The Fourth Mind is the first book ever to explore the anatomy, brains, genetics, beliefs and capabilities of the unknown entities the author refers to as "the visitors." He maintains that they have a set of abilities he describes as a "fourth mind" that include such powers as telepathy, levitation, the ability to move heavy objects without machinery, and many others.
He then shows that there is a rich store of evidence that mankind once possessed these same powers, and that hidden knowledge of them has persisted into the 20th century.
Uri Geller says, "As the Fourth Mind breaks new ground in analyzing the physical bodies of the mysterious beings Whitley Strieber calls "the visitors," it can truly be called revolutionary."
Famed UAP Researcher Jacques Vallee says, "By calling attention to the dangers of Washington procrastination, Whitley Strieber is one again forcing the issue before the public."
Retired CIA Officer and close encounter witness Jim Semivan says, "The Fourth Mind is clearly the best book to date on who the Visitors are, physically and spiritually, and what humanity must do to prepare for a possible introduction to them. Highly recommended."
There has never been another book like The Fourth Mind. It marks the beginning of a new way of thinking about who and what we are, and points toward the re-empowerment of mankind as a truly cosmic species.
American writer best known for his novels The Wolfen,The Hunger and Warday and for Communion, a non-fiction description of his experiences with apparent alien contact. He has recently made significant advances in understanding this phenomenon, and has published his new discoveries in Solving the Communion Enigma.
Strieber also co-authored The Coming Global Superstorm with Art Bell, which inspired the blockbuster film about sudden climate change, The Day After Tomorrow.
His book The Afterlife Revolution written with his deceased wife Anne, is a record of what is considered to be one of the most powerful instances of afterlife communication ever recorded.
Considering that the author of this book has had several of his writings transformed into movies or TV shows, one might wonder why I only accord two stars to “The Fourth Mind“. Primarily, I assumed that it would be the narration of his dealing with extra-terrestrial beings. Indeed, he relates a series of interactions with such beings. It is not so much a treaty on extra-terrestrials than a compound of musings about human intelligence and its hypothetical potential into higher developments. I came away hungry from his narratives: for having been exposed directly to several of these extra terrestrial beings, I find his recollection wanting. More than once, he states that these beings infused him with a certain level of terror or maybe fear. Yet at the same time, he also hypothesizes that their intentions may actually be benevolent rather than hostile. Should I assume that he takes a 'neither/either or' position, because he wants to be politically correct or neutral? Most of this narration is actually not based on extra-terrestrial presence on Earth, but rather on findings of extraordinary constructions around planet Earth. It is not so much that he attributes those to extra-terrestrial works, but rather that he suggests that humans once had extraordinary capabilities, and that these capabilities have been lost for some cataclysmic reasons. So basically he ties a generous arc from extraterrestrial intelligence to humans, by surmising, that we, too, might once have possessed higher capabilities than the ones we seem to own now. I have read quite a few books of archaeology, some of them written by not so conventional archaeologists, which are often shunned by the more conventional ones. I do like those books, because they find potentially rational answers to the mysteries of many archaeological sites. In this book, I find that neither the question of the extraterrestrial beings nor the situation with unexplained archaeological sites are addressed in a satisfactory fashion. Hence, I am left hungry on the subject of the aliens, for which I got this book, and also a little frustrated, because I find that the title does not imply excursions into archaeology. Moreover, neither of the two have been dealt with in what I would call an in-depth fashion. I also want to mention, that I could not explain to you what the meaning of the title “The Fourth Mind“ is. It would imply that there are three minds, and that he in his writing describes the existence of a fourth one. I can’t tell you what he meant by that. On a side note, I also feel that the editing of this book is rather low rate. It leaves me wondering why established writers cannot afford to find a professional partner who would read the entire work thoroughly and with the goal of polishing it editorially.... and that's a pity and annoying to me personally. I am very fond of the crafting of a good story, including grammar and syntax.
Really disappointing, the best part is the reddit document in the appendix that the first half of the book is based on (and which I strongly suspect the author wrote himself and posted to that smelly website so he could write this book).
If you want aliens, you're not really going to get them I'm afraid. I'm tired of all these UFO Occult genre books not delivering aliens. I want descriptions, I want interactions, I want more than a sentence followed by drawn out speculation.
I've had enough I say! If you want something done right...
Whitley Strieber’s The Fourth Mind is the kind of book that asks you to leave the ticket counter for skepticism at the door. If you’ve followed Strieber since Communion (and who hasn’t been at least curious since 1987?), you know what you’re signing up for: a writer who’ll push theory into territories most of us only visit at 2 a.m. with bad coffee and better imagination. He’s still one of the best storytellers in this space, and that alone makes this a compelling read.
But let’s be straight: this book leans hard on sources that will make empiricists bristle. A fair amount of the argument rests on unverified documents — the sort of Reddit “leaks” and secondhand dossiers that have become currency in the UFO/EBE conversation. If you’re the kind of reader who needs peer-reviewed footnotes and court-certified evidence, large parts of this will feel thin. That said, Strieber doesn’t pretend otherwise; he’s working from a mix of testimony, leaked materials, and his own long-standing instincts about the phenomenon.
Where the book does something interesting is in its focus: Strieber isn’t just cataloguing UFO reports; he’s trying to read the biology and cognition of these entities and ask what — if anything — they tell us about ourselves. He makes some pretty bold leaps, especially when he starts tracing alleged abilities humans may have possessed in the past. I’m the Fox Mulder type — want to believe — but Strieber’s speculative bridges sometimes rest on shaky planks. There’s allure there, though: the suggestion that human history and these non-human intelligences may be braided together is provocative and, at times, captivating.
He also dips into spiritual territory, perhaps more than in some of his earlier books. There’s an undercurrent here that hints these beings could be interpreted as spiritual entities — even demons — depending on your hermeneutic. That idea will unsettle some readers and enthrall others. For me, it was one of the more thought-provoking angles, because that line between the metaphysical and the extraterrestrial feels like the place where the conversation is evolving.
Roswell gets its due — an affidavit and the usual “there’s more to the story than we were told” energy. If you’ve spent any time researching Roswell, you know the contours: someone’s not telling the whole truth. Strieber leans into that conviction without pretending he can produce an incontrovertible timeline. He uses the Roswell material more as a hinge than as a smoking gun.
Ultimately, this is classic Strieber: beautifully written, opinionated, sometimes maddening, but never boring. If you want an airtight investigative manual, this isn’t it. If you want a provocative, lyrical, and at times uncanny meditation on what alien intelligence might mean for human history and spirituality, The Fourth Mind is worth the read. The ending — especially the final paragraph — is quietly beautiful and stays with you, which is about the highest compliment I can give a book like this.
If you go in with patience and curiosity (and a tolerance for speculative evidence), you’ll get more out of it than you probably expect. Strieber doesn’t resolve the mystery — he enlarges it, and for readers who like the mystery big, that’s a feature, not a bug.
If you can get past the assumption that any of this based on anything but speculation - he weaves an interesting thought exercise into potential connections that require massive leaps of faith. Ignoring the sex between himself and an alien … it’s mostly about what if…
If you’re looking for a book written ENTIRELY on speculation and opinions this is the one for you! I should have paid attention to the red flags at the beginning of the book when the author started to speak on molecular structure and DNA with zero scientific background.
This is the latest in the ongoing series of books Strieber started (in)famously with Communion in 1987 and it is, perhaps, the strangest.
The book is divided into two halves, the first is largely based on a series of posts on reddit describing the physiology of the visitors based on an alleged eyewitness report. Strieber expands on these entries with his own experience to extrapolate on various aspects of the visitor's anatomy, abilities and so on. The entire set of reddit posts is also included in an appendix.
Drawing on what he and others have seen, Strieber speculates on how the visitors can perform seemingly impossible things, like levitation, telepathy and ignoring physics and gravity. He further goes on to explain the visitors may be "out of time" and that they are here to both observe and perhaps join with us, because we are still trapped in a mode where time is linear. A major part of the thesis Strieber elaborates on is how the visitors have evolved to a point where they exist outside conventional time in such a way that they essentially know everything that has happened or will happen--basically, a life where there are no surprises.
If that sounds like a bit of a bummer, Strieber agrees. He seems to feel the visitors are perhaps even envious of us and our more primitive minds and bodies, where life happens and we don't always know what's coming.
Strieber also brings up two ongoing threats to humanity--the crisis of climate change, and the still-possible risk of nuclear war, and edges closer to thinking the visitors will intervene in some way if things get too dire for us (this seems especially timely for 2025, given what a dumpster fire the year is already becoming for the world).
The second half of the book is full of weird speculation about...us! Specifically, Strieber tries to draw examples from both ancient and more recent history to put forward the idea that humans had many of the same abilities of the visitors, like levitation and telepathy, but lost the abilities thanks to global cataclysms thousands of years ago (ice ages, along with other calamities, like fires that consumed large swathes of North America, and more) that forced people to prioritize survival over establishing cities and civilization. This shift to basic survival led to a kind of mass amnesia where these abilities were forgotten. He suggests it is possible for us to re-learn these abilities, and may indeed need to if we are to integrate the visitors into our lives without feeling inferior to them (to help with that, Strieber also suggests they are not necessarily all that much more intelligent than we are, which feels a bit like a burn on them).
The evidence presented throughout is circumstantial, though to his credit, Strieber does provide numerous examples of megalithic structures built to a scale and level of precision that would challenge us even with modern technology. For example, Ggantija on the island of Malta, has stones up to 5 meters high and weighing up to 50 tonnes--with no obvious means of how they would have been transported to the site. Strieber suggests it was, quite literally, levitation, which would have been a common ability of people at the time.
I've always approached Strieber's books as being sincere--I don't think he's pulling some long con on readers--and that he truly believes everything he writes about. His tone in The Fourth Mind remains calm and sober as he discusses things that are pretty wacky, really. In trying to piece together a "grand vision" for both the visitors and humanity, it feels like he is making greater leaps than before. It's all certainly food for thought if you have an open mind, and Strieber's smooth, articulate writing makes reading such speculation effortless.
If you've enjoyed his other books, you will likely find this shorter entry worthy of your time as well. If you are disinclined to believe any of this stuff, there's nothing in this book that will win you over.
I have read communion, the grays, Them, and cat magic which isn’t UFO related. Out of all the books related to ufo I like the grays and them the most. I have read communion and listened to the audible version. I tried watching the movie and I couldn’t finish watching it. Just made him sound crazy.
Anyway, on to my review. This wasn’t my favorite book I’ve read by him. I was a little annoyed how much of the book referenced back to communion. I could have rated it a 3 because it seemed repetitive. I want new information, not talking about topics I have already heard and read.
Saying that, I still enjoyed the book. It still made me think. For me personally I read his books because afterwards I’m left thinking for weeks. I don’t want to take other people’s word for the phenomenon. I read and make up my own conclusions. If you are a true fan like me you will still enjoy it and take something valuable from reading it.
Most all of Strieber’s books are deep and personal investigations into anomalous activity in and around his life. They are inspiring, challenging, and awe-inspiring as works that ask questions, many of which cannot be explained away or neglected as passing ‘unusuals,’ of experience. This particular book for me falls short of his other books. It reads as a long list of comparative questions one against the other of possibilities into what-if’s and circles these around and around missing his usual artistic tone and content of palpable personal mystery which peeks into the awesome soul of mind and body. There seems to be a misstep into a slight lean toward an academic purview I am not certain his greatest strengths rest. He is at his strongest when he takes us by hand into his many dark nights of the soul, as his other books beautifully do.
Mr Strieber is a good writer so this book does flow as he presents his points of view. Naturally, we see the world through our own fear-beliefs and ideas of what soul consciousness is. Mr Streiber’s ideas often struck me as limited in their concepts, so I found myself disagreeing with some of his conclusions, especially in light of my own experiences in which my personal sovereignty has always been honored. I did have to get beyond my own fear of the unknown, naturally.
All in all, the big plus this book offers on your ‘ET bookshelf’ is Mr Streiber’s honest attempt to approach the subject with a degree of neutrality as he offers up more pieces to the puzzle to the question, “Who are these cosmic neighbors of ours?”
The visitors are here now to assist with our awakening. They are specifically concerned about nuclear war and climate change. I know they are here and go out to say hello every evening the stars are visible. I recognize the vehicles due to their rapid dancing patterns that seem to begin when they see I am watching. When they imitate my body patterns back, forth, up down I know we are communicating. I thank them for their service to us. The two way telepathic if simple messages bring tears to my eyes I honor them as sisters and brothers in God.
The author provides detailed information about visitors to our planet and gow we are all connected. I love the way he discusses the history of the planet and its cultures from the beginning of time. It gives the reader connections never considered before. He poses many relevant questions we should be asking ourselves about our global civilization and welfare of our planet. I recommend this for all curious minds.
Another fascinating and thought provoking read from Whitley Strieber.
The cover to this book is similar to the author's very famous book, Communion, and with good reason. This book explores what Strieber feels he knows about the visitors and why they may be here, after his many years of contact with them.
The sections of the book that focus on the visitors biology, abilities and behaviour is especially interesting.
Strieber also explores a hypothesis about humans having lost some Psi abilities due to a catastrophic trauma in our distant history. While interesting, I did get a bit lost during these sections.
If you're interested by the whole subject of non human intelligence (as I am), then this book will be a very interesting read for you.
This book was nothing like I expected. It was deep. It had many strange theories and semi-scientific explanations. I have read some of this author's other books about aliens, but never thought about the topics brought up in this book. I agree with some of the conclusions & suggestions in this book. I hope we can find a way to relate to the Earthly visitors so no more trauma results.
This book is quite different than anything we have come to expect from this author. He is questing for answers to new and different theories about who we really are and how we are changing as a people. Recommended reading to Strieber fans and those with curious minds and open hearts.
Reading this after the Age of Disclosure has made the UAP debate far more acceptable, to many ordinary people. Enjoyed the first part and found Part Two - of even more interest. Few commentators, including Graham Hancock, have discussed the effect on humanity of the Younger Dryers, if that continued for 2,000 years. Highly recommended.
This book will open your mind if you let it. There is a lot that can be learned of the information that is in this book, but you have to have an open mind to this revelation.
I've just finished "The Fourth Mind" and my head is spinning...in a very good way. Whitney is a fount of knowledge and he's able to share this knowledge in the most profound way. He's given me many things to think about in the upcoming days. Thank you, Whitley!
this was an interesting book, but there were too many references to reddit posts and YouTube videos. it was kinda of listening to a guy who is constantly online.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.