Karl Jung once wrote, "Religious experience is absolute. It is indisputable. You can only say that you have not had such an experience, and your opponent will say, "Sorry, I have." And there your discussion will come to an end." Therein lies the problem of dealing with any personal experience. Some people claim that they have seen a genuine extra-terrestrial creature; I have not. We might assume that person was simply mistaken, fooled by some sort of optical illusion. Or we might even assume intentional dishonesty. Perhaps mental illness best explains why this person believes he or she has seen an extraterrestrial. But what we absolutely cannot do is to claim with any conviction that this other person's experience was imaginary or a lie, unless we can prove it. Literally, if we weren't there to see for ourselves, how can we possibly claim to possess this knowledge? Some people might argue that it's logical to assume, or common sense to believe that there are no aliens in outer space because there is no evidence they exist. If behavior in the physical world was always logical and common sensical, computer programmers would never have to write code to handle exceptions. Fortunately, I can understand this phenomena all too well, because I have publicly confessed that I believe that I have personally experienced supernatural phenomena. I specifically referred to paranormal entities that one might describe as a ghost or a demon, depending on one's personal beliefs as to whether or not ghosts actually exist. Whatever "it" was, this invisible entity was intelligent … [Read more...]