... A series of very interesting letters by well-known writer Philip K. Dick is a case in point. He once gave a detailed non-fiction account similar to that of many U.F.O witnesses and abductees when he described his own encounters with an entity that first manifested by keeping him awake at night with "violent phosphene activity".

It did not seem bound by either time or space ... within my head it communicated with me in the form of a computer-like or Al-system-like voice, quite different from any human voice, neither male nor female, and a very beautiful sound it was, the most beautiful sound I ever heard. (February 10, 1978)

He added that he thought it was "an ionized, atmo spheric, electrical life form able to travel through time and space at will ... through camouflage (it) prevents us from seeing it. And he described the aftermath of his initial experience: "during the days following ... the imposition - that is the right word - the imposition of another human personality unto mine produced startling modifications in my behavior." He came to the conclusion that he experienced "not added perceptual faculties but restored perceptual faculties ... we are imprisoned by blunted faculties: the very blunting itself makes us unaware that we are deformed. (February 20, 1978)

Philip Dick wrote some 500,000 words of notes over a four year period concerning his "paranormal" experience and concluded that "I will never really know what did in fact happen. Some living, highly intelligent entity manifested itself inside me and around me, but what it was, what its purpose was, where it came from - I have tried a thousand theories, and all work equally well, but at the same time each theory leaves some datum unexplained ... and I know this is not going to change (PKD's emphasis). I have the impression that a master game player and magician and trickster is involved." (February 23, 1978)

By trying to force the UFO experience into the narrow mold of the extraterrestrial theory, we have lost sight of other, more profitable avenues of research. We have allowed abduction believers to drive us into a blind alley. We have wasted a valuable opportunity to open our minds to new models of reality.