Dr. Diana Pasulka is a professor of religious studies, and she did not go looking for this. Her question has always been a simpler one: what motivates people to do genuinely extraordinary things, the martyrs of early Christianity, the yogis and the sannyasin traditions, lives given over to meditation in the forest. Whatever it is, she says, it is not money. That work took her into the extraordinary events of the Catholic tradition. Francis of Assisi receiving the stigmata through an angel contact event. Teresa of Avila, who wrote about her own encounter in her autobiography. And reading the primary sources rather than the paintings turned out to matter enormously, because the two do not match. When Renaissance artists were commissioned to depict these events, they had no idea how to represent what the testimony actually described, so they reached back to Greek convention. The angels in the paintings owe more to Eros than to anything Teresa wrote down. Then, around 2012, something she was not looking for. Reading the accounts of people reporting UFO experiences, she found they did not resemble the paintings either, and they did resemble the primary sources. She describes being shocked by it. What emerged was a continuous testimonial record, people across centuries describing something in a strikingly consistent way. She is careful about what that means, and the care is the point. She does not claim the phenomena are the same thing. That, she says, would be reductionism, and reductionism is only acceptable when it happens to be true. What she does claim is a pattern match in the language: a person reporting something in the sky in 1947 reached for Ezekiel's wheel, exactly as people reached for the vocabulary available to them in 1200 and 1400. Behind that sits the Merkabah tradition, older than Christianity, a mystical lineage of encounters with angels whose name simply means vehicle. This is not something an academic wants to say out loud, she admits, because it sounds ridiculous. But asked whether these experiences could constitute a modern form of a new religion, she does not hesitate. Absolutely. And they are. She also corrects an assumption most of us carry. We imagine religious revelation as ecstatic and welcome, and experiencer reports as frightening, and treat that as the place the comparison breaks down. It does not. Jonah runs from his assignment. Moses resists. Joan of Arc recanted in prison because she did not want to burn, then recanted her recantation. A great many people who receive revelation would rather not have received it, which is precisely what the contemporary accounts describe too. Most of us, she suggests, have inherited religion without ever really reading it. Want to go deeper with D.W. Pasulka? Join Sounds True One for more conversations like this. Get your first month FREE at https://bit.ly/4ctecMn Subscribe to Sounds True's YouTube Channel ► https://bit.ly/SubscribeSTYT Sounds True is a mission-driven learning and media company, and a recognized leader in wellbeing, personal growth, and spiritual transformation. Partnering with the world’s foremost wisdom teachers and best-selling authors, the company reaches millions worldwide with its unique programs, digital learning experiences, and worldwide events. The company also features a variety of original series, weekly shows, and live online experiences on Sounds True One, its global platform and community with members across more than 125 countries. Sounds True is a Public Benefit Corporation and also the home of the Sounds True Foundation. Connect with us: ▪️Facebook: http://bit.ly/2XFIIeE ▪️Instagram: http://bit.ly/2UlEoiH ▪️Website: http://bit.ly/2tOl02d