All language subtitles for Beyond.UFOs.and.The.Unknown.S01E04.eng

Holy crap, look!

It was a perfect triangle
just floating across the sky,

way up there.

[Liz] I think it was
a spaceship of some sort.

Aliens, first thing
that I thought,

but it scared
the heck out of me.

[dramatic music plays]

[Timothy Gallaudet] There's a
lot of talk about the Tic Tac

actually being U.S. technology.

And that is
very interesting to me

because you ask the pilots,
and they say

there is no possibility
that that could be

a technology that we've made.

[Avi Loeb] If something
doesn't look right,

we have to revise the way we
think about reality, you know?

[Garry Nolan] Jacques,
in discussing, he started

talking about some of these
materials that he had from UAP.

Why would somebody
alter magnesium?

And it doesn't sound
like something

you would go throwing
around a beach in Brazil.

[Jeffrey Kripal]
When people claim they know

what this is about,
whether it's some kind of fraud

or it's some kind of mechanism,

my eyes just roll.

You either don't know
what you're talking about,

or you're lying.

[dramatic music]

[Whitley Strieber] I can't
tell you what's going on,

but I can tell you this.

If we ever figure it out,
it's gonna change the world.

[theme music plays]

♪♪♪

[birds chirping]

I'd say there's...

a couple hundred
of these slides in here.

I mean, we can just go
through them one after the other

and just look at images.

I am looking at pictorial
targets that were likely used

for remote viewing subjects

to test
their remote viewing capacities.

Remote viewing was
a kind of military lingo

for what an earlier period
would have called clairvoyance.

Essentially, seeing
what's happening at a distance.

And the U.S. government

and various
U.S. intelligence agencies

got very interested in
these capacities in the 1970s.

It's partly because
the Soviet Union was interested,

and so there was a kind of
parapsychological space race.

Intelligence agencies basically
trained a number

of military professionals
to become clairvoyant spies

on the Soviet Union.

That's essentially
what remote viewing is.

♪♪♪

Russell Targ is
a laser physicist.

He worked with another physicist
named Hal Puthoff.

They're the ones who ran
the remote viewing program.

Hal Puthoff--
he's in his 80s now.

He has been involved
long, long time

doing studies
on remote viewing,

all of it for the government.

He knows a lot.
He's a deep insider.

[Jeffrey Kripal] The person
who really led that program

after Russell stepped down

donated 50 to a hundred boxes
of declassified material.

It's all right...
It's all right here.

♪♪♪

[Mitch Horowitz]
Operation Stargate,

the CIA so-called
psychic spying program

went on for about 20 years

and its budget got cut during
the Clinton administration,

when the post-Cold War
atmosphere

was producing budget cuts

in the military
and intelligence,

and there is a debate
to this day

over the validity of the results
that have emerged from Stargate.

♪♪♪

[Jeffrey Kripal] They would put
these in a slide machine.

They'd throw the image
up on the slide,

and they would ask
the remote viewer,

who would be
in another room

or another building
what was the image

up on the screen at that moment,

and they would have some system
for determining

whether it was a hit or miss
or a near miss or a near hit.

♪♪♪

[Leslie Kean] People think
that's all, you know,

bogus, but it's not.

If you look at the actual
studies and read the documents,

remote viewing
got great results.

[John Santos] Essentially,
it's the idea that we live

in this infinitely
entangled universe

at the quantum level.

Psychic espionage is really
just a matter of indexing

a kind of place in time,
in time-space,

that allows the psyche
of the investigator

to target them.

[dramatic music plays]

I'm Hal Puthoff
from Stanford University,

PhD in Quantum Electronics.

Remote viewing in the old days

used to call remote viewing,
ESP.

That is the ability of people
to sense things

or to pick up information
from remote locations

or hidden locations and so on.

I wasn't particularly interested
in the topic.

It was only because
there was an individual

who had demonstrated the ability
to "see" inside a device,

a very high tech magnetometer
at Stanford University,

and so this fellow by the name
of Ingo Swann was asked

to demonstrate his ability,
and he did.

It was absolutely amazing to me
as a physicist.

I can't imagine, you know,
anything like this occurring.

Well, suddenly the CIA descended
on my doorstep,

and they said, "Oh, have we
been looking for you." [laughs]

And I said, "Why?"
You know, "What did I do?"

And they said, "Well we saw
that early in your career

you were
a Naval intelligence officer,

used to be in NSA."

So I was at SRI,
and I was a physicist

instead of a psychologist,
which they took to be a plus.

[chuckles] And they saw that
this experiment had occurred,

and they said,
"What we're dealing with

is that the Russians have been
spending millions of dollars

at their best institutes
for some of their best people

for years on, 'ESP research,'

so we were wondering,
would you be willing to set up

a small program
to look into it?"

So, I founded the program
in '72.

♪♪♪

And it turned out there were
remote viewers who were

able to see into hidden places
and remote locations

with some degree of accuracy.
I mean, not 100%,

but more than
an ordinary physicist

could seemingly account for.

And so we agreed to do
a series of experiments.

[narrator] Here,
the experiment is repeated,

this time
with Puthoff as a sender.

This is a drawing
that Geller has made

to correspond
to the target object.

As you can see,
he is quite elated

about getting
the right answer.

♪♪♪

Here in the laboratory notebook,
on the left side of the page

you see the original targets,

and on the right,
Geller's responses.

This is not a collection
of correct answers

out of a long series of correct
and incorrect responses.

This is actually the total run
of pictures in a series.

It is interesting that there is
often a mirror symmetry.

I was at SRI before them,
working on the ARPANET,

which became the internet.

♪♪♪

SRI had machine number 2
on the internet.

Okay, so it was
a significant place

at the time
in software development

before what became,
you know, the internet.

♪♪♪

The director of our branch
came into my office

and closed the door
and said there is a proposal

to do parapsychology research
at SRI.

He said, "Let me draw you
a picture,"

and he went to my white board,

and he drew a scale.

On one side
he put a big cube,

and he wrote,
"A hundred million dollars,"

which was his budget,

and then he put
a little dot here that said,

"$1 million,"

which was research
that Puthoff and Targ

wanted to do parapsychology,

and he said,
"We're going to jeopardize

a hundred million dollars
of research

with IBM, AT&T, Intel, Xerox...

major corporate
America companies

by doing this research
on parapsychology

where, you know,
we may be subject

to a lot of ridicule.
We may not find anything."

And he said, "You've been able
to keep your reputation,

you know, in science
when studying UFOs.

How did you do it?"

And I said, "Well, you know
the solution may be to keep

that research classified,"

not because there were
big secrets, you know,

for the next atom bomb,
but because if you announce it

on day one, everybody is going
to attack us.

We should let Puthoff
and Targ run laboratory here.

[soft music plays]

It became
an extraordinary program at SRI,

Stanford Research Institute,
on remote viewing.

[Hal Puthoff]
We ended up training

Army intelligence remote viewers
to learn to tap into this.

So, that's how the whole
remote viewing program took off.

♪♪♪

One of our very first
operational cases that we did

for the CIA
was they wanted to know

about a research facility
in the Soviet Union.

Semipalatinsk was
the name of it.

[dramatic music plays]

We had no idea
what was there,

but we had
really good remote viewer.

So, we just gave him
coordinates and said,

"Tell us what you see there."

♪♪♪

He drew a giant crane.

He said it was so large it ran
over the top of a building

and said that they were building
these giant spheres there,

60 foot in diameter.

And so he gave
a really terrific description

and turned out the information
was really quite accurate,

so the CIA spent a week
having him wander

through this facility
in the Soviet Union,

describing everything he saw.

And so it was evaluated
by a number of elements

of the agency
and other outside contractors.

And they were absolutely amazed.

♪♪♪

That was a major thing.

Another critical one
was that there was

a Libyan pilot who flew
Soviet airplanes.

♪♪♪

And, uh, he was going to turn
the plane over to--to us.

But after he was in the air,
he got cold feet,

and he realized, "Oh, my God,
the KGB will, you know,

chase me the rest of my life."

So, he just bailed out
of the plane and he said,

"Okay, I had a problem
with the plane,

and I just bailed out."

So the plane just ran
till it ran out of gas

and, you know,
crashed in Africa.

♪♪♪

[Mitch Horowitz] Shortly after
Carter left the presidency,

he was addressing
a group of students,

at Emory University in Atlanta,

and he related the account
of how a Soviet spy plane

had crashed in Central Africa,
and this spy plane contained

lots of valuable
espionage technology,

so there were recon teams

from both the U.S. side
and the Soviet side

that were racing to find
this wreckage

and either secure it
or procure it.

[dramatic music plays]

[Hal Puthoff]
When President Carter

was briefed on the plane
going down,

Stan Turner, who was
the CIA director, said,

"Well, you know, we've got
these remote viewers.

Maybe they can find the plane."

So, we put two of
our best remote viewers on it.

Long story short,
they made an excellent map

that was within three miles
of where that plane crashed,

so the CIA was able to go in
and get the plane,

of course, before the Russians
even knew where it was.

So, those are the kind
of operational things

that we would do as it came up.

♪♪♪

Data that, in fact,
the Russians were doing

exactly this kind of stuff.

In fact, when the CIA
came to me at SRI and said,

"We'd like for you
to look into this,"

they plopped a telephone-sized
book down on my desk

that was full of Russian work
in this area,

and so that's why they knew
that they took it seriously.

♪♪♪

[Mitch Horowitz]
Afterwards, Carter

was subjected to mockery--

the notion
that you could believe

that this remote viewing program
had actually produced

actionable intelligence
was held up to ridicule,

but of course Carter
is a nuclear engineer.

He's speaking from a place
of informed inquiry.

He's at the top level
of executive oversight.

He has access
to the information.

This is obviously
an informed account.

But it's very easy
for an observer

to just say, "Oh, there goes
old Jimmy again

talking about little green men
or what have you."

It was the easiest thing
in the world.

♪♪♪

[Hal Puthoff] The stigma
that was originally, you know,

forefront for things
like ESP research,

remote viewing, UFO research,
and so on

were very high back in,
you know, the '60s and '70s,

but because now
it's become clear

and much of the information
in both

the remote viewing program
that was highly classified,

and in the UAP program
that was highly classified.

Since much of that
has been declassified,

is now available to the public.

♪♪♪

Scientists are beginning
to realize that,

"Well, there appears to be
more to this than we thought."

♪♪♪

[Jimmy Conway] When people say
that the government

had no interests in UFOs
and UAP, we think,

"Well, we know that they were
interested in psychic abilities

and experiments with LSD
and psychedelics

and all sorts of weird
and wonderful things

from--from decades ago,
why wouldn't they be interested

in UFOs and UAP?

♪♪♪

[Kelly Chase] What's really
fascinating about that

is the overlap

between the people who
were part

of these programs
back in, like, the '70s,

and the UFO community,
as it exists now,

the people whose names
most people will know,

that are still in the community,

are still going on podcasts,
are still talking about this.

A lot of them were involved

in these remote viewing programs
decades ago.

♪♪♪

[Hal Puthoff]
I tend in the direction

that, if there were
a major planetary UAP event

that forced all governments
and all peoples

to realize that this is
an absolutely real thing.

♪♪♪

I'm of the opinion
that it'd be more likely

to unite our viewpoints
than to result in panic.

These UAP events are definitely
beyond our engineering,

but not beyond our physics.

I made a list of what are all
the weird things that people

have claimed associated
with observation of UAP,

and there are a lot
of weird things. [chuckles]

And suppose Einstein's equation
for general relativity,

you know, black holes
and astrophysics,

to access those things
that general relativity says

that in principle you could,
with warp drive and wormholes

and all that kind of stuff
takes enormous amounts

of concentrated energy
at infinitesimal volumes,

and we just don't have that.

So, I would say it's not
beyond our physics.

We can understand the physics,

but it is definitely
beyond our engineering.

So, given that that's the case,
that's another reason

why I think the source
of the phenomena

is not black programs
and Russia, China or the US,

but really
from some other source.

[man]
Oh, my God, what was that?

[woman laughs]

Yeah, am I a believer in UFOs?

I mean, it's such a funny,
funny, funny word

to a scientist.

Do I have data
that makes me think

there's something there of value

to examine
and come to grips with?

Absolutely.
Does that make me "a believer"?

Well, I mean, for a scientist,

it's data that counts,
not opinion about the data.

So, we need more data.

♪♪♪

I think the human being is

the ultimate
special effects projector.

I think human beings

are able to project
special effects,

real special effects,
into the physical environment

and often change
things physically,

and that's why I always say
I think the human is really...

is a superhuman,
but on kind of an unconscious

kind of unaware level.

♪♪♪

What remote viewing
or precognition

or any of these abilities
strongly imply

is that we can actually
get information

from great distances
in space or--and/or time.

[Hal Puthoff] You would think
that there must be

special people that are able
to do this.

In fact, what we found was,
it's sort of a bell curve.

So just like with athletic
ability or music ability,

everyone seems to have this
to some degree.

I mean, you get superstars
at one end of the bell curve

and duds at the other end,
but to some degree,

anyone could be trained.

♪♪♪

Well, okay, that's... [chuckles]
What do you do with that?

I mean, that radically shifts
what you think a human being is.

And I think that's why
it's resisted.

[inquisitive music plays]

If you study religion, you know,
there are a number

of what I would call universals
in the sense

that they happen everywhere
as far as we can see back.

And one of the most common
religious rituals is divination,

the ability to know
what's going to happen

before it happens.
-[camera shutter clicking]

Modern writers are very gifted

at explaining
their own experiences.

The person I always write about
is Mark Twain.

Twain, or Samuel Clemens,

was viciously funny
and critical of everything,

but he was completely convinced

that he had had
these precognitive experiences.

He called it mental telegraphy.

'Cause he knew if he wrote
about it,

he would be made fun of.

And so there's this really funny
moment where he gives

this essay called
Mental Telegraphy

to a very famous magazine
in the 19th century,

and he asks
that they publish it anonymously

and you can just see
the editor going like,

"You're Mark Twain,
I'm not going to do that."

The precognitive dream
he relates is actually

about his brother's death.
It's--it's not a happy event.

It's a tragic event.

He linked this phenomenon
to his own literary creativity,

by the way.

He got ideas for stories

through channels
that were not normal,

but he didn't have some kind
of religious model for it.

He just felt this was part
of reality, part of what he did.

♪♪♪

[Jacques Vallée] I wrote
the book called Le Sub-Espace,

and it got the Jules Vernes
prize in France,

but the idea was that the...

a group of scientists in France
were aware of strange lights

that were seen outside,
but they also came

inside houses
and inside buildings,

and they couldn't understand
what those were.

♪♪♪

This is 1961, 1962.

I wanted to posit the concept

that those were not
necessarily E.T.s,

that it was something else.

It turns out that today
people are seeing

globes of light.

They become material
when they are here,

but the rest of the time
they are not material,

which is why they can go
through this wall

and they can transform
into lights

or they can transform
into globes,

into balls of light,

snot in our normal universe
but in a subset of universe

I call subspace.

And these creatures exist
in subspace,

and they can come into our world

through a number
of different media,

some of which
are flying saucers.

♪♪♪

This is a debate that people
are beginning to have now

in the United States.

♪♪♪

[Hal Puthoff] Jacques Vallée
has been the primary person

who has brought up,
"Let's have a broader viewpoint

that maybe it isn't
just ETs coming

from some galaxy far away."

You know, maybe
it's interdimensional.

[ethereal music plays]

Whether it's interdimensional,
time travelers from the future,

or maybe some sequestered group

hiding out
below the seabed or something,

I think we have to open up
our mental telescope

to take in more
than just, you know, wayfarers

coming in from other galaxies.

[Kelly Chase] There's a lot
of different versions

of the interdimensional
hypothesis.

That's a tough one
because we don't actually know

what other dimensions are
or if--if they even exist.

It's kind of like string theory
and quantum theory,

but we don't actually
have any proof that they exist.

They just kind of help us
solve problems at this point,

and so that hypothesis
can kind of take any weirdness

that you put on it.

I was studying advanced physics
for a PhD,

and the advanced physics
says there are more

than four dimensions.

You know, there are more
than just time and space.

And there may be
other universes.

I mean, this is
classical physics.

It's not science fiction.

They don't relate it to UFOs,
but maybe they should,

you know, at some point.

♪♪♪

I think that actually one
of the biggest secrets

about the UFO phenomenon

is that it's not about craft
and technology,

that the people who know
the most about it

and have been doing this
the longest,

the thing that they're
actually interested in

is consciousness
and human potential,

that those are the things
that they care about the most.

♪♪♪

[Mitch Horowitz]
There is a convergence today

between the question of UFOs

and the question
of extraphysical experience.

When I was growing up,
the outlook on UFOs,

if one took seriously
the UFO thesis, was,

"Well, maybe
they're E.T. craft,"

and what would it take for some
kind of mechanical vehicle

to span such distances?"
But in the past few decades,

I would say that the thesis
around UFO phenomena,

if one takes seriously
that it's something

that goes outside
of ordinary observation,

is that these experiences
might be

from different intersections
of time or different dimensions,

which when first said,
sounds very, very far out.

♪♪♪

But we've known since the age
of Einstein

that time is conditional,

that one has to logically
account for the existence

of an infinitude
of simultaneous events.

♪♪♪

People will talk
about cosmic wormholes

whereby you introduce
some exotic matter

into a mix of events,

and you're able
to bend space-time.

These are all
just conceptual models,

but it seems to me
that the concepts

are better developed
around interdimensionality

than they are
around extraterrestriality,

which doesn't mean that
only one thing is happening.

There could be
a whole complexity of things

that are occurring.

♪♪♪

The fact is,
if we are experiencing evidence

from academic
psychical research,

ESP research,

that the psyche is capable

of receiving
and transmitting information

in anomalous ways
that may indicate the capacity

of the psyche to travel among
different intersections of time,

from which that information
presumably emanates.

That is possibly parallel
to exactly what's going on

when people report
UFO encounters

or abduction experiences,

so part of the complexity
of human nature

is that we are all
conditioned to think

in terms of magic bullet
theories behind events

as though to say
there's just one antecedent,

and if we can find that
we'll get to the truth,

whereas there's probably
a complexity of antecedents.

♪♪♪

♪♪♪

[Eben Alexander]
I was very into space.

I've wanted to go to the moon.

I wanted to be with NASA,
every bit of that.

In college, I started out
in astrophysics,

but then I spent a summer
working in the hospital

or in an operating room
as an orderly,

and I really fell in love
with taking care of patients.

My dad, of course, was a
globally renowned neurosurgeon,

and so I knew how much he loved
working with patients

and he loved neurosurgery.

♪♪♪

In the back of my mind
I thought,

"Well I'll go to medical school
but I'm not going to go

into neurosurgery."

That lasted until I did
a neurosurgery rotation

for two weeks,
and I fell in love with it

and, uh, you know,
I've never looked back.

♪♪♪

You go in and in one day,
with your hands,

you try to affect someone's life
for the better.

♪♪♪

Probably every
two or three months,

I would hear
fairly compelling stories

of near-death experiences
or shared death

or after-death communications

that should have gotten
my attention,

but I kept dismissing them,

thinking, "No," you know,
"That's wishful thinking.

We don't have any way
of proving that.

No, we don't seem to have
memories of past lives.

I don't know that I believe
in reincarnation."

[camera shutter clicks]

Certainly having
my own personal experience

went light-years
towards opening me up

to accepting and admitting
this beautiful kind of expansion

in our knowledge
of ourselves and the universe.

♪♪♪

It was such a mundane day.

It was one of the most
unremarkable days

you could imagine,

other than it just being
a beautiful family day.

♪♪♪

But then at 4:30 in the morning
November 10th,

all that changed
very dramatically, very quickly.

♪♪♪

Well, I had, um...

It was a gram-negative
bacterial meningoencephalitis.

Basically, the worst kind
of meningitis to have.

For E.coli meningitis,
the numbers are well up there

over 50% for the people
who die from it,

but it's especially bad
for people

who, for example, spend a week
in coma like I did.

♪♪♪

In fact, when the three doctors
who wrote the case report,

they sent it to The Journal
of Nervous and Mental Diseases

for publication September 2018.

The--The peer review
scientific editor

said, "Wait a minute.
This case is absurd."

Nothing like this precedes it
in the medical literature.

How do you explain
this recovery?"

And they said, "It's because
he had a near-death experience."

So, it all started
in a very primitive way.

[tranquil music plays]

There came a slowly spinning
white light.

This white light had fine
silver and golden tendrils,

and it came towards me,
very slowly spinning,

and as it did so, I realized

it came
with a perfect musical melody.

[melody plays]

The first time it happened,
the light twirl took me up

into this brilliant
ultra-real gateway valley.

♪♪♪

It had many
Earth-like features.

I mean, there was this meadow

that was lush and fertile
and beautiful

surrounded by forests,

waterfalls
and crystal-blue ponds,

beautiful billowing clouds
of pure color

against a blue,
black velvety sky.

♪♪♪

Thousands of beings dancing down
in this meadow.

I had no body awareness
at any point.

I was simply an observer,
and what I observed,

I was a speck of awareness
on a butterfly wing.

There were millions
of other butterflies

that were looping and spiraling
in these vast formations.

And the best part about it,
as I've said, I wasn't alone.

♪♪♪

You feel that, like a big hello

from this God-force
of pure love.

♪♪♪

I was told,
"You're not here to stay.

We'll teach you many things.
You'll be going back."

And that happened.
I would just tumble back down,

but it was by remembering
the musical notes of the melody

that I could conjure up
that light portal

and these spiritual realms.

♪♪♪

[Eben Alexander]
The actual kind of awakening

that my family witnessed

where I was fighting
the ventilator,

and then when they pulled
the breathing tube out,

I said, "Thank you"--

I have only the vaguest glimmer
of a memory of that.

Although my youngest sister,
Phyllis, who was there,

told me I did very shortly,
like, literally

within ten or 20 minutes of
the breathing tube coming out--

she said I was sitting there
on the bed

looking around at everyone
in the room,

and I would look them
in the eyes and say,

"Don't worry. All is well."

♪♪♪

What I had been through
was astonishing.

I wanted to tell everybody
about it,

but my doctors were trying
to tell me,

"Oh, yes, you were very sick.

Your brain was soaking in pus.

We don't even know how you are
coming back to us now,

but you can forget about it

because a dying brain
plays all kinds of tricks."

I just thought,
"Okay, hallucination,

vast hallucination,
bad meningitis, I get it."

And that's what I tried
to tell my son.

He had been at the bedside
while I was deep in coma.

He knew something very unusual
was going on,

and he told me,
"Write everything down

before you read anyone else's
near-death account."

So, I forced myself.

I didn't read
any near-death experiences,

and I just wrote down
about 20,000 words

over five to six weeks
of my memories

of my deep experience.

♪♪♪

[Jay King] There are
very interesting corollaries

for people that have
had experiences

with non-human intelligence
or UAP, UFOs,

and those that have had
near-deaths

or other forms
of out-of-body experience.

In reporting that,
there seems to be

some layer of reality
that we can't often perceive,

that is just right around us
all the time,

and we have a problem
discussing this.

[tranquil music plays]

People say, "Oh, it's, like,
some other dimension,"

or, "It's some
higher dimension,"

and then somebody
will inevitably say,

"Well, what is a dimension?

How can you say
that it's a dimension,

and how could you possibly know
that its higher than ours?"

♪♪♪

[Jeffrey Kripal] When
a physicist or a neurosurgeon

has an experience,
you listen to them,

but when an ordinary person
has such,

you don't listen to them,

and I'm like, why? Why?

It's the same experience.

The answer to the why
is it's the culture,

it's how knowledge
is being constructed

at that particular moment,

and how authority
is being delegated,

but it actually has nothing to
do with the actual experiences

or with what's
being communicated.

♪♪♪

[Jay King] We have to get
to a common point

because there's so many
millions of people

that have had experiences

of some just adjacent realm
to ours,

and by merely putting
experiencers of one modality

near experiencers
of another modality,

that conversational chain
opens up.

[vibrant music plays]

[Hal Puthoff] The near-death
experience is of interest

to those of us who are involved

in examining these
edgy topics in human function.

Some of the cases
are very famous and known,

and some of them
are absolutely staggering.

For example, someone
who is blind from birth,

never saw anything...

during a cardiac arrest
describes the experience

of lifting out of the body
and seeing things,

and then describing them
in detail.

I mean, as a physicist
I can't even imagine

in principle, I would think
unless your brain

has been, you know, processed
to interpret optical images,

I mean, I can't imagine
how that could occur,

but that was pretty compelling.

♪♪♪

[Eben Alexander] The pre-coma
me would have said basically

that the brain takes
sensory input,

like from eyes, ears, touch,
balance systems, et cetera,

assembles that in kind
of a version of the now,

involving physical body,

but then you have access
to memories

of all the events
you've been through,

and the piece I would have
missed tremendously,

that I know now since my coma,
is very real,

are the aspects
of conscious awareness

and information access

that go beyond
the ken of our physical senses.

♪♪♪

[Hal Puthoff]
All that speaks to the issue

that we are somehow connected,

and as a quantum physicist
I say,

ah, quantum entanglement,
you know.

We're somehow connected
to the universe around us

well beyond what we usually
take cognizance of

just based
on our typical five senses.

♪♪♪

[Brian Loftus] A Las Vegas
businessman is plopping down

a million dollars to find out

if there is evidence
of an afterlife.

Space entrepreneur
Robert Bigelow has announced

the creation of a new institute
that is devoted to research

into whether human consciousness
survives physical death.

[Sarah Rawlette] Robert Bigelow
is an entrepreneur.

He has made most of his money
in real estate and hotels,

and he's done a lot of work
in the aerospace area.

He, just a few years ago,
decided to turn his attention

and his resources
toward investigating

the evidence
for survival of death.

[Leslie Kean] Robert Bigelow's
been interested in UFOs

for a very long time, I think
since he was a young man,

basically, and he decided
to offer financial support

to the study of UFOs,
and he set up a group

called the National Institute
for Discovery Science.

NIDS is the abbreviation,
in which he brought together

some of the best people
in the field,

among them people like
Hal Puthoff and Jacques Vallée,

and a lot of people
we are familiar with today.

[Hal Puthoff]
And that's where I met people

like Whitley Strieber,
John Mack, and of course,

Jacques and I were part of that.

♪♪♪

[Jeffrey Kripal] Mr. Bigelow's
had a long-standing interest

in paranormal phenomena
and UFO or alien-type phenomena,

and the paranormal aspects
of this.

[Bryan Bender]
If you sort of trace it back,

it is a lot of the same people.

I mean, Harry Reid
knew Bob Bigelow.

I think he influenced
Harry Reid.

He also was the contractor,
not surprisingly,

that worked for the AATIP
program at the Pentagon

that Harry Reid set up.

As it turns out,
Robert Bigelow separately

set up something called

Bigelow Institute
for Consciousness Studies.

He decided to put up
a lot of money.

I mean, millions of dollars,

to investigate
near-death experience.

There isn't funding
anywhere else.

Private individuals, especially
private individuals with means,

are some of the only people

who are willing
to take a risk on this

because they're not worried
about their reputation.

So, they have the freedom
to take risks,

to go in experimental,
edgy directions.

There's not that kind
of willingness to explore

within the business world.

In the world of startups
like we think

about people taking risks

and, you know, trying
new technologies,

but even that,
all is super conservative

compared to doing
this kind of research.

♪♪♪

[Leslie Kean]
When you lose loved ones,

it does provoke that question,
"Well, did they survive?"

And it's happened to me.

Robert Bigelow
has had tragedies, family,

he's lost some loved ones,
including his wife,

and so, yeah, I think absolutely

it's not just
an intellectual quest.

It's a very personal quest.

It's unfortunate that he felt
the need to do that.

[Garry Nolan] Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, but those people
were only the catalyst.

They aren't the ones still
moving the narrative, right?

So, all those people
have done...

and I mean this
in a positive way,

they brought others in.

Others who looked at the data
and said,

"This is worth studying."

[reporter] This morning,
the former leader

of the Pentagon's UFO
tracking division

is casting some doubt

on the existence of alien craft.

Sean Kirkpatrick is
the former director of AARO,

and he's since retired,
but he's been doing some press.

[narrator] After the hearing,

Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick
refuted Rusch's claims

in a letter published
on his personal LinkedIn page.

He wrote...

[Hal Puthoff] Sean Kirkpatrick
put a negative spin on it

and said, "Well, there's just
this group of groupies who are,"

you know, "Big on UFOs
and ETs and so on,

and they just keep talking
to each other

and sharing data
back and forth."

That's the scientific method.
Nothing wrong with that.

So, there's kind of
a disconnect there

between his statement about it

versus the people
who are actually involved.

[Garry Nolan]
And yet, at the same time,

AARO, the offices he oversaw,

published that,
"There's a number of cases

we don't understand,
including these metal balls

that seem to be flying
around our battlefields."

[roaring]

[alert beeping]

And they said,
"We can't figure it out,

but we're going to tell you
it's not ET,

'cause we haven't proven it,
but it's still moving in ways

that we don't know
how to do it."

What else do you call it?

♪♪♪

[Christopher Mellon] If you want
to solve this mystery,

if you want to get
to the bottom of this,

the best thing you can
possibly do would be

to get the U.S.
intelligence community

to take this on,
to find the answers,

because they have capabilities
that are exquisite.

We have just
insane sort of capabilities

the public probably
doesn't know about.

We've got satellites
in geosynchronous orbit,

in low Earth orbit
and highly elliptical orbits

and things under the ocean
and air platforms,

and new generations of things.

We have 17 different
space surveillance capabilities.

Nobody in the science world
has capabilities like that,

and I think that gives us hope
that within our lifetimes

we may really get
to the bottom of this.

♪♪♪

[Tim Gallaudet] It's clear to me
at a very high level,

and we're talking
the National Security Council

and the Office of the Director
of National Intelligence,

that both of them have directed,

"We do not want to disclose
all that we know about UAP."

So that is reflected
in the latest AARO report,

for example,
and with Sean Kirkpatrick

is now saying coming out,
I'm sure he has some alignment

or association
with those two offices.

♪♪♪

It seems to me that he is part
of the disinformation campaign,

and it's clear the government
does not want to disclose.

♪♪♪

Well, they can say
it's not a UFO

because maybe
they've identified it.

And they know what it is, right?

[birds chirping]

♪♪♪

We're in some kind of a race,

and the race is with destiny--

human destiny and the destiny
of whoever or whatever is here.

You have the Defense Department
resisting every step of the way

because they've got
so much to hide,

and the embarrassment
when the truth comes out

is going to be,
to say the least, fantastic.

♪♪♪

[Rep. Tim Burchett] Imagine if
you did have a recovered craft.

It'd be something the equivalent
of taking something back to,

you know, the 1700s
and dropping them, like,

a brand new Harley-Davidson
motorcycle.

They ain't gonna figure it out.

And they're not gonna
figure out the gasoline.

They're not gonna
figure out anything.

They might kick it over
and it... Kaboom! You know?

And kicks off, but, um...

and that's sort of like
where we're at right now.

[Bryan Bender] Some people
think, "Oh, the government has

the full picture, and they just
don't wanna tell us."

I think it's just as likely
they're reluctant to tell us

what they know
because of a lack of knowledge.

It's because they don't have
the answers,

and it scares them
because it's like,

where is this stuff from?
We don't really know.

[laughter]

[Kelly Chase] Regardless of what
happens in Washington, D.C.,

with the disclosure narrative,

and who knows
where that's gonna go?

The cat has been let
out of the bag.

I think there is
a growing number of people

who are picking this up

as--as a real, legitimate
line of inquiry.

These are anthropologists
and, you know,

religious studies people
and philosophers.

We're seeing people teaching
UFO classes in colleges.

And so this is
a brand-new world.

♪♪♪

We should be constructing
the arguments in a way

that will convince the public
that we're serious about it.

[soft music plays]

You can't claim
a scientific conclusion

if you don't produce
the science that you used

to come to the conclusion
for other people to verify.

Otherwise,
it's just an anecdote.

You are passing off as truth,
a story.

♪♪♪

[Jeffrey Kripal] I actually
don't think we'll ever get

a scientific model for this
because it's not science.

♪♪♪

We can go outside right now,
and I can try to prove to you

that there are stars in the sky,

and you'll just look at me
like, "You're crazy,"

and if we couldn't
go out at night,

if we were--
if we were bound to noon,

you would win the argument
every single time.

So, it's actually the context
that matters.

It's not me telling you
there's stars in the sky.

You won't ever believe me

because there's no way to go
out at night in that model,

and so that's really what
we need.

We need a way to go out at night
and look at the stars,

and we just
don't have that yet.

Science is restricted
to the sun,

to cognitive reason
and the senses,

and this is about altered states

that we don't actually
know how to study

because they don't follow
those rules.

♪♪♪

[Mitch Horowitz] It may be
that all of these experiences,

whether it's a UFO encounter,

whether it's so-called
poltergeist activity,

whether it's
a near-death experience

or reflections or snapshots
in a certain sense

of this extraphysical field

in which
the psyche participates.

♪♪♪

From my perspective,
it's a very exciting time

because we're experiencing
not only the mainstreaming

of the UFO thesis,

but the conversation around UFOs

and the conversation
around the psychical

or the extraphysical
are starting to converge,

and that's a hallmark
of our time.

♪♪♪

[closing theme music plays]

♪♪♪