Posted on 11/09/2023 7:14:58 AM PST by RoosterRedux
Diana Walsh Pasulka never imagined that her scholarly work in the field of religion would lead her to skulking around in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico, with one of the world’s top scientists and a former high NASA official. She tells the story in her riveting 2019 book American Cosmic, in which Pasulka, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, surveyed the then-current state of knowledge of UFOs and related phenomena.
Then came the shocking 2021 revelations by the U.S. government that it had been investigating UFOs—then renamed ‘unidentified aerial phenomena,’ or UAPs. In a series of strokes, the research that Pasulka and many others had been working on for years, even decades, received powerful vindication. Something really is out there—and top national security and intelligence officials have been for a very long time taking it more seriously than they wanted the public to know.
Whatever the ‘aliens’ really are, it is startling to discover that many of the most informed people in the UFO world doubt that they are creatures from other planets. What are they, then? On November 7th, Pasulka’s latest volume hits bookstores, offering answers, but also raising new and important questions about that very issue. Encounters: Experiences With Nonhuman Intelligences (Macmillan), profiles a wide range of people who for various reasons have been drawn into the shadowy and mysterious world of UFOs, and whose testimonies move the phenomenon out of narrowly-drawn scientific categories, and well into the world of the religious and the paranormal.
Pasulka recently agreed to an interview about her work, her new book, and the emergence of a new form of religion tied to aliens, artificial intelligence, and high technology.
Pasulka (from the interview):
I had not paid the slightest attention to the UFO—or, I guess now, UAP—phenomenon since the first season of “X-Files.” Frankly, I thought it was for weirdos. But then a journalist friend told me I was missing out on a serious religious phenomenon, and advised that I read your book American Cosmic. I did, and then went into a mild version of what you call “epistemological shock.” Now you’re out with a follow-up that’s equally shocking. So let me start by asking you to bring ‘normies’ up to date on what we know about the phenomenon—and what we think we know, but really don’t.
Rod, like you, I had never paid attention to UFOs either. I didn’t watch the “X-Files.” I never saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I actually just saw that film last year and enjoyed it!
I began to study the topic of UFOs/UAPs somewhat by accident. My field is religious studies and my focus within that is Catholic history and miraculous events. In my field, we study religion academically, which means that we are looking at things like the social effects of religion, etc. As professors of religious studies, our beliefs, whether atheists or members of religious traditions, do not influence what we study. We are historians, archeologists, social scientists. We are not priests or ministers (generally). We don’t advocate for any religious tradition.
This is how I came to the study of UFOs. I had finished a long study of the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory. I used a lot of archival records to do this study, which means that I went to libraries of old manuscripts (archives) and looked at records from 1300 on up to about 1880. That is a long-time span, but I was just looking for what Europeans from those time periods believed about Purgatory.
I found a lot of information, and a lot of what I would call extra information. I saw a lot of records of reported aerial sightings. People saw orbs, discs, and basically things that surprised them, flying around in the skies. I took note of these. I found that when they saw them, they recorded a process of trying to identify these objects. Often, they would think that these were souls from Purgatory that needed to be prayed back into Purgatory. I thought that the sightings were interesting, so I kept notes.
When my book about Purgatory was finished, I showed a friend some of these records. He looked at them and immediately thought of UFOs! I thought he was crazy. This was in 2012. Then, there was a UFO conference near me, and based on my friend’s suggestion, I attended it. There, I heard people talking about aerial phenomena and describing the same experiences described by European Catholics of the past. I then began to study modern reports of UFOs.
At first, I wasn’t shocked at all by this research because I thought that people were utilizing different cultural frameworks for looking at unidentified aerial phenomena. That is, it is rational to approach the topic like this: in the 1400s people were using religious frameworks to describe what they saw in the sky. Today, people do the same thing, but now we live in an ostensibly ‘secular’ society and have achieved flight, so when people see unidentified aerial phenomena, they think of drones or something like stealth aircraft, and maybe UFOs. This is how I approached the study.
I became shocked when I was approached by government agents and scientists who said that they worked, in their ‘spare time,’ on UFOs, and collected UFO materials. They were and are credible people.
(Excerpt) Read more at europeanconservative.com ...
Ping
Why do aliens ‘probe’ humans and create crop circles?....
This was what Jacques Vallee said.
ps: Whatever they want, the answer is no.
"On November 7th, Pasulka’s latest volume hits bookstores, offering answers, but also raising new and important questions about that very [UFO] issue....I quit reading then, but there's 30 seconds of my life I'll never get back.
"Pasulka recently agreed to an interview about her work, her new book, and the emergence of a new form of religion tied to aliens, artificial intelligence, and high technology."
I heard Michael Heiser (RIP) say he made a point of attending UFO conferences because of the opportunities they provided for him to make his case for Christianity.
I read the whole thing, unfortunately. She doesn’t explain anything. I have no idea what she thinks they are.
His conclusion re: UFOs (that they are related to the angelic/spiritual realm) makes a lot of sense.
This is a fascinating topic that should not be dismissed out of hand. A study of Heiser’s books led me to Graham Hancock’s Supernatural, where he cites some of the same studies that are mentioned in this article. I’m beginning to believe there is something to this. If these phenomena have been with us for ages and ages, then their reality is more likely. Are they extra-terrestrial or from another realm of existence? It’s seems increasingly more probable the latter, to me.
She is one of the smart ones—even when I disagree with her I learn new things from her.
I bought a copy and read it last year. I thought it was great. I've also listened to numerous podcasts, both his own and shows where he was a guest. He always had something informative to say.
She doesn't know what they are. She does mention that it "appears" that they are not "aliens" in the classical sense. Whatever they are (and I don't think anyone knows at this point), they appear to be related to the paranormal or occult (as much as they want to be perceived as "aliens" flying around in nuts and bolts craft).
I read Pasulka's book American Cosmic and am currently reading her new book, Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences.
A great place to start is this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Flying-Saucers-Modern-Things-Skies/dp/0691018227
HAHAH. Poor kid.
Throughout history they were described based on their primitive understanding of science and physics. Everything not understood was supernatural to them.
But they have been around forever, even in spirituality. But they are not all evil as proposed by the faithful now. Even in Christian times past they knew better.
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That's the gimmick; you have to buy the book. In carnival slang, it's called "drawing the tip" (attracting a crowd of people to buy tickets to the sideshow).
It’s a book review. If you don’t like book reviews, don’t read them.
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