In the 1950s and 60s a remarkable social phenomenon
emerged, basically concentrated in the State of California. It was
organizations founded by UFO contactees, individuals who told of physical and
telepathic contacts with space people. Three of these contactees, Daniel Fry,
George Adamski and Gabriel Green, succeeded in creating large organizations
with local units in many U.S. states and even abroad. Understanding was founded
in 1955 by Daniel Fry, El Monte, California, with only nine members at the beginning.
In September 22, 1960 the organization was registred as a non-profit corporation
in the state of California, Understanding, Inc. By 1975 no less than 86 local
Understanding units had been registred, the last one documented, founded in Tonopah, Arizona.
Daniel Fry
In depth research and documentation is still very
much lacking regarding the history and development of these organizations. This
is probably partly due to the problem of finding archives with easily accessed
original documents: newsletters, correspondence, photos etc. At Archives for the Unexplained (AFU) in Norrköping, Sweden we have for many years been working
hard trying to salvage organizational archives from around the world,
digitizing documents and making them aviable free on the internet. When it
comes to Daniel Fry´s organization Understanding we must commend the excellent
efforts of Sean Donovan in Canada who has salvaged and preserved the
Understanding archive and making much of the data accessible on a website
dedicated to Daniel Fry.
Sean Donovan
Based on documents from the Daniel Fry website, Sean
Donovan´s excellent Fry biography and data from AFU I have made a small study
of Understanding and the life of Daniel Fry. In every issue of Understanding magazine
is to be found a department called Bulletin Board with news of Understanding
units but also information on lectures, conferences social gatherings etc.by
various ”Spacecraft Clubs”. By studying every issue of Understanding magazine I
have been able to compile some statistical data that may be of interest. These
figures should not be regarded as exact. Understanding magazine never mentioned
when units had folded and sometimes units were given the same number.
Between 1955 and 1975 altogether 86 Understanding
units were registrered in the Bulletin Board. A unit could be formed if there
were five members. The organization was to a large extent California-based.
Unit locations in the U.S. states: California (48), Oregon (7), Arizona (4),
New, York, Oklahoma, Washington (3), Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin (2), Nevada,
Maryland, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
South Dakota (1). There were also three units in Canada and one in Nigeria. In
1963 Understanding Sweden Unit no 1 was founded by Sven-Erik and Ing-Marie
Asklund. The unit had some twenty members and during 1963-64 gathered at the
Asklund home at Bandhagen, a suburb of Stockholm. The unit was discontinued in
December 1964.
Daniel Fry in Sweden 1970
Usually between one and four new units were founded
every year between 1955-1975. Understanding had its peak activity years in the
beginning of the 1960s. In 1960 there were 24 new units registrered, 1962 eight
new units and in 1965 ten new units. Directors were named Presidents and
represented people from all walks of life, some with a Dr. attached to the
name. Of Presidents mentioned in the Bulletin Board 70 were men and 55 women.
In May 1963 a unit was formed at Stanford University, California by J. Lynn
Mason. Generally members were people involved with various metaphysical,
theosophical and UFO contactee groups.
Several of the local Understanding units initiated
an impressive amount of activities, lectures and social gatherings. Lecturers
were often the well known UFO contactees of the period such as George Adamski,
Orfeo Angelucci, George Van Tassel, Dana Howard, Wayne Aho and of course Daniel
Fry. A frequent guest and lecturer at the local units was Riley Crabb, from
1959 director of Borderland Sciences Research Foundation (BSRF). As the entire
BSRF archive has been donated to AFU I have been able to study the correspondence
between Riley Crabb and several of the local Understanding units in the 1950s
and 60s. So far I have scanned 757 letters in the Riley Crabb file often giving
interesting background information about Understanding units and activities.
Charlotte Sullivan was founder and first President of Understanding Unit no 6, San Fernando, California
The most extensive documentation of Understanding as
an organization has been published by Sean Donovan in his excellent biography
Contactee. Was Daniel W. Fry Telling the Truth?, published in 2013. Some 60
pages are devoted to the history of Understanding. Donovan relates the ups and
downs, successful endeavors and projects, conflicts and crises during the four decades of
organization activities. There are still some unsolved issues regarding the
final years of Understanding. The last issue of Understanding magazine was
published in September-October 1979 (vol. 24, no 5). But in November 1982
Daniel Fry began publishing a one-page newsletter with its final issue in June
1989. Beginning with the May 1985 issue the newsletter was published by World
Understanding, Inc. On March 27, 1985 Daniel Fry had re-incorporated
Understanding, Inc. As World Understanding, Inc. And the newsletters were
published with this name until the last issue in June 1989. I have not been
able to find out whether Understanding, Inc. Or World Understanding, Inc. were ever
formally dissolved? Recently I sent a request to California State Archives whether there were any documents indicating that Understanding, Inc. or World Understanding, Inc. had been officially dissolved. According to the reference archivist I corresponded with no such documents were found.
Understanding Unit no 15, Inglewood, California was
founded already in 1958 and was a very active local unit. In September 1985
newly elected President Bill Hamilton sent out a leaflet announcing a lecture
by Al Synder. In this leaflet is also mentioned that ”In the future, we will be
changing the name of the group to the Association for Universal Understanding
as we are no longer connected to the now defunct Understanding, Inc.” But as
the original organization was still functioning with the new name World
Understanding, Inc. why not simply rename the unit World Understanding Unit no
15? Perhaps some of my blog readers in the U.S. can solve this mystery?
Daniel Fry wrote of his contact experiences with the
spaceman Alan and the philosophy he received in several books. Essentially it
is a message of goodwill and peace: ”… creating a greater degree of understanding
between all the peoples of the earth, and of bringing to them some of the
understanding of those beings who are not of earth.” (Understanding, vol 1, no
1, Jan. 1956, p. 1). Alan explain that humanity will not survive if we do not
succeed in reaching a balance between the physical or material science, the
social science and the spiritual science. ”Understanding is the key to survival
for your race. There is little value in a treaty, a pact or a guarantee between
governments, if understanding is lacking between the people” (Daniel Fry, To
Men of Earth. Including The White Sands Incident, p. 115).
There is much of philosophical and spiritual value
in the messages given by Alan to Daniel Fry. Words of wisdom and inspiration
that became the core teachings presented in the Understanding units. As I have
stated many times before I have advanced the theory that behind some of the
1950s contactees was a benevolent group of aliens visitors from somewhere who initiated
a cultural and psychological influence test, at a critical moment for our
civilisation. Some of the people contacted tried their best to implement the projects
and ideas received by the visitors. Others couldn´t stand the psychological
strain of the experiences or invented fake stories when the real contacts
ended.
Alan´s basic message that understanding is the key
to survival for humanity has an immediate appeal but still fails to adress the
problem of evil. We may understand the ideas and motives of a Hitler, Stalin or
ISIS leader but we will still be killed or imprisoned if we have a different
idea. No amount of understanding will help us in this respect. Only force or power will do
the job. Many of the members in the Understanding were mystics, who often fail
or refuse to recognize the problem of evil or admit that an individual can be
totally evil. Dag Hammarskjöld, 2nd Secretary-General of the United Nations
learned this lesson during the Congo-Katanga crisis in 1960-61. His best
friend, Bo Beskow, related a conversation he had with Hammarskjöld in 1961 when
he asked whether Dag still believed in the good in man, that there is something
good in all people? ”That Summer, 1961, Hammarskjöld was very serious in his
answer. You know I have concluded something I never thought possible. I have
discovered that there really exist completely evil people.” (Documentary,
Swedish TV October 29, 2005).
In the last book published by Daniel Fry, When In
Cairo, there are indications that Alan was really very aware of the problem of
evil. This is a strange, unfinished book by Fry which he claimed was 70%
true. It is a sort of spy novel where Alan is the leader of a secret group
fighting an evil society in Egypt (The Shukran), trying to find and use hidden technological treasures from the Atlantean
civilization: ” We simply must find some way to stop this insane organization
before they take over all of Egypt and plunge the nation into a hopeless war of
conquest. The three leaders are the most dangerous of egomaniacs, whose
ambition has absolutely no limit. If they succeeded in conquering the entire
earth. they would immediately set up a huge space program just so they could go
to other planets and conquer them too!” (p. 12)
Another fundamental idea presented by Alan is the necessity
of balance between physical, material science, social science and spiritual
science. In the human being this could be compared with balance between the
physical, emotional and intellectual/spiritual part of man. The problem is that
humanity on this planet has no generally recognized spiritual science, only
various religions and more or less obsolete belief systems. The custodians of
the science of the multiverse (Esoteric Science) have only recently made some
tests in giving this science to humanity. But mainstream academic scholars will
probably not take an interest in esotericism until definite empirical evidence
of the etheric worlds and their inhabitants can be presented in the form of
photos and films. An elementary outline of The Esoteric Tradition was presented
by Daniel Fry in his book The Curve of Development. This is actually an
excellent, easy to read, introduction to the science of the multiverse but as
usual, unfortunately, mostly introduced in old religious terms.
There are still many unanswered questions regarding the contact experiences of Daniel Fry. Who was actually Alan? Is he or his group still around? Why didn´t such a large organization as Understanding survive the death of Fry in 1992? There were many capable local leaders who could have continued Daniel´s work. Further in-depth research on the history of the Understanding movement could perhaps give more clues to this enigma?
