Preparing for Contact
Authors: Lissa Royal and Keith Priest

Reviewer: Martin Gottschall, PhD

Over many years I have evolved or maintained a particular meaning for the term "Extra Terrestrial" or "ET", and found on reading this book an entirely other meaning, and this has forced me to think this issue through again. Since many of our readers probably entertain a viewpoint similar to mine, it might be useful to deal with this matter first, and then discuss the book.

To me an ET is a being who is capable of functioning in our physical domain, so that it is possible to touch, measure, see, photograph, hear and speak to it. Since an ET is an unknown, it could have many other attributes and faculties which might be more or less incomprehensible to us, but the starting point of contact was to be physical, and all these other things would be introduced, at least initially, through the physical channel. While this is not often spelled out, a notion of this type underlays almost the whole thinking of "conventional" UFO research. By definition, an ET is not from our civilization on Earth, but has a place of origin. Hence it is a "Visitor". If it is here now, then there was a time when it was not here, and there will be a time again when it is gone, and physical contact is possible only while is is here.

The "ET" of the book is not at all like this. It seems to be always here, can manifest physically only with great difficulty, or not at all, and needs us to enter a different plane of consciousness for a meaningful contact to be possible. To readers familiar with esoteric literature or thinking, they have a certain similarity to the inhabitants of the non physical realms that are taken to exist below and above the planetary surface, and are somehow linked to it.

The greater part of the book is channelled by one or other of three entities, but there are comments and introductions by the authors. There is nothing in the channelled material that could not have been taken or derived from existing sources, and for this reason, the use of channelling can also be regarded as a literary device by the authors. If the reader feels for example, that he is asked to believe something simply because is is claimed to originate from some highly evolved and benevolent ET, then, to neutralize this trick, it might be more useful to regard the book as simply the opinion of its authors. I suspect that a great deal of channelled material relies on just this psychological device, but I do not think that this is the intention of the authors here. I think they wanted the reader to have a kind of experience of contact as he read the book.

The central thesis of the book is that humans could function on three levels of consciousness, but that we have restricted ourselves to just the one level, and as a result we compartmented ourselves into our physical consciousness and we effectively ignore the other parts of ourselves. As a consequence of this compartmentalization, we are out of touch with the bulk of what we really are. ETs it says, are more balanced and hence are more or less unable to focus all of themselves into our physical plane of consciousness, and to contact them, we must move to a common ground where both parties are sufficiently "complete" to allow a meaningful contact. These levels of consciousness are characterised by certain brain wave frequencies, and are referred to as "beta frequency state" etc.

The book claims that all of us are having contact, but that most contactees do not realize this consciously at all, and that most of the painful recollections of those who do remember some of their contact is due to the effects of our compartmented consciousness rather than the ETs. Instead of looking for a new contact, we should learn to recognize what is already going on by de-compartmentalizing our conscious functioning. When that is done, more satisfactory contacts can be experienced. Humanity, it says is, is evolving to the place where a fuller contact with the greater universe will become the norm.

As stated above, very little in this book, except perhaps its perspective, is really new. Hence there has to be a great deal that a reader can easily agree with. However, some of the lines of argument seem to me to be weak and probably plain wrong. For example, it is frequently stated that because our conceptual framework does not include the ET spaceships, we mostly do not see them flying around, and the sighting of a spaceship is the exception rather than the rule. I agree for example that when an object is camouflaged, we can be tricked into not seeing it, but if an object in the sky were an ET spacecraft, even a hardened skeptic (a minority of the population) would acknowledge an image on his retina, though he might not admit to it being a spacecraft. This hypothesis is relied upon heavily, and has to be plain wrong, because it can be tested. Lissa, who claims a background in Psychology, should know this.

Another line of argument arises in discussions of abductions which are remembered as abusive by the abductee. It is reasoned in the book that people with a history of abusive treatment as children identify abuse as an expression of love, and subconsciously desire it although they consciously reject abuse. The ET, who hears the subconscious much more loudly that the conscious protestations, it is claimed, responds with abusive actions. This "hypothesis" is also testable and qualified persons in the fields of human perception and the psychology of abuse have spoken on it in relation to UFO sightings and abductions, and rejected it.

The other weakness of these hypotheses is that the ET's could easily circumvent them, if they were real obstacles to contact. ET spacecraft for example could be camouflaged as conventional objects until the observer's conscious attention is focused on them, and then they could change just enough to raise questions about their nature, etc. Likewise, just because a human abductee "wants" to be abused is no reason for an ET to do it. Surely they can see beyond the immediate situation, and surely there are infinitely better ways of healing the scars of past abuse, than to continue abusive treatment.

On the question of whether it seems to me to be a "good" or a "bad" book, I find it harder to be unequivocal. I think that I am sufficiently familiar with esoteric and UFO matters to be able to recognize its possible dangers. Many readers might not be. The reader is asked to open himself to - what? There are altered states of consciousness like hypnosis, in which the subject is highly suggestible. People in such a state are much more easily exploited. With drug abuse and other devices, people have also opened themselves to influences which are destroying them. The book makes not even a passing reference to possible dangers, or how to avoid them. I find this disquieting.

For the well informed, this book might be useful in their exploration of the question of contact with ET's. One of the underlying premises of conventional ET contact thinking is that with physical contact we have at least some indication of what we are dealing with. We can take the contact step by step using sensible precautions at each stage. When we jump in at the deep end and are completely at a disadvantage we violate our own common sense. No intelligent and benevolent ET would want us to do that, surely?

This book, by its very nature, has to tackle the issue of UFO abductions. It does so to a degree, but its explanations are inadequate. The writers might claim that there is really nothing to be concerned about in the abduction phenomenon, but their logic here seems to me to be very weak, and their data virtually nonexistent. They then go on to infer without perhaps actually saying it, that it is perfectly safe to "open" oneself to their kind of "contact". In this it seems to be very much a case of the blind leading the blind, or worse. A book claiming to be almost wholly the channelled words of three ET entities who can reasonably be expected to know a great deal about the abduction phenomenon which we do not know, nevertheless fails to tell us anything we did not already know. I think this is a very telling feature of the book, and raises the question - does it really have anything to offer, other than the opinions of its authors?

Having said all that it might seem that the book has nothing constructive to offer. Far from it. I could easily agree with most of the ideas presented. I feel strongly that in our conventional thinking we have ignored what presently seems to be "paranormal" yet is going on every day, like the response of plants to the feelings and thoughts of humans as demonstrated by Baxter and others; how animals and insects sense coming weather and geophysical events, etc etc. We have no idea what wonders and accomplishments might be ours if we understood and used these things. Yes, we certainly must "decompartmentalize", or whatever we want to call it. And we should do it in safe, sensible, ways.

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