KEN KORCZAK:

Just when you think you’ve read every kind of UFO book on the market, along comes journalist Martin Keller who takes the genre and smashes it wide open.

The Space Pen Club is a UFO book unlike any other. Marvelously entertaining and multifaceted, it takes a deep dive behind the scenes of the UFO community.

As a reader of UFO lit for 50+ years now, I was astounded when I got to the last page of ‘Space Pen.’ I can’t think of another book on this topic that intersects with so many facets of “The Phenomenon” — cultural, political, scientific, theological and more.

This is easily among the best UFO offerings of the past decade. See my full review here: REVIEW: THE SPACE PEN CLUB by Martin Keller

Today I review three short books that explore mind-expanding concepts based on Sufism, Vedic philosophy and lucid dreaming.

I found each one of these brief tracts inspiring while providing solid, grounded information and advice on how anyone might expand their consciousness and transcend ego-based consciousness.

The three items reviewed are:

1. Universal Mysteries by Ahmed Hulusi

2. The Inner Consciousness by Swami Prakashananda

3. Spiritual Lucid Dreaming by  Samira Nuriyeva

Full story, click here: QUICK HITTERS

I was stunned when I saw that a new book had just come out about the incredible UFO encounter that occurred in the small town of Willernie, Minnesota, in the winter of 1982.

This is a case I thought was long forgotten and would remain that way.

I remember it vividly because I lived not so far from where it happened.

I have always thought this UFO event deserved a much higher status among the pantheon of top UFO encounters.

But now the primary witness of the Willernie UFO has come forward. Experiencer Julie Ohlson tells the full story in her just-released book, Dark Secrets and Hidden Lies: The 1982 Willernie UFO Case.

And — wow — what a story she has in store for her readers!

Read full story here: Willernie UFO

Review by: KEN KORCZAK

The “little green men” trope has haunted the UFO community for decades.

It’s a classic bait-line for scoffers and trolls who fancy themselves “skeptics” as they usually go after the low-hanging fruit with mocking attempts to “scientifically debunk” encounters with The Phenomenon.

But not to worry. The author’s choice to feature a waving green alien on the cover of this remarkable book is about the only controversial choice he made in bringing forward a compelling and consequential story.

This is far less “a UFO book” than it is a profound meditation on the essential validity of every human being and the eternal validity of the human soul.

YOSSI RONEN derived this enlightened perspective of mankind’s place in Creation from a personal encounter with … um … what should we call them?

Transhuman entities? Transcendent intelligence? Interdimensional visitors? Aliens?

I suppose it doesn’t matter since “The Visitors” themselves told Ronen that their actual physical appearance was not important and, at best, is a kind of illusionary representation of their true nature.

Ronen was just 21 when he experienced his encounter with “The Others.” It was the early 1980s, and Ronen was an Israeli citizen spending a year in Los Angeles. He was in his apartment sleeping. His brother was his roommate was sleeping in the same room when things were about to get exceedingly strange.

Okay, I’m going to stop right there because I don’t want to give anything away. I encourage readers to buy this book and experience the encounter of Yossi Ronen with entities that were not only stranger than he could imagine – but stranger than any of us can imagine.

It’s one of the best presented and most intriguing descriptions of a human-other interaction I have read.

For Yossi, it would prove to be an event that would alter the trajectory of the rest of his life. Prior to his confrontation with the unknown, he was a grounded young man firmly rooted in the efficacy of material science. He was studying electronics in college and fully expected to embark on a tech-oriented career. That proved difficult and problematic after the mind-expanding fallout of his experience.

It would take decades for Ronen to process his encounter, come to grips with it and ferret out a larger meaning he could process and integrate.

The title he chose for his book, ONE, sums up his conclusions – in that, the Universe, or All That Is, or whatever you want to call it – is an infinite Singularity of Consciousness. The being he encountered on the day were not so much “Others” but aspects of himself – or all of us, really. That includes animals, plants, rocks, atoms, electrons, quarks, planets, stars, galaxies — everything.

I’ve been reading UFO books since the late 1960s. It’s fascinating to observe how this genre has evolved from a nuts-and-bolts “I saw a flying saucer” perspective to today a body of literature increasingly that more resembles transpersonal psychology and philosophy.

In her book, American Cosmic, University of North Carolina religious studies professor D.W. Pasulka suggests that what we are witnesses is the “birth of a new religion.” The only thing I don’t like about her hypothesis is her use of the word “religion” because of the baggage that comes with it. The experiences of Ronen and many others today who have confronted “The Others” seem almost inherently unfettered, unrutted and free of dogmatic trappings and rituals associated with formal religious systems – but I digress.

Speaking of other experiencers, in the past months I have reviewed a string of books by these people who come from all walks of ordinary life. The through-line between all of them is their uncanny “normality” in all other manners if we exclude their extraordinary encounters.

Here is a list of such folks and their books I have reviewed recently, and I think it incredibly important to point this out because it heralds a significant global transformational trend:

INITIATED by Matthew Roberts – A former lifer in the U.S. Navy who left his career as a military intelligence officer to tell his story of supra-human encounters.

BEYOND THE EXTRATERRESTIAL FIREWALL by Steve Boucher – A Canadian who has worked as a musician and design professional who has interacted with “alien beings” over a lifetime.

UFOs FIRST PERSON by Dave Shoup – A Ph.D.-level professor of agriculture who enjoyed a long and successful career as an academician and research scientist but kept a secret of his lifetime of UFO encounter his closest secret throughout the decades of his career.

UFOs ARE WITH US: TAKE MY WORD by Leo Dworshak – Blue-collar working-class man who grew up on a small North Dakota farm amid the Great Depression and began interaction with high human-like aliens in 1932. Kept intermittent contact with them until his death in 2007.

SYMBIOSIS — Nancy Tremaine – At age 12 in a small town outside of Detroit, she experienced an abduction scenario and kept it a secret for 50 years. She worked various jobs and led an otherwise normal life on the outside while experiencing fantastic events across the decades .

ENCOUNTER AT DEVIL’S DEN — Terry Lovelace – A retired attorney with a long successful career began experiencing visitations as a child and endured a massive abduction event while a young man serving in the U.S. Air Force. Kept his secret for decades until retirement when he felt free to speak out.

EXTRATERRESTRIAL ODYSSEY — Roger Kvande – Small-town Minnesota man who was born with a gifted IQ and superior talent for working with electronic systems and computers began experiencing high-strangeness alien contact as a child; these encountered blossomed as he reached adulthood. His accounts include being allowed to pilot and alien spacecraft. Enjoyed a successful, lucrative career in computers and electronics.

So much of the UFO community is still waiting for that magical and seemingly elusive Holy Grail they call “Disclosure.” But the people in the list above, including Yossie Ronen, have no need to wait for some lofty government entity to come out and announce: “They’re here!” These people already have Disclosure — and they’re working very hard to get the word out to the rest of us.

Are you listening #ufotwitter?

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Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of BIRD BRAIN GENIUS

All NEW: KEN’S BOOK REVIEW SITE ON FACEBOOK: REMOTE BOOK REVIEWING

Review by: KEN KORCZAK

The author tells us that he wrote this book “out of love for mankind.”

What puts weight behind this lofty statement is that MATTHEW ROBERTS felt it necessary to jettison his 16-year career in the U.S. Navy – 10 years of it at sea –with only four years to go before securing a well-earned military retirement pension.

He gave it all up because of what he needs to talk about in this book.

Roberts didn’t have just any Navy job — he was in military intelligence. It’s a sensitive field that not only requires a high IQ but extraordinary emotional stability.

Roberts understood that if he published and promoted a book about his personal interactions with UFOs, aliens (whom he now calls “The Progenitors”) and his intense psychological battle to cope with extraordinary paranormal experiences – well, that would be something the brass of U.S. Naval Intelligence would not tolerate.

All the above is fine and well-intentioned. But does he deliver?

The short answer is yes.

In many ways, this is a remarkable piece of literature. Certainly, it’s a work of depth and integrity. It has the remarkable quality of being both scholarly and heartfelt at the same time.

Furthermore, INITIATED bears a critical message for humanity that is sorely needed at what feels like an inflection point in our planetary history.

I hope this book is read and contemplated by as many people as possible.

That said, it’s unfortunate this volume will probably be categorized as “a UFO book” and therefore likely to be relegated to what Kurt Vonnegut called “the urinal of literature.” (He actually said that about science fiction, but UFO literature is afforded about the same status, if not worse by the snobby literary elites). I would encourage readers to treat this book as a mainstream offering that would be best served if booksellers would place it in their philosophy section.

So, what’s this book about?

My first notion was that if you could take the works of three intellectual giants – famed mythologist JOSEPH CAMPBELL, the Austrian philosopher RUDOLF STEINER and Harvard psychiatrist JOHN MACK – and synthesize them into a new body of work, then you would have an idea about the contents of Initiated.

Then you add in some healthy doses of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, and you would also have to fold in a huge helping of classical Greek Mythology along with dollops of Whitley Strieber, Travis Walton and Barney and Betty Hill.

I should hasten to add there is an additional sense of timeliness and urgency about what Roberts is writing about. In case you haven’t noticed, the study of UFOs has recently entered a new era.

It began in December of 2017 when the New York Times published a front-page article reporting that Navy fighter pilots attached to the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier encountered inexplicable objects that defied the laws of physics in terms of their flight speed and patterns.

Intriguing video of the objects recorded with fighter jet gun cameras video was released concurrently with the NYT article. Furthermore, the Pentagon said they didn’t know what the objects were but that they “should be taken seriously” in terms of future study. Other videos and stories if similar ilk followed. The Pentagon when as far as to say (albeit in rather tepid fashion) that an extraterrestrial explanation “cannot be ruled out.”

Now here’s an amazing thing:

Our author, Matthew Roberts, was on one of those Navy ships when these encounters occurred. The year was 2015. He was serving on the Theodore Roosevelt that was part of a “strike group” fleet of warships. It was the pilots of a group that captured what has come to be called the “Gimbal” and “Go Fast” footage.

Up until this time, UFOs or any sort of paranormal phenomenon were simply not on Roberts’s radar or part of his life. He was a strictly a no-nonsense, by-the-book Naval intelligence officer. The son of an astronomer, he was grounded in rational scientific materialism. He describes his family growing up as “proud and devout atheists.”

However, after the Gimbal encounters, a crack had formed in his cosmic egg. The next three years would entail a personal epistemological and eschatological crisis for Roberts as he confronted strange beings in what is now the well-described abduction scenario –- noting that the latter is widely varied and comes in many permutations.

For Roberts, the seemingly undeniable reality that he was encountering UFO aliens, other bizarre entities along with a series of other happenings had forced him to question his sanity.

And so, INITIATED is the story of how Roberts traveled through his personal dark tunnel and sojourned through the mythological Underworld – only to emerge out the other side a changed man, or more acutely, one of those rare people who can say to be genuinely “Initiated.”

If you want to know what that means, exactly, then I suggest you read the book. Initiation into the cosmic mysteries of the universe is a millennials-old tradition and concept that I think in modern times was most eloquently explained for all of us by Rudolf Steiner – although Roberts’s preferred authority is WILLIAM WALKER ATKINSON, noted author of the Kybalion. (Note: Read the Kybalion FREE HERE). 

(Side Note: I’ve always thought of Atkinson as “Rudolf Steiner lite.” Also, Steiner came at the subject of Initiation by staying grounded in Western thought, while Atkinson preferred to bring it forth by drawing heavily upon Eastern religions and philosophy. But that’s a whole other can of worms that I’ll leave aside for some other article).

At any rate, for me, Roberts comes off as a modern-day Theseus who risked his own life to slay the Minotaur so that his fellows could be freed from its terrors. Roberts might also be liked to a modern Prometheus who stole fire from the gods, came back to Earth and bequeathed it upon mankind — but paid a heavy price for his heroism.

If you read the book, I bet you’ll agree that my statement is not overwrought.

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Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of BIRD BRAIN GENIUS

All NEW: KEN’S BOOK REVIEW SITE ON FACEBOOK: REMOTE BOOK REVIEWING

Review by: KEN KORCZAK

Most people consider 1947 as the kick-off to the modern UFO era. Two major events happened in that year. In June of 1947, private pilot Kenneth Arnold made his famous sighting of nine objects “skipping along” in the skies over Mt. Rainier. About a month later came the headline in the Roswell Daily Record that the U.S. Air Force had recovered the debris of a flying disk which had crashed on a ranch near Roswell.

It was the Arnold sightings that many argue created the concept of the “flying saucer.” Famous astronomer and skeptic Carl Sagan argued that flying saucers never existed before that and that a closer examination of Kenneth Arnold’s description of what he saw don’t gibe with the objects being flying saucers at all.

In his book, The Demon Haunted World, Sagan noted, correctly, that Arnold described the motion of the objects as only “acting like disks or saucers being skipped across the water.” The objects were actually more boomerang-shaped. It was newspaper reporters who ran with the name flying saucer in their stories. Sagan goes on to suggest this is when the collective psyche of humanity was injected with the suggestion that something like flying saucers existed – and only then did millions of people start seeing them – his point being that they’re not real, but some kind of mass psychic projection, at best.

But since then, many in ufology have pointed to a number of indicators to suggest that flying disks have been sighted long before Kenneth Arnold, Roswell and 1947. Indeed, ancient cave paintings, tens of thousands of years old, depict disks flying in the air, as do artworks from the days of the Greeks/Romans and on through the Medieval and Renaissance periods.

Well, in this book, LEO DWORSHAK, tells his story of encounters with a large flying disk that landed in a field not far from his North Dakota home in 1932. The world’s top math geniuses tell us that’s 15 years before 1947. True, skeptics will pounce and say Dworshak published his book in 2003 so it was natural for him to adopt the flying saucer motif for the purpose of writing his fake or delusional book.

But for the moment, let’s say the hell with the dogmatic skeptics of the Church of Scientific Materialist Fundamentalism and talk about this offering, UFOS ARE WITH US – TAKE MY WORD.

It’s is a marvelous gem of a book that rings with a deep sense of authenticity. It’s written by a simple, honest man who grew up on a hard-scrabble farm during the grinding hard times of the Great Depression. The tone of the narrative is gentle, kind and straightforward. Shot throughout is an understated yet almost beseeching plea for readers to accept this story as nothing but the plain truth.

The events take place on a remote farm near the small town of Killdeer, North Dakota. This is a vast, wide-open area where the endless flatness of the Great Plains of the Midwest began to transition to a rolling hill landscape. The location is within the Bakken Formation which is among the most productive oil regions in the United States. Everything in Killdeer and the surrounding region today revolves around the boom and bust economy of the dirty oil business.

But back in 1932, the Bakken was untapped. This was farm country; it was sparsely populated and growing crops and raising livestock was just about everything. The Dworshak family were of German heritage. Leo and his younger brother Mike spoke German as a first language. When they went into town, they were teased and bullied for their broken English. They also faced hostility because of the awful events in Europe in the wake of World War I, and the rebirth and growing virulence of the militaristic German state of the early 1930s.

It was one fine summer day in 1932 when Leo, then about age 12, and his brother, Mike, about age 8, were out wandering the hilly countryside near their farmstead when then saw something remarkable. Leo describes their first encounter this way:

“It was a huge, round thing, as big as our barn at least. We just stood there gaping at it and began excitedly discussing what it was doing down there and trying to understand what we were seeing … it was silvery … It appeared to be perfectly round, not round like a baseball, unless you could kind of flatten a baseball a little bit an put a bump or blister on the top, but more round like a silver dollar.  I counted many different colors of light on it that came from a band around the edge.”

This initial, astonishing sighting would be only the beginning of a decades-long series of encounters with this magnificent craft. The experience would evolve from a close encounter of the first kind, to the second and third kinds and finally to a close encounter of the fourth kind.

J. Allen Hynek coined the “close encounter” terms but stopped at the “third kind.” It was Jacques Vallee who later added “the fourth kind” which he described as, “cases when witnesses experienced a transformation of their sense of reality.” That would be an excellent description of what happened to Leo and Mike Dworshak. It is interesting to note, however, that although Leo was transformed by his experience, he managed to remain grounded and led an entirely normal life of a small-town working man. Mike would later die fighting in the Korean war.

Leo and Mike would eventually make contact with the pilots of the UFO. They looked like men who were all-but indistinguishable from ordinary humans, except that they seemed to be near clones of each other. They were also such perfect specimens — with nary a blemish or slightest physical flaw — it seemed downright unnatural. The boys eventually engaged the aliens in intense conversations. The aliens spoke to them in perfect German. Mostly, however, they “absorbed” huge volumes of information via a psychic transfer process. The aliens imparted huge blocks of information and concepts directly into the minds of the Dworshak boys.

Now …

I took pains to mention the Bakken oil fields earlier because it speaks directly to what these extraterrestrial visitors were doing in North Dakota back in the 1930s, according to Leo Dworshak. He said they were deeply concerned about the cleanliness of the earth’s environment. They warned that soon – through the folly of mankind – this area and the entire planet would encounter difficult times because of the intense pollutions that would result from our industrialized, toxic culture.

In addition to the thousands of oil wells pumping crude from beneath the earth, this area of North Dakota is also coal country. Millions of tons of coal continue to be mined here every year and many utility companies –including my own here in northern Minnesota – remain ever eager to buy cheap North Dakota coal-generated electricity.

North Dakota has become one of the wealthiest states in the Union thanks to its vast abundance of super-dirty coal and the billions of barrels of crude oil currently being extracted and still waiting to be pumped out and burned – spewing tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

The fossil fuel industry enjoys almost total dominance over the North Dakota legislature and the executive branch – and over the people of North Dakota, for that matter – because so many reap the benefits of the fast money that can be made with hydrocarbon energy. The North Dakota economy has a destructive and toxic addiction to fossil fuels.

From this perspective, UFOs Are With Us – Take My Word takes on the aura of mythical warning that seems timed for release when it was most needed.

Warnings of ecological and environmental disaster has been one of the most common themes to emerge from the UFO community, especially among the abductees. They frequently report that aliens show them intensely realistic holographic videos depicting scenes of horrendous environment destruction.  The aliens say this is to be our future if we don’t change our ways.

Leo Dworshak does not get up on a soapbox to preach or rant and rave about the environmental disaster to come as told to him by the ETs. Rather, the theme is weaved seamlessly into the fabric of the story. The reader will absorb it automatically, almost in the same manner with which the alien visitors caused Leo and Mike to sop up telepathic information.

I don’t want to give too much away by telling you more because this is a slender book of just 71 pages and I eagerly encourage all to get a copy — if you can. I resorted to scrounging my copy via a used bookseller on eBay. I got it for $4. It’s short but has the feeling and impact of a much larger document.  

I put in among that special class of small UFO books, usually self-published by an experiencer, that rise above the normal clutter to become something special. A good example of another is EXTRATERRESTRIAL ODYSSEY by Roger Kvande who grew up in a rural area near the small town of Bagley, Minnesota. I review that book HERE.

Leo Dworshak died in 2007 at the age of 87. He continued to see and make contact with the aliens he met and befriended well into his adult life. He describes his relationship with them as deep and loving friendship. He held the UFO entities in awe, but they treated him as an equal and returned his feelings of profound and abiding respect.

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Ken Korczak is a former newspaper reporter, government information officer, served as an advocate for homeless people as a VISTA Volunteer, and taught journalism at the University of North Dakota for five years. He is the author of: BIRD BRAIN GENIUS

All NEW: KEN’S BOOK REVIEW SITE ON FACEBOOK: REMOTE BOOK REVIEWING