A review by tinido
Encounters: Experiences with Nonhuman Intelligences by D.W. Pasulka, D.W. Pasulka

funny mysterious slow-paced

1.0

If you're interested in Ufology and folklore, military complex and intelligence community self mythologizing and tech religion, and if you have a high tolerance for Venture Capitalist and AI investor meeting claptrap, this might be an interesting read. But even with a high tolerance for the Silicon Valley esoteric faux-deep thinking shit Pasulka regurgitates in her book in almost every chapter, I'm really not sure if it is worth your time: Even with a cursory knowledge of Ufology (being an avid X-files watcher is entirely sufficient) or as a Pynchon reader you will probably know most of of the phenomena Pasulka relates. 

What made me read on (I skipped a lot of the stuff on AI being a gateway to cosmic higher intelligences, partly because of the convoluted writing) were the stories  of two of the "experiencers" Jose and Len, and my interest in the very American (at least too me) character of Pasulka's theories about what this all means (and that this all has a meaning at all). Jose and Len are very compelling and likable storytellers, and their theories of what has been or is happening to them, and their own abilities to "plug in" the numinous, are interesting and thought provoking. 

Pasulka herself seems to have no stories of contacts with alien or non-human intelligences to tell, instead she's making a great deal out of 'fateful' coincidences and synchronicities, giving events in her life a feeling of being guided by higher forces, which are mostly neither very remarkable nor surprising. For example, attending an Ufology conference and meeting persons that are, SURPRISE SURPRISE, themselves heavily interested in paranormal phenomena. Like all of the people she meets, except Jose and Len, Pasulka is obsessed with hierarchies and status, disguised as having been initiated into some sort of higher knowledge. This may be in Academia or as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, or best of all: as a combination of both, or in the military-technological complex (which Silicon Valley is part of, but Pasulka invests a lot of pages to burry this and instead tell the story of the intrepid outsider community that establishes the secret knowledges about the universe against the government, its military and intelligence agencies). It's rather obvious that her interest in religion(s) has absolutely nothing to do with religion(s) as a communal practice, as a cultural force, organizational structures, theological systems, their histories, syncretisms, or how ordinary believers go about practicing their religion. 

What she’s interested in is religion as occult knowledge, as privileged gateway to the truth of the universe (and to power, another topic she never discusses openly) only obtainable by the initiated. The aim of the whole book seems to me to establish the strange concoction of American exceptionalism, barely remembered bits of European philosophy, new age slob, tech gnosis and college level Nietzsche Ubermensch philosophy she encounters in her sources (and subscribes to herself) as the new Evangelion: the religion / philosophy for the happy few who are prepared to accept the truth about the cosmos (which seems mainly to be that American tech entrepreneurs are indeed godlike creatures). All in all, I would say this is more cringey than dangerous, BUT Pasulka’s appropriation of indigenous cultures and Buddhism to lend the crap the American cosmics spout authenticity and historical depth is really infuriating.