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.
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.
From Kirkus Reviews
Mack has taken on the prophetic tone of Whitley Strieber in his latest works about alien contact, a tone that can become annoying. Mack created quite a stir when he published his book Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens a few years back. Why, people wanted to know, was this brilliant Harvard psychiatrist supporting the delusions of people who are clearly crazy? But Mack insists theyre not crazy, that, in fact, on all personality and other psychological tests given to them, abductees seem completely normal. After working with hundreds more abductees over the past few years, Mack has concluded that they and aliens together have important lessons for us. For, according to Mack, the aliens come not from another planet, but from an other realitya kind of parallel universe. They are forcing us to appreciate that cosmic realities exist beyond the three-dimensional universe that has bounded our earthly existence. The cosmos that is revealed by this opening of consciousness . . . appears to be filled with beings, creatures, spirits, intelliigences, gods . . . that have through the millennia been intimately involved with human existence. In support of this thesis, Mack focuses in depth on several aspects of the abductees experience: the sense abductees have that their bodies begin to vibrate at a higher frequency when in contact with the bright light and energy of the aliens; the environmental lessons that the aliens seem to be teaching the abductees, and the intense bonds of love that develop between the abductees and the aliens. The abductees quoted by Mack here believe the aliens are in some sense messengers of God, or Source, as they call this power. Mack quotes at length from a selection of abductees, all of whose testimony echo these themes. Only the most dedicated abduction devotees will be able to read this all the way through without intense skepticism. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"John Mack has again gone where others dare not go in pursuit of the truth about mysterious abduction experiences. Through research by such serious, qualified, and respected academics as John Mack, understanding of these events will eventually emerge."
--Edgar Mitchell, Sc.D., astronaut and founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences
"John Mack's research on the challenging phenomenon of alien abduction represents a
stunning breakthrough in our understanding of ourselves and our place in the larger cosmos. With a rare combination of empiricism, reason, and empathy he skillfully guides us to reconsider our attachment to the bankrupt materialist worldview and open our minds to the possibilities of a universe of awesome diversity."
--Ralph Metzner, Ph.D., psychologist and author of Green Psychology
"Passport to the Cosmos provides the most sophisticated and insightful analysis to date
about alien abduction phenomena. John Mack deserves not only praise for offering such a perceptive analysis of this phenomenon, but also thanks for holding his ground in the face of critics who cannot tolerate the possibility that humans are encountering an 'otherness' that does not fit into categories acceptable to our civilization."
--Michael Zimmerman, chair of the Department of Philosophy, Tulane University
"A transcendent, landmark work. . . . An extraordinarily rich and strange, mind-expanding book."
--Boston Herald
"Fascinating, suggestive, and even inspiring."
--The New York Times Book Review
"Provocative. . . . This book is a challenge to any reader. It opens the door to a very serious redefinition of life as we know it."
--Los Angeles Times Book Review
From the Author
Despite official skepticism and cynicism, it must be evident to many people that something extraordinary-at least from the standpoint of the Western worldview-is going on.
Yet the debate that is devoted to reports of alien abduction remains focused largely on the question of whether or not it is real in the strictly physical sense. Some skeptics even claim or imply that, insofar as the physical evidence for the reality of the phenomenon does not meet standards of scientific proof, we can presume for practical purposes that it does not exist at all.
But what if the phenomenon were subtle in the sense that it may manifest in the physical world, but derive from a source which by its very nature could not provide the kind of hard evidence that would satisfy skeptics for whom reality is limited to the material? If so, might we not be losing an opportunity to learn and grow as a species by remaining so wedded to an epistemology of physical proof?
What if, instead, we were to acknowledge that the abduction phenomenon is intrinsically mysterious and, ultimately, beyond our present framework of knowledge? What if we were to admit our puzzlement before this mystery?
Might not such an attitude of humility become, paradoxically, a way to enlarge upon what could then be learned? Is it possible that adopting an open attitude could result in greater knowledge not only about the physical aspects of the phenomenon, but about numinous dimensions as well?
And might not this opening of consciousness enable us to learn of unseen realities now obscured by our too limited epistemology, allowing us to rediscover the sacred and the divinity in nature and in ourselves?
From the Inside Flap
dbreaking follow-up to the best-selling Abduction, Pulitzer Prize-winner John E. Mack, M.D., powerfully demonstrates how the alien abduction phenomenon calls for a revolutionary new way of examining the nature of reality and our place in the cosmos.<br>Harvard professor John E. Mack stunned the world when he first published in Abduction the astonishing results of his extensive research involving clients who reported they had had encounters with alien life-forms. In Passport to the Cosmos, Mack, who has done additional research with abductees in the United States and around the world, provocatively asserts that this phenomenon is part of a new era in human consciousness, a time in which we must be willing to embrace the idea that alien visitation is real on some level.<br><br>For Mack, the alien abduction phenomenon is nothing short of a cosmic wake-up call to humans that we do indeed live in a world filled with spirits and beings who can cross the barrier we have thrown up between the materia
About the Author
John E. Mack, M.D., is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and founding director of the Program for Extraordinary Experience Research (PEER). His earlier books include the Pulitzer Prize-winning A Prince of Our Disorder, a biography of T. E. Lawrence.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
From Part ONE Chapter 1
Abduction: The Next Generation
The power of the encounters comes from acknowledging your helplessness and keeping the whole matter in question, because the deeper the question goes, the more you attempt to come to some kind of resolution. If you keep asking them [the beings] questions, they keep reforming the thing in such a way that the questions get more provocative but can't quite be answered. . . . If you start saying, "Well, they are aliens and they're from this planet," you're lost. . . . I've often been in situations where the question has been impossible to live with. You can't not answer it, and you can't answer it either. And there you have it. You sit in a situation where you can't bear to be?and you grow.
Whitley Strieber
Interview with author
Wagner, South Dakota
June 16, 1996
Background
In the years since the publication of Abduction (Mack 1994), I have worked with more than one hundred additional people in the United States and other countries who report encounters with strange beings. These individuals are called "abductees," "experiencers" or "anomalous experiencers"?finding appropriate language, as we shall see, has become an increasingly difficult problem.
The alien abduction phenomenon can be defined as the experience of being taken by humanoid beings, usually but not always against the person's will, into some sort of enclosure where a variety of procedures and communications occur. Not all of the encounters described in this book are typical or classical in the sense of being intrusive and/or traumatic. As you will see, the experiences of Carlos Diaz, Jean, Sequoyah and Gary, for example, are not typical, and I do not have evidence that Bernardo or the children at the Ariel School were actually abducted by the beings they saw, although their encounters affected them profoundly. I believe that including a somewhat wider range of experiences is likely to add to our understanding. In this book I will tell what I have learned from my further explorations. My understanding of the meaning and power of this extraordinary phenomenon, especially its relationship to the planet's ecological crisis, is continuously evolving. I will set forth the consistent patterns that seem to be emerging as well as the contradictions and paradoxes that persist. The implications of these experiences for our understanding of ourselves in this universe will, I think, be reflected in each chapter of the book.
Before telling of the findings that have led me to my present viewpoint, I thought it might be useful to share with the reader where I have arrived, or have been taken, philosophically speaking, by my immersion in this fascinating and compelling work. There has been a continuing evolution of my perspective regarding the data itself, the most effective method of bringing it forth, and the most useful way of interpreting the material. I have tried to be scrupulous in my observations and analysis, but I recognize that in the end what I have done will always to some degree remain idiosyncratic; that is, it is the product of the interplay of my own psyche or consciousness with the experiences of others.
I was raised in a secular American family of German Jewish heritage. The idea of a great bearded figure suspended somehow in the heavens was the only representation of God I remember being taught, and my logical, rational mind rejected this notion as impossible and absurd. Spirituality was a vaguely pleasant but unrealistic concept. My father, a professor of English at New York's City College, read the Bible to my sister and me as culture and literature. In medical school any thought that the complex life-forms we were studying were created by purpose or intelligent design rather than simply through Darwinian selection was disparagingly labeled "teleology," a kind of academic expletive. The experiences of native peoples with spirits, and the religious beliefs of the faithful, I looked upon, with Freud (another secular Jewish rationalist), as animism, primitivism, and illusion. Psychoanalysis and psychiatry, while expressly addressing the inner life, at the same time fit well into my materialist worldview, offering mechanistic explanations for human behavior, feelings, and experiences.
I was raised in a secular American family of German Jewish heritage. The idea of a great bearded figure suspended somehow in the heavens was the only representation of God I remember being taught, and my logical, rational mind rejected this notion as impossible and absurd. Spirituality was a vaguely pleasant but unrealistic concept. My father, a professor of English at New York's City College, read the Bible to my sister and me as culture and literature.
