Tuesdays July 26, August 2, August 9, August 16
Time: 6-8 pm ET/New York City time
Admission: $160 Patreon members / $175 general admission

PLEASE NOTE: All classes will also be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time

Students can register after the start time and receive a streaming link to class recordings via email.

Join author and professor Diana Pasulka on a journey to understand the initiatory and spiritual aspects of the UFO event. After American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, and Technology was published, Diana received correspondence from people all over the world who understood their own experiences of a UFO event spiritually. This class is one response to the questions and comments from people who have had experiences with UFO events and who see these are spiritual in a variety of ways. It will be an examination of the spiritual aspects of the UFO event.

Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung wrote that the image of the flying saucer constitutes a modern myth and he exclaimed that contemporary people are lucky to witness a new legend and mythology in-process. In his own examination of UFO events he came to several different conclusions. He first believed that the UFO represented a new archetype. After consultations with colleagues who worked in the Air Force, he came to see that this archetype was tangible and not just part of the social imaginal. There were blips on radars that confirmed UFOs’ apparent material reality. This caused Jung to revisit his previous conclusions about UFO events, but sadly he never finished his work on the topic.

Many years later Harvard Research psychiatrist Dr. John Mack was shocked by his examination of people who reported UFO events. He emphasized the spiritual nature of these experiences, “There are energies involved here, of which for someone like me, raised in the materialist/rationalist culture of New York City, I had had no inkling. I found myself speaking of spiritual matters, of the divinity and higher consciousness, even about God, which was probably the last thing I ever believed could happen when was growing up in New York.” (John Mack Institute)

Dr. Pasulka will explore the connections between modern reports of UFO events and Western Esoteric traditions, including mystical traditions within Christian history.

Diana Walsh Pasulka is a Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her research examines miraculous events within Catholic history to new religious movements. Recent books include American Cosmic: Religion, UFOs, and Technology (Oxford University Press 2019) and The Resurrected: Spiritual Initiations in the 21^st Century (forthcoming with St. Martins’ Essentials). She is widely published, recently in Tank, Vox, Vice, and is a featured speaker at conferences, on podcasts, radio, and television. Memorable engagements include the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, a keynote speech at Rice University, and regular presentations at Esalen’s Center for Theory and Research. She is lead investigator on an ongoing study of Catholic manuscripts about saints, levitation, and bilocation, in partnership with the Vatican Secret Archive and the Vatican Space Observatory. Her book American Cosmic has garnered critical acclaim with the field of religious studies.