CE-5 protocol
The CE-5 protocol (Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind) is a set of human-initiated contact procedures developed by Steven Greer of the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI) and the Disclosure Project, designed to produce verifiable two-way contact with non-human intelligent beings through coherent group consciousness, remote viewing techniques, meditation, and supplementary technology including night-vision equipment and electromagnetic signaling devices. The taxonomy follows J. Allen Hynek's original CE scale: CE-1 through CE-4 describe sightings, physical trace evidence, onboard experiences, and abductions respectively; CE-5 designates the fifth type, in which the contact is human-initiated rather than ET-initiated — a distinction Greer considers fundamental, as it treats non-human intelligent beings as communication partners rather than objects of study.
Theoretical basis
The protocol rests on Greer's model of NHI communication as operating through what he calls "coherent thought" — a mode of consciousness analogous to coherent light (a laser), in which mental intention becomes directional and receivable by interstellar civilizations equipped with corresponding technology. Greer holds that the conscious field is non-local and quantum-entangled, integrating every point in space-time instantaneously, so that a group of humans achieving a sufficiently coherent meditative state can effectively signal across any distance: "those communication systems and those civilizations are interfacing with not just random thought and consciousness, but in a state of more expanded awareness and coherent thought... it's the ultimate quantum entangled field, meaning that every point in space and time is integrated into it and there's no latency in time."
This theory also provides a tactical rationale for why CE-5 contacts tend to be brief and non-solid: "Because it's dangerous for them to be three D in an area close to satellites, ground based radar and systems. Aircraft are going to pick that up and triangulate them and strike them." Advanced weapons systems capable of targeting ET craft — which Greer describes as "quantum potential weapons that are scalar, that go way beyond the speed of light" — are held by unauthorized programs outside normal government oversight.
Field protocol
A CSETI CE-5 field event typically involves:
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Training period — approximately one week of instruction in remote viewing, contact protocols, night-sky satellite identification, and the conceptual framework of NHI communication. Participants study Greer's archive material and use the CSETI/Sirius Disclosure smartphone app, which includes: the Contact app, which converts the phone into a magnetometer; crop-circle tone recordings; and guided remote-viewing exercises.
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Night-vision observation — groups use 4th-generation night-vision scopes and dedicated cameras to observe and document anomalous aerial objects during contact windows.
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Group coherence meditation — participants enter a collective meditative state, projecting coherent thought toward NHI craft and beings with a clear, peaceful intent. The goal is a "morphogenetic field" of shared human consciousness that NHI can detect and respond to.
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Mass events — public CE-5 mass-meditation events are organized at remote locations, sometimes with thousands of participants online simultaneously, on the premise that scale of coherent consciousness amplifies the contact signal.
Documented results claimed
The earliest publicly documented CE-5 contact event cited by Greer occurred in Pensacola, Florida, where approximately 60 participants used the protocol and four craft appeared in the sky; one was photographed and appeared on the front page of the Pensacola News Journal. That event brought Greer to the attention of General Albert Stubblebine of U.S. Army Intelligence, who subsequently approached Greer about the methodology.
Greer reports CE-5 contact in the Great Pyramid of Giza during a chanting session, in which an "emerald green sphere appeared inside that chamber and floated around" — a plasma-light form rather than a solid three-dimensional object, consistent with his model of how NHI craft appear when conditions make solid materialization dangerous.
In the mountains outside Tucson, Arizona, during a smaller group session of approximately 25–30 people, Greer reports that a cloaked ET entity physically walked behind the circle of meditating participants — audible as footsteps but invisible — an event witnessed by both Greer and film screenwriter David Marconi.
A CE-5 event captured on video at the Cascade Range — a volcanic mountain site used for multiple annual expeditions — shows a craft rising from a field, executing a corkscrew maneuver, and dematerializing in the sky during a session with night-vision equipment running.
Greer also cites independent CE-5 contacts by untrained individuals using the app: "we've had people who are just truck drivers in Croatia, right to us where they were in a, you know, pull their truck over to rest at night and did it and the craft would materialize and come over the cab."
Military interest
U.S. Army Intelligence, under General Albert Stubblebine, monitored CSETI CE-5 events after the Pensacola contact and approached Greer about the methodology — an interest Greer characterizes as reflecting that "the intelligence community knew we had figured out the Rosetta Stone of contact: non-locality and consciousness." Greer's future-vision, reported as a precognitive lucid dream from around age 18–20, involves the U.S. military securing an area for peaceful CE-5 contact leading to a public daytime landing event with a small craft and an ET elder. Following the Pensacola event, Army Intelligence and the CIA initiated direct contact with Greer: "they came in and started asking me, what are you doing? How are you doing this? And that started a whole process where people in there were friendlies and unfriendlies in the U.S. government and other governments who reached out." The "friendlies" — persons read into classified programs who had come to view those programs as operating illegally — began advising Greer from inside the national security state, shaping his understanding of the institutional obstacles to CE-5 contact becoming a publicly sanctioned activity. Greer identified this dual dynamic — covert intelligence monitoring of CE-5 events alongside informal support from reform-minded insiders — as a persistent feature of the CE-5 program's relationship with U.S. government and military entities throughout the 1990s and 2000s.
Meditation-based contact in congressional testimony
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna reported to the Joe Rogan Experience that witnesses in her congressional UAP interviews repeatedly described communicating with NHI through meditation — consistent with the CE-5 framework — and that these accounts came from executives and intelligence professionals rather than fringe claimants.
Distinguishing CE-5 contact from covert programs
Greer consistently separates genuine CE-5 results from government-run simulated contacts, documenting what he describes as decades-long psychological operations in which covertly manufactured craft and biological constructs resembling grey and reptilian beings were used to simulate alien abductions for psychological warfare value. He states: "I know men who've worked on them — actually fabricated them. Those are man-made. And they're used for their psychological warfare purpose." Greer cites a 1985 CIA document — which he provided to figures in the White House and Pentagon — describing CIA-conducted fake alien abductions in Brazil and Argentina "for their psychological warfare value," a program he argues created widespread public fear of extraterrestrials in order to prevent the open, peaceful CE-5 contact he promotes.