The Psychology of UFOs - Carl Jung

Strange sightings have been reported in the sky  throughout history. After the Second World War, however, the appearance of flying saucers, UFOs  or UAPs (unidentified anomalous phenomena) – or whatever one wants to call them – became  prominent in culture, and recently this phenomenon has gained more public exposure  and sparked intense interest – constituting an important cornerstone for our current zeitgeist. Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung had studied this phenomenon for more than a  decade until his death in 1961.

He writes: “From the very beginning the UFO reports  interested me as being, very possibly, symbolical rumours, and since 1947 I have collected all  the books I could get hold of on the subject. ” While Jung was unable to form a definite opinion  concerning the physical nature of UFOs, the evidence available to him was convincing enough  to arouse a continuous and fervent interest. He wrote down his thoughts in Flying Saucers:  A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies, which is part of the Collected Works, vol.

10:  Civilisation in Transition. His views on UFOs, however, have commonly been misinterpreted – even  by the press during his time. Jung makes it clear that he is focused on the psychic aspect of UFOs  as a modern myth, that is to say, as a narrative from the collective unconscious that expresses a  fundamental human experience, providing insight into our inherited patterns of behaviour or  archetypes and the nature of human existence.

Jung could not commit himself on the question of  the physical reality or unreality of them, since he did not possess sufficient evidence either for  or against. His position can be summarised in the following sentence: “Something is seen, but it  isn’t known what. ” Something material could be seen, or something psychic could be seen. 

Both are realities, but of different kinds. Jung himself had never seen a UFO but knew four  people who had or said they did. Jung did not know whether the entities controlling these crafts  were extraterrestrial or not, as some reports show these objects rising out of the sea – it may well  be that they are not from outer space, but have rather been among us for millennia.

Thus, it is  more appropriate to call these beings non-human intelligences (NHIs), in which we may include  aliens, angels, demons, elemental beings, etc. Perhaps the aliens seen in the UFOs are forms of  technologies artificially created by higher beings whose form we cannot comprehend or perceive. Jung does not reduce the UFO phenomenon to purely psychological grounds, for a large number  of observations point to a natural phenomenon or even a physical one (anti-gravity  field, signs of intelligent guidance, radar signals, etc).

But since he could  not contribute to their physical reality, he dealt almost exclusively with their psychic  aspect. Jung’s field of interest is the human reaction to the phenomena, an effort to understand  the complex working of our interior life, as this is revealed through the UFO phenomenon. Contrary to the ordinary rumours which are told all over the world, Jung described UFOs as  visionary rumours, as they are expressed in visions, or perhaps owed their existence to  visions in the first place and are now kept alive by them.

Thus, they are closely akin to collective  visions, such as the so-called Miracle of the Sun in Fátima, Portugal which occurred in 1917. After a day of heavy rain, the clouds parted and revealed the sun, which started spinning,  dancing or zigzagging across the sky, it also emitted radiant colours. Others describe  seeing not the sun but instead a “disc of dull silver” or “wheel of fire” which did not hurt  the eyes when stared at.

Individual descriptions vary in detail and emphasis, some people reported  seeing nothing out of the ordinary. At one point, there was a cry of anguish from the crowd as the  sun appeared to rapidly descend towards the earth, people were terrified as they thought the sun  was going to fall upon them. They started praying and confessing their sins, when at last the  sun stopped moving.

Around 30,000 to 100,000 people witnessed this phenomenon, which lasted  approximately ten minutes. After the event, the ground and the clothing of those present  were reported to have dried completely. There are cases of collective visions where  one or more persons see something that others cannot see.

That is not to say that they are  hallucinations, but rather, for some reason, these visions only appear in the consciousness of  certain people, whilst they remain invisible to others. Jung experienced this in a spiritualistic  séance where four of the five people present saw an object like a moon floating above the  abdomen of the medium. They showed Jung, the firth person present, exactly where it was,  and it was absolutely incomprehensible to them that he could see nothing of the sort.

Even  people who are entirely of “sound mind” and in full possession of their senses can sometimes see  things that “do not exist”. In addition, things can be seen by many people independently of one  another, or even simultaneously, which are not of a physical nature, but a psychic one. All of these  factors must be considered with regards to UFOs.

Though visionary rumours may be caused  or accompanied by all manner of outward circumstances, they are based essentially  on an omnipresent emotional foundation, a psychological situation common to all mankind  (the collective unconscious). The basis for this kind of rumour is an emotional tension  having its cause in a situation of collective distress or danger, or in a vital psychic need  – shedding light on the psychic compensation of the collective fear weighing on our hearts. There’s a personal unconscious which is concerned with our own problems and complexes, but also a  collective unconscious that concerns the whole human race.

When the world is divided,  it brings about confusion, aimlessness, and disorientation, as well as a meaning crisis.  This “mass hysteria” arising from common causes, can affect vast groups of people, who are  under tension from the same archetypal pressure, which is of tremendous intensity. Should something extraordinary or impressive then occur in the outside world, be it a human  personality, a thing, or an idea, the unconscious content can project itself upon it, thereby  investing the projection carrier (which acts like a hook on which the projection hangs) with  numinous and mythical powers.

Thanks to this, the projection carrier has a highly suggestive effect  and grows into a saviour myth whose basic features have been repeated countless times in history. In an interview, Jung was asked if our preoccupation with psychology and UFOs can be  traced back to a decline of the belief in God, as though this left a void which the  unconscious had to fill. He stated: “In our world miracles do not happen anymore,  and we feel that something simply must happen which will provide an answer or show a way  out.

So now these UFOs are appearing in the skies. Although they have always been observed  they didn’t signify anything. Now, suddenly, they seem to portend something because that  something has been projected on them—a hope, an expectation… it is of course the expectation  of a saviour.

But that is only one aspect. There is another aspect, a mythological one. The UFO  can be a ship of death, which means that ships of death are coming to fetch the living or bring  souls.

Either those souls will fall into birth, or many people are going to die and will be  fetched by fleets of these ships of death. These are important archetypal ideas, because  they can also be predictions. If an atomic war were to break out, an infinite multitude of  souls would be carried away from the earth.

” When we are threatened with disaster, and  mysterious vehicles start appearing in the skies, we unconsciously project on them the figure of a  saviour. We assume that these beings of superior intelligence are peaceful, and have come to save  us – even though they might not do so. Thus, they gain an almost messianic or godlike status.

In the  case of ancient mythology, gods are men, plus have more intelligence, power, or authority. Each god  represents an archetypal image. It seems that, as Heidegger declared, “only a God can save us.

” For Jung, it is thus no surprise that sightings of UFOs were reported much more frequently  after the Second World War and the threat of totalitarianism and nuclear annihilation – the  inner expectations of the people (the desire for a saviour symbolised by the UFOs) appeared in the  outer world in a non-causal but meaningful way, a phenomenon Jung calls synchronicity.  Because of our modern rationalism, we interpreted such visions of longing and  deliverance not as heavenly, other-worldly angels, but mechanical, other-worldly  spaceships, or “technological angels. ” The UFO has the value of a living  symbol, that is, a dynamic factor which, because of the general ignorance and lack  of understanding, has to confine itself to producing a visionary rumour.

The fact that there  is a numinous quality about all archetypal images is responsible not only for the spread of the  visionary rumour but also for its persistence. One thing is certain, UFOs have become a living  myth for modern man, and Jung states that we have the golden opportunity of seeing how a legend  is formed, and how in a difficult and dark time for humanity a miraculous tale grows up of an  attempted intervention by superior or “heavenly” beings. If they are a case of psychological  projection, there must be a psychic cause for it.

One can hardly suppose that anything of such  worldwide incidence is purely fortuitous and of no importance whatever. The cause must strike at  the roots of our existence if it is to explain such an extraordinary phenomenon as the UFOs. Though UFOs were popularised towards the end of the Second World War, the phenomenon itself  was known long before.

There are countless reports in literature. Jung spares himself  from this task and gives us two examples. The first one is the Basel broadsheet of August  7, 1566 in which it is reported that at the time of sunrise, “many large black globes were seen in  the air, moving before the sun with great speed, and turning against each other as  if fighting.

Some of them became red and fiery and afterwards faded and went out. ” The second example is the Nuremberg Broadsheet of April 14, 1561 where numerous people saw  a frightful spectacle at sunrise, in which “globes” of blood-red, bluish or black colour or  “plates” in large numbers appeared near the sun, along with crosses and large tubes. They all  began to fight one another, and this went on for about an hour.

They then all fell down to the  earth. Underneath the globes was a long object, “shaped like a great black spear. ” Naturally  this “spectacle” was interpreted as a divine warning.

These tubes are analogous to the  cylindrical objects in UFO reports known as the “mother-ships” which are said to carry the  smaller lens-shaped UFOs for long distances. As we have mentioned, strange objects in the  skies have been witnessed for thousands of years. In his book, Passport to Magonia,  Jacques Vallée, who could be dubbed the father of the modern study of UFOs, argues that  similar patterns could be observed in folklore, religious tradition, and modern UFO events.

A constant feature of one class of legends involving supernatural creatures is that the  beings come to our world to steal our products, our animals, and even human beings. As well as  their “sample-gathering” behaviour and their request for terrestrial products. There are also  alleged miraculous cures after people describe having a religious experience.

Similarly, people  encountering UFOs find that they are suddenly cured of their wounds, and chronic illnesses. Vallée challenges the so-called extraterrestrial hypothesis, and the view that UFOs are  scientific devices having nothing to do with the mystico-religious context of medieval  apparitions. He suggests that similar phenomena have always occurred in human history,  and proposes the psychosocial hypothesis, in which psychological and social factors  are indispensable for explaining the UFO phenomenon.

To study the recurring themes and  motifs, he presents a comprehensive catalogue detailing all the pertinent facts of some  900 sightings of UFOs from 1868 to 1968. It is important to note the continuum of beliefs  which leads directly from primitive magic, through mystical experience, the fairy-faith, and  religion, to modern UFOs. The mechanisms that have generated these various beliefs are identical. 

Their human context and their effect on humans are constant. It has little to do with the problem of  knowing whether UFOs are physical objects or not. There are many old reports of witnesses describing  seeing various objects in the sky across the world, which include: strange flying machines  before the invention of flight, multiple suns and moons, discs, cigar-shaped objects, crosses,  spheres of fire, wheels, flying earthenware, etc.

At this time, people unconsciously projected  these aerial phenomena as portents or omens, or that God wanted to induce people to amend  their lives and make penance. In fact, panics, riots and disruptive social movements were  often linked to celestial apparitions. What matters here is the link between certain  unusual phenomena—observed or imagined—and the alteration of the witnesses’ behaviour.

For Vallée, folklore is indispensable for understanding the phenomenon of visitation,  from the very earliest days to the present. His book aims to document a recurrent  myth, namely, the myth of contact between mankind and an intelligent race endowed with  apparently supernatural powers. He writes: “Of considerable interest to the psychologist  is the fact that the entities are endowed with the same fugitiveness and behave with the  same ignorance of logical or physical laws as the reflection of a dream, the monsters  of our nightmares… if a superior race does in fact generate what we are now observing as  the UFO phenomenon, is it not precisely with the purpose of changing the course of human destiny  by presenting us with evidence of our limitations in the technical, as well as the mental, realm? 

… Children of the Unknown – if they are not real, should we see these rumours as a sign that  something in the human imagination has changed, bringing into a new light uncharted areas of  our “collective unconscious? ” … In any case, it is important to understand what need these  images fulfill, why this knowledge is both so exciting and so distressing to us. ” It is interesting that Vallée compares the UFO phenomenon with a dream.

When we are  confronted with a mystery, either individually or collectively, our reaction tells us a great  deal about ourselves. And all we can ever read into anything is ourselves. Our responses are  like a Rorschach test.

In the case of UFOs, the phenomenon becomes a kind of collective dream,  not merely a personal dream, but an archetypal dream that reveals the needs of humanity’s  inner life. This dream, like any other dream, is capable of analysis, and in the analysis of  it, we gain far more insight into ourselves, life, nature, and being – than we gain by attempting  to solve the actual mystery of these phenomena. Vallée observes that the UFO sightings  have a chameleon-like character: the shapes of the objects, the appearances of  their occupants, their reported statements, vary as a function of the cultural environment  into which they are projected.

This makes the study of such objects infinitely broader than the  simple investigation of a new phenomenon: for if the appearance and behaviour of the objects are  functions of our interpretation at any particular time in the development of our culture, then what  chances can we have of ever knowing the truth? Human actions are based on imagination, belief,  and faith, not on objective observation. And to control human imagination is to shape mankind’s  collective destiny, provided the source of this control is not identifiable by the public.

During 1896 and 1897, an airship with beings was seen throughout the United States by multiple  witnesses. The airship, though it was believable to the witnesses of 1897, is no longer credible  to us. UFOs appear to keep pace with human technology.

In fact, one of these beings told  a witness, “Soon the invention will be given to the public. ” Perhaps the airship, like the fairy  tricks, the flying saucers, was a lie, so well engineered that its image in human consciousness  could sink very deep indeed and then be forgotten. In his book, Messengers of Deception, Vallée  states that UFOs could be physical devices used to affect human consciousness.

Their purpose may be  to achieve social changes on this planet, through a belief system that uses systematic manipulation  of witnesses and contactees. The witnesses of the airship, far from witnessing by chance the  manoeuvres of interplanetary visitors, may have been deliberately exposed to a scene designed  to be recorded by them and transmitted to us. In her book, American Cosmic:  UFOs, Religion, Technology, Diana Pasulka suggests that UFO experiences  are similar to religious experiences reported throughout history.

As such, they are modern  vehicles for spiritual experiences. She writes: “Nobody wants to be known as the person who has  seen a UFO, so, if they see something anomalous, they usually choose the least unlikely  explanation and leave it at that. The same is true of religious experiences.

People who  have reported experiences that are ultimately deemed religious have at first been confused  by what they see or hear. It is not immediately clear to them that they are having a religious  experience. ” In many cases, such experiences can cause ontological shock, a profound disruption in  one’s understanding of existence.

Nevertheless, since they are impossible to verify objectively,  one fears public ridicule, ostracisation, or the loss of one’s job or credibility. It  may change one’s life and being inwardly, but outwardly everything goes on as before,  one still needs to attend to one’s duties and obligations, which seem to be prosaic. The contrast between an extraordinary event and ordinary everyday life creates a  sense of the absurd, which can be profoundly alienating.

It is perhaps best depicted  in Kafka’s novella The Metamorphosis, where the protagonist wakes up transformed  into a giant insect and is preoccupied with ordinary concerns such as being late for work. Whether the UFOs have a physical reality or not, they are in any case psychic realities. Even  if there is nothing physically tangible about these phenomena, the rumour of the existence of  such objects is an incontestable fact.

Whether the rumour corresponds to a physical reality  or not makes little difference to Jung, as a psychologist. For him the interesting thing is  to know why the human mind creates such products, because that throws particular light  on the activity of our unconscious. So, what are the psychic aspects of the UFOs? 

What as a rule is seen is a body of round shape, disk-like or spherical, glowing or shining  fierily in different colours, or more seldom, a cigar-shaped or cylindrical figure  of various sizes. The round bodies in particular are figures such as the unconscious  produces in dreams, visions, etc. Jung writes: “In this case they are to be regarded  as symbols representing, in visual form, some thought that was not thought consciously, but  is merely potentially present in the unconscious in invisible form and attains visibility only  through the process of becoming conscious.

The visible form, however, expresses the  meaning of the unconscious content only approximately. In practice the meaning has to  be completed by amplificatory interpretation. ” The figures in visionary rumours can be subjected  to the same principle of dream interpretation.

Namely, by means of amplification, that  is, using mythological, historical, and cultural parallels in order to “amplify” the  symbols present in the unconscious. UFOs express the symbol of totality represented by the mandala.  In so far as the mandala encompasses, protects, and defends the psychic totality against outside  influences and seeks to unite the inner opposites, it is at the same time a distinct individuation  symbol.

The soul too is supposed to have the form of a sphere, on the analogy of Plato’s world-soul.  This symbol leads us to the heavenly spheres, to Plato’s “supra-celestial place” where  the “Ideas” of all things are stored up. The alchemists called it a rotundum, which expresses  the totality of the individual.

Jung defines it as the archetype of the Self, that is, the totality  composed of the conscious and the unconscious. Jung, in fact, had a dream  of a UFO which he associates with the problem of the Self. He writes: “In one dream, which I had in October 1958, I caught sight from my house of two lens-shaped  metallically gleaming disks… They were two UFOs… Then another body came flying directly toward me. 

It was a perfectly circular lens… At a distance of four to five hundred yards it stood still for a  moment, and then flew off. Immediately afterward, another came speeding through the air: a lens  with a metallic extension which led to a box – a magic lantern. At a distance of sixty or  seventy yards it stood still in the air, pointing straight at me.

I awoke with a feeling  of astonishment. Still half in the dream, the thought passed through my head: “We always  think that the UFOs are projections of ours. Now it turns out that we are their projections. 

I am projected by the magic lantern as C. G. Jung.

But who manipulates the apparatus? ”” Jung compares this dream to another similar one in which he entered a chapel and saw a yogi  in lotus posture, in deep meditation. When he looked at him more closely, he realised that  he had his face.

He became frightened and awoke with the thought: “Aha, so he is the one who is  meditating me. He has a dream, and I am it. ” He knew that when he awakened, he would no longer be. 

Jung’s Self retires into meditation and meditates his earthly form: it assumes human shape in  order to enter three-dimensional existence, and by greater awareness can take a further  step toward realisation. The figure of the yogi represents Jung’s unconscious prenatal  wholeness. Like the magic lantern, the yogi’s meditation “projects” his empirical reality.

Since UFOs have become for many people a symbol of the Self, a redemptive or  destructive manifestation of the divine, either the salvation or destruction  of our planet is expected from them. Circular symbols have played an important  role in every age, which are not only soul symbols but God-images. As the old saying goes,  “God is a sphere whose centre is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

” The chief role  of the archetype of the Self or God-image is in uniting apparently irreconcilable  opposites and is therefore best suited to compensate the split-mindedness of our age. It  brings order and regulation to chaotic states. Undeterred by rationalistic criticism, the  unconscious thrusts itself to the forefront in the form of a symbolic rumour, accompanied and  reinforced by the appropriate visions, and thus activates an archetype that has always expressed  order, deliverance, salvation, and wholeness.

It is characteristic of our time that the archetype,  in contrast to its previous manifestations, should now take on the form of an object, a  technological construction, in order to avoid the odiousness of mythological personification. From the psychological point of view, the plurality of UFOs would correspond to the  projection of a plurality of human individuals, the spherical symbol indicating that  the content of the projection is not the actual people themselves, but rather  their ideal psychic totality. Jung writes: “The plurality of UFOs, then, is a projection  of a number of psychic images of wholeness which appear in the sky because on the one  hand they represent archetypes charged with energy and on the other hand are not recognised as  psychic factors.

The reason for this is that our present-day consciousness possesses no conceptual  categories by means of which it could apprehend the nature of psychic totality… Moreover, it is  so trained that it must think of such images not as forms inherent in the psyche, but as existing  somewhere in extra-psychic, metaphysical space, or else as historical facts. When, therefore,  the archetype receives from the conditions of the time and from the general psychic situation  an additional charge of energy, it cannot, for the reasons I have described, be integrated directly  into consciousness, but is forced to manifest itself indirectly in the form of spontaneous  projections. The projected image then appears as an ostensibly physical fact independent of the  individual psyche and its nature.

In other words, the rounded wholeness of the mandala becomes a  space ship controlled by an intelligent being. ” The message which the UFO brings is a time  problem that concerns us all. The signs appear in the heavens so that everyone  shall see them.

They bid each one of us to remember our soul and our own wholeness. The opposition between the physical world and the spiritual or “higher” world is not absolute;  the two are only relatively incommensurable, for the bridge between them is not entirely lacking.  That there is something beyond the borderline, beyond the frontiers of knowledge, is shown by  what Jung calls the psychoid – a term that refers to the irrepresentable nature of all archetypes,  which do not fully belong in the psyche, nor in matter, but rather transcends both  and yet provides a bridge to them as the unifying element.

This connection is most clear,  according to Jung, in the archetype of number, which this side of the border are quantities but  on the other side are autonomous psychic entities, capable of making qualitative statements which  manifest themselves in a priori patterns of order. This brings us a little nearer to understanding  the mystery of psychophysical parallelism, for we now know that a factor exists which mediates  between the apparent incommensurability of body and psyche, giving matter a kind of “psychic”  faculty and the psyche a kind of “materiality”, by means of which the one can work on the  other. For Jung, both views, the materialistic as well as the spiritualistic, are metaphysical  prejudices.

It accords better with experience to suppose that living matter has a psychic  aspect, and the psyche a physical aspect. If we give due consideration to the facts of  parapsychology, then the hypothesis of the psychic aspect must be extended beyond the sphere  of biochemical processes to matter in general. In that case all reality would be grounded on an as  yet unknown substrate possessing material and at the same time psychic qualities (the unus mundus  or “one world”).

The acausal correspondences between mutually independent psychic and physical  events, in other words, synchronistic phenomena, and in particular extrasensory perception,  would then become more understandable. Another important phenomenon that is typically  associated with UFOs are crop circles, which have appeared relatively recent in history. In his book, Crop Circles, Jung, and the Reemergence of the Archetypal Feminine, Gary  S.

Bobroff analyses the psychological meaning behind crop circles. We typically categorise  phenomena because it offers the illusion of understanding and thus reduces anxiety. In the  Middle Ages, crop circles inspired fear and were seen as Witches’ rings or as being reaped  by a “Mowing Devil”.

In the Enlightenment period they emphasised the possibility of natural  causation of the phenomenon by weather or wind. And in the contemporary period, the predominant  response is that it is a hoax, and to dismiss it altogether. Generally speaking, our theories  that we have about the new and unknown say more about us than they do about the phenomena.

We live in a time where we are disconnected from the body, from nature, and from the  unconscious. Instead, we have become too focused on rationalism, literalism and materialism. We  do not want to remain content with the mystery, but want to know everything there is about  it.

By cutting off a part of who we are, the psyche seeks to restore our balance. In  other words, we have lost our relationship with the archetypal feminine – which crop circles  exemplify as they are formed in the grain. Grain has been a part of our diet since  prehistoric times, and flourished in the agricultural revolution.

It corresponds  to the archetypal concept of life, death, and rebirth. Cultures around the world that have  produced crops have worshipped the divinities whom they believed protected and sustained their  crops, providing abundance and nourishment – which Bobroff states has been predominantly directed  in goddesses of life and vegetation. He writes: “As early farmers planted and waited, watching  for their seeds to grow, and as they watched and saw their bellies grow fat with children, they  felt the source of life inside themselves and knew the association between the land’s fertility  and their own.

And, as they, in their natural love for their children, nourished and cared for them,  so too did they see, in the endless generosity of Nature, an expression of its love for us. ” Modern culture no longer gives thanks for what we receive from the earth; no longer  do we see something divine our daily bread, and lost to us is the miracle of life, the  miracle of our own life. In other words, we live in a world where the consciousness of  the Feminine has gone underground, and whatever remains unconscious, behaves in neurotic ways.

The mystery of the female body is the mystery of birth, which is also the mystery of the unmanifest  becoming manifest in the whole world of nature, and the mystery of life itself. It is in this way  that the archetype of the Feminine exists within us, it is the most potent association to the  symbol of grain in our psyche, and the possibility of “dead” matter giving birth to the new. In Latin, mother is “mater”, which is related to the word “materia” or “matter”.

Thus, as a  “mother” is the source which gives material shape to her children, so too does matter constitute the  building blocks from which all materials in the physical world arise. The mother is the matrix or  womb from which things originate. Our separation from the archetypal feminine is expressed  compulsively and unconsciously as one-sided materialism, a shadow expression of the feminine.

The circle, on the other hand, is a symbol of the Self. It expresses the totality of the psyche in  all its aspects including the relationship between humanity and the whole of nature. Visually, the  emergence of the crop circle phenomenon from the initial circular form seen throughout history  around the world into the diverse concentric complexity of the mandala mirrors the form of  the Self archetype’s evolution in the psyche.

The depth of the mystery that we  witness in crop circles, UFOs, etc. , does not lie in our ability to construct  complex theories about it; its mystery is present simply in its existence. This encounter with  the “Other” has occurred since time immemorial.

Jung was aware that we could not remain  satisfied with just the psychological explanation of UFOs – as he says that these  have not only been seen visually but have also been picked up on the radar screen and have  left traces on the photographic plate (which preceded photographic film). He writes: “It boils down to nothing less than this: that either psychic projections throw back  a radar echo, or else the appearance of real objects affords an opportunity for mythological  projections. Here I must remark that even if the UFOs are physically real, the corresponding  psychic projections are not actually caused, but are only occasioned, by them.

Mythical  statements of this kind have always occurred, whether UFOs exist or not. These statements  depend in the first place on the peculiar nature of the psychic background, the collective  unconscious, and for this reason have always been projected in some form. At various times all  sorts of other projections have appeared in the heavens beside the saucers… The alternative  hypothesis that UFOs are something psychic that is endowed with physical properties seem even  less probable, for where should such a thing come from?

If weightlessness is a hard proposition  to swallow, then the notion of a materialised psychism opens a bottomless void under our feet. ” For Jung, there is also a third possibility: that UFOs are real material phenomena of  an unknown nature, either coming from outer space or have always been on earth. After Jung completed his manuscript, a book fell into his hands which captured his  attention, and which he included in the epilogue.

It is The Secret of the Saucers by Orfeo M.  Angelucci published in 1955. Orfeo was an Italian mechanic working in the United States.

Jung  describes his book as a naïve production which for that very reason reveals all the more clearly the  unconscious background of the UFO phenomenon and therefore comes like a gift to the psychologist. After his encounter with NHIs, Orfeo made his living by preaching the gospel revealed to  him by them. His career as a prophet began with the sighting of a supposedly authentic UFO on  August 4, 1946.

At night, he felt unwell and had a “prickling” sensation in the upper half of his  body. As he was driving home in his car, he saw a faintly red-glowing, oval-shaped object hovering  over the horizon, which nobody else seemed to see. Suddenly it shot upwards with great speed  but before it vanished, it released two balls of green fire from which he heard a voice say:  “Don’t be afraid, Orfeo, we are friends!

” As he got out of the car, he watched the two “pulsating”  disks hovering a short distance in front of him. The voice explained to him that he was in direct  communication with “friends from another world. ” They asked him to drink from a crystal cup which  he described as “the most delicious beverage I had ever tasted.

” He felt refreshed and strengthened.  Suddenly the area between the twin disks began to glow with a soft green light which gradually  formed into a three-dimensional screen. In it there appeared a man and a woman, “being the  ultimate of perfection.

” They had large shining eyes and seemed strangely familiar to him.  It seemed to him that he was in telepathic communication with them. Then the voice said: “We see the individuals of Earth as each one really is, Orfeo, and not as perceived by the  limited senses of man.

The people of your planet have been under observation for centuries, but  have only recently been re-surveyed. Every point of progress in your society is registered with  us. We know you as you do not know yourselves.

Every man, woman, and child is recorded in  vital statistics by means of our recording crystal disks. Each of you is infinitely more  important to us than to your fellow Earthlings because you are not aware of the true mystery of  your being… We feel a deep sense of brotherhood toward Earth’s inhabitants because of an  ancient kinship of our planet with Earth. In you we can look far back in time and recreate  certain aspects of our former world.

With deep compassion and understanding we have watched your  world going through its ‘growing pains. ’ We ask that you look upon us simply as older brothers. ” Orfeo was also informed that as “etheric” entities they needed the UFOs only in order to manifest  themselves materially to man.

The heavenly visitors were harmless and filled with the best  intentions. “Cosmic law” forbade spectacular landings on earth. The earth was at present  threatened by greater dangers than was realised.

After these revelations Orfeo felt exalted  and strengthened. It was, as he states, “as though momentarily I had transcended  mortality, and was somehow related to these superior beings. ” When the lights disappeared,  it seemed to him that the everyday world had lost its reality and became an abode of shadows.

At another time, Orfeo was feeling unwell and had a dulling of consciousness he had noted on  that other occasion. Jung describes this as the awareness of an abaissement du niveau  mental (lowering of the mental level), a state which is a very important precondition for  the occurrence of spontaneous psychic phenomena. Suddenly, he saw a luminous object which visibly  increased in solidity, as if its vibrational frequency were lowered (just as the blades  of a propeller are invisible at high speeds, but visible at low speeds).

He saw a doorway  leading into a brightly lit interior and he stepped inside. The walls were made of some  “ethereal mother-of-pearl stuff”. Facing him was a comfortable reclining chair consisting  of the same translucent, shimmering substance.

He sat down and it was as if the chair moulded  itself to the shape of his body of its own accord. The UFO carried him away and he saw the earth.  Orfeo wept with emotion and the voice said: “Weep Orfeo… we weep with you for earth and  her children.

For all its apparent beauty earth is a purgatorial world among the planets  evolving intelligent life. Hate, selfishness, and cruelty rise from many parts of it like a dark  mist. ” The voice informed him that every being on earth was divinely created.

Orfeo had spiritual  gifts, and that was why the higher beings could enter into communication with him. The voice  entertained him with more explanations concerning the attitude of the higher beings to mankind: “Man had not kept pace morally and psychologically with his technological development, and  therefore the inhabitants of other planets were trying to instil into the earth dwellers a  better understanding of their present predicament and to help them particularly in the art of  healing. They also wanted to put Orfeo right about Jesus Christ.

Jesus, so they said, was called  allegorically the son of God. In reality he was the “Lord of the Flame”, “an infinite entity of  the Sun”, and not of earthly origin. “As the Sun spirit who sacrificed Himself for the children  of woe he has become a part of the oversoul of mankind and the world spirit.

In this he differs  from all other cosmic teachers. ” Everyone on earth has a “spiritual, unknown self which transcends  the material world and consciousness and dwells eternally outside of the Time dimension in  spiritual perfection within the unity of the oversoul. ” The sole purpose of human existence  on earth is to attain reunion with the “immortal consciousness” … Orfeo felt like a “crawling worm  – unclean, filled with error and sin.

He wept… to the accompaniment of the appropriate music. The  voice spoke and said: “Beloved friend of Earth, we baptise you now in the true light of the worlds  eternal. ” A white flash of lightning blazed forth: his life lay clear before his eyes, and the  remembrance of all his previous existences came back to him.

He understood “the mystery  of life. ” He thought he was going to die, for he knew that at this moment he was wafted  into “eternity, into a timeless sea of bliss. ”” After this illuminative experience, Orfeo came to  himself again.

He noticed that he had an inflamed circle with a dot in the middle on his chest.  Psychologically, this is the symbol of the Self, of absolute wholeness, or in religious  language, God. The centre is frequently symbolised by an eye: the ever-open eye  of the fish in alchemy (the fish is also a symbol for Christ and the age of Pisces).

For Jung, the UFO phenomenon is part of the new approaching astrological age, the age of  Aquarius, estimated to fall between AD 2000 and 2200. In Western astrology, the completion  of a full cycle of the sun through the zodiac, called a Great Year, takes approximately 26,000  years. An astrological age, or “Platonic month”, is one twelfth of a Great Year, corresponding  with the one zodiacal sign, therefore lasting approximately 2200 years.

Every age has  left a secret to be discovered. Jung writes: “These rumours [UFOs] … seem to me so significant  that I feel myself compelled… to sound a note of warning… they are manifestations of psychic  changes which always appear at the end of one Platonic month and at the beginning of another.  Apparently, they are changes in the constellation of psychic dominants of the archetypes, or “gods”  as they used to be called, which bring about, or accompany, long-lasting transformations of the  collective psyche.

This transformation started in the historical era and left its traces first  in the passing of the aeon of Taurus into that of Aries, and then of Aries into Pisces, whose  beginning coincides with the rise of Christianity. We are now nearing that great change which may be  expected when the spring-point enters Aquarius. It would be frivolous of me to try to conceal from  the reader that such reflections are not only exceedingly unpopular but even come perilously  close to those turbid fantasies which becloud the minds of world-reformers and other interpreters of  “signs and portents.

” But I must take this risk, even if it means putting my hard-won reputation  for truthfulness, reliability and capacity for scientific judgment in jeopardy. I can assure my  readers that I do not do this with a light heart. ” In an interview conducted two years  before his death, Jung stated: “What comes next?

Aquarius, the Water-pourer…  In our era the fish is the content [Pisces]; with the Water-pourer, he becomes the container.  It’s a very strange symbol. I don’t dare to interpret it.

So far as one can tell, it  is the image of a great man approaching. ” Pisces has water as an element, Aquarius, on  the other hand, despite alluding to water, is classified as an air sign. The  atmospheric mystery, the mystery of air, must become increasingly psychologically dominant  for a period of more than 2,000 years to come.

In his lecture on Jung’s flying saucer book, Manly P.  Hall states that the “water of life” of Aquarius is an etheric, electric or magnetic substance  moving in the air. It is fluidic in nature, but energising in quality.

It represents the  transmission of waves and energy in space. On this basis, we are dealing with an air sign with a  curiously fluid symbol almost resembling water. We may refer to Genesis where it is written, “And God  made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which  were above the firmament.

” The waters above the firmament have a relationship to this symbol.  Therefore, the phenomenon of the UFOs – which interestingly have been described as being both in  air and under water – have become more important for humankind as we are nearing the Aquarian Age. The circular form of the UFOs is also the circle of the zodiac, the wheel of life which depicts  the astrological ages in which humanity eternally moves around – circumambulating the circle through  the aeons – which is also the Self.

As T. S. Eliot wrote, “And the end of all our exploring, will  be to arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time.

” This mysterious cyclic  symbol is related to the creation of the wheel, which led to transportation, the ability to  move from one place to another, an appropriate symbol of motion and progress. On his final thoughts on the subject of UFOs, Jung writes: “Unfortunately, after more than ten years’ study of the problem I have not managed to  collect a sufficient number of observations from which more reliable conclusions could be drawn. I  must therefore content myself with having sketched out a few lines for future research.

” And finally, Jung writes: “Two or three more centuries will go  by before the new era I spoke of [the Age of Aquarius] in connection with the  flying saucers. A lot will still have to happen to mankind. Many things will have to  change before the new style comes to birth, the new formula for the realisation of humanity.

” The UFO phenomenon is a crisis in the Platonic month, a crisis in which human beings, moving from  one pattern of archetypal symbolism to another, are confronted with an entirely new way of  life – and this confusion is solved by the ageless and perennial task of individuation,  the integration of the two parts of our nature, the conscious and the unconscious, which aligns us  to the Self, establishing our interior totality.