Netflix has an interesting new series called "Encounters" dealing with UFO sightings and similar reports of the paranormal. One episode partially deals with a reported UFO sighting at the Ariel school in Ruwa, Zimbawe. On September 16, 1994 about 60 school children between nine and twelve claimed to have seen a strange craft and strange beings near the craft. The same episode deals with Harvard professor John Mack, who interviewed some of the Ariel school children. In the 1990's John Mack started seriously studying reports of paranormal experience that are often called "alien abduction" accounts (although, as I will explain, such a term may be an inappropriate one for many of these cases). His scientist colleagues expected him to produce a paper or book suggesting that accounts of alien abductions are produced by people with mental illness. Instead, Mack produced the 1996 book "Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens," in which he stated that the people telling such stories seem to be generally of sound mind. Mack suggested that the people may well have been reporting experiences of something that really happened, not just something that was all in their minds.
The behavior of Mack's fellow scientists was one of the most shameful episodes in the recent history of science. Mack was subjected to merciless gaslighting from fellow scientists, who treated him as if he had lost his mind or gone over to some "lunatic fringe." Mack's serious scholarship on observational reports well-worthy of study was treated as an abhorrent aberration by materialist professors eager to "sweep under the rug" such reports and prevent people from studying them. It was just more of what has gone on for more than 200 years within scientific academia: scientists senselessly ignoring important-seeming observational reports they should have been paying attention to, for the sake of maintaining a storyline consistent with their materialist dogmas and poorly grounded boasts of understanding human minds or human origins. Harvard put together some "Star Chamber" style secret committee to try and revoke Mack's credentials. In 1995 it was announced that after a year of "closed door hearings" Harvard would not discipline Mack. The article pointed out that the hearings had cost Mack more than $100,000 in legal expenses. Mack eventually died suddenly after being hit by a car.
A key question is: how much of Mack's accounts were obtained through hypnosis? On page 32 of his book "Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters" Mack states this:
"A modified hypnosis or relaxation exercise may be used to help focus the client's attention upon their inner experience and memories, but it should be emphasized that about 80 percent of the information is obtained through conscious recollection...We are careful not to lead individuals or to encourage them to 'produce' and abduction story --we use neutral, encouraging comments and questions."
This raises a question mark about the reliability of the accounts, because it is known that under hypnosis people can be extremely suggestible. A nineteenth century work describes this aspect of hypnotism, describing some hypnotized subjects:
"When they drank water, and were told that it was milk, coffee, rum, whisky, or wormwood, they tasted it as such. Nay, after drinking it as whisky, they were told that they were drunk, and in a minute or two became, in every particular, very drunk indeed. The expression of the face was perfectly that of intoxication, and they could not walk a step without staggering or falling. They were easily made, by suggestion, to fancy themselves any other persons, and acted in character. They shot, fished, swam, lectured, and exhibited every feeling suggested to them. They were as easily made to suppose a stick to be a gun, a rod, a sword, nay, a serpent ; or a chair to be a tiger or a bear. From these animals they fled with extreme terror. They were made to see, hear, and feel a dreadful storm, and to creep for shelter under a table or a chair, supposed by them to be a house."
It is quite a potential problem for us to be told that 80% of reported recollections come from "conscious recollection" and that hypnosis was used to get some of the accounts. That makes it unclear whether a particular detail we hear from someone did or did not come from statements under hypnosis. A good technique would be:
(1) Whenever citing or quoting anything that a particular person said under hypnosis, always tell the reader that such a statement was made under hypnosis.
(2) If a person ever makes some sensational claim under hypnosis, attempt to verify such a claim by seeing whether it is made by the same person under more than one hypnotic session.
Unfortunately, it seems that Mack failed to follow such a technique. But we should not necessarily throw away the accounts he has gathered, merely because of such imperfect methods.
Another complaint I have about Mack is his terminology. His book titles seem to overuse the term "abduction" and to presumptively use the term "aliens." A typical account in Mack's books will involve some encounter with some mysterious entity of unknown origin. Why should we be using the term "alien" to refer to such entities? In most cases no claim is being made by anyone to have learned that the strange entity encountered is from another planet. If such reports come from encounters with real mysterious entities, we do not know whether such entities are spiritual, extraterrestrial or extra-dimensional. Often the reports involve mystical-sounding or spiritual-sounding experiences that it may be inappropriate to describe as "abductions," a term with a strong criminal connotation. Mack's 1996 book should have had a less presumptive title, something such as "Human Encounters With Mysterious Entities." And Mack's use in his books of the term "alien abduction phenomenon" is unfortunate. It would have been better to have used a more general term such as "involuntary high-intensity anomalous experience."
The fact is that humans have for a very long time reported an extremely wide variety of encounters with mysterious entities:
(1) For ages humans in normal health have reported that in normal waking consciousness they suddenly and unexpectedly encountered apparitions of the dead, appearing as full or partial human figures.
(2) Very large numbers of dying people report seeing apparitions of the dead, a phenomenon sometimes called deathbed visions.
(3) Many have reported seeing mysterious humanoid figures such as Bigfoot or Yeti.
(4) In near-death experiences people report seeing a wide variety of mysterious entities that may include some numinous "Being of light," deceased relatives or deceased friends, angelic or semi-angelic figures, or various other mysterious figures.
(5) A thorough examination of the history of spiritualism will reveal very many reports of encounters with mysterious figures appearing during seances, figures often called materializations. A prominent example is the Katie King apparition or materialization well-studied by the scientist Sir William Crookes. Read the section entitled "Miss Cook's Mediumship" in the newspaper account here for a very detailed account, and my posts here, here, here and here for related information.
(6) The lore of the Catholic Church includes numerous stories of encounters with mysterious figures, often identified as the Virgin Mary or saints. An examination of the lore of Mahayana Buddhism would probably produce very many similar accounts.
(7) Users of certain types of drugs report seeing mysterious entities, and sometimes claim to see the same type of mysterious entities (with a very distinctive non-human appearance) whenever they take a particular type of drug.
(8) In quite a few cultures there are figures called shamans who claim to be able to go on spiritual journeys in which they may encounter mysterious entities.
(9) As discussed here, a small group of people claim to be able to practice at will something called astral projection in which they have out-of-body experiences that may involve claimed encounters with strange nonearthly intelligences.
(10) We can find in every major religion some mystics who claimed to have trips of the soul in which they encountered some superhuman reality.
People don't learn about such things (except in the briefest and the most superficial way) when studying to become psychology professors. Mack should have thoroughly studied such reports as part of his investigation into the accounts he has labeled as "alien abduction" reports. But I don't see very much evidence of such scholarship in Mack's writing. If Mack's scholarship had been deeper, he might have tended to use some more general term to describe the reports he had studied, rather than to put them all into some "alien abduction" category. But Mack was very diligent about personally interviewing people reporting anomalous experience, showing none of the "fear of hearing firsthand testimonies" we so often get from skeptics.
On pages 72-73 we hear of a person named Jean who reported very frequent reports of being taken to what she called a spaceship. She said that "sometimes it was like being
beamed up" and "sometimes it was like being sucked up, sort of like a vacuum cleaner, and all of a sudden just whoosh!" The beings she claims to have encountered (in what she calls a spaceship) are described by her as "very refined presences" and "literally beings of light." On the next page we read her
claims that she was given "a new cosmological system"
that enabled her to "plug into Source, or God," having
"a capacity to heal myself and heal other people" and
become "a medium to, if you will, the Divine." The report sounds like a very spiritual affair, and we may wonder why mystical-seeming encounters such as this are put in the category of close encounters with extraterrestrials, as if some purely physical encounter with a nuts-and-bolts spaceship had occurred.
On page 74 we read of an Andrea who describes an encounter beginning with a beautiful flash of light. She reports that she floated feet-first through the glass of her window, rather as if it was her "astral body" moving rather than her physical body. She recalled thinking "I'm not a body anymore," and thought "I'm light." She reports encountering strange creatures that "look like they're made of light." On page 75 a Karin reports a feeling that was like moving at ultra-fast speeds "basically tucked in a ball." We read, "For Karin, these overwhelming energies seem to have a kind of 'universal power' as if they emanate from God." The next two accounts we get (from two other people) also sound like mystical or spiritual experiences, with lots of mention of encounters with mysterious intense energies, but little mention of anything sounding like protoplasmic extraterrestrials in metal spaceships.
Here is an encounter described on page 161 of one of Mack's books. Dave reported beings who he could see only as silhouettes taking his "inner self" or "inner spirt" out of his body and taking him through large transparent tubes, "into the next plane." In the next plane there were beings that appeared luminous, like "giants" with "crystal" bodies. They had big heads with large eyes having beautiful colors. We are told, "The beings would not permit Dave to go further into the light, which seemed to be coming from a great 'inner city' of some sort, because, they told him, he was going back to the Earth plane. Dave said he was brought to this plane to show him that there was "life beyond this life," and that there are other planes of reality into which we will eventually pass. We read this:
"Dave and the other two people felt a warmth in this other plane, a sense of belonging there, and he did not want to come back to Earth. He described a place of overwhelming joy, without pain, filth, anger or discontent, an awesome realm where nothing and no one was above another and
existence itself was like light. The realization that this was
only a demonstration, and that he could not actually fully
experience the light, filled Dave with a sense of loss.
But he has a strong sense that after death in prior lives, it
is into this other plane that he has passed and that he will return to it again when this life is over."
Any student of near-death experiences will recognize several elements in this account. They include (1) an idea of an inner self kind of traveling out of the physical body; (2) a trip through a tunnel; (3) encountering strange luminous beings; (4) a report of a kind of unearthly "city of light"; (5) being told that you must return to Earth; (6) a feeling of regret about having to go back to Earth; (7) an idea of "life beyond life" or some "higher plane" which a human will eventually reach. We may wonder: why has this very spiritual-sounding account been put in a book with a title insinuating an encounter with flesh-and-blood extraterrestrials?
We may notice here a huge contrast between the report above and the stereotypical idea of an alien abduction. Asked to describe a typical account of an alien abduction, the average person (based on press accounts) might report someone being forced into a flying saucer, tied down, and subjected to terrifying medical examinations. The account above is pretty much the exact opposite of such a terrifying encounter with a "nuts and bolts" spaceship. The report is of a very positive experience. And instead of being an experience with a physical spaceship on Earth, the person is taken to what seems unearthly spiritual realm.
On pages 163-164 we have some interesting suggestions that some of the imagery that shows up in some of the so-called "alien encounter" or "alien abduction" accounts may be symbolic imagery. So a person who reports seeing some reptile-like alien may be seeing some manifestation that symbolizes some lower intelligence or lower spiritual level, rather than a literal species that arose on some other planet with a reptile-like form.
It is widely believed that visual symbolism occurs in dreams. Dream content is worthy of serious study, and some dreams may come to humans telepathically from some external reality beyond our understanding. One of the reasons I suspect such a thing is that for years I have been logging my own dreams, and I do not at all find them consisting of mere random content. During the past three years my dreams have seemed to heavily repeat themes involving life after death. I have had had more than 400 dreams in the past three years that seemed to symbolize the theme of life after death, as I report in my very long post here. Very often such themes seem to be expressed with symbolic imagery.
Some of the experiences called "alien encounters" or "alien abductions" may be mental communications from some mysterious external reality, similar to dreams, but appearing more vivid than dreams. On page 164 Mack makes an interesting speculation:
"The beings and their UFO-related 'props' may seem almost...to disguise themselves, as in Carol's encounter, through inhabiting the familiar images of the experiencer's knowledge base...One might also consider that it may be a means that the beings, or the intelligence behind them, utilize to mute the traumatic impact of the intense energies and the shock of unfamiliar images, while at the same time opening the experiencers to the mysteries of the unknown by breaking down the boundaries of their familiar world...Animal images that abductees encounter may, as they do for some
native people, serve to disguise humanoid beings, but they may also represent archetypal symbols of great power and meaning that can propel them on their transformative journeys."
I often get the feeling after analyzing my dreams that some recurring element is a symbolic token representing something deeper. For example, my very frequent dreams of being on a bus, train, boat or aircraft may symbolize traveling to some unearthly realm. My very frequent dreams of being on an elevator or escalator may symbolize going to some higher realm of existence. My very frequent dreams about crossing some border or barrier and going to some other side of something may symbolize some an eventual trip to some Other Side of an afterlife. Let us imagine some higher intelligence (possibly spiritual in nature) wanting to convey to someone an idea of some encounter with some higher reality of great power and knowledge. Such a message might be conveyed through modern icons and symbols such as UFO encounters, entering into a spaceship, encountering a humanoid creature with a huge head and giant eyes, and so forth. Perhaps just as we should often ask "what does it symbolize?" when analyzing dreams, we should ask "what does it symbolize?" when analyzing some reports sounding like encounters with extraterrestrials.
Continuing to use the word "alien abductions" to refer to a variety of experiences that may or may not provide evidence of visiting extraterrestrials, on page 237 Mack says, "In this chapter I will try to show how the alien abduction phenomenon can potentially be one of the most powerful agents of spiritual growth, personal transformation, and expanded awareness that is now affecting people on this planet." A bit later (after quoting someone referring to "Divine Source") Mack states, "Sometimes abductees perceive, or are told by the beings, that their (the 'beings') true nature is a kind of energy form, but that they have to become embodied to play this intermediary role between humans and Source. " On the next page we read, "Abductees sometimes express the conviction that the Earth is not their true Home, which is in another realm outside of time and space." Such an idea is frequently expressed in accounts of near-death experiences.
On page 244 one of the persons described as an "alien abductee" describes a scenario under which humans choose to become incarnated as humans here on Earth, possibly for reasons such as spiritual or moral growth. Two pages later another "abductee" expresses a similar idea. The underlying idea is one that has often been suggested by dreams and near-death experiences, as I discuss in my post here. On page 251 we have one of the "abductees" describing a "choice of whether to come back to your earthly body" choice that sounds like a very common motif of near-death experiences. When describing such things, Mack fails to point out resemblances between such experiences and other types of spiritual experiences (such as near-death experiences) that are never called "alien abduction" episodes. We get the impression that Mack was very diligent in studying the people he interviewed, but was not much of a scholar of the more general topic of paranormal or spiritual experiences. Doing a little better about drawing connections, on page 256 he states this:
"The abduction experiences affect profoundly the experiencers' sense of who or what they are as beings in the cosmos. Their transformation, which they attribute directly to their encounters with the infinite or the creative Source, is often expressed in the ecstatic language generally associated with mysticism or other experiences of transcendence."
On the next page we are told that "when they no longer deny their experiences and confront them honestly, abductees tend to lose their fear of death." We hear of one "abductee" claiming to have made contact with her deceased son.
The more we hear about these people describing their experiences as factors producing spiritual growth and worldview deepening, the more we should tend to think poorly of those who tried to gaslight Mack and his subjects, and who tried to suggest that Mack was guilty of malpractice by not labeling his subjects as psychotics, and not prescribing them anti-psychotic medication.
A very interesting possibility is that some of the strange events described while someone is under hypnosis (and sometimes categorized as "alien abduction experiences") may be neither fantasy nor recollections of encounters with extraterrestrials, but instead what may be examples of what used to be called "traveling clairvoyance." During the first half of the nineteenth century, when hypnosis was called "Mesmerism," "animal magnetism" or "somnambulism," there would often seem to occur astonishing displays of clairvoyance by people under hypnosis. The hypnotist would invite the hypnotized person to kind of "go with him" on a mental trip to some place the hypnotist knew well, but the hypnotized person had no knowledge of. The hypnotized person would often describe the place with astonishing accuracy, and might describe details about the actions of its current occupants that were quite unknown to the hypnotist, but which would subsequently be verified as being correct. It was rather as if some power of the mind to travel outside of the body and explore the external world was being unlocked.
When some hypnotized person asked about an alien abduction describes seeing some beings of light and visiting some unearthly realm, he may use the present tense. The hypnotist will tend to interpret this as some recollection of some weird encounter that previously happened. But what is occurring may be no recollection of a past experience, but instead an example of traveling clairvoyance or something like astral projection in which the hypnotized person is temporarily unshackled from his bodily limits, and is able to make contact with realities beyond our planet, realities that may be spiritual or involving some other dimension. Such an idea is unthinkable only to those who deny the existence of the human soul. During near-death experiences there seems to be a travel of a human soul beyond the body. So why should we should exclude the possibility for such a thing to a happen under hypnosis, particularly since there is so much nineteenth century evidence that under hypnosis certain subjects could display all kind of wonders such as immunity to physical pain and traveling clairvoyance?
There are quite a few attempts to shoe-horn so-called "alien abduction" accounts into a "nuts and bolts" kind of explanation of visiting metal spaceships from other planets. Such attempts often involve ignoring what was reported. For example, in a book on alien abduction studies an author says, "When abductees described communication with occupants, it was almost always accomplished telepathically; they said they received 'impressions' that their minds converted to words." That already takes you out of the world of materialism and its "brains make minds" claims, into the world of psychic phenomena. Again we have a parallel with near-death experiences, in which people abundantly tell us that some idea was received telepathically, rather than by hearing some spoken words.
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