This book is a series of interviews with 12 or so psychiatric patients who claimed that they had been abducted by aliens. These patients were seen by Dr. John E Mack of Harvard, and their stories turned out to be so remarkable, that Mack himself started to wonder if there might be some validity to the alien abduction phenomenon afterall.
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I want to give some background on Dr. Mack, the author of this book. Mack was a psychiatrist, and became the head of psychiatry at Harvard in 1977. This was also the year he received the Pulitzer Prize for Biography for his book about the life of British officer TE Lawrence called, “A Prince of our Disorder.” TE Lawrence is the dude who Lawrence of Arabia is about. This is an old movie I still have never seen, but I remember my theater coach in high school said it was his favorite movie. Anyway, so, it’s not like John E Mack was some chucklehead off the street. He was a legit scientist and physician.
Anyway, Mack was just bobbing along with his life as a well-regarded psychiatrist, when he learned about people who fancied that they’d been abducted by aliens. He says of this, “ When I first heard of people who reported being taken by humanoid beings into spacecraft, my initial reaction was that they must be suffering from some kind of delusion…”
you think?
This was back in 1989, and to give some context, Mack was around 59 years old at this time. I mean, he had literally seen it all in his career by this time; and not to stereotype or anything, but that’s what I’m about to do, most people are pretty set in their beliefs after their thirties, so I really have to hand it to this guy for stretching outside his comfort zone. A lot of the abductees, or experiencers as they are called in this book), went through sessions with other psychiatrists and the psychiatrists just maintained that they were suffering delusions throughout their interactions. These psychotherapists just ignored the fact that the experiencers were, and I quote from Mack’s book, “discriminating individuals, largely of sound mind, who were as inclined to doubt their experiences as was I.”
So if you can imagine knowing that you are about to talk to a patient who is delusional and just needs your help, and you’re probably in the mindset of how do I understand this person so I can figure out how best to help them get over their psychosis; then, as you understand them more and more, you start to realize that your initial belief–that these people are nuts– just no longer makes sense…of this, Mack says
Faced with a phenomenon that does not fit one’s ontological perspective, the choices are to ignore it, to force it somehow into the old mold (this, I believe, is what leads to so many foolish conventional explanations of the abduction phenomenon), or to modify or expand the world view itself
John E. Mack, Abduction
So, literally at age 60, Dr. John Mack found his sessions with these experiencers to be so convincing that he realized that he had no choice but to change his entire worldview. That, my friends, could not have been an easy task.
Moreover, he was highly respected, and the backlash from the public, from academia was just as one might predict. Harvard actually ran an investigation into his methods, and this investigation was apparently totally invalid since Mack was not doing anything unethical and he was a tenured professor. He was ultimately cleared by Harvard, but given a censure for his methods – perhaps the regression hypnosis.
It is really difficult to convince someone of the existence of something supernatural if they believe it to be fantasy. And not only that, but you usually end up alienating (so to speak) the person you’re trying to convince. I’m reminded of the producer of the movie The Phenomenon, James Fox. He was a non-believer in the UFO phenomenon, and so much so that when a good friend of his told him about UFOs and how they were real, Fox literally thought to himself, bummer, I really liked that guy; and now we can’t really be friends anymore because he’s a loon. Can you imagine what John Mack’s colleagues at Harvard thought when he started saying that there might be some validity to what all of these patients of his were saying?
Mack was killed in 2004 when he was hit by a motorcycle. Coincidentally, TE Lawrence, the man who Mack wrote a biography about, died in a motorcycle accident when he swerved to miss two boys which he had not seen.
I had no idea, when I started reading this book how pervasive the theme of sexual trauma was going to be. Basically, I’m not quite finished with the book, but 100% of the experiencers have really invasive experiments conducted on their bodies while they experience emotional and physical anguish. This is flat out disturbing, and, since this podcast is intended to be lighthearted, I’ve tried to gloss over a lot of the invasive and seemingly rapey accounts, but I really couldn’t review this book without including some anal probing – so you’ve been warned.
I’m still not anti-alien even after reading about all of these horrible things. Mostly because – the experiencers themselves are not anti-alien. Again, many if not all of the abductees end up with this feeling that they are cooperating with the aliens, that they were part of some sort of special mission. What is this mission? Why, none other than to create an alien / human hybrid species to populate the earth with after the apocalypse of course. Dull, right? And here we thought this book was supposed to be interesting.
The other purpose mentioned by one of the abductees is to sort of help us to evolve spiritually – which seems to require physical and emotional manipulation–one woman said that the aliens were scaring her on purpose because they needed for her to basically transcend her fear.
So there are many similar elements to each of the stories, but I thought I would note a few highlights which were interesting to me.
Chapter 10
Paul started seeing a normal psychotherapist, and during regression sessions with her, started experiencing connections with this alien presence. He then asked the aliens to give him a sign that they were real, and there was a loud knock at the door, behind which no one was. The psychotherapist was freaked out, and he had to calm her down. He then told her that something was going to come for her that weekend – which, I feel like he could have reached for a phrase which was less anxiety inducing. When they met the following week, she admitted that her bed had bounced up and down…which totally seems demon related.
Chapter 12 the Magic Mountain
Dave, before he gets put under regression, talks about some of the odd events of his life which have made him wonder if he might actually be an abductee. One of the stories he tells is about a night he was driving 65 mph in a rainstorm with friends in Canada. Suddenly, a bus blew past them, going really fast – maybe 90 mph. This was when his friends exclaimed because they realized that they were 90 MILES behind where they had thought they’d reached. None of the boys had any idea how they had just lost all of that mileage. To add to the strangeness, there was a bus accident that night in the news where 65 people had been killed.
There are several people highlighted in this book, and I decided to go into detail about one of them, and this is Peter. I chose Peter because his story held a lot of elements which were here and there throughout each of the abductees–he really went through it all; but then interestingly, continued to come back for more (meaning the regression sessions), because he felt that he gained so much from reliving these experiences.
Peter was 34 when he came to see Dr. Mack. He was getting into acupuncture, but also had experience managing hotels. In the book, Mack says, “Peter’s case provides one of the most dramatic examples of the way the nature of abduction experiences can be transformed in conjunction with the evolution of the experiencer’s consciousness.” So as your consciousness expands, the way you view the abduction changes–for the better.
For all of the patients, Mack gives some background on their history as well as what they remembered of their abduction experiences before they came to him. And there seems to be a consistent theme of people remembering seeing something odd or unusual, but then they’d fall asleep, and seemingly nothing else would happen; but then Mack would put them under regression hypnosis, and there all of this detail would come out.
Peter was no different. He had vague recollections of seeing large owls, but then, nothing much else. He also remembered playing with alien hybrid children when he was 4. But meanwhile, before he came to see Mack, he really wanted to believe that everything was his imagination. At the same time, he felt that the experience must be real in some way, because he feels so much emotion around it; so he decides to do the regression session. And keep in mind that some of these sessions really dredge up some very horrific experiences, and I want to keep this podcast lighthearted, so if any of you have read the book, and you’re thinking to your self, “Hey, she’s just glossing over the part where he had an anal probe.” you’re right, I totally am. But I still get into some raw stuff, so if you’re a kid, or a parent, you may not want to listen to the rest of this.
Under regression, he remembers going to sleep, but then getting up to walk over to his couch. That’s when he sees a little creature. He feels humiliated because he’s naked, and he feels rage because he knows that they have essentially made him completely powerless; he can’t move; he basically is completely vulnerable to their will. The beings are thin and short – with the taller one coming up to Peter’s chest. They end up “hitting” him with this light at his forehead; and after that things become peaceful for him–both in the regression session, but also at the time these events are happening; he has no fear or humiliation anymore, and at this point, he normally just forgets everything that happens after.
The beings wave a light under his body, and he lifts very lightly off the couch and through the door. They glide him outside and towards this very bright light into this small spaceship. They take him on a tour around the spaceship, and he feels like an honored guest. They fly up, and earth becomes just a pinpoint. He then goes into a room full of maybe a hundred human men and women. It’s weird because the aliens seem to tell him to go mix and mingle, but when he walks up to this dude to chat, the dude says, “not yet, you have to go, not yet.” He gets this sinking feeling. During the regression, Peter has to stop things because he is just really not wanting to face what happens next.
Back in his regression, in the spaceship, he’s taken to this room where there are humans in suspended animation with helmets on their heads. They then put this silver dome like helmet on his head and then he is taken to this examination table. He says this examination table is really comfortable – like it molds to every contour of his body. I found this detail to be sort of hilariously off-topic. Again, during the regression session Peter is yelling to Dr. Mack, “I don’t want to tell you what happens now.” So he is really experiencing deep distress. He goes on anyway, and says that they start to “suck the lifeforce out of the top of his head.” I have no idea what this is about, and I don’t think Peter ever goes into it either. What is the purpose of this?
He’s then taken to another examination table which he feels the need to point out is super comfy where, and i think I said I wasn’t going to be mentioning anal probes, so if you don’t want to hear about this, stop listening now, because I changed my mind and am going to mention anal probes – we’ll see how many times i say “anal probe” before this episode is over. The next thing that happens is that they put this tube up inside his body through his groin. It’s humiliating, but he doesn’t feel any pain, so little pain, that he mentions during his session, “I’m amazed at some of the simple technological things that they’ve got that we haven’t thought of yet.” again, with these strange, off-topic comments. The next thing they do is, wait for it, anal probe! They shove something up his backside, and he thinks that they’re leaving basically a tracking device.
When Peter is done with the regression, they talk about the humiliation and anguish he feels over this memory, and he says that he feels that on some level he’s a willing participant in this entire process. He likens it to a woman giving birth – it’s painful and she feels rage and anger, but in the end, she’s not pissed at the baby or unhappy that she agreed to it.
At some point, Peter leads a 4 day energy healing workshop. You might remember from earlier that he had gotten his acupuncture license. After this workshop, he realizes that he is abducted again. The circumstances around the abduction are mysterious as well. He’s staying in a house with other workshop attendees, and they all decide to go for a walk. He, for some reason, decides not to, and he wonders if is because on some unconscious level the aliens communicated with him to stay behind so they could visit him. Also, just to cast doubt on the skeptics who think this is all happening in Peter’s mind, the women who went on the walk actually saw the spaceship.
So during the regression, as you might expect, he remembered being abducted. The aliens then put an instrument in his eye, dug around, and then pulled something out. He basically, thinks that this is an instrument which tracks memory. Then, Dr. Mack says that the timbre of Peter’s voice changes to this monotonous droning, and it basically his him shifting to speaking as an alien himself. Here is a freaky quote from the book:
we want to study the chemical reactions of the brain and how people will react in order to “know when it is time to be present.” we will know at what level the shock will come in, so we will be better able to control it so we will be in tune with the human beings as they go through this shock process, as they go through the unfolding of seeing us for the first time.
John E. Mack, Abduction
This is when Peter’s voice returns to being his own in the regression session, and he says that, “the beings are working with us,… so they will be able to tell how we will react to their manifesting before us.”
What’s creepy about the part of the regression where Peter took on the identity of the alien, is that he essentially was channeling alien consciousness right there and then–so he was no longer reviewing past events, aliens were all up in the house.
After these sessions with Mack, it was still bothering Peter that he just felt so much fear around the alien experiences, and he wanted to see if he could address this fear; this was how he entered into the third regression session; and Mack said it was the most dramatic experience he had ever encountered with an experiencer. It was so profound that it really removed any doubt from Mack’s mind that he was dealing with something real.
They enter the regression, and Peter starts to leap from experience to experience. At first, it seems like he’s going to go into an abduction when he lived in Hawaii, but then it shifts to when he was 4, and he remembers playing with aliens, and then his consciousness shifts to when he was age 8…he seems to leap from event to event; and each time, he’s getting more and more agitated. Things really come to a head when he remembers lying on a table and having a sperm sample taken from him when he was 19. He’s screaming in terror and just sheer rage. The procedure itself is extremely disturbing for him, but he also remembers the fear of basically being completely powerless and taken against his will.
After the regression was over, Mack and Peter talked about it, and Peter said that he believes the physical and psychological torture is necesary for some sort of spiritual growth the aliens are trying to develop. This sounds weak, and Mack even suggests that maybe the aliens are just using us, and then making us think that there’s some sort of spiritual growth in it for us; but Peter is certain that the spiritual part is real and necessary. Why?
They need my consciousness to expand. They need more of my brain to be awake.
Why?
So they can interact with our planet
Why?
So they can prevent our beings from becoming extinct.
John E. Mack, Abduction
So – just your average afternoon chat about the end of the world. No big deal. This is another reason I chose to go into Peter’s story – he has some more prophecies I want to share in a sec.
But before I do, I want to mention that each of the regression sessions were recorded, and this particular session was so striking and dramatic that Mack ended up using it when he gave lectures about the abduction phenomenon. There was even a lecture which he had to stop showing the recording early because people couldn’t handle watching Peter’s experience. In Canada, this dude was doing a documentary series called “Man Alive,” and he asked Peter to be a guest, and he showed the video. Unfortunately, this series was never aired in the US – lame.
After feeling like he’s integrated this dramatic regression session, Peter realizes that he still wants to go deeper because he senses that there’s more he wants to remember. He remembers a time when these three people, he calls them Holy Rollers come to the door – maybe trying to give him religious pamphlets or something. There’s a woman with them, and she is giving him this knowing look, and it sort of puts him off a bit. Then, during the regression session, he realizes that the holy rollers were aliens in disguise. This freaks him out because he wonders how many aliens he’s seen in real life, and not known it. But it gets more interesting. This time, during his “abduction,” the aliens really aren’t forcing him to do anything. They actually give him the choice of whether he wants to walk through the wall (which would basically mean coming with them, and sort of graduating to the next level of commitment), or just staying put. He’s really conflicted because taking that next step really feels like a leap of faith. A lot of hemming and hawing takes place where he almost makes the leap, but then doesn’t. His stress level is really high, but eventually, he makes the leap, and is taken up to the ship where he glides past all these alien babies and is taken to a room.
Remember that Holy Roller woman who gave Peter the knowing look at his door? Well, he realizes that she’s his “real” wife “on a soul level.” He realizes, to his horror, that he’s had tons of sex with her and is the father of all those alien beings he saw! And just in case there was any ambiguity on the matter, these aliens are not attractive. He describes their skin as slimy and cold..I mean, he’s just disgusted. Still, on some level, he thinks that he agreed to this – maybe even 10 lifetimes before.
By the way, Peter goes home, and tells his wife everything. Hey honey, you know how I’ve had these vague alien abduction experiences and I’ve been getting therapy from Dr. Mack? Wellll, I found out the other day something new. Wanna guess? As it turns out, and I don’t mean to brag, but I Happen to have fathered a spaceship full of hybrid alien babies with this female alien being – probably since even before you and I met. How about that? How did she react? Totally fine with it – no problem. She’s like, well, boys will be boys. If he’s gonna have his spaceship of hybrid alien babies then I guess he’s just gotta have his spaceship of hybrid alien babies.
Alright, now, let’s get to prophecy, this is Session number 6 with Peter. Here’s where he learns from his alien friends that there are actually beings from all over the universe battling over control of the earth.
Say what? Now a skeptic might ask how in the world would we human beings not be aware of this, not even notice that there are alien beings trying to control us? Maybe their strategy is to keep us unaware while they bleed us of our energy. How might they be doing this, you ask? Perhaps by keeping us trapped in our minds, constantly preoccupied with the past or the future, or distracted by Netflix or social media so that our true souls, our true essence never sees the light of day.
Peter talks about people being taken up – as described by the rapture in the bible – taken up into spaceships which he says are ready for this crumbling of society which is going to transpire. He suggests that this might happen in 2010 – so it’s at least nice to know that he was wrong about that…but he’s also not really firm on that date. What I find interesting about his perceptions that there would be spaceships on standby to carry people away is that it’s not the first time I’ve heard this story. I think David Wilcock has suggested the exact same thing, and the year he thinks this will happen is 2030, but again, who knows. And there’s also a comedian named Jessa Reed who had an NDE in 2000; and she says that the aliens told her that it would get really bad – they showed her Portland on fire – which did happen last year during the protests; and they told her that all you have to do is reach out your hand, and we will take you up. So that’s three disparate sources giving pretty much the same story about aliens coming to lift us off this earth.
I’m going to leave it there. If you think this sounds interesting, make sure to pick up the book, since I really left a lot of detail out – this is only a tiny fraction. Thanks for listening, everyone. See you next time!
