If you tell a child angels watch over her, she will see angels. If you tell her Bigfoot lurks in the woods, she may well encounter Bigfoot. If you speak to a child of UFOs and alien being from other planets, there’s a good chance she’s going to think your nuts.
I’m kidding, I’m kidding. My apologies to the UFO enthusiasts out there.
My point is, people see what they want to see.
It’s no wonder more and more people see Bigfoot today with advertisers messing with Sasquatch and Bobo and the gang running through the woods beating blocks of wood and screaming into the night Finding Bigfoot. And by the way, since they’ve not actually found a single Bigfoot, isn’t it time to change the name of that show to Running Around in the Woods Looking Silly in Night Vision Goggles?
What keeps me pondering though is that, be it angels or demons or Bigfoot or ET, people DO see strange things, encounter beings they cannot identify which creep them the heck out, or terrify them, or drop them to their knees in awe.
I spoke this past weekend at the Kimberling, Missouri library. I told how, within the Indian communities in Northern California where it was my blessing to spend a few summers as a child, Bigfoot was a part of the natural world. I told about Grandpa’s road building equipment being strewn all over the backside of Blue Mountain by giant creatures with very big feet. Most of the audience listened with a mix of interest and amusement. One man found me after the talk and spoke quietly, almost reverently of a personal encounter with the large, hairy creature that, up in Missouri, they call Momo.
Encounters with the unknown is a fascinating phenomenon.
It’s possible that there are creatures that pass between our world and other realities. Like angels. Like Bigfoot. When we, as suggestible and frightened humans, encounter these creatures, it seems reasonable that we make them into whatever form we expect of them.
It’s possible that, in our desperate search for meaning in life, our minds create that which does not exist outside ourselves. Yet, even if these awe inspiring creatures live nowhere but in our consciousness, in our imaginings, in some sense, are they not still real?
All I can say with certainty when people ask if I believe in the existence of Bigfoot is this:
I don’t know, but I’m not ruling out the possibility
Jung wrote extensively on paranormal sightings, including the Virgin Mary and UFOs. He felt that these were powerful archetypes whose external manifestations changed as the culture changed.
Archetypes. Exactly.