October 15, 2017 — Dr. Scott Kolbaba with Paul Kimball

[Paul Kimball]

I don't believe, and I don't disbelieve. Just like a lot of reasonable people. Beware of anyone offering an absolute answer for something we have so little understanding about.

Why so many people–including scientists–suddenly believe in an afterlife

 

[Paul Kimball]

From the; "for whatever it's worth" dept ....

World's largest near death experiences study | University of Southampton

"The recalled experience surrounding death merits a genuine investigation without prejudice."

That's called good science.

 

[Christopher O'Brien]

... I do not think it is my place to protest peoples' after life beliefs. But when asked, I tell people that I believe in the Great Hippo God, who will greet me in the river of Heaven. I will shape shift into a crocodile and spend eternity joyously eating Christians. LOL

I would imagine that Christians are rather bland and would require more than just salt & pepper to season them. Perhaps garlic powder, oregano, cumin, coriander, thyme and a dash of Herbs du Province would do the trick? Or at the very least some good quality homemade BBQ sauce...

 

[SRL+]

“Thus, the near-death state may be a trigger for DMT release”

Interview - Rick Strassman on DMT and the dying process

 

[SheaOlmsford]

Tricky question to answer – for example, what do we mean by “paranormal experiences?” Lots of people would describe a sighting of a metallic craft executing rapid hairpin maneuvers in the sky as a “paranormal experience.”

We’d have to look at each example if we wanted to try to find specific explanations. From personal experience I’ve seen that some people are interested in their unusual experiences, so they remember them and talk about them, while other people could care less about such things and forget about them fairly quickly. So any connection could be “correlation” rather than “causation.” I assume that ghost experiences are psychological/neurological in nature, rather than objectively phenomenological, but perhaps they're both in some sense.

Life is complex, and the universe is vast and almost entirely unexplored. All kinds of exotic and unrelated phenomena are possible. I think we’re likely to be led astray if we try to put all of these different possibilities into a single basket.


I think that’s a mistake. Many witnesses have seen exotic solid craft behaving in a mechanical manner, following and evading aircraft, entering and exiting the water, leaving trace evidence, hovering for extended periods, emitting light of various colors,, etc. That just doesn’t jibe with “a mysterious force that can manifest itself physically at least for short periods of time,” in my estimation. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck…


It’s odd to see that some people find the idea of an alien device visiting the Earth to be ridiculously unlikely, while others like yourself call the idea “mundane.” Many different things appear to be going on; some sightings are almost certainly experimental aircraft, others appear to be extraterrestrial technology, and others appear to be so far beyond our comprehension that it’s difficult to even construct a rational interpretation. But flatly concluding, as you have, that the source of the sighting experience is the same, and unphysical, seems logically indefensible to me.


There are many instances where the reported events are truly and deeply confounding. And I think it would be absurd to rule out the possibility that other forms of consciousness could be inhabiting the Earth and intersecting with our perceptions from time to time. Perhaps the Earth itself is consciousness is some way that eludes our comprehension, as the First Nations people suggest. Perhaps other organisms, like hives or even large fungi, possess some form of consciousness that’s entirely unknown to us, but perhaps quite sophisticated in its own right. Or maybe our own consciousness couples to physical reality in subtle ways that we have yet to understand, and our own subconscious mind plays tricks on us via this unidentified causal mechanism.

In any case, there seems to be no shortage of intriguing mysteries to explore and hopefully explain in the future. I’m grateful for that, frankly; a world without mystery would be a drab world indeed, and the exhilaration of scientific progress would vanish entirely.


Like I said, it may well be a mistake to try to “reconcile” seemingly disparate phenomena. We can’t even describe physics with a single postulate – why should the full range of human experience be any different?

Regardless, I think it’s disingenuous to characterize the behavior of unidentified flying objects as “floating around our planet.” To the contrary, all of the interesting cases indicate craft executing deliberate precision maneuvers, and exhibiting extremely high speeds, which suggests purpose and agency. If they simply meandered around aimlessly, as you’ve implied, they’d be a lot easier to photograph, and capture.

I would hypothesize that we have always been visited by other species (and/or their drones), for thousands if not millions of years, and that once we began detonating over 2000 nuclear warheads, we invited surveillance by any number of species in our galactic vicinity. And I would imagine that many of them would participate in their own sophisticated psyops, just as we do, as Usual Suspect suggested.

But do we have to draw a connection between unidentified aerial objects and things like ghosts, dog men, shadow people, and the Virgin Mary appearing on a slice of bread? I think not.

The point is, people who experience UFOs often experience all the other so-called paranormal events like ghosts and other bizarre situations. Did one cause the other or is it all unconnected? So the same people who see a UFO just happen to also experience ghosts, poltergeist activity, communication from the dead, orbs, even possession? This connection has been noted for decades but squelched by nuts & bolts folks like Budd Hopkins and David Jacobs. Why? Because all the bizarre experiences tend to muddy the water of a logical nuts & bolts explanation. Carol Rainer (no matter what you may think of her motives) revealed how often Budd Hopkins simply threw out any paranormal experiences from his client files.

As someone who has seen UFOS often, even at close range, and had abduction experiences until I seem to have passed my Sell By date (thank god), I can affirm that paranormal experiences of all sorts came along with the UFO/abduction experiences. Life is not as simple as you seem to think it is.

 

[SRL+]

Always thought of this narrative as cool.

The Roots of Consciousness: Folklore, Other Worlds

"The Strange Case of Dr. X

Oddly enough, many reported UFO sightings and contacts involve incidences of what could be called paraconceptual healing. A prime example is "The Strange Case of Dr. X" which was reported by the French scientist Aime Michel in Flying Saucer Review in 1969. "Dr. X," is the pseudonym for a well-known and respected physician who holds an important official position in southeast France.

Early one morning in November 1968, the doctor was awakened by the cries of his fourteen month old son. He got up painfully, due to an injury he had received a few days earlier while chopping wood, and found the baby pointing toward light flashes coming in through the shuttered window. Opening a large window, Dr. X observed two horizontal, disk-shaped objects that were silvery white on top and bright red underneath. The flashes were caused by a sudden burst of light between the two disks with a periodicity close to one second. As the doctor watched these disks they approached him and actually seemed to merge so there was only one disk from which emanated a single beam of white light. Then the disk began to flip from a horizontal to a vertical position, so it was seen as a circle standing on its edge. The beam of light came to illuminate the front of Dr. X's house and shone directly into his face. At that moment a loud sound was heard and the object vanished.

The doctor immediately woke up his wife to tell her what had occurred. It was then she observed the swelling and wound on his leg had disappeared. Furthermore Dr. X had suffered from a partial paralysis of his right side from a war wound received ten years previously in Algeria. In the days following the sighting, these symptoms also disappeared.

There are many unusual aspects of this case which are still being investigated by a competent team of researchers. One study, reported several years after the original sighting, noted that an odd red pigmentation has periodically appeared in a triangle shape around the naval of both Dr. X and his young child. It would stay visible for two or three days at a time. This had happened even when the child was staying with his grandmother who knew nothing of the UFO sighting. Other phenomena of a psychokinetic nature have been noted such as levitation and poltergeist-type phenomena. The sighting seems to have been a landmark event in Dr. X's life as he now faces life with a rather mystical acceptance, showing no fear of death or tragedy. This new attitude has been recognized by friends and relatives who also knew nothing of Dr. X's experience."

 

[Randall]

I don't believe, and I don't disbelieve. Just like a lot of reasonable people. Beware of anyone offering an absolute answer for something we have so little understanding about.
Why so many people–including scientists–suddenly believe in an afterlife

The article doesn't provide any reasons that can be used as counterpoint for the reasons why afterlives are impossible. It just makes the same old inapplicable unsubstantiated claims, including a the boy who went to Heaven, meanwhile we have this: Boy Says He Didn't Go To Heaven; Publisher Says It Will Pull Book

 

[Randall]

"The recalled experience surrounding death merits a genuine investigation without prejudice." That's called good science.

There's only one reasonable "scientific" study I've ever heard of on NDEs, and it makes use of images or messages placed outside the patients view above the doctors in the room so that if a patient floats up and is able to see the message they can report it upon being resuscitated. No study that I've looked at that employs that method of verification has been successful in showing that a patient has been able to accurately relay the message. But even if for some reason that happened. It still wouldn't prove the existence of afterlives. It would only be evidence of some sort of information gathering or transfer.

 

[SheaOlmsford]

The article doesn't provide any reasons that can be used as counterpoint for the reasons why afterlives are impossible. It just makes the same old inapplicable unsubstantiated claims, including a the boy who went to Heaven, meanwhile we have this: Boy Says He Didn't Go To Heaven; Publisher Says It Will Pull Book

I don't need to go to heaven as long as this life includes warm banana bread and butter. Find heavenly moments NOW and treasure them. It is actually quite silly to argue about life after death. If there is, we will mostly be pleasantly surprised. If not, we will never know.

 

[Randall]

The point is, people who experience UFOs often experience all the other so-called paranormal events like ghosts and other bizarre situations ...

That in my mind suggests that alien visitation may be intimately connected to so-called paranormal activity.

 

[Creepy Green Light]

It’s true that alien visitors haven’t left behind any samples of concrete. But there has been plenty of evidence in the form of radar cases, multiple independent eyewitnesses, military personnel taking film footage, and trace evidence

I asked the question on another thread (speaking of trace evidence); Whatever happened to Ted Phillips? I thought at one point he & trace evidence was going to be ufology's best chance at cracking the UFO code. But it seems like himself and his 1000's of cases vanished into thin air?

 

[Randall]

I don't need to go to heaven as long as this life includes warm banana bread and butter.

Here's how I kicked warm banana bread up a notch and gained an unwanted 2 extra inches. Warning! You take the banana bread ( which BTW is fab with butter too ) but instead of butter, you heat up a slice in a bowl, then add a generous scoop of Häagen-Dazs Pineapple Coconut ice cream on top, pour a couple of oz. of real cream, over that, along with a real Maple Syrup drizzle ( Note: Apparently The Drizzle is the super hero of the food world ).

​

 

[Creepy Green Light]

Here's how I kicked warm banana bread up a notch and gained an unwanted 2 extra inches. Warning! You take the banana bread ( which BTW is fab with butter too ) but instead of butter, you heat up a slice in a bowl, then add a generous scoop of Häagen-Dazs Pineapple Coconut ice cream on top, pour a couple of oz. of real cream, over that, along with a real Maple Syrup drizzle ( Note: Apparently The Drizzle is the super hero of the food world ).

​

That concoction sounds like one of the most disgusting things I've ever heard of lol.

 

[William Strathmann]

I appreciated the show, and several of the tougher questions that Paul asked.

 

[Creepy Green Light]

You guys made my day by briefly discussing my question about viewing Plan 9 in B&W or color. And I concur (original B&W is the way to go - esp. for Plan 9) Also, for it's worth (and you're proll already aware) but the U.S. military's standard date format is day/month/year - as in 15 OCT 2017.

And I 100% agree with how CGI is garbage. Always have, always will look like a video game (CGI). The original Star Wars looks 1000% more believable then the prequels because practical effects were used. Though a scale model - a star destroyer looked real because it WAS a real, physical thing. CGI looks as fake as Ed Woods flying saucers wobbling on fishing line.

 

[Creepy Green Light]

I forgot about the Karl Pflock book I ordered. It showed up today

 

[Paul Kimball]

I forgot about the Karl Pflock book I ordered. It showed up today

Karl's tone can be a bit snarky at times, but he went into his research wanting to believe, and then went where the evidence led him. The case he constructed against a space alien crash at Roswell is definitive, in my opinion.

 

[Creepy Green Light]

Karl's tone can be a bit snarky at times, but he went into his research wanting to believe, and then went where the evidence led him. The case he constructed against a space alien crash at Roswell is definitive, in my opinion.

Paul, is there any angle in Karl's book that you wouldn't necessarily agree with? I'd be interested to know any area's of his book that you do not agree with before I read it (provided you would want to share). Thank you

 

[Randall]

I appreciated the show, and several of the tougher questions that Paul asked.

Tougher questions ... lol ... like what? The closest he got to any tough questions was mine, Kolbaba's answer was a complete dodge, and Kimball never called him on it.

 

[Jimi]

Just finished listening to AP, one of the best ever episodes I feel.

Box Office Kimball

Would love to hear a Kimball / Kean / Dolan Paracast Roundtable. Good luck getting that one together Gene, should you desire to take on the challenge