The Joe Rogan Experience - #2091 - Diana Walsh Pasulka

Episode Date: January 24, 2024

Diana Walsh Pasulka is a writer and professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her latest book is "Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences."�� www.dwpasulka.com 

the joe rogan experience train by day joe rogan podcast by night all day it's a scary podcast for me because i feel like you're because i know a lot of the things that you've said and i've related to them and i've said okay this makes sense. Why is that scary? Okay, so it's scary because it's not consensus reality. And, you know, because it's not consensus reality, we could talk about it over hot chocolate in the fire, you know, near a fire or something. But here we're talking about it and lots of people are going to be listening. Yes. So that is somewhat scary. Yeah, that's the hurdle that we all have to get over. And the good thing about this is it really is just us talking. Right. You know, and there are a lot of people that are going to listen, but they're just people too. That's true. And they've

probably had these experiences. Some of them have. Yeah. The experiences that are available through psychedelics that I've always wondered. I mean, the thing that has always struck me about the UFO experience, particularly the abduction experience, is that it always happens when people are asleep. It always happens at night. It either happens on the road when people are tired and it's late at night or it happens like, why does it have to happen at night? the road when people are tired and it's late at night or it happens like why does it have to happen at night the universe doesn't give a shit what where the sun is in position to the planet like that doesn't make any sense that all these ufo abduction experiences would happen only when the sun is on the other side that's so dumb it makes no sense it's literally it's such an egocentric earth-centric perspective

that and not even earth-centric hemispherical centric right it depends on where the sun is in position to the earth for that to be the only time that ufos come i was always like this seems like horseshit there's something about it that seems like horseshit. But there's also something about it that seems real. When you listen to like Betty and Barney Hill, when they're talking, boy, that sounds like people talking about a real thing. Boy, that sounds like a real experience. It really does.

And these people like the Whitley Strybers, these people that talk about these experiences that happen at night, we know for a fact that when you are sleeping, your brain is producing endogenous psychedelic chemicals. We have no idea why. We have no idea what the purpose of those things are. We have no idea what the quantity is. We used to think until recently they weren't even exactly sure like where it was being produced. But now through Strassman's work and through the work of the Cottonwood Research Foundation, the people that do those DMT studies, they know that now your brain is producing this. And so is your brain, is it producing a chemical gateway into another dimension? And is that why these

people are experiencing these abduction, you know, air quote, abduction experiences? These encounters, let's say encounters, is that why they're happening at night? Is that why they're happening while they're lying in bed? Because that seems to make way more sense. Yeah, that's a great question. I can talk a little bit about this. Please. Okay, so I think that... I think we're starting weird. Yeah.

Can we just start with how did you get involved in this? Okay. And please just tell people your background. Okay, sure. So I'm a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington, and I grew up in California. And I've always been interested in these experiences, but religion. And also, I grew up, I was going to graduate school during the dot-com boom. So I saw how technology was changing everything. Our schools

were the first to adopt computers and that type of thing. So what I did was, I was very interested in, I was working. You know, when your parents – you tell them you want to study religion and they're like, why not be a doctor, right? So I was going to college, but I kept taking courses in religion and philosophy. And when I got out, I got a job doing technology and things like that. And I made all right money, but I still read about religion and philosophy. So I figured if I could get scholarships to continue that I would. And I kept getting scholarships. And that's how I got my PhD in religion. In religious studies, by the way, we actually were not ministers or anything like that. We don't advocate for any religious tradition. We study them. And since most people in the world

are religious in some way, it's a good thing to know. But how did I get into studying UFOs? So I studied Christian history. And that's what I did for a long time until I was what's called a full professor. You can't go any higher. You're a full professor. That's it. And I studied these things called ascent narratives. So ascent narratives are when people levitate in the, you know, Christian tradition.

People either levitate or they have – they see things that they call angels or demons and things like this. And I always studied them from a historical perspective. And I found that going through looking at these ascent narratives through the historical record at the Vatican actually, I kept coming across aerial phenomena in the historical record from 1,000 years ago, from 500 years ago, from very recently. And I recognized that this was happening in UFO literature. And so I started to look at abductions and UFO sightings and things like that. And I wanted to do a cross-cultural analysis of this. And that was in 2012. And that's how I got into this. I just want to point out that not all abductions happen in your sleep. A lot of abductions actually happen

in daylight. But I do agree with you that something's happening in your brain and you're perceiving something and you called it, is there some type of mental gateway? And I think there's absolutely a mental gateway. Does this discount that this is objective of us? Like, you know, the question is, is this something subjective? Or this is this something objective of us? My opinion at this point is it's something that is objective of us. There's something that we're accessing. And I don't think it's within our space-time reality, to tell you the truth. So you think it's from somewhere else? I do. But that doesn't, I mean, it doesn't have to be a location, you know, a geography.

Right. That's where it gets weird. It gets totally weird, but so does quantum physics. Quantum physics is totally weird. It's the weirdest stuff ever. Right. That's where it gets weird. It gets totally weird, but so does quantum physics. Quantum physics is totally weird. It's the weirdest stuff ever. Yeah. And it's completely accepted that you could have something that exists in one place and also in another place. Now it is. Now it's completely accepted. And also still.

Yeah. The Nobel Prize in, what was it, 2022 was about that. Yeah, which is like, what are you saying? You're saying witchcraft's real? Like, what are you saying? You're saying witchcraft's real? Like, what are you saying? Magic is real? Quantum physics is the nuttiest stuff of all time. I've had a hundred people explain it to me.

I don't get it still. Yeah. Well, see, okay, so you were talking about accessing this space. And if I can go back to something you were talking about, and I'm going to say this. So what I found was, and I had this experience too, when I was around 13 years old, I felt like the world was going to end. I felt like there was going to be some kind of war. And it was a visceral feeling. It wasn't something that, it was something that made me depressed as a child. And it, it was real. I

believed it was going to happen. And I believed it was going to happen at any time. Well, this – after studying religion and studying – by the way, this kind of prompted me into studying religion and recognizing that, you know, if you look at, say, Christianity or even other religions, people had ideas that the world was going to end And extinction events have happened and things like that. So it could very well be that information like this is coming to us, but it's out of our space time. So to us, it seems like it's going to happen now because our sense is of linear time, right? So if we get a feeling and it's not from any of the input that we're getting, like our, you know, people telling us this is actually going to happen, the news telling us this is actually going to happen. But it's coming to us as this feeling that you and I were just talking about. It could be coming from that space that we've just identified as, you know, people are talking about. And, yeah, I think that we're at the very beginning of doing a taxonomy or, you know, looking at this space in terms of the scientists that you just referenced and people that – I think that actually people have – you know, indigenous cultures talk about this space.

They have language about this space. I talked about this in Encounters that, you know, religious traditions do talk about these spaces, but in secular culture, we've lost that language. Well, it is interesting that that language exists when you're discussing things like quantum physics, because that is a language of like, you know, it's a bizarre, non-tangible, impossible to understand to the layperson when you're explaining that these things are all interacting with each other without physical contact. Like, what do you mean?

Like, what are you saying? Like, can you show me these things? Are there photos of them? No, we're just drawing it. We're writing it down on paper. We're pretty sure we have these equations and we know what it is like what yeah yeah like why am i supposed to believe you because you guys are phds like what this is nuts like but because this is like in a field of science this is a field of study that's universally accepted, we've given them a pass to talk about crazy stuff.

But if you want to talk about crazy things in terms of encountering some sort of thing, some entity, some consciousness that exists in an alternative realm that has access to this realm Exists in an alternative realm that has access to this realm occasionally or perhaps that you can transcend your Normal state of consciousness and access this other realm Occasionally through some methods whether it's through meditation through psychedelic trips through something look near-death experiences through psychedelic trips, through something, near-death experiences, something happens that perturbs the normal state of reality, and you have brief access to this transcendent experience

that everyone has talked about. All of the great prophets, all of the great saints and religious figures have talked about from the beginning of written history. Yeah. So I think that it's not just that we give those physics guys a pass and girls. Okay. We just don't, what they produce actually is, creates our world, right? The computers we look at and the technologies we use, even the structures we live in. And so this is what prompted me to go back into our historical record and look at the writings of Plato again. And some of these people that you're talking about, like the great minds, right? And I recognize that, say, Plato, who writes about his mentor, Socrates,

who's, by the way, killed by his country, you know, he's killed by Athens, the town he lives in, not the town, but the state he lives in. And he's executed for being an atheist, by the way. And if you look at what he's talking about he's actually talking about this space he's actually talking about having a vision of something that we can't see and he calls it the good and he says it's it's the best thing okay and he says it it makes you do things that are just and you don't do them because they're the right thing to do you do them because you really want to do them and so to me this, this is I thought this was fascinating. So I went back and I recognized that he was what's called a math realist. So he believed that and he was one of the first people. Well, not just him, but people, you know, were talking about the, you know, 300s before the common era. So many, many, many years ago, he's already identifying these things called platonic solids that now we can prove exist, but we weren't able to prove them. So he was using, and he even has this language too, Joe. He has this language. He says that we can actually

perceive these through our minds, but it's not normal intellect. It's not your normal abstract thinking, but it's a type of thinking. And he relates it to protocols, like physical protocols. Like, did you know he was a wrestler? No, I didn't. Yeah. Oh, I did know that. Yeah.

I'm sorry. In fact, his name even means that he's really not just a wrestler but an awesome wrestler so Socrates that name no no Plato oh sorry yeah these guys were all physical they were all they it was basically this like philosophy almost like a fight club I think these guys you know they were like they were wrestlers and you, they believed that this was good. They believed that these protocols helped them use their brains to access this, the good. So what was the methodology behind that? Was it the breaking down of the normal states of consciousness through rigorous exercise and exertion? That's my opinion.

Like a runner's high. Yeah? That's my opinion. Like a runner's high. Yeah, that's my opinion. Yeah, so when I talk about it, because I like to teach my students about this, because I honestly think that this is what progresses civilization, this kind of thing. So I think when I did American Cosmic, which is the first book about UFOs,

again, which I never thought I'd be studying, I encountered thiss, again, which I never thought I'd be studying, I encountered this man, Tyler. And he works for the Space Force. And he's been working for the Space Force since the whole space shuttle program. Okay. And he's a special kind of person. He's a mission controller, but he does a lot of other things too. But he's also a multimillionaire space rocket scientist. I mean, just so strange. And I called him Tyler after the character in Fight Club, because that's who he reminded me of. He reminded me of that character in Fight Club, because he had this, first of all, he has more than 44 patents, and they're all related to space. And the space force has a special place for him,

like he's special, right? What I found was that he was practicing these types of protocols. I called them protocols because they reminded me of Plato and monastic traditions, the traditions of monks and things. So he would make sure that he got sunshine. He would make sure that he got plenty of sleep. He would not have too much caffeine. He exercised a lot. He boxed, right? So he was also a fighter. And he tried to stay away from people. I know it sounds weird, but that's what monks do. They try to stay, you know, they try to like monitor their input of people because those people can actually take them off their game or something like that. But so this guy was put into another mental state.

And during this mental state, he said that he could receive calculations. He could receive information. He could receive things. And then he could gather a group of scientists and he wouldn't tell them where he came from because he honestly thought they were coming from these things outside of space-time, kind of like ETs or something, off-planet intelligences. Which Tesla also believed. And the people who started our own space force believed it. So this isn't common knowledge. That's what I found is like a lot of people aren't, they don't know this history of the American space force and the Russian Space Force. Very much the same. These people were doing these things.

And this allowed them. You see this in sports, right? So people, I was just using this example in a class yesterday. I saw this basketball game two or three years ago with Steph Curry. And, you know, the way they were playing, it was almost as if there was an emergent phenomenon that was bigger than each of the people because they somehow anticipated what the other guy was going to do. And I used to do sports, and I know that this is something that can be done. There's a flow state, right?

And I think that this is what Plato was trying to get his group into through these protocols. Well, that makes sense. And one of the things that happens in flow state is that you stop being there. That's right. Yeah. It's not you. Yeah. And you're just experiencing this thing. Totally. Yeah. Yeah. You experience it on stage doing stand up. I imagine that. When you do it right. Yeah. When you get it right, you're on a ride. I imagine that. When you do it right. Yeah.

When you get it right, you're on a ride. Like you're just like sort of like making sure that, okay, feed this into the machine and go. And it goes. And you're sort of like you're in tune with what you're saying, but you're almost outside of yourself. That's exactly right. And, you know, there is science that shows that this is the case. Right. With brainw case. Right. With brain waves.

Yeah. The problem is that when Joe's out there on stage, they're not going to hook you up to an MRI. They can't do that kind of thing. Because when it's happening, it's happening spontaneously. It just happens. And no one can actually predict when it's going to happen. But you hope that it happens. And also if they did hook you up to it, you would also be aware that you're being monitored and would change the state.

And you'd lose it. Yeah, you'd lose it. Yeah. It's like when you're in a lucid dream and you go, oh, my God, I'm in a lucid dream. And then wake up. Yeah. Damn it. I've had that happen so many times.

I'm like, wow. I know there's a way to facilitate lucid dreams. I know there's a study behind it, but I've never, for whatever reason, it seems so stupid that I've never done it, but I've never even had

the desire to do it. I just want it to come to me when it comes to me, which is dumb. Not necessarily. I respect that. Yeah, but part of me doesn't. Part of me is like,

you're just lazy. Why don't you just go start the practice and study it and figure out how to make it happen more often. You know? But for whatever reason, I have zero desire to

do that. I don't know why. There might be some wisdom there. I don't know. I go back and forth with whether or not it's laziness. I don't know what it is. You know, but there's obviously a fascinating aspect to lucid dreaming, to like what is going on there. Yeah.

Like how are you managing this weird thing that for most of us, you wake up and you go, God, what the hell was that? Why was Godzilla in my dream? Right. Why was I on a skateboard? That's right. It's just like weirdness to it. And then there's people that try to interpret that with like far too much confidence. Yes, I think so too.

I think so too. So in Tibet, there's a Tibetan dream yoga. And that's what they do. They basically teach you how to do. And you have to have a teacher, by the way, because they say it can be dangerous. So, yeah. So I think that's probably why you think you're not doing it, because I don't think you're lazy, frankly. Like, I know the kinds of things you do.

I know that that's not part. Yeah, but I am lazy. That's what's crazy. Well, I really am. I'm lazy, but I'm disciplined. OK. I'm both of those things. Like, I do all the things that I'm supposed to do, but God, it's a sludge.

It's a struggle. It's like, but I always do them. Okay. Well, that's that you'd be up for Plato's. He'd invite you to his school. The only time things are not a struggle is when like, like when I was competing, when I was competing, then my discipline wasn't a struggle. Then like like when I was competing when I was competing then my discipline wasn't a struggle then it was an obsession so it was like people said god he's so disciplined like no I'm mentally ill I'm crazy yeah I understand there's a giant difference between discipline

like Mike Tyson said this on the podcast he, discipline is doing something you hate but doing it like you love it. That's right. Yeah. So when you love it, it's not really discipline. No, it's not. It's obsession. Yeah. There's a different thing to that.

That's what I was telling you about when I saw your picture out there of Jimi Hendrix. And when I was a kid, I was an artist. I really liked to do art. When I was a kid, I was an artist. I really liked to do art. And I remember the first time I became obsessed was when I was doing this drawing of Jimi Hendrix. And it went on for about a week. And my parents were like, what are you doing?

And I was just obsessed with getting it correct. It had to be absolutely correct. And I did get it corrected. It was pretty amazing. Do you have it? No, I always give my stuff away. Do you have a photo of it or anything? No, no, no. This was like pre cell phones. So I gave it to my best friend and I don't, I don't regret it. That's cool. Yeah. But I mean, it was the experience though. That was the best part of it. Yeah. I, The reason why this podcast is called the Joe Rogan Experience is because I think Jimi Hendrix is a religious figure. He is.

He absolutely is. I think, I mean, the guy died at 27, which when I was 27, I was a fucking moron. I had never done anything good. This guy had transcended the normal boundaries of what music was and had tapped into something whatever it was but when you listen to voodoo child to this day i've listened that song thousands of times but like if i'm on my way to go do something cool and I listen to that song like loud in my car it's just like it's it's there's he tapped into something that was just out of this realm inaccessible to the average person that

plays a guitar inaccessible to the average artist he hit some crazy vibration. And I've always got that feeling when I listen to his stuff. It's always moved me in a very weird way where I'm just completely captivated, like immersed in the sounds, immersed in his music. Me too. So he knew that he was doing that. So as you know, I'm sure you know this, but, you know, he had a guitar when he was five. And he was so good at it. He was immediately like, he streamed sacred information through his music.

And he knew he did. He called it his electric church. Yeah. So he knew he did that and um how incredible and yes we can hear it and i think and i think i think probably part of the reason i i felt that when i listened to his music and i somehow put that into his that picture that that drawing that i made and and at last and it was a beautiful experience and that was you know I mean I mean sounds so

strange but that's part of the reason why I was interested in studying religion and things like that because of of that experience yeah that you're tapping into something that's higher than normal consciousness yes and it's pretty cool it's exactly what Plato said it Yes. And it's pretty cool. It's exactly what Plato said it was. It's, it's, you do it for its own sake.

You don't do it for anything else. You do it because of it. You don't do it because after this, I'm going to make up a lot of money or, you know, after this, uh, it'll make my parents happy or after you don't do it for those reasons. You do it for in and of itself.

Well, the people that I know that do do it for those reasons, I'm going to be famous. I'm going to be this. I'm going to be that. They never make it. There's something about it. They just don't. They just don't.

Maybe some of them will become pop stars. Like someone will plug them into the right songwriter and the right producer and they'll figure it out. But it'll never be transcendent. It might be catchy. It might be okay. But there's not. It's not Hend. It might be okay. But there's not, it's not Hendrix. No, no. Yeah. Yeah. That, that kind of what we like to call genius. Like what, what is that? But it's not, I mean, clearly it's him. He's a vessel. He's a receiver, an antenna, whatever he is.

But he's getting something from a higher state. No doubt. And the wildest thing with people, what I always want to tell people about Hendrix and a lot of the particularly impactful people from the 1960s is that you have to understand how different the 60s were from the 50s. Like the difference between 2014 and 2024 is nil. There's very little difference other than the ubiquitous technology, AI, things that are much more powerful than they ever were before, the impact of social media. But there was an impact of social media even 10 years ago, right? There's something about the 60s that were very different than the 50s. And I connected to psychedelic use because all of those people were doing psychedelics,

all of them, all those transcendent people, all the Beatles. When the Beatles, from their early days to the psychedelic days was a completely different band like completely different style of music yes yeah that's right yeah completely different impact there was something about it what what what had happened in the 1960s was a stunning revolution in culture yes and it's hard for us to understand it because we didn't we weren't teenagers when that was happening. I wasn't even born when Hendrix was in his prime or I was just a baby. When you listen to that now, it's hard to put it into context of how revolutionary that was.

I think you're right. For most people, I think that's – unless you lived through it. Yeah. And yeah. And that's also the terrifying aspect of what government can do because through the Sweeping Psychedelics Act of 1970, they made everything illegal and they did it to squash dissent. They did it to stop the civil rights movement and the anti-war movement and they did it to – so that they could arrest all these people that were involved in all these groups because all of them were involved in drugs. And so they figured, well, this is the best way to just make everything. It's obviously these people are doing acid and

ruining our country. Let's make everything illegal and then lock everybody up that does it. And then you get the 80s. And the 80s is like this confused child that was raised improperly, was then cast out into the world with a distorted sense of values that was like expressing these values in like some of the most clumsy and goofy art human beings have ever done. And the drugs changed. goofy art human beings have ever done. And the drugs changed. Yeah. Right.

They became ego-driven drugs, the worst kind of drugs. So, you know, it's really interesting because that wouldn't be the, that the 60s wouldn't be the only culture that's informed by psychedelics, right? Or entheogens, you know, as they're called in Native American churches or, you know, that. But what's interesting to me, and I don't know if you have any ideas about this, is that most likely it was through the government that the drugs became available. Sure. Yeah. there were just two factions of government one that was pro you know let's see what happens you know let's do this experiment and then the other was you know push back and you know let's let's change the the you know change the culture through taking you know making these illegal

but what you see now is you definitely see a uh you know using these for therapeutic purposes. administering psychedelics to people in brothels without their knowledge and observing them and what they did with Charles Manson. That's very well detailed. I don't know if you've read Tom O'Neill's book, Chaos. Have you ever read that? Yeah. Insane. Yeah, I know. It's insane because Tom is so detail oriented. I mean, he's so crazy that he studied this one thing for 20 years, like really kind of like tanked his life, you know, and then finally got the book out there. And the book is just holy shit. Yeah. Because it's what the facts, the absolute undeniable facts in that book, just those alone, forget speculation, forget theory, just the facts alone are insane.

Yes. Just the facts alone are insane. They most likely created Charles Manson, most likely gave him psychedelics, gave him LSD, taught him how to mind control influential young people or easily influenced young people and get them to do horrific things and demonize the hippie movement. Yeah, it makes you wonder, doesn't it? Yeah, like what's going on right now? That's exactly what I think. I don't think they're as good right now. I think right now they're baffled by this thing called the internet. I think the internet threw a giant monkey wrench in propaganda because it made people so much more resistant to bullshit. Yes.

bullshit yes and and then the when you see things like especially coming out of the pandemic when you see how incompetent these people that are supposed to be leaders are and how foolhardy they are and how stupid their decisions were and then you just look at the undeniable transfer of wealth to the upper small area of the country that gained billions of dollars in wealth and how much it devastated small businesses. And, like, did you guys do this on purpose? Like, do you know what you're doing? Are you idiots? Like, why are you telling us what to do?

You guys are fools. And especially when it comes to, like, does anybody believee biden's ever had a transcendent experience does anybody believe that joe biden has ever like met god and and came back with a message for mankind no it's like everything is like bizarre ego driven narrative driven lies and propaganda and just nonsense that's supposed to make it look like they're doing the right thing always. Yeah, that's a terrible idea of justice. Yes. But it's the appearance of justice without actually doing the right thing.

Yeah. And it's just – I mean it's also very – it's got all the aspects of a cult. All the people that go along with it, no matter what the evidence shows, the people that aren't like stepping back and going, wait a minute, we are being run by people that have zero feelings for the actual populace. And all they're trying to do is feed this machine that's got them to where they are in the first place. Yeah, it's terrible. It's terrible. first place yeah it's uh terrible it's terrible and it's it as it moves forward it creates the need for resistance and it creates the and that's what i've always thought about evil and negative things in the first place like they are necessary because they motivate change and they motivate evolution they motivate expression of of dis of disdain of of

people that are completely displeased people that are very upset with the way things are they know this is the wrong way yeah and it motivates the the the zeitgeist to move into a different direction which i think is happening i hear that um this This was actually a comment from a student, the exact same comment that you just said is that, you know, there's this structural evil, right? There's this evil. And it actually does some good in the sense that it motivates people to transform. Yeah. transform. Yeah. Okay. I mean, yeah, I agree with you. And I'm at the same point. So through, through my looking at the UFO phenomenon, and you know, I knew all of this, I grew up in Northern California, you know, there was there were the, the grove, the I can't think of the name, it's

right above where I live, the Bohemian Grove. So I kind of already had an idea of this kind of thing, of the group, the cult, as you call it. Yeah. All right. And it's easy to see. Well, for those who can see it, it's easy to see. Some people don't want to see it.

Right. Okay. So once you see it, you're like, okay. But then to live it, this is what I felt like happened to see. Some people don't want to see it. So once you see it, you're like, okay. But then to live it, this is what I felt like happened to me. In 2012, after I started the study of UFOs, I recognized that the management of that

message of the UFO for the American public had been organized not just from the 1940s but really from earlier, from the early 20th century and once i started to recognize and even meet the people who were responsible for managing this in a very cohesive tight way very specific that's when i recognized that it was that you know i felt i felt it i guess that's the difference was that before I just saw it on the sideline, you know, like we talk about it now, you and I.

And it looks like we're talking about it from the sideline. We're saying, yeah, this is really bad what they're doing and stuff. But I was part of it. I saw it. I know those people. They talked to me about it. They talked to me about why they were doing it. And they said, Diana, you don't want to help these people.

They will kill you if you had something that they wanted. Like, these are not good people, is what they were saying. These people specifically? The general population. They were talking about the general population. The general population would kill you. That's what they were saying. They were saying that these people only do good because they have to do good. They are actually bad. And so this was the argument I was getting. So it caused me to eject these people from my life for one, but also to understand more deeply.

And believe me, I've already thought a lot about the problem of evil. I've spent my life reading about it and talking about it with people. And, you know, what can we do? I recognize we can't do anything except work on ourselves. And that's where I had to reread some of those texts, like the Plato text that I talked about, who he talks about your idea of evil that, you know, perhaps or he calls it injustice, injustice. He calls it injustice, injustice. And he says that perhaps people are unjust just because, you know, there needs to be injustice for other people to like recognize it and then to do this thing. You know, how do we create a just society? That's his question. Right. And I don't think he so he doesn't actually answer that question with words, but he does it through giving stories. And one of the stories is the

allegory of the cave, where, you know, the allegory, it's like the matrix, right? It's like, you know, where people are in, they're being tied up, and there's puppeteers who are showing them these shadows on the wall, and they take that for reality. But somehow some person gets out, and they see, well, what he's talking about is this mystical tradition that you and i've talked about early when we started talking we talked about if we do those things that we love and we're carried away and we become you call the you said it was obsessed you know you're obsessed with it and i call it doing it because it's pretty awesome right that's my word for it yeah when you do that justice happens like you're not worried about, you know. So so so it's almost like a an emergent phenomena from these communities that do it.

And they're small communities. So there is structural injustice and there's structural evil. And it doesn't seem like we can fight. That's what I learned from doing the UFO. I learned that there were these things, UFO but more intensely and more personally I learned that the government was doing this and that's what was upsetting to me most so I want to take it back to that because a lot of this is probably hard to follow for people that aren't like well read in this when you say that they have been engineering or orchestrating public perception of this experience from the beginning, what's the earliest known instance of this? Okay, so the one that is unclassified is Project Blue Book. And that's from 1950s, 1952. But I know that and I have to explain how one knows this. So we have documents

that talk about Project Blue Book, and that's the managed, you know, they're managing the perception, the public perception of UFOs goes back to like 47 even with Roswell and that kind of thing. kind of thing. There's another, and this is what I've found, is that there's an oral tradition that is part of the communities that run this, run these programs, like the UFO programs, right? And that information is carried within people. It's not written down. They even have a word for not writing it down. When they're going to have these meetings, they have this special term, and everybody puts down everything.

What's the term? It's called pencils up. Pencils up. Yeah. So pencils up means they're just going to discuss these things, and then that's the only record of up. Yeah. So pencils up means they're just going to discuss these things. And then that's the only record of it. Yeah. It's the oral tradition.

Now, why I was able to look at this is because I had done work looking at oral traditions in religious communities. Like oral traditions go back 10,000 years, whereas, you know, written traditions are like 2,000 years old. Oral traditions are actually more accurate than we think they are. We tend to think of it as telephone game. But you can get a lot of information from oral traditions. And this is actually how a lot of classified information is kept through oral tradition. Especially in a very disciplined and structured environment like high level military. Yeah. So they have a perception. And one of the things that you said earlier is that they think that the greater population is not good and that they will turn on you and that they're evil. Well, that's one faction. So what I found was that there were several different factions within the perception management of UFOs.

And one of the factions was responsible for sadly harassing people who do research. And I found this out by being harassed. How so? How were you harassed? Okay. How so? How were you harassed? Okay, so, you know, here I am, just your average professor doing their work and, you know, and doing it pretty well. At my university, I was the chair of my department, well regarded by my colleagues and students, and never really doing anything weird, right? And then I start to study UFOs thinking that they're not real,

thinking that it's just a form, a new form of religion. And then quickly having people come into my sphere, research sphere, who are, you know, part of CIA, part of FBI, that kind of thing. And then getting a shock that, you know, whoa, this could be dangerous and maybe I shouldn't be doing this. And thinking, you know, whoa, this could be dangerous and maybe I shouldn't be doing this. And thinking, you know, but... Just simply because those people are contacting you or specific reasons why you would think it's dangerous? It indicated to me that there was something that I shouldn't maybe be doing, that it could be dangerous. Right. That you could suffer consequences for your curiosity or for your research. Yeah. And that they would punish you or you could be punished. That's what I thought.

Yeah. Yeah. No, most certainly. And plus, I had done some research on UFOs by that time, of course. But what is it about the research and what is about what you could possibly uncover that would be so dangerous? Okay. So, of course, that's a question that's loaded. So I'm going to talk a little bit

about, I'll answer it in part. Okay. So in part, this is before the crash retrieval became a term that the Congress used. Right. So I was- What year are we talking about? So I started in 2012. Okay. By 2015 and 16, I was already in full shock mode of, wow, this is bigger than I thought. And I had been invited to go to a crash retrieval spot in New Mexico that was under a no-fly zone. And I still didn't believe that we UFOs at this point. You have to understand that. So I just thought that this, I thought the person inviting me is Tyler. He's a scientist. He works for the Space Force. He believes this. And I'm wondering, how does he even believe that this is real? We're going with Gary Nolan, who's from Stanford, and he's out.

But at the time, I called him James in my book. And I'm the one actually who invited him to go, because I didn't really want to go by myself, you know. And so I insisted that Gary go with me. And Tyler figured out who Gary was. And he said, okay, so we went out there, we had to actually wear blindfolds. And it was out in the middle of this place in New Mexico, I don't know where. I know what was near it, but I don't know where the actual place was. And we were looking for parts, right, that had been put out there. And during the time period, so I think part of it was the danger was that parts exist, right? So things like this do exist. And there are anomalous materials. This is what I was finding out. And I think that this is what, I'm an okay researcher. It's not like I would make

this up, nor would I lie. You know, I'm publishing with Oxford. So my reputation is at stake, right? So I'm doing the best I can to kind of adjudicate, like, am I being fed disinformation or what's going on? Gary now will be able to identify by taking these parts back and analyzing them through his laboratories, whether or not they're engineers or not. And he's been doing that ever since. So these are the kinds of things that I would have found out. I think part of it was also that I was finding out that there was an oral tradition and that the perception management was very tight. And I think this is what they were afraid.

But I've said this now publicly. But I did get harassed, though. I did get harassed. And it still happens. How did you get harassed, though. I did get harassed. And it still happens. How did you get harassed? Most of it is doxing and email harassment at my university began. And both to me and Gary at the same time. And people showing up.

People? Yeah, people in my town showing up. What kind of people? Schizophrenics? No, but people you wouldn't want to meet. Loons. Yeah. Do you think that's targeted?

Do you think that's on purpose? Oh, it's for sure. But do you think that also that might just be people that are obsessed with this particular subject? These are people that are affiliated with people in those that – Okay. Yeah. I mean, there's no doubt. So tell me about the crash retrieval site.

Yeah. So this is in... Okay. So now you have to understand this is a long time period. So I start this in 2012. I get this shock where I'm being, you know, people are asking me to meet, you know, people from these programs and from the Space Force. And I'm actually not meeting with them because I'm waiting. I'm kind of thinking,

I've got to think this through. It wasn't until about 2014 that I actually start to meet the people, like the affiliated people. And they show me some things and they, you know, they asked me to go to this crash retrieval site in New Mexico. Now, this is a recent crash? No. Okay. So this crash is part of a series of crashes that happened in the 1940s. So the Roswell.

It wasn't Roswell, actually. It was one of the crash sites that's near. It's in New Mexico, but it's not Roswell. So there was more than one crash in new mexico yeah i think allegedly allegedly yeah they said that there were probably four maybe even more i don't know what a bunch of shitty ufos i know i know that's what well they don't believe that they crashed they they use that term but they don't they don't think it's a crash they think that it's they personally i'll tell you from a professor's

standpoint, like their idea of this is that it's a donation. They call it the donation site. So they think that these were donated materials and they're going to get information and they do. And that's how Tyler was able to create a lot of, of the things that he created in, you know, through, and he would fly these on the space shuttle, by the way, he created in, you know, through, and he would fly these on the space shuttle, by the way, these experiments and so forth. It was very, very fascinating to me. I mean, I think anybody would be fascinated with it,

to tell you the truth. When you say fly these, you don't mean physical materials. So he would have an idea that he would get through these protocols that I told you about. So he practices these protocols. And it would be related to something that he would then want to fly on the space shuttle because this was during the time the space shuttle was happening. And the space shuttle had anti-gravity environments.

And he needed these environments in order to create this. And now this is actually a whole field called biologics. this and now this is actually a whole field called biologics so there's there's a real field now that where people are doing these experiments in space and creating things that we can't create here like what um medicine uh certain types of metals uh kind of like ceramic metals he created something i actually wrote about this and published about it. Totally academic paper. So, you know, most general readers would never read it. It's because it has academic jargon in it. But I talked all about it. Jamie's got something. Your research is capitalized on microgravity in space to accelerate drug discovery and development. and development. That was one of the speculations about the type of metals that were retrieved,

supposedly, from these crash sites, that whatever these metals were, they were layered, and that they could only be layered specifically the way they were done in a zero-gravity environment. Yeah, that's right. They were engineered. So I actually did talk to Gary before I came on your podcast because I just wanted to be sure, you know, because I don't want to represent his research incorrectly. So I said, can you please, you know, recap it? He always thinks I'm an idiot, too. He's like, how many times have I told you this? So, yeah, so he has parts from various of the crash sites that are clearly engineered. Not by humans. But he's not going to jump to the conclusion that it's extraterrestrial.

He says, we just don't know. Right. It's just something that is outside of the realm of our current understanding of how we create physical materials. That's correct. And how much of this stuff do they have? Do they have full crafts? I've never seen any full crafts. What did you see when you went to the crash site?

So I saw two types of materials. One, I can say, looks like kind of metallic frog skin. And another— And this is on the ground at the crash site? Okay, so that's another thing. I have to tell you a little bit about how we came about this. Now, remember, this is the first book that I wrote about this. So I've written two books about it. And I wasn't a believer. So when I went there, I even wasn't a believer. I was like, I think they're trying to give me misinformation or something's going on.

Maybe they really believe this. Well, they both really believed this. I know that for sure. So we're there and we had to wear blindfolds in order to go, me and Gary. So Tyler's taking us. We drive to a certain place. He says, put the blindfolds on. We had to leave our cell phones. We couldn't take any technology with us. And so we go out. It takes about an hour to get out to the site. We're blindfolded. We get out to the site. We get out.

We're wearing, like, I guess there's rattlesnakes out there. And so we have to wear certain boots and, you know, things like that. So we get out. We take our blindfolds off. And the first thing I do is I look around because it looks really familiar to me, even though I've never been out there. And Tyler looked at me and he said, looks familiar, doesn't it? And I said, you know, yeah. And he said, it's, it's, you've seen it in the X-Files. And I was like, what? He goes, they had an insider on their team. what? He goes, they had an insider on their team. And I honestly thought, okay, this actually fits into my research that, you know, we learn everything we do about religion from media. Like you want to know what, you know, Moses looked like, you just watch, you know, the 10 commandments and things like that. Like, it's not true, of course, but that's how most people learn about their religions. And so this made me understand, this course, but that's how most people learn about their religions.

And so this made me understand, this is what's going on. It's like, people are believing this through this, and then I'm coming to this, and I'm gonna confirm that it indeed looks like this, you know, and it is a crash site. It's just too weird for me, but, you know, this is what I study, so I'm gonna study. But that gets to your point, like,

how did we get this stuff? So he actually did have metal detectors that were configured for specific types of metals that he had these built. Is there a scientific term for these particular types of metals? They're called metamaterials. Metamaterials. Yeah. I think that's just a fancy word for saying we don't know what this is, frankly, because they're meta. Okay. Right? And they're layered in some sort of a way where it's like literally like atom upon atom.

Yeah. Well, I don't actually know the science of it. I just know what these guys tell me because, you know, they're doing the research at, you know, their laboratories. People are very cagey about it. Like Jacques Vallée was very cagey about the way he was willing to describe it and the way he was willing to describe these things. It's almost like they don't want to blurt out too much because it'll cut off access. I don't.

Okay. So that could be. But I know that the reason that I don't want to is there's some type of national security issue. And I am an American. Right. So there's something like that going on. Right. Especially if someone else can figure out how to use these things.

Yeah. So when you go to this site, do you see the physical ground where this thing hit? Okay, yes. What does it look like? Okay, so at this point, the whole site is covered with rubble that looks like rusted rubble. And it's not sand. So there's the sand of the desert, right? And then there's this rubble that looks like rusted rubble and it's not sand. So there's the sand of the desert, right? And then there's this rubble everywhere and I'm stepping on the rubble and I'm kind of looking at it. How big are these pieces? Well, this is all just like less than- Gravel? Yeah,

it's like gravel. And so I asked Tyler, what's this? And he said that after the government retrieved the crash and they didn't want anyone out here looking. So what they did was they dropped a bunch of tin cans out here in the 1950s and these have disintegrated down into this rubble. And so I put that in my book because that's what he said. And when I put that in my book, the editor of my book said to me, you can't say this because it's ridiculous. And I at the time I was like, it is ridiculous, but this is what happened. And it's data. And even though we don't understand it now and it seems ridiculous, we need to keep it in there.

It doesn't seem ridiculous to me at all. Well, this is a person who absolutely, you know, the editor who absolutely doesn't believe in UFOs at all, but knows that I'm doing good work on a new type of religion. Therefore, is keeping the Oxford brand, you know, Oxford University straight and narrow. But I convinced her. I said, it's data. So we've got to keep it in there. And I'm really happy I did. I kept it in there.

I kept a lot of stuff in there that didn't make sense to me at the time. But when I look back on it with everything that's coming out now, I'm like, okay, I'm glad I did that. Well, the strategy for disseminating disinformation along with real information has long been used. Yes. Where they'll say a bunch of really ridiculous things and connect them to something that's probably real. Right. And that way everything gets thrown out. It's the baby with the bathwater. The whole thing gets thrown out. Totally. And if you have a site where they've picked up these anomalous metals that defy our understanding of metallurgy and you're calling them metamaterials, no one knows where the hell it comes from.

What's the best way to confuse people? Well, just throw a bunch of regular metal everywhere. That's right. That's exactly. Yeah. Just throw 10 cans. But we were out there all day. So we were out there for probably 10 hours. And I know. So at many points in the day, Gary and I would go aside and kind of confer without Tyler listening and saying, you know, is this a setup? You know, And so he goes, well, let's just try to find some stuff and I'll analyze it and we'll tell you. So are you – do you notice that the ground has been disturbed? Is there an indication that something hit there? Yes.

So Tyler took us and showed us everywhere. Like he's been a part of this retrieval site for like 40 years or so. And he knows the people that like the original people and the story and everything like that. So he gave us a tour of the whole place. And we did. And we found parts, by the way. And some of the parts were so deep down into the ground, like there were rocks and things like that. And Gary, like I'm afraid he's going to get bit by a rattlesnake, frankly.

He's putting his hand down there and, you know, spending like hours at this one place trying to get something. He found some things there. found some things there. And I thought if people are trying to fool us and put things down, they did a really good job because they would have had to come here like a year ago or something and put that down there. So I don't, honestly, that's my personal opinion is I don't think that this, this was put out there for us. They found, they did, they did find, we did find things. What's interesting to me is this, is that after we found these things and we did all this kind of data collection and everything at the site, you know, very much like anthropologists do, by the way, you know, documenting what we found, when we found it, you know, what it looked like and things like that and putting into special containers. Um, then I was like, I don't want this. I don't want any of this stuff.

And they both looked at me and laughed. And so Tyler told us what was going to happen when we went back to the airport. He said, once we get back to the airport, Gary said he's going to take the stuff. Gary's going to get stopped. Oh, Tyler can go through airports, by the way. He doesn't have to go through the normal thing that I have to go through, like the TSA and everything. He just goes through. So he went through that through. I had to go through. Gary went through and he did get stopped. And everything happened exactly as Tyler said it would. They were going to look through everything. They were going to take everything apart. Then, you know, all that was was a signal to someone in DC that somebody had these parts and this is

who that's what he said was so and that and I don't know if the signal went to DC but everything else happened and and Gary and I were both sweating right we were like oh so they essentially allow this yeah yeah yeah is it because they want different perspectives from different academics? can't keep siloed because it's too important and we need to have the best minds on this information, this data, this material. And so they're kind of like outsourcing. How big were these pieces? So these pieces that I found weren't very big. I mean, they were about, one of them was about like this big, right?

Okay, like so the size of a pack of gum? Yeah. And the actual frog skin type thing was probably about this big. Like a small notebook? And we found a couple of those. You found a couple of those just wandering around this area? Well, we weren't wandering. We were actually digging in and looking.

Yeah. Wandering is a bad word. That's okay. But exploring. Yeah. This frog skin, what is it? Is it malleable? Yes yes it's malleable and you could crunch it up and it'll go back to its original form i've heard of that before that was something that they talked about at roswell that there was some bizarre metal that

you could crumple up like a piece of paper and it would flatten right back out. And that's what you experienced? I don't know if it was the same material, but yes. Yeah, it was like that. What did that feel like when you did that? It's hard to explain because you have to understand, I was really resistant to the, you know, 10 years ago. Think about it. This was a time period when we weren't talking about UFOs. Right. It was ridiculous.

Until 2017. That's right. To the New York Times story. That's right. And my book was impressed during that time. So during this time period, I'm doing this research and I am not going to believe that this is. But so many indicators were telling me that it was, yes, this is Diana. This is what's going on.

You know, there is something. That it was, yes, this is Diana. This is what's going on. You know, there is something. And so much. And when I looked back at the Space Force, our Space Force, and also the history of that, I could see, okay, there are so many things that just don't add up here. That this is probably. And I met too many people that had been long timers in the program.

Like seriously long timers. Like their whole lives. Live and die by this. Live and die by it. When they die, they die with that information. Whoa. And it's traumatizing to them and their family too. I can only imagine.

Yeah. Yeah. The people that worked on Roswell that spoke about it many, many years later, they have that sort of same weight that they're carrying around with them. Like Philip Corso and all those other people, when they describe the experience like many, many years later. So there's a weight to the information that they're carrying. It's almost like they want to tell the world, but the world's not going to even believe them. And how could they unless they experienced it? And even though they experienced it, they're still baffled by it. That's exactly the feeling I got. It was a weight.

There was a sense of duty to the American, you know, to being an American, of course, and patriot. There's a patriotism there. But there was also a sense that these were the true actors in history and we will never know their names. So you spent 10 hours at this site. Yeah. And is there any guidance? Are they describing things to you? Are they telling you what you can and can't do?

Is there any? No, it was just me, Gary, and Tyler. Mm-hmm. There was no. No one else. So who transported you there? Well, Tyler did because it was his site. So Tyler blindfolded you?

Yeah, yeah. He's the person who worked on this site for 40 years. So obviously he has permission to do this. He does. In fact, he had to get permission for Gary to go. He had already received permission for me to go, and he had to get permission for Gary to go. He had already received permission for me to go and he had to get permission for Gary to go. And what kind of information are they giving you in terms of what their conclusions are,

how many different possibilities that they have surmised? Like, do they have a summary of all the different aspects of this phenomenon that they think it could be or might not be? So, yes. So the story actually begins there. And then I continue to work with Tyler because I'm pretty fascinated by what he does. And I'm fascinated about the programs. And I'm fascinated by the fact that the true actors of history are unknown. What do you mean by that? Because these are the people that are doing things that actually change history. Like think of the first people that decided, hey, let's give these people LSD and see what happens, right? Well, they probably weren't Richard Alpert, Ram Dass, and Timothy Leary.

They probably weren't them. It was Jolly West. There you go. Okay. And most people don't know who that is. Okay. So that's what I'm saying is like there's a whole other level to our history. And I already knew this anyway, being a historian of religion.

But when it – I guess I was a patriot. Right. And I still am. And so when I was mine, so when I learned about this, I was I really wanted to share the story because I felt like these people, even if they remained invisible, they should get their due. Like because these people keep us safe in ways that we just don't know. And they're dedicating their lives and they're getting no recognition for it. Okay, no recognition. And so that really prompted me more than anything to write about it. So I was working with Tyler and I was scheduled to go to the Vatican. And it was at the Vatican where we encountered, where a lot of things happened for Tyler that I saw, made him understand that this was something that had been going on historically for a very long time period. See, we didn't just go to the Vatican, we also went to the well, we went to the

Vatican archive, which is hard to get into, but I could get into it. And we also went to the space observatory archive, which most people don't even know that the Vatican has a space of his observatory. And how that all happened was not set up, Joe, it was not, it was so organic. Because it happened before I even met Tyler. And I, I put off going there because I have, I had at the time, very young kids kids and I didn't want to leave them and go to another country for, you know, three weeks or whatnot. And – but I had been invited by Brother Guy Consolmagno to go to the space observatory because I had been studying about the space, you know, research. And I said, does the Vatican have like a lot of space documents, you know, documents about space? does the Vatican have like a lot of space documents, you know, documents about space? And he said every single thing that the Vatican does, and we do, he said, comes to where I live,

which is at the Space Observatory. And we have a scholar's residence and you're welcome to stay for as long as you want. You have full access to the Space Observatory archive. What is it like? It's great. It's great. Describe it to me. Okay. Well, for me, it's great. Right. Many people may think, oh, how boring, right?

But original Keplers and Copernicuses and, you know, every single thing that people, scientists from 1200, 1300 on up, thought about space and about magnetism and propulsion and things like that, it's all there, every one of them. And so you go in there and we had full access to it. Why does the Vatican have that? Well, the Vatican would have it. So because, you know, who was doing this 500 years ago? There was no United States. So of course they're going to have it. They also have an amazing meteorite collection. They have a lot of really cool things there. And they're, again, they're going to have it. They also have an amazing meteorite collection. They have a lot of really cool things there. And again, they're these monks. They're astrophysicist monks. And they're just hanging out there. They've got the best lattes, by the way. Italians. Yeah.

They know how to eat. My experience, though, of the Vatican itself was different than the archive. And I've actually heard you talk about the Vatican. And I agree. Like you said, I saw you talking about it and you said, you know, I'm looking around and I see all this stuff and they stole it from all these countries. It was like all this booty, you know, the Vatican is filled with it. That was my experience as well. So when I went, you know, we did all the, we did the scholarship, of course, but we also did the touristy thing. So, you know, we went and looked at all the museum and everything like that.

And everything I saw seemed to me to be like, you know, colonization, you know, the colonization of these people and taking their stuff and the colonization of these people and taking their stuff. And they have it all there. And when you're inside the vatican by the way it's different than when you're outside of it because you know when you're outside of it there are those guys that that uh the swiss guards well those guys are militia when you go inside and they're everywhere the thing that fascinated me about it was the the volume. Yeah. The volume. It's like they're hoarders for insane art. Yeah.

I mean, there's stuff that should be in its own room, and it's just stacked next to other stuff that also should be in its own room. It's almost like they don't have enough space for all the stuff that they have. That's what it seems like. Yeah. Well, it's kind of like this place. If you see our stack of art that we have out there, I have stuff that I need to put on the walls. I just have too much of it because so many people send me cool shit.

This is such an awesome studio. It reminded me immediately when I walked into it. I was like, okay, I want to take photos of everything. But I didn't. But I did want to. Well, you can. It's okay. Yeah, it's just art.

It's amazing. You have some really amazing stuff It's okay. Yeah, it's just art. It's amazing. You have some really amazing stuff. Thank you. Yeah, it's cool. It's cool to be connected to so many fascinating artists that send me stuff or that I buy their stuff. Like, you know, I bought the Hendrix painting. The thing about the Vatican, well, I got very fortunate that we had a professor that took us on a tour. And my children were pretty young at the time.

And when we went, we were outside in this courtyard area and there's where the pine cone is. And he said, do you know the significance of the pine cone? And I said, does it represent the pineal gland? And he said, yes. And so he got so excited. I did not know this. Yeah. It's also in the Pope's staff. If you look at the staff that the Pope carries,

the staff has a pine cone. See if you can get a photo of the staff the Pope carries. It has a pine cone in the center of it. The pine cone, which is in, it's depicted in many, many ancient pieces of art, religious art, and it represents the pineal gland. Because it's similar in appearance to a pine cone. And so this pine cone, which also I'm sure probably represents the Fibonacci sequence, which also represents itself in the pine cone.

That's the seed of the soul. That where dmt is made this might be the gateway place yeah it's well the reason why they have it an immense pine cone i mean that's not an accident no of course no that's so here it is fascinating so he has it in his staff and that massive pine cone that is the sculpture at the Vatican that that's what that is that that that is it's representative of the pineal gland and this is what this professor was telling me and like you see it there in that ancient Mesopotamian art it's probably Sumerian with that that god that has that I mean that's the Anunnaki carried that thing. And that the fact that they're holding it specifically, that they're telling you, like, this is what's up. This is the connection.

This is the connection to the gods. Did you guess this? Well, I knew that the pineal gland looked like a pine cone. And so when he asked you, you just knew this? Yeah. That's pretty amazing. Well, I'd already had a lot of experiences with DMT. Right.

So I already knew. I knew there was, there's a realm accessible to anybody that gets in contact with that stuff that is beyond imagination. It is more real than reality. And when you go there, you've been there before. It is more real than reality. And when you go there, you've been there before. The most bizarre feeling about it is this terrifying fear while it's happening and then incredible peace when you get in there and a recognition like, oh, I know this place.

I've been here. I'm here all the time. I know these things. I know these beings. These beings are truth. They're something from somewhere else, somewhere that's probably around us all the time. That's influencing us all the time. I know a lot of people have had very negative experiences, like horrific experiences

of demons and negative encounters. I've had none none i've had no negative experiences like that my my experiences are all in these very enlightened bizarre creatures that contact you and they seem to know like what's wrong with me like right away and they seem to like also work on you like there's this bizarre feeling like they're like, let me get in there and fix your fucking wires. Well, that, of course, sounds like the abduction experience. Yes. Very, very, very similar to the abduction experience. I think they're all connected.

I really do. I think that's why. I mean, I know you're saying that some of them do happen during the day. I'm sure. I'm sure some of them happen during the day. Most of them happen at night. The vast majority of them happen during when people are sleeping. That's true.

And that seems to be completely connected to that. It's the only explanation that makes sense to me other than an actual, you know, like, you know, Hollywood-style UFO landing and then come and get you, which seems so theatrical. I think the reality is far more bizarre than that i think that is that's one of the things that mckenna said about dmt and also about mushrooms terence mckenna said that they show you themselves in that way to comfort you because the reality of what they are would be too much for you to handle. And that what you're seeing, even though it's mind blowing, it's just a tiny little piece of what it actually is. So when I'm at the Vatican and I see this pine cone, I'm going, okay. So there's this recognition that this connection to God, this connection to this higher experience, this higher power, it's available inside of us. There's a gateway,

and that's the gateway. That pine cone is the gateway. That's amazing. And, you know, my parish priest actually about a year ago gave me a little pine cone, a little gold pine cone, and I put it on my bag. And I didn't know this, actually. And as I came here to Austin, it fell off in the airport. And it's not gold or anything, but it looks gold and it fell off and it kind of went away and it would be I thought maybe I should just let it go and then I looked at it and I was like nah that's really important for some reason so I picked it up and put it back in the bag that's wild I know yeah it's a strange representation of what I mean it's it's like it's an icon of this thing whatever this thing is that's inside of us, that is this gateway. And it must have been that Plato and his school was basically, they were basically trying to make the body healthy enough for people to, you know, access through this, which is

a type of mind, like he didn't call it intellectual. He had another word for it they have uh like greeks they have different words for knowledge right so gnosis and you know so this was a form of um the dialectic which was a certain type of knowledge a certain type of knowing it wasn't like mathematical knowing so this must be this type of thing, I'm thinking. Because, you know, Plato's Republic actually went and influenced Christians in early Christianity. So this idea seems to not be just specifically Christian, as you say. You saw, you know, we saw some photos of Egyptians, you know, with the Bible. Yes.

Fascinating. All throughout history. Yeah. And then all throughout history, the use of psychedelics. I'm sure you're aware of Brian Murerescu's work. Oh, yeah. I know him. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And then all throughout history, the use of psychedelics. I'm sure you're aware of Brian Murarescu's work. Oh, yeah. I know him. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So that whole thing, the Eleusinian Mysteries. That's right. Yeah. That was all about that. That's right.

Are you aware of Maria Sabina? Yes. Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay. So when I was young, I learned about her and how she worked with psilocybin to heal people. And when she died, I think it was in the 1980s, the president of Mexico announced it. So in that culture, it was well known. And she called the psilocybin, the mushrooms, little saints. Did you ever read John Marco Allegro's work? No, I haven't. Do you know of it?

No, I probably have read it. I've read a lot of books, so I may have just forgotten. John Marco Allegro was an ordained minister who became an agnostic when he started studying theology. And he was one of the people that was studying the Dead Sea Scrolls. And he studied the Dead Sea Scrolls for 14 years and he wrote The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross. Okay, yes, I do know that book. Yes, yeah, yeah. And then he wrote, that one got,

I think it got bought out by the Catholic Church and you can get old copies of it, but then it was just re-released a few years back. But then he wrote something in the Christian myth. I forget what it was. Sacred Mushroom in the Cross. And then there was another one he wrote that he published after that other one was bought out that's readily available. But this guy studied the Dead Sea Scrolls, which is the oldest version of the Bible that we know of. It's written in Aramaic. And the Dead Sea Scrolls is a particularly meticulous transcription. The way they had to transcribe

this is very bizarre because it's written on parchment, which is animal skin. So they had to do DNA tests on the various pieces of parchment to make sure that they came from the same piece, because the idea that they'd be from different cows. So they take this parchment skin, they're laying it out, they do DNA tests on it to make sure it's all from the same, and then they try to piece together what it is. And not all of it is even available.

Jamie, check me that out. Behind you to the right. Thank you. And not all of it is even available. Jamie, chuck me that up. Behind you to the right. Thank you. And his conclusion after all of this, the summary of his conclusion was the entire Christian religion was all about psychedelic experiences and fertility rituals. And that this was what all these stories really meant. And he even connected the word for Christ to an ancient Sumerian word,

which meant a mushroom covered in God's semen. And that these ancient people believed that when it rained, it was God having an orgasm on the earth. And that these mushrooms, which if you've ever seen, mushrooms appear after the rain, they come up out of nowhere. And that these mushrooms, these people would eat them, and they would experience God. And that they wrote these things down.

And then, well, first it was an oral tradition for who knows how long. And then they wrote them down. And then, you know, it gets transcribed to Greek and Latin and English. And it's all. And a lot is missing out of those translations. A lot of it's missing even from the ancient Hebrew translation because the words in ancient Hebrew had numerical value. Yes, that's true. Which is a very complicated language where like the word love and the word God have the same numerical value.

And the numerical value in words is very important to what the meaning of these sentences and what these phrases meant. And we lose a lot of that. We also lose people's gender through these translations. So some early apostles are called, who are women, are called men in the translation from Greek to Latin. So I'm aware of this idea, and of course Brian's work as well. So I'm aware of this idea and, of course, Brian's work as well. And in my field, that's one. We have categories for, you know, obviously, you know, like medicine, you know, has different categories.

And that's one category is entheogens and different types of religions. So the early Christian church, I would say that not all. I don't agree that all of Christian tradition is this. i would say that there definitely is a lot of it um but there are also other types of you know christian traditions i mean when i look at the jesus movement in the first century it to me looks like a philosophical school like plato and you know plato did the mysteries you know and um but i don't know if i think jesus was part of an Essene movement, like the John the Baptist is Jewish, he's out in the desert, and, you know, they're practicing these water rites, and they basically are, you know, they have their own community.

And he looked like he was part of, he had been baptized into this community. So the Jews at the, in the first century are just trying to survive because Rome is killing them and destroying, they're going to destroy their temple. So a lot of these communities, you know, so that's one interpretation, and I'm not discounting that that's correct for those traditions, but there are other traditions that are not, they're not filled with entheogens and things like that. I'm just letting, just being accurate. That's all I could do. I'm sure there's a lot. I mean, you're, you're.

Yeah. It was, it was super diverse today. Look at how diverse it is. So I think there are thousands of, well, there are thousands of Protestant denominations of, you know, and there's Catholicism and, you know, so we have so many different, and even Catholics don't even know what they're supposed to believe. So some here believe this, some over here believe that. They have the same mass that they go to, but their belief structures are different. So that leads us to one of the most fascinating interpretations of what we're experiencing collectively when it comes to this UFO, UAP, whatever it is, phenomenon, that this is not a thing from another planet. It comes on a spaceship and lands here to show us how to do things correctly.

But that they've always been here and that they are the things that are being described in Ezekiel, that they are a phenomenon that is both here and not here at the same time, that you are literally dealing with angels and demons, That this phenomenon is connected to these ancient stories of religion. And it's not as simple as other beings like us from somewhere else. Okay. Yeah. So I can respond to that. All right. So because you've said a huge amount of information in there, and I'm going to parse out some of that and tell you just about what I think. So part of why I continued to study this was that I saw that the historical record included a lot of these events. And these events were weird back then just like they're weird today.

Right. And when you look at these events back in that time period, you also see a common pattern that happens today. And what is that pattern? That pattern is that, you know, let's take St. Francis of Assisi's stigmata. I don't know if you want to show, you know. Sure. So if you look at his stigmata where it looks like he's being, you know, basically radiated by a UFO, that's what my

students say when they go and they see this in the Louvre and such. If you look at his primary sources for that, this happens in the 1200s, and you look at what, yeah, so that. So here you see St. Francis, but also over here on the right you see his friend Brother Leo. Brother Leo actually at the time was probably 15 or something like that. 15? Yeah, he's really young. Hard life back then. Dude looks 80.

Well, he doesn't actually look like that. So the artists actually are not getting at the primary sources. And that's what similar things are happening today. So the representations that we get in the media don't look at all like an abduction. They don't look at all what people experience. And so what I did was I went through a lot of the primary source materials for Teresa of Avila has a weird experience that looks like an abduction. But they look beautiful. They're domesticated. They're made to look a lot more happy or something like that. And I think part of the reason for that, I don't think it's

intentional. I think because it's traumatic. I think because once you recognize the people themselves are traumatized by this in both good and bad ways. OK, so this experience is still happening. To call it angels and demons is is is accurate, except for one part. And because there are bad things that happen, sometimes people get hurt. Francis died from that wound or he died from wounds that, you know, were bleeding until. So when he had this experience until he died, which was about a year and a half later, they tried to keep it silent in his monastery because they were they didn't know what happened to him and they were horrified

by it. OK. And so until he died, they didn't actually tell anybody. So he kept it between him, Brother Leo and probably another monk. So there's this idea of shame almost, you know, this is like, you know, shameful. But also this idea that bad things happen. And that's why people say, well, you know, demonic or something like that. And people do experience these things in different ways. And they still do. They still do.

But what should we call it? Should we then use the terminology of people from 100 years ago and call it angels and demons? I don't think we should. I think that what we have to do is we have to take case by case, look at patterns, and maybe just try to proceed with different language. Because some of the things are really interesting. If you do look at, say, experiences that Catholics have, say, in the 1960s that have been videotaped. Okay, so Virgin Mary experiences where the Virgin Mary appears. And she reads people's minds as she does, you know, she's doing these kinds of things, levitating people together.

If you put physics on that case, physicists on that case, and if you take, you know, the work of those people who are working, I think it's the University of Washington, where they're doing MRI imaging of what people are thinking, and they're able to replicate it. So if they're looking at a Van Gogh painting, they can replicate that. Well, this looks like a technology. So that's what I'm trying to say is that there's something going on that could possibly be different. And we need different language for it. And I think we're at the very beginning, just like doing this stuff with DMT, we're at the very beginning of learning about this other world. You know, another thing that's fascinating about ancient religious art is the halo.

Yeah. Have you ever seen the earlier depictions of the halo where it looks like a mushroom cap? That is wild because it seems to be that what they're trying to say is that this person is under the influence of the entheogens. I mean, it's a literal representation of a mushroom cap. It changes over time and over history, and it becomes different, and it eventually becomes like a hula hoop around your head. But the earlier versions all look like a mushroom cap.

They have the lines of the mushroom cap. Jesus is depicted there. The enlightened ones, the saints, the religious figures that are of prominence, they all have that mushroom cap experience behind their head. Even the Buddha, that photo of the Buddha there with the halo, click on that, the statue, yeah, even that. I mean, they all have this thing behind them, which you could represent. I mean, you could interpret as these people are under the influence.

OK, I agree with you that their mushrooms are seen in Catholic churches in near Guatemala, down in Mexico and things like that inlaid. Guatemala, down in Mexico and things like that inlaid. But I would have to suggest that there might be more going on. So I'm going to push back on your interpretation. Although I'm not going to say that psilocybin and mushrooms aren't part of that iconography. I would say that a lot of the iconography is going to be something about the light that emanates from people who are accessing these realms. And I say that because I've read so many reports, and they're not... I think that if some of the monks and nuns who report being lit up, right, in their cells and things like that, if they were doing psilocybin, if they were doing mushrooms, they would have said so. They would have written it because they write a lot. So the Catholics have immense records.

They took good notes. Well, I don't think it's the only way to do it. Oh, I know. I was just – I mean I think it's something that they discovered. Oh, for sure. I think it's – It's something that they discovered. Oh, for sure. It's a part of it. I do.

Yeah, I think that. But so the magnetism of what's, you know, this kind of light that's happening, you can see that even in the Shroud of Turin, which is, by the way, an anomalous artifact that scientists have looked at. Even atheist scientists have looked at it. And it appears to be some type of imprint from radiation onto a cloth. So I think we're talking about forms of light as well. But the Shroud of Turin is only 500 years old. Well, not necessarily. Really?

Yeah. 500 years old. Well, not necessarily. Really? Yeah. So there are certain parts of it that could have been repaired that are 500 years old. So the problem is there is a whole department of the... You should get this priest on here, by the way. You'd have a really good discussion with him. He's an expert on the Shroud of Turin, and he just came out with new research that's been done about six months ago. And there's a whole department in the Vatican just for doing research on the Shroud of Turin. So it's not necessarily just 500 years old. There are different parts of it. You know how you were talking about the parchment? Is the Shroud of Turin real after all? 1988 report wrote off the relic as a medieval fake, but now the science seems to be turning.

Could it have been a miracle all along? Fascinating. Okay. Let's see what it says. Other than just that. 170 peer-reviewed academic papers on the shroud have been published in scientific and archaeological journals around the world. Despite all the attention, there's little consensus as to just how ancient this ancient linen really is

or what it actually shows. The record places the shroud in, how do you say that? Lyrie? Lyrie? L-I-R-E-Y? Northern France for four years until 1357, the alpine town of Chambry from 1502 to 1578 where it was damaged by fire before being passed to the Dukes of Savoy

in 1578. The Savoys moved it to their capital, Turin, and aside from periods of wartime evacuation, it has stayed in the Royal Chapel of San Giovanni Battista Cathedral ever since. Consensus has been the shroud's history pre-1300 will never be established,

and yet the French historian Jean-Christine Petitfils has recently published a seriously reviewed 400-page analysis of all the archaeological and scientific studies so far, and in Italy the peer-reviewed findings of a specialist x-ray study by a team of physicists indicate that the fabric is potentially up to 2,000 years old. There are now six studies which challenge the idea that Turin Shroud has nothing more than a cunning piece of medieval trickery. Could it be something more? The cloth, which has been the object of mass veneration by Catholic faithful for centuries was acquired by a French knight, Geoffrey de Charny, Charny, how do you say that? How would you say that? Charny? I'm not quite sure. Who deposited

in the monastery in Lire about 130 miles east of Paris in 1353. This is a time of unparalleled relic mongering and forgery, and according to the American archaeologist William Mecham, the shroud was most likely arrived in Europe along with many other relics looted from churches and monasteries during the Crusades. Research in 2015 reported the analysis and identification of dust and pollen samples extracted by an adhesive which suggested that the shroud may have undergone a journey from the ancient Near East after the sack of Constantinople in 1204. Still were it not for the poignant image of its folds, chances are it would have disappeared into the mores of other spurious relics kept in thousands of churches all over Western Europe. In Petit Fil's latest book, how do you say it? Petit Fil?

I'm not actually, Petit Fil is what I would say. Petit fil. But. Les Saints Soirés de Touraine, Timon de la Passion de Jesus Christ, the Holy Shroud of Turin, witness to the passion of Jesus Christ. He examines more than 100 years of historical, archaeological, and scientific research. His conclusion, the cloth has all the characteristics of authenticity.

Hmm. Interesting. Interesting. Go back. Interesting. Interesting. Go back. Okay. Even those who reject the idea the shroud is a 2,000-year-old, how do you say that word? Sepulchral? Sepulchral cloth? Yes, sepulchral.

Sepulchral cloth. He writes, are unable to explain the imprint of the body. Adversaries of the authenticity of the shroud come up against an enigma that this one cannot be the work of a counterfeiter because to make such an image would have required unknown scientific knowledge in the Middle Ages. The image is not a painting, no trace of brushstrokes, no outline has been observed even under electron microscope. We must exclude the hypothesis of a smear, the application of a base relief of wood or marble or a metal statue heated and placed on the cloth. It was the Catholic Church itself unwittingly sparked what would become a global obsession with the shroud in 1898, when it gave the green light to a rare public exhibition of the cloth. Secondo Pia, an amateur, became the first to photograph the linen's strange sepia shadows and the high contrast created by black and white photography enhanced by blurry stains.

When Pia went to the darkroom to check his plates, he was startled to see that the negatives revealed a haunting, perfectly proportional facial image of a serene bearded man and the imprint of a body tortured by what appears to be flogging lacerations and puncture wounds. Can we see an actual image of what the... Yeah, that's it. Is that the actual image? Yeah.

Can you click on that, Jamie, and make it large? Wow. How bizarre. Where that the actual image? Yeah. Can you click on that, Jamie, and make it large? Wow. How bizarre. Where are the puncture wounds? Is that what we're seeing in his stomach area? Maybe right here, this thing. Yeah, right? And that is where they... They didn't go through the hands. They did go through the wrists when they crucified people. And then there also

appears to be something in his stomach. Yeah. If you look above his right arm, right above the wrist, that looks like a wound, which is what is detailed in his stomach. Yeah. If you look above his right arm, right above the wrist, that looks like a wound, which is what is detailed in the Bible. Yeah. Very strange. Yeah. So that really is 2,000 years old, but very bizarre.

Very bizarre. Hmm. Hmm. Yeah. You ever hear of the second coming project I used to have a joke about it second coming project was a group of people that

were it was either a troll they were joking around or they were serious about it where they wanted to obtain DNA from the shroud of Turin and clone Jesus. And that's how Jesus would come back. I have heard about this.

That's right. That's right. That's hilarious. Yeah. Wow. That would be so weird. Imagine. That's how they do it.

That would be so amazing. Yeah. That would kind of, I mean, that wouldn't, that wouldn't create immaculate conception, but it kind of would. It seems like it. I mean, it's not birthed from a virgin, but it's similar in that regard. But that's one of the things that I had a conversation with Taylor Sheridan the other day, we were discussing like, what is the Bible trying to say when it describes certain

things? But in the beginning there was light and how God created everything in six days. God, doesn't that sound like the Big Bang through the telephone game? Yeah. So the Catholic Church and science go together. Even Catholics can believe in evolution. They don't generally know that. They believe in evolution. It's just theistic evolution. Right. That's all. And most Catholics don't know that. And I don't know why. But Catholics, theistic evolution. Right. That's all. Right. And most Catholics don't know that. And I don't know why. But Catholics, yeah, we're scientific. I've been messing around with

this idea over the last few years that the universe itself is God. I think, yeah, I mean. This idea that like God created the universe. Yeah. Maybe it is God. I mean, if you want to talk about something that's all powerful, beyond comprehension, is responsible for every single thing in the cosmos, it is the universe that all has some sort of law that keeps it together. Like an intelligence. Yes. Yeah. And it's completely mysterious. One of the things you talked about in your book that's really fascinating was the Apollo 10 when they were hearing space music. Yeah.

And they didn't want to talk about it. No, they didn't. What did they describe it like? You can hear it actually online. Really? Yeah. Let's hear it. Apollo 10 space music.

Let's fucking go. Maybe this has been my new workout music. Space music. I didn't know you could hear it online. It really freaked them out. I would imagine. Dr. Aya Whiteley, she's a space psychologist. She's the one who told me about it and said you should put this as a quote before my information because she talked about how they didn't want to report it because it was so weird.

And that's the whole idea of this two data set. There are two data sets for UFO reporting. Like pilots will see stuff, but they won't report it. Right. Or they'll see stuff and they'll report stuff, but they won't. Let's listen, I guess. Here we go. You want some more brownies?

Now. I pushed this guy a little harder. Let's listen, I guess. Here we go. You want some more brownies? No. I pushed it a little harder. That music even sounds outer spacey, doesn't it? You hear that? That whistling sound? Yeah. Woo! Yeah, it sounds like, you know, outer space type music.

Hey, Tom, is your insulation all burned off here on the front side of your window over here? Yeah. Mine's all burned off. Heading out here. Where are you, John? You might get burst into a pinch of heat. I'll put you some grape juice. This goes on for five minutes. I don't know. So it's just that sound

i think it's the sound there are two tones there's kind of like this high pitch sound and then that sound yeah Yeah, and you're also getting it. It's a recording from inside. And obviously it's not going to sound exactly how they were hearing it. This video can't be this. It's not. It's just video. I think like stock video of them on the mission. Oh, so this is not the video of them experiencing it?

No way. The audio would be recorded separately from this, and I think someone just mixed this together, so there's something to look at. Let's see if there's just a recording of the audio itself without these guys. This is the one that's in full audio. I don't know. This is from CBS.

I don't know. Sounds the same. All right. That is... That sounds like it. Wow. Mystery music heard space. Ooh.

What the hell is that? Yeah. What do they think it is? Well, what happens now, I don't know what they think it is, but I do know that they train astronauts for it now to get them. They have simulations. So when astronauts go into space, they're not surprised by stuff. So this is a common occurrence. There are so many weird things that happen.

Like one thing that happened to them when they were in space. Now, this is getting back to the two data sets. So they've worked their whole lives to go into space. So they can't indicate that in any way they're mentally unstable. So when they go there and they come back, certain things happen. So one thing that happened was they were seeing like flashes of light when they came back down to Earth, but they wouldn't tell anybody. And then finally, a bunch of them said, do you see this flash of light? Like when you close your eyes, you see light and everything like that.

And they agreed that if they all reported it, they couldn't get fired. So this is how they were able to report weird stuff that they saw in space. Isn't that crazy that exploring the outside of Earth, you have to be careful about what you say because people think you're crazy? That's right. That's right. Isn't that bizarre? Well, yeah. So it's these two data sets. So it happens here when people have, you know, when they see things and then they have these

strange things that happen. They tell authorities the stuff. Okay, yeah, I saw this. It was unknown. I don't know what it was. But then they tell their friends and family, I actually had this feeling that it was looking at me and this is why I think that. And so they tell their subjective kind

Of weird things, you know to their families and their family friends. So yeah, so you get that with astronauts, too. Hmm Who is that The front of the line when it comes to this stuff like who has been studying this the longest That has the greatest body of information available? About space and stuff? About the emergent phenomenon of some sort of contact. Okay. That's such – okay, this is a hard question to answer because there is a person, but will this person say everything this person knows?

Probably not. Okay. So, but there is an official NASA historian who, in my opinion, knows way more than he actually writes about, but he's written a heck of a lot. And his name is Stephen Dick. What an unfortunate name. Well, yeah, but it is his name. And he has an amazing body of work that anybody who's interested in this should read. He was also at the very beginning kind of in – he was part of the initial stages of creating astrobiology and – yeah, astrobiology. And what leads you to believe that he's holding back information? What leads you to believe that he's holding back information? Well, when I go back and I'm in contact with him and when I read what he's written, I can see that he was at the forefront of looking at this like AI back like 25 years ago. He was already talking about it, saying this is AI.

ET is going to be AI and this is why. And then kind of doing timelines and things like that. So and also just conversations that I've had with him that are, you know, basically correspondences that indicate to me that I think he probably has some information. But he you know, a lot of this is classified. Right. And probably for good reason. information but he you know a lot of this is classified right and probably for good reason what good reason um i don't know but yeah this is from his wikipedia uh on astrobiology that's not this we're just talking they argued since the ancient greeks extraterrestrial life has been a theme tied to scientific cosmologies, including the ancient atomist, Copernican, Cartesian, and the Newtonian worldviews. Dick argues that from an epistemological point of view, the methods of astrobiology in the 20th century are as empirical as in any historical science such as astronomy or geology. Dick has also surveyed the field of astrobiology in critical issues in the history, philosophy,

and sociology of astrobiology. On December 4th, 2013, while holding the NASA Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Dick testified on astrobiology before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, arguing that SETI funding should be restored and integrated with the NASA astrobiology program. Hmm. Hold on. Go back to that. Okay. This part, the intelligence principle.

Yeah, this is it. This is the thing that he worked on like more than 20 years ago is a hypothetical idea of dicks in the field of cultural evolution outlined is 2003 paper cultural evolution the post-biological universe and seti the intelligence principle describes a potential binding tendency among all intelligent societies, both terrestrial and extraterrestrial. The maintenance, improvement, and perpetuation of knowledge and intelligence is the central driving force of cultural evolution. And that, to the extent intelligence can be improved, it will be improved. It doesn't actually have the next line that he writes about and says, and if it's not improved, it will be to the detriment of that society.

That certainly seems to be true. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, so it's him, but also Joe, it's not just him. There's a group, they're called the Invisible College, and I'm not going to name who they are. People can search them and find out their names. But they're part of this oral tradition and this hidden tradition that's been at the forefront of doing this type of work for over 50, 60, 70 years. So what has it been like for you to go from a person that before you visit this crash site, you think this is all nonsense. Right. To where you are now, having written two books about it and very careful with your words and realizing how bizarre this is to now having this conversation with me in front of millions of people. What has this been like for you?

Yes, it's been life-changing. Okay, so that's definitely a fact. And in the beginning, it was uncomfortable. But I learned, this is where I learned about, you know, you're talking about the pineal gland. This is how I learned about this access. And I learned it through communities that are associated with this study. So I've learned about human potential. And I think that that's probably what's impacted me more than anything.

And I also learned about structural evil in societies. And how has it been for me? I think it's been great. Really? Yeah. I mean, I thought about it the other day, because there were times when I said, I don't want to do this anymore. And I think that, I thought, you know, I think the bad times have been worth it. The scary parts have been worth it. Because I went into this wanting to know, right? I'm a professor of religion. I mean, I want to know. And I wanted to be a professor of religion since I was 11. And yeah, and now I am. That's cool to know what you want to do when you're 11.

Yeah, it was pretty weird. But I knew. And now I feel like I'm getting answers. And it's not like I know conclusively. Part of it is that we're not meant to know. Part of it is that it is a mystery. But it's a fascinating one. It's almost as if this, for me, you talked about obsession, it's that.

Like I do it in and of itself. I think it's fascinating. I often struggle with the concept that the human mind is incapable of grasping the truth. That even if it was presented to us, we don't have the capability to truly incorporate it into our not just worldview, but view life view existence view that it's it's too baffling we're not quite ready yet it's like showing australia pithicus a cell phone right it's like what the fuck is this yeah what is this we're not ready for it yet and i i really wonder with the emergence of artificial intelligence and what seems to me at least to be the inevitable, not just incorporation of it into our lives, which has already happened, but incorporation into it

biologically. I feel like that is a step that we're taking that seems inevitable, that seems there's going to be some sort of convergence, emerging of human consciousness and artificial. I think artificial intelligence is the wrong term. I don't think it's artificial at all. I think it's a type of intelligence that's created by the human being, and the human being is biologically hindered by the fact that biological evolution is so slow and technological evolution is so insanely rapid, especially if sentient artificial intelligence becomes capable of creating its own version of artificial intelligence. And it's not hindered by the

biological limitations of the human mind. You know, I think Elon said it best, and you talked about it in this book, that we're the biological bootloader for artificial intelligence. I've described it before I heard that, that we are a caterpillar that's creating a cocoon to give birth to the electronic butterfly, and that this is also what fuels not just innovation but materialism materialism is inexorably connected to innovation because one of the things about materialism is everybody wants the newest latest greatest thing and status is attached to those things we buy new cell phones like my friend had a um an iphone one of my friends hilarious my friend eddie bravo he

had a iphone 13 and i go why'd you get He goes, they gave it to me for free. And I was like, didn't you want a 15? He's like, doesn't it do the same thing? I'm like, it really does. But I wanted a 15 when it came out. I have zero difference between my 15 and my 14. But how'd you get the 15? It's like there's something connected to us that wants the latest, greatest, and we're connected to this idea of materialism. And if you looked at the human being as an organism and you were separate from it and you said, well, what does this thing do? Well, this thing makes better things constantly. That's all it does. That's what it does.

It does a lot of other stuff. Yeah, yeah. It does a lot of other stuff. But it makes better things. But even the better things it does, like when wars to control resources, why do they want resources? So they can make better things. It's all about better things. It's all about more control so that they have more access to more materials, to more better things. more better things.

And that always, if you're dealing with intelligence and you're dealing with technological evolution and technological innovation, it's going to lead to artificial life or a life, a new kind of life. A new kind of life, yeah. And that might be the kind of life that literally becomes a god. If you think about it, if it continues to get,

like there's, I was looking at this video that was on YouTube that was showing the stages of artificial intelligence and that there's these multiple stages, artificial and general intelligence, sentient general intelligence, and then it goes to God-like artificial intelligence. But that is, is that what God is?

And is that what we're doing? Are we making God? If God made us in his own image, are we making God? Is that what this whole thing is about? Well, you know, these are some of the questions that I have when I go back to looking at some of the characteristics of these, like the Virgin Mary sightings and things like that. We now have technologies that can replicate what it seems like was happening during that event you know like in Garibundal in Spain

in the 1960s and if that's the case then it looks like Stephen's idea of the intelligence principles correct when he says that there will be intelligent beings that will appear like deities to us which makes sense yeah and he also says you know and um i don't know if you've gotten to the chapter on simone in the book but she's a quantum ai person and she's um she talks about ufos and and she hates the word artificial intelligence she says it's, we don't like make a painting and then say, see this artificial, you know, we don't do that. So why do we call it? It's because she says we're afraid of it.

You know, we're afraid that it's going to be sentient and we're afraid, you know, she said, but it's just another life form that we happen to be doing, creating. And she says it's special in that way, but it's also going to free us in many, many ways. She's a tech optimist. She's an accelerationist. Yeah. Well, I hope she's right.

She better be right. Yeah, it's happening no matter what. Yeah. But I mean, I think if you could go back again to Australopithecus and say, hey, man, one day you're going to be wrought with anxiety because of existential angst and you're going to be on antidepressants and living in a cubicle all day and doing. But that's the future. It's progress. Like, fuck that.

I'd rather hang out here in the Savannah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's in this inevitable part of the process of whatever we're going through because we're not in a static state we're in a constant state of social upheaval cultural upheaval a change of perspectives this constant battle to try to define things and to figure out what's appropriate and inappropriate and gaslighting people who disagree with you which is also fascinating just to watch people do that

it's fascinating to watch people do that. It's fascinating to watch people try to put a positive spin on inherently evil things. Yeah, it's pretty terrible. It's horrible. Yeah. It's a bad show. Yeah. It's a weird show. That's for sure. It's a weird show. But again, I do have this internal struggle with this concept of good and evil that perhaps the negative aspects are there to enlighten us and to let us know that our work is not done and that we have to move into a direction that we know is just and good and correct and loving. and that this is possible in small groups of people. It's possible with individuals and ultimately must be possible with the collective. It just has to be managed in some way or facilitated in some way, and that it's not guaranteed. And that if you look at World War II

and look at the Holocaust, you look at the horrific things that human beings are capable of when they're allowed to just run rampant. You talked about the Japanese horrors during World War II, like the rape of Nanking. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Oh, my God. I remember reading that going, how are human beings capable of doing this? How are people? The savagery. Yeah, unbelievable.

Bizarre, bizarre in its cruelty. Unbelievable. Horrific. And that seems to be evil. That seems to be evil personified. I think so. But I mean, I'm not afraid to say it. Right. It is a thing. Evil's a real thing. Like evil's real. I mean, as a professor, you know, teaching my students, I'm not going to say, oh, yeah, evil is real. But here I'm going to say, and I've said this on podcasts, you can't say that humans trafficking is not evil. Right. That's evil. Evil. And let's just call it for what it is. Yeah.

Human medical experiments on children. It's evil. Evil. Evil. Yeah. And we do it. And we do it almost specifically for profit. Always.

Which is also evil. Yeah. Yeah. So back to the allegory of the cave and the Plato. So he's dealing with these questions of, he doesn't call it justice, but calls it injustice. I mean, he doesn't call it evil. trying to say is my position at this point, after doing the study of this kind of thing, is that it's the development of this mystic state that we've been talking about that I think we need to, this is how we need to counter, because we can't decide these are the rules

we're going to follow. People aren't going to follow those rules, or they're going to follow those rules and cheat, right? Or they're going to pretend to follow the rules. But if people actually engaged in the type of thing that we were talking about, the thing they love, you know, that allows, then perhaps justice emerges, right? That's what I'm trying to point out to people, that these ideas have been around for a long time. They're not new ideas, but we've never actually done them. Small groups have done them. So when you're alone with your thoughts, and you've been studying this for a long time now, what do you think the UFO phenomenon is?

Yeah. So I think, first of all, that there are a lot of different varieties of it. But when we look at, like we were looking at the Francis of Assisi and the kind of historical things and the abductions and things like that, I think that it's been around for a long time and that these are things that are in communication with us. So I used what I do in my book, both the books that I wrote about this is I go, I talk to people who I think represent thousands of people. So each person in the book represents thousands, if not more, maybe many thousands of people who have had experiences and the ways in which they interpret them. So all of the people seem to have had

experiences where now what they want to do is they actually want to work for justice in different ways. Like Jose, the veteran in my book, he's working with young people and helping them deal with being addicted to social media and things young people and helping them deal with being addicted to social media and things like that and helping them get through life, which is really hard right now. And that's what he's doing. And then you look at Dr. Whiteley, right? So she's working in a space where she's trying to, you know, help people deal with the fact that they're seeing things that, you know, that could down planes and things like that. And she's helping people talk about that. She's helping people. Each person in, you know, is somehow doing what I'm

suggesting that I think is an out, this kind of structural injustice that we see. So I think that this is a transformational thing without the drugs is what's going on, like some kind of massive experience that people are having. And now it's getting out and people are being able to talk to each other through Reddit communities and, you know, different types of social media. So it is, it's, it's, we did see, you know, religions when they begin, they become viral at one point. We've never seen it in an age where we have digital technology. But this is what we're seeing now. What do you think the physical objects are?

Well, okay, so this is something that's very interesting. We just looked at the Shroud of Turin. I believe that there are these, I would call them, and this is just my own non-scientific term, interdimensional objects. They're objects that have characteristics of our dimension and some other dimension. So some other dimension has the capability or something from some other dimension has the capability of transporting a physical object into our realm or even imprinting onto a physical object yeah how so well I don't know I mean I think that's what does that mean imprinting on so with the stride of Turin we see the imprint of you know the image and if it's real you know, the image and... If it's real.

Yeah, if it's real. But it's an anomalous object. So we do have, from Gary Nolan, engineered objects that we don't know how they're engineered, but they definitely look like they're, you know, it's off planet. I would call the kinds of things that we see in the historical record interdimensional types of things. Now, how? I don't know, Joe. OK, so I just don't know. But I do think that scientists in the government know that these things exist and they would like to figure it out.

And so part of disclosure, the disclosure movement, is outsourcing this and trying to get as many people as possible to help in figuring it out. What do you think when they use the term donations, what do you think the purpose of that is? If there is an object that is purposely released into our, you know, like I'm sure you're aware of cargo cults. Yes. So with cargo cults, for people that don't know, there's been some islands during World War I and World War II where planes landed there and they left. And these people, they created these statues of these planes and they worshiped them. And they wanted them to come back. Yes. Because they got food and you know all kinds of wonderful things from the plains right yeah but they thought of them as thought of them as deities

right the same way we would think of something from somewhere else yeah yeah so yeah that in my field has been called the cargo cult the ufo cargo cult right and And obviously, Tyler and James view these parts as donate. They call it the donation site, right? So giving it the idea that— Is that just one theory? Yeah, that's just one theory. Are there other theories that there's a biological organism that encounters a lightning storm and it actually crashes and there's physical bodies? Oh, yeah.

There is that. Yeah, there's that. Yeah. What's your take on that? Because that's one of the things that Grush talked about and some of the other people talked about, that there are biological things that have been recovered. Well, what impressed me about what he said was that he used the term biologics. And I actually know that term because that's the same term that Tyler was talking about when he was creating materials in anti-gravity spaces on space shuttles and such.

So I was wondering, because David Grush does get his information from people in allegedly in the programs, but he's never seen these materials that I know of. I think he has some firsthand experience that he was not able to talk about that he's alluding to. Okay. I think. But this is recent, and he's been very careful about how he releases this information and what he's able to release and not able to release. And that I was like okay yeah so I mean I've not seen any any bodies nor have I seen intact craft but I also have had now remember I don't have a clearance like he has so I can actually talk about what people have told me I have had people tell me that yes, there are in TACCRAFT. I don't know. I mean, maybe.

So I don't know, Joe. Have you studied Bob Lazar? Okay, yes. I'm always asked about Bob Lazar. Yeah. And I don't know, but I can tell you that people that I've met who are associated with the programs tell me that he's right. Now, I know his background and I know, you know, all the things. I don't have an opinion one way or the other. But I can also say that a lot of times people with very disturbing backgrounds, you know, who could be easily discredited are given information and shown things and told things.

Well, I would think that that's sort of like a little escape clause. Yeah, I think so. I think it is. I mean, the guy's obviously a genius and was obviously a propulsion expert and put a fucking jet engine on a Honda in the 1980s. He's a fascinating guy. Yeah, yeah. fascinating guy yeah yeah and um you know he claims that there's some element some element that exists other in other places in the universe which leads me to believe well not even to believe but like so here's the question are some of these things from other

planets is that also in the equation? I mean, just because something is traveling interdimensionally, we do know that there are an infinite number of planets in the universe. I mean, we have no idea how many of them are capable of supporting human-like life, or some other kind of life, or an infinite number of varieties of life. And if that life can do what we've done and get to some part of its progression where it's capable of creating what we're calling artificial intelligence or super advanced technology, why wouldn't it come here? Yes. I'm not discounting ET. So that could be there too.

I think so, especially because of the ways in which the materials are being manufactured off planet, like the ones that we just saw. And that was in formation when I met Tyler in 2014, and now it's a full-on thing that's happening, right? So it's a supercharged program of creating things that will help us off planet. I mean, certainly then, yeah, I think so. I mean, but I don't know. So I have to just be honest. So it might be a bunch of different things happening all at the same time, interdimensionally, extraterrestrially, something from a distant galaxy that's figured out some new method of propulsion that's beyond our imagination that can visit,

and then also things that are coming here from other dimensions. Yes. And even recently, somebody had, you know, yeah, well, I can't say anything. I can't say I'm sorry. I don't want to be that person that goes on your show and says, oh, I can't say that. But I probably, most likely there are, if there's crash retrieval part, you know, crash retrievals here on Earth, perhaps there are in space as well. Hmm. Do you, when they talk about inventions that emerged post Roswell, that's one of the points of speculation is that we have back engineered something and that this led to the creation of fiber optics and a lot of other technologies that seemed to emerge after that time. Yeah. So this question was prominent in my mind in 2012 when I met Jacques Vallée. So I was already aware of his work, even as a person who hadn't studied UFOs or even believed in them. Jacques Vallée is just one of these people, right, that you come across his work and he's fascinating.

So I thought it was strange that not only was he a person who was, you know, pre-engineered ARPANET, right? He was on ARPANET, which is pre-internet. He was creating that at the same time as being obsessed with UFOs and doing, you know, being a ufologist. These things seemed that they had to be together, right? There was something that, you know, what's going on here? So, and I'm in touch with him often. And he says a lot of things that are rather cryptic, but sometimes I ask him specifically, was what you were doing on ARPANET related to back-engineered UFO parts?

And then he'd say something like, there are many secrets in Silicon Valley, or something like that. Yeah, yeah, he's real cryptic. He's kind of difficult to have a conversation with publicly. Well, it does have a lot. I guess there are lots of secrets in Silicon Valley, which is where he lives. Yeah. Another thing that was really fascinating about your book was you were talking about how much religion he studied. Yes. Yes. That was really interesting. So in the book, what I do is I uncover not just him,

but Alan Hynek. They were friends. And they were both Rosicrucians, which is a form of, he might not like me to say this, but it's a form of mystical Christianity in a sense. But a lot of Rosicrucians don't view their roots as Christian. They look at it as Egyptian. But it's basically, it's an esoteric tradition. And it involves meditation. I think it most likely involves this thing that you and I have been discussing in the whole talk so far is the pineal gland thing, you know, the access point. Because both of them believe in this kind of life, this meditating and

things like that. And so I included references. Everything I say in my books, by the way, I pass to the person that I'm writing the chapter about. So everything that I said about Jacques, I gave it to him beforehand. And I said, are you okay with me saying this publicly? And so it passed all the tests. And I also talk about going to his apartment and seeing his library, which is an amazing library. And he has stained glass from Chartres Cathedral. And Chartres Cathedral is a special place for Rosicrucians, like a special place of presence of the sacred. And he actually did those himself. So he learned how to do stained glass from people at Chartres, by the way. And yeah, just amazing.

And he had a lot of books on angels and fallen angels in that library. Like almost like it was almost like going into the Vatican archive, going into this place because these looked like first editions or close. So, you know, really, really old books about this topic. Fallen Angel. about, you know, what I learned from Tyler and that kind of thing. And we went to lunch and then he said, do you want to see the library? And I was like, yes, of course. So I saw the handwritten documents from Project Blue Book. And that was just going into the library that wasn't actually in the library. Then when we got in there, I noticed a big bookcases of these books. And of course, I was drawn to them. And he said, he picked out one, and he opened it, and it was about angels. And he said, this is a book about angels. And I could

see that. And I was looking at it. I was like, wow. And then I looked at the other bookshelf, and that bookshelf was just as impressive. And then it was about fallen angels. He said, oh, this one's about fallen angels. And then he made a joke. And he said, you can't have one without the other. And I thought that, yeah, I thought that was really interesting. That does seem to align with what we're talking about with like the struggle of good and evil. It does. That's what he said too. And I was actually shocked at that point.

I was like, wow. So just, you know, I'm a professor of religion, you know, so I'm like, I'm right about, you know, my intuition was somehow confirmed. And by the way, I think people, I think this should be, I'm not sure if this is totally true, but I believe he was the inspiration for the French character in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I think so. Yeah. Which makes sense. Absolutely. Because Hynek's in there and then there's him.

Yeah. Yeah. It's wild stuff. Yeah. What do you make of the reports of this craft that's supposedly 40 feet long and you get inside of it as big as a football field? Oh, that one. Okay. Yeah. So the time dimensions. And okay. So people I know who do the work and are physicists, they describe this in quantum language, which I cannot replicate at all. But this is how they're describing it. They're saying that the – and by the way, it's really interesting that, you know, when I'm doing my research into the Catholic history and I'm looking at some of the things that we can do now technologically that it looks very – you know, like people back then were like, this is a miracle, right? Sure.

Okay. So what they're doing is a similar type of process or method. So basically what they're doing is they're looking at people's descriptions and data of the craft, right? And they're then identifying the patterns and they're saying if there was a quantum field, this would make perfect sense. Right. And they're then identifying the patterns and they're saying if there was a quantum field, this would make perfect sense. So if this was occurring in a quantum field, this would make sense. That this thing would look small on the outside and go in and it's immense. Yeah. Yeah.

Why do you think this information is getting released? Why do you think it's becoming a more mainstream, acceptable thing to discuss? Because to the average person that sees this, the thought, I think, sort of naturally goes to this idea that some sort of contact is inevitable, some sort of revelation, some sort of landing on the White House lawn type deal. OK, I have a couple of thoughts on that. The first one is that part of the reason is because China is now in space. So before it was us and Russia.

We were the only ones. We were together, actually. So, you know, we were aligned, even though at many points we're enemies on Earth. In space, we weren't enemies. We were working together, using each other's equipment. So also keeping the secrets that perhaps we're seeing in space. But now that other countries are going into space, whatever is up there will be known. into space, whatever is up there will be known. And I think part of it has to do with this phenomenon. And so that's why it's urgent to get this message out. That's one of my ideas. Another, well, I have some other ideas, but that's the one that's most prominent

is because I just don't think that it's going to be a secret for very much longer. And in fact, right now, a lot, you know, Chinese are, you know, they are going into space and they are like, you know, looking at things. So from a national security standpoint, it's important to sort of move this conversation further, accelerate it. I think so. to sort of move this conversation further, accelerate it. I think so. Are you hopeful with all this information that you have? Are you hopeful about the direction that the world is going?

I would say that I'm simultaneously hopeful and horrified. Okay, and how can you be both? I just am because it seems like a lot of things are happening that are terrible and will continue to happen and may even ramp up. Okay. At the same time, there is what I believe to be an awakening happening as well. And I think that's also going to ramp up. And as long as we have some portion of the collective awake, I think there's hope. All right. Let's wrap it up on that. Well, thank you very much for being here.

I really appreciate it. It was fascinating. Fascinating conversation. When more stuff comes out, let's do it again. Okay, sounds good. Okay, thank you very much. Absolutely.

All right, bye everybody.