Skeptiko with Alex Tsakiris is one of the best podcasts to address the deeper questions about consciousness. I recently spoke with Alex about my owl books, and a whole lot more. The show is titled: Owls and Extended Consciousness. This was an excellent interview, and I recommend it highly! There's even a transcript.
Near the end of the interview they talk about something that really hit home for me—the dangers of getting bogged down in the need define a story as something literal. The transcript below begins with Diana talking about a chapter in her upcoming book American Cosmic. In it she looks at Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey as a deeper form of story telling.
(begins at time-count 53:20)
Diana: What I am saying is that… 2001: A Space Odyssey is like a mass Marian apparition. I go into the specifics and my book gets somewhat academic, I go into the specifics of what happens to us when we are involved in [watching]... 2001. Or, The Conjuring, or a Marian apparition. We tend to separate them out and say this is real life, and what’s this thing of psi? And we separate technology from that, but I don't think we should. Gordon: No. It’s weird. I get a lot of anthropologists on the show as a category of academics, more than any other. One of the things that has always interested me is the idea of fiction and nonfiction is a byproduct of a culture that’s fixated on a revealed religious text and then had an enlightenment, so it has become kind of canonized—this is true and this is fake—and then [in doing so] we messed up our understanding of the imagination and the imaginal—and diminished it. No other culture does that. Diana: Definitely! Gordon: So, no other culture does that. So there is no fiction and nonfiction of section aboriginal Australia. There are stories. Diana: Right…Yes! Beautiful! Gordon: Only 9% of the population of the planet, and [it has happened in] only the last couple of hundred years, thinks in this categorized way, no other people, anywhere or any-when thinks like that - and so there is a very good chance that we’re wrong and we should probably think about story rather than fiction and non-fiction and then see what emerges from that analysis. And it seems like thats what you're doing.
This has been the way I’ve attempted to presented my research. This wasn’t a formal decision on my part, it’s just the way owl stories seemed to present themselves. If I filtered out the accounts that seemed too bizarre, I would be doing a disservice to these experiences—and to myself. I wrote this on page 346 of The Messengers.
This book is more than just a collection of odd owl stories, it is meant to be a reflection of a mystery, something vital within the human spirit. Gathering all these owl accounts has been a kind of awakening for me, and I have become a disciple to the story. There is a deeper message folded into many of these personal narratives, well beyond just seeing an owl in the forest. It is my sincerest hope that some of these stories will someday be shared around the campfire, filling the listener with some elusive understanding, and perhaps a more heartfelt way to proceed forward with their own lives.
I'm excited to offer ten readers a FREE audiobook of STORIES FORM THE MESSENGERS, read by the author (that’s me), Mike Clelland.
The first TEN folks who reply to this post via email will get a simple code that can be plugged into Audible site. You'll need to be an Audible member, or join up for the offer. Easy!
Sorry, you'll need to type this in manually
If you do accept this offer, I ask that you take a few minutes to write a review for Audible or Amazon (or both!). As an author I'm dependent on the reviews on these sites. Your good faith review would mean a lot to me!
Complete introduction read by the author
My deepest thanks go to Whitley Strieber, Suzanne Chancellor, Lorin Cutts, and Andrea Villiere. Their support was amazing!
I found a cool image from space (above), and my first thought was it looked like and OWL! I mean, it sure looked like an owl to me, but at this point everything does.
I mean, that's an owl, right?
It’s a Hubble Space Telescope image of a dust nebula near the star Merope. Merope is a star in the Pleiades, an easily recognizable star cluster in the night sky of the norther hemisphere. I was doing a simple google search of The Pleiades for a fiction book project. I was looking up the names of the Seven Sisters in Greek mythology. The scene in the book involves an owl and also the Pleiades.
I read the entire book into a microphone, and it was a much bigger project than I had imagine. A lot of readers have asked when the audio version of the book will be available, and I am happy to say it's out now!
My deepest thanks go to Whitley Strieber, Suzanne Chancellor, Lorin Cutts, and Andrea Villiere. Their support was amazing!
This morning, after months of hard work, the audiobook of Stories from The Messengers has been uploaded on the audible website.
Alas, the website said that it would be 10—14 days until the audiobook is actually available on for purchase.
I read the entire book aloud into a microphone, and it was a much bigger project than I dared imagine. A lot of readers have asked when the audio version of the book will be available, and I am happy to say it will be very soon!
Stay tuned, I will make a big announcement when the the big day arrives. I am very proud of the final result.
My deepest thanks go to Whitley Strieber, Suzanne Chancellor, Lorin Cutts, and Andrea Villiere. Their support was amazing!
This was a very good interview. It is hard to capture the complexity of the books without a lot of time, but we dug pretty deep in this one hour conversation. Jim Harold is a professional podcaster, and he takes his role seriously.
New interview with author and theologian Dr. Diana Pasulka. She talks about the research for her upcoming book, American Cosmic. The Youtube video is a very straight and formal discussion by a guy who looks like what an academic should look like!
The other recommended interview is from late last year. Greg Bishop talked with Diana on Radio Mysterioso. This is by far the preferred of the two interview.
Return of the Night Messengers: Owls, UFOs and a Deeper Reality
Author and host Whitley Strieber
One of the most inspiring, beautiful and thought-provoking Dreamlands ever recorded. Mike Clelland joins Whitley to discuss his ongoing research into the relationship between owls and the close encounter experience.
Mike proceeds to tell a series of wonderful, mind-bending stories about how owls fit into the very complex picture that is close encounter.
If ever there has been a Dreamland that advances consciousness, it’s this one. We are truly at the edge of an unknown country here, and stepping forth into a new vision of reality.
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This is the text from Whitley Strieber's DREAMLAND. We did a wonderful interview, now posted on his site. I am humbled at his kind words.
Brad Steiger was one of the hard working giants in this field. I just heard that he has died, he was 82. I was honored to spend a few hours in conversation listening to his deep, hypnotic voice. I did two interviews with him where he shared many of his owl personal experiences. He made a strong impression on me, it didn't feel like I was talking with an author—he was much more of a mystic.
These two interviews play well side-by-side, creating (in a sort) a full two-hour interview. The order doesn't matter, and none of the information overlaps. Each of these audio interviews are just a little over one-hour long.
He was a gracious gentleman and visionary. He will be missed.
This text below is quite remarkable, it reads like a press release. It was posted by the CBS TV affiliate in Las Vegas. This is from Robert Bigalow, the man who talked about UFOs on 60 Minutes. I have wondered if Bigalow's appearance on such a high profile news show was part of an orchestrated release of "news" similar to the New York Times article form November of 2017. A few curious segments in the text below are highlighted.
Statement from a Senior Manager of BAASS
(Bigalow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies)
By: Caroline Bleakley
Updated: May 04, 2018
LAS VEGAS - BAASS broke new ground in professionalism by hiring, training and deploying 50 full-time staff comprising retired military intelligence and law enforcement officers, PhD level scientists, engineers, technicians, analysts, translators, and project managers to create the largest multi-disciplinary full-time team in history to investigate the UFO topic.
The investigations by BAASS provided new lines of evidence showing that the UFO phenomenon was a lot more than nuts and bolts machines that interacted with military aircraft. The phenomenon also involved a whole panoply of diverse activity that included bizarre creatures, poltergeist activity, invisible entities, orbs of light, animal and human injuries and much more. The exclusive focus on nuts and bolts machines could be considered myopic and unproductive in solving the larger mystery of UFOs.
One of the major successes of BAASS was in adopting the novel approach of utilizing the human body as a readout system for dissecting interactions with the UFO phenomenon. This novel approach aimed to circumvent the increasing evidence of deception and subterfuge by the UFO phenomenon in that multiple eyewitnesses co-located in the same vicinity frequently reported seeing widely different events. The evidence was multiplying that the UFO phenomenon was capable of manipulating and distorting human perception and therefore eyewitness testimony of UFO activity was becoming increasingly untrustworthy.
The BAASS approach was to view the human body as a readout system for UFO effects by utilizing forensic technology, the tools of immunology, cell biology, genomics and neuroanatomy for in depth study of the effects of UFOs on humans. This approach marked a dramatic shift away from the traditional norms of relying on eyewitness testimony as the central evidentiary arm in UFO investigations. The approach aimed to bypass UFO deception and manipulation of human perception by utilizing molecular forensics to decipher the biological consequences of the phenomenon.
The result of applying this new approach was a revolution in delineating the threat level of UFOs.
Click on the image for a HIrez view. Also, note the 3:33 time stamp.
A few weeks ago I was asked by two podcasters to be on their show (Oh No! with Ross and Carrie). They had seen me speak at the 2017 Ozark conference. I replied and said that I'd be a guest on their show. Then they told me they had done a podcast review of my presentation, so I listened. I was unprepared for their snarky tone, and it felt like their blend of humor and skepticism came of as sort of mean spirited. My first reaction was to cancel our interview, but we ended up in a long email dialogue. Ross said he had read my book after the conference, and now better understood the personal approach to my research.
I was clear that this is a personal journey for me, and I am not approaching this as a scientist. The interview went well, but at times you can hear both frustration and defensiveness in my voice. The discussion was fun at times and it forced me to articulate some things very clearly, things I might blow past in other interviews.
They were dismissive of some of my ideas in both their initial review of my presentation, and the recent interview.
They gave me grief about my presentation, here are three points:
My preoccupation with numbers like 333.
My claim that people see owls while listening to my voice.
They questioned why people don’t get pictures of the owls they see while listening to my voice.
On the very day they posted my interview, Carrie received something on her phone (image above). Seems three points got addressed in that one tweet. It had nullified each of the points in the short list above.
For me, this was a synchro-rebuttal from the universe—a cosmic hat-trick.
To his credit, Ross wrote this in an email to me:
Having read the book, I do get that you are not trying to be a scientist. I appreciated this passage [from The Messengers], for example:
"I am trying to be clear in the way these ideas are explored, but also clear that this is a personal journey. This is not science, and I don't pretend that it is."
“If it’s not weird, I don’t trust it.” That was the motto of Anne Strieber, the late wife of author Whitley Strieber, and her way to deal with the hundreds of claims of non-human intervention she and her husband received from the readers of Communion.
Mike Clelland, author of The Messengers, totally agrees with this idea—though he probably would add “and if it doesn’t have owls, I trust it even less.”
...This new book, Stories from the Messengers, is intended as a companion volume that will add even more depth to this journey into the most mysterious aspects of the UFO phenomenon. Something I personally feel resonates with a great deal of people, despite what conference organizers or the TTSA consultants might think. Because if there’s something that’s sorely lacking in this ‘new’ interest in UFOs by mainstream media –oops! Sorry: I mean ‘UAPs’ (gotta get those acronym right, folks)– is an acknowledgement of how the phenomenon refuses to conform to simplistic explanations when viewed in its totality, instead of edited accounts cherry-picked by researchers or black-and-white videos from UFO encounters with military jets; another thing lacking from those smartly doctored gun camera videos, is the profound impact these type of events have on many who experience them; and when they find themselves with the rug of consensual reality swept from under their feet and in a state of total confusion and despair, the owls might show up with those big unblinking eyes of theirs –a casual reminder that they need to pay attention to the road ahead.
Mike Clelland wrote this book for those kind of people.
We at The Daily Grail are very thankful Mike accepted to share a chapter of Stories from the Messengers as an exclusive for our readers. We hope you enjoy it, and if you do, that you share it and also pick up a copy in either a paperback or e-book format:
I've written an handful of books, some about UFOs and some about outdoor skills. The last month of my life has involved working on an audio book for Stories from The Messengers. This project has been much harder than I could have ever expected. It means scrutinizing every single word of the book. This afternoon I read this passage into the microphone—and it just sings to me.
Kristin was in Alpine Texas waiting for the midnight train to Austin. This was in the early 1990’s and she was in her mid 20’s, a time when she had given herself over to wilderness travel. She’d just finished ten days of solo hiking in the Chihuahuan Desert about one hundred miles south of the train station. She stood alone on the dark on the platform, and as usual she was sobbing. It tore her heart out to leave the wilderness and return to her life in the city. When the train approached she collected herself and wiped away her tears.
This story also includes owls, UFOs, healing skills, an NDE and a OBE. I reference the goddess Diana as well as St Francis of Assisi. Plus, there is an amazing story about glowing. This is the longest chapter in the book.
_____________________________________ this was origonaly posted on April 13th 2018
