American Cosmic

by D W Pasulka

  I ever work at my day job again.”

  “I wil ,” I said.

  I knew that Tyler was having a spiritual conversion, and

  that its effects in his life would be completely different from

  what he expected. I had a feeling that he would learn more

  about what the future held for him when we went to the ob-

  servatory archive in Castel Gandolfo.

  I was feeling very uneasy. To me the Vatican looked

  like a medieval feudal palace. The constant presence of the

  elite guards put me on edge. I understood that I was lucky

  that Tyler had met Father McDonnell and that we were

  then invited to attend several important meetings, but this

  was only because of Tyler’s access. None of this would have

  happened had I been there alone.

  As it turned out, our time at the Vatican Observatory

  couldn’t have been more different from our experience at

  the Vatican. Brother Guy Consolmagno, director of the

  observatory, is a well- known astronomer who specializes

  in meteorites and asteroids. He is an American Jesuit with

  degrees from MIT and the University of Arizona. After we

  drove up to the observatory and parked, Brother Guy greeted

  us warmly. He gave us a brief tour of the premises, careful y

  showing us which doors we could enter and which were

  off- limits. After the tour, Brother Guy presented me with

  the keys to their archive. I have spent half of my life looking

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  through archives— and this was unprecedented. Archivists

  are usual y very protective of their holdings, and we were

  going to be looking at the works of Johannes Kepler and

  other great scientists of Western cosmology. When Tyler saw

  the list of books we would be viewing, his face lit up. He had

  spent his entire life exploring space, and now he would get to

  see the original works that had paved the way for his present

  vocation.

  The archive itself is beautiful. On exhibit are old

  technologies of space exploration: the first telescopes de-

  veloped to scour the galaxy. Brother Guy had lined the

  walls with old photographs of nuns who had worked at

  the observatory and helped to chart star patterns. He was

  correcting the historical record by including those who

  had been left out of it. I felt like I was home, and Tyler

  did too.

  Every morning, around 10 a.m., the brothers and priests

  would gather for cappuccino and cafe latte in a room near the

  archive. As anyone who has been to Italy can attest, Italian

  coffee may be the best in the world. Tyler, who used to avoid

  coffee as part of his healthy living protocol, had cast aside re-

  straint and was now addicted. We stood in a small room with

  about ten Jesuits with various types of PhDs, all connected

  to space in some way— astrophysics, astronomy, and related

  disciplines.

  “What are you looking for in our archive?” one of the

  brothers asked.

  I wasn’t going to say that I was writing a book about

  the topic of UFOs. That could have immediately alienated

  us from these amazing scholars. I told the truth but without

  using the word “UFO.”

  “We are looking for instances of aerial phenomena.”

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  “Aerial phenomena?” Several of the others stood and

  stared at us.

  “Yes.”

  I waited a few seconds, and then I laughed. To my relief,

  they laughed too. That was the end of the conversation.

  To set the record straight, the Jesuits at the Vatican

  Observatory are not actively searching for UFOs, nor are

  they engaged in anything related to ufology. Brother Guy

  has a wonderful sense of humor and some of his jokes and

  comments, taken out of context, have fed into conspiracy

  theories about the Catholic Church. What these scientists are

  doing is revealing that science is compatible with religion.

  And they are doing it so effectively that, after hearing Brother

  Guy speak about his vocation, my Baptist scientist colleague

  chose to become a Catholic.

  T Y L E R’ S T R A N S F O R M AT I O N A N D

  H I S R E V I S E D U N D E R S TA N D I N G

  On our first morning in the archive, Brother Guy stuck

  his head in the door and peeked in at us. We were busy

  identifying books we wanted to read that day. Brother Guy

  told us that he was heading up to the actual observatory

  where the telescopes were housed and asked if we wanted to

  come to a talk he was giving to a group of young scientists

  from the European Space Agency. Of course we did. I’d heard

  Brother Guy speak several times and I knew that his insights,

  which were always delivered with humor, could be profound

  and transformative. I had a feeling that this talk would in-

  fluence Tyler, who was on fire to change his life. We jumped

  up from our desks and helped Brother Guy get organized

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  for the talk. Soon we were in a car driving through the gar-

  dens of the estate and up to the top of the small mountain,

  which overlooked a crystal- blue volcanic lake. The first thing

  I noticed, besides the breathtaking scenery, was a fleet of

  sleek cars lined up in a row, gleaming in the morning sun. It

  was an impressive sight.

  The young scientists were eager to see the historical hub of

  their own space program and to meet the Jesuit who directed

  this enchanting observatory. They were welcoming to Tyler

  and me when Brother Guy introduced us. I was introduced

  as a professor from the University of North Carolina; when

  Tyler was introduced, along with his affiliations, the youthful

  crowd burst into cheers and applause. I was proud that, at

  least among these smart young Europeans, Tyler, whom

  I considered an American hero, was not invisible.

  As I predicted, Brother Guy’s talk was funny, informa-

  tive, and profound. He made the young scientists laugh and

  cry. He addressed the conspiracy theories about what he and

  the other scientists do at the observatory by showing images

  from popular culture, such as scenes from popular movies

  and books that paint Castel Gandolfo as a hub of mystery

  and intrigue, and then the reality, which turned out to be

  pictures of the priests and brothers sitting together discussing

  the composition of meteorites. The pictures conveyed the

  mundane daily lives of the observatory scientists, even if

  they did have Italian lattes. The popular depictions of Castel

  Gandolfo were so far removed from the reality that the

  whole group erupted in laughter. Brother Guy talked about

  how, after he received his PhD, he felt a call to help people

  in need and had joined the Peace Corp. Stationed in a very

  poor country, he helped to feed the people of the small town

  where he was posted and helped them obtain clean water. At

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  night the vil agers would gather together and implore him

  to take out h
is telescope so they could look up at the night

  sky. They asked him about the meaning of what they saw.

  It was then, he said, that something within him clicked. He

  realized that he had a vocation, and that was to help people

  realize that there is more to life than just what to eat for

  lunch. The wonder of the cosmos and the questions that

  arise from it were part of the human condition. It was as im-

  portant as the bread we eat, as it fed the soul. It was literal y

  spiritual food. He realized that he was in a unique position

  to help foster this wonder.

  Brother Guy’s words sent an electric charge through the

  audience. When he finished, everyone rose and filed into the

  observatory for a demonstration of the telescope. Tyler was

  introspective. I could tell that Brother Guy’s talk had affected

  him the way I thought it would. Not only did Tyler have a de-

  sire to help people in a meaningful way, like Brother Guy, but

  also he had similar training and also worked in space- related

  research. He was touched by the wonder of the cosmos, and

  his life was a testament to a type of vocation not recognized

  by secular institutions. Here, at Castel Gandolfo, he saw that

  there were scientists who lived a life of vocation, or calling.

  They wedded their spiritual lives to their work lives. They

  didn’t compartmentalize religion into attendance at a re-

  ligious service one day a week. Their faith, spirituality, and

  religion permeated everything they did. And they were

  scientists.

  That night Tyler and I were in the archive, looking

  at the first of the books by Kepler. I had noticed that the

  observatory’s neighbor was a convent and the home of clois-

  tered nuns, and my own room was adjacent to theirs. As I sat

  in the archive of the Vatican Observatory in Castel Gandolfo,

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  staring at Johannes Kepler’s analysis of Copernicus’s cos-

  mology, I was struck by the thought that Sister Maria of

  Agreda, whose records I had seen, had claimed to have

  bilocated to New Mexico, the part of the world where Tyler

  had taken James and me to visit the supposed UFO crash

  site. I looked up quickly. Tyler looked at me, surprised by the

  suddenness of my move.

  “I was blindfolded on the trip to New Mexico,” I said,

  “so I don’t know exactly where I was. But we just read about

  Sister Maria and she describes where she went. Is this the

  same place where she imagined she went?”

  Tyler’s face appeared to freeze and he looked back down

  at his book. He wasn’t going to answer me. The small archive

  suddenly felt large to me, not in any spatial way, but in a way

  that fused it with my memories of New Mexico.

  S I S T E R M A R IA O F AG R E DA’ S

  E P I S O D E S O F B I L O C AT I O N

  In the early 1600s, as Spain was exploring and colonizing

  western North America, the youthful Maria claimed

  that with the help of angels she flew through space and

  over the ocean to New Mexico. Her sister nuns said they

  witnessed Maria during her alleged bilocations and that

  she rose a few feet off the floor and was surrounded by

  brilliant light.

  The veracity of Maria’s account of her experiences

  was bolstered by reported encounters between Franciscan

  missionaries in New Mexico and members of a native tribe,

  the Jumanos, who presented themselves as eager to be

  baptized. Allegedly, the Jumanos said that they had been

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  visited by a “lady in blue” who spoke to them about the

  Catholic faith.1

  This story traveled back to Spain with Alonso de

  Benavides, the first commissioner of the Inquisition in New

  Mexico. He met with Maria and questioned her closely about

  what she saw and with whom she spoke. Benavides was

  impressed by her account, which included details of things

  of which he thought she could not have been aware, and he

  made a report to the king of Spain, Philip IV.

  Maria’s “journeys” were strategical y politicized by

  Benavides. He and others used them to justify their con-

  tinued funding and efforts to expand the Spanish empire.

  The missionaries wanted to believe, and most likely did be-

  lieve, that Sister Maria actual y appeared, in physical form, to

  the people who lived there. Benavides and others used this

  miraculous story as proof that God wanted this area under

  Spanish rule.

  As I revisited this historiography, I thought about what

  was erased in its telling. Sitting in the archive, it was hard

  not to remember Sister Maria’s early work on cosmog-

  raphy and her recognition of some of the “heretical” sci-

  entific discoveries of her own era. Those works, her first,

  were burned, and only a few copies remain. She wrote that

  she saw the earth from space, and it was a spinning sphere.

  She is best known as the author of the Mystical City of God,

  a biography of the Virgin Mary, and her earlier work on

  science and cosmography is largely ignored.2 I could not

  help but draw a correlation with Tyler and his own imag-

  inings of how humans will eventual y explore and live in

  space. Was Tyler a contemporary Maria, existing in a sort of

  cloister of invisibility? Maria imagined herself traveling to

  what was for her a new world and making contact with its

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  inhabitants, and this imaginary/ real voyage paved the way

  for real missionaries. Tyler’s visions are supported by tele-

  vision and media and we accept, on an “imaginary” level,

  Tyler’s version of space travel. Maria’s visions were spread

  through rumors, stories, and circulated letters. Today,

  visions of UFOs and space travel are fueled by a vast media

  industry.

  Just as in Tyler’s case, there were inexplicable realist

  aspects to Maria’s imaginings. Had Maria been alive today,

  perhaps she would have been a remote viewer with the

  Stanford Research Institute, as she seems to have possessed

  the qualifications and skil s. There is a history of psychic

  cosmonauts within religious traditions, people who claim to

  fly through space with the help of angels or beings of light.

  Even if Maria in some sense creatively imagined a place to

  which she had never been, but had perhaps read about, it

  would not discredit the very real history of how her reported

  travels helped legitimize continued Spanish expansion. As

  Jeff Kripal suggests, instead of positing an either/ or scenario

  that negates the inexplicable and anomalous and reduces

  Maria’s claims to purely imaginings and nothing more, why

  not consider the story within a framework of both/ and? This

  would allow both the possibility that Maria real y had some

  experiences that cannot be easily explained away or reduced

  to political machinations and that these experiences helped

  pave the way for Spanish colonization in a world that was
<
br />   new to them, a place where people had already existed for

  thousands of years.

  Maria articulated her own version of the events and their

  inexplicable nature. She even criticized Benavides for being

  too “literal” in his interpretation of her bilocations. At the

  same time, she insisted that they real y did happen. She wrote:

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  God showed me those things by means of abstract images of

  the kingdoms and what was going on there, or perhaps they

  were shown to me there. Neither then nor now was, or am,

  I capable of knowing the way it happened. . . . Whether or not

  I real y and truly went in my body is something about which

  I cannot be certain. And it is not surprising I have questions

  in my mind, for Saint Paul understood things better than

  I and yet tel s us that he was carried up to the third heaven but

  does not know whether it was in the body or out of it. What

  I can assure you beyond any doubt is that the case did in fact

  happen, and that as far as I know, it had nothing to do with the

  devil or wrong desires.3

  Significantly, Maria notes that her travels would not have

  happened without the assistance of angels, or angelic beings.

  Angelic beings show up, again and again, in the discourse of

  the psychic cosmonauts. Of course, Tyler believes in beings

  that help him develop technologies.

  Empirical or not, Maria’s imaginings helped Spain colo-

  nize part of America. As a woman living in the seventeenth

  century who dared to write, she inspired suspicion and had

  to answer to the Inquisition. She later claimed that she was

  pressured to answer to Benavides in ways that he desired.

  Some of her writings were burned. Later, she recanted her

  recantations and rewrote many of her former works from

  memory. Colonial expansion was forged through the energy,

  money, and desires of the Spanish elite. Maria’s voyages and

  “first contact” were put in service to this end.

  Across the table in the silent archive, Tyler was diligently

  searching through the pages of an eighteenth- century book

  about electromagnetism. I considered that his own special

  skil s were used to serve an industry that sought colonization

  and expansion of space. It was also an endeavor undertaken

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  by the elite. The heads of the private space industries are