Robbie Graham Busts the UFO Paradigm |358|

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Robbie Graham Busts the UFO Paradigm |358|
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Robbie Graham and Robert Brandstetter challenge us to look beyond UFOs, extraterrestrials and disclosure.
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photo by: Skeptiko
On this episode of Skeptiko…

Robbie Graham: I would be surprised if there were not an extraterrestrial component to the UFO phenomenon but again, I would be very surprised if the extraterrestrial hypothesis could be proved to be a cacharel answer for the riddle.

That’s Robbie Graham, author of a new book, UFOs: Reframing the Debate. What debate? Well that’s a real Skeptiko question like, how does frontier consciousness science, like the recent near-death experience science published by Dr. Sam Parnia as part of his AWARE study, how does that factor into the UFO question?

Robert Brandstetter: And they had one piece [case] they could use even that case, couldn’t prove anything.

Alex Tsakiris: Respectfully Robert, you’re misrepresenting that research. The lead investigator Dr. Sam Parnia, who’s a worldwide, recognized expert in resuscitation, his conclusion is that consciousness survives bodily death. Dr. Pim van Lommel, Dr. Jeff Long, every researcher who’s actively involved in study near-death experience has come to the same conclusion; you can’t take their work and then just put a spin on it based on your interpretation of it.

And does UFO research lead to the kind of deep spirituality I’d like to talk about?

Robbie Graham: I don’t feel I’m any spiritual than I was when I first became attracted to the subject, when I was a teenager. I consider myself to be a spiritual person but I’ve shaken my dogmatic attachment to UFOs.

And since I’m always keen to look at the conspiratorial angle, how does the deep state factor into this and what about disclosure?

Robbie Graham: I mean, it really ultimately comes down to where you dinned on how trustworthy and decent governmental structures. If you take them to be fundamentally corrupt and when you recognize that official interactions with the UFO subject have been characterized almost exclusively, well totally exclusively for the past 70 years by deception and by psychological warfare, why do you believe anything that the same official bodies have to say on the UFO subject on a hypothetical disclosure day? Well, you would believe it because you desperately want to believe it.
 
Ah, this topic is more in line than.... those....other.....ones. :)

To topic.... can't wait to listen. These guys have been making the ufo/paranormal/esoterica podcast rounds of late.

There's been this resurgence/re-styling of Jacque Vallee's excellent hypothesis of the ufo phenomena being a sort of mind-fukk on the human race.

The whole ufo field has become so rife with disinformation, infighting, fraud, hoaxing, media overplay, over the past 20+ or so years that the more 'honest', now 2nd, 3rd, generation followers of the subject have revived and built upon Vallee. Not saying this in a negative way either.

I swear if Alex interviewed the queen of england, he'd ask her what she thought about NDE then berate her on not being up on the peer reviewed research. :D

I keed, I keed:)
 
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I swear if Alex interviewed the queen of england, he'd ask her what she thought about NDE then berate her on not being up on the peer reviewed research. :D

And he'd be right to! Such bias takes away from everything else they have to say imo.
 
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And he'd be right to! Such bias takes away from everything else they have to say imo.
thx. agreed. and it was even worse in this case as Robert was spinning the conclusions the AWARE study in order to fit his preconceived opinions about consciousness... kinda strange given the context of the interview.
 
thx. agreed. and it was even worse in this case as Robert was spinning the conclusions the AWARE study in order to fit his preconceived opinions about consciousness... kinda strange given the context of the interview.
Agreed - he didn't say, or didn't realise that there were huge logistical problems in that study so that:

Many NDE's were not in a location equipped with a shelf and image.

Many of those that were resuscitated were not in a fit state to be interviewed.

Etc.

The other point about AWARE, is that it was only necessary if you discarded all the detailed accounts given by NDEers of their own resuscitation!

I suppose I'd already taken on board that UFO phenomena are at least partly related to greater consciousness, so I didn't feel I learned much that was new and exciting from that interview.

David
 
What do UFOs have to do with consciousness?

It's interesting that this topic has been raised recently in Bernardo Kastrup's forum, where I posted a video by Graham Hancock. I won't post that here, but rather this one short and more readily digestible one:


--which is one of many videos in a series you'll find on a youtube playlist at:

&ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1lKnZI0B_E&list=PLB6EFBBB59A1BD95E

(copy the whole URL into your browser URL bar [NOT Google], replace the first "&" with "h" then press enter to be able to play any of the videos at will).

I ask myself whether there is any "material" evidence for UFOs at all. To me (and I'm happy to be corrected on this if anyone can), all the evidence for them is anecdotal: there are no "nuts and bolts" or crashed spaceships that I'm aware of. By saying that I'm not rubbishing the stories and reports that people provide, nor the many photos/videos of purported UFOs. Far from it; when enough people report observations and experiences, even provide visually recorded evidence, I lean towards their being a real phenomenon.

However, though real, there is the question of interpreting what they actually are. Are they creations of consciousness that more than one person can simultaneously observe? Was Fatima an example? Are reports where many people see and take photos/videos of "UFOs" no less creations of observing consciousnesses?

I suspect many in the UFO community would claim that photos/videos are physical evidence, but I tend to fall back on a "quantum-type" explanation, viz. that that comes to exist which consciousness observes. An unobserved "elementary particle" doesn't yet exist, and may never come to do so; until it is observed, it has only a potential to exist. "Observation" here isn't limited to sight alone, so much as the other senses and even, I'd posit, various effects from which one can deduce that "particles" (whatever they might be) produced them.

Hence it's already apparent in physics (at least for proponents of the Copenhagen interpretation of QM) that at the elementary level--in some inexplicable way--reality is dependent on conscious observation by at least one person. Science, of course, isn't generally happy with only one person's observation and insists it is made by a number of people (preferably accredited scientists) before it can become accepted, and even then, if it doesn't fit in with accepted paradigms, it is likely to be rejected, at least for a while.

Science will only accept anecdotal evidence in the sense that scientists may be prepared to accept or even believe themselves that a number of people believe in something; that for them it might seem real. But if it doesn't fit in with preconceptions, they're likely to dismiss experiences as imagination.

Well, doubtless some experiences are imaginary. But as Hancock points out, there is much similarity between past reports of spirits, fairies and elves, and present ones of various UFO phenomena. The main thing that has changed is the context in which such experiences occur; they're no longer couched in a mediaeval context, but rather a modern, technological one.

It's a context in which, incidentally, we can artificially produce hallucinogens such as DMT, and know from advanced biochemistry that some people produce this compound quite naturally in greater quantities than others: so that those experiencing UFO phenomena, abductions, etc, don't have to take exogenous DMT, or ingest ayahuasca, for their experiences.

And then we can see that such phenomena really are being experienced by different people from different cultures in very similar ways, in fact have always been so. They aren't "real" in the sense that just any observer can perceive them, but they are "real" in the sense that when observers do perceive them, there is a consistency to what they report and how they feel about their experiences. Another Hancock video refers to this and also a linkage with DNA, particularly of the "junk" variety:

:
 
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thx. agreed. and it was even worse in this case as Robert was spinning the conclusions the AWARE study in order to fit his preconceived opinions about consciousness... kinda strange given the context of the interview.
Yes, he doesn't seem to acknowledge that there was a documented veridical experience while a patient was technically dead.

I really enjoyed this interview and can't wait for the one with Jacques Vallee.

What I find really interesting is that the idea of a connection between psi, consciousness and UFOs is not new, and yet many members of the UFO community don't get that. J Allen Hynek certainly made that connection. If you watch this show to the end he talks about UFO experiencers having precognitive feelings before the event or developing psychic abilities after the event.

 
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Alex's question at the end of the interview:

What do UFOs have to do with consciousness?

A lot.

Doug brought this video to my attention, and I think it's well worth watching. The discussion gets into the various ideas on how UFO experiences may relate to consciousness. On one end of the spectrum is David Halperin, who thinks UFOs are an internal creation of consciousness; then there is Eric Ouellet, who suggests they are an internal creation outwardly manifested via psychokinesis; and at the other end of the spectrum is Jacques Vallee, who's work seems to imply that there is some outside influence interacting with human consciousness that can produce both spiritual and physical effects.

 
I ask myself whether there is any "material" evidence for UFOs at all.
- yes, quite a bit. Take Rendlesham for example... tree marks, burn marks. same goes for Travis Walton... i.e. they returned to the scene and saw physical traces. UFO researcher Ted Phillips (easy to Google) spent yrs researching many, many physical trace cases. then we have the isotope stuff Vallee mentions in this interview... and similar findings from Lear.

this reinforces my concerns about going over-the-top with the UFO consciousness thing. I'm all for the "consciousness angle" but if were going to bother with the data at all (i.e. accept the consensus reality), we have to account for the nuts-and-bolts part of the phenomenon.
 
What I find really interesting is that the idea of a connection between psi, consciousness and UFOs is not new, and yet many members of the UFO community don't get that.
agreed. that's why I played the Stan Friedman clip. he has been all over the consciousness thing for a long time... but somehow gets reduced to a lesser-than because he's interested in propulsion systems.
 
I believe there is other life in the universe, have they visited us? No one can say for sure. Are UFOS experimental government aircraft? Quite possibly

Will I stay away from ufo communities? Yes this might be the most heavily misinformed fringe subject on the internet. Way too much too soft through, don't have the time or patience
 
- yes, quite a bit. Take Rendlesham for example... tree marks, burn marks. same goes for Travis Walton... i.e. they returned to the scene and saw physical traces. UFO researcher Ted Phillips (easy to Google) spent yrs researching many, many physical trace cases. then we have the isotope stuff Vallee mentions in this interview... and similar findings from Lear.

this reinforces my concerns about going over-the-top with the UFO consciousness thing. I'm all for the "consciousness angle" but if were going to bother with the data at all (i.e. accept the consensus reality), we have to account for the nuts-and-bolts part of the phenomenon.

I've taken a look at some of the evidence you indicate. It seems to fall under the same kind of classification I've already granted is authentic: e.g. some person or a group of people observe something, provide reports, etc., even take photos/videos. There may even be photographic evidence of where a claimed UFO scorched the ground and what have you. I'm not doubting that such things can occur, but for me, they don't fall under what I'd class as "material" evidence as opposed to psychological evidence (reported experience) coupled with corroborating physical effects that can be photographed/videoed.

What would be much more convincing evidence would be actual alien artifacts of some kind, and/or incontrovertible evidence of aliens (e.g. their preserved dead bodies), which as far as I know aren't available. Now maybe this is because conspiracy theories about government cover-ups are true, and in fact such concrete evidence is kept in secret government vaults that maybe one day will be made available for inspection. But failing that, so far I'm sticking with psychospiritual events that have some kind of indirect physical correlates that may be real enough, but be psychically caused--the result of observer consciousness affecting matter in some way that isn't yet fully understood.
 
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Will I stay away from ufo communities? Yes this might be the most heavily misinformed fringe subject on the internet. Way too much too soft through, don't have the time or patience
yeah, the amount of proven gov misinfo/psyop is ridiculous... can only imagine what's really happening.
 
I've taken a look at some of the evidence you indicate. It seems to fall under the same kind of classification I've already granted is authentic: e.g. some person or a group of people observe something, provide reports, etc., even take photos/videos. There may even be photographic evidence of where a claimed UFO scorched the ground and what have you. I'm not doubting that such things can occur, but for me, they don't fall under what I'd class as "material" evidence as opposed to psychological evidence (reported experience) coupled with corroborating physical effects that can be photographed/videoed.

What would be much more convincing evidence would be actual alien artifacts of some kind, and/or incontrovertible evidence of aliens (e.g their preserved dead bodies), which as far as I know aren't available. Now maybe this is because conspiracy theories about government cover-ups are true, and in fact such concrete evidence is kept in secret government vaults that maybe one day will be made available for inspection. But failing that, so far I'm sticking with psychospiritual events that have some kind of indirect physical correlates that may be real enough, but be psychically caused--the result of observer consciousness affecting matter in some way that isn't yet fully understood.
I get yr point... it's hard to know where to draw the "material" line.
 
Alex, I haven't listened yet (but will) but I wanted to say you need to have Mike Clelland back on the show. Things really have moved on with him since your last show with him. Maybe Mike is mentioned in your interview as he is a contributor to the book I believe (sorry, as I said, I haven't listened yet).

His book: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Messengers...&qid=1503498536&sr=8-1&keywords=mike+clelland

His blog: http://hiddenexperience.blogspot.co.uk/

Mike adds something new to the whole thing.

And his publisher, Richard Dolan, would also make a great guest.
 
(Michael Larkin, I don't know if you're aware, but Graham Hancock recently had a major brush with death. I guess no one told us that it was happening, but he had a bunch of seizures over the period of a week, it sounds really scary. You can find details on his facebook page.)

As for the Skeptiko discussion I really loved this one and I'm super-excited about the next guest. The book sounds like a bunch of really fascinating brains (go Greg Bishop!) churning it out and breaking the UFO paradigm/religion which I'm all for. (I'm actually still reading the Strieber/Kripal Super Natural off and on. It's taken me ages to get through it. Normally I inhale UFO-related-material.)

Whaa? How can that dude turn off as soon as an experiencer discusses telepathy with other beings? That's precisely the point that I turn ON and get really interested. (Though I do realize the translation is filtered through the human brain and may not be accurate from the-other's perspective it's still fascinating.) You cannot piecemeal your data like that and expect to come away with a true representation of what's going on, surely? It's like when Jeremy Vaeni and Jeff Ritzman did the Project Core survey, but threw out any respondents that mentioned hypnosis as a recall aid. I can understand why one would want to track that statistic and see what correlates are there, but just ignoring it seems dumb to me. Just like there are answers to be found in psychedelics despite the questionable correlates to materialist reality, there are unquestionably very important answers to the human condition in hypnosis as well ~ for instance, belief states themselves are a type of hypnosis. We're riddled with hypnosis on a daily basis. All is conscious again...

I guess kind of like Alex I'm excited we're moving on from materialist ETH, but I've already run a mile down the road and I'm looking back waiting for everyone to catch up. "Come on guys!" It is really interesting how these things lead you down those mental pathways including the disillusionment with the whole thing...

Aliens -> Psi -> Consciousness -> Time is fluid/All time is happening at once -> Multi-verse theory(?) -> DNA is a technology (?) -> Reincarnation -> Soul? Beings involved in soul transfer? Beings involved with the dead/dead relatives? The true origins of man? God? "Angels"? Why are we here? What is coming? Free will? Everything is connected? How are we being influenced? By who/what? How do our beliefs/thoughts influence the universe? Why does the universe seem empty, where are they? Other dimensions or just other frequencies in the same plane? What is our purpose?

 
I saw an alien once while meditating. Had no interest in them or UFOs at all. Does that say more about me then or does that say anything about meditation?
 
How are we being influenced? By who/what?

This is the big one for me right now. This seems to go all across the spectrum of the paramormal, not just UFOs. It appears to me that something wants us to lay aside critical thinking and buy into a mythos. Take reincarnation for instance. It comes through in a number of the major religions as well as from the "other side". There seems to be very credible evidence that it does happen. Yet from there it gets very murky very fast. So I die with all my beliefs in hand fully expecting and prepared to get sent down here again to finish "learning lessons". Makes me wonder who or what is gaining from the system.
 
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