This whole commentary has come out of a recent conversation I had with the executive producer of a 'new' TV show that Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is doing, in conjunction with Rogers Home Digital, entitled 'Aliens and Psychics'.

From the sound of it, it would seem, they are hitting the archives and pulling old material that will suit the title, hence, segments on aliens and segments on psychics. How much new material they intend to add is unknown to me, although, I assume they will do, with this series, what other networks have done in the past, which is to lace the old with the new.

Hanna Gartner is hosting the series, which will bring an air of respectability and good reporting to it, so, the series ought to be interesting.

Now, the reason I was speaking with this producer was, she wanted to let me know they will be airing a segment I had done for CBC's The Fifth Estate, and was there anything I had said, at that time, that I would like to retract?

That was ten years ago and, looking back at that segment, I realize I had made some rather startling, eyebrow raising statements, such as, I am an alien, and, in answer to Hanna Gartners' next question where she asked if my mother was surprised by that, I replied, she's an alien, too.

I shared, with the producer, that a lot of water had passed under the bridge since I had made those remarks, but they could feel free to air the piece, intact, nothing missing... not the toning... or the healing session with my meditation group...or the family shots at home... or... anything I had said.

Now, I'm faced with this segment going to air, sometime next season. Do I panic? No. Why? Because, I believe what I said to be true, not just that it's my truth and my reality, but that it's something I innately know to be true.

Without a credible scientific explanation though, I just look like I'm talking through my tin-foil hat.

So, how do we tackle this?

The whole idea of genetic memory is not news. Scientists have found definite genetic links to behaviours, such as alcoholism, which, according to Michio Kaku in his book Visions, scientists have found on evidence for on chromosomes 1,4,8 and 16. He cites there are also genes that contribute to anxiety, optimism and pessimism. He says "although they did not locate a gene controlling happiness, psychologists at the University of Minnesota claimed that, after analyzing 2,000 twins born between 1936 and 1955 in Minnesota, there is a preset happiness set point that seems to be hard-wired into our genes. They go on to say,"whether we face good fortune or bad times, we eventually return to that set point".

So, I'm thinking, what else is hard-wired into our genes? Michio Kaku believes that, "individual genes contributing to a wide variety of behaviour patterns will be discovered by 2020, but that it may take many years after that before we understand how they are orchestrated and how they take their cues from the environment."

Do we have certain forms of behaviour that are taking their cues from, let's say, an ancestry beyond this planet, and/or dimension? Why is it that the majority of contactees/abductees have a sense of mission, feel like observers, share commonalities of all sorts and most often have a family history through the generations of contact or abduction?

Well, how about Genetic Memory? It's a popular topic amongst some ET-based religions. They discuss the properties of our former twelve-strand DNA vs our current two-strand DNA and what we have lost genetically, which sounds reasonable enough, although the information is often lost in flowery rhetoric. Of course, there's Carl Jung, who popularized the term Collective Unconscious, which helped us to analyze our dreams and Joseph Campbell to compare the Creation Myth, shared by the people of this planet. Genetic memory is also being used as one explanation for reincarnation, so, how far back do we go? Do we go beyond our Earthly existence? I believe so, but, then, there is the burden of proof.

Is it up to the scientific community or do we take, as documented proof, video tape, photographs, recordings or... something else?

There's a link on the Virtually Strange Network under Ufological Links entitled Historical Artwork and UFOs. This compilation, from cave drawings to religious art, depict what are, as far as we can see, documented experiences and sightings of UFOs and visitors.

Christ flanked by spacecraft, a cardinals' saucer-shaped hat, the Virgin Mary beamed with a shaft of light from an obvious craft, or a detailed cave drawing of visitors and their vehicles. In this case, is seeing is more than believing? Have people documented real occurrences? Was the cave artist not only marking where wild game could be found, or something else that he saw on his hunting expedition?

Ufology is an area that is slowly gaining credibility, but mostly when it focuses on the investigation of hard physical evidence. It stands to reason, though, if we want to make any impact on the serious scientific community. Certainly, finding evidence for the contactee/abductee experience has also been downright difficult to prove because it tends to be subjective and somewhat abstract. Whether we take the scientific route or another, remember that science began with an observation... and that's the view from here.