Point of Convergence: Recent Episodes
ExoAcademian
Point of Convergence is a weekly podcast addressing inter-related topics such as UFOs, the Phenomenon, alien abductions, remote viewing, near death experiences, out of body experiences, interdimensionality, and high strangeness. In addition to discussing these and related topics, host ExoAcademian will discuss their apparent connection as contact modalities within the bedrock of entangled Consciousness. Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/pointofconvergence/support
In this episode of PoC, Darren tackles a key aspect of the high strangeness that is part and parcel of the Phenomenon: the anomalous experience of time. What do we make sense of beings who both say "we are from your future" and—in other contexts—"time is not real?" And how are we to make sense of the temporal anomalies people report experiencing? Finally, how might the picture shift in a consciousness-first model?
Psionics, non-human intelligences, and vast—largely untapped—human potential have become increasingly and inextricably linked. Ingo Swann stood at the forefront of this nexus. Prepare for a deep dive into his books Star Fire and Penetration.
In this episode of Point of Convergence, Darren/Exo asks: why does this gnostic notion of our waking experience not being ultimately real prove so enduring? Why does some version of this perspective show up over and over again within human experience; evident in everything from Vedanta to Buddhism to Jungian depth psychology? Perhaps even more compellingly—at least to modern ears—why are elements of this perspective evident in our most cutting-edge physics, astronomy and neuroscience? More to the point, if this is indeed a truer apprehension of ultimate reality, then what are the implications, and how now shall we live?
In this episode of Point of Convergence, we explore the reality-expanding implications of one woman's contact experiences, including her successful attempt to remain fully conscious in an abduction experience—with the help of the very NHI beings she once feared.
In this episode of Point of Convergence, we explore how anomalous experiences—UFO/NHI encounters, synchronicities, altered states, psi phenomena, etc.—are playing a transformative, grassroots role in steering Western perspectives along more shamanic lines. Is this incidental, or by design?
Since the dawn of what has come to be colloquially referred to as the modern UFO Phenomenon, two very divergent aspects have emerged to create a situation that appears—on the face of it—utterly irreconcilable. On the one hand, this phenomenon is supported by evidence gathered in what we call “the real world”, that is to say “physical reality”. This evidence includes radar returns, electromagnetic effects, soil traces, multiple, independent witness accounts, biological effects on witnesses, photographic and video evidence, and more.
On the other hand, the testimony of those who have apparently interacted with this Phenomenon suggests an experience that defies our very understanding of what can be “real”. These elements include: precognition of future events, memories from lifetimes beyond this one—including as forms not exclusively human—the encountering of spaces that seem much larger from within than without, movement through the environment sometimes with the body, and sometimes without, etc.
Another key component that arises not just in the Contact phenomenon, but also in near-death experiences, is the uncanny sense that what we call “the real world” is somehow less “real” than the modes of existence or states of being in which these so-called “non-ordinary” experiences occur. And let us be clear: if we are to take these accounts at face-value, it would appear that what we have long referred to as “the real world” is actually subsidiary to one or more subsuming realms, and that even what we refer to as “the self” is actually a truncated and fractional expression of a much more dynamic, multifaceted identity that exists outside of spacetime altogether.
Speaking of space and time, also particularly pertinent here is the paradoxical and perplexing way that certain notions expressed in what are referred to as the archetypes, and in astrology, seem to comport—with a confounding degree of precision—with the unfolding of our actual experience of reality, giving rise to prickly questions about determinism and free will. Indeed, these apparently pre-existing patterns of manifestation—that point to an underlying symbolic geometry—call into question the very naturalistic assumptions that are at the core of physicalism, the present dominant paradigm widely ascribed to within Western civilization.
All of this so-called “high strangeness” converges to point to a deeper truth that is truly astonishing: namely that the experiences of our lives are not arising either as real or symbolic (as in our long-standing distinction between the reality of waking vs. dream states), but rather as—simultaneously—both. And yes, not surprisingly, this has profound implications regarding the nature of the self, and the nature of existence. These are precisely the paradigm-shattering, mind-expanding matters that we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 115th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
UFOs & NHI operate at the fringe of human awareness. A key question is: why? Is this an indicator of an anti-human agenda? Or, might the very questions we're asking—framed by binary thinking—be leading us to miss the forest for the proverbial trees? Furthermore, what if the unquestioned axioms of the dominant Western paradigm make it the least likely to apprehend the overarching reality?
Throughout the history of ufology, researchers have been attempting to make sense of both the technology and the nature of the intelligences behind the anomalous phenomena that have been observed and interacted with. Inevitably, those researchers have ended up looking to emerging human science and technology for potential understanding. And so, not surprisingly, leading conceptions of what the UFO Phenomenon represents have evolved over time as our own technology and models of reality have evolved.
The issue with this, however, is that we are often not accounting for how our modern conceptions are tied to the myth-making that human beings inevitably engage in in order to make sense of who we are, and indeed, what this (i.e. reality) is. And in that sense, of course, we are following in the footsteps of our ancestors who did the very same thing. To be alive is to engage in such narrative-framing. Looking backwards, we are often quick to belittle earlier myth-making attempts, accusing our ancestors of being naive, unscientific story-tellers, while simultaneously completely missing the fact that we too weave narratives about reality, also often based on notions we lack solid evidence for.
This is why the UFO Phenomenon emerges as the simultaneously intoxicating but confounding and discombobulating matter it is. Fascinatingly—and perhaps tellingly— it often seems to manifest in such a way as to poke holes in our latest myth. And in so-doing, it helps those within the societal structure—those with a keen and discerning eye, that is—to see our collective narrative as such, as myth.
Note here that myth doesn’t necessarily mean “untrue”, it just refers to a society’s collective sense of “the real”. The data arising from these ufological investigations so often confounds our consensus conceptions of reality that it’s fair to ask if that may indeed be one of the central purposes of the entire enigma. Before us, of course, were those who framed reality within a theological lens. In going through this very same process, they too ran into the very same conundrum, leading them to, like us, often exclude, ignore or explain away the elements that “didn’t play well” with the contemporary myth.
How are we to proceed with these considerations in mind? Is it a fool’s errand to chase a specter that seems to change its guise just when we think we’ve pinned it down? Or should we accept that this game of hide and seek involves stretching our very understanding of what’s possible? These are the simultaneously mystifying but mesmerizingly captivating matters we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 113th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
Throughout the course of this podcast we’ve been weaving together topics often discussed in isolation; topics including UFOs, psychic phenomena, and near-death experiences, among others. Research into these topics not only shows that they overlap–in terms of who experiences them and how they are changed as a result–but they also all point to a particular kind of reality-scape: one composed of, for lack of a better term, Mind; mind expressed both individually and collectively, and everywhere in between.
Fascinatingly–and consequentially–these mindforms seem to interpenetrate, with porous boundaries that allow us both a temporary and meaningful sense of individuality, while also affording us the ability to tune into each other, and to the various non-human beings all around us, as well as into the very fabric of multidimensional reality itself, which is yet again a matter of mind; a mindscape, if you will.
While the data around these matters are overwhelming, old habits tend to die hard. Which is to say, even within ufology there has been a longstanding tendency to push the so-called “woo” aspects of the Phenomenon to the fringes; often leaving those who’ve actually had the experiences with the Phenomenon to discuss these anomalous events amongst themselves, while the “nuts ‘n boltsers” carry on discussing the supposed craft and the beings arriving from Alpha Centauri.
Part of the reasoning for the more nuts ‘n bolts crowd, of course, arises from a desire to see this topic make more of a dent in the mainstream, by forcing the government to come clean about what it knows about these otherworldly matters and the programs it has stood up to investigate such them. Needless to say, things for those folks have taken a bit of a left turn of late, because the details arising from those very government programs are suggesting the so-called “woo” is right at the heart of this entire matter.
Recent whistleblowers like Jacob Barber have emerged to not only confirm that the government, along with various defense contractors, haw been engaged in historic UFO recovery programs, but also that human beings seem to be able to both contact and even “summon” these vehicles through the power of mental intention alone. And so here we are yet again, at the intersection of Mind and Mind. Mind that allows for effortless interspecies communication, and mind to call and control the anomalous craft.
To say this is a shock to the system for modern Western civilization is an understatement of enormous proportions. After all, many Westerners still orient around the notion that mind is nothing more than a temporary epiphenomenon of material stuff. And yet, the point of convergence we’ve been exploring the last few years on this podcast suggests that model of reality is fully upside-down; having missed the forest for the proverbial trees.
This has major implications in a whole host of ways. But perhaps one of the most striking involves the fact that various non-human intelligences can - and indeed have been - interacting with humanity all along; sometimes in direct ways, and sometimes through mental influence alone. And considering the evidence arising suggests that while some of these intelligences have our best interests at heart, others do not, this ignorance on the part of modern society is highly consequential.
Furthermore, this process of distracting us away from the true nature of things - perhaps willfully imposed by both human and non-human forces - has not only made us easily manipulable, but it’s also kept us in the dark as to our true potential; a potential, again, that goes to the very heart of our true nature, and to the heart of reality itself. These are the pivotal matters that we’ll seek to explore in this, the 112th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
Whenever we reach certain watershed moments within ufology, a whole new contingent of interested parties tend to enter the fray, after some new public revelation has convinced them that there really is a “there there’” after all. This happened en masse after a groundbreaking article was published in the New York Times in 2017. Another influx came after the Luis Elizondo and David Grusch revelations/allegations respectively.
One thing that each of these moments had in common, of course, is that they each had to do solely with the matter of UFOs and aliens - now rebranded UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena) and NHI (non-human intelligence). In other words, the people tending to enter the conversation following these key inflection points, really had no idea what a gateway drug - if you will - that UFOs and aliens often end up proving to be.
The gateway leads, of course, as all of you who’ve been on this journey with me for some time now know - to deeper matters having to do with not only who they - these Others are - but who we are, and indeed to the nature of reality itself. That is to say, the High Strangeness that is part and parcel of this phenomenon is, as they say, a feature, not a bug. Some have even ventured so far as to say that the phenomena themselves are manifesting as they do precisely to force us into new ways of thinking about all that’s possible, and all that is.
Of course, for those looking with a keen eye, this venture into new models of reality is not confined to ufology. Yes, the bizarre, perplexing, and sometimes even absurd nature of the UFO Phenomenon does lead people down some peculiar avenues in order to make sense of it, but as it turns out, empirical research being done in distinct but converging fields of research - fields such as physics, astronomy and neuroscience - is leading investigators in those fields into similar trains of thought.
One notion that has arisen in light of the data that has been amassed by different researchers, across these different fields of inquiry, is that the “physical” reality we assume ourselves to be so comfortably placed within, may not actually be so “physical” after all. In fact, what has emerged over time is surprisingly compelling evidence suggesting that our waking state reality-scape may perhaps be better described as synthetic, and derived from a deeper structure altogether.
A simulation you say? Well, sort of, but maybe not in the way you often hear described in popular discourse. But what is the nature of the evidence pointing in this direction, and, if it’s as compelling as seems to be the case, what are the implications, not just for the matter of UAP and NHI, but for us, and for the context we find ourselves in; a context we’ve long taken for granted as settled, at least within Western civilization? These are precisely the matters we’ll seek to explore, in this, the 111th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
For those who have been involved in ufology for decades, the last few weeks have been particularly noteworthy. And that’s because what we’ve been seeing unfolding in our midst can best be described by a term reserved only for historical events involving a verifiable barrage of unidentified flying objects. The term in question is “flap”. And, without doubt, we have indeed been living through one of those moments. And of course, as many predicted would be the case, with almost everyone in the modern world walking around with a smartphone, the footage being captured during this modern-day flap has been, to say the least, abundant.
That being the case, plenty of controversy and difference of opinion has also been a-swarm, along with these apparently unidentified anomalous phenomena. And that’s because there is more than one perspective being floated to explain what is being observed. In addition to smartphones, the modern world has also equipped us with a new kind of aerial vehicle; a vehicle known, of course, as a “drone”. These are unmanned vehicles that, while at first suffering from pretty considerable limitations in terms of range and flight time, have become increasingly sophisticated over the last few years, to the point where future wars will eventually be fought with these kinds of vehicles dominating the skies.
While the conventional crowd will cry foul, suggesting this is not a flap at all, but merely a period of increased drone activity, some of the data being captured simply don’t support such a one-dimensional hypothesis. And that’s because the behavior of these vehicles has been reported - on numerous occasions - to be… well, anomalous. That is to say, while not every one of the aerial objects capturing attention - and stoking concern - seem better described as UAP, rather than drones, some definitely are. In fact, Lue Elizondo, who coined the term “the 5 observables” to define a UAP, has come out publicly stating that some of these objects are indeed displaying such behavior. And in that sense, they are therefore, by definition: UAP.
Of course, the behavior and plenitude of these objects in our skies alone does not explain why this particular flap is causing so much concern, and raising so much ire for an increasingly broad swath of our government, and our society at large. Even more concerning is the fact that these vehicles are operating - with apparent impunity - above the most secure, sensitive air bases and nuclear sites the United States possesses. Even, for instance, forcing the closing of the ufologically famous Wright-Patterson air force base in the process. And to the skeptics saying there’s nothing to see here but the standard hobby and commercial drones, Lue Elizondo, again, has aptly pointed out that: “You don’t close U.S. military air bases because there’s legally flying commercial drones in your airspace. That doesn’t make sense.”
So with all this said, what exactly is going on here? Let’s call out the elephant in the room and ask: are these vehicles, at least a portion of them, being operated by non-human intelligences? And does the scale of this operation suggest that we are, as we speak, experiencing what has come to be known as “catastrophic disclosure”? And if that is the case, this prompts a further question: why now? Is all of this anomalous activity tied to the convergence of daunting forces that seem to have humankind dancing at the precipice of self-destruction? These are precisely the matters we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 110th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
In recent times, considerable focus has been on the march towards some form of official UAP disclosure. Throughout that period, momentum has been arising from congressional attempts to surface information in light of intelligence gathered within various branches of the military and the intelligence community; that is to say, based on data and assessments from within “the government” itself.Based on this government-centric approach, one might come to the illusory conclusion that this is the only real source of information available; the main repository or “raw data”, if you will. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. While many assume the only way ufology will gain traction in the mainstream is if and when government makes some sort of official acknowledgement of the data they have amassed over the decades, myriad compelling and dara-rich reports already exist in the public at large.A key - but often underrepresented and under-discussed - component of that data available within the public domain, arises from people of indigenous descent. These peoples, often also referred to as First Nations, or more colloquially, within the United States, as “American Indians”, have a remarkably deep and diverse lore pertaining to these matters. And this lore not only touches on a plethora of encounters with non-human and non-conventionally human intelligences, over many generations, but it also speaks to a self-understanding of origins, related to these very so-called “star people”.Part of the challenge in having these reports considered as part of our ongoing data gathering efforts has been that these peoples, so often marginalized in the mainstream, have been reticent to share their accounts with the public at large. This is where Dr. Ardy Sixkiller Clarke’s legacy comes in. She is both a university professor and herself of Cherokee/Choctaw descent. And this has provided her unique access to these underrepresented peoples. Furthermore, Clarke has dedicated years of her life to visiting these various tribes, in both North and South America, and diligently recording their accounts for posterity’s sake.What’s fascinating about Clarke’s work is not just how vast a body of data it is, but also how incredibly diverse it is. Her work, perhaps more than any other researcher of recent memory, uncovers just how many different forms of non-human and - just as importantly - non-conventionally-human intelligences appear to be in our midst; even teasing the possibility that some of those non-conventional life forms have relationships (and perhaps even genetic links) with particular ethnicities amongst the present Earth population. And these are precisely the fascinating and consequential matters we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 109th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
In this episode, Darren/Exo explores how the matter of the UFO Phenomenon and converging fields of research collapse various constructs of the world, giving rise to a perspective that transcends current assumptions and expectations of "the real".
As we speak, both within ufology and within the segments of the political and public spheres that are beginning to wrestle with this enigmatic topic, we are seeing ongoing debate about how much the intelligences behind what we colloquially refer to as “the Phenomenon” should be framed as a threat–or at least a “potential threat”--or not. Some argue “better safe than sorry”, in lobbying for an approach that assumes this is a threat until proven otherwise.
As we delved into in the last episode of Point of Convergence, much of that particular argument leans on the notion that we have pretty much zero understanding as to the intent of these non-conventional others. But, as I pointed out in that episode, the wealth of experiencer testimony at our disposal would suggest otherwise, for within that extensive body of data we see consistent messages provided by these non-human others to the human beings who have interacted with them.
But even beyond this particular matter, which is already controversial because it ventures into questions around what kind of data should be considered “legitimate” and “trustworthy” or not, the lore we just referenced goes well beyond offering potential answers to the question of whether or not this amounts to a threat or not, even touching on ultimate matters such as the nature of reality, and even an alternate history regarding human origins.
What is perhaps most challenging of all to our secular, and still largely physicalist (that is to say reductionistic materialist) Western civilization, is notions that arise in the experiencer data that speak to what might best be called “spirituality”. This challenges our typical conceptions because most see this entire matter as involving technology and a potential clash of space-faring civilizations, not one delving into ultimate meaning and the evolution of souls. And yet, that is indeed where this body of data goes, which perhaps only adds fuel to the fire, in terms of why this lore is not taken as legitimate by the powers-that-be.
If experiencer lore stretches our expectations regarding what the UFO Phenomenon is even ultimately about, in what precise ways does it do so? And how do these elements in particular make our contemporary meaning-making machine uncomfortable? And how might the ignoring of those elements, simply because they are unexpected and inconvenient, potentially create a scenario where we miss the forest for the proverbial trees? These are precisely the issues we’ll seek to gain clarity around in this, the 107th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
Even as our modern mainstream society begins to grapple with the notion that non-human intelligences of a sophisticated nature are in our midst, piloting remarkably unconventional, and beyond next-gen technological craft, there is still a key component of this cultural conversation that is missing: and that is the consideration of the testimony of those who’ve apparently already encountered these very intelligences. Now, if one were unfamiliar with experiencer lore, one might conclude that we have almost zero understanding as to the intent of these various non-human others. In fact, this is basically what some, otherwise well-meaning, pro-disclosure advocates, have publicly stated - that we have no idea as to why they’re here, or what they want.
But if and when one does pay attention to said experiencer lore, it quickly becomes evident that nothing could be further from the truth. Now, does that mean that we should take everything said in these circles at face value. Certainly not. We still want to apply standard witness credibility criteria to these statements. And we also want to look for the aspects of the testimony that represent the greatest consensus. But to ignore this testimony altogether is not only unwise - after all, wouldn’t we want to hear what has been reportedly said to those who’ve interacted with these beings? - but it’s also inaccurate/inauthentic, because it lets those new to the conversation believe that this is a complete unknown, which only adds to fear states that are already driving far too much of our contemporary societal dialogue.
When one does pay attention to experiencer testimony, it becomes clear that these beings have been speaking pretty pointedly to some very specific issues. One element that is brought up frequently is that we as a species have lost touch with our connection to the planet, and even more overarchingly, to the larger cosmic community of which we are all a part. Furthermore, not only is that disconnect unfortunate, but it is also highly consequential, because it is that misunderstanding that is giving rise to the very existential threats we are now facing as a collective.
But beyond even these clearly and regularly stated messages, part of the communication also frequently touches on how we’ve lost touch with our most essential nature: a nature that stretches beyond the parameters of this one individual lifetime. In fact, it’s made clear by many of these non-conventional beings that this loss of context is driving us into a kind of individual and collective madness, one where we let pursuits like materialism become the orienting principle of our lives, even when that dogged pursuit begins to devolve into disease in our collective consciousness, reflected in, among other things, ecological disaster and frayed human mental health.
Of course, much of this speaks to the notion of “journeys of souls” and even of “soul contracts”. And, if that’s the case, what does this say of the nature of these beings? Are they “spiritual” figures, or “biological ones”, just like us? Of course, that false dichotomy is at the very heart of our present conundrum. Just who are these beings? And how does their very nature, and even their technology, tend to collapse our present paradigm? And how does the potential of that very collapse serve as the seed for a new way of being; one that restores the relationships we’ve so deeply fallen out of alignment with? These are the ultimate matters, both technological and metaphysical in nature, that we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 106th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
While modern ufology has been a component of our cultural zeitgeist for decades and decades now, during much of that time it has generally been seen as a matter for astrophysicists and aviation experts. While ground-breaking researchers such as Jacques Vallee, John Keel and J. Allen Hynek, as early as the 1970s, suggested the anomalous and highly strange nature of the data takes us well beyond that kind of conventional inquiry, even today, the mainstream still tends to think of UFOs (now monikered as UAP) and NHI - the fancy new name for what we use to call “aliens”, as involving interstellar travelers arriving at Earth in sophisticated spacecraft.
For many, especially in still physicalist-centric Western civilization, this kind of enterprise represents, at least in potentia, a new kind of contact, and a new possibility for communication that takes us beyond what we’ve been limited to amongst our own species over the millennia. But, here again, the data - when one actually looks squarely into them - take us well beyond that notion. And that’s because - contact - and specifically contact with apparently non-human and non-conventionally human intelligences - has supposedly already been happening.
The varieties of contact technologies or modalities that have meditated this non-ordinary kind of communication include mediumship/channeling, shamanic journeying, CE-5/HICE, dreams, psychedelics, and even fever states.In other words, the issue seems to be not one of needing to wait for interstellar travelers to arrive to finally give us this opportunity, for it's been available to us all along, with some cultures and people groups being more privy to this fact than others. Interestingly, these various modalities of contact and communication also seem to be possible regardless of what would seem to be the expected language and even species-specific differences. And that’s because mind-to-mind communication, known in parapsychological circles as telepathy, seems to be the general rule rather than the exception in these endeavors, thus bypassing the need for translation of written and spoken languages altogether.
But of course, these startling revelations raise further questions: if the issue is not one of needing to wait for interstellar travelers to arrive via superliminal (that is, faster than light) travel, then how exactly is this contact and communication happening? Have they been here - in our so-called “physical” space – all along? Or does the nature of this contact suggest space, and for that matter, time, is simply not what we’ve long assumed? How is it that these various contact technologies are able to connect us with alternative forms of sophisticated sentience, and what do they have in common that makes them effective? These are the captivating and consequential matters we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 105th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
Beginning with the revelations that arose in a now famous 2017 New York Times article titled “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program”, and further brought to light with the allegations made by former military insiders like Luis Elizondo and David Grusch, the general public is being slowly acclimated to a reality that those of us who are part of this community have long known to be the case: non-human intelligences and their technological marvels have been (and continue to be) in our very midst.
Still, for those of us who regularly dive deep into these murky (but often exhilarating) waters, we know that these revelations - as startling as they are to the average Joe and Jane on the street - are really just the beginning. And that’s because, simply put, there are numerous elements of human experience that simply don’t play well with the prevailing paradigm that rules in Western civilization - at least at present. These elements include out of body experiences, near death experiences, psi phenomena, synchronicity, contact with supposed deceased loved ones, and time slippages. And that’s just for starters.
Not only do these elements that have historically been forced to the fringes of polite conversation stretch the mainstream’s understanding of what’s possible, they also call into question the very maps we’ve so confidently crafted to make sense of what’s real altogether. For instance, when it comes to the matter of dealing with sophisticated, apparently non-human intelligences (ie. aliens), not only do we have the matter of the DoD allegedly housing the recovered craft and even the cadavers of non-human life forms - life forms that are decidedly biological, just like us - also on the table are the credible accounts of a host of other kind of non-conventional encounters.
Truth be told, there is a considerable body of data pointing to encounters with beings that are better described as ethereal, though - importantly - no less “real”. These beings are described by people from different walks of life in such consistent ways that they seem to claim just as much “real” and independent existence as we do. Other life forms that people encounter are perhaps better described as quasi-physical, and still others seem to navigate between these different domains like we might move between different rooms of a house.
Furthermore, human beings sometimes find themselves acting outside of their own bodies - and even outside of this 3D “physical” construct altogether - interacting with alien beings of various sorts and sometimes even with their own supposedly deceased loved ones in the process. The beings encountered also seem capable of moving human consciousness in ways that sometimes include the physical body, and other times do not. In short, what’s being highlighted here is the untenable nature of the physicalist paradigm altogether.
But all this being the case, how are we to proceed? If our modern maps have been exposed as - at best - approximations reflecting only one tiny corner of a much more expansive territory, how are we to make our way forward? And how can we reconcile the seemingly illusory boundaries between the living and the dead, sleep and waking states, and physical and ethereal realms? This all amounts to some pretty ambitious inquiry. But these are exactly the matters that we’ll seek to engage with in this the 104th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
When we take the time to look back at the history of the UFO phenomenon in popular culture, perhaps no book has had an impact greater than Whitley Strieber’s groundbreaking 1987 work Communion. This was a book that, on the one hand, caught the world by surprise, depicting shocking, discombobulating encounters with beings of a decidedly otherworldly nature, despite the fact that the experiences seemed to be happening – at least partially – very much in physical reality, and were experienced not just by Strieber, but also by his family and by guests to his cabin in upstate New York.
While shocking in its claims, one can easily make the argument that the reason the book had such an impact on popular culture is related to the fact that so many people resonated with the material within, and – even more pointedly – with the now iconic cover of the book, depicting what has since become known as the quintessential “grey alien”. The being depicted on the cover of Communion was not only provocative, but also – to many thousands of people around the world – strangely familiar. Of course, the question that inevitably arises from this fact is: why? Were these memory fragments suggestive of a reality where untold numbers of human beings were being abducted in a similar manner to Strieber?
And, if so, what was the nature of the apparently extensive enterprise these beings were in the midst of conducting? Perplexingly, while elements of the encounters seemed to be happening in something like an alternate state of consciousness or in an alternate, ethereal realm, other elements, involving medical examinations and the extraction of reproductive, genetic material, seemed suggestive of a much more “down to earth” purpose, perhaps involving the hybridization program that has become such a lynch pin of our contemporary understanding of the Phenomenon.
These questions were of paramount importance in 1987 when this book was first unleashed upon the world. Since then, the significance of the material has only become even more pressing – as many of the future visions experiencers like Strieber had then have seemingly come to pass, suggesting we are even closer to some consequential turning point in human history; a moment these beings spoke so pointedly about. Because, to be clear, the encounters did involve warnings; warnings that seem particularly prescient in light of how things have unfolded in human civilization since the time of Strieber’s initial encounters.
But, we might ask, to what end? And in preparation for what? Who are these beings, and how are their efforts to not only interact with us, but perhaps even to chart a new evolutionary path forward, related to the events arising in our midst even as we speak; events that threaten our very place on the planet as we have known it? These are just a few of the questions we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 103rd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
Seeing the matter of UAP, or, as they have more traditionally been named: UFOs, unidentified flying objects, move through the halls of Congress, apparently towards some kind of official government disclosure, one might assume that what we’re dealing with is the rather clear cut matter of alien beings arising from elsewhere in our vast galaxy, visiting us in their sophisticated nuts and bolts spacecraft. Many assume this is the logical starting point based on what we think we know of the frontiers that are yet to be explored by our modern species.
However, if one pays close attention one notices the peculiar matter of the fact that these beings are referred to in official government documentation, specifically the so-called Schumer amendment, as “non-human intelligence”. No mention of the term “extraterrestrial” or “alien” can be found. Many have speculated that this is because the nature of these beings is perhaps more exotic than our sci-fi tropes would have us believe.
In truth, the exotic nature of this matter of the UFO Phenomenon goes far beyond simply the origin of the beings themselves. For if one spends any amount of time studying the nuances of this Phenomenon, it becomes clear that some very peculiar goings-on are seemingly baked-in to the entire enterprise. The term “high strangeness” has been coined to encapsulate the many aspects that are peculiar, mind-bending, and sometimes even apparently absurd.
In fact, the ways experiences with this Phenomenon tend to stretch - in cognitively uncomfortable ways - our very notions of what we think even can happen in a rational universe, are so frequent, and so seemingly impossible, that many have wondered if this is telling us that our conventional model of reality is, simply put, just wrong altogether. If these incidents of high strangeness are “real”, then how can our model be sufficient to account for what can arise in our material universe? And to that point, in light of the bizarre nature of these experiences, is it even accurate to see the stage we traipse upon as a “material universe”, at all? In other words, does the very mind-bending nature of these experiences suggest that perhaps this is exactly where we should look for the locus of reality itself: in mind? And are these events arising from the machinations of our individual minds, a collective mind, or some combination of the two? These are the matters we’ll seek to explore in this, the 102nd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
When it comes to the intelligences behind the UFO Phenomenon, a certain group of repeating players tend to draw most of the attention. These commonly referenced groups include the greys, the nordics, the reptilians and the mantis types. And while there are a considerable number of accounts that do indeed refer to these particular beings, this can sometimes lead to the erroneous conclusion that they represent the sum total of the NHI we are dealing with.
The truth is, when one peruses the full breadth of the experiencer literature, it becomes clear that a plethora of alien beings are actually encountered. And even within the types that resemble the most commonly referenced, there seem to be numerous nuances in their appearance and behavior, only further complicating the picture, suggesting perhaps both species, subspecies, as well as factioning.
While it is a human tendency to prefer concise - that is to say “manageable” - answers, especially when it comes to an exploration of the unknown reaches of our knowledge, we should be careful not to reduce the complexity encountered in order to simply lighten “cognitive load”. I would suggest a more helpful response would be to embrace the rich diversity represented in the many types of non-human intelligences that we, on occasion, seem to cross paths with, even if this does require a significant upgrade in our understanding of the complexity of our cosmic environment.
To this point, in today’s episode we’re going to be making our third trek into the stellar work of Ardy "Sixkiller" Clarke, an academic of Native American descent who’s contributed greatly to our collective awareness of these various forms of non-human intelligence. Our collective knowledge of the variety and nature of these beings has been greatly aided through Clarke’s dedicated, tireless, and methodical cataloging of the many kinds of beings encountered specifically amongst people of indigenous descent.
Do certain kinds of apparently alien beings tend to interact with specific types of human people groups? And, if so, do these data points perhaps represent overarching patterns - providing hints even in regards to differing human origins? To that point, how should we make sense of the claims of descent from such beings, which are so often part of indigenous cultural lore?
It is the expansive and unique work of people like Ardy "Sixkiller" Clarke that helps us to begin to address just such questions. Just how wide-ranging are the alien types encountered? And where do these various types fall within the spectrum of consciousness development, respectively? These are just a few of the questions we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 101st episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
In our modern, technologically sophisticated world, it is something of a wonder that a medium such as the podcast continues to thrive. When podcasts first began to emerge in the new era of mini audio devices known as iPods (which speaks, of course, to the origin of the name), many saw them as a nostalgic throwback to the era of radio plays, before even the advent of television. The fact that the podcast medium continues to hold its own, even well into the 2020s, suggests there is something deeply enduring about the experience of tuning into real human voices, in order to feel an authentic human connection.
For me personally, it has been a profoundly rewarding experience to build that connection with a dedicated podcast audience that feels very much like a kind of extended family; a tribe, if you will. And as we make note of this, the 100th episode of Point of Convergence, I think it bears pausing for a moment to celebrate not only this milestone in the life of the podcast, but also the human journey we all share, one that draws each of us to this mysterious collection of topics centered around anomalous - and therefore extraordinary - experience.
Truth be told, what you have primarily witnessed over these many episodes is my own indulgence of curiosity. For it is primarily questions, rather than answers, that have driven this quest; one centered around both hard and incontrovertible data, but also an intuitive sense that the world we are all a part of is made up of so much more than what we’ve been led to believe in our conventional, reductionistically materialist society.
To mark this turning over into the triple digits, I plan to make this episode partly a retrospective of sorts, one in which I take some time to look back at the meandering – but also synchronistically orchestrated – path that has brought us here to episode 100. What lessons have been learned along the way in exploring the so-called UFO Phenomenon and related topics? And how might some additional but associated notions – such as that of a hologram, or a “holomovement”, which we’ll delve into today – help shed further light not just on the anomalous, but also on the ultimate nature of reality itself? These are the particular questions we’ll seek to indulge in this, the 100th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
In the recent move towards a more mainstream consideration of the enigma colloquially known as the UFO Phenomenon, we are seeing increasing discussion around the alleged technology recovered. We are also seeing robust conversation arising around whether or not this anomalous technology may have made its way into the top-secret craft being developed and operated by the military industrial complex, by way of successful reverse engineering.
While such a move is a welcome sign for ufologists and those who are merely enthused about the topic alike, this development leaves out one absolutely fundamental component of the entire matter: that of the nature and intentions of the intelligences responsible for such technology. The fact that this obvious implication is not being discussed in the mainstream, perhaps hints at a deep, subconscious nervousness around what this may mean for our civilization’s own self-understanding.
When one adds to the mix the fact that, perhaps, all along, the reality of these various others - these NHI, as they are now referred to in official circles - has been staring us in the face, in the form of the very religious traditions we’ve embraced as our meaning-making models of the world, only adds to this strange sense that there’s something we as a modern civilization have almost willingly turned our gaze away from.
In today’s podcast we’ve going to take a deep dive into the surprisingly compelling notion that the beings, sometimes referred to as “gods”, and sometimes conflated as a single deity in monotheistic traditions, points almost squarely towards the very non-human intelligences said to be responsible for the mysteriously daunting behavior being increasingly recorded in our modern day.
What do our most revered spiritual traditions - when read in the correct context - say of these beings and their role in the seeding and subsequent development of humankind? And what might this mean for what’s happening even now, and where we are headed as a supposedly sophisticated, modern civilization? These are the most consequential matters we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 99th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
Those familiar with ufological lore, and especially how it ties into our deep religious history, will tell you that UFOs have been around for as long as we have, and perhaps even longer. Indeed, it has long been acknowledged that the assumed non-human intelligences behind these manifestations may be responsible not only for the inspiration and direction of our most foundational meaning-making models - that is to say, our religious traditions - but also for our very origin as a species.
That being the case, some might find it a stretch to believe that the times we find ourselves in now are somehow unique when it comes to this enigmatic topic: Yes, they’re here, but they always have been, directing affairs mostly in shadow - à la something like Jacques Vallee’s control system hypothesis - so what would be different about now? - or so the thinking goes.
While that’s an understandable perspective to have, and while we should always be on the lookout for bias in our contemporary reading of history, there is indeed compelling evidence to suggest that what we’re seeing with this Phenomenon since the turn of the millennium - and especially over the last few years or so - is indeed worthy of note, suggesting that we may very well be heading towards some crescendo point, where our very relationship to this Phenomenon, and, for that matter, to reality itself, fundamentally changes.
The evidence for this notion arises not just in the increased activity of alien intelligences in our midst - though we have indeed seen a rise in reported accounts of sightings and engagements with the craft apparently piloted by these so-called NHI of late - but also via reports from experiencers, those uniquely tuned into these various alien groups, who have seen visions of imminent changes that speak to the coming of a foundationally different world.
While even these two data points - the increased sightings/interactions and sense from experiencers that something is coming - might not be enough to convince many, these are not the only elements we need to reckon with here. Just as important in this equation is the rising tide of challenges our civilization is presently facing; challenges so daunting that they threaten our very existence.
These matters include climate change, geopolitical conflict rife with ever more catastrophic weapons of mass destruction, and the sudden rise of artificial intelligence. All three of these are particularly troublesome because they are being met by a center of gravity of consciousness still driven by fear, scarcity and what our most ancient and enduring spiritual traditions - not to mention many of these Others - call “the illusion of separation”.
Those familiar with ufological lore will also know that the trajectory we’re presently on as a human, earth-based civilization, is precisely the one that these various non-human (and non-conventionally-human) intelligences have long warned us about. Their historic concern about our ever more technological focus, unmoored from an accompanying increase in our level of consciousness, is central to the messages delivered to humankind via the experiencers we’ve already discussed. Suddenly those warnings and prognostications, going back decades, seem strikingly prescient.
That said, we know that timing is particularly challenging to predict and parse out when it comes to these otherworldly admonitions. And thus, the question still remains: just how pressing are these issues, and just how close are we to some fundamental transformation of life as we have thus far known it? Furthermore, how might the very real march towards official disclosure we’ve seen of late be informed by all of this? These are the very thorny - yet crucial - matters we’ll seek to gain clarity around in this, the 98th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
Over the last several episodes of this podcast we’ve been exploring the overlap between religious history, Shamanism and the UFO Phenomenon. In today’s episode we’ll be continuing this line of inquiry by zeroing in on the mystical and transformative aspects of encounters had as part of the modern UFO Phenomenon. Specifically we’ll be considering how the nature of these encounters, had in a seemingly alternate realm or alternate state of consciousness, prompt remarkably consistent and long-lasting worldview changes amongst those who’ve had the experiences.
While some will argue that the ontological shock experienced in interactions with alien beings that are not supposed to exist according to the dictates of conventional thinking is simply that - the result of paradigm-shattering experiences had with often frightening, “bug-like” creatures - a more thoughtful approach might suggest that, to the contrary, the “reality rewrite” that experiencers undergo is not just an unintended side-effect, but a chief aim of the entire enterprise.
Put another way, one can very clearly make the argument that a central mission of these mysterious Others interacting with human beings over time is to “wake us up” to who we truly are, and to how we’re connected to everything and everyone else around us, including myriad beings we have not even yet begun to map onto our collective awareness. Ultimately that “waking up” process is not only about expanding our conceptual categories, but more centrally about cracking open human perception and potential - allowing us to more fully step into our true birthright as powerful, multidimensional beings that are fractal representations of Source consciousness itself.
In the latter part of the 20th century, John Mack, a well-respected professor of psychiatry and head of the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School was thrust full-on into these confusing and controversial matters when he began to be sought out by the people who’d had these discombobulating encounters. In taking these accounts seriously, determining that - contrary to mainstream thinking of the time - these accounts were not the result of delusional, damaged minds, Mack played a central role in mainstreaming our culture’s engagement with these challenging issues.
In today’s episode we’ll be considering the observations made by Mack in his ground-breaking book Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters. By the time Mack penned this book, he was a decade or more into the matter of apparent alien abduction and hybridization, and, having had first-hand exposure not only to Western experiencers, but also to Shamans and those of various indigenous traditions from around the world, he was in a unique position to draw overarching insights from his immersive investigations. In what directions did these investigations take his thinking, and why were his tentative conclusions so utterly unpalatable for conventional, Western society? These are the matters we’ll seek to explore in this, the 97th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
While the notion of extraterrestrial life has long captivated the public imagination, certain expectations regarding how such life might interact with us have also proven problematic. Primarily that’s because, being the stubborn species we are, when data doesn’t conform to our expectations, we tend to either ignore it, explain it away, or assume it has been gathered incorrectly, or is even the result of fraudulent reporting. This issue has been paramount in the matter of the modern UFO Phenomenon, because many elements of the reports that have arisen from eye-witness testimony contain elements that stretch our expectations - often to the breaking point and beyond.
A term that has been put forward to explain the various elements that stretch our expectations of how sophisticated non-terrestrial intelligence would interact with us – even to the point of defying rational understanding altogether – is “high strangeness”. Here we see crossover into another domain, that of general paranormality. Now while we modern Westerners would like to keep these bodies of data completely separate – after all, why would extraterrestrials act in ways that are reminiscent of apparitions and poltergeist phenomena, or so the conventional thinking goes -- the reality is that these two kinds of data seem to regularly co-arise in people’s experience. And that being the case, it would be unwise to let our pre-existing biases prevent us from seeing linkages that clearly exist in the raw data itself.
Speaking of crossover between domains that tend to be kept distinct in our modern notions of how reality works, we also see startling parallels between the UFO Phenomenon and humanity’s most ancient expressions of religion – collectively referred to as “Shamanism”. The most glaring similarities arise in the experience of reality people report in both Shamanistic journeys, and encounters with supposed “aliens” during contact experiences reported as part of the modern UFO Phenomenon. In both cases people report experiencing the encounter in a seemingly alternate realm or non-ordinary state of consciousness. The question then emerges, pertaining to the UFO Phenomenon, if these really are “space aliens” – that is, physical beings arising from some distant star system – then why would the encounters involve so much overlap with the visionquest encounters reported in Shamanism?
While one can certainly attempt to explain away these parallels in the bodies of data, a more open-minded, objective, and sincere perspective might very well land on the notion that these clues are telling us something fundamental about the nature of reality itself; something that seems to inevitably lead towards a reframing of what it means to be a sentient life form living in a supposedly “physical” universe, as defined under the dictates of scientific materialism. But what precisely is the nature of the overlap between domains/topics such as Shamanism and experiences that fall within the modern UFO Phenomenon, and where might the implications of these alignments lead us? These are the mind-stretching and paradigm-collapsing matters we’ll seek to delve more deeply into, in this, the 96th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
Over the last 12 months or so, those associated with ufology have seen their excitement level around the matter of official disclosure reach a fevered pitch. Much of the optimism has been tied to the remarkable specificity of the language included in the Schumer amendment, which makes clear not only that sophisticated, non-human intelligences in our midst exist, but that various elements of the military industrial complex have constructed elaborate schemes to study this phenomenon while shielding this consequential reality not just from the American people, but also from Congress and the rest of government.
While much of that amendment was eventually gutted before being passed into law, in many ways the proverbial train has nevertheless left the station. There is just too much momentum heading into 2024 for this progress to reverse course. It may take longer than some within ufology would prefer, but this march towards an official acknowledgement of the reality of this phenomenon – and the various unconventional intelligences behind it – seems unstoppable at this point.
While this particular matter of when disclosure will actually happen has been front and center in the ufological dialogue over the last year, what has been discussed much less regularly is the matter of what will actually be disclosed. Many of us obsessed with this topic have been so focused on crossing this one particular threshold -- yes, this is real, and yes, so are they – that we’ve spent far less time pondering what might be disclosed, or commented upon, beyond this initial civilization-changing acknowledgement.
Truth be told, this is precisely where the challenge really arises for the powers that be. And, frankly, that’s because they really have no clear understanding of where this all leads. Yes, it’s real. Yes, it’s been present in our midst – even if in stealthy manner – for perhaps as long as we’ve been around as a species. But as to its ultimate nature, and how it changes our understanding of fundamental reality, that’s a matter of ongoing contention and confusion – even for the insiders who’ve spent decades studying this, with the highest security clearances available.
For those who take the most overarching view – considering not just the more contemporary manifestation and interpretation of this Phenomenon, but also ways that deep human history seems to point to interactions stretching back millenia - even if described in terms and frames much less familiar and comfortable to modern ears – it’s clear that these other intelligences have not only been with us all along, likely shaping our development across time in the process, but likely were responsible for our very seeding upon this blue pearl of a planet to begin with.
In today’s episode we’ll be taking a deep dive into the ways one can make a very solid case for the notion that ancient encounters with so-called “gods" were ultimately part of the very same enterprise as the more modern UFO/UAP and alien abduction/hybridization enigma. How has framing, and a poor understanding of the different cultural contexts that have tried to make sense of these phenomena over time, obscured the underlying truth of these reality-shaking revelations? These are the very daring, daunting, and highly disruptive matters we’ll be exploring in this, the 95th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
As our civilization continues to skate at the very edge of a new era of widespread public disclosure around the so-called UFO Phenomenon, there still exists a striking incongruence between what is being discussed in government and media, and what is understood to be the nature of the entire enterprise for those colloquially known as “experiencers”. At the public level, we are finally approaching a moment of reckoning around the fact that technology exists - and has existed - for decades if not centuries, if not since the dawn of humankind - that performs maneuvers we simply don’t understand - let alone are ready to replicate.
Of course, along with acknowledgement of this seemingly “otherworldly” technology, we are finally seeing mention of the supposed pilots of these said craft in the form of recovered “biologics”. That, of course, inevitably leads to questions of both where - and when - these so-called “pilots” are from. But even here politicians and the mainstream media are very careful to not fully land on the notion that “aliens are real”. There is a strange socio-psychological game being played here, where polite society still keeps this idea enough to the fringes that it doesn’t disturb our everyday routines.
Again, on the other hand, for experiencers, this part of the enterprise couldn’t be any more real. The interaction with the beings associated with this next-gen technology is actually the most central aspect of the matter. And while the public conversation is just beginning to approach the matter of their being one - or at most - a few - different kinds of intelligent entities to grapple with, what the body of the experiencer testimony over time makes clear is that the diversity of the various kinds of non-human and non-conventionally human intelligences in our midst is almost as extensive as the various craft that have been observed over time. That is to say, while the quintessential “grey alien” is a figure almost any modern human will recognize, that form is just the beginning of a dizzying array of many, many forms.
In today’s episode that point will be made paramount, as we explore a variety of encounters with beings described as blue humans, reptilians, and insectoids. And to be clear, rather than being a one-off, these encounters are also numerous, suggesting that these are distinct beings, beyond the greys, who also have been carrying on a relationship with human beings throughout time as well - that is to say, in addition to the more commonly perceived “greys”. But who and what are these beings? And are these forms permanent, or merely part of a shifting guise employed to communicate certain information to human beings at different times? These are the perplexing but intriguing matters we’ll seek to engage with, in this, the 94th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
Anyone alive in the modern era is entitled to look at the startling conflux of transformational variables currently arising in our midst, and conclude that this is a time of truly unparalleled change; change so all-encompassing that it is virtually guaranteed that the world a decade from now will prove fundamentally different from the one we’re in now, and even more contrastingly different than the one any of us were born into.
The UFO Phenomenon, an ever-present specter in our midst, is a key element in this transformational stew. At this point not only is new information coming to light on a yearly basis pertaining to this topic, but even on a monthly - and sometimes even weekly - basis. That is to say, while the modern UFO Phenomenon traces its origins back 80 years or so - existing mostly in the fringes of polite society for that entire time - we are now in an era where it feels like at any moment this reality of mysterious others and their bewitching tech will be fully “mainstreamed”.
Of course, once we cross this threshold, a key collective moment of contemplation awaits us: one that presents overarchingly profound questions about not just who they are, but who we are. And at that point our entire civilization must endure a moment of deep, reflective reckoning; a reckoning that acknowledges that almost nothing we’ve confidently believed about our reality is quite what it has seemed. If nothing else, this dawning realization will help us see that we’ve been living in some version of the Truman Show - where what we’ve thought was real was more like a stage play.
Even as we face this comprehensive re-contextualization around our origins and our place in the Cosmos, we are seeing our own civilization approach an apex moment, referred to some as the Singularity, where spiraling technological growth becomes not only irreversible, but so all-encompassing that it constitutionally changes what it means to be human. The sudden rise of artificial intelligence over the course of the last 12 months is front and center in this discussion.
Of course, in addition to us approaching this moment of widespread acknowledgement of these Others in our midst, happening just as we approach an apparent technological point of no return, there is also the matter of the increased engagement by some of these Others with modern humanity. And of course this raises a couple of intriguing questions:
1.) Is the government shift towards disclosure happening because they recognize that if they don’t get “ahead of the curve” - in terms of embarking on some plan of controlled disclosure - that the matter will be taken out of their hands altogether, resulting in what some have called “catastrophic disclosure” - speaking to its potentially devastatingly destabilizing impact on human civilization?
2.) Are groups of these Others ramping up their engagement with humanity precisely because the point of no return we are presently approaching at break-neck speed is so consequential that they have determined that letting us pass that threshold of our own accord is simply not tenable - primarily because they perhaps see that - without intervention - that unaided crossing would inevitably ensure our own demise?
These questions are simultaneously as profound as they are perplexing - arousing excitement in some, and trepidation in others, and they are precisely the matters we’ll be diving head on into, in this, the 93rd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
Over the course of the 80 or so years that make up what is colloquially known as the modern UFO Phenomenon, various hypotheses have been generated to make sense of not only the remarkably sophisticated craft that seem to be leagues beyond the technology of any modern nation-state present on the planet, but also of the apparently non-human beings who occupy them, and of the high strangeness that seems so often to be part and parcel with these anomalous encounters.
Because mainstream Western civilization has been firmly in the clutches of reductionistic physicalism as a model of reality for the entire duration of the modern UFO Phenomenon, the vast majority of the hypotheses generated thus far have been based on this underlying materialist framework. What’s strange about this though is that physicalism has been dead in the water for quite some time now. Not only is it misguided in some of its claims, but it is demonstrably untenable based on modern research findings.
Bernardo Kastrup is a renowned contemporary philosopher who is one of the most vocal voices in the world today calling physicalism’s bluff. He counters the materialist delusion with a model he calls analytic idealism; arguing that reality is fundamentally a mental construct, a process of mentation, and we – along with all other sentient beings in the cosmos - are what he deems alters of Original Mind, or what others might call Source consciousness.
In this the second of my two-part interview with Bernardo, we cover a variety of topics, engaging with how idealism might present some very interesting and encouraging possibilities for further research. The issues addressed from the perspective of idealism include high strangeness and the peculiarly humanoid - almost neo-human - body type of many of the anomalous beings encountered across history.
While the UFO Phenomenon has undoubtedly proven to be one of, if not THE most enigmatic of modern topics, in this discussion we consider the insights that a metaphysical model like idealism might open up in our process of inquiry, in this, the 92nd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
Over the course of 90+ episodes of Point of Convergence, save for one episode with James Iandoli, on the topic of CE-5, or HICE: human initiated contact events, this show has not followed the common podcast interview format. The reason for that is that there are already plenty of shows that follow the common interview pattern. My goal here has generally been to offer solo deep dives on various aspects of the UFO Phenomenon and associated topics that include, among others, NDEs, OBEs, and psi phenomena.
That said, as in the case of my interview with James Iandoli - who represents a wealth of wisdom on so-called “contact work” - I do find it helpful to include the thoughts of others when that person represents what I would deem a paragon in their field. This is true in today’s episode, which features my recent conversation with philosopher Bernardo Kastrup.
Bernardo’s work has been featured prominently in this podcast. His analytic idealism framework has been influential in my own aim to make sense of the dizzying and sometimes discombobulating array of phenomena associated with anomalous encounters with UFOs/UAP and apparent aliens. His book Meaning in Absurdity: What Bizarre Phenomena Can Tell Us About the Nature of Reality is especially pertinent to our overarching subject of interest, and I highly recommend it.
As an idealist, Bernardo’s view is that base reality is ultimately mental in nature; like a dream held in what he calls “Mind at Large”, or that others might call Source consciousness, or Original Mind. I have found that seeing not just the UFO Phenomenon and related paranormal encounters, but reality itself, in this light, is extremely helpful in making headway in these tricky, murky waters. With that introduction aside, let’s move to part 1 of my 2 part discussion with philosopher Bernardo Kastrup, in this, the 91st episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
For a long period of modern history the matter of the so-called UFO Phenomenon remained a topic cast to the fringes of discourse. While there has always been a committed community of people dedicated to getting to the bottom of this enduring, enigmatic mystery, that group has operated - for the most part - in the margins of polite society. And while the general public has long believed in the likely existence of extraterrestrial life in the cosmos – as have astrophysicists, for that matter – the subject of some of that sophisticated alien life already being in our midst has been a different matter altogether; one, for the most part, subjected to the conspiracy theory bin amongst the mainstream.That clear distinction between these two statements - that other life exists in the cosmos, and that some of that life is already visiting us - began to dissolve somewhat with the revelations brought forward by David Grusch; an insider who had come into contact with clear evidence not just of the presence of these “aliens” in our midst, but furthermore of contact, communication and even agreements being made between elements of the U.S. government and its military services and these factions of so-called non-human intelligence.For those subjected to the historic enterprise known as alien abduction, these revelations raised new and troubling questions about just how much human governments have not only known about this matter – despite their public denials – but may have been party to them. It is one thing to come to grips with the notion that sophisticated intelligences are able to take you from the comfort of your home with impunity. It is another matter altogether to learn that perhaps your own government has been privy to these activities; and that may have been part of an accord struck between these other intelligences and human governments.And yet, this is precisely what is on the table; not just as a result of the allegations brought forward by David Grusch, but also because of details that have been provided elsewhere, going into greater detail as to the nature of these accords as they pertain to the matter of abductions. In this week’s podcast we’re going to delve into once such account that purports to describe the nature of the cooperative aspect of these events; detailing how a deeply compartmented element of the U.S. air force was made aware of abductions via telepathic communication received by personnel who had been genetically altered to enhance their capacity to receive said messages from the faction of non-human intelligence who had made this accord. If true, the implications of this account are not only consequential, but, for many, they are also deeply disquieting. But of course such topics are not ones we shy away from on this podcast. Just how much have human governments – or segmented aspects of them – actually known about these historic abductions? And how exactly was intel passed from an alien faction to a group of human beings privy to this sweeping enterprise? These are precisely the matters we’ll be delving into in this, the 90th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
Without question, 2023 has been a banner year in the decades-long endeavor to bring disclosure about the reality of the so-called UFO Phenomenon to public awareness. Ever since the mid 20th century there has been a dedicated push by a relatively small but growing contingent of die-hards to finally get the U.S. government to admit what it knows about these beings from “elsewhere”; beings who have apparently been at work in our civilization in very substantive albeit clandestine ways. Based on the political machinations that began churning soon after the dawn of the startling allegations brought forward by a former insider named David Grusch, that push seemed to finally be paying dividends.
That said, of late the startling progress seen earlier in the summer seems to have slowed. So much so, in fact, that some have begun to wonder aloud, with chagrin, if perhaps the historic secrecy/disinformation machine – which has been pushing back in its own dedicated way ever since these revelations came to light – might once again be about to turn this apparently irreversible progress into yet another mirage.
While on the one hand, such a feat seems more like wizardry – after all, how could these revelations not at the very least lead to a deep and broad congressional investigation? – it does indeed seem as if our society is carrying on with the same old, same old, in regards to what tends to garner public attention. Now that we’re just over a year away from a hotly contested federal election, perhaps not surprisingly the vast majority of public and media focus has turned to that epic showdown; one being seeded by near civil-war like stratifications within the national fabric.
The question now arising is this: can this push for disclosure hope to gain enough steam, and make enough noise, to be heard amongst this rising national clamor leading up to an historic moment in late 2024? At least, that’s the question some are asking; chiefly those concerned this might all come down to a monumental run of bad luck around timing.
From another point of view, however – one that I personally think is more robustly informed by the full scope of the matters in play here – these issues are not separable; and certainly not coincidental. I would argue that the what, when, and how of these matters again comes down – at least in part – to the clandestine actions of those mysterious actors; ones who seem to be both everywhere and everywhen, except for when you expressly go looking for them.
Is this seeming overarching orchestration humbling to our collective sense of agency, and even to our species’ perspective on planetary sovereignty? Certainly. Does it suggest that disclosure – however one defines that term – simply isn’t something that humanity alone can muster up enough momentum to bring to bear – at least, not at our current stage of development? Yes, without question. I think history makes this matter crystal clear.
Questions we should be asking include the following: What do they want in the midst of all of this? What is their overarching agenda? Is it singular or plural? Are they singular or plural? If they’ve shaped our history – to one degree or another – what do they intend for our future? And what role are they playing as the figures on the chessboard seemingly move about of their own volition? Considering the subject of disclosure from this much more panoptic vantage point is exactly the approach we will be taking in this particular discussion, as we aim to make sense of these intriguing yet imposing matters, in this, the 89th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
The modern so-called UFO Phenomenon stretches back to the mid-20th century. That means we have 75+ years of lore to draw from when reflecting on the subject matter in question. Of course, for the vast majority of that time this topic, colloquially referred to as “ufology”, has remained a somewhat “fringe” enterprise, discussed ad nauseam by enthusiasts of the notion of extraterrestrial intelligences visiting earth in sophisticated machines, but never gaining a truly legitimate foothold amongst the mainstream.That is, of course, up until recently. Since the advent of the revelations/allegations brought forward by a former insider named David Grusch, this topic has gained traction in the mainstream; at least, it has begun to. At this point, while decades-long ufologists have been shocked to see the kind of attention this topic has recently garnered in political circles, it’s still not truly penetrated the formidable iron gates of legacy mainstream media. Nevertheless, there are signs that this wall of impenetrability is perhaps beginning to crack and crumble. And without doubt, as more hearings are held, and more evidence is presented, along with a secondary wave of whistleblowers prepared to follow in David Grusch’s wake, that traction in the mainstream will eventually prove undeniable. And that will mark an inflection point for our civilization, as the conversation around this new reality we are collectively grappling with turns from “could it be?” to “how now shall we respond?”
All that said, as we’ve watched this topic, and the questions it inevitably begs, begin to become a noticeable “something” for those who’ve long ignored it, there is an aspect of the conversation that is still largely missing from the society-wide dialogue. Here I speak of the aims/intentions/agendas of the beings in question. It’s as if we’re talking about them either in the past tense, or as a force that is unconscious, like water running down a mountain towards the ocean.But, of course, they are not just another aspect of nature running its course like water returning to the ocean via the impartial force of gravity. They are a parallel intelligence; walking beside us, with their own history, species-specific norms, and collective aims to bring to the mix. And only a much, much smaller subset of the community are asking the relevant questions that arise from this aspect of the situation. Questions such as: who are they, and what are their aims? Some throw their hands in the air here, assuming that the intentions and, for that matter, even basic nature of a non-human intelligence would be impenetrable to homo sapien sapiens. But of course, a long history of interaction between these others and a subset of humanity known as experiencers casts serious doubt on such assumptions. That history suggests not only that we can engage in open contact with these other beings, but that that communication often involves very specific details about their aims amongst us, and their intentions towards us. How consistent are these messages? And to what degree should we trust them? Many see these as waters too murky to navigate. But that’s precisely what we’ll endeavor to do in this, the 88th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
Throughout much of the 20th century there existed a narrative that ran in parallel, but also somewhat in shadow and away from plain sight, to the march of history that we all learned about in school. This parallel narrative spoke of remarkable technological craft, seemingly centuries ahead of our own cutting-edge marvels, and included whispers of encounters with the pilots of said craft, who often both looked somewhat like us: humanoid, bipedal, etc, but also distinctly different, that is to say: “alien”, with huge, wrap around eyes and skin the color and texture of mushrooms.
Within 20th century history, the period where we see these two parallel tracks most overlap, at least initially, was around the turn of what is commonly referred to as the atomic era. If you look at the history of the development and testing of atomic weapons, you will find these Others entering the fray, even if in ways that still didn’t make mention in mainstream news publications. Desert landscapes, mushroom clouds, and flying saucers; these all go hand in hand, when you consider these two parallel track of history.
Towards the latter half of the 20th century, another key intersection occurred; one that saw these others (or perhaps, another group of “others” altogether), entering the fray to embark upon some kind of vast, but secretive genetic program; a program that saw human beings taken aboard apparent craft, and having their reproductive material taken, apparently in the service of the creation of hybrid beings: that is to say, a new creation of humanoid creature that was very much a cross between us, and them.
These key historical developments have long been rumored about in the so-called backrooms of ufology. That said, they have historically been remarkably difficult to surface, for those who have endeavored to see these two parallel tracks considered as undeniably and inextricably connected to each other - which is to say, you cannot reconstruct the true history of the 20th century without seeing these two parallel tracks merged into one.
This difficulty is largely attributable to the remarkable success of an official suppression and disinformation program that was operated by the government of the American people, against the American people, as well as others around the world, throughout much of the 20th century, and stretching on into the 21st.
In light of events of the last several weeks and months, however, it’s now clear that this fight for legitimacy amongst the mainstream has taken a sharp turn. So much so, in fact, that those who’ve been investigating these matters for decades and decades have been left with their mouths agape; as they’ve seen these matters, seemingly overnight, being given true governmental attention, and on a bipartisan basis to boot.
To be clear, the surprising pace of recent events – which has seen each of the main governmental bodies in the United States, in recent weeks, publicly take up the challenge of endeavoring to be transparent about this enigmatic part of our history – has left many wondering if something more than meets the eye might be in play here. After all, finally beginning to move towards transparency is one thing. But what we’re apparently seeing is arguably much more than that. To be clear, we’re now seeing legislation being crafted, by some of the most powerful politicians in the nation, around what is officially being deemed a “disclosure plan”. The question is: Why? And, just as, if not more importantly, why now? These are the very compelling and complex matters we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 87th episode, of the Point of Convergence podcast.
Throughout the history of humankind we’ve been pushing the boundaries of exploration, determined to map and – often eventually, populate – every nook and cranny of physical space we come across. This has meant we’ve ventured into every corner of the earth, even those sporting the most inhospitable of environmental conditions.
When the modern-day UFO Phenomenon first exploded into public consciousness around the era of the 1940s through, not one, but a series of remarkable events, that orientation around frontier consciousness led almost everyone of the time – once it was clear these strange objects seen - designated UFOs – unidentified flying objects – were very unlikely to be of prosaic origin – to assume that these apparently intelligently controlled vehicles must be coming from the last of the frontiers we had yet to explore; namely: outer space - they greater expanse of the surrounding cosmos.
This of course suggested the existence of extraterrestrials; beings who had evolved on entirely different planets in entirely different star systems in far flung corners of the Milky Way Galaxy or beyond. This sparked our imagination, leading us to imagine what they might look like, and how they might behave. Would they look anything like us? Would they follow our behavior patterns? Would they want to conquer and colonize us the same way we’d done with each other?
As the 20th century marched on, many people around the planet began to report encounters with the very beings supposedly piloting these sophisticated vehicles. Interestingly, while modern science had long leaned towards extraterrestrial beings likely looking decidedly unlike us - because of their origin being tied to completely different evolutionary pressures in completely different home planet contexts, the reports arising from these encounters with “other-worldly beings” spoke to a remarkably humanoid form; and indeed on regular occasion, even a seemingly fully human form.
Furthermore, even the types less human in appearance still matched the general morphology of other forms of life from Earth: including reptilian and insectoid, including mantis beings - bearing a striking resemblance to 9 foot tall praying mantis insects found right here on our home planet. Of course, this raises an obvious question: why? Why were these encountered forms flying in the face of our expectations around what extraterrestrial beings would likely look like – and, more importantly, what they would NOT look like? I would suggest to you that perhaps the issue lies in one of our earlier assumptions: that the next frontier to be explored is always spatial in nature. But what if these others were not coming from elsewhere, but from some as yet poorly understood non-spatial dimension?
On that note, the notion of a multiverse opened up the interdimensional hypothesis to popular consideration. And that’s still in the running, suggesting these beings are arriving from planes of existence sitting in parallel to our physical existence. But there is another possibility that has long escaped the mainstream of our collective imagination around these beings; namely: time travel. In other words, what if these beings are not so much coming from somewhere else, but rather some when else?
When one stops to consider this possibility, not only does it hold its own – in terms of serving as a potential theoretical explanatory mechanism – but it also fits remarkably well with key components of the historical data, not just around the appearance and behavior of these various beings, but also with other key elements arising from the historical experiencer literature. This possibility that time is a key variable in the overarching phenomenon is a fascinating one, one that will be our focus in this, the 86th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
The year 2017 saw what appeared at the time to be a sea change in ufology when a key piece published in the New York Times made clear that the U.S. military had footage of aerial vehicles of unknown origin. In other words, not only were UFOs - now referred to as UAP - a “thing”, something those intimately familiar with the topic had long known to be the case, but the U.S. government, to some degree or another, was now publicly acknowledging this fact.
Many within ufology assumed this was the turning point we’d all been waiting for; the historical event that would send this topic fully into hyperdrive, and not just in remote corners of the internet, but, more importantly, within the mainstream. In the end, that wasn’t what happened. The article made waves, to be sure, dragging the topic beyond X-files land, and tantalizingly closer to mainstream acceptance. Still, what many enthusiasts and researchers were left wondering was, why weren’t these revelations enough to really bring us past the threshold into widespread, conventional recognition of the validity of this topic?
That question has lingered, largely in a static status, until this past week, when a new article by the same authors has brought to light startling allegations that take this topic well beyond the matter of strange lights in the sky. According to an article by Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, a former intelligence official turned whistleblower named David Grusch has alleged that elements of the U.S. military are in possession of “intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin.”
Because Grusch has provided this information to Congress and the Intelligence Community inspector general, filing “a complaint alleging that he suffered illegal retaliation for his confidential disclosures,” and because officials have received these concerns as “credible” and “urgent”, once again we seem to be at the precipice of a word ufologists have been bandying about for decades: disclosure. True disclosure. Not hearsay. Not rumors; but true widespread acknowledgement by government officials and widespread acceptance by the populace of the world that not only are we not alone in the universe, but that various beings who represent vast, sophisticated intelligence are here, in our very midst, and, in a collective shock to the system, perhaps have been all along.
As things stand right now, this is a dynamic situation, evolving daily as the story makes its way across the media landscape, inevitably landing anew in the awareness of untold numbers of the general public, and on the desks of government officials all around the world. But where do things stand, really? Is there no turning back at this point? Have we crossed the proverbial event horizon? Is the end result, while still rolling out as we speak, already a foregone conclusion?
Put simply the question is this: will these remarkable recent events finally catapult us into a new era in human civilization, where we recognize we are part of a cosmic neighborhood teeming with life forms we’ve as of yet been largely unaware of? And, if so, what comes next? How will we be changed by these revelations? These are the very pressing and profound questions we’ll seek to find some clarity around on this, the 85th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
Ever since the dawn of the modern UFO Phenomenon, a wide variety of terms have been used to describe people’s reactions to it. People have been fascinated, frustrated, shocked, perplexed, bewildered, frightened and inspired. And, because of the enigmatic nature of encounters with the beings associated with this Phenomenon, often several of these descriptors can and do apply for any given situation.
As has been pointed out numerous times on this podcast and elsewhere, when one widens the historical scope, it is not a stretch to wonder – even postulate – if beings from more distant folklore may be part and parcel of this same enterprise. And this is true not just because these events that come to us from the depth of recorded human history involve encounters with apparently non-human entities, but also because the nature of the encounters often involve similar elements.
That said, one could also argue that this might be an example of a brush simply applied too broadly. In other words, perhaps because of the very fact that these encounters across time do involve similar elements, we might be tempted to prematurely draw precise parallels where they perhaps do not exist. Were the creatures of faery lore the very same as our modern-day prototypical grey aliens? Or do we simply leap to this conclusion because they neither fit neatly within our tidy conventional zoological models?
In the 20th century, reaching a fevered pitch sometime in the 1990s, word of human abductions by these supposed grey aliens slowly became part of our cultural zeitgeist. The narrative around these more recent encounters involved apparent genetic experimentation and even full-on hybridization programs. Again though, if we widen the scope once more, one could postulate that some of the apparently anomalous leaps in our species’ cognitive capacity throughout hominin history were also the fruit of similar genetic intervention and augmentation programs.
People have also wondered aloud if the UFO Phenomenon marks the beginning of a new religious trend? Many postulated in the 20th century that visits by the space brothers - bearing an uncanny resemblance to ourselves - marked the beginning of a new frontier in spiritual discovery. But again, if we step back, adopting the 30,000 foot view, one can logically question if the very seed of religious belief and practice for our species, from our very earliest creeds on, were also the fruit, either directly or indirectly, of encounters with these same anomalous beings.Which leads us to some pressing questions: are these beings the same groups of entities interacting and shaping us over time? Or is our imagination simply so limited that we have inappropriately drawn parallels where they simply don’t exist - opening up the possibility that perhaps our ontological landscape is simply much more complex and diverse than we’ve yet been able to really fathom, let alone truly reckon with.
While the history of anomalous encounters seemingly goes right back to the dawn of our civilization, more recent events raise a particularly pressing question: Does the apparent increase in our species’ interaction with some of these non-conventional beings in recent history - paired with what one could argue is a seeming march towards a cataclysmic collapse of our own making - suggest that, while interactions with non-conventional entities have existed across the breadth of human history, that they are now nearing some kind of culmination point - where, as some of the experiencer narrative would suggest -this results in a situation where everything and everyone is left completely different afterwards? And furthermore, is this coming apex inflecion point terminal, or transformational for our civilization, and perhaps even both? These are the daunting, challenging and awe-inspiring matters we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 84th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
Within the vast historical literature associated with the UFO Phenomenon there are references to numerous kinds of craft sighted and numerous kinds of entities encountered. Interestingly, even within a subset of a certain group of entities, distinct patterns sometimes emerge, suggesting specific enterprises have been undertaken at various points in history by these various groups. One such unique pattern took place between sometime in the late 20th century, stretching up until around the turn of millennium. This specific endeavor was concentrated around what have come to be known as “abductions”. In other words, this specific enterprise involved not just sightings, but people being abruptly physically taken from their homes to some “other place”, whether that be an apparent spacecraft or some alternate realm, where specific actions were undertaken, involving both physical examinations and what can only be described as activities pertaining to a large-scale reproductive program. This extensive reproductive program, involving, at minimum, untold thousands of human beings, saw men and women having reproductive material taken from them: eggs from women and sperm from men, as part of a scheme to produce what have come to be known as hybrid beings; entities part conventionally human and part “something-else”. The question around the nature of this “something else” is a matter of some debate, one that we’ll be delving into in this episode.Once the initial extraction of reproductive material had taken place, many abductees/contactees/experiencers (pick your designation of choice, and those involved have differences of opinion on what they prefer to be called) were later shown what, for all intents and purposes, appeared to be their very own hybrid offspring. Sometimes these “others” - most often colloquially referred to as “aliens” - would ask these human abductees to interact with said offspring, to fulfill some form of developmental bonding. Said abductees often mention feeling both a deep connection to these apparently hybrid children, while also sometimes feeling a sense of revolution arising from their atypical form.As I mentioned, this specific hybridization enterprise seemed to phase out around the time of the turn of millennium. At this point many of these abductees/contactees/experiencers were telepathically told that they wouldn’t be seeing the apparent aliens nearly as much anymore, indicating the enterprise had been successful enough that a page was now being turned. Of course the specificity of this entire enterprise raises many intriguing questions. What was the ultimate purpose of this hybridization program? What role, if any, do these apparently hybrid offspring play in the future of human civilization? And in what way might this enterprise serve as a kind of failsafe against the potential of a coming earth cataclysm that experiencers of this type were warned was bound to be our civilization’s fate, should we fail to turn from our misguided, erring ways? These are the profound, but mind-bending issues we’ll seek to find some clarity around in this, the 83rd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
The enigma known as the UFO Phenomenon is compelling for numerous reasons. One of those reasons is that this phenomenon has been attested to by witnesses and experiencers over long periods of modern history. And, furthermore, once you get past the surface veneer of the way people have categorized/interpreted these phenomena differently over time because of different cultural expectations, one can make a convincing argument - as Jacques Vallee and others have in fact done - that this phenomenon has been with us since the beginning of time; sometimes interpreted as gods come down from the heavens to parade in front of we mere mortals, and more recently as advanced technological civilizations visiting us far from far flung destinations such as Zeta Reticuli and Alpha Centauri on scientific expeditions and the like.
Another of the key elements of data lending credence to the notion that this Phenomenon is as real as green grass in the spring and plasma erupting from the sun is that it is attested to across the world, even in cultures significantly divorced from the typical modernist and physicalist conceptions found in Western civilization. And whenever we can show cross-cultural support for this phenomenon we can more confidently conclude that this is not simply a construct based on the expectations of any particular people group. Indeed, the fact that the interpretation of sightings and interactions with “the Others” have differed somewhat in different parts of the world over time actually lends credence to the notion that, underlyingly, beyond that surface veneer of categorization/interpretation, something is really there; legitimately being encountered and interacted with.
Armchair skeptics will at times argue that this is simply a North American and European phenomenon. Now, while it is statistically true that we have more data from these locations, it’s important to point out that much of this can likely be attributed to the fact that the some data-gathering efforts haven’t happened to the same degree in other places, and that even the cultural expectations of some of those other continents are such that what is a paradigm-shaking moment for a modern North American or European might not be for someone from an indigenous population. After all, why make a big deal of an event that has been normalized in a particular culture for generations? And one can make the argument that this is indeed the case in various indigenous populations.
As I mentioned, some of the discrepancy in the regularity of reports from different parts of the globe can be reduced to the fact that the search simply hasn’t been conducted with equal dedication around the world. Furthermore, cultural differences and language issues have added to this challenge. As a Professor Emeritus at Montana State University and former Director of the Center for Bilingual/Multicultural Education, Clarke, who is Cherokee/Choctaw herself, has dedicated decades of her life to investigating sightings of UFOs and interactions with various forms of alien and non-conventionally human beings in parts of the globe long neglected.
In today’s episode we’re going to consider the astounding reports Clarke was able to gather during her trips through Mesoamerica. Not only do the accounts Clarke gathered make clear the fact that UFO sightings and interactions with actual beings are every much as common - perhaps even more so - there, as compared to here, but they also raise very interesting possibilities regarding the very origins of some of these people groups, and specifically the Maya. Could the Maya themselves not only be the recipients of the traditions of a so-called “ancient alien” civilization, but perhaps even their very descendants? These are the fascinating matters we’ll endeavor to engage with, head on, in this, the 82nd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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When people are first introduced to the enigmatic topic known as the UFO Phenomenon, the working assumption is that this is a matter of determining whether or not aliens, i.e. extraterrestrials from some likely extrasolar source, have traversed the immense distances of outer space, to arrive at our blue pearl planet either to, A.) from a more positive view, study us, as in a scientific expedition, or, B.) from a less positive view, scope out our capabilities prior to some kind of invasion.Perhaps it should not be surprising that this is where the conversation begins for people; including those who’ve flocked to this topic since 2017, when the revelations of a now famous New York Times article first entered the public sphere, suggesting to many that, despite decades of scoff and ridicule and X-Files jokes, perhaps there really was a there there.Speaking of decades of scoff and ridicule, the decades leading up to the present one filled people’s minds with the very scenarios I just mentioned: that either these visitors from beyond are here as part of a scientific expedition, as in Star Trek, or as a prelude to a full-on invasion of our planet, as in War of the Worlds or Independence Day. These are familiar tropes in science fiction, and so it should not surprise us that this has worked its way into our cultural zeitgeist.But those initial, rather tame and predictable questions about what the so-called UFO Phenomenon represents are quickly supplanted by much more profound, far-reaching, and, for some, disturbing questions, once newcomers really begin to start poking around and considering the plethora of reports made by credible witnesses, going back decades and decades - and perhaps even millenia - discussing in-person encounters with the intelligences supposedly responsible for the piloting of these sophisticated aerial vehicles known as UFOs or UAP.Because, as I just mentioned, these encounters trace back deep into human history, and likely even pre-history, one could argue that these more recent “sci-fi” encounters are really in the same overarching category as what we might deem “religious” encounters from yester millenia, the questions around what this all means suddenly become much more broadly sweeping and all-encompassing. Without doubt, our religious traditions have shaped the development of our civilization. And if the encounters that inspired those very traditions didn’t actually involve gods, or angels or demons, after all - at least, not as they are typically portrayed, interpreted and understood in religious tradition - then perhaps this Phenomenon, and the intelligences that comprise it - has been much more intimately involved with our evolution than we first realized. And if that’s the case, then we’re suddenly a long way from merely Star Trek or Independence Day territory.Eventually, if one traces this back far enough, especially in light of more recent revelations suggesting these overarching intelligences can tweak our genetics and even partake in hybridization programs that lead to the emergence of entirely new species, one inevitably lands at a very striking query: could our very existence on this planet be a result of some earlier version of these same endeavors? And if that’s the case, how do popularly held beliefs in notions such as reincarnation play into this? Is that a “natural” process, or is something more akin to what we might call “technology” involved?These truly are not just mind-bending but also civilization-shaking matters to consider. And one wonders, if we truly are nearing some kind of so-called “disclosure” around the existence of this Phenomenon, then just how many of these startling revelations might be part of that mix? And how exactly will our civilization handle such acknowledgements? Tricky, nuanced matters to parse out, to be sure. But that’s precisely what we’ll endeavor to do in this, the 81st episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Generally speaking, with this podcast, each episode takes a different topic pertaining to the UFO Phenomenon and general paranormality and does a deep dive into it. That being the case, for the most part, Point of Convergence is not a current affairs kind of show. My aim is to make each episode relevant, regardless of when and where any particular listener happens to access and consume it.
That said, recent events are such that I think that, on this particular occasion, it makes sense to veer from that overarching strategy. And that’s because, simply put, I believe we are living through truly extraordinary times; times that speak to a key inflection point in the history of our civilization. While even our current era is the product of events that have been unfolding for decades now, I believe evidence suggests this particular period of the 2020s is particularly significant.
Now, even as I speak those words I’m aware of how problematic such statements can turn out to be. Having explored various religious and spiritual circles in great depth, both personally and academically, over the decades of my life, I’ve personally seen how many times various prognosticators have declared that a particular time was of special import - for the future of our civilization and the fate of the world - only to see various predictions and so-called prophecies tied to those prognostications fail to materialize, time and time again.
Now, certainly, our current state of affairs as it pertains to the UFO Phenomenon is undoubtedly built upon decisions and actions made over the course of getting on for 100 years now, but still, I see those decisions and actions coming to a head at this particular period in our history. As the saying goes, “History repeats itself… until it doesn’t”. While we can be bludgeoned into disinterest and apathy by the sheer repetition of certain themes over and over again, that historical trend is no guarantee that events will always proceed as they have done. Indeed, at some point, any and every historical trend comes to an end. I believe we’re nearing one of those key inflection points now.
But who and what is behind this shift? Is it one party of many? Are they human or non-human? How can we be sure that this is not just some kind of government psyop that will ultimately be revealed as another iteration of the “same old, same old”? And if something significant really is on the cusp of being revealed, how is it going to manifest, and in what kind of frame of time? These are the matters, both essential and particularly timely, that we’ll seek to engage with, in this, the 80th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Within the enigma known as the UFO Phenomenon, a few particularly troubling aspects have long existed as part of the experiencer literature. One specific aspect that has long been particularly concerning involves the knowledge of and cooperation in what are often deemed negative abduction encounters, by apparently human, terrestrial powers. In other words, our very own governments, or particular elements of them, willingly signing off on the abduction of and experimentation with innocent citizens.
These kinds of accounts and evidence streams are particularly difficult to swallow because they not only involve humans agreeing to let other humans be experimented with – though, of course, we’ve seen that before, for instance during the horrors of the Nazi regime in WW2 – but also because they involve communication and accord-making between human beings and various alien species.
For some this is a bridge too far. Strange, liminal creatures coming in and out of different dimensions is one thing. But grey aliens walking into a meeting room with government officials and negotiating treaties is something else entirely. And yet, that’s precisely what aspects of the experiencer literature, corroborated with additional historical evidence that has leaked out over time, is suggesting has indeed taken place as part of our relatively recent history.
Part of these agreed-upon accords involve not only the abduction of Earth humans, but also the introduction of apparently hybrid beings into the Earth population; entities who are part human and part alien, sometimes looking shockingly unlike us, and other times looking so much like terrestrial humans that they could pass by unnoticed. Here we are confronted with the notion of them “walking amongst us”, even as we speak.
In a case we’re going to review today we have all of the above taking place. First, evidence of accords being made with not just one alien group, but a consortium of different alien species, aligned – if only loosely – around various endeavors they are engaged with on our planet, with both Earth humans, and terrestrial animal populations. Furthermore, the accord discussed in this case actually involves the directing of ongoing interstellar traffic around a particular location in the American southwest, which, for all intents and purposes, serves as a spaceport hub for aliens coming from locations as far flung as Zeta Reticuli.
Finally, the case we’re going to discuss today involves the attempted introduction of a particular hybrid being: part human and part something else, into the terrestrial population. How that attempted socialization of a hybrid being goes, speaks to the challenges that arise in these kinds of experiments; not only because vastly different social context origins are in the mix, but also because the biological defaults are so different between the two species.
Is it true that Earth governments have made accords with interstellar, alien civilizations, and perhaps even with consortiums of various alien groups? And have these agreements included the experimentation with human beings, resulting in hybrid entities, who have then been introduced into the earth population? In this particular case, these are precisely the matters we’ll attempt to face head-on, seeking both for clarity and confirmation, in this, the 79th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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While the modern UFO era may have begun with the emergence of saucer sightings in the early to mid 20th century, that picture eventually grew to include not only those initial sightings, but also reported interactions with the supposed beings piloting these sophisticated, non-conventional craft. Yes, indeed “aliens” - or as they’re often called in modern ufology circles - non-human intelligences, often to clarify that we don’t actually know where they’re from, just that they’re not human - at least we’re pretty sure of that fact - if by “human” we mean beings akin to contemporary homo sapien sapiens. Of course, as we’ll see in today’s episode, that clear cut distinction between us and them might not be so easy to delineate after all, but we’ll get to that.From sightings of supposed alien beings - or, apparently non-human but very often “humanoid” beings - the picture filled out even more, to include the now infamous abduction phenomenon, where modern earth humans are taken aboard craft - often from the comfort and quiet of their bedrooms in the middle of the night - where they are then subjected to a wide variety of experiences, including - in some cases of a perhaps less apparently positive nature - invasive medical procedures and supposed hybridization programs, and - in more apparently positive reports - opportunities to see the cosmos and even, on occasion, to learn to maneuver the craft, often via mental intention alone, no less.In terms of the beings often seen, while there really is a broad spectrum of others, one particular form has come to represent the quintessential “alien” in our cultural zeitgeist. Here I speak of the proverbial “grey alien”. The emergence of this particular form had much to do, one could argue, with the front cover of Whitley Streiber’s ground-breaking and nerve-rattling book, Communion, published in 1987. Of course, that image wouldn't have made the waves it did if it were not for the fact that many thousands of people reportedly recognized that prototypical face - sometimes, much to their chagrin. After all, if they recognized the image, if it was somehow familiar to them, even if murkily so, did this mean they too were perhaps alien abductees? These were chilling questions for a plethora of human beings to contemplate.Of course, the fact that these beings were - if not exactly human-looking - then certainly humanoid, raised many questions. Why would an alien being look so much like us? Wouldn’t the evolutionary trajectory of their own home planet taken them in very different directions? The conventional thinking on these matters assumed this would be the case, and it’s partly this that led to so much ridicule and scoff. Many took these humanoid forms as a good reason to ignore the entire affair altogether. It’s as if these people decided that since aliens wouldn’t look like this, the entire affair must be reducible to make believe or delusion.And yet, the enigma of this particular form of “otherness” has endured, to the point where it’s now a mainstay in our cultural heritage, both for those who believe and don’t believe aliens are here, and are actually interacting with human beings on an ongoing basis. Of course another possibility that’s emerged more recently, and this would explain why these others look so much like us is they may actually be us - but us from the future; our descendants, who have been taken in some strange evolutionary directions based on future events.So what is it? Are greys from an extraplanetary source - i.e. are they extraterrestrials? Or are they future humans, what Michael Masters has aptly deemed “extratempestrials”? Or is it possible that both options exist? And, furthermore, could the prevalence of this form, and its evident ongoing connection to us, point towards an even deeper and and more primary construct - that might not only speak to common origins, but perhaps also to a common terminus - maybe in the form of the singularity that rushes to--- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/pointofconvergence/support
While the push towards government disclosure around its knowledge of UFOs – and even its knowledge of the attempted reverse engineering of apparently recovered craft of anomalous origin – really is kicking into a high gear of late, it’s still a far cry from the kinds of matters that the people known as experiencers are concerned with. Experiencers, those who have witnessed and interacted with anomalous phenomena personally, including those who’ve had actual encounters with beings of a decidedly non-conventionally human variety, are dealing with the way these experiences have changed them.
That is to say, the question of UFOs and aliens is no longer an open one for these people. That matter is settled, while the public debate rages on. What experiencers have largely moved onto is how to make sense of these experiences, and how to incorporate them into daily reality. No small task when one considers just how life-changing such experiences are.
One key aspect of the encounters experiencers report having has to do with messages; messages received from the beings coming from “elsewhere” – whether one sees that as an extraterrestrial, interdimensional, extratempestrial or extradimensional in nature. If there is one theme that arises more than any other in these reported encounters, it's one dealing with warnings and admonitions around a dawning cataclysm of some sort, supposedly arising in the not-too-distant future of human civilization.
Sometimes these warnings and admonitions are more symbolic in nature - such as when contactees/abductees are shown images of the earth on fire, or when, for insurance, one particular person saw an image of what looked like the earth as an organism experiencing labored breathing. Other times the message or vision is laid out more plainly, when, for instance, giant waves are seen engulfing the coasts, or when an extraplanetary object is seen smashing into the earth from outer space.
Taken alone, these messages and visions are concerning enough; so much so that some experiencers have historically started changing lifestyle, because they have expected this massive shift in Earth affairs to be imminent. But, the thing is, the UFO Phenomenon experiencers literature is not the only source for these kinds of messages and visions. One need look no further than our religious history to see that various scriptural texts - which are of course ultimately derived from the accounts of anomalous encounters from distant history - also attest to these same themes; both in terms of “beginnings”, such as in the Genesis account, and its older Babylonian and Sumerian sources, as well as in prophesied “endings”, like what we find in apocalyptic literature such as the New Testament’s Book of Revelation.
And then we have the geological and archaeological records, that leave similar tantalizing clues - perhaps even suggesting that this notion of cataclysm is actually part of a recurring cycle; perhaps even one who’s repeated arising is coming due again soon. Is this what ancient ruins and whisperings of former advanced civilizations like Atlantis are pointing towards? Many would suggest this is indeed the case; and that the writing is on the proverbial wall, even if that’s in the form of ancient cave paintings.
But what are we to make of all of this? Why are human beings shown images of seeming impending doom, without being given requisite knowledge regarding how to avoid it? And how does this repeated message of the need for us to “raise our vibration” come into play? Is this about advancing our level of collective consciousness so as to be able to avoid this apocalypse? Or is it about preparing ourselves for the dimensional shift that will happen - at least potentially - immediately afterwards? Tricky waters to navigate, to be sure. But that’s precisely what we’ll attempt in this, the 77th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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The so-called UFO Phenomenon is a tricky affair because, no matter when and from where you enter the discussion, you’ve inevitably going to face having your assumptions and expectations stretched. Indeed, to those really paying close attention to, for instance, the wealth of experiencer data that’s been amassed over decades, it’s clear that a discourse around the nature of potential UFOs and aliens in our midst eventually leads to a much deeper rabbit hole where our place in the universe and the very nature of reality are in play.
Of course, one of the biggest leap those who enter this discussion face is the notion not simply that aliens exist “out there” - somewhere, perhaps in some corner of the vast expanse of the Cosmos, but that they’re here, and perhaps have been for as long – and undoubtedly – even longer than we’ve been looking for them.
But if that’s true, skeptics ask, why aren’t we finding clear, undeniable evidence for their presence, and, for that matter, why don’t they simply land on the White House lawn to put the matter to rest once and for all? It’s absurd to think they’re here, these skeptics confidently assert, but then chose this bizarre stealthiness.
Absurdity you say? Indeed - we’ve got that, in spades even! Welcome to the UFO Phenomenon as it actually exists, rather than how you’d like it to be based on your 21st century Western expectations and assumptions - one of the largest and most questionable of which is the belief that if they were here, we’d be able to detect them with relative ease.
Another major deeper dive into the proverbial rabbit hole comes when one comes to grips that these various others are not only here, but are actually interacting with various human beings - and that this circumstance is much more commonplace than the mainstream media and present political set would have you believe.
And even once you’ve digested that interactions really are happening, you’re then confronted by just how diverse these interactions are. Indeed, they seem to cover the proverbial gamut: from positive encounters with supportive, inspirational entities, to frightening encounters with beings who conduct obtuse medical procedures and examinations that seem, on the face of it, to be much more invasive than is necessary - especially if these beings are as advanced as they purport to be.
Yet an even more paradigm-stretching matter arises when people hear of encounters with beings that humans come to find they recognize, and even feel a pre-incarnate familial connection to. And often these encounters involve the person being reminded of a particular mission they are here - in this incarnation as an earth human - to fulfill. Of course, this brings to mind for some people the religious notion of angels and demons - as old as human civilization itself.
But these beings often arrive in spacecraft and have their own home planets. Are these the same entities as are reported in religious traditions, or different ones altogether? And how are we to make sense of these particular encounters from within the dazzling complexity that is the UFO Phenomenon? These are the very matters we’ll seek to disentangle in this, the 76th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Many of the people who regularly tune into this podcast know that the UFO Phenomenon, general paranormality, and other so-called contact modalities such as NDEs, OBEs and psi phenomena are addictively fascinating matters. One could draw the conclusion that this is the case simply because the nature of the subject matter is seductive, and helps to distract people from the mundanity of their everyday existence.
While the subject matter does indeed draw one deeper and deeper into the proverbial rabbit hole the longer one pays attention with a keen, discerning eye, I think there’s more than meets the eye going on here. I think partly what’s going on is a kind of “remembering the future”. What I mean by that is that our collective fascination with this subject matter reflects a kind of mental bookmark to what becomes a key inflection point in our civilization’s history. You could describe it as the experience of living through the arising of an interference pattern, where the present is equally impacted by events from our past AND our future. Particularly significant points in time can tend to feel like this, even if it is confusing to those living through it.
Particularly thoughtful researchers, like the preeminent Jacques Vallee, have noted that what we are seeing take place with the modern UFO Phenomenon is simply the latest wrinkle in time of a larger phenomenon that has been manifesting since time immemorial. Here I speak of the interaction between human beings and other, sophisticated, bewitching non-human intelligences; intelligences so capable both in matters of the external AND internal sciences (manifesting in both the world and the mind) that they have undoubtedly played a key role in shaping the very meaning models that we currently shape our collective existence with and through.
Former rock star and later founder of TTSA, Tom DeLonge, ended up uttering what I have found - in retrospect - to be apt words in describing the nature and origin of many of the Others of which we speak. In one interview DeLonge said “The evidence doesn't suggest it's interplanetary, so, people need to understand religion, ancient texts...the occult...esoteric stuff...they need to understand that time is not linear - it's parallel - & once you understand that all things - past, present, future - exist at one moment, which is what quantum mechanics is kinda figuring out, then they'll realize there can be parallel realities right here, with advanced civilizations that are popping over with frequency. Not linear… not coming from Alpha Centauri here. And I'm not even suggesting that that can't happen, too. But what is happening here is a little bit different."
Indeed it is. And I would add to this insightful analysis - that I at first didn’t pay close enough attention to when I began this journey years ago - that it’s not that some of them are NOT extraterrestrial. In some very real ways some of the groups are. But, importantly, that’s only PART of the story. They are also interdimensional, but in a way that diverges from some of the ways that term has conventionally been used by astrophysicists, and is more inline with the way the term is applied, as DeLonge hints at, by enthusiasts of the occult and other forms of esotericism.
Notice there that I said “groups” - plural. And I stand by this. I am more convinced than ever that the evidence suggests more than one group is involved; and that these groups cover the gamut in terms of their developmental consciousness. I speak in terms of degrees of evolution because I have found this is both a more helpful and a more accurate way of describing the situation than painting in polarities of black and white - i.e. good vs evil.
Now, while DeLonge has seemed particularly concerned with the ways some of the less mature groups have been working their will in our collective lives, I personally have experienced what it’s like to be in contact with, and be inspired by, groups who are typical of the m
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For those of us intimately familiar with the nuances of the so-called UFO Phenomenon, the question of if there is a “there” there or not is long settled. Those of us who’ve looked closely at the data gathered over the last 100 years or so - not to mention more ancient accounts that bear a striking resemblance to the descriptions of more modern encounters - have concluded that humanity is indeed being interacted with by intelligences that seem to arise from “elsewhere”. Now, whether the nature of that “elsewhere” is another solar system or another dimension of reality is a matter of some debate. Here I will argue, as I have for some time now, that these categories are generated from a perspective on reality that is limited and incomplete, better replaced by options that both include and transcend these outdated notions. But, nevertheless, the evidence points not only to them having been here for pretty much as long as we’ve been around, but also to the very distinct likelihood that they played a major role in our seeding and later development as a species on this planet. Beyond these often agreed upon notions comes the question regarding how many different groups of these others there are. Some will argue, based on a variety of factors, that what we may be observing is the actions of a single group or intelligence, merely presenting in different ways over time. John Keel, a very influential figure in this field, largely argued for this perspective. One of the key data points for this view is that high strangeness, psychic influence and elements of spacetime distortion are present in the vast majority of these cases. To some, startling overlap suggests a common source. Is this the only way to square this evidence though? I would argue it is not. I believe a better fit for the data is that the ways by which these various groups of Others are traversing domains to get here is what accounts for these common elements in experiencer accounts. Truth be told, I think it is our bias towards reducing complexity whenever and wherever we can that leads many to draw upon these somewhat superficial commonalities in order to leap to the conclusion that humanity is being manipulated by some singular overarching metaforce. Another reason why I think this being one group parading as many is not the best fit for the data is that the way these various Others interact with human beings is quite different. To speak in very broad terms, some of these groups seem to tread lightly, asking us not to fear them, and bringing messages of reconciliation and universal sibling-hood. On the other end of the spectrum are groups that seem to view human beings more like how we view animals - as commodities to use towards their own ends, regardless of how much discomfort we may experience in the process. To be sure there are many interactions with groups that also fall somewhere in between these two extremes. This variable treatment of human beings is a key data point demonstrating that these are different groups, often using similar means of “travel” - which, I will argue, is almost always interdimensional in nature. Does that mean so-called abductions are always conducted by groups of alien others who are malevolent - perhaps even the very source of evil described in ancient religious texts? Well, no I don’t think it’s quite that black and white. Nuance will be required throughout this discussion, because, as with so much of reality, the details are complex. That said, I do believe one can begin to parse out the actions of different groups, not only working towards different aims, but motivated by very different underlying levels of consciousness development, from within the totality of the data available. And that very goal, the identification of specific patterns of contact and communication from within the overarching complexity of the data associated with the UFO Phenomenon that will be the focus of this, the 74th episode, of the Point of Convergence.
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As many of you may know, I recently had the opportunity to make a presentation at a very unique and powerful conference event held in the heart of Manhattan, titled “An Inquiry into Anomalous Experiences and the Phenomenon”. The event turned out to be a smashing success, both in terms of the inspiring quality of the presentations being made by a group of speakers that included yours truly, Garry Nolan, Mitch Horowitz, Tim Grieve-Calrson, and Sean Esbjörn-Hargens, but also - just as, if not more importantly - in terms of linking together a group of passionate researchers, experiencers and enthusiasts from all around the world. That feeling of a cosmic family coming together was palpable throughout.
The organizers of the event, James Iandoli of Engaging the Phenomenon, and Jay Christopher King of the Experiences Group - both good friends of mine - did a wonderful job in planning for and executing this unique event. In the end, I would say the event came off without a hitch. A great time was had by all, and - even more inspiringly - there is already a second event planned for December, and rumblings of other events of a similar nature to be held in places all across the country, and indeed overseas as well. I think this is exactly what many of us involved in the conference were hoping would happen- that this would be the catalyst for a movement, rather than just the hosting of a one-off event.
Speaking of my presentation at last weekend’s event in New York City, the event organizers have been kind enough to make the audio content of my presentation available so I can now share it with all of you, my regular audience on Point of Convergence. Much of the material will be familiar to many of you - based on previous podcast episodes. That said, this probably marks the occasion when I put it all together in the most comprehensive, overarching way yet, in terms of the implications for the ultimate nature of reality.
And with that said, let’s get to it: Here is the audio from my presentation at the “An Inquiry Into Anomalous Experiences and the Phenomenon” conference held last week in Manhattan, for this, the 73rd episode, of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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If there’s one thing that becomes abundantly clear to those who endeavor to study the so-called UFO Phenomenon closely, it’s that it defies easy categorization. When you come across a researcher or enthusiast who claims they’ve made quick work of what’s actually going on – i.e. who’s involved, where they’re from, what their agenda is, etc, you can be sure that their conclusions have more to do with their own wish-fulfillment than with the data at hand.
That isn’t to say there aren’t distinctive patterns that emerge within the totality of human experience with these various non-human others, giving clues as to the underlying reality – because I believe there are. But even amongst those distinct patterns, various elements of ambiguity still inevitably bubble to the surface, resisting simple classification and description. Indeed this ambiguity may be part and parcel of a Phenomenon that involves interaction with entities who seemingly come from domains of existence beyond our own, where perhaps even notions like space and time manifest very differently.
One of the elements where this applies is in regards to how human beings interpret the nature of their experiences with these various non-human, alien others, along a spectrum ranging from positive, to neutral, to negative. This somewhat murky picture gets even murkier when one adds the element of time; for evidence seems to suggest that the longer people have to reflect on the nature of their encounters, the more they begin to see their interactions in either a positive light, or at least as a net neutral. To be sure, this is not always the case, but nevertheless, often enough to draw our attention.
I already mentioned that sometimes contactees/abductees/experiencers find that their interpretation of the nature of their experiences evolves over time, given the advent of further perspective. Often this comes down to letting the ontological shock wear off a little – because, lest we forget, these are very often, at least initially, extremely traumatic experiences, where human beings encounter strange looking entities that they’ve been told their entire lives cannot possibly exist. That is not to say that trauma equals inherent negativity – in terms of the intentions of these various others. It just means that the physiological and neurological reaction to the event leaves clear evidence of PTSD for any trained therapist to find clear signs of.
Beyond having perspectives change over the long haul, once in a while we find the interpretation of an experience can change almost in real-time, or, at least within a matter of days, to weeks, to months. That’s exactly what happened in a case we’re going to delve into in this episode. It involves the abduction of two teenage parents and their young infant son. Were they taken against their will? Well, that’s complicated. Were they initially traumatized by the shocking nature of the experience? Yes, absolutely so. Were they also permanently transformed for the better – to the point that their understanding of themselves and reality itself was expanded? Undeniably. And here again we see the overtones of the complexity of these situations.
Why are these experiences initially so ontologically shocking, even when they can ultimately prove so positively transformative? And why and how is the element of personal sovereignty and personal agency so complicated when it comes to the subject of alien contact and/or abduction accounts? These are the very matters we’ll seek to engage with, by delving deeply into an astonishing real-world example, in this, the 72nd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Ever since human beings have had some sense of the immensity of the Cosmos, when we look up to the starry array above their heads in the dark of night, an enduring question emerges: How many other planets with sophisticated civilizations like ours are out there? With a thousand pinpricks of light coming through that black tapestry of the night sky, many of us logically assume the cosmos is likely teeming with life.
Of course, that initial impression, based more on a hunch perhaps than solid data, has only grown stronger and stronger as our understanding of the immense scope of the universe has come more fully into view. Dazzling as the earth, our home planet is, it is but one rock circling one star in one star system amongst hundreds of billions in our Milky Way galaxy alone. And likewise that galaxy is merely one of trillions scattered across the vast expanse of the cosmos.
The so-called Fermi paradox arises from the apparent conflict between the lack of clear, obvious signs of extraterrestrial life despite consistently high estimates for their probable existence. This paradox is named after Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi, who, as the story goes, in the midst of a casual conversation with fellow physicists Edward Teller, Herbert York, and Emil Konopinski, in almost the precise middle of the 20th century, exclaimed, when thinking on these matters: “But where is everybody?”, or something to that effect.
It is indeed a perplexing matter. As time has gone on, we’ve gathered more and more evidence not just about how gargantuan the cosmos actually is, but how, as Dr. Ian Malcolm, a character in the original Jurassic Park movie played by Jeff Goldblum famously says, “Life finds a way”. In other words, life seems to spring up even in the most inhabitable of environments. That being the case, and considering how many goldilox-like planets must exist, even amongst the many planets that are perhaps not suited for life, where are all those civilizations? Why are we not finding clear evidence of their existence?
Of course the Fermi paradox makes certain assumptions, firstly about the nature and ultimate reality of the spacetime construct we find ourselves seemingly firmly embedded within. But also about the notion that civilizations that are perhaps out there – and perhaps much more advanced than we earthlings, would not choose to interfere with our ability to perceive their existence. When you really think about it: this is a rather strange assumption to make. After all, we manipulate our environment almost the moment we gain the ability to. Why would this not occur with interstellar civilizations that have mastered interstellar and perhaps even intergalactic travel in the same way we’ve mastered intercontinental travel?
And of course, last but certainly not least, there is the clear evidence, gathered not just over the course of what you might call the modern UFO era, reaching back to the early to mid 20th century, but even to our distant religious lore and early Creation myths, suggesting these Others have been here for a very long time, perhaps even predating us as beings walking this blue pearl of a planet.
So, all this being the case, what does this mean? Why are we simultaneously being visited and interacted with by these various non-conventionally human others, while also being presented with a visible universe that appears starkly devoid of life? These are the compelling and head-scratching matters that we’ll endeavor to make sense of in this, the 71st episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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For those who’ve spent decades searching for answers to the elusive yet seemingly ever-present enigma colloquially known as the UFO Phenomenon, the last several years have been a whirlwind of activity and revelations. It is well understood by those veteran to this field that elements within the U.S. government spent decades not only covering up details that made it abundantly clear that there really was a there there - that we were being visited by non-human intelligences operating craft of the most sophisticated nature - but they simultaneously sought to silence those who sought to proclaim this very fact to the masses.
Using a combination of scorn and ridicule, at minimum, and personal and professional tacks and even violence when necessary, at maximum, the U.S. government’s general approach to the matter of the UFO Phenomenon was to squelch public interest in this topic, while simultaneously doing it’s darnedest to understand it. Of course part of the reason why that approach remained static for so long is that the secret-keepers didn’t make much headway in terms of really getting to the bottom of the enigma.
Yes, there have been crashes and crash retrievals along the way, including of craft that evidence now seemingly suggests we did manage to bring down on occasion, and there apparently have been some major technological breakthroughs as a result. But the real root of this issue still remains elusive. And here I speak of the identity of the beings who are parading around our skies with impunity, and who are interacting with, and sometimes taking aboard their craft and into what appear to be other apparent domains of existence, civilians who the military is powerless to protect.
This is not to say that these so-called abductions are purely malevolent in intent, but merely to point out that, when you get down to it, part of the reason the government has kept this under wraps for so long is that they have zero ability to police the skies within our nation state borders, and thus they are failing in one of the core tenets of what makes a nation-state viable to begin with. In other words, why should a populace ascribe authority to a government when it is simply unable to ensure the smooth running of a society, with even the most basic guarantee as to citizen safety?
Not only is the notion of so-called “protected air space” rendered meaningless by these Others as they buzz in and around our skies, but so too are physical boundaries like locks, doors, walls and the like. When they want, these Others can appear in your room, in the middle of the night, and there’s nothing the government can do to prevent it. And here I really do mean literally nothing.
As I mentioned at the outset, the government’s about-face in recent years really has taken long term ufologists by surprise. For the first time in history, we really do seem to be on the verge of full-blown disclosure. And by that I mean, not only the acknowledgement that some of the craft and phenomena being spotted regularly in our skies are not the property of the U.S. military of any other known nation-state operator, but also that we are being visited by non-human entities, of a sophisticated nature, who seem to rank higher on the proverbial food chain than do we human beings.
But we again come to the real question at hand: who are these Others? Where are they coming from? How long have they been here? What are their intentions? How many of them are there? Are they one group, or many? These are the fascinating, yet daunting, matters we’ll seek to engage with, from the vantage point of a towering 30,000 foot view, overlooking the multidimensional landscape, if you will, in this, the 70th episode, of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Over the course of the history of this podcast, I have taken several opportunities to publish a special edition of the podcast, where I answer audience questions, in a feature I call The Inquiring Mind. This week’s episode mark’s the occasion where I do this for a 4th time. Now, since the 3rd edition of the Inquiring Mind, which launched several months ago, you could say a few things have changed.
Perhaps the most significant change came recently, when I posted an actual photo of myself to social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. I followed that up this past week with my first two video interviews, first for James Iandoli’s Engaging the Phenomenon podcast and YouTube channel, and then for Kelly Chase’s The UFO Rabbit Hole YouTube channel. There are other interviews scheduled in the near future as well, which I will let people know about as they become available.
Part of the interest that has arisen lately relates to an event I attended at the Monroe Institute back at the end of May. Regular listeners to the podcast may recall that I discussed events from that multi-day retreat in Episode 67, which was titled Human Initiated Contact: On Proactive Communication with Non-Human Intelligence. That event marked a new season in my history as a researcher of the UFO Phenomenon and its intersection with other topics of interest, such as near death experiences, out of body experiences, and psi phenomena like telepathy, psychokinesis and precognition.
This new season involves me doing actual field research, where I travel to various locations to join with others in actively exploring these various points of convergence. As it turns out, at the time of the launch of this podcast, I will be away for a second time doing active field research. The fruit of that experience I hope to report on in future episodes of this podcast.
These new opportunities to connect with various players in this field, including both leading researchers and individuals Joseph Burkes has deemed, prime contactees, is yet another of the many profound opportunities that have arisen since I first started this podcast, some 18 months ago. It goes without saying that I really had no idea then, the many avenues this profound path of discovery would open up before me. Here’s to that journey of adventure and fascination, as it continues to manifest in each of our lives.
But for now, without further adieu, let’s get back to the matter at hand: which has to do with me answering more of the thoughtful and thought-provoking questions that you, the audience, have sent in, for this latest edition of the Inquiring Mind feature, in this, the 69th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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For those who look at the UFO Phenomenon as a primarily “nuts and bolts” enterprise, elements of this enigma that veer into the domains of the spiritual and the paranormal are often seen as superfluous to the main point of the exercise. From the point of view of traditional ufologists like this, the central point is that some kind of biologically-based alien intelligence is here, in our midst, buzzing in and around our skies - and apparently our most supposedly secure air space, for that matter - with impunity. From this perspective, the focus and the fascination lies in the sophisticated nature of the technology on display, and in the earthly presence of apparently bipedal alien life forms.
Interestingly, and, I would suggest, tellingly, researchers in the distinct field of hauntology have a similar tunnel-vision focus. For traditional hauntologists the assumption is often that deceased human beings are responsible for much of the paranormal experiences people report having. And when the dead are not responsible, the aim often turns towards the so-called “spirit realm”, where angels and demons reside.
For someone with only a cursory understanding of the two fields just described: namely ufology and hauntology, the assumption is largely that these are distinct and unrelated fields. The first has to do with extraterrestrials arriving from Zeta Reticuli, and the second has to do with ancestors who refuse to fade fully into the domain of the afterlife, and with spiritual entities who are meddling in the affairs of human beings, supposedly with the hopes of determining the ultimate destiny of human souls.
Again, this is how these matters appear to someone with only a shallow understanding of these two fields, with a correspondingly shallow understanding of the data arising in the literature of these two fields. For those who are intimately familiar with the full breadth of said data, however, the overlap between these two fields is startling. So much so, in fact, that those who really are attempting to look at these matters with objective eyes see that this is all part of some overarching category of inquiry. Why do mysterious balls of light - often referred to as “orbs” - often show up both in cases ascribed to ufology and hauntology? Why do UFOs and aliens sometimes appear right alongside deceased human beings? These overlapping data points seemingly demand we step back and look at this from a more overarching perspective.
Beyond these similarities, another fascinating and (for some) disturbing data point is shared by both ufology and hauntology. Here I speak of the so-called Hitchhiker Effect - where human beings seem to be “followed” by entities of various forms, after having had encounters of either ghosts and/or spirits, or aliens alongside sightings of UFOs. Startlingly, not only do these entities and phenomena follow people who’ve had such encounters, but they often are reported to “spread” - almost like a virus of some sort - into the lives of people who simply know the person initially “afflicted”. And this hitchhiker phenomena can then carry on the lives of such individuals for months, even years.
These overlapping data points of course raise profound questions. Who then are these entities appearing in both ufology and hauntology? Have we mistook them for the wrong types merely because our categories are based more in folklore and wishful thinking than in reality? And what of us? Who are we? In other words, what are we really composed of that would allow such seemingly energetic life forms and phenomena to attach to us? And, ultimately, what do these revelations suggest in terms of an overarching metaphysical understanding of reality itself? These perplexing, astonishing and mind-bending matters are the focus of this, the 68th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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When we think back to the dawn of the modern UFO era in the 1940s, and the subsequent reports of sightings and interactions ever since - whether they be of the quintessential flying saucers, black triangles, tic tabs, or orbs, the focus has largely been on how these strange and sophisticated craft and/or phenomena seem to suddenly appear in our skies. Where are they coming from? Who are they? What is their agenda? All of these questions inevitably arise as we perceive them entering our reality.
It goes without saying that it is these Others, whoever and whatever they may ultimately prove to be - whether extraterrestrial, interdimensional, time traveling humans, ultraterrestrials, or all of the above - it is they who have been in charge of the interaction with us. And it is this revelation that has set many a human being on edge.
Why is this off-putting for some? Well, because we humans like to believe we’re in control of our daily lives. Of course, this fragile sense of control is only further perturbed when we learn of so-called “abductions”, where these Others, or at least a subset of them, reportedly take human beings from the comfort of their own homes and up into their craft and elsewhere.
While what I just outlined describes the typical narrative around UFOs and aliens, and our interaction with them, it is not the full story. For decades now there have existed groups of curious and bold people who have sought to take the front foot - as it were - in regards to the encounters with these apparently non-human intelligences. These groups have sought to define a series of protocols around which contact and ongoing communication with these - for lack of a better term - aliens, can take place.
While these attempts at human initiated contact may seem surprising to some, what is even more interesting is that the historical record has shown that these efforts have proven successful. Not always. But often enough so as to be considered effective. Of course, what this also suggests is that there really is an opportunity for a relationship here - a two-way dialog, so to speak: human to other, and vice versa.
But what are the nature of these protocols? And what makes them quote, unquote “work”? And who, really, are we contacting when these efforts do prove successful? Are we being deceived, perhaps even used? Are we opening ourselves up to manipulation? Or are these interactions exactly what they often appear to be: peaceful and cooperative? Are these Others our moral superiors? Or are they just technological giants with no qualms about using less advanced species? These have always been, and will continue to be, the pressing and pertinent questions in play when it comes to human contact with alien others.
Speaking of these matters, I personally had an opportunity recently to engage these very questions in a very direct, up close and personal manner, when I joined a special group of experiencers and researchers to both pursue contact, and explore consciousness, as part of a multi-day retreat. It is the nature of the experiences we had, as well as the lessons learned as a result, that are the topic of this, the 67th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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In the long history of strange events occurring in the lives of human beings, the drive for understanding has been, not surprisingly, shaped by the model of reality prevalent at the time. Thus, while our distant ancestors saw the appearance of strange, awe-inspiring non-human intelligences as a manifestation of angels and demons: entities normally bound to the spiritual domain beyond this mortal coil, modern westerners have tended to see more recent appearances of these non-human entities as the arrival of extraterrestrial entities who’ve traversed the vast expanse of outer space to get here.
In both of these described kinds of encounters, the interpretation has less to do with the elements of the encounters themselves, and more to do with the overarching meaning-making model of a particular civilization. And, of course, this is not just a time-bound phenomenon. Because, even today, a Shamanistically-oriented culture is likely to see these Others in a very different light than a scientifically-minded society shaped by the values of the Enlightenment.
In fact, when the gatekeepers of a particular society are convinced that certain kinds of described encounters just simply cannot be - as in modern western societies - then when these encounters are cloaked in a particularly potent degree of what is often termed High Strangeness, the event is just suppressed altogether, lest the witness be deemed mentally unstable or of questionable credibility. This of course doesn’t mean that such events don’t happen, but merely that they have no place to be categorized and analyzed within a particular framework.
All this is to say, the annals of non-conventional encounters from across time serve as a kind of road map for our shifting collective attempt to describe reality itself. And to separate the understanding of these kinds of encounters from the overarching meaning model of a particular time and place in which they occurred is to miss a major point of the exercise; for these matters work hand in hand, in a coordinated and interwoven feedback loop of event and interpretation.
Typically, while a certain brave subset of pioneers are willing to question the meaning model of a particular time and place, the overarching metanarrative doesn’t begin to break down - making room for new and transcendent hypotheses - until the sheer volume of outlier data has created enough collective cognitive dissonance so as to make it clear that there is no other feasible way forward than to trail-blaze a new metanarrative.
Speaking of trailblazing new metanarratives, today we’re going to discuss the work of just such an individual. Donald Hoffman, an American cognitive psychologist and professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, with joint appointments in the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, the Department of Philosophy, and the School of Computer Science, is someone who - decades ago - became convinced that the reality model that western society has been living under over the last several centuries simply cannot stand. From his perspective - and he is one of a growing segment within the scientific establishment - the data arising from diverse fields of study has made it clear that physicalism - the metaphysical view that all mental phenomena are ultimately physical phenomena, or necessitated by physical phenomena - is simply incorrect.
As it pertains to the usual subject matter of this podcast, Hoffman’s work opens up new, tantalizing and explanatorily powerful ways of making sense of the strange encounters we’ve been discussing, while also offering a robust explanation to make sense of the so-called Fermi Paradox. It is the implications of Hoffman’s Conscious Realism as it pertains to the UFO Phenomenon and general paranormality that we’ll be doing a deep dive into in this, the 66th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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In the long history of the modern UFO Phenomenon, a key and iconic moment stands out as of particular import. I speak of a rumored crash of a sophisticated aerial vehicle in the desert terrain near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. The event prompted an initial acknowledgement by the government that this was indeed a moment of the greatest significance: the crash of an actual alien craft, apparently not of this world, and piloted by beings of a decidedly non-human nature.
Of course, as many of us now know, that initial acknowledgement was quickly retracted, giving rise to a series of ever more mundane and suspect explanations, involving a downed weather balloon and the like. And when rumors spread that the crashed vehicle included actual entities, the cover story was that these were merely crash test dummies, mistaken for living, breathing beings of extraterrestrial origin.
While many deeply invested in ufological history long questioned the official account of what happened that night all those years ago in the American desert southwest, evidence to demonstrate that the prosaic explanations were propaganda aimed at covering up something more world-shaking was scant. That was, at least, until 1997 - some 50 years after the event in question - when a retired Colonel of the U.S. Army emerged to offer a new account of what he claimed really happened that night.
His claims provided sweet vindication for those long convinced that what slammed into the New Mexico desert in 1947 was anything but conventional. Colonel Philip Corso - the man making these claims - suggested not only that an alien craft really was recovered that night, but that indeed alien entities were also “at the wheel”, as it were. He even claimed to have laid eyes on one of these aliens in a later turn of fate while he was stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas.
And his claims didn’t stop there, he also stated that he came to be involved in a scheme to take technology recovered from the craft and farm it out to American industry, in order to jump-start the American advantage over adversaries of the time such as the Soviet Union. He also suggested this was done under the cover of a “foreign technology desk”, done in such a way as to cover the tracks of the true origin of this revolutionary tech.
It goes without saying that these claims are as bold as they come. If true, they are truly world-shaking - with implications that effectively rewrite not just the history of the 20th century, but once and for all settle the matter of our place in the universe. But how credible are these claims? And what historical lines of evidence exist to either support or refute them? These are the very matters we’ll seek to delve into in this, the 65th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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When strange and sophisticated aerial vehicles were first spotted buzzing in and around our skies in a series of flaps during the period of the 1940s, many assumed these represented the visitation of an extraterrestrial species. The beyond next-gen characteristics of these advanced craft – where they could travel at incredible rates of speed, hover in place, and make 90 degree turns on a dime – suggested to most that these could not logically be the property of any known nation-state actor. The technological prowess of these so-called unidentified flying objects was simply too advanced to be of terrestrial origin.
It is therefore not surprising that the seemingly logical conclusion that many came to was that these simply must be visitors from beyond our planet. At first, when the barrenness of the planets of our own solar system was not yet fully realized, many assumed these to be visiting Martians or Venusians. And then as our surveying of the planets of our own solar neighborhood showed them to be lifeless, ufologists and the public alike began to wonder from which extra-solar source these beings were coming from. But again, the assumption was still that these must be visitors from “outer space”. After all, that seemed to be the only frontier we had yet to explore.
Since those early days of the flying saucer phenomenon, other – and to most, more exotic – hypotheses have arisen, suggesting these Others may be interdimensional in nature, or perhaps even time-traveling humans from our future. Some researchers suggest both extraterrestrials and interdimensionals may be in the mix.
In the course of that conversation, again, the assumption has been that these must be something non-terrestrial in nature, because the sophistication of the craft themselves suggest no known nation-state actor could have developed such beyond next-gen technology. However, there is one key assumption being made here: and that is that it is only the known nation-state actors: The United States, Russia, etc, that could possibly even get close to this level of technological prowess.
The pertinent question to ask here is: is that a fair assumption to make? Is it only nation-state actors that we need to account for? Or is it possible that some other human group, not usually accounted for, could actually be responsible for the design and development of these UFOs – or at least some of them?
Perhaps to many people’s surprise, there is a rather daunting amount of historical evidence suggesting the possibility that these craft – or again – at least some of them – could actually be the property of a rogue group of scientifically-oriented techno-military elites that may have broken off from conventional society sometime during the middle part of the 20th century, not long after, we should note, the first series of sightings of disk-like craft.
But what is the nature of this evidence? And does it get even close to passing muster in terms of suggesting that a truly sequestered society might exist, in our very midst? Is it possible that some of the beyond next-gen vehicles that have been spotted in our skies might actually be of terrestrial origin, after all – even if that terrestrial origin is of a non-conventional nature – one that exists beyond the scope of our nation-state global system? These are the very questions we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 64th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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2017 was the year that saw a sudden uptick of mainstream interest in the notion of UFOs following revelations arising from a groundbreaking article in the New York Times. This article described so-called “unidentified aerial phenomena” - modern nomenclature for what had traditionally been referred to as “unidentified flying objects” - UFOs. These revelations suggested these objects and/or phenomena had been documented and studied as part of an official Department of Defense program. This tacit acknowledgment of an official UFO program marked a sharp right turn when compared with the historical trend, where the government had traditionally sought to suppress, dismiss and even ridicule the notion of UFOs, as a part of official policy.
Ever since that trailblazing article was first published the interest in this topic has grown by leaps and bounds in the mainstream - even if it still feels painfully slow and incremental to those more familiar with the wealth of data suggesting there really is a there there, and that there has been for a long time. But nevertheless, the presence of these apparent vehicles, that appear to be under intelligence control, has led to inevitable questions around who might be behind them - either at the wheel - so to speak, or piloting them remotely from somewhere else. Industry insiders attest to the beyond next-gen capabilities of these craft, suggesting - startlingly - that they couldn’t possibly belong to any contemporary nation-state player.
And of course, in people’s minds that leaves open one enticing possibility: the notion that these may be the property of an extraterrestrial intelligence; a biological exo-planetary species who’ve come here to study us for reasons thus far largely unclear. For some people in our civilization this notion is most welcome, because the thinking is that these more sophisticated others may be able to help us address some of our most intractable problems. For others, it prompts feelings of fear, forcing a reckoning around the notion that we may not be the apex species on the block after all.
Of course, for those of us much more intimately familiar with the breadth and depth of the historical literature on this topic, these questions - while certainly profound - are just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. And that’s because a deep dive into the actual data gathered over the decades suggests the presence of one or more extraterrestrial species in our midst may not be sufficient to explain the bizarreness of what has been observed and encountered by human beings around the world and across time.
In the 1970s trailblazing figures like Jacques Vallee and John Keel emerged, provocatively suggesting that the traditional nuts and bolts ET hypothesis was not the best fit for the events described in the literature. Vallee surprised many by drawing parallels between modern UFO encounters with supposed space aliens and encounters with the so-called faerie folk of deep human lore. By comparing and contrasting the nature of these various entities, Vallee forced a 20th century populace to wrestle with the notion that what we might be seeing is just a modern-day manifestation of a presence that had been with us since the very beginning.
While Vallee’s postulation is certainly a compelling one - after all, these striking parallels do exist - it’s also important not to prematurely leap to that conclusion based solely on fairly superficial similarities. And of course, this begs the question: how much overlap really exists between ancient faerie and even religious tradition, and the modern-day UFO Phenomenon? And how might we distinguish between a single intelligence with multiple manifestations, and the presence of multiple intelligences perhaps arising from very different source points? These are the very matters we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 63rd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Over the course of the history of this podcast, we’ve covered events and experiences that are so bizarre, seemingly irrational and even absurd, that one can’t help but come away from an exhaustive examination of this data wondering how on Earth it fits into our notion of reality at all. Put simply, I don’t think it does. But not because the data is somehow in error. After all, at this point, there’s simply too much of it, with too much cross-cultural, cross-temporal consistency for that to be the case, even allowing for a healthy dose of filtering for cases involving misrepresentation, misapprehension and/or mental instability. No, it being the case that this is a bonafide phenomenon - happening to real people, in real ways - and has been since time immemorial, the problems must lie not in the data, but in our very conceptions of reality.
In today’s episode we’ll be unwrapping this enigma even further, but not in the form of a new case we’ll be studying, but rather in the form of questions and answers. The questions submitted this time around for this Inquiring Mind feature were - again - of the highest caliber - and my thanks go out to all who took the time to submit a question. Since I don’t have the time to answer all of the questions submitted, I’ve chosen to engage with several that I think help us to keep our eye on this central question regarding the ultimate nature of reality. And with that in mind, let’s get right to it, in this, the 3rd installment of The Inquiring Mind, in this, the 62nd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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In recent years numerous accounts involving the UFO Phenomenon have been made public that contain a broad assortment of bizarre, paradigm-stretching, and, for many, credibility-challenging, elements of so-called High Strangeness - i.e. elements that seem to contradict our consensus understanding of the possible. Recent books such as Skinwalkers at the Pentagon have helped to turn the spotlight on these co-arising elements of paranormality that tend to emerge alongside standard UFO sightings.
Some might look at these recent revelations and wonder if perhaps these elements are only now being presented because paranormality has become “in vogue”, so to speak. In other words, skeptics might look at these recent revelations and suggest ufology has become corrupted by the imagination of the time - as if people’s reports have become sprinkled with elements they internalized while watching too much Netflix, or something of the sort.
But the truth is, these elements of High Strangeness are not new. Not in the slightest. The truth is that the reason we see more reporting of these elements today is because there is less repression of these elements and these particular encounters by the ufological gatekeepers who, historically, wanted to present a cohesive nuts and bolts narrative so as to garner the attention and, they hoped, respect, of the scientific mainstream. In other words, historically, ufologists themselves often censored elements of high strangeness in the data that was collated.
But again, these reports have always existed. Paranormality and UFOs go together like the ocean and sand; in other words, not only do they simply co-exist together, but they seem to be directly linked in some kind of causal chain - even if the specifics have long eluded the grasp of researchers and theorists alike.
The curious encounters of a French man who, in order to maintain his privacy, came to be referred to simply as Dr. X, is a perfect case in point. This case is from the late 1960s, long before the current era’s focus on ufological high strangeness, and yet, it has it all: physical healing, the spontaneous appearance of triangular skin marks, memory manipulation, future-casting, poltergeist & hitchhiker effects, multi-generational impacts, etcetera.
What are we to make of this bizarre menu of elements that seem to - effectively - turn on their head almost all of our modern notions as to how reality is supposed to unfold? Do these elements merely demonstrate the impressive capabilities of a more sophisticated extraterrestrial intelligence, or do they perhaps provide hints regarding an origin for some of these mysterious others that flies in the face of the standard hypotheses put forth to make sense of this Phenomenon? These are the very matters we’ll seek to explore in this, the 61st episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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When it comes to the so-called UFO Phenomenon, the levels of complexity go much deeper than the general public and the political and media mainstream generally realize. In other words, the conversation that’s – finally – being had in those circles, because of revelations arising primarily since 2017 – is still a far cry from the nature of the discussion being had by people really familiar with the nuances of this thorny but enthralling topic.
The first layer is the notion that sophisticated alien entities may be in our midst, supposedly piloting – or at least controlling, even if remotely – the strangely exotic craft that have been regularly spotted buzzing in and around our skies. That part of the conversation is finally being had – in at least some elements of the mainstream, though widespread acknowledgement of this fact is still a long way off.
Further inward from that surface layer of the proverbial onion is discussion regarding how these alien others seem to be both contacting and ongoingly interacting with human beings, as we speak, and most likely have been for as long as our species has been around to have such experiences.
Another layer deeper from that part of the narrative, which is already much more than the general public and the political and media mainstream are willing to even discuss, is a notion even more shocking: that being that some people are taking a proactive role – and are reaching out to these alien others; taking the front-foot, as it were, in the contact and communication process.
CE-5 – short for “close encounters of the 5th kind” is a term used to describe a certain form of this kind of interaction with alien others. CE-5 involves a series of general protocols designed to peacefully invite contact with sophisticated, non-human intelligence. A person may, for instance, communicate, via the aid of meditation and directed intention, a desire to see a craft – presumed by many, if not most, to be extraterrestrial in origin – to show itself in a particular place in the sky at a particular time.
Interestingly, while CE-5 is the most familiar form of proactive, human-initiated contact with apparently non-human, alien intelligence, it is not the only method that has, and is, being employed. Astral travel is another form of contact/communication/communion that is being used to reach out and bridge whatever divide separates us and “them”.
Of course, the fact that astral travel seems to – after the correct kind of training/preparation – be just as effective in achieving this close encounter contact as is CE-5, this only begs the question as to the nature of the divide that does actually separate us from them. Indeed, the fact that we seem to be able to travel, via consciousness, as it were, without “physically” going anywhere, and still not only contact these alien others, but even spend time aboard their in-orbit spacecraft, suggests that the nature of the contact (or at least, some if it) is perhaps not what many first assume it to be. And really, once you really think about it, it becomes clear that the implications here even call into question the very nature of what we call “reality”.
Without doubt these implications are as fascinating as they are mind-bending; and are – without question – as simultaneously bizarre as they are profound. And these are the very matters we’ll seek to delve deep into, in this, the 60th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Over the last several episodes we’ve been discussing some of the more bizarre, even absurd, elements of the UFO Phenomenon. For anyone who’s taken the time to do a truly deep dive into the data behind this Phenomenon, it is clear that there is much to make sense of here: much that doesn’t fit well with certain cookie-cutter, predetermined hypotheses meant to make sense of the data.
Two episodes ago we discussed Jacque Vallée’s groundbreaking, genre-stretching and controversial book Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers, where Vallée drew our attention to parallels between elements of the so-called UFO Phenomenon and events from both religious history and historic faerie lore. Beyond somewhat superficial differences, the overlap was clear.
And in our last episode we dove directly into an investigation of the absurd or ridiculous nature of many of these encounters with supposed aliens. While we should always be wary of anthropocentric notions of how supposed space aliens “should behave”, it is difficult to look past the overwhelming degree of absurdity in many of these encounters. Are they merely so strange because we cannot make heads or tails of the actions of a much more sophisticated intelligence or species whose rationality supersedes our own? Or are the events themselves simply absurd – full stop?
Following up on his exhaustive study of the data we’ve covered over the last couple of episodes, Vallée, along with his colleague, physicist Eric Davis published a position paper titled Incommensurability, Orthodoxy and the Physics of High Strangeness: A 6-layer Model for Anomalous Phenomena in which they lay out the challenges that confront us in trying to study a Phenomenon that is so rich in elements of High Strangeness and paranormality.
This paper, though only totaling 9 pages, is rich in detail – touching on many of the key elements that anyone studying this Phenomenon should be paying close attention to. Beyond presenting these elements in a clear and concise manner, this paper by Vallée and Davis also makes clear many of the misguided assumptions that various researchers make in trying to “pin down” the ultimate origin and nature of the apparent intelligence or intelligences behind the mind-bending activity associated with the UFO Phenomenon, while also proposing the broad brush strokes of a way forward, utilizing a multi-pronged and multidisciplinary approach.
A deep dive into the informative and insightful nature of this paper by Jacques Vallée and Eric Davis is the topic of this, the 59th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Last time on this podcast we discussed Jacque Vallée’s ground-breaking and genre-stretching book Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers, which highlights striking parallels between elements found within what’s commonly referred to as the UFO Phenomenon, and distant tales that come to us from so-called faerie lore.
That is to say, once you crack the veneer of more recent 20th and 21st century encounters with what are assumed to be spacecraft being piloted by alien beings who’ve supposedly traveled across the vast distances of the cosmos to get here, and the stories of our ancestor’s encounters with the likes of fawns, faeries and goblins from the annals of human history, the degree of overlap is as startling as it is, at least from Vallée’s perspective, potentially revealing.
Put succinctly, Vallée, and others since he first penned this book in the late 1960s, have wondered if perhaps some kind of intelligence has been interacting with human beings throughout the entire course of our history, and either that we’ve just interpreted them differently because of our changing assumptions about reality, or that the very manner in which they appear to us is partly determined by cultural constructs. Incidentally, this latter possibility may even explain some of the differences noticed, not only across time, but also between cultures existing contemporaneously.
When one peruses the full breadth of the history of these kinds of interactions with beings that appear to be decidedly non-human, one particular element stands out particularly. Here I speak of the degree of absurdity, elsewhere described as “ridiculousness”, that arises in many of these cases. And again, this is often as true of cases of what, at first glance, appear to be standard extraterrestrials flying spacecraft, as it does of faeries abducting human beings and then returning them only after having altered that individual’s relationship with spacetime, in one way or another, at least temporarily.
While we might ignore elements of absurdity apparent in historic cases of faerie lore because, after all, few modern people take those stories seriously to begin with. After all, they’re “fairy tales”: a genre many take to mean “made up” or “not real” or “fantastical. However, what is disconcerting to some who like to cling to a standard extraterrestrial hypothesis to explain modern incidents of the UFO Phenomenon, here too the accounts provided reveal elements of what appears to be pure absurdity: elements of ridiculousness that surely have no place if we’re speaking of sophisticated, technologically superior entities traveling from exo-planets to survey our blue pearl of a planet.
Why the absurdity? And why so often? What are we to make of this? Is this merely attributable to errors in translation or something equally banal? Or is this seeming ridiculousness pointing to something more central; something serving perhaps as a signpost pointing towards the murky origin of these various non-human Others? These are the very matters we’ll seek to explore in this, the 58th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Near the middle part of the 20th century, American society became obsessed with a newfangled fascination. This pastime that took the public’s imagination by storm, prompted serious and excited discussion around interplanetary visitors. The dawning of this new era in pubic life was fueled by a series of sightings of what quickly became known, colloquially, as
“flying saucers”.
More generally, the term adopted was that of UFOs – unidentified flying objects. This term described what was commonly assumed to be, sophisticated technological spacecraft being piloted by alien others – Martians or Venusians or something in that line of thinking; our neighbors from the surrounding planets of our solar system.
Now, while the public’s interest was peaking, the mainstream scientific establishment was much more cautious. All of this hoopla seemed too good to be true; too much like a radio drama depicting an H.G. Wells story, or something along those lines. For that reason, mainstream scientists largely steered clear of this topic. And of course, this bias was helped in large measure by what we understand now to be a dedicated disinformation campaign meant to quell public and academic interest, being perpetuated by the federal government.
However, that said, there were scientists who had not forgotten that their role was to investigate anything mysterious that seemed to be manifesting, without assuming – a priori – that such things simply couldn’t be. These rare pioneers of inquiry are the kinds of people determined to let data – not preexisting bias – lead the way.
One such pioneer was and is a scientist named Jacques Vallee – a living legend who has arguably done more for the field of ufology than any other person in the history of the world. What’s made Vallee so well regarded over time is that, looking back, he was always willing to go – again – wherever the data led him; letting it, rather than the “common sense” thinking of the day lead to the postulating of new hypotheses.
Now, speaking of that, one such data-driven shift that happened for Vallee came when he recognized that, 1.) These supposed encounters with alien beings flying sophisticated spacecraft seemed to regularly include elements of high strangeness more akin to what are commonly referred to as paranormal encounters, and 2.) That, when examined in close detail, these elements overlapped considerably with apparently religious or fairy-tale encounters from distant human history.
This inspired Vallee to do a deep dive, comparing modern-day UFO encounters with events from distant history, leading, eventually, to his controversial, consequential and ground-breaking book Passport to Magonia: From Folklore to Flying Saucers. And It is the surprising and evocative revelations uncovered in that seminal book that is the topic of this, the 57th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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In the two previous episodes of the podcast we covered the key elements of the case of Terry Lovelace, a man who’s had a lifetime of experiences with apparently non-human, alien intelligences. Lovelace’s case is punctuated by events known as abductions, which involve human beings being visited by these alien others and then transported, by way of their technology, up into craft, either situated above a particular location, or orbiting the earth. In one instance Lovelace recounts being transported to a massive mothership, so large that it needed to be “parked” on the far side of the moon in order to not be visible to the naked eye of those on Earth.
As it turns out, a case such as Lovelace’s is not terribly unique. In fact, beyond certain fairly superficial differences, this case bears remarkable similarity to a host of other cases documented within the annals of the UFO Phenomenon literature. In fact, it is not a stretch to say that this particular kind of alien interaction is one of the most commonly reported. And of course that’s precisely why I picked Lovelace’s case to highlight: because it is so representative of a larger phenomenon that speaks to a group of alien others interacting with human beings all across the planet, and over the course of multiple generations.
So now that we’ve taken the time to highlight some of the specifics of Lovelace’s case, and how it played out over the course of his lifetime, in this episode I’d like to dive into the key elements of these particular kinds of cases that, again, are well attested throughout the UFO Phenomenon literature. What the data tells us is that, barring some massive disinformation campaign involving thousands of people all across the world, co-conspiring to enact some bizarre and unwieldy psy-op, these events really are happening in one way or another. This particular kind of human/alien interaction is going on, en-masse, as we speak.
This answers the “what’s happening” or “what is it” aspect of the UFO Phenomenon, or at least, in relation to one aspect of it – because again, as I keep trying to drive home, from my perspective what we conveniently call the UFO Phenomenon, is likely an amalgam of numerous phenomena arising from different intelligences with likely different origin stories, not to mention different agendas.
But in relation to this one key element of the larger Phenomenon, knowing what’s happening only serves to beg certain key questions, such as: Who’s involved? Why are they doing it? And how are they doing it? We might also ask, how is it that this is happening seemingly under the very noses of the world’s populace? Said differently, why the societal ignorance and/or disinterest? And to what degree are the governments of the world aware of this phenomenon, and to what degree might they actually be involved?
These are the very thorny but essential questions we’ll seek to find some clarity on in this, the 56th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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In last week’s episode we kicked off a discussion of a certain kind of alien interaction: the kind – well attested to in UFO Phenomenon literature – where human beings are repeatedly interacted with by non-human intelligences, and often from a very young age. As time goes on that interaction often includes abduction – that is, the taking of these people from their homes, up onto what appear to be spacecraft, either orbiting the earth in cloaked fashion, or existing in some kind of hyperspace or alternate realm of reality, where time and space seem to function differently.
The level of ontological shock that arises for these abductees/contactees – as we’ve said numerous times over the course of this podcast – cannot be overstated. These encounters shake these people to the core. And that’s true whether they ultimately come to see the experiences as positive, negative or neutral.
These meetings, whether you see them as intergalactic or interdimensional in nature – or some combination of the two, seem to very often include a biological element. That is to say, the people who are taken onboard these craft remember having had various medical experiments and procedures done to them; including the collecting of reproductive material, that seems to be part of a vast hybridization program of some kind. Furthering this narrative all the more, many of these experiencers also report having had contact with some of these very hybrid beings, including ones they are told, and believe to be, their very offspring.
The cast of Terry Lovelace fits all of the above criteria, to a tee. This case is fascinating for several different reasons: First, because it is told by a person who has had a distinguished professional career, and who seems to be credible in every measure one can reasonably apply. Secondly, because Terry Lovelace’s retelling of his experiences, extending over an entire lifetime, are so rich in vivid detail. And thirdly, because, as I already mentioned, this case is so typical of many such cases cataloged within the UFO Phenomenon literature.
In last week’s episode of Point of Convergence we discussed two key sequences of Lovelace’s lifelong encounters: a window of time from his childhood, when he encountered grey aliens he, at the time, called “the monkeymen”, and then a climactic event that occurred while he was a young man in the military, where he and a close friend encountered a massive black triangle UFO craft while camping in a remote area. This latter experience resulted in an abduction of both men, and a subsequent interrogation by the air force, upon their hasty return from that excursion.
This week we’ll pick up right where we left off, discussing the nature of that interrogation, and what that suggested the military already knew about this Phenomenon, as well as details about Lovelace’s experience while onboard the triangular craft, and then moving forward to events from later in his life, after his time in the military, in this, the 55th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Over the last several months we’ve been discussing how the totality of the data behind the UFO Phenomenon may include different patterns that, perhaps, suggest that different actors and agendas serve as distinct parts of that whole. Distinguishing segments within the meta-category known as the UFO Phenomenon can, perhaps, help us to better understand what’s actually going on.
Within that totality, for instance, is a subsection of data involving apparent alien abduction. Here we’re speaking about human beings first encountering evidently non-human corporeal entities in their homes, as well as elsewhere, and subsequently being taken by these aliens onboard what appear to be spacecraft. Once onboard these apparent other worldly craft, these individuals often find that strange, invasive and frequently uncomfortable medical procedures are performed.
While medical treatment for various conditions that may be ailing these abductees is sometimes the goal, much more often the medical procedures seem to revolve around some kind of vast reproductive scheme; often as part of what appears to be a wide-reaching hybridization program – where offspring who are part human and part grey alien appear to be being bred and then raised by these non-human others.
The data we’ve gathered over the decades on these kinds of encounters also suggest that these interactions between these non-human, alien others and usually individual human beings, begin early in childhood – even though it’s sometimes only in adulthood that these early life memories are successfully retrieved – sometimes as a result of some kind of triggering, associative event, or via the aid of therapeutic tools such as hypnotic regression.
These particular kinds of experiencer accounts are widespread. The fact that these particular alien abduction experiences share so many common data points suggest we really can learn a lot by really embarking on a close examination of the evidence. And that’s precisely what we’ll be doing over the next several episodes.
To begin that process we’ll be delving into a specific case that fits well within the boundaries of this particular kind of experiencer account. Terry Lovelace is a man who’s encountered these alien greys since childhood. That ongoing but usually intermittent interaction took a shocking turn when he was a young man in the military. Events in one particular scenario, depicted in his book Incident at Devil’s Den, seem to suggest these alien greys have wielded an alarming and overarching control over his behavior, intentions, perception and memory.
A deep dive into the astonishing but revealing – and all too familiar – case of Terry Lovelace, alien abductee, is the topic of this, the 54th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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It was at this time last year that the inaugural edition of the Point of Convergence podcast was launched. In that very first edition I discussed some of the broad brush topics I planned to cover in the coming weeks and months. I didn’t know exactly what direction the podcast would take, but I had a strong sense that it would attempt to weave together topics that are often taken as distinct and disconnected: topics such as alien beings and the UFO Phenomenon, psi phenomena such as psychokinesis, telepathy and clairvoyance, and the mystery of life and death, revealed with growing clarity through phenomena such as out of body experiences, and even more so, near death experiences.
I also understood that central to our inquiry would be the underlying role that consciousness seems to play in connecting each of these subjects – which are often collectively referred to as “the contact modalities”, almost like spokes in a wheel. Over time it has become increasingly clear that, as I recently heard it put, it’s not so much that we possess consciousness, as that we, on the most fundamental of levels, are consciousness.
Somehow, despite the temporary sense of separation we often experience in this particular earthly iteration, we are actually part of capital “C” consciousness, which, as quantum physicist Erwin Schrodinger put it: “Consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown. There is only one thing and that which seems to be a plurality is merely a series of different aspects of this one thing, produced by a deception, the Indian maya, as in a gallery of mirrors.”
While the UFO Phenomenon, which has been our most central topic of inquiry, might at first seem like it doesn’t belong in such a conversation, I think it’s clear, based on the various cases of contact with non-human intelligence that we’ve covered over the last year, that nothing could be further from the truth.
Indeed, the connection between UFOs and aliens, with psi phenomena and out of body and near death experiences, is not even secondary and subtle, but often quite immediate and direct. In fact, we’ve come across cases where deceased relatives show up in the very same encounters where people meet and interact with apparently alien beings. We also know that the altered state of consciousness that experiencers of the UFO Phenomenon frequently describe involves striking overlap with elements of out of body and near death experiences.
Now, speaking of those various experiences of contact with apparently non-human, alien entities, it has been informative to see how different people have described different kinds of experiences in cases we’ve covered over the last year. While there are too many striking similarities to count, there have also been some striking differences, perhaps suggesting, as I’ve postulated for some time now, that we’re dealing with different elements within one totality we conveniently, colloquially title “the UFO Phenomenon”.
Now that we’ve reached the one year mark of this podcast, while also reaching the end of this calendar year, now seems like an apt time for a retrospective of sorts, looking back to compare and contrast the various elements of these otherworldly, anomalous experiences.
Over the last 365 days or so, we’ve covered nine specific cases of contact with alien intelligence. And now we’ll seek to take an overarching view of those cases, considering in what ways they’re similar, as well as distinct, and in what ways they did or didn’t somehow touch on the other “contract modalities” we discussed earlier, in this the 53rd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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As we approach the one year anniversary of the Point of Convergence podcast – now only days away – it’s useful to stop and reflect on the sheer wealth of the diverse and captivating material we’ve covered during the past 12 months. Over the past 50+ episodes we’ve pivoted between a micro and a macro view of this phenomenon, discussing the mind-boggling details of individual encounters with these beings perhaps best described as “the Others”, while also examining the overarching trends and common data-points observed, as we’ve endeavored to piece together a meaningful narrative to help us understand – at least in part – the totality of what is going on.
And, during these last 12 months, while we’ve been busy perusing the so-called experiencer literature that has grown into an enormous volume of data over the decades, we’ve seen – out of the corner of our eye, as it were – that this topic: commonly referred to as “the UFO Phenomenon”, has even begun to finally pierce the veil of the mainstream. Indeed, in recent weeks we’ve seen the momentum that began in December 2017 with a remarkable piece in the New York Times, culminate in the passing of Congressional amendments that are poised to create an officially sanctioned office to gather, process and collate information pertaining specifically to UAP – unidentified aerial phenomena, aka UFOs.
But our journey together has been about much more than an investigation of the strange and sophisticated craft buzzing in and around the skies above our heads, and of the bizarre and often life-changing encounters people have had with beings that seem decidedly otherworldly. We’ve also traced a point of convergence, if you will, where capacities that exist along the so-called psi spectrum seem to overlap with the data belonging to UFOs and aliens. Fascinatingly, not only do these Others – these non-human intelligences – seem to demonstrate a startling capacity for abilities such as telepathy, psychokinesis, and clairvoyance, but so too do human beings, suggesting perhaps our connection to them is closer than many of us have first imagined.
Indeed other human experiences reported across time; here we speak of events such as out of body experiences, near death experiences, subtle state sensing and astral travel – also seem to meet at a point of convergence with data usually squarely bookmarked within the UFO Phenomenon. And we’ve discussed how, in total, this remarkably illuminating point of convergence seems to be suggesting something fundamental about ultimate reality itself; laying bare the evidently central role that capital “C” consciousness seems to play as the bedrock of all that is; serving as a substrate that not only gives rise to secondary phenomena such as matter and energy, but that seems to connect everything and everyone in the Kosmos, which is perhaps best described as a multi-dimensional multiverse, potentially teeming with life.
As we’ve tracked this trajectory that has – I’m sure you’ll agree – proven to be, at times, as equally baffling and bewildering as it has bewitching and transfixing, no doubt questions have arisen in the minds of you, the audience. And that’s probably true whether you hopped on this train at the first stop around this time last year, or whether you’ve jumped on-board on one of our more recent episode stops. Either way, now seems like an apt time to explore some of those questions in the second edition of a feature titled The Inquiring Mind, where I engage with some of the thoughtful and insightful questions you the audience have sent in over the last couple of months.
And so now, without further adieu, let’s jump into these thought-provoking questions as part of this Inquiring Mind feature, in this, the 52nd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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In last week’s episode I postulated that part of the reason why it’s so difficult to make sense of the actions of the intelligence behind the UFO Phenomenon is because, in reality, that broad range of activity is not the result of a single actor. The data ends up looking nonsensical and contradictory to us because in one case a so-called “alien” intelligence says or does one thing, and then in the next case it does the seeming opposite. But as I argued, this apparent contradiction only exists when we assume a single intelligence and agenda is involved.
From my point of view the reality is anything but. I think what we’re dealing with is a multidimensional multiverse absolutely teeming with life. And while trickster phenomena are undoubtedly in the mix, that alone - from my point of view - doesn't explain the bizarre mishmash of actions we see evidenced in the data. Again, I think the wide range of activity and messages attributed to these Others comes down to them being different groups - often with different agendas as well as, different sources/origins.
I also made the point in last week’s episode that, while various researchers tend to focus on one subset of the data, while ignoring, dismissing or downplaying the rest, this is the wrong approach - especially if our goal is to gain a greater understanding as to the totality of what’s going on, and to, more importantly, gain further clarity on the very fabric of ultimate reality.
I think our approach should be to attempt to identify patterns within the totality of the data. And as we do that, I think we’ll find that one particular hypothesis might better fit one aspect of the data while perhaps a different hypothesis better fits a different segment. In other words, in no way should we consider these various hypotheses to be mutually exclusive. In fact, I think it’s only in combining them within some overarching meta-conception that we can hope to achieve some semblance of clarity as to the source and nature of these various mysterious Others.
In addition to the confusion that can arise when we have data that effectively is a jumble of activity based on many different kinds of non-human intelligence, one aspect of that data that seems particularly confounding is the regularly reported humanoid form of these so-called aliens. Now, on the one hand, one might want to disregard these reports as being an anthropocentric tendency based on people who didn’t see very clearly during a certain contact or abduction experience, or who are suffering from a failing memory. And that might work, for one or a few cases. But as I already stated, these humanoid forms are described again and again and again in the UFO Phenomenon literature, so much so that we surely can’t explain this all away as blatant, inherent bias in this broad assortment of witnesses.
Not very long ago on this podcast we discussed the Future Human Hypothesis, and how this helps to elegantly explain why these Others so often appear to not only be humanoids, but actually hominids; in other words, biological beings directly descended from human beings.
But are there other possibilities that deserve consideration as a plausible explanation for their uncanny resemblance to us? I believe there are. And we’ll explore both those possibilities, as well as how various proposed hypotheses might weave together to form a fabric robust enough to contain the plurality of alien Others that have been reported over time, in this, the 51st episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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For getting on for 80 years now, people have been trying to expose secrets kept under lock and key by deeply embedded, so-called “black ops programs” that many believe are holding back irrefutable evidence pertaining to knowledge of, and interaction with, non-human intelligence. These same people believe that when this secret is finally exposed to the world, it will bring about revelations that will mark a key turning in the course of human civilization, ushering in an era of inter-galactic cooperation with a larger family of civilizations.
Of course, that’s for the people who believe that these Others mean us good, and are here as part of a peaceful mission to help us ascend to the next development level. There are other people who agree that a secret is being kept from humanity, but that this is in part because the news is not good: that these Others are dominator races whose aim is either to conquer us via overt means and technology that greatly eclipses our own, or via some insidious plan that involves a hybridization program meant to turn humans into something else entirely.
But this picture still isn’t complete - because both of the above conceptions of what’s going on tend to involve intelligences believed to be extraterrestrial in origin. The thing is, even when one looks at the evidence that exists as part of the literature behind the so-called UFO Phenomenon that’s publicly available as a result of the work of tireless researchers, it’s not at all clear that what’s being interacted with are solely off-world races who’ve traveled here via sophisticated spacecraft.
In fact, even if one finds this topic because of a kind sci-fi interest in advanced spacecraft and alien biological beings originating on some exo-solar planet, the data one comes across - assuming one is diligently perusing the totality of the historical data, that is - quickly turns the picture ever more obscure and confusing. And that’s because, while extraterrestrials definitely seem to be “in the mix”, as it were, the total picture is much more complex and multifaceted. Some find this complexity intriguing and inspiring, while others are left feeling unmoored from what they used to believe defined “reality”, as a result of these revelations.
Some grab a-hold of these revelations with a fervor, feeling inspired to explore elements of a clearly multi-dimensional reality that makes our former conceptions look like child’s play, while others end up abandoning the endeavor altogether, convinced that the more mind-bending aspects of the data suggest a mixture of human fraud, ego, mental instability and the like have painted a picture that can’t possibly be accurate. Of course, this exposes the fact that what we’re willing to entertain as being part of the fabric of the larger reality, says as much about who we are – as individuals, and as different cultural groups - as it does about the true nature of all that is.
How are we to make sense of this disorienting complexity? How are we to walk what some perceive to be a minefield of competing and mutually exclusive hypotheses regarding the origin and nature of these mysterious non-human Others? These are the very matters we’ll seek to address in this, the 50th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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When Luis Elizondo made the bold and life changing decision to leave his career within the U.S. military and intelligence community by resigning from his role spearheading AATIP - The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program - it wasn’t because he wanted a change in scenario or a change in direction. No, on the contrary, he has repeatedly stated that the decision to leave his position was the hardest one he’s ever made, one that he wouldn’t have made if he had seen any other legitimate way forward. Furthermore, he has repeatedly asserted that his decision to resign was brought about by his desire - first and foremost - to serve his country.
In the end it became apparent to Elizondo that the intelligence he was trying to deliver up his chain of command was being brickwalled before it could get to where it needed to. In short, there were people above him who not only had no interest in seeing the intelligence gathered being delivered to the top of the chain, where it could be - as Elizondo had hoped - acted upon - but there were individuals who had apparently decided that the investigation shouldn’t be happening at all; that to investigate the matter of these unidentified aerial phenomena - aka UFOs - was, in itself, a foolhardy and ill-advised endeavor.
Of course this begs the question: why? Why was there a contingent within the US military intelligence apparatus that not only wanted to halt someone like Elizondo from delivering intel to his superiors, but who had seemingly already decided - a priori - that an investigation into UFOs was not only ill advised, but - more significantly - actually a dangerous endeavor to even pursue?
In short, these individuals within Elizondo’s chain of command believed the intelligence behind UAPs/UFOs was actually demonic in nature. And not in some abstract - these are bad news - kind of way. No, these individuals seemed to believe that these intelligences were in fact the very demons they believed the Bible laid bare as the evil minions of Satan, dark and deceptive nefarious entities who’s only true aim was to corrupt and lead humanity away from a reliance on and relationship with the “one true God”.
Now, to be sure, a predetermined position rooted in religious fundamentalism was central to this group’s thinking. Had there been no Christian fundamentalists in positions of power, this notion likely wouldn’t have gotten off the ground to begin with. But, as it turns out, the conclusions this group of government and military insiders had come to was not solely based on pre-existing religious conviction. Rather, events that had taken place earlier in the 20th century, events such as those tied to the first ever modern sighting of UFOs by Kenneth Arnold, and of the purported crash of an alien craft along with the alleged recovery of alien life forms at Roswell, New Mexico, were central to this group’s conclusions.
Put succinctly, this group - who came to be known as the Collins Elite - believed that occultic practices foolishly pursued by human beings in the early to mid 20th century had opened a kind of portal to an alternate dimension; a netherworld that was home to these dark and deceptive intelligences. And that now these demonic forces were laying siege to humanity under the ruse of a visitation from extraterrestrials piloting sophisticated spacecraft.
But what were the actual, specific historical events that had led to the Collins Elite to these rather startling conclusions? And how was it that the personal convictions of these religious fundamentalists went so far as to influence, and some might even say, shape, much of the unofficial response of the U.S. government to the UFO Phenomenon? These are the very matters we’ll seek to understand in this, the 49th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Over the past couple of episodes of the Point of Convergence podcast we’ve been examining two distinct but related matters:
1.) That various intel sources – sources trusted by credible individuals such as Australian journalist Ross Coulthart and British intelligence analyst Franc Milburn – have divulged the apparent existence of various factions of future-humans who have been intervening in affairs in our present time in order to impact the potential arising of a cataclysmic event that lies — allegedly — in our very not distant future.
And, 2.) That further evolution, especially after something like a cataclysmic environmental event, could very likely give rise to a species of neo-humans who would look very much like the quintessential “grey aliens” we’ve all become very familiar with.
It should be clearly understood, as I just noted above, that while these matters may be related, the notion that at least some of the “grey aliens” contactees/abductees have interacted with are time-traveling future neo-humans can (and, I would argue) should be considered on its own merits. And I think the grounds for this possibility are remarkably compelling, especially once you really gig into the pertinent details. Much of the evidence we’ll discuss today in that regard comes from anthropologist and evolutionary biologist Michael Masters’ book Identified Flying Objects: A Multidisciplinary Scientific Approach to the UFO Phenomenon.
Not only does Masters lay out a thorough and convincing case that so-called “grey aliens” are best understood as being a later arising along the same genetic line that began with chimpanzees and later gave rise to modern homo sapiens, but he makes an equally strong case that two-way time travel is not only a theoretical possibility, but a very likely eventuality based on our ongoing technological development. He also clarifies that many of the seemingly unworkable paradoxes that arise with the notion of time travel are rooted in our misapprehension of how time actually works, and indeed, what it actually is.
In today’s podcast, in addition to a deeper dive into Masters’ bold but well-supported arguments, we’ll examine additional lines of evidence that relate to the intel reports suggesting timeline manipulation by factions of future humans may already be happening.
Are time-traveling future neo-humans the missing link in making sense of the UFO Phenomenon that has eluded us for decades? Or at least, of making sense of a large swath of the data and activity and interactions observed? These are precisely the matters we’ll seek to unravel in this, the 48th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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For those of us intimately familiar with the data behind what we colloquially refer to as the UFO Phenomenon, one thing is abundantly clear: we are being visited by beings that are not conventionally human. Beings that, for lack of a better term, we call “aliens”. Aliens here being a term that, in its most general sense, simply simply means “other” - and doesn’t necessarily refer to intelligences arising from some far flung star system, i.e. outer space.
Furthermore, not only are we being visited by these “aliens”, but they - some of them, anyway - are interacting with us in some very bizarre, and for some, disturbing ways; including, apparently, for the sake of harvesting genetic material and even to create what for all intents and purposes appear to be hybridized offspring - beings that are part alien and part human.
That’s the “what” of the UFO Phenomenon. That’s what’s been observed in terms of what’s happening. Again, these are complex matters that, as I’ve argued time and time again, likely involve various phenomena (plural), underlyingly consisting of multiple actors with multiple agendas, and involving origins that may be as diverse as the types of beings described. In that sense, extraterrestrials, interdimensionals, extradimensionals, etc, are very likely -- according to my view -- all in the picture. In other words, I tick the “all of the above” answer on that particular multiple choice question.
But now that we’ve identified much of the “what’s happening” piece - here I’m specifically referring to craft in our skies that show evidence of technology that is not only sophisticated, but that also shows clear evidence of the apparent warping of spacetime, and to beings that are taking people aboard craft and elsewhere, and performing strange biological experiments and harvesting genetic, reproductive material, and then, often, introducing the apparent hybridized offspring to humans, sometimes to perform various bonding procedures, the question now turns to the “why”. Why would they be doing this?
Well, amongst numerous postulated explanations, one that stands out from the pack, from my point of view, is the notion that these Others, or again, a certain segment of them, are in some way related to modern human beings, and that their endeavor to extract genetic material from us is because they need this material somehow. In fact, experiencers have repeatedly been told messages such as “if we could do this any other way, we would”, or, “we do this because it’s necessary”.
Now while this might sound outlandish at first glance - how would they be related to us, some might ask - that question becomes much simpler to answer once you add in the possibility of time travel. And this brings us to the Future Human Hypothesis, the notion that these Others, or again, at least SOME of them, are our very own progeny, perhaps coming from the distant future, who now look like the quintessential grey alien because they’ve evolved on an Earth that has decidedly different environmental conditions than the one we live on today.
But how likely is it that these Others, some of them anyway, may actually be neo-humans, our very descendants? And how credible is the notion that they may be here to manipulate our timeline as it pertains to some near-future cataclysm? And how might this apparent apocalyptic event relate to previous cataclysms that have happened in Earth’s history; cataclysms that may actually be recurring events, events that perhaps only arise once every few thousand years or so? These are the intriguing and essential matters we’ll see to engage with in this, the 47th episode, of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Ever since the dawn of the modern era of flying saucers people have been speculating as to where these apparent visitors were coming from. For decades the leading candidate, in terms of explanations, was of course the ETH: the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis, which postulated that the beings piloting these sophisticated craft were from some far-flung star system, perhaps here not so much to conquer us, but rather to study us, in the spirit of an ambitious intergalactic scientific expedition.
However, as the decades moved along and as detailed data was gathered for the first time, the ubiquitousness of the ETH began to be questioned. Some of the leading experts in the field, such as Jacques Vallee and his own time colleague J.Allen Hynek, early proponents of the ETH, later came to conclude that something like the interdimensional hypothesis was a more likely explanation for what was being observed. This notion postulated that these Others were slipping into our reality via some kind of portal from a parallel reality. Vallee suggested these may even be the same creatures that humans were encountering in distant lore.
While these and other, even more outlandish hypotheses are bandied about on social media, deep pockets of secretive government programs, and certain corners of obscure academia, there is another hypothesis that many seemingly overlook. For those who champion this alternate hypothesis, it is claimed that this hypothesis is in many ways simpler, and exists without violating any known notions of physics, and is thus a stronger candidate than its competitors.
Here I speak of the so-called Future Human Hypothesis: the notion that these Others, or at least some of them, represent a group of our very own descendants who, with their more sophisticated technological understanding, have mastered time travel, allowing them to temporally relocate to our time period. Now, for long periods of time the common assumption was that these future humans were basically nothing more than spectators, peering in on our existence the same way we might take in a period piece at our local cinema.
However, recent details have emerged that call this common assumption into question. In fact new revelations suggest that perhaps these future humans are not here as mere sight seers, but rather as active agents in some plan to alter the historical timeline. What’s even more startling is that these notions appear not to be emerging from some dubious corner of social media, but directly from within the U.S. and other nation’s intelligence communities.
Could this be disinformation? The long historical record of government involvement in this area suggests we should always be wary of this possibility. Is this a distraction meant to throw enthusiasts off the true scent? Or is there something to this? Something to the notion that not just one, but perhaps multiple different factions of future humans – some who look like us, and some who appear to resemble the so-called greys of ufological lore – are here, as competing parties, each trying to manipulate the trajectory of our civilization’s history?
What is the evidence for this? And what relationship do these purported attempts at timeline interference have to do with a purported cataclysmic event that lies somewhere in our near future? These are the very matters we’ll seek to make sense of in this, the 46th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Ventures into the skies above our heads may have begun with the Wright Brothers and their rudimentary attempts at flight, but within decades those initial crude experiments evolved into sophisticated spacecraft that could not only take humankind soaring only into the skies, but well beyond. Indeed, by the 1960s the future for humankind seemed clearly to be destined for space, and eventually the colonization of near and distant planets.
And as we gained in our understanding of spaceflight, and as our ever more powerful telescopes could peer farther and farther into the great expanse of the so-called Final Frontier of outer space, we began to wonder aloud about how long it would be before we would discover other civilizations, perhaps now travelling the stars as we hoped to do in the decades to come.
And yet, no matter where we looked, and no matter how far we looked, it seemed that, while every nook and cranny of that great expanse was filled with dazzling displays of starry splendor, life -- that is, sophisticated, non-human, alien life, was nowhere to be found. Even something as primitive as bacteria remained elusive.
This of course, led to the obvious question: where was all the life we assumed was out there? If there were plenty of planets in so-called habitable zones, as all of our growing body of data seemed to suggest, why weren’t we discovering life? Why weren’t we picking up the transmissions of distant civilizations with our ever more powerful and far-reaching sensors and telescopes?
This conundrum is known as the Fermi paradox, which, according to Wikipedia, is states thusly: -The Fermi paradox, named after Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi, is the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial life and various high estimates for their probability (such as some optimistic estimates for the Drake equation).
Now, while this dilemma still troubles many - especially those holding to a more traditional understanding of how life in the Cosmos is likely to have developed over the last several billion years - there are others who have postulated that the reasons are obvious once one really looks at the question in the right way. In other words, the problem lies not in the apparent result, but in the very assumptions we make as to what advanced, non-human life will look like, how it would behave, and where and how we’re most likely to find it.
Not only do these refreshingly inventive, forward-thinking ways of seeing this issue help us to address the Fermi paradox, but they also open up intriguing possibilities as to how we humans may evolve to the point where we too can follow suit, perhaps finding passage into the fascinating realms these Others may already be existing in.
These notions also help those of us intimately involved with a topic such as the UFO Phenomenon to perhaps better understand a truth that we think is staring us in the face: a truth suggesting these Others are not only “out there”, but here, in and around the Earth, and perhaps have been for as long, or longer, than we have. These compelling ideas and the intriguing potential implications they give birth to, are the very matters we’ll seek to explore in this, the 45th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Just as someone interested in matters such as the UFO Phenomenon and the so-called “paranormal” aspects of reality begins to conclude that these topics will always remain on the very fringes of both our collective radar and our collective curiosity, a startling piece of news comes to the fore, demonstrating that, as painstakingly slow as it may feel to those of us deeply invested in these matters, the collective imagination does eventually come around, finally entertaining and investigating these fascinating dimensions of reality.
Such news emerged with fresh, startling clarity in recent weeks with the publication of a trailblazing new book titled Skinwalkers at the Pentagon: An Insiders' Account of the Secret Government UFO Program. The book, penned by James, Lacatski, Colm Kelleher, & George Knapp, details a truly ground-breaking program known as AAWSAP - the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, that approached the topic of UAP - unidentified aerial phenomena - with a refreshingly broad lens, recognizing the uncanny but unmistakable connection between the UFO Phenomenon and what has come to be referred to as “high strangeness” or “the paranormal”.
It is one thing for a forward-thinking private think tank or some paradigm-challenging corner of academia to explore these matters. It is something else entirely for an official government body to do so. And yet, this is exactly the story we learn about in this book. The DIA - the Defense Intelligence Agency - steered 22 million dollars in tax-payer funds towards precisely this endeavor.
And, as is stated in the book, “AAWSAP personnel chose to launch the UAP program with as broad a scope as possible” and to “research paranormal phenomena that co-locate with UAPs and to examine psychic effects in UAP witnesses in addition to scrutinizing the core UAP technology itself.”
While this broad-reaching net was as ambitious as it was unorthodox, to say the least, ultimately the data it produced proved revelatory. And while the program seemingly opened up more new questions than it ever managed to answer, the findings are nevertheless essential, because they help to define the direction such research needs to take in the months and years to come.
It should not be surprising, however, that so many new questions emerged at the culmination of the AAWSAP program. Because, ultimately, these findings point towards the undeniable necessity to expand our current model of reality. But what were these revelations? And what do they hint towards in regards to the very fabric of what we call “the real”? These are precisely the matters we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 44th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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In 2017 the New York Times dropped a bombshell article detailing a secret government UFO program that included footage of newly categorized “UAP” – unidentified aerial phenomena. That article, published by a mainstream, industry-leading publication like the Times inspired other publications and news outlets all over the world to follow suit. The ensuing drama resulted in a new wave of public and political interest in the topic of UFOs that has vaulted this field to new heights in the public sphere.
Still, as groundbreaking as that article and its contents were, it turns out that numerous errors also squeaked through. In addition, the article opened up many intriguing questions that were never fully answered. At least, until now. This past week saw the publication of a trailblazing new book titled Skinwalkers at the Pentagon that is garnering considerable attention – for numerous reasons, not the least of which is because it sets the record straight on many of the details that the Times article ultimately got wrong.
But serving as much more than a correction of the historical record, this new book, penned by James Lacatski, Colm Kelleher, & George Knapp, sheds wholly new light on a secret program, titled the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program (or AAWSAP), whose paradigm-changing findings were ultimately delivered to the DIA – the Defense Intelligence Agency, at the culmination of its research.
As it turns out, the program Lacatski and Kelleher spearheaded between 2008 and 2010 covered a broad swath of phenomena that included, but went well beyond sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena – aka UFOs. Other matters investigated included psychic effects, the colloquially deemed “hitchhiker phenomenon”, poltergeist activity, and the documented physiological effects on human beings of contact with these various mysterious phenomena.
No doubt the contents of this book will shock many. And without question, many from the mainstream – both scientists and journalists alike – will balk at much of this material, because it brings the question of the primacy of consciousness and controversial matters such as sophisticated, non-human intelligence into the fore.
But of course, this kind of material is perfectly suited to a podcast such as this one. And so this is precisely the terrain we plan to traverse in this, the 43rd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Over 40+ episodes of the Point of Convergence Podcast, we’ve covered a broad assortment of matters pertaining both to the UFO Phenomenon, and related topics such as parapsychology, near death experiences, out of body experiences, contact with non-human intelligence via endogenic means, and much more.
We’ve also frequently framed these matters within a model that proposes that Consciousness may be the underlying bedrock of reality, from which all of the rest of the manifest cosmos arises. We’ve plotted various points of convergence as we’ve explored the remarkable ways the so-called contact modalities point to something fundamental about reality itself; a reality much more complex and interesting than the flatland version currently being offered up by reductionistic scientific materialism.
And during the course of our journey, these various matters have sparked our collective curiosity, birthing additional questions. And of course, we should not be surprised by this. This field of inquiry is the deepest of rabbit holes, inspiring several new and fascinating questions for every point of semi-transparent clarity that is tentatively offered up.
And in light of that, it occurred to me that now would be an apt time to turn the subject matter over to you, the audience. Inspired by that notion, this week’s episode will be the first of a new, recurring feature I’m calling The Inquiring Mind, which will incorporate a question and answer format. You ask the questions, and I’ll do my best to respond in as thoughtful and complete a manner as I can.
In terms of the questions put forward by you, this first edition of The Inquiring Mind certainly did not disappoint. The questions submitted were thoughtful and intriguing, and for that I thank you for your submissions. Topics for today's episode include disclosure, mass trance, the origins of religion, prime contactees, zero point energy, the nature of reality, and more.
And now, without further adieu, let’s dive into the inaugural edition of The Inquiring Mind, in this, the 42nd episode of the Point of Convergence Podcast.
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To anyone with the faintest familiarity with the topic of the UFO Phenomenon, it is well understood that a central and longstanding aspect of this phenomenon involves not just sightings of unexplained manifestations in the skies above our heads, but also contact and communication between human beings and supposed intelligent entities from elsewhere - and perhaps even “elsewhen”, as what we might perceive as movement through time might be as commonplace for them as what we perceive as movement through space.
That said, as much as both monologues and dialogues are a key aspect of this entire endeavor, the manner of communication has been decidedly varied, even though there are some key components that repeat themselves time and time again. In terms of the differences, sometimes the messages are delivered in a linear, chain-of-thought kind of way - somewhat akin to how human beings communicate with each other.
Other times, entire bodies of knowledge just suddenly, for lack of a better word, “arrive” in the mind of the contactee. These so-called “downloads” are astonishing because, unlike computer files streaming from a server, for instance, these packets of information seem to be instantaneous, no matter how vast the data being received is. And these downloads often can overwhelm the recipient, in the sense that sometimes these involve technical information that the individual doesn’t have the capacity to understand, often leading them to seek out others who can.
I mentioned there are also key components that repeat themselves time and time again when we look across the body of data obtained regarding the literature behind the UFO Phenomenon. A key aspect, that appears almost every time we hear of supposed contact between these Others and human beings, is that of telepathy: mind to mind communication, that bypasses the need to speech altogether.
One should note here, however, that often the kind of telepathy reported between human beings and aliens is of a much more robust nature than types reported between two human beings, for instance. When telepathy occurs between people, information still tends to be chained together, piece by piece, in linear fashion, and shared directly, mind to mind. In the cast of alien to human communication, however, the nature of the communication often involves much more than simply ideas or “thought-forms”, but also rich, multi-faceted elements of emotion. So much so that “total presence telepathy” might be a better way to describe this particular kind of communication.
Another key piece of the communication between the Others and human beings that occurs with striking regularity is the nature of the messages themselves. Repeated elements include concern for the trajectory of human civilization, concern over our disproportionate rate of growth in technology when compared with our snail’s pace growth in consciousness, concern over our seeming negligence in caring for the planet that is home to not only us, but countless animal species (and perhaps even to beings living in some kind of shadow biom - beyond the parameters of normal human perception), and concern with our overall propensity towards violence and aggression within our own species.
Without a doubt, the revelations that have emerged in this particular arena, are amongst the most compelling and the most telling of the entire UFO Phenomenon. What do both the nature of the messages received, as well as the fascinating manner in which they are communicated to us tell us about, tell us about these apparently non-human, alien intelligences? These are the matters we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 41st episode of the Point of Convergence Podcast.
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When it comes to diving into the ultimum mysterium that is the UFO Phenomenon, someone new to the endeavor is likely to quickly find themselves surprised, and likely overwhelmed, by just how many directions this topic can quickly diverge into. In the simpler time of the early to mid 20th century, sightings of strange objects in the sky inspired earthlings to imagine the dawn of an era of visitation from other-planetary civilizations. Were these Martians or Venusians? The collective imagination of the time didn’t go much beyond that.
Of course, the nature of the conversation about the UFO Phenomenon today is in a very different place. A plain question with a few apparent options on the table - in terms of answers - has burgeoned into a much larger, multifaceted discussion not just about alien visitors traversing the immense distances of interstellar space (and we are talking interstellar at this point, because we now understand, unlike those in the early to mid 20th century, that the neighboring planets of our own solar system are decidedly lifeless and barren), but also one about parallel dimensions of reality, perhaps existing right alongside us, and - even more bewilderingly - perhaps consisting of entities that can hop back and forth between our and some of these other dimensions with the ease and regularity upon which we move from one room of a house to another.
As if that added complexity wasn’t already enough to juggle, in-depth investigations into the nature of the apparent contact experiences between these alien visitors and human beings suggest these Others, many of them anyway, are capable of manipulating human perception - and perhaps even human consciousness itself - somewhat like how we might control a puppet on a string - to the point where even the data we gather to examine the objective nature of our interactions with these Others is called into question. After all, if they can not only control what we see, taste, smell, feel and hear, but also apparently implant false memories that are indistinguishable from real events of our past, how much confidence can we have in any analysis of the data we do?
It does seem fair to say that whatever conclusions we do come to after combing through and collating this data is precisely the conclusions these Others are comfortable with us coming to. While some human beings who look into this Phenomenon find themselves feeling frustrated and helpless after having understood the degree of superiority these Others wield over us, other people are less concerned, and are perhaps even inspired and hopeful that a more advanced intelligence in our midst, perhaps here to help prevent us from rushing off the precipice of doom we’ve arrived at after centuries of self-inflicted violence and aggression.
Now, while this is undoubtedly a lot to take in, when we look at the amalgam of experiences of people who’ve had supposed contact with these Others, certain patterns do emerge - albeit with the caveat of perception control we mentioned earlier. In fact, common data points have become apparent to the point where some people have endeavored to catalog whole species of alien intelligences, resulting in so-called “almanacs of extraterrestrial species”. Of course, with such books we’re right back where we started, with a bold-faced assumption that the nature of these non-human intelligences is simply and solely extraterrestrial. A questionable conclusion, to be sure.
That said, it can be helpful to pause the process of examining new cases in order to look back at the data we’ve gathered thus far, peering over the information in its totality, to see what overarching perspectives may emerge - using both the tools of steel-toothed analysis and inspirational insight. And that ambition endeavor is exactly what we’ll embark upon in this, the 40th episode of the Point of Convergence Podcast.
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If one thing is clear as we look back over the course of 38 episodes of the Point of Convergence podcast, it’s that the so-called UFO Phenomenon is as complex and multifaceted as it is equal parts bewildering and fascinating. As I’ve mentioned numerous times before, while there is a temptation to reduce this complexity by making all of the anomalous phenomena observed and experienced about a single intelligence parading in a variety of different ways, I just don’t think this notion fits the data well when we look at it honestly and completely.
Rather, to me, when one considers the breadth and depth of the data gathered over the last century - and perhaps going back into the depth of human lore, it seems apparent that numerous non-human intelligences are appearing and interacting with us. And truth be told, the ways these various intelligences manifest before our eyes, and interact, manipulate, and sometimes control us, is just as varied as the plethora of supposed alien entities described within the literature of the UFO Phenomenon.
Some of these entities appear like what we might call solid, biological beings, with, one assumes, beating hearts and liquid blood of one color or another pulsing through their veins. Other intelligences seem to be better described as either post-biological or simply non-biological, and seem most often to manifest in forms made purely of light.
When one also considers the fullness of the data gathered, it is clear that some entities seem, from a moral point of view, perhaps no more sophisticated than us, and demonstrate, if not malevolent, then at least self-serving behaviors. And as we discussed last week, sometimes the actions of some of these Others are best described as representing a kind of symbiotic relationship with human beings - where both sides of the equation, us and them, gain something from the relationship.
Then there are beings like those encountered in the case we’re going to discuss today, the case of Israeli experiencer Yossi Ronen, who seem to demonstrate not just a moral superiority, when compared to us, but also what one might describe as a moral innocence - as if their evolution didn’t progress from self-serving to cosmocentric, so much so as the nature of their experience of reality always revealed to them, from the beginning, the interconnectedness of all that is; so that, from their point of view, harming another would be no different than harming oneself.
Yossi Ronen’s encounters with these beings was as life-altering as it was short and to the point. While the time spent in their presence was but a blink of the eye in comparison with the totality of the days of his life thus far, the impact for Ronen was as incontrovertible as it was irreversible. Never again would he be able to see reality the same way following his encounter. For he learned not just about a kind of intelligence beyond human, but a fundamental truth about the nature of reality itself, revealing a non-dual, interconnected totality best described in the term: oneness.
Yossi Ronen’s life-changing encounters with interdimensional aliens, and the revelations regarding the nature of ultimate reality that emerged as a result, are the topic of this, the 39th episode of the Point of Convergence Podcast.
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The UFO Phenomenon is a topic that has undoubtedly seen a rise in interest amongst the general public in recent years. This of course has much to do with startling videos of officially declared UAP - that is, unidentified aerial phenomena - that were discussed in some detail in a ground-breaking New York Times article in 2017.
More recently, discussions have only increased following a classified report delivered to Congress in 2021 by an officially sanctioned Department of Defense task force. Indeed this momentum really has helped to make this topic, if not exactly headline news around the world, at least a subject that no longer garners outright ridicule and derision in the mainstream.
Still, that said, what is perhaps an even more intriguing, startling, and consequential aspect of the UFO Phenomenon, still tends to “fly under the radar” when it comes to mainstream coverage - and that includes both news media as well as the political set. Here I speak of contact with the apparently non-human intelligences piloting these craft. As those of us intimately familiar with this enigmatic topic know all too well, this aspect is central to our quest to understand the ultimate origin and intentions of these Others.
Contrary to what many cynics and naysayers might claim, those who do experience this kind of contact with alien entities are not necessarily conspiracy theorists obsessed with this topic. In fact, many who have experienced the kind of sudden, and initially unwanted, contact event known as abduction, had no interest nor familiarity with this topic beforehand. From their point of view, It was an event (or, more commonly, series of events) that seemed to be suddenly thrust upon them from out of nowhere.
One such individual is Jim Sparks. With a background as a run-of-the-mill real estate developer from south Florida, only really concerned with fulfilling his vision of the American dream, the last thing on his radar was otherworldly visitors and trips to their apparently sophisticated spacecraft. And yes, at some point in his adult life, this is precisely what he started experiencing. And these events were far and few in between. At the height of his experiences, he was being abducted multiple times a month.
Unlike some contact/abduction experiences that only offer up foggy, jumbled memories of alien figures and supposed off-world technology, Sparks experienced full-on education sessions, where these Others sought to teach him their own language, and fostered his capacities along the Psi spectrum, including abilities such as telepathy and psychokinesis.
What’s even more striking about Sparks’ case - making it even more difficult for naysayers to dismiss - is that all of these memories were recalled consciously. That is, without the need for what is commonly known as regression therapy. In retelling events, Sparks makes it clear that, from the onset of these experiences, as frightening as they initially were, he made a mental note to do his very best to remain conscious throughout. And, unlike many others who wished to do the same, he was surprisingly successful in this endeavor - ultimately remembering almost every aspect of the events.
What was the nature of these consciously recalled experiences? And what did the communication between Sparks and these apparent alien Others reveal about their ultimate intentions, not just for him, but for all of humanity? The answers that emerged, according to Sparks’ experience, reveal a kind of symbiotic arrangement that some might find as disconcerting and disturbing as others find encouraging and enlightening. These are the very matters we’ll seek to explore in this, the 38th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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When it comes to the history of the UFO Phenomenon, there are a few key players who have shaped the nature of the conversation. Of those individuals, those considered – at least initially, anyway – the most controversial, are the ones who suggested an alternative to the popular, and in many ways ubiquitous, extraterrestrial hypothesis: the notion that alien species had traveled to us by traversing vast distances of interstellar space.
That initial controversy fell by the wayside, in many ways, as evidence mounted over the decades suggesting the ETH really was either, if not wrong, then woefully incomplete, in terms of explaining the depth and breadth of the UFO Phenomenon; a phenomenon that seemed, upon closer inspection, to have much in common with tales of encounters with otherworldly entities from distant human lore.
Of course, Jacques Vallee stands out as perhaps the most influential in this regard. But standing right alongside him, in terms of positing an alternate origin hypothesis to explain the apparently non-human entities visiting and interacting with us throughout recorded history, is the figure of John Keel. Keel, ever a trailblazer, sought from the outset to study this subject in an objective way, unprejudiced by the prominent theories of his day.
And as he studied this subject in depth, Keel began to notice peculiar – though, to him, unmistakable – commonalities behind the appearance and behavior of phenomena such as UFOs and alien beings, and tales from occult literature going back deep into the depth of recorded human history. The crossover elements were so overwhelming in scope, in fact, that this recognition ultimately led Keel to conclude that a common origin was responsible for all interactions with supposedly otherworldly entities – whether they be supposed aliens from distant planets, or goblins arising from the underworld.
Keel suggested that these beings were not so much distant travelers from elsewhere in the fabric of our own spacetime, as interdimensional sojourners, emerging from some alternate plane that exists right alongside our own. He termed this vast “otherplace”, the superspectrum. And he termed the visitors coming from this parallel plane the “ultraterrestrials”.
Keel believed – even though that term “belief” was loathsome to him in many ways – that the vastly different entities we’ve experienced over time, including the craft supposedly traversing our skies, were all manifestations arising from this alternate plane of existence. Indeed he even wondered if perhaps one central and decidedly superior intelligence was responsible for all of these manifestations; manifestations that influenced the origins of our ancient religions as well as much more recent fields of interest and inquiry, such as the UFO Phenomenon.
What was the historical evidence, and direct personal experience, that led Keel in this peculiar – and, at first glance, perhaps counterintuitive – direction? These are the very matters we’ll seek to engage with, in this, the 37th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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In the 1980s a book that seemingly came out of nowhere, a book that the author purportedly had a very difficult time actually finding a publisher for, took the world by storm. The book, with the provocative title of Communion, featured the image of a face of a very peculiar creature: one with an oval head, large, almond-shaped eyes, and a decidedly pointed chin.
The book was authored by Whitley Strieber, a well-known fiction writer of the time; a writer who had numerous well received and best-selling titles under his belt by the time Communion was published. The image on the cover of Communion of course went on to become the quintessential face of the alien all over the world, partly because, shockingly, that face bore a strange, uncanny and, to many, disconcerting familiarity for people all across the globe.
While many might at first have assumed that Communion was a one-off; a book describing one man’s harrowing tale of an encounter with supposedly alien, or at least, decidedly non-human, intelligent entities, nothing could be further from the truth. In reality Strieber continued to have ongoing encounters with these seemingly otherworldly entities, encounters that were filled to the brim with elements of what has come to be referred to as “high strangeness”.
Furthermore, as Strieber sought to grapple with the nature and meaning of these adult encounters, he began to realize there was a peculiar familiarity to these Visitors – as he came to call them – that stretched well back into his childhood; even though he had repressed much of those memories in his early adult life. Now it was all coming flooding back, making the entire matter all the more overwhelming and bewildering.
He followed Communion with a second book titled Transformation that, from in my opinion, is even more enthralling than its predecessor, because it involves a degree of perspective and clarity that was simply unavailable to the author at the time he penned the first book. In Transformation, Strieber not only describes the bizarre and sometimes terrifying nature of the encounters he had and continued to have, but he begins to offer a kind of response, at first somewhat feeble but growing in intensity and boldness as the months rolled on and the events continued happening.
It is not a stretch to describe the kind of interaction that Strieber began to have with the Visitors as “relationship”; though of a kind that continued to feel decidedly one-sided for some time to come. And while the sheer ontological shock and discombobulation involved with these encounters continued to elicit a kind of primal terror in Strieber, he began, slowly but surely, to carve out a kind of mutuality in the experience, eventually even discerning that these Visitors weren’t coming to hurt him, but perhaps to ultimately help him.
Who were these Visitors? What was their intention? Why had they chosen him? And what did this mean not just for his future, but for the future of the human species? These are all questions that Strieber wrestled with in his engaging and thought-provoking book Transformation. And we’ll endeavor to do the same in this, the 36th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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In last week’s episode of the Point of Convergence podcast we discussed what I consider to be one of the most important cases in the history of the UFO Phenomenon. I speak here of the astounding life and times of Dorothy Izatt, a soft-spoken woman who managed to capture 30,000 feet of film footage documenting bizarre, astonishing, bewildering objects and lights in the sky outside her home in a suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia.
Of course, the capturing of the footage - as compelling as that is, in terms of offering clear evidence of something you might call otherworldly really taking place - was perhaps not the most important or compelling aspect of Dorothy’s experience. She also claimed to be in regular communication with the intelligences behind these dizzying visual displays. And that combination of documented evidence of contact, along with the nature of the communication that took place with these Others, is what makes this case so particularly unique.
Notice I used the term “intelligences” to describe Dorothy’s contact experiences. I do that not only to designate different individuals within one type or race of alien beings, but also to acknowledge the sheer breadth of contact Dorothy encountered - involving numerous different kinds of beings that fit the description of aliens we’d typically categorize as extraterrestrial, but also other entities, which as we mentioned last week might better be described as extradimensional, whom Dorothy saw as basically angelic in nature.
Indeed, Dorothy’s ability to see and interact with such a broad assortment of Others seems directly connected to her capacity to observe a much wider spectrum of reality than the typical human being. That capacity included her apparent ability to see energy such as microwaves, which we’ll get into later in this episode. Interestingly, her capacity for this kind of extraordinary perception seemed to arise through a combination of what one might call innate gifting, and a kind of augmentation and tuning done by some of these beings themselves.
Dorothy Izatt’s case is also fascinating and illuminating because it touches on her apparent history over multiple lifetimes - during which these Others claimed to have been in contact and ongoing relationship with her. Indeed, this piece, dealing with the expanded modalities of human beings, seems to be central to our quest to understand more about the ultimate nature of the UFO Phenomenon, and indeed of the fabric of reality itself.
All that is to say, the case of Dorothy Izatt is simply too intriguing and too illuminating to be covered adequately in a single episode. And thus, a further discussion of the ground-breaking case of Dorothy Izatt is the topic of this, the 35th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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There are a few cases in the lore of the UFO Phenomenon that tend to get a disproportionate amount of attention. When it comes to cases involving not just sightings of UFOs or UAP, but actual contact with non-human intelligences (i.e. aliens), historically cases involving scary tales of humorless, unfeeling and sometimes outright malevolent entities have tended to get a lot of - as they say - press.
But as we discussed in last week’s episode of the Point of Convergence podcast, evidence actually suggests positive encounters are more prevalent than negative ones; especially when, as we’ve pointed out a few times now, experiencers have the necessary time and perspective to be able to consider their experiences beyond the scope of the initial ontological shock.
Now, while the ontological shock is front and center for many - and completely understandably so - there do exist cases where people have positive encounters with these Others from the outset, with almost none of the usual fight/flight response involved. While cases exempt from the ontological shock aspect are much more rare, they do exist. And when they do exist they often involve a very distinct kind of human being.
One such case is that of Dorothy Izatt. This case is one of my personal favorites, for a few different reasons. First off, the case involves an amazing degree of documentation. Indeed, spanning over decades, Dorothy Izatt - in her quiet, non-nonsense manner - managed to capture literally thousands of feet of footage cataloging her encounters with a wide variety of entities.
Secondly, because the majority of this footage was captured on 8mm film, and this happened before the proliferation of video editing software, the footage is very difficult to dismiss. And, as I’m sure you would expect, believe me, experts have tried. Part of what surprises me, to this day, is that her footage is not studied and discussed more often, considering these factors.
Thirdly, the footage itself is astonishing - both in terms of quantity and quality. One particularly fascinating aspect of the footage involves how one frame of film will show lighted orbs in the sky, and then the very next frame will show a bizarre array of zigzagging lines of light jumping all over the frame. And then, in the very next frame, all you’ll see once again are orbs like in the first of the three frames. In other words, this transformation is happening so quickly that all the human eye recognizes in real time is a flash.
Finally, a key aspect of what makes this case so particularly compelling is the figure of Dorothy herself. Those who were lucky enough to have met her reported that she was a grounded, down-to-earth soul, not a seeker of attention whatsoever, and someone who always exuded kindness, wisdom and humility. If character is a key component in evaluating these kinds of cases, Dorothy clearly passes with flying colors.
Highly pertinent to this podcast and the inquiries we’ve been making - not only into the nature of the UFO Phenomenon, but also into the ultimate nature of all that is - is that Dorothy’s encounters were as diverse as they were astounding - involving levels of contact that both included and that go far beyond the initial telepathic messages she received while first recording dazzling lights in the sky. The fascinating, compelling and illuminating case of Dorothy Izatt is the topic of this, the 34th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Much of the world has only recently begun to come to grips with the growing evidence emerging in the public sphere suggesting that sophisticated, non-human intelligences are apparently in our midst, buzzing in and around our skies both day and night. This revelation takes the notion that aliens might exist – out there – in the great beyond of outer space, and brings the idea much closer to home. For some, it’s simply too close to home. Truth be told, many people just aren’t prepared to deal with the idea that extra-terrestrial or inter-dimensional beings are not only already here, but may have indeed been here as long – or longer – than we have.
Of course, for those of us more aware of the extensive body of data regarding the UFO Phenomenon, it’s clear that, not only are these intelligences piloting sophisticated craft in the skies above our heads, but they’re are also interacting directly – face to face and up close and personal – with human beings. And we’re not speaking simply of these Others once in a while introducing themselves in the broad light of day. No, they – some of them, anyway – are also conducting apparently clandestine missions to enter people’s homes, passing through solid walls like we might pass through a fine morning mist, and taking people back to their sophisticated craft, or elsewhere, such as some mysterious matrix-like reality that defies easy categorization based on our current understanding of reality.
Notice that I just said “some of them” are conducting these kinds of covert missions, often – it’s important to point out – without the apparent permission or often even knowledge of the people they are taking. I say “some of them” because, truth be told, not only is sophisticated non-human (i.e. alien) intelligence here, but it is here in the plural. And here I’m not referring simply to numbers of the same alien species. No, I’m referring to different alien species altogether. There are so many in fact that one quickly becomes overwhelmed by the sheer variety of alien types apparently in our midst: the short and tall greys, reptilians, mantids, human-like species such as the so-called Nordics and Tall Whites, and many more.
And it’s not just the variety of alien species that can be overwhelming. The kinds of experiences people have with these various Others also vary. Some people have decidedly positive, even spiritually transformative encounters with these Others, from the get-go, while other people have much more traumatic, frightening, and discombobulating experiences. Truth be told, even the positive encounters are usually disorienting in the extreme at first blush. One simply cannot overstate the degree of ontological shock that is involved here, as John Mack made clear in his research with alien contactees/abductees.
Even more complication arises in this already complex, convoluted discussion, when one takes into account how many people eventually grow to see their experiences differently once the initial ontological shock has – to some degree – worn off. Even more confusing, many abductees/contactees find that, at some point during an encounter with these Others, they realize they actually recognize these beings.
Sometimes this recognition tracks back to early childhood, meaning that, for some, these encounters have been ongoing for decades, often without the individual having any conscious memory of this contact. Even more discombobulatingly, for those of us trying to make sense of the contact totality, it becomes clear that some people find that they recognize these beings from some deep sense of a larger, multi-dimensional self that may even track over multiple lifetimes.
With all of this complexity in mind, what can we make of the jungle that is the territory of these Others? This is exactly what we’ll explore in this, the 33rd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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For those of us intimately familiar with the details of the UFO Phenomenon, it has been exciting to see both our elected officials, some of them anyway, and the public at large, some of it anyway, finally beginning to take the entire matter seriously. To us, the notion that the human race is not only not the only truly intelligence species in the cosmic neighborhood, but perhaps playing second fiddle to intelligences so advanced that they run circles around both our most state of the art aircraft, and, seemingly, around our very ability to perceive and discern the reality around us, should be the story of the century.
Add in the fact that a close and exhaustive reading of our distant lore suggests that human beings may have been interacting with these intelligences since, basically, the very beginning of the beginning, and that perhaps the very meaning models we look to to make sense of the world – here I speak of our religious traditions – may have been spawned by these very Others, that this quickly becomes not just the story of the century, but of all time. Who wouldn’t want to delve into the very depths of this subject – investigating every nook and cranny?
Well, as I say, while the public and our elected officials have a long way to go in really becoming familiar with the nuanced history of this topic, the conversation has begun – undoubtedly so, largely spurned by revelations that emerged in 2017, and have been rolling out in a fairly steady manner ever since.
This past week marks another important milestone in that march towards growing public awareness that, one hopes, might lead – eventually – to the disclosure many of us have been waiting for. Here I speak of the publication of the book In Plain Sight: An investigation into UFOs and impossible science by award-winning, veteran investigative Australian journalist, Ross Coulthart. In the line of books by American journalists such as Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, this book seeks to take a nuanced, historically-rich discussion about the UFO Phenomenon right to the town square of public conversation.
While there may have been more books written about UFOs and alien contact than grains of sands on your local beach, this new release by Coulthart is special because it has the opportunity to reach a much more mainstream audience – not the least of which includes Coulthart’s professional colleagues in the, up until now, notoriously dismissive field of journalism. In other words, this book has the potential to take a subject that has been gaining steam over the last few years, and elevate it into the stratosphere of public conversation. And that is something to be excited about, to be sure.
Furthermore, what gives this book even more teeth, one might say, is that Ross Coulthart has done his homework. He’s taken years to carefully, meticulously craft a book that not only accurately depicts UFO events throughout the course of history, including events from his native Australia that many American audiences will have never heard about, but he has done so with a depth of penetrating analysis that makes apparent to even a naive reader, just how shocking, preposterous and disturbing the government treatment and coverup of this essential topic has been over the course of the last eight decades or so.
Coulthart has put together an exemplary read that has the potential to serve the cause of pushing this rock of confirmation and eventually perhaps disclosure, over that proverbial hill. Coulthart himself finishes his book by claiming we may seemingly be at the cusp of a public revelation that has the potential to change the world. Ross Coulthart’s stellar new book, In Plain Sight: An investigation into UFOs and impossible science and the shocking events from our shared history it uncovers, are the topic of this, the 32nd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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For those tuned into more recent developments within the field of ufology, there is a clear recognition that the conversation has moved in some surprising directions. What began as an assumption that we were witnessing the presence of spacecraft being piloted by extraterrestrials has evolved into a much broader consideration that involves interdimensionality, potential cryptoterrestrials and ultraterrestrials, consciousness-control, the manipulation of space-time, and much more.
In many ways one could argue that what began as a conversation singularly about the potential visitation of visitors from some far-flung star system has evolved into a discussion about the nature of reality itself. The implications that arise from the so-called UFO Phenomenon really are that far-reaching and paradigm-stretching.
Interestingly though, this kind of deep-seated soul searching is not unique to the field of ufology. As it turns out, other fields of inquiry are experiencing similar upheavals. While the often categorized “soft” sciences of sociology and psychology are facing these challenges, the so-called “hard” sciences are certainly not immune either.
While the outer reaches of psychology, often termed parapsychology for that very reason, are trying to make sense of human capacities that apparently violate our notions of space-time altogether – here I speak of various categories of so-called ESP: telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, and psychokinesis, etc., physics is grappling with equally baffling notions such as retro-causation – where the future seemingly causes the past, or at least, where the arrow of time seems to operate equally well in both directions, contrary to everything we’ve understood about the nature of reality up until recently.
Tellingly, several astute observers, including pioneering researchers like Dean Radin of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, have noticed striking parallels emerging between these various fields of inquiry. Specifically, Radin and others have noted that the interconnected fabric of information that underlies the field of quantum mechanics bears remarkable similarity to the kind of fundamental structure that seemingly gives rise to phenomena plotted along the Psi spectrum.
The essential question that arises from these fascinating observations is this: what does this apparent crossover tell us about the nature of ultimate reality? Clearly what we’re seeing here is evidence of a level of reality that is more informational and symbolic in nature. And it is this substrate of reality that ultimately gives rise to what we consider the physical world: the realm of matter and energy.
In what way are human beings operating – usually unknowingly – at this informational layer, one that apparently exists beyond the constraints of space and time as as we have traditionally understood them, when we send messages to each other telepathically, or when CIA intelligence analysts employ the protocols of remote viewing to see into underground bases in the former Soviet Union?
Furthermore, in what way does this understanding of reality help to explain some of the more bizarre elements of the UFO Phenomenon? Here we speak of events such as when people are passed through solid objects, or when alien intelligences are apparently able to read the minds of abductees/contactees, and even see into their futures, or how an alien species is able to traverse the immense distances involved in interstellar travel with relative ease.
The convergence of the fields we’ve just identified: namely ufology, parapsychology and quantum physics, and the implications regarding the fundamental nature of reality that are arising as a result, is the subject matter of this, the 31st episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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When it comes to the matter of informing a naive general public about the reality of the UFO Phenomenon, many more familiar with the topic will argue that the way to introduce this topic to the broader population is to begin by focusing on what are – in some ways – the most relatable, or at least the least objectionable aspects, of the entire enterprise. And for most that means focusing on the fact that we have documented evidence, going back decades, of sophisticated aerial vehicles being intelligently controlled in the skies above our heads.
While the topic clearly goes much deeper than that, it’s understandable that many would want to focus on this angle. They would argue: let’s inform a general public that’s been existing in a state of ignorance up until now that advanced craft performing death-defying – and at least based on our current understanding of physics – often physics-defying maneuvers, have been legitimately and repeatedly observed and recorded in and around the atmosphere of our planet. Once that’s been established we can move onto the more paradigm-shaking aspects of the phenomenon.
Of course, front and center when it comes to those more paradigm-shaking aspects of this phenomenon involves these apparently non-human intelligences interacting – face to face and up close and personal – with a surprisingly large segment of the human population. Here we’re speaking of so-called “abductions”, shocking events that involve these apparent “aliens” entering people’s homes and often taking people back to the sophisticated craft that have been observed in our skies.
Robert Hastings is a long-time, well-informed UFO enthusiast who long argued for just such an approach. He’s been known throughout ufology as a nose-to-the-ground, nuts and bolts, show-me-the-data, ultra-pragmatic and hyper-rational researcher, and was much respected for it. Many saw him as exactly the kind of science-based researcher this field – long seen by some as too full of “woo” to be taken seriously – needed in order to establish this topic as a credible field of inquiry amongst academia and the broader general public.
Hastings’ specific focus, spanning over decades, was on the documenting and evidence-based recording of shocking events involving UFOs making incursions into highly secure and ultra-sensitive nuclear weapons facilities across the United States and elsewhere. Hastings’ has been driven by an uncannily singular focus to bring this matter to the attention of the general public, despite what he saw as clear and long-standing efforts by the U.S. government to cover-up such events.
As I say, so-called “nuts & bolts” researchers, those who focus on the technology and presence of these apparently non-humanly engineered craft in our skies, long respected Hastings for his pragmatic, evidence-based approach. However, that perception of Hastings took a turn in a surprising direction just a few short years ago when Hastings, along with co-author Bob Jacobs, published Confession: Our Hidden Alien Encounters Revealed. This book, which sent shockwaves throughout the field of ufology, detailed lifelong personal encounters between Hastings and these apparent aliens. Yes, indeed, to many people’s shock and no doubt horror, Hastings had emerged from the shadows to publicly identify himself as a contactee/abductee.
Not only was this in itself a surprising turn of events, but it raised all sorts of questions regarding the steely, singular focus of Hastings’ to bring the topic of what he called “UFOs and Nukes” to the public’s attention. After realizing he’d been interacting with these beings for decades, Hastings couldn’t help but wonder if, underlyingly, his life-long mission was actually one encouraged and even sub-consciously implanted by these non-human “others”.
These profound and far-reaching matters are the topic of this, the 30th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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For many, the notion that non-human intelligences, whether extraterrestrial, interdimensional, or ultraterrestrial, may be operating advanced vehicles in the skies above our heads is a stretch, but one they can wrap their heads around. It only makes sense – to most people, anyway, that an advanced species would have technology that might very well out-class our own. And if a non-terrestrial species wanted to visit our planet, most can imagine them buzzing around our atmosphere, before moving on to other points of interest.
What is a more difficult notion for people to really track with is that the intelligences behind these vehicles may be interacting with us in a more direct and personal way. When you advance evidence suggesting these intelligences may be entering people’s homes, and are often taking them back to their craft in order to perform a variety of actions – some of a medical variety – and many people will balk.
One has to ask: is this knee-jerk rejection of this notion based on a rational consideration of the evidence, or is it fueled more by a subconscious fear of loss of power and agency. We are so accustomed to being the apex intelligence around these parts, that when we’re confronted with compelling evidence suggesting we may very well not be, many people respond out of deep-seated fear. We suddenly remember all of the less than humane actions we’ve performed on animals over the centuries, continuing even to today, and we wonder what it would be like to be treated in the same manner by a superior species.
When you add into the mix the apparent ability of these non-human intelligences to alter human perception, and to even control behavior, and you’ve now entered territory that makes most people turn around and walk the other way – not interested in engaging in such a conversation. And yet, that’s exactly what the literature behind the UFO Phenomenon suggests. All of the above. Craft of an advanced nature, operating in our skies. Entities entering our homes, passing through solid walls with no more difficulty than passing through a fine mist on a morning walk. And seemingly near total control of human consciousness – to the point where people look back with confusion and bewilderment at the nature of their own actions during such experiences.
Yet another piece of the puzzle that is simply too much to consider for many people in the general public, is the sheer number of life forms apparently involved and interacting with us. Yes, you have the greys, with their large, inky-black wraparound eyes – that has become the quintessential face of the alien for millions, but you also have entities that appear almost totally human, as well as hybrid species that look very much like a cross between a human being and something else. And of course you have 7 foot tall praying mantis type beings, equally tall reptilian types, and the list goes on.
For those who’ve had such experiences of what is often coined “high strangeness”, discombobulation is the inevitable result. These kinds of experiences are simply not of the sort that can be easily assimilated into most people’s working notions of “the real world”. Indeed, without support and the ability to process such experiences with others, these kinds of encounters can lead many to question their very grip on “reality”.
But this not about a tenuous grip on reality. No, these experiences are real. And, as it turns out, I am no stranger to "high strangeness". And on this week’s podcast I’d like to offer some of my own family’s personal experiences of this nature. These are events that shattered former notions of what is and what’s possible, leading to a long, complicated journey in understanding the broader, richer, more colorful totality of all that exists. A reflection on the personal, generational encounters that have impacted me and my family are the topic of this, the 29th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Ever since the release of videos showing images of strangely behaving vehicles officially classified as "unidentified aerial phenomena" entered the public sphere in 2017, there has been a rising tide of public and even government interest in what have more commonly and historically been referred to as UFOs - unidentified flying objects. This rise in interest crescendoed in a DoD report delivered to Congress recently, which has resulted in further speculation here in the United States, and right around the world. Not surprisingly, the speculation tends to revolve around the nature and origin of these vehicles.
As I and others predicted, the final UAPTF report delivered to the public - i.e., the unclassified version - is nebulous enough to, at times, seemingly talk out of both sides of it's proverbial mouth. And, because of that deliberate, meticulously crafted nebulousness, conversation near and far does still touch on the possibility of these craft being those of foreign adversaries, though no one "in the know" in the government really believes that anymore, because the leap in technology is simply too great. That said, because the extraterrestrial possibly was not excluded from consideration in the report, even those who have historically steered away from speculation about non-human "visitation", are now bridging that conversation, all across the globe.
That said, when one pays close attention to the conversations that are being had, all around the world, one thing becomes clear, when the "non-human origin" possibility is breached, it is almost solely in the form of so-called extra-terrestrial visitors - i.e. physical beings who've travelled here from some far-flung star system in sophisticated spacecraft. In this sense, the conversation quickly jumps into the well-grooved category of "space aliens" which has been served up time and time again via our society's entertainment industry. The "space alien" notion in media is so ubiquitous now, in fact, that most people can't even consciously separate fact from fiction in their mind's eye anymore - as Diana Pasulka argued in her book American Cosmic.
But those of us who've studied the UFO Phenomenon in a dedicated and granular way have long realized that this familiar category - namely that of “space aliens” - may only represent one small piece of a much larger puzzle. Indeed, the revelations that inevitably arise from a close study of this phenomenon seemingly give birth to a whole new set of questions for every one that it - often only tentatively - answers.
Knowing that is the case, we might ask: is the general public ready for these revelations? Can they "handle the truth" - as complex and convoluted as it apparently is? And can they stomach entering into a conversation that has not yet served up clear, unequivocal answers, even after decades of underground study? Do they even have the attention-span to do so? Unlikely, I would argue, for vast swaths of the population, anyway.
Modern human societies are simply not accustomed to this degree of unclarity about the nature of reality. And make no mistake, that’s exactly where these revelations lead – to questions about the very fabric of all that exists, and to how it is all connected. The current models of reality will not only have to be revised as a result, but they will need to be re-categorized as understandings that only apply to micro-environments, seen at a certain, local level. That, in light of the totality of all that is, these notions are almost trite and simplistic.
These are vast issues, giving way to bewildering, discombobulating questions the likes of which our civilization has never yet had to deal with in a direct way. What will the process look like as it rolls out in the months and years ahead? These are the thorny – and yet, fascinating – topics we’ll endeavor to address in this, the 28th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Over the last several weeks and months, leading up to a UAP task force report delivered to Congress recently, the chatter about evidence for the presence of bonafide UFOs – unidentified flying objects – already in our midst, here on planet Earth, buzzing in and around our skies has risen to a near fever pitch. And while some are determined to dismiss every one of these sightings – no matter how well attested by a combination of expert witness testimony and sophisticated sensor data – as merely misunderstood examples of prosaic phenomena – there is a growing openness, even amongst a skeptical slice of mainstream media, academia and the political set, to at least consider the possibility that these craft are being controlled by a genuine form of advanced, non-human intelligence.
While the pace at which this openness to non-conventional explanations has grown steadily over the last few months, and really years, it’s of course still not happening to a degree that satisfies most of us who are convinced, and have been for years in fact, after having studied the data closely, that the UFO Phenomenon is real. Nevertheless, whether one is a veteran in non-terrestrial affairs, or somewhat new to the entire topic, a key question that inevitably arises is: if these Others really are not just out there, but here, stationed in and around our planet, what are their intentions? What do they intend to do, and are their ultimate intentions benevolent, or nefarious?
As has been discussed before on this very podcast, when it comes to our attempt to answer that question, we are not – as some strangely seem to assume – working with nothing but our own biases and assumptions here. No, in fact, there is a very extensive and well-supported body of literature that now exists, that speaks to this very question as to the intentions of these sophisticated, non-human intelligences. Here I speak of what is often referred to as the Experiencer literature; the body of data that represents what these apparent Others have told human beings who’ve come into contact with them, about their very aims and intentions here on the Earth.
Now, some will look at this body of data, much of which is self-corroborating, and argue that, while that’s all well and good, how do we know we’re not just advancing our own hopes and biases in the form of a kind of collective wishful thinking. After all, some of these people would ask: what evidence do we have to suggest they would regard us as any more significant and worthy of “keeping around” than ants? If they really are as sophisticated, both in terms of technological prowess and advanced intelligence, as compared to us, what’s to say they would give us the “time of day” any more than we would do a mound of insects making a mess of our backyard?
While these are fair questions – ones certainly worthy of addressing, considering the clear superiority these apparent Others do demonstrate over us – there is actually more than just the Experience literature available to us that suggests that we can indeed draw some tentative conclusions as to the purpose and intent of these “aliens” – these non-human intelligences now making our acquaintance. Here I speak of the predictable directionality of the evolutionary development of sentient species.
What does this predictable directionality tell us about the likely perspectives of these advanced non-human Others, and what assurance do we have that these notions are not merely species-centric prejudices, projected on to species that are anything but human?
These are intriguing, and, considering our current situation, essential questions for us as a civilization to address. These are the very issues we’ll tackle, head on, here in the 27th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of months, you’ve no doubt noticed the sudden and dramatic uptick in mainstream media coverage of the UFO Phenomenon. And, as a result of this increased exposure, it’s no longer unusual for so-called water-cooler conversations – even if they’re most often virtual in nature in this day and age – to turn to the topic of UFOs, or as they’re commonly referred to now in government circles, UAP, or “unidentified aerial phenomena”.
If you’ve read some of the myriad number of articles now being published in newspapers across the world, or tuned in to see just some of the plethora of reports airing on news channels pretty much everywhere news channels exist – you’ve likely noticed that we’re now on the other side of a kind of inflection point. And that means there’s now considerably less outright snicker, ridicule and scorn directed towards the topic of the UFO Phenomena within the mainstream media, and subsequently, within the greater population.
That said, while this is a welcome turn of events, to be sure, and a sure sign of even greater and more impacting things to come — after all, it’s very difficult to imagine this genie being put back in the bottle at this point — one who’s paying close attention to the media coverage of late can’t help but notice that a key aspect of this conversation is missing: and missing to a shocking degree, almost as if the delete button has been pushed on an entire section of the literature behind this Phenomenon. Here I speak of the experiences of those who have had reported contact — often on an ongoing, sometimes even lifelong basis — with the very non-human intelligences apparently piloting these astonishing aerial vehicles.
Now that even the mainstream media – and to a large degree the general public they report to — have begrudgingly acknowledged that something of unknown (and perhaps even non-human) origin is truly manifesting in our physical reality — often above some of our supposedly most secure military spaces, such as nuclear weapons facilities, no less – you’d think reporters and media editors would want to gather every shred of data they could in order to make sense of what should actually be the story of the decade, the century, and the millennium. Alas, that’s simply not been the case. Much of the media is still lost as to how to approach this topic, perhaps because of the fact that it’s implications really are so mind-bogglingly far-reaching.
As a result, the extensive data that’s been gathered on behalf of the experiencer community – the collective group of individuals who’ve either seen, interacted with, or in some cases reportedly been abducted by- these “Others”, is simply being ignored — full stop; almost as if this extensive and well-attested data set simply doesn’t really exist.
But it does exist. As already mentioned, the data is extensive, and, even more startlingly and tellingly, it paints a very compelling picture — because often what people describe is remarkably similar. Indeed, much of the messaging experiencers report receiving from these apparent aliens is also remarkably consistent.
Who wouldn’t want to be made aware of these astounding revelations? Only a media, political set, and general public that is simply, often unconsciously, not ready to ask these far-reaching questions: questions that ultimately lead to an inquiry as to the very fabric of reality itself; and even more specifically, to the role that Consciousness apparently plays in that inextricably interconnected totality.
This essential aspect of the UFO Phenomenon literature – namely, the data representing the interactions with these apparently non-human intelligences by those collectively known as “experiencers”, as well as the astounding implications that arise as a result – is the topic of this, the 26th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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For anyone who’s spent any degree of time and energy researching the collective enigma known as the UFO Phenomenon one thing is clear, this topic is as elusive – almost absurdly so – as it is obsessively fascinating. Not only do the manifestations of these phenomena, in and of themselves, tantalize, mesmerize and bewilder anyone who’s paying close attention to the bizarre array of feats performed by the apparently non-humanly crafted aerial vehicles coined “UFOs” or “UAP”, but the way the intelligences behind this phenomenon are able to manipulate human perception and/or experience, only further complicates this already murky – if astonishing and invigorating – subject matter.
Regardless of how someone enters this conversation – whether that be as a result of a personal “nuts n’ bolts” interest in next-gen technology and/or an interaction with an intelligent, non-human biological species, or via a profoundly spiritual personal encounter with entities that are perceived as so superior and “otherworldly” that an expression like “celestial being” seems more appropriate than a blunt and crude term like “alien”, this subject matter quickly expands into a wide-reaching and profound mystery; one that inevitably leads to questions about the very nature of reality itself.
With decades of data now behind us, there have been no shortage of hypotheses put forth to try to explain the nature, meaning, and origin of this phenomenon. Of course, sometimes a particular hypothesis put forward will say as much about the worldview of the group proposing it, as it does the nature of the encounters themselves. And this is of course because – regardless of how discombobulating these experiences can be for witnesses and contactees/abductees – at the end of the day, as with anything, we have to try to make sense of them by slotting them into pre-ordained possibilities dictated by our reality paradigm.
Even when a researcher tries to focus on a singular aspect of the data, often an honest, thorough assessment of reports will quickly lead the inquiry into another area altogether. And that often creates understandable confusion. For instance, oftentimes these events are so complex that one is left wondering if the psychological aspect somehow manifests the apparent physicality, or vice versa.
By way of example, when physical phenomena are observed – that supposedly violate our very notions of physics – of how we assume the world works – we’re left wondering: does this mean our perception is being played with somehow, or that our very understanding of reality is being exposed as woefully incomplete – if not almost wholly misguided?
As mentioned already, over the last several decades a wide variety of hypotheses have been advanced to try to make sense of the UFO Phenomenon. So many possible explanations have emerged, in fact, that any attempt to keep track of the plethora of proposed explanations can in itself be dizzying. That said, one way one can organize these various hypotheses into a digestible and comprehensible whole is to view them from three different “high altitude” perspectives: the psychic, the physical and the transphysical. And that’s exactly the approach we’ll employ to make sense of this enigmatic topic in this, the 25th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Since early in the 20th century people’s imaginations have been captured by the notion of visitors from the Great Beyond visiting our blue pearl of a planet. And of course, for the vast majority of people, and for decades and decades, this “Great Beyond” was assumed to be outer space: the vast array of galaxies, star systems and planets populating the immense expanse of the Cosmos.
When sightings of soon-to-be-branded “flying saucers” were first reported in the 1940s, it was taken as a given that these fast-moving flying vehicles, which were apparently unlikely to be the technology of terrestrial civilization, were examples of these visitors from outer-space finally arrived to make our acquaintance. Immediately the media was saturated with images of “little green men” from nearby planets like Mars, as our imaginations filled in the gaps as to who was piloting these advanced craft.
This view which suggested that these visitors were from outer-space held sway for decades more — even though the potential originating planet for these extra-terrestrials was pushed farther and farther away, as we began to understand more and more about the apparent lifelessness of the neighboring planets within our own solar system.
However, by the time the 1960s rolled around, and gaining steam ever since then, competing hypotheses emerged to explain the source of these apparent Others. And some of these hypotheses even began to question the assumption that these Others were actually really “Visitors” at all.
Researchers likes Jacques Vallee and John Keel, who had examined thousands of cases each, and who tended to be much more familiar with the totality of the data as compared with armchair enthusiasts, began to take note of data-points that suggested perhaps these “aliens” weren’t visiting from far-flung star systems after all. The way these Others seemed to blink in and out of existence, for instance, led some of these more nuanced researchers to wonder if perhaps these Others were popping in and out of different dimensions, almost instantaneously. And if that were true then they weren’t necessarily really coming from far away at all. In fact, they may be dropping in from a mirror universe; perhaps even from an alternate Earth, thus giving birth to what’s often referred to as the Interdimensional Hypothesis.
When researchers like the aforementioned Vallee and Keel considered the long history of the so-called UFO Phenomenon, they wondered if perhaps stories buried in the lore of distant history – here we speak of elves, goblins, the fae, etc., may actually be instances of contact with the same beings who are piloting the craft we see buzzing around our skies today, and who are interacting with modern human beings in consistently – and similarly – confoundingly mysterious ways.
There are various forms that new hypotheses take to account for all of the data we’ve described above, but a common term that’s arisen to describe these not necessarily extraterrestrial Others, is “ultraterrestrial”. This term is seen to capture the sense that perhaps these Others are native to the Earth after all, and may indeed have been here longer than us. But it also allows for the sense that they either: don’t seem to be necessarily tied only to the earth, in our experience of it anyway, and/or that they exist in a bandwidth of reality that only sometimes brings them into direct contact with us – or at least, into a kind of direct contact that we can actually perceive. Perhaps they can see us all the time, but we only seem to be able to “see” them when certain, as of now unknown, conditions are met.
The notion of these ultraterrestrial others is the topic of this, the 24th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Witnesses on the ground gasp in awe, as a dazzling, spherical light moves silently across the sky. Mesmerizing, it shimmers as it rocks back and forth, descending like a falling leaf. Those watching below are frozen in place, unable to move – though if that’s due to sheer wonder or because of some strange paralytic effect of the object itself, no one is sure.
The object grows to be so bright that it seems to dim the very light of the noon-day sun, to the point where the moon and stars become visible in the background. A rushing wind is felt, though the trees do not appear to sway in its wake. And the temperature drops noticeably, almost as if the seasons have changed in a matter of minutes.
And then, almost as quickly as it began, it ends. The dazzling object fades to a single point in the sky, and then disappears altogether, replaced by the glaring light of the sun and the onrushing, stifling heat of midday. The witnesses soon regain their ability to move their limbs, though their wits will take much longer to recover.
The news eventually makes its way around the world, enrapturing the imagination of a curious public. And the question inevitably arises: What have these chosen observers just witnessed?
From one perspective this is clearly an event of miraculous wonder; a divine encounter; a sign from the heavens. A revelation from the Lord himself, intended as a warning of, quite literally, Biblical proportions. From another point of view this event has all the hallmarks of another phenomenon altogether, one associated with vehicles hypothesized to be spacecraft originating from some far-flung star system, or from some mirror dimension, which have traversed the invisible gap between worlds in an instant, demonstrating the sophisticated nature of a technology that makes human engineering look like a play with sticks and stones.
The very same event; the very same dataset, leads one group of people to — wholeheartedly, without apparent reservation — assume one explanation is the only real possibility. While a different group comes to the other conclusion — with just as much as conviction and fervor.
But who’s right? And is it necessarily one or the other? Or could it perhaps be some blend of the two? An event that is as much spiritual in nature as it is technological – if such a thing was possible.
There are numerous events in human history — some buried deep in the past like relics covered in centuries of sediment, only reaching us as distorted echoes of long ago, and others more recent, perhaps even contemporaneous with this very discussion – that bear a striking resemblance to the event I just described.The so-called “Miracle of the Sun” that occurred in the small village of Fatima, Portugal is perhaps the most famous of all of the recent events of this type and magnitude. The wonders observed at Fatima occurred over a period of months and years, in a rising tide of spectacle, that resulted in a crescendo that was witnessed by tens of thousands.
The Catholic Church ultimately declared these events to be miraculous: nothing less than a visitation of the historical Virgin Mary — the very “mother of God”, from their perspective — blessing the faithful with her heavenly presence, while calling the world to repent and turn to the one true God, in order to avoid eternal damnation. But to ufologists, especially those particularly familiar with the historical data, the events of Fatima bear a striking resemblance to countless historical sightings of so-called unidentified flying objects, and to reported close encounters with non-human, alien intelligence. How are we to make sense of these remarkable kinds of events, and of the vastly different ways human beings try to make sense of them? The events at Fatima, and the profoundly confounding questions that arise in their wake, are the topic of this, the 23rd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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When UFO enthusiasts think back to the origins of the modern UFO Phenomenon, the decade of the 1940s certainly stands out. Of course this was the decade that saw the Roswell event reportedly happen: when a craft, apparently piloted by beings who were decidedly non-human, crashed into the desert of New Mexico. Rumors of crash retrievals, attempts at reverse-engineered technologies, and the recovery of alien bodies of course swirl around the historical account of this famous event; an event now seared into the collective memory of our entire culture.
The 1940s also birthed the first mention of the term “flying saucer”, when private pilot Kenneth Arnold reportedly saw shiny unidentified flying objects flying past Mount Rainier at remarkable velocity. This sighting created an uproar in the media and in American popular culture. And Arnold’s description of these UFOs subsequently led the press to coin the terms “flying saucer” and “flying disc” as popular descriptors.
According to a new book by ufology legend Jacques Vallee, and his co-author Paola Harris, the popular historical record as it pertains to the UFO Phenomenon is missing a major milestone from that remarkable decade. Here they refer to an event that predates both of the afore-mentioned famous events.
In 1945, two years previous to Roswell, there was another crash in the desert of New Mexico. And this event had witnesses; witnesses still alive today. Witnesses that were interviewed at length by both Vallee and Harris. And in addition to extensive interviews with the living witnesses of that remarkable event, Vallee and Harris spent much time in the very location of the reported crash, examining the land and circumstances that surround the event in painstaking, scientific detail.
Of course, that particular location is famous for more than the crash of a sophisticated craft piloted by non-human beings. It is also the very same location of the detonation of the very first atomic bomb. And as if that coincidence doesn’t already grab your attention, the two events happened within weeks of each other. These historical details – to Vallee and Harris – are too striking to be explained away as mere coincidence. No, in fact, the authors postulate that there is a profound meaning needing to be dusted off and considered here, along with the artifacts of the event itself.
And Jacques Vallee and Paola Harris go further, openly questioning the idea that this was an accident at all. To them it has all the hallmarks of a staged event; one that was meant to send a clear message to humankind, at the very dawn of the Atomic Age, a dark era that erupted onto the canvas of human history with the light of a thousand suns, as the now infamous description goes.
Was this a warning? An attempt at the opening of a dialog? Or something else? Many profound questions arise as one learns about the details of this remarkable event: an event that involved not just an apparently alien vehicle piloted by potentially off-world visitors, but telepathic communication between these Others and the witnesses that Vallee and Harris interviewed; even communication offering glimpses into the future of our civilization; including some events that have already come to pass in the time since.
The stellar, dedicated investigatory work done by Jacques Vallee and Paola Harris is catalogued in their excellent, thorough, and highly readable new book TRINITY: THE BEST-KEPT SECRET. This book offers, they suggest, evidence that rewrites this modern history of ufology. And it shines light on an event that raises profound questions as to the intentions of these Others who have been interacting with us in equally profound yet mysterious ways, ever since.
A discussion around these thought-provoking questions, that stem from that remarkable and uncannily timed event in 1945, are the topic of this, the 22nd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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For some time now here on the Point of Convergence podcast, we've been discussing the many ways that various forms of high strangeness tend to, well, converge. As we've discussed previously, often that means an individual who's experienced one form of high strangeness is quite likely to have experienced others as well. The crossover effect, as one might call it, involves everything from NDEs (near death experiences), to contact with deceased, discarnate human beings, to OBEs (out of body experiences), to UFO sightings and apparent contact with non-human intelligences, as well as a wide variety of Psi phenomena (or what used to be more commonly referred to as "ESP", or extra sensory perception) including clairvoyance, telepathy, psychokinesis, precognition, etc.
A central question that arises from the well-attested data we've just discussed is, what makes these more sensitive people the way they are? How is it that they are so much more attuned to this apparently broader bandwidth of reality than the rest of the population? Are they harbingers of what's to come: a glimpse into the emerging evolutionary track of humankind in general? And regarding this shift into these new capacities, are these gifts, as one might refer to them, "natural", or have such people been genetically "enhanced" somehow, perhaps by the intervention of a more sophisticated alien species?
The fascinating but bewildering case of Ted Owens is an interesting case in point, as it pertains to this question specifically. Not only was Ted Owens a man who seemed to know the future, and be able to -- to absolutely discombobulating degrees -- actually manifest it, often it seemed in whatever way he so chose -- but he claimed to have had these astounding and well documented powers because of the very kind of alien intervention we just surmised about.
In fact, Owens went further. Not only did he claim that he had been entrained and led into certain kinds of life experiences, from early childhood on, by these highly advanced non-human intelligences, but he also insisted he had been operated on, neurologically, to fine-tune and further greatly enhance his innate predispositions for psychic and psychokinetic activity. Indeed, Owens claims all of the psychokinetic feats he went on to perform were done in partnership with what he called "space intelligences", who were orbiting the earth in vast, sophisticated spacecraft that remained cloaked to the majority of the human race.
Regardless of whether or not you believe Owens' account about how he received his unique gifts, one thing is clear: he had these gifts. And he had them to degrees - it is fair to say - not seen perhaps in any other human being in the history of the world. And most compellingly, this is not merely here-say, pieced together from accounts found here and there. No, Owens case is very well attested, as well-known and much respected para-psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove -- long known in the public sphere for his role as host of the program New Thinking Allowed, followed and documented Owens exploits for a full decade, ultimately resulting in Mishlove's much respected book, The PK Man.
How is it that a human being is able to will into existence phenomena such as hurricanes, tornados, power blackouts, broadly reported UFO sightings, lightning strikes, droughts, almost on demand? As astounding as these exploits were, was this more about precognition? Did Owens somehow rely on happening to know these events were going to happen -- which is of course, astounding enough, all on its own. Or, did he actually in reality manifest them? And if the latter is the case, did he indeed do so with the assistance and sometimes inspiration of an alien intelligence that was orbiting the planet at the very times these events were predicted and then occurred - as Owens himself claimed?
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In recent months former Department of Defense employee Luis Elizondo, who ran the Pentagon’s UFO program, known as AATIP, or The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, has made comments pinpointing experiences where senior Department of Defense officials attempted to shut down further investigation into UFOs, or, as they have been rebranded in government circles, “unidentified aerial phenomenon”, simply for reasons that amount to a prejudice stemming from religious fundamentalism. And unfortunately, this is far from the first time such incidents have reportedly occurred.
As unnerving as it is that taxpayer-run programs are being started and stopped based merely on the biases of religious extremists placed deep within the hierarchy of our government, this perspective that seeks to draw conclusions even before finishing the task of gathering data, connecting dots that arise from that process, and considering various hypotheses, is actually common-place – not only within the hallowed halls of government – but within the greater American society as well.
In fact, this is one of the greatest challenges our society faces when – as will almost certainly be the case as increasingly clear revelations regarding the presence of a non-human intelligence in our midst emerge – we are forced to reckon with this reality as a nation and, speaking more generally, a civilization.
When one considers various reactions to the revelation that apparently non-human intelligences are in our midst, and perhaps have been for a very long time, one thing seems clear: the very same data points that lead some observers to conclude that we are being visited by an extraterrestrial alien race, lead others to believe we are falling prey to the actions of demonic entities whose only aim is to deceive and ultimately draw us away from the one true God.
One group ponders the implications for our human future when faced with the startlingly sophisticated technology of a more advanced biological race, while the other fears for the salvation – and thus the very eternal souls – of countless billions, as a result of what they consider “The Great Deception”.
How did we get here? How do people — living in the very same nation, and within the very same era of history — draw such starkly different conclusions when faced with the very same data-set? And what does this say for our ability — as a collective — to deal with this revelation in the months and years ahead in a positive, constructive way?
Of course, matters become even more convoluted and complicated when research suggests that – perhaps – the events that spawned the creation of the very religions that have evolved to become the dominant meaning-making structures for a majority of the world’s population, may very well have been initiated by the very same sophisticated, non-human intelligences that we are trying to grapple with based on the evidence of contemporary encounters. In that sense, the entire question — regarding what constitutes our notion of ultimate reality – may have come full circle.
Depending on your point of view, this unique situation can be seen as an opportunity for the greatest transformation in the history of human civilization, or the revelation that has the potential to collapse our society into utter chaos. And perhaps it is both.
What do these revelations say about who we are, where we come from, and where we’re going? And how will we, as a collective, divided and currently subscribed to very different belief systems, rise to the challenge? These are the intriguing and perplexing questions we’ll attempt to address in this, the 20th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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When we look back at the history of the topic collectively referred to as “high strangeness”, it’s clear that, for a long time, various phenomena were studied as distinct fields of inquiry. And often, so-called ghost-hunters, bigfoot investigators, and UFO researchers were distinct groups of people, who kept to their “own lane”, so to speak.
As we’ve discussed previously on the Point of Convergence podcast, over time it has become clear that this is likely not the best way to approach these topics, because there appears to be a repeated overlap between them. For instance, a person who experiences one of these kinds of uncanny encounters is much more likely than an average random individual from the general population to experience other kinds as well.
Indeed, one of the most useful predictors of someone experiencing any form of high strangeness – whether that be a UFO sighting, contact with non-human intelligence, a near death experience, remote sensing, or an out of body experience – is that they’ve already experienced any of the phenomena from this list. That tells us that, clearly, some people seem “hard-wired” to perceive and experience a broader bandwidth of reality than the general population.
But uniquely “gifted” and “sensitive” individuals only represent one of the ways that we see overlap between these various kinds of contact modalities. Another fascinating data-point that has emerged from a cross-discipline study of various forms of high strangeness is that certain particular locations seem more prone than others to be host to such paranormal phenomena.
There are numerous examples of such places around the world: the Uinta Basin of Utah, Sedona, Arizona, New Zealand’s Kaikoura mountain range region, New York’s Hudson Valley, the Bermuda Triangle, and many more. Often these locations are not only known for just one particular kind of paranormal encounter, but several.
This has led some to postulate that such places may be paranormal thuways of some kind – where different realities can and do sometimes overlap and interact. This hypothesis suggests that it’s not necessarily that different entities and phenomena are related to each other per se, but that different entities are simply using the same interdimensional portals to gain access to our world.
Indeed, these otherworld gates, as we might call them, might not just be the bridge between two worlds, but a nexus point joining together not one but multiple other worlds and/or parallel realities. At least that’s one possibility. Another possibility is that what we observe in these porous “thin places” between worlds, is one singular phenomenon, that is able to disguise itself in many forms.
The existence of such portals is a mind-boggling notion, and yet the data certainly points in this direction. And it makes one wonder what might be possible if we could gain access to these throughways ourselves.
Are these locations the exit points for wormholes long ago established by non-human intelligences from elsewhere in our universe, or from a different universe entirely? And what does the existence of such portals suggest about ultimate reality? These and other fascinating questions and the topic of this, the 19th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Not all that long ago it seems, the notion that our world may actually be a simulation, a massively and masterly orchestrated virtual reality, seemed a notion best left to science fiction writers. In fact, the idea didn’t even really gain traction until our own video game technology — rendered with high definition graphics cards, and powered by code bases that included full-on physics engines — grew to be so immersive and realistic, that people began extrapolating outwards, wondering if — one day — perhaps a technologically advanced enough civilization could actually render an entire universe, one so all encompassing that even the participants would be fooled into believing it was “real”.
Believe it or not, today, this notion is taken very seriously, by philosophers and physicists alike. And it’s not just because we’ve been inspired (and perhaps frightened?) by the remarkable increase in the reality and capacities of our own digital creations. No, even more central to the growth of this idea are hints that have been found – breadcrumbs found along the trail, if you will – by observations made on the quantum level of reality. The implications of these observations are truly mind-blowing. Indeed, these very revelations led world-renowned physicist Niels Bohr to famously say, “If quantum mechanics hasn’t profoundly shocked you, you haven’t understood it yet.” Ultimately, these astounding findings bring into question the very fabric of our our “reality”.
In modern plays on this notion of virtual reality, television shows like Westworld depict human beings entering into the simulation to tweak the inner workings of the AI-driven robots. Not surprisingly, many a UFO enthusiast has noticed how similar such scenes seem to be to the reported abductions of human beings by apparently alien intelligences, who likewise, reportedly make “alterations” on their own subjects. And perhaps even more tellingly, many of these experiencers report, after the fact, feeling that “the realm of the Others” – whether that be on board a supposed UFO craft or elsewhere, actually feels more “real” than our every day waking existence. Indeed near death experiencers report the very same kind of sentiment when comparing “there” to “here”.
And beyond the issue of contact and abduction experiences, the very way these “Others” – these evidently non-human intelligences – are able to — apparently — effortlessly violate our observed laws of physics while they make their rare appearances within our world, has led some to postulate that perhaps our world is a simulation, and they, the architects. How is it that they seemingly pass through solid walls like passing through air — often taking us along with them? And how do they pilot craft that seem immune to the very effects of gravity itself – almost as if they’re operating within bubbles of localized space-time?
When you add to the mix the long-standing historical appearances of these “Others”, who were often understood by pre-scientific societies to be — depending on the circumstance and the worldview – “angels” or “demons”, and sometimes even “gods”, the very creators themselves, and the situation becomes even more — depending on your point of view — intriguing, inspiring, or disturbing.
This confounding complexity leads us to pose some astronomically large questions, such as: what is the “reality” status of our perceived universe? To what degree do these “Others” exist in or beyond this universe? And what is truly central to existence itself? What role does matter, energy, and pure information play? And could it be that each of these are derivatives of capital “C” Consciousness itself: the ultimate engine of parallel “virtual” universes?
These truly mind-bending and potentially paradigm-crashing questions are the topic of this, the eighteenth episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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When it comes to proposed hypotheses offered to explain the intelligence behind the UFO Phenomenon, the extraterrestrial hypothesis is still the most common idea put forth. For the majority of the population, when confronted with the notion that a non-human intelligence is supposedly here, traversing the skies above our heads in technologically sophisticated craft that run circles around our most cutting-edge aerospace offerings, space aliens still seems like the logical explanation. In fact, for much of the general public, this is really considered the only logical option.
For those who’ve studied the UFO Phenomenon in any detail and for any length of time, however, it quickly becomes clear – for those really open to considering all of the data with an open mind that is – that the extraterrestrial hypothesis, on its own, seems lacking. And for much of this small subset of the population actually paying attention to this phenomenon, something like the interdimensional hypothesis rises up as a leading hypothesis.
Other possibilities also exist, of course; one of them being the Cryptoterrestrial Hypothesis – which we’ve already discussed in some detail on a previous podcast – suggesting that a sister humanoid species may be cohabitating the planet with us, in a stealthy way – employing masterfully skillful techniques of misdirection to encourage our belief that what we’re dealing with are solely extraterrestrial visitors. A 4th hypothesis, positing beings known as ultraterrestrials, is a notion we will be pursuing in a future episode.
If you’ve studied the UFO Phenomenon for any length of time, whether you’re familiar with this particular podcast or not, you’ve likely come across all of the above hypotheses. There are still other options, however. Some of them involve elements that ask us to think a little more outside the box, introducing additional variables such as time travel to the mix. In this week’s podcast I’d like to explore one of the lesser known hypotheses that does exactly this.
This particular hypotheses doesn’t have a commonly recognizable name we can refer to, because it is in some ways a hybrid version of other hypotheses. If one were to give it a name, something like “The Post-terrestrial Hypothesis” works well enough. Though, as you’ll soon find out, it involves elements of extraterrestriality as well. It’s also intimate to us, because it supposedly involves actions by a time traveling non-conventional future human population, whose aim is to avert some imminent disaster in human history, by enacting some form of mass-intervention, accomplished mostly on the subconsciousness level, by primarily psychical means.
This particular hypothesis is, from my point of view, both insightful & elegant. Insightful in that it offers potential explanations for particular data points commonly found within the literature of the UFO Phenomenon that other hypotheses simply ignore. And elegant because it explains much of the data without resorting to the incorporation of notions such as interdimensionality and vast, interstellar travel. Melding together elements from other hypotheses, it adds time travel to the equation, and revolves around our own post-conventional human future.
An exploration of a hypotheses suggesting that at least some of the beings described in the literature of the UFO Phenomenon are actually our very own descendants, genetically altered, and featuring a spliced genome incorporating traits of other species from our very own planet, who are perhaps here to try to avert some future apocalyptic wrong turn in human history, is the topic of this, the 17th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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For almost as long as human beings have been attempting to document and study what is often collectively termed “high strangeness”, it has been assumed that various phenomena should be studied separately, as distinct fields of inquiry. Thus, when researchers wanted to conduct research and/or look for evidence suggesting human consciousness could survive bodily death, they would do so by isolating factors only related to that particular inquiry.
And if, for instance, another group of researchers wanted to investigate the psychic and personality effects brought on by supposed contact with non-human intelligence, they would proceed by only considering factors related to that narrow field of study. It was assumed this was the best way to proceed, so as to tease out data that was already difficult to ascertain – because these kinds of phenomena tend not to be easily reproducible under laboratory conditions.
However, almost by accident, when data was compiled and looked at as a whole, it was discovered that various – presumably unrelated forms of high strangeness – seemed to correlate with each other somehow. That is to say, a person who’d experienced one form of high strangeness was much more likely than, say, a random person from the general population (what one might consider “the control group”) to have experienced other forms of “paranormal” phenomena as well.
Interestingly and tellingly, this curious and surprising result has persisted, even with rigorous controls in place to ensure other artifacts aren’t creeping in to corrupt the data. And, as a result, a new paradigm has emerged – one so new that we’re still really getting acquainted with questions around how one might study this apparent connection, and what the implications might be in terms of our framing of ultimate reality.
Sometimes, even beyond this astonishing correlation point in the data, these various anomalous phenomena manifest in the same single experience. That is to say, not only is person A more likely than a person from the general population to have experienced two or more seemingly distinct forms of high strangeness, but sometimes these paranormal effects are observed/experienced in the very same event!
One such example of this kind of mind-boggling event — reported on numerous occasions – by unrelated individuals, is an experience where contact with non-human, apparently alien intelligence, also involves contact and interaction with deceased individuals from that person’s life. Yes, indeed. People sometimes experience meeting the Others, as they’re often called, as well deceased loved ones, in the very same encounter.
This apparent point of convergence between what were previously assumed to be completely unrelated forms of anomalous phenomenology, is as mind-bendingly confounding as it is utterly fascinating. And of course, the exploration of interrelated modalities such as these is ideal fodder for a podcast just such as this!
An exploration of these kinds of encounters, as well as a consideration of the bewildering implications that arise as a result, are the topic of this, the 16th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Believing intelligent non-human life exists elsewhere in the Cosmos is one thing. That notion now has widespread acceptance, even amongst die-hard scientific materialists. But believing that non-human intelligence is here, in our very own backward, so to speak, is something else entirely. For many, that notion flies in the face of common sense. Taking it a step further, believing widespread accounts of alien-human contact, and even of abductions of people from the cozy comfort of their bedrooms in the middle of the night is, for a large portion of the population – simply a bridge too far.
But, as if that weren’t already a lot to try to cognize, there is yet another key piece to the mythos of the UFO Phenomenon that demands to be reckoned with. I speak of the notion of alien-human hybrids: beings apparently already in our midst, walking amongst us, who’s very substance is a mixture of human and extraterrestrial genetic material.
What are we to make of these claims? On the one hand, our understanding of biology screams foul. Surely a life-form indigenous to another planet, not to mention another star system altogether, for that matter, is simply not going to be biologically compatible with a modern homo-sapien. Surely you can no more interbreed an extraterrestrial and a human being, than you can an ant and a rabbit.
And even if that were possible, by some feat of technological wizardry that we just can’t fathom at this point in our civilization’s history, this simply begs the question: why? Why would this even be something a supposedly vastly technologically superior alien species would want to do? Is this a science experiment to them? A game of biological manipulation that they play just to see what kinds of strange organisms result? Is this something we imagine a superior intelligence doing? Doesn’t that raise alarms in another part of our thinking: the part that assumes a superior alien intelligence would be too highly conscious to play such games?
Of course, again, assuming that they are supposedly both our technological and moral/ethical superiors, perhaps there is a reason after all: but one that we simply cannot fathom based on our own civilization’s rather young age and rather modest center of gravity – in terms of evolutionary development.
Or, perhaps there is a way we can glean the intention behind such activity – if indeed it is going on, as the literature behind the UFO Phenomenon would have us believe. Perhaps we can do this, second-hand, as it were, by listening to the very people who have stepped forward to claim that they themselves are walking, talking, breathing examples of these very alien-human hybrids we’re speaking of.
Not only do these people exist: those who claim to be hybrid ET-human entities (or “hubrids”, as some call them), but they’ve stepped out from the shadows in recent years to proclaim they have a message from the ET civilizations from which they, in part, spawn. And they’re saying this is a message that we need to hear; one that is, in fact, perhaps vitally important for the very survival of our species. Indeed, a message central to the very reason for their existence.
An exploration of the evidence and the implications behind this notion that there is a group of alien-human hybrids, already walking amongst us, on every continent on the earth, is the topic of this, the 15th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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For almost as long as human beings have been looking up and spotting strange aerial vehicles making astonishing maneuvers in our skies, people have been reporting a parallel experience that in most people’s minds, is even stranger. I speak of direct contact with the supposed intelligence controlling these advanced craft.
Sometimes the contact comes in the form of remote, telepathic communication – where human beings find themselves being communicated with by an apparently non-human intelligence not immediately present. Other times non-human entities seem to appear, in person as it were, wherever an experiencer is, making the event all the more concrete and ontologically disturbing.
Of course, the most — depending on your point of view — famous, or infamous, type of contact, is in the form most commonly referred to as “abduction”. This kind of event involves humans being taken — often reportedly against their will, and under a form of paralysis — and transported directly onboard UFOs — i.e. alien craft. The means of this transportation often involves bizarre elements such as levitation and the passing, seamlessly and effortlessly, through solid walls.
What is often termed “the Abduction Phenomenon” takes on an even stranger turn with the added consideration of an even more startling metric. Here I refer to the finding that many, if not most, of the people who have experienced such an event have come to realize, sometimes on their own, and sometimes with the aid of tools such as hypnotic regression, that these experiences are not isolated events, but actually part of a repeating pattern, often stretching well back into early childhood. Sometimes even a history stretching across generations of genetic lines emerge.
Even stranger than the revelation of this evidently alien intervention in the lives of reported thousands, if not millions, of people, right across the planet, is the reported nature of these contact events. These experiences are as utterly disorienting and paradigm-shattering as they can be ultimately illuminating and transformative. The sheer depth and richness of the experience has led author/experiencer, Whitley Strieber, to refer to the experience as “communion”. And, like Streiber, contactees/abductees are often left with artifacts, such as missing time and bodily implants, at the end of these uncannily bizarre episodes.
But make no mistake, while these experiences can ultimately play a deeply transformative role in the lives of experiencers, they are — perhaps of necessity, based on the reality-bending nature of the information being conveyed — also ontologically shocking, and often — at least initially — astoundingly traumatic. Perhaps there is no easy way to ease a human being into these kinds of revelations. They effectively pull the rug out from underneath a person, even if, what’s eventually put in its place, for many anyway, is something much richer and more inspiring.
To complicate matters further, the expanded understanding of both self-identity, and reality itself, often discovered in these visits to the realm of the Others, even brings into question our somewhat limited understanding as to the nature of free will, when a soul may have made participatory decisions about the nature of these interactions, even before birth into a human body.
The dual nature of these contact experiences: that are as soul-shakingly bewildering as they are ultimately illuminating and potentially deeply transformative, is the topic of this, the 14th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Even before H.G. Wells wrote his classic War of the Worlds, depicting an alien invasion on behalf of a technologically superior civilization from Mars, human beings have looked to the skies — meaning, more specifically, outer space — as the obvious source for visitation from a group of “Others”. As we’ve grown in our understanding of just how discombobulatingly vast our Cosmos is, populated by countless galaxies, each containing untold numbers of star systems and planets, that assumption has seemed all the more secure. The “final frontier” was clearly “out there” — and so we turned our attention, as well as our most advanced telescopes and technology — to the stars, in hopes of confirming the existence of these “Others”.
Ever since the dawn of the Atomic Age, the apparent presence of advanced craft buzzing in and around our skies, combined with reported contact between people and various non-human entities, has led many to conclude that the epoch of contact with advanced non-human intelligence is already upon us. And, of course, following the common-sense thinking of the day, these Others have been assumed to be space travelers, who’ve transversed astounding astronomical distances to arrive on and around our planet.
In more recent decades this model, termed the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis, has met with some competition from what is most often termed the “Interdimensional Hypothesis”. This competing notion postulates the visitation of beings who are coming, not necessarily from far-flung star systems, but from parallel dimensions or other universes. This hypothesis has been advanced by well respected ufologists such as Jacques Vallee, who argue that the data best fits with this model.
What sometimes flies under the radar in this debate as to the origin of these Others, is a much more close-to-home explanation. It’s an explanation that is so close-to-home, in fact, that some find it downright disturbing. I speak of a model advanced most famously by a researcher named Mac Tonnies, termed “The Cryptoterrestrial Hypothesis”. This hypothesis posits that these Others are actually terrestrial creatures – flesh and blood beings, just like us, co-occupants of our world, who have operated, in stealth, right alongside us, since time immemorial.
This hypothesis goes further, arguing that many of the bizarre reported sightings and interactions with beings from distant human history – I speak of faeries, elves, and such – which are of course disregarded/explained away today as mythological constructs of pre-scientific societies by modern historians – are actually incidents of contact with these very same Cryptoterrestrials.
Is it possible that the Others we’ve heard so much about, or at least some of them, could actually be terrestrial in origin – perhaps a distant off-shoot of a common human ancestor? And have they, supposed masters of stealth and disinformation, been actively misdirecting us into believing that what we’re solely dealing with are extraterrestrial visitors, simply to throw us off their scent?
This is exactly what’s postulated in Mac Tonnies’ much respected book, THE CRYPTOTERRESTRIALS: A Meditation on Indigenous Humanoids and the Aliens Among Us. Tonnies’ counter-intuitive and disconcerting Cryptoterrestrial hypothesis is the topic of this, the 13th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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In the long-running history of the UFO Phenomenon, numerous aspects of encounters with these Others stretch our imaginations to the breaking point, pushing the outer limits of our capacity to even conceive of technologies that could accomplish what our eyes and others senses are telling us we’re apparently witnessing.
In terms of the demonstration of evidently advanced technology, the craft controlled by this supposedly non-human intelligence make maneuvers that are not only death-defying, but that break our very notions of how physics works. Engineers and aviation experts tell us that, not only do we not have vehicles that can perform like this, but that we can’t really even presently conceive of how such feats could be accomplished — even theoretically. Add to the mix that reports suggest a direct consciousness link between pilot and craft is key to the operation of these vehicles, and our understanding is stretched even further.
Teleportation is another apparent feature on display with these craft. In other words, not only do witnesses — including trained, expert, military witnesses — see these UFOs/UAPs racing across the sky at breakneck speeds, making 90 degree turns on a dime, without even slowing, but witnesses have also reported seeing craft — even massive mother ship types the size of football stadiums – suddenly materialize before their eyes, out of nowhere. And they can apparently disappear — dematerialize — just as quickly and completely.
And the wizardry on display by these Others doesn’t stop with the demonstration of their external technology. They also readily demonstrate an ability to interact with us directly — mind to mind — that is equally baffling. Not only can they seemingly control our very perceptions: to the point that we can no longer trust the output generated by our brains to be an accurate depiction of what’s actually “out there”, but, despite clear species and vast cultural differences, they seem able to effortlessly communicate with us, telepathically, bypassing the need for language translation altogether.
Furthermore, not only is the means of their communication almost always telepathic in nature, but this direct telepathic communication seems to come across at a much broader bandwidth than typical human communication; meaning the entire, nuanced emotional content of a thought is shared — seemingly instantaneously. And even more startlingly, the human beings being contacted find that they can communicate back — through the same telepathic means — just as easily.
Somewhat disconcertingly to some, even when one chooses not to share a thought, one’s thinking and feeling seems still to be laid bare to these Others. In other words, they can seemingly read out minds and hearts, as it were. Furthermore, and even more discombobulatingly, they seem to have knowledge of ever figment of our lives, and not only in its present state, but going back into the distant past — as well as the distant future.
But how? How is all of this accomplished? How are we to make sense of this? Figures like Dr. Edgar Mitchell, the 6th man to walk on the moon, and Dr. Rudy Schild, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, have led the way in engaging in these matters, advancing some intriguing possibilities. And the fascinating new conceptions around the nature of the intelligence behind the UFO Phenomenon, postulated by Mitchell, Schild and others, is the topic of this, the 12th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Dr. John Mack was a one-of-a-kind individual, who’s pursuits and interests were as varied as the kinds of responses he garnered from various elements of both the public and institutional academia. His “day jobs” included that of a psychiatrist, a writer, and a professor. Most famously Mack was the head of the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
As destiny would have it, Mack stumbled across one of the greatest secrets of our time – if not of the entire history of humanity: namely: the UFO Phenomenon, and specifically, the apparent “abduction” of thousands, if not millions, of people across the world, evidently by a clandestine alien intelligence. Mack, never one to turn down the pursuit of an intriguing mystery, soon began investigating this phenomenon first hand, counseling clients who claimed to have had these very experiences, doing his very best to help them feel heard and understood in the process.
It was these endeavors, chronicled in his 1994 book “Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens” that would eventually run him a-fowl him of his overseers at Harvard, culminating in a near Inquisition-style proceeding that sought to undermine his academic freedoms because he had dared to commit the heresy of questioning the dominant, reductionistic paradigm of scientific materialism.
John Mack’s investigatory efforts into what he initially termed the “Abduction Syndrome” eventually branched out into what he came to see as undeniably related categories, including life after death, reincarnation, soul identity, and the very nature of ultimate reality. This man’s fascinating journey is chronicled in Ralph Blumenthal’s compelling new biography, titled: “The Believer: Alien Encounters, Hard Science, and the Passion of John Mack”.
Those of us deeply invested in this topic owe a great debt of gratitude to the trailblazer John Mack, who, at great risk to himself, sought to bring the topic of ufology & contact with non-human intelligence into the mainstream, as a verifiably legitimate arena of study, even as the academic establishment around him did its damnedest to crucify him for the effort.
The life and legacy of Dr. John E. Mack, chronicled in Ralph Blumenthal’s excellent new biography, is the topic of this, the 11th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Slowly but surely, and with increasing pace in recent years, the human population is waking up to the idea that our world is being visited by intelligence(s) from "elsewhere". As our sensor systems grow ever more refined with each technological iteration, and the planet becomes increasingly populated with increasingly high definition cameras, the evidence for the presence of these "Others" will undoubtedly only grow - forcing, at some point - you would imagine - a true reckoning by human civilization. At some point, as a society, we'll need to openly ask this question of the UFO Phenomenon: Who are they, and where do they come from?
At one point in human history the answer to the question as the origin of these visitors seemed obvious (almost to the point where the question didn't even need to be asked, from many people's perspective). If they weren't human, then surely they must be from "out there", meaning "outer space" -- and more specifically, from some other planet located within some far-flung star system within the Milky Way galaxy, or perhaps some other galaxy entirely. This argument is known as the "ETH": The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis.
But over time, several considerations combined to bring this assumption regarding the origin of these Others, into question. First there was the understanding that the sheer distances involved in such travel were so, pun intended -- astronomical -- that the notion of transversing that distance in something like a space craft seemed unlikely, even if such vehicles could approach the speed of light.
Secondly, the data regarding the nature of the appearances of these Others seemed peculiar. Sometimes they appeared as "nuts & bolts" craft - with rumors circulating even of crash retrievals from such vehicles, going back 70 years now - while at other times they seemed to appear more as manifestations of light, or of hyperspace kinds of objects that could transform shape right in front of an observer's eyes.
And then thirdly, there is the contributing factor of our evolving sense of the nature of the Cosmos; the very fabric of reality itself. In the last 100 years or so, science has postulated not just the 3+1 dimensions of reality we're familiar with, but something more like a matrix of 10 or more dimensions, as one finds described in String Theory. Thus the notion of reality being a fabric of fixed space, where "travel" always necessitated movement from one fixed space to another in one physical universe began to be called into question.
Add to the mix that these "Others" look rather humanoid, and that they -- in some form of another -- may have been here all along, going back into the depths of human history, and beyond -- has led some to postulate the source of these Others as being not so much merely "extraterrestrial", as "interdimensional". But what does this term suggest, exactly? Is this a reference to the extra dimensions posited in String Theory, or to the notion of a multiverse, or something else entirely? These are issues that are perhaps just as complex to unravel as they are intriguing to engage with. But that's exactly what we'll attempt in this, the 10th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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For decades now, many if not most people across the globe have wondered, who else is out there? Are we alone? Can our species really be the only intelligence in the immensity of the Cosmos? And as our understanding of the mind-boggling vastness of the physical universe has grown exponentially over time, along with the development of a much more nuanced fine-tuned understanding of just how many galaxies, star systems and planets that likely entails, the preposterousness of the notion that we’re “all alone” has only escalated. And in that endeavor, we’ve been sending probes out into our solar system, and now beyond, as well as exploratory rovers to neighboring worlds like Mars, in hopes of answering that question.
But from that very large collection of nearly everyone on the planet who’s asked the question about us being alone in the universe, there is a subsection that asks a different question: are we alone, here? Right here, on Earth? Or is it possible that we have already been, and perhaps are presently being, surveilled by an alien presence much more advanced that us — to the point where our intelligence gathering capabilities have thus far failed miserably in our attempt to answer that question, even though tantalizing hints exist almost everywhere we look — especially since our sensing tools and apparatus have taken gargantuan leaps in capability over the last couple of decades.
As I say, tantalizing hints exist suggesting that we are not alone — even here, in our own backyard, as it were. These hints include verified unidentified flying objects, or as they’re currently referenced in government intelligence circles, “unidentified aerial phenomena”, buzzing in and around our airspace, even some of our most supposedly secure, protected military airspace. Many of us would go much further, arguing there is actually persuasive evidence, for those unbiased enough to really look with clear vision, to suggest the question as to their presence here on and around the earth is a long settled one: in the positive.
But if they’re here, as we asked in last week’s podcast, why the hiddenness? Why are their operations so evidently clandestine? Many experiencers who’ve claimed contact with these Others share a familiar narrative regarding the reason they’ve been told about: they (the Others) are waiting – not passively, but while employing various means to speed the process along – for a consciousness upgrade, as it were, amongst the human race, so that we can arrive at a point in our history where a revelation of a superior alien presence would be welcomed and considered “good news” for humanity and the planet.
Some are frustrated with this proposed reasoning. Surely the revelation of a more technologically capable, benign alien presence would be good news today, this very day, were these Others to suddenly, in some worldwide, plain-as-day way, make themselves known to human civilization. And surely countless challenges – including disease, climate change, international and inter-religious strife, etc. could be well on their way to being resolved, were this to happen. I actually think that perspective is misguided, and makes various assumptions about the nature of the world as it presently exists, that simply don’t hold water. So what would really happen if a superior alien intelligence suddenly made its presence known on a global scale? An intriguing question: one that is the topic of this, the 9th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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When one considers the history of the UFO Phenomenon, both recent and going well back to the middle part of the 20th century, one thing is clear: subterfuge is an ongoing and ever-present element of the entire enterprise. When these elusive craft are seen, it’s often at night and, on average, in less densely populated areas. When they are spotted over city centers, some people will see these unidentified aerial phenomena, while others will not — because on top of being elusive, the intelligence behind these craft show a clear ability to manipulate human perception directly, in whatever way it sees fit. It is fair to say that you only see them when they want you to see them.
And then there are the witnesses, the abductees and the contactees: known collectively as “experiencers”. When these people do remember coming into contact with these apparently non-human intelligences, it’s often in fits and starts. The memories are foggy and disjointed. For this reason, many of these experiencers seek out trained therapists to conduct hypnotic regression, in hopes of pulling additional details from the ether of the deep subconscious. And when the embedded events do eventually arise in memory, it’s often clear that significant portions of the experiencer’s life have either been blocked from conscious memory, or masked as other events that didn’t tell the whole – or true – story. These shards of recall often touch on genetic manipulation, even the witnessing of apparent alien/human hybridization programs.
The question we’re left with is: Why? Why the secrecy? Why the hiddenness? What’s behind the stealthy nature of this alien intelligence? What can we tease from the data regarding the potential motivations behind these actions? Is this sign of a daunting, looming threat of enormous proportions? Or is a completely different future in play: one that involves a cooperative, inter-species relationship and a subsequently completely changed human civilization? These compelling questions are the topic of this, the 8th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Dr. Jacques Vallee is often considered ufology’s gold standard. By bringing the entire scope of human history to bear, he’s taken the discussion of the UFO Phenomenon to another level. While Vallee began his career as a UFO researcher championing the idea that these aerial vehicles were spacecraft being piloted either by beings from another non-human civilization, or via their representative artificial intelligence, he eventually grew to reconsider and doubt that hypothesis.
Today, while he doesn’t exclude the idea that, at least some of these UAPs represent space traveling civilizations who originate from some far-flung star system within our own physical universe, he’s come to believe — based on the mountains of data available, much of which he’s personally compiled and combed — that a much more complex and, in his words, “interesting” explanation is likely. This more interesting explanation involves interdimensional entities, and intelligences that may have been “here” all along, popping in and out of our own dimension and/or perception, and perhaps shaping human history along the way.
How does this non-human intelligence do this? How does it effectively manage human evolution? They do it via what Jacques refers to as a “control system”. Vallee’s control system hypothesis is the topic of this, the 7th edition of the Point of Convergence podcast.
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Here on the Point of Convergence podcast we’ve been discussing how various categories of what’s often referred to as High Strangeness seem to overlap. Many of the same people who experience something like, say, precognition, have also seen a UFO in the sky, or sensed mysterious presences nearby, apparently just beyond perception via our visual field. Remote viewing, known more colloquially as clairvoyance, is another of these categories. And like other contact modalities we’ve discussed, entangled Consciousness seems to be at the root of the experience.
One aspect that sets remote viewing apart from some of these other phenomena, however, is the fact that it has been studied, tested, and proven, under rigorous laboratory conditions. While some may dismiss some of the other categories of High Strangeness as unverifiable, from an objective point of view, remote viewing stands up to that test – and passes it with flying colors. In the 6th episode of the PoC podcast we take a deep dive into remote viewing, and its connection to some of these other modalities, such as NDEs and encounters with UFO intelligence, while exploring what this means as to the nature of ultimate reality.
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Amidst the ongoing surge of interest regarding reports of elusive UFOs/UAPs that are being seen by the military and civilians alike, many seem to have missed the fact that a movement has emerged over the last couple of decades, geared specifically towards taking the front foot in the relationship with these mysterious “Others”. CE-5, which is short for “close encounters of the fifth kind”, is all about human beings initiating contact and communication with these non-human intelligence(s). CE-5 seeks not only to bring about the appearance of strange – perhaps extraterrestrial – craft in our skies, but also to establish an ongoing relationship with these beings from “elsewhere”.
Are these extraterrestrials? Interdimensionals? Some combination of the two? Something else entirely? And how effective is CE-5 for its proponents? We’ll discuss these and related matters with our special guest, James Iandoli, a long-term CE-5 practitioner and the founder of Engaging the Phenomenon, who’s not only experienced many of his own astounding encounters with these Others, but who has also championed the CE-5 cause, helping to grow it into the thriving, global community it is today.
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In the 4th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast, ExoAcademian discusses both some of the stubborn challenges as well as some of the unique opportunities that exist when studying an enigmatic topic such as UFOs and the Phenomenon. How can we make headway when studying non-human intelligence(s) apparently able to manipulate perception, consciousness and even the supposed “constants” of the natural world?
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In this, the 3rd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast, ExoAcademian reviews and explores the results of the Dr. Edgar Mitchell Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial and Extraordinary Experiencers, international, multi-cultural and multi-lingual, Experiencer Research Study. This is the largest study of its kind ever conducted, and offers results that may prove confounding to some, and encouraging to others, on the nature of UFOs, the Phenomenon, non-human intelligence, and reality itself.
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In this, the second installment of the Point of Convergence podcast, ExoAcademian engages with Richard Dolan's new and compelling book: "The Alien Agendas: A Speculative Analysis of Those Visiting Earth". Who are these intelligences? Where are they from? And, perhaps most important of all, what are their intentions as it pertains to planet Earth and humanity?
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In this inaugural episode of the Point of Convergence podcast, ExoAcademian discusses how ufology: the study of UFOs and the Phenomenon, really belongs within the scope of a much larger question, addressing the very nature of reality itself. And this is because UFO sightings and contact with non-human intelligence share certain core features of "high strangeness" seen in related topics such as remote viewing, near death experiences, out of body experiences, PSI contact, sightings of apparitions, and more.
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