John Mack's Transpersonal Journey Continues
by Bill Chalker

Like all of us I found the news of John Mack’s untimely passing very saddening.

While some of us might not have agreed with some of the directions John was taking the subject in, I think the field has been enriched by his involvement. When he was in Australia I supported his research into indigenous aboriginal abduction & UFO experiences — an area we both had a strong interest in, particularly its shamanic dimensions. On the hurdles he often encountered, particularly from mainstream academia, he once told me what he felt. Maybe his response was coloured by spending too much time in Australia, but clearly he enjoyed his time down down under. His response: “Fuck ‘em”. I smiled and wished him well. He was always a courageous and wonderful researcher. Full speed John on the rest of your transpersonal journey.

I recently went through the final editing of my forthcoming book, from which some discussions about John’s legacy had been deleted. Not my choice, but this forum and this time seems like a good place to post that material.

Regards,

Bill Chalker

September 2004

I lectured with John Mack, Dominique Callimanopulos, his research associate, Robb Tilley, a fellow research associate, and experiencers, Kelly Cahill and Peter Khoury, in Sydney, on February 4th, 1996, at an Australian Transpersonal Association presentation. Some of the forum session was germane to the key issues being discussed in this book, specifically the search for evidence and the nature of the reality behind alien abductions. This is the crux of the problem. The abduction phenomenon is centring on the human dimension of the UFO phenomenon. To date it has not provided the kind of physical evidence that would persuade a scientist.[i] The UFO phenomenon has in many ways. My focus in this book on the scientific and forensic examination of the alien abduction phenomenon is an attempt to re-centre the drift of the abduction mystery:

Dominique Callimanopulos: The real problem with this is how do you define what knowledge is and how do we know when we know something. You have the researcher who has his or her consciousness coming at an experiencer or abductee who is having a subjective experience... The whole interaction is not something you can repeat. So how do we know what takes place during that enquiry.

Bill Chalker: Just as a scientist to respond to the question about physical evidence and the need for physical evidence, I would like to put my perspective... Like it or lump it, the UFO experience (and the abduction experience) is a marginalised experience in human society. It might be popularised by the X Files and things like that. But, essentially it is seen as a fringe phenomenon. It is not generally accepted as a reality. Most of us on a day to day basis live in a physical reality and that’s why there is this sort of emphasis on the search for physical evidence ... But, I find it interesting that indigenous cultures seem to be coming out and offering us some quite sobering insights into this field, that they themselves seem to have been aware of for hundreds of years. Also, the powerful nature of these experiences on the individual is also sobering from a scientific point of view, for me at least ... That’s why I turn to people like John and other health professionals to assist us in that field.

John Mack: What Bill is slipping us slightly into here, is what I’ve called the politics of ontology. In other words, this is a political question he is hinting at. Who decides in a given culture what is real or not. In this culture it isn’t any longer so much the religious leaders, as it is the scientists. In other words the mainstream scientists tell us the methodologies, the criteria for reality that we are expected to go by, and he said this very well, that is, unfortunately in this culture, this is marginalised and mainstream notions of method and reality require that we get this physical evidence, and I support this, and I think we should get physical evidence. But, I just think we should be aware of the degree to which what is real is determined on the basis of a consensus of a certain elite.

Some critics argue that sufficient explanations for the UFO abduction mystery are already available. Answers may yet emerge in work being done with such esoteric fields as temporal lobe sensitivities, fantasy prone personalities, false memory syndrome, sleep paralysis, and electro-hypersensitivities. Some of these areas have been examined and found wanting. Some researchers feel that such areas are not relevant, but the judgement is in, and abductions are real alien experiences. Others argue just as passionately that it is all rubbish. What is needed is the recognition that it is far too early to rush to judgement with definite positions. What has been uncovered to date — an extraordinarily complex human drama — argues powerfully for caution and patience. We have a long way to go and much to discover along the way.

John Mack was a potent and articulate spokesman for some of the wider dimensions of the abduction mystery, and with his 1999 book, Passport To The Cosmos: Human Transformation And Alien Encounters, he plainly marked out his perspectives, that were signalled in his first book on the subject: Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens.[ii]

In essence “Passport” represented a shamanic envisioning of the whole alien abduction mystery. The transformative aspects of the phenomenon held sway for John Mack, and examination of the physical dimensions seemed secondary or even unimportant. He argued, “There are problems with an entirely literal physical interpretation. To begin with, despite liberal use of words like genetic, DNA, and mitochondria, there is not solid material evidence of which I am aware to support the notion that any of this, including the creation of the hybrids themselves, is occurring on the material plane to the extent that detectable or measurable changes are happening at the molecular level. At best what we have in the physical domain are small lesions (which skeptics say could be self-inflicted, but I have found no evidence for this) and bodily symptoms that might be manifestations of subtle forces, real energies originating on another plane of reality.”[iii]

These statements puzzled me somewhat as during his research visits to Australia and after them he had become well acquainted with Peter Khoury and the fact that the hair sample related to his 1992 experience was being subjected to mitochondrial DNA sequence analysis. Our first report on the work: Strange Evidence, appeared in the Spring 1999 issue of the International UFO Reporter and information about it was widely reported in the UFO media from June 1999 onwards. Prior to that we were circulating the preliminary results of the research. In addition while the words genetic and DNA might have been liberally used in the abduction research field I was not aware of similar usage of the term mitochondrial, until the appearance of the “Strange Evidence” report. I felt that perhaps any information that gave credence to the relevance of words like genetic, DNA and mitochondria, as our study did, conflicted with the numinous dimensions of the hyper reality John Mack speculates is at the heart of the abduction phenomenon. He concludes, “The abduction phenomenon seems to be one of a number of intrusions into our reality from other realms that are contributing to the gradual (at least so far) spiritual rebirth taking place in Western culture. It seems to have something to do with the human future. Each of the principal elements of the phenomenon: the traumatic intrusions; the reality-shattering encounters; the energetic intensity; the apocalyptic ecological confrontations; the reconnection with Source; and the forging of new relationships across a dimensional divide: contributes to the daishigyo, the great ego death, that is marking the end of the materialist business-as-usual paradigm that has lost its compatibility with life in the world as we now know it.”[iv] For John Mack, “In the end, the abduction phenomenon seems to me to be a part of the shift in consciousness that is collapsing duality and enabling us to see that we are connected beyond the Earth at a cosmic level.”[v]

It seems that in alien abductions John Mack has seen affirmations of important concerns and perspectives he has long had, and they sit well with the transpersonal and environmental issues he has championed for some time, certainly long before the alien sirens beckoned him into their seductive embrace. To do that requires one to disconnect from the classic physical dimensions of the abduction phenomenon, all of which seem to argue that at least part of the experience occurs in the real world and real world consequences occur. Physical evidence, both explicit and hidden, is becoming available. What has not been so much in evidence are appropriate methodologies to capture and assess this range of evidence. So far the record has been uninspiring, but a new paradigm is emerging, one that has been well represented in terms of potential and actual results by one small part of that paradigm, namely DNA. Other parts of that new paradigm have their anchor in science and its broad base of approaches to understanding the world around us, even when it’s being intruded upon, perhaps by something out there.

What is needed, rather than uncoupling from the physical reality we think we all understand, to embrace the wider startling realities that are intruding into our world, is a multidisciplinary approach. Science needs to be an anchor in this enterprise.

Budd Hopkins and Carol Rainey in their book, Sight Unseen, provide a sort of de-facto ‘reality check’, when they highlight the various scientific breakthroughs and discoveries which resonate or reflect the bizarre elements that have emerged in abduction lore over the previous few decades. In essence the impossibility of the body of abduction lore as perceived by Budd Hopkins, David Jacobs and others may diminish considerably given that some of the startling advances of our own sciences seem to eerily approximate some of the unlikely tenets of the alien abduction mythos. For example the field of transgenics provides a telling analog answer for the genetic species barrier argument that was thrown up in the face of the “ridiculous” claims that maybe a human alien “hybrid” agenda was at the heart of the abduction mystery. Such analogies are not certainties but they give sustenance to the argument that some of the touchstones of abduction lore are not as unfeasible as they seemed a decade ago.[vi]

The results that emerged with the hair sample recovered from Peter Khoury’s 1992 experience are a veritable lightning rod to such speculations. The evidence in total (from Chapters 3 & 4) might represent advanced DNA and cloning techniques, we are only now beginning to develop and exploit. One of Carl Sagan’s last books The Demon-Haunted World, was subtitled, Science As A Candle In The Dark.[vii] Science should light the way, but not in a debunking way, that seems so rife in the contemporary mainstream science and sceptical communities responses to the abduction mystery. Science can allow us to focus on a strategy beyond the crossroads at which abduction research now lingers. Even the quantum envisioning of reality, seen in such works as “Hyperspace” by quantum physicist Michio Kaku,[viii] strikingly reflect the more numinous and abstract pictures of reality and strange phenomena that pervade alternative views anchored in consciousness.[ix]

[i] See the course of the debate in such books as The Abduction Enigma: The Truth Behind The Mass Alien Abductions Of The Late Twentieth Century , by Kevin Randle, Russ Estes, and William Cone, Ph.D. (1999), The Complete Book Of Aliens And Abductions, by Jenny Randles (1999), UFOs And Ufology: The First 50 Years, by Paul Devereux and Peter Brookesmith (1997), Alien Discussions: Proceedings Of The Abduction Study Conference Held At MIT , Cambridge, MA, edited by Andrea Pritchard, David Pritchard, John Mack, Pam Kasey & Claudia Yapp (1994), Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind: A Reporter’s Notebook On Alien Abduction, UFOs, And The Conference At M.I.T. , by C.D.B. Bryan (1995), Alien Abductions: Creating A Modern Phenomenon by Terry Matheson (1998), and UFOs & Abductions: Challenging The Borders Of Knowledge, edited by David Jacobs (University Press of Kansas, 2000)

[ii] Abduction: Human Encounters With Aliens, by John Mack (1994)

[iii] Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation And Alien Encounters, by John Mack, (1999) pg. 125

[iv] Ibid, “Passport” pg 279

[v] Ibid, “Passport” pg 280

[vi] See Sight Unseen: Science, UFO Invisibility And Transgenic Beings, by Budd Hopkins & Carol Rainey (2003).

[vii] The Demon-Haunted World: Science As A Candle In The Dark by Carl Sagan (1996)

[viii] Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, And The 10th Dimension, by Michio Kaku (1994)

[ix] For example, The Holographic Universe, by Michael Talbot (1991), The Eagle’s Quest: A Physicist’S Search For Truth In The Heart Of The Shamanic World , by Fred Alan Wolf (1991), and off course, Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation And Alien Encounters, by John Mack (1999).

© 2004 Bill Chalker

Bill Chalker is a leading UFO researcher based in Sydney, Australia, with a background in chemistry and mathematics. He has contributed to such publications as Rolling Stone and Reader's Digest, and has written books about the Australian UFO experience.