Other relatively common observations are the seemingly ubiquitous dray table with the solid base, the smallness of the visitors, their large, black eyes devoid of iris or pupil, and the fact that there is either more than one type or more than one species appearing in the same context. Many of us also seemed to have relationships with particular beings.

Their skin tone seems to be gray, with other overtones. When they speak aloud, it is sometimes with a high, squeaking sound, other times in a deep bass. They can also create words inside the center of their Beads. One occasionally feels from them powerful emotions.

Other times they are as emotionless as stones. People report various smells, primarily pungent. Light, both as a means of anesthesia and as a medium of transport, is commonly described. "I rose up the shaft of light" and "The light hit me and I was totally paralyzed" are typical statements. Electromagnetic effects are also commonly reported, primarily malfunctioning cars, television sets, and home lights.

A number of us have also been in a small operating theater, but nobody seems to remember what transpires there. One woman was left to walk around in such a place by herself.

Interestingly, one sound that is reported other than the various voices is a very low-pitched noise. There is a small body of research suggesting that low-frequency sound may have biological effects, especially in the area of disorientation.

There is as well a striking symbolic consistency, which lies hidden within many of the accounts I have heard and read. It has almost no reference to modern Western culture, and so is not particularly likely to have been drawn from some general pool of background symbols.

But the symbol is very ancient, as it happens, and through much of human history was tremendously important. I have had a lifelong interest in it — really, an obsession. The others m the colloquy all noted its presence. It is mentioned in many of the tapes people have allowed me to hear, and it appears m the drawings they have made. It is an incidental, though.

Before now, nobody has seen it as a general symbol of the visitors.

This symbol is the triangle Buckminster Fuller. in his autobiography, called it the

"fundamental building block of the universe." It is the central symbol of growth in many ancient traditions. An understanding of it is the key to the riddle of the Sphinx and to the pyramid as the mark of eternal life. G. I. Gurdjieff relates it to the "three holy forces" of creation and it is the main sense of the Holy Trinity.

I had a pair of triangles etched on my arm in February 1986. "Dr. X," a physician in Arles, France, who prefers to remain anonymous, had a triangular rash appear around his navel after his experience.

Sifting through this colloquy will be the symbol of the triangle. While the colloquy was taking place neither I nor any of the participants was aware of the symbol's importance.