2017 was the year that saw a sudden uptick of mainstream interest in the notion of UFOs following revelations arising from a groundbreaking article in the New York Times. This article described so-called “unidentified aerial phenomena” – modern nomenclature for what had traditionally been referred to as “unidentified flying objects” – UFOs. These revelations suggested these objects and/or phenomena had been documented and studied as part of an official Department of Defense program. This tacit acknowledgment of an official UFO program marked a sharp right turn when compared with the historical trend, where the government had traditionally sought to suppress, dismiss and even ridicule the notion of UFOs, as a part of official policy.

Ever since that trailblazing article was first published the interest in this topic has grown by leaps and bounds in the mainstream – even if it still feels painfully slow and incremental to those more familiar with the wealth of data suggesting there really is a there there, and that there has been for a long time. But nevertheless, the presence of these apparent vehicles, that appear to be under intelligence control, has led to inevitable questions around who might be behind them – either at the wheel – so to speak, or piloting them remotely from somewhere else. Industry insiders attest to the beyond next-gen capabilities of these craft, suggesting – startlingly – that they couldn’t possibly belong to any contemporary nation-state player.

And of course, in people’s minds that leaves open one enticing possibility: the notion that these may be the property of an extraterrestrial intelligence; a biological exo-planetary species who’ve come here to study us for reasons thus far largely unclear. For some people in our civilization this notion is most welcome, because the thinking is that these more sophisticated others may be able to help us address some of our most intractable problems. For others, it prompts feelings of fear, forcing a reckoning around the notion that we may not be the apex species on the block after all.

Of course, for those of us much more intimately familiar with the breadth and depth of the historical literature on this topic, these questions – while certainly profound – are just the proverbial tip of the iceberg. And that’s because a deep dive into the actual data gathered over the decades suggests the presence of one or more extraterrestrial species in our midst may not be sufficient to explain the bizarreness of what has been observed and encountered by human beings around the world and across time.

In the 1970s trailblazing figures like Jacques Vallee and John Keel emerged, provocatively suggesting that the traditional nuts and bolts ET hypothesis was not the best fit for the events described in the literature. Vallee surprised many by drawing parallels between modern UFO encounters with supposed space aliens and encounters with the so-called faerie folk of deep human lore. By comparing and contrasting the nature of these various entities, Vallee forced a 20th century populace to wrestle with the notion that what we might be seeing is just a modern-day manifestation of a presence that had been with us since the very beginning.

While Vallee’s postulation is certainly a compelling one – after all, these striking parallels do exist – it’s also important not to prematurely leap to that conclusion based solely on fairly superficial similarities. And of course, this begs the question: how much overlap really exists between ancient faerie and even religious tradition, and the modern-day UFO Phenomenon? And how might we distinguish between a single intelligence with multiple manifestations, and the presence of multiple intelligences perhaps arising from very different source points? These are the very matters we’ll seek to engage with in this, the 63rd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.

Much of the world has only recently begun to come to grips with the growing evidence emerging in the public sphere suggesting that sophisticated, non-human intelligences are apparently in our midst, buzzing in and around our skies both day and night. This revelation takes the notion that aliens might exist – out there – in the great beyond of outer space, and brings the idea much closer to home. For some, it’s simply too close to home. Truth be told, many people just aren’t prepared to deal with the idea that extra-terrestrial or inter-dimensional beings are not only already here, but may have indeed been here as long – or longer – than we have.

Of course, for those of us more aware of the extensive body of data regarding the UFO Phenomenon, it’s clear that, not only are these intelligences piloting sophisticated craft in the skies above our heads, but they’re are also interacting directly – face to face and up close and personal – with human beings. And we’re not speaking simply of these Others once in a while introducing themselves in the broad light of day. No, they – some of them, anyway – are also conducting apparently clandestine missions to enter people’s homes, passing through solid walls like we might pass through a fine morning mist, and taking people back to their sophisticated craft, or elsewhere, such as some mysterious matrix-like reality that defies easy categorization based on our current understanding of reality.

Notice that I just said “some of them” are conducting these kinds of covert missions, often – it’s important to point out – without the apparent permission or often even knowledge of the people they are taking. I say “some of them” because, truth be told, not only is sophisticated non-human (i.e. alien) intelligence here, but it is here in the plural. And here I’m not referring simply to numbers of the same alien species. No, I’m referring to different alien species altogether. There are so many in fact that one quickly becomes overwhelmed by the sheer variety of alien types apparently in our midst: the short and tall greys, reptilians, mantids, human-like species such as the so-called Nordics and Tall Whites, and many more.

And it’s not just the variety of alien species that can be overwhelming. The kinds of experiences people have with these various Others also vary. Some people have decidedly positive, even spiritually transformative encounters with these Others, from the get-go, while other people have much more traumatic, frightening, and discombobulating experiences. Truth be told, even the positive encounters are usually disorienting in the extreme at first blush. One simply cannot overstate the degree of ontological shock that is involved here, as John Mack made clear in his research with alien contactees/abductees.

Even more complication arises in this already complex, convoluted discussion, when one takes into account how many people eventually grow to see their experiences differently once the initial ontological shock has – to some degree – worn off. Even more confusing, many abductees/contactees find that, at some point during an encounter with these Others, they realize they actually recognize these beings.

Sometimes this recognition tracks back to early childhood, meaning that, for some, these encounters have been ongoing for decades, often without the individual having any conscious memory of this contact. Even more discombobulatingly, for those of us trying to make sense of the contact totality, it becomes clear that some people find that they recognize these beings from some deep sense of a larger, multi-dimensional self that may even track over multiple lifetimes.

Clearly this is a complicated discussion; one that, arguably, cannot be even fully addressed without asking as many questions about who we truly are as who they truly are. Still, with all of this complexity in mind, what can we make of the jungle that is the territory of these Others? This is exactly what we’ll explore in this, the 33rd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.

In this, the 3rd episode of the Point of Convergence podcast, ExoAcademian reviews and explores the results of the Dr. Edgar Mitchell Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial and Extraordinary Experiencers, international, multi-cultural and multi-lingual, Experiencer Research Study. This is the largest study of its kind ever conducted, and offers results that may prove confounding to some, and encouraging to others, on the nature of UFOs, the Phenomenon, non-human intelligence, and reality itself.