Publisher Description

What is the nature of unidentified aerial phenomena? Forty years ago a small cadre of dedicated researchers began actively investigating cases, interviewing witnesses, and exchanging data through a small, informal network of international contacts. Today this low profile network, or "invisible college," has grown into a larger, multi-nation volunteer research effort joined by many individuals. But the questions first raised 40 years ago remain current-and unanswered. "I believe that a powerful force has influenced the human race in the past and is again influencing it now. Does this force represent alien intervention, or does it originate entirely within human consciousness? This is the question that forms the basis of the work of the Invisible College of UFO researchers." - Jacques Vallee

Review

"The Invisible College is unlike any other UFO book ever written. Dr. Vallee questions what everybody else takes for granted, doubts what everybody believes, drenches us with data that doesn't 'fit' any of the theories of either the True Believers or the die-hard non-believers and then offers a hypothesis on his own." - Robert Anton Wilson"An important book-not only are UFOs and psychic events inextricably linked, as Dr. Vallee so nicely points out, but neither can be understood without an appreciation of the role of myth, tradition, and belief system. Must reading for the serious student of contemporary events." - Edgar Mitchell"Certainly one of the most interesting, thought-provoking books so far written on UFOs." - Colin Wilson"I once thought Jacques Vallee's thesis about the phenomena being a 'control system' was a stretch but it makes sense precisely because much of what he said it indicated has actually happened in the decades since he first wrote. The shift in consciousness on the planet vis-a-vis exterrestrial life and UFO phenomena - not the same thing - has happened since the 70s. I just reread The Invisible College, republished in 2014 after about 40 years, it is as relevant or even more relevant today then it was then, and more obviously so. But it was difficult to hear when nuts-and-bolts ONLY was the focus of many. It is definitely nuts-and-bolts ALSO but not only, and a failure to account for the psychic or 'paranormal' effects in many cases undermines any theory about the phenomena. And any theory that treats 'time' as a fourth dimension in a simple way like the three dimensions of space without expanding the possibilities to include multi-dimensional space-time or a genuine multi-verse is 20th-century old speak. The material is available for the studies Vallee suggested if serious workers want to do them. But to think the unthinkable inside the old paradigm is impossible, and to think the unthinkable outside it is almost impossible. That 'almost' is the key to new understandings." - Richard Thieme, UFOs and Government, "...if Passport to Magonia was about constructing 'a picture of a different level of existence, a reality that seemes to cut through our own at right angles..what I call the reality of Magonia'...then The Invisible College is about exploring 'the psychical component' that appears to be a common core result of human exposure to UFOs. This is the book's most important, most daring, contribution. Vallee notes that it came only gradually to him, as the frequency and richness of the close-encounter cases became both overwhelming and inescapable. The amount of evidential data was just too great." - from Authors of the Impossible by Jeffrey Kripal

Long Description

What is the nature of unidentified aerial phenomena? Forty years agoa small cadre of dedicated researchers began actively investigatingcases, interviewing witnesses, and exchanging data through a small, informal network of international contacts. Today this low profilenetwork, or "invisible college," has grown into a larger, multi-nationvolunteer research effort joined by many individuals. But the questionsfirst raised 40 years ago remain current-and unanswered. "I believe that a powerful force has influenced the human race in thepast and is again influencing it now. Does this force represent alienintervention, or does it originate entirely within human consciousness?This is the question that forms the basis of the work of the InvisibleCollege of UFO researchers." - Jacques Vallee Dr. Jacques Vallee began his professional life as an astronomer at the Paris Observatory in 1961. While on the staff of the French Space Committee, he witnessed the destruction of the tracking tapes of unknown objects orbiting the earth, initiating a lifelong interest in the UFO phenomenon. Vallee arrived in the U.S. in 1962 and worked in astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin before receiving a Ph.D. in computer science from Northwestern University in 1967. There he became a close associate of J. Allen Hynek, then scientific consultant for the U.S. Air Force on Project Blue Book-the result wasThe Invisible College. Other works by Vallee include Dimensions, Confrontations, and Revelations. Dr. Vallee is presently a venture capitalist living in San Francisco."

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