My new book, Solving the Communion Enigma is being murdered. There is no other way to say it. Try finding it in a bookstore. This comment is typical of what readers are discovering: "Whitley: I would like to bring to you attention some things I've noticed regarding my purchase of your new book. I purchased it Friday evening (January 13) at a Barnes & Noble in Skokie, IL where I live.

"On Friday January 6, I went to this facility to purchase your book. It was nowhere to be found--not even the "New Age" section where I was told it would be displayed.

"When I asked if it was in the storage room, the answer was yes, but the service representative could not locate it. He took my number and promised to call when it was found. The call came Wednesday of last week. Just out of curiosity, I went over to the "New Releases" section and the "New Age" section, and no, sad to say, it is still not on the shelves in this particular facility."

This is true all over the US, and not just in Barnes and Nobles. Not only that, it has not been sold in a single foreign country. Not one. I am still trying to determine if it has even been marketed outside of the US.

But the peril of my book is hardly the only issue. Denial of the incredible phenomenon that is its subject has reached terrifying proportions. While the public is more open minded than ever, government is in total denial, the media is following in lockstep, and the scientific community is allowing itself to be controlled by what amount to a small cotiere of intellectual potentates who bear a great deal of the blame for what is becoming the greatest cultural failure in human history.

Worse, the public, even though well aware of the truth, is becoming more and more passive. The reason is clear. People feel helpless. For example, now that the White House has spread its fantastic lie that the government has no UFO information, further petitions are fizzling.

But if you asked the average person, he'd say that he thought the White House was lying. So why won't people sign any of the new peititions that have been posted?

The reason is that the White House has succeeded in one respect: they have made people feel that the quest for information is hopeless. What is so distressing to me is that this is NOT what is hopeless. What is hopeless is trying to get a straight answer out of the government. But, hey, what's new about that? Government lies to protect itself. Throughout history and all over the world, it has done this, and not just when it comes to UFO secrets.

When the truth is potentially damaging, government lies. This is among the most shameful aspects of the human condition, and it is particularly shameful when it comes to UFO information, with its gigantic, world-changing potential. If government told the truth about this, even a little bit of the truth, our lives would be opened up to a fantastic, unimaginable degree. We would be immeasurably increased as human beings, each one of us.

Instead, their lies keep us weak, confused and afraid. Yes, we might not like what we would find. But yes, also, we would find a way to handle it, both individually and as a species. We would, and I speak from personal experience. I did it and Anne did it, and Solving the Communion Enigma tells exactly how we did it. Love of one another and determination to make what was happening to us part of the richness of our life together, and not let our fear overcome us were key.

I don't know if the visitors mean us harm or wish us well, or even what they are. But I know these things: They are real and I am here and I WILL NEVER SHUT UP.

What is so deeply ironic is that we don't even need the government. We don't need to know one thing that they are hiding. What we DO need is a cadre of dedicated scientists who can subject the physical evidence that is available now to proper study, and do it with honesty and open minds.

So where are they? They answer is, in part, that their community is the victim of innocent ignorance. As soon as you try to become informed about the situation, you run into a lot of amateurism, imagination, confusion, hoaxing and lies. You have to get past that. I go into some detail in Solving about exactly what can be studied and how it can be done. It doesn't require any special processes. All it takes is time, professional expertise and, obviously, money that is not there.

In this sense, the government and whoever is manipulating its activities are once again to blame. No scientist who wishes to survive in his career is going to seek grant money for any sort of UFO study, no matter how well formed the proposal or how exalted his position.

Worse, the scientific community operates its own level of self-censorship. The Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees, rarely misses an opportuntity to make a disparaging joke about close encounter witnesses, crop formations or even people who make UFO reports, whom he dismisses as 'cranks.' Stephen Hawking utters ominous but utterly unfounded warnings that nevertheless come weighted with his immense personal authority. The rest of the community, and too miuch of the public and the media, cannot help but take its marching orders from men of such stature.

Of course, Reese completely ignores the existence of UFO witnesses like Dr. Paul Hill, who was one of NASA's founding engineers and one of its best, and who also had detailed UFO sightings which he reported in his book Unconventional Flying Objectsp--a book that NASA wouldn't allow him to publish during his lifetime. Beynd that, there are all of the highly credentialed observers Leslie Kean interviewed in her book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials go on the Record, a book which Rees could discover with five minutes of simple online research.

So Reese is absolutely and completely mistaken, and Hawking, in expressing his concern, appeals not to the evidence, which suggests that our visitors are presenting a far more complex picture than such unsophisticated 'good guys-bad guys' fantasies as the one to which he has given voice would imply. Rather, it appeals to his own unexamined and ill-thought out fears.

But why does he react like that? I think that the answer lies in something astronaut Rusty Schewiekert said to me many years ago at the World Affairs Conference at the University of Colorado. He was expressing his dislike of the whole UFO subject, and in particular my contention that my close encounter was in some way a real experience. He finally said that he just did not want it to be real because he would hate to find out that the road to Mars was actually a well-worn path.

In other words, to people at the leading edge of discovery—such as Hawking and most other leading scientists, and astronauts like Schweickart and so many others—fear confrontation with an intelligence that already knows everything that they seek to discover. This is why explorers used to engage in rivalries, for example, seeking the poles. If somebody had already ascended Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary would have had no reason to try.

Of course, in this case, the fear is unfounded. Our universe is too big a place, too mysterious, and too complex for anybody to worry even for a moment about this sort of disempowerment. In reality, looking into this phenomenon at the highest possible level of expertise, collecting the evidence that can be studied and analyzing it in an open minded manner, is going to lead to an astonishing scientific breakthrough, probably even to a new era of scientific and intellectual progress at least as explosive as the Enlightenment itself.

If just twenty people who have objects in their bodies that are either encapsulated in a way that cannot be explained naturally, and/or are broadcasting radio signals could be studied objectively, a real start could be made.

As I point out in Communion Enigma, not only could such people be studied physically, and the objects examined in laboratory conditions, their brains could be studied using scanning techniques that can detect memories that are related to actual, physical events. Using such a technique, over time a clear impression can be gained of the difference between what they think they experienced and what actually happened to them during encounters.

However, government once again enters the picture here, and once again in a negative way. When I lived in Texas, William Mallow, a prominent materials scientist at Southwest Research Institute, took an interest in the objects that were being harvested from a few close encounter witnesses. He studied them extensively, but was never able to formally report on his findings because, as he told me, the institute’s director had informed him that their CIA client, their most important contractor, took a ‘dim view’ of UFO research.

Which leads to a question: why would an intelligence agency take any view at all of such research, let alone a dim one, unless it was somehow of concern to them? Why would they care? But they do care, obviously, and in a way that is demonstrably harmful to the advance of human knowledge.

For that, in the end, is what this is all about. Humanity is at the beginning of what is going to become a desperate crisis. Our planet is full. This is why our economies are faltering: we are reaching the limits of growth. It is why environmental problems are becoming more and more apparent.

And yet, there is among us a new phenomenon that might well contain elements of revolutionary value to us. I say ‘new’ very advisedly. Of course, it has historical precedent. The first crop formations appeared at least two hundred years ago. Dr. Jacques Vallee has traced close encounters back to the myths of ancient times. During my research for Solving the Communion Enigma, I discovered animal mutilations going back at least a hundred years. UFO sightings have been reported for at least two thousand years.

But never in all of our history have ALL of these phenomena appeared with anything even close to the persistence and intensity that has been steadily building since the beginning of the twentieth century. And in this sense it absolutely IS new.

Objective, sensible and intelligent study of the whole array of phenomena will bring dividends of transformative value and importance, and I say that without equivocation. This is because—intended or not—it represents on the largest possible scale, with more depth and complexity than we have ever experienced before, a genuine communication from a vivid unknown source that is also deeply thoughtful, but in ways that are very different from our own.

To further and encourage such research, I have published Solving. And what has happened? Almost nothing. There has been a virtual media blackout. One review in the Associated Press, but so far not one other mass-media venue. The book is, as I write this, hardly visible in stores. And why? Not because I am thought a liar, but rather because I have proven myself, with years and years of advocacy, to be utterly sincere in my determination to direct the focus of human intelligence to this phenomenon. I have been among many researchers whose work has made it impossible for any informed person anywhere in the world to deny the reality of what we are facing.

Not only that, the phenomenon itself, as its manifestations grow more numerous and more intense every year, is, in effect, increasing its visibility. To deny its mystery now, you must either be willfully or helplessly ignorant, or both.

We must respond. It is essential that we respond. We need the knowledge that has already been left among us, ready for study and analysis.

In my own life, the rewards of turning toward the phenomenon and embracing it have been incalculable. I have been enriched at literally every level, and especially intellectually. I cannot imagine how much minds better than mine might benefit from study of the available data, much less how they might be enriched by an expansion of contact into our scientific and intellectual communities.

I know some scientists who—very much in secrecy—have already done this, and have seen their work immeasurably enhanced by the discoveries that have come. In one field, a scientist has used knowledge gained in his contacts to revolutionize his speciality and create dramatic advancements. But I dare not even say his name, lest his life be destroyed by his own colleagues.

Do you not find that amazing? Because I do. It is a fantastic emotional and cultural failure, and it absolutely must end. Our children and grandchildren need us to step past the arrogance and the fear and face the truth a vast and humbling presence is here. It, also, is humble, though. It does not seek to impose itself on us. Instead it waits for us to open our minds. Instead, we deny its existence and allow the US Air Force to continue to respond to its manifestations by sending up jets, as they did in 2009 over Stephensville, Texas.

Obviously, the Air Force's displays are effective. When anthropologists are confronted in the jungle by indigenous people who toss spears at them, they also stand back and wait for the tribe to settle down and get used to them. Jane Goodall did the same among the chimpanzees. She kept up her visibility among them until they finally got used to her.

All well and good, but the result is that rational people like me and the other UFO researchers are being ghettoized, starved out, and cruelly marginalized, and I, for one, am sick and tired of it. I am sick of waiting and I can't stand it any more.

Will the presence that is here wait forever? Can it?
One thing I know: we certainly cannot. Our time is running out.