New Realities: A Lifetime of Making Known the Unknown – An Interview with Alan Steinfeld

What if the unknown isn’t something to fear…but the most beautiful thing you’ve never let yourself explore?

Alan Steinfeld has spent over 40 years making the unknown known. From a pivotal encounter with Ramtha in a Manhattan auditorium in 1981, to a mysterious night in a van in Nebraska that left him with a mark he still can’t explain, to decades of interviewing the most respected and controversial minds in UFO research and consciousness exploration, Alan has dedicated his life to one question: what is really going on, and what does it mean for who we are? 

Alan is the host of New Realities, the author of Making Contact, and a remote viewing teacher who proves in every class that consciousness extends far beyond the body. In this conversation, he shares the experiences that shaped him, the difference between soul and spirit, why he believes we are consciously impaired, and why the future is always more than we can imagine.

Whether you read this as a UFO enthusiast, a consciousness explorer, or just someone who has always felt like there’s more to this life than what you’ve been told, this one will leave you thinking for a long time.

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Alan, Executive Producer of “Calling All Earthlings”, in front of the poster for the premiere with JJ Hurtak, an interviewee in the film.

I want to know more about you and your own awakening to consciousness, mindfulness, spirituality. And so one of the things we oftentimes start off by talking with our guests about is their childhood and how faith or spirituality was either a part of or not a part of their experience. So you grew up in New York, correct?

Alan Steinfeld: Long Island—suburbia, yeah.

Okay, so take us back. What kind of life did you have in terms of some connection to faith, spirituality, consciousness? Was there an experience there?

Alan Steinfeld: Yeah, I always felt there was a difference between faith and spirituality, even though at the time I didn’t really know what spirituality was. I was brought up Jewish. My father was somewhat Orthodox until he met my mother, and then he became more Reformed. I was bar mitzvahed, went to Hebrew school—but I didn’t feel any real connection to spirituality there. It was just something you did.

I’m sure there are places where people truly experience the spiritual depth of Judaism, but for me, religion and spirituality were two completely separate paths. I’m not judging one as better than the other—just that one felt more fulfilling to me later on. At the time, though, I didn’t really understand spirituality at all.

What shifted things was my father. He grew up poor, lived through the Depression, and eventually achieved the American dream—moving to the suburbs, raising a family, and building financial stability. But after reaching a certain level of success, he realized he wasn’t fulfilled by money alone. He started searching for something deeper.

That’s when he began exploring Zen Buddhism and some of the early spiritual and psychological practices emerging in the 1970s—things like Arica and transactional analysis. There were all these new modalities coming forward. I found that fascinating. I even went with him to zazen centers as he learned to meditate.

That was really my doorway into understanding that spirituality wasn’t about religion—it was about an internal process of being. Religion, for me, had felt very external—like going to the Boy Scouts or playing a sport. It was something outside of yourself. But through Buddhism and these deeper psychological practices, I began to see that spirituality was the inner dimension that religion was originally meant to point toward.

It wasn’t until my father opened that door that I was able to connect those two ideas. In a way, he gave me permission to pursue what genuinely interested me.

We had a good life growing up on Long Island. My mother was a homemaker, and my father worked hard. But as I got older—after high school and into college—I started asking myself whether I wanted that same life. Did I want to stay in the suburbs and follow that path, or did I want to explore the unknown? I became interested in what I later came to understand as “making the unknown known.”

I initially studied psychology because I wanted to understand human beings. My uncle, who recently passed, was a psychologist, and I admired that. I wanted to understand how people think. But when I got into it at the University of Buffalo, it wasn’t what I expected. It was statistics, case studies, and a focus on abnormal psychology. It felt dry and disconnected.

Then I took a literature course—and everything changed. I realized that writers understood human psychology far more deeply and meaningfully than the textbooks I was studying. So I switched my major from psychology to literature. It was more creative, more intellectual, and far more satisfying.

I never really liked writing in high school, but this was different. Literature—especially studying someone like James Joyce—was about internal dialogue. It was about consciousness itself. If you look at 20th-century literature, so much of it is centered on understanding the mind and inner experience. That became incredibly meaningful to me.

And how did your dad feel about you pursuing a degree in literature?

Alan Steinfeld: My parents were actually pretty liberal about it. My mother was a little more concerned—she wanted me to have a stable, traditional job, maybe even go into my father’s construction business, which eventually took a toll on his health. But my father was open. In fact, literature was something he had wanted to study himself, but he had to work to support his family.

So he supported me. I didn’t really know what to do with a literature degree, but after college, I got into film production in New York. That was interesting, though if you stay in production, you don’t usually end up directing. Still, I eventually directed my own short film, Never Wear Dead Man’s Shoes, which brought together my interests in spirituality and film.

Around that time—early 1980s—there was this growing movement that people called the “New Age.” It really emerged out of the post-hippie era of the 1960s. The 60s had been a kind of cultural revolution—Woodstock, the Beatles, psychedelics, free love. I just missed it. I was a little too young, which always felt like I arrived just after something important had happened.

But in the 70s and into the 80s, that energy evolved into something more spiritual. Gurus became more visible—people like Rajneesh, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Transcendental Meditation), and Swami Satyananda. There was also Ram Dass, whom I eventually met. Eastern philosophy was starting to enter mainstream alternative culture.

And then I came across something I had never even heard of before—channeling.

Back in 1981, no one really knew what that was. A friend of mine told me about this woman who could transform into a 35,000-year-old warrior from Atlantis and speak profound truths. I thought it sounded ridiculous. I assumed she was either acting or maybe just a bit unstable.

But I was curious enough to go.

That woman was JZ Knight, who channels Ramtha. I saw her live in New York City. She would travel around giving what were called “dialogues,” where people could ask this entity questions.

At first, it seemed entertaining, interesting, but strange. People were asking questions about their relationships, their pets, and their lives. But then something happened that I couldn’t easily explain.

JZ Knight would go into a full trance. Her entire physical presence would change—her posture, her voice, even her eyes. She became someone else entirely. Not partially—completely. She wasn’t there anymore.

And I realized I was witnessing something that challenged everything I thought I knew about consciousness.

That experience didn’t give me answers—but it opened a door.

With Humbatz Men, a Mayan Elder and Day Keeper at a special Crystal Skull gathering in NYC on 10-10-10.

How would you find that mildly entertaining? Or would you not, at that point in your life, be thinking—wow, either this lady’s crazy, or she’s onto something?

Alan Steinfeld: That’s exactly why I went—because I thought she might be onto something. It was entertaining, yes, but the questions people were asking weren’t that interesting to me. There were moments when Ramtha would go into the history of Atlantis and other things that became more fascinating as I went deeper into the teachings—but that first day, it was just… okay.

But then something happened.

Ramtha suddenly turned to me. I was sitting in the back of the room, and he—she—this presence—was pacing across the stage. Then he pointed directly at me and said, “What say you, beloved entity? How be you this day in your time?”

I was stunned. I said, “What? Are you talking to me?”

And he replied, “Indeed, beloved entity. You’d be a most contented being.”

I just said, “Okay… thank you very much.” But that was the moment. That was the inciting incident.

I’m sitting there in the back of the room, still unsure if he was really speaking to me. And then something shifted. Reality itself seemed to soften—like everything became slightly misty, almost fluid. I felt a part of myself leave my body and meet this presence in the middle of the room. It was like an energetic merging, an embrace.

I didn’t even know something like that was possible.

But in that moment, I knew—not intellectually, but directly—that I was more than my body. Who I was extended beyond anything I had been taught in psychology, religion, or anywhere else. There was an essence—an immortal aspect of myself—that became activated in that experience.

And that opened the door to everything that followed.

At first, I thought it might just be a strange incident. So I did what made sense to me—I went to the literature. I started reading texts like Autobiography of a Yogi. I figured if this experience was real, there would be depth to it. And if it wasn’t, it would just fade away.

But the more I read, the deeper it became.

Once that door opens, you can’t really close it again. Something awakens—and from that point on, it becomes a path.

40 years. Amazing.

Alan Steinfeld: And that’s really been my life. I didn’t feel the need to go back to the life I had grown up with—the house in the suburbs, the traditional path. What interested me was this: Who are the spiritual teachers of our time? Where can I learn more? How can I understand this greater essence of myself?

So I became a seeker. But not just a seeker—a finder. There’s a difference.

I found incredible teachers, deep wisdom, and meaningful insights into the nature of reality. I studied with Ramtha for about 20 years. Some people called it a cult—I wouldn’t. To me, it was a teaching. No one was controlling how you lived your life. It was about understanding.

That became the foundation of my spiritual worldview. A lot of people came through that space—Joe Dispenza, for example, received early training there, along with many others.

Through those teachings, I began to explore deeper questions: Why are we here? What is incarnation? What’s the difference between soul and spirit? What is our purpose, our destiny?

For me, spirit is the essence—the fractal of an all-knowing intelligence, the source of creation. It’s what we fundamentally are and always will be. But as that essence expresses itself across dimensions and experiences, there needed to be a way to hold the wisdom of those experiences.

That’s what I understand as the soul.

The soul is like a container for experience—some call it the Akashic Records. Every moment, every lifetime, every emotional imprint is recorded there. In that sense, the soul is like a child of the spirit. The spirit seeks experience; the soul gathers the wisdom from it.

That’s why what may feel difficult or painful on a human level can still serve a deeper purpose. The spirit is seeking expansion through experience, while the soul is integrating and learning from it.

So in this view, we’re here to fully experience what it means to be human—to feel, to live, to understand. Not necessarily to do everything, but to deeply know the emotional reality of being human.

When you reach a point where you can look at others and say, “I understand that—I’ve felt that,” that’s the wisdom of incarnation.

And from that, something begins to shift. The way I see it, ascension isn’t something separate or abstract—it’s the natural result of a life deeply lived. A life of awareness, compassion, and integration. As that happens, even the body begins to change energetically.

That’s one reason we’re here.

Another is to create.

To bring something into existence that wasn’t here before—to “make known the unknown.” That’s what creativity is. Whether it’s writing, music, art, or something like what you’re doing with your magazine, it’s all part of that process. You’re taking something unseen and giving it form so others can experience it.

That’s how we contribute to the evolution of awareness—through both experience and creation.

With Drs. JJ and Desiree Hurtak at one of the many talks on UFOs and Remote Viewing.

Speaking of books, I happen to have one in my hand—a signed copy of Making Contact: Preparing for the New Realities of Extraterrestrial Existence. “Making known the unknown,” as you just said. I’m curious, when did you become aware of—or curious about—ETs, UAPs, UFOs, contact? When did that come into your consciousness?

Alan Steinfeld: That’s a great question. But first, I want to say a few words about the UFO phenomenon in general.

This is the challenge humanity is meeting now. Of course, it’s been going on for a long time, but if we’re going to move to the next level, we have to expand our awareness. If we’re truly going to meet these beings—whatever they are—we have to do it on an even playing field, without going into fear, worship, or any of those extremes.

Because in some way, they are a higher reflection of us. They are pulling us up to a level where we can finally become a planetary race that lives in coherence.

When I was very young—maybe three or four years old—I used to see strange faces in the window. It freaked me out a little. I didn’t know what to make of it. I also felt very different from the rest of my family and the people around me. I think there’s often one person in every family who feels that way.

I never felt like I fully fit into the socialization structure. I didn’t like team sports; I preferred individual sports. I just always knew there was more to reality.

But my real doorway into the UFO phenomenon came through science fiction. In the 1970s, I was obsessed with Star Trek. I loved science fiction because, for me, it opened a door into another level of consciousness. Those writers were the real avant-garde thinkers of our time.

They were writing about living on other planets, transferring consciousness into robot bodies, parallel timelines, parallel dimensions—all the things people are talking about now. Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Philip K. Dick—these writers were experimenting with consciousness in ways that today might be considered spiritual. But it was also science fiction. And now, in some ways, maybe it’s becoming a scientific reality.

So I had this fascination with science fiction. I wanted to be an astronaut. That was a big dream when I was growing up. I also had some strange dreams and definitely had out-of-body experiences when I was younger.

Then, in 1987, something important happened.

There was an event called the Harmonic Convergence, which was really the first New Age spiritual holiday. It took place on August 16 and 17, 1987. José Argüelles, who had worked with the Mayan calendar, said that date marked the end of what he called the ninth hell—a cycle that began when Cortés invaded Mexico in 1519.

The idea was that humanity was completing these cycles of difficulty and entering a new calendar, which later became connected to the 2012 mythology. So in 1987, there was this worldwide spiritual celebration. People gathered in places like Machu Picchu, Sedona, and Mount Shasta—all over the world. And this was before the internet.

Because I was already involved in the New Age scene—studying gurus, channels, and spiritual teachings—I wanted to be part of it. Before the event, I drove around the country in a van to see where I wanted to be for the Harmonic Convergence.

I went to Sedona, which I had visited briefly before, to feel into whether that was the place. While I was there, I met a beautiful, kind woman, and we ended up traveling together. We drove up to Oregon, went to the Oregon Country Fair, and then started heading back east. She was living outside Detroit, and I was going back to New York.

On the way, we stopped at Cougar Hot Springs outside Springfield, Oregon, then continued east on Interstate 80. Eventually, we pulled off the road in western Nebraska, near North Platte. We were exhausted, so we turned onto a dirt road and fell asleep in the van.

When we woke up the next morning, it felt as if we had been frozen in place all night—like suspended animation. We both realized we had woken up in the exact same position we had fallen asleep in. It was strange. The place itself felt weird, and we just wanted to get out.

Then I noticed a mark on the back of my leg—a four-pronged puncture mark behind my knee. At first, I thought it might be a spider bite. But something about the whole experience felt unusual.

After that, we continued, and we were even more connected than before. There was this very heightened energy between us—very intense.

When I got back to New York, I had a family wedding to attend, and I happened to run into some people connected to Budd Hopkins. Budd Hopkins was one of the earliest abduction and contactee researchers. He was the one who introduced John Mack and Whitley Strieber to the UFO phenomenon.

I showed one of his people the mark on the back of my knee and asked, “Do you know what this is?”

They said, “Yes. That’s an abduction mark.”

I said, “What?”

So I couldn’t really deny that something had happened. It definitely wasn’t a spider bite. And that realization—that maybe we had been contacted—pulled me down the rabbit hole for good.

It became two things at once: an obsession and something that freaked me out. I didn’t remember what happened, but something had happened. So I started reading every book I could find and meeting everyone in the field of ufology. I wanted to understand the mystery of the phenomenon.

That was 1987. Almost 40 years later, no one has given me a fully satisfactory answer.

That’s part of why I created this book. It’s a collection of writing from people I consider some of the most knowledgeable voices in the field—Linda Moulton Howe, Whitley Strieber, John Mack, Darryl Anka, Nick Pope, Grant Cameron, J.J. and Desiree Hurtak, Caroline Cory, Mary Rodwell, and Henrietta Weekes.

These are people who became my friends over the years. When you go to enough conferences, you start having dinner with people, spending time with them, and getting to know them. So when I went to a publisher and said I wanted to write a book on UFOs, they suggested I reach out to people I knew and ask each to contribute a chapter.

That’s what the book became—an overview of the phenomenon through different perspectives. There really isn’t another book quite like it.

For example, Nick Pope, who recently passed, was a good friend. He wrote the first chapter in the compilation of essays in Making Contact. He was a government insider, so he wrote in the opening lines of the book, “Every book has to have a villain.” 

I asked him more than once, even publicly at Contact in the Desert. And he still wouldn’t say. That showed real integrity, whatever the secret was.

I wanted the book to include as broad a view of the phenomenon as possible—from someone like Nick Pope, who represents the nuts-and-bolts government perspective, to the more esoteric and consciousness-based side. My literary background helped me structure it that way: moving from the exterior to the interior, from exo-consciousness to the esoteric.

Darryl Anka wrote about his relationship with Bashar. Caroline Cory and Mary Rodwell brought in other dimensions of contact. The Hurtaks wrote a powerful chapter about spiritual dimensions and what they call “extra-celestials,” not just extraterrestrials.

So the book is like different parts of the elephant. No one really knows the whole thing, but each person is touching an important piece.

At a Contact in the Desert lunch with top UFO experts: (from left to right) Alan, Whitley Streiber, Linda Moulton Howe, Jacquee Vallee, Sid Goldberg, Richard Dolan, Nick Pope.

I want to connect our earlier conversation to what you’re talking about now. You talked about your faith feeling more external—about the things out there. And as someone who grew up in a conservative evangelical home and was a pastor for 10 years, a great deal of that felt external and performative: right or wrong, good or bad. It was more about ethics and behavior versus what’s transformative on the inside.

Then you talked about spirituality being more of this internal world. And now you’re relating that to the ET world—that there is an external component and an internal component. So I’m curious about even the word “contact” that you use here. How much of contact do you think of as being out there—some sort of face-to-face, hand-to-hand contact—versus something internal, more of an experience of human consciousness with these beings who maybe cannot be seen? How much of it is out there versus in here?

Alan Steinfeld: First, David, that’s a very intelligent insight and question. And you’re absolutely right.

To understand the whole phenomenon, we have to look at both sides. There is the nuts-and-bolts aspect, but making contact is also about making contact with ourselves—who we are as eternal beings, who we are as evolving consciousness in a cosmos full of consciousness.

It’s about understanding a broader physical reality. We have to have a foot in both worlds. We need our feet on the earth and our heads to the sky.

The phenomenon itself is often divided into two camps. On one side, you have the Department of Defense, or what I call the defense and the offense. The defense side is the government saying, “No, we can’t tell you what we know.” They’re focused on secrecy, technology, and possibly weapons.

The offense, in a sense, is the phenomenon itself. These beings—or whatever they are—are coming and going, interacting with people, and not just on a physical level. People’s consciousness is being affected. They’re being upgraded. They’re having visions. These beings appear in dreams. Their neurology changes. Their creativity changes.

So there is absolutely an internal component.

It depends on who you are and how you view the phenomenon. Some people see something in the sky and say, “That’s a UFO.” Others see something and say, “That did something to me. My thoughts are changing. I don’t think the same way anymore.”

If you’re living in a very small version of reality and something that extreme appears, it can be shocking. It can create ontological shock or cognitive dissonance. But all of that is part of waking people up to the broader reality of who we are.

Ultimately, I see the spiritual aspect of the phenomenon as an evolutionary moment in human history.

John Mack, who was a psychiatrist at Harvard, began speaking with contactees. He was a very traditional psychiatrist. He knew what mental illness looked like. And he said, “These people are not crazy. They’re having a real experience.”

He started to understand that the phenomenon was about consciousness. One of my favorite things he said was that UFOs are like an outreach program from the cosmos for the consciously impaired. And that’s us—we are the consciously impaired.

He also said that we need other ways of thinking if we’re going to understand this phenomenon. We can’t understand it through a purely logical, rational, materialistic, Western view of reality. Something else is happening here.

So to answer your question, I believe this phenomenon is asking us to move beyond materialism—beyond living only on the surface of things. Ken Wilber might call that “flatland.” We’re being invited to realize there is depth, meaning, and purpose to reality.

The dominant Western worldview has often treated the universe as dead, mechanical, and meaningless. But I think the shift that’s happening now is the realization that we live in a universe full of life, consciousness, possibility, and expanded perception.

That is what the phenomenon represents to me.

Jacques Vallée once said that if this were only about visitors from another planet—alien tourists checking out Earth—he would be very disappointed. And I agree. There is something much deeper going on.

This is about a systemic change in who we are as human beings. It’s about becoming homo universalis—humans of the universe. In that sense, it’s a spiritual understanding, because we are realizing how much more we are.

What began in the 1980s as the New Age and human potential movement is now evolving into the recognition that we are infinite beings. Consciousness itself is infinite.

And that’s why I’m so passionate about teaching remote viewing.

Tell me more. I mean, I know what remote viewing is, and I know that you’re involved in it. 

Alan Steinfeld: Remote viewing is one of the clearest proofs that we are not limited to the physical body—that our minds, our consciousness, extend beyond space and time. I can go much deeper into that, but go ahead. Ask me anything.

Lunch meeting for luch with Larry King in LA talking about UFOs.

You’re talking about this experience with contact—that it can be external, but there’s also an internal reality to it. The same thing connects to spirituality: there’s an internal experience. How does one differentiate between what is “real,” what is elevated perception, what is pure imagination, and what is psychosis? Especially for oneself—but also for others. Do we need to differentiate that for other people? There are people I watch online who make me think, “I don’t know, this seems a little off.” How do you differentiate that?

Alan Steinfeld: That is a really excellent question. And honestly, it’s the question most spiritual people have to ask: Is this person crazy? Everyone has a red line.

People will say to me, “I’m out there, but I’m not that out there.” And I understand that.

One of the reasons I ask is because I came from an evangelical Christian world, which I’ve long transitioned out of. I left the pastorate in 2008 and went through my own deconstruction process. In that world, there was a very clear box of theology. If something wasn’t about Jesus, the Holy Spirit, God, and a certain interpretation of Scripture, then it was considered satanic or demonic.

But as I’ve come into spirituality over the last five or six years, one of the first things I noticed was: there are no boundaries here at all. Zero boundaries. And yet, is there still a question of light and dark? I don’t necessarily want to say good and evil, but higher vibration, lower vibration, helpful, unhelpful, healthy, unhealthy—how does one differentiate between all of those things?

Alan Steinfeld: That is the question of the day. It’s the question of spiritual culture, and each of us has to understand it and decide for ourselves.

You can say there is light and dark, or you can say darkness is simply the absence of light. There are things I don’t believe. People tell me a lot of very far-out things, and sometimes I think, “Okay, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.”

So you need discernment.

Give me one you’ve heard recently where it was just completely out there. Obviously, don’t say who it was, but something where you thought, “What?”

Alan Steinfeld: The “20 and back” stories are one example that really turns me off. These are people who claim they were taken to Mars through a wormhole in an office building, served there for 20 years in a secret government program, and then returned to the exact age they were when they left.

For me, that’s very hard to take seriously.

And I feel that some of those stories—like the whole flat earth movement—may even function as psyops or implants to make the entire field look ridiculous. People start repeating something absurd because someone fed them a convincing narrative.

That’s why discernment matters.

I’ve met people in this field who, according to my judgment, seemed completely disconnected. There are people who are always looking up at the sky, saying, “They’re looking at me. They’re talking to me.” There are unstable people in every field.

For me, I ask: Am I receiving truth here? Is this person giving me information I can actually use? Is there a feeling of expansion, intelligence, or depth?

I’m also very discerning when it comes to channels. I’ve seen some of the best since the 1980s, so I have a strong reference point. In my opinion, many people who say they are channeling are really channeling their alter ego. They may be saying meaningful things, but I ask myself: Am I learning something new? Is there a vibration or transmission that expands me?

It’s a feeling, an intellectual recognition, and an energetic sense.

Getting back to UFOs, there are some very extreme claims. I once asked someone who believed in these Mars programs, “What were you doing on Mars?” And he said, “We were selling beer to the rest of the solar system.”

At that point, I thought, “Okay, I really have to go.”

I don’t have much patience for something that doesn’t feel intelligently designed.

So that’s my own discernment. There are fundamentalists in the UFO world just like there are fundamentalists in theology or any other world. I’m drawn to people who have a wider view of reality.

The people I invited into Making Contact all had that wider perspective. Even Nick Pope, who came from a government background, was open and expansive. John Mack, although he had already passed by the time I created the book, had given a talk that felt very contemporary, so I worked with his archivist to include it.

John was very level-headed. He came from a psychiatric background and taught psychiatry at Harvard. Harvard challenged him because he was saying people were having ET experiences. So he had to ask: Are these people experiencing psychosis, or are they having a real experience?

Using his background in psychiatry, he concluded that, for the most part, these people were normal, functional, productive, and highly motivated.

There are signs of psychosis—self-obsession, delusion, and lack of self-awareness. And I think we all have to bring critical thinking to our own beliefs, too. Belief doesn’t make something true. Belief is conjecture. Belief can be make-believe.

You can believe whatever you want, but do you know it? Are you taking it seriously without questioning it, or are you willing to be critical of your own belief system?

I try to do that myself. I believe there are abductions and contact experiences. I think I’ve had them. But do I know exactly what happened? Not completely. Some of it didn’t happen in this physical reality, so I still question everything.

What I do know is that something is here. There is a phenomenon that interacts with human consciousness and the world. It appears, disappears, and remains hidden.

The best way I can describe it is something someone once said about Einstein’s work: “Something unknown is doing we don’t know what.” That’s how I see the UFO phenomenon. Something unknown is happening; we don’t know what.

Maybe the government knows a little more. I think they do. But they’re trying to put it into a box. They create fear around it and say, “We can’t reveal this because of national security.” But that’s another level of the lie. They’re taking the phenomenon too literally, focusing on objects, technology, and weapons instead of seeing the bigger picture.

Most experiencers—people who have interacted with these beings—are experiencing something much more complex. For me, some of those interactions have happened on the dream level. At least I think they were dreams. But they’re not ordinary dreams. Most dreams fade. These stay with you. Some of mine have stayed with me since 1987.

So the question becomes: Do you embrace the unknown, or do you fear it?

If you fear the unknown, you’re usually projecting the known onto it. But the real unknown is full of possibilities, wonder, and unexpected treasure.

So do we make known the unknown? Or do we hide in our little cave and say, “Don’t go there. It might be dangerous.”

Maybe it is dangerous in some ways. But overall, I’ve seen more positive effects from the phenomenon than negative ones.

Lecturing at the Alex Grey’s Chapel of Sacred Mirrors (CoSM) on UFOs and Consciousness.

Darryl Anka wears “2027” on the front of his shirt wherever he goes, and underneath it says, “The year that changed everything.” Do you believe that’s true? And if so, what do you think is going to change?

Alan Steinfeld: Well, you asked me if I believe it’s true—and I just said belief is conjecture. So belief, in itself, doesn’t mean anything.

But I do think something seems to be building within the government and the global political structure. We’re in a dangerous time, with very intense geopolitical developments. And I do feel like we’re building toward an exciting moment.

If you’ve ever read Shakespeare, Act Four is where everything changes—right before it resolves in Act Five. I feel like we’re in Act Four of the human drama. And which way will it go? Will it become a comedy or a tragedy?

My feeling is that we’re building toward a huge shift.

More people around the planet are having experiences, contacts, and sightings. I was just out in Sedona with a group of people, and we saw these lights coming up over the horizon. They were yellow lights—not flashing like planes—and then they faded away. About 20 of us saw them.

My friend Peter Sterling had a video go viral recently with lights like that, and we were out there with him. I’ve seen other things in the sky, too. I’ve seen blue beams coming out of lights. I was in Sedona with night vision goggles, which amplify light thousands of times, and someone said, “Look, there’s a triangle up there.” I looked through the goggles, and there was this triangle. As I was looking at it, it shifted orientation.

Maybe it was a coincidence. Maybe it wasn’t. But David, something is going on. It feels like it’s getting closer. Maybe it’s 2027. Maybe it isn’t. Who knows?

What if nothing happens in 2027? Is Darryl risking his reputation on this?

Alan Steinfeld: Yes, he’s risking his reputation—but he’s risked it before.

With prophecy, there’s always that question. There’s even a book called When Prophecy Fails, about how people sometimes become even stronger believers when predictions don’t come true. People are always making predictions.

But even if you ask Bashar about the future, anything he sees is based on the probability of the moment.

And we can have an impact on what unfolds a year from now.

Alan Steinfeld: Exactly. We can change what happens.

So I don’t know. And in a way, who cares? We’ll see what happens. I’m excited because every year we seem to get closer to the truth. Something is about to give way. And if it doesn’t, we’re in a lot of trouble.

I’m not saying they’re here to rescue us, because they’re definitely not here to save us from ourselves. We have to wake up and take responsibility as conscious beings with each other. We are on one planet.

This is an amazing planet—one of my favorites, I’ll tell you that. There are a lot of planets out there, but they’re not as interesting, diverse, or beautiful as this emerald-blue jewel of the solar system.

So why are we not living in peace?

One of my favorite quotes is from H.G. Wells, who wrote War of the Worlds, the first major book about alien invasion. At the end of his life, he came to some peace and wrote, “someday people will look back at old newspapers and magazines and wonder, incredulously, was there ever such a world.

In the future, as I see it, hopefully, we will become an evolved society. So whether the ETs come or not, we will hopefully have learned how to live together, how to care for one another and the planet, how to realize the God essence within us, and how to activate the human potential of our universal mind.

That means compassion, love, telepathy, and what some might call gifts of the spirit—embodied in the human being of this next decade.

That’s my hope.

Interview with Paul Selig at Google studios for the New Realities YouTube channel.

Thank you so much, Alan. That’s beautiful. You’ve recently created a song called Impossible Things. Tell us, what is your vision for this song?

Alan Steinfeld: I’ve been doing workshops since the 1980s, ever since I met Ramtha in 1981. Recently, I did a workshop on mind sight—seeing through blindfolds—as well as telekinesis, psychic awareness, remote viewing, and learning out-of-body travel.

These are things the mainstream world considers impossible. The idea that consciousness exists beyond the body is still considered impossible by many people. But how do you explain near-death experiences? Out-of-body travel? Astral projection?

These are things I’ve been studying for decades, and they are still very foreign to the mainstream world. Remote viewing shows that you can perceive something beyond your immediate senses. In my own classes, I explain that the CIA and Stanford Research Institute proved this 50 years ago, in the 1970s. Consciousness is non-local, and you can perceive beyond the physical.

I recently went to Russell Targ’s birthday party. He was one of the founders of remote viewing, and he’s very proud that there are now millions of websites using the term. It started as a phrase in the 1970s, and now it’s everywhere.

So these things are only “impossible” according to the old paradigm.

I wanted to write a song about that—about consciousness floating beyond the brain and body, and all these abilities and possibilities that are part of our human potential. I wanted something playful, something that named these impossible things.

I was thinking about Julie Andrews’ song from The Sound of Music, “My Favorite Things.” That kind of structure—naming things one after another—felt right. But I couldn’t quite make that work. Then someone told me about this AI music app called Suno, where you give it lyrics and choose a genre.

I wanted something with that classic musical feeling, but I ended up choosing a big band sound from the 1930s and 1940s. I put in my words about all these “impossible” things—remote healing, remote sensing, energy healing, Reiki, and everything I’ve studied over the last 40 years—and it created this big band melody with a voice that reminded me of Frank Sinatra.

My parents loved Frank Sinatra. He was a little before my time, but he was such a great phraser of words. You could understand everything he sang.

So I put on a Frank Sinatra-style voice for my words about impossible things, and it came out magically. I don’t think I could have hired musicians to do it better than what this AI app created. I can listen to that song all day.

Even though I wrote it, it reminds me of who we really are. We are fantastic beings who have not been recognized by the old paradigms. When we realize that what we once thought was impossible is now possible, that’s a paradigm shift.

That’s also what Awakened Magazine is about. What are people awakening to? Their own infinite nature. That’s what you’re doing—you’re helping tell people who they really are.

My mother, when she was alive, probably would have said, “What are you talking about? Awakening? Stop it. Just do your homework. Go get a job.” But now that she’s passed over, I think she has a different point of view.

Alan, tell us where people can find you, your upcoming events, and what you have planned through the end of 2026.

Alan Steinfeld: My website is NewRealities.com. Everything I do is under the frame of New Realities, because that’s what I’m pursuing. All the people I’ve interviewed are talking about this next level of reality—a mind expansion.

You can find The Immortal Songs of New Realities on Spotify.

I also have my YouTube channel, where I interview many cutting-edge, impossible thinkers—people who are pushing the envelope of what is possible.

On May 3^rd I will be hosting the upcoming UAPCon 2.

I’m participating in the Psi Games, a friendly competition of psychic activity in Charlottesville. I’m also doing Contact in the Desert, which I haven’t missed in 14 years because I’m still obsessed with the UFO phenomenon.

I actually dedicated my book to the founders of Contact in the Desert. I’ll be there May 29 through June 1, 2026, in Indian Wells, outside Palm Springs. It’s the best UFO conference in the world, in my opinion. There are usually 4,000 to 5,000 people there, all in community, discussing new ideas, the latest revelations, and people’s experiences.

There’s a whole experiencer forum where people gather and share what has happened to them. If you go, David, you can start to discern who is really on the edge and who is over the edge.

I’m also doing Suzanne Ross’ San Diego Transcendence Retreat, and I’ll be in Glastonbury at the Portal to Ascension retreat at the end of August. That should be a lot of fun. I may also do a small speaking tour around Europe, possibly in Mallorca.

You can check everything on my website. And if anyone wants to email me or take my next remote viewing class, which will probably be sometime in the fall, they can email newrealities@earthlink.net.

Things keep snowballing. I’m also writing another book about UFOs and what it really means to be in contact—how it changes us when these beings interface with humans. That’s really exciting to me.

The book probably won’t come out until after they arrive in 2027.

When will that book come out?

Alan Steinfeld: We’ll have to see. The future is always changing. I think it was George Bush who said, “The future will be better tomorrow.”

The future is always more than we can imagine. That’s why it’s the future. If you can already imagine it, it’s the past.

So we’re moving into a new time, and I think the ETs will be part of it for sure. And I’ll be right there with the welcoming party when they land.

I love it. Alan, it is so fun to hear you share your thoughts and memories. You have spent so much time processing all of this and connecting with people who are thinking on the edge—and also over the edge. I love being at events where you are creating energy wherever you go. People love you. You are loved. So thank you for what you do.

Alan Steinfeld: Well, I love people. That’s my Aquarian nature.

And really, this is about community. Yes, these are way-out subjects and new ideas, but the people on this journey together—what we might call an evolutionary community—are really good people, for the most part. Don’t you think so, David?

Absolutely. I’ve had so much fun getting to know you at events and today as well. Alan, thanks for being with us. I appreciate it.

Alan Steinfeld: You asked really intelligent and challenging questions. I had to dig into myself, and I really liked this interview. Thanks, David.