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.

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.

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 at a fairly stead clip 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.

Not shying from delving into even the most controversial but compelling aspects of the history of this topic – including crashed AND landed retrievals of apparently alien vehicles and their non-human pilots – 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.

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.

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.