Passport to the Cosmos : Human Transformation and Alien Encounters (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Here is a fascinating foray into an exotic world. From Harvard psychiatry professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Mack comes a second book (after Abduction) based on accounts by people who claim to have been abducted by aliens. While he fudges the question of whether the aliens are "real in a strictly material sense," he insist that the experience is "real" for the abductees, in the way that shamans' spiritual journeys are real to them; indeed, a couple of his interviewees are shamans. He focuses on the newly emerging spiritual importance of the alleged abductees' message. Their reports, Mack believes, reveal much about human culture and the future of the human race. In extensive interviews with Mack, those who claim to have been abducted, report that the aliens are especially motivated by questions of ecological destruction, and that they may even be survivors of a destroyed civilization seeking to breed hybrid children with humans to ensure the survival of both the human race and their own. Overwhelmingly, the abductees state that the aliens visit Earth to warn us that our cavalier tree-cutting, water-polluting, trash-dumping habits will have dire consequences if we do not change our ways. Abductees are left with not only a profound caring for the environment, but with a sense that they have encountered creatures sent by whatever power rules the universe. They particularly find that their experiences resonate with Native American religions. This discussion leads into what is possibly the most intriguing section of the book, the examination of sex between humans and aliensAgreat sex, by numerous accounts. But as a serious investigation into a mystifying experience, Mack's account poses questions begging for answers. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Mack, a Harvard University psychiatrist and Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of T.E. Lawrence, created an academic stir with the publication of Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens (1994), in which he argued that tales of alien abduction were true. As a result, Harvard warned him to adhere to its standards of conduct for clinical research. In this follow-up, Mack, still undaunted, argues that our knowledge of reality needs to change and that scientific rationalism alone cannot explain the alien abduction syndrome. He examines traditional views of reality, the implications for humanity in light of the abduction phenomenon, and the traumatic effects on "experiencers" or abductees. Mack's work with indigenous peopleAshamans and medicine men and womenAsuggests that the phenomenon is not simply a product of Western imagination. This veritable handbook of New Age philosophy will find a readership in most public libraries.
-AGary D. Barber, formerly with SUNY Coll. at Fredonia
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Crown; 1 edition (October 26, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0517705680
• ISBN-13: 978-0517705681
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #564,416 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rational, provocative and always engaging, January 31, 2001

By	Mac Tonnies (Kansas City, MO USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

In "Passport to the Cosmos," John Mack succeeds in creating one of the most astute, rational narratives ever written about the "alien abduction" phenomenon. Not since Whitley Strieber's seminal best-selling "Communion" have I read a book that addresses the issue of nonhuman intelligence with such humility and restraint (traits lacking in recent books on the subject, such as David Jacobs' insipidly literal "The Threat"). Mack argues that alien encounters, while subjectively real to experiencers, probably reflect a much more sophisticated model of reality than Western empiricism currently allows. In other words, abduction experiences are likely not "real" in the traditional sense of flesh-and-blood extraterrestrial visitors conducting unsolicited health check-ups (an interpretation exploited by skeptics eager to downplay the reality of alleged alien encounters).

Mack takes time to address the issue from an indigenous perspective, drawing on testimony from experiencers in Africa and South America. The parallels, he reveals, are as startling as they are productive. In them, Mack concludes that we are indeed coming into contact with a largely (though not entirely) unrecognized intelligence that appears to antedate space-time as we know it.

Mack is to be applauded for his skepticism and determination in helping our understanding of what is perhaps the most misunderstood phenomenon in the world today. "Passport to the Cosmos" is a landmark book in a field with too few reasoned perspectives and way too many unbounded imaginations.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An unexpected, inspiring trip across spiritual terrain, December 10, 1999

By A Customer

Passport to the Cosmos explores a spiritual terrain that I would not have expected to find in a book that on the surface appears to be about something "alien." What is discovered is a profound reconnection with the sacred, provoked by something as yet unknown.

Dr. John Mack compares the reactions of people in the West who have faced these experiences to a trio of experiencers from indigenous cultures - Native American, Brazillian, and African. The reactions and interpretations are compared and contrasted, and the value of some indigenous perspectives is considered.

In view of his years of clinical work with over 200 people reporting these experiences, Dr. Mack feels that the West suffers deeply when faced with something drastically unknown. But he suggests that if the terror of these experiences is fully faced, even embraced, an expansion of consciousness may take place.

"When these phenomena show up in our world in a way that we cannot deny, this powerfully shatters our worldview, and when you shatter a worldview, then new possibilities for human identity and experience emerge. One of the elements that occur when that worldview is shattered is then the earth and everything in the earth and every human relation becomes sacred. And that kind of consciousness, that return of the sacred, of the reverent sense of connection that emerges from this experience transforms our whole relationship to one another and to the planet itself. And it seems to me that's a good thing."

How the terror of being provoked by these experiences can transform into something truly grand is the journey of the book, told in the words of Dr. Mack and several particularly articulate experiencers (from the over 200 interviewed), so I leave that journey for the reader to discover. It is a journey worth taking.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars alien abductions, real or not?, May 22, 2002

By	"melchizedeck" (Norwich, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters (Paperback)

A good overview of the alien abduction phenomenon. Mack's main conclusions are that the experience of abductees are not purely imagination, hysteria or hallucination. The abductees are normally perfectly sane and come from every walk of life and they are not generally attention seekers who are jumping on a bandwagon. The only physical evidence Mack has found are scars from alleged medical procedures during abductions and he notes that other investigators have found implants, although they are not found to be made of 'alien' material.

Mack doesn't use the label 'abductee' he prefers to use the term 'experiencer', because it is a more neutral term. He notes the similarity between the phenomenon and shamanic initiation. In that the abductees who are most able to deal with the experience are those who face the terror of the powerlessness and pain involved in alleged medical procedures and transcend the fear. Mack seems to think the 'aliens' (although he doesn't use that term either) are less extraterrestrial than interdimensional. Mack is probably the most intelligent investigator of the abduction phenomenon, he is a phd, pulitzer prize winner and is not afraid to investigate taboo areas, despite the flack he recieves from the scientific mainstream for doing so.

Most people assume the alien abduction phenomenon is not real, because any 'aliens' would not be able to change dimensions, break the light speed barrier or even travel close enough to light speed in order to get here or that we are alone in the universe. There is also the assumption by many people that 'aliens' if they were here would land on the Whitehouse lawn and announce themselves. The equivalent of this could of already happened of course, any cover up could have been undertaken in the interests of 'national security', but this is just speculation. The main problem with the abduction phenomenon is the lack of physical evidence. Although if 'aliens' wanted and were able to leave no physical evidence, that would not be any more unbelievable than the phenomenon happening in the first place. It has been said that any great advancement in science is indistinguishable from magic and the ability of the 'aliens' could be described as magical.

...P> A very common theme that the abductees recount is the 'aliens' communicating to them that the earth is becoming increasingly unstable due to environmental damage caused by humans. This is as good a reason as any for 'aliens' to interact with us. When Mack asks the abductees why 'aliens' don't act directly to solve our environmental problems? He is told that the 'aliens' don't wish to incringe on our freedom of choice and also that they did attempt to give free energy technology to the government, but it was covered up as it eroded US hegemony of energy technology. These two statements are contradictory, but Mack doesn't comment on this. There is a lot of scepticism surrounding the subject of alien abduction and that is understandable. A lot of people tend to think that because we are top of the food chain and allegedly the most intelligent species on earth although we don't act like it a lot of the time; that it's not possible for other intelligent entities to be far in advance of us in intelligence, duration of their science and psychic development compared to our relatively young science and lack of interest in studying psychic development. A lack of vision of what is possible is a sign of complacency, the same complacency that allows us to destroy our environment.
( review by Melchizedeck )