href="#ulink_039a4ca2-f9e8-5d20-a5d2-bc4706fbe60e"> 14. Other exceptional experiences
Background, objectives and research activities
Excerpt from the free research study
I have a feeling that the whole of humanity
is about to embark on the greatest journey of all.
Over time, I think, this will
become more and more obvious.
We will lose our fear, our feeling
of separateness and individuality. We will learn
how to flee the limit of our linear thinking about time
and recognize our potential as »one«.
The veils of our minds will finally tear
and we will remember what we really are
and why we are here.
Debbie Jordan, 1994 1
Foreword by Kathleen Marden
Rarely does a UFO book attempt to explain consciousness and paranormal phenomena scientifically. Most mainstream scientists scoff at the notion or relegate it to their »highly improbable« circular file. Yet the fearless scientists at the Dr. Edgar Mitchell Foundation for Research into Extraterrestrial and Extraordinary Encounters (FREE) are exploring this long taboo subject matter. Moreover, Dr. Marcel Polte, a FREE member since 2015, has advanced our understanding of non-human intelligence in his extraordinary book Non-human Contact.
FREE’s cofounder, the late Dr. Edgar Mitchell, was the sixth person to walk on the moon and founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. He devoted his life to the scientific investigation of consciousness and paranormal phenomena. It was his personal experience, on his trip back to Earth on the Apollo 14 flight, that fortified his interest in the reality of telepathic communication. He informed the public that extraterrestrial visitation is real, but government agencies, dating back to the 1940s, have orchestrated a massive cover-up involving the E.T. presence.
FREE was the brainstorm of Reinerio Hernandez, JD, MCP. He was suddenly thrust into a reality shattering experience on Sunday, 4 March 2012. A self-professed material rationalist, Rey ridiculed anyone who believed in paranormal phenomena and the study of consciousness, until a miracle occurred at his home. The family’s aged Jack Russel Terrier suffered paralysis, possibly caused by a stroke on March 3, and arrangements were made to euthanize her when the veterinarian’s office opened on Monday morning. A devout Catholic, Rey’s wife had been praying for divine intervention. She lovingly carried her failing companion down the stairs and into the living room, where in the corner, she observed the apparition of a small, translucent, silver disk hovering four feet above the floor. Believing that her prayers might be answered, she fell to her knees and called for her husband in the upstairs bedroom. When he failed to respond to her pleas, she ascended the stairs and insisted that he follow her to the living room. In the living room, Rey, now highly perplexed, witnessed his wife and dog disappear before his eyes. Momentarily, he observed what he calls »a plasma energy being« that appears to have rendered him unconscious for 45 minutes. When he regained consciousness, his wife was proclaiming that the angels had healed their dog, who was now running agilely around the house. This was the first of several paranormal experiences for Rey and his wife. For additional information see Beyond UFOs: The Science of Consciousness and Contact with Non-Human Intelligence.
I met Rey in May 2013, when he and his wife attended a UFO conference where I was a speaker. As Rey recounted his experience to me, his enthusiasm was apparent. The former skeptic was now convinced that their dog’s miraculous healing was UFO related because his wife was having follow-up close encounters with UFOs.
He was searching for answers and I informed him of the results of my first small study, with Denise Stoner, on 50 experiencers of ET abduction and 25 participants who had never observed a UFO or had contact. I had read reports pertaining to several academic studies on experiencers that had been undertaken at universities, so I developed my questions accordingly, to test the consistency of their findings with my own. Denise Stoner, my coauthor on The Alien Abduction Files, and I had conducted this year-long study to identify commonalities among experiencers that were not common among the general population. We had discovered 23 commonalities.
Later, Dr. Don C. Donderi, a retired psychology professor and statistician at McGill University, joined our team at the Mutual UFO Network for a two-phase study on 516 experiencers. It expanded our knowledge base on the many characteristics that experiencers share and identified, as a separate group, those with »UFO Abduction Syndrome«. We discovered that abductees have certain common characteristics at a higher rate than the overall survey group. For example, being awake at the time of the abduction and observing non-human entities occurs at a higher rate among the abductee group: 60% vs 36% overall. Close encounters of craft at 500 feet or less and family witnesses to the event occur at an increased rate among abductees. An astounding 45% state that they have been healed by the non-human entities, whereas this is true of only 10% of the survey takers in general. Spirituality, psychic growth, and becoming empathic occurs at an increased rate among abductees. The results of our findings are discussed in my latest book, Extraterrestrial Contact: What to Do When You’ve Been Abducted.
In 2014, Rey made the decision to undertake an ambitious multi-national study of more than 4000 experiencers and invited me to join FREE’s Board of Directors and to work as a research consultant to FREE’s Experiencer Questionnaire. I accepted his invitation and worked on the development of the study with FREE founder Mary Rodwell, Dr. Leo Sprinkle, Barbara Lamb, et al. Dr. Rudy Schild, took the helm as FREE’s Executive Director, enabling Rey to more efficiently handle the day to day operations at FREE. Dr. Schild is an Emeritus Research Astronomer from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and a scientist who is not afraid to voice his opinion. In 2018, I contributed a chapter to FREE’s 785 page book Beyond UFOs: The Science of Consciousness and Contact with Non-Human Intelligence.
These were exciting times, indeed, to be involved in UFO contact research. Later, many additional academic scientists joined FREE as a result to the tireless efforts of Rey Hernandez.
Marcel Polte, a lawyer from Germany with a penchant for astrophysics and an alternative practitioner for psychotherapy and hypnotherapy, joined FREE in 2015. He began to correspond with me in 2016, to compare my research findings, on experiencers and the paranormal, with his own research. Scientifically oriented researchers, we independently advanced a common objective: to move beyond material science for the acquisition of data and knowledge as it pertains to contact phenomena.
An article on the front page of the New York Times, on 16 December 2017, took me by surprise. Titled »Glowing Auras and ›Black Money‹: The Pentagon’s Mysterious UFO Program«, respected journalists Helene Cooper,