One of the things I see happening over and over in the world, and especially in the UFO world, is a hyperbolic sensory-to-intuitive switch which can just about overpower people who have given the bulk of their life’s attention to sensory things.

The way this often plays out in the UFO world is, “hey, I’m just a nuts-and-bolts guy, not really the type to let the imagination run wild, haha…”

“…and by the way, I did see a UFO once.”

Personally, I don’t like to let my thoughts gel too quickly in areas like UFO research, and that is one reason why.

Carl Jung described this kind of condition, a switch from one function to the other, as a sort of “rebalancing act”. For example, lots of sensory work leads to a massive switch to a focus on intuitive perceptions, and vice-versa. This is where we originally got the idea that an extravert needs some introversion time at the end of the day, or an introverted hobby, and introverts need some extraversion—it’s deeper than that, but that’s the gist.

Well, going back to sensation and intuition, the pattern is this “nuts and bolts type of guy” sensory personality description which then gives way to the “yep, saw a UFO” possible-pure-intuition experience.

Personally, this gives me second thoughts about a lot of the UFO-related content that I read. That’s not to say I believe, or don’t believe, but I personally don’t feel pressure to define myself as being in one of those camps.

Example Video

Here is an example of a video which concerns me: Interview with Kevin Day

Noteworthy time stamps:

• 9:17: The guy has spent 18 years on these ships. Wow. That’s extremely sensory work, day in and day out.
• 10:10: He had a secret wish to see a UFO!
• 15:50: But we’re not going to speculate about what we saw—we don’t know if it was military tech or what
• 18:33: Discussion about any lasting “psychic” effects of the experience begins.
• 20:53: This made me cringe as it sounds exactly like a Ni-type experience, wherein Kevin became convinced he could find a gold motherlode. And…
• 21:28: He found the “source of the gold”! Wow!!! But…
• 22:28: “My family never wants me to mine it…” Wait, what?

So I’d guess—and this is just a guess—that he “saw” the gold in his “mind’s eye.” As in, he couldn’t show it to you such that your physical sensory organs could see it, touch it, smell it, etc.

I’ve read this kind of thing many, many times before.

And unfortunately, this is exactly how Ni can be warped into “reality” to get people to believe in telepathy, secret cities under the earth, religion origin stories, etc.

“Look with your ‘spiritual eyes’” was one way this was communicated by religions at least as far back as the 1800s, and it still is today.

Effectively, and I hate to say it, but a lot of this stuff ends up being an exercise of the imagination.

Furthermore, the person who experiences it is sometimes so unfamiliar with the intuition that they firmly believe they have a special power (see the first outcome category below).

Two Concerning Outcome Categories

There are two main outcomes from this “intuition switch” that concern me:

• First, “I believe it all, here’s what I saw, here’s what it means, and the experience went even deeper” (deeper inside my mind, but I’m kind of merging sensation with intuition at this point because I’m convinced of the power of intuition without even knowing what ‘intuition’ is or how it works). I remember checking out a really well-known UFO believer’s book about “who the aliens are and what they’re up to,” and it read exactly like a metaphorical Ni (introverted intuition) / active imagination exercise. I felt pretty embarrassed for the author, to say the least, though more research is needed here. You can always take Ni deeper, and it usually gets weirder and weirder, especially if you don’t realize that you’re most likely encountering subjective metaphor.
• Second, “Here’s what I saw, I don’t know much about it, don’t really care to follow up.” This gets answered by UFO critics as, “WOW, WOULDN’T YOU WANT TO FOLLOW UP?! I SURE WOULD!!” and they just don’t understand how much psychology in this “care to follow up / don’t care to follow up” area can differ among humans. While irritating on one level, it’s also a potential strike against their ability to rationally debunk UFO stories on another. This is unfortunate for their cause, and I see lots of little things like this on debunker sites—again, not claiming they’re wrong in total, but it’s unfortunately not a favorable sign regarding level of education.

Conclusion: But what about the objective aspects?

What about the fact that our ship’s hardware sensors captured this or that? Well, unfortunately for the UFO community and for people of many faith communities, etc.—Ni and Se are ever bound in a grand commingling of psychological information. A great deal of qualitative work is required to begin to separate objectively reliable and subjectively “probably not so reliable” information.

Personally, I also use this to weight my own exploration of the UFO topic: I am undergoing a lot of life changes myself, here in my mid-life years, so I would expect imagery of the unknown to be more of a feature—and an attractive one—to my subconscious. That doesn’t mean UFOs do or don’t exist in some form, it just means that I know I need to zoom out from time to time and keep that factor in consideration.

Well: What do you think? UFOs are in the news a lot lately thanks to the U.S. Navy’s decision-making regarding the reporting process. It’s been interesting to follow, and as I mentioned before, a big part of this for me is just the fun of exploring it as a topic.

Filed in: Sensation /40/ | Se /25/ | Ni /42/ | Intuition /62/