Jeff Kripal is on to discuss Biological Gods, the New Mythmakers of Science Fiction
Jeff starts by quoting someone who says that aliens don’t have to be material but can be energy.
Quotes Promethea: You might not want to look for folklore because folklore will come looking for you.
Jeff gives examples of UFO sightings, and how UFO began as a war-time name for an opposing force. And it hasn’t changed. Some of these certainly include sex with aliens. He quotes the book The Interrupted Journey. An interracial couple was abducted and raped (symbolical since it was in the Civil Rites era).
Some believe Aliens are us in the future coming back to teach us and re-calibrate our imagination. Quotes a lot of Jacques Vallee, the guy who said aliens appeared as children. Vallee was an advisor for Stephen Spielberg in Close Encounters.
Carl Sagan originated the Ancient Astronaut theory in 1966. Interesting.
Kripal proposes that the aliens are just modern gods, made of some substance we cannot understand. Kripal mentions PKD and his Valis experience, which seems alien but is probably much more but we understand alien our world so much better.
Valis=Logos
Dick contended everyone was made up of language. Reading was a sacrament or occult practice. Dick said his novels were Secret Gnostic Gospels. Dick does mention that Valis could be calling from the future, much like Vallee.
Whitley Strieber writes in his book Communion, where aliens are Archons that drain our emotions. In Dec 1985, he was abducted by aliens. Afterwards, he didn’t remember anything but felt anal pain and pain at the tip of his finger. He went and got help because of depression, and through hypnotism began to remember.
Four different types of aliens took Strieber to a craft and performed experiments. They anal probed him, as well as collected his semen. South Park satirized him and ruined his career.
Strieber got tested on his brain to make sure his mind was broken, but it seemed fine. He had many theories, including the aliens were spiritual beings in a parallel universe. The aliens might have been hiding in our folklore. We are embedded in their world like animals are embedded our world.
Now he moves to Barbara Ehrenreich and her book Living with a Wild God.
Ehrenreich was an atheist activist who was taken by aliens at 17 during a ski trip; and suppressed the event for decades. She didn’t want to sound crazy. She did discover there are many beings we simply can’t see, just as other animals might barely notice humans.
Basically, the gods are among us dressed in the clothing of our culture…or just us (higher selves) trying to make contact.