UFOs, Hippies, New Age and religion.

I used to frequent New Age bookstores in Kitchener and often wondered who these authors were and what influenced them. What was all the Ascension stuff based on and what, if any, significance places like Mount Shasta or Sedona have(none, only if your believe it). It’s somewhat fascinating with the terms “Maitreya”, “Uriel” and “Elohim” pop up.

I do love to research things.
The Aetherius Society was founded in the United Kingdom in the 1950s. Its founder, George King, claimed to have been contacted telepathically by an alien intelligence called Aetherius, who represented an "Interplanetary Parliament." According to Aetherians, their society acts as a vehicle through which "Cosmic Transmissions of advanced metaphysical significance" can be disseminated to the rest of humanity. George King (1919 - 1997) taught that past incarnations of humanity, with a propensity to belligerence rather than peace, have created a "negative" Karmic pattern for mankind, which has had repercussions down the ages, making it even more difficult for mankind to break the constant cycle of destruction and never really learning from its mistakes. He claimed that the world was now reaching a point in its history which echoed the past, and that total annihilation was again possible. But that humanity could alter its negative pattern by "manipulating Karma" through service.

Joshua David Stone (1953 - 2005) was an American author and teacher in the Ascended Master Teachings (sometimes called the Ascension Movement), a group of religions based on Theosophy. In the mid-1990s, Dr. Stone became the first ascended master teachings teacher ever to admit a UFO related entity, Ashtar (whom he referred to as the Master Ashtar), to the ranks of the ascended masters, by incorporating the teachings of the medium Tuella into his own teachings. Dr. Stone portrayed the "Master Ashtar" as commanding a space fleet of thousands of flying saucers watching over Earth, with the extraterrestrial being Vrillon functioning as his communications director. In the traditional Ascended Master Teachings of Guy Ballard and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, no mention is made of UFOs or flying saucers.

The Theosophical guru Benjamin Creme claims that the Messiah figure he refers to as Maitreya, who, he teaches, will soon declare himself publicly, is in telepathic contact with the space brothers in their flying saucers.

Unarius Academy of Science are a group headquartered in El Cajon, California, who believe that, through the use of fourth dimensional physics, they are able to communicate with supposed advanced intelligent beings that allegedly exist on higher frequency planes. Unarians believe in past lives and hold that the Solar System was once inhabited by ancient interplanetary civilizations.
1. Ernest L. Norman (1904 –1971) was an American electrical engineer and the co-founder of the Unarius Academy of Science. Unarians believe he was Jesus in a past life, and his earthly incarnation was as an archangel named Raphiel.
2. Ruth E. Norman (1900 – 1993) was the co-founder of the Unarius Academy of Science. She claimed to be the reincarnation of notable figures including Confucius, Mona Lisa, Ben Franklin, Socrates, Queen Elizabeth, and Tsar Peter the Great. She was nicknamed "Spaceship Ruthie" in the press
3. The group was founded in February 1954 in Los Angeles, California by Norman and her husband. The two met after he gave a lecture in Glendale, California. She took over operations following his death. She was later known within the group as both Ioshanna (1972–1979) and Uriel (1980–1993). Uriel stood for "Universal Radiant Infinite Eternal Light."

The International Raëlian Movement has been described as “the largest UFO religion in the world.” Raëlians believe that scientifically advanced extraterrestrials, known as the Elohim, created life on Earth through genetic engineering, and that a combination of human cloning and “mind transfer” can ultimately provide eternal life. Past religious teachers, like Jesus, Buddha and Muhammad, are said to have been sent by these scientifically advanced extraterrestrials to teach humanity. The Elohim are said to be planning a future visit to complete their revelation and education of humanity.

In 1947, Allen Noonan was a pictorial sign painter in Long Beach, California, who that year claimed to have a telepathic encounter with a UFO. He then changed his name from Allen Noonan to Allen Michael. He claimed to have physically encountered a flying saucer in 1954 at Giant Rock in the Mojave Desert of California. During the Summer of Love, he had a vegan restaurant on the northeast corner of Haight and Scott streets in San Francisco, California, called the Here and Now (also called the Mustard Seed). His group lived in two communes in two large houses during the late 1960s and early 1970s in Berkeley, California, called The One World Family. They taught classes in tantric sex. In 1969, the vegan restaurant moved to a much larger space on Telegraph Avenue and Haste Street in Berkeley and the name of the restaurant was changed to the One World Family Natural Food Center. They published a vegan cookbook called Cosmic Cookery. There was a large mural on the side of the restaurant painted by Allen Michael that had written above it the phrase Farmers, Workers, Soldiers—Revolution by 1976! The farmer was holding a pitchfork, the worker was holding a hammer, and the soldier was holding a gun, and they had their arms around each other’s shoulders. Above the three were three flying saucers coming in for a landing. In 1973, Allen Michael founded “The Industrial Church of the New World Comforter”.

The Heaven’s Gate group achieved notoriety in 1997 when one of its founders convinced 38 followers to commit mass suicide. Members reportedly believed themselves to be aliens, awaiting a spaceship that would arrive with Comet Hale-Bopp. The suicide was undertaken in the apparent belief that their souls would be transported onto the spaceship, which they thought was hiding behind the comet.

Founded in 1979 with the publication of SubGenius Pamphlet #1 by Ivan Stang and Philo Drummond, the Church of the SubGenius has been known as a “parody religion” due to its extensive use of comedy and parody. In spite of this, the organization claims over 10,000 followers worldwide who have paid $30 to become “ordained SubGenius ministers”.

The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-World War II writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired. Central elements of "Beat" culture included experimentation with drugs, alternative forms of sexuality, an interest in Eastern religion, a rejection of materialism, and the idealizing of exuberant, unexpurgated means of expression and being. Allen Ginsberg's Howl (1956), William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch (1959) and Jack Kerouac's On the Road (1957) are among the best known examples of Beat literature.
Jean-Louis "Jack" Kerouac (1922 – 1969) was an American novelist and poet. Kerouac became an underground celebrity and, with other beats, a progenitor of the hippie movement.
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (1926 – 1997) was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s.
Alan Wilson Watts (1915 –1973) was a British philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and popularizer of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience.

Alexandra David-Néel born Louise Eugénie Alexandrine Marie David (1969 - 1969) was a Belgian-French explorer, spiritualist, Buddhist and writer, most known for her visit to Lhasa, Tibet, in 1924, when it was forbidden to foreigners. David-Néel wrote over 30 books about Eastern religion, philosophy, and her travels. Her teachings influenced beat writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, philosopher Alan Watts, and Theosophist Benjamin Creme. Alexandra continued to study and write until her death at age nearly 101.

Elizabeth Klarer (1910 - 1994) was a South African who claimed to have been contacted by extraterrestials between 1954 and 1963. After reading George Adamski's Flying Saucers Have Landed (1953) and Inside the Space Ships (1955), Klarer recalled that she had been receiving occasional telepathic messages from a friendly space alien named Akon since childhood. She was one of the first women to claim a sexual relationship with an extraterrestrial. She was carried up to the mother ship in earth orbit, and --- now the story becomes somewhat different from the mid-1950s contactee standard --- was eventually transported in 1957 to Akon's home planet, Meton, orbiting in the nearby multiple-star system Alpha Centauri, where she and Akon had sex, she became pregnant, and eventually delivered a male child. Her son, Ayling, stayed behind on Meton to be educated, while Klarer came home. The whole process, trip, lovemaking, pregnancy, delivery and return trip, supposedly required less than four months.

Klarer was not the only Adamski follower to experience claimed space-motherhood, because in 1957 British housewife Cynthia Appleton was revealing that one of Adamski's handsome blond Venusian Space Brothers had seduced her and gotten her pregnant. The resulting son, Matthew, has never been available for comment.

The simplest of teachings remains: “Be still and know that I AM God.”