The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Extraterrestrial Encounters

by Story, Ronald

  “I was walking, at night, in the streets of a city. Interplanetary ‘machines’ appeared in the sky, and everyone fled. The ‘machines’ looked like large steel cigars. I did not flee. One of the ‘machines’ spotted me and came straight towards me at an oblique angle. I think: Professor Jung says that one should not run away, so I stand still and look at the machine. From the front, seen close to, it looked like a circular eye, half blue, half white.

  “A room in a hospital: my two chiefs come in, very worried, and ask my sister how it was going. My sister replied that the mere sight of the machine had burnt my whole face. Only then did I realize that they were talking about me, and that my whole head was bandaged, although I could not see it.” (Jung, 1959)

  Jung also reports on a woman’s dream about a black humming metallic object like a spider with great dark eyes that flies over her. She was not clothed and felt somewhat embarrassed. The spider flew alongside a large administrative building in which international decisions were being made and influenced people inside to go the way of peace, which was the way to the inner, secret world. Obviously eyes are intimately associated with UFOs in the unconscious. Eye-like UFOs are to be expected.

  There may of course be perfectly plausible ways of explaining away the eye-like nature of UFOs as a function of their observation equipment behaving like the machinery of the human eye. There may be perfectly plausible ways of explaining the cop-sunglasses eyes of Strieber’s aliens as the plausible product of evolutionary adaptation to the environment of the planet from which they came. But what really makes the most sense?

  Carl Jung

  In the final analysis, one has to go back to context. The eyes appear in relationship to a web of paranoid themes in the UFO mythos and a structure of paranoid development occurring in paranoid systems of thought. We also see them in the context of a mythos grown up from Keyhoe in which aliens were assumed to be spying on us. It is a context filled with apocalypses, amnesia, persecutions, chases, influencing machines, and conspiracies. And always there is furtiveness to allow evidence but never proof. So, what ultimately is the more meaningful interpretation—extraterrestrials or superegos?

  —MARTIN S. KOTTMEYER

  References

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  religion and UFOs Religion is used by some in the UFO field to explain away the existence of UFOs. It is used in the following form: “Religion and UFOs have one thing in common: Both are make-believe.” In fact, UFOs are a modern form of religion, something quasi-scientific, which have taken the place of traditional ideas of angels and miracles. To some extent, the theories of Carl Jung, found in his book Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies (1959), develop the view that saucer-shaped UFOs are symbolic of the longing of the soul for unity. Therefore, UFOs may not be “real” in our usual scientific sense. In the book edited by Carl Sagan and Thornton Page, UFOs—A Scientific Debate (1972), the article by Sagan, “UFO’s: The Extraterrestrial and Other Hypotheses,” and the article by the late Donald H. Menzel, “UFO’s—The Modem Myth,” both develop the view that UFOs do not have any more scientific reality than religion does. In effect, people like Sagan and Menzel use religion to destroy the credibility of UFOs as a scientific study.

  Could this have been the scene at Sodom and Gommorah?

  (Painting by Monarca Lynn Merrifield)

  As Sagan and Menzel use religion to get rid of UFOs, there are others who use UFOs, and related subjects, to get rid of religion. Erich von Däniken’s Chariots of the Gods? (1968), as well as his other works, represent this view. Von Däniken deals mainly with the history of what he believes is extraterrestrial visitation to Earth, in which space beings carried on experiments in science with Earth people. Earth people fell in religious awe before advanced space technology. The city of Sodom, von Däniken believes, was destroyed by nuclear weapons in the hands of space beings. Likewise, the Exodus in the Bible was the work of space beings carrying out a breeding experiment. Man, in his ignorance, began to worship these beings. Von Däniken is very hostile toward organized religion, especially his native Roman Catholic Church and its priesthood, as may be seen from his attacks on it, especially in his book Miracles of the Gods (1974). Von Däniken sees UFOs and the visitation of “ancient astronauts” as “true science” and uses this “UFO science” to discredit religion.

  Angels announcing the birth of the savior

  A third approach to UFOs and religion is to say “God is an astronaut” Von Däniken used this approach to discredit religion, but R. L. Dione, in books such as God Drives a Flying Saucer (1969), develops the view that the God of the Bible is really an astronaut, a kind of Star Trek Captain Kirk, who for reasons known only to himself decided to start the biblical religion. This “god” uses advanced technology to perform the miracles in the Bible—everything from the parting of the Red Sea to the artificial insemination of Mary so that Jesus could be born and promote the work of the astronaut-god. The unfortunate thing about Dione’s god is that he appears demonically deceptive, and, in fact, Dione feels himself called to uncover the fraud which this technological god has brought upon us: an astronaut who has tried to make us think he is really divine!

  A fourth approach to UFOs and religion is more complex, and suggests that UFOs and religion may share a common ground in man’s unconscious or psychic area. One approach in this area is directly religious, as in the work of Ted Peters, UFOs—God’s Chariots? (1977), while another approach is more secular, as in Jerome Clark and Loren Coleman’s book The Unidentified (1975). Peters approaches the subject phenomenologically, making no decision about the “reality” of UFOs, but pointing out that how a person sees a UFO usually depends on what he is: Politicians see them as space visitors here to establish contact, scientists see them as scientists here to study us, some religious leaders see them as angels as found in the Bible. In other words, man’s unconscious nature determines our UFO theories.

  Clark and Coleman go even further. They argue that UFOs are a psychic projection of man’s collective unconscious (drawing on C. G. Jung), a kind of “poltergeist” phenomena. Their theory is able to draw together the physical and psychological dimensions of the UFO problem better than most theories, but in order to accept their view, one has to believe the human unconscious is capable of powers unknown before. The theories of Peters and Clark and Coleman might be summarized in terms of religion in this way: “If faith can move mountains, then it can certainly create UFOs.”

  A fifth theory joining UFOs and religion is that UFOs are demons. This view is most popular among Christian fundamentalists and is expressed in the work of John Weldon and Zola Levitt in UFOs: What on Earth is Happening? (1975) and Clifford Wilson in his book UFOs and their Mission Impossible (1974). These authors conclude that since UFOs will not reveal their true nature to us, they are demonic. Weldon and Levitt use this approach in a fairly traditional fundamentalist way: The world is coming to an end, Jesus is returning, UFOs are a sign that the devil has been let loose; repent and be saved. The weakness of both the above books is that they make no serious attempt to relate their theory to the other possibility, that UFOs are in a sense “good” angels as described in the Bible.

/>   The sixth theory is that UFOs are some kind of divine power. This theory has been developed in both a secular and religious form. Jacques Vallée has put forth this theory in secular form in his book The Invisible College (1975). He concludes his book with a chapter describing “The Next Form of Religion,” by suggesting that UFOs are some kind of power which directs, at a deep unconscious level, human destiny. Vallée does not call this power God, although that has been the traditional name for such a power. I have developed this theory from the more traditional point of view in my book The Bible and Flying Saucers (1968) and in various articles. I have suggested that the “pillar of cloud and fire” of the Exodus was what we now call a UFO, that it led the way to the Red Sea, parted the water, fed Israel on manna, and led the way to Mount Sinai, where Moses received all the commandments of the Jewish religion. This, together with major UFO contacts with the prophets, represents the “First Revelation” or the Old Testament. The “Second Revelation” concerns the coming of Jesus, one called the son of God, who comes from the Higher Reality into our reality to explain what life is about. Roughly the message of life is this: Life is a three-stage process; (1) we begin in the dark in our mother’s womb, and then are born into (2) a second womb, the world we see, but in which we only begin to understand the nature of God, and then we are born again into (3) the higher spiritual world, from which Jesus has come, and to which we will go when we die, leaving our physical body behind as a baby leaves the placenta.

  UFO events in the New Testament include the bright light over the shepherds at Christmas (Luke 2:9), the Baptism of Jesus (Matt. 3:16), the Transfiguration of Jesus (Matt. 17:5), the Ascension of Jesus (Acts 1.9), and the conversion of the Apostle Paul by a bright light on the Damascus Road (Acts 9:3). This theory of the Bible has been largely rejected by liberals because they have tended to doubt the “reality” of miracles, angels, and life after death This theory of the Bible has also been rejected by fundamentalist Christians in favor of the “demon” view described above. The reason for this in part is that Protestant fundamentalists do not expect to see any real divine activity now. They tend to think God finished his work in the New Testament, with the exception of the Second Coming of Christ. The idea that God might be doing any obvious work is foreign to their doctrines.