Transformation the Breakthrough Whitley Strieber

TRANSFORMATION THE BREAKTHROUGH WHITLEY STRIEBER On February 10, 1987, one of the most star tling and controversial books of our time was published: Whitley Strieber's Commu nion. In Communion, Whitley Strieber de scribed the shattering effects of an assault from the unknown-what seemed to be an encounter with intelligent nonhuman beings. Transformation is the chronicle of his effort to form a relationship with the unknown reality he has come to call"the visitors." After writing Communion, Whitley Strie ber firmly expected that his encounters with the "visitors" would end. They did not. At first he was desperate and terrified. He struggled frantically to push the visitors out of his life, to prove to himself that they were figments of his imagination, that they were anything but a reality separate from himself. He was finally forced to admit, because of their persistence and the undeniably intelli gent structure of their encounters with him, that they had to be a genuine mystery, an intelligence of unknown nature and origin. Whitley began to challenge his fear of the visitors, to try to confront them with objec tivity, in an effort to gain real insight into their impact on our lives. The more he did this, he found, the deeper and richer his ex perience became. Do the visitors represent a force that has been with mankind throughout history? Has it played an absolutely central role in alter ing human culture? Has a conscious force (continued on backflap) Book Club Edition TRANSFORMATI ON By Whitley Strieber As Author: Transformation Communion Wo lfof Shadows Catmagic Th e Night Church Black Magic The Hunger The Wolfen As Co-Author: Nature's End Wa rday Whitley Strieber TRANSFORMATION The Breakthrough BEECH TREE BOOKS WILLIAM MOR ROW New York Copyright C 1988 by Wilson & Neff, Inc. Grateful acknowledgment is made to Insel Verlag for permission to reprint lines from the "Second Elegy," from Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to Permissions Department, Beech Tree Books, William Morrow and Company, Inc., 105 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10016 Printed in the United States of America BOOK DESIGN BY JAYE ZIMET Theword'' book"is said to derive fromboka,or beec h. Thebeech tree hasbeen the patron treeof writers since ancient timesand represents the floweringof literatureand knowledge. Transformation is dedicated to those who have had the courage to be named in this book as witnesses to my experience. Barbara Clagman, Ed Conroy, Denise Daniels, Selena Fox, l.Anette Glasscock, Annie Gottlieb, Bruce Lee, Roy Leonard, Barry Maddock, Philippe Mora, David Nigrelle, Dora Ru.ffoer, Jacques Sandulescu, Martin Sharp, Patricia Simpson, Richard Strieber, Gilda Strutz, Mary Sue and Patrick Weathers, Yensoon Tfoi, and in memory ofJo Sharp. I would also like to thank Dr. John Gliedman, whose open mind and resolute skepticism have led to so many essential insights. Beth Andreasson, Raymond Cowley, Stanton Friedman, Leonard Keave, Bruce Maccabee, Dr. Jesse Marcel, Dr. Jacques Vallee, and William Moore lent me counsel and advice, which was much needed and appreci ated. Most of all I would like to thank Anne Strieber, whose objectivity and courage have sustained me, and Andrew Stn.eber, whose calm acceptance has been an inspiration to me. Contents INTRODUCTION 9 PART ONE Secret Journeys 13 ONE The Lost Boy 15 TWO The Golden City 27 THREE Extreme Strangeness 33 FOUR The Storm Gathers 43 FIVE Lightning 52 SIX The White Angel 70 SEVEN Transfigured Night 78 EIGHT Long-Ago Summers 90 PART TWO Lift in the Dark 105 NINE The Lost Land 107 TEN Secret Knowledge 115 ELEVEN The Terror ofthe Real 123 TWELVE Fire of the Question 134 THIRTEEN The jolt ofthe True 141 FOURTEEN Distant Witness 147 PART THREE Beyond the Dark 155 FIFTEEN The Woods 157 SIXTEEN Passage into Death 163 SEVENTEEN Fury 175 EIGHTEEN A Soul's journey 186 NINETEEN December 23, 1986 203 TWENTY The Razor's Edge 212 TWENTY-oNE The Visitors Emerge 221 TWENTY-TWO Beyond Nightmare 239 APPENDIX ONE Health 245 APPENDIX TWO Truth 249 APPENDIX THREE Gaelic 251 AFTERWORD 253 Contents 8 Introduction I have been deep into the dark and found extraordinary things there. The visitors did not go away when I fmished Commu nion. On the contrary, they came rushing into my life and would not stop. My experience has come to include too many witnesses for me to consider that it is internal to my mind. I believe that the vivid and startling nature of a number of the witnesses' experiences, and the credibility of the wit nesses, all but proves my contention that the visitors are a genuine unknown and not an outcome of hallucination or mental illness. Even the most skeptical and vociferous of my critics has publicly admitted that I am not lying. Short of actual, physical evidence, I think that I have gone as far as possible to demonstrate the reality of the visitors. If they represent' some sort of essentially nonphysical form that we do not yet understand, then physical proof may never come. This does not mean that they should be ignored. They are already having a staggering but largely hidden impact on our society, and their presence should be taken with the ut most seriousness. I do not think that we are dealing with something as straightforward as the arrival of a scientific team from an other planet that is here to study us. Neither are we dealing with hallucinations. This is a subtle, complex group of phe nomena, causing experience at the very limits of perception and understanding. It suggests to me that there may be quite a real world that exists between thing and thought, moving easily from one to the other-emerging one moment as a full-scale physical reality and slipping the next into the shadows. The visitors have caused me to slough offmy old view of the world like the dismal skin that it was and seek a com pletely new vision of this magnificent, mysterious, and fiercely alive universe. There is some evidence that the visitors have been here for a long time, perhaps for all of history. Involvement with them may be an ancient human experience. Abduction by nonhuman beings is a part of much folk lore. Whether the abductors are called demons, gods, fair ies, or aliens, the experience is always devastating to its victims. Because we have refused to study the subject, we remain ignorant, and the experience is as hard now as it was a thousand years ago. I believe that this can change. Like their earlier counterparts, a few of the modem ab ductees have been driven mad, died, or disappeared. The great majority have simply borne their difficult, incompre hensible, and socially unacceptable memories in silence. Because it is so stressful, an encounter with the visitors can either be destructive or it can be used as a golden door to inner understanding. But it has a dark side too. People who cannot make use of their encounters are often shat tered. At its best the experience shocks minds to openness. It creates in its victims a hunger to develop and enrich their spirits. It is not a "special" experience, reserved for a lucky few. There is no certain way to know how many people are being affected, but the numbers are very large and they are growing. I am reporting on my perceptions of what the visitors have done to me and my own personal responses. I am not claiming that my observations are perfect reflections of exactly what happened, or even that they fit the visitors' motives. I will defend the fact that I have described my experi ences with all the clarity I could achieve, and with complete Introduction 10 candor. They are honest descriptions of one man's behavior when confronted by an unknown intelligence. Thousands and thousands of people are waking up to the realization that the strange creatures and lighted objects that mankind has been encountering are not some trick of the mind but a genuine enigma. Precognition, apparent telepathy, out-of-the-body per ceptions, and even physical levitation are commonplace side effects of contact with the visitors. I find this absolutely as tonishing, but I cannot deny it. Thousands of letters and personal interviews with people who have encountered them-with many of them reporting one or more of these effects-convince me that they are a real outcome of con tact. Even so, I would still hesitate to report them, simply because they are so bizarre. But some of them have hap pened to me as well. The difficulty of the visitor experience does not make it a certain evil: The most critical development of the mind comes from the most intense effort. Fear confuses us and holds us back. It is our primary obstacle. Successful con frontation with it is the breakthrough that leads to under standing. Whether by accident or design, the visitors took me on a fabulous and terrible journey through my fears. Whatever my worst imagining, actual experience intensified it a hundred times. They took me into the red terror of death; they made me face even my most suppressed dread. They also com pelled me to face my guilts, my rages, my sorrows, all that I have buried in myself. Whatever sin was hidden, it ended up lying wet and wriggling in my hands.

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