The Human Download: Consciousness is Way Weirder Than We Want to Believe

We have barely begun to scratch the surface of what the human mind can do.

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Consciousness is something we don’t talk about nearly enough.

What is it? How does it work? Where does it reside?

We make so many assumptions about it. We take so much for granted. In true cartesian fashion, “We think, therefore we are.”

End of story.

I came across a post today by a guy who has some pretty out there ideas. But it got me thinking about this topic again. And since I’ve gotten way into the weeds on the weird and the woo, I’ve decided to take my old pal

Hilary White

’s suggestion that I just lean into it and become “the Fox Mulder of Substack.” Why the hell not? Life is too short not to explore what fascinates you.

So here’s the post that got the ball rolling for me today:

There’s a general sense that some kind of strange psychic energy is building. I can’t dispute what Jordan is saying here.

Over the past few years, I've come to a growing awareness that we don't understand nearly enough about how consciousness works. Where does it reside? Is it localized or distributed? Do we have access to an external consciousness?

A theme I keep stumbling over is the idea that we can "download" information from somewhere else.

The first time I came across this idea of the "download" was in Diana Walsh Pasulka’s 2019 book, American Cosmic.

In it, she describes a protocol used by "Tyler," her pseudonymous aerospace entrepreneur & inventor whop plays a critical role in the unfolding story of her investigation of the intersection between religion and UFOs. Tyler claims that he gets many of his ideas from somewhere external, by following a “protocol”:

At lunch Tyler explained that he had a specific protocol for connecting with off-planet intelligence. It was a physical and mental protocol, and as Tyler explained the details of it, Jeff and I nodded in recognition. Many religious traditions advocate a physical protocol, like yoga, meditation, or contemplation, that involves the body and the mind. These traditions, it is believed, help practitioners connect with the sacred. Tyler’s description of his own protocol reminded us of religious practitioners and these traditions.

“I basically believe, and there is evidence for this, that our DNA is a receptor and transmitter. It works at a certain frequency—the same frequency, in fact, that we use to communicate with our satellites in deep space. Humans are a type of satellite, in fact. So, in order to receive the signals and to transmit the signals, we have to tune our physical bodies and DNA. Because of this, I make sure I sleep really well. I use the eight plus one rule. That is, I sleep for eight hours, wake up, and then make myself go back to bed for an hour. That one hour, the top-off, really makes or breaks my day. I barely drink alcohol, as it interferes with sleep, and I never drink coffee. Coffee really messes up the signal.”

Tyler continues:

“I also have to be in the sun. So I wake up, and the previous night I will have gone to bed a little dehydrated. Then, I get my extra hour of sleep and go out into the sun. While I bask in the light of vitamin D, I drink a tall glass of water, which flushes my cells and rehydrates them. This is better than coffee. It is at this point that I can usually feel the connection. I know I’ve established connection when the thoughts that show up in my mind don’t seem like my own. They are unfamiliar. With practice you can feel the difference.”

“So, you recognize these thoughts as different from your own?” Jeff asked.

“Yes, but you also have to understand that the environment also ‘wakes up’ and validates that they are speaking to you. See? I can explain it this way. I get a thought, and it comes out of nowhere. It comes with a certain feeling, like a hit. Then, usually within a few hours, something will happen that will validate that it was them, and that I should act on it.

There’s a certain “accidental” component to Tyler’s protocol. It makes room for receptivity and coincidences - or what many who study the phenomenon like to refer to as “synchronicities.”

Tyler says that, “In order to make the right call, you have to be in tune with your environment, and tune your DNA to receive the signal, and then pay attention. Be on the lookout for the confirmations, and then act on it.”

The “accidental” aspect of Tyler’s protocol brought to my mind the biochemist Kary Mullis, who had discovered the highly influential polymerase chain reaction and won the Nobel Prize for the discovery in 1993. He also had an anomalous experience that he referred to as a UFO encounter, although he was very careful not to “conclude” that was what it was. I was struck by Mullis’s description of his own process of creativity and its similarity to what Tyler was telling us:

Creativity is when you are trying to figure something out and something else keeps intruding. You finally give in to it, and it turns out to be the answer you were looking for. Perhaps something is lost and instead of looking for it, you let your hands lead you to it with your eyes closed. You might be looking something up and find the wrong subject and it turns out not only to be related, but to be exactly what you were after. It’s not an accident. It was inevitable and it all makes perfect sense after the moment, but it’s unexpected. That’s how creativity happens. The focused beam of your consciousness is very narrow, but you have a creepy sense of what is right behind you.

Tyler’s protocol was similar to what I knew from several researchers within the UFO community. Within many of these communities, the name for this contact is the “download.” It describes the process of connection with off-planet entities. Researcher Grant Cameron writes about the download experience and suggests that creativity does not necessarily stem from a high IQ or special talent, but instead comes from the ability to tap into “nonlocal intelligence.”

Using the following citation from Cameron’s book, Pasulka introduces us to more about the way this phenomenon interacts with creativity:

Many modern musicians are very interested in UFOs and extraterrestrial life. . . . As that book neared a final first draft, the whole focus changed. It became apparent that it was more important to talk about downloads and inspirations. What was happening to musicians became only a small part of the story. Following a lecture on the alien-music connection in Boulder, Colorado, some in the audience maintained that it was the devil and evil forces that were influencing modern music. Somewhat taken aback by this criticism, and the old idea of a battle for men’s minds by forces of good and evil, I had to sit back and re-examine my world view. I grew up in a home where my mother was a church organist for four decades. That inspired me to see if the composers of the church hymns experienced the same downloads and inspirations as modern musicians. It turned out that they had. That meant that if the devil was behind downloads and inspirations in rock and roll, it appeared that he had also composed all the church music as well.9

Pasulka continues:

Like Tyler, Cameron believes that the intelligence behind the download is nonhuman. He also utilizes the language of quantum mechanics; the theme of nonlocality permeates many discussions of the download and processes of extreme creativity. Heather Berlin, a neurologist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, offers an analysis of the creative mind that supports the idea that creative individuals experience their innovative ideas as external to themselves, or as supplied by external agents:

So I think that a lot of what’s happening in the brain is happening outside awareness and we—when we have our sort of conscious brain highly active—it’s kind, it’s kind of suppressing a lot of what’s going on outside of oneself. Sometimes when people are being creative they say it almost feels like things are coming from outside of them when they are in this sort of flow state. We’re starting to understand a little bit more about that state and it seems to be that when people are being creative in the moment that the part of their brain that has to do with their sense of self, self-awareness, self-consciousness is turned down. It’s called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. . . . If you think about it a similar pattern of brain activation happens during dreams or during daydreaming or some types of meditation or hypnosis where you lose your sense of self and time and place. It allows the filter to come off so that novel associations are okay, you know. Dreams don’t all make sense. That’s where the creativity comes in.

Belief that we can tap into a form of collective creativity or consciousness -- nonhuman or otherwise -- struck me as very odd on first glance. But then I kept coming across the same theme again and again. The next time I ran into it was in the book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, by the legendary music producer and creative genius Rick Rubin.

A few excerpts are in order to establish the connection to Pasulka’s work. Much of the book is focused on becoming receptive, so that we can better receive the creative signals the universe is broadcasting:

Inspiration

It appears in a moment.

An immaculate conception.

A divine flash of light. An idea that would otherwise require labor to unfold suddenly blooms in a single inhalation.

What defines inspiration is the quality and quantity of the download. At a speed so instantaneous, it seems impossible to process. Inspiration is the rocket fuel powering our work. It is a universal conversation we yearn to be part of.

The word comes from the Latin—inspirare, meaning to breathe in or blow into. For the lungs to draw in air, they must first be emptied. For the mind to draw inspiration, it wants space to welcome the new. The universe seeks balance. Through this absence, you are inviting energy in.

The same principle applies to everything in life. If we are looking for a relationship when we’re already in one, then we are full. There is no room for the new to enter. And we are unable to welcome in the relationship we want.

To create space for inspiration, we might consider practices of quieting the mind: meditation, awareness, silence, contemplation, prayer, any ritual that helps us fend off distraction and papancha.

Breath itself is a potent vehicle to calm our thoughts, create space, and tune in. It cannot guarantee that inspiration will come, though the vacancy may draw the muse in to play.

Rubin again:

We are all antennae for creative thought. Some transmissions come on strong, others are more faint. If your antenna isn’t sensitively tuned, you’re likely to lose the data in the noise. Particularly since the signals coming through are often more subtle than the content we collect through sensory awareness. They are energetic more than tactile, intuitively perceived more than consciously recorded.

Most of the time, we are gathering data from the world through the five senses. With the information that’s being transmitted on higher frequencies, we are channeling energetic material that can’t be physically grasped. It defies logic, in the same way that an electron can be in two places at once. This elusive energy is of great worth, though so few people are open enough to hold it.

How do we pick up on a signal that can neither be heard nor be defined? The answer is not to look for it. Nor do we attempt to predict or analyze our way into it. Instead, we create an open space that allows it. A space so free of the normal overpacked condition of our minds that it functions as a vacuum. Drawing down the ideas that the universe is making available.

Rubin asserts that there is an external force that is sending these signals and ideas, and it’s our job to tune in:

These rhythms are not set by us. We are all participating in a larger creative act we are not conducting. We are being conducted. The artist is on a cosmic timetable, just like all of nature.

If you have an idea you’re excited about and you don’t bring it to life, it’s not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker. This isn’t because the other artist stole your idea, but because the idea’s time has come.

In this great unfolding, ideas and thoughts, themes and songs and other works of art exist in the aether and ripen on schedule, ready to find expression in the physical world.

As artists, it is our job to draw down this information, transmute it, and share it. We are all translators for messages the universe is broadcasting. The best artists tend to be the ones with the most sensitive antennae to draw in the energy resonating at a particular moment. Many great artists first develop sensitive antennae not to create art but to protect themselves. They have to protect themselves because everything hurts more. They feel everything more deeply.

When I first read these sections, my brain went into overdrive. For most of my life, my religious beliefs and cultural parameters left me epistemologically closed off to ideas like this. They seemed too “new age” or just weird.

But a pattern was emerging, and it was like picking up signal through a cloud of noise.

In his book, The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity, Bobby Azarian says that the universe is literally "waking up" as a product of collective consciousness and complexity.

Azarian writes:

As cosmic evolution proceeds, the world is becoming increasingly organized, increasingly functional, and, because life and consciousness emerge from sufficient complexity and information integration, increasingly sentient. Through the evolution and eventual outward expansion of self-aware beings like ourselves, and their efforts to organize matter into arrangements that support information processing and computation, the universe is, in a very real and literal sense, waking up. It is not waking up independent of us, as in a panpsychic sense, but through us, as all the matter that composes life was once inanimate. As cosmologist and science educator Carl Sagan famously put it, “We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.” Rather than brushing it off as merely a poetic metaphor, this book takes Sagan’s statement seriously and places it within the context of cosmic evolution. In doing so, we see that adaptive complexity has initiated a cosmic awakening process that is only just beginning. Where it ends is to be determined. Exactly how the story goes curiously appears to crucially depend on the actions of intelligent life. In fact, it could depend in some meaningful way on you, and on us, collectively.

In the groundbreaking podcast series, The Telepathy Tapes, host Ky Dickens explores how non-verbal individuals, usually with autism, are manifesting incredible extrasensory powers. They can literally read thoughts and communicate with each other telepathically.

Dickens posits that this may be a form of shared consciousness. Savant skills, in particular, consist of knowledge that is possessed by individuals who have not obtained it through traditional means. Languages, music, math, etc. - all unlearned, but somehow known regardless.

Some practitioners of meditation and "remote viewing" - the ability to focus on and obtain information about a subject that is in a different physical location - say that this skill is a gift we all possess that can be awakened through effort:

And though it may sound far-fetched, there is evidence to support it.

In his book, Imminent: Inside the Pentagon’s Hunt for UFOs, former US intelligence officer and Pentagon UFO investigator Lue Elizondo talks about the CIA's use of a "remote viewing" program called "Stargage" for intelligence gathering.

Elizondo writes:

Great Skills was a long-running program that Army intelligence used to recruit young soldiers whom they had identified as having special talents and that they could train and use as soldier spies. How they teased out those abilities, I was never told.

“How about remote viewing? Know what that is?”

“Nope,” I responded.

I was later told by Gene that the Great Skills program was also called Grey Fox. Gene was a MICACP, which stood for Military Intelligence Civilian Accepted Career Program. Gene was a civilian intelligence case officer who worked for the Army. I later found out that Gene also spotted and recruited soldiers into another highly secret operation called Stargate, or at least what was left of it. He never made it clear if his efforts with Stargate were ever part of the official mission of Grey Fox. Stargate was embedded in the federal government, run for years by the CIA, and later the DIA. Recruits were trained to spy upon enemies, but not in the usual way.

Stargate trained “supersoldiers” to spy on hard targets using their psychic gifts. No, I am not kidding, this was an official US government program.

They called the highly controversial technique “remote viewing.” The program, pioneered at Stanford University in the late 1960s, was led by none other than Hal Puthoff, whom I met at the dinner meeting I described earlier. Hal had been a Stanford University researcher and an employee of the NSA when he and his colleague Russell Targ were approached by the CIA and told that Russia had a remote-viewing program. The US needed to catch up and beat their efforts. That’s how it all started.

Extrasensory perception had won over supporters in government who were initially dubious, then shocked that the technique worked. No one understood the mechanism. The CIA didn’t care why it worked; the only thing that mattered was that it did.

When government-trained psychics focused their attention on a particular subject, they gleaned images, feelings, thoughts, and intelligence that were otherwise impossible to collect via conventional spy tradecraft. Stargate became so successful, Hal reported directly to the director of the CIA and the White House on a regular basis.

As a measure of the program’s success that can be talked about, its psychics once located a Russian supersonic jet that crashed somewhere over Africa. Our best satellites couldn’t locate it, and neither could the Russians. One of our remote viewers “saw” and pinpointed the exact location of the downed aircraft in the Congo. The US was able to sweep in and salvage this valuable target, based on the remote viewer’s visions alone. President Jimmy Carter famously referenced the case to the media. Remote viewers also located Brigadier General James Lee Dozier, who had been kidnapped in Italy by the Red Brigade in 1981. In the Persian Gulf War, remote viewers identified and located storage facilities that housed deadly chemical war agents. The success stories of remote viewing were legion and seemed almost magical. The stories I can’t share are even more mind-blowing.

Elizondo also discusses the intersection of expanded consciousness, ESP, and the UFO/UAP phenomenon:

Researchers have long argued that UAP appear to be controlled by one or several superior intelligences. The Tic Tac encountered by the Nimitz pilots seemed to anticipate what actions the human pilots planned to take before actually taking them. A UAP encountered by an Iranian pilot in 1976 seemed to have anticipated the precise moment that the human pilot was about to fire an AIM-9 missile at the craft. At that instant, the pilot’s control panel failed. He only recovered control (and saved his life) when the UAP disappeared from sight. In 1982 a UAP did exactly what a civilian witness wished it would do. Just as a driver in Hudson Valley, New York, looked at a boomerang-shaped UAP in the sky and thought, “Gee, I wish it would come closer so I can get a better look at it,” the craft changed its course and flew right toward the individual’s car. When the driver became terrified, he sensed a message in his mind telling him, “Don’t be afraid.” Interestingly, some individuals who claim to be abductees often detail how their captors seem to communicate wordlessly, similar to the way we do in our dreams. More concerning, some alleged abductees describe being controlled and restrained in some manner so that they won’t panic.

For these reasons and others, some investigators think the pilots of these UAP possess highly evolved psychic abilities. But is there a deeper, more profound possibility? What if enhanced consciousness and physical manipulation of reality are critical components of the aircraft’s propulsion system? It sounds like something out of the Jedi playbook: a power source integral to the universe that is inherently intelligent and can keep aircraft flying. From a scientific perspective, I don’t necessarily subscribe to this idea, but it can’t be ruled out either.

It isn’t that far a leap. Experiments by DARPA in the past showed that pilots can indeed remotely control an aircraft, using their thoughts and a special interface. A helmet specially designed to interpret thought and a pilot’s brain waves and translate them to electronic signals that control the aircraft. Honeywell Aerospace has worked on a similar technology for more than a decade. UAP could use the same sort of technology, at least in principle. What if some otherworldly intelligence is linked to the power of UAP? As one researcher argued, perhaps enhanced consciousness is a fundamental force of the universe.

There are also experiments like the ones conducted at Laurentian University in Canada that fitted subjects with a so-called God Helmet and demonstrated how easy it was to manipulate and alter human consciousness. To push this further, perhaps our much-vaunted consciousness is not uniquely human at all and is part of a greater collective.

Maybe, before one can understand how these aircraft fly, we have to plumb the untapped secrets of our own brains. To explore that aspect, we must first all agree on a definition of consciousness. Until we can do that, I am not sure we will ever have consensus regarding UAP.

To return for a moment to Diana Pasuka's work, in an interview with her for his excellent podcast, American Alchemy, Jesse Michels explored the idea of consciousness as a key to the UAP phenomenon:

Michels’ brief synopsis of the interview was as follows:

Key takeaways:

1) There's a secret space program in the US more focused on consciousness than UFO hardware. She's met a member (pseudonymously named "Tyler")

2) Historic "divine"/"angelic" contact may be what we now consider "alien"/"ufo" contact

3) Vatican archives have more to say on UFOs than meet the eye...

4) The history of rocketry is beyond bizarre

5) UFOs are becoming a new form of religion

Investigative journalist Ross Coulthart, who has become deeply focused on the UAP issue in his work, discussed the phenomenon of consciousness as relates to UAPs with Nobel-nominated immunologist, inventor, and Stanford Professor Garry Nolan:

Nolan, for his part, has noted in his work that “experiencers” of UAP and other unusual phenomena appear to have more development and activity in the caudate nucleus and putamen, structures in the brain that are part of the basal ganglia.

These have become associated with things like advanced intuition.

On a whim, after listening to half a dozen episodes of The Telepathy Tapes, I looked up the connection between autism and the caudate and putamen. Sure enough, there is a direct association:

Research suggests that in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), the caudate nucleus and putamen, which are both parts of the basal ganglia, tend to show increased volume compared to neurotypical individuals, indicating potential structural differences in these brain regions associated with autism; this is particularly observed as a larger putamen volume in many studies.

The more you look, the more connected all these seemingly esoteric phenomena turn out to be.

Coulthart has spoken frequently about the association of aspects of human consciousness and the UAP phenomenon:

In a video last week, after being asked by a viewer about why the non-human intelligences alleged to be here by various whistleblowers do not simply reveal themselves, he returned again to the question of consciousness (both internal and external) and psionics, and our awareness of our own abilities in this regard.

Coulthart even talks about the use of children with psionic gifts for military purposes, echoing the “Project MKUltra” program from the hit high-strangeness television show, Stranger Things:

All of this has me thinking about whatever is going on with these "drones" over New Jersey, and other locations besides. What if they are not, in fact, man-made? Why is our technology ineffective against them? Why can't we intercept, understand, or bring them down?

In a fascinating NewsNation interview this week with Garry and John Tedesco of Nightcrawler Research, a “data-centric UAP research team” that works directly with federal agencies to investigate anomalous phenomena, Ross Coulthart prompted the researchers to share a list of questions they were given by an undisclosed source from inside a government agency that should be being asked by the public to their elected officials. The list is bracing in its implications. Note that the very first question is: “how do we know these are human-made drones?”

Coulthart: Now, one thing that you did tell me off camera is that there's some questions that basically the authorities are interested in getting answered. What are those questions?

Tedesco: Okay, so we reached out to some contacts we had in some of the federal and state agencies. These are individuals who have concerns. They felt they were kind of in the dark themselves, and let’s see if I can raise these questions. They put a list of 10 questions together that they say the American public should be asking the authorities and their governors.

The 10 Questions the Public Should Ask:

1. How does the government know that these craft are human-made drones?

2. How does the government know the intent of these craft?

3. Why has the government declined to take action against these craft?

4. Have these craft similarly affected adversarial nations?

   • (Coulthart: “And they have.”)

5. Other than "see something, say something," what should the general public do if these craft engage with them? There's an unverified report of one hovering over a car and interfering with the car's digital equipment, like its clock. That’s something they shared.

6. What are the potential consequences of taking action against the drones or drone-like entities, such as shooting at them with a gun?

7. Do these craft emit radiation, and are there affordable and accessible sensors or detectors a person can purchase for themselves?

8. Have any of these craft been seen emitting substances, like "angel hair"?

   [Angel hair refers to a fibrous, silky material often reported in UFO sightings. - SS]

9. What should be the response of first responders if they come across these craft that land or crash?

10. Why is there no coordinated federal preparedness guidance or direction for municipalities nationwide—only reactive, isolated responses?

Coulthart: So, gents, can I just ask you this? Those are questions that have been asked by somebody in an agency that you don’t want to name, that should be being asked by the public. Is that a correct representation?

Tedesco: That’s correct.

Coulthart: So what that’s telling me is that there are people in government agencies—and I won’t try and name them—who are genuinely concerned that they’re not getting answers.

Tedesco: Exactly. Right. And that’s the way we would interpret it. They feel they’re in the dark also. These couple of individuals were pretty frustrated from the conversation we had.

Coulthart: That is really alarming.

Coulthart: Well, I can tell you, just to add to that, we know that just in the last few minutes, the Homeland Security Committee hearing has ended in Congress. A representative, a senior representative of the FBI, Mr. Wheeler, has admitted they don’t know what these objects are.

Coulthart: That’s a breathtaking admission.

Tedesco: That’s very unsettling.

In a separate interview on NewsNation, New Jersey state senator Jon Bramnick echoed these concerns:

Whatever these drones are doing, the government really doesn’t want us to know. What that must mean is, they’re more concerned with us getting knowledge, and being afraid of that information, than having no knowledge and having all these questions. That’s why I’m worried about it. There must be something going on that they can't tell us because they're so fearful of what the public is going to do when they hear what the drones are doing.

Watch:

One of the most interesting theories that has come out about these "drones" is that they may in fact be UAPs that are mimicking human technology as a means of acclimating us to their presence in our world.

The amount of information coming in about this phenomena, the number of weird occurrences, the growing sense of public concern, all feels very much like the original radio broadcast of War of the Worlds, as I mentioned in yesterday’s piece. In that story, what began as something dismissed as normal turned out to be something quite alarmingly different.

Is disclosure imminent?

Or will this all just disappear, filed away with all the other things we never get answers for.

We certainly live in fascinating times.