The Mutual Enactment Hypothesis

Mar 17, 2020 | Updates

by Sean Esbjörn-Hargens PhD

Over the last 7 months I’ve been teaching an Exo Studies Master Course online with 35-55 participants depending on the week or section. During this period, I’ve been intensely exploring the various theories about what non-human intelligences (NHIs) are. I have identified 10 distinct but overlapping hypotheses. I have always felt that each hypothesis does account for some of the phenomena and experiences that occur in and around UFOs. Thus, they are all right to some extent or within certain contexts. This sense that they are all partially correct has led me to explore how I can visually represent their partial truths by highlighting which aspects of the “exo phenomena” they focus on in their explanations. This has led me to create figure 1 (see above) and develop a new eleventh hypothesis. Below is an excerpt from the article I’m working on currently entitled “A Metaview of the Ontological Status of Non-Human Intelligences (NHIs): An Exo Studies Exploration of the Mutual Enactment Hypothesis”

The 10 Most Common Hypotheses

There are at least 10 major camps of explanation for who or what these NHIs are that people keep encountering. Each of these hypotheses contain variations that often that don’t agree with each other. I am not trying to minimize the diversity of explanations but rather just want to provide a high-level overview of the major positions.

  • The Extraterrestrial Hypothesis (ETH): NHIs are physical or artificial beings from other planets or star systems who have some form of interstellar travel that can manipulate time-space to cover vast distances. This includes the human-alien hybrids that have consistently been reported by abductees. This was the preferred explanation within UFOlogy from the 1940s through the 1960s and still remains the most popular view public consciousness.
  • The Extradimensional Hypothesis (EDH): NHIs are physical or energetic beings living in other dimensions or parallel worlds that are able to enter into our world through their own technology, their powers of consciousness, or through natural portals that open up between our worlds. A variation of this hypothesis is the Ultraterrestrial Hypothesis (UTH) advanced by John Keel which sees NHIs as indigenous to Earth who are manipulating us from a different dimension. Mac Tonnies notion of cryptoterrestrials is a recent version of Keel’s position. A less nefarious version of this hypothesis is the Interterrestrial Hypothesis (ITH), which claims that there are NHIs living “inside” the Earth in other dimensions such as in the city of Telos under Mt. Shasta in California. This hypothesis has gained much favor since the 1960s as the ETH has for many failed to account for the more bizarre aspects of the UFO phenomena.
  • The Time Traveling Hypothesis (TTH): NHIs are actually humans from the future. Though they might not look exactly like us due to future evolutionary dynamics, genetic modification, and/or the destruction of our environment. Michael Master’s recent work on “extratempestrials” is a good example of this approach.
  • The Dark Military Hypothesis (DMH): NHIs are actually the result of black ops and covert military programs using advanced forms of technology to produce psychological manipulation and in some cases “programmed life forms” (PLFs) to stage abductions and generate certain types of experiences of UFOs. This hypothesis assumes that these military operations have been successful in acquiring or reverse engineering their own UFOs. Steven Greer often advances versions of this hypothesis as a way of accounting for negative encounters with NHIs. His view is that all “real” ETs and EDs are benevolent.
  • The Psychosocial Hypothesis (PSH): NHIs are the result of psychosocial dynamics such as mass hysteria, archetypal manifestations, and collective psi phenomena. This view also tends to emphasize the cultural frames used to interpret NHIs in different time periods (e.g., European fairy encounters as aliens of yesteryear or Medieval angels and demons). This approach is most often associated with Carl Jung’s classic Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Sky (1969).
  • The Earth Lights Hypothesis (ELH): NHIs are the result of tectonic strain, ley lines, water interacting with sandy soils, and other various electromagnetic dynamics which produce various light-based phenomena (e.g., orbs, earth lights, spook lights, ghost lights) which in can appear to be sentient or intelligent. This hypothesis emerged in the late 70s and early 1980s with Michael Persinger & Gyslaine Lafreniere research into “space-time transients” and Paul Devereux work around earth lights.
  • The Intrapsychic Hypothesis (IPH): NHIs are the result of different psychological processes (e.g., false memory, projection, trauma, hypnagogic sleep, imagination, altered states of consciousness, EMFs triggering hallucinations). This hypothesis is generally evoked to dismiss the notion of NHIs or reduce them to fantasy. However, I believe that there are non-skeptical aspects of this hypothesis than can be used to better understand NHIs as “real” psychological, cultural, and even multidimensional beings.
  • The Co-creative Hypothesis (CCH): NHIs are independent beings (either physical ETs or energetic EDs) but our experience of them and perception of how they appear is the result of a co-creative process informed by 1.) the NHIs ability to actively morph their appearance as they see fit to facilitate the encounter, 2.) our own expectations and cultural frames, and 3.) our unconscious cognitive biases of perception that kick in to help us make sense of paranormal stimuli that doesn’t fit into our normal range of perception and meaning making. This hypothesis is associated with Greg Bishop, see his chapter in UFOs: Reframing the Debate (2017).
  • The Breakaway Civilization Hypothesis (BCH): Many NHIs, especially “human-looking” ones are primarily Earth humans or off-planet humans that have been part of an emerging breakaway civilization beginning with the airship mystery of the late 1800s associated with Charles Dellschau and the Sonora Aero Club. This breakaway group is believed to have become spacefaring in the 1930s as the Nazi “Die Glocke” (the Bell) program paved the way for the emergence of “secret space programs” (SSPs). As a result, many of the legitime UFOs sighted are actually interstellar craft belonging to this group and their SSPs. Richard Dolan has recently provided an overview of how a breakaway civilization could have emerged.
  • The Artificial Intelligence Hypothesis (AIH): Some NHIs are actually “programmed life forms.” For example, often the short Grays are reported as being robot-like worker bees. Throughout the encounter literature there are reports of encounters with what appear to be robots or various forms of humanoid artificial intelligence. Likewise, UFOs have in some cases been described as drones or “living machines.”

I believe that these various hypotheses are not incommensurable or nonexclusive with each other. They can all be accurate or helpful in describing different aspects of the UFO phenomena. In some cases, more than one hypothesis might apply to any given occurrence or situation. If anything has become obvious over the last 80 years it is that UFOs and NHIs are NOT easily explained in their totality with a single theory or approach. Thus, over the last few years I’ve been developing what I call the mutual enactment hypothesis (MEH).

A New Integrative Hypothesis of NHIs

From an exo studies perspective each of the 10 hypothesis outlined above are recognized as being “true but partial.” They each shine a unique light on the complexity and multivalent nature of UFOs and the NHIs associated with them. For the last year I have been grappling with the mercurial manifestations of the UFO phenomena in all of its anomalist and paranormal expressions. Different reports in the literature or experiences from people I talk with often seem best explained by one or two (sometimes three) of the 8 hypotheses. But none of the 10 (nor any combination of several of them) seem adequate for the majority of the expressions of the phenomena. This has consistently led me to the sense that all of the hypothesis are correct or partially correct depending on what is being examined or discussed. As a result, I’ve been exploring how to present a new hypothesis that is informed by the best of the other 10. Here is a short summary of the mutual enactment hypothesis followed by a more expanded presentation:

  • The Mutual Enactment Hypothesis (MEH): NHIs are one of five major types of beings that contribute in mutually enacting ways to each other and the manifestation of the Phenomena (i.e., UFO, anomalist, and paranormal occurrences). All five types of beings (i.e., humans, NHIs, earth lights, thought forms and archetypes) are influenced in numerous ways by electromagnetic energies. These five types of beings exist along an ontological spectrum of intrapsychic, interpsychic, interobjective and objective. This hypothesis is the result of a sustained meta-analysis the other 8 hypothesis and provides a potential integration of the major insights and distinctions of each of them.

The MEH takes the position that there are at least five major distinct types of beings involved with the UFO phenomena. A being is understood as any entity that is perceived by an observer as being distinct regardless of its actual ontological status in relationship to the observer (i.e., dependent, semi-independent, independent existence). Each of these five beings can be considered an observer under certain circumstances. These beings include the following:

  • Humans: objective beings that live on Earth.
  • Non-human intelligences: objective beings that can be either physical (i.e., ETs) or para-physical or energetic (i.e., EDs) beings that live on other planets, on spaceships, or in other dimensions.
  • Thought forms: intrapsychic beings that emerge in or from the minds of objective beings but who can under certain circumstances gain semi-independence or complete independent existence. For example, the creation of tulpas through the powers of concentration such as in occult practices.
  • Archetypes: interpsychic beings that emerge from the collective minds of multiple objective beings but who like thought forms can under certain circumstances gain semi-independence or complete independent existence. For example, the creation of egregories through the power of focused or repeated cultural awareness.
  • Earth lights: interobjective beings that are produced by natural earth-based processes that involve electromagnetic energies such as tectonic plates grinding together or landscape features that contain or produce gravitational or magnetic anomalies. These beings are often called ghost lights, earth lights, spook lights, and will-o-wisps. Many experiences of these luminous balls describe them as intelligent or sentient. Thus, similar to thought forms and archetypes these beings appear to be able to under certain circumstances to gain and display a level of semi-independence or potentially complete independence of observers. Also, many NHIs have been observed transforming into orbs or vice versa.

In short, all five types of beings outlined above contribute to and are informed by the exo-phenomena in various ways. The MEH is radically non-anthropocentric in that it takes seriously the perspectives of all five types of beings and developing reliable ways to account for or represent such perspectives. Figure 1 provides a graphic representation of various lines of enactment that are considered within the MEH.

As Figure 1 highlights electromagnetic energies (EME) have the potential and often do contribute directly to all five types of beings both in terms of what they perceive and how they are perceived by the other beings. For example, research into the effects of EMEs on human beings indicates that they can increase human psychic capacities to perceive NHIs, earth lights, and various other paranormal realities. NHIs seem to be able to use EMEs to help them manipulate time and space. For example, in order to time travel or open up portals to enter our world from other dimensions or parallel realities. Thought forms and archetypes can draw on and be substantiated by EMEs. And earth lights are often the direct result of EMEs.