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we know full well that the many of the other assumptions being applied are equally as either questionable, or fully outdated, in light of the decades–and many would argue, even centuries or even millennia-long–data at our disposal.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.