“Aliens have been trying to teach us how to time travel but first we have to change our body composition which we are not willing to do we have tried animals and it has failed…Our science is totally irrelevant to aliens” – Jose Canseco on Twitter (1)



On January 30th, 2019 six-time All Star former Major League Baseball player Jose Canseco took to Twitter with a series of posts discussing time travel, alien subtle bodies, and the future evolution of the human species as it relates to space travel.

I admit that this is an odd follow up to the preceding posts he put up on the same day promoting Brute’s LUX series of custom golf drivers and it probably falls well outside his Major League prowess to tackle the issue of the migration of the human species into space. If you have questions, his follow up tweets offer a chance to hit the golf course with him and pick his brain on aliens and time travel – or if you want to sit that one out simply read on and we’ll journey through a few of the weirder roads that have paralleled the space race and maybe we can illuminate the questions.

It’s easy to be dismissive, especially with tweets about aliens teaching us time travel, and the very real possibility that Canseco was trying to stir viral attention for his golf promotions, but for the moment why don’t we take a different track and rather than dismissing his curious statements let’s do a thought experiment and explore some of the avenues that he indicates in his tweets – we’ll quickly find that they lead down interesting paths of speculation if we let them and they can help us to consider the magnitude of our culture’s current quest for space travel.

For many of us the day to day seems tough enough without thinking about breaking the boundaries of earth’s atmosphere, but as Abraham Loeb, chair of astronomy at Harvard University , said in a recent article for Scientific American:

“There is no doubt that we will ultimately be forced to relocate as a result of a major catastrophe on Earth, such as the sun boiling off the oceans in less than a billion years, a giant asteroid impact within hundreds of millions of years, a technologically-inflicted climate change within thousands of years or a global nuclear war within tens or hundreds of years. The only uncertainty is the timescale over which such a migration will be forced upon us.”(2)

Future planning puts space travel in a primary spot on humanity’s to-do list, but before we get too excited let’s reacquaint ourselves with the harsh reality of space – take out the aliens in the tweets from Jose Canseco and we can see that he is essentially discussing the simple fact that the human body has a hard time adapting to high terrestrial altitudes and most certainly cannot endure the conditions we find in space. Going further we can add that the human body can’t endure prolonged exposure within an environmentally controlled craft while protected by the heliosphere of our sun – once we get beyond that we have very little idea what will happen to the human body or how fast it will happen and it doesn’t seem likely to get any better than the zero chances for long term survival we see closer to earth.

As NASA clearly outlines in a PR piece titled – The Human Body in Space:

“Space is a dangerous, unfriendly place. Isolated from family and friends, exposed to radiation that could increase your lifetime risk for cancer, a diet high in freeze-dried food, required daily exercise to keep your muscles and bones from deteriorating, a carefully scripted high-tempo work schedule, and confinement with three co-workers picked to travel with you by your boss.” (3)

Straight from the horses mouth – space is not a happy place for humans. So what’s a space hungry homo-sapien to do with the odds being set against our free wheeling leap into the celestial spheres?

The 6 Million Dollar Man

“Time travel puts 42, 651 pounds of pressure on a human skeletal structure…can you detach the brain from the body and equalize the pressure it could be done.” – Jose Canseco on Twitter

Canseco is talking time-travel, but solving the problems of bodily stress in space alone is a no less daunting task – radiation exposure, oxygen deprivation, extreme temperatures, bone loss, changes in gene expression, and more all stand against humanities climb to the stars – one solution popularized during the early days of space exploration was advanced cybernetic development to integrate the human body/mind with machines in the hopes of enhancing its adaptability in space. Sci-Fi fans familiar with the television series The Six Million Dollar Man will recognize one of the most popular examples of marketing this approach to the public.

The series was based on Cyborg, a pulp novel from 1973 by sci-fi writer and aerospace expert Martin Caidin*. In the novel Caidin weaves the story of Lt. Col. Steve Austin, a test pilot who ended up on the wrong end of a crashed plane and became the subject of a top-secret interagency project to blend man and machine:

Steve Austin is a superhero in the television series – in the novel it’s a bit more complicated:

“He was a wonder of scientific perfection– but it was lonely as hell at the top. All the resources of NASA, the Pentagon, and Government Money put the pieces of Lt. Col. Steve Austin’s shattered body back together again. He came out of it more perfect than human. Better than new. A deadly, unstoppable weapon. Now all he needed was to find some human emotion in the tangle of plastic, wire and atomic metal that was fused to the remains of his flesh.” (4)

Before we look at some of the science behind this idea check out how it gets framed in the media. Compare the first edition cover from Caidin’s book and the cover from the edition released to coincide with the television series and we see a drastic change in framing:

What is clearly a sci-fi allegory and example of speculative fiction warning about technological overreach (notice on the 1st edition the novel is compared to The Andromeda Strain and Terminal Man) becomes a muscled up promotional piece for cybernetic warriors once the broader popular market gets involved.

Another TV tie-in edition even has a bold evolution inspired promo line implying that the ‘Cyborg’ is a new breed of human:

“They had taken the wreck of a man and bionically created a superior being – a superman who might even be the first of a whole new breed!”

It’s difficult to blame the folks who really thought this was a solution to our survival problem in space and wanted to promote cyborg astronauts to the public. When you start reading the technical papers and popular science pieces that were coming out in relation to the actual science and medical procedures involved in melding human bodies with machine parts it’s a rather gruesome affair. Just consider the fact that this was the mid-20th century when computers were still the size of a filing cabinet or larger and we’d yet to discover nano-technology…and they wanted to merge that with the human organism. ‘Nuff said.

Artifact-Organism Systems

“…we have to change our body composition which we are not willing to do we have tried animals and it has failed…”

During the mid-late 20th century, it seemed feasible that “altering man’s bodily functions to meet the requirements of extraterrestrial environments would be more logical than providing an earthly environment for him in space . . . Artifact-organism systems which would extend man’s unconscious, self-regulatory controls are one possibility.” (5) These alterations were seen within the context of evolution and as the inevitable next step in the development of humanity beyond our current state of existence.

As Manfred E. Clynes and Nathan S. Kline, from Rockland State Hospital, put it in an article published in the September, 1960 issue of Astronautics:

“Space travel challenges mankind not only technologically but also spiritually, in that it invites man to take an active part in his own biological evolution. Scientific advances of the future may thus be utilized to permit man’s existence in environments which differ radically from those provided by nature as we know it. The task of adapting man’s body to any environment he may choose will be made easier by increased knowledge of homeo- static functioning, the cybernetic aspects of which are just begin- ning to be understood and investigated. In the past evolution brought about the altering of bodily functions to suit different environments. Starting as of now, it will be possible to achieve this to some degree without alteration of heredity by suitable bio- chemical, physiological, and electronic modifications of man’s existing modus vivendi.” (5) They go on further to describe the requirement for these mechanical adaptations to operate seamlessly with the existing biological functions of the organism – or the human artifact – ie. the person being grafted into a machine: “What are some of the devices necessary for creating self-regulating man-machine systems? This self- regulation must function without the benefit of consciousness in order to cooperate with the body’s own autonomous homeostatic controls. For the exogenously extended organizational complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously, we propose the term “Cyborg.” The Cyborg deliberately incorporates exogenous components extending the self-regulatory control function of the organism in order to adapt it to new environments.”(5) All well and good until the human body says no – it’s hard enough to get an organ transplant to take, let alone a piece of metal or electronics. The reality of going from a speculative cybernetic ideal to real life application in living organisms put the whole cyborg thing on hold as our technological and bio-medical understanding advanced to meet up with our high sighted goals. Today we are much closer to having limited capabilities in this area – but nowhere near what it would take to develop a human-machine interface that could withstand the deadly atmosphere of space travel without the addition of an artificial environment. Inner Space Astronautics “…the brain can physically travel without the body…” While science continued developing the possibilities of physical augmentation, other methods were theorized that flipped the view from outer adjustments to inner ones. Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell in his introduction to the 1975 anthology, Psychic Explorations: A Challenge for Science, in a chapter titled From Outer Space to Inner Space, defines the ideological impetus for noetic and transpersonal research into space travel when he says that we must “promote the process of metanoia, or a new awakening in which mankind can realize its self-produced dilemma and, through a change of awareness and an expansion of individual responsibility, reestablish the unity of man with man and with the environment,” because, “only when man moves from his ego-centered self-image to a new image of universal man will the perennial problems that plague us be susceptible of resolution. Humanity must rise from man to mankind, from the personal to the transpersonal, from self-consciousness to cosmic consciousness.” (6) During Mitchell’s experience on the moon he had a profound vision of the earth hanging in space that catalyzed a drastic change in his perspective – as he told People magazine in 1974, “you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty.” (7) Viewing the earth from far beyond the boundaries of its atmosphere opened up a new vision of a unified humanity – a humanity capable and worthy to expand beyond the bounds of terra firma and into the mystery of the star swept depths of space. This shift in perspective, both literal and mythopoetic, provided new ground upon which to understand humanity as a global organism, a biological system whose individual members made up a greater whole. We have to remember that during the Apollo 14 mission, Mitchell was also conducting a personal experiment in psychic functioning. As detailed in People magazine, “without NASA’s knowledge he had set up an experiment in extrasensory perception to be conducted during the mission with four men back on earth. The test involved the men on earth guessing the correct order of certain standard symbols as Mitchell “sent” them from space by telepathy and it was later judged to be a moderate success. At any rate, in Mitchell’s new resolution, such psi techniques could include ESP, clairvoyance, telepathy and psychokinesis (the use of psychic energy to bring about physical changes, like bending forks with well aimed thinking). All these and more could be employed in the quest for greater realization of the power of the human mind. For this commendable purpose the Institute of Noetic Sciences (Mitchell coined the term “Noetic” from the Greek word for mind) was eventually founded, on a nonprofit basis.”(7) IONS wasn’t the only organization that was moving in this direction. Robert Monroe, a cable executive from Virginia, had a similar vision of a greater humanity open up to him as he learned to travel within his mind and experiment with sound induced out-of-body experiences. In 1971 he published his seminal work, Journeys Out of Body, which collected his observations on his personal experiments and quickly lead to the development of a more formal organization for his program of exploration – as can be seen from his introduction to the 1977 edition where he celebrates the news that: “a research facility was formed and became active in 1972. Our work has attracted the interest and co-operation of physicists, psychologists, biochemists, engineers, educators, psychiatrists, corporate presidents, statisticians, many of whom serve on our board of advisers.” He also outlines how the book served as a tool for normalizing the idea that our conscious selves are not necessarily bound by the body. “Among the eleven thousand plus pieces of mail received to date, many sighs of relief were reported. The secret could be talked about without the need for sanity hearings. Thus the book is serving its primary purpose.” At the research facility he mentions that, “over seven hundred persons have participated in our research and experimental training program. Our first Explorer Team has six members. Some fifty more are waiting for our facility to handle their final indoctrination, and their number is growing daily. We hope to be able to expand shortly in physical space, equipment, and personnel so that we can absorb the backlog and the increase. This year, training programs at the Institute may qualify for credit at the college and university level.” (8) The Monroe Institute, along with the Institute of Noetic Sciences founded by Edgar Mitchell, have played a vital role in organizing and managing the scientific investigation into humanity’s extended capacities and both organizations have been formative in evolving our perception of ourselves as more than the limits of our body. Further on in his 1977 update, Monroe celebrates this, saying: “Our Explorer Team of six is bringing back data faster than we can process it, far more rapidly and diverse than I alone could accumulate. That which we have sorted is overwhelming in its import. The fact of consensus and agreement from six different explorers-each unaware of the other’s experiences except in joint operations-has had a formidable impact upon those who have examined the material. The details will be reported in another book which is in preparation.”* This intensive data gathering was seen within the framework of an expanded awareness burgeoning on a global scale in which Monroe and his colleagues played their part. We see this evolutionary focus as Monroe reflects on, “A lot of action to pack into four years. It only strengthens the concept of accelerated change at work-especially the change in human needs.” This accelerated change has not stopped and today we can look back on how useful the tools of inner astronautics and psychical research are for adapting to the changes wrought by the cybernetic potentials of the inter web and our advances in genetics, bio-technology, mass communication, machine learning, climate change and so many other areas where a unified humanity is necessary to ensure our survival.

The Purpose of Dreams is to Prepare Us for Space While IONS and the Monroe Institute represent organizations that were pursuing space travel through the realms of inner space, these ideas were also being developed by individual artists and researchers. One of the most dedicated being the American counter culture’s infamous Invisible Man, William S. Burroughs, whose entire corpus of work is based on using the techniques of inner space for outer space travel. “We postulate that man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole. This postulate, agreed upon, gives us a standard evaluation. Is a proposed course of action conducive to realizing space conditions? Art, science, technology, what is it contributing to the space program? As for individuals, ask yourself – would I like to be in space with that person? Postulate that there is no privacy and no deceit possible in space: Your innermost thoughts, feelings and intentions are immediately apparent to those around you. So you want to be careful who is around you.”(9)

In this quote from his essay Civilian Defense, Burroughs is basically saying the same things as the NASA PR piece and mirrors the language in Clynes and Klines famous article on Cyborgs in Aeronautics right down to the evolutionary script – he always did make a point of reading the literature. Yet when he talks about the personality conflicts there’s that bit of added psychic context we need to consider – he’s not talking about being crammed in a box with bad neighbors, he’s saying that by the time we make it into space, if we make it into space, we will be a fully psychic species and may not even have physical bodies in the way we think of now. When he says, “your innermost thoughts, feelings and intentions are immediately apparent to those around you,” he really means it!

He further outlines his speculations on esoteric astronautics in a talk that he presented in 1980 at Naropa University, saying “I think that the purpose of dreams is to prepare us for space and this is why they are a biological necessity. Whether the dream body is able to exist separately from the physical one, that is something that needs to be studied”(10)

Burroughs also helps us to put Canseco’s time travel in relation to our journey into space:

“A Russian scientist has said that we will travel, not only in space, but in time as well, that is, to travel in space is to travel in time, and if writers are to travel in space-time and explore the areas opened by the space age, I think they must develop techniques quite as new and definite as the technique of physical space travel.” (11)

In all of this Burroughs is explicit about his vision for a bodiless evolution of the human species – in one of his most famous routines, The Last Words of Hassan i Sabbah from his novel Nova Express, he states:

“The” word of Alien Enemy imprisons “thee” in Time. In Body. In Shit. Prisoner, come out. “

Every element in this particular routine is directed as a critique against the system of Control that he saw as the inevitable driving force behind the illusory world designed by “board syndicates and governments of the earth,” who he labels as “Collaborators with Insect People with Vegetable People. With any people anywhere you offer you a body forever. To shit forever,” saying that “For this you have sold out your sons. Sold the ground from unborn feet forever. Traitors to all souls everywhere.” Here we see him identifying two forms of people that are against freedom – Insect People, or those functioning within a hive-mind system that lacks all individual personality, and Vegetable People, those existing in a system that is wholly focused on the body and bodily functions. These are ‘traitors to all souls everywhere’ and it is this elevation of the soul over the body which gives us a key to what he elsewhere explains in terms of lucid dreaming or psychic bodies. It also gives us our stepping stone to begin looking at what our future selves might look like.

Visitors at a Cabin in the Woods

“..these aliens are going to teach us how to try and travel…”

On December 26th, 1985 something happened to the novelist Whitley Strieber that changed the way the world looked at the notion of ‘alien life forms’ – Strieber experienced transformative contact with the unknown, leading to the publication of his groundbreaking book Communion: A True Story in 1987. With this book the public was given a delicate, personal exploration of a contact experience that broke down the boundaries between inner and outer, past and future, perception and memory – we were given an initiation into communion with non-human intelligences that seemed to stretch our conceptual framework to the very limits.

” I have never seen an unidentified flying object. I thought that the whole subject had been explained by science. It took me a couple of months to establish the connection between what had happened to me and possible nonhuman visitors, so unlikely did such a connection seem. In the middle of the night of December 26 — 1 do not know the exact time — I abruptly found myself awake. And I knew why: I heard a peculiar whooshing, swirling noise coming from the living room downstairs.” (12)

Communion is a challenging work, written not to answer questions, but to reframe them in light of Strieber’s experience of contact with an intelligence or intelligences that seemed to exist within the shadows of his daily life and within the hidden pathways of his mind. Although it was quickly shoehorned into the mediated category of ‘alien abduction,’ the complex nature of the experiences introduced in Communion, and further fleshed out in later works, is closer to contact experiences described in religious histories from around the world.

As the scholar of religion Jeffrey Kripal explains:

“If I hear and read him correctly (and I am reading the written tradition off the oral one), what Whitley is proposing is his total body of work is the real presence of intelligent light forms or conscious plasmas in our shared cosmic environment, their long historical interactions with human beings, and their subsequent very real effects on human civilization, particularly through story and symbol, or what historians of religions call ‘myth’. He possesses no certainty about the source or nature of the lights and energies. He has learned instead to focus on their practical and spiritual effects on individual human beings and communities…

…His conception of human nature overflows any ordinary secular notions. He thus thinks of a human being as an ‘incredible inter-dimensional entity’ and suspects that what we normally think of as a person is only one form of human being.” (13)

This expansion of the human being requires an inner development that is just as radical as the development of the cyborg in terms of reconfiguring the human biological organism. However this expansion seems to entail an inner work that might be seen as a natural extension of human evolution, more easily than one could imagine that the natural order is leading us to surgical augmentation and strange acts of experimental butchery.

Reimagining of the human as an ‘incredible inter-dimensional entity’ also brings us back to long standing traditions of esoteric spirituality, providing a historical continuity that is more firm than those offered by the vivisectionists. While it’s unlikely that Jose Canseco had this in mind with his tweets – the underlying resonance with a very real conversation going on around these topics gives us the opportunity to explore areas that we would not normally look at in terms of space travel. In the book Light Changes: Experiences in the Presence of Transforming Light, Annekatrin Puhle Ph.D. points out that “experiences with unusual light confront us with the old pantheistic idea that spirits live everywhere, in everything and in every being in the world. In the past, according to magical thinking, ‘things’ were not dead, but alive and even able to act. The whole world was believed to have been filled with life-spirits. Humans, besides the physical body, possessed another mostly invisible body of a spiritual nature.” (14) Again and again we are confronted with a physical concept the soul and an expanded idea of what it means to be human – could it be here that the answer to humanities potential future in space ultimately lies?

What Strieber and the other inner space astronauts present is a scientifically pursued esoteric spiritual practice that mirrors the highest practices of ancient religions. Some would say that this is simply an atavism best left to the historical record – but there is evidence that this might not be the case.

UFOs and Intelligent Plasmas

“We are in communication with aliens with a very flexible body composition…”

One of the most difficult elements of Whitley Strieber’s experiential narrative is the fact that it flies in the face of the so-called ‘nuts and bolts’ hypothesis for contact with non-human intelligence. Although there are instances that seem to indicate some sort of physical craft – like so many experiencer reports these occasions fit within a wider experiential set that blurs the lines between inner and outer experience making it difficult to shoehorn them into any easy categorization.

It might surprise many readers that this ambiguity is also found in nearly all of the attempts to scientifically examine the UFO issue. There have been a number of serious scientific attempts to directly engage with the phenomenon and each of them has come up against the curious fact that while some of the data indicates a physical craft may be involved, what is far more common is an encounter with what appears to be psychoactive and self contained instances of electromagnetically activated ionized gases – or intelligent plasmas!

Take for example the research conducted by Harley D. Rutledge, former head of the physics department of Southeast Missouri State University:

“While he was generally noncommittal on the nature of the UFOs his team recorded, (Harley) Rutledge did relate that the discs and lights observed in the daylight by the teams were obviously plasmas. In his summary he wrote, “The plasma balls seen in daylight certainly suggest remote control.”

Perhaps the oddest finding of all was that everyone on the research team was convinced that the objects responded to being observed. The project cites 32 cases where the UFOs directly responded to the ground station observers. Rutledge and his team concluded that the objects were aware of their presence and would interact with them, sometimes seemingly toying with them.

As the project began to wind down, Rutledge noted in later interviews that some balls of plasma, 2-6 inches in diameter, would actually follow him around and even appear inside buildings. He found, as do many people who become intrigued by the UFO phenomenon, that the deeper you go into it, strange things begin happening.” (15)

A similar long term research project conducted in Hessdalen, Norway also points to the possibility of UFOs as some kind of unique plasma phenomenon:

“Hessdalen lights (HL) are unexplained light balls usually seen in the valley of Hessdalen, Norway. In this work, it is suggested that HL are formed by a cluster of macroscopic Coulomb crystals in a plasma produced by the ionization of air and dust by alpha particles during radon decay in the dusty atmosphere. Several physical properties (oscillation, geometric structure, and light spectrum) observed in HL phenomenon can be explained through the dust plasma model.”(16)

Italian astrophysicist Massimo Teodorani, who has actively worked with the Hessdalen Light phenomenon, expands on this through a speculative analysis in his book The Hyperspace of Consciousness where he discusses the possibility that this kind of coordinated plasma phenomenon could lead to intelligent or conscious plasmas, saying that:

“…it might be possible to hypothesize that if really plasmas too are able to become in certain conditions real Life forms, then a part of them might evolve towards forms of intelligence that is more or less sophisticated. The consequences of such an hypothesis would be really disruptive, because then for any life form (even intelligent) based on plasma a planetary atmosphere would be an almost irrelevant prerequisite to make them live, as there should be no need of a “habitability zone” for as we have conceived it until now in the ambit of canonical projects such as, in particular, the SETI Project. According to this scenario Life forms based on plasma might truly live everywhere in the Universe. If this were effectively the case all the planets of the solar system – even those with the most poisonous atmospheres – might indifferently harbor life forms of this kind. As it happens on the Earth the trigger – we could denominate it as a “midwife” – for the birth of such plasma forms starts from natural mechanisms due to the geophysical conditions of the soil or underground, to atmospheric mechanisms or to both.” (18)

While we need to be clear that this is a speculative hypothesis, it certainly fits with experiencer narratives such as Whitley Strieber’s and others, and more so it fits with some of the developments we are seeing in attempts to outline the physics of information. By looking at both the theoretical work in this area along with more detailed analysis of the research conducted at Hessdalen and within Harley Rutledge’s work on Project Identification we may discover an entirely new way of looking at what it means to be human and more so what it means to be alive.

Those familiar with Dr. Diana Pasulka’s book American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology (Oxford University Press, 2019) will know that there is much more to this question – as she outlines additional research into alleged ‘UFO materials’ that complicates a simple reading of the phenomenon as psycho-active plasmas. These complications are a reason for celebration, however, as they help us to maintain the mystery that has lead us as a species through an incredible course of development. Our quest to understand our place in the universe – and more recently our quest to expand our domains into space challenge us to stretch our boundaries beyond simple binaries like physical and non-physical and into more holistic realms of investigation.

Physicist Paul Davies speaks to these possibilities in a recent Guardian article on his upcoming book, The Demon in the Machine. As he puts it, “when you look at a living system, the way information is managed is very far from random. It will show patterns that could lead us to a definition of life. We talk about informational hallmarks and these might be used to identify life wherever we look for it in the universe.” (19) Is it possible that a deeper analysis of the UFO enigma could play a part in our understanding of this? From the implications we seen in the data related to psycho-active plasmas there is a very real chance this may be the case!

Our Science is Totally Irrelevant to Aliens

“The only people on Earth who might begin to understand an ‘alien‘ mentality would be those who distance themselves as much as possible from the realm of ‘human’ action, the better to see alternative perspectives.” – Peter Levenda, Sekret Machines: Gods – An official Sekret Machines investigation of the UFO phenomenon, p. 342 (To the Stars, Inc., 2016)

Jose Canseco’s alien non-sequiturs on Twitter provide a wonderful opportunity for us to take a very cursory and surface level look at a few interesting angles in the contemporary history of space travel. As I read over this piece there is so much more that could be said, so many other explorers, scientists and creatives who have in their own small way contributed to this process.

As we move further into the 21st century and become more comfortable stepping beyond our artificial and self-defined limitations we may finally come to a science and a spirituality that allow us some relevance to these hypothetical aliens. Aliens that in many ways may represent something far more human than we can conceive in our present state of awareness.

–

Footnotes:

(1) https://twitter.com/JoseCanseco

(2) Abraham Loeb, Our Future in Space Will Echo Our Future on Earth, Scientific American, January 30th, 2019

(3) https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/bodyinspace

(4) Back cover synopsis, Cyborg: A Novel by Martin Caidin (W.H. Allen, 1973)

(5) http://www.guicolandia.net/files/expansao/Cyborgs_Space.pdf

(6) Psychic Explorations: A Challenge for Science, Understanding the Nature and Power of Consciousness, ed. Edgar D. Mitchell (Perigree, 1974)

(7) https://people.com/archive/edgar-mitchells-strange-voyage-vol-1-no-6/

(8) Robert Monroe, Journeys Out of Body (Anchor Books, 1977)

(9) William S. Burroughs, from Civilian Defense in The Adding Machine, p. 105 (Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 2013 )

(10) http://www.faena.com/aleph/articles/william-burroughs-on-how-our-dreams-prepare-us-for-space-travel/

(11) William S. Burroughs, from an interview Recontre aver William Burroughs, Eric Mottram (Les Langues Modernes (Paris) Jan/Feb, 1965) and found in Conversations with William S. Burroughs (Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1999)

(12) Whitley Strieber, Communion: A True Story (Avon Books, 1987)

(13) Jeffrey Kripal, The Secret Body, p 314 (University of Chicago Press, 2017)

(14) http://whitecrowbooks.com/books/feature/electric_light_phenomena_associated_with_a_dying_or_deceased_person_by_anne

(15) http://www.apmagazine.info/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1031&Itemid=53

(16) https://www.anomalyarchives.org/public-hall/collections/files/project-identification/

(17) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136468261000218X?via%3Dihub (17A) http://www.hessdalen.org/reports/hpreport84.shtml

(18) http://www.buzzwordbooks.com/hyperspace-of-consciousness.htm

(19) https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jan/26/i-predict-great-revolution-physicists-define-life-paul-davies

–

*Notes:

Martin Caidin’s novel The Final Countdown features the now infamous U.S.S. Nimitz in a plot centered around trans-dimensional time-travel. Caidin was also featured in Loyd Auerbach’s book Mind Over Matter: A Comprehensive Guide to Discovering Your Psychic Power, which details his later experiments in Psycho-Kinesis.

–

In 2012 I had the opportunity to have dinner with the late Carol de la Herran, who was at the time president and executive director of the Monroe Institute. Our conversation completely changed the way I saw Monroe’s work and these areas of research in that Carol was one of the most stable minded and focused executives I’ve ever met – and yet she was also completely comfortable with the role that psychic development played in her daily life. As one of the original team members in Robert Monroe’s experimental groups she had spent a good portion of her life working in these modalities and had completely integrated them into her professional and personal life. It’s easy to dismiss these areas of experimental development until you meet and spend time with the researchers, executives and scientists that have been seriously working in them – after such a meeting one is forced to consider the implications that there might be more here than we would expect based on the public conversation.