Contemplating Phenomenology: A review of American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology by D.W. Pasulka

A spirit of intellectual exploration, underpinned by rigorous scepticism, can help us approach some of the most mystifying questions facing humanity, writes M.L.R. Smith in his reflections upon both American Cosmic and the life of his father.

For the first time in over fifty years, in May 2022, a United States House subcommittee opened a congressional hearing to receive testimony on ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’, or ‘The Phenomenon’, as initiates term it. Although the committee did not draw any inferences, it examined the growing body of photographic and video evidence, much of it accumulated by the US Navy and Air Force, of aeriform objects which appeared to defy the known physics of gravity, speed, and movement. These phenomena could not, moreover, be rationalised with reference to alternative explanations, such as the secret testing of advanced military technology, drones, the operations of hostile states, optical illusions, or hoaxes.

Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) or Unidentified Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are, of course, the stuff of myth, legend, science fiction, and much else in popular culture from films and TV series in the mould of Star Wars and ET, to the X-Files. No doubt a great deal of hokum surrounds the subject, and UFO enthusiasts are still routinely stereotyped as fantasists prone to outlandish conspiracy theories. Yet, the congressional hearings for the first time in decades acknowledged that there was a legitimate discussion to be had about some of the most intriguing questions of all time: what may be ‘out there’, and are we alone in the universe?

Indeed, that congress was prepared to consider the implications of ‘The Phenomenon’ in an evidential, dispassionate, manner was itself testament to a growing body of scholarly endeavour that has sought to bring a degree of intellectual rigour to the study of ‘Ufology’. American Cosmic: UFOs, Religion, Technology by D.W. Pasulka is one of the most engaging of these recent works because it is premised on two central ideas. The first is that UFOs do not appear only to ‘cranks and wierdos’ but to highly intelligent and successful people. Not only does Pasulka converse with high achieving ‘believers’ throughout the book, but she points out that pioneering figures of Soviet and US rocketry such as, respectively, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Jack Parsons, believed in ethereal beings and non-human intelligence. Others, like the psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, felt that the UFO phenomenon should not be dismissed but studied seriously.

The second underlying premise is that the way people understand UFOs can provide insight into how technology and religion often intersect. British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke was acutely aware that the dimensions of the ‘The Phenomenon’ represent a ‘fusion of magic, or the supernatural, and the technological’. As the co-writer of the screenplay for Stanley Kubrick’s epic 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), he remarked: ‘MGM is making the first ten-million-dollar religious movie, only they don’t know it yet’.

Quasi-religious practices

American Cosmic digs into the ways in which social and technological infrastructures shape quasi-religious practices. UFO phenomena are considered by ‘believers’ to be advanced technology/intelligence that allows humans to connect with other minds, both human and extra-terrestrial, and to places outside current scientific understandings of time and space. Pasulka draws attention to the existence of an ‘invisible’ college of scientists and academics who study UFOs but who do not make their work public and receive no wider scholarly recognition, either because they are associated with classified government programmes, or because they fear ridicule for touching the subject, let alone suggesting that UFOs might comprise real phenomena under intelligent control.