“Horsley’s exceedingly important book … delves very deeply into the Communion enigma and its implications. It’s as if Horsley is picking up where the late John Keel failed to go.” ~Andrew W. Griffith, Red Dirt Report
Prisoner of Infinity read by author (includes excised chapters):
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“One of the best books I’ve read this decade, and easily one of the best books in all of UFOlogy, this intensive investigation into Strieber’s literary landscape is probably the best specific antidote to the neomainstream ‘hardware’ saucer cult of Tom DeLonge & friends, exposing the subtle psychological software which has enabled ‘alien abduction’ to become the modernist archetype of religious experience.” ~ Linus Minimax
Prisoner of Infinity examines modern-day accounts of UFOs, alien abductions, and psychism to uncover a century-long program of psychological fragmentation, collective indoctrination, and covert cultural, social, and mythic engineering. Whether it is the forces of God, government, aliens from outer (or inner) space, or the incalculable effects of childhood sexual trauma on the human psyche, premature contact with these forces compels us to create “crucial fictions.” Such semi-coherent mythic narratives make partial sense out of our experience, but in the process turn us into the unreliable narrators of our own lives. Taking UFOS and the work of “experiencer” Whitley Strieber as its departure point, Prisoner of Infinity explores how beliefs are created and perceptions are managed in the face of the inexplicably complex forces of our existence. While keeping the question of a non-human and/or paranormal element open, the book maps how all-too-human agendas (such as the CIA’s MK Ultra program) have co-opted the ancient psychological process of myth-making, giving rise to dissociative, dumbed-down Hollywood versions of reality. The New Age movement, UFOs, alien abductions, psychism, psychedelic mind expansion, Transhumanism, the Space Program — what if they are all productions devised by committee in dark rooms to serve social, political, and economic goals that are largely devoid of true substance or meaning? Through an exacting and enlivening process of social, cultural and psychological examination and excavation, Prisoner of Infinity uncovers the most deeply buried treasure of all. The original, uncredited author of all mystery and meaning: the human soul.
‘Easily the most important study extant of social/mythological engineering/UFOs/Strieber’s continuum… An incredible–literally mind-blowing–exploration.’ ~ William Grabowski, contrib. ed. Library Journal; author of Black Light: Perspectives On Mysterious Phenomena
‘Prisoner of Infinity unravels the influential new age movement and investigates its back-end. It postulates a critical materialist return to the real, to physical and carnal forces as structural determinants for culture and its foundation in individual experiences and the spirituality that they produce. It is here that Prisoner of Infinity also becomes a personal investigation of and reflection on Horsley’s own life, for which both the esoteric and the occult, along with the stew of internet conspiracy culture, are a sort of home terrain. The author knows these domains intimately, while at the same time taking a critical distance from the material and investigating it in a lucid, level-headed and often humorous fashion.… Prisoner of Infinity reads like a twentieth-century psychohistory of the US, and because of that becomes a fierce critique of American science mysticism and its prominent representatives.… Prisoner of Infinity stands out as an exceptional work of art in its own right, weaving connections between an intimate and moving personal narrative, and the wild auto-didactic medley of references drawn from the domains of pop culture, psychology, and history. It is a truly boundless cognitive mapping enterprise … one senses that Horsley can go places that most academics simply will not. It is not often the case that writers create something that is truly contemporary – in the best possible meaning of the term. A captivating archaeology of contemporary culture from a true underground artist who remains widely underappreciated, Prisoner of Infinity is surely one of the most interesting and challenging books to appear in recent years.’ ~ Nicolas Hausdorf, Hong Kong Review of Books
‘Jasun Horsley is making a habit of writing books everyone should read. Prisoner of Infinity is an engrossing autobiographical/journalistic expedition into the murky frontiers of alien abductions, space exploration, New Age spirituality, cult worship, psi phenomena, near-death-experiences, channeling the dead, etc.–oh, and childhood trauma. Somehow Horsley emerges from his own close encounters with such terrors and seductions sufficiently intact to write an extraordinarily coherent and grounded guidebook for others who may be wandering along these frontiers or about to embark into them. He is “Mistah Kurtz”–come back to tell us all, and he does so masterfully. You have to read this book to feel its power and to fully understand the heart and the depth of its voice, its call, and its challenge to every other soul in evaluating these alternate reality phenomena. Horsley takes readers on a personal journey they should not miss.’ ~Gregory Desilet, author of Cult of the Kill: Traditional Metaphysics of Rhetoric, Truth, and Violence in a Postmodern World
‘Possibly the most complex problem in the social sciences is what may be called be the “micro-macro transition phase,” i.e., accounting theoretically for that mechanism by which individual psyches are made receptive to external waves, or outside suggestions, and turned into instruments for fashioning so-called “history.” Jasun Horsley’s Prisoner of Infinity is an erudite and trenchant testimony, which, by taking Whitley Strieber’s intriguing literary output as its point of departure, delves obstinately into the darker recesses of psychic spaces torn asunder by (child) abuse with a view to reveal the ulterior purposes of these practices. As the investigation proceeds, it unmasks the aesthetic cover-ups that have been created in pop iconography in order to smuggle a sinister contraband into conventional reality. Prisoner of Infinity appears to reveal this baleful drive of greater forces, bent on making our world ever more spiritually flattened, which is to say, animated by a diffuse principle of hierarchized and mechanized violence. A book such as this, which weaves seamlessly literary criticism, autobiographical reminiscence, a reinterpretation of pop counter-culture, and a personal mapping of esotericism’s strange maze, represents indeed an important advance in unlocking the mysteries of the “micro-macro transition phase.“ ‘ ~ Guido Giacomo Preparata, author of The Ideology of Tyranny and Conjuring Hitler