I'm writing this, having just binge-read her books, “American Cosmic”, and “Encounters”.
Pasulka, unless you've been living under a rock, is the new go-to expert in the field of Ufology, a field which is continually expanding into unexpected areas - you might even say, exploding. Which is how your head can feel, reading her work!
She's been on a range of podcasts, and spoken at international conferences in the last few years, just google her name.
A Religious Studies professor and a mother of five, she discovered that her own research strangely overlapped with the “paranormal" aspects of the UFO/UAP phenomenon.
Since then, she has dived down the (very crowded) rabbit-hole in a way few academics have risked, at least under their real names, and is seen by many as the protege and “heir apparent” of Jacques Vallee, the grand old man of Ufology.
I’m in my 6th decade, so for me, it's very much “here we are again"! I read Vallee's famous book “Passport to Magonia” when it was published - at age 14!
I freely admit I may have been a little young to “get it” completely!
Pasulka has worked closely with him and mentions that book frequently.
Talk about ‘what goes around, comes around’…those of us who were lucky enough to live our impressionable years at the tail end of the hippy era, can be excused for thinking we’ve stepped out of a time machine, and found the world on the ‘rinse and repeat'cycle.
UFOs, Earth Magic, Faerie Lore, Environmentalism, Paranormal phenomena, Cryptids, Flat Earth, Psychedelics, Ancient Astronauts; all that stuff was the rage back in the 1970s. And was often dismissed, as it is today, as “it’s all in your head”, or “you're not into that Woo-Woo crap, are you”?
I graduated to other writers on the weird and wonderful, having grown up with a mother who encouraged me, and shared books with me. In no particular order, these include JRR Tolkien, Lyall Watson, Richard Bach, Robert Pirsig, HUGE amounts of science-fiction, and not least, Michael Talbot's “The Holographic Universe”.
If you've read my previous posts on this substack, you will know that I'm now what is called “an Experiencer” (only because I started talking about it).
I'm completely with Pasulka on this - there's nothing special about it. I'm not in a club, it's not like the Masons! We now know that millions of people have had these experiences, through history. They've just given them different names, depending on their culture and environment.
In the past, only those with access to pens, paper, time, seclusion, and education, could tell of their visions and dreams; so they tended to be men and women in religious communities.
A famous example is Saint Teresa of Avila. She wrote about and drew her visions, which are now accepted as being the result of severe Migraines. (She is the patron Saint of headaches)! A perfect example of someone who made her inner world visible to others, and had a lasting effect on their lives.
This is, of course, what all writers and artists strive to do.
I was already following (and have appeared on), some podcasts which collect people's “paranormal” sightings, so I was more than open to Diana Pasulka's brilliant convergence of the ideas of those earlier scribes of the possible, who informed my growing up.
Without any academic background (I left school at 16 and had no FE, except Vocational qualifications), I found that I had already reached most of her conclusions.
These include:
YES - Jacques Vallee’s book remains essential reading. Here's a YouTube channel which has very helpfully read it aloud in 5 parts:
YES - what's “in your head” - your dreams, experiences and visions, are just as important as your waking life, an equally valid part of your reality. Day-dreaming is NOT a waste of time!
YES - “ the Phenomena” may very well be all connected.
YES - it's got a lot to do with human creativity, and trance states. However they are induced or self-induced - by walking, drawing, harmonics, meditating, drugs, or staring into a campfire. Is the ubiquitous device screen our new campfire?
YES - the human body and mind are intimately connected, and the water and electricity we “operate” on, and the light coming in through our lenses, on the top bit, nearest to the light source, are the nuts and bolts by which our creativity is driven forward.
YES - we should encourage more openness, dismiss nothing, listen to Experiencers.
YES - we may well be on the verge of re-discovering a universal human language, which we last shared when we were hominids, and some indigenous peoples retain a memory of.
And NO - it's not “hippy woo-woo" and no one should be afraid of losing their friends, jobs or reputation, or be locked up in the madhouse, for talking about it.
My picture at the top is an illustration to “The Light" by Poul Anderson. It's a short story published in 1957, of the first astronaut who gets to walk on the Moon, and finds that someone got there first - a certain medieval polymath genius, patronised by Kings and mafia equally, which in the context, dare I say “in light of”, Pasulka’s ideas, is extremely appropriate!
This one is to another science-fiction novel, one of my favourites, by Wolfgang Jeschke, “The Last Day of Creation”. Because that's where we might now be, but if Pasulka is right, it could also be a new beginning.
Just like the Hippies hoped for, 50 years ago.
“In his night-black eyes could be seen the reflection of the stars. …By the time the sun rose they had been received into the wide, bright heart of Africa”. (from The Last Day of Creation).
You can see my artwork at radicalcartoons.com and on my YouTube channel, Radical Cartoons. Follow me as @radicalcartoons on GETTR and spinster.xyz
I love thinking about our own experiences & consciousness itself, too, Stella. It's a good counterpoint to getting riled up about "the real world" - particularly as presented by corporate media & those with an agenda. To stay mildly sane, I must often return my precious attention to my own life, my own experience, to the beautiful, natural world.