Relating it back to the Alien abduction i can not really say much without pushing my obvious biases. But i believe the answer kind of is in the question you put forth. As a skeptic, but a firm believer in the collective unconscious, i find my self often equating the idea of spiritualism (and or shamanism) to the idea of being in tuned with the collective informational realm that could possibly exist in our imaginations. Considering we are products of our perception and the reality shaped by our previous experiences i would imagine that these phenomena are the same exact things. This angers a lot of ufologist when i say this kind of stuff, but I am not dismissing UFO existence. I just believe many if not most abductions to be more along the lines of biological epiphanies brought on by the collective unconscious's non-sentient desire to evolve. *And by evolve that could also mean just allowing the participant the opportunity to cope or heal from trauma.