Contactees And Free Will

In the first issue of my old magazine The Excluded Middle, I wrote an essay called “Why I like Contactees Better Than Abductees.” Looking back on that piece, written over 15 years ago, I wouldn’t change a word. Perhaps I will always have a soft spot for the old-time (1950s) contactees. They were on their own wavelength and for the most part didn’t appear to care who believed them or not. Perhaps as long as the checks kept coming, they didn’t have to.

In the intervening years, I have learned more about the contactee movement, met some of the old guard, and even been asked to speak about my opinions and theories at a couple of conferences. Once, in a radio interview, I was asked if I thought that the Raelian movement was “dangerous.” I said no, they were a harmless group interested in sex and space brothers. What could be better? (Hint for a bribe or Christmas present: A Raelian medallion!)

This was before their ridiculous announcement that they had achieved human cloning and were taking orders from those egotistical enough to want themselves reproduced in a lab. I don’t particularly have anything against cloning humans. After the debacle died down, I still thought that they were pretty harmless. It was an ill-concieved publicity stunt that probably garnered them 10 or 15 more followers.

Separated at birth? : )

The other case that comes to everyone’s mind when we think of UFO cults is of course the Heaven’s Gate story. The group began in the early 1970s when Marshall Applewhite (who in some early pictures bore an unsettling resemblance to Jacques Vallee) and Bonnie Lu Nettles somehow realized that they were “the two” spoken of in the Book of Revelations who were to appear on Earth and lead a small flock to righteousness. They wandered about the U.S. recruiting followers for the next 25 years, until the appearance of the Hale-Bopp comet somehow indicated that they were supposed to “shed their earthly containers” and join their alien bretheren.

You might think that this is where I draw the line, but no. The cults I consider dangerous are the those that don’t allow their followers to leave when they choose to. Heaven’s Gate let people come and go as they pleased. If they chose to do away with themselves, they did so of their own will. Of course, that “will” had been twisted for years into the worldview of their leaders, but it was their own. If someone chooses suicide, unless I know them personally, I really don’t have any problem because I can’t do anything about it. I of course feel sorry for those who died, and especially their friends and families, who had no control over the events.

One strange coda about Vallee and Applewhite is that Vallee, in his groundbreaking 1979 book Messengers of Deception, warned that UFO cults might be vehicles for control of susceptible minds and societies. Vallee was far ahead of the curve, as usual, but unless things get worse on the world stage, the Raelians, Heaven’s Gate, and the european Solar Temple group still appear to have been marginal as political forces.

The danger is raising children in a society that doesn’t encourage them to think for themselves. When that radio host said that the Raelians were “dangerous” he may have been engaging in a subtle dig at any groups who seem outside the pale. The fact that they’re different doesn’t make them a danger to the society at large. If we lose the freedom to believe what we choose, even if it means killing ourselves, that is not a society in which I would want to live.

P.S. Alien writing researcher (the late) Mario Pazzaglini pointed out to me that the “Bopp” (from co-discoverer Thomas Bopp) part of the comet’s name contained earlier versions of Applewhite’s and Nettles’ ever changing aliases: “Bo and Peep.” Idle speculation?