“I feel lightness. You lose your body.  I’m moving.  I’m melting.  There’s a lot of vibration…. Everything’s moving all around me.  It’s like going through a tunnel.  It feels like it’s going in circles, like it’s rolling back and rolling back, and going forward.  I’m like expanding…. There’s wind all around, and this tremendous energy and activity all around…. I know I’m safe, and I know I’m protected.  It’s like waves of energy…. It’s totally unbelievable. I’m going through a tunnel.  I’m flying. It’s like flying through years.  It’s flying through nothingness.”

- Recording of an experiencer describing being drawn toward a ship from Passport to the Cosmos, John E. Mack, M.D.

Expanding Our Understanding of Reality

Shamanism and the study of what we in our Western culture refer to as UFO “abductions” or “encounters” both venture into other worlds with phenomenological differences and many similarities. A cross-study of these can augment, advance, and expand our understanding of reality. Bringing this knowledge together might bring insights that neither shamanism nor the UFO phenomenon could provide by itself.  Stated differently, our understanding of reality may expand when a variety of means of accessing other worlds are compared and contrasted.  With this end in view we will examine the commonalities and differences among shamanic journeys and UFO encounters.

In using the terms visitations and visitors it is not our intention to sugarcoat experiences that may have been intrusive, terrifying and traumatizing for those involved, at least until the experiencer has had the opportunity to confront the experiences with an understanding facilitator.  This selection of terms is a personal choice that can enable experiencers to move from a place of victimization to the spiritual growth and transformation that we have come to believe is a possibility inherent in the visitation phenomenon.

A Personal Reality

 Throughout her life, Sue Jamieson has experienced out-of-body experiences (obes), lucid dreaming and UFO encounters, and, over the past several years, shamanic journeying. These experiences have shaped, and continue to expand her knowledge of reality. As a shamanic practitioner and a lifetime experiencer of UFO encounters, she feels in a unique position to compare and contrast the similarities and differences between shamanic journeys and UFO encounter experiences. She is increasingly guided by her shamanic experiences, and compelled by her encounter experiences to bridge these two ways of knowing the world.  Furthermore, she has been encouraged by others,--- “encounterees”, shamans,  and researchers of these matters --- to step forward and assist in the facilitation of communication and understanding regarding the very real phenomenon of “other world” visitation.  Bernardo Ipupiara (Ipu) Peixoto, a Brazilian shaman and his wife, Cleicha, a Peruvian shaman, have urged her to step forward and speak about the encounter phenomenon to facilitate a deeper understanding of reality in our Western culture.

Sue has come to understand shamanic and encounter experiences as less dissimilar than she had originally believed, although the emotional impact may be quite different. Nothing in her early upbringing in our Western culture prepared her for the visitations that began as a small child. Nor was there a framework within which she could safely seek counsel and understanding as she grew up. There were no cultural elders to consult; no keepers of traditional wisdom. What is unacceptable for the surrounding culture (i.e. “alien”) in a person’s worldview develops into an unaccepting view of oneself. It was simply not safe to speak of these visitations.

Myths and Legends – Visitors from the Stars

For native peoples, the universe is filled with life, including entities of various sorts, and some of them (the UFO occupants) seem to have the capacity to show up on the material plane.  But for experiencers of the UFO phenomenonwith a background of Western scientific materialism, which has voided the cosmos of other intelligence, the vividness and terror of these encounters is shattering and forces them to acknowledge the reality of the beings and the inadequacy of this worldview.

Native cultures acknowledge the encounter phenomenon as real. Many indigenous shamans and medicine people, such as Bernardo Ipupiara Peixoto, Cleicha Peixoto, Sequoyah Trueblood, Credo Mutwa, Dhyani Ywahoo, Godfrey Chips, Standing Elk, and Wallace Black Elk, openly acknowledge UFO encounters as part of their reality and speak easily of myths and legends telling of peoples that come from the sky or the stars. According to Osage legends, some of the Osage lived in the sky, way beyond the earth.  The Cherokee, or as they call themselves, Tsalagi, trace their origins to the star group known as the Pleiades, or Seven Dancers, as do the Lakota/ Dakota/ Nakota peoples. The Colombian Amazon Desana say that in the beginning of time their ancestors arrived on the earth in canoes from the sky.   The name of a small tribe in Brazil, Uru-e Wau-Wau, means literally “people from the stars.”

“Extraterrestrial” landings and interactions are commonly spoken of by native peoples.  According to African lore, “star people” have come from the heavens in “magic sky boats” for thousands of years. The great Zulu warrior king, Shaka, was said to have been “kidnapped” by the mantindane (the gray beings).

Indigenous acknowledgement, coupled with collections of thousands of reports from experiencers, seem to be increasing public awareness and acceptance of the reality of the phenomenon within our own Western culture. Dr. John E. Mack, a psychiatrist and author of Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens and Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters, has worked to bring the UFO encounter phenomenon to the attention of mainstream society.  In the course of his research John has interviewed indigenous shamans and hundreds of encounterees. At a time when he was being criticized in the academic community for seeking to legitimize the encounter phenomenon, John was moved when Standing Elk, a Dakota Sioux medicine man, upon learning of his work called to tell him that he and other native leaders would “stand by” him regarding the legitimacy of what he was finding.

Wallace Black Elk, who, like many Native American elders,has had experiences with “disks”, “these little people,”and telepathic communications with them, mocks theliteralness and limited knowing power of scientificmaterialism.  “The scientists call that a UFO, … but that’s a joke, see? Because they are not trained; they lost contact with the wisdom, knowledge, power, and gift.  So they have to see everything first with their naked eye.  They have to catch one first.  They have to shoot it downand see what all it is made of, how it was shaped and formed.  But their intention is wrong, so somebody is misleading those scientists that way… But the biggest joke is on those scientists, because they lost contact with those star-nation people” (Black Elk and Lyon 1991, p.91, emphasis Mack)

Bernardo Ipupiara Peixoto, a shaman who was raised by the Ipixuma tribe of the Brazilian rain forest, is currently working as an anthropologist at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, teaching individuals and offering classes about South American native culture. Ipu was born into the Uru-e Wau-wau tribe in the state of Para in northern Brazil, near the Venezuelan border.  Their legends tell that "a long time ago" a huskerah, something from the sky that makes no sound and was not a bird, landed in the Amazon Basin, and makuras or spirits, small glowing beings with large eyes who came in the huskerahs, taught the Uru-e Wau-Wau how to plant seeds and grow corn. According to Ipu, representations of these vehicles and their occupants or atojars -- which also means "entities that come from the sky" or "people with so much knowledge that they cannot be from Earth" -- are engraved on cave walls. 

To his people, Ipu told John, such beings represent the Great Spirit taking a physical form, because that is the only way they have to understand such matters. The legend continues that after the creation of his peoples, the Great Spirit told the beings from the sky, "your mission is finished here.  I need you somewhere else," and they went away.  Ipu's people are waiting for the Star people to return.

For Credo Mutwa, a sangoma or medicine man of South Africa, the abduction phenomenon and the gray beings are altogether real.  “Ask the Pygmies, the Bushmen of the Kalahari, the Ovahimba of Namibia, or the tribes people of Zaire”, he urged John.  “All will tell of the growing presence among us of what we call alien beings.”

Credo is impatient and even scornful of those, especially in the West, who doubt this. “I just get mad,” he said to John, “because this thing is real.  I just get furious because the people from the stars are trying to give us knowledge, but we are too stupid.  The thing that you are looking into [the UFO phenomenon] is one of the oldest things that we have known.  The thing you are talking about, sir, is real.  It’s not a figment of anyone’s imagination… Why is it that people of different races, people of different cultures, see the same thing?”

Over the past several years,  John and Sue have become personally acquainted with many experiencers, who are also shamans. Godfrey Chips, known in his tribe as Pte He Woptura, a Lakota Sioux Yuwipi medicine man (his Grandfather, Horn Chipps, was the Yuwipi medicine man for Crazy Horse), participated in lengthy conversations with Sue about UFOs during an extended stay at her home in which they also participated in Yuwipi healing ceremonies for her son. According to Sue, he laughed when she called them “UFOs”, saying that was a peculiar term for them that his people did not use, but that he would use it in their conversation. He did not reveal to her the term or terms that his people use.  He told her about watching a “UFO” in broad daylight fly directly into a mountain located behind his home at Pine Ridge. For him that was the most spiritually powerful and personally humbling event he had ever witnessed --- a strong statement from a powerful medicine man.

In June of 2001, when Ipu and Cleicha were visiting Sue, they had a mutual encounter at her home in Vermont. It was a vivid, conscious, experience for all three of them, and contained elements often noted in UFO visitations --- surprise, fear, awe, recognition of some of the beings, teachings, and gaps of memory.  Following is Sue’s account of their experience:

A Visitation

“Ipu and Cleicha were staying in a ground floor and I in an upstairs bedroom. All three of us were tired after having participated in several days of shamanic teaching and healings and, after a dinner and visiting for a while, had retired early, as they were doing a healing on my son, Dan, the next day. 

I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep within minutes of lying down. Suddenly, I snapped awake, heart pounding. My bed was shaking, and I could hear a low-pitched, whirring noise. Bright light was shining through my windows, illuminating the room.

I could see my Chocolate Lab, “Shadow”, who usually has only two moves in his repertoire, lounging or lunging, “belly crawling” along the rug toward the bedroom door.  He kept attempting to growl, low-pitched sounds beginning deep down in his throat erupting as pitiful, high-pitched whines. Dazed and confused, I glanced at the digital clock; it was a few minutes after ll:00 P.M.  Shadow was now “hunkered down” just inside my bedroom door, whining and peering down the stairs toward the foyer and the front door. I could hear my other Lab, “Mali”, also whining at the foot of the stairs.

My heart still jackhammering in my chest and fully awake now, I could see and feel that not just my bed, but the whole room was shaking. My house is a new, large, two story with a full basement. It would take a powerful force to shake it.  The whirring, a low susurrus penetrating the house from above, sent chills of fear, intermingled with anticipation, running along my spine. For reasons beyond my understanding, I got up and went downstairs, herding the dogs out onto the back porch. Both belly-crawled to the end of the porch, peered around the side of the house, and then tuck-tailed back inside. That was my last conscious memory of being downstairs.  Sometime later I found myself back upstairs in my bedroom, with no memory of what had happened from the time my dogs had come back in and how I had gotten back upstairs next to my bed. I crawled back into bed, feeling exhausted.

The next morning, joining me for coffee, Ipu asked me if I remembered seeing “the visitors from the stars” during the night. He told me that he and Cleicha had lain awake talking for awhile before drifting off to sleep.  Cleicha woke up because of a light that shone into the bedroom, even though the blinds were drawn. She got up, and, peering through the slats of the blinds, saw an object with pulsating lights hovering low over the field of balsam trees in front of the house. (My home is located on a 65-acre tree farm, bordered by 400+ acres of unsettled land on two sides.  The nearest house is about a quarter of a mile down the road and is not visible as it is located at the bottom of a tree-covered ledge. Ours is the only house on our road.)  Keeping her eyes on the lighted object, Cleicha called out to Ipu to wake up and come look.  She could not remember anything after that.

Ipu remembered standing in front of three, large, insect-like beings, which resembled what we call praying mantises.  He explained that ‘these were highly evolved sacred beings, not the grays’ that are often reported by experiencers.  They talked with him about my son, Dan, who has severe health challenges, and the healing work that could be done for him. They also told him, “The mother (me) needs to negotiate with us.” When Ipu asked, “Negotiate what?” “She knows,” was the cryptic reply.

It was an unsettling experience for all of us, providing some answers, and raising many questions.  The worlds of shamanic healing and UFO abduction were dramatically joined for me. I subsequently journeyed to my spirit helpers, i.e. power animals and teachers, seeking answers regarding that contact and communication. Based on information from the spirits, I have undergone changes in some of my beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors toward the beings. Specifically, I can now meet these contacts from a place of compassion and cooperation where previously I often met them from a place of fear and anger. I still continue to journey about and process that particular visitation as many questions remain unanswered for me.

Shamanism and UFO Encounters – Similarities and Differences

There are similarities between the ontology, i.e. the essential reality, of shamanic practices and journeys and UFO encounters. There are also noticeable experiential differences.  Furthermore, there are circumstances within both experiences in which differences and similarities overlap and are difficult to distinguish.  We will explore the similarities and differences between the two types of experiences, noting instances in which there is overlap.

Similarities

There are many similarities between shamanic journeys and UFO encounter experiences.  Both involve non-ordinary reality (NOR), altered space and time, and other beings or spirit beings. Experiencersand journeyersboth report flying, moving through tunnels, light, healings, “other world families”, and alternate ways of exploring the sacred.

Differences

What Can Shamanism and UFO Encounter Exploration Teach Each Other?

“It was not my rational consciousness that brought me to an understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe.”
                                … quote attributed to Einstein

     Mutual exploration of shamanism and the UFO encounter phenomenon can assist each other in expanding the current paradigm of reality, in extending our knowledge base, in providing healing methods and techniques, and in the mapping of non-ordinary states of consciousness and realities.

A Paradigm Shift

Within the span of half a millennium, worldviews or paradigms have undergone many changes often perceived as radical or startling at the time. It is difficult for us now to imagine that learned scholars and scientists once taught that our earth was flat, the center of the universe, and orbited by the sun. In the last few hundred years, technological advances have revealed a microscopic world of viruses, bacteria, the mysteries of cellular inner life, the double helix of DNA, genes, the subatomic particle worlds and much more.

Our technology enables us to send rockets thousands of miles into the universe and transmit pictures back to earth to view on televisions and computers. We can sit in an airplane thousands of feet above the earth, and use an airline phone to communicate with someone several hundred miles away. Our technology continually provides us with demonstrable proof that macroscopic, microscopic, subatomic worlds exist outside the realms of our human senses. New worlds beyond our immediate sensory perceptions are continuously being identified and described, expanding our understanding of our universe or universes.

As witnesses to how technological advances continually expand our understanding of the universe and existence, we inquire inevitably, “What exists beyond or outside of our current technological capabilities and perceptual comprehension?”  Furthermore, as the work of Narby, Eliade, Harner, and others have shown, shamans, using techniques of journeying, divination, and “seeing” in a non-rational way, have reported microscopic, macroscopic, and subatomic knowledge for thousands of years, sometimes far in advance of contemporary discoveries.

Jeremy Narby’s statement that the difficulty of grasping “shamanism” lies not so much in the concept itself as in the perceptual lenses through which it is viewed in our society”, might also be applied to how the UFO phenomenon is perceived. 

To a large extent, study of the UFO phenomenon has focused on the question of whether UFOs are real in a strictly material sense, if their existence can be proven by the methods of traditional science, and whether people are being taken bodily through the sky into spaceships by alien beings.  These may be intriguing questions, but the most important truths for our culture may lie in the extraordinary nature and power of the encounterers’ experiences, the opening that these experiences provide to other deeper dimensions of reality, and what they may mean for our culture and the human future. The subtle and elusive nature of the UFO phenomenon is such that its secrets may be denied to those using a purely empirical approach, who try to keep observer and observed, subject and object totally separate.

The idea that we live in a multidimensional universe populated by beings or life-forms that are less densely embodied than we are, or perhaps not embodied at all, is not new to shamanism or to most of the indigenous peoples of the world.  But it is not a cosmos that is familiar or accepted as existing by the scientific culture of Western society, which has constructed a universe in which the seen and unseen realms, the physical and the non-physical have been kept largely separate, so that the physical world might be understood and mastered in its own right.  A difficulty is that this almost exclusive concentration on the material world has resulted in the virtual atrophy of the capacity to perceive or experience the exquisite and awesome beauty, magnificence, and transcendent power of those other dimensions. Paradigmatic shifts can occur when new information or experiences, utterly incompatible with previously held beliefs, reach beyond the intellect so powerfully that the inadequacy of the worldview that has been used to explain or contend with reality becomes viscerally and intellectually inescapable.

Expanded Knowledge Base

Information conveyed to experiencers and journeyers covers a wide range, including skills of all sorts, spiritual truths, and knowledge of healing, art, science, technology, and ecology.  Above all the information for both concerns the status of the Earth and our relationship to it. Experiencers may be unclear as to just what they are to do with this knowledge, but feel that it is of profound, even sacred, meaning and importance. They feel privileged to be receiving it, and know that they must act in some way to bring about change.

The apparent expansion of psychic or intuitive abilities, a heightened reverence for nature with the feeling of having a life-preserving mission, the collapse of space/time perception, a sense of entering other dimensions of reality or universes, the conviction of possessing a dual human/alien identity, or a feeling of connection with creation itself all are such frequent features of the abduction phenomenon that John feels they are, at least potentially, basic elements of the process. The experiences of abductees may bring them to something very much akin to shamanic or mystical states of mind, although for the most part the experiencersremain deeply rooted in everyday “three-dimensional” life, a dilemma that sometimes causes them a good deal of pain.

Shamanic Healing

One way that experiencerscan work through this pain is through shamanic methods. The encountersare often experienced, especially initially, as traumatic, ego-shattering crises, both for the individuals who have undergone them and for their families and friends when they learn of them. Belief systems about their reality structures dissolve.   Feelings of fear, confusion, and disorientation may be quite disturbing.  The visitationscan confront individuals with beings and events for which they have no explanation within their paradigm of reality, causing confusion and fear to those who have been visited, as well as to their family members, friends, et cetera, forcing them to question their own sense of themselves as individuals and their sense of collective identity.

It was through the lens of shamanism that Sue was able to perceive her encountersin a different way. For her, accepting “aliens” into her life with love and compassion as real beings in our world-universe contributed greatly to a personal transformation. This transformation has allowed her to reach out and help others from a place of awareness, understanding, and empathy. 

A shaman moves back and forth between different realities deliberately and with intention, utilizing the precepts appropriate within those realities and striving for mastery of both his or her mundane, ordinary activities and activities within other realms.  Shamanic journeying techniques access not only “what” needs to be done, but also, “how” to do what needs to be done.

Shamanic techniques can help experiencers and their families integrate the encounter experiences into their lives.  In our society UFOs and UFO encounters have been the subject of speculation, derision, confusion, and ridicule for decades.  But largely, perhaps tragically, lost in the arguments between debaters and debunkers are the thousands of individuals who have experienced, in some form or other, visitations of “beings” from “objects and crafts” and who return from their encounterswith much to teach us about our cosmos.

Mapping of Non-ordinary Reality

Experiencers are a rich resource of information who can bring knowledge of different realms to which they are taken, expanding shamanic cosmology and our knowledge of these worlds. Michael Harner through the Foundation for Shamanic Studies has been developing a database of cross-cultural accounts of shamanic journeys, near-death, and other non-ordinary explorations for the purpose of mapping the hidden universe visited by shamans and others. Harner has expressed that it has the potential to challenge current scientific definitions of reality.

Expanding our Knowledge of Reality

Knowledge of reality expands when different means of accessing other worlds are compared and contrasted. Mutual exploration can re-define, describe, and expand our perceptions of reality as well as facilitate personal, global, and perhaps universal, transformational healing. Both shamanism and the UFO phenomenon involve entering a consciousness that is constructed differently than our Western cognitive realities accommodate or embrace. Our Western epistemologies of consistent logic cannot explain the phenomena that occur in shamanic journeys, out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, or UFO encounters.  Cross-study expands our understanding of reality, facilitating change from old paradigm thinking that views us as isolated entities, separate from our environment and from others, and from the universe itself. The isolation of practitioners who sometimes find themselves locked into sub-specialties may limit the expansion of knowledge in each field. Fragmentation of methods and knowledge prevents seeing the connections between them. Collaborative and cooperative exploration of shamanism and the UFO phenomenon can assist fruitful personal and global healing and contribute to advancement of understanding, knowledge, and transformation of our lives.

Summary and Conclusions

Increasing numbers of thoughtful people are recognizing the ontololgical constrictions imposed on our minds by the western materialist worldview.  For this reason traditions and experiences that provide access to a greater reality are being looked at with particular interest.  These include shamanic journeys, near death experiences (ndes), Grof Holotropic Breathwork, various techniques of meditation, and UFO encounters.  Students of each of these fields or phenomena have tended to focus on the one that most suits their interests.  Passing references to comparisons is common, but a systematic discussion of similarities and differences occurs less frequently.  In this paper we have examined the common features and differences of two of these subjects--shamanic journeys and UFO encounters.  The realms beyond what is manifest to our senses may be infinite, and cannot, therefore, be mapped like our planet or even the galaxies.  But using the same analogy, each mode of travel may lead to the discovery of domains that are qualitatively different from the others. 

Both shamanic journeys and UFO encounters “take” the experiencer to other worlds, or domains of existence.  Each experience has great capacity to heal and bring about personal growth and a richer sense of reality and oneself.  Shamans know of the “visitors from the stars,” although careful questioning is necessary to determine if and when they are speaking of something similar to the UFO encounters.  Often they have had encounters themselves.  UFO encounterees, like this paper’s first author, are often drawn to shamanism, having become familiar through their experiences with the worlds to which shamans can take the journeyers.  Sometimes shamans and encounterees recognize each other as kindred spirits.

At the heart of our interest in subjects like shamanism and UFO encounters lies the desire to recover the vital information and wisdom that have been lost through our turning away from traditional ways of knowing.  Shamanic knowledge can help abductees find an ancient framework for experiences, which may otherwise seem shocking and bizarre.  For shamanism itself UFO encounters may provide a frontier, a look into the unknown, familiar perhaps but only dimly perceived.  Bringing the two studies together may lead to discoveries of the complex interplay of inner and outer reality, the relations of spirit to matter, and the possible existence of new physical domains and principles, as well as capacities of our consciousness of which we have hardly dreamed.

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