Unidentified Flying Religions

 

There is a network of highly capable scientists exploring UFO phenomena. They work anonymously and in secret lest their reputations be trashed for dealing with such a fringe subject yet their findings do percolate upwards and outwards in varied ways. 

Two such scientists - Tyler a private scientist and inventor and James a public academic - accompanied by a religious scholar go to an alleged crash site in New Mexico with specially adapted metal detectors searching for debris. They find some and the academic, a molecular biologist, takes it back to be tested. The result is that it was not manufactured on Earth but what is more, it does not appear to have come from this universe. Not only extraterrestrial but from another dimension.

At this point, the reader may be wondering whether I am describing a lost episode of the X-files but, in truth, I am reading a perfectly sober account of a trip undertaken by the aforementioned scholar of religion, D. W. Paskula, who has earned the trust of the said network and entered its undoubtedly very unusual space.

This UFO space is broadly divided into two, often sparring, camps. 

The first is that UFOs are the responsibility of a technologically advanced civilization(s) who come from out there to observe us for their own purposes and the truth of this is known to governments but covered up lest we all panic (or maybe simply to quietly utilize those bits of technology they have acquired without others knowing). The truth is 'out there'.

The second is that UFOs are inhabitants of a different space or dimension and have the ability to move between there and here, and that space might be thought of, in the words of Henri Corbin as imaginal (not imaginary) but certainly as within as without. The truth is 'in there' or 'over there'.

Our recovered artifact might be thought to establish the first camp's thesis - except it is not from here - and what's more it has properties that include fostering dreams amongst people who have been unknowingly in contact with it! It is definitely 'out there'! Indeed Tyler claims that many of his own patented inventions are the result of tuning into inspiration that appears to come from beyond yet within him. They are inventions that have, incidentally, made him very rich as well as being, in the bio-medical sphere, very helpful.

Why would a scholar of religion, formerly interested in the multi-dimensional lives of Catholic saints, be interested in UFOs? Because, as she admirably shows in 'American Cosmic; UFOs, Religion and Technology,' the UFO phenomena have recognizably religious impacts and act as an unfolding real-time 'experiment' in religion formation. 

Anomalous events happen to multiple people, these get to be interpreted in competing ways, and patterns of belief and practice emerge that begin to influence (and seek to control) what can and cannot be understood by the unfolding experiences. This will sound familiar to anyone who has read the New Testament and studied the emergence of Christianity.

Meanwhile, people who have not had such experiences (who may have wanted to) become fervent believers in their possibility and may indeed 'fake' them at worse or unconsciously imagine they have had them at best. 

As Pasulka notes, the brain does a poor job of distinguishing actual from virtual (or fictional events), so a person who may actually not have encountered phenomena may legitimately believe they have. A process accelerated by our immersion, through social media, in a virtual and manipulated world. One of the virtues of Paskula's book is her thoughtful exploration of what a 'virtual world'' may mean in the context of future 'religion formation and development.''

But it is a world that has real lifetime effects - hundreds of thousands of people have reported UFO phenomena and in a significant proportion of cases these have had long-lasting impacts on what people believe and how they behave.

The book as a whole is a highly sensitive, and erudite, exploration of how anomalous experiences (in this case UFO phenomena) enter into interpretive spaces and take on extended lives and how difficult it is to return to the phenomena themselves because all experience comes hermeneutically laden. 

It is, also, a very compelling account of the phenomena themselves and how they relate to analogous happenings within the history of religions. Analogous and indeed overlapping with many UFO experiencers (as they are known) interpreting either what they have seen in the light of their faith commitments or revisiting their faith commitments in the light of their UFO experience. Elijah's Chariot or the dancing sun at Fatima anyone? It is an exploration carefully bracketed, as you would expect, with no account or discussion of the phenomena's ontological status.

But, of course, all through the reader is intriguingly asking themselves exactly that question - what are these phenomena about (and how real are they)?! This reader came away agreeing with the distinguished UFO researcher Jacques Vallee that the phenomena are real events, that they are intelligently guided, and that we should pay attention but that, of course, precludes any definite decision for one or other camp. It is probably a case of both/and. 

The truth is 'out there' but the 'out there' is ultimately within a more complex universe than we currently imagine that breaks the boundaries between consciousness and matter, real and imaginary.