Prisoner of Infinity
UFOs, Social Engineering, and the Psychology of Fragmentation
Jasun Horsley Aeon Books 2018 Pb, 328pp, £14.99, ISBN 9781911597056
Prisoner of Infinity began in May 2013 as an online art installation, ‘Crucial Fictions’, and reached its final form in January 2017. Long before its start (though not the author’s longstanding awareness of these issues), the dismantling of societal infrastructure’s “core coherence” had been underway. The value of Horsley’s insight and careful articulation lies not only in his capacity for tracking, analysing and flagging potential dangers, but in charging them with meaning. “It’s not possible to really investigate the UFO,” he notes, “without winding up knee-deep in epistemological and psychological waters.” That statement describes what’s absent in most ufological esoterica: relevance.
“[ Prisoner of Infinity] is also,” Horsley continues, “for anyone interested in how beliefs are created [..] influence our perceptions and shape the narratives that engender our beliefs. [..] It delves into the experience and psychology of one high-profile ‘experiencer,’ not in order to undermine his work but in order to reach a proper understanding of the phenomena being observed – by observing closely the observer himself. Yet, as the author of this exploration, I am also the observer who must be observed... since it is only fair to place my own psychology under the same microscope as I am placing Strieber.”
Horsley’s chronicling of events in his past goes beyond this statement of purpose; nowhere in the literature will one find a more comprehensive, balanced evaluation of Whitley Strieber’s confounding (and frequently contradictory) oeuvre.
‘Part I: Passport to Manchuria’ covers – among other matters – de-eroticised spirituality, trauma as psychism and agent of evolution, child abuse and fragmentation, quasi-memories, Donald Kalsched’s Jungian model of dissociation and the self-care system applied to Strieber’s “shattered mirror of expectation” and alien intervention, his alleged ties to US intelligence, The Process Church, and similarities to the late Carlos Castaneda.
‘Part II: Crucial Fictions’ explores the theories of Julian Jaynes (of The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown
of the Bicameral Mind), alien abduction and MK ULTRA, military psy ops, Kurtzweil, von Neumann and the so-called Singularity, transhumanism, Harman’s New Freemasonry, the trap of transcendental knowledge, black-ops and mind control, ritual sexual abuse, the ultimate motivation of the illumineers, and more.
The Afterword, ‘Update: one fiction to rule them (UFO Disclosure Plan 2017)’ assesses the questionable John Podesta, and Strieber’s claims – via an audio series on his Unknown
Country website – of channelling his late wife Anne. But the bonus is the Appendix: ‘Delivering the Poison Secret: A Review of Whitley Strieber & Jeffrey Kripal’s The Super
Natural’, with copious notes and references. Whether Strieber – complicitly or not – was/is being exploited by “traumatogenic agencies,” Horsley demonstrates that delving into, and manipulating, mass consciousness will never end until that most unidentified object of all – the human soul – is at last identified.
Prisoner of Infinity is the most important study of social/ mythological engineering/ UFOs/Strieber’s continuum, and Horsley’s relentless – yet empathetic – intelligence strips out the annoying nonsense that’s tainted these subjects since the ‘heady’ days of Adamski, Bowert’s Operation Mind Control, the late Jim Keith’s more lucid material and Cannon’s The
Controllers. An incredible, mindblowing exploration. William Grabowski