Using slides to illustrate his points - huge figures on the plain of Nazca visible only from the air (as is our own Uffington White Horse), stoneworkings, rock shaping and cut as easily as if it were butter - he gave a fascinating lecture although until near the end he said nothing new to anyone who has any knowledge of the subject or indeed anyone who has read his first book. Then towards the end he told us of a guy down Ecuador way who has found caves leading into a mountain which connect up with miles of caves within the mountain; these caves are manufactured, walls as smooth as silk, and filled with ancient objects. There are carved stones and pebbles littering the caves, gold and silver plate in quantity, a library full to the ceiling with metal paged books, on the pages unknown hieroglyphics (what tales to tell I wonder) in one place the solid rock carved into four storeys. All this inside a mountain.

Mr Daniken takes all this to mean that we were once visited by beings from another planet, galaxy or wherever, from the weight of evidence pointing to a race in advance of even our own civilisation (grimace). And that our benighted antecedents mistakenly believed these wonderful men in their flying machines when they said they were messengers from God. After a short break he came back to take questions from the audience. In the break I realised that he has not changed his hypothesis or extended it since Chariots of the Gods, surprising because anyone who has delved into the subject to any degree at all realises the story does not finish ten thousand years ago. If anything it had only just begun. The question period brought out a couple of interesting facts. Mr Daniken said that he believed in God but that the people / entities who gave Man the knowledge of God HAD NOTHING WHATEVER TO DO WITH GOD. That the strange beings that "ride the pearls in the sky", who presented themselves to our remote ancestors claiming to be Angels of the Lord were in fact only space travellers, I suppose like the Americans (wry smile). The question period came with the questioners showing themselves to be a bit more evolved in their own theories than Mr Daniken himself. Someone asked what he thought of Churchward's 'The Lost Continent of Mu' (this book written in the 1890s gives, I believe, conclusive proof of the continent Mu which existed in the Pacific Ocean hundreds of thousands of years ago. The book also tells of the American archaeologist Niven who discovered underground cities similar to the place in the mountain). The questioner asked whether it was possible that what Daniken spoke of were only remains of a past civilisation on earth, to which Mr Daniken replied, he had not gone into the subject so didn't know. Surprising if I may say so, when in such a field every possibility must be exhausted. Mr Daniken then introduced Raymond Drake (author of 'Gods and Spacemen in the Ancient East') from the floor. Mr Drake came out with the gem that he didn't believe Jesus Christ had really lived. A statement with which Mr Daniken agreed, the mind absolutely boggles. Earlier Mr von Daniken had gone to great pains (he even consulted an ASA man) to explain that what Ezekiel described 8,000 years before was in fact a space craft. Both he and Mr Drake accepted as fact writings from remote history yet viewed the modern writings of the New Testament as untrue!

Another interesting fact which came to light was that Mr Daniken had never seen a UFO but believed that what the ancients saw as signs from God and UFOs are one and the same thing. I agree. If Mr Daniken had studied UFOs or read very many books about them he would realise there is more to flying discs than meets the eye (slight smile) or his hypothesis. For even now thousands upon thousands of years later these magical visions are still being seen in abundance all over the earth. If he had cast his eyes skywards more often he might have seen something more than interplanetary visitors. How often do you look into the sky? These strange crafts, whose occupants in past times proclaimed themselves to be angels of God, are still all around us. Mr Daniken, if UFOs have been around for ten thousand years why haven't they contacted us? If they were Universal Star Trekkers the first thing they would do would be to communicate with us, like Capt Kirk yunaa. Why in ten thousand do they communicate as a spiritual and moral guide when we humans have so much more to talk about?

The interesting thing about UFOs is that they are not material objects in the sense our moon rockets are. I agree that our moon rockets are a first attempt at space travel (very primitive) and certainly we are going to have to discover some revolutionary form of transport if we ever hope to get beyond our own planetary system; but will we ever make UFOs? i.e. things that can appear and disappear at will, and most disconcertingly appear as gas, mist or apparently as real, shining, silver metal, flaming fireballs, twinkling stars, pillars of fire or cloud (believe it or not, the latter variety I myself have seen over South Shields), and things that appear on photographs when not seen by the photographer or when seen by the photographer appear on the photo as pyramids, crosses, columns under the sea, or worst of all credibility wise, don't appear on the photo, or other mystical signs and can vary in size from six inch white discs to a quarter of a mile long cylinders.

UFOs are accepted as fact by every government in the world but ask questions and you talk to a brick wall. UFOs tracked one of Gemini moon shots and were seen by the astronauts and ground control. A Russian moonshot was aborted when a cosmonaut freaked out after seeing something near his ship, what he saw was never disclosed. Why official silence? If it was just space travellers why not tell us?

While in Warminster recently I asked Arthur Shuttlewood what he believed saucers to be and after some remarkable stories, he said "to put it in four words, they are of God" (see footnote).

I have been fortunate since the age of ten, in seeing UFOs. Through diligent (four years ago I was a complete and dedicated atheist who believed UFOs were space travellers) research and (heaviest of all) signs in the sky, I reached the same conclusion. Watch the skies.

Of course, in this Rio-Tinto Zinc / ITT world of ours mysticism is not allowed to have any credibility so those of you about to throw this down, either fight your conditioning and read on or realise you are conditioned. We can't be allowed to see clearly that which doesn't fit our material product orientated society. Which might lead us to know that the goals we are taught to accept and live for are valueless. That things happen far beyond the pathetically small scope of society's owners is too much for them to accept, subsequently we are not allowed to treat too seriously things other-worldly. We are all the stars of our own movies but to realise and accept that there exists a director of all our movies is a task, a task we must attempt to meet in whatever way we can.

When reading mags I've often thought that writers used the discussion of somebody's ideas as an excuse for their own intellectual gambolling and now I stand guilty but I believe Mr Daniken to be off base about something of absolute importance to us all. UFOs are not interplanetary travellers but visitors / visions from another dimension. A dimension beyond ours but inextricably involved with us.

Those of you fortunate enough to have seen a UFO may realise you are being shown something which makes our material way of life pale into insignificance (are ghosts for the same reason?). Those of you who have not seen a saucer, watch the skies and remember these lines from the ancient Vedas:

"God appears close to those who wish to know Him,
Yet far from those who do not wish to have a knowledge of Him, God is the unknown.
Seek the unknown."

(Warminster is a small Wiltshire town that since late '65 has been the centre of thousands of UFO sightings. The photo shown was taken at Cradle Hill [and the UFO was not seen when I took it] the first week in July this year. I saw several UFOs in the week I was there but the best one a friend and I saw did not appear on an otherwise perfect shot.

Mr Shuttlewood is editor of the local Warminster Journal. He has been at the centre of the phenomenon since 1965. He has written three books on the happenings. Try 'The Warminster Mystery' as a starter.

The Warminster UFO Newsletter, if you want to know about recent happenings, can be got from Preston House, East Street, Warminster, Wiltshire.)

Bob