Without a sound the white camellia fell

To sound the darkness of the deep stone well.

Afterward he said, "Dad, you know, we like the haiku and all the beautiful words. But the thin ones, it's like they are the haiku. Inside, they are haiku."

That night a father staved a long time with his child, wondering about the soft fire of communion that might be hidden between the breaths of his life.

SIX

No building ever came into being as easily as did this temple — or rather, this temple came into being the way a temple should. Except that, to wreak a spilt or to desecrate or destroy it completely, instruments obviously of a magnificent sharpness had been used to scratch on every stone — from what quarry had then come? — of an eternity outlasting the temple, the clumsy scribblings of senseless children's hands, or rather the entries of barbaric mountain dwellers.

—FRANZ KAFKA,
"The Building of the Temple"

A STRUCTURE IN THE AIR

Science, History, and Secret Knowledge

What Is Going On?

In the past forty years the question of the real nature of the UFO experience has been addressed by psychologists and psychiatrists, most notably Carl lung, by public personages ranging from presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford to Senator Barry Goldwater, by a plethora of scientists, by the United States Air Force and various security agencies, and by the general public.

In addition to all this recent interest there are reports of disk sightings, of airships, of little men in silver clothing, dating back over a thousand years.

I began this search by assuming that I was dealing either with a mental aberration or a visit "from another planet." If I had been asked, I would have said that the nature of my experience indicated that the visitors hadn't been here too long, and that I had been studied by a team of biologists and anthropologists.

Judging from the extraordinary range — not to mention the age — of some of the material I have found, thin cannot be the whole answer. Even if partially true, there is much more to it than a recent arrival of more or less comprehensible visitors. Whatever this may be, a correct and final understanding of it certainly poses an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual challenge of unprecedented complexity and subtlety.

There is so little final knowledge of this phenomenon that it is impossible to do more than speculate about its actual nature. But speculation need not be random; it can be careful and directed.

The visitors could be:

• from another planet or planets.

• from earth, but so different from us that we have not hitherto understood that they were even real.