UFO? Myth or Reality?
"The imaginal realm is an inherently ambiguous world that stands between the corporeal and the spiritual worlds and must be understood in terms of both" (Sufi mystic quoted in Denzier 113)

Imagination is what should be a focal point of the discussion on UFO. However, we need not to confuse imagination with fantasy. Fantasy is an escapism, an empty flight from "reality". Imagination is symbolic, metaphoric, and dynamic form of knowledge. Imagination is what we feel, what we dream, what we fear, what we love, what we perceive before rationalizing. Anyway, the point I am making is that imagination should not be seen as something false. It is like myth, a powerful, yet, non-linear way of looking at the world.
So, we need to locate UFO within this imaginary realm of culture. This is where we blend science and spirituality together. It is only within the umbrella of imagination, we can come to know what UFO is.
UFO as a narrative started on the level of the individual. Then it was spread out within the whole society, promoting debates between sceptics, realists, and New Age spiritual movements....Someone saw something, interpreted it according to his/her worldviews (that are partly shaped by the religious views), then made conclusions about it, told his/her community...so the story began.
UFO as an imaginative construction started on the national level. They needed to test their machinery in the face of the Cold War. They did not want to scare the public. They took ancient myths about 'vinams', Atlantis, and angels blended them with Biblical stories, and created UFO. So they could get away with flying objects in the public space without ruining status quo.
UFO as a gateway to Outer spaces coincided with political, military, cultural agendas...It was another way of interpreting reality of the western world. And we can have as many interpretations as we chose. And we will be right. Because it is imagination that is limitless. If we chose to imagine UFO as a strategic mythologized manoeuvre, we are most likely to be right. If we imagine UFO as someone's experience, we are right too. UFO is subjective, and inter-subjective. It is a cultural phenomenon.
As such it also offers hope; it mirrors cultural state of the mind, its shared system of meaning. "Seeing is believing" is what we attach to UFO. Indeed, with this myth, we started to look up at the sky, waiting, hoping...The sky opened itself to us. Horizons of our vision expanded. Even though we were waiting for Them. We were still looking. And we all know that the sky has the ability to heal. Once wounded by militarism, our imagination found ways healing itself by using that militarism as a tool to get our rational attention. What I am saying here is that even if UFO is a set up , it still enabled people to expand their symbolic consciousness.
With this expansion, we got closer to the sky...to outer spaces, by expanding our inner ones.
Imagination needs no separation, no dualities..It is a force that brings spirituality and science together. We imagine before we do...
When we look up at the sky, our imagination brings the whole universe into our eyes. Both stare at each other, both see each other. And as Nietzsche said once "if you stare in the abyss for too long, the abyss will stare at you"...UFO is a mirror effect of imagination..
And it is also Opened to interpretations.