UFO Religions

1. UFO Religions • UFOs: non-religious? Mythological characteristics: • spaceborne saviours? Demonic figures? • First sighting: June 24, 1947: Kenneth Arnold, Boise Idaho. • By early 1950’s: mostly skeptics; claims to have made contact.

2. Similarities to 19th C. Spiritualism. • Descending gods, deliver wisdom and messages of warning, hope, or apocalypse. • Interstellar abduction • Also Men in Black harass UFO observers. • Appear to chosen few. • Messages passed on to others (by trance, automatic writing) • Groups tend to be loose and short-lived. • Presuppose spiritually significant beings between human and ultimate reality (God). • Expanded consciousness • Psychical phenomena; “signs” producing faith. • Channelling: Instructions from spiritual teachers • Wisdom tends to Theosophy: karma, reincarnation • Spiritual evolution possible, by effort, initiation, and acquired wisdom

3. Similarities to fairy tales • Otherworldly “little men” (Jacques Vallee) • Appearance like elves or goblins • Time not passing (like into a fairy mound) • Changelings (half-human pregnancies) • Experience: subjective or objective impossible to prove (Thomas Bullard)

4. Contactees • George Adamski (1952) Flying Saucers Have Landed. • In Mojave desert • “Orthon” from Venus • Religion is “science of life, without temples. • Truman Bethurum (1954) Aboard a Flying Saucer. • Also Mojave • From Clarion • No war, divorce, taxes • Fry 1954 • Warning from past earth civilization: atomic warfare • Angelucci 1955

5. Explanations: • Cold War, anticommunism • World can become better

6. Early Organizations • Conventions (1954-1977) • Fry: Understanding, Inc. • Amalgamated Flying Saucer Clubs (1957) • Heralds of the New Age (early 1950’s) • Cosmon Research Foundation (1962 martyred Gloria Lee) • Christ Brotherhood (1956). Halsey disappeared 1963 • Association of Sananda and Sanat Kumara (When Prophecy Fails) • Mark-Age (1956) Charles Boyd Gentzel • Unarius (1954) Ernest L. Norman • Aetherius Society (1955) George King

7. 1970’s- UFO cults • Human Individual Metamorphosis (1975) • Bo & Peep, “The Two” “to the level above human” • “The Four: A Christian Newsletter of the Tribulation” (1980’s) (in Ottawa and Kansas)

8. M.I.B. • Gray Barker, They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers (1956) • 1953 Three men in black suits visit Albert Bender of Conneticut, director of “International Flying Saucer Bureau”. Bureau ends. • Mechanical walk and voices.

9. Abductions • John Fuller (1961): Barney & Betty Hill abducted in New Hampshire • Medical experiments • Missing time • Budd Hopkins & David Jacobs • Laboratory animals? • Pregnancies • Whitley Streiber: Communion and Transformation. • Ultimately benign aliens

10. So What? • Concerns expressed by: • American Humanist Association • Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal • Skeptical Inquirer • Skeptics UFO Newsletter • Promotes credulity and authoritarian truth in charismatic figures • Glorifies pathological psychosis • Are UFO movements religious? • Use categories from myths & religion • We are not alone • Beings with supernatural abilities to harm & heal, like angels & demons.

11. Review: UFO Religions • UFOs: non-religious? Mythological characteristics: • 1947-early 1950’s: heyday • Similarities to 19th C. Spiritualism: Descending gods, deliver wisdom • Similarities to fairy tales: Otherworldly goblins; Time not passing; Changelings • Messages, according to Contactees: Utopia is possible • Diverse Organizations • Human Individual Metamorphosis (1975) • Men In Black • Abductions: medical? Benign? • So What? • Promotes credulity and authoritarian truth in charismatic figures • Glorifies pathological psychosis • Are UFO movements religions?

12. Heaven’s Gate video

13. Heaven’s Gate beliefs USA Today ad, May 27, 1993

14. Heaven’s Gate’s Purpose Two thousand years ago Kingdom of Heaven determined some human "plants" of Garden Earth ready to be "containers" for soul deposits. a member of Kingdom of Heaven left His body for a human body "prepped" for this task: Jesus. He did so at His "Father's" (or Older Member's) instruction, at baptism by John the Baptist His Task: offer membership into the Kingdom of Heaven to those who recognized Him and followed Him. Only those with the "deposit" could believe . Get to His Father through total reliance upon Him. Leaving behind this world included: family, sensuality, selfish desires, your human mind, and even your human body if it be required of you - all mammalian ways, thinking, and behavior. Do’s mission is exactly the same. Do has the same task as Jesus; Do’s purposes is to offer the discipline required. Do’s “Father”, his Older Member, came to assist in the task, to provide the opportunity to become a new creature, one of the Next Evolutionary Level, rightfully belonging to the Kingdom of Heaven.

15. Heaven’s Gate’s Purpose Why Do says It Is Difficult To Believe or Accept Him evil spirits, malevolent space aliens, are "Luciferians," or Satan and his fallen angels. The space aliens, or Luciferians, use the discarnate spirits (the minds that are disembodied at the death of a body) as their primary servants - against potential members of the Kingdom of God. From our point of view, this "programming" finds that body, and the vast majority of all human bodies, barely usable by students of the Kingdom of Heaven. Unless you are currently an active student you ARE STILL "of the world.“ The window of opportunity to go to Heaven requires: 1) an incarnate (as human) Representative of the Kingdom of Heaven; 2) being an active students of that Representative 3) enduring the "transition classroom" until bonding or "grafting" to that Representative.