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Reality Checking—Alternate Perceptions Magazine, January 2019




The Journey Continues As A Friend Is Remembered

by: Brent Raynes








Are ET beings manipulating our “space-time like slabs of soft butter”?

To Dean Radin, Ph.D., chief scientist for the Institute of Noetic Sciences, a professor of integral and transpersonal psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, a scientist who worked on the top secret “remote viewing” Stargate program, the use of giant radio telescopes for detecting ET signals may be comparable to using smoke signals for that same task. He explained how an intelligent species out there that was possibly a few thousand to a few million years more advanced than us would likely possess a far superior understanding of consciousness and what it is capable of doing than we currently do. He feels EM broadcasts are a very primitive means of communication. “If we can already see tiny space-time warps in our little laboratory psi experiments, then they'd be able to manipulate huge chunks of space-time like slabs of soft butter,” Radin wrote in his 2018 book Real Magic. “They would be able to spy on us, perhaps even embody us, from the dark side of distant galaxies, far better than we're able to spy on friends and enemies with today's aerial drones.”

Over four decades ago, back when Dr. Radin was apparently just beginning to take his first babysteps into this controversy with his studies into the deeper implications of consciousness and non-local quantum physics, pioneering UFO author-researcher John A. Keel, best known for his controversial “ultraterrestrial” theory of a “parallel world” as opposed to the “nuts and bolts” ET visitors from deep space, did in one instance speculate on ET interactions if quantum physics and parapsychological factors were part of the explanation. In a 1976 Saga magazine article he pondered “instantaneous astral travel,” the parapsychological evidence for out-of-body projection, as well as the possibility of “time travel,” and considered that astral ET's were possible. “If some humans have a capacity for this kind of time travel, then it is quite possible that intelligent beings in some distant star system may have the same ability to a very advanced degree,” Keel speculated. He continued “if the cosmic time travelers are projecting only their consciousness to our planet they would arrive as shapeless energy forms. They could assume any form when perceived by the limited human senses. ...they would not need spaceships and other sophisticated technological devices.”

While Keel's use of terminology was different from Dr. Radin's, I'd say that the concept remains basically the same.

Here's one of the strangest near-death experiencers you'll ever read, and for the experiencer it was the beginning of a life of high strangeness events. Back in the autumn of 1923, at the age of 22, Raymond F. Fowler, Sr., working a routine shift 4 p.m. to 4 a.m. at the U.S. Naval Radio Compass Station on Maine's Mount Desert Island, found himself on duty during a storm with near hurricane force winds outside. Ships were constantly radioing him for navigational bearings. Around 11 p.m. a lightning bolt struck an outside cable and came down the cable through the transmitting key, landing he said a “fiery sun of light” in his abdomen. He sat in his chair transfixed but clear headed, marveling that he could be seeing this and not be dead instead. He observed that the fiery light inside of him was approximately 8 inches in diameter and pulsated resonantly with his heartbeat. In addition, there also was a “ray” of light that extended up through the roof of the station, and the storm and the darkness of night to what resembled a “radiant star.” Then there were three flashes of light nearby, inside the building, that became three smiling men in “shining robes of light” who bowed in his direction, then removed the ball lightning from his abdomen, and then tossed it around to each other, and then threw it into a copper mesh screening whereupon the fiery ball exploded in a shower of sparks. After this the three light beings smiled and bowed once again before disappearing in three more light flashes.

The NDE experiencer was the father of Raymond E. Fowler, a highly respected UFO investigator and author who at one time was well known for having a very strict and no-nonsense “nuts and bolts” ET perspective. In an interview with him back in 2004, he told me: “As a fundamentalist Christian I believed that Dad’s experiences were satanic. It has been a long process between my belief system and attitudes then to what they are today. My avid youthful interests in astronomy and space travel coupled with a daylight disk sighting resulted in my near fanatical preoccupation with the UFO phenomenon. I began to investigate UFO sightings after my service in the Air Force and College. At that time any UFO report that included any kind of psychic phenomena was rejected out of hand. I immediately evaluated witnesses of such as unreliable. It was not until I investigated the [Betty] Andreasson Affair that my past mindset was shattered. Her reports of childhood abductions and similar cases being investigated by Budd Hopkins caused flashbacks of my own childhood abduction experiences that I had considered dreams. Any doubts were shattered when Betty and I both received the typical abductee scoop wounds after abduction dreams. It was like someone had flicked a switch on and suddenly I realized why I was so interested in UFOs, astronomy and space travel. I began investigating and reading about other cases which indicated that childhood abductions, family abductions and paranormal phenomena were a legitimate segment of the UFO phenomenon. I began to realize that my father’s experiences were not unique, imagined or satanic. I investigated and found that there were many others experiencing the same things that he had related to me for years. Thankfully, I came to this conclusion before he died so that I could make peace with him about my past sometimes cruel rejection of his experiences. Shortly after these realizations, I began experiencing well over a decade of all kinds of paranormal phenomena related to UFO abductions which I faithfully recorded in a journal. These were included in my autobiographical book entitled UFO Testament. I also decided concurrently to record the ongoing synchronistic events and circumstances in my life which resulted in publishing them in my book entitled SynchroFile.”



My wife Joan Raynes posted the following on Facebook on December 10, 2018:

I had a strange dream a few nights ago. In this dream my mother and my sister (both have been deceased for many years) were talking via a telephone to a friend of ours who we have not seen or talked to for several years. The mood of the dream was very upbeat. Everyone seemed to be happy with the focus of the dream on these three people and me off to the side just watching. When I woke up my first thought was "I wonder if he is dead or possibly dying" Brent and I began trying to find some information on him and soon enough we found the answer. Our friend Jon Waio Thunder, Apache Indian and a wonderfully talented Native American artist is dead. He apparently passed in November of 2016. He had cancer. Brent and I had no idea, although we have thought about him and wondered from time to time what ever had become of him. Jon and I had many "good talks", mostly about Native Americans and I learned a lot from him. One visit he told me that he had spent an hour or more helping a very old woman pull weeds out of her flower garden. Then with a wink and a grin he said, "you know every once in a while I have to stop and do something good to balance out the bad that I do." He could be a rascal, but at heart he was a very good person, a real "human being". I feel that this dream was Jon's way of letting us know where he is now so we don't have to wonder about him anymore. In many, maybe most of Native American cultures and languages that I am aware of there is no real word for goodbye. So Jon, no goodbyes. We'll just catch up with you, our friend, a little later on down the road.



Below is one of my favorite stories that Jon shared with us. This was originally posted in the December 2005 (Vol. 96) edition of this magazine:

Jon Thunder wonders: Did a man really walk out on thin air over the Grand Canyon? On Thanksgiving evening my wife Joan and I were visiting with our good friend Jon Thunder, a professional artist and Apache Indian who currently lives outside of Pulaski, Tennessee. (A couple of years ago, I did a two part interview with Jon for Alternate Perceptions about Native American issues and spirituality) Though we had touched briefly upon Jon’s personal spiritual and UFO experiences in past conversations, he was often busy with his career and one thing and another (he has traveled widely, including Japan and Europe in promotion of his artwork), but recently has been home nursing an injury, and so on this particular evening I asked if he might be ready and interested in going on the record about these matters. He indicated that he was, so I pulled out my miniature tape recorder and a fresh pack of batteries, we laughed some, and then Jon got very serious and I switched on my recorder and listened with great interest. Jon began by talking about how all people have “superstitions” and beliefs in a “spiritual realm.” “My definition of a superstition is something that is not understood,” he stated. “In the American Indian circles history documents the belief of spirits and if you believe in spirits, there’s good and bad, and some people believe that they can harness this energy and the spirits will do their bidding or whatever. So like every other culture, we have things that are a mystery, and some are good and some are bad. You’ve got to have one to know what the other is.

“And there’s different worship societies. There’s the Sun Dance, the Ghost Dancers, the Pipe Society, and the Peyote Society. These are accepted. These are the ones that mom and dad Indian go, that’s okay, but then you have those circles that dive even deeper. Were they a cult with followers? I don’t know. “And one happening was around the Grand Canyon, close to a place called The Cut. This happened over twenty years ago. It’s been a long time. It seems like it was yesterday. It’s been a good 22 or 23 years ago.

“I happened to be at a circle, at a gathering of nations, and I met some people there that could show me another side of spiritualism. I was associated with them for about a year and a half and I went out to this place. If you’ve heard of the legends of the shape shifters, people who can separate their physical body from a spiritual body and go to different places, and a person who really explains it well is Carlos Castaneda. He writes about don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian. So if you kind of know about that setting then we can jump into the setting that we’re talking about. It’s the same type of persona. The same legends. The same beliefs. “So roughly in the gathering of about I would say almost maybe a hundred people. It was a good gathering, and I witnessed a man walk a good 30, 40 feet off the lip of the canyon out into the air. It wasn’t levitation because levitation is rising from a platform. He just stepped off and it was like there was an invisible glass bridge. He stood out there and turned around and he spoke to us. I did not understand the words that he was saying because I’m Apache and this man was of Navajo origin. He was speaking old, old Navajo, and I could make out some words, but even if I could understand the words I wouldn’t repeat them anyway. But I did understand what I was seeing.

“There was no type of ingestion of any outside peyote or any type of plant. Was it mass hypnosis? Was it the power of suggestion? I didn’t go there as a believer. I didn’t even go there as a skeptic. I just went there as someone who was interested.”

I then interjected, “And everybody there,”but before I could complete my sentence Jon said, “Everybody saw it. Everybody there saw it.” “In the circles of old Indians who still speak the languages and still worship the old ways, people like this were talked about. It’s kind of like when you get around the old black people or the old Cajuns, especially the people down around New Orleans. They’ll speak of things that defy what we call reality. We have those stories too.

“But could I document this? No. Would I give the location or the type of group this was? No, because it’s an unaccepted group. I was there as a guest of somebody, very curious about this type of thing, and through my years of living I’ve kind of decided that what I get I’ll get on my own or through prayer or something like that, but not through mysticism or for a lack of a better word magic.

“But I did witness this and it will be something that when I sing my death song and I’m laying on my bed and I know that I’m going to cross to the other side and I’m thinking about my life, the memory of the birth of my kids and everything else that has been of great importance to me, this is an incident that I will definitely think of.”




Jon Thunder [December 31, 1955 – November 3, 2016]
This picture taken of Jon Thunder demonstrating how to drum to my young grandson Conner Harrison back in 2010.


Thursday, March 28, 2024