Quotes from John E. Mack

As we, like the abductees, permit ourselves to surrender the illusion of control and mastery of our world, we might discover our place as one species among many whose special gifts include unusual capacities for caring, rational thought, and self-awareness.

As we suspend the notion of our preeminent and dominating intelligence, we might open to a universe filled with life-forms different from ourselves to whom we might be connected in ways we do not yet comprehend.

The aliens are using us, the argument goes, for their own purposes, replenishing their genetic stock at our expense after some sort of holocaust on their own planet. If they make us feel that there is something worthwhile about the whole process, this is the result of deception. I would not say that the aliens never resort to deception to hide their purposes, but the above argument is, in my view, too narrow or linear an interpretation.

The connecting principle, the force that expands our consciousness beyond ourselves, appears to be love.

As part of our effort to explore whether the abduction phenomenon, as has been suggested, is primarily a Western occurrence, my colleague Dominique Callimanopulos and I have been exploring alien abductions in other countries and among American indigenous peoples.

From this perspective, the earth would no longer be simply a marketplace, its lands and resources divided among competing human groups.

My own impression is that we may be witnessing something far more complex, namely an awkward joining of two species, engineered by an intelligence we are unable to fathom, for a purpose that serves both of our goals with difficulties for each. I base this view on the evidence presented by the abductees themselves.

The alien beings have come to the abductees from a source that remains unknown to us. We still do not fully grasp their purposes or their methods. It seems clear, however, that "they" have had to come to "us," appearing in material form so that we might know them.

The abduction phenomenon, it seems clear, is about what is yet to come. It presents, quite literally, visions of alternative futures, but it leaves the choice to

Mr. Mutwa and the children were both distressed by their experiences. But they also spoke spontaneously of receiving powerful communications from the alien beings, especially through their huge black eyes, about the failure of our species to take proper care of the earth.

A recently interviewed geologist and abduction experiencer wrote me that his experiences have taught him that "We are a runaway species bent on self-destruction, because we (collectively) are unwilling to impose self controls to stop our growth and to plan for our future with forethought and higher purpose" (Bruce Cornet, letter to the author, December 1994).

The alien abduction field is a new one, and it deserves a broad and systematic multi-disciplinary inquiry. It is my hope that, if nothing else, this book will encourage at least some of the skeptics who have criticized my methods and hypotheses to immerse themselves in the primary data of this field, namely the experiences of those who have undergone the abduction encounters, and draw their own conclusions about what is taking place here and what it might mean for the human future.

Since the publication of the hardcover edition of this book in April 1994, a number of questions have been raised about the reality of the alien abduction phenomenon and the evidential basis for crediting the experiencers' accounts of what has happened to them.

Humans are just another form. You're another lifeform of energy. You think you're independent of life, and you can't be that way. You're causing death. You're causing a lot of death and it's your own. And we're trying to help you, but we came and we were killed by many of you.

She observed that more than one person "could potentially access the same life." She also had brought in her drawings of an anal probe, which compared accurately with a picture that Dave had made independently, except that hers was shown open and his was closed. "The only reason I saw this open," she said, "was because the doctor showed it to me.

The contemporary Western tenet that we are alone in the universe, conversant only with ourselves, is, in fact, a minority perspective, an anomaly.

In Truk, located in the Marshall Islands, people have traditionally believed in an outer world that corresponds in some ways to our modern conception of outer space.

Likewise, Native American Hopi were traditionally taught by the Kachinas, spirit-like beings from other planets, who instructed them in agricultural techniques and gave them philosophical and moral guidelines that have shaped Hopi culture

None of this work, in my view, has come to terms with the potential implications of the abduction phenomenon for the expansion of human consciousness or the meaning for our world of this apparent opening to a mysterious reality that may be beyond the manifest physical world.

Chi," which he defines as the "force which pervades the universe from which reality arises.

People in Ireland believed that fairies or the gentle folk were not earthly, having originated on other planets. Fairies often travel about the skies in cloudlike aerial boats called "fairy boats" or "spectre ships" (Rojcewicz 1991, p. 481).

This book describes a clinical map of the abduction territory, which I believe shows that we are dealing with a phenomenon that may not originate in our physical reality but penetrates variably into it or manifests within it in a variety of ways.

Nevertheless, my experiences with abductees push me toward this conclusion.

as if a mischievous intelligence were at work. Yet I have come to the view after five years of involvement in this field that this subtlety is intrinsic to it and must be embraced if we