by D W Pasulka
never looked at the camera, and they spoke as if they were
unaware that they were being filmed. I quickly surmised that,
in fact, they did not know. Tyler was outfitted with various
types of cameras hidden in his clothes, disguised, and stra-
tegical y placed on his body, and was recording everything.
I knew that if and when I final y did meet him, he would
be videotaping me too. That, among other things, was a
deterrent.
Yet, Tyler’s personal history was compelling. Through
our correspondence I learned that since the age of eighteen
he had worked for the US space program, first as an intern
and then as an engineer for the space shuttle program. He
worked on almost every space shuttle that was ever launched,
and he spoke about each as if it were a living thing. He
described how each shuttle had its own personality, its own
noises and sounds. Tyler’s passion was launching rockets and
T H E I N V I S I B L E T Y L E R D . | 2 9
shuttles and for anything that had to do with space explo-
ration. He sent me videos of his conversations with several
astronauts, just casual conversations. I wondered how they
would feel knowing that I, a stranger to them, was watching
them have lunch with their friend Tyler while I was sitting
in my office at work. I found it amusing, and fascinating.
Tyler’s circle of colleagues consisted of generals, scientists,
and astronauts. He had another set of colleagues— surgeons
and venture capitalists— and he began to share more of his
life in this sector. I was confused by his breadth of knowledge
and skil s; on the one hand, he was an aeronautical engineer,
and on the other hand, he was a biomedical entrepreneur. He
was a wealthy rocket scientist. It all just didn’t seem to add
up. One day I asked him to explain the connections between
his diverse fields of expertise.
Through a combination of videos, text messages, and
emails, Tyler explained that part of his mission was to trans-
late the information he learned from space exploration into
biomedical technologies. One video featured the CEO of one
of Tyler’s companies in Tampa praising him. In one scene,
the CEO stood in front of a promotional video for a biomed-
ical project. The video featured a photo of Tyler in a blue
flight uniform, wearing aviator sunglasses, posed in front of
a giant rocket. Tyler worked with venture capitalists and with
surgeons and medical researchers to implement his visions.
He explained that he owns more than forty patents, and that
he mostly works from home, on his deck, in the sun.
“I get paid to think. And to match up experts who can
implement my vision.”
I asked him why he was interested in carrying on a
correspondence with me, a scholar of religion. He said, “I
have mentors in the space program. One of them, who is
3 0 | A M E R IC A N C O SM IC
now retired, explained that the next discovery in my field
is going to come from your field. I am at the limit of un-
derstanding what I can from a materialist perspective. My
mentor explained that mysticism, religion, and conscious-
ness is where I need to go to learn what’s next. That the
mind– machine interface is the next frontier.”
Tyler’s career had been going full speed ahead until the
death of one of his mentors and friends, the brilliant astro-
naut Judith Resnik, who was killed when the space shuttle
Chal enger exploded in 1986. He recalled this disaster and
its effect on him in a video he sent to me while he was on
business in Cape Canaveral. In the video, he was standing on
concrete slabs at the Air Force base. He was there to pay his
respects to the Chal enger’s crew, and to his friend Judy.
“This is the burial ground of the Chal enger. Pretty sad,
huh? The shuttle is buried here, in chunks of concrete.”
I hadn’t known that this was the ultimate destination of
the Chal enger. Tyler went on to explain more about that day.
“Her last hug showed me that on some level she must
have known. Anyway, for us on the ground, we were looking
up as it launched. We were all excited as this mission had
received so much publicity, and the president was watching
it too. On that day, we all huddled in a group and stared at
the capsule as she left Earth. She soared higher and higher,
and we squinted to keep her in focus. Then, well . . . yeah.
We saw the explosion. I instantly felt a shock of pain in my
stomach. I knew immediately what happened. Everyone else
was in denial. They refused to see it. I don’t blame them.
Those were our friends. I saw the sparks and the debris start
to fal . I could feel my heart and my spirit— they just died.
No feeling left, just a gaping hole. I left the group and went
down and looked out at the ocean. My spirit and soul called
T H E I N V I S I B L E T Y L E R D . | 31
out to my friend Judy. ‘I’m sorry.’ That is what I wanted to say
to her. I watched the wisps of debris floating into the ocean,
and I knew I was never going to be the same.”
Tyler’s voice, now strained and broken, trailed off in the
video, but he was still filming. I could still see the concrete
chunks. I watched the video in silence. Tyler was still re-
cording, but he couldn’t speak. I sat and watched quietly.
I can still picture myself, sitting in my office chair, watching.
I will not forget that day. Until then, I had been mostly
amused by Tyler. This video put an end to that feeling.
His sad story revealed itself to me, at that moment, in its
greatness, its largeness. Tyler’s story was bigger than Tyler.
It was also part of American history. Yet, Tyler’s part in this
history would never be known. Was Tyler obsessed with re-
cording videos because his story was erased, and had to be
erased? I didn’t know. Probably. The video marked a turning
point in my estimation of who Tyler was and what he had
contributed, and was contributing, to a history that, ironi-
cal y, was unknown.
Later he spoke to me about the aftermath of the
Chal enger disaster.
“Like a lot of astronauts and people in the program,
I dedicated my life to the program and its success. That
means that I didn’t have a personal life. It took its tol . Right
after the Chal enger accident my wife wanted a divorce. That,
and the loss of my friend Judy, put me over the edge. I de-
veloped heart palpitations that landed me in the hospital for
a few days, but things all went better with some medication
that I took for a few months . . . but it was a rough time.
I was very depressed and struggling through life and had no
idea of anything about the phenomenon. In fact, I was a pure
skeptic and didn’t believe in anything in that realm.
32 | A M E R IC A N C O SM IC
“Someone left a book in my office at work, which had
no title on the black cover. It ended up in my briefcase
one
day, and I took it out and started reading it. It was Carl
Sagan’s book on the cosmos and space travel. It was com-
pletely different from anything at my day job launching space
shuttles. I noticed as I read the book that I was able to settle
down and even sleep wel . It became my saving grace, and
I read it every night. His views of the universe expanded my
knowledge and put all my problems in perspective. It was
my turning point, and I knew that there was either existing
or soon to exist technology that was much further advanced
than the space shuttle that could allow for interstel ar and su-
perluminal space travel. A few months later I started work in
a very special facility at the space center, which was the next
step, I think, in my evolution to off- planet experiences.”
Tyler’s personal crisis after the Chal enger disaster led
him to his discovery of the phenomenon. As he grieved the
loss of Judy and the crew, as well as his divorce, he knew
that he couldn’t go on working in the program. The reali-
zation hit him hard, as his own identity was fused with the
program and space exploration. He explained that one day,
as he contemplated his departure from the program, a gen-
eral entered his office and issued a request for proposals for
experiments to be run on the space shuttle Columbia. As the
general spoke, Tyler said, “I had a memory, and it was about
this experiment. I knew it would work. It was to test whether
or not a noncharged material could speak with a charged
material. This could only be tested in a nongravity environ-
ment. Don’t ask me how I knew this would work; I just did.”
The general, however, didn’t think the experiment would
work. Tyler did not have a PhD, which was required to run
the experiment.
T H E I N V I S I B L E T Y L E R D . | 33
“As much as the memory of that idea was there as a re-
ality to me, so was the will to get the general to say yes to
this experiment. Basical y, he thought it was stupid, and so
did everyone else. But I did get a professor to agree to help
me with the experiment, even though he thought it wouldn’t
work. He wanted to publish the results and to have run an ex-
periment on the space shuttle, and to him, whether it worked
or not didn’t matter. It was the publication that mattered.”
The general reluctantly agreed to the experiment, and
to everyone’s surprise, it worked. Tyler explained what
happened afterward, which marked the turning point in his
career.
“A few days after the experiment worked, me and the
professor were called to Washington, DC. I was excited, as
I thought that I would get an award. Instead, we were asked
to go into the basement, which, by the way, is never good. We
went in, and we all sat down— me, the professor, a few people
who had witnessed the experiment, and some guards. After a
few minutes the door opened and a two- star general entered
the room. We al stood.
“He barked out, ‘Who the hell came up with this idea?’
“I immediately stiffened with shock. The professor
pointed at me. ‘He did.’
“At that point I knew I wasn’t getting an award. Instead,
I was interrogated.
“ ‘Where did you get that idea?’ the general yelled at me.
“I could only tell him the truth, that it was a memory.
That sounded like bul shit, but it was the truth. The professor
confirmed it. Once the general was satisfied that I was prob-
ably an idiot, he sent me out of the room. The next week at
work, I was given a plaque, a patent, and five hundred dol ars.
I decided that week to quit my job and go into business with
3 4 | A M E R IC A N C O SM IC
a surgeon buddy of mine. I decided to take my ‘memory’ and
use it for good.”
At this point Tyler and his associates went into business
pursuing the biomedical applications of his ideas, or
memories. He was successful. He wrote patent after patent,
and sold his first biomedical company to a public corpora-
tion for an undisclosed amount of money. It provided him
with enough money to retire, which he did, but his retire-
ment proved to be brief.
“After a few months, I was bored. I knew I had to go back
into the space program. It was my core passion. As if on cue,
as I was passing through an airport, two men approached me
and handed me a card. They asked me if I wanted to come
back to the program, and on the card was a phone number.
They told me to call it, so I did. I know that sounds like it is
straight out of a movie, but that’s what happened.”
When Tyler returned to the program, things had changed.
He explained that he was now connected to a source that he
believed was part of an off- planet intelligence. He felt that
it had been with him since a few months after he saw the
Chal enger explode.
“After the disaster I started working in a very special fa-
cility at the space center. It was the next step in my evolution
of my knowledge of off- planet phenomenon.”
What he learned there wasn’t typical information. He
wasn’t shown anything and didn’t read about anything, but
he believes he was in the proximity of something that emitted
energy and frequencies that changed the way he thought. His
desk was next to a square room that was covered in concrete
and metal.
“There was something in there that either emitted
frequencies or signals and they didn’t want those to escape or
T H E I N V I S I B L E T Y L E R D . | 3 5
they didn’t want signals to get in. I never knew which. It was
a mysterious place, and we weren’t allowed to talk about it.”
That room, Tyler felt, zapped him with energy that
changed the “frequencies” of his body and his thoughts. It was
after this experience that he began to have more “memories”
of biomedical technologies.
“In the program, I started to find myself on jobs where
I interfaced directly with the phenomenon. I know its lan-
guage. It does speak to us, in space. I don’t know who is re-
sponsible for putting me on these jobs. I think that somehow
they are responsible for it. My own direct boss doesn’t know
what I do. This is how the program works.”
Tyler explained that his connection to off- planet intelli-
gence helps him create biotechnologies. The technologies he
has created seem to me as if they originated in an episode of
Star Wars or Star Trek. One of the applications of his inspira-
tion is a material that has been etched at the molecular level
with information. The etching codes the material with infor-
mation that human bone “reads” as itself. It is then incor-
porated into diseased human tissue and bone, which helps
the body recuperate from cancer and other illnesses. Tyler
showed me a picture of one of the patients who was healed
through this treatment. Jane is a radian
t young mother of
twins. She had bone cancer and was told that she would never
walk again. Tyler sent me a picture of a thank you card she
had written to him, noting that she had believed she would
never walk again, let alone care for her young boys, and now
she was doing both.
At this point, my curiosity was piqued. Tyler, his life,
and his current pursuits intrigued me. I decided to meet
him. If he was an agent, he certainly was an accomplished
and productive one, and I didn’t feel as if I was in danger.
3 6 | A M E R IC A N C O SM IC
He had shared information about his family, so I knew he
was a family man as wel . Additional y, as he and I continued
our correspondence, I had uncovered a lot more historical
information about the beginnings of the Russian and the
American space programs. This information helped me con-
textualize Tyler’s place within these institutions.
Many of the scientists and astronauts who work for the
space programs most likely do not believe in extraterres-
trial intelligence, or that humans are in contact with that
intelligence, but the founders of both the Russian and the
American space programs did. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky,
regarded as the founding father of rocketry and aeronautics,
believed that ethereal beings, or nonhuman intelligences,
were trying to communicate with humans through symbols.
He wrote:
We are made as the “ethereal beings,” existing beyond our
dimensions of recognized reality. These higher beings are in
communication with us, reading our thoughts and sending
us messages through celestial symbols which most of us do
not even perceive, much less understand. A genius is one who
comprehends and channels these messages from higher beings
into technologies, products, and even art.3
Tsiolkovsky perhaps regarded himself as one of these
geniuses, as he discovered the equations that would later
help scientists develop rockets to take humans off Earth and
into space.
The American space program had its own version of
Tsiolkovsky. Jack Parsons was uniquely American in that he
col aborated with Aleister Crowley and L. Ron Hubbard and
spent time both launching rockets and engaging in provoca-
tive rituals in the Los Angeles desert. He also believed that he
T H E I N V I S I B L E T Y L E R D . | 37
was in contact with extraterrestrial intelligences. He launched