1. 1. Pasulka, Diana Walsh. 2019. American cosmic: UFOs, religion, technology.
      
      
   2. Sagan, Carl. 1985. Cosmos: Carl Sagan. New York, New York: Ballantine Books.
      
      
   3. Palahniuk, Chuck. 2018. Fight Club: a novel.
      
      
   4. Jung, C. G., and R. F. Hull. 1973. Synchronicity: an acausal connecting principle. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.
      
      
   5. Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1887. The Gay Science, A Joyful Wisdom, Chapter 4, St. Januarius.

The Margins: Ep 01 “The Book Encounter” Transcript

DIANA PASULKA  0:03 

The synchronicities and coincidences meaningful coincidences could drive a person crazy. If that person accepts, you know the materialist view of reality.

CAVANAUGH.BARDO  0:17 

You’re listening to The Margins, where we explore obsessions, the supernormal and oddly shaped ideas. The book is “American Cosmic, UFOs, Religion, Technology.” An X Files meets souped up Da Vinci Code by Diana Walsh Basilica. She’s a professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, and Chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion. Now, what caught our attention, after reviewing several hours of interviews, was the number of curious synchronicities that kept popping out, becoming part of the creative process itself. In this mashup, we take a look at a few of these strange, beautiful and weird synchronicities that cast a net over Professor Pasulka. She was writing the book. Let’s take a listen.

DIANA PASULKA  1:20 

The book is about my travels with scientists who believe that they engineer technologies from UFO artifacts. And these are scientists that are from major research universities. Like the top five. If I told you which University you would say, Oh my goodness. It’s also work with people from the American space program. These people are anonymous in my book, okay, they have to be anonymous. This book was read by them, and certain information had to be removed.

DIANA PASULKA  1:51 

And people have told me all kinds of different coincidences that they’ve had. A lot of them having to do strangely enough, and ironically enough, and absurdly enough with Fight Club. So I had a series of very strange Fight Club synchronicities.

DIANA PASULKA  2:10 

Fight Club is a movie in, that — I think it’s a 1999 movie, and it’s about a very subversive group of people, and this man who starts this group of men who fight each other. And so this man encounters Brad Pitt’s character, and he’s just added — you know, he’s, he’s someone who doesn’t exist, he’s just too incredibly amazing to exist, right? So I thought, you know, I was trying to understand how to convey this man, Tyler, who I write about in the first chapter, and throughout the book. How do I convey this guy’s character? I mean, this, this man is someone who — I’ve never met a man like this before. He’s, he’s so incredibly, from the movies, you know? He’s, he’s so incredibly from science fiction that what could I possibly call him? So I thought at first that I call him like, you know, David as in like David Bowie, or something like that, but that just did not fit the guy’s personality. And so finally, what hit me was, you know, he is invisible. And he does do these things. He was, you know, a fighter, and he does — so I called him “Tyler” as in Tyler Durden. And then when I called him that, and I had actually sent him the draft the first draft, so he could okay it, he, he couldn’t believe it. Because — he took pictures. He took pictures of the purple robe that Tyler Durden wears, he actually found a robe that was purple and looked just like it. It’s his favorite movie. He had soap. I mean, he had everything from Fight Club. And he said, he said he literally cried when he read it because he thought that he had been understood.

DIANA PASULKA  3:58 

What Tyler always says: Why do I feel like I’m living in a script? And I don’t really have control over what I’m doing. But I’m, you know, the things that happen to me, like, show me what I’m doing, but I only know it after I do it.

C.G. JUNG’s SYNCHRONICITY  4:15 

It may prove to be that psyche and matter are actually the same phenomenon. One observed from within, and the other from without Dr. Jung put forward a new concept that he called synchronicity. This term means a meaningful coincidence of outer and inner events that are not themselves causally connected. The emphasis lies on the word meaningful.

DIANA PASULKA  4:44 

So it’s, so you know, when Christmas Eve, I mean, on Christmas Eve, when New Year’s Eve hit 2012, right? And so everybody’s out there screaming and doing the things that they do, I wake up, and there’s that book, the Gay Science at my bedside. I hadn’t read it because I actually didn’t like Nietzsche at the time, and so I picked it up and, and there I randomly opened to a page. And it’s a book of aphorisms, and it’s an aphorism about New Year’s Eve. And it’s also about Saint Januarius, right? And he references a saint, Saint Januarius, who’s basically one of my favorite saints. Saint Januarius, right? Whose blood runs — whose blood is desiccated. His blood is like– it doesn’t– you know, it’s in this church in I believe it’s France, I’m not entirely sure. And so every New Year’s his blood actually turns liquid again. And so this was, you know, and I thought, Wow, that’s a really weird synchronicity. I didn’t even call it a synchronicity then because, you know, my mind frame wasn’t there. And so I, I thought, this is really odd. And he said, you know, he had a very powerful, it was a very powerful aphorism. And so I turned the page because I was so fascinated. now, all of a sudden, by this book by Nietzsche. I turned the page and he basically had this incredibly poignant, beautiful passage on why you should not believe in synchronicities. And I was like, What? This is a really intense coincidence. And he, you know, he says something that was really profound, he says, Today, I’ll never say no, again, I’m going to say yes to life.

READING NIETZSCHE  6:24 

Book Four, Saint Januarius: For the New Year. I’m still alive. I still think I, must still be alive. Because I still have to think, soon ago Cogito, Cogito ergo sum. Today, everyone allows himself to express his dearest wish and thoughts. So I too, want to say what I wish for myself today. And what thought first cross my heart with thought shall be the reason weren’t in sweetness of the rest of my life. I want to learn more and more how to see what is necessary in things as what is beautiful in them. Thus, I will be one of those who make things beautiful. Amore Fati! Let that be my love from now on. I do not want to wage war against ugliness. I do not want to accuse. I do not even want to accuse the accusers. But let looking away be my only negation. And, all in all, and on the whole, someday I want only to be a Yes, say-er.

DIANA PASULKA  7:45 

Okay, so the Book Encounter is, okay, so it’s a synchronicity, a meaningful synchronicity. But the way I used, I used the phrase “Book Encounter” because every person who I interviewed in the book, who was you know, who was an experiencer, had a book encounter, and that means that it was like, what happened with me with Nietzsche. So once they had an experience that they couldn’t really understand, you know, it didn’t fit into their framework, right?  Their — the kind of way in which they think of the world, they would then find a book or book would pop out at them, or someone would give them the book, or, yeah, like, Tyler had it.

DIANA PASULKA  8:34 

After the Challenger episode, where he lost his, you know, his good friend, the astronaut Judy Resnick. He was in a state of depression, and he didn’t know what to do. And he said that somehow somebody had put in his luggage Cosmos by Carl Sagan. So that was his book encounter. He said it completely changed his view of everything. So a book encounter is basically what Arthur Koestler called or [Koestler] called the Library Angel. And it’s that book that shows up when you most need it. Sometimes it’s what you don’t think you need and you don’t — you’re not looking for it. And all of a sudden there it is, and is precisely that what — which you need. And so it’s not just Koestler who talked about this, it’s Carl Jung talked about it. So many scholars have talked about this kind of idea of synchronicity. It doesn’t have to be a book. It could be a movie encounter, or it could be — some people have song encounters. These things are like Japanese koans, you know, they’re just like, we don’t know, they wake us up. And you know, what’s the meaning of them? I don’t know. But they make sure that that we know that the world is weirder than we think. A lot of times in my research, what I found with this book in particular, was that I do it and I wouldn’t know what I was doing until about a month later and then I’d look back on it and I’d say Wow, that’s what I did and that’s why I did it.

CARL SAGAN  10:15 

What an astonishing thing a book is.

CAVANAUGH.BARDO  10:19 

You’ve been listening to The Book Encounter on The Margins. Music by Setuniman. Produced by Cavanaugh Bardo. Audio Engineering Tim Baron of Tim Baron Video. Head over to AppetitesPod.com for more illuminating show notes. As if you didn’t know, this program is completely supported by fans like you. Drop us a couple of duckets, will ya, at our Patreon, to help keep the lights on. Links at the website. Subscribe to Appetites and Indiscretions for more oddly-shaped ideas. Thanks, and, soon.

CARL SAGAN  10:53 

In January, a tiny fragment of a Long Whale song might sound like this: [Sagan mimics whale song].

[End]

1. Interview excerpts for mashup: Rune Soup, UFONN, Ryan Sprague, Religion in Life

2. Image in header: Ed Norton and Brad Pitt in the film “Fight Club.” 

3. Carl Sagan; Ann Druyan; Adrian Malone; Steven Soter; Gregory Andofer; Rob McCain; KCET (Television station : Los Angeles, Calif.); Turner Home Entertainment (Firm); Carl Sagan Productions.