Epistemology & UFO’s

People are people are people etc.... We are all just humans. To be clear this blog post is not meant to be a critique of others, but an honest look and appraisal of the mind and look at how we know what we know in terms of UFO’s and Extraterrestrials. A look at the separation of knowing vs belief and provable theory vs pure speculation. Speculation and thought experiments are fun and necessary for future discoveries, but how honest are we being with ourselves and more importantly with others? So how do we know what we know when it comes to UFO’s and possibly extraterrestrial life? I am about to exercise some Cartesian doubt before resolving with some UFO gnosis. Experiences are truly the only way we can know something as an individual. Even when we are kids and are told not to do something that is in our best interest we still do it and learn the hard way through experience. This continues on into adulthood, but generally in a more calculated fashion. When it comes to UFO’s and Extraterrestrials people in the know are told things. How do the people that told them know that info? Did they talk or communicate with an alien? Why does seeing a UFO or having a real weird experience always get bogged down speculation and preconceived notions? Why do we take people at their word and trust other people in terms of secrecy? There is a lot of “I heard” “Supposedly” “This person was told” “My sources tell me”, so how do we know they were not fooled or have their own cognitive biases? Why do we yearn for secrets knowing they might be misinterpreted data or just not true? To know something that paradigm shifting through experience can not be a grey area (no pun intended) in terms of effect on the self. If someone has actually sat down with, interrogated, or communicated with an extraterrestrial it would be not just paradigm shifting it would be mind melting. I would think not many people could handle that psychological load even though many will claim it is easy or they could do it. Your nerves would be greater than the most nervous you have ever been and your adrenaline would be through the roof. If someone has or were to experience this they would never be the same or normal (if normal exists) again. I am sure many people who have had UFO sightings or abduction experiences have felt those nerves as well as a wide range of emotions. One thing I will point out to the people who don’t believe in the consciousness aspect of the phenomenon is everything we do, experience, and know is observed and filtered through our consciousness. So when people take a materialistic stance and say oh it is all nuts and bolts, well yeah there might be a physical craft, but you are still the observer witnessing it through your consciousness. I personally have no doubt there is other life in the universe somewhere and maybe many many places. This is mathematically and statically probable. I also know there are anomalous crafts and things in the sky we can not explain and there is hard data to prove it. My father and I saw a large orange glowing orb in sky last year. I immediately pulled up a star map app on my phone and seconds later as I looked back up it was gone. Based on the app it definitely was not a planet or bright star. Also, it definitely was not an airplane having seen many in the skies near O’hare. This was very weird and stuck with us the rest of the night as we kept bringing it up to each other. Now I did not do an episode on our podcast about it even though I did mention it casually a couple times. I did not want to create a narrative so I just let the experience simmer and tried not to create a mythology around it similar to how I approach my psychedelic experiences. My point here is it is important if you are really after truth to not embellish or make statements that would be purely speculative. The weird thing about our sighting is we weren’t like oh that was aliens or advanced technology we both just kept saying that was so weird. I personally think when we create narratives or mythologies we want others to validate and believe them too so it makes the experience more real somehow. I think this is a mistake in terms of truth. Not the sharing of the experience or observation which I encourage, but the speculative elements or biases that usually accompany these stories or experiences. People like Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung based their life’s work trying to understand why we humans mythologize. I do not have the answers and I am very honest about what I do not know and can not know. That being said even though there is a very real phenomenon I think two things 1) With more and more people abandoning organized religion it created a vacuum and there is a current need for a higher power or calling and creating the narrative of super advanced beings observing us gives us that. To be clear this is not a new idea and instead of God of the gaps it is now Aliens of the gaps. 2) This could be some evolutionary mechanism that is always dangling this carrot and taking different forms and symbols to help us evolve our consciousness for some unknown reason. If that is the case then that proves we do not know and can not know what the phenomenon is since its interactions prove we are not currently equipped to understand it and we require its help to get to the next level of understanding. One thing I rarely hear people talk about is how this whole thing could be all in our heads similar to how ancient greeks believed in Zeus and the other Gods. Not that people don’t see things or experience things, but that those experiences are tied to the mythologies we create in our minds to explain unknown physical or non physical phenomena. Superstition evolved into religion and religion evolved into philosophy and philosophy evolved into natural philosophy which then evolved into our current model of science. UFOs and Extraterrestrials could be our version of believing in the greek gods and later on in the future maybe someone figures out the science of these experiences or the mechanism behind this kind of belief. Maybe for whatever reason this type of belief is what evolution selects for. Maybe this is why the mystery schools and traditions have been so important though out our history. Sometimes to get closer to something you actually have to suspend everything you believe and start again with what you know. I urge anyone reading this to examine their own confirmation and cognitive biases and think about how we know what we know. I am always open to new data and being wrong, but I do think Vallee, Mack, Keel, and Jung resonate with us for a reason. Their work along with Plato’s philosophies have definitely influenced this blog and the way I think about this topic. All of this came to me during a psilocybin experience and I felt like I was downloading the words from an unknown source. It was weird in the sense I was not thinking about this topic before and during most it and then all the sudden I was compelled to write on this topic. I have have had my own experiences and witnessed weird things that I can’t explain, but those are the key words “I can’t Explain”.