AN INTERVIEW WITH BWS ABOUT OPUS 1
Conducted by William C. Ritchie


Part 3

Q) We were going to pursue a overview of subjects touched upon in Time Rise chapter 1. Psychic phenomena, precognitive episodes, time as illusion of reality. What about alien life? Have you encountered aliens?
BWS: I'm unsure. Of the classic alien Grays, like on the cover of Whitley Strieber's book [Communion], no. There is increasing world-wide interest in extraterrestrial life, I'm pleased to say. Not in the cosmological circles, nobody at JPL, or SETI, I mean. But in what I might refer to as the "enlightened" camps. There's Joe Firmage on the Internet, John Mack's books, stuff like that.

Q) Budd Hopkins? Art Bell on the radio show?
BWS: I've never heard that show, I don't listen to the radio at all anymore. Hopkins' books and his lectures are about abductions, alien abductions of humans. I can't personally relate to that as I've not been abducted, as far as I know. John Mack is more interested in the transformative aspect of the phenomena. By that I mean the intellectual and spiritual enlightenment that comes with the experience of non-traditional thinking and perception. Alien contact - whether it's extraterrestrial or extradimensional - requires a complete re-evaluation of the way humans think about and perceive reality.

Q) Do you believe in extraterrestrial life? Are aliens visiting our planet?
BWS: I've no direct proof one way or the other. I've seen UFOs, but I can't prove that as an undeniable fact. I personally believe that life exists elsewhere in the universe; to personally believe that it doesn't or can't would be stupid.

Q) And you have seen UFOs.
BWS: Yes, sure. But I've seen many things that most people wouldn't believe can exist. Before we can even begin to understand the UFO phenomenon we have to reassess what we define as reality. LSD trippers have known for years that there are infinite realities, it's just unfortunate that they can't remember what the hell they were. I've experienced other realities entirely dope-free, and I remember very well. It's only in the past few years that I've quit trying to deny their reality. I think that most people are still very much in the dark when it comes to what is and what is not real. Newtonian science still reigns supreme in most people's idea of what goes up must come down and all that. Our three-dimensional universe, our plane of basic awareness, is just one aspect of manifold existencies. It's the one we can see, touch, hear, smell, and taste, so we've somehow got it into our heads that that's all there is. Like this planet: we're here, so there can't be anywhere else. Or we're at the center of there, so we must be here. It's so myopic, so provincial. We're measuring eternity with a yardstick.

Q) Spaceships on the lawn at the White House would change all that.
BWS: I truly hope that could never happen. Surely any intelligence capable of crossing time and space or dimensions would comprehend and avoid the awesome shock that would bring to human beings. The Western world, its cultural underpinnings, would never survive such a shock to their belief systems. Murder and suicide would be rampant. We'd undo everything we've tried to achieve; we'd revert to barbarism. We're nowhere near sophisticated enough to withstand such a crash of reality. Or what they think is reality, at any rate.

Q) I noticed that you say "we" when talking of the human race, but change to "they" when referring to their belief systems.
BWS: Yeah, caught that, did you? I go back and forth like that. It's indicative of my quandaries, I guess. I don't know many people who know what I know. Of that small group who do know, I think of them as "us." The world at large I refer to as "them," I guess. It's semantics, I know, but I suppose I can't help feeling alienated from the man on the street, as it were. No pun intended with the alien word.

Q) I know better than to ask you about "what you know."
BWS: I'm not trying to be cagey, for crying out loud. All of my life I've kept these secrets, but I'm not the only one, you know. Since OPUS 1 I've received letters and had personal conversations with people who are thrilled that I've got the brass to talk out loud about these things. But I'm not that courageous, you know, I've been hiding this for over forty years because I feared that no one would believe me. That they'd all think I was a nutter. But that's what other people have been afraid of too, afraid of being judged by their friends or their family. I know just how that feels, I know, I really know.

Q) But you took the leap.
BWS: Yeah, I'm in the process of taking the leap. Time Rise 1 is just the tip of the iceberg, believe me. Yow, Time Rise two'll get me committed. If we were still in the dark ages, I'd be burned. But some people are coming forward now, they're very cautiously testing the waters with me in the sea up to my knees. Like, y'know, "is it safe?"

Q) Is it safe?
BWS: No, I don't think so. Depends on your commitment, I guess. For me, though, I'm just not afraid anymore. I'd like to say that I don't care how many people call me a nutcase, but that'd give the wrong impression. This isn't about me. I'm just one pixel in the bigger picture. Is it safe to try to tell the truth about ourselves? No, not if you're addressing the knee-jerk naysayers who fear the value of human potential, it isn't. They'd rather not hear that human beings are barely aware of the universe they exist in. They don't want to be challenged, they don't want their little half-acre of the universe invaded by their neighbors. Shut your eyes tight, and maybe it'll all go away.

Q) What will go away? Aliens?
BWS: Not necessarily in the popular sense, no. Look, it's like the human race is a school of fish. What we perceive is what we understand and vice-versa. We're quite aware of all the other types of fish in the ocean, so we know we're not alone, okay? Fish brains work in a simple fashion: we know to avoid getting killed, getting eaten. We're instinctive in that way. But despite our hundreds of thousands of years of evolution we can't comprehend the thought of life anywhere else but in the sea. The concept is utterly beyond us: we simply can't grasp it.

Q) Abductions can be seen as fly-fishing then.
BWS: Well, yeah, maybe. But that's not my point. I'm saying that the general populace of the world - the school of fish - cannot visualize, cannot cope with the very idea of intelligent non-human life. This is a matter of perception, of the limited purview that humankind has created for itself. I speak largely of the Western world when I say that: Europe and America, less than half the population of this planet, that's all it is.

Q) What can the Western world do?
BWS: Wake the **** up, is what we can do. We're the most technically accomplished members of the human race. We have the audacity to reach out to the moon and to Mars and beyond, but as spiritual beings we are practically non-existent. I don't mean religious, I mean spiritual: There's a difference. I grant that if the Western world was more spiritual and less technological we'd've never built the space ships, and Hubble telescope, and missiles and bombs, too. But, okay, we're technologically capable to some extent - but there's more to being human than that. So many people are actually non-conscious. They're awake and living, but they're perceptions are running on very low wattage indeed. Many people use only enough of their potential to get them through each day, and that's it. Inspiration, insight, noetical clarity, these phenomena rarely happen to ordinary folks in day-to-day life. I'm talking about heads of state and wives and mothers. Chief executive officers and sports stars; airline pilots and sales assistants. You can take their pulse and their temperature and you'll determine that they're fully functioning on an organic level. If there was a device similar to a thermometer that could read human potentiality rather than temperature you'd find that most people are barely aware of the energies that're active all around them. Conscious in the technical sense only. We have the potential to wake up, but we're all too comfortable staying asleep. Imagine if this malady were a physical thing. America would be a nation of layabouts, sleeping in, lazily wasting the daylight, squandering time. You can see that, right? What a horror show that'd be. Well, there is a real malaise going on, and it is in the mind. Not the biceps but the brain. Not sinews but psyche. Not the . . . I can't think of any other alliterations.

Q) You said a half-hour, we're past that. Do you want to continue? Last comments?
BWS: No, I'm just ranting and rambling anyway. We need to . . . For our own good, and the future of this planet and everybody and every living thing on it, we must face the challenge of changing ourselves profoundly. We must take ourselves up and outward to new levels of understanding. Comprehension, perception. In a word, we need to become enlightened. Our brains and minds are capable of this transition, that's why we have brains and minds. Let's take our individual and whole-world consciousness to new levels of cognitive insight and understanding.

END OF PART 3.