Experiencer Disclosure Initiative
(ExDI)

The Experiencer Disclosure Initiative is an answer to the incredulity and disbelief expressed by most westerners when Experiencers^[1] candidly respond to questions about the nature of their encounters with an advanced form of intelligent life. Decades into the 21st century, the subject matter remains so ontologically problematic that people who report incidents of Contact are usually presumed to be mentally ill, lying for personal gain, or simply confused about a sleep paralysis event. In other words, they’re pathologized for telling what is quite literally, an unbelievable truth.

The exasperation and insult of this dynamic notwithstanding, most Experiencers readily empathize with just how challenging it can be to accept claims of “alien visitation” at face value. In a dearth of corroborating physical evidence, accounts of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena that defy Newtonian physics, and tales of otherworldly grey beings who appear to blink in and out of material existence at will, are nearly impossible to reconcile within the dominant western worldview. All too familiar is the reflexive cultural pushback against exotic narratives that uncomfortably diverge from consensus reality…

“What these people are describing is impossible! It’s the stuff of science fiction! If the phenomenon is real, where is the proof? Where are the pictures? Why don’t the aliens just land on the White House lawn?”

At ExDI, we recognize that it’s instinctive to assume Experiencers and UAP^[2] witnesses are inherently uncredible, or that they are somehow fundamentally incapable of accurately evaluating the corporeal features of Contact encounters. That many individuals were fully awake during at least some portion of their interactions, is a detail often lost in translation. Deflecting one's own cognitive dissonance is decidedly easier than facing the existential implications of otherworldly phenomena that rarely materialize within the thresholds of sensory perception.

But alas, one needn’t believe in a thing for it to be true.

Materialists have for millennia enjoyed a kind of ontological homeostasis in our understanding of the atomistic universe we inhabit. While scientific knowledge has evolved through the centuries, truly consequential paradigm shifts have been few and far between. Indeed, one could argue that humanity hasn’t been on the verge of such a quantum leap in consciousness since Galileo used his telescope to confirm that Earth wasn’t the center of the Cosmos after all. Exciting as this sounds, our reptilian brain is often triggered by the idea that our species' dominance — an evolutionary advantage we have long taken for granted — might soon be called into question. It is perhaps in this primordial fear that so many of us reject even the possibility that life on Earth might already be of interest to technologically advanced beings who appear to be in complete control of both the manner and timing of their interactions with us.

Apparently, we’d prefer to kick the evidentiary can down the road when the burden of proof is on a community of people who seem utterly incapable of providing any at all.

And yet... it's becoming increasingly apparent that we have not been acting in our own best interests in refusing to take seriously a very provocative data set — one that has been incubated by UAP witnesses and Experiencers alike since at least June of 1947 (when private pilot Kenneth Arnold clocked nine shiny unidentified saucer-shaped objects flying at supersonic speeds past Mount Rainier).^[3] Humankind should be engaging these anomalous events with the same ingenuity and sense of purpose that Homo sapiens have been drawing upon since the dawn of our existence. We have the capacity to act courageously even when we're afraid, and we are intellectually capable of suspending disbelief for the purposes of scientific inquiry. Knowing this, it's disappointing that so many of us have been unwilling to consider the Contact phenomenon with an open mind or even a healthy skepticism. Because what if... western civilization's reticence to contemplate this profound enigma, has peripherally blinded us to a mysterious universe that has been flickering at the edges of our collective psyche for decades?

Today, as the western mainstream struggles to navigate the waters of a cultural conversation laced with the noetic struggles of a cognitive minority whose interactions with an advanced alien intelligence defy both imagination and belief, Experiencer claims continue to be evaluated against long-established orthodoxies upheld by the gatekeepers of human knowledge — venerable scientists and academics who have been presiding over the dialog with the full weight of centuries-old institutions behind them. When few rational people would argue against the erudition of such learned authorities, where does that leave us in a discussion about the fundamental nature of reality, or the phenomenology of Contact?

To find out, we must wrest the discourse from the mire of dogmatism, circular reasoning, and debunkerism masked as legitimate scientific skepticism. We are also urgently in need of a rigorous investigative model that will allow researchers to:

• Establish universally accepted criteria for UAP and experiencer witness credibility.
• Question various scientific hypotheses long presumed to be incontrovertible.
• Think beyond the rubrics of materialism, insomuch as the paradigm fails to accommodate the (meta)physics of Contact.
• Define and respond to the complex epistemological challenges that inevitably arise when perfectly sane people remain unwavering in their claims about Contact.
• Develop a new referential language to more accurately describe the peculiar phenomena and physics of Contact.
• Devise novel research methodologies to capture the data set currently held by numerous UAP witnesses and Experiencers.
• Implement a cross-sectional, observational approach in the study of the phenomenon. Since empirical science cannot reproduce in a lab the appearance of UAP or the cause and effects of Contact, we require an interdisciplinary collaboration that utilizes pattern recognition and data linkage for a robust analysis of UAP and the Experiencer mythos as a whole.

The magnitude of the task before us cannot be overstated. It is in fact, monumental. We, therefore, urgently need intellectually courageous scientists, academicians and cultural leaders around the globe to step forward in the spirit of collaboration. The truth must be pursued wherever it leads; even if that turns out to be beyond the limits of spacetime, into the shimmering folds of a multidimensional Universe where the highly improbable is actually real, deeply enigmatic, and happening — right now — during this pivotal hour of our species’ evolutionary journey.

ExDI recognizes a broad spectrum of exotic phenomena that many people have either directly experienced or can personally relate to in some way. Numerous detailed accounts of OBE’s, NDE’s, meditative visions, psychedelic journeys, premonitory dreams, telepathy, precognition, channeling, mediumship, and even UFO sightings, suggest these mystifying occurrences might be manifesting on a continuum of consciousness. Ephemeral as they are, they often leave lasting impressions within the human psyche and precipitate the onset of major life changes for the person involved. In this way and others, they share DNA in common with the Contact phenomenon. Accordingly, it has become culturally normative for “experiencers” of all types to identify as such.

That said, for the purposes of our collaboration with scholars and scientists endeavoring to answer the question, "Are we alone in the universe?", ExDI is focusing on the subset of experiencers who have either: a. directly witnessed UAP vehicles perform maneuvers that exceeded the limits of Newtonian physics, or b. have interacted with technologically advanced sentient beings who physically manifested in 4D reality for a meaningful period of time. At least some part of the event will have occurred during the experiencer’s waking state consciousness, thus leaving the individual with explicit, unsuppressed memories that are immediately recalled without the use of hypnosis.

We are intentionally parsing this category of experiencer witnesses to eliminate any noise in the data set which might be accounted for by conventional explanations. We have also adopted the reasonable stance that the most common explications regarding Contact encounters are not accurately applied universally. That is to say, while we acknowledge that some percentage of experiences have mundane explanations, we also recognize that others are profoundly anomalous and cannot be dismissed with prescriptive rationalizations.

ExDI is taking this very measured approach in how we research and communicate about the Phenomenon in our commitment to meet the thresholds of rigorous, open, and genuinely scientific research. We are deeply committed to establishing the credibility of a diverse experiencer community, and trust our meticulousness toward that end will be well received by colleagues, critics and peers alike

In John Naughton’s essay in The Guardian, he wrote about Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions:

Kuhn’s central claim is that a careful study of the history of science reveals that development in any scientific field happens via a series of phases. The first he christened “normal science” – business as usual, if you like. In this phase, a community of researchers who share a common intellectual framework – called a paradigm or a “disciplinary matrix” – engage in solving puzzles thrown up by discrepancies (anomalies) between what the paradigm predicts and what is revealed by observation or experiment. Most of the time, the anomalies are resolved either by incremental changes to the paradigm or by uncovering observational or experimental error. As philosopher Ian Hacking puts it in his terrific preface to the new edition of Structure: “Normal science does not aim at novelty but at clearing up the status quo. It tends to discover what it expects to discover.”

The trouble is that over longer periods unresolved anomalies accumulate and eventually get to the point where some scientists begin to question the paradigm itself. At this point, the discipline enters a period of crisis characterised by, in Kuhn’s words, “a proliferation of compelling articulations, the willingness to try anything, the expression of explicit discontent, the recourse to philosophy and to debate over fundamentals”.

In the end, the crisis is resolved by a revolutionary change in world-view in which the now-deficient paradigm is replaced by a newer one. This is the paradigm shift of modern parlance and after it has happened the scientific field returns to normal science, based on the new framework. And so it goes on.

This is precisely where we find ourselves in the contemporary dialectic about UAP and human-alien contact encounters.

How could there be any better contextualization or framework for understanding the work that lies ahead?

Reference:
Naughten, John. “Thomas Kuhn, the Man Who Changed the Way the World Looked at Science”, The Guardian, Aug 19, 2012

We are developing:

•  A community of vetted, highly-credible experiencers to participate in:

1. 1. Roundtable discussions with scholars and scientists
   2. Public education opportunities through filmmakers and various media outlets
   3. Personality studies and other academic research

•  A website with original content for educational and community outreach purposes

•  Relationships with respected members of the scientific, academic and research  communities to implement a cross-sectional, observational approach in the study of the Phenomenon. (Since empirical science cannot reproduce in a lab the appearance of UAP or the cause and effects of Contact, we require a interdisciplinary collaboration that utilizes pattern recognition and data linkage for a robust analysis of UAP and the Experiencer mythos as a whole.)

We are offering support to projects that intend to:

1. 1. Establish universally accepted criteria for UAP witness and experiencer credibility.
   2. Expand critical thinking about the phenomenon beyond the rubrics of materialism, insomuch as the worldview fails to entirely accommodate the (meta)physics of Contact.
   3. Define and respond to the complex epistemological challenges that inevitably arise when perfectly sane people remain unwavering in their claims about Contact.
   4. Develop a new referential language that addresses the inaccuracies within pseudo-scientific and scientific discussions re: the peculiar phenomena and physics of Contact.
   5. Devise novel research methodologies to capture the data set currently held by numerous UAP witnesses and experiencers.
   6. Resolve human suffering and move humanity toward the realization of an interconnected global community.

A Call to Action… ExDI is currently cultivating partnerships with reputable organizations, forward-thinking scholars, and courageous researchers committed to upholding rigorous protocols in their investigations of the Phenomenon. If you are interested in contributing to the development of Dr. Mack’s work with Experiencers and have a professional or research background that you believe might be usefully applied in our efforts, please don’t hesitate to reach out and introduce yourself.

To reach the directors of the Experiencer Disclosure Initiative please write to exdi@johnemackinstitute.org