Richard Cox, is 9/11 Deeply Spiritual? |428|

Richard Cox gives us a deep dive into the spirituality of 9/11, schizophrenia and suicide.

photo by: Skeptiko

Alex Tsakiris: [00:00:00] Welcome to Skeptiko where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. I’m your host Alex Tsakiris, and I’m really excited about today’s show, because I’m not just a podcaster and I’ve been a podcaster for a long time, but I got into podcasting because I was a listener and I still am a podcast listener today. I love to share the work of people who really inspire me and there’s a guy who has really been knocking it out of the park lately. You might have seen him on the show before, his name is Richard Cox, but he has a show, The Deep State Consciousness podcast.

So Richard, thanks so much for joining me and welcome to Skeptiko. Welcome back.

Richard Cox: [00:00:48] Thank you Alex, thank you. Nice to be back.

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Alex Tsakiris: [00:00:52] So, let’s see. Of course, you are being roped into playing Skeptiko Jeopardy. You knew that coming in, so there’s kind of no secrets in any of that.

Richard Cox: [00:01:05] Yeah, but it’s more high-tech than last time I was on, this is really exciting. I listen to the show, I haven’t seen this, this is like, really, like we’re on a game show now.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:01:13] Yeah, you’re right. We’re taking it to the next level. Sure, sure. Okay, I’m going read the Skeptiko Jeopardy board, for those who are just listening along. It starts out with, Deep States. 9/11. Podcasting. Cultish. Trauma. Medium, Non-Duality. Suicide and ET.

Now, you have not been given a heads-up in any of these topics. So we’re going to get the raw unedited version of Richard Cox. I’m going to pick the first one, because I think it’s only appropriate, since I did just a little bit of an introduction. You tell us more about the podcast.

Richard Cox: [00:01:56] Okay. Well, I never intended to do a podcast, I fell into it because I was doing some work with Tim Freke, a philosopher, a previous guest on the show, republishing some of his books. And I felt like Tim goes through so many different things, There are a lot of subjects he’s covered in the past, like Zen and gurus, that he’s written books on perhaps, but there was nothing on YouTube and I thought, “Hey, someone should interview about this,” and no one was. So I thought I’d throw my hat in the ring and see if I could pull off an interview. And he wasn’t too awful, people told me, so I sort of liked it.

And then I realized that I knew all of these interesting people who were just quietly living their lives and I felt the world deserved to hear a bit more from them. So initially, I thought I’d just do one or two and then I kept finding that I knew more and more interesting people. So that’s how I kind of slipped into the whole podcast thing.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:02:44] Maybe we’ll just leave it at that, because I think we’ll get into that as I let you pick the next topic that we might go to.

Richard Cox: [00:02:56] I’m going to run roughshod over all of these boundaries, so you’ll have to watch me there Alex. I mean, could follow up on what you’re saying there with the 9/11 and spirituality thing, all the conspiracy and spirituality if that’s…

Alex Tsakiris: [00:03:10] Please do.

 Richard Cox: [00:03:11] Do you want me to go there? Yeah? I think that’s in part a product of my age, that I’m 36 now, which means I was 18 when 9/11 happened and that coincided with me leaving school. And it was also a time in my life where, I suppose, yeah, to pick a tarot card, the tower tarot card would be the appropriate one, where my belief in the society as it is, structures as they are, the system, the establishment, that was all coming tumbling down and they didn’t really have anything to replace it with. It was leading to a rather despairful place of, “Does anyone have a clue what’s going on here?” Things like your President George W Bush being elected, that shot to pieces my faith in the concept of a leader of the free world for reasons I don’t think I need to explain.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:04:02] No, no, I think, let me take that back. I think you do need to explain for a couple reasons. One, my audience is largely American, you’re British. In particularly you’re on the Isle of Man, which is even more kind of interested, and kind of isolated in a way. But what was your… why do you say that? Because I go in a million different directions with that. I go skull and bones, CIA.

Richard Cox: [00:04:32] Nothing that deep initially, nothing that deep initially for me. See, you have to understand that up until about the age of 16, 17, I believed in the system, as everyone does really. I remember being a little kid and we had to make a model house and I made the White House, because I heard about George Bush Senior being the President and he’d done something to protect golden eagles and I thought that sounded great and Presidents protect golden eagles and they’re the leaders of the free World and I felt everything was figured out.

And we have the scientific theories we have for very well-thought-out reasons. Okay? And even if random mutations and evolutionary biology might not make sense to me, it certainly makes sense to the boffins at Oxford University. Okay? And if I could get to talk to people like that, my questions would be answered. And even if economic systems maybe don’t appear quite right sometimes, of course, we all have the the economic policies we have because they are the best ones and it couldn’t be any other way. So one of many things, and other thing would be my just direct experience of going through the educational system.

But with the Bush thing, initially I was struck by, what seemed to me like the most incredible coincidence, in a country of 300 million people, the son of the guy who did the job before getting it, and it’s like, gosh, is there some fundamental reversion to monarchy that human societies just go through? Are we sort of that primitive that we just revert back to what seems like a less evolved form of government?

And then I thought, maybe sometimes, like the the children of great athletes are themselves great athletes for genetic reasons. So maybe the Bush family are just the best of the bunch and George Junior, you know, he really is the brightest America has to offer. Literally, I thought this prior to seeing him on TV, and then I did, and it became apparent to me that the United States did have better to offer, you know, in terms of intellectual capacity and there’s just something very wrong with this picture. The picture no longer makes sense. So that was one of many cracks that were appearing at that time.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:06:39] So roll that then, I kind of sidetracked the story a little bit, we have to roll that into 9/11 and I guess, in particular, if I was going to hone in because you’ve done so much work on it that we could spend an hour just talking about that.

What interested me, from a Skeptiko perspective, and this is jumping right into the middle of this story folks, because again, Richard has done so much work on this, is a point were, it was almost an aside, almost a throwaway point Richard, but you go, “Hey look, I can look at building 7 collapse and understand why people see that as a smoking gun.” You don’t cover building 7. You did this deep dive into the CIA, into all of these shenanigans that are going back and forth between the CIA and the FBI, following all these guys, and then you get and you start unraveling the craziness of the intelligence agencies covering their ass, when clearly they were following these guys, knew about this thing, and then were maneuvered by whatever force is out there to do that, to kind of look the other way and bypass this.

Richard Cox: [00:08:05] Yeah. Well, just to give some back story if this. 9/11 has always kind of interesting me because, as I say, it happened at this time where I was just getting into spiritual awakening and these two things seemed utterly joined to me, like the inner world and the outer. Like there are deep mysteries in our own consciousness and also there are deep mysteries in the world. The surface appearance that we are presented with in the nightly news is not true. And I think, back then, there was also, at some point a recognition to me, that I didn’t have a worldly knowledge and context to take on those questions. And things like the internet just weren’t in the state they’re in now obviously.

So I left it for a few years and came back to it and left it again, and most recently I kind of stumbled into meeting this chap, Adam Fitzgerald, and he’s the real hardcore 9/11 researcher. So I’ve been working with him on the series and looking at the geopolitical history, because building 7 and the collapse of the towers has become 9/11 for the conspiracy angle, it’s consumed this immense amount of attention, perhaps for good reason. But we certainly feel that there are ways you can prove government complicity in the attacks without mentioning the demolition of buildings at all.

And it’s not that we will never touch the buildings, we actually just recorded with David Chandler last night, the physicist who did a lot of work on the collapse of the buildings, and he’s the guy that forced NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, to admit a period of freefall in there. So we’ve had to step into that because it’s too big to ignore.

But my feeling about it is, people do not necessarily accept things for physics or statistical reasons alone. So a classic example is Dr Semmelweis, the fellow who discovered that surgeons who work with corpses and then go straight into the maternity ward vastly increase the death rate of newborn babies and mothers. And even though he could demonstrate this beyond all doubt statistically, people wouldn’t have it because there was no plausible mechanism for how a little bit of skin under the fingernails from a corpse could cause this kind of effects prior to germ theory. And you will of course see this with psychical research and things.

So physics aside, I think if you’re going to make those kinds of claims, you need to demonstrate what kind of geopolitical context, what kind of structures in the deep state, the CIA, whoever else, could give rise to rogueing a building with explosive charges. And so that’s why we’ve laid towards the geopolitical in a strong way.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:10:46] Yeah, I hear that, and I guess, I hope we can turn this into something other than just kind of a rambling discussion, but it might just be a rambling discussion between two podcasters.

To me you’re doing a lot more, and you’re doing a lot of deeper work in the, kind of deep spiritual kind of thing that you said, because I would maybe challenge you a little bit on that idea that the reason that people didn’t accept that there are these unseen forces being germs and bacteria that cause women to die when they’re infected by the surgeon. No, people just did it because they just followed authority. I mean, they were just told, this is the truth and they just accepted it. Then they read the current science and then were, you know, converted by the data.

And in the same way, 9/11, no one’s going to change their mind on this, not no one, I shouldn’t say no one. A vast majority of people are not going to change their mind and the government agencies, on a world basis, you know, we have ours here, you have yours there, and then there’s something above that that we don’t totally understand. They rely on the fact that most people just do what they’re told, and most people are so involved in the day-to-day struggles of their life, that they really don’t have any time to look at any of this stuff.

So that’s kind of one point that I’d make, but the other point is we should never rely on intelligence organizations to do anything other than exactly what they did on 9/11.

Richard Cox: [00:12:16] Absolutely, absolutely. Just to address your first point briefly. I appreciate the, pessimism is too strong a word, but the pragmatism, maybe, that you bring these kinds of conversations, and in a world of spirituality where everyone thinks that the age of Aquarius is dawning or something, or we’re going to have a revolution and overthrow the deep state and live in peace and happiness forever. You’ve always been a bit more pragmatic on that and said, “No, this is always going to be a niche of the population,” and I appreciate that.

So when I’m trying to demonstrate a plausibility to such a thing as bombs and buildings, I don’t mean so that we can finally stick it in the face of the populace, and they will have to come around and millions of people will take to the streets. I mean, to allow for understanding of that, firstly for myself, because I have gaps there too. I don’t know who could have given the order for such a thing within the deep state and then to allow for people who want to know, to come to know that.

And the second point, yeah, I think it’s beyond our belief in September 11^th itself, that the CIA were protecting at least two of the hijackers. That can be demonstrated beyond all doubt and additionally going back to the 1993 bombing, it’s clear that they were protecting the Brooklyn cell that nearly brought down the Trade Center then, as part of a historic relationship with Islamist militant types, which ratcheted up seriously in the 1980s. But you can go way back with it, because they’re a convenient proxy army to carry out geostrategic aims and that’s what the CIA and the sort of intelligence agencies do. They’re not there to protect Americans from terror threats.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:13:59] Yeah, those are so many threads to pull on. I might even, if I have the time, dig up a clip that you have from one of the things where you play an interview from Richard Clarke who was in the White House. What was his official position in the White House?

Richard Cox: [00:14:16] He was National Security Coordinator in the White House. So he oversaw different agencies and their relationship to the executive branch.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:14:26] The stunning thing about about that for me, that kind of encapsulates this whole thing is, Richard Clarke was just really hung out to dry on this, you know, like gosh how did you blow this? You know, because we have to find somebody to blame, and he fought back a little bit by kind of outing some people. And in this interview, he kind of outs the CIA and the FBI, in terms of the information he’s getting back, and he goes right up to the verge of saying, “Clearly, you know, these guys lied,” including Mueller from the FBI, including all of these other guys. But then he backs off in typical, you know intelligence fashion, which is all we’ll ever get, and that’s my my bottom line on this. All we’ll ever get is Richard Clarke saying, “Well, it could be this,” which is totally ridiculous, or, “It could be this,” which is totally ridiculous, or, “I don’t know what it is.”

Richard Cox: [00:15:21] Yeah. So Richard Clarke’s clip is both deeply revealing and probably not entirely true, or we can certainly question the narrative he’s putting across. Just to give the listener the narrative, two of the hijackers who boarded Flight 77, which went into the Pentagon, the CIA knew they came into the country and not only failed to inform the FBI, who should have taken over the case then, but deliberately, absolutely blocked the FBI from ever finding out they were there, whilst these guys were ferried around by Saudi intelligence with links to the royal family, up until the point that they boarded the planes. So this is like a total crime, Right?

Richard Clarke hypothesizes that the CIA were trying to flip these guys because they didn’t have agents inside Al-Qaeda. And that’s the bit that, it doesn’t really make sense in a lot of ways. And we’ve just interviewed an FBI agent who was involved in Alec Station at the time, that’s the CIA’s Bin Laden unit, who is also of that opinion, and is very angry about it, about how the CIA would not let him pass this information on to his colleagues at the FBI.

And, you know when you talk to someone who’s on the inside and they can resolve your question sometimes and they go, “Oh, okay, now I see,” thus far, that’s not the sense we’ve come away with. We’ve still come away feeling like, it actually makes far more sense if you look at it, “But certain people in the CIA wanted these attacks to go ahead.” To me that’s looks like a more sensible picture.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:16:56] Yeah, or the way I would phrase it is, they had a higher instruction or mission to not intervene at some point, not that they even knew what that was about. And then after the attacks they had another mission and that was to not get killed, suicided or, you know, completely sent to prison for not disclosing this. So to me it just kind of, it’s very instructive, the series of interviews you did, into exactly the psychology that must be going on in these people’s minds. You know, I mean, they’re given a job to do, they’re doing the job the best they can and at some point they go, “Wow, but shouldn’t we be telling somebody?” Then you put that aside and then 9/11 happens, what can you do? I mean, there’s nothing you can do, you’ve got to go along with the program now.

Richard Cox: [00:17:58] Yeah, and it’s not speculative, just thinking about them getting into trouble. All of the people that blew whistles on things after 9/11 did get in serious trouble and did have FBI agents bursting into their houses and putting guns to their head and some of them did do time in jail or lost their jobs or ended up in court at the very least. Whereas all of the people who participated in the pre-9/11 cover-up and continued that cover-up afterwards, they all got promoted. So it’s entirely accurate.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:18:23] Yeah, you know the thing I say is there’s no such thing as whistleblowers anymore. If you see a whistleblower, you should be immediately suspect and in a minute, we’ll talk about ET and the TSA to the Stars Academy and the control disclosure on all that and to me one of the first telltale signs of that whole thing is.

The guy claims be a whistleblower and he’s not a whistleblower. So it’s a controlled fake was whistleblowers wind up in jail or dead. That’s the way it is now.

Richard Cox: [00:18:58] Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I’m not saying there’s nothing, you know, there are people who go through hardship and that that would indicate, you know through whistle blowing and that would indicate maybe there’s something more serious about their story.

But yeah, that’s the general path. We had to be very careful and Discerning in.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:19:15] to me what’s really really significant about what you’re doing is you are connecting it as we said from the very beginning to the Deep State contemplation. That is the personal spiritual. Journey kind of thing and I’ve always felt that the conspiracy stuff the conspiracy science. If you will the conspiracy ethos has a role to play in that because the folks that I encountered in I encounter over and over again who are not willing to go there or not willing to look at that shadow.

Because 9/11 is a shadow. We don’t know where the shadow goes and I don’t particularly care to spend my whole life tracing down those Shadows, but I do think as part of my spiritual path. It’s important to understand that there is a shadow there. We had an interesting conversation now, I don’t know you’re so ago with Tim freak who I loved him and he’s awesome.

But he’s just not willing to go there on any of this stuff. I have a similar kind of relationship with my. The Rick Archer at Buddha at the gas pump just close to this aspect which to me seems to close them off from a greater part of this spiritual path that needs to be explored

where does 911 fit with you? And you’re deeply spiritual show

Richard Cox: [00:20:48] you know, I’m not entirely sure it very much arises from Affeldt place in me that these things are connected and maybe one day I’ll conclude that they’re not and there really is no link between spirituality and events like 9/11 bought my felt senses and that there is I think you know if my podcast is about anything.

About being with what is and how we perceive the world and. how things aren’t what they appear to be a 911 is certainly something that isn’t what it appears to be. So it draws me in in that way. And then the question becomes well, how deep does that? Rabbit hole go. Are we going all the way until you know Illuminati type groups and connections with all the world’s the entities that are all totally behind.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:21:35] That’s not how are we not?

Richard Cox: [00:21:37] that’s the inevitable thing I think arises when we acknowledge. Okay, you know, dr. Julie by shell has shown us that. There’s a validity to this otherworldly contact in some way if we can we needed that maybe our personal anecdotal experience has shown us that and then furthermore we see that that’s not all sweetness and light there are percentage of people who have very negative experiences with so there seems to be whatever is going on over there.

It seems to be a spectrum of good and bad. And so I’ve interviewed the psychotherapist Jeremy is in ski on my show who who worked with people in both in a mental institution and in prisons suffering with what was called schizophrenia this hearing of tormenting voices continuously encouraging them to do- violent things running them down the whole time and he became firmly convinced.

This was all the world least. There are contact coming through. Irrespective of that he derived a method which help people from viewing it that way. Okay, but if we go with that then it’s the question of. what effect has that world had on this historically becomes when we just can’t not ask any more.

Okay, like a week because we tend to look at individual levels both good and bad. Like people might have mediumistic contact with family members or people might be tormented by something. They consider to be a Hungry Ghost or a demonic entity. But it surely not just then on an individual level.

What effect if we acknowledge the existence this realm it becomes inevitable that it’s having a global effect on it. That’s the way I look at it.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:23:13] Absolutely. And when I heard you say that on the show, it was like an aha moment of like of course, of course and why aren’t more people going there and I understand it, you know, I understand we get into near-death experience for example, and we’re going to contemplate our through all the first we’re going to look at the science.

You know it is it real. Is it the last gasp of a Dying brain and we’re going to be down all the steps? X and all that and then we’re going to take such pride and wrap ourselves around the data that we have. It is real my God, you know, you do suck trouble of Consciousness is real and  then you’re going to dive into the accounts and you’re going to look at all the accounts and say wow, you know, isn’t this awesome and life transforming and spiritually transformative experience in how your changed and all that stuff.

It is awesome. But then when you’re going to take a step back and you’re going to say what does this now mean in terms of the larger implications for extended Consciousness and you arrive at the kind of questions that you just asked. Well if there are these other forces and they are both monovalent and benevolent.

What for how are they impacting? The rest of the world that I lived I live in Beyond me beyond my family beyond my mother who I connected with in a medium reading, how are they connecting with these people who perpetrated 9/11 why that’s a question that. I think is a way that you connect these things that we need so much more because I don’t know who else is stepping into that void.

Well, I

Richard Cox: [00:25:02] see the starkly like you’ve had them I think his name is Jason Horsley on the show and he talked about his research and I’ve read all the people saying the same thing about John Dee is considered the intellectual architect of the British Empire. He had the idea of this maritime. Empire and he got it out of scrying sessions where some spirit being claiming to be the Arca Archangel Michael came through and gave him the whole idea for this.

So the British Empire I suppose you could say morphed into the Anglo American Empire. So you have the dominant power structure of the past 300 years came through a spirit being claimed the Archangel Michael now. How do you write that in the history books, you know well

Alex Tsakiris: [00:25:48] and then take that one step further because this is the kind of Deep dive stuff that we got to do because you’re talking about hungry ghosts in you’re talking about deception in that realm, which is really where we have to go and we have to start pulling that apart and that experience of John Dee has all the earmarks of deception.

So like you had a great interview with clear broad who I just interviewed recently as well and my interview is and up but you guys did a great great job in that interview. And one of the things that you asked Claire is hey, I have a number of people who are worried about, you know, encountering evil entities malevolent entities in this other realm and she was very.

I think she’s awesome person. I really really appreciate her and I think she was being totally upfront when she says look I don’t encounter that. I’ve been doing this for 22 years. It does not come up and the couple times it does come up. I don’t go there and it goes away I get that from my own spiritual understanding I get the secret of the ascent is to always look up that you can always choose light over dark and I get that on a.

As Above So Below level in terms of you want to go looking for Darkness? You don’t need to enter the spiritual realm. You can just drive around your neighborhood and you’ll find plenty of darkness and you’ll find plenty of people who are doing horribly evil things. So I get that on both of those levels what I don’t.

Fully understand is how we connect that with. The Deep Impact that that these beings seem to be having on our governments on our there’s no other way to put it I mean our it’s hard to see back to 9/11. It’s hard to see that other than. Evil on so many levels and not evil in terms of I mean evil are evil United States are evil if we pulled in other people’s Mossad zville, Israel’s evil Saudi Arabia’s evil. So be it but there’s a lot of there’s enough to go around there. Where’s the light in that?

Richard Cox: [00:28:12] I’ll just

return to the point made earlier that this is if you’re crossing the line into acknowledging the reality of this realm whatever it is, it becomes an inevitability right that it’s having this massive effect on the world that were not acknowledged.

And as to what I think of it, I want to proceed cautiously because I feel around the kind of thing. We’ve done with the CIA and Alex Asian and Islamic hijackers. We’ve step very cautiously step by step proving everything along the way to have something. That’s very solid. Okay and whilst I might take leaps in speculative conversations.

I want to. Take my time proceed very cautiously in this kind of area 2 and

Alex Tsakiris: [00:28:47] I wonder about that Richard and that’s one thing I plan on doing differently as I move forward is a lot more leaps. Because because you’re there but I’ve interviewed so many people that need to be pushed into that leap.

Richard Cox: [00:29:03] Yeah, so I certainly agree with you know, placing our attention on that area and taking leaps and such. However, what I what I also see and this is not a factor in skeptic. Oh, right, but I do see out there that there can be people people take a lot of leaps in the conspiracy world into very unsubstantiated information.

Okay, and I think certain traps are set. For people right? There’s two ways. You can short down a solid investigation into State violence one is to be dismissive offer and say you’re a bunch of fuel was you’re exaggerating a fantasist your conspiracy theorists and the other is to say yeah, and not only that but the planes were Holograms and they were being directed by energy weapons from outer space now whilst I can’t, you know, prove the planes went all the way around so on.

Grossly exaggerated claims are a way of covering things up. So conspiracy theory can become a part of the official cover-up and that’s all I mean by not taking lie. I

Alex Tsakiris: [00:30:09] would go one step further is it always is always a tactic as part of the cover-up. So I look at you know, what’s going on today as a one that that I have a hunch kind of in from another angle the whole Flat Earth thing.

Absolutely the traction that it got yeah, but what are your things? My hunch is that that was fed watered and nurtured a long as a way of kind of pointing at something and going and look at how stupid people are to believe that  

Richard Cox: [00:30:43] what both of those things I thought was a bit ahead of the curve if you’ll pardon my expression on a flat Earth because I’ll years ago. I had a bit of philosophy of science course and my teacher he always wanted the base like the. Is course around the flat earth, right?

And this is this is when they were like 10 legitimate flat-earthers in the world. Okay, so I’m assuming he’s delighted by the recent turn of events. I on the other hand did not want to do that because I felt there are so many real controversies in the world. I like the things that science takes absolutely for granted, which I don’t think should be that Flat Earth is not worth my time.

And I like continue with that. I think two things one. I hope to live long enough to see the CIA documents Declassified ago. They did see the Flat Earth story onto YouTube. Okay, they will hustle and I’ve course, of course. I suspect that. It’s been helped along of course and and II thought again, I’m just just parroting what you said Alex.

It’s an interesting. Sociological phenomena that breakdown of trust because I remember myself and make the admission. I was I was not a flat earther, but I certainly question things when I was 10, right because I’m very interested in science. And I remember like holding a ball up and imagining ants walking around it in my school class and thinking like if a why don’t people in the southern hemisphere fall off right because this is natural impulse to move downward this the and then you know, I found out about gravity and Newton and oh, okay, that’s it.

So I think. And if I take something positive from this, it seems like maybe on societal Level Society is going through that kind of hang on. I trust so little of what you say now, I don’t even believe it got the shape of the Earth, right? Okay, and I can take a positive from it in that way in that.

I imagine a lot of people who were flat earthers two or three years ago. Or now will not be now or will not be in five years time. I wouldn’t be surprised at all that someone go on to do very interesting things in other areas and this is like. The foundational thing for them and indeed one thing I learned from spending time on your Forum.

I’m not going to get the term right but there were two gentlemen are talking about how there’s a way of inquiry that we start off by going to the most extreme proposition and then working your way into the center. I’ve can’t recall that I keep meaning to go back on food skeptical forums and find the term because that was a new one to me, but I think that’s that it’s something that I’ve unconsciously adopted and maybe what I see people adopting their with with the Flat Earth,

Alex Tsakiris: [00:33:05] Interesting interesting.

Let’s return  to the non-dual thing, yep and explaining what that is. What’s been your experience with it and if it is. I don’t know what to say in alternative to but it does seem to be from my own experience with it. And it being part of my spiritual path being somewhat of an answer to the questions that we were raising in terms of the hungry ghosts the malevolent forces that are so dominant in our political lives and in our society.

Richard Cox: [00:33:50] Yeah, well, I think it’s a. It’s an answer to everything but the detail, okay, so it’s a way we can navigate our way through all these subjects and without necessarily knowing all the hungry ghosts aliens or alien somebody goes and then some the detail like that. It doesn’t give us but in terms of like if you’re being attacked by a Hungry Ghost how well what do you do about that then?

We can look there for support in that so what would you like on Earth? Would you like a biography for me of my involvement or

Alex Tsakiris: [00:34:19] yeah, that’d be that’d be fine.

Would

Richard Cox: [00:34:22] Elevate the biographies probably.  wanted more interesting things about me. I suppose somehow I’ll give you that then so it started for me is like a reasonably jaded 16 year old who had rejected his religious upbringing in favor of the materialist atheism and finding the auto lack of meaning contained within that was starting to weigh ever more heavily.

Okay, as I dragged into that position and I’ve never heard anyone else quite have this story. But for me it started with they’re going to the pub and drinking some whiskey. Okay, and whatever that did to me. Okay the next day I would wake up in this kind of absolute or the world of just Bliss and I would like walk around in the garden feeling the life force in the trees and the grass under my feet struggling to find.

Any description of what just happened to me, but it’s the best I could come up with fitting into a kind of the Christian upbringing I’d had was like it felt like I knew that heaven existed and there was this world was a small part of something Timeless Beyond it that we come from and return to and that sense of knowledge eradicated my sense of panic about life my worrying about the future my threatening about what I hadn’t done and everything was just Bliss and then.

Wore off for the next day and I was back like I’ve got outside and start to rub my hand against the tree and think where did that amazing sense of how alive this tree was? It’s completely gone. I’m locked in what just happened. And I’d never heard anyone talk about this stuff. Right? I would say I would I remembered some fragments or some poem by Blake about eternity in the palm of one’s hand and Heaven in a wild flower and that sounded kind of similar.

So maybe by didn’t know as far as I was concerned. I could be the only person that ever experiences this no no one’s talking about it and. And that was a reoccurring thing then but I knew something to do with shifting Consciousness, right? So like that’s drugs in meditation. You’re going to go down one of those roots and I got into Eastern martial arts and sort of practicing meditation and my initial experience of that was very not like what I do.

Xperia T. The would like I got into zen because I heard this thing about being in the moment and then life or oh, yeah. I know I never thought about it that way but I was very in the moment for those for those times but it seemed very caught before horse to me as well. It seemed like if you continue to push yourself into the moment and you know, quote unquote gently pull your attention back there continuously, then you’ll start to feel really good and to me that was mistaking the result for the cause.

Okay, because it’s like no no something happened deep within me. I’m not quite sure about and that allowed me to be very relaxed and present in the moment. It’s not that I this is very arduous and my experience is anything bought and but I did get drawn into that and it was an experience of being because I didn’t have a better solution.

I threw my lot in of that order, please you got sold to me and that was my experience being involved in somewhat cultish mentality then and thinking I was going to attain Enlightenment and I was gonna be my mind goes snap and I did. Probably good overall. I have that in my life and experience of like being an idiot and Hiccup because if I can reflect upon it now, but then I really after a two or three years started to question the underpinnings of what I was doing and moved away from that into.

I was very influenced by a radical Tony Parsons who had acceptance of what is and then I suppose really Foo meeting Tim and exploring his work more this sense of finding a return to that place. And open up non-dual States for doing it the way that was more obvious to me of delving into this deeper inner sense of Consciousness.

That’s very connected or perhaps the same as the Sleep state but going there consciously and that then changing the world our words and and Andre finding that place very like TS Eliot. We shall learn the end of all our traveling we shall arrive back at place from where we started a new Earth for the first time.

That was what what struck me over about a 10-year period of. Like me finding that 16 year old experience

Alex Tsakiris: [00:38:32] and I take it from understanding your biography deeper. Not an easy path not a path without bumps and doubts and all the other things.

Richard Cox: [00:38:42] Well, the big one was was period off them depression when I things were generally only up for me until I got to about 23.

Life is better my social contacts better. So I thought you know, it’s all going in the right direction. And then this this overwhelming sense of Oppression engulf me, which was big surprise, right? Because it was not not expect or not. The way things have been going and

Alex Tsakiris: [00:39:05] and not the way things are drawn up on the path that you were supposedly on and.

Richard Cox: [00:39:11] Yeah, I mean, I can’t remember if I was I think I was shocked. I think I because I thought if I encountered something like that or maybe last a day or two and then I you know get myself out of it. I mean, I was aware of John of the Cross and Dark Night of the soul and that kind of thing, but I don’t know how much I really.

Related to it and it went on for so long. I felt like oh, maybe this is it for me. Maybe it’s you know time still taking the lithium and making the best of it. I didn’t really think about how I feel about how to maybe if something is how to live with this rather than then get over it but to give us sort of esoteric analysis of that what was going on for me was it was a transition between.

From belief to the real. Okay. So what I found I done was I bought into a lot of Concepts like oh the love of God and so on and and believed in that and do my meditations with great aspiration that I would come into contact with such a feeling and after a certain time period having to recognize well, yeah, but it’s not really real for me something I believe in but I’ve never felt the love of God right with all the love.

I felt comes from other people and that’s transient is here one minute. Gone the next and this sense. Of what what I find inside myself. No looking to my depth is a sense of emptiness has I used to call it the not nothing because it wasn’t even nothingness. It was just an absence and absolute absence of meaning anything.

And when I meditate that’s when I find that that horrified me and not just an intellectual way. It was a deep embodied sense of horror that that’s what was underpinning all things absolute absence for meaning and I had I. Eventually encounter the writing some who’ve gone through a similar experience and I feel what I lacked on to that point was that acity to just stay on the edge of that in a Blackness for long enough and it in reading this account I resolved to do just that and I sat up into the night on the edge of Despair until it got really late or I’m gonna go to bed, but.

I will be using this tomorrow morning and this is what I’ll be doing for Evermore now and I would often wake up for a fit of Despair at about 4 a.m. Time to sweat a lot when you’re depressed every sweaty sheets at that time. So I woke up my usual fees of the stair and I saw everyone I knew and who had some meeting my life’s like a still around me in this very.

Vivid dreaming wake like State and they all started shooting off into the distance and everyone represented a little supply of love that was coming in to me. That was now gone until I got down to one person who had been like a very kind music good friend was a big sister kind of thing and then she went and I just had this moment of complete aloneness and it is oceanic infinite sense of Love opened up.

Okay. It was just like bigger than the universe and it was this classical. Invited none Jewel experience of we are swimming in an ocean of love and I saw all these people in that I saw people have problems with and I fell. Apologetic that I’d ever needed them to be a certain way because I was this and we were all this and much like people say with the near-death experience thing the p.m.

At water would say that the proof of the pudding is in the lasting effect saying I woke up the next morning and my depression was gone, right and I didn’t know that it was gone for awhile. I get like a couple of weeks went by and like is it not going back and I really knew what I went out and got drunk and it would always really hit me if I was drunk and I got drunk with a friend and.

Wasn’t there at all and then I never did either leathery service that was and then my subsequent investigations of non-duality were like, what was that? And how do I I’ve sort of thought into this into this they proved a lot of intensity and a lot of suffering but let’s try and understand that a bit more proper.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:42:56] Awesome, just totally awesome stuff to questions. I guess what have you discovered since then? What are some of the most meaningful discussions? I know you still are interested in trauma and in grief and in people who are overcoming and I think you feel a need to support people in that wonderful way.

But I can’t help but tying this back to the earlier part of our conversation. Why is still there that need to understand it in terms of our world like 9/11?

Richard Cox: [00:43:34] because the world is a reflection of Consciousness. I think it’s like a dream. Okay. So then on a collective level we dreamt 911 and some way and what’s the yeah.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:43:42] but let me offer a counter hypothesis that you’ll hear on the non-dual path and I’ve shared it on this show.

It’s the of the hugging Saint world. What world you know, so imma is this woman who at 13 had this amazing. Spiritually transformative experience in India. She was incredibly impoverished but you knew she just had to devote her life to God and she has and she goes around and she supposedly does all these wonderful things with people and works tirelessly 18 hours a day.

Just helping people helping people helping people and one of her devotees goes to her and says, I’m a you’re so busy you’re doing all this stuff for the world and get your telling us. We’re not of this world  and that’s what we hear from spiritual Masters all the time, which would this is not this is not skeptical because I’m in the world right?

I’m interested in this stuff. I’m interested in 9/11 and why science is wrong about almost everything and all these other things but there is a part of me that says. I’m doing that as a way of just kind of occupying myself because I really know that. On a deeper deeper sense. It really doesn’t matter like in the same way that you know, some of the near-death experiencers you’ve had come on and said that and said it on my show too is that this is all just middle stuff.

Richard Cox: [00:45:00] It doesn’t cause me a problem or I don’t feel there’s a contradiction   now if you had some sort of. Psychological issue where in watching a film of the cinema you started to believe it was real.

Okay, you would really want to stop that.  Right? And so if you’re having that kind of issue of not knowing it’s an illusion, you need to solve that first.

You need to get your mind. And yeah, it’s okay. I’m in the cinema. It’s fine. It’s all good. Let’s enjoy the show, and that’s what I feel about the world reading.

I don’t necessarily think it’s immensely important on a grander scheme of things. But this is the dream I’m having this is the our time observing. So I want to fully engage with it and indeed I think the none. Allows ultimately for deeper engagement because again, if you think the film is real you just want to ruin what you’re going to scream or something.

It doesn’t allow you to really involve yourself with anyone. You know, it’s not real. If you have a sense the world isn’t real and that were alternately safe that the deepest part of us isn’t in the world. Then there’s the freedom to engage fully.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:46:06] Love that answer. I agree. I didn’t see that coming, but you’re right.

Okay, you pick next I’ve kind of monopolized the board.

Richard Cox: [00:46:15] I’m going to say away from ET. Well, I wonder why suicide is that.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:46:21] I thought you did an excellent show  suicide in near-death experience with Angie Fenimore. thumbnail sketch of her story.

It’s fascinating, you know, sexually abused traumatic yet ripe berries. It all gets to a point contemplate suicide attempt suicide has an nde. Some people would call it a hellish and the ear traumatic nde, but she says no this is a turning point in that life and you know all these things and she comes out of it with a mission to.

tell others that suicide just can’t possibly be an answer because it’s just didn’t intermediary step. You know, it doesn’t get you anywhere.

Richard Cox: [00:47:08] So Angie Fenimore wrote a book back in the 90s called beyond the darkness and it was at the story of her life, which had a lot of trauma in it from.

Childhood Arnold and then dealing of the effect of that trauma in throughout her adult life then have relationships and such so all of this automatically lead to a serious suicide attempt. I’m she says she she didn’t attempt at she actually succeeded actually. She did cross over that line into being dead through taking a lot of medication inspired somewhat by. Near-death experiences how I feel just try to pull this in my memory or so stepmother who would made suicide attempt and talked about this beautiful sense of love and light on the other side and I think she come into contact with some other literature around it and felt like that’s the ultimate escape from.

The trauma of the world is to go off into this this place of love and light them and that’s not what she encountered. She encountered a sense of stepping out of her body, but the problems all still being there because she was still the same and then a sense of all the people being around who had just done a similar thing and going to this place where.

People were very very lost felt. Like they’ve been there a long time just drawn into their own suffering consumed by it and realizing that this hadn’t solved anything then calling upon the light and having a sense of God and Jesus coming and an interaction with them then and this sends people talk about it being more real than the waking world and ultimately waking off with a sense of firm.

A new sense of purpose and a new sense of spirituality and I don’t think everything has been sweetness and light since then for her bought for me. The book was I found very powerful in the sense of like I might have had a certain ideation around suicide only whatever like close to acting it out and bought in this sense of wanting to escape the trance of the world and it sort of.

Reshape that in my mind. So I saw the potential for it to reshape that for other people then it’s not without its problems. And

Alex Tsakiris: [00:49:25] and and let me just interject a couple parts that I found particularly meaningful because first this idea of contemplating suicide at one point or another is probably I don’t know what the stats are.

I’m sure it’s in the majority of the population. We just don’t talk about it. We just don’t talk about that darkness that. It comes in the middle of the night for everyone no matter who you are and unless you’re kind of totally stuffing it down and then it comes up in other places when you’re down there eating ice cream at two o’clock in the morning and not think about you but what I found interesting about her story is and again, it’s like you.

Back to all of your thing about the movie because here’s some reality that we have to pack back in So part of the reality is she’s faced with contemplating suicide and she’s shown instructed told by this higher being. That you should not do this because look what it will do to your children. It will do this.

It will do this it will you will lose out this now.  It says so much about one. It says this about there are lessons that we have to learn and whether we learn them on this level or whether we learn them through help from these Spirits, whatever.

That means that that’s somehow part of it. It also raises this question of can we change this timeline that were on it’s long been a question of mine that I don’t think it’s fully answered in the near-death experience where you hear people say. This is your time. This is not your time or you hear people say hey, this is your time and they go no, no.

No, this is not my time. And then they’re allowed to go back. There’s a million questions that aren’t completely that aren’t completely answered by your interview with Angie but are at least teed up

Richard Cox: [00:51:13] yeah. Sure. I think with the suicide thing, you know, if there is this absolute stigma around acknowledging any ideation of it whatsoever, and it’s not something I don’t want to do.

When I’ve talked to people about this more and more people will acknowledge that they have thought right and they can be a million miles away from doing it. But I think it’s to our detriment that we have pathologize thinking about it right with any kind of relationship. You have the the if it’s healthy.

There’s the possibility to end it with it’s a Java partner anything and in a sense have a relationship with life. Okay, and I think the the impulse to say I’ve just had enough of this right I want out. Well, I’m not saying that’s the way to go but it’s going to tell you a lot about yourself if rather than being afraid of that sense of I want out you think okay.

Why is that? What is it that I can’t cope with in this moment. So we demonize the impulse to our detriment. I think I wanted to engage vangie on that level. I was also interested to ask her. She wrote this book back in the 90s. Okay, and there’s been so much done since then on the death experience.

So how her interpretation has maybe changed since then? Okay. So for example, and he’s Christian and January Christian experience, okay, but since then she’s. Read a lot about this experience has already been Alexander and all sorts. And she said I asked to do feel that you met Jesus because he’s the correct one.

He’s the one true God or because he’s a symbol of some deeper infinite Consciousness and she doesn’t have an answer to that as you know, we don’t put she says it’s it’s come through more to her since the that, you know, maybe it’s deep. Infinite mind lot of things expressing itself in the right way.

We can’t be definite about answered on the details of it. But that’s yeah and there’s something I get. I don’t for me also doesn’t answer all the things like Angie’s experience is it has this very dualistic quality to a like she was in the darkness and God was light and he came to the edge of the darkness because he couldn’t go into the light and he told her you know, she made a mistake in doing this he brought her back to life.

So there’s a dualism that’s maintained. Between that right like suicide is a bad thing and you keep it away. And I think there’s different ways of seeing it there too in terms as I be mentioned in this idea of integration of like what is the what is the impulse that desire to end it have to tell me?

So that those are things that came out ultimately I wanted to create something that will be valuable to people as a resource in you may be struggling those kind of feelings. And and this is the counter intuitive part helpful to people who might have had a loved one go through suicide. Okay, because that’s I say counterintuitive because this this this dark place that they.

Angie talks about going to is not necessarily what people want here, but I don’t think people want fluffy stories about light and love in that sense. And what Angie came back with was the sense of. She certainly didn’t feel that it was only her the got saved and everyone else is screwed. Right there’s a sense of being able to connect through all through four forms through prayer as previous guests on skeptical talked about and with with people on the other side who may be there is a continuation of suffering and struggle.

Okay, maybe not for everyone some people maybe that’s the case but. What we want Angie doesn’t leave us with is this sense of that an infinite divide. Then this kind of religious we get it from Christianity a lot that when you’re lost you’re lost forever.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:54:45] great, so there’s two more that I want to make sure we get to I’ll let you pick the order but but cultish and the ET and I know you’re begging off the ET but we have to go there a little bit.

Which one would you like to go to?

Richard Cox: [00:54:58] What are you T at the end of the will do cool fish. Now what what about corphish?

Alex Tsakiris: [00:55:03] So another really interesting interview that you do. Holy hell. Tell folks a little bit about this and that I want to talk more broadly about what’s going on with Cults and how it Taps into a lot of the stuff that we’re talking about in a really interesting way.

So. Please jump in at any at any part you want

Richard Cox: [00:55:30] so holy hell is a documentary. If you have Netflix, you can see it and it’s called documentary. Okay, and I sat down and watched it one evening and for the first 20 or 30 minutes, you might think I’ll be yeah, this doesn’t look too bad. I don’t know what the what’s going to be the dark side hero looks like having a lovely time and then it just goes off a cliff and descends into.

Insanity and people’s lives being ruined people being sexually abused by their Guru just awful from at experience for the people involved and I interviewed Chris Johnson one of the participants in the interview. I was just thinking about this the other day actually is probably one of the most interesting hours of my life was was speaking to Chris and getting his insights about how he is a.

You man who was not lacking in StreetWise and had been approached by religious groups on the streets of I think I’m gonna be in La the Moonies or whatever had laughed until all this is because of course we knew what a court was but then still got involved in in a court and end up doing like

Alex Tsakiris: [00:56:39] 20 years

Richard Cox: [00:56:41] or 20 years about that.

Yeah. Yeah, and the the. Guru thick and I live he went by various names and I’ve forgotten all of them to check on his foot. Yeah, getting his insights on that how he questions I was left with were was he genuinely interested in spirituality and it kind of got to be egotistical or was it just a scam for him and these kind of things and don’t did Chris feel like there were psychological factors of in him that Drew him to that or was it just you know, anyone could have fallen for this the con job.

And so I see it. Yeah, Alex got just where you want to go with that. It’s kind of that whole thing there.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:57:24] Well, you don’t. Because you have this interest in spirituality and in exploring these deep States one of the questions I wanted to ask you in particular is when you’re watching this movie this excellent brave brave documentary for not only Chris to kind of come out and say this guy, you know chorus me into having sex, but then and I think Chris is gay, right.

Richard Cox: [00:57:54] I’m not really sure to be honest. What I will how we would Define that

Alex Tsakiris: [00:57:57] because the reason I bring that up is, you know, even more sadly in a very confusing way. There’s other young men who are heterosexual who are coerced or. You know, whatever you want to say into having sexual relations with this Guru.

His just has this power over them is doing therapy with them is doing hit and hypnosis with them and they wind up having these, you know sexual encounters with. And again, I don’t have heat even have to say there’s nothing wrong with being gay. Of course. There’s nothing wrong with being gay. But the trauma in these people’s lives say that’s not my sexual orientation and I look back at that with this incredible shame because you know, how did I wind up in that situation?

So there’s these people to come on the film that are incredibly Brave and they reveal the story which as you say is not typical, but then is typical of what we see in cult. But I digress Richard and that’s why they show goes on without a lot of questions the part. I found particularly interesting is the samadhi experiences that these people have so when you talked about your experience with the whiskey and the all feeling of Love, there are.

People on this planet that seem to be able to transmit that experience to other people through a touch through a gaze through. Any various number of waves and these people have been reported through history and they a lot of times sit up on a cushion up on the stage and people throw flowers and money at him because we have such unbelievable respect but more to the point participants have this if you have that incredible feeling the most profound feeling of your life like you talked about that next morning after drinking the whiskey.

Man, it’s hard not to be attached to that and it’s hard not to attach yourself to the person who you think transmitted that experience. So there’s so much to pull apart there. What do we think is going on when someone like this who is not a good person by any measure seems to be able to affect this inside of people.

Richard Cox: [01:00:21] Yeah, so I don’t have a final answer on this one, but it’s something I’ve explored and journeyed on myself. So I think for one there’s definitely a sense in watching the film but for the grace of God there go I there was a period in my life where I can see definitely I could have taken that course if I’d have met the wrong people at the right time.

Yes, I could have fallen into that. You know at the same time. I do feel that getting involved in spirituality in the early naughties. The first time I ever heard about Sai Baba was when I heard about the accusations of pedophilia, right? So the the veneer was falling off gurus though. The gloss was falling away.

 So then okay, we start we start out with this idea that there are some people who go into Consciousness in such a profound way that they can wave their hand above your head and that will induce the cement experience of you because they are so enlightened pure themselves.

Okay, that’s the same place for this and then then the accusation surface that these people are not holier than thou they’re doing stuff that’s in some cases not only dark but so dark, it would make them amongst the most evil one percent of people. In the population, so then we have to move that they okay. Well, we’ll people can be enlightened on a very deep level of consciousness. And and talk to the infinite and transmit that but in the middle, it doesn’t necessarily purify their psyche and they can have all these demons event. So this power comes through for you shouldn’t necessarily trust them and that’s that’s a model Tim freak move towards and that’s like the some pickles up from you.

I mention his name because he came with this great analogy of like look, it’s like a rockstar. Okay, like you might no one expects rock stars to be good people in fact, you know, If they will get people that will probably have left out if they you went backstage and they were just drinking herbal tea and they work like snorting cocaine or something.

You’d be a bit disappointed. So but they have a genius there’s a genius in the music and artists are tormented people. And actually we should move gurus out of the spiritually pure category and put them in the torment of Genius category.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:02:22] Awesome. I’ll tell you what. I love that and I think it also speaks to your earlier point about understanding the movie is the movie.

Richard Cox: [01:02:32] I mean, I have a friend who was a devotee of cellular appreciate the recently deceased Buddhist and you know, he really struggles because he knows full. Well, he’s a nasty abusive guy who. You know had sex of all these young female devotees, but he struggles with the can’t ignore that the most profoundly shifting moments of his life came in the presence of this man or in his group and he’s had to you know, wrestle of that and it’s differed

 I think it gets right into our attachment patterns and disorders and probably how we were parented and what we’re unconsciously searching for in that level.

So I understand why people get a real lock into that and whilst I agree is part of the movie and the the process then is to recognize why we’re being drawn to visit the person what they give us in the way we are and to. Come into our own sense of Oneness and I sympathize with that being a difficult journey in one that can take time.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:03:26] Totally agree. Okay Richard. Why is it beneficial ET ET is right on your shoulder, man. He keep you ret. Isn’t that what we found out the end of the day, isn’t that? The real reality here that we ret.

Richard Cox: [01:03:46] Is it I am I blame skeptical for this? I was just trying to do some basic meat and potato near-death experience research. And then I stumbled across Mary Rod Wells interview that you can talk to it. And that was that was the rabbit. Oh, I never wanted fall down, but then I was down it and once I told Simon small.

Yeah, that was another again. Ontology of accident Simon is a priest in the Church of England which retired now deeply mystical contemplative man in that that aspects the church and I really wanted to interview him on that and he wrote a Sci-Fi book big fan of sci-fi. So he wrote a book about a priest to meet Aliens bringing those two worlds together.

I didn’t really know his interest in. This whole area was prompted by some personal experience of contact. Okay, so that came up inside my interview and then of course you’ve got to go there. So we did an alien encounters mainly encounters interview.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:04:48] So to me, what I thought would be kind of interesting to talk about and just drag you into the deep water here, it’s like steppingstones across the river and I guess my earlier rant about I do want to jump, I do want to launch into, kind of conclusions, and that’s not maybe exactly what I meant. But what I do feel like I want to do is, I don’t want to not recognize when the burden of proof, kind of thing, shifts in a dramatic way and that we have to change our belief system in a way that says, “Well, I now have to accept that until I’m proven otherwise.”

Here are the steppingstones to me. I was like bringing up the New York Times, Fox News, CBS News, December 2017 is it? Yeah.

Richard Cox: [01:05:46] I think so. Yeah,

Alex Tsakiris: [01:05:47] You know, I mean it’s outed. So the DOD has now come out and said, our government, the United States had said, “Yeah, they’re here and there are UFOs.” So the steppingstone for me is, number one, you lied your ass off about that, for at least 60, 70 years. You threatened people. You threatened to kill people, kill their families, kill everyone if they revealed this UFO secret. And now you just kind of casually, kind of slip it out there in a little, you know, “Oh, it never was really classified information anyway. Here’s the video, you can see for yourself.”

What surprises me in that is that people seem unexplainably reluctant to take the next step. If we see the UFO video that the DOD now has thrown the holy water on and say, “Yeah, that’s real,” then certainly ET is real, there’s someone piloting those crafts and it’s ET. And then, how would we not connect that to the ancient alien hypothesis, which I think is overwhelmingly, just self-evident, when you go and you interview, like I interviewed Ardy Sixkiller Clarke, who is a Native American anthropologist at Montana State, who goes and interviews all of these indigenous people in North America and Canada, the United States and South America and they say, “Oh yes, this is our tradition. The star people came, and they gave us all this, and we are in fact the star people.” And then you go over to Africa and you talk to the Dogon and they say, “Yes, the star people they came to us.” And then you go and you look at Egypt and you look at the lining of the pyramids, and of course, they’re there with the stars and it’s the star people.

I mean, again, if the pivot point is the DOD release of the videos and saying, “Yeah, this is real,” well then, there does have to be this kind of avalanche here of accepting all of these other things.

So the Mary Rodwell interview that you mentioned that I did, and we can juxtapose that to the interview you just reference that you did, brings us face to face with the hybridization of us, the hybridization of ETs, this genetic transformation from all of these different species that might be out there in the universe, to something that is us right now, but is in the process of constantly being tweaked and changed. That, to me, I’m not going to say that’s certain, I’m just saying that until, that can be thoroughly disproven, that has to become the most likely scenario in my opinion.

And then the larger question that I get to in all of this, back to your hope, this whole interview is, does that change anything about all of these conversations we were having about deep spirituality? Does it change it at all, or does it just fit right into it seamlessly? So there’s a ton on the table there but go ahead.

Richard Cox: [01:09:10] Yeah, I can see it not changing anything about deep spirituality. If you take this non-dual idealist paradigm that the found that big ocean of lore’s and presumably the UFOs are arising in that too, whatever they are. So, you know, unless I fundamentally misinterpreted my experience there, which is of course always a possibility, I could see it not changing that and this being like another aspect of the world we inhabit.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:09:40] Can we explore that for a minute?  How does that work?

Richard Cox: [01:09:42] It sounds self-evident to me. Can you elaborate on the question a bit?

Alex Tsakiris: [01:09:47] In one way, I get that it’s self-evident, in another way, how come Angie isn’t all over that? How come she isn’t coming back and that’s the first thing she says, “The variety of the manifestation of that one love consciousness is infinite, there’s like millions and millions of different manifestations of it.” She doesn’t say that.

Richard Cox: [01:10:11] Well, no, but I mean, think of the context here that Angie is not going into it, she’s not taking tablets to shut her heart down because she wants to have this deep conscious experience because she’s a psychonautical explorer, she’s doing it in an act of utter desperation. But what reaches out to her is the appropriate image for this lady born into Christian spirituality and that’s been the thing she’s clung to for her life, for soulful sustenance. So it makes sense to me in that way, whereas by contrast, someone in a Rick Strassman group taking DMT, so they can explore the depth and breadth of the universe might have a different experience that speaks more to that.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:10:53] Let’s pause on that, because this is like really the conversation that I wanted to have. So does that really wash though? Because one of Angie’s concerns is, she’s hearing the voice of God and she wants to make sure she gets it down just right. Which always strikes me as a little bit strange, although I love what Angie has to say and what she brings forward is phenomenal. She’s gifted, in terms of her knowledge and her understanding of it, but, “I wanted to make sure I got the voice of God just right.” If it’s God talking to you then why are you just getting that little sliver?

And then we jump over, and I just interviewed Debra Diamond, who I think is a really great medium and she’s talked to thousands of thousands of spirits and sees spirits all the time and I asked her and she’s like, “Well, no, I’m not sure I’m down with reincarnation.” I’m like, “What do you mean, you’re not down with reincarnation? They’ve already proved it over at the University of Virginia.”

And then if you want to talk about aliens, it’s like a whole different kind, it’s like, “Whoa, I don’t know anything about that.” It doesn’t fit together in a way that I would expect it to, if the whole ET, genetic, we are ET, kind of story is real. I would expect to see that pop up more.

Richard Cox: [01:12:16] Yeah. I can only address the Angie thing by being a bit sort of theological and making statements like, “God reaches out to us in the form we can accept,” and then that fundamentally makes sense to me, because if I’m having a conversation like this and we’re exploring the nature of reality, I’m not sat here thinking, “What’s the most compassionate and kind way to speak to Alex, that won’t upset his apple cart?” But if I’m interacting with someone who maybe, the big thing for them is they’re suffering and struggling or they have a particular religious view, that does come into play then, and I’m happy to fit in to whatever language bracket people feel comfortable, if I can be of some service in that way.

So it makes sense to me to extrapolate from… that’s the way I would act, then it makes sense that that carries on up, so that when, whatever deeper being interacts with Angie in her moment of suffering, it makes sense it would reach her in that in that form, because compassion trumps exploration in that moment.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:13:15] God is working on a need-to-know basis.

Richard Cox: [01:13:18] Yeah. It’s also not lost on me Alex. When I was 23, 24, I was really into Neo-Advaita, I looked at the world that way, or Advaita Vedanta, and what do you know? My experience was a very non-dual classical Advaita Vedanta experience. What a coincidence, I guess that’s the right one then. Well, maybe, there’s something very pure, very non-mythological about the way I experienced it, I didn’t meet Jesus or something. But also, maybe, that’s just that I’m seeing the part or feeling the part of the elephant that I can feel in that, and I might have my own cognitive restrictions because of the lens I’ve picked up. I don’t doubt that if I’d very much done this soul searching through a more Christian lens, I would be speaking a different language in reporting it. Maybe not. Maybe the same experience or maybe it’s going to be a little different, I don’t know.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:14:12] A related question as we start to wrap this up. Are we looking at two ladders that are leaning up against different walls? One ladder being the spiritual ladder that you’re talking about and were trying to ascend hopefully that ladder. And then we have these different experiences and we could call them non-dual, or we could call them Christian, or we could call them mystical or Gnostic or all of these different things, and we understand all of the complexities and challenges of that and all the rest of that.

And then there’s this other ladder that we’re exploring, which is, you know, “What’s going on and how does science relate to that? We are a genetic experiment and we are being manipulated but our consciousness is manifesting.” Now, on that ladder, they’re still talking about consciousness and they’re talking about Rick Strassman and they’re talking about the purple jaguar and all the rest of that.

But when you really get up to the top of these ladders, you find they’re on two completely different walls. One wall is, looking deeply at this time-space reality and it’s just trying to figure that out, and not putting judgment on that but just saying, here are all of the things that we can experience in this time-space reality and hey, there are these other beings that are seem to be popping into it and experiencing it with us. And then this hypothesis then, if I were to round it out, would say, this other wall, as you’re ascending it, at the top of it it becomes more and more separated from the other wall, because the other wall, it’s just like a game. It’s just kind of an experience, but at the end of the day, this other true spiritual ascension is what it’s all about. Does that analogy make any sense?

Richard Cox: [01:16:03] I think so. I think you could say it depends on your perspective on things like the UFO phenomena. So, for example, if like David Jacobs has got the correct answer, then the ladders are quite separated. The UFOs, the aliens aren’t here for any spiritual reason, they’ve just seen resources and they want to take them. On the other hand, obviously like a Mary Rodwell perspective would have the two ladders very conjoined.

I can’t make sense of the questions you ask, like exactly the right questions to be asking regarding, like why does this person say reincarnation and this person says, you know, three times and why do some people say spirits want close contact with their families when they’re gone and you can do therapy around that, and others say, no leave them alone, they’re busy with their own thing.

I suspect that it might be that our way of understanding the world, our rules of logic and such are more limited, and we’re dealing with something that’s just on another level and we’re no more, where like, if the ancient Greeks try to understand or found the facts we know about the world, about having the reasons, they wouldn’t be able to understand quantum mechanics or something, it’s just they’re not in a position where they can even approach that and I suspect we’re not in a position where we can approach that. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, and I appreciate that’s an ultimate cop out answer, but that’s also just because of the variety of the way the phenomena have come through and all of these apparent contradictions. It makes me think that we would need to look at this on a deeper level in some way, that we might have limited access to.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:17:43] Hey, it’s either a cop out or it’s the most deep profound answer. It is the world, what world answer. It is the Amma answer, right? It’s like, “Hey, I’m playing the game as hard as I can, but I still see it as a movie,” I don’t forget that. So I think that’s just awesome.

I hope I can turn this into something that is edutainment for at least some folks out there. It’s been awesome to me because as you can tell, I’ve had a lot of my own deep state consciousness experiences while listening to your excellent, excellent show and I really hope people check it out. You’re really in this glut of podcasting content, there’s so much fantastic stuff out of it. I do hope people find their way over to your excellent show.

Richard, as we wrap it up, tell folks what you have coming up, what you’re working on.

Richard Cox: [01:18:40] Okay. Well, my mind is fried at the moment, because I’ve spent the past month or so working on an interview with a fellow from the FBI about the kind of intelligence failures we were talking about. We have gone into the ring over the collapse of the towers thing, with the physicist David Chandler. I also have lined up a lady who, she was a client of Dr. Janet Colli, who worked with UFO encounters, people having that. And a lady who’s had a kind of spiritual awakening through prolonged encounters, who’s writing a book on the subject, to explore the spirituality of contact. So that’s something I’m very much looking forward to doing.

And the continuation of the themes, basically there are all of these themes which I get completely absorbed whenever I’m doing and forget everything else exists, and then I think, “Oh, yeah I did that.” So there’s a continuing thing I’m doing, looking around the spirituality of hell, and I’ve got a Tibetan lucid dreamer on next to continue that series, looking at the spiritual value in hellish experiences.

Alex Tsakiris: [01:19:46] Awesome, much for me to to look forward to. Great listening for a good walk on the beach.

Richard, it’s been absolutely awesome having you on. I know I kind of sprung this on you at the last minute, in terms of turning this into a Skeptiko episode, but I’m glad we did. 

Richard Cox: [01:20:04] Absolutely, yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you very much Alex.

Thanks again to Richard Cox for joining me today on Skeptiko. One question I’d have to tee up at the end of this interview, what the heck does 9/11 have to do with deep spirituality? I tried to make the link because, to me, it’s really so much of what this show is all about.

But as always, I’m interested to hear what you have to say, your thoughts, your ideas. The best place to connect with other people who are listening to the show and to connect with me is through the Skeptiko Forum, skeptiko-forum.com. You can find that through the Skeptiko website, skeptiko.com where you will find all our previous shows available for free download MP3. Take them, run with them, do what you will with them.

I have a number of, I think, super interesting shows coming up. A couple of half-baked projects that I’m super excited to do. I hope you stay with me for that. I hope you join this community in any way that seems to make sense for you and share it with anyone you think needs to hear about it.

Until next time, take care and bye for now.

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