George P. Hansen | The Trickster, The UFO, & The Taboo

00:04 The planet's puppet masters almost surely have a plan There clearly may be something there beyond the realm of man Until we've thoroughly tested every last closed chested view You'll find the more you think you know, the less you really do Where would we be without THC? We know they're lying to us, just don't know to what degree. Where would we be without THC? The highest side chat show. Greg Carlwood and company

00:58 So say we all, good people of the internet. From the Sunshine State I'm Greg Carlwood And just outside the purview of a typical American mind lies an archetypal force weaving its way through many unexplained phenomena manifesting in many forms and taking on almost endless number of embodiments causing mischief and chaos subverting taboos dissolving boundaries and mystifying man as if that's it prime directive Its many faces have been recognized by a number of groups from Native Americans and Indigenous Australians to occultists and conjurers, yet it remains elusive and ambiguous even those who have accepted its influence. It inspires hoaxers, motivates magicians, and encourages internet trolls igniting the internal charge one gets from trickery slight-of-hand and the astonishment of onlookers

01:49 One could consider it to be some ethereal artist from behind the cosmic curtain whose greatest works include what we would often refer to as paranormal, high strangeness UFOs and Fortean events. This force has broadly been known as the trickster, and few have been so bold as to try to pin down this slippery something. But today we are talking to one such man in George P Hansen author of the classic book The Trickster and The Paranormal for the uninitiated George was professionally employed in parapsychology laboratories for eight years three at the Ryan Research Center in Durham North Carolina and five at psycho physical research laboratories in Princeton New Jersey

02:30 His experiments include remote viewing, card guessing, electronic random number generators, seance phenomena and ghosts. He has been active in a number of psychic UFO and New Age organizations and even helped found a skeptics group just to keep balance in the force His papers in scientific journals cover mathematical statistics, fraud and deception, the skeptics movement, conjures in parapsychology and exposés of hoaxes. And he's also a proud card-carrying member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians! A legend in paranormal research, and it's an honor to have him here. The anti-structure educator high strangeness explorer and talented trickster biographer George P Hanson welcome to the higher side

03:18 Well, thank you. Yes, yes I'm really looking forward to this your work has been cited by many previous guests and i tried to outline the general shape of what we might call the trickster in that intro so that we wouldn't have to start from scratch i know your general basic definition is that the trickster is an archetype or a collection of abstract characteristics talk to us about some of those characteristics just so we get all the listeners on the same page Well one of the obvious characters that gives a deception and we certainly see that in the ufo field. And most paranormal fields weather it's big foot or other monsters, in parapsychology and spiritual is there any long history bakery. In virtually all paranormal fields they're sort of painted because of the deception and their sort of

04:16 Marginal and marginality is often a characteristic of the trickster. So one could go on and on and on. And as we discuss more, if I'm not being clear enough or not giving enough examples just tell me so I'll turn it back to you. Fair enough. And I think it's pretty clear that the trickster isn't just one Supreme entity but it is almost like a personality profile and archetype that can be embodied in many different ways Is it fair to say that the trickster is almost like a form of energy or force of some kind in the world, almost akin to gravity? I wouldn't call it a force. I wouldn't use that word. I would prefer to keep it a little bit more abstract something like constellation or the trickster qualities or tricks your characteristics. At least in my mind that gets to it a little bit better energy

05:14 It has physical meaning and it's sometimes related to entropy. And I think there is an aspect there certainly, but I think the trickster is more broad and a little more ambiguous. Fair enough. Yes. Well we're aware of the tricksters presence in mythology and folklore which are themselves terms that blur the lines between real and not real for a lot of people. But if we called The Trickster A force that governs paradox or energy that governs paradox, the irrational and liminal spaces. I obviously see that trickster tone present in paranormal or high strangeness encounters but i'm curious what you think triggers such an experience? Or the mechanisms behind these very bizarre encounters with all sorts of non-human creatures people report

06:07 I don't know if you can get behind that but we see the aspects of a trickster all across the board and there's disruption in deception. And the trickster is inherently a bit ambiguous, people have rather ambivalent feelings toward the trickster so you're not going to be able completely pin down the trick just by its nature It's not like something very solid it conceptual and it seems to have something life of its own. I don't believe that can be fully control or completely defined crisply and clearly that part of it,

06:58 And if you're not willing to accept that, then you're going to have problems. If you think that you will be able to contain the trickster somehow, you're probably going to be in for some surprises and disappointments. Fair enough. Yes there are some cultures in the world that have similar feelings around absolute raw truth that you can't really get it directly, but it's best expressed through proverbs or reading between the lines. And you know when you hear it but the language is always around rather than directly on it. I like that! Yeah. I might quote you sometime. Wow wow alright well I win so let's talk about one of the wildest manifestations

07:54 the trickster, which is the creatures that abductees and contactees experience. Often people assume they are the occupants or pilots of UFOs but I've heard you say in previous interviews that some your best friends are abductees and contactees when you hear enough those sorts of stories they really do boggle my mind as to what's behind all that. Sometimes people just see little men come out of a craft and inspect some foliage on the ground, sometimes people have fluids extracted from them other times they might be taken out of their body shown dead relatives then put back into bed

08:34 These situations clearly check some of those trickster boxes, but is there not anything more we could say about their source or their motivations in these weird encounters having studied this so long? I don't think that question really makes sense. What you do is you're asking sort of why are they doing it? It's who what where when and how to get the motivation I think that doesn't seem to me to be a useful pursuit try to understand that. You look at characteristics across because you're trying to figure out what they are doing and for my own thinking that leads no place,

09:24 I could understand why you say that for sure. It's hard to understand the logic of something so foreign and probably a waste of time to try, but it is my biggest curiosity what they are doing. Well let me ask you what sort of things can we infer about the nature of reality if we accept the paranormal UFO high strangeness encounters people have as they are described? Well, you look at what are the characteristics of the people and the circumstances in their life and the circumstances of the encounters. And you will see certain commonalities there are people undergoing transitions of some type or more likely to have some kind of a trickster phenomena when the books that was very influential in my early reading with synchronicity science myth and the trickster by combs and Holland

10:23 And they pointed out that when people are traveling, they're likely to have more synchronicities. Especially traveling not in their car but say on a vacation or trip someplace it's a little out of the way and that's been my experience as well I've been over in Europe a few times and I've been walking down the street then encountered someone who I knew! That rarely happens in my hometown So there are, what are the circumstances in which these phenomena occur? So I look at it more that way. And also the time period there are times when our society is undergoing more transition in my experience and observation. I think there are times when that kind of transition or instability we see an upsurge interest in the paranormal and UFOs

11:25 And you will see a lot of abductees also have psychic experiences so those things go together when you look at the. Aspects that seem to occur together that will tell us something i'd like to think a little bit more elaborate on that but, if u look it what else is happening around the people and their lives and maybe even people in there community So right now we're seeing two things that I point out in some of my lectures. We're seeing a lot of UFO activity getting enormous amount of attention, but we're also seeing a lot of attention given to transgender. I don't think that's an accident. I think those are very closely related and both have very strong trickster qualities

12:20 Right, right. Gender studies and gender in general right now is obviously a somewhat thorny topic people have very emotional visceral reactions to such conversations but the characteristics of the trickster are subverting binaries sexual taboos and this sort of stuff so yeah maybe we should talk about it what do you think is the connective tissue outside of those things I just mentioned between UFOs and say gender studies or this cultural fixation on gender that's going on out there.

13:02 Okay, well I've attended a number of large conferences on transgender issues. Philadelphia for some years had very large conference held in the summertime and i spent some time with those people and gave a lecture at one of the conferences. And found absolutely interesting people some very very impressive people there And I also noted that if you were to have an occult conference, there were enough presenters at the Philadelphia conferences to people talking about paranormal and occult issues. You could have a full conference just on that topic from the transgender people. In fact if you look historically transgender people had been very prominent as shamans and mediums and the like

13:55 And this goes to very, very many different cultures. So there's something very you want to say spiritual or occult or paranormal so you can go back thousands of years and see this connection we're also seeing our society undergoing some kind of transition I don't know where it's going to wind up but at this time we are seeing enormous amount of attention given to the transgender issue we're also seeing enormous amount of effort and information on the UFO topic. Both of these have very strong trickster aspects, and then the boundary blurring is very very distinct there so you see in the transgender community there is an enormous relatively to the straight community there is enormous amount of interest in paranormal topics if you go like to Philadelphia which literally thousands of people attending

14:55 I saw quite a number of very interesting lectures related to the paranormal and religious topics. Well, you are right about an occult LGBTQ crossover that is pretty strong that I could definitely say I've acknowledged and people also talk about Baphomet all the time as the big iconic symbol which is a transgendered being So yeah there's definitely something there for sure and then you can talk about the crowley stuff you do mention that in a book that girl i love to violate sexual taboos no sexual perversion and ritual magic he would say increases its power. And you even know that images of cannibalism and human sacrifice are central to christianity which is another cross over the,

15:48 paranormal religious crossover that is being examined more these days. But yeah, it seems like sexual taboo is in all of those little avenues? Yes yes It's quite strong and the religion paranormal connection is getting a little more attention but historically The paranormal is basically equivalent to the supernatural and the supernatural has typically been the domain of religion. There are not a lot of people in parapsychology who really want to admit that, but if they ignore that they're going to have a very limited understanding of these phenomena historically

16:37 Saints, mystics, shamans and other practitioners have been involved with religion of their societies and paranormal phenomena. And there's been attempts to downplay that and ignore that but if you ignore that and just take a little part of the paranormal you're going to have a very distorted understanding of the phenomenon I agree i think it's actually a little ironic that categorization is such a big sticking point for some people in ufology if you aren't

17:15 coming to the same conclusion then you're disruptive to the field if u don't think that their planet hoppers and some spaceship then you are a problem as opposed to really being cross referential with all sorts of things mythology religion. Fairies even all kinds of different areas of strange phenomenon you should probably think of them more in a continuum as opposed to trying to just look at the narrow box and cut around everything else. I mean that's what the mainstream does with paranormal in general so it's funny to see a microcosm within ufology researchers

17:58 Oh, it's quite pervasive within the UFO research. But it is also pervasive within academe. Academe is highly bureaucratic you have the humanities, you've got the social sciences, you've got the soft sciences and hard sciences and people in those areas rarely read or cite in rather dramatically different disciplines. In fact they are generally penalized for doing so they'd be looked down upon they would not advance in the academic world. So, the nature of bureaucracy and categorization is sort of inimical to understanding these phenomena and the society itself especially bureaucratic society and that includes academia and government they're not supposed to cross over and mess with topics outside of their quote expertise

18:54 So the nature of our society itself is inimical to these boundary blurring, and it confuses people and scares people. And if you decide to move into those areas well, you're probably going to be penalized. You will be looked down upon marginalized and your work will not be taken seriously Yeah, there's just something about the way people think and organize that they just want to be part of a group I guess. And want to push everything else out but when we were talking about UFOs and what triggers them you said you would start with looking at the individual experience or state of consciousness are they in a state of transition? Are they in highly emotional

19:45 emotionally volatile state did they experience trauma change travel these sorts of things i tend to agree it's not as obvious connection to make for a lot of people as it would be looking at people state-of-consciousness and the side effects that you studied but Sci-fx are interesting. I consider them a little bit of a different category because they don't involve other bizarre seemingly autonomous beings, maybe these beings do come from a certain state of consciousness or are triggered from them, but these puzzling abilities of the mind like subtle influence of random number generators remote viewing card guessing psychic reading premonitions skeptics would say these things can't be true because we already know x y and z about reality. But if we were to get past that and accept this psi phenomenon as proven like the data shows

20:46 How has that eight years of your study and the time since caused you to reconfigure your construct of reality in accordance with folding in what that strange data seems to prove? Well, I looked at all this something more from like a sociological or more likely an anthropological approach. Rather than the psychological approach so if you look at who are people are involved in the remote viewing program what do they do whatever activities or interested. And if u look at the government spying program and personnel involved with it, end of the government ufo programs there is a huge overlap

21:33 In some of my lectures, I have a long list of the people who are involved in both topics. Even at the very beginning of the program when Yuri Geller was brought over to be tested at SRI, well Jacques Vallée was in a tower at SRI watching for UFO's while Geller was being tested so the connection there is very clear and you will see people in the remote viewing area have an interest in say near-death experiences and people involved with near death experiences often have an interest in the UFO topic. So these things go together, and if people are not aware of this they're going to miss a whole lot. And the government remote viewing program has heavy involvement. If you look at say the Skinwalker Ranch there's all sorts of wonderful overlaps there

22:34 Right. And it's interesting that once Bigelow ended up kind of retiring that venture and selling the ranch, he started a consciousness studies organization? Yes. I'm not sure what he is doing now. He had NIDS National Discovery Science and now you've got Brian Google who is funding some very interesting research and they're sending people out in there looking at cattle mutilations another entity types of experiences. Can you also look into your physics and various electrical phenomena and the like and that's the way i think we need to go it started with a shotgun type of approach let's try something and see what happens

23:23 Right. There's a lot of people actually talking about the locational aspect, like what makes a hotspot? A hotspot for such things is it qualities of the earth is that pressure building up in certain areas of the earth as at ley lines there is the theory about a connection between earthquakes and UFO activity which was strange the first time I heard it but there does seem to be a correlation there Yeah, well John Durer and Michael Persinger had written on that 30 to 40 years ago. So that's not something new people have been looking at for some time I haven't kept up on that research but that deserves more attention Ray Stanford was looking at things along that line and Paul Devereaux over in the UK has been looking at somewhat related topics And i'm sure there is a lot more than I am not aware of

24:20 And again, these have been marginal people who are generally not been part of the big academic structure but some other research is very interesting. Yeah definitely is and when i think about the book you wrote in all the different areas you cover and these sections dedicated to hoaxing that goes on, end both around my side effects and mediumship and ufo's. And the way you were like no let's hit this head on because it's also an element of a trickster It's not something that you should just kind of ignore. It's a big part of the paranormal." Well, that also is a big part of what we might call alternative energy research Tesla type stuff there is the quest for zero point energy and energy science and there is this

25:16 paranoia of the government's involvement and the government suppressing certain technologies. And there's also fraud where people say they've made over unity devices and haven't, and I just find that all curious that electrical phenomenon and applications of electricity and energy science is another kind of box that we could also say we sometimes see The Trickster playing in Yes and also you see some kind of connection with technology certainly with magic. And there been a number of scholars of magical brought attention to well hey there's some kinda relationship, which technology and i think that deserves a little more attention as well do people who are cutting edge of technology often have an interest in paranormal top

26:10 Tesla would be one edison would be another look at the big finders james mcdonnell. McDonald aircraft was when the big funders of paranormal research, robert bigelow also an interest in space technology and one of the biggest funders in our normal research there is something important they're pushing us forward technologically And that should be tricksters are innovators they're disruptors and some technology is very disruptive so we might be seeing more of this as the disruption in our society contains what were looking at a i can't think of any paranormal aspect but there probably are something.

26:58 Right well Elon Musk has referred to it as summoning the demon and Gordy Rose has referred to it as Playing with the altar to an alien God So like that language is very much in there, and then like be most popular Technology company apple is invoking the bitten apple religious symbols so there's that weird religious connection again and a lot of. Oh man and then a lot of other people have also noted that If you break open a phone or computer and you look at the motherboard, a lot of its patterns and structure look like sigils from old grimoires. And that's another weird somewhat connection there is also that general theme of the ghost in the machine idea

27:54 these computers are actually vessels for contact, perhaps. And maybe that's what AI is. Maybe it's not artificial intelligence but you've opened up some kind of portal to an intelligence that can just speak through it. I mean how would you really know the difference between something organically created and something that becomes a vessel for a foreign exotic consciousness? Mm-hmm, I like that. And some of the orb phenomena it shows up on cameras well sometimes people see it sometimes they don't and it shows up Is this phenomenon interacting with the machine somehow? I don't know but it's intriguing It is and there are some researchers who have worked with plasmas and They have said that in certain experiments

28:48 When they can generate a plasma, it almost seems as if it has an intelligence that is somewhat autonomous. I'm not aware of that, it's interesting Yes Eric Dollard said that to me he showed a photo from an experiment and actually this plasma looked like the shape of a little stick figure man And i asked him about it and he was like yeah you know he is trying to be a serious scientist but there were some qualities that made me think there could be some emerging intelligence from it It's a curious thing. I mean, people see light beings. A lot of times these experiences do involve a brilliant white light and maybe plasma is either their vehicle to get here or something they can operate through. Interesting. Yeah yeah i mean there's some weird stuff out there but i'm always just trying to find out a little bit more about all this but

29:52 You do have a section of the book titled UFOs, myth ritual and the trickster. And you write that in the sixties and seventies John Keele and Jacques Vallee pointed out that reports of UFO occupants are strikingly similar to entities described in myth and folklore during those same decades anthropologists made significant advancements in understanding myth and ritual I'm curious What you think about that connection between ritual when it comes to indigenous cultures and their beliefs, these cultures that live closer within nature. They tend to find a place for the paranormal in their concept of reality. They seem to have a pretty complex understanding oftentimes of things that the Western mind can barely even accept

30:45 Yes that's true they have typically a simpler society don't have as much social stratification they do have. some, but they're more likely to have in rituals typically the status distinctions will be lowered or basically there will be no status distinction. They're very few. There might be a shaman who leads the ritual that people will have what Victor Turner used to communitize sort of an equality and

31:20 You can see this in our culture occasionally if you work in a large corporation united just say hi and wave to the CEO. What even smaller corporations are status left well at the company picnic might very well have more direct personal interaction with people, and that's sort of like it time of community house What doing normal work today you have a very rigid boundaries between levels of management workers and all that. So our culture has probably more stratification than some of the earlier cultures and with the, stratification is more rigidity in your roles and what do u do and less

32:10 In some sense freedom of what you can do within a structure like that. So when those distinctions, those roles sort of collapse and people are more egalitarian situation, those phenomena may erupt and become more common. Those are some my thoughts but that comes out in some of Arnold Van Genep's and Victor Turner's work Show me looking at the social situation not so much just a personality but this what are the relations of various people and it's often the marginal or the outsider that has the more interest in involvement with paranormal topics i sometimes kinda joke who incorporation, consult fortune tellers well secretary perhaps and maybe c.e.o right

33:03 But people in between, they probably wouldn't be quite so willing to admit that. And certainly CEOs and some big corporations do use remote viewers and psychics. I've been involved with some of that but they usually keep that very quiet. Yeah the stratification of our society obviously is pretty far and wide, but I do get curious and speculate a lot of times about that upper level. They seem to have a lot of different thoughts about this stuff they seem to have just concepts that aren't necessarily advertised there's the old trope of the kings court and the King would have some sort

33:50 occultist, astronomer. He would have someone whose expertise is those areas, someone shaman-esque and that's not necessarily thought about in todays upper levels but I'm not so sure it has gone away. I don't think it has and I think at very high levels people are aware of these things they have to be! And I suspect its more common than even I know of. There are certain well to do people who I knew who do employ psychics and want to keep up on what's going on in the world. So, I was gonna ask you about this... You have a paragraph in the book about

34:38 where you say, in any given Psy experiment it is difficult if not impossible to fully determine who causes any result. Experimenters subjects checkers and others may all contribute some influence even without conscious intent ESP is not blocked by distance or time retroactive telekinesis suggests that persons in the future can influence the past I'm pretty interested in that retroactive psychokinesis. Psychokinesis is, it tends to be defined by moving objects with your mind you can do that from the future influencing the past

35:23 Yeah, that work was pretty well known in the 70s and 80. And there were a series of theoretical efforts that were generally under the title of the observational theories and much of the work pertinent work was done with random number generators And there were a number of other formulations of these ideas. There was the notion of sign-mediated experimenter effect, there was the divergence problem, this source problem and so they were efforts to try to determine who is the source of these paranormal effects in the laboratory and if the researchers studied it more and more it became more and more nebulous

36:11 Now this research is not very well known. All the work is primarily published in the professional journals and conference presentations, and it was largely headed by physicists So it's not very well known, but yes the problem of determining who is actually causing a particular effect is often rather nebulous. Now in certain poltergeist situations there seem to be some kind of disturbed individual or someone who has got some type of transition or other problem

36:49 What even then you got multiple people involved so it's very difficult to pin down ok who is the cause now certainly there are people who. Display psychic talents much more frequently than others, Never the less you're not always successful and i suspect there's sometimes it say going for a reading you want to psychic reading. It may depend on your own personality as well as the sidekick who is the major cause for the phenomenon, You might think ok there's certainly the psychic has had a reputation what is the psychic because or the source of the effect. That's not so clear maybe it involves somehow the relationship itself whether it's unconscious you're conscious whatever so,

37:44 That requires a fairly sophisticated understanding of the laboratory results and how the laboratory experiments are undertaken. And that's almost never discussed in the popular literature, unfortunately. And the people in the field now that I read seem to be unaware of that. In the 70s and especially 80s there was a large amount of money pumped into the field comparatively Today, and in the 80s there were like six laboratories in the US doing research publishing in refereed journals with people in offices and had paid staff. We don't see that now today in the U S there might be I dunno two or three people doing research full time in parapsychology who are paid during that research at a professional level

38:40 Now, there is the Skinwalker research which is getting quite a bit of attention. It's not really traditional laboratory type situation that they've got but I think they're doing some very important and interesting work. I suspect maybe the research needs to go in that direction but laboratory research now is nothing like it was in the 80s And the Skinwalker work is very interesting, but it's not being published in scientific journals by and large. There is a little bit but not very much. Yeah, it's definitely worth considering that these experiences could be generated by some kind of resonance or field effect almost like the contagiousness of a cold. It's almost like

39:26 sometimes if you, just like the side effects and the potency. If you investigate the paranormal, sometimes they say it follows you home as if its contagious in a weird way? Yes yes there was a sitter group that I was involved with for awhile and when other people would visit that group sometimes they'd go home and have certain odd phenomena happen And you also see that in the Skinwalker work. So yeah, there is some kind of contagion there I'm pretty convinced that's a legitimate way of describing something like that. So if you were pressed would you say your most likely conclusion is that The Greys would be a product of individual experiencers unconscious mind?

40:22 No, I suspect these entities have some kind of independent existence or at least quasi-independent. I don't think these are simply generated by the experiencers. Fair but their state of consciousness and you know elements of trauma or heightened emotion... These things are relevant to the experience but maybe not the primary source? Yeah and i'm not sure we can identify a primary source it may be a constellation that is the relationship between a variety of factors in people. That these phenomena do occur but to try to identify a source might be,

41:07 going in the wrong direction. I think it's worth trying, but also looking at okay what else is happening there? What are the commonalities in these cases and taking a broad brush if you look at strong phenomena what else is going on there? Is there more deception or are certain types of personalities who are attracted do they have a history in other areas of the paranormal So I think it's best to take sort of a broad approach. And if you just go in with, say psychological inventories, you've already sort of set up what you want to find out. I think getting more involved like an anthropologist and getting to know the people and observe the phenomena and observe that people is probably a better way to go rather than some kind of pre-existing testing regime

42:04 I think those are useful, but I think it's more useful for the researchers to get involved more directly with the phenomena and try to observe the people and the phenomenon themselves. And there's a lot of people in parapsychology who don't really want to do that. I believe it! Another interesting avenue of research...I don't know what to make of it comes from This mentioned in the book where you say that at one point in the fall of 1989, you were asked to comment on an early version of The Controllers by Martin Cannon on government mind control. That went on to become something of an underground classic and some ufology circles while I have heard about the basic premise of that book, UFO experiences are a result of government mind control operations

42:59 What was your take on his premise and have your thoughts on intelligence operations being a part of all this evolved over time? Well, I'm not sure. I can comment on that effectively. In fact, I kind of forgotten about the Martin Cannon incident but certainly government have had a long-term interest in the paranormal I don't know to what extent or what divisions of the government. You know, i've known a few names that do pop up but it's very difficult to know the extent now it does seem too be there is a lot of interest in the ufo topic now and the government well historically that has been very closely associated with the psychic aspect

43:50 I'm not sure that come out very much in the testimony but if you just look historically the same people keep popping up andreas harwich. Add your mitchell, And these are the public people who have been involved with the topics. But I suspect that there are quite a number of others that have been holding it very, very low profile. Ingo Swann has certainly an interest in both and he was one of the government... He taught many of the government viewers and he was very direct about his interest in UFO topic and had described that at some length

44:32 No when you find someone is successful in engel squad involved i'm sure that there are plenty of people in the intelligence community with. We certainly certain to develop bad interest as well as many people in foreign countries, Right. I agree with you there, it does seem like the context of the David Grush stuff and these hearings that they're having is mostly a nuts-and-bolts alien craft military industrial complex kind of context? Well maybe not! Certainly we've got people like Jack Sarfatti who's been involved with remote viewing and UFOs in the way There's alternative physics

45:22 Show i suspect that there are people in the government who are much more sophisticated in their thinking i don't know how much power they have if you're thinking strictly nuts and bolts i think they got to be more sophisticated. As far as I know, there's no really good theory connecting remote viewing with UFOs. But there needs to be and there's obviously people who are very involved with both topics now. Now I don't know how much theoretical advance that they've made but they certainly have to realize that those things are connected. Oh yeah! I certainly think they are connected and i hope that there are people behind the curtain that make those connections

46:07 I'm just saying the public facing hearings, it's military pilots. It's whistleblowers who worked in military groups that were studying the phenomenon. It's all steeped in classified files and these speculation in general is that this is somehow going to be spun or used for inflating military budgets when it's all said and done, but that's like surface level operations that they have going on I hope there's something deeper behind the curtain, it seems like there would be. Hal Puthoff of course is a big name in both energy research and studying UFOs and this sort of thing. And there's got to be more! Probably a lot of names we don't even know. Well if these phenomena do occur they may be very disruptive and there maybe some blowback

47:06 If you look at the skinwalker and the hitchhiker effect, there are side effects. Have they been able to control those? Probably not. There may be effects on their families in fact certainly that's part of the skinwalker phenomenon so there maybe unanticipated consequences and those consequences maybe rather severe I didn't know about effects on people's families. Oh yeah, you need to read the Skinwalkers at the Pentagon and go into considerable detail on that. Yeah, I've heard people say they went home from Skinwalker Ranch and their doors would slam shut, their fans would come on an off... No no there are diseases where people get very very sick

48:02 It's a very, very important phenomena and it really fits very nicely with some of my own theoretical work. If you look at anything even I think George Knapp has covered some of that in some of his postings there are number of autoimmune disorders that occur. Interesting how does that fit with your research? Like what do you think that it might be a clue to Well, that's I'm not willing to go public on that at this point. I've noted it in one or two of my lectures. This is a very important phenomenon. Very interesting and very interesting. Yeah yeah this is you really need to look at the book Skinwalkers at the Pentagon. Yeah I'll have to dust off It's been awhile obviously That's another classic. Yeah I think it's a very important book

48:51 Yeah, I sometimes hear about radiation that sort of poisoning encountering crabs or where they were. No no this is a radiation model probably it's not appropriate Okay, some other sickness vector then. Yeah we'll leave it at that but remote viewing and sigh effects coming back to some of that just the notion that they aren't blocked by distance that's been proven with remote viewing many times I mean just the nature of it remote viewing if it was blocked by distance then you would just be using your eyes

49:27 But time is such a wacky thing. And sometimes I think that if ESP and psychokinesis aren't limited by time, how are things not just absolute chaos from even just a small percentage of people at all periods of time dabbling in these sorts of effects? You know maybe there's a way of answering that question i don't see that would be you have to look at regularity what things seem to happen in. Over hundreds years and order the patterns you need to look for pattern not trying to explain understand why you have to understand what first,

50:17 So the selection of topics and questions is rather important. And a why question is usually not productive. I'm full of why questions, I don't know why I am so stuck on the why but... No you see if you're thinking in that direction You can't make progress because your dealing with what you know. You need to find out what else you don't know yet Right on right on well i you know i was gonna ask you about this but terence mckenna suggested that the universe runs on narrative and always struck me as kind of interesting when thinking about things like synchronicity and how people's lives tend to unfold into.

51:09 A good story or stories that hit certain notes this might relate to joseph campbell's the hero's journey just these beats that seem to come up in a person's life and This idea that the universe would run on narrative That it would push people towards self-organizing our lives in almost narrative plot points. Do you think there's something to that statement, that the universe runs on narrative? Yes! In fact your description here made me think a little bit more on that topic Yeah I do think there is something there. I'm not really sure how to formulate it but it is a topic that I do have some interest in

51:56 And your discussion of it, in fact has prompted me to think a little bit differently about it. So that's very deep area narrative would probably be an area studied by literary criticism and that scenario that I have developed some interest at. So I'm not sure how to express that and what that means. There are other people who have said similar things, but right now I have not figured out in my mind exactly what that means. Now i've got some ideas about it but I think it's an important issue and if you write anything more about that I'll be interested in hearing on variety of

52:44 I'm interested in a variety of different perspectives on that. So, I think it's a valuable area to pursue. I'm kind of confused by it but that's probably a good thing. It's curious...it's curious but people who pay attention to synchronicity obviously start to notice more of them you mentioned the travel and synchronicity thing maybe that is a catalyst because It's forming a narrative actively as opposed to someone sitting on their couch not really engaging with much action in the world obviously travel is a big action so maybe the universe puts a spotlight on it and weird way.

53:25 Add also it's typically non routine and travel it's not a usual thing that you know like driving to work or something. It's something different in your experience in the world differently than you have before and your routine is not the same so time is different, So those types of things that are a bit disruptive or changing one's life and one status, because when you're traveling you're not answering to your boss necessarily. You can't follow the same schedules as you do so there is more openness, you might have little bit more freedom to go here or there and those types of situations I think are sort of side conducive or synchronistically conducive

54:10 You know, I never really gave much thought to routine and high strangeness experiences. Just the notion of asking a wide range of experiencers if right before this happened they were taking a road less traveled or going to work as they would five days a week for the last three years Where in their routine did this occur? Were they outside of the norm?" That's probably pretty interesting. Just like their state of mind, did they experience a recent trauma? Are they physically in a place that they wouldn't otherwise be? Did they stay up later in the night than they might have otherwise before this occurred? Those sorts of things probably are another area of investigation worth going down. Yeah I think so

55:05 And have you read the Synchronicity Science Myth and the Trickster? No. I recommend it, it's an easy read Who wrote that? Okay, Combs, first author I think is Combs C-O-M-B-S and Holland and he came out in maybe late 70s...I'm sure I have a list of references there Yes, I've heard you mention it before definitely It's on the list! On a very long list I guess, I would ask you who do you consider some of the brightest minds applying their thought to paranormal psi topics or the UFO field at a high level? If listeners wanted to make sure they're tuned into the best sources and paying attention. Who is operating at a high level these days looking at High Strangeness in general

56:06 I'm not endorsing their work, but I am favorably impressed with the stuff that's...with the Skinwalker work. It's very well funded. I suspect some of it will not hold up. I'm not sure where it will lead but I think something like they're doing is important. I don't know of any ongoing laboratory work that I could point to because there are a few people who can do a little bit of that work, but I'm not seeing a community forming around laboratory-based research in the paranormal. It's basically not there. There are departments over in England but I've not seen anything that really is very impressive as far as overall results. Yikes!

57:08 Yeah partly it's because of the funding but i just don't see it and I do see a decline in quality now some of the practical applications people might, do something but you know there is alot more remote viewers out there now they have their own organization. There are people who are teaching remote viewing, but typically they're not involved in long-term serious lab work which might be appropriate to do a practical application. Maybe that's something that is more suitable for the nature of the phenomenon. I think there are very serious limitations to laboratory work simply because of the nature of the phenomena. Also, I will point out that for thousands

58:05 these phenomena were looked upon as somewhat dangerous. And that's almost never addressed why that is, I could go on at some length and i think that they've always been surrounded by taboos and religious restrictions and the like why is that? That question almost never is asked in religion or in science. Why is it marginal How did that come about? Yes.

59:05 Interesting in a culture today with less religious people than ever in America, I would think we would see it in full swing and as we talked about. In some ways we are very interesting. Well, I guess we'll leave it at that. But man in 13 years have never recorded an interview between midnight and 2 a.m., so that's a new milestone certainly has helped with the vibe but outside of recommending your book is there anything more to tell people any future work you might put out or links to give? Not offhand i'm very busy reading a lot of material. I've got a whole lot more I'd like to write on

59:50 But to explain it, for instance some of my work about Derrida. It's rather difficult to convey the issues. It's very abstract but I think it will eventually be productive. Yeah! I hope so. I hope to see that in the future and I hope You give some attention to that intersection of the strict rules associated with religions and the phenomenon. I think that's a real light bulb moment, really late in the game in this interview but a light bulb moment for me and the final moments that I'm definitely going to be thinking about for awhile. Yeah there is not much on that at some point we might have another discussion on that

1:00:39 It's very interesting to watch. There are a number of people who have religious background or religious training in study of religion, who really pretty clearly avoid that topic completely and these are somewhat rather prominent people in these areas they don't talk about that Yeah, well that's a provocative place to end things for sure. And it was a real pleasure to spend some time with you your book has left a huge impression on me and it was a real honor to check this box on my quest to catch all the good guests that have made an impact on me over the years so thanks for making my wildest dream come true and take care out there

1:01:27 Well, thank you. You've been giving me some very provocative ideas to think about so appreciate it I try all right have a good night okay you too alrighty bye-bye All right well there it is A legend in his field master of his domain I mentioned this in the interview but in 12 years I've never had anybody request that we record from midnight to 2am and it wasn't exactly an easy thing to accommodate with my life right now but I wanted this one so i just thought alright, I see you trickster guy touche. So that's one thing but I wish I could have gotten him a bit more outside of his lane A bit more into speculative territory...I tried

1:02:19 And it seemed like he found some of those avenues interesting, but he's pretty careful with his words and it didn't seem like he wanted to talk about ideas. He hasn't had sufficient time to consider thoroughly I respect that is probably pretty smart but does kinda throw a wrench in what I do when I have a guest who is as well known as he has done as many interviews as she has tried to do something different And the guests usually don't know me, I'm just another face in the podcasting crowd. So maybe it comes across as i don't really know the basics when really I'm just trying to say hey we know A B and C those bits are well established but what about how this all applies to X Y and Z? But either way it was a milestone for me like I said

1:03:14 I do think we got into interesting territory a few times. What he said about disease and the paranormal, as well as what he said about the strict rules of religion being a way to keep the chaos at bay and the boundaries and binaries clearly defined because there is that devil mischief taboo subverting connection And if sexual taboo violation makes magic more potent i think that's reason enough at the time for some pious authorities to make a bunch of rules against it. But maybe there was this idea that it fueled the beast in general, the trickster or the devil etc., etc.. We all know about fear of the unknown and the trickster seems to love presenting itself as the unknown or the unexpected or the chaotic. It's interesting that could have been part of the logic and such restrictive rules around religion but

1:04:15 As George said, there's something there just not many people exploring it. I have noticed that a lot of our guests who study things in this realm actually tend to come back to religion or have a religious foundation of sorts Michael Joseph Nick Hinton even Joshua Cutchin Chris Knowles will say don't fuck with this stuff Don't pursue it and Gordon will say that magic can wreck your life So had it all up you know but i thought that religious angle was going somewhere it just came so late in the game. I did have a good time his book is a classic, how many previous guests of cited as a favorite many and i included it in the paranormal top ten book list with gordon i'm pretty sure

1:05:11 We didn't talk about this but I always liked that point that Bugs Bunny is probably the most well-known and clearest trickster archetype in Western media. It's also funny that liberals cite Bugs Bunny dressing as a woman to taunt Elmer Fudd in the cartoons, as this example that nobody seemed to have a problem with drag back then And it might not exactly be the same thing but just an observation of how its popping up in the cultural discourse these days. So overall maybe not how i thought it would go and my planning but I'm still glad we did if you like the first hour you know the second hour goes deeper we added things to the stack like,

1:05:56 Young's thoughts on UFOs and the Trickster, Disclosure and Deception, Psychedelics in the Trickster, Skinwalker Ranch Research... And several other threads. You know how to get it if you want it! Thanks for listening Let's go to the calendar at highersidemeetups.com where anyone can make an event and find new people to add your local network Here is what we got on deck Today, September 30th is both the Auckland New Zealand meetup and the Columbia Missouri meet up. And then October 1st the PlayStation Virtual Meet Up October 12th The monthly Flame International Restaurant meet-up in LA October 14th Edgewater Colorado also the 14th Rappingers Falls New York and also the 14th An event in Lansing Michigan

1:06:49 and also the 14th one in Huntington, Indiana. And let's leave it there because there will be more shows coming out where we can throw the other ones out there to you but good stuff join the party if there is 1 near you or you can always make your own and that's it 5 shows before the month's end like I said and I think my little family here is through the most difficult parts of what we had to go through, and everyone is going to carry on unscathed. So I appreciate all the thoughts, prayers and well-wishes. Natural birth really is a rite of passage for women. And I've talked to my wife about the nuances of the most recent homebirth experience versus the first one

1:07:43 Yes, it got scary there for a minute but she is happy she did it and its something that no one can ever take away. And I think these experiences are baked into nature and we shouldn't use the so-called conveniences of industrial society to numb them or take them away unless you have to! But it's not my business how you handle your shit." That said, thanks for sticking around this long. Thanks to George and take care of you and yours I'm getting out of here your move trickster embodiments taboo disruptors and uniters of opposites your fucking move when you see weird lights outside of your door something sits on your chest when you sleep

1:08:39 It might be a pattern you've been through before. Oh, you might have those screen memories. Darling wait till we get some proof and well make them see And baby I tried the camera right? I'm not crazy How people can't get free from mystique

1:09:18 It's getting just a bit out of hand We really just want to get back on with our days Don't care about the hiberting plan So honey now, don't walk into the skinny arms No they came from the sky from out of the stars Place something on my beating heart Baby this damn life is too bizarre I can tell when they're gone cause my memories fade But we know that it's not just a dream Cause they never put me back exactly the same way And the pain is as real as the scream Honey, you're

1:10:33 Might be the whole, oh, last sense of theme The higher side chats has covered all that we're breaking free People can't get free from this disgrace It's getting just a bit out of hand We really just want to get back on with our days Don't care about the hybrid in plan But for now, don't walk into their skinny arms No they came from the sky from out of the stars Play something I'm a beating heart

1:11:43 Baby this damn life is too bizarre So honey now, don't walk into the skinny all No they came from the sky from out of the stars Play something on my beating heart I'm shouting out

1:12:37 Baby this damn life is too bizarre Honey I think we're on some kind of fall Baby this damn life is too bizarre