Deep Prasad Describes Totally Not a Dream Alien Encounter

Apparently, it is dream week here on my blog, since Silicon Valley entrepreneur turned UFO enthusiast Deep Prasad posted a long Twitter thread this past weekend outlining what he claims to be his own UFO experience. Regular readers will remember Prasad because he planned to use Silicon Valley resources to hunt UFOs, and because he criticized me on Twitter for doubting claims about “alien” metamaterials. His recent Twitter thread was collected and published by the aptly named Hot Air, and I think you’ll quickly see that the supposed encounter is almost certainly not what Prasad thinks it is. Here is the most relevant part. The story occurs three months after Prasad began obsessive UFO studies and shortly after the suicide of an acquaintance that he said left him “traumatized.”

Near the beginning of this year (February 1st), I had the most absurd, world-changing experience of my life. It happened in broad daylight at 9:40 in the morning in my home. More specific details will be for another time when I have a better safety net and can expand more. But to put it simply: I was paralyzed against my will, could not move, and saw 3 entities that had no-chill [sic—“no chins,” presumably]. Could I be crazy? Sure. Do I think I am? Obviously not. Could this have been a hallucination? I can’t prove it wasn’t or I wouldn’t be so worried about sharing this.
 
These entities projected hundreds/thousands of sentences and paragraphs in a language that looked like a marriage of Japanese and Egyptian hieroglyphics. I was terrified that I could barely move and was in complete disbelief at what was happening. I’d go back and forth between, convincing myself that I was having some sort of seizure or had fallen unconscious and that there was no way this was happening, to downright fear realizing that it all felt more real than reality.
 
I was scared that I couldn’t move and was not in control of the situation yet could think perfectly straight.

He went on to say that he recognized one English word in the hieroglyphics (!), and it was “DNA” (!!). Nice of aliens to use English initialisms. He claimed that he was transported magically to a room full of golden angels with big eyes like Grey aliens, and he was filled with a “euphoric” feeling of bliss and universal love that he says cured his depression and converted him from atheism to a believer in the divine. He fell back to sleep and then woke up at home.
 
I urge you to read the whole account for yourself.
 
At first glance, Prasad seems to be describing a waking dream that occurred during sleep paralysis. There is nothing in his account to contradict this conclusion, and indeed his references to sleep and the haziness and emotion characteristic of dreams only serve to confirm the conclusion.
 
I understand how powerful these experiences can be. I’ve repeated often enough the story of my own waking dream and (partial) sleep paralysis where a demonic alien-like creature attacked me, and I bonked its nose-hole, causing it to disappear into a puff of smoke. Alien-demons don’t scare me, even in dreams. I don’t believe in them. But long, long ago I had one of the most intense dreams of my life. I was in my early teens, I think, and it had all of that universal love and an apparition of Greek-style deity (I was always more Classically inclined and was never partial to big-eyed sparkly golden space angels). But it also took place in the middle of the island from the then-current video game Myst, so I was pretty sure I hadn’t been transported to Olympus unless the gods have very strange decorating taste.
 
It’s disappointing to see that Prasad’s trust in science stops at his own subjective personal experience, but also revealing to see that his adamant ufology is really the fire of the converted, not terribly different from the cult leaders and religious fanatics who claim visitations from heaven.