Unseen Realms of the Infinite

chance to explore their abductions as dreams. Now, when they call a dream, is it a dream that recollects an abduction? Is it an abduction they're calling a dream? There's all kinds of ways that word dream is. There's just an experience that happens at night. You call it a dream because that's the way you were raised to think. If you take an abduction experiencer through the night of an experience, there is that moment of truth when they realize they

weren't really asleep when this happened. As a sort of like you went to bed, and it's very important to go, you know, reconstruct the events of the night, like, Okay, what time do you go to bed. You're watching television, and you went to bed, and then what happened? And and then this light came in now, but you didn't say you fell asleep. And that's a moment of truth. And at that moment, a shift in consciousness occurs. It's not as if they're just like an ordinary waking consciousness.

One of the people that Bud and I have worked with in New York describes it's as if the aliens come through a screen. They break through like a scrim which is a screen in the theater. It's as if they shatter one reality and come into this reality versus not asleep, but they're in another state of consciousness. But they're fully present in that state of consciousness. But it's a different state of consciousness. So it's a true experience, but in another state of consciousness, and we don't have

language for that. I'm Toby Ball and this is Strange Arrivals, Episode five, Unseen Realms of the Infinite. On June thirteenth, nineteen ninety two, a conference convened on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, titled the Abduction Study Conference. It brought together researchers, experiencers, and a loane skeptic in an attempt to make sense of the

apparent alien abduction phenomenon. It's a little hard to picture this now because alien abductions have largely faded from public consciousness, but these were prominent people in their respective fields who were looking at what they felt was the very likely reality that people, perhaps millions of people, had been abducted by aliens. What were the consequences, what should be done?

The conference was organized by John Mack, who was at Harvard, and David Pritchard, a prominent physicist at MIT who had become intrigued by the subject. Pritchard had looked at the ufology landscape in nineteen ninety two and realized that there was quite a bit of research that had been done, but almost none of it had been published. An academic conference, he thought, was the proper way for these researchers to

present their findings and then have discussions about them. It was an attempt at a serious academic look at the phenomenon, but while it was held on the MIT campus, MIT did not actually sponsor the conference. Not surprisingly, the subject was considered controversial. John mac, biographer Ralph Blumenthal. Now MT didn't sponsor this conference, but they gave it a venue because this professor Dave Pritchard was very eminent and he

wanted a place to hold a conference. So it attracted atomic scientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, religious scholars, a broad cross section of academia and people who were really interested in getting it at this mystery, which it was. So four five days in June of nineteen and ninety two they discussed all this. The one professed skeptic was Robert Schaeffer, who had worked with legendary UFO researcher Philip Klass and was himself a leading skeptical voice in ufology. Here he is

talking about the conference. They were very serious about this. Big conferences like this don't happen all that often. Especially this is not a conference that was open to the public.

It's only people who were invited to attend, and actually they invited They wanted to make a show of having skeptics there, to show that they were, you know, open, that they were not afraid of septics, because some upologists, you know, they'll actually run in in the hole if somebody's going to critically examine their claims as Blumenthal mentions.

The conference attracted experts in a number of subjects for an interdisciplinary effort at making sense of the reports that were being obtained by UFO abduction researchers like John Mack, Bud Hopkins, and David Jacobs. The conference featured about one hundred presentations. Several people had more than one presentation as the conference organizers tried to create a coherent, comprehensive picture

of what they believed was happening. In many ways, the conference was at venue for mac and Hopkins and other uipologists. They had been at the forefront of identifying what they saw as an abduction crisis, and this was their opportunity to present their findings to a scientific audience. For their response, this included giving presentations on their research methods and on specific cases they felt were especially compelling, say so that they had one big new case and a whole bunch

of other ones. If they thought was so well documented and everything, this was going to be like their revelation to the world. Look at this great stuff, this great proof that we have. Okay, we could drop this upon the world, we could reveal this, and so that's what they were trying to do, and of course it didn't turn out the way that they were hoping. This big case was the so called brooklyn Bridge case that involved the alleged abduction of a woman identified as Linda Cortill.

We looked at this incident in episode ten of the first season of Strange Arrivals. As time passed, the story grew until it became too convoluted and incredible for all but the most committed abduction adherents. In the end, it was a blow to the credibility of the field, but that came after this conference. The conference was also a chance for the u Phoe researchers to present their methods

and results to a scientific audience. The expectation was that the scientists would affirm that their methods were valid, but

again the reality was a little different. He had all kinds of psychology, were all kinds of psychologists and physinicists and everybody in this conference here, and as they were talking, like Bud Opkins and so I talking about these surveys that they were doing and such and a whole bunch of psychologists, and the audience back saw, right, could you didn't you quantify these the survey that Schaefer is talking about is known as the Roper pole. The Roper pole

is famous in UFO circles. It sought to determine to some degree the number of people in the US who had been abducted by UFOs. The idea for it came from a man named Robert Bigelow, the owner of the discount motel chain, Budget Suites of America, founder of Bigelow Aerospace, and a leading figure in funding UFO studies. He provided the funds to conduct the survey. The survey was conducted

face to face rather than by phone. It asked respondents a series of questions which the designers Hopkins Jacobs and a sociologist named Rob Westrom thought would identify people who had likely been abducted, even in cases where the respondent didn't remember the experience. And the results that two percent of the population, or three point seven million Americans, were, in Bud Hopkins words, highly likely to be UFO abductees.

They felt that this number was a conservative estimate. Like so much of ufology, the Roper poll seems to mimic science without actually adhering to scientific rigor, and the scientists at the conference noticed often the most interesting parts of conference proceedings are the questions and comments that follow presents. This conference was no different. After a presentation on the Roper Pole, sociologist Robert Hall expressed his reservations about the pole.

I'm sorry, but all due respect to Bud Hopkins and Dave Jacobs, who have done a lot of things very valuable in this field, I have to say that I think this survey was the worst waste of research money I've ever seen, in a terrible, terrible lost opportunity. I think with proper advanced planning, it could have been a very valuable survey, but it does not provide any scientific evidence about the prevalence of these events. After another presentation,

the poll was again the subject of stern questioning. David Jacobs protested that he didn't believe that he and others were making any outlandish claims as a result of the poll. Hypnotherapist Joe Nyman replied, reasonably, I think I don't agree with that, Dave, I think you are making an outlandish claim. Its specifically stated that these are the number of abductees and two and a half percent of the population are abductees. They screwed it up completely and Bud Hopkins said, from

you know, the speaker's platform. He said, well, I'm glad you guys are here. I'm glad you guys are telling me this because you're the experts that we brought you here, so I ducally give us feedback. I don't understand these things. I'm just an artist. I don't understand about psychological tasting.

It's there, ken, he says, it were. It was not nearly as solid as they thought it was, as it was immediately apparent from having you know, a number of these psychologists of the audience who were not themselves actually into ufology, but who are into psychological past daying down comparisons are various things. Despite these issues, not everyone saw the conference as a failure. In fact, people point the conference is making a compelling case for the abduction phenomenon.

Even today again Ralph Blumenthal talking about the conference proceedings. They made a record of their discussions. It came out in a thick book two years later. It was embargoed at the time, but it remains a very authoritative account

of the best research of all these scholars. And you know what I like to say is that the so called skeptics and debunkers who pooh pooh this whole notion of alien encounters and dismiss it as ridiculous need to do the research, because the research consists of looking at volumes like this Alien Discussions account of the MIT Conference

to really understand that the strength of the evidence. It's circumstantial evidence, to be sure, but these accounts that are very vivid and coherent and consistent, and you can really challenge these accounts till you know what they really are. So a lot of the skeptics are lazy, they haven't done the work, and they just say this is ridiculous. Well, of course it's ridiculous. It makes no sense in our world.

And yet these accounts are so vivid and so consistent and so credible when you look at the people from all walks of life are coming out with its, including children, not only the aerial school children, but children as young as two years old or John mac interviewed who told stories of being taken from their cribs and flown into the sky by alien beings. And these kids, you know,

haven't read books, and they haven't seen movies. This is just stories that they've told their parents and told John mack so That was the importance of the MIT conference and the research he did. It gave credibility to this phenomenon that once you really go into it, it stands up. It's very difficult to challenge. What I find really interesting about John Mack is here was an obviously very smart,

very accomplished guy. He studied alien abducts, worked with experiencers, and came to believe unequivocally that people were being abducted in mass numbers. But this was based on the testimony of the experiencers. There was no real physical evidence, certainly not of the kind you'd expect with the sheer number of cases. So how do you resolve this contradiction? After

the break, strange arrivals will return in a moment. It seems to me that the tension that lies at the heart of ufology and the alien abduction phenomenon is this. There are thousands and thousands of UFO encounters and far fewer but still numerous tales of an abduction, but to this day there is no single piece of the kind of evidence one would expect an abundance based on the sheer number of cases. Someone who thinks seriously about UFOs has to confront the question of why this evidence does

not exist. John Mack wrestled with this question and arrived at an answer that is both strange and not surprising because it reaches back to his preexisting beliefs. We saw how his devotion to environmentalist and peace movements was reflected in the messages the aerial students said they received. In explaining how the phenomenon leaves no physical traces, he looked to his beliefs about spirituality and realities not accounted for

in Western science. This is John Mack being interviewed informally on camera by philosopher Terrence McKenna at the nineteen ninety two International Transpersonal Conference in Prague. He mentions the term anima mundi, which refers to the concept that there is a connection between all living things in the world, much

like a soul in an individual. The world of both spirit with form and spirit without form, or the anima mundi, whatever your language for it, the Great Spirit, the Holy Spirit, whatever it is, it we have lost contact with it. It signals us we don't listen. There are various ways that certain people have revelations and experiences. Occasionally, the more advanced spiritual people among us are reconnecting with the spirit. But for most of us, the only language that we

know now is the language of the material world. So it's as if the Divinity say, Okay, if that's all you understand, I'll give it to you in the material world. I'll give you physical manipulations. I'll give you reproductive connection. I'll give you cuts, scars, scoop marks. I'll give you a burned earth where the UFOs land. And I'll give you an experience which is consistent among various people, which empirically everybody agrees that photographs of UFOs. It's showing up

in the physical world. It may not be of the physical world as we know it, but it communicates in the physical world. What is Max saying here, He believes that the phenomenon is essentially a non material or spiritual one. But we have for the most part lost our ability to access that world. So it appears to people in strange physical ways to let itself be known. So through this experience in the body. Because that's the importing point here.

This experience is not just information and an intellectual sense. They experience these abductions in the body and as several abductees have said to me, we only know the body now as embodied creatures. If you want to reach us, you have to reach us through the body, because that's the only language we understand it. So that tells us that the creatures are real in this on a sense.

As we have seen earlier, Mac had taken part in attempts to access a spiritual realm through meditation, taking LSD, and most importantly, through holotropic breathing, a controlled breathing technique intended to cause non normal states. In nineteen ninety four, science writer Jill Nemark interviewed Mac for an article in Psychology Today. In it, they discussed Mac's experience with this

technique the first time he tried it. Macna only quote reexperienced his mother's death when he was eight months old. He also felt quote my father's grief at the time. I got more out of one session that I had in all my years of analysis. Later in the session, he said, I became a Russian father in the sixteenth century, a man whose four year old son was decapitated by Mongol hordes. Mac found analogs to his conception of the

phenomenon existing in both the material and spiritual realms. He saw the stories of shamans as describing experiences similar to those of abductees. In his book Abduction, he quotes the great Romanian sociologist Murcia Aliada. During his initiation, the shaman learns how to penetrate into other dimensions of reality and maintain himself there. His trials, whatever the nature of them, endow him with the sensitivity that can perceive and integrate

these new experiences. Through the strangely sharp and senses of the shaman, the sacred manifests itself. He would bring the shaman concept to his work with experiencers, making those connections concrete, even if the meaning wasn't always clear to the subject. This is abduction experiencer Elizabeth Anglin, who worked with Mac. He listened a lot, and he took a lot of notes, and then when he wanted to get his opinion, he would say some blah blah blah, Well, you know, I

think it might be a shamonic thing. Mac would also talk about the phenomenon in terms of what he considered the false choice between the real and the not real. He wrote, we've got make belief phenomena and we've got reality. I think we need a category of phenomena for which we have no category. Ralph Blumenthal, Well, he said that this phenomenon has a way of penetrating our reality, and when it penetrates, it penetrates with a great deal of vividness.

There's nothing subtle about it. These people who reported these encounters say this was more real to me than reality. This was not a dream. John Macrone a book on nightmares. He studied dreams and nightmares, and these people said, look, I know the difference between a nightmare and reality. This was not a nightmare. So the best he could come up with was that this was some kind of a reality that was penetrating our reality. It was absolutely real,

but not our everyday reality. It was happening in some other dimension, on some other way that he could not explain. But it was absolutely real to the people who encountered it. The phenomenon is real, but not from our reality. What does this mean to me? It sounds a little like stubbornness. Sure, I can't prove it's real, but that's because you're only willing to consider our reality. But what reason do we have to believe that there is another reality? We seem

to be far adrift of science. Just how far adrift is clear when this reasoning is applied to topics outside the abduction phenomenon. This passage from Jill Nemark's Psychology Today article begins with a quote from Mac. He says, quote, I know this sounds like hedging, but we don't know in what reality this occurs. False and true memory don't apply. This is powerfully real, But in what reality? I asked him where he felt he belonged in the raging controversy

over memory and abuse. Does he think memories of satanic abuse might be happening in an alternate reality? He postulated that indeed they might, saying, perhaps those memories are experientially true, but they didn't factually happen in this reality. What does this mean in the fourth dimension or perhaps the sixth dimension? So again, this article was written in nineteen ninety four, before the so called Satanic panic had been comprehensive debunked.

He says about a controversy that is raging within psychology, his field of expertise, that is possible that memories of abuse are true but from a different reality. What does that mean? What do you do with this idea? People were on trial at the time on charges of abuse stemming from these quote unquote recovered memories. The more I read John Mack, the more I got the sense that

he was approaching the topic backwards. He wasn't gathering this testimonial evidence and trying to determine whether it described a phenomenon that was actually physically happening and not just a psychological perception. He assumed that the stories were things that had actually happened, and he was trying to figure out how to explain them. And it leads to reasoning like this example from Max nineteen ninety four book Passport to the Cosmos, where the following is suggested as necessary to

understanding what is going on. An awareness of unseen realities of the Infidel in which the laws of space, time, reality as we know them seem not to apply. This can create a dilemma or a mind that would stay in the duality of internal external, for the phenomenon appears

to be both or now one than the other. In fact, mac even puts forward the idea that whatever is behind the phenomenon is actually intentionally creating a situation where there is enough evidence to convince believers, but not enough to win over skeptics. It is as if the agent or intelligence at work here we're parodying, mocking, tricking, and deceiving the investigators, providing just enough physical evidence to win over those who are prepared to believe in the phenomenon, but

not enough to convince the skeptic. In this apparently frustrating situation, there may lie a deeper truth and possibility. He goes on to say that the phenomenon might be inviting us to change our way of looking at things, to expand our consciousness, to do, in other words, what John Mack wants us to do. John Mack died tragically when he was hit by a car in London on September twenty seventh, two thousand and four. He was seventy four years old.

His final years were marked by two controversies, which I won't go into depth about, but which should be mentioned. The first was a critical article in the April twenty fifth, nineteen ninety four edition of Time magazine. It featured the revelation that one of Mac's subjects, a woman named Donna Bassett, was a debunker. Earlier, she had reported to Mac in a session that, among other things, she had been on a spacecraft with both John F. Kennedy and Nikita Kruschoff,

and that she comforted the crying Cruischoff again. Ralph Blumenthal, Yeah, this was a very sad episode, as she wanted to destroy him. She thought he was a cult leader and she'd made the whole thing up. Well, it turns out that she probably did have real alien encounter experiences because she told them to other people before encountering John Mack. She had a very strange background herself, and for whatever reason,

she was determined to bring John Mack down. And Time magazine picked this up and made a big issue of it, and it hurt John mac tremendously. It was damaging to him, no doubt, but it did not undermine all the other cases he had dealt with, and it was just a very very sad episode. There was more to the article than Bassett's allegations at general skepticism about his work. One passage reads, psychologists and ethicists do not question max sanity

so much as his motives and methodology. They charge that he is misusing the techniques of hypnosis, trying to shape the memories of his subjects to suit his vision of an intergalactic future. And very possibly endangering the emotional health of his patients in the process. Quote. If this were just an example of some zany new outer limit of how foolish psychology and psychiatry can be in that wrong hands, we'd look at it, roll our eyes and walk away,

says University of California, Berkeley professor Richard O'she. Quote, but the use of his techniques in counseling is substantially harming lots of people. End quote. The second controversy was that Harvard launched an unprecedented secret committee to look into Max's research. Harvard was very uncomfortable with his research and eventually conveying a secret committee and inquisition. I call it because that's a word that they used at one to see if

he was doing anything wrong inappropriate. And they kept asking him what is his proof, and he kept saying, well, I really don't have proof apart from the stories that all these people have told. The Harvard committee echoed the concerns of Richard o'she about Max's treatment of his subjects. Max Lawyer wrote a letter during the inquiry that was made public and quoted in an article in the student

newspaper The Harvard Crimson. The letter asserted that a draft of the committee reports stated, quote to communicate in any way whatsoever to a person who has reported a close encounter with an extraterrestrial life form that this experience might well have been real is professionally irresponsible on the part of any academic scientific professional person. With this letter, the committee's work became public and was viewed in some quarters

as a threat to free inquiry. In the end, the committee quote reaffirmed doctor Mac's academic freedom to study what he wishes and to state his opinions without impediment end quote. It concluded, quote doctor mac remains a member and good standing of the Harvard Faculty of Medicine. I want to come back to the Abduction conference because there was something that emerged from the conference that I think is important

to remember about John Mack. Western Michigan University professor Michael Swords wrote a review of the conference proceedings in a nineteen ninety seven issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration. He wrote, the conference at MIT split the public unity of American researchers into at least two major schools of opinion deeply disagree to this day. Both continue to believe

that the phenomenon is extraterrestrially based. Hopkins, Jacobs, and others were present to elaborate what some have come to refer to as the Dark Marauders view of abductions, but conference co organizer and world known Harvard psychologist John Mack presented an entirely different spin. These experiences are extraterrestrially caused, but are positively transformational for the human spirit. What sticks with

me about Mac was his essential optimism. He saw the abduction phenomenon as being a force for what he considered to be good in the world, and I think this optimism carried over to the way he interacted with his subjects. I agree with Richard o'shee and the draft of the Harvard Committee report that telling your patients that they have

had real alien encounters is hugely problematic. But Mac, in contrast with Bud Hopkins, and as we will see, David Jacobs, tried to bolster his subjects again Elizabeth Anglin and Mac. He wouldn't poo poo you and say, oh, you poor little victim. He'd be like, you've been working full time, you've been going to school full time, and you survived that, and you survived that like twice a week for the past how many months? So you know what you are.

You're a survivor. That's what you are. You're not a victim, You're a survivor. And Hopkins would really sort of and my sense of its time went on was he was really getting off on the victimization of it and saying, oh, these poor victims, these poor victims, these poor victims. But also at the same time you sort of controlling the narrative more than I felt mac ever did, and Jacobs

was worse, much worse next time on Strange Arrivals. Strange Arrivals is a production of iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky. This episode was written and hosted by Toby Ball and produced by Rima L. Kayali Jesse Funk, and Naami Griffin, with executive producers Alexander Williams, Matt Frederick,

and Aaron Mankey, and supervising producer Josh Thaine. Learn more about the show at Grimm and Miild dot com, slash Strange Arrivals, and find more podcasts from iHeartRadio by visiting the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,