 So you are the king of the Jews Kings your word Well, you want Jesus of Nazareth, aren't you? Yes, I am. Well, that's what they're saying. You are the king of Messiah That's a clip from the movie the last temptation of Christ and that's David Bowie. Believe it or not playing Pontius Pilate You know, I usually like to keep these introductions rather short and kind of let all of us kind of figure this stuff out Have our own experience with it. But I kind of feel like I need an expanded introduction to this one because I've had a couple of interviews lately with some Christian friends people I really really like honor and respect who seem to just not Be grocking the basics of my understanding of this. So let me kind of lay this out number one is I honor Your spiritual experience your christ consciousness experience if that's what it is and not because I'm a particularly nice guy But because as you've heard the data compels me to understand That you are more than a biological robot meaningless universe that there is this extended realm And that you could very well be connecting with it in some way that makes christ consciousness very real so I'm down with that but if you're going to connect your spiritual experience with History and history is tricky, but let's just pretend there is this shared Consensus reality that we call history and we all try and agree on let's just kind of make that a given If you're going to connect your spiritual experience with some text with some documents with some archaeological evidence Well, then that's a different discussion And here's the rub The gospels Are not historical Like if if you go to seminary and you study this stuff deeply you learn that pretty quickly They say okay. Yeah, you know, there's different translations. There's Contradictions there's conflicts all that kind of stuff even most christians kind of get that They've kind of been beat up by that enough and there's enough popular books They get that they can't take their gospels Literally, but there is this lingering false impression Among christians that You know despite those problems the gospels are still well basically historical. I mean they kind of got the gist of it Here is jesus meeting with Pontius pilot. I gotta tell you go look at your gospels. That is right out of the gospels But it didn't happen I mean the best evidence we have and and before I get to that evidence Let me just stop right there because if what I'm about to present to you Is true or even close to true or leaning towards true Then I want you to start wrapping your head around the implications of that because it's not just about the movie It's about the gospels and the gospels are talking about a scene from history Jesus sitting down and kind of hashing it out there with old Pontius pilot If that didn't happen And it is in the gospels and it's reported by all the gospels just in different ways Well, then you see what I'm saying the gospels are non historical In a way that's much bigger than most christians think So why do we think that scene probably didn't happen? Well That gets us back to this guy. I keep fucking hammering on it talking about and that is josephus because As you already know from listening to the show or as you will know if you keep listening Josephus is purely a propaganda agent for the romans pure and simple Just follow the money on that one But he also in serving his role as propaganda agent is doing some quasi semi historical stuff and including in Real history so that people believe him That's kind of one of the things you have to do as a propaganda agent You have to mix the truth with the fiction. Otherwise it doesn't go down so well So he was pretty exhaustive About writing down every little event that happened now He might have spun him in a different way, but he got the gist of stuff that happens I mean take for example the aqueduct riot. Have you ever heard of the aqueduct riot? You ever heard about Pontius pilot during the same period that we're talking about putting down the aqueduct rebellion I bet you haven't because it's so obscure. It's such a minor thing in history It's a bunch of jews that got together in the streets and they're protesting about the aqueduct and The really josephus's story I think is to show you how clever Pontius pilot is and how clever the romans are that he infiltrates I mean this is like right out of our history today But he infiltrates the crowd with his own goons who are not dressed as roman soldiers But are hiding the kind of clubs and sticks think antifa think you know all this crazy stuff And they turn on the protesters and creates this big scene and they're getting beat up and some of them die all the rest But it's not a huge deal. It's just not a huge deal But it's the level of detail That josephus would go into to record all the events that happened now Think for a minute about this event Pontius pilot is the guy In judaea. He's the guy You know you think about gatekeepers in terms of you know modern things like you want to talk to a celebrity or you want to If you're in business you want to get to the ceo or whatever. There's all these gatekeepers. You never get a meeting Jesus gets a meeting. He gets a sit with Pontius pilot That my friend would have been recorded most certainly by Josephus or by someone else But josephus has the most extensive history we can look at and we look at all the other stuff he recorded He would have recorded this and the fact that he doesn't suggest that it doesn't happen Now the content of the of the meeting also suggests that it just wouldn't happen It's out of context with what the romans would do and how they ran their whole show But that's almost another issue and gets into the whole propaganda stuff For a minute. I just want to Pull up on the fact that the gospels are non historical They can't be relied on for a historical account of the life of this Jesus character And i'm telling you josephus can't either But you're going to have to sort this stuff out and in that way At least josephus is closer than the gospels are because i want to roll this clip a little bit further I want to get to one final point which is to me The main point of this and the main point that i've been trying to get to With some of my guests, but all this other christian bullshit gets in the way And you can't get to the real important point. So listen to this The prophet daniel had a vision a tall statue had a gold head silver shoulders Stomach was bronze the legs where iron the feet were clay A stone was thrown The clay feet broke and the statue collapsed Yes You see God threw the stone the stones me and realm is the statue. Yes So your kingdom or your world Will replace brown Now first this isn't exactly In the gospels, but this is the strange way that christianity works Most christians understand this to be A fundamental part of what happened, right? So whether you can point to a particular line in the gospels most christians understand That this is what it was about. It was about jesus talking to power talking to rome and say we're going to bring your ass down My followers will eventually Bring you down the mustard seed will grow and rome will be destroyed Now this is exactly the kind of stuff that wittly streiber puts forth in this book We're going to talk about today's show and it's really really important To figure out whether that's true Because i think it's not only Not true It's actually completely the opposite It is a scripted social engineering project Intended to take you in exactly the opposite direction I can't get all the way there now, but stick around and you'll hear in shows that come up What really happened, but i'll give you the short version the romans co-opted christianity And used it to essentially reboot the roman empire in a way that allowed the roman empire to decline While it wasn't really declining It was still business as usual Through this little entity that they created called the church the pope christianity That's why this history is so important to me and that's why if you listen to this show, you know Once I kind of get onto something it's hard for me to get off it But that's why if you're going to stick around with me you're going to hear A bunch more shows on this topic Hopefully they won't all be as contentious as this one with a guy I still stand behind everything I said I think is one of the most Important people in our history and someone who I greatly admire for his non-linear thinking I just think he's kind of not done his homework on this history and I think it it comes through But that's okay. Like I like to say way way higher than hall of fame batting average And witley stripper is definitely in the hall of fame. Here's a couple of clips from the show Well, I I don't even know why we're talking about it It has almost nothing to do with my book. Well, it has it has everything to do with your book The only references I made I was well aware of Josephus and his Uh And in fact in that time No one Was writing history as we think of it now that hadn't it not even been invented yet So why are we talking about Josephus? I agree because because you should I don't care There's some really important points of Connection between what you're saying and what I'm saying. I mean what you're saying about Constantine What you're saying about the romans Co-opting the religion Is is central to what I'm saying. You're just taking in a slightly different direction and a lot of times That's how it is when people talk about even with people are are in sync The differences are what get kind of exaggerated like the message of jesus love everyone and tell the truth The message of jesus about humility and compassion about the boot I mean, that's all we really don't need to talk about anything more than that That's the most important part and then the fact that the romans tried to co-op that in an evil way We are essentially we're in agreement on the most important things, but it isn't going to sound like that. That's okay All right. Thank you very much for having me on Okay You are very welcome We'll we'll do it again sometime soon Welcome to skeptica where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers thinkers and their critics I'm your host alexa caris and today I am very excited to have wittly streber back here on skeptico wittly has a new book out jesus a new vision We're going to talk a little bit about that because that's certainly a topic I've been talking a lot about lately on this show and you've heard a lot of interviews on That roman history so it was really exciting to me the last time that wittly and I talked and I heard that He had this the new book on this topic. So we've been exchanging some things and that might get pretty interesting But I also hope to broaden The dialogue on that For example, how has his contact experience Influenced his spirituality. How has his After-death communication experiences with an how has that affected this larger question of spirituality? and more Generally, I guess how has this? amazing life that he's had affected his spirituality, you know the first time I had wittly on the show. I kind of took a minute to remind everybody That just I don't know how else to put it what an important person in history Wittly represents and you know as we chatted a little bit about before We cannot and I know wittly would not assume That that is accidental I mean in a lot of ways Wittly is our first contactee I mean, he's not technically the first contactee But in a lot of ways the way this whole thing has rolled out the way that the Our our relationship with what wittly calls the others the way that whole thing has evolved in our culture Wittly is really kind of the first contactee and if you can wrap your head around that for a minute Then the other thing I'd ask you to wrap your head around is The other contacts that he's made In that world, you know, I was just reminded I was listening to an interview with wittly in preparation for this interview and all the people that he's influenced Through his work through his life through his experience and so many intersections in you know strange ways I mean joc valet asks him to write the introduction to his book He writes a book with a dr. Jeffrey kripal who we're all associated with there's a whole other world There's the whole world of comparative religion and they write this book the supernatural and And then I was mentioning to wittly, you know, I have an interview coming up with Ralph Blumenthal who is Kind of very cool guy new york times reporter and just has written an amazing important biography about john mac I mean wittly's all all over this thing all over that that history of john mac and bud hopkins and You know leslie kane and you know everybody in that it's wittly's popping up again and again. So I just think it's such an opportunity. I'm so excited whenever I get a chance to talk to this guy because I'm talking to someone who Is chosen to be this kind of important Person who's carrying this message But is also in the kind of here and now real world has written all these amazing books and then has Interacted with all these other people who are on the the edge of This new understanding that we're trying to wrap our head around now That doesn't mean I'm gonna agree with it on everything Probably we're gonna have so if a lot of points of agreement disagreement Uh today, but I'm not on the bigger pictures not on the bigger picture items because it's just He's just too awesome wittly So glad you're here. Thank you so much for joining me. Welcome here. Welcome back Well, thanks for having me as always it's always fun to talk together. We're we are uh Sort of joined at the hip intellectually I think I had a lot of fun when you were on dreamland and I have always had a wonderful time on skeptico 2 Well, thanks. So let's start jumping right in on this book. Tell us about this new book you have You know, it was something that I wasn't really expecting to come from you in many ways, but Let's dive into it Well, I have a bad habit of not fulfilling expectations I am the author of quite a range of non fiction books and people Forget that They they think of me People think have you know, think of me as being related to The whole alien UFO controversy, but I also published super storm Which became a meme in the world and war day before that which did also in its time I published a Mixed facts fact and fiction. Those are all mixed fact and fiction books and nature's end And so, you know, I have a definite uh habit of Moving in from one area to another and this book Came to me because I um I am deeply connected with my wife at this point and you know in it it's almost It's the same dialogue that we had when she was physically alive with the difference that her perspective is Very much more Evolved than it was she knows a lot more and We began to dialogue about jesus about a year and a half ago. She was Extremely interested in jesus when she was alive physically And one of the things she hoped most to do Was to find out what had actually had happened Because she didn't feel that the That the narratives That are available to us Are correct that they are not the story That there is another story that was buried somehow Are misunderstood In in in in profoundly fundamental ways But we could never get to To the right Place to understand what was missing but now With the use of my implant which I have talked about on your show before but I'll just briefly Reiterate this for those who don't know about it. It was put in my Ear in 1989 Uh, it has something to do with communicating not with necessarily with aliens But certainly with our own dead It is associated in some way With an electronic voice phenomenon researcher Called constantine radaway I was told that when the its functionality was explained to me By two rather mysterious people who have popped up in my life from time to time about six months ago So he apparently designed this either while he was physically alive or Afterwards and it is there And it facilitates communication I It used to open up a little slit in my right eye and words would go through that slit And these words would not when we moving too fast to see To comprehend the individually But I was it was explained to me that they would move into my that they were drawn from my own Sort of Unconscious and were like an enhanced Enhanced intuition call it that Um However, I lost the sight in my right eye by Working too hard. I'd learned to see into a parallel universe and folks. You're gonna have to live with it I don't lie and I don't live a normal life. So just suck it up Anyway, and you too, let me let me interject something because you actually touched on an important point That I wanted to talk about when you said you don't lie That's been my general perception About you Yeah, I don't it comes through it comes through in kind of an intuitive sense But it also just comes through in the way you present yourself And the way you stand up to criticism the way you which you are battle tested over the years The way you stand up to recalling events and other people's versions of those events, you know, like Again, we're going to talk about maybe we'll talk about the whole uh john mac thing But you know the bud hopkins thing and you say well, here's what happened, you know And it was kind of professional jealousy and sometimes Authors get into that and I understand it and you just lay it out and it just seems to be true So this is such an important point that let me broaden it because what you're saying is impossible to Literally comprehend and process in kind of a normal way This guy got an implant after having contact with aliens And now he's telling us well the implant isn't just to talk to aliens It's also to talk to dead people and it's connected with this other guy who developed it while he was living Or or dad. I don't know which one When you say suck it up. I'm telling the truth boy. I love that because I don't know, uh, you know I don't know if this is real on one level, but I know Is as much as I can know that what you're telling me is your attempt to be as Honest genuine real as you can be Um, yes within all this stuff and I think we also have to understand that that we cannot possibly Understand all these dimensions and realms that we're talking about so of course it should be If it's if it's not incomprehensible, we're probably not getting very close to it I think we're getting a lot closer because uh, I'm not the only life unfolding right now That is testament to the fact that there is much more to human experience than Simply living in the material world and moving through time But let me get back to what I was saying about the genesis of the book Ann and I will we'll dialogue there's a specific time of day for it Which in some, uh yoga traditions is known as brahman moharta time That's about three or four between three and four o'clock in the morning I get up every morning and every morning We often we dialogue we didn't this morning, but we we often do And the book came out of that the fact that she had Gained knowledge And I began to be able to access access that knowledge using The implant as my tool Because it's a it's a really wonderful research device it will What will happen is if you have an open question Using Some kind of organized system of synchronicity The answer Will soon fall into your hands Not an answer from the beyond But the answer that's available in this reality from a book or something somebody says or some Then you meet or something like that to the extent that I use it It's high. I've got it to the point where this is a highly organized research methodology I will I will Open questions And then within usually hours to days One way or another I'll be I'll end up able to address this And whatever the question was and that was how the book was was built I was able to Find up new insights into The gospel of thomas the gospel of mary The actual What happened to jesus how his his story relates to the or was related to the stories of the solar deities of the roman world and how he is Jesus the teacher Was taken over By a constant scene and turned into Jesus the god because the roman gods were failing The to protect rome which had been cursed by plagues and invasions and Inflation and climate change that none of which they understood Only they were praying to their gods for support and what they didn't know was The roman climate optimum was ending And so they were being Visited by terrible droughts And They were being weakened because they had not enough food And the result was that this very these very crowded little communities All of them linked together by sea and by roads that the romans had built Were becoming infected in ways that had never happened before and they didn't understand because their immune systems were compromised by hunger and these and starting in the age of The antonine age when marcus aurelius was emperor The first plague the antonine plague started and it went on and on with one plague after another Until they were desperate And losing faith The temples being abandoned The population of the empire dropping Germans pressing from from from the east because they in turn were being pressed by the megas East of them who were in turn being pressed by the huns Who were had left central asia because the drought was destroying the forage that their Horses depended on so all of this enormous complex Series of events combined together to cause constantine to think We need a new god Because the empire Is being abandoned by its own people because its gods don't work and you have to understand in those days There was no such thing as a the idea of a of a some kind of split between religion and church and state it didn't even exist church and state Were integrated completely integrated it there was it was one system And the state part a big part of the state's job Was to engage the gods on behalf of the people and it did that Through its priesthoods and its temples and sacrifice Uh and real sacrifice. I mean the the the temple sacrifices were very demanding They weren't just go in and drop off a dead pigeon. I mean you you had the sacrifice for sure So all of that was happening and I Found in that History a threat of truth. I think that's in the jesus book Of what really happened to this man and to His story after he left this world Okay, so Here's the deal though And let me make sure I understand I asked this question rather than I assume You're not asking us to accept any of that as Revelatory right you're you're you're saying you got this You got this download and we'll leave aside the means the technical means of it, you know And we'll say and then you're saying you did Research that you would just put on par with anyone else who would Research and write a book of this right kind and then you stand by that you don't say Do you can't you can't question me because it came in my download and there right there's no download It's not like that You get my point We're not going to have much of a discussion if you're going to say well, that's that's what I was told So I know this is true, right? I mean it has to well, listen I've heard so many people with things that they've been told that turned out not to be true I don't Do that I don't get downloads. That's not how it works What I do is I dialogue and the dialogue results in A journey of research in this world and that's where the information comes from it's it's really A method of finding the right Needles in the haystack and that's why Jesus and new visions got a long A long bibliography, okay because many books are Referenced in it. It's it's not downloaded from the beyond right. It's fallible Well, I wouldn't say it was fallible Well, it's it's opened. It's open to being fallible because it's open to discussion like any book would be any Book of scholarship would be of course That's that's my only point I don't agree with a lot of the conclusions that you've come to and I To kind of cut to the chase kind of thing I want to bring up one Quote that I sent you that I think puts an entirely different spin on this and is absolutely critical to this Understanding and I just cannot get over the fact that so many Not all but so many biblical scholars have completely Misunderstood and misinterpreted that and that's from Josephus. Let me pull it up on the screen Do you want to remind people who Josephus is? Josephus was a A Jewish scholar and historian who Became he became famous in the Roman world because he predicted The ascendancy of vespasian to the emperor ship to the imperial to the imperial purple and when vespasian This happened vespasian honored him and gave him a very special place in his court especially for a jew because of the fact that The jew the jewish rebellion was underway at the time and the romans were During this whole period. They were in the process of destroying the jewish Province as it existed pulling the temple down And dispersing the jews around the whole empire and forbidding them to even live in jerusalem and then later under The emperor hadrian it was even its name was changed to alia capitalina But that was after this time the point is this By making that prediction Josephus became an important figure and also was free to do a lot of writing which he did and the Books like the antiquities of the jews remain Primary source material for anyone studying this whole era and the history of the jewish people Yeah, I just don't think a lot of that is is really believable I mean anyone who goes and looks at the history of josephus and i've brought it up on the screen here just in terms of the highlights He just makes a lot of stuff up So and it's proven that he makes a lot of stuff up one of the first things that he Well, one of the first things he does if you talk to A jewish scholars and rabbis and folks i've researched they'll say one of the first things Josephus says is like hey I am like a super jew That 14 years old I was down in the temple telling those old guys How to really interpret the law because I was smarter than all of this is what josephus says He says I knew all the different sects right because there's all these different Competing sects and some of them are very kind of friendly to the romans Which is kind of where his family lineage are and some are revolting violently and Causing all these rebellions and stuff like that, but he says no man. I am the super jew I know everything and I'm going to be the guy and then at a very young age He actually gets this if you believe his story. He gets this honor of going to rome to Negotiate the release of these rabbis who are in rome Again, his whole story. I think is manufactured, but if you're just going to follow What he says happened. Oh and just to go back to that first part The reason we know he isn't kind of the super jew knows the law better than any of the best Is that he contradicts the law over and over again in his writings, right? So he says I know all this stuff But then he he doesn't really seem to know the law all that well But back to his story He claims to go to rome and negotiate The release of these rabbis and he's welcomed By the emperor and particularly he's friends with the emperor's wife Again impossible to believe he gets back to galilee There's this revolt that's brought that's breaking out and he again. This is not really believable but he is put in charge of the Row of the jewish troops in galilee And now here's the important part of the story that most people do know Is that he fights tooth and nail and finally he's cornered by the romans and they go into a cave And they go well, there's nothing we can do We can't surrender to these people We'll commit suicide So they make this pack 40 of them to commit suicide And they kind of do this complicated math problem where they draw straws because it's against jewish law to commit suicide So they have to kill one another And then lo and behold, wouldn't you know it gets down to the final two And josephus just randomly happens to be one of those two And he says, you know what? I just had a revelation And the revelation is no we shouldn't commit suicide. We should go out and join With the spasian so he goes out and he Now here comes a really important part of the story Everyone makes a big deal out of the fact that he predicts that like the spasians sitting there waiting like Ah, what's this guy have to say because you will be emperor in a couple of years and they go really gee, you know Here's here's this guy. We captured making this a prophecy that's going to be so important But really the important thing that he and then he becomes part of the spasians entourage if you will And he goes with him from location to location as they're sacking judaea And they're taking over these towns And on the way to sacking judaea and he is recording all this history As a reward for that and probably what he probably did Was he probably cut a deal with the spasian To give the spasian Kind of the keys to the kingdom to let him know where all the gold is because this is something we actually have archaeological Evidence of if anyone wants to go google the arch of Titus You will see this big arch that is still in rom and it shows the romans after they've kicked ass in judaea on the jews They're carrying all the gold over their shoulder Well that gold we should probably assume was buried somewhere And the guy who really makes out great in that whole deal is josephus because josephus is given The spasian's old townhouse after this asian comes becomes uh Emperor he's not only given his freedom But he's allowed to pick 200 other people off of his list to go with him live in live the high life in rom And then he has to go and write all this history down of what happened play by play War the jews how they sacked Judaea and how it wasn't really the romans fault It was really the jews fault and how you know Give unto caesar what is caesar's and he says all this stuff that winds up sounding in the making the bible sound very pro romain And again, we've got to remember the date of all this This is he's probably writing this in the 70s early 70s maybe 80s We can't be sure but this is after jesus has died And it's after the sacking of derusalem And i'll stop there because the the big punch line is coming in a minute But i want to give you a chance to respond to that history which i think is I mean i'm maybe flavoring it a little bit, but the main points are undeniable as far as i understand Well, i i don't even know why we're talking about it It has almost nothing to do with my book Well, it has it has everything to do with your book because if you don't I'm because because of this what the only references i made i was well aware of josephus and his And in fact in that time No one Was writing history as we think of it now that hadn't it not even been invented yet that idea of history as an accurate narrative of form these were all these these For example the gospels are perfect example of that They're not historical documents. They these are things that the Authors of the gospels thought probably would have happened. They were perfectly willing to to To to do that, but i don't i don't use josephus as a as a Critical source or a fundamental source in my book at all Uh, and i'm saying you should Well, i didn't so why are we talking about josephus? I agree because because you should i don't care Well, you you have to care and here's the reason why In in my opinion obviously we're just having a Nice heated discussion here. It hasn't heated up too much. Here's why here's why you should care Because here's who josephus Really is and this is from war in the jews This is 70 and it relates directly to constantine Even though constantine is almost 300 years later And this is a message that he's writing to everyone but particularly to the people of judaea particularly to the jews He writes But what more than all else incited them to the war was an ambiguous oracle Likewise found in their sacred scriptures To the effect that at the time one from their country would become ruler of the world So this is the messiah So what josephus is saying is hey the reason these jews got so worked up in the first place Is because they kept expecting the messiah they were waiting the messiah So they were pushing against the romans because they felt like that was their job to kind of hold out That's exactly correct. It is This they understood to mean that one of their race and many of the wise men the people in the temple the The rabbis went astray in their interpretation of it the oracle. However in reality Signified the sovereignty of vespasian Who was proclaimed emperor on jewish soil? So what he's saying? This is josephus Speaking to all the jews He's saying your religion judaism is Completely misunderstood by you guys Vespasian is the messiah Give it up Judaism is over Vespasian is the messiah now to me I think to most people when they really process this There's no other way to interpret this as an attempt at the ultimate attempt at social engineering at psi op at control the people by Co-opting their religion. I mean this is a propaganda agent of the first order Who's speaking to the romans and telling the jews Hey, you don't have a religion I don't understand at all What this has to do with my book in my book I don't claim that the jews thought jesus was a messiah at all. In fact very much the contrary They didn't they didn't because he was killed. He was he was hung from it from a tree across And that was something that the messiah specifically would not happen to him, but it happened to jesus That's why the jews rejected jesus's messiah and reject him to this day as messiah And I don't think I don't see what I don't get a connection between what I The josephus references in my book which are all very carefully chosen Because every single one of them is corroborated by other other historical narrative And because i'm well aware of the fact that these ancient historic histories are not Factual and based in fact like history is now that as I said before that hadn't been invented yet So I don't know where you're going with this. I mean, of course My book doesn't in fact Say that the jews thought jesus was a messiah. In fact, I don't even think jesus was a messiah I think he was a rabbinical teacher of the first order And it his life ended in an extremely unusual and unexplained way Minute none of it has anything as far as I can tell at all to do with josephus and Or vespasian I don't think vespasian. I don't recall that vespasian is even mentioned in my book in fact well again And this kind of this is kind of a tweak issue for me whenever someone talks about their book Your your book is about history. So anything i'm pulling about the history of that time is relevant It doesn't have to reference back to what's in the book Here's the point. I mean it's Why why is it important? Yes, in the discussion of my book Yes, you talk about whether or not this because the gospels are dependent upon josephus So anyone who does careful analysis of the gospels they will find and this is Understood by many many I would say a majority of biblical scholars if you go look You'll you'll and they put it in very Kind of coded words the gospels are dependent upon josephus and what they mean is the gospel writers had access to josephus And they were using josephus To write gospels and in that way they were Really you can say that that's just how history was and this and that but it's deceptive because they're Now taking the words of a quote-unquote historian even though he's a propaganda artist josephus And they're turning those into prophecies. So when jesus is Standing on the hill saying oh the temple will be raised to the ground and every stone will be overturned well That is right out of josephus But when josephus writes it he's saying hey, I was there with titus after vestibasian went up went away to be emperor And that's what they did man. They kicked ass. They knocked the whole thing down and then But when it comes out of jesus's mouth it's prophecy. Well, no, it's not he didn't really jesus Jesus whoever jesus was didn't really prophesize that it just sounds good when you take the history and you write it as prophecy So that's why I don't get it at all what you're even saying Because you say the gospel writers all were aware of the works of josephus The problem with that is the jewish war is written in in in about 75 Which was at least five years after the earliest gospel mark was written And the antiques of the jews doesn't come along until 94 and the only uh A gospel written after 94 was john Well, then we have a problem don't we because if the is the gospels can be shown and you know We can have a I could show you that offline or we can pull out of now if the gospels can be shown to have a Statistically off the charts parallel play by play Consistency with josephus then we do have a problem, right? Is it no problem at all? They all emerge out of the same The same narrative which may have been written down at the time by somebody but it's now been lost or was oral an oral narrative And the jew the the gospel writers and josephus were all aware of it But who was copying who who the hell knows our cares it's irrelevant Well, again, I'd come back to the point why it's not irrelevant is If it is history so even take your assumption there that someone wrote it down. It's not history Well, we don't we don't I didn't write a book about I I put together a lot of different possibilities in My book and I don't know why you don't want to talk about my book, but you don't and that's fine I'll talk about instead. I'll talk about the way the way narrative Stories like this like the antiquities of the jews and the gospels were created in that time and These were created by people who were Extremely isolated from the incidents that they were describing for the most part Josephus was apparently involved in the jewish war. So some of his statements might be might be accurate But many of them won't be Because they they they took they didn't they couldn't tell the difference between hearsay what we would call now hearsay an actual factual narrative I mean if you pick up suetioness and his bizarre tales of the emperors The emperors he liked come off well and the emperors he didn't like come off as maniacs and Nobody knows the truth of any of that And the same is true of the gospels or josephus or any of these authors We have to struggle through These narrative threads to try to find Some consistency And that is what for example scholarship is of this era is all about And my book is does the same it doesn't Use josephus as a as a source of Fact at all. I mean There there are mentions of josephus But they're all only things that were corroborated by other historians so that they Other narratives at the time I mean, we don't know what happened then really We know again again, I mean I almost want to shift off of this in order to bring it back into focus In a different way, but I can't quite leave it yet because I think you do leave a couple of gaps there So again, that's why I mentioned the arch of titus Because a lot of people can get kind of lost in the weeds and kind of listen to that Well, we don't really know the history and this and that well, I don't know We kind of know some of the history. We can go look at that arch And we're gonna look at those guys with all that gold the jewish booty that they got from sacking jerusalem And we can know at least what historic history tells us Why do we know the spasian built the coliseum with the gold that he got from judaea, right? So no, you don't know that Well, you only know what the romans wanted to say Not what nests necessarily happened or didn't happen Why would you pick that? I mean the the general consensus is that the spasian was kind of the ultimate super general Paid his guys well, which was his smart way to do it and that it's generally accepted that he used the gold from judaea To build the coliseum and do the You know circus and bread kind of thing. Are you saying you that's not your understanding of that history saying anything I'm simply saying that you're saying you're using words like generally accepted in other words. You are you are Regarding this history in exactly the same type of mindset that jocephus would have Just to get back to that for I skip off on this other thing is When when we hear about Like the sacking of rom in the gospels It's coming through as prophecy from jesus You mean the sacking of jerusalem by the romans? Yes, i'm sorry if i'm mistaken that but yeah, I mean that's that's in the gospel. That's prophecy from jesus Well, yeah, but no one thinks that he did that. I don't I don't think he actually prophesied that I mean he's he was a very bright man and it's not beyond belief that he might have Have I mean I've prophesied things that It wasn't miracles that came true I did in superstorm for example, but it's not because I had some Magic power from on high. It's because i'm not stupid The point here is that you know, I can I can prophesy stuff that happened 30 years ago, too Well, look When I wrote superstorm None of that material Was in the record and people scorned me I was laughed off of with art bell off of the today show because our ideas were so radical Now if you google the word superstorm you find millions of references to it The superstorm scenario is even the Is even the center of one of the major environmental papers written in the past 10 years And i'm telling you right now. I didn't have Some kind of messianic Skill at all I just looked at the science and at the reality of it in a different way as I was Describing earlier. I didn't have the implant then but I or I may I guess I did have it But I didn't wasn't aware how to use it but um as far as these stories of We know I'll tell you how the My book's not really about the historicity of the narrative But if you want to really learn About the relationship between the various narratives That appear in in the in the roman world and what might have actually been happening on the ground Then you have to go to archaeology And you and and analyses of things like population densities age at death Conditions of bodies and so far as we can determine that Of et cetera and so forth and that has been done brilliantly over many years by by Archaeologists and so we do know for example That the roman that roman roam was it was Visited by numerous plagues and not only because of the historical narrative But because we can find skeletons that show sample show um evidence of The diseases that were involved You see what I mean? I do see what you mean, but I don't honestly care about josephus Josephus isn't peripherally important to my book Whether or not he felt he's central. He's central to this history. He's entirely irrelevant to me Well, not to me. He's central to this issue because he's the clear example of the social engineering that Rome is engaged in and you actually said this in the very old I Well, hold on you can't you can't say so what it can be so what to you and it isn't so what to me So, okay beginning invited me on this show to talk about a book Now we're I don't ever invite anyone on on skeptico to talk about books I just have people on to have conversations And and and the and and it seems like it seems like a completely Unimportant and irrelevant argument about something that doesn't matter You know even even in even the history even in the context of history who cares whether uh josephus thought vespasian was the Messiah or not and the jews were very confused about it and they did end up being Badly beaten up because of their belief in their in their messiah. You're right about that. It's not what I said so what It happens to what it's not it's not what I said So it's not accurate to say you're right about that because that's that wasn't my point Well, what is your point? I've been very curious to Understand that because I don't at all. I I know so I'm not going to keep hammering on it from the same direction I'm going to come in it from a different direction because I just heard an interview that you did with With jeffrey mishlove and you you had a great quote in there that I thought was just phenomenal in a way if I if it does link back to this then I will have been successful in Helping you understand where I'm coming from But you're trying to understand the relationship that we might have with The others with et if you will to keep it simple And you use the analogy of a dog Of us being the dog, you know not being being I we have a foster dog here And I've been enjoying getting to know this dog and at times. I think the dog is so smart until I see the dog do something You know just get run around chasing their tail or run around chasing a stick And I go that doesn't seem all that smart And that's the analogy you made and then you further extended that analogy in a way that I thought was very interesting You said if we're the dog Et maybe can be understood as the boot the boot on the neck of that dog And then you talked about how futile it is to gnaw at that boot Because the boot can get you So what is the relationship between? us and the various boots whether they be Et which is where we can start But also that's how it relates to this The picture that you paint Actually from the beginning witley before you got all agitated with my Questions is that the romans were the boot? And they became the boot and they used The life of jesus or the spiritual experience what I would say that people are having with christ consciousness They use that To create the boot on the neck of the people So what do you think about? The boot and the dog Well, uh, that's exactly my point about what constantine did He turned This rabbi into a roman god And as I point out in my book A religious dictatorship emerged out of that that lasted until Really it only completely died away in the 19th century And for much of that time because of it The western world was plunged into Superstition ignorance and darkness and terrible suffering Millions of people probably over the years between The fifth century when it began to really take hold And the the last of the inquisition in 1823. I think it was Must have suffered persecution from it And it still went on in a sense when the holocaust emerged uh because I don't think that There would have been a holocaust if the long standing tradition of animosity between christians and jews had not persisted And it all starts with constantine It all starts with him. Well, and this is to my point It does it start with constantine or does it start on some other Realm that we don't totally understand. You know the last time we talked I asked you a question that Just still res it still rings in my ears and I bring it up all the time and I asked you How far away Is et and you immediately said inch away inch away So if we are to understand The larger Consciousness soup that we're in including our dorky here and now reality if we're to understand that It with a light with a wider lens lens a lens that includes et a lens that includes Leslie kane trying to talk to bud hopkins through after death communication I'll leave your after death communication out of it just for a second if we're trying to talk about Um the connection to evil and benevolent forces, which I think is what's relevant in rome To think that constantine is making all this up on his own is to deny The rich spiritual experience that all these people throughout history had well I point out in my book Something that tacitus reports that a defeated Scottish Warrior called calgacus said After he had been vanquished by Agricola In around 80 something 85 I guess ad To plunder butcher and steal these things they mistake as empire They Create A desolation and call it peace now I hasten to add that In view of our previous conversation I have no idea whether tacitus was quoting a speech or made it all up And it doesn't matter because it's a very accurate description of what rome did and was doing Now as far as constantine is concerned the the chapter I have on constantine relates Back to the story in the gospels Of jesus's 40 days in the desert and his temptation by the devil satan And I point out that constantine succumbed To that same temptation which jesus did not succumb to And whether that temptation emerges from some kind of an entity outside of us or not You tell me. I mean I've no you tell me No, I can't I'm not going to because I can't I'm I'd as we talked about at the very beginning I do not I am not a channeler and I don't have downloads from the beyond History would tell us that it extends way before it boy But when montezuma was standing on the top of that pyramid pulling the live hearts out of the people And letting the blood drip down the stairs He was in connection with Some entity in that extended realm that would probably be really comfortable with what you just read about How Constantine saw the world but I don't think that you can you can draw the conclusion that These things happen because of something outside of us when it's perfectly clear to see it for anybody to see for example that the romans were They were very primitive people and Ethically had no ethical focus It hadn't been invented yet Their job was to go in and and take as much out of their provinces as they could That was what the governors were about and that's why a lot of them were called Procurators because they were there to procure And eventually even the romans as thickheaded as they were Discovered that if you taxed people to the point that they would Starve to death then you you in the long run you lost out and gradually things changed But Is that our constantine was terrified that the empire would was going to fail and is is that Did he act as he did because he was in league with some sort of satanic entity or montezuma If indeed he did stand on the pyramid, but in any case somebody certainly did it We know that because we found some of the skeletons of the people who were who were killed in that way in both in all through All of meso america and why also have the record that they say that they were connecting with Spirit entities so well, I don't know why I don't know why you're pushing against that or qualifying it And and you know the other thing with the romans that I would add because I think this is I really disagree with you about the romans being blockheaded or characterizing them this way I think this is the major one of the major major problems in history And I would expect you to be more tuned into this and that history writes these people Into the books as if they are not living the same rich Spiritual life that you and I live I am not a perfect person I'll probably yell at my wife or scream at my daughter today in a way that I'm not proud of And I'll wake up at two o'clock in the morning and I'll be wondering how that has impacted my soul Because I am living a rich spiritual life. So was vespasian. So was josephus So was every roman whether they were a slave or whether they were You know, whatever they were because that is our nature is living rich spiritual lives Well, I don't know what to say. I I am very Much engaged in these extended realms and I Don't um I just don't know how to respond. I have no idea what you're Talking about where you're going what you're trying to say Um, if you believe in demons then get some sage and go Go flying around your house with sage burning or whatever you need to do Um, I live my life and it's it's a good life and that's really all I have to say I guess I don't know why I don't even know why that would be so A difficult I'm not I'm not into The demon thing because I'm not a christian because I don't believe I believe the the christian narrative is a co-opted religion co-opted by the same People that you describe in the book. So I don't know why we're so exactly what the book is about Well, so I don't know why we're so out of out of joint out of sync with that and when I talked about I just don't understand what you're talking about what what evil entities and and if you don't Again, Whitley Whitley, why were you talking? Why were you talking about et being the boot on your neck of the dog? Whatever I said then and whatever the context was I don't know but I was probably talking in terms of the All of the negative stuff that has gone on and there's been a lot of it Uh, I had a hell of a bad experience and frankly, so did my wife Uh, but we don't she did not wish to talk about her aspect of it and I honor that to this day But uh, it was very terrible And uh, there was nothing we could do about it Are you there's people who have been beaten up and scarred and god knows maybe some of them have even disappeared completely We don't know but there is an aspect of it that is Dark and difficult and dangerous And you know what that doesn't mean it's some kind of supernatural thing It means that we are looking at something that is very complex just like us Because believe me I can gather together plenty of very dark dangerous and evil people Why are they that way? is it because some Dark force has entered them Maybe I wouldn't doubt wouldn't say that's impossible but What I can do is I can react to what is present And not to what I believe may be its origins and that's why I was talking about The boot Because the dog doesn't see the man who's kicking him the dog sees the boot The dog bites the boot He doesn't leap up and bite the throat out of his oppressor. That does not occur to him And we're in the same place the dog the dog Doesn't understand the relationship between the man above him and the boot that's kicking him And we don't understand the relationship between getting beat up by whatever it is And what it is because we don't understand what it is That's what I always thought you meant when you use that analogy Well, I was here here's what I was attempting to substitute in there, which again, I do not know why you would find this controversial or need to push back on it but your experience as Probably I'll put probably in there a part of mk ultra if we understand that history Which is well documented with tens of thousands of Declassified documents Is that they were exactly trying to reach these extended realms and not just the et realms But the other realms in order to conjure Spirits that they thought it they not only thought but they had evidence could be Another boot could be a different boot and hey, we got to do it before they got to do it kind of mentality That's in play right or do you want to say, you know, do you want to kind of wave your fingers and go use supernatural freak? Of course, it's supernatural natural is is scientific materialism. That's out the window Well, I certainly is in play and I Would assume that I was affected by something by a A precursor of mk ultra when I was a little boy In 1952 something happened to me that was done to me that was very oppressive and done by people There are 48 boxes of four 48 boxes of files. I'm sure they're long gone by now That the judge in the mk ultra case ruled That the government could withhold because they contained Material that that should remain classified. I have often wondered whether or not What was done to children? If anything is in those files, but when you open a door like that into a child's life and into a child's soul You can never close that door again nor can you Control what comes through it and my life has been an enormous battle to stand by the good and to Identify myself with the light and there has I have lived out this battle and I'm not going to say that it's Superstition because it's not it's real at the same time Demonizing things and and and and and trying to organize it at our level Is trying is you end up seeing your own reflection in the toe of the boot Yeah, maybe maybe not. I mean here. Let me let me kind of put a put a little bow on that because when You're nice enough to have me on your show to talk about uh My book that investigates this white evil matters The one thing I've found out in doing that and I'll remind you this is that The work of a clinical psychologist in Grand Rapids, michigan Who really kind of closed the loop on this and what he said is it's about dissociative identity disorder And when we talked about this you were all over it. You understood immediately That what they were attempting to do with mk ultra and the documents that are released in canada are definitely point to children Definitely definitely point to children. You know the documents at harvard And we're a blumenthal and I are going to have a really interesting talk about that at john mack Because there were mk projects going on at harvard all over the place, you know, but back to uh, this disassociative identity disorder Which is the breaking right you're cracking open it was to use your term, you know, you're cracking somebody open They were trying to it looks like this is conjecture But it's informed conjecture that they were attempting to do that in an in an effort to Understand how they could weaponize it So in the same way that you're implant if we're supposed to understand that as you describe it They said hey, here's another way Just take a two-year-old and scare the crap out of them and create this incredible trauma and boom They'll be outside of their body now once they're outside of their body Let's start seeing what we might do with that and we have to because we have to know because if we don't get them They'll get us kind of stuff to which you said be careful with your black magic flypaper Because you're never going to get your hands off of it, which I agree with absolutely true I've seen that happen to many people You get you once you once you start playing with the dark side I know people who have just gotten lost in Black magic and stuff like that Because the reason is that we don't know what we're doing in these areas and There is something there certainly I I'm not sure that you can we we tend to characterize it as good and evil But I'm not sure it sees itself that way at all Again if let me interject because I I think that's a contradiction with what you said earlier And what you said earlier is the part that I agree with because it jives so closely with the research I've done into near-death experience Because no one comes back from a near-death experience and says oh, you know what? Alistair Crowley is right. Do what thou wilt is the way Michael Aquino is right. I should go molest little kids No one comes back, you know the number of cases of the thousands of cases that are meticulously reported of near-death experiences Zero zero come back and say that what they say is there's light There's love There's god and we have the choice to move in that direction and we always have that choice That's what I understand. So I am not I'm not interested in engaging in A deep dive into the evil or exploring it or practicing it But I do need to understand it. I do need to at least Identify what the playing field is like. So when I make that choice To choose light to choose good. I'm better informed about what that choice is. That's my only point Well, let's get back to the boot in the neck. We are not Going to be able to understand it What we are going to be able to do is to understand our side of the relationship that we can understand and that's All about the Journey toward the good. It was the it was it's been the message of Buddha Jesus even Muhammad in the Meccasuras It is It is a message that is That fills humanity It is the human message and embracing that Is embracing humanity be explicit about what that message is because you've said it before but I want you to say it again if you could About compassion about love about forgiveness even when you even when you were the dog with the boot on your neck There's only one way out and it's not the obvious way It's not it's not to fight the boot Because you can't there's something else there that you can't see and you can't address It is to live by love compassion and humility to live that way That's what changed me my experience of the visitors was the an absolute effort to really understand my My relationship to those three things To understand where am I when it comes to love Am I leaving a loving life? And what does that mean in terms of my relationships with the people around me the people? I know and don't know and the friends and the enemies and all of that Uh, what does that mean? And then humility I've said many times the first lesson I got from the visitors and the first indication I had that I was involved with somebody who had a different Viewpoint not it was simply a dark evil terrifying We're going to eat you if we can kind of approach Uh, was the fact that they taught me beautifully and very brilliantly about the importance of humility And then I learned about compassion from my wife Not only from the way she lived But from what she said about it, which I think is one of those powerful statements I know in my life when I asked and what compassion was How to understand it. She said simply each of us is all we have And when you hear that suddenly a door opens in you at least it did in me and you see the others In their vulnerability and pain the good the bad and the ugly and If you really let that door open you soon find out Why it's so hard to be compassionate It is because it hurts to feel The pain of others that that is so so beautiful It is so amazing how that fits and I don't know if you're aware of this But that is exactly the message from the near-death experience Is that you will stand in judgment of yourself And the most difficult thing about that judgment will be you will be fully compassionate Fully compassionate of all you've ever Done all you've ever thought and it's not anyone imposing that on you It just becomes your reality That's and and was that's why this that's what and I mean and had Such extraordinary it has such extraordinary insight I also want you to to go back and speak some more if you would about humility Because I think that's a tricky a tricky term especially In our times, especially among men Especially among men who are kind of geared to achieve You've achieved a lot in your life a lot of success with literary accomplishments with media accomplishments that you know Make make humility. I'm sure at different times in your life difficult. Well speak more about humility You know, it has to be understood that we're all equal that the man or the woman with great accomplishments And the The one who appears to have few or even negative accomplishments are In the end equal I've been out of my body in a couple of instances When I was in the presence of large numbers of other people I'm not going to get it. There were I was not witnessed In these cases. So I don't talk about them much But I will say this when you're in that state and you're with you're in a group of a large group of people Quite an astonishing thing happens They all look both utterly and completely unique And exactly the same at the same time And when you live that You find yourself living in a state of humility That's quite quite beautiful You know, I don't know how much we accomplished in terms of maybe what you wanted to talk about in terms of jesus A new vision But I accomplished what I wanted that was the kind of dialogue I wanted Make sure to check out your show. So good That's it is my show and I do honor my right to do what the hell I want because I don't have a pay wall I don't have advertisers I never have and I never will because it doesn't cost that much money to run a podcast And I got all the money I need anyway. So I like Trying to expand my understanding of who I am And why I'm here and that's why I am continuously no matter how much I piss you off I am continually open to and just so thankful For who you are and what you bring And the life that you've lived and the contributions you've made you are just an amazing amazing Spiritual being and communicator and I so honor what you've done What you continue to do because you know sometimes people, you know Whitley is not going anywhere. He's still cranking out stuff, you know, go to unknowncountry.com Go to dreamland listen to that amazing podcast I think I just I mentioned earlier in the show the interview with Ralph Blumenthal It's phenomenal. You cannot read Ralph's book and not listen to Whitley's interview with him. The two would be He should be sending those out on mv3 with it because one doesn't even fully tell the story Without the other because Whitley is so central to so much of this Experience that we're living as we're unfolding into this larger reality that is You know this et ufo thing Whitley Phenomenal that you've joined me and I thank you so much Sorry, I I put you on tilt, but I'm not going to apologize. Really. I'm sorry on tilt a few times in my life I bet but I I Would like at some point to discuss my book which we did not do Well, you're gonna have to find somebody else to do that. I guess because I can't I think so Yeah, because I because josephus is a is a very peripheral aspect of the book But I don't want to let's not go back there. We've been there on that. It's over Well, there's there's actually see there. There's actually, uh, which you you don't You don't see it that way, which is fine there's no there's some really important points of Connection between what you're saying and what I'm saying. I mean what you're saying about constantine What you're saying about the romans? co-opting The religion is is central to what I'm saying You're just taking in a slightly different direction and a lot of times that's how it is when people talk about Even with people are are in sync The differences are what get kind of exaggerated like the message of jesus love everyone and tell the truth the message of jesus about Humility and compassion about the boot. I mean, that's all we really don't need to talk about anything more than that That's the most important part and then the fact that the romans tried to co-op that in an evil way We are essentially we're in agreement on the most important things, but it isn't going to sound like that. That's okay All right, thank you very much for having me on Okay You are very welcome Thank you. We'll we'll do it again sometime soon. Okay. Take care. We Bye Thanks again to Whitley striber for joining me today on skeptico, you know I'm hesitant to even tee up a question from this interview because I don't know I don't know how down you all are with this But you know, if I was going to tee up a question, it would be along the lines of what I was talking about at the beginning Do you see the connection between the co-opting of christianity and the false flag fail of the roman empire? Or do you think well, do you think otherwise? Let me know. Love to hear your thoughts Got a lot more of this great stuff coming up Until next time take care and bye for now