UFOs are a great challenge because they defy definition.
Joseph Burkes MD 2017, edited 2024
They are called flying saucers, UFOs, ETs, and now UAP, but also space brothers, aliens, angels, or demons. My wife Yael is not particularly interested in the subject and calls them “the Whatevers.” I mean no disrespect to Christians when I suggest that perhaps they “have become all things to all people.”
A pet term of mine for them is “The Others that Experiencers Now Call ‘ET’”, a rather awkward name that goes by the acronym TOTENCET, pronounced “toe ten set.”
UFOs are the gift that keeps giving. For those that imagine science is the key, they are a kind of engineering problem. For contactees like myself, they are the wish dream of benevolent ETs; for some fundamentalist Christians, they are the demons.
Seeing is believing and vice versa. As the bad boy of ufology, the late John Keel proposed, the so-called ETs are in the “belief business” and have probably been so “forever.” If many, or perhaps even most UFOs are technologically manufactured “visual displays” produced by non-human intelligences to create the illusion of “flying saucers,” then they can appear in any shape that we might imagine. Should we believe that the hundreds of different categories of UFOs (triangles, saucers, globes etc.) are “craft” being manufactured and repaired in a multitude of “alien” factories? I concur with Keel who advised us that we should not believe such notions.
In my judgment, some “UFOs” are likely visual displays that are not physical objects. We should keep in mind that holographic like projections may also appear to defy the laws of physics as we know them. When confused with physical objects, they are presumed to dematerialize and accelerate at tremendous speeds. If holographic technology is being employed to stage sightings, then many “encounters” are perhaps not with objects. Thus, groups like MUFON that focus on sighting reports, might often be chasing “holograms”, and they have been doing so for generations.
On the other hand, some “UFOs” are physical objects in as much as they cast shadows and are tracked on radar while visually observed. I strongly suspect, however, that most sightings are not purely physical, and as a result I have developed what I call Virtual Experience Model. This theory describes what, from a materialistic/physicalist point of view, can be designated as “illusory” mechanisms of contact.
Thus, UFOs are a great mystery and I suspect they will be so for some time. This is true despite the recent new openness on this contentious topic. Flying saucers will continue to resist every attempt to define them, and I suspect this is not by accident. The different names applied reflect the incredibly complex nature of the challenge confronting humanity. If we wish to understand what they are and who is responsible, my advice is that we do the following: we should carefully study our reactions to their presence in a disciplined, informed, and hopefully enlightened way. Or is that too difficult a task to ask for?
Addendum: When I first posted this blog on social media several years ago, I was criticized for daring to quote the bible in reference to flying saucers. One critic objected stating that religion is out of context when it comes to UFOs. I replied as follows:
We are interacting with an intelligence that in my view is totally telepathic. It is hard to accept, I imagine, but “they” can access our consciousness as readily as we access light by turning on a wall switch. They can dialogue with us mentally both as a “voice” in our heads as well as transmitting complex abstract concepts.
Mental communication with them can be very much like prayer. UFO intelligence has been able to carry out miraculous healing and produce “wonders in the skies.” If the individuals identified as great prophets or “messengers of God” were contactees, then our fundamental belief systems may have their origins, at least partly, in what are now being called “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.” Thus, the topic of religion and the statements concerning saints, avatars, messengers and even the offspring of God, are appropriate in my view and are not “out of context.”
For blogs focusing on the Virtual Experience Model, the following links are provided:
Joseph Burkes MD 2019. INTRODUCTION As the result of carefully studying numerous interactions with the intelligence responsible for Unidentified Aerial Phenomena UAP, I have developed a new paradigm for understanding the important role of illusion as a mechanism of contact. In proposing this model, I must emphasize that both physical and illusory contact experiences likely … Continue reading The Virtual Experience Model, an Overview
J. Burkes MD 2021 Important Proviso: The Virtual Experience Model doesn’t propose that all encounters are holographic or psychic. In my judgment, interactions are occurring via both virtual and physical means. The Virtual Experience Model describes what I believe are the illusory mechanisms of contact employed by flying saucer intelligences. The model is as follows: … Continue reading The Reasons why Flying Saucer Intelligences might stage “Virtual” Instead of Physical Encounters
A blog analyzing an event at Skinwalker Ranch that supports the Virtual Experience Model. Dr. Kelleher was present when 6 observers using night vision equipment described seeing “completely different things.”
Two Cases Supporting the VE-2 Category “Matrix reality”
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of the Virtual Experience Model is “virtual memory, a Virtual Experience of the Third Kind (VE-3) I have proposed that not only are UAP intelligences able to render witnesses amnesiac, create screen memories that block accurate recollections of contact events, but that experiencers’ entire recollections of contact events are “memory implants.” In the 1970s, while reportedly associated with the CIA, the North American physician Andrija Puharich worked with Uri Geller. In Dr. Puharich’s book “Uri” there is an example of what I call “virtual memory” i.e. a VE-3.
Contact Underground 
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