American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology. A conversation with Diana Walsh Pasulka
- Channel
- HDS Center for the Study of World Religions
- Length
- 58 min
- Format
- Interview
- Speakers
- Giovanna Parmigiani, Diana Walsh Pasulka
- Claims checked
- 1 of 20
Summary
Religious-studies scholar Diana Walsh Pasulka (UNC Wilmington), author of American Cosmic and Encounters, describes to host Giovanna Parmigiani (Harvard Divinity School's Gnoseologies series) how a decade studying the Catholic history of purgatory and 'ascent narratives' led her into ethnographic fieldwork among aerospace-industry UAP believers after 2012. She recounts being taken, blindfolded, by an anonymous Space-Force-linked source ('Tyler D.') and Stanford biologist Garry Nolan to an alleged 1940s crash site in New Mexico, and later watching Tyler D. gain unexplained access to the Vatican's Apostolic Library while she researched the canonization records of the 'levitating saint' Joseph of Cupertino. She draws a sustained analogy between historical Catholic ascension and angel-contact imagery (Teresa of Avila, Dante) and modern UFO-abduction and entity reports, and argues that fighter pilots' and aerospace insiders' post-2017 openness (following Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal's New York Times reporting) reflects a genuine, unclassified phenomenon rather than simple misidentification. Her current, in-progress work argues that the timing of UAP disclosure is connected to the rise of AI, which she frames as a form of 'nonhuman intelligence.' Throughout, she frames her method as bracketing the ontological question of whether UAP are real, though the interview offers no skeptical counter-voice and rests its most dramatic claims (the crash site, the Vatican access) on a single unverifiable anonymous source.
We publish a summary, chapters, the claims and short quotes. The transcript itself is never published.
Speakers
- Giovanna ParmigianiHost
- Diana Walsh PasulkaDistinguished Professor of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina Wilmington; scholar of religion, technology and cultural studies
Claims
- Unverified
Her first monograph, a study of Catholic purgatory devotion, was published by Oxford University Press in 2012.
It took me a long time. But I did, in fact, look at the reasons why this happened and presented it as a book, published by Oxford in 2012.
- Supported
Before being codified as Catholic doctrine in the 1200s, purgatory was widely depicted and treated as an actual physical place, including a named 'Purgatory Cave' in Italy and one at Lough Derg, Ireland.
So it was thought of as an actual place... there was a place in Italy called the Purgatory Cave. But there was a very famous one... in Ireland on a lake.
Our check Confirmed against Pasulka's own peer-reviewed scholarship. Her Oxford University Press book 'Heaven Can Wait: Purgatory in Catholic Devotional and Popular Culture' (drawing on medieval world maps, chronicles and Irish bardic poetry) documents that before purgatory was formally codified as doctrine in the 13th century, it was treated as a real physical place, including a cave-entrance site at Lough Derg, Ireland (St. Patrick's Purgatory, attested from at least 1185 and on maps from the 15th century) and a separate purgatory cave tradition in Italy that fed into the doctrine's formation.
Sources academic.oup.com, en.wikipedia.org
- Unverified
St. Patrick's Purgatory, a medieval account of a knight entering the Purgatory Cave in Ireland and fighting demons, was owned by Dante and was a bestseller of its time.
Dante actually had this book in his library. And it is called St. Patrick's Purgatory... it's a medieval bestseller, by the way.
- Unverified
In the Catholic historical record, people who witnessed unexplained aerial phenomena (e.g. in 1800s France) often interpreted them as a soul from purgatory needing prayer.
A lot of times when a Catholic person, say, in France in 1800 or something, sees something in the sky... they'll interpret it as a soul from purgatory that needs to be prayed back into purgatory.
- Unverified
Astronaut Chris Hadfield and Dr. Iya Whiteley (University College London, who trains astronauts and pilots) contacted her asking to share her angel-contact-event and ascent-narrative data.
This is Chris Hadfield. He's an astronaut. And on his left is my colleague now, who is Dr. Iya Whiteley. And she's at University College London.
- Unverified
The 2017 New York Times articles by Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal made more aerospace-industry people willing to come forward and share UAP-related experiences with her.
After the 2017 New York Times articles by Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, that took off, and more and more aerospace people felt courage to come and talk share their experiences.
- Unverified
Fighter pilot Alex Dietrich described seeing a UFO while flying with colleagues and said her first reaction was 'not another jet, not one of ours... WTF.'
She said the first thing that came to her mind was that she said, not another jet, not one of ours. WTF is how she put it, right? WTF.
- Unverified
Teresa of Avila's autobiography describes an unidentified being she later called an angel: luminescent, not imaginary, holding what she describes as a fiery dart.
She says, I don't know what this is, but I can tell you that it's real. It's not imaginary, and it's luminescent... a dart with fire on the end of it.
- Unverified
An anonymous Space Force-linked source ('Tyler D.') told her he had access to a crashed craft site in New Mexico (not Roswell) dating to the 1940s, and took her and Stanford biologist Garry Nolan there blindfolded.
There was a crashed craft. It's in New Mexico. It's not Roswell. And I have access to it... But we have to be blindfolded to go to this place.
- Unverified
At the alleged New Mexico site, she and Garry Nolan found physical debris, which Nolan took back to study.
But we went out there. And we did find interesting things there. And Garry took it back and studied it.
- Unverified
Garry Nolan runs an organization called 'The Soul Foundation,' affiliated with Stanford, that studies materials such as the New Mexico debris.
Garry's now got this foundation called The Soul Foundation, affiliated with Stanford. And he actually does study things like this today.
- Unverified
Elon Musk (or a company of his) filed or applied for a trademark on the name 'Telepathy,' and possibly 'Telekinesis,' for a new venture.
Elon Musk just has, I think successfully, or put in an application to-- I forgot the name of it, maybe copyright, but that might not be the name-- but copyright Telekinesis and Telepathy.
- Unverified
After American Cosmic was published, members of her own family (an uncle, and her father during his Coast Guard service) told her, for the first time, about their own UFO-adjacent experiences.
Did you know Uncle Joe had this happen, and did you know your father had this happen when he was in the Coast Guard? ... My family has a rich history of this.
- Unverified
She personally has not encountered 'entities' (e.g. small gray beings associated with UFOs), but many people, including police officers, report such encounters and most never disclose them publicly.
There is too much observational data of people who -- even police officers and so forth, who wouldn't make that up... so many more who've seen them and will never say.
- Unverified
Tyler D. gained access to the Vatican's Apostolic Library using an ID she believed signaled a government/military affiliation, more easily than she herself, despite her holding the required Catholic-studies credentials.
He said, let me just do it. And I said, OK, go ahead. And so he did share his ID, and lo and behold, he got access. He got access immediately.
- Unverified
Jacques Vallée earned a PhD in information science from Northwestern University in 1968 or 1969, and wrote 'Passport to Magonia' (1968), one of the foundational UFO/UAP books.
He got his PhD from Northwestern in 1968 or 1969 in information science... He wrote a definitive book called Passport to Magonia in 1968.
- Unverified
People in the AI-development community, some of whom have used AI for banking purposes for roughly 20 years, recognized Tyler D.'s information-gathering methods as resembling their own, and reached out to her as a result.
They all reached out to me and said, this Tyler guy, this is like me. This is exactly how I get information and create AI. And I thought, wow.
- Unverified
She is writing a new book connecting AI and UAP, arguing the two are linked because AI represents a nonhuman intelligence now entering ordinary life.
I'm writing a new book, which is about AI and UAP... it's basically an answer to the question... what is this very inextricable and intimate connection between technology and UFOs.
- Unverified
People within the US government want to create institutional/academic spaces for UAP-related research, and government interest is likely to bring funding for that.
Right now, people within the government are wanting to create spaces like this... And so if people in the government are hoping for this, there will be money coming along.
- Unverified
She did not expect government disclosure of UAP to happen for roughly another 10 years after writing American Cosmic, but disclosure began while the book was in press.
When I published American Cosmic, I honestly didn't think that the government disclosure of UAPs was going to happen for another 10 years or so. And it happened as my book was in press.
Topics
- American Cosmic thesisUAP experiences among technologically elite communities function as an emergent belief-and-practice system that a religious-studies ethnographer can study like any other religious community.
- Ascent narrativeA recurring genre across religious traditions (Plato's cave, Dante's Purgatorio) in which the soul or seeker ascends toward a higher state or heaven.
- Purgatory as a placeMedieval Catholics and cartography depicted purgatory as an actual physical location, with real sites (e.g. the Purgatory Cave), before it was codified as doctrine.
- Angel contact eventA historical mystical encounter, such as Teresa of Avila's, with a being the experiencer cannot initially identify, later categorized as an angel.
- UAP pattern-match confusionThe common first-response moment witnesses describe: ruling out known categories (drone, airplane) and confronting genuine confusion before reaching for the UFO framework.
- Crash-retrieval claimAn assertion that a non-terrestrial or anomalous craft crashed and that wreckage/material was recovered and remains accessible, as with the alleged 1940s New Mexico site.
- Nonhuman intelligence (NHI)A framing, used for both UAP-associated beings and for artificial intelligence, of an intelligence that is not human.
- Brain-computer interfaceTechnology, referenced via researchers' papers she has followed, that links brain signals directly to machines.
- Digital purgatoryAn audience-proposed idea that AI-mediated brain-computer interfaces (e.g. Neuralink) could create a virtual space where consciousness persists after death, possibly also where nonhuman intelligence contacts the living.
- Nonlocal reality interfaceThe idea, held by people Pasulka is in conversation with, that divination and similar practices interface with a nonlocal reality that technologists are now trying to replicate.
- UAP-studies field-formation cautionAdvice that UAP research should be pursued from within an established discipline (e.g. Catholic history) rather than as a standalone dissertation topic, given the field's lack of institutional standing.
- Teilhard's technological shift of consciousnessReading of paleontologist and Catholic visionary Teilhard de Chardin's writing as anticipating a shift in the human condition driven by what now appears to be AI.
- Scholarship as spiritual practiceThe idea, attributed to Teilhard de Chardin and observed in colleagues, that religious-studies research itself can function as a form of faith practice or devotion.
- Catholic reinterpretation of aerial phenomenaHistorical pattern in the Catholic archival record of unexplained aerial sightings being interpreted within available religious categories, e.g. as a soul from purgatory.