Hackers Underworld 2: Forbidden Knowledge/Hackers Underworld 2: Forbidden Knowledge.iso/UFO/JUNGSUFO.TXT

Text File | 1989-12-31 | 17KB | 280 lines

  The following is a summary of the concepts from the book FLYING
SAUCERS, A MODERN MYTH OF THINGS SEEN IN THE SKY by C.G. JUNG.
(1978, Princeton University press ISBN 0-691-01822-7, written in
1958), and is part of the Collected works of C.G. Jung.
All I could hope to do here is pick out major points of the book
and relate them as best I can. All quotes from the book will
start with /and end with \ and include the paragraph number.
Please forgive a word or two left out here and there. I would
strongly recommend a study of the works of Jung but for those
unfamiliar I will try a brief description to avoid some confusion.
  Jung says the individual unconcious is as real and as important
as the concious and that the collective unconcious is one shared
by everyone, built up and passed on somewhat like instincts in the
animal kingdom. He names the major influences of the unconcious
archetypes. One he calls the shadow, which is the 'bad' in us,
another the anima or animus which describes the traits of the
opposite sex which we can all sometimes display. His philosophy
is that the more we are aware of these traits the easier we can
achieve individuation, or becoming a whole person. Mandalas,
circular objects (often found as art, the Aztec calendar might be
an example), are important because they often reveal much about
ourselves. That is a very rough summary of some of his major
ideas.( I am not an authority, hence the following has turned out
to be more of a "best of" quotes from the book. Hopefully his
overall opinion of the subject can be deciphered.)
  In the introduction. Jung relates that there are manifstations
of psychic changes which occur at the beginning and end of
Platonic months,/589 .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 transfor-
mations 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 Aries, and then Aires 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.\
  Jung tackles the UFOs, 594/ only with their undoubted psychic
aspect, and in what follow shall deal almost exclusively with
their psychic comcomitants.\
  In part 1 Jung cites several cases of spiritual seances in
which several attendees witnessed a visual phenomenon but others
present (including himself) saw nothing. 608/But if it (UFOs) is
a case of psychological 'projection', there must be a psychic
cause for it. One can hardly suppose that anything of such world-
wide incidence as the UFO legend is purely fortuitous and of no
importance whatever...in this case a psychological situation
common to all mankind. The basis for this kind of rumour is an
emotional tension having its cause in a situation of collective
distress or danger...This condition undoubtedly exists today, in
so far as the whole world is suffering under the strain of
Russian policies and their still unpredictable consequences. In
the individual, too, such phenomena ..only occur when he is
suffering from a psychic dissociation, when there is a split
between the conscious attitude and the unconcious contents
opposed to it. Precisely because the conscious mind does not know
about them and is therefore confronted with a situtation from
which there seems to be no way out, these strange contents cannot
be integrated directly but seek to express themselves indirectly,
thus giving rise to unexpected and apparently inexplicable
opinions, beliefs, illusions, visions, and so forth.\
He says that oftens this happens just to those who are least
inclined to believe in them, which then gives them an air of
particular credibility.
/614 UFOs..have become a 'living myth'. We have here a 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 extra terrestrial "heavenly" powers,
and this at the very time when human fantasy is seriously
considering the possibility of space travel... We at least are
concious of our space conquering aspirations, but that a
corresponding extra terrestrial tendency exists is a purely
mythological conjecture, i.e., a projection.\
/622. If the round shining objects that appear in the sky be
regarded as visions, we can hardly avoid interpreting them as
archetypal images. They would then be involuntary, automatic
projections based on istinct, and as little as any other psychic
manifestations or symptoms can they be dismissed as meaningless.
Anyone with the requisite historical and psychological knowledge
knows that circular symbols have played an improtant role in
every age.. There is an old saying that "God is a circle whose
centre is everywhere and the circumference nowhere."\
/623. The present world situation is calculated as never before to
arouse expectations of a redeeming, supernatural event. If these
expectations have not dared to show themselves in the open, this
is simply because no one is deeply rooted enough in the tradition
of earlier centuries to consider an intervention from heaven as a
matter of course. We have indeed strayed far from the metaphysical
certainties of the Middle Ages, but not so far that our historical
and psychological background is empty of all metaphysical hope.\
/625. Nuclear physics has begotten in the laymans head an
uncertainty of judgment that far esxceeds that of the physicists
and makes things appear possible which but a short while ago would
have been declared nonsensical. Consequently the UFOs can easily
be regarded and believed in as a physicists miracle.\
  In part 2, a major portion of the book, Jungs examines dreams
that involve UFOs and then comments on their particular 'meaning',
too lengthy to repeat here. Some points he makes are;
/636. It must be emphasized however that there is also the
possibility of a natural or absolute knowledge, when the
unconcious psyche coincides with objective facts. This is a
problem that has been raised by the discoveries of parapsychology.
Absolute knowledge occurs not only in telepathy and precognition,
but also in biology, for instance in the attunement of the virus
of hydrophobia to the anatomy of dog and man as described by
Portmann, the wasps apparent knowledge of where the motor ganglia
are located in the caterpillar that is to nourish the wasps
progeny, the emission of light by certain fishes and insects with
almost 100% efficiency, the directional sense of carrier pigeons,
the warning of earthquakes given by chickens and cats, and the
amazing cooperation given in symbiotic relationships.\
(I could not help to think of the the recent Lear.txt when I
read the following paragraph)
/648. Today, as never before, men pay an extraordinary amount of
attention to the skies, for technological reasons. This is
especially true of the airman, whose field of vision is occupied
on the one hand by the complicated control apparatus before him,
and on the other by the empty vastness of cosmic space. His
consciousness is concentrated one sidedly on details requiring the
most careful observation, while at his back, so to speak, his
unconcious strives to fill the illimitable emptiness of space. His
training and his common sense both preclude him from observing all
the things that might rise up from within and become visible in
order to compensate for the emptiness and solitude of flight high
above the earth. Such a situation provides the ideal conditions
for spontaneous psychic phenomena, as everyone knows who has lived
sufficiently long in the solitude, silence and emptiness of
deserts, seas, mountains or in primeval forests. Rationalism and
boredom are essentially products of the over induged craving for
stimulation so characteristic of urban populations. The city
dweller se