Back in the days when I used to be an avid flying saucer enthusiast, I would be enthralled by the occasional ‘whistle-blower’ stories that would appear. Over the years various technical experts, all with seemingly sound credentials, would present their true stories of back-engineering alien spacecraft.

Whilst these stories always made for fascinating reading when taken individually, they didn’t seem to offer a great amount in the way of corroborative detail when compared. In fact they often seemed to be talking about totally different technologies.

Taken at face value one would have to say that either most of these people were just making up these stories for a laugh or that we were suddenly being visited by many alien races all with radically different spacecraft design and science. Or could there be another reason behind these apparently reasonable sources of information having such glaring discrepancies?

Let’s imagine that the Cold War is just starting. We have been given ownership of a super-secret aeronautics 'research and development' test facility, and it is absolutely crucial that the aircraft that come out of our hangars are next-generation, with a clear supremacy versus anything else on the planet. How could we make sure that our engineers come up with the best ideas?

Well, it would appear that the main obstacle to new ideas and creativity is the apparent human difficulty in questioning, and sometimes even recognising, the worldview - the beliefs and social reality-tunnel - we grew up in. Robert Anton Wilson has pointed out on a number of occasions that radical ideas often have to wait until the next generation to be properly accepted. If this ‘New Idea’ violates political or religious dogma then it can take even longer; hundreds of years or more.

So how do we get around this?

If we had the time and resources to totally re-educate every engineer that came through the door then we would probably start by making a few alterations to the mental concept of 'expertise'. The standard image of ‘The Expert’ that many people have been conditioned with is one that is not particularly compatible with creativity. ‘The Expert’ is someone who already knows it all, does not need to ask any questions and has no need to play around with potentially ridiculous or silly ideas. All of that will need to be changed in order to make use of the brain-storming strategies as used by Tony Buzan or Walt Disney. Some training in being more aware of how language tricks us into thinking that we 'already know' about things - even when we don't - will also be in order.

The main problem with all of this is that this 're-training' relies on other competencies - visualisation, relaxation, the suspension of dis-belief, and so on - all of which would have to be taught as well. It would be entirely possible, maybe even probable, that many talented engineers just might not 'get the point' and approach this re-training with less than the required focus.

So what happens now?

Well, what if we could put them face-to-face with something that would smash their old scientific world-view to pieces? What if we could show them an alien space vehicle, capable of levitation, invisibility and more?

So: a new engineer has arrived. As he is undergoing the usual induction talk he is given a glass of water containing an hallucinogenic.

Remember: this was the Cold War when the CIA’s MK-ULTRA project, and its LSD / hypnosis experiments on uninformed subjects, was considered a ‘necessary evil’ in the fight against the Communist Bogeyman!

As soon as we are sure that our new engineer is 'ready', he is taken to an observation area that affords him a view of a carefully-lit hangar containing our 'flying saucer' - a mysterious hunk of exotically designed metal, surrounded by masses of wiring, technical equipment, and people in white lab-coats with clip-boards. There's the odd hint of steam, a bit of 'unnatural' lighting and a few sub-woofer speakers giving off an eerie hum.

And then the 'show' begins : using a series of sophisticated visual illusions we can give the impression of levitation, and with some decent lighting tricks, a bit of misdirection and a huge pane of glass we might even be able to make the thing fade away into invisibility, who knows. I’m not saying that we need David Copperfield or Derren Brown on the team or anything, but it wouldn’t hurt.

Most importantly - during and after the ‘show’ we would be using a lot of 'hypnotic language', which while appearing to be a bland description of the flying saucer, would actually be directing the subject to notice specific things about the show, maybe even things which actually aren’t there but which in hindsight could be filled in by the mind.

As this process gets more sophisticated the 'spiked drink' could be shown to be unnecessary. The real work would now be done with the hypnotic language patterns with the 'show' being a 'scene-setter' or even just a distraction. This could account for all of the different details of the whistle-blowers – these details have been filled in by their own subconscious creativity and are therefore unique to them.

Anyway, the point is that the engineer now exists in a mental space where all of the old certainties about what is and isn’t possible have been thrown out. All preconceptions are questionable, all judgements malleable. Nothing is true, everything is permitted. The question "How can something become invisible?" which only this morning was a 'childish fantasy', to be immediately ignored and scorned, has suddenly become a possibility which the engineer can direct creativity towards.

And from this state which combines adult knowledge and intellect with a child’s sense of wonder and curiosity, the raw materials for creativity, we could expect new and wonderful ideas, perspectives and genius.

On the off-chance that you don’t run a ‘super-secret aeronautics research and development test facility’ either we have to ask ourselves: how can we use this information?

It all comes down to an exercise in the 'suspension of disbelief' - or in playing 'let's pretend'. You ask your subconscious mind questions that assume that some kind of alien technology or ability already exists and sends it off to figure out how it might work, how we could do something similar, and so on. This is the real 'magic' or 'sleight of mind' here - most people just will not even consider a question that violates their conditioned beliefs of what 'is true' and what 'is false'.

If you don't ask, the subconscious won't answer - it really is as simple as that.

So, for example, if you’re tired of dressing up like Gandalf (or the Wicked Witch) and doing all this ‘casting spells’ woo-woo stuff to get access to your 'interface with the Universe' then maybe you could spend some time imagining an alien that can ‘create change in reality in accordance with will through non-normal means’ and ask yourself how it might achieve this. Or maybe try asking the alien if it would do you a favour and fiddle the Universe for you? What would it be like if this alien entity 'magically' fixed all your problems overnight? Or decided to 'guide and protect' you?

Or perhaps you might want to play around with some 'original thinking' in a career / skill path. Maybe if you are a computer programmer you might wonder just how much of the way we write computer programs is purely down to the ways some of us think, act or live? How might an alien - who lives in space – write a computer program differently? How about an alien who lives in rock, or the atmosphere, or is made of light, or exists simultaneously across time? And might some of these programming styles be superior to our own in some circumstances? - As I understand it the basic human computer system structure was inspired by an old model of how the brain might work, so it’s quite possible that an alien computer system might be totally different in structure, operation and even purpose – despite what Independence Day tells us.

The point is to be able to send your subconscious into this realm of conjecture and impossibility – and to bring back insights or intuitions that can be converted into ideas that add value to your life and to the world around you.

What is the most useful way that you could ask these types of question?