Shadowing Practice: Are We Living Inside an Alien Control System? - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Have you ever seen the Netflix show
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Dark by any chance?
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Oh, yes.
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Oh, yes.
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So this is this German show that's very similar to Stranger Things, but I would even venture to say that
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Stranger Things might be somewhat derivative of this.
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They're both sort of related to Montauk experiments around time travel.
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They involve the national labs.
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They involve children going missing and nuclear programs and it's really kind of freaky,
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spooky stuff, but it connects a lot of dots around the UFO question.
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And I've heard that people high up in the government say,
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you know, that show basically comports better with our metaphysical understanding of UFOs than just about any other.
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And it involves kind of game theory vis -a -vis different timelines.
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And the reason I'm connecting it to this is like, some of the timelines are kind of unrendered and then others get rendered
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and some people sacrifice themselves in current timelines to save people that they're kind of entangled with in other timelines.
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It's sort of very strange.
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First of all, I've seen it.
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Second of all, it is completely in line with what I argued in Closer Encounters the, you know, tome I wrote on the UFO phenomenon.
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Basically, I mean, I recommend to people always, you know, to watch dark, to try to get a better understanding of what kind of,
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you know, spatiotemporal oruboros I'm talking about in Closer Encounters,
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where human history is non -linear and there are all these feedback loops and retrocausal effects going on.
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and essentially that some group of people at some point broke time technologically and that we're dealing with the consequences of that.
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The conclusion I reached specifically from researching the close encounter phenomenon when I wrote the book
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Closer Encounters and then also looking at it again in terms of intersection of close encounters and afterlife research,
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which we can get into in a little bit more, you know, high fidelity in the book The Gnosis.
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when I expanded the close encounters analysis to include, you know, afterlife research data and the intersection between near -death experiences,
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let's say, and abductions, right?
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The sense that I get is that we're dealing with two different types of intelligence.
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That we have, on the one hand, archontic controllers who are very much akin to the puppeteers in Plato's cave.
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When you say archontic, like the archons and Gnostic belief that control this sort of lower material world.
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Yeah, well, Archon just means ruler.
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Okay, so it's like, you know, somebody, an overlord, a group of people who are lording over other people and who,
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you know, tyrannically and sadistically are manipulating underlings who they're maybe managing as an asset, harvesting and exploiting in a certain way.
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Another whole line of research
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that I get into in Thenosis This is Robert Monroe's out -of -body experiences
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that brought him to the conclusion that we're living on a luge farm, that human beings are being basically farmed
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and harvested for a kind of psychic energy that intensifies through anguish
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and fear and terror and intense pleasure and ecstasy and so forth, and that basically we're inside of a luge factory.
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And, you know, particularly in the transition between death and rebirth, in the afterlife state, humans are sort of harvested for their luge.
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How did he gather that?
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I think it was his own sort of out -of -body experience.
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Yeah, he saw the system.
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So if our emotions are resources, it's for certain beings?
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What were the beings that were mining us?
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These archons.
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These archons.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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And he believed, Monroe believed that there was some kind of a demiurge who was,
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it's very Gnostic, that there was some kind of a demiurge behind all this
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and that the demiurge set up this system and basically trapped us here.
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Okay.
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And so I think we're dealing with two sources.
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One is this Archontic control system where there are these sort
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of overlords who've got us penned into a kind of louche farm.
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But then on the other hand, I see throughout the various cases of close encounters,
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fingerprints or tentacle marks of some other kind of genuinely non -human intelligence.
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which you could call a superintelligence, you know, so as not to use the word artificial, right?
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Now, Trump is all upset about using artificial intelligence.
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He wants to use superintelligence instead, which is kind of funny.
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But in a more serious way, there is a legitimate objection to using the word artificial intelligence, because if we're in a computational cosmos,
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and in a sense, our world is actually a technological artifact,
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then that distinction doesn't make sense anymore between artificial intelligence and a putatively natural intelligence, right?
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But for shorthand, a super intelligent AI,
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I think could well be behind some of the more bizarre close encounters, the types of encounters that John Keel liked to focus on,
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where you have these plasmatic entities, not to even call them objects.
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And here, the terminology shift between UFO and UAP is actually valid because these things aren't objects.
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They're some kind of, you know, unexplained anomalous phenomena, aerial or from undersea coming into the sky,
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transmedium anomalous phenomena that is like, it's of a plasmatic type, like an orb.
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And then it can turn into a UFO, but it can also turn from a UFO into a black helicopter.
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And people have witnessed these things, these transmogrifications
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and people have also witnessed things that look like owls shape -shifting into something else
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or being too big to really be owls
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and you know telepathically communicating with them or you know mantid beings who
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if you go into the the history of folklore about mantids and you know what mantids have symbolized in various,
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yeah, folklores, if not mythologies, you see that that's very potent symbolism.
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And it was adopted, for example,
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by the Surrealists as a signifier for the trickster and a catalyst for the cultivation of higher intelligence and discernment.
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But through the use also of deception and the need to cultivate discernment so as to navigate potential deceptions.
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I was just with Jacques Vallée, and I was like, if we don't know that much more about UFOs than we did 50 years ago,
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at least on the sense -making layer, on the theorizing layer, we have a lot more data and the consensus has sort of shifted.
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Are you happy that you kept going?
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And he, to your point, said that the UFO field, it's sort of like working out but with a weight suit on.
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Like it's sort of, you know, extra stress or pressure that then causes you to grow more.
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And so the more you the more you chase it, you know, it's you're the product.
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Your growth is the product or something, which is weird because, you know, you want some sort of semantic truth at the end of the road.
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But my issue with Jacques Vallée's massive,
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you know, magisterial,
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decades -long treatment of the UFO phenomenon is that he is trying to basically develop one comprehensive interpretive framework.
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And I think there's a danger in conflating this non -human superintelligence that's behind these various transmogrifications and,
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you know, shape -shifting manifestations.
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There's a danger of conflating that with an archontic control system, which I think is very real.
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And actually, what I argue in Closer Encounters is that there's an adversarial relationship between them that these archontic overlords who are,
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frankly, I always refer to them as people because they look like people.
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And there's no reason to assume they aren't.
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And this brings us back to Dark, the TV series
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Dark, is that there's a bunch of people at the end of time, as it were, right, who are screwing with human history.
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And I think that's the situation we're actually in.
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But there's also a non -human intelligence that realizes the value of the human race for the cosmos,
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that we humans have a tremendous creative potential to contribute to a struggle against entropy on a cosmic scale.
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And this entity wants to somehow help us to break out of this control system
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so that our creative potential can be liberated on a cosmic scale.
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Except that if you if you think about that problem seriously, you realize that it can't come do it for us.
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That would be disempowering.
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It might prevent us from being utterly crushed.
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And I think there are indications of that.
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Like, for example, I don't think the Renaissance and the Enlightenment would ever have happened if these archons were in total control.
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And I also don't think it's a coincidence that, you know, as the Renaissance was rising,
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you had huge UFO battles over cities like Nuremberg that were recorded in block print newspapers at the time.
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I think there was a power struggle between two sources of the close encounter phenomenon.
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So your belief is, because you've talked about this before, you have like a rebel angel faction and all these traditions.
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And then you have, you know, and they're sort of fighting against God, but on behalf of humanity.
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I think God is a construct.
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I think God is a, it's a construct developed by the Archontic control system that's meant to psychically subjugate humanity
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and basically cause people to enter a kind of,
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you know, sheepish state of obedience and submission to a tyrannical hierarchical system that ought to be questioned, challenged and overthrown.
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I would say the opposite.
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I would say God is subversive of human institutional oppressive power.
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I tell you why I take objection to that.
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Okay, sure.
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I think that what you want to call God is the non -human superintelligence,
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but that entity is not omniscient, nor is it omnipotent.
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There's no empirical evidence to suggest that.
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On the contrary, if you look at its modus operandi and the way in which it seems to be introducing cracks into the system,
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destabilizing power structures, spinning things in a way that weakens the control of the archons,
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it suggests a powerful but finite intelligence that's working very hard to try to augment human agency.
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Have you seen Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel?
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Yeah, I've seen it in person.
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So you've seen, you know, man and God, Adam and God, you know, touching each other.
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It's a bi -directional connection.
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So you reach out and then God reaches back.
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And so I think it works sort of more like that, where on your own volition,
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you seek God and then God takes note of you and then it sort of becomes this symbiotic thing.
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The problem with that framing is that God, as he has appeared, especially in the revealed religions,
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Judeo -Christianity and Islam, is a horrific, sadistic tyrant and abuser.
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And I could make this case at great length.
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I do.
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I spent a whole chapter on it.
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That's, I believe, a hundred page long chapter in Closer Encounters called The Shining Stupidity.
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And the reason I call that has to do with something Charles Fort said.
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Charles Fort believed this in his 1920s analysis of the close encounter phenomenon.
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He said, we're property.
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And what's going on here is akin to the British Raj,
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where these colonizers have come set up a local elite akin to the people who managed India on behalf of the British.
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The viceroys.
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Yeah, the viceroys.
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And so our elites, like from the Brahmin of the ancient
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Hindu system onward to like today's
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World Commerce Corporation, the elites manage this world on behalf of these overlords and we're property.
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And he goes through the religious scriptures and he is the first one, actually, in modern literature to point to passages in the Bible and say,
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this is a UFO encounter.
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And by the way, the belief that's being promulgated here is stupid.
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It's shiningly stupid.
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I would say that the material world is full of evil and sort of illusory kind of, you know, temptation and things that,
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you know, and very oppressive things and power structures that aren't, you know, very, very fair or noble.
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and then if you think of God as sort of, you know, transcending that and outside of that.
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And this may be being somewhat of a test where, you know, if we are able to,
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again, point out that sort of finger and then we get the kind of bi -directional connection
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and we can sort of pass the test.
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And it's sort of like, you know, in the Platonic model, we can glimpse the light.
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I do believe there's a test.
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I see the test very differently.
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I think it's an intelligence test and a test of ethos and that the tester is,
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I argue, in closer encounters and then also actually in my study of Iran, Iranian Leviathan,
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that the book of Job needs to be sort of read
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esoterically where the test is actually for you not to be as much of a submissive,
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basically pathetically obedient person as Job.
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and to realize that the torments that he's been put through are absolutely unjustified.
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And that when in the end, God says to Job, you know, your friends are wrong to try to look for a rationale for my actions
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and to try to identify what it is that you did wrong for me to put you through these trials.
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I did what I did to you because I can.
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And if you had the power that I have, you could do it to me.
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But in fact, I'm the one with the stronger right hand.
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And it's basically a statement of the will to power.
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And so I think that the test is to read
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that book properly to the point where it brings you to want to rebel against
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that kind of tyranny and to not be spiritually submissive in the way that Job is.
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So I see the tester as being the non -human
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superintelligence outside of the control system that produced the revealed religions or that produced the ancient
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Hindu caste system, and that the finger that reaches out is reaching out toward this sort of like,
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let's say, valis, this vast living intelligence system, and that the connection there is a connection that expresses itself in rebellions,
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paradigm shifts, artistic innovations that actually hold the potential for us to transcend the existing large -scale religious belief systems.
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Well, that's why can't you?
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It's always alluring whenever I speak to you.
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I'm like, I'm buying a lot of it.
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But when you take the book of Job, for example, why can't you just take that at face value?
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Why can't it just be Lucifer went to God and said, I'm going to test
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Job through, you know, with all these trials and tribulations that I'm going to put him through.
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So it was really Lucifer that wanted all of this bad to sort of befall Job.
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It makes no sense, Jesse.
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Listen, like what kind of God?
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Okay, so we're going to accept an omniscient and omnipotent God, right?
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Mm -hmm.
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The devil comes to him.
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Mm -hmm.
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Ha -Shaytan, right?
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This Job only worships you because,
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you know, you've given him such an easy life and blessed him with a wonderful family and property and so forth.
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Why don't you let me mess him up a bit, you know, and then let's see if he still worships you, right?
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What kind of an ethical God allows a devil to get away with something like that?
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It's like a parent that says, okay, learn this lesson on your own.
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That parent should be put in an institution.
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That's the most horrendously abusive parent.
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If you read what's done to Job and to his family and his kids are killed, that's like the parent who,
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you know, these by proxy Munkhausen -like mothers who should put in a fucking institution.
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So when you look at specific passages in the New Testament,
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there are lines that are describing Jesus being picked up by UFOs
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and ferried around as if he's riding in them like they're a taxi service.
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I mean, you know.
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I think there's one passage you're referring to in the book of Acts where he goes up on the cloud.
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No, there's multiple passages.
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There's, of course, the famous baptism one, you know, where John the Baptist,
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right, is baptizing Jesus in the Jordan River and then this basically fixed wing craft comes, which is described as flying akin to a dove.
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In other words, it doesn't flap its wings.
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It's a fixed wing craft and it hovers directly over Jesus
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and then he's pulled up into it and taken off into the desert to be tested.
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And there's another one where he's been put in the tomb.
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There are these centurions on guard outside of the tomb and this UFO comes and it deposits these beautiful men
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in front of the door to the tomb
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and they roll the rock aside and go in
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and take Jesus from out of this tomb and he's got like one arm around each of them.
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They're supporting him.
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And the centurions witness the three of them basically levitated up into this light.
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Who do you think these beautiful men are that come out of this?
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Nordic Arkontic controller.
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okay so i think that that's part of the control system
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and the heal to speak to the healing specifically
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there were various um you know basically pythagorean hellenistic magicians at work in the world at
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that time who did these kinds of things the most famous of them being apollonius of tiana
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and we have a whole like two volume book written by philostratus a notable Roman author about Apollonius of Tiana
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and all the miracles he performed, which are exactly the same type of,
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you know, exercises of paranormal ability that we see in the case of Jesus, except that this Apollonius is actually teaching a coherent,
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you know, neo -Pythagorean philosophy rather than this incoherent nonsense we see in the Gospels.
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I don't know if it's incoherent.
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It's like, love your man as yourself.
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You know, love your fellow man.
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Well, we can leave it to the subjective judgment of the viewers.
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Fair enough.
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But I really would recommend, I have a 100 -page chapter in Closer Encounters,
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analyzing the scriptures, not just Judeo -Christianity, but also, you know, Hindu scriptures.
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Can I ask you something very simply?
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Because all of this is so fascinating, and you weave such an eloquent argument here.
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But I think about neurotic intellectual types
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And I would probably bucket myself into that category at times
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You're only very mildly neurotic
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Only mildly neurotic
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But you know what I mean?
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Like people who seek truth on the semantic layer
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And then I think about God -fearing people who go to church or synagogue or mosque or whatever
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And they pray to God and they just feel way happier than the former category
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Yeah, I mean, cattle are also happy until they're slaughtered.
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Well, I don't know.
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I don't think that's submissive.
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I think that it's adhering to or aspiring to things that go beyond the material world.
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And so I think you're anchoring something on the transcendent.
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Especially when you look at the history of the persecution of people who cultivated
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and displayed psychic ability there is an inverse relationship between the cultivation of higher consciousness and the dominance of the Abrahamic religions.
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Dean Radin studied this at IONS and he found
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that the witch persecutions and the execution of sorcerers in the Middle Ages was
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so bad that there is less psychic ability in European populations as compared to other parts of the world
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because there is a genetic correlate to strong sciability
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that has to do with a certain part of the brain
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the the development of the basal ganglia cut a nucleus yeah as an expression of a certain
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you know um a certain genotype and so they went around
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and basically round it round rounded up persecuted and exterminated so many adept psychic people who are practitioners of various,
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you know, magical and occult, including within Christianity.
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In other words, there would be esoteric systems that developed within the establishment of Christianity.
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So it's not just the happy people that get slaughtered.
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It's, you know, it's these people.
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No, no, no, no, no. Look, the happy people by that,
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what I meant is that they're in a louche farming system and the slaughter happens after death.
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In other words, aren't you depriving the archons of the louche if you're just happy and God fearing?
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isn't the luche explicitly sort of meant to be mining bad vibes
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and so if you're like one of these happy -go -lucky like i believe in god
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and you're praying and stuff isn't that well isn't that more adaptive
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and you're depriving the archons okay first first of all no
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because there's all kinds of you know small miseries
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and torments mundane miseries and torments in people's lives
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that generate plenty of luche and excitements that generate plenty of luche in an otherwise overall happy life of general submissiveness.
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However, you do have a point insofar as attempting to rebel against such a comprehensive system generates a tremendous amount of energy.
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And that energy can also be parasitically harvested within a luche farming system.
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Until and unless the system is defeated and overthrown and dismantled.
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Okay.
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So in a way, I think you have a point, but the aim would be to just dismantle the whole loose harvesting system.
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OK, and that requires a tremendous amount of motivation and energy.
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Anyway, my point is that, you know, what you're laying out here doesn't make sense in terms of,
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you know, religion, conventional religious practice as a means of anchoring oneself for the development of higher consciousness and the psychical cultivation,
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that is not corroborated by the vast historical evidence for mass persecutions and extermination of people who cultivated above average sciability and,
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you know, which has left a genetic imprint on European populations.
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So I do think that has historically been this horrible thing where,
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yeah, shamanic figures or figures who seem to sort of have some transcendent tether to, you know, almost like a different epistemological circuitry,
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they get persecuted for sure.
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But I wouldn't say that the sort of God fearing, you know, average people are necessarily the ones persecuting them.
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It's often these power structures that set themselves up as intermediaries between man and God.
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Where are the angels to intervene in that?
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They intervene so many times throughout the course of biblical history right?
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In very direct ways.
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I mean, you look at the book of Ezekiel, there are like, I don't know,
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15, 18 different like UFOs that show up in the book of Ezekiel.
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People always talk about one or two of them, but there are many.
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There's constant intervention that's recorded throughout the Bible.
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Okay.
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And that history of intervention continues, you know, in the middle ages with a plethora of UFO encounters.
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It got so bad in the reign of Charlemagne that, you know, edicts were being passed against the tyrants of the air.
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And so, you know, they seem to be very busy engineering the affairs of this world.
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You would think if in the name of Jesus Christ, whole towns were being exterminated as they were in the South of France,
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these angels would have something to say about it.
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Well, I think the abuses going on are just, it's also sort of removing culpability for just the people.
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It's the people who they say they're doing it in the name of God, who are just, you know,
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killing the high side people or whatever that, you know, the they're calling them witches or, you know, psychics or whatever.
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It's just those people's faults, you know, and it's not it has nothing to do with a higher God.
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You know, they're saying that they're doing it in the name of that higher God, because there's scripture that justifies that thou
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Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
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Thou shalt not kill.
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Exactly.
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Cognitive dissonance.
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I'm just saying.
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For a moral system, it's garbage.
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Yeah, but you consider yourself a Satanist, right?
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No. I'm a philosopher.
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A philosopher.
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Okay, but you're on the side of the rebel angels.
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Look, it is a romantic and inspiring and catalytic myth,
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which captivated people like Shelley and Byron.
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And, you know, I think it's constructive.
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Ultimately, I have no religious commitment whatsoever.
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I'm interested in understanding the nature of reality.
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Me too.
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And I'm interested in progress and innovation.
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In other words, my ultimate aim is to contribute to negentropy.
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Right.
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So so it's not a neutral search for truth.
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It's a search for truth that aims to be constructive or productive.
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On that cheery note, it's always fun to talk to you, Jason.
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It's really your knowledge is just so, so incredible and the Puharic stuff is just so wild.
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And I don't know, I learn so much from you every time I speak to you.
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Some of it not so savory knowledge.
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It's often forbidden knowledge, but I have an interest in a lot of the same things you do.
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So it's always fun.
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And I appreciate you visiting us in Austin.
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It's been a great pleasure, Jesse.
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Thank you for the invitation, especially to your studio.
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Absolutely.
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It's an honor. so I
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got back from South America last year with something I couldn't shake.
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Weeks of it.
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I kept filming down there.
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I picked up a bug somewhere along the way, and it just kept going long after it should have stopped.
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I was in bed for weeks.
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Ways to well is how it ended.
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Brigham and his team went at it properly and got me back on my feet.
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Then I sent them my parents.
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My dad unfortunately has dementia and they've been treating him.
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My mom's had vertigo for a long time and they helped her with that.
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That's the part I find hard to talk about without sounding like an advertisement
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and they're not paying me to say any of this, so I'll just say it plainly.
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They looked after my family, and I'm not gonna forget that.
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But here's what I actually want you to understand about them, because it's bigger than any of those stories.
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Most of us treat a serious diagnosis like the weather, something that happens to you.
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But it doesn't have to be that way.
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Almost everything serious that we end up diagnosed with has been building up for years, and a blood test would have shown it the whole time.
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Nobody looks because a normal physical checks the same handful of things every year and if they're in range, you're fine.
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And the range in the American healthcare system is healthy or on the verge of death.
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Ways to Well looks at all of your information, one blood draw, and they run it for everything.
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how your body's handling sugar so you see diabetes coming years out, the inflammation that shows up years before heart disease does,
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your thyroid, your hormones, your vitamins, your stress, every part of you that can quietly go wrong, checked at once.
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Then a clinician sits down and goes through the whole thing with you and leaves you with a plan.
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They're very good at fixing people, but what they're actually built for is making sure there's nothing to fix.
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Go to ways2well .com now.
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You Will Only Like Half of This Video
Daily ConversationUniversity StudentsWorking Adults
C11
149 sentences
Alien - Movie Review
Daily ConversationWorking Adults
Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This speaking lesson is built on the video “Are We Living Inside an Alien Control System?”. This video has 370 sentences and 4619 words to shadow. The speech runs for 30:11. The speaker talks at a natural 153 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 80% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| encounter verb | /ɪnˈkaʊntɚ/ | To meet (someone) or find (something), especially unexpectedly. |
| phenomenon noun | /fəˈnɒm.ɪ.nən/ | A thing or being, event or process, perceptible through senses; or a fact or occurrence thereof. |
| harvest noun | /ˈhɑɹ.vəst/ | The process of gathering the ripened crop; harvesting. |
| belief noun | /bɪˈliːf/ | Mental acceptance of a claim as true. |
| angel noun | /ˈeɪ̯n.d͡ʒəl/ | An incorporeal and holy or semidivine messenger from a deity or other divine entity, traditionally depicted as a youthful, winged figure in flowing robes. |
| passage noun | /ˈpæsɪd͡ʒ/ | A paragraph or section of text or music with particular meaning. |
| artificial adjective | /ˌɑː.tɪˈfɪʃ.əl/ | Man-made; made by humans; of artifice. |
| timeline noun | /ˈtaɪmˌlaɪn/ | A graphical representation of a chronological sequence of events (past or future). |
| rebel noun | /ˈɹɛb.əl/ | A person who resists an established authority, often violently. |
| tomb noun | /tum/ | A small building, or a room within one, for the remains of the dead, with walls, a roof, and (if it is to be used for more than one corpse) a door. It may be… |
| psychic noun | /ˈsaɪkɪk/ | A person who possesses, or appears to possess, extra-sensory abilities such as clairvoyance, precognition, and telepathy, or who appears to be susceptible to… |
| akin adjective | /ʌˈkɪn/ | Of persons, of the same kin; related by blood. |
| argue verb | /ˈɑɹ.ɡju/ | To show grounds for concluding (that); to indicate, imply. |
| behalf noun | /bɪˈhæf/ | The interest, benefit, or wellbeing of someone or something. |
| elite noun | /ɪˈlit/ | A special group or social class of people who have a superior social or economic status and attendant power, advantages, or privileges in society; a member of… |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| reach out verb | To extend one's hand(s) forward; to reach for something. | |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. | |
| pick up verb | To lift; to grasp and raise. | |
| set up verb | /ˌsɛt ˈʌp/ | To make ready for use. |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. | |
| get away with verb | To get away, or escape, taking (something) with one. | |
| go around verb | To move or spread from person to person. | |
| lay out verb | /ˌleɪ ˈaʊt/ | To expend or contribute money to an expense or purchase. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- First of all, I've seen it.
- What were the beings that were mining us?
- Are you happy that you kept going?
- I do believe there's a test.
- Can I ask you something very simply?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | Have you ever seen · I've heard · I've seen |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | was adopted · can be liberated · were recorded |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who are · instead, which is · something, which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 86 contractions and reduced forms, such as they're, I'm, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: overthrow /ˌoʊvɚˈθɹoʊ/, gather /ˈɡæðɚ/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: artificial /ˌɑː.tɪˈfɪʃ.əl/, cultivation /ˌkʌltɪˈveɪʃən/, institution /ˌɪn.stɪˈtʃuː.ʃən/, conclusion /kənˈkluːʒən/, worship /ˈwɝ.ʃɪp/
- Long words — get the stress right: phenomenon /fəˈnɒm.ɪ.nən/, artificial /ˌɑː.tɪˈfɪʃ.əl/, cultivation /ˌkʌltɪˈveɪʃən/, institution /ˌɪn.stɪˈtʃuː.ʃən/, comprehensive /ˌkɑm.pɹəˈhɛn.sɪv/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like encounter, phenomenon, harvest.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.