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Science is Humbled
by Reverend Jeffrey L. Brown and Janis A. Pryor
The Reverend Jeffrey Brown is pator of the Union Baptist Church, Central
Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Janis A. Pryor is an author who lives
in Cambridge.
Perhaps the most significant consequence
of John Mack's work with abductees (those who believe they have had
an encounter or encounters with alien beings) is forcing the scientific
community to grudgingly accept that there may be a reality that cannot
be measured in the material world; a reality that transcends the scientific
process. Mack says that "the [west believes] that the only intelligence
that exists in the universe comes out of the human brain, not God."
[But] this phenomenon, according to Mack, "opens us to a different
sense of ourselves," and "gets the western mind right where
it lives."
Having been raised in what he describes
as "radical secularism" and having entered a profession where
any notion of believing in God, spirits or entities, much less aliens,
was considered anywhere from "misguided" to "psychotic,"
coming to this realization and making the scientific and religious communities
seriously examine this phenomenon is nothing short of revolutionary
for the western world. With a distinguished career in psychiatry for
40-plus years, this work has forced Mack to face the fact that the "universe
is different from what I was taught to believe in."
Consider the profundity of this realization
and the potential for its impact. Already Harvard Medical School is
saying that medical students must study the influence of their patients'
spiritual belief system on their health and treatment. And those whose
world view has always embraced the "unseen" find themselves
having something to teach those of us searching for not only spiritual
fulfillment but spiritual validation as well.
During the weekend of May 8, 9 and 10,
[1998] the Program for Extraordinary Experience Research, or PEER, founded
by John Mack, which is a research and education project of the nonprofit
Center for Psychology & Social Change in Cambridge, along with Interface
sponsored a three-day conference to "bring together the scientific
and clinical communities with Native Americans" to discuss some
of these "extraordinary experiences and beliefs."
The Native American community and other
indigenous people around the world have always had a world view that
includes not only contact with the spirit world, but with the other
intelligences in the cosmos. John Mack's work has served as a catalyst
to bring many Native American elders and holy people forward to share
this sacred knowledge and their experiences in a more public forum and
to support his work.
What makes us all squirm, though, is this
"alien" factor: the grays, the blues, or the very tall Nordic-looking
creatures. Having science confronts the "reality" of God is
one thing, aliens is another matter! It makes us nervous even mentioning
it, for no one wants to be ostracized from society, doubted or ridiculed
for even considering "something this crazy." But no one can
deny the power of what is going on; western society is on a spiritual
search, more and more people who are "sane in every way, exhibiting
no [other] symptoms of 'mental illness'" are stepping forward to
talk about their encounters — "experiencers" as Mack
calls them — with messages of a sacred nature regarding human kind,
the fate of the Earth and the sanctity of life itself.
Our mission is not to argue for or against
the existence of aliens. For every story a attesting to a profound exchange
of information between the experiencer and some form of non-human intelligence,
there are stories of violent, invasive, terrifying ordeals. We are saying,
however, that we support John Mack's contention that as a culture, our
epistomology, our way of investigating the origin, methods and the limits
of human knowledge must be expanded to include that human experience
can be a legitimate way of knowing. And by extension, matters of faith,
spirituality, God and their collective impact on the human condition
cannot be ignored by science or the mental health communities.
We are saying that there are questions
all of these experiences raise that can no longer be dismissed as the
troubled, demented thoughts of a "crazy person." Questions
like, what are the implications for our own world view? How can this
[reality] be? How does it change our consciousness? Does it affirm or
challenge the interconnectedness of nature and all living creatures?
And, are there any existing cultures or belief systems, like those of
Native Americans, that can serve as a bridge between two radically different
but perhaps profoundly linked world views? Linked not by little gray
beings but by the power that gives life to all living things.
Science Is Humbled
© 1998 Rev. Jeffrey L. Brown and Janis A. Pryor
Originally published in The Cambridge Chronicle
April 30, 1998, p. 17
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