Alex's question at the end of the podcast:
"I have one question to tee up from this interview and, you know, I’m reluctant because it’s really not the main focus of her terrific work, which I really want you to check out, but it’s the thing that keeps bugging me and that’s, how does this fit into our larger understanding of extended consciousness?
I was kind of surprised when we talked about reincarnation and she was like, “That isn’t really my thing.” On one hand I accept that that’s not her thing but why doesn’t that come up? Why doesn’t ET come up and it comes up for Marisa Ryan? I mean consciousness, extended consciousness, the only thing we can say from so many of the guests we’ve had on, is that it’s incredibly vast, impossible to pigeonhole or even understand, comprehend from our limited time space reality. But shouldn’t the pieces fit together a little bit more elegantly at times? But maybe they shouldn’t."
I wanted to bring my earlier comments full circle in regards to this podcast episode. My earlier comment (It may be useful to consider that there may be No Ultimate Truth) suggests at least a partial approach to answering the question about why the pieces don't always seem to fit together.
I don't know if there is One Ultimate Truth or not. But I would suggest that it seems useful in certain contexts and for certain purposes to consider that there may not be.
Specifically, in the context and for the purpose of trying to answer the big questions of life, the universe, and everything, it seems useful to consider that "Perhaps there's NO ONE OVERARCHING UNIVERSAL TRUTH" is itself a useful idea to consider.
Shifting the criteria from "accuracy in relation to a hypothetical overarching universal truth" to "usefulness as we navigate mystical experiences and our mundane lives" helps resolve the weirdness of the contradictory data that is reported by NDErs, psychics, mediums, mystics, researches, etc. It also helps resolve the long-standing deadlock that seems to persist between spiritual/religious perspectives and materialist perspectives.
Likewise, I think it's useful to consider that the meaning of words, objects, events, etc comes from need and usefulness more than it comes from correctness or accuracy in terms of a hypothetical SINGLE OVERARCHING UNIVERSAL TRUTH.
Note, I'm not arguing that there is NO SINGLE OVERARCHING UNIVERSAL TRUTH, I am only suggesting that it is useful, in a variety of ways, to consider in the context of thinking about these big questions. Perhaps sometime in the distant future, we will be able to determine once and for all if there is a SINGLE OVERARCHING UNIVERSAL TRUTH or not. Perhaps we are in the "Pre-Copernican" days of the question where we can use our models to navigate and make meaningful sense of experience, but that doesn't mean that our models are "correct" in any absolute sense. (Just like pre-Copernican models of the movement of celestial bodies can be used for navigation and prediction, even though now we consider the pre-copernican models to be "incorrect".) It may be that we emerge from our pre-copernican notions and figure out the absolute truth someday, or it may be that we never do. For me, it's unknown whether these big questions are fundamentally answerable or not. Perhaps our useful, meaningful, provisional answers are the best we can do for now. Perhaps we will have different useful, meaningful, provisional answers in the future that scratch more of our itches when it comes to these questions as we experience them today. But then perhaps we will have different itches that would need to be scratched ...