Mod+ Terence McKenna talks to Kenneth Ring about NDEs & UFOs

Thanks for this, K9. It reminds me I have to get to Ken's UFO book one of these days. :)

Interesting in the second segment when he interprets these experiences as purposively inexplicable or "baffling". That sort of links to Moody's "nonsense".
 
Thanks for this, K9. It reminds me I have to get to Ken's UFO book one of these days. :)

Interesting in the second segment when he interprets these experiences as purposively inexplicable or "baffling". That sort of links to Moody's "nonsense".
I hadn't thought of Moody's "nonsense" when watching this, but you're right! It's funny to think of these experiences as set up purposefully to confound us and by doing so, opening us up to a greater experience of being.

I noticed that McKenna was quick to try and characterize abductees as trailer park trash, but Ring stopped him cold on that and pointed out that UFO experiences can happen to anyone regardless of their societal status.
 
I was curious about McKenna's take on UFO's, and was surprised to find out that he did have a strong dislike for the topic. He suggests that the "gods" of UFOology, such as John Mack, do not match the status of people such as himself:

It's a backward fantasy that the media has drummed up into a hysteria. And if you really car about it... If it really speaks to you... then you must go and investigate it. You cannot understand it by consuming it from the media because all of these people that you hear about: Jacques Vallee and Bud Hopkins and John Mack - The GODS of this - Do you think they would stand out if they were sitting here in this room? Do you think that if we had them in front of us that these would be towering geniuses or men of deeper insight than you and I? GET REAL! No! It's just the New Age book circuit!

 
Wow, Ken is actually venturing a wild guess here. I never heard him say this before. That NDEs or UFO phenomena could be orchestrated by a mind at large or the planetary mind that really reflects the collective unconscious. That's why these ETs are showing up as bigheaded aliens, Nordics, Reptilians or praying mantises, I suppose. They may have presented themselves as elves, fairies, leprochauns, and unicorns during the middle ages. The other possibility is the concept of Gaia, the planetary spirit.

I'm very impressed that Ken Ring may not be regarding NDEs and UFO abductions literally but rather as a symbolic and archetypal event designed to elicit certain response from us. He's not sure what this is. But I see this as a major departure from his prior thinking. He finally read Vallee and thinks that the message is deliberately designed to confound us. That is certainly the case with UFO abductions. But NDEs as well? I definitely connect the dots here. But I suspect most people don't.

Thanks for this, K9. It reminds me I have to get to Ken's UFO book one of these days. :) Interesting in the second segment when he interprets these experiences as purposively inexplicable or "baffling". That sort of links to Moody's "nonsense".
 
I'm very impressed that Ken Ring may not be regarding NDEs and UFO abductions literally but rather as a symbolic and archetypal event designed to elicit certain response from us. He's not sure what this is. But I see this as a major departure from his prior thinking. He finally read Vallee and thinks that the message is deliberately designed to confound us. That is certainly the case with UFO abductions. But NDEs as well? I definitely connect the dots here. But I suspect most people don't.
I definitely don't think Ring regarded NDEs as merely "symbolic and archetypal" events. That interviewed posted is pretty old, and his book on UFOs and NDEs came out in 1992: The Omega Project: Near-Death Experiences, Ufo Encounters, and Mind at Large. His later Mindsight (1999) and the comprehensive Lessons in the Light (1998, 2006) certainly don't treat NDEs that way. His UFO book is the one of his I haven't read yet, so I can't really comment on its contents though.
 
I'm curious, what does Ring say about NDEs in Mindsight and Lessons in the Light? Does he make such parallels (between NDEs and UFO events) in those books? I'd be buying them in a jiffy if he does. There really isn't much written on this topic. At least I thought. If you can point me in any direction on this type of literature, I'd be grateful. I'm interested in possible events masquerading as NDEs or "absurd" NDEs that really parallel "absurd" UFO experiences. The link cannot be ignored, in my opinion.

I don't think the simple duality of heanvely vs. hellish NDEs really hold. Hellish NDEs are "variegated" and lacks structure, according to Moody. But so are some "heavenly" NDEs or NDEs that span both realms.

I definitely don't think Ring regarded NDEs as merely "symbolic and archetypal" events. That interviewed posted is pretty old, and his book on UFOs and NDEs came out in 1992: The Omega Project: Near-Death Experiences, Ufo Encounters, and Mind at Large. His later Mindsight (1999) and the comprehensive Lessons in the Light (1998, 2006) certainly don't treat NDEs that way. His UFO book is the one of his I haven't read yet, so I can't really comment on its contents though.
 
I'm curious, what does Ring say about NDEs in Mindsight and Lessons in the Light? Does he make such parallels (between NDEs and UFO events) in those books? I'd be buying them in a jiffy if he does. There really isn't much written on this topic. At least I thought. If you can point me in any direction on this type of literature, I'd be grateful. I'm interested in possible events masquerading as NDEs or "absurd" NDEs that really parallel "absurd" UFO experiences. The link cannot be ignored, in my opinion.
Mindsight is about a study of NDEs in the blind. I don't remember reading anything about UFO experiences in Lessons in the Light either.

Mack references Ring in his 1994 Abduction book and talks about Ring's early 90s work where he posited "an encounter-prone personality". But I think that's been discredited (?), and that Ring moved on after that. On the dust-jacket of the Omega UFO book (which I have, I'll read it later this year most likely), it says "Dr. Ring posits the existence of 'an encounter-prone personality' - a distinctive, spiritually sensitive, and visionary psyche that may, collectively, represent the next stage in human evolution." Maybe in later years Ring backed away from such "the paradigm shift is about to happen, humanity is on the brink of an evolutionary shift" type of stuff.

These are the chapter headings of the Omega Project UFO book (not to be confused with his earlier Heading Toward Omega book):
1. Another road to Omega
2. Varieties of UFO encounters.
3. Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind.
4. Near-Death Experiences.
5. The Omega Project.
6. Childhood Antecedents of Extraordinary Encounters.
7. Psychophysical Changes Following Extraordinary Encounters.
8. Beliefs and Value Shifts Following Extraordinary Encounters.
9. Heading Toward Oz: Demystifying Extraordinary Encounters.
10. Omega Revelation: Ecological and Evolutionary Implications of Extraordinary Encounters.

Ring's UFO book does reference Vallée extensively.

Meanwhile, forum member Ian Thompson runs the www.newdualism.org website. It has many NDE scholarly articles, and you may want to check out these ones:

Lorraine Davis, A Comparison of UFO and Near-Death Experiences as Vehicles for the Evolution of Human Consciousness (Journal of Near Death Studies, 1988)
http://www.newdualism.org/nde-papers/Davis/Davis-Journal of Near-Death Studies_1988-6-240-257.pdf

K. Ring and C. J. Rosing, The omega project: An empirical study of the NDE-prone personality, Journal of Near-Death Studies, 8 (1990), pp. 211-239.
http://www.newdualism.org/nde-papers/Ring/Ring-Journal of Near-Death Studies_1990-8-211-239.pdf

This lecture followed the release of the UFO-NDE book:

 
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At the same time that Ring & Rosier published their article on NDEs and the experience-prone personality, they did one for UFOs (but I can't find it online):

Ring, Kenneth, & Christopher J. Rosing. (1990). The Omega Project: A psychological survey of persons reporting abductions and other encounters.Journal of UFO Studies 2, 59–98. It seems these articles were part of the foundation for Ring's book.

This article by Stuart Appelle addressed Ring's and others' work regarding personality explanations:
http://www.ufocasebook.com/pdf/abductionexperience.pdf
 
Wow, thanks, that's pretty much new stuff to me. I've been beating around the bush, I guess. We have enough inventory of these NDEs. With wits and knowledge, perhaps we can make some sense out of them, unlike UFO abduction events.
 
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