Encounters: Experiences with non-human intelligences
DW Pasulka
St Martin’s Essentials, £21.99, 256 pages
It is tempting to dismiss this as a very silly book. Its style manages to be both breathless and repetitive as the author tries her utmost to persuade you that she is about to reveal something momentous. Unsurprisingly, given the principle subject matter (unexplained phenomena like UFOs), there are no revelations and there is nothing of moment. Such value as Catholic scholar of religion Diana Pasulka’s Encounters has lies elsewhere, however. What it shows is that the world, and notably the West, is well advanced along the road to a wholehearted re-enchantment. This is characterised, among other things, b irruptions of so-called non-human consciousness into the natural world via encounters with the “non-human consciousness” of extra-terrestrial beings, angelic figures and, most recently and most presciently, through the apparent consciousness of some AI.
