Dr. Richard Grego explores how academic objectivity has hamstrung our understanding of extended consciousness.

photo by: Skeptiko

Welcome to Skeptiko where we explore controversial science and spirituality with leading researchers, thinkers in their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris, and today’s guest is a very interesting guy, he’s a former professional boxer, trained by heavyweight champ Floyd Patterson, quite an amazing thing there. A former criminal investigator who’s worked on many high profile cases before becoming an instructor at the Criminal Justice Institute. And Dr. Rich Grego was also a Professor of Philosophy and World Religion at Florida State College in Jacksonville, who earned his PhD with a dissertation on Krishnamurti and Thich Nhat Hanh. So like I said, an interesting guy and for those of you who’ve been around Skeptiko for a while, you’ll recognize Rich as someone who’s been on the show before, somebody I lean on to, kind of weigh in on topics. He was recently on the interview that I did with Dr. Donald Hoffman, and he provided some great analysis there, but he’s also done some interviews for Skeptiko over the years. So it’s always great to connect with him, and Rich, thanks for joining me on this one. Dr. Richard Grego: [00:01:15] Thanks again for having me.

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Alex Tsakiris: [00:01:18] We’ve talked a couple of times and we have a good rapport going back and forth. But I kind of re-dug into your background and it’s really, really interesting and it’s particularly relevant to these kinds of things that we’ve been talking about today and that we’re going to be getting into, in terms of what kind of background it really takes to be able to engage in the discourse that we need to when we start getting into extended consciousness or talks about evil or those kinds of thing. What else can we know from your background that you think is maybe coming into play with the work that you’ve done and the worldview that you have?

Dr. Richard Grego: [00:02:13] Wow, you’ve really done a substantial job, you’re a pretty good investigator yourself. I could have used your help back in the day, I didn’t realize you knew that much about my background. But in terms of the past that led me here, I guess it has a lot to do with the fact that, I suppose being a professional philosopher and I suppose a trained historian too, it is one branch of the quest for ultimate meaning and truth. Certainly just investigation in a practical context, doing a criminal investigation or any other kind is also essentially about the very same thing.

Alex Tsakiris: [00:02:54] So I’ve been sending you a ton of these interviews I’ve been doing lately, and they’re kind of all over the board on this stuff. I sent you Anneke Lucas, who’s been a victim of, what turns out is satanic ritual abuse, since the time she was six years old, sold into sex slavery. Then I sent you an interview with a Christian fundamentalist guy who deals with it, that is, deals with satanic ritual abuse from a whole different basis. So I’ve sent you a bunch of these along with these interviews I’ve done with scholars and I’ve been like, “How are we supposed to sort this out?”

And I think one of the things that emerged from that discussion is,