The Astral Researcher

For my first post on this site, I’d like to spend a few minutes discussing why I’m quite skeptical of Prison Planet Theory, which has exploded in popularity recently due to the subreddit r/EscapingPrisonPlanet, as well as some Youtubers like SchizoDumpz. As an initial (rather obvious) disclaimer: I have no way to prove that Prison Planet Theory doesn’t exist, but I just personally find many of their beliefs to be unfounded at best, contradictory at worst. This is in no way intended to attack those who do believe in PPT, and I welcome anything that believers want to add to the conversation.

Introduction

For those who are unfamiliar with Prison Planet Theory, the general idea is that where we live (sometimes defined as Earth, sometimes as our physical reality itself) is a prison ruled over by “Archons”, which are spiritual and/or reptilian entities that purposefully make this world miserable in order to feed on our “loosh”, which is something we create from our negative emotions (and to a lesser extent, our positive emotions). PPT takes concepts from a variety of sources, such as the Gnostic Gospels, Buddhism, Hinduism, Out of Body Experiences (OBEs) and the works of researches such as Bob Monroe and combines them into a single theory. The general idea is that, upon death, we are tricked by overwhelming feelings of love and light, which the Archons use to capture us and reincarnate us back into this reality. Beyond that, things get a bit less clear, as most PPT believers tend to fracture into a variety of sub-groups that have different answers for how we should escape. My criticisms are not addressed to any specific subgroup, as I am mostly focused on the larger overarching parts of the theory.

My criticism of the theory can mostly be summed up into five points, which I will explain in greater detail below:

1. PPT believers fail to be as skeptical of their own theory as they are of other worldviews
2. The argument of suffering being proof of PPT is not as convincing as it first appears
3. The power level of “Archons” is wildly inconsistent
4. The belief system is extremely negative
5. PPT takes bits and pieces of other belief systems while frequently ignoring the whole

Keep in mind that these buckets of criticisms are not “neat”: There is frequent overlap between the points, especially point 1. Keeping that in mind, let’s get into the deeper discussion of these points:

Point #1: PPT believers fail to be as skeptical of their own theory as they are of other worldviews

This is an overarching point criticizing the way that PPT theorists fail to turn their skepticism inward towards their own beliefs. They quite correctly are very critical of logical fallacies, circular reasoning, and inconsistencies in mainstream religious systems, but most believers that I’ve met have not examined their own beliefs with the same vigor. There are two areas I see this happening most frequently: OBE experience reports, and the validity of materials they use as truth, most frequent of which being the Gnostic Gospels.

In regards to OBE experience reports, the overwhelming majority of recorded OBEs have been quite positive, as opposed to the negative reports involving reptilian farmers that PPT theorists frequently cite. Yet, believers will frequently refer to any positive OBEs as tricks and deceptions while claiming that the negative experiences are the truth. The problem is that their citation for why they believe the positive experiences are traps is….prison planet theory itself. The logic here is incredibly circular: the positive OBEs are fake because PPT says so, and PPT is legit because of the reported OBEs. Obviously there is a problem here. I could just as easily claim the inverse–that the positive experiences are the real ones and the negative experiences were random entities or fear holding the subject back–and I would have largely the same backing for it. It’s simply unsound to claim that every OBE that agrees with you is the truth, and every OBE that doesn’t agree with you is a trick.

The “validity of materials” problem is similar. PPT believers frequently tell people to question everything, that the Archons are incredibly manipulative and have distorted things through mainstream religions, etc. But, when I ask about why they hold their own materials (typically Gnostic materials) in such high regard, believers typically just ignore me or call me a “contrarian who does not want to admit the answer leads them back to Christ” and do not engage with my inquiry in a serious manner. To me, I see no reason why the Gnostic writings cannot be false flags or traps themselves, meant to trip up believers at the last step. I have not heard any satisfactory explanation for why the writings that agree with PPT are exempt from the possibility that they are not the whole truth, yet believers ignore this. To me, it seems as though most believers of PPT simply do not adhere to their own tenet of questioning “everything” and instead only question that which is convenient.

Point #2: The argument of suffering being proof of PPT is not as convincing as it first appears

Perhaps the most common substantive argument for PPT’s truthfulness is that humans experience a great deal of suffering which, according to the believer, is incompatible with other theories of Earth. While I acknowledge that there is indeed a great deal of suffering here on Earth (and this is indeed one of the primary reasons I left mainstream religion), I am forced to wonder why it is that the Archons have not “refined” suffering more completely. Why have the Archons allowed for some people to live lives of great luxury and pleasure with minimal suffering? Why are so many people still happy with life as a whole on their deathbed? While many PPT theorists believe it is because pleasure makes the pain worse by contrast, I still find this unlikely because it is not standardized. Surely if the Archons wanted to maximize loosh production, they would have a perfect ratio of pain-to-pleasure that all humans would experience roughly equally. But we see that this is not the case in practice.

A better formulation of this argument I have seen from believers is asking why pleasure has a “cap” on it but there is seemingly no ceiling for how much pain and loss one can experience. I actually think this is PPT’s best argument, but it in no way is proof of PPT. It works better as a refutation of the mainstream religious idea that there are all-powerful, purely good gods watching over us more than it works as a positive proof of PPT itself. There are still plenty of other explanations for this reality: maybe all physical matter trends towards more suffering than pleasure, maybe it’s a specific condition we consented to in other to learn how to overcome the greatest adversities, etc. Sure, PPT is consistent with this argument, but it’s far from the only conclusion one can make.

Point #3: The power level of “Archons” is wildly inconsistent

Even after spending a great deal of time in Prison Planet subreddits and forums, I have yet to see anyone address why the power level of Archons is so inconsistent and how it so conveniently drops off whenever the believer needs to explain how all this truthful material is reaching so many people. On the one hand, the Archons are supposed to be the overlords of this reality, either directly controlling or influencing world governments and tech platforms to establish complete control over what humanity sees, thinks, and feels. On the other hand, these Archons are apparently so inept that they can’t wipe out discussions of PPT, Gnosticism, and related subjects from Youtube and Reddit, some of the largest and most tightly regulated websites on the internet. To me, there can only be three possibilities here:

1. The Archons really do control everything that we see, in which case they also deliberately show us the Gnostic gospels and PPT, meaning that these texts are useless (or propaganda) because the Archons want us to see it.
2. The Archons actually don’t have that much control over the physical reality, in which case all these claims about tech platforms and world governments conspiring to restrict us in service of the Archons is complete nonsense.
3. PPT is completely false and this world isn’t a prison run by Archons.

I cannot think of any answer that does not fit the above three categories. I am especially skeptical of Option 1, as I think that governments would be far more fascistic (actually fascistic, not what Reddit says is fascistic) if they had complete power over world governments. There would be no need to “move us towards globalism” because we’d already be there.

Point #4: The belief system is extremely negative

Negativity itself is not a convincing reason to not believe something. However, I believe that when combined with tenets of PPT, negativity is a point against PPT’s validity. PPT states that we are “sovereign” entities that have complete power over our own realities. Without our consent, Archons and malevolent forces can do nothing to us. If that is true, and our beliefs truly do shape reality, then PPT itself is shaping reality in a negative way: If we believe the prison is there, then the prison is there. If the point of PPT is getting us to recognize our sovereignty and escape, then surely it would be better to not even mention the prison at all and instead focus on discussions on our sovereign power, so that we believe in our powers without believing in the prison at all.

Point #5: PPT takes bits and pieces of other belief systems while frequently ignoring the whole

Something I and many other skeptics of PPT have noticed is that it takes only the parts of belief systems and scholars that line up with its belief structure while ignoring the parts that don’t line up. For example, many Gnostic scholars on Reddit have expressed dissatisfaction with the PPT community because it ignores many things that true Gnostics believe (I am not well versed in the specifics here, but there are plenty of people on Reddit who are). Similarly, PPT believers will frequently cite to and use terms from Bob Monroe of the Monroe Institute as proof of PPT, but Monroe himself had a far different take on the universe and disagreed with PPT. The point that I’m trying to make here is that PPT only uses bits and pieces of sources, but never adopts the whole of the research. It simply takes the research it finds useful and throws out everything contradictory to it. While not definitively a reason to not believe in PPT, I find it interesting that many of the sources PPT takes from have far more than what PPT uses, and much of what they have is in direct contradiction to PPT.

Conclusion

That pretty much wraps up my views on why I don’t personally believe in Prison Planet Theory. Thanks for reading this far, and if you have any thoughts I’d love to hear them in the comments. I do want to say that I am someone who hasn’t had any OBEs, reality shifts, astral projections, or any other supernatural things happen to me personally, so this post stems from theory only, which is something I hope to change soon. I don’t intend to directly talk about PPT again unless my hands-on research uncovers something related to it. As for what’s next on this blog, I’m planning on delving into astral projection and reality shifting over the next couple months, so my next project will likely be some form of ongoing journal regarding my first attempts at using the Gateway Tapes. See you all next time!