It is difficult to discuss the phenomena of contact and abduction because the entities often appear to pull experiencers into an alternate state of consciousness that is challenging enough to experience, let alone try to describe (and often defend) to others. We have to open our aperture to what’s possible to begin to even start to sort things out.
An oversimplification of this alternate consciousness is a mixture of surreal sensations and heightened sense of connection to the universe. How is this state achieved and why does it occur?
For starters, I believe that the natural form of at least some of the visiting beings isn’t physical as we know it. Although they can appear physical if they choose, my speculation is that their native existence is a form of pure consciousness.
While not known how old visiting civilizations are, one can likely liberally speculate on their technological advancements. I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to guess that, if there’s a way to plug consciousness in and out of body, that a society that has mastered long-distance space-travel may be able to also perform other technologic wonders such as this. Not only can they do this to themselves, but to experiencers as well.
For them, when operating in a material form, the bodies they use are more like puppets. They operate within corporeal forms in the short-term if they need to physically interact with individuals or the solid environment. Afterwards, they put these bodies back into storage until needed again.
The value to this for them is that they don’t need to fly a craft here with a full crew to visit or take experiencers for those missions of purely intellectual interaction, additionally having to worry about the logistics of doing so in a stealthy manner. They come in a form of consciousness and pull experiencers into the energetic realm with them.
People taken out of body surely experience strange environments untethered from the world ordinarily observed by their five bodily senses. This landscape is what the beings call home and where they operate comfortably. Experiencers are just there for a brief vacation at the whim of the beings before being returned and trying to reconcile what they’ve just seen with what they consider normal.
Even while in the physical form, these beings are likely only loosely here and would have access to the energy of spirit that can daze the experiencer.
In the aftermath of an alternate consciousness encounter, if the experiencer tries to explain the event to others, it can sound like the description of a dream, which obviously doesn’t help their confession being taken seriously. It is important to listen to experiencers with an open mind rather than bluntly filter their accounts through the scope of our limited scientific knowledge.
What I’ve laid out here is a theory based upon personal experiences, many which have been shared in the Journal of Abduction-Encounter Research and other places. I believe a growing body of data from the experiencer community also widely supports this theory.
On that note, there is one alternate consciousness experience of mine that was real, but so surreal, that I have yet to find the courage to put it out for public consumption. Should anyone wish to contact me personally, I would enjoy exchanging high strangeness encounter stories.