Visitors From Outer Space

This isn't any old domed ceiling you are looking up at. This was taken from my iPhone Friday night, lying on a quilt on a wooden floor, seemingly looking down. I was near Joshua Tree National Park in the Mojave Desert with two friends to view the Perseids meteor shower. And what more fitting place for a viewing than the site of the "Integratron," inspired by visitors from Venus?

In 1947, in his late thirties, George Van Tassel left his job as an aircraft inspector and headed for the desert to operate his own landing strip, cafe, and dude ranch. In 1951, he was transported astrally to an alien spacecraft, where he met the Council of Seven Lights, and in 1952 visitors from the planet Venus dropped in.

The upshot of this meeting was a new building project that was to occupy Van Tassel the rest of his life. Built upon an energy vortex, the Integratron is an all-wood (no nails) combination rejuvenation chamber and time machine - 38-feet high and 55-feet in diameter - based on the design of Moses’ Tabernacle and the King's Chamber of the Great Pyramid, the writings of Nikola Tesla, and telepathic guidance from the Venusians.

The project was funded by UFO conventions that Van Tassel staged over the years. He completed the structure in 1959, but continued to tinker with it till his death in 1978. Its current owners operate the Integraton as a tourist attraction, and visitors are treated to a 25-minute "sound bath" of recorded quartz crystal vibrations reverberating throughout the dome.

Following our sound bath, we headed out into the dark, settled back in our folding chairs, and gazed up into the brilliant night desert sky at nature's fireworks. I looked up into the filmy Milky Way and let out an involuntary gasp. A brilliant blue bolt appeared from out of nowhere and streaked across the heavens.

A piece of cosmic dust? I can't get the Venusians out of my mind.