"Aliens will land on earth but we will need to lose the hostility we have towards them and show them respect."

So says Fulham-based Richard Lawrence, who is not a Hollywood scriptwriter but a former Henry Compton School teacher who has dedicated the last 30 years of his life to researching UFOs and 'cosmic communication'.

Whether or not you're a sceptic who read the first line and instantly dismissed Lawrence as a crackpot, his tales of UFO sightings in Fulham and his comprehensive research into government cover-ups, chronicled in his new book, UFOs and the Extraterrestrial Message, certainly make for interesting, if rather unorthodox, reading.

He is the executive secretary of The Aetherius Society in the Fulham Road, a spiritual organisation founded by the late Dr George King in 1958, who, thorugh a state of trance, became one of the first people in Britain to claim contact with the cosmos.

A young Lawrence was so convinced by his mentor's beliefs he gave up teaching to embark on what he describes as a 'spiritual' journey.

His says his beliefs are not based on 'blind faith' but on evidence in the classified CIA 'X files' that he brought to Britain for the first time, ancient Hindu and Japanese scripts and an absolute trust in King.

Lawrence freely admits some of his conclusions are 'questionable', but says: "Just because something is strange and unfamiliar doesn't make it untrue."

The cosmic movement, he says, is gathering pace. "We have seen an enormous change over the past 30 years. A recent poll found almost 10 per cent of people have seen a UFO and more than half believed in life on other planets.

"Science has moved on greatly, and people are now asking questions, but this is not a new thing, it goes way back – there are references to extraterrestrial life in the bible and it was spoken about by the ancient Hindus and the Japanese."

The evidence Lawrence, 57, has drawn from the confidential government files give pause for thought but it is when he speaks of his dealings with King that one finds oneself reverting back to the roll of hardened sceptic.

I asked him why he thinks aliens haven't landed yet and his answer is based on the messages apparently relayed from space to his mentor.

"At the moment they would regard us insane," he says. "We need to change spiritually because at the moment we are too hostile. They are looking for an end to nuclear proliferation."

So are they scared, I ask him. "Not at all – if we went into conflict with them we wouldn't have a chance. They have far superior powers to us."

When I put it to him that some people may find these alien 'conversations' absurd, his defence of King, who died in 1997, is absolute.

"I trusted what he said completely," he said. "He used to go into a deep state of trance. His converasations are recorded and held at the society and I have no reason to doubt what he said."

His evidence from the CIA, however, is less open to ridicule and he extracts a passage from a file that was made public under the US Freedom of Information Act in 1978.

This, he says, proves UFO operators 'have a mastery of mind over matter foreign to Earth technology'.

It related to an incident in Tehran in 1976 when an F-4 fighter jet was scrambled to investigate a flying object.

"Due to its brilliance the object was easily visible from 70 miles away," the document reads. "As the F-4 approached a range of 25nm, he (the pilot) lost all instrumentation and communications...

"When the F-4 turned away from the object and was apparently no longer a threat to it, the aircraft regained all communications...

"The visual size of the object was difficult to discern because of its intense brilliance. That light it gave off was that of flashing strobe lights arranged in a rectangular pattern and alternating blue, green, red and orange in colour...

"The pilot attempted to fire an AIM-9 missile at the object but at that instant his weapons control panel went off and he lost all communications."

Lawrence believes the previously secret documents prove governments are colluding to cover up the alien threat, and he also claims heads of state don't have a response plan in the event of an invasion.

"We are far from ready to handle this," he says.

Mindful, perhaps, of my cynicism, he is at pains to emphasise his willingness to dismiss the majority of claims from UFO enthusiasts, saying he divides the validity of sightings into three sections – deluded, hoax and genuine.

"I'm the first to say I don't believe certain claims – many can be passed off as being lights from a pop concert or meteorites, for example."

He is no doubt, however, that the object he spotted in Fulham in 2008, was entirely genuine.

"I was walking along Brookville Road. I saw this object which circled in the sky. It changed velocity and started to move very quickly and did a full circuit. It was much too high to be an aircraft."

Lawrence says he never tries to hard-sell his beliefs and says non-believers who attended his recent lecture in Fulham took to him well.

"There are some incidences which even the most hardened sceptics just cannot explain.

"But even if people are not converted, I hope the book at least opens peoples' minds to the possibilities."

* UFOs and the Extraterrestrial Message is published by CICO books and priced £9.99.