GEOFF GRAFF'S STORY

Just for you Dirk.

THE EVOLUTION OF A CONTACTEE

Geoff Graff was a good friend to many persons and especially to me. He was the Associate Director in Las Vegas in my organization until his untimely death by cancer in his early 40's. This is his story.

On the 7th of October, 1970, I left my home in San Francisco to get away from the madness of big city life. I was looking for a more natural, simpler life.

I didn't have any particular destination in mind and just planned to bum around the islands for a while until I found the right spot to settle down. A stewardess on the plane told me about a beach on Maui that was a great place to camp so I decided to go there for the first few days.

When I arrived on Maui, I was at first somewhat disappointed to learn that hitchhiking was illegal as that was how I had planned to get around. To compound matters, there was no bus service other than the shuttle busses to the big resorts in Lahaina which wasn't anywhere near where I wanted to go.

Well, I didn't have a schedule or a time clock to worry about, so I figured that I would just hike to one of the nearby beaches to camp for the day as there was one within a couple of miles from the airport. As I was walking down the road a car just stopped and asked if I needed a ride. Since hitching was illegal, people just stopped to offer rides to you. It was really great the way the people were so open and friendly. I knew I was going to like it there.

My second ride took me all the way down to the beach that I was looking for and the guy who picked me up told me about a big wedding that was going to be taking place in a few days and said that I should come. I explained that I really wanted to just stay on the beach for a while and thanked him anyway but he told me that I really had to go because the UFOs were supposed to show up.

Ookaaay - thanks anyway I said and went to the end of the beach from where he was going. I found a great spot at the far end of the beach from where most of the other campers were and set up my new temporary home.

Maui was really like a little slice of paradise. I had never seen such natural beauty before anywhere. The people were all very friendly but there were some real strange ones too. A lot of them kept talking about the UFOs and how they were coming at the end of the month.

I was always interested in the stories about the UFOs but wasn't really concerned with them because I figured that there had to be intelligent life somewhere in the vastness of the universe but that this was home and that our focus should be here as this is where we are and that our lessons haven't been mastered here yet. Until then, we shouldn't be overly concerned with the thought of leaving Earth.

Anyway, on the day of the wedding a group of my new friends were going to go up to Olinda, which is called Upcountry Maui, where the wedding was being held. They all wanted me to go and really wouldn't take no for an answer so along I went. Once there, I was told that the wedding would be delayed because the Cosmic Ambassadors hadn't arrived yet. Then everyone began scanning the skies. Suddenly the one who was to perform the ceremony said "Here they come now," and when I looked up I saw what appeared to be a star moving slowly across the sky. It came to a stop and then a cloud formed around it. Then the "minister" said, "Now we can begin."

Well, I've got to tell you, that was pretty far out.

Back down on the beach a few days later, I had just finished my evening meditation and went over to where a group of people had started a bonfire to see what was going on and ended up meeting a girl. She had only been on the island for about a week and she asked me what I thought of all this talk of UFOs.

Let me digress just a bit to give you a little more background on what I was doing there as this is actually central to the story as a whole.

One of the reasons I left San Francisco was to try to live a more natural lifestyle. I had been on a vegetarian diet for about six months when I came across a book called "The Essene Gospel of peace." This book stressed the importance of eating mostly raw fruits and vegetables as cooking food destroys the living cells of the foods, leaving dead matter to be ingested. The principle is that only living cells can give life energy to living organisms. I was also practicing meditation and during one of my meditations I was contemplating the UFOs and their occupants when I had the thought that these were not craft made of matter as we know it but were actually a form of pure energy which we see as light thought ships.

Now, back to this girl, Nancy was her name, and her question about what I thought of all this UFO business? I told Nancy of my ideas of the ships being energy vehicles and when I said that was why we were seeing them as points of light... a huge craft, or it could have been a formation of smaller craft, immediately flew over us from the direction of the mountain, Haleakala. Nancy bolted up and said, "Somebody is trying to tell you something." Little did I know just how right she was! I can't tell you how much time passed but we both saw the same formation of lights return from wherever they had gone to and went back in the direction that it originally had come from.

It wasn't until just the past few years now that a series of events, spanning a period of about 18 years began to fall into place.

Within weeks of that first sighting (conscious at least), I started having a sort of intuitive sense of world events that would be coming. I had a very strong impression to be part of a kind of cooperative community, dedicated to Spiritual growth and in harmony with the laws of nature. I saw this place as a sort of a retreat at first and then a place of refuge in times of peril. I also felt that it would be a place to take care of homeless children.

I was not a politically motivated individual nor was I by any stretch of the imagination religious either and these were not things that I had ever given any thought to before. In fact, I was an only child and kids actually made me nervous.

Rather than doing what was impressed upon me, I got back into more of the type of life that I had before I came to Maui. After a few months I moved to Honolulu and bounced back and forth between the mainland and the islands for a couple of years. In '72 I ended up on the Big Island which is actually the one named Hawaii and started a small business catching tropical fish. I heard of an individual in Lahaina that supposedly claimed to have come from one of the UFOs. I had heard that his message of mission was to help the people of earth to realize our true nature and potential; and to help bring about a one world government by any means possible.

I know that the idea of a world government is not too popular now but eventually we must reach an understanding of the global village and brotherhood of all living beings. When we do, the government that evolves will be to serve the people as our original government was intended to do. The thing that bothered me though was the phrase, by any means possible. This left open too many options such as the possibility of violent overthrow and I was not comfortable with that so I managed to find out how to reach this individual and wrote a letter detailing my concern, asking for clarification. I stated my belief in the karmic principle saying that history has proven, time and again, that anything which was born of the sword would in turn, die by the sword. The reply was that I was closer to the truth than I really realized, but that soon I would remember and know the truth and my place in it. He then asked me if I was willing to do something for them, which I don't wish to reveal here, but it seemed ridiculous at the time so I never had any further contact with him, thinking that he was probably just another fruitcake.

I managed to go until 1980 without giving much thought to this UFO business. I never really forgot about the community but it was not something to worry about at the time. I always planned to move to the country someday but in the meantime I had my life to live. I was married in '76 and my wife wanted nothing to do with moving away from the city and I eventually lost sight of my dream. Then one night while camping on a beach with a friend, we both saw another moving star. Shortly after this I saw an announcement in the Honolulu Advertiser, Hawaii's main newspaper, which started with the following: "Greetings to the Citizens of Earth". I guess I don't have to tell you that it caught my attention.

There wasn't any name or any way to identify who placed the announcement in the paper so I called to find out who paid for the space. It turned out to be a retired civil engineer named Philip Yee. I managed to contact Mr. Yee and asked him why he put the announcement in the newspaper? It was a pretty big space and I knew that it must have cost a lot of money; I wanted to know what was really the motivation behind it as there was no solicitation for funds. People usually don't put out that kind of money without some way to get a return on it. What he told me really took me by surprise. He said he did it because "they" asked him to. I said, "What do you mean 'they asked you to'?" He then told me an incredible story of how a stranger came up to him on the street, greeted him by name and asked if they could go somewhere to talk. Mr. Yee said that this man told him that he came from what we usually refer to as a UFO and that they decided to come to him to ask if he would be willing to help. After talking to this man for a while, Mr. Yee said that he was convinced of the fellows story and agreed to do what he could. I asked who "they" were and was told that "they" were the Ashtar Command. Now I know what you are probably thinking but before you dismiss this as another piece of UFO garbage let me share my experience with you.

Mr. Yee told me of a book of messages which supposedly were sent to us from various members of this Ashtar Command and suggested that I read it. The book as titled World Messages for the Coming Decade. Maybe some of you have seen or heard of it. There were a lot of different warnings in it as well as a request for us to practice a daily meditation for world peace. Over the next month I saw about a half dozen things in the sky that I believe were space craft. One of the things they said in the book was that they would show themselves to us if we asked them to. On a couple of occasions a friend and I would go down to Waikiki Beach to see if we could spot them and tried to send a thought to them asking them to allow us to see them. Sure enough, one of the "stars" would move around a little bit then stop and just remain stationary.

By this time I was convinced that they were for real and would practice this meditation every day. The book also said that we could communicate with them directly if we wanted to by telepathy. I would try to send and receive messages but whenever I got a reply I would dismiss it as my imagination. One evening, after completing the meditation, I attempted to communicate with them again but when I started to receive an answer I again doubted the validity and this time I sent another to them explaining that while I knew that the ships were real I couldn't understand why I would begin to have doubts about whether I was really seeing what I thought I was. I said that when I would receive a reply to one of my questions I would then convince myself that it was really only my imagination. I then apologized for not being able to believe and said that I really needed to see them face to face. When I opened my eyes, there was a man standing in my living room. I almost went into shock! He was no more than 10 feet away from me. I kick myself to this day for the way that I reacted. I was in a state of total disbelief. I rubbed my eyes thinking that I was probably hallucinating but he was still there. I then started thinking that I had gone over the edge and just be imagining the whole thing. Still he remained. Then I started getting a little panicky and that's when he started to leave. He didn't just disappear but slowly became less dense and over a period of about 10 seconds just faded away.

The whole thing really shook me up. I seriously wondered if I was losing my mind. One of the things that had me so shocked was the way he looked. I had this notion of space men wearing some sort of silver suits or something but this was a man with long hair, a beard and a robe. Looking back on it now I think that it may have been a hologram of Jesus. Whoever or whatever it was was enough to make me give away the books I had on UFOs and I ended up joining a very fundamental Christian organization that did not believe in the existence of UFOs or life on other planets. Regardless of the things I had seen, I tried to convince myself that there must be a logical explanation for these objects. As Phil Klass would say, there had to be a "prosaic explanation."

To be continued tomorrow