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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.