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I don’t remember now where I got the reference for Omens of Awareness by David Tansley. It was published in 1977. It appears that there was a subsequent printing of the book later on and right now the book is quite expensive in the used market, although there may be a free pdf roaming about.
Some viewers who are more esoterically minded or into certain modalities of holistic healing, may recognize Tansley’s name. He was the author of a number of books on energy healing, Radionics and various eastern (Indian mostly and some Chinese) mystical teachings during the 1970s and 1980s.
He died relatively young in 1988. He was also well versed, or heavily schooled, in the Alice Bailey branch of Theosophy, and as the book demonstrates, had a fair understanding of Hermetic Occultism as well.
Omens of Awareness appears to be the only text Tansley wrote about paranormal topics and, according to him, the main reason why he wrote the book was to bridge what he considered to be the gap between the experiences of individuals claiming events of high strangeness (he doesn’t use that term) and mystical/esoteric traditions, which often display some of the same reported experiences (he notes that Vallee had already figured this out).
He was also inspired by Josef Blumrich’s book The Spaceships of Ezekiel, which argues that the prophet’s visions were actually UFO encounters. Tansley believes that Blumrich is wrong and the book is also an attempt to disprove this thesis.
Tansley had also accumulated quite a collection of personal UFO accounts from other witnesses himself, and had had some of his own experiences, so wanted to make a public record of them.
As a result, while he does summarize a wide variety of stories from already published accounts, demonstrating that he has a good acquaintance with the UFO literature at the time (mid 1970’s), he also provides first person accounts that had never been published–and probably never were again. Some of those accounts are quite valuable as we shall see.
Based on all his data and experiences at the time of writing, Tansley came to his own conclusions about the meaning and significance of the UFO phenomenon and tells the reader up front.
In short, while there may be many different points of origin for specific experiences (he doesn’t deny the possibility of extraterrestrial contact for example), the sum total of the phenomenon as a whole is precisely what Vallee has been telling us–i.e., the purpose is to awaken human awareness to the larger realities which surround it and from which it comes.
Sometimes this awareness must be done forcibly and in most cases the UFO experiences contain not only actual physical events (or effects), but highly symbolic content which can be understood if one is familiar with similar kinds of reports throughout human history.
After making this focus of his work and conclusions clear, Tansley then spends the rest of his text illustrating this with many, many examples.
I could be exhaustive about this–but am only going to provide a couple examples here and then go on to a couple more criticisms (which are the normal kinds of criticisms that one might make about such endeavors) before more than strongly hinting that you might want to read this book.
First, Tansley has, in fact, done his research. His text displays a good working knowledge of a wide range of mystical, religious, occult, early New Age and psychological texts, ranging from Jung and Reich to the Upanishads (Indian Philosophy), Theosophy (Alice Bailey) and The Golden Dawn to Edgar Cayce, Buckminster Fuller to Cathie, the New Zealander who believed that he had discovered the mathematical key to understanding why UFOs seem to show up in certain places all the time. He even has a decent working knowledge of the Seth Material and a certain Carlos Casteneda.
This is the foundation upon which he lays his equally prodigious knowledge of UFO literature–everyone from Keyhoe, Skully and Adamski to Vallee, Keel, Hynek and virtually all the principal contact and abduction cases that had been published up to that time. It’s really a smorgasbord for the UFO aficionado.
With these sources, Tansley is easily able to draw various connections between similar kinds of experiences found in mystical/occult literature and that of many UFO contactees/abductees, e.g. the changes in consciousness, the experiences of various types of light, encountering different kinds of entities, the messages, experiences of healing or injury–the UFO encounter as the beginning of a personal transformation on the part of the percipient.
He particularly is interested in the relationship between synchronicity and multi-level symbolism as a possible interpretative matrix–and demonstrates the possibilities with his retelling and reinterpretation of the Scoriton Mystery.
As a reminder, the Scoriton Mystery was an alleged encounter between Ernest/Arthur Bryant, an apparently unassuming man from South Devon in the UK and several reported extraterrestrials, all of whom looked rather like odd young personable men, who popped out of a spaceship on April 24, 1965. One of them introduced himself to Bryant using the name Yamski.
Famed contactee, George Adamski had died the day before and there was no way Bryant could have known that.
According to Bryant, this “Yamski” delivered a lengthy message which, upon reflection, by investigators, seemed to make reference to Desmond Leslie and Thomas Mantell, the former was another contactee who often hung out with Adamski, and Thomas Mantell was a pilot who had died when he had been scrambled to pursue a UFO in 1948 (he climbed above his oxygen limit and passed out-then crashed–the official story is that he was mistakenly pursuing the planet Venus).
For Tansley, Bryant’s experience demonstrates that Adamski’s experiences were not just fanciful creations, but were real in some way. Both Adamski and then Bryant were shown items that seemed to resemble Rosicrucian symbols, demonstrating that “other levels of existence are a reality and that the UFO experience is an aspect of penetration into those levels.”
Essentially, UFOs are expressing, engendering, manifesting and for some, opening the mind to, the greater levels of reality from which we all come. The whole thing is evidence of a modern mystical experience.
To many current readers, the Scoriton Mystery, which was investigated by Eileen Buckle and team, seems more like a PsyOps exercise, although granted, why Mr. Bryant would have been chosen for it is anyone’s guess. Yamski said that the underlying reason for the contact was that both Adamski and Bryant shared Rominy heritage–but what does THAT mean?
Of course, there’s then the curious case of Zigmund Adamski who was found mysteriously dead on a West Yorkshire coal pile in 1980 after disappearing for several days (his disappearance was also out of character and very suspicious).
Where he had been, how he actually died and ended up on the coal pile (which was 10 feet tall) and who “took care of him” in the intervening days before his death has never been determined.
And then the policeman, Alan Godfrey, who was responsible for investigating Adamski’s death, six months later, was called out to investigate reports of escaped cattle on an estate and had his own profound UFO encounter and possible abduction.
Obviously, Tansley doesn’t mention Godfrey for the events in Yorkshire occurred after his book was published, but they seem to form a strange bookend to Bryant’s encounter, an odd set of symbolic occurrences that, nonetheless, appear to involve real people, real cattle, real families, real deaths.
All of the strange synchronistic connections are true-though obscure–and might not seem so strange to us, except when one remembers that Omens was written about 50 years ago, and during a time when Vallee’s speculations were considered way out there.
Tansley was writing at a time when the a “nuts and bolts” interpretation held sway–so his observations were probably considered pretty “out there.” His approach seems much less strange now.
As if to bring the strange symbolic elements of UFO encounter home, Tansley tells the fascinating story of a UFO encounter in which the craft seemed to leave behind a literal pile of nuts and bolts–although of a style that were not common or native to the place they were deposited.
There are also some caveats that a critical reader will note now–in retrospect, that are worth noting.
First, he’s writing before the discrediting of Casteneda–so all of his analysis that uses said source needs to be seen in that light.
To remind the reader: in later life, Casteneda was found to have been a possible serial rapist and assaulter of numerous women, some of whom he kept in what amounted to a cultish like compound. He was also found to have plagiarized much of his “work” and made up, out of whole cloth, most of the rest of it.
He’s essentially referred to as a “cult leader” now. It is believed that after his death, two of his women companions may have committed suicide after disappearing into Death Valley.
There are plenty of reliable “shamanic” sources which can be substituted for the Carlos–and actually to greater effect since there are long traditions of “UFO” like experiences referenced in most indigenous traditions.
It being 1977, Tansley is also guilty of remarks that are, to put it delicately, racially and ethnically stereotypical and insensitive—a quality of the times.
Second, the influence of Theosophy is often very clear, in that Tansley often tries to make disparate sources “say exactly the same thing” in the spirit of Theosophical universalism, in order to make his point that the main and best explanation of the UFO phenomenon is that it is a signal that human consciousness is growing and evolving into a “higher state.”
For him, this is evidence of Bailey’s Externalization of the Hierarchy, so to speak-he’s particularly fond of her Cosmic Ray book.
Thus, for example, he tries to use elements of the Seth Material and Alice Bailey together to prove that these sources are saying the same thing about consciousness so that he can then apply these ideas to the changes in consciousness experienced by UFO percipients.
Basically, he’s cherry picking from both. A careful review of his quotations, which I did, demonstrates that his quotes are frequently taken a bit out of context–and anyone who is familiar with Bailey and the Seth Material knows that the metaphysical conceit behind each is quite different.
Still, it is interesting that Tansley knows enough about the Seth Material to quote from it. Most paranormal investigators are unaware of the fact that Seth replied to several questions about various paranormal topics, UFOs, Bigfoot, hauntings, possessions, over the course of years when the material was being produced. Many of Seth’s answers are quite provocative, and I may present them in a future episode.
Tansley interprets Cayce’s intimation that the current explosion of technological advances humanity has experienced is NOT the result of secret extraterrestrial knowledge but rather the fact that Atlantean souls are reincarnating with that information as implying that UFO experiences may be omens, portents or warnings trying to persuade humans to go another way.
When you position this interpretation with Seth’s contention that the story of Atlantis doesn’t lie in the past but represents a possible future–well, that is just interesting to think about.
Criticisms aside, there are a number of reasons to read this book anyway-
First, it’s an easy and fun read. Tansley has an engaging narrative style. He tells stories well and it’s really a treat to pick up a book, read a chapter, think about it and read another chapter.
Second, Tansley does have a treasure trove of previously unpublished accounts which go a long way in establishing one of his principal arguments for the relationship between the mystical, magickal and esoteric aspects of UFO encounter–i.e. the experience of synchronicity.
In fact, just my reading of the book triggered several synchronistic experiences in my own life that, at first, seemed unrelated (none of which involved obvious UFO experiences) but which are significant enough that several very profound internal changes have taken place–leading to external decisions which I’ve made that may alter my life course.
His attention to this aspect of UFO encounter is worth yours.
Third, Tansley dedicates a large chunk of one chapter to his experiences living in the same basic area of the Tujunga Canyon during the same time period as the women contactees Anne Druffel investigated, as detailed in The Tujunga Canyon Contacts.
As some of you may recall, I did a lengthy review of this book and these cases almost exactly two years ago (2022).
Tansley had relocated to the Tujunga Canyon region in the early 1950’s in order to go to college and eventually study medicine. He reports on the very rural character of the Canyon at that time and a strange woman who claimed she knew a man who came from outer space.
Tansley reports that, at that time, he was too involved with his studies to pay much mind to the reports.
By the early 1960’s he had moved to another part of the canyon, closer to his school, had gotten married and was a periodic attendee at household parties held by a man named Gene Burrows, who was an engineer for ABC network and at one point assisted in the televising of astronauts during the Apollo missions.
Burrows was into UFOs and claimed to have seen many of them over the canyon and the surrounding mountains. Tansley claimed that he still didn’t pay too much attention to any of this at the time because he was too involved in studying for his state medical boards, although he does admit he saw something once.
Another attendee was a man named Gene Dorsey (two Genes here) who apparently had had many strange sightings and paranormal occurrences all of his life.
According to Tansley, Dorsey was just a simple business man–very pleasant and unassuming in his manner, who ended up getting involved in all kinds of strange things, UFOs, strange men in suits, disappearances and reappearances of other witnesses, and eventually even George Adamski, who actually mentions Dorsey at the end of Flying Saucers Have Landed.
Tansley recounts some of Dorsey’s reported experiences and wonders why he wasn’t so interested at the time, since Dorsey’s encounters bear so many of the hallmarks that would fascinate Tansley later.
This little bit of history that Tansley recounts places the Tujunga Canyon contacts into a larger, proper context. Tansley seems to confirm that many people were seeing things at the time, in that place where a series of women would later report their own experiences. There are details in his story that interested local historians might be able to investigate further.
While I was reading the book and organizing this blog, I was contacted out of the blue by a young reporter out of LA who wanted to get a few statements from me about my Tujunga Canyon blog. How’s that for a synchronicity?
So, Omens of Awareness is a book worth getting and reading, despite its flaws (which are mostly due to the times). Tansley was more optimistic about human potential than we are now, so, there is a kind of irony in reading his hopes for the future. There are moments of jewel like precision in his analysis that might still prove useful–and some of his personally collected accounts are amazing.