Remembrances of the late John E. Mack, M.D., compiled

This page preserves a few of the many remembrances of John Mack written by friends and colleagues upon learning of his death on September 27, 2004.

Remembrance of John Mack
by Gurucharan Singh Khalsa, Ph.D.

Dear Friends,

I write this with deep sadness and tears at John's passing and with even deeper appreciation to know and love him during his life. My prayers and support go to each of you.

I received the news while in our annual international meetings here in New Mexico. I could not continue the meeting.

I asked all participants — yogis and tachers from every continent — to stop with me. We chanted a powerful sound, one I had taught John years ago, that awakens and guides the soul in passing. It was a tangibly potent, respectful and quiet space. I am sure our prayers join those of the thousands of other souls he has touched in his life. My own spiritual teacher would say that when we pass through the short transition of death the only clothing we wear are the ones woven from the fabric of kindness we spun in our life and stitched together by the tears of the spirits we inspired. So I know he is well clad.

For over twenty years we shared moments of creativity and inspiration in our talks together. Always a blend of vision, heart, philosophy and practical actions.

He often said I acted as a spiritual guide so he added 22 years to my age so he could speak to an elder. It became a running chuckle between us.

One thing we did was share writings and poems from time to time. Here is one I wrote that I wish to share:

We stand before the Infinite
At One with being just one

At first all is a journey
Until gradually, like a perfect dawn
we become the destination

We admit the visit of the spirit
We open to the limitless in our sweet, timorous way
We get busy preparing our mind and body to welcome

The intrusion of the subtle
The kiss of the Divine
The reality of that embrace
In the earthy tangle of each moment

Then it is done
There is a ripening ecstasy and calm
That finds a friend in every atom and movement
Of this universe

We are finally home
In love
In humility
In our timeless body that knows no bounds.

He and I would enjoy these types of sentiments together.

In our Sikh Tradition the way we honor a person of respect and love is to do a continuous three day prayer — three 24 hours continuous. I am sponsoring such an event here in New Mexico in our most sacred spot over the next few days.

I am with you all in this time.

Blessings

MSS Gurucharan Singh Khalsa

Gurucharan S. Khalsa, Ph.D. is recognized internationally as an expert in the application of meditation and Kundalini yoga. He trains therapists to use meditation effectively, is director of training for Kundalini yoga teachers, maintains a broad counseling practice for 25 years and is an author, professor and researcher. He bridges the perspectives of east and west, of the heart and science and of the personal and the transpersonal.

John E. Mack, MD: A Tribute
by Michael H. Cohen

This is a tribute to John E. Mack, MD, who has transitioned from his physical body to the next plane of consciousness. He was a colleague and explorer of the human experience who modeled insight, humor, and courage.

Grieving John's Bodily Transition
When someone you love suddenly passes, a series of shocks ripple through the system: waves of grief, tenderness, memories, combined with a sense of your own finitude, and at the same time, this paradoxical analytical process of combing through the associations and trying to understand the enormity of what this person meant in your life.

When I learned from a friend last night that John Mack had suddenly died, I found these waves of emotions rising and subsiding. I felt deeply connected to John, though I knew him professionally only in passing, and personally hardly at all. I realized that we had connected beyond time and space, through a shared bond, a passion for truth; I admired John, and felt that I was able to travel further simply knowing he was there.

The details of John Mack’s legacy are now coming to light in tributes from around the world, both from academics and institutions of great learning—including Harvard, which once put him through what might have seemed an inquisition—and the many individuals whose lives he touched. John was a pioneer, a Pulitzer-prize winning author, a dedicated psychiatrist and a humanitarian deeply committed to improving his community. John was committed to his local community in Cambridge, the community of mental healthcare, and the larger community of all beings everywhere. Whether specifically a Buddhist or maybe a bit of everything, he seemed to me to embody the Buddhist ideal of aspiring to help uplift the entire creation. John held the space for many to open up to their felt experiences, not judging them but allowing, and in our time together, I experienced his wisdom, his compassion, and his humanness. Both in his intellectual triumphs and in the stillness we shared—the contact in-between the words—I felt his essence as a marvel.

John Mack: A Freedom-Fighter for Consciousness
John was a freedom-fighter, working toward liberation of human consciousness. That meant a lot to many people—particularly those “experiencers,” people who had experienced extraordinary planes of consciousness, tried to express their inner (and sometimes tormenting) adventures, and found only scorn and (further abuse) on most other doorsteps within the scientific and mental health “care” communities. Many of these individually finally found a measure of acceptance (and self-acceptance) through John’s work, a way to reflect on and integrate their intense experiences. And John’s openness to spiritual experience, combined with his prominence in academe, meant a lot personally and professionally to me.

John Opened the Way for People to Trust their Inner Experience
I first had heard of John Mack while I was a sophomore at the Barbara Brennan School of Healing. The year was 1994; I was a new law professor teaching in the Midwest; “alternative medicine” was just barely on the map. Professionally, I was teaching a seminar on the emerging legal framework surrounding alternative medicine, using whatever crumbs of medical literature were available to validate my interest in the field and counter any possible objections within the law school that my interests might be on the lunatic fringe.

Personally, I was learning about energy healing—skeptical and distant at first, but increasingly releasing a hard-edged denial of my own gifts in this arena. While at the Brennan school, we were studying the “astral levels of the [human energy] field,” the places where, according to Brennan’s energy healing theory and practice, our consciousness could encounter beings from other planes, past-life memories, traumas and triumphs from other dimensions of existence, and other things seemingly out of fantasy or science fiction, and certainly not supported by any prevailing scientific theory other than, perhaps, notions of the “holographic universe” developed by physicist David Bohm. All these things were real to me—or became real, not by virtue of any indoctrination by Brennan, but because of my own research—I call it that—an experiential dive into planes of consciousness that increasingly opened as I let my heart and spirit soften.

Having traversed mystical experience in a variety of ways prior to enrolling in the school—some through Judaism, others through Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and various forms of meditation—I had moved beyond a rigid intellectualization to a place of increasing receptivity. But still, it was difficult to reconcile the professional identities of lawyer and healer. Simply learning about John Mack and his work, even from afar, opened me to trust my inner experience.

A friend from Brennan’s school had happened to meet John while traveling to receive ‘darshan’ with Mother Meera, a purported Indian avatar, in Germany. Just knowing about that encounter with John helped further heal the split between the ‘scientific’ (or ‘legal’) and the inner, mystical that my personal and professional path seemed to be increasingly embodying.

John: A Pioneering Advocate for a Broader Worldview
Our work on the “astral planes” in the Brennan school opened me to the possibility that “ET” (extraterrestrial encounters) were real: not fictive, delusional, or otherwise phantasmagorical imagining. Nor were these products of distorted, deceptive or false memories by a self-perceived victim. For me, the notion of ET’s pointed toward transcendence, not only and always abuse recapitulated. Since in healing school we were having regular experiences of spirit guides, angels (as well as demons), and spiritual forces both benevolent and sinister, extending that experience to ‘brothers and sisters’ from other planets—whose bodies did not necessarily have to be physical, like ours, but rather could exist solely on other levels of the energy field—seemed reasonable.

Of course, one has to take the leap and actually experience one’s self as inhabiting more than what current biology takes as real; it helps to experience one’s self on the higher levels of the human energy field, rather than as a “just” a body and a mind. That leap is impossible if one uses skepticism, an otherwise valuable tool, to intellectualize away or otherwise distance one's self from inner experience. It takes a rare soul who can not only include critical intellectual faculties in the quest for clarity but also lead other critical thinkers past limited conceptualizations to new paradigmatic possibilities.

Indeed, continuing his pioneering efforts along these lines, and combining his skills as a psychiatrist and biographer, John was working on a new manuscript about communications from a healer after her death. He was exploring how a field of love can literally create a bridge between worlds: reiterating the perennial wisdom in the psychologically rich, biographical vein that had won him the Pulitzer.

John's exploration, while controversial to some, has resonances in epistemology and other branches of philosophy, and may inspire colleagues in other fields, including a new scientific discipline known as astrobiology. I believe his work will stand the test of time and be recognized as a great contribution to human knowledge. But I want to turn more specifically to John’s influence and how that filtered into my own life through the world-wide web of auspicious connections that ultimately brought me zero degrees of separation from him.

One of my teachers at Barbara Brennan’s school was Peter Faust, an “experiencer” (the preferred term to “abductee”) who had explored his memories of the ET experience through hypnosis with John, and served as subject for a main chapter in John’s book, Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens. Peter described his experiences to a group at the school; that same year he appeared, with John and others, on Oprah.

Peter’s experiences frightened even many of my classmates at Barbara Brennan’s school, perhaps because they suggested a loss of control or invasion. I felt safe in the ET territory, perhaps because I conceptualized ETs as dwelling on a continuum of consciousness, together with many other mystical and “extraordinary experiences,” as John would come to denote these inner adventures. But for many the ET experience, particularly its “abduction” aspects, connoted trauma; abuse; being out-of-control. To help dispel the fears (and hostility) that seemed to permeate response to descriptions from experiencers, Peter explained that there were several distinct races of ETs that others had identified, and only one—the so-called Grays—were involved in the abduction phenomena.

According to Peter, the abduction phenomenon, the defining modus operandi of the Grays, reified the classic mind-body split that arguably has been responsible for so much evil in human history: a runaway intellect divorced from the heart, technology gone wild. This, indeed, was a theme in John’s work—to quote the John E. Mack Institute's tribute to John, “Mack advocated that Western culture requires a shift away from a purely materialist worldview (which he feels is responsible for the Cold War, the global ecological crisis, ethnonationalism and regional conflict) towards a transpersonal worldview which embraces certain elements of Eastern spiritual and philosophical traditions.” Whether one took the Grays as metaphysics or metaphor, the archetype of gray consciousness had power: head separated from heart, a mutant Cartesian dualism massively distorting the connectivity of love, resulting in sick and sense-less experimentation.

In a larger context, though, the flipside of the abduction encounter was the possibility for transcendence and a heart encounter with all-that-is. That was the theme of John’s second book, Passport to the Cosmos. Some parts of the alien encounter experience included the alienness (from the perspective of mundane human emotions) of exalted states, feelings of cosmic unity, an end to the separation that Alan Watts had characterized as leaving us "an ego encased in a bag of skin." Following this line of inquiry, John advocated a broader worldview than the species-centric, human-dominated view of the cosmos. John’s spacious mind allowed a broader conceptualization of our place in the omni-verse, a place in which we humans might coexist with other species and, indeed, intelligently converse with them. But to do so, if one followed the line of John’s work, required more than radio signals and scientific intelligence—it required emotional and spiritual intelligence, including a capacity to deepen our opening to inner experience.

In this way, John was a pioneering advocate for a broader view of consciousness, and of our relatedness to the entire creation. John moved us past the marriage to our own intellectual constructs, and into an awareness of our soul bond with something more unrestricted.

In a sense, I had ‘met’ John Mack in 1994, through Peter, the Barbara Brennan School, and my own unfolding spiritual life. John’s presence on this Earth, and his contribution to human awareness, scholarly discourse, and “the literature,” was as much a part of my spiritual opening as my encounter with different religions.

Meeting John
I had linked my consciousness with John’s in 1994, but it took until 2003 to meet him in person. Oddly, it happened at a men’s group organized by a physician friend and held at the New England School for Acupuncture. Around the circle, John introduced himself to the group casually, humbly, without any pretense or ego. There, he was another man, like each of us: gifted, charged with desire for contribution, and also riddled with the complexities of modern life. I recognized him and went up and introduced myself after the meeting, mentioning briefly my friendship with the Peter and the fact that I, too, had had experiences, though not of the abduction kind. John peered down his half-glasses and warmly asked: “Spiritual experiences?” I nodded, and we arranged to meet.

In truth, my ET experience had occurred (back in 1994) in what seemed an unlikely—though in one sense, deeply spiritual—space: at the Cleveland Clinic. I was at the Medical Institute for Law Faculty, visiting the Clinic with about a dozen law professors in a scholarly exchange between the professions of law and medicine. Our visit included the operating rooms during surgery and the intensive care unit. One evening while drifting off in my hotel room, I experienced a being in my room. She—for femaleness described her—wore a headpiece, had intelligent eyes, and communicated telepathically. I felt a great kinship with her. I had a sense of her compassionate awareness and presence during the states of nonverbal connection I had experienced with anesthetized patients, with individuals on life support, and with others in the twilight zone of life and death. She might have been Mary, or Kwan Yin, or some other being identified from any religious tradition, but I identified her as ET because of an otherness about her that cannot be described—a sense of different kind of intelligence, with its own world, customs, cultures, languages, even energetic (nonphysical) bodies and modes of transportation.

For I was experiencing a dual reality during the Medical Institute—the world of the doctors, the nurses, the bleeping machines, the families laboring under grief and stress; and the inner world, a silent one in which all sorts of—for lack of a better word—energies were exchanged, at different levels, some psychic and others spiritual.

Yet who, in my academic community, could validate or even sanction such an experience. I could be ridiculed for claiming to speak with an ET in my hotel room at the Cleveland Clinic. Yet, paradoxically, the same community that might launch a witch hunt for an admission of ‘ET contact’ could laud an admission of conversing privately with Jesus, Allah, Yahweh, or any recognized figure from a mainstream religion. Beliefs are strange creatures, some accepted, others scandalized. It would be perfectly acceptable for me to believe that Mary physically ascended to heaven or that Moses parted the Red Sea or that Arjuna had entered a chariot driven by Krishna, but ludicrous, in the minds of many, to believe that a being from another planet could speak to me telepathically in a hotel room. The former likely would be called, religious impulse; the second labeled fantasy or delusion. My ET experience was spiritual, not the abduction experience—but even if were in that other category, the shaming aspects of contemporary judgment might make it feel unsafe to describe. Yet I was having experiences as real to me—perhaps more—than discussions with peer attorneys and doctors; indeed, many of those conversations were intellectualized abstractions, coated with thick denial of the palpable suffering around us, while my inner experiences allowed no room to deflect from genuine, authentic emotions. And yet to keep myself professionally safe, I wrote about the experience in a scholarly journal, but from a detached perspective—hinting but ultimately concealing the fact that it was my experience.

John Mack offered a gift to all with extraordinary experiences who might otherwise have felt shamed by the judgment of many segments within contemporary society, who may have hesitated coming open with the truth of their psychic receptivity to other parts of the cosmos than those accepted in what psychologist Charles Tart has called “consensus trance.” John’s gift was unconditional acceptance of the possibility for transcendence. It was a gift to meet John personally and say to him that I, too, had had close encounters of a kind not usually admitted in academic—or any professional—circles. These encounters were held with care and recognition in the heart and mind of a great being like John.

Being able to acknowledge my ET connection and locate its reality within the context of John Mack’s work made it somehow safer to be fully myself. Meeting John in person at the men’s group brought yet another level of solidity to imbibing his life’s work. My verbal interaction with John there lasted only a few minutes, but being with him, knowing he was there, making that heart and mind and soul connection, in an instant made a shift.

John Mack himself was a passport to the cosmos.

An Interview with John Mack
My next physical encounter with John was professional. He was building an institute at the intersection of psychology and spirituality, a subject of deep interest given my involvement in complementary medicine law and policy, and we were looking for ways to form a professional bridge. But, while much of complementary medicine at least could be scientifically validated (or, alternatively, debunked) through conventional scientific process, the objective reality of subjective mystical experience could not. On one level, John’s professional inquiry seemed more radical than mine, because he delved into realms of the mind that lacked tangible expression, capable of receiving objective consensus. Yet we were both spiritual warriors, trying to give expression to our interest in the sublime through our mundane (in the world) positions as academics.

In a sense, we were coming at the same problem—tackling a lot of fear and limitation of consciousness—from opposite directions: complementary medicine had gained a foothold in academic circles. But John had been excoriated by some within his academic community, even if ultimately vindicated. And I was coming from law, John from psychiatry.

The John E. Mack Institute’s website summarizes John’s Harvard trials as follows: “In 1994 the Dean of Harvard Medical School appointed a committee of peers to review Mack's clinical care and clinical investigation of the people who had shared their alien encounters with him (some of their cases were written of in Mack's 1994 book Abduction). After fourteen months of inquiry and amid growing questions from the academic community (including Harvard Professor of Law Alan Dershowitz) regarding the validity of Harvard's investigation of a tenured professor, Harvard issued a statement stating that the Dean had ‘reaffirmed Dr. Mack's academic freedom to study what he wishes and to state his opinions without impediment,’ concluding ‘Dr. Mack remains a member in good standing of the Harvard Faculty of Medicine.’”

It seemed to me that John had come through the experience with wisdom and even humor. But we also discussed our dislike for the bias, bigotry, hostility, and rigid ideological stance that some—not all—within our community could hold against openness to inner experience.

In many ways I, too, had experienced the sting of enemy fire against freedom of consciousness in various academic affiliations. Noting this fact is not a tirade against Harvard—as indeed in many ways it has been a welcome academic home—but rather a memoir of the deep connection I felt with John in our brief association. We were both faculty members at the same institution—he far more senior and deeply rooted, and having withstood an assault on his scholarly reputation and line of inquiry, but both sharing a maverick’s eye from within the citadel of science. Knowing he was there; that he had faced challenge, defended himself, and come through; that he, too, respected mystical experience yet could stand, shoulder-to-shoulder, with colleagues committed to compassionate clinical care and dispassionate scientific inquiry; all this gave me a warm feeling of fellowship unavailable in many quarters.

In fact, simply having a kind of job interview with John freed me from the shackles—the “mind-forg’d manacles,” as Blake would call them—of fear-based thinking, keeping who I was under wraps. I had been admonished by some—not all—peers to avoid being “perceived as an advocate” for therapies that could be considered ‘unproven.’ To be so perceived could, according to some, mean falling from professional grace, perhaps even being run out of the institution. John Mack served as the ‘bad boy’ example of what might happen were I to be truly myself—as he courageously was. Because of this professional pressure to avoid anything that might possibly be perceived as ‘advocacy’ (and hence ‘unscientific’), and also to dissociate myself from John, I joked with John that I could not be seen with him in the parking lot. We appreciated the old joke that 'just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.' Several times he picked up on and repeated the joke about having to disguise our appearing together—we spoke of institutional spies; this was a kind of humorous, self-referential way to reflect our shared distaste for the abundance of judgment that some quarters heaped upon our shared interest in psychology and spirituality.

Perhaps that was one reason I cried when I learned he had passed. I was proud of my association with John, and longed for it to deepen. To me he was a kind, generous, thoughtful man, full of beguiling vulnerability alongside his penetrating and boundary-breaking brilliance. What we shared in our encounters was not merely kinship around interest in alien experiences—it was our humanness. There was a deep tenderness about and within him and a mutual empathy between us for our shared battle against ideological stifling and control. And, I might say, a kind of divine love passed—certainly an appreciation flowed for his contribution as well as his struggles. I miss him.

Working with John
As I grieved John’s death, I told my wife: “I had hoped to work closely with him.” My wife wisely and sweetly responded: “You still will. That work will continue.” I miss John being here physically, and continue to feel him on subtle levels. And I am sure many of us will be supporting John and feel supported by John as he continues his work alongside ours in the new dimensions of body and consciousness in which he resides.

I was gratified to read that one of John’s spiritual friends and teachers will be saying prayers at a holy place in New Mexico. I dedicate today’s yoga practice to him; may it bring blessings, peace, and wholeness in worlds to come.

I will also echo this tribute to John from songwriter Stuart Davis, as it is absolutely true: “as anyone who's had the pleasure of meeting John knows, he was a total sweet heart of a human being, instantly lovable. each time i was with him, i was struck by his transparency, humility, and curiousity. he was 64 when i met him, he sparkled like a diamond, and he was every bit as glowing when i had dinner with him for the last time about a year ago….john, it is with much love and gratitude that i thank you for your amazing presence in our lives, for your gifts to humanity, and indeed all beings- everywhere. may your radiant soul be received by its source and continue to illuminate us from the point of all places.”

A few months ago, I ran into John on a train ride to New York. It was wonderful to be in contact with his keen mind, wry humor, and generous heart. John could be intellectually critical and skeptical—as he was when the notion of “karma” was raised—yet as a person he was simultaneously embracing, tolerant, and full of wisdom.

John Gave Permission
At the end of our interview, John stood and shared with me some very personal book projects on which he was working. After that, he stood close and softly asked: “is there anything more; is there anything more you wish to share?”

Of course there was; I could have gone on for days. There was a book, for example, I was writing on my experience in Byelorussia, in a visit that involved trying to help children radiation victims of Chernobyl through energy healing. John had been involved in the physicians’ movement for nuclear disarmament. He was a link in the legacy of psychiatrists (such as Robert Jay Lifton, MD) who had written about the mass dissociation known as ‘psychic numbing;’ who had catalogued the splits and distortions in our collective response to 'nuclear absurdity;' who had bared witness to the human capacity for shutting off feeling the immensity of a shared horror.

I sent my book manuscript about the children of Chernobyl to John for review. Simply knowing John was there—the enormity of his knowledge base, understanding, and interests—provided a touchstone for further creativity. The fact that he understood the issues, that he was caring, that he had a spiritual as well as a clinical and academic side, that he did not judge—gave room for exploration.

By asking “is there anything more,” John was compassionately offering to elicit anything personal I might share such as the split between the scholarly and the spiritual. But John was my senior colleague and friend. I made the decision not to go into my own experiences, as our meeting was professionally exploratory and it was important for me to stay in the role of lawyer and legal scholar. But John gave permission and took a kind interest in me as a whole being. He was neither all head nor all heart, but rather a compassionate, wise old soul who, in his crowded schedule, made room for everything.

What John did as a psychiatrist and scholar he embodied, and modeled, during our moments together: he gave permission for the full authentic expression of self to be.


Michael H. Cohen, Esq. combines unusual experience as a practicing lawyer, faculty member at law and medical schools, and explorer of the healing arts. He is principal in Law Offices of Michael H. Cohen, President of the Institute for Integrative and Energy Medicine, and publisher of the Complementary and Alternative Medicine Law Blog.

With Love, to John Mack...
by Stuart Davis

September 30, 2004

song of the day: Universe Communion / for John Mack
word of the day: lococession / place for giving (noun, 1656 -1656)

i found out late last night that my dear friend John Mack has passed, he was apparently killed by a drunk driver in London, in a cross walk coming home at night from a gathering. John was one of my favorite people, i will miss him very much. he was professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, his early work focused on dreams, nightmares, teen suicide, and how a world view affects relationships. He was a Pulitzer Prize winner, author of several books (A Prince Of Our Disorder, Abduction, Passport To The Cosmos), he started the Center for Psychology and Social Change, and the Program For Extraordinary Experience Research, among much more. his work with PEER included his research with experiencers of the alien abduction phenomenon. John had done extensive research with hundreds of people from around the World on this subject (he was featured in the 2003 documentary film "Touched" as well as numerous television and radio segments), and discovered they came from all walks of life, and were not mentally ill or crazy. This upset a lot of people in the academic world (surprise, surprise) and in 1994 Harvard formed a committee of peers to review his tenure and see if they shouldn't revoke it, publicly castigate him, or cover their asses somehow. After 14 months, the school "reaffirmed Dr. Mack's academic freedom to study what he wishes and to state his opinions without impediment."

now that's basically the obituary you're going to read in the papers around the World, but it doesn't say much. i knew John pretty well, and i would like to offer some more details about this man's work and life, his great love for humanity and the challenges he accepted in the interest of love.

i met John in 1994, i had read his book "Abduction" and was moved by it. in fact that book was the inspiration for the song Universe Communion, which appeared first on my CD Self-Untitled (also released in 1994). i sent him a copy of the disc, and he called me on the phone shortly after that to say thanks and chat a bit. i remember how funny it was, because he kept bringing up a different song on the CD — "Someone Else's Ears", because he thought it ended too suddenly. he didn't want to talk about Universe Communion, he wanted to know about the ending to Someone Else's Ears. he just wasn't sure — was it supposed to end that way, or was there something wrong with his CD? i tried to explain, no John, it's actually supposed to end that way, it's an artistic tool — but hey, what did you think of that other song — Universe Communion? and he would go "oh, because it sounds like my CD is broken or something, like that song Someone Else's Ears — maybe it's ending too abruptly..." and back and forth. it was quite endearing, because as anyone who's had the pleasure of meeting John knows, he was a total sweet heart of a human being, instantly lovable. each time i was with him, i was struck by his transparency, humility, and curiousity. he was 64 when i met him, he sparkled like a diamond, and he was every bit as glowing when i had dinner with him for the last time about a year ago.

Universe Communion was not the only song i've written which was inspired by John's work, the song "Greys" (from Kid Mystic) was another one. in fact there were undertones throughout that entire album that were influenced by my relationship with John. i felt then, and still do now, that art was one of the most promising mediums for exploring and expressing a subject as nuanced and subtle as the alien abduction phenomenon. not that my art has done a perfect job of it by any means, but simply that it has been an attempt to inhabit the trauma, wonder, and mystery that so infuses those questions. john had a very tough gig in the World, being probably the very first major academic figure to publicly hold forth on this topic, and the back lash was often pretty nasty.

it's a funny thing about dogma, we usually associate a rigid adherence to doctrine with fundamentalist religion — with pre-rational world views. but "science" can be equally dogmatic — when it becomes a religion of rationality, and has its own cache' of blind spots and assumptions. rationality, and the emperical method, are wonderful — they ushered in the enlightenment and gave us a miraculous new World — on the inside and the outside. but the danger of dogmatic rationality is, not only does it despise what is pre-rational (mythic religion, etc), it also despises what is trans-rational (authentic mysticism, trans-personal awareness). on top of that, the religion of rationality is utterly incapable of seeing the DISTINCTION between the two, it is unable to see that there is a difference between pre-rational and trans-rational stages, because to the materialist / reductionist / flatland empericist, they are both simply "not -rational". this is a tragic collapse of what is a profoundly important distinction. a healthy scientist, an authentic empericist — is capable of recognizing the limits of one mode of inquiry — however effective and potent it may be in its domain. this was the case with virtually every significant 20th century quantum physicist — Einstein, Schroedinger, Bohr, etc etc — their work in quantum physics led them BEYOND merely emperical methodologies into a sense of wonder and awe that — described in their words — was too mysterious, too deep for hard science to accomodate. they did not abandon their field, they did not forfeit the World that rationality had unveiled, but were introduced to another World that was trans-rational that went beyond (but included) the rational perspective, and realized both were inherent aspects of their very own being. their rational capacities were still every bit as useful, in fact even more beautiful, when viewed through a greater aperture which included trans-rational insights and inquiry. they expressing it and exploring it unique ways, but they all crossed that thresh hold.

unfortunately in the academic world a simple axiom is defended at all costs: if it's not rational, it's ir-rational (and so irrelevant). those perceived to be coming from outside the scientific community who present trans-rational findings or data (let's say research on the effects of prayer, or psychic phenomena) which don't fit the consensus interpretation of "reality" are fairly easily dismissed and caricatured as kooks. by example, neo-darwinist like to play it as though anyone who doesn't ascribe to their theory of evolution is a fundamentalist bible-thumping moron. but the fact of the matter is, no one has a fucking clue how evolution actually occurs. how eye-sight ever emerged (much less simultaneously around the planet) is a stunning un-known at this point, and although it seems that evolution does occur in biology — the fact remains that scientists don't know shit about what, how, when, why of any of it. chance mutations? wha? in 100 years, Darwinism will be to evolutionary biology what leeches were to medicine. yes, there was medicine 400 years ago, and there is medicine today. in which century would you rather be treated for a bacterial infection? evolutionary biology will still be around in 100 years, but this ridiculous effort to prop up Darwinism over and over will be seen for what it was: a desperate attempt to keep the Bible-thumpers at bay. because the scientist know that they can't give the precious rational World back to pre-rational wackos, and they're right, and they can be pretty fucking nasty about defending their Church. they are correct that mythic imperialistic religion is in fact pre-rational, but there is also literally a Kosmos out there (and in HERE) that is full of trans-rational wonders. what is more difficult for the rationalists to dismiss is research and data that comes from within their "community", from within the establishment, that calls into question any of the assumptions the community has internalized to the point of invisibility (invisibility means they can't even see what those assumptions are anymore, they are part of their SUBJECT. the subject of one level of awareness becomes the object of the next level of awareness, so often to be able to perceive an assumption, we must move to a deeper / higher stage of awareness, where we can see it, and then operate on it. that which we can't see, that which is invisible, exerts and an un-conscious influence on us, or in this case, a community).

my point in bringing all this up is really quite simple: John Mack started asking trans-rational questions in the rational kingdom. usually, someone brings up a subject like alien abduction, and the academic community can just whip out its old "he's a pre-rational wacko" response, and be done with it. but John was a Harvard professor, a Pulitzer Prize winner, an internationally recognized authority in Psychiatry and transpersonal studies with decades of experience. and so, when John published his findings as a cllinician and researcher on the alien abduction phenomena and told the World (including academia) in effect 'there's something mysterious going on here, and it's not pre-rational, it's trans-rational' it was much harder to immediately dismiss or discredit. not that people didn't try — they did, they are, and they will continue to for as long as there are pre-rational, rational, and trans-rational world views, there will be healthy and pathological modes for each.

whatever you make of the alien abduction phenomena is up to you. just like spirituality, politics, evolution, etc. the important question is: is your interpretation — your perspective of the matter formed by carefully considering all the available data and research, and then coming to a conclusion (aka: interpretation)? i'm not here to tell you how to interpret the data on this phenomenon, and i don't think John was either. he was passionate about making the information available to the public, about encouraging an interdisciplinary dialogue of inquiry. my experience of those who wholly dismiss the alien abduction topic as "pre-rational wacko world" is that they are never deeply informed, they are never truly familiar with the data, and they are defending their Rational Religion. and the data on alien abductions, my friends, is confounding, perplexing, and mystifying. if you go into it with an open mind, it starts to fuck with your (rational) mind. that's all. it doesn't mean you have to forfeit your rational mind, it doesn't mean you have to believe that physical beings are literally visiting this planet from a far away place. it just means that something enigmatic is going on in the interior and exterior lives of hundreds of thousands of people around the world, people who have never encountered each other — people who come from all walks of life, stations of social standing, cultures, ages, races, sexes — and the experiences they report unmistakably, undeniably correspond and corroborate. based on what we know from psychology, psychiatry, and affiliated fields, these people's experiences are not pathological, they are not crazy, mentally insane, or emotionally unstable. conversely, they generally exhibit notably advanced positions in several lines of development as a result of these often traumatic, stigmatizing histories of experience. now, as far as i can tell, here are a few of the ways we can interpret this world -wide phenomenon:

1, in an historically unprecedented event, hundreds of thousands — or millions — of people have suddenly (simultaneously) begun to mass-hallucinate identical experiences of interacting with what they perceive to be sentient beings from another deeper "dimension" of reality. these hallucinations are a product of an entirely new order of collective consciousness, what we might think of as a nightmare in the noosphere, and have no "actual" external reality, but are a bizarre new feature in the collective interior of humanity. this would require us accepting that there is literally a psychic-level interaction occuring all around the world among every imaginable type of person, and that its symptoms involve physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual components that do not fit our current interpretation of what's "real". it would mean we've gone crazy, but in a very odd turn of events, this disease makes people more spiritually, emotionally, and psychologically advanced, and more caring for their fellow beings on the planet, as well as more conscious, compassionate citizens of the biosphere. but it's all the random by-product of a collective hallucination, coming from within human interiors and projected as "other".

2, beings from another World or another dimension are visiting us.

3, something inexplicable is occuring around the World which we do not presently have sufficient perspective or development to understand. it challenges many of our scientific, social, and psychological assumptions about Reality. it permeates gross, subtle, and causal dimensions, and carries profound implications for our development as a species. we don't know exactly what it is or how to describe it.

now which one of these interpretations of the alien abduction phenomena is so trite that we can simply dismiss it? none of them, of course. academia's vehement resistance to John Mack's work is in itself a bit telling. i read this in one of John's obituaries, it's a quote from some attorney (Roderick MacLeish) who represented John during Harvard's investigation on whether to revoke his tenure:

"He was so caring to his patients, and I hope that is what he is remembered for, and not for being the guy who believed in people's stories of alien abductions,'' MacLeish said.

and if i were quoted in Roderick MacLeish's obituary, i would say: "Roderick was a good person and a great lawyer, and i hope that's what he's remembered for, and not for being an unabashed reductionist and prisoner to his own dogmatic rational mind" — (stuart davis)

sorry if i'm a bit touchy about this Roderick, but at the time of John's passing, to make such a statement in a mainstream paper seems to me to be a sleezy, traitorous move. especially considering what John went through in this life, what he came up against in doing this important work (and might i add all the while enduring it with love and light, and an infectious appreciation of the miracle of what it is to be alive), i believe this is the time we recognize what a visionary this extraordinary man was, and not a time for small-minded, back-handed quips from supposed friends.

and that's the thing. mostly, i'll miss John as my friend. i adored him, hanging out with him, talking philosophy, spirituality, psychology, science, and the infinite puzzle of BEING. my life will always be richer for having known him and this planet is a better place because he was on it.

john, it is with much love and gratitude that i thank you for your amazing presence in our lives, for your gifts to humanity, and indeed all beings — everywhere. may your radiant soul be received by its source and continue to illuminate us from the point of all places.

Stuart Davis is an alternative singer/songwriter with a yen for esoteric topics. His music has long been influenced by books such as the Tao Te Ching, Tibetian Book of the Dead, Cloud of Unknowing, and a host of authors including Pierre Teolhard De Chardin, Ken Wilber, and Jellaludin Rumi. www.stuartdavis.com

Georgiana Sykes Boyer MD
& John T. Boyer MD
Oct 9, 2004

Dear Friends:

We met John in September, 1951, as we entered Harvard Medical School, and maintained our friendship visiting back and forth between Arizona and Massachusetts through the years. We never were involved in his professional life, but knew his family, many of his friends, and much of his extraordinary life. We are shocked and acutely bereaved by his death. He visited us last spring and wrote a great letter to us a few days before his death, glowing with the description of his son Ken's marriage in Boston and of plans to attend the second marriage ceremony in Kazahkstan.

John was unusual in many ways, and these attributes were uniquely his from an early time. He was attracted to new ideas and reveled in exploring them. He was delighted with the new ideas of others, without jealousy. He enjoyed argument, too, but usually friendship survived disagreement. The amazing thing was how many people he could maintain a close relationship to, how many people thought of him as a special friend. Thanks to an awesome memory, he could "take up where we left off" with friends he hadn't seen in years.

One of his most impressive characteristics was revealed in one-on-one conversation. He listened better than anyone we've ever known — whether to friend, patient, adult or child. One felt important, interesting, and cared for in his presence and by his existence. We will miss him terribly. Our love and sympathy go to his family and we share the grief of the many others who loved and admired him.

Sincerely,

Georgiana Sykes Boyer MD & John T. Boyer MD

Budd Hopkins
on Coast to Coast AM
interviewed by George Noory on September 28, 2004


John Mack and Budd Hopkins together at the UFO Congress awards ceremony some years ago; photo by Stuart Conway.


Budd Hopkins is a world-renowned author and pioneer UFO abduction researcher, and founder of the nonprofit research organization, the Intruders Foundation.

George Noory: A sad moment to bring you aboard, Budd, but I knew how close that John Mack was to you and you to him. So my condolences on behalf of everyone here at Coast to Coast on this very tragic episode.

Budd Hopkins: Well I think it’s a major loss, both on a personal level and for the field, because John was an extremely eloquent spokesman for the reality of the problem, or the issue – the abduction phenomenon, the UFO phenomenon – and a man of great intelligence and an enormous personal warmth. He’s going to be really sorely missed by me especially as a friend.

George Noory: What energy he possessed, Budd. I did not know he was almost 75 years old.

Budd Hopkins: Yup. He, one other interesting little thing [ahem], the fact is that John and I both attended Oblerin College. He graduated two years ahead of me – I just turned 73 myself – and so we were [classmates], although we didn’t know each other at Oberlin. We didn’t meet until 1990. That’s when a colleague of John’s brought him to my studio in New York and I began to show him some of the material that abductees had presented to me, in some of the cases. And he became immediately fascinated.

And this is of course one of the great, great strengths of John’s, that he was open-minded and curious. As every scientist should be, all the time. It should be in the definition of a scientist, that he or she is open minded and curious about, especially, things that might be extremely important new areas of knowledge. And John picked up on it instantly, and went straight into it and never left it. And made some wonderful contributions in his books and in his working with so many people.

I just think that, you know, his loss is such a sudden, sudden shock. There was no sign of illness or of slowing down of his energy, as you mentioned. He had just given a talk at a conference in, I believe Oxford, and had come back to London and had gone to dinner with friends and taken the tube back to his hotel or where he was staying, and he got out and evidently stepped off the curb in a crosswalk area and was instantly hit and apparently almost instantly killed.

George Noory: I just don’t know what to say, too. I’ve continued to monitor the work of you of course Budd and John Mack. And you know, you’re one of the pioneers here for this entire phenomenon of UFO abductions. But John Mack was a scientist, a doctor who decided also to get involved. A Harvard professor. And when I saw those credentials involved in the study that you were undertaking years ago, I began to say, you know finally with people like Hopkins and Mack maybe just maybe we’ll get not only mainstream media to wake up, but maybe we’ll really get to the bottom of this. And that’s what’s so sad about this: we’re losing, and you’re losing, a great arm and a great ally here.

Budd Hopkins: That’s right and John as I mentioned, part of his just sparkling personality – he had a great sense of humor – and at an early conference on the abduction phenomenon when John had first become involved, he said about himself with a sort of a shrug looking around the room and he said “I guess I’m currently the highest ranking prisoner of war in this whole field,” meaning that he was the highest ranking in terms of credentials individual who had left the conventional field of psychiatry and ventured out into this much more difficult and complex and, well, looked-down-upon field, unfortunately by the profession, as UFO research. So he understood the risk he was taking. And he had serious problems at Harvard, as many of us know, as a result of this.

George Noory: No doubt. I am told by law enforcement officials that they have arrested someone in this case and indeed this person was quite inebriated when he was driving his car.

Budd Hopkins: Well that’s a horrible thing. I spoke today at length to very, very good friend of John’s and of mine, the psychohistorian Robert Jay Lifton. I am currently speaking from my studio in Wellfleet, on Cape Cod, which is where Dr. Lifton stays. And he said that his last communication with John, which was just a few weeks ago, John was talking about when he gets worried about a subject or an issue he plunges in. And he said John had become increasingly worried about the direction of the government and had voluntarily gone to New Hampshire – this is his last activity, apparently, in the United States – to work trying to register voters, poor or underprivileged people who had never had a chance, for lots of reasons, to actually get to the polls and to vote. And John was going door to door working with people. And this is a man, as you said, almost 75, who is a man of great importance at his university and so forth, but going to Manchester to enroll voters, hoping to change the regime here in the United States. And this was just one side of his leaping in to a cause which he found to be of extraordinary importance.

George Noory: Do you know if he was working on another book or anything like that, perhaps?

Budd Hopkins: Yes, George. He and I had talked about this. I had spent time with him at the beginning of August at a meeting in Newport. And John was working on a book having to do – and this is, in a strange way, it’s an enormous irony – having to do with evidence suggesting the survival of consciousness after death. Having nothing to do with the UFO field, but this was another area that had engaged his interest, and he was spending a great deal of time on this subject.

George Noory: Like Harry Houdini, who also was really interested in that field, I wonder if John will ever come back to us in some form or fashion.

Budd Hopkins: Well, we can certainly hope.

George Noory: Absolutely. You know, Budd, here at Coast to Coast we have now lost another dear friend of course with the passing of John Mack and several months ago with Dr. Eugene Mallove who was murdered in this particular case, in a case that is still not solved. Both of them in their own way pioneering: Dr. Mallove and his alternative energy, cold fusion; John Mack of course in the field that you have spent so much time in, just trying to unravel this ufo abduction phenomenon. Very sad and also very strange to lose two good people who are really at the forefront of things that no one else really touches.

Budd Hopkins: A friend of mine used to say with irony that if Mother Nature, meaning the Fates, that if Mother Nature were a politician she’d never be reelected. Meaning, that life seems to be arranged in such a way that so many things like this occur that are totally unfortunate: people taken long before their time, or people taken in their prime by crazy accidents. You know George, one of the reasons that I think the conspiracists – the people who develop and weave these vast conspiracy theories that are so fanciful so often – why they flourish is because we find it almost impossible, when we lose someone, to accept a mundane accident. For instance, the analogy with John’s death is a little bit like the death in England of Princess Diana. And it has been, there have been so many theories about the fact that she must have been killed or murdered or something like that for the basic reason that one does not -- when one suffers such a loss as the people of England did for this very beloved woman – they could not accept such a mundane explanation as a drunk driver, in that particular case too – in this case the driver of her own car. We just don’t want to think that something that stupid and that absurd and that ridiculous can take from us someone who is so cherished and so valued. So we have to invent something larger, it has to have been some major plot or something, simply to feel better about the loss.

George Noory: Yeah, that’s true. And then we begin to think, “what was he working on? Was it something someone else found out about?” You’re right Budd. Are you going to be ok?

Budd Hopkins: Oh, of course. We’ll all be ok. I’ve, you know, John’s a dear friend. The loss that I remember suffering so strongly years ago was that of Allen Hynek in the field, J. Allen Hynek who was a wonderful man, and I regarded him as a friend, a dear friend. And that loss was enormous but one has to just plunge on and do the work. I’ve had a long conversation today with David Jacobs, my other close, close friend about this subject, the death of John – and Dave and John were friends -- and how in a strange way, more responsibilities fall on our shoulders, that is, because work that was being shared say by the three of us now has to be shared by two.

George Noory: That is true, absolutely. Budd, thank you so much and again our deepest condolences on the death of your friend, John Mack. Thank you Budd.

Budd Hopkins: Thank you, George.

George Noory: Budd Hopkins, in his own right a great man. John Mack, dead, age of 74 years old, hit by a drunk driver while he was crossing a street in London last night. He would have been 75 years old next week.

Copyright © 2004 Premiere Radio Networks
Reprinted by kind permission.

Michael Blumenthal
Euology for John Mack
Delivered at Memorial Church, Harvard
University, Saturday, November 13, 2004

One of eleven eulogies spoken at John Mack's memorial service by John's family and friends.


“The art of losing,” the poet Elizabeth Bishop wrote, precisely because she knew it not to be true, “isn’t hard to master.” But it isn’t the art of losing — our husband, father, brother, grandfather, and our rare and remarkable friend — that we are here to try and master today. We are here, rather, I believe, to celebrate the great gift we were given in the shape of this good, kind, gentle and large-spirited man, my friend John.

I have only, in my life, once had the experience of love at first sight — some 20 years ago at a party in Newton where I first saw — and fell immediately in love with — my friend John Mack.

In the ensuing 20 years of our friendship, John was much, much more than a friend to me: He was a father, a brother, a Godfather to my son, a sex symbol to my wife (“those gorgeous Macks,” she called John and his sons) a mutual confessor and confessee of our joys and sorrows… he was, in the deepest sense of the word, a soul-mate. He was, in fact, for me, the living embodiment of what I immodestly call Blumenthal’s Law: That water — because it is fermented by the chosen — is often far thicker than blood.

My friend John knew, firsthand and at the earliest possible age, the meaning of loss — in fact, that gravest loss of all for a young child: the loss of his mother. But, like the Greek warrior Philoctetes, he also knew that our woundedness can also become the source of our strength, of our compassion, of our openness to the world and its mysteries. He knew that being wounded means remaining capable of being hurt… because it also means remaining able to feel. And, all his life, John was open to the wounded, in whatever form they came: neglected children, wounded veterans, suffering friends, confused and soul-searching young clinicians. Nor was one world even enough to contain the range of his sympathies: they extended, even, those who considered themselves frightened and misunderstood abductees from another.

And while certain more “serious-minded” persons, in high places and low, sometimes sought to mock — even to persecute — him for his openness and vulnerability, he went on doing exactly that by which Marcus Aurelius defines the good man: “modestly following the divine, saying nothing but what is true, doing nothing but what is just.” Like the truly good man that he was, he rarely, if ever, spoke badly of anyone — with the possible exception of George W. Bush — not even of those who tried to harm him.

Like all of us, John was hardly a perfect man. But, precisely for that, he was all the more impressively — and all the more profoundly — that rarest of human creatures: a truly good one. When I reflect upon those admirable qualities enumerated by Marcus Aurelius in his Meditations — “simplicity, goodness, purity, dignity, lack of affectation, love of justice, piety, kindliness, graciousness and strength for one’s appropriate duties” — these were the qualities I will always associate with my friend. Nor were they mere abstractions in his warm and capable hands: He put — in countless small, profoundly human ways — meat on their ever-hungry bones.

Professionally speaking, there were many Johns — John the child psychiatrist, John the biographer, John the teacher, John the political activist, John the holiotropic breath worker, John the investigator into what some might call the para-normal. But, in the most fundamental, and most spiritual, sense, there was always one and the same John… wherever he went, and whatever he did. Part of the genuine beauty, the genuine lovability, of who he was — and, since I am incapable of speaking of him in the past tense, of who he is — was that no situation, no human presence, no mortal contingency, could alter the fundamental integrity and wholeness of his being. Like Walt Whitman, his very presence, and his fundamental humility, insisted: “Nothing external can ever command me completely.”

Because he was a true aristocrat — an aristocrat of the spirit — human categories and status meant nothing to my friend John. He didn’t care — couldn’t have cared less — whether you were a Jew or a Sikh or a Muslim or an infidel. He didn’t care if you were a devotee of Yogi Batwan or Werner Erhard or Stanislav Graf or Sri Aurobindo, or of the B’aal Shem Tov. He didn’t care if you were a Harvard professor or a high school dropout, a Nobel laureate or a janitor, whether your book had sold 10 million copies or 10, whether you were the Dalai Lama or simply the four-legged kind.

He knew, as did Keats, that the world was “a vale of soul-making,” and he respected, and honored, the right of every single soul, no matter how humble, to get made. He was possessed, in other words, of a truly Augustian sense of humanity: “Love means: I want you to be.” And John wanted all of us to be.

Just a few days ago in Tennessee, my son Noah, who loved John like a grandfather and admired him like a father, said to me, “It’s just impossible to believe that John isn’t here.” “John,” I answered him, “is here… and, for us, he will always be here.” Because John was so vividly present to us — so vividly present, I think, to all who knew him — that, even when we were supposedly apart, I felt his presence with me… as I do now. And because goodness and kindness and decency and nobility of spirit survive the mere physical body that tries, unsuccessfully, to contain them, he will never, ever, be gone for me.

On what would have been John’s 75th birthday, October 4th, I took a walk around a pond in Tennessee near where I am presently living. It was a beautiful, crisp and luminescent Fall day — the kind John would have loved and which I sometimes spent with him in Cambridge or Thetford. As I walked around the pond, I saw a great blue heron, a family of cardinals, the common turtle known as a red-eared slider, muskrats, white-tailed deer, warblers of all sorts. I saw, in other words, all around me: Life, and its persistent continuing.

And, then, a single line came to me: “The dead are only dead to us if we let them die.” As did also some lines written by the poet Howard Nemerov, about the painter Paul Klee, which I believe are equally applicable to this particular occasion, and to the life of our dear friend:

So may it be to all of us, that at some times
In this bad time when faith in study seems to fail,
And when impatience in the street and still despair at home
Divide the mind to rule it, there shall some comfort come
From the remembrance of so deep and clear a life as his
His dream an emblem to us of the life of thought,
The same dream that flared before intelligence
When light first went forth looking for the eye.