There are many reasons to join a Cult. Perhaps you are lonely, troubled, damaged or uncertain about your place in the world. You may be looking for answers, for something that makes sense and gives your life direction. The Cult will provide a home, a place, a purpose, a meaning; you will belong to something that also belongs to you. Cults offer belief, and trade in faith. By joining the Cult, you become special, one of the chosen. You have always been special, but only the Cult understands this: the Cult gets you, the Cult values you, the Cult thinks you are cool.
Even the most dysfunctional misfit can find a place within a cult, sometimes even a place at the high table, at the right hand of the dysfunctional misfits who call the shots. Cults make sense: they are a very human response to a very human problem. The world is overwhelming and full of stuff, much of it contradictory. A cult shrinks the world, and limits the flow of information. It makes things easier for you to process. It makes uncertain things certain, irrevocable, sacrosanct – sacred. It provides rules, writes law, distributes rewards and administers punishments. It tells you how to spend your money, when (and what) to eat, when to sleep and who with, and, sometimes, when to die.
A mature cult either has plans to dominate the world, or to utterly retreat from it. The rest of the world is wrong and so you must either change it or shun it. You live in a bubble of belief, a closed system. All outside is a threat to your ecology. All outside is an enemy. You are always ready to fight. Perhaps your Cult is thinking about attack rather than defence, plotting to take the fight to the world before it starts in on you. You may be stockpiling guns, or bombs or poison. You are setting the timetable for a DIY apocalypse. You may be personally unsure about this, but it’s too late now – this is your Cult, and so it's your apocalypse.
Or, conversely, perhaps your cult is thinking about dressing up in colourful costumes and universal harmony. If this is the case, congratulations, you’ve joined the most benign and non-aggressive cult in the history of all universes, the Unarius Academy of Science!
Unarius is an extraordinary thing: a long-standing cult that has never brainwashed, defrauded, abused, raped, murdered or martyred its adherents. It is a movement that engenders an intense spiritual connection in its members but seemingly has no interest in exploiting that. Not only are its people free to come and go as they please but they are also welcome to challenge the central precepts of their belief system. Over its near 70 year history it has vociferously resisted attempts to classify it as a religion, and for many years has operated as a non-profit (tax exempt) educational foundation.
Founded in 1954 by Ernest and Ruth Norman, a married couple who scratched a living from Ernest’s ability as a psychic, Unarius (which stands for Universal Articulate Interdimensional Understanding of Science) was initially a vague amalgam of metaphysics, cosmology and pulp science fiction. Ernest ‘channelled’ the voices of entities from other worlds and other eras to piece together a constantly expanding philosophy and history of the universe, and this was documented in a never ending stream of books and, later, cassettes and VHS tapes.
According to Ernest, Earth is a backwater of the universe, and more advanced civilisations on other planets view us with suspicion, even fear. If we listen to the Space Brothers, however, we can become sufficiently evolved to take our place alongside them, and thereafter live happy, fulfilled lives free from want or war. In a parallel to the much more aggressive cult of S*********y, Unarius believes that humans have been traumatised by past lives, and are usually working off some form of karmic deficit. The central pillar of Unarius’ teachings is that individuals are energy, and this energy contains the key to not only their past and future lives, but to every life there has ever been. By tuning into the right frequency, individuals can be physically and psychically healed and, ultimately, become part of the collective higher consciousness of the universe. Unlike Scientology, this process does not Unarians cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and require total isolation from friends and family. Indeed, much of it can be done at home, or at weekends: unlike other cults, Unarius is happy for its members to have lives away from the group. It is a part time undertaking, and gain is not accompanied by pain.
Unarius has always been a fairly modest cult, attracting neither thousands of followers or intense zealotry. After Ernest’s death in the early 1970s, his wife Ruth became the figurehead and brought flamboyance, pageantry and entertainment to the organisation, as well as expanding on their core beliefs in a colourful, imaginative and attention grabbing way. Under Ruth’s leadership, Unarius became fun. Members dressed up as aliens and held parades; they drove around in cars with flying saucers on the roof, and made a number of feature length films with charming production values and special effects (and, it must be said, some reprehensible examples of casual and institutional racism – one of the few criticisms that can be specifically levelled against the group). This was the zenith of the movement in terms of membership and profile, and interest was maintained by TV appearances, scores of books and publications and Ruth’s ardent promises of an imminent alien space fleet landing (the landing was anticipated for almost twenty years and, at the time of writing, is still imminent).
Ruth Norman died in 1993 after several years of incapacity, and Unarius has never been quite the same since. Without her larger than life persona and lack of inhibition, Unarius has receded from the world stage and gone back to the fundamentals. They are back now to how they were at the beginning: a small, niche interest metaphysical group with a bunch of wacky beliefs that have no evidence behind them other than the word of a (now long-dead) psychic.
The Understanding of Science part of the Unarius acronym has always been key to the group: it is how they promote themselves, and how they wish to be perceived. Both Ernest and Ruth baulked at the idea that were a cult, or a religion, or even a ‘belief group’: this was fact, truth, science. Despite their passion and sincerity, however, Unarius is not science, neither is it easy to understand. They do prevail, though, and have done for almost seven decades, although they would no doubt feel that was a mere bagatelle in the bottomless well of cosmic time. I hope they keep on indefinitely, until they are eventually proven absolutely right or completely wrong – something that may take centuries, of course.
And that’s perfectly okay. It’s not like they are hurting anyone.
More Unarius content to follow, perhaps too much - maybe not enough.
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