American Cosmic

by D W Pasulka

  AMERICAN COSMIC

  AMERICAN COSMIC

  UFOs, Religion, Technology

  D. W. PASU L KA

  1

  1

  Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers

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  Press in the UK and certain other countries.

  Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

  198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.

  © Oxford University Press 2019

  Parts of Chapter Four have been adapted from D. W. Pasulka’s article

  “The Fairy Tale is True”: Social Technologies of the Religious

  Supernatural in Film and New Media in the Journal of the American

  Academy of Religion, Volume 84, Issue 2, 1 June 2016, Pages 530–547.

  Used with Permission.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Pasulka, D. W., author.

  Title: American cosmic : UFOs, religion, techonology.

  Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2019] | Includes index.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018015547 (print) | LCCN 2018047070 (ebook) |

  ISBN 9780190693497 (updf) | ISBN 9780190693503 (epub) |

  ISBN 9780190692889 (hardcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: Unidentified flying objects—Religious aspects. |

  Unidentified flying objects in popular culture. | Life on other

  planets—Religious aspects. | Extraterrestrial beings in popular culture.

  Classification: LCC BL65.U54 (ebook) |

  LCC BL65.U54 P37 2019 (print) | DDC 001.9420973—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018015547

  9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America

  American Cosmic is dedicated to Tyler.

  “Almost two thousand years, and no new god!”

  — F r i e d r i c h N i e t z s c h e

  “The Internet is an alien life form.”

  — Dav i d B ow i e

  CONTENTS

  Preface: A Tour of Silicon Val ey with Jacques

  Val ee

  ix

  Acknowledgments

  xiii

  Introduction

  1

  1.

  The Invisible Tyler D.

  17

  2.

  James: Master of the Multiverse

  51

  3.

  In the Field: The War Is Virtual, the Blood

  Is Real

  84

  4.

  When Star Wars Became Real: The

  Mechanisms of Belief

  120

  5.

  The Material Code: From the Disembodied

  Soul to the Materiality of Quantum

  Information

  153

  6.

  The Human Receiver: Matter, Information,

  Energy . . . Contact

  185

  7.

  Real and Imaginary: Tyler D.’s Spiritual

  Conversion in Rome

  215

  Conclusion: The Artifact

  240

  v i i i | C ON T E N T S

  Notes

  245

  Glossary

  259

  Index

  261

  PREFACE

  A Tour of Silicon Val ey

  with Jacques Val ee

  “These are the hil s of Silicon Valley. There are many secrets

  in this valley.”

  Jacques Vallee maneuvers his car expertly through the

  daunting San Francisco Bay Area traffic, darting this way

  and that. Large trucks and small cars barrel toward us on

  the winding roads, and crashes are narrowly evaded. Every

  twenty minutes I lift my shoulders, which are stuck to the

  back of the car seat, and try to shake out the tension.

  Jacques, father of the modern study of UFOs and an

  early visionary of the internet, is giving me and my colleague,

  Robbie Graham, a personal tour of his favorite geolocation,

  Silicon Valley. We drive by places that loom large in the his-

  tory of “the Valley.” He recal s the early days of the tech-

  nology revolution: “They were on fire and purely democratic.

  Pure scientists, fueled by discovery.” Jacques’s credentials are

  intimidating. As an astronomer, he helped NASA create the

  first detailed map of Mars. As a computer scientist with a

  x | P R E FAC E

  PhD from Northwestern University, he was one of the early

  engineers of ARPANET, the Advanced Research Projects

  Agency, a precursor of the internet. He is also a successful

  venture capitalist, funding startups of innovative technologies

  that have changed the daily lives of millions of people. He is a

  prolific author. He is probably most famous for being a con-

  sultant to Steven Spielberg on the movie Close Encounters of

  the Third Kind (1977). The scientist character in the movie,

  played by French actor François Truffaut, is based on Jacques.

  Jacques has perhaps done more for the field of ufology than

  anyone else in its short history, and yet he cal s the study of

  UFOs his hobby.

  This is the orthodox history of Jacques’s life and work.

  His unorthodox history is equal y interesting. He worked

  with scientists affiliated with the Stanford Research Institute,

  now SRI International, an independent, nonprofit research

  institute in Menlo Park. The group’s activities are largely un-

  known to the public, but declassified documents from the

  1970s and 1980s indicate that it was a research site for the ex-

  traordinary. Jacques did his early work on the internet under

  a program that, as Jeffrey Kripal writes, was probably called

  “Augmentation of the Human Intellect.”

  This research was happening at the same time and

  in the same place as studies of remote viewing, precog-

  nition, and extrasensory perception. These esoteric skil s

  were studied under a classified program called The Stargate

  Project, funded by the US military in partnership with the

  SRI. The hope was that the skil s and talents of people who

  were natural y psychic could be developed and harnessed

  for the purposes of gathering intelligence. In the course of

  this research, the psychic viewers reportedly uncovered un-

  intended and surprising targets, like UFOs. The participants

  P R E FA C E | x i

  in the program
also reported that they could travel through

  space, to the moon, and to other planets, like Mars. In other

  words, the program allegedly developed, intentional y or not,

  psychic cosmonauts.

  Perhaps unknown to Jacques and the researchers of

  the SRI, psychic travel had long been reported. Psychic

  cosmonauts like the eighteenth- century philosopher/ theolo-

  gian Emanuel Swedenborg crop up throughout the history of

  religions. Swedenborg claimed that, with the assistance of an

  angel, he had visited Mercury, Mars, Venus, and the moon.

  He claimed to have spoken to beings on those planets and

  he published his experiences in a book, Life on Other Planets

  (1758). The activities of the cosmonauts of the SRI may have

  resembled the interstel ar adventures of Swedenborg, but

  their goals could not have been more different. They hoped

  to operationalize the knowledge they acquired about ter-

  restrial targets; remote viewing was one of many methods

  of attempted data collection. These efforts to create human

  portals to other planets were taking place under the same

  auspices and at the same time as technologies of connectivity

  like the internet.

  As we spun down the highway, I recognized the

  neighborhoods of my childhood, but I saw them now through

  Jacques’s eyes. The streets, the smell of the eucalyptus trees,

  parks, schools, cafes— all looked new to me, shining with the

  al ure of mystery. As much as I wanted to, I never got up the

  nerve to ask Jacques exactly what he meant by the secrets of

  Silicon Valley. But on that drive I caught a glimpse into the

  exciting ideology and philosophy behind the revolution— its

  zeitgeist.

  If Jacques were an essay, he would be “The Question

  Concerning Technology” by the philosopher Martin

  x i i | P R E FAC E

  Heidegger. This essay, dubbed impenetrable by many readers,

  nevertheless offers several intriguing observations about the

  relationship between humans and technology. As Heidegger

  saw it, humans do not understand the essence of technology.

  Instead, they are blinded by it and view it simply as an instru-

  ment. The interpretation of technology as pure instrumen-

  tality was wrong, he said. The Greek temple, for the Greeks,

  housed the gods, and as such it was a sacred “frame.” Similarly,

  the medieval cathedral embodied and housed the presence

  of God for medieval Europeans. Heidegger suggested that

  the human relationship with technology is religiouslike, that

  it is possible for us to have a noninstrumental relationship

  with technology and engage ful y with what it real y is: a

  saving power. Jacques Vallee is ful y aware of the revolu-

  tion that is technology. Although he most likely never read

  Heidegger’s essay, Jacques’s depiction of Silicon Valley as the

  home of the new resonates with Heidegger’s vision of tech-

  nology as bringing to birth a new era of human experience,

  a new epoch.

  The symbol for this new epoch is the UFO. Carl Jung

  called the UFO a technological angel. This is a book about

  UFOs and technology, but also about a group of people who

  believe anomalous technology functions as creative inspi-

  ration. I found these people. In the 1970s, when Jacques

  consulted on Close Encounters, he encouraged Spielberg to

  portray the more complex version of the story, that is, that

  the phenomenon is complex and might not be extraterres-

  trial at al . But Spielberg went with the simple story, the one

  everybody would understand. He said, “This is Hol ywood.”

  This book does not tell the simple story, but I believe it is a

  story anyone can understand.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am indebted to those who helped me in the process of

  writing this book, which has been an adventure from the be-

  ginning. More than an adventure, the research has brought

  me into a deep relationship with the forces that motivated

  me, as a child and young adult, to study religion.

  I am indebted to Jeffrey Kripal and Michael Murphy

  for supporting my effort to explore religion and technology.

  Jeff has been a great mentor to many scholars whose work

  seeks to grapple with religious experience, and his integrity

  and courage have innovated the study of religion in ground-

  breaking ways. His work continues to be an inspiration to me.

  I would like to thank my editor, Cynthia Read, whose

  suggestions and book recommendations were always ser-

  endipitous and relevant. Early on in my research Cynthia

  suggested I read Dr. George M. Young’s The Russian

  Cosmists: The Esoteric Futurism of Nikolai Fedorov and

  His Followers. I received the book as I was researching the

  x i v | AC K NOW L E D G M E N T S

  history of the American space program, and as I interviewed

  scientists whose intimate relationships with rockets and sat-

  ellites could have been the content for the next chapter in

  Dr. Young’s book. Dr. Young’s work on the esoteric traditions

  of the Russian space program was so relevant to my work that

  my title, American Cosmic, is an homage to his brilliant book.

  I am indebted to Christopher Bledsoe and his wife,

  Yvonne, and to the whole Bledsoe family. Their kindness

  and hospitality allowed me a peek into the blessings and

  hardships that an experience can produce on a person and

  his or her family members. I wish to thank Chad Hayes and

  Carey Hayes, whom I worked with as a religion consultant

  for The Conjuring franchise. They were open to my academic

  proclivities and allowed me to view the making of a media

  production about the supernatural from the inside.

  Whitley Strieber’s work and friendship helped me un-

  derstand aspects of the phenomenon that are not easily un-

  derstood. Whitley’s brilliant commentaries, insights, help,

  and moral support were instrumental in helping me finish

  the book manuscript. I would like to thank my colleagues

  Brenda Denzler, who donated her library of UFO- related

  materials to me, and Dr. David Halperin, whose inspiring

  work on the topic of UFOs is brilliant and helped me think

  through my own work. I am grateful to Rey Hernandez and

  to astronaut Edgar Mitchell for their insights and helpful-

  ness with my section on quantum physics and Rey’s expe-

  rience. Nancy Mullis and Kary Mullis were both kind, very

  helpful, and deeply insightful. I wish to thank them for their

  friendship. Tanya Luhrmann’s work and comments were

  very helpful and always brilliant.

  A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S | x v

  I would like to thank Jacques Vallee, whose work and

  insights permeate this book. My thanks to him cannot be

  overstated, as his ideas about the phenomenon and tech-

  nology have proved to be prescient. I owe so much to my

  anonymous friends, Tyler D. and James. They possess a

  burning desire to know the mystery, and I was infected with

  their enthusiasm.

  I am indebted to researche
rs Scott Browne, Allison

  Kruse, and David Stinnett. Scott’s Facebook page, In the

  Field, provides a forum for serious videographers to vet their

  captures, and Scott, to his credit, has kept the forum free from

  the vitriol that accompanies much discussion within ufology.

  I owe thanks to my friend Robbie Graham, who early in my

  research helped me think through a lot of the theoretical

  aspects of the phenomenon, and to Greg Bishop, whose own

  work on the topic helped me to understand the climate of the

  research. George Hansen’s work was instrumental in helping

  me understand the “trickster” element of the phenomenon.

  Dr. Patty Turrisi, my colleague and friend, provided moral

  support and helpful comments. Dr. Dean Radin’s work, and

  his comments, were helpful and always fascinating. I met

  many virtual but nonetheless real friends during this re-

  search, including David Metcalfe, whose insights into dig-

  ital technology have been instrumental to putting together

  several helpful pieces of the puzzle. Christopher Laursen has

  been a wonderful conversation partner throughout the expe-

  rience. My students have inspired me with their intelligence

  and bravery. They include Jose Herrera, Steve Nunez, Lauryn

  Justice, Bryan Hendershot, Eugene O’Dea, and so many

  others. My student Alex Karas was instrumental in helping

  x v i | AC K NOW L E D G M E N T S

  me as a research assistant, and I am especial y thankful for

  his help.

  I want to thank my wonderful family, especial y my

  little brother. As latchkey kids we used to sit in our living

  room with the neighbor kids watching rerun episodes of

  the Twilight Zone, never anticipating that one day, we would

  wake up in an actual episode.

  AMERICAN COSMIC

  INTRODUCTION

  When you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes

  also into you.

  — F r i e d r i c h N i e t z s c h e

  AS I FINISH WRITING THIS INTRODUCTION, the television

  series 60 Minutes has just aired an interview with billionaire

  Robert Bigelow, of Bigelow Aerospace. Bigelow founded his