Interview with Lyssa Royal Article by James Sturn The following article is reprinted from The Stranger (September 20, 1994 issue), an alternative newspaper in Seattle Washington. The article is by James Sturn. Several times I've floated out of my body. Once, about a year and a half ago, I was lying in my bed, late at night, having just returned from taking a piss. As I lay there with my head under the covers I heard a strange humming/gibberish noise. Then I felt about half a dozen hands poking at me. It was exciting and scary. So it should come as no surprise that I am one of the increasing number of people who is curious about the alien abduction/contact experience. By far the most engaging, thought provoking, and useful books I have found on the subject are from a small press in Arizona, among them two by channeler Lyssa Royal. Admittedly, there were a few hurdles that I needed to clear before I could enjoy the material – for starters, the book covers themselves, heinous, cliché, new-agey covers of painted aliens. Secondly, the source of most of the text – channeled material from alien sources. I rolled my eyes at this and almost put the book down for good. But then I thought, "Why does this one word, 'channel' put me off so much?" So I decided to start from scratch with it. My dictionary has several definitions for channeling, including "any means of passage" and a "route of communication or access." Hundreds of artists and writers throughout the centuries speak of being informed by the muse (they aren't all being modest.). They profess that they are not truly the creators of their work, but are, rather, mediums funneling it out of the ether. Is this process not channeling? When Harvard professor John Mack writes about UFO abduction phenomena in his book Abductions, he reports several of his clients' stories. Each client speaks of information they received during their abductions. Is this not channeled information? Yet I was initially less skeptical about Abductions (Dr. Mack is a Harvard professor and Pulitzer Price-winning author) than about Royal's channeled information. I admit one reason for this bias is that Lyssa Royal has not been traumatized in the receiving of her channeled information, and so the material seems less credible. After all, trauma is sexy, emotional, and reeks of conviction. In the first paragraph of her introduction, Royal writes, "Many individuals distrust, dislike, or fear channeled material and may judge it prematurely. We ask that you read it not because it is or isn't channeled. Read it because the material presents an alternative point of view." Fair enough. After reading Visitors from Within and Preparing for Contact my skepticism quickly gave way to wonder and intrigue. Both books were extremely compelling and offered a perspective that you are not likely to find elsewhere. When I arranged an interview with Lyssa Royal, the co-author (along with Keith Priest) and channeler, I still half expected to find a kook – which is basically the stereotype I harbor for people preoccupied with UFOs. Instead I found a bright and candid individual who spoke with eloquence and lucidity. I talked with her from her home in Phoenix, Arizona. In 1979 you and your family were present at a UFO sighting. How old were you at the time and were you interested in UFOs prior to that experience? I was a freshman in college, so I had just turned 18.. Prior to that I did have an interest in UFOs. I was reading, throughout my childhood, books about UFOs, and I grew up in New Hampshire where one of the most famous cases from the 60s (the Betty and Barney Hill case) was very popular. So, I was aware of that. Can you briefly say what the Betty and Barney Hill case was? In 1961 Betty and Barney Hill were driving from Canada south into New Hampshire and they had what today what is called an "abduction" experience, complete with physical evidence traces on their car. It was also one of the first cases where regressive hypnosis was used in the retrieval of an abduction memory. This story was later made into a TV movie. In the field of UFOlogy, it is seen as one of the first cases that brings to the attention of the public the abduction phenomenon. So how did your family react to this sighting? My father and I always had an interest in those things. We would talk about it sometimes when we'd be under a starry night in New Hampshire. He was very quiet when it happened, and tried to give mundane explanations for it. But it was obvious that it was nothing mundane. My stepmother was very excited, she's more open to a lot of paranormal things. So she thought it was a really exciting thing. My stepbrothers were too young to really know what was going on. When I wanted to go outside into the woods to follow it they wouldn't let me. I was quite disappointed. How did it come to pass that you began channeling alien entities? It's not exactly something you can pick up at a vocational school. When I was in college studying psychology, one of the research projects I had was on hypnosis. So I learned how to put myself in an altered state of consciousness -- mostly it was used for stress management. So if you can combine an interest in psychology and hypnosis with an interest in UFOs, you can kind of see how the groundwork was laid. After I graduated I moved out to California and was exposed to another channel there, Darryl Anka, who channels Bashar, and that really opened me up to the whole channeling phenomenon. What do you mean he "channels Bashar?" Bashar is an extraterrestrial entity. Darryl is the channel. He's a friend of mine now, and he was very instrumental in my "awakening" if you want to call it that. How much overlap is there between the channeler and the channelee? That's a really good question, because I think there's more than what people realize. The message is only as clear as the messenger. As channels, we're responsible to keep ourselves on a path of personal growth, otherwise our own stuff can pollute the channel. We live in a culture that looks at channeling and UFOs very cynically. Does any of that cynicism seep into your mind? Or are you beyond that at this point? No, I think I'm my own worst skeptic, and I think that healthy skepticism is very important. So what I've allowed myself to do now [since 1985 when I began] is to allow the skepticism to be there, but I don't allow it to interfere with the channeling. So later I can go back and criticize what has been channeled, but I have trained myself not to interfere with the channeling process. How hard is it to integrate your work with your day-to-day life? Are you considered the member of your family whose "kickstand doesn't quite reach the ground?" The kook? [laughs] At this point, since I've been doing it for so long, everyone who knows me and is close to me already knows me as this. I don't have to deal with integrating people into my life who are not open to it. If I meet people who are not into this, I think that the first impression they get is that I, personally, am not kooky. What I do may be kooky, but I am not a kook. What is the most useful purpose of the material you channel? I put the material I channel in two separate categories. One has to do with extraterrestrials and one has to do with self-empowerment and personal growth. The information that is channeled about extraterrestrials to me has no value if it does not promote personal growth. For instance, I am not interested in channeling information about crashed saucers and underground bases and things that don't touch our lives as people, so when I channel the extraterrestrial information that is in my books, it is with the bent that we as a species need to understand our past. The extraterrestrial connection [can help us] to understand who we are now, so we can create a future we want, not only on earth but with the whole galactic family. Historically, paranormal or metaphysical topics have been magnets for snake oil salesmen. Timothy Green Beckly, "Mr. UFO" has published a lot of UFO material, including creepy reports of the Controllers, malicious aliens who secretly rule planet Earth, and about how Earth is just a big cosmic laboratory, and human beings little more than guinea pigs. Much of the material is conveyed in a tabloid-like fashion. Is any of this sincere, or is he just an opportunist, taking advantage of the UFO phenomenon to sell books, and audio and video cassettes, and boost attendance for seminars? I think it depends on the individual. There are some people out there who really do believe that stuff and therefore when they promote it they have integrity. Some people are taking advantage of it and, like we just talked about, the message can only be as clear as the messenger. For instance, if we have unresolved issues in life of a fearful nature, I as a channel will be more likely to channel fearful information. What's your take on all these UFO conferences? Do you attend them? I do attend and speak at conferences, but generally I'm considered a black sheep by the other presenters in the UFO field. That's because what I do can't be "proven" which is kind of ironic since UFOs can't be "proven" either! But I do think [UFO conferences] are important. People are hungry for them. However, a few organizers are more interested in making money than in having credible presentations. Much of the material presented is absolute garbage. There are also so many people out there with powerful and informative and transformational information that are being overlooked because they don't have the drawing power of the more sensationalistic presentations. . . . Do you have a private practice?. . . I'm doing this full time now, since 1990. Before that I was a secretary. . . In 1990 some things happened to me (it's a long story) that made me realize I needed to be doing this more. I do a lot of speaking. I do a lot of overseas travel, especially to Japan. Is the Japanese culture more receptive to the UFO phenomenon? In a way, yes. If I were to give 10 people in America an exercise to do to better their lives, maybe 3 of the 10 will do it. In Japan, 9 out of 10 will do it. They take it more seriously. They're more disciplined. If you think about it, that culture (for the most part) has had a belief in reincarnation for thousands of years. That one idea is enough to make their culture a little more flexible in some areas. Are there a lot of reports of abductions in Japanese culture? There's not a lot from what I can see. I have had clients that talked about it, but for the most part their encounter experiences are neutral or positive. Perhaps there are many abductions but given the cultural climate, less are reported. That's true. I think they are having as many encounter experiences as we are. It's fashionable here to report them now. It's not yet fashionable to report them there, although the Japanese people as a whole have very strong interest in the phenomenon. There are a large number of TV shows that focus on them. How much involvement do aliens have in our culture? I don't feel that they are present in our culture manipulating things. I think their influence comes from our reactions to their presence. Even if our conscious minds aren't aware of their presence, there are other portions of us that are. A good portion of the structure of society now is [due to] ancient alien connections. I know that is a strong statement but there are indications, if you look at any of the major ancient texts around the world, that extraterrestrial involvement is very strong in our past. How far off is the time when extraterrestrials will be acknowledged by society at large? I'd like to say I think it's going to be soon. It might be soon. There are indications, with things happening in many different directions, that the time is going to be soon. One thing is the congressman in New Mexico who is investigating the Roswell incident (a crashed saucer in government hands). That's one angle that may cause it to come to the forefront. There's another group, one that I'm involved with -- CSETI, the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Their research involves close encounters of the fifth kind, which is human-initiated contact. We go out in the field and attempt to make contact, and then we document the results. The results that organization has had are absolutely profound. So I think it's accelerating and I would not be surprised if we had acknowledgment by the end of the century. What kind of results are we talking about? I remember watching a 48 Hours show when they broadcast a segment about UFOs. The people in the group looked like a bunch of fools mistaking airplanes for UFOs. So when you say "profound results" are we talking intuitively, or hard core evidence? No, it was physically structured crafts. I'm glad you saw that episode [of 48 Hours] because my friend was one of the people who went down [to Mexico] on that research project. 48 Hours actually filmed these structured crafts, the producers who were down there called CBS to have them extend their stay because they were getting so much fantastic footage. We thought for sure that when everyone came back from Mexico that this was going to be the first time these ships were shown on television. When we saw the TV show we couldn't believe how censored it was. Why would CBS want to censor the footage? I think they got pressure from somebody else. Whether it's governmental or some type of quasi- or private military organization. Some body pressured them not to tell what really happened. This is sounding an awful lot like a conspiracy theory . . . [laughs] I know . . . I never really used to put a lot into that, except when I have a friend go to Mexico with a 48 Hours crew and these structured crafts are seen and are signaling to the group, [it's caught on film, then] outright censored. Not only that, but 48 Hours signed an agreement with CSETI that they would provide a copy of the footage to them [in exchange for being able to attend the private research outing], and now they're refusing. So you can interpret that as a conspiracy if you like, but those are the facts. There are government cover-ups, but there are also people cover-ups. A lot of people have a lot invested in keeping things the way they are, and major changes like this might upset the apple cart. Throughout human history there have been all types of mythological beings. Do you suppose aliens are just a creation of our collective unconscious that we're manifesting at this point in time, and eventually we'll move on from viewing aliens in the context that we do? That's a good point. Obviously the ETs exist outside of us, but in western culture we have separated from the magical part, the archetypal part of ourselves. And when you make a separation like that, those forces of the psyche and within the collective unconscious are stifled. They have to manifest themselves somehow. If suddenly, tomorrow, our entire society acknowledged the presence of extraterrestrial beings, then the way we perceive them would change dramatically. John Mack, like the UFO phenomenon in general, is getting a ton of press, but it seems no one is talking about the ideas presented but rather, "How can we take these people seriously?" I know. We've been so conditioned. It's amazing to think that these things are crazy. Instead of thinking, "How can this Harvard professor believe this? they should be thinking, "Wow! There must be something to it!" People are afraid of the subject and they would rather invalidate it than look into it. Article by James Sturn. Reprinted from The Stranger, Seattle, Washington. September 20, 1994 issue.
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