“A Conversation with Whitley Strieber” by Jon King,
UFO Reality magazine, Vol.1 No.1, 1996

After some years out of the
spotlight WHITLEY STRIEBER,
author of the
international megaseller
Communion, is back.

JK Hi, Whitley. How are you?

WS Fine, thank you.

JK I'm very pleased to be able to talk with you. I've been in the States for a few days and I was surprised to find a copy of your new book. It's not available in England.

WS No. It hasn't been published there yet. There seem to be one or two problems ? I think it may have been blocked. Perhaps you could help me find a publisher?

JK I'll do my best.

WS Thank you.

JK Whitley, I'd like to begin by asking why you felt this was the time for you to go public again after so long?

WS OK, What happened was, in 1988 and 89, 1 became aware that to some degree this phenomenon, whatever it is, couldn't enter our reality unless it was invited in. A lot of the sort of theatrical qualities that it has, it seemed to me, had to do with the need to establish itself as part of our reality. I became concerned that I might be aiding this process with my books ? but without me really understanding what it might mean if it happened ? and so I therefore stopped and tried to communicate more meaningfully with the visitors, and to understand from my own experiences with them what they might be doing. Above all, I tried to understand whether or not there was any way for us to gain anything from the phenomenon. Because if there was nothing to be gained, then why do it? Right?

JK Sure.

WS And even if it meant that we might gain something from it, but that the cost would be something, for example, like the loss of human psychological independence, or even the domination of the world economic level, then who wants that? I don't want that.

So basically I spent five years in some sort of contact with them, while publicly being very careful about what I said. I said nothing to further the process. I was purposely evasive. First I would say one thing and then another about it to keep people guessing as to what I really believed and didn't believe, so that I wouldn't do anything more to further it until I was sure it was worth furthering.

JK OK. In Communion it seemed your experience was very personal to you. Would you now say that the visitors might be trying to communicate something through you, or do you still think it's purely a personal process?

WS No, not entirely personal. What they're trying to do is to show .. to show me something that they can do for all of us, something that is worth having.

JK And what would you say that something is?

WS I can tell you precisely what it is. What they have to offer that is worth having is the shock itself, primarily. The shock of the contact experience is what they have to offer, and it is worth having in the sense that this shock cracks, as it were, your personal paradigm. It causes you to be able to see beyond the ordinary mechanical level of the universe, to see beyond the dynamics of Newtonian physics, if you will.

It's not the only shock out there that does this.

There are lots of them. In the old days the ancient mystery religions and shamanic religions all had shocks that were effective in doing this, ranging from the crudest types of shock which were practiced by the more primitive shamanic religions ? where a person wishing to be a shaman was simply thrown off a cliff, and if they lived they were a shaman, and if they didn't, well, they'd made the wrong decision! ? to the much more subtle and psychologically powerful shocks that were administered during the mysteries, for example, in Ephesus in ancient Greece.

But for a long time the western world has been at war with its own soul. It still is, of course. It's at war now with the very idea of a soul. The western intellectual community, since the rise of the age of reason, has been trying to free itself from superstition by freeing itself from the soul. Unfortunately, directionally it's a good idea to free ourselves from superstition. But we can't free ourselves from the soul, and for this reason the whole methodology is flawed. However, where it has led us is into an ability to see what the visitors are doing without any of the trappings of Ephesus or the shamanic journey. We can simply take the shock for what it is and then go on and make use of it without bothering with any of the mythological trappings.

To go on and expand this point a little bit...

JK Please do.

WS One of the other things that operates now to administer this shock is the near?death experience. When a person falls into death and returns, sometimes they return with a shock having been administered. An example of this would be Damian Brinkley, the author of Saved By The Light. If you read Saved By The Light you'll find that Brinkley had a number of experiences in the near?death state that were very similar to experiences I have had in the visitor?encounter situation. You'll also find that people who have visitor?encounters also end up psychically active, and having encounters with the dead, and all kinds of different things along those lines. What it is, what the visitor is, what they offer us, is a chance to ascend into a hyperconscious state.

JK Yes, OK. But not everybody is able to see it that way, Whitley. Not everybody seems able to deal with the visitor?encounter in such a positive light. It seems to me you're perceived by your readers as a kind of role model ? I note, for example, you say you received 140,000 letters...

WS From Communion, yes. I've received more than that by now. Probably about 170,000.

JK And how do you feel about that? I mean, you must feel a kind of responsibility to them ... ?

WS Enormous responsibility. I feel a huge responsibility.

JK So how do you manage to deal with that?

WS Well I'll tell you. When you get a letter from a mother who is having encounters, who is pregnant, with two little babies already, little children, and they are having encounters too ... and her husband wants to commit her to an insane asylum and take the children including the unborn infant when it's born ? then you feel a sense of responsibility. I mean, how do you help a family in a state like that? That's the kind of letter I get practically every day, because those who write me do so because they're, very often, desperate. The great majority of people who have the experience cope with it very adequately, and in fact what is happening as a result of the continuing shock that the visitors are giving us is that many, many people are very quietly ascending into this higher level of mind, or beginning to, without any intervention from anyone. But the ones that are having trouble are the ones that come to people like me and I just do my best, you know, to help them in any way I can.

The larger sense of responsibility, though, operates on another level. It is the concern that the visitors may be very insightful. In fact they are very insightful, and they may have seen that this is the one gift that I would take. It's the one promise I would respond to, that I would believe was real. They offered me this, but it's a very dangerous gift because it's like taking the Trojan Horse into our city. Once we have embraced them in order to obtain this shock and reach this higher state of mind, then we will find ourselves endangered in some way. However, that doesn't worry me because I don't think it's a real fear, I don't think it's a real fear because the shock is so empowering. This hyperconscious state I'm speaking about is so ... so powerful that when you begin to live in it you also begin to control your relationship with the visitors, so therefore it couldn't be a trick. See what I mean?

JK Yes I do. And I agree completely.

WS Good! Ha ha...

JK So would you also say, Whitley, that - and taking into account the fact that we're moving through some kind of global paradigm shift ? assuming you agree with that ... ?

WS I do, yes.

JK Good!

WS Touche!

JK So would you also say then that it's getting 'safer' now for people to let down their guard a little bit, for them to view the whole contact/abduction experience with more consciousness and less fear?

WS Well, let me put it this way. It's happening. It's happening because the average person in the experience is very interested in making the experience work for them. They're not running away from it in any numbers. But there is a problem, and the problem is this.

There are people who believe that society requires a level of control that it doesn't really require, and these people are fighting a desperate rear?guard action to keep this experience out of our lives. But they're gonna become more and more desperate as time goes on, as they fail more and more profoundly. They're already beginning to do, you know, sort of useless things, like attacking people like Colin [Andrews] and myself. But it doesn't really matter. It doesn't really matter what they do or don't do. It's irrelevant. They can't do anything to change this. And so the attacks they make are just a waste of time. They aren't going to have any historical effect at all.

JK Taking you up on this theme, Whitley, there was a very interesting passage in your new book where you speak a little bit about your uncle, Colonel Edward Strieber, who worked at Wright?Patterson airfield...

WS Yes.

JK ... You speak about the discovery of a Top Secret scientific paper which states that the US Government in fact acknowledges the presence of extraterrestrial visitors and are indeed today involved in counteraction against what they fear as an 'invasion'. The book goes on to say that the US Government are now in possession of scientific proof that this so?called 'invasion' could be literally held at bay by a policy of orchestrated denial and general disbelief', and that this is therefore the reason for the ongoing hoax and disinformation program perpetrated by US Intelligence. Is this correct?

WS Oh, yes. It's an active program. They believe it. The program is ongoing, they've tricked us so profoundly. But then, it's the same thing with the visitors...

JK Really?

WS Yes. The visitors are very active participants in the suppression of the whole phenomenon, and the reason is simple. They want us to be strong. I mean, I get resistance from them on every level, as well as resistance from the Government and various secret and religious groups and cults ? but all it does is makes me stronger.

JK So what would you say to others who find themselves also being suppressed or hoodwinked by government policies, or even by visitor policies? What would be your advice to them?

WS I don't really have any advice. Because if somebody is going to be hoodwinked then they are going to be hoodwinked. Although I would say that ... yes, yes I guess I actually do have some advice. My advice would be to follow your own instincts ? if you want to do this, just do it. It's available. If the visitors make it available to you then you can do it, and if they don't, then you can probably find it somewhere. There are a lot of people who do ? people find their way into this all the time.

Personally I don't have a very adversarial attitude towards the Government. They've kicked me around quite a bit, but as far as I'm concerned I use that. It's an energy?builder for me. I welcome their intrusions and that sort of thing. I'm under immense pressure right now, but it's all to the good. The more the better. Because it's not going to break me. They can't. They're not strong enough. I mean, what are they going to do? Kill me? That's fine. I recognized when I first started this that that could happen. But I am very well aware that there are other levels of reality, and I am just as interested in being on those levels as I am being on this one. I don't even question it. If I am on this reality level then I am going to do this here. If I am somewhere else then I'll do whatever it is I'm supposed to do there. My forward planning mode is gone. I don't worry about it. Rather I just try to be like a lily in the field!

JK Whitley, Roswell is very much in tile news at the moment. Do you have anything you would like to say, in particular about the autopsy footage hat to be causing such a stir?

WS Yes I do. As far as Roswell itself is concerned, something happened out there, there's no question in my mind about it personally. There's just too much evidence to the effect that it did. The footage is a different story.

I am aware of two big lines of research regarding the footage. One of them convincingly suggests that it is real. On the other hand, I have talked to people who claim to have been present when the body was being made!

In my opinion, the one test that has not yet been conducted on the footage would chemically date the actual emulsion on the celluloid, to see how old it was physically and they can get that within a few years, or even more closely timed, and that hasn't been done yet. Until that is done it is always possible that this is an elaborate fraud, and that the film stock itself was counterfeited from the ground tip. In other words, that they placed Super X 10 chemicals on raw celluloid and actually manufactured film stock that would appear to be from that era.

JK Why do you think that would have been done? Why do you think the footage would have been hoaxed? Do you think it's a way to make a fast buck? Or do you think it might be another government?sponsored disinformation scam?

WS Well it's not to make money. Rather the reason behind the fabrication and release of such footage is probably this ?to make a big splash with it. To send out this incredibly convincing message that Roswell was completely real, and then a few months or years later to prove conclusively that the footage was a hoax. And therefore by extension that Roswell didn't happen either. This is the way disinformation works. Something true is used to extend into a lie. In this case the lie would be that Roswell didn't happen.

JK Which takes us back to the point we were discussing just now, about how the 'powers that be' claim that they are quite literally able to hold the phenomenon at bay by a program of 'orchestrated denial and general disbelief'.

WS Right. And that would be the way it would work. The thing about it that's odd, though, is the fact that tile then looks strange, so different from what everyone was expecting and ... I mean, if it was done recently you'd have thought they would have used a more believable alien figure. So I think a lot of people who suspect a fraud wouldn't be so skeptical if whoever made the alien had made a more believable figure. Assuming it's a hoax, that is. They would have pulled a lot more people in.

JK Presumably the footage itself could actually be genuine and still used in a disinformative way?

WS Oh, sure, absolutely. There's a lot that can be done. But again, I don't worry about all that. But I'll tell you one thing ? this is all governed by natural laws. The whole contact process, the whole experience of the species beginning to ascend into hyperconsciousness is part of nature. And it feels like something else. It feels like something we can orchestrate and control, because we feel that our part of nature ? 'consciousness' ? is somehow separate from tile laws of nature. But it's not. So therefore, one has to be surrendered to it because this is going to unfold as it will, no matter what they do. No matter how much Whitley Strieber and people who are looking, for the soul to be freed work, no matter how much the people working against it work, in 150 or 200 years things are gonna come out pretty much the way they're gonna come out. What we're really talking about is ? is this gonna happen tomorrow or in fifteen years? That's the only thing. We have no real long term historical significance, all of us, on both sides of this issue.

JK So where in your opinion is the whole human/ET relationship headed? Do you see the need for some kind of imminent socio?political shift, some kind of imminent structural shift in order for this relationship to do whatever it is supposed to do?

WS One always sees such a shift. It always looks like a shift is imminent. Always. However, it may actually be imminent right now. The visitors, told me some years ago that when we begin to see the motherships things are gonna start to change very quickly from then on. Two such craft are now being actively videoed, one in Venezuela and one in Colorado. They are appearing on a regular basis and are being filmed on video. Some of the video of' the Colorado craft has been shown oil television here and the other one ? I think it's actually Argentina not Venezuela ? has been shown down there. I think it's a very significant change. These things are like a mile long ? they're huge, and they're seen at high altitude, and that's a harbinger that the thing is going to move into a new phase. There is nothing that can be done about it. I mean, the war against it is useless. Absolutely useless. But the energy you get from fighting in that war isn't useless at all. So I actually like the attacks. I welcome them, like food.

JK Do you see the transition, the coming changes, as being smooth? Or do you foresee upheaval?

WS The visitors won't allow it to be smooth. They want the shock, and as I say, they're experts at delivering the shock. The initial phase of contact is the shock, and the grey people with the big eyes are really good at delivering it. They're so bitchy! And they will deliver the shock. That's what they're here for. There are others here who don't really get much press, who are even more shocking, And they will show up too. They're gonna be a big surprise! But occasionally there'll be people who will learn to cope with them, and that's really hard ? but then those people will turn out to be on the leading edge of the thing in terms of growth of consciousness.

JK And where do you think that might lead, on a global scale? Once through the shock...

WS Once through the shock? Oh, the shock is our ticket to the Cosmos. I mean, after the shock, we're outa here! We'll change paradigmatically. Right now we're in the mechanical paradigm, we're enslaved by the physical conditions of the surrounding in which we live. We can't walk through walls. We can't levitate. We can't hear each other thinking. On the other side of the paradigm, however, we will be able to make decisions about how we want the laws of the universe to function in our individual lives, and all of a sudden things that are now done by grotesquely incompetent technology ? such as we transmit our thoughts via radio and television and so forth ? will be done by a much more sublime natural force. The brain itself is the repository of the greatest technology in the world, and it's gonna be turned on at that point.

JK Is there anything else you would like to add?

WS Yes, one last thing. One of the things I learned from this whole experience is that when this begins to unfold things are going to be immensely difficult. I asked the visitors to show me life in a world where this had just unfolded, where they were a little bit farther along then we are, and I can tell you very clearly what the difference was.

We live in a culture of blame. In other words, someone does wrong and they are punished and blamed for it. This culture had changed. Everybody knew everybody else and themselves very much better than we do, and it had become a culture of compassion. It was a very compassionate culture and it was ... the use of humour as a tool of consciousness was incredibly important to them, where it is rather trivial to us. It was a very different culture to ours but enormously fun. I guess the difference was that ahhh ... I suppose a person could still go to jail there, but in that world, when they came out, they came out healed.

JK That's a beautiful vision to end with, Whitley. Thank you very much for your time, it's been very inspiring talking with you. If there's anything I can do to help your situation in England ... ?

WS Make a good magazine! Oh, and if you can find me a publisher for my book that would be very helpful, because I'm pretty sure something, some clandestine device, has been worked to prevent that from happening. Judging by the volume of books I've already sold it's very difficult to believe anything else.



Any takers? Any publishers willing to run the risk on a surefire bestseller? Whitley can be reached via UFO REALITY, PO Box 1998, Glastonbury, BA6 8YB.

~Please note UFO Reality went out of business; the address is not valid.