American Cosmic

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

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  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

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  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

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  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.

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  “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.

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  “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

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  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

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  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.

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  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

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  was in contact with extraterrestrial intelligences. He launched