Religions Based on Extraterrestrials There are a lot of strange things in this world, so nothing I could say would surprise some people. Be that as it may. I do find some of these strange things not shocking, but a bit unbelievable. One of the things you have to admit is very unusual are the people who believe they are extraterrestrials. No, I am not making this up, there are some people who believe this and there are others who believe they can turn into extraterrestrials if they do bizarre things. We humans are capable of some very unusual beliefs and extraterrestrials and religion sometimes get mixed together. There is a religious group in Brazil who believe they are aliens who are in human bodies. They have built a complex about an hour away from Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. The complex is named Vale do Amanhecer. The name is related to light or sun, and means Valley of the Dawn in English, but can also be translated as Sunrise Valley. It was built in the city of Planaltina. The complex has been described as a place where there is a pyramid, a spaceship-like temple, a six-pointed praying center, and several ellipse-shaped sculptures. Believers have said things about why they converted, and felt they were contacted by alien spirits. One man who came to the complex to photograph some of the rituals, which were said to have been drawn from many different religions, said he began to feel dizzy and felt an urge to get out of the temple. It may sound very strange to us that there are people who have been convinced they are aliens, because alien spirits have told them, but this religion has experienced phenomenal growth, and currently there are over 800,000 people, and 600 temple complexes all over the world. Is the reason for such success the fact these people want to meet extraterrestrials, and think by worshiping them they have somehow become them? Some think the religion is so popular, because it is a way to escape the poverty of the 1950s when migrants helped to build Brasilia. One of the things this religion is known for is its colorful dress which seems to have been adopted from many different past civilizations. One of the tenants of Scientology states billions of people were brought to earth 75,000,000 years ago which would make them and their descendants aliens. In this country one of the most famous UFO religions was Heaven’s Gate. This religion had a very sad ending. Marshall Applewhite had convinced his followers the Hale-Bopp comet was being followed by a UFO, and his followers could get onto this UFO and be with the aliens. There was only one hitch, they had to die to do this. He called it graduation from the human evolutionary level. When Applewhite told his people it was time, 39 of them committed suicide including Applewhite himself. You would have thought someone might have thought there was a possibility Applewhite might have had a mental illness, but apparently this never occurred to anyone. Maybe he just wanted to kill himself and wanted company. There is a theory which states we are all aliens, and were brought to this planet by aliens to mine gold for them. The story goes we revolted, and the aliens left, because we were too much trouble. Some say there is another version which states the aliens created us right here. There are people who have joined what is known as flying saucer cults with the hope of being able to communicate with extraterrestrials. They believe for the most part there are a few different ways this can happen such as telepathy, which seems to be the most popular, physical contact, and astral projection. The hope is the aliens will be able to save them from some future calamity. Ashtar, which is also known as Ashtar Sheran is a UFO religion. The people in it claim to be able to channel an extraterrestrial being who has this name. It started when a so-called UFO contactee named George Van Tassel claimed to receive a message from Ashtar. Since that time, many others have made similar claims. Van Tassel had moved to Giant Rock in the Mojave Desert in California, and established a UFO center. Interestingly this was in 1947. I wonder how many people see the significance of the date? 1947 was the year of the Roswell UFO crash. While many of the UFO religions were founded in the 1950s and 1960s, there were still some which were founded much later. In 1995 a UFO religion was founded in Taiwan by Hon-ming Chen. It was called Chen Tao. Chen Tao means true way. Chen was a former professor who had previously stated he was an atheist. The religion was really not new because it had been founded twenty years earlier by Yu-Hsia Chen. He merely created a breakaway group. It is amazing to me what people can believe. We seem to be fascinated with the idea aliens might exist, and some take it to the extreme, allotting god like powers to them. They seem not to realize history is full of stories of people coming into contact with more advanced races and thinking in the beginning they had met gods. I remember a story about the Spanish meeting with natives in Central America who thought they were gods, until they noticed one of the Spaniards with a cut on his hand which was bleeding, and that was when the natives realized the Spaniards were just people, even though they were more advanced. The same would be true of extraterrestrials. It has been said advanced technology would look like magic to a not so developed race. That is probably right to a point, but I think we are advanced enough to realize advanced technology is just that, advanced technology. It is not a miracle or magic, and just because some race has it does not make them gods. This is why I have to wonder about UFO religions, and why the people in them don’t realize even if aliens exist, and we cannot verify this yet, they would not be beings we should worship and yet some do it.
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