Are "Alien Close Encounters" More Psychic Than "Nuts and Bolts" Affairs?

When asked to describe a typical story of a "UFO close encounter" or "alien close encounter," the average man might tend to think of a very "nuts and bolts" kind of experience.  Maybe he might imagine some metallic space ship appearing, with some human abductee being taken into a spaceship. Then he might imagine strange-looking creatures using physical equipment on an abductee.  

But according to the 2018 book "Beyond UFOs: The Science of Consciousness & Contact with Non Human Intelligence," UFO close encounters may often be more spiritual or psychic than such stereotypical ideas. FREE is the Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial and Extraordinary Experiences. Early in the book we read this about a survey of people claiming such close encounters:

"FREE's research suggests that the physical aspects are but a small fraction of the attributes associated with these complex manifestations. Indeed, it is the persuasive non-physicality, the parapsychological and other paranormal aspects, that comprise the majority of survey respondents' experiences. We firmly believe that the field of parapsychology needs to take note and,  instead of remaining distant from the UAP phenomenon, the field needs to embrace it." 

Next in the book we read an interesting hypothesis. Using the term NIH for "non-human intelligence," the book states this:

"FREE hypothesizes that types of contact with NIH (contact via NDEs, OBEs, UAP Contact, Remote Viewing, Channeling, communication with ghosts/spirits, Hallucinogenic Shamanic Journeys, Telepathic Contact, sightings of Orbs, PSI, and other types of 'paranormal' Contact with NIH) might actually be one phenomenon that should not be studied separately. We call all of the ways that humans have pierced the veil and have had contact with NIH the 'Contact Modalities'...We firmly believe that cross comparative academic research on 'Experiencers' of the Contact Modalities may provide insight into the validity of various models of consciousness. Once the necessary cross comparative research has been undertaken among the various Contact Modalities, numerous commonalities will be derived that are shared by many of the experiencers of the Contact Modalities."

That's quite a mouthful, and to aid anyone confused by this "alphabet soup," let me explain some of the terms used:

• "NDE" means "near-death experience."
• "OBE" means "out-of-body experience," a type of experience which most commonly occurs near death, but which can also occur in those not near death. 
• "UAP Contact" means contact (visual or otherwise) with Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (another term for UFOs). 
• "Remote Viewing" is a reported ability to observe in a paranormal fashion distant locations.
• "Channeling" is when someone speaks (often in an unusual voice) in an anomalous way, and later claims that the words came not from his own mind but from some other person's mind (living or dead).  A very similar term is "voice mediumship." 
• "Hallucinogenic Shamanic Journeys" can occur after someone takes a drug or uses a natural substance (such as certain mushrooms), and may then report seeing otherwordly beings. 
• "Sightings of Orbs" sometimes occurs visually (as in the 32 cases described here), but the most common related experience is photography of hard-to-explain orbs (as shown here, here and here). 
• "Psi" is a general term for human "sixth sense" abilities such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition and mind-over-matter. 

The hypothesis that all these very diverse things are "one phenomenon" is rather hard to believe, although it may be that some of these things are strongly interrelated.  The idea that such things should be studied collectively is probably a wise one.  At least, people studying one anomalous phenomena should study many other types of anomalous phenomena, without raising artificial barriers restricting what they study. 

From the Facebook site here

Some of the "stick to your specialty" research habits of anomaly investigators make no sense.  For example:

• UFO researchers are very interested in things reported in the sky or reports of close encounters that might have been spaceships from other planets; and they focus almost exclusively on events occurring after 1940.  Such researchers seem to have almost no interest in the 120+ years of voluminous reports of paranormal phenomena made between 1820 and 1940.  That doesn't make sense. 
• Parapsychology researchers are very interested in experimental evidence for ESP and also reports of spontaneous ESP experiences. But they don't seem to be interested in studying reports of ESP occurring in UFO encounters.  That doesn't make sense. 
• SETI scientists (often radio astronomers) are intensely interested in discovering anomalies in deep space that might indicate extraterrestrial intelligence. But such astronomers (for example Seth Shostak) seem to have zero interest in studying evidence for earthly anomalies (such as UFO/UAP sightings) that may indicate the earthly presence of extraterrestrial visitors. 
• UFO researchers are very interested in photos of anomalous objects in the sky that could be extraterrestrial spaceships. But they seem to have no interest in studying photos of anomalous orbs in the sky (or mysterious orbs taken indoors) that do not appear to be extraterrestrial spaceships.  This makes little sense, because such orb photos may actually seem to show signs of intelligence, such as my photos of strongly repeating stripe patterns in mysterious orbs, or my photos of 800+ mysterious striped orbs.  It's as if there was some researcher principle such as "I'm interested in inexplicable things in the sky, but only if it could be a spaceship," or maybe "I'm interested when humanoid creatures are photographed in your home, but not other inexplicable phenomena photographed in your home."  We should remember that extraterrestrials might be millions of years more advanced than us, and (having powers beyond our imagination) might make themselves shown to us through 1001 ways other than "nuts and bolts" spaceships. 
• Wishing to attract interest from mainstream professors, and realizing that so many mainstream senselessly refuse to accept abundant evidence for psi phenomena such as telepathy, a UFO researcher might downplay psychic or paranormal aspects of a UFO report.  For example, the UFO incident in Ruwa, Zimbawe in which children reported telepathic contact with mysterious visitors may be described without mentioning the report of telepathy. 
• A UFO researcher may be very interested in some reported "other-worldly encounter" with some mysterious "shining being" as long as the person having the encounter reports the being as being an extraterrestrial. But the moment the witness claims the "shining being" was a ghost or a spirit or an angel, the UFO researcher will lose all interest. Similarly, a researcher with strong conventional religious beliefs may be very interested in such an account, but only if the witness claims the shining being was an angel or God. As soon as the witness claims the shining being was an extraterrestrial or a ghost, the researcher may shun the account. 

One of the sources mentioned above tells us that some multiple author "magnum opus" of cross-disciplinary study on paranormal phenomena (including UFOs and UAP) will be available on www.amazon.com in June of this year.