Book Review: The Nine: Briefing from Deep Space

By Stuart Holroyd

My travels as an editor have led me to this book from the latest book to be released by White Crow Books in the series from New Thinking Allowed. Since the New York Times release of Naval video footage and a story by Leslie Kean, the discussion around UFOs (or UAPs now) has gone from fringe woo-woo to “Hey, there must be something to this after all.” As a result, the book I’m editing has come from transcripts by people Dr. Mishlove has interviewed over the years who know about “alien encounters”. Only one has to do with the physical close encounters of the name-your-number. The rest are about the experiences of the victims or, as we say in parapsychology “the experiencers”.

I am not a believer in the “alien visitor” hypothesis considering that we have so little data about the origins of these phenomena but I do think something is going on, and has since we branched off from our ape ancestors to begin the genus “Homo”. If I’m starting to sound like the ancient astronaut theorists from the History Channel, please continue reading so I may disavow this idea and explain further what I mean.

One of the interviewees brought up this book called The Nine during their discussion with Dr. Mishlove and I thought it would be worth checking into. This is the book blurb:

Stuart Holroyd, skeptical, open-minded, and well-informed, became 

Observer to a remarkable U.S. group of psychics headed by a famous American scientist and an English aristocrat. They claimed that they had made contact with galactic intelligences and their “evidence” was astounding…

– Did three “selected” minds help to avert world disaster?

-Was the group in constant communication with extraterrestrials?

-Was it possible for these alien intelligences to effect a landing on Earth?

-Had they, in fact, already visited Earth in previous centuries?

-Did the group’s meditations avert Kissinger’s assassination and a Middle East holocaust?

from the book’s back cover

This is a pretty good summary of what I read. You’re probably wondering why Henry Kissinger is involved. This book was written in 1977 after the Middle East was having fits about Israel. Yes, I read this book just before Hamas invaded Israel in October 2023 taking prisoners, killing Jews and anyone else they came across which included Americans. The synchronicity is not lost on me.

The writer, Stuart Holroyd, is a British author famous for being one of the original “Angry Young Men” in the 1950s before it gained popularity in the 1960s. He went from being angry to looking into the paranormal and esoteric. The American scientist was Andrija Puharich who had over fifty patents, primarily medical, one of which involved hearing aids. He studied several very powerful mediums, healers, and Uri Geller, the Israeli famous for spoon-bending and other psychokinetic feats. The aristocrat was Sir John Whitmore, a racecar driver who had a near-death experience, which caused him to sell his pile in England and use his fortune to bankroll Puharich’s work for a while. The third was a trance medium named Phyllis Schlemmer, the Transceiver of the Nine. Several other people were tangentially involved with the project including a young man named Bobby who was to be an important addition to the group but opted not to stay.

Andrija Puharic and Uri Geller (1972)
Phyllis Schlemmer
Sir John Whitmore

The Council of Nine, as they called themselves, spoke through Phyllis while Whitmore and Puharich listened, sometimes using a tape recorder to capture what the Nine said. The author treats these events in chronological order and determines, from the many interactions the three principles had with The Nine, those communications he deemed were coherent and important. Interspersed throughout are reality checks. Holroyd pulls the reader through the fourth wall to say, “Hey, yeah, this reads like fiction, but I promise you, this stuff happened.” And, “Yeah, I bet you’re thinking ‘pull the other one’ right now, but if you look at it, it could just be nine super powerful dudes talking to these three humans.”

Puharich took these communications in stride since this wasn’t his first rodeo. He had worked with a transceiver and a healer and had received similar messages. However, the three principles frequently squabbled and their egos interfered with the plan on occasion. It is fun to read The Nine rebuking three accomplished adults over their issues with one another, but that’s where the fun ends and the explosions go off in your mind as you continue to read. Taking what The Nine say at face value as the author recommends, a series of messages peeking into their reality unfolds that would make Philip K. Dick freak. Like the President of the United States has several members of the White House Press Corp, The Nine used several spokes-entities as liaisons to speak through Phyllis, primarily one named Tom. 

The primary reason The Nine were in contact with the three was to avert a devastating possible World War III with Israel as the center of the conflict. Whitmore, Puharic, and Schlemmer together apparently made a perfect “human” to work through and with to achieve these goals. Bobby would have been a better transceiver but, according to Tom, he forgot what he came here to do. When asked why they didn’t force him, manipulate him, or use other tactics to convince him of the importance of his task, they replied that we humans have free will and The Nine cannot interfere, even if humans made the choice before coming to this planet. The message here is that we come to this life on planet Earth with a plan for our lives, but our memories get wiped and we may not achieve our goals. We also have free will to do with our lives as we want. It’s not all candy on Halloween though. If we don’t achieve our goals here, we get to go through remedial school when we leave our lives here and before we can progress to higher planes. 

Other messages and information include:

  • “…more advanced technologies would help ensure the survival of the planet”
  • Bioengineering. Both Phyllis and Bobby were re-engineered to be better transceivers.
  • “…dark forces that try to prevent all this happening, and one of their ways is to insinuate false teachings in the communications. It is not so difficult for them for they are sly and under the guise of something fine, they can be misleading.”
  • They had different forms as if they were from different planets
  • Many different types of craft would land over nine days leaving teachers behind to help Earth evolve (this is a future event).
  • “To raise the vibration of the souls, to bring them out of darkness – and when we say darkness, we do not mean negativity but true darkness – for they do not see and do not understand the cosmic, and they also do not understand that when they hate and when they are angry, this creates a problem for the universe. Only by raising the level of the consciousness of this planet, and perfecting the love and the core that is inside each human being, can we go on then to perfect other planets in the galaxies. This planet is one of the lowest that the soul comes to learn a lesson. The tragedy of this planet is its density. It is like a mire; it is sticky, and these beings get trapped in this stickiness…we are going to raise the level of this planet, make it a lighter planet. The energy then coming from it will be sent into the universe and will help raise the levels of consciousness and the levels of other planets…”
  • “…this planet has lagged behind, it hasn’t progressed like it’s supposed to…beneath this planet…are other beings, other civilizations, that there are other people with more technology that can help raise it, but this planet is so bogged down in pure ego, and without harmony and out of balance, that it’s upsetting the master plan.”
  • The Nine are equivalent to the top cosmic governing council
  • There is no other planet like Earth and every being that exists in the Universe must take a turn here. If this planet fails, then all the souls that haven’t had a turn here will not obtain the necessary growth.
  • UFOs come from many places, including the place The Nine inhabit, but many are not physical, just appear to be.
  • “…[The Nine] are not God. All of you and all of us make God…Many of your physical beings deify other physical beings, when it is truly them.”
  • “Many souls when they die are trapped in the atmosphere and are evolved over and over on this planet, and seem to be going nowhere. This planet was originally created to teach a being balance between the spiritual and the physical world, and so these beings never evolve beyond the belt of this planet. Their desires hold them to this planet.”
  • The emissary, Tom said, “The difficulty we have in understanding the problems you have in this gross heavy density world that as physical beings you must exist upon…”

Dr. Puharich had worked with another transceiver prior to Phyllis named D.G. Vinod who had achieved contact with The Nine. He had also worked with, and wrote a book about, Uri Geller who, Puharich claimed, had abilities given to him from superhuman entities which he said were The Nine. 

This can be taken at face value and be applied to the unknown experiences that humans have had even before the Roswell event’s flying saucers. This could also be a misinformation campaign if you are to believe those who think that Puharic was using mind control to test CIA tactics. Those people skeptical of Puharic tend to have a Christian philosophy and are against The Nine because they have been quoted as saying that Christianity is based on a false premise. Tom called Jesus of Nazareth the “Nazarene” and claimed he was simply human but given many superhuman abilities to guide humanity forward. Instead, we deified Jesus and created another religion. I guess you can see why Christians would be miffed and would want to debunk The Nine.

There is the issue of veridical data. None of the tapes that Puharic made exist and much of the experimental data has not been shared by the Stanford Research Institute researchers who looked at Uri Geller’s ability. Over and over in this book and the book “Uri”, Puharic claims that the tapes were wiped and the documentation disappeared. One has to wonder why that happened or even if it did. Why was a book about The Nine written but no proof provided? Is this another trick like the Scientology philosophy? Was it a CIA brainwashing program? Why were so many influential people involved? Why is The Nine still so pervasive today, especially amongst the wealthy and powerful? And, what happened to Puharic when he returned to the U.S.?

Without proof, we can only speculate.