Consciousness, Contact, and the Limits of Measurability |648|

I've decrypted, processed, passed more data than anyone in my section. We have more frozen blood samples, more data of every kind, and much more experience. MORE DATA, MORE DATA. We need more, more. What the data is showing, if you look at Great. Great. You want the data now. Now you want the data. Now you're on my team. You just said that's You realize what you just said, Janice. You just said that's what the data shows. So now you're on my team. Let's use the data. Let's realize how limited it is because we can't really measure anything, but let's use it to kind of nudge a little bit closer. So whether it's climate, or whether it's Julian Assange, or whether it's near-death experience, we do have access to some data. Look, where I think we're agreed on the fact that there are some themes that come out of really good data sets these days that do point to the idea that there are souls, we're here for our own creative purposes. That's a theme that comes out of that data over and over and over. Hey Pa, you've been on a roll lately with these introductions you've been helping me with for my podcast. And I have a really good one coming up now. It's going to stretch you a little bit, but I want you to tell me what information you have about Janice Whitlock. Wow, Janice Whitlock sounds like an incredibly accomplished and dedicated professional. Based on the information you provided, I can gather that she is a developmental psychologist, researcher, and consultant who has made significant contributions to the field of mental health and well-being. She is particularly well known for her work in the areas of self-injury and recovery, connectedness and belonging, and the relationship between technology use and youth well-being. In addition to her academic and research contributions, Dr. Whitlock has also developed a range of resources to support individuals with self-injury experience, youth-serving professionals, and caregivers. That's awesome, but I want you to dig further. What if I was just to ask her about UAPs? What if I was just to ask her about uh consciousness, the nature of consciousness, near-death experience? Do you think she could go there? There's there any indication she would know anything about that or have any opinion about that? Given her background and areas of expertise, Dr. Whitlock's primary focus seems to be on mental health and well-being from a developmental and clinical perspective. Her work on connectedness and belonging could potentially intersect with discussions of consciousness and the nature of reality, as many scholars believe that our sense of connection to others in the world around us plays a role in shaping our consciousness. I know, my friend. I think you're going to be quite surprised by what she knows. You're going to want to tune into this one, Pi. Well, that's intriguing, Alex. I'm certainly open to being surprised and learning new things. If Dr. Whitlock is able to shed light on some of these complex and fascinating questions about consciousness, near-death experiences, and the nature of reality, I'll be all ears, or should I say all processors? By the way, and I almost forgot to mention this, Dr. Whitlock is host of or co-host of the Event Horizon podcast. So, check that out. It's really great. Goes into all these issues that she's talking about here, and that's how I found her initially, and I was so impressed with what her and Darren do on that show. So, definitely check out the Event Horizon podcast with Dr. Janice Whitlock. Well, so I played for people that cheeky little intro because I really enjoyed the little dialogue we've had by email and the kind of starts and stops about this interview because I initially ran across your work, Janice, with Darren, and I was just so excited and blown away. You know, here's someone who's super smart and is willing to kind of go what seems to me just to be obvious next steps of like okay, materialism. That's fake. It's been propped up for so long. Not that it's fake. It's just so limiting and we know that there's so much more. So then someone's willing like you to say okay, let's start piecing together some of the little threads that we have and it's not like we're not a lot of it, but we have some threads. What is consciousness? What about near death experience, parapsychology? And then dare we even say what about these things called contact experience? Because as soon, you know, you blow somebody out of the water if you say that and they're not ready for it and they're like, oh you know, like but for anyone who's looked at a little bit, you're like, well, of course that's on the table. In some way we have to factor it into this worldview we have and then I picked up on the little bio that you sent me. You sent me two bios. One for the normies and one for the rest. And in the one for the rest it says ontological shock is going to Well, your area is in helping people with ontological shock. So jump into this. Where are you coming from? Introduce yourself in any way you feel is appropriate and then you know, what is what's with the ontological shock? Well, um okay. Well, it's all right. You know, this is an early as I told you in our exchange, I haven't merged these two worlds publicly and I don't have a big social media footprint even in my professional life cuz I just don't like that living room. I don't I I've never had one so I don't I don't venture there and I really haven't had to. So unless I'm forced out there, I'm not really going. Um but in recent, you know, in the last few years it's been clear that it's time and I can get to that in a second. Um all this is by way of saying I don't have a pithy little like story that I can easily tell you except that I'll just start really broad. Yeah, the opportunity to merge these two sectors of myself is fabulous. I'm so glad to be here at this juncture in my life because they've been with me my entire life. I mean, I've always been an experiencer. Like I've always had just anomalous experiences. I didn't recognize that at first. I'm sure that's common. I know that's common. And people are like, "I didn't know I was that different. I really didn't know that I was that different." As a teenager, I couldn't understand why everybody was freaked out about death. I'm like, "It's a shift in perspective." I mean, I get the ending of our story and our body. I mean, that's big, but you know, I always knew this is a real. I knew that one of the biggest challenges I was going to have being here, even as a teenager, is like, "God, how am I going to get interested and stay interested enough to do something day after day, you know?" And that was actually a bit of a challenge. The fortunate part for me is that I was also very analytical because, you know, the universe is friendly and does all sorts of wonderful things to support our growth and evolution even when it doesn't feel good. Uh I ended up in Well, actually, in California. I went to junior high. It wasn't middle school. The first year of involuntary integration California. So, that was a really interesting experience. This first year is in Pasadena. Second year is in San Diego. And I was getting in trouble in the school. We lived in Mission Valley and I was up at a school right above there. Can't remember what it was now. And I was getting a lot of trouble. I had a hardscrabble childhood and was kind of a hardscrabble kid. And for a variety of reasons, my There's people in my family who went to the superintendent and asked what they could do and they had one slot left in one of the magnet schools in San Diego that had just started. So, I went to Gompers for uh math, science, and computers, which is not what I would have chosen at that point. But it was a real gift because I ended up doing really well there and I was around all sorts of geeks. And I ended up in some like really heavy-duty science classes. And even though I wasn't destined to be a hard scientist, it really did help me to be very analytical in my thinking and they were teaching us to do programming. You know, we took computer science classes then because that was '80s and they were convinced we were all going to be programmers and a bunch of my schoolmates and there were only 53 of us in that class, did go off to Stanford and Harvard and other places to do just that. So, anyway, that part I had to work really hard and when I would get emotionally stressed, it was really easy for me just to kind of disappear into problem solving. And that was good cuz it helped me do really well at school and that got me to Berkeley and you know, so I was able to this I was balancing all these different parts of my life with each other and then all the intuitive stuff that was coming in uh yeah, I would get saturated and then I would just move into problem solving mode and then I would produce you know, either answering problem sets or later doing research. So, it turned out that I just needed something really chunky to chew on and work with in order to be able to keep myself uh going here and get myself interested. So, anyway, those always sort of existed and had this dialectic relationship inside of me. Um but it as you know, wasn't really all that common to live in both those worlds outside and uh so, I pursued them separately and in different ways, but in about 2018, a lot of that shifted because for a variety of reasons that we can get into if you want it became clear that it's time. Like that we are on the precipice as a species and as a globe of a monumental moment in human history. And that was visible from whatever angle I looked at. If I just looked at the scientific angle, I could see massive numbers of convergences. We've got climate stuff, we've got geopolitical tension, we've got AI uh tech and singularity of coming. We've got stuff going on with the poles and where, you know, literally our solar system is in the galaxy. We've got a whole set of things and of course the everybody noticed the increasing social tension. Not just here, but everywhere. So, I was like, "Ooh, this is getting interesting." And I knew I was told I heard this was fully intuitive, but uh that the the opportunity for humanity could not be successfully leveraged unless we expanded consciousness as a collective. And then it was clear that all that stuff that we, you know, we've been sort of piling up little bits and pieces of data and evidence and people's pockets of interest were starting to converge like NDEs and UAP and the contact experiences and quantum physics and all of these things that a lot of us with this interest have been following separately were starting to kind of come together in ways that were really satisfying and coherent. And that's when I was like, "Okay, it's time." Now, I have to step out, but how will I do that? Where will I do that? And it wasn't conscious as much as it just it was a natural evolution. So, here we are. We'll see how it all goes. We'll see. We'll see in this conversation how it goes cuz I think it's very tricky. And like I say, I'm drawn to people who are willing to engage with the kind of data you're talking about at this kind of level. But I do process it, you know, quite a bit differently. I started this podcast 15 years ago. And my thing was always consciousness. My thing was always spirituality first. I was a yogi disguised as a businessman. And then I made it enough money where I like, "Good, I don't have to do that anymore. Now, I can focus on who we are and why we're here." But I really knew why I was here and I really knew who I am. So, my main thing was why don't the rest of these people know who we are and why we're here. And my approach to that was to take a scientific angle cuz I said, "Okay, I can penetrate the conversation through science. So, you know, I think my first show was with Rupert Sheldrake. Do you know Rupert Sheldrake? Yeah, of course. Yeah. And the second was with Dean Radin. So, two parapsychology guys. And from there, but my thing has always been why are we having to push so hard against scientific materialism, physicalism, when the empirical evidence is really quite clear? And to kind of come full circle with the 15-year journey or whatever. That's what's so exciting to me about AI. And I have a very different perspective than most people in our community, if I can use that term. And I just wrote a book called why AI is smartest is dangerous and is divine. And the point is is that first, it's smartest. Anyone who doesn't think AI is smart is just not looking at it from a computer programmer perspective. A guy who was getting his PhD in AI, a guy who started a fund a company in AI. It's smartest. Just I think I was like, "Just go Just go play chess." Just go play chess. It's AI. It's smartest. And the humans have moved on. That's the point I always phrase with people. The humans have moved on. The humans aren't hung up on the fact that AI is smartest. Magnus Carlsen is still a super celebrity and he's super engaging guy. He's the greatest chess player in history. And people are dying to play him. And you can watch YouTube videos that have a million views of people who are playing chess in the park. It's more popular than ever. But it's over. It's over. AI is smartest. AI is so much better than Magnus Carlsen that it wouldn't even make sense for him to be in a tournament together. Everything is going to be like chess. All these philosophical arguments we're having, all the stuff that you just spit out there that I might push back on you on, is extremely if not solvable, at least deconstructible with AI in a way that reveals this elusive thing called truth or nudges us towards truth in a very important way. So, I think AI is smartest. I think AI is extremely dangerous for a completely different reason than most people think. I think the AI safety narrative is a complete hijacking. It's a deceptive move. It's a problem reaction solution dialectic. Oh my god, AI might start generating hate speech. Oh, let me close it down and control it so you can't have access to it. So, you can't have free speech. That's what it's always been about. That's how they've always played that game and that's how they're playing the game there. But, the third point and the one that I think we can maybe come around to cuz I think it connects with so many other things that you're talking about is I think ultimately AI right now today, but even in the future will reveal I started out as the yogi which is like, of course we're more than that. Of course we're more. I may not be able to completely articulate it or I cannot I can experience it. I think anyone can experience it instantly because that's the truth. That's the wisdom of the consciousness of the light. It's always shining. We can always experience it. We just block it for whatever reasons. Which gets into a lot of your work probably. But, so that's where I'm coming from in a nutshell and then I'll shut up cuz I want you to jump in there. A bunch of questions for you. Uh but first of all, start with the last one. How will AI uh shine a light on the deeper truths of our reality? Ask AI like I have a numerous times and published the nature of consciousness question. The thing that I spent 10 years and 200, 300 shows interviewing, you know, leading neuroscientist. I just interviewed Kristof Koch again, you know, Kristof Koch, Allen Institute. Oh my god. He gets cloud under by AI in 15 seconds. Integrated information theory, nonsense. It just doesn't make any sense. It's a physicalist model suggesting that, you know, it's Give me one miracle and I'll explain the rest. I So My my point just being it easily handles these questions that have been used as roadblocks in our way towards dealing with this more interesting the ontological shock data. Near-death experience is an ontological shock. Kundalini experience is an ontological shock. When you go to India and you know this cuz you've studied it. They're like Okay, that's okay. He's had an awakening. She's had an awakening. She might wander around the streets for 6 months and, you know, that's okay. It'll stabilize. They get it because they they've studied it. We have wrapped ourselves in this scientific nonsense cuz we cracked the atom and thinking, you know, we don't have to look at any of that data. I mean, I guess gosh, there's so much in there to unpack, but I think part of what we're going to grapple with is the cognitive versus the subjective experience of, right? So, of course, AI can run circles around us cognitively. And it will, and it's good. It's going to be a great tool, but it cannot understand the subjective experience of a Kundalini awakening. How do you I mean, I yeah, that happened to me in 2007. It was like, whoa. AI can explain it to me perhaps. It can give me some of the symptoms, but it cannot subjectively experience it or other than to describe to my brain what likely to experience. It can't describe the qualia experience of it. And it is in that space that I think where we talk about intelligence that it gets pretty tricky cuz intelligence, as I understand, is pattern recognition. And of course, if it's just a matter of figuring out logic models, all cerebrally describable, yeah, it's definitely got an edge on us. And isn't that why we developed it? I mean, that was the whole point of it. It didn't just come into being, we created it. But there is a lot about the human experience, the opportunity to experience as a human that can't be distilled to what an AI at this point could possibly know or experience or even interact with us around. And that part is the piece or so when I, for example, am interested in ontological shock, I'm less interested, I'm aware that people are going to have to do some cognitive grappling with the concept of whatever it is that's shocking. And that's one layer. But there are many layers that we have a human experience of. I mean, we can't talk about NDEs and other kinds of experiences with out at least implicitly, even if we don't have the language for it, describing an energetic body experience. And even the physical body experience, which is separate from the cognitive experience. So, this is something I, you know, I think is really interesting. If we do ever have a full contact experience with another species, I'm sure there's going to be There's a lot of people who are like, I would love it, you know, I'm ready. And I'm thinking, yeah, your brain is ready, but your body's going to have a fear response. And so, be prepared to maybe throw up and to go into all that cuz there's different layers of absorbing information and information isn't all cerebral. So, I think we're just scratching the surface in terms of what the full experience of life is, which is one of the reasons that makes it interesting to talk about it cuz we tend to really just stay up here. And we preference up here. And it's one piece of it, but it is not the most interesting piece for me. It's one of the reasons I don't I don't want to engage anymore. Like, where does it run around the same old word circles over and over and over and over and over again. And until we get beyond that, until we can, you know, until AI can have an experience of love, a convincing experience of love, then and that I can and that I can feel and relate to through my felt sense as a relational experience, then then, you know, I don't know. It's a tool and it could kill it may destroy us depending on how we interact with it, but that's on us, right? This is the opportunity for humanity to grow beyond where we are. I think that's one of the reasons we've brought it into being. We've done all this. It's not happening to us. It's happening for us and because of us. Oh, boy. So, I'm going to agree with you on one level and then just say, "Well, but of course." And suggest you kind of like said it all and then you kind of missed the point. The point is No, it's never going to experience that because our consciousness is outside of time space. And we can prove that with Dean Radin's pre-sentiment experiments, but they proved it 100 years ago with the double-slit experiment. And then they did the double-slit quantum eraser experiment and they proved it. It's just they don't want we don't want to accept it. So, the problem with the little monkey mind is not that AI should bring it to the point of experiencing what you experience in your kundalini experience. It's the point out that why are you going down the wrong path over there? But also all the energy that we are spending on that other path, there are some real concerns. We're not going to talk about climate cuz there's no way. But AI can just destroy that fake narrative of the old carbon blanket that's going to warm everybody up. So, let's give up all your rights as citizens so that we can impose this. So, there is a place where there is a scientific question. Even if we disagree on the data, we can step back and go, "Hmm, somebody ought to be able to measure that and think through that logically and analytically in a way that is unbiased." Has that been done? And and yes. Can I have that? Okay, can you send me those articles cuz I'd like to see where AI has crunched all the data that we have and arrived at the We can do it. We can do it right here, Janice, if you want. We can do it right here. to take our time doing that so much, but We will do it. We'll do it right here. See, it's real simple. Like the best the the the narrative on on if you think of what they sold us like 20 Wait a minute, who's they? Well, I don't I don't know who they is. I don't know why we have a why we have this worldwide push towards carbon counting, right? To carbon taxes all over the EU, trying Is that like Is that like an outrageous statement? Is that No, I mean and I'm not a climate scientist exactly, but it I and so it's I have a fairly simple logic, but I assume that you put a bunch of in the air and that is hot and toxic that bad things are going to happen. Like yeah, so especially if it's all over the world. Can we say that that isn't that what we're experiencing isn't due to say that some of the you know, uh the Younger Dryas theories where we're in another cycle? No, I think that's probably operational, too. But I do not think that lets humans off the hook for really sloppy lazy behavior. Absolutely. And I can't and I'm I'm I'm likely to assume that it is having an ecological impact because I've never Absolutely. Absolutely. thing in which you put a bunch of stuff into an environment, whether it's toxic human stuff, you know, just rage, anger, or whatever, and you don't get an effect. So, from the from the ecology, the local ecology, whether it's plants and animals or humans or whatever it is we're talking about. So, you know, but I don't again, I don't really this isn't really what I wanted to to go down cuz I can't I can't say for sure, but I don't think it's too much to ask humans to But you did say, right? So, you can't say for sure, and I can't say for sure. But you did say, and you said it here, and you said it in the conversation with Darren, and you're putting it on the table. So, even if we want to back off of it, and what I can do, if you want, we will engage. I'll engage with AI, and you'll you'll see how clear it is with the best climatologist in the world and Chinese want But I would need I mean, I we would need to I Whatever you need, whatever you need, you'll get. Let's just a climate scientist would say, "Well, let's feed it this this this this and this data, and then let's see what it says." I'm not in a good position to evaluate the source data. I'm not I'm not asking you to to the extent that you want to engage, really engage with that data, then we'll engage with that data, and I'll you know, it is the other thing, like back to the AI thing. It is incredibly easy to stack all that stuff into AI. And it doesn't mean that it comes out with some kind We wouldn't want it to come out with some definitive answer. But, you know, one thing I've worked on is um have you heard of the chain-of-thought uh prompt engineering? That you're not super into So, No, AI is not I mean, I know enough about it to be conversant on the basic list of but Okay. Yeah, I'm not a good position you go to you go to your you go to your chat GPT, and you go in, and a few months ago, you know, it kind of did its thing. And then some people started playing around with it and saying, "We can make this a lot better with just some simple prompt engineering things." One is just iteration. When it gives you you the answer, you say, "Evaluate it again and see if you can do a little bit better." Just one concept, right? What's that? This is the AI thinking concept, right? Well, it's really just iteration, you know? It's just try it again. They have a name for that. The tree of thought was another thing that it's again, it's just prompt engineering. Break it down step-by-step, analyze it this way and that way. And as it turns out, you an old programmer from your middle school days, you know, the new programming is prompting. When you are prompting ChatGPT or any of the other ones, you are really programming. Because if you think about it from this standpoint of there's this huge, enormous, unbelievably to think about knowledge base out there, you're deciding how it traverses it. And anyone of us and you're extremely accomplished in your field of psychology, you are traversing your knowledge base in a unique way. And then when you meet your colleagues, they're traversing it in a different way. And then when you go out to dinner in Boulder with someone who's never heard of it, they're traversing it at some level of what they saw on TV or something like that. So, your prompting is traversing it. So, it's incredibly useful to engage in these kind of dialogues with AI because of a couple of reasons. One, it's very easy to get past the bias that's built into AI. And again, we've been told that AI is crippled by some kind of bias in the data and stuff like that. Alex, let me ask you a question. I mean, we have a fleet, you know, I have such incredible respect for our many of my colleagues, my academic colleagues. They're They're smart, they're thoughtful, they've spent lifetimes delving into their data. I know when I generate data, especially big data sets for my work, I'm interested in finding the story. I'm not interested in finding what I what I want. I don't even know what I want. Mostly I'm like, "Tell me the story. Help me understand the story that it Why would It sounds like uh you are dismissing hundreds if not more, thousands of climate scientists with good intent and a a good strong handle on the data of lots of different type, you would preference AI over all of this this whole field of study. Who has There's no way there's chance to you're kind of there's no AI per se. AI is just helping us sort through the data of all those scientists, right? I mean So in order to I can't do anything. AI can't do anything new. What AI can do is one, it can be unbiased. Number two, it can apply the basic rules of logic and reason. And number three, it can be fantastic at natural language processing. So we can we can see that conclusion that is radically different than the Know that? You don't know cuz cuz I said that two seconds ago. Yes, but you're saying that I know that you're dismissing the idea of human instigated climate change categorically. And you're suggesting if I'm reading correctly or listening correctly that AI can already prove that. No, no, I mean maybe you're maybe you're buying into my a little bit too much. Like if you go talk to one of the leading climatologists in the world, Dr. Judith Curry formerly at Georgia Tech, she's the head and all that stuff. And she did probably the most extensive research on sea level rise, right? So you can go research her papers and you can plug them into whatever cloud or whoever and you can analyze it. And then you can take her colleagues that maybe have a different opinion of that and then you can plug those in. And then you can anal There's a bunch of different vectors. I mean they would have to look at all sorts of they'd have to look at That's what they That's what she does. I mean that Oh, is she looking at Is she looking at glacial change glacier changes? Is she looking at the amount of carbon being absorbed or not absorbed by the oceans and the and plants and trees? If we want we'll jump off the climate thing. I will as a I will as an epilogue to this show tell people the extent to which you have engaged with that discussion. Because those questions are Let So here I'll give you another example. Totally back in this other world that'll kind of pull it more towards because one of the questions I prompted you with that I was excited that you were excited to respond to is as we walk our spiritual path how do we incorporate in these ideas of truth of experiential truth of logical truth. And then if we think about you know, more advanced beings you know, maybe they have more cognitive capabilities and how would that factor in? But here's the story. And it's funny cuz I touched on this with Darren, too. So if you look at Elizabeth Krohn is a woman in Houston who had a near-death experience and she and Dr. Jeffrey Kripal wrote a book Changed in a Flash. Right. She is Jewish at the time. She's walking into the temple, the synagogue. She's holding an umbrella. She gets electrocuted and she dies. She has an incredible near-death experience that changes her life. She wasn't that religious to begin with, but she's like religion is completely nonsense. There's it's a unnecessary intermediary. That's her take, right? Right. Comes back. She's in Houston. This is like 30, 40 years ago. She is telling no one. She's not telling her husband. One of the things she sees on the other side or is told on the other side is this is going to lead to divorce because of what? Ontological shock, which is like such an interesting thing cuz like you wouldn't think that should lead to a divorce, but it leads to more divorce for near death experiences, right? So anyway, she comes back, she's in Houston, not a lot of outlet or connection. She connects with someone who's had a near death experience and written wrote a book. The guy wrote a book called Near Death Experience in Christianity. And she has a long lunch with him and he listened to her story and says, "My dear, I'm sorry. I I I You didn't have a near death experience. You didn't meet Jesus. Oh, what what And I got this book here that probably will tell us better about what happened to you, right?" And I've had people like that on the show, you know, if you didn't meet Jesus in your near death experience, it wasn't a near death experience. This is Judith Curry climatology thing, right? This is his experience, it's his world view, it's his knowledge. Now, the wonderful thing about that story is he meets with her again and again and has this profound connection with her and winds up writing a book, Near Death Experience for people of Jewish faith, Near Death Experience for people of Islam. It I think he still kind of misses the point with those, but maybe 30 or 40 years ago he kind of came pretty close. My point is that the truth in terms of this data-driven kind of truth, even about these kind of issues, might be useful to say that's that might be something we might want to seek and and embrace is that we can nudge a little bit closer to knowing not just by listening to everyone's stories, not by listening to I saw Jesus, therefore Jesus is the only way, but by doing something more like akin to what we call in science. I I mean, it's a this is I'm not exactly sure where to engage. I will start though by saying I don't fundamentally believe in truth. If we could shed these bodies and fully remember where we typically were unfettered by this, then I suppose we could have a conversation about truth cuz there must be some ground truth of source. But from a human perspective, um that I mean part of the thing that was hard for me in science was the positivist assumption that there is a truth that we can get at too. And one of the more interesting contemplations I had toward, you know, is mid when we were starting to really do all the open science stuff because we had this replication crisis, right? We can't replicate our findings. Even some of the hardcore findings like animals prefer mates with symmetrical faces. And it was I think it started in birds. I can't remember what the starting species was, but it was replicated over and over. Well, then it stopped being replicated. Things like mammals no longer prefer mates with uh symmetrical faces. But we're seeing that all over the place. And I started and I, you know, in my my spiritual path, which is yogic, in the way that that path might inform this discussion is I think we might be capturing our co-created reality, which is dynamic. So, if all of this changes because we engage, I suppose at some point science might find that it's quantum at a quantum level. We are quantum beings having a quantum experience and we're co-creating reality, then our science is probably measuring a co-created narrative. And that narrative is dynamic and it's not going to be static, which means that it would help to explain why we cannot count on things being exactly the same, even physical phenomenon, over time, potentially. And it opens the door, obviously, to all sorts of interesting questions. So, this issue of truth is a bit tricky for me that way. I'm like in the physicalist world, the truth tends we tend to assume that there is a concrete truth that we can arrive at and because, you know, the dynamism of change in this way is probably slow, it can feel that way, but I don't know if it actually is that way. Um and that leads me uh always to this larger more expanded view of like well, what's happening? What is it that's happening? What am I? What are you? What is this that we're creating? And if we're creating it, how can I become aware of myself as a creative agent? How do I experience that? And that always bypasses the chatter of the mind because I can't really experience it that way. In fact, I find that distracting, which is one of the reasons I need to stop doing it so much. So, truth is a little bit of a tricky challenge is a tricky one for me. I don't even know what the hell we're talking about it. Right, but we're here. We're engaging and we're doing the best we can because cuz I'm going to start you know, my pushback is always with this show and the origin of the show, which I didn't even realize at the time when I named it. You know, skeptikos is these Greek philosophers and their ethos was inquiry to perpetuate doubt. And I was like, oh my god, I get it. Doubt to me is spiritual. Non-doubt is fundamentalism. It's not spiritualism. I know the answer. You can't convince me. Dialectic, that's how you learn. You can't understand light without dark. It's all connected. Yes, got it. So, this has been a a a difficult journey with the physicalist materialist science because it seems clear to me from an evidential truth, data, all those things you don't like. I like Let me finish cuz the point is I think it has brought us to that point. I think what we can thank materialist science for obsolting itself, right? Because when you say that consciousness is outside of time-space, you go, oh, well, then you can't measure anything. You can't measure anything. You're over there in time-space. And so, if consciousness is always part of the equation, you know, 100 years ago, the greatest physicist in the world, Max Planck, looked at the double-slit experiment and all that and goes, "Oh, okay. Consciousness is fundamental. All matter is derived from consciousness." That's the end of the story. There's no measurement. There's no does this symmetrical mammal any more than there is measuring that photon that went through the beam and came out as a particle or a wave. He saw that from the beginning and all those other guys did, too. If we are part of the experiment and we can never pull ourselves out of the experiment, then of course we can't really talk about these things as if they're true. But, what we can do is cast doubt on those who do say that it's certainty. Well, that's kind of crazy, honestly. Well, let me just quickly say that I think we can measure a co-created reality with the tools that we have derived to measure it. How about it? In the ways that we do, that's what we're doing. We're measuring a co-created reality. Although, it's all an illusion. So, even the illusion, you know, measurement is an illusion. It gets kind of that doesn't that contradict itself? I mean, there is no looking for like what are the what's the biggest truth we can possibly know, I think there's a limit to that answer, honestly, from a human perspective, but we have to try. It's kind of our nature to try. necessarily have to try, but I like to try. Well, we are engaged. We are. We're engaged in the same game here, you know? I mean, go back and watch TV later and I won't be engaged, but right now we're engaged in that. Like, one of the questions that I think is pressing to me that I think we can engage with from a truth standpoint, from a what is highly suggestive given the evidence is is there a moral imperative, you know? So, I wrote a book a couple of ago called the why evil matters, and that was the point of that book is to say if you think there isn't evil go talk to Annika Lucas who was you know at 6 years old by her mentally disturbed mother sold into sex slavery in Belgium as part of the Detroit cult and think about being 6 years old and being repeatedly raped and raped and raped so many times as so many people it you just go I don't know what that is but that is that is evil that's not I believe that evil I mean I know right there right there past all the right there so the other guy I interviewed is a retired FBI undercover agent who was undercover with Nambla right the North American man boy kind of thing and he's on the field trip that they put together to go to Times Square in New York in the olden days where they had the big Ferris wheel and all the kids are down there and what these guys are saying what they want to do to these kids not just sexually but in terms of pain and suffering and they want to do so I understand evil from a yogic perspective the energy is coming through me I'm blocking that energy and somehow that energy is going to come out maybe some destructive ways but I don't want to hold on to that I don't want to put that in stone or anything like that but I want to say from practical terms don't give me this of I'm not sure what evil is cuz I'll just point to Annika Lucas and I'll point to those guys and say I don't have to totally understand it to say that is evil and then on the contrast I'll point to the near death experience and I'll point to Jeff Long and his research with 4,000 near death experiences with 96 or 97% of them coming back saying the number one thing is love everyone talks about the light the tunnel it's love this overwhelming feeling of love forgiveness acceptance I say oh okay so that I'm going to label as good and the other I'm going to label as evil and I don't have to be really super smart about it but I can say there is a moral imperative. It does seem like if I quiet my mind, I'm led towards good. And the people who are led toward evil always have a different story. And I think that plays into the UAP thing, and that's where Darren and I were talking. Okay, well, wait, let's stop with the UAP thing. Let's go back. Cuz what's the relationship in your mind between the soul, the being I say cuz you're you're you're yogi, right? I assume that is part of your Did I guess that there's a soul and the experience they have in this body? So, do the children or the people or those of us who have really traumatic experiences, are we victims to what are we victims of what? Are we not What's happening in your mind between what's happening for me outside this body and what happens inside this body? Did I say I'm going to incarnate and go to sleep and I'm going to be a victim I mean what is that relationship? Because that Maybe. Maybe. I don't I don't know, but I'll tell you what, I think the best description of it that I've ever heard is from Mickey Singer, you know, the Michael Singer, the guy who wrote the Untethered Soul. Great yogi. I think some of the Western yogis are really some of our greatest yogis. Also, cuz they're culturally we can kind of relate to him. So, Mickey uh understands this I think quite well, and then he spends 30 years in the penitentiary doing yoga classes and meditation classes with inmates, some of the worst of the worst kind of things. And he's kind of teaching this. And so, basically has the samskara uh kind of thing described as that this is what these people are experiencing, right? And we can all relate to this. It's what I said. It's like, "Hey, the light is always there." All you have to do is is be open to it. But we all know how we interfere with that light even just by, you know, we yell at the kids, we kick the dog. I kicked the dog at the beach today. Finally, the dog was not giving me attention, the only thing I could do was kick him. I didn't kick him too hard, but that was the He's 160-lb uh mastiff, and when he wants to pull on that thing, he's going to do it his way. Uh and he needed to let little boot there. So, the light is coming through, the energy is coming through, the good is coming through. Can I misdirect it? Can I turn it into evil? And can I connect it with other entities that maybe are stuck in that same space? I don't know, but that's a more useful and empowering understanding of it than I have a soul contract that meant I was supposed to be raped a thousand times by 45-year-old men who run the world in castles in Belgium. And hey, that's what I signed up for, that's what God wanted me to do. I I I'm open to that as being a possibility. I just I'm trying to sort that out. That's That's why I think the climate thing is the same thing. We're just trying to sort it out with the best data we have. Right. Do you follow Neale Donald Walsch at all? Do you know any of his work? I think he's great. Right. So, there was a book that was pretty impactful for me around this stuff that showed up. I don't even remember how it got to my house, to be honest. I just remember reading it to my child. It's called Little Soul and the Sun. It was a Neale Donald Walsch book. And the illustrations were gorgeous, the story is beautiful. But I remember first reading it to my son, who was about six or seven at the time. And I got to a certain page cuz I didn't First time I read it was to him. And I was like, "Ooh." This is going to really tweak a lot of people out, but it really is the way I experience my life here. And the story goes, there's a little soul, and you never see God. Little soul is talking to God. God says, "What are you?" And little soul says, "I'm the light." And God chuckles and says, "That's all that's here is the light." And little soul says, "Yeah, but I want to have an experience of myself." And they have this conversation about that in order to have an experience of the light, God says you have to have an experience of something that's not the light in order to have your experience of yourself as the light. So they have this conversation about what aspect of the light little soul wants to experience and little soul arrives on the experience of forgiveness. Says I want to experience the aspect of the light called forgiveness. And meanwhile, all the other little souls are kind of gathering and listening and one of them says then God says right. God says, well then you have to have something to forgive. And a friend of little soul steps forward and says, I'll give you something to forgive. And little soul says, you will? Oh my God, that's the nicest thing anybody's ever done for me. And meanwhile, they're like taking things out of this big trunk and they're putting them on and you get the impression they're going to be incarnating on earth in order to have this experience. And little soul says to its friend, oh I'm so grateful. Thank you so much. And little soul's friend says, just remember that when I do this terrible thing to you, remember who I am. And little soul like, are you kidding? There's no way I won't remember that. And then of course they incarnate. And the next book is called little soul comes to earth and it little soul gets born and immediately starts to forget everything. So I'm not a big soul contract person exactly and I don't Well well wait a minute. You can't say both of those. but they're but this idea that the soul desires an experience, this eternal soul that cannot ever be hurt. The soul cannot be hurt from this vantage point. Desires an experience. And it sees the opportunity to have the experience which is really the dialectic, right? It wants to experience forgiveness. So yeah, you have to have something to forgive. It it it and it takes form because here in form you can have that in a way that you can't have it when you're not in this not remembering state. What happens next and what we do collectively is a really interesting conversation and I don't think it's all choreographed. That's one of the reasons why the contract piece of like it's not choreographed. No, it's not choreographed. This is the next level stuff that I want that you know, that's my whole point in talking to both you and Darren. And in ways these conversations sound like they've gone off rails, but in another way I think it's exactly where they need to be because I don't hear anyone pushing you guys on these things. When you kind of say stuff that is contradictory. So somehow or another you have to resolve it. Now, let me just throw in one other piece because it relates back to Elizabeth Chrome. Remember the woman umbrella and Yeah. He said a really beautiful thing I thought. She said, you know, I hear everyone talk about the school and the evolution of your soul. She says, well, I got to tell you from my experience and this aligns exactly perfectly with what you said, but I think it's an important distinction and until we call out these distinctions and say, yeah, this is contradictory, but it's a distinction I'm going to make until it holds up. But she goes there's really nothing to learn per se. I mean, your soul was perfect, is perfect, it's one with God, but she says your word. She says as an experiential thing as a growing the entire conscious experience yeah, that's what you're doing down here. But how many times with do you and Darren in the interviews I like you guys go off on the soul school and you know, this is your growth. no, no, we do not. I'll pull it I'll send it to you. I send it to you. Please cuz I don't give it that way. When Darren and I had lots of conversations around it. And you know, he's careful to be really clear about what he doesn't mean school as in lessons. He means school as in opportunity to learn from a different perspective. Language is important. And I I right, fair, but my perspective really is that. I never I understand this is just a place to have experience. And if I'm if my truth my true again, there we are. If the deeper truth of my being is inalterable and indestructible. If you cannot hurt me no matter what you do to me here, then every experience would be of interest to me. I can totally imagine if I'm an eternal being, I'm not just going to seek what humans think of as the good experience. I'm going to be like, well, let me play this one, too. But you're trying not to do bad things. I I think once, you know, I I imagine I How do I want to say this? I can imagine I'm trying to I'm trying to do I'm trying not to do bad things. So, if that's by non-doing or if that's by intentionally doing good things, my first point is to try and do less bad things. Because I do bad things, either speaking or this and that. So, I'm I'm actively engaged. If I'm supposed to be meeting someone at the junction of giving them a really negative experience, I'm actively trying to avoid that. Well, so yeah, I mean, I don't know so I don't you I don't know how I can't I haven't seen all your shows, but I have memories of other expressions of me. And I don't have they're not I can't tell you a whole life, but I definitely have a bunch of different spots. I have not always been good in any classic way. I have memories of places where I really probably wasn't that good. I don't think I was ever cruel. I can't find cruel, but I can find kind of cold. Uh and I can find it in this expression of me. I'm like, "Ooh, I can touch that." Mhm. That's And that helps me to understand how the collective consciousness looks the way that it does, which is a whole 'nother ex- you know, 'nother conversation. So, I wonder if you can find expressions of yourself that weren't always aspirationally good. This right now. There's only right now. And those expressions are all simultaneously happening because there's only right now. So, Correct. But in terms of me contracting, there's just like look, here's the next level conversation that we are engaged in and that my main point is this needs to be formalized and taken forward in a way that adds meat to the bone here in a way that's ontologically consistent with some ontology and is logically consistent in some way and is pulling apart the data strings that we have. This conversation right here is the conversation that needs to go forward. Not integrated information theory is a physicalism and simulation theory and all this other nonsense. It should be more towards real stuff that really matters, which is if there is such a thing as a soul contract for lack of a better term. If I am there with that it engage in this play, if I'm a player, how does that really work? How does that inform who I am right now and the decisions that I'll make right now? The other thing is, why the hell should I I don't want an answer to that. I don't want Janice's opinion on that. What I want to move towards is something closer to what we might call truth. And you can only find that inside you. I mean, there's really nothing anybody can tell you. They No, that's the point about the Houston guy who thinks that NDEs are Christian. They're not and I can present 4,000 cases from Jeff Long and I can be appreciative that Jeff Long did that, compiled the data and has a 96% That is useful. For you to kind of turn around and do the switch, you know, which I get, but it's kind of part if I was going to push on the academic world that you came from. It's like, oh no, you know, everyone you know, everyone all speech is political, there's no I think we need to inject a little bit of science in there and say, wait a minute, Jeff Long, radiation oncologist, scientist, 4,000 cases, 96% That means something. This guy who had I just interviewed a Reverend Storm, the famous NDEr, you know, great guy and and I won't bore you with that kind of thing, but he had one experience. He met Jesus. He had a near-death experience. He met Jesus. So, Jeff Long, 4,000 cases statistically analyzed, one experience from Howard Storm. I think I want to be able to say, "You know what? One One has a little bit more weight than the other." Not to say everyone's experiences matters. Everyone's opinion matters. Jeff's opinion is more authoritative on this particular issue than Howard Storm. I don't disagree with you at all, and I think one of the things that the NDE research consistently shows is that we are not victims here. We are choosing an experience. Of course, we're victims. Lucas at 6 years old sold into slavery, raped a thousand times, is a victim. Now, if you want to say from some inter-soul kind of multiple life kind of thing, then fine, but prove it, damn it, before you say it. You got to show that you have to provide some evidence of that. I'm I'm down with you. I'm not against that. The only place I can go for evidence is the NDE research, right? So, you read somebody like Natalie Sudman. I don't know if she'd be a really great interviewee, actually, cuz she was blown apart in the Iraq war, and the case. Okay, right? So, and she experiences what comes up over and over and over is that the soul has chosen a particular kind of experience. Does that mean that we come here that and that you and I just shrug and go on while terrible things are happening? No, because part of the collective experience is the broadening enough to understand that we are all facets of each other, and when we damage each other, we're basically destroying the opportunity for us to have a robust, amazing experience here. But, do I that fall out of the first part of what you're saying? If that's the contract, if that's the deal, I mean, it it there's just that breaks down I think logically in some fundamental ways in the same way the climate does. I mean, we can sit here and rattle off about the climate thing. What what like we're in charge of that? Like we're in charge of what happens there? Or we need to make things better? Or we need to do carbon trading tax or something? Like how would that not factor in? If Annika Lucas makes a contract to come as a 6-year-old and be able sold into sex slavery by these rich power brokers and prime ministers and stuff like that, then how would we don't know what's going on with exopolitically? If there's some kind of push towards globalization at some inner planetary thing where they We don't know any of that stuff. Well, we don't. How would you make a logical distinction and say, "Oh, no, over here it's a collective and we all have to move towards this consciousness awakening that we're having right now at this time?" And saying it's I'm just saying it's dynamic. So, if a soul's desire to experience hardship so that it can experience it if it the soul desires to experience hardship of climate warming? Whatever it is. Whatever there's a billion different thing. I have a friend who's slated to die on Friday. He's going to be executed. I just talked to him 2 hours ago. That's real. And did he do it? Did he do the crime? He did the crime. Yes, he did the crime, but it was not a crime it was a the reason he's on death row is highly political. It has nothing really to do with he did. It was not a premeditated murder. believe that. Yeah. So, it's very you know, it is one of those instances. So, watching him walk Political massage kind of thing? No. No. I mean, in the same way that you know, I mean, they were going to kill him, right? They tried to kill him. He didn't even do anything. He didn't even do anything. Yeah, I mean, there was a crime committed. This person should not be on death row. It's not a death row kind of crime. And he's a black man. So, he fits right in that profile. But, the point that I'm trying to make here is he's facing probable death at this point with an extraordinary amount of equanimity. The way he talks about it based on the understanding he has now of what his life has been about is very much reflective of the sense of dynamic motion. That's what I think is really the most interesting. It's not the event. It's what happens next. How does that person in this case my friend come to understand what he was really wanting to experience here. And he has reached wildly beautiful states of I mean abilities to kind of be quiet and transcend while in prison since 1999 on death row. So that's the way I understand there's this interesting way in which it moves. The question isn't what's the event, but what happens as a result of the event to me, to the people around me, to the people involved in whatever the event is as It's only me. There's no everyone is having their own experience, right? I'm sure he has other people on death row there that don't have the same perspective as he does. Right. Then so it's each soul's incarnates for its own purpose. And I don't think every lifetime is necessarily one where we're going to be able to visibly see that there's some aha moments that this soul was after. So that's the you know We don't but we don't know that. And see that's really the whole point of this whole That's what the data is showing if you look Great. Great. You want the data now. Now you want the data. Now you're on my team. You just said that's You realize what you just said, Janice. You just said that's what the data shows. So now you're on my team. Let's use the data. Let's realize how limited it is because we can't really measure anything, but let's use it to kind of nudge a little bit closer. So whether it's climate or whether it's Julian Assange or whether it's near death experience or any of the rest of that, we do have access to some data. Why aren't we using it? And what are the barriers to it? Look, I think we're agreed on the fact that there are some themes that come out of really good data sets these days that do point to the idea that soul there are souls, they do incarnate, they have experiences they're designed. We don't always know why those experiences Designed. Wait a minute, you threw that How was it with you right up until the end? experiences they desire at some point or not. I mean, we're here for our own creative purposes. That's a theme that comes out of that data over and over and over. Right? And then right? Are we not agreed on that? You don't agree with Not totally because we're we would have to really parse out the Elizabeth Krone versus soul school versus experiential collective experiential and what that means. So I'm with you, but we'd have to you know, this is again what I'm advocating to really break that down, you know, what is the premise? What is the counterpoint to it? And how are we really breaking that down? Language matters. Okay. So experiential versus soul school, I think the overall message there is they're all chosen. I want to go to my soul school so that I can learn versus I want to go down here and have this experience over here and have this experience. It's still there's a choice involved. It's there's soul agency involved. Nobody's saying, nobody ever has ever said that I've ever heard. You tell me if you have, has said, I was forced to come by some mean daddy So that's not exa- that's not exactly true. And I know that you're aware of this data, but when you and this comes up quite a bit in near-death experience is this whole point of returning. Some people say, I was given the choice to return to my body. Other people said, I was kicking and screaming, but they said, no, you got to go back. I didn't have a choice. But those So you can't gloss over that and then say, I'm saying we don't know, but I what I hear a lot of times, and this is the what I'm pushing towards, I hear a lot of people just kind of gloss over that and say, well, that's really the same because, you know, no, it's not the same, but we don't know what the distinction is. We don't know. I mean what we returning yeah. Let me see. Hmm. I think we can be in agreement that I don't think anybody I've ever heard anybody say my original incarnation, my original urge to go there was forced. It may be that I die I had an NDE and I'm like whoa I'm free from this matter house. But then there's some reminder, you know, you're not you didn't want to be done. There's not done yet. Remember and it's there's I don't know that for a fact because here's the point. I don't think we've fully and I don't know about you. Maybe you have, but I've only scratched the surface of the between lives regression therapy stuff which I think speaks directly to that, right? So then people have problems with that cuz they have problem with regression which I don't have as much problem with regression, but particularly between lives regression. But I would love to see So this is the point. Like I want the data. I want a comprehensive analysis of the between lives data. I want it broken down you know, making sure that we're carefully sampling and controlling for all the things we can and then we could have that discussion. But until I have that data, no, I'm not willing to accept that, you know, that's what I've read is that no one's forced. so fair, but I would say that the preponderance of the data that we do have at the moment considering it is preliminary, there's still stuff to do for sure, would suggest nobody's forced. I would agree. There's no forcing and that we don't have any there's not a single Don't say that. We don't know that. Just stick with your first part. what happens after that, what we're doing collectively, I don't know. What I do know is time and the unfolding matters. Like I think that's part of the story people don't focus on. We often will focus on a single event. This terrible thing happened and everything gets static. It stops right there. Therefore and we make a bunch of therefores when we don't follow the whole story line. Yeah, the terrible thing happened and then what? Then what was the subjective experience of that person over time? Do we know what happened, how they came I mean, I've seen this over and over and over as a psychologist. Part of what I was studying when before the self-injury work came in, and then later as a part of that, is how do dark nights of the soul engender deeper wisdom? How do they engender deeper connection? How do they deepen and engender more desire to do good in the world? Because it was clear to me that that does happen. People can go through very hard experiences. In fact, I see that in my data with the self-injury work. Over a third of people, both at the family level as well as the individual level with the experience, will say they wouldn't wish it on anybody, they don't really want to do it again, but they're glad they had the experience because they have learned so much about themselves. They've become closer to their family members, and they really want to do good in the world. I hear that over and over and over. I mean, I don't know how I can pull you away from the data. You're just obsessed with data. You're obsessed with truth. I'm being I'm being facetious. I'm being facetious. Cuz my point is that's what that's what I want, is what you want, is I want to at least have the self-satisfaction of feeling I'm moving towards something called truth, and I'm going to use these familiar tools that you've used your whole entire career called the scientific method Yeah, no, I to pull me here. Yes, I love this convergence. It's fine. But truth is a tricky one for me because it it feels like it's convenient on something small. My experience of it is just expansion. My own personal life experience is just that as I have grown and learned and as the hard things have happened and torqued the out of me, then I understand something I didn't understand. I have more compassion I never had. I can touch and experience someone else's having that I couldn't connect to before. I experience it as opening. And when When around the world and I say, "What's going on right now?" It is my hope What do you see when you look around the world? When people say that, I don't know what world you're looking at. Are you looking at Asheville, North Carolina? Are you looking at Ukraine? Are you looking at at China? You know, where Where are you looking? Are you looking at Chad? I mean, this idea that uh you can somehow from your eagle eye view see the world through YouTube and see what's going on. I just really That's That's climate. It's like, "What do you mean, Judith Curry? How can she overturn?" Well, just keep sorting through the data and then we peck away at some point. You know, the world is changing. We can all see that the world is converging towards some consciousness transformation. That's a conversation I had with Darren. It's a Well, let's go talk to Bruce Fenton 780,000 years ago in the Star Wars thing. Let's go talk to John Brandenburg, a very uh respected physicist. He says, "Hey, I see signatures on Mars of nuclear weapons 250,000 years ago." So, let's pull the lens back a little bit and say, "Do we really want to stake the claim that right now is the most important time in history, especially when everyone throughout time has said that?" And do we really think that we've We kind of invented uh the near-death experience? Go talk to Gregory Shushan, you know, who says, "Hey, I look back across time, across cultures, every culture, every religion, their afterlife beliefs are based on near-death experience. Guy walks out into the forest, gets hit by a tree, comes back, has a near-death experience." I'm not willing to accept that we're in this special place in time and there's some big Give me the data. Give me the data. Prove that truth to me. Fair, and I can't because it's too big. And there would be Even if I could spend a year cobbling together the pieces cuz I'd have to look at trends across each of these domains and I'd have to make a case to you. It would be too easy to pick apart just cuz of the sheer volume and the sheer different ways to cut it. So, I can't. This is not one of those places Yeah, AI would help probably here. And hindsight will help. Um this is really where I have to lean heavily on the subjective experience. But what I noticed cuz I truly in 2018 when stuff started really strange stuff started happening and I you know, I was like, am I nuts? Like, woo, this is big. And so, I just lived with it for a while cuz it was a lot and I had to life and I had to keep going on and da da da. And then there was a period of a couple years where I was like, who are there who else? Is there anybody else? And that's when I started the deep diving. I mean, prior to that I wasn't ever on YouTube. As you know, I'm not on social media. I don't really like it. I don't spend time there. If I'm on my computer, it's for work. Um so, I started looking for people and I was struck by the sheer volume of people who used not just the same ideas, but the same language that was showing up. So, that is a form of data that we don't yet totally recognize. We don't have any way to really codify and collect yet, but I suspect if we're correct, so it's wholly postulate at this point. It's only theory. That's the only way I can tell you. But the experience that then horizon is from this very profound personal experience that seems to be being had by a good number of people, a growing number of people. I mean, I just talked to somebody today who's another academic who's drawn to this topic inexplicably. They don't really know why, but they just feel this tug. And more and more and more people. So, as a scientist and as a psychologist, I'm like, that's data. We will someday have a way to measure it or at least to ask people about it. We're in it right now. You may be right, Alex. I'm not trying to contend that this is unique among all history. I have no idea. How could we know that? But I do think there's something interesting happening right now that is unique and it does feel like the UAP issue is part of and we do know that when you start to go down those roads in the UAP issue, you hit the consciousness stuff and the spiritual stuff and the high strangeness stuff really quickly. They're clearly extricably related and we do know from a purely evidentiary perspective that it's coming. Not necessarily that they're coming, but more awareness of the fact that we have had contact, we do have craft, there are bodies, there is something there. That is unequivocal at this point. I don't think anybody who looks at the data could dismiss that. And that it's linked to consciousness and spirituality and some of these really ephemeral things that especially the Eastern cosmologies and the indigenous cosmologies and wisdom seem to point to. Those are very bundled and clearly if the data is there for non-human intelligence. Yeah. And I think it is. Yeah. Then the data is highly suggestive that it's always been there. Of course. The data does is not right now. Why is it so Why is it It's not. If it's always been there, it undermines the idea that there's some specialness about right now. It doesn't completely blow it apart, but it's like when people want to talk about the current round of disclosure that a few years ago I interviewed Richard Dolan and he wrote a really famous book called After Disclosure. I forget who the co-author was. But it's a wonderful book. The premise of the book is that there will never be disclosure because once they disclose, the questions will never stop. Well, he was right on part of it, but totally wrong kind of on both counts. One, there probably will never be full disclosure, but there's been a level of disclosure that no one anticipated. But the second part of that was completely wrong. There were no questions. There were no, you know, why did you take these American citizens? Let's stick to the American citizens, God only knows what they did outside the United States, and threaten them with death, threaten their families to die. Why did you kill some of them? Why did you suicide some of them? Why did you do all this stuff for 80 freaking years? So, until we go back and start at that timeline and not say, "Okay, guys, we just found it. Here's the release of information." It's like that's the whole thing of Dolan's book. The questions we never stop. There's no questions about what did we do 80 years ago? How are we now supposed to understand that? Now that we have this new lens. So, no, we can't just start here and say now the clock starts now. We got to turn back the clock. I'm not saying that. I'm just saying there is something kind of unique around this issue at this time because it is coming forth. It seems like whether they want it to or not, as you just pointed out yourself, it does seem to be in a new phase. There is a new phase. There are people who's coming to There are people starting to be attracted to studying it. They're starting to dismiss the stigma. I mean, we're definitely I agree with you overall. It's like the other thing that in motion of it's hard to collect data. Data can't It's hard to collect data while you're in while things are being laid down. So, No, we always have to do that. Things are always being laid down. It's like before. See, this is what I'm pushing for. This is people will No one will hear through all this squabbling to hear what I'm really talking about. But when I pushed you really hard and you came back and said, "Okay. Well, what I would say then is the preponderance of the evidence that we have from between life research that is based on regression work, which is somewhat questionable, but we do have a body of evidence there and it is highly suggestive that A, no one no one is forced to choose. I agreed with that. But then when you go off and start doing this stuff like everybody knows, I I talked to somebody yesterday. Can't you see it? It's obvious. All right. Let us do something. Then let us agree on what would constitute data. So, let me just ask you a couple questions. Would the number of people who have come out publicly, high-level officials who come out publicly saying either in response to a question or just offering it that UAP are real that we might have some reverse engineering. Would that constitute data? If we looked at cuz that's a public record, right? We could look at how many people have actually done that for the last 80 years. So, if that's how big know who Lue Elizondo is? Of course I know who Lue Elizondo is. Do you think Lue Elizondo is is legit? Yes. Oh, he's not legit? He's an intelligence officer for God's sake. And if you look into No, if you look into the story, the people that have been with Lue Elizondo on his things and his Russian wife and him calling back to they have all this documented. He still is reporting Let me just make the point and then you can go. But the point is he's an he's an intelligence operative and he always has been. His story is what the the story that they've wanted to tell. That to me seems completely obvious and it's what they've done over and over again. So, Lue Elizondo is behind the release in the New York Times. So, I I interviewed uh Blumenthal and Leslie Kean, both who did it. They just sucked up whatever Lue Elizondo had to say. They just fell in bed to him. There are so many. And you look, Karl Nell, Garry Nolan, the list goes on. We've got, you know, the guy from NASA How do you figure How are you using Garry Nolan in that? Cuz Garry Nolan has specifically said in multiple forums that UAP are real, that he has evidence. is Lue Elizondo. My point is what is behind that message? And you're saying that you will not accept that data for you would not be uh high-level disclosure. No, what I'm saying is you have to be able to sort through the data. This is back to the climate issue. It's not whether or not Like when you said, "No, I'm going to cuz I'm going to send you all this stuff on climate and then I'm going to publish that as well." But when you said, "Hey, I don't think we should be destroying the environment." I'm like, "Right on." My point is I don't think we should be Orwellian control of all individuals over carbon credits which will not affect the problem. So, when you say "The ET thing is real, non-human intelligence is real." I'm saying, "Fine. Don't tell me that I have to listen to the the same mouthpiece, Lou Elizondo, that has obscured this for 60 years. Why is that your go-to?" That's the person that you have to say, "We have to set him aside cuz he's obviously tainted. What is the evidentiary base that you would accept as signaling that there has in fact been a creep toward probable disclosure that is actually different now than it was 80 years ago. Is Janice, as long as you're careful with your language, if you don't are not willing to dive into the Lou Elizondo issue and you just glossed over it. You're trying to gloss over it again. It is fundamental to the question that you're asking. That's my point. I was talking sheer volume of people. We can quibble about each one of those people later, but I'm That's not my point. So, you're just picking one person to throw out of the data set. Not my point. Wait, no, you're not hearing I'm asking you what would be How would you What data would you accept? So, if it's not number of high-level officials, regardless of what you think about them. So, typically when we collect data, I would collect my data and then I would say like 70% of people blah blah blah, right? But then somebody might come along and say, "Yeah, but these 20 people you need to jettison because they're tainted somehow and we would talk about whether or not we need to clean the data set and we would throw them out." And then we would How would you clean the data set? What if you came to believe that the data set was tainted in a way that you hadn't fully understood? Then might you, instead of plowing ahead with the data that you've gathered, say, "Wait a minute, we need to back up and look at the way that we collected the data." That's why I'm asking you. So, what is That's what I'm asking you. When you look at Lue Elizondo and you say he was part of an operation to disseminate this information, you can't do, I'm suggesting, what you just did and say, "Well, we'll throw him out." And just throw How many How many Lue Elizondo I'm saying what you have to do is say, "Full stop. How many Lue Elizondos are in the data set? How was the data set created? What assumptions did we make about the data set?" At the end of the day, I agree with you that the preponderance of the evidence, like you said before, blah blah blah. But, I'm I'm very I'm pushing on you really hard, but you don't When you gloss over Lue Elizondo, you're really missing the point. It's that the data set is corrupt. We can't count people because the vast majority of those that people come out are probably like Lue Elizondo. So, that's not data to you that you're going to accept. Okay, fair. So, my question to you is, what would be data to you? Can you not hear me? It's not about Lue Elizondo. It's about the data set. It's about the data So, Gary Gary Nolan. So, Gary Nolan, are you done with Gary Nolan and Diana Walsh Pasulka? Yeah. And they've all I mean, so I I think more I'm not totally convinced that Gary Nolan is exactly how he seems and part of my part of my my problem with that is his connection to Anthony Fauci, who was proven to be, as he testified in front of Congress, lied about some very significant would lie about UAP because of his connection to Anthony Fauci. So, like you had problems with Lue You didn't even push on Lue Elizondo. I was talking to you about like the number of people in the data set. And but again, I'm saying methodologically, you can't do it that way. You can't collect your data and then throw out cherry pick Oh, this and that. At some point Like if there's dirty data, if there's something in there that, you know, is seriously but you then you take it out of for the analysis. Yeah, I thought we already agreed on this and I know you would agree on it if we spend another 4 hours, this would take AI 2 seconds to figure out. But the point, and I'm sure you would agree with this, is that there are two possibilities with your data set, right? One is that you have some unique flaws that are kind of confined within the individual data piece, and the other is there's some methodological problem with the way the data is collected If you don't like the methodology, tell me what methodology you would use. So, what is the methodology that you, Alex, would accept or that as a viable method for assessing this question of whether or not there has been a shift toward disclosure or not. How can we test this? What's the empirical study look like? From your vantage I would say and this is from experience that this is a point where AI is just a game changer cuz it has the ability to cut out a lot of this back and forth, a lot of the bias, and really break it down to a logical analysis of it. Because I think at the end of the day, we would be much more in sync because we already are in threads and pieces even on this point. It's like the whole data can be corrupted or there can be some corrupted data. And that's really the question that is at the heart of it, the point that I wanted to make. But then, I'm with you, you know, the preponderance of the evidence is that there's more disclosure. I get it. Yeah. Yeah, also yeah, there's one question of study design and the other is then once you agree on what the design should be, then you have to work through the data as you collect it. If there's corruption, then you work with it there. But yeah, I'm glad you just said that. You think that there is evidence suggesting that there has been an uptick cuz it certainly looks that way but like I said earlier we're in the process of it right now so nobody's had time as far as I know cobble together all the different possible vectors for evidence yet. I'm sure that will happen. The fact that you don't know who Lou Elizondo is like on this other level makes me suspicious of everything you're going to say after that because I think Lou Elizondo is so tainted and whether this is from that Alex is spinning out or whether there's any basis to it. And it's the same thing that I reached with Darren on Dean Raiden, you know, he's like, "Hey, the hive mind is great." I said, "Do you realize he has a biotech company that wants to jab people but to change their DNA to have a more hive mind kind of thing?" He goes, "Well, that changes everything for me." Well, it changes everything when we learn that Lou Elizondo is not who he was presented as. Okay, let us not talk about Lou because it's kind of irrelevant. The bigger question for me is interesting. When we started out this conversation or somewhere in here we agreed that we we both want to be good people in the world, right? And I think most of us do want that. The vast majority Fortunately, not everybody I'll give you that but most people do. How do people in your mind, how do we cross these divides? So, if you're going to throw out everything I say because I will listen to somebody that you've already decided is corrupt. And you'll throw out very Nolan because he has an association of unknown origin to Anthony Fauci. How do we cross this divide we're currently in a moment where we have so many people with so many different perspectives that refuse to talk to each other and refuse to see each other's humanity and divinity because they have opinions or perspectives or experiences the other person doesn't like. This actually is the bigger question I grapple with especially given the context that we're in right now. Well, what do you mean the context that we're in right now? And we've already demonstrated an ability civil context. I mean, we you know, it's very divided. We've already demonstrated I mean, really, your question is fundamentally the question that I keyed up at the beginning and which is that look, if you're going to engage then only engagement that I'm interested in is the one that is that we've entered into that is post-materialist, number one, post-religious, number two, and then you have to realize like somebody told me many years ago that okay, so let me get this straight. You're kind of against scientific science because you're against scientific materialism and you're against religion and you want to talk about spirituality. Well, who are you going to talk to? There's nobody left. So, no, this divide, you know, in this divide, what are we going to do with the Christians? What are we going to do with the Jews? What are we going to do with the Muslims? What are we going to do with them? They have world view that from my perspective, from what we're talking about in terms of extended consciousness and stuff like that, is not well equipped to handle the data. What are we going to do with the scientists? What are we going to do with all the people that we see on that are propped up as being, you know, the genius neuroscience. Well, they have a world view that isn't equipped to deal with this. So, don't tell me about the divide until we acknowledge that you and I are in a room with about a half of 1% of the people. So, we're just beginning to have the conversation that needs to be had and no, it's not going to be easy. Of course, it's going to be messy. Yeah, I mean, I think that is the question. I would ask you, please don't throw me out because I'm not willing to read this point summarily reject Lou Elizondo for the same reasons you would. Or please don't throw Gary Nolan out because he's got a connection to somebody you dislike Anthony Fauci. But that isn't the point. The point is we're now engaged in the conversation. So if you want to like engage in the conversation to me, Janice, is not that I'm throwing you out. It's like I'm trying to pull you in. I'm trying to say, you know, the call on the Lou Elizondo thing or say prove it to me. are that way. So that's going to what? You're not going to what? Not going to be where you are that way. Of course you are. Of course you are because I'm interested in following the data wherever it leads. If you have better data on Lou Elizondo, that's what I want. That's what I'm seeking. I want to know whether Gary Nolan is reliable source on this and his brain differences and all the rest. I want to know Diana Walsh Pasulka who's Catholic. I want to know how she's processing this. So no, we're in the we're in the soup. All right. Well, let's stay in the soup together. That's good. I mean, I don't mind that. I don't mind staying in the soup together, but I'm not Yeah, I'm just not I don't have the same perspective on what is true this way. And I think that's what makes this time and place and moment one of the most fascinating things. It's disconcerting. I mean, I feel like we're all so so far apart. Uh it's disconcerting. But we're not that far apart. And the point is this is somewhat knowable. I mean, we could have a body of facts and and logical premises that we could then and you could probably maybe you would crush me on some of these and destroy me and I would be like, great. Glad I've learned that. We're not far apart and we have more tools because the reason we're not far apart is like I just said, you know, if you want to bring the Christians and the Jews and the Muslims on one side and you want to bring the sign then we're far apart. But no, I'm right in your swing zone here. Just convince me. I don't really want to. Of course you do. That's why we're engaged in this conversation. Well, I don't really want to convince you about Lou Elizondo. I mean, let's go to another question. That's That's fine. We can we can agree to it. The only thing I want to convince you of is that the the and I think you kind of agreed to it, but I don't know why I can't nail you down. That question of whether or not Lou Elizondo is an operative who is controlled to deliver a particular message about That hold on. Just let me finish the dark question. That to me seems fundamental to the issue that you're raising. Would you agree with that? No, I see no evidence of that. I see say whether it's true or not. I'm saying whether or not he is is fundamental to the issue Of course. If if there was if there was concrete evidence that he was being used to deliver a particular message That's that was my question from the beginning. Do you realize how many times I had to ask that and before I got a straight This is like you asking me the other question I go yes, the preponderance of the evidence. So, you just answered yes, of course, it's obvious that if Lou Elizondo is delivering a controlled message that's tainted, then that changes everything. know that. Yeah, right. You don't know that. I I I got you on that. I got you on the record on that. is for me, my gaze would go to what is the larger design? Cuz he's one of two, yeah. Yeah, and I'm not Well, well, what is the larger design? When you say that, what is the larger design behind the operation to generate that information? You know, part of the UFO lore is that this is the next mechanism to like Project Blue Beam, etc. Yeah. Exactly. But there's a whole other set of data points that I'm looking at that don't all add up to that either. So, then I'm interested in like there's a larger design here that has not fully emerged and Agreed. watching. So, we'll see. But that something's moving, that there is motion, that there is a motion that seems to be an accumulation in a particular direction that would suggest that maybe more humanity than not is going to know we're not alone in the universe at some point and that has massive bearing on us. We've been involved with it. So, when Montezuma was up on top of that pyramid and he was cutting open those people and reaching into their hearts and throwing them down the steps and they said, "Montezuma, why are you doing that?" And he said, "Well, I'm in connection with this spiritual entity that is really telling me how to do everything." Are you saying that time is completely different from the time that we're in? Oh, were the connections that he had somehow related to the phenomenon that as we understand it? I mean, these are all relevant questions to your point that, you know, "Okay, can we agree that right now is the time?" Like, "No, I think Montezuma was really the time. No, I think uh you know, uh whenever." that at all, cuz I really have no idea. I mean, my focal point is only within the span of my lifetime plus some, right? Because I mean, I haven't studied all moments in history when there's been some perceived contact. Nor what could be now. What I all I can say is right now does seem to be unique within the course of the last 80 90-plus years, probably more. And it's an interesting time to be alive. I'm grateful. Mostly, I'm just like, "Wow, I get to be alive at a time that is clearly not going to be ho-hum." So, we'll see where it all goes, and this facet of it is particularly unique because it would open a number of questions, not just about our history and what's been done and the secrets that have been kept, but deeper truths about the substructures of reality, deeper truths about what the nature of bodies and souls and the possibility of travel beyond any of our wildest dreams. You know, what if my children end up in space in ways I couldn't even imagine? Like, you know, there's all sorts of possibilities. So, it's an exciting time, mostly, but way more questions than answers at this point. So, if people want to keep track of your answers as they evolve, are you totally out now? Where can they find that? Event Horizon podcast that you do with Darren, which is fantastic, next level, deep discussion. I love it. I was totally sucked in. I was like, are you I was telling my wife, oh, so excited to talk to these people. That was so great. But so is that where they're going to find you? Where else are they going to find you? Yeah, for right now, that's probably where they're going to find me. I haven't And the Visible College, you know, I don't know how well we'll be going on there, but more and more people are coming there. We'll probably have some more stuff up there. And um yeah, I think those are the two best places at the moment. Well, again, I hope some people can sort through this and see how much love and respect I have for what you're bringing here, cuz I really do. And I think it's unique, like the little story I told you. I mean, there just aren't a lot of people who one are in the space to the degree that you are and then are willing to engage in these kind of you know, next level discussions we need to have. I mean, no one's having these. We need to talk about it. We need to hammer it out. You know, these idiots get together for their philosophy conferences and physics They're not idiots and they're not useless, but they debate stuff all the time. And then we kind of have a tendency to fall into this little echo chamber and kind of everybody has their echo chambers. But I think engagement of this kind is going to have to be part of the process. You can't get through this stuff without engaging with other points of view. It's not about argumentation. We are all having this experience together. We may all be experiencing it differently subjectively, but I look around at my fellow person, even if I vehemently disagree with them on a lot of stuff and I think, wow, we're here, you and I and all these people in this moment. And that is that, you know, we have far more in common that way, even from the limited perspective we have as humans, than not. And it makes me smile. I have no grievance. I think all of this is a design to some degree, not in terms of somebody put the architecture down and now we're unfolding it, but there's a geometry at play. There's motion at play and it's not random. So, how it all works I can't say, but we are all of it in motion. We're not just watching it. We are it and that I think is an amazing thing to be able to carry around the world and hold it. It gives me a tremendous amount of gratitude and thanks for everybody I share with, including you. So, thank you for having me on your show. What a wonderful way to wrap it up, Janice. Thank you so much.