WEBVTT - Techno-Religion for the Masses: Part 2 0:00:03.120 --> 0:00:06.000 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:06.000 --> 0:00:14.520 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:16.919 My name is Robert lamp and I'm Joe McCormick. And 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:20.680 this is part two in our two part exploration of 0:00:20.840 --> 0:00:25.000 techno religion of the convergence of religion and technology. So 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:27.360 before you listen to this episode, you should definitely go 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:31.479 back and check out our part one episode of techno Religion. 0:00:31.520 --> 0:00:33.480 And at the beginning of the last episode, I told 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:36.440 the story about a strange incident taking place at High 0:00:36.520 --> 0:00:40.360 Rock Tower in Lynn, Massachusetts in the eighteen fifties where 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:45.000 people were trying to build an electro mechanical Messiah, and 0:00:45.240 --> 0:00:49.560 the chief intellectual architect of this event was a guy 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:55.279 named John Murray Spear. We now continue the story. So 0:00:55.320 --> 0:00:59.520 who was John Murray Spear. He's in some ways a 0:00:59.600 --> 0:01:03.480 much forgotten an overlooked figure from the sort of radical 0:01:03.560 --> 0:01:07.560 reform movement of the early eighteen hundreds. So John R. 0:01:07.680 --> 0:01:11.560 Spear was born in Boston in eighteen o four. His 0:01:11.640 --> 0:01:13.960 father was a blacksmith. He had a brother named Charles 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:15.800 who was a year older than him, and he and 0:01:15.840 --> 0:01:20.280 his family were members of the Universalist Church. And this 0:01:20.400 --> 0:01:23.600 was a Christian church that was popular in some parts 0:01:23.600 --> 0:01:28.040 of New England back then, and the Universalist Church rejected 0:01:28.080 --> 0:01:30.360 the doctrine of hell. That's one of the most notable 0:01:30.400 --> 0:01:33.440 things about them. They rejected the doctrine of hell and 0:01:33.560 --> 0:01:37.640 eternal damn nation, and they preached that the salvation of 0:01:37.720 --> 0:01:42.200 Christ was applied to all people unconditionally. I like that. Yeah, 0:01:42.200 --> 0:01:47.080 And they also were very often associated with political radical 0:01:47.160 --> 0:01:51.800 reform causes. They were tied up in abolitionist movements. Yeah. Yeah, 0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:55.600 So there was a somewhat utopian strain of thinking about 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:59.640 earthly life, not just the afterlife, in the Universalist circles 0:01:59.640 --> 0:02:02.520 back then. So John Murray Spear and his brother Charles 0:02:02.520 --> 0:02:05.560 grew up in the Church of Reverend John Murray, for 0:02:05.600 --> 0:02:09.440 whom John Murray Spear was named, and young John they said, 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:12.440 you know, he was fond of going to solitary places 0:02:12.520 --> 0:02:15.600 and sort of thinking deep thoughts. In his early life 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:18.280 he was apprentice to a shoemaker, which I had no 0:02:18.360 --> 0:02:21.080 idea about this, but according to the book which is 0:02:21.120 --> 0:02:23.399 my main source on John Murray Spear, which is called 0:02:23.440 --> 0:02:26.960 The Remarkable Life of John Murray Spear by John Benedict Baucher, 0:02:28.120 --> 0:02:33.920 back then shoemakers were particularly radical and bookish group. Have 0:02:33.960 --> 0:02:36.320 you ever heard this? No? I never, so the ideas 0:02:36.440 --> 0:02:40.680 shoemakers would have young apprentices, and the the youngest apprentices 0:02:40.760 --> 0:02:43.720 would go out each day and collect a whole bunch 0:02:43.720 --> 0:02:46.880 of pamphlets and newspapers for the day and then would 0:02:46.919 --> 0:02:49.760 sit there reading them out loud to all the shoemakers 0:02:49.760 --> 0:02:52.520 and older apprentice shoemakers while they did their work for 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:55.639 the day. And I wonder why this is shoemakers, why 0:02:55.639 --> 0:02:58.320 shoemaker And of course the shoemakers would listen to the 0:02:58.440 --> 0:03:01.200 stuff and they'd comment on it, sort of have debates. 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:05.480 I think maybe this is just completely uninformed. I wonder 0:03:05.520 --> 0:03:09.519 if it's because shoemakers have a job where they're mostly stationary, 0:03:09.600 --> 0:03:13.040 but it's not too loud. That's true. But that's a 0:03:13.080 --> 0:03:16.359 good point because essentially they're listening to podcasts right right, Yeah, 0:03:16.480 --> 0:03:18.440 and today a lot of people listen to podcasts. Like 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:20.440 if you're you know, you're working on a spreadsheet, or 0:03:20.480 --> 0:03:23.200 you're doing something at your computer, or you're driving, right, 0:03:23.240 --> 0:03:25.720 these are all tasks that that are not too loud 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:28.800 and they don't require a level of concentration that is 0:03:28.800 --> 0:03:31.200 so intense that you can't hear a couple of people 0:03:31.440 --> 0:03:35.440 talk about some topic or another. Right, So, John Murray Spear, 0:03:35.520 --> 0:03:38.840 the young John Murray Spear, got some early practice sort 0:03:38.840 --> 0:03:42.480 of dealing with radical ideas and participating in public conversations 0:03:42.560 --> 0:03:45.160 this way through being a shoemaker, and through the influence 0:03:45.200 --> 0:03:49.480 of the Universalist Church, especially eventually through the Universalist luminary 0:03:49.560 --> 0:03:53.880 jose A. Blue, who's a big name in Universalist thinking 0:03:53.920 --> 0:03:56.360 at this time, And eventually John Murray Spear went on 0:03:56.400 --> 0:04:00.320 to become a Universalist minister himself, and he traveled round 0:04:00.320 --> 0:04:04.800 and ministered in several different UH congregations and did a 0:04:04.840 --> 0:04:09.560 lot of radical reform activism, what we would call activism now. 0:04:09.880 --> 0:04:13.400 So he became deeply involved in the movement to abolish 0:04:13.480 --> 0:04:16.279 the death penalty UH. He and his brother Charles were 0:04:16.279 --> 0:04:19.240 both very much involved with that. He became very much 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:23.679 involved in women's rights and in the abolition of slavery. 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:27.040 Especially John Mary Spire was very much an abolitionist. He 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:30.840 he campaigned against slavery constantly, and he was also, i 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:32.359 would say in a way that was sort of ahead 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:37.080 of his time, campaigning against what we today know as racism. 0:04:37.400 --> 0:04:39.320 Though I think back then a lot of white people 0:04:39.360 --> 0:04:41.760 didn't even have a word for that or know what 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:45.200 to call it. But he was against prejudice, not just slavery, 0:04:45.240 --> 0:04:50.000 but prejudice against people of different skin tones. And so 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:52.360 there's a lot to admire about this guy. I think 0:04:52.400 --> 0:04:57.159 he was. He was active in William Lloyd Garrison's abolitionist movements. Actually, 0:04:57.600 --> 0:04:59.880 there's a great quote from this book where William Lloyd 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:04.280 Garrison was introducing spear as a speaker and an abolitionist convention, 0:05:04.440 --> 0:05:07.279 and he made this horrible pun, but it sort of 0:05:07.320 --> 0:05:11.000 reflects his role. He says, although weapons of our warfare 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:14.360 are not carnal but spiritual, we do not object at 0:05:14.400 --> 0:05:19.040 all to the use of the spear. Now, this apparently 0:05:19.160 --> 0:05:23.200 is this like a Miltonian reference here as well, Right, Yeah, 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:26.839 this is a reference to the angel Etheriel in in 0:05:26.920 --> 0:05:31.680 Paradise Lost, which has a spear that essentially exposes the 0:05:31.720 --> 0:05:33.960 true nature of whatever it touches. It's you know, the 0:05:34.120 --> 0:05:39.080 it's the glasses from they live. Um. So the Euriel 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:41.479 can touch the spirit to Satan when Satan's in the 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:44.080 form of a toad and reveal Satan's true nature as 0:05:44.120 --> 0:05:47.279 Satan and This was a common metaphor in the abolitionist 0:05:47.360 --> 0:05:49.440 movement at the time, and I think more generally the 0:05:49.520 --> 0:05:52.400 radical reform movements of the time to sort of expose 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:57.520 the hypocrisy and oppression of the standard governments and institutions 0:05:57.560 --> 0:06:00.240 of the time. So to summarize this is a this 0:06:00.320 --> 0:06:03.840 is a guy who is very concerned with the real world, 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:08.679 oh totally. But then John Murray spirit took a turn 0:06:09.880 --> 0:06:12.400 and while still i'd say in a lot of ways 0:06:12.440 --> 0:06:15.480 being concerned with the real world, he took a turn 0:06:15.640 --> 0:06:19.160 towards the spirit world. He became involved with what was 0:06:19.279 --> 0:06:22.480 known at the time as the spiritualist movement. So this 0:06:22.600 --> 0:06:25.960 for I think the first real piece of evidence here 0:06:26.320 --> 0:06:27.919 that was in this book I read. It was in 0:06:27.960 --> 0:06:32.479 August eighteen, John Murray spear penned a review in an 0:06:32.520 --> 0:06:36.120 anti death penalty newspaper that he was co editor of 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:39.280 called The Prisoner's Friend, and he penned a review of 0:06:39.320 --> 0:06:42.680 a book about spiritualism, which was The Principles of Nature, 0:06:42.800 --> 0:06:46.240 Her Divine Revelations and a Voice to Mankind by Andrew 0:06:46.320 --> 0:06:49.760 Jackson Davis. And this was sort of work in the 0:06:49.800 --> 0:06:52.800 emerging field of spiritualism, and Davis claimed to be in 0:06:52.880 --> 0:06:56.880 contact with the spirit of Emmanuel sweden Borg, like channeling 0:06:57.040 --> 0:07:00.679 his statements from beyond the grave, and the book alleged 0:07:00.720 --> 0:07:04.240 that there were these various universal laws at play, and 0:07:04.279 --> 0:07:08.880 it sort of looked at religion from a rationalist angle. Actually, 0:07:08.920 --> 0:07:11.320 this is a thing that might seem weird to us today, 0:07:11.640 --> 0:07:15.480 but at the time, spiritualism represented what some people believe 0:07:15.560 --> 0:07:20.200 to be a more scientific approach to the supernatural. So 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:24.160 you might have traditional religions that are based on received traditions, 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:28.800 whereas spiritualism, people sitting around channeling spirits was actually an 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:33.560 empirically observed phenomenon. You might not believe that they were 0:07:33.600 --> 0:07:37.360 having real supernatural experiences, but the scientific thinking of the 0:07:37.360 --> 0:07:39.720 time was, well, at least we're we're looking at real 0:07:39.760 --> 0:07:42.760 phenomena here and we can make judgments on them. Yeah, 0:07:42.800 --> 0:07:45.280 I mean you you look back to the spiritualist movement. 0:07:45.280 --> 0:07:48.000 I mean, even in some of the fringier stuff with 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:51.320 seance an ectoplasm, right, even if it even though ectoplasm 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:54.320 was a was a con it was an attempt to say, look, 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:59.720 here's physical proof, some sort of biological manifestation of the spirit. Right. 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:02.160 So a lot of these people who were into spiritualism, 0:08:02.200 --> 0:08:06.040 were people who were deeply desperately yearning for something to 0:08:06.120 --> 0:08:11.400 cling onto about true messages from beyond, real transcendental knowledge. 0:08:11.840 --> 0:08:15.360 So some Universalist ministries at the time were opposed to spiritualism. 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:18.880 But in eighteen fifty one, John Murray Spear broke ties 0:08:18.960 --> 0:08:22.520 with the Universalist Church after refusing to affirm a simple 0:08:22.600 --> 0:08:25.760 creed of the Church, which is basically pledging allegiance to 0:08:25.760 --> 0:08:28.000 the guidance of the Bible and the person of Jesus, 0:08:28.400 --> 0:08:31.600 because he's he saw that as too constrictive on on 0:08:31.720 --> 0:08:34.480 sort of freedom of thought by that point, and it 0:08:34.600 --> 0:08:38.120 seems like in some way he began to at least 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:43.600 secretly train himself as a seer and practitioner of mesmeric trances, 0:08:43.600 --> 0:08:47.920 you know, like the Mesmerism. So on March thirty one, 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:51.840 eighteen fifty two, John Murray Spear actually began his career 0:08:51.880 --> 0:08:54.640 as a spirit medium, and this was a career with 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:59.680 somewhat mixed reception among his social circles. He'd get messages 0:08:59.720 --> 0:09:03.400 from spirits from beyond the grave, sometimes through automatic writing, 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:05.760 where he would sit there and just start writing whatever 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:08.280 came to his mind and believing it came from a 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:12.520 spirit and sometimes automatic drawing. Some of these drawings sound 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:14.959 pretty funny, where he'd like draw a human and then 0:09:15.080 --> 0:09:19.319 like draw a spirit guided labels for all their body parts. Uh. 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:22.400 Sometimes through speech, so sometimes he might just get up 0:09:22.440 --> 0:09:25.520 and give an extemporaneous speech on a subject he didn't 0:09:25.520 --> 0:09:30.520 know anything about, believing he was channeling messages from someone 0:09:30.559 --> 0:09:32.480 who did know something about it, who was in the 0:09:32.520 --> 0:09:35.880 spirit world. So in spiritualism, like I mean, there's a 0:09:35.920 --> 0:09:38.000 sense of evolution to this as well, because it's the 0:09:38.040 --> 0:09:40.760 idea that we die, our spirit passes on and as 0:09:40.800 --> 0:09:43.760 spirits we continue to evolve, and the spirit world is 0:09:43.800 --> 0:09:46.719 filled with the individuals that have have a lot of 0:09:46.840 --> 0:09:49.120 of of knowledge, a lot of wisdom to share with 0:09:49.120 --> 0:09:52.600 the living. And John Murray spirit is essentially opening himself 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:56.120 up in along these lines as just anytime you want 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:58.760 to pop in and I am open Mike Night for humanity, 0:09:58.880 --> 0:10:01.560 just pop into me. And so so he's popping in 0:10:01.600 --> 0:10:04.000 and out of the real John Murray Spear and just 0:10:04.080 --> 0:10:06.360 becoming whoever is coming up to the podium to speak, 0:10:06.480 --> 0:10:09.000 that's right, yeah, yeah, exactly. So John Murray Spear and 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:12.800 his daughter Sophronia also Sophronia as I love that name. Uh. 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:15.280 They sort of became a spirit medium team. For a while, 0:10:15.320 --> 0:10:17.599 they were both channeling messages of spirits, and for a 0:10:17.600 --> 0:10:21.520 while he was getting various kinds of messages, sometimes like 0:10:21.640 --> 0:10:24.240 vague messages would tell him to travel to a specific 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:28.720 place and meet people to do healing rituals on them. 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:31.800 One example was I think at some point Benjamin Franklin 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:35.000 contacted him via spirits and told him to go visit 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:37.679 a lady who had been struck by lightning and was ailing. 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:40.920 And then also, yeah, he'd be given these discourses on 0:10:40.920 --> 0:10:44.440 the nature of reality, so Benjamin Franklin would inhabit him 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:48.480 and speak through him on the nature of electricity, magnetism, 0:10:48.520 --> 0:10:52.360 the cosmic ether. There was also there was a particularly 0:10:52.400 --> 0:10:55.040 funny story in this book where John Murray Spear was 0:10:55.080 --> 0:10:57.920 in Cleveland channeling the spirit of the dead physician and 0:10:57.960 --> 0:11:01.160 founding father Benjamin Rush. And this is a direct quote 0:11:01.200 --> 0:11:04.640 from his speech in speaking of the mortal body, it 0:11:04.640 --> 0:11:08.080 will be all things considered. Wisest to commence that what 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:11.120 looking at all things, may be considered the most or 0:11:11.200 --> 0:11:14.320 more strictly speaking, the more important part, and that is 0:11:14.440 --> 0:11:17.920 the head in the front part just below the eyes 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:20.720 there is what is generally called by the common people 0:11:20.840 --> 0:11:23.600 a knows, and here it will be perceived that there 0:11:23.600 --> 0:11:29.400 are two apartments. What what does that even mean? Um? 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:33.959 But it didn't stop there. Unfortunately he uh so, or 0:11:34.040 --> 0:11:37.520 maybe fortunately who knows. Genrey spirit didn't just get these 0:11:37.520 --> 0:11:41.160 discourses on the nature of humanity. He eventually started getting 0:11:41.200 --> 0:11:44.440 messages from a congress of spirits, this great sort of 0:11:44.760 --> 0:11:48.000 enclay of of spirits that formed a general assembly in 0:11:48.080 --> 0:11:52.640 the spirit world. Uh. And these had sub committees basically 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:55.480 that would communicate to him, and they had these great names. 0:11:55.600 --> 0:12:00.000 One was the Association of Beneficence. They're also the Association 0:12:00.240 --> 0:12:08.920 of Electrizers, Elementizers, education Izers, governmentizers, healthfulizers, and agriculturalizers. It 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:10.800 makes it makes sense, you know, in terms of the 0:12:11.480 --> 0:12:14.520 cosmology of the thing, right, because if if a living 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:18.400 human is just the larval form, and the spirit form 0:12:18.480 --> 0:12:20.320 is kind of the adult, then imagine what kind of 0:12:20.320 --> 0:12:24.280 an adult spirit form someone like Benjamin Franklin transforms into. Right. 0:12:24.559 --> 0:12:26.480 I mean, if you have enough of these individuals floating 0:12:26.520 --> 0:12:29.280 around in the spirit realm, they're going to form committees 0:12:29.480 --> 0:12:33.119 exactly right. So this is where things got really interesting 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:38.240 because the association of electrizers, that's not as sinister as 0:12:38.280 --> 0:12:40.480 it sounds. I think they were providing knowledge on the 0:12:40.520 --> 0:12:45.280 electrification of the world through through technology. Contacted Spear and 0:12:45.400 --> 0:12:49.760 said through Spear that they had some plans that needed 0:12:49.840 --> 0:12:53.600 to be enacted on Earth, and those plans were for 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:57.320 what they called a new motor. Yes, the new motor, 0:12:57.400 --> 0:13:00.360 which is the physical channel of the new motive power. 0:13:00.520 --> 0:13:04.120 And this is the electro mechanical Messiah. We began the 0:13:04.160 --> 0:13:06.880 episode with al Right, at this point, I should probably 0:13:06.960 --> 0:13:10.480 jump in and just give just a brief overview of 0:13:10.520 --> 0:13:14.199 some of the metaphysics that are at play in spears spiritualism, 0:13:14.200 --> 0:13:16.040 and already touched on THEO. We already touched on the 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:19.760 whole idea of the the human. The physical human is 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:22.640 being the larval form of a of a spirit form 0:13:22.679 --> 0:13:25.760 that continues to evolve. Right, But Spears metaphysics actually played 0:13:25.800 --> 0:13:30.440 into the supposed mechanics of this machine. Yes, um, he 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:33.440 said that the mind has three functions, the human mind 0:13:33.600 --> 0:13:38.959 three functions. It receives, stores, and transmits spiritual energy. H 0:13:39.040 --> 0:13:41.720 And this thought energy is not generated in the mind, 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:44.200 so that it's it's not coming out of the meat 0:13:44.200 --> 0:13:47.520 inside your head, but rather it's broadcast into our solar 0:13:47.520 --> 0:13:50.720 system by a cosmic God, and then the Sun acts 0:13:50.720 --> 0:13:54.040 as a lens to direct this divine signal down to Earth, 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:59.120 where it collects, of course in north polar reservoirs, and 0:13:59.160 --> 0:14:02.600 then it dissipates astound to the human minds across the Earth. Right, 0:14:02.600 --> 0:14:06.000 So we're sort of like receivers or repeaters of this 0:14:06.120 --> 0:14:10.880 cosmic signal coming from God, the electricity of God's love 0:14:10.960 --> 0:14:13.640 that has channeled through the lens of the Sun. Yes, 0:14:14.040 --> 0:14:17.600 and notice all of these technological scientific metaphors that are 0:14:17.679 --> 0:14:21.480 used in the creation of of of of of a 0:14:21.600 --> 0:14:27.120 cosmology for the unseen. Right. So what was this machine actually, Well, 0:14:27.800 --> 0:14:30.720 in mundane terms, it was a table with a bunch 0:14:30.760 --> 0:14:33.800 of pieces attached to it. Yes, if you were introduced 0:14:33.800 --> 0:14:36.280 to this electrical messiah, I dare say you would be 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:40.480 disappointed because it is not the large robot Jesus that 0:14:40.560 --> 0:14:43.720 you wanted to be. Right, So Spear would continually get 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:47.360 new messages from the spirits, constantly updating the plans for 0:14:47.400 --> 0:14:50.400 the machine, and all of his supporters gathered in this 0:14:50.440 --> 0:14:54.120 place I mentioned earlier, the High Rock Tower in Lynn, Massachusetts, 0:14:54.160 --> 0:14:56.760 and worked for months on this from the summer of 0:14:56.800 --> 0:15:01.640 eighteen fifty three and into eighteen fifty four, constantly making 0:15:01.680 --> 0:15:06.520 additions to the machine, changing things based on the spirit specifications. Basically, 0:15:06.520 --> 0:15:09.680 there was like a metal stalk uh in some ways. 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:12.120 I think it was said to have resembled across a 0:15:12.240 --> 0:15:15.840 cruciform in nature, but it also it had metal parts 0:15:15.840 --> 0:15:19.960 extending out to the sides and then these dangling balls 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:24.000 and antennae of various types. So it's sort of like 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:30.080 a strange metal Christmas tree cross type object on a 0:15:30.120 --> 0:15:34.240 dining room table. Yes, And the descriptions that we were 0:15:34.280 --> 0:15:36.400 reading about it, they were kind of like all over 0:15:36.400 --> 0:15:39.320 the place in terms of what was it supposed to do, 0:15:39.640 --> 0:15:41.520 like is it, what is it? What is it physically 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:44.920 supposed to do? What is it sort of metaphorically supposed 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:48.600 to do? Because it it was described as a sacramental presence, 0:15:48.680 --> 0:15:51.920 a holy force field generator, a gay way to the 0:15:51.960 --> 0:15:55.440 spirit realm uh. So it's kind of like this mechanical 0:15:55.840 --> 0:15:59.360 symbolic body that's going to channel the free energy of 0:15:59.360 --> 0:16:03.000 the universe or you know, God's love that radio radiates 0:16:03.000 --> 0:16:06.080 out from the cosmic center. It's a north pole aligned 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:11.320 aerial antenna to receive electrical spirit energy. It's um and 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:14.400 then on top of all this again he's he's open 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:16.840 mic night for the spirits for his committees that are speaking. 0:16:17.040 --> 0:16:20.360 So when he drops back into just good old John Boy, 0:16:20.680 --> 0:16:22.760 he'll he's kind of ambivalent about it at times. He's 0:16:22.840 --> 0:16:25.080 kind of like, Oh, I don't know anything about technology. 0:16:25.400 --> 0:16:27.440 Is that what those guys are telling you? Okay, that 0:16:27.480 --> 0:16:31.280 sounds right, But he had some very enthusiastic supporters who 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:34.320 were there to tell him, no, John, it's great, we're 0:16:34.400 --> 0:16:38.120 working on it. But the compound matters further. It wasn't 0:16:38.200 --> 0:16:41.680 simply going to be a sort of like a repeater 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:47.880 or receiver, collector and retransmitter of God's electrical psychic energy. 0:16:48.480 --> 0:16:50.880 It was also going to be a perpetual motion machine, 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:56.120 something that uh, apparently the science at the time believed 0:16:56.280 --> 0:16:59.160 could not exist. That's still pretty much considered to be right. 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:03.200 There's no thing is perpetual motion machine. Motion always sort 0:17:03.200 --> 0:17:06.280 of gets lost to entropy transformed into heat. But they 0:17:06.320 --> 0:17:09.639 wanted to create a perpetual motion machine or quote a 0:17:09.680 --> 0:17:13.520 self moving machine, right, self moving in the same way 0:17:13.560 --> 0:17:16.360 that that God was perceived as being self moving and 0:17:16.400 --> 0:17:19.560 potentially in the same sense that a spirit with free 0:17:19.560 --> 0:17:22.480 will is considered to be a self moving soul by 0:17:22.480 --> 0:17:25.480 some interpretations. Right, So they wanted this piece of technology, 0:17:25.560 --> 0:17:29.240 this new motor, to be not just an effect but 0:17:29.320 --> 0:17:32.119 also a cause in itself, and in that way it 0:17:32.160 --> 0:17:36.480 would be kind of like creating a new man or 0:17:36.520 --> 0:17:41.879 a new God. Yes, but also in gets kind of 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:45.320 complicated because it's like, in a sense it's it's also 0:17:45.400 --> 0:17:48.840 just about the idea of it should inspire everyone, right, right, 0:17:49.080 --> 0:17:51.800 But then they also you do expect the thing to 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:54.720 do something into work, right, so that they clearly thought 0:17:54.800 --> 0:17:58.280 that it would have some major significance in transforming the world, 0:17:58.720 --> 0:18:01.760 in ushering in some kind of s schatological event. They 0:18:01.760 --> 0:18:04.880 thought of it as as a sort of like transition 0:18:04.960 --> 0:18:07.639 to the end times, though not necessarily the end times 0:18:07.640 --> 0:18:10.840 in terms of the apocalyptic imagery we often think of, 0:18:10.960 --> 0:18:12.760 or anything negative. They thought of it as like the 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:15.359 new Age, you know, the new heavens and the new Earth. 0:18:16.160 --> 0:18:21.320 Everything changed, transformed, the apotheosis, things brought up out of 0:18:21.400 --> 0:18:25.280 munday and existence into the new realm of life. And 0:18:25.359 --> 0:18:27.679 kind of a sense too that it it is that 0:18:27.800 --> 0:18:30.080 spear that we're talking about earlier that angel expere that 0:18:30.119 --> 0:18:33.040 reveals truth. But the truth that it would supposedly reveal 0:18:33.119 --> 0:18:36.480 would be the the importance the power of spiritualism and 0:18:36.480 --> 0:18:40.240 the and the reality of this uh, this these metaphysics 0:18:40.359 --> 0:18:43.960 that John has been uh revealing to his followers. Yeah, 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:46.640 now the story doesn't in there. Actually, I very much 0:18:46.680 --> 0:18:49.520 recommend this book. I mentioned earlier the remarkable life of 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:53.000 John Murray spear agitator for the Spirit Land, because they 0:18:53.080 --> 0:18:55.680 continued to try experiments to get this thing to work. 0:18:55.760 --> 0:19:00.160 Unfortunately it did not usher in this eschatological event um, 0:19:00.200 --> 0:19:04.119 but that they tried to imbue it with personal magnetism 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:06.000 to get it to turn on, so that they had 0:19:06.000 --> 0:19:09.119 this belief sort of tried to mesmerism and things that 0:19:09.600 --> 0:19:12.800 people had these sort of spirit essences. Then they'd have 0:19:12.880 --> 0:19:16.320 certain pairs of people of particular types try to transmit 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:19.520 their personal or psychic energy to the machine to get 0:19:19.560 --> 0:19:21.919 it to animate and come to life. They gave it 0:19:21.960 --> 0:19:26.080 a ritual birthing ceremony with a human mother. That did 0:19:26.080 --> 0:19:28.720 not go well with some of the town's folk, who 0:19:28.760 --> 0:19:31.760 found that a moral outrage, and then uh sort of 0:19:31.800 --> 0:19:35.640 took up arms against the machine. Uh, there's a whole 0:19:35.640 --> 0:19:39.359 story of sort of how this machine was received, but 0:19:39.640 --> 0:19:43.199 it also was received sort of as an embarrassment. And 0:19:43.240 --> 0:19:45.920 I think this is one of the reasons John Murray 0:19:45.960 --> 0:19:49.520 Spear is not as well remembered in history as he 0:19:49.640 --> 0:19:51.320 might have been, because I think a lot of the 0:19:51.359 --> 0:19:56.240 other radical reformers of the time, we're like, uh, I 0:19:56.400 --> 0:19:58.880 don't know how much we want to be associated with 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:02.119 Mr Spear, Right, Yeah, I mean I can define definitely 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:05.240 see it because ultimately the thing did not work. The 0:20:05.240 --> 0:20:07.880 thing did not It didn't need any of the more 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:12.080 elaborate other worldly expectations for the thing, and it didn't. 0:20:12.119 --> 0:20:16.440 It didn't even really meet like the bare threshold required 0:20:17.040 --> 0:20:20.080 to impress the people who poured their lives into it. Sure, 0:20:20.240 --> 0:20:22.960 But another thing that I think is worth mentioning is 0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:27.760 that this kind of thinking isn't quite as obscure as 0:20:27.800 --> 0:20:30.960 it would seem to us, because there were thoughts back 0:20:31.000 --> 0:20:36.399 in the nineteenth century about the perhaps borderline supernatural or 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:41.720 psychic psychically significant power of electricity. That's true, Um, yeah, 0:20:41.840 --> 0:20:45.440 back in the nineteenth century, Uh, electricity had a noble 0:20:45.720 --> 0:20:48.479 you haven't if not a divine reputation to the extent 0:20:48.800 --> 0:20:52.600 that members of the scientific community protested the idea of 0:20:52.600 --> 0:20:56.320 the electric chair as a degradation of both electricity and 0:20:56.440 --> 0:21:00.640 the scientific breakthroughs that made electrocuting a criminal are possible. 0:21:01.800 --> 0:21:03.920 So there was sort of like a new a G 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:08.120 paradigm laid on top of the idea of electrical technology. Yes, 0:21:08.880 --> 0:21:10.520 on that note, we're gonna take a quick break, and 0:21:10.520 --> 0:21:14.160 when we come back, we are going to move forward 0:21:14.200 --> 0:21:18.600 in time and discuss some more um convergences of technology 0:21:18.600 --> 0:21:31.560 and religion. All right, we're back. We're discussing religion now 0:21:31.600 --> 0:21:33.359 and in the age of science, but also in the 0:21:33.359 --> 0:21:36.639 age of science fiction, in the age of space, and 0:21:36.760 --> 0:21:40.200 in the age of UFOs. Right, So this has got 0:21:40.200 --> 0:21:43.160 to be one of the most obvious places that religion 0:21:43.160 --> 0:21:47.840 could go when it's changed by technology. Aliens exactly right. 0:21:47.880 --> 0:21:50.280 I mean, you've got to believe because in so many ways, 0:21:50.880 --> 0:21:53.359 I can't remember who I heard make this point, but 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:55.520 but it's something I heard someone say a long time ago, 0:21:56.320 --> 0:21:59.520 which was the idea that if you explained our idea 0:21:59.560 --> 0:22:04.360 of what aliens are two ancient people's, they wouldn't even 0:22:04.400 --> 0:22:07.200 really make a distinction between what we're talking about when 0:22:07.240 --> 0:22:10.760 we say aliens and their concepts of God's we have 0:22:10.920 --> 0:22:15.160 this distinction between okay, natural aliens, that's you know, standard 0:22:15.240 --> 0:22:20.920 natural phenomenon and supernatural entities. But they didn't necessarily make 0:22:20.960 --> 0:22:24.200 that distinction that aliens to them would be oh yeah, okay, 0:22:24.240 --> 0:22:26.959 So they they're very powerful beings from a place up 0:22:27.000 --> 0:22:30.359 above and they can travel down to Earth if they want, 0:22:30.400 --> 0:22:33.600 and you know we're powerless to oppose them. Yeah. Essentially, 0:22:33.680 --> 0:22:38.439 an alien is a supernatural entity that is described and 0:22:38.520 --> 0:22:41.880 wrapped up in in in in the keepings of science, 0:22:42.160 --> 0:22:44.960 in the traditions of science, so that it it makes 0:22:44.960 --> 0:22:48.280 at least, uh, it makes some level of scientific sense 0:22:48.600 --> 0:22:51.080 instead of non scientific. And if you look back through time, 0:22:51.160 --> 0:22:54.480 like any anytime someone is dealt with hallucinations, anytime someone 0:22:54.480 --> 0:22:58.600 has dealt with sleep paralysis or some other encounter. You know, 0:22:58.640 --> 0:23:01.439 what was once an encounter with fairies in the woods, 0:23:01.520 --> 0:23:05.200 which what was once an assault by demons or or 0:23:05.240 --> 0:23:09.320 an encounter with ghosts, uh, increasingly become became in the 0:23:09.359 --> 0:23:13.400 past few decades an encounter with aliens or UFOs. Right, 0:23:13.440 --> 0:23:16.280 because that's the cultural script that we can fall back 0:23:16.320 --> 0:23:20.600 on for the unexplained, and that essentially the supernatural perfectly. Yeah, 0:23:20.640 --> 0:23:25.560 aliens have become the new otherworldly organism, and this has 0:23:25.600 --> 0:23:29.280 translated into actual religious movements. The main one I want 0:23:29.280 --> 0:23:34.560 to talk about is Railianism. Yes, so had you heard 0:23:34.600 --> 0:23:37.280 anything much about Relianism before this? I had never done 0:23:37.560 --> 0:23:39.840 a deep dive into Alianism. But of course you the 0:23:39.840 --> 0:23:41.480