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world view—where the spiritual realm is relegated to the field of religion and the scientific and the material realm is separate and distinct and relegated to the scientists— may be breaking down. Indeed, he sees the UFO abduction phenomenon as a merging of science and religion, the appearance of a new paradigm of thought—one in which the lines separating faith and science, religion, philosophy, the material world, and the spirit world are blurred. The result, Mack believes, is a merging and unification of science, reli- gion, philosophy, and the spiritual realm. "The alien beings that appear to come to us from the sky in strange space craft present a particularly confusing challenge to such a naturalistic or objectivist ideology. For they seem to partake of properties belonging to both the spirit and the material worlds, bridging, as if effortlessly, the division between these realms which have become increasingly sacred and unbreachable since science and religion went their separate ways in the 17th century. On the one hand these beings seem able to be seen by the abductees, who feel their bodies moved and find small lesions inflicted nA a 1 tad woo . upon them. On the other hand the beings seem to come, like intermediaries from God or the devil, from a nonembodied source, and they are able to open the consciousness of abductees to realms of being that do not exist in the physical world as we know it."'*° "My own impression is that we may be witnessing something far more complex, namely an awkward joining of two species, engineered by an intelligence we are unable to fathom, for a purpose that serves both of our goals with difficulties for each. I base this view on the evidence presented by the abductees themselves.”"'*” Mack's belief that the alien beings are interdimensional beings akin to spiritual entities is, he admitted, a staggering blow to the materialistic world view that has emerged in our secular age. He stated: "But I believe there is core belief in our culture that is violated by the alien abduction phenomenon, namely the total separation of the spirit and the physical world. We have made that gulf inviolate, relegating to religion the spirit (subjective) world and assigning science to the material (objective) domain. We simply do not know what to do with a phenomenon that crossed that seemingly inviolable barrier. It shocks the foundation of our belief structure, our minds have no place to put such a thing."!°8 Finally, Jacques Vallee, discussed the UFO and abductions phenomenon in its historical cross-cultural contexts. He asked: "|. . should we hypothesize that an advanced race somewhere in the universe in some time in the future has been showing us three-dimensional space operas for the last 2,000 years, in an attempt to guide our civilization? If so, do they deserve congratulations? .. . Are we dealing instead with a parallel universe, another dimension, where there are human races living, 73 Regarding the nature of the aliens and the abductions phenomenon Mack stated: Regarding the purpose of abduction Mack stated: