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.

Without question, 2023 has been a banner year in the decades-long endeavor to bring disclosure about the reality of the so-called UFO Phenomenon to public awareness. Ever since the mid 20th century there has been a dedicated push by a relatively small but growing contingent of die-hards to finally get the U.S. government to admit what it knows about these beings from “elsewhere”; beings who have apparently been at work in our civilization in very substantive albeit clandestine ways. Based on the political machinations that began churning soon after the dawn of the startling allegations brought forward by a former insider named David Grusch, that push seemed to finally be paying dividends.

That said, of late the startling progress seen earlier in the summer seems to have slowed. So much so, in fact, that some have begun to wonder aloud, with chagrin, if perhaps the historic secrecy/disinformation machine – which has been pushing back in its own dedicated way ever since these revelations came to light – might once again be about to turn this apparently irreversible progress into yet another mirage.

While on the one hand, such a feat seems more like wizardry – after all, how could these revelations not at the very least lead to a deep and broad congressional investigation? – it does indeed seem as if our society is carrying on with the same old, same old, in regards to what tends to garner public attention. Now that we’re just over a year away from a hotly contested federal election, perhaps not surprisingly the vast majority of public and media focus has turned to that epic showdown; one being seeded by near civil-war like stratifications within the national fabric.

The question now arising is this: can this push for disclosure hope to gain enough steam, and make enough noise, to be heard amongst this rising national clamor leading up to an historic moment in late 2024? At least, that’s the question some are asking; chiefly those concerned this might all come down to a monumental run of bad luck around timing.

From another point of view, however – one that I personally think is more robustly informed by the full scope of the matters in play here – these issues are not separable; and certainly not coincidental. I would argue that the what, when, and how of these matters again comes down – at least in part – to the clandestine actions of those mysterious actors; ones who seem to be both everywhere and everywhen, except for when you expressly go looking for them.

Is this seeming overarching orchestration humbling to our collective sense of agency, and even to our species’ perspective on planetary sovereignty? Certainly. Does it suggest that disclosure – however one defines that term – simply isn’t something that humanity alone can muster up enough momentum to bring to bear – at least, not at our current stage of development? Yes, without question. I think history makes this matter crystal clear.

Truth be told, I would argue that it is only by opening the aperture to its widest setting possible; and by taking the proverbial 30,000 foot view, that we have any hope of wrapping our understanding around the sheer scope and scale of this civilization-shaping and civilization-shaking topic. For these intelligences are not new on the block. Nor are they merely visiting tourists from a neighboring star system. Rather, they are the very puppet-masters who have shaped the very course – and perhaps even origin – of our species. With that perspective in mind, one realizes it is almost preposterous to talk about disclosure happening now, or later, without the express intent, or, at the very least, the acquiescence, of these archetypal archons.

Questions we should be asking include the following: What do they want in the midst of all of this? What is their overarching agenda? Is it singular or plural? Are they singular or plural? If they’ve shaped our history – to one degree or another – what do they intend for our future? And what role are they playing as the figures on the chessboard seemingly move about of their own volition? Considering the subject of disclosure from this much more panoptic vantage point is exactly the approach we will be taking in this particular discussion, as we aim to make sense of these intriguing yet imposing matters, in this, the 89th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.

For those who look at the UFO Phenomenon as a primarily “nuts and bolts” enterprise, elements of this enigma that veer into the domains of the spiritual and the paranormal are often seen as superfluous to the main point of the exercise. From the point of view of traditional ufologists like this, the central point is that some kind of biologically-based alien intelligence is here, in our midst, buzzing in and around our skies – and apparently our most supposedly secure air space, for that matter – with impunity. From this perspective, the focus and the fascination lies in the sophisticated nature of the technology on display, and in the earthly presence of apparently bipedal alien life forms.

Interestingly, and, I would suggest, tellingly, researchers in the distinct field of hauntology have a similar tunnel-vision focus. For traditional hauntologists the assumption is often that deceased human beings are responsible for much of the paranormal experiences people report having. And when the dead are not responsible, the aim often turns towards the so-called “spirit realm”, where angels and demons reside.

For someone with only a cursory understanding of the two fields just described: namely ufology and hauntology, the assumption is largely that these are distinct and unrelated fields. The first has to do with extraterrestrials arriving from Zeta Reticuli, and the second has to do with ancestors who refuse to fade fully into the domain of the afterlife, and with spiritual entities who are meddling in the affairs of human beings, supposedly with the hopes of determining the ultimate destiny of human souls.

Again, this is how these matters appear to someone with only a shallow understanding of these two fields, with a correspondingly shallow understanding of the data arising in the literature of these two fields. For those who are intimately familiar with the full breadth of said data, however, the overlap between these two fields is startling. So much so, in fact, that those who really are attempting to look at these matters with objective eyes see that this is all part of some overarching category of inquiry. Why do mysterious balls of light – often referred to as “orbs” – often show up both in cases ascribed to ufology and hauntology? Why do UFOs and aliens sometimes appear right alongside deceased human beings? These overlapping data points seemingly demand we step back and look at this from a more overarching perspective.

Beyond these similarities, another fascinating and (for some) disturbing data point is shared by both ufology and hauntology. Here I speak of the so-called Hitchhiker Effect – where human beings seem to be “followed” by entities of various forms, after having had encounters of either ghosts and/or spirits, or aliens alongside sightings of UFOs. Startlingly, not only do these entities and phenomena follow people who’ve had such encounters, but they often are reported to “spread” – almost like a virus of some sort – into the lives of people who simply know the person initially “afflicted”. In other words, just knowing someone who’s had an anomalous encounter like the ones described above is enough to trigger a similar experience of the paranormal – even when the matter was never actually discussed by either party. And this hitchhiker phenomena can then carry on the lives of such individuals for months, even years.

These overlapping data points of course raise profound questions. Who then are these entities appearing in both ufology and hauntology? Have we mistook them for the wrong types merely because our categories are based more in folklore and wishful thinking than in reality? And what of us? Who are we? In other words, what are we really composed of that would allow such seemingly energetic life forms and phenomena to attach to us? And, ultimately, what do these revelations suggest in terms of an overarching metaphysical understanding of reality itself? These perplexing, astonishing and mind-bending matters are the focus of this, the 68th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.

In the long history of strange events occurring in the lives of human beings, the drive for understanding has been, not surprisingly, shaped by the model of reality prevalent at the time. Thus, while our distant ancestors saw the appearance of strange, awe-inspiring non-human intelligences as a manifestation of angels and demons: entities normally bound to the spiritual domain beyond this mortal coil, modern westerners have tended to see more recent appearances of these non-human entities as the arrival of extraterrestrial entities who’ve traversed the vast expanse of outer space to get here.

In both of these described kinds of encounters, the interpretation has less to do with the elements of the encounters themselves, and more to do with the overarching meaning-making model of a particular civilization. And, of course, this is not just a time-bound phenomenon. Because, even today, a Shamanistically-oriented culture is likely to see these Others in a very different light than a scientifically-minded society shaped by the values of the Enlightenment.

In fact, when the gatekeepers of a particular society are convinced that certain kinds of described encounters just simply cannot be – as in modern western societies – then when these encounters are cloaked in a particularly potent degree of what is often termed High Strangeness, the event is just suppressed altogether, lest the witness be deemed mentally unstable or of questionable credibility. This of course doesn’t mean that such events don’t happen, but merely that they have no place to be categorized and analyzed within a particular framework.

All this is to say, the annals of non-conventional encounters from across time serve as a kind of road map for our shifting collective attempt to describe reality itself. And to separate the understanding of these kinds of encounters from the overarching meaning model of a particular time and place in which they occurred is to miss a major point of the exercise; for these matters work hand in hand, in a coordinated and interwoven feedback loop of event and interpretation.

Typically, while a certain brave subset of pioneers are willing to question the meaning model of a particular time and place, the overarching metanarrative doesn’t begin to break down – making room for new and transcendent hypotheses – until the sheer volume of outlier data has created enough collective cognitive dissonance so as to make it clear that there is no other feasible way forward than to trail-blaze a new metanarrative.

Speaking of trailblazing new metanarratives, today we’re going to discuss the work of just such an individual. Donald Hoffman, an American cognitive psychologist and professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, with joint appointments in the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, the Department of Philosophy, and the School of Computer Science, is someone who – decades ago – became convinced that the reality model that western society has been living under over the last several centuries simply cannot stand. From his perspective – and he is one of a growing segment within the scientific establishment – the data arising from diverse fields of study has made it clear that physicalism – the metaphysical view that all mental phenomena are ultimately physical phenomena, or necessitated by physical phenomena – is simply incorrect.

Make no mistake, Hoffman’s postulations are not based in imagination and wishful thinking. No, truth be told, mathematical theorems and the implications of the theory of evolution by natural selection are what drive this new line of thinking. These ideas, put forth in a model he calls Conscious Realism, have profound implications for our understanding of all that is. And as it pertains to the usual subject matter of this podcast, Hoffman’s work opens up new, tantalizing and explanatorily powerful ways of making sense of the strange encounters we’ve been discussing, while also offering a robust explanation to make sense of the so-called Fermi Paradox. It is the implications of Hoffman’s Conscious Realism as it pertains to the UFO Phenomenon and general paranormality that we’ll be doing a deep dive into in this, the 66th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.

Over the course of the history of this podcast, we’ve covered events and experiences that are so bizarre, seemingly irrational and even absurd, that one can’t help but come away from an exhaustive examination of this data wondering how on Earth it fits into our notion of reality at all. Put simply, I don’t think it does. But not because the data is somehow in error. After all, at this point, there’s simply too much of it, with too much cross-cultural, cross-temporal consistency for that to be the case, even allowing for a healthy dose of filtering for cases involving misrepresentation, misapprehension and/or mental instability. No, it being the case that this is a bonafide phenomenon – happening to real people, in real ways – and has been since time immemorial, the problems must lie not in the data, but in our very conceptions of reality.

In today’s episode we’ll be unwrapping this enigma even further, but not in the form of a new case we’ll be studying, but rather in the form of questions and answers. The questions submitted this time around for this Inquiring Mind feature were – again – of the highest caliber – and my thanks go out to all who took the time to submit a question. Since I don’t have the time to answer all of the questions submitted, I’ve chosen to engage with several that I think help us to keep our eye on this central question regarding the ultimate nature of reality. And with that in mind, let’s get right to it, in this, the 3rd installment of The Inquiring Mind, in this, the 62nd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.