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The UFO Abduction Phenomenon: What Does it Mean for the Transformation of Human Consciousness?
by John E. Mack, M.D.
Editor's Note: This article was originally presented
at the International Transpersonal Association Conference on "Science,
Spirituality, and the Global Crisis: Toward a World with a Future,"
which was held in Prague, Czechoslovakia. It was delivered on 25 June
1992. It was subsequently published in Primal Renaissance: The Journal
of Primal Psychology, Vol. 1, No. 1, Spring 1995, 96-110. An audio
recording may still be available for purchase from CRS (ITA92, No.85).
ABSTRACT: The author describes how he got into
the study of the UFO abduction experience, a bit of the history of the
field, the phenomenology of UFO abductions, who the abductees are, his
use of nonordinary states of consciousness in working with them, some
of the physical evidence involved, what effect being abducted has on
the abductees, and his interpretation of the meaning of the experience.
UFO abductions are not a rare phenomenon and have been estimated to
have occurred to three-million Americans. There is a remarkably precise
correspondence to the reports. Abductees exhibit relatively little psychopathology.
The author uses a combination o hypnosis and a breathing technique as
treatment in helping the abductees confront and move through the terrifying
memories of the experiences. Abduction events and descriptions of aliens
are relatively uniform. There is both subtle and highly robust physical
evidence that accompanies some of the abductions. The aftermaths of
these events are usually highly traumatic. But in processing these terrors,
abductees are often able to find these events a source of transformation,
in connecting them beyond themselves. They can provide a sense of purpose,
often linked to an environmental awareness and a sense of mission related
to our precarious global ecological situation. Their meaning for all
of us may lie in challenging, in a powerful and meaningful way, the
species-arrogance inherent in our Western cultural paradigm. They challenge
our consensus reality in collapsing the boundaries we have placed between
the physical and spiritual domains. Considering the global crisis, they
may even represent a cosmic intervention or corrective, spoken to us
in the only language we are any longer capable of hearing-that of the
physical and of high technology.
The Opening Through Which UFOs Flew
Because of my work with Stanislav Grof and holotropic
breathwork and the way it has brought me on and opened my consciousness,
I sometimes say the UFOs [Unidentified Flying Objects] flew in through
the hole in my psyche that was opened up by the work that I have done
in the transformational area.
Each of us working in the area of consciousness
evolution seems to have our limits. Some people say, "Well, that
parapsychology stuff is OK, but astrology — I can't buy into that."
I know a publisher, who has even published Grof's works, who said that
to me. Or people may say, "I can take astrology or parapsychology,
but this UFO abduction stuff is too far out; I can't accept that. "
Well, that was my reaction as well, as I will explain.
One of the things one has to do when working in
this field is to disimpact certain of our words. Our language is for
the making of categories. But the categories we have do not work very
well here. For example, people ask me, "Is it really true?"
or "Did this literally happen to people?" "Is it real?"
they ask.
Well, real is the kind of word that has to
be looked at again from this other point of view. Or take the words,
inside and outside — is this something in the external
world or something in the internal world? Again, these categories
get shattered.
What I will do now is relate my own experience of
how I got into this area; then give a bit of the history of the field
— very briefly, because this is a huge subject, a whole domain
that I am only going to be able to touch the high spots of; and then
I will describe the phenomenology some. I am going to describe who the
abductees are, my use of nonordinary states of consciousness in working
with them, a little of the physical evidence, what effect being abducted
has on the abductees, and finally, how I put together the meaning of
this phenomenon.
I refer you to four books in which to explore this
further: One is by Kenneth Ring (1985), called Heading Toward Omega.
Another is by Keith Thompson (1991), called Angels and Aliens.
Budd Hopkins's (1987) work, titled Intruders, is a classic in
this field. Finally, there is David Jacobs's (1990) recently published
book, Secret Life: Firsthand Accounts of UFO Abductions.
My Experience With the UFO Phenomenon
My experience with this phenomenon is fairly recent.
In 1989 I was given a paper, written by Keith Thompson, that Stan Grof
was preparing for a book. it contained a Jungian interpretation of the
UFO phenomenon. I kept asking myself at the time, "Yes, but what
is the data? What is really going on here?"
Nothing much happened until a friend — another
member of my training group working with Stan Grof — asked me if
I wanted to meet Budd Hopkins. I said, "Who's Budd Hopkins?"
Hopkins, of course, is the classic pioneer in this field. That was late
in 1989. I met him in January in New York. It was one of those moments
you kind of remember the date exactly — January 10th —w here
something shifts in your life.
When Budd told me about these cases, what was so
powerful for me was the very precise correspondence of the experiences
people were reporting, coming forth with great reluctance from all over
the United States and all parts of the world. When, for example, one
experiencer would be shown a picture of the aliens drawn by another
experiencer, he or she would react with horror, because that meant someone
else was having the experience and their notion that they could somehow
dismiss this as a dream was shattered. That response struck me as something
that could only occur if something real, and not imaginary, had happened
to them. Dreams do not work like that. People do not respond to another's
dreams that way. So something in me said there is something going on
here that I do not understand.
Little by little I got drawn into this, and I was
referred to cases. By the beginning of June of that same year I had
worked with approximately fifty-five individuals — forty-one of
whom fulfilled the strict criteria of an abduction case, which include
being taken by strange, humanoid creatures into an enclosure, a UFO,
and subjected to a variety of procedures, which I will tell you about.
My cases include children as young as two years old. The oldest person
is fifty-seven.
There is debate in UFO literature as to whether
this phenomenon is fundamentally different from the folkloric history
of visitation by little people and fairies, and there are some similarities
to these phenomena. But what is distinctive about UFO abductions —
at least ever since the Betty and Barney Hill case began the current
abduction phenomena in 1961 — is that these cases have been subjected
to firsthand empirical study and are not handed down through an oral
tradition. As Eddie Bullard (1982), a folklorist who has looked into
this and who is a most experienced person, put it, in UFO cases there
is a core phenomenon which is highly articulated and detailed and thus
is unlike other folkloric reports, which have great cultural variability.
In his two books, Missing Time (1983) and
Intruders (1987), Budd Hopkins described many of the fundamental
features of the phenomenon that I will tell you about. And David Jacobs's
(1990) book, more recently, has described for the first time the fundamental
elements from the beginning of the abduction, through the procedures
that occur on the ship, to the end of the experience.
An Estimated Three-Million Americans Abducted
A Roper poll (1991) based on a sample of six-thousand
Americans and conducted from July through September of 1991 asked people
whether they had experienced a number of the phenomena associated with
UFO abductions — e.g., the experience of being taken through a
wall, the inexplicable bright light strange beings around their bed,
or actually seeing a UFO. If people had four out of five of these experiences,
it was reasoned there was a likelihood or a good possibility they were
UFO abductees. Based on this estimate in that poll, it is conceivable
that as many as three-million Americans have had this experience. So,
you see, it is not a rare phenomenon.
It is striking to me that many of my new cases are
people who were known to the UFO community but had not come forward
before, coming forward only now as it seems to them that more "respectable"
people like myself are taking notice. (Well, presumably I am more respectable,
although how long that condition will prevail is questionable.) They
are saying, "Well, if a Harvard professor can take this seriously,
then I can come forward, I can report my experience."
For example, one woman — a thirty-year-old,
very stable person, mother of three kids — had this experience
of seven little guys coming and taking her through walls to the ship.
She would say it was terrifying to her.
Her mother would respond, “Oh, you've had that
nightmare.”
And she would say, “No, Mother, it wasn't a
nightmare. It really happened to me.”
And that kept happening to her. Still, all her life
her mother would say it was a nightmare. But then she heard about me
and thought "Well, if this man believes it's happening, I can tell
him my experience." She was relieved in one sense but crestfallen
in another sense to discover that yes indeed, this is an experience
that many people have had.
Who Are the Abductees?
Now, who are the abductees? First of all, it struck
me how ordinary these people are. They exhibit relatively little psychopathology,
except that which might be considered the result of the impact of this
very disturbing experience. I have housewives, clerks, prison guards,
a chef in a Boston restaurant. There have been numerous psychological
studies of these individuals; none has discovered any psychopathology
in great degree that could account for the experience.
Kenneth Ring (1985) has talked about the possibility
that there might be some kind of encounter-prone personality. The fantasy-prone
personality — a thesis of Keith Basterville from Australia —
has not proved out. Yet one of the difficulties involved is to know
what is cause and what is effect, because the process of being abducted
may begin as early as nursery age. There have been abductions of infants
from nurseries, for example.
Also, there has been criticism of the use of hypnosis,
which is important in investigating these cases. Yet we have no evidence
that hypnosis has introduced distortion into this phenomenon. What hypnosis
tends to do is to access memories that have been walled off and are
not available to the individual because of the intense traumatic nature
of the phenomenon. There is, in addition, the fact that experiencers
feel that the aliens have ordered them to not remember, have shifted
their consciousness, and have "turned them off" so that they
are not expected to remember this. The nonordinary state of hypnosis
seems to reverse this amnesia.
My Approach in Treating Abductees
My own approach in treating abductees, which has
evolved in investigating this phenomenon, is to use hypnotic relaxation
in combination with intense focus on the breath. I can not just use
holotropic breathwork alone — although that would be interesting
— because I need to talk to them. Breathwork precludes talking,
for the most part. At any rate, I first establish in an interview, which
lasts at least an hour and a half, that the person has the suggestive
indicators of abduction — like little guys around the bed or periods
of missing time. However, sometimes they will remember the whole abduction
experience, even initially. Interestingly, people who have taken psychedelics
at some time in their lives tend to remember the experience this way.
I do not have enough statistics about this to be sure that this is a
robust phenomenon, but there appears to be a tendency for these sorts
of people to remember their experiences without a nonordinary state
of consciousness and to be able to explore what has occurred to them
without hypnosis. But generally when I have used the standard hypnosis
approach and relaxation to get someone into a nonordinary state, into
a trance, and when they reach a difficult place where some intense anxiety
comes or when there is some disturbing sensation in the body, then I
will have them focus on the breath and go deep into the breathing. It
returns the person into the trance. It also helps them to move through
the fear and the stressing-out effect that they are experiencing at
the time.
[It might be
useful to restate that a large proportion of the material relating to
abductions is recalled without the use of an altered state of consciousness,
and that many abduction reporters appear to relive powerful experiences
after only the most minimal relaxation exercise, hardly justifying the
word "hypnosis" at all. The relaxation exercise is useful
to relieve the experiencer's need to attend to the social demands and
other stimuli of face-to-face conversation, and to relieve the energies
involved in repressing memories and emotion.]
One thing I want to emphasize, because I think it
is fundamental in distinguishing this phenomenon from fantasy or delusion
or in its diagnosis, is the intense distressing affect that is associated
with the recall of these experiences. There are individuals who literally
shake with fear confronting the memories of how they were paralyzed
or upon seeing again the little aliens with the big black eyes. Their
bodies shake, and they scream literally with terror as they remember
the intrusive procedures which occurred on the ships. This contrasts
with research like Lawson's (1985, 1987), which uses a simulation. Such
research asks, "Well, what do you imagine an encounter would be
like?" And people can somehow concoct what an abduction would be
like if they were to have one. But it is the affective power of the
real abduction experience that gives authenticity to it and tells me
as a psychiatrist that something powerful and disturbing has, in fact,
happened to people.
What Is the Abduction Experience?
So the great mystery remains: What is it? What is
it in fact that happens? That is what I will turn to now.
The basic abduction experience occurs almost out
of nowhere. The person may have some premonitory suggestion. They will
be in their bed or in a car. One woman was in a snowmobile. They may
hear a humming. They may see a UFO up close. And then they undergo a
change in consciousness. They do not exactly lose consciousness; there
is a period they can not account for. It passes, and then they are kind
of woozy at the end of two or three hours when they realize the time
has passed. Occasionally they will remember what happened.
What I am going to relate will include the information
gotten from the use of the nonordinary state through the technique I
have described. They may see light in the bedroom or a beam of light
outside. Then they find themselves, against their wills, being carried
to the light, through a wall or the window, wherever they happen to
be. Their first reaction, when they first recall, is that this just
can not be real. It does not fit any laws that we know. Yet they have
been witnessed by their relatives to not be present during that time.
They are physically gone, and families become very distressed. Mothers
become distressed when their children are in fact gone. One of the things
most difficult to accept is that this can actually have a literal factual
basis. Yet we must acknowledge that facts that do not fit still must
be looked at.
What the Aliens Look Like
One of the hardest things for the abductees is to
look at the beings themselves. The beings are generally described fairly
consistently, despite the fact that until the last several years descriptions
in the media were not common. I did not myself know the basic description
until about four-and-a-half, five years ago. Usually they are described
as small, having large heads and big black eyes. Their eyes are the
most prominent feature. They have a kind of rudimentary nose, nostril
holes, a slit of a mouth, no ears, and are about three, three-and-a-half
feet tall.
Sometimes there is a doctor or a leader who is described
as somewhat taller, sometimes with wrinkles in the head. He seems to
be the figure who is in charge on the UFO, having long arms, three or
four fingers, thin, tapering legs, a chest without forms, and no genitals
are seen. Occasionally, there are larger, seemingly human figures that
appear to be associated with the little humanoids.
Keep in mind that I hear myself saying these words
and I can not believe I am saying them. You probably can not either.
Yet this is the consistent account of otherwise normal, healthy, sane
people, who do not believe it either. They are only first confronting
the truth of it with me or other investigators.
Happenings Inside the Ship
Then the ship is described. Abductees may or may
not see the ship from the outside. The next thing they know they are
inside the ship, and it has kind of curved walls, a kind of coolness
inside. They are naked, and they are subjected to a series of procedures,
which include the taking of skin samples, and the insertions of probes
of various kinds in the nose. Abductees who do not know each other and
have not gotten this information in the media consistently give elaborate
and highly detailed descriptions of instruments. The media did not have
the details of these reports until fairly recently, and it is still
fairly sketchy in the media, so it is hard to account for this consistency
in reports. The most prominent aspect of the experience is the urological-gynecological
probings. Instruments are inserted into the vagina. Often, mothers claim
to have had fetuses removed. While there is not a physically documented
case of fetus removal, the experience is that they have been pregnant
and the fetus has been removed. Men have had sperm samples taken against
their wills. It is highly distressing. That is one of the most disturbing
parts about it. However, I will discuss shortly how that in itself is
not the core or most disturbing aspect of the experience as you go more
deeply into the phenomenon.
There is also intense probing of the head; sometimes
there is the experience of implants being put in. Several of these implants,
by the way, have been removed and are currently being analyzed. So far,
none of these have been definitely proven to not be made of materials
that could be on Earth. There is a lot of research going on about the
physical aspects of this, which I will mention in a moment.
The experience ends with the return of abductees
via a reversal of the procedure I mentioned. They are usually returned
to the place where they had been, but funny things happen there. Their
shirts may be inside out. Or they may be placed some place different
from where they started out from.
The Physical Evidence
There are accompanying physical dimensions to this
phenomenon. These by themselves would not constitute evidence that would
satisfy scientists, but in the context of the abductions the physical
evidence is highly important. Abductees may wake up with unexplained
cuts, scoop marks, or bleeding noses. There is one case in which four
or five people were abducted from an apartment and all woke up with
nosebleeds the next morning. in association with the experience, they
may notice that there is burned earth outside of the apartment from
where the UFO landed.
The physical evidence is sometimes subtle. One of
the things that is important in terms of consciousness and our notions
of reality is that the evidence here has to be taken as a totality.
To rely on the physical evidence by itself might not satisfy us. Yet
taken within the context of the whole, highly robust psychological experience
of this phenomenon, it creates a pattern. So subtler information is
something we need to be attentive to as we expand our epistemologies.
On the other hand, sometimes the physical evidence is not so subtle.
There is a case being explored in New York of a regression hypnosis
that Budd Hopkins did. In this case, a woman passed out through a window
of an apartment building in which she lived, on the Lower East Side.
This was about four years ago. Since then, several witnesses have come
forward who were outside the apartment building, who saw the UFO, who
saw the beings, and who saw her and the little beings go into the UFO,
and then saw the UFO going into the East River. They were on the Brooklyn
Bridge or someplace on the street; and they exactly described, physically
from outside the building, what Hopkins discovered and described in
the hypnotically regressed abduction experience of the woman. So sometimes
you get this highly robust physical evidence, and sometimes the evidence
is very subtle.
The Aftermath of the Experience
The fact that these experiences can occur in families
adds a deeper and in some ways more troubling dimension to the aftermath
of the abduction phenomenon. That is, several members of a family may
be taken; the experiences may even span several generations, including
parents and grandparents. Yet families have great difficulty talking
to each other about it because it violates consensus reality. At any
rate, the two fundamental sequellae are the traumatic/post-traumatic
nature of the phenomenon — although it is not altogether post-traumatic,
as I will explain — and the transformational/growth-enhancing dimension
of it.
The Traumatic Aftermath
First the traumatic: The trauma has four aspects
to it. The first element is the experience itself — to be paralyzed,
to be taken against your will, to be subjected to these intrusive, terrifying
procedures. The terror is enormous, and it is buried or repressed for
the reasons that I mentioned.
The second aspect is the isolation that these individuals
feel. They are very reluctant to tell their parents. They get told they
are too imaginative or that they are dreaming. As adults, if the guy
who is abducted tells what happened, say, in a bar, he will be told
he is crazy. So abductees have each learned, as one of them put it,
to go "underground." They do not tell their experiences, so
they feel very isolated. They know something of profound importance
has happened in their lives, something that has great meaning; but they
dare not talk about it.
The third aspect, which is the one that has particular
relevance to our discussion, is that it totally shatters their understanding
of consensus reality, as of course it does for us. Claire, a woman who
was at an M.I.T. conference on UFO abductions, shared that she is the
second of four generations of people who have been abducted and is very
troubled that she can not protect her little four-year-old granddaughter.
She related how her granddaughter draws pictures of how she locks herself
in a box so that Mu, the head alien, will not take her sometime. Claire
also said — and this is characteristic of what abductees say to
me — "I would relish the idea that I'm insane. To accept that
this is genuine undermines everything that I have accepted as reality.
I like skeptics; they give me an out." Many people have come to
me, particularly recently, who have come forward with all the attention
that seems somewhat to have legitimized the phenomenon (although not
really, it seems still to be mostly "tabloid" material rather
than mainstream). But these people win come to me, and I will listen.
At the end I can see they are distressed, and they will usually say
things like, "I came here to get you to tell me I'm crazy. "
And I will say, "I don't understand this. It's a deep mystery to
me. I've seen many people like you, and it's not an expression of madness.
"
And to them that is a loss, because it strips away
the defense of denial that used to tell them this can not be so.
The fourth aspect of the trauma resides in the fact
that the experience can recur at any time. Unlike many other traumas,
it is not over, when it is over.
The Transformational Aftermath
The second important dimension of the UFO abduction
phenomenon, and one I want to underscore, is the element of transformation.
What I and others who have worked with the trauma of this have discovered
is that the abductees begin to feel that their experiences were for
a purpose or had a positive meaning to them. That is, when the trauma
has been fully experienced and processed intensely in the nonordinary
state of consciousness, after more than one-my, two, three, or four
hypnosis sessions-something begins to happen in the abductees and in
their perceptions of their experiences. They feel that the experience
is expanding their consciousness, that they are connecting with themselves,
that they are opening up to a whole new perspective on the universe.
One man went through just incredible terror. He
had a sperm sample taken from him against his will, and he was screaming
and yelling on the bed as I worked with him in hypnosis. At the end
he said, "You know, John, the physical terror is minuscule compared
to the terror of acknowledging that this is real, of having to look
into the eyes of the aliens." The eye contact, which is sometimes
strongly resisted, is a very powerful, confirming matter for these individuals.
The terror of that acknowledgment is much greater,. as this man said,
than the physical reality of being overwhelmed and taken on the ship.
I have seen this pattern in case after case.
Another important transformational aspect pertains
to the intense information that abductees are given on the ship about
the global crisis. For example, they may be shown a wasted landscape
after nuclear war or environmental destruction. They may see the Earth
dying, with polluted atmosphere and foul rivers. In response to this,
and almost uniformly, they develop a powerful environmental consciousness.
Some of them go so far as to drop the jobs they have been doing.
However, it should be noted that this deep transformation
only occurs when they have worked intensely with their experiences in
a nonordinary state of consciousness. These transformations do not normally
occur spontaneously; the abductees have to go deeply into the experience,
it seems. But when they do, many find that they can bring the experience
forward into the work they do in the world. One woman has begun teaching
environmental studies in a school; one has become a massage therapist;
another has become an acupuncturist. They tend towards work that is
more connecting, more transpersonal if you will.
Another transformation that happens is the intense
bonding that occurs with the aliens after a while. What was originally
an intensely traumatic experience turns into an extraordinarily meaningful
relationship. From fear of looking into the eyes, they come to look
deeply into those black eyes of the aliens. One woman described it as
being fifty times more powerful than any experience she had had of connecting
with another person on Earth. So they feel this bonding relationship
with something beyond themselves.
Recently I have been getting cases that take this
even further. In deep trance one young man, for example, began to talk
about an inter-species mating process going on. He said there is a connecting
going on beyond the Earth, beyond ourselves, that that is what is happening
with the mating of these two species against our will. I do not think
one can understand this sort of thing without some sense of a larger
design, or a divinity, or an anima mundi. There is this feeling of inter-species
connecting on a very powerful level. What this one man said to me is
that these beings with huge heads have been too much observing and not
enough feeling and that they look to us for feeling. Creation of hybrid
babies, occurring as a result of this inter-species mating process,
appears to be an important purpose in abductions. The aliens are very
interested in watching mothers nurture these hybrid babies, whose characteristics
are a mix between human beings and the aliens. This young man-Dane was
his name-claimed that he learned through connecting with the aliens
that we have become too disconnected from our feelings and that this
mating process is to somehow "open up the heart-mind"-those
were his words. We have lost or we need to develop the heart-mind. The
heart has a mind and an agenda all its own to bring us back home, all
of us, by which he meant back to God, or the evolution of consciousness
back to our Ground of Being.
The Meaning of Abductions
The last part I wish to relate is how I put the
whole phenomenon together, what meaning I have been able to derive from
the whole structure of this. This is made difficult by the fact that
the aliens do not necessarily tell you what they are up to unless, as
they put it we are ready to hear it. Furthermore, a theory of this phenomenon
would have to account for a number of disparate matters. It would have
to account for the fact that these people are otherwise quite ordinary
and sane. It would have to account for the sightings of UFOs that accompany
some of them, the physical phenomena that are sometimes associated with
them, and the fact that they occur to children as young as three years
old.
Challenging Our Species-Arrogance
First, this phenomenon has challenged our sense
of reality more powerfully than almost anything else I am aware of.
One man had an experience ten years earlier that he could remember without
hypnosis. Throughout that time and prior to any investigation with me,
he claimed that the experience had opened him up. As he put it "Once
I was open I couldn't stand what we were doing on the Earth. Just that
opening of me changed my whole perspective on our place in the universe.
"
Considering this, it occurs to me that the global
crisis, the destruction of the environment, is the context in which
they are occurring. I trust I do not have to spell out those dimensions
to you. That crisis is at root a product of the dominant paradigm of
the Western mind, particularly its inherent dualism and materialism.
Together these philosophical assumptions represent a kind of species-arrogance.
They imply that we are the only intelligence, the only ones with the
brains evolved enough to produce consciousness. This implies also that
we are alone on this planet with our intelligence, building it up single-"mindedly,"
but separated in a meaningless and otherwise nonconscious universe.
Now, the alien phenomenon strikes at almost every
aspect of that fundamental, dominant paradigm of Western psychology
and science. Just one example: The UFOs themselves make a mockery of
the technology we are so proud of. They go on and off the radar screen.
They appear. They disappear. Nothing military has any relevance to them,
although they appear to some military quarters to be a threat to us.
Perhaps you have heard the joke that Allen Hyneck, a United States Air
Force officer and former debunker, who switched over to becoming a believer,
used to tell. He quotes an Air Force colonel who said, "Why don't
we shoot one of them down and see if they're friendly?"
So we see the Trickster at work here: They exist
they do not exist. UFOs appear in our physical reality, then disappear
from our physical reality They tell us that whatever illusions we had
that we were in control of the world, of nature, of ourselves, are shattered.
We are utterly not in control. They come; they take us when they
will; they take us onto their ships; they do what they want with us.
All we can do is surrender and try to stay open to it.
Collapsing the Walls Between Physical and Spiritual
Abductees also experience the collapse of space-time.
These are generally not philosophically sophisticated people. Yet space
and time to them just seem to fold in and disappear. So it shatters
the notion of a space-time universe as being the only dimension that
is possible. Our Western dualism is also overcome by the bonding that
takes place. The connecting that occurs with the aliens tells us that
we are somehow connected beyond the universe as we know it.
If this were not enough, the abduction phenomenon
commits another cardinal sin to the Western mind If you think about
the cognitive demography, as it was spelled out to a group of us recently
by the Dalai Lama in India, there are three dimensions of being that
are known to Eastern traditions. One is the physical, the manifesting
bodies that we know. Then there is the spirit world — with angels,
Shiva, the gods and goddesses, and so on. Finally, there is the level
without form. Each tradition has words for that level — the Holy
Spirit in Christianity, the anima mundi, or the Great Spirit
of Native Americans. In the West we have departments of religion, anthropology,
and philosophy to study the second and third domains. But the only one
that is considered real is the first dimension — the physical,
bodied domain, whereas in other cultures those other domains are real.
Of course we generally allow that those domains sort of exist in people's
minds. But the absolute cardinal sin to the Western mind — and
the thing that will drive my colleagues crazy and probably end up getting
me in trouble — is that there can be traffic across those barriers,
is that the third world can enter the physical world. Yet that is precisely
what this phenomenon indicates to us. In other words it breaks down
that barrier which ought to belong and stay in the third world, yet
it shows up in the physical world.
A Cosmic Intervention
The way I understand this — and I am stretching
a bit to say this-is that the higher intelligence, or whatever is at
work here as a "cosmic corrective," can only talk to us in
the language we know. By this I mean that many of the abductees I am
working with have come to understand that there is an imbalance in us
requiring a cosmic adjustment an intervention from outside ourselves.
Yet the only language we understand, particularly in Western culture
is the language of the physical, that of the embodied creature. So if
any intelligence wants to reach us, it must come to us in the physical
form. And that is why the aliens enter our world in the familiar high-tech
way they do.
I want to conclude with two quotes. One is from
Rainer Maria Rilke. It is from a letter, quoted in a foreword to Peter
Matthieson's book, The Snow Leopard. Rilke, you may remember,
was on a personal odyssey of his own, as was Peter Mattlhieson. Rilke
wrote,
That is at bottom the only courage that is
demanded of us. To have courage for the most strange, the most singular,
and the most inexplicable that we may encounter. That mankind has
in this sense been cowardly has done life endless harm. The experiences
that are called visions, the whole so-called spirit world, death,
and all those things that are so closely akin to us have, by daily
parrying, been so crowded out of life that the senses by which we
could have grasped them have atrophied. To say nothing of God.
The last quote is from an abductee. She is a young
mother She has been abducted with her son and, perhaps, her husband
She has been told by the aliens that there is a place from which they
come where time does not exist For her, this domain has become altogether
real. "Truth is truth," she said. "It will still be there
when science is ready to see it or equipped to validate it"
Questions and Answers
Audience Member: Do they say anything
more about where they are from?
John Mack: The problem here is there is a
fine tune that seems to be going on between the consciousness of the
abductees and what the aliens communicate. Sometimes they sound like
a Zen koan. Of course, this is reported by abduction researchers as
nonsense, as if to say, it is not for you to know. But it is said more
poetically than that So people will try to find out what planet they
are from, what star, and so on. All of this is very interesting but
it is not very fruitful. It is like we need to open up to some other
dimension. Jacques Vallee (1990) talks about a multidimensional universe
or a multi reality or other dimensions entering into our dimension.
We do not yet have too many geographers of a multi-dimensional universe
so it is hard to find a language to talk about that sort of thing. Maybe
there are some scientists who are experts in the multi-verse, like Fred
Alan Wolf (e.g., 1987) and others, but for most of us that question
is difficult to tackle.
AM: Has the government tried to stop you from
doing this work?
JM: I am not very knowledgeable about this
area of government awareness or involvement with UFOs. It is a whole
complicated area involving documents. However, the general sense I get
of the governments position is that they take the position I might take
if it were my job to provide for the national security. They basically
have this material, but they say there is nothing to it. It does not
exist. And they cover up. That is my sense of what the government's
attitude is. But they have not approached me personally.
There was a movie put out about this, called "Intruders."
The main character, a psychiatrist, had seen about three abduction cases
and given one talk. High-level government people confronted him Hollywood-style.
I was a consultant for that show, but that part I did not want in it.
The government heavies come and try to corrupt the psychiatrist, as
much as acknowledging they are hiding the truth from the public and
trying to get him to play along with the cover-up. The psychiatrist,
of course, is high-minded and will not be corrupted. In the real world,
however, none of us — Budd Hopkins, Dave Jacobs, or myself —
have been approached by the government. I do not think they would know
what to do with us if they did.
AM: Could you say more about the meaning of the
apparent harshness of the experience and why this is happening now?
JM: People have come to the transpersonal
movement because there was no place they could come to talk of their
mystical experiences and their power I mentioned other dimensions and
universes. Terence McKenna (1991) has written on parallel universes.
He has also been an advocate of the fact that the Western mind is so
encrusted, so cut off from the divinity, that it takes a really heavy
dose of something to get us opened in our hearts and in our souls, and
that the psychedelics are one really powerful hit that can bust through
the encasement of the Western mind. I see this abduction phenomenon
as another one. It kind of hits us where we live, in the physical domain.
So it is also a very powerful kind of opening process, not just for
abductees but for all of us, through the extraordinary meaning of the
phenomenon.
AM: Have you talked with David Bohm about this,
and is there a branch of physics that deals with the multi-verse?
JM: I think there is increasing interest
in it in physics. I think that the new physics is certainly very compatible
to the possibilities on which the abduction experience open us; it is
very open to it, in fact As for a science of the multi-verse as such,
I do not know.
AM: How do the abductees' eventual feelings toward
their abductors relate to the Stockholm. syndrome-where terrorists abduct
someone and the captives end up feeling a positive relationship with
their captors after a while?
JM: That has actually been the prevailing
interpretation, in UFO abduction research, about the bonding phenomenon.
And I think there may be some of that going on but that the bonding
that occurs is much more profound than that. In the case of terrorists,
I believe there is something they are up to, they have a self-interest.
Maybe aliens do too; I am not saying they do not. But it really seems
to be part of a much more profound cosmic process, a connecting between
two species. There is a feeling of deception or trickiness involved,
but I am not as taken with the Stockholm syndrome interpretation for
it. There is some of that there, but overall I feel what is going on
is much more meaningful than that
AM: During abductions, is it simply a subjective
sense of time being gone, or do family members notice that they are
gone?
JM: Both. There are situations where someone
is undergoing' an abduction experience, and to others it seems they
are still physically present It seems to be more like an out-of-body
experience, and the experiencer feels like Ins or her body has gone
from them. Then there are many other cases — I have a number of
them, and other researchers do too — where the person's body is
actually out of the apartment and may be gone for several hours.
Travis Walton was gone for several days in 1975,
and then he was found wandering in the woods. So it is not known how
long he had been placed back. But the usual experience involves being
gone between one and three hours. One of my first cases, a young woman,
was abducted with a friend from a rumpus room in her friends house.
They were returned about five or six o'clock in the morning But when
they had not come home and were not found by either of the two fathers
until six o'clock in the morning, the fathers were understandably very
upset. They said, "Where have you been during the night?"
Only later did the women recover their abduction
experience, so at the time they simply were not there and they could
not explain where they had been. There were even search parties sent
for them.
What characterizes the abduction experience is that
it is physically real and it enters the physical world, but it is also
transpersonal and subjective. It crosses that barrier between the hard-edged
physical world and the spirit/transpersonal world.
REFERENCES
Bullard, Thomas Eddie. (1982). Mysteries in the
Eye of the Beholder- UFOs and Their Correlates as a Folkloric Theme
Past and Present. Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University.
Hopkins, Budd. (1983). Missing Time. New
York: Berkley Books.
Hopkins, Budd. (1987). Intruders. New York:
Random House.
Lawson, Alvin H. (1985). UFO abductions or
birth memories? Fate, 38(3) March 1985, 68-80.
Lawson, Alvin H. (1987). Perinatal imagery in UFO
abduction reports. In T. Verny (ed.) Pre- and Perinatal Psychology:
An Introduction. New York: Human Sciences Press.
Mack, John E. (1994). Abduction: Human Encounters
with Aliens. New York: Scribner's.
McKenna, Terence. (1991). The Archaic Revival.
Speculations on Psychedelic Mushrooms, the Amazon, Virtual Reality,
UFOs, Evolution, Shamanism, the Rebirth of the Goddess, and the End
of History. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.
Ring, Kenneth. (1985). Heading Toward Omega:
In Search of the Meaning of the Near-Death Experience. New York:
William Morrow.
Thompson, Keith. (1991). Angels and Aliens: UFOs
and the Mythic Imagination. New York: Fawcett Columbine.
Vallee, Jacques. (1990). Confrontation: A Scientist's
Search for Alien Contact. New York: Ballantine Books.
Wolf, Fred Alan. (1987). The physics of dream consciousness:
Is the lucid dream a parallel universe? Second Lucid Dreaming Symposium
Proceedings/ Lucidity Letter 6, no. 2 [December 1987].
© 1992 John E. Mack, M.D.
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