Confirmed: John Mack Dead

I just got off the phone with the John Mack Institute. Officials at the Institute have confirmed the shocking death of Dr. John E. Mack in some kind of vehicle accident last night in England. She said the latest information can be found at www.earthchanges.com The institute is speaking with the family now and will have their official announcement on their website within the hour.


John E Mack Institute

www.centerchange.org...

I now pause to reflect on the work of this great man

For those who might not be familiar with John Mack, here is some background info for you.

John Mack (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

John Edward Mack, M.D. (born October 4, 1929), professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, considered to be a leading authority on the spiritual or transformational affects of alleged alien encounter experiences.

Mack received his medical degree from the Harvard Medical School (Cum Laude, 1955) after undergraduate study at Oberlin (Phi Beta Kappa, 1951). He is a graduate of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and is Board certified in child and adult psychoanalysis.

The dominant theme of his life's work has been the exploration of how one's perceptions of the world affect one's relationships. He addressed this issue of "worldview" on the individual level in his early clinical explorations of dreams, nightmares and teen suicide, and in his biographical study of the life of British officer T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), for which he received the Pulitzer Prize in biography in 1977.

Mack advocates that Western culture requires a shift away from a purely materialist worldview (which he feels is responsible for the Cold War, the global ecological crisis, ethnonationalism and regional conflict) towards a transpersonal worldview which embraces certain elements of Eastern spiritual and philosophical traditions.

Mack's interest in the spiritual aspect of human experience has been compared by the New York Times to that of fellow Harvard alum William James, and like James, Mack became a controversial figure for his efforts to bridge spirituality and psychiatry.

This theme was taken to a controversial extreme in the early 1990s when Mack commenced his decade-plus study of 200 men and women who claimed that recurrent alien encounter experiences had affected the way they regarded the world, including a heightened sense of spirituality and environmental concern. Mack's interest in the spiritual or transformational aspects of people's alien encounters, and his suggestion that the experience of alien contact itself may be more spiritual than physical in nature � yet nonetheless real � set him apart from many of his contemporaries such as Budd Hopkins, who advocated the physical reality of aliens.

In 1994 the Dean of Harvard Medical School appointed a committee of peers to review Mack's clinical care and clinical investigation of the people who had shared their alien encounters with him (some of their cases were written of in Mack's 1994 book Abduction). After fourteen months of inquiry and amid growing questions from the academic community (including Harvard Professor of Law Alan Dershowitz) regarding the validity of Harvard's investigation of a tenured professor, Harvard issued a statement stating that the Dean had �reaffirmed Dr. Mack's academic freedom to study what he wishes and to state his opinions without impediment,� concluding �Dr. Mack remains a member in good standing of the Harvard Faculty of Medicine.�

Mack's explorations later broadened into the general consideration of the merits of an expanded notion of reality, one which allows for experiences that may not fit the Western materialist paradigm, yet deeply affect people's lives. His second (and final) book on the alien encounter experience, Passport to the Cosmos: Human Transformation and Alien Encounters (1999), was as much the culmination of his work with the �experiencers� of alien encounters (to whom the book is dedicated) as it was a philosophical treatise connecting the themes of spirituality and modern worldviews.

The latest from www.johnemackinstitute.org

PASSING OF DR JOHN MACK: ANNOUNCEMENT TO FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES

This is preliminary information; a statement from the family is forthcoming.

At this time we must with great sorrow confirm that Dr John Mack has passed away in London, England.

Dr Mack was one of several speakers discussing British officer T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") at the T. E. Lawrence Society Symposium, Oxford. Dr Mack's 1977 biography of T.E. Lawrence, A Prince of Our Disorder, received the Pulitzer Prize in biography (see complete bio below). Dr Mack's presentation at an afternoon panel was so warmly received that he was asked to stay and present an additional evening talk, which again met with positive response. Afterward, he went to dinner with friends.

On his return to the home at which he was staying while in London, traveling on foot on Totteridge Road, he was struck by a vehicle being driven by an intoxicated driver. Dr Mack was pronounced dead on the scene by London police and is believed to have died on impact.

This information will be revised as needed and will be replaced by a statement from Dr Mack's family when available. Information will be posted to the John E Mack Institute website, www.johnemackinstitute.org

Really sad news

I've read his books, very serious abduction research.
The UFO community has lost one of its greatest experts.

Hi thirddensity,

Thank you for sharing with us the awareness about the passing of a very important figure in the field of UFO-alien abduction research.

Dr. John Mack now has new areas to consider and paths to explore, in addition to the old ones.

I always followed the axiom that we should all do whatever we can with the time and energy allotted to us, so there won't be any significant regrets after we transition into The Light, sometimes unexpectedly and abruptly.

John's research helped pave the way for others in this field to have greater credibility within the academic community.

Some of us will be hearing from him.




[edit on 28-9-2004 by Paul_Richard]

Originally posted by Paul_Richard
Hi thirddensity,

Thank you for sharing with us the awareness about the passing of a very important figure in the field of UFO-alien abduction research.

Dr. John Mack now has new areas to consider and paths to explore, in addition to the old ones.

I always followed the axiom that we should all do whatever we can with the time and energy allotted to us, so there won't be any significant regrets after we transition into The Light, sometimes unexpectedly and abruptly.

John's research helped pave the way for others in this field to have greater credibility within the academic community.

Some of us will be hearing from him.

[edit on 28-9-2004 by Paul_Richard]

His passing is most unfortunate. I commend him for his work, and his courage, in bringing the ET issues to the fore. The shadow government has one less man to worry about, who knows, maybe this was an assassination.

John Mack was the kind of scholar the world needed: openminded to new possibilities, and thinking outside the box, pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable to believe in.

He was a blessing for the UFO community and abductees themselves, for he did something few scholars have the guts to do: give serious study and observation to the phenomina.

Shame we had to lose such an asset

Paul_Richard, I love your Avitar.

Mack? Gone? Shame, darn shame. He had a real insite into life that will be missed. ...................

That sucks.

Read some of his work. Shame to lose such a great scholar.

When I saw this thread my heart broke instantly.

Hi Indigo_Child,

Originally posted by Indigo_Child

His passing is most unfortunate. I commend him for his work, and his courage, in bringing the ET issues to the fore. The shadow government has one less man to worry about, who knows, maybe this was an assassination.

The idea of assassination came to my mind as well. I think that many people are pondering that right now.

Originally posted by All Seeing Eye
Paul_Richard, I love your Avatar.

Thanks ASE...

Originally posted by Skadi_the_Evil_Elf
John Mack was the kind of scholar the world needed: openminded to new possibilities, and thinking outside the box, pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable to believe in.

He was a blessing for the UFO community and abductees themselves, for he did something few scholars have the guts to do: give serious study and observation to the phenomina.

Shame we had to lose such an asset

Well put Skadi.

I wonder how Budd Hopkins and Dr. David M. Jacobs are faring these days?

I'd read his T.E. Lawrence biography and know he was a brilliant author and all-around renaissance man. Although I disagreed (and still do) with some of his beliefs regarding Western materialism a driving force for regional conflict (cf. Rwanda, Congo, etc.) I certainly think that the way he was treated by his faculty for his unorthodox beliefs was shameful.

Right or wrong, he had a right to his views and to publish them.

www.centerchange.org...

Jeremy Wilson of the T.E.Lawrence Society on John\'s last days

Jeremy Wilson (Vice-Chairman of the T.E.Lawrence Society)

Reprinted from the T.E.Lawrence Studies discussion list (hosted by GWU)


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As some of you will already know, John E. Mack, our principal guest at the T.E.Lawrence Society Symposium, was killed in a road accident in London on Monday evening. There are reports about the accident on the Internet. It seems he was struck down by a drunken driver.

I last saw John after the end of the Symposium on Sunday afternoon. Later, Nicole talked to him in the lodge of St. John\'s while he was waiting with his luggage to be collected. He had told me he was dining that night with an Oxford friend from the period he had spent researching Lawrence\'s life at the Bodleian Library. I do not know what he planned to do on Monday.

I cannot find words to express what I feel about this news. The things that immediately come to my mind are, perhaps, inconsequential.

John told me during the Symposium that he felt very emotional (those were the words he used) about this homecoming to the world of T.E.Lawrence scholarship. I and others had the impression that he was in some way deeply happy. In advance, he had been apprehensive about speaking to an audience that was probably better informed about the details of Lawrence\'s life than he was, after so many years. Those fears were unfounded, as he quickly realised. He took part not only in the scheduled sessions on Saturday, but in the question panel on Sunday morning. Throughout, he spoke with great intelligence and empathy. The effect was spellbinding.

Those who heard him talking about Lawrence and his own current interests will understand the words of a colleague, reported on the Internet, \"John was one of the kindest, most compassionate mental health clinicians I have ever met.\"

I noticed that at one point John referred to the death of his father, Edward Mack, which occurred while he was working on \'A Prince of Our Disorder\'. I think he said that his father - a specialist in a different academic field - had taken a keen and supportive interest in the project. Somehow, as I told Nicole afterwards, this reference seemed to me to have a deeper significance for John. Edward Mack also died tragically - killed, I think, by a passing vehicle while changing the wheel of his car.

Sometimes, when you meet a friend after a long interval, they seem to have changed. The element in their personality that you liked has gone. When I met John on Friday morning, the intervening years simply disappeared. The friendship we had known a quarter of a century earlier was unchanged.

My heart goes out to his family. He will be mourned by many, many friends.

Jeremy Wilson