Articles by Dr. John Mack and colleagues
“DO ALIENS EXIST?” This is a standard question for abduction books, but it is not the question addressed by John Mack in his book Abduction. He considers a question with more far-reaching consequences: “WHAT IF ALIENS EXIST?” The answers he gets from speaking with a number of experiencers is a positive, energetic portrayal of hope, spiritually fulfilling goals, and an indication that the individual and his or her choices may matter in the grand scheme.
A single-page Omni magazine article about alien encounters, presented both as the version published in July 1994 and also as an earlier draft.
The other night I was reading along in Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, the much-discussed new book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvard psychiatrist John E. Mack. I was right at the part where Mack explains that right before people are abducted by aliens mysterious electrical malfunctions often occur. It being nightfall, I reached up to turn on a lamp. Sparks flew and the lamp suddenly burst into flames.
A few unusual therapists buck the system and specialize in treating people who’ve had encounters with the unexplainable.
Increasing numbers of UFO abductees, as well as the experts who treat them, say their experiences have as much to do with inner as outer space.
Developed from a talk first given at Interface, Cambridge, Massachusetts, April 23, 1993 (and given again at the 24th Annual MUFON Symposium). Dr. Mack had not yet finished writing his book about alien encounters, but the prior year he had co-chaired the Abduction Study Conference held at MIT, for which he had received some critical feedback.
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.
This paper appears in Alien Discussions: Proceedings of the Abduction Study Conference (North Cambridge Press, 1992).
We hear the expression “consensus reality” used more and more often to distinguish the conventional Western/Newtonian/Cartesian world view from other possible philosophies or frameworks of thought. The frequent bracketing of these words in writing and conversation implies that there is one accepted version of reality that includes a social agreement about what the mind may or may not legitimately countenance, if its owner wishes to remain within mainstream discourse. Yet there is also a connotation of questioning or doubt in the use of the modifying adjective “consensus,” even a certain defensiveness. It is as if the speaker, who may generally accept the prevailing paradigm, does not completely agree that what we have been acculturated to believe is, in fact, the only reality.