Insight, understanding not always found in official reports, documents

By Steve Hammons

Sometimes things like government documents, news accounts and scientific investigative reports don’t always convey the deeper potential of forward-leaning research into human perception and awareness, as well as other interesting phenomena.

For example, the open-source files on Project STAR GATE provide plenty of educational information about research into extrasensory perception (ESP), anomalous cognition, remote viewing and transcendent warfare.

Much of this material seems quite helpful. And, it seems to be associated with several other types of anomalous, unconventional and leading-edge topics.

ESP research with dolphins seems particularly fascinating. Other studies indicated that humans might be able to perceive across time. Actually, there are several other aspects of “integrative perception,” “complementary cognition” and "transcendent power" that appear to open up new potential for many people around the world.

Yet, when we see these kinds of approaches in real-life practice, they may take many forms. While many modern researchers try to use scientific methods, other examples follow another path. They may be rooted in ancient understanding.

In my novel Mission Into Light, published in 2001, elderly Navajo and former U.S. Marine Corps “Code Talker” Joe Bear is thinking about his association with the Joint Reconnaissance Study Group, a 10-person joint-service military and civilian team based in San Diego. The son of Joe’s former World War II buddy is now an Air Force colonel and commanding officer of the group.

Below is an excerpt from Mission Into Light, Chapter 10, called “Navajo Intel.”

CHAPTER 10, NAVAJO INTEL

Joe Bear and his wife Maggie had returned to their home in the Navajo Nation in the northeast corner of Arizona. Their visits with friends in San Diego had been fun, but the trip was tiring. He still drove his pickup the full distance to San Diego and back.

He felt a need to make arrangements with certain friends. Code Talker friends. But for now, he sat on his front porch.

Joe thought about the things he’d seen and done in his time on Earth. As a young man, he and other Navajo Code Talkers were part of the networks of OSS, intelligence, and cryptography experts fighting the Japanese military in the Pacific. The Code Talkers went on dangerous missions and were often near, on or behind the front lines. Many of them did not make it back to the Navajo Nation alive.

The Code Talkers still alive sometimes got together. Some of them belonged to the VFW post in Gallup, New Mexico, just across the Arizona state line. A small modest museum in a Kayenta restaurant displayed memorabilia about the Code Talkers.

And yet, Joe often felt his duty as a Marine was not yet done. Old OSS and intelligence buddies from World War Two kept in touch from all over the country. Some of them helped put together the meeting they had planned.

Tom O’Brien was the son of one of his old Marine buddies. Grown up from the boy Joe remembered. And now an Air Force colonel in charge of an intelligence and research team in San Diego. Joe had a feeling this group was going to accomplish something good.

As he was thinking about these things and looking out toward the rocky hills in the distance, his wife Maggie opened the front door and came out on the porch with lunch time plates of mutton stew and two glasses of cold lemonade.

She put the food and glasses on the table nearby and silently sat down next to him. They had raised two sons, now grown and married with children of their own. Joe and Maggie were the grandparents of three girls and two boys.

They lived comfortably in a newer double wide factory-built home that had all the amenities. A satellite dish on the roof brought in dozens of TV stations to the new thirty-two-inch TV their sons had given them last Christmas.

Joe and Maggie had lived almost their entire lives on the Navajo reservation. When Joe was recruited for the Marines at age nineteen, Maggie went to San Diego briefly to be near him. Joe had often sent her letters from strange places in the Pacific, and the letters were frequently edited by military censors for security reasons.

Maggie took bites of the stew, sipped on her lemonade and reached over to touch Joe’s hand.

“What are you thinking about, old man?”

“Oh, those people on Thomas O’Brien’s team in San Diego. I think about what they are doing and what they might accomplish. I feel hopeful, but sometimes worried,” he told her as he picked up his lemonade and took a sip.

“They have enemies, don’t they, Joe?”

“Yes, wife, they do. Dangerous enemies.”

“They’re coming up for your meeting?”

“Yes. We’re going to take them to that old kiva in the hidden canyon we discovered. Maybe it has some power from the ancient times,” Joe speculated.

Maggie would also attend as well as their two sons, who would help with all the guests.

“Eat your stew, old man. It’s getting cold.”

Joe reached out and took the nearby plate and a fork. He held the plate of mutton in his lap and started to eat. He’d been eating mutton since he was a small child.

As a young boy he helped his family with the herd of sheep the family had. Both Maggie’s and Joe’s mothers, like many Navajo women, used the wool to weave beautiful clothes and blankets on old-style traditional looms.

Joe remembered the horses and dogs the family had when he was a boy. It was a good life. They lived in a traditional hogan back then. No modern kitchens, bathrooms, and carpet in those days.

Many Navajo families still lived in hogans, or kept one nearby their more modern homes. Even today, many did not have electricity or phones.

As they finished their lunch, Maggie started to clear away the dishes to take them inside to the kitchen.

Joe then made some phone calls to a couple of friends and confirmed a sweat ceremony for that afternoon. These men had known each other since childhood and through World War Two service in the Pacific. After the war, they had grown older, raising families, living out their lives on the Navajo Nation and sometimes traveling around the Four Corners area and the Southwest.

From their home in the Navajo Nation, they had watched the turbulence of the Cold War and Vietnam years shake the larger society of the United States. Assassinations, racial troubles, terrorist threats, had come and gone. They had also witnessed abuse of natural resources, extinction of animals and plants, weather changes, and natural disasters. Technology had made quantum leaps in their lifetimes.

INNER VISION

Later that afternoon, Joe and three friends met at a small hut-like sweat lodge. The rocks to be used for the sweat lodge were sitting on a campfire outside. Using a shovel, the four each carried one large, hot rock to the center of the small hut, then sat in a circle. From a bucket inside, water was poured on the rocks, causing great clouds of steam, and filling the lodge with heat.

Joe had suggested the meeting, and he led the proceedings.

“Great Spirit of all life, hear our words. We seek guidance from You. Our friends and our people want Your Path to be made clear.”

The four good friends then began a song, an ancient song of special medicine words. More water was added to the hot rocks. White clouds of steam again filled the air.

Joe closed his eyes and listened to his friends’ songs. Sometimes they took turns, or joined one another as the feeling moved them.

After twenty minutes or so, Joe started to see something in his mind’s eye.

Clouds. White clouds against a deep blue sky. From inside the clouds, something stirred. Joe tried to see what was inside, but could not. Then he relaxed, and watched, and waited.

Very slowly, a large, white bison stepped out of the cloud and looked straight at Joe. The huge animal then looked down, and gestured with his front leg, as if pointing down. In Joe’s vision, he looked down and saw the shape of the continent of North America. The bison then spoke to him.

“See how the land has changed, my brother.”

And Joe saw North America as it was long ago. Thick forests across all of the eastern half of the continent and into the central plains. This was the land long before the Europeans discovered it.

The only humans were the thousands of native tribes, clans, communities, and families. These people had spread and populated the continent from coast to coast, and from the frozen north to the Gulf of Mexico and beyond.

This vision triggered many feelings in Joe Bear. Strange feelings were swirling inside him. Sadness, grief, anger. But something else was moving him. The white bison again was looking at him, as if trying to communicate.

Joe tried to focus his vision on the face, the horns, the powerful body of the buffalo. The animal was calm and looked at Joe again, then started to glow, radiating a strange light. It again spoke to Joe.

“My brother, beautiful days are ahead. Nature and the Spirit have brought us along this river of life. Our land will be beautiful again.”

The buffalo was happy, Joe thought. That was a good sign.

The bison then gestured again to him.

“Your friends can help us, brother. They may take us home. Look here and see them.”

As the bison gestured down again, instead of North America, Joe saw a large cloud, swirling gently like a slow-motion cyclone. Inside the circling mass were millions of people. A brilliant golden light was shining on one part of the slowly spinning cloud. Part was in darkness.

“Your friends are here,” the buffalo said, pointing to a small bright spot in the cloud. Joe noticed other points and regions of darkness and light.

Joe had questions.

“How can I help them?”

“Look closer, brother.”

Joe then saw the faces of Tom O’Brien and the others as he did when he spoke to them in San Diego. He remembered looking into the faces sitting around the small table in the JRSG office at Point Loma. Joe heard his own words as he talked to the group about the Code Talkers and World War Two.

Then the scene suddenly changed. Those young people were now in Arizona. Joe could see pine trees. It felt like north central Arizona, south of the Navajo nation, maybe the Apache lands to the south. Or maybe he saw the Four Corners region of the southern Rockies. Maybe Ute country. Joe wasn’t sure, but he somehow felt it was Indian land.

In his vision, he saw Thomas O’Brien and these young people involved in a struggle. He saw danger and heard the sound of weapons. He heard O’Brien call out Joe’s name. Joe saw injured and dead people lying on the floor of a pine forest.

He then heard soothing words.

“All is well, my brother.” It was the white buffalo again. “Do you see?”

Joe then looked down and saw North America, the slow swirling cloud of people, and O’Brien’s people of the JRSG, all in one scene.

The play of light and darkness slowly changed, and the darkness faded away like the dawn of a new day. The swirling of the cloud gently stopped. The cloud and the picture of North America started to glow like the white bison.

Joe slowly opened his eyes. He was laying down in the sweat lodge, his body and the towel beneath him were soaked. His friends were also lying down and silently sleeping, dreaming, or having their own visions. One of his old friends was snoring loudly.

Joe slowly got up and walked outside. It was almost sunset now. A warm and gentle breeze dried some of the moisture from his body and hair. The old man raised his arms above his head and stretched. His old body had many aches from eighty-five years of life.

He drank from a canteen of water nearby and ate from a bag of food that their wives had prepared. One by one, his friends slowly awoke and came out of the sweat lodge to join him.

They passed around the canteen and the bag of food. As the four old men sat in the setting sun and relaxed, they started an informal debriefing. What kind of visions did each have? What was seen or learned?

Each had an unusual dream or vision that day. They compared the messages they had received. They tried to interpret images and words. They revealed to each other what their buddies had a need to know.

Joe told his friends about the bison, and looking at North America as if he were up in space.

The Code Talkers had once again completed an intelligence mission, like the days of their youth in the Pacific.