The Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence was founded in 1990 by physician and activist Steven Greer. CSETI was conceived as a private research and diplomatic initiative seeking peaceful contact with extraterrestrial intelligence. It became the organizational home for Greer’s field expeditions, training materials, witness network, and “Close Encounters of the Fifth Kind,” or CE-5, terminology.

CSETI participants use meditation, group intention, lights, sounds, and structured observation sessions in attempts to attract or communicate with anomalous craft or beings. The organization interprets some lights and subjective experiences as responsive contact. Those interpretations are disputed because ordinary aircraft, satellites, astronomical objects, suggestion, and incomplete controls can produce similar reports. Field sessions are usually conducted in groups at dark-sky locations, and participants are taught a shared sequence of meditative and signaling practices. That common training helps explain recurring language across later CE-5 communities. It also makes complete contemporaneous recording important, because expectation and group interpretation can influence how ambiguous lights or sensations are described.

The center also helped create the network from which Greer’s Disclosure Project emerged. The two organizations overlap in leadership and worldview but have different primary functions: CSETI emphasizes contact protocols and field activity, while the Disclosure Project emphasizes witness testimony and government transparency. Neither label should be used as a substitute for identifying a specific event or source.

CSETI matters because it popularized a participatory, consciousness-centered model of alleged contact that now extends well beyond the original organization. Its sessions are evidence that people conducted an exercise and reported an outcome, not automatic proof of extraterrestrial intelligence. Strong evaluation requires contemporaneous logs, calibrated instruments, complete recordings, independent observers, and explicit handling of conventional alternatives.