Himalayan connection

10. How does the Himalayan connection explain UFOs? How does such a theoretic model also help explain religious visions?

In the text “The Himalayan Connection,” Prof. Lane writes the U.F.O experience he witnessed in Delhi in July of 1978. It was not until he met a man by the name of Faqir Chand that he was able to fully understand why he experienced such a radical event. Chand clearly explained to him the philosophy of people like layman and gurus experiencing the supernatural. According to Chand, miracles and other forms of phenomena are basically nothing more than deviances away from our conscious state of reality. This is known as the Chandian Effect, the certainty that we feel in our waking state creates the reality in which we consciously live in. (The Himalayan Connection) When our mind enters dream mode during our sleeping hours, around the time REM step (Rapid Eye Movement) kicks in, our reality becomes the things that we dream. To relate the Chandian Effect to U.F.O experiences, Prof. Lane later on in the text also introduces these three terms: Translation, Transformation, and Transfusion.

A toast with the face of Jesus
People may believe this is true

The translation of the U.F.O. experience to the reality of our consciousness requires scientific evidence and proof to explain these supernatural events. U.F.O. researchers have yet to completely accomplish this feature. The transformation of the U.F.O. experience connects this sight to the reality of the person witnessing or experiencing it. Although the experience may simply be a deception one’s consciousness, for that person, sighting is very real. Lastly, transfusion is a method of mixing both translation and transformation. Although we may not be able to correctly explain these kinds of phenomena and may ignore it, the person who experienced it will argue otherwise. The experience of the person, while not plausible and believable to regular minds, can be explained as a hallucination of his or her mind. 

This leads us to other phenomena such as religious visions and miracles. People may have visions that they perceive as real, but have no scientific proof to back their claims. This leads to arguments and discussions regarding the matter of whether they are true or not, or even how crazy a person is. People may clearly be influenced by outside influences such as psychoactive drugs that force them to have unimaginable visions or experiences. This also relates to people having visions while dreaming, where the dreams contain some type of prophecies or information for the future and become a reality to them because of the very fact that it is a dream.

Although I do not think Prof. Lane’s explanation to U.F.O experiences is completely false, it is still extremely difficult for me fully believe that it actually happened. Nevertheless, Lane’s translation, transformation, and transfusion design does offer a legitimate bridge to relate those types of ambiguous encounters with our conscious reality.