In recent months former Department of Defense employee Luis Elizondo, who ran the Pentagon’s UFO program, known as AATIP, or The Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, has made comments pinpointing experiences where senior Department of Defense officials attempted to shut down further investigation into UFOs, or, as they have been rebranded in government circles, “unidentified aerial phenomenon”, simply for reasons that amount to a prejudice stemming from religious fundamentalism. And unfortunately, this is far from the first time such incidents have reportedly occurred.

As unnerving as it is that taxpayer-run programs are being started and stopped based merely on the biases of religious extremists placed deep within the hierarchy of our government, this perspective that seeks to draw conclusions even before finishing the task of gathering data, connecting dots that arise from that process, and considering various hypotheses, is actually common-place – not only within the hallowed halls of government – but within the greater American society as well.

In fact, this is one of the greatest challenges our society faces when – as will almost certainly be the case as increasingly clear revelations regarding the presence of a non-human intelligence in our midst emerge – we are forced to reckon with this reality as a nation and, speaking more generally, a civilization.

When one considers various reactions to the revelation that apparently non-human intelligences are in our midst, and perhaps have been for a very long time, one thing seems clear: the very same data points that lead some observers to conclude that we are being visited by an extraterrestrial alien race, lead others to believe we are falling prey to the actions of demonic entities whose only aim is to deceive and ultimately draw us away from the one true God.

One group ponders the implications for our human future when faced with the startlingly sophisticated technology of a more advanced biological race, while the other fears for the salvation – and thus the very eternal souls – of countless billions, as a result of what they consider “The Great Deception”.

How did we get here? How do people — living in the very same nation, and within the very same era of history — draw such starkly different conclusions when faced with the very same data-set? And what does this say for our ability — as a collective — to deal with this revelation in the months and years ahead in a positive, constructive way?

Of course, matters become even more convoluted and complicated when research suggests that – perhaps – the events that spawned the creation of the very religions that have evolved to become the dominant meaning-making structures for a majority of the world’s population, may very well have been initiated by the very same sophisticated, non-human intelligences that we are trying to grapple with based on the evidence of contemporary encounters. In that sense, the entire question — regarding what constitutes our notion of ultimate reality – may have come full circle.

Depending on your point of view, this unique situation can be seen as an opportunity for the greatest transformation in the history of human civilization, or the revelation that has the potential to collapse our society into utter chaos. And perhaps it is both.

What do these revelations say about who we are, where we come from, and where we’re going? And how will we, as a collective, divided and currently subscribed to very different belief systems, rise to the challenge? These are the intriguing and perplexing questions we’ll attempt to address in this, the 20th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.

In the long-running history of the UFO Phenomenon, numerous aspects of encounters with these Others stretch our imaginations to the breaking point, pushing the outer limits of our capacity to even conceive of technologies that could accomplish what our eyes and others senses are telling us we’re apparently witnessing.

In terms of the demonstration of evidently advanced technology, the craft controlled by this supposedly non-human intelligence make maneuvers that are not only death-defying, but that break our very notions of how physics works. Engineers and aviation experts tell us that, not only do we not have vehicles that can perform like this, but that we can’t really even presently conceive of how such feats could be accomplished — even theoretically. Add to the mix that reports suggest a direct consciousness link between pilot and craft is key to the operation of these vehicles, and our understanding is stretched even further.

Teleportation is another apparent feature on display with these craft. In other words, not only do witnesses — including trained, expert, military witnesses — see these UFOs/UAPs racing across the sky at breakneck speeds, making 90 degree turns on a dime, without even slowing, but witnesses have also reported seeing craft — even massive mother ship types the size of football stadiums – suddenly materialize before their eyes, out of nowhere. And they can apparently disappear — dematerialize — just as quickly and completely.

And the wizardry on display by these Others doesn’t stop with the demonstration of their external technology. They also readily demonstrate an ability to interact with us directly — mind to mind — that is equally baffling. Not only can they seemingly control our very perceptions: to the point that we can no longer trust the output generated by our brains to be an accurate depiction of what’s actually “out there”, but, despite clear species and vast cultural differences, they seem able to effortlessly communicate with us, telepathically, bypassing the need for language translation altogether.

Furthermore, not only is the means of their communication almost always telepathic in nature, but this direct telepathic communication seems to come across at a much broader bandwidth than typical human communication; meaning the entire, nuanced emotional content of a thought is shared — seemingly instantaneously. And even more startlingly, the human beings being contacted find that they can communicate back — through the same telepathic means — just as easily.

Somewhat disconcertingly to some, even when one chooses not to share a thought, one’s thinking and feeling seems still to be laid bare to these Others. In other words, they can seemingly read out minds and hearts, as it were. Furthermore, and even more discombobulatingly, they seem to have knowledge of ever figment of our lives, and not only in its present state, but going back into the distant past — as well as the distant future.

But how? How is all of this accomplished? How are we to make sense of this? Figures like Dr. Edgar Mitchell, the 6th man to walk on the moon, and Dr. Rudy Schild, an astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, have led the way in engaging in these matters, advancing some intriguing possibilities. And the fascinating new conceptions around the nature of the intelligence behind the UFO Phenomenon, postulated by Mitchell, Schild and others, is the topic of this, the 12th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.

For decades now, many if not most people across the globe have wondered, who else is out there? Are we alone? Can our species really be the only intelligence in the immensity of the Cosmos? And as our understanding of the mind-boggling vastness of the physical universe has grown exponentially over time, along with the development of a much more nuanced fine-tuned understanding of just how many galaxies, star systems and planets that likely entails, the preposterousness of the notion that we’re “all alone” has only escalated. And in that endeavor, we’ve been sending probes out into our solar system, and now beyond, as well as exploratory rovers to neighboring worlds like Mars, in hopes of answering that question.

But from that very large collection of nearly everyone on the planet who’s asked the question about us being alone in the universe, there is a subsection that asks a different question: are we alone, here? Right here, on Earth? Or is it possible that we have already been, and perhaps are presently being, surveilled by an alien presence much more advanced that us — to the point where our intelligence gathering capabilities have thus far failed miserably in our attempt to answer that question, even though tantalizing hints exist almost everywhere we look — especially since our sensing tools and apparatus have taken gargantuan leaps in capability over the last couple of decades.

As I say, tantalizing hints exist suggesting that we are not alone — even here, in our own backyard, as it were. These hints include verified unidentified flying objects, or as they’re currently referenced in government intelligence circles, “unidentified aerial phenomena”, buzzing in and around our airspace, even some of our most supposedly secure, protected military airspace. Many of us would go much further, arguing there is actually persuasive evidence, for those unbiased enough to really look with clear vision, to suggest the question as to their presence here on and around the earth is a long settled one: in the positive.

But if they’re here, as we asked in last week’s podcast, why the hiddenness? Why are their operations so evidently clandestine? Many experiencers who’ve claimed contact with these Others share a familiar narrative regarding the reason they’ve been told about: they (the Others) are waiting – not passively, but while employing various means to speed the process along – for a consciousness upgrade, as it were, amongst the human race, so that we can arrive at a point in our history where a revelation of a superior alien presence would be welcomed and considered “good news” for humanity and the planet.

Some are frustrated with this proposed reasoning. Surely the revelation of a more technologically capable, benign alien presence would be good news today, this very day, were these Others to suddenly, in some worldwide, plain-as-day way, make themselves known to human civilization. And surely countless challenges – including disease, climate change, international and inter-religious strife, etc. could be well on their way to being resolved, were this to happen. I actually think that perspective is misguided, and makes various assumptions about the nature of the world as it presently exists, that simply don’t hold water. So what would really happen if a superior alien intelligence suddenly made its presence known on a global scale? An intriguing question: one that is the topic of this, the 9th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.

When one considers the history of the UFO Phenomenon, both recent and going well back to the middle part of the 20th century, one thing is clear: subterfuge is an ongoing and ever-present element of the entire enterprise. When these elusive craft are seen, it’s often at night and, on average, in less densely populated areas. When they are spotted over city centers, some people will see these unidentified aerial phenomena, while others will not — because on top of being elusive, the intelligence behind these craft show a clear ability to manipulate human perception directly, in whatever way it sees fit. It is fair to say that you only see them when they want you to see them.

And then there are the witnesses, the abductees and the contactees: known collectively as “experiencers”. When these people do remember coming into contact with these apparently non-human intelligences, it’s often in fits and starts. The memories are foggy and disjointed. For this reason, many of these experiencers seek out trained therapists to conduct hypnotic regression, in hopes of pulling additional details from the ether of the deep subconscious. And when the embedded events do eventually arise in memory, it’s often clear that significant portions of the experiencer’s life have either been blocked from conscious memory, or masked as other events that didn’t tell the whole – or true – story. These shards of recall often touch on genetic manipulation, even the witnessing of apparent alien/human hybridization programs.

The question we’re left with is: Why? Why the secrecy? Why the hiddenness? What’s behind the stealthy nature of this alien intelligence? What can we tease from the data regarding the potential motivations behind these actions? Is this sign of a daunting, looming threat of enormous proportions? Or is a completely different future in play: one that involves a cooperative, inter-species relationship and a subsequently completely changed human civilization? These compelling questions are the topic of this, the 8th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.

Dr. Jacques Vallee is often considered ufology’s gold standard. By bringing the entire scope of human history to bear, he’s taken the discussion of the UFO Phenomenon to another level. While Vallee began his career as a UFO researcher championing the idea that these aerial vehicles were spacecraft being piloted either by beings from another non-human civilization, or via their representative artificial intelligence, he eventually grew to reconsider and doubt that hypothesis.

Today, while he doesn’t exclude the idea that, at least some of these UAPs represent space traveling civilizations who originate from some far-flung star system within our own physical universe, he’s come to believe — based on the mountains of data available, much of which he’s personally compiled and combed — that a much more complex and, in his words, “interesting” explanation is likely. This more interesting explanation involves interdimensional entities, and intelligences that may have been “here” all along, popping in and out of our own dimension and/or perception, and perhaps shaping human history along the way.

How does this non-human intelligence do this? How does it effectively manage human evolution? They do it via what Jacques refers to as a “control system”. Vallee’s control system hypothesis is the topic of this, the 7th edition of the Point of Convergence podcast.

Amidst the ongoing surge of interest regarding reports of elusive UFOs/UAPs that are being seen by the military and civilians alike, many seem to have missed the fact that a movement has emerged over the last couple of decades, geared specifically towards taking the front foot in the relationship with these mysterious “Others”. CE-5, which is short for “close encounters of the fifth kind”, is all about human beings initiating contact and communication with these non-human intelligence(s). CE-5 seeks not only to bring about the appearance of strange – perhaps extraterrestrial – craft in our skies, but also to establish an ongoing relationship with these beings from “elsewhere”.

Are these extraterrestrials? Interdimensionals? Some combination of the two? Something else entirely? And how effective is CE-5 for its proponents? We’ll discuss these and related matters with our special guest, James Iandoli, a long-term CE-5 practitioner and the founder of Engaging the Phenomenon, who’s not only experienced many of his own astounding encounters with these Others, but who has also championed the CE-5 cause, helping to grow it into the thriving, global community it is today.

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.