The Men Who Stare at Zygotes

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The Men Who Stare at Zygotes
November 18, 2009
Peter Fotis Kapnistos
UFO Digest

The Men Who Stare at Goats (2004) is a book by Jon Ronson about the U.S. Army's investigation of psychic theories and the possible military uses of the paranormal. Its title alludes to efforts to kill goats by staring at them. In a Nov 7, 2009 online Twitter post, the well-known mentalist Uri Geller referred to actor George Clooney, saying, “His latest film is about my work.” In a Nov 12 Twitter post, Geller added:

“George Clooney is Uri Geller in the movie The Men Who Stare At Goats? I believe I ignited the story when I told Jon Ronson about some of my adventures with a certain intelligence agency.”

Jon Ronson’s book examines the links between paranormal military programs and psychological techniques used today. The book follows the development of secret psychic activities over the past decades and explores how they are used today in U.S. security and military operations. Project Stargate, the CIA-run program that used remote viewing for psychic spying, came to an end in 1995, and thousands of pages of formerly classified material were released. Journalist Gary S. Bekkum has researched those secret government documents, as well as UFO information and psychic explorations.

According to Bekkum, The Men Who Stare at Goats (the 2009 comedy film) is more or less consistent, with polished performances from a first-rate cast headed by George Clooney, Ewan McGregor, Jeff Bridges, and Kevin Spacey. The America government has been involved in using the paranormal since the beginning of the Cold War. Bekkum now has 89,900 pages of documents about the psychic effort provided by the CIA:

In the 1970s, the American Intelligence Community, including but not limited to CIA, DIA, NSA, Army intelligence, the USAF, the Navy, and others, engaged in secret research to determine the usefulness of psychic phenomena. This is true, and this larger effort is mostly ignored by the film, which tells the story from the point of view of the characters, some who were inspired by real persons and events.

In the 1980s, Army intelligence did train operational military psychic spies, who were tasked against real targets of interest, including several high profile cases, such as the hostage crisis in Iran. Tasking for the units was handed down from highest levels of the U.S. government, including the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to declassified government files.

Jon Ronson's book focused on one group of psychic spies in the U.S. Army. But if famed paranormalist Uri Geller is somehow related to Ronson’s observations, perhaps we ought to also look into Geller’s military background. Uri Geller was a paratrooper in the Israeli army. He fought in the Six Day War of 1967 and was wounded in action.

Geller’s biographers disclosed a rather intense incident when Uri supposedly tried to “duck and dive” on military service: “His working out of a cunning plan of deception in the paratroopers was not only foolhardy at the time - for what he did, he could have been flung in a military prison for months and suffered a stain on his record for the rest of his life.”

What actually happened to Uri Geller in the Israeli army? According to Uri, a miraculous switchover incident took place, with a machine gun. (‘Ben Gunn,’ says you, ‘has reasons of his own.’) But there was no one he could tell. “His first thought was that God had intervened, and as he has never had any other explanation for it, that tends to remain his belief.”

Although Geller took a bullet through his left hand in the Six Day War, he still headed a crack unit to knock out a pillbox. After being shot at twice, he fired his gun and killed a Jordanian soldier. Shortly later, slices of metal flying off a stricken tank, or possibly bullets, hit Geller again. “He felt a blast, sensed something entering his right arm and the left side of his forehead, and, as he blacked out, assumed with resignation that he was dead.”

Is there anything in the army records to suggest that Uri Geller might be able to stop someone’s heart by staring at him or her? Uri has been filmed staring at fertilized cells (zygotes) and plant seeds in order to make them germinate and sprout. But do certain psychic techniques involve martial arts and self-defense? Why does Geller relate to the men who stare at goats? Should we take a more careful look at Gary Bekkum’s files?

Uri Geller once said he had a dream he would die during a paratrooper jump: “He appreciated that dreaming of dying on a jump was a fairly normal thing for a paratrooper to do.” Did something weird happen to Uri Geller when he jumped as a paratrooper in the Six Day War? Did he in some way set off from this life? Was Uri’s miraculous switchover incident a reference to an out-of-body experience (OBE), or a significant UFO intrusion?

n the Second World War, UFO sightings were called “foo fighters.” Nowadays, if the blip of an unidentified paratrooper shows up on a radar screen, it’s sometimes called a “Mary Poppins” (the one-liner joke is that someone jumped down from the sky).

When the 11th blip abruptly arrived on Israeli radar in June of 1967, it was far more life threatening than a pathetic joke of duck and dive. Ten Israeli soldiers had volunteered for a critical mission to defend Israel’s right to exist. The radar screens showed eleven. Who was the 11th paratrooper of the Six Day War?

For what he did, he could have been put in prison. His mind raced beyond the limits of past and future. His body was a weightless force, faster than a speeding projectile. His right hand was outstretched. A shock wave roared and thundered in the sky behind him. The eleventh paratrooper was descending to the Mount of Olives.

There would be no picnic tables set with refreshments or well-dressed pastors waiting with Bibles at the moment. Jerusalem was a battle zone with heavy fighting –– a desert theater of fortifications and tanks. Pieces of someone’s dismembered leg marked the burning ground. “Where’s your parachute?” asked another soldier. “Over there,” the eleventh replied and pointed to a near graveyard. His shirt was saturated with color, dipped in his own blood.

He projected phases of his life as several dimensions, from a playful child to an elderly peacekeeper. Those aspects he embedded into terrestrial reality –– past and future –– when his feet touched the ground, and his body descended to the Mount of Olives. Who was the 11th paratrooper?
* * *

Cause tonight for the first time
Just about half-past ten
For the first time in history
It's gonna start raining men.
It's Raining Men! Hallelujah! - It's Raining Men! Amen!
(The Weather Girls, 1982)
* * *

The eleventh paratrooper was at last identified and a background check was conducted. The niece of Sigmund Freud became a refugee when book burning and violent outbursts of anti-Semitism began in Vienna. Sigmund Freud and his family received visits from the Gestapo. Many would perish in the Holocaust.

The niece of Sigmund Freud was put at great risk with numerous forced abortion incidents –– enough to bring about female infertility. It would have been a medical wonder for her to be his biological mother.

The “SS Exodus” was a ship that carried Jewish emigrants from France in 1947 with the goal of taking its passengers to Israel. Most of the emigrants were Holocaust survivors who had no immigration certificates. Homeless orphans had no legal birth certificates or given names.
* * *

Uri Geller said that his paratrooper switchover was under the protection of some outside force, which was unfathomable. His first thought was that God had intervened. The American psychic Ingo Swann worked with Uri in the 1970s. Russel Targ and Harold Puthoff conducted experiments with them at the Stanford Research Institute (SRI). They believed that Uri Geller, retired police commissioner Pat Price, and artist Ingo Swann had genuine psychic abilities. The CIA and the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA), directed by Andrija Puharich, allegedly worked with Geller, Price, and Swann to develop psychic powers for the military.

In November 2009, NASA scientists made the thrilling discovery that the moon has lots of water and could probably support life. NASA's October 9 mission involving the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite provided the stunning confirmation of water in the forms of ice and vapor. "Having definitive evidence that there is substantial water is a significant step forward in making the moon an interesting place to go," said John Logsdon, a space policy researcher for George Washington University.

n 1998, Ingo Swann wrote of water on the moon and said the moon also supports life. Swann claimed that men in black had taken him into the wing of a covert black ops survey into lunar anomalies to learn what aliens were doing there. Swann said he had made government connections with human looking moon visitors that were living on earth.

“VALIS” is a 1981 science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick. (The title is an acronym for Vast Active Living Intelligence System.) Dick's theory was that we have been contacted by a transcendental mind he called VALIS:

In 1973 world-famous psychic showman Uri Geller had also been receiving messages and regular UFO sightings from something calling itself SPECTRA, which claimed to be a super computer in orbit around the earth. Not normally reticent about his bizarre beliefs, Geller has been suspiciously quiet about his experiences of SPECTRA - which may or may not relate to the publicly recorded interest the CIA paid to this particular aspect of his unusual career. However, the maverick, but world-renowned physicist, Dr. Jack Sarfatti, was prepared to commit almost certain professional suicide by publicly declaring that he too had been contacted by, in his own words, “a VALIS-like being.” Despite knowing he was going to face ridicule and scientific crucifixion, Sarfatti went on record to recount how, in 1952 at the age of 13, he had received a telephone call from an inhuman, metallic voice. The voice declared himself a sentient computer on a spacecraft from the future and instructed him to pursue a career in science.

After Sarfatti went public about his phone call from VALIS as a teenager, it emerged that he was not the only scientist to have had a similar experience. In recent years, researchers have discovered that at least a dozen other senior players in the international scientific community received a mysterious call claiming to be from a computer or other being from the future encouraging them to study science.

(David Southwell and Sean Twist, “Conspiracy Files: Real-life Stories of Paranoia, Secrecy, and Intrigue” 2004)

Tim Boucher freshly considered Philip K. Dick’s premise and said that Geller is also responsible for stories regarding John Lennon’s UFO contacts. Today, the prospects for life on the moon are better than ever before. "Rather than a dead and unchanging world, it could in fact be a very dynamic and interesting one," said Greg Delory, a researcher for the University of California.

Former astronaut Buzz Aldrin recently said in an interview that there’s a “monolith” on a moon. Benjamin Creme, a writer of esotericism for Share International magazine, claims that the modern “Messiah” already entered the earth’s atmosphere –– decades ago –– and is now living in England. The modern messiah-figure is making his policies known to the world as the current global systems give way.

As the “megachurch” movement spreads worldwide and “televangelists” make use of home entertainment media to provide teaching and support to believers, a new inquiry has been put forward: “If Jesus had a TV show, what would he broadcast?” The men who stare at quotes think he should probably instruct Bible and Sunday school studies. The men who stare at notes think he should explore lost archeology, ancient biology or stellar explosions in space. But the men who stare at votes think he should perform more miracles –– in harmony with our current laws. Today it is unlawful for a layman to heal without a medical license (very soon, it might also be forbidden for one to offer security related help).

“Another world,” the stranger said to the small crowd of men. “Why do you stand there, looking up at the sky? He will return in the same way that you saw him go.”

According to Benjamin Crème (and maybe Dan Brown), the modern messiah-figure’s intention is to marry and live the dream of Eden. His legendary wedding feast is supposed to last for a thousand years, to mark the “technological singularity” or scientific era of eternal life.

Some critics may perhaps argue that men who stare at goats use the evil side of the mind. But a more angelic inspiration for Jon Ronson's weird tale can be found in Acts 5:

Now a man named Ananias, together with his wife Sapphira, also sold a piece of property. With his wife's full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles' feet.

Then Peter said, "Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept for yourself some of the money you received for the land? Didn't it belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal? What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men but to God."

When Ananias heard this, he fell down and died. And great fear seized all who heard what had happened. Then the young men came forward, wrapped up his body, and carried him out and buried him.

About three hours later his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. Peter asked her, "Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?"

"Yes," she said, "that is the price."

Peter said to her, "How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also."

At that moment she fell down at his feet and died. Then the young men came in and, finding her dead, carried her out and buried her beside her husband. Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events.