferente al yo.

«Fourteen years would pass before he found any adequate resonances to what he had known that day, first in William James’s classic study of mystical experiences, The Varieties of Religious Experience, then in the nous or “cosmic intellect” of the third-century Greek philosopher Plotinus» — Kripal cuenta que ese testigo tardó catorce años en hallar dónde encajar lo suyo, en James y luego en el nous de Plotino.

«Something eerily similar happened to a German Lutheran shoe cobbler by the name of Jacob Boehme in the year 1600. Jacob was staring at a beam of sunlight bouncing off a pewter dish.» — Kripal pone a Jakob Böhme en la misma serie, con el reflejo en el plato de peltre; la obra escribe Boehme y fecha el episodio en 1600.

«He developed a mind-bogglingly elaborate symbolism and philosophy to explain what had been revealed to him in the light, much of which was deemed heretical and dangerous by the local religious authorities. Regardless, what happened to Jacob initiated an entire lineage of Western esoteric thought that influenced artists and philosophers like Emanuel Swedenborg, William Blake, Samuel Coleridge, and G. F. W. Hegel, a “thinker of the third” if ever there was one. Hegel famously called Jacob the “first German philosopher.» — Kripal hace nacer de ese episodio un linaje entero del pensamiento esotérico occidental, con Swedenborg, Blake, Coleridge y Hegel.

«Then there was the American science-fiction writer Philip K. Dick. The cultural and psychological contexts—that is, the filter, medium, or prism—could not have been any more different, but there was the reflected light again. On February 20, 1974, the author was staring at a young woman’s golden Christian fish-sign necklace. She had come to the door to deliver some pain medication for an oral surgery. The golden necklace glittering in the sun was his pewter dish. “It” rushed in again.» — tercer caso de la serie, con la fecha exacta y el collar dorado en lugar del plato de peltre.

«What happened to Dick in the next few hours, days, and weeks changed his life and resulted in his last three novels, all of which orbited around what he came to conclude was a cosmic mind that had reprogrammed him in and through that same mysterious light. It also did very practical things, like enable him to clairvoyantly diagnose an invisible hernia in his young son, a diagnosis which led to an emergency surgery. Dick called this cosmic mind “Valis,” for Vast Active Living Intelligence System. His experience of it was so physical, so palpably electromagnetic, so real that Phil seriously thought that Valis was the beam of some alien technology or satellite in the sky before he concluded that it was more likely something else: a superintelligent plasma that underlies and underwrites everything, which the ancients had called the Logos, that is, the Mind or Word of God.» — Kripal resume el episodio de Dick, con la hernia diagnosticada a distancia y el paso de la hipótesis tecnológica al Logos.

«My point? That trance states, even and especially those induced casually and unconsciously by white buildings, pewter dishes, and gold necklaces, do not always lead to more illusion and more projection. Sometimes, for reasons that we do not understand, they appear to do the exact opposite.» — la tesis que Kripal saca de los tres casos, que el trance no siempre suma ilusión y a veces la deshace.

«They appear to outshine, to end the consensual trances of society and self. They catalyze remarkable states of mind and being that look very similar across the ages» — Kripal describe esos estados como semejantes entre épocas y opuestos al trance consensuado de la sociedad.

«I do not think that whatever Seong was hypnotized into was illusory. No doubt some of the visionary features of his experience, like those of Jacob and Phil, were functions of his cultural imagination. The light is always refracted, always reflected through culture and psychology. It can be no other way, since as social egos we ourselves are those mediums, filters, or prisms. We are that two-way mirror.» — Kripal concede la refracción cultural de la visión y le niega ese carácter al núcleo.

«We might add another trance word to Lee Siegel’s new language, then, and begin to speak of “trance-scendence.” Sometimes, rarely but really, the trick of trance states leads out of the consensual trance of culture and religion into something other or more, something so other that it feels and seems alien.» — Kripal acuña trance-scendencia para el trance que saca del trance colectivo, y explica ahí por qué lo hallado se siente ajeno.

«That’s because it is. It is not us, not us as rational social egos anyway. And yet it is us, as soul, as spirit, as Valis.» — Kripal sostiene a la vez que eso no es uno y que sí lo es, en otro registro.

«Until we recognize the Human as Two, we will not be able to see and accept the illusory nature of our little selves, our little cultures, and our little religions. Nor will we be able to recognize the cosmic vastness of who we really are.» — Kripal hace del Humano como Dos la condición para ver lo ilusorio del yo y de la cultura.

«It explains why the skeptics are so honestly and understandably skeptical (their egos or consensual trances have not yet been invaded or broken). It explains the utter convictions of the mystics, poets, and modern-day abductees (their egos or consensual trances have been invaded and broken).» — Kripal usa esa noción para explicar por igual al escéptico honesto y a la convicción del místico.

«Finally, it helps us to come to moral terms with what we see in the history of religions when we look closely enough and without blinking. What we see is death and transformation. What we see is trauma and transcendence.» — lo que Kripal dice ver en la historia de las religiones cuando se la mira sin parpadear.

«There are many ways to realize the Human as Two. There are many ways to “die” and be “resurrected,” to realize, as it were, both our own humanity and our own divinity. The problem is that none of these ways are quite reliable, and some of them are extremely dangerous and destructive, if not actually and literally deadly.» — Kripal admite muchas vías al Humano como Dos y advierte que ninguna es fiable y algunas son mortales.

«He understands perfectly well that trauma is often a catalyst for later visionary events. He also does not flinch from the common sexual dimensions of these traumas, even their horrific nature in childhood sexual abuse.» — Kripal le reconoce a Strieber no eludir la dimensión sexual del trauma, incluido el abuso infantil.

«Most important of all, though, Whitley recognizes very clearly that trance and trauma do not just lead to illusion and suffering. In rare cases, they can also lead to transcendence, hence the “new birth” after the “death” of an initiation ritual.» — lo que Kripal considera más importante en su coautor, que el trauma también pueda abrir a la trascendencia.

«The most striking example of this door of trauma opening out onto some form of transcendence is Whitley’s suggestion in the last chapter that the physical and psychological traumas that he apparently endured on the air force base outside of San Antonio as a young boy may have been engineered by German scientists, who in turn may have stumbled on this possibility through their gruesome observations of accidental survivors» — Kripal toma como caso extremo la hipótesis de Strieber sobre los científicos alemanes y sus observaciones en los campos.

«chambers and death camps back in Nazi Germany. This is an especially poignant and difficult suggestion. But it is hardly beyond the realm of possibility.» — Kripal califica esa hipótesis de penosa y difícil, y se niega a descartarla.

«Astonishingly, a very similar scene to the one Whitley has imagined here—that is, one involving a pile of slain bodies with a single individual with special powers emerging from its traumatic debris—occurs in the West’s oldest account of a “near-death” experience: the story of Er as told by Plato in the fourth century BCE in his famous treatise on political philosophy, The Republic.» — Kripal encuentra la misma escena en el relato de Er de la República de Platón, que llama el más antiguo del Occidente sobre la muerte cercana.

«Er was a warrior apparently killed on the battlefield. His body was dumped onto a pile of rotting corpses ten days after the battle. Two days later, the bodies are about to be burned on a pyre when Er revives and tells a remarkable story involving a journey to the other world, the nature of death, the moral mechanisms of reincarnation, and the purpose of life itself, including why we do not remember our previous lives and how and why we take on the bodies we do (basically, a kind of ancient Greek karma theory).» — Kripal resume el relato de Er, con la reencarnación y el olvido de las vidas previas entre lo que allí se cuenta.

«Plato is very clear about what he thinks Er’s story means and why it is so important: because it teaches us that the soul is immortal, and that we should take care to live well and rightly, so that our future lives will be better ones.» — la lectura que Kripal le atribuye a Platón sobre su propio relato, la inmortalidad del alma como enseñanza.

«Er’s story is usually described as the “myth of Er,” as if Plato made it all up for some abstract philosophical lesson. Maybe. Maybe not.» — Kripal deja sin decidir si Platón inventó ese relato o lo recibió.

«None of this is meant to romanticize the evils of Nazism, of war, or of the horrible sufferings of trauma and sexual trauma in their countless destructive and debilitating forms. It is simply to observe that human beings sometimes have profound spiritual experiences amid or after suffering and death, and that trauma sometimes opens up into transcendence. Is this really so difficult to understand?» — Kripal marca el límite moral de su argumento y se queda en la observación, no en la justificación del daño.

«I have long argued that paranormal experiences are often connected to reading events, and that paranormal phenomena somehow shape themselves into a kind of symbolic language that wants to be read and interpreted.» — la tesis vieja de Kripal, lo paranormal como lenguaje simbólico ligado a la lectura.

«I have suggested, in effect, that we are at once the writers and readers of these illustrative languages, these living graphic novels, these eerie texts and secret structures; that, somehow, some very big part of us is speaking to a little part of us at these moments—maddeningly, in code. This, of course, is why we cannot escape hermeneutics, that trippy art of interpreting ourselves into being.» — Kripal nos pone a la vez de autores y lectores de ese lenguaje, con una parte grande hablándole cifrada a una parte chica.

«There is another way of saying this. The paranormal is a kind of reading. Which, of course, means that reading might catalyze or become a paranormal event. Here is another kind of “flip.” I really believe this. I am not exaggerating in the least. Forget Professor Xavier’s cool Cerebro room. Forget Superman’s icy Fortress of Solitude. Reading and writing are the most powerful paranormal technologies that we possess, if only we knew what and how to read.» — Kripal invierte la relación y declara la lectura y la escritura las tecnologías paranormales más potentes disponibles.

«James was a troubled west Texas teenager. He had been removed from “Satan’s public school system” and educated on things like creationist biology. Torn by excruciating sexual guilt (“I couldn’t look at women without sinning anymore”), he had held a butcher knife to his wrist more than once. But he never quite had the courage.» — Kripal presenta el caso de un estudiante suyo, con la culpa sexual y el intento de suicidio por antecedente.

«In his own words, he “Ouija drove” to Barnes & Noble, a “worldly” bookstore that was definitely off-limits, forbidden. He walked in, still in a trance state above it all, in some kind of odd transcendence, split in two, as it were: “Everything was a thousand miles away. I was a thousand miles away from» — el episodio en trance que ese estudiante relata, con el trayecto hasta la librería prohibida; la parte entrecomillada es voz de James.

«The book on the floor was Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra. It had fallen from a shelf marked “Philosophy,” a word he had never heard of until that moment. He looked around to see who might have knocked it off the shelf. No one. Then suddenly, a “hauntingly beautiful blonde in her late teens dressed in a dangerously short black dress” appeared at a distance, giggled, looked him right in the eyes, and began snapping pictures of him holding the book before she literally dashed out of the bookstore.» — lo que cayó a sus pies y la testigo que Kripal deja sin explicar, la muchacha que fotografió la escena.

«Drawing loosely on Darwin, Nietzsche imagined our present humanity as a taut rope stretched between the ape and the future Superman. We can no more understand our own future nature than the ape can understand ours (another earth-farm or cat-in-the-library analogy). Nevertheless, we are in process. We are on the rope. We are evolving. And we will eventually be something else.» — Kripal glosa el Superhombre de Nietzsche como cuerda tendida entre el simio y lo que viene.

«James took the magical book home and read its first section with his father’s Colt pistol in his lap. “It was the antidote to a lifetime of poison I hadn’t known I was drinking.” He put the pistol away and walked outside in a Texas downpour. “I stared up at the stars between the clouds and laughed. A divine laughter, an ecstatic laughter while the rain poured down. It was the greatest moment I had ever experienced. When my sides ached and the rain abated, I walked back inside, dried off and read the rest of the book.» — el desenlace que Kripal relata, con el arma guardada y la risa bajo el aguacero; la parte entrecomillada es voz de James.

«James is still reading. He would go on and major in philosophy in college. He wrote his senior thesis on Nietzsche. He is now working toward a dissertation on occult supermen in early twentieth-century esoteric movements.» — Kripal cierra el caso con el destino académico de ese estudiante, que investiga los superhombres ocultistas del esoterismo.

«I asked him what he thought really happened. He thought what I thought: that “he” somehow did all of this. Well, both of him. That his mind, at once tortured and supercharged by his teenage crisis, literally pulled the book off the shelf and threw it at his feet.» — la lectura que Kripal y su estudiante comparten, que fue la mente de él la que tiró el libro.

«Or did he reach up with his hand, still in a trance, and knock exactly the right book off the right shelf onto the floor, without remembering any of this? James doesn’t think so. It is remotely possible, he admits, but highly unlikely and certainly not part of his experience. But, really, is such a scenario any less unbelievable? Okay, maybe a little.» — Kripal expone la explicación mundana y la deja viva, con la admisión de que tampoco es más creíble.

«Whatever happened, it happened off-line in an “unconscious,” or superconscious, way. James as ego did nothing. But some greater presence within him, or acting through him, exploded into action. A supermind intervened through a trauma and a trance. That and the Girl in Black. Who was she?» — Kripal atribuye el suceso a una supermente actuando por el sujeto, y deja sin explicar a la testigo.

«It is only a thought. I do not know. I want to be very humble here and stress the complexities, not wish them away with a set of simplicities.» — Kripal encabeza su explicación del doble carácter del encuentro con una declaración de que no sabe.

«What I expressed to Anne is that this strange both-and may be largely a function of the human ego and whether a particular ego is ready to let go of itself. If the ego is ready to let go, then it will be more likely to experience an encounter with the sacred Alien or Other as extremely positive, as redemptive, as ecstatic. If, on the other hand, the ego is not ready to let go of itself, then it will be more likely to experience an encounter with the sacred as extremely negative, as terrifying, as destructive.» — la hipótesis que Kripal le expuso a Anne Strieber: el signo del encuentro depende de si el yo está listo para soltarse.

«In this model at least, the demon is a projection of our fears, the angel of our nature beyond those fears. The same ego, of course, can move through different stages, with an initial terror morphing» — la consecuencia de ese modelo, con el demonio y el ángel repartidos entre el miedo y lo que está más allá del miedo.

«into a loving communion. This is how I read Communion and, indeed, the entire trajectory of Whitley’s mystical life.» — Kripal aplica ese modelo a la trayectoria entera de Strieber, del terror inicial a la comunión.

«Sometimes one does not know what one thinks until one explains it to another.» — lo que Kripal dice haber sacado de esa conversación con Anne Strieber.

«Whitley expresses the same exact double insight, in more poetic or symbolic terms now, when he writes in an earlier chapter of the female owl of Athena, “who will educate us if we face her, but steal us away if we run.” Again, that seems exactly right to me. It is up to us whether we face her or run, whether we will be her students or her prey.» — Kripal encuentra la misma idea en el búho de Strieber y deja la elección del lado del humano.

«I don’t run into many new ideas. But this notion is shockingly new: the soul as a plasmalike energy that can superpower our imaginal capacities and so generate the movies of visionary experience.» — Kripal declara nueva para él la idea del alma como energía plásmica que sobrealimenta lo imaginal.

«Here the soul is an exotic form of energy interacting with a primate nervous system, and the symbol and the mythical narrative are the means of focusing, working with, projecting, even materializing that energy.» — Kripal le da al símbolo y al mito la función de enfocar y materializar esa energía.

«In some ways, this is old news, very old news. Solar light, spherical star souls, and mysterious forms of radiance—in short, conscious light—are among the oldest and most universal expressions of divinity» — Kripal inscribe la luz consciente entre las expresiones más antiguas y universales de lo divino.

«“Spiritual” here meant “of the pneuma,” which the ancients thought of as a very subtle material substance, like air, breath, or fire, that extended throughout the physical universe—in short, as a kind of invisible, living cosmic energy.» — Kripal define el pneuma antiguo como sustancia sutilmente material, no como lo inmaterial.

«Such weirdly familiar details have led artist and author Christopher Knowles to write in his Secret Sun blog of early Christian Gnosticism as “history’s first flying saucer cult.» — Kripal recoge de Christopher Knowles la fórmula sobre el gnosticismo cristiano temprano.

«And Chris is in good company. My colleague April DeConick, an expert on early Christianities, has just finished a marvelous book on “the Ancient New Age” in which she demonstrates convincingly how modern science-fiction films are deeply resonant with what she calls the Gnostic spirituality of the ancient world.» — Kripal remite al libro de April DeConick sobre la Nueva Era Antigua y su resonancia con el cine de ciencia ficción.

«and proclaimed a direct mystical knowing (gnosis) of the inner divinity of the spirit, or pneuma, itself, which the Gnostics knew as a real spark of God temporarily encased in a material form but destined, ultimately, for the stars.» — la definición que Kripal da de la gnosis, chispa divina encerrada en materia y destinada a las estrellas.

«Here was a new spiritual orientation that called into question, really denied, all the local ethnic or inherited religions and their petty, violent gods, including and especially the bloody god of the orthodox Christians.» — Kripal describe esa orientación como negación de las religiones heredadas y de sus dioses violentos.

«Here was a wildly syncretistic practice that pulled in everything—from Homer to Greek and Latin magic to wild speculations about multiple universes—in order to say what it had to say. Here was an ancient search for charismatic gurus, in this case Egyptian ones. Here was a loose but effective network of grassroots movements poised against organized religion and its oppressive alignment with the imperial state. Here was a Mediterranean counterculture that flourished for centuries before it was stamped out by the “right-thinking” orthodox churches. Here was the Ancient New Age.» — el inventario de Kripal sobre ese movimiento, con la magia griega y latina entre sus materiales y la contracultura mediterránea por figura.

«These new forms of knowledge are game-changers that, with or without the scientists, are dramatically reshaping the religious imagination as they inspire new forms of secular spirituality and guide experiencers into new imaginal territory.» — Kripal le atribuye a la ciencia moderna un efecto sobre la imaginación religiosa, con o sin los científicos.

«Modern peoples, after all, rarely see hellscapes or visions of the Trinity anymore, but they are increasingly reporting popping into hyperdimensional mindspaces, becoming one with the evolutionary impulse of the universe, and knowing or “seeing” a superconnected quantum realm. With respect to our science, modern forms of mysticism are becoming more and more realist.» — el cambio de contenido que Kripal registra en las visiones modernas, del infierno al espacio hiperdimensional.

«However sophisticated these modern experiences and expressions might be, conventional scientists like to call all such reports “New Agey.” Like the word “anecdotal,” this is little more than an intellectual dodge, a moral meanness, a rhetorical sleight of hand designed to stop or sidestep the conversation, I presume, so that it doesn’t get too far.» — Kripal iguala el rótulo de Nueva Era al de anecdótico, como maniobra para cortar la conversación.

«The truth is that numerous founders of quantum physics—Werner Heisenberg, Erwin Schrödinger, Niels Bohr, and Wolfgang Pauli, to name the most obvious—were deeply committed to worldviews that combined mysticism and rationalism.» — Kripal nombra a cuatro fundadores de la física cuántica comprometidos a la vez con el misticismo y el racionalismo.

«They went to places like the Brahman, or cosmic unity, and Atman, or Self, of the Hindu Upanishads (Schrödinger), the yin and yang symbolism of Chinese Taoism (Bohr), and the paranormal synchronicities of Jungian psychology (Pauli)» — a qué tradición recurrió cada uno según Kripal, con las Upanishads, el taoísmo y las sincronicidades junguianas.

«Generally speaking, they were drawing parallels, compatibilities, and complementarities, not simple equations, between physics and the mystics. Still, some of them were pointing toward a worldview in which the math and the mysticism were two different expressions of the same fundamental reality. In effect, they suggested: “If you want to understand what the implications of quantum physics might ‘look’ like up here, in the world of human experience, go read the unities and paradoxes of the mystics.” They were after a realist mysticism.» — el límite que Kripal le pone a esos paralelos, que no eran ecuaciones simples.

«These countercultural physicists became fascinated with the apparent “telepathic” effects that entangled particles exhibit in Bell’s theorem, or what Einstein had famously called “spooky action at a distance.» — Kripal explica de qué se ocuparon esos físicos, el entrelazamiento y la acción fantasmal a distancia de Einstein.

«Such intellectuals kept the notion of entanglement alive for decades while the rest of the physics community was being told to “shut up and calculate,” that is, to quit talking about the philosophical implications of the physics and just do the math.» — Kripal les adjudica haber sostenido el problema mientras al gremio se le pedía callar y calcular.

«Many of these countercultural physicists were convinced that quantum effects do scale up into human experience, and that these effects can be seen in parapsychological phenomena and mystical experiences of mind.» — la convicción que Kripal les atribuye, que los efectos cuánticos escalan hasta la experiencia humana.

«One of them, my friend and colleague Nick Herbert, has written eloquently about these effects under the banners of “elemental mind” and “Quantum Tantra.” The latter is his dream of a scientific-spiritual practice that would lead to an erotic union with the physical universe.» — Kripal define el Tantra Cuántico de Nick Herbert como práctica que buscaría una unión erótica con el universo físico.

«Jane has a Ph.D. in experimental high energy physics. She is also the illustrator/photographer of the best-selling English translation of the Tao Te Ching, with Gia-Fu Feng. In short, she is an heir to Niels Bohr, who put the Tao on his coat of arms to capture the two-in-one paradoxes of quantum physics in which light can be measured either as a particle or a wave.» — Kripal presenta a Jane English y la hace heredera de Bohr, que puso el Tao en su escudo de armas.

«The same paradox caught Jane’s attention. For her it functioned as a Zen koan, that is, as a riddle that awakened her into the true nature of reality.» — Kripal describe la paradoja onda-partícula funcionando para ella como un koan zen.

«Essentially, Jane English had become light, had become the energy of the world, which is consciousness.» — la lectura que Kripal hace de ese testimonio, con la luz y la energía identificadas con la consciencia.

«She now knew that none of this is true. She understood that it was perfectly possible to directly experience the world of quantum physics, and that quantum physics does have meaning for us “up here” in the big world, profound and beautiful meaning.» — lo que ese episodio le habría revocado a English, según Kripal, la idea de que lo cuántico no llega al mundo grande.

«She understood that the paradoxes of quantum physics are nothing more than functions of us trying to understand reality with our objectifying senses, instead of directly via consciousness itself. She understood that consciousness could not be reduced to the mechanistic laws of Newtonian physics.» — la lectura de la paradoja cuántica que Kripal le adjudica, como efecto de nuestros sentidos objetivadores.

«What is important here is Whitley’s perfectly accurate observation that these plasmalike soul-spheres» — Kripal suscribe la observación de Strieber sobre el carácter consciente de esas esferas.

«Such an observation —commonly reported, as we will see in a moment—carries the stunning implication that life and intelligence may not need carbon-based life-forms or a nervous system to express and know itself.» — la implicación que Kripal saca de ahí, que la vida y la inteligencia podrían no necesitar carbono ni sistema nervioso.

«I remember wondering whether “eternity” might be a loose term for this stopping of time at the speed of light, and whether the classic “speeding tunnel” effect and sense of eternity “in the Light” of near-death experiences might be how the imagination translates a ride on (or as) a beam of light. Is there a mystical “inside” to light itself that is related to but not captured by the “outside” of light modeled by physics?» — las preguntas de Kripal sobre un adentro místico de la luz, que dice seguir haciéndose.

«In graduate school, I learned that the Greek Orthodox tradition developed an extremely sophisticated mystical theology in the thirteenth century through which the light seen around saints and experienced within mystical encounters was understood to be not a metaphor or a symbol, or an effect of any cause, but really and truly God.» — Kripal data en el siglo XIII la teología que hace de esa luz a Dios mismo, ni metáfora ni efecto.

«The architect of this mystical theology was the monk and hermit Gregory Palamas (1296–1359). Gregory argued that the knowledge derived from such mystical experiences of light is the knowledge of the “energies” of God, but never of the “essence” of God, which remains unknowable to us as creatures.» — Kripal atribuye a Gregorio Palamás la distinción entre energías y esencia divinas, con las fechas que da la obra.

«One does not have to read too far into Greek Orthodox spirituality and its goal of theosis, or “deification,” to realize that Gregory and his colleagues were not being metaphorical about these luminous energies or their deifying effects on the human body and person that is fortunate enough to get illuminated by their rays. Gregory even argued that those who have been deified by such energies become homotheoi, that is, “co-divinities” or “co-gods.”» — Kripal sostiene que la deificación palamita no es metafórica y cita el término homotheoi.

«Contactees and abductees get belted with beams of light all the time. And, just as we see in the Christian mystical literature, these lights change them, give them special powers, usher them into eternity (or telepathy), and call them to lives of prophetic witness.» — Kripal hace coincidir punto por punto los efectos de esa luz en la mística cristiana y en el contactado moderno.

«We no longer speak of deification or “becoming divine,” of course, but this is because our culture has changed, probably not because the lights themselves have.» — Kripal atribuye al cambio de cultura, y no al cambio del fenómeno, la desaparición del vocabulario de la deificación.

«I think I first encountered the idea of the soul as a subtle material energy in Whitley’s books. I did not at first understand or even recognize it, despite my earlier electric experience in Calcutta. The idea was just too new, too radical, too much. I needed another author to help me come to terms with what Whitley was saying. I needed Philip K. Dick.» — Kripal fecha en los libros de Strieber su primer encuentro con esa idea y admite que no la entendió sin otro autor.

«A few years ago, one of my Ph.D. students, Erik Davis, asked me to join a team of scholars who were transcribing and editing Dick’s massive Exegesis, his unpublished journals written roughly between 1974 and 1982, after his experience of Valis as cosmic mind. My role as an annotator of the selected passages was a humble and minor one. The effect of the journals on me was neither.» — Kripal cuenta su papel menor en la edición del Exegesis de Philip K. Dick y el efecto mayor que le atribuye.

«Dick believed that the entity that had zapped him in the winter of 1974 was a bio-linguistic plasma, that is, a living form of language-energy. I know that’s confusing. It was confusing to Dick as well, who strained every word and every grammatical convention, who turned to every form of mystical literature he could find, who bent and broke time itself, in a brave effort to try to understand Valis. He failed. And that, he learned, was the final paradoxical function or purpose of the alien entity: to say away everything he thought.» — Kripal describe el Valis de Dick como plasma biolingüístico y le da al fracaso de entenderlo la función de decir-quitando.

«A homoplasmate is a kind of alien-human hybrid or, if you prefer, a deified human being.» — Kripal traduce el homoplasmate de Dick a la lengua de la deificación.

«Such an account is important for our conversation here, since it gives us an up-close and detailed description of these encounters, and from a psychologically and philosophically trained observer no less.» — Kripal justifica reproducir ese relato entero por la formación del testigo.

«He notes that language is incapable of describing the event. It is the subject/object structure of language and normal perception that is the problem here. These, after all, were not simple “objects” that could have been seen by another witness, like an animal emerging from a cave at a zoo, he explains. Rather, as he puts it: “They weren’t really seen, heard, or smelled. They appeared to me, but also somehow in me.» — Kripal sitúa el problema en la estructura sujeto-objeto del lenguaje, y cita al testigo sobre lo que apareció en él y no ante él.

«One of the most striking details of the event for Stuart was something that was not part of the event itself but which he discovered after the fact: such glowing orbs, it turns out, are fairly well known in the larger Big Sur community.92 It was this “match” between his experience and the experiences of others that impressed him so. He had never heard of such glowing orbs, ever, and yet he had just had an experience that matched the other Big Sur reports in significant details. Stuart concluded that his own subjective experience of the glowing orbs was not simply subjective. In some sense, these orbs were a shared experience. They existed outside his own subjectivity. They were real.» — lo que a Kripal le parece decisivo del caso, que el testigo no conocía los relatos previos y su descripción coincide con ellos.

«There is one more historical context that seems important here: the grounds upon which Esalen sits and out of which the beautiful balls of light emerged is a Native American burial site.» — el dato que Kripal añade al final, el mismo tipo de terreno que Strieber describe en su cabaña.

«In what sense are these things “imagined,” that is, projected by our own subjectivities? And in what sense are they “real,” that is, in what sense do they exist independently of our seeing them? Or are these the wrong questions?» — Kripal plantea el par imaginado o real y en la misma línea sugiere que la pregunta esté mal hecha.

«The imagination, of course, is all about images. And images, like mirrors, always imply distance, that is, they always imply that what one is observing is separate from the act of observing it. If one is something, one cannot see it. One is it.» — Kripal deriva de la imagen la distancia, y de ahí que no se pueda ver aquello que uno es.

«This visual distance, of course, is also the basis of modern reason and modern science, both of which need to create a “distance” between the subject and the object being reasoned about or measured. Hence the modern metaphor of “objectivity.”93 It’s all about creating objects, which is to say: distance, separation, not us.» — Kripal hace de esa distancia el fundamento de la objetividad moderna.

«These altered states of energy take us out of the realm of distant objects or mirrored images into the much more immediate world of energy, vibration, electromagnetism, and light itself.» — Kripal traslada los estados energéticos fuera del régimen de la imagen y del objeto.

«None of these descriptions are reasonable or objective ones. And although many of them were accompanied by elaborate visionary phenomena, none of them are primarily about seeing anything at all.» — Kripal retira de esos relatos el carácter visual, pese a sus fenómenos visionarios.

«This “resonance” is also a kind of knowing, a most profound kind, but not of the sort that we are used to talking about with our words and grammar. To resonate with an energetic pattern or presence is not to see it from afar as an image or object. It is a kind of mutual “tuning” or “entrainment.” It is a becoming. It is to become present with a presence.» — Kripal define la resonancia como un modo de conocer que es entonación mutua, no visión a distancia.

«Here, then, is our toolbox as it stands: the spiral of sophisticated comparison, the cut of phenomenology, the contextualizations of history, the quantumlike, communion-like interpretations of hermeneutics, an erotics pointing toward our own super sexualities, the traumatic secret of trauma, trance, and transcendence, and now a particular energetics, that is, a focus on the felt energies, powers, and entrainments of resonance.» — Kripal enumera las ocho herramientas acumuladas y nombra la última, una energética.

«Is it any wonder that so many spiritual practices turn to the sonic drivers of dance, drum, chant, mantra, and song in order to remember, or hum again, the power and presence of this communion?» — Kripal explica por esa energética el recurso al tambor, el canto y el mantra en las prácticas espirituales.

«Since I began taking the plasmatic soul seriously, since I made this conceptual move from reason to resonance, I have had hundreds of encounters with the glowing orbs in the more humble form of my reading and comparative practices. One, after all, generally notices and looks for only what one is ready to see.» — Kripal admite que el patrón se le multiplicó una vez que lo buscaba, y lo dice como límite de su propio método.

«Mark Fox has published a wonderful comparative study of spiritual encounters with light forms. He tracks some four hundred unpublished accounts from a large database begun by the British zoologist Sir Alister Hardy (1896– 1985), who believed, by the way, that such mystical experiences were somehow involved in human evolution.» — Kripal remite al estudio de Mark Fox sobre cuatrocientos relatos del archivo de Alister Hardy, y a la tesis evolutiva de este.

«Paul Marshall is a contemporary scholar of religion who has had his own modern mystical encounter, this time with a zig-zagging pattern of circular “little beings” that were somehow simultaneously both in him» — Kripal presenta el caso de Paul Marshall, con seres circulares que estaban a la vez dentro de él.

«Here he discusses circular halos, all-knowing eyes, luminous soul-vehicles moving in circular motions, shining bubbles, and spherical encasements or energy vehicles of the human form—so many “soul spheres.”» — el inventario que Kripal recoge de ese estudio sobre las esferas del alma.

«Hence the visions of figures like Ezekiel (whose chariot vision included “wheels-within-wheels” that were full of eyes); the Neoplatonists, who imagined the perfection of the soul as spherical; the medieval visionary abbess Hildegard of Bingen (1098– 1179), who reported incredibly detailed visions, including one of how circular souls enter the developed fetus; Dante’s famous Divine Comedy, which describes a heavenly vision of souls as “a hundred little spheres” (cento sperule); and modern near-death experiences, like that recently reported by the neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander.» — la serie histórica que Kripal enumera, de las ruedas de Ezequiel y los neoplatónicos a Hildegarda, Dante y la muerte cercana contemporánea.

«Paul also gestures to other religious tradition, citing, for example, the modern Hindu spiritual teacher Swami Muktananda (1908–1982), who famously taught, out of his own meditative experiences, that the divine Self is a “Blue Pearl.”» — Kripal añade a esa serie la Perla Azul de Swami Muktananda; la frase va con el singular que imprime el libro.

«Glowing orbs have also been encountered in Africa and Latin America by professional anthropologists, where they are given numerous and conflicting interpretations by the local people, from the flight of witches or the battles of wizards and shamans, through ghost riders and spirits of buried treasure, to the omnipresent modern UFO.» — Kripal reparte las lecturas locales del mismo fenómeno, del vuelo de las brujas y las batallas de hechiceros al ovni.

«To take just two examples, the anthropologist Yves Marton reported a bright light about the size of a tennis ball that woke him from his sleep and filled him with states of plenitude and joy. More recently, the anthropologist Diego Escolar has given us a detailed report of some “anomalous luminous entities,” or luces, that tracked and followed his research team through the mountains of Argentina for four hours.» — los dos casos etnográficos que Kripal cita, con equipos enteros de investigación por testigos.

«The experience also included a dramatic temporal distortion, which altered the time that it should have taken to travel through a valley and reduced these four hours to an experienced one or one and a half.96 Temporal distortions, of course, are extremely common in reports of UFO encounters.» — la distorsión temporal de ese caso y el patrón mayor en que Kripal la inscribe.

«Orbs of light are quite common in the pre-modern world, and all around the world. For example, they are very common in the ancient Mediterranean world, particularly in Neoplatonism, where the soul’s body of light, or “shining vehicle” (augoeides ochema), is reported as spheroid in shape.» — Kripal remonta el orbe al neoplatonismo, con el vehículo luminoso del alma descrito como esferoide.

«The historian of religions Ioan Couliano went so far as to describe this spherical soul-vehicle as a kind of ancient “space shuttle” traveling back and forth between the earthly body and outer space, where the gods were believed to inhabit, or be, the stars.» — Kripal recoge de Ioan Couliano la figura del vehículo del alma como transbordador antiguo entre el cuerpo y los astros.

«Living light forms are also described in many medieval and early modern records about the “materiality” of purgatory in Catholicism, here as mysterious flames or beings of light that allegedly left physical effects and were interpreted, at least by the officials of the tradition, as suffering souls in purgatory in need of prayer and the Church’s mediation.» — Kripal sitúa las formas de luz en los expedientes de purgatorio y anota que la interpretación era de la propia institución.

«Consider the third-century apocryphal scripture The Revelation of the Magi. This remarkable text features a luminous entity appearing to the magi in a cave “in the land of Shir” (probably China), changing into the form of a glowing “small and humble” humanoid, and leading them, as the famous star, to travel to Bethlehem. There, in another cave, the light form is “born” as Mary and Joseph’s infant son, still glowing radiantly.» — Kripal resume la Revelación de los Magos, con la entidad luminosa que se vuelve humanoide y guía a los magos.

«For example, thanks to the power of the star, the trip from Shir to Bethlehem is said to be “short and swift,” as if time has deteriorated in the presence of a UFO.» — el detalle temporal de ese texto que Kripal compara con la deterioración del tiempo ante un ovni.

«And much like Stuart’s encounter with the glowing orbs that were somehow “inside him,” the bright star is said to be visible only to the magi.» — el segundo detalle que Kripal hace coincidir, la visibilidad restringida de la estrella.

«The little star or glowing orb never actually identifies himself as Christ to the traveling magicians and makes startling statements like this: “I am everywhere, because I am a ray of light whose light has shone . . . in the entire world and in every land by unspeakable mysteries.» — lo que ese texto pone en boca de la estrella, sin identificarla con Cristo.

«The star-child from the East, in other words, was proclaiming a kind of New Age wisdom about the deeper identity of the world’s religions, seventeen centuries ago. The Ancient New Age again.» — la lectura de Kripal, con esa estrella proclamando la identidad profunda de las religiones diecisiete siglos antes.

«I must add here that Philip K. Dick often came to the same conclusion from his Valis encounters, namely, that we are dead» — Kripal alinea la inversión de Strieber con la de Philip K. Dick.

«Whitley makes the same suggestion above. Charles Fort proposed the same “flip” almost a hundred years ago.» — Kripal remonta esa misma inversión a Charles Fort, un siglo antes.

«Here, of course, we have another “Revelation of the Magi.” We have another sphere of light and transcendent bliss, another shining vehicle of the soul, another glowing orb, another little star that can morph into a small dwarflike humanoid.» — Kripal hace del episodio de la cabaña otra versión del texto apócrifo que acaba de comentar.

«I do not, of course, know what all of this means, but I do not see how we can avoid the obvious similarities here. Surely, those echoing resonances across the millennia mean something, something that we have not even begun to recognize, much less try to understand.» — Kripal se abstiene del sentido y sostiene solo la semejanza, que dice sin empezar a entender.

«Once we begin this comparative project, once we really practice this future of the past, I suspect that we will begin to see the world and ourselves in another light, literally. Perhaps we will see that the soul is a UFO, a little radiant star twinkling inside our heads and hearts that will lift off into who-knows-where when these carbon-based brains and bodies finally fail and fall away. I hope so.» — Kripal cierra su capítulo con el alma como ovni, y en la última frase lo deja en esperanza.

«Among these is the conclusion that the U.S. military and government do not understand the UFO phenomenon, and that their secrecy, whatever its motivations, is feeding the mythology. He observes that a small collection of communities have formed around the stories and secrecies, but that these are generally isolated and marginalized by the broader culture since they are embracing a form of rejected knowledge. And he notes that we now possess both scientific and intellectual tools to study the formation of such mythologies and communities that no previous culture possessed. All of these conclusions, it seems to me, are very good ways to move the conversation forward.» — Kripal resume y suscribe tres posiciones de Strieber, incluida la del conocimiento rechazado.

«I think the science is crucial, of course, but I do not think it is enough, or ever will be. It is my own position that the tools of the humanities—and particularly those of the study of religion and anthropology— are much more promising and, frankly, much more powerful in this particular arena.» — la posición de Kripal frente a la de su coautor: la ciencia no basta y las humanidades le parecen más potentes aquí.

«And I intend that phrase in the most paradoxical sense possible, that is, in the sense of something seen or physically encountered that is actually a materialized story or meaning. I mean a thing that is also a thought.» — Kripal define el objeto mítico como historia materializada, cosa y pensamiento a la vez.

«Put differently, these spectral encounters participate in both the material and the mental. They are objective and subjective at the same time. They are expressions of the one world we encountered at the end of chapter 15. Like the bizarre objects of that previous chapter (the implant, the magical stone, and the honey jar), they are props in a drama. They pull us into their stories, even as we tell them ours.» — Kripal describe esos encuentros como utilería de un drama que nos incluye como narradores y como narrados.

«This is probably a premature conclusion on our part, but that is where we are at the moment.» — Kripal declara prematura la alergia de su propio gremio a la realidad de esos objetos.

«Well, we can begin by simply admitting our ignorance. We can also recognize the likelihood that this ignorance is not a moral one, that it is not somehow “our fault.” It is much more likely a perfectly natural or cognitive condition, that is, a function of how we are put together, how we are “wired,” as people like to say today, entranced as they are with computers and smart phones.» — Kripal propone empezar por admitir la ignorancia y la califica de cognitiva, no de culpa moral.

«As a result of our cultural software (read: our languages, grammars, social customs, and beliefs) and our neurological hardware (read: our nervous system, senses, and brain), we are constantly equating what we believe or perceive for what is. These constant, unconscious acts need to be named for what they are: mistakes.» — Kripal nombra error al acto habitual de tomar lo percibido o lo creído por lo que hay.

«Our religious symbols, for example, may or may not point to some aspect of ultimate reality, but they are not literally true and should never be taken as absolutely accurate. This is the fundamental lesson of the comparative study of religion.» — la lección que Kripal extrae de su propia disciplina, símbolos que no son literalmente verdaderos.

«It is also the fundamental mistake that the religions have repeatedly made throughout recorded history: their believers have too often (not always) confused coded cultural memories of real encounters with something as literal and perfectly accurate descriptions of everything. Much too often, they have forgotten, or simply have not known, that every religious truth is a mediated one, and so also a relative one.» — el error correlativo que Kripal les imputa a las religiones, con la salvedad de que no siempre lo cometen.

«They have confused the filter with the filtered, the medium with the mediated, the prism with the light (not unlike the conventional neuroscientists who today confuse the brain with mind). As a result, they have ended up idolizing their own local languages, their scriptural texts, their mythologies, and their local social practices and moral values, none of which are or ever can be universal. They remain entranced.» — Kripal iguala ese error al del neurocientífico que confunde el cerebro con la mente.

«When these sorts of conflations between appearance and reality, between something and everything, are linked to authoritarian institutions and exclusivist ideologies, they also carry profoundly dangerous political potentials, as we can see today all around us.» — Kripal le da salida política a ese error cuando se combina con instituciones autoritarias.

«It is hard to avoid the conclusion that many of our world’s present problems are a result of our lack of an adequate theory of the religious imagination as both a projector of cultural fantasy and a medium of conscious light. Without such an understanding, we can only fail, miserably, to compare one another’s projections and prisms deeply, fairly, and calmly. Without such an understanding, we will also not be able to understand something like the UFO phenomenon and recognize, as Whitley puts it just right, that it isn’t entirely imaginary.» — Kripal atribuye buena parte de los problemas del mundo a la falta de una teoría de la imaginación religiosa que la tome por proyector y por medio a la vez.

«Whitley observes quite correctly that the human species is a mythmaking species. As anthropologists have long noted, just as birds instinctively build nests and bees build hives, we “make worlds,” that is, we create mythical universes to live in. We have no choice. Human beings need meaning, which is to say story, in order to live, much as they need food and air. No human community can live without meaning. As Jesus put it, man cannot live by bread alone. He was right about that.» — Kripal suscribe la tesis del humano hacedor de mitos y hace del sentido una necesidad como el pan.

«But here is the thing. Every story is incomplete. No story works for everyone. If there is anything I know with certainty as a historian of religions, it is this:» — Kripal declara incompleto todo relato y anuncia lo único que dice saber con certeza como historiador de las religiones.

«Believe it or not, this is good news, at least in the big picture. Every story must end, after all, because no story can capture the fullness of the human experience and its various historical, environmental, and conceptual challenges. We are always and everywhere more than our stories, more than our cultures and families, more than our races and ethnicities, more than our religions and societies. We shut one book not to end the human venture, but to begin another anew.» — Kripal lee ese vencimiento como buena noticia porque somos siempre más que nuestros relatos.

«consider that “they,” and by extension “we,” are engaging in the modern eruption of these manifestations and appearances precisely so that a new story will be told. We are suggesting that all the bizzarerie is “aimed” at one real object—a mythical object. Which is to say: a new and better story.» — la hipótesis más fuerte del capítulo: que la irrupción moderna esté apuntada a que se cuente un relato nuevo.

«So the question is this. After we have said away all of our beliefs and unbeliefs about “what we are, who we are, and where we are,” we are still left with a fundamental mystery or question mark: What on earth (or off the Earth) has been in contact with us for all these millennia, producing, in the confusing process, tens of thousands of religions and billions of contact encounters?» — la pregunta que a Kripal le queda después del decir-quitando, y que deja abierta.

«This early humility, however, quickly trance-formed into an all too certain and all too mechanistic nightmare that was mostly a projection of our own cold war fears and Christian fundamentalist fantasies about the end of the world, which, horror of all horrors, we now had the technology to bring about, and still do.» — Kripal lee el paso del objeto no identificado a la pesadilla mecánica como proyección de miedos de guerra fría.

«It was the U.S. Air Force, after all, that coined the expression “UFO” in the early 1950s, largely for defense reasons. In its historical origins, the acronym is a military cold war expression. It names something that we need to defend ourselves against.» — Kripal data el acrónimo en la fuerza aérea estadounidense y le lee su origen defensivo.

«On one level, materialism is just more monotheism in disguise. It is another jealous god. Instead of “My God is the only God,” now it is “There is only matter.” The story goes like this. Matter is made up of tiny dead things that are bouncing or waving around in predictable mathematical patterns. It’s all math. There is no meaning. There is no mind. Evolution is without a goal. It intends nothing. It is going nowhere. The universe is pointless.» — Kripal cuenta el materialismo como relato y lo iguala en estructura al monoteísmo excluyente.

«This is a bad story in the simple sense that it is deeply depressing. Why anyone wants to live inside such a trance state is simply beyond me. I recognize, of course, that those who embrace it do so because they think it is true. I respect that, but I also know that this conclusion is a belief and not a fact, an interpretation of the world and not the world itself. I also know that there are real phenomena in the world that this interpretation must ignore in order to preserve its own fragile status.» — Kripal objeta ese relato por deprimente y por interpretativo, y le imputa dejar fenómenos fuera.

«Taken out of context, this third law has been employed endlessly to diminish or demean traditional forms of magical practice and religious experience as deluded, mistaken, and ignorant. Those poor primitives just would not understand our modern science and technology. We moderns are so clever. They were so foolish. This, of course, is precisely the assumption of the reductive comparisons that I criticized at the very beginning of this book. It is also the attitude of colonialists, imperialists, and racists.» — Kripal desmonta el uso corriente de la tercera ley de Clarke y lo adscribe a la comparación reductiva.

«fascinated with paranormal phenomena from maledictions, stigmata, and apparitions (all which he considered “highly probable”) to poltergeists, telepathy, and dowsing (which he considered “possible” and “worth investigating”) to survival of bodily death and reincarnation (which he considered “almost certainly untrue”).101 The science-fiction legend even worked with two television professionals to create a series for British television on unexplained phenomena.» — Kripal reparte lo que Clarke tenía por probable, posible y casi seguramente falso en materia paranormal.

«When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.» — las dos primeras leyes de Clarke, que Kripal dice que nadie cita por no servir a la negación.

«In his epilogue to Arthur C. Clarke’s World of Strange Powers, for example, he seriously suggested that the human eye, under rare but real conditions, might actually reverse its normal functions. Instead of passively receiving impressions from the environment, it might actively project, like a slide projector, mental apparitions into the physical environment that others can see.103 Here was his version of the imaginal. He was very serious about this. He was quite convinced that apparitions are real phenomena. Apparitions rated very high on his scale of the probable.» — Kripal recoge de Clarke la hipótesis del ojo que proyecta en vez de recibir, y la llama su versión del imaginal.

«Any sufficiently profound magical event is indistinguishable from technology.» — la inversión que Kripal le hace a la máxima de Clarke.

«But this, I would suggest, is the exact opposite of the truth. Contemporary extraterrestrials show every appearance of being gods misperceived by spiritually naive moderns. What looks like technology today is really magic. The gods were not ancient aliens. The aliens are modern gods.» — Kripal invierte la lectura del astronauta antiguo y deja a los alienígenas como dioses mal vistos por modernos.

«This modern magic and these modern gods, of course, are likely not what they appear to be either. There is the flip of the flip. There is the spiral up.» — Kripal le aplica a su propia inversión otra vuelta y no la deja como conclusión.

«In a recent interview with his daughter Kim Arnold, Ms. Arnold explained that one of the “hidden secrets” of her father’s literary remains and personal files is that he witnessed the flying objects “pulsating with a blue-white light,” like a heartbeat, and that he eventually concluded that the saucers were “not mechanical in any sense at all,” that is, that they were alive.» — Kripal recoge de Kim Arnold que su padre acabó teniendo por vivos, y no por máquinas, a los objetos que vio.

«also convinced that they could change their density, and that they came from another dimensional world, which is the same one we enter when we die.» — la otra mitad de esa convicción atribuida a Kenneth Arnold, con el mundo de los objetos identificado con el de los muertos.

«Already in 1949, Arnold had offered a more biological version of the same understanding, when he suggested that these flying objects were in fact “groups and masses of living organisms that are as much a part of our atmosphere and space as the life we find in the oceans.”105 This is pure Charles Fort, by the way. Was he reading Fort?» — Kripal fecha en 1949 la versión biológica de esa idea y la acerca a Charles Fort, dejando la deuda como pregunta.

«Kim Arnold also speaks about the telepathic gifts and reincarnation beliefs of her mother and what looks very much like a general Theosophical or occult framework in which her father and mother understood these historical sightings and their cultural aftermath.» — Kripal sitúa a los Arnold dentro de un marco teosófico u ocultista, con telepatía y reencarnación.

«Finally, she also describes how her father was threatened by a government agent not to speak about what he saw and recounts in some detail how both of her parents spent the rest of their lives in fear of being killed by the U.S. government, whose intelligence community appears to have manipulated and harassed Arnold for its own purposes.» — la parte del testimonio que Kripal recoge sobre las amenazas y el hostigamiento oficial a esa familia.

«We can now well see that the Ken Arnold story is a perfect example of “Arthur C. Clarke flipped.” Modern technology was not being misperceived by scientifically naive ancients. Ancient souls were being misperceived by spiritually naive moderns.» — Kripal aplica al caso Arnold su inversión de la máxima de Clarke.

«And the confusions only multiplied, fast. This occult vision of soul creatures living in the atmosphere or energy beings emerging from some other dimension almost immediately got implicated in a whole series of cold war fears, secret military projects, Christian teachings about “demons” (such interpretive strategies have been used for two millennia to deny and demonize other people’s experiences of the sacred, which, like the Christian God, often do possess both positive and negative dimensions, at least relative to the ego), sci-fi stories, and Hollywood movies, not to mention more than a few government intelligence responses no doubt designed to protect and hide real military technology. Hence what we have called “the wastebasket problem.” Where to start? Where to begin anew?» — Kripal enumera lo que se le enredó encima a esa visión ocultista y vuelve al problema del cesto de basura.

«The older religious stories may be better in some ways in that they recognize the spiritual side of all of this, hence the flip. But they are far worse in others. Again, neither the scientism nor the dogmatic religion are going to get us there. We need to keep shooting the arrow both ways. We need to keep flipping the coin, back and forth, back and forth. We need to spiral up. We need a new third way forward. Which is another way of saying: We don’t just need another story; we also need another kind of story, that is, another way of telling stories.» — Kripal reparte el mérito entre los relatos religiosos y los científicos, y pide un modo nuevo de contar, no solo un relato nuevo.

«What will these new stories and this new way of telling them look like? I do not know, but I have two basic guesses.» — Kripal declara que no lo sabe y anuncia dos conjeturas, así llamadas.

«The first guess is that these new stories will take modern cosmology, quantum physics, and evolutionary biology as their main sources of inspiration or general framework and put an extremely robust and expansive sense of “cosmic conscious evolution” at the center of their narratives—cosmological, material, and biological, yes, but also cultural and spiritual.» — primera conjetura de Kripal, una evolución cósmica consciente en el centro del relato nuevo.

«Here we are not just “star dust,” as Carl Sagan had it. We are highly evolved expressions of starlight become conscious and aware within a vast web of planetary life. These new stories will not just be evolutionary, then. They will also be “green,” that is, deeply ecological in hope and direction. In Mutants and Mystics, I called this deep, science-inspired, nature-based structure of the emergent mythologies the “Super Story.” That still seems exactly right to me.» — Kripal nombra Super Historia a esa estructura y la declara ecológica además de evolutiva.

«It is worth noting, though, that the X-Men are very late to the emerging mutant mysticism. Such practices, experiences, and belief systems are not 50 years old. They are 150 years old. They go all the way back to the origins of evolutionary biology itself in the co-founding figure of Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) and his deep personal engagement with nineteenth-century Spiritualism, occultism, and psychical research, all of which was forming around the Darwinian revolution.» — Kripal remonta el misticismo mutante ciento cincuenta años, hasta Alfred Russel Wallace y su espiritismo y ocultismo.

«The second guess is that the new super story–tellers will be different kinds of storytellers to the extent that, as authors and artists with real empirical experience, they will always keep in mind the indubitable fact that they are telling stories, even as—and here is the tricky part—they will also know that their fictions encode the remembered experiences of contact. In Whitley’s language, they will be mythmakers who know that their myths are not just imaginary.» — segunda conjetura de Kripal, narradores que saben que narran y que a la vez saben que su ficción cifra un contacto.

«I also take his conviction that the imagination can materialize its contents in the physical environment (something he shares with the late Arthur C. Clarke) and his fascinating extension of von Neumann’s Quantum Perception problem— that we might actually “open a door” into an invisible world or dimension through the psychic power of belief—to be profound and dramatic instances of the imaginal and hermeneutical practices I described in chapter 9. The latter practices I would summarize again as the bizarre fact that we are always everywhere imagining, interpreting, and believing ourselves into existence through the process of contact, communication, communion, and community. We would do well to recognize that and to make it more conscious.» — Kripal recoge dos ideas de Strieber, la imaginación que materializa y la puerta abierta por la creencia, y las resume en su propia fórmula.

«But must we go there? Must we do this yet again? “Hasn’t the past taught us anything at all?”108 Could it not be finally the time not just for a different story, but also for a different kind of story, a story that knows itself as story?» — Kripal se niega a fundar otra religión y pide un relato que se sepa relato.

«The fundamental question remains: just who is telling all of these stories? Who is left after another story is told, the book is shut, and the spell is broken?» — la pregunta con que Kripal deja el asunto, quién queda cuando el relato termina.

«And so we come to our final tool or technique. After comparison, phenomenology, history, hermeneutics, erotics, saying away, the traumatic secret, and energetics, we finally come to this: say again. With these two words, I mean two things. I mean: “Say again,” as in “Tell us another story.” But I also mean: “Say again?” as in “Do you really believe all of that?» — Kripal nombra la novena y última herramienta, decir-otra-vez, con sus dos sentidos.

«military components of the UFO for a focusing in on the personal visionary and spiritual dimensions. I trust that perspective is clear enough by now, and that you can see well what it gives us, and what it does not give us.» — Kripal recuerda que apartó la capa militar a propósito y le pide al lector ver también qué se pierde con eso.

«What it does not give us is an adequate struggle with the political and ideological dimensions of the problem at hand. Nor does it adequately treat the very real military involvement in these histories, which also needs to be studied carefully and calmly.» — Kripal nombra lo que su enfoque deja fuera, la dimensión política y la implicación militar.

«I want to metaphorically wrestle for a moment with the people in Whitley’s room who broke into his cabin and put something strange in his ear. I want to acknowledge the decades-long anxieties of Mr. and Mrs. Arnold after those cruel threats in the desert. I want to recognize the role of shadowy intelligence officers, literal abductions, and misinformation campaigns that damage people’s careers, even ruin their lives.» — lo que Kripal quiere reconocer al cierre, del allanamiento de la cabaña a las campañas de desinformación.

«I want to call out the morally reprehensible ways that individuals and traditions literally demonize the religious experiences of other people that cannot fit into their own narrow and close-minded belief systems (calling something “demonic,” after all, is also a conspiracy theory).» — Kripal iguala la demonización de la experiencia religiosa ajena a una teoría de la conspiración.

«I want to acknowledge the moral and intellectual integrity of my colleagues in the study of myth and religion who have consistently pointed out to us that every myth is a power play, that every religion is political» — Kripal le concede a sus colegas críticos que todo mito es una jugada de poder y toda religión es política.

«What I mean by this is that I don’t trust the wild conspiracies that are constantly spun out of this material, which is not to say that I do not recognize that there are likely real truths embedded in some of them. As literal scenarios, however, I always find them stretched and finally unbelievable.» — Kripal acota su rechazo a las conspiraciones y admite que puede haber verdades dentro de algunas.

«I still do not “do conspiracy,” that is, I don’t generally buy the content of the extreme conspiracies, but I do understand their social function. What I mean by this is that I understand how conspiracy theories make an otherwise chaotic world meaningful to a small group of people whose psychology is dominated by the attractive belief that they possess a fantastic truth hidden from the rest of us.» — Kripal separa el contenido de la conspiración, que rechaza, de su función social, que describe.

«I also recognize a general if distorted truth behind the contents of the different conspiracies, namely, that mythologies are also always ideologies, and that “telling a story” is never enough, particularly when there are institutions and political and economic interests involved that want to “control the story” or “take back the story.” And, of course, there always are.» — la verdad deformada que Kripal les concede a las conspiraciones, que hay intereses queriendo controlar el relato.

«On a deeper level still, it must be said that all conspiracy theories—both reasonable and unreasonable—express a most basic fact about the human condition that is well known in the humanities, indeed, that grounds all of them: namely, that all of us at every moment are being duped, are being tricked by our languages, our cultures, our religions, and, alas, by our very brains.» — Kripal lleva la conspiración hasta el fundamento de las humanidades, que todos estamos siendo engañados por lengua y cultura.

«Is not this proposed truth the ultimate conspiracy theory? Am I a conspiracy theorist?» — Kripal le aplica a su propia tesis la pregunta que le hace a los demás.

«In the end, the most reliable truth of conspiracy is not a positive one but a negative one. What you see is not what you get. Seeing is not believing. Don’t believe what you believe. Don’t think what you think. Say away.» — Kripal deja la conspiración en su forma negativa y la enlaza con su herramienta del decir-quitando.

«I have put this most basic of all truths in the humanities in my own work in terms of the observation that all of us are “being written” by language and culture.» — la fórmula con que Kripal enuncia esa verdad de las humanidades, que a todos nos escriben la lengua y la cultura.

«real superheroes struggling to step off the page and into the conviction of our own independent existence, which, alas, is not as yet at all clear.» — Kripal cierra su capítulo 17 con nosotros como personajes que intentan salir de la página, sin darlo por conseguido.

«With respect to the unexplained, Fort understood that it all comes down to one’s comparative practice. Collection, classification, and pattern recognition are the keys to seeing what is already there before our eyes, if only we could collect enough pieces and put them together in the right way.» — Kripal resume el método de Fort en colección, clasificación y reconocimiento de patrones.

«Such a comparative practice would, in effect, end the world we assume and reveal another one, our true condition.» — lo que Kripal le atribuye a esa práctica llevada al extremo, terminar con el mundo supuesto.

«COMPARE. Data is just data. It means nothing until it is classified and compared toward some end.» — primera regla del apéndice: el dato no dice nada hasta que se lo clasifica y compara.

«Begin, then, by recognizing your choices and your own role in this selective process. Compare the appearances you are trying to understand with other similar but different appearances in the historical record» — la primera instrucción de esa regla, reconocer la propia elección antes de comparar.

«be careful not to privilege too quickly any past or present interpretation of these similarities.» — la cautela con que Kripal cierra esa regla, no privilegiar ni la lectura antigua ni la moderna.

«MAKE A CUT. Make a distinction between what has appeared and what is and recognize that, as an embodied ego, you have no reliable access to the latter, and for one simple reason: you yourself are a biological medium or neurological filter. Do not believe what you believe.» — segunda regla, con la razón que la funda: uno mismo es el filtro biológico.

«HISTORICALLY CONTEXTUALIZE. Place the events that you are trying to understand both in the general history of religions and in their own more immediate historical, social, and political contexts. Employ these contexts to not only recognize the uniqueness of the events but also to see how they fit into much larger global patterns.» — tercera regla, con el contexto usado para lo singular y para el patrón a la vez.

«Recognize the roles of fantasy and projection in the production of these potential signals, but do not assume that everything imagined is imaginary. Imagine double.» — el núcleo de la cuarta regla: contar con la proyección sin dar por imaginario todo lo imaginado.

«Do not automatically reduce these experiences to the simply sexual, but recognize how sexual energies can sometimes morph into transcendent spiritual states.» — la reserva de la quinta regla, ni reducir a lo sexual ni desconocer que esa energía muda de estado.

«SAY AWAY. Learn to live with paradox, to sit with the question. Come to terms with the bluntly physical ways that these events sometimes materialize in the environment.» — sexta regla, que junta la convivencia con la paradoja y el reconocimiento de lo físico.

«Recognize that this splitting into a subject “in here” perceiving objects “out there” is a function of the human organism and its cognitive and sensory hardware and probably not of the psychophysical world itself.» — cierre de esa misma regla, con la partición sujeto-objeto atribuida al organismo y no al mundo.

«Consider whether the trance state might be related to a history of trauma that has “cracked open” the ego for contact and communication, but do not assume an identity between the traumatic opening and the transcendence that might be rushing in through this cracked-open door.» — séptima regla, con la advertencia expresa de no identificar la apertura traumática con lo que entra por ella.

«THINK IN TERMS OF AN ENERGETICS. Look for energetic, electromagnetic, or plasmalike phenomena within and around the extreme experience. See if these altered states of energy appear to be alive or intelligent in some way. Recognize that you may well not be able to reason with them, but that you may be able to resonate with them. And finally . . .» — octava regla, con la resonancia puesta en el lugar del razonamiento.

«SAY AGAIN. Decide for yourself whether the story that your cultural trance-forms have put you in is a story you really want to be in. If it is not, then wake up out of that story, step off the page, and begin to think about telling another, but try to tell this new story in a new way —as a true fiction.» — novena regla, con el relato nuevo pedido en forma de ficción verdadera.

«You will need help. Seek out like-minded individuals. Create community. Look to unexplained events—weird “coincidences,” striking dreams, drop-your-jar super moments—in your life as possible clues to how to tell this new story-self with others, or how to not tell it (there might, after all, be negative or dark synchronicities).» — continuación de esa regla, con la comunidad por requisito y la sincronicidad oscura como posibilidad declarada.

«Finally, consider just who is telling all of these stories. Here are the steps, then: contact, communication, communion, community, and, finally . . . consciousness.» — los cinco pasos con que Kripal cierra el apéndice, de contacto a consciencia.

«No one, of course, really “makes the supernatural super natural.” It already is, and it has always been so.» — Kripal le retira al título del apéndice toda pretensión de operación sobre el mundo.

«prism of the light. All that changes is us.» — última línea del apéndice, en la plana siguiente al corte de página.

«The Renaissance brought reason, the enlightenment that followed the freeing disciplines of structured academic inquiry and scientific method» — así abre su primer capítulo, y añade: «However, there is one area that remains outside of understanding».

«Moses, Paul, and all the others who encountered such manifestations in the past saw something, just as people who encounter UFOs, orbs of light, and aliens do today» — afirma continuidad del encuentro entre lo antiguo y lo moderno.

«The only things new are the names, and with them a visual grammar that fits our imagination» — sitúa la novedad en el vocabulario, no en el fenómeno.

«bring reason to enchantment» — su programa, en tres palabras.

«In February of 2015, presidential adviser John Podesta tweeted that his greatest regret of 2014 was that he had failed to get the government to release the information it possesses about UFOs.» — dato fechado que consigna.

«they did not act, in my encounters with them, like explorers in any easily understood sense, nor, in my experience, are they aliens in the way that is commonly assumed. But that does not mean they emerge from our minds and nowhere else» — su reserva ante la hipótesis extraterrestre, sin caer en la mental.

«The “alien” is as much a herald from the dark of the universe as it is a signal from the depths of our own minds.» — sostiene las dos lecturas a la vez.

«I don’t believe in the supernatural or the paranormal, but I do feel strongly that these terms are used in our materially focused culture to explain away phenomena that are in some way real» — su negativa doctrinal.

«Aliens both are and are not aliens, for example. Ghosts are both real and illusory, something like reflections.» — su registro es paradójico, no disyuntivo.

«I don’t think that I am perceiving the supernatural, but rather, as Jeff has so adroitly expressed it, the super natural, that which is part of nature but works by rules that are different from those we are familiar with.» — adopta el término de su coautor y lo declara.

«I do not see it as being overseen by a final being, or god. We the living, in all our ancient vastness, are all that is here. But by living, I don’t mean only physically alive.» — declaración antiteísta explícita.

«capering stick insects, others squat, frog-faced trolls who were a deep iridescent blue» — así describe a los presentes en el episodio de diciembre de 1985.

«What can we do to help you stop screaming?» — la frase que relata haber oído, en voz femenina robótica.

«by identifying themselves with owl imagery» — sostiene que la imaginería del búho es lenguaje de los visitantes, no coincidencia.

«My efforts to describe my experiences publicly and accurately have profoundly compromised my credibility.» — consigna el costo público de su relato.

«It’s not nothing. Something happens and it is not confined to the mind. It isn’t hallucinatory. Neither, however, is it real in the same way that we are real, not exactly.» — el estatuto que le da al fenómeno.

«There cannot be consciousness or coherent being outside of the physical—which is, in fact, what I want to believe. Unfortunately for me, though, it simply is not my perception.» — declara que su deseo va contra su percepción.

«They are in my life, but I don’t know what they are» — su abstención sobre la naturaleza de los visitantes.

«I’d prefer to let that sort of debate wander off down its meaningless pathway on its own.» — rechaza el debate binario sobre el trucaje de la imagen del gnomo de cámara trampa que le envió Linda Moulton Howe.

«In the academy and the professional study of religion» — reconoce ahí un debate de ciento cincuenta años que apenas llegó a la percepción pública.

«I am, in my heart, a secular individual, but I do consider it possible, based on personal experience, that there may be conscious being outside of the body.» — su posición declarada al cierre del capítulo 2.

«The Emerald Tablet of Hermes by Hermes Trismegistus, which first appears in an Arabic text in about the eighth century» — la data ahí y añade que Newton la tuvo por fundamento del movimiento alquímico.

«So the kobolds, perhaps, were communicating that it is possible to mine for wisdom by ascending.» — lee los episodios de la cabaña como jeroglíficos vivos, no como sucesos brutos.

«The father of all perfection in the whole world is here. Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth.» — cita la Tabla de Esmeralda en la traducción de Newton.

«An alchemical transformation that was apparently not so good for the circulatory system of an elderly lawyer» — aplica el vocabulario alquímico al episodio del vecino que sangró por la frente.

«half a lifetime of spiritual search and fifteen years of intensive inner work in the Gurdjieff Foundation» — declara su formación; en las páginas vecinas nombra a Ouspensky, *In Search of the Miraculous* y las reuniones en la Fundación de Manhattan.

«holy the firm» — expresión que adjudica a G. I. Gurdjieff.

«Gurdjieff taught the importance of friction» — el linaje operando como clave de lectura de su propia experiencia.

«A brutal rape by a beloved parent might become a brutal alien abduction» — enuncia la hipótesis de sublimación del trauma.

«A rape by a father becomes a visit from a god. Leda didn’t get ravished by daddy—too unbearable to contemplate. No, it was a swan, and that swan was a god.» — la extiende al mito.

«This might explain many of these experiences, but it should not be used to explain them away.» — el límite explícito que le pone a su propia hipótesis.

«The shattering of expectation that accompanies trauma doesn’t just cause transference, it opens a door.» — su lectura del trauma como apertura, no solo como causa.

«my perception is that our physical reality is embedded in something larger—an island, as it were, alone in a vast ocean» — su cosmología, declarada como percepción.

«I agree with Jeff that these are probably not tracking devices. I also stand by the idea that somebody was there. They had to be. I saw two of them.» — sobre el implante: concede la interpretación y sostiene el hecho.

«I think that the program was run by German scientists who had been brought to the United States as part of Operation Paperclip. They had worked in human behavior in the concentration camps.» — su hipótesis sobre el programa que recuerda en Randolph Air Force Base.

«the title a play on that of Project Blue Book’s Condon Report» — así presenta el Condign Report, documento de 408 páginas desclasificado por el Ministerio de Defensa británico.

«they generate hallucinations» — lo que el Condign Report adjudica a los plasmas, según su lectura.

«Frequencies can be detected and analyzed» — su apuesta por la vía instrumental.

«I would be extremely surprised if aliens have anything to do with any of this. The magical stones of shamanism are quite interesting» — correo suyo del 1 de enero de 2015 a Kripal, reproducido dentro de un capítulo de Kripal; añade que le fue *dada* una piedra así.

«We have always assumed that myth only came out of the mind» — pasaje suyo citado en bloque por Kripal dentro del capítulo 17; sigue con que ahora se ve que el mito «isn’t entirely imaginary».

«it is not necessary to believe in such things as flying saucers, aliens, ghosts, and other unexplained phenomena in order to study them.» — su cierre programático, que él mismo adjudica a Kripal («as Jeff has pointed out»).

«If disclosure or some other event created a compelling suggestion, say, that aliens are here, it would be a grave mistake and a great tragedy to attempt to understand them in the context of the popular vision of them.» — la consecuencia que teme.

«spent many thousands of years explaining the mysteries and vagaries of nature as the outcomes of various enchantments, the actions of gods and demons in human affairs, to be managed by ritual and worship.» — así abre Strieber su primer capítulo, con el encantamiento y el ritual como modo antiguo de tratar la naturaleza.

«In the past it manifested in the form of mysterious beings, strange lights, and ghostly presences. St. Paul encountered it on the road to Damascus when he was startled by a flash of light and a voice, an event that changed the world. Earlier, Moses encountered it in the form of a burning bush, with equally dramatic effect on our culture.» — Strieber pone a Pablo en el camino de Damasco y a Moisés ante la zarza como casos de esa única zona no entendida.

«It is what we now call the supernatural. It has reemerged in the form of the alien and UFO stories that abound in our time, and threatens to degenerate into a new superstition if it does not receive the study necessary to determine what it actually is.» — Strieber advierte que sin estudio el asunto degenera en superstición nueva.

«Previously, this aspect of nature—for that is what it is—had to be entirely rejected as there was no avenue of approach that would enable empirical study» — Strieber sostiene que es un aspecto de la naturaleza, y explica el rechazo previo por la falta de vía empírica.

«As this point in our intellectual and scientific evolution, it seems possible to study this material without recourse to beliefs, old or new.» — Strieber declara que ya hay herramientas para estudiar el material sin recurrir a creencias, viejas ni nuevas; la primera frase va con la errata del libro, que imprime As donde se espera At.

«I wish to suggest from the outset that the phenomenon is much larger than any of the usual explanations, including alien visitation and such interpretations as brain seizure.» — Strieber declara desde el inicio que el fenómeno excede tanto la visita alienígena como la explicación neurológica.

«It is far richer, more complex, and more ambiguous than we commonly suppose, and is, with or without governmental revelations about UFOs, in the process of changing us and our world, as it has been doing not just since the first modern flying saucer sightings seventy years ago, but also for thousands of years» — Strieber le da al fenómeno una duración milenaria y lo declara en curso de cambiarnos, haya o no anuncio oficial.

«I would never dismiss the idea that aliens from other planets are here, or may come here. It’s just that this is not proven, at least not outside the community of secret-keepers to which Mr. Podesta referred in his tweet, and until there is proof, it is only one of a number of possibilities.» — Strieber no descarta la hipótesis extraterrestre; la deja como una posibilidad no probada entre otras.

«represent the largest, strangest, most dangerous, and potentially most fruitful experience humanity has ever faced—as, indeed, they always have. What “they” are, though, is an unanswered question.» — Strieber le da a los visitantes el mayor rango de importancia y deja sin contestar qué son.

«my persistence in attempting to interact with them resulted in what I can interpret as a structured process during which they at once led me to deeper understanding and more provocative questions.» — Strieber lee su propia insistencia como proceso estructurado, con la reserva de que es una interpretación suya.

«Most of my nonfiction from Communion on reflects my attempts to make sense of this.» — Strieber sitúa toda su obra de no ficción desde Communion como intentos de entender lo mismo.

«they will not be offering us plans for a starship, or a trade in exotic electronics. What will be on offer, I would suggest, is a journey into a whole new understanding of reality and the part we play in it.» — Strieber niega que un contacto general traiga tecnología y lo describe como cambio de comprensión.

«No matter what sort of disclosures may be made, there will prove to be no government documents that define for us the new world that is on offer.» — Strieber le quita al desclasificado gubernamental la capacidad de definir el mundo que él propone.

«Had it not been for the friends who had experiences, for example, at my cabin in upstate New York, I would have dismissed many of them. But the experiences are simply too common for me to reject.» — Strieber apoya la realidad de sus episodios en los testigos de la cabaña del norte de Nueva York.

«The phenomena causing them exist. Or is it a single phenomenon that appears in many different ways?» — Strieber afirma la existencia y deja abierto si es uno o varios fenómenos.

«At different times, I have convinced myself of many different things regarding what I was perceiving and experiencing. But all of those explanations—aliens, interdimensional beings, other earthly intelligent species, ghosts, deities, time travelers, seizure effects (it’s a long list)—have proved to be unsatisfactory or incomplete in one way or another.» — Strieber enumera las explicaciones que él mismo adoptó y desechó, de los alienígenas a los efectos de convulsión.

«can and will respond by penetrating into the physical world, by coming into contact, by offering itself on many different levels, ranging from the transcendently transformative to the desperately dangerous, and all manner of shadings in between.» — Strieber describe la respuesta del fenómeno como escala continua, de lo transformador a lo peligroso.

«When I responded to the initial physical overtures of what I call “the visitors,” as violent as they were, the reaction was to offer me what has become years of coherently structured instruction in an entirely new way of life that penetrates the barrier of assumptions that so limit our vision and restrict our access to reality . . . unless, of course, I am looking into a mirror more deeply than is wise.» — Strieber lee la violencia inicial como comienzo de una instrucción, y en la misma frase admite que podría estar mirándose a sí mismo.

«I hope that my unwillingness to address it through the filter of beliefs, assumptions, and, above all, appearances has enabled me to focus on this reality in a clearer way.» — Strieber formula como esperanza, no como resultado, lo que le habría dado su negativa a filtrar la experiencia por creencias.

«So I don’t see it through the lens of religion or myth or superstition, but rather through eyes that look at the immensity of reality and see aspects of being that are living by a physics that we apparently do not fully understand, but which, in the end, is knowable.» — Strieber declara que no lo mira con lente religiosa sino como física todavía no entendida, y sostiene que es cognoscible.

«In late December of 1985 I was awakened by strange noises in my little rural cabin. I found myself surrounded by odd and menacing figures. I’d felt that I was being carried, then manhandled, and then I was in what I initially thought was a tent.» — Strieber sitúa el episodio fundacional en su cabaña rural a fines de diciembre de 1985.

«As a sometime horror novelist, I was initially delighted by this useful dream. But when I tried to wake up, the horror became real.» — Strieber cuenta que primero lo tomó por sueño útil de novelista de horror, y que el intento de despertar lo desmintió.

«A series of spectacularly bizarre and terrifying events then took place, unfolding at once as a horror movie, a grim fairy tale, a nightmare, and a viscerally real, physically painful experience.» — Strieber le da a la noche cuatro registros simultáneos, entre ellos el de dolor físico.

«Over the next few days, I would begin to recall somebody pushing a needle into my head, and feeling what my doctor would later say looked like a spider bite. More disturbingly, the rectal agony that would later be universally lampooned began to torment me.» — Strieber consigna las secuelas corporales, incluida la lesión rectal que después fue objeto de burla pública.

«They have suggested that it might be useful in understanding them to look to the owl both as an animal and a mythological creature. By doing so, it is possible, I suspect, to hear them explaining themselves. Wise and dangerous birds, night flyers, all seeing and immeasurably capable, but also vulnerable.» — Strieber propone leer el búho a la vez como animal y como criatura mitológica para entender a los visitantes.

«a controversial book called Warday that had annoyed some government officials because it gave the lie to their dangerous and absurd push to destabilize cold war détente.» — la primera hipótesis de Strieber fue la represalia oficial por Warday, libro que él coescribió contra el desmantelamiento de la distensión.

«I recalled seeing a familiar face during the initial stages of the experience— a school friend who had joined the Central Intelligence Agency. But when I tried to look him up, I was appalled and confused to discover that he had died months before the night in question.» — Strieber dice haber reconocido entre los presentes a un amigo de escuela ya muerto meses antes de esa noche.

«a test for temporal lobe epilepsy indicated that I had a brain that was not only normal but also exceptionally resistant to seizures. An MRI scan revealed no sign of any illness that might account for my perceptions.» — los resultados médicos que Strieber consigna contra su propia hipótesis de convulsión.

«Although I have been identified as the primary advocate for belief in alien abduction—and have at times publicly entertained this notion—for the most part, I have tried to adhere to the question.» — Strieber admite haber entretenido en público la lectura alienígena y dice haber intentado sostener la pregunta en vez de cerrarla.

«The alien explanation—while fascinating and touched by deliciously uneasy romance—has, from the beginning, made me wary.» — Strieber declara su recelo ante la explicación extraterrestre, sin negarle atractivo.

«either this must involve space travelers from some other planet, or it’s all a load of rubbish. For the most part, scientists and intellectuals come down on the “load of rubbish” side of the equation and decline to inquire further.» — Strieber describe el debate como disyuntiva cerrada y sitúa a científicos e intelectuales del lado del descarte.

«I frequently see and interact with nonphysical and quasi-physical beings. They seem to be part of nature just like we are, but, as Jeff advocates, in some “super” way for which we have neither an adequate religious model nor present science.» — Strieber declara trato frecuente con esos seres y toma de Kripal el calificativo para el modo en que serían parte de la naturaleza.

«They want to challenge me with questions too provocative to be left unanswered, but which I cannot, in all frankness, answer in anything approaching an objective manner.» — Strieber le adjudica a los visitantes el propósito de interrogarlo, y admite no poder contestar de modo objetivo.

«not like the old prophets who saw them as angels and deities, or modern advocates of alien contact, who see them as extraterrestrials.» — Strieber se deslinda a la vez de los profetas antiguos que vieron ángeles y de los partidarios modernos del contacto alienígena.

«On the very morning that I started writing about little blue men, Linda Moulton Howe, who is a long time observer and professional reporter in the field of the paranormal, sent me a group of three trail camera photographs of what appeared to be a classic garden gnome, complete with red vest and tall, pointed hat.» — Strieber fecha la llegada de las fotos de cámara trampa y adjudica el envío a Linda Moulton Howe.

«Work with a photography expert soon told a different story. First, the figure was blurred and thus moving fast. It wasn’t swinging in an arc but walking on two spindly legs. It was forty-four inches tall, a typical height for all of these small beings. It had stopped moving forward the moment the camera took its first picture, then beat a retreat at a high rate of speed. The camera, activated by movement and heat, takes a photo every second until the movement stops. There was no evidence that the photo was hoaxed, or that the image on it was anything known.» — lo que Strieber reporta del peritaje: figura borrosa, cuarenta y cuatro pulgadas, marcha bípeda y sin indicio de montaje.

«Now, if we apply the old methods, we must conclude either that garden gnomes are real creatures, or that this is some sort of a hoax, or perhaps a shot of a common animal whose appearance has been distorted by a trick of light.» — Strieber muestra las tres únicas salidas que deja el método viejo ante la fotografía.

«It is possible to apply new methods to the enigma, which would involve attempting to find what I would describe as more energetic questions, in the sense that they would have more potential to meaningfully dimensionalize the mystery.» — la alternativa que propone Strieber: buscar preguntas más energéticas antes que respuestas.

«Discovering such questions is not going to be easy, given that we have never searched the supernatural for an inner logic, but only argued about it, at least in the public forum, in the most simplistic way.» — Strieber atribuye la dificultad a que nunca se buscó una lógica interna en lo sobrenatural, solo se discutió sobre él.

«Or are we seeing a droll challenge from this other level, one that is suggesting that we really do need to think about the whole subject in a new way? And perhaps, also, a little less ponderously.» — Strieber deja la lectura del episodio del gnomo como pregunta, y le pide al lector menos solemnidad.

«After I realized that my 1985 experience was a true mystery, I began compulsively going out into the woods around the cabin where it happened— quite a large woodland, in fact—and attempting to somehow face it again. At the same time, I wrote and published my book about it called Communion, the reaction to which was easily as unexpected as the experience itself.» — Strieber cuenta que volvió al bosque de la cabaña a buscar el suceso y que de ahí salió Communion.

«Then the letters started coming in, at first by the hundreds, then the thousands, then a great cataract of letters, easily ten thousand a month, from all over the world.» — Strieber describe la respuesta de correo a Communion como diez mil cartas al mes.

«Far from parroting versions of my own experience, my correspondents revealed that they were perceiving an extremely complex phenomenon that involved hundreds of different types of events.» — Strieber niega que sus corresponsales repitieran su relato y les adjudica cientos de tipos distintos de suceso.

«They were linked by certain commonalities, most often the seeing of a face, long and thin with great, dark eyes, like the one I’d had painted for the cover of the book.» — el rasgo común que Strieber encuentra en las cartas es el rostro de la portada de Communion.

«Between 1987 and 2000, we must have received well in excess of half a million letters, at least a hundred thousand of them detailed accounts. I understand that this seems like a fantastic number, but it is probably accurate. We stopped counting at two hundred thousand, and that was in 1992, and they were still arriving in surprising numbers as late as 1998.» — las cifras de correspondencia que da Strieber, con la advertencia de que dejaron de contar en 1992.

«To expedite this, I created the Communion Foundation. However, I found that I could get no support. There was not just no scientific interest, but the reaction was often hostile.» — Strieber cuenta que fundó la Communion Foundation para dar el material a estudio y que no encontró apoyo científico.

«A scientist seeking to study such people, as doctors John Mack and Roger Leir discovered, could expect to have their professional credentials challenged if they dared propose such study, or worse, engage in it.» — Strieber adjudica a John Mack y a Roger Leir la experiencia de ver cuestionadas sus credenciales por estudiar el asunto.

«I very well remember the day that Dr. Mack called me and told me that both his license to practice psychiatry and his tenure at Harvard were under review.» — Strieber fecha por memoria propia la revisión de la licencia y la titularidad de Mack en Harvard.

«Surely that can change, but not unless the most interesting aspect of the phenomenon, which is its ambiguity, is to replace the either/or debate.» — Strieber pone la ambigüedad del fenómeno como el rasgo que debería sustituir a la disyuntiva.

«Whatever happened to me on the night of December 26, 1985, there was enough physical trauma to send me to the doctor a few days later, who observed that I had been raped.» — Strieber nombra la lesión de aquella noche con la palabra del médico, sin adjudicar antes qué la causó.

«Unfortunately for me, I was so humiliated by this that I described it in Communion—delicately, I thought—as a “rectal probe.” The result was that, instead of being treated with the sensitivity one might think would be due a rape victim, I was made a figure of fun.» — Strieber explica el eufemismo con que la contó en Communion y el efecto que tuvo, la burla en vez del trato debido.

«It took me a quarter of a century to even describe the experience as a rape to my wife.» — Strieber fecha en veinticinco años el silencio sobre ese punto, incluso ante Anne Strieber.

«I could not refute it, because it might be at least partially true. So I won’t say that, at times, I haven’t been seduced by it, because it does have its appeal. But that core of distrust has never left me.» — Strieber explica por qué no desmintió el rótulo de abducido y sostiene a la vez su desconfianza de fondo.

«My reason for this is not the one usually advanced, that “they couldn’t possibly get here.” Given the age of the universe and its immensity, I wouldn’t be in the least surprised if somebody has figured out interstellar travel, even if, for us, it is impossible.» — Strieber aclara que su reserva no es la imposibilidad del viaje interestelar, que él no descarta.

«I don’t mean that it’s entirely in the mind, but rather that the mind might not be entirely in us. In other words, mind might not be entirely confined to the brain.» — la corrección de Strieber a quien lea mentalismo en su propuesta: no la experiencia dentro de la mente, sino la mente fuera del cráneo.

«My intellect says that it cannot be true. My life bears witness to its truth.» — Strieber deja el conflicto entre su juicio y su vida sin resolverlo hacia ningún lado.

«If mind does exist independent of biology, then, given the conservation of energy, it is likely to be rather old, and given its lack of confinement in the body, limited, if at all, in unknown ways. Considering that this universe is at least thirteen billion years old, and that there is increasing evidence that it might not be the only one out there, it is liable, also, to have a good deal of experience.» — la consecuencia que Strieber deriva, siempre en condicional, de una mente no biológica: sería antigua y experimentada.

«I cannot answer these questions, and they might not even be the right ones. I am not a believer in any hypothesis. On the contrary, I am a wanderer, lost in the forest of hypotheses.» — Strieber declara su abstención en forma de figura: no creyente de ninguna hipótesis sino perdido entre todas.

«It’s full of aliens; ghosts; sexy succubae and incubi; fairy-folk; demanding and inconsiderate gods, angels, demons, and growling subterranean kobolds—and, it would seem, garden gnomes. In fact, there are too many other forms to list, as well as some that cannot be defined beyond saying that one sometimes senses presences beyond description.» — el inventario del bosque según Strieber, de los súcubos e íncubos al pueblo feérico y a los kobolds subterráneos.

«My direct questions are these: Why do we see all of these things; and why and how do they sometimes interact with us in enough of a physical way to leave injuries, have sex, and, in some cases such as my own, leave demonstrably bizarre physical objects in the body, not to mention perplexed witnesses?» — Strieber formula su pregunta doble, por qué se ven y por qué dejan huella física comprobable.

«The shadowy presences in the sacred groves of antiquity, Dante’s lost path, more humble journeys such as my own, ridden with fear and driven by compulsion—these are the journeys in the forest of mind.» — Strieber pone su propio recorrido en serie con los bosques sagrados antiguos y con la selva oscura de Dante.

«It has keepers, you know. Foresters, if you will. They’re a pretty rough bunch, and pretty strange, and I suspect that they are the arbiters of souls» — Strieber le da guardianes a ese bosque y sospecha en ellos una función de árbitros de las almas.

«Maybe, on the night of December 26, 1985, I was in an alien spaceship and maybe I wasn’t, but I was certainly in a very agitated state, and getting more panicked with every moment that the impossible scene around me came into greater focus.» — Strieber deja sin decidir si hubo nave y afirma solo su propio estado.

«A squat blue man came up to me. He carried a silver device in his hand, the “rectal probe.” Subsequently, I found that models are marketed both for erotic stimulation and for use in animal husbandry. They work by stimulating the vagus nerve.» — Strieber describe el instrumento y añade que hay modelos comerciales equivalentes que actúan sobre el nervio vago.

«It is an easy thing to jump to the conclusion that I am claiming here that I was abducted by aliens and had semen stolen by them, but I am not claiming that. I am reporting a perception, not making a claim, and there is a world of difference between those two approaches.» — la distinción con que Strieber gobierna todo su relato: reporta una percepción y no formula una afirmación.

«there were elements of the experience— that are also integral to the whole “alien abduction” phenomenon—that challenge to its core the very meaning of what we perceive as» — Strieber sostiene que la experiencia pone en cuestión el sentido mismo de lo físico.

«Until the discovery, originally made by Anne Strieber as she read all those thousands of letters, that the dead and aliens seemed often to show up together in the lives of witnesses, the two phenomena were assumed to be entirely separate. The folklore of alien contact and the folklore of spirit manifestation were unrelated.» — Strieber adjudica a Anne Strieber la observación de que muertos y alienígenas aparecen juntos, contra el supuesto de que eran folclores separados.

«I am willing to entertain the notion, in fact, that the physical world may be embedded in a much larger, older, and more intelligent energetic consciousness.» — la hipótesis que Strieber dice estar dispuesto a considerar, un mundo físico embebido en una consciencia energética mayor.

«If so, then the true journey of cultural and religious history is about our long struggle to come to terms with it, and find a way to objectively include it in our understanding of reality.» — lo que Strieber deriva de esa hipótesis, sostenida en condicional: la historia religiosa como forcejeo con eso.

«We started the journey on our knees, cowering before the ruthless and intemperate gods of antiquity. We followed our many religions deeper into the forest, until finally that path played out, disappearing into the current dark mutter of ritual, sloganizing, and murder.» — Strieber narra la historia religiosa como camino agotado, que termina en rito, consigna y matanza.

«Paradoxically, I am rather sure that this secular path through the impossible —the most ill-marked and twisted of them all—opens eventually into the sunlight of a clear and objective understanding of what we are, where we are, and why we are here.» — Strieber cierra su capítulo apostando por la vía secular, con el matiz de que solo está bastante seguro.

«little blue men have been with us for a long time. As is the case with most of the other forms, they were originally identified in folklore—most frequently, in this case, in northern European folklore.» — Strieber sitúa a los hombrecillos azules en el folclore norteuropeo, antes que en la literatura alienígena.

«They saw something. These manifestations probably weren’t—and aren’t—real in the same sense that you and I are real, but they most certainly do occupy some sort of space in reality.» — la fórmula ontológica de Strieber para estas apariciones: no reales como nosotros, y aun así con lugar en lo real.

«In the past, they were most often found in mines. Now they’re known as “blue aliens.” They were observed by German, Welsh, Cornish, and English miners. The folklore was most developed in Germany, where they were given the name kobolds.» — Strieber traza la serie de la mina al alienígena azul y le da a los kobolds su origen folclórico alemán.

«Because of its dark blue color, the metal cobalt, discovered in a German mine in 1735, was named after them. But the word “kobold” ultimately derives from the Greek for» — las dos etimologías que da Strieber, la del cobalto por el kobold y la del kobold por una voz griega; se consignan tal como él las escribe.

«They were said to carry, at the level of the heart, a small orb, glowing red, and, in point of fact, I’ve seen that myself: Sometime in the mid-seventies, I saw such a being come rushing out of my brother’s room in the middle of the night in our house in San Antonio. It was about three feet tall, stocky, wearing a dark» — Strieber pasa del rasgo folclórico del orbe rojo a su propio avistamiento nocturno en San Antonio, a mediados de los setenta.

«In it, I saw small men in dark blue uniforms lighting lamps in an ominous looking tower, which, a few years later, I came to see as the Tower of Destruction in the Marseilles Tarot, a card of profound and dynamic change, the destruction of past beliefs.» — Strieber lee su sueño de la torre con la carta de la Casa de Dios del tarot de Marsella, que él llama Torre de la Destrucción.

«I saw in it a beautifully worked-out structure that could be used to add definition to the journey of life.» — Strieber le adjudica al tarot una estructura para dar definición al recorrido de una vida.

«It amounted to an elegant pathway through the symbols of the Major Arcana, which reveals the way the cards interact and what each one means in terms of the growth of consciousness.» — lo que Strieber dice haber visto en los arcanos mayores: un camino que ordena el crecimiento de la consciencia, no un método adivinatorio.

«I had the peculiar impression that somebody had been in the office with me, a man in a blue suit. But nobody was there.» — Strieber acompaña esa intuición sobre el tarot con la impresión de una presencia azul en su oficina.

«Shortly after the turn of the century, I recorded my discovery in a book called The Path.» — Strieber remite a su propio libro The Path como registro de esa lectura del tarot.

«It was, I think, the beginning of the destruction of the system of beliefs by which I had always lived, that the dead are dead and gone, that aliens, if they exist, are certainly not here, and that religion is an anachronism founded in the magical thinking of the past and has no basis in any actual, observational evidence.» — el sistema de creencias que Strieber dice haber tenido antes, con la religión por anacronismo fundado en pensamiento mágico.

«I was in my “conventional interlude,” the years between when I stopped having numinous experiences as a child and started having—or noticing them—once again at the age of forty.» — Strieber nombra así el paréntesis entre sus experiencias numinosas de niño y su regreso a los cuarenta.

«They indicated that this was where they lived. I said, “These aren’t even huts.” One of them replied in a low, breathy voice, “They’re all we need.» — el intercambio que Strieber relata con los hombres azules del sueño sobre sus refugios de palos.

«At that moment, I got the impression of vast stretches of time, and how hard it was to maintain environmental balance, how you must waste nothing if you expect to survive long enough to matter. From that brief instant would later arise my own deep concern with the environment, which would lead to the writing of Nature’s End and Superstorm, and all the environmental reporting on my website, and the work I have done in this field. From that one moment of dream came a whole lifetime of effort.» — Strieber hace nacer de ese instante de sueño su obra ambiental, Nature’s End y Superstorm entre ellas.

«I asked them about the building. One of them replied that it was a university. Now that we were close to it, I could see that it was a wreck. I said, “It looks like it’s in ruins.” The reply, through bubbling humor, was, “It’s a million years old and the scholars aren’t very good at maintenance.» — la universidad en ruinas del sueño y la respuesta con humor que Strieber atribuye a sus guías.

«I sensed that the whole history and meaning of humanity must be known in that place, and that if I could matriculate there, I could learn the truth of us and the secrets of our lives, and find some real definition to the three great questions of what we are, where we are, and why we are here.» — lo que Strieber esperaba de esa matrícula, las mismas tres preguntas que cierran su capítulo anterior.

«Little did I know that, in that moment of living dream, I had entered the school. They rejected me, perhaps, in order to find the real depths of my desire. If so, then my regret told them that I was ready.» — Strieber lee el rechazo del sueño como sondeo de su deseo y fecha ahí su entrada a la escuela.

«As we watched, astonished, little blue dwarfs kept running out, then darting behind the curtain again. Every so often, the leg or arm or shoulder of a man in a suit would appear, only to be pulled back by the blue men.» — Strieber describe la escena de la Octava Avenida, con Anne Strieber por testigo.

«We discussed the event many times, but never came to any resolution about what we had seen.» — Strieber deja el episodio sin resolución, después de años de discutirlo.

«The last one I tried did an X-ray and observed that two of the vertebra were surgically fused. I told him that I’d never had surgery. He said that the fusion was definitely surgical. I repeated that there had been no surgery. So he refused to treat me, and that was the end of that. (Other doctors have since said that it could also be due to a fall on my head as a baby.» — Strieber consigna la fusión vertebral quirúrgica sin cirugía, y en la misma línea la explicación alterna de otros médicos.

«On this night, I woke up and saw standing in a far corner of the room, barely visible, what I took to be a squat blue figure about three feet tall. I stared at it, trying to tell if it was a trick of light or if there was indeed something there.» — Strieber relata la aparición azul de septiembre de 1985 con la duda incorporada sobre si era un juego de luz.

«At one point, there was a deep scraping sound and I felt as if my consciousness had become momentarily detached from my body. Then it was over. I lay there, confused and a little afraid. Had I broken my neck? What had just happened to me? Then I realized that I was no longer in pain. I sat up. I forgot all about the blue figure. The lack of pain was extraordinary, the sudden freedom of being without it after all these years. From then on, the pain has remained far less than it was before.» — Strieber cuenta el alivio del dolor cervical esa misma noche, con una sensación de consciencia desprendida del cuerpo.

«Over the years, my recollections of that night have become complicated by the fact that they returned only gradually, and I am not really sure that I can accurately differentiate between precisely what I recalled in the days immediately afterward, and what came into focus later on.» — la advertencia de Strieber sobre su propia memoria: no puede separar lo recordado en los días siguientes de lo que se aclaró después.

«they have the same quality as my other memories of these experiences, too self-organizing and vivid to be ordinary dreams, but less defined than what we normally regard as memories of the real.» — el estatuto intermedio que Strieber le da a esos recuerdos, más organizados que un sueño y menos definidos que un recuerdo.

«Was I being physically carried out of the house? Later, I had physical injuries. And yet, nothing else about any part of the experience—or most of my experiences—was as firmly invested in physical reality as, say, the act of pushing my pen across this page.» — Strieber contrapone las lesiones físicas al grado de realidad de la experiencia, que dice menor que el de escribir a mano.

«I have learned, over the years, to see the actions of our visitors as a sort of illustrative language, communication built out of images and events.» — la clave de lectura de Strieber: los actos de los visitantes como lenguaje ilustrado, hecho de imágenes y de sucesos.

«If you study the habits and capabilities of the owl carefully, you find yourself studying the capabilities of the visitors. They are creatures of the night, they are stealthy, silent, and use surprise. Like owls, which can use their extraordinary ears to hear prey scrambling under snow, they have extraordinary means of detection. Like owls, they are predators. Left unanswered, though, is the question of what they are hunting. If we are generally returned home more or less intact, what do they want?» — Strieber traslada al visitante los rasgos del búho, depredador incluido, y deja abierta la pregunta por la presa.

«Later, he found himself awake and looking straight at a short man who was standing a few feet away. It was too dark to determine any color, but he was short and squat. The carpenter experienced a wave of intense fear, whereupon the man changed before his eyes into a bird of paradise and then disappeared.» — testimonio del carpintero que Strieber recoge, con la transformación en ave del paraíso; voz del carpintero, referida por Strieber.

«Thus ended the first incident, or the first sentence in the paragraph that I saw the visitors as composing.» — Strieber cuenta ese episodio como primera oración de un párrafo escrito por los visitantes.

«It failed because what happened could not be detected by a camera. Could it be that alien technology prevented this? Of course that’s possible, but it is also possible that what was happening couldn’t be filmed because it was unfolding in a space that cameras cannot record, an inner space that relates to the physical but is not part of it. In other words, a super natural space.» — Strieber explica el fracaso de la grabación proponiendo un espacio interior no registrable, y deja la hipótesis tecnológica como alternativa.

«He experienced a surge of fear. Instantly, the face of the man changed. It became the menacing head of a hawk, the very image of the Egyptian god Horus, sun-god and protector.» — segundo testimonio que recoge Strieber, el del cineasta, con la cabeza de halcón que él identifica con Horus.

«So, even if what was happening was unfolding in some not quite physical way, it was, in the end, physical enough to be visible, and to need to avoid the trees.» — el argumento de Strieber para no dejar la figura del todo fuera de lo físico: esquivaba los árboles.

«Later, I walked into the woods along that same line. In a few minutes, I found myself at an old Native American burial site where there are two graves. When I bought the land the site is on, I put a codicil in the deed that the burial sites must not be disturbed. I did this in part because two men claiming to be Delaware Indians came to the cabin and said the graves were sacred to them, but also because I had sensed on the day we saw the translucent figure that it was somehow connected to the dead, and maybe to those specific dead.» — Strieber liga la figura translúcida a las tumbas indígenas de su terreno y cuenta el codicilo que puso en la escritura.

«If you want to be invisible, you need to bend light, which takes a lot of energy. Could it be that the figure was using technology to do this, and that, as he left, he reduced the power of some sort of device, which caused both the release of heat and him to become somewhat visible?» — Strieber propone en forma de pregunta una explicación técnica del calor y de la visibilidad de la figura al salir.

«It is possible to see these two incidents, and much more, as a form of communication—visual communication as it were, living hieroglyphs.» — Strieber nombra su clave de lectura: los episodios como jeroglíficos vivos, no como sucesos brutos.

«The first one might be seen as inner beauty, represented by the bird of paradise, replacing the outer ugliness of the froglike creature, and adding an implication of flight. The second, the image of Horus, might be seen as a response to the filmmaker’s fear. This is because one aspect of this very ancient Egyptian deity is protective. But, like the bird of paradise, the falcon also flies, indicating that it can reach a higher level.» — la lectura que Strieber propone de los dos episodios, con el ave del paraíso por belleza interior y Horus por respuesta al miedo.

«During this period, we were hearing high-pitched sounds from under the cabin—drilling, it sounded like, in the seam of iron that runs there. (We were not far from the original Iron Mountain facility in Rosendale, New York.» — Strieber consigna los ruidos de perforación bajo la cabaña y la veta de hierro, con la instalación de Iron Mountain al lado.

«Not likely, given that, as the sound continued, a stream of blood came shooting out of the center of our guest’s forehead. Anne immediately staunched it with some tissue. He went home, never to return.» — el episodio del vecino que sangró por la frente mientras seguía el sonido.

«Sometime after midnight the people in the living room discovered that they couldn’t move. But they could still talk, and began to converse as they tried to get off their beds. A moment later, a group of short, dark blue figures entered the room through the front door, and began leaping around like acrobats, jumping and tumbling and making a ruckus. This went on for a few minutes until they disappeared and the group found that they could once again move.» — la noche de testigos múltiples según Strieber: parálisis con habla conservada y figuras azules dando volteretas.

«What happened was that the couple sleeping in the basement woke up to see an old friend of theirs standing at the foot of the bed. She spoke to them, telling them that she was all right. They were astounded, because she had died in the Mexico City earthquake of 1983, and yet here she was, big as life and seemingly entirely solid, standing before them telling them that she, who had been dead now for four years, was perfectly fine.» — en el sótano de la misma noche, la aparición de una amiga muerta en el terremoto de la Ciudad de México.

«Upstairs, little blue aliens were cavorting in the living room. Downstairs, a ghost, seemingly solid and very much alive, was telling two of her old friends that she was fine.» — Strieber pone los dos sucesos de esa noche en una sola frase, el alienígena arriba y el muerto abajo.

«Among other things, it would profoundly weaken the argument that any alien presence that may be here is on a scientific expedition.» — lo que Strieber deriva de la coincidencia de muertos y visitantes: debilita la hipótesis de la expedición científica.

«As Anne and I worked together on this, as we did on everything, she asked the question: How do we know that any of this—the visits from Horus and the bird of paradise, and, for that matter, the meanings we are deriving not only from things like that but also from the whole “school” of close encounter—is communication? Perhaps it’s simply a matter of our using our own knowledge to construct meanings that were in no way intended—at least, not by the entities we saw.» — la objeción que Strieber adjudica a Anne Strieber: que el sentido lo pongamos nosotros y nadie lo haya querido decir.

«Maybe they don’t know any more than we do. Given their chimerical nature, maybe even less. There can be little question but that there is a structure, large in scale and intellectually dynamic, that gives form to the whole phenomenon, including UFO sightings, alien encounters, encounters with the dead—all of it. Does it come from them, from us, or from some larger manifestation of consciousness that is dancing us marionettes to a cosmic tune?» — Strieber afirma que hay una estructura y deja sin decidir de dónde viene, si de ellos, de nosotros o de una consciencia mayor.

«Whatever its origin, judging from the history of religion, it is probably a good deal more dangerous than it looks.» — la advertencia de Strieber, sacada de la historia de las religiones y no del fenómeno.

«We human beings have a great defect, which is that we are all too often willing to both spread and enforce our ideas with violence.» — el defecto humano que Strieber pone bajo esa advertencia, la imposición violenta de las ideas.

«I would never have believed them, not for a moment, had there not been witnesses. As has so often been true in my experiential life, these experiences, outré as they were, were shared with others.» — Strieber condiciona su propia creencia a la existencia de testigos, y lo pone por delante de los relatos que siguen.

«I might refer here to Jeff’s concept of the Human as Two, and mention that these may be glimpses, as it were, through the fence that surrounds Charles Fort’s famous comment in Book of the Damned, “I think we’re property.» — Strieber toma el Humano como Dos de Kripal y lo cruza con la frase de Charles Fort en Book of the Damned.

«We are little, curious animals, as it were, peering through the slats of the fence that surrounds our barnyard, and seeing beyond the edge not another world, but a more real vision of ourselves reflected as noumena and wondering, “What is that?” It is what we are, would be one possible answer.» — la figura del corral con que Strieber sitúa lo que se ve del otro lado: no otro mundo, sino uno mismo como noúmeno.

«The gentleness of the being was striking. Equally striking was the feeling I had that I was looking at another form of myself or at somebody who inhabits me.» — Strieber describe la aparición del gris como otra forma de sí mismo o como alguien que lo habita.

«At about this same time, I woke up one morning with the sensation that my head was open at the top and there was somebody inside me. As I came into consciousness, a youthful voice, shrill with fear, cried out, “I’m being trapped inside a body.” That brought me to full and immediate consciousness, you can be sure. But it never went further. Not another stirring. I was left to wonder what had given rise to this dream or hallucination or whatever it was. I am still wondering.» — Strieber relata la voz que gritó desde dentro de su cabeza y deja el episodio sin clasificar.

«The famed psychic Ingo Swann came to the house at about that time. During our conversation, he suddenly kicked his feet uneasily» — Strieber sitúa a Ingo Swann en su casa por esos días y le adjudica una reacción de invasión.

«Waves of vibration began flowing through me, surging up and down my body. I thought to myself that Anne was finally going to get a chance to see an alien, because I was about to change form. Just then, though, one of our cats jumped up on my chest. He yowled as electric sparks shot between his paws and my body, and immediately jumped down. Nothing further happened, so I assumed that the balance had been thrown off.» — Strieber cuenta el episodio de Brooklyn Heights, con el gato que interrumpe el cambio de forma.

«Later that night, I woke up. I was in the other form. I got out of bed and found that I could fly a few inches above the floor. I was entirely conscious. I felt normal, but far lighter than usual.» — Strieber describe el estado en la otra forma como consciente y ligero, no como sueño.

«Unfortunately, I did not look back at the bed. I wish I had, because then I would have seen if my normal body was still there.» — la comprobación que Strieber lamenta no haber hecho, mirar si su cuerpo seguía en la cama.

«Later our son said that his friend had seen one of those things in the bedroom and was furious about it. If he was going to have any sort of social life, let alone more sleepovers, no more aliens, please!» — el testigo infantil del episodio, según lo que Strieber dice haber sabido después por su hijo.

«Which one is more true? Or better put perhaps, who are we, that we so conceal ourselves from ourselves?» — Strieber deja las dos reacciones del niño, delicia y furia, sin decidir cuál vale, y convierte eso en pregunta sobre nosotros.

«I am far from alone in having experiences like this, that suggest the presence of an entirely unexpected duality of human being, not to say an entirely different core to reality itself—indeed, Jeff’s “human as two.» — Strieber generaliza esa dualidad y la nombra con la fórmula de Kripal.

«I knew a massage therapist who specialized in working with very frail people. One time while massaging a patient (an elderly woman with an extremely weak heart), he felt an odd vibration, looked up from the patient, and saw in a mirror across the room that he had apparently turned into an alien. Naturally, he was terrified that she’d see this, too, and that the shock would kill her. He continued quietly massaging her while in this state for some little time, until he finally resumed his normal appearance with her fortunately none the wiser.» — testimonio del masajista que Strieber recoge, con la transformación vista en un espejo.

«He also wrote the introduction to UFO investigator Leslie Kean’s book UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record. The book makes a convincing case that officials are aware of something unknown in our skies.» — Strieber remite al libro de Leslie Kean con prólogo de Podesta y le concede que documenta algo desconocido.

«But I am not so sure that the conclusions that the objects are spacecraft and that they are piloted by aliens— which are universally believed in the UFO community and, for all I know, in government circles as well—are correct. In fact, even if alleged aliens actually come forward in some way and claim that this is true, I think we should still hesitate to abandon the questions that surround the enigma before the whole of the truth is understood.» — Strieber le retira a ese libro la conclusión sobre naves y pilotos, y pide no cerrar las preguntas ni aunque los propios alienígenas lo afirmen.

«It is interesting to contemplate that this level of mind that we are discussing must be held responsible not just for the ancient, organic polytheisms but also for many of the more modern religions.» — Strieber hace responsable a ese nivel de mente tanto de los politeísmos antiguos como de religiones modernas.

«One must ask, if it is there, are its ambitions malignant or confused, or is it our response that is defective? Something is most certainly very wrong, or we wouldn’t have spent the last three thousand years and more killing each other over religion. We convert the ambiguities of meaning that it presents us into beliefs, which we simply cannot handle. Inevitably, in defense of belief, we become willing to die and willing to kill.» — Strieber deja abierto si el defecto está en eso o en nuestra respuesta, y sitúa el daño en volver creencia la ambigüedad.

«As established religions in the West implode and Islam suffers its agonies, a vast and hidden experience spreads among the people, its power concealed behind the same sort of wall of denial that Rome once erected against Christianity, which was also derided, ignored, and persecuted, as most religions are during their early emergent periods.» — Strieber compara el trato que recibe la experiencia difundida con el que Roma dio al cristianismo naciente.

«By the end of the first century CE, Christianity probably had only a few thousand devotees. Presently, millions of people have been touched by UFO lore.» — la comparación de escalas con que Strieber cierra ese paralelo.

«I noticed that she had written at the top of the sheet, “This has something to do with what we call death.» — la nota que Strieber dice haber visto en la hoja de conteo de Anne Strieber, encabezando la lista de rasgos comunes.

«So I was among those who had seen a dead man with the aliens. There was nothing ghostly about him at all. Like the apparition our friends saw at the foot of their bed, he had seemed entirely solid and real.» — Strieber se incluye en el patrón que Anne Strieber encontró, y describe al muerto como sólido y no como fantasma.

«Their old dog had become unexpectedly agitated and had needed to go out a second time. As the wife was opening the front door, she saw what appeared to be a fireball roar overhead and disappear below the treetops. She told her husband that she’d just seen a plane on fire and crashing. The next moment, their seven-year-old son came rushing down from his bedroom shouting, “Little blue men came into my room and they had Frankie [his older brother] with them and he said to tell you he was OK.» — caso que Strieber recoge de un lector: la bola de fuego vista por la madre y el mensaje que el hijo menor atribuye a los hombrecillos azules.

«The older boy had been killed in an auto accident the week before, and the father desperately wanted to know if there was any reason to believe his child’s story. I was able to tell him that this was actually a commonplace part of the experience, judging from what we were discovering.» — Strieber cierra ese caso diciéndole al padre que la coincidencia de muertos y visitantes era ya un lugar común del material.

«She was shocked to see a group of squat blue or black figures with hideous froglike faces. As she recoiled, the one in the lead said, “Do not be afraid. We are not here for you. We are interested in the girl child you are carrying.» — testimonio de Lorie Barnes, que Strieber sitúa en los años cincuenta y con embarazo en curso; voz de Barnes, referida por él.

«When born, Lorie’s child was indeed a girl. Back in those days, there was no way to determine the sex of a fetus. At least, we didn’t have one.» — el dato con que Strieber apuntala ese testimonio, que entonces no había modo de saber el sexo del feto.

«Perhaps two hours into the procedure, I was surprised to see him standing in the doorway of the waiting room. He stared at me with a mixture of longing and resignation, his eyes at once famished and deeply sad. To a degree, he had led a dissolute and dishonest life, but he had also been a loyal family man. He had been my friend since boyhood. In the next instant, he was gone.» — Strieber relata la aparición de su amigo en el umbral de la sala de espera mientras lo operaban a corazón abierto.

«In it, a group of kobolds were carrying him through a tumbledown cardboard slum in India. Then he was gone and in his place there was a tiny baby girl being held by her father.» — la segunda escena de esa visión según Strieber, con los kobolds trasladando al muerto y una recién nacida en su lugar.

«What might it mean—that these odd beings are indeed the managers of our souls? Did they put the soul of a bad man into a fresh young body, to give this not entirely lost being some sort of a second chance? Is that in some way part of life? What is life? What does it actually mean to be human?» — Strieber deja la hipótesis de la reencarnación administrada en forma de preguntas, sin afirmarla.

«I know an individual who, as a child, said that he would sometimes wake up at night and find them shining lights on his body. They said that they were doctors, and they were examining his soul.» — otro caso que recoge Strieber, con los visitantes declarándose médicos del alma.

«he was horrified to see a jet coming straight toward his car, apparently about to crash into the dense traffic. Instead, though, it went right overhead, and he was perplexed to observe that the engines appeared to be wood cutouts. The whole plane was fake. Huge, but nothing more than a stage prop, in some bizarre way set to flight.» — episodio del Grand Central Parkway que Strieber recoge de un conocido: el avión de utilería en vuelo.

«It was lighted like the news feeds in Times Square, and strange symbols were flashing across it. I asked him what they looked like, but he wasn’t able to remember them, except that they were moving fast and didn’t look at all familiar.» — el cartel luminoso con símbolos que el mismo testigo describe, sin poder recordarlos.

«When he got out of his car, he could see a short distance away a number of people standing in a circle. As he walked toward them, he was approached by fearsome looking little men in dark blue uniforms, one of whom snarled at him, “Get out of here.» — el corro de gente y la orden de los hombrecillos de azul con que termina ese relato.

«I cannot say if it had anything to do with aliens, but it certainly did have to do with human beings, because there were people there in that circle.» — lo único que Strieber afirma del episodio, que había seres humanos, y lo que se abstiene de decir.

«He laid a thickly gloved hand on her wrist and said in a kind and understanding voice, “My dear, one day you will look just like us.» — la frase que Strieber pone como respuesta a quiénes son los kobolds, en boca de la figura que habló con Lorie Barnes.

«But what might this mean? Are we to turn into aliens, then? Or, if we take this comment at face value, might it not mean that there is more than one human form?» — Strieber propone en pregunta la lectura de esa frase: no una metamorfosis sino más de una forma humana.

«a woman in Australia, who had been doing housework in the middle of the day when some very strange creatures had abruptly appeared in her sitting room. She observed a willowy being with dark, slanted eyes and a group of short, stocky ones in “brown shrouds,” who seemed to her to be workers, while the tall one was more of a supervisor.» — testimonio australiano de 1988 que Strieber recoge, con jerarquía entre el ser esbelto y los de mortaja parda.

«It proceeded to overpower her with its mind while the workers moved about in the background, doing what she could not imagine. After a ferocious mental struggle, during which she literally tried to crawl out of the house as she could no longer walk, all went dark. When she woke up, it was hours later. She never found out what had happened to her during that missing time.» — la parte del testimonio que queda en blanco, con horas perdidas que la testigo nunca supo.

«Presumably, though, the creatures who put her through this ordeal know— and perhaps, also, that is something close to the secret of the ages.» — Strieber deja lo que se sabe del lado de ellos, y lo enuncia con un presumiblemente.

«one wonders, looking at Lorie Barnes’s story and the story of the Australian woman, if we are not seeing the outline of a very remarkable and unsuspected structure: we are the kobolds. They are us working, somehow, in the fields of the soul.» — la hipótesis con que Strieber cierra su capítulo de los kobolds: que los kobolds seamos nosotros trabajando en los campos del alma.

«as we enter this other level of humanity, where what is hidden to us in this state, is the grammar of their ordinary truth.» — continuación de esa hipótesis, con lo que aquí está oculto vuelto gramática ordinaria allá.

«not only rends the veil between the living and the dead, it penetrates deeply into sexuality.» — así abre Strieber su capítulo sobre lo sexual, con la misma experiencia que rasga el velo de los muertos.

«If we take the position that modern close encounter experiences are essentially the same phenomenon of contact that we have been perceiving through all of our history, then this aspect of them, also, fits long experiential tradition.» — Strieber pone la condición de continuidad histórica de la que depende el argumento de todo el capítulo.

«My unconventional sexual life has been wildly promiscuous, fearsomely intense, at times even somewhat perverse—or at least, what this very conventional man would regard as perverse.» — Strieber describe esa vida y acota el juicio a su propio criterio, no a uno general.

«I have never wanted to write about it, to some degree because of the prurient stupidity that I fear it will elicit in people addicted to sensation and looking for the next lurid tale of “alien sex.” There is a deeper reason, though.» — la primera razón de su silencio según Strieber, el morbo que espera de los lectores.

«One way to put it would be to say that I had a love affair with a goddess. Another would be that it was an affair with an alien. But the third way to describe it—which is, I suspect, closer to the truth—is that I didn’t know who or what my wife really was, or myself, or any of us.» — Strieber pone tres formulaciones y prefiere la tercera, la que dice que no sabe qué era su esposa ni qué es él.

«I don’t know what human beings are, and, based on my own life experience, I have every reason to suspect that the form we live in every day of our lives is not our only state.» — Strieber deriva de su experiencia la sospecha de que la forma diaria no es el único estado humano.

«Unless, of course, it is what one of our letter writers was told when she asked her visitor who he was. He responded, “It is me within thee.” So, not only an interstellar astronaut piloting a spaceship.» — Strieber recoge la respuesta que un visitante dio a una corresponsal y la usa contra la lectura del astronauta.

«Now, I am not making a claim here that my wife was an alien or anything nearly so concrete as that. What I am saying is that the shadow of my wife—her life, her ways, my awareness of her body—ghosts through the experiences that I am about to describe like a sylph.» — la reserva expresa de Strieber sobre Anne Strieber: no afirma nada, describe una sombra que atraviesa los episodios.

«I had experienced such powerful emotions during the experiences that I felt that they were a profound invasion of my vow to her. As they had not apparently been initiated by me, and I didn’t have the impression that I could have stopped them, I wasn’t sure that I had violated it, but the pleasure that they had brought me made me very uneasy about my moral position.» — el conflicto moral que Strieber consigna: no sabe si rompió el voto porque no cree haber iniciado ni podido detener los episodios.

«But I violated it. Not technically, as I have said, but in my heart, helplessly and certainly. For I fell in love with this being and am still in love with her and always will be.» — Strieber se da a sí mismo por infractor del voto y declara el amor por esa presencia como vigente.

«Could Anne be one with the woman depicted on the cover of Communion? Are they the same person in two different forms, or do I perceive her that way—and by extension, do we all sometimes perceive others around us as being in different forms? If so, then sexually staid Whitley and Anne and sexually wild Whitley and Anne share a kind of mandala-like existence, a conventional relationship and an unconventional one rotating around each other, enclosed in a circle that, as it is a form without final measure, contains an infinity of possibilities.» — Strieber propone en preguntas una existencia en mandala, con dos parejas girando una alrededor de la otra.

«He answered that the visitors thought that Communion was full of mistakes. Then he added, “The good news is that we all believe you now.» — anécdota que Strieber sitúa en 1988 con su editor Jim Landis, y el reproche que ahí se le atribuye a los visitantes.

«It turned out that another editor, Bruce Lee, had been checking stock in the old Madison Avenue Bookshop when he had noticed two people looking through a copy of the book. They were turning pages very rapidly and laughing together. When he went closer, he could hear that they were saying that I’d gotten this wrong or that wrong, then paging along and snickering.» — lo que Strieber refiere del editor Bruce Lee en la librería de Madison Avenue; voz de Lee, referida por él.

«He was shocked to see huge, glistening eyes just like the ones the being on the cover of the book had. He found the eyes absolutely terrifying, and decided to leave the shop. When he walked out, they followed him, chatting together in what he thought of as Jewish accents. He watched them walk off into the afternoon crowd on Madison Avenue. Nobody seemed in the least concerned that two aliens were strolling down the street in overcoats and hats on a warm afternoon. He told me that people would look right at them and not react at all.» — continuación de ese testimonio, con las dos figuras saliendo a la calle sin que nadie reaccionara.

«At that time, I was debating in my own mind whether or not the experience was real or imaginal—that is to say, a tangible presence somehow generated by the imagination.» — Strieber declara ahí su duda entre lo real y lo imaginal, y define lo segundo como presencia tangible generada por la imaginación.

«Bruce took and passed a lie detector test and stuck to his story, so I finally accepted that he was at least reporting his perceptions as he had seen them.» — hasta dónde llega la aceptación de Strieber tras el polígrafo: que el testigo reportaba sus percepciones, no que fueran lo que parecen.

«In a similar case in 2004, Adrian Hicks, a member of the Winchester town council in Great Britain, saw what appeared to him to be a humanoid alien walking in ballet shoes down a crowded shopping street. He said, “I was near the Works bookshop when I saw this strange woman, a humanoid walking with a penguinlike gait. She had very large prominent eyes and was twirling her hands in a circular motion. She seemed friendly and totally at ease with us. She wasn’t scared, she was smiling, and seemed to be enjoying herself among us. She walked very slowly up the High Street. I remember she was very interested in the clock over Lloyds Bank. She was human enough to get away with it. Everybody’s heads were turning.» — testimonio de Adrian Hicks, concejal de Winchester, que Strieber reproduce entero; voz de Hicks.

«one would think him very foolish to invent such a story, and I doubt that he did. I wonder, though, what he actually did see, what Bruce Lee saw, and what my dear “alien” lover, of precious memory, really is.» — Strieber le concede verosimilitud al testigo por su cargo público y deja sin contestar qué vieron ni qué era su amante.

«When I was a child, as I mentioned in The Secret School, a white owl used to stand at the edge of our backyard and stare up at my windows. While I still cannot say that much of what I remember, or have imagined, of those days exists outside of my mind, family members do recall the white owl, and my parents were disturbed enough about what appeared to be nocturnal excursions on my part to have had the screens on the windows of my room nailed shut.» — Strieber remite a su propio The Secret School y separa lo que no puede sostener de lo que sostienen terceros, el búho blanco y las mosquiteras clavadas.

«The nun taught about the drama of evolution, dinosaurs, and the shimmering movement of God’s hand across time, drawing life toward the knowledge of him. I would say, now, that something was certainly drawing life somewhere, but for me it has turned out to be in the direction of question rather than belief.» — Strieber acepta el impulso que le enseñó la monja y le cambia el destino, de la creencia a la pregunta.

«In The Secret School, I portray myself as riding my bicycle down to the Carter place at night. But this would have been a daunting task for a child, and I really cannot believe that I did it, especially not at night, any more than I went to the spot behind the old sisters’ home in the wee hours, as I also recall doing. I did go to classes at Mrs. Carter’s house, and I might well have gone to the old sisters’ home some afternoons with my mother, and could well have been befriended by one of the old teachers, eager to enjoy a last student. The night journeys, I assume, are imaginary.» — Strieber corrige por dentro su propio libro anterior y da por imaginarios los viajes nocturnos que allí narró.

«And no matter the degree to which they were imaginary, they suffused my life then with a grand romance, and left me with a reverence for the world around us that is as strong today as it was when I was a boy.» — Strieber sostiene el efecto de esos episodios aun dándolos por imaginarios.

«There was, in these experiences, an unformed longing toward the drama of women. I did not relate to either woman sexually, of course, but deep within my body there was something stirring that would emerge more overtly when I came face-to-face with the woman on the cover of Communion, and found in her both the authority and gentleness of my teachers and the brilliance and sensuality of my wife.» — Strieber enlaza a sus dos maestras de infancia con la figura femenina de la portada de Communion.

«In my life, I have had four very powerful sexual experiences. The first one occurred when I was just coming into puberty.» — Strieber anuncia la serie de cuatro episodios sexuales que organiza el resto del capítulo.

«While he was trying to find what, it turned out later, had been reported as naked dwarfs, I was in the tree touching myself, shuddering with wonder and shaking with guilt.» — el cruce que Strieber deja sin comentar: la policía buscaba enanos desnudos mientras él estaba en el árbol.

«The next morning, my mother told me that there could be no more campouts that summer, as naked dwarfs had been seen creeping through the neighborhood. I listened solemnly, and did not argue.» — Strieber cierra el episodio con el rumor vecinal que quedó, el de los enanos desnudos.

«At school, the nuns had cautioned us to not even look down at our nakedness while we were bathing. So perhaps I had annoyed Jesus.» — la formación católica con que Strieber sitúa su propia culpa de entonces.

«And now I turn to this other woman, if she is a woman, or, for that matter, a person at all. She has provided me with the other two great sexual experiences of my life, and I don’t even know if she exists!» — Strieber presenta a la figura femenina de sus episodios sin decidir si es mujer, persona ni existente.

«And yet when I write of her in this way—exploring the notion that she might exist only as some sort of figment or wraith—I feel a deep sense of disloyalty. Speaking of sin, it feels sinful and duplicitous, as if such a suggestion is a cruel lie, and one which will be hurtful to the most sensitive person I have ever known.» — Strieber declara que hablar de ella como quimera le resulta desleal, y la trata como persona en la misma frase.

«I think of her as an aristocrat, a princess, someone grandly born and of great attainments. I believe her to be deep in my life, and that The Secret School is a chronicle of the period in which I entered her orbit, in a childhood filled with magic.» — Strieber sitúa el trato con ella en la infancia que narró en The Secret School.

«exploring the process of looking out at the world and back at oneself at the same time, and learning from this work that there are realms of consciousness all around— cathedrals of consciousness—of which we are generally unaware.» — la práctica que Strieber dice haber aprendido en la Fundación Gurdjieff, la doble atención, y los recintos de consciencia que le atribuye.

«Only when I left the foundation, which caused me grave anguish, but which I knew was necessary, did she appear once again in my life, that dangerous, wonderful night bird who has been my secret teacher, mistress, and lover over all of my days.» — Strieber hace coincidir su salida de la Fundación con el regreso de esa figura, a la que llama maestra secreta.

«My spiritual search began in a confessional at Mount Sacred Heart School in San Antonio, when I informed the priest that I didn’t believe the Old Testament. I did not believe that god had created the world in seven days, that Adam and Eve had been formally tossed out of a garden called Eden, that Jonah had been swallowed by a whale, or that a god worth worshiping would have amused himself by causing Job all that misery.» — Strieber fecha el comienzo de su búsqueda en un confesionario y en su rechazo del Antiguo Testamento.

«I soon discovered while struggling through a translation of Origen’s Contra Celsus I’d found at the public library that the Mass was derived from secret Mithriac rites that had started in Tarsus, which was, coincidentally, also where Paul had grown up.» — lectura de Orígenes con que Strieber deriva la misa de ritos mitraicos; el título y la grafía van como los imprime el libro.

«Then I noticed, while reading Roman history that the “good news” proclaimed in the gospels was strikingly similar to the good news proclamation spread across the empire by Augustus after he established the Pax Romana. In fact, it looked as if Paul had plagiarized it. In Jeff’s language, I was comparing, and the results were severe ones.» — Strieber acerca la buena nueva evangélica a la proclama de Augusto y reconoce en eso la comparación que Kripal nombra.

«I had a strong sense of the presence of soul within me. In fact, I began to see that body and soul are really a continuity, not two separate entities, and I began, at the age of seventeen or eighteen, to attempt to meditate. I could feel that I extended in some way beyond the physical.» — Strieber declara cuerpo y alma como continuidad y no como dos entidades, y fecha ahí sus primeros intentos de meditar.

«But ultimately I found the same defect in Buddhism that I had in Christianity. Both of them—and all religions—promote structural visions of the unseen world, and are based on the assumption that their particular vision is accurate.» — el defecto único que Strieber le imputa a toda religión: dar por exacta su propia imagen de lo invisible.

«But how could that be so, given that their founders had, at best, a very unclear and limited idea of how the universe is constructed? It wasn’t until the early twentieth century that it even began to be realized that there were galaxies beyond our own. Until the work of Heber Curtis (1872–1942) in 1917, we had no inkling of the true size of the universe.» — el argumento de escala con que Strieber sostiene esa objeción, con Heber Curtis y 1917 por fecha del tamaño real del universo.

«All of this has led me to consider the possibility that the firmament might be endless, or at least so much more enormous than we can conceive that it is not possible to confine it paradigmatically, let alone in any religious context. How could a reality so huge have a single creator or, for that matter, any creator at all? It simply is, and in that thought I find rich meaning and spiritual sustenance.» — Strieber saca de la escala su negativa a un creador, y dice hallar sustento espiritual en que la realidad simplemente sea.

«Later, I also explored atheism, which was closer to my heart than the other religions, but I found, during a conversation with an editor from the New York Times Book Review at a literary event, that it was just as much doctrine as the other religions. He was a brilliant and articulate man, and the only avowed atheist I had met who had the ability to actually explain his reasons for the choice that he had made. But I found that he preached atheism in the same way that I had heard Catholicism and Buddhism preached, as truth. In other words, a faith.» — Strieber pone al ateísmo en la misma serie de las religiones, por su modo de predicarse como verdad.

«It now offers two main assertions. The first is that there is no god. The second is that all consciousness, if there is such a thing, is an outcome of brain activity. There is no god and we are only flesh. But I think a more adequate response, based on the vast and ancient evidence of the numinous, is that there is unlikely to be a god and we don’t know what we are.» — Strieber contrapone a las dos tesis del ateísmo su propia fórmula, improbable un dios y desconocido lo que somos.

«It is possible to be an atheist and still recognize the evidence that there are aspects of being that we don’t understand—that is, if one can resist the temptation to turn it into a religion.» — la salida que Strieber le deja al ateo, con la condición de no volverlo religión.

«What is useful to me, contemplatively, is to regard our isolation in the spectacle of immensity that is reality, and to consider how very many possibilities it must contain. We are lost in the stars, which I find both a source of wonder and foundational to freedom of thought. This is because it offers all but endless possibilities, and because my life is rich with evidence of the reality of the numinous, I am released to search as my fancy takes me, rather than riding the rails of belief, and no matter the religion, even if it’s atheism.» — Strieber describe su método como quedarse en la pregunta en vez de andar sobre los rieles de una creencia.

«It is possible to experience mind outside of body without religion. It is even possible to conjure expressions from it.» — Strieber separa la experiencia de la mente fuera del cuerpo de toda religión, y añade que de ahí se pueden conjurar manifestaciones.

«I have sat on a quiet hillside with UFO enthusiasts shining flashlights at the sky and seen bright orbs come and dance about overhead. Rather than settle on the assumption that we have called alien spaceships with our flashlights, I have let myself come to rest in the question, and found there what to me is truly holy ground, a mystery that can neither be ignored nor solved.» — Strieber cuenta el episodio de los orbes llamados con linternas y se abstiene de leerlo como nave, quedándose en la pregunta.

«That is to say, the only firm ground in human life is the seemingly uneasy ground of question, especially question that can neither be answered nor left unanswered.» — Strieber glosa la fórmula que atribuye a Gurdjieff y pone el suelo firme en la pregunta sin respuesta posible.

«This is shadowed in physics, which offers evidence that the vacuum is, in fact, not empty. For example, the Casimir effect suggests that nothing contains energy—that it is, indeed, not nothing.» — Strieber lleva ese conundro a la física del vacío y cita el efecto Casimir.

«It could be that events happening on the Planck scale—the really, really tiny— have durations that are too short to be measurable. In other words, they reflect the conundrum in a slightly different way: “nothing is unmeasurable.» — la formulación alterna que Strieber propone, con la escala de Planck y la duración no medible.

«I was introduced to the work of G. I. Gurdjieff in 1970 by a man I met while a Director’s Guild trainee.» — Strieber fecha en 1970 su entrada al material de Gurdjieff y nombra a quien se lo presentó.

«Ouspensky’s book In Search of the Miraculous and began attending meetings at the Gurdjieff Foundation in Manhattan. There were three reasons that the Work drew me.» — Strieber declara la lectura de Ouspensky y las reuniones en la Fundación Gurdjieff de Manhattan como punto de partida.

«The first was that, behind the eccentric word-salad of Gurdjieff’s prose, I saw a spiritual journey without a religious component. There was material of real value to be found by patiently decoding his peculiar vision of the universe, largely because it was so open-ended and internally contradictory that, unlike religions, it forced one into a state of question, which was its intention.» — la primera razón de Strieber: un camino espiritual sin componente religioso, cuya contradicción interna obliga a la pregunta.

«Reality was formed of triads with active, passive, and balancing sides. Events unfolded in octaves, like music. One could find the action of triads and octaves everywhere in life, and find them also in deep thought and to some extent in the esotericism of the past.» — lo que Strieber toma de Ouspensky, tríadas y octavas, y que dice hallar también en el esoterismo antiguo.

«In one of my novels, The Grays, the aliens are divided into triads, with one always advocating action, the second warning of danger, and the third reconciling the ideas of the other two and moving the triad forward. This is because close encounters so often begin with a triangle of stars crossing the sky.» — Strieber traslada la tríada a su propia novela The Grays y la enlaza con el triángulo de luces del encuentro.

«Grouping by threes is an important part of the way the visitors present themselves to us, and I noticed from the beginning that my relationship with them was structured around ideas that I had learned in the Gurdjieff Work, most particularly, a method of meditation that facilitated communication with them.» — Strieber declara que su trato con los visitantes quedó estructurado por lo aprendido en el Trabajo, y sobre todo por un método de meditación.

«Under the instruction of foundation leaders Joseph Stein and William C. Segal, I began meditation practice, which involved placing the attention on the body and letting the mind go along on its own.» — Strieber nombra a Joseph Stein y a William C. Segal como sus instructores y describe la práctica: atención en el cuerpo, mente suelta.

«Later, when I would do this in the presence of the visitors, they would be able to access my mind, and there would be communication. Without this skill, I cannot see that my interactions with them would ever have become as rich as they did.» — Strieber hace depender de esa técnica la riqueza de sus interacciones, con los visitantes accediendo a su mente.

«In 1983, I left formal engagement with the Gurdjieff Foundation, on the theory that I would either continue my inner work on my own, without the support of weekly group meetings, or I would slip back into the less acute consciousness that is associated with ordinary life.» — Strieber fecha en 1983 su salida de la Fundación y deja las dos salidas posibles que veía entonces.

«Well, another teacher I had in the Gurdjieff Work, P. L. Travers, expressed it most eloquently. While she was famous as the author of Mary Poppins» — Strieber nombra a P. L. Travers como maestra suya en el Trabajo y consigna que ella mantuvo esa parte de su vida en privado.

«She was a flawed, brilliant, damaged, and wise human being, who was able to bare herself in our conversations, thus drawing me to my own flaws and strengths, and enabling me to learn how it is that holy ground, foundational and fundamental to all real search, is as shifting and elusive as quantum indeterminacy.» — lo que Strieber dice haber aprendido de Travers: que el suelo santo de toda búsqueda es tan móvil como la indeterminación cuántica.

«She used to ask those of us who would gather around her, “Do you know what it means to lie in the lap of the goddess? It means to be unsure.» — la frase de Travers de la que sale el título del capítulo, en voz de ella.

«the most essentially and powerfully feminine presence I have ever known came to me and had me dragged out of the house and essentially beaten until I realized that she was real and I was not dreaming. During those horrific moments, I awoke both physically and spiritually.» — así abre Strieber su capítulo del dolor, con la presencia femenina de diciembre de 1985 y el despertar que le atribuye.

«I have understood that we exist, in our normal state, in a sort of sleep that filters out certain aspects of reality. For whatever reason, we simply do not want to see this.» — Strieber describe el estado ordinario como sueño que filtra la realidad, y le suma una negativa nuestra a ver.

«We are wild animals. We have tamed others to us, but nobody has ever tamed us. On that night, I began a process of education that started at the most basic level. I was being broken as I used to break horses when I was a boy, on the rollicking ranches of South Texas. In fact, every summer when we returned to our country place in the Texas hill country» — Strieber lee lo que le pasó como doma, con el oficio de su infancia por comparación.

«Feelings emerged in me that I had not been aware of before, that could best be described as a sense of surrender to a greater power that carried with it both terrific fear and what I would describe as a sort of pleasure found in spiritual release, the giving of oneself to something higher. This was accompanied by a pleasure that was unlike anything I had ever known. It was physical. It was spiritual. It drew me to drop barriers I had not known were there, and from that to experience a new kind of nakedness, that made me feel at once vulnerable and delighted. My soul was naked.» — Strieber nombra la mezcla de terror y placer como entrega a un poder mayor, en registro de liberación espiritual.

«In it, the narrator comes into contact with a young woman who turns out to be a sort of angel, very sweet but also very determined to free him from the dark things he has done in his life by balancing their karma with pain. The narrator is put into a box in which he experiences great agony, which is described as fire, but which is actually the anguish of facing one’s own truth.» — argumento del cuento Pain que Strieber dice haber escrito entonces, con el fuego leído como enfrentamiento con la propia verdad.

«His fear was not of what was there, but of what he was afraid was there, and this, I think, is why most of us resist looking into ourselves.» — lo que Strieber generaliza de ese cuento, que el miedo es a lo temido y no a lo que hay.

«As I was writing the story, the memories of that night came back to me, and a sequence appeared in it connecting it to alien lore, the first time in my work that this had been directly addressed.» — Strieber fecha en ese cuento la primera vez que su obra tocó el asunto de los alienígenas.

«I suppose that the horse, at the moment of breaking, feels something similar. It is when fear surrenders, and the acceptance that will eventually turn to love emerges—when the animal perceives that no harm is intended, and that compliance brings rewards.» — Strieber completa la comparación con la doma desde el lado del animal.

«But then the groaning dark blue trolls were joined by what at first appeared to be gigantic hornets. They had the affect, though, of young women. I sensed in them the purity of maidens» — Strieber describe el cambio de registro de las figuras, de los kobolds a unas avispas con afecto de muchachas.

«While the creatures I remember had big black insect eyes and a menacingly alien demeanor, when they appeared in my imagination rather than my memory, I saw them as my emotions had seen them, behind the curtain of fear.» — Strieber separa lo recordado de lo imaginado y dice que en lo segundo vio a las figuras como las vieron sus emociones.

«I had changed the eyes from brown to green because otherwise it would have been eerily familiar as a description of Anne.» — Strieber admite haber modificado un rasgo del personaje para que no describiera a Anne Strieber.

«Great and terrible Oz turned out to be a young woman, possessed of the kindness that is present in good people who are loved for their beauty.» — la fórmula con que Strieber cierra ese pasaje, con la figura temible vuelta muchacha.

«This plunged me into turmoil. I came to feel that the experience had been so powerful that it had given rise in me to what I then regarded as perverted desires.» — Strieber consigna el desconcierto moral en que lo dejó el deseo despertado por el episodio.

«This period was when I began walking deep into the woods behind our cabin at night, carrying only a flashlight.» — Strieber fecha ahí el comienzo de sus caminatas nocturnas por el bosque, con una linterna por todo equipo.

«When I say “show up again,” I want to be very specific. I am dealing here with more than one kind of perceptual memory, and I want to do a careful job of differentiation. It has taken me many years of work to be able to do this.» — Strieber advierte que distingue tipos de memoria perceptiva y dice que le costó años poder hacerlo.

«For example, when I wrote books like Communion, Transformation, and the others, I was not able to, as it were, taste the difference between a memory that refers to a concrete event and one that refers to an intense event that might not have been so concrete.» — Strieber le pone ese límite a sus propios libros anteriores: entonces no sabía distinguir el recuerdo de un hecho concreto del de un suceso intenso.

«This does not mean that the perceptions I am going to describe are precisely what happened, but they are what I was able to perceive, or chose to perceive. In Jeff’s language, please “make the cut” when reading what follows.» — Strieber adopta el corte fenomenológico de Kripal y se lo pide al lector antes de contar lo que sigue.

«It was about midnight, and I was sitting in a chair in our cabin when there suddenly came on the side of the house or the roof, nine knocks in three groups of three, followed by what seemed like a sort of resigned double tap, which I perceived as a reaction to the fact that I had remained frozen in the chair and not, say, stepped outside.» — Strieber describe los nueve golpes en tres grupos de tres y el doble golpe que lee como reproche.

«These were not normal sounds. They were absolutely, startlingly perfect, as if the time between them was precise to a measure we do not normally perceive. They were also high up on the house, a good sixty feet from the ground, so it wasn’t somebody in the backyard.» — los dos datos con que Strieber excluye una causa ordinaria, la precisión del intervalo y la altura.

«Both of our cats were in the room with me, and they reacted by turning into great puffed-up balls of fur and moving along on their stomachs yowling. So they were hearing something, too.» — Strieber suma a los gatos como testigos del sonido.

«One meditative practice that Joe Stein had used involved contemplating nine thoughts in three groups of three, and I had been using it for years. Also, when entering the thirty-third degree, a Mason must knock on the door of the lodge nine times in three groups of three.» — Strieber pone dos claves para esos golpes, la práctica meditativa de Joseph Stein y el ingreso al grado treinta y tres masónico.

«This is because three triads traditionally form a triad themselves, a completion. Reaching the thirty-third degree represents the completion of one phase of one’s life as a Mason, and so also on that night, I was being told that I had completed one level of study and was ready to enter another.» — la lectura que Strieber hace de ese número, con la tríada de tríadas por señal de que un tramo de estudio se cerraba.

«It was, in other words, a living experience that has left me with a living question: What if I had gone out? Would “they” have focused in a new way? Would I have met aliens, or had some deeper secret revealed?» — Strieber deja el episodio como pregunta viva sobre lo que habría pasado si sale de la casa.

«now the second time I had refused the call. The second crow of the cock, as it were. The first came when I struggled and fought on the first night. Instead of opening my mind to what was happening, and addressing it like a human being, with questions, I reacted with the wild animal’s fear.» — Strieber se adjudica dos rechazos del llamado y llama al primero reacción de animal en vez de pregunta.

«I’m reminded of Anne Sexton’s “awful rowing toward God.” That’s what this is, an awful rowing, but toward God or not, I do not know. An awful rowing toward the living darkness.» — Strieber toma de Anne Sexton la figura del remar terrible y le quita el destino, que deja en oscuridad viva.

«After I published Transformation, I got a letter from a reader in Glenrock, Wyoming, who said that the entire town had experienced the nine knocks on a very strange night in which there had been odd lights and small figures dashing in the streets. Anne and I went to the town, and I have no reason to think that any of the people we discussed this with were lying.» — Strieber recoge el caso de Glenrock, Wyoming, donde dice que un pueblo entero oyó los nueve golpes.

«It starts abruptly, and seems to be factual memory, but so strange and unexpected that it also has the flavor of dream.» — el estatuto que Strieber le da al episodio siguiente, entre recuerdo de hecho y sabor de sueño.

«Sitting on top of me was the woman from the cover of the book. She was slim and soft and angular. Even though her face was blacked out as if by some sort of curtain, this is who I believed it was.» — Strieber identifica a la figura con la de la portada de Communion y marca que es una creencia suya, con el rostro tapado.

«It was a transformative nakedness. Lying there like that, I experienced total surrender and profound sexual satisfaction. I did not know that such absolute surrender could exist, let alone that it would open every secret door to pleasure in my body.» — Strieber describe el episodio como entrega total y desnudez transformadora.

«Or had I? What really happened on that night? I feel as if I made love to somebody, but who? An alien? A succubus?» — Strieber deja abierta la identidad de la figura y pone la súcubo entre las opciones, sin elegir.

«When he was twelve, he had a close encounter that he has never been able to remember, with the exception that he was given a book, a detective story. It was innocuous, except for one thing: one sentence was underlined twice in heavy lines. The sentence read “Colonel ‘X’ promised that he would never reveal what he saw on that night.» — codicilo que Strieber recibió en 2014, con la frase subrayada en el libro que dice haber recibido un cineasta rumano.

«Now I wonder what he really knows, what he has seen, and what memories he plans to take to his grave. If I had made a promise like that, I would never, ever break it, Never, and I would never challenge him in the matter.» — Strieber declara que no piensa interpelar al militar que dice haber reconocido, por respeto a una promesa.

«I suspect that something extraordinary did happen that night, and that he was witness to it. As dreamlike—even imaginary—as it now seems, I suspect that there was a sexual encounter on that night, and I am haunted as to why. Always, the whisper of suspicion is there: do I have a child, or children, in some other reality?» — Strieber sostiene la sospecha sin afirmarla, y la lleva hasta la pregunta por una descendencia en otra realidad.

«It could be that my mind inserted him into the memory of the earlier experience after I saw him. It is so very important not to forget things like this. While memory is more a plastic than a fluid, it is not an absolute record of the past» — Strieber advierte contra su propio recuerdo y describe la memoria como plástica, no como registro.

«So, despite this apparently concretizing discovery, this memory, like all memory, must remain in question.» — Strieber mantiene el episodio en cuestión pese al dato que parecía concretarlo.

«One night I woke up sensing a presence in the room. It was not visible, but it was really awesome. It was also feminine, and I recognized it—her—at once.» — comienzo del cuarto episodio según Strieber, con una presencia femenina que dice reconocer sin verla.

«I only remember a shadowy presence, and an odd sense of freshness and youth contrasting with another impression I had gained at some point, that this person was very old.» — la contradicción que Strieber conserva sin resolver, juventud y vejez en la misma figura.

«The sensation was one of being absolutely cherished and absolutely favored. I wonder if even Hephaistos would have had so intense an experience of the mouni of Aphrodite.» — Strieber recurre a Hefesto y Afrodita para medir ese episodio; los nombres van como los imprime el libro.

«What was this sense that she was so very, very holy, truly a sacred being?» — Strieber cierra el episodio con la pregunta por el carácter sagrado de la figura, sin contestarla.

«Without going further, I will say that these experiences revolutionized our sex life. We rediscovered ourselves in a new way. What a deep holiness it was—she was—to teach me as she did, and bring to my marriage the wonders I had found.» — Strieber le atribuye a esos episodios un efecto sobre su matrimonio, y llama santidad a la figura.

«It was not all joyous, though. As always, the dark side of the sacred was there, too. During this same period, something quite terrible happened. It wasn’t unfamiliar to us, though. We’d read about it in thousands of letters. It was, in fact, a commonplace occurrence of the close encounter experience.» — Strieber pone el lado oscuro de lo sagrado como parte del mismo fenómeno, atestiguado en el correo.

«I saw, standing on the foot of the bed, three of the dark blue kobolds. Their faces were horrific almost beyond description. Lorie Barnes’s cry of “you’re so ugly” hardly even begins to describe what I was seeing. Their eyes were sharklike and preternaturally sharp, as if they were looking not at me but into me. Their lips were red and lascivious, grotesquely sexualized. One of them actually licked its lips, as if it was about to enjoy a meal. These were predators, there was no question in my mind about it, and they were after us.» — Strieber describe a los kobolds de esa noche como depredadores, en registro opuesto al de los capítulos anteriores.

«Later still, Anne woke up. She was in agony. She was bleeding. She rushed into the bathroom and proceeded to have a miscarriage. Blood poured out of her, but no debris. I got ready to take her up to the emergency room, which was about thirty miles away, but the bleeding stopped and she decided that she wanted to rest at home instead. She told me that she had been pregnant, but had been saving the news as a surprise for me.» — el aborto espontáneo de Anne Strieber esa misma noche, contado por él sin establecer causa.

«I kept the horror that I had witnessed to myself, and held Anne and cherished her and prayed that she be protected and loved, and her sorrow pass from her.» — Strieber consigna que se calló lo visto ante Anne Strieber esa noche.

«As we descended into the garage, I noticed what appeared to be an opening in its concrete floor, a round darkness. Anne didn’t see it, so I said nothing. By that time, I was well aware that I would often see things that others did not.» — Strieber cuenta la abertura que dice haber visto en el piso del garaje y anota que ya sabía que veía cosas que otros no.

«The next thing I knew, I was holding a lovely little baby who regarded me with dark, frighteningly conscious eyes. Then, seemingly with nothing in between, we were driving to the restaurant. All the way there, we talked of nothing but babies, but our youth had slipped away, and there would not be another infant in our lives.» — la escena de la criatura que sigue a esa abertura, sin nada en medio, y el cierre biográfico que Strieber le pone.

«I was still trying to engage with my “visitors” in some manner that would enable me to finally strip away all of the artifacts of imagination and dream and see them as they actually were, in the flesh and in common light. I was still naive enough to imagine that such a thing could happen» — Strieber describe la expectativa que tenía entonces, verlos en carne y a plena luz, y la califica de ingenua.

«It would be the third and final refusal of the call. I did not understand at the time, but after this, my relationship with them would never be the same. I would still be a student, but left to my own devices, no longer able to rely on them for instruction. What I needed now, I would have to find within myself, and take my questions to them.» — Strieber fecha ahí el fin de la instrucción y su paso a alumno sin maestro.

«The first refusal had been the active side of the triad: I had fought and screamed like a wild animal. The second had been passive. I sat in my chair until they gave up. The third would be reconciling: from it, I would gain basic insight about what I was, where I was, and why I was here.» — Strieber ordena sus tres rechazos con la tríada activa, pasiva y reconciliadora que aprendió en el Trabajo.

«It was February. I had been going down into the woods nightly and meditating in the cold and winter silence, in the hard-frozen, glowing snow. I was returning to the spot from which I had been taken in the first place. I was asking for a meeting, dropping deep into meditation and making the request with my mind, heart, and body. On one of those nights when the clouds were rushing and the wind was sighing in the pines, I had seen a dark circular shadow above me, hanging just inside the cloud cover and as still as a stone. I watched the clouds tumble past it. I marveled at how absolutely motionless it was. And I visualized sitting on a little stone bench I’d built nearby, sitting with her, and talking together about the secrets of space and time.» — Strieber describe la meditación invernal en el sitio del rapto y la sombra circular que dice haber visto entre las nubes.

«Early one morning, just at the edge of dawn, there came from those woods the sound of a trumpet or shofar, three haunting, mournful wails.» — la señal que Strieber dice haber oído, tres lamentos de trompeta o shofar.

«No sooner had those rather self-involved thoughts passed through my mind than I heard a voice say, “Come on, come on.” It was hard and mean, and had about it the flavor of somebody growing impatient, who was hoping to spring a trap.» — la voz que Strieber dice haber oído en el claro, y el tono de trampa que le atribuye.

«I could not take this risk. I had a family, and their welfare came first. I couldn’t just disappear on them. I was in that moment incredibly torn. I wanted to continue on. I dared not. I had to. I must not. Finally, my heart filled with fear and swamped with regret, I turned around and went back to the house.» — Strieber explica el tercer rechazo por su familia, y describe el conflicto sin resolverlo a favor.

«It was also, by a tremendous long shot, the most emotionally rich and complex sound I have ever known. Everything about it was tremendous: the gentleness, the ferocity, the love, the longing, the disappointment.» — Strieber describe el sonido de los tres lamentos como emocionalmente compuesto, con la decepción incluida.

«Somebody came with me, and I knew who it was. She was invisible, but nevertheless absolutely and undeniably there.» — Strieber afirma la presencia invisible que dice haber acompañado su regreso a la casa.

«Beloved, dangerous presence, an invisible tiger and an invisible saint. There was a sense of the empty menace of the cruising shark and a love richer than any I had ever known or would ever know again.» — la fórmula con que Strieber sostiene los dos rasgos de esa presencia sin conciliarlos, amenaza y amor.

«I had been taken back to the beginning, to an incredibly vivid visual memory of my earliest, first steps. Once again, there was great complexity in what had just happened. I was being told that I had taken a first step. I was also being told that I was still a baby.» — Strieber lee la vuelta a sus primeros pasos como mensaje doble, un avance y una minoría de edad.

«In the years that have followed, I have agonized many times over that final refusal of the call. Something very sacred had approached me and I had drawn back, too afraid to surrender myself to its dangerous embrace.» — Strieber consigna su arrepentimiento por el último rechazo, con lo sagrado por sujeto de la oferta.

«I must say that in all the beauty and all the darkness, the sweetness and ferocity—all of its contradictory, profoundly honest manifestation—the being that I had been having this love affair with—for that’s what it was—was a holy person. Be it man or woman, part of me or Anne or some deeper, richer intimacy within the beloved labyrinth of my marriage, be it alien, human, or a nameless thing that wanders the world in search of love, I was briefly privileged to gain its notice and fall into its embrace.» — Strieber afirma la santidad de esa presencia y deja abierta su identidad entre siete opciones que no jerarquiza.

«It has given me so much—she has—but did she also take my daughter? If so, then to what end? I sense that my child is out there somewhere, perhaps living a superconscious life, or did she die in abnegation, fodder for some cosmic predator? Or is it that we are all both things?» — Strieber deja la pérdida de la hija como pregunta abierta entre la vida superconsciente y el depredador cósmico.

«Because I was led to reconciliation of the wisdom and the horror, I am grateful beyond saying to this my dear teacher, at whose knee I learned greater truths, and glimpsed the world as a far more complex, intense, and richly alive place than we are in our general life graced to know.» — Strieber cierra agradecido a la que llama su maestra, por haberlo llevado a reconciliar la sabiduría y el horror.

«she found herself blurting out, “Teacher! How good to see you again.» — frase de una corresponsal ante un ser de ojos grandes, que Strieber recoge de las cartas; voz de la corresponsal.

«What I got from the visitors was friction a thousand times more potent, friction that had the power to break the soul, to plunge me into a frozen paroxysm of hatred and fear.» — Strieber mide lo suyo contra la fricción que Gurdjieff fabricaba para sus alumnos, y le da mil veces más potencia.

«To be taught truly is to be guided inward, into the secrets of one’s own heart, and at once to be lifted into a greater vision. “Greater” does not mean more beautiful, though. It means truer, which is, as far as I am concerned, more exquisite in its ambiguity.» — la definición de enseñanza de Strieber, con lo mayor entendido como más verdadero y no como más bello.

«I could focus on the agonizing loss of our baby and say that it was stolen by aliens. I could say that we were later shown this baby and claim further that this means that it was kidnapped and raised by them. I could say as easily that I fell in love with some sort of monster and had grand sex with it, and never mind those unfortunate looks.» — Strieber enumera las lecturas fáciles que podría dar de su propio material, y no las da.

«I could also say that this whole group of memories causes me to look at myself and the world around me in ways that otherwise would not have been possible, that open my mind and heart to the richness of questions that I can neither bear to leave unanswered nor truthfully answer. The corrosive power of these questions demands that I close them, but I will not close them, not until I can sit across a table from my dangerous and sacred mistress and converse clearly and openly with her about them. Even then, I doubt very much that she (he, it, or unclassifiable) would betray me by closing them in my face.» — la lectura que Strieber sí adopta, con preguntas que no puede dejar sin responder ni responder con verdad.

«In the end, the questions that I bear and carry regarding these possible events are the most energetic intellectual and emotional resources that I possess.» — Strieber convierte esas preguntas en su recurso intelectual y emocional principal.

«These questions that burn within me, that wake me sweating in the night, are the treasures of my soul, the keys to the kingdom. But what kingdom? Am I a seeker on the heaven road, or lost, doomed to wander the darkness forever? I have no idea.» — Strieber cierra su capítulo con dos preguntas sobre su propio rumbo y la abstención más breve del libro.

«in February of 1986, I found myself conscious but unable to wake up fully. There was something moving in my left nostril, as if some sort of object was being inserted. The next thing I knew, there was a terrific crack in my forehead between my eyes.» — así abre Strieber su capítulo del implante, con el episodio nasal de febrero de 1986.

«There can be no question that there is a physical dimension to this experience. I say no question because of the fact that the evidence is sufficiently documented outside of my own experience.» — Strieber afirma la dimensión física del asunto y funda la afirmación en material ajeno a su propia experiencia.

«In April of 1989, I was contacted by a Manhattan radiologist who had read my account of my apparent implantation in Transformation and proposed to do an MRI to see if anything was there. He also asked if I could get some additional witnesses to participate.» — Strieber fecha el estudio de resonancia que le propuso un radiólogo tras leer Transformation.

«For the most part, their brain scans were normal, but one of them was suggestive. The report reads, “In the right anterior ethmoid cell, just at the margin with the nasal cavity, is a small polypoid structure approximately 5mm. x 3mm. This displays equal intensity on both the proton density and the T2 images obtained.” Initially, I was excited, but the report went on to say, “Slight prolongation of T2 relaxation times within the nasal turbinates is noted, which may be related to a recent allergy or respiratory infection.» — Strieber reproduce el informe radiológico entero, incluida la lectura banal que lo desactiva.

«And the witness did report such an infection. This meant that the object might have been an ordinary nasal polyp, and not one that was a candidate for surgical intervention. So it was never excised.» — Strieber consigna el resultado negativo del estudio sin matizarlo a su favor.

«Previously, I had been clinging to the notion that, even though I had physical symptoms as a result of my December 1985 experience, it was not, in its essence, something that had happened physically.» — Strieber describe la posición que sostenía antes, con síntomas físicos y causa no física.

«In this, I was like most people of a scientific and skeptical mind about the paranormal: willing to explore it as long as it remained safely under control—that is, outside of the physical world. Once it enters the physical, it threatens our entire vision of reality. More than threatens it—it devastates it.» — Strieber explica por qué lo físico es el umbral: mientras el fenómeno no toca el mundo, la visión de la realidad aguanta.

«As long as my experiences were ambiguous, I could face them, even explore them. I could go out into the woods at night and confront the visitors, never sure about whether or not I was confronting myself or something in the world around me.» — Strieber ata su propia capacidad de enfrentar el asunto a que siguiera siendo ambiguo.

«I was more afraid, at that point, of the public than I was of the supposed aliens. Locally, I was as feared and despised as I was nationally. I’d been spat on in airports, which was bad enough, but I’d also had my grocery basket spat in at the local store, and that was frightening, because it meant that the people around me hated me as much as did the general public.» — Strieber consigna el hostigamiento vecinal y dice haber temido más al público que a los visitantes.

«This was because the debunking and the media hostility allowed people to think that I was a fraudster and deserved to be punished. Such an opportunity brings out the bully in even the mildest of us, as I was becoming painfully aware.» — Strieber atribuye ese hostigamiento al descrédito mediático, que habilitaba el castigo.

«By this time, I was used to the visitors. The guns weren’t for them. They were there to protect us from a much more dangerous species: our neighbors.» — Strieber declara para quién eran las armas de la cabaña, y no era para los visitantes.

«A moment after I heard the gravel crunching, a quiet male voice said from the backyard, “Condition red.» — la frase que Strieber dice haber oído desde el patio la noche de mayo de 1989.

«As I reached down for the shotgun, I saw standing in the doorway across the room from the foot of the bed, two people, a man and a woman. The woman was in front, the man behind. She was perhaps five foot five or six. He was six feet or more and had a beard. I have stated at times that there was an “alien” with them, but, looking back, the two of them are all I can clearly remember.» — Strieber corrige en la misma línea lo que él mismo había declarado antes sobre la presencia de un alienígena esa noche.

«I saw that the alarm system was still armed. Then I threw on all the floodlights around the house. I took my pistol out of my drawer and went racing through the house from the basement to the attic. I found not a door unlocked, not a window ajar, and no sign of any intruders.» — el registro de Strieber tras el episodio: alarma armada, casa cerrada y sin rastro.

«Returning to the bedroom, I convinced myself that it must have been a vivid dream. How could I draw any other conclusion, given the state of the property? It didn’t seem right, though.» — Strieber cuenta que se dio a sí mismo la explicación del sueño y que no le convenció.

«that even though I had not yet disarmed the alarm system, the big garage door was wide open. As the alarm system was still armed, this was impossible— unless, of course, the system had been tampered with.» — Strieber consigna el portón abierto con la alarma todavía armada como imposibilidad técnica.

«This wasn’t imaginal, as Jeff has defined it elsewhere in this book. It certainly wasn’t imaginary. The door was open. The alarm system was still armed. And I did not want to face what was now plainly before me.» — Strieber usa la distinción de Kripal para descartar las dos lecturas mentales y admite que no quería mirar el hecho.

«As I backed the car out, electric sparks shot between my hands and the steering wheel, then began snapping against my cheek as I turned around and my» — el fenómeno eléctrico que Strieber relata a continuación, con chispas entre sus manos y el volante.

«In checking the switches, he discovered that there was a powerful magnetic field that had kept the system from reacting when the door was opened.» — lo que el técnico de alarmas halló según Strieber, un campo magnético que inhibía el sensor.

«They don’t propagate like radio waves, but rather remain around whatever is generating them. The problem was there was absolutely nothing generating this magnetic field. So how could it exist? And yet it did.» — Strieber deja el campo magnético sin fuente y sin explicación, planteado como problema.

«We then downloaded the system’s log, only to find that the clock had been altered and there was no way to tell what time the various entries and exits it had recorded had actually happened.» — segundo dato del registro según Strieber, el reloj alterado y las entradas sin hora fiable.

«I will never forget standing in the bathroom feeling the pinna of my left ear, where the pain was coming from, and feeling within it a new lump. I got Anne to feel it. She said it was faintly red, but there was no sign of broken skin. So, what was it?» — Strieber fecha ahí el hallazgo del bulto en el pabellón de la oreja izquierda, con Anne Strieber por testigo.

«Morning brought two things—first, Anne didn’t react to it the way I had. She thought it was fascinating and that it might prove to be a very interesting thing to possess. Why did I assume that it was something bad? Why would it be? We don’t implant animals with things that are going to harm them. On the contrary, our implants are in various ways supportive, never harmful. What would be the point? If you want to do them harm, it’s not hard. Just shoot them.» — la lectura contraria de Anne Strieber que él reproduce: los implantes que ponemos a los animales no son para dañarlos.

«A couple of days later, I went to the doctor. He took a look at it and said it was a small cyst. How long had I had it? A week, I said. He said if it became» — el primer dictamen médico que Strieber consigna, un quiste pequeño.

«Instead, after another week or so, it turned on. I heard a screeching sound in my ear, which became hot and, Anne reported, bright red. This effect came and went without incident.» — Strieber describe el objeto como algo que se enciende, con calor y enrojecimiento vistos por Anne Strieber.

«That night I was meditating as usual when there suddenly appeared in my mind’s eye a startling vision of what was clearly another world. I say startling because it was as clear as television imagery. It lasted only a few seconds, but it was so complex, so vividly detailed that it was hard to see it as a product of my imagination. It was an image of a dirt street overspread with flags that contained bold writing on them in an unknown language. On both sides of the street there were low buildings. Then the image was gone.» — la visión de la calle con banderas y escritura desconocida que Strieber sitúa esa misma noche.

«But there had been a lot of others prior to the implant, and I’d be the last person to advocate that they were anything but imaginary. And yet, they haunted me, some of them, because they were so detailed and so strange.» — Strieber le quita valor probatorio a esas imágenes por haberlas tenido antes del implante.

«After giving my talk to the Mind Science group, I was introduced to William Mallow, head of materials science at Southwest Research. We met again soon after, and I told him of the implant. As it happened, it turned on in his office. He saw my ear turn bright red, and rushed me into a signals lab. We were not able to detect any emissions.» — Strieber cuenta el paso por el laboratorio de señales con William Mallow, sin emisión detectada.

«He located the object just below the apex of the pinna, and drew a circle around it with a marker. It was fixed in place. It had never moved. He anesthetized the ear, then made an incision.» — Strieber describe la cirugía menor del doctor John Lerma y consigna que el objeto estaba fijo.

«He determined that it had moved, on its own, from the top of my ear down into the earlobe. He said that he’d have to cut my ear to pieces if he was going to extract it. Instead, he pulled out and closed the wound.» — lo que el médico concluyó según Strieber: que el objeto se desplazó solo hasta el lóbulo.

«The pathologist first asked him if the fragment was some sort of practical joke. When Dr. Lerma explained that it had come out of the pinna of a patient’s ear, he responded that it was a fragment of metal with cilia anchored in it, and that the cilia were motile—that is to say, they were moving. He thought that they must be alive.» — el dictamen del patólogo que Strieber refiere, metal con cilios móviles que aquel juzgó vivos.

«A few days after the surgery, I felt a burning sensation in my ear, and the object returned to its original position, where it remains to this day.» — Strieber cierra el episodio con el objeto de vuelta en su sitio.

«Now I discovered that I could not get rid of it. The fear involved was quite terrible—actually, very much like claustrophobia. I’d long since gotten used to feeling watched. My deepest privacy was no longer private, but that hadn’t bothered me. I have nothing to hide. What is visible on the outside is the same as what is within me.» — Strieber describe el efecto de saberse portador de algo que no puede quitarse, y lo compara con la claustrofobia.

«Then I was contacted by a podiatrist from California, Dr. Roger Leir, saying that he had an interest in implants. He claimed that he had removed small metallic objects encased in epidermal tissue from three people who claimed alien contact, and I soon verified this claim.» — Strieber presenta a Roger Leir y dice haber comprobado su afirmación sobre tres extracciones.

«Leir himself was licensed to conduct surgeries only below the ankle, so he enlisted the help of a general surgeon to extract objects from other areas of the body. It was decided that they would only do relatively easy excisions. Nothing from the brain, or close to vital organs, for example.» — Strieber consigna los límites de licencia y de prudencia con que se hicieron esas cirugías.

«I attended a surgery in 1996, and was deeply moved to hear the stories told by the witnesses, all of whom had memories, some clear and others more vague, of being approached by what they assumed to be aliens. Later, they found little scoop-mark scars on their bodies and, in some cases, also raised areas where something appeared to have been placed under the skin.» — Strieber describe a los operados de 1996, con recuerdos de nitidez desigual y marcas en el cuerpo.

«He was told by the director that their CIA client, who provided almost half of the institute’s annual budget, took a “dim view,” of what he described as “UFO research.» — Strieber consigna la objeción institucional a esos análisis, con el cliente de inteligencia como razón declarada.

«I didn’t see it as that at all. These were not unidentified objects, and they certainly weren’t flying. They were identified bits of metal extracted from people’s bodies. To me, the question of who had introduced them, if anybody, was still very much an open one.» — Strieber rechaza el rótulo de investigación ovni para ese trabajo y deja abierta la pregunta por el autor.

«Under the scanning electron microscope, they were found to be composed of iron with traces of nickel and other metals present. They were typical of meteoric iron. But what were meteor fragments doing embedding themselves under people’s skin? There is no known phenomenon that would cause this.» — el resultado analítico que reporta Strieber, hierro meteórico, y el problema que le ve.

«Moreover, they were found encased in skin, and yet were embedded in deep tissue. The body does not have the genetic encoding to generate skin inside muscle tissue. The conclusion that the presence of these objects, like the one in my body, was not an accident of nature was hard to avoid.» — el argumento anatómico de Strieber contra el accidente: el cuerpo no genera piel dentro del músculo.

«In 1998, Dr. Leir told me that he had located one in a man’s neck that was emitting a low-power FM signal. Bill and I were extremely interested, because we had found absolutely no sign of any technology in any of the others Roger had given us. But if there was a signal, there must also be a circuit of some kind, or a crystal.» — Strieber consigna que hasta entonces ningún objeto mostraba tecnología, y por eso el que emitía señal les interesó.

«On the first pass, the machine recorded the presence of the object, but after that it became X-ray invisible. We took it back to the SEM, which showed no change. Over many more passes and despite the fact that it was nearly pure iron, the diffraction machine never again detected its presence.» — el comportamiento del objeto en la máquina de difracción, según lo describe Strieber.

«The skeptical community either dismissed the objects as naturally occurring, or ignored them altogether. However, they cannot be naturally occurring, and as difficult as it is, the truth must be faced: there is at present no explanation for what they are, but there is substantial witness testimony— including my own—that they are placed in the body by unknown presences.» — Strieber separa lo que no hay, explicación, de lo que sí hay, testimonio, y no llena el hueco.

«Does this mean that aliens are involved? I wish I knew, but I don’t. I saw people do it to me. Others have seen strange looking creatures. Most have found the objects after the fact, and have no clear memory of how they got into their bodies.» — la abstención de Strieber sobre el autor de los implantes, con lo que sí afirma haber visto.

«It’s too early to conclude anything about them other than that they are there and cannot presently be explained. Everything else is speculation, but it’s a provocative problem, and it deserves more scientific and medical notice than it has so far received.» — Strieber deja el asunto como problema abierto y le pide atención científica, no conclusión.

«But when I walked over to ask him to stop, I found myself confronted by somebody who struck me as very strange and, in fact, sinister.» — Strieber corrige su primera impresión sobre el muchacho del bosque en cuanto se le acerca.

«He had the face of an immature boy, but his skin was weathered, as if he was much older, but had never reached puberty. My impression was, frankly, of somebody rather freakish.» — la descripción que da Strieber de esa figura, con la edad en contradicción con la piel.

«I finally telephoned the state police, and eventually a detective from the criminal investigation division showed up. I described the person I’d seen in the woods. Unfortunately, he knew who I was and when I mentioned that he was “little,” he said scornfully, “A little man?” It didn’t take long for him to leave, and I was left alone with my problem. I suppose that his main job was raiding meth labs and crack houses, and when he saw that this case wasn’t leading in that direction, he was no longer concerned. And then there was what Anne and I had come to call the “Strieber Factor,” where the mere mention of our name causes snickering and generalized disbelief. Once the Strieber Factor manifests itself, that’s the end of any serious interest.» — Strieber nombra el Factor Strieber, el efecto de su apellido sobre cualquier gestión seria.

«We were far back in the woods when we found, to our horror, a sort of nest. The ground was beaten down, tree limbs had been broken and pushed aside to make a small space, and it was thick with cigarette butts. That was the last of the woods for us. We returned to the house and never went back out.» — el hallazgo del nido con colillas que Strieber sitúa al final del verano, y el fin de sus caminatas.

«Over the course of the season, my financial condition deteriorated further. Soon, it became clear that we could no longer afford the cabin, so we packed up our car and moved to a tiny condo we owned in San Antonio.» — Strieber consigna el motivo económico de dejar la cabaña.

«During this time, also, neighbors began noticing what appeared to be a strange child doing things like climbing the walls of the building, getting onto decks, and damaging possessions found there. Texas state social services were called.» — Strieber suma a los vecinos como testigos de esa figura en San Antonio.

«I first saw one of them stealing tobacco products at the local drugstore. He went out with easily two hundred dollars’ worth of pipe tobacco, cigarettes, cigars, and whatnot. As he passed me, we locked eyes, and I saw there a frightful malevolence. The clerks let him pass without a challenge, and yet the theft was blatant. It was as if they didn’t even see him.» — el episodio del robo impune que Strieber relata, con los empleados como si no vieran al ladrón.

«When I called him, however, he said that he didn’t have any tenants. As far as he knew, the apartment was empty. I told him that it was occupied by three individuals, two men and a boy. He was outraged, and said that he’d call the sheriff at once and have them evicted.» — lo que el dueño del departamento le contestó según Strieber, que no tenía inquilinos.

«I have never seen the two men or the strange boy again, and I never want to. But they were entirely real. Were they somehow connected with aliens? For that matter, were the implants installed by aliens? I have no idea.» — Strieber afirma la realidad de esas personas y se abstiene sobre su relación con los alienígenas.

«The implants exist. They are found encased in skin and embedded in deep tissue. Therefore, they are not accidental inclusions, but something put there intentionally.» — el único paso que Strieber da del hecho a la inferencia, de la anatomía a la intención.

«But why, and by whom? And who were the people who placed an exotic, technologically advanced object in my ear without even making an incision?» — las preguntas que Strieber deja abiertas sobre el objeto de su oreja.

«I leave these questions for future science to address usefully. So far, that has not been done.» — Strieber cierra su capítulo remitiendo a una ciencia futura y anotando que hasta ahora no la hay.

«I think it’s important that we take this discussion beyond where it is now, which is that either aliens put these things in or they are simply trivial.» — apertura del correo del 1 de enero de 2015 que Kripal reproduce dentro de su capítulo; Strieber rechaza la disyuntiva.

«Your mention of them caused me to recall that I was “given” such a stone, which I still have. I dreamed about it in the night, then walked outside and there it lay in the middle of our driveway.» — continuación de ese correo, con la piedra que Strieber dice haber recibido tras soñarla; voz de Strieber dentro de un capítulo de Kripal.

«childhood fades into a lovely, anguished distance until it remains only as glimmers of memory that probe into a world that is too unfocused for our adult minds. This is because, as familiarity with one’s surroundings grows, the mind adds structure based on expectation, until at last the eyes that winked back from the raindrops of those early years and the ships that sailed the clouds are lost.» — Strieber explica la pérdida de la infancia por la estructura que la expectativa le va imponiendo a la percepción.

«When I was tiny, I used to sit in the living room in the dawn and converse with the sunlight. I had many friends in the swirling rain, and would watch Admiral Pirate fire his lightning broadsides when it stormed.» — lo que Strieber dice recordar de esa percepción de niño, con el sol y la lluvia por interlocutores.

«In every life, there remain sparks of wonder and visions—fleeting, perhaps —that are too eccentric to explain. We discount them, then deny them, and finally do not see them at all. But in some lives, the process of filtration is interrupted.» — Strieber describe el filtrado de esas percepciones y la excepción de las vidas donde el filtro se rompe.

«Hypnosis can be used to extract such memories, but it is a demanding process. Unfortunately, it is routinely carried out on “abductees” by nonprofessionals. As the objective of the subject is to please the hypnotist, even the fact that the hypnotist’s beliefs are known to the subject will confuse the results. People can end up with false memories that they can never untangle.» — Strieber advierte contra la hipnosis de aficionados y su producción de recuerdos falsos irrecuperables.

«Neither I nor Dr. Klein put much stock in the notion that I might have been abducted by aliens. I still don’t think that the sessions I did with him necessarily suggest that. They do suggest, however, that whatever happens to me is an ongoing process and that it started in childhood.» — Strieber consigna que ni él ni el hipnotista leyeron esas sesiones como abducción, y qué sí les concede.

«This is because, during the second session, I spontaneously regressed to the age of twelve and described seeing a room full of sleeping soldiers who were being overseen by a willowy form familiar to me from my close encounter the previous December. The childhood event happened on a train, during a trip to Wisconsin to see relatives.» — el contenido de esa regresión según Strieber, la sala de soldados dormidos vista a los doce años en un tren.

«As author Ed Conroy described in his book about me, Report on Communion, a friend of mine from those days remembered me returning from the trip talking about nothing but the soldiers I had seen.» — el testimonio de época que Strieber aduce, recogido por Ed Conroy en Report on Communion.

«To this day, I really cannot be sure what my childhood memories are, this one included. It is difficult to believe that what I remember of them now, as I described in The Secret School, happened in an absolute, literal sense. But something unusual happened, otherwise I don’t think that they would be in my mind at all.» — Strieber retira el sentido literal de sus recuerdos de infancia y conserva solo que algo inusual pasó.

«What if something else happened on that train, something perhaps that is part of a pattern so shocking that I cannot face it directly even now and have transferred it into this strange memory in order to protect myself from what my unconscious mind regards as an unbearable truth?» — Strieber plantea contra sí mismo la hipótesis de un trauma transferido a ese recuerdo extraño.

«In his 1990 study of close encounter witnesses and near-death experiencers that led to his book The Omega Project, Dr. Kenneth Ring found among the close encounter witnesses one consistent result: the majority of them reported childhood trauma of some sort.» — Strieber cita el resultado de Kenneth Ring en The Omega Project, la mayoría de testigos con trauma infantil.

«If this finding is correct, it could be that there is some sort of process of sublimation involved in transferring unacceptable and incomprehensible memories to more bearable fantasies.» — la hipótesis de sublimación que Strieber deriva de ese dato, condicionada a que el dato valga.

«This might explain, at least in part, the proliferation of close encounter memories, including some of my own. I doubt that it explains them all, but that possibility shouldn’t be discounted, either. If such a process exists now, it is likely that it has always existed and might well be one of the primary generators of folklore.» — Strieber aplica esa hipótesis a sus propios recuerdos, duda de que lo explique todo y la extiende al origen del folclore.

«When a child finds that he cannot trust a parent, the child becomes hyper-vigilant, and the sense of mistrust radiates out from that foundational wound until the child’s connection with reality becomes unsettled.» — el mecanismo que Strieber describe entre la herida y la desconfianza generalizada en lo real.

«The world whispers a devastating message to the sufferer: “I am not what I seem . . . and neither are you.” I have heard that whisper, and believe me, soft as it is, it is capable of searing the soul forever.» — la fórmula con que Strieber resume ese mensaje, y su declaración de haberlo oído.

«To this day my relationship to reality is edged by a region of ambiguity. Over the years, I have become able to address it in various ways. It is here that the faces in the raindrops command my attention.» — Strieber conserva la ambigüedad como borde permanente de su relación con lo real, con las caras en las gotas de lluvia por señal.

«Instead of taking an objective look at phenomena that cannot be explained, we have thus far across our history contented ourselves with either accepting them or rejecting them. Personally, I find a more inclusive and questioning approach more interesting and intellectually useful, and also capable of offering the culture some advancement in the clarity of its vision of reality, rather than a continuation of the confusion that has dogged us since well before Leda was raped by Zeus.» — Strieber reprocha a la historia haber aceptado o rechazado el fenómeno sin mirarlo, y propone la vía interrogativa.

«They were people, but possessed of technologies far beyond anything known and using tools that seem almost incomprehensible, such as magnetic fields that persist even in the absence of a source.» — lo que Strieber afirma de los visitantes de aquella noche: personas con tecnología incomprensible, no alienígenas.

«On the other side of the line, they may or may not have been physical, but when they entered my bedroom, they were, and they brought with them a physical object that once yielded some very mysterious information.» — Strieber deja el estatuto físico de esos visitantes indeciso fuera de la recámara y firme dentro.

«If I could be assured of an objective analysis of the object and of my own safety in having it removed, I might try that again. But it’s a hard thing to face.» — la condición bajo la cual Strieber volvería a intentar la extracción del objeto.

«The disturbance to expectation that has followed me across my life began, quite literally, with birth. I have never had a chance to experience an assured sense of reality, and perhaps this is why I am so open to intrusions from beyond the edge of expectation.» — Strieber remonta al nacimiento su falta de un sentido asegurado de la realidad, y la propone como causa de su apertura.

«As I recorded in Solving the Communion Enigma, I ended up in some sort of program that I believe to have been carried out at Randolph Air Force Base near San Antonio. My primary recollection is of being jammed with other children into a dark space—a box—where horrific, deafening sounds were played. I remember it as shrill screaming that made us scream, also, as we twisted and struggled.» — Strieber remite a su propio libro y describe el programa que ubica en la base aérea Randolph, con la caja oscura y los sonidos.

«Now, these memories did not really focus until a few years ago, after Anne and I moved back to San Antonio. To my surprise one afternoon while driving home on I35 north of the city, I wound up at Randolph’s south gate. I had no idea how or why I had driven there. After that, I found myself visiting certain memories that had always been with me, but which I had been neglecting in the same way that a stroke victim’s brain might neglect a paralyzed limb. The surprise detour to Randolph restored my interest in them, and I have been thinking about them and researching them ever since.» — Strieber fecha el retorno de esos recuerdos en un desvío involuntario hasta la puerta sur de esa base.

«I know that there was a program for bright children at Randolph because one of my oldest friends, now a distinguished academician, was present when a couple from the air force attempted to recruit him for it when he was a child. When a Skinner box was mentioned, his parents declined. Skinner boxes are used to study animal behavior, and the idea of using them with children did not sit well with these very aware parents. They knew that, whatever this program was about, something was seriously wrong with it.» — el testimonio de tercero con que Strieber sostiene la existencia del programa, con la caja de Skinner por motivo del rechazo.

«So I think that the program existed. I also know that it stressed me severely, because my immune system collapsed when I was in it, at age seven. My report card from the period shows weeks of absences, which was the time that I was kept in isolation.» — Strieber separa lo que cree de lo que dice saber, y aduce sus faltas escolares por documento.

«Looking back at the program now, it seems to me that the stress involved had the effect of cracking the cosmic egg, just like, say, sexual abuse. Perhaps even more completely.» — Strieber le da al programa el mismo efecto que atribuye al abuso, romper el huevo cósmico que da título al capítulo.

«Could it be that they discovered that by stressing children to extremes, the children would not always go mad or die, but would sometimes become conduits to some other way of addressing reality? To me, the tightly packed bodies and the screaming amount to an excellent simulation of the interior of a gas chamber, pitch dark, packed solid with humanity, and thick with terror.» — Strieber plantea en pregunta el propósito que le supone al programa y lo enlaza con la cámara de gas.

«Did some children sometimes survive the gassings—buried, perhaps, under heaps of bodies—and emerge from the ordeal with strange knowledge and strange powers? Were the Nazi scientists trying to re-create these conditions in their lab in Texas? If so, perhaps it sometimes works. My life would certainly suggest so.» — la hipótesis más extrema del capítulo, que Strieber deja en interrogación y matiza con un quizá.

«When I was twelve, we began noticing that white owl standing at the far edge of our backyard. It seemed to be watching my windows. This disturbed my parents so much that they had my screens nailed shut. It was also my first exposure to a creature that would come to emblemize my whole relationship to that aspect of being that I call the visitors.» — Strieber fecha en el búho blanco de sus doce años el emblema de toda su relación con los visitantes.

«I have always been a bit too curious, and I opened it. What I saw shocked me to my core. In it was a nun’s habit and, lying beside it, a dry, flattened owl carcass. I didn’t get off the train again until I was in Strasbourg. The owls were gathering.» — episodio de Roma en 1968 que Strieber relata, con el hábito de monja y el búho disecado en la maleta.

«But it was winter, all the windows were closed and we had no chimney, so it wasn’t possible that an owl could have gotten in.» — la imposibilidad material que Strieber consigna sobre el búho de diciembre de 1985.

«Our dark god, it would seem, isn’t a swan but an owl, and therein lies, I suspect, a fundamental revelation about how exactly what is touching us wishes us to understand our relationship with it, or, conversely, how we wish to interact with it.» — Strieber cambia el cisne de Leda por el búho y deja abierto en qué dirección va la elección del emblema.

«As I write this, both Jeff Kripal and our editor at Tarcher/Penguin, Mitch Horowitz, are having owl imagery enter their lives. Mitch has been having unexpected encounters with them for about a year. And, of course, the owl is the mascot at Jeff’s university. In Celtic myth, the owl is a symbol of the otherworld, and in the UFO literature, a sign of the gray visitors.» — Strieber extiende el motivo del búho a su coautor y a su editor, y da las dos claves, la céltica y la ufológica.

«This is not quite the same as Freud’s use, wherein real memories are used to screen deeper, unwanted ones.» — Strieber distingue el recuerdo pantalla de los testigos del uso freudiano, porque aquí lo que tapa no es real.

«When witnesses find owls watching their houses, as we did, they will often think that the visitors are using the owls like cameras. More interestingly to me, people will identify the owl as the totem animal of the visitors.» — las dos lecturas que Strieber recoge entre los testigos, el búho como cámara y el búho como tótem.

«In all of this, I hear language. Back when we lived in the woods, I understood that the visitors were potentially dangerous. The owl image spoke to me in two ways: it warned of a stealthy predator, and it promised wisdom.» — Strieber lee la imagen del búho como enunciado doble, advertencia de depredador y promesa de saber.

«The question was how to take the wisdom without being eaten? I decided to use the same language I was seeing to reply with my own visual statement.» — Strieber formula el problema práctico que se puso y su decisión de contestar en el mismo lenguaje.

«If this all rests somehow in physical reality, was that child made? What has been his or her experience? Have I given my seed to the stars, or given a lamb to the slaughter?» — las preguntas que Strieber deja abiertas sobre una descendencia posible, condicionadas a que aquello sea físico.

«To lie in the lap of the goddess is to be unsure, and in that unsureness there is extraordinary suffering.» — Strieber le añade a la fórmula de Travers el costo de la incertidumbre.

«Or was it that I was doing what I hoped I was doing, which was surrendering myself to them—asking, I hoped, for a relationship?» — Strieber describe sus salidas nocturnas como oferta de relación, planteada como pregunta.

«it has ever been essential to finding one’s truth that one tempt death. This is a central feature of initiation. Even in modern times, in Masonry, there is a symbolic death to the past self.» — Strieber pone la tentación de la muerte como rasgo central de toda iniciación y cita la masonería como caso moderno.

«the Eleusinian Mysteries involved a reenactment of the abduction of Persephone and her descent into the underworld.» — el caso antiguo que Strieber pone al lado, el rapto de Perséfone reactuado en Eleusis.

«But, of course, there was a secret revealed in the Eleusinian Mysteries, as there is in all shamanic initiation. It is that death is not what it seems; it is a change of direction, not the end of existence.» — Strieber enuncia el secreto que adjudica por igual a Eleusis y a toda iniciación chamánica.

«But release does not come easily. Suffering is the engine of transcendence. Osiris cut to pieces. Job in his abnegation, even so grateful to his god. Jesus forsaken on his cross. Humanity on a dying planet, lifting desperate eyes to the cold stars.» — Strieber alinea a Osiris, Job y Jesús como figuras del sufrimiento que transforma, y suma a la humanidad entera.

«Make no mistake, the entire species is probably headed toward suffering just as great as that of the avatars of the past, but on a truly fantastic scale.» — la extensión que Strieber le da a esa serie, con la especie entera en el lugar de los avatares.

«In that night, the owl, bringer of death and wisdom, will potentially reign as silent mistress of our souls. Like the old song, but perhaps with a somewhat different tone, she will have the whole world in her hands.» — Strieber cierra el motivo del búho con la figura de la dueña silenciosa de las almas.

«I cannot tell how dangerous it really was, but I can share the peace my life as her student has brought me. I have threaded the maze of my own suffering, Ariadne’s follower, to a place in the heart that I had never known existed, where compassion floods for my fellow man, for Earth and her creatures, even for my own slouching struggle in the darkness.» — Strieber deja sin medir el peligro y afirma solo lo que dice haber ganado, una compasión que describe.

«In my foreword to Jacques Vallee’s book Dimensions: A Casebook of Alien Contact, I offered the opinion that the pressure of the close encounter experience is what the force of evolution looks like when it is applied to a conscious mind.» — Strieber cita su propio prólogo a Dimensions y ahí sí escribe Jacques con ese, a diferencia de la plana 101.

«When I said in Communion that “the human mind winks back from the dark,” I was addressing both the evolutionary power and ambiguity that emerges into our lives when we see past the expectations and assumptions with which we surround ourselves. We see into a darkness that, in my experience, is at once “us” as we truly are and the “other” in all its mystery.» — Strieber glosa su propia línea de Communion y la reparte entre nosotros mismos y lo otro.

«is not just a crack in the mirror of self, but a shattering of that mirror. And beyond self, joy.» — el cierre del capítulo, donde el huevo cósmico rajado se vuelve espejo hecho añicos.

«The Condon Report had concluded that the U.S. Air Force had no reason to pursue investigations of unidentified flying objects, there being no apparent military reason to do so. The Condign Report concurred, as it also states that there is no evidence of any military threat.» — Strieber contrasta los dos informes, con el británico coincidiendo en que no hay amenaza militar.

«But the executive summary of the Condon report essentially says that the phenomenon offers nothing to study. Not so the Condign Report. In its executive summary, there appears the statement that what it calls unidentified aerial phenomena “are comprised of rarely encountered natural events.» — la diferencia que Strieber marca entre los dos resúmenes ejecutivos, con el británico admitiendo un suceso natural raro.

«But if they are natural events and have no military significance, why is it that this classification even exists? Why was the Condign Report, for example, ever classified at all?» — la contradicción que Strieber le señala al documento, natural y sin valor militar pero clasificado.

«The report, which is now available in its entirety on the United Kingdom National Archives Web Archive, explores the belief that unidentified aerial phenomena are plasmas of a type unknown to science» — Strieber resume la tesis del informe, plasmas de tipo desconocido para la ciencia.

«In the report, UAPs are frankly acknowledged to be of unknown origin, and it is noted that the “temporal cortex can be rendered electrically unstable” by them. “Neurological rather than biological effects may be the clue to some human behavior after exposure to the near field of UAP radiation. Particularly sensitive are the temporal lobe areas of the brain.» — lo que Strieber cita del propio informe sobre el efecto en el lóbulo temporal.

«There is never any reason given for the conclusion that they are entirely natural formations, but it is acknowledged that they have been part of human life for a very long time.» — la objeción de Strieber al informe, que da por natural el fenómeno sin argumentarlo.

«But, in fact, it is a stunning and damning admission. Governmental authorities have kept secret for years the fact that unknown plasmas can and do affect the minds of people who come close to them, and have done nothing to prevent the spread of the now enormous UFO lore and all of its attendant beliefs.» — Strieber lee el informe como admisión oficial de que hay plasmas que afectan la mente y que nada se hizo con eso.

«So what are the plasmas? Who have they affected? Are their effects on the mind temporary or permanent? Are they dangerous? The report discusses the various frequencies that are involved, and it is obvious that much more is known than is being released.» — las preguntas que Strieber le hace al informe y su sospecha de que se sabe más de lo que se publica.

«We have never even asked the most obvious question about these plasmas: very simply, what are they? The Catholic Church used to believe that the orbs of light so often reported were souls that were on fire, thus suffering. They were free to roam, which suggested that they weren’t trapped in hell. So the conclusion was that they were souls in purgatory, as pointed out, for example, in Diana Pasulka’s purgatory study, Heaven Can Wait.» — Strieber recuerda la lectura católica de esos orbes como almas del purgatorio y remite al estudio de Diana Pasulka.

«I don’t think it can be assumed without question that they are without any intelligent direction. Whatever affected me over all those years after my December 1985 experience seemed to me to be highly intelligent.» — Strieber se niega a dar por descartada la dirección inteligente, apoyado en su propia impresión.

«readily assume that they are entirely plasmid in nature, either. My impression is that some aspect of life that we don’t understand is involved.» — Strieber tampoco acepta la reducción a plasma y propone que hay ahí un aspecto de la vida no entendido.

«After my 1985 encounter, high on the list of possibilities in my mind was temporal lobe dysfunction, either a tumor or temporal lobe epilepsy. As I have documented previously, tests for both proved negative. In fact, a very aggressive test for temporal lobe epilepsy revealed that I have an unusually stable brain.» — Strieber consigna que sus propias pruebas de lóbulo temporal salieron negativas, contra su primera hipótesis.

«The Condign Report provides official acknowledgment that unidentified aerial phenomena exist, and that they have effects on human beings. Given its release, it is no longer possible for governments to deny this. As these phenomena affect the mind, study is clearly essential.» — lo que Strieber da por ganado con la publicación del informe, la existencia del fenómeno y sus efectos.

«If a random, natural phenomenon is giving rise to the visions and hallucinations that generate our belief systems, that is of literally epochal importance. If it is in some way conscious, then the importance is beyond measure.» — Strieber deja las dos ramas abiertas, azar o consciencia, y le da importancia máxima a las dos.

«As we have pointed out elsewhere, this secrecy has also the effect of encouraging rampant speculation, which, in this case had led to the emergence of an elaborate folklore—strengthened, as is usually the case, by being based on a kernel of truth. So the secrecy hasn’t simply stifled progress, it has caused a malign descent into the old labyrinth of folk belief, superstition, and confusion.» — Strieber le imputa al secreto oficial la producción del folclore, apoyado en un núcleo de verdad.

«As an example, a UFO group leader in 2015 uploaded a video to YouTube of a “meditation” during which UFOs apparently lit up the horizon. However, photo experts to whom I showed the video felt that the lights were flares, and there was a military base nearby.» — caso que Strieber desmonta él mismo: las luces de la meditación colectiva eran bengalas, según los peritos que consultó.

«In the end, we will come to the same drearily familiar results that we have been enduring for thousands of years: a belief system will form which will once again by its very nature push away whatever is actually there.» — lo que Strieber teme de un anuncio oficial, un sistema de creencias que empuje fuera lo que hay.

«Paul assumed that he encountered the risen body of Jesus on the Road to Damascus. Mohammed thought that the radiant being he encountered in the cave was the angel Gabriel. Moses thought that the burning bush was the presence of Yaweh.» — los tres precedentes con que Strieber ilustra ese cierre por creencia; las grafías van como las imprime el libro.

«Let’s not go that far this time. Yes, the plasmas exist. No, we don’t know that they are aliens. Yes, we can come to an objective understanding of what they are.» — la fórmula de tres cláusulas con que Strieber reparte lo afirmado, lo no sabido y lo alcanzable.