Dr. John Mack was a one-of-a-kind individual, who’s pursuits and interests were as varied as the kinds of responses he garnered from various elements of both the public and institutional academia. His “day jobs” included that of a psychiatrist, a writer, and a professor. Most famously Mack was the head of the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

As destiny would have it, Mack stumbled across one of the greatest secrets of our time – if not of the entire history of humanity: namely: the UFO Phenomenon, and specifically, the apparent “abduction” of thousands, if not millions, of people across the world, evidently by a clandestine alien intelligence. Mack, never one to turn down the pursuit of an intriguing mystery, soon began investigating this phenomenon first hand, counseling clients who claimed to have had these very experiences, doing his very best to help them feel heard and understood in the process.

It was these endeavors, chronicled in his 1994 book “Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens” that would eventually run him a-fowl him of his overseers at Harvard, culminating in a near Inquisition-style proceeding that sought to undermine his academic freedoms because he had dared to commit the heresy of questioning the dominant, reductionistic paradigm of scientific materialism.

John Mack’s investigatory efforts into what he initially termed the “Abduction Syndrome” eventually branched out into what he came to see as undeniably related categories, including life after death, reincarnation, soul identity, and the very nature of ultimate reality. This man’s fascinating journey is chronicled in Ralph Blumenthal’s compelling new biography, titled: “The Believer: Alien Encounters, Hard Science, and the Passion of John Mack”.

Those of us deeply invested in this topic owe a great debt of gratitude to the trailblazer John Mack, who, at great risk to himself, sought to bring the topic of ufology & contact with non-human intelligence into the mainstream, as a verifiably legitimate arena of study, even as the academic establishment around him did its damnedest to crucify him for the effort.

The life and legacy of Dr. John E. Mack, chronicled in Ralph Blumenthal’s excellent new biography, is the topic of this, the 11th episode of the Point of Convergence podcast.