Agents in Space: Alien Interfacings as Cognitive Companion Constructions

This paper explores the experiences of people who have sustained relationships with beings that they describe as extraterrestrial and explores the cultural and cognitive priors that enable such experiences. I argue that people’s experiences with alien interlocutors – what I call “alien interfacings” – can be understood as a manifestation of Cognitive Companion Construction (CCC). CCC builds upon previous research about practices of internal imaginative and sensory cultivation which facilitate experiences of external agents (also termed supernatural agent encounters). Certain evangelical Christian prayer practices fall into this category, for instance, as well as the techniques of tulpamancers who purposefully foster the experience of an independent, separate consciousness within their mind. Shared mental capabilities underpin these methods for nurturing relationships with agents understood to be separate and often external from the practitioner. I will argue that alien interfacings can also be grouped into this category of experiences—those that utilize the human capacity for CCC.

The first section of the paper will give a brief introduction to the phenomenon of alien abductions and alien experiences writ broadly. Alien interfacings are relationships that often operate within the context of repeated abductions wherein experiencers (a preferred term to that of “abductees”) undergo startling transitions into otherworldly environs and are subject to physically painful procedures. Frequently, a moral message serves as the denouement for these episodes and experiencers return to the default world with an acute sense that they are meant to radically transform themselves and others in order to make the world a better place. (Although the majority of experiencers report ultimately positive outcomes from alien interfacings, a minority suffer from protracted ill effects like physical illness or persistent fear, demonstrating that the transformative power of alien interfacings does not always work in the experiencer’s favor.) Other experiencers do not undergo abduction, but form long-term relationships with aliens through mental communication and external signs, termed “synchronicities,” which experiencers perceive as affirmation that their alien companions are offering as signals of their presence and support. Previous research emphasizes the powerful impact that alien interfacing bears upon experiencers’ lives. Indeed, religious studies scholars frequently categorize such phenomena as spiritual experiences in their own right.

Altered states of consciousness play a major role in facilitating experiences of aliens. The three major abduction researchers—Hopkins, Jacobs, and Mack—utilized hypnosis to draw out abduction narratives from their interlocutors during their research in the 1980s-90s. Experiencers came to them in order to explain unusual occurrences in their lives such as nightmares, emotional difficulties, and unexplained marks on their bodies. Together with the help of abduction researchers, these people sought to interrogate the suspected reality of strange phenomenon in their lives by means of a narrative that unfolded during hypnosis. Although less commonly used now, hypnosis is still a tool that experiencers use to flesh out narratives of alien interfacings. Additionally, many report contact with alien entities during meditative states.

Common themes among alien interfacings suggest that experiencers are drawing upon certain sets of cultural priors which prime them to understand their experiences in certain ways. Specifically, I argue that experiencers are tapping into an understanding of aliens and UFOs as manifestations of a different species technologically superior to humans and also frequently perceive such beings as spiritually superior. This perceptual framework is informed by New Age thought based on theosophical concepts of ascended masters living in other dimensions or worlds and conceptualizations of extraterrestrials informed by pop culture and science fiction media. This paper will postulate that modern Americans’ ideas about technology as both threat and savior, as well as New Age yearnings for messianic figures from the sky enabling the messianic urges in one’s own self, function as cultural priors priming experiencers as they interface with alien interlocutors.

The second section of this paper will ponder the cognitive capabilities which, together with the aforementioned cultural priors, enable alien interfacings to take place. Ann Taves’ building blocks approach to religious experience posits that certain cultural priors shape when and how people understand certain experiences to be spiritual or religious. This paper builds on Taves’ theory by integrating the concept of CCC, which takes into account not just cultural priors but also cognitive ones—the mental foundation, fundamental to the human being, upon which the constructions of spiritual experience can be placed. What kinds of cognitive priors are at play within alien interfacings and how do these experiences elucidate the interweavings of mind and culture that CCC seeks to explain?

Specifically, I will examine the role of altered states of consciousness in facilitating experiences of interactions with aliens. Marc Andersen suggests that a confluence of factors, including expectation, cultural practices, and sensory deprivation, can result in sensed presences. He counts meditation and prayer as among sensory deprivation techniques. I will place alien interfacings within this framework, exploring how hypnotic, meditative, dream, and psychedelic states of consciousness interact with cultural priors to enable experiences of alien interactions. (While “hypnosis” as a psychological state is a contested concept, I will use the term as experiencers and abduction researchers do—that is, referring to a purposefully-induced state of relaxation during which the hypnotized individual can be guided to narrate their internal world.)

The interplay of cognitive and cultural elements that takes place during alien interfacing results in powerful encounters with beings that can enact radical transformation in experiencers’ lives. Although previous research has categorized alien encounters as religious experiences, this paper dives deeper by utilizing the novel analytical framework of CCC to better understand how alien encounters are generated and understood by experiencers through the common mental capacity of the human mind in collaboration with cultural primers, symbols, and fears. This paper thus helps explain not only alien interfacings at a phenomenological level but also offers insight into the culture from which experiencers distill their mental vocabulary. What does it tell us about our modern world that many people interact with technologically advanced beings who can be understood as either our saviors or our doom?