Bonus Sample: The Giant Rock Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention
George van Tassel was the original UFO contactee. He claimed to have been visited by aliens from Venus in 1953, which led to him hosting thousands of people at the annual Interplanetary Spacecraft Convention for almost 20 years. He channeled “Ashtar, ”a figure still popular in “Galactic Federation” conspiritualist circles today, and spent 25 years building a time machine based on telepathic communications with aliens.
Julian unpacks the wild story of van Tassel’s airstrip, the Mojave Desert’s Giant Rock, and how the FBI may have been involved in his mysterious death and subsequent disappearance of his cellular rejuvenation equipment.
This is part of a series of free-standing episodes that excavates the history of pseudoscience and conspiracism beneath contemporary New Age spirituality.
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I say that what is occurring now has occurred before.
There's many records of these ships landing throughout history clear back into Sanskrit.
And there are records in the 1898 Chicago newspapers that covered the front page for three days of a big ship setting over Chicago.
When you realize we're dealing with a type of man that is almost as far above us in intelligence as we are above the lower animals...
If you live in L.A., or if you've visited with crunchy hippie types who do, you've probably been to Joshua Tree.
It's that national park in the Mojave Desert where the band U2 took those iconic black-and-white promo pictures for their massive 1987 album of the same name.
Joshua Tree National Park is in the California high desert, about 130 miles east of L.A. The succulent and distinctive yucca brevifolia trees that populate the park were apparently given the name by Mormon settlers in the mid-19th century who were supposedly reminded of a biblical story about Joshua keeping his hands reached out for an extended period,
and this somehow magically leading to the Israelites defeating the Canaanites in battle.
Julian here for Conspirituality.
Stay tuned because this story for this bonus episode has it all.
Time travel, UFOs, the science of electromagnetic life extension, and a conspiracy theory about the FBI and the suspicious death of a man who claimed to be in telepathic contact with aliens from Venus.
Anyway.
I myself went out to Joshua Tree with some friends on New Year's Eve of 1999. We wanted to be out of town in case the much-touted Y2K computer crisis, remember that, led to power outages and civil unrest.
We stayed at a low-cost hot spring motel and had our room robbed immediately upon checking in and decamping to the pools for a sunset soak after the almost three-hour drive.
They took our credit cards, some cash, and an entire freshly bought stash of weed my friend had purchased on his way out of town.
He was gutted.
The room had a balcony-type area accessed via a glass sliding door that was visible from the parking lot.
It had been left closed but unlocked for the thieves, probably by an ally on the inside.
In the years since, I've had many a yoga student approach me after class with their story of visiting Joshua Tree and then venturing another 20 miles north to visit the town of Landers, home to something called the Integratron.
Have you ever been?
They always ask with this knowing look.
I haven't.
From their accounts, it's like the most epic sound bath you've ever been to.
They're also really taken in by the mythology around the Integratron and are convinced I will find it intriguing, too.
More about that in the main body of this episode.
Sound baths have become all the rage in the yoga world over the last 10 years.
If you miss this, it's like what...
Turban-wearing kundalini yoga teachers used to do during savasana with their enormous gong, basically vibrating you into an almost out-of-body experience by using waves of resonant sound produced by artfully banging with a large padded mallet on this metal gong at escalating volume and rhythmic intensity.
It's kind of cool the first few times you're subjected to it.
Sound baths these days...
Tend to also add crystal singing bowls and Native American rain sticks and whatever else that makes sounds is available for purchase at the local New Age book and crystal store.
And then they market the experience as a hot ticket magical healing group event on one of the usually quiet weekend evenings, say, at the yoga studio.
But back to the Integratron.
It's a 38-foot-tall domed structure, 55 feet in diameter, that was built by a man named George Van Tassel in the late 1950s, with some financing provided by famous eccentric billionaire of the period, Howard Hughes.
The structure was officially designated as a national landmark in 2018. Fascinated by mythology around the rejuvenating effects of the Egyptian pyramids, Van Tassel modeled the Integratron on ideas he said were influenced by the writings of Nikolai Tesla, structural design details about the Tabernacle of Moses, and telepathic directions given to him by aliens from Venus.
I know.
That last part, right?
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