Encounters: The UFO Phenomenon, Exposed!/Encounters - The UFO Phenomenon, Exposed (1995).iso/misc1/misc090.txt

Internet Message Format | 1995-10-20 | 13KB

From: [e-mail] (Don Allen)
Subject: The UFO Cults 1/3
Date: 23 Jul 94 20:41:06 GMT
Organization: FidoNet node 1:2430/2112.3 - The Temples o, Springfield IL


** Extract from: "Phenomenon - Forty Years of Flying Saucers". Edited
by John Spencer & Hillary Evans. Copyright 1988 by BUFORA. Avon Books.
ISBN: 0-380-70654-7

** This is posted for informational purposes only **

=====================================================================

The UFO Cults

Kevin McClure


Frequent claims have been made during the past forty years, that
individuals and groups have received messages, information and
instruction from intelligences and entities that claim to come from
the same sources as UFOs.

There are few cultures in the world that do not have as their
spiritual centre a belief system based on information from a non-human
source. That source can be personalized  -  the  issue of the Ten
Commandments by Jehovah to Moses - or it can be found in a body of
writing - The Koran, The Talmud. The relationship to the non-human
source can vary considerably. Buddhism encourages a striving  to
become one with that source. Judaism a detailed adherence to its laws,
Catholicism  promotes a judgemental system of error and forgiveness,
where there can be a relationship with the divine. In simpler
societies the relationship is managed through a shaman, or
witch-doctor figure, chosen by a village or tribe. The more a culture
develops sophistication and intellectual achievement, the more likely
it is to develop a priesthood and the need to explain and understand
its relationship to the rest of creation, and to the time before the
birth and after the death of each individual.

Consequently, it is hardly surprising that the most ancient of
cultural mysteries - religion - has become deeply involved with the
most modern of cultural mysteries - the UFO Experience.

Most of our knowledge of the UFO Experience comes from reports from
those who have witnessed UFOs of many kinds, from simple
light-in-the-sky, to complex close encounter cases. There is objective
evidence for very few of these, but it is important that they were
_unexpected_ experiences; events that occurred out of the blue, that
surprised and mystified the witnesses. Though a few go on to have
repeat experiences, and to anticipate and welcome them, a great
majority of witnesses shun publicity, and gain little pleasure from
their experience. It is clear that a great many decide never even to
tell anybody outside their immediate family. The credibility of the
UFO experience as a whole rests not on individual reports but on what
the ancient Greeks called `common notion'. Simply, if enough people
believed something to be true, then it probably was. The only fair
conclusion to be drawn on this basis is that a substantial number of
reasonable people have been witnesses to events that cannot be
rationally explained. However, the UFO cults, or belief groups, almost
entirely avoid the accepted processes of report and investigation, but
still play a part in the public understanding of the UFO field. It is
proper that we look at their claims.

Claims of communication and instruction from UFO-related intelligences
are frequent and persistent. Most groups are short lived and to judge
from material recently received from the USA we are entering a golden
age of UFO belief groups. However, let us look at what a few
extraterrestrial intelligences have had to say:

  'I am one of these Advanced Spiritual Beings. I have come from a
  very high spiritual world called Aries; I am not an Earth Person. I
  am now living as an Earth Person in a physical body. I came to teach
  the Earth people'  (Uriel,  through Ruth E. Norman  of the Unarius
  Foundation.)

  `Will you agree to be the saviour of the world?' (Ashtar, to
  American contactee Allen-Michael Noonan.)

  'Prepare yourself! You are to become the voice of Interplanetary
  Parliament!' (Invisible entity to George King, founder of the
  Aetherius Society.)

  'I, Raymere, transmit once more upon this occasion in order to speak
  with you about the things of the next period of time ... you will
  find that you are moving into a higher frequency wherein there is a
  totally new dimension'. (Raymere, a space being, through Alenti
  Francesca at the Solar Light Retreat.)

  'Earth's vortex is about to break because of an excess amount of
  hatred ...' (The space brothers resident on Io, one of the moons of
  Jupiter, to 'Gordon', a US contactee from 1967.)

These are typical of a great many more. They purport to be from
non-human sources, channelled through a particular human being who
then becomes the centre of attention in a belief group: The source
claims a knowledge of human and universal affairs superior to any that
humanity could hope to achieve. In addition to this display of
knowledge, there is almost always an exhortation for members of the
belief group to undertake a task, or live in a particular, unusual
way, in order to do something about a situation of which the source
has made them aware. This task may be as complex as constructing a
working flying saucer, or working in prayer with UFO entities to avoid
disasters and change the history of the world, or as simple as
spreading the word of the reality of Martians or Venusians, or of the
civilizations in the centre of the Earth. All too often, a way of life
is demanded that immediately sets the group members apart from the
friends and neighbours around them.

On such a basis have been founded many UFO-based belief groups. The
classic account of the life and death of such a group is in the
excellent book "When Prophecy Fails" by Festinger, Reicken, and
Schachter, sociologists who joined a group in Utah as observers, and
spent many hours within the group. The leader and 'channel' for the
group was Marion Keech, who first received messages from her father,
then from the `Elder Brother', and then from entities who said they
came from the planets Clarion and Cerus. Her closest contact was
Sananda, who had previously been Jesus! In 1954 her group forecast a
major and disastrous flood, from which she and her followers would be
physically removed by extraterrestrials. The group and its message
received considerable publicity, and its members gave up jobs and
possessions. During the last few days before the predicted end the
messages became wilder and more contradictory, and when the appointed
night came there was neither flood nor rescue. Deeply disappointed,
the group drifted apart.

A couple of other cases from the USA: I mentioned 'Gordon' whose
Institute for Cosmic Research was given the task of building a flying
saucer - The Bluebird - by one of the Great White Brothers (who make
remarkably frequent appearances among many belief groups). Gordon's
followers persisted with their task for seven years before they began
to realize that they were getting nowhere, and the group broke up.
More rewarding - for its founders at least - was HIM, Human Individual
Metamorphosis, which appeared in California in 1975. Run by Bo and
Peep - the chosen names of a psychiatric nurse and one of her patients
- they procured a substantial following among the post-hippy
generation by preaching that they would be assassinated, only to be
resurrected after three days. They also promised that once their
followers had achieved a lifestyle of sufficient asceticism, UFOs
would come for them, and they would be removed to a physical plane
above the Earth. Bo and Peep made a good deal of money, but nobody
made any exciting journeys!

Perhaps the belief group which has attracted the largest and most
consistent following is the Aetherius Society, founded and based in
Britain, but with active branches in major cities throughout the
world. Following his call to become the `Voice of Interplanetary
Parliament' George King, who had a background in what, in the 1950s,
was known as 'the occult', founded the Aetherius Society. Over the
past thirty years it has developed a detailed cosmology, in which many
flying saucers represent a benign and concerned force, the
Interplanetary Parliament. King wrote extensively, and explained how
he had travelled to Mars and Venus, stating that Mercury was the only
uninhabited planet. He detailed a battle he fought on a massive flying
saucer of an interplanetary space fleet, 40,000,000 miles from Earth.
In public meetings he gave out - and continues to give - messages from
entities such as Mars Sector 6, the Master Aetherius and even the
Master Jesus, who is apparently living on or near Venus. The tasks set
for members of the Aetherius Society are usually of charging
'spiritual batteries' for the use and protection of suffering
humanity, at various sites around the Earth. To quote briefly from the
Society's account of Operation Prayer Power, an effort to help
invasion-threatened Poland in 1981, as published in the journal
"Cosmic Voice" : The Los Angeles battery had to be substituted for the
inadequate Detroit one, because the Prayer Energies were not being
picked up by Adepts 002 and 003 in position in their invisible [!]
space craft above the central base of operations in Los Angeles ...
the Great White Brotherhood Retreat in Kilimanjaro, East Africa, had
now joined in the release pattern ....' At the end of the operation,
Mars Sector 6 informed King that `there was a heavy resonance of
Spiritual Energies over the whole of Poland'.

In the great majority of belief groups the source intelligences do
nothing to prove themselves to the world at large, nothing to _prove_
themselves even to their own followers: `Only believe, and thou shalt
see.' But what is it that the average group member really believes in?
The channel; the person through whom the messages are being
transmitted, who runs the group or cult, who asks, and organizes,
demands and - of course - promises. Perhaps this is why the group
members take so long to become critical and untrusting - it is the
charisma of the messenger that holds the group together, not the
conviction of the message.

Evidence is problem enough in relation to the mainstream UFO
experience, but far more elusive where belief-groups are concerned.
Amongst the hundreds of belief-group messages I have come across over
the years, I can think of no two that have clearly been in contact
with the same entity, giving the same information. And while some of
the names - like Ashtar and Uriel - do crop up more than once, they
seem to be different from other Ashtars and Uriels, who have never
even met each other, and are unaware each of the others' existence.

Historically, most of these groups have collapsed in failure,
disappointment and dissent. Promises have not been fulfilled,
disasters predicted have not occurred, and nobody has been flown away
by the UFOs as so frequently promised. In every case, all we know of
the intelligence or entity is what its channel says about it. In no
way does that constitute evidence.

The relationship of the communicator's revelations to the developing
scientific knowledge of space is an obscure one. While there has been
the occasional coincidence, exploration has made a mockery of reports
of visits to alien civilizations on the nearby planets. Though the
Aetherius Society covers the contradictions with the cloak of
invisibility it is noticeable that as the space programme has extended
its reach, so the belief groups have extended to parts of the galaxy
well beyond the reach of scientific knowledge!

It must be clear by now that I am less than convinced that the
messages that inspire the UFO belief groups have anything to do with
the broader, witness-based UFO experience.

There are a great many more examples of allegedly non-human
communicators who claim knowledge outside and ahead of our
understanding, and who almost invariably fail; the Theosophical
version of the Great White  Brotherhood;  the magical visitors of
Eliphas Levi and Aleister Crowley and Dion Fortune; the Witch of Endor
or the Delphic Oracle. We could list hundreds of spirit guides and
local deities the world over: Elijah, Mahommed, Joan of Arc, and many
appearances of the Blessed Virgin Mary. All have  had  their messages,
their convictions and, inevitably, their followers. But in no case is
there any significant evidence to suggest that the communicators had
any separate existence from those who said they had been chosen to
transmit those communications.

To put my argument in its simplest form, the UFO belief groups are a
contemporary form of a tradition that has been with us for thousands
of years, in a guise that is attractive and convincing to followers. I
do not think that the channels, the leaders of the groups,
intentionally set out to deceive; they are part of a long-established
cultural phenomenon, that grows and changes with the fears, wishes and
priorities of succeeding generations.

** End **

--
Don Allen - via ParaNet node 1:104/422
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