There's a lot to unpack in American Cosmic. The most significant revelation in the book is that the tin foil hat crowd are not alone chasing UFOs. There's a large number of scientists, engineers, writers, and "cultural elites" leading double lives as UFO researchers and seekers. Academics work in anonymity out of their colleagues will disassociate from them. They refer to themselves as the "invisible college."
Pasulka gained some access to this "invisible college" and becomes a character in her own book. She recounts her adventures with "Tyler D", a mystery man who's apparently a NASA scientist, MMA fighter, venture capitalist, and the guru behind cutting edge medical technology. Over the years Tyler came to believe "off world intelligence" guided him towards his discoveries through psychic communication. The opening chapter recounts Tyler taking Diane and a colleague to visit a purported UFO crash site in New Mexico. While there they discover an "artifact" that may or may not have been planted.
At the book's heart is the mystery of existence and consciousness. Pasulka approaches the subject matter as a religious scholar, in the tradition of Carl Jung who made connections between religion and UFOs. Insights are also gleaned from neuroscience, mass media studies, and quantum physics. Advances in these fields are contributing to understanding the paranormal. Comparisons are made between Tyler's experience and those of composers making music - neurology tells us we feel outside of ourselves when moments of intense creativity occur. Anyone can channel this part of their brain, not just the Mozarts among us.
We now live in a reality when most of our information comes from staring into screens. Pasulka's argument here gets a little cloudy, but the concept is that the reality of screen is starting to merge with actual reality. The simulation is more real than the real world - like The Matrix. While characters in a movie are fictional, they nevertheless exist in our minds. How many times have you heard someone compare a movie to a religious experience? An example is a new religion based on Star Wars. While Star Wars exists as fiction, the effect of these films on many is powerful and life changing - the logical next step is a religion based on the stories. All religions stem from narratives that in time become more real than real to its followers.
The ubiquitous presence of media has also shaped the way we perceive the UFO phenomenon and everything else. Media shapes our memories to the point where they blend with the reality. American Cosmic is not proselytizing any "truth" about UFOs and other phenomena, but attempts to understand it. Media shapes our understanding and may be portals to understanding these mysterious phenomena people experience. Those who believe they've had contact with ET's express narratives that are similar to movies and TV shows, as if the idea of an encounter is already embedded in our brains.
Those who believe in alien contact are not sure of what it means either, but they are sure these beings are curious about us. Yet a voice in my head says these elites (mostly wealthy white men) are simply bored and have nothing better to do, what better fate than to be chosen by the visitors? Pasulka criticizes Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind as a simplistic movie, but I find it interesting that the protagonist of the film is an every man. Not some brilliant rich white guy. I come away from American Cosmic thinking the "invisible college" may be more of a diversion for those with tons of money and time on their hands.
Nevertheless, American Cosmic is a compelling mix of academic rigor and intellectual adventure, I would not be surprised if a movie or TV show will be developed from it. But the book left me with more questions than answers. Skeptics get short thrift and that annoyed me. Carl Sagan is mentioned many times, and while he was intrigued with the concept of life elsewhere, he remained a skeptic about UFO encounters until the end of his life. We're left with the impression he was a believer in UFOs. Sagan's final book The Demon Haunted Earth lamented the rise of pseudoscience and conspiracy theory culture in America.
Even more ominous is the idea of media becoming the new reality. We've seen the political ramifications of misinformation becoming fact in the minds of many. Some believe media saturation could ricochet into something else entirely, perhaps a spiritual awakening. If there really are intelligent beings meddling with us, the nature of their being would be so abstract it would make little sense to anyone is another takeaway from the book. Meanwhile life goes on.
Pasulka, D.W. American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, and Technology. New York: OUP, 2019.
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