Recording - We are aliens to ourselves
Bernardo Kastrup on UAPs, part 1 recorded 12th August. Part 2 coming up - 19th August: Discussion & Q&A with guest Jeffrey Kripal PhD & Bernardo Kastrup. "Meaning in Absurdity: UAPs & High Strangeness"
Apologies for the later email than normal. A family bereavement has required some of my attention. Normally I like to write a comprehensive introduction highlighting some of the most exciting parts of each conversation, but this time I'll need to be brief.
Suffice it to say, it was a thought provoking and wonder provoking session, with Bernardo drawing on evidence, science and philosophy to make sense of a confounding topic, as we've come to expect.
But perhaps the most enchanting moment was when he was pressed to offer his personal intuition as to who is behind anomalous encounters such as UAP. I'm sure you'll find the answer intriguing and I would love to hear your reflections.
As mentioned last time, Bernardo Kastrup released Meaning in Absurdity in 2012 and his thinking on bizarre phenomena such as UFOs has continued to evolve, partly in response to the large quantity of new information being released. In preparation for this session, we sent out several resources, interviews and an essay from Bernardo, linked below. Then in today's session we discussed:
- How idealism doesn’t explain UAPs, but provides a better context than physicalism
- Bernardo’s take on abduction: an expression of what as a culture we repress
- How information that bypasses anatomy is more personalised
- Why the Hindu will see Krishna and the Christian will see Christ
- How the formless is real, even when clothed in our imagination
- More or less autonomous psychic entities
- Why UFO sightings are so common near nuclear and military infrastructure
- “The monkeys are crazy”
- We are losing out ability to pick out what is happening in the otherworld
- Why alien encounters are accompanied by massive and unexpected changes in cognitive state
Next session, on the 19th of August, we continue the theme, joined by special guest Jeffrey Kripal.
Background resources
Amir Giles
Amir Giles
Time stamps courtesy of Rita Conde:
1:55 - What are UAPs?
3:00 - Why UAPs are relevant in Analytical Idealism
04:50 - How personal accounts of UAPs are influenced by cultural frameworks and subjective backgrounds
06:56 - Physical traces left by UAPs
08:00 - The case of a French family reported by Jacques Vallée
09:00 - Why only Analytical Idealism can account for these phenomena
10:50 - Poll: Familiarity with the UAP topic
13:40 - Can Mind-at-Large be the common substrate underlying these phenomena?
17:00 - Consistency of characteristics in UAP reports
18:00 - Statistical relevance of UAP descriptions under psychedelics
20:50 - Repeated characteristics in UAP reports
22:22 - Contradictory characteristics in UAP reports
23:00 - Peculiar details that persist in UAP reports
24:18 - Bernardo’s personal UAP sighting
28:00 -Subjectivity and objectivity in UAP accounts
29:00 - Realms of mind we don’t normally access
30:00 - Archetypes as deeper than the rules of logic
32:00 - The world as a dream dreamt by the Universal Mind
35:00 - Two categories of UAPs: “nuts and bolts” and sightings
39:28 - Jacques Vallée’s research
46:00 - Poll results
48:20 - The abduction phenomenon under Analytical Idealism
54:00 - Your mind is not in your skull
57:30 - Analytical Idealism as a framework for plausibility of these phenomena
58:34 - Bernardo’s hypothesis on the abduction phenomenon
01:00:00 - Hysteria and the sexual repression of women
01:02:00 - We are all repressed beings
01:07:00 - Fairies and aliens
01:09:00 - Who is causing these encounters, and why?
01:21:00 - Jung’s archetypes
01:25:00 - Thoughts and feelings are formless and real
01:29:00 - Evolutionary reasons for repressing desires
01:31:10 - Is imagination culturally repressed?
01:34:25 - Individuation, psyche, and the need for balance
01:43:00 - The dancing plague
01:48:44 - UAP sightings near military facilities and nuclear plants
01:52:10 - Would a meteor cause the same destruction as a nuclear explosion?
01:56:15 - How would Earth react to such a disaster?
01:59:30 - A UAP sighting near a nuclear plant
02:02:00 - Changes in mental states during a UAP sighting
02:08:00 - Absence of fear during a UAP sighting
02:12:35 - What’s coming up in the next session