Flex Mentallo

It has been argued that in order to live with the threat of thermonuclear destruction, society as a whole must by definition be psychotic. The "reason" for such behavior is protection of one's own group, even if it means destroying it in the process.

The need perhaps was for wholeness again out of the increasing fragmentation of the modern world. In the early 50s and the beginning of the Cold War, when UFOs began to infiltrate popular culture, there was a great fragmentation in the world.

Jung came to the conclusion that UFOs were examples of the phenomena of synchronicity where external events mirror internal psychic states. For Jung the UFO images had much to do with the ending of an era in history and the beginning of a new one.

Jung concluded that it was more desirable for people to believe UFOs exist than to believe they don't exist. One of his final works, Flying Saucers, was an attempt to answer why it was more desirable to believe in their existence.

As early as 1946 he started collecting data on UFOs and reading every book on the subject. In a 1951 letter to an American friend he wrote, "I'm puzzled to death about these phenomena, because I haven't been able yet to make out with sufficient certainty whether the whole thing is a rumor with concomitant singular and mass hallucination, or a downright fact."

He felt that modern man projected his inner state into the heavens in a similar manner that the medieval alchemists projected their psyche into matter. In this sense, the UFOs became modern symbols for the ancient gods which came to humanity's assistance in time of need.

Carl Jung was fascinated - and mystified - by the UFO phenomenon. It was significant to Jung that the shape of the flying saucers was round, the shape of the ancient Mandala, symbol of wholeness throughout history.

Carl Jung "At a time when the world is divided by an iron curtain...we might expect all sorts of funny things, since when such a thing happens in an individual it means a complete dissociation, which is instantly compensated by symbols of wholeness and unity." Carl Jung

Perhaps the typical appearance of the alien manifests an innate desire to return to the comfort and uniformity of the womb.

Similarly a newborn infant is predisposed to hold it’s breath underwater, hang by its hands from the branch of a tree – and to recognize the pattern of it’s mother’s face and smile.

In addition to our innate suggestibility we have also evolved with a predisposition to interpret and interact with reality in certain specific reflexive ways over which we exercise little or no conscious control. A new born chick will freeze if a shadow in the shape of a hawk passes overhead. If the same shadow passes backwards, the chick will ignore it. This is known as an innate releasing mechanism(IRM).

How could so many scientists be wrong? They deceived themselves into thinking they were seeing something with their instruments that in fact was not there. This came on the heels of Wilhelm Rontgen’s discovery of X-rays and Paul Ulrich Villard’s discovery of gamma rays in the early 1900s.

The classic example of this “confirmation bias” is the 1903 discovery of “N-rays” a completely new form of radiation announced by Prosper-René Blondlot. At the time, dozens of other scientists confirmed the existence of N-rays in their own laboratories. But further tests showed that N-rays don’t exist at all.

Yet in the realm of quantum physics, even science can no longer lay claim to objective reality. For we cannot exclude ourselves from what we observe.

Still others that most of the matter and energy in the universe is dark, and ultimately beyond our reach.

Others that we and the universe are a random accident leading back to entropy.

Some tell us that science has sufficiency, that the hypothesized multiverse is eternal and infinite, and does not need God to explain it.

Some that God has forsaken us.

Some argue that we have forsaken God.

“How do I deal with immensity in a measured world? Where life is kept in a thermos?” Marina Tsvetiyeva

In the absence of a compellingly believable inherited myth, in that silence, are we compelled to create our own?

Materialism is no adequate substitute for a sense of meaningful connection to something greater than ourselves, though materialism has undoubtedly obscured the trail that led us here.

But our myths, according to Joseph Campbell, are seriously outdated.

Yet it may feel real to us in a way that our daily lives do not.

The mythical experience is a language of symbols, of metaphors.