Diana Walsh Pasulka

Diana Pasulka is a scholar of religion who has spent the last decade researching belief systems and social organization around UFO phenomena. Needless to say, she's riding a wave at the moment. I gather that the first printing of this book sold out after she made an appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast.

The subtitle of Encounters indicates that the ones encountered are "nonhuman intelligences," including the extraterrestrials postulated in many stories of "close" encounters. But the substance of the book consists of her encounters with experiencers and investigators of UFOs and related phenomena. Other than action-hero Iya Whiteley, "The Space Psychologist," and skeptical visionary Len Filppu, the experiencers are all pseudonymous--or at least their names have been truncated to prevent identification. In most cases we are given full narrative descriptions of their formative experiences with nonhuman intelligences, but these accounts are often overshadowed by their retrospective feelings and opinions.

Pasulka remains (or perhaps becomes) vigorously agnostic about the objective nature of the exotic intelligences, detailing such hypotheses as space aliens (increasingly dubious), angels or demons, post-human artificial intelligences in "another dimension," and a gnostic-hermetic anima mundi. She never uses the latter phrase, although it is extremely apposite to some of her musings. Her style of entertaining these various theories and her warmth toward her informants sometimes makes her seem like a credulous enthusiast, especially towards the end of the book.

An interesting feature of Pasulka's analysis is her recourse to two Platonic texts central to esoteric currents: the allegory of the cave from the Republic and the parable of Theuth and Thamus from the Phaedrus. Her emphasis in the first case is on the identity of the puppeteers in the cave, thus courting a borderline-paranoid reading of the epistemological dilemma. She relates the second text to the impossibility or inadvisability of documenting transcendent truths.

Pasulka ultimately proposes two methods to circumvent the evident redaction (149) to which all her documentary sources have been subjected. One is personal, mouth-to-ear transmission in secrecy. The other is what she follows her informant Jose in calling "protocols," which are personal disciplines to remove epistemological noise and to be open to non-ordinary experiences. Both are touchstones of traditional esotericism, of course.

In the chapter "Gnosis," Pasulka refers extensively to the "Rosicrucian" orientation of Allen Hynek and Jacques Vallée. Since I am familiar with the extraordinary level of diversity among doctrines claiming that label, I was frustrated that she emphasized the "non-denominational" unaffiliated status of the men. It wasn't until concluding that section that she mentioned in passing the authorities they acknowledged in modern Rosicrucianism: Rudolf Steiner and Max Heindel (131). (For what it's worth, I have read in the works of both men, and find Steiner interesting and occasionally profound, and Heindel decidedly loopy.)

This book is a fast read, but it seemed a little sloppier to me than her previous effort American Cosmic. Still, those who liked the earlier book will probably enjoy it, and it is a pretty engaging introduction to the beyond-nuts-and-bolts school of ufological investigation.… (mais)

The book American Cosmic was six years in the making by an established scholar of religion and issued by Oxford University Press. Nevertheless, it is very accessible and addressed to a general audience. It has a significant measure of "reflexivity," often exhibited in stretches of first-person narrative. Author Diana Pasulka references as sympathetic colleagues Jeffrey Kripal and Tanya Lurhmann, both researchers I've met and whose work I've found valuable. Within the relevant field of UFO studies, Pasulka boasts herself a "fan" and co-worker of Jacques Vallee, making special reference to his book The Invisible College.

Pasulka says at the outset that the investigations she undertook to research this book resulted in multiple forms of "epistemological shock" for her. Not only was she brought to confront the currency of ufological beliefs among members of the economic and intellectual elite in the US, but she also realized the extent of the willful falsehoods and disinformation presented in various media and social milieus. Early on, she addresses the manner in which the research regimes of academic transparency and trade/military secrecy create unbridgeable chasms in communication. Although she demonstrates it in the course of the book, she doesn't explicitly call out the extent to which this tension can come to lodge itself within the experience of an individual, and I think this dynamic, as much as the "embarrassment" often remarked by Pasulka, helps to account for the anxiety and social opacity of those she calls "experiencers" (i.e. contactees and witnesses) and "meta-experiencers" (a.k.a. "scientist-believers").

The extreme case of this latter category Pasulka calls "Invisibles." These are successful scientists who avoid any public profile for their work, rejecting visibility in any media including the "social" media of the Internet. Two of these Invisibles figure as sources and collaborators in the book, where she has given them cover names: "Tyler D." ("the first rule of Fight Club is ...") and "James" ("Master of the Multiverse"). Although she is scrupulous about their anonymity in the book, some of the incidents related there imply that their identities might be deduced by some of her fellow academics.

The book repeatedly though briefly references the modern philosophical tradition. Pasulka's readings of Heidegger and Baudrillard, while certainly relevant to the subject at hand, tend to simplify the positions expressed by those writers in ways that gave me pause. On the other hand, her engagement with Nietzsche is one which I can both respect and sympathize with.

I think Pasulka amply demonstrates the usefulness of religion as a paradigm for viewing the social effects of UFO phenomena and ideas. Not only does she (following Vallee and Kripal) highlight the elements of the miraculous, but she discusses the ways in which non-empirical concepts become experientially actual. She does not compare the passion of UFO researchers to religious fanaticism, but rather to religious vocation. The book makes passing reference to parapsychological idioms and theories, but does not resort to them as part of its method. There is also very little reference to esoteric religion or occultism, although those familiar with that field will have little difficulty seeing the considerable areas of overlap with the business of this study.… (mais)