Considerations about the abductions
di Giovanni Pellegrino

In recent time the subject of UFO abductions has gained immense popularity both with the public and with a small group of writers who have tourned their attention the UFO phenomenon. The number of people who claim to have been abducted by occupans of UFOs has been rising almost exponentially since early 1970s.
The popularity of abduction as led to a proliferation of first person accounts, both remembered consciously and retrieved through hypnosis which are accessible to the researcher.
A careful examination of abduction narratives indicates that the patterns alleged to have been discovered by abduction investigator often have religious overtones or similarities with more traditional types of religious experience.
While the reliance on hypnosis heavy among abduction researchers most seem to be aware of the difficulties inherent in the process. Hypnosis apparently allows access to a subconscious level of an individual’s phyche allowing him or her to recall repressed memories of actual events, but also making it possible to derive “memories” of thinks which have never happened. The nature of accounts obteined through hypnosis is important for understanding the religious characteristic of abduction phenomenon.
One of the signs noted by abduction researchers as indicative of an abduction event is the prevalence of the dreams containing UFOs or alien related imagery. An examination of the available primary accounts of abductions also renforces the dream like character of the phenomenon. Time and space appear disjointed in a non a sensical dreamlike way. Day instantly becomes night and events which seem to have taken hours are found to have taken minutes.
Abductions often begine with the perception of light extremely bright light that causes the percipiant to become paralyzed or generally disoriented. Some times the light renders the abductee unconscious. This intense light is usually identified as the light of a flying saucers of extraterrestrial vehicle.
The religious symbolism inherent here is quite obvious. The apperance of a brilliant light is often said to herald an encounter with the divine Other. Paralysis, blindness and disorientation are associated with this light.
Alternately the experience begin in the nighttime at the abductee’s home. The abductee sees one or more beings approaching in her or him bedside often after passing trough walls or closed windows. The abductee usually feel paralyzed at this point and often loses consciousness. The bedside visitors then take the abductee into their craft once again passing trough walls and taking their victim with them. Vision of beings or face over the bed before one falls a sleep is among the most common of all hallucinations occurring in the distinctive mental state that lies between waking and sleeping.
The vision of abductees have analogies to the experiences of religious dimension. In fact the people who report meeting angels, demons or religious figures often say that these meeting come to them in the night.
After the light the abductee encounters the aliens. The alien is, as the name suggest, the personification of Other. The alien often floats or flies and speaks to the abductee without moving its lips. The alien’s apperance marks it as not of this word.
Often the abductees receive messages in their minds which they take back with them when they return to normal life. Often this messages concern the purpose of the alien’s visit. These messages can be divided into for classes with a specifically religious connotation.
The first type of message is the moral injunction. The aliens tell the abductee that the human kind has been behaving very bad and that if they don’t mend their ways the planet will suffer some sort of chastisement: if the nations of the heart do not stop their constant bickering and experimentation with nuclear weapons they will destroy themselves. Some times the aliens themselves claim that they will take and active role in the moral sphere and are ready to destroy the humanity.

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CUSI - Centro Ufologico della Svizzera Italiana