Angels are one thing. You can talk about angels without
being dismissed as a nutcase.
But just try talking about extraterrestrials as your spiritual guides.
These are trying times for followers of so-called spaceship religions, who
believe we share the cosmos with other intelligent beings. First came the 1997
mass suicide by members of Heaven's Gate, who believed that the arrival of
Hale-Bopp, an unusually bright comet, was a sign to shed their earthly
"containers."
Then, last month, the Raelians made world headlines after announcing they had
cloned Baby Eve - a claim now generally considered a hoax perpetrated by the
group that believes humans were "seeded" by little green men.
"The Raelians have been the worst thing for UFO believers since Heaven's
Gate," one believer grumbled recently in Manhattan.
Although such notorious stories are grist for the tabloid mill, they obscure
the fact that dozens of new religious groups embrace the idea of
extraterrestrial life and purport to meld science and spirituality, not to
mention what outsiders regard as science fiction.
"There are quite a few spaceship religions, though none of them is very
large at this point," said the Rev. John Saliba, a Jesuit priest and
sociologist at the University of Detroit-Mercy in Michigan, who has studied
spaceship religions for 40 years.
"The UFO symbolism fits into our culture," Saliba said. "After
all, we have space travel. We have attempted to communicate with life on other
planets."
Indeed, given the relentless pace of exploration in our time, Saliba said, it
was inevitable that the question of man's place in the universe - and, indeed,
the nature of that universe itself - would be questioned anew.
One of the oldest and best- known spaceship religions is the Aetherius Society,
based in Hollywood, Calif. The group was founded by the late George King, a
British yoga master who said he began receiving messages from extraterrestrials
in May 1954, when a voice told him: "Prepare yourself. You are to become
the voice of Interplanetary Parliament."
Based on his communication with the Cosmic Masters, as he called them, King
trumpeted that humans were on the verge of a new millennium when religion and
science would merge, and the barriers between different religions, races and
cultures would come down. He also said that extraterrestrials were helping
humans evolve.
"We are dedicated to spiritual truth," said current-day director Paul
Nugent, who oversees a global organization of several thousand followers from
Europe to Asia, including several hundred in the United States.
"And the evidence for UFOs is overwhelming - and that, in turn, has
spiritual implications. But that doesn't mean we have to go loopy. It's another
aspect of this incredible creation we are all a part of."
Nugent said he "shudders" at comparisons with groups such as the
Raelians or Heaven's Gate, "who come to public notice because of some of
the far-out things they've done."
Most believers in extraterrestrial life do not start new religions as King did,
but rather, adapt or reinterpret their own long-standing religious beliefs.
The Rev. Michael Carter, 45, a New York hospital chaplain, describes himself as
a former Bible-thumping Baptist, until he had a personal encounter with an
extraterrestrial on Sept. 28, 1989, in his Upper West Side Manhattan apartment.
Now, his views are dramatically less dogmatic.
"I woke up, and my apartment was lit up in this bright white-bluish light,
and there was a being at the edge of my bed with a bald, pear-shaped head with
wraparound black eyes," he said.
Carter said he didn't believe in extraterrestrials then, and imagined he had
lost his mind. He went to see a therapist, in addition to doing extensive
reading about UFOs.
But his encounters continued, and they "broadened my view," he said,
impelling him to write his master's thesis on UFOs and the Bible at Union
Theological Seminary.
Today, he is convinced that many so-called Biblical miracles were actually UFO
encounters.
"Look at the Exodus from Egypt," Carter said. "What do they
follow? A pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night. The ancients may
not have known what vocabulary to use, but certainly there were things
happening in the sky similar to what is happening today."
Many followers of the Urantia Book, a 2,097-page spiritual tome purportedly
dictated by "superhuman beings," also say they believe in the
all-powerful God related in the Judeo-Christian-Muslim tradition. But they
understand Him as the creator of a much more expansive universe.
The book, which has sold 600,000 copies over the past half-century, tells of
millions of inhabited worlds in various stages of biological, intellectual,
social and spiritual evolution, and offers an elaborate history of our own
planet, which the authors call "Urantia." It also offers 700 pages on
the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
Contractor Robin Jorgensen, who holds weekly study groups in his SoHo
apartment, admits some of its assertions are "bizarre" but objects
when people categorize The Urantia Book as a spaceship religion.
"I hate that," the 50-year-old devotee said. "I mean, we're not
waiting to be picked up by aliens, or for some divine intervention to heal our
planet.... We're just normal people trying to find our way."
Jorgensen describes himself as a Lutheran who had devoured many of the classics
of philosophy and science fiction before he happened upon The Urantia Book 20
years ago. Today, he says, he is a far more grounded human being.
"I'm an extremely successful contractor who supervises large, dirty men in
an often dangerous atmosphere," he said. "And the reason I'm good at
what I do is because my treatment of my fellow human beings has been tempered
with a much greater knowledge of who they are and who I am."
And if those insights came to him via celestial or extraterrestrial guides,
Jorgensen said, "that's OK with me. They seem all right to me."