Tracey’s Interview on F2B and additional thoughts

Last night Tracey was the featured guest on Fade 2 Black, hosted by Jimmy Church. She talked about some of the key interests and events that make up her life, including a hell of a remote view and a hell of an encounter with s0me sort of ‘being’ not from around here. There was much more, of course, including her interest in strange and unusually vivid dreams — in large part because she has had them all her life. She will be doing her own blog entries on all this at some point soon, but suffice to say for now that she has made a kind of taxonomy of dreams, from Level 1 to Level 6.

Jimmy did a nice job with Tracey, but I would say was somewhat hampered by (a) just not knowing her story well enough, and (b) his desire to spring the “surprise” at the end by mentioning that Tracey is my wife. That was sweet, of course, and we told him so, but I couldn’t help but think, “who doesn’t know by now we are together?”

I jumped in for the final segment, and we all had an enjoyable conversation. We hope you enjoy.

While we both were happy with the interview overall, it’s still true that Tracey and I are able to go places in an interview that no one else can do. As a result, we recorded a 30-minute apres-interview which I am loading for members of this site. More on that in a separate post.

Meanwhile, I thought I could address an issue Jimmy raised during the segment that I was on. Essentially, he wanted to know how being with Tracey has affected my intellectual outlook on the fringe and paranormal. He pointed out that I appear to be known as the hard-core data-driven type (my words, but an accurate paraphrase) who doesn’t have much tolerance for such things as channeling or remote viewing.

It made me wonder, is that how people really see me? It’s almost as if I’m perceived as a kind of Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins of ufology, a characterization I would certainly reject. I replied to Jimmy that I have always found remote viewing of great interest, and frankly have believed in remote viewing without hesitation for the past 15 years or more. Back in 2003 or so, I wrote an article for the print version of Phenomena Magazine entitled (rather presumptuously, I will add) “The Physics of Remote Viewing.” I interviewed Hal Puthoff, Russell Targ, Ingo Swann, Joe McMoneagle, and Lyn Buchanon for that piece, and really tried to think that one through. The article isn’t available online, as far as I know, but I’ll probably make it available here sometime. In any case, I stated last night that the fact that remote viewing works is proof enough that our contemporary understanding of physics has failed at some point. Because the phenomenon is real and lacks a proper explanation. Therefore, I said, remote viewing is a kind of proof that our understanding of space and time need improvement, possibly at a fundamental level. This was essentially what I argued in my paper from so long ago.

At that time, in fact, I added something else. What part of us is able to see a place that is thousands of miles away in space? Even crazier, what part of us is able to see something in another time? Because that also happens. Well, I said, the ancients had a word for it. They called it the soul. Good enough for me, I suggested.

The fact that a person is able to see events in the past or future tells me something else. That time isn’t what it seems to our common sense. That is, an arrow that just keeps going on and on. No, time is something different. There is a structure to time, a fabric, that simply seems to … exist. As if it’s all there already. I said this to Puthoff years ago. His answer, “yes, I’ve wondered the same thing. Kind of tough on free will.”

Anyway, I made the point to Jimmy Church that although I believed in such things as remote viewing, it’s true that I still seek to maintain standards of evidence when I am speaking or writing about UFOs or anything else. But one thing Tracey has done for me in this regard, I said, is to soften my attitude just a bit. I can come down rather hard at times — especially in private when I am not being recorded. Being with Tracey has made me realize that when I am harsh toward the unproven claims of someone else, there are always people just like Tracey who have also had unproven and perhaps unprovable experiences. And the fact is that when you have had something impossible to verify and which genuinely puzzles you, it’s not helpful to have some “expert” telling the world that you are full of it. So she has gently reminded me that none of us are robots, we all are human beings and everyone is deserving of respect.

Everyone except liars and con artists, but hopefully you understand what I mean.

RD