In 1989 during a a major Hindu festival
called Kali Puja, I had what most people
would think of as a condalini awakening
in which I left my body and I was like,
"Oh my god." And I came back into the
body and felt this incredible charge or
transmission.
>> Really,
>> I knew something had been transmitted
into me.
>> Dr. Dr. Jeffrey Kipel, you are a
renowned professor of religious studies
at Rice University, but beyond that,
you've lent your credentials to all
sorts of things, paranormal, UFOs,
near-death experiences. You also created
the archives of the impossible, which
obviously explores the nature of
reality. One of my favorite books of
yours, it's called Changed in a Flash,
and it's about a woman who gets struck
by lightning. What happens next?
>> Well, that's Elizabeth Cone. She follows
this light and she has this elaborate
near-death experience. She spent two
weeks talking to God.
>> It was like an instantaneous download of
information.
>> And so she'd ask who's going to win the
Super Bowl and who's going to be the
next president and it all came true.
Wow. They experienced the future.
They're not guessing. The brain exists
in the future. The human being is a
tesseract, a four-dimensional worm
spread out in time.
You have Charles Chase who was director
of revolutionary technologies at skunk
works I believe invited you to lecture
on flying saints.
>> He did. Charles felt that was somehow
related to how UFOs propagate through
space and time.
>> That's fascinating to me. I was talking
to Hal Putoff one time and he was saying
you know everybody's speculating about
alubiary warp drives and negative energy
and negative mass and what if it was a
medieval secret society and they knew
how to fly. just people knew how to fly
and they just put metal capsules around
themselves. He's basically defending the
idea that this is real history.
>> Well, because it is.
>> There was a an alien experiencer who I
believe you might have had some contact
with named David Huggin.
>> The core experience of David Huggin is
with this being or entity named
Crescent. She was this tall female
entity that he had intercourse with. And
the next thing I know, I wake up. I
don't know how much later. And she says,
"David, the baby's dying." And I go,
"Baby, what baby?
>> Can we say anything about these beings?"
>> My sensibility is that it's us. And by
us, Jesse, I don't mean Jesse or Jeff. I
mean some other realm of mind or
consciousness or humanity. Mystical
forms of sexuality. says, "Well, there's
another way."
>> Very interesting.
>> Yeah. What I can tell you for certain is
that disclosure, it's a literal
translation of apocalypse. And people
mostly think of apocalypse as the ending
of a world, but they don't generally
understand that it's also a revelation
of reality.
>> Ignition sequence.
How is this possible?
>> Nothing too unusual about that.
>> Existence cannot longer be denied.
>> Dr. Jeffrey Kiple, this has been a long
time coming. I'm I'm really honored to
have you here. uh you are a renowned uh
professor of religious studies at Rice
University but beyond that you've lent
your credentials to all sorts of things
that usually somebody of your background
doesn't like to you know sort of wade in
these waters you know paranormal UFOs
near-death experiences uh you have gone
basically you've jumped into the deep
end of all of these topics but you've
lent your sort of rigorous academic
background to them and your name to them
And I I can't wait to have this
conversation. It's going to be a lot of
fun. And for the purposes of this show,
which obviously explores nature of
reality, but you know, specifically the
UFO phenomena. You also created the
archives of the impossible. Yeah. Along
with Jacques Ble. You have archives from
Edgar Mitchell, NASA astronaut, of
course, Whitley Strieber, and many more.
And so, I'm really excited to have you,
man.
>> Great. That's great. I'm happy to talk.
I'm happy to blab.
>> Let's do it. Let's blab. Uh why did you
want to study religion in the first
place?
>> That's a long story. I
you know I started out um
I had a I thought what it was a
religious vocation uh and I started out
in a Roman Catholic seminary in a
monastery actually and I studied
religion because that didn't work out
basically and I had questions that I
wanted to ask that that um couldn't
quite be fit into that particular
training. I want to get into why that
didn't work out because you have you
have a chapter in one of your books
that's uh titled my aeros has been
crucified,
>> right?
>> What does that mean?
>> Well, that refers to this period of my
life, you know. Um I was I was anorexic.
Um we didn't even have a word in the
late 70s and early 80s for that. I mean,
I think Karen Carpenter died in '84 or
so, and then the culture had a word, but
um I was, if you would have asked a
young Jeff, you know, why he wasn't
eating, he would have said something
like he was fasting.
Um he was trying to be holy,
>> he was trying to be a saint. Uh and he
was and that that was very genuine. But
on another level, there was this
um psychological suffering that that was
tied into this. And that's really what
turned me into an intellectual Jesse to
be to be um clear about it is I learned
that there were other motivations
um behind religious motivations,
>> you know, and sometimes they were
instinctual, sometimes they were
sometimes they're sexual, sometimes
they're emotional. Um but I I I learned
through because I had to to survive. I
learned to distinguish between um what I
was doing and and what I believed and
and and what was actually the case.
>> The religious impulse is maybe in theory
supposed to be the most immune from
human nature, but it is often motivated
by our most base impulses.
>> Oh yeah. I I I think so. And and again,
it's not that there isn't this this um
transformation or sublimation of those
impulses, but um the definitely this is
an definitely anorexia was a form of
embodiment and a form of uh obsessive um
emotional um
I don't know how else to put it. I mean,
I was dying. I was literally dying. And
I I got down to 125 lbs. This here is
about 220 you see here. Um but so it was
I was I was basically on the edge of of
death and it really was the monks and
and psychoanalysis that brought me back
uh and that cured me really or healed me
of of this this condition I had. And was
that somewhat inspired or aided by a
version of Christianity you held in your
head? Was were there, you know,
particular saints or monks that you were
>> Oh, yeah. Coming up to certainly the the
the anorexic um behavior was was um in
my own conscious mind was driven by
religious impulses and by saints. I was
reading the lives of the saints and I
was fasting and I was I was pursuing
holiness essentially. So it it
definitely had a grounding in my my own
religious tradition. Um but there was
something else going on you know as well
um that was that needed to be addressed.
>> You had an experience in India early on
that was sort of the inverse of that
sort of
>> flipped on its head.
>> Yeah.
>> What religion might mean.
>> Yeah. Uh I mean so so I get asked about
that that experience a lot. I it's worth
it's worth describing because I've
written about it explicitly and and and
theorized it. I mean basically what
happened was
uh I was asleep. Uh it was during a a
major Hindu festival called Kali Puja
and
basically I had what most people would
think of as a condalini awakening. there
there was some kind of energy or force
uh that came out of my body or came out
of the room and overwhelmed me, you
know, physically and spiritually. And I
had an out-of- body experience. I had a
basically a near-death experience in
which I left my body and I came back
into the body and felt this incredible
charge or transmission
that um was really overwhelming. That
was in 1989.
So, I was all, you know, I was all of 27
years old. Um, I was a I was a young man
and I haven't had it since. Uh,
>> was there an emotion associated with it?
>> It was profoundly it was I wouldn't say
it was sexual. It was erotic in in a
kind of spiritual or mystical sense. Um,
you know, looking back on it, Jesse, I
what I really think because I've thought
about it endlessly for
almost what 37 years now. Um I think it
was basically all of my books flowing
into me. I mean I think there was a kind
of precognitive
um or or creative element to it. I of
course didn't understand anything that
was transmitted into me. I mean I was
like but I knew something had been
transmitted into me. Oh yeah. I
absolutely knew
>> content was transmitted into me.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Instantly. And I
mean, I woke up and I was like, "Oh my
god, that was that was incredible." And
um
>> and and and I I couldn't have told you
what the content was, but I was writing
my dissertation at the time. And it was
very much about the dissertation and I
wo that into the dissertation in a kind
of implicit or or secret way, I guess.
>> And the dissertation was on Ramak
Krishna.
>> Yeah. Yeah. It's my first book basically
Ki's child. Um and that whole book is
organized around basically the the god
Shiva on top of or below the goddess
Kali. And so I I reflected on this this
iconography and that's essentially what
I experienced. It was I was basically
Shiva. I was asleep or I was was dead or
I was I mean there are different ways of
framing that that state. Um
but um
it was ecstatic.
>> It wasn't and it wasn't minor Jesse. It
wasn't like some dream I had. It was
really
physical and powerful and and
transmissive in in some intellectual and
spiritual way. M and so it was almost
like what you were studying the barriers
between you and that broke down
>> totally
>> interesting.
>> There was no binary between the academic
researcher and the experiencer.
>> None.
>> And you know my second book was all
about that breakdown. By the way, Roads
of Excess Palaces of Wisdom is all about
the mystical experiences of scholars of
mysticism. And I've really felt
certainly since that experience since
1989, but really in all my work is a is
a kind of challenge of that breakdown
between those two those two modes of of
being as it were.
>> How did that reshape your understanding
of religion? So going from this kind of
you know anorexic maybe trying to you
know uh inhibit your worldly impulses
and then you have this ecstatic very
worldly
>> experience. Obviously, you know, it
almost seems otherworldly too. But
>> I mean, I was always interested
from the very beginning. I my
sensibility was that
there was something profoundly spiritual
about human sexuality. And I was
interested in the most ecstatic
experiences that were also erotic. And
so I I was already challenging that
binary between the body and the spirit
as it were. Um and this just confirmed
that
>> in in big you know in a big in a big
direct personal way
>> and Ramach Krishna himself had had some
similar experiences.
>> Yeah. I mean he was he was um
you know he he was spiritually activated
for sure and he was a
radioactive is is the word that keeps
coming to my mind. And I mean he would
just touch people and they would go into
to ecstasy.
>> And so I think he he was very much in
this same
uh mode, but he was an active agent of
it. He was a he was a medium of it. I
wasn't a a medium. I wasn't a a
spiritual teacher or a guru, but
certainly I was the the object of of
this this awakening.
>> When you see depictions of like the
ecstasy of St. Teresa, for example, it
feels like it's sort of sexual in nature
or something. And then that seems
somewhat heretical to say or something.
>> Well, yeah.
>> Yeah. I mean, it is. It is sexual. Um,
and it is, it is heretical. Um, I, you
know, again, I was trained and grew up
with with Teresa and ecstasy. And you're
talking about the Bernini statue which
I've seen actually in Rome and it's over
an altar actually.
>> And so there's something we talked about
the bridal mystical tradition a lot in
in the Catholic tradition. And so there
was this linking of of of human
sexuality and and and mystical
experience in a very dramatic way. And I
don't to this day I don't think we
understand that. I don't I don't think,
you know, I I know we'll get to the UAP
or the UFO issue later, but I think this
this topic of the sexual comes up
constantly
>> and it's just brushed aside because
because people don't know how to think
about it
>> and and they aren't aware of these long
mystical traditions that have thought
about it and have
framed it in different ways for sure.
But I I I do think that there's this
profound relationship between human
sexuality and and and human ecstatic
experience that
that we just don't we don't give enough
attention to.
>> That also feels like uh dirty little
secret that gets shoved in the trunk
around alien experiences, quote unquote
alien experiences, whatever they are.
like when you you know Betty and Barney
Hill uh you know they were interviewed
after their experience you know I think
Barney only very reluctantly said that
gametes you know sperm samples were were
taken in his case and I I believe Diana
Pulka another religious scholar also
discusses uh the ecstasy of Staint you
know Teresa uh also accompanying a being
sort of spearing her in the heart or
something. Well, that's the the the
angel as they call it, you know, the
>> the the male angel. And
>> yeah, I mean, it's not even a dirty it's
not a dirty little secret to me. It's
just like it's so obvious.
>> It's like, yeah,
>> um
>> I guess it's a it's a secret in the
sense that it doesn't get talked about
enough or integrated enough or it's made
fun of, but it's it's just obvious to
me. And maybe what drives a lot of my
work is that I I take that very
seriously because that's that's really
what I've been in interested in from day
one.
>> What's the honest empirical thing to do
is to take seriously the the facts.
>> And and to take it ontologically or to
take it as a part of the human
experience or part of human reality. And
I um
I just don't think we do that. There was
a an alien experiencer who I believe you
might have had some contact with or at
least studied named David Huggin.
>> Oh yeah, sure.
>> Who lost his virginity to what he
describes as an alien being?
>> Yeah.
>> I mean, do you want me to talk about
David off?
>> I mean, Brad Brad Abrams was was uh came
to my home. I'm in that movie actually.
It's called Love and Saucers. It's a
great movie. and David. Um, what's great
about that movie is it doesn't land. It
doesn't dismiss David's experiences
of of sexual intercourse with with the
entity, but it doesn't affirm them
either. It just stays it just reports
it. And I think that's that third space,
as I call it, is is the right way to go
about this. And David's just, you know,
he's like Whitley Streber. You know, my
my my my language around Whitley is
you're you're sin is is you're you're
just too honest. You're just you're
describing what actually happened and
you're not lying about it. You're not um
you're not not saying
>> you you're you're saying too much for
for most people. And I think David's a
lot like that. and he just says too too
much
>> and and I don't I don't mean that
negatively because it's not too much for
me but it's I think it's too much for
most people.
>> What is the core experience just for the
audience who wants context?
>> The core experience of David Huggins is
with this being or entity named
Crescent. he called her Crescent and she
was this tall female entity that he had
intercourse with and he was shown all
these hybrid children and it's kind of a
classic you know abduction experience in
that sense um and then you know he
becomes a painter later in life and he
starts to paint these these images and I
I do think that there's something about
creativity and there's something about
painting and but also writing
that is really crucial here that we
don't we don't quite understand either.
I think a lot of these experiences are
result in a kind of wild creativity
>> whether it's the visual arts or whether
it's the creative arts or or writing.
>> Can we say anything about these beings?
It feels so hard to say things that are
definitive about the beings. And I find
that when I speak to sort of deeper
thinkers like yourself, they say, "Oh,
I'm sort of in the Jacques Ble John Keel
camp and I, you know, I sort of am too,
you know, where it's like you can't take
these things at face value necessarily.
You know, they might might not have
literal meaning and they're more sort of
mythological or archetypal." And then
simultaneously,
how does that not end in this sort of
radical cartisian doubt or sort of, you
know, this everything is everything?
Yeah.
>> Where we can't make progress. Yeah.
I mean, that's the that's the $60
million question right there. I my
my sensibility is that it's us.
And by us, Jesse, I don't mean Jesse or
Jeff. I don't I don't mean this sort of
superficial
social ego. I mean some other other
realm of mind or consciousness or
humanity
and I think that that other realm is
profoundly spiritual and profoundly
sexual frankly at the same time. So
I guess I do you know when I when I
reduce it back to the human I don't mean
the human as what you what is generally
meant by the human. And I think that's
that
that's that third space that gets that
gets dismissed a lot or that just isn't
understood. I'm I'm not the rationalist
debunker, but I'm not the literalist
religious believer either. Um, and I
think that's why I get along so well
with debunkers and and believers, by the
way. Um, because I really do understand
where both are coming from. When you say
it's us, you know, John Mack actually
described this sort of identification
with the beings that were performing the
abductions on the part of the
experiencers, which is fascinating.
>> A very powerful dimension of this
phenomenon is what I call the double
identity aspect. The experiencers, as
they're called, will often experience
themselves as aliens. That they have a
whole other identity as an alien. And
then obviously when people have
psychedelic experiences it seems like
these sort of subconscious archetypal
beings seem to talk of them talk to them
and they're of a you know common
taxonomy there. Sometimes there are
actually you know specific um you know
kind of morphologies in which they show
up and they say sort of consistent
somewhat consistent things.
>> So is that what you mean or what do you
mean when you say it's it's us or is it
impossible to talk about? I don't know
what I mean. Uh and I and I say that in
all honesty. I I I don't think we have
conceived how awesome we are, how how
cosmic we are. Um and the the experience
or community in particular has has
really changed me and transformed me
along the physicality and the kind of
the literalness of of these experiences.
So I want to I want to honor that. And
John did too as well. But I, you know,
he was also a psychoanalyst and a and a
psychiatrist and
he he was struggling. I mean, I know
John Mack both through through Karen
Austin who was is my assistant now and
Karen was one of his experiencers and
was John's assistant. So there's a
direct lineage there. Um, but I also
know Mac through his books. Um, I did
not know him, you know, when he was
alive. Um, but he struggled. You know
what what what what really sticks out
with to me in his books is
a couple things
is his willingness to listen to people
and to struggle with the the fact that
these experiences often start out with
terror and they're very negative
and that they sometimes not all the time
they morph into transformation and they
become very positive. and he wanted to
he wanted to deal with both of those. He
wanted to develop a model that that
could accept both of those. And the
other thing that sticks out at me that
really strikes me about John's work is
how often it returns to the sexual.
>> I mean, his books are filled with puses
and vaginas and sexual fluids and
intercourse and hybrids and I mean, it
just goes on and on and on. And I think
that's right.
>> I think that's actually what's
happening. There's something to do with
human reproduction or something to do
with the the sexual the sexual being
that is not just sex. It's not just
instinctual.
Um
>> what what do you think it is there? you
know, um, UFO researchers like Steve
Aspen, who wrote a great book called Out
of Time,
>> which is about this like
intergenerational breeding program.
Yeah. Between, you know, these beings
and humanity that might be
>> too literal for for you. And then on the
other side, you have people saying, "Oh,
it's all it's all demonic or something.
Of course, it's sexual because it's, you
know, it's sort of tempting or
something." So,
>> yeah, what what can we say about it?
>> It's definitely not all demonic.
>> Yeah. I So, I agree with that. Yeah.
Yeah. And I also I think that ends the
conversation then it's like what do you
mean by that? What is that? Of
>> course it does. You know, one of the
things I say a lot is don't reduce
>> the phenomenon to your worldview.
>> And sometimes that worldview is
religious. So they'll say, "Oh, it's a
demon or it's an angel or it's a god or
or what have you." But sometimes it's
secular and scientific and they'll say,
"Oh, that's just a hallucination or a
bad dream or a sleep paralysis." I'm
like, don't do that.
>> That's just not right. And so
when I say it's not right, I mean if you
actually listen to people who've had
these experiencers, it doesn't work. It
doesn't work. The the secular scientific
reduction does not work. But the
religious belief doesn't work either.
>> Yeah. It breaks everything.
>> It it it just it stops the conversation
as you put it. And but so does the
secular scientific explanation.
>> Yes.
>> Because it's not really an explanation.
It doesn't really explain anything. It
just invokes a word like hallucination
or sleep paralysis and it just
>> it just stops it. It just stops the
conversation. And what I want to do is
like no, let's have the conversation.
Let's keep going. And that's why I think
this earlier
fascination I had with with erotic forms
of mystical experience or or mystical
forms of of sexuality is really crucial
because it just breaks down that binary
between the the religious believer and
the the secular scientist and says,
"Well, there's another way there's
another way forward here that is neither
of those."
>> And I don't Jesse, I don't know what
that is. Yeah. Again, I don't think
we've had that.
>> Yeah. Well, I think to
>> we haven't had that conversation.
>> That's right. And we need to have the
conversation in order to then
crystallize some analytical overlay that
we're confident and you we need to be
able to sort of talk about stuff freely.
>> I mean, I I think the the problem is is
even deeper. I
>> it's not that we can have that
conversation and come to some analytic
overlay or explanation. I don't think we
can ever explain it rationally,
>> but I don't think we can explain it
religiously either,
>> right?
>> I I think um I mean I know a lot about
religion
>> um and it just doesn't work.
>> And and I haven't seen anything that
does work. So that that's why I'm so
fascinated by the phenomenon as as an
intellectual is because nothing worked.
M is do you think it's sort of um
intended to break all of your prior
conventions? So there's a a great uh
author uh named James Madden. He's you
know also a scholar and he he's a
platonist and he talks about these as as
um you know unidentified uh platonic
hyper objects.
>> Yeah, that's Tim Morton by the way.
>> Ah interesting.
>> Yeah, that's Tim's Tim's language. I
know Jim well. Uh-huh.
>> Um, and I know I literally had Jim and
Tim at to dinner together and had them
talk about the the hyperobject stuff.
And
I think that is where you want to go or
where we want to go. And I think this is
why I keep saying it's actually the
humanists and the historians and the
philosophers who have the goods.
>> Let's listen. Let's listen to them. And
it's not that they have the only goods.
I'm not saying that. is that that they
have goods that we really need to hear.
>> Um,
in terms of what it intends, I think
attention is always a frankly a
dangerous thing to think about. But I I
do think there's something about
breaking one's categories that's crucial
here. Well, to me, I'd almost say uh you
know, I just got lunch with Jacqu Ble
like a week or two ago and I uh we were
talking and I was like, was it has it
been worth it? You know, so he wrote he
wrote Invisible College in 1975,
>> right?
>> And he wrote about how this whole thing
is this sort of control system, you
know, sort of BF Skinner intermittent
reinforcement. It keeps you running on
this treadmill forever. And I was like,
are you glad that you didn't stop and
that you kept going? Because I feel like
in some ways he's this incredibly rich
compendium of just, you know,
encyclopedia of all this information.
And then in others, I feel like it's
hard to say a lot more about the
phenomenon than it was at the time.
>> So, I know Jacques really well. um
my feelings about this are
that uh how should I put this? People
don't read.
>> We've been here before.
>> Been here many many times. Uh and
Jacques knows that. Uh and the beauty
and power of of Valet's books is that
they combine the sciences and the
humanities in really striking ways. And
that's really what I'm trying to stand
for is how do we do that? How do we how
do we extend that that that valan
system, you know, um and maybe we'll
come to different conclusions. I'm not
and I think I think that's very faithful
to Jacques, by the way.
>> It is. Well, I would almost say that a
design feature of the whatever system
exists is uh this sort of missing
variable Lucy with the football
phenomena. I I know a lot of, you know,
UFO researchers who are like a dog with
a bone running speed running truth and
you I've been there myself and it's
very common for them to sort of
>> almost get there and then there's like a
missing hard drive or there's like mud
slung on a thing that kepts it keeps it
in this sort of liinal space, right? So,
and then and then you end up with this
disclosure which is this sort of jagged,
messy, slow consensus shift that feels
like it's happening higher and we're
we're sort of like nodes of it and you
know, Whitley is this important node and
other people are important nodes, but it
it just doesn't happen all at once and
we're all sort of chasing our tails.
>> So, so we we got right into disclosure
here. Yeah. Um, one of the things that
really strikes me about disclosure is
that it's a literal translation of
apocalypse.
That's what apocalypse means, by the
way. Yes. It means taking the lid off or
something. It means disclosing,
>> unveil, unveiling.
>> And people mostly think of apocalypse as
the ending of a world, but they don't
generally understand that it's also a
revelation of reality.
And so this this disclosure movement,
this is why I keep saying you really
really want to listen to the historians,
particularly the historians of
religions, because they're the ones who
know the most about the the apocalypse,
as it were, the apocalyptic language,
and they're not
they're not going to be duped by the by
the bone. They're like, "Yeah, that's
that's a bone. Yeah, you you can you can
run with that or the dog can have that,
but then there'll be lots of other
bones, you know. And
>> what you know, one of the things I often
say is, you know, we hear a lot about
this phrase onlogical shock, which by
the way, John Mack popularized in the
'9s, but he actually got it, we don't
know how it actually originates in a in
a liberal theologian named Paul Tillik
in the 1950s. It goes way back. It goes
back to the 50s and Telica really is
talking about my my discipline, the
history of religions and the history of
mystical literature and he's talking
about how certain kinds of experiences
are shocking to people because they
realize that reality isn't what they
thought it was.
And there's this terror aspect and
there's this transformative aspect to
that. And human beings can respond
in terror or in transformation. I mean
you you see both. Um and so where I'm
coming from as a historian of religions
is
I I have seen many many forms of
ontological shock. Jesse I think I think
the religions are all about onlogical
shock. It's one ontological shock after
another. And so I think human beings in
particular have always been shocked by
by these different revelations of
reality. And so this does not surprise
me. Um
but it also pleases me if I can put it
that way.
>> Yeah. It's almost like onlogical shock,
little onlogical shocks help us evolve.
and kind of like the monolith in 2001
Space Odyssey. It's like everything
seems very emergent and organic and sort
of Darwinian or something and then you
just get something dropped in your
reality and you're like, "What is that?"
I mean, this is why I love I again I
love the UFO topic or I love the
abduction phen because it's it's it's a
it's a vast I told you so.
>> It's not what you think it is. Clearly,
>> it's but I mean I'm saying to this to
the to the debunkers and to the the
rationalists and to the the the science
the scientific rationalist de debunkers.
It's like it's just not what you're
saying is not
it's just not true.
>> It's it's just not what human beings are
experiencing. And and that's what I mean
by this fast I told you so. It's like I
told you so. M m where do you think it's
all headed in our lifetime? Because it
does feel like, you know, maybe it's not
the ultimate crescendo or the
apocalypse, but it feels like we're
experiencing a local sort of peak.
>> Oh, no. We definitely are.
>> I don't know. I
you know, my my jo I tell a lot of bad
jokes is that we're going to lose this
one.
>> It's going to get messy.
Um because apocalyptic
scenarios always get really messy and
they they always somebody always loses
and uh I know from the history of
colonialism as well that it's never it's
not good for the the culture that's
colonized,
you know, and we haven't talked about
the history of colonialism here, but I
think that's really integral to to
what's going on, too. And I think one of
the one of the things that's that's
happening is
people are becoming aware that
something is happening not just not just
to reality but to them
>> and and I think that that's really
powerful and pos and it's positive but
it's also messy
>> because I don't
I don't know if our institutions can
take it
>> to be really frank about it and by
institutions I mean our our scientific
institutions but I also mean our
religious institutions.
>> Do you think humanity has been
colonized?
Um,
I think humanity has colonized a lot of
a lot of different peoples. And I think
that the
one of the things I I sometimes think is
that the the abduction experience, this
issue of of of colonialism,
that the colonizer is becoming colonized
through the abduction experience. M
>> I don't know if we've been colonized in
the sense of some kind of alien
colonizer which I think is behind your
question but I think human beings are
becoming more aware that they themselves
have participated in this colonialism.
>> He reminded me of this crazy trippy
conversation I had with Jacqu Valet.
>> Yeah.
>> And he said one of his
>> I've had many trippy conversations with
Jac.
>> I believe that. I believe that. It's
almost like he speaks in sort of
cobbalistic code or something.
>> He does. He does.
>> He recommended this book and it was I
think it was Michael Rockefeller. This
sort of he was this kind of um black
sheep of the family and he was very
interested in art and indigenous
cultures.
And I believe the book is called Savage
Harvest.
and he went to like Papa New Guinea or
some adjacent, you know, island in
French Polynesia
and he was trying to, you know, he's
really interested in the art there and
he and the culture and then they ended
up doing some horrible ritual with him.
they sort sort of, you know, turned on
him and then it was, you know, like a an
Aztec like human sacrifice occurred with
with him. And Jacques mentioned that as
somehow being very important to his UFO
worldview. And he was showing me the
book in this sort of like I'm going to
show you and not tell you, you know,
read the book sort of thing. And that
just always stuck with me so much. And I
think I got like halfway through the
book, but it was when you said
colonizing, I was like,
>> "Yeah,
>> yeah, I don't know."
>> My my my
I have a lot of gut feelings.
My gut feeling I I mean, the the the
notion of colonization, it goes back to
Charles Ford, of course,
>> in the 1920s, but it also the one of the
early science fiction alien invasion
stories was War of the Worlds, and it's
about colonization.
And basically what HG Wells is doing is
he's asking the question, well, what
happens if England, who was the greatest
colonizing power of the time, is it
self-colonized?
And so I think that issue is at the gut
of science fiction for sure. And I also
think it's at the gut of our his of a
lot of historical experience of of human
beings. And so I think it comes up in
the abduction experience, but I'm not
I wouldn't go so far as to say something
else is colonizing us, but I would say
we're becoming aware of our own colonial
history.
>> I think that's a that's a fair
statement.
You
let me let me back up on this and and
and say more. Um,
you know, one of the premises or the the
bases of a lot of humanist and social
scientific discourse is that
we're not really in control
of what social reality is. That it's
deeper than we think. And this is kind
of what I'm trying to get at. There's
something deeper about social reality or
there's something deeper about our
histories that we need to struggle with.
we need to like confront. I think
colonialism is one of them. I think
slavery is another one by the way. Um we
just and the abduction experience throws
this into relief basically
um in a really powerful way that I
because then the the the experiencer
himself or herself or themselves is is
in fact colonized or or abducted as they
say.
>> You know, there's a lack of agency
there. there's a there's a kind of
enslavement or or or um
abduction.
>> And you you you mentioned trauma as
being
>> this important
>> common foundational pattern among
abductees. Um but then you you have you
you have quotes like roomie you know the
the the light comes through the wound
and you know things like that where the
uh traumatic void that someone might
feel then causes them uh to regain
wholeness
>> and that journey is somehow very
transformative.
>> Yeah. I mean
it's such a huge issue. I mean
there's this distinction in the study of
religion between the once-born and the
twiceborn that goes back to William
James and his basic point is that people
who are who are uh healthy and happy and
put together well don't have religious
experiences. People who have conversion
or profound religious experiences are
messed up. They're they're traumatized
in in the language that you're using.
And I think there's really something to
that. Um,
I, you know, I've spent a lot of time
with near-death experiencers and the
near-death experience, and it by
definition is a traumatic, physically
traumatic event. I mean, you almost have
to die
>> to have a near-death experience, but
some people do have near-death
experiences, but not everybody. They're
not automatic. They're not guaranteed.
And I think that's what's
really difficult about this is we don't
really understand why some people have
them and some people don't.
>> To the William James point, there's like
this brokenness
that leads one to,
you know, wholeness or salvation or to
to to attempt uh some greater inner
inner unification. There's this inner
division initially.
Okay. So, I want to talk about William
James. He's a Harvard psychologist,
brother of Henry James, the father of
American pragmatism. But he was also way
more mystical than anyone gave him
credit for. And in 1902, he wrote the
varieties of religious experience.
In that book, he does something that
nobody else was willing to do at the
time. He takes the people who say
they've directly encountered God and he
treats them as data. not as crazy, not
as saints, of course, as human beings,
but also as important testimonial data.
And here's the thing that jumped out at
me over and over in the accounts that
James collects. The divine doesn't need
to show up as a nice idea in your head.
It shows up in the body and usually in
the broken part of the body. James has
this phrase, the sick soul, the person
who is fractured physically or
psychically. And that fracture is the
doorway. Look at George Fox, the founder
of the Quakers. James spends real time
on him. Fox is walking barefoot through
the field in a kind of trance. He's got
what James basically calls a
pathological nervous system. He's
seized. He's shaken. And that's when the
Lord opened up to him. The voice comes
through the wound. It's not in spite of
the suffering. It's through it. James
basically says the hinge of religious
genius is a nervous instability that
most of us would call a disorder. What's
maladaptive in society is adaptive
spiritually. Now put that next to UFO
experiences. Jacqu Valet in Passport
Tomia Diana Pulka in American Cosmic.
What do experiencers that come into
close contact with UFOs report? burns,
scars, implants, a body that gets marked
and then downloads, voices, a sense of
being spoken to by something vastly more
intelligent than you. The same
architecture contact enters through a
wounded site in the body, and the wound
becomes the channel.
My model of of of the paranormal is
traumatic.
Basically what I think Jesse is that
everybody lives in a world. Everybody
lives in a story. They they may not be
aware of that story. It's it's a it's a
religious story or it's a secular story
or a scientific story, but they live
inside a story. And when that story
starts to break down, they sometimes
have this paranormal experience. And
what a paranormal event or experience is
about is basically
them. I think on some other level saying
don't don't live inside this story. This
story isn't working for you anymore.
Tell a different story. Do be different.
So I think there's a healing what I want
to say is there's a healing impulse to
these experiences but they happen in
trauma. They happen in suffering and
illness. And you can always point to the
illness and say, "Oh, that's the cause."
But that's actually not the cause. It's
actually trying to to heal the person.
is trying to bring the person out of the
whatever the person is suffering.
And so I think where where I'm trying to
go with this, I think there's something
terribly serious about paranormal events
that are fundamentally about healing on
a on a psychological or a social or even
a social level.
>> That's what I'm trying to say. Um
>> what William James also kind of gets
into in the varieties of religious
experience is this idea that religious
religions often have sort of a mystical
inner core and you know certain people
who experience something that is very
hard to translate and ends up getting
relayed in sort of a game of telephone
and then you have these sort of garden
variety churchgoers who are just happy
to show up you know they're inherited uh
you know they have rituals and stuff.
Would you would you also sort of
subscribe to that? Um
>> yeah, I I mean so the the beauty of of J
the Jamesian approach is it really
distinguishes between religion as a
social institution which I think most
people do actually. They think of
religion as what goes on at church or
the synagogue or the temple. And what
James was doing is I'm not talking about
that. I'm talking about extremity. I'm
talking about conversion. And I'm
talking about human beings who have
profoundly
life-changing experiences. He's talking
about the twiceborn. He's not interested
in the once. He's not interested in in
religion as a social institution. And
and that's really what I'm trying to get
at as well is I'm not I'm not as
interested in in what makes people
whatever they are because it's their
families, by the way. It's their
culture, it's their language, it's it's
whatever. Uh I'm really interested in
those moments in a human life where
something doesn't fit in
>> and something happens to the individual
in which the story begins to break down.
>> And again that story can be religious or
it can be secular scientific but but it
but I think it's always going to break
down. Um, and the story, one of the
stories I tell here, and it'll go back
to the the the sex stuff, which was we
began, I taught this course once on
sexuality and spirituality.
>> And I thought,
well, I began it by going around the
room and having people tell their
stories of of sexuality and spirituality
in their own lives. And I thought this
would take, you know, one one day or
maybe two days. It took like a week and
a half every and we met every almost
every day and people were balling,
people were crying
and I realized that
almost no one has a story in which those
two things fit together really well.
There was only one happy story in the
whole room, by the way. Um,
and that what they most wanted from me
as a teacher was not to solve their
problem, which I couldn't do, but to
explain to them why there's a conflict.
>> And I could do that. I could do that
really well, depending on whatever their
their their religious tradition or their
cult their cultural conflict was. And I
could tell them, well, here's here's
where where the problem is. But I I
couldn't um resolve that for them.
>> I mean the traditional conflict
that somebody might point out is
something like you know we have these
evolutionary instincts. You read a book
like that's popular today like sex at
dawn or something and then you compare
that with uh religious conventions and
obviously there's sort of a a tension
there. Do you think it goes deeper than
that?
>> Yeah, I mean it always goes deeper. I
mean, but I mean, basically, one of the
things that I pointed out to them was
that all of our our religious models of
human sexuality are agricultural,
>> and we know they're just all wrong.
>> Um, and it's really modern genetics and
bi biology that has pushed us into this
new paradigm. And so we're all living if
to the extent people are religious and
and I understand that some people are
not we're living in a they're living in
a vast anacronism
>> because they're basing their their moral
values on a system that understood
sexual human sexuality in this case in
agricultural terms and it's no longer
agricultural.
>> Um and that and I'll just give you a
simple example of that. We, you know,
historically we think of of sexuality in
terms of the male who who plants the
seed and the soil as it were. That's the
agricultural metaphor that was used over
and over and over again, frankly. And if
that's your understanding, then of
course it's the male who owns the seed.
It's the male. It's the male who defines
the essence of the person.
>> And so you get you get
>> patriarchy. You get you get the
dominance of the bale. Well, we know
that's just wrong. We know that there's
chromosomes from the woman as well as
the man and and that's what what
produces the the human being. So,
but we haven't caught up with that.
>> We haven't caught up with that genetic
understanding in our in our um moral
systems.
>> Going back to what you were saying
earlier where
some people have near-death experiences,
others don't. I think there's a
confucious quote that you know it's like
every man lived lives twice his second
life starts when he realizes he only has
one life to live. So it's sort of
paradoxical. Um and then you look at
sort of ancient mystery rituals and it
seems like there is a simulation of a
near-death experience occurring often
what seems to be aided by uh you know
pharmacopia or drugs. uh you know uh uh
Brian Murescu and Carl Ruck and others
write about these sort of elusinian
mystery rituals. Um it seems like in
those rituals and it's hard to
approximate exactly what occurred, but
it seems like there's violence and and
sex are also a part of those those
rituals,
>> right?
>> And so yeah, what what do you make of
that in light of what we're talking
about now?
>> I get we get asked I get asked the
psychedelic question all the time. By
the way, um
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And it seems like there is a simulation
of a near-death experience occurring
often what seems to be aided by uh you
know pharmacopia or drugs uh you know uh
Brian Morescu and Carl Ruck and others
write about these sort of elusinian
mystery rituals um it seems like in
those rituals and it's hard to
approximate exactly what occurred but it
seems like there's violence and and sex
are also a part of those those rituals
Right.
>> And so, yeah, what what do you make of
that in light of what we're talking
about? Now,
>> I get we get asked I get asked the
psychedelic question all the time, by
the way. Um,
again, I think psyched I think human
beings have been ingesting
plants and substances for as far as we
can see back. And they've done this to
alter their state of mind and to alter
their their consciousness as it were.
And the the idea of dying before one
dies is is basic to h human beings. I
mean, we all die. You're going to die,
Jesse. I'm going to die. We're we're
organic beings. And to the extent we
know that, we want to know what that's
like before we do it. And then we can be
released from that that fear
essentially. I think that's again
religion. um basically is is it revolves
around the the awareness of death and
and and the suffering that that that
ensues there. Um so I take I take all of
that very seriously. I just I just think
it's obvious that that's what that's
what the history of religions and the
history of civilization is about.
There's this idea that the soul can be
somehow liberated from the body or you
can experience you know the the Greek
term noises knowledge of the the soul
and then you come back with a greater
sense of of purpose.
>> Yeah. Yeah. And of course the idea of a
soul as separate from the body is a
classical religious religious idea. Um I
think what's actually happening in these
states is that
you know this will sound this will sound
um esoteric or it'll sound paradoxical
but
there's nothing to die
you know and and you realize that the
soul or the person it's it's just a
grammatical fiction
>> really and once you realize that and and
I have not realized that um and I
suspect most of our listeners have not.
So they still think they're a person or
they're they're a soul as it were. Um
we're going to suffer
>> because we're going to lose that person
or we're going to lose that soul. And
once you do experience that
dramatically, and I think psychedelics
is one way that this is often done, you
just lose all fear of death
>> because there's nothing to die.
speak that that's that's paradoxical I
think
>> yes it to right it is
>> let me put it this way
what we call consciousness or mind may
not be personal
>> and so the person dies the the the the
identity the body just is an organic
being as I say and but but that doesn't
mean consciousness ends.
You know,
>> speaking of death, you experienced what
I can only imagine to be a kind of
traumatic thing that you were in
proximity to at the University of
Chicago Divinity School.
>> Yeah.
>> Can you talk about that?
>> Um, you were talking about Yoan's Yes.
>> Yan's murder. Um, I mean, I can talk
about it for sure.
They're definitely Yoan was killed in
May of 91.
>> Who is Yoan for the audience?
>> Yoan Koulanu was uh the successor really
of the person who founded my discipline,
Mitchellotti. And there are different
theories about why Yoan Yoan was
assassinated.
Um and we don't know why actually. And
there are different theories about why
he was was assassinated. Why would a
Divinity School professor ever be
assassinated? And it was in the bathroom
or what it happened exactly.
>> Yeah, it was on the third floor in the
bathroom.
>> Um, well, he was Romanian for one thing.
>> Uh, and he was very much a critic of
Romanian politics. So, that's one theory
is that he was he was killed for
political reasons. He was also very
interested in the paranormal and wrote a
wonderful essay. I I still assign to all
my graduate students called a
historian's toolkit for the fourth
dimension.
>> Whoa. Cool.
>> It is it's like that's Yoan. Um he was
thinking about
>> the paranormal in geometric or
mathematical terms, you know, already in
the 1980s and early 90s. I guess he died
in '91, so it's probably mostly in the
1980s.
>> Do you remember any of his specific
ideas around that or
>> Well, I don't I just remember them. I
teach them.
>> Yeah.
>> Um I mean basically this is flat land.
>> Okay.
>> He thought that
a lot of paranormal experiences were
perfectly natural once you posit a
fourth dimension.
And that things like ghosts and uh
telepathy and and precognition make no
sense if if we're stuck in these three
dimensions, you know, and in this this
linear time. But once we posit another
dimension, they just make total sense.
>> And the image he gave was from Flatland.
This novel written in the 19th century
is it's it's if you have this
two-dimensional worldview and this three
this thirddimensional sphere interacts
with it, it's it's going to be magical.
It's going to be religious. It's going
to be miraculous. But it's not. It's
just you just have another dimension.
You have a third dimension. You have an
up there. And there's no up. and in flat
land. And so Yoan was thinking about
these
these paranormal experiences already,
you know, in the late 1980s.
Uh I think in in in geometrical terms.
>> It's fascinating.
>> Yeah.
>> Very interesting.
>> Yeah, it really is. And I I was not a
student of Yoan's um but I certainly
knew him
>> and um he was very much a part of my
program, you know, that I was I was was
at at the University of Chicago.
>> Wow. And do you do you think I guess
because you were talking about theories
as to why he was killed, do you think
that might have had anything to do with
what happened to him?
>> I don't know. I just don't know.
>> Yeah,
>> we I was just a kid. I I was a student
and um it was it was traumatic to have
one of your professors killed. I mean
that was really and by the way at this
point I don't think any American
professor had ever been killed.
Um, and we didn't, again, we didn't know
why or we didn't know, we certainly knew
how,
>> but we didn't know why. And that that
made it even more difficult.
>> But, but I do think Yoan's interest in
the paranormal and what Elelliotti was
calling cultural fashions really before
he died. Um, I think that's where the
history of religions was going. Yeah.
>> I think it was headed that way. And so I
think what I'm doing now is very much in
that same line. But was that picked up
and was that really done? No, it was
not.
>> There's a a visualization of the fourth
dimension going viral on Twitter right
now where you see like a almost like
time-lapse timescape of an individual or
an object. Uh but you see it in sort of
a block form and you're like 360, you
know, moving around that block.
>> Yeah. And it's fascinating. It's really
interesting to to visualize and see. And
obviously you have Flatland by Sir Edwin
Abbott is a great
>> It's already like 1884 or something. I
mean, it's early.
>> Mhm.
>> It's like right when the geometry is is
is created, they start talking about
this other dimension as really a way of
talking about transcendence. I I think
because transcendence
uh I I know you're not asking me for
this, but but transcendence historically
is up and it's because we're stuck on a
two-dimensional plane.
>> It's because human beings are stuck. And
so the point where you meet the gods is
actually on a mountain
>> or on a hill because it's the place
where up meets meets that
two-dimensional plane. And so, and this
is why angels have wings and the gods
are always coming down from the sky. And
it's because up is transcendence. Well,
what happens when human beings go up?
There there's nothing there.
>> And so, you have to move. You have to
think about transcendence in another
way. And I think the fourth dimension or
hyperdimensionality is a way as a one
way that you do that. Yes. you start you
start to think of and by transcendence I
don't mean I just mean something that's
not normal to the human experience.
>> I don't I don't mean
genuine or true transcendence. Although
some people still def definitely believe
that.
>> I' I'd almost say also that the fourth
dimension in this model has to be
weirder than the fourth dimension we
traditionally conceive of cuz we think
of the fourth dimension is just time.
And then we think of Zeno's arrow of
time as sort of fundamental. And so if
you know it's just like a river, you can
never step in, you know, the same part
of the river twice.
But what if you could see the whole
river at once, including the parts you
haven't reached yet? That viral
animation I mentioned earlier gives us a
way to picture it. Normally, a video
plays one frame at a time, but in that
visualization, the entire film strip is
compressed into a block, smearing each
pedestrian into a weird ghostly trail.
Their different moments layered together
in the same shape. Now, imagine doing
that with your entire life, every moment
connected. What would the whole thing
look like? We used one of my favorite AI
research tools and a sponsor of this
show, Venice, to dig deeper into the
physics behind this fascinating
visualization.
Technically, it isn't a literal view of
four dimensions. It stacks 2D frames
along a third axis using time as depth
to create a 3D block. But under that
visual is a real concept called a world
line. the unique path a single point
carves through 4D spaceime. Scale that
up to an entire human body and you get
what physicists call a world tube. In
the block universe model, your past,
present, and future form a
four-dimensional structure. Seen from
the outside, you wouldn't look like a
person moving through time. You would be
your whole life at once. newborn you,
presentday you, and every future you up
to your final moment, bending through
every place you ever stood, all fused
into one 4D object that might look like
a big frozen worm. The version of you
here right now would just be one slice
of it. And if consciousness could reach
beyond that single slice we call now,
maybe precognition doesn't involve
predicting the future. Maybe it's
retrocausal information bleeding back
from a future you who already exists
somewhere inside that block at a point
in your life you just haven't reached
yet.
>> One of the things that I guess one of my
bad jokes is that don't listen to
people.
Um because once you start listening to
people,
you just go down one rabbit hole after
another.
>> Yeah. It's it's
your worldview will fall apart if you
just listen to people. And I mean
listen, I don't mean I don't mean hear
them. I mean like really really take
them seriously. And one of the things
that people have
the experience of commonly is
precognition.
>> They experience the future. They're not
guessing. They're not. I mean, we have
all these words like intuition and and
and guessing and prediction that are
basically flat land terms, but if you
talk to people who have actually had
these experiences, they're not
predicting something. They're like
seeing something that will happen and
then it happens. And so once you start
to take those precognitive dreams or or
visions or experiences seriously, then
all of your models of of this three or
four dimensions just start to break
down.
>> Yeah.
>> And
you just go down one rabbit hole after
another.
>> You do. And then simultaneously I love
physicalist attempts even if they're
feudile and fall short to reconcile
precognition with you know our science
today. And so you have somebody like
Eric Wargo who talks about kind of the
long body
>> right
>> as this sort of quantum thing that's
ported into our 3D body and talks about
the brain as possibly kind of a a
biological quantum system similar to
like Roger Penrose and Steuart Hamro.
Yeah,
>> where we might be accessing a
pre-nowledge state of what we what we
know in the future which is you know in
certain quantum interpretations very
possible you have temporal non-locality
you can reverse cubit positions in
quantum computations. Yeah.
>> So theoretically you might know what you
know in the future and you might know
certain things that are adaptive. It
seems like if you were to anecdotally,
at least in my experience, when you talk
to people about precognitive
experiences,
uh they are generally the ones that are
most significant. So it's like don't get
on that plane, final destination sort of
stuff, you know, or very important
geopolitical events. Uh and I find that
really interesting, too. It's almost
like there's an adaptive trickling down
of information from the future knowledge
state into the present. We uh so I love
Eric Wargo. I I think time loops is the
most important thing in that literature
since Passport to Monagonia. And and
I've said that in print and I love Eric
Wargo and I'm not a materialist either
though. But but Eric is and I'm and my
response to him is always well if that's
materialism then I'm a materialist.
That's great, Eric. Let's do and and
what what I'm trying to get at is,
>> you know, the the metaphor I often use
is is is keeping things on the table.
And the thing I love about Eric's work
is it keeps stuff on the table.
>> It it doesn't because generally what a
what a physicist or rationalist will do
is he and it's virtually always a he.
It's not always a he, but but mostly
they'll take things off the table and
then they'll say, "Well, I can explain
everything on the table." I'm like,
"Well, that's just because you just took
everything off the table you can't
explain you." It's circular. And what
Eric does is he keeps precognition on
the table. And he then he tries to think
of a model uh in this case a physicist
or a quantum uh or or a hyperdimensional
model that can that can make sense of
that. And I love that. I love I think
that's what we should be doing. We
should be keeping things on the table
and then coming up with models to
explain them. And um
if everybody thought like that, I think
we'd be in a completely different world
world right now.
>> I think so too. Yeah. Because if you um
a prioritize sift out uh things that you
don't want to put on the table,
eventually the table becomes obsolete or
breaks and you need a whole new table,
you know. And this is sort of the
structure of scientific revolutions.
>> Yeah. I mean
I mean this will take us into the the
the the UFO land too again. But um
you know a lot of these experiences are
pre-cognitive experiences. And I'm like
yeah of course and all of this
literature then makes sense of that you
know. Um but if they don't know this
literature then they don't don't don't
don't know that. and they don't invoke
that. And and so, you know,
I just I get sick and tired, Jesse, of
the the Fairmy paradox and this language
of they can't get there from here. I'm
like, that's a that's a spatial
hermeneutic,
>> right?
>> You know, I'm like, what if it's has
nothing to do with space? Well,
>> what if it's a temporal he hermeneutic?
It's it's it's bad epistemology too
because you are moving downwards from a
a current uh model of the world instead
of just empirically studying
phenomenology that that occurs and and
and that's always bad because because
there's a decay rate on our
understanding of the world that you know
50% at any time is is going to be BS and
it's going to get overturned in the
future. So why would you ping off of
that as and make that a prior instead of
just going with the data just just
taking in what's what's happen
>> because the data is dangerous
>> right
>> you don't again you don't listen to
people
>> right
>> you you you listen to your paradigm
whatever that is in this case a spatial
paradigm and you're like that's what is
true and then you dismiss all these
experience experiences and experiencers
because it doesn't fit into your
>> but right but then it goes it goes down
to this very irrational
human bias that like like I just had
Michael Shurmer on the program. I I sort
of accused him to his face. We have a
very collegial, you know, relationship.
But I I was like I think you're running
from your shadow. And I think and I and
then simultaneously I think a part of
you is a secret mystic that wants to
believe. Yeah.
>> You know, and I I I I felt like he
swirmed a little bit when I said those
things, but
>> I think you're running from your shadow.
You're a secret mystic. Do you do you
want to have a mystical experience?
Okay. All right. Yes, sir. Could be. No,
no, I I I meant that. I do I do I do
believe that. I do. I do try to keep an
open mind.
>> I know Michael and uh I actually am very
fond of Michael and very fond of of
>> certainly skeptics like himself.
>> I am too. Um
because I think there is this mystical
germ
>> there there there is this desire to
understand uh reality in a deeper sense
and
I you know I'm often
I'm often called an atheist and and I
suspect I am visual
models of God. I mean I I I suspect I
am. Um but that doesn't mean I'm an
atheist. It doesn't mean that.
Um,
so what I'm trying to say is I have a
deepseated
sympathy for the debunking impulse or
the skeptical impulse, but I I also have
a deep-seated impulse or or alignment
with the religious uh uh experience. And
I think it's it's really balancing or
it's really bringing those into into
contact or getting them to talk to each
other
>> that is really the secret.
>> Yeah, I love that. And I think it makes
sense that you're a a collector and a
node of a lot of people on both sides
because of that. Um, speaking of uh, you
know, we just were talking about time
loops, time travel, have you ever met
anybody who thinks of themselves as a
time traveler?
Well, yeah. I mean, I' I certainly know
lots of people who have had
precognitions,
>> but not just precogn
sort of the consciousness level.
>> No, I don't.
>> Okay.
>> I don't I mean, like Jacqu Valet has
said to me, um, he doesn't understand
why reincarnation is always from the
past.
>> Why isn't it somebody from the future?
And
I I'm like, "Yeah,
why why why is our why is our cognition
just tied into linear causality as if
we're somehow
on the the node of all space and time?"
Yes,
>> you and I are in a now. And we're just
>> all of the cosmos is like right here,
right now, and it's just moving along.
And so and I and I've ex and I do know
people who
you know do understand descendants
speaking back to them or experiences of
the future. Yeah.
>> So that to me is like
>> that's again don't listen to them
because it's dangerous.
>> Yeah.
>> Um but it's dangerous to this linear
thinking that's always in the past. The
reason I ask is because we have a mutual
friend who's a University of Chicago
affiliate and very smart guy and he
mentioned this NASA mission controller
who I believe showed up at some of your
conferences and engaged in interesting
UFO related discussions and he's a
constant sort of topic of speculation
and discussion in UFO world.
>> Uhhuh.
>> Do you know who I'm talking about? that.
>> So his his name is Tim Taylor and
>> Okay. Yeah.
>> I always feel somewhat awkward
mentioning his name. I I kept him
pseudonmous for many years and uh cuz I
I knew his name. I had even met him once
>> uh and then
>> on another program his name was let out
and because he sort of shows up in
experiencers lives everywhere and has
>> in my opinion seeded a lot of the modern
lore I feel kind of a duty now that his
name is out to call him by his name,
right? Um, but I'm curious as to what
your take was on on him. Did you find
him to be smart? Did you feel like he
was tapped into some core truths that,
you know, uh, others might not be aware
of or
>> Yeah. So, I knew Tim.
>> Yeah.
>> Um, he was he, as you said, he was at a
number of the conferences I held with
with Diana, by the way, Diana Pasila.
And
I found Tim very genuine actually. I I
thought he was speaking from the heart.
Um I don't know what to make of all of
his self-standings, but I
>> I don't know what to make of of the
self-understandings of religious people
either. I
>> I um
>> suspicion and is is integral to to what
I do. And I also don't think Jesse,
again, this isn't really about Tim, but
I don't
I don't take religious experience
literally either. Like I don't think I
don't think the experiencer is the
ultimate authority of of his or her own
experience. And what I mean by that is I
think somebody can genuinely have an
experience of the ancestor or or the
ancestors or of a spirit or of the
afterlife or the blessed virgin Mary and
it's not the blessed virgin Mary or it's
not the ancestor or it's not the
afterlife. M
>> um
and I don't know what to do with that
>> other than there's a
there's a trickster element to to
religious experience that that really
strikes me as important
>> because in his case I just find the fact
that you know he's this kind of vetted
NASA mission controller.
>> Yeah.
>> And then he's also extremely interested
in people's very profound UFO
experiences. And then on top of that,
he's saying things like he reports to an
angel and takes orders from an angel.
Um, you know, who I think he describes
>> and I think that's probably Tim's
experience. That's probably he's
probably being totally open and honest
about that. But but you know, again, I I
don't know. I I don't It doesn't bother
me is is I guess is what you're getting
at. Um because I'm not bothered by
people having
>> near-death experiences either. And I
don't
>> I don't sign my name to their vision of
the afterlife.
>> Yeah.
>> But I think that was their experience of
the afterlife. I can put it that way.
>> And I mean this gets us into a deeper
issue of I you know I'm a historian of
religions at the end of the day which
basically means a comparivist. I think
the Buddhist experience, the Tibetan
experience is as integral as the Hindu
experience or the Christian experience
or the Muslim. I mean, I don't I don't
none of them have the truth for me.
>> But they all have a portion of the
truth.
>> Yeah.
>> Um and I think that's a very different
very different perspective at the end of
the day. And so I think religion is
is revealing
that there's a kind of reality behind
it, but it's not always true either.
>> Sure.
>> It's not always there. There's one shock
after another is what I'm trying to put
it. Do you think there are people in
reality or in government who find
themselves inside of you know what they
almost feel like is a you know Dan Brown
or or Ombberto Echo Echo novel or
something where it's like they feel like
they're part of some sort of hermetic
order and they're experiencing
synchronicities and uh maybe even
commune regularly with other beings that
>> Well, there are such people.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, I do. But I
let me put it this way. Uh this is this
is a this is a tougher part of my
thought. I
I think religious phenomena are special
effects.
>> And by special effects I mean things
that involve physical reality
>> but are not what they seem. M
and so I think we as human beings and by
we I again I don't mean Jeff or Jesse I
mean there's something deeper in us
that's that's a master of special
effects that is actually can create
psychoinetic phenomenon for example can
make a table tip or or manifest a hand
>> but I don't think for a second that it's
about that hand or it's about that table
tipping
>> I think there's something else going on
uh and the the story I always tell here
and you know viewers on other podcasts I
mean I I've told this story many times.
We we I was with Whitley Strieber at a
conference and we were pushing Whitley
on the fact that he is a science fiction
writer. It's a horror writer basically
and that the visitor experience looks a
lot like science fiction or horror. And
we were we were basically pushing on
this like basically the question was
well wasn't your visitor experiences a a
function of your sci-fi or horror
writing? And Willie said something that
has really stuck with me over the years.
He said, he said, "Look,
I know
that the experiences I had in 1986 or
whenever they they occurred were a
function of the bad sci-fi movies I saw
as a kid in the 1950s." I know that, but
there still was something there.
>> So, he said, "The point the basically
what we're being called to do is make
better science fiction movies." M
>> and I was like, "Wow."
>> That that to me is really interesting
because it it it doesn't remove us from
this loop of consciousness and culture.
In fact, it it puts us puts us right in
that loop, but it changes how we think
about the phenomenon because we then
become
the agent of the special effects. But we
also the special effects are also based
on what we have seen
>> and what we produce as a culture.
>> And so you know one of the ways I talk
about religious phenomena and by
religious phenomen again I don't mean
going to church or going to a synagogue.
I mean a near-death experience I mean a
psychedelic experience. There are a
series of these special effects that I
think are directed and written by
millions or billions of people behind
us. I think everyone has participated in
the production of that that event.
And so I think what we're being called
to do today, Jesse, is make better
movies, be better directors, be better
writers, and think about what we're
doing in a way that is really e
ethically
powerful. And by that I don't mean
results in some kind of
moral goodness, but I mean really thinks
about the human quality or the human
human condition in in a way that is not
just human is not just instinctual or is
not just material.
>> Yes. Having said that, so I, you know,
I'm more partial to everything you just
said. And then I find it fascinating
that you have a guy like Tim Taylor
saying the next advancement in my field,
you know, my field being aerospace, uh,
will come from religion.
>> I find that to be so fascinating. Yeah.
>> And then you have, you know, Charles
Chase who was uh I believe director of
revolutionary technologies at Skunk
Works, but I've actually met and I think
is brilliant.
>> Charles Chase.
>> Charles Chase.
>> Yeah, I know Charles.
>> I know. That's what I'm saying. He um I
believe invited you to lecture on flying
saints.
>> He did
>> because he was interested in that as a
real physical phenomena.
>> It is physical. It is a real physical
phenomen. Charles felt that it was
somehow related to how UFOs um um
propagate through space and time.
>> I was talking to Hal Putoff one time and
he was saying, you know, everybody's
speculating about alubiary warp drives
and negative energy and negative mass
and what if it was he, this is a this
will always stay with me. He goes, what
if it was uh a medieval secret society
and they knew how to fly? just just
people knew how to fly and they just put
metal capsules around themselves and I
was like what? I was like really like
you the like you know heterodox you know
physicist NSA CIA for so many years
that's what you're you know speculating
on
>> um wow this is it's take us down many
rabbit holes
>> I mean so Charles invited me to MIT I
don't know what year it was 2016
or 17 somewhere in there and he wanted
me to talk about flying saints and
basically levitation and he was rel he
wanted to know if it was related to to
how UFOs propagate and or fly as it
were.
Uh and of course I didn't know um but I
knew a lot about flying saints. And the
thing about flying saints or the thing
about levitation I don't think they're
aware
of how they do it. you know, I mean,
when we look at the lives of levitators,
um, they clearly don't understand how
it's happening.
>> Um, and that's what I'm trying to get
at. There's there's something going on
here in which the human person, you
know, the the Jesse or the Jeff is an
object uh of of some other form of
agency.
>> So, in St. Joseph of Certino's case, is
he like, whoa, what's going on? He just
starts like yo going up almost. You're
not in control.
>> Interesting.
>> Not in control of that. And it's it's
very much, you know,
Carlos is is somebody I um
deeply admire here. And Carlos will
write about the origins or or the the
the the genre of demonology.
And
it's not that Catholic and Protestant
intellectuals disagreed about
levitation. They they both were arguing
that it did happen. They were arguing
about the agency.
>> And the the the people who thought that
the levitation was a sign of sanctity or
holiness were arguing for God as the
agent.
But the people who were arguing for
levitation as a sign of psychopathology
or or madness or or or evil were arguing
for Satan as the agent. Um, and so I
think this is this is why when I I wrote
a book with Willie, we we called it the
supernatural. Three words,
>> supernatural, because I think the
supernatural is is is
a binary. You, you know, it God is the
agent of the miracle or the supernatural
and God is outside the natural order.
But I don't think these things are out
really outside the natural order. Well,
that's what's so interesting about
Carlos, you know, this Yale professor
who I mean, in this book, they flew,
he's basically defending the idea that
this is real history.
>> Well, because it is that this is what
history is like. Yeah.
>> This is this is what
>> but that these saints actually flew.
It's not just mythology,
>> you know, in so in my my discipline, you
can talk about anything other than
what's real.
you you can never talk about reality.
>> And what I want to most say to people,
including my colleagues, is just get
real. Just talk about reality. And so
Carlos is doing that. He's talking about
levitation as something that's actually
happening. But the point is,
you can't actually get into the question
of demonology or agency until you think
it's real.
If you just think it's made up or it's a
social representation or it's some kind
of gymnastics or something, you're not
going to get into these questions about
agency. I
>> think that's Diana Pulka's understanding
of St. Joseph of Certina, who she's gone
very deep on as well, where she's like,
I think that this guy levitated, you
know, I think that this was a real
historical event. And it's just so
fascinating. Another weird kind of
tangent but very related. I think in
Naflu that book you know he goes through
all of the flying saints and I believe
in a lot of miracles as well and I
believe he talks about this 15th century
monk in Mount Aos Greece uh named Odius
Maximus and this was so trippy. One of
the most interesting things I've
experienced is sitting in your chair,
was uh former head of intel and
counterintel for the Department of
Energy, which you think of as holding
all the crown jewels of the UFO secrets.
At the very least, we know UFOs show up
around nuclear sites all over the world,
and then maybe it goes deeper into
materials. Who knows?
>> Yeah.
>> So, he's sitting right here and he wrote
a book called um
>> I believe a state of mind, faith in the
CIA. He was a Moscow station chief in
the CIA before that. And you know there
are people who are like oh you know he's
totally scoping you and he's distracting
you and whatever. And he wrote this book
before I ever had a show. He I don't
think he was targeting me in any way. I
think he really believes this. Yeah. He
says that he timeraveled back to 15th
century Mount Aos Greece and he lived
like a you know Yankee in King Arthur's
court for three months in you know then.
And he had all these aesthetic sort of
protocols where he would build these
huts and burn the huts and he would cook
these meals and he was you know very
devout and and he would occasionally
talk to some of his you know compatriots
about you know I'm from modern times and
then he you know went through a time
slip and ended up back in 20th century
Mount Aos Greece where he was CIA case
officer recruiting spies or or maybe
trying to catch Soviet spies or
something. So it's this crazy story and
then he finds out so his name then was
Odius Maximus in this time slip and he
finds out after the fact that Odius
Maximus was this real historical
character and in his experience in that
in that 3-month period he levitated he
flew. He was a flying monk. The farther
I'm getting away from myself that's when
I start flying. That's when I start my
spiritual growth is happening when I'm
being less selfish. And I believe
there's a little part of that that book
that Carlos book that talks about Odius
Maximus.
>> Yeah.
>> Crazy.
>> Yeah. I mean, again, I don't think we
understand that. We don't we don't even
know what to do with that.
>> Yeah.
>> Um
>> if you read the YouTube comments, you're
right.
>> But people were not happy.
>> Well,
let let me um
make it even more complex. I mean, we
don't know what to do, for example, with
children who remember previous lives.
>> We We have no idea. And we don't have
any idea because we haven't done it
enough. Yeah. And some of that stuff, if
you watch Leslie Kane's, what's her
Netflix series? Surviving death.
Surviving death. It's like, you know,
often they'll remember, you know, if
they died in a violent way or something,
they'll remember the way in which they
died. They'll remember the whole family,
their former family. In certain cases,
they show up at that house. Yeah. And
they just know they have all this
primordial built-in pre- grammar around
this family that they would have no
other way of of knowing.
>> So, so I mean again from a I mean I I
know I know those researchers. I I I I
know this literature. I've read I've
read it. But what's not clear and what
the researchers will say is it's not
clear whether they're tapping into a
memory of a of a previous life or
whether they were actually that person.
>> And I know from debates that that are
existed in the Hindu and Buddhist
literature, this question of of
reincarnation or of identity is really
tricky. Like
if you if you were uh
a woman in your previous life, who are
you? You know,
well, are you that person or are you
this person or, you know, so what is
identity? What what what it it just
messes with with our all of our notions?
And I think it should. And I think these
these questions about children who
remember previous lives, were they those
people is a is a fairly naive way of
putting it philosophically.
um where the memory of it might be an
actual memory that exists somewhere.
>> You know, we don't again we don't know
because we keep identifying mind or
consciousness with brain
>> and so we don't we don't even have a
model of that.
>> We don't have a way of understanding it.
>> Totally. Eto Bentov who wrote stalking
the wild pendulum had this idea that
like identity was like um like a pinch a
pinch point on like a circuit or
something. Yeah.
>> You know, and then you would you would
sort of
>> go back into source or wholeness or
something. But yeah, it's sort of it's
impossible to sort of talk about this
stuff in physicalist ways.
>> So the the the image I often use is is
the cell phone. You know, it's like you
can throw the cell phone against the
wall.
>> It doesn't hurt the internet,
>> but the cell phone's destroyed. So,
there's no ability to pick up the Wi-Fi
and to create this personal screen. Um,
but the Wi-Fi itself is completely it
doesn't care. And I to me that's a
that's a model or it's an analogy of of
consciousness. It's like and I think
that's I think we're all cell phones
basically.
>> I think so too. Yeah. William James and
Aldis Huxley, this transmission theory
of
>> consciousness. Yeah.
>> Yeah. If you you could have a radio, you
break the, you know, batteries,
capacitors, whatever, and the music
turns off. But that doesn't mean you
know exactly where Valdi's Four Seasons
is is coming from. It's coming from this
radio frequency.
>> Yeah. And and the deeper question is,
well,
maybe everything we know, including all
of our science, is just human.
>> It's just it's just what the brain does,
you know. Um, and so what reality is
then becomes we become mediums or or or
mediators of of this reality, but we're
always going to translate it in terms of
what the brain and the reason and the
senses do and how they how they have
evolved. And that that is almost
certainly not not ultimate.
>> Well, that that seems empirically true.
Like if you in you know consciousness
theorists like Thomas Messenger talk
about this where if you're daydreaming
you are clearly a receptacle for
thoughts that are coming from elsewhere
you are not intending to have those
daydreams.
>> Yeah.
>> So what is that? And then I think maybe
you know a deeper question would be you
know if we are sort of antennas of sorts
you know how do we tap into the best
possible thing and if you read uh you
know Plato Glone talks about protocols
and so are there are there sort of
protocols to receive and Tim Tim Taylor
talks about protocols to receive
>> Tim does too Tim Taylor. Yeah.
>> Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
>> Yeah. I mean, this this to me is the
deeper question. Um,
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You know, if we are sort of antennas of
sorts, you know, how do we tap into the
best possible thing? And if you read uh,
you know, Plato, Glalone talks about
protocols. And so are there are there
sort of protocols to receive? And Tim
Tim Taylor talks about protocols to
receive.
>> Tim does too. Tim Taylor. Yeah.
>> Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
>> Yeah. I mean this this to me is the
deeper question. Um you know the academy
really goes back to Plato in some ways.
The academy was literally a stand of
trees outside of Athens. I mean and the
the founding story of the academy is
Plato's cave actually. And
if you read rep the republic, you
actually read it. You don't just hear
about it. You read it. You understand
that
the cave is running through the entire
book. It's it's central to the whole
book. And that it actually ends with a
near-death experience.
>> And so what the way that and and and I
think it ends with a near-death
experience because Plato was saying this
is what it's really about. This is this
is the core of the the suspicion really
around reason and the senses and the
people in the cave who are chained down.
And once you get out of the cave and see
reality as it really is and you come
back into the cave then you can become
the philosopher king and you can run the
kingdom as it were but with the people
in the cave who might kill you by the
way. Um, but there's a there's an
inherent
suspicion encoded into that story.
Uh, and of course what rationalists do
is they they call the the ending the
myth of because it's to them it's just a
myth. Well, I don't think Plato calls it
a myth. You know, he thinks I mean the
book literally ends with this this this
it's basically a a near-death
experience, but it's also a
reincarnation experience. Yeah, I I've
never read it and I was told that you
know mythos festival and Tomus and Creta
or whatever but you know they they say
uh you know that yeah it's sort of only
mythological and then you you read about
the alusinian mystery rituals and you
realize Plato himself was definitely
historically he would go to a lucis 13
mi northwest of Athens and he would take
he would trip out and he would sort of
experience this primordial soul self and
there's so much language around these
transcendent experiences so to say that
it's just myth. I think is, you know,
dogmatic.
>> We don't understand. I mean, I mean,
when when a when a historian of religion
says that something's myth, what he or
she really means is that's the founding
story of the culture. They do not mean
lie. They do not mean falsehood. They
mean, you know, the the myth of Star
Trek, for example, is that every cosmic
problem can be solved in 42 minutes with
commercials, you know, and you
you sort of get used to that after a
while, you know, and that then becomes
the reigning mythology of of of um
certainly of science, I think, that we
can solve anything through through just
more technology.
>> Well, I think that the other thing about
Plato is that the mythmaking itself
creates reality. And if you read Pulka's
American Cosmic, really that the first
half of that book is about how our
experiences of the UFO phenomenon are
shaded by prior memes installed into us
by the local zeitgeist. And so she talks
about Betty and Barney Hill when they
get their regression. That's like 11 or
12 days after Outer Limits comes out and
the beings look oddly similar. And you
just talked about Whitley Strieber, you
know, where clearly something
transcendent happened, you know, but how
much of all of these experiences are
shaded by, you know, what what we have
in our head like the, you know, the
ability to even conceive of certain
things. I I I think my own discipline,
my academics in general were really good
at context at at explaining X, Y, or Z
because of the outer limits or because
of some culture or some language. What
we're really bad at is that transcendent
>> and we
constantly make this argument that it's
all context.
>> But but it that doesn't work. No, I
think it doesn't. I think I think at We
haven't learned to balance context and
and consciousness as it were. We we we
we we're just we keep saying it's all
context or it's all language or it's all
history when
>> it's both. It's clearly both. And but my
point is is that because it's both, you
can always go to one, right?
>> And you can always explain it if that's
if that's your worldview, that's your
mythology.
>> Yeah. I think that the point would be to
not pre- crystallize, not come to some
preemptive conclusion and uh hold in in
kind of this superp position the
possibilities of you know what what it
could be and uh yeah it could be this
sort of passport to meia Jacqu Valet
style thing where the the incidental
mask is you know you're you're placing
that mask or maybe the thing is placing
its mask based on what's in the lore
kind of right Wow. Uh but but but you
definitely are experiencing something
transcendent. And then beyond that, I
wish we could say more. I wish we could
understand, you know,
>> but we're local contextual creatures,
right? I mean, we're in a language.
We're speaking English now. We're we're
bound to this
this local context.
>> Yes. Yes, we are. And that that's sort
of frustrating if you're truth seeeking.
you you want to get you want to
transcend that, you know, you want to
understand some ultimate
>> that's to me that that's what comparison
is all about is is getting past that
that local context.
>> Do you believe that the United States
government has flying saucers and
hangers all around the country?
>> Um, this will sound like it's a it's
it's I'm I'm pushing back on the
question, but I don't know, but I'm
suspicious of that. M
um and the reason I'm suspicious of it
is we're never shown the flangers. We're
never we don't have direct knowledge of
it. We're only getting indirect
knowledge of it. Now,
you know where the experiencers come in
is they'll say, "Well, we do we do have
these experience. We talk about them all
the time." And that's true. True enough.
But it's not the saucer in the hanger.
It's not the the body as it were. Um and
I know from the history of religions
that
countless cultures have made similar
arguments,
>> right?
>> You know, so I'm always suspicious of
those arguments. And that's again why I
say that you need the historian or the
the anthropologist or the the the
philosopher in the room because that
person will
they won't they won't deny that but
they'll they'll put it into some kind of
context.
>> I think the suspicion around the saucers
and the hangers is very warranted
because you have low sample size you
know a few anecdotes. Some of the
anecdotes feel bulletproof in isolation
or not bulletproof but like hard to
debunk. Um but it's just it's just we
don't have a lot to go off of. Yeah. Go
for it.
>> I I mean let me say more. I mean so I
there's a lot of bulletproof stories in
my world.
>> Yeah.
>> And they conflict
and
I don't know. I I I I I think that the
people who have these say take
near-death experiences, I think they
really had those experiences and I think
they conflict. Uh and I think they're
based on previous memes to use Diana's
language. Um I think at the end of the
day, we're stuck, Jesse, on mythological
tracks.
>> We're stuck in our stories.
>> Is there some intentionality behind the
mythmaking? So I feel like because it's
so hard to answer the transcendent
questions, a more benal question that I
feel like is extremely important is for
example, why post 2017 has everyone
become obsessed with UFOs? And that
seems important because it feels like it
feels like part of that push is
intentional. Yeah.
>> Part of it might be emergent, but what
do you think is going on there? I think
people are finally dealing with the
reality of the of the phenomenon. I
think that's that third space.
>> And I think what people are struggling
with is the the debunking rationalist
skepticism no longer works. And so
they're they're flipping over to a
literalist religious belief. But there's
this third
response that I think is is much more
nuanced and much stronger. And I just
don't think people are aware of that. I
think this is the Jacqu fillet answer
basically. You know, it's like let's be
careful about jumping into this or that
literalist belief. Um, but let's not
dismiss the reality of what's going on
either. I mean, Jacques, I think I I
can't speak for Jacques, but I think he
really believes something is really
going on, but that it's constantly fed
not only through these local contexts,
but people are faking it, too. They're
they're fraudulent. I mean, a lot of a
lot of the cases that Jacqu is most
famous for were were fraud. He shows
that they were fraudulent.
>> Yes.
>> Um so, and I think that's true, too.
>> You know, but
just because something is fake doesn't
mean it's not real.
>> What do you mean by that?
>> Well,
you can fake psychokinesis,
but that doesn't mean psychokinesis
doesn't happen.
>> For sure. Just because you have fake
examples of a thing doesn't mean it's
not real.
>> Yeah, that's that's what I mean by it.
And you can fake all kinds of things. Um
but or you can mimic all kinds of
things, but again that doesn't mean that
the phenomena itself doesn't happen.
Like I think one of the worst things
that ever happened to this is another
whole topic, but to parasychology is the
decision that was made at some point to
dismiss uh a medium or an individual if
they were caught cheating. I think that
was a horrible mistake
>> because I think religious people fake it
till they make it.
>> Yeah.
>> You know, I think the relationship
between mimicry and and fraud is much
more complex than people realize.
>> It's interesting if you read like uh JG
Frasier, you know, the golden bow. It's
like you have these shamanic uh priests,
you know, in these sort of, you know,
small tribes or whatever. And often the
the magic is fully fake until the end
when the tribe turns on them and tries
to kill them and then the magic becomes
real somehow at the end. And this is
also sort of a Gerardian concept, too.
And it's just that's fascinating.
>> Well, again, if you study religion, you
know, you know that things are faked
until they become real. I mean, you know
this.
>> You know, and the placebo effect doesn't
surprise you at all.
>> Yeah. It's a sort of
>> it's like agregor style consensus
thought form that gets created and then
the thought form becomes real all of a
sudden and
>> and placebo is is a part of of all
medical science or pharmaceutical
science and so we know it works we know
it works you know x number of times 30%
or 25% or whatever the the percentage
but it really works
>> the other thing I would say and this
conversation is impossible to have kind
of with any rationalist skeptic up top
because it breaks their kind of
epistemology. But it's that reality
itself is probably far more fractured
than we could ever imagine. So if you
just take at face value these random
event generator experiments which is you
know you tie something that is
conventionally thought of as random like
radioactive isotope decay or literally
you know double slit experiment where
you expect you know 50/50 left slip left
slit right slit and then you say that
there's an observer effect that goes
beyond what we traditionally know as the
observer effect. There's a literal
skewing of you know I'm getting more
right slits because I want more right
slits.
Then all of a sudden everything becomes
downstream of that and you could have
somebody like a Whitley or some of these
people who have very wide apertures in
their reality because the governor
placed on their own consciousness is off
and so they're experiencing a wider
reality and you are bumping off of that
>> widened epistemology. I think um
oh this I don't know how to say this
particularly with with religious truth
and by truth I mean something that that
that is actually represents or or
reflects reality. I I think a lot of
statements are esoteric
in the sense that
it's not that I can whisper something to
you and you suddenly you know a data
point for example. It's like, no, you
actually cannot know this. You literally
I can tell you point blank what it's
about and you will not understand. And
and by you, I mean I mean anybody. I
mean myself, too. So I I I do think that
there's a level of of of understanding
that is literally secret. And it's not
because of a lack of data or a lack of
information. It's because the cognitive
hardware is set up that it it can't
know.
>> See, uh Terrence McKenna has a great
quote. A secret is not something that
isn't told. It's something that cannot
be told. And that is a it's a beautiful
uh kind of, you know, expression of what
you're saying right now.
>> Yeah, Terrence was great.
>> The truth can be selfstigmatizing
to the crowd that it, you know, it isn't
ready for it.
>> I think it is self-stigmatizing. I think
that's what I mean by the trickster
element. There's something about the
truth, as it were, that that um
it's it's self-cancelling,
if I can put it that way.
>> It is. And you have, you know, you need
to have ears to hear.
>> And and this is why, again, this is why
the UFO or the abduction material is so
fascinating to me because it self-
cancels. It cancels itself out at some
point, you know, through these these
different experiences and these
different voices. Um,
>> do you think there is a relationship
between
UFOs that we think of in the modern
sense and Cabala?
>> Well,
oh boy. It just gets us into a whole
This is the um a popular television
series, by the way. Um which I
profoundly disagree with because it
assumes that
>> which television series?
>> What's that?
>> Which television series?
>> Ancient Aliens.
>> Okay.
>> Um
and it deals with Cabala or
>> Well, its basic argument is that all
religious truth is misperceived
astronauts.
>> Sure. So, it's basically an affirmation
of our present mythology and it reads
back onto to the past.
>> It's like Ezekiel's wheel was a UFO.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> Yeah. And I I just think that's wrong. I
I think that
but I also think it's wrong to take that
religious understanding from the past
like Ezekiel's wheel and to read it
forward and say this is really about God
or this is about demons or this is about
angels or what whatever whatever the
language is. So I I'm very much about
how do we not do either of those? How do
we not take our contemporary
understanding and read it back, but also
how do we not take our religious
understanding from the past and read it
forward?
>> And I'm like, what happens when we sit
with things and we just we just sit with
them? And again, I don't know where
that's going. There's another this is
another television series that's that's
about to appear called archive X which
is very much about my own thought and
and the center for the impossible at
rights and we try to do this we try to
do that third space where you don't you
don't think that every religious
phenomena is because of ancient
astronauts but you also don't think that
modern UFO say UFO phenomenon is about
>> Kabala
>> uh you don't you You don't do either of
those.
>> I meant more in the sense not in the
ancient aliens, you know, in the book of
Acts, Jesus went up on a UFO. You can
always superimpose the current thing
onto the onto the past thing. I meant
more in the sense of so take St. Francis
of Aisi where you know on Mount Leverne
in I think 13th century Italy he and
brother Leo brother Leo's in the back
and he he sees this sort of flaming
torch object and it you know Dian Pulka
thinks maybe in the original Greek or
Latin it could have been a UFO and maybe
he died you know his the stigmata that
he received was actually yeah
>> electromagnetic you know radiation but
that's sort of what we were talking
about what the interesting detail that
she told me on on air is that the last
thing he wrote in his uh diary was the
Greek letter Tao
>> and that that represented to him somehow
a forced conversion. And I think about
the UFO journey for a lot of people and
it does involve trauma and it does
involve feeling somewhat broken or
confused and then sort of trying to
reach or gain wholeness and um and
seeking kind of something divine in that
in that process. And that feels somewhat
cobbalistic to me because it's it feels
kind of esoteric and individual and not
like you're just going to church or
synagogue or you know a mosque or
>> Well again St. Francis is that's a
Catholic figure and now you jump to
Kabala.
>> Yeah.
>> Right. I mean um it's two different
religious systems
>> but he was forced to walk the straight
and narrow. There's like there are these
protocols that a person has to you know
and he was this party guy you know
before he was very social and
>> so take Francis. So so I've been to a CC
by the way.
>> Oh amazing
>> that is one weird dude.
>> Francis was weird.
>> Talk to animals.
>> Uh
if you're if you if you walk around as
you recognize at least I did that his
life begins with art. He literally is in
this broken down church and he sees a
crucifix talking and it says something
like, "Rebuild my church." And he
mistakenly thinks it's that church, but
it's actually the church, the the
universal church. But then his life ends
with art. It ends with all of these
amazing um works of art at Aisi. But you
also, at least I saw the bloody socks,
you know, you you you this object in the
sky does pierce him. I mean, it's a very
again a very physical very um
real phenomenon. And it may have killed
him. We don't we don't know how he died.
We we know he died fairly young. Um but
he gets pierced by this object in the
sky. And so I think there is a
relationship between what Pierce Francis
and what contemporary experiencers see.
But I wouldn't say that
Francis is it's not about Christ. It's
not about some Christian message. I
wouldn't take again the past and read it
forward into the present. But I also
wouldn't take again the present and read
it into the past. H
>> I would just say well
something's going on with the
contemporary experiencers that's similar
to something that went on with Francis
and he was using his context and his
culture to explain it that was very
Catholic and this context and this
culture they're they're they're using it
and they're saying it's something very
different. They're saying it's a UFO
example. Um
but the comparativeist always stands
back from both of those moves and says
okay well what's going on you know and
and something is going on in both
contexts. So you you get this this this
localism but you also get this
universalism as it were. you said at at
the soul conference at Stanford, you
said you can't shoot down human souls
>> and implied in that is maybe there's a
connection between the UFO phenomenon
that we see in and human souls and
actually there's a Japanese Buddhist
concept of hitoma which is you know this
plasma orb like thing that represents a
human soul right
>> and so do you think that's sometimes
what we're seeing
>> yeah I think I think basically what's
happening is people are confusing
the security or the nation state with
with religious phenomena.
>> But I don't
that's what I meant by shooting down
souls. You can't do that. I mean, but I
don't I don't want to I mean, maybe
religion is a is a category that doesn't
work anymore, Jess.
>> I I want to I I really want to offer
that. I don't I don't think science
works, but I also don't think religion
works. And so we just need we need new
categories.
>> That excites me so much. You know, I
think we're living in a new axial age
where the past meaning structures are,
you know, just sloing off. And I think
we're going to get this new exciting
thing maybe in our lifetime.
>> That that's where I think the physical
experiences of the experiencers is
really is really relevant. Um because
you do see a lot of sigh phenomena or
you see a lot of a lot of religious
phenomena in the experiencers but
they're not religious
>> you know um and nor should they be u
because religion is about often it's
about believing backwards as I say it's
about affirming someone else's altered
state in the past and I think this is an
altered state obviously in the in the
present but it's pointing toward towards
some kind of future story that we don't
that we don't have. And so like people
ask me sometimes what do I believe? Uh
and I believe in the future.
>> I I I live for the future. I live for um
generations that have not yet been born.
And
what what is that going to be like? I
don't know. I I I agree that the the
only guarantee about the future is that
it'll surprise us for sure. Having said
that, you know, I think people think of,
for example, California as the center of
the future, whether it be
>> Silicon Valley sometimes in dystopian
ways. Uh but you know, you were in the
kind of human potential movement. You
were very involved in early. I still am.
>> Still are. And so I you know we think of
these things as sort of bleeding edge of
you know human sociology and ways of
living and stuff.
>> One of the things I often say is that
it's called the human potential
movement. It's not called the human
accomplishment movement.
>> It it's about the future. It's not about
the past. And what the other thing I I
joke about is like all of the visions of
the future on say Netflix or your
whatever your streaming service is,
they're all bad. The future is always
bad. This is why, by the way, I love
Diana's work. The future's good. There's
there's there's there's a visionary
quality to the future that I think gets
erased um in a lot of dystopian visions
of the future. And I'm also, Jesse, I'm
also very
moved
by the presence of UFOs around nuclear
bases. By the way, to me, that's really
powerful.
>> Yeah. And it's also empirically
ubiquitous. Yes. Unlike the saucers and
hangers thing, I think if any scientists
were sitting here, they would either
have to be sort of dogmatically opposed
to the data or or just admitting that
this is real. Well, the reason I I I
really like that idea, there's a couple
reasons I like it. One is I grew up in
the 70s
um probably before you were born
at the Nadier of the the nuclear crisis.
And I had to register for the draft in
19
80 I guess it was when I turned 18. Uh,
and I and I registered as a
conscientious objector because I saw I I
didn't think I would live to see 40. I
thought the world would be gone because
there'd be an all-out nuclear exchange
between the Soviet Union and the US.
That's really what we thought in the
70s. The other reason I like the idea
that the UFOs show up around nuclear
bases is because John Mack going back to
Mack now he started out as a nuclear
activist by the way or anti-uclear
activist and he went to by the way and
as an anti-uclear activist as what
people don't know about and the human
potential movement it had a profound
uh uh anti-uclear Russianamean an
impulse in inside it. And Mack went to
Eselin as part of this this diplomatic
uh um impulse. And then he was turned on
to the UFO by Stan Grath, by the way.
And you know, his his words were
um
the gra punched a hole in my psyche and
the UFOs flew in. M
>> and that's I think that's captures it
really powerfully that he starts out as
an anti-uclear activist and he ends up
as a as a UFO abduction researcher and I
think that's that's a natural
development but I think a very powerful
one.
>> It certainly describes my own my own
life. M Stannislav Grath is so
fascinating as a as a character. You
know, he obviously is sort of the
inventor of holotropic breath work,
which means sort of growing towards
wholeness. And actually, I I was really
into holotropic breath work and I I
definitely consider it a big part of my
own kind of waking up.
>> So was John Mack, by the way.
>> I know. I know they were friends, too.
And and when I read that in Ralph
Blumenthal's The Believer, I was like,
"Wow, this is really cool." Well,
I wrote a whole chapter on Stan and
Christina, by the way, uh, in my Elin
book. And Stan invented holotropic
breath work when when, um, LSD was made
illegal, by the way.
>> Well, I so I've heard, and you could
probably confirm this, that he, Albert
Hoffman, Carl Ruck explicitly wanted to
recreate the Elusinian mystery rituals
in the modern day.
>> Yeah. Well, yeah, I'm I know I can't
confirm that, but it sounds right to me.
But with Stan, the reason he invented
holotropic breath work, which is
basically breathing really strongly,
>> it's hyperventilating.
>> Hyperventilating basically, and then
entering altered states and having a a a
psychotherapist there uh to to sit with
you. Um, and this is this again is again
what John Mack um um was trained in with
Stan uh and that he used with with uh um
abduction experiencers as well. But
again, Stan invented that
in the late 60s, early 70s when LSD was
legally prohibited. It was not illegal
until ' 67 or ' 68 or whenever whatever
the year was. uh and people don't don't
realize that I mean the the early
psychedelic crisis in the early 60s was
not because of legality.
It was because
psychedelic states appeared and I think
they did
to reproduce religious mystical states.
>> And so the question was theological. It
wasn't legal. It was how how in the
world does eating a mushroom produce an
experience of God or or infinity or or
immortality? Well, it does just does to
some people. Um and so that that was the
early crisis. It it wasn't. And the the
the legal stuff really is only in the
late 60s and 70s when when
>> the the nation state cracks down on
on these altered states and these kids,
these these annoying kids. You know,
>> Aldis Huxley famously predicted that
there would be a future religion
dedicated to psychedelics where each
person had their own transcendent direct
connection
>> to God. Huxley was uh one of the
basically one of the inventors of the
human potential movement. I mean the
phrase human potential movement comes
from Aldis Huxley.
>> Who would you say are the sort of
godfathers?
>> Abraham Maslo and Aldis Huxley.
>> I mean it was really Huxley and Huxley
by the way was very he was very secular
and I would say bitter when he wrote
Brave New World which is what we all
read in high school and at least what I
read in high school. Nobody reads Island
which was his last novel which is very
trippy. It's very much predicting the
counterculture which then breaks in in
the in the six after 64 say but um
Huxley was also really involved in
parasychology.
>> Yeah he was at the round table institute
with Puharic and yeah he seemed very
interested. He was very close to Eileen
Garrett, the the medium,
>> and he was also very involved in the
psychedelic
uh uh revolution. He wrote the doors of
perception and really adopted what what
you what you called the transmission
theory
>> and this was the idea that basically
what psychedelics do is they shut down
brain processes. they don't activate
them and so more of reality is available
to the person precisely because there's
less of a filter and you know Huxley's
language was
reality can appear as it really is uh
outside of or before language sure
>> which I think is really important
especially with this modern kind of AI
and technology conversation you have one
of my favorite quotes is from Marshall
McLuhan he says uh who is maybe a sort
of a Catholic mystic in his own right,
but he he had this quote um every media
extension of man is an amputation. And
so you can think of um you know uh uh
you know AI or the tech stuff as like
this new omvelt through which to see
more of the world or you could see it as
an amputation of your own senses and the
taking away of those senses and this
goes back to Plato actually allows you
to see a more primordial fundamental
reality and you're sort of just trapped
in your bodily prism and once you once
you you know um transcend that you see
more.
>> That's interesting.
Um I mean the history of parasychology
follows technology by the way in a
really really clear way.
>> They're like parallel.
>> Well telepathy I mean telepathy is
coined in 1882 and it's coined after the
telegraph.
>> That's fascinating.
>> Yeah. And and then it's the radio and
then it's the television and then the
computer and now it's the internet and
then it's quantum computing. I mean it
just it just goes on and on with and
because we don't understand human beings
do not get
why I can read your mind or or how I
know about something that's going to
happen before it happens. And so they
they metaphorize they they pull and I
and I don't think they consciously do
that. There's not some agency here, but
they naturally pull the computer or the
television or whatever technology is is
around. They just make it work and they
just come up with new words.
>> Um, but it does it's not really about
that, you know.
>> No,
>> telepathy is really not the telegraph
>> and and
uh precognition is really not about
computers. No, I would say, you know, um
Jack Parson's actually reading The
Golden Bow, he has this really
interesting quote where he says, "After
reading that book, I realized science is
a form of magic. Magic is not downstream
of of science." And so, I think a lot of
the things we think of as like these
mechanical sort of processes actually
come from bizarre divine revelation.
>> Well, this is my my problem with Archer
C. Clark actually who you know everybody
quotes him uh uh every magical event is
is an undisguised form of technology. I
forget the quote but it's like no and
this is the ancient aliens thing too.
It's like
>> they there's no real magic or there's no
real mystical experience. It's all
ancient astronauts and these dumb
primitives have misperceived what's
actually going on. I'm like, "No,
there's real magic."
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
>> There there's real revelation. And and
um
>> you could flip it. You could say any
sufficiently advanced magic is
indistinguishable from technology or
something like that.
>> I actually did flip it, by the way, in
the supernatural.
>> Oh, there you go.
>> Yeah. But I uh that's what annoys me
about the history of of technology and
science is that you know it it it does
see magic or the magical experience as
as a primitive or or or previous form
that of of unknowing and I don't think
it is. I I I think it's really
dramatically not that.
>> What what does nosis mean to you as
opposed to kind of more wrote academic
knowledge?
Nosis is direct. Uh it's a kind of
direct knowing um that that in which one
realizes one's identity with with
divinity.
>> That that's what it means to me.
>> Maybe one of my favorite books of yours
is involves a form of nosis that is so
miraculous and remarkable. Uh it's just
incredible. Everybody should go read it.
It's called Changed in a Flash.
>> Uhhuh.
>> And it's about a woman who gets struck
by lightning. Yeah. What happens next?
>> Oh, that's Elizabeth Cone. And she gets
struck by lightning in a synagogue
parking lot literally across the street
from Rice University where I teach in
1988.
And what happens next is Elizabeth ha
Elizabeth walks into the synagogue and
doesn't understand why no one is is
paying attention to her. And she sees
herself floating off the ground and she
looks behind. She looks out the window
of the door and sees her body lying, you
know, in the rain uh with the flaming uh
umbrella. And she realizes she's having
a near-death experience. And when she
realizes that her boys, who are very
young at this point, are taken care of
by the synagogue um participants, then
she leaves. She follows this light and
she has this elaborate near-death
experience that goes on for two weeks.
Um,
and and that's what change in the Flash
is about is is Elizabeth really tells
her story in the first half of that book
and then I try to interpreted in the
second second half of it.
>> It's remarkable. Um, and she comes back
describing this garden.
>> Yeah.
>> But the garden is sort of that she says
she calls it a garden but it's really
kind of beyond words and concepts that
we have in ordinary waking life. I mean,
the reason so I I
I think I met Elizabeth in 2014 or so
over in the medical center and we had
this event on near-death experiences in
the medical center for people who
who treat who who are pastors of of of
people who who've died and who have come
back. And this happens a lot in the
medical profession, by the way. Um, and
doctors generally don't know what to do
with this and so they they don't do
anything with it, but but certainly uh
chaplain, hospital chaplain need to. So
anyway, I I heard Elizabeth's story of
her near-death experience and I walked
up to her and I said, "Wow, you should
write a book." And she said to me,
"Uh, I don't know how to write a book."
I was like, I know how to write a book,
but I don't have a story like that. And
so, we got together and we wrote Change
in a Flash over the next, you know, two
or three years. Uh, and that's how the
book came to be is through this
collaboration between myself and
Elizabeth. And the reason I liked where
I'm going with this, the reason I liked
Elizabeth's story so much is she was
very clear
that the afterlife is what you want to
see. M
>> so she had a really profound sense of
of both context but also of universalism
or or or you know the com the
comparivist I think is very happy with
her you die into your imaginations which
was my language
>> um but it's your imagination is is
defined by the culture or by the
language you know or the religion in
this in this case of of Elizabeth and so
I interpreted Elizabeth's near-death
experience in Jewish terms
>> in this in the second part of the book
and um because of the garden
>> and the light it led me to a place I
call it the garden because to me it
looked like a garden but not a typical
earthly garden it it was different.
>> What was her sense of God in this
garden?
Um, so God was so she she spent two
weeks talking to God, but it was her
grandfather's
French accented voice. So she was
talking to her grandfather, but she
always f she felt very strongly
that it was God. And so there was this
clear sense in in in which the the
experience itself was not what it seemed
and that in her language
it was her grandfather's voice to calm
her down
>> and and to get her to listen. And so
she'd asked her grandfather all kinds of
practical things like who's going to win
the Super Bowl and who's gonna be the
next president and all these and it all
came true and it all it all happened. Um
but um
>> that's wild. So literal predictions came
true
>> and then she became massively
precognitive by the way.
>> Wow.
uh in in real in after her lightning
strike um in which she would have dreams
of plane crashes that would then play
out in the next day's news.
>> Wow.
>> And so yeah,
>> a lot of these people also experience
anomalies around electronics, phone.
>> She still does.
>> That's amazing.
>> She she experiences with electricity in
particular. Um and this is by the way
where I got turned on to to Eric Wargo.
M
>> was through listening to Elizabeth
because I realized listening to
Elizabeth, particularly with the plane
crash dreams that her experience of the
dream was always the exact angle and
perspective of what appeared in the news
the next day. And so I began to suspect,
oh, Elizabeth
is
precognizing what she'll see in the
newspaper or on the computer or the
television set the next day. She's not
actually there at the site. Well, that
changes dramatically how you think of
these experiences. Um, and that fit
Eric's model,
>> you know, perfectly. I, you know, to put
it to put it differently, um,
I think, and again, Elizabeth differs
with me here, but I think Elizabeth's
brain is precognizing her own brain in
the future.
>> So, it's an entirely physical experience
for for someone like Eric that the the
brain is exists in the future. the the
human being is a tesseract in his own
language is a four-dimensional
worm spread out in time. Uh, and I think
that's what's happening in these
precognitive dreams.
>> But I don't think that's Elizabeth's
experience because it I talked to her
and I asked her and um, and she's very
she's very articulate and she's very
good with me, you know. she she puts up
with the dumb scholar of religion.
>> Um, and she'll say she's, you know,
she'll make some um comment that she's
not as smart as as as this, but I think
she is.
>> You know, my my joke whenever I appear
with Elizabeth, I feel like the warm-up
band for the Beatles.
>> And and what they really want to know is
they want to hear the Beatles. How how
did her priorities shift if at all
after?
>> Interesting.
>> She was a fundamentally different person
after the event than before it.
>> How so?
>> In her own language, she became more
spiritual but less religious.
>> She was more convinced in the
immortality of the soul as it were, but
less convinced of the truth of her own
Jewishness. M
>> and I think that's and the other the
other major part of her near-death
experience was her her conviction that
she would get a divorce by the way.
>> Um and she did and that she would have a
daughter. She did. Uh so it had very the
near-death experience had very strong
conjugal and reproductive elements to it
too.
>> And if I Wow. And if I remember
correctly, she basically was holding on
to this umbrella, which was essentially
a lightning rod.
>> Yeah.
>> And she was struck in this parking lot
of this synagogue and she was kind of
hovering over her body and then did she
follow a light?
>> Yeah, she did.
>> So that's also kind of an archetypal
thing that people with NDEs
>> The thing about it too, I mean, it just
gets weirder and weirder. I mean, this
is what I kept saying, don't listen to
people because you'll just go down one
rabbit hole after another. But of
course, I do listen to people listen to
Elizabeth a lot. And what's striking
about her near-death experience, other
than it was a lightning strike,
was that the the little boy who was
struck with her, who was two at the
time, um, grew up to be an Orthodox
rabbi. He grew up uber uber religious.
And we don't know that there's a
connection, but I I can't help but think
there is. And also she goes on and on
about how it was her wedding ring that
was stuck to the umbrella that the
lightning hit.
>> Whoa.
>> So again,
>> her divorce. Yeah. Like the severing of
that wedding ring or something.
>> Yeah. So it's a really And she also
thinks I'm speaking for Elizabeth here,
but I I think this is fair.
She thinks that the cloud just basically
formed above her. So, and that she was
intended to be struck by lightning and
that she was al they al somehow intended
also was the writing of our book and she
when she was writing the book with me
what she most wanted was for these
things to go away. M
>> she did not want to be
the the object of these pre-cognitive
dreams and these extraordinary
experiences.
>> Um so again it's about healing I think.
Um but it's
there's also a physicality to it. You
know these are that's why use the the
phrase special effects. It's it's like
because I think the electrical thing is
very real. Um I mean she really does
have effects on light bulbs and you know
electrical um appliances.
>> That is a common thing. Um I have a one
of my best friends is this guy Amar
Candal from a really big YouTube channel
called Yes Theory and they went to the
Birkers where there were the famous kind
of whole host of abductions uh I believe
in the late 60s early 70s and there's
this one woman there Melanie and she
experiences all sorts of electromagnetic
anomalies. She, you know, touches a
phone and it turns off and fries. And
>> I still turn off lights. I blow up
computers. I can't go near in my
husband's office. He won't let me go in
the office. I don't know what the hell
they did to me. I really don't. But it's
bad.
>> That seems to be just a very common
thing.
>> And also, I mean, not I guess I am going
back to it, but to go back to the sex
thing,
>> I think this electricity is often
erotic. M
>> I I think there's something
dealing with our sexuality or something
dealing with human sexuality that
manifests as this electrical
disturbance.
Um so I mean that that's another thing
you see over and over again in the
literature and nobody comments on it and
I'm like it's clearly so.
>> Yeah.
>> Um and I understand why they don't.
>> Why do you say that? Why do you think
there's a connection between this
electric feeling? seen so many times
>> that you know
>> so it's like an electrical shock like
experience and then there's some sort of
sexual arousal
>> or the electrical experiences connected
to puberty or or you know the woman will
look at me and say I'm an erotic witch
you know I mean there are moments that
the person clearly is aware of the the
sexual components of the of the
electrical
uh haywire
kind of experience and I think so I
think what's happening is you know
before the modern era we understood
poltergeist
as loud spirits in the house was
essentially a haunting
and in the 20th century researchers
began to suspect it had something to do
with the what they call the focal agent
who was usually a young person and
they're in puberty by the way
>> and so they connected it to sexual
uality and you know where this goes you
know to today certainly in my own life
when I visited um like Germany uh and
visited a parasychology center there and
I met with some some psychotherapists
and they would go into houses that were
haunted and the first thing they would
ask the family is well they would start
doing psychotherapy how do you feel
what's going on and the family would
look at them like
what are talking about.
>> We brought you in for a freaking ghost
and you're talking about emotions in our
relationships and that the the
psychotherapists were adamant that if
you dealt with the the emotional sexual
complexity of the family unit then then
the poltergeist would go away.
>> Oh, interesting.
>> And so there there is an awareness there
that I think is really significant. Do
you think past human
ritual has involved trying to provoke
sort of paranormal things to happen
through some of these sort of you know
traumatic Yeah.
>> occurrence that you do?
>> Yeah. I think I think a lot of ritual is
designed to to control trauma.
>> Yes.
>> Essentially. And it works really well
with particular individuals and it
doesn't work at all with other
individuals. Well, this is going back to
the UFO thing. Coming full circle, like
you hear about, you know, Jake Barber
was this whistleblower. I don't know if
you're familiar with his story.
>> Yeah, I am familiar with it.
>> I interviewed him and he talked about
retrieving two UFOs specifically, and
there are a lot of interesting things
about his testimony, his sort of mental
connection with the craft and the
emotions that that evoked. But the
subplot of how he describes the kind of
UFO legacy program is that it's
basically kind of ritually abusing
>> young people, children, and and people
from third world countries and getting
them to sort of call in these sacred
objects.
>> Yeah.
>> Uh and that's kind of that's kind of
freaky. And then you honestly you read
some of the Epstein files and it feels
feels like there's some sort of
systematic exploitation of young people
going on there.
>> Yeah. I can't speak to that at all, but
I can definitely say there is a link
between
traumatic events and mystical events.
>> There definitely is. Um, and so one of
the things that you would rationally, I
think, conclude is that if you could
induce trauma in enough young people in
particular, you you're going to get
particular mystical events,
>> right? Um, and we can't do that
ethically or morally, certainly in a
university, but people can do that
outside a university in totally immoral
or unethical ways.
>> Totally. And it's also hinted at
actually even in Spielberg's disclosure
day where this Hansel and Gretle sort of
analogy for this abduction which goes
back to Metarlink's story in the late
19th century about the you know the
bluebird um where these two children are
sort of led you know kind of tricked
into this experience which is very
traumatic. It's also mystical. I mean, I
saw I saw the movie. I saw it twice. And
>> I mean, those children are are heavily
traumatized. Yes. By by the experience
and and the experience
>> really happens to them in the movie now,
of course. Um, but I think again, you
see this in the literature over and over
again.
>> Yeah. That's a I mean it just feels like
this dark like I don't even know where
to where you go with that you know but
>> you know I so so certainly one of the
things where I go one of the first
lessons of the study of religion is that
the experience of the sacred is not the
good
>> that you can have the sacred as terror
but you can also have the sacred as
transformation and they go together. the
the the demon is related to the angel
and the angel is related to the demon
and they're all part of the divine as it
were or the sacred.
>> Absolutely. And then I also think
there's a fundamental distinction
between the protoarchitecture of what
people might describe as an angelic
experience which always starts with
terror and might end in transformation
and then other humans who are more
powerful than innocent humans trying to
provoke
mystical stuff to happen by abusing
those less powerful humans. Well, so
again to take this to the to the UFO or
the the abduction phenomena, I mean this
is why I am so fundamentally against
language of the demon.
>> Um because I think first of all, I've
never, you know, my joke is I've never
met a human I've never met a demon that
didn't look like a suffering human being
>> ever.
And I so I think I really do think on on
a on a profound level demonic uh
possession which I think is really
happens and people really experience is
is really human. It's a form of human
suffering. It's it's us suffering
ourselves and and often these people are
traumatized heavily by by individuals
>> you know. So, I have nothing but
compassion for people who are possessed,
but but I don't think it's an objective
demon. I think it's I think it's very
human.
>> Um,
but in a profound special effects kind
of way. I'm again, I'm not I'm not
arguing against the phenomena of of
demonic possession, but but I am arguing
about the agency or the the ultimate
source of it.
>> Yeah. Yeah. No, makes sense. What what
do you think you know you talk a lot
about um the idea of the holy this
Rudolph auto book and uh
>> that's the that's the negative and the
positive aspect of the sacred.
>> Yes. And he talks about uh it's really
interesting like this light that is like
lighter than light. Like it's uh it's
this almost like tear in the fabric of
reality um that that people who have
mystical experiences often see. And I
find that just fascinating. You know,
one of the things I just lectured on on
on Otto, by the way, this will sound
nerdy, but but you you have a professor
on your show, so you you like nerdiness.
>> I do.
>> Um
there's something about Otto and James
in particular that's very Protestant.
Um not Catholic at all, not not Jewish,
not not Hindu, but Protestant in the
sense that the experience is based on
the individual. you know, and and
>> it's it's a human it's a very
individualist response and and that's
essentially what I'm saying. So I'm
taking I guess a very Protestant view
here as well that there's something
about the human response to the sacred
that I think is very significant here
and that can be one of profound terror
or it can be one of profound
transformation or both. And I think this
is what John was Mack was really dealing
with in his in his abductees was it's
was really both and
>> it's not it's not an eitheror and I
don't think I don't this is why you need
scholars of religion um in this zone not
not to reduce this to some social
category but to say the experience of
the sacred is not one or the other it's
really both and and this really does
help us understand what's going on.
>> Often there's a trajectory in UFO
research where somebody starts a little
more nuts and bolts. Take Jacquallay
himself. He was an astronomer. He was
involved in the earliest version of the
internet. Uh Arpanet uh and then you get
into sort of more more mystical uh
territory. And he ultimately I think
semi conceives of himself as
>> he's at least very interested in
Racianism and he talks about the
invisible college. Yeah.
>> Do you think there's a relationship
between these sort of esoteric
>> I do orders and ufology?
>> Oh. Oh, I I see. Um, so I don't think
>> I don't think there's anybody in those
orders
>> really.
>> I mean, there are Rosacrruian, of
course, but but Rosacruianism begins as
as basically a joke
>> really.
>> Yeah. As a kind of there's nobody in it.
But all these intellectuals want to be a
Rossian because they see the power of it
and the value in it.
>> Was Christian Rosen Croit sort of a
mythical was itty probably not real or
>> Totally.
>> Okay.
>> Totally. And I I think it's a genre. I
think it's a uh it's a game. It's a it's
it's it to use the Latin language, but
that doesn't mean it's not important or
it's not real.
>> But the Templars and the Freemasons were
real.
>> Yeah. But yeah, but again I I think
overused,
>> you know, if I can put it that way. Um,
>> yeah. I
I don't think I think religious identity
in general is a real problem. M
>> I don't think we're,
as I've said on other podcasts, I don't
I don't think anybody is is Christian or
Buddhist or Hindu or or Muslim or
whatever. I I think that's an identity
that they put on for a time. And it
might work and they might believe that,
but they're not really that.
Um, and I think a lot of this is is a
similar kind of we put these things on
for a time. I mean, this is why I, you
know, I say at the end of the day, I'm
probably an idealist. I I I do think
we're we're pretending to be X, Y, and
Z, but but um
but we're not.
>> Is there any moment in your own UFO
research where the walls broke down and
you found yourself having a very kind of
paranormal experience?
>> So, I've been writing about the UFO
since the early 2000s because I had to.
you couldn't understand the
counterculture or the human potential
movement or Eelin without really
engaging the UFO in a in a fairly
dramatic way. Um I would say that the
fundamental place where um
I don't know if I turned um was was
Karen Austin actually Ken was and and
just the pure physicality or the pure
the littleness of her experience really
shaped me and and changed me in a
fundamental way. Um
>> what did she experience?
Um, she calls it um um an AI
consciousness infused telepathic bug
>> that crawled up onto her and in and
waking. She was awake when it happened.
Uh, and it came out of nowhere.
>> What did it look like?
>> A telepathic bug. It looked like a bug.
It looked like a a mechanical
um consciousness infused bug.
>> Whoa. Um,
and I mean I we hired an artist to
recreate this and Karen talks about it
and and um
you know I I use it in class and it's
it's powerful. I I write about it and
how to think impossibly and u I don't
see how you think about that experience
in other than physical and physical
terms.
>> I just I don't get it. And so when I
like this language of AI which is all
over the place now I mean abductees have
been talking about robots for for 70 75
years now. They've known forever you
know as far as we can see back as it
were in this life anywhere that that the
robot as they called it was was integral
to the abduction experience. Well now
they're talking about AI
>> right? you know, and
>> yeah, I I've speak to certain people and
they're just so sure they go, "Ah, it's
AI." I'm like, "How do you know that?"
You know, but it is an interesting
overlay of like, you know, some
homeostatic
kit that is trying to like protect the
earth, maybe some vonoman replicator
drones or something, you know, and then
it does seem like the grays in certain
cases, abduction cases are very
surgical. Not only literally comm, you
know, performing surgery, but surgical
in their in their movements and
unfeilling. Yeah. I mean, the way the
way this has been told to me is,
well, look, if you're going to go into
the the the monkey tribe or the the
gorillas, you're not you're not going to
go in there. You're going to send a
machine.
>> And I'm like, yeah, you are. Uh I I get
that. That makes a lot of sense because
the monkeyy's going to throw the machine
against the wall or it's going to smack
smack it beside the head. And if you're
you're you're there, then that's that's
a problem. You don't want to be with the
violent monkey. Um, and that makes sense
to me actually. And of course, this goes
into science fiction. This gets into
popular culture in different ways as
well, but also gets into the history of
philosophy in a really interesting way.
>> Yeah, absolutely. So, I was interviewing
Diana Pulka and I was asking her why
does, you know, angels and demons and
the devil come up a lot in UFO research
and she told this story of being in
Jacqu Valet's apartment in San
Francisco.
>> Yeah. And as a joke, he shows her this
book and it has 666 pages and it's about
the devil. And apparently one of his
favorite movies is The Ninth Gate in
which Johnny Depp is this sort of rear
book stealer who's, you know, searching
for the the third of, you know, this
trilogy of books that confers some sort
of Fouian, you know, devil power. And so
what does this have to do with UFO
research is my question. Yeah, I I think
everything actually. Um,
first of all, the FA legend, this idea
that that you make a contract with the
devil is is about 500 years old. It goes
back to the 15th century actually. And
we know we know we even it's very
German, by the way. And we we know exact
and FA by the way was basically what
we'd call today a professor. So the idea
is that the professor or the academic or
the nerd as it were makes some pact with
the devil and gets some form of
knowledge but then sells his soul to the
devil. This idea of forbidden knowledge
however is biblical. It goes back to the
origins of certainly European
civilization. And I I my third book I
wrote a book called the the serpent's
gift
reflections on the study of religion.
And it begins with the Adam and Eve
story which is very much about forbidden
knowledge.
So I think what human beings have done
at least in the at least in Europe or in
the west or in the biblical world
they've demonized knowledge
and I don't think we should.
And particularly with with Jacques now
with Jacques Jacques Valet, he's
encouraged me on many occasions to read
the history of the devil or the history
of of this literature. Not because he I
think he believes in the devil. I don't
think he I don't think Jacques does. I I
can't speak for him again. But
because of this this this history and I
think demonology
or this rational discourse about demons
is also a kind of demonization of
knowledge. M
>> uh and I and I think it goes back
ultimately what we were talking about
earlier to to to this suffering to this
this impulse to heal and for I think
people really have this experience of
being possessed by the devil or or
demons. But I think that's ultimately a
form of human suffering and they're
trying to be healed or or exercised from
this which is their religious language.
>> Yes. But but I don't think it's I don't
think it's accurate and I don't think
it's ours anymore. And and so I I think
what I'm trying to say is to speak
mythically. I think we should all be
>> foust.
>> I I don't think we're making a deal with
the devil. By the way,
>> um I I think it's tricky though. Like if
you you know uh Oenheimer is seen as a
modern Prometheus.
>> Yeah, he is. you know, and when you sort
of steal fire from the gods, it's, you
know, usually usually those myths don't
end well, you know, and so, yeah, I I
don't think knowledge should be
demonized. I don't think the pursuit of
knowledge should be demonized. My
revealed preference in doing this show
and sort of, you know, literally chasing
forbidden knowledge all the time is is
obviously not that. And then I I often
also find it really interesting that
some UFO researchers will dive deep into
this stuff and then they'll come out and
they're like I'm a Christian or I'm a
Jew or you know what I mean and they'll
just go you know kind of recede back to
convention and I don't know if that's
like a things got too intense for me so
I I had to like kind of retreat or I
actually learned something at the end of
the forbidden knowledge you know
Heisenberg has a quote, you know, uh the
beginning of the bottle of science, you
take a sip or whatever and you're an
atheist and then you get to the bottom
of the bottle and you find God. And so
is that the same with UFO research where
you somehow you realized that it was all
of this knowledge was somehow useless
and it was all within or something like
that.
So I'm not
I'm obviously a professor and I believe
in knowledge
uh and I believe in higher education. I
believe in communicating knowledge.
That's what it's about. I don't believe
in demonizing it. And I think there are
a lot of reasons that people
and and good reasons and natural reasons
that people demonize knowledge.
But I think ultimately it's a bad thing.
>> Um I think I think the same thing of
secrecy. By the way, I don't think
secrecy at the end of the day is the way
to go. It's not how you it's not how
you um promote knowledge.
>> I agree and I disagree. Like I think
>> Yes.
>> Let me let me say two two other things.
>> Yeah.
>> Which will contradict each other. One of
the reasons Jacques Valle had the idea
of an archive and our archives of the
impossible, our center for the
impossible at Rice really begins with a
conversation between myself and Jacques
Valet around this notion was he wanted
to get around the silos of secrecy and
he wanted to help create a culture of
research that was multigenerational and
was not dependent on secrecy or
confidentiality.
And I thought that was a great idea. And
so I've
I founded and have curated for
over 10 years now the these these
archival collections and they're the
most amazing thing certainly I've ever
been involved in. They're astonishing.
Um, and you you'll see this in the show
in in the Archivex show. Um,
that's a real place. The archives are
physically amazing. Um, but they're also
by content amazing because basically the
way the way a collection works is a
donor approaches me or approaches us and
says, "I want to give my life work to
you. my my my kids are not going to care
about this, but but if you take it, then
it'll be preserved for future
generations, and they're absolutely
right about that. Um, and so it's it's
been very easy for me
to ask people for their life work
>> because it's not for me.
>> I'm not asking them to give me money or
give me their books or their collection.
I'm asking them to give their
collection, to give their research,
their files to Rice University, and
that's a very easy thing to do. Okay.
So, there's that one thing that's
against secrecy. But here's here's the
the the pro-secre argument,
and I've said this before on on this
this podcast. I think some forms of
knowledge are secret,
and they're esoteric by nature. I don't
think it's a matter of data. I think
it's a matter of cognition. I I think
certain people are just set up to
understand things and most of us are
not.
And I don't think that's our fault.
Um, you know, Don Hoffman has this
wonderful phrase, Don a neuroscientist
of of perception, and he has this
wonderful phrase, fitness beats truth.
And what he means by that is we have
adapted by evolution to win the game. We
have not adapted to understand how the
game is put together.
And I think Don is absolutely right.
>> Mhm.
>> I think most of us are clueless and that
benefits us
>> in terms of fitness. This is why I love
Plato's Cave and the whole origin of the
academy I think in that. Um, but we're
set up to to to win, not to know.
>> Yeah, I think so, too. And then Allah
Plato, I think we're probably in some
cavelike construct.
>> We are
>> where
>> I think it's probably very adaptive to
not know
>> in order to operate in that construct
>> and then in order to sort of ascend out
or, you know, I don't know, maybe evol
evolve past that. So the other thing
that I find interesting about Hoffman's
work is that um embodied consciousness
is theoretically not adaptive. You know,
it's sort of high latency and low
bandwidth and really kind of gangly and
awkward. And you know, in his model, the
8 million or I don't know if it's 8
million, however many million species, I
think it's low millions of species on
Earth are just the ones that we can
perceive. And there probably is a whole
chain of consciousness above us that you
know it's not adaptive for us to to
perceive. And how many of those you know
millions of species on Earth adaptively
think that they are apex predators
either until it's too late or for their
whole lives. They think that there's you
know they don't know about us. You know
maybe they're some theorists among them
that talk about non-human or you know
non-dlphin intelligence and that's you
know whatever. Um, and so I find that
really interesting because then then the
kind of Plato symposium thing is like
this trans political, you know, truth
that transcends politics is it's very
maladaptive in like the citystate
context, you end up getting killed and
then uh in the in the higher context.
May maybe there is some some higher
version in which it is adaptive.
Yeah, I mean
I I think we associate transcendence and
getting out of the Plato's cave or the
Matrix um with authoritarianism.
>> Um but for historical and contextual
reasons that are just not true. You
know, if if you take a comparative
angle, human beings have always been
about transcendence and have always been
about becoming a god or or transcending
their their human condition. That's not
recent. That's not a 20th century German
Nazi phenomenon. That's as old as the
hills.
>> Yes.
>> And so I think esotericism at the end of
the day as a language, it's and
languages can be used for very ill
purposes, but they can also be used for
very good purposes.
>> 100%. And where I would fall on the
knowledge thing is we have to
distinguish between forms of knowledge.
And uh I know you're kind of a Nichze
scholar and fan and um I love his essay
on history where he talks about
undigested stones of knowledge and you
know he's sort of criticizing academia
which he felt shunned by in his time and
um I think there's very wrote knowledge
or knowledge that you used for political
purposes or for virtue signaling or
whatever and then there's knowledge
that's um a byproduct of some like
mystical truth instinct and those two
things feel very different uh to me.
>> I I think I think we're very plonist in
that we think knowledge is good. It's
good for human beings. And I always
wonder if it's not, you know, maybe it's
not, but it but it's still knowledge.
And
I don't know, Jesse, I um you know, my
my one of my many jokes is that I backed
into the academy because it was the only
institution that would have me, but it
was also the only cultural form that was
about knowledge.
You know,
my my religion was also about knowledge
for sure. Catholicism was very much
about knowledge, but there were limits
to it. and I could ask questions and
even get answers in the academy that I
couldn't in Catholicism and that really
impressed me.
>> Yes.
>> Having said that, of course, the academy
is not perfect and it's filled with
people and there are all kinds of limits
limits on on what can be known. And
that's why I that's why I really do
believe in the broader uh cultural
arena. Um because I want other people to
know things that academics can't know.
And that again that takes us back to the
the show um the archive X show. It it's
filled with people who are experiencers
and who are not academics,
but it's also filled with people who are
academics and are researchers. and a lot
of people you'd know commenting on these
experiences. And I think when you put
those two together, I think you have a a
kind of powerhouse because you have the
experience like the Elizabeth Cronhn of
the world, but you also have uh the Jeff
Kriles of the world. You you and you so
you get an interpretation of the
experience, but you also get the
experience. I think those are both
crucial. Well, that's beautifully said
and I hope you continue to bridge that
gap and spend time both on the forefront
of human knowledge uh but also bring
bringing that to uh you know rigorous uh
places of of study and uh I'm excited to
see where it all goes.
>> Thank you.
>> Well, this has been amazing. I I really
have enjoyed this conversation and
you're so close by so maybe we can run
it back at some point and uh yeah I
really appreciate your time and uh all
your work and uh you know uh you have a
couple of things that you're you're
coming out with right?
>> Yeah. Um so
this big actually uh it's on AMC Plus
and Sundance. It's called Archivex
Unexplained Phenomena. It's coming out
October 1st and
it features our Center for the
Impossible at Rice and and our archives
and
>> and it's a website or where can people
find it or is it
>> on AMC Plus or or Sundance? Um um
>> it and then our our um our website for
the Center for the Impossible will be up
too and and that's that's where people
can go and then my website too
jeffreyjcripple.com and it'll it'll be
up there always.
>> Amazing. Go check it out.
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