Abby: The Body Remembering; Energy That Heals

In November 1991 Abby was twenty-four and camping with her husband-to-be in Mexico when, she recalls, their tent and surroundings were bathed in light, and she saw four luminous beings with large heads and thick necks and arms "float through the side of the tent." Her companion woke her to call her attention to what was occurring, but later could not remember the event. Abby came from the West Coast to see me because she wanted to "remember more." The session reported below was attended by Roberta Colasanti, Karen Wesolowski, and one of Abby's senior colleagues, a television producer she trusted who had taken a special interest in her experiences. She relaxed easily and soon was reliving the experience. "I'm not ready for this," she cried out, remembering her panic upon seeing the beings coming through the sides of the tent and being unable to move. (See page 55 for Abby's struggles with the reality of the experience.)

One of the beings, a female, calmed Abby by touching her on the forehead. Her body shook as she recalled the "energy flow." Then she remembered being lifted from the bed, floated "sideways," and taken "through the side of the tent." "Wow," she said with wonder, as she felt a tingling as if all her cells were"coming apart." "It was so quick and subtle," she said, gasping, "and then you're on the other side. Then you're whole." Laughing in amazement, she remembered the feeling of "going through the tent." Abby seemed to be reliving the intense bodily sensations of this passage, especially in her hands. "It's like the residue of this exchange is exiting through my hands. My fingers are burning right now. The tips of them are like, wild," she said, breathing heavily and deeply.

In a state of a w e and fear, Abby continued to relive her experience, speaking in halting phrases and crying about the awesome sense of cellular change, especially in her hands. Her body seemed to remember "how it's done," she said, "becoming separated molecularly" and then "the coming together." "I unbecome and then I become." She relived, gasping and screaming, the energy changes in her amis, feet, legs and head, but it was in her hands that she seemed to carry most intensely the residue of the feeling of coming together. The sensation in her hands became so intense, so far "beyond burning, beyond pins and needles," that Abby felt certain that we could feel it too and asked us to hold them. (We couldn't.)

The beings seemed pleased, Abby recalled, that she had grasped "that you can go through solid things. They knew I was ready to be taught this stuff. They looked at me and said,*See, you know.'" I asked her to be more specific about what she had learned. "The ability to change matter into nonmatter and vice versa," she said. "That's the lesson that I just lived through. They use no machines to go through matter," she continued. "We have the ability as well, or they wouldn't be able to bring us through matter."

After this, Abby recalled, she was taken in a "cold cylinder" of surrounding white light ("it's the energy that transports us") to the place "where they do their work." This was confusing to her because she thought she was "going up" but felt no "movement in the cylinder. The cylinder opened up, and we walked out," she said, and she found herself "in a big room in their ship, but it's right by the tent.... They don't like the word ship," she remarked, and she did not either, so we settled on "the place where they do their work." In the room she saw several beings who were "welcoming" her. This was different than other times she had been taken, she said, because "they're not here to do experiments on me—I hate that word and so do they—[but] to show things and explain."

With intense emotion Abby described a process similar to what she had recalled when she was taken through the sides of the tent. One of the beings, the same female who had smiled at her for "getting it" about the molecular or cellular changes that had enabled her to go through the tent, took what "was physical at this stage and made it a nonphysical stage of matter.... They made it into energy with their hands.... With their hands they can change structure." She gasped and screamed loudly again as she relived this experience. The energy was so powerful, she explained, that she was having trouble breathing.

Coming out of the relaxed state at the end of the session, Abby said, "I've never felt so powerful before, ever. I felt like I could rocket somebody across the room with the energy" by "touching you." Once she recalled that in a healing session, she did "rocket" someone "across the room. I had the same feeling in my hands then." What had been especially startling and profound for Abby was the sense that she could "change physical matter." The session had a particularly powerful impact on Abby's colleague, who said he had been "awakened by the whole experience."

Six months later Abby wrote that after our time together, she had been in a blissful state for several weeks, followed by feeling more grounded than she had before. In the sessions, she wrote, she had had a glimpse of the creative potential human beings had.

In summary it seems increasingly clear that light and other energy manifestations are fundamental aspects not only of UFO activity but also of virtually every part of the abduction experience. Even telepathic communication is felt by the experiencers to be related to subtle forms of energy. Light and certain sounds may be associated with intense subjective and observable vibratory phenomena, whose apparent energies may reach extraordinary levels of intensity. These energies often appear to have been retained somehow in the abductees' bodies since the time of the experience, and relaxation exercises can be very useful in releasing the apparent tensions. Experiencers may shake intensely and cry out with distress and relief when this occurs, which, for the facilitator, may be an experience of awesome power.

Some experiencers have the impression that the changes in their vibratory frequency or "energy fields" are an accommodation or attuning to the higher frequency of the beings themselves, the energies that surround them, and "universal energy fields." This change is also felt in some way to be related to the capacity of the beings to bring the human body through a solid object, an ability the experiencers may be told that we all potentially have. When they relive the memories of moving through solid forms, it is striking how similar are the words they use—"cells separating," "coming apart at the molecular level," and so on. They characteristically evince incredulous disbelief when they relive or recount this part of their experience. Some are left with a strong sense of the interchangeability of matter and energy. Many feel that some sort of permanent change in the vibratory frequency of their bodies occurs as a result of their experiences.

Quite frequently abduction experiencers will relate the energetic changes in their bodies to their own healing or a capacity to heal others, a subject that deserves careful research. Commonly the energy and light experiences that they have undergone become associated with personal transformation, spiritual development, and the evolution of consciousness, both personal and collective. This connection will be explored more fully in chapter 12.

What Is the Nature and Source of These Energies? Some Theoretical Considerations

Efforts to understand the light, energy, and vibratory phenomena that abductees confront take us far beyond this subject and into theoretical questions about the underlying nature of the universe. This is a territory where theoretical physics and spirituality touch each other, if they do not completely converge. In this section I will look at some of these questions, keeping in mind that it is not possible to do justice to their richness and ultimate importance in these few pages.

One of the most fundamental questions is the relationship between light as experienced during abduction encounters, near-death experiences (NDEs), and other "transpersonal journeys" and light as it is observed and studied by physicists. NDE researcher P.M.H. Atwater, for example, has written that "subjective light (present in meditation, otherworld journeys, near-death experiences and visions) behaves in a fashion similar to physical light" (Atwater 1998). But on the other hand, coming from the side of empirical science, MIT physicist David Pritchard (whose specialty is optical physics) wrote to me after reading an early draft of this chapter, "The abductees' light may provide illumination for them, but it doesn't for me. It does not behave like physicists' light that I work with." Furthermore, "the vibratory phenomena have no counterparts in physical reality as I know it." "The language," he noted, "sounds like the stuff I've read on spiritual awakening." Similarly, Arthur Zajonc, another physicist who has made the study of light his specialty and has explored the complex relationship between physical light and light as known in spiritual experiences, asserts that "the light within is of a different order than the objects without" (Zajonc 1995, p. 323).

Both of these scientists, in contrast to Atwater, caution us that in our quest to find ultimate unifying connections between the outer and inner worlds, essential distinctions, an irreducible duality, may in the end remain. The light/ vibrational energies related to abduction experiences, even though they may evoke the most vivid analogies and even possibly leave physical traces, may not turn out to be quite like—of the same "order" as—the light and energy manifestations that physicists study and measure.

What then can be said about the nature of the extraordinary energies associated with UFOs and especially with the abduction phenomenon? Clearly powerful forces are associated with UFOs themselves related to their propulsion, the light that they give off, their apparent effect on the surrounding environment, the melted hardened earth discovered where they have been seen to have landed (Phillips 1975), and the observations of intense light and the physical and emotional impact of close encounters on the experiencers themselves.

As we have seen in this chapter, abductees observe or feel intense light and vibrational energies during their experiences, which have a lasting effect. Light and energy seem to be at the core of or are everything, they try to explain. In a similar vein, consciousness and physics researcher Peter Russell has noted that in both quantum physics and consciousness studies, "light is in some way absolutely fundamental" (Russell 1998, p. 7, emphasis mine). This seems intuitively apparent, but what exactly does it mean or imply?

When those who are familial* with Eastern philosophical and spiritual studies learn about abduction encounters, they readily compare aspects of the energy-related experiences to manifestations of chi, prana, kundalini awakenings, and the yogic traditions of India and China (see, for example, Bhajan and Khalsa 1998; Brennan 1987; Bruyere 1994; Eisenberg 1985; Greenwell 1988; Mookerjee 1986; White 1990)." All these powerful phenomena are associated with profound spiritual transformations that may even have measurable physical effects (Brennan 1987 and 1993; Rubik 1995). But efforts to reduce them or translate them into the electromagnetic energies with which physicists are familiar have been largely unsuccessful. Former NASA physical scientist

Barbara Brennan, who has devoted her life to studying these energies (sometimes referred to as the "human energy field" or the "universal energy field"), has observed that they seem to have great healing properties, and a vast array of alternative therapies based on their application have been developed in recent years.

The human energy field (HEF) and the universal energy field (UEF), experienced vibrationally or observed as auras by energy healers, have qualities that appear to be different from traditionally understood electromagnetic energy in fundamental ways. They are difficult to measure and behave paradoxically. Unlike electromagnetic energy, for example, these energies seem to build on themselves, creating more energy. Most expenditures of physical effort tire you, Dave said at the Multidisciplinary Study Group Conference, but this kind does not. "It boosts you." Also, he noted, this energy contains information and is the vehicle for telepathy. As electromagnetic energies seem to be finite, the human or universal energy fields give intimations of the infinite. They also, Brennan observes, seem to be directly associated with various forms or changes of consciousness and to "evade normal scientific explanations" (Brennan 1987, p. 40).*

For all of the above reasons, researchers who study such matters have joined with Eastern philosophers and practitioners in calling these "subtle energies." They have also in recent years begun to study the healing and other properties of subtle energies and their relation to auras, the chakra system, and the etheric, astral, radiant, and other "subtle" bodies that, in Eastern healing and spiritual traditions, seem to lie at the margin between the material and nonmaterial worlds (Collinge 1998; Cooperstein 1996; Hunt 1996; Bridges [magazine]; and Subtle Energies [journal]; and especially Woolger 1987 and 1988). Physician/scientist Larry Dossey, who has done pioneering studies of the healing power of prayer and the possibility that conscious intent may have helpful effects at a distance (see also Markides 1987, 1989, 1992), questions, however, whether any of the known tenets of physiology and physics, or even the concept of "energy" itself, are useful in studying such phenomena (Dossey, 1992 and 1993a).

For abductees a strong physical vibration that seems to affect and even change the cells and molecules of their bodies is a central aspect of the encounters. Anyone who has been present when these experiences are relived is likely to be impressed with the awesome power of such energies. Furthermore, as will be discussed in greater depth in chapter 12, these vibratory experiences appear to be associated with some sort of shift of consciousness, spiritual awakening, and the sense of connecting with other dimensions of reality. In relation to this aspect of the phenomenon, I have been particularly interested in the evolving cosmology that is being brought about by recent discoveries in physics and astrophysics.

The discovery of certain subatomic particles seems mathematically to require the positing of additional dimensions or universes. But of greater significance, perhaps, are the discoveries by physicists that the universe is expanding—that galaxies are flying apart at an accelerating rate (Riess et al. 1998)²—and that space itself, far from being empty and lifeless, is filled with its own powerful fluctuating energy, called the vacuum energy field or zero point energy (O'Leary 1996, Mitchell 1996). Physicist Brian O'Leary has documented the controversial results reported by pioneering inventors who have tried to tap into the energies that fill space (O'Leary 1996). Finally, Rudolf Schild suggests that black holes, located at the nuclei of galaxies, seem to function as if they were other universes or connected to other dimensions of reality, especially as we have no way to penetrate them—even laser beams directed at them seem to break up when they reach their margins (Schild 1998).

According to Schild (1998), Bryan (2000), and other scientists, as well as Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell (1998), the four-dimensional universe posited by Einstein is not adequate to account for any of these discoveries. Schild wonders if the UFOs and the "aliens" have somehow discovered a way to master the quantum fluctuations of the vacuum energy field in order to transport themselves and enter the Earth's atmosphere. Perhaps, he speculates, they have found a way of "introducing a fifth dimension," a principle that would enable them "to organize mass and energy in our own dimensions that we just haven't encountered yet." It would not be surprising, he suggests, that abductees would feel such intense vibrations as they encounter these unusual energies. All of these discoveries, together with the for him incontrovertible evidence of the reality of psychic phenomena, has led him to wonder if there might not be "some larger universal spirit or energies," something like "what gives the energy its energy," as Catherine puts it, that enables people to communicate telepathically or at great distances.

I am not suggesting that the light or energy phenomena perceived or experienced by abductees leave no physical traces or have no physical effects. The intense light that Matthew and his companion saw, and the nearly overwhelming experience of bodily vibration that Nona and Abby have gone through, are vividly perceived by them or felt in the body. But what remains unknown is the precise nature or source of that energy and how it finds its way into our material world. As adventurous scientists have done since Wilhelm Reich's experiments with "orgone" energy (Reich 1949, 1951), it may be possible to measure the effects of the "larger universal spirit or energies" that Schild posited. But this may not bring us much closer to understanding their nature or origins.

In the end I come back to the apparent fact that the energies (perhaps, in view of the physical connotation of this word, something like "creative power" or "source" would be better) associated with the abduction phenomenon seem to contain the possibility of personal growth or spiritual transformation, and that these changes seem to be related to the vibrational and emotional intensity of the experiences. But once again we come up against "the age-old gap between spirit and matter" (Harpur 1994, p. 154) and the discontinuity between these realms that Patrick Harpur has written about (see page 28).

This gap may, however, be more apparent than real, growing out of our limited ways of knowing. It may be a "gap" only if we insist on trying to close it through physical measurement, or by seeking mechanisms familiar to us in the physical world, to understand the ways that elements of the unseen realm(s) can cross over into the material realm, or, in the language of religion, spirit can become manifest. In making this linkage, we may have to accept that at this time we can go no further than analogies, concepts, metaphors, and synchronicities, and it may be possible that only intuition, direct knowing, or consciousness itself—Wilber's eye of contemplation— can close the gap.

The experiences of light in abduction encounters may be linked to powerful feelings of love. An Australian man in his early thirties, not quoted elsewhere in this book, spoke during a relaxation session of being surrounded by light and feeling love that was "a thousand times stronger" than ordinary human love. (See also Julie's remarks on page 284.) For Matthew the core cosmic energy is virtually identical to love. "It's been my feeling since I was little," he said to Roberta Colasanti and me, "that physical love, erotic love, the energy of work, the energy of creativity, the blue sky, the spiral galaxies, the spaceships, use this energy.... This energy phenomenon is the love phenomenon, is the life energy, is the cosmic energy. Because we don't really feel it, we can't comprehend it."

From the time of the great scientist Michael Faraday, it has been known that some sort of waves, "the vibrations of physical lines of force," are at the core of reality (Zajonc 1995, p. 138). As Rudolf Schild (1998) remarks, "the universe gives us vibrations of all kinds," and light is one of the manifestations of vibration. But what exactly is vibrating? It is here, perhaps, that the physical and the nonphysical meet, where spirit and matter intertwine, and where the unknown and the unknowable (at least by the methods of empirical science) touch each other. For light quanta, pho tons, are without mass, and light appears to exist everywhere with no apparent physical substrate. As Arthur Zajonc has written, light seems to be omnipresent and eternal, existing outside of space and time. "The nature of light cannot be reduced to matter; it is its own thing," a "subtle, entangled" something (Zajonc 1995, pp. 260,315).

These are the qualities that abductees speak of when they experience the intense light phenomena associated with their encounters, or feel powerful vibrations in their bodies. Words may come with difficulty, but sometimes they know themselves during their experiences to be outside or "beyond" space and time, in an awesome state of being containing both material and nonmaterial elements. The feeling of vibration in the body is intensely 4 physical, yet its effects are as much spiritual as material."

The powers associated with the abduction phenomenon may take the form of specific information, especially about the Earth itself, which, like the physical effects, can affect experiencers deeply. Similarly, the coming together of human beings and aliens to form some sort of hybrid race appears to involve strange, intense energies. These seem to derive, abductees sometimes note, from the different "vibrational frequency" of the two species. However we may understand these observations, we will consider these dimensions of the abduction phenomenon in the next two chapters.

* A number of studies have sought to measure the human or universal energy fields using one or another kind of instrumentation. Some of these have had positive results (Hunt 1996, pp. 314-48; Brennan 1987, pp. 32-34; Osis and McCormick 1980). This, however, shows only that the subtle energies may, in some instances, have measurable physical manifestations. It does not tell us what they are or from what source they come.

Part Two

'Their minds leak into your mind. Their ideals are able to become ours....It is they, sir, who have instilled into our minds at this time in human history a consciousness of the oneness of the whole world. "(Credo Mutwa interviewed by Dr. John Mack, December 10, 1995). Illustration by Credo Mutwa.

Chapter 5

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