It is possible that the visitors are about to show up. I am not saying that this will happen, but only that this is a time when it could happen, and there are some indications that it may be about to happen.

The indications are these: First, the large number of UFO sightings around the world, capped most recently by a report that there is an active UFO on the ground in southern Somalia. Is this report true? So far, it has not been possible to follow up, and probably the only way to get confirmation would be from a US military satellite, and we can forget that. Second, the sudden upsurge in official and semi-official statements, with the latest being Gov. Fife Symington’s reiteration on Good Morning America this morning that he had seen a UFO.

So, all of the activity and public pronouncement suggest change. Interestingly, conditions within our society suggest that a basis of rational response to contact that has not been present in the past is present now. For example, this website now reaches a million people every month with its sophisticated and sensible view of the UFO and close encounter phenomena. Even five years ago, nothing like it existed. Public reaction to UFOs is now muted. The appearance of even extensive UFO activity in a given area does not cause panic or sensational press response. They are more-or-less taken for granted as a relatively benign mystery of interest to some but not most people.

This is a profile that is conducive to a more productive form of contact than has been possible in the past. It will not be the way the world at first presents itself to the visitors, but it is there, and behind it there lies the potential for a rational response.

At first, the media will likely go to all the wrong authorities: to scientists who know nothing of the history of the phenomenon and will look upon whatever is happening now as the beginning of a process of contact and not what it is, which is the culmination of many years of effort; to religious leaders who will contend that their own beliefs must be reflected in the culture of the visitors, and, if not, that they are somehow fallen, or ‘not saved’ or otherwise ignorant; to government officials who might make false claims about what has happened in the past; and to various UFO researchers, probably the ones with the most sensationalistic theories, or who assert their leadership most forcefully, and are therefore ego-driven and least capable.

Later, though, cooler heads will hopefully prevail, and we will begin to explore how contact can help us. Initially, this will be a matter of looking back over the past 60 years at a higher level of scientific analysis, and seeing what it has already left behind that can be of use to us. Then learning to communicate with the visitors, which will involve using our minds in a new way, and accepting that such things as what we call ‘telepathy’ are merely aspects of nature and perfectly detectable and measurable.

It will take human culture many years to evolve an efficient organ of communication and exchange with them, and they will not be in a hurry. There will turn out to be people, as it were, hidden away in our socieities all over the world who have already been prepared and will together provide a useful beginning.

This will unfold outside of the context of current religious and governmental structures. The planet is dying, which is why the visitors are showing up now, to try to offer us a new perspective. They will not lay out a plan of action. But observing their presence, the knowledge they have left behind already, and whatever messages we can glean from early attempts at communication, will provide us with a rich new source of ideas.

Depending on how serious our situation actually is, they may intervene in the cultural milieu in some very surprising ways, by taking specific action to deflect or curtail the activities of those most unwilling to try to live in a way that will sustain the planet’s functioning long term. If that happens, then we will see interventions that will cause a good deal of consternation, although I cannot even begin to guess the exact form they may take.

They will not at first address the species’ various religious ideas except in very general terms, by communicating with us in triads, with a positive thrust and a negative thrust, leaving us to evolve the message by reconciling its two parts. I know that this is very, very different from the way we commuicate, but it works and if they do show up it will become familiar enough.

Face-to-face communication, if the experience of close encounter witnesses so far is any example, will be extremely varied. Not only will there be many different physical forms involved, they will be presenting us with sometimes radically different views of the way they should approach us.

Imagine what it would be like on another planet if human spacefarers showed up, some from the US, others from Brazil, others from Borneo, from France, from India and China, and you can get a very minor idea of what this will be like.

What we are apt to see are many different variants of known forms as well as some we have never seen, or hardly seen, and some of these will be quite frightening, with a combination of toughness and capabilities that will make it very hard to face them. But not impossible.

I did it alone in the woods in the middle of the night, so it certainly can be done.

There are also going to be more human forms. It turns out that physical evolution follows similar patterns on worlds with similar mineral content and similar stars. There is something about the stars themselves that determines what sort of creature will evolve on their planets, and so the mix of forms is tremendous, but also strangely familiar, and, in some cases, shockingly so.

People ask me what I will do under the circumstances of contact. I already know my role, very precisely. I will not volunteer myself, but I do have a lot of knowledge that will be freely available to anybody who asks. I am not ego-driven, in the sense that I will want to take some place that I might think I deserve.

In this, we are all equal. Nobody knows much more than another and nobody deserves any special place in regard to the contact process. Those who seek to impose their presence between the visitors and the rest of us will find that they have made a grave mistake, in that they will be among the first human beings called to task for violating laws created elsewhere, that now also pertain to us.

What I will be eager to do is to help evolve effective human institutions of contact. These will be scientific and cultural. In my work on this subject in fiction and in the movies, I am already struggling with the cultural aspect. I am not trying to use fiction to disguise what I believe to be factually true, but to offer stories that are emotionally true, and give a taste of the wonder, fear and sense of question the actual experience involves.

Once contact comes, my primary work will change. It will be to offer persepective and guidance in the development of a useful scientific response to this new model of the universe, as an entity that contains a certain amount of intelligent life beyond our own, and knowledge associated with it that we can integrate into our own understanding.

This is what I have been unable to do so far, because official denial has led to a broader culture of denial within educated human circles. Right now, it is as dangerous to a scientist’s career to propose that money be spent on the study of UFOs as it was in the fifteenth century for him to propose that the earth revolves around the sun.

But the earth does revolve around the sun, and when we faced that reality, we embarked upon a five hundred year journey into science that has culminated in all the magnificent knowledge we possess today.

Similarly, when science acknowledges that the visitors are real and therefore that communication with them and use of the knowledge we get from that is possible, a second, and even greater scientific revolution will unfold.

At the end of the first scientific revolution, we are sending instantaneous messages around the world, feeding billions more than we ever dreamed possible, flying, and doing so much more. It has been a triumph.

The next scientific revolution begins when the scientific community acknowledges that other intelligence is here and that it has unknown origins. When we look back from the perspective of another five hundred years, we will find that this second scientific revolution has been even more profound, and the triumph great beyond the most hopeful imaginings of today.

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