Dr. Diana Walsh Pasulka on MIND-BLOWING Phenomena Connected to RELIGION, UFOs, UAP, & Consciousness
Diana Walsh Pasulka is a professor of religious studies who is most well known for her two latest books: American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology, AND Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences: Explorations with UFOs, Dreams, Angels, AI, and Other Dimensions. Diana has worked as a Consultant for Amblin's Encounters Docu-series on Netflix, and well known films including The Conjuring. In this interview we discuss mind-boggling phenomena related to religion, UFOs, and consciousness. Time stamps are in the description - we hope you enjoy the interview. Thank you so much for doing this with me Diana, to start us off can you please tell me briefly about your background and your main areas of research interest? yeah sure so I am a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina in Wilmington and I grew up in California and studied um at a University of California for undergrad I went to the Jesuit School of Theology which funded my research into religion and Catholic history and then I I went to Syracuse University in New York uh to get a PhD focusing on religious history and philosophy basically and um what I look at is I look at material culture but specifically digital infrastructures and how they implicate and um intercept with religious belief and more more specifically than that I've been uh publishing and teaching about uh Miracles and and things that you know extraordinary events within the Christian tradition yeah cool yeah there's so so many fascinating things there like Miracles are something I definitely want to Circle back to later and and other things too I guess a good kind of question to to kick us off is how do you and again like in a nutshell because loads of these questions are probably things we could discuss for ages and you know have an actual discussion on just these individual questions but in a nutshell how do you define religion yeah so religion that's such a great question and um most people so religion is a western term and if you go to say uh Kyoto University or you know uh universities in other countries they don't actually have a department of religious studies right so they have Buddhist studies and they consider that a philosophy and things like that so religion is and in religious studies we Define it in lots of different ways as well so what is religion uh okay so I like Jeffrey Kel's and I'm going to paraphrase him Jeffrey kle is a professor at of comparative religion at Rice University yeah and he basically says when you look at the history of religions what you see is you see Sky gods and goddesses Sky entities Sky beings coming down and interacting and engaging with humans and then you have you know discourse around that that evolves into religions you know we're talking about like angels and things like that uh or things seeing in the sky that are considered to be gods and goddesses uh you find that in ancient Greece and and Rome and you know and and even today um but how I religion is a set of beliefs and practices directed toward that which is considered to be of sacred and transforming power um so in the western tradition a lot of times when we look at religions we look at them as monotheistic we we tend to see them like our own religions the religions we grew up with which could be Islam uh Christianity uh Judaism things like that but you know there are religions that that look very different than that we have atheist religion right we have religions that you know are based on fiction uh these are called new religious movements like jediism so religion is a very big category and we tend in the west to put a lot of emphasis on religions that look like what we think they should look like but there's a whole variety of different types of religions yeah yeah wow there a really comprehensive answer thank you and you're right like in the west when we think religion we immediately think of yeah like the big boys the big you know like Christianity and Islam and maybe Buddhism and and you're right there's going to be others and the the various kind of denominations or the main denominations of Christianity I guess like Catholicism and and you know Protestants and everything like that but yeah jediism was an interesting one that I learned about through your book or I'd heard of it before but I kind of had a new kind of take on it from reading your book um American Cosmic which was I think it's kind of a cool religion right like you said based on the force and everything like that the force from everything I've learned from all the people I've spoken to and there's lots of science to back it up essentially the force is a real thing depending on you know how you word it and how you want to look at it and there's every culture and every religion has a different word for it it's essentially the Holy Spirit right I suppose um in the same in the same breath um do you think all the world's religions or the vce majority or the majority or however how many of the world's religions have common roots and are those roots kind of uh based in reality are they rooted in reality yeah so that's a good question so there are commonalities and patterns within even jediism and Christianity have you know you just said oh that looks like the Holy Spirit a lot of Christians when they look at Star Wars say oh yeah that's like the Holy Spirit I've heard them literally say that okay so um so yes so there so there's a reason why there's my field religious studies and it's interdisciplinary so we have archaeologists historians uh people who do you know comparative religious studies things like that um even literature and religion so the thing about this is that yes there are commonalities within these religions and that's and most people in the world are religious so it's it's people who are secular who are actually in the minority and if most people in the religion in the world are religious we basically should study religions for this reason that they seem to inspire behavior that is um like ultimate ultimate Behavior right so people will die for their religion um they won't necessarily die for their political ideology although they might but religion they definitely would you know people have died for their religion so religion inspires behaviors and I think that that's what makes it very important yeah that's that's a fascinating thought yeah people will die for their religion they'll they'll kill for their religion they'll get married into a situation that they're not necessarily happy with for their religion like yeah they'll they
2024-02-08 22:09
