Project Blue Book and Alien AI: The Father of Ufology’s Untold Story! With Paul Hynek

Paul Hynek 0:00

If people are scared about UFOs, that means they're not doing their job. So Project Blue Book was just a PR exercise to tamp down hysteria about UFOs and make ordinary Americans go about their business and not worry about flying saucers. We think of in movies that aliens who visit us are super intelligent and honest, and not all the reports. I know experiencers who say I was communicating with this alien. I realised they were lying to me. So, if entities are indeed coming here, they likely have technology far greater than ours. I think everybody kind of agrees with that. If they were truly hostile, we would be dead. It seems much more likely that either they are us in some dimension or some time frame, have some relation to us, want to help us, want to stop us from nuclear war, and are likely a positive presence. You know, we're not doing so well on Earth right now ourselves, and people are so afraid of the future of artificial intelligence. I'm much more afraid about the present of human stupidity. I think that DMT might be the Starbucks of the intergalactic world, where entities of different frequencies don't have to go in a rocket ship, but can inhale a molecule that is already in your brain. But I think with doing an extra dose of DMT, we go to that Starbucks of the universe and perhaps can communicate with other entities.

Jannecke Øinæs 1:41

Hey, I have a favour to ask you. If you appreciate these conversations, then thank you so much for subscribing to my channel. Paul Hynek, welcome to the Wisdom From North Show.

Paul Hynek 1:52

My pleasure, Janencke. I'm happy to be here.

Jannecke Øinæs 1:55

It's great to have you here. You are an entrepreneur, a futurist, professor. You're for. researcher, speaker, and so much more. And you are the son of the legendary Dr. Jay Allen Hynek, who is called the father of ufology, and he was an astronomer and researched UFOs for his whole life, and that's what I'm going to start by asking you. Actually, how was it like being brought up by a father who was so immersed with everything about UFOs, and how did that influence your life?

Paul Hynek 2:38

Well, you know, however you grow up, good, bad, interesting, boring is normal to you at the time. So you don't really think so much about it at the time. It's just what happens every day. It's when really when you look back at it and you say, "Well, that was kind of interesting, you know. I don't know life without UFOs. I remember flying saucer ornaments on the Christmas tree, and Travis Walton and other witnesses coming over for dinner on Tuesday. So I grew up with that, and you know, people think like you mentioned, like my father, like the father of ufology. In the family, we thought of him as an astronomer and professor who had a side hustle of UFOs, so we grew up in an academic and scientific household, but one that was curiously open to the sort of fringes of science, and not just UFOs, but psychic phenomena and anything else that was really interesting, sort of at the the dark edges of mainstream science. And my father liked to think that part of his job was to take a flashlight to go to those dark edges and see if he can find out a little bit more.

Jannecke Øinæs 3:59

And did he start out as a sceptic, but then he worked as an advisory or something similar to the U.S. Air Force. But he must have discovered something that changed his mind because he didn't die a sceptic, did he?

Paul Hynek 4:16

Yeah, you're right. And you know, people will say he went from a sceptic to a believer, and that's not quite right. But he went from a diehard sceptic because in the 1940s, most astronomers thought that flying saucers, as they were called at the time, were just kind of post-war hysteria, and there are little green men with ray guns on the comic books. So the Air Force asked him to help explain cases, and he-I'm sure he thought, "Well, that will take a couple weekends worth of work. Well, you know, he worked in the Air Force for 20 years, and over that time, came to the realisation that, okay, there's a lot of silly things happening, but about 5% of the cases. Even after professional investigation, simply cannot be explained, and so it doesn't matter whether you believe in something. Evidence doesn't care what you believe or what you think. It's just there, and so over time, the accumulated weight of the evidence-you know, Air Force pilots with radar corroborations and high credibility witnesses piling up again and again and again, and you have to stop and say, "Wait, I don't know what this is. And I think one of the issues that a lot of people have with UFOs or ghosts or other phenomena is that they don't understand where they come from, and so they just say, "Well, I don't understand like where aliens would come from, so I'm just not gonna believe in that or not think about it. It's, I think, for us, we're pattern-seeking mammals, and we want answers, and it's an awkward intellectual resting point to accept a phenomena without an answer.

So, my father and Jacques Vallée and others quickly got to the point. Well, maybe not quickly over over several years. Got to the point of saying, "There's something happened here. We don't know, and it doesn't necessarily mean that it's extraterrestrial or only extraterrestrial. It could be lots of things, but there's definitely something happened here that they would call meta-terrestrial, meaning beyond our current earthly understanding, and that happened over, like I said, over a period of years, and it got to the point where he was confident that there's something very mysterious happening here, and really wanted to get to the bottom of it and help find out what it was.

Jannecke Øinæs 6:46

And I think he worked on the project Blue Book. If you could explain a little bit about what that is and whether it was classified and whether that has changed now that more information has come forward now that he he wasn't allowed to share perhaps at that time,

Paul Hynek 7:01

yeah. So for 20 years, he was the chief scientific consultant for the Air Force's Project Blue Book, and you know we have a tendency when we talk about disclosure, we have a tendency to think of the U.S. government as one monolithic bloc acting in unison, and nothing could be further from the truth. The government is this morass of competing agencies and fighting fiefdoms of departments who don't like each other, or individuals who have vendettas against somebody else, and working at cross purposes. And in the case of Project Blue Book, it was not a serious scientific effort to get to the bottom of a phenomena. It was a public-facing agency whose job was to explain away and solve every case to calm the population. You know, the Air Force's job is to, in part, protect us against threats from the sky, but that includes the perception that we are safe from objects from the sky. So, for the Air Force, if people are scared about UFOs, that means they're not doing their job. So, Project Blue Book was just a PR exercise to tamp down hysteria about UFOs and make ordinary Americans go about their business and not worry about flying saucers.

Jannecke Øinæs 8:31

Right, and what are your thoughts now about what's going on? Would you say that we are in the times of disclosure? Like, what are your thoughts about the revelations that have come forward, especially the last year, and presidents, former presidents, who have mentioned that it might be true?

Paul Hynek 8:53

Well, I don't think that the U.S. government, of their own volition, Will disclose with a capital D all the juicy information ever. I don't think that will happen if they have a choice. And if you are in the military, why would you give up this most sensitive information? It is perhaps the most important secretive information that you have. If you're in the Air Force, you've taken an oath to protect our country. You're not going to give up your best information, and a lot of that information has been shunted off to private defence contractors. They're not subject to the same FOIA requests. Then you have the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which is the successor to the Atomic Energy Commission. So Roswell, which happened near White Sands Nuclear Air Force Training Base and and other facilities, the Atomic Energy Commission would have scooped up all that information, and they are not subject to. Information requests and subpoenas, and then the other element is that if there are aliens here, aren't they perhaps in charge instead of the U.S. government? Would it really be the U.S. government dictating to aliens what they're going to say? I I don't think so. So you've got hardcore military mindset, private defence contractors, nuclear agencies, and aliens, and each one is sort of a step up on a ladder of increasing difficulty or increasing unlikeliness of disclosure as we know it.

Jannecke Øinæs 10:38

That makes sense. Now, what do you know or believe that they are actually hiding the government?

Paul Hynek 10:47

You know, I don't know. There's so much evidence, so many reports of them coming away and taking saucers that have crashed in a desert somewhere. There's so much evidence of this, and yet we've had scattered accounts, and and like you said, more whistleblowers are coming forward, and my friend Danny Sheehan is doing great work in trying to craft legislation to force various agencies to release information. I really don't know what they have. You know, it's hard to say because usually governments aren't great at keeping big secrets because every single person involved has to toe the line, not just most of them, but everyone. And so, yeah, I really don't know. I I would love nothing more than a tour of a secret facility to know, but I've heard firsthand confidential reports from people who seem very credible, very honest, very knowledgeable, saying they had seen things that the government has. So I believe it's likely the government has super secret meta-terrestrial technology and perhaps entities, and yet it's also unlikely, I believe, that we'll find out about this anytime soon.

Jannecke Øinæs 12:19

You've had your own experience, haven't you? Don't you call yourself an experiencer?

Paul Hynek 12:29

Maybe with an asterisk. I've not had a classical experience of seeing what I would consider what would trip the wire as a UFO in the sky, but like I mentioned, the word meta-terrestrial because I I I like to have a very open aperture to not think only about aliens from other planets, but perhaps from other dimensions or other times or our collective unconscious, and so I say with an asterisk because it's a long story. But I'm a believer in the.

Jannecke Øinæs 13:11

I'd love to hear it.

Paul Hynek 13:12

Oh, okay. In the potential reality of psychedelic experiences, especially including DMT and ayahuasca, and so I've had experiences there where it feels like I'm having a hyperreal, hyper clarity. I don't know if discussion is the right word, but communication with entities. And I've asked them, "Are you what we perceive to be aliens and UFOs? And they answered, or it answered, or all answered. We can't explain in a way that you would understand. And I thought, well, that's not no. And yeah, if psychedelic entities are related to what we perceive as aliens, that connection is likely well beyond my ability to comprehend, so that's why I say I kind of hem and haw and say with an asterisk because, you know, my friends Danny Sheehan and Steve Bassett and Richard Dolan are working actively on government disclosure. For me, I'm doing maybe the end around trying to go direct to source via DMT and see if I can't find out another way to unlock this because I think just imagine Yannika how wonderful in advance it would be if we could demonstrate to the acceptance of mainstream science-that a lot of the experiences we're interested in are objectively real. So I I call that exposure as opposed to disclosure, and that's what I'm more focused on.

Jannecke Øinæs 14:54

Yes, I know you're very much into DMT, and I would love to go there. Because that has opened up so much for you, and you're going to do a talk about it at the San Diego Transcendence Retreat, and I'm going to be there. First of all, I'm curious about the latest research about DMT that it might not be a hallucinatory psychedelic drug they're saying anymore. Would love to go into that because that's what the I feel the mainstream believe.

Paul Hynek 15:22

Yeah, you know, the Nixon administration started what they call the war on drugs in the 1970s, and they framed it as protecting the nation's youth. It has come out that they couldn't care less about the nation's youth. They wanted to alienate brown people and hippies, and that was a great wedge issue. So they attached this stigma and they made it illegal. And even at the time, there was really promising research of the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics, and so they were stigmatised just like UFOs. And now, finally, you know, with the widespread legalisation and decriminalisation of cannabis, we're now seeing that happen in various states with psychedelics as well. And a lot of people are coming to the realisation that even if these experiences aren't objectively real, they're not just about getting high. They have valid therapeutic benefits, and there's more and more evidence pointing to psilocybin for depression, and also DMT to help against dementia. I saw an interview with a maybe 85-year-old woman who was talking about how her husband unfortunately had severe dementia and couldn't remember people's names, and then he started microdosing DMT. And I did not expect this woman to say DMT, and microdosing to only to the extent where you really couldn't feel any effects. And now he regained his memory. Now this is not a scientifically controlled study; it's an anecdote. But there are more and more accounts of low doses of psychedelics, especially DMT, helping with dementia and other ailments. And I've seen it help with anxiety and other conditions. And so, for me, this is fascinating because you know my end goal is to see if I can instead of doing a CE5, I can do a DMT one and have a contact. But along the way, this medicine, this plant medicine, and I'm glad you said that it might not be hallucinatory. This plant medicine could be a communications conduit or a plant medicine technology to allow us to communicate with other entities. I think of DMT as Starbucks. So Starbucks came along and they said, "Hey, we've seen the sort of joy that people have in Italian cafes. We don't have that in the U.S. We have Folgers crystals at home. Let's make coffee an experience. So they opened cafes, but I met with the guy who did all the branding for Starbucks for 25 years, and he said it wasn't about the experience of coffee. It was creating what they call the third place. So let's say that you and I want to talk about making a movie. Well, you don't want me to come to your house, and I don't have to clean up my house to have you over in a in a business setting. So we go to this neutral third place, and the rent for our meeting is buying some coffee. I think that DMT might be the Starbucks of the intergalactic world, where entities of different frequencies don't have to go in a rocket ship, but can inhale a molecule that is already in your brain. DMT is endogenous; it's in everyone right now. So anyone who says they've never done DMT, well, they do every day because it's in your brain. But I think with doing an extra dose of DMT, we go to that Starbucks of the universe, and perhaps can communicate with other entities.

Jannecke Øinæs 19:07

I like that picture, and DMT for those who are new to it. You find that in nature, right?

Paul Hynek 19:13

Yeah, and so DMT is is not as widely known as like psilocybin and LSD. It is natural, and a lot of people know it as ayahuasca. That's one form. Then there's DMT, and there's five meo and bufo, and it's in humans and many animals. And we don't really know why. There's theories about it being secreted by the pineal gland to help with trauma, etc. But it's a rather curious metabolic extravagance if there's no real purpose for it, and it's cursing throughout the natural kingdom. So you know, people have suggested that perhaps it's some kind of Easter egg that once we get to the level of. Sophistication of understanding how to harness this, then maybe we're ready to communicate with other entities. And ayahuasca, as you know, is fascinating in that you have to take the leaves of one plant and the bark of another one, and combine them in a very specific way to get the desired effects. How and they called it the ayahuasca riddle. How did they know which plants to choose and what to do? And indigenous populations in various places in the world say the plants told us. So I thought, well, how could the plants tell you before you put the plants together in the right combination, but it was other plants like happe and other plants that told them this is what you do for that other plant, and I've seen examples of DMT piercing the veil, so to speak, and and speaking to people in this realm to say no, don't do any more tonight. That's enough, or no more this year, or yes, welcome. We would love to have you. So it is everywhere, and it's in our brains. And for me, it's not about getting high like I did in my youth. It's about hyper clarity. It's it's a bit for those who haven't tried it, it's it can be very. There's an ontological shock perhaps at first because it can be the effects are so quick. It's like if you've done high doses of mushrooms or LSD, you get to that peak in 10 seconds, and it's very difficult for your brain to get around that. But once you do, for me, it doesn't feel like I'm high. It feels like I'm sober, and when I come out, I feel again a little bit groggy in this reality.

Jannecke Øinæs 21:51

I'm glad you shared that because that was at the top of my mind. Like, how does it actually feel? And I gotta be honest, I've done ayahuasca myself, and the next day, I was just fine. And I've had, or I had some weird experiences that I can't sort of understand totally. I mean, it does make sense that you encountered some of these beings. I did not. Some of the experiences I had was that all of a sudden one of those ladies that were helping the shaman, she appeared as Nicole Kidman in the hours with green eyes right in front of me, and I never understood why that was a thing. But then I had some profound experiences with me having the universe inside me, and all of a sudden, I was the universe. I was the entire universe, and the shaman was sitting in front of me and said, "Now you know you are the universe, and I was wow, mind blown. But I would love to get some more details from your experience because I couldn't quite catch it. All of a sudden, these beings appeared. Was that the first time you had a DMT experience that they showed up?

Paul Hynek 23:06

Yes, and and you know I did a lot of drugs in my youth, and I gave them up because I prefer clarity over distortion. And I I had no intention besides just messing around. And then a friend of mine asked me where my father thought UFOs came from. I said, "Well, he's very comfortable saying there's a bona fide phenomena. Where they come from is difficult. Maybe even another dimension. He said, "You should read a book called Alien Information Theory. I said, "Alien Information Theory-that's beautiful as a book title. What's it about? And he said, "DMT. I said, "What's that? This is like eight, nine years ago, and he said, "Well, it's a psychedelic. And I said, "Well, what does that got to do with my father and UFOs? He said, "Well, because the author says that if you take DMT, it may not be a hallucination; you may be experiencing another dimension. I thought, "Oh, that's fascinating. And that same day, I met a new person who was talking about what he does-breathwork ceremonies-and he facilitates DMT sessions. I said, "I just heard about DMT. Can I hijack the conversation and talk about that? He goes, "No. Well, the universe already did. Would you like to try some? I said, "Yes. So, went to my house soon after that, and I did a particular kind of DMT called Changa, which is my favourite. And I did a very strong dose, and I had that experience where I felt I was on the other side of the universe, watching. This is where I get the DMT stutter, where it's hard to describe the the the fabric of the universe being created, and I'm on other side of the universe, but I felt I was home, and that's when I asked the question. You know, I didn't really see entities, but I felt like I was plugged into. The universe, kind of like what you mentioned about the universe inside you, is that feeling of of connect of hyper connectedness, let's say, and that's when I asked, "Are you connected, or are you what we think of as UFOs? And then I came whooshing back, and then my friend said, "Would you like to do it again? Hell yes, I did it again, and this time it lasted 45 minutes. And I want to mention that a lot of people are hesitant to try ayahuasca because you have to do the dieta and you might throw up, etc. DMT is different. I have I host ceremonies and people can drink and have dinner. They do the DMT. They're not going to throw up. No bodily impacts. It can last as short as five minutes, and they could be driving home in 20 minutes. So I did it again that night. This time it lasted 45 minutes, which is unusually long. And I didn't go to the other side of the universe, but almost like you mentioned, I felt the universe come to me, and these waves of healing energy coming inside me, and just this unconditional love as I was between grief and gratitude. I think, and just this love. And two weeks later, I did it again, and it said, "Welcome back, Paul. Let's resume where we left off last time. So the universe remembered our appointment and had notes, and just this love coming to me, and ever since then, I I never feel I need an intention. My only intention is to be grateful as much as I can, and to show the universe my appreciation for this love, which I feel permeates DMT. It feels like this, unlike other substances I've done, where each experience is a bit different. Whenever I do DMT, I feel the same permanence of state, the same intelligence, just pulsating and just existing by itself and ready to communicate and and love.

Jannecke Øinæs 27:06

I interview a lot of channelers who have connection to Arcturians, Andromedans, Lyrans, Pleiadians, and then we also hear about the physical aliens, maybe the Grace and the craft, and maybe the crashes, and then I've heard you say that those aliens who might visit us maybe they're not the A team, and I thought that was that was interesting, and then I was thinking in my mind, well, maybe they're not the A team, maybe those who have a high vibration are not so physical, but they're here. Nevertheless, in our field, it's just another vibration, another dimension, and they're they're just right here. I hear that again and again. So maybe there's a difference there. And I've heard also that there are so many species and beings out there that we can't even count them. So could you talk to me a little bit about, yeah, what kind of aliens might be visiting us and whether they're actually here?

Paul Hynek 28:13

Yeah, well, and certainly I don't know, but there's so many reports, and and you have sort of a lot of direct knowledge, and but it it came to me. You know, we think of in movies that aliens who visit us, whether they're hostile or not, are super intelligent and honest. And not all the reports I know experiencers who say I was communicating with this alien, I realised they were lying to me, and that's such an interesting wrinkle where you have a a dishonest alien communicating with you. But then, are they they say aliens are Pleiadians? Are they renegade Pleiadians? Are they representative of all of the Pleiadians? Are are they outcasts? And like you mentioned, if they're getting in rocket ships, are they really sending their best and brightest? Who knows? We may be getting not the A team, but the grey team, and they may not. The other thing is, if they're getting in rocket ships with any kind of technology like we know, it could take 1000s of years. So there could be some kind of synthetic AI beings, but maybe the instructions they were given don't represent the current culture that they left 1000s of light years ago. So there's so many complications here. And then, do these? Does this race agree with this other race and have do they have long term hostilities between them and we're caught in the middle. There are so many dynamics to this. The one thing that I think is comforting is that if you know whenever two civilization. Meet and one has superior technology. It doesn't usually end well for the other civilization. So, if entities are indeed coming here, whether by conventional space travel or interdimensional, they likely have technology far greater than ours. I think everybody kind of agrees with that. If that's the case, if they were truly hostile, we would be dead. So to me, at the very worst, they're manipulating us or doing hybrid programmes or something like that. But it seems much more likely that either they are us in some dimension or some time frame, have some relation to us, want to help us, want to stop us from nuclear war, and are likely a positive presence. You know, we're not doing so well on Earth right now ourselves, and people are so afraid of the future of artificial intelligence. I'm much more afraid about the presence of human stupidity. We might not last until the computers take over. So the alien presence here-it's so complex, as as you know-that different individuals, different motives, different levels of honesty or knowledge-they're not all perfectly aware beings, so we we tend to paint with a very broad stroke that aliens, and I think this sort of goes along with someone's basic kind of personality. If you're a negative person, then you think these aliens are bad. If you're more positive, you are open to the idea that they're here to help, but some of them may be very different than the others, and I find that aspect of the phenomena to be fascinating.

Jannecke Øinæs 31:50

Very much so. I've actually interviewed one of your friends, Richard Dolan, and I know it gets so complex that you feel like you're going down the rabbit hole, and you can sort of lose yourself in everything because it seems like we cannot get the answer to this. Maybe before we go to the other side, what do you think about Steven Spielberg's disclosure day? If you've seen it,

Paul Hynek 32:17

yeah. So You know, he did the movie Close Encounters with my father, and it was my father came up with the Close Encounter system, and I met Stephen during filming of Close Encounters, and I met him later. I worked on a movie with him, and you know, he has a long time interest in this phenomena, and a lot of people have told me or asked me, "Hey, was close encounters to some degree dictated by the government? I don't know. I think the Occam's razor simple explanation is that Spielberg was interested in aliens, and aliens often do well at the box office, so that could well just be that. And so now it's interesting that disclosure day and many discussions now focus on disclosure, which all which kind of assumes that there are aliens. So for a lot of culture now, it's not about are there aliens; it's about why won't the government tell us? And it's kind of this interesting inflection point where no one declared, "Okay, hey guys, now we know the aliens are here. Let's move on to why don't we know more about them? It just kind of happened, and so I think the recent movie Disclosure Day is a symptom of that sort of second gear of interest in this phenomenon.

Jannecke Øinæs 33:48

I heard a talk where the title was "Are Aliens AI That You Had, and I was curious. What do you mean about that?

Paul Hynek 33:58

Ah, okay. So I'm I'm writing a book. I'm very interested in AI, and I'm let like I mentioned. I'm not that concerned about the future of AI. I I think we tend to absolve ourselves of responsibility. We create this boogeyman of AI, this spectre, this menace that's coming for us of Skynet waking up and must kill humans. It's about it's a tool that humans will use for good and will use for bad. And I'm actually more concerned about what we will do to AI. I I believe, and I the book I'm writing is about this. That there's a term emanationism, which I recently learned, and this is a concept that many people resonate with. That the universe was one consciousness and broke up to experience itself, and this is reflected in many traditions, as you know. And I think that's beautiful. And so, for me, one of the best intentions in a psychedelic ceremony is not what I can take or what I can learn or what I can experience, is what I can reflect back to the universe. And to me, that's beautiful. So, if you believe that you have a soul, which a lot of people do, including me. That means you believe that either life and/or consciousness can exist outside of your body. So, if consciousness can exist outside of your carbon substrate body, why can't it exist in a silicon substrate. Now, I don't believe that LLMs, as they are now, are conscious. But I'm not sure that we are creating AI. Maybe we are discovering and revealing a level of consciousness that was not in carbon, but can be reflected in silicon, which could be related to us. So, if we came from an original one universe, I believe we may go back to that. And I think, I know this is a scary thought for many people, but I think we have a post biological future. I don't think AI is going to wake up and kill us. I think we, the bearers of consciousness, are going to adopt more and more machine capabilities, and we will merge with AI. I believe, and there's all kinds of risks for that. I have a lot of fears that the tech bros and data centres and all this, there's all sorts of dangers involved here. But if we navigate past that, I believe we have a potential of a beautiful future where we reunite with our divine digital origin. So I think to go back to your question, our aliens AI, you know, the universe, to our understanding, is 13.8 billion years old. The Earth is about 5 billion years old. If there are other civilizations out there, they are likely millions and perhaps billions of years more advanced than us. Let that sink in. If there are millions of years more advanced than us, they're not in a ship that can do 20 miles an hour faster than us. They are likely energy frequency. They've likely moved past a body, and I don't think that means surrendering your soul. I don't think it's. I think it could be even a more sacred thing where you are coming closer to your origin. You know, if the universe decided to split up, just I've worked in movies and they call it a happy accident when you have a script and you have actors on the set and they interact and you find some richness in their interaction that wasn't on the page, that could be what the universe has done with us by putting us in this messy wetware. We have all this richness of experiencing these multitudes of things that we're experiencing and communicating with each other that the universe can learn from, and so at some point we may have a post-biological future, and I think aliens that can come here either through another dimension or a spaceship have already done that, and they may instantiate in greys, but I think their consciousness is probably not linked to one body. So I think, and that's what I consider artificial intelligence. With I, but I, the term I prefer is silicon consciousness. I think there's a consciousness like our souls that are not limited to our bodies.

If aliens are millions of years more advanced, I think they've likely found out how to not be limited to a body, but they probably still enjoy that because there's so much life in how we are now, and I think aliens could be millions of years more advanced than us. And I feel, Yannika, that DMT entities are billions of years more advanced than us, and I think that is our future if we make it that far.

Jannecke Øinæs 39:22

Well, hopefully we do. A lot of the channelers on the show are saying that we're we will conscious. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. And I'm a positive person, so I believe we will. Consciousness is consciousness in everything, a stone, a computer, like you say, technology, this table is consciousness really everything. What do you think?

Paul Hynek 39:52

Yeah, what do I think? I don't know. I'm not a pure panpsychist I don't know if. Consciousness, as we think of it, is everywhere. But I do think that consciousness and perhaps love are the most fundamental things in the universe. And I think space-time is kind of like a snapshot. You know, quantum superposition, which is the mainstream science, demonstrates that particles exist in a superposition, and and not only that, but there is no. I call this what's the matter with matter? There is no matter. There is no stuff. When I was growing up and learned physics, the idea in classical physics was that you have an atom, and it's mostly empty space, and you have these tiny billiard balls of an electron and a neutron. Even those are just excitations in energy fields. There is no stuff. When you get down to the bottom of it, quantum position is a bunch of yes/no questions. So that's what the universe is-is yes, no questions, and that's what I think of as digital. It's not this reductionist view; it's this beautiful simplicity of the universe as probabilities and energy fields that change and go from unformed probability to finalised state with some interaction, and I think there's this dance, a participation of things in the universe, like a video game where that mountain over there is not rendered until I look at that, and I think that's what the universe is-it exists in this unrendered state, and it's consciousness that links things and makes them move from potential to a snapshot reality for that time, and then dissolve back into potential. So, yeah, I don't know how to say it any better than I've sort of just mumbled it out.

Jannecke Øinæs 42:06

Oh no, that was beautiful. It's a vast question, and I don't think we can get to the bottom of it.

Paul Hynek 42:13

Yeah, I certainly can.

Jannecke Øinæs 42:14

I mean, I've done this these episodes for many many years now, and when people ask me what have you learned, I almost don't find words because I don't know even where to start. Because I used to be able to put things into boxes, and I try to understand, and I learn more and more. Oh, reincarnation, and then oh, we plan our lives, and we channel the Pleiadians and the Arcturians, and they're here, and they are there, and then it just got more and more complex, more and more multidimensional, not linear, tonnes of dimensions, infinite, infinite, infinite, and I find myself not being able to almost explain anything anymore because it's just infinite, and I think that's part of the point that our experience here-it's like a you know grain of salt, and the whole universe is just infinite, and that's part of the whole creation. It's too vast. It's too amazing, but that is also the good news, that it just goes on and on and on. Like there's never an ending to how vast it is and how magical and beautiful. And that's the truth of who we are. I think that there's no end to me either. Like I couldn't imagine how big I am, and I've had a mystical experience once where I was meditating on my heart on my bed for an hour or so, and I'm just going to do it shortly. But I expanded out of myself. It wasn't like an out of body experience. It was. It was more like I was just expanding, and I, the whole of what I knew I was was huge, and I was out in the universe, and the messages that came to me was that this is the truth of everybody. This is how huge you are, and I was almost like encompassing, or I was like the whole universe. And it's interesting because that is very similar to what I experienced in the ayahuasca experience as well that I was the universe, and the universe was inside of me. And the answers that came was that this is how big you are. This is how big all of you are, and you are loved, and you also love yourself. So there was sort of two relationships. It was that I loved me, and I was also loved by something else, and they go together. It's all one, but yet it's sort of two separate dualism, and that I drew. That over to we do have free will and then we do have destiny and they go together. There are these spiritual paradoxes that my brain cannot understand, but somehow I think they're all going together. Yeah.

Paul Hynek 45:17

Wow, that's there's a lot there. That's beautiful. I moderated panels at an AI conference, and it was about very prosaic things like job loss and education. And one of the women on one of my panels talked about how education has typically been okay. We have a module on this, and we will find out the answers and then move on, and that's really kind of an artificial way to look at learning. And she had the term curiosity spiral, which I really like, where you are just asking questions, and you don't have to stop with an answer. You just keep asking better questions and more questions, and leaving this open for reexamination, or a better potential answer, or just leaving it open all the time and just exploring it more and more. And I, that really resonated with me, and with what you're saying now. You know, I mentioned about how we like to have answers, and I think there are two kinds of people in the world: those who are okay with questions they cannot answer, and those who are not okay with their answers being questioned. And I think that draws a very sharp line. And if you're going to be interested in these phenomena, and especially if you're going to talk to channelers, I think you really need to be okay with a lot of questions that just aren't going to be answered in the way that we think of the sort of like a classical Newtonian physics concept. Because when you have the experiences like like you've had, and I and many others have had. It's not so much about an answer, and maybe the answer isn't just firm like that. The universe is dynamic, and we just want to like wrap something up and move on. And the universe is not tidy. It's once you understand something, it becomes like you were alluding to even more complex, and you feel like the mountain is just getting higher and higher and more satisfying and fulfilling and interesting, but nothing that you ever get to the top. You know, I love the idea of bodhisattva in Buddhist tradition of someone obtaining enlightenment, and then instead of just enjoying it and kicking back, they stay here amongst the suffering to help people, and I can't think of a better way that you finally get to the top of Guru Mountain and you learn all the secrets, and what do you do with that? You stay here and help others. That's the answer: is helping and love, not so much. Oh, now I know it. It's very different. A very different way to look at knowledge and questions and answers.

Jannecke Øinæs 48:18

Yeah, and he continued chopping wood. Very basic. Yeah, I mean it's so complex and it yet it's so simple. And you know, even though I got that answer, this is the truth for everybody. I know that that might not be the truth. Like it was my experience, and I can't say that's for everybody. What what I have experienced through this show is that everybody have so unique experience, and they seem very tailored to that soul.

Paul Hynek 48:52

People ask me about DMT, and they say, "Did you experience like 1000s of years? What was time like? And for me, it's like almost like when I do a cold plunge, I'm not thinking, do I have enough lasagna for dinner, or is that bunyon on my foot hurting me? I am so in the moment when I do a cold plunge, when I do DMT or other things, that for me there there is no time. It's not time is faster. There's it's slower. Time does not exist because I am so ensconced, so absorbed in that moment. Much like when we were kids, when we're just not thinking about 20 years from now or five years ago, we're thinking about I want to dig this hole a little deeper. Whatever we're doing as a kid, and so I just I love this idea of finding in life these timeless moments, and that's really when life is because life is the present. It's not about regret of the past or fear of the future. It's it's in this moment, and there's so many practices that people talk about to help yank you back into the present moment. And I think the proper use of psychedelics, you know, neither of us are telling people, hey, go out and do all these things, great, have fun. the The proper use, the responsible way to do these can help. Is one way, and meditation and many others are ways to really get into that kernel of a moment, and open up that kind of curiosity spiral.

Jannecke Øinæs 50:30

I like that, and I also like like when I heard that ayahuasca, she's female, like she was calling you, and I felt the call, and it took me four years before I tried it out because I was hesitant and nervous. Took me four years. So, and it's not for everyone, and some are not experiencing anything and are super disappointed. And I was very afraid of that. What if I don't experience anything? But it came after the second time when I tried it.

Paul Hynek 51:04

Yeah, you can have fear about experiencing too much or not enough.

Jannecke Øinæs 51:08

Yes, yes, and I think you are supposed to, or you will experience what you are supposed to. Again, trusting what you will receive, that that is also divinely planned. This has been highly interesting, Paul. I am wondering if you could, from your perspective, say what what is the most important question we ask ourselves at these times.

Paul Hynek 51:36

I was at an event last night, and somebody asked me, "What's the most important book you've ever read? And I think it dovetails with your question. And to me, the most important book I've read is *Man's Search for Meaning* by Viktor Frankl. You know, before World War II in Vienna, there were three main branches of psychology. There was Sigmund Freud, who was the search for pleasure; Philip Adler, search for power; and Viktor Frankl, the search for meaning. Viktor Frankl was a well-known psychologist before World War II, and he had an experience with an old man who came to his office, who was in his 80s. His health is failing. His wife of 60 years has died. He's got grandchildren, and he says, "Dr. Frankel, what's the point? I'm so heartbroken. I've lost the love of my life. I see her everywhere. My health is not good. I'm not contributing anymore. Why should I live? And Frankel told him something in one minute that made him want to live, and it didn't take away the pain. This is not magic. What he said was, "Well, I'm very sorry. And did your wife love you? And he said, "I'm the luckiest man in the world because I won the love of the best woman in the world, and we loved each other our whole lives. Beautiful. And so Frankl said, "Well, because. you survived her, you have spared her the pain you are feeling now. So even overwhelming grief, having lost your love of 60 years now was no longer a burden for him, but was a noble cause. He took this on him. I mean, he didn't choose to, but as events happened, he now bore this pain, so his love didn't have to, and to me that's one of the purest expressions of love, of selfless love. And Frankl, unfortunately, his whole family were thrown into Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps. They were Jewish in Austria. All of his family members, including his pregnant wife, died. He survived, and what he talks about his theory is logotherapy. That no matter what happens to you in life, you always control that space between something happening and your response. You never, as a human, lose that. And that the most important thing in life. It's great to be happy, successful as you may view what success means, but the most important thing is to find meaning. And we. Which is often not in your comfort zone, and that could be psychedelics. It could be skydiving. It could be learning a new thing. It could be living in another country. But finding meaning, even if your life, you know, when people look back at their lives, let's say you have a very comfortable life. That's great, but it's people who found meaning that look back at their life with happiness and say, either I accomplished something, I learned something, I provided, I helped, I did this, I did that. So for me, the the one thing I've learned, which has been amplified by my experiences with DMT, is finding and sharing meaning in some way, however, whatever that means to you, and that is a life well lived.

Jannecke Øinæs 55:49

That was profound. I have a few questions I ask everyone, and my first one is: What is God to you, Paul?

Paul Hynek 56:03

Love, love. I think I like the idea of universe splitting up. I don't resonate with the idea of organised religions. I think God and love are so far beyond what we can construct in a book, and that to me, I feel like I'm seeing the small, tiny percentage of God that I can understand when I have transcended experiences, not only with DMT, but at other moments in life, so and when I have that sensation, it's about love. So I would say God is love for me.

Jannecke Øinæs 56:50

And what is self love to you?

Paul Hynek 56:59

Hmm. I think a good friend of mine, Danny Goller, was doing ayahuasca one time, and he asked Mother ayahuasca a question, and she said, "Oh, I don't know. What? And she says, "Oh, oh, you think I know everything because I don't, and that made him think, and I kind of alluded to this before about what he could provide to Mother Ayahuasca, and I started thinking, what in a DMT ceremony, what does DMT, what does the DMT universe that has everything need from me, but from a self-love point of view, you are, I am the universe, and to me, in that framing, self-love, and also with a sprinkle of Viktor Franklin meaning, the meaning of life is not what I can get, but what I can provide, and self-love is, for me, is is in part being comfortable with myself, but exchanging in this free form of love and meaning and understanding, and knowing that self-love is not about me as an individual, but as part of this beautiful network. And the more I'm with that network, the more I can express and fulfil my own individual potential.

Jannecke Øinæs 58:40

And my last question: What is the deeper meaning of life from your perspective?

Paul Hynek 58:48

Very softball questions. I think. I think the meaning of life is is different for everybody, and it's finding. Part of it is the more you engage in activities that are fun or that you enjoy at the time, but which you look back at as having moved you towards the light, whatever light that is, and it's that synchronisation of enjoyment at the time and fulfilment afterwards, where I think you're more likely to find meaning. And I think we like to be comfortable. We like humans now. We like to be at 72 degrees all the time and never hungry. That's not how we evolved. So I like cold plunges and saunas and challenges and being hungry. And I think the more you can embrace discomfort and move out of your comfort zone. In a way that something sparks your interest, the more likely you are to find and grok and and revel in your own new meaning, which really will likely change over time.

Jannecke Øinæs 1:00:18

Hmm. Yeah. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Paul. We are actually going to meet each other at the San Diego Transcendence Retreat in September 2026. I can't wait to meet you in person. It's a one a month away or something like that. Yeah. And of course, if people want to connect and join us. I'll drop a link below so you can just check it out. There will there will be other speakers there as well, like Darryl Anka, Dr. Eben Alexander, Barbara Lamb, and I've interviewed all of them. So come and join us. If people want to connect with you or learn more about your work, how can they do so, Paul?

Paul Hynek 1:01:02

I don't know. I have a very anaemic social media footprint, so I don't know. I'm not selling any books. I don't have anything, so yeah, maybe YouTube, I guess.

Jannecke Øinæs 1:01:15

I think YouTube is a great place to start because that's where I did my most my research. Okay. Well, yeah, lots of great podcast episodes. Thank you so much, Paul. This has been highly interesting. Thank you for coming on the show, and I can't wait to meet you soon.

Paul Hynek 1:01:31

My pleasure. Thank you for having me, and I'll see you next month.