© Tom Lethbridge 1967 [1]

I have asked a lot of difficult questions already, but this one is more likely to land me in a pickle than most. All through history there have been occasional great teachers, often now spoken of by the Hindu term, ‘avatar’, whose births seem to have been inexplicable and teachings far higher than those of the surrounding populace. Did these avatars come down from higher levels of deliberate purpose to try to help people living on a lower level of vibration?

There appear to have been female avatars as well as male; although they are not often mentioned nowadays. Aradia, the avatar of the religion now known as witchcraft, was supposedly born of the goddess, Diana, and taught her disciples both how to handle the bio-electric power and the freedom of the individual, in a manner strongly reminiscent of the great male teachers.

The only candidate that I know of from America was Quetzalcoatl, also a character of mysterious origin. It is interesting, too, that, though he did not apparently claim that rank, Jesus did not deny that he was a son of God. He seemed rather to imply that all or many men were this, although they did not know it. At the same time he insisted that he was the son of Man. Presumably here once again we are up against the old difficulty of the real meaning of words.

The paternity of all avatars is mysterious. This of course may be an idea of the priestly caste to add glamour to the founder of their religion. Even Buddha, although claimed by the orthodox to have come from a respectably princely family, is said to have been fathered by an elephant. By this one supposes that the elephant-headed god, Ganesa, is implied. However to go into the maze of Indian mythology would be more trouble than it is worth. It is more incomprehensible to the western mind than that of ancient Greece or Rome.

The point to remember about three of the avatars at any rate is that they were able to instruct their followers not only with a general code of behaviour but how to control the power of living electricity, which is apparently what ESP is. The Buddhists took this teaching to much greater lengths than anybody in the west. The Christians largely either failed to grasp it or forgot it. The witches knew a lot about it and even bred people deliberately to increase their so-called psychic powers.

The importance of this in our particular enquiry lies in the fact that anyone living on a level of what we might perhaps call ‘higher potential’ would have to lower his voltage in some way before being able to cope with earthly surroundings at all. He would also have to register. That means that somehow he had to make allowances for the distortion due to the position of things on the two, or perhaps more, different whorls of the spiral.

It is here then I can see a possible error happening nearly two thousand years ago. In the Biblical story of the terrible future calamity in which the sun would be ‘turned into darkness and the moon into blood’, had there been a mistake in which ring in the sequence on the timeless level had been taken? Was Jesus really talking about something which had already happened?

If it has been recorded correctly, Jesus evidently thought that it would happen in the lifetime of some of his companions. Some of them may well still have been living at the time of Titus’ siege of Jerusalem in AD 70, but, although this was a revolting siege according to Josephus, it was nothing to compare with the events which Jesus apparently foresaw.

I am well aware that many far more clever men than myself must have spent many hours thinking about this discrepancy and my suggestion may be offending a lot of people. Yet one must tell the truth as far as one sees it. In this particular matter there was an error, either in foretelling the future or in the recording of what was said.

The great trouble, which looks like the description of an atomic war, had either happened long before or was not going to happen for perhaps two thousand years. At least this theory appears to be the explanation of all the conflicting statements in the Gospels. It surely explains too all the difficulties, heresies, schisms and the like which follow all attempts to make a coherent picture of an imaginary interpretation.

If the avatar were omnipotent, then surely everyone would believe in him at once and the whole world would become a good and kindly place. Instead of that, rival variations of beliefs pursued one another through the ages with fire and sword. Jesus realized this and said it would happen: ‘I came not to send peace on earth but with a sword.’

To return to the problem of UFOs. They may be either contemporary visitors from some unknown planet or they may be the work of people, spoken of today as dead, living in a timeless zone above that of our own earth. The first supposition would have seemed utterly impossible before the days of H.G. Wells, but is today quite a commonplace idea. It may be difficult to guess what planet they might be coming from but no longer utterly improbable. Even with our primitive modern rockets, it is possible to see that the problems of long space travel might be overcome by any fortunate, or perhaps unfortunate, discovery in a comparatively few years.

The second idea would still seem fantastic to very many people who are still wedded to the concept of only one stage of living and that confined to the surface of a single earth. An earth with onion skins of different levels of existence cannot easily be grasped by people with a materialistic or rationalistic upbringing. Yet this idea would not seem particularly strange to advanced Buddhist or Hindu thinkers. The Buddhists with their ‘wheel of life’ are very near it but have not apparently as yet seen that the wheel is a double spiral. [2]

There are pointers to the occurrence of the second type of happening in the Bible itself, but since the witnesses who observed the incident clearly did not understand what appears to have been taking place, the orthodox interpretation is not particularly convincing nowadays. You can appreciate that much of the reporting in the Bible is true without believing a word of the dogma, which has been built up upon it through the ages. That is one of the difficulties today. Because of the incredibility of the dogma, people tend to throw away the baby with the bath water.

The two incidents which we must look at both concern ascents into heaven. The first is that of Elijah and is simply a traditional story somewhat dramatized by whoever wrote it down. The second is the Ascension itself and apparently a far more accurate account. But there is great similarity between the two stories. Not only that, but they are also very much like the dematerializations which are reported by Hindu and Buddhist sages to this day.

The Ascension is by far the most important and is entirely distinct from the vexed question of what really happened at the Crucifixion. At the Ascension a living man actually vanished in the sight of a large number of people. It is very hard to dismiss this as an account of a conjuring trick because it made such a great impression on those who saw it that it has not been forgotten for nearly two thousand years. Conjuring tricks are a commonplace in the Eastern world and had it been one, no such impression would have survived. The incident carried complete conviction. [3]

Having said this much, let us see what the Gospels appear to relate. I have taken the two following accounts from J.B. Phillips’ recent translations of the Gospels, but they are little different from the wording of the James I version:

'Then He led them outside as far as Bethany, where He blessed them with uplifted hands. While He was in the act of blessing them He parted from them and was carried up to Heaven.’ (St Luke)

'When He had said these words He was lifted up before their eyes till a cloud hid Him from their sight.’ (St John)

It is clear, I think, that the witnesses did not understand what had happened and the words ‘carried up to Heaven’ and ‘a cloud hid Him from their sight’ were added to the straightforward report in explanation of an apparently impossible event.

However, if we remember the numerous reports of ‘out of body’ experiences and the evidence of the spiral, it is possible to see what had happened. Jesus, a master of bio-electronic power, had simply accelerated his vibrations and moved up on the next whorl of the spiral. There, as we have already observed, he would be invisible to the watchers. There are numerous modern Hindu accounts of this feat being performed by their learned men and also of their subsequent return.

The whole Ascension story in the Gospels is claimed as the promise of human survival of death and, as far as one can judge, indeed it is, but hardly of the type of survival which is generally imagined. This is in itself a glorified picture of what was believed to be the most happy situation two thousand years ago. The harps and the songs and all the rest of it are a reflection of that bygone age, when a feast was the height of enjoyment.

The Elijah story may well have once been similar. In fact some Hindu experts believe Jesus to have been a reincarnation not of Elijah but of his disciple Elisha, who was promised a double portion of Elijah’s spirit if he could see him carried into heaven.

The point about Elijah’s aerial exploit is that it has been quoted in various works as evidence for the former existence of flying saucers. What actually does the Bible say?

'Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, before I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said, I pray thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me. And he said, Thou has asked a hard thing: nevertheless, if thou see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto thee, but if not, it shall not be so. And it came to pass, as they still went on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both asunder; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father, the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof. And he saw him no more.’ Authorized Version. 2 Kings, 2, verses 9-11

This dramatic story had probably been handed down by word of mouth for a long time before it was put into writing. The vehicle, if there was one, was indescribable and so spoken of as a chariot. A chariot had to have horses and they were added, quite reasonably. But nobody emerged from the chariot; although Elijah apparently knew it was coming. When it came he vanished in a whirlwind.

One can see how this story fits in well with modern accounts of flying saucers; but we are left with a doubt whether anything more than a dust-devil, or willy-waw, was ever seen. Elijah, an accomplished practitioner of ESP (or shall we call it magic?) simply vanished. How he went nobody, probably not even Elisha, ever knew.

I don’t know how it strikes others, but I personally suspect that Elisha had to say he had seen the chariot to explain his subsequent magic powers. One wonders too whether the scribe who wrote the story down was familiar with the Greek beliefs in which Gods flew about the heavens in chariots drawn by horses.

Whatever may have been the truth of Elijah’s disappearance, a feeling remains that it may have been very like the Ascension. Unfortunately there was only a single witness and there is quite a possibility either that he may have been biased in his subsequent account, or that the author of the second book of Kings was somewhat carried away by the drama of the incident. On the whole it does not seem possible to use this story as an argument in favour of the former existence of flying saucers.

When we turn to the problem of how anyone could possibly pass from one level of vibration to one of perhaps four times faster rate, we are humbugged by a lack of general knowledge. It is a problem well ahead of science at its present stage.

We do know that a living scientist today is not the solid object he appears to be, but is really almost entirely empty space, a series of holes joined together by French knitting. In fact he may only be there at all because somebody else thinks of him. In any case you could have dozens of different scientists fitted into the holes in the first one.

People used to think that they knew all about matter; but today they do at least realize that they hardly know anything at all. Matter may be energy, still what is that? Energy may be vibrations. What are they?

All that is really known is that if you do certain things, certain results will follow and the range of action in which the foreseeable results are known is very limited. It has not even begun to dawn on the scientific world that, by changing the rate of vibration, you might land bang in another scientific world much more advanced than your own.

As I said at the beginning, I am only putting up questions to most of which there is no known answer. I do not believe in the answers I have put forward, except to a very limited degree. For instance I do think that I have got the right method by which the bluestones were transported to Stonehenge. But I hope that it will provoke enough interest for others to try to solve some of the problems which are too difficult for me to answer.

In any case this is all imagination and we do not really know what unidentified flying objects may be: ghosts, hallucinations, time machines or honest to God visitors from another planet. Whatever they might be, they offer us an interesting subject for talk and speculation and the answer may come sooner than anyone expects.

I shall finish now. Many people will think it is all rubbish. Others will see some sense in it, even if I have produced no hard and fast theory. At least I hope I have given a few something to turn over in their minds, to see whether they can produce anything more satisfactory than I have been able to.

Endnotes

[i] Source: The Legend of the Sons of God (1972) by Tom Lethbridge included as Chapter 11 in The Essential T.C.Lethbridge edited by Tom Graves & Janet Hoult; Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1980, ISBN 0 586 05077 9.
[ii] In fact, as Jesus so rightly said, you have to ‘become again as little children’ and reorientate all your ideas from the start. This, thanks largely to the inventiveness of television script writers, children of today appear to be quite ready to do. It means little to them that people should jump about in time and place. I have quite a number of letters from teenagers who obviously have a good idea of the possibilities, although they tell me that their views are ridiculed by their elders.
[iii] I may seem unduly credulous here, but one must remember that very little history is in any way exact. As recently as the great battle of Jutland, when I was still at school, there was only one case of exact reporting. A boy seaman in a destroyer was made to write in the log the time and the exact bearing of every incident which took place. As a reward for this devotion to duty, the boy was taken ashore afterwards and given the best meal his heart desired at the expense of the destroyer’s first lieutenant. The lieutenant himself, the only man in the whole British fleet who realized the importance of a record, received no commendation at all, although he eventually retired from the Navy as a captain.