D. W. Pasulka: Could We Become Ultra-Human? UFOs, A.I. & Our Evolution

In the early twentieth century, Jesuit priest and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin predicted that humanity was evolving toward a “thinking layer” around the Earth—the noosphere—that would give rise to a new kind of human he called the “ultra-human.” A hundred years later, that vision is having an unexpected revival in Silicon Valley.

This week, Tami Simon speaks with Dr. Diana Pasulka, who writes under the name D.W. Pasulka, a professor of religious studies at the University of North Carolina Wilmington and author of American Cosmic, Encounters, and the new book The Others: UFOs, AI, and the Secret Forces Guiding Human Destiny. For years, Pasulka has studied the uncanny overlap between centuries of religious testimony—angel encounters, apparitions, mystical visions—and modern reports of UFO contact, and what that overlap might mean for how we understand both AI and our own evolution.

Join Tami and Diana to explore:

Teilhard de Chardin’s century-old vision of the noosphere and the “ultra-human”—and why tech entrepreneurs are reviving it today
The pattern match between medieval angel-contact accounts and modern UFO experiencer reports
Why religious revelation has historically been far less “positive” than we assume—and what that says about today’s abduction literature
The difference between relating to AI as a tool versus as a companion—and the “chemical relationship” Pasulka sees forming between young people and AI
Why one NASA historian believes truly advanced extraterrestrial intelligence might be permanently incommensurable with our own
Pasulka’s own time horizon for mainstream public acceptance of extraterrestrial life
Why she argues that the possibility of UFOs being real may be the best thing to happen to religion in two hundred years

Whether you come to this conversation as a skeptic, a believer, or simply someone trying to make sense of how AI is reshaping our inner lives, Pasulka offers a provocative lens on what we might be evolving into—and what we stand to lose along the way.

Listen now and step into the edge of our own evolution. →

This conversation offers genuine transmission, not just concepts about awakening, but the palpable presence of realized teachers exploring the growing edge of spiritual understanding together, and originally aired on Sounds True One.

Insights at the Edge is supported by Omega Institute, a global gathering hub for lifelong learning and spiritual exploration. Located in upstate New York’s beautiful Hudson Valley, Omega offers weekend workshops, special events, rest and rejuvenation retreats, professional trainings, online learning, and more.

Special Offer – Sounds True community members enjoy 10% off any workshop registration at Omega Institute. Discover what calls to you at eomega.org/true. Use code TRUE at checkout.

Insights at the Edge is supported by Magic Hour, whose ceremonial teas carry more presence, beauty, and ritual into ordinary days. Magic Hour draws its leaves and botanicals from regenerative small farms around the world, in blends made to nourish the body and open the mind.

Explore their teas, matchas, and herbal rituals at clubmagichour.com. Get 20% off your first order with the code TRUE.

Just One Question | Adyashanti: Is It an Awakening If ...

Adyashanti — October 1, 2026

Is a spiritual awakening only real if it completely rearranges your life? That’s the question Tami Simon puts to Adyashanti in this episode, and his answer digs into something a lot of seekers wrestle with: the gap between a powerful glimpse of clarity and the ongoing work of actually living from it.

Adya, the American-born teacher behind books like The End of Your World and Falling into Grace, walks through why those temporary tastes of awakening are real, even when they fade, and offers a surprisingly practical way to hold onto what they revealed without grasping at them. Then he does something rare: he tells the story of his own first major awakening, a moment he describes as feeling like a nuclear explosion going off inside him.

Here’s what we cover:

Why a fleeting shift still counts as a real awakening, even if it doesn’t stick
The two (seemingly contradictory) pieces of advice Adya gives people chasing a past peak experience
How the first awakening can feel like a “freebie,” while everything after asks you to participate consciously
Adya’s own account of the night everything fell away and the still, small voice that told him, “This isn’t all of it. Keep going.”

And there’s so much more. Listen to the entire conversation from this Insights At the Edge episode, “Waking Up: What Does It Really Mean?”

Tracee Stanley: What We Need in These Threshold Times

— September 22, 2026

What if the antidote to a world coming apart isn’t a bigger plan, but a smaller, daily act of devotion?

This week, Tami Simon speaks with Tracee Stanley—teacher of yoga nidra, meditation, and self-inquiry, founder of Empowered Life Circle, and author of the new Sounds True book Living Ritual: Infuse Each Day with Purpose and Spirit—about why ritual may be the most important practice we have during what she calls threshold times.

Join Tami and Tracee to explore:

The threshold question at the heart of ritual: what within me is dying, and what is waiting to be born?
Why devotion, not discipline, is the doorway—and how to weave practice through an ordinary householder’s day without shame
Tracee’s shard of light in Cape Town, and the years it took to find language for it
The body as shrine: the origins of yoga nidra in nyasa, the ancient practice of anointing the body as a divine temple
Earth dreaming—lying on the land and letting the land dream through you
Her reframe of the four Purusharthas, turning prosperity into support and pleasure into relationship
Sankalpa as a vow that leads to dharma, not a manifestation wish list
The analog cocoon and the night school: reclaiming sleep and dream time from the phone
Why enlightenment may be less a permanent state than a moment available in the space between two breaths

Tracee also speaks candidly about walking away from a successful film career, and what a surgery taught her about the ego that refuses to let the body rest.

Tracee opens and closes this interview with a short guided ritual you can practice along with.

Listen now, and let something be reshaped. →

Get a FREE month of membership at https://bit.ly/STOne-Free-Month.

Thomas Moore: “Curing Our Cultural Lostness̶...

Thomas Moore — September 8, 2026

Thoreau said he wasn’t paddling the Assabet River—he was on the Ganges. Was he being poetic, or was he seeing something we’ve lost the capacity to see?

This week, Tami Simon speaks with Thomas Moore—bestselling author of Care of the Soul, Dark Nights of the Soul, and Ageless Soul—about his new book, The Cure at Walden Pond: A Guide to Recovering Our Humanity. At 85, Moore offers a reading of Thoreau that upends the one most of us were taught: not a naturalist cataloguing the woods, but a mystic looking for what he called the divine “lurking” there.

Join Tami and Thomas to explore:

Living daimonically: the guiding presence the Greeks called a daimon and the Romans called a genius—and how to tell it from your own ego agenda
Why Moore left the monastery after 13 years on the strength of a single morning’s clarity
“We are half human, half angel”—and what changes when you look at the people in your life through that lens
Musical time, Bach, and why playing the piano every day has made Moore think differently about dying
Why “the ultimate secret is to show the world who you are”—and why humiliation may be closer to the soul than confidence
Thoreau’s dark night: holding his brother as he died, and what it teaches about grief you never get over
The chapter called “Be Cold and Hungry,” and why the storms belong

Tami presses Moore on the parts she finds hard to swallow—and his answers are the heart of this episode.

Listen now, and find the cure. →