The contingent of the UFO community known for holding a “nuts ‘n bolts” perspective has no doubt found recent developments within the space rather, shall we say, disconcerting. And that’s because, as time has gone on, the consciousness aspect of the conversation about UAP and NHI has only become more and more central; now even openly talked about by scientists and congresspeople seeking to wrap their heads around this age-old conundrum.

While recent years have seen a growing shift toward a consciousness-centric view of the phenomenon, this perspective is hardly new. For early pioneers like Jacques Vallée and John Keel, consciousness was central to understanding the UFO mystery. Additional key figures—such as Russel Targ and Hal Puthoff—also clearly saw the connection, and sought to research it in official capacity within programs funded by the US government.

Sitting alongside these paragons of new thought was the man we’re going to focus on today: Ingo Swann, credited with being the founder and architect of modern remote viewing protocols, and especially the structured version that became “Controlled Remote Viewing.” Swann’s participation with the Stanford Research Institute’s program in the early 1970s, working with the aforementioned Hal Puthoff and Russell Targ, is seen as foundational. He, for instance, provided a striking demonstration in his remote viewing of Jupiter, later said to match Voyager findings.

Swann’s psychic exploration of outer space didn’t stop with Jupiter, however. He was also tasked with psychically examining both the Moon and Mars, specifically in regards to potential extraterrestrial presences. What he found was as shocking as it was consequential to his later framing of what he saw as the limiting of humankind’s vast psychic potential in the modern world. And it’s that very matter in particular, outlined in his books Star Fire and Penetration, that we’re going to explore in this, the 119th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.

Since the very beginning of this podcast, we’ve been exploring the various experiences people report having, across time and across cultures, that speak to outlier events; events that defy easy categorization, especially within our modern, Western milieu. Here we’re speaking of events that are not only unusual, but that manifest in such a way as to appear—simply put—impossible, at least according to so-called “modern” understanding. Because of the bewildering—”does not compute” nature of these events, we’ve often resorted to doubting the witnesses themselves, calling them everything from prone to exaggeration, to delusional, to frauds.

And yet, the vast numbers of these events—once you dare begin to collect and collate the date in a dedicated, objective fashion—suggest such easy—and let’s call a spade a spade here—lazy dismissals, simply can’t stand as a legitimate assessment. Indeed, on this podcast, the sheer preponderance of these highly strange experiences has led us to not only catalog and compare them, but also to ask: what model of reality could possibly emerge to help us understand them? If these are “real”—as a phenomenological approach to the data would certainly suggest they are—then what does that say of the nature of our reality, itself?

Some would suggest—and have long suggested, going back to the dawn of our civilization, in fact—that we have everything upside down and inside out. That is to say, from this perspective, the problem lies not with these so-called outlier experiences, but with our insistence that this—which is to say: everything we see manifesting around us in apparently solid, physical form—is actually base reality. These people would unapologetically suggest it is in fact not; that this is a hall of mirrors, if you will, a carefully crafted illusion that hides, behind a veil, a deeper “true” existence, one not defined by the duality we see so evident in our day to day lives “here”.

The movement and/or perspective we’re speaking of here is colloquially known as “gnosticism.” Gnosis is a Greek term meaning “knowledge,” specifically direct, experiential knowledge of the divine or ultimate reality. Adherents of gnosticism are quick to point out that this is not mere belief—arising from some external authority or doctrine—but rather a knowing based on direct, first-hand experience. This notion of a direct, first-hand, felt-sense of the ultimately real, helps us make sense of why so many experiencers report these events as being “more real than real.” If these people are indeed experiencing modes of existence and/or states of being beyond the veil, as it were, then this of course is exactly what we would expect them to report.

It’s important to ask: why does this 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 across time and space 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? These are precisely the matters that we’ll seek to unpack in this, the 118th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.

Over the course of the last few Point of Convergence episodes, we’ve been exploring how the complexity, nuance—and sometimes downright inconvenient nature—of the UFO Phenomenon data, ultimately serves to invite us into a series of questions that not only inform our inquiry into our place in the cosmos—in other words, are we alone or not—but also—and more importantly—even deeper questions, about who we ultimately are, and what the nature of this—our shared experience of what we call “reality”—is actually all about.

In today’s episode we’re going to delve into the experiences of one particular abductee/contactee, in order to observe her process of trying to understand and ultimately integrate a lifetime of anomalous encounters with apparent NHI—non-human intelligences. We’re also going to see that deep soul searching unfolding in ongoing dialogue with a therapist particularly well-equipped for this kind of work—a therapist employing a therapeutic approach involving an overlap with the role of a traditional shaman, further shaping those perspectives through the lens of depth psychology.

One reason—among many reasons—why the shamanically-informed perspective can be particularly helpful here, is that it offers a richly nuanced understanding of the potentially transformative role of trauma in—not just these particular anomalous encounters—but in all aspects of human life; ultimately seeing it as a potent gateway to deeper aspects of the self. By now we’re all very familiar with the discombobulating nature of these experiences. It’s a staple of the anomalous encounter, and that’s true whether the event is ultimately understood as being positive, negative or neutral by the experiencer themselves. All that is to say, trauma, to one extent or another, is pretty much a given here.

Considering our ongoing inquiry on Point of Convergence into the intersection between the UFO Phenomenon and what one might call spiritual transformation, a key question emerges: does trauma end up being incidentally used as a portal for non-dual awakening, or is it deliberately brought about to facilitate that process? In other words, is the trauma incidental, or intentional, in service of the desired outcome? What does the body of data suggest is actually going on here? These are precisely the prickly yet particularly pertinent matters that we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 116th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.

For those who’ve been working doggedly to see the matter of the UFO Phenomenon grounded in the awareness of the general public, the focus has long been on political engagement. That is to say, the aim has been to have the government disclose what it knows about these mysterious flying objects and the occupants who pilot them. Beyond the exposing of the details of the secrets themselves, the sense has been that only an official announcement from a podium will be sufficient to move this topic solidly into civilization-wide acceptance.

That said, what has—paradoxically—worked in opposition to that goal, has been the nature of the data themselves. Said more plainly, the issue often comes down to the high strangeness that comes part and parcel with people’s interactions with the anomalous phenomena. Simply put, these “inconvenient details” stretch credulity, and thus work against the hope of seeing official acknowledgement followed by societal engagement.

Here though, we should offer a clarifying qualifier. These elements of high strangeness—often bordering on apparent absurdity— only stretch credulity in Western circles. In other contemporaneous societies, as well as in Shamanic and indigenous societies of the past, these elements aren’t at all objectionable. They are, in fact, welcomed within a much more multidimensional model of relational reality.

Even as some disclosure advocates work to sanitize some of the data—so that the overarching Phenomena has a better chance of seeing official acknowledgment and engagement—people within Western society continue to experience the phenomena themselves; in all their inconvenient, paradigm-shattering, discombobulating glory. And this is resulting in what one might call a revolution of sorts, but one bubbling up from below, rather than descending from on high.

This of course includes—not just highly strange UFOs—but every experiential element that refuses to play by the rules of reductionistic materialism. Here I’m also speaking of elements such as synchronicities, altered states, psi phenomena, etc.. Because these elements are being both experienced and documented, they are playing a transformative, grassroots role in steering Western perspectives along more shamanic lines, even without acknowledgment from the ivory towers of our civilization.

What some particularly astute observers have asked is: is this perhaps by design? Is this an end-goal of the enterprise itself, to drop bread crumbs along the way so that a wayward civilization is able to find its way back into a more balanced understanding of its place within the interactive whole? This is a compelling argument; one deserving of a closer examination of just what’s involved. And that’s precisely what we’ll endeavor to do in this the 116th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.

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.

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.

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.”

But if they’re not commercial or hobby drones, then that of course raises concerns that these may be the property of U.S. adversaries like China or Russia, stoking fears that such a provocation could suggest we’re on the verge of WW3. But to counter this notion, U.S. authorities have repeatedly stated that they do not believe these are the property of U.S. adversaries. And furthermore, these sightings have spread well beyond the United States, now appearing in countries right around the world. To add further spice to an historical flap of epic proportions, in addition to the so-called “drones” – or “drone-like” vehicles, what are also being sighted regularly in the U.S. northeast and around the world, are the so-called orbs that have drawn increasing focus amongst ufologists over the last few years.

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.

As our society begins to host dinner-table conversations around the reality of non-human intelligences co-occupying our space here on and around planet Earth, certain assumptions are inevitably being applied before even a single word is spoken. On previous episodes of this podcast we’ve discussed how the notion that these beings are extraterrestrials, that is to say – “space aliens” – has been one of the most frequent assumptions applied.

Even today, that continues to be the case, because the other origin hypotheses that had been floated; namely interdimensional, extradimensional/celestial, cryptoterrestrial, ultraterrestrial, extratempestrial, etc, are really only being bandied about within the dedicated ufological community. We (those who are part of that community, that is) know, of course, that it is the data themselves that lead people to these other possibilities; but Joe and Jane Public just are not there yet. They’re still parsing along the lines of the headline grabbing: “we’re not alone, and they’re here!”

As it turns out, though, that pre-assigned notion as to origins is just one of a whole host of assumptions regularly being applied to this matter of the UFO Phenomenon. And again, for those of us intimately familiar with this topic, we know full well that the many of the other assumptions being applied are equally as either questionable, or fully outdated, in light of the decades–and many would argue, even centuries or even millennia-long–data at our disposal.

While those who’ve been in this field the longest–the true “lifers”–if you will, are no doubt cheering the entrance of mainstream academia into the mix in recent years, I would caution that this segment of our society is bringing its own set of pre-existing assumptions to the table as well.

And, again, some of those assumptions just don’t play well with this data. And in our race for conventional recognition, we should be careful to not sell the process short, because academia, too, will have its understanding stretched (to say the very least) by the nature of this data.

This same is true for religious adherents of one form or another. The fact that this data does seem to include what we might call “spiritual overtones” often leads this religiously-affiliated segment of our civilization to the conclusion that this puts the UFO Phenomenon data firmly in their worldview camp, leading them to gleefully proclaim that this shows that they’ve been “right all along”. In both these cases (for those academically and/or religiously inclined), the problem arises in their assumption that the interpretive grid they have at their disposal is generally sufficient to make sense of this anomalous data, and that all they need to do now is slot various data points into various categories of pre-agreed meaning.

Simply put, that will not work. I tend to agree with Peter Levenda’s contention here, suggesting that what this data really asks us to do is consider our reality models from the perspective of the Phenomenon, and not the other way around. The question then becomes: as we do this, just how far afield will this take us? And what elements of our various pre-existing conceptual models will be left standing when we’re done?

And what alternatives might we tentatively put in their place? And these are precisely the issues we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 108th 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 milenia. 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.