This passage can be found on page 331 from As A God Might Be, by Neil Griffiths.
Down below is my account of an experience I myself had, some years ago, and which I wrote down directly after it had happened.
"I just saw something which I can not explain. A typical UFO sighting, really:
2 vague balls of light in the sky, between yellow and orange in colour + drawings
First they were equidistant from each other, moving slowly from right (from the way I was looking at it) to left across the night sky. Then the first ball/ orb, began to wobble. Then this stabilized.
After this the hind ball/ orb did the same thing. then this one stabilized as well. All the while they were still moving slowly across the night sky. Then the balls began to move noticeably away from us, they got more distant from us, I was watching this with my father.
At this point the hind orb moved in such a way that the first orb was invisible for a moment,
as if you're looking at the bumpers of a car that is riding beside you, which speeds up and which then changes lanes in front of you, and all you can see at that point is the back bumper+ drawings.
All of this took place over the course of 10 seconds at most. though the balls moved slowly across the night sky, they were extremely fast.
These were not searchlights or anything like that. The sky was clear, there were no clouds, the stars were very visible and as I said, at the end the hind orb eclipsed the first one.
They weren't satellites; as the orbs were too big and moved too erratically.
They weren't planes as there was no noise and they moved too erratically.
They didn't move in random patterns, and those patterns, in fact, seemed intelligent.
It is incredible. I can not explain it. An unidentified flying object.
All I'm sure of is that this is going to be a good memory together with my dad.
All of this took place somewhere between 10 to and 5 to mid night, on the 17th of August in the year of 2012.
Levi"
So, that's what I saw.
The thing is that, at the time, all of the above happened too fast to enable thorough speculation, or even observation. We just saw. We were just looking at something, taking it in, in less than half a minute. And then it was gone and we went back inside, making offhand comments to the rest of the family about what we had just seen.
Ask me now what it was and I can't give you an answer. I refrain from looking at it too deeply.
I'm not sure if this is a conscious decision or not.
It might just be because to me this thing wasn't that special, regardless of what it actually was. Humanity is keyed to make the miraculous mundane. We are small and so what is large, we minimize. For all our fascination with God, religion and mythology, all our grand stories and explorations, despite all our pleas and prayers to witness something beyond ourselves, above ourselves, were we to be faced with something truly miraculous we wouldn't be able to see it for what it was, what it meant. We would dismiss it, unable to put it into our perception of reality. Or maybe it would be the opposite: Oh, this thing exists, it is there... okay then.
But it might also be that, faced with something we couldn't explain at the time, and in the full knowledge that there probably was a very boring explanation for what we saw, we didn't really want to know. We wanted to be fooled.
Because we saw this thing and we both got something out of it. This was special, and for seeing it, we were special too.
My dad, being deeply religious, probably saw the hand of God in the phenomenon; an affirmation of his choices and his beliefs. A pat on the back for all his effort.
And me too. I got something out of it too. Even though, yes, I still refrain from looking at it too much. Even if I refuse to analyze it, even if I refuse to accrue knowledge in a bid to explain it.
After all, here I am, at my own dinner-party, accessible to all and sundry, sharing my amusing anecdote to an audience willing to be entertained.
So, that's what I saw.
The thing is that, at the time, all of the above happened too fast to enable thorough speculation, or even observation. We just saw. We were just looking at something, taking it in, in less than half a minute. And then it was gone and we went back inside, making offhand comments to the rest of the family about what we had just seen.
Ask me now what it was and I can't give you an answer. I refrain from looking at it too deeply.
I'm not sure if this is a conscious decision or not.
It might just be because to me this thing wasn't that special, regardless of what it actually was. Humanity is keyed to make the miraculous mundane. We are small and so what is large, we minimize. For all our fascination with God, religion and mythology, all our grand stories and explorations, despite all our pleas and prayers to witness something beyond ourselves, above ourselves, were we to be faced with something truly miraculous we wouldn't be able to see it for what it was, what it meant. We would dismiss it, unable to put it into our perception of reality. Or maybe it would be the opposite: Oh, this thing exists, it is there... okay then.
But it might also be that, faced with something we couldn't explain at the time, and in the full knowledge that there probably was a very boring explanation for what we saw, we didn't really want to know. We wanted to be fooled.
Because we saw this thing and we both got something out of it. This was special, and for seeing it, we were special too.
My dad, being deeply religious, probably saw the hand of God in the phenomenon; an affirmation of his choices and his beliefs. A pat on the back for all his effort.
And me too. I got something out of it too. Even though, yes, I still refrain from looking at it too much. Even if I refuse to analyze it, even if I refuse to accrue knowledge in a bid to explain it.
After all, here I am, at my own dinner-party, accessible to all and sundry, sharing my amusing anecdote to an audience willing to be entertained.
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