Jasun Horsley, How Culture Shapers Spin Aleister Crowley |457|

Jasun Horsey has a razor sharp critique of how the occult has become part of our pedocracy culture.

photo by: Skeptiko

[Clip 00:00:00 – 00:00:09]

I have an interview coming up in a minute with Jason Horsley. We talk a lot about the cultural influence of Aleister Crowley. Do you need any more evidence than a Scooby doo movie or a Buffy the Vampire episode?

So, this is a really long interview. I think there’s a ton of good stuff in it. 

Here are some clips from the show. 

Jasun Horsley: [00:00:30] You bring a case like Crowley and you put him under the microscope, and you see what I saw with The Vice of Kings. How far was he willing to take that? He was willing to take that all the way, he was looking for what he perceived as the most evil act possible, the unforgivable sin in the Bible, the sin against the Holy spirit that’s unforgivable and then committing it, as a way to, the the path of trangression, completely free himself from social conditioning, from false morality. And we’re living in a culture and climate that advocates this, it’s all over.

I mean, if somebody is consciously deceiving, they would have to also be deluded as well. They would have to have some rationale for doing it that would be fundamentally delusional. I mean, I do believe there’s an innate moral sense that we have biologically even, we have a sense of what’s right and wrong in any given moment.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:01:30] You know, how effective you can be with 90% to 95% truth… and win your trust, so that I can then use that to kind of switch things in a different way.

Jasun Horsley: [00:01:44] It’s spin isn’t it? My sense with Levenda, and he did help me see something ironically, is that I started to get a sense that it was to do with ideological affiliation, if you like. That Levenda, my impression anyway, he’s ideologically affiliated with occult values and systems and methodologies.

 [box]

Listen Now:

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

[box]

Subscribe:

[one_third][/one_third] [one_third][/one_third] [one_third_last][/one_third_last] [/box]

Click here for Forum Discussion 

Click Here for Jasun Horsley’s website    

 Alex Tsakiris: [00:02:10] Welcome to Skeptiko where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers, and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris, and today we welcome Jasun Horsley back to Skeptiko.

Jasun is the author of several books. Including Prisoner of Infinity, which we talked about during a previous episode of Skeptiko. Also, The Vice of Kings: How Socialism, Occultism, and the Sexual Revolution Engineered a Culture of Abuse. A book I am sure we will be referencing frequently today. And a new upcoming book titled 16 Maps of Hell: The Unravelling of a Hollywood Superculture. I don’t know if we’ll get a chance to talk about that, but I hope we do, it sounds intriguing. I don’t really do the book interview thing, as you know Jasun, but I’ve just got to let people know about those fantastic books, because they’re going to want to check them out.

I also wanted to let them know about, you have a terrific podcast, The Liminalist, that liminal are between, well between whatever this is and whatever that is. And an outstanding website blog which we’ll be referencing as well, called Auticulture. And of course, people can find all of that and follow you. 

So all of that stuff is great, but I really wanted to do something different. I first wanted to reintroduce people to you, we did have that interview before, but you continue to do just such phenomenally outstanding work and produce stuff, and I’m just blow away. I think it’s brilliant and every time I go to dip into some of your stuff, I’m like, I need to just grab a piece and I wind up just getting more and more and more, listening to more, reading more.  Your brilliant, brilliant writing, brilliant audio presentation, this dialogue thing you have going on is terrific. 

But the other thing that I really like and respect about you Jasun is your personal courage that you demonstrate over and over again about just putting yourself out there, and a lot of people can do that, but they don’t have the tenacity that you have. One of the things that really just compelled me to contact you again was this email exchange you have with Peter Levenda and we’re going to try and unravel that in this larger context.

But your tenacity to continue to go after Levenda in a very appropriate way in these email exchanges, and I can’t tell you the number of exchanges I’ve had with people where I go, “This guy clearly, he’s psyop, he’s psyop 100%, why are you buying into this shit?” And you, rather than just ranting and no one ever listens to me because I can’t back it up, you back it up man, you back it up in the dialogue you’ve had with him and you back it up, in terms of pulling together a lot of other pieces.

So I really, really appreciate that about what you do and I’m super excited to have you back on Skeptiko.

Jasun Horsley: [00:05:28] Well, thanks Alex, thanks for all those kind words and that last point, because that is one of the hardest things in life, is to confront people when we feel that we’re being deceived and there’s just a whole social protocol that says, thou shalt not do that. And it’s a fine line to all because it can be driven by neurotic things, I’m aware of that. Like, they might have father issues or brother issues and certainly, I got triggered in my exchange with Peter Levenda, and it would have been easy for me to back off because of just being not sure of myself and he’s an authority figure and so on and so forth. But you’re right, I didn’t, I persisted. And then when it came to The Vice of Kings, I did a lot more digging, as you know if you’ve read it. I found an awful lot of much more compelling evidence around that.

So it seemed like it was worth it, it was worth standing up for my own personal sense of integrity and being willing to confront this figure as a way to really get a better sense of the kind of deception that goes on in this community and in this world and around these subjects and really like rubber meeting road, make it personal and practical and experiential, not abstract, not theoretical. It’s much more exciting, much more interesting, it’s riskier, but I think the end result is a lot more meaningful.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:07:08] Well, you know, I think there’s just a ton to unpack there and we’re going to try and do that. I think we have to back up and talk about the Peter Levenda incident that, you know, as you said, in some sense it’s the whole story in some ways. It’s the whole story that we’re going to tell today about deception, about evil, and how we understand evil, what our role is in evil, what our culture’s role isn’t evil, what our intelligence organization’s role is evil. And this deception part, I think is just so brilliant, the way that you put it, because I think we’re all trying to wrestle with to what extent we’re being deceived, who the deceptors are, whether we’re deceiving ourselves, whether our culture is engineered to deceive us? I could go on and on.

But what I’ve thrown up there on the screen, which is kind of what I wanted to base this on, because I mentioned to you when I sent you that email, I’m writing this book. So this book, I don’t know why anyone writes books these days, but you write books and some people read them and I’ve read your books and they impacted me. And I guess that’s all I hope to do with my book, Why Evil Matters, is just to maybe reach a couple of people at the right time who go, “Gee, why aren’t we really dealing with this evil question in a kind of more deeper intellectual kind of pre-scientific way?” And that’s really the premise of the book. 

And I think, when you talk about evil, one thing that comes up a lot to me in the conversations I have is the Aleister Crowley thing. And I call it the Aleister Crowley test. Do you know what I mean by that? Like, if you just tell people, you bring up Aleister Crowley, and you know you’re going to get a couple of canned reactions, and it’s the ability people have I think, to handle that topic, however they, to me is almost like a shortcut litmus test for where they’re at in this larger understanding of evil, deception left-hand path. And both personally, but also just in kind of the cultural spy, Peter Levenda thing that we’ll get into. But as usual, I’m kind of laying a lot on the table and jumping way ahead of the story. 

So let me back up or let you back up, if you could. You’ve written brilliantly and extensively on Crowley, can you give folks just, if they’re coming at this new and they can’t understand the deep dive inside baseball stuff we’ve gotten into, back up. Who is Aleister Crowley? What does he represent in our culture? Why is he important? Why does he matter? Can you just kind of start with the basics maybe? 

Jasun Horsley: [00:10:22] Well, I guess even starting with the basics, there are a lot of different angles. So where I tend to start with Crowley and what seems to me, what makes him indisputably significant is his influence, and from two perspectives. Like the proof of his has influenced is indisputable. I mean, the easy go-to is pop music of the 60s and 70s, he’s on the cover of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and he’s cited in David Bowie’s Hunky Dory, which was very influential for me as an adolescent, and so on Jimmy Page and Marilyn Manson. There’s just no end, he’s influenced several decades and several different musical movements. So from the one side there’s that, that’s irrefutable. 

But the other side is how did he have that much influence and how deliberate and how intentional was that? And I look at, in The Vice of Kings, the evidence that Crowley was not what he seems, in terms of this creative occult outlier, this iconic [unclear 00:11:36] is pursuing these extreme transgressions in order to liberate humanity. That’s half the story, but it’s also maybe a half a cover story. And that his influence, I think was at least partially assisted, let’s say, just as there’s evidence that Crowley was an intelligence agent and an operative, and was functioning at that level.

It tends to be that the biographies have separated those two things out. On the one hand he’s just an independent artist, writer, occultist, on the other hand, he also dabbled in intelligence work, and that they’re almost like separate things. 

Now, the connecting areas, of course, he was member of occult AA which was a splinter of the OTO.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:12:32] Hold on, before we bury people, there are so many parts of that. So we bury people with all these acronyms and we bury people with the cover story. But I do want to kind of back up because when you talk about the cover story, we also have to understand the other touchpoint that Crowley is today inside of the magic culture that is kind of a growing subculture, Netflix culture, streaming. It’s interwoven through all that, that the idea of the occult, that there’s something hidden, that there’s something you don’t know about, but it’s a deeper truth. And there’s this do what thou wilt, famous ethos that is kind of woven through our culture in another way that we don’t quite understand its origins until people tell you about Aleister Crowley, and they kind of whisper it in your ear, and then you go, “Oh, wow, you mean there’s this other secret Sage of the esoteric, that I need to kind of get in touch with.”

Let me do this if I can. I pulled out some clips, from some really excellent interviews you’ve done. Let me play some of those.   

Jasun Horsley: [00:13:50] My first contact with Crowley was through David Bowie, the album Hunky Dory, which I heard in my brother’s bedroom, and that might seem like a trivial thing or an odd place to start, but how a virus enters us is very key, I think, how open we are, how vulnerable we are in that moment is going to determine how infected we are. And I’d say that that was the case with the Crowley virus, that there was a delivery device, it was a combination of the culture and my family environment and the David Bowie, who I discovered thereby through my brother, who was never a David Bowie fan, and I was very rarely in his bedroom because he didn’t let me hang around with him at all, he was an older brother. So I think, you know, you talk about priming, like if you have a really positive experience of something the first time around, then you’re going to be much more susceptible to ignoring the negative aspects of it because of that initial priming.

So, in some weird way I think I was primed for Crowley by that combination of hearing David Bowie sing his name in my brother’s attic bedroom.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:14:58] So there’s a lot to unpack there. Let me just turn it over to you. What are some of your thoughts listening to that again?

Jasun Horsley: [00:15:08] Well, I mean, it’s still going on, that’s the thing. I mean, the reason I write these books as I do, and this latest one about Hollywood is getting much more specific. I’m trying to extract the virus. I’m trying to purge the virus from my system, but at the same time, there’s a reason why I let it in which isn’t just nefarious and malignant. Like, there’s a reason one can develop immunity because it’s quite topical with all this stuff around with COVID now. But one diverts immunity by exposure to viruses or what we call viruses, and one can observe their effects and thereby, you know, analyze and understand them. 

So where I’m at now is, I let this virus in and I’m trying to get it out and necessary to getting it out of my system somehow seems to be breaking it down to its constituent parts and understanding what made me vulnerable to it, and what what’s the affinity or sympathy between myself and my own trauma and that cultural virus. And then that leads to these books and these analyses, which hopefully are helpful to others.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:16:22] Hold on on that. What if it really is about deception? What if it is, not even so much part of your personal journey, what if it’s an unnecessary step along your personal journey? And that’s one thing I’d like to at least explore, both in my book and in this interview, is that, just because Crowley is there, and just because Johnny Depp is wrapping his arm around Damien Echols, who was the Crowley follower from the West Memphis Three and over and over again our culture has told us Crowleyan, it’s cool. Maybe we don’t have to go there. Maybe we don’t have to explore that, and we can step past it. And I’m not saying that’s it’s like all evil and bad if you do it, I’m just questioning, as I think you were, because there are two ways to read what you’re saying. One is to say it’s there and you’ve got to deal with it, and the other is to say, let’s be informed beforehand so maybe we can step around the pothole in the first place.

Jasun Horsley: [00:17:28] It makes sense, certainly, but this is a sort of conundrum, I have. I also have it around it around psychedelics because I feel that psychedelics was a mistake for me by and large. And therefore, maybe I can use my experience of them to help others avoid the same pitfalls. So this is definitely the case with Crowley and occultism, I would warn others against it. 

I mean, this is right to the core of your questioning of why evil matters, which is an interesting phrase in itself. Because you’re talking about the allure and the cool of Crowley and all of that stuff, very prominent in our culture as I said, since the 60s on. It’s this meme that’s been generated. But you must also be aware that coexisting with that, there’s a not necessarily Christian, but often Christian counter push saying that Crowley is just evil and just stay away from it, it’s just sick, it’s venal, it’s psychopathic. And although I probably agree with the diagnosis 90%, it’s not really fruitful and if you just dismiss evil, if you just say it’s evil, stay away from it, because it doesn’t allow for understanding and it demonizes and it scape goats, and it just perpetuates this division there. And of course, Crowley himself promoted his evil, and that was part of his cool. So the people who think that Crowley’s cool are not going to be discouraged by people saying he’s evil. Right? That’s the problem.  

Alex Tsakiris: [00:19:00] I think that’s exactly the problem. I think you immediately, I think, understood the premise of the book just by the title, which so few people do. I’ve already done interviews on the book and people immediately want to go to, “Is this evil? Is that evil? Do you mean this is evil?” And it’s like, “No, you’re trying to make a list or quantify evil or compare evil.”

I wrote this first book, Why Science Is Wrong… about Almost Everything, and the premise of the book was that if you get consciousness wrong, if you think consciousness is an illusion, if you think we’re all biological robots in a meaningless universe, well then you really can’t get anything right in science because you’ll never factor in consciousness.

And the premise of the second book, Why Evil Matters, is that, if you’re not willing to explore evil, and evil becomes really a shorthand for saying these extended consciousness realms that extend beyond this biological robot, I’m just here in my brain. If you’re not willing to explore what might extend beyond our minute by minute experience, and if you’re not willing to include evil in that, then you’re not really going to say anything meaningful about spirituality, whatever that means. 

So, yeah, I’m trying to draw attention to, that we’ve been kind of put in a box with evil, where it’s like it’s evil, it’s either this very narrowly defined thing that this old book tells you about and you’re shamed into believing through being a part of one of these cultish religions like Christianity, or it’s a complete denial. It’s the do what thou wilt denial of evil that’s not only from Crowley, but if you look in the scientific realms, like you have and I have, it’s embedded in that materialist message. Of course there’s no evil. I mean, there isn’t even free will. There’s nothing. You are just a biological robot. How could there be evil in that? 

So, to me, that’s the whole Why Evil Matters thing. It’s because we’re Indiana Jones and the walls are closing in on both sides with religion on one hand and scientism on the other. And I think Crowley as an agent of that process, I think is really kind of interesting. 

Jasun Horsley: [00:21:41] Yeah, and to me the area where we can let some air in is psychology you know, the area where we can. Let some air and his psychology. And now of course, psychology is traced back to Freud and even Jung, it’s heavily compromised, but still at least as a, as a working model, it allows for both a scientific view and a religious view.

But primarily it’s, it’s a, it’s a subjective view. It’s something we can refer to and understand ourselves. And by looking at ourselves and we’re all human beings and we all have psyches. Whatever configured in the same way in the same way. Biologically we’re the same. So, um, my approach with Crawley C isn’t isn’t that Crowley was Eagle is that he was psychologically damaged and that we can see this in inconsistencies, in his work and the hypocrisy and the abuses and the corruption and what we would think of as evil behaviors.

Well, that can be seen psychologically and it makes his work fundamentally invalid invalidated. And at the same time, it corresponds with how Croley himself was useful for an instrument of these much larger apparatuses of, of psychosocial control and engineering, which, um, create somebody like Croley or create these viruses and perpetuate the trauma.

As this much larger agriculture, or you might say of, of ancestral trauma, which has become so endemic. And so virulent that the word evil. Isn’t a misnomer really? I mean it, the word evil, I don’t use it much, except when we’re talking about in this Metso way, I can I try and avoid saying this is evil. That is evil.

He is evil. Cause I think it, uh, it, well, it just doesn’t really work. 

Alex Tsakiris: [00:23:31] this is not where I thought this would go, but it’s a really interesting point. So let me back up and I know I’m. Talking a lot for really an interview with you, but we’ve got to have this conversation.

So like, and this is a story that everyone has listened to show probably has her 50 times by now, but it’s okay. I’ll do it again. Cause we gotta get it out there. So I’m interviewing this guy. Ohio state university, religion, professor dr. Heuer Ben he’s written this fantastic book on Scientology. Fantastic.

I don’t know, but fantastic. Well received. Everyone thinks it’s great. It’s about Scientology as a new religion. Well, right off the bat, is this a new religion? Can’t we just call it for what it is a cult? No, we can’t call it a cult because we’re in the we’re in academia. We can’t identify something as evil, you know, it’s back to this relativism.

There’s no evil thing. So in his research, urban. Is doing an historical breakdown of Scientology. And he says, yes, I can confirm that L Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology was in the desert with Jack Parsons. And Jack Parsons was in communication with CRO Lee and they had orchestrated this sex matters ritual to bring forth the whore of Babylon, with the hopes of conceiving the antichrist and thereby controlling the world.

You know, so. Again, this guy says, yes, that did happen. And I said, okay, pause. You know, don’t we need to kind of explore that a little bit. And he goes, no, Alex, we don’t because it doesn’t matter if it’s true. It matters only if they believed were true. And my point, and this kind of gets to the psychology thing.

Right. Cause that’s something you might hear. That’s definitely something you would hear. Some psychologists say, and my point was no, that’s completely backwards. The first thing we have to know is whether or not we should take seriously that claim, whether there is an extended consciousness realm that they were trying to connect with.

Is there such a thing. Is it possible to connect with such realms? Is it possible that those realms can have an effect on this material world? I’m not saying we have to, you know, have some firm answer on that, but we have to be able to put that on the table. 

Jasun Horsley: [00:25:48] , well, I, I mean, I agree with that. I don’t think that I was sidestepping the question of whether evil exists, however, but what I was saying is that it doesn’t work to call something evil for me anyway, uh, in a number of ways, one is, as I’ve already said that people who are already drawn to those things, that’s not going to wash for them anyway.

Um, so that’s one thing, but the other is just, 

Alex Tsakiris: [00:26:16] why should we care? 

Jasun Horsley: [00:26:17] No, but I understand that perspective. You see, because if, if we’re going to pause it, I mean, let’s cut to the chase and if we’re going to pause it, Satan was an actual entity, which is almost necessary.

If you start to Mount evils, No, but it’s get, you know, getting in that realm, then we’ve got, just ask, well, what is Satan? You know, God creates Satan. Therefore Satan must be a principle in the universe that is divine me or dang. This is the problem with Christianne. Is this inherent contradiction in it, right?

Alex Tsakiris: [00:26:44] That’s a problem with Christianity. It isn’t a problem with evil per se. Satan, we can both agree. Satan, if you try and look at Satan, historically, he slips through your fingers, right?

He’s not there. You know, I often reference Richard Smoley the esteemed religious scholar and author of the book. Um, how God became God. And there’s a guy who goes and tries to trace state and he goes, he, he’s not, there you go. In the, in the pre Toro way back Judaic texts, he doesn’t exist. And then a few hundred years later Zorie asked her kind of introduces this dualism.

And all of a sudden it pops up in his books. It’s not there, but no one would deny that to whatever extent we’re co-creators of this reality. Satan sure. Seems to be here now. So it’s like, okay. Yeah. I mean, deconstructing that as a whole. For our thing we could have, but Christianity is clearly corrupted.

So I don’t think we want to come. 

Jasun Horsley: [00:27:40] it’s because as extreme or it’s a very clear sort of example, in the embodiment of evil, so to speak, but the same can be applied to evil is my point. Like the people who, who do evil, the people who perpetuate evil, the people who advocate evil, they have very convincing arguments for it.

They’re very sophisticated. 

Alex Tsakiris: [00:28:02] What do you think is convincing 

Jasun Horsley: [00:28:03] the path of trangression? That, I mean, when I say convincing, I mean, I’m not convinced by them. I don’t want to be missing understood that. I think that, uh, the rationalizations, but rationalizations can be very sophisticated. And so the most obvious one is, is it young in approach that the shadow that we need to integrate the shadow, as in all the parts of ourselves that are points that we disowned, um, in order to maintain socialized ego self, that feels like it has control over life, which is a losery.

And in order to actually suppress things into the unconscious that we find difficult, we create the shadow of everything that we don’t like. And in order to become whole, we have to integrate all those things we have to become conscious of. And to some extent we have to, we have to rely on the minivan in that.

Then you can see how that can, you know, I looked at this John DeRousse as a Canadian girl who had this rationale for having sex with his followers and keeping it secret. And he believed clients believed he was battling and internally. And the pot of that baffle meant that he had to actually commit acts that he considered evil in order to.

But, you know, blah, blah, blah, integrate the shadow. Right. And, and to this wedge is true. Like we do. I know in my life I’ve had to see my own capacity to evil for evil and accept it. And some of that has involved. Conscious enactment Zola. Cause it’s the only way I’d let myself see it. And then you bring a case like Crowley and you put them under the microscope and you see what I saw with vice Kings.

How far was he willing to take that? He was willing to take that all the way he was, what he was looking for. The wa perceived as the most evil act possible. The, the unforgivable sin, you know, in the Bible, the sin that the Holy spirit, the sin against the Holy spirit, some forgivable and then committing it.

As a way to completely, uh, the path of trangression completely free himself from social conditioning, from false morality, you know, and we’re, we’re living in a culture and climate, the advocate, this it’s all over. Yeah. 

Alex Tsakiris: [00:30:12] Yeah. I mean, I don’t know where we’re going to get back to deconstructing that because those are such amazingly important, you know, topics.

And I think that the, the do what thou wilt culture, I think that, that we are a part of definitely has an appeal for a lot of the reasons that you said, and they’re not all. Uh, completely understandable, but I think one of the things that I like that you’re kind of bringing forward, but I want to emphasize it even further is this idea of transgression, this idea of the Ikhana clastic rebellion against, and usually what that means is rebellion against again, this.

Equally corrupted system of social engineering mind control that is Christianity. And I really think, you know, until you do a deep dive and really understand the roots of Christianity being about social engineering and control, then you can’t understand the juxtaposition of, you know, The transgression ism, denialism do without wilt, you know, express yourself.

I pulled up. If we cannot be saints, let us all be sinners, which is the, you know, if anyone’s heard of the sabotage and Frankish thing, uh, here’s a guy is Anthony Mueller. On medium. And I always point people to this because we have a tendency to think that the Jacob Frank thing is fake or that it’s just cooked up by some people with an agenda.

And no, it’s just a real thing. And it’s been in history for a long time. Jacob Frank was in, lived in the 17 hundreds and it was the same thing. It was like, and they, again, they tied it back in this kind of crazy cultish way to the Bible. They said, look, the Bible says that the return to the kingdom will only come when we’re all saints or we’re all sinners.

And we sure as hell can’t all be saints. So here’s the best path. This is logical people like your, like your guru guy, you know, it’s a twist logic. The deception will all be centers. And let’s go on. Let’s take on the job of being the greatest sinners we can be. So this is just another instance of the same thing, but when you understand this history, I think it’s easier to see the head fake deception that was cruelly, but it doesn’t.

It does amaze me, maybe getting back back to where I want to get with the Peter Levina stuff. It amazes me how many people. Can’t penetrate this. It’s just, it’s just, they can’t get through it. 

Jasun Horsley: [00:33:00] Hmm. Yeah. Well, I mean, one key point here I think is, is when does deception. Become unconscious behavior and vice versa.

Like, can we determine the difference between somebody who’s actually deceiving and somebody who’s acting unconsciously? Uh, and certainly the, you know, somebody is more effective at deceiving others if they can deceive themselves. And at that point they would be diluted and therefore acting unconsciously.

Uh, it’s a very general thing, but I just wanted to raise that as a general point. Um, 

Alex Tsakiris: [00:33:37] Well, this is also an interesting point about the useful idiot versus the lifetime player. You know, so the useful idiot is someone who believes has just either naively or has been somehow convinced or duped into believing.

What they’re doing and the player, which is again, if we ever get to Peter Lavanya, we’ll talk about is maybe somebody go, you know, he keeps popping up too many times in the wrong place in terms of orchestrating these things for me to just accept that, he’s just kind of been duped himself, you know? 

Jasun Horsley: [00:34:13] Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I think it’s both. I think it’s always going to be both. I mean, if somebody is consciously deceiving, they would have to also be diluted as well. I mean, they would have to have some rationale for doing it. That would be fundamentally delusional. I mean, I do believe there’s an innate moral sense that we have biologically, even though we have a sense of what’s right and wrong in any given moment.

And so I think that any kind of deception is. Is sourced in a self deception.  

Alex Tsakiris: [00:34:44] got it. Emphasize that that is a beautiful point. I think it’s a central point to all of this and that is that. If you don’t, this is the best evidence we have suggests that there is a moral imperative.

And again, that’s, my approach is to say, that’s the evidence folks, the evidence, if you look at near death experience, if you look at all the wisdom traditions, if you look at all the accumulated knowledge throughout time, as well as. Most everyone’s personal experience, there is this sense of what’s right and wrong.

And I think you just made a beautiful point about deceiving. Someone is somehow violating that. And I think that might get us closer to, I hate to go with the definition of evil, but that’s where everyone wants to go. I think that starts creeping towards. A definition of evil. And what I would add to it is that to me, the distinction between darkness, which is the force, which is the energy, which isn’t evil, it just is.

And the act of evil, which I think we see in this world. And we assume it just kind of mirrors itself in the extended world is an attempt to. The best way I can put it is the crush someone’s soul is to somehow impede their progress towards something better and good. And instead of just try and pull them over towards the dark.

And that’s what I think. So in my mind, evil is evil. Is that, is that verb is that action that wants to pull a soul. Into the darkness because that’s where they feel most comfortable. Do you have any thoughts on that? 

Jasun Horsley: [00:36:45] Misery loves company. It’s it’s funny. Cause I’m just watching this Christmas, Carol, a couple of  version of it was guy Pierce and of course the famous story screwed and, uh, it was occurring while watching it’s very well done.

Incorporate sort of the ghost, all call aspects of the story and. Kind of beefs them up from modern sensibilities and it cuts me while watching it. But one of the reasons this story has such resonance there for such a long period of time is it’s essentially true. It’s describing a mechanism within existence and you say it’s biological, but it transcends biology.

So spiritual principles that are wrongdoings will always catch up with us. Inevitably, whether if not in this life and in the next, 

Alex Tsakiris: [00:37:37] and we shall be the judge of those actions, which is also embedded in that, in that script.

Isn’t it right there. Won’t be this white bearded guy on the cloud judging. No, you will judge yourself. 

Jasun Horsley: [00:37:49] Yeah. And that’s, and it’s because we’re doing it to ourselves and what we do to others we’re doing to ourselves. So, I mean, my riffing off what you were saying, my sense of evil. Close things strongly to distortion of reality, reality distortion.

And that was what I thought was going on with the vendor. And it was crazy making, he was distorting reality around Croley and spinning it this way and that to try. And it wasn’t just to win an argument. Like I’ve seen that, babe. You know, I know when someone’s trying to win an argument, it’s kind of easy to deal with, but this was much slippery.

He was trying to actually maintain a version of reality. That was. False. And to make me think that I was wrong, not to the argument, let’s just undermine my sense, what was true and what was real. That was my second that’s. What was going on, even though it was kind of alcohol perception, man management, like a very skilled practitioner of perception management, which of course is well.

You know, I’ll cultism and magic is closely related to manipulating reality by manipulating people’s perceptions. 

Alex Tsakiris: [00:38:55] . , let me ask you to back up a little bit.   set up the story a little bit, a little bit of the background and then walk people through the exchange with  who is love Venda.

And then how will the exchange kind of builds? Cause it almost has a tempo, like a story in and of itself, 

Jasun Horsley: [00:39:14] right? Well, I saw, I knew the vendor. I talked to him for stormy weather back in 2009. 

Alex Tsakiris: [00:39:21] who is 

Jasun Horsley: [00:39:22] the vendor? Very well known for sinister forces, Georgie. Uh, before that he wrote a book on Nazi-ism that Norman mailer.

Provided a forward for, uh, and he’s more recently written these books about Lovecraft and UFO is with Tom, the lawns he’s written books back. Kenneth Grant also says, had a long and illustrious own career. He’s also got this shadowy side to us. 

Alex Tsakiris: [00:39:48] before you get to the shadowy side, I mean, again, for the, for the.

For just the kind of average person, Peter, the vendor is one of us, right? He’s out there in this kind of alt conspiracy thing, telling you, they’ve given you the goods on JFK and writing about sinister forces and these crazy people. And Peter Lavenia is one of us. And then, you know, he comes along with the low and lo and behold, he pops up with a Tom DeLong thing and his story is, well, you know, the phone rang and it was Tom DeLonge.

And I said, at Tom belong, it can’t be. And I hung up the phone and then he called me back and he said, yes, it really is Tom gong from blink one 82. And Peter, we have to get to the bottom of this UFO thing. And Peter goes. Yeah, you’re right, Tom. We should go to the CIA and get the real story. So Peter Venda represents if people don’t know, he represents this kind of one, none of us conspiracy all, you know, narrative guy he’s on our side.

Right. Which makes this exchange do you have with them about Croley a million times more interesting. Sure. 

Jasun Horsley: [00:41:05] Sure. I mean, yeah, he’s probably one fear for central figures or has it been in the alternate perceptions community conspiracy says and so on right up there, I actually was never that impressed by it since the forces and I wasn’t sure why, I just didn’t feel it somehow just felt like a shopping list of, you know, data.

Uh, it felt lifeless. But I did have good conversations with Amanda and he’s clearly a very smart guy. Um, the last time I spoke to him on the limb list, I did bring out the possibility that he was an intelligence operative, but not as a question, I, I couched it in such a way that I. Know, it was safe for both of us, but just, you know, have you, haven’t been asked that you’re an intelligence operative because there’s an awful lot of, you know, we’re things around your life.

But anyway, that, that, yeah, that was as close as I got to a diabetic confrontation until this happened, this, this thread and this happened. Uh, you know, innocent inorganic enough, just cause I was researching crawl in these possible things and it’s, I was reaching out to a number of people and the vendor seemed an obvious person.

So I sent him an email, just bringing out the skin out. Have you ever considered this possible ability that quality might have 

Alex Tsakiris: [00:42:27] Okay. Again, I’m going to have to drag you through this backstory in your it’s your work. Okay. So all credit to you, Jason, but the backstory is that if you start looking at the weaponized systematic abuse of children in our culture, what that might mean for politics, what that might mean in terms of power.

And, and then this extended part of it that you don’t really get into too much. He’s extended realms. Chromoly is somebody who kind of starts. Coming in through, in some weird ways, you know, that you just wouldn’t expect. And then if you look at like you did the scholars, the Croley scholars, they really come up.

In a very kind of apologetics kind of, he wasn’t that bad. You don’t really understand them kind of thing. And Peter , what are you, where would you stake him in that, in that kind of plethora of quote unquote Croley scholars, where does he stand and why did you reach out to him? 

Jasun Horsley: [00:43:37] Well, I mean, it’s not.

Technique, probably Scott. He hasn’t written about Croley very directly, but he has written a whole book about kind of Scrawn, it was Crawley success. And of course he’s written a lot about our cultism and since the forces as a whole trilogy, about as soon as divorces and the overlap with our cultism and intelligence agency.

So it’s his field. It’s absolutely it’s field. 

Alex Tsakiris: [00:44:02] like one of the things that’s been, uh, kind of tossed around is this idea of whether Croley himself was involved with.

Sexual molestation, sexual abuse, sex magic with little kids. So that’s what you. Probably demand. Right. 

Jasun Horsley: [00:44:23] That’s what I probed him on. And there was a larger question with all cultism in general, you know, how much of an overlap was there was our cultism and the sexual abuse of children, whether or not it was institutionalized and systematized via these intelligence operations that I’ve been tracking.

And we still, the vendor himself it’s supposedly been tracking goals. All right. So he just seemed an obvious person to go to. Uh, and I knew him now, his, his TAC was first of all to defend Crawley or at least suggest I was barking up the wrong tree because there was no real evidence to suggest. And in the County for Crawley, he just.

Talked a lot about stuff. And that was, you know, people always took him to literally that kind of angle of approach, which I was already familiar with. 

Alex Tsakiris: [00:45:13] hold on. Nope, because we, we, we got, I mean, I don’t know if I’m messing this up by interrupting you all the time, but you’re, you’re just, you’re breezing pass all these fantastic points.

And the first one is, is right there is that. It’s almost like a frickin playbook, Jason. So the first, the first is kind of this patronizing tone that comes through in these emails. Like kid, you don’t know what you’re talking about, so you just, you just need to back up because you just don’t know what you’re talking about.

Right. That’s the first line of on Peter lavander you’re a guy who reached out to me. I get a ton of these emails, , kid. Why don’t you just move on 

Jasun Horsley: [00:45:52] right. It was, I mean, that was the feeling. That was what I said earlier. It’s a little hard to gauge how much I was reacting a bit neurotically because of my issues with father or older, you know, that how much of that I was projecting, it can never be sure.

And that’s part of the very skillful, you know, psychological handling of someone by the end, jumping to the end. I really felt like I was handled by the vendor, like by a master. 

Alex Tsakiris: [00:46:18] to the contrary. Yeah. I thought you handled him better than anyone I’ve seen, because again, we can go through these emails, but it’s probably too much to do on this show, but there’s round after round where you say, well, wait a minute.

Right? From his own diaries here, her, his admissions that he did old. His words, Crowley’s words, children here is his acknowledgement that he allowed children to be present vert during at least be present if not involved in these sex magic rituals, if were to call them that. So you’re hitting them with fact after fact that is directly.

Thoroughly referenced in his work and his deflections are more and more telling of kind of a desperate attempt to get you to buy into this narrative that just doesn’t hold. 

Jasun Horsley: [00:47:13] Hmm. Well, I, you know, I wonder how much this is because there’s been a sea change in the year since then, because when that discussion first happened and I, and I put it online with lender’s permission, which is kind of seem surprising in retrospect, there were certainly people saying, Oh, you CA the vendor came off much better than you did.

And you basically, and that they didn’t feel that they would just. The vendors lack is either is even people that follow my blog. Definitely. It was definitely it wasn’t the unanimous feeling. And I didn’t feel at the end of it, like I scored a victory. I, I just, I wasn’t even sure what had happened to be honest.

So that’s what I mean by handle. I felt psychologically I’ve been manipulated quite a lot and yes, I saw I was definitely making persuasive argument and he was doing exactly what you’re saying, but I couldn’t be sure if others were able to see that. And it wasn’t clear. It had, I mean, this is, 

Alex Tsakiris: [00:48:08] well, that’s a whole other level to this thing that we could kind of talk about because the edge that you’re, I love how you said before, you know, the thin edge and the thin edge that you’re playing is it’s never going to be popular and everyone, people are never going to.

You know, in droves flock to Jason Horsley and go, Oh wow. He totally nailed it. I mean, it’s so much of a paradigm shift for people, but I think that we’re where you’re really at is playing for the very thin minority of people who really. See it for what it is, because when I read that post, I immediately saw it for what it is and  it just further cemented these suspicions I had had because Peter Levine did appear to me like so many of these CIA lifetime players who. As you explain in another excellent post on your website, use 95% truth and five to 10% orchestrate narrative controlled narrative in order to shape. The story.

And, you know, I don’t know if we want to dive into that right away, or if we want to go in a different direction, but you know how effective you can be with 90 to 95% just true agree with you and when your trust so that I can then use that to kind of switch things in a different way.

Jasun Horsley: [00:49:45] Yeah. Well, it’s spin isn’t that? Um, my sense was that with a little event and he did help me see something, ironically, is that. I started to get a sense that it was to do his ideological affiliation. If you like that. The vendor, my in my impression anyways, is ideologically affiliated with Del Colt values and systems and methodology.

The crawling himself was a pioneer of, and so he can Dodge this and not by saying he’s never been a Croley advocate and, and, and so on, but he’s perpetuating the same. Memes. And I think that that’s what essentially he was defending, 

Alex Tsakiris: [00:50:31] but what would that ideology be? I see. I think people struggle with that.

It’s like, okay,  he appears to be. Having some agenda that we have traditionally historically aligned with a certain group of us intelligence agents that are driving a certain agenda.

But I think this is again where it gets into the evil thing. We, for the most part have associated that agenda with. With evil, with, you know, deception with the secret overthrow of governments, of secret packs and societies that others aren’t aware of. So I don’t know what ideology you’re what other ideology you’re referring to, but that’s generally not an ideology that most of us think of as a, as something good.

Jasun Horsley: [00:51:20] Sure. No, it’s, it’s really, it’s complicated when we’re getting into really deep or. I mean, there’s two. I see, I see. There’s like, there’s two things going on here. One is an ideology that is almost. Reveal, I think, which is the intelligence agencies and stuff. They have an ideology and it’s still a cover.

First of all, they have the first cover, which is the good guys and they would never do any of that kind of stuff. Right underneath that. When she starts saying that that’s bullshit, they have this. Second ideology. The second language is where all the good guys, but we have to do evil stuff in order to fight evil.

We have to be as evil as the people we’re fighting. So you 

Alex Tsakiris: [00:52:04] want me on that wall? You need me on that wall thing. 

Jasun Horsley: [00:52:08] So, so there’s that, and that’s pretty persuasive. I mean, it’s pretty hard, hard to argue against that. I could see how, for example, if the vendor really did believe Tom Dylan’s is fancy AA alien invasion.

Evil love crafting overalls that wants to completely destroy us. Uh, then that would justify any kind of human skullduggery and, you know, evil doing, if it would prevent that from happening. Right. So, so that’s the second lap underneath that. I believe this is the thing that we’re not supposed to see unless we’re ready.

Um, and that would be the ready to be recruited or ready to be just completely supplicant to it. Cause we’re so. You know, pacified and horrified by it is that they are, they, the human beings, the intelligence operatives, or the I’ll call agents of control, whether or not they really have connected, you know, to the consumer Lou or whether or not they really believe it.

And that they practice. An ideological methodology, which has to do with trauma Genesis, which is engineering or accelerating evolution to the infliction of violence and trauma specifically on children. And that they’re creating this great cosmic omelet that involves breaking all of these acts in order to do that.

And that. I mean, you find that you can see that in section with Kenneth Grant, for example, there’s a new stage of evolution coming on this planet and that the human form has to be destroyed in order. I mean, that’s consistent through many different myths, including John’s humanism. I we’re transcending to another level beyond flesh and blood.

So, so that’s the ideology I’m telling you about that the all, uh, this end justifies all means and even requires the worst means possible. 

Alex Tsakiris: [00:54:02] Well, again, I think that’s super important, but super deep, but I think it’s really key how you layered those ideologies because I, I think I’m pretty much in sync with you, you know, level one is the way I put it is you don’t deserve the truth, you know, which is like, I’m going to lie to you because if you’re stupid enough to believe my lies, then you’re just, you don’t matter.

And then. Level two is you can’t handle the truth. You want me on that wall? You need me on that wall. The third layer, I think relates back to. What you said very early on, which I think is super key is that ultimately a spiritual self deception. It’s a buying into this spiritual materialism that I can gain.

I can somehow accomplish an escape from my dilemma, from my existential dilemma. By transhumanism, I can live forever or just by dominating everybody, I can kind of control everything. And of course, I think in our deep, deep inside of us, we understand how feudal that is because we’re up against that truth that we, we all know, which is that.

You know, we’re not going to escape, you know, it, isn’t going to turn out the way that we want, no matter how we think, because it’s not about doing accomplishing, gathering and feeding them that little me that I’ve created. So I think the three layers that you have there kind of explain a lot and I don’t get too hung up on the.

All the permutations of layer threes that people can get, you know, transhumanism versus sex abuse of children versus, you know, this occult thing. I mean, it’s, it’s limitless. And I think we can kind of lose the thread by tracing down, you know, where does that one lead? Where does that when lead, they all lead to the same place.

It’s just a self deception. Hmm. 

Jasun Horsley: [00:56:11] Yeah. Well, I would tend to agree with you. That’s the only reason I’m trying to give up writing books. I try to at least start writing about different things. It’s the last one maps of how is this idea? You know, this is mapping help, but the only point. A reason to map out is to, is to find the exhale, how we came in and how we ended up here.

And that was, will be the way out too. And once you’ve done that, you leave, you just stop mapping it. So, yeah, there’s a, there’s a fundamental reality to existence, which transcends morality we could say, but it’s the source of morality and it’s so accessible to us because it’s the nature and fabric of, of physical reality itself.

But of course we are in this dissociated realm through this sustained perpetuated trauma and, um, There are many, many red herrings on the past that yeah. To the truth. So to some extent we don’t have much choice, but to map the, you know, the ramifications and the iterations of delusion, I haven’t anyway.

Um, and I, and I do think they will come back to this reality distortion, like these three levels. They’re all about the distortion of reality and, and how, when we. When we are committed to distorting reality, not, not only do we justify any level of abuses, but they become necessary because anyone who, who touches upon our experience with.

A breadth of the reel or reminders reminds us of reality or questions. Our distortions has to be the destroyed banished or as you put it co-opted and sucked into our delusional state. So we said we will become destructive in that way as an, as an overt, you know, overcharged self-protective. Strategy that just replicates and replicates, 

Alex Tsakiris: [00:58:10] you know, I thought I might pick up a little bit on your point about staring into the abyss because we do have this sense, I think, and it’s.

Told to us in a number of different ways in terms of our culture, you know, don’t look at evil, you know, don’t stare into evil and you will become evil. If there’s a certain reality that we get that. And we see people who do become. Consumed by that, which they study and it kind of becomes a part of them, but I don’t know.

I certainly don’t get that from your work. I get that. I get that. You’re moving through it. I don’t feel like you’re stopping any longer than you need to, to really explore what it’s there because there’s another danger in that is what I see is the. Looking away from evil , without regard for how that shadow may be manifested deep inside of us and how it may be infecting, you know, the rest of our culture.

So I don’t know, I don’t worry too much about staring into the abyss as long as we’re grounded on the. The way out, which is always, I think, just to look up, we don’t have to, we don’t have to go there. We can switch at any point. You know, you can listen to the pilot, I guess you can turn it off and go walk on the beach.

You can turn off the TV.

Jasun Horsley: [00:59:35] Well, I think, so this is back to the now of, of, of, of evil and the frame of evil, because it can be, I mean, there’s a C S Lewis quote, which I thought was great, which is, um, the demons have two ways of controlling us. One is to, you know, get us to just dismiss them as unreal. And the other is, is to gender and unhealthy obsession with Derek existence.

And, and so. Certainly there are those who just dismiss evil as, as a, as an outdated moralistic, you know, religious perspective. And they, uh, you know, 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:00:11] you 

Jasun Horsley: [01:00:11] can’t really do that except by not digging deep enough. Cause if you dig deep enough, you’ll see that, you know, there’s there things going on in our world and even in our towns that are just so horrific that we really do need.

To use that word. We don’t have to use it, but that word has meaning. 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:00:31] have a no at one, I see it kind of quality that’s inescapable for all of us. And I think that’s almost like a starting point in a way as horrific as those things are, it’s almost like a grounding to say, Oh yeah, there is something that I do understand as evil.

Jasun Horsley: [01:00:52] Any spectrum, you know how it says extreme, any polarity. If we accept those a wholesome goodness to life, then there could be a state where that is almost completely absent. So, so to do is an awareness of our capacity and our limits. And you know, and this all has to do with this question right here. How much are we willing to look at my.

My understanding and it seems logical to me is we have to be willing to look at everything, . If we think of the human body and it’s got some sort of, you know, conditions of pathologies or what have you, uh, not wanting to look at any of those particular things, particularly the worst ones is obviously going to be counterproductive.

The worst it is, the more we need to look at it. The thing is, is not to recall and horror. And that’s. Yeah. And that’s the flip side of, you know, people evil has a fascination and then say the fascination is probably compensation goes back very far and deep. I think about fairytales. Fairytales are written for children with all this horrific imagery because it’s understood the childhood is horrifying.

Sure things that happen to us as children, or that we start to perceive that horrifies and the fairytales provide a certain amount of relief from that, but they also potentially, you know, dissociative fancies that might feed a fascination, but three of all of the trauma. And so we’re in this will, as I said, was Crawley.

You can see two sides. You can see that there are all these generations, that people are fascinated by Crawley and all he represents and all this kind of spewed out of the Karoli apparatus. And on the other hand, and it isn’t just Christian, as I say, but you’ve got a, probably is often a more wholesome perspective and certainly more accurate that that’s just.

Toxic and, and, and, and polluted and basically evil. So stay away from it. Um, but they’re not willing. I mean, that perspective isn’t willing to understand it just wants to dismiss. And so what I’ve found is what works for me is actually this to me is the acid test is can I look up. The worst things that I can find in my own life and my body and my psyche and my past and my own behaviors and in the culture that I’ve adopted and, and unwittingly propagated, like a virus spreader, kind of, I look at those things and not only not turn away.

But not react right close to judge. Not lest ye be judged, but it’s not judgment. Isn’t bad. And it’s not, I’m not discerning. I’m not saying I’m not judging in the sense I can judge and say, I judge this to be toxic and harmful. That’s a judgment, but it’s not a judgment, like a condemnation. Like I could never do that, or that’s not, not part of me.

It’s the opposite. So that I have that in me, you know, as one cell in the whole body of humanity, that is as part of my, you know, my, my existence. Can I actually, can I, um, I’m trying to say embrace, but then we get onto this, just this dangerous line of transgression. So it’s certainly not embracing sense of celebrate this embrace and sense of integrate.

God, she just let it be the, so my, the goodness of my system as a whole system will be able to absolve it. 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:04:22] I think that’s incredibly deep and it’s completely consistent with my spirituality, which is that, uh, what it’s really about here. Without, and this is, I’ll probably edit this out, cause it’s a little bit too prescriptive.

Like I don’t, I don’t know the fucking mind of God. And you know, I certainly don’t even know half of what I understand half of what I read, but what seems to make sense to me is that the light ultimately shines and that what we’re experiencing is a blockage of that light and that the best way to. It’s an addition by subtraction thing, which is kind of what I hear you saying with the integration.

It’s letting the light do its thing, which is just, you don’t have to do, you don’t have to do anything. You just have to. Disengage and it’ll self-correct let me, let me play some more clips from your excellent podcast, because I think, I think you’ll have a lot to say just by listening to these again,

Jasun Horsley: [01:05:38] well, the first thing I heard or read, or that M was, was CRO this book of the law and it did it uplifted me. I, I believed right away that I was prophesized in that book. And so after I read books of the law, you could say embraced for Lima. I felt like I was the successor to Crow list. No, I’m talking to you about this now.

I honestly don’t know at this point, how much, if, if, if there was any truth in that and if so, how much? Because I don’t, I I’m wearing throwing babies out with bath water. There’s an awful lot of bath water, and there’s awful lot of dead babies in our culture. All I know for sure is that Crawley was the worst kind of role model and whatever came through him, whatever possible truth there was in it, it would be like water coming through a rusty contaminated pipe.

The had had been, hadn’t been used since the black death. Right? So it’s still the wool to Mike might have been clear once upon a time, but once it’s come out, the other end of that pipe, it’s just toxic. That’s how I feel about crony now. And that’s based on a number of things that I recount in vice of Kings.

The two main areas, I suppose, my own life. I put my own life under the microscope in terms of crow’s influence and how I ambulated Crawley, which is a point for example, of committing an animal sacrifice without realizing that I had done it. So, which would raise a question Mark for your listeners, but that’s how unconscious.

It can be, if we get colonized by in a toxic philosophy and many other ways in tattoos and things like that, this kind, I mean, I really just took on the CRO Leanna in a deep way without really believing I was doing. So I thought I was just, as I say, picking it up where he left off. So, so I look at that and the other thing I look at is  and all of the evidence for not just the.

Malevolent nature of Crawley himself and of his behaviors and his abuses of power, self abuses. And I believe abuses of others, but also his compatibility with, or his alignment was the dominant super culture by which I mean, it’s a hidden culture that rules over this culture.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:08:02] Well, there’s a lot to unpack there. Fantastic. What are your thoughts listening to it again? 

Jasun Horsley: [01:08:09] Well, gosh, like I said, it’s just, there’s just a lot, I mean, I guess I’m just having more of a personal risk response, which is how, how, how, how in the clear am I, how close to the exit am I? Is that how these cultural programming, how close to we all?

Um, cause 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:08:33] what are your thoughts when, when you say that, because I’m always a little bit. Suspicious of the cultural overlay. I mean, it’s so it’s so oppressive, especially like right now with what we’re going through, but at the same time, it feels like, you know, back to the three layers, it feels it’s like a head fake.

It’s like, that’s not what it’s about. That’s not what it’s about. It’s just another form of deception. Where are you at with that? 

Jasun Horsley: [01:09:04] What, what do you mean? What’s another form of deception? 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:09:07] Well, to like a minute ago, we were talking about the personal spirituality of. Evil and the integration. So however it forms, whether it’s a little evil we have, or whether it’s a big evil and it comes up and we deal with it by letting go of it, just letting it merge back in, you know, and I totally, I think that’s really, really deep from a personal spiritual standpoint.

I get the cultural part. You know, I get it every day and every time I turn on the computer, turn on the fire cube and the Amazon fire cube. But then I also wonder if sometimes that feels like I’m being pulled into this spiritual materialism again, where I need to square off with Peter lavenders because he’s trying to control the narrative and let’s go get those fricking Catholic priests because they’re deceiving us when, to your point before the deception is always only a self deception.

Jasun Horsley: [01:10:14] Yeah. Yeah. So I think what’s, I mean, my response areas is that. Uh, certainly not about blaming the culture or, or identifying the cause of, of, of my distortions in the culture, except Sofar is it’s a mirror and, and there is, there is causative as well as the Carl development, I was once a child and I was in cultured in a way that was traumatic and so on.

So on that’s helpful to my own, uh, Integration process and like becoming conscious processes is to see those things. But certainly, no, it’s not about the culture of bad. Yeah. Back to nature chill though. I’m kind of feeling that orientation currently. Um, again, it’s about how, how closely are we willing to look at the culture to see what I call the super culture?

Because, you know, most of the analyses, if you can even call them that. But the growing perspect, I mean, there’s some weird whatever’s going on in the world now. And a lot of it, we get through the internet, but, um, there’s two things I wanted to mention going on in the culture. Now, one is we could say the quantum thing or whatever, you know, just to, just to give a, you know, can it.

Uh, an identification point, but the growing awareness of the toxicity of our culture and as a hidden machinations of power abuse and all of that, and the other is, is, um, harder to define, but, um, And, and it also has, it kind of onsite is an anti patriarchal feeling, but it it’s to do with identity politics and the celebration of the self, uh, over everything else.

Right. And, and, you know, safe zones and, and, and hate speech and political correctness and you know, that whole thing. Right. And, uh, the both aspects of the culture, of course. And I think both traps. And, um, they take, they conversion in an interesting way because the problem with what I call the Quinones saying, are they just, you know, the growing awareness of, of the toxicity of the culture that wants to identify name and expunge.

The evil within a culture is it is, it is scapegoating. And it’s not really identifying how the problem goes is it’s mistaking and effect for a cause. As in, if I countries, um, you know, I world is mostly run by Kakkis doc graphy, stocker serving as the word, you know, by, by, by pathological predators, that’s more of a symptom of something much deeper than it is the cause of that.

So that, that I don’t think it’s ever going to work, just trying to actually, um, fix it by addressing the surface. Um, and then on the other hand, this celebration of the identity clearly is itself a symptom of, of, of this CRO Leah cruelly, uh, kind of will to power pursuit of happiness, well to power. You know, that they’re almost different, uh, descriptions of the same urge, I think, which is the ramifications, the identity and our own personal drives over everything.

So the point I’m trying to make here is, is that, um, if we were, if we start to really identify what’s going on in the culture in a way that’s more comprehensive and less reactive,

We’ll see two things. One we’ll start to see just, just have bad things really are across the board. And then it’s in absolutely everything. It’s it is like a virus or plutonium or something. It doesn’t just hit certain individuals with certain populations. It’s it’s through our everything, and, and by extension it’s in us.

So the more we see how bad things are culturally and socially. The more we’re going to sit. If we’re honestly looking the more we’re going to see how we’re carriers all that. And that leaves us nowhere to go, actually. Cause you can’t, then you can’t say let’s have a revolution. Cause you have to admit, you can create the revolution, take out the past jokes is, but you will just build them in the image of the thing you’ve taken down.

So it takes us to a place of. But really, really difficult place. And it is a spiritual place. It is consistent with religious doctrine.   

Alex Tsakiris: [01:14:41] I was going to try and pick up on your, you really excellent point about those two forces. I don’t generally like to get too political, cause it just kind of, I mean, there’s so many different ways to trigger people. I’d rather trigger him on. More important things that they haven’t thought about before, like Ellis or Croley you’re queuing on, which is just like an instant, you know, no boom right.

To the end of the line kind of thing. But I think your point is super well taken about. And if we were going to try and fold that into this conversation, I’d have to kind of wonder out loud to you whether or not that. Orchestrated divisiveness. Isn’t just another play in the playbook. You know, that’s kind of two ways to stir up.

The natives. And so we have the cronyism do what thou wilt on one hand, and you’ll have the, you know, grab the pitchforks. We just have to get these bastards on the other hand. And that’s what you want. You just want them fighting and you want them depressed and confused, and they’re just easier to control that way.

You don’t want them. Thinking deeply about things or an existential questions, and you certainly don’t want them somehow uniting on some humanitarian, deeply human sensibilities that we would say approach spirituality. You just, you definitely don’t want that. That’s not good for business. 

Jasun Horsley: [01:16:14] Yeah. Well, it’s um, it also prevents mapping.

Well, it’s going on. It prevents coherence. You got these two extremes and they’re not meeting. It’s like CS Lewis with the demons as well. You know, the truth isn’t the demons don’t exist. The truth isn’t the demons are super powerful and need to be worshiped or, or feared even right as the truth is somewhere bringing these two perspectives together.

Um, and what you’re talking about there, I’ve written about that in the, um, on my blog, but it’s also in 16 maps of house. Gizmo Genesis was the thing that Gregory Bates and developed while he was working for the LSS. And we’re really seeing the evidence of it. Now it is divide and conquer, but it’s to do the most subtle level as well with perspectives and with grouping.

So yeah, what you’re describing that up. Intensify polarization means it’s harder and harder to find a position anywhere in the middle, the space between right. That becomes less and less populated. And the magnetic pool of the two poles get stronger and stronger. So, so now if you don’t want to be seen as a trend PI or a Mac guy or whatever yeah.

Then you’ve got to double down on your. You know, liberal progressivism otherwise, right. You’ve got to have a strong opinion about something, because one way or another you’ll get grouped on one side or the other. And there’s a tendency to want to gravitate because it’s very scary to be in the middle and potentially you get scapegoated by both sides.

Right? So, and that happens internally as well. We, we stopped going prematurely to strong convictions on one side or the other, rather than staying in this ambiguity about, you know, is it, and then bring it back to the vendor. That was one of the tells, right? Cause I was, I was questioning, I was asking questions and it seemed that he was shutting down the questioning and that’s, that’s always been my approach.

And I think that that’s, the health is in the sane is to approach, um, to be constantly asking questions. And if the questions keep leading you closer and closer to, to some kind of reality, you don’t ever have to, to finalize it and put a stamp on it and say, that’s it. Now I know that evil exists and it looks like this, that, and the other has to Crow and the OTL, whatever.

Uh, one does the cause I’m on stopped questioning. But you, you, you mapped the new Mark cause you go, okay. So identify those agents, but you know, there’s still more to uncover. We don’t know, by the end of the day, everything could look completely different course, but meantime, we see more and more about what we haven’t seen.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:19:10] whenever I talk to someone and they they’re quick to say, Oh, no, I don’t doubt I I’m a Christian. I don’t doubt my faith. You’ve lost the spiritual edge.

You are the person who says that’s the Zen mind, beginner, mind, you know, like I’m always beginning. I’m always wondering, I’m always challenging. My beliefs. There seems to be something fundamentally spiritual about that. And especially when we contrast it with  the opposite of that, which is belief.

Jasun Horsley: [01:19:47] Yeah, I did a blog post recently. It was called the vector of increasing disbelief, which spells void when we just have to keep moving into this void where we, we disbelief, we allow ourselves to come to, to look at the non confirming evidence. Not just looking at the evidence that confirms, and even if there’s just a little bit and it, it is, it’s incredibly hard.

I mean, you talk about the very specifics of, um, you know, the vendor and that was one of the hardest experiences in my life. Well, writing is actually confronting another deception and not knowing what to believe. And, but it continues to this day, say working in this field as we do, but we often don’t know, always speaking with somebody who’s genuinely what they are.

They say they are. And. And how do you approach that you have to stay in this limo place. You don’t believe them and you don’t take them up their word entirely because then you just get a new, don’t be overly polite and just keep to the protocol. If you see bullshit, you have to call it. But at the same time, you don’t start shouting their shell and this, that, and the other.

Cause then you’ve lost your own. Floating around ground. Uh, and that, you know, that’s just microcosm of this much larger thing we’re in, we’re in a time in history of society going to have you where everything is increasingly unstable and liminal. Okay. Then we’re in this vast universe where it’s all unknown and then

Well, we’re completely at a loss to make sense of anything. So, and this is actually to a Metta point. This is one of the levels of deception. This is mixing of levels. So you’ll find this moral relativism around things which uses the level of cosmic. Say cosmic or spiritual awareness to say, well, there is no good and evil.

It’s all gone. It’s all gone. But there, it says to the social level of, of raping and killing children. Not directly, but indirectly. And 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:21:58] in some cases directly, 

Jasun Horsley: [01:22:00] in some cases directly or close enough, you can join the dots and then the hypocrites in laws, but maybe deep rationalization and delusional behind it.

But some level often there’s a conscious, there was a little stitches to conscious malevolence going on there. So 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:22:20] I’m returning more and more to this idea of we’re all just here to entertain  each other.

And I heard that quote from Shirley McClain, who, if anyone remembers way back in the seventies was the first really be selective Verde to kind of launch the new age movement and talk, talk about astral projection and. I heard this interview with her and the guy was really kind of. Looking to, I guess, right.

Some kind of reaction about all the abuse she took. Cause she took so much abuse for being this kind of new age person. And she was like, look, you know, detractors, whatever. We’re all just trying to entertain each. We’re all. We’re all, maybe just here to entertain each other. And, you know, I thought about that the other day, because someone was bringing up like Michael Shermer, the skeptic, and I’ve had him on the show a bunch of times.

And I don’t think he does very well at all, but I, I, I like his as a front of me. He’s great. He’s entertaining or Neil deGrasse, Tyson who has kind of a. A nitwit when it comes to consciousness and says absurd things, kind of like with Sam Harris kind of same thing, but they are entertaining. And, and I think we have to genuinely, I think, appreciate how all our, our enemies slash frenemies are somehow part of this process of entertainment.

What do you think? Is there anything to that? Well, I 

Jasun Horsley: [01:23:44] think there’s some, I mean, the Cohen I says is that we can find ways to. See, what is, is good and a value of others and appreciate that particular qualities. I’d say entertaining is not a word I would use because it means passing the time. And I think we definitely had to do more than pass that to Tom, because 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:24:05] are we really though, are we see this, this gets back to the, it gets back to the three levels and it’s like, if they’re convincing you that you’re here to do something other than past time.

Maybe that’s part of the deception as well. Cause maybe all us 

Jasun Horsley: [01:24:18] were here levels again. I mean, I’m not enlightened. So I mean the only person I know who seems like our enlightened, he seems very dedicated to helping other human beings, 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:24:31] I’m highly suspicious of that. I just am.

And I tell you a great story. I love spiritual story is, um, Ahmad, you know, I’m a, the hugging Saint she’s quite popular. 

Jasun Horsley: [01:24:47] Yeah. 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:24:49] So, so I’m in LA and I got a hug from, um, didn’t do anything for me, but I appreciate where she’s coming from. And I appreciate the story that I heard from my buddy, Rick Carter, from Buddha at the gas pump that a devotee came up to amen.

Said, uh, You know, you speak of this world as non-existent. And yet I see you out working 18 hours a day, digging latrines in the hunt with the untouchables and hugging people too. You’re almost to the point of exhaustion. W how, how, what is it about this world that she goes world? What world. And if we take that story and all those spiritual stories as being somewhat true, it’s someone who doesn’t even see their actions as doing in a literal sense.

and I’m highly suspicious of spiritual materialism as what’s what I call it. The Sage on the stage, I know something special. And let me just pass it on to you, but then you have to get out there and buddy, you got to do it because doing is what’s important. 

Jasun Horsley: [01:26:01] Sure. I mean, this is quite a big subject now.

It just varying into, and it’s quite, quite far from what we’ve been covering. So I’ll bring it back to entertainment because. Cause it says key to this latest book about Hollywood. And there’s a, there’s a convergence between entertainment, certainly in the Hollywood sense and a suspending disbelief.

That’s the first principle, the prime directive of Hollywood. Right. And you could say of entertainment. We have to suspend disbelief so that we get pulled into the story and then believes that it’s real. So, um, my sense is with. I mean entertainment has its place. And certainly I want to enjoy my conversation with you otherwise, what’s the point. 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:26:49] I have to wonder Jason, when I saw your mind go there for a minute. I wonder if you saw the same connection that I did and that. If entertainment in Hollywood is about suspending disbelief, and we are here to inquiry to perpetuate doubt.

Isn’t there an interesting through line between those two that, that maybe we have to explore in the disbelief that you talked about in your blog posts, which I haven’t read by the way, which sounds 

Jasun Horsley: [01:27:23] great. That’s why I bought a jar. So I would say that where you and I are here, our mission, if you like is to unsuspend this belief.

So in that sense, it’s anti entertainment. We’re trying to get free of dispel of entertainment and that it would be much better. Wouldn’t it for me to be able to be as honest with you as I, as I could be, even if that meant that you were no longer being entertained, you might get upset, you might get offended, but the truth is much more important than keeping each other happy.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:27:55] Yeah. Except we could, we could, you know, suspend disbelief in suspending belief, art. The same. Right. So if I’m trying 

Jasun Horsley: [01:28:05] to, I know defending disbelief means believing it’s just a fancy way of saying believing, 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:28:11] well, it depends on what your beliefs are. So you take one belief and I’m going to try and get you to suspend that belief as it just, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a double negative.

When we say suspend and dis I mean, it’s. 

Jasun Horsley: [01:28:23] Okay, but you understand the meaning in Hollywood, it means that you, you, uh, inhibit the part of your consciousness. That’s telling you, this is not real. None of this is happening. You inhibit that you suspended this boy. So you succumb to the spell and you feel like you’re actually having a real experience.

That that’s what we do all the time. During our days, when we interact with each other, we forget the, when not who we think we are and that. What we’re seeing and perceiving isn’t really what’s happening. Even if we know, you know, in different ways, we know that reality is, is quite different than our minds are telling it is part of how our minds do it is like persuade us.

That is wizards. Where does the devices, you 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:29:12] know, you know, there’s this really fantastic podcasts that I like it’s been around forever. It’s called martini shot with rod long, who was a, is a very highly, highly regarded writer in Hollywood and used to write for a, Oh, what was that show? Uh, cheers, you know, way back in the day.

And he’s done a month, many other projects as well, but he always has this kind of insider kind of Hollywood. Writer’s thing, but you know, to drive home your point about suspending disbelief, I love this story that he tells about. This one scene that there was shooting and they shot it and they liked it.

And then somebody pointed out that the actor who, you know, this is sit-com TV, sitcom kind of stuff, not high cinema or anything, but he never started the car and yet drove off in it. You know what I mean? And this guy brought it up, said, Hey, you know, we got to reshoot that because. Know, people are going to pick up on that.

And he said, if they pick up on that, we’ve already lost already. And it speaks to the suspending disbelief. If we haven’t gotten them along to go along with the story at this point, then forget it. They’re not there. So I guess I, I wonder out loud and this is kind of a very minor point, but it’s maybe interesting if this.

Entertainment that we’re doing for and to each other. Isn’t playing with these different ideas of belief and trying to tune up my belief with yours. And whether you want to call it disbelief or belief, it’s kind of two, two sides of the same coin. 

Jasun Horsley: [01:31:01] I think it probably has to what’s primary. I think if, if, uh, if a primary.

Drive or interest is getting to the truth and really being in Israel as we can lose each other, a and R the entertainment thing is secondary is I know all is good and all as well, but I think if we put the entertainment thing primary, and then we subject or submit the truth, Impetus to that and say, well, if at any point my search for the truth, ceases to be entertaining, I’ll stop it.

Right. Then, then we get into problems with the vendor. If I’d been, if I had put entertainment before truths, I would have gone, it would have gone a very different way. Cause it wasn’t entertaining. That was not an entertaining exchange. It was for others. I’m finding out now in the end, but even at the time it made people uncomfortable.

So, so I would say that that was motivated by entertainment. It was motivated by something else and that it could people align neurotic as they say, like the drive for the truth can be unhealthy, can be, it can be obsessive 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:32:07] your other point, which is. Extremely well-taken and it’s these subtle shifts that we make in terms of how we’re prioritizing all these different things and keeping the space and keeping the plates spinning is, is really what it’s all about.

Jasun Horsley: [01:32:23] So 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:32:24] I give up on that one, you wrestled me to the ground, and I agree with you. One final point, I might try and. Fold back into this because I really tried to, I jumped in there and kind of really put those halts on when you talked about religion. And I guess  I want to deconstruct that a little bit, so we’re not just talking in shorthand, but like 

one of the really influential episodes or explorations I did on skeptic co was the series of interviews I did with the Joseph Attwell, who is, um, wrote this book. Caesar’s Messiah that. The promise of the book is that there is the bejesus myth. The historical Jesus doesn’t really exist and should be understood, is best understood as a social control mechanism of the Roman empire.

And I don’t agree with. The 100% go there kind of thing that Joe Attwell does, but I think there’s some fundamental provable truth to what he’s about. And yeah, historically, if anyone wants to investigate, I always point people to Josephus because Josephus is the. W, what we’re told is Josephus is this Roman slash Jewish historian through which we know just about everything historically, that we know about that time at will makes an extremely strong case for the fact that Josephus is a fictional character.

He’s not real. He’s an invention of the Roman empire to control the narrative. And the evidence I think is really once you can make that step, it becomes really kind of overwhelming evidence from everything about Josephus a story. But the implications then in terms of the Bible are much more significant because the writings of Josephus.

Which are clearly pro Roman because the Romans employed this guy to write the history are, are clearly, uh, constructed in, in the, in the gospels. So ju the, the gospels. The Bible is dependent on Josephus, just CFUs is written into the Bible. The implications of this are that it is undeniable, that Christianity, as we understand, it was from the beginning to some extent.

A control mechanism, a social engineering mechanism, just like it is today. And that that’s always been at play and to broaden it to this larger conversation we’re having what I think people have a problem with that doesn’t mean that Christ consciousness isn’t real. That doesn’t mean that people can’t experience some kind of spiritual truth, both through that book.

Through the figures in that book in the same way that they can experience some negative reality Satan, even though, our, our friend, Richard Smoley historian that Satan, it slips through our fingers historically as well. So. Until we can get to that deeper reality about exploring how these, how these can both be true.

Then I don’t think we can get there, but I certainly don’t think we need to infuse religion back into this discussion, Christianity, back into this discussion as if it’s somewhat as if it’s real, in some sense, because it’s, it’s just, it’s just not in that way real to talk about it, you know? 

Jasun Horsley: [01:36:08] Well, no, not really.

Um, I mean, cause we all talk about evil and so I’d say the context for you all is largely a religious one. Uh, unemployment I made about religion. 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:36:18] It’s not what if it’s not? What if it’s? Cause I think I thought we were saying it’s not a religious one. I thought we were saying, you 

Jasun Horsley: [01:36:26] know, Well, I think, I mean, this is a point, the Jordan peers and mates, I’m not a very fan of Jordan Pearson, but I think it was one of his better points is that we are Christian, whether we like it or not, our culture is so firmly embedded in Christian Esau.

Even the staunchest atheists don’t realize that they’re espousing Christian values. 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:36:48] that’s cripplingly ethnocentric. You know, I just posted on the skeptical forum. This is just like recent news, 27 people, is that in new Guinea, because they were suspected of being witches. So part of the culture had this spiritual connection with this other dimension and decided that these people were witches and that they needed to die and they killed them and they.

Ate their hearts and cook their penis or something crazy like that. Or maybe it’s not crazy. Maybe that is what happened in the extended realm. Maybe there’s a demon in that extended realm. That’s manipulating them in the same way that Montezuma felt like he had to take these hearts out of people and do this.

But the new Guinea let’s not go to Montezuma cause that’s like ancient history. This is today in new Guinea. So no, I don’t access it. This idea that we’re we’re Christian. I think that is from Christians 

Jasun Horsley: [01:37:39] , I can’t just say Hollywood sucks. Um, I could stop watching home product, but I couldn’t, I can’t just get Hollywood, my sister, because I decide that I don’t like Hollywood cause I grew up on it. So even if we’re not raised Christian, we were raised in a Christian culture. So those values of that.

Hardwired into our identity. 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:37:59] I don’t buy that to the extent that, I mean, this is, it’s kind of like our discussion on entertainment, which, you know, you, you win that one because it’s all where we put our point of emphasis and I’d say the same thing like with Hollywood and I’m wanting to know more about is that book out currently.

Jasun Horsley: [01:38:18] No, I’m just rewriting it now last minute. Cause I’ve funded. I did a crowd funder and a raised, I mean, raised enough to publish it and just raise, trying to raise another thousand to get hard back edition before August date. And then, uh, I’ve got to send it to the printers in August, probably about in October, something like that.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:38:39] Nice. Nice. Okay. We’ll recap that at the end, but I guess my point was going to be, I think you can disengage from Hollywood too, to a significant degree just by understanding. What you’re saying just by, I mean, the realization, if you trace back through your history anyone’s history, when you become aware of this stuff, you can never look at it the same way.

So I would suspect that already you cannot look at Hollywood movies the way that. You don’t 90%. So 

The same is true with Christianity, you know? So when you watch South park destroy the Catholic church, you can’t go into the Catholic church the same way.

Even if you’re quote unquote, a devout Catholic, it’s never going to be the same and it shouldn’t ever be the same. 

Jasun Horsley: [01:39:31] This is all a conscious level. So what’s, I’m referring to is the constructed identity, which is constructed, uh, showing the same time that we develop language. So we develop a sense of who we are existing as an actual individual self is internalized illusory sense that we exist, you know, as a puss that I’m talking about, that thing.

So. For that to come on down. I mean, for us to be entirely liberated and now ironically getting into, you know, the rationale for transgression and the number of pathologies, but to be fully liberated from that constructed identity trauma generated itself, uh, and thereby by extension the culture that co-created, it.

We wouldn’t have to go all the way back or we do have to go all the way back to that original formation, you know, undo the original formation so that, that’s why I’m referring to, 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:40:34] but I wonder if that is true and consistent with what we both, I think really identified with in terms of a personal spirituality and that maybe the undoing process, isn’t what we’ve been told it is because I think a lot of times we’re told that it is this deep, you know, cleansing and bringing up 

Jasun Horsley: [01:40:58] there.

I agree with, we don’t know how it could just happen over night,

Alex Tsakiris: [01:41:03] it could happen. The way that I think you were describing. Which is to just let it be, let it, let the light. 

Jasun Horsley: [01:41:12] it. Wasn’t just sliding it be because billions of people, it just letting it be. And they just carry on watching Netflix 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:41:18] but it’s with awareness, like you’re talking about before 

Jasun Horsley: [01:41:21] so that involves, that does involve a willingness. To engage and explore and examine and to look and to not look away and to keep looking and keep going, moving once awareness, deeper and deeper into those areas that the light hasn’t shown on.

So, and that does involve being liminal. And as you said, being in city have doubt and not, and not adding new convictions. So the old ones, you see what I mean? Not replacing all convictions with new ones that it requires really not knowing. And, um,

cause I mean, you talk about Christianity or I talk about Hollywood, but actually the underpinnings of our identity, um, are even deeper than those things. Right?  it’s, it’s easy enough to reanalyze data and reach different conclusions and say, okay, Christianity’s all sign up.

Don’t have to worry about that. Okay. Curly was a child abuse. It don’t have to believe in any of that. Okay. Holly was run by pedophiles. Don’t have right. It’s I mean, it’s hard. That is hard. Most people can’t do that, but relatively it’s easy enough to perform those. You know, procedures to follow those procedures compared to.

Go. I don’t know how to describe the other thing cause I’m fully done it, but it’s effect like our identity is hardwired into our nervous system through this traumatic impact of both locally and, and globally, you know, the culture as narrative, this fine laser point of our parenting and any other abuses that happen and not as imprinted as biologically, let’s just.

Overwhelming aspect out of which has kind of spewed this robotic constructed identity as a defense against the athlete. And so really to let go of that defensive identity is to reexperience all the overwhelming anguish of that original effect. The original wound. I’m not saying that can be done or I, you know, cause I don’t know, I just, just.

That kind of undoing is a much deeper on doing or that kind of letting go. I should say, as a much deeper letting go, the letting go of a religious belief or an affiliation with dolls, you know, it it’s SLT, it’s in the cells 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:43:47] again, I’ve always say the same thing. I’m totally with you. It’s deep right up to the end of the night.

I disagree. Let me throw a couple things on the table and then we’ll wrap this up. A couple of spiritual teachers. Add a couple of guideposts here that are meaningful to me. The first is with regard to all the deep cell level cleansing, I start with don’t complain about the weather. So complaining about the weather is gets right to the heart of it, right.

It’s me. I hate when it rains on the weekend. Oh, it’s a sunny day. It’s too cold, too hot. I am somehow this little me that is defined by my likes and dislikes, and I can get into that and analyze that to, you know, great extent. But how about just don’t complain about the weather. That’s something I try and do.

It seems to work. It seems to be part of my spiritual path. And number two, I learned a long time ago. Cause I. I really appreciate the yoga, the physical practice of it. My very first teacher, he told me it looked like he was brilliant at doing these really is a real, like a Dallas cowboy football player, kind of yoga guy could really do these things.

He said, don’t anticipate the pose. And when we, when you do yoga, if you do any kind of strenuous physical activity, your mind immediately goes to, Oh, when will this be over? What’s next? What am I to have for lunch and not anticipating the pose doesn’t require any cell level rehashing of your Christian programming but might.

As we were talking about, have the effect of moving you further along the spiritual path than doing that. That’s been my experience. 

Jasun Horsley: [01:45:39] Yeah, well, I was trying to make clear, I qualify that I wasn’t suggesting there was a doing about the cells, just something in us that prevents us from relaxing and letting a life force flow into life and to be fully open to life and fully engaged with living.

And that’s. That’s what needs to happen is a total relax and that no changing ideology is going to allow for that relaxation. I’m not saying we have to purge every cell just for some reason. And I think it is trauma based. Uh, our nervous system. Isn’t relaxed. It is tense stuff. It is locked up. And until that happens, until that release happens.

We shouldn’t, we can’t make up my mind about Anna saying really, and maybe we won’t need to once that happens. And then, I mean, my family about religion, I know I do want to bring it back to that specifically Christianity, I would suggest reading Shirad for accounts, appoint Rene, Gerard, cause this is a very deep understanding of Christianity that goes beyond , but it doesn’t.

I have to argue that it’s, you know, a received revelation neither, but just as a deep application, all that. Um, but my, yeah, my understanding about religious doctrine is, is, uh, it’s, it’s another tool and that it can get us to a place, uh, of relaxing and trusting and of surrendering to life. If it’s rightly used in a way, I would say our is, and probably can’t, but that maybe that’s me.

Maybe I’m just too hotline or cultism, uh, And, and so, um, I don’t have a strong position on Christianity, but that’s where I really get to be liminal cause quite a lot of my listeners are Christian and sometimes annoyingly. So I mean, I’ve got Christian and I Don I don’t, I don’t comment at my site cause he’s so virulent, but there are other Christians who aren’t that way and I can see that it seems to work for them.

And I can, I think I can see why. So I think, uh, I just, well, for me, it’s a, it’s that, that’s an area where I’m very aware of, of the difficulty, but the reward of staying liminal, I can talk with you or another skeptic about it and be open. I can also talk with a pretty virulent Christian and be open to that perspective.

That’s very, very hard actually. To be able to be that spread that it’s in between two poles to actually extend one’s awareness to both extremes. Actually, it’s hard for me to relate to you what you’re saying about Joe out. Will I have to say I’m closer to the dogmatic Christian, but I really can’t stand up by two Christians.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:48:27] we’ve been at this for two hours, so I hate to open up a can of worms. That 

would 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:48:31] take us back there, but I cannot resist because I think this does wind us all the way back at the beginning. Like. If you don’t like Joe at well in Christianity as a word.

Jasun Horsley: [01:48:44] Yeah. I’ve spoken to Joe. So I do like him. 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:48:46] if you don’t like Joe’s idea about Christianity as a weaponized sigh up then. Great. Just present counter evidence.  

Jasun Horsley: [01:48:54] It could be a weaponized style. Well, I don’t like, and I doubt any evidence would change my view on is that that would anyway prove that that wasn’t a reality because every weaponize style that I’ve seen used real. Stuff. It, it relies on real principles, real figures, real historical events.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:49:15] , Jason, this is like the oldest thing in the book. It’s like at that point, It doesn’t, it doesn’t matter because the narrative, the story is completely changed, completely undermined. It’s like the reality of satanic ritual abuse. If there’s no reality to it, then there’s no discussion.

If it is real, then we need them the entire discussion changes. So that’s the same thing with Christianity. If it, if it’s origins do have connections to a social engineering control mechanism. Of the Romans then everything, every fundamental tenant of that religion has to be looked at in a different way.

Jasun Horsley: [01:50:00] so why would you even allow for Christ consciousness if you’re not going to allow for Christ? 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:50:06] Well, two things. Number one, I’m a kind of follow the data guy. So when I look at, I start with consciousness and I say, gee consciousness seems to be real. Despite what Neil deGrasse Tyson, who’s never studied.

Consciousness says that it’s an illusion. It’s not it. Every. Yeah. And we have that scientifically.  So next, if that is true, then we can start taking seriously the experiences that people have and start looking at those. And when we do, we have a lot of people that are experiencing Christ.

I just interviewed the latest episode up on skeptical is a guy named David Ditchfield, who had an incredible 

Jasun Horsley: [01:50:45] if you’re rejecting the whole Christian out of his wine name at Christ at all. 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:50:50] For the same reason that when we talk about  Satan and stuff, tannic ritual abuse, and you know, and I had an interview up there with Annika Lucas, who at six years old in Belgium sold by her mother, too satanic ritual abuse cult, and almost died was on the chopping block to die, you know, so, so they, they are connecting with.

This is their, this is their experience. They are connecting with a, being a spirit being in the extended realm that they identify as Satan. So I have to reconcile that with. You know, the fact that Satan doesn’t exist historically. So, you know, you talked about the Egger Gorea or the top a thing in the, you know, apparently in some way we don’t totally understand we are co-creating this reality.

So if we want to create Satan, Satan appears David Ditchfield the near death experience or who was dragged under a commuter train and died. He saw Jesus. That was his experience and it transformed his life. I don’t question that the fact that he encountered Christ consciousness now spiritual people will tell me, well, that’s what he encountered, what he needed to encounter.

And it can embody any form that he understands is it to be just like we do in lucid dreaming. Yeah. 

Jasun Horsley: [01:52:16] But if Christianity was a social engineering program only, and it wasn’t based in a real spiritual being called Christ and Christ closeness would be wholly a product of the social engineering program and just a manufactured 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:52:32] solution.

I mean, I was, again, I can agree with half of that and not with the other half, you know, because. I think that is again, I think that Tibetan Buddhists for one have a deeper understanding of how we are, co-creating this reality and how both can exist at the same time. And that, you know, Jesus of the, you know, it’s like, so in my interview with David, Ditchfield super nice guy.

And like one of the things that’s phenomenal about his near death experience with so many of these near death experiences is the. Obvious spiritual transformation that they go, that he goes through his life is changed dramatically and significantly in his life speaks to that. He also develops these unbelievable abilities.

He’s able to produce this incredible well art. He has no art training at all, but he came out of the near death appearance and he’s doing these things incredible, large scale art and composing music. And he has this art and it’s and I asked him about it. He goes, yes. And counter Jesus and it was amazing.

And I saw Jesus and I looked over to the side and I saw the world being created and stars and this and that. And I said, okay, but you understand that the people that have studied near death experience, scientifically, if you will, you know, across culture, across time, large numbers of people, different medical conditions consistently, they say that.

Jesus is just one aspect, one possible connection that you can have. And they’re consistent about this, all these other aspects, but Jesus seems to be just one story that can be spun. And he was like, no, Alex, I encountered Jesus. So I said, David, let me approach it a different way. I’ve had people that have had multiple near death experiences on the show.

And what they tell me is sometimes what they experience in their first near death experience gives way to a deeper truth that they experienced in subsequent near death experiences. And it goes deeper and higher if you will. And some of these people have a sense that Jesus was. Unnecessary entry point for them to understand the light and the love, but that, that kind of fell away as they got deeper into it.

I don’t know if that’s the answer. I don’t know if that’s reality, but I can see how that could play into this. because to think that David not only saw Jesus, like the Jesus of the, you know, movies, but that when he rolled over the bed, he actually saw the universe being created. 

Jasun Horsley: [01:55:28] But it’s low hanging fruit. Of course people are deluded, and I would say 999 out of 1000 of any of these experiences, I’d say the same about alien abduction, I’d say the same about near-death experiences. They may well be delusional. There are so many levels of psychic manipulation going on. It’s like the enlightenment problem, that because there are thousands of people out there claiming to be enlightened, that we can pretty much see, at least establish for our own satisfaction, they’re deluded. That shouldn’t lead us to then say that anyone who says they’re enlightened is deluded or lying, because then we’re saying that enlightenment doesn’t exist or that somebody who got enlightened would never speak about it, and that would be a mistake, I think indisputably and arguable. So we just have to kind of leave it open. Well, I don’t know, intuitively I know that enlightenment exists for myself, I have that felt sense in my life. So I’ve got no dogma around that, but I’ve also got no doubt that what I mean by enlightenment has some kind of real reality, but as far as people out there claiming to it, well, it’s unknown. I just assume most of them are deluded and most of them I look at seem to confirm that assumption. But I can only really speak to the ones I encounter directly, and that’s only two really. So I’ve met one who I think was deeply deluded and another I think is being honest about it, they are in this different state and good for them, it’s wonderful to be close to that.

I’d say the same, that goes even much more for Christ and Christianity. We can only really refer to our experiences with other Christians and these people you’re talking about on a case by case basis and our own experience with Christ and/or Christianity. But my sense about Christ and Christianity is that… I mean, I said this about evil, like evil is possibly a necessary word just because there is a reality that if we’re going to identify and talk about it, well it’s pretty evil. But I’d say that much more so about Christ and Christianity, although it’s in a more abstract way, that they do represent something real, something profoundly real.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:58:02] When you say real, now, are you talking about historically?

Jasun Horsley: [01:58:08] Well, there isn’t really a history of Christ, it’s just the Bible. So I can’t really say it’s historically can I? But narratively? 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:58:19] Well narratively then is historically. 

Jasun Horsley: [01:58:21] I don’t think it was all made up. I’ll put it that way. 

Alex Tsakiris: [01:58:25] I didn’t realize you were so Christian. Okay, I don’t think anything is all made up. I just don’t think it really gets us to…

Jasun Horsley: [01:58:33] Castaneda would be an interesting counterpoint, wouldn’t he? It might be safe ground. Because my feeling with Castaneda, he’s been too thoroughly, or not thoroughly enough debunked, but too easily dismissed, that Castaneda’s books are part of the psyop to a degree and that Castaneda was lying and that he probably was heavily compromised and quite pathological. But there are incredibly profound truths in those books, and I don’t just mean that there are metaphorical truths, I think there are actual literal truth in those books.

So I would say the same about the gospel. There’s literal truth in there and there’s a literal truth that there was a guy who walked this planet, who was in a state of grace, let’s say, that was very, very unusual. I’m not saying it was unprecedented that he’s the son of God. That stuff’s trickier, that becomes quite abstract and I’d see it more like a mathematic formula, that represents some base reality in the universe is my sense, like the trinity and so on.

We could go on for hours with this, but the specific point I wanted to make is that the idea, and I said this about Castaneda, if Castaneda would have made all of that stuff up, he was way greater a genius than anyone I can even think of in history. For somebody to just make that up would just require such skills, talent, imagination, I just don’t believe it.

So the idea that social engineers or secret societies could completely create Christianity as a cynical tool of manipulation, makes then on a level of angelic.

Alex Tsakiris: [02:00:18] In a way, this relates back to the “focus” of this interview, although it hasn’t been, and that’s what you suspect, or I suspect is potentially a psyop.  

Jasun Horsley: [02:00:32] Because it’s a good counterpoint, yeah, Simon and the Necronomicon. I mean, how shoddy that is comparatively. It was effective, but it’s paper thin, it’s so easy to take apart. Like the Tom DeLonge thing. Christianity, 2000 years later, still people devoutly following it, you can’t say they’re all dupes. Rene Girard was a genius. He was one of the great thinkers of the 20th century and he converted to Catholicism based on what he understood about the gospel. I don’t really agree that he should have converted to Catholicism, I think that’s a bit crazy personally. But whatever, he was smarter than I was, so I’ve got to give some credit where due, and he’s reframed Christianity for me that it’s almost beyond face in a way. It’s just like, it’s so profound what he reveals there in the gospel. So profound that it’s almost indistinguishable from a holy book, I would say, there’s a level of awareness that went into it.

So yeah, psyop, well maybe, but do angels do psyops? Maybe they do. And how do we know? If Christ consciousness is real, what are we saying then? That maybe Christ manipulated the social engineers to create a fake version of it so that people would experience… You know, it gets just so convoluted and bizarre. 

Alex Tsakiris: [02:01:51] It does get convoluted and bizarre, but then I think that’s at the point at which it gets spiritual, because we let go of the rational, we let go of the level three kind of thing, that if we’re going to fight about whether it’s Crowley or whether it’s all of this kind of stuff. And we let go into this larger reality.

My point is that you can’t bring your historical Jesus along with you as part of that reality. So all of the great minds in time that have connected with Christ consciousness, which all you could ever…

I don’t understand why people… I interviewed an evangelical preacher that I really like, his name is Russ Dizdar and he spent the last 30 years working with victims of satanic ritual abuse, and really helping people, he’s a people helper. Because imagine, if you are such a victim and you really have nowhere to turn, the people are saying, “Well, it can’t be that because there is no such thing as Satan,” and yet they’re victims and they have been victimized in that.

But anyways, I was having this kind of similar conversation with Russ, but when you talk to any Christian, they always react to this idea of Christ consciousness, and I always want to say, “Well, how can you react to that? How else are you experiencing Jesus? I’m giving you the highest compliment that you are experiencing Christ through some kind of extended consciousness experience, why are you programmed, triggered to react and go, ‘No, it’s not Christ consciousness and your agnostic craziness, it’s really Jesus.’” It’s like, what do you mean it’s really Jesus?

Jasun Horsley: [02:03:41] But I can understand why because of the whole new age thing and the whole new age conspiracy. 

Alex Tsakiris: [02:03:47] Yeah. Well, they need to hold onto that a little bit more loosely because holding onto the biblical narrative in that history is really problematic. I’ll just put it at that.

Jasun Horsley: [02:03:57] Well, I think any kind of holding on is problematic. So I imagine there’s an awful lot of people out there believing in Christ consciousness that are just stuck in their own new age ruts around that, and they’ve been psyoped and socially engineer to believe in Christ consciousness. So there we go. We’ve got this polarization, “It’s not Christ consciousness, it’s Jesus. It’s not Jesus, it’s Christ consciousness.” Well, maybe it’s both, maybe it’s neither.  

Alex Tsakiris: [02:04:29] But just to be clear on this point, how could it be Jesus? Jesus would be Christ consciousness. 

Jasun Horsley: [02:04:35] I think when they say it’s Jesus, what they mean is it’s the only son of God, and the only way is through him and so on. Which I say there’s a mathematical…. I don’t know if mathematical is the word, but I find there are sound principles that can be observed and may play a part in there. 

Alex Tsakiris: [02:04:54] This was a special point in history, 2000 years ago was a special point in history. We just don’t have any evidence for that. It’s an outrageous statement. 

Jasun Horsley: [02:05:05] But why wouldn’t there be special points in history? 

Alex Tsakiris: [02:05:08] Not special points. The one and only, that absolutely is inconsistent with everything we know about history.

Jasun Horsley: [02:05:17] Have you read Rudolf Steiner? 

Alex Tsakiris: [02:05:22] Yeah. As much as I can take, and I think there are some wonderful things in what Steiner says.

Jasun Horsley: [02:05:27] Because I don’t recommend any kind of occultist, but he’s as close as I get to an occultist who seemed to be tuning into some interesting things. He had some interesting takes on it. 

I just think it seems Alex, that you have a strong conviction around this, which is like a bulwark against….

Alex Tsakiris: [02:05:51] I don’t have a strong conviction. It’s just plain from the evidence. I’m totally open to someone who can present… 

Jasun Horsley: [02:05:59] But that’s what people with convictions always say, they say it’s just plain from the evidence. 

Alex Tsakiris: [02:06:02] Here’s the point is. You say you’re open to talking to Christians and dialoguing with Christians. I am too, as long as you acknowledge that, like you acknowledge that the Bible is pro Roman and the essence of what Joe Atwill says is proven in the text, is that the Bible in dependent…

Jasun Horsley: [02:06:22] How can they advise that, they’d have to be familiar with Joe Atwill. 

Alex Tsakiris: [02:06:24] That’s not an impossible hurdle to overcome. 

Jasun Horsley: [02:06:26] You’re putting an unfair condition on it. I could just say to you I can’t talk to you until you’ve read Rene Girard.

Alex Tsakiris: [02:06:34] I’m not putting a condition on it, but I’m saying, I don’t think we’re really… I don’t know why you’re fighting on this one because this is the point that we had earlier. I mean, if someone isn’t willing to read the email exchange you had with Peter Levenda, and yet they want to form an opinion, which I’m sure a lot of people do, the majority of people, form an opinion on your exchange, because I’ve had this. 

I was just interviewed for my book, just a while ago, and I won’t even say who it’s with, but a guy I really like, I really respect and I brought this up and I said, “Jasun totally destroyed and outed Levenda,” and he was like, “No, he didn’t.” And I said, “Well, have you read it?” He goes, “No, but I know what Levenda says.

So, they don’t need the evidence, or they don’t need to deeply dive into the evidence. So that’s the same thing with Atwill.

Jasun Horsley: [02:07:30] I’m not doing that with Joe Atwill’s argument.

Alex Tsakiris: [02:07:34] I’m not saying you are. You were saying that Christians who come to your site. A Christian that comes to my site and is willing to listen to the interviews with Joe Atwill and have a reasoned response, to say, “I don’t think the Bible is pro Roman because of this, this and this,” then I’m willing to listen to that. As a matter of fact, I’ve gone out and tried to engage with… and I have interviews on the show, engage with Christian scholars, engage with religious scholars who are atheist, because they don’t like Atwill either. And I wrestle those people to the ground and all they all wind up admitting at the end that the gospels are dependent on Josephus, in other words, the people who wrote the gospels clearly had access to Josephus’ writing. This is like a point that you can wrestle people to the ground on and they…

Jasun Horsley: [02:08:24] Why are we even talking about it? 

Alex Tsakiris: [02:08:28] This is the opening. I said how you’re tenacious. I’m tenacious on certain things too. 

Jasun Horsley: [02:08:35] I know, but why this? 

Alex Tsakiris: [02:08:36] Because it’s the Bible. If the Bible is pro Roman, then we have…

Jasun Horsley: [02:08:43] I haven’t even read Joe Atwill’s thing, I obviously don’t have the tools to answer these questions. All I can tell you is what my position is, and you’ll say, “Yeah, but this, that and the other,” and I’d say, “Maybe,” but I’d have to take the time to get familiar with Joe’s stuff and then we could talk about that. Otherwise, clearly you’ve put me at a big disadvantage and if I’m not careful I’ll end up seeming like I’m super pro Christian or anti Joe Atwill. I’m not, I’m just like, I don’t know. I’m not convinced because I haven’t looked at it. I’m guessing there are some leaps being made there because I’m not… I mean, maybe Paul was a Roman agent, I’m perfectly open to that, he was a good writer, so it would be a bit distressing to think that they had agents at that level of poetic insight. But I’m not ruling out that Christianity was coopted from day one by St Paul or Paul, at all, why would I? Obviously, I don’t know that Christ was a real person who walked on the earth, I’m just saying that that’s what I think. 

But my general point is, I don’t see an incongruity between the Christian view that Christ is this and Christ is that and that’s all wonderful and that Christianity was a psyop. Those two things are quite compatible to me. That’s the only point I’m making, I think.

Alex Tsakiris: [02:10:10] Our guest, who I’ve dragged through, a just delightful to me anyway, two-and-a-half-hour conversation, has written some fantastic books that you have to check out. And has this website that I keep talking about, Auticulture, as well as his podcast, The Liminalist. All great, great stuff, really an important thinker I think, just in general, I’ll just leave it at that. An important thinker of our time and an analyst of our culture that is just not to be ignored.

Jasun, tell folks what’s going on with these books, where they can find them, and an update on 16 Maps of Hell.

Jasun Horsley: [02:10:55] Okay. Well, first of all, thanks Alex for that, it was quite entertaining all through, but particularly at the end, I’m glad we got into a more dynamic thing. That’s always quite a rare opportunity, I think, to really connect.

As far as my site, it’s auticulture.com, the podcast is The Liminalist, it’s a weekly thing. The books I’ve written are Seen and Not Seen, Prisoner of Infinity, The Vice of Kings, also Dark Oasis. The first three are kind of a trilogy of sociocultural engineering. And 16 Maps of Hell is an attempt to kind of synthesize the different fields which is organized abuse and secret societies with The Vice of Kings, the entertainment industry, which is Seen and Not Seen, and kind of psycho-social cultural engineering, which is Prisoner of Infinity. So they’re all brought together for 16 Maps of Hell.

And I couldn’t find a publisher for this much to my surprise, even though it was about Hollywood, it was all of this Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey and Jeffrey Epstein. It seemed like it was a very topical subject, but despite that I could not find a publisher and even the publisher that I was with previously, Aeon Books, weren’t interested. So I ended up crowd funding to get it published and I’ve raised, over the last two months now or six weeks I think it is, almost  £8,000, which is going to cover a run of 200 books, I think, paperbacks, it’s a very large book, and an audio book which I’ll be doing. So I’m just currently trying to raise another £1,000 to fund a hardback edition, because some people like a hardback edition and that campaign goes through until August 8th. So people that are interested, they can preorder the book and by doing so, that will help fund the hardback.

Alex Tsakiris: [02:12:55] I think that’s so encouraging to hear that people are willing to get involved in that way. It’s almost like even better than having a publisher. 

Jasun Horsley: [02:13:06] That’s my experience, I’m connecting directly to the readers, I know their names, their addresses. I’ll be inscribing the books personally and posting them. I’m having a direct connection to my readers, it’s far more satisfying actually than this evasive review in The New York Times, which I spent so long chasing after some dream that actually was not, I think, what I was looking for. Because what I was looking for was a sense of community, connecting to other souls out there and sharing my experience. So yeah, this does seem to be the natural organic way. And I’m not using Amazon, Amazon is not included in my project.

Alex Tsakiris: [02:13:50] Well, I’m just very happy that you’re part of my community and that you’re in my head, I just really, really respect and admire what you do and I’m so glad you’re doing it. 

Jasun Horsley: [02:14:03] Well, thanks Alex and ditto. I was impressed by your willingness to take on the Levenda Leviathan, because very few others have followed or picked up what I’ve done and been willing to take it further. So kudos for that, and thanks very much for the opportunity today.

Thanks again to Jasun Horsley for joining me today on Skeptiko. You know, the one question, I guess I’d tee up from this interview has to do with this blog post about his exchange about Crowley with Peter Levenda, so, the question kind of requires that you are somewhat familiar with that post and it is, what do you think of the Crowley apologists? I mean is Aleister Crowley this kind of iconoclastic, misunderstood rebel against oppressive cultural norms? Or is he just a bad guy likes to do bad things? 

I’d love to hear your thoughts on that. Of course, the easiest, best place to do it, if you want to get a reply for me, is that the Skeptiko Forum, so do check that out. And also, consider jumping over to the skeptiko.com website, where you can download this show and all the previous shows, get them in a nice easy MP3 format that you can do with as you see fit. No ads, no firewall, no, nothing like that. Just take the info and go with it. 

Hey, I do have a number of, I don’t know, I think they’re really good shows coming up. So please stay with me for all of that. Until next time, take care and bye for now.  

[box]