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The Basement: Diana Pasulka | Angels, Vatican Archives, and a Government Email

221m 10s

The Basement: Diana Pasulka | Angels, Vatican Archives, and a Government Email

Diana Walsh Peselka, a religious studies professor, explores the intersection of religion, death, and the supernatural through extensive archival research. Her work reveals consistent patterns in near-death experiences across cultures, from medieval Catholic "other world journeys" to children’s accounts of life after death. She examines how Catholic doctrine, particularly purgatory, was downplayed during Vatican II but is now gaining renewed attention among younger believers. Drawing on ancient texts like Plato’s *Republic* and Dante’s *Divine Comedy*, she finds deep philosophical roots in ideas of the afterlife and spiritual travel. Her research also extends to Russian Cosmism, a 19th-century movement that envisioned resurrecting the dead through space technology as a moral duty. She highlights the story of Marie of Agrida, a 16th-century nun who allegedly flew across the globe on angelic wings, with records linking her to indigenous communities in the American Southwest. These stories, while controversial, demonstrate how spiritual experiences are embedded in historical and cultural memory. Peselka emphasizes that religious studies is not about promoting belief, but about critically examining data and experiences that challenge traditional frameworks. Her work shows how modern technological advances—like AI and space exploration—resonate with ancient philosophical questions about consciousness, memory, and the afterlife. Ultimately, she advocates for an open, evidence-based approach to spiritual phenomena, recognizing that such experiences, though unproven, remain deeply human and culturally significant.

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All new drinks are now at McDonald's with refreshers like the strawberry water melon refresher. And the mango pineapple refresher with popping boba to graft in sodas like the Sprite Berry Blast with berry flavors and cold foam. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so fire? Six all new drinks are here. Now at McDonald's. Refreshers contain caffeine. Today I'm talking with Diana Walsh Peselka. She's a religious studies professor who spent years and archives of most people never see, including the Vatican's, reading sworn testimony about saints who levitate in front of entire towns. Then the government noticed the research and she ended up blindfolded in the New Mexico desert taking for debris at an alleged UFO crash site. It blindfolded and drifted out to the desert with a shovel. Sometimes I miss the old vegans. By the way, this is a woman who wants a foot in a haunted house. The blindfold was fine. Apparently. Today we're covering the flying saints, the recruitment, and why she believes a new religion is forming around UFOs, with somebody already writing its Bible. Her new book, The Others, just hit the New York Times bestseller list. The Times list is regularly controlled by big publishing. Unless she's on it, then it's a very prestigious Anna. Congratulations, Professor. And her leading candidate for the Antichrist? I didn't see that one coming. It's a cat, isn't it? It's not a cat. Yeah, it's exactly what a cat would want you to think. Stick around after the episode. I'll pop back in and untangle the conversation. Let's go down to the basement. Did you start your career in death? I know that you teach the museum a death in dying sometimes in Brooklyn. Yeah. Okay, so what was it that drew you to death? Yeah, I know. Okay, so I've been studying religion my whole life. And I'm in religious studies, so I just have to explain what that is. So because a lot of people don't know. They think that if you're studying religion, you're like a minister or a theologian. And I definitely, I went to school with priest information. People who are going to be priests and nuns and so forth. So I have that background. But I took an academic track. So I was interested in religion from a perspective of. I just didn't think I was good enough, frankly, to be a theologian. Like in order to be a theologian, you have to like, kind of walk the walk, right? And I was like, oh, I'm not, you know, I'm probably not that good. But I'm really interested in religion. Well, what's interesting to three of theologian and the clergy? Yeah, they're the same. So in order to be a clergy, you have to have a theology degree. And so I had the same background as a person who has a theology degree. But I went extra and got a PhD in an academic field. And I'm super happy I did. So I'm in this field called religious studies, which looks at religion. I mean, most of the world are religious practitioners. It's really an important thing to know about. And so I study, but not from a belief perspective. So I'm not advocating for any belief. I'm not advocating for belief in Christianity. I'm not advocating for belief in Buddhism. And I don't advocate for people to believe in UFOs. But, you know, that was the second part of my career with studying UFO belief. And so how did I get into death and things like that? So it was, it wasn't really a choice. It just kind of happened. So I was looking at the ways in which my field is looking at technology and religious belief and the interactions that technology has on how people practice their beliefs and, you know, what they believe in. And so, but I was really interested in extraordinary events and how people describe them. So what would that be? That would be like looking at angel contact events in the historical record for Christians. What did they believe or Jewish people? So I started to look at that. That invariably crossed over into people having near death experiences and things like that. Because a lot of people who have extraordinary events also have brushes with death or something like that. And so that's how it happened. It was very on accident kind of. And one of my first publications in the first publications when I was a young assistant professor was looking. And by the way, I also spent a lot of time in archives. And archives are old libraries. So archives. So this is for young people out there. Believe it or not, there is non-digitized information. Information that is not on the internet. Information that is, you know, not on your phone. That chat's GPT doesn't know about. And this is all contained in archives. So I spent a lot of time, like years and years, in archives, old archives, Vatican archives, archives all over the place. And these, you know, we're talking about manuscripts and books and even stones that have picked a grip. Like petroglyphs? Yeah, yeah, thank you. Yeah, pictograms, petroglyphs. Right. So I've seen Aztec petroglyphs, yeah. So it's comparative religion, it's everybody. Oh yeah, yeah, it is. It's comparative religion. And so the first publication that I wrote was about near death experiences of children from the 1800s. And there was, believe it or not, there was a whole genre of writing about children who died and came back and said what they saw. Or just before they died, they were in a state where they could see people who had been dead and then tell their friends so and so is okay. Or, you know, I saw so and so and this is what they want to say to you and so forth. And so I thought this was really interesting. So that's what really got me into looking at death and why actually I became, I'm part of the American Academy of Religion, which is an international group, or mostly American, but international, of people like me who study religion. And I co-chaired the death session of that for like 10 years. And now it's co-chaired by my, by a former student who's now a professor. So children, death, near death experiences is interesting because they're not, they don't have enough time on the earth to be primed for what to see. Yeah. And yet they're seeing the same things that kind of everybody sees. Yeah, yeah. So near death experiences are interesting. One of the first recorded near death experiences happened, well, was recorded about 2,500 years ago. And that's with Plato, actually. So in his book, The Republic, he talks about a soldier who dies on the field, you know, the, I guess the front. And everybody thinks he's dead. And then he comes back to life. And he says, wow, look what I saw when I was dead. And it's really interesting. And so that's, so they've been around for a long time. And they look similar. The patterns are similar. Are you seeing the same patterns in other cultures and religions as well? Yes, you do. You see the same patterns. There are inflections, cultural inflections that are different. But, but for the most part, it looks, it looks pretty consistent. So what you see when a, when a, I know it sounds strange. When a person dies and they come back and talk about it. And it's not strange in this room. Okay. Good. Good. All right. So often what happens is they have like what is called a life review. And in ancient Egypt, there's the same thing. There's this god of Cyrus. He's looking at, you know, if your soul is not, he weighs your soul. Against the feather. Yeah, exactly. And if it's not, if it's heavy, there's a demon that, you know, so there's always a sense of judgment that you get. After a really kind of okay experience of meeting a guide, right? And the guide can be like an illuminus being or it could be if your Christian Jesus or, you know, so there's always that cultural inflection of that helps you frame what you're, what you see. And then if the person, well, the person has to come back to explain that they went through this. But this was a whole genre of literature for Catholics of the medieval era. And the, you know, European, basically the European continent, right? Where these people are having these experiences and then monks are writing about it and they're called other world journeys. And so I got into the other world journeys. And that was, my first book was about purgatory, which is a dogma of the Catholic church that describes when souls are not good enough to go to heaven, where do they go? It's this place called purgatory. And so purgatory was, I spent a lot of time in archives to write that book. So that was my first book. Why did Catholicism kind of abandon the idea of purgatory? Well, okay. So they haven't technically abandoned purgatory. So that's still a dogma of the church. What happened was that there was a big, like, almost like an internal reformation for Catholics in the 1960s, between 1961 and '65. And this is called Vatican II. And what they did was they determined that a lot of people were falling away from the Catholic church. Why, right? And they thought it was this M-- emphasis on, well, we tell them when they die, their soul will go to hell or a purgatory. It looks pretty bad, right? And that's not a good look, right? So they reformed how they taught their priests and they taught their priests in seminary to downplay this idea of purgatory. And so, in that sense, when churches in pre-Vaticant 2 churches were built with a place where people would pray for the souls in purgatory, that's not done now. That devotion is still done by believing Catholics, right? Many Catholics don't know about it, though. No, no, young Catholics aren't. I mean, if they're traditionalist Catholics, by the way, this is a source of contention. You tell me, talk about it, Catholics email me, and they're very upset. And they say, "No, we know about this, Diana. What are you talking about?" And I'm like, "Well, you know about it." But the Catholics that come into my class, those young people, they don't know about purgatory. So it is a thing that they downplayed that for those Catholics. But there's a comeback right now happening with Catholicism. And those ideas that were downplayed in Vatican 2 are now being embraced by young Catholics. It's fun, so whether it's Vatican 2 or 367 or Carthage or the Council of Trent, it's all about marketing. Yes, it is. Yes, yeah. Yeah. How does the idea of purgatory and Catholicism track with Dante's work? By 3 p.m., I'm usually four coffees deep. My heart's doing that weird, flutter thing. I'm jittery, and somehow I'm still tired, that an hour later, I crash. And of course, all that caffeine means my sleep that night is garbage. Now, it was basically my routine for years, caffeine, spike, crash, sleep terribly, wake up tired, and start the whole thing over again. So that's when I decided to swap that fourth coffee for an ultra-pouch. I just took one in at my desk and keep working, no jitters, no racing heart, no weird, anxious energy, and about 20 minutes later, I'm just focused, steady, not wire buzzing, just clear. What's great about ultra-pouches is there's no nicotine or caffeine. They're partnered with neuroscientists to build these with clinically proven neurotropics, Infinity Px for a cleaner smoother energy boost than caffeine, LTHNN for calm focus, Alpha GPC for mental clarity, and B6 and B12 to keep things balanced. So you get the lift without another cup of coffee, and the crash that comes with it. No more counting how many coffees I've had by lunch. No more negotiating with my own nervous system at 3 p.m. Just one pouch, steady focus, and a sleep score that isn't actively judging me. Ultra is the ultimate guilt-free pouch, delivering instant focus of mental clarity without nicotine or caffeine. New customers can use code basement to get 15% off at TakeUltra.com, that's TakeUltra.com for 15% off with code basement. After you purchase, they'll ask you where you heard about them, tell them the basement. Okay, so Dante's describing, so Dante, Allegheri, right? So he's in the 1200s rights, the divine comedy, which is basically about his journey, his soul. He's in love with this woman named Beatriz, and he's had a pretty terrible life, right? So he's been ostracized, and so he's upset, but he writes this beautiful epic poem about his journey, that his soul takes through the various levels of the afterlife. So there's the purgatorio, there's heaven, and then there's hell. I think everyone knows the inferno, but they don't know purgatorio or parodieso. That's right, they don't. That's right. And so what happens though during this is he has a guide. So it's a classic kind of near-death journey, but like, upgraded, right? Yeah. So it's not a couple pages, and it's also beautiful, but he also describes in depth the punishments of the people in the various places like in hell, the inferno, and it looks brutal, right? And some people that did him wrong in life, you see them there in the poem, so, but it's really beautiful when he gets to, so Virgil, by the way, is his first guide and is a, what he calls a good pagan, right? So a pagan being a non-Christian, and he's not allowed to go into heaven. So he has to stop at some point, and then of all people, Beatrice becomes his guide. And when she ascends, it's quite beautiful, actually, and I recommend it as excellent reading. It is. Yeah. And the political commentary is entertaining in it. It is, it is. Yeah. So, but your question was, does he get it right, right? Yeah. I mean, that's the thing is we don't know, right? We don't know. But I think that he, you know, he follows the template of the medieval other world journey. And he has all the elements there, right? So any, you know, I, I don't know if he gets it right, but I kind of, there's a part of me that that thinks, especially when you get to how he describes the heavens, which bring in, like, the imagery of the stars in the imagery of space. And I mean, that's pretty cool. And you know, he's writing, like, so long ago. How could he know those things, like the Imperium, and so forth, he's talking about a center of the universe in space where God, you know, attracts, and pretty amazing. It's almost like he read the book of Enoch before he wrote that. So we know that Plato influenced Catholicism, did, was there influence, what about Osiris and the Duat? Is there influence there as well? Gosh, that's a good question. I can't say authoritatively. I don't know. I only one guy knows. Yeah, yeah, right, right, yeah, no, I do not know that. I'm asking more academically if you see, if you see that. Because I see the connections between when they go from polytheism into Akhenaten and monotheism and then it dovetails very nicely into the story of Moses and Exodus, there's a through light in there that I think you can follow through history. I was just curious if early Catholics were aware of the Duat and how all that worked. Because you see, I would assume so. I would assume so, but I can't see, my position is if I don't know it specifically and can give you the evidence for it, but I can tell you off-record, like, now, yeah, off-record, I think so, like I think so, so, but, you know, let's just say that that's not my academic self saying that because I don't know authoritatively. So everything you're saying today, are you speaking for UNC, you're the spokesperson out today? No? No, no, no. Okay. I'm speaking as a private individual. Fair enough. Okay. Later, I do agree that, you know, when I went to seminary and, you know, did that training, we didn't learn about Socrates and Plato and their influence. So although it's truly there-- You didn't? No. And that's what I think is so amazing was that, in a sense, I had one of the best educations you can have in that field, but so many things I learned on my own. By reading, you know, theologians that did have that training, so that training kind of got cut off and, thank goodness for, I mean, this is the good part of technology, you know, you can learn a lot, right, today, just doing your own stuff, right? What was you call it? Like, armchair PhD or something like that, and you can definitely do that. And also another thing, though, which I like about the work I do is that I have a lot of friends who know a lot about different things. So if I don't know the answers like Hebrew Bible information or something like that, I could just go to them and say, what does this say in the Hebrew, right? And we can work it out. And that's part of the reason I went to school, by the way, is so I could have an extended network of people who-- because you can't know everything. Right. But you and your friends can know a lot. So when you read the Republic and he talked about the Immortal Spirit, you were just like, wait a minute. Well, you see, I was exposed to that as an undergraduate and even as a high school kid, right? And so I just read it like they taught me, which was sadly kind of boring, like the boring diversion of Plato, which, by the way, is really hard to do because it's so fascinating. And so I read it and didn't take a lot away from it. And actually, I just thought it was political. And it wasn't, yeah, it wasn't until, after graduate school actually, that I started to go back. And even after doing UFO research, I started to go back and think, what, like, he was talking about the simulation theory. Yes. You know, he was talking about the bad guys. You know, he was talking about so many things that are relevant today. And wow, he was even talking about externalized memory. Externalized memory. Where did he talk about that? In Fadres. So in Fadres, Socrates is having a conversation with Fadres. And Fadres is like, he's a young guy from Athens. He's like into the newest technology, which is writing. And he's all about it. And he's like, this is going to be cool. This is going to take over, you know, kind of like AI guys today, right? So that's Fadres. And so, Socrates is like, "Hey, let's talk about this," and he goes, But what are the repercussions of you losing your memory to this technology? That's what he says. I mean, he doesn't use that language, but he's talking about memory, he uses that language. And so he's talking about the externalization of memory and how it's going to change you. It's going to change how you access knowledge, and you're going to lose the capacity to do that. Somebody just asked me recently if Socrates would, in fact, it was a student, it was a graduate student. He said, "I'm asking everybody this question. I want to ask you." And I was like, "Okay." And she said, "What would Socrates think about AI today?" And I was like, "Oh, he would just die, right? He would bring him back to life, show him AI, he'd probably die." And she was like, "Ah, are you sure?" And she was kind of disappointed. And I said, "Yes, because he warned about if we, you know, think about it, culture was oral, you know, orderly transmitted knowledge, and many cultures today still, like indigenous cultures. No way. They're not going to do the writing thing. They're not going to externalize their memory because they have a lot of knowledge. They don't want to mess that up, okay? So that's going to be something that probably a lot of your viewers won't understand, but I'm going to try to explain it. And that is that, you know, in favoris, what's going on is that Socrates, the reason why he knows so much is because he doesn't know anything. And that's what he said. He says, "I don't know anything." But then how does he know things? He knows math. He knows things that we just figured out, using technology today. These things called the solids, the platonic solids, the real, right? But they're not in our dimension. And we're using, you know, professors at UC Berkeley are now figuring out how to identify these things and what they are. Like the tetrahedron and so forth. Well, how did he know that, right? How did he know that? He was using his brain and his body in a different way. And he said, "Writing is going to mess this up. We don't really want to do this." And he called it an amnesis. So it's a form of retrieval, like memory retrieval knowledge. What's the problem with writing? Because it would be corrupted, the oral tradition would corrupt it as well. You would have your own sort of your own leanings would leak into that. So this is, so he did have the hope that there was a form of writing which could be helpful. Okay, there was a form of technology which could be helpful. This would only be though for people who were already in contact with the ability to retrieve knowledge in this way that he's talking about. And there aren't very many people that could do that. Because he had to train them, right? They had to be trained. And yeah, so my grad student here, there you go. He's not going to be happy about AI. Don't we sit with every technology, whether it's video games or comic books, any kind of new way of communicating, there's always, what are the repercussions of this? Yeah, that's absolutely true. I do think though that he's right that we can have it, but we just have to have it in a way that's helpful. And I always present to my students when I give this talk to them, because right now what I find is that young people know what's happening, they're also upset. They're like, "Oh, how could you have given us a world like this?" And I'm like, "Ah, sorry." Yeah. Like, what do we do now? I lost the train of thought that I was going down. That's okay. We'll pick up the train at some point. That's the boomer generation. Gen X is fixing it. We're fixing it. Yeah. I don't know if it's compatible in ancient Egyptian, but what about reincarnation? How does that work with Catholicism? Is it compatible? No. It's not compatible. No. Even though there are references in, you can see Hebrew Bible references and so forth. And even in the New Testament, there are things that are like, "What does that mean?" No. It's not going to be compatible though. Catholicism is an interpretation of the Bible and the extrabiblical texts and so forth that went into influencing the early church. So it's not the only Christian religion. There are Christian denominations in which reincarnation is compatible, but those are different interpretations. But Catholicism, it's not. How do you feel personally in comparative studies? Okay. So that's, yeah. So it's an academic looking at that. There are a lot of things that the denominations hold as tradition and dogma, that when you look at, this is why it's important to make this distinction to students, especially when they come in and they have their tradition, their Jewish or their Christian. You don't want to upset their ideas, but you want to present what we have over here is religious studies. You can add it historically. Some of the things that we get from the Hebrew Bible is that it looks like it's not monotheistic in the beginning, right? And that there's an idea of other gods and so forth, but that doesn't have to challenge their faiths and interpretation. They just have to go back and figure it out. What does their faith say about this, right? And I think that's why I was interested in religious studies because I thought all those challenges, you can't then, for me, it's not okay. My dog gave me a brain, right? I'm supposed to use it, so I'm not going to say, "Oh, that's not compatible. I'm going to put it over here and not even think about it," but everyone's while it creeps in, right? Sure it does. And so yeah, so religious studies allows you to think about those things and deeply. And what I find is that Catholics in the, you know, a lot of Catholics think about those things. Of course they do. Yeah. I mean, when you read some of the stories about children who come back or children who are remembering past lives, I think most of it is bunk, but some of the stories are really compelling. Have you ever read about like James Lannager and some of those other stories? Yeah. Yeah, I've read so many near-death experience stories, yeah. And as a Catholic, how do you dismiss it? No. No, no. I believe that people have near-death experiences. I have students throughout the life. What about past life experiences, though? Yeah. Okay. I don't know. It seems amazingly compelling, like you say, that, you know, when young children, you know, talk about, you know, their lives, and you can corroborate that. There's that Virginia, University of Virginia archive, right? That is there. I forgot the Navy's archive, so part of me for the folks who do that work. There's a bunch of people there who do that work. You should have them on, by the way. That would be really interesting. Yeah. And they could talk about their archive and all the near-death children's, near-death experiences that they have in that archive and that work that they've done. So there's room in your belief structure to allow for that? Oh, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. So the thing about me is, you know, if it's data that you can't explain is data, you can't explain, right? So I'm not going to dismiss it, especially if people are having these experiences. Of course, especially, and since they're so similar, I mean, I don't consider myself very religious, although I'm moving more that way. I think a lot of people are, but I've said very often that, you know, after I die, if Jesus is there, the first thing I'll tell Him is, thank God, right? Yeah. So I'm open to it. Yeah, for sure. For sure. I like data. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Me too. But as you get older, you start to become a little more open-minded about what comes next. It does happen. Yeah. And how do you feel about that? You worry about your mortality? I don't worry about it, but I do feel this way about it. I feel that, first of all, I kind of feel like Socrates that, you know, this is where he's, well, he sadly had to kill himself. I'm not going to do that. Yes. But, you know, Athens wanted him to take him lock. Right. And he chose it. He did, because he didn't have to. He didn't have to. Yeah. Yeah. But he said to his friends who were upset with him. He said, look, I've let a life that I examined and I feel good about. So if I die and there's an afterlife, I'll be hanging out with people I like, right? And he goes, I'll have great conversations with them. If I don't, if there's nothing, then it'll be like the best sleep I've ever had, right? You're not going to care. Yeah, exactly. So like, wife read about it. What I do feel is that I am happy that I am alive so that I can do things I think I should do. Like, the things I think I should do, I have kids. I'm going to make sure that they're set up all right, you know, that's my, I feel that I need to do that. I have students. I feel like I have an obligation to my students to do the best I can for them. And to help them learn the things they need to know. And even to help the ones that I'm in direct contact with do well, you know, outside when they're done, right? Kind of postgraduate. So I have these things that I feel like I should do. And I'm glad I'm alive so I could do that. And, you know, maybe I want to be able to, if I'm, if I know when I'm going to die, you know, if I'm like really old and I say, okay, it's going to happen any day now and I feel okay about that. Like, socrates, right? Yes. Yeah. But I don't feel that way yet. I feel like I, I'm not, seriously. So, you know, being transparent, I would like to have more time to do, to do as much as I can to, like, to get to the point. And I'm not in any way that I, like, selfish, like I want to feel good about what I've done my life. I mean, that's not really that selfish. The things I want to do aren't like, you know, make a million dollars, make a billion dollars or whatever. You know, that's great for the people who want to do that, but I guess I'm people oriented. Every diet trend has the same thing. Re-adjust your whole life overnight. 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Yeah. And being well known doesn't have to be a bad thing because these are ideas that more people should hear, even if you don't agree with them. Yeah, yeah. I believe that. Yeah. So you're on an assignment translating Latin and Hollywood calls, and it's the conjuring. That's right. Yeah. What happened there? That was so, that was great. I loved that. Okay. So this happened in 2011. And I'm doing all my normal work, right? Just kind of like doing the professor stuff. And I get a phone call. And by the way, when we to North Carolina, we have movies. It's called Hollywood East. So we have like big movie studios and so forth. A lot of things get filmed there. And so I get a phone call. And one of the people, they got a phone call and they said, "We need someone who does Latin." And I was like, "Latin." I'm like, "My Latin's horrible." I go, "But most likely it's going to be an exorcism movie about exorcism because why I'm sorry, they're going to want somebody helping them to Latin." Of course. So I said, "Well, I'll go." Well, oh no. Actually, what I said was we do have a person who does Latin. And I said, "You should talk to her first." You didn't want anything to do with it. She said, "No, I'm not interested. I'm way too busy." And I was like, "Okay, I'll do it." So I go out to the studio and it's. Okay. LA. No. It's actually in Wilmington. Okay. They're filming in Wilmington. And they let me in and I meet Chad Hayes and Kerry Hayes. And they're the screenwriters. And they bring me back. And I see James Wan on set. And the reason I know about him is because my husband really likes his movies. And so I'm like, "James Wan, you know, I don't see him." And then I see some of the famous people that are on set. And Vera, Farmaga, and so forth. And I was like, "Okay, this is going to be a cool movie." And they tell me what it's about. And I could help them because they were translating the Latin right, which is an exorcism prayer, which is the exorcism prayer. But they were translating the instructions. They weren't actually translating it. Yeah. So I say, "At least I know this much." Like the Latin is terrible, but at least I know that much. So they brought me on to help them. And I had a really fun time doing that. And I still know those guys and I still work with them. That's funny. Did you consult on other movies? Yeah, I consulted on a bunch of movies. And Netflix? Yeah, I did a series that was nominated for an Emmy. And it's an Ambulance series, which is great. And it's about encounters, which is strangely the name of my book. That was an accident. But my book comes out and then their documentary comes out. And it's about UFOs. And so that was fun to work on. Yeah. So I've been doing that. I'm doing that now. I can't say what I'm doing. Oh, you can't? No. But when it does happen, I'll tell you about it. Okay. But it's really exciting. I bet it is. All right. More about death. I want to know about Cosmism and Federoth. Federoth, right? Okay. That sounded like a wild theory today. Yeah. Okay. So you're talking about a movement in Russia that is called the Russian Cosmist Movement. And the Cosmist Movement was a movement started by Nikolai Fedorov. But also Konstantin Chikoski was part of it. So he's the guy who did the rocket technology for Russia, right? So Fedorov was this guy who is a librarian. And you know, really just totally into what he was like his books and thinking about writing science fiction and thinking about getting the next iteration of human beings. They were going to be close to being like angels, basically. They were going to take the place of fallen angels because fallen angels, this is his idea. These are his ideas. And he inspired all of the next generation of rocket technologists, actually. And so it was a this belief system that incorporated Christianity because part of the task, so they had a task, a mission. Okay. And so he thought, you know, that the next iteration of humanity, what we needed to do is not only become space-faring, but we also needed to resurrect all the dead. That all? Yeah, all the dead. That would be the good thing to do. That would be if we could do that, we must do that. And so it became like a moral imperative. And there are now there are Russian billionaires who are set on 2040, being the time when we'll be able to do that. When human beings kind of like the singularity, right? When human beings will be immortal. So this was so Russian, that's Russian Cosmism. And it happened between 1880 to the early 20th century. Well, how did Fedorov think that that was going to happen? What would the technology be? Well, he didn't know, actually. Okay. Or else he would have done it. He would have done it. Oh, 100%. He was bent on doing this. How do you resurrect someone who's been dead for 1000 years or 2000? I mean, how to think about it, though, AJ, like, how do we make it into space? You know, so those kinds of things that we think are like back in the day, they thought the space travel was for nutty people back in the day. Right? You know, people thought that they were crazy. And, but now we're doing it, right? Even airplanes, like they're like, even electricity, you know, all these things. Now we can do these things. So he thought, and by the way, this is a, this is a really interesting idea that if we can think it, we can do it. Okay. And I realized that a lot of the history of our country and Russia has these people in them who are like thinking on the very edge. And they don't doubt that we are going to do this. Okay. And it's kind of interesting because then it looks like it's happening. This is happening, that's happening, right? Obviously resurrecting the dead isn't happening. But this is what, this was their moral, they believe that this was a moral thing to do. Well, if we start resurrecting the dead and things start to track like first the salonians. I know. Yeah. I don't know. Is that a good thing? Well, I mean, that's the thing. It's like, always, you know, who brought up the idea of it's the Jurassic Park kind of ethical dilemma, right? Right. Yeah. Should we do it? Well, we could do it, but should we do it? Right. Right. With technology, was Mary Shelley, Frankenstein. So she wrote Frankenstein in 1800. She was only 18, which she did that, by the way. And that was her idea was that, is this really a good idea because we could do it like, you know, Frankenstein is the scientist who basically resurrects, takes these bodies, puts it together, uses a little bit of like techno electricity and boom, there's this monster. And it's a monster. It's not like, you know, I mean, we could call it a good monster or a complicated monster, right? Complicated. Yeah, yeah, complicated. But you know, she's basically putting the ethical dilemma out there. Yeah, she did. Yeah. Yeah, that, I mean, I wonder does this Better off a contemporary of Jules Verne at that time? - Is that, okay, Jules Verne, is that 1880s? - I think it's, it's gotta be close. I'm just wondering because Jules Verne kind of made all, I mean, he was basically hard sci-fi. A lot of that stuff has happened. - I know, I know. I think so, actually. So the Russian version of, 'cause there are a lot, that the people who were really intelligent were hanging out with each other. - Yes. - And the Americans and the Russians, you know, and they had their communities that they were mutually, you know, discussing these kinds of things. Maybe, it's hard to say, he, I mean, if Jules Verne was writing at that point, I would have to assume that Fedorov knew. - Sure, I mean, 'cause everybody did. - Yeah, so of course, he's going to, and plus he's into sci-fi. - Right, right, that's right. See, this is how, this is exactly how academics think. They're like, they're like, you know, even if they can't, like, you know, give the resources evidence, they're like, this person had to have been influenced by this person. - Of course. - But we can't prove it. Yeah, but they were. - But they must have been. - Yeah, exactly, yeah. - Yeah, who is an influenced by Michael Crichton, or, you know, Christopher Nolan? Everybody knows who they are, and their stories. - That's right. - It's interesting that whether it's Russia or America, the rocket scientists are always involved in the esoteric and all these weird things. - Yeah, yeah. - Is it accident? - Okay, is this an accident? So that's a good question. I was surprised when I found out that this was the case. So when I moved from Catholic history into looking at UFOs, I decided the first thing I needed to do was look at the space, there's history, the space program. So I started to read everything I could, and I also realized I had to read about the Russian space program too, because each of those were the viable programs that goddess actually offered, right? And what I found was that at the basis of those, were the scientists who were into the esoteric, right? Maybe the Christian esoteric on the Russian side, and then the cult esoteric on our side. And the thing is that, so I had friends at this point who were in the space force, and it wasn't called the space force then, and we're like, look, if you need to go to the Air Force archives, just let me know, and I'm like, yeah, of course I do. I do, you know, it's in LA, this and that. And he's like, I can get you in there. And so they were like, yeah, no problem. You have a friend who's an academic writing about the history of the space, you know, at that point, I had given a conference, I had given some information, like a belief system of UFOs, and they could Google that and find out as soon as they figured that out, they were like, nope, she can't come. - Oh, really? - Yeah, yeah. - I'm not surprised. - And there were a lot of things though that, so I went over everything I could that was digitized, right, about the American that they released. And their historians were really transparent. They were like, a lot of this history has to be written by future historians because it's still classified, and we can't write it. I was like, wow, at least they're honest. - Yeah. Take us to the Vatican archives. I mean, I still call them the secret archives, but I know the Apple stock archives. Yeah, how many times did you go there? - So I went there for two weeks once. - To the archives? - Yeah, the archives and the library, the archives, the secret of archives, and the observatory archives. - So how did that all start? - Okay, well, it was, again, it's wonderful things often happen truly by accident. - Thank you. - So I was working, I'm working at my university, and I work with a sister there for Catholic students, we kind of do things, but she wants to invite the current director of the Vatican Observatory, which is an observatory owned by the Vatican to come talk about what they do there, the space research and so forth for our students and other people who want to come. Community members and so forth. So she said, can you pick up brother guy? He's going to be at the airport, and I'm always kind of the go-to person to do all these things, and I'm like, sure, no problem. - You're the go-what, you're the airport run? - Yeah, yeah, so for sister, Rose, I'll do that, you know? - Sure. - So I'm like, yeah, so I'll go pick him up, and I take him to Father Joe. Father Joe has this really beautiful house next to his church, which is on the ocean. So we take brother guy, I take brother guy there, and they invite us to have some sweet tea one in the south. So we're on the porch looking at the ocean, just talking about random stuff. And it occurs to me to ask him about, you know, I'm starting this UFO research, and it occurs to me to ask him where in the Vatican, 'cause I haven't gone yet, I can find some of those books about, you know, space stuff. And so I just ask him, aw, I'm writing something about, you know, belief in the rise of UFOs and so forth. He knows I'm totally academic. So he's like, aw, all that stuff that comes into Vatican actually comes to my archive in the space of his oratory in Castle Gandalfa. He goes, we have a place you can stay. You're welcome to come for as long as you need to. And I was like, I'll do that. - Yes, you'll do that, of course. - So I did that, yeah. - So that's the, that's different than the archives, right, the observatory. - It is, but-- - You get downstairs. - Yeah, okay, so the archive itself, it is, okay, so there's the Vatican archive, which in the secret archive. And so the secret just means that it's the Pope's archive, like he gets to decide, like, you know, all about it and so forth. And so that was cool. So it is, there is a basement area, right, and there are various places to go on site at the Vatican. And that was definitely an interesting place to be. - Well, take us through the day, the first day, what do orges you walk through, the guys with guns, the security. - Okay, you know about that, okay, yeah. So that was really shocking. So I was really-- - Oh, shocking. - You didn't think there'd be security there? - I just didn't, I just didn't realize how scary they would look. So-- - Yeah, these aren't Swiss guards now. - No, they're not. - These are actual guards. - Yeah, yeah, they're guards who, yeah, they're like, you know, they look like army guys, like, you know, with everything they have, these big guns and so forth. - These Swiss guards are badass too. - They just wear a funny unicorn. - Oh, of course, yeah. - Those guys are serious. - Yes, right. So it just so happened, I went there with a person that I knew from the, he was affiliated with our government working in space force, okay? And he suggested early on that he come with me because he would be able to identify stuff that might be of interest. And since I was doing that research, I thought, okay, that's probably a good idea. So I said, I didn't think he'd be able to get in, all right. So I can take you through that first day. - Yes. - Okay. So we go on two separate flights, okay? The reason is is because I have flight anxiety and I really couldn't get on the first flight. - Really? - Yeah, I just, it's really, I do fly all over the place, but I have flight anxiety. So going to Italy was, you know, scary for me, but I did it and so, but I couldn't get on the first flight. So he went out there and I told him how to like try to get into the helicopter. - What do you do? You just go, "Efford, I can't do it, I could go home?" - No, it was just like a struggle, I'm telling you. - Call a doctor, get some xanics, get on there. - No, that doesn't even help. - Wow. - I know, it's pretty bad. It's pretty bad, yeah. - I don't really like to fly either, but I mean, I'll go to, if the batting in calls, I'm there. - Well, yes, so I did go. - So the next day you made it? - Of course. - Okay, of course you made it. - I knew I had to go home. - You have to. - You know, it's not like, okay. It's not so easy, all right? - It's not. - It's not. - All right, so he gets there first and he's like, doesn't know what to do. He can't get in because it's hard to get in. You have to have a PhD in Catholic studies or something like that. And you have to have a need to know, right? You have to have legitimate reason to go and get in. - And for people who don't know, you can't just go there and browse like the doing decimal system. You need to say, this is what I wanna see. - Yes, way beforehand. 'Cause it might be something that they, you know, there are miles and miles of archival material. - It's three miles. - That's right, of archival material. So they need to know so they could go find it, okay? And so there's all that. And so there's the library, which sometimes people can get into, but this is not that. This is not the library, this is the archive. There are, by the way, there are books written about how to study at the archive. So books written about it. - I could, yeah, I think you would need that. - Yeah, so I read those books. And I also got in touch with the authors. And I was like, I'm going here. Things probably have changed. And every, all the correspondence I had to use Google translate 'cause it was all in Italian, you know? So, all right. So anyway, so the person is Tyler. That's a pseudonym. - Are we not naming him yet? 'Cause we know who that is. - I know, but listen, I can't name him because I, in my field, it's an ethical imperative. - Fair enough. - Okay, so that's why. - So that's why. - For the people who are upset, they can go listen to the show. We talk about him. - Okay, so Tyler's going and he's there already. And good things happen to that guy. And, you know? And so he meets an insider. He meets the American priest there who's an insider takes a liking to him and says, "I'll help you, whatever you need. I'll help you." And so he's like, "Well, he can't help him get into the archive." Right? So, but he can help him with anything else. And but he does get in. And the reason he gets in, so as I'm traveling on the plane, I'm going, you know, and we're texting back and forth. And he goes, "What can I just show them my credentials?" Because he's got special credentials, right? You weren't in airplane mode, you're going to crash the plane. No, I wasn't airplane mode, but you can still certain certain plane flights allow you to be like-- Oh, I'm only teasing you. No, no, no, no. I wouldn't do that. My goodness. I'm on the plane, okay? So, yeah. So it's Wi-Fi that allows you to text. That is, you know, whatever it is. So I'm texting him. And he says that he wants to show his credentials and I'm thinking, "That's a bad idea." Because it would be like the Air Force thing. They'll like kick us out, you know, if they know anything about UFOs or anything. Like that, you know. And I said I was there to do research, which I was there to do about these saints that are by locating saints and flying saints and so forth, right? Right. And look at their records and so forth. All right, so he's trying to get in. And finally, he can't get in. It's like two hours later. And so he asks and I say, "Just show them whatever you need to show them and see if it works like last-ditch effort." And apparently it worked, okay? His face came up on their screen. And they were like, "You're in." And I was like, "Wow, that's incredible." He knew that he would be able to get in. He was just waiting for me to give him the okay. So he was in. And then I finally got there, met him and met the father who would take us in. Now I would not go anywhere in the Vatican without this father because of these guys, these, you know, guys with the guns and so forth. Because if you're not, and I'm not looking like I'm a part of the Vatican, mostly there are guys and they're all wearing black and, you know, they look a certain way and I'm not looking like that. And so I'm easily identified. And so there was a point when the father was not near me and the mean guys were like, "Get out of here. You know, they're going to escort me out." And the father comes back and says, "No, no, she's with me." And they let me go. So every, all after that, I'm like, I'm was hanging on to it, you know, like following him around. But in the archive, he didn't come with me. So I was able to go. I'm a researcher. So they take you in, they, there's a rickety elevator that's kind of scary, you're hoping that you don't get, you know, stuck in it and it takes you down. And then there's a bunch of stairs that you go down. And then there's a beautiful, beautiful room and you have to ask for what you came for. And they get it and they bring it to you and you have to wear special gloves and you sit down on your own table that kind of looks like this. And they're there to help you with anything you need. And then you sit there and you're with the book. You're with the book, the manuscript or whatever it is. And probably there were about 10 people in there. And you're not, you shouldn't talk, okay. Tyler didn't abide by those rules. He doesn't follow. No. So he did a bunch of things that I was like stop doing that, you know, but I'm glad he did actually because there was a lot, there was a lot of information that we got from there. Like what? Okay. So part of what we got was information about the canonization record. So part of it was that we were looking into, especially Marie of Agrida. So she, this was a saint in the 1500s, gosh, I hope I got it right. Marie of who? Marie of Agrida. So she's a Spanish. Yeah. So you might have to fact check because I haven't talked about it in a long time. Maybe I'm sorry. It might be the 1600s. It most likely is the 1600s. I'll let us know in the comments. Okay. Okay. So anyway, so she is the lady in blue. And we do know about her in the American Southwest because in fact after I came, after I wrote American Cosmic in which this is described, people from the tribe that had seen her right during that time period, you know, they reached out to me and they were like, we want to know about your research, which I thought was really interesting. So she's this woman who was in Spain while the missionaries were here from Spanish missionaries, evangelizing indigenous people in the American Southwest. Some of them didn't need to be evangelized because they had already been evangelized. And the missionaries were like, what? Who was here? And they said this lady. And they were like, so they had actually not a photo obviously, but they had like a drawing of a nun and they showed them the drawing of this lady. And they were like, does no younger, but she's wearing the same thing. And so that was weird, right? And so you still see their churches to her now here in the American Southwest and so forth and all kinds of things and communities that still hold her in reverence. But she believed that she, I've read her books and her diaries and she believed that she was traveling over the earth and she could see the spinning earth under her on the wings of angels and she would come down into the American Southwest and teach these people about Jesus is so forth and then go back. Where did she travel from? She traveled from herself, she's a nun in Spain, so she flies across the planet. Yeah, she flies across the planet. And in her diaries, she discusses everything. She discusses the people that she met, one of whom didn't have like sight in when I, and this is corroborated by the Spanish missionary whose name escapes me at the moment who describes the same guy. Anyway, so a lot of people won't believe this story, but this story is so fascinating and fascinated me. So I was there to look at her story and strangely, it was in the same area that Tyler had taken me to when we went and looked for UFO debris. And so it didn't occur to me until I was actually there in Nevada, and then I thought about it and I was like, she was there, she was in that same area. And I thought it was a strange coincidence, so I remember looking at Tyler at the time and I said, do you realize that she was, and he just didn't want to talk about it? It was like, his face got, like, his face got, I'm not talking about that, and I was like, okay. I bet that whole section has very interesting stories in it. I think so. Yeah. So, so there is a book that I don't have by her, which by the way I met a person from the CIA who has a copy of that book, which is weird if you think about it. Yeah, because how do you get that? In 1979, inflation was running above 13%, and the Fed was pushing interest rates into double digits, trying to bring it under control. In the middle of all that chaos, Silver went from around $6 an ounce to nearly 50 and less than a year. That's the last time inflation, a weakening dollar, and heavy industrial demand hit the same medal it was. And then it was cars and electronics. Today it's solar panels, EVs, and AI data centers, all silver hungry, all scaling fast. Layer that on top of $39 trillion in debt, and a Fed that's missed its inflation target five years in a row. All that lines up with the 70s a little too close for comfort. History doesn't repeat exactly, but it's already given us the playbook once. 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This is really interesting. Yeah. It does sound like murkabah. So, murkabah would be chariot terminology for those who don't know. These listeners know Ezekiel very well. Okay. Okay, good. So in my opinion, that's what it looks like. She describes the wings of angels carrying her above the earth. So she's kind of like in the stratosphere or somewhere near the edge of space in the earth's atmosphere. She's flying across, you know, I guess the Atlantic. Does she, I mean, is this uriel, is this Elijah, does she name who they are? No, the angel. Yeah. No. Because the stories, we see that story a lot. You know, it's really interesting. That's right. So, it tracks with all the stuff that I've read, and that's why I thought it was so interesting. So, you know, I mean, when historians and when people generally in my field work, there are some great analyses of Maria of Agraday out there. that they're never going to be talking about. talking about the paranormal or the kind of extra weird stuff. They see it as kind of like a story to initiate conversions. That's how they see it, kind of perpetrated by the Catholic Church. I don't really see it that way because once you get into the actual documents, they just don't, something just doesn't make sense. Now, that doesn't mean that it couldn't be that because I can't explain why, you know, this kind of thing would happen. But I can say that it tracks with the other world journeys, you know, kind of thing that I study. You were there to see the flying saint. Was that Cupertino? Yeah. Joseph of Cupertino. What's his story? Okay. So, all right. So Joseph is a saint at the same time as kind of, they're around the same time period in the 1600s. I think that's important. It is important. Yeah. You know, it's almost like the angels are on mission. Yeah. It does seem like that. I'm taking people around like, "Hey, while we're here, let's go check out and see what Joseph." Yeah, it's really interesting. So, you know, the story's clustered, don't they? Yeah. And historically? Yeah. So, there's a great book out there called "They Flew," which is by Carlos Er, who's an academic at Yale. And. That's a good archive. Yeah. So, his book talks about the worldview of that time period, of Joseph's time period, but he didn't have access to Joseph's trial record, which I actually strangely have. We got that translated because I don't translate 17th century Latin in Italian, which is what this big archive is made from, is written in. The first thing you notice, first of all, is huge. It's like, if you were to print it out, it'd probably be like, "The Vatican sent me the printed out one, by the way." And it was like, I don't know, four feet, like just. What? Yeah, yeah. It was crazy. I have it. And I also have the digitized version. Wait. You have the original one? No. No, not the original one. No, they digitized it. Okay. And gave it to me. To translate, to get it translated. And so I had to get a team to do that because I couldn't do it. And it was a team because not one person could do that. So it's an incredible document because it talks about not just his, first of all, the document itself had. This is during the time period of his Spanish Inquisition. Yes. And if you said you saw someone levitate, you were under suspicion. Now, so all these people, though, said, "Oh no, he levitate." I saw. And, you know, all, whole towns. And so what you see, as you see, maybe thousands of signatures on this document, the first, like, just kind of corroborating that. He did do this and all these people saw it. And not just their signatures, but who they were. That's really sticking to your neck out to sign that. Yeah, yeah. It absolutely is. Yeah. Yeah. So he was levitating. What's his story? Why did he levitate? Joseph is an interesting person because he's described as a person who's not particularly intelligent, okay? So he's. These are the descriptions. He wanted to be a priest, but he couldn't hack it because it was hard, but he became a priest. And how he did that was, by pure, just determination of wanting to do it. And so after a while, people, the hierarchy were like, "He seems to have a vocation to do this. Let's just let him in." The problem with him, though, was that he could discern things. And when I say discern things, this is like the Catholic version of, "I can read your mind, right? He can discern your soul." And he seemingly could. So if you read through the document, there are so many places where a person will say, "I was on my way to church, and I was thinking about this, and when I got there, Father Joseph said this to me, Padre, Joseph said this to me, and that was what was in my mind. And I don't know how he could have known that." They burned people for that? Yeah, that's right. So a lot of things happened. By the way, Theresa Avila has some. She's another doctor of the church. She's a sister who, or a nun, I'm sorry. And she also had levitation experiences. Didn't they censor her story? I know her story. There were certain parts of it that they censored, yeah. But I mean, she had people who were her editors, let's call them editors, not her doctors, right, editors. So they edited certain things, yeah. What did Joseph say? Why did he levitate? Okay. So he would levitate when certain things would initiate his levitation. They would always be ecstatic, he would go into ecstatic trances, and so those kinds of things would be like Mary, the mother of God. Yeah. And so he would just. If something initiated this, he went to church, and they were seeing a certain hymn to her, he would go up into the church. And people would try to hold him down, he would be. He would embarrass the parish priest, you know. So the thing is that most of these people did not want to levitate, even Teresa did not want to levitate. Of course not. Because it was like weird, right? You're hanging it out and all of a sudden you're like, boom, you know, going up and doing these things, and people would try to hold them down. The strange thing is that, now this is what I find fascinating, is that because once you read enough of these accounts, you can actually see recurring patterns that are weird. And one of these is this idea of a private gravity. That's Arthur C. Clarke's term, by the way, this idea that, and if you know who pointed it out to me, this man named Michael Murphy, who's head of this institute called the Esland Institute. He was very interested in this information, because he noticed that people could do these extraordinary things in sports, and he was like, how could they do that? That's superhuman. He goes, "Diana, you need to figure this out by looking at the saints." And so when a person would touch Joseph, they would fly up with him. But not hanging on, they would just, they would just fly up with him. Because they're in his. Yeah, they were in a micro gravitational universe of sorts, which is weird. But same thing with Teresa. People would try to hold her down, but they would go up with her. Why do you think whoever they is, or he is, wanted them to levitate? Okay, so the case that I studied, that's the most recent one, where we actually have video, and so forth of this, would be, I write about it, actually, in the others called, it's a, it's a Marian apparition site in a place in Spain, an autonomous region in Spain called Garibondal. It's Sansa Bastion Garibondal, and it's between 1961, I think, in 1964. And these four girls also have these, like, levitation experiences where they also have this kind of same gravitational, I don't know what you call it, space around them. Okay, so you ask about the intelligence behind it, that's what you're asking. I couldn't, I don't know. Speculate. Okay, speculate. Okay, so what I can ascertain is that these are happening within, this is my field. So it could happen in Buddhism, and I just don't know about it, it could happen in Hinduism, I just don't know about it. There are stories of Buddhist levitating. Yeah. So those I don't know about, but I can speak about what the intelligence behind the Catholic cases wants, and what they ask for, which is really interesting to me, so they're asking for very ordinary things that people don't do, fasting once a week. Meditation happens to be super good for you, okay, they want you to fast, okay, why? They also want you to lead a good life, like not be mean, right, basically do the 10 Commandments, and the other Commandments, treat others like you want to be treated. Basic stuff, a pray, okay, another thing that you see in every traditional religion, this idea of praying, why, what's up with the same praying? So that's what I started to focus on, was that what is it about these practices that changes a community, changes a human being, and it does change human beings, actually. So there's so much now on the internet about intermittent fasting, and you know, well, that's what this Virgin Mary is asking people to do, intermittent fast for once a week, right? Well, I mean, if you fast long enough and you're deep in prayer or meditation, then that kind of opens up certain channels in your brain to experience different things. That's right, that's what's going on. So that's what, so she asked the whole community in the 1960s to do this and they did. They were a community that had no technology, so they had been living in like a medieval lifestyle up until the 60s, okay, so they had, they were in the mountains, they hadn't been touched by television and that kind of thing. They were very Catholic, so they were doing, you know, rosaries every day and so forth. So when this happened to the girls of their community, they believed. And it was when these girls had these apparitions, all the people would come out. So there were like 300 people. They would all come out and this went on for years, for years. For years? Yeah, years. It wasn't covered by the media. It was. It's very covered. In Catholic cultures, a lot of Catholics know about Garamondal. And a lot of Catholics believe in it. People do pilgrimages there. The church has not approved it, 'cause it takes a long time for good reason, for the church to approve things like this. But it's not against, it just says be discerning if you go there, if you do a pilgrimages there. - Hmm. At what point did you realize reading all these accounts that it sounds a lot like a close encounter? - Yeah, this was shocking. So I'd spent my formative years as a professor and a grad student and so forth studying these, right? And being really immersed in studying these kinds of events and contact events and so forth. And most of that work was done in archives. And I wrote my book, published it, it did well, and I got tenure. And so I had, being in archives, what I noticed was that there were instances where people back in the day, like 500 years ago, Catholics in France or something, would see aerial phenomenon. And they would be shocked, just like people are shocked when they see something and they rule out drone and airplane and that kind of thing. And they're like, what's that? And so they had the same experience. And then they would interpret it. They would say, oh, it must be a soul from purgatory. They should pray that soul back into purgatory, things like that. So I took note of all those things, not knowing what they were thinking, they were strange. And I thought, hmm, maybe someday I'll study those, but you know, I had this book to write. And afterwards, after I finished with my book, I was gonna be on to writing about this, this really cool priest in the Carolinas named John England in the 1800s. I was gonna write about him. And, but, I never did. And this is why. So I showed that list to a friend of mine. And you know, just randomly, we were having coffee and I said, you wanna see this list I have? And I showed it to him and I said, what do you make of all that stuff? And he said, this looks like Spielberg films. These are UFO events. And I was like, I thought it was crazy. You know, I was like, get out of here. So that week though, this is how this stuff works. That week there was a, a move on, like mutual UFO network meeting of experiences in my town or close to my town. So I went to that and I saw people talking about their experiences and I thought, okay, yep, these definitely sound like that. - They do. - And that's when, that was my first shock. But I still, I didn't believe in UFOs, okay. So that was my first shock though. - So did you get a move on just with your arms folded? Like look, these cooks. - No, no. I went to understand like what was going on. - 'Cause something happens to some of these people, not all of them, but some of them. - Yeah, yeah, I wasn't gonna discount it, but I wasn't gonna be a believer. I, you know, it takes a lot of evidence, right? To make a person a believer in this. So that was shocking though, when I saw the continuity, 'cause the historical continuity was what shocked me. And then I was, I was talking about it at American Academy of Religion conferences, right? Of course they all know about that. Like they're like, yeah, yeah, that's a good project. Diana, you should do that. - Oh, they didn't try to dissuade you? - No, no, no, American, no. People who study religion, they think it's cool. - Okay. - They're used to that. Like think of what we study. We study angel things. And, you know, if they, like, aren't supposed to happen. So they thought that it was a good idea. And within religious studies, it's been done many times, right? What made it different though was that I started to get correspondence and visits from people who were from aerospace companies and the government. And they were interested in my research. And they were like, we wanna see the data that you have. And I thought, why? Why do you wanna see the data that I have? And so I showed them, you know? And that's when I realized that our government was actually studying this as believers, not as what my position was. Let's take a break there. We'll come back. We'll talk about what the government wanted you for. All right, so before we get into your recruitment, tell me the story about the Bitter Suite. - The Bitter Suite, where my dad has-- - Yes! - Okay, wow, wow, gosh, you got like some awesome questions here out of the blue, right? That I would never have anticipated. Okay, so my dad was in the Coast Guard in the 1950. So he was, you know, high school grad, 18, and listen to the Coast Guard. And so he became the sonar person, like he learned how to do sonar. And he was, we just more found out about this, by the way, because of Admiral Tim Galadeh, who is an admiral in the right to Navy. And so he's doing this really interesting work, where he's going back through the logs of people in the Navy, like, and people in the Coast Guard, like my dad. And he's basically identifying UFOs in that, you know, or USOs, right? So, you know, UFOs at sea. So this is, when I'm a kid, so I'm a kid, and I'm really young, like I first hear about it, probably when I'm like three or four, and my dad is an attorney. So first before that, though, he was, I know it sounds weird, he went to medical school. So he's this educated guy who doesn't-- - I have friends like that medical school in law school. - He was crazy, yeah. So I guess he just, during medical school, he didn't really want to do that, right? So it seems kind of depressing to him. So he became a lawyer. And he's a guy who doesn't speak very much. He's like one of those guys, he just doesn't talk that much, right? And, but when he does say something, you pay attention to it, because it's a rare time when dad talks. So I remember growing up, hearing this story, probably about three times. And my dad says that he was on the ship, he was on-- I just learned that he was on two different ships. So the bittersweet is one of the ships that he was on. And I guess it's like a cutter. And the other one was also a cutter, but I don't remember the name of it. So he's on probably the bittersweet, but I'm not sure. And he's in the waters near Alaska, and they're looking for probably Russian submarines. - Sure. - Okay, so they're doing that work. - This is a '50s. - Yeah. - '57, probably, around '57. And I didn't know where he sees on radar something giant at the bottom of the ocean coming toward the ship. - How big? - Big, like a football field or something, like giant, right? And so he freaks out, right? And as it comes to the ship, he says that, a lot of the ships, I guess it was electricity, I'm not sure, but a lot of the ships function stopped working. They just stopped. And the ship couldn't, it stopped, too. So they had, I guess they put like an anchor down or something, and whatever it was, made the ship stop. And they were stopped for four hours, and they were horrified. Like they didn't know if they were gonna continue on. They thought it was a Russian submarine. - But the biggest one they'd ever heard of? - Yeah, they couldn't really imagine what it was, so they just assumed it was a Russian, some kind of Russian ship, some submersive ship. And then it just left, it just went away, and all functions came back, and then they were able to resume. Now he never said anything like it was a UFO. He never said anything that it was a USO. He didn't have that terminology. He just said what he saw. He just gave us the data points, right? And of course, we were all like, what was that? We don't know what that was. And so I remember that. And so then I meet Tim Galadette, and I realized that my dad had been one of these people that had seen something at sea. So Tim reached out to me and he said, can you tell me about his experience and what ship, anything you know? So my family knows a lot, apparently. So they knew a lot of things like my mother knew where he was stationed and the ship and everything like that. So we gave that all to Tim, and now he's looking for it. - He's looking for it 'cause there's records of that. - That's right, that's he should be able to find it. - And didn't like your brothers remember the story and everybody? - Everybody remembered the story. Yeah, we all remembered it 'cause it's like kind of family lore. - Yeah, did your dad eventually come around to think it was a USO? - No. - I don't think so, so my dad died pretty young, but he did have experiences, so his father had a cabin in the Redwoods of California. - Oh, that's Bigfoot Country. - Yeah, and so my dad said that there was a big like crevice or something, some kind of like, you know, and my grandfather would say, now okay, I'm gonna give you another family lore UFO story, right? But it doesn't start off as a UFO story. So it starts off where my grandfather, he likes to tell stories, he and my dad are completely different. So my grandfather likes to tell all these stories, right? And we love to hear them. So he apparently told, 'cause I never heard it from my grandfather, I heard it from my dad. So my dad told us that my grandfather used to go hiking in the redwood. right in northern California and in that area of the Gorge and I can ask my brother by the way, so you can you know tell your viewers Where it is he used to see UFOs come out of the mountain, right? And we were like, ah-ha Granddad saw UFOs coming out of mountain. That's funny, right? Okay, so that's the story so years later One of my brothers becomes a sheriff and Then he becomes like a homicide detective and so he's on this This homicide and it's in that area, okay? And so it's a it's a minor so there it's a minor who's who they don't know what happened to him He disappeared they said and so the people that said this were minors who were on the river and they had you know How to camp and so they gave a missing report and they said we think you know something bad happened to him So it was up to my brother and his team to go looking for him and to find out what they could find, right and So part of the data that they collected was that this guy was on a mission to go Get photos of the UFOs that were coming out of the and my brother was like I've heard that somewhere before and then he came and told us he was like a look at this and and I thought that was a really interesting Connection. Did you ever find anything? No, no, no There was a mission. I've heard that story before about these guys that go into the woods and disappear or something happens and it turns out They've from the intelligence community and all of that. It's not interesting. Yeah, it sounds like an extraction not a missing person. Yeah so Your comparative religious studies and then what you get a call from aerospace Yes, it was so weird. Yeah, not just from not just from A diff there are a few aerospace quite a few people from various of these right and But it's government. It's not it lock. He doesn't call you Not to my knowledge Well, I guess kind of they did but but it's government. Yeah, so it's it's Well, there are yeah, it's different aerospace companies, right and so Honestly, I think that it's really difficult to pinpoint like because the credentials are so You know, what would you call it slippery? Yeah, when you ask them, you know, what do you do exactly? You know, it's slippery so I mean that's just how they presented themselves So they were interested in the data they were interested in the data on Angels and they were interested in the data on the aerial phenomena that I had recorded Are you recorded? Well, no, I'm sorry. Not in the video. Oh, okay. This is old school Report on papers. That's right. I'm an archivist. You know, I was like old school Recording this stuff. How do they find out about you? I think because they must this is what I believe and I and I pretty much have evidence That is true is that there are certain people from who are who are who are tasked to troll the internet for anyone who's doing any kind of research in this area and They want that data. So I had been doing really low key American Academy religion talks here and there on the rising belief in UFOs and Leaking it to kind of historic list compare it to historical contact events with angels guys This sounds like a fun thing to do right and then they saw that and so they were like Diana, you know So they reached out to me and they reached out first. They just emailed me at my Account my university account and you didn't believe the email did you? Well, I wasn't sure my emails got to be weird. Do they want like do we want to we want to talk to you? We want to buy a coffee or Is it more aggressive like we want to interview you here at this day? Well, okay, so at first it was first you have to understand that as a university professor I would only receive emails from students and faculty and so when you get an aerospace person saying you know and then you're like You do your due diligence and you check them out. You're like is this person real and then they look real so you answer them back They were just asking for my written records So they wanted to see the data that I use for some of the publications that I did which by the way those publications are free On academia edu right and they know that yeah, yeah, okay. I guess you're right. So They wouldn't know what's not in there. Yeah, they want to know like the what's the data used so I'm happy to give that to them Why well because at the beginning? I wasn't quite sure why and I treated them like an academic So with academics you show your sources. Okay, that's what we do We say I got this information from this source and Then that person looks at it says. Yeah, that's a genuine credible source. We believe you right so that's what we do We share our sources with each other. We don't hide them right so it was really Shocking to me when I realized that like they wanted to see this but they were looking at it like it was real What was the what year is this first average? This was in like 2015 2016 before Leslie keen. So yeah, yeah Yeah, that's another thing. It was my research was parallel to the government Disclosure pseudo disclosure. What are we getting? I don't know, but that was not a thing yet So my research was already well underway and it was on a track that was parallel to The governments whatever they were up to right and so we kind of crossed over and that's when I I got The term now was so misused, but I got red pills right on what was going on with the government and It was shocking so I had first been shocked to see the historical continuity between Religious events and UFO events and I thought okay Seems like something's going on. I don't know what but let's do some research here And then to see the government doing it and I was like okay, and then to see the extent of what was going on was very eye-opening So that that was a period of re They call it ontological shock now. Yes, they do. Yeah, so I went through that For like a year, did they communicate with you just through email a woman would you? No, I started to meet them and there were a few different types of people like Depending on where they worked. So this is around so I think it was around - I can't exactly remember the year Maybe it was like 2013 2014 where I met Tyler who is a person who's associated with These kinds of this kind of work, but worked for the government in various capacities. So this is before the email Yeah, I met him before before. Well, how did he come across you? He came across so he did reach out to me and he learned about me through This is I think as part of his job was he trolled the internet, right? Or he had people who did because he actually probably couldn't and so he figured out who I was reached out to me It took me about a year before I actually met him in person because I wasn't You have to understand just a super conventional boring professor here having this conventional boring life and This kind of stuff with the government weirded me out. I was like, I'm not sure I want to meet anybody like that. Why do you want to meet? Because I wasn't quite sure with the motivation for wanting to know all this information was like why and They were affiliated with like CIA FBI and I didn't really want that in my life. Still don't So yeah, so I just kind of wanted to keep to my lane. I was in my lane, and I didn't really want to come out of it I I intruded danger. I think you may be correctly. So he said what do you let's get coffee or Okay, so he wanted to me invited me to Cape Canaveral a couple times, you know, to see a rocket launch and stuff like that But I declined to go. Okay, even though it sounded cool, right and then I mean that's is that's one that's an approach is Come down to your rocket launch. Yeah, I'm a cool guy. It's all good. Yeah, exactly exactly. Yeah. No, I didn't go for it You know So what happened was that When I did finally meet him it was I bring up the American I kind of religion a lot I hope that they're okay with that But this is like a meeting so I would attend these meetings every year and this one was in Georgia Atlanta and he lived near there and so he said I said look if if you happen to be around I'm gonna be at this conference Maybe we can have coffee And then you said yes, I'm gonna be there and so I thought oh, I better tell my friend Jeff that I need to the meeting with Jeff Like I didn't want to meet him by myself good call because I wanted somebody else to like get a read on him, right? Is this Jeffrey Criple? Yes, okay so so we did we met and You know it was a really funny meeting too because We were, it was the American category of religions, a bunch of religious studies people. They're all kind of like, you know, they're similar, you know, it's kind of like a conference for sci-fi people. You know, we have our things. So, you know, you can identify them, but there's many of them. There's like 6,000 of them there. And we couldn't find a place to eat. And so, he said, well, I'm at, you know, this fancy hotel. And why don't you come and all buy you lunch, right? And so, he just called and got us a place. And so, Jeff was like, wow, that's kind of out of my price range kind of thing, you know, for me too. And he's like, no, I got the, I've covered it. Yeah. And so, you know, immediately Jeff liked him. And I was like, come on, Jeff, you know, keep, keep up the, you know, you got to, you got to be suspicious here, right? We don't know about this guy. He's kind of nice. Yeah, he's charming. Oh, he was taken in by him. Yeah. So, that was the first meeting. I picture like an empty restaurant like, oh, I bought out the whole place for us. It's just us. It was kind of like that. Yeah. And that's when I first realized that he was wearing all kinds of like surveillance devices, like he was wearing stuff on him that took video. And he said, and he said that to us too. So, as we were done with lunch, we had a great lunch. We, we were going back to the conference. Wait, what is he wearing like a body? I don't know all kinds of stuff. You could even tell though. And he said, anyway, we were walking across the street. It was really windy. And he kind of grabbed part, you know, like where maybe one of these devices was. And he's like, oh, well, I'm all decked out with this, you know, this video and stuff. And I'm thinking, I took notice of that. Like, I think that's weird. He didn't mention that during the lunch. Like, I'm recording all of this. He probably was. Like, he seemed to record everything. And yeah, I know. All right. So he was. Yeah. Oh, he should, he should disclose that. I don't like that. I think so. Yeah. But well, he did, right? Get with the wind. No, I don't. I know. So I told Jeff that as we were walking out. And that, you know, he went his way and we went ours. And I said, Jeff, like, didn't you hear what he said? And he was like, no, what do you say? He's really nice. We should invite him to this conference. I'm like, oh, maybe he'll take us out for dinner. Yeah. Is that when Tyler invited you for to go to the desert? Yeah. So there was a kind of like this standing invitation to the desert, which again, took me a long time to say yes to what did he say was out there. Okay. So he was, he noticed that the way I studied this topic was not from a belief perspective. That's why you're interesting. Yeah. And so he wanted me to be a believer. And so he said, and I believe, like, I believe people were having these experiences. Isn't that enough? No, he wanted to show me physical proof, right? And of course, at this point, I had read all of Jacques Velay's work. I know Jacques, you know, I was all, and you know, he was so helpful to me. He was like, don't believe anything, Diana. You know, he was telling me this all the time. He's like, people will show you a body. Do not believe it. Right? Jacques. So early on, like 2012. And so I had the Jacques Velay kind of framework going into this. And so I was like, he's going to show me something, but no way am I going to believe it. Right? So, but I'll go out, but I'll only go out with someone. I'm not going out on my own. Right? Seems kind of creepy really. You know, like he wanted me to wear, like this is a legitimate place that he was talking about. He, this, a place that he excavated, right? With people over many, many, many years. And it was, he, this is what he told me about it. He said it was, and I believe that this is the place that Jacques talks about in Trinity, because it was after he met him and went out there that he wrote Trinity. But I don't know. I don't know for sure. Okay? Because a lot, of course, a lot is being said about the place and so forth. Yes. And also I got information from various people that was, that said, yeah, just don't talk about that, please. But how can I not? I wrote about it. It's in my book. So, yeah, so he did take us out to this place that he said was a crash retrieval. You know, UFOs crashed there in the 1940s. Hold on a second. Oh, okay, sorry. You get on the plane and where you land in Albuquerque. Yeah. And when, when does he say we're going to blindfold you? Okay. So he described the whole process to, to me, and I decided to bring Gary Nolan with me. Right. At the time, Gary, his name was James. His, he since come out as himself. But you invited Jeff and said no. No, I invited Jeff. Yeah. But it was outside of his comfort zone. Well, yeah. I mean, I've read that you won't go into a haunted house, but you'll be blindfolded by a government official to go out into the desert. Your line is weird, man. Yeah. That's right. Well, I didn't think anything was haunted out there. I can't blindfold me. I would be blindfolded. That's crazy. I didn't think it was that weird. Did he at least give you a heads up or is this like another recording thing? Like, oh, when we get there, you're going to have to persecurity. Oh, no, he gave us a heads up. Okay. So it wasn't like a surprise. Like, here, put this on. I mean, I had to go through like two years of like getting, you know, having my, getting numb to the, the weirdness of it, right? So too, so he invited me early on. How persistent was he during those years? Oh, no, he'd just bring it up every once in a while. You know, say, remember, we could go out here. It's, you know, these people have been out there and you know, we get, this is, this will make you believe because you'll see evidence for it. Did he tell you what you'd see yet or just evidence? He said it would be physical material. Okay. So, I mean, I'm clear in my book. I basically say, I don't believe this, but these two guys believe it and they're really smart. Yes, they are. So you're out there with Gary. The blindfolds are on. They come off. So you're out in the desert at a crash site, an alleged crash site. And this is all alleged. Yeah, yeah. Because as we were talking about earlier is I was wondering how you don't know if you're not being used. Oh, no, I, I put that in the book. Yes. Because part of what happens to people I see happening now is that they're shown stuff, right? Yes. There's a lot of people and they're shown stuff. Now they haven't read Jacques Vellet. They haven't read the whole history of ephology. You have to do that before you endeavor on any of this or you will be fooled. Yes. You will be fooled. So I think people hear my story, but they don't read the, they don't actually read what I say. So I honestly am writing an academic book. And this is for people who are in academia. And we are talk, you know, I'm talking about this as a rising belief system, but I know that this is a curious rising belief system because there's so much real disinformation in it. So my position is it's all data. Like if he's trying to just disinform me, this is also data about this rising belief system. So I had to completely shift the normal way of doing religious studies. I had to incorporate known known unknowns, right? I had to incorporate the idea that there that I'm being actively targeted for disinformation all the time. And this could be that. But you know, who do I have? I've got Gary Nolland. And he can figure out if this is real or not, he's going to bring it back to his lab. I've seen his stuff in his lab, been to his labs. He's legit. Well, when you're on the site, what do you see on the ground? What do you mean? Okay, sure. Is there a UFO under a tarp? Okay, no, no, listen, listen, okay. So all right, so we so we I introduced Gary to Tyler. Tyler takes him to that Air Force place, right? And they have some really amazing things there. And kind of shows him all this stuff that makes Gary recognize that this guy is hardcore. Like and Gary's like, okay, you know, he's got their scientists there that are better than these scientists, you know, and he's like, okay, what's going on? So he's beginning to see a bigger picture. And so and Gary would know. He totally would know. Yeah. So then so good. I'm glad that Gary wants to go and do this with me because he's the right guy to do it. Yes. Okay, so we go out there and we take the bill. We put the blindfolds on and stuff is funny. We make jokes and stuff and we go for like 40, 45 minutes. We could tell us kind of rocky territory. And once we get there, he's like, okay, you could take your blindfolds off. So we take the blindfolds off and we get out of the car. And by the way, we have to wear like, there were like rattlesnakes out there and so forth. So we have to wear like sunscreen because it's high desert. We have to wear these boots. So we're like outfitted out. We look pretty ridiculous, right? So we get out there and I look around because it looks kind of familiar to me. And and so he notices that and he says, does this look familiar to you? And I was like, well, yeah, it does. And he goes, that's because it was on the one of the seasons of the ex files. And I was like, what? And so that's when it started to make sense to me as a scholar. Because then I was like, alright, this is like real life. You know, this is what this in a lot of ways religion is like this. It starts with kind of like an event that you can't prove. But then it gets reinforced through media. Religion has always been this way. It's been either images you see in church or books or stories. And so I was like okay this is ground zero of this new UFO belief right and I'm on it right now and so then what my job was was basically to watch these two scientists who are complete believers and I have Tyler's a believer he's not honestly I've known I knew him for so long and I got to see parts of his life that were so you can't make up kind of stuff you know like phone calls he'd take and stuff and I could tell like he's totally a believer and so is Gary and so they were both like so we had metal detectors configured for the area and so we spent like all day looking for this stuff part there were parts buried under things and so we got this stuff that to me looked like a frog skin right and so a bunch of that stuff and they put it in bags and they labeled it and everything and they we were gonna take it back with us wondering why it wasn't already collected and taken somewhere it had been collected so the thing is is that they couldn't get everything so when we got out there what the first thing I noticed was that there was rubble everywhere and it looked like kind of rusty rubble like red colored and I didn't know what that was and Tyler said that this was just disintegrated cans from the 1950s when the government was out there getting everything and then they wanted to put that down there so people with metal detectors couldn't go out there and get this stuff and this was a this was actually something that my editor wanted me to take out so I described it because my editor she's from Oxford right so he's a editor editor with Oxford University Press and she goes it doesn't make sense because this is you're out there in the middle of nowhere why would the government put a bunch of cans out there just letting them disintegrate is it obvious well I I mean I told her I said listen I don't know but that's what I saw I saw this rubble and this was the explanation that Tyler gave to me so we have to keep that in there as data and she she went with that she was so wonderful by the way because I had a lot of weird things to to describe right yes she was okay with it well no she wasn't with everything but she was like okay all right we could keep it in there and I'm glad we kept it in there no that's I mean that's I think it's important to keep that in there because it shows an act of cover up it shows something I've since had people tell me that it was just something that the government did but it had nothing to do with UFOs and that was you know I've had other people tell me things about what it was it doesn't matter really because again from my perspective from a religious studies perspective documenting a rise in belief in UFOs it doesn't matter if it's if it's really what Tyler believed it was or not what matters is that's how it fit into his narrative yes and that's what I was describing so the frog skin did it look strange or did it just look like more pieces of metal no it looked strange it looked like it looked shiny and iridescent iridescent with pebbly stuff on it I mean literally looked like frog skin of you know a frog that has that kind of skin kind of rough pebbly skin I've talked about this in podcast before and then I've had like and I've heard that there were endless like discussions with Gary about this we finally put it to rest on a podcast with Chris I forgot his last name but there's a podcast out there that where we meet and discuss it maybe Chris Ramsey no no he's an air he's a pilot ex-pilot who's in Portugal now okay so did Gary ask to take the material or did Tyler offer it all along we knew that Gary would be taking the material to study it what did Gary find he found for that particular material right now while in the beginning there were stages of what Gary found okay so in the very beginning he found that the isotopic ratios were really crazy and and he and Jacques had lots of communication about this and I was privy to that some of it at least and then later they were like like that when I asked him about they were like they do what talk about it I don't know let's just say I don't want to say like it just was kind of odd so I just kind of like okay Gary is probably obviously available certain isotopes won't occur here yeah and so that's why in the end like that's why when I talk about it in the book I it's I quote him where he says this could not have been made in this universe and I was like are you sure you want to say that he's like yeah and I was like okay but there's a universe on this planet well he's well he's since said other things about it so it's ongoing research I guess okay I'll just put it I'll let him talk about that because I don't want to have any disagreements for anything I'm just talking about what I put in the book and what I experienced that's okay and if you get some details wrong just go read the books because they're great anyway do we do we get a like a metallurgical analysis of yeah yeah for sure well of course Tyler already had all this yeah we already knew all of it yeah well no not all of it so there were certain things that Gary could provide that he did not have the equipment to figure out Tyler didn't have the equipment mm-hmm I'm pretty sure that's why he was opening it up like to like probably well let's just say like other types of scientists than the kind that he was utilizing to figure out what it was because maybe they hit a roadblock I don't know this is all speculation it of course it is do you remember the the components no if I were a scientist I would remember but I am not I'm not a scientist so it doesn't stick in my memory it's interesting that you talk about a belief system was it young who said how interesting it is to be a part of an emerging belief system yes yes absolutely yeah oh absolutely 100% it's not going away so who are the apostles the disciples who is Pontius Pilate who are the Romans in this story well right so I would say that we all know who the Romans are right who do you think they are give me I don't know the what's what's Rome the military industrial complex Rome is the Empire yeah the Empire based on old beliefs yeah they're still by the way in order it's certain things stuck stuck out to me and this is in order to answer that question I noticed that in the rocket launches that Tyler would do like he's a mission controller that's one of his jobs they would use on their rockets they would put up Roman gods and goddesses and they would utilize a first century Latin and I was like because you know I would notice that and so I asked him once I said why are you utilizing Latin he didn't even know it was Latin he's like what yeah no he didn't know it and I said this is this is not medieval Catholic Latin this is like first century Latin and and so I wanted to know so that indicates that's an answer to your question well it is I mean if you look at the enter a mission mission patches yeah yeah there you go it's yeah it's all Latin and Roman gods and as a terrorism yeah yeah it is so who are the disciples I think that I don't know but I think the disciples would have to be like the experiencers people like the experiencers today that's what makes it a different religion because at different form of religion because we have different architecture now that we live with everything we live with a digital architecture so a person who sees you know UFO or or something will video it and they'll put it they'll upload it onto Instagram or something like that right and then you know you have all that you have many disciples you don't just have like 12 you don't just have this many you have I don't know millions so it's a different kind of belief system it's a different kind of religion it is but it might be compatible with some of the older ones oh there's a continuity yeah yeah let's I know we don't want to get too specific about Tyler I think you you basically named him over the years but that you we're not gonna do it today but I would like to hear about what it's like if you're Tyler trying to go through an airport how is that different for him than it is for the rest of us yeah so he has abilities right so he's conferred these abilities and one of them is that he just is able to go through airports because of what he does I don't you know okay I don't know why but he he does have that ability that idea is magical yeah it is yeah yeah so I witnessed this many times and one of which was when we went back from Albuquerque so we were we're in New Mexico at the alleged crash site we did the thing we were supposed to do we got the stuff and then he told us what was gonna happen okay so he said we are first off I did not want this stuff I was like you take it Gary he's gonna take it anyway but he's like okay so he says I'll put it in my backpack and I'll put it you know, wrap it up and everything. And so Tyler says it's going to be identified. - The alien medal. - It's going to be identified and they're going to take a part of your backpack and they're going to let you go, but you're just going to have to go through that and it'll be all right. And so we were like, Gary and I were actually talking like when we were out there, we would kind of confer. And I was like, do you think there's just some information, Gary and stuff like that? He's got, it could be, yeah. And he goes, but you know, I'll be able to find out, right? And I'm like, yeah, yeah, well, okay. So anyway, so the same thing. We're like, is this going to happen? I don't know if it's going to happen. And so we get back to the airport and he goes to the other side. He gets a glass of water and he sits down and he's just going to hang out there and wait. And so Gary and I are both going through. Gary gets identified, but it's not just your normal kind of, like some kind of like thing that goes off like a alarm. And so they take him to a room. And apparently they do exactly what he said. They take everything out and ask him what he's doing and where's he coming from. And so I get through, I find Tyler, I sit down and I'm kind of worried about Gary, you know, like nervous. - Was Gary nervous? - Gary was super nervous. He was super nervous. So we were, I was nervous, Gary was nervous, but Tyler was not nervous. So Gary gets done and he's like really shaken up and he sits down and I like get something to drink. So he gets something to drink and he kind of describes the situation. And yeah, so that's that anyway. So yeah, he can get through airports easily. - He wants to ask where you were concerned if you were the siop. There, I mean, the reason that's interesting to me is Tyler could have just brought that material through and nobody would have, he doesn't get searched. You know, he doesn't go through the conveyor belt. - That's right. - He made Gary do it. Why did he do that? - Yeah, well, let's see. You think that, I mean, it could be that. So absolutely, it could be. - You didn't see Tyler go through a met up detector? - No. - He was waiting for you. - That's right. - He goes around the other way. - So they wanted, he wanted the spectacle. - Yes, one of the spectacles. - Of course, of course, yeah, yeah. - Any idea why the purpose of the spectacle? - Well, I mean, it could possibly be that obviously he wants to raise, you know, he's interested in having people 'cause many times I asked him why are, you know, you know that I'm writing a book about this. I mean, so many times I said, both to him and Gary. And they were like, yeah, you know, Gary's okay with it. And he was okay with it too. And so I was like, okay, you know, they're okay with it. And honestly, I thought maybe 10 people would read the book. I didn't think it was gonna correspond with this, but correspond with what the government's doing right now. And so, you know, I, and well, that's the thing, AJ, is I wrote the book with recognizing that is, that possibly this is, and I write it in the book. And I say, look, this is possibly misinfo. In the first paragraph, I say, whatever you read about this is not what it is. Like the first paragraph, I say, what, you're gonna be subjected to in media is not truly what this phenomenon is about. 'Cause there's so much misinformation. - I want to ask you about that. First is the spectacle of, so he goes through the metal detector. We've all done that. We've all been stopped. We've all had our bags look through. But you said an alarm would offer that was unusual. - Yeah. - That spectacle to me is, it's suspicious. - Of course. - It's almost like Tyler saying, I'm gonna prove to you that this is weird. You're gonna, the metal's gonna go off. You know it's real metal. You're gonna hear an alarm. You've never heard before. - That's right. - You're gonna be taken to a room. You never did that before. And through all of that, it's gonna be fine. That's, I mean, that's really selling it. - Yeah, but you have to understand that that's what he told me he wanted to do. - Yes. - Was he wanted to convince me that it was real? - Well, that won't convince me that it's real. - Nope, but it convinces you that Tyler's real though. - I was already convinced of that. But yeah, you're right. I mean, it's gonna convince the people who read the book. - Yes. - Yeah. But he is real. - He is real. - Of Ard, I mean, I know you hate to name names, so I don't wanna put you on the spot, but you have written that there is an active disinformation campaign. - Yeah. - Where do you stand on like Richard Dodie? - Well, he's transparent about being an active disinformation campaign. - No, hold on. Let me push back on that. - Okay. - He's transparent that he was active. - Yeah. - And now he's since come around and said, "Well, most of what I told them was true." I was just, like, he's been mudding the waters now for 50, 60, 50 years. - Yeah, yeah. - Where now he's saying most of it was true and-- - I don't know if we can believe what he says though. - That's what I mean. - Yeah. - Who do we believe? So do we have any modern Dodies coming out of, I mean, we have a lot of Air Force intelligence guys at Congress. - Yeah, yeah. I think we need to be really, so, okay, listen, people. - Are you addressing the folks now? - Yeah. - Okay, go for it. - I, listen, okay. I've been super clear in my books. - You have. - That disinformation, like so is Jacques, by the way. Right? - Okay. - 70s. - Yeah, yeah. He even calls, like, one of his book's messengers of deception, right? So, okay. So, the thing about the problem with a government-backed disclosure is that the problem with it, is that first and foremost is that you'll get, so my work is, I always say, is parallel to that development. It was totally autonomous, organically motivated, right? Based on what I saw. And then, once I got, once I recognized that, and this was after 2017, the Leslie Cain Ralph Blumenthal and his Haley and Cooper, once, and I got phone calls from people, my book was not even published yet, but a group of people associated with this disclosure effort, really wanted me to give them the names of the two scientists in the book that hasn't been published yet. I was like, I can't do that. I got this with something that happened continuously for like three or four weeks. - Which book was this? - American Cosmic. - Oh, okay. - It was before it was published. - Okay. - And no, I'm not going to do that. Okay, so. - How do they know about that? - No, that's what I'm saying. Like I started to get this idea that this was all coming down. And so, all right, so in each of my books, I basically say, be careful, look what's happening, but then why work gets appropriated, not just by the disclosure advocates, 'cause I'm not, I'm not really a disclosure advocate. I believe this is real and it's happening, but the way it's happening with the government, that's not my story, okay? And I'm telling people, be careful, but people don't read the book. They see me on a podcast. And then it gets edited in certain ways and people are like, oh my goodness, you know, she's a disclosure advocate. And I've also made it pretty clear to the disclosure advocates, many of whom I know, and I'm friendly with, that I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna be a part of that press conference. I'm not gonna be a congressional person. I'm not gonna do any of that stuff, right? So that's what I'm trying to say here, is that this is good. This is a good time to be able to identify a narrative before it becomes authoritative. That's my position, just exactly what Carl Jung said. But this time we have the millennial generation, we have our generation who's already suspicious. We have the millennial generation, and then we have my kids generation, right? They don't even pay attention to it. They're like, yeah, whatever aliens exist. You know, okay, you know, tell me something new. - Right. - Okay, so they're not buying it. So the people who are buying it, they shouldn't, right? But they're going to, but I don't think the majority of people are going to buy it. And so, yeah, it's real, but it's not what is, it's just like Christianity, right? So Christianity's really vibrant and amazing in its incipient form, and then it becomes institutionalized and changes, okay? There's a core that you could get to, but boy, do you have to study to get to it? And boy, do you have to unlearn a lot of stuff in order to get to it, but it's still there, and it's still in some of the institutional forms of it, but it's buried in there. I think the same thing is happening with the UFO narrative that's being spun right now. Because why is it all military stuff? Really? - Yeah. - So that was what my second book was about, And that's why. In my second book I went back and talked a lot about indigenous ideas of you know Basically I went back to the experiencers and I said what do they have to say right and then what does history Have to say and then I went back to Plato's allegory the cave simulation hypothesis and I was like okay It really looks like this is that and that's what we have to be careful for Why does simulation hypothesis play into your warning? because um See the whole so the Coming into contact with a very powerful group of people that are Of which this new belief system is being Advocated who are advocating for this belief system When I say very powerful I'm talking very powerful So all of the when I say we're living in a new environment an architecture of digital technology that My kids just take for granted because they've been born into it You and I know the difference, okay, and even millennials know the difference okay, so that architecture now is Propaganda everywhere everywhere whether we want and by the way American cosmic was a lot about propaganda It was and how we are in an inundated by this and whether we like it or not. It's going to influence us so That's exactly what the allegory the cave is about Plato's allegory the cave So when I after American cosmic was published There were other people who showed up who were just as like insider as Tyler But worked for a different they were different and they were you know They kind of gave me an insight into the extent of this control and that was really depressing. I was so depressed why why is that depressing I you were surprised Well, I don't always know about it on an abstract level that we were you know We were that propaganda kind of you know taught us about the food groups and you know everything pretty much You know that was propaganda and we could get out of it by thinking about it, right? We can just use our critical faculties. No not anymore our critical faculties are even being performed now They are I you know seriously and so just thinking is not a form of resistance anymore You have got to so that's when I became there because it used to be my last kind of holdout I could teach critical thinking to my kids to my students and that will help them in this maze of disinformation that they're gonna live in No, that's not gonna be the superpower anymore. Let me um I love it Let's use one of your anecdotes to help people understand this more because we talked about the allegory the cave and My audience knows what that is. I think you tend to believe that the public is generally still in the cave, right? This is this the rally we were seeing our shadows on the wall. I'm okay. Yeah, okay So we could use an anecdote, but I want to say that I think that I Have hope now because disclosure day came out And nobody bought it nobody bought it and that gives me hope that oh and also the you the books that are being sold The UFO books in that category William Cooper's Behold a pale horse is one of the top ones and I'm thinking you know because that's You know that is basically Showing you everything, you know, even if he gets something's wrong like, you know Yeah, the spirit of it is right and so that to me is hope When I see that people are actually they're not buying the government sponsored books. No, they're not and they're going for the stuff That's old but good right like the bill Cooper thing now if the viewers go out and read that be careful because there are fit things that are Not entirely factually correct, but the spirit of it is is right it is and a lot of his predictions came to ruin Yeah, he said he was going to be killed by the government and he kind of was yeah Kind of was But you wanted to go to an anecdote. I did and it may not it's your anecdote may not be related to the cave, but it's related to Being manipulated by propaganda, but not even really being aware of it is a story you told about Talking to parents. Maybe it was talking to the sisters kids on their phones who were kind of bullying each other on their phones Yes, yeah, it's really sad. Please tell it. Yeah. Okay, so I'm at a conference and it's a conference for Catholic Teachers and Catholic people parents and so forth. It's out at high school and but I want to stare you so okay, so I'm there and All of us professors and so forth. We give our you know talks and so forth and so I gave a rundown of of the developmental stages of the brains of kids and when if they receive Social media via their phones at certain stages what this does to their brains, okay, and so afterwards I there was a break and Some teachers came up to me and they were very unhappy. They were like shell shocked and so one of them said I really need to talk with you and I was like okay, you know So a bunch of teachers kind of surrounded me and they said we We need some help like we need like you know, this is a conference where a lot of the talks were actually really intellectual and stuff That wasn't helpful that wasn't helpful and so I kind of broke with that and talked to the teachers And they could they wanted me to help them they wanted me to intervene and they said we can't do anything Because we have students who are we have a lot of suicidal students because they're being bullied on social media And we try to tell their parents the parents of the kids who are with the bullies and the parents are on social media too So they don't even see the problem. Well, you said take away their phones. That's right. That said we can't do that Yeah, they can't take away their phone. So a lot of schools Will have they don't have the policy where you know the kids have their phones in the classroom. No good I think that's terrible. I just can't understand why you would do that They have their phones 24/7 then right because their parents can't push back because generally they're just trying to make ends meet You know, so there's no it's not like I'm blaming anybody, but we definitely need regulation in schools, you know So yeah, so there was really a sad Uh, that was really sad to see and I you know, I don't allow Technology in my classroom unless the person needs it for whatever ability they have Um, and the students a lot of the students have issues with that like it's really hard for them just to go The 50 minutes or the hour and 15 minutes just that time to kind of like it's hard for them to concentrate No, they can't do it. I mean the the dopamine turns off. So it's like a dick uh withdrawal So you it was like uh, you said well, what do the parents have to say about it? And the parent and they said we talked to the parents. They don't understand they do not understand because they're with they're within the same cave Right, the millennial parents are in the same cave. Yeah, and they they can't get out of it They can't even help their kids get out of it. That so that's kind of what I felt by propaganda is like you if you're If you're not really studying and looking beyond the the mainstream narrative You you might be someone to say I can't be fooled by propaganda. It's like you don't know if you are or not That's right because you're in the cave. Yeah. That's right. That's exactly right And the way that what I showed in American cosmic and some of my um papers are on academia They're just the straight research that shows this and it's that when we are subject to this stuff It goes into our brain it bypasses our critical faculty of discerning whether it's real or not We can't even tell anymore by the way And so it goes into parts of our brain that then we believe it's real So we our bodies act as if it's real for all intent and purposes. It's real to us Yeah I have I have faith in the in in in Gen Z. I'm a Gen Z fan Yeah, Millennials not so much See I think it's turning around because you're seeing a lot more people going back to religion. Oh for sure Gen Z yeah, yeah, and you're seeing younger parents now saying I'm not letting my kids have a phone in school That's right. That's right. Didn't you have um how about the chess club story is interesting that's pertinent here Yeah, okay, so the young student who came about the chess. Yeah, okay, this is really um Very hopeful It's a touching story. Yeah, so uh, you know, I was really You know, I get upset about this stuff to tell you the truth and um, and I was you know thinking what could I possibly do to like Get the kids off their phones like what could I do and I thought I I need to create something like a space for them So I thought maybe chess my kids play chess by the way And so I was like I but that was just a thought I had well a week later a student shows up asks if he can meet with me in my office hour and He's not in my major and he said that he had played my daughter in chess and that she had won him and so she thought he thought then that Her her mom's a professor here She would be the person to create this chess club at the university. And so this is an incredible young student who created the chess club, all the kids came, we had all these tournaments and they were able to hang out. They know, by the way, this group of students, these young people now, they know there's an issue. He specifically said, "My generation, we can't even be together and talk to each other. We can't do that and I want to stop that. I want to try to stop that." He asked me to help him out with that. I thought it was a weird coincidence that I had just thought to myself, "Chess," so, of course, I was all on that. Now, we do have this thriving chess club at my university. No phones there, right? Well, if they have phones, they're not using them. They're probably in their pockets. It fills me with so much hope and I will do it 100% like, yeah, so. I think you said if there's a leading candidate for the Antichrist, it would be social media. I did. That was in response to Peter Tiel's excellent talk on the Antichrist, so he's been talking about the Antichrist and you can find this online, so you can listen to him talk about it. He's on a road tour. He did a road tour of that talk. Yeah, that's right. So he's the Antichrist guy, and I think it's cool because he's kind of uplifting that conversation. He's bringing some credibility to it. He's a smart guy who's talking about this that has been a stigmatized topic, and so, of course, I took notice, and so I listened to him. I attended a conference where he gave a talk on the Antichrist, and I was thinking, I was really surprised because he's the founder's fund, like he's the guy who funded the social media, the big social media we have. And so it occurred to me that he's missing something really important. And that is that AI super powered social media, but even social media without AI is what is stopping young people from having the capacity to have what we call this interior life, which is really important because it's actually part of our body, it's part of our physical makeup. All human beings are born with the capacity to have this, it's called a spiritual science, a capacity for this. But we're taking it away. We're making it inaccessible to young people now because it changes their brain chemistry. So they're no longer taught, and by the way, lots of people are not taught this, but we all have this capacity. That's what religion is for. And so I thought, you know, the Antichrist in the book of Revelation is actually being, there's the false prophet that actually powers the Antichrist, well it seems like that something that's powering, like the Antichrist would be like this social media because it's eradicating that part of what makes a person spiritual, it's just getting rid of it, right? I think it's doing that physically. It's physically doing that. Physically destroying your brain. Yeah, yeah. I was surprised that he didn't consider that because he was reading the same, I was reading the same books he was reading. I think it's Howard Benson, and I might get his first name wrong, The Lord of the World, which is about the Antichrist. And so basically his, he's writing in the early 20th century, and he's talking about what's going to happen when the end times come. And he basically says, what's going to happen is that we're going to have an infrastructure powered by technology that's going to eradicate the knowledge of the spiritual sense. It's just going to just get rid of it. You won't even know you have it. And I'm thinking, that's it. Right. And so I wrote a commentary to kind of, and he and I had the same, one of the same professors by the way, which is René Gerard. So I was not just like, come on, Mr. Teal, you would have known this. So I kind of pointed it out, and just like the first two chapters of the others, where I point out that if I were to say that there's an Antichrist, I would say that social media is a contender for that, like powered by AI, because it's eradicating the spiritual sense. I tend to agree. There's a few ironies with Peter's talk. I think one of his contenders for the Antichrist was an over-regulated system and a lack of privacy from the guy who helped found Palantir is an interesting irony. So it was like Gerard's work didn't make it into his talk. It was Gerard, the one who talked about post-biological. No, no, that's Stephen Dick, who's a NASA historian for many, many years, and founder of Astrobiology, one of the founders, co-founder, super amazing intelligent person. Yes. Have you spoken to Peter about your disagreement? Okay. Because you've done it a couple of times, haven't you? I've been invited a couple of times, I went the one time. So I have met Peter, and I did ask him about that, and I asked him about Gerard. He's a very intelligent person, and very, obviously, he's who he is. But I did ask him about that. Well, he's a huge fan of Gerard, but he didn't make it. I haven't read it in his posted talks. I haven't read him draw on Gerard and the scapegoat mechanism in his antichrist talks. He may have, though, he may have integrated that. It just wasn't in the talk that I saw. Okay, well, let's take a quick break, and when we come back, I'd like to talk a little bit more about memetic theory and post-biology, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. You're right back. Well, let's start. We can start with your questions. You have notes? Oh, wow, yeah, I do. Okay. Okay, cool, cool. Okay, take it away. Okay, all right. I can't move this thing up. No. Okay. Well, you can, you can't stand. Oh. If you want to get closer, it'll drag. Oh, okay. I'm good. I'm good. Okay. I was very interested in the podcast you did about the man who sees the future. There's a few. It did. So, Amadeus Dinock. That's right. That's right. And what really interested me was not just that he could see the future, but that he described the evolution of a spiritual sense. So can you say a bit about that, about what about the spiritual sense and what he saw. Dinock. So that story is George Pahatsis, I think, comes from who is a Greek academic. So the Amadeus Dinock story is not true, but George's point was there that mankind is evolving toward a consciousness, sort of a unified consciousness, is our next stage of evolution. Is what Pahatsis was getting at. Is that kind of what you mean? Yeah, but he also said that part of the reason we make it and we don't kill ourselves is because of the development of the spiritual sense. Right. Right. So, which we talked about before the break, we talked about that and how social media could influence that in a negative way. Yes. So what I did when I was horrified by how we were so conditioned by propaganda and so forth, I decided that to go back to visionary literature of the Catholic tradition and look at the people who got it right, who kind of predicted stuff that actually came true, because I thought that would be really interesting. And it was quite a journey. So this is what the others is mostly about, is this journey where this idea of the spiritual sense, so your guy, right, isn't the only one who describes this. So you can see this also in the literature of this priest named Teyar Deshardan. And he lived in the early 20th century. So he was born, I think, in 1880. And so he was actually part of the Russian cosmos scene. So he had a lot of friends who were Russian. And what's really interesting about him is that, first, he predicted that our time, the early 21st century, would be a time when human beings are going to change. In a way that he described, he believed in evolution. So he was a, his work, by the way, was suppressed, not suppressed, but, yeah, I mean, it was basically the Catholic Church told him not to talk about this stuff. So they liked, he was a paleontologist. So they liked his science, his science on, you know, rocks and stuff like that, his geological work. But they didn't want him to talk about what he thought was going to happen, like his visions of what he thought was going to happen. Wasn't he a daily mass guy? Yeah, he was a completely varied about Catholics. So he was really devastated when the Catholic Church told him not to do this. I was going to ask you that to be admonished by the church must have been devastating right? It was very devastating. Yeah. And he was really upset about it. And we could talk about that, please. Yeah. Well, I'll talk about it after I say what he was actually what he saw. So he was a really devout person, and he always had a bend from a child, okay? And what's really interesting about him, well, there are so many things that are interesting about him. But one of them is that everything that he wrote about, in the early 20th century, he believed he saw through his spiritual sense. He believed in this physical sense that he had. And he said it was a sense, literally like our senses, like hearing or sight. So you and I can see what's on this table, right? To him, his spiritual sense was that obvious. And I'd been through a lot of his work, right? I'd read like everything. And what I noticed was that he would use the word astonish only when he was talking about how he was astonished that other people didn't have this sense. So he felt like the sense was going to evolve. He thought it was going to evolve, okay? So what was his vision? So some people have heard of this thing called the newest fear. So the newest fear is something that a lot of people in tech and AI talk about. It's, I mean, it looks really like the internet and supercharged internet. But this is what he saw. So he was, he went to the war. So he was French, and he went to World War One, and he worked on the front. And he helped people who were being, who were injured. He helped bring them to the medical person, okay? So his job was to help get them on the stretcher and then to bring them to. Well, what he saw during this devastating war was he said he saw humankind soul, all right? Well, what does that mean? Humankind soul. He said that there was something about the environment of war that was so incredibly charged that helped him identify that through a spiritual sense, humanity's future. And he called it the newest fear, okay? He said humankind is evolving toward what he called like this omega point, this newest fear. So that's like a, a sphere of thought where I'll have this, a unified thought. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So he saw, um, he saw humanity merge into through their basic cognition. Like, he called it seribration. And what it was was there's the biosphere, right? So this is going to be above the biosphere. And it's going to be a space that humanity is going to connect with each other through like a network to mind. It's like a global brain. So he was projecting a mass global brain that human beings were going to be a part of. And we were going to share insights, share art, share entertainment, have economic things happen in this fear. This is the newest fear. He didn't coin the term by the way or he may have coined it. I actually don't know exactly who coined it, but it was, it was being utilized by, uh, Russian cosmists and he utilized it too. So he described this as the newest fear that people now talk about today. It very much looks like when the internet started to happen, you know, many years ago, I remember looking at it and thinking, this really looks like Tayard's idea of the newest fear, you know, taking shape. And now it really looks like that. And so, you know, especially with AI and AI may be, um, you know, could it be AI even? I don't know. So that's the thing. It's like when you get into these guys who are doing this projection into the 21st century, uh, it's really interesting to kind of parse out what could it be that they're talking about? It looks very similar to the internet, but it looks even more like, um, aware, self-aware. So that could be a form of like AI, perhaps, or human beings merged with AI. I don't know, but he, he projected that human beings were going to evolve into this and he was Catholic. So he believed it would be a, honestly, he believed that it would be apocalyptic. He thought it was going to either be really good or, or the end of human beings. Apocalyptic really just means to reveal what isn't known, right? It is. Yeah. I'm using it in the sense of not necessarily it literally means to be revealed. Yeah. But people utilize it today to mean like maybe an apocalyptic event would be like a catastrophic event. So it has, you know, it has that meaning also. It's a hard, um, believe the newest fear you would retain individuality or is it more toward your analysis of like children's end where it's not so great? Okay. Yeah. So all right. So the childhood is end is the book by Arthur C. Clarke who it looks like was influenced by Teyard. Yes. In fact, it looks like a lot of people were influenced by Teyard. Um, I know Kurzweil who wrote about the singularity talks about Teyard as well. But secularize is it. So, you know, um, he did think Teyard thought that we would retain our individuality, but still be connected. Um, he thought it would be, he actually thought it would be good, right? That's, but there were occasions in his discussions where he also thought it could possibly be bad, but it would be our choice. It would be our choice. Yeah. But he was a believer. So listen, what happened to him? Okay. So he couldn't not write about this. Okay. Right. So of course, he's writing about it. And these are circulating through, um, what do they call the kind of precursor to, okay, like memograph, you know, um, and people are reading it. And he's influencing lots and lots of people. He's like, he's a very charismatic thinker and people love him. All right. So he's influencing people. But the Catholic Church is telling him, you know, stop, right? We, we think you're crazy. You know, what you're talking about makes no sense to us. Um, they now like him, by the way, and they've lifted that ban on him, but he did, he was under that for a long time. Why didn't the church like it? Um, I think part of it was that they were grappling with how to integrate the idea of evolution because they're, you know, they're, they believe that God created everything. So this is pre-Vatican too. Yeah. It is pre-Vatican too. But come and close. No, no. Vatican II is in 1960s. So he's writing in the, in the 1920s and 30s. So he does. To me, that's pretty close. Oh, well, he dies in 55, I think. Okay. And one of the things that's really interesting is that he obeyed the Catholic Church, you know, and he, uh, he did, he didn't, his friend said this. They said that he used to say, if I, God, if I'm right, uh, take me on Resurrection Day, right? Take me on the day of, of Resurrection, which is Easter Sunday. And he did die on Easter Sunday. He did? Yeah. Yeah. That's what, that's why I don't talk about what day I'm going to die because that always comes. That always happens. Wasn't your book encounters going to be named Resurrection? Resurrection? But I read that. And, and he was, he had talked to your editors and changed it. It could be. It sounds like it's something I would do. I can't remember, though. There was something I read. I thought it was, thought was interesting. Um, so the church now is okay with, with his theory. Yeah, because it looks like, you know, something of, that sort has happened. Yes, it does. We do have a global brain of sorts, right? And it looks like it's just going to ramp up. Um, where it's going to go. Uh, that's why I think it's interesting to follow the work of these people. So it's not just him. So he influenced other people who tweaked his ideas a bit, one of whom was Marshall McCleoon, who's a, another guy who talks about the spiritual sense and credits his spiritual sense with his insights into technology and how technology is going to change humanity. Is McCleoon the, the media guy? Yeah, the media is the message guy. Oh, so he's the, he's a propaganda guy. Yes. He's a propaganda guy. Yeah, he's fascinating. Really interesting work way ahead of his time. You know, he, well, think how ahead of his time, Tariah is, right? Right. So that's why I say, when you're ahead of your time, you're, you're ahead of your time. No one's going to know that, right? And so you're going to be misunderstood and it's a bummer, right? It's a bummer. Um, boy, I wish that he would know what happened since, since he died, you know, Tariah. Uh, even McCleoon, like McCleoon has some amazing things. So these guys, they're, they're Catholic and they're looking at the 21st century. Each of them has an idea that human beings are going to shift into something completely different. Um, Tariah thinks is kind of like a, uh, like a singularity type thing, like a global mind, but he sees that as spiritual. He calls it the omega point. Mm hmm. And Marshall McCleoon doesn't really have that idea, but he definitely thinks that it's, it's, um, well, he's hopeful, right? Being Catholic, but he also is apocalyptic in the sense that it could go wrong, you know, but he's hoping that it doesn't go wrong. Um, but he sees it as technology shifting human perception, um, kind of like Socrates said it would, right? So he's soocratic in that way. That's right, right? Whether it's writing or AI. Yeah, that's right. Technology is always going to change us physically, which it was one of these thinkers talking about technology who said the principle of our world will certainly be a great electrical engineer. That's right. Yeah. Forget who it was, it said that it might. I don't know. Was it McCleoon? There's one of those guys talking about technology. Um, talk a little bit about childhood's hand and why Arthur C. Clarks went the dark way. Yeah. Okay. That's a good way to put it. Yeah. Well, I mean, others is probably your darkest book, I would think. I think so. So I mean, at some point you went from sort of academic [BLANK_AUDIO] documentarian to believer to now you're now you're a herald now you're warning us well I guess I felt like the other books didn't warn enough because people you know what I mean I was like listen this is you know this is going this is happening this is happening let's let's pay attention yeah yeah this is kind of a scary book I have to admit it it is so R3C Clark went dark yeah he may have always been dark I don't know let's talk about it yeah let's talk about him okay so R3C Clark brilliant guy right one of these okay so another person who lived in the early 20th century until like throughout the century died in the 2000s I think like 2007 maybe anyway brilliant thinker started out not just writing about super interested in space travel okay so he was part of the British interplanetary I think it's called society the BIS yeah yeah and so those guys were interesting so in order to do this book I had to go back and read about those guys and this is in the early 20th century when space travels weird yes people think people who are interested in space travel they think they're weird okay so now we just think it's cool yeah it's pre-sputnik yeah yeah yeah so okay so R3C Clark is writing about like writing about space travel and you know he's not doing sci-fi yet he's kind of just doing writing for people lay people like trying to get them to onboard with everyone we're gonna have a pretty cool future if we can like just get you know space-faring and this kind of stuff right and what he's doing is it's almost like a laboratory like he and the other science fiction people they're not they begin to write science fiction they're writing it with the understanding that what they're writing is gonna happen like they're gonna help make it happen by writing about it it's really interesting I didn't know that they were so conscious about what intentional right about what they were doing so so I start with him there in my opinion he's very influenced by TAYARDS work of the global brain and the end of humanity in a way you know so he's so but he doesn't credit him in child who's in he does talk about him in his later work like in the 2000s he actually writes a lot about TAYARDS but he doesn't credit him early so I can't honestly say that he was influenced by him if he's not crediting him but how could he not be because child who's in is about a net like an overmind like a global brain and it's being ushered in by these beings right that look really curious I'm not gonna step on your punch line I know they're revealed in in the story but I don't want to tell people if they haven't read it you don't know what's gonna read it okay we have to tell them because it gets into retro causality which is so interesting it does it does yeah so Clark was so smart right okay yeah so smart yeah or we'll tell tell the story all right so we'll start with the premise of child who's in yes okay so the premise is that humans are hanging out right and then all the sudden well we're fighting with each other it did normal things that humans do that we do yeah yeah and it's in the future okay so is it our time our time you know maybe like you know TAYARDS was and Marshall McClure well Marshall McClure was very clear we're talking like 21st century this new human he called it the old three human TAYARDS called it the no TAYARDS called it the old three human Marshall McClure and called it the super terrestrial right John Keel called it the ultra terrestrial that's right that's right and but what is Clark call it okay Clark calls them humans but what's gonna happen to them okay so what happens is that all over you see in the sky you see like an alien invasion right so these ships come around in the sky and they stay there for a while and freak us out and people kind of go about their day because you know what do you do you know they're just there we can't get rid of them it's scary but they're not doing anything and it's intimidating right they're basically saying we're here yes so it's an intimidating first contact and then they're representative contacts us but we don't get to see them they just talk to us and they basically say we mean you know harm yeah we're here to help that's right we're here to help of course people aren't stupid so there are a lot of people who are like no way this is uncool we don't like these these guys but they're there and they say we're not going to reveal ourselves for 50 years right and people are like why you know and so during that 50 years though they're utilized they're there and they're making people aware that they're going to help us and they're going to do these things and you know they're going to bring some wonderful technologies to us that we could utilize they eliminate disease war poverty hunger it's all gone and they're very so Clark makes them very aware and and they're smart at using propaganda right yes so they use propaganda and they say it's the best weapon they say there's better than any kind of bomb it's better than anything yeah they said they said they said that you don't even need much power it's how you use it you just need a radio just need a radio written in the 50s that's right so TV isn't ubiquitous yet so the radio is the thing so they're utilizing radio to basically get people used to this and then they are going to show themselves okay and this is interesting for various reasons that we've talked about so far in this podcast okay one of which I'll get to okay so what happens is that the main guy Correllen right is going to show himself and so he announces that he goes I'm going to meet you all finally you know now you all are ready to meet me and so millions of people all over the world are ready for this so they are going to televised it you know hundreds of thousand people show up and then he shows himself and he says well before he does that he says I'd like some children to come to me right and so a boy and a girl go they walk over to him as soon as they get to where he is and they nobody sees him yet the girl and the boy flip up into like they start to float so he has this kind of gravity that we've been talking about he's got a private gravity and that's what that's what uh orthercy Claude calls it he said this being had its own private gravity right and so he comes out and he looks exactly like a demon so he's got horns he's got scales he's got he looks red you know he looks like a demon right he's got the clobin hooves the tail that's right yeah exactly like what we think of as a demon the classical demon and no one no one is really that upset except for some people who who faint right right you know but only like one or two people out of like a hundred thousand so he's already acclimated people against religion because they got rid of religion and they made they made it seem like it was um you know not rational remember in the story the people in new Athens are saying these are demons and the younger people are saying you're just old and supersized that's right archaic archaic yeah yeah so okay so then we we see that the real thing that's going to happen though is not he's not going to take them over um he's ushering in this like giant network mind that goes around the galaxy and usherps whole civilizations into it and they become like networked up and so they're targeting humans the human children so that the grownups are literally the last human beings the children start to show psychic powers and telepathy yeah they start to become one mind and they're speaking as one mind now right they are they are not just they speak as one mind and they act as one mind and if you read it uh the descriptions of the children it looks terrible looks like they're zombies they don't keep that you know they're not into hygiene so their hair gets like matted and they have their clothes like their parents are now afraid of them right and so the the children literally get usherped into this network and those people that they're the last humans so that's why it's called childhood Zen yeah um I think didn't they tell uh it was Jan I think it's his name on the way back where they say whenever you think you're going to see it's not going to be what you think you're going to see yeah and he and he's like has to force himself to he wants to look way that can because yeah the the children are so horrifying the horror they're worse than corpses yeah they don't even seem like they have any kind of like they're like blank and then what happens what's the happy ending to that well it's a bad ending yes so the ending is is the end of humanity the end of earth and these beings or what we think is like the the end of earth uh it could very well just be that earth changes but humanity is completely gone now the children absorb all the energy from the earth or something like that right yeah it's a little it's a for me it's a I should read it again but it's it's the end it is the end would I what I couldn't get from the story was what what Arthur C Clark was trying to convey oh okay so this is what I noticed was that in a lot of of not just science fiction but media, that portray this topic of alien contact with us. Often it replaces religion or completely discredits religion. Now, I'm not trying to be a conspiracy theorist and say there's a bunch of these guys who are doing this, maybe that's true, but that's just a fact. So if you look at all of this, if you spend time reading this history, the history of sci-fi and also what we see in the media, even with Star Wars, right? You see, we see traditional religions that get usurped under this new form, what I call this new form of religion, which is belief in extraterrestrials, replacing. Because the belief in God is superstitious. That's how it's made out to be. Whereas the belief in aliens, of course, that makes perfect sense, right? So that is happening. You can see it. I'm not making it up, go and read these things. You'll see it case in point, like with Star Wars, the last Jedi, and then the one before that, I can't remember the Force Awakens, I think. In these two movies, you have the very beginning of Western Christianity, which is in, you know, not in Rome, but you see it in Ireland in this place called Skellig Michael, which is this really beautiful rocks off the coast of Ireland. And this is where monks lived in the fifth century, no, the 500. So it was pretty early on in Christianity. And they're going to, you know, spread Christianity, but they're at this place. That's where Luke Skywalker is, that's where he trains Jedi. That's where Jedi's are trained. That's where they filmed was like the heart of Western Christianity is now the heart of the Jedi religion. And that is religion now, by the way. The Jedi religion is religion. So, you know, when you see this, you can't unsee this. You start to like look at the media. And you're like, wow, okay, it's happening there too. And this is not anything I'm making up. Do I say it's on purpose? I don't know if it's on purpose, is it, but it's definitely something that's, it's like a snowball effect. It's definitely something that's progressing. - Do you think the people, whoever they are in charge, like that analogy, maybe it's not an analogy, that it's becoming a religion? Do you think they want that to be a religion? - I do, religion is very powerful. - I mean, I do too. - It's a powerful thing, you know? Like people in the name of religion will die for religion. It is very powerful. So, yeah, I think so. - Sure, don't create a belief, create a whole belief system, but they're controlling the system. They're writing the Bible. - Yeah. - I don't know if that's great. I don't know if that's great for us. - Okay, I'll tell you why I don't think it's great. I have a specific reason. And it has to do with how, when you look at Marshal McCluen and you look at Tayard's work, they keep the spiritual sense. And in fact, if you read their work, you cannot get away from the fact that the spiritual sense worked in their lives. They see things that we don't see because of their sense, their spiritual sense, they cultivated it and it's a life for them like seeing and touch and hearing as a life for us. That's absolutely absent in childhood's end. Totally absent. In fact, there's a scene in childhood's end where he basically says that this is the worst part of humans, the spiritual sense, right? So it's a scene with a sayon. So a sayon, this woman who is the one who's gonna have the child, who's gonna be absorbed first into the overmind, she's the mother and she has a cultivated spiritual sense so that the overmind identifies her. And what happens is that they're gonna definitely, they're gonna, her offspring are gonna be the ones that they're going to colonize, right? So they're gonna colonize the spiritual sense. And not just that, but he talks about it in derogatory terms. The spiritual sense is the worst thing in humans, this mystical sense that they have and they kinda think it's disgusting and don't like it. So yeah, so it's the spiritual sense that we're seeing, again, changed, right? - Do we all have that spiritual sense? - Everyone is born with it, yeah. - We are. - Yeah, for sure, all people are. All the religions of the world, if you look at them, they are the traditional religions. They focus on the cultivation of the sense, like how do you cultivate it? Well, you pray, you can fast, you live a life that cultivates things called the virtues. And you can see this in all the religious traditions, Buddhism, like, you know, meditation, what are they doing? They're cultivating their sense, right? And so all the religious traditions knew about this and cultivated it for the benefit of the social group, all of them. And so yeah, we don't want to get rid of that. That's just, that would change human beings. - Well, this is another argument for social media and the antichrist is because that's blocking that. - Yeah, yeah. - It's interesting that, you know, that all the tech bros are into fasting and meditation and it's all these like monastic rituals that they're doing. I don't know if they know they're doing that. That they're basically monks. - Yeah, that's right, that's right. - Who was it who talked about religion being a way to protect us from violence? - Okay, so this is Renas Gerard. Renas Gerard is a French theorist who is contemporary with us, he died only recently actually. And so he was an atheist or agnostic, he wasn't religious at all. - At first. - Yeah, right. - Yeah, and so he went through reading the traditions of the Bible actually reading the Hebrew scriptures and then the New Testament. And through that, he recognized that there was a mechanism at work and that this was the mechanism of nonviolence. And he saw this 'cause, you know, if you do read the Bible, you'll notice that there are like sacrifices of like children and stuff, you're like, oh, goodness, you know? What's up with that, right? Well, does God require that? And so what you see though is that the Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew scriptures are pushing back against that. Pushing back against that, you have Abraham, you know, the push back against his sacrifice of his son. And then when you get to-- - That's right, but it might have been the first one where a sacrifice is stopped. - Yeah, by an angel, a messenger of God. - Right. - And so then, you know, so you have to understand that in history a lot of culture. So he sacrifices at the basis for a lot of cultures like, you know, human sacrifice and then animal sacrifice. And, you know, all right. That said, he sees Christianity as an answer to that type of violence. It's a specific type of violence that he thinks is bad, is really terrible. And if you're the recipient of being bullied, if you're the recipient of group violence of being canceled today, you know, you know that this is a bummer experience. - Yes. People seem to enjoy piling on. So there's like an enjoyment that people get from it, which I think is pretty sick, frankly. But, you know, people who do that shame on you for doing that just stalked you. You know, life will be better for everyone if you just don't do that kind of thing. - I think we've turned a corner on a lot of that. Was Gerard, would you see the one with the scapegoat theory? - Yes, so this is the theory of the scapegoat. So what he came to understand was that this type of violence was at the basis of Christianity. And Christianity was the first, so he became Christian because of it, okay? So long story short, he converted and became super Christian. And then all of his writing was about what he called the scapegoat mechanism and how it functioned in culture. And he said that most religion because people feel, they'll kill, so his idea was this, was that a society tends to become violent and in order to resolve that violence, say identify a scapegoat and then they get rid of the scapegoat, the violence goes away for a while, but then the whole cycle repeats again. But they feel really guilty about killing that scapegoat and that's where religion comes in. So religion comes in as a way to deceive people into thinking it was a necessary, a justified violent act. I was surprised to learn that, you know, Romans didn't consider themselves to be people who sacrificed humans, they looked at like people, other cultures and they say those people are horrible because they kill people like they sacrificed people. We don't do that, but they did do that. - Of course. - So the gladiator games were literally religious events, right, to their gods and goddesses. That's what we don't understand now. We're like, those were pretty weird events that they had, right, with the gladiators and so forth. Well, they were religious events and they would invoke whatever god or goddess, you know, at the time they were revoking Roman god or goddess. And they would take people that were vulnerable like prisoners of war or gladiators. And it would dress them up as the gods and then they would kill them. They would reenact their killing. And this you could see even as texted this, okay? With, I mean, these cultures didn't know each other. So this shows that there's like this template to human sacrifice. Oh, it goes on forever. I mean Hitler did the same thing, escape voting is another form of propaganda. That's right. That's right. It's a terrible propaganda. So that's what Gerard identified. The basis of human cultures that aren't self aware are like this. Well, Christianity came along to challenge it to basically say, this is what he believed. Christianity came along to basically say, stop doing that, right? This is how you cannot do it. Jesus will be the last sacrifice. You won't have to do it anymore, right? And so if that's what it became it, it fought back. That's why it fought back a Rome. So some of the early Christians who fought back were like Perpetua who was a woman from Carthage 20 years old or so, 21. And she refused. She was, you know, going to be put into the gladier games, dressed up as series. I think that was the goddess. And she refused. She said, I'm not dressing up. You can kill me. I don't care. I'm dying for Jesus. But I am not going to be dressed up as your goddess. And she refused. And that went around like wildfire because people didn't like Rome. Rome was doing this all over the place, right? So they pushed back. And Christianity became a resistance movement to the empire's violence. About what year was Perpetua? Because we can read her diary from prison. That's right. Yes. You can. So I think she was like 200, 200, 203. Oh, okay. Rome was already quite a mess. And so I was wondering if it was first century, if it was after after the Sack of Jerusalem. It was almost, yeah, it was after that, her diary is very touching. It's very sad. Yeah. So she writes, so this is the first document that we have by Christian woman. And she writes about her own impending death. And just as she's just about to go into to be killed in the game, her friends take over and write the diary. Okay. So it's a partial autobiography and partial biography with some, with parts of it that are what we call hageographic, like what you'd call poetic license, right? But it was real. It's actually a fact that she was killed for sure. And that her resistance became the Christian resistance, right? Yeah. I mean, her diary is very touching and short. Everyone should read it. It ends with the word Amen. Yeah. What? How does memetic theory work? That was new to me to learn about that. Okay. And I think it might be, it might be onto something. Yes, yes. So this is the idea. And this is known by lots and lots of people who research like human development and so forth. You know, monkey, see monkey, do you? Like human beings mimic, in order to learn, we first mimic, right? In order to learn top speech, we mimic and stuff. So it's kind of a built in way in which human beings are, right? We're built that way. What happens though is that it becomes destructive when we want, when we want something that another person has and we're willing to kill that person for it, right? And, but we have to understand that the only reason we want what they have is because they want it. So in a sense, we're mimicking their want. Yes. And you can really see this in social media right now. Oh, yeah. So the like. So if you go to, and by the way, a lot of those likes are bots, okay? But that's a scary thing. Like we can now create the scapegoat mechanism and mnemetic theory. So this idea that we mimic each other's desires. So let's take, you know, let's take a YouTube channel, right? Okay. So this YouTube channel has, I don't know, a couple million subscribers. And we're like, that person must, we must listen to that person because so many subscribers, right? But what if like most of those subscribers are not real? So that's how it can be generated. So we can have our own tastes generated. Look at, you know, I am a woman. I am subject to wanting nice things like purses, nice purses, right? And I know that. So I'm going along doing my work and so forth and ads pop up Gucci bag or this and that. And I'm like, I don't want that bag, all right? But then I do want, but you do want it. Yes, I do. But what I have to do is I have to wait it out. So I'm being manipulated by everyone else wanting that bag. Wait two years and that bag will look ridiculous to you, right? It really will. You'll have the bag in a like, why did I even buy that bag? It's weird looking, right? And so your, your desire is cultivated, it's generated, it's constructed, it's created and it's created through clicks and likes and so forth. My wife has bags that might, more than cars, some of them. It's a matter with you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't want to put, I mean, look, men have cars like, you know, everybody has their theme. So I'm not going to, yeah, I'm not going to judge you. I'm not for unstones. I'm just being like, yeah, I have, I have the bag, right? No, glad you said that because it should kind of universal. We all kind of do it. But we have to, we have to understand that we do it. Yes. And when we can understand it, we can, because, you know, and we'll, we'll be enslaved by this. If we allow us, just, you know, we're a slave to our desires. But if we can, you can wait out the desire and that's all it takes. It just takes like three weeks or something. Sure. But most people don't, don't we need all people to do this for a tour? Yeah, this, I think we need a critical mass. I don't know if we need all people to do it. Critical mass. Yeah. So Gerard then says, how, you know, what do we do? If human beings are wired this way, we're wired to hurt each other, we're wired for violence. We, you know, what can we possibly do? And that's where he says, that's where you have to examine yourself. That's what Socrates said, the exam in life. You must, if you want this world to change, you must change. You must do this. And if you don't, you know, if you say, well, no one else is going to do it. You know, okay, then that's the world we have. That's the world we live in. We, we all do that. Why should, why should I make that sacrifice? No one else is going to do it. Yep. Or just, you know, you could try, you could start trying and then you're trying gets into the ability to resist. It's hard to, it's hard to do that. Do you agree with Jacques Vallet about the UFO phenomena being subjective and created by our culture and maybe, maybe more of a non-nuts and bolts phenomenon? Okay. So Jacques, I don't think he believes that it's created by our culture. I think that he believes, this is what, just, you know, from knowing him a bit. Sure. He's, now he, his idea of what it is possibly could be or his theory about it changes, right? So I've seen it change. Sure. But he, if he wasn't nuts and bolts, he's way more nuts and bolts now than he used to be, by the way. So he was definitely not nuts and bolts for a long time. But I think he thinks that there's something beyond the projector. There's something beyond. Oh, he thinks it's something. Yeah. He's described it as a, as a control system. Yeah, a control mechanism. Who? Who? He doesn't know. That's the thing he wants to find out. But he's, he's, you know, studying it enough to identify its characteristics. And that's why he wrote messengers of deception. He said, this is kind of a deceptive phenomenon. So speculate. Who's behind that? And why? Speculate? Yeah. Wow. I mean, it was, it was pie plates and nuts and bolts and saucers, and now it's orbs. Yeah. Yeah. And who knows what it's going to be next? That's right. That's right. I mean, you know, I talked to Chris Bledso who you may, you may know Chris. I know, I know Chris. He can summon orbs. Yeah. And I wouldn't call myself a, a, a fanatic believer. I'm a skeptical believer. And I wouldn't think anyone can summon orbs. But I've seen it on video. My brother went out to the yard with him and they summoned orbs. And I asked Chris, is there can anyone, anyone do this? He said, anyone can do this and nobody should do this. Like he, he doesn't think it's a good idea. Is he talking to something real? Okay. So, all right. So yeah, in order to talk about this, I, I, this is another thing that I present in, in the others is I basically say, now that we know that there is something like how do we deal with it? And I said, I think the history of religions gives us some frameworks for this because if these things are deceptive, which it looks like they are, and if you do summon them regularly and they're in your life, your life's going to be pretty weird and not in some fun ways. Okay. And so if that's the case, then they look like what we've talked about in the religious traditions before. We just have different names for them or we haven't even named them yet. But what kinds of protocols do those traditions give you to deal with these? Well, in Buddhism, they might, if you meditate a lot, they might come into your life. And you just ignore them because that's not the goal. That's not the goal. That you have a spiritual goal in Buddhist meditation and that's not it. So just ignore it. All right. So there's that. Within, I've talked about this before in the Catholic tradition, JD Vamps, you know, I said this publicly, you know, he believes that this phenomena is what he called kind of like demons. And I can fill in that with that means he's, he's referencing what's called the Praetor natural. So it's not supernatural. It's not from God. It's not natural. Right? We can agree that is pretty weird. This area, this great area that Catholics think the fallen angels fall into and also angels. Like, it's not a god thing, but it's like maybe kind of angelic thing or maybe something other than angels, but we probably shouldn't deal with it. We probably shouldn't mess with it. Now, that's why I wouldn't go to like scanwalk or ranch or, you know, the haunted places. That's why I do not want to summon things. So, no hitchhiker effect seems to be a real thing. It is a real thing. Yeah. You mentioned John Alexander. I mean, his wife didn't like him being there at all. Yeah. You know, it should wake up and there'd be stuff in the yard. So, yeah. So, if we already have information about that stuff, even from indigenous communities, right? Oh, yeah. What are you doing? You know, don't summon that. You know, I guess my question is, we already have information about that. We know, you know, we should listen to it. Yeah. You definitely see the trickster at work because I've talked to a few people from scanwalk with John or Travis Taylor. And it's like, how come there are not that many photographs of it? And the answer is always, it's photographs what it wants to be. We can't control it. Sometimes it allows it. Sometimes it just doesn't. So, it feels like, and then Travis agreed that there is an intention here. There's an intent to deceive. But nobody knows what the purpose, what's the reason for it? What does it want with us? Yeah. I don't know. I mean, I'm not, look, I do this study. I've studied this stuff right and written books about it. Yes. But no, I can't answer that question. You don't have an opinion. I guess. Well, my opinion is that this is my personal opinion. I don't advocate it for anyone. And it's just how I deal with it. Because it resembled so closely, the traditions of religion, and I happen to be religious, I'm Christian, that I look at this from that standpoint. And I, you know, I'm not going to summon something that I think is deceptive. Why would I do that? Totally agree. I'm not interested in going to scan walker or summoning warbys doing any of that. Yeah. So, I'm going to focus on the spiritual sense that I have. Try to cultivate it. Try to help my students. Try to help, you know, I'm going to do that. I'm not going to focus on, on that other stuff. I think that's smart. It's just like four days ago. Had a nightmare about orbs. And I woke up like, that was a message. Wow. Like doing this show maybe too long. I was, it was, it was pretty scary. So if we're going to be contacted by something else, especially from another world, it's probably going to be some type of AI. It's not going to be by a lot. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's Stephen Dick's theory. Yeah. I think it's a really good theory. I agree. So let's walk Stephen Dick's theory backwards. Could the angel visitations that we see in these eagle and elsewhere? Could those be postbiological entities? Yeah. So remember that he's speculating. This is his theory. So he is, his whole bibliography, by the way, he's been writing about theories of ET and the history of what's called the plurality of worlds, because we're not the only ones who have thought about this, right? People from many, many years ago, thousands of years ago have thought about this. Sure. So he's, he's compiled this, this bibliography, which everybody should check out. All right. So with his idea, so he says that if we take where we are at now, and he's has, this is a essay that's called the postbiological, oh gosh, how can I forget what it's called? I've read it a million times. The postbiological universe, and he's rewritten this a couple times. Okay. So it's the most, the most recent iteration I've covered that in the others, but it's also online in his bibliography. So the postbiological universe revisited is the most recent one. And this is what he says, just take where we're at now and apply what he calls cultural evolution. Okay. So where we are at now is that we are a technological civilization. All right. And if you take our evolution and you look at it in large scales, instead of scales of like, you know, thousands of years or even millions of years, and you talk about like the age of the universe, he said, if there was a civilization like us or close to us, and they've been there now a million years old, he goes, what does their technology look like, right? Like look at our technology, how exponential it is just in the last five years. And this thing, thank you so much for magic. That's right. That's right. But it's not magic. It's technology. Right. All right. And so he says, let's just extrapolate what kind of life, what it will look like. And he wrote this in answer to the Fermi paradox, which is, you know, if there is extraterrestrial life, why, where is it? Right. And he says, we won't even recognize it because it's so far ahead of us. And it's most likely passed through AI and gotten to self-replicating technological beings that resemble deities because they can read your mind. Like all the things that deities can do. Right. Raise your mind. Disappear, appear. Right. The physics that we see. Well, they could do that. Right. They can do anything. The private gravity, gravity we talk about. So he suggests that post, he calls them postbiologicals because they've gone through the stage of biology. They've gotten into a technological or a biotechnological phase. And they've exceeded that. So to us, they're going to appear to be like deities. So that's his idea. That's his theory. And I think he's right. Arthur C. Clark, in late in his career, kind of got away from the mysticism, but he he believed telepathy was real and it was just technology we haven't explored yet. That's right. Yeah. So Marshall McLuhan believed that. Yeah. Arthur C. Clark believed that, you know, Teyard had some indication, you know, of that. And both, you know, Marshall McLuhan's an academic. Arthur C. Clark's just a super general amazing smart person, right? And yeah, both of them definitely believed in telepathy and believed that it would be augmented even by technology. Technology would make it even more of a real thing. And in fact, that looks like what's happening, right? So I have some friends who they are investors and technologies. And one of the technologies that a friend is invested in is this one that actually can read a person's mind. So can read the image in their mind and project it onto a computer screen. And she saw this happen. And this is technology that's real, right? So we're talking about like, I don't know if Neuralink does this, but I do know that there is technology that can like you can think of an image like she thought of her dog and then her dog appeared on screen like a dog that looked like. So that is reading our minds. It's reading our brain waves, right? And so forth. So that does happen. This is just the beginning of it. It's just the beginning. Yeah. Because she had to concentrate on her dog in that story, which makes sense to me. Where it becomes scary is when you no longer have agency over it. That's right. That's right. That's where it's like minority report type of thing. Yes. That's Philip K. Dick. That's right. Who's another Arthur C. Clark kind of figure? Speaking of Philip K. Dick and Arthur C. Clark, something we talked about just a little bit with childhood's end. In that book, when they saw the demons, they were seeing that demons were from the future. That's right. It's a cool part of the book. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So in most of the book, the author of the book will obviously Arthur C. Clark, but the protagonists of the book, they're having conversations about what the appearance of the demon, why it's, you know, it must have been from the past like a cultural memory that, you know, humankind had come into contact with these. So that was the assumption throughout most of the book. And then later you hear at the very near the end of the book, Karellen, who's the the demon, basically flips it and says, no, no, that was us from the future. Basically, you were pre-membring us. Right? It was like a pre-memory. So it was a memory from the future. And in the others you talk about, Eric Wargo's work. I mean, it was fun to see him mentioned in there because I'm a big fan of as he's been in here. He's changed my thinking on how time works. Yes. Do you subscribe to his time loop theory? Mostly. Yeah. Mostly do. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. So when you read, I love his books. So his books are really interesting because they're not only super theoretical, but they also have so many awesome examples. Yes. So they, you know, he's got these examples of things that couldn't have happened because they, they happened out of time, right? Like the thing I just told you about about Arthur C. Clark. Sure. So he has real examples from history. Well, there's guys drawing 9/11 with planes flying into them. That's right. That's right. Yeah. So he asks then why, you know, what kind of information is that? What kind of knowledge is that? And so he's talking about getting that knowledge through dreams and through, I guess it's like a hypogodic state. Yes. And so forth. And getting those in art, you know, which you're into that kind of state when you're doing art or writing and things like that. So he says that during those states of mind, these images come into our consciousness from the future because of the block universe. I think that's what he says. I don't want to get him wrong. Because you're viewers need to read his books, because they're really good, they're really accessible, and it will definitely blow your mind. It does. To boil down block universes, people talk about the grandfather paradox, can't go back in time. Meet your grandfather, kill your grandfather, you're never born, blah, blah, blah. And Eric says that doesn't work, because of the block universe. Well, why didn't I kill my grandfather in the answers, because you didn't? Yeah. And that's it? Yeah. That's the whole theory, because you didn't, because here you are. And that's it. So there is no other timelines, there's nothing like that. We know you didn't kill him, because here you are. It's just as simple as that. And that just kind of blew my mind. And he has so many examples of it. Yeah. Does the church have any theories or statements on time travel is not really the right word, but how time works. You know, Arthur C. Clark and the overmind said, this is how time and space work. You just don't know it yet. Yeah. This is just how it is. That's right. That's right. So the church is pro science, okay, even though it gets a bad rap, right? But they're open to scientific discoveries, and they're very open to that. So I would imagine that, you know, but they're doing it the way that academics do, which is in pure review, right? Right. So you don't just throw it as theory and say, that's true. You actually have it tested, and then people have to test it again, and you have to say, okay, it's a theory, and it seems to work this way. So they're slow that way. Like, you know, they're not jumping to any kind of like fast conclusion about anything, but definitely they be open to that. There is a, and I'm trying to think of his name. Oh, my goodness. He's a theologian that was actually talking about some of the, oh, a Mary. And basically saying that this is a theologian in writing in the early medieval time period. And he basically, his idea, and he's a very famous theologian, even though sadly I can't remember who it is. But I'll figure it out and let you know, okay. Welcome to Middle Age kid. So, okay, yeah. So, all right. So he's basically saying, Mary is what, this is before the idea of the immaculate conception of Mary. Okay, so it's not a dogma yet in the Middle Ages. And, but people are talking about it. And he said, I believe that Mary is immaculately conceived because it was already preordained. Like, you know, so he's already talking about like time not being linear. That just being from the beginning of time, she's this way before she's even born. Right. So yeah, so it's in the Catholic tradition. I guess that's true. The prophecy is just, is just recognition. Yeah, yeah. I have a couple of short ones before I let you go. Okay. Um, you tell the story. I mean, everyone wants to hear about Fatima. Oh, really? Yeah, of course. Everyone loves, loves the secrets of Fatima. I'd like to, if you could tell us about Fatima, but also how in the Seedon and Bay side, I think the church agreed that Fatima was something. Yes. The Seedon and Bay side, no, definitely not. How did, how did they decide which was real or not? Yeah. Okay. So the church's idea about Mary and apparitions. Yes. So there aren't very many approved Mary and apparitions. Right. Uh, the reason, well, first off, do you want me to talk about Fatima? Yes. Okay. So Fatima is, uh, Fatima, uh, Portugal. And it's, again, it's kind of like Garibondol. So it's a, it's a mountainous region where there's a group of people, a couple hundred people in this town. And there, there are, by the way, a couple of angel events that happen before the Virgin Mary comes along. Okay. So there are these children. They're playing. There's three of them. And an angel appears to them. And they're afraid, frankly, you know, what's that? And they don't even recognize really that as an angel. They're like, what is this? You know, and then it kind of talks to them. It says you need to get ready. You need to start praying. And they don't know why, but they're going to do it. And then, um, at some point they, they learned that the, the Virgin Mary is going to show up, right? And, but a question about whether or not she's the Virgin Mary arises, right? You know, who is this lady? Um, she shows up. She looks like a doll. She's beautiful and, uh, they experience kind of like a, a, a trance state while they're, they're in. By the way, the animals around them do too, which is really like the private gravity thing. Yeah. Okay. So the animals kind of end their exhausted for days after she shows up, right? And so she shows up and she tells them to pray and do fasting. And pretty much that's it, right? Uh, there's an indication that there's like a secret, though. And so this drives the, the parish priest crazy and the people then believe because they just don't think the children are lying. And they can tell that the children are seeing something because of the way the children are looking up the same thing. Like their eyes are focused on the same thing. And if you study Mary and apparitions, that's a feature of them is that a lot of times people like doctors and skeptics will do everything they can to try to get them out of the trance or to find out where their eyes are. You know, they're looking at the same thing. No one else can see it. Sometimes other people can see it. Okay. Sometimes people can see it. And so all these people show up. So it becomes like a zoo in the town. And so the priest is trying to get the kids to like chill out. You know, don't do this. He kidnaps them out. Doesn't kidnap them. But yeah, kidnaps them. Okay. Takes them away so that they can't make the date that the Virgin Mary is going to show up on. And the townspeople, you know, death threat him. And they're like, let those kids go. They show up. The townspeople show up. Some stuff happens there. You know, where the Virgin Mary is going to show up. But the kids aren't there. So there's a lot of drama. Then priests come from the Vatican. They're like, we need to figure out what the heck is going on. Right. And so they do, you know, they interview the kids and so forth. And they begin to see that it does seem like, you know, something's going on here. We don't know what. But it looks like she's in, you know, ask the lady what she wants. Ask the lady what her name is. They do all these things. They tell the kids. Okay. The kids ask that they give the answers to the priest. So the big-- About what year is this? What's that? About what year is this? Okay. This is 1917. Right. So there are, I believe, six apparitions each month on the 13th. The last one is October 13th. And I could be wrong on the 6th, but I don't think I am. And so at this point though, there are lots of people who are showing up, like probably 20,000, 30,000, 60,000. And so they, the Virgin Mary tells the kids, this last-- I'm going to show up and this time it's going to be a big deal. I'm going to show you some stuff and tell that to the people, right? So they do. They tell the people and between 70,000 to 100,000 people show up, right? At this place, devastating the town. Sure. You know, I mean, but a lot of people see something. It's called the Miracle of the Sun. And there's phenomena that happen. It looks really UFO-like, right? Circular spinning discs and things like that. And a lot of people see it. Some people don't see it. Some people see other things. They're all hanging out. They're all the people. And then rain comes. And they're all soaking wet. And then what happens is that after the Miracle of the Sun happens, everybody's super dry, like completely dry. And this is all photographed by people there who are, you know, there to do. They're not there to believe. They're there to document it. It's photographed. It's people from miles and miles away see something in the sky. And they're like, what's going on over there? There's some kind of solar event, right? And so people that are skeptics become believers. A lot of things happen. And this is now known as the Miracle of the Sun. So it takes the church a long time to say that, you know, they have to interview the kids. The two younger kids pass away. The Virgin Mary says that they would, like they're going to be taken early. The older one, Lucia or Lucia. She becomes a nun and she goes on to write her diary and so forth. And it's now one of the biggest pilgrimages in the world. And so that's Fatima. What was the, what were the secrets? Okay, so that's a good question. So there is continuous dialogue and debate about the secrets. Because the secrets, I think one of the secrets was, well, first the kids had a version. They got to see hell, which was horrific for them, and traumatic. And they said that humanity really needs to like start living in a better way, right? Because we're headed for a dark season, okay? And so it's in that way apocalyptic, not in the Greek word sense, but in the normal sense that people use that word. All right, so one of the secrets though is very debated. This is called the third secret of Fatima. And so what the children were told, you have the secret and give it to the Holy Father and open it in 1960, okay? Well, this was in 1917. So everybody goes along, you know, people are doing the best they can to be good Catholics and so forth. And they go to the Fatima and so forth. 1960 comes along and the Pope doesn't read the secret, right? Doesn't read it to people. So people are very upset like why? Why? What are you doing? It comes along to John Paul II. He becomes Pope. He has the secret. And again, nobody, he's not releasing the secret. Why? And then Pope Benedict says, well, okay, this is what the secret is about, but it's probably not the secret. I don't know, AJ. This is, this is just. This is in 2000. Yeah. When it was finally released. Yeah. And is it the secret? A lot of people don't believe it is. The secret is the holy father escaping the burning city, climbing over the corpses of his disciples. Yeah. It's a very end of the world type of, yes, and end of the Catholic Church type of. I think the official statement was it was an interpretation of John Paul's assassination in the '81. Yeah. That was what interpretation. Well, he was a huge, he was a huge Marian saint. Yes. I mean, yeah. He is a saint now. He is a huge Marian Pope. Definitely believer. I didn't, I don't really buy that from the church. It sounds like that's kind of a stretcher, that third secret was very specific. I don't know, but I do know that right now, Virgin Mary apparitions are global and even non-Catholic. So there was a big Marian apparition in Xitune, Egypt, and that was the church, not the Catholic church there, but the Catholic, I think it was the Catholic church. I couldn't be wrong. The Orthodox Church in that region, it was there of Marian apparition, right? And hundreds of thousands of people saw that and they have photographs of it. So she has now become kind of like a global phenomenon beyond Catholicism. Sure. So what made Neseed and Bayside different that the church said this is not, and people still go there, right? Oh, yes. And believe. Yeah. So, okay. So, is it New Jersey? Queens. Queens. Okay. And Neseed was constant. Yeah. Yeah. So, when Neseed happens in the 1950s and Bayside happens in the 1990s, I think, I can't remember. Sorry guys. So many Virgin Mary apparitions. Yeah. But I did have, I worked on these two apparitions with some graduate students and actually some former students were now professors. And we did some new research on it. And okay. So the Virgin Mary shows up to some women, both in each case, right? And at first it seems pretty normal for Marian apparitions. She doesn't say too much. She says, do the good thing, like fast, pray, right? Do the good works and whatnot. But then they get kind of like very, very, you wouldn't think the Virgin Mary would say these things, like very specific about who in the Catholic Church is going to hell. And you know, things like that. So that gives the indication to the Catholic hierarchy, no, these are not, you know. But then they get a lot of followers because there's push back against the Vatican Council, you know, what's happening to Vatican II. And that even started before the Vatican II, in the 1950s with Neseedha. Now, what's really weird though? This is weird. The last time we looked into this, one of my associates who were working on this together, uncovered Neseedha, the presence of people that look like men in black. Wow. Yeah. He was freaked out by it and he freaked me out too. So he basically uncovered it in the primary source material where she's talking about her experiences, this is the woman who Mary and Huff, and she's writing her diaries. And she said, and then these, now this is the 1950s, these men show up and they wear all black and they show up in dark cars without their headlights on. And they come and they tell me that I'm bad and that I need to stop doing this and they tell me that I'm a terrible person and, you know, they hang outside my window and they come at all hours and they harass me. Pretty strange. It is. Yeah. It makes me want to go look at the photos of Fatima to see who's in that crowd. Yeah, because we have a ton of photos. Right. Yeah. Do you believe those second two sightings? I mean, I think we all believe Fatima, right? I do. I do too. Yeah. I believe something paranormal is happening in those sightings, but I don't think that it's the same type of thing that's happening in Fatima or in Garibondol. I believe in Garibondol too, even though it's not approved. What about Guadalupe? Do you believe that one? Absolutely. I believe that one. Yeah. Absolutely. I believe it. I'll tell you why. Because first, the tillma is weird. If you look into the tillma, you know, the tillma is the image of our lady. That's a new Mexico. Do you study on that? And it's, I mean, our historians have studied it too. And a lot of them say, well, it's painting and stuff. Well, some parts of it are painted. But it's still very, very odd. And I think miraculous. But also, if you read, it's called the Nikon Mahapua. And this is the original text written in the bottle of the man who's Juan Diego who has this, the, the Virgin Mary sighting over this hill. And now, because I've read so many of these apparition accounts, and a lot of these people don't know each other. Like who's Juan Diego is going to know about any of this other stuff? No, he's not. It hasn't happened yet. He describes almost perfectly what these other children describe. And the way she talks, the way, you know, the, the sound of her voice is musical and that he's entranced and, you know, enchanted and all of this kind of very, very interesting, I think absolutely it happened. But I'm a believer. I'm not advocating. Okay. Even scientifically, it's hard to explain Guadalupe, unless you're out of touring, it's very hard to explain. Yeah, mysterious. Yes. Oh, you mentioned enchanted stuff. This is my last question for you. Then we'll talk about anything you think we missed. I think you wrote two sentences of two different books. I want to put them next to each other. Wrote that the UFO re-enchanted the modern world, it wrote legitimized transcendence for secular people. That's true. And you wrote that whatever is behind it may not mean us well. So, is, is reenchantment a gift or is it bait? Okay. Reenchantment is an opportunity. Okay. So what I mean by that is that there was the secularization hypothesis that Max Faber and a lot of really smart people from 1800s on thought that religion was going to go away because people were educated and becoming more rational. Completely wrong. It didn't work out, right? So people are way more religious now, even, you know, people are super religious and rationality has nothing to do with it, okay? Maybe a little bit, but you can be rational and religious. Lots of people are. All right. So this is the idea. This is what Max Faber then called the disenchantment of the world. That we were going to live in a world that was committed to, you know, in a sense, it's really happening. A lot of people became what are called, what is called secular, non-believers. They don't believe in anything. They can't see. They can't touch. Their tools identify, therefore it's disenchanted, but the UFO comes back. We have the government now saying that it's real. What does that mean? It means that we now live in a more enchanted world, like the world view is going to change. We live in an enchanted world. And then what does that mean? That gives us an opportunity to figure out how we're going to deal with this, like, you know, if there is non-human intelligence, how would we then deal with it? And I think that's where traditional religions give us a head start on, you know, understanding like that last quote that you had, you know, you picked out from, I think it's encounters. It may not mean as well. Yeah. I mean, like, you know, I haven't heard that quote from Chris Blisso that you told me just in, you know, this podcast. No, he said it in here. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, he says, don't do it if, you know, don't summon. Don't mess with it. If you don't know what you're doing. Yeah. That's what religious traditions say, too. I read them. Anything else you wanted to cover for our last year? Let's see. Oh, you've got your notepad. Yeah. But, you know, we pretty much covered every single thing. Okay. Plugged. Plugged. Books. Websites. We'll find you. Oh, yeah. Okay. So, my book, The Others, came out. It came out last week, which was July 28th. And since then, it's made The New York Times bestseller list, which I was so shocked and happy about. So. Is that your first one? New York Times? Yeah, definitely. Absolutely. So, if people are interested in what we've talked about, it's, it's a lot of it's in that book. Yes. Substack? Oh, yeah. So, I have a substack. It's a DW Pasolka at Substack. And I also have, you know, I'm on Instagram. I don't spend a lot of time on there. I mean, we just talked about why. So, I don't spend a lot of time on social media, but I do have a DW Pasolka X profile, Instagram profile, LinkedIn profile, Substack, I definitely like because it's writing and I'm okay with that, you know, and then what else? Yeah. I have a YouTube channel. Again, I don't utilize a lot, so that's where I'm at. Great. That episode. Thank you so much for being here. It's a lot of fun. Yeah. See you soon. Okay. Bye. Bye everybody. That was Diana Walsh Pasolka. We covered purgatory, Russian immortality cults, a blindfold. to trip to a UFO crash site, where their social media is the antichrist. The Saints I Check First, The Records Areal, Whole Towns Signs weren't testimony that Joseph of Coportino levitated during the Inquisition, when that could get you burned. In 2023, Yale historian Carlos Iyer published a whole book on these files, it's called They Flue, which is great. Now for father, he worked sonar on a coast guard cutter called The Bitter Sweat, when something enormous stopped the ship dead for four hours. That ship is real, and it was out in Alaskan waters out of Codiac, when he served. The four hours, well we have to take your dad's word for it, but a retired admiral is searching for the log, so ask me in a year. And the men in black, in a condemned apparition case from the 1950s in Wisconsin, the Anasteme found the visionary describing men in dark clothes and dark cars with no headlights, telling her to stop. UFO witnesses started describing the same men, that same decade, the stories never met. But there they are. Four nights before he sat down, I had a nightmare on bad warps, so I'm not a neutral judge. I can't tell you what this phenomenon is, and neither can Diana, that's why I trust her. The book is called The Others, it's already a New York Times bestseller, she's at dwfacilker.com this P-A-S-U-L-K-A, and everything I mentioned is linked below. All the guy whose name she will mention, Tim Taylor, the dragon, born in soon. Until next time, be safe, be kind, and know that you are appreciate. Inside the Bible said I was, I love my UFOs, and the paranormal bars as well as mirrors it. So I'm saying it like I should, but then another conspiracy theory becomes the truth with my friends, and it never ends, I know it never ends. I fear the crap that I got stuck inside my home, with them chaos truck, I've been only to a whare, did Stanley Kuverid fake the moon landing alone, on a film set, I wore the shadow of the old man, the rust-well aliens just fought the smiling man, and I'm told, and his name was cold. I can't believe, I'm cancer with the fish, it had no fish, I'm thirsty, they're not sweet, they jade too, and when I die, I'm going off to the night, all I ever wanted was to just hear the truth. I'm going off to the night. The mouth man's side and the solar storm still come to a god, the city under ground. The mysterious number of stations, planets are phoned to, project stockade, and what the dark watchers found, and in a simulation, don't you worry though, the black night's at a light, it told me so, I can't believe, I'm cancer with the fish, it had no fish, I'm thirsty, they're not sweet, they jade too, and when I die, I'm going off to the night, all I ever wanted was to just hear the truth, so, when I die, I'm going off to the night. The fish, I'm thirsty, they're not sweet, they jade too, and when I die, I'm going off to the night, all I ever wanted was to just hear the truth, so, when I die, I'm going off to the night. The fish, I'm thirsty, they're not sweet, they jade too, and when I die, I'm going off to the night. The fish, I'm thirsty, they're not sweet, they jade too, and when I die, I'm going off to the

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Diana Walsh Peselka, a religious studies professor, explores near-death experiences and religious beliefs through archival research, including Vatican and Russian Cosmism archives.
  2. She finds recurring patterns in near-death experiences across cultures, such as children’s accounts and medieval "other world journeys," including descriptions of purgatory and heavenly travel.
  3. The Catholic concept of purgatory was downplayed during Vatican II but is experiencing a revival among younger Catholics, especially in light of renewed interest in spiritual experiences.
  4. Historical figures like Plato, Dante, and Socrates show early connections between religious visions, the afterlife, and technology, suggesting ancient philosophical foundations for modern UFO and spiritual beliefs.
  5. Russian Cosmism, led by Nikolai Fedorov, proposes resurrecting the dead through space travel as a moral imperative, blending Christian esotericism with technological ambition.
  6. Research into UFOs and saints, such as Marie of Agrida, reveals possible overlaps between reported levitations, indigenous memories, and historical records in the American Southwest.
  7. Academic inquiry into religious phenomena is open-minded, acknowledging that unexplained experiences—like past lives or flying saints—deserve serious study even if not universally accepted.
  8. The intersection of religion, technology, and space exploration continues to inspire new belief systems, with emerging narratives and even potential "Bibles" forming around UFO-related spirituality.

Summary:

Diana Walsh Peselka, a religious studies professor, explores the intersection of religion, death, and the supernatural through extensive archival research. Her work reveals consistent patterns in near-death experiences across cultures, from medieval Catholic "other world journeys" to children’s accounts of life after death. She examines how Catholic doctrine, particularly purgatory, was downplayed during Vatican II but is now gaining renewed attention among younger believers.

Drawing on ancient texts like Plato’s *Republic* and Dante’s *Divine Comedy*, she finds deep philosophical roots in ideas of the afterlife and spiritual travel. Her research also extends to Russian Cosmism, a 19th-century movement that envisioned resurrecting the dead through space technology as a moral duty. She highlights the story of Marie of Agrida, a 16th-century nun who allegedly flew across the globe on angelic wings, with records linking her to indigenous communities in the American Southwest.

These stories, while controversial, demonstrate how spiritual experiences are embedded in historical and cultural memory. Peselka emphasizes that religious studies is not about promoting belief, but about critically examining data and experiences that challenge traditional frameworks. Her work shows how modern technological advances—like AI and space exploration—resonate with ancient philosophical questions about consciousness, memory, and the afterlife.

Ultimately, she advocates for an open, evidence-based approach to spiritual phenomena, recognizing that such experiences, though unproven, remain deeply human and culturally significant.

FAQs

McDonald's has launched several new drinks, including the strawberry watermelon refresher, mango pineapple refresher with popping boba, and the Sprite Berry Blast with berry flavors and cold foam.

Yes, the refreshers and other new drinks at McDonald's contain caffeine.

The Russian Cosmist Movement, founded by Nikolai Fedorov, proposed that humanity should become space-faring and resurrect all the dead as a moral imperative, aiming to create an immortal future for humanity.

She became interested after studying religious texts and archives, particularly in the 1800s, where she found writings about children who reported seeing the dead or experiencing life reviews after death.

No, reincarnation is not compatible with Catholicism, which is based on a fixed interpretation of biblical texts and the doctrine of purgatory and heaven.

Yes, she visited the Vatican archives and found records related to saints, including the story of Marie of Agrida, who reportedly traveled across the globe on angelic wings and taught indigenous communities in the American Southwest.

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