I really loved this episode.
I remember reading Communion in the early 90's as a young man and it had a profound effect on me. Although I found it rather fear inducing and utterly perplexing, it was responsible to a large degree in helping to oil the hinges of my mind doors, and crack them open a little farther.
I remember wondering about whether the "visitors" were physical or something else. It also got me thinking about and re-evaluating my own strange dreamlike ( nightmarish ) experiences as a child. (I am sure many children have similar experiences).
I remember on many occasions waking in the night, being physically paralysed (sleep paralysis?) and seeing shadowy beings moving around my bed, touching me and doing who knows what. I was unable to call out for my mother or move.
I also remember being told mentally during one of these terrifying episodes, by a woman in my minds eye, that I should project a golden shell like force field from my heart that would enclose my body and keep these entities out.
I did this and it worked (and I still do when I get the heebee jeebies), though I was still terrified. I could literally see these creatures touching the golden shell I was projecting, and being unable to get through it. It looked like a kind of TV static shell to me, but to my childish imagination, it felt all very real.
It also however, felt very dream like, and I always thought and still do wonder if it wasn't just the over active imagination of the sensitive child I was, and the difficult early life I had.
Whitley's book forced me to reconsider these experiences (whether real or imagined), as they closely resembled his in some ways and so many other peoples experiences. I never saw any " greys" though. Back then, from memory, the beings I saw seemed monstrous and not physically very big, but very shadowy. I can't remember any exact or clear form, which adds to the dream like feeling it had.
Over the years, like Many of us, I have come to adopt the notion that mind or Consciousness is the foundation or ground upon which all else is built, and not the other way around as my mainstream teachers tried to inculcate in me.
My experiences helped me to shun that notion much more easily than if I had to do it by reason alone, although reason is ultimately the foundation I use to support my belief in a mental universe. Such an understanding of a fundamentally mental universe means necessarily that I place more value and meaning on things, even purely imaginal things, than a cold hard materialist would.
As a result, if the above childhood experience was purely emanating from my own childish mind, it still carries with it tremendous value and meaning, as much as if it were literal aliens in a tin can flying saucer actually visiting me. I will never know if my experience was 100% childhood imagination, or if it was an intrusion by some independently existing beings from an extended realm or dimension, but this almost doesn't matter. There is an archetypal experience here that I imagine millions of people experience, and my sense is that there is some valuable information to be gleaned from it, whether about ourselves, or about the world around and beyond us.
I didn't really understand your question Alex, about Whitley's fly paper analogy. I didn't get from the interview that he was insinuating that a thirst for knowledge about the extended realms was equal to black magic.
I can see that if such knowledge is used to serve the ego (ones selfish desire to satisfy ones insatiable and ever growing personal whims, wants and desires), rather than help one escape from the endless ego rat wheel, then this is by definition would be some form of perversion of truth, black magic, dark living, an askewed life path.
However, the paradox here is that some knowledge of these extended realms is also necessary when it comes to pursuing a shrinking or reducing, if not shedding of the ego mind. Otherwise, what would the motivation be for such on undertaking?
Why for example, would one choose love and selfless (egoless) service over the selfish pursuit of personal gratification if One didn't have a clear perspective on the lay of the land and the ultimate destination of the paths we choose to walk across the landscape?
Surely a good map is essential kit for any traveller. With a good Map, the destination will be one of choice rather than accidental wandering and happenstance. But good maps cannot be constructed without exploration and inquiry.
I did not get that whitley was equating a thirst for knowledge with black magic from this interview, but the way you posed your question made it seem that this was what you thought ?