New Realities recorded on July 19, 2011
Summary
Alan Steinfeld interviews Anne Strieber, editor-in-chief of unknowncountry.com and wife of author Whitley Strieber. They discuss the profound impact of Whitley’s alien abduction experiences and the hundreds of thousands of letters they received from the public. Anne shares her unique theories on the phenomenon, suggesting it serves to stimulate human logical and creative thinking, and that the visitors might be from a parallel universe or the future. She also recounts a poignant near-death experience involving her deceased cat.
Transcript
Alan Steinfeld
Welcome to New Realities. This is Alan Steinfeld, and this program is about the exploration of new realities. It’s about the unfolding of a new awareness that’s happening in this country and around the world, and there’s many people coming out who understand the value of different perspectives. Tonight’s guest is very much a part of this changing paradigm. I’m going to be interviewing Anne Strieber, the wife of Whitley Strieber, who most of my listeners I’m sure know, the author of Communion, and someone who really brought the visitors, the little grays, whatever you want to call these beings that are coming into our time and space, and making a different presence known. After Communion was written, the Striebers received thousands of letters from people who’ve read those books and had their own experiences to share. Anne read all those letters and has formulated a unique perspective on the whole situation. So we’re going to hear some very unique theories on the abduction experience, whatever you want to call that thing that seems to be infiltrating the consciousness of people on Earth. So welcome, Anne.
Anne Strieber
Nice to be here, Alan. Thanks for having me.
Alan Steinfeld
Yes, thanks so much, Anne. I know you’ve sort of been behind the scenes and Whitley’s really been the front person out there, but you’ve been a keen observer. Just to kind of give us an orientation to you, we know from Communion that in the 80s these experiences started to happen to your husband, and you went from being the wife of a writer to someone that was thrust into a galactic drama of some sort, some otherworldly experience. What was your actual experience when Whitley first had what was coming to him? What was your reaction and what did you think about the whole thing?
Anne Strieber
Well, I wrote about this in a very amusing diary which can be found on our website, unknowncountry.com. It’s called Diary of a Marriage. I hope people will look for it because it basically tells that one of the most incredible acts of courage I’ve ever heard of, which is Whitley thought that he had a brain tumor or was going crazy. He was going to be committed. He didn’t know what was going on. So he kept trying to get, but he didn’t want to divorce me.
Alan Steinfeld
Because he wanted to protect you from whatever he thought was going on?
Anne Strieber
Yes, yes. And he knew that if he was committed to a mental hospital, I would not be able to get out of the marriage in New York state law.
Alan Steinfeld
Oh, right. Okay.
Anne Strieber
So, he kept trying to get me to divorce him. And we had a little kid at that point, and I had never been a very successful single person. I went on later to get an advanced degree and all, but in those days I had been mostly a secretary and a waitress, and I thought, oh no, God, I’m going to have to be a waitress again, and this time I’ve got a kid, you know. But we would hire a babysitter and drive around in the car and have these screaming fights. Finally he would say to me, “Well, why don’t you just divorce me?” And I finally said, “Well, what’s going on?” I said, “Come on, what’s going on?” He said, “I think I’ve been abducted by aliens.” And you know what I said, Alan?
Alan Steinfeld
What?
Anne Strieber
“Thank God, I don’t have to get a divorce.” That is the truth.
Alan Steinfeld
You believed him right away?
Anne Strieber
I did, because he’s always been truthful with me.
Alan Steinfeld
Right. But so, your courage in a way to believe in who he was also helped Whitley in a lot of very hard times.
Anne Strieber
Well it has been hard, and I must say that, not to put too fine a point on it, but some of these UFO people are some of the meanest people I’ve ever met.
Alan Steinfeld
Oh really?
Anne Strieber
Oh God, nasty. They make the mafia and the movie business look good. That says something.
Alan Steinfeld
Right, but it’s like any industry or it’s like, people are always, yeah, I know. Well, that’s just human nature, I guess.
Anne Strieber
Well I hope it’s not just human nature. I think human nature is much nicer than that in general. I don’t know any mafiosi, but I do know a lot of movie people. But going back to that moment where Whitley said, “I think I’ve been abducted by aliens,” and you said, “Thank God,” and then the drama begins. The story in a way begins for you there. Well, what was interesting was it was kind of a last minute whim. Whitley put our then New York City mail center address into Communion and asked people to write and tell their own experiences. We expected to get, you know, a handful of letters. We got what we estimate to be a quarter of a million letters. And so pretty soon the mail center wouldn’t take them anymore, and they made the mail people come into our apartment and bring them directly there in these huge gray canvas bags which they dragged in and piled up.
Alan Steinfeld
Was that over the course of about 10 or 15 years or something?
Anne Strieber
Oh no, this was over the course of a year, the year after Communion was published. And I had to hire somebody to help me open the letters. But I read them all. I read them all, and I answered all of them. And I kept a long list of commonalities because one thing I noticed was that people who were living in completely different places, even different countries, would see and hear and smell and feel the same things. So this was obviously a real phenomenon. It wasn’t just in people’s minds. And I also realized it didn’t sound very much like people from outer space to me.
Alan Steinfeld
It didn’t? Is this the book, The Communion Letters, that you and Whitley put together, a lot of these letters?
Anne Strieber
A lot of these letters, the best letters, yes.
Alan Steinfeld
But you’re saying it didn’t sound like ETs, extraterrestrials.
Anne Strieber
Well it didn’t to me, no. And the more I’ve learned about quantum physics, the more I understand what may be going on.
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah, we will get to that because I think that is an original insight on your part.
Anne Strieber
I also have figured out, Alan, why they’re doing what they’re doing. Why the visitors are doing it.
Alan Steinfeld
Why they’re abducting people, why they’re taking the genetic…
Anne Strieber
Well, the genetic part I don’t know. And I’m not so sure that that’s what really happens, but I know why they are abducting people and having these encounters. I know why.
Alan Steinfeld
Well let’s just cut to the chase and tell us why.
Anne Strieber
Well, but first I want to tell you what I noticed that was most interesting and I never heard this from any UFO researcher anywhere. I noticed that people would see the visitors, the Grays especially, with dead friends and relatives.
Alan Steinfeld
But not in all cases, because…
Anne Strieber
No, no, but in lots of cases.
Alan Steinfeld
Really, because I mean I’ve read, I’ve had my own experience, because it wasn’t my experience and then also of course the classic case of Betty and Barney Hill, I don’t remember seeing that, but maybe in a, but I’m not doubting that that’s also…
Anne Strieber
Well that’s what they wrote again and again and again. And this is what Whitley’s new book is really about. It’s going to be out in January, it’s called The Solution to the Communion Enigma: What is to Come.
Alan Steinfeld
And the solution is what?
Anne Strieber
Well, I don’t want to steal the thunder from the book.
Alan Steinfeld
Okay, okay, we’ll wait till January until it’s released by Penguin Tarcher. I’m looking forward to that, but could it be, I don’t doubt that there are people who have died that are seen by experiencers, but could it be that the ETs, if they’re ETs, open a doorway to other ways of knowing, other awarenesses that include this whole realm of people who have died? I mean…
Anne Strieber
It could be that, absolutely. But you know what’s interesting is what this does is, you know this is a transformative experience. People wrote again and again about feeling transformed by it. And it’s almost a spiritual experience, almost like religion, especially if you took the dogma out of religion and just stuck with the transformation. And it really though, it really gives evidence that perhaps there is such a thing as the soul, of all the amazing things.
Alan Steinfeld
Yes. But the ETs themselves, or who, whatever you want to call these visitors, do they have a soul, do you feel?
Anne Strieber
I have no idea. I have no idea about anything like that.
Alan Steinfeld
But the soul of humanity seems to be touched in this experience, you’re saying.
Anne Strieber
Well I think that people are seeing the souls of the dead.
Alan Steinfeld
Oh. So what is it, why are they doing it? So let’s say that’s true, and it could be, it’s as good a theory as anything. What is the reason?
Anne Strieber
Oh, I know the reason.
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah, what do you think?
Anne Strieber
Well see, Unknown Country is a science website, it’s an edge science website. I write stories about science, real science, not pseudoscience. And one of the stories that came from a legitimate source was that scientists think that surrealistic experiences, this is how they describe them, surrealistic experiences strengthen the left brain. Now you know the left brain is the logical part of the brain. The right brain is the more creative part of the brain. Now but they say that surrealistic, strange experiences, something you cannot find a reason for, it leaves you full of questions, strengthen the left part of the brain, the logical part of the brain. Now if you think about it, what do we need more than anything right now when we’ve got climate change, we’ve got two wars, we’ve got all kinds of conflict, a terrible economy. What do we need more than anything is we need good, logical left brains so we can figure it out.
Alan Steinfeld
So these experiences you feel are to stimulate or awaken a greater perception of our consciousness?
Anne Strieber
No, I think they’re to strengthen our logical thinking.
Alan Steinfeld
To help us think better.
Anne Strieber
We need to think better, and we think very badly. I mean if you listen to the daily news and then hear Congress screaming at each other, I mean nobody is thinking straight over there.
Alan Steinfeld
Right. So we have that to help us think better. And also on Unknown Country, you have another article about trauma actually helping the right brain be more creative. In this “What are the visitors doing here?” article that you wrote, right?
Anne Strieber
Yeah, yeah, I have two inside pieces, who I think the visitors are and what I think the visitors are doing.
Alan Steinfeld
So the surrealistic experiences help us strengthen our logic, and then the trauma helps us strengthen the right brain, so we become more whole brain functional beings. Is that it?
Anne Strieber
Yes, yes. You remember John Mack, the late John Mack, the late and great. He noticed that the people he talked to, the contactees and experiencers that he talked to, all said they had received messages about the environment. Or many of them did, and a great number of them did. And this is again, obviously what we need is help figuring this out, so we don’t completely self-destruct here.
Alan Steinfeld
But yeah, and I do think a lot of abductees are more creative, and I think it’s…
Anne Strieber
Oh absolutely, many of them say that it turned on their creativity. Absolutely.
Alan Steinfeld
And of course, going back to Whitley, it’s very traumatic. It’s not a pleasant experience to have one of these encounters.
Anne Strieber
Oh no, and people who talk about it in angelic terms or write about it in those terms, I know they’re filtering out a lot. I kind of blew off those letters because I knew they weren’t real. You know, it’s very interesting. One of the most poignant letters we got, do you want me to tell you about it?
Alan Steinfeld
Please. No, I love your research. Out of a quarter million letters, I want to hear this.
Anne Strieber
Yes, a mother and daughter are driving through the desert. It’s a classic situation. They’re driving along and a UFO is hovering above their car and it takes them up into the craft. Classic Betty and Barney Hill type situation, right? So they go up there and they’re taken into separate compartments and they’re examined, the classic again, Betty and Barney Hill. And then they are returned to the car, and they’ve lost hours of time, of course. And the little girl says to the mother… Oh, oh, first I want to add this, the mother said, “I looked at these beings and I said to them spontaneously, it just came out, I said, ‘It’s so good to see you again.'” And she said it felt like they were family. Now this is some more evidence of the dead. And anyway, so they return to the car and the little girl says to the mother, “The little bug-like beings, they told me they were sorry, but I had some bad things in my body and they couldn’t fix it. And they said I’m going to die soon.” Now the little girl is like five or six, just a little girl. So they go home and the little girl comes down with this horrible, incurable type of cancer, and she eventually does die. And of course the mother is terribly traumatized, and she hasn’t told anyone about the abduction. All of a sudden she gets a phone call from a friend of hers who lives 200 miles away in another city. This all took place in Texas. And the friend says, “I have to come see you. I have something to tell you, but I can’t tell you on the phone.” So this poor mother says, “Okay, come.” And she said in the letters, she said, “My friend is legally blind. But she drove 200 miles to tell me this.” And here’s what she told her. She said, “I was lying in bed, and all of a sudden the ceiling opened, and your daughter was there with two aliens, one on either side of her. And they said they couldn’t get through to you, but they wanted you to know she was alright.”
Alan Steinfeld
Wow. Beautiful. Wow. Isn’t that incredible? That’s amazing. That’s a beautiful story. So, but what does it mean then? What does it mean for someone to die? Is it only that if they’ve encountered aliens, will they have a life after death? I mean what is the…
Anne Strieber
Oh, of course not. I mean, but what can we… I mean, it’s so, it’s such a new concept, I’m just trying to try to fit it into all my other theories of…
Alan Steinfeld
Well remember, our brains are strengthened if we keep the question open. I don’t know the answers, and you don’t either. But don’t try to answer them with dogma. I mean religion is all dogma at this point. I mean there were some real experiences that went on and people turned them into dogma, and you know there are real UFO experiences that go on, and people have created a UFO religion of spacemen coming to create hybrids and whatever else they’re saying. It’s all dogma, and we have to stay away from it.
Anne Strieber
So we don’t know really, but the human nature is to take a stab at it, to take a guess, to hypothesize, not to believe our hypothesis, but to put one out there and see, well what does it mean? What does someone who’s passed over, what does that really mean anyway? Are they still here on some level? I mean what, how has this changed your ideas of death?
Alan Steinfeld
Well, it’s very interesting. We have a friend who is a hospice physician. And he discovered, he would go in to see his patients, they’re all dying of course. And he noticed that they would say, “Oh, I had a visitor. Had a visitor.” And he would go out to the main receptionist desk and nobody had signed in to visit these people. Happened again and again. So finally they became a little more frank with him and it turned out that these visitors were dead people. And then he found out something else. He went to a big conference of hospice doctors, and they all compared their experiences. They all had the same experiences with their patients. And they found that after this visit, the people died in general four days later.
Anne Strieber
Four days.
Alan Steinfeld
Well you know, this reminds me of an interview I did a few weeks ago with Robert Van Den Broeke in Holland, who’s actually taking digital pictures of people who have died. He’s working with Nancy Talbott of the BLT Research Group and actually it’d be a great interview for you and Whitley because I think he might, because he’s also in touch with ET and interdimensional beings and he might have some ideas that could connect with what you’re putting out there.
Anne Strieber
That’s very interesting. I know Nancy Talbott, I never heard of him, so send me his email.
Alan Steinfeld
I will, I will. And I think that would be really interesting, it really fits in with what you’re discovering here. But then, so you’re saying then that these people are having experiences to strengthen their left brain and to also connect us with the dead?
Anne Strieber
We need to get smarter fast.
Alan Steinfeld
But is it happening? I mean why…
Anne Strieber
I don’t know, I think people, the contactees and experiencers I meet are extraordinary people. In many ways they’re very ordinary people. They aren’t people in general, although there are some exceptions to this, but they aren’t people who are in academia, although there are quite a few scientists actually, because scientists are very curious and open-minded, at least they should be. But they are people I call the extraordinary ordinary.
Alan Steinfeld
I like that. The extraordinary ordinary people. But you know, it’s taken in a way a while for you to get to this place of where you’re at and so calm and composed and aware of this phenomenon, whatever it is. But what were the steps like, you know, Whitley writes about waking up in the middle of the night screaming, and you not really knowing what’s going on. What were the steps in helping to bridge your consciousness to what was going on in general?
Anne Strieber
Well, I’ve always been the observer. The outsider, the skeptic. I’m a skeptic. It’s a role, it’s not a real pleasant role, but it’s a role that somehow I’ve been delegated to play. And I think it’s a needed role, it’s very necessary because people tend to rush to judgment when it comes to UFOs. And they have all kinds of wrong-headed ideas. And I mean, I think frankly that what we call the visitors and people call aliens and UFOs and ETs, I think they are beings who are visiting from a parallel universe. They’ve discovered a way to travel through wormholes, now our quantum physicists say this is not possible, but maybe it is. I’m sure it is. Or, I think they are from the future, or maybe they’re both. And if they are from the future, I think they are coming back here to try to get us to quit messing up their present.
Alan Steinfeld
Right. I think the Earth is like a little splinter in the body of some giant being, and you know, when you have something a little tiny thing in your body, all your attention goes there. I think there’s a lot of attention coming here because we’re like out of alignment, we’re out of harmony. But how did you arrive, I mean when you first heard about this you were skeptical, and…
Anne Strieber
I’ve always been skeptical, I’m still skeptical.
Alan Steinfeld
But when did you, how did you first sort of accept, of course Whitley told you and you believed him and of course you would because you love him…
Anne Strieber
Well I met a lot of people who had the same experience. And then I read all those letters, I mean that’s what convinced me it was something real.
Alan Steinfeld
Because what I’m getting at is there’s still a huge population that has no idea. You know, Whitley’s book has been on the bestseller list, of course, and a bunch of other books, but there’s some people that are still so closed-minded and so shut down about any type of visitor possibility that those are the people that need to wake up to some kind of new reality. So I’m asking you as someone who came from there, how do you suggest we get the government, these right-wing scientists I call them, that are so fundamental in their scientific theory that they can’t consider something coming through a wormhole. How do we talk to those people about what could be possible?
Anne Strieber
Well I think I don’t know if we ought to talk to them at all. I mean let them have their little prejudices. Who cares? First of all, I don’t think the government knows much about this. I think the people who have the information are these extraordinary ordinary people. They’ve got the information. I mean the government might have some blips on radar screens, but the people who are being visited are, you know, Joe Sixpack, that’s who’s got the info. And if they don’t want to listen to him, well, I mean if there were this many people having physical symptoms that sounded like a disease, the Center for Disease Control would be all over it, investigating it, but because it’s been put into the UFO box, it can be ignored. But let them ignore it, who cares? What do we care?
Alan Steinfeld
But the other aspect of it is it has something to do with consciousness. I mean after you’ve had these experiences the way you think, and it is the ordinary, there’s a shift in, this is what you elude to in your articles, there’s a shift in our thinking.
Anne Strieber
It’s transformative. Absolutely.
Alan Steinfeld
So is it that there’s going to have to be enough people having these experiences and Whitley says it’s only when we really step towards them, will they step towards us in the open and make this an acknowledged event? You know, something that will be integrated into the public psyche. It seems like that. It seems like we need enough of us to come forward and start to think and dialogue and of course with books and movies. But to embrace it not as a fantasy, but as the reality that it actually is and then perhaps more will show up. I mean…
Anne Strieber
I don’t know if that would attract more of them or not, I really don’t know. I think I remember so many letters, people would say, well why was I chosen? But I don’t think people are chosen. I think that only certain people can see them. And we don’t know why that is. Whitley and I have a theory. We suspect it has to do with early childhood trauma of some sort. That people who were traumatized as children, perhaps even by sexual abuse, but other things, the crack in their consciousness opens up. There’s a paradigm shift. I mean things happen that weren’t supposed to happen, that all the sweet little books that everybody was reading them didn’t talk about. And all of a sudden you realize, very young, that life isn’t like everybody’s telling you it is, and that opens you up perhaps to seeing these visitors. Because so often for instance, you have a row of people sitting on a couch. One person is taken. The rest sit there frozen and don’t remember anything. So why did the one who was taken, why did that one get taken? Why did that one see what was going on?
Alan Steinfeld
I think that’s a really good point that you and Whitley make there, because reality is more solid than the ground beneath our feet, and when that is shaken up at an early age, there does seem to be a possibility of the unknown coming into awaken new experiences.
Anne Strieber
A crack in the cosmic egg.
Alan Steinfeld
Yes, it is the unknown country, it is. So when we’re open to the out of the ordinary is when we can see those unfolding realities. So is that part of the commonality that you found in these quarter million letters that you read, that there was something…
Anne Strieber
Many times there was. One thing that interested me is it might also be genetic, because we did a little search of the last names of people who wrote us, and a large percentage of them were Irish.
Alan Steinfeld
Oh really?
Anne Strieber
Oh yes. And you know the Irish are familiar with the fairy folk, and so it might be genetic as well. It might be genetic predisposition to seeing these folks.
Alan Steinfeld
Well there are patterns in families, the mother, daughter…
Anne Strieber
Oh, it runs in families, it definitely runs in families.
Alan Steinfeld
It does, and I think my mother and grandmother were both part of some kind of situation like that, although they’ll never admit it, my mother keeps on saying, “You don’t really believe that stuff.” And it’s someone who’s just very frightened and unable to expand what’s possible, although the seed is planted in there. But I do, you know the other part of what you just mentioned about that crack in the reality is that Whitley has had other types of experiences too that are anomalous, that are out of the ordinary, his book The Key and some time travel stuff or parallel realities, one of the books I think it was Breakthrough he writes about driving down the road and suddenly… I mean that doesn’t happen to people who haven’t had some kind of shakeup in their reality already. So there might be these other types of experiences that people are prone to because of this crack.
Anne Strieber
Absolutely. People who have contactee experiences definitely start having other experiences. I have a funny story for you. There was a UFO researcher who shall remain nameless, and he would have weekly meetings of contactees at his house, and he said to us, “This is getting so expensive, I’ve got to give them snacks and everything,” and we said, “Well, we’ll have it at our house.” So we had it at our house. At that time, Whitley had had an out of the body experience, spontaneous, and he had even levitated once, he was pretty sure. And so there were little groups around the room chatting and he’d go from one group to another and talk about these things and they all said, “Oh yes, that happened to me, I had an out of body experience, oh yes, I levitated, oh yes, I this and that,” and the UFO researcher who was supposed to be very open-minded, he was going around putting out these brush fires, stomping them out because they didn’t have to do with his UFO dogma theory. They were completely different from his belief system and he couldn’t stand it and he never let the meeting happen at our house again.
Alan Steinfeld
Oh really? That does remind me because when I was like 13, 14, I felt as if I was being pulled out of my body through the back of my neck and it was very, I felt like couldn’t move, there wasn’t even a sound but it was some kind of vibration going through me and just this weird sensation that was numbing, and I think it was related to some abduction type experience, but it actually…
Anne Strieber
You should go to the Monroe Institute. That’s what you should do.
Alan Steinfeld
I should, but I’ve heard of other people having these sort of pulling out of your body experiences, but after that I did have some astral out of body travels and I did have some types of phenomena that was unrelated to UFOs, that seemed to do with other parts of consciousness. So, yeah, have you been to the Monroe Institute?
Anne Strieber
No, I haven’t, but Whitley has, he was there when Robert Monroe was alive, and one of our hosts, psychic medium Marla Frees is there now. She just came home. She goes there all the time. And we’ve interviewed people from there, it’s a great place.
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah, no, I mean I think it’s very important that we train parts of our minds for these experiences because yeah, the fact that we are a soul in a physical body is very much a part of the new paradigm.
Anne Strieber
Well, if we are, I think there’s a lot of evidence from contactees that we are. That’s what’s interesting. Because religion can tell you that’s the case, but why should you believe it?
Alan Steinfeld
Well unless you’ve had the experience, I have been out of my body, I have moved through walls, I mean at least in…
Anne Strieber
So yes, so it seems. I mean I could be dreaming, I mean my abduction experiences could have been… I mean they were very dreamlike. I mean they’re not in a normal state of consciousness. That’s actually something I’d love to talk to Whitley about is the altered state of consciousness that people go in during these experiences.
Alan Steinfeld
Oh yes, definitely.
Anne Strieber
I’ll do a show with him at some point. But that’s part of, everything you’re saying is part of the complexity that makes up a human being. You know we’ve been told by religion and our education that we are this type of linear being. And from what you’re saying and other people, that we’re not. We’re not linear. We exist perhaps on many levels at once.
Alan Steinfeld
Well I think we do. It’s very interesting to me some of the commonalities that abductees and contactees have. For instance, they’ve all seen, or most of them have seen, the black box. Did you see the black box?
Anne Strieber
I did not. Can you tell me what that is? Maybe I’m not an abductee then. What is the black box?
Alan Steinfeld
Well it’s interesting, we’re not sure what it is, but it has to do with… many people see the black box. In fact, if you stand in front of an audience of people who say they’ve had abduction experiences or contact experiences, and ask them just say, “Have you seen the black box?” Most of them will raise their hands. And I once talked to a quantum physicist and I said, “Do you think time travel is possible?” He says, “Oh it’s possible, but we don’t know how to do it yet, but it’s possible.” And he said, “If you were with time travelers, you would always see the time machine in the room where they were.”
Anne Strieber
Oh, is that the black box?
Alan Steinfeld
I wonder. I don’t know, but I wonder.
Anne Strieber
I did not see a black box, but I did see a wand. Did you see the wand?
Alan Steinfeld
I did see a wand, and I did see what I call the ancient one. Seemed like a very very old female like Queen Bee.
Anne Strieber
Yes, that’s who Whitley’s been in touch with so many times. The face on the cover of Communion. Well now, were you touched with the wand?
Alan Steinfeld
I think I do have an implant somewhere… I think I was…
Anne Strieber
No, no, I’m not talking about an implant, I’m talking about the wand.
Alan Steinfeld
I think I, I don’t know, I couldn’t say…
Anne Strieber
They touch people with the wand in the pineal gland, which is the third eye.
Alan Steinfeld
Well you know I was going to tell you, when I was aboard a ship in a dreamlike state, I kept touching my third eye, saying this is like… and eventually I got the message that they couldn’t work with me anymore because I was too much under my own control, because I was willfully touching my third eye and they didn’t have control over me anymore, so that was sort of the last time I had that kind of experience. I don’t know what that means, if I made that up, or…
Anne Strieber
Well I would contemplate it. You’ll get the answer, you’ll get an answer. If you contemplate it. Keep the question open.
Alan Steinfeld
I did have a little hybrid being placed in my arms during another dreamlike state, and you know how they…
Anne Strieber
Very common, very common.
Alan Steinfeld
You know the weird thing is they woke me up by running this furry little thing on the inside of my thigh. It was so weird, they did that three times, and then they gave me this little being that looked like a little deer with big eyes and a cut off snout that I had just so freaked out, I had no connection at all to whatever it is that they gave me. It was just too weird, and then I went back to sleep and then you know, oh, was that a dream, was that something…
Anne Strieber
Well people, you know, the most common sentence in all the letters I read was, someone would say, “I had a dream that wasn’t a dream.”
Alan Steinfeld
Right. I still remember it to this day. I mean most dreams fade, you know, right as you get up, but this experience has stayed with me for, I guess it’s been like 20 years almost or something, 88 or you know almost 20 years. So yeah, so it’s that’s the idea of it happening in an altered state of consciousness. And the only thing we can equate it to is a dream state, but you know the human mind is capable of so many states and I think the more we train our inner awareness through things like meditation, the more conscious interaction we can have with these visitors.
Anne Strieber
Well Whitley says that they only come around when, after he meditates.
Alan Steinfeld
Well I think because Whitley seems to be pretty, you know, familiar with these beings. He’s been able to maintain a level of consciousness in his interactions that maybe a lot of people don’t. And I think this, we have to reframe what consciousness is and how we can use it if we’re going to be welcomed into a galactic community that these visitors may be a part of.
Anne Strieber
Well what’s interesting to Whitley and I is the idea that different people, different beings, may have different consciousnesses. And if you had a warring consciousness battle, whose consciousness would win? Whose world would win? Maybe that’s what everyone is so frightened of. Maybe it’s on a visceral level, they’re afraid that somebody’s going to come in with their consciousness, the way they see things, and change the way we see things. Change our world.
Alan Steinfeld
Well that’s exactly why things like LSD was made illegal. Not that I’m for psychedelics, but what Timothy Leary said, and he was a wild guy, he said Harvard didn’t like the way he was thinking. That’s why they got rid of him. These hallucinogens changed his perception, and I’m not for them necessarily, but I think what was so controversial was that people started to think differently on those substances. And I don’t think we need them to think differently, but that was sort of a crack in the cultural shell of reality.
Anne Strieber
And in those days we needed a crack in the cultural shell. We had McCarthyism and all kinds of horrible things.
Alan Steinfeld
But now we don’t need it because there’s so much coming to us and I think we do need an awakening. I think this, these experiences are part of our planetary awakening. And I do want to say Anne and Whitley will be at an event that I’m hosting along with FIONS, the Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in New York City on October 22nd. And actually that whole weekend there’ll be different events connected to the visitor experience. We have Linda Moulton Howe also speaking there and Richard Dolan.
Anne Strieber
Oh they’re both great.
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah they are really the top of the line. I mean I listen to Coast to Coast all the time, and the three, Whitley, Richard, and Linda are like constant guests. And they really are about that program and that show that Whitley does every week and what I’m trying to do is about infusing new realities into the consciousness of the collective. So we can have an awakening on a planetary level that will be different, that maybe new ideas and more creative ways of thinking there will be answers to the situations that we’re facing.
Anne Strieber
Well the Renaissance didn’t happen overnight.
Alan Steinfeld
They didn’t happen overnight. So but it is happening, there is a renaissance of thought and I do think that there is a definitely I think intelligence is intrinsic to creation. I think life is intrinsic, I think we’re not alone in this accidental universe. I think there’s intention behind it. I think life is abundant out there, and we’re about to, and some people already have met the life that doesn’t think like us and doesn’t look like us, but the knowledge of sentience, the awareness of sentience, of consciousness itself is what connects us. Actually I wrote an article I’ll send you called the Aliens of 2010, where different movies that came out had a common theme about awareness and consciousness, and it’s consciousness that does connect us together.
Anne Strieber
Hey, we’ll put that up in our insight section. How about that?
Alan Steinfeld
Oh that would be great. I’ll send it to you guys.
Anne Strieber
Yes, please do.
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah I actually quote Whitley’s, some of his articles in that article. So yeah, I would love to hear what you think of that those insights that I had. So, but tell me about what was the weirdest thing, I mean I know you’re the observer, but what was the most oddest thing that happened to you personally in these last, you know really 30 years or so?
Anne Strieber
Well actually the oddest thing that happened to me didn’t have anything to do with UFOs or visitors. I had a very interesting near-death experience.
Alan Steinfeld
Ah. And that opened you up to… what do you want to tell us…
Anne Strieber
Well I was already pretty open. But it was very nice. I had an aneurysm burst in my brain seven years ago, and I almost died. And while I was in the hospital, my dead Siamese cat came to me. I could feel his fur. You know I used to always put my face in his fur. And I could hear him say in my head, which is the way visitors talk to people, they talk to people in their heads, and I could hear him say, “Come on, let’s go, come on.” So I followed him. I guess I was out of my body, who knows? I followed him. And I heard him say, you know, Siamese cats, I don’t know if you’re familiar with them, but they’re very arrogant. And I heard him say, “These stupid humans, these stupid humans, they can’t even find the world of the dead on their own.” So he took me to the world of the dead.
Alan Steinfeld
Do you want to know what it looked like?
Anne Strieber
Yeah, yeah, is this…
Alan Steinfeld
Well it looked like a subway station or a Greyhound bus station. There were people sitting around waiting for the train or the bus to take them, who knows where. But what I noticed was they were all carrying huge, bulging suitcases and shopping bags, and I knew that they were not going to be able to take that train or get on that bus until they put their packages down. In other words, they had to put down the cares of their current life before they could go on.
Alan Steinfeld
Oh, wow.
Anne Strieber
Isn’t that a wonderful metaphor, and I never have heard it or read it anywhere.
Alan Steinfeld
That is great, that’s a great story. So did that change your view of reality at all?
Anne Strieber
Well my brain was changed for a while after I came out of my coma. I was psychic for a while, and that was interesting.
Alan Steinfeld
And did you relate to people differently, reality… I mean did you…
Anne Strieber
Well I got psychic messages, and the most important one I got was that I had to contact our goddaughter, whom we hadn’t seen in a long time. And I kept getting this message, “You must contact Amy, you have to contact Amy, you must contact Amy.” And so finally I said, “Okay, leave me alone, I’ll contact Amy.” So I emailed her mother, Dora, and I said, “What’s Amy’s email address?” And I got Amy’s email address and I contacted her, and we started emailing back and forth. And then I found out why I had gotten this message, because shortly afterwards her mother came down with colon cancer and died. And I would not have even known about it if I had not gotten that message. But we were able to go down to Texas and be with her while this was going on. Her dad’s not in the picture, so she didn’t have anybody else. And now we’re her only parents, we’re her surrogate parents.
Alan Steinfeld
Oh, that’s great that you followed that advice, and I think more and more of us are opening to these inner voices, these other dimensions of reality. So to put it all together with all these experiences that we’ve talked about just in this show, how do you see the human being as different than what we’ve been taught we are?
Anne Strieber
Well we’re definitely not who religion tells us we are. Because religion wants to control us. And I, you know, I used to go to the Chautauqua Institute and I loved it there. And so I’m not anti-religion, but I’m certainly anti- a lot of religions. And you know, they’re about control. They want, they’ve always wanted to control us, and they want to control us, they tell us about good and evil. And we have to stop thinking in that box.
Alan Steinfeld
Right. That is such an old paradigm, good and evil. It is such a low level of comparison, black and white, when there’s a whole range of color that makes up sentient life.
Anne Strieber
People say there’s good aliens and evil aliens. And I say, why? They’re good people and bad people, I mean look, we’ve got a human, we’ve got Hitler, and we’ve got Martin Luther King. Why aren’t aliens the same?
Alan Steinfeld
Right, there’s a whole range of everything in between. So what do you think is going to happen with the visitor situation? Is it going to eventually come into the public awareness, or is it always going to be…
Anne Strieber
Oh yes, oh it is, it’s coming more and more. And I think any polls anybody did saying, calling people up and saying, “Do you think this is real?” I think you’d get positive reactions from almost everybody. Almost everybody except perhaps people who have been cowed by their, as I say, religion. But in general, anybody even slightly open-minded thinks there’s something real going on because they know people it’s happened to.
Alan Steinfeld
Exactly, the thing that’s in the way is the way people think, the structures of thought that make those realities so solid that you can’t crack them. That’s what’s in the way, I think.
Anne Strieber
Oh absolutely, but people are getting more and more open-minded, they’re learning more. That’s what our website’s about. It’s about opening people’s minds.
Alan Steinfeld
That is unknowncountry.com, the edge of the world. And you are the editor-in-chief of unknowncountry?
Anne Strieber
Yes. And I write all the stories, too. So if you don’t like them, write to me.
Alan Steinfeld
It’s a great website. And Whitley, of course, is writing a lot, and he’s coming out with a new book in January.
Anne Strieber
Oh yes, we have a whole bunch of books. He’s got The Key out now, and then we have a young adult novel coming out in October.
Alan Steinfeld
Oh great. So you guys are very, very busy.
Anne Strieber
This is an idea of mine that he wrote. An adult novel, a young adult novel. Young adult novels are basically for girls. Adolescent girls.
Alan Steinfeld
Okay. And is it about the visitors?
Anne Strieber
Nope. It’s an updating of the Phantom of the Opera.
Alan Steinfeld
Okay. Okay. I mean there’s that movie out called Another Earth, have you seen that about a parallel earth and things like that?
Anne Strieber
I haven’t seen that. I don’t think it’s out here yet.
Alan Steinfeld
It’s coming out, I think it won some prizes at some film festival. That’s actually stars a young adult woman who… anyway, there’s a lot going on that is shifting our consciousnesses. And Whitley does an interview every week.
Anne Strieber
Yeah, every week, we have a new radio show. Yeah.
Alan Steinfeld
And what nights is that on?
Anne Strieber
Well it can be listened to… it’s posted… the audio is usually up Friday and the show description is up Wednesday. And it can be listened to free for a week and indefinitely by subscribers.
Alan Steinfeld
Right. And they can subscribe to unknowncountry right there on the website.
Anne Strieber
Yeah.
Alan Steinfeld
Well thank you so much Anne, and I love the calm and the peace that you have in your presence there. So…
Anne Strieber
Well it’s been fun talking with you.
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah, it’s been fun seeing you too. Nobody can see you but me.
Anne Strieber
I know a secret about you.
Alan Steinfeld
What was I doing? You’re not wearing a shirt. Well you know, it’s like 95 degrees in New York.
Anne Strieber
I know New York is hot.
Alan Steinfeld
And I don’t like air conditioning, so…
Anne Strieber
But I can only see your shoulders.
Alan Steinfeld
So if you’re naked from the waist down, I don’t know. I’m glad I didn’t stand up, so thank you. But thank you. Say hello to Whitley, and thank him for all the great work he’s put in over the years for truth and a deeper understanding of reality. He’s one of the pioneers.
Anne Strieber
Yes he is.
Alan Steinfeld
I’m looking forward to seeing you both. That’s for people that are listening, you can go to the FIONS website, that’s the Friends of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. We’re doing a weekend along with New Realities. I’m co-sponsoring some of it along with some other groups, but they’re the main ones. And this will be a weekend, pretty much October 21st, 22nd, 23rd. And Whitley, and Linda Moulton Howe, and Richard Dolan, and some surprise guests, and we’re going to show a movie, The Hidden Hand, which is about the UFO ET revelation in whatever form we think it’s happening by a filmmaker James Carman. He’ll be showing the film Friday night. And then we’ll have talks with Whitley and Linda Moulton Howe and Richard Dolan, and maybe another guest on Saturday. And then on Sunday, we’re having a brunch where Anne is going to be speaking about these experiences. So all that should be on the FIONS website, fions.org website. It’ll also be on my website, newrealities.com. And I’ve been talking to Anne Strieber, who’s had an inside view of this amazing phenomenon that we are encountering.
Anne Strieber
If anybody wants to come up to me at the brunch and tell me their story, I’d love to hear it.
Alan Steinfeld
Great. And I look forward to hearing from whoever’s been listening out there, any questions you can email me at newrealities@earthlink.net. And how can people get in touch with you, Anne?
Anne Strieber
Well they can get in touch through the website. It would be anne@strieber.com.
Alan Steinfeld
Well thank you again for being a guest. And people can hear this again on bbsradio.com archives, and also going to post this on newrealities.com, so you can link to that. And tell people about that. So thank you. Thanks for having me. This is Alan Steinfeld for New Realities. Again, check the website, newrealities.com. And same time, same station next week. Thanks for listening.
