By Vicky Verma | Source

This Man, whose father was a CIA-funded physician, claims that a group of high-level entities called “The Nine” oversee the universe and guide what happens on Earth as part of a bigger cosmic plan. On the Danny Jones Podcast, Andy Puharich, the son of Andrija Puharich, and filmmaker Greg Mallozzi shared a bizarre story about entities called “The Nine.”

Andrija Puharich was a  medical doctor from Northwestern Medical School who became a pioneer in ESP and psychic research in the 1940s and 1950s, long before it was popular. He was deeply interested in the brain, the human mind, and what hidden abilities people might have. He worked with famous figures like Itzhak Bentov, helped “discover” Uri Geller, and was involved with the Stanford Research Institute (SRI), Hal Puthoff, and other big names in remote viewing and psychic studies, but he stayed mostly in the shadows and never became a famous public figure.

Andy talks about how his father worked with different psychics and healers before Uri Geller. One example is the Brazilian healer Zé Arigó, whose sudden death ended that line of research and pushed Puharich to look for a new subject. Later, he heard about Uri Geller in Israel and went there, either on his own curiosity or possibly on a mission connected to the CIA, depending on which story you believe.

In Israel, he watched Uri’s shows, ran simple tests in a hotel room, and became convinced that at least some of Uri’s abilities were real. He then brought Uri to the United States to be tested under strict lab conditions at Stanford, where cameras and controls tried to rule out cheating. This is where Uri’s international career as a psychic “superstar” began, although Puharich himself cared more about  science than show business.

According to them, researchers like New York Times bestselling author Annie Jacobsen suggested that Israeli scientists and officials were more open to spiritual and mystical ideas linked to psychic research, while American institutions were more closed and materialistic. In Israel, Puharich felt he could explore channeling, “The Nine,” and more “far out” ideas with open‑minded people like Itzhak Bentov, who was almost an Israeli version of Puharich. Bentov was both a scientist and an intelligence asset, part of a group of Israeli scientists in the 1960s closely tied to intelligence services.

Greg said these beings are described more like divine spirits or cosmic minds than classic aliens in spaceships, because they are never described as having a body, a planet, or a star system, such as “we come from Zeta Reticuli.” Instead, they present themselves as a kind of council of minds that can be contacted through trance and channeling.

The story begins in 1953, when an Indian doctor named Dr. Dhundiraj G. Vinod walked into Andrija Puharich’s lab and showed psychic abilities to convince Puharich he was genuine. He then went into a trance and started channeling a collective entity that called itself “The Nine,” speaking as if they were “nine principles of nature” or forces that govern reality.

This was the first time The Nine appeared in Puharich’s work, and this happened while he was already doing psychic research with funding and interest from the U.S. military and intelligence circles.

Many years later, in the early 1970s, The Nine “came back through other people. Uri Geller, in the 1970s, claimed he had contact with The Nine or with a related controlling entity called Spectra, and said he had channeled The Nine, though the filmmaker is not sure whether that part is true. Then a powerful medium named Phyllis Schlemmer began to channel The Nine very clearly and often, giving long messages about Earth’s history and the role of alien civilizations and higher beings in guiding humanity.

Puharich was convinced these channels were real and built a whole project around them. He helped create a group sometimes known as “Lab Nine,” bringing together Phyllis and others, organizing meditations, trips, and group trance sessions to strengthen the connection with The Nine. From these sessions came the material that later appeared in the book “Briefing for the Landing on Planet Earth,” which describes The Nine as extraterrestrial or extra‑dimensional intelligences managing Earth as part of a larger cosmic program.

In the interview, they explain that The Nine are said to be “above” all the other entities that sometimes come through channels. There are many smaller spirits or beings mentioned in the material, but the Nine are described as the top level, the head controllers who oversee the universe, watch what happens on this planet, and “make sure” some events do or do not happen according to a bigger plan. They communicate only through special psychics in trance, and in this story, they have used just a few main human channels over the decades: first,t Dr. Vinod in the 1950s, then apparently Uri Geller in the early 1970s, and then Phyllis Schlemmer in the late 1970s.

The “nine forces of nature” idea comes from how The Nine first described themselves through Dr. Vinod, calling themselves the nine principles or forces behind nature. Later channeling, especially through Phyllis, added more detail: they talked about the early history of Earth, how alien or higher civilizations influenced human development, and how new knowledge and “higher physics” could be given through special people.

Puharich believed that equations and technical information coming through some of these channels were pieces of a new, higher science from another world, and he hoped to collect enough of it to build a new understanding of the universe.

The intelligence agencies were tightly woven around Puharich’s work, which makes the whole thing feel like a spooky intelligence–occult mix. The filmmaker shows that in the 1950s,s Puharich’s psychic lab was funded by the U.S. Army and visited by people linked to the CIA, and there are actual letters between Puharich and the office of CIA director Allen Dulles. Later in life, after his house burned down when he was warned not to publish certain information, Puharich himself became convinced the CIA was trying to shut him up, and he developed a deep hatred and fear of them.

Because of this overlap, researchers and conspiracy writers now ask why, in a lab financed by the military and intelligence, a psychic suddenly starts to contact a group of universe‑controlling entities while very rich and powerful people sit in on the sessions.

They also point out that Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, attended some nine sessions at Puharich’s place and even tried channeling them, which later fed claims that parts of Star Trek, like “Deep Space Nine,” were inspired by these beings.

This mix of cosmic beings, occult channeling, high‑level guests, and intelligence funding gives rise to the conspiracy that agencies might secretly fear or at least take very seriously what The Nine represent, or might try to use the myth of The Nine for psychological experiments and spiritual manipulation.

For years, Andy remained skeptical, even as he heard his father’s stories and met Uri Gelle,r who was living in their house. Two things shifted him: first reading the book “Briefing for the Landing on Planet Earth,” which describes his father’s later work with Phyllis and Sir John Whitmore (a British aristocrat, and key collaborator with Andrija Puharich in channeling “The Nine”)and presents The Nine as real extraterrestrial or extra‑dimensional entities in contact with his father; and second, his own UFO sighting in 1985 at his father’s North Carolina house, when a predicted craft appeared as a silent, multicolored array of lights moving slowly over the treetops. That experience made him feel the whole story, including his father’s contact with The Nine, had real weight.

Andy and Greg stress how unresolved the whole topic remains. As they sit today, after going through tapes, documents, and archives, they still cannot say what The Nine really were: genuine cosmic intelligences, an intelligence‑community manipulation, a group psychodrama, or some mix of these. They find it strange that no one now seems to be openly channeling The Nine in the same way, and that their story is tightly tied to that one period, with those few people around Puharich. For them, The Nine remain both a mystical “council of intelligences” overseeing the universe and a deep rabbit hole of Cold War psychic research, spies, and high‑society spiritual experiments that have never been fully explained.