Near-Death and UFO Encounters as Shamanic Initiations by Dr. Kenneth Ring

In recent years, there has been an effort, particularly by American folkloric scholars (e.g., Hufford 1982; Rojcewicz 1986), to bring some conceptual order to a disparate array of paranormal and transcendental experiences whose academic study has heretofore tended to be associated with distinct and somewhat insular disciplines.

Included in this set of non-ordinary occurrences are such phenomena as out-of-body experiences (traditionally the province of parapsychology), near-death experiences (near-death studies, medicine), shamanic experiences (anthropology), psychedelic experiences (transpersonal psychology), night terrors (folklore), and UFO encounters (ufology). That there are significant similarities among subsets of these experiences, both in terms of phenomenology and aftereffects, has long been recognized, but so far there has been no sustained scholarly effort to build conceptual bridges between these experiential domains or to foster their comparative study, despite some expressions of interest in such undertakings (e.g., Ring and Agar 1986). In the spirit of this kind of endeavor, the need for which has been persuasively set forth by Rojcewicz (1986), I would like to present here a framework for a partial conceptual integration of two non-ordinary experiences previously held to be quite separate and unrelated. I am referring to near-death experiences (NDEs) and alleged UFO encounters (UFOEs),[1] between which I believe there are some hitherto unsuspected links.

This paper has second purpose as well. After delineating certain commonalities between these types of experiences, I intend to explore their possible joint significance for the evolution of human consciousness. This will involve an attempt to embed these and other types of non-ordinary experiences in a second kind of conceptual matrix that will provide a still more encompassing perspective in terms of which to view the implicit connections among the variety of experiences we will be concerned with.

Before setting out on the first of these conceptual journeys, I need to enter a couple of caveats. First, in stressing certain linkages between NDEs and UFOEs, I make no claim that all varieties of these two phenomena are thus entwined. UFOEs especially cover an extraordinary range, and therefore no one model is likely to do even nominal justice to them all. In this instance, however, I will be dealing with a particular and nowadays increasingly well-known type of UFOE, the nature of which I will specify shortly.

Second, the kind of integrative model I will offer here attempts to join these experiences only in terms of their archetypal patterning and functional significance. At the phenomenological level, NDEs and UFOEs are of course quite dissimilar, but it is in their deep structure, as it were, rather than in their surface contentual manifestations that important commonalities can be discerned.

Research on modern NDEs has been carried on for more than a decade; thus the prototypic pattern for this type of non-ordinary experience will be quite familiar to most readers of this journal. This pattern is made up of such elements as (1) a psychological sense of separation from the physical body; (2) a feeling of overwhelming peace and well-being; (3) a sense of movement through a dark but not frightening space, sometimes described as a tunnel; (4) the perception of a brilliant white or golden light by which one is (5) gradually encompassed and from which one (6) feels a sense of total love and unconditional acceptance; (7) an encounter with a being of light or other spiritual entities who (8) may afford the occasion for a panoramic life review following which (if it occurs) one (9) may decide or be told to return to one's body, thereby (10) terminating the NDE. Such experiences tend to cohere in a highly meaningful way for the individual, are almost always said to be hyper-real (i.e., not like a dream or hallucination), and usually have a profound transformative effect on the survivor (e.g., Ring 1980, 1984; Sabom 1982; Grey 1985; Flynn 1986; Atwater 1988). In any event, this is the kind of NDE that will be of focal relevance here.

Another type of experience that, owing to the popularity of such books as Communion (Strieber 1987) and Intruders (Hopkins 1987a), is likewise coming to be increasingly well known to a broad segment of the American public is the so-called UFO abduction experience.[2] This is an encounter for which the prototypic pattern can be, for our purposes at least, reduced to the following four elements: (1) a sense of being taken away, usually against one's will, by one or more humanoid beings, and (2) brought into a strange, alien environment where (3) one is subjected to an invasive physical examination that in some instances seems to have to do with one's reproductive organs, following which (4) one is returned to the physical world, though not necessarily to exactly the same location where the abduction apparently originated. These experiences often lack the coherence of NDEs, are not infrequently temporarily repressed or forgotten but when recalled are re-experienced as traumatic, and often entail a period of time for which one cannot account (e.g., Lorenzen and Lorenzen 1977; Fowler 1979; Rogo 1980; Hopkins 1981, 1987a; Strieber 1987, Bullard 1987). Again, it is this kind of UFO encounter with which we will be especially concerned in this paper.

Now, when one reads accounts of these two types of prototypic experiences or, better yet, has a chance to talk directly to persons who report having undergone them, one cannot fail to be impressed with the obvious differences between them. The typical NDE, for example, is usually recounted in such a way as to impress the reader or listener with its ineffable beauty, transcendental influx or knowledge, and spiritual profundity. In my own work with NDErs, I confess to having often been struck and indeed deeply affected by the radiant glow and strong positive emotions that emanate from NDErs while in the throes of describing their experiences to me. With UFO abductees, on the other hand, both the content and tone are radically different. Here, for instance, one senses one is reading about or listening to people who may feel especially in the immediate aftermath of their experience that they have been the victims of a form of psychological rape. Their reactions afterward are indicative in any case of some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder (Spiegel, Hunt, and Dondershine 1988; Laibow 1988), and their difficulties in dealing with their experience are only compounded by the knowledge of others' likely reactions to learning about the incredible (in the literal sense) circumstances and bizarre events associated with the abduction.

Nevertheless, when one begins to probe beneath the divergent phenomenological surfaces of these two types of experiences, one sees that for all their dissimilarities there does appear to be a common structural basis for them both a shared archetypal patterning that binds them. And if I were to try to encapsulate this common element in a single phrase, the one I'd choose is the shamanic journey. To see this more clearly now, we need to examine these prototypic experiences from an explicit shamanic perspective. When we do so, it will become apparent that most of the defining features of NDEs and UFOEs can be coordinated to a model of shamanic initiation.

In any event, following this kind of revelatory encounter, the individual is sent back or in some cases chooses to return to his physical body. And how does his otherworldly initiation change him? Anyone familiar with the now extensive NDE literature on this subject (e.g., Ring 1984; Grey 1985; Flynn 1986; Atwater 1988) will know that many NDErs return with apparently enhanced psychic sensitivities. Furthermore, quite a few (including Jayne) claim to have acquired healing gifts as a result of their NDE (as the NDE-based film, Resurrection, depicts), and most of them report an increased concern with the welfare of others and indeed with the welfare of all life on this planet.

Finally, I should note that though NDErs as a rule are more concerned with others, others may shy away from them. Many NDErs soon learn to their sorrow that a person who lives in two worlds however one is initiated into a second world tends to make one-worlders a trifle, if not distinctly, uncomfortable.

All in all, then, there seems to be a pretty good fit here between the shamanic initiation model and the structure of the NDE. These parallels, of course, are evident not just from the perspective of NDE research. Students of shamanism such as Harner (1987) and Kalweit (1988) have also drawn explicit connections between these two domains, and Kalweit's book even gives pride of place to the NDE as a modern empirical exemplification of the timeless truths of the shamanic journey.

Nevertheless, a note of caution about these parallels is in order here. Specifically, by claiming that NDErs undergo a kind of shamanic initiation, I do not mean to imply that they are therefore fully accomplished shamans.

On the contrary, they have simply received their first initiation; they have not completed the course, which for a shaman-to-be in a traditional society often takes years of effort. Therefore, while NDErs may return with some shamanic skills and something of a shamanic orientation, it would be best to view them as shamans-in-training, still learning their craft.

Turning now to UFO encounters, we need to discover how well our model fits the case of the typical abductee.

Let's review, then, in somewhat greater detail than before the usual progression of events in these experiences in an attempt to test the utility of this model here.

In UFO abductions, the individual is taken (and I don't mean this in a physical sense, though abductees themselves sometimes do) when he is usually in some kind of an altered state of consciousness asleep, in a state of helpless paralysis, or otherwise somehow entranced. Here, however, the figure of the cosmic shaman this time in the form of a space-age E.T., as it were, but playing the selfsame role albeit in new garb may make his appearance early on, or the abductee may be brought into his presence by a set of clone-like assistants. The next stage of the journey is the examination in which the individual, already usually highly uneasy if not frightened to the core, is forced to endure a variety of intrusive procedures apparently the UFO equivalent of the initiatory ordeal or dismemberment ceremony. It's noteworthy, by the way, how often the abductee will say that this examination took place in a round or curved chamber. We know of course that a round hut or circular enclosure of some kind is a staple in traditional initiations, as Kannenberg (1986), herself a UFO abductee, has pointed out.

Rotunda-like structures can be taken to symbolize a womb or a place of new beginnings. In any event, following this ordeal, certain specific I suppose one might say classified information may be imparted telepathically as part of another act in the initiatory drama. Eventually, however, the abductee is somehow returned to his ordinary space/time world, though, as I have said, he may not have any immediate conscious recall of his traumatic adventure.

Yet he, too, like the NDEr, may come back shaken from his experience but with the seeds of transformation already sown in his psyche. While there are, to my knowledge, no careful long-term studies of the aftereffects of these UFO encounters,[3] preliminary work by Sprinkle (1981, 1983), Davis (1985), and others (e.g., Decker 1986) suggests that despite the grueling nature of these experiences, the after-effects, though variable, often show striking resemblances to the characteristics of NDEs.

And once more in common with NDErs, the UFO abductee may learn that his experience, though it has conferred upon him certain new skills, insights, and understandings, has also served to isolate him somewhat from his community. Like the NDEr, he, too, has had his passport stamped with an extramundane imprint and returns from his strange sojourn with divided and complicated allegiances to that world. As a result, he may find that he is inwardly conflicted and frequently estranged from his family and fellows, something of an alien himself.

Before looking more closely at what precisely one is initiated into during these NDEs and UFOEs, I want to add a couple of comments about the characteristics of the cosmic shaman himself. First, it is clear from the literature of abduction cases that the appearance and behavior of the cosmic shaman in UFOEs tend to be disturbing and indeed frightening to most of those who encounter him. This is in marked contrast, of course, to the loving and benign qualities of the cosmic shaman in NDEs. Once more, it seems, we have an antipodal relationship between these two categories of experience at the phenomenological level but one that again obscures an important functional similarity. The point here is this: It doesn't matter what the cosmic shaman looks like or how he behaves. His function is simply to educate the soul. Whether he does this by acting out the role of the trickster, the masked demon, or the sage is irrelevant. His ways are protean, but his objective is the same through a thousand disguises.Second, as I've just implied, appearances may be deceiving, especially in the exotic mindscape of UFOEs. What I am alluding to here I will shortly tell.

Given that NDEs and UFOEs may be forms of shamanic initiation, we must now take this inquiry one step further and ask: What is it that those who have these experiences are being initiated into when they pass through these otherworldly domains?

In my view, whenever an individual undergoes a shamanic journey whether through nearly dying, UFO abduction, or by other means he is vaulted into the world of the imagination or, to use Henri Corbin's (1976) equivalent phrase, a mundus imaginalis. Let me be clear at the outset what I understand by this expression, whether it be the English or the Latin. James Hillman (1975) has insisted, and NDErs and shamans everywhere would quickly concur, that in the world of imagination, persons and places are fully real; they are as real in that domain as our physical world is to our senses.[4] So in using this expression, I am not implying that such experiences are imaginary, but rather that they are imaginal (again to use Corbin's helpful term). Imagination in this sense is, as Coleridge argued, a creative power, and the world that it reveals is, as Blake knew, a supersensible reality that can be directly apprehended.

Shamans, who see with the eyes of their soul, have also penetrated into this world and have given us peerless descriptions of its fabulous and infinitely varied regions and denizens. Indeed, the idea that shamanic experiences thrust individuals into this realm has lately started to serve as a unifying formulation for a number of writers. For instance, in Shirley Nicholson's excellent anthology on shamanism (1987), there are quite a few articles that articulate this notion admirably (see, for example, the pieces by Harner, Houston, Achterberg, and Noll). Likewise, in Carol Zaleski's brilliant book, Otherworld Journey (1987), she follows a similar interpretative line for NDEs.

Finally, Terrence McKenna (1982, 1984), another student of shamanism, has also argued for the primacy of the imagination in understanding UFO phenomena. These collective efforts, centered on the imaginal world and the power of the imagination to shape human experience, may eventually spawn a conceptual net of sufficient breadth to capture and order meaningfully the variety of non-ordinary experiences we considered at the beginning of this paper.

At any rate, this approach appears to be a most promising direction for conceptual work in this area, and deserves even more attention.

All this notwithstanding, what is important for us at this point in our inquiry is not just the recent popularity of this kind of formulation but rather the fact that through it we are led all the way back to Heraclitus the father of psychology and the seeming priority of the soul. From this perspective, of course, NDEs, UFOEs, and shamanic journeys in general are all explorations in the domain of soul, which, as Heraclitus seems to have been the first to assert, is infinite.[5] And, as Roberts Avens (1980) has pointed out, soul is not only inseparable from imagination, soul is imagination (p. 103).

Therefore, if shamanic experiences are to educate the soul, as I have claimed, they must necessarily do this by propelling us into the infinitude of the human imagination. The mundus imaginalis is our true home, which we are once more beginning to see and to experience directly. Again, as Avens has said: Only soul (the imaginal realm) is not reducible to anything else and so constitutes our true, ontological reality (p. 102).

[1]  Bowing to the widespread use of the phrase UFO encounter, I will defer to it here, but I do want to state at the outset that I myself find this expression both misleading and unhelpful. In my judgment, what is encountered in these experiences has nothing to do with unidentified flying objects as we commonly understand this designation. Perhaps one benefit of attempting to bring some conceptual coherence to the set of phenomena of which UFO encounters are one important category will be to rid ourselves of this unfortunate and somewhat embarrassing term, UFO.

[2]  This is the most frequently used designation for this experience both in the popular literature on UFOEs and in scholarly treatments of the phenomenon (e.g., Bullard 1987). It is, however, not favored by some of those who have had this kind of traumatic encounter. Strieber (1987), for example, prefers the expression visitor experience and has been emphatic in this rejection of any label for it that implies a sense of victimization (e.g., Strieber 1988).

[3]  I have recently inaugurated a research project designed to provide data on this matter that will also afford a direct comparison between NDErs and UFOErs on a variety of different measures.

[4]  Thus Corbin: It must be stressed that the world [of imagination] is perfectly real. Its reality is more irrefutable and more coherent than that of the empirical world, where reality is perceived by the senses (p. 17, his emphasis).

[5]  Fragment 42 in Wheelwright's (1962) version reads: You could not discover the limits of the soul, even if you traveled every road to do so; such is the depth of its meaning (quoted in Avens 1980, 21).

[6]  Since NDEs represent a specific form of OBE, Grosso's argument can easily be extended to NDEs and to other similar transcendental experiences.