Dr. John E. Mack, an American psychiatrist and professor at Harvard University School of Medicine, talks in an interview with the Institut de Recherche sur les Experiences Extraordinaires (INREES) in France about the phenomenon of alien abductions.
About working with psychiatrist Stanislav Grof
My interest in this work came from my teacher Stanislav Grof, a Czech psychoanalyst who, in the late 1950s, began experimenting with the (psychoactive substance) LSD and found that our understanding of the structure of the mind is completely limited and that when consciousness is opened levels of consciousness and being are discovered that are much deeper than those that relate to everyday reality and which he calls the transpersonal state.
This is a state when consciousness is not attached to the body. Out-of-body experience will be such a state. When a person is no longer limited by this body. Holotropic breathing, a method that came from his research on LSD, uses frequent deep breathing, expressive music, when a person can reach an extraordinary state of consciousness, but already without the drug. It's like LSD, but no LSD.
So, in my experience, which I first had with Grof doing breathing exercises, I found that, to my surprise, my consciousness changed from being myself, to being a Russian father, in the 16th century, whose 4-year-old the son was beheaded by the Mongols. This was not a fantasy. It was something when I was literally transported into a state that can be called a past life, a transpersonal experience, when consciousness travels through time. Whether there was such a person, I don't know, it doesn't really matter, but the experience was very strong and very real. So much so that he caused me more understanding and empathy for the Russian doctors with whom I was in my time. It was a time when we were still aiming nuclear weapons at each other and so on. This was a very powerful example of a transpersonal experience.
Meeting with Bud Hopkins
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At some point near the end of my apprenticeship with Grof, he gave me an article written by Keefe Thompson, which had a chapter on Extreme Spiritual Experiences, and it spoke of UFO encounters that Grof classified as extreme spiritual experiences. I read this article and I never stopped asking - since this was Jung's interpretation of the UFO phenomenon - I kept asking: okay … but is it real? What I meant by real was quite literal at the time - were UFOs real and did people really see aliens and so on and so forth. And… I think that if you ask a question persistently enough, the Universe will meet halfway and give information corresponding to this question. Because after a month or two, one of the people in the group in which I learned this method … a woman named Blanche, a psychologist,asked if I would like to meet with Bud Hopkins. I asked: who is he? She said that he is an artist from New York who studies people who had the experience when they were taken by aliens into spaceships. And I thought it was absolutely crazy. Despite the fact that I looked quite openly at everything, having a transpersonal experience with Grof, it was already too much for me. But she said no, it's all very real and that I should go to him. She herself had a case and was introduced to Hopkins in connection with this case. I went to meet him, he told me about the phenomenon. Next time there were several people with him … And I was amazed by the fact that they were very ordinary, ordinary people, except that they had such an extraordinary experience. It was shocking to me. I asked: who is he? She said that he is an artist from New York who studies people who had the experience when they were taken by aliens into spaceships. And I thought it was absolutely crazy. Despite the fact that I looked quite openly at everything, having a transpersonal experience with Grof, it was already too much for me. But she said no, it's all very real and that I should go to him. She herself had a case and was introduced to Hopkins in connection with this case. I went to meet him, he told me about the phenomenon. Next time there were several people with him … And I was amazed by the fact that they were very ordinary, ordinary people, except that they had such an extraordinary experience. It was shocking to me. I asked: who is he? She said that he is an artist from New York who studies people who had the experience when they were taken by aliens into spaceships. And I thought it was absolutely crazy. Despite the fact that I looked quite openly at everything, having a transpersonal experience with Grof, it was already too much for me. But she said no, it's all very real and that I should go to him. She herself had a case and was introduced to Hopkins in connection with this case. I went to meet him, he told me about the phenomenon. Next time there were several people with him … And I was amazed by the fact that they were very ordinary, ordinary people, except that they had such an extraordinary experience. It was shocking to me.experienced when they were taken by aliens into spaceships. And I thought it was absolutely crazy. Despite the fact that I looked quite openly at everything, having a transpersonal experience with Grof, it was already too much for me. But she said no, it's all very real and that I should go to him. She herself had a case and was introduced to Hopkins in connection with this case. I went to meet him, he told me about the phenomenon. Next time there were several people with him … And I was amazed by the fact that they were very ordinary, ordinary people, except that they had such an extraordinary experience. It was shocking to me.experienced when they were taken by aliens into spaceships. And I thought it was absolutely crazy. Despite the fact that I looked quite openly at everything, having a transpersonal experience with Grof, it was already too much for me. But she said no, it's all very real and that I should go to him. She herself had a case and was introduced to Hopkins in connection with this case. I went to meet him, he told me about the phenomenon. Next time there were several people with him … And I was amazed by the fact that they were very ordinary, ordinary people, except that they had such an extraordinary experience. It was shocking to me.with Grof's transpersonal experience, it was too much for me. But she said no, it's all very real and that I should go to him. She herself had a case and was introduced to Hopkins in connection with this case. I went to meet him, he told me about the phenomenon. Next time there were several people with him … And I was amazed by the fact that they were very ordinary, ordinary people, except that they had such an extraordinary experience. It was shocking to me.with Grof's transpersonal experience, it was too much for me. But she said no, it's all very real and that I should go to him. She herself had a case and was introduced to Hopkins in connection with this case. I went to meet him, he told me about the phenomenon. Next time there were several people with him … And I was amazed by the fact that they were very ordinary, ordinary people, except that they had such an extraordinary experience. It was shocking to me.ordinary people, except that they had such an extraordinary experience. It was shocking to me.ordinary people, except that they had such an extraordinary experience. It was shocking to me.
Now … the fact that I took it seriously - and I felt it was monumental important - it was because I myself was already imbued with transpersonal experiences through Grof's classes.
My first experienced
So, even though I thought it was impossible, crazy, I still wanted to know more. When I started meeting people, then they started coming to me in Boston, Cambridge. Some sent by Hopkins, then others began to find me themselves. And… I… don't remember if I said this before… when I started evaluating them, they did not suffer from any mental illness. And there was no indication that this was coming from the media. In what they said, there were too many specific details, clearly expressed, repetitive. There was nothing like this in the media at that time. It was something that happened like a real event that happened to them. And the emotions were very intense. And also, what they described … each person described more or less the same thing. But they didn't know each otherdid not have any benefit from it, were alarmed by it, did not want all this to be true. In particular, we would be pleased if I gave them some kind of pill that would cure them or assure them that it was a dream. They could not sleep if such phenomena occurred. After listening to 50-60 of these people, I was quite convinced that it was something truly mysterious and real. And I had to think, if it's real, what does it all mean? That's how I started. And I had to think, if it's real, what does it all mean? That's how I started. And I had to think, if it's real, what does it all mean? That's how I started.
They are not schizophrenics
Each mental state has its own specific aspects. For example, in schizophrenia, people don't just have one idea that is strange. All their behavior … they tend to be withdrawn, not too clearly expressed, there are other things in which they believe, there is a whole … With paranoid schizophrenia, they have a whole system of belief that they are pursued all their life, they are usually quite convinced that their ideas are correct, and they are trying to convince you of something. But these people are completely different. They are well aware that this is the opposite of what other people tend to believe. They not only believe in it, but simply have problematic experience for them. They don't have any obsessions about stalking. And most of them are healthy people. They have jobs, families, good relationships. In psychosis and schizophrenia, more and more criteria refer to the quality of a person's relationship to others. And these people are very good. So there is nothing like psychosis here. Except, perhaps, that they have ideas about what should not exist, in accordance with the generally accepted worldview. And if you want to call psychosis what goes against the generally accepted worldview, then anyone who … This is what they tried to do for some time under the Soviet system. If someone was a dissident, so? - it was said that the dissident did not follow the dominant Marxist philosophy and was sent to a psychiatric hospital. If we consider psychosis, then when someone has a point of view that differs from the dominant paradigm - which we, as a society, to some extent do - is good … but in a free society there is no sign ofthat these people are not normal.
These are not dreams
Another category is dreams. Well … Many people, as you know, waking up after sleep, in the morning … when you had a dream and you woke up, then you know that it was a dream. But sometimes those who have experienced this experience even before they went to bed. They didn't sleep at all. Other people were even awakened by what was happening. And when they tell you in the morning, they say that something woke them up, and when it happened, they were awake. Also, it may not happen at night. At night can be confused with sleep. But there will no longer be any confusion, if a child was in the schoolyard, a light appeared and … he, you know, disappeared for several hours. This is rare, but there are such cases. And a lot of people were taken from their cars as they were driving and there was a light from above,and so on … So it's … obviously not just night-time stuff that makes people think it's like a dream.
and no hallucinations
Hallucinations refer to some kind of mental illness like schizophrenia or when someone uses drugs and has hallucinations. But hallucinations usually have a certain look. You hear some kind of voice, or you see some kind of animal or something else that is not really there. But hallucinations do not have a complex, well-expressed narrative, a story that has a beginning, a continuation, an end. Delirium may, but not hallucination. And I just told you why this is not nonsense. But a person in a car, or when he is asleep.., a light appears, creatures come, he feels paralyzed, he is taken, moved to a ship, something happens there, there may be other people, he has telepathic contact with aliens, taking some kind of trial - a whole complex set of events occurs, which is repeated from person to person,with slight differences. And hallucinations are personal. You might argue that these are massive hallucinations. But mass hallucinations happen when people are part of a certain society or have some common experience, where everyone has the same idea, because they communicate with each other. But these people are from all over the world and do not have any communication with each other. And everyone experiences the same … It doesn't look like a mass hallucination.
and not fantasies
Fantasies … well … Again - fantasies are very personal. You have a set of certain ideas, imagine something … This is your imagination. It will not be ten thousand people, one hundred thousand people who have the same fantasy. You understand. By definition, a specific fantasy is associated with a specific person at a specific time.
This is a real experience
But the most important point, from my point of view - not from a general point of view, but from my diagnostic point of view - is that they describe this experience or these events as people who talk about what really happened to them … When you talk to a mentally abnormal person who tells something that is delusional illusion, then you feel that this has not happened. I can say.., i.e. I know that something is not here that the person wants me to believe, he is scared, or he distorts reality in some way. But there is nothing of the kind here. People here are sane, mostly. They tell me about something that is very … they know that I can … think that they are crazy, that they are a little unsure telling me about it, they themselves are full of doubts and insecurities.. and at the same time they describe something- very real, intense light,something happened to their body … The very quality of how they talk about it, just like people who have experienced something, talk about what happened to them.
My method of work
I work with all patients in the same way. What I do first, I ask what brought you here … And they answer: my therapist thinks that I experience what you write or say. Or … for example, that all my life, my parents said, also during childhood, that certain events were only dreams … Ie. I take into account history, not only the experience itself or the symptoms, if you like, what makes them think that they belong to this category of people, but also everything about themselves - their life, what kind of relationships they have with people, work, personal life, i.e. what health professionals do in any assessment. And then I go back to their experience, the details.
This usually takes about an hour and a half. And then, depending on the situation, I either ask them to come another time, to continue the face-to-face interview, I can bring my relatives with me to check the testimony that people are not inclined to invent stories and that they can be trusted. And then a lot of memories about the experience emerge in consciousness by themselves. But some are somewhere deep and difficult to remember. They see this … light over the lake and it is very significant and important, and then … they feel that something has happened, but they are not very sure what.
And then I do relaxation - what people call hypnosis. I do a relaxation exercise called regression sometimes. And quite often these events are recalled in greater detail. Not just because of hypnosis, but hypnosis kind of brings out more details of what I've already heard. It often allows a person to express some of the underlying emotions and also get a clearer picture of what seems to have happened. And this first session of hypnosis is usually a real shake-up for the person, like your conversation last night. Because the details that surface are so powerful and so undeniable that a person can no longer live in the state of denial that he was in. The great benefit of relaxation is that the emotions that come up are so intensebright and so undeniably connected with something real that … if you are in the room when this happens, not only I am alone, but anyone I invited comes out with the words: I don't know … something really happened here, I cannot explain and so on.
Those who experienced change
And … as I said, I have had hundreds of similar cases. And the way science works - a recurring scenario comes to light, which has a certain stability. Not all cases are the same. Some are more traumatic, others are more spiritually oriented, some are more ecologically related, have apocalyptic images. But the basic story is repeated here - as I see after several hundred cases - both in the United States and in other countries. And all this merges into a general picture, which has in itself a solid … form of truth.
Sometimes a person continues to come, with some we become friends and meet from year to year. They tend to integrate the experience into life, and minimize the experience itself, an active experience. If something happens they come again. I get the impression that experiences like being literally on board a spaceship are less common now. And that the experiences themselves become more subtle, like a ball of light that has information, or as a spiritual opening, or people become … more like teachers as a result of their experience.
Our view of the world is crashing
Within the framework of our culture, such phenomena are simply not possible. So what! Why should I turn my attention to a culture that is already failing. We must support her assumptions about being no more than her military doctrine or attitude towards the environment, or towards the economy, or towards any other aspect of our society that is clearly falling apart. And the only thing that remains is the idea of being, which is the cause of all other problems. But what this phenomenon does is start to attack what is the real problem, i.e. limited understanding of being. And he tells us that reality is not only what we thought about it.
And from this come enormous consequences, i.e. that we live in a universe that is not so limited, but that is more abundant, and that if we worry about the Earth and about each other, with love, then there will be enough for everyone. And this changes the very principles of how corporations would behave, how countries and armies would behave, and we would not destroy the Earth, we would live in harmony, jointly experience the sacredness of reality, the sacredness of nature. And destruction for the sake of commercial interests would be considered sacrilege.
This whole phenomenon is, in a sense, the last nail hammered into the coffin lid of our idea of the world. Everything else that crashes - crashes because of the failure of our understanding of the world. And now the very idea of the world is collapsing.
Defining reality
So what? The idea of what is possible comes from a worldview. This is all conditional. Culture decides what is real. What is real for this culture may be completely different from what is reality for American Indians, or reality for Tibetan Buddhists, or reality for Hawaiian kahuna, and so on. We have one set of ideas about what is real. Very limited. And becoming more and more limited as the centuries go by. As the poet Rilke said, the senses through which we can know the spiritual world have atrophied. Because we don't even have a structure in our perceptual capacity for knowing the greater reality.
It is as if we have lost the very senses through which we could know beyond this limited physical horizon. And therefore now I have no respect for the dominant view of the world today, because it is conditional. It was formed at a certain time to solve certain problems. This particular view of the world, which we call scientific materialism, which is the dominant worldview today, was formed to solve certain problems at a certain time.
The problem was that the church dominated thinking and if someone like Galileo said something about the Moon and Jupiter, supporting Copernicus, that the Earth is not the center of the Universe, when the Church is trying to make a person the center of the Universe, i.e. it was the tyranny of ideas at the time. And science then became a way of documenting the limitations of a limited, then prevailing theological worldview. Science then became, material science, then it became a subversion, if you will, for the old way of looking at things. And so gradually, starting from the 15th, 16th, 17th centuries, the spiritual, more precisely religious worldview began to recede before the scientific one. But they seemed to coexist side by side, it was, for a while, like the idea that there is a spiritual world that the church and psychologists could know. Those. scientists concerned only the material world. But gradually,from the 16th to the 20th century, all spiritual knowledge was pushed aside and the scientific way of knowing became the only way of knowing. And the view of being narrowed more and more, as the way of knowing became more and more limited. Figuratively speaking, the spirit child was thrown out along with the religious water.
Our view of the world
Therefore, I began to respect less and less the dominant worldview, because I began to understand that, first of all, from a clinical point of view, the worldview simply does not stand up to criticism. These people … I trust patients more than I believe our worldview. They are much more convincing. I would have no reason to believe our worldview, but I was indoctrinated to believe him from early childhood. But as soon as I realized that this was just programming my thinking, and it was not based on any factual knowledge other than the so-called "laws," which are only part of the scientific materialistic worldview, I began to lose respect for it.
Not because there is no place for this - science has its place, in the development of medicines and weapons, and so on - but in the sense of the ability of the materialistic worldview to provide a good life, to maintain life on Earth, to explain such phenomena as out-of-body experience with clinical death, alien abductions … it just doesn't work. This worldview cannot explain any … it copes with very little. And this is a worldview that should have taken care … More and more I am losing respect for this worldview, which was not able to solve any of these … not to solve … not quite the right word … it cannot handle it all. In the 14th century, the black death, the plague, spread throughout Europe and killed a third of the population and the church had nothing to offer.
And the black death, which appeared again, even in the time of Galileo - there is information about the plague in his time - it was clear that the old way, the way of the church, was inadequate in meeting the realities of the material world and disease is one of them. But now we have other problems. Not that we can already cure all diseases, but at least we know what science is good for, in this sense. But now we have a whole set of problems. Relationships between groups of people, nuclear weapons, anomalies … all kinds of anomalies that are inexplicable … economic issues, issues of justice - none of them are considered by the scientific materialistic worldview, which … rather looks like a shell from a worldview, if you think about it, it is not a worldview at all. To reduce knowledge about reality to a purely material world … but how about the whole world of emotions, the spiritual world,the subatomic world … the quantum world. Quantum physics, as you have heard in conferences, quantum mechanics itself undermines the dominant view of the materialistic world. Because if you look in the subatomic reality, there is nothing there, there is no material world - only possibilities and probabilities. Waves … and … particles that are non-local and not connected by material ties. New discoveries in physics, if seriously considered, simply undermine the dominant worldview, as well as the phenomenon I am talking about.which are non-local and unrelated material ties. New discoveries in physics, if seriously considered, simply undermine the dominant worldview, as well as the phenomenon I am talking about.which are non-local and unrelated material ties. New discoveries in physics, if seriously considered, simply undermine the dominant worldview, as well as the phenomenon I am talking about.
I cannot fight prejudice
When you are dealing with people who come with prejudice and a dominant worldview behind them and have not done the preliminary research, personally, then what is the point of discussing with them? This is, you know, how to deal with heavy artillery - the dominant worldview. They have more divisions than me, right? So with my tools … I cannot win against military attacks from the dominant worldview. I can work only when there is a certain openness of thoughts, consciousness, do you understand?