The so-called UFO Phenomenon is a tricky affair because, no matter when and from where you enter the discussion, you’ve inevitably going to face having your assumptions and expectations stretched. Indeed, to those really paying close attention to, for instance, the wealth of experiencer data that’s been amassed over decades, it’s clear that a discourse around the nature of potential UFOs and aliens in our midst eventually leads to a much deeper rabbit hole where our place in the universe and the very nature of reality are in play.
Of course, one of the biggest leap those who enter this discussion face is the notion not simply that aliens exist “out there” – somewhere, perhaps in some corner of the vast expanse of the Cosmos, but that they’re here, and perhaps have been for as long – and undoubtedly – even longer than we’ve been looking for them.
But if that’s true, skeptics ask, why aren’t we finding clear, undeniable evidence for their presence, and, for that matter, why don’t they simply land on the White House lawn to put the matter to rest once and for all? It’s absurd to think they’re here, these skeptics confidently assert, but then chose this bizarre stealthiness.
Absurdity you say? Indeed – we’ve got that, in spades even! Welcome to the UFO Phenomenon as it actually exists, rather than how you’d like it to be based on your 21st century Western expectations and assumptions – one of the largest and most questionable of which is the belief that if they were here, we’d be able to detect them with relative ease.
Another major deeper dive into the proverbial rabbit hole comes when one comes to grips that these various others are not only here, but are actually interacting with various human beings – and that this circumstance is much more commonplace than the mainstream media and present political set would have you believe.
And even once you’ve digested that interactions really are happening, you’re then confronted by just how diverse these interactions are. Indeed, they seem to cover the proverbial gamut: from positive encounters with supportive, inspirational entities, to frightening encounters with beings who conduct obtuse medical procedures and examinations that seem, on the face of it, to be much more invasive than is necessary – especially if these beings are as advanced as they purport to be.
Yet an even more paradigm-stretching matter arises when people hear of encounters with beings that humans come to find they recognize, and even feel a pre-incarnate familial connection to. And often these encounters involve the person being reminded of a particular mission they are here – in this incarnation as an earth human – to fulfill. Of course, this brings to mind for some people the religious notion of angels and demons – as old as human civilization itself.
But these beings often arrive in spacecraft and have their own home planets. Are these the same entities as are reported in religious traditions, or different ones altogether? And how are we to make sense of these particular encounters from within the dazzling complexity that is the UFO Phenomenon? These are the very matters we’ll seek to disentangle in this, the 76th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
]]>Even before H.G. Wells wrote his classic War of the Worlds, depicting an alien invasion on behalf of a technologically superior civilization from Mars, human beings have looked to the skies — meaning, more specifically, outer space — as the obvious source for visitation from a group of “Others”. As we’ve grown in our understanding of just how discombobulatingly vast our Cosmos is, populated by countless galaxies, each containing untold numbers of star systems and planets, that assumption has seemed all the more secure. The “final frontier” was clearly “out there” — and so we turned our attention, as well as our most advanced telescopes and technology — to the stars, in hopes of confirming the existence of these “Others”.
Ever since the dawn of the Atomic Age, the apparent presence of advanced craft buzzing in and around our skies, combined with reported contact between people and various non-human entities, has led many to conclude that the epoch of contact with advanced non-human intelligence is already upon us. And, of course, following the common-sense thinking of the day, these Others have been assumed to be space travelers, who’ve transversed astounding astronomical distances to arrive on and around our planet.
In more recent decades this model, termed the Extraterrestrial Hypothesis, has met with some competition from what is most often termed the “Interdimensional Hypothesis”. This competing notion postulates the visitation of beings who are coming, not necessarily from far-flung star systems, but from parallel dimensions or other universes. This hypothesis has been advanced by well respected ufologists such as Jacques Vallee, who argue that the data best fits with this model.
What sometimes flies under the radar in this debate as to the origin of these Others, is a much more close-to-home explanation. It’s an explanation that is so close-to-home, in fact, that some find it downright disturbing. I speak of a model advanced most famously by a researcher named Mac Tonnies, termed “The Cryptoterrestrial Hypothesis”. This hypothesis posits that these Others are actually terrestrial creatures – flesh and blood beings, just like us, co-occupants of our world, who have operated, in stealth, right alongside us, since time immemorial.
This hypothesis goes further, arguing that many of the bizarre reported sightings and interactions with beings from distant human history – I speak of faeries, elves, and such – which are of course disregarded/explained away today as mythological constructs of pre-scientific societies by modern historians – are actually incidents of contact with these very same Cryptoterrestrials.
Is it possible that the Others we’ve heard so much about, or at least some of them, could actually be terrestrial in origin – perhaps a distant off-shoot of a common human ancestor? And have they, supposed masters of stealth and disinformation, been actively misdirecting us into believing that what we’re solely dealing with are extraterrestrial visitors, simply to throw us off their scent?
This is exactly what’s postulated in Mac Tonnies’ much respected book, THE CRYPTOTERRESTRIALS: A Meditation on Indigenous Humanoids and the Aliens Among Us. Tonnies’ counter-intuitive and disconcerting Cryptoterrestrial hypothesis is the topic of this, the 13th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.
]]>In the 4th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast, ExoAcademian discusses both some of the stubborn challenges as well as some of the unique opportunities that exist when studying an enigmatic topic such as UFOs and the Phenomenon. How can we make headway when studying non-human intelligence(s) apparently able to manipulate perception, consciousness and even the supposed “constants” of the natural world?
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