Aliens Here Among Us: The Secret Reality of the Archetypes

Alien species will probably occupy a big place in popular imagination for the foreseeable future because, among other reasons, they embody our longing for new frontiers now that there is little left to discover here on Earth. Or at least, there seems to be no new continents of exploration, and so we send our flights of fancy into alternate dimensions of fantasy and the far reaches of space.

But in reality, we have only exhausted the regions of this world that are visible to our reason. The inner world that we touch in moments of inspiration and intuition - where we journey to every night when we dream - the realm of the archetypes: that place is as steeped in mystery and wonder as any work of speculative fiction could ever be. And it is already here, all around. The aliens live among us.

One of the most pervasive elements of science fiction is the encounter not only with a different kind of physical being but, more significantly, a kind of consciousness that differs from our own. Extra-terrestrials typically have a more advanced technology than our own; in the better specimens of science-fiction, though, like Dune and Stranger in a Strange Land, they also possess a deeper, more profound understanding of the universe and the potentialities of the psyche and soul. Here they are really standing in for our own untapped and unexplored faculties.

This unguessed-at breadth of understanding is what we project upon UFOs and other inexplicable phenomenon. Regardless of whether or not UFOs really exist, we speculate about their existence because it seems that such existence would bring a sharper focus to the meaning and significance of our own lives here on Earth. When we fantasize about alien cultures impacting upon our world and altering the conditions of life, we're actually groping for unknown aspects of ourselves that have their existence in the Archetypal dimension.

Nowadays there is a kind of collective ennui amongst people that seems to say, "Everything's been done and there is nothing new under the sun." Life feels like this when the intellect is at the end of its resources. But intellect is only a small portion of our being. The other aspects of the psyche we can see reflected back at us in the magical and alien species of speculative fiction. Perhaps we are actually the ones who can transcend space and time. What if our inner life is already teeming with the kinds of wondrous worlds that we've dreamt of existing light-years across the cold expanses of space?