In reviewing and organizing documents from the BSRF archive at AFU I have now completed the file on Trevor James Constable (1925-2016), for many years associated with Borderland Sciences Research Foundation. I have scanned articles, interviews, booklets, photos and assorted documents including the correspondence file consisting of 206 letters, written between 1959-1997. By studying these letters and rereading the books and articles written by Trevor James Constable I have tried to solve some of the riddles regarding his UFO contact experiences in 1956-1957.
A internet search for Trevor James Constable resulted in 9,040 links, mostly references to his two books, They Live in the Sky (1958), The Cosmic Pulse of Life (1976), etheric weather engineering and infrared photography of ”sky critters”, invisible amoeba-like elementals often confused with UFOs. What many readers of these sites may not be aware of is that all this activity was originally inspired by and the result of Constable´s contact with space people. Few investigators have made an in-depth study of these decisive UFO experiences. Neither is there much information on his contacts in Thomas Brown´s extensive interview Loom of the Future, the Weather Engineering Work of Trevor James Constable (1994). Thomas Brown was director of Borderland Sciences Research Foundation 1985-1995.
Trevor James Constable was born 1925 in Wellington, New Zealand. As a lincenced Radio Electronics Officer he served in the Merchant Marine of New Zealand, Great Britain and for 26 years in the U.S. Merchant Marine. After emigrating to the United States in 1952 Constable became interested in the UFO enigma and read the classic books of Keyhoe, Wilkins, Jessup, Adamski and others. Fascinated by the prospect of contact with UFO intelligences he visited George Van Tassel who gave Constable instructions on how to contact space people and also warned of possible ill effects. Being an adventurous and practical man he did not heed this cautioning and spent several months in trying to open up communication with space people.
Experimenting with channeling without a competent teacher is not recommended. Constable learned this the hard way: ”… I did develop extreme sensitivity to telepathic impulses. I found that I can barely control the situation. In daily business life in the aviation industry, I would hear a sentence psychically before a client ever spoke the words physically. When the telephone rang, I knew who was calling before I picked up the instrument. A constant struggle soon ensued for control of my physical vehicle – myself against unseen interloopers…My difficulties were extreme, and I felt that I was slowly losing my battle to retain my mastery of myself. I bitterly regretted ever having meddled in UFO communications. The ”intelligences” into whose realm I had broken poured confusing rubbish into me.” (The Cosmic Pulse of Life, p. 48.)
I have not been able to determine what year Constable met Van Tassel. Possibly 1955, as the first result of the telepathic contact experiments were published (under the pen name Trevor James) in two small booklets, Spacemen – Friends and Foes, 1956. Publisher was Franklin Thomas, who together with his wife Dorothy, operated the New Age Publishing Company in Los Angeles between 1948 and 1959. They issued many of the classic 1950s contactee books. The couple also ran a small bookshop on Glendale Boulevard, where Thomas used to lecture on Friday evenings on various occult and new age topics. Thomas was an experienced esotericist who taught Constable how to control his psychic faculties: ”I had learned, through Franklin Thomas, how to sort out the otherworld telepaths. Those intelligences which would seek to communicate without controlling had what seemed to be valid information.” (The Cosmic Pulse of Life, p. 50). It was also Franklin Thomas who inspired Constable to study the teachings of Rudolf Steiner. Anthroposophy from now on became the guiding light and worldview that he always would relate too and promote for the rest of his life.
Trevor James Constable 1961. Photographed by Kerstin Bäfverstedt, former Swedish Regional Director of BSRF
In 1956-1957 Constable, together with his friend and co-worker James Woods, made many trips to various places in the Mojave desert in California, combining channeling sessions with infrared photography. The idea to initiate such a photo project was originally presented by a well known spaceman in contactee circles, Ashtar: ” ”The first and most essential ”wrinkle” we learned was the use of infrared film, which permits photography of invisible light or radiation. We obtained this information from Ashtar, whose early suggestion it was, before I terminated contact with him many months ago.” (The Live in the Sky, p. 218). The last sentence is certainly intriguing. Why would Constable ”terminate” his contact with Ashtar and other space people when he regarded these messages as valid and emanating from benevolent alien visitors? In all the documents I have studied there is no explanation for this decision.
The first individual to claim contact with Ashtar and other space people, with rather odd-sounding names, was George Van Tassel in 1952. According to Van Tassel these messages were not received with ordinary telepathy or channeling but relayed via an instrument referred to as adiphone. The information delivered to Van Tassel is of a very mixed quality as anyone reading his book I Rode a Flying Saucer can ascertain. But he also had physical contacts with space people and in my view was part of a psychological-sociological test made by a group of benevolent alien visitors in the 1950s. According to journalist and esotericist Paul M. Vest the space people used physical contacts, ham radio, clairvoyance and clairaudience in this operation.
The adiphon instrument mentioned by George Van Tassel was also used in transmissions to Constable: ”One of the most fascinating experiences occurs when the transmission is transferred from one space base to another. The beam can be felt to switch off, and then on again as the new entity appears. On one occasion Ashtar has brought his wife to this ”thought microphone” the adiphon and had her communicate with me.” (Letter from Trevor James Constable to Meade Layne, Round Robin, vol 12, no 4, Nov-Dec 1956, p. 7.)
The messages received by Constable are interesting and generally in accordance with The Esoteric Tradition and the teachings of the Inner Circle, channeled by deep trance medium Mark Probert. Ashtar refer to his homeplanet as the etheric Venus. Here a few quotes from They Live in the Sky:
”Question: ”From your statement that you are etheric, am I to presume that you have evolved beyond the stage of a physical and astral body”?
Ashtar: ”Correct. I do not possess a physical casing of the dense type such as yours. I am definitely etheric, as are all people on other planets in this solar system.” (p. 39-40).
Ashtar: ”Correct. I do not possess a physical casing of the dense type such as yours. I am definitely etheric, as are all people on other planets in this solar system.” (p. 39-40).
Question: ”When you become visible to our eyes does the person who sees you know that you are a ”converted etheric?”
Ashtar: ”Not as a rule. The conversion can be made so completely that a physical person encountering us thinks that we, too, are physical.” (p. 41)
Ashtar: ”Not as a rule. The conversion can be made so completely that a physical person encountering us thinks that we, too, are physical.” (p. 41)
Question: When you speak of making etheric matter visible at will, is this the way that George Adamski was permitted to take his now famous photographs?
Ashtar: ”Yes, Ether ships as they have been called on your surface, have been made visible to and for certain individuals, selected, upon your surface of whom Adamski is one. Normally the ships are part of the invisible world.” (p.46-47).
Ashtar: ”Yes, Ether ships as they have been called on your surface, have been made visible to and for certain individuals, selected, upon your surface of whom Adamski is one. Normally the ships are part of the invisible world.” (p.46-47).
Question: Why has the information you have given me been passed through me? That is, why have I been used as the channel for it?
Ashtar: ”This information is well known in occult circles upon your planet, and has been known for many thousands of years by those you term initiates and adepts.” (p. 170).
Ashtar: ”This information is well known in occult circles upon your planet, and has been known for many thousands of years by those you term initiates and adepts.” (p. 170).
Ashtar warned Constable that there were scores of impersonators and deceivers in the invisible worlds who used his name: ”He has frequently stated that many come in his name and under his name, and therefore that it is foolish to presume that because a message comes ”from Ashtar” it is automatically the truth.” (p. 161). This proved very true as after Van Tassel and Constable a large channeling industry appeared using Ashtar or Ashtar Command. George Adamski, critical of channeled communications, noted this phenomenon during his European tour: ”In Europe I encountered reports of two Ashtars, totally different in character, but each claiming supreme command over large numbers of space travelers. From such dubious sources have come promises of personal contacts, sometimes even with specific dates and instructions as to time and place.” (George Adamski, Flying Saucers Farewell, p. 113-114).
Trevor James Constable and Riley Crabb in Visa, California, June 1962
Although Constable all his life defended George Van Tassel as a genuine contactee he also voiced some critical views in The Live in the Sky. Constable agreed with Riley Crabb that Van Tassel was not enough discerning when inving speakers to his annual Spacecraft Conventions at Giant Rock: ”The major fault of George´s Conventions is that no effort is ever made to set aside, however briefly, the monotonous reiteration of these astral experiences with spacecraft, undergone by well-meaning but hopelessly disoriented sensitives… The book (The Live in the Sky) had just come of the press prior to the Convention, and I previously wrote to George and told him that I would appreciate the opportunity to speak to the people about these new discoveries. When Convention time came, George took care that I did not get on the platform. Some reference to him in the book, which were truthful and honest expressions of my own views disagreeing with his, apparently aroused his ire.” (Trevor James Constable, Think About This, Psychic Observer, May 10, 1959, p. 4).
George Van Tassel at Giant Rock
When They Live in the Sky was published in 1958 Constable was regarded as a heretic by the love-and-light mystics in the contactee movement, mainstream scientific ufologists and the general public. His statements that there was also dangerous (astral) forces involved in the UFO phenomenon coupled with his assertion that many UFOs were actually a form of normally invisible life forms (critters) was upsetting to many in the UFO community: ”During my 1957 experiments with telepathy, the ethereans with whom I had commerce conveyed to me, in a simplistic yet emphatic fashion suited to my ignorance of things cosmic, basic facts concerning the forces at work within the UFO phenomena that are anti-evolutionary and anti-humanity. This was, and is, unpleasant information.” (The Cosmic Pulse of Life, p. 210). In an undated letter to Riley Crabb 1974 Constable told of how in 1958 his book was deemed as crazy, even by his friends: … business executives, who knew me well, literally crossed the street to avoid talking with me, or being seen talking to me.”
After They Live in the Sky was published Constable abandoned the UFO movement and spent the rest of his life devoted to etheric weather engineering, inspired by Rudolf Steiner, Ruth Drown and Wilhelm Reich. In the beginning of the 1970s he began working on a new book, a synthesis of his mentor´s teachings and the UFO problem: ” ”My big new UFO book is a tyrant in my life at present, and the synthesizing of Reich, Steiner and Drown a Herculean chore. I hope I can retire from that field with its completion, and settle down to the intriguing realities of weather control.” (Letter from Trevor James Constable to Riley Crabb, Nov. 16, 1970). In the same letter to Crabb he disclosed what would be the spiritual message in this monumental tome: ”I am finishing up Puls of Life at this time, and am engaged in the most comprehensive exposure of the Ahrimanic powers and their workings that has yet been set to print. This is putting me to my limit in every way, because they surely want this book obliterated along with its author.”
This prophecy would prove devastatingly true. The manuscript to The Cosmic Pulse of Life was rejected by Harper and Row in 1974. On August 16, 1975 Constable married his second wife Linda Christine. What then happened was told to Riley Crabb in a letter October 16, 1975: ” On 2 October she jumped 22 stories in Honolulu to her death, while I was en route from New Guinea to San Francisco.” This was a personal tragedy and terrible blow from what Constable believed was a murder orchestrated by the ”Ahrimanic powers: ”Well, slowly I recover from the occult murder of my beloved spouse. Believe me, that was one hell of a cannon ball – and having to survive it out on a ship thousands of miles from home and all my control cords just about put me out of the body myself. That was the idea of course…Frank Thomas went through the same thing when ”They Live in the Sky” was published, but he got the job done before losing his body two months afterwards.” (Letter from Trevor James Constable to Riley Crabb, Feb. 26, 1976). The Cosmic Pulse of Life was finally published in 1976, ”Dedicated to the memory of my beloved wife Linda Christine 1944-1975 – My Eternal Star”. Later Constable found a new love in his third wife Gloria.
They Live in the Sky and The Cosmic Pulse of Life have become classics in UFO literature. Because of Constable´s theory of the critters or bioforms some author´s have misunderstood his writings, claiming all UFOs are invisible critters. Now and then Constable had to officially defend his actual position on the UFO problem. Here in a letter to author Andrew Collins: ”Where in any of my works is the statement you impute to me, that ”UFOs are not spacecraft at all, but bioforms… etc. etc.”? You will find in Cosmic Pulse of Life that the point is comprehensively deliniated that there are TWO distinct types of UFO´s which are MUTUALLY CONFUSED. These are the ether ships, and the bioforms. The confusion is intensified by the etheric power source of both kinds of UFO´s. This is the first qualitative element introduced into the UFO subject. You refer to this not at all – just critters.” (Letter from Trevor James Constable to Andrew Collins, Aug. 15, 1992).
There are still many unanswered questions regarding the UFO contacts of Trevor James Constable. In spite of my study of his extensive correspondence and articles I have not found out why he terminated his, obviously positive and inspiring, contact with the space people? Neither have I been able to find out whether his personal archive has been saved. I assume there must be more messages received from his space friends than so far published. Trevor James Constable was a brave pioneer in the UFO movement and I hope the ultimate biography of his life and research will one day be written.