By Giorgio Piacenza
Like Manuel Lamiroy from S. Africa recently shared with me, it would be silly to try to understand a civilization only by the cars they make. By all means, the psychic, multidimensional, and contact aspect in ufology has been present since the beginning of the "modern UFO era" and, most likely, also historically throughout human experience. Thus, whether we like it or not, it cannot be divorced from a comprehensive and vital understanding of what may be going on. This is even more so since close encounters (for instance CE-I sightings within 500 feet) also frequently lead – according to witnesses - to an activation of “high strangeness” events that include spatial and temporal anomalies besides psychic phenomena. Thus, whether we like it or, the reality-modifying effects of contact experiences cannot - in all honesty – be avoided. Hence, by trying to remain “objective” under modern, materialist, scientific, single-reality canons which – mistakenly - involve a biased dismissal of the evidence for an interactive presence of non-conventional, ‘otherworldly’ realities, we are, quite frankly, actively trying hide ourselves from what vast accumulated experience and data points to.
Moreover, through proper surveys and testimonies, researchers are finding that individual and collective contact interface with the UFO or UAP entities generally leads to positive transformations in values and personality. So (much like when confronted by a Near-Death Experience), when we are inescapably and emotionally touched on a first person, subjective basis, we are forced to reconsider any narrow worldviews that don’t fit with the experience. We are indeed impelled to expand our mental horizons and to grow up. Extending this fact to the human experience in general may be why contact experiences and experiencer accounts can, after all, be more valuable than the nuts-and-bolts approach.
Of course, when subjectivity and intersubjectivity enter a space of discovery, there's a tendency to embellish or distort, especially when persons supportive of these types of exchanges don-t just tend to be more open-minded but also not too sufficiently scientific, analytical, or demanding of objective validation. However, given the number of reports of veridical experiences had by sane persons all over the world, to say that these experiences (especially if deemed “benevolent”) are wholly bogus is in itself quite unscientific and unreasonable. Therefore, we face an undeniably necessary area of study that demands much more interest and a comprehensive, integrative, and balanced approach.
Contact experiences indeed are a major challenge for our over-simplifying, dichotomous (either-or), and materially realist, reductionist minds accustomed to physically stable or predictable patterns also under regular and stable separations in time and space. This is especially so in the minds of the scientifically trained for whom a rejection of things otherworldly has been sine qua non with “valid knowledge” and personal credibility. Furthermore, any sense of spiritual benevolence (instead of Machiavellian manipulation) behind the motivations accompanying the alleged otherworldly contact experiences further deepens their dismissal into the waste paper basket.
In spite of this (and however limited our current interpretive categories and capacities for taking perspectives might be), we should - at the very least - consider (in human terms) the plausible benevolent, malevolent, variable, and neutral motivations of UAP or UFO intelligences in order to try to comprehensively assess them. This is because they aren’t just a mysterious presence intermittently interacting with different individuals and intermittently seen all over the world but also because they are becoming recognized active agents or ‘players’ in our social and political domains.
In fact, one can make a comparative analysis of the messages allegedly received during contact interactions and, by doing so, (by not over-relying on any one source), one can get a slightly better working estimate of who the various intelligences behind the genuinely otherworldly aspect of the UFO phenomenon might be and why they are doing what they do. But, besides much needed comparative analyses, we also need to intersubjectively recognize the contact experience itself because without a ‘felt sense’ of the subjective interiorities of these sentient beings we cannot intuitively and more completely evaluate who we are relating with. And without this evaluation inclusive of intersubjectivity, no healthy social relationship is possible. There would be no possibility of eventually building a healthy sense of community with ‘them’.
Many questions arise. Are we relevant or necessary to them because our potential capacities relate to the importance which they place regarding what consciousness can achieve? Do they need us more than we need them or do we need each other in equal measure in order to actualize our potentials? Are we, in a deeper sense, inextricable projections of each other? And, even if they were using, protecting, enhancing, perhaps simply studying, or manipulating us for reasons which they more completely understand (just like we understand why we treat mentally inferior animal species as we do) contact experiencers describe inner telepathic certainty or knowingness of shared feelings and (apparently simplified) concepts.
Without the sharing of an inner subjective life how can we more fully understand them, not only in abstract, distant, third person, conceptual terms and evaluating them by their actions but also, more intimately, as co-equal at least in some levels of being?
Moreover, if we don’t rise (or get closer) to their level of being and understanding in part by means of benefits which may arise by interfacing with them, how are we going to intersubjectively understand if what they do to us or expect from us is good for us? How are we going to make the best exopolitical decisions and whether to consider them friends or foes? And, if we don’t start by acknowledging the possibilities disclosed during this interface, how are we going to eventually rise to their level?
Furthermore, to consider the possibility of befriending and trusting at least some of these UAP intelligences, it also becomes necessary to study various contact modalities and types of experiences, such as voluntary (or primarily non-abduction-based), contact experiences based on long-term telepathic associations, especially those that at times offer publicly verifiable events.
If there is nothing that we can do to prevent ‘them’ from “flying” around (or from ‘popping up’ into our “reality space”, so to speak); nothing to prevent them from taking people for training, information transfer, benevolent (or not-so-benevolent) experiments or, still, other purposes; for us not to simply feel (or actually be) thus used, we’ll need to get closer to their level of understanding perhaps by imbibing and co-creatively processing what feelings, messages, energies, and procedures recur during such interface experiences. In fact, the contact experience (often transgressing the boundaries between a variety of physical and non-physical realms) may be indicating that we may have to learn to become not only a multi-planetary species (for instance, by establishing a permanent physical colony on Mars) but also a multi-ontological one.
But, how long can it take? While many experiencer-contactee researchers collect seemingly outlandish messages of imminent transformation that do not seem to reflect our current Machiavellian and “Real Politik” world conditions, I think that - as serious, comprehensive researchers - we need to include such messages, even if with caution. I think that we must keep in mind that the greater the epistemological and ontological gap there is between the UAP intelligence and a chosen human intermediary, the greater the interpretive distortion there is likely to be.
We must avoid falling into the trap of semi-religious myth-making especially when the narratives do not coincide with the facts. However, not all experiencer-contactees have a sense of impending reality jumps. Some (like Enrique Castillo-Rincon from Costa Rica-Colombia, Vlado Kapetanovic from Yugoslavia-Peru and Ricardo Gonzalez from Peru) also think in terms of more long-term evolutionary transformations as humanity grows organically assuming knowledge and responsibility. But the fact that many alleged experiencers do think in terms of shorter time frames (for example proselytizing about an impending "ascension" into the “4th or 5th dimensions") possibly shows that interpretation problems take place when someone adapted to experience life in a denser (and allegedly slower) time frame has an intense meeting with a being in lighter and speedier one. A sense of urgency or of events already happening probably installs in the mind leading to predictions of events already happening during the contact experience but not as quickly in our ‘denser’ timeline.
If there is coherence in the contact messages, if they share a pattern among sincere individuals, if it is perhaps objectively validated by implants, UFO photos, videos, scientific instruments, or collective sightings, it will not make sense to simply dismiss them. Recognition of contact experiences with non-human or UAP intelligences can move the conversation beyond (once again) officially recognizing what had already been semi-officially recognized 70 years ago: That the phenomenon is unknown and intelligent.
Nourishing a specific relationship with a specific non-human civilization willing to communicate on a more egalitarian basis (as some of us now treat ravens, dolphins, gorillas, and octopi) rather than to (naturally and understandably) treat us as inferior creatures might be the best way to promote our evolutionary dialogue. But – for now - they might have to emphasize eliciting from most of us some elementary responses that we share with them. In other words, if the UAP intelligences are able to manipulate spacetime and to transfer themselves across physical and non-physical levels of reality (perhaps by means of a psychic programming reorganizing physical potentials), and, if more advanced levels of development transcend but also include key elements of previous ones, we may mostly be able to understand them through shared fundamentals such as feelings of fear or of love rather than through their advanced transdimensional concepts. Moreover, if they transferred their technical know-how to us, we would probably distance ourselves from their mental and spiritual development by not comporting ourselves properly under any post egoic, inter reality “rules of engagement” perhaps demanded by a cosmic community with those capacities.
In fact, being willing to “meet the challenge” of contact as a wiser, unified species might involve a gradual developmental process beginning by recognizing our personal and cultural shadows, developing a post-materialist science, including our children in educational and social-support programs promoting post-formal adult development, finding shared truths behind different worldviews and religions, consolidating post-ethnocentric values, and nourishing multidimensional (multi reality) awareness of subtle realms. In other words, “meeting the challenge” of “making sense” of a more advanced intelligence so aptly manipulating ‘reality’ forces us to evolve, actualizing the highest human potentials and coming together culturally and socially. The UFO with its interactive aspect is a multidimensional, persistent, “hyper object” that cannot be ignored.
Interestingly, the anonymous, scientifically authorized, FREE survey and MUFON's experiencer survey also surprisingly showed that (according to most experiencer-contactees) there was a predominance of contact experiencers (even those with elements of traditional abduction events) who deemed their experiences as benevolent and who underwent positive ethical changes due to such experiences. These important results contradicted the excessive emphasis place on negativity and manipulation by researchers that filtered whom they would add to their limited database according to their own biases. Luckily, a few professional individuals like Mary Rodwell have also been collecting testimonies from individuals (including children) that claim benign, consciousness-raising, evolutionary motivations behind most otherworldly entities.
So, what do we need to focus on to understand the ‘others’, provided such thing is possible? In the Mission Rahma contact network predominantly from Latin America it has been about working together with specific civilizations. To avoid the typical contact pattern by which - even benevolent interlopers - still treat us like child-like, immature or inferior beings we would – as learned from the genuine aspects of the Rahma contact experiences – need to develop a long-term working relationship with specific UAP intelligences keen to work with us in specific projects or ‘missions’. If, by doing so, they also consistently and objectively treat us according to human standards of conscious free will respect and decency, our subjective and objective assessments will match and we will probably have a clearer understanding of at least some of the ‘others’ and, by extension, most of those ‘others’ associated with them.
* Coinciding with the theme of this edition of JAR Magazine, The Pulse recently published an article titled “Stanford & Virginia School of Medicine Are Studying “Experiencers” and written by Gautam Peddada. It begs the question that if serious academic institutions and scientists are publicly opening up to the study of contact, psychic, and multidimensional “experiencers”, why would most ufologists still continue divorcing themselves from this type of research? They could run the risk of becoming obsolete if (after further official confirmation of an intelligent UAP or UFO presence) the scientific community that once rejected their field now becomes actively interested both in the “nuts & bolts” and in the “contact, psychic, multidimensional” aspects.
We cannot waste more time under an “either-or” mindset. I actually agree with the article’s significant concluding words: “The findings and data being gathered definitely convey a tale of interest and mystery about how the cosmos works and our role within it” https://thepulse.one/2021/07/10/stanford-virginia-school-of-medicine-are-studying-experiencers/