Quotes About Abduction

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.

through natural catastrophe, especially a more communicable form of AIDS. This kind of apocalyptic vision is common among abductees, but we have no way of knowing whether it is authentically predictive in the physical world – it certainly is not inconsistent with what we know to be occurring on the planet – or represents some sort of metaphoric prophecy or wake-up call.

The abduction phenomenon also raises interesting questions about the nature of memory and the control of consciousness. As discussed in chapter 1, prevalence or incidence

Sometimes this not remembering appears to protect the abductees from a distress that they could not handle, especially in the case of children. But we have little understanding of how this repressing force works, or, for that matter, why an altered state of consciousness, facilitated in a caring, protective setting, is so effective in recovering abduction memories.

For me and others who have attended the sessions, as well as for the abductees themselves, it is this intensity of recovered emotion that lends inescapable authenticity to the phenomenon.

Indeed, the alien abduction phenomenon seems to open abductees and those who work with them to deeper realms of human emotion, whether or not that is a specific "purpose" of the phenomenon.

The abduction phenomenon also seems to offer new perspectives on human destructiveness.

But there are more fundamental questions raised by the abduction phenomenon which seem to lie outside the ontological framework of modern science and appear to be unapproachable by its methods. Foremost among these is the problem of defining in what reality the abductions occur.

These qualities were captured in a poem she called "Decision," written in the winter of 1992-93. She wrote of her battle to overcome her fears and the secrecy and silence that had always oppressed her. She had chosen, she said, to "no longer" let her abduction experiences "take all of me . . . At least I will have the dignity," she concluded, "of knowing and owning my own memory.

Temple University historian David Jacobs has further refined the basic reported pattern of an abduction experience (Jacobs 1992). Jacobs identifies primary phenomena such as manual or instrument examination, staring, and urological-gynecological procedures; secondary events, including machine examination, visualization, and child presentation; and ancillary events, among them miscellaneous additional physical, mental, and sexual activities and procedures.

still greater problem resides in the fact that memory in relation to abduction experiences behaves rather strangely. As in the cases, for example, of Ed (chapter 3) or Arthur (chapter 15) the memory of an abduction may be outside of consciousness until triggered many years later by another experience or situation that becomes associated with the original event.

As has so often been said, there is, as yet, no recorded abduction experience that proved, upon investigation, to be a reflection of some other trauma or experience, despite a great deal of effort on the part of investigators to find some other source for these experiences.

Each abductee discovers that he or she is but one intelligent being in a universe populated with various other entities that are not "supposed to" exist.

Abductees tend to feel that the contents of their minds are thoroughly revealed to the aliens.

That's when the ship came down. It came right down. Bam! There it was. Small." The ship, he said, was "kind of round, but oblong. It's kind of like an egg," a "standing-up egg." The craft was "real symmetrical . . . more oblong on the top half" and "about four feet off the ground," with some sort of "feet" holding it up.

What some of these critics may not realize is that frequently abduction experiencers have already been subjected to intense investigations of their abduction-related symptoms by physicians and various mental health professionals seeking a variety of neurophysiological and/or psychological and emotional explanations, sometimes with frustrating and even damaging effects (see, for example, the cases of Scott, Sheila, and Paul in this book).

Psychiatric examinations and numerous psychological tests have failed to reveal forms of mental illness that could, conceivably, explain the abduction phenomenon (Mack 1995; Bloecher, Clamar, and Hopkins 1985; Parnell and Sprinkle 1990; Rodeghier, Goodpastor, and Blatterbauer 1991; Zimmer 1984; Spanos, Cross, Dickson, and DeBreuil 1993).

politics of ontology" (Mack 1992) is then the primary arena in which the reality and significance of the UFO abduction phenomenon must be confronted. Before its potential meaning for our individual and collective lives can be realized it has to be taken seriously and moved out of the sensationalizing tabloids into the mainstream of the society so that the sophisticated media is free to give up their supercilious tone.

It is true that abduction experiences do show some of the symptoms associated with post-traumatic states, but these symptoms appear to be the result, not the cause, of what the experiencers have undergone.

Furthermore, there is much more involved in the complex narratives of abduction experiences than human trauma per se.

There are other political implications of the abduction phenomenon. Politics, local, national, and international, is, after all, a game of power. We seek power to dominate, control, or influence a sphere of action. But the abduction phenomenon, by its demonstration that control is impossible, even absurd, and its capacity to reveal our wider identity in the universe, invites us to discover the meaning of our "power" in a deeper, spiritual sense.

There are, for example, consistent details of passage to and from the craft, the rich descriptions of the alien beings and the intricate relationships to them, the many non-traumatic activities and observations that occur within the craft, and the elaborate communications concerning the earth's ecology and other psychospiritual matters which are, in my experience, a frequent, if not regular, dimension of the abduction phenomenon.

The transmission of information from the alien beings to the experiencers appears to be a fundamental aspect of the abduction phenomenon.