Excerpts of Breakthrough
( Whitley Strieber's New Book )

Mr. Strieber is a member of the I_UFO system which Glenda Stocks helps to coordinates. For its members Mr. Strieber posted some excerpts from his new book, released on May 21st (1995) and Glenda sent it to her SNET mailing list on Internet. As one of the most famous UFO abductees, I feel it is important to follow his process as we can learn a great deal about the 'Visitors'. Also I think that Mr. Strieber, as a famous author, helped many other people to feel free to come and share their own abduction experience as we try to understand what it all means. He received thousands of letters from people after his book, "Communion". So lets see what Mr. Strieber will be sharing with us next.

Illinois

From: gs@rochgte.fidonet.org (Glenda Stocks)
Date: Wed, 10 May 1995 13:59:36
Subject: Strieber's Breakthrough
To: snet-l@world.std.com

* Forwarded from "I_UFO"
* Originally from Glenda Stocks
* Originally dated 10 May 95 12:58:34

I have written a new book called Breakthrough which is a follow-up to my books Communion and Transformation. In it, I have, among other things, objective proof that the visitors are real. I've prepared a little sampler of it free for anybody who wants it. It is a simple text file. There is a slightly more elaborate multimedia version available on C-Serve (New Age Forum B, Communion Library Section), also free.

I mostly lurk this newsgroup, and find it really interesting. Anybody interested in communicating with me directly, I'm at wstriebe@interserv.com.

BREAKTHROUGH SAMPLER
TEXT ONLY VERSION
Copyright (c) 1995, Whitley Strieber
May Not be Reprinted Without Permission.


The media usually rips me apart, so these early reviews are surprising.

Fans will be captivated; others will be skeptical or wonder what it all means.

--Publisher's Weekly

He presents some highly convincing evidence of a government cover-up regarding UFOs.
Strieber's purported proof of alien visitors will at least give you serious pause.

--Kirkus Reviews

TEXT OF THE SPOKEN MESSAGE IN
THE MULTIMEDIA BREAKTHROUGH SAMPLER

Breakthrough is probably among the strangest books you will ever read. I think that this is because it is an honest account of contact with people and a culture very different from our own, but obviously very concerned with us, in their own way. The book contains proof that they are real, and one respected book review, the Kirkus Reviews, has already stated, that it will give you pause.'

Breakthrough is very different from most books about visitors and aliens. First, there are many named witnesses who are willing to step forward.

Second, it is not a horror story, but rather the story of a struggle that remade a man intellectually and spiritually.

In this sense, it is much more like real life with the visitors than the scary stories that come out of the UFO community. Only a small percentage of people who wrote me told such stories. But obviously, we should proceed down this very new path with caution. But also, I think, with curiosity and love. Welcome to Breakthrough.

====================

SAMPLES FROM THE BOOK

The Introduction is called SOMETHING VERY NEW

Steadily rising over the past fifty years, a chorus of voices has been claiming that unidentified flying objects are real and mankind is coming into contact with extraterrestrials. Other voices, as loud or louder, have claimed that this is all nonsense. As the evidence has built, official denial has become more strident. At the same time, the number of people who do not believe the government, science and the press has grown until it is now a substantial majority.

One of the reasons is that the denials are not convincing. Another is that more and more people are having the contact experience. Thirty years ago, practically nobody knew of a person who thought they might have encountered visitors. Now, most of us know, or have heard of, such a person. And we also know that this person, in the vast majority of cases, is as normal as we are.

PUBLIC PROOF Comes In Many Forms. This Is One

In February of 1988 my book Transformation was being bound and shipped. Thus, nothing in the book could now be changed, and only I, my editors and some friends knew its contents. Reviewers were just beginning to get copies. In the second week March, a first few books would appear in stores in the larger cities.

It was at this precise moment in the life of Transformation--after it had been finished and could no longer be altered, but before the public knew about it--that the proof came.

On February 27, 1988, eighteen months to the day after the incident of the nine knocks at my cabin that I reported in Transformation, but before they could have been publicly known, a large number of people in Glenrock, Wyoming were awakened at 2:45 a.m. by a series of nine knocks in three groups of three on their cars, on the sides or roofs of their houses, on their doors. The Glenrock Independent reported on Thursday, March 3 that "strange, unexplained noises interrupted the slumber of many Glenrock residents early Sunday morning. The three part series of three dull thuds at 2:45 a.m. was reported by many residents who believed it was made by direct physical contact on the outside of their dwellings."

In other words, despite the near- simultaneity of the sounds, numerous people thought that their individual homes were being affected. That they all heard the sounds at virtually the same time is supported by the sudden surge in police calls. Residents hearing the knocks, "discounted the possibility of a hoax being performed on a seemingly random number of houses. The residents quickly either looked outside or physically inspected their property..." A UFO was also observed in the area.

In the end, the Independent said, "the UFO, like the knocking, remains a mystery."

A careful investigation that included confirmation by the National Earthquake Center in Colorado that there had been no seismic activity in Glenrock that night further substantiated that the visitors had really been there, and had created this subtle proof of their existence in a manner that was tailor-made to be explained in a book.

====================

A Fully Conscious Witness Sees
A DARK, REFLECTIVE EYE

A witness called Raven Dana became the first person I'd ever heard of to touch a visitor while in normal consciousness. She had face-to-face physical contact which, incredibly, was corroborated by another witness, Lorie Barnes. It happened at my cabin in upstate New York when a documentary film crew was present. Although they did not get footage of the visitors, some of them also had encounter experiences, much to their amazement.

I asked Raven to remember back. "Could you describe what happened that night?"

"Well, the first thing I remember is waking up because the automatic lights had come on outside. I looked out the window, and then opened it because I was feeling hot, even though it was kind of cold out. Then I fell asleep for a while. Then I woke up again, because something I thought was a raccoon or a skunk or a cat had come through the window, as if something had stepped in onto the window ledge and was coming down onto the bed, like an animal or small child. I felt it pressing against my leg."

"Did you know that the window had a locked screen in it?"

"The thought never even occurred to me. My first thought was, oh, great, if I move I'm going to get skunked."

The mind seeks the normal, always. The stranger the event, the harder it tries to wend its way back to what it knows. "How heavy did you feel that this object was?"

"Small dog, large cat, small child."

We have cats, but we'd left them in our city apartment because there were going to be so many people in the house that weekend. "What weight, would you estimate?"

"Maybe about twenty to forty pounds, hard to tell. But a definite sense of weight, and I could feel it stop moving suddenly when I woke up. Like it had sensed it and stopped moving. I had the feeling that if I was very still I could see it before it jumped back out the window."

"And what happened then?"

"I very slowly turned my head, until I could see the outline against the window."

She had known that something was there, but unlike me had not been plunged at once into terror. I have always envied Raven Dana her poise in the face of this experience. But I must also add that she has reported her share of fear, as have we all. "What kind of an outline?"

"Like a small child."

"How tall?"

"It was crouched. In that position, two and a half feet. It had a knee bent and a foot on the bed."

Her memories remained detailed, even after all this time. It was fascinating to talk to her, to look into her eyes. She'd been so close to them, so very close. "An aggressive crouch?"

"It wasn't an aggressive crouch. More frozen, like it hadn't expected me to wake up. That kind of a crouch. I wanted my eyes to adjust to the light."

I reminded her that it had been cloudy night, but that there was a fair amount of ambient light.

"Well, I could see, but not a lot of detail. I was very acutely aware of its presence in a way that I can't physically describe. Except where it was touching my leg, I could sense a sort of electric charge. Not unpleasant. I could feel it through the sheet. It was the kind of sensation you might feel if your hair was standing on end, or if somebody was holding a tuning fork against me."

"Any other sensation?"

"Light pressure. Like a small child or animal. I remember thinking how normal this seemed. How much like an animal this was. There was an incredible awakening of my own animal nature. At that point, I thought, should I get up, get out of the bed, or what? I didn't want to frighten it, but I was a little frightened myself. As I was thinking, 'what do I do,' it raised its hand. I could see the outline against the window."

"At this point, what exactly had you seen?"

"The outline, and when it turned its head, I could see the cheekbone--a high cheekbone-- and one of its eyes. A long, black eye."

I have thought long and hard about those eyes. Why are they like that and--above all--why do they have that effect on us? Those eyes take you to your conscience, those brilliant eyes. "What sort of eye and face did you see?"

"A little bit longer than usual, mostly human-looking face with a bald head. The eye had no pupil. Just a dark, reflective eye."

I Got Thousands of Letters From THE HIDDEN CHOIR

From the publication of Communion in 1987 until September of 1994, I received 139,914 letters. Between my wife, myself and our secretary, we read them all. Personally, I have read about forty thousand pieces of mail. We saved a representative sample of about thirty thousand, eight thousand of which have been retyped and mostly scanned into computer- readable format. This was paid for by the Communion Foundation, which is a private foundation funded by me out of earnings on my books. As far as possible, we answered each person, at least thanking them for their effort.

The letters have not been statistically tabulated or professionally analyzed. This awaits both very substantial funds and access to the scientific professionals needed for the work.

We have created some rough statistics regarding our letters. Eighty percent of them reflect either positive encounters or encounters where the visitors seemed neutral. Sixty percent specifically mention fear. Twenty percent report negative encounters. Three percent specifically mention hypnosis by UFO researchers, and nine out of ten of these perceived their encounters as negative. (This is probably not an outcome of hypnosis. These people sought help because of their bad experiences.)

Most witnesses are articulate, concerned people who are very genuinely puzzled about what has happened to them and are seeking knowledge.

I have received letters from many prominent people, including military officers from Australia, Belgium, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. All of these people have been guaranteed total confidentiality, and in cases where it has been asked that no record of correspondence be kept, as was the case with a general who had encounters along with his wife and children, the request has always been kept. Most of my correspondents were writing not to get an answer so much as to clarify their own memories and gain the satisfaction of telling somebody else what had happened to them.

Something's Rotten Behind the Scenes and

====================

CONGRESS SMELLS A RAT

This is a brief section of an interview with a congressional aide who has been privately investigating the cover-up since 1992. Breakthrough is the first time he has spoken out about his findings.

One of the most interesting things that he has pointed out involves the fact that, since congress has not been duly informed about the coverup, it is illegal. Everybody who is engaged in it is party to a felony, whether they have signed a National Security Oath or not.

"If it is deliberate disinformation," the investigator said, "then I think it's probably a violation of the law, because propagandizing the American public is forbidden by statute." He continued, "my sense of this is that some of what has gone out is probably disinformation, and it's very troubling to me. If there is an official kind of locomotion to this, that officials are orchestrating this, then we are in a very serious situation. They are in violation of the law, and whoever is responsible for it is guilty of a conspiracy to defraud the American people. It's a problem area that troubles me. These people may just be quacks who have been in the military. But if there is a concerted official effort to confuse the public about what's going on, there are serious violations of the law involved."

With regard to the Roswell Incident, he concluded that, "based on what I've read about it and the investigating I've done, the evidence is almost overwhelming that this debris was not a balloon and it was a sophisticated device of the great importance to the national security establishment. There has never been any kind of a briefing or explanation to the congress that it was anything other than a weather balloon or another known object. The weather balloon story is false. I'm driven, given my investigation, to conclude that this was not American, it was not under our control, and it was of great interest to us. Whether it was terrestrially based or not I do not know. The fact is, that something happened of great importance and it was covered up. It was covered up in a way that indicates a very concerted, organized effort at the highest levels to do so. Given the statements of witness and all the other evidence, one is led to believe that a security event of the first order occurred. That is my conclusion."

My Own Conclusion is called AEON

It should be understood clearly that the characterization of the visitor experience as fearful and evil has four sources:

1. People who want to create the impression that the visitors are Biblical demons.

2. Disinformationists who want to spread fear as a control mechanism.

3. UFO researchers who have only had contact with the small number of people calling for help.

4. Witnesses, like myself, who have had a hard time, at least at first.

Where do the visitors fit into our future? Wherever we want them to. They stand ready to respond in any way they can. I see no reason why scientists, gaining contact with them, cannot expect to obtain a great acceleration of all their disciplines. I think that many ordinary people are going to discover that they possess the potential to lead extraordinary lives.

My method of getting to the visitors has always been to indicate my availability by challenging my fears and maintaining a meditative and contemplative state of mind. As more and more of us turn our faces toward the them, I anticipate that they will become less secretive. As we embrace our potential by demonstrating that we can make use of it, the pressure will get less and we will finally begin to see who is really behind those fearsome masks.

If my own experience is any example, the visitors are prepared to give us the exact minimum amount of knowledge that we need to do things on our own. They are not here to carry us, but to tempt us into walking, which is why they will always stay just out of reach.

I suppose that science will remain institutionally in denial for some time, but I also know that there are already a few physicists who are struggling with their own contact experiences, and I expect that their secret discovery that the visitors are real will soon begin to spread through the scientific and academic undergrounds.

The most difficult thing that our intellectual community will have to face is not that very real visitors of many different kinds may be here, but that physical being has this enormous unguessed dimension that the past identified as the soul, and the Age of Reason rejected as a source of superstition and religious enslavement.

I hope that this BREAKTHROUGH sampler encourages you to try the book.

Thank you for giving me your valuable time and attention. For what it's worth, I might add that six of the first twenty readers had contact experiences during or after their reading of the manuscript. If you want it, I hope you get the same.

====================

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Mr. Strieber welcomes e-mail from other people interested in communicating with him. His new book started selling in the stores on May 21st, 1995.