The idea of Disclosure from a Jungian vs. 'Universal' perspective raises an interesting question that heavy philosophy of the academic kind can't answer, as all academia is by nature filtered through the long tunnel vision of each prof's area of expertise. Academics suffer from a positivist refusal to believe or admit anything outside that 'known' area, since anything they write, say, or believe is automatically considered 'expert' testimony. It's understandable but short-sighted. If we limit ourselves to the already known then the already known begins to shrink.
Aside from the dogma of Catholic or fundamentalist Christian colleges, most academics are completely atheistic and since science refuses to acknowledge God and to admit the impossibility of pure objectivity, they'll always be like a bunch of Dungeons and Dragons players who can't think outside the 'universe' of their parent's basement, as if to say 'sorry, I can't set my dungeon in space, it wouldn't be realistic'. On the other hand, religions that adhere to dogma "long written down" instead of championing the direct subjective experience of God are just as myopic. When a bible scholar says 'Ezekiel Saw the Wheel' for example, is he imagining a literal wagon wheel in the sky? To imagine literal interpretations of everything in the bible is to stunt reality. For example, if I see something I can't explain so I describe it as 'shiny and twisting like a snake' then in 2000 years (if I wind up in the bible) they'll say I saw a snake. Kenneth Arnold described the first UFOs as skipping across the sky like saucers...boom - he saw 'flying saucers.'
That said, we have to see this stuff as something, and there's nothing that says God shouldn't be seen as a white man in a beard instead of, say, an electrical matrix, something that might be imagined by artists like Alex Grey (below), for example, whose brilliant art reminds us that we're really not flesh and bone but electromagnetic energy running through a DNA motherboard and creating endless branches and manifestations of some pure higher consciousness. The many heads of the beings seen by Ezekiel (or the Hindi pantheon) can be perhaps translated as multiple dimension displacement effects, as per below:
The concept of 'the hero's journey' in Jung is able to adapt along with humanity, as does art, which is why my blog Divinorum Psychonauticus tries to deal with UFO and other high strangeness issues via art and collage (top), dream analysis and Charles Fort-style writing that leaves dichotomies like true/false and real/imaginary behind. When one refuses to allow themselves to be overcome by superstition and magical thinking, even for a few minutes, one misses out on the mystery of life. The more closed-off and scientific the masses become, the more desperately they need artists who can 're-mystify' the world.
Remember the purpose of the hero's journey is to leave the construct of the universal, to go deep into the woods of the personal and have that non-linguistic awakening and then to bring a piece of it back to the stale social order left behind. Art will silently effect change where a thousand competing voices cannot. But art does it indirectly, the way a therapist will lead you to the door and then back off, so you open the door on your own and go "wow, look what I found!" and the therapist goes "that's super!" while thinking to herself 'took you long enough!'
If on the other hand the therapist takes all the credit and just says "here, look in this room: there's a, b, and c, in there" you wont think a, b, c are cool or interesting at all, you'll just think of the therapist's smug face and want to punch him for opening your presents. It's the difference between discovering America yourself and seeing a boring filmstrip on Columbus. Good art is neither one or the other, but a signifier created to instill an experience that gradually roots itself in the psyche so that you 'suddenly' discover America a few days after looking at the filmstrip. But the masses have to think it for themselves... it has to be their idea.
When you think about 'disclosure,' think about the way people who should know better still call the cops when they see strange lights in they sky, as if they expect the law to have an explanation, or to stop it, or do something about it "tell those aliens to turn off their lights so we can sleep." Right there is reason #1 why disclosure would mean the end of human civilization. Think of the government's refusal to admit the truth as the equivalent of a giant mom who sits on your bed and tells you you were having a nightmare, go back to sleep, even though she knows what you saw is real and she's powerless against it. This is one of the government's (and academia's and science's) key functions, to explain and rationalize and otherwise diffuse the terrifying enigmatic pull of the boogeyman. It's what we pay them for, and it's what gives them their assumed power.
To understand the seeming abandonment of the universal for the personal you have to turn to the east, to Taoism, and see that meditation and the evolution of the personal self are inextricably tied in to the world at large, fractal-like.
An old Taoist story goes that Chuang Tzu was visited by a student who had achieved a kind of enlightened state and was determined to go to a neighboring province where a corrupt prince was robbing his people. The student was sure if he traveled to the province and spoke to the king, the power of his enlightened state would shine through and king would see the light and lift the crippling taxes.
Chuang Tzu listened very patiently then told the student he'd help that cause far more by just staying home and meditating, sending his good will and prayers to the prince perhaps, forgiving all and removing his judgment.
I try to keep that tale in mind when I get all angry reading the morning paper. After all, what do I really know about these issues beyond what rabble rousing journalists are telling me?
I had a guy come in yesterday, an old man of 70 who's found 'inner joy' via the lectures of some guru, Pram Nam something or other. I forget what I said to get him started, but he wouldn't stop pitching his guru's spiel about walking the path and finding joy (holding his hand over his heart and saying how joyful he was and so forth). I've written hundreds of new age music and meditation CD reviews so I've heard them ALL, every New Age spiritual thinker, and I tried to tell him there are many roads to the path up the ladder, etc., but he just sagely raised his hand as if to say 'but but but- let me wow you by delivering my humble message from the guru' and kept going on and on in this mix of sales pitch-slow, rhetorical question-laced, corporate retreat-taught dynamic speaking.
After he left, I felt sickened. I had just witnessed the process by which spirituality is hardened into dogma, the ignorance of thinking your personal ecstasy can spread through your repetitions of other people's descriptions and words, not realizing you're just positing yourself as superior (more humble, more 'in the moment') than your audience, and wondering why they close the door in your face, leaving you standing there with your pamphlet in your hand. I'm glad this guy found inner peace, but on the other hand I don't trust an inner peace that needs to trumpet its peacefulness.
Similarly, sitting around and blaming the government and the corporations and the general idiocy of the people and feeling YOU can make a difference and change the world is a fine past time, but it's not revolutionary; it actually enables and enforces the status quo. True change occurs when either a leader is so charismatic he can convince his followers to risk their own lives and walk humbly into the path of police batons and attack dogs or is ruthless enough to eliminate his opponent in the governmental process, ala Hitler's Night of the Long Knives or Stalin's mass executions.
The rise of the Tea Party is a hilarious example of the people's frustrations wherein they'd vote for inept, draconian Puritans for whom masturbation is a sin, who want to remove unwed mothers and homosexuals from teaching positions and next probably take away a woman's right to vote and reinstate prohibition and segregation. People who consider themselves conservative because they don't think the government should have a right to meddle in an individual's liberty are the same people who vote against marijuana reform and abortion rights, which makes no sense, like Jews for Hitler. They're just responding to most fear-based easy to follow rhetoric. It's fear of freedom! It's fascism! Why would anyone think fascism ever lost or will ever lose its seductive hold on basic human emotions?
It doesn't make rational sense, but in its Salem Witch trial-ish hysteria shows the very function of government in a fear-based society, which in turn shows why 'full disclosure' will never happen, and yet meanwhile has already happened. The recent testimony of astronauts and missile base officials should be enough evidence to convince anyone, but they would have to 'want' to be convinced. By withholding full disclosure the government gives people an option. Most people don't want to know and who can blame them? Those who do want to know can find enough answers amid the myths and eyewitness reports to keep them awake at night for the rest of their lives -- the truth is out there, all over the web, like a shot of terrifyingly potent whiskey... it's maybe too horrifying to fully 'take in' without without the sweet chaser that it might not be true
Another way to compare it would be parents who don't want to admit their son is gay. Let's say the son is very charismatic and athletic but has never had a girlfriend and is already 24: the parents are convinced he's just a late bloomer. The son brings home handsome boys for sleepovers and sexual moaning and rhythmic thumping sounds are heard late at night: "oh they're just being boys, probably wrestling around" - Finally the son comes out to them and the parents are literally unable to hear him say he's gay "You're hay? Like horses eat? I don't understand. Gay? Like happy in the 1930s? Of course you are!" Just switch gay for aliens and you got the picture. Hawking is the ultimate force in this, putting out a dozen documentaries on why your son isn't really gay so don't worry, you didn't fail as parents. Science can explain it all and put you back in the saddle of your own delusions.
The UFO disclosure clock at our present point in time would be right around the upstairs moaning and rhythmic thumping portion. I mean, the parents know/suspect the truth but have already buried it in a blind spot where they put their fear of their own mortality, and so forth. So with UFOs parked next the fear of death in their sub-basement unconscious parking lot, even suggesting they consider UFOs to be a reality is, by association, to sic the Grim Reaper on them.
Consider the awesome power that rock bands briefly had in the late 1960s. The Rolling Stone Altamont concert for example, was an event where the Stones had a huge amount of untapped power at their disposal -- a crowd of young people coming to San Francisco for a 'free concert' that was around the population of a small city. No army could control a swarm that big, and the Stones only had to announce where their fans should go to park the VW buses and set up their tents and that place would be instantly overrun. The local government and even the owner of the speedway was in no way going to be able to stop them, anymore than farmers could stop a swarm of locusts by waving an injunction at the sky.
Things quickly got out of hand, because they made the mistake of thinking people are basically self-governing. They are not. Individual people in small tribal units are often self-governing, but after a certain critical mass, the lowest common denominator takes over. The idea of 'need' trumps decency: "gimme gimme gimme" won the day at Altamont (hence the film's title). Woodstock was a lucky fluke. If Altamont hadn't happened, more such events would rise up and who knows what kind of chaos would reign once the good will dried up. The whole nation would be one big chainfight mudpit anarchic Hell's Angels free-for-all. Woodstock was the Roswell to Alamont's weather balloons.
In other words, stay home and listen to Beggar's Banquet on the radio. If you think the masses are dangerous and ignorant then yes, you are right - but you need to love and accept them as they are for them to change, not try and beat (brow or otherwise) some peace and truth into them, not ridicule their superstitions or rub their faces in your oxymoronic superior humility (I'm speaking to myself more than anybody. God knows I hate the masses).
In summation, the universal starts with the personal; past and future are illusions to comfort the terrified hiders from the moment; the government will only admit there are aliens when it can provide an action to deal with them or when it's such a given--aliens on the White House lawn, impervious to bullets, taking over the media--that they'd look bad not to. When people see UFOs but no one bothers to call the cops, we're getting close to that point. When people who hate the police see lights in the sky then call the cops and demand they do something about it, we're getting farther away. If we all stayed home and meditated tonight and skipped work tomorrow, the world's problems would be solved... somehow.
There's nothing wrong with the world in the end, or the masses, or the government, it's just our own perspective, and when we let go of that fixed identity in the sanctity of our private meditation headspace, we're forced to realize just how terrified of freedom we really are.
If we are ever able to let go of that fear, and let go of our nerve ending's tenacious hold on the realms of our perceived bodily awareness, then there would no longer be a 'we' at all, nor an 'I' nor a 'you' and all difference between individual and universal perception would completely dissolve. If that 'sounds' like it could be good, ask yourself this: how will you hear it without ears, or know whether its good or bad without judgment, or remember it without time?
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