Inquiries into nonmaterial phenomena, of which afterlife phenomena occupy a prominent role, often open vast and seemingly limitless realms that in some ways appear to intersect to offer us glimpses into what may comprise reality itself. Spiritual and psychic phenomena are prominent, but others, not so well known or understood are also vitally important in helping us understand ourselves and our place and purpose in the cosmos.
One involves phenomena that for lack of a better term I call cosmic, including reported alien contacts. Cosmic phenomena occupy a strange quality of being clearly material yet also in a real sense nonmaterial. They involve a quality of intelligence or consciousness beyond and in some ways superior to that of us humans, and they appear to be trying to tell us something very important about ourselves and our human future.
Alien contacts
Reported contact with alien beings or entities sometimes crops up in unlikely places. In the 1990s psychiatrist Rick Strassman began conducting studies with DMT a key component of the psychedelic substance ayahuasca. Strassman had developed a hypothesis that DMT is produced by the pineal gland buried deep in the brain, which functions as kind of seat of the soul.
By mid-1995 the first phase of the research had been completed involving seven studies during which four hundred doses of DMT in various strengths were given to over 60 volunteers. Strassman divided the DMT experiences into three general categories. The first, or personal, were psychological in nature in which the volunteers primarily dealt with issues in their own lives, gaining deeper awareness and understanding. The second, the transpersonal group, involved material going beyond the individual’s historical life, although they continued to involve familiar aspects from the individual’s experience. Near-death and mystical experiences fall into this category. The third, the invisible worlds group, involved encounters with what appeared to be autonomous, free-standing realities that in some way coexist with our reality.
Experiences of invisible realms, Strassman noted, suggest that in some sense they appear to involve different levels of external reality including different worlds or universes. Volunteers in their DMT sessions reported meeting with beings, entities, or creatures that possess awareness and intelligence that is sometimes much greater than our own. Surprisingly, these beings were aware of them and sometimes seemed to be expecting them, and sometimes the volunteers seemed surprised by their appearance in the beings’ world.
Sometimes they were welcomed, and sometimes they were greeted with anger and hostility. In some cases it seemed that they had travelled great distances through deep space to get to that world, and yet they arrived with no sense of travelling at all. It was in these situations that the beings were most likely to be hostile. They sometimes provided knowledge and healing and sometimes pain and suffering. At times they also offered predictions related to us humans and our world .
Strassman struggled to explain these kinds of reports and concluded that he had to accept the reports of his subjects as descriptions of things that were “real.” Under the influence of DMT they do happen in reality although not in a reality we usually inhabit.”
No doubt the best-known person to describe his own abduction type experiences and to deeply explore what they might mean is Whitley Strieber. Strieber described his first encounter with beings he calls ‘the visitors’ in his 1987 book Communion and in subsequent books added details about ongoing experiences with them.
In December of 1985 while staying in his rural cabin he experienced his first of a great many encounters continuing throughout his life. For our purposes, two unusual incidents are relevant. In reviewing his initial terrifying abduction encounter with very strange beings Strieber recalled seeing a familiar face of a school friend who had joined the CIA. When he attempted to learn about him, he discovered the friend had died months before.
He tells of an unusual event that took place at his rural cabin. He and his wife had been inviting
people to stay overnight in the hope that they too might witness the strange encounters with alien beings he had been reporting. One visiting couple was upstairs in their bedroom and in the living room below four people were sleeping on cots. Another couple were sleeping in the basement. Sometime in the middle of the night the people in the living room discovered that for some reason they couldn’t move. However, they could talk and began talking about their strange circumstance. All of a sudden a group of short, dark blue figures came in through the front door and began jumping around like acrobats. After a few minutes they disappeared, and the people discovered they could move again. The couple sleeping there reported being awakened to see an old friend who had died four years before standing near the bed. She appeared solid and very much alive and told them she was fine. Then she disappeared.
Strieber tells us that following publication of his book Communion letters reporting similar occurrences started pouring in from all over the world, at first by the at first by the hundreds, then thousands, and then easily ten thousand a month. Between 1987 and 2000 he estimates he must have received more than half a million letters with at least 100,000 providing detailed accounts. Many were articulate and provided detailed accounts that were “strange beyond strange. A major element of many was some kind of connection with ghosts and the dead.
A significant element in Strieber’s alien contact experiences and those who sent him letters describing theirs was that such experiences facilitated deep spiritual awakenings. John Mack, a psychiatrist and professor at Harvard Medical School who extensively studied alien contact experiences, found the same thing. In the early 1990s he began what became a decade-plus study of 200 men and women who reported recurrent alien encounter experiences. Four major themes emerged.
One seems to involve a complex sexual/ reproductive endeavor that, if a sequences of experiences occur, may yield the apparent creation of hybrid beings. These experiencers may come to understand that they have been selected for some sort of important cosmic mission.
A second major theme in the abduction phenomenon involves transmission of information from the beings to the experiencer that can include such things as spiritual truths as well as knowledge of science, technology, ecology, healing, art and all sorts of skills. Most importantly among all of these topics is information that concerns the condition of the earth and our relationship to it.
Mack tells us that the third basic aspect of the abduction phenomenon involves an interspecies relationship that can develop between an abductee and one or more aliens with whom he or she relates. Usually the initial memories that abductees report involve cold and indifferent contacts in which they are rendered helpless and probed and examined without regard for their feelings. With repeated experiences over time the relationship tends to evolve into something very different with the development of a sense of meaningful connection that can “reach heights of love so profound as to be felt to be incompatible with earthly love.”
The fourth dimension of this phenomenon involves the expansion of consciousness or spirituality. Mack notes that there is a good deal of disagreement in the abduction research field as to whether an experience that is traumatic for many people, appears to disregard their wishes, feelings, and morality, and may leave them with organ scarring and lasting conscious and unconscious fears and phobias can be spiritual in the sense of coming from a divine source. Typically, we think of spiritual experiences as being benign, uplifting, and perhaps directly enlightening. He argues that life-threatening illnesses, tragic losses, and other personal crises are often catalysts for profound personal growth and transformation. Some spiritual disciplines actually include difficult practices that confront their students with disturbing aspects of internal and external reality.
Another area where afterlife phenomena and alien contact intersect involves electronic voice phenomena (EVP) described elsewhere on this website. EVP originally developed out of a very large body of observations suggesting that they appeared to involve deceased human beings. However, MacRae raises the question as to whether the EVP enthusiasts are selling it short by viewing it as being just a way of contacting the dead. A large proportion of responses in his research originated from beings or entities not associated with this world. His conclusion is that we are dealing with, “certainly in part, intelligence far in advance of ourselves.”
Strassman, R. (2010). Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien worlds through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies.
Streiber, W. (1987). Communion. New York: Beech Tree Books
Mack, J. (1999). Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters.
MacRae, Alexander. 2014 EVP Research: Spirits, Aliens