“If there are super-intelligent aliens out there, they’re probably already observing us—that would seem quite likely—and we’re just not smart enough to realize it.”

-Elon Musk, founder of Tesla & SpaceX, Dubai World Government Summit (2017)

“I Want To Believe.”

This slogan is displayed prominently on a poster above Fox Mulder’s desk in the pilot episode of The X-Files, which went on to become a cultural phenomenon. The show followed two FBI agents as they investigated ETs and the paranormal. It was Agent Mulder who was the open-minded one, counterbalanced by the skeptical Scully, who was always questioning her partner’s “spooky” theories.

It was Agent Mulder, however, who turned out to be correct, as we later learn from a high-level government insider: “they’ve been here for a long, long time.”

As a child of the ’90s, it was easy to admire someone like Mulder, enamored by his virtue, bravery, and yes, his willingness to believe. Even through a TV screen, his fervor for the unadulterated truth was contagious indeed, sparking something latent in my young heart and setting it ablaze. Soon, I wanted to believe too.

It wasn’t until my early teenage years, after stumbling across a documentary on the Roswell crash, that I realized there might be something more to this than just belief. There were deathbed confessionals, after all, from top military officials! There were leaked photos of an alleged alien autopsy! Unbelievably, there was even an “alien interview” with a creepy-looking black-eyed being on YouTube!!

“Why aren’t people freaking out over this?!” I wondered. “This is the real X-Files!”

Luckily, once you dig through so much BS you’re bound to find a critical mind. So after researching this topic for over a decade, I recognize that the large majority of stuff on the internet is complete misinformation (perhaps deliberate disinformation), coming to appreciate the skeptical mind of Scully after all.

However, there are several cases that I consider diamonds in the rough, ones we should study thoroughly and take very seriously. These cases lend validity to the idea that we are being visited by creatures from another planet—possibly, even, “for a long, long time.” Hence leads me to the creation of a series I will aptly title “The Real X-Files,” exploring the best evidence I’ve come across for ET life.

In this first installment, we analyze the groundbreaking work of Dr. John Mack, particularly delving into the extraordinary case of the children of Ruwa, Zimbabwe. So open your mind, come along on this journey, and leave everything you thought you knew about reality behind . . .

“The alien abduction experiences themselves are often initially quite frightening. Yet over time many experiencers form a powerful bond with one or more of these beings. People become deeply connected with these entities.

“They have palpable experiences that are just as powerful, sometimes more powerful, than relationships here. They view them not just as these cold, calculating, indifferent big-eyed creatures, but bonds develop between experiencers and those strange creatures which often has an intense, transcendent, spiritual, sometimes even erotic, element to it.

“. . . [They] are coming now ‘because they are conscious that we as human beings on this planet are destroying ourselves, and they love us and wouldn’t see this happening.’ They are trying to influence us by bringing knowledge and understanding of our connection to each other and to the Earth and a reminder that ‘we are just one part of a big, big whole.'”

-Dr. John Mack, speech at Seven Stars Bookstore (2000)

There was a Time When John E. Mack was an Academic Superstar.

He was a force in developmental psychology. In 1977, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his book A Prince of Our Disorder. That same year, he became department head at Harvard Medical School, specializing in child psychiatry, where he was well-respected throughout the entire university. He interviewed US presidents. He was a prominent voice of nuclear disarmament. And in 1985, he was part of an organization that was given the Nobel Peace Prize, teaming up with other intellectuals who shared this same view.

John Mack was a man who could have played it safe. He could have lived a long and comfortable life, emboldened by his wealth and academic stature. All that changed by the turn of the ’90s, when he did something so unspeakable for a man in his position it shattered his reputation among colleagues:

He began taking cases of UFO contactees seriously.

What started as a meeting with artist Budd Hopkins, turned into a life-shifting discussion about the reports of abductees he researched intensively. “I assumed that both he and his subjects must be mentally disturbed,” Mack later admitted. “For the phenomenon lies outside the range of realities that are possible in the Western world view.”

Yet like a true scientist, the psychiatrist studied the data instead of closing off with this narrow assumption, coming to see that there was a sincerity with these subjects representative of a genuine occurrence—one with potentially earth-shattering implications for humanity if even a single case held legitimacy. Mack explains in his comprehensive 1992 article, “what was so powerful for me was the very precise correspondence of the experiences people were reporting, coming forth with great reluctance from all over the United States and all parts of the world.”

In fact, the consistency was so striking that depictions of the beings drawn by one abductee would send another into shock or even terror once they were shown. “That response struck me as something that could only occur if something real, and not imaginary, had happened to them,” the psychiatrist concluded. “Dreams do not work like that. People do not respond to another’s dreams that way. So something in me said there is something going on here that I do not understand.”

Dr. Mack further estimated that as much as three-million Americans may have had such an experience, based upon reports of a 1991 Roper poll, demonstrating that “it is not a rare phenomenon” (I indeed know one personally). And so he started to work with them:

“Little by little I got drawn into this, and I was referred to cases. By the beginning of June of [1990] I had worked with approximately fifty-five individuals—forty-one of whom fulfilled the strict criteria of an abduction case, which include being taken by strange, humanoid creatures into an enclosure, a UFO, and subjected to a variety of procedures, which I will tell you about. My cases include children as young as two years old. The oldest person is fifty-seven.

“. . . it struck me how ordinary these people are. They exhibit relatively little psychopathology, except that which might be considered the result of the impact of this very disturbing experience. I have housewives, clerks, prison guards, a chef in a Boston restaurant. There have been numerous psychological studies of these individuals; none has discovered any psychopathology in great degree that could account for the experience.”

-Dr. John Mack, “The UFO Abduction Phenomenon: What Does it Mean for the Transformation of Human Consciousness?” (1992)

Using hypnotic relaxation coupled with deep breathing techniques, John was able to regress his subjects back through memories that might otherwise be walled off with trauma, routinely releasing with extreme emotion.

He states, “There are individuals who literally shake with fear confronting the memories of how they were paralyzed or upon seeing again the little aliens with the big black eyes. Their bodies shake, and they scream literally with terror as they remember the intrusive procedures which occurred on the ships. ”

To the professor, this distressing effect was essential in differentiating this phenomenon from any type of fantasy or fabrication. Otherwise, they were normal and sane individuals, without a trace of psychopathology. It was apparent that the subjects at least believed themselves that something extraordinary had happened to them, as the associating trauma was often way too real.

However, after working through all that fear, another element inevitably begins to arise from within—one of utter self-transformation.

“What I and others who have worked with the trauma of this have discovered is that the abductees begin to feel that their experiences were for a purpose or had a positive meaning to them,” Dr. Mack observed. “They feel that the experience is expanding their consciousness, that they are connecting with themselves, that they are opening up to a whole new perspective on reality.”

This expansion of consciousness involves a shattering of consensus worldview, a sudden concern for Earth and the environment, a “sense of being connected once again to a divine Source or Home,” as well as a transpersonal, often deeply spiritual affiliation between being and contactee. Indeed, the subjects regularly reported the feeling of a higher agenda to “open up the heart-mind” and connect us back to the ground of creation. As one man claimed, “Once I was open I couldn’t stand what we were doing on the Earth. Just that opening of me changed my whole view on our place in the universe. ”

“The second important dimension of the UFO abduction phenomenon, and one I want to underscore, is the element of transformation. What I and others who have worked with the trauma of this have discovered is that the abductees begin to feel that their experiences were for a purpose or had a positive meaning to them. That is, when the trauma has been fully processed . . . They feel that the experience is expanding their consciousness, that they are connecting with themselves, that they are opening up to a whole new perspective on the universe.

“Another important transformational aspect pertains to the intense information that abductees are given on the ship about the global crisis. For example, they may be shown a wasted landscape after nuclear war or environmental destruction. They may see the Earth dying, with polluted atmosphere and foul rivers. In response to this, and almost uniformly, they develop a powerful environmental consciousness. Some of them go so far as to drop the jobs they have been doing.

“Another transformation that happens is the intense bonding that occurs with the aliens after a while. What was originally an intensely traumatic experience turns into an extraordinarily meaningful relationship.”

-Dr. John Mack, “The UFO Abduction Phenomenon: What Does it Mean for the Transformation of Human Consciousness?” (1992)

As the subjects were transformed, so was the psychiatrist. Dr. Mack noticed that repeated aspects of the testimony stood in harsh opposition to the prevailing Western worldview, including the collapse of space and time, dispelling “the notion of a space-time universe as being the only dimension that is possible.”

More uncanny is the intensely telepathic connection with these beings, often to the point of feeling “a profound, strange loving bond,” even in the aftermath of the event. Mack notes that “the connecting that occurs with the aliens tells us that we are somehow connected beyond the universe as we know it.

“I do not think one can understand this sort of thing without some sense of a larger design, or a divinity, or an anima mundi,” he continues. “There is this feeling of inter-species connecting on a very powerful level. . . . this phenomenon has challenged our sense of reality more powerfully than almost anything else I am aware of.”

This challenging of materialist reality was “a very great leap” for the professor that contradicted his academic upbringing. The only precedent for him was the great Carl Jung, whose “psychoid” description of the UFO phenomena implies an essential interconnection between mental dimensions and accompanying manifestations in the physical. From this perspective, “World and psyche or consciousness become one, existing in some sort of harmony or resonance, whose design we are left to discover.”

“Of course we generally allow that those domains sort of exist in people’s minds,” Mack acknowledges. “But the absolute cardinal sin to the Western mind—and the thing that will drive my colleagues crazy and probably end up getting me in trouble—is that there can be traffic across those barriers, is that the third [spiritual] world can enter the physical world. Yet that is precisely what this phenomenon indicates to us.”

This is what set Dr. Mack apart from other researchers of the time, by not only viewing the phenomenon through a positive lens of transformation, but also insisting to expand our definition of reality to other dimensions. For all signs indicate that advanced alien spacecraft may phase in and out of this reality to “subtle realms” from which they originate, operating at a different resonance. Surely, just because an experience occurs in a transcendent dimension does not make it any less real. Our physical reality may be but a thin layer of an onion, in a mysterious multiverse we have yet to understand.

Mack calls this “one of the basic assumptions we have to challenge if we are going to be able to study the subtle realms, which not only involve consciousness itself but the relationship of consciousness to the material world.” He further maintains, “We have to consider the possibility that consciousness—spirit, self, soul—all have a life, an existence, separate from the physical body.” In this regard I entirely agree, as I have written extensively as to why new science shows this to be the case.

“The physical sciences have given us fairly reliable methods of knowing about the material world. But how then are we to determine the truthfulness of reports of things even when there is a limited amount of physical evidence, that are known mainly by the instrument of consciousness, realms that are neither purely inner nor outer but both, existing in a relationship that may be quite difficult to disentangle?

“It is the messiness of this question, I believe, that accounts, in part, for the tendency of science to avoid the study of the range of human experiences, like the UFO abduction phenomenon, that tell us of realities that are perhaps far more vast, mysterious and vital to our well being than what can be known by empirical study of the physical world alone.

“. . . If, indeed, these Witnesses are bringing us closer to the Divine, rejection of their testimony or unjustified skepticism have profound moral as well as clinical and scientific implications. We are denying or rejecting their sacred truth.”

-Dr. John Mack, “Witnessing: Abductees as Sacred Truth-Tellers” (2001)

By a manner of logic, if we were to accept the reality of this phenomenon, we would also have to accept some sort of inter-dimensional play, as that is how they travel—traversing through strings of a higher realm. Additionally, we would need to concede that consciousness is more than just an epiphenomenon of the brain, perhaps fundamentally entangled through a non-local field, as that is how they communicate—telepathically, “reaching [contactees] apparently from other dimensions.”

These notions drove many of Mack’s colleagues crazy, to say the least, who thought him to be naive. After all, the professor admitted himself that his body of evidence was largely experiential, with the exception of unexplained marks and UFOs seen in the vicinity. “But what if the phenomenon were subtle in the sense that it may manifest in the physical world,” he contends, “but derive from a source which by its very nature could not provide the kind of hard evidence that would satisfy skeptics for whom reality is limited to the material?”

In this regard, the academic was bold enough to expand his way of thinking, remaining open to experiences “so far outside of the bounds of reality that have been defined by [our] education and upbringing.”

“Truth is truth,” as one subject put it. “It will still be there when science is ready to see it or equipped to validate it.”

The Children of Ruwa

“If the masses started to accept UFOs, it would profoundly affect their attitudes towards life, politics, everything. It would threaten the status quo. Whenever people come to realize that there are larger considerations than their own petty little lives, they are ripe to make radical changes on a personal level which would eventually lead to a political revolution in society as a whole.”

-John Lennon, musician, activist & UFO witness, radio interview (1975)

Perhaps the most famous case investigated by Dr. Mack is indeed an exceptional one. In September of 1994, during their morning break in the small village of Ruwa, Zimbabwe, 62 children of the Ariel School witnessed several disc-like objects fly through the yellow haze of the sun and finally land in a wooded area adjacent to the schoolyard. Out of the largest craft came two strange-looking beings, one of which approached the children.

The children, between the ages of 6 and 12 and comprised of different races, had varied reactions to the surreal event. Some ran about excitedly, shouting across the schoolyard. A few were brave enough to go and inspect. Many of the younger ones were frightened and started to cry. Still others stood in a trance-like state, enamored by the eyes they could look in directly, allegedly receiving messages telepathically.

But at the end of it all, there was only hysteria.

“They came running up here in such a panic,” said one of the teachers, “and even if we had staged it, they could not have run all together like that.” However, most adults did not initially believe the children. It was only after phone calls from parents demanding an explanation, of what traumatized their kids to the point that several had to meet with paramedics, that the headmaster admitted something extraordinary had happened.

Investigators came, such as the South African Cynthia Hind, who corroborated the claims with reports of UFO sightings in the area the few days prior—including an incident in which hundreds of Zimbabweans witnessed bright flashes in the sky. Moreover, it was noted that the children seemed very intelligent, well-spoken, and most of all sincere, sharing common details of the account through a number of different cultures and perspectives. Word spread quickly of the incredible story.

It was November when John Mack flew down to Africa with colleague and anthropologist Dominique Callimanopulos to document the case. They spent the ensuing two days at the Ariel School interviewing nearly 50 children, one by one, and asking them to draw pictures.

Their descriptions as well as the dozens of illustrations were vivid and consistent. The spacecraft was depicted as a large silver disc with bright lights and a red stripe around it. Hovering over the grass, it made a humming noise that sounded “like someone was playing a flute,” as one frightened girl whispered.

The beings themselves apparently wore tight black suits, were exceedingly thin, had small slits for mouths, and—most eerily—possessed large, powerful eyes “like rugby balls” that could leave one spellbound. “It was all black [but] the pupils were white,” remarked one of the boys to Dr. Mack, while drawing their huge, slanted eyes. “Yes [he looked at me] and he gave me the creeps.” Notably, the children were adamant that these beings and their craft were not of any kind we would find on Earth, calling them “aliens from another planet.”

Most remarkably, several of the children claimed to have had telepathic communication with the beings, who transmitted apocalyptic messages about the destruction of our environment. Previously care-free children were suddenly burdened with the thought that Earth was in trouble, and we need to take better care of our planet. This implies a connection that occurred on a deeper level, subsequently trickling down from the subconscious and into the developing intellect of these young human beings.

Says little Lisa: “What I thought was they were telling us the world is going to end, because we don’t look after the planet properly. . . . I just felt all horrible inside. All the trees will just go down and there will be no air and people will be dying,” clarifying to the psychiatrist that she never thought of anything like that before her contact with those beings. “He never said anything. It’s just the eyes. . . . he was interested.”

“John was an amazing interviewer and there was a depth to his interviews I’ve seen few people replicate. He never rested with the first answer and would always allow time and space for another way of asking the question. This allowed the kids to get beyond an initial reaction and answer; in some ways, they were able to relive their experience of their sighting.

“They all saw pretty much the same thing. They saw a craft approach the playground and hover over the playground. And they saw two beings. Many of the children we spoke with had communication with the beings and described staring into the beings’ eyes. They had apocalyptic visions of the Earth.

“I remember one girl said she felt that all the trees would come down. There was another girl who probably said the most profound, deep things, and she reported feeling scared and also feeling sorry for the beings to the point of feeling love for them.”

-Dominique Callimanopulos, American anthropologist, “Through their Eyes: The 1994 Ariel School Encounter” (Mahoney, 2018)

Dr. Mack—one of the foremost experts on child psychology—listened to each child closely, coming to the conclusion that there was no way it could be a delusion. From the body language, the genuine emotion, the sense of conviction, to the stunning consistency of the claims among dozens of children, one thing was apparent: “There’s no hint of psychopathy.” As the Harvard professor clarifies, “They describe these experiences like a person talks about something that has happened to them. When you’re talking with someone who’s telling you a delusion, I can tell. There’s nothing like that here.”

“I haven’t been influenced by any of my friends,” one girl affirmed when questioned by Mack. “I have seen what I’ve seen.” And among the other 61, they all described the same event, something remarkable in itself. Exceptionally, they continue to do so to this day.

Indeed, in the age of the internet, experiencers of this event are increasingly being called upon to give interviews. Now as young adults, their story remains the same, yet they are able to better articulate sensations such as psychic communication and the distortion of time. Explains an emotional Emily Trim: “They were curious, almost like mimicking us, and all of a sudden they were in front of us, within arm’s reach. We were frozen. Telepathic images started going across my face—communication through the eyes that’s all I could really describe it as—image after image after image.

“One of the other girls standing beside me got more communication about the environment,” the young woman continues, reiterating the ideas of Lisa over 20 years prior. “Mine was more [about] technology that exists, and positive and negative uses of technology. . . . I’ll never forget that day.” Emily claims that she’s had a connection with these beings ever since.

Absolutely, many of the children, as well as their parents, report they’ve been totally changed since the encounter, opening up new horizons. “My experience as an eleven-year-old at school in the playground that day has definitely shaped and informed a lot of what I do,” affirms Salma Siddick, who is now a staunch social activist. “It was very immense, very intense, and clearly has changed my life.”

Says another experiencer, now a young man, of looking into the eyes of that strange-looking being: “If there’s one moment I’d like to relive, it would be that one particular moment that day.”

“We heard a high-pitched frequency sound, and we saw a flash and a craft. It’s really hard to describe time at this point . . . all I could tell you is that two beings were hopping along the side. They were curious, almost like mimicking us, and all of a sudden they were in front of us, within arm’s reach. We were frozen. Telepathic images started going across my face—communication through the eyes that’s all I could really describe it as—image after image after image.

“One of the other girls standing beside me got more communication about the environment. Mine was more [about] technology that exists, and positive and negative uses of technology. . . . I’ll never forget that day.”

-Emily Trim, Ariel School contactee, Alien Cosmic Expo (2015)

It hasn’t been a happy ride for everyone, however. Another of the Ariel contactees, Sarah, reveals that peers still poke fun at her for the incident—even though for her it is no laughing matter. “The real message is that this stuff can brand you for life,” she maintains. “It undermined Mack’s credibility, became this huge unending thing for others, and it certainly fucked me up. I mean, try telling people that you live in permanent fear of these things returning one day. Try telling them that you can actually sense when they’re back in our atmosphere. They’ll think you’re a kook.”

It is paramount that we do not fall victim to this mindset; for from our own narrow view, we can never step into their shoes. We should not attempt to project our limited dogmas onto events that we’ve never experienced ourselves, with perceptions we cannot fully comprehend. In this regard, we should hold what these children say with the utmost importance, willing to open our minds to a greater reality.

It was Dr. Mack, after all, who observed that the central problem experiencers were facing was “not simply a matter of evidence, but the persistence of a narrow worldview and of the ways of knowing that sustain it.” This is why Cynthia Hind, who was the first investigator of the Ariel encounter, applauded the work of the professor, calling him “not only open-minded and prepared to listen, but an academic of some standing. And one who has risked his credibility with his colleagues to come out and say he believes the experiences of abductees are very real indeed.”

An Intellectual Astray

“John Mack told me that the children behaved and talked as if they were totally sincere. In the footage I viewed, it certainly appears as if they were telling the truth. I think the children, as a voice of innocence and authenticity, offer a perfect contribution to the awareness that many people are growing into. More people are coming forth and speaking about encounters that they’ve had with otherworldly beings. More and more people, as well as many noted physicists, are thinking about the possibility of different dimensions of reality.

“We’ll probably always have skeptics who do not want to stretch their thinking about reality. John Mack used to talk about how people would have a certain paradigm about reality but become resistant when something new would come along like a crop circle, sighting, or an encounter with an extraterrestrial being. Accepting these aspects as real can be difficult for some people; they have to give up their old beliefs about reality and their worldview has to stretch and grow.”

-Barbara Lamb, regression therapist & friend of John Mack, “Through their Eyes: The 1994 Ariel School Encounter” (Mahoney, 2018)

During the year of the Ruwa incident, and after the success of his best-selling Abduction, a committee was appointed to critically review the research of the open-minded academic. According to the BBC, “It was the first time in Harvard’s history that a tenured professor was subjected to such an investigation.” While at first attempting to keep the investigation under wraps, rumor spread quickly of the secret committee, soon becoming a highly publicized matter “dividing the academic community.”

Luckily, famous colleagues came to Mack’s defense, notably Alan Dershowitz, who denounced “the chilling of academic freedom” in a front-page Washington Post story. “Will the next professor who is thinking about an unconventional research project be deterred by the prospect of having to hire a lawyer to defend his ideas?” the eminent lawyer questions, subsequently asserting: “No great university should be in the business of investigating the ideas of its faculty. . . . Eventually the truth will come out. That is what a university is all about.”

Due to the publicity, Harvard was ultimately forced to disband its committee, admitting that the distinguished professor should be free to study what he wants, even if it is—alarmingly—potentially paradigm-shifting.

“Should a distinguished Harvard professor of psychiatry be subject to formal investigation and potential discipline for doing research on the possibility that people who claim that they were abducted by space aliens may not all be crazy after all? This question is dividing the academic community, which is watching carefully as Harvard Medical School completes its year-long investigation into the research of Dr. John Mack, who wrote the controversial best-seller Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens.

“It is extremely unusual for great universities to second-guess the research or publications of their tenured faculty. . . . any formal investigation of a professor’s ideas raises serious concerns about the chilling of academic freedom. Will the next professor who is thinking about an unconventional research project be deterred by the prospect of having to hire a lawyer to defend his ideas? . . . It is noteworthy that the issue of space aliens is not a politically, racially or sexually divisive one.

“What is on trial in his case are his ideas—his willingness to consider the possibility that the numerous accounts of alien abductions may not all be products of insane delusions. Dr. Mack’s idea ‘shop’ in the marketplace should not be shut down; nor should it be subjected to extraordinary ‘inspections.’ Critics should open their own idea ‘shops’ and try to compete. Eventually the truth will come out. That is what a university is all about.”

-Alan M. Dershowitz, “Defining Academic Freedom,” The Harvard Crimson (picked up by The Washington Post) (1995)

“I would not have gotten into trouble if I had not suggested in the book [Abduction] that my findings might require a change in our view of reality,” clarifies Dr. Mack in his 1999 Passport to the Cosmos, “rather than saying that I had found a new psychiatric syndrome whose cause had not yet been established.”

Certainly, John is correct in that the reason he “got in trouble” is that he questioned the entrenched worldview, coming from an establishment that treats the populace like spoon-fed children, dictating what and what not to believe (presumably, at the delight of elitist corporations, whose power and control would outright collapse if the highest-level ET technologies ever saw the light of day). “When [materialism] or any world view is challenged and shattered, it creates terror,” writes the psychiatrist. “I think that some of the resistance that I have encountered, and which, naively, I rather underestimated, derives from this threat.”

Assuming there is a reality to this phenomenon, it is natural then to ask what “they” are doing here, and why these abductions take place. From the testimony I personally have heard and read, it seems that many may be benevolent, with a mission to raise consciousness and check up on humans in their “soul group.” Others might have a more questionable agenda, with Mack speculating the creation of a “hybrid” breeding program due to his subjects’ invasive descriptions of procedures on the ships, as well as the often intense bonding with their offspring afterwards.

Still others may not be extraterrestrial at all, as alleged by recent black project insiders, who claim ongoing experiments of “staged abductions” by a covert military with reverse-engineered ET technology, though I won’t delve too far down the rabbit hole here.

Overall, however, Dr. Mack supposed it “quite possible that the protection of the Earth’s life is at the heart of the abduction phenomenon,” buoyed by his myriad of subjects who suddenly “become passionate on behalf of the stewardship of the Earth.” He concluded in the late ’90s that this reverence “is so frequent an aspect of the phenomenon, and such a consistent element in the communication between the beings and the experiencers, that the transformational dimension may be regarded as a central feature if not the primary ‘purpose’ of the phenomenon itself.”

“The experiences that are written about make it clear that the encounter opens people to an awareness of Self, with a capital S, that goes way beyond any kind of ethno-national identification, to a much larger sense of being a child of the Divine, or a child of Spirit, a child of the Cosmos. And so it is in a sense a passage experience from a nationalistic identity to a collective identity, to a larger global identity.

“When you open Self to a connection beyond the material world, beyond the Earth to a larger firmament, this opens people to the sacred. It opens people to a sense of the divine, of being one with all-that-is, what people used to call God. And when that occurs, then everything becomes part of that. Everything becomes part of God, part of the divine. Everything you do, everything you see, every material or non-material object, whatever you encounter becomes a part of that sacred universe.

“Many of the things that we do, the mass destructive things we’re doing, particularly the destruction of the Earth itself, become impossible from the place of that kind of consciousness. You’d cringe every time you saw a bulldozer. You would shrink in horror from every polluted stream; it just wouldn’t be OK. . . . That kind of shift of consciousness is the only thing, I think, which could possibly arrest the downward spiral of destruction that is happening here.”

-Dr. John Mack, speech at Seven Stars Bookstore (2000)

This environmental message further pertains to the children of Zimbabwe. Regarding the Ruwa incident, you do not have to be an expert in child psychology, as is Dr. Mack, to be able to look at these kids and process sincerity, as well as genuine emotion. Additionally, you do not have to be a PhD in statistics to understand that the possibility of 62 human beings recounting the same vivid lie, throughout all these years, with such clarity and consistency is highly improbable.

What is even more improbable is that out of the hundreds of billions of stars within our galaxy alone, there’s not one race of hyper-intelligent beings who possess the capacity to observe us. That probability, if you’re asking me, is close to nil—solely from a perspective of rationality.

Then you can add in the “abundant evidence that we are being contacted,” to quote the late NASA astronaut and Princeton physics professor Dr. Brian O’Leary, another “astray intellectual” brave enough to explore beyond the decaying paradigm. “That civilizations have been visiting us for a very long time, [who] manipulate time and space . . . and use the technologies of consciousness.”

Similarly asserts Dr. Mack, after 12 years of investigation, during a 2002 lecture: “The evidence is overwhelming. Even the physical evidence is overwhelming, never mind the thousands of reports. But that again has to do with the worldview. How many times have you heard people say ‘There’s no evidence!’—they haven’t looked! Or if they looked, they don’t see.”

Another understanding we may arrive at is that if there are visiting ETs, we would have to assume they are not only advanced technologically but also spiritually—for we are living in a spiritual universe, connected through cosmic webs—and therein lies their concern for the Earth (especially in the nuclear age). This is where it seems most people get hung up on; we cannot project our primitive patterns and behaviors onto these advanced beings, as a single-planet species largely walking about in amnesia, with most of us ostensibly indifferent to our very inner nature.

We are but senseless ducks in a small pond, unaware that we are being watched, oblivious to a greater reality. This is why it is so important to remain receptive to the central message of these contactees: to grow spiritually, to expand our awareness, and to demand the release of suppressed technologies.

On the other hand, if we only looked for aliens to come save us, we would learn nothing, and stall our progression as a species. It would defeat the entire purpose of existence itself, in this playground of evolution we call planet Earth, and that is why these “watchers” may not want to intervene—only give messages to those open to receive (and if they do, they might enter into an unwanted karmic connection, which could cause complications cosmically speaking). This does not mean, however, that ETs have never covertly tinkered with human DNA, shut down nuclear missile silos, or from a spiritual perspective, established agendas of incarnating souls.

Dr. Mack was revolutionary, especially for a man in his academic position, as he was gratefully able to see from this higher angle. Insisting to expand the definition of reality beyond our restricted worldview, he shined light on positive experiences with these beings that could be spiritually transformational.

“The Ariel school encounter is an important example of teachers and parents talking with children about a paranormal experience. It’s important to listen to and accept what children say about their paranormal experiences such as ESP, past lives, and ET encounters.

“I think more and more children are coming into the planet with psychic awareness and many feel they are here not only for their own spiritual growth, but also to assist humanity and its evolution.”

-Dr. Leo Sprinkle, child psychologist, “Through their Eyes: The 1994 Ariel School Encounter” (Mahoney, 2018)

Additionally, he took children seriously. He reminds me a lot of Dr. Ian Stevenson in this regard, who I’ve recently written about, the head of psychiatry at UVA who studied past life memories. Although investigating apparently separate phenomena, the now-passed professors are forever interlinked through a common theme: the willingness to believe experiences that subvert the dominant paradigm, and could possibly change the world. Likewise, throughout so much ridicule, they favored the transcendent truth over personal reputation, sacrificing much of the latter for the greater good of humanity.

Organizations that embody these ideals still exist to this day: For Stevenson, it is UVA’s Division of Perceptual Studies, “devoted exclusively to the investigation of phenomena that challenge current physicalist brain/mind orthodoxy,” as the “recognition of consciousness as something greater than a physically produced phenomenon is both more optimistic and more accurate than the prevailing materialist worldview.”

For Dr. Mack, it is the John E. Mack Institute (JEMI). Founded by friends and family, its mission “is to explore the frontiers of human experience, to serve the transformation of individual consciousness, and to further the evolution of the paradigms by which we understand human identity.” Fortuitously, JEMI has for years been sponsoring a documentary about the encounter in Ruwa, entitled Ariel Phenomenon, which is finally expected to be released sometime in 2019.

The film is being produced by Randall Nickerson, an alleged contactee himself, who reported being blown away when he saw Dr. Mack’s original interviews with the Ariel children. “That’s what initially interested me about this case,” he explains. “These children all describing seeing the same thing. You can tell they are not lying. But having seen this footage I thought: I need to go to this place, to talk to people, I need to investigate it for myself. Did this really happen?”

On the JEMI website, Nickerson describes his first visit to the Ariel School over a decade ago:

“After seeing this footage, I could understand what Mack saw in the testimony of these children. . . . Seeing the school for the first time was a moment I will never forget and meeting the teachers and those that were there in 1994 was fascinating. The school and the Head Mistress were so gracious and accommodating given the circumstances that they were under. The Headmistress shared with me photos, drawings, and the story of the 1994 incident.

“My question was ‘Do you really believe it happened?’ Her and the 2 other teachers I spoke with and interviewed were convinced that it did. I walked the playground for days and the site where the witnesses said this silver disc was. I met with parents of some of the children and people from Ruwa that also witnessed unusual things in the sky the day before. A paramedic who met with some of the children who were traumatized after the event. It became more and more apparent that there was an incredible story here.”

“This is a story the world needs to see,” the American concluded. “There’s no question that something very unusual happened at that school. I’ve found hundreds, if not thousands, of people who believe it and couldn’t find anyone who didn’t.” This includes “One teacher who had been skeptical [but] believes the children now, nearly twenty years later, because their testimony has been so consistent over time.”

Indeed, Nickerson has taken upon himself the arduous task of tracking down the former students, now largely scattered across the globe, for a “re-interview” from an adult perspective. Fortunately, many have voluntarily reached out to him through the JEMI website, eager to share their undoubted account of what happened that day, along with the recurring testament of how profoundly the surreal contact impacted their lives.

“Their stories have not changed at all,” Nickerson reiterates. “Not what you would expect if they had made it all up.” And judging by the recent trailer, neither has the emotional connection to the incident, sparking an uncanny wonder about our place in the universe.

“Why is it we want to shrink this powerful phenomenon to our notions of reality,” Dr. Mack’s voice is heard near the end of the trailer, “rather than be able to stretch ourselves to expand what we know and to admit that we don’t know.”

John Mack remained head of psychiatry at Harvard until his tragic death in 2004, being hit by a car while in London for a lecture, walking home alone late at night. There are many today who question the circumstances of his death, but that is not my place to speculate. I wrote this article, as the John E. Mack Institute eloquently puts it, “to honor his courageous examination of human experience and the ways in which perceptions and beliefs about reality shape the global condition.”

“Despite official skepticism and even cynicism in media, government, and scientific circles, it must be evident to many Americans that something extraordinary—at least from the standpoint of the Western worldview—is going on,” continually maintained Dr. Mack. “No conventional explanation for the thousands of reported cases of encounters with alien beings has been sufficient.”

So do I want to believe? Yes, of course I do. But as someone who’s been researching this matter for more than a decade, it just seems inescapable to me that something strange is in our midst, so far beyond the bounds of reality we’ve been led to believe. Exceptionally, there seems to be a growing number of contactees by beings not of this Earth, urging us to evolve our global consciousness, yet still live in fear of being called crazy. There’s no room for continued cynicism in this regard. At some point, even the Scullys of the world have to come around.