Hey @jfmartel ~ if you’re still tuning into this thread, I’ve been meaning to send my appreciation for the episodes you and @phord did with Stuart Davis and Jeffrey Kripal, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I really like the way you guys are framing these tricky, and often fraught, discursive waters. It seems there may even be something of a non-ordinary experiences ‘#metoo’ movement on the rise, as more people find receptive venues for sharing their suppressed stories.
I don’t personally have any very weird paranormal experiences to report, but I tend to regard the very fact of my existence as exceedingly non-normal. Moreover, I have enough to deal with in my daily life without adding in these components. However, I believe in an open ontology of multiple worlds, dimensions, forms of experience, and radically diverse intelligences—all of which are subtly, causally, and physically (in the quantum) interconnected within the whole of manifestation (birthing from the unmanifest, mystery, or void) which historically we call “Cosmos”—and when I am writing poetry at my best (at least a certain kind of poetry), these are the realities I tap into.
Something like that also defines my general notion of the limits of experience; so I am really enthused by hearing your recent talks, which bring so much sensitivity, as well as an aesthetic sensibility (which for me, as well, is primary) to the topic of the “exo,” or what is outside our current conceptions of the real.
Anyway, I wanted to reconnect because I just heard a podcast, featuring someone I’ve known and respected from the Integral Meta-Theory world for a long time, who has recently popped out of the closet as a TOTALLY WEIRD FUCKING DUDE. Just kidding: He is an incredible scholar who is bringing the full force of his prodigious intellect, with great sympathy, to bear on the topic of alien contact:
The Prince of Metatheory, Sean Esbjorn-Hargens, has been an alternate-realities geek all along! I love it—and I just want to suggest him as a guest for your show.