Aliens and Archetypes
Terence McKenna and Jeffrey Mishlove discussed UFOs, minds and thoughtful matters.
Discussion can lead to new understanding. When Dr. Jeffrey Mishlove and Dr. Terence McKenna got together in 1987, an important insight was shared. That is: the UFO phenomenon has deep connections to human consciousness — psychological and psychic components — and to physical reality — the world of matter, energy and information that we can observe and measure. In their remarkable discussion on the paranormal mind and world, shared in the video below, they refer to the work of Dr. Carl Jung and of Dr. Jacques Vallee, both previously examined in The Residium.
Dr. McKenna was an ethnobotanist specializing in medicinal and psychoactive plants. Also recognized as an author, explorer, philosopher and shaman, he received his PhD from LaSalle University in Louisiana. Dr. McKenna was a proponent for the responsible use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants and mushrooms in order to gain insight into humanity’s inner and outer worlds. He died in 2000.
Dr. Mishlove is the first person to earn a doctoral diploma in parasychology from an accredited American institution — the University of California, Berkeley. Today he is affiliated with the California Institute for Human Science. He has written extensively on anomalous phenomena, including UFOs. We also have previously quoted his work in The Residium.
From the discussion:
JEFFREY MISHLOVE: One of the things that Jung pointed out in his book is that we must pay attention to the research that Dr. J.B. Rhine was doing at that time at Duke University in ESP and psychokinesis, and that even if UFOs had a physical reality, could be photographed or could be weighed and measured, that they still might in some manner be projections of the human mind.
TERENCE McKENNA: Oh yes, this is an important point to make, which the flying saucer people are forever misunderstanding, and that is that saying the flying saucer is a psychic object does not mean it is not a physical object. Jung in Mysterium Coniunctionis is at great pains to say that the realm of the psychic and the realm of the physical meet in a strange kind of never-never land that we have yet to create the intellectual tools to explore. This is where the mystery of synchronicity is going to come to rest, the mystery of all kinds of paranormal activity on the part of human beings, and the mystery of the flying saucer. It's interesting, you see, that if you take the broad world of the so-called mysteries — parapsychological, shamanic, extraterrestrial, and so forth — and hypothesize another spatial dimension, one more spatial dimension, then suddenly all these mysteries become trivial. They are easily done. Locked boxes are opened; future events are discerned; lost objects are found. This sort of thing becomes quite the ordinary run of things if we hypothesize dimensions hidden from ordinary experience.
This video is a special release from the original Thinking Allowed series that ran on public television from 1986 until 2002. It was recorded in about 1987. It will remain public for only one week.
Do UFOs originate as psychic projections from our own minds? Terence McKenna is co-author of The Invisible Landscape and a leading thinker in the area of alternative realities. He suggests that regardless of their origin and material existence, UFOs are a challenge to the authority of science. Their chief function, he says, may be to offset the rationalist imbalance in our contemporary culture.
Dear Reader: I am truly sorry that I didn’t find and post this recording sooner. The video is only available gratis for two more days.
The point of The Residium is to share information about the UFO phenomenon. When I do all the talking — cough when one person does all the talking — odds are one will not learning anything new. As shown above, discussion does lead to discovery. Please share your thoughts, questions and observations.
Thank you! And heads-up!