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 did this mean of 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.

And, importantly, the messages have not stopped being communicated. Even during a recent series of conversations I had with Mike Masters, chief proponent of the so-called Extratempestrial Hypothesis – the notion that some of these beings are our very own descendants from some future point in humanity’s evolutionary trajectory – additional elements became clear, aided by synchronistic events suggesting these overarching intelligences are not only able to defy our understanding of physics, but sometimes even able to orchestrate an ordering of the very events of our lives.

But to what end? And in preparation for what? Who are these beings, and how are their efforts to not only interact with us, but 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.

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.