Published On: July 22nd, 2024Categories: Making Contact

This is an only the Introduction. To order the complete book go to: https://www.amazon.com/Making-Contact-Preparing-Realities-Extraterrestrial/dp/1250773946

Introduction to MAKING * CONTACT by Alan Steinfeld

Prologue

There are seasons in human affairs, of inward and outward revolution, when new depths seem to be broken up in the soul, when new wants are unfolded in multitudes, and a new and undefined good is thirsted for. There are periods when the principles of experience need to be modified, when hope and trust and instinct claim a share in the guidance of affairs, when in truth, to dare is the highest wisdom.

—William Ellery Channing, abolitionist and author of The Union, 1844

Let’s face it, human civilization has been awash with stunning achievements in the arts and sciences, coupled with the most horrendous atrocities that a species can inflict upon itself. We are now at a crossroads where, as the poet and abolitionist William Channing stated above, “New wants are unfolded in multitudes.” These wants demand freedom from tyranny, dogma, and the lies that have enslaved the human race. We have lived with a hidden history that has resulted in a crisis in “the season of human affairs” such as war with each other, the Earth, and ourselves. To “modify the principles of experience” we need to abolish these enslavements and rectify the falsehoods about who we are and our place in the cosmos. Now is the time when “thirsting for an undefined good” will lead us to “a season of inward and outward revolution” in the quality of thought and levels of perception. Now is the time when greed and manipulation can no longer threaten our existence. This will only come when we transcend our self-imposed limitations and connect to a greater truth, which has always meant greater freedom. This is a book by and about people with a passion to take us beyond the confining ideas of a universe devoid of life. Their mission is the push for an expanded recognition of life on, above, and beyond the Earth, because they instinctually know that “to dare is the highest wisdom.”


The New Story

It is time to tell a better story about the whole pantheon of the unknown, their gods, miracles, angels, demons, aliens, and mysterious objects in the sky. Jeffrey Kripal, The Super Natural

One of the first writers to envision making contact with an alien race was H. G. Wells in 1895 with his earth-shattering novel, War of the Worlds. Years later in a more reflective mood he declared: “Civilization is in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.” The veteran UFOlogist, Stanton Friedman, use to suggest that no one wants to deal with a species whose favorite past-time is “tribal warfare”. Indeed, human history has been full of an ongoing series of aggression, hatred, and genocide leading to disaster. “Dis-aster” meaning in the ancient Greek “ill-fated star” has blocked the inclusion of other starry intelligences into our historical narrative. This exclusion is an out-of-date story creating an intolerable condition of global decay. We are at a juncture in the chronicles of civilization where we must say: “Enough! It is time for something new and unknown to serve the greater humanity.

The contemporary spiritual philosopher Deepak Chopra said: Humans think only of what is good for me and mine without realizing that me and mine is entangled with all of existence. We cannot separate the earth from its greater cosmic environment . . . What is needed is a new story? If we don’t create that story, which includes knowing our connection to all of existence, we are done![ii] This is the present crisis: Disconnection from nature and each other has led to a narcissistic conquest to own what was never ours in the first place. Such abuses cannot be separated from the prevailing insistence of scientism (the belief of science, not the facts) that life on this paradise of a planet is an anomaly.

The new story of humanity remains to be written, but its prologue can be found in these pages. Hints of its upcoming chapters are sourced by the fact that we live in a time of astronomical discovery with an abundance of exo-Earthlike planets coming into view. Perhaps the antiquated science-based pronouncement that we are “the lonely freaks of a lifeless universe” is coming to an end. In this context Arthur C. Clarke declared: “Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
As anxious bystanders of either possibility, we have a choice, like the storyteller in The Life of Pi. After being questioned by his inquisitors about whether his seaward journey with a tiger was real or not, he answered: “Which story do you like better? The one with the tiger or the one being adrift in a vast ocean all alone?” Well for us, I like the story “with” better. It offers a greater adventure of spirit, stretching us beyond our comfort zone, affording us the rewards of untapped creative thought. Potential encounters with other life-forms throughout the universe invites a grander perspective to be envisioned ourselves and our place in the vastness of space. This is the evolutionary outlook at the source of Making* Contact. The writings here present an enriching prospect that each of us are a part of a greater cosmic ecology. By laying out the likelihood that the universe is teeming with pulsating intelligence we may find the courage to push beyond our barbarisms towards a prospective future and live free, equal, and joyful.

Limited Worldview

Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. —John Dewey

The suspicion that other sentient beings exist beyond our common humanity is not a new story. It is one of the oldest in history. Unfortunately, it has been institutionalized by religion or a mechanistic-based science. In both cases, unfounded hyperbole has led us to a myopic view of reality. Conversely, what is expressed in these pages is based on empirical evidence—as it has been formally put forth as a means to gathering information that is not the results of laboratory settings. Rather, the information supplied in the present volume comes from direct observation and experience.

The volume argues that the conditioned reasoning of a materialistic worldview has not gotten us very far in understanding the what and who” of UFOs. We cannot make sense of the seemingly irrational evidence that lay outside our ordinary realm of knowledge. Preliminary considerations address three different levels of inquiry: First, could life, and for that matter intelligent life, exist elsewhere in the universe? Second, have more advanced intelligences visited and interacted with humans? Third, has an unsuspected presence been part of an untold story of humanity? If so, does this mean that we humans are part of something greater?

Other Worlds

This investigation into the unreasonable begins with the reasonable statement about whether life is unique to Earth. Metrodorus of Chios was a student of Democritus, the man who first formulated the idea about atoms being the smallest measure of the microcosm in the fourth century B.C. His younger colleague looked at the other end of the spectrum, the macrocosm suggesting to consider the Earth as the only populated world in the infinity of space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field of seeds, only one plant will grow.”[iv] Advances in the telescope during the nineteenth century led to widespread public speculation about life throughout the universe, known as “the Plurality of Worlds.” One radical premise was proposed in 1844 by the American writer Edgar Allen Poe in the short story “The Mesmeric Revelation.” Poe expressed the idea that there are worlds which contain “other rudimental thinking beings than man.”Rudimental’ meaning basic physical beings. Taking a more spiritual angle he continued, “the multitudinous conglomeration of rare matter into nebulæ, planets, suns, and other bodies are for the sole purpose of supplying pabulum for the idiosyncrasy of the organs of an infinity of rudimental beings . . . Each of these is tenanted by a distinct variety of organic, rudimental, thinking creatures. In all, the organs vary with the features of the place tenanted. Whether or not such “thinking creatures . . . [actually] tenant a variety” of planets cannot be confirmed at this point, but evidence for the plurality of worlds is more conceivable today than it has ever been. For instance, 99 percent of astrobiologists believe life exists somewhere in the cosmos. The current chairman of astrobiology for the Library of Congress, Steven Dick, has said: “I think the underlying principle is [that] the laws of physics and biology are universal . . . What has happened here is likely to have happened out there. The universe is an enormous place, too vast for life not to exist somewhere else.[vi] This agrees with the views of one of the most well-respected scientists of our time, known for his contribution to Superstring theory, Michio Kaku: “I think it’s inevitable that we’re going to find evidence not just of life but also of intelligent life because our galaxy has perhaps billions of Earth-like planets.”This is not a confirmation of extraterrestrial life, but an educated assertion. Dick concludes: “The idea of life out there is very much at the forefront. The question is what are the implications?

The Unbelieved Evidence

“We may be in the universe as dogs and cats are in our libraries, seeing the books and hearing the conversation, but having no inkling of the meaning of it all.” William James, The Variety of Religious Experiences

The book comes as a guide for shifting our conceptions about organic intelligence in the infinity of space. The sighting of strange objects in the sky and the notion of visitors coming to us from beyond this world stretches back to the dawning of civilization. Still, the phenomenon remains unacknowledged by sincere scientists searching for life on the most distant stars. They have ignored such publications as Cheryl and Linda Costa’s book, UFO Sightings Desk Reference: United States of America 2001–2015, which presents a compilation of more than 100,000 sightings of unusual objects in the sky within that fifteen-year period. A reviewer of the book for The New York Times, Ralph Blumenthal, wrote: “People are seeing UFOs everywhere, and this book proves it.[ix] Moreover, the indexed reports reference. My estimate is that only a fraction of sightings are reported, implying that actual observations of strange craft are most likely significantly higher. Despite the great number of UFO witnesses, most scientists, like humans in general, remain attached to their fixed beliefs, because their beliefs identify who they think they are. Aware of this fabricated sense of identity – a more enlightened physicist, Max Planck declared: “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it . . .[x] Informally Planck’s statement is often paraphrased as “science moves forward one funeral at a time.

Our attachment to personal beliefs has not changed since 1689 when John Locke wrote the essay Concerning Human Understanding: “Earthly minds, like mud walls, resist the strongest batteries: and though perhaps sometimes the force of a clear argument may make some impression, they nevertheless stand firm and keep out the enemy, truth, that would captivate or disturb them. Locke’s explanation is probably the best reason why most astrophysicists stand by the 1950 proclamation of The Fermi Paradox. This was proposed when the physicist Enrico Fermi, a pioneer in nuclear physics, realized that despite the uniformity of elements throughout the galaxy we have yet to meet an alien civilization. He shouted to his colleagues in exasperation: “Where is everybody?” A response to this sort of ignorance came from one of the foundational researchers into alien–human contact. Budd Hopkins often said that the job of science is “to investigate the unexplained, not explain the uninvestigated.” Nevertheless, the rallying cry of astronomers since Fermi has remained. Fermi asserted that “any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonize the entire galaxy.” But what if an ET civilization was not interested in colonization? Or better yet—what if the human race is exactly that, an outpost colony of an advanced alien race? Of course, Fermi and his fellow scientists must have missed the 1952 memo from the CIA’s Science Intelligence Deputy Director who acknowledged that there are “numerous other sightings of lights or objects which either in configuration or performance do not resemble any known aerial vehicle or explainable natural phenomena. Nevertheless, since Fermi the lot of mainstream scientists including those who have fruitlessly searched the heavens of the well-funded SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) organization, still claim that we are alone. As recently as 2017, Space.com republished an article titled 12 Reasons Why We Cannot Find Aliens. The central question remains: If professional astronomers are looking “out there” for life, then how can hundreds of thousands of people (contactees) worldwide claim contact with beings so much closer to home, literally at times, in their own backyards? This book directly addresses the reconciliation between the apparent lack of scientific evidence about life elsewhere with that corroboration from expert investigators and experiencers who are indeed being visited and interacting with other beings almost daily.
One explanation for the divergent views comes from the paradigm pundit Ken Wilber, who writes that, “Different worldviews create not just different ideas about the world, they actually create different worlds altogether.” This is because people can only perceive what they believe exists. A perfect example came at the opening of Darryl Anka’s essay on page 191 with “the paradox” about SETI looking for radio waves coming from some distant planet, while we ourselves have moved well beyond the radio age. Nevertheless, there is a shift underway by innovative scientists like Avi Loeb, astronomer at Harvard university. His 2021 book, Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligence Life Beyond Earth, offers ample evidence that the object which flew by the Earth in October 2017 was an interstellar alien craft checking out our solar system. Loeb stated in a New York Post article: Some people do not want to discuss the possibility that there are other civilizations out there. They believe we are special and unique. I think it’s a prejudice that should be abandoned……” Loeb explained how the skeptics are bending over backwards to assign natural origins to the object… “it’s weird properties don’t stand up to scrutiny.”The article goes on to say that the acceptance of an alien race making contact would trigger a serious search… leading us to scour the moon and Mars, for example, for debris that might have crash-landed thousands or millions of years ago. Loeb concludes that “It would put us in perspective. If we are not alone, are we the smartest kids on the block? If there was a species that eliminated itself through war or changing the climate, we can get our act together and behave better. Instead, we are wasting a lot of resources on Earth fighting each other and other negative things that are a big waste.” The relevance of Loeb’s forward-looking hypothesis defies the reasoning of the material-based science belief which surmises life is an anomaly in a lifeless universe.
The present collection is about entering a brave new world that gives insight into the workings of a greater life-affirming creation, by overcoming our socially conditioned skepticism. A way to consider without prejudice new and unusual situations originated with the philosopher Thomas Kuhn, a mentor to one of the prominent writers in this collection, Professor John Mack. Kuhn’s thesis on The Structure of Scientific Revolutions states that the linchpin for conceptual changes must be the consideration of anomalies that have been disregarded in the present paradigm. According to Kuhn, anomalous discoveries are written off in the current scientific view because they challenge its basic assumptions. Kuhn wrote: “In many ways, the established paradigm is the enemy of discovery. An anomaly may not be perceived for what it is, precisely because it is not expected[xix] Anomalies are irrefutable evidence that the paranormal researcher Charles Fort called “damned facts.” “Damned” because science just wants them to go away; they don’t fit into their well-formulated order of the world. As such, anomalous occurrences such as UFOs are uncategorizable in the current paradigm and have remained unidentifiable for almost a hundred years. Fort contended that the lack of knowledge about odd occurrences is covered-over by the authorities with terminology. The best example of this comes when from calling something inexplicable in the sky a UFO (an unidentified flying object) as if we know what that is. However, identifying something as “unidentified” is double speak and really means nothing at all.

Conclusively, in the 1930s the progressive psychologist Trigant Burrow said that “When organic truth is denied its expression in the realm of reality, it will invent its expression in the realm of fantasy.] If we take Burrow’s insight into the nature of the psyche and apply it to the collective awareness of the species. we can see why some of the highest-grossing films of all times have been about off-world beings. This includes the Star Wars series, Avatar, and the Spielberg classics – ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind; are obvious representatives of an organic truth whose expression in reality have been denied.

Disclosure
The denials vanished on December 16, 2017. Before that date it was okay to call anyone who believed in UFOs “a crackpot.” The hour was struck when The New York Times turned the tide for a serious public awakening. The front-page headline proclaimed: “The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program.” The article discussed the Senate’s secret budget of $22 million to study what they called Unexplained Aerial Phenomena. Of course, unacknowledged government programs into the phenomena have existed since the Roswell crash of 1947 with studies like Project Blue Book and the Condon Report. Even so, the Times article stated that in 2007 the Pentagon began the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP). The online version of the article provided an official video released by the Pentagon of Navy pilots chasing a flying object that has been called a “Tic Tac” due to its shape and white color.

The formal announcement was greeted by some UFO investigators as the long-awaited “Disclosure.” The proclamation was driven home when former AATIP investigator, Luis Elizondo, said publicly: “I think we’re at the point now where we’re beyond reasonable doubt that these things exist. We know they’re there—we have some of the greatest technology in the world that has confirmed their existence.” While most researchers affirmed the importance of that “disclosure moment,” others felt it doesn’t become real until we have “confirmation.”— This would be the action by the government of rolling out the alien bodies and the scavenged spaceships to provide the hardcore evidence of off-world visitations. Still, we moved a step closer to that on July 23, 2020, when The New York Times dropped another bombshell. It reported that the astrophysics consultant to the Pentagon’s AATIP program, Eric W. Davis, gave a series of classified briefings to members of the Senate Armed Services, Intelligence Committees, and the Defense Department about “crashed retrievals of unexplained off-world vehicles not made on this earth.” In a follow-up story, CNN reported that Senators Marco Rubio and Mark Warner confirmed that they were given information about the existence of advanced aerial vehicles of unknown origin having visited the Earth. On the heels of that article came the announcement from the Pentagon’s Department of Defense that further investigations are underway with the creation of the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF). Its ongoing mission is “to detect, analyze, and catalog UAPs in order to gain insight into the nature and origins of UAPs, and if they pose a threat to national security.”

The Intelligence
Such slow-leaking government’s acknowledgments of “visitors” is only half the game. As in most sporting events, the defensive team (as in the Department of Defense) is met by the offensive players. What lays at the heart of this volume is the nature of the ‘offenders’ and their confounding actions. Extraterrestrials (if that is what they are) who might at some point present themselves publicly has formally been called “Contact.” Unlike most opposing players, “confirmation” verses “contact” appears to be less at odds and more in collusion than it might first seem. Grant Cameron’s The Theory Wow, pages 26-46, explains that the objective of both sides is not to shock people with an obvious presence but rather to plant seeds in our minds about a greater life in the cosmos.

Former Air Force officer and UFO advocate Robert Hastings theorizes that the steadied approach on the part of “the ET intelligence” is for a slow and mitigated acceptance of other worldly beings into our fragile notions of reality. In 2010 Hastings hosted a press conference with former military officers, testifying about UFO sightings over nuclear weapon bases. He eloquently summed up what might be the underlying strategy of the visitors: “I am of the opinion that whoever they are. They have enough sense to know that if they interject themselves into our reality in one fell swoop, there could be very dire repercussions. Whereas, on the other hand, if they engage in an on again off again, cat and mouse behavior, that allows a slow psychological conditioning of humankind to their reality and to the presence of themselves. Then, when open contact, if that indeed is in the cards, occurs there will be far less trauma.

Not a Spectator Sport
Every major competition of opposing teams is for the benefit of those watching on the sidelines. Yet, Cameron emphasizes this is not a spectator sport. Those who seem like innocent bystanders are of direct concern to the phenomena. In his essay, he claims that if someone sees a UFO it is not by chance; every sighting and contact experience is intentional. Whatever the players’ game strategy is—something is certainly appearing in the skies on every continent to an increasing degree, and interacting with the human population.

This is one reason I regard knowing the truth about UFOs as serious business. The act of making contact seems to be a convergence of all three sides to create a coherent synthesis of awareness that will bring us (and maybe ‘them’) to another level of perception. Whitley Strieber expressed this understanding in the final chapter of The Super Natural: “They [the visitors] might need us to believe in them before they can become invested in our reality. If so, then the whole vast UFO and close encounter experience could be a sort of military operation designed to open the door in our minds from their side.[xxvi] The mission of this book is to provide a key to that door from our side which will bring us closer to the threshold of making formal contact.

Introduction to the Contributors

Down how many roads among the stars must man propel himself in search of the final secret? The journey is difficult, immense, at times impossible, yet that will not deter some of us from attempting it. —Loren Eiseley, The Immense Journey

Even though the phenomena stretches back to annals of recorded history, the brief background I’ve just laid out is enough of a foundation to contextualize the following essays. What will be covered is the widest overview ever proposed of the multifaceted phenomena. More significantly, what I feel makes this anthology particularly exciting is the way the developmental structure of the essays as they progress from observation to knowledge to experience. Thus, the reader is able to proceed from the outer shell of material phenomena and advance inwards towards emotional reflections, culminating in an understanding of how to merge our consciousness with beings beyond the human realm.

In this respect what is found in the following pages is not from people for whom the idea of “making contact” is a passing curiosity. The complexity of the subject being explored is by some of the most intelligent and adventurous people I have ever met; people not handicapped by ridicule, fear, or contradictory reports. These pioneers have forged a collection of unmatched insights into the most bewildering circumstances humankind has ever faced. Many of the writers have dedicated their professional lives to exacting as much truth as they can convey about an enigma that has yet to yield all its secrets. Nevertheless, such actions have led some of the writers to face serious threats and open distain for speaking about their research and experiences. Yet such occupational hazards have not prevented those in this collection from publicly stating what they feel is of utmost concern to our human destiny and the fate of the planet. They have stood firm in their resolve to step into the unknown for the sake of knowledge. What is most valued from these creative individuals are their original and well-informed insights whose purpose will catapult us towards an inconceivable future. They know that “to dare is the highest wisdom.

Chapters 1–3: Investigators

Specifically, the development of the text begins with THE INVESTIGATORS. For lack of a better term, these are people who look into the government cover-ups concerning the greatest secret never told. This area of study involves the “nuts and bolts” hardware of the phenomena and addresses why the military insists on keeping the hardcore UFO evidence from the public. This level of inquiry can be equated to J. Allen Hynek’s well-known classification of Close Encounters of the First Kind, which refers to only the sightings of unidentified flying objects.

Chapter 1: Nick Pope kicks off this compilation by laying out in the first part of his essay “The Government Mindset” why top-secret materials are being kept from the public in the first place. As a government insider, Nick worked for more than two decades as the assistant to the British Ministry of Defense (MoD) assigned to researching and investigating the UFO phenomenon. He says that “by using this inside knowledge what I hope to give is an informed assessment of what has been going on in the United States.” Getting down to the nuts and bolts, he talks about the need of “intelligence” strategies in evaluating possible alien craft and why the MoD considered UAP encounters as a real public threat. He also talks about the agency’s investigation into the technology that extraterrestrial visitors would require to get here, and the possibility of back engineering this technology. Although still under an oath of secrecy from his government, he admits this essay “is easily the most detailed account that I’ve given of my time investigating UFOs for the MoD, sharing my direct personal experience of the intelligence assessment of . . . UFO work.” In the last section of the essay “Our Future Among the Stars,” Nick speculates on “a roadmap to the stars,” which is what might be in store for the human race with advanced engineering. This sort of optimism advances the reader toward a next level of consideration and leads into the next essay.

Chapter 2: Grant Cameron takes us deeper into the mechanics of the phenomena with “The Theory of WOW.” In this essay, he lays out the strategy that the intelligence behind the phenomena might be taking to wake-up a sleeping, planetary population. Instead of the cliché about “landing on the White house lawn,” he feels UFOs are performing spectacular aerial maneuvers to get people’s attention so they can exclaim: “Wow, there must be more to reality than what I have been told.” Their innumerable appearances, although fleeting at times, is to shake loose the workings of our conditioned mind and help us wonder about the larger scope of the cosmos. He asserts that if we truly understood the enormity of what we are facing we would realize that this is “the Super Bowl of all stories.” In recent years Grant has moved from the “nuts and bolts” investigations toward research on people who are “making contact.” He has often said in in interviews and that feels that while “the story will be eventually be told by government officials, it is the experiencers who have the direct knowledge on the subject.

Chapter 3: Dr. J. J. Hurtak and Dr. Desiree Hurtak combine their knowledge of astronomy, environmental science, and UFO history to give an assessment of “Extraterrestrials and Multidimensional Nonlocality Reality.” The overview starts with various technological developments that will help us in “making contact.” Their organization, The Academy for Future Science, researches advances in technology that we as a civilization need to develop for interstellar travel to become a reality. This includes the use of wormholes, star gates, and teleportation. Even though Dr. J. J. Hurtak was one of the first to present evidence of a crash retrieval spacecraft with photographs of alien bodies to the world press in 1979, the Hurtaks realize that the phenomenon encompasses more than the physical manifestations. Their research looks further into the likelihood that life itself may have originated beyond the Earth, and that nonphysical contact may include the presence of higher spiritual beings. Speculating on the nature of consciousness, they feel it is irrevocably connected to a nonlocal source, as quantum physics is beginning to understand. They conclude that this evolved perspective is the most sophisticated way to understand nature of all intersecting realities. In developing a right relationship between us and a universal consciousness we will be able to travel through the multidimensional realms of creation.

Chapters 4–5: Researchers

THE RESEARCHERS again is a label that does not necessarily constitute the entire scope of the writers’ work. It is only used to categorize the present material. These are people who look into the psychological and sociological implications of the phenomena. This includes various degrees of ET involvement and how each person’s interaction can only be described from the level of awareness they are currently at. Presented in this section are two of the most respected minds in the field. Professor John Mack and Linda Moulton Howe, both agree that there are aspects to the non-human beings that seem to connected to a more harmonious “implicate,” “order.” This extended look at the phenomena can be classified as Close Encounters of the Second and Third Kind, investigating the ramifications of the alien presence.

Chapter 4: In “Contact in the Implicate Order,” Linda Moulton Howe dives deep into a personal accounting of forty-plus years of research into the complexities of her ongoing investigations. What puts Linda in a unique position is that from her diligent Earthfiles.com reports, she can draw government whistleblowers into her trusted confidence. Her writing includes an extract of an eight-hour meeting with an unnamed official from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Washington, DC. One of the facts that the DIA revealed to Linda is that at least three competing ET races have participated in the evolutionary development of Homo sapiens on planet Earth. However, Linda agrees with the Hurtaks’ speculation that humans, given the chance to know the truth about who we really are, could achieve a greater destiny of mind and soul.

Chapter 5: Having Dr. John Mack’s Studying Intrusions from the Subtle Realm: How Can We Deepen Our Knowledge?” is a real coup for this collection. The previously unpublished essay granted by the John E. Mack Institute profiles the unique position the late Professor Mack maintained in the study of those who interacted with the phenomena. As the head of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and with expertise in child and adolescent psychology as well as the psychology of religion, he helped many people cope with the reality of their contact experiences. Upon initially hearing about alien abductions, he considered the idea a form of mental illness. Only after conducting a large number of his own interviews with experiencers he concludes in his essay: “No case has revealed that behind the reported [alien] experience is some kind of strange depression, or child abuse, or something else.” Mack claimed that “abductions” were a logical development from his earlier work, which “resides in the matter of identity—who we are in the deepest and broadest sense . . . the reported experience of the witness, and our clinical assessment of the genuineness of that report, may be the only means by which we can judge the reality of the experience.[xxvii] Despite his tragic passing in 2004, his work remains as current as ever in evaluating the effects of phenomena on the human psyche. Mack suggests that the very idea of alien abductions undermines the fundamental paradigm of the Western mind. His essay goes further in validating a nonrational, intuitive approach to reality.

Chapters 6–11: Experiencers (Abductees and Contactees)

If the thousands of people who have already been “making contact” were to come forward and be heard it would totally grab the attention of our civilization. This is where the text gets highly personal with writers sharing the intimate details of their interactions with other beings. In this regard, Grant Cameron comments that if we really want to know what is going on, we have to talk to the people directly involved with the other-worldly beings. This group can be broken down into two sub-categories: Abductees and Contactees.

THE ABDUCTEES refer to people who claim to have been taken by aliens against their will for various invasive purposes such as genetic manipulation and vibrational upgrades. Alien abduction is considered a close encounter of the fourth kind. Unfortunately, this action has sometimes resulted in PTSD effects. Still, in many cases, not all, the feelings about forced abductions seem to shift later on in abductees’ lives. Many people come to realize that the disturbing events have increased the level of awareness to their lives that they may not have achieved any other way. This has manifested for many abductees as higher intelligence, increased creativity, psychic development, and healing powers.

Chapter 6: Whitley Strieber’s “The Return of the Visitors” is an excerpt from his 2019 book A New World. Whitley is probably the most well-known abductee in the world and one of the most profound thinkers on the topic. His breakthrough book on the subject, Communion, in 1987 was not only a worldwide best seller but it gave the planet the iconic face of an extraterrestrial. His writings since that time have been a continuous effort to contextualize his relationship with what he terms “the visitors.” In this contribution he looks at the all-encompassing nature of “making contact”. He offers a new way to integrate encounter experiences in terms of human awareness, but the caveat comes from the source of the title A New World. It seems that the United States Army Colonel Philip J. Corso told Whitley what an alien said to him when he asked what they can offer us. The alien answered, “A new world, if you can take it.” This is not a fearful projection, but rather a challenge to shift the dynamics of human awareness.

Chapter 7: Alan Steinfeld’s Extraordinary Actuality: My Journey to the Stars” is one of the most intimate stories in the collection. It is about my life-long compulsion with outer space. I begin my chapter with my childhood fascination of the stars and my love of science fiction books. In 1987 what I thought was fiction became an actuality, when I experienced my own alien abduction on a cross-country road trip. This changed the direction of my life and academic interests. I became obsessed with all things UFO and ET related. Now, for the first time, I relay my hypnotic regression back to the 1987 abduction and the insights I had about these other beings efforts at “making contact.” As I state in my essay, the dreamlike nature of contact is central to the ET experience. Trying to understand other ways of knowing has led me to look at the nature of perception, what is cognition, and how we can perceive new realities. This search led me around the world interviewing leading thinkers in science, art, and UFOs about the nature of reality. It opened up a spiritual awareness of a cosmic consciousness within me.

Chapter 8:Something Moving” is the writer and performer Henrietta Weekes’s lyrical biographical profile that attempts to communicate what cannot be said in words. The significant factor in the portrayal of her abductions is the way she showcases the nonlinear quality of her experience. Rather than telling us, her prosaic style illuminates the sensorial nature of the ET presence. By relating dream-like memories and fragmented perceptions of her sometimes-fearful encounters, Henrietta stretches the reader to move into the feeling nature of encounters. Her style and phrasing allow a freer and more creative way to sense the multidimensions we all live in. Her language conveys a method to shut down the analytical part of the brain. As John Mack said many times about his research, that the phenomena appears to be beyond the logic of the Western mind. In this way Henrietta demonstrates how to activate new cognitive skills in order to meet these beings on their own terms.

CONTACTEES: Up until this point it is fair to say that the contributions have all been contained within a worldview that may be doubtful to some, but tolerable to many. Contactees, claim their interactions have been supremely intimate, and for the most part see the value of making contact. In some cases these are converted abductees who have discovered the significance of their alien interactions. For instance, the Edgar Mitchel Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial and Extraordinary Encounters (FREE) found that a large majority of the 4,200 experiencers of their online survey, many who had recalled past trauma of contact, years later looked upon their abduction as a beneficial force in their lives. Nevertheless, what I am referring to as “contactees” are generally people who have not suffered the traumatic effects of contact. As opposed to abductees, these people feel their encounters have been with beings who care about humanity, and often contribute to the contactee’s well-being with uplifting, healing, and mind-expanding experiences. Mostly, these people feel that the ETs are here to evolve human civilization so that the Earth may become a more peaceful planet.

The more intimate nature of this section can be classified as “close encounters of a fifth, sixth and seventh kind.” These last few chapters moves the reader towards the integration of the essays. I urge everyone to suspend their judgment of the possible and embrace the work of the next three writers as honest portrayals of their experiences and observations.

Chapter 9: Darryl Anka’s “Telepathic Contact with Extraterrestrial Intelligence” specifically deals with one of the vital topics that was mentioned in seven out of the eight previous essays: the use of mind-to-mind (telepathic) contact as the primary mode of extraterrestrial communication with humans. Darryl is the perfect person to relay this information, because for almost four decades he has had ongoing interaction with an extraterrestrial named Bashar. The entity is known to millions of people worldwide and by allowing Bashar to take full control of his body, Darrly seems to have perfected a telepathic link with an advanced civilization coming to us from 300 years in the future. Furthermore, Bashar is not just a channeled being; he is on a mission with his communications as a “first contact specialist.” The contribution Darryl’s supplies is of own journey working with the extraterrestial in preparing the greater humanity for making contact.

Chapter 10: Mary Rodwell’s “Awakening to Our Cosmic Heritage” is based on her investigations of 3,000 case histories with contactees. To her, “making contact” appears to be a global phenomena, with aliens contributing to the new humans, whom she also refers to as “star children.” Mary affirms there is a wide population of children who exhibit a maturity and wisdom beyond their years. They are known for their telepathic abilities and spiritually insights. Many of the children she quotes in her essay feel emotionally supported by their contact and have the ablity to describe varieties of non-­human visitors as familiar to them as their human family.
Her research explores evidence of contact from a biological, psychological, and historical perspective. Mary feels that all this is part of a “genetic” engineering program to “upgrade” Homo sapiens. Her training as a nurse, midwife, and spiritual counselor has allowed her to look beyond the norm as many of these individuals demonstrate awareness of the nonphysical realms not understood by an older generation. Her work begins with an initial question: “What will humanity look like when we realize we are part of a larger cosmos?” Mary concludes with the sentiment that we are waking up to the truth of our cosmic heritage.

Chapter 11: This collection wraps up with an interview with Caroline Cory on ET Lineages and Human Evolution.” In this discussion with editor Alan Steinfeld, Caroline talks about how to live as someone who has fully assimilated the awareness of other realms into her daily life. While Mary Rodwell talks to children about their messages, Caroline is one of the few people who embodies the ET mindset. In talking about the potential for the new gifts of consciousness she touches on topics mentioned in previous essays, such as multidimensionality, the development of greater sensitivity and increased creativity. Specifically, her personal experiences have witnessed how a galactic grid is linked to our brains, and how we can merge our energy fields with other beings. In acknowledging our lineage from the stars, and the ways to activate the higher potential of our minds – will give the reader valuable tools to move beyond the ordinary into the extraordinary. Caroline closes by sharing how the ET connection is an evolutionary potential that will give us all a more fulfilling human experience.

Reader Beware

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. I do say that space can be explored and mastered without feeding the fires of war, without repeating the mistakes that man has made in extending his writ around this globe of ours. —John F. Kennedy

I have to say none of the above will make sense until there is a suspension of linear reality. Whitely Strieber has made a specific argument in the past that “There is every implication that behind the supposed alien presence, there lies a completely new vision of reality that is at once larger and more accurate than the current rigorously materialistic scientific vision.”[xxix] This is the reasons for the myriad of perspectives being offered. That is to demonstrate that at this juncture in history there has yet to appear a monolithic truth of what “making contact” means. Einstein said: “Whoever sets himself up in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.” For sure something unfathomable is happening in our skies, and there seems to be no comprehensive explanation coming any time soon. But one suggestion to keep in mind is found in The Journal of Scientific Exploration (1992): “The phenomenon of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) presently affords analysis [of] only pieces of a hereto unknown whole reality. Because the whole is not seen or understood, the visible pieces often appear to be irreconcilable with one another and lead to hypotheses which are in conflict.[xxx] This brings us to the point some UFO writers have made that the situation may be too dynamic for the government to admit they don’t understand what is going on. Linda Moulton Howe, commenting on the phenomena’s intricacies, has said after her nearly forty years of investigations: “It is like a hall of mirrors with a quicksand moving floor.” The reason the book is not a straight-forward narrative is that the nature of the phenomena appears to be a mosaic; a myriad of impressions from which the reader can create an educated hunch that adds to the collective cognition of a new era of understanding. Nevertheless, the purpose of this volume is to supply the foundation for interacting with a situation, that asks us to suspend out qualifications of reality and venture into the unknown.

New Knowledge

Let those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign overall —The Gospel of Thomas

In the process of letting go of our past qualifications so that we can formulate a fresh take on the phenomena, we must overcome two obstacles. First is the fact that UFOs and ETs threaten our established way of thinking, because their presence challenges our fundamental conceptions of the world. Our social conditioning wants us to live in a safe, secure and predictable world. Even when something new and more expansive is offered, it is difficult to leave our comfort zone of what we think is real. Reality, as we know and trust, is more solid than the ground beneath our feet. If that is taken away, so are our predictable lives. Therefore, the biggest struggle that readers new and old to the subject have is confronting their own prescribed view of the possible, and not escaping into a stable position whereby they can say: “Oh, now I know what UFOs and ETs are all about.” This sort of conclusion isn’t practical and maybe not even possible. The cultural historian Raymond Williams acknowledged his own resistance to new ideas in his book The Long Revolution: “The effect of this new knowledge seems to me to be of the greatest importance, but I know from my own attempts to absorb it that it is so difficult to grasp and that its application must be met with all kinds of resistance and confusion.[xxxi]

Even after we accept the fact that there are unknown objects in our skies, the second challenge is our capacity to know. I am reminded of what the philosopher Samuel Coleridge said about the nature of existence itself as being “too profound for human insight.” Nevertheless, this has never stopped the best of us, like these admirable authors, from grasping and attempting to communicate what may indeed be beyond the reach of human comprehension. This sort of puzzlement was recently admitted to by the ex-CIA Director talking about UFOs at the end of 2020: “I think some of the phenomena we’re going to be seeing continues to be unexplained and might, in fact, be some type of phenomenon that is the result of something that we don’t yet understand and that could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life,”[xxxii] Nevertheless, this is why I have assembled a team of admirable authors, because this enigma has never stopped the best of them from attempting to grasp and communicate what may indeed be beyond the reach of human comprehension.

In the following offerings I ask the reader to do what a curious John Mack did when first confronting the unbelievable claims of alien abductions. He approached his mentor, Thomas Kuhn, the man who coined the word “paradigm shift,” to advise him on how to evaluate such an unknown situation. Kuhn suggested to just take it all in without trying to fit the information into a current belief system. After a few years of listening to many experiencers, Mack concluded that:

I was dealing with a phenomenon that I felt could not be explained psychiatrically yet was simply not possible within the framework of the Western scientific worldview. My choices then were either, to insist upon a psychological explanation consistent with the prevailing Western scientific ideology. Or . . . open to the possibility that our conscious framework of reality is too limited and that a phenomenon such as this cannot be explained within its ontological parameters. In other words, a new scientific paradigm might be necessary in order to understand what was going on.[xxxiii]

Mack contemplated what the public might soon be forced to contend with: how making contact with non-human intelligence could result in the evaporation of our current worldview, creating global reset, and a cognitive realignment more drastic than the Copernican revolution. If this is true, then the radical nature of this material requires a suspension of belief to take it all in without judgment and afterward make an educated assessment of the situation. The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: “We must accept our reality as vastly as we possibly can. Everything, even the unprecedented, must be possible within it. This is in the end the only kind of courage that is required of us: the courage to face the strangest, most unusual, most inexplicable experiences that can meet us.”[xxxiv]

Hence, if the reader remains available to considerations they will find astonishing possibilities that even the most advanced scientific speculations have yet to embrace. As Henrietta Weekes writes about in her essay, – it was only when she opened herself up to the idea of extraterrestrial contact was she able to discover more of her own mind, more of herself, and the freedom to further her artistic explorations. In this way the adventure of absorbing the sequential development laid out here is to take the reader deeper down the rabbit hole of their own creative thought. In this manner the book is a primer for each of us to fashion a coherent understanding of a situation that has thus far evaded all categorization. And if none of this makes sense, then listen to the wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson who, in the same year Poe wrote The Mesmeric Revelation, 1844, expressed the evolution of a mind confounded by the mysteries”
“The state of science is an index of our self-knowledge. Since everything in nature answers to a [principled] power, if any phenomenon remains brute and dark, it is because the corresponding faculty in the observer is not yet active.”[xxxv] In other words, if the reader has yet to reach a level of self-reflection the phenomena described will remain inconceivable. New faculties of perception can only be achieved by putting aside everything we think, and available ourselves to the creative force of the mind to, sooner or later, synthesize a new way of knowing.

Poiesis
Only by imagination can the world be known. What is needed is not larger and larger telescopes . . . but that the human mind should become increasingly aware of its own creative activity. —Owen Barfield, Poetic Diction

There are a few additional elements to consider before getting to the bulk of the book. The first is to see that “making contact” is a process; an ongoing action. It is not something that has happened or will happen only once. It is happening and will continue to happen as an ongoing revelation of being. In this sense the word “making” is related to the ancient Greek word “poiesis,” meaning to create, as well as the ability to receive new stimuli that had not been previously sensed. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote “poiesis” is synonymous with a “bringing-forth into presence,” an “unveiling” of the unknown.[xxxvii] “Making” (poiesis) is the drive of consciousness to evolve awareness for more inventive possibilities. Our survival depends on seeing a greater reconciliation of life and intelligence. The neurobiologist John Z. Young affirmed this effort because he felt we as a species have been hardwired for ongoing creative advancement. He wrote: “The continuity of life depends on… the continuous invention of new ways of observing. This is man’s special secret of living that the whole race will only be preserved if the individual contributes new inventions to these rules [of seeing]and passes that onto others.

Stretching this sentiment to the possibilities of extraterrestrial existence, Whitley Strieber points out that “it must never be forgotten that contact was not initiated by the visitors. It was initiated by the growing richness of the human mind.[xxxix] In this way reading this book is a destining; an aspiration of our minds to reach outward, while being matched by an equal power to receive new levels of awareness. Even if the information you are about to read defies everything you know, take a chance to venture into the unexplored by giving yourself the freedom to enlarge the context of your thoughts. The linguist Noam Chomsky contemplating the human capacity to know suggested that “new levels of human cognition can only emerge at new levels of awareness.” The linguist Noam Chomsky contemplating our capacity to understand suggested that new levels of human cognition can only emerge at new levels of awareness. In regards to the current topic, I take Chomsky’s sentiment to denote that by extending ourselves toward the unknown, previously unrecognized perception can come into view

The Point of Making * Contact
The universe is not made but is being made continually. It is growing perhaps indefinitely. Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution

One final point concerns the sage words of Professor Mack: “We’re dealing with a phenomenon which violates our sense of reality, and which operates in this gray area between the physical world and the subjective, or mythic or other-realm world. We’re being asked to prove this by the methods of the physical sciences alone. But those methods, in my view, will not yield its secrets, until we discover other ways of knowing. Other ways of knowing demand a suspension of our logical mind. So, while the phenomenon refuses to be known in any comprehensible, rational way, it can be apprehended in a more abstract sense.


Apprehending over comprehending is a movement towards a more open-ended, approximated awareness. It is a shift in how “to know.” For example, the title Making * Contact is a clue to how apprehension can bring forth an expanded and more abstract sense of perception. Where words carry a specific meaning, symbols like the asterisk (*) provide a wider range of significance. It establishes an undefined presence, much like “the visitors” themselves. The writer/philosopher Johanne Goethe contended that symbols are “a living perceptible and instantaneous revelation of the unfathomable.” Their power lay in the ability to convey multiple meanings at once. The use of the * bestows a variety of obvious associations, such as a distant star as the possible origin of extraterrestrial existence. On another level, its placement between “making” and “contact” is like the center point of a compass representing the way consciousness reaches out into all directions. Whatever the reader’s associations with the symbol, it is an initiation into a different cognition; a nonverbal communication. It is a silent transmission from mind to mind, as in telepathy, mentioned in ten out of the eleven essays, standing for “the point” of making contact.

Conclusion
The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things that now lie hidden. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them. Roman writer Lucius Annaeus Seneca, Natural Questions, Book 7 (first century CE)
In addition to all the information stated above, the book arrives at a critical juncture in the government’s ongoing disclosures concerning the reality of UFOs/UAPs. However, as it stands now most scientists, politicians, and mainstream news outlets have no idea what to make of such reports, or the growing number of publicly acknowledged contact experiences occurring on a global scale. The revelations covered here supply the needed clarification on the intent and intelligence behind the phenomena. Such perspectives present a solid foundation for the “preparation” for the supreme challenge ever to confront humanity. This is the reason I ask the reader to absorb as much as they can of the following so that a new mindset can be acquired for the coming era.
Allowing each fragment, no matter how bizarre, to be contemplated welcomes fresh perceptual opportunities to be realized. Find the courage to let go of the known and align with an abstract knowing for a greater destiny to be cognized. A teacher of human potential, Joe Dispenza said, “Knowledge is a precursor to experience. The more knowledge you have, the more prepared you are for the event.[xliii] In this way, what you are about to read as a “the new realities of extraterrestrial existence” is not a substitute for experience—it is a primer for one. Let the words liberate the infinitude of the human mind, where the principles of experience can be modified to allow a new story of humanity to unfold. Now is the time to conceive the inconceivable, indulge in Extra-Ordinary adventure of being and take a peek into forever.

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