Gryphons! Background Notes

In his 2006 book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, Daniel Pinchbeck talks about a subject that might be useful here for this series. At first glance one might think what do the "Grays" of ufology and Gryphons have to do with each other? Hopefully this will illuminate that question. From pages 142-144 of 2012: "The Grays are analagous to bacteria, but operating on the level of the psyche. Earthly bacteria derives energy from breaking down complex organic compounds that they take in from the enviorment. The visitors seem to be entities that sustain themselves from the negative emotions, such as fear and anxiety, emanated by the human nervous system and energy body. Just as earthly bacteria play a crucial role in the global eco-system, we may eventually understand that our infraterrestrial intruders occupy a necessary niche in the ecosystem of consciousness, is it develops or decays."

"Are the visitors "real" or "imaginary"? They are both, and they are neither. Like quantum phenomenon, they do not exist or not exist, they also do not exist and not exist, nor do they both not exist and not exist. According to Dzogchen, a tradition of teachings and practices linked to Tibetan Buddhism, ultimately there are no entities. Any entity only possesses relative reality, including ourselves. Overcoming dualism is essential to Dzogchen, as Chogyal Namkai Norbu writes in Dzogchen: The Self-Perfected State: "Duality is the real root of our suffering and all of our conflicts. All our concepts and beliefs, no matter how profound they may seem, are like nets which trap us in dualism. Where we discover our limits we have to try to overcome them, untying ourselves from whatever type of religious, political, or social conviction may condition us. We have to abandon such concepts as "enlightenment," "the nature of the mind," and so on, until we no longer neglect to integrate our knowledge with our actual existence."

"Entities who manifest in other forms of conciousness, such as the Grays, are, at the same time, separate from us and aspects of our psyche. We are the ground for their manifestation, and it is only by attaining a nondual perspective that we can understand them."

"Reality, according to Eastern mysticism, is maya, illusion-a tonal tapestry, or spectrum of vibrations called, in the Mayan tradition, tlalticpac, the dream-world of Earth. There is, according to Dzogchen, neither being nor nonbeing. However, there may be an infinite number of relatively real entities, possessing varying forms of conciousness. Overcoming dualism, we can recognize such beings as fractal shards or autonomous archetypes of our own psyche, as well as self-directed entities undergoing their own forms of evolution."

"From a nondualistic perspective, it makes sense that some encounters with the Grays are neutral or positive. Betty Andreasson, a woman whose accounts of abductions were published in the 1980s, described a classical mystical vision in which they Grays showed her a giant golden phoenix that was consumed by a flame. In her descriptions, and many others, the intruders reveal an ambivalent polarity. Monsters produced by "the sleep of reason," they have a necessary part to play in the evolution of human consciousness-the process of psychic transmutation that alchemists called the "Great Work."

"Connected to our technological development, the Grays embody a malignant, supersensible element lurking beneath our fascination with mechanization, revealing the irrational basis of our constricted rationality. They also have lessons to teach us. As the critic Lewis Mumford noted, "Our capacity to go beyond the machine rests on our power to assimilate the machine. Until we have absorbed the lessons of objectivity, impersonality, neutrality, the lessons of the mechanical realm, we cannot go further in our development toward the more richly organic, the more profoundly human." Like transhumanist zombies, the Grays embody the reductive perspective that sees everything-matter, genes, human souls-as resources to be used for the purposes of control and domination. In this way the visitors serve as a warning, as well as an innoculation against a nightmarish fate we can recognize, and reject, in the time that remains to us."

"...According to occult tradition, humanity has a responsibility to all of the elemental beings, those other forms of consciousness that express themselves through the natural world. We are supposed to learn to work with the elementals and, also, alleviate their suffering-it is clear from the abduction accounts that the visitors are suffering...They are intelligent and sentient, hence aware of their exiled status. Unable to escape their de-souled condition,they desire to draw humans into their lower world, sustaining their half-lives on our subtle energies. They appear to be utilizing their dream-world technologies in a serious and desperate attempt to find a way out of the cul-de-sac."

I wanted to include this bit from Daniel Pinchbeck's book not only because it is one of the best explanations or theories about the "Grays" that I have ever read (I would be very interested to know what you think)-not necessarily all of our "visitors" by a long-shot. But I also thought this part of his book goes a long way towards explaining the thinking about how something (including us) can be real and not real, or have a relative reality.

These paragraphs from 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl explained in a lucid way not only what and why the "Grays" may be doing here when they visit us-but also gave a wonderful overview of how to look at the "imaginal realm" -the "real" and "unreal" at the same time world, where not only the Grays may come from, but perhaps Gryphons, Dragons, Garudas, Elves, Gnomes, Bigfoot, etcetera-and maybe just maybe this is the realm where our so called "myths" spring from and perhaps we humans ourselves! I say our "so called myths" because one thing I am starting to realize is that it seems that so many "myths" are being played out in our so called "real world" {:-)>{ in "real time" right before our "real eyes"! All the best to anyone stopping by and I hope to have the main "Gryphon" article here in a couple of days. Thanks again for your wonderful comments and links!