Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka, American Cosmic’s Breakaway Civilization |417|

That's super interesting and useful and valid and reasonable.

But I disagree their are major technological breakthroughs from reverse engineering ufos or whatever. If we handed Newton a microwave oven, could he build one if he had a billion dollars and a thousand assistants?

Why pre-specify the aliens are close technologically to us if newton likely could not understand? We can learn a lot from them. We can see what is possible.

I am not pre-specifying they are close to us technologically. That is a restriction you think is necessary for reverse engineering. I don't think it is.

You wrote "We can learn a lot from them, We can see what is possible." That is part of reverse engineering (I used to work as an engineer.) If you saw a new technology you might try to guess how it works and maybe it would give you new ideas on what you can do with your own existing technology. You don't even need an actual sample to examine to reverse engineer. Just the knowledge that something is definitely possible is huge advantage in developing something yourself.

The analogy to Newton is a reasonable opinion but it is not proof of anything. I have different opinions, they are also not proof, just opinions ....

Not all of the technology we use today would be incomprehensible to Newton. He could probably figure out how a lawn mower engine works. Even if he couldn't understand how pulling the cord produced a spark, he might come up with a way to start his version with a spark from a flint and steel instead of a spark from generator. Maybe some things aliens have don't need super advanced tech and are comprehensible to human scientists.

Some forms of technology are understandable based on analogy. Blood vessels, neurons, wires, and fiber optics are all analogous. If scientists found a new kind of "wiring" they could guess its function and study the materials it was made from. They might not be able to use it to build a time machine but maybe they could build a faster computer with it.

Newton's biggest obstacle was that he didn't know about elements and the periodic table. Modern scientists can take any form of matter and identify the chemical elements and compounds that are in it. They understand something about how each element behaves and how they might behave in combination. (The question of whether humans have samples of alien technology is a different subject I am not addressing now.)

Maybe 20th century scientists could figure out how alien technology worked. Maybe they couldn't figure out everything but maybe they could figure out something. Maybe they could see the principles behind it and develop existing human technology based on the principles. And if the breakaway half had advanced human technology they were keeping from the other half, they would be closer to the aliens than we know. And maybe they didn't reverse engineer it, maybe aliens gave it to them.
 
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I'm sorry to keep banging on about idealism, but if there is nothing but consciousness, then everything is mental and nothing is physical. We and other animate beings have perception, which makes some things appear concrete and solid, i.e. physical -- and to at least some extent predictable according to our models (latterly, including scientific ones) of reality.
Yes, but often in science it is better to keep things separate, even when it is believed they are both aspects of one whole. Examples

1) It is often better to think about electrostatics, or about magnetism without invoking electromagnetism.

2) It is often useful to think of molecules as blobs of matter whizzing around.

3) The valence electrons in metals are analysed in terms of particles that are nearly like electrons but have a higher mass. This allows people to conceive of electrons interacting without considering all the other electrons in the metal. It also ignores the fact that all electrons are interchangeable.

4) People use Newton's laws for most purposes, even though these are just a limit case for the laws of Special Relativity or GR.

I think Idealism is an impractical way of thinking about reality at this point - it doesn't matter whether it is the ultimate truth or not. At the level we are at, reality seems to separate fairly cleanly into the mental and physical - so that is where we should start.

Also, we don't know for sure that Idealism is true.

David
 
Clear as mud?

Hey Eric. Far from it. Its is as clear as vodka. You articulate a perfectly cogent POV with which I have a huge amount of sympathy. If I have quibbles they would be stylistic - and there's no point debating that level of differentiation.

I think your point about focus of awareness is pertinent. In relation to OOBEs I would, however, argue that being 'out of one's body' is a perfectly useful descriptor in the sense that the sense of self is where the focus of awareness is - so if it is through the physical or not there is a sense of being in or out of one's body even if this means only the point of focus of awareness. But I take your point that making this a literal concrete notion can mislead.

I learned this though being woken from a dream by my partner at the time. She had the sensation of floating above her physical body and was freaking out. She woke me to tell me what she had experienced and that I had calmly and rationally talked her down. But she roused me from a dream that exactly related to her account in fine detail. It was apparent that 'I' was operating on several levels at the same time. My dreaming sense of me was conscious in the dream. My partner related a rational lucid non-dreaming experience of me. So I was both at the same time?

That raised the question about how many levels of me were functioning at the same time. Two? Twenty? Two I could confirm. But more than that I could not presently know. And the I that I experienced in the dream was me, in your terms, looking through the physical facet at brain level. So that was me + physical filter/facet. The OOBe me is me sans physical filter, but with another?

We struggle with thought because it is framed by so many things. While we focus through organic form we are obliged to construct thought that responds to the imperatives of that dimension - but we need to add the cultural and psychological to that as well - and we get down to the level of a deeply personal set of filters - me qualified by situation and circumstance. But its like we are elevator shaft able to open at different floors and deliver the focus of awareness to whatever floor it is necessary to focus on. But that could be 3 floors at once and we (as we know ourselves) can know only one. The deeply evolved (integrated) can be aware of multiple floors - and eventually all of them. This is just a metaphor with flaws (not floors), and not a thesis.

It is important to flex and fiddle with our sense of being.
 
I'm sorry to keep banging on about idealism, but if there is nothing but consciousness, then everything is mental and nothing is physical. We and other animate beings have perception, which makes some things appear concrete and solid, i.e. physical -- and to at least some extent predictable according to our models (latterly, including scientific ones) of reality.

But Michael what is physical is a state of consciousness in the same way that water has the popular states of steam, fluid and ice. For example in computer games you have an apparent physical domain even thought you and I both know that its all data inside a small solid state processor. And yet the 'experience' is vast - even galactic. The difference in such a program that defines solid from fluid or 'space' comes down to rules that are 'programmed' in.

I can have the whole Star Wars series on a single flash drive. Something the size of a postage stamp can depict a galaxy - or a postage stamp. What is concrete or solid in not a matter of what it is, rather what the experiencing agent is relative to the subject. Something thats solid to us is not to agents on a different wave length. If a brick and I vibrate at the same wave length then I will hurt myself when I kick the brick. If the relationship is different then I might be a hallucination to the brick and my foot would pass right through it.

Used to hate the New Age terminology of relative vibrational frequencies because it was popular among people who were, otherwise, insufferable wankers. But it remains the most usefully way to swiftly convey an important idea. What is mental is also physical - because when you imagine walking along a road the road has to be physical to the imagined you - otherwise it wouldn't work as an act of imagination.
 
Hey Eric. Far from it. Its is as clear as vodka. You articulate a perfectly cogent POV with which I have a huge amount of sympathy. If I have quibbles they would be stylistic - and there's no point debating that level of differentiation.

I think your point about focus of awareness is pertinent. In relation to OOBEs I would, however, argue that being 'out of one's body' is a perfectly useful descriptor in the sense that the sense of self is where the focus of awareness is - so if it is through the physical or not there is a sense of being in or out of one's body even if this means only the point of focus of awareness. But I take your point that making this a literal concrete notion can mislead..

Agree. It feels that way and it's useful to talk about it that way and - as you note - it isn't even totally wrong even from a shift in focus of awareness model perspective. I just like to call out what I think is really happening because the basic description of OBE misses some important nuances and sounds way too biblical for my taste. Also it kind of gets it backwards. It's too body-centric.

I learned this though being woken from a dream by my partner at the time. She had the sensation of floating above her physical body and was freaking out. She woke me to tell me what she had experienced and that I had calmly and rationally talked her down. But she roused me from a dream that exactly related to her account in fine detail. It was apparent that 'I' was operating on several levels at the same time. My dreaming sense of me was conscious in the dream. My partner related a rational lucid non-dreaming experience of me. So I was both at the same time?

That raised the question about how many levels of me were functioning at the same time. Two? Twenty? Two I could confirm. But more than that I could not presently know. And the I that I experienced in the dream was me, in your terms, looking through the physical facet at brain level. So that was me + physical filter/facet. The OOBe me is me sans physical filter, but with another?..

I know exactly what you mean. It gets to the mind blown level pretty quickly if you stay with it.

We struggle with thought because it is framed by so many things. While we focus through organic form we are obliged to construct thought that responds to the imperatives of that dimension - but we need to add the cultural and psychological to that as well - and we get down to the level of a deeply personal set of filters - me qualified by situation and circumstance. But its like we are elevator shaft able to open at different floors and deliver the focus of awareness to whatever floor it is necessary to focus on. But that could be 3 floors at once and we (as we know ourselves) can know only one. The deeply evolved (integrated) can be aware of multiple floors - and eventually all of them. This is just a metaphor with flaws (not floors), and not a thesis.

It is important to flex and fiddle with our sense of being.

Michael,
OK. Great.I'm sure you've noticed that each time the elevator stops at a different floor we are not the same. Some core being is still there, but it isn't the us that we are used to in material life that is communicating via a computer and keyboard right now. We are able to process perception in different ways at each floor. Those different ways don't always include thinking, rationality or other brain functions. We can enter into all of the "mental" states (I would call them "perceptual states" because it's more accurate, IMO) that UFO are said to induce without ever experiencing a UFO. So I'm not ready to buy into the idea that alien intelligences are manipulating our awareness. I think it is fair to come at it from the idea that we are manipulating our own perceptual states (perhaps subconsciously sometimes) and, sometimes, when the elevator has stopped at a different than usual floor and the door opens, we find aliens/UFOs living there.

So I'm thinking that UFOs are going from steam to ice to water and back to steam. We are observing them from the point of view of ice only. Unknown whether or not the UFOs are consciously shifting, or if it is just happening; kind of like us when we have an OBE or a lucid dream in which we meet unknown intelligences.

Somewhere over the rainbow there could be alien intelligences that debate about our mysterious appearance and disappearances in their realm.
 
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So I'm thinking that UFOs are going from steam to ice to water and back to steam. We are observing them from the point of view of ice only. Unknown whether or not the UFOs are consciously shifting, or if it is just happening; kind of like us when we have an OBE or a lucid dream in which we meet unknown intelligences.

Somewhere over the rainbow there could be alien intelligences that debate about our mysterious appearance and disappearances in their realm.

Love it! I have 2 hours left on Diana's book in audio form and she is pointing in the same direction. We are defining ET by our rules of perception and experience as if we own the territory.

Yesterday I hooked into a teleconference as an outsider and was fascinated to hear the person who set it all up carry on as if she was in charge, and that was how it was going to be. She was a relative junior officer, and while it was good she triggered the meeting, she completely failed to acknowledge the presence of a senior executive who would, in all likelihood, be the one running the show. The organiser was tone deaf because she did not imagine the scale of what she was dealing with.

I think the preponderance of the evidence points plainly to a complex steam/water/ice interface as normal. But ice brains can't imagine concrete reality in steam. Concrete means ice only - an absolute rather than relative and contingent conception.
 
Alex, I thought Gordon had bested you on the pyramids issue. Even more important, what is your hard evidence for aliens messing with humans long ago: have you done a show on this?
hi firestorm... let's play around here... because you're kind of making my point regarding burden of proof tipping point. gordon white said in episode 405:

Gordon White: When you talk about the similarity between pyramids, if you include Gunung Padang in that, which is in the book and I think you should, you’re dealing with a pyramid building project that happened multiple times, between 15 and 20 thousand years.

So, if they’re the inspiration for it, how many times did they come down and where are they?

There has to be a better understanding of what human interaction with off-planet is, that allows for these kinds of ideas to recur over time, because they absolutely do, and it doesn’t necessarily require physical Sirians landing in West Africa and talking to the Dogon, when we have no evidence of that but we do absolutely have evidence for telepathy and distance, like nonverbal communication, when we do these kinds of things.

So, the Sirians don’t actually need to get here to tell us this stuff and what if it’s the actual stars themselves? Like this is coming back to Dr. Sheldrake, right? Like the implications which neither of us like this, but it’s a great way of describing it. The implications of panpsychism is that the sun has some form of consciousness.

Now neither of us are panpsychists for very good reasons, but that’s what I mean. Like rather than having something for which we have no evidence, we do have evidence for these [psy capacities 00:19:49] and it seems like that’s a better place to start with. That was sort of the whole point of the book, rather than having aliens keep showing up.


Well, now we do have evidence of "them" landing here in high-tech craft. moreover, this is what the Dogan reported all along, we were just reluctant to believe them. we should be a lot less reluctant now :)
 
I haven't read american cosmic, but this is directly relevant to the veracity of collected alien materials (and Bob Lazar).

It's quite the slow drip drip drip indeed.

I gave this a quick scan... how is it anything more than old-fashioned science as we know it Skepticism?
 
So I'm thinking that UFOs are going from steam to ice to water and back to steam. We are observing them from the point of view of ice only. Unknown whether or not the UFOs are consciously shifting, or if it is just happening; kind of like us when we have an OBE or a lucid dream in which we meet unknown intelligences.

Somewhere over the rainbow there could be alien intelligences that debate about our mysterious appearance and disappearances in their realm.
good stuff.

who does ET pray to?
 
good stuff.

who does ET pray to?

Alex,
I suppose it depends on who they are and what they need; or in my lingo, what they are focusing their awareness on.

They would identify some larger energy in the universe and attempt to align with it through prayer or activities that serve the same underlying function as prayer.

I assume you know better than to think that the god we pray to is the true ultimate master of the entire multiverse. Sure, we may define it as such, but we don't even know what we're talking about. Merely saying it's so doesn't make it so.

And that includes "ascended masters" of exotic spiritual practices. I don't care if they can produce valid psi, telekinesis, heal the sick or bring back the dead or what ever. Being at level 3 as opposed to the average schmuck at level 1 doesn't mean that level 3 is The Ultimate. The god of the human realm/energetic field (say Christ/ father/son/holy ghost) may not be the god of the alien intelligence realm and certainly not of EVERYTHING. Parlor tricks do not convince me of anything other than that you're trying to convince me. I digress.
 
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Alex,
I suppose it depends on who they are and what they need; or in my lingo, what they are focusing their awareness on.

They would identify some larger energy in the universe and attempt to align with it through prayer or activities that serve the same underlying function as prayer.

I assume you know better than to think that the god we pray to is the true ultimate master of the entire multiverse. Sure, we may define it as such, but we don't even know what we're talking about. Merely saying it's so doesn't make it so.
and who would the "some larger energy in the universe" pray to :) haha... you get my point... we're bumping up against the hierarchy issue. from here we can retreat to panpsychism and the "blob of consciousness" nonsense ( which doesn't just fail philosophically but also contradicts the data) or fall to our knees and pray to God :) just kidding... well, kinda :)
 
and who would the "some larger energy in the universe" pray to :) haha... you get my point... we're bumping up against the hierarchy issue. from here we can retreat to panpsychism and the "blob of consciousness" nonsense ( which doesn't just fail philosophically but also contradicts the data) or fall to our knees and pray to God :) just kidding... well, kinda :)

To clarify - Aliens probably have the same issues we do in their own way. They attempt to align with a god or gods that make sense to their existence. Their existence is, of course, what's important to them. So their god(s) would be considered, by them, to be the ultimate.

Or, perhaps they are wise enough to know that while their god(s) mean everything to them, they are just a narrow slice of the range of energies in the universe that fuel other morphic fields.

IMO, our gods are the aware and intelligent rulers of our human morphic field. They should not be discounted. But beyond the human field, there are fields upon fields into, perhaps, infinity. Alien intelligence is probably of a different morphic field and therefore of different god(s)/energies. To claim to know the god of all these gods, the organizer of all of these fields into infinity is the pinnacle of arrogance, IMO. That assumes there even is such an intelligent and aware ultimate organizer (something I doubt).

Is there overlap between the alien field and the human? Maybe and maybe they are trying to explore the extent of that overlap, but they seem different enough to have different gods.
 
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and who would the "some larger energy in the universe" pray to :) haha... you get my point... we're bumping up against the hierarchy issue. from here we can retreat to panpsychism and the "blob of consciousness" nonsense ( which doesn't just fail philosophically but also contradicts the data) or fall to our knees and pray to God :) just kidding... well, kinda :)

Alex,
To be honest I was just playing along - Personally, I do not understand the question "who do they pray to?" - it presumes that everything prays and that there is a need to pray.

Do ants pray? Birds? And yet they are taken of (see what I did there? I ripped off Jesus and I don't feel too bad about it either). How about we just live and be who and what we are? Maybe aliens have that approach.

Hierarchies might be like time, a concept we create to help our physical brains keep things orderly. Yet, even if they exist in some objective fashion, why do they necessitate praying? The Taoists don't pray. They merely seek to align/come into harmony by understanding the way of what is and letting go into it. Totally different head and one I appreciate.

100% with you on panpsych and "the blob" - if these things were "it", then there'd be no life.
 
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hi firestorm... let's play around here... because you're kind of making my point regarding burden of proof tipping point. gordon white said in episode 405:

Gordon White: When you talk about the similarity between pyramids, if you include Gunung Padang in that, which is in the book and I think you should, you’re dealing with a pyramid building project that happened multiple times, between 15 and 20 thousand years.

So, if they’re the inspiration for it, how many times did they come down and where are they?

There has to be a better understanding of what human interaction with off-planet is, that allows for these kinds of ideas to recur over time, because they absolutely do, and it doesn’t necessarily require physical Sirians landing in West Africa and talking to the Dogon, when we have no evidence of that but we do absolutely have evidence for telepathy and distance, like nonverbal communication, when we do these kinds of things.

So, the Sirians don’t actually need to get here to tell us this stuff and what if it’s the actual stars themselves? Like this is coming back to Dr. Sheldrake, right? Like the implications which neither of us like this, but it’s a great way of describing it. The implications of panpsychism is that the sun has some form of consciousness.

Now neither of us are panpsychists for very good reasons, but that’s what I mean. Like rather than having something for which we have no evidence, we do have evidence for these [psy capacities 00:19:49] and it seems like that’s a better place to start with. That was sort of the whole point of the book, rather than having aliens keep showing up.

Well, now we do have evidence of "them" landing here in high-tech craft. moreover, this is what the Dogan reported all along, we were just reluctant to believe them. we should be a lot less reluctant now :)

Great stuff, now where did all the dragons come from and disappear to?
 
I didn't read american cosmic, but claiming an anonymous scientist says the sample is out of this world is itself unconvincing to me and I would think anyone who didn't know the source of the science personally.
Damn right it is, but I think the only way to deal with Skeptiko podcasts, is to try to see the wood through the trees. I mean we now know one extraordinary fact - the US military has admitted they study these phenomena, and do not think they can all be explained away. To me, that rather changes the way I read people such as Diana Pasulka. She clearly isn't a scientist herself or knowledgeable about science (I think), so she talks about science in a rather naive way.
I am working my way through her book right now.

David
 
I am not pre-specifying they are close to us technologically. That is a restriction you think is necessary for reverse engineering. I don't think it is.

You wrote "We can learn a lot from them, We can see what is possible." That is part of reverse engineering (I used to work as an engineer.) If you saw a new technology you might try to guess how it works and maybe it would give you new ideas on what you can do with your own existing technology. You don't even need an actual sample to examine to reverse engineer. Just the knowledge that something is definitely possible is huge advantage in developing something yourself.

The analogy to Newton is a reasonable opinion but it is not proof of anything. I have different opinions, they are also not proof, just opinions ....

Not all of the technology we use today would be incomprehensible to Newton. He could probably figure out how a lawn mower engine works. Even if he couldn't understand how pulling the cord produced a spark, he might come up with a way to start his version with a spark from a flint and steel instead of a spark from generator. Maybe some things aliens have don't need super advanced tech and are comprehensible to human scientists.

Some forms of technology are understandable based on analogy. Blood vessels, neurons, wires, and fiber optics are all analogous. If scientists found a new kind of "wiring" they could guess its function and study the materials it was made from. They might not be able to use it to build a time machine but maybe they could build a faster computer with it.

Newton's biggest obstacle was that he didn't know about elements and the periodic table. Modern scientists can take any form of matter and identify the chemical elements and compounds that are in it. They understand something about how each element behaves and how they might behave in combination. (The question of whether humans have samples of alien technology is a different subject I am not addressing now.)

Maybe 20th century scientists could figure out how alien technology worked. Maybe they couldn't figure out everything but maybe they could figure out something. Maybe they could see the principles behind it and develop existing human technology based on the principles. And if the breakaway half had advanced human technology they were keeping from the other half, they would be closer to the aliens than we know. And maybe they didn't reverse engineer it, maybe aliens gave it to them.

It would be fun to try and any progress might represent a life's work. However, if these crafts are real, the obious solution is to open source the problem to expedite progress.

But that seems unlikely for reasons of security and greed. Sad.
 
Damn right it is, but I think the only way to deal with Skeptiko podcasts, is to try to see the wood through the trees. I mean we now know one extraordinary fact - the US military has admitted they study these phenomena, and do not think they can all be explained away. To me, that rather changes the way I read people such as Diana Pasulka. She clearly isn't a scientist herself or knowledgeable about science (I think), so she talks about science in a rather naive way.
I am working my way through her book right now.

David
A plausible story is the governments desire to co-opt the seemingly supernatural phenomena of both the sane and mentally ill towards their own ends -- likely for conservation of power and money. To my mind, 'Tyler Durden' was a government spy with many hats.
 
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