But keeping humans in the equation is much more complicated than the reality of a universe of populated star systems, some of them being spacefaring civilzations.

Within 20 years, EVP and related Instrumental Transcommunication technology will evolve into a reliable Thanatronic Interface, enabling the ‘dead’ to walk among us, piloting robotic avatars. Simultaneously, A.I. will reach - and surpass - human intellectual capabilities, and, likely also become common ambulatory ‘persons’ ubiquitous in society.

Whether organic humans are bumped off our pinnacle to become the lesser among three, or least out of four (including ET) types of ‘beings’ inhabiting the planet at that time would seem to make little difference. I think we will find that we have more in common with our ‘dead’ and with other biologicals (ET) than we have with machine intelligence of any sort.

If [at least some] ET are not alien visitors, then it may indeed be true that no intelligent civilization survives its technological Singularity to continue biological evolution long enough to travel space.

If some are aliens, then perhaps such an older, wiser civilization may help us avoid becoming obsolete, ultimately to be eaten by Carbon-fxing nanobots and excreted as ‘Computronium’. For that is the path we’re on; Man as a mere ’speedbump’ on the evolutionary highway which runs from “Animal” to “Machine”.

Lets hope that ET is there and able and willing to help, because we have already passed the Singularity’s ‘Event Horizon’, and it now appears beyond our power to alter the trajectory of this timeline. Interdimensional, transcendental companions are nice, wise, even prescient, but our most pressing existential threat comes in nuts-and-bolts, not from space but from Silicon Valley.

What if McKenna’s “self-transforming Machine Elves” are a stoned Artillect from our own near future?

Thanks for not getting fundamentalist on me! My personality is such that I gravitate towards non-ETH theories. By no means are they mutually exclusive. My problem is that people almost always assume that UFO = ET. While that is not out of the realm of possibility, it hasn’t been proven, because there is no real way to do so. The other theories haven’t been proven either, but they seem more exciting to me because they tend to put humans in the equation, which might give us a better handle on some aspect of the problem.

You might be interested to read other posts I have made on this subject:

Where Might Aliens Come From?

Where Do UFOs Come From?

…or there’s the story that Strieber told a few years back about some secret Government study from the 1950s that said that the only way to hold back an invasion was to keep people from believing in aliens.

Thank you for taking the time to address my comments point by point. In the end I guess that I just find it wholly implausible that ALL of the witnesses, contactees, abductees, ex-spook whistleblowers, ex-military, etc. are all similarly befuddled or conspiring to make up the same coherent, cohesive set of lies. At least, it seems less plausible than the more mundane explanation that somebody else on another planet can simply build better flying machines than we can.

Having said that, I am troubled by the “either/or” mentality of the discussion. The number and variety of un-Earthly anomalous aerial sightings certaily leaves room for *some* to be things other than ET spacecraft. For example, the many small ‘orbs’, often seen up close, which apparently respond to the observer, could well be entities manifesting themselves from the Spiritual Dimension. But, even if true, how does this in any way inform our understanding of mile-long, boomerang shaped craft with running lights, seen up close by thousands of people over Phoenix, by RAF and Belgian fighters over the English Channel, and elsewhere around the world? Why do all sightings have to be the same thing (either “ETH” or “Not”) when there could likely be a veritable ZOO of things outside the official canon of our scientific and cultural understanding?

The existence of alien spacecraft in no way negates that “larger view of existence, and our perceptions of it… such as shamanism, psychoactive plants, religious ideas, fringe science, occult beliefs and other hidden aspects of history.”

Unlike Drew, I have no trouble with Ghosts, Psycho-Kinesis, or other manifestations of the Afterlife or ESP phenomena, since hard laboratory evidence has accumulated in recent years which fairly conclusively establish these to be real as well.

Biological Aliens from other worlds and Spirits of the Dead from higher dimensions are in no respect mutually exclusive. I suspect that an advanced ET civilization, more evolved and sophisticated than ourselves, probably has a better understanding of Quantum Consciousness and spiritual transcendence than we do. They’ve had more time to shed fundamentalist scientific dogma and fundamentalist religious dogma, in order to come to a more accurate understanding of - and likely more practical access to - the ‘Spiritual Environment’. Aliens are not “gods”, “angels”, “demons”, or “devils” (though likely mistaken as such by primitive Man), but are probably better acquainted with Him/Them than we are…

Oh yeah so the psychological projection — Nandor Fodor style — the Paranormal State had a ghost in a fire station. It was making physical presence — telekinesis — but the ghost had been a fireman who committed suicide. Then the psychic stated that the ghost knew that the new fireman to replace him was also suicidal and therefore was OUTING the physically alive suicidal fireman.

So there is a symbiotic relationship because the psychic stated that the ghost was achieving pentance — that the physically alive people were helping the ghost make up for his own suicide. So that the physical presence of the ALIENS is also the symptom of the ETHers being helped by the disembodied spirits which are in turn a psychological projection of the ETHers repressed emotional blockages.

Isn’t Nick supposed to writing a book on this — how the scientists are actually conjuring up the extraterrestials using occult technology?

Thanks Greg!