Dr Carl Jung…a mere mortal after all?

If you haven’t read Carl Jung’s book by now then you should because, ‘Flying Saucers – A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies’ is a classic. Jung’s primary question throughout this book was whether UFOs are real or if they are mere products of fantasy psychically projected? Although he claimed to explore the question with an open mind, it becomes obvious to the reader that the dear doctor pushes his view that UFOs are a projection of the subconscious human mind only, and do not exist in our reality. One can only wonder if he would have the same view today given the Disclosure Project complete with it’s whistleblower testimony.

However, Dr Jung was only a mere mortal after all, and like many scientists and researchers today found the UFO phenomenon challenged him at his deepest level to go beyond his training and conditioning. One question stood out for Jung, baffling him to understand, how UFOs as psychic projections could throw back radar echo, confounding him immensely no doubt.

Based on the works of Ruppelt, Keyhoe and Menzel at the time, Jung eventually decided that even if UFOs are physically real they are so bizarre that they tax our understanding and credulity to the limit. This is very reminiscent of T.S. Eliots’ words, “human kind cannot bear very much reality” and reveals that even great minds, like Carl Jung, can only tolerate so much.

It also reminds readers of the rift that exists between science and the mystical and that as Jung himself stated, “the interest of many scientists is too easily restricted to the common, the probable, the average, for that is after all the basis of every empirical science.” Fortunately, and eventually, the good doctor became willing to go where few had been before, especially in his lifetime, and was willing to admit that any scientific basis “has little meaning unless something can be erected upon it that also leaves room for the exceptional and the extraordinary.”

We can only wonder what Dr Jung might think of the modern research of Dr Rick Strassman with his subjects using DMT (N-dimethyltryptamine) or the investigations of Graham Hancock into shamanic experiences using ahyuasca, to further our current understanding of alternate realities as well as the possibility of them being stomping grounds for some extraterrestrials. Would Jung approve of psychedelic use and ancient ritual to make contact with ETs? Maybe…maybe not.

However looking back on Jung’s thoughts 44 years later, his work acts as a beacon as well as a warning for researchers, revealing the lack of psychological research into the UFO subject which remains undone but by now should have far surpassed his initial work. Jung himself admits that he found no clear answers to an ET reality and had to be content with having sketched out a few lines for future research. He also stated that the “psychic aspects of the UFO subject play so great a role that it cannot be omitted from any future studies”. He considered that “if military authorities felt compelled to set up bureaus for collecting and evaluating UFO reports, then psychology too, had not only the right but also the duty to do what it could to shed light on this dark problem.” Yes good doctor, we couldn’t agree more.