As people send me reports of the latest crop circles, I’ve been trying to sort out my thoughts in order to respond. Truth be told, I’ve stopped paying attention. However, that doesn’t mean I’ve joined the disbeliever camp. What I see now, that’s no different from what I saw when I was deeply involved, is that something inexplicable is going on. The mystery is the core. You can’t get behind it to dispel it. There are things that occur in the formations which within our terrestrial parameters cannot be. Like biological changes to plants and chemical changes to soil. Like plants bending when they should be breaking. Like electrical devises going haywire.
It was very exciting in the early years when we were enthralled by the mystery, and what happened was that humankind, exercising its penchant for meaning-making, developed a mythology rich in detail about the many aspects of what was showing up. Imaginative people teased out intricate messages and saw into presumable intensions, weaving everything in a web of enthusiasm that people who were paying attention were swept into. Glorious, delightful, intriguing possibilities were speculated about so charmingly that there was a passionate buy-in to a new reality.
The ugliness that prevails now in the relations among the relatively small cadre of people who are the bedrock of the croppie world killed the enthusiasm. The reality bubble of a glorious adventure into the mysteriousness of this awesome universe burst. Its center could not hold. The world of magical reality depended on the players being in its thrall and then it was a very good time. But it is gasping now, too far gone to be revived. The strands that wove it are separated, scattered everywhere. There is no one to turn to for guidance or advice. In the fog of skepticism that has descended, no clarity about distinguishing the inexplicable from the human-made exists. No good-will flows.
Humanity has advanced in major leaps by overcoming catastrophes. But, by our shared excitation and by a humility we would have experienced as we engaged with a higher order of reality than the rapacious one we are in, the circles offered a gentler way. All we can do now is pray for something else to come along that is so beautiful and so inspirational that it captures our fancy to lift us out of a deadening sadness of egos and superficiality before something so horrible happens that progress comes from having to reconfigure our world — or worse, where our capacity for destruction descends us into an abyss from which we cannot emerge.
My talks now will be strolls down memory lane. They will be stories about a bygone era, when, for a few shining years, there was a hope for humanity. And they will be invitations to look for whatever might be coming along next that could open our eyes to how magnificent the universe is and to the privilege of being residents in it.
For a sense of how it used to be, my documentary, What on Earth?, that got a good review in The New York Times, streams for $2 on Vimeo: www.cropcirclemovie.com