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

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 conservation of power and money. To my mind, 'Tyler Durden' was a government spy with many hats.
I have no illusions about government, but what do they have to gain by producing a story saying UFO's are real if they don't think they are?

David
 
That's a fair question. Nothing if they are fake, a lot if they are real. So i enjoy the interviews.

Furthermore, i get the trust involved in believing others stories. Sometimes its all we have.
 
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.
yes, this is all play... i.e. very speculative... but if we're going to say anything about these extended consciousness realms then it seems to me we do have to be consistent with the evidence we have.

So I keep pounding on the fact that jeff long has looked at 3000 NDE cases and his conclusion is that god (i.e. ultimate top of the hierarchy) is a fundamental part of the experience. he also reports that this is under-reported... i.e. we really don't like to deal with the messiness of the God thing.

But if we take him as an honest unbiased researcher then the question about who ET prays to takes on a different meaning. I mean, another way to read jeff's conclusion is that there is a god to pray to. there is an order to things. there is a moral imperative. ( full disclosure, I'm not a pray-er)



they all seem a little bit too quick to jump on the consciousness bandwagon and thereby get all excited by the similarities between ET contact and ndes and shamanic experiences. don't get me wrong, I think there are some really important similarities... and I think they tell us a lot... but I think there may be some hugely important differences.
 
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
IDK... James seems like a heavy hitter. and diana seems very careful about whose opinion she relied on... jaques vallee is no slouch
 
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'm not quite sure why you began your response with "But..."; maybe it's intended as a counter or rebuttal? That said, I'm not even sure I understand how your response relates to what I said. Perhaps you have a different model of reality -- if so, that's fine of course.

What do you mean by saying "what is physical is a state of consciousness in the same way that water has the popular states of steam, fluid and ice"? That physicality is in and of itself one state of consciousness? To me, idealism posits that physicality is an appearance to the perception of an alter; one that gives an impression of concreteness.

Anything that reliably and repeatably appears concrete comes through sensory perception of one kind or another -- I'm not implying that we necessarily know of or understand all possible modes of sensory perception, by the way -- and anything else one might be periodically aware of is still within one dissociated consciousness (which is itself within the consciousness of M@L). An example might be thoughts, which don't generally appear concrete, at least until expressed in the concrete form of language.

I must admit I don't understand what you're saying, and why you launch into an analogy about computer games; the analogy doesn't for me strike a chord and seems irrelevant and unrelated to the matter at hand. Perhaps I'm just being dense, but I'm nonplussed by your post. Maybe what you say makes sense, but if so I'm not getting it. Perhaps you could try to put it some other way I might understand?
 
Last edited:
I'm with you... I totally don't know... but I'm reluctant to lump them into the UFO ET thing

Maby, but they are represented in the stars and on earth like the pyramids and seem to persist on in our minds despite being a little ridiculous.
Long things with wings that can fly and destroy with fire.
Cant say I have any answer though, perhaps the questions are the answers, sort of to create a state of mind.
 
yes, this is all play... i.e. very speculative... but if we're going to say anything about these extended consciousness realms then it seems to me we do have to be consistent with the evidence we have.

So I keep pounding on the fact that jeff long has looked at 3000 NDE cases and his conclusion is that god (i.e. ultimate top of the hierarchy) is a fundamental part of the experience. he also reports that this is under-reported... i.e. we really don't like to deal with the messiness of the God thing.

But if we take him as an honest unbiased researcher then the question about who ET prays to takes on a different meaning. I mean, another way to read jeff's conclusion is that there is a god to pray to. there is an order to things. there is a moral imperative. ( full disclosure, I'm not a pray-er)



they all seem a little bit too quick to jump on the consciousness bandwagon and thereby get all excited by the similarities between ET contact and ndes and shamanic experiences. don't get me wrong, I think there are some really important similarities... and I think they tell us a lot... but I think there may be some hugely important differences.

I don't think the average NDEr has the capacity to discriminate between god and a movie star or a ham sandwich. They sure don't in every day life. So they die and some being of light appears some times and they take it for god. That doesn't convince me of anything. Like I said, maybe it is the god of the human morphic field -or a human morphic field. I am extremely skeptical that it is the god of everything in the universe. That doesn't diminish the message, power, hope and beauty we find in NDEs- it just ain't the god of everything; and that's ok.

And we know from NDEs from other cultures that the 'being of light" isn't so much of a feature. I guess they are damned because they don't believe in the true god? The Tibetan Book of the Dead is Satan's work? It dismisses all these NDE images just as I do. People are given to all kinds of delusions and arrogant fantasies.
 
Last edited:
A lot of stuff gets wacky and I understand why people are skeptical and jaded. Just recently I met with some friends for the 4th of July fireworks show. They had brought around a person who had switched faiths every year for the past 5 years. I remember when I first met this person I told myself they had crazy eyes, something was not right in this person's head. I felt shame and guilt for this judgement and kept it to myself as the person was an acquaintance and would not be a big part of my life.

Fast forward to the 4th and this person had completely turned in to a Jesus freak. The ride there was brutal... this person sat shotgun and would only allow Jesus music to being played, on top of that the person would scream Jesus loves you or Jesus died for you to random people out the car window. I was embarrassed crazy eyes was ruining my 4th of July and I kept it to myself. I just wanted to see fireworks get away from the house and enjoy the water.

When we got out of the car it got worse, the person walked up to random people and told them Jesus died on the cross and sacrificed himself so you can be alive. At this point I had enough I told her to calm down as nice as I could. Jesus Freak told me not to tell them what to do, meanwhile they were telling people to repent and to accept Jesus and give up their life and power in the name of the lord and his son Jesus.

On the way to the firework show it continued, walking up to random people telling them to repent to Jesus or go to hell I was embarrassed. The other people were docile, New agey types... although I seen them getting annoyed and giving me the wide eye look they remained docile, sometimes just asking this person why they believe what they do, and to try receiving instead of giving advice all the time. I got so annoyed and started telling Jesus freak about Egypt and the counsel of nicea. Why did God create the devil, etc just basic stuff. Which they ignored and told me Jesus would save me. As we settled in a spot the Jesus freak was anxious and said they could be doing better things like studying the Bible. They the person got up and started preaching to dozens of people telling them they are all family and going to burn in hell. At this point I told the person to shut up! Let these people enjoy their 4th as they were visibly annoyed and uncomfortable. This continued on through the fireworks show and at a gas station we had stopped at afterwords were the person made an employee angry after she said Jesus split blood so he can work where he replied to stop and please stop talking about religion. On the way home the person got shotgun and the Jesus music continued, I told them please play something else they snapped back and said no only Jesus music no swear words.

This is what we are dealing with in religion, new age movement, pseudo skeptics, government, doctors, medicine, vaccines, covens etc fanatics!!!! All we have are our experiences, I don't blame people for being skeptical look at what I just want through. A person who should be in a psychiatric ward out in society off their meds in a delusional state of Jesus fear.... Oh my please be careful out there and remain neutral as possible, skeptical and use discernment.

Mass hysteria is amongst us
 
IDK... James seems like a heavy hitter. and diana seems very careful about whose opinion she relied on... jaques vallee is no slouch
Well I have her book, and it is interesting - particularly if viewed in the way I described, but here is just one of the passages that made me write what I did:
As James unveiled his first slide, we all squinted to decipher the object pictured. None of us recognized what it was. It turned out to be a photo of a massive molecular microscope, something that none of us had ever seen before and probably would never see again.
I think this is a reference to a scanning tunneling microscope which can image individual molecules. A GOOGLE indicates that the term 'molecular microscope' is sometimes used to refer to a procedure, not a particular instrument.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scanning_tunneling_microscope

Also, if presented with an image of a large chunk of electronics on a slide, how many people would expect to identify it, unless they happened to be familiar with that particular make of instrument?

This was not the only remark that seemed odd to me.

My guess would be that she wrote the book later, and some distortions crept in at that stage - which is not surprising, she is after all, a professor of religion!

Alex, I'd like to ask you how you, with a tech background, understand the use of the term 'frequency' as used in Ψ-type contexts. Do you read it as a metaphor, or a reference to some non-material extension to electromagnetic theory (I have seen suggestions in this direction), or what? DWP uses that expression from time to time.

David
 
ood point. then again, even if we clean up our act like you're suggesting it seems like we're still going to be on the outside

But we can be on the outside with some degree of modesty. By trying to define ET by our rules - instead of using ET to expand our notion of the rules - we are being quite stupid.

Now I have finished American Cosmic I see the subtler point Diana was making - allowing the experience to take us where we dare let ourselves be taken. There are not native categories as hard edged as we want to insist. Technology is a manifestation of consciousness rather than a hard lumpy thing apart. And it engages with and transforms consciousness.

We aren't asking the right questions or asserting the right rules - so of course we are going to be on the outside - because we exclude ourselves. Eg we carry on because we think rational intelligence is a big deal, so we miss all the gentle clues that at best its only a bucket and what counts more is what we carry in the bucket.
 
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.

Diana is quite clear that she is not a science person, but I don't think you can characterise her was being naive about science. She sees it from a different perspective. She doesn't critique science in any way I found exposing a lack of complexity or sophistication. In fact In thought she gently let scientists speak for themselves. She looked at science through the eyes of a historian or religion and brought what I thought was a compelling and very balanced set of insights.
 
Diana is quite clear that she is not a science person, but I don't think you can characterise her was being naive about science.
Well exactly - but I don't know what the problem was with what I said.

Perhaps more to the point is that I'd have thought she would have let James or Tyler proof read her book - maybe even write some sections - so maybe they didn't because there is still a covert attempt to be a bit vague about this whole issue. We may not be getting a straight download of the facts, even now.

I am about 29% of the way through the book - trying to read it carefully - but if I wait until I have finished it before commenting, everyone will have moved on to another podcast!

David
 
I guess they are damned because they don't believe in the true god? The Tibetan Book of the Dead is Satan's work? It dismisses all these NDE images just as I do. People are given to all kinds of delusions and arrogant fantasies.
I prefer Dr. Gregory Shushan's take -- NDEs are the source of all religions:
 
Diana is quite clear that she is not a science person, but I don't think you can characterise her was being naive about science. She sees it from a different perspective. She doesn't critique science in any way I found exposing a lack of complexity or sophistication. In fact In thought she gently let scientists speak for themselves. She looked at science through the eyes of a historian or religion and brought what I thought was a compelling and very balanced set of insights.
agreed. I also got the sense that she had a lot of respect for the scientist she was working with, particularly james. she might have struck a different tone if she was talkin about neil deGrasse tyson :)
 
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 :)

I think whenever there is a society of beings with a spectrum of power and a spectrum of “good and evil” you get spontaneously arising social structure that’s part hierarchy and part network.

It baffles me that someone like Tyler (Timothy) would convert to Catholicism, but on the other hand, perhaps he had the realization that whether we like it or not there are dueling hierarchies and it is better to join one than try to influence (or fall prey) as an individual.

The American spirit, Protestantism, new Ageism - all very individualistic. Collectivism is for communists, right? Well maybe there is a balance between the two - even in off planet societal structures.

I still haven’t heard anyone else comment on the notion that the cherubim guarding the way to the Tree of Life in Genesis is a mythical encapsulation of a possibly very tangible fact: that “the gods” (the universal hierarchy) have locked us out of the Tree of Life “tech” because the power to live forever is also the power to destroy everything, and the universe therefore requires a hierarchy to maintain stability and avoid being blown up from within and we need to be forced to labor and die in order to evolve to a place where we can take back the “Tree of Life.”
 
Back
Top