Inquiry with Kelly Chase - [The UFO Rabbit Hole] Ep 16: The Sky Calls To Us: The Occult Origins Of The Space Race

Episode Date: January 20, 2023

In this episode, we’re discussing one of the most profound transitions in human history–that of our evolution from a terrestrial species to a spacefaring one. And as we examine the history and origins of the space programs in both the United States and the Soviet Union, we discover one of the most remarkable and baffling stories ever told, hiding in plain sight. To put it simply, many of the fathers of modern space flight were occultists who believed themselves to be in direct communication with non-human intelligences who were helping to guide their work. While their claims sound too extraordinary to even be considered, the startling breadth and innovation of the work that they claim sprang for this paranormal communication makes it difficult not to wonder if perhaps there might have been something to those claims.We’ll discuss the work of Jack Parsons, an intrepid young rocket scientist and occultist who palled around with the likes of Aleister Crowley, L. Ron Hubbard, and Howard Hughes, whose remarkable life was cut short by his mysterious death at 37. And we’ll also explore the work of Russian Cosmists like Konstantine Tsiolkovsky whose prophetic work seemingly foretold the intricate details of space flight decades before Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. And once again, we’ll look at Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka’s phenomenal book American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology clues to whether these occult practices might still be in use among top members of the space program today. And the answers are, frankly, shocking. In this episode we’ll begin to ask some of the most important questions that will follow us on our journey forward:What is the occult? What does the occult have to do with UFOs? How is it that so many “impossible” things seem to have a basis in reality? And what do we do when our models of reality stop working?Welcome back to The UFO Rabbit Hole.NEW Class from Dr. James MaddenUnidentified Flying Hyperobject: UFOs, Philosophy, and the End of the WorldFour-week online class via ZoomWednesdays, March 27 – April 24 (skips April 10), 20247 – 9 pm ETLearn More About the ClassSign Up NowGET THE EPISODE BRIEFGET AMERICAN COSMIC BY DIANA WALSH PASULKAREAD THE 2022 UFO REPORT - Office of the Director of National IntelligenceBECOME A PATRONGET THE BOOKGet a SIGNED COPYGet it on AmazonFOLLOWWebsiteTwitterFacebookMUSICTheme: Cabinet of Curiosities by Shaun FrearsonMusic Break: "Hymn to Pan" by Son of a PriestBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-ufo-rabbit-hole-podcast--5746035/support. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How many discounts does USAA auto insurance offer? Too many to say here. Multi-vehicle discount. Safe driver discount. New vehicle discount. Storage discount. How many discounts will you stack up? Tap the banner or visit usa.com slash auto discounts. Restrictions apply. Welcome back to the UFO Rabbit Hole podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Chase. Today, we turn our attention to examine what may be the most pivotal and triumphant moment in human history. Our transition from a terrestrial species to a space-faring one. The importance of that transition is impossible to overstate.

In fact, I sometimes wonder if those of us who don't remember a time before humans first ventured into space can truly grasp the profundity of that accomplishment. For the first 3.7 billion years that life has existed on this planet, humans are, we assume, the only species that has ever managed to leave it. And I think that in many ways, we've only just barely begun to grapple with the implications of that achievement. For most of us, space is still just an idea. It's an abstraction. But as we discussed in the last episode, for the intrepid men and women who have made that journey, the impact that space travel has on humans seems to be profound and long-lasting. On October 13, 2021, William Shatner, a man who

was certainly spent the better part of his life immersed in the concept of human space travel, got to experience the reality of space for the first time aboard a Blue Origin space. ship. Upon returning to Earth, Shatner was visibly shaken. I hope I never recover from this, he said through tears. I hope I maintain what I feel now. I don't want to lose it. There seems to be something almost mystical about humanity's relationship to space. The ability to not just travel into space, but to turn around and look back at our fragile planet hanging serenely in a near infinite black vacuum has already profoundly changed how we see ourselves and our place in the cosmos. Astronauts have coined the term the overview effect to describe the profound feeling of interconnectedness

that results from looking down at the Earth from space. Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell explained the transcendent experience that he had while in space like this. Quote, The biggest joy was on the way home. In my cockpit window, every two minutes, I saw the Earth, the moon and the sun, the whole 360-degree panorama of the heavens. And that was a powerful, overwhelming experience. And suddenly, I realized that the molecules of my body and the molecules of the spacecraft and the molecules in the body of my partners were prototyped, manufactured in some ancient generation of stars. And there was an overwhelming sense of oneness and connectedness. It wasn't just them and us. It was, that's me. It's all of it. It's one thing.

And it was accompanied by an ecstasy, a sense of, oh my God, wow, yes, an insight, an epiphany, end quote. And this view of the Earth doesn't just change our awareness of our connection to each other, but to the greater cosmos as well. The ability to travel beyond our own planet allows us to dream of a greater destiny for humanity, and it offers us a shot at the kind of immortality that only beings who aren't dependent on any one home world could ever hope to enjoy. So perhaps it's not at all surprising that space can inspire the sort of awe and worshipful wonder that we tend to associate with the divine. And yet, when we look at the strange history of humanity's journey to space,

and the even stranger beliefs of the figure's critical to getting us there, there seems to be something more at play than just our transformative awe at the vastness of creation. Because, listen, there is really no non-crazy-sounding way to say this, so I'm just going to go for it. The reality is that when we look back at the history of the early space programs in the United States and the Soviet Union, many of the scientists who were responsible for the critical breakthroughs that made space travel possible were occultists who believed themselves to be in telepathic communication with non-human intelligent beings who were guiding their work. Yeah, I know. It's a lot. It sounds so outrageous that it would be easy to dismiss the whole thing is some crazy fringe theory. except that these people existed, their beliefs are well documented, and so are the astonishing

inventions and innovations that came from their alleged contact with these beings. And although NASA has very clearly and intentionally distanced itself from this chapter in its history, there is evidence that these same sorts of occult practices continue to exist at the highest levels of the space program among the people responsible for their most bleeding edge breakthroughs. But before we dive into any of that, I think it's important that we first take a moment to talk about what the occult actually is. From the very beginning of my research into this topic, it became clear to me that the UFO phenomenon was somehow inextricably linked to the occult. Wherever you find references to one, you naturally find references to the other.

And yet, although this connection was self-evident, I'll admit that it took me quite a while to put my finger on exactly what that connection is. And even now, I feel like I'm only just beginning to scratch the surface. I think that there are a few reasons why the concept of the occult is so hard to pin down, and it's worth taking the time to explore them so that we can hopefully arrive at a working definition of the occult that will allow us to have a more nuanced understanding of the strange stories regarding the origins of human spaceflight that are to follow. One of the most significant factors that contributes to the confusion around what the occult is, lies in the fact that it has been aggressively stigmatized in our culture.

At best, dabbling in the occult is generally seen as an aesthetic choice, a personal branding move that communicates something distinct, and many would argue distinctly antisocial about oneself. At worst, our society regards the occult as an intentional alignment with evil forces. It brings to mind devil worship, blood drinking, and other ritualized horrors. And from the satanic panic of the 1980s, through to the modern-day hysterics of the QAnon crowd, it's clear that this fear of the occult and its practitioners is alive and well,

even in our aggressively scientific age. And yes, some of the spookier things that we associate with the occult are relevant to actual occult practices. However, these things are hardly representative of the occult as a whole. The realm of the occult comprises a much more nuanced and varied tapestry of traditions, including the ancient mystery schools, witchcraft, pagan, spiritualism, astrology, alchemy, secret societies like the Freemasons, New Age spirituality, and more. When you begin to get a grasp on how vast the world of the occult really is, it becomes obvious that pigeonholing the occult as any one set of beliefs or practices simply doesn't work.

So what then, if anything, is the connective thread that ties all of these disparate traditions and practices together? What is the occult? To really begin to grapple, not just with the content of this episode, but with many of the other major themes moving forward, we need to have a more mature and nuanced understanding of what the occult actually is. In a talk on his book, Occult America, lauded occult writer Mitch Horowitz, gave what I think is a pretty solid working definition of the occult. According to Horowitz, the occult is the belief that there is an invisible dimension to life whose effects can be felt on us and through us, and this invisible dimension can be searched for outside of any individual congregation or religion or dogma. He's basically saying that

the occult has two primary defining characteristics. First, you have the belief in dimensions and forces that exist beyond the physical realm and that we have the ability to interact with, influence, and in some cases even harness these forces. The second part is that this invisible dimension can be accessed directly. You don't need an intermediary in the form of religious teachings or leaders to interact with it. This is a useful definition because it both gives us a definition of what the occult is and also what it is not, namely it's not religion. And the differences between the occult and religion are important for us to understand. Let's start by looking at Western religious traditions. This is an oversimplification,

and there are certainly exceptions, but in general, the focus of Western religious traditions is salvation. Humans are believed to be inherently flawed beings that must be delivered from the consequences of those flaws by divine intervention. And though it is incumbent upon humans to seek salvation, in a real sense, they can never truly earn it, because no human can ever truly be worthy, only saved through the grace of God. By contrast, in occult traditions, and again, this is a bit of an oversimplification, the focus isn't on salvation, but ascension. In this model, the human being doesn't need to be saved by God, but rather only needs to look inward to find the spark of the divine within. By coming to greater knowledge of one's true nature, a person comes to greater knowledge of

reality as a whole. The result is some version of ascension or enlightenment in which the person becomes a more perfected or higher version of themselves. Or to simplify it even further, in religion, the mechanism of salvation is exterior to the person. In the occult, the mechanism of ascension is interior to the person. Looking at it in this way can help us understand not just what the occult is, but also why it has been so stigmatized throughout history. I want to be really clear that I'm not making any claims or judgments about the reality of any particular set of religious or occult beliefs. To be honest, I don't know what I believe at this point, and even if I did, it's antithetical to everything I believe to push my beliefs on you. But here's a quick thought experiment. Let's say that you

were the power-hungry type who wanted to more easily govern and control large groups of people. Which set of beliefs, would you rather those people subscribe to? Would you rather that they believe that they were fundamentally flawed and can only potentially be saved through elaborate rules, supplications, and hierarchies? Or would you rather the people believe that they are powerful creative agents, each of whom carries the spark of the divine within them? Once again, I'm not making a claim either way on the reality of either belief system, but it's at least important to recognize that there might be ulterior motives for the aggressive stigmatization of occult beliefs. And I also, also think that it's important to point out that, though there seem to be clear cultural battle lines

drawn between traditional religion and the occult, the distinction between the two isn't always so black and white in our daily lives. Occult and pagan practices are often assimilated into religious practices, and many occultists are not above indulging in religiosity. For example, I was raised in the Catholic tradition. The culmination of the Catholic Mass involves a ritual in which bread and wine are believed to be transformed into the literal body and blood of Jesus Christ. The process by which this is done is virtually indistinguishable from ritual magic. It would be impossible to claim otherwise. And yet, it wouldn't be fair or accurate to refer to a Catholic priest as an occultist.

When occult and religious traditions collide, one subsumes the other in a way that makes it impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. So while I think it's important to understand the differences between religion and the occult, there is an extent to which we need to be able to collapse those two relatively arbitrary labels in order to step back and look at the bigger picture. At the end of the day, the occult and traditional religions are two sides of the same coin. They are each attempts to grapple with the most profound and mysterious elements of the human experience. And though we try to categorize them and wrap them up in neat little boxes, the reality is, when it comes to approaching the mystical, there are as many paths as there are

people to walk them. And all of this brings us back to our original question, which is, what does the occult have to do with UFOs? And all be honest, I'm still not entirely sure how to answer that question. It's easy to point out the various places where these two topics overlap, but when you zoom out and try to look at the whole thing to establish any kind of a coherent narrative explaining their relationship to one another, there are no easy answers. There are some clear commonalities, however, and those are worth exploring. One of the things that they have in common is liminality.

Perhaps it's not surprising that the concept of liminality has been having a bit of a moment online over the last few years. Liminality refers to the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a right of passage. Like entering into the eighth month of a pandemic lockdown, liminality is all about standing on the threshold of something uncertain after having gone through something harrowing. And liminality is something that you find woven throughout both the occult and accounts of the UFO phenomenon. First of all, the communities that are most drawn to both of these things have an aspect of liminality themselves. They tend to be rebels, outsiders, weirdos, people who exist somewhat on the fringes outside of the established structure. And both deal with

forces, beings, and events that can seem to be at once there and not there, real and not real. And the ways and places in which these forces make themselves known have a liminality about them as well. For example, both experiencers and occultists might use a trance state to contact a higher being, and anomalous experiences are often associated with a hypnagogic state between dreaming and waking. Everywhere you look with regard to both of these topics, you find the same themes, and again of boundaries, thresholds, fringe areas, and spaces in between, being entangled with UFO and paranormal phenomena. And while this might seem vague and a bit arbitrary at first blush, as we'll explore in our next few episodes, there are several emerging theories of reality

that might help to explain why this is the case. Another commonality is that both UFOs and the occult deal with hidden mysteries and the concept of ascension in one form or another. In the a cult, these mysteries are conveyed by divine teachers, and the student upon understanding these teachings, is able to ascend. And in the UFO world, the existence of technology that exists in a paradigm so far beyond our own suggests the existence of a higher intelligence, a higher intelligence that could conceivably share their knowledge with us. And through that knowledge, we have the potential to become something more than simply human, but a truly space-faring species. And symbolically, the idea of being taken up into a craft in the sky has deep parallels to

ascension stories and myths that can be found throughout sacred texts of the past. Another major overlap between UFOs and the occult is the emphasis on sci phenomena, which includes things like extrasensory perception, telepathy, precognition, and psychokinesis. In the case of the occult, many occult practices are aimed at harnessing various types of sci phenomena to do things like influencing how events unfold, gaining access to non-local intelligence and information, and communicating with non-human intelligences. And in the case of UFOs, we see many references to this kind of side phenomena as well. Many people who report experiencing contact with these craft and the beings associated with them say that the communication

that they received was entirely telepathic. And those who seek to proactively establish contact with UFOs through human-initiated contact events or heist, use techniques like meditation, trans-states, and visualization that are similar to occult practices aimed at the same types of outcomes. And while this all might sound like a bunch of woo-woo nonsense, and I'll confess that it did to me when I first started down this path, there is considerable and surprising evidence to suggest that psi phenomena aren't just real, but they seem to represent a latent ability that we all have. I know that one might be a tough pill to swallow. We'll dive into it a lot more in the next episode, but for now, just put that one on the shelf and we'll get back to it.

Another thing that UFOs and the occult have in common is that, if real, both UFOs and certain occult practices have pretty stunning implications for the nature of our reality. In fact, if anything, I think that alone is enough to consider that UFOs in the occult might be related in some meaningful way. Put simply, the paradigm shift needed for us to adequately explain all of the weirdness associated with UFOs is so massive that it's likely to explain a whole bunch of other strange phenomena as well. Maybe it'll give us some insight into the occult and side phenomena, or maybe we'll find that they're all manifestations of the same thing.

In the next episode, we'll get into theories of reality that could potentially explain how that could be. And finally, one of the most notable things that the UFO phenomena and certain occult and sci phenomena have in common is that, though the government has both privately and publicly led the aggressive stigmatization of both, it's pretty clear that the government believes this stuff is real. Just last week, on January 12, 2023, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released its long overdue report on UAPs. In this report, it says that the U.S. government has received over 350 reports of UFO sighting since March 2021,

half of which remain unexplained. And it recommends that further resources be deployed to study this potential national security threat. If you haven't read that report yet, I'll have it linked in the episode description. And as we'll discuss more in the next episode, behind closed doors, the government has also invested considerable resources into researching and leveraging the kind of sci phenomena that many would associate with the occult, including remote viewing and astral projection. And if you ask me, that alone makes it work.

worthwhile to consider all of these things that we might once have scoffed at a little bit more closely. Because if there is something that they are trying this hard to keep us from exploring while secretly spending decades studying it themselves, I mean, don't you want to know why? There's a much more interesting story to be told here, and while it's clear that many of the most profound secrets about these strange phenomena remain concealed from us, significant and startling parts of this story are hiding in plain sight. And one such story, can be found in the occult origins of the space race. When it comes to the story of how humanity first made its way to the stars,

there's the story that we're told in the history books, and then there's the truth. It's often this way with history, which is not to imply some kind of a conspiracy. I only mean to say this. History is not a recounting of the facts of what happened in the past. History is an interpretation of what happened in the past, based on the data that is available,

and told through the lens of the past, dominant culture of the day. The reality of the past is far too vast, nuanced, and intrinsically unknowable to ever truly be captured. That's not what history is. Rather, history is a story that is created when we pull forward various narrative threads from the past and frame them in such a way as to extract meaning. For example, the story of how the Cold War provided the fuel for the space race as two superpowers battled for global dominance? That's true. And the story of the story of the Cold War provided the fuel for the space race as two superpowers battled for global dominance? That's true. And the story of how the collective will of the American people to go to the moon, as President Kennedy famously said, not because it is easy, but because

it is hard, provided the impetus for the moon landing humanity's greatest achievement to date. That's true, too, or as true as history ever is. But there is another very different story that can be told that is also true. Instead of being a story about collective will, this is a story about individual madness. Instead of the triumph of reason and scientific endeavor, it's a tale that shreds the very fabric of consensus reality, leaving us on moored and without a clear foundation. As the sociologist William Bainbridge observed, not the public will, but private fanaticism drove men to the moon. And this story is just as true as the other. Scattered throughout the narrative of the early space race loom the figures of men whose pursuit of the mechanisms of spaceflight led them to the very

brink of madness, some of them never to return. And it seems that under every rock, we find more evidence of deep ties between humanity's early space programs and strange occult beliefs and practices. That's the story that I want to tell. And like so much of the lore involving high strangeness from the mid-20th century, this story unfortunately has its roots in Nazi Germany. In episode 12, we did a deep dive into the lore surrounding Nazi involvement with the occult and the possibility that it might have led to breakthroughs in secret technology. If you haven't listened to that one yet, I highly recommend that you do to get the full context here. To make a long story short, near the end of World War II, the Nazis managed to make

some pretty significant advances in rocket technology. In 1942, led by a brilliant young scientist named Werner von Braun, Germany developed the world's first ballistic missile, the V2. With a range of 200 miles, the V2 could travel at 3,500 miles per hour while packing a 2,200-pound warhead. The V2 far surpassed anything that the United States or the Soviets had in their arsenals at the time. And had it been rolled out a little sooner, it very easily could have turned the tide of the war. And to this day, rumors persist about how exactly the Nazis managed to continually beat the United States and the Soviet Union to the punch on the development of critical new technologies. And all of these rumors center on the involvement

of UFOs and the occult. Some have speculated that Germany had their own UFO crash a few years before Roswell, from which they were able to back engineer several technological breakthroughs. Others believe that the infamous Nazi search for ancient treasure and mythological relics may have led them to discover lost technology and esoteric knowledge that gave them the advantage. and still others believe that these breakthroughs were channeled from non-human entities who were guiding the Nazi scientists. As we discussed in detail in episode 12, it's hard to know if any of that could possibly be true, but what isn't in doubt is that the occult was central to Nazi ideology. And so Nazi scientists like Werner von Braun would have been steeped in this culture

and would have had to at least given the outward appearance of having subscribed to it. Whether that means that the occult had anything tangible to do with their scientific breakthroughs, though, is really impossible to know. But it's important to be aware of this occult influence because of what happened next. As World War II drew to a close, the seeds of another conflict that would come to define the geopolitical landscape for the next four decades had already been planted and were beginning to sprout. And that conflict was the Cold War. Although the U.S. and the Soviet Union had fought alongside one another, and the war as part of the allied powers, which also included Great Britain, by the time the war had reached its conclusion, tensions between the two nations were at an all-time high.

In the crucible of war, both nations had been forged into formidable global superpowers, and their diametrically opposed ideologies fed the flames of a growing rivalry. At stake was nothing less than global domination, and so as both nations began the process of picking over the bones of what had been Germany's massive war machine. Both nations were not so secretly scrambling to claim the experts and resources that were left behind for their own, knowing that if they didn't, those people and resources would end up in the hands of their rival. Of particular interest in both countries were Nazi scientists, engineers, and technicians with specialized knowledge,

especially those who had been involved in the rocketry program that had developed the V2. And despite the fact that most of these scientists, scientists, including von Braun, were high-ranking SS officers and card-carrying members of the Nazi Party. A plan was made by the United States government to overlook all of that in return for them coming to the U.S. to continue their work in the employ of the government. This classified program, codenamed Operation Paperclip, brought more than 1,600 German scientists and engineers to the United States between 1945 and 1959. For their part, the Soviet Union responded by relocating more than 2,200 German specialists during one night on October 22, 1946. And just like that,

the space race between the United States and the Soviet Union that came to define the early decades of the Cold War had begun. If you find it shocking and disturbing that the United States gave refuge to know Nazis and war criminals who then went on to form the foundation of our space program, you aren't alone. It's hard to deny that this is one of the darkest chapters in our history. It's particularly disturbing when you recognize that von Braun ended up becoming something of an American hero. In 1960, von Braun started working at NASA, where he served as director of the newly formed Marshall Space Flight Center. And as the chief architect of the Saturn 5 super heavy lift launch vehicle that propelled the Apollo spacecraft to the moon. In 1967, von Braun was inducted into

the National Academy of Engineering, and in 1975, he received the National Medal of Science. Further, he is remembered as both the father of space travel and the father of the American Lunar Program, and he appeared in family-friendly Disney films talking about space and the moon landing. Now, granted, there are those who have argued that von Braun only joined the Nazi party because he was forced, and that if he hadn't joined, he likely would have been killed. They argue that he was just a scientist who was too caught up in his work to involve himself much in the machinations of politics and war. However, as you'll recall from episode 12, von Braun was the head of the German rocketry program, which birthed the V2. And this program

utilized the brutal forced labor of countless prisoners of the concentration camps, at least 10,000 of which died from illness, beatings, and starvation. And yet, because of his strategic significance in the space race, the United States government was willing to overlook his clear and unambiguous involvement in torture, slavery, and genocide. In 1963, President Truman, under whose leadership operation paperclip was carried out, recalled that he was not in the least reluctant to approve the program because, in his own words, quote, this had to be done and was done. A dark chapter indeed. And as we look ahead to all of the occult strangeness that would come to define the early space programs of the United States and the Soviet Union, it would be easy to point to this chapter as the root cause. But the truth is much more complicated.

The reality is that it wasn't just the German rocketry program that had ties to the occult. Despite having drastically different cultural backgrounds and contexts, some of the brightest minds and greatest inventors in both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, without whose work we almost certainly wouldn't have made it to the moon, were deeply involved in various forms of occult practice. And for many of them, these practices were integral to their work. A perfect example of this could be found in a man who was actually a childhood pen pal of von Braun's, a man by the name of Jack Whiteside Parsons. When both men were teenagers in the 1920s, the idea of space travel was a distant fantasy relegated to the world

of science fiction novels. Von Braun and Parsons already had a deep interest in the subject, which led them to strike up a long-distance friendship, which lasted for years. Talking for hours on the phone, they exchanged ideas, tips, and notes from experiments on everything from explosions to home-engineered rocket fuel tests. However, in 1932, when Von Braun began working for the German army just before the country fell under Nazi rule, Parsons quickly severed ties. Like von Braun, Parsons' childhood interest in rocketry and space travel followed him into adulthood. It was a passion that would define his life and ultimately also his death. And like von Braun, without Parsons' contributions to the field,

humanity would not have been able to make it to the moon. So why have so few people heard of this near-forgotten forefather of the space program? And why has NASA seemingly sought to erase his legacy? The answer lies in a bizarre and somehow, uniquely American tale, one born in the affluent outskirts of mid-century Los Angeles, and steeped in a heady mix of sex, drugs, rockets, and of course, the occult. Though when most people think of a rocket scientist, it probably brings to mind mental images of a brilliant but meek type shuffling around in a lab coat, Jack Parsons could not have been more the opposite. Rather than a life

of quiet study, Parsons' life was one of extremes, and hedonism. I could easily write an entire book just on Parsons and his wild shenanigans, but luckily someone already has. The phenomenal book, Strange Angel, the otherworldly life of rocket scientist John Whiteside Parsons by George Pendle, does a great job exploring the many strange tales involving this controversial and enigmatic character if you'd like to dive into those further. I couldn't possibly include them all in this episode, but here are some highlights to give you a taste of what kind of a guy Jack Parsons was. Parsons was born into a wealthy family and spent his childhood in Pasadena. From a young age, he had a voracious interest in science

fiction, which quickly developed into an interest in rocketry, and he began doing amateur rocket experiments with friends from school. But for Parsons, this was much more than just the passing fascination of a schoolboy blowing up bottle rockets in the park. It was the seed of a lifelong passion. Unfortunately for Parsons, when the Great Depression hit, his family lost most of their fortune. The financial hardship forced him to drop out of Pasadena Junior College and Stanford University before completing his degree. However, the young rocket scientist was not to be deterred by lack of access to formal education and continued the rigorous pursuit of his studies and experiments. In 1934, along with friends Edward S. Foreman and Frank Molina, he formed the Caltech-affiliated

Guggenheim Aeronautical Laboratory or Galsett, Rocket Research Group, and by 1939, the Galsit Group gained funding from the National Academy of Sciences to work on jet-assisted takeoff for the U.S. military. But just as his professional career was beginning to take off, Parsons began to turn his attention to new and even more exotic interests. Following a brief flirtation with Marxism in 1939, Parsons converted to Thelima, a new religious movement founded by the English occultist, Alistair Crowley. Crowley's name looms large as one of the most notorious and influential in 20th century occultism.

Originally a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an occult secret society in the 19th and 20th centuries, Crowley claimed to have channeled the text that would become the foundation of Thelima while on his honeymoon in Cairo with his first wife Rose in 1904. The honeymoon started, as most honeymoons do, with the bride and groom, a woman. arriving in Egypt and fraudulently claiming to be a prince and princess. The newly self-minted royals rented an apartment where they proceeded to set up a temple room where Crowley began to perform rituals to invoke Egyptian deities. During these rituals, Rose was said to have become delirious and repeatedly told Crowley, they're waiting for you. According to Crowley's later accounts,

a few days later on April 8, 1904, he heard a disembodied voice claiming to be a messenger of the Egyptian God Horace, whose name was Iwas. The voice spoke to Crowley for three days, as Crowley feverishly copied down everything that it told him, resulting in the text that became known as the book of the law. This book, and the philosophy that it espoused, became the cornerstone of Crowley's religion, Philema. The book proclaimed that humanity was entering a new eon, and that Crowley would serve as its prophet. It stated that a supreme moral law was to be introduced in this eon, which was embodied in the words, Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.

Now, even if you aren't familiar with Crowley, just based on what I've already told you, you're probably getting the sense that this phrase is representative of an anarchistic and even antisocial worldview, in which one is encouraged to do basically whatever one wants, regardless of the consequences. And as we'll see, Crowley and many of his followers,

including Jack Parsons, certainly seemed to live by that axiom. Crowley was popularly known as the wickedest man in the world in his time, and it was an image that he both earned and embraced with exuberance. However, in fairness, I think it's important to point out that that isn't exactly how it's presented in the book of the law. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. Isn't necessarily meant to imply that you should do whatever you want. Rather, it is referring to the the the themic concept of the true will, which is entirely distinct from the wants and desires of the east. ego. One's true will can be thought of as one's true purpose or calling in life. So do what thou wilt

isn't a call for hedonism, but rather to move oneself into alignment with one's true essence and purpose. For Crowley, however, hedonism seemed to be part and parcel of his approach to the occult, and his drive to be unfettered by rules and limitations seem to extend even to his own religious movement. Crowley wasn't even initially sure what to do with the book of the law and was said to have often felt resentment for it. And although the texts that he claimed to have channeled commanded him to do a series of tasks, including stealing a particular Egyptian artifact from a museum, buying and fortifying his own island, and translating the book of the law into all of the world's languages, he ignored all of these mandates. And certainly hedonism had come to be the center of Crowley's practice

at the time that he came into contact with Jack Parsons. Parsons first attended a Gnostic Mass in 1939 and became fascinated with the Lima. He immersed himself in Crowley's work and became convinced that Phthalmic magic was real and that it was a force that could be explained through quantum mechanics. By 1941, Jack and his wife, Helen Northrop, joined the famed Agape Lodge, which was the Californian branch of the Phthalamite Ordo Templei Orientus, or Ote. and in 1942, Alastair Crowley, who publicly recognized Jack Parsons as being one of the most important of his followers and a possible successor, pushed for Parsons to become leader of the lodge, replacing its former leader, Wilfred Talbot Smith. Parsons began to run the lodge from his mansion on Orange Grove Boulevard in Pasadena, kicking off an absolutely wild series of events. Parsons promptly began a sexual relationship with his wife Helen's 17-year-old sister Sarah,

who then declared herself to be Parsons' new wife. Devastated by this news, Helen sought comfort with the Agape Lodge's former leader, Wilfred Talbot Smith. The four of them remarkably remained friends and moved into Parsons' mansion together with a handful of other dedicated followers. Parsons' home became a hub of bizarre and frenetic activity. At once, a commune, an occult lodge, a chemical laboratory, and a salon for some of the top science fiction writers of the day, Daily Life on Orange Grove Boulevard was chaotic to say the least. And his affluent Pasadena neighbors, as I'm sure you can imagine, were not amused.

After multiple allegations of the home being the site of a black magic cult, allegations which were, to be fair, more or less true, both the Pasadena Police Department and the FBI opened investigations into the lodge. Although they failed to find evidence that the lodge was a threat to national security, the mansion was still undoubtedly the sight of all manner of immoral and illegal activity. For his part, Parsons at this point had fallen deep into a well of debauchery and self-destruction. Having long been a heavy user of alcohol and marijuana, he had begun to habitually use cocaine, amphetamines, peyote, mescaline, and opiates as well.

Unsurprisingly, in light of his extracurricular activities, Parsons' work began to suffer, and he began to show up to work hungover and out of sorts. That paired with his increasingly eccentric behavior, his deteriorating reputation in the community, his alleged complete lack of regard for workplace safety, and his propensity for sleeping with literally whomever he wanted, including the partners of his colleagues and friends, led to Parsons being expelled from JPL and Aerojet in 1944.

From there, things only got more bizarre for Parsons. He began to rent rooms to non-exempt. phthalamites at his mansion, which had become known as the parsonage. He placed ads in the local paper specifying that, quote, only bohemians, artists, musicians, atheists, anarchists, or any other exotic types need apply. It was around this time that U.S. Navy officer and science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard moved into the parsonage. Yes, that L. Ron Hubbard. Hubbard and Parsons quickly became fast friends. Parsons was so taken with Hubbard that he soon wrote to Crowley that although Hubbard had, quote, no formal training in magic, he has an extraordinary amount of experience

and understanding in the field. From some of his experiences, I deduce he is in direct touch with some higher intelligence. He is the most thelemic person I have ever met and is in complete accord with our own principles, unquote. And as these principles included an anarchist approach to sex and relationships, Parsons' wife Sarah soon found herself deeply enamored with Hubbard, which in turn caused Parsons to become intensely jealous. He decided to overcome his jealousy and seek a new partner through occult means, which involved an elaborate sex magic ritual in the Mojave Desert, in which he included Hubbard, despite his jealousy, because he believed him to be particularly sensitive to magical phenomena. When he returned home after this ritual, he met a woman named

Marjorie Cameron, who was visiting the parsonage, and he became convinced that she was the elemental woman in manifestation of Babylon that he had invoked through his ritual in the desert and began a relationship with her. He eventually had a falling out with Hubbard and Sarah as the result of some shady business dealings. The three of them started a company together called Allied Enterprises, and Parsons had invested his life savings of around $20,000, the equivalent of $300,000 today, into the venture. Hubbard convinced Parsons that they should use that money to travel to Miami, to purchase three yachts, which they would then sail through the Panama Canal and sell on the West Coast for a profit. After being convinced by Crowley that Hubbard had defrauded him, Parsons tracked

the couple down in Miami Beach, where he discovered them with all three yachts. Hubbard and Sarah tried to flee on one of the yachts, but whether it was an act of magic or simply a striking coincidence, after Parsons performed a ritual containing an invocation of Bartsebel, a vengeful spirit of Mars, the couple was hit with a squall and forced to return to port. Allied Enterprises was dissolved, and Parsons eventually won a settlement in court requiring Hubbard to reimburse him. However, after the trial, Parsons decided not to take any further action to collect the money after Sarah threatened to report him for statutory rape. Charges that she almost certainly could have made stick, considering that their relationship had begun when she was still

a minor. Hubbard went on to marry Sarah, despite still being married to his first wife, and eventually founded Dionetics and Scientology. Like I said, I could literally fill a book with dozens more equally crazy tales from the life of Jack Parsons, but we don't have time to get into all of that today. But suffice it to say that his life didn't get less weird after that. And perhaps it's not surprising that someone who packed so much life into such a short period of time would meet his end sooner than expected. By 1952, Parsons had lost his clearance with the FBI, effectively stopping him from being able to continue his career in rocketry. To make a living, he founded the Parsons Chemical Manufacturing Company, which was based in North Hollywood, and created

pyrotechnics and explosives such as fog effects and imitation gunshot wounds for the film industry. On June 17, 1952, Parsons received a rush order of explosives for a film set a day before he was set to depart on a trip. He rushed to begin work on it in his home laboratory. Soon after, an explosion destroyed the lower part of the building. Parsons was found still alive, but horrifically wounded, and he died a short time later. He was 37 years old. The investigation by the Pasadena Police Department concluded that Parsons had been mixing fall of mercury in a coffee can when he dropped it on the floor, causing the initial explosion,

which quickly escalated when it came into contact with the other chemicals in the room. While some of his colleagues thought that this explanation was likely given some of his more reckless tendencies, others weren't convinced that the explosion was an accident. Some thought that there was evidence that the explosion came from under the floor where he was standing, indicating that his death may have been foul play, perhaps on the part of the government. And as if the story didn't have enough notorious mid-century megalomaniacs in it, one of the other parties suspected of having been behind the plot was none other than Howard Hughes, who apparently suspected Parsons of having stolen sensitive documents from his company.

There was other speculation as well. Some thought that Parsons had killed himself intentionally. Still others thought that he had died while working a ritual. To this day, his death has never been fully explained. The legacy of Jack Parsons might be a complicated one, but it's not ambiguous. Whatever his personal habits and proclivities, it's impossible to deny that his contributions to the field of rocket science were extraordinary. Among many other notable accomplishments, he helped invent not only the solid fuel rocket, but he was also a pioneer developer of

jet-assisted takeoff, both of which were innovations that were key to our eventual journey to the moon. And in a certain sense, it would be easy to simply write Jack Parsons off as a brilliant guy who fell in with the wrong crowd, partied a little too hard, and flew a little too close to the sun. It's a tidy, unchallenging narrative that would allow us to separate out his genius from the parts of the story that are less convenient. But it would also require that we entirely ignore Parsons' own perceptions about his work and his occult practice. Because to Parsons, these things weren't separate. They were two sides of the same coin. Like the science fiction that he loved so dearly, the things that occupied his attention were all just different modalities for both

exploring the cosmos and plumbing the depths of his own potential. So what should we make of Parsons? There's a certain kind of genius that looks like madness, but does that mean that Jack Parsons was crazy? Quantum mechanics certainly seems to imply an intrinsic subjectivity to our reality. Could what we think of as magic be a set of practices that can allow one to better harness our inborn ability to shape events and outcomes? I don't know. But during rocket tests, Parsons was known to ecstatically recite Crowley's poem, Him to Pan, a Greek god associated with nature, fertility, music, sexuality, and fear in a style that his colleagues compared to the fiery preaching of Billy Graham. The words of Crowley's poem are powerful and evocative, and I found myself taken with the image of the dark-haired young scientist out in the desert, summoning a long-dead god with a combustible hubris strong enough to rend the very heavens in two in his quest for the stars. I found this incredible rendition of the hymn to pan on the son of a priest's YouTube channel, which I will link to in the episode description. The channel's owner was kind enough to let me share it with you here.

some lust of the light, O man, my man, Come, careering out of the night of Pan. Yo, pan, yo pan, yo pan, Yo pan, yo pan, Come over the sea from Sicily and from Arkady, roaming as bacchus with fawns and pards, and nymphs and satires for thy guards.

On a milk-white ass, come over the sea, To me, to me Come with Apollo in bridal dress Shepherdess and Pythonesce Come with Artemis Silken Shod And wash thy white thigh Beautiful God

In the moon of the woods On the marble mount The dimpled dawn of the amber Fount Dip the purple of passionate prayer In the crimson shrine The scarlet snare the soul that startles in eyes of blue

To watch thy wantonness Weeping through the tangled grove The gnarled bowl of the living tree That is spirit and soul and body and brain Come over the sea Yopan, Yopan, devil or God To me, to me, my man, my man Come, come with tree,

Trumpets sounding shrill over the hill. Come with drums, low muttering from the spring. Come with flute and come with pipe. Am I not ripe? I who wait and writhe and wrestle with air that hath no bows to nestle. My body weary of empty clasp, strong as a lion and sharp as an asp. Oh, come, oh come, I am numb with the lonely lust of devildom. Thrust the sword through the galling fetter, all devourer, all begetter.

Give me the sign of the open eye and the token erect of thorny thigh. And the word of madness and mystery. O Pan, yo, Pan, yo, Pan, you Pan, Pan, Pan, Pan, Pan, Pan, Pan, I am a man. Do as thou wilt, as a great God can. Oh, you, Pan, you Pan, Pan, Pan, Pan, I am awake in the grip of the snake. The eagle slashes with beak and claw, the gods withdraw. beasts come yo pan I am born to the death on the horn of the unicorn I am pan yo pan pan you pan pan pan I am thy mate I am thy man goat of thy flock I am gold I am God flesh to thy bone flower to thy rod with hooves and steel I race on the rocks through solstice stubborn to equinox and I raise

I rake, and I rip, and I rend, everlasting world without end, mannequin, maiden, maniac, man in the might of pan, you pan, you pan, pan, pan, pan, you pan, pan, you pan! In many ways, Jack Parsons represents a distinctly American approach to the occult, one that is fiercely individualistic and steeped in the punk rock values of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, occultists were also deeply involved in shaping the early space program of the Soviet Union. But as you might imagine, the vastly different cultural context in which it emerged gave birth to an occultism of an entirely different variety. Russian cosmism. In his book, the Russian Cosmists, the esoteric futurism of Nikolai Fedorov and his followers,

author George M. Young describes Russian cosmism as, quote, A highly controversial and oxymoronic blend of activist speculation, futuristic traditionalism, religious science, exoteric esotericism, utopian pragmatism, idealistic materialism, higher magic partner to higher mathematics, unquote. In many ways, Russian cosmism is a reflection of the culture of the people themselves. As philosopher Nikola Bairdyev wrote in his book, The Russian Idea, two contradictory principles lay at the foundation of the structure of the Russian soul,

the one a natural Dionysian elemental paganism, and the other acetic monastic orthodoxy. So what did the Russian cosmos believe exactly, and how did it contribute to humanity's journey to space? To understand that, we need to take a moment to examine this complex philosophy through the lens of the work of two fathers of modern space travel, Nikolai Fedorov and Konstantin Chilkovsky. We'll start with Nikolai Fedorov, a philosopher regarded by many as the first of the Russian Cosmists. Although Fedorov didn't write any books in his lifetime due to his belief that books and ideas shouldn't be owned, and his few works were only published posthumously, his thinking had an outsized influence on the shaping of Cosmist philosophy. Federov's work came down to

one core idea, that all known problems have a single root in the problem of death, and that no solution to any social, economic, political, or philosophical problems will prove adequate until we have solved the problem of death. All philosophies, Fedorov wrote, while disagreeing about all else, agree on one thing. They all recognize the reality of death. It's inevitability. Even when recognizing as some do, nothing real in the world, the most skeptical systems doubting even itself, bow down before the fact and reality of death, unquote. However, a course of According to Fedorov, the inevitability of death doesn't necessarily need to be so inevitable. Death is a condition, he wrote, but not a quality without which man ceases to be what he is and what he ought to be.

And it's that very idea of what a man is and what he ought to be that is core to the philosophy of Fedorov. In his view, what a human is is immortal. And what he or she ought to be is engaged in the active pursuit of immortality for themselves and their fellow human beings. An interesting side note, in many ways what you find in Federov's belief system is the roots of the modern-day futurism and transhumanism that is embraced by biohacking tech billionaires and their breathless followers today. When asked directly, some of the richest and most powerful people in the world will tell you that they think that theirs might be the first generation not to die. Whether that's wishful thinking or not remains to be seen. According to Fedorov, there are two reasons

for death, and both of these reasons come down to entropy. On the one hand, there is entropy inside the human body that leads to death. Internal organ systems break down over time and become disorganized through the process of aging until life is no longer possible. On the other hand, there is also an unpredictability to the events outside of the body, such as weather phenomena. Federov believed that man might achieve immortality by introducing will and reason into nature to counteract these forces. But in order to do this, the human being must be perfected. According to Fedorov, this meant evolving into a self-creating, mind-controlled form capable of infinite renewal, which is immortal.

He envisioned a superhuman future for humanity, where the perfected human form could self-direct itself to accomplish any task, from flight to seeing through walls to surviving the harsh conditions of space. These bodies would also finally manifest humanity's true. immortal nature by constantly regenerating itself at the cellular level, including creating new organs if necessary, and developing new modes of energy exchange that would allow itself to self-feed indefinitely, something like a plant that is also its own greenhouse and watering system. In Fedorov's worldview, then, space exploration isn't just a fun option for humanity

to be undertaken simply out of curiosity or a desire for conquest. Rather, it should be pursued as an ultimate end in itself to assure the triumph of life over death for all of humanity. Federov's thinking was hugely influential, not just on Russian cosmist philosophy, but on many of the forefathers of the Soviet space program. One of the most notable of these forefathers was early rocket scientist Constantine Chilkovsky. Chokovsky had frequent and direct contact with Fedorov over a three-year period when Chikov visited the library where Fedorov was working. And while Chalkovsky's thinking undoubtedly pulled from a variety of sources. The influence that Fedorov had on him is apparent. What's most remarkable about Chikovsky's work is how much of it feels almost prophetic.

Though Chilkovsky died in 1935 at the age of 78, a full quarter of a century before Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, he conceived of many of the necessary components of modern spaceflight at a time when these ideas were considered to be at best science fiction. He wrote more than 400 works, including approximately 90 published pieces on space travel and related subjects. Among his works are designs for rockets with steering thrusters, multi-stage boosters, space stations, airlocks for exiting a spaceship into the vacuum of space, enclosed cycle biological systems to provide food and oxygen for space colonies. Among Chilkovsky's published works were many works of fiction as well. He had a gift not just for

quantifying space travel through mathematical equations, but for translating his enthusiasm for the topic in such a way as to popularize the very idea of space travel itself. Many of the future Russian cosmonauts, including the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, were avid readers of Chilkovsky's work as children, inspiring them to pursue their future career as adults. However, according to Chilkowski, all of his work concerning space travel and his development of the theory of rocketry was merely supplemental to his philosophical research on these subjects. One of the central ideas of his philosophy is that life and spirit are present in all matter. He wrote, quote, I am not only a materialist, but also a pan-psychist, recognizing the sensitivity of the entire universe. I consider

this characteristic to be inseparable from matter. Everything is alive, but with the condition that we consider living only that which possesses a sufficiently strong sense of feeling. Since everything that is matter can, under favorable circumstances, convert to an organic state, then we can conditionally say that inorganic matter is potentially living, unquote. Chilkovsky saw the universe as being both rationally organized and hierarchical. On the bottom rung of this hierarchy are lower life forms consisting mainly of matter in which spirit is dormant. These life forms eventually have involve into higher ones, in which spirit is awakened and more dominant. At the highest levels of

evolution, as a being reaches perfection, we outgrow our corporeal meat sacks and become beings of light and energy. Chilkovsky believed that we are made of the same Adam's spirits as ethereal beings that exist beyond our dimension, like angels, gods, and ascended masters. He further believed that these higher beings are in constant communication with us, reading our thoughts and sending us messages through celestial symbols, which most of us don't perceive, much less understand. For Tchaikovsky, a genius is a person who is capable of comprehending and channeling these messages from higher beings and translating them into earthly projects, like the poet who hears the muses or the inspired inventor who turns a dreamed universal

symbol into a useful object. I want to pause here for a moment to acknowledge that there is a dark side to Chilkovsky's worldview, and it's a thread that you unfortunately find woven throughout many of the branches of a cult and esoteric thinking. Within the ideal of the self-perfecting human is a slippery slope that can lead to the horrific belief that human evolution requires the elimination of or weeding out of those of us who are somehow deemed to be defective. We only have to look back at the rise of Nazi Germany to understand how profoundly dangerous and how terribly inhumane that belief is. In fact, there are those that argue that due to the prevalence of that sort of belief system within esotericism,

that the occult is an inherently hateful ideology. And while I don't agree with that perspective, I can't deny that there is a certain danger there. It's my opinion that the vast pantheon of occult beliefs and practices are far too varied in nuance to be inherently any one thing. And I'd argue that philosophical models, like any tool, can be used for good or for evil depending on who's wielding them. Still, I think it's important to be aware of the dangers and pitfalls of certain belief systems, particularly those that have been used to justify mass violence against human beings. In general, the ideologies to watch out for are any that, one, tie moral superiority to genetics or to any particular physical traits or abilities, two, that hold social hierarchies to be both

naturally occurring and intrinsically fair structures whereby the morally superior rule over the morally inferior, or three, the put any one person or group of people in charge of the spiritual development of another. I've found that as long as you were mindful to keep those ideas at arm's length, it becomes easy to navigate some of these stickier occult concepts without straying from the road of decency and compassion for one's fellow human beings. So now that we've taken a tour of the occult practices and philosophies of some of the most influential figures of the early space programs of the United States and the Soviet Union? What are we to make of it all? If I'm being honest, I don't really know what to do with all of this.

As a skeptical, rational person approaching this subject, the nuts and bolts of the UFO phenomenon is usually where you start. It's certainly where I started. I mean, the government says UFOs are real. Highly trained members of our military are seeing them all the time. And some of these sightings have been verified by multiple witnesses and highly advanced tracking systems. That's something that just about anyone can get their head around. They are craft of some kind, their technology, super advanced technology, but technology all the same. These are concepts that we understand. But the problem is that once you start really diving into this topic, you immediately recognize that where the rubber meets the road, by which I mean in the cases of contact between the UFO phenomenon and real people, nothing about these experiences appears to be

rational. Even things like time and cause and effect seem to break down in the presence of whatever these things are. There is a strange quality about the UFO phenomenon. It is somehow both there and not there. And yet, UFOs are, at least some of them, undeniably some form of technology that falls outside of our current technological paradigm. With craft that can in the case of the infamous Tic Tac travel 80,000 feet in less than a second, it's not a stretch to assume that this technology is the product of a highly advanced intelligence. Hell, the craft themselves might be that intelligence. We simply don't know. The only thing that this phenomenon ever seems to bother to make clear is that we are not alone. And there is a weird cognitive

dissonance that comes at the point when you begin to really internalize that reality, that we are not alone. Because if an advanced intelligence is interacting with our military, they almost certainly aren't interacting only with our military. And if they are interacting with everyday people, then we have to assume that at least some portion of the bizarre accounts that people give of those types of interactions are true. But people who hear voices and see strange entities are crazy, right? It's a reflexive response. The stigma against any form of anomalous experience runs so deep in our culture that it can be difficult for even the most independent thinkers to approach the idea that some so-called crazy people might not actually be crazy for fear of people thinking that they

have gone crazy themselves. We're powerfully disincentivized to even consider such thoughts. So many of us who have never had such an experience ourselves simply don't. I mean, why would we? But in the case of Jack Parsons and Constantine Schalcovsky, these claims are particularly difficult to ignore. Both men believe themselves to be in communication with non-human intelligences, and this This belief not only fueled their work, it informed it. And you could write them off as baddie. You could fairly claim that partisans did way too many drugs. You can point out what a crazy time it was, ontologically speaking,

and that the lines between science and science fiction were blurred. You can doubt them and discredit them in a thousand different ways. But the reality is that without their work, we never would have made it to the moon. Their insights and breakthroughs took us to space. I mean, it's literally rocket science. nothing about it was easy or intuitive or inevitable. And so even the most skeptical among us has to ask themselves how crazy these men really could have been.

And if they weren't crazy, could it really be possible that a non-human intelligence guided our journey to space? And even more remarkably, could there still be a legacy of this kind of contact going on in the space program today? It turns out that there is, And it's not just isolated to the space program.

As Dr. Diana Welsh-Posolka revealed in her phenomenal book, American Cosmic UFO's Religion Technology, these sorts of experiencer scientists can often be found at the bleeding edge of futuristic fields like aeronautics and biotech. These likely are not names that you know or will ever hear. These people tend to be intensely private, are bound by multiple government clearances in NDAs, and usually have enough money from their dozens of highly lucrative

patents and business ventures that they can afford to fly under the radar. In short, this is not a group of people that is easy to find. But in her research for her book on UFOs, Diana found them. We last discussed Dr. Pasolka's American Cosmic in episode 11 when we were exploring the emergence of UFO lore. We only just scratched the surface of the book in that episode, so I'm excited to dive into it more here. Because one of the most compelling aspects of American Cosmic is Diana's description of forming a friendship with two such experience or scientists to whom she gave the pseudonyms James and Tyler. Although James and Tyler had never met before Diana introduced them, the two men had a lot in common. Both men were scientists at the very top of their fields. Defying the stereotypes,

both drove fancy sports cars funded by their work, and most significantly, both men were experiencers of the phenomenon who believed that their work was in some way guided by contact with a non-human intelligence. James and Tyler were both members of what Jay Ellen Heineck of Project Blue Book fame termed the Invisible College, a small, secretive group of scientists and researchers who study the phenomenon behind closed doors of some of our most elite scientific and academic institutions. And both men were also what Diana termed meta-experiencers, or scientists who are interested in what experiencers see and how they see it and then use that data to inform their work. With these two contacts, Diana quickly found herself on the other side of the looking glass.

As an academic and someone who was entirely skeptical about the UFO phenomenon before beginning her work, she found herself in the surprising position of being confronted with the reality of two people who weren't just sane, but generationally brilliant, and who were making extraordinary claims. And to back up these claims, they each had decades worth of surprising breakthroughs and paradigm-breaking patents. startling in both their breadth and level of innovation, their respective bodies of work, save lives, cure diseases, and stretch the very limits of human potential. And lest you doubt the credentials of these gentlemen, it's worth noting that James has since outed himself and is actually none other than the distinguished Dr. Gary Nolan,

who holds the Ratchford and Carlotta A. Harris Professor Endowed Chair in the Department of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Nolan is an immunologist, academic, inventor, and entrepreneur who is founded and sold multiple biotech companies in his career. In short, he could not be more legit. Except for Tyler. Tyler is one of the very few people who one might consider to be more legit. Although his identity hasn't been revealed, Tyler has been involved in the space program for decades, and his involvement with both the exploration of space and the phenomenon have taken him to place,

of which few can dream. And his story arc within American Cosmic provides a compelling case study of the potential involvement of non-human intelligence within the United States space program. One of the most fascinating parts of Diana's accounts of Tyler is that she was able to find and meet him at all.

Like I said, these people tend to be intensely private and Tyler was no different. So the fact that Diana was able to find him meant that he wanted to be found, at least by someone like her. her. When Diana asked him why it was that he agreed to talk to her, a religious studies professor, Tyler's answer was surprising. He said, I have mentors in the space program. One of them, who is now retired, explained that the next discovery in my field is going to come from your field. I am at the

limit of understanding what I can from a materialist perspective. My mentor explained that mysticism, religion, and consciousness is where I need to go to learn what's next. As she got to know, Tyler, a narrative of his life began to emerge. One of the biggest turning points for Tyler was witnessing the death of his dear friend and colleague, the beautiful astronaut Judith Reznik in the Challenger explosion in 1986. Although many others who were gathered to watch the launch were initially in denial about what happened, Tyler said that he immediately knew that his friend was gone and experienced immense grief.

Distraught by the loss, Tyler found comfort in Carl Sagan's book, Cosmos. He found himself thinking more and more deeply about technology that he believed to be just over the horizon that would far exceed that of the space shuttles and allow humans to truly venture to the stars. Despite his new fascination, he knew that he needed to leave the space program. The trauma of the incident seemed to be too much, and Tyler felt that it was time to move on. As he was considering this at work one day, a general came into his office requesting proposals for experiments that would be run on the space shuttle Columbia. As this general was speaking, Tyler suddenly had what he called a memory about this experiment that had not yet been performed,

and somehow he knew that if it was performed, that this experiment would work. The experiment was to test whether or not a non-charged material could speak with a charged material, and he could only be tested in space. It took some convincing in getting a professor to sign on to the experiment for Tyler to convince the general that it should be done, because Tyler didn't have a PhD, but the experiment was eventually performed on the space shuttle, and it went exactly as Tyler had anticipated. A few days after the experiment, Tyler was called to Washington, D.C. He thought, to receive an award. But instead, he was interrogated by a two-star general who demanded to know where he got the idea for the experiment. Tyler had to tell him the truth,

that it was a memory. The general eventually believed him. Recognizing both the business potential and the potential to do good that was presented by his new memories. Tyler started a new company with a few of his associates pursuing biomedical applications for the ideas that came to him through this new gift. He was quickly churning out new patents and sold his first biomedical company to a public corporation for an undisclosed amount of money, but enough that he could have easily retired. It was then that a combination of fate and boredom led him back to the space program. But this time, it was a very different scenario. Mario. By this time, Tyler had come to believe that he was connected to a source that was part of an off-planet intelligence and had been since shortly after the Challenger explosion. It was to this non-human intelligence that he attributed the success of his company, and he maintained a strict set of protocols to help facilitate ongoing communication. Once back in the program, Tyler told Diana that he believed that he was intentionally exposed to something that zapped him with energy and somehow,

used frequencies to change the way that he thought. Whatever it was, it seemed to increase his ability to access information from this intelligence. He couldn't go into many details, but he claimed that in his work he was often interfacing directly with the phenomenon. He said that he didn't know who chose him for these strange jobs, that his own boss didn't even really know what he did, and that he suspected that they, as in the off-world intelligence, were somehow involved in directing his activities. And yes, it would be easy to write off Tyler as crazy, a man driven to some kind of a psychotic break by a traumatic event, except for the patents. The technology that Tyler claims to channel is strikingly futuristic. One example Diana gives in the book is of a material that has been

etched at the molecular level with information. The etching codes the material with information that human bone reads as itself. It is then incorporated into, disease, tissue, and bone, which helps the body recuperate from cancer and other illnesses. And if the story ended right there, it would be a stunning tale. But it's what happens to Tyler at the end of American Cosmic that is perhaps the most compelling part of his story. But if you want to hear more about that, you'll have to read the book. You can find the link in the episode description.

I do, however, want to circle back quickly to talk about the protocols that I mentioned, which Tyler uses that he believes helps to facilitate his communication with the off-world intelligences that guide his work. These protocols are both cognitive and physiological in nature, and they are a part of his everyday practice. One of the most important of these is sleep. Tyler had participated in studies about astronauts in sleep, and he used that information to inform his protocols. Tyler makes a point of getting a lot of sleep, specifically he sleeps for eight hours, wakes up, and then goes back to sleep for one more hour. When he wakes up, he gets a big glass of water and goes outside to drink it in the sun. Sun is also very important to Tyler because he believes it recharges his cells. He tends to

spend most of his workday working outside on his porch in the sun. Tyler is also meticulous about maintaining a rigorous schedule of exercise including intense yoga. He eats very clean. He doesn't watch television and he avoids caffeine and alcohol. I was lucky enough to take a couple of classes over the summer from Dr. Pasolka, and it's clear that she is fascinated with these protocols, and I can see why. With her background in religious studies, she was able to quickly identify a pattern that other people might have missed. Specifically, she saw the profound similarities between these sorts of protocols and the devotions practiced by members of certain religious orders. But she also recognized through her encounters with James and Tyler that these

same practices are used by communities of what she referred to as extremely effective people. across a wide variety of fields and disciplines. These communities include elite military and special forces, certain members of the Vatican who occupies special positions, extremely creative types like artists and musicians, as well as top scientists like James and Tyler who claim to download information from outside intelligences. And all of this is fascinating,

because like all of the other stories we've explored today, it implies not only that it might be possible for humans to access and communicate with a non-local, non-human intelligence, but it suggests that it's a skill that one might be able to cultivate. It's something that you can learn how to do and then get better at. And that's exciting. So where does all of this leave us? Well, for one, it leaves us with a lot of questions. Are scientists on the bleeding edge of technological innovation really communicating with and being guided by

off-world intelligences? And if so, what is the mechanism by which this happens? And who are they? And what are their motivations for helping us in this manner? And if these people aren't really communicating with off-world intelligences, then what exactly is going on here? What are these phenomena that they are experiencing that seem to be so closely tied to their scientific output? Are they accessing something like Young's collective unconscious? Is this simply some built-in feature of consciousness meant to trigger our continued forward progress? What this line of questioning leads us to, like so much else in the realm of UFOs and high strangeness, is the unsettling realization that something about our fundamental models of reality must be wrong. When so many supposedly

impossible things are happening to otherwise intelligent, rational, credible human beings, at what point do we finally need to concede that the models that we use to judge what is possible must be wrong. I'd argue that we're there and that we've been there for a while. And some of the top minds in the field of physics and consciousness are already working on new models of reality that might make room for and explain the impossible things that happen every day. And that's what we'll be discussing in the next regular episode. But before that, in the next week or so, I'll be releasing an in-depth interview with none other than Dr. Diana Walsh-Pasulka for a deeper dive into this topic and her work. I can't wait to share that with you. Until then.