JESUS, THE ANUNNAKI, AND THE OLDER STORY BENEATH RELIGION ~ A Sacred Matrix Roundtable Revisited
By Janet Kira Lessin and Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D.
What began as a discussion about the Anunnaki quickly widened into something far larger, because once the panel began connecting personal contact experiences, ancient history, religion, human origins, kingship, consciousness, extraterrestrial intervention, and the figure of Jesus, the conversation moved beyond the boundaries of any single field and became an inquiry into who we are, where we came from, and whether humanity’s religious traditions preserve fragments of a much older story.
The roundtable brought together researchers and experiencers who approached the subject from very different directions. Neil Freer had childhood contact experiences that began years before the modern UFO era and later led him to Zecharia Sitchin’s work. Gerald Clark approached the Anunnaki question through engineering, military aviation, ancient genealogy, bodywork, energy systems, and comparative religion. Robert Evans followed a trail through astronomical imagery and unexplained objects around the Sun, while Sasha Alex Lessin brought the perspective of a cultural anthropologist who had spent decades comparing Sumerian accounts with what he saw as unresolved questions in conventional anthropology.
I brought an entirely different perspective because my own contact with nonhuman beings began at the very beginning of this life, and I understand that contact as part of a much longer continuity that reaches beyond this incarnation.
At the center of the discussion stood the Anunnaki, the beings described in Mesopotamian traditions and reinterpreted by Zecharia Sitchin as a technologically advanced population associated with the planet Nibiru. Yet as the conversation developed, the larger question became not merely who the Anunnaki were, but what happened after they arrived, what happened after they left, and whether some of them ever left at all.
NEIL FREER: CONTACT BEFORE THE MODERN UFO ERA
Neil Freer’s story began long before flying saucers became embedded in popular culture, as his first major experience took place in 1936, when he was only six years old and visiting relatives in rural New York.
It was a summer evening, and the men had gathered outside on a long front porch after dinner while Neil stood beside his father, listening to the adults talk. At some point, a light crossed the sky, and someone suggested that it might be a mail plane, although there was no engine noise and no obvious explanation for its silence.
Then, according to Neil, everything changed.
He looked along the porch and saw the adults frozen in place, caught in the middle of movements and syllables as though time itself had stopped, while he remained conscious and able to move. Neil felt compelled to leave the porch and walk around the side of the house into the darkness, where he sensed something enormous nearby.
His memory of what happened next disappeared, and when he returned to the porch, the adults began moving and speaking again exactly where they had left off. The family soon realized that far more time had passed than anyone could account for, and Neil later interpreted the episode as a missing-time experience during which he believed he had been taken aboard a craft.
His second major experience came when he was twelve, and this time he remembered far more.
Neil described waking in the middle of the night surrounded by a blue field while several short gray beings held him weightlessly above their heads. Another gray stood nearby, taller and more powerfully built than the others, and Neil interpreted this being as the supervisor or leader of the group.
When Neil asked what they were, he said the being communicated that they were androids, a word that meant almost nothing to him at the time.
The year was 1942, years before Roswell and before the modern UFO era had established the vocabulary that later generations would use to describe such encounters.
The beings asked Neil to help them “get into” Earth, and when he agreed, he experienced what he described as an enormous transfer of information into his mind, far more than he could consciously understand. He felt that the material had been placed there for later use and that he might not comprehend its purpose until he was much older.
When Neil asked who directed the androids, he saw a tall, heavily built, bearded humanoid male in white, who gave Neil the impression that he and the others would watch over him for the rest of his life.
Although the being never identified himself by name, Neil later associated him with the Anunnaki.
THE NEWSPAPER THAT LED NEIL TO SITCHIN
Neil’s direct involvement with Anunnaki research did not begin until decades later, when he was living in Woodstock, New York, in 1976 and experienced what he described as an unmistakable internal instruction to pick up a newspaper lying on his coffee table.
He rarely read that newspaper, yet when he opened it, his attention immediately fell upon a pre-publication discussion of Zecharia Sitchin’s forthcoming book, The 12th Planet.
Neil remembered thinking, “Here we go.”
Sitchin’s work provided a historical framework for experiences Neil had carried since childhood, and he immersed himself in the material, eventually meeting Sitchin, speaking at one of his conferences, and developing a relationship with him that led Sitchin to write introductions for two of Neil’s books.
For Neil, Sitchin supplied a bridge between personal contact and ancient history.
GERALD CLARK: ENGINEERING MEETS ANCIENT HISTORY
Gerald Clark arrived at the Anunnaki question by another route, because his background included electrical engineering, military aviation, religious study, bodywork, consciousness research, and an intense interest in the relationship between energy and matter.
Born in San Diego, Gerald spent part of his youth in rural Arkansas, where he described a UFO encounter at around age 14. At the same time, he grew up immersed in Southern Baptist Christianity and understood the doctrine of salvation from the inside, yet he also felt that certain spiritual and energetic experiences could not be fully explained by the religious language available to him.
Gerald later studied electrical engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and spent seven years flying helicopters for the U.S. Army. Engineering gave him a framework for thinking about reality through frequency, structure, energy, gravity, matter, and measurable relationships, while his later exploration of structural integration and bodywork brought him into another understanding of how physical structure and energy might interact.
That search eventually brought him to Hawaii, where he began connecting human physiology, gravity, energetic change, consciousness, ancient history, and the work of researchers such as Zecharia Sitchin and Laurence Gardner.
The more Gerald read, the more he saw ancient history as a genealogy rather than a collection of isolated myths, and he began constructing extensive charts that traced Anunnaki figures across cultures, names, dynasties, religions, and historical traditions.
ROBERT EVANS: LOOKING TOWARD THE SUN
Robert Evans approached the subject from observation rather than ancient texts, because his interest deepened when he began examining unusual astronomical images and objects appearing in online telescope data around 2007 and 2008.
He tracked coordinates, studied solar imagery, contacted people with technical backgrounds, and compiled thousands of images from solar-observing satellites that he believed showed enormous artificial objects orbiting the Sun.
Some seemed to approach it, others appeared to move away, and still others seemed to interact with objects outside the visible field.
Robert began comparing the shapes he observed with ancient depictions from the Middle East, particularly winged figures and symbols associated with Zoroastrian traditions, and over time he became increasingly convinced that modern imagery and ancient accounts might belong to the same larger story.
Robert did not begin with Sitchin and work forward.
He began with the images and worked backward.
Only later did he conclude that Sitchin’s reconstruction of ancient history appeared to match what he believed he was seeing in modern astronomical data.
SASHA LESSIN: WHEN ANTHROPOLOGY STOPPED BEING ENOUGH
Sasha Alex Lessin entered Anunnaki studies after becoming dissatisfied with conventional anthropology’s explanation of human origins, particularly because he believed standard evolutionary models left too many anomalies unresolved and too many abrupt developments insufficiently explained.
As a cultural anthropologist and ethnologist trained to compare information across societies and construct broader explanatory models, Sasha approached Sitchin’s work not merely as mythology but as a proposed historical framework that could be compared against archaeology, anthropology, astronomy, religion, and the ancient texts themselves.
He attended Sitchin’s seminars and certification program, studied the ancient narratives intensively, and spent years examining how the Anunnaki account might explain aspects of human history that conventional models treated separately.
For Sasha, the Anunnaki story was not simply about ancient gods.
It was about human origins.
JANET KIRA LESSIN: A LIFETIME OF CONTACT
My own path into this work began before I had words for extraterrestrials, UFOs, Anunnaki, reincarnation, or consciousness research, because I came into this life with what I understood as awareness of myself as an eternal being and with contact experiences that reach back to the crib and, in my understanding, beyond this incarnation into the state between lives and previous existences.
As a child, some of what I perceived and remembered frightened my deeply Christian mother, and I came to understand that my conscious access to certain memories was deliberately restricted so that I could function within my family and remain protected from people who might have harmed me if I openly retained everything I knew. Contact continued, but encounters were often followed by memory suppression, with fragments returning later when I was better able to understand and integrate them.
At the soul level, I understand that I agreed to participate in the hybrid program as a hybrid mother, and at the oversoul level I recognize aspects of myself that include Joy, Kira, and Ninmah. I experience myself as an avatar of Ninmah and understand my work with her, along with other emanations of my higher selves, as part of a larger mission to help prepare humanity for open Contact and for the awakening and evolution of consciousness that such recognition will require.
Within that framework, I do not believe the Anunnaki ever truly left Earth. I understand them as remaining connected to this world, sometimes hidden, sometimes walking among us, while humanity gradually approaches the point at which Contact will no longer belong only to isolated experiencers or secret institutions but will become part of our shared reality.
For me, the coming change is not merely the arrival of spacecraft or the disclosure of extraterrestrial life. It is humanity awakening to the larger community of consciousness around us and preparing to participate in what I understand as a Federation of Planets of Love and Light, whose members await our emergence into a more conscious, peaceful, and cooperative civilization.
THE ANUNNAKI STORY
The discussion then turned toward the basic Anunnaki narrative, which, in the reconstruction presented during the roundtable, began with the planet Nibiru, a world associated with a long elliptical orbit through the solar system.
Political conflict on Nibiru eventually brought Alalu to Earth, where gold became the critical resource sought by the newcomers. The Anunnaki established settlements, mining operations, transportation routes, and eventually a substantial presence spanning Earth and Mars.
Among the central figures were Anu, Enki, Enlil, Ninmah, Ninurta, Marduk, Nannar, and Ningshzida, and the story gradually shifted from extraterrestrial settlement into something far more consequential for humanity.
According to this interpretation of the ancient material, the Anunnaki modified an existing Earth hominin population to create workers capable of performing labor that the Anunnaki themselves no longer wished to carry out.
Human beings therefore emerged, in this reconstruction, as a hybrid population containing both terrestrial and Anunnaki ancestry.
That single idea transformed the entire discussion because, if humanity carries Anunnaki ancestry, then the relationship between humans and the beings remembered as gods becomes a family history rather than a distant extraterrestrial encounter.
DID SOME ANUNNAKI REMAIN ON EARTH?
Neil believed some Anunnaki may never have left, while Gerald proposed that long residence on Earth could have altered their physiology to such an extent that returning to Nibiru might have become dangerous or impossible.
That possibility changed the story again because the beings who arrived as rulers, scientists, administrators, miners, and explorers may eventually have become biologically tied to the world they originally came to exploit.
Some may have departed, some may have remained, and others may have withdrawn from public view while continuing to influence human civilization.
For me, the issue goes even further, because my own experiences have led me to conclude that the Anunnaki never completely withdrew from Earth.
The question is therefore not simply whether they will return, but when humanity will become collectively aware of the presence that has continued all along.
FROM SUMER TO JESUS
Because the broadcast took place on Easter weekend, the conversation naturally shifted toward Jesus, Christianity, and the possibility that religious traditions preserve fragments of a much older history.
Neil introduced the work of Laurence Gardner and the idea that the Holy Grail was not primarily an object, a cup, or a relic, but rather a bloodline.
In this interpretation, the Grail represented a dynastic lineage that stretched through Mesopotamia, Egypt, Hebrew traditions, the Essenes, and eventually Jesus and Mary Magdalene.
Neil described Enki as the originator of a line of rulers intended to continue guiding humanity after the Anunnaki withdrew from overt rule.
Cain became central to that lineage, not merely as the familiar biblical figure of later theology, but as the beginning of a royal succession whose purpose was governance.
Kingship, in this interpretation, was not intended to mean domination.
The ruler was supposed to serve the people.
JESUS, MARY MAGDALENE, AND THE GRAIL LINE
The conversation then turned to the Essene tradition and the possibility that Jesus belonged to a carefully maintained royal lineage governed by strict rules governing marriage, conception, birth, and succession.
Neil suggested that Jesus may have been born outside the expected timetable, which raised questions about legitimacy and succession, while James also became part of the struggle over who properly inherited the royal position.
Mary Magdalene emerged in a radically different role from the one assigned to her in later Christian traditions because, in this interpretation, she belonged to a royal lineage of her own, and her importance rested partly on the continuation of that bloodline.
If dynastic transmission depended upon women, then discrediting Mary Magdalene carried political consequences.
To diminish her was to diminish the lineage.
NINGSHZIDA, THOTH, HERMES, AND JESUS
Gerald then pushed the conversation into even more provocative territory by connecting the Sumerian figure Ningshzida with the Egyptian Thoth, the Greek Hermes, Melchizedek, Yehoshua, and ultimately Jesus.
The argument did not necessarily require that all of these figures represented a single biological individual living continuously over thousands of years, because Gerald considered reincarnation, incarnation, consciousness transfer, and other ways in which a nonphysical intelligence might repeatedly enter physical embodiment.
The central figure remained Ningshzida.
In Sitchin’s reconstruction, Ningshzida received a mandate from Anu to become a teacher of humanity, and Gerald saw that role as one of the most important clues in the entire story.
If Ningshzida had been sent to Earth to teach civilization, then later teacher figures associated with wisdom, transformation, sacred knowledge, resurrection, alchemy, and human awakening might represent different expressions of the same mission.
Thoth, Hermes, Melchizedek, Yehoshua, and Jesus could therefore be understood not as disconnected figures but as parts of one continuing lineage of consciousness and purpose.
THE BODY AS THE TEMPLE
Gerald then connected this ancient teacher tradition with human consciousness itself, suggesting that the familiar phrase “the body is the temple” might describe something more literal than later religious interpretations allowed.
The seven chakras, the pineal gland, the caduceus, alchemical transformation, energetic awakening, and the teachings attributed to Jesus could all be viewed as parts of the same larger process.
Human transformation, in that interpretation, did not depend entirely upon temples, churches, priests, or institutions because the essential mechanism already existed inside the human body.
The teacher’s purpose was not simply to create another religion but to show humanity how consciousness itself could evolve.
THE HISTORICAL JESUS AND THE THEOLOGICAL JESUS
Neil drew an important distinction between the historical Jesus and the theological Jesus created by later institutions, because over centuries political interests, ecclesiastical disputes, competing bishops, religious councils, imperial authority, and institutional theology reshaped the figure who eventually became the center of orthodox Christianity.
Neil believed the resulting Jesus represented a synthesis that obscured the original man beneath layers of doctrine.
The teacher, royal heir, husband, father, and participant in a living historical movement disappeared beneath theology, while the religion built around him survived and expanded.
MARY MAGDALENE AND THE SURVIVING LINE
Sasha added traditions that placed Jesus and Mary Magdalene in southern France after the events traditionally associated with the Crucifixion, where Jesus was said to have survived, raised a family, and continued teaching.
Their descendants, according to those traditions, later intermarried with European royal houses, creating a bloodline that continued long after the original events in Judea.
If that interpretation is correct, then the Grail was never lost.
It simply became genealogy.
A WAR BETWEEN TWO SYSTEMS
Throughout the discussion, another pattern repeatedly surfaced: the ancient rivalry between Enki and Enlil and the possibility that human political, religious, and dynastic conflicts continued to reflect the competing systems associated with them.
Ancient wars, royal disputes, theological divisions, and struggles over human control could therefore be interpreted as later expressions of a much older conflict.
Gerald described these opposing systems as representing different relationships with humanity, with one emphasizing hierarchy, obedience, domination, and control, while the other emphasized knowledge, development, consciousness, and the possibility that human beings could eventually mature beyond servitude.
Within that framework, the story of Jesus became another chapter in the long struggle over what humanity was allowed to become.
HUMANITY MUST GROW UP
Near the end of the conversation, Neil deliberately shifted the discussion away from ancient history and toward humanity’s future because, from his perspective, endless debate about the past accomplished very little unless it helped us prepare for what comes next.
If humanity truly belongs to a larger cosmic community, then our greatest obstacle may not be technological at all.
It may be psychological, political, and cultural.
We remain divided into nations, religions, races, ideologies, economies, military blocs, and institutions that continually reinforce separation and conflict.
Neil believed humanity had to “break the god spell,” stop surrendering responsibility to external gods and authorities, and begin functioning as a mature planetary civilization before we could participate responsibly in a wider stellar society.
WHAT WOULD WE SAY IF THEY RETURNED?
That question gave the final portion of the roundtable its direction.
If the Anunnaki became openly visible again, how should humanity respond?
Would we worship them, fear them, fight them, or finally meet them as relatives?
Whatever relationship may once have existed between humanity and the Anunnaki, I do not believe we should return to the old hierarchy.
If they are our ancestors, that does not make us their servants, and if they possess technology or knowledge we need, exchange should occur through mutual respect rather than submission.
Humanity has changed.
We have developed our own cultures, sciences, identities, and consciousness.
The relationship must evolve accordingly.
We can recognize ancestry without surrendering sovereignty, listen without kneeling, and learn without becoming slaves.
THE SHIPS NEAR THE SUN
Robert returned the discussion to the present by pointing toward the unexplained objects he believed were already entering the solar system and appearing around the Sun.
Some of the imagery he studied seemed, in his interpretation, to show enormous craft interacting with incoming objects or threats, raising questions about whether these were Anunnaki vessels, another extraterrestrial civilization, or something else entirely.
The roundtable could not answer those questions, yet Robert remained convinced that the images deserved serious attention rather than dismissal.
If artificial craft were already moving through our solar system, then humanity’s relationship with other intelligences might not belong to the future at all.
It might already be underway.
DISCLOSURE MAY NOT COME FROM GOVERNMENT
By the end of the discussion, the panel had moved toward another shared realization: humanity may wait forever if we expect governments, institutions, universities, or official authorities to settle the extraterrestrial question for us.
Contact may not arrive through a presidential announcement or government hearing.
It may emerge through personal experience, archaeological discovery, astronomical observation, historical reconstruction, scientific anomaly, telepathic communication, or the appearance of something in the sky that can no longer be ignored.
Neil and his colleagues were already sending what he described as a deliberate invitation to those other intelligences.
The message was simple:
We are ready.
Perhaps not everyone is ready, and perhaps no civilization ever becomes completely ready, but enough people may already be asking the questions that prepare the ground for what comes next.
THE QUESTION THAT REMAINS
The Sacred Matrix roundtable never reached a neat conclusion, and perhaps that is precisely why the discussion still matters.
Neil Freer understood his childhood experiences as the beginning of a lifelong assignment that eventually led him into Anunnaki research and the question of humanity’s future among other civilizations.
Gerald Clark searched for the hidden architecture connecting consciousness, genealogy, physics, ancient history, religion, and the beings remembered as gods.
Robert Evans watched the Sun and searched modern astronomical imagery for evidence that the ancient visitors never truly disappeared.
Sasha searched anthropology and ancient history for the pieces that conventional models had left unexplained.
And I continued asking the question that has followed me throughout a lifetime of contact: Who are they, and why have they remained connected to us?
Yet perhaps the more important question now is something else entirely.
Who are we becoming?
If humanity carries the legacy of another civilization in our bodies, cultures, religions, myths, bloodlines, and memories, then disclosure is not merely about discovering extraterrestrials.
It is about discovering ourselves.
If the beings remembered as gods once walked beside us, created with us, fought over us, ruled us, taught us, loved us, and left descendants among us, then their departure never ended the story, particularly if, as my own experiences have led me to believe, they never completely departed in the first place.
The story continued through humanity, through contact, through consciousness, through the witnesses who remembered, and through those who began recovering pieces of a history that had never truly vanished.
The next chapter may not be the return of beings who went away.
It may be humanity awakening sufficiently to recognize those who have been here all along and to take our place, consciously and responsibly, within the larger community that awaits us.
Janet Kira Lessin and Sasha Alex Lessin, Ph.D. — Minerva Monroe — Contributor/Researcher
