Jay e alteres,

Visita lor merviliose pagina domestic:

<http://www7.concentric.net/~Font/>

Vide specialmente le referentias a (e picturas de) cometas e planetas!

Io anque ha recipite multe articulos (per le SKEPTIX lista) super le
conductor/fundator de iste secta, qui esseva "outspaced" retro multe
annos. Io va a adder un exemplo de articulos, que nos espaventa. Como
a comprender le adherentes? Que es le contexto? Esque il es possibile
comprender le idea "sectos suicidal"?

(copy:)
                ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
From:
            Marcello Truzzi <[log in to unmask]>

            [log in to unmask]


>From UFO Update:

While watching CNNs coverage of the San Diego
>suicides this afternoon I heard a 'cult-expert'
>mention 'Bo and Peep' and 'Te and Do' (as in
>the last two notes of the musical scale).
>
>I wondered if any other UFO researcher picked-up
>on the reference as I looked for a back-issue of
>Vicki Cooper Ecker's UFO Magazine that featured
>UFO cults. Rebecca Schatte called me an hour later
>as I was keying the article below, asking if I "knew
>what the hell was going on?" She's in New Mexico
>and was frustrated by not being able to get at
>her archives at home - had heard the Bo and Peep
>reference and made the same connection.
>
>My OCR software is not too swift and it took an
>hour or two to key Michael Miley's article below.
>It's quite prophetic, in the light of the events
>of the past few days.
>
>ebk
>
>________________________________________________
>
>There's a photograph at:
>
>http//alpha.mic.dundee.ac.uk/ft/crop_circles/temp/tr8paradigm.html
>
>
>From: UFO Magazine - A Forum on Extraordinary Theories and Phenomena
>      Volume 10, Number 3, May/June 1995. Pages 26 - 35.
>
>      Published bi-monthly by
>      UFO Magazine,
>      8123 Foothill Blvd.,
>      Sunland, CA 91040.
>
>
>Return of 'The Two'
>by Michael Wiley
>
>A 'classic UFO cult has re-surfaced, well after some sociological
>detective work traced the group's long - at time fragmentary -
>evolution of beliefs and practices. Despite bearing the 'cult' label,
>'The Two' never used blatantly coercive techniques normally associated
>with the cultic milieu - a fact pointed out by the author and others
>who've studied the group.
>
>---
>
>In January of 1994, a group calling themselves Total Overcomers
>Anonymous (TOA) resurfaced on the American scene after 18 years out of
>the public eye. Some 24 people, those who had remained committed to
>the group from the first recruitment period of 1975 and 1976, went out
>to spread the Word of "true membership in the Evolutionary Level Above
>Human, the true 'Kingdom of God.'" Their message remained simple,
>though extreme: the last days of the biblical Apocalypse are now upon
>us. It's time to give up your human life and all your attachments to
>family, possessions, sexual relations, and the like, and join TOA in a
>"human individual metamorphosis." TOA members live an ascetic
>lifestyle they believe will prepare them for ascension in a
>transformed body to "the literal heavens" via a UFO.
>
>TOA Re-surfaces
>
>Over the past year and a half, small groups of TOA members have been
>seen in cities as far-flung as Madison, Santa Fe, Seattle, and San
>Francisco, where meetings are held and new recruits made. Six members
>of TOA, in fact, gave a talk at Fort Mason, San Francisco on May 26,
>1994, which I attended along with a couple of friends. I'd been
>intrigued by their flyer, which alluded to "space aliens and their
>final fight for Earth's spoils." At the meeting, however, I found
>their message unpalatable and their behavior robotic, and I left after
>the formal presentation, which took about an hour. I assume some
>people stayed for the question and answer period that followed. I
>don't know if anyone from San Francisco joined them.
>
>Who are these people? AQnd why should we care? For starters, TOA is
>not some invasion from the skies, but the creation of a middle-class
>Texas couple named Marshall Herff Applewhite and Bonnie Lu Nettles,
>also know as 'Bo' and 'Peep' or 'Do and 'Te' to their followers and
>the press (TOA was first covered in a UFO context by Jacques Vallee
>in 'Messengers of Deception: UFO Contacts and Cults', And/Or Press,
>Berkeley, CA, 1979.) But the bigger answer is more complex, with
>negative repercussions, I think, for potential new recruits, UFO
>researchers, and abductees alike.
>
>'Earmarks of Cult'
>
>TOA has all the earmarks of a cult, and the current 'metaphysical'
>climate in certain sectors of American society makes them dangerously
>susceptible to groups like these. TOA is in the process of a
>recruitment drive, and if its past history is any indication, new
>recruits will be culled from the same sub-culture of spiritual seekers
>and disaffected people as in the 1970s - with the possible addition
>of abductees who are confused by their experiences.
>
>New recruits aside, TOA also offers debunkers and a poorly informed
>public a golden opportunity to tar the UFO community with a very broad
>brush. As the UFO phenomenon gains wider attention, so will UFO cults,
>and legitimate researchers and experiencers may find themselves in
>the unhappy position of being lumped together with groups like
>TOA.
>
>This isn't as far-fetched as people might think. For example,
>when Harvard psychiatrist John Mack came out with his book
>'Abductions', he was immediately branded by 'Time' magazine as a
>cult leader guilty of brainwashing his patients to believe in
>aliens. Similar allegations have been made of other ufologists
>and abduction therapists. Thus, it behooves the UFO community to
>know what Total Overcomers is about, and to gain some insight
>into the formation of cults.
>
>Interviews with CAN, others
>
>To that end, I contacted the Cult Awareness Network (CAN) in
>Chicago, and was given the names of three people who could give
>me some information about the group. The first person I spoke to
>at length was former executive director of CAN, Priscilla Coates,
>who followed the group in its early days, keeping track of them
>via accounts in the press (i.e., articles in 'The New York Times
>Magazine', 'Psychology Today' and 'Time', is an activist educator
>on the formation and ideology of cults.
>
>The second person I spoke to was professor Robert Balch, a
>sociologist at the University of Montana who's done extensive
>research on TOA, and who, along with David Taylor, infiltrated
>the group in 1975, spending seven weeks travelling and living
>with them. Dr. Balch followed up this 'participant-observer'
>phase with extensive interviews of people who  knew the founders
>prior to their creation of the group; he also interviewed some 43
>group members, both during their membership and after their
>defection. Finally, I spoke with a mother whose son joined the
>group in May of '94, but whose concern for him requires her to
>remain anonymous. While I won't be quoting from my interviews
>with those folks for reasons of space, they inform my research.
>
>Brief history of TOA
>
>Balch and Taylor's studies of Total Overcomers Anonymous - also
>known as Human Individual Metamorphosis and the Next Level Crew -
>are extensive and various. The topics covered in their papers
>include analyses of the founders' spiritual awakening and the
>origins of their belief system; the beginnings of the group in
>Los Angeles in 1975; studies of TOA members' recruitment,
>conversion, and commitment, as well as their disillusionment and
>defection in the first few years; and changes introduced by the
>leaders in early 1976. Balch's most recent article, 'Waiting for
>the Ships', in 'The God's Have Landed, (State University of New
>York Press, 1995) includes the current revival phase of TOA and
>lists a complete bibliography of Balch and Taylor's previous
>articles on the group.
>
>Using these papers as source material, as well as various
>magazine articles and TOA ads, I identified five phase in the
>history of TOA, periods I call the Personal, Crisis, Recruitment,
>Commitment, and Revivalist phases.
>
>The Personal Phase.
>
>This is the period of the founders' lives prior to their
>"spiritual awakening". When describing this phase, Balch is only
>able to provide a few details on Bonnie Lu Nettles' life prior to
>her emergence as 'Peep, because not much is know about her. We do
>know that when she met Herff Applewhite, she was a nurse in a
>Houston hospital. Although she'd been raised as a Baptist, when
>she met Herff Applewhite she was a member of the Houston
>Theosophical Society and belonged to a meditation group that
>channeled messages from discarnate spirits.
>
>Complex profile of 'Bo'
>
>Balch's description of Marshall Herff Applewhite, or 'Bo' is more
>extensive, and is a complex profile of an outwardly conventional
>but talented man who concealed a privately troubled existence
>full of sexual confusion, emotional trauma, and spiritual crisis.
>The son of an exacting Presbyterian minister Herff at first
>studied for the ministry, but later switched to music and earned
>a degree at the University of Colorado. After working briefly on
>the music faculty at the University of Alabama, during which time
>he got married and fathered two children, he divorced and moved
>back to Houston, a rift which occurred presumably as a result of
>secret homosexual liaisons he'd had during the time he was
>married.
>
>In Houston he got a job at St. Thomas University to establish a
>Fine Arts program, where he was loved as a charismatic teacher
>and successful fund raiser. At the height of his career in 1970,
>however, he got involved in a scandal with the daughter of one of
>the trustees, and was fired from his job. This was the second
>major blow to Herff.
>
>The Crisis Phase
>
>After leaving St. Thomas, he got a job as music director in a
>local theatre, which didn't pay well. He had problems with his
>boss when he wouldn't show up at work, having laid awake at night
>hearing voices, which added to his spiritual confusion. In 1972,
>he met Bonnie and established a platonic relationship with her.
>
>Bonnie introduced Herff to the world of New Age metaphysics, and
>together they established a short-live venture at a local
>Episcopal church, called the Christian Arts Center, where Herff
>directed a choir. There, Bonnie offered classes in astrology,
>mysticism, and Theosophy, wile Herff taught the performing arts.
>
>Rumours of seances
>
>When church members got wind of their activities, however, and
>rumours of seances surfaced in the press, they were asked to
>leave. For a short time then, the couple held classes in a house
>they called 'Knowplace', while they gradually became anti-social,
>becoming, according to Balch, "absorbed in a private world of
>visions, dreams, and paranormal experiences that included
>contacts with space being who urged them to abandon their worldly
>pursuits."
>
>Then, in 1973, Herff and Bonnie left Houston and travelled around
>the country, camping and doing odd jobs to survive. This was a
>time of much spiritual searching, and in letters to friends, they
>compared themselves to the two mystic characters 'Brother
>Sun/Sister Moon' who lived a life free of material possessions.
>
>After much wandering, they eventually wound up on the Oregon
>coast, where they set up camp along the Rogue River in an isolated
>spot they called their "Hideaway". It was during this six-week
>period that they had their 'revelation' that they were, in fact,
>the two witnesses prophesied in the Book of Revelations, Chapter
>11. According to that text, after they went out and spread the
>word, they would be assassinated; three days later, they would
>rise from the dead and 'ascend up to heaven in a cloud'
>(Revelations. 11:12), a reference they interpreted as a UFO.
>
>Mission of 'Two Witnesses'
>
>This period marks the fitful beginnings of their mission. Over
>the next few years, they travelled around the country, planting
>notes signed as 'The Two Witnesses' in churches around the
>country and visiting metaphysical bookstores and New Age centers,
>where they tried out their message on people, with mixed results.
>Gradually, their teaching solidified into the rigid, dualistic
>world view we've come to associate with TOA: the world is the site
>of a cosmic battle between good and evil, heaved and earth, the
>saved and the damned, and angels and Luciferians - a hybrid
>mixture of Christian beliefs and Herff's cursory readings on
>UFOs.
>
>The Recruitment Phase
>
>In the spring of 1975, Herff and Bonnie recruited 24 students of
>metaphysics in Los Angeles, California, and took on the names
>'Bo' and 'Peep' to symbolise their role as space-age shepherds.
>Men and women were put together in platonic partnerships, much
>like their own, and told to spend most of their time with their
>partners "tuning in" to "the next level", while minimizing all
>socializing as being "too human".
>
>By summer, Bo and Peep began sending their followers out on the
>road to be 'tested', a process that mixed proselyting with
>begging church ministers for food and gas money. Meetings were
>advertised by posters across the country and Bo and Peep began
>alluding to the proposed 'demonstration' of their role as the
>Apocalyptic Two, where they'd be assassinated and rise from the
>dead. On the way to meeting in Chicago, however, two men
>infiltrated the group, looking for a friend who had joined in
>Oregon, and Bo and Peep, fearing an early assassination before
>all the 'ripe fruit' could be harvested, abandoned their plans to
>hold a meeting in Chicago and retreated to the wilderness.
>Followers were split up into small groups, each headed by two
>spokespeople, and were sent out to spread the message.
>
>Sociologists infiltrate
>
>At this time, Bach and Taylor joined one of the groups. Balch
>characterizes this period as one of rapid recruitment, chaos and
>defection, as the groups dispersed across the country, holding
>meetings and spreading the message. The sudden disappearance of
>Bo and Peep caused confusion in the ranks, as did the democratic
>organisation of many of the groups, where each individual's
>'tuning-in' to the next level competed with everyone else's.
>Defection at this time was about 70 to 80 percent, according to
>Balch. This period extended to the summer of 1976, when a marked
>change toward extreme discipline coincided with the end of the
>first recruitment phase.
>
>o The Commitment Phase
>
>This phase was marked by a change in ideology, where the Two took
>the remaining group to a remote camp in the mountains near
>Laramie, Wyoming, and announced that the demonstration had been
>cancelled. They now ushered in an authoritarian regime, more in
>keeping with usual cult tactics, where all information from the
>'next level' was channeled solely through Bo and Peep, through a
>so-called 'chain of mind'. As part of this more rigid structure,
>they now divided the members into circular camps know as 'star
>clusters', and each cluster was monitored by two inner circle
>members who were rotated from camp to camp.
>
>Space-age language was pervasive throughout the groups. Bo and
>Peep's camp was called 'Central', trails to the parking area were
>called 'docking zones' and a remote circle was established called
>the 'decontamination zone' where members went when they were
>fighting off 'evil spirits', Bo and Peep's name for doubts and
>negative emotions.
>
>Regimented lifestyle
>
>Daily life was made up of countless drills and exercises, where
>every minute of the day was accounted for. Staying in tune with
>the higher level meant eliminating 'human thoughts' a process
>helped by placing a tuning fork against the temple and
>concentrating on the note it produced. Members spent days without
>talking, using handwritten notes to communicate, and uniforms
>were sometimes worn, an outfit that included a nylon windbreaker,
>a hood with cloth-mesh eyes, and gloves in winter.
>
>At this time, as a mark of the groups new effectiveness defections
>from the group decreased overall, to about 12 percent per year,
>according to Balch, although people who found the regime too hard
>were encouraged to leave, as when 19 of the least committed
>members were sent to Phoenix, Arizona, where they eventually
>dispersed.
>
>Near the end of 1976, this harsh outdoor life came to an end when
>Bo and Peep came into money through two members' inheritances, a
>figure totalling more than $300,000 . Houses were rented in
>Denver and in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and the group dropped
>out of the public eye. During this long retreat, they've
>maintained a high level of secrecy and relative commitment,
>though 18 years of discipline have taken their toll. From a
>height of 88 members in the Wyoming days, only about 24 were left
>by 1993.
>
>TOA's re-emergence -
>
>o The Revivalist Phase
>
>This phase governs the period from around May of 1993 to the
>present. Apparently, TOA's re-emergence into the public eye began
>with an ad placed in 'USA Today' on May 27, 1993, entitled 'UFO
>Cult Resurfaces with Final Offer'. The ad focuses on the groups
>beliefs though their message is more apocalyptic than ever
>before: "The Earth's present 'civilisation' is about to be
>recycled - 'spaded under'. Its inhabitants are refusing to
>evolve. The 'weeds' have taken over the garden and disturbed its
>usefulness beyond repair."
>
>In January of 1994, the group started holding public meetings
>again and recruiting new members. By May, I saw their flyer in
>he Haight-Ashbury area in San Francisco, posted in a head shop
>window that also sports products with an alien theme.
>
>TOA's flyer begins:
>
>'UFOs, SPACE ALIENS, AND THEIR FINAL FIGHT FOR EARTHS SPOILS
>
>o All reproducing space aliens - including mammalian and
>  reptilian - use Earth's humans simply for their own interests
>  (and have been for thousands of years.
>
>o They intentionally keep humans falsely 'programmed' or 'in the
>  dark - primarily through religious concepts - secondarily
>  through reproductive and 'humanitarian' concepts.
>
>o They support these preoccupations by transmitting images and
>  thoughts into Earth's atmosphere around the clock.
>
>o The 'Luciferians' abduct humans for genetic experimentation,
>  'rob' healthy human specimens for their own next 'suit of
>  clothes' and induct humans into their service.
>
>o In spite of these facts, there is a true Kingdom of 'God' - a
>  truly Evolutionary Kingdom Level Above Human...that exists in
>  the literal Heavens...[etc.]
>
>REPRESENTATIVES FROM THAT 'NEXT LEVEL'; WILL SPEAK AT 7:15PM THUR
>MAY 26TH, FORT MASON CENTER, LANDMARK BLDG C RM 205, SAN
>FRANCISCO.
>
>One final note: though Peed died in 1985 from cancer, members
>viewed her death as her outgrowing the need for a "human
>container" and consider her higher in the "chain of mind" than
>Bo. Her new status affords an even better connection to 'the
>Fathers' - a line through Peep, then Bo, on down to the members.
>
>Since they're still waiting for the UFO to come and take them, the
>last chapter of TOA has not yet been written.
>
>Cults and the metaphysical milieu
>
>A full discussion of cult formation is beyond the scope of this
>article (readers are referred to Balch's work, as well as 'Cults
>in America: Programmed for Paradise', by Willa Appel, Henry Holt
>&  Co, 1983, for starters), though it's clear that some basic
>characteristics of TOA are common to many cults: they have an
>authoritarian structure, true belief in a revealed system of
>truth that creates an 'us and them' mentality, they isolate their
>members from critical scrutiny by family and friends, and have
>strict code of acceptable behaviour that works to repress
>individual initiative and independent thinking.
>
>Other questions that might be asked: What were the sources of Bo
>and Peep's UFO Beliefs? (One TOA paper I had read had a list of
>works by Wendelle Stevens, Leonard Stringfield, 'Fate Magazine'
>Berlitz and Moore's 'Roswell Incident' and  MUFON status reports.
>How are we to evaluate Bonnie's channeling as a source for TOA's
>'revealed truths' - indeed, any channeled sources? Are the
>current psycho-pathological models for the creation of a 'messiah
>complex' adequate, or do we need to develop a transpersonal model
>that can include genuine mystical experience? And more
>importantly, can we develop methods for comparing the
>transpersonal with psychotic material? And shouldn't we treat
>Christian belief systems, and the uses to which they're put, with
>the same sort of critical eye as we do any world view, whether
>religious or secular? All our cards should be put on the table.
>
>Balch's insights
>
>Despite these questions, Balch's work develops an important
>insight: Both the leaders and followers of TOA are part of a
>'meta-physical sub-culture of middle class whites that
>includesNew Age Spiritual seekers and members of the
>counter-culture who became disillusioned by the collapse of the
>idealism of the '60s (see 'Seekers and Saucers: The Role of the
>Cultic Milieu in Joining a UFO Cult', by Robert W. Balch and
>David Taylor, 'American Behavioral Scientist', Vol. 20 No. 6,
>July/August 1977).
>
>Evidence Balch gained from over 40 interviews indicates that
>most of TOA's recruits were young people in their 20s, people he
>characterised as 'protean' types who'd gone from one 'trip' to
>another, and would continue to do so after they left TOA. Thus,
>recruitment to the TOA message was not such a stretch for many and
>hardly a process of brainwashing (though the commitment phase
>could be characterised as such). Indeed, TOA recruitment meetings
>are not a hard sell and in the meeting I attended, TOA members
>took pains to present a self-aware, intelligent, even humorous
>tone; they often refer to themselves as a cult, so as not to
>appear crazy to the audience. (Nonetheless, I found them
>authoritarian and rigid, especially in their use of programming
>language to describe nature and human beings.)
>
>Spirituality, cynicism, conspiracy
>
>But one thing is clear: in the mid-1990s, we're seeing a
>resurgence of this metaphysical sub-culture, with a new interest
>in psychedelics and alternative spirituality re-surfacing amidst a
>cynical political climate that fosters mistrust, paranoia and
>un-founded conspiracy theories.
>
>Balch's portrait of Herff and Bonnie includes a poignant
>portrayal of Herff's psychology and his erratic, difficult life,
>one punctuated with a spiritual crisis that includes psychotic and
>paranormal components that left him with a messianic sense of
>self (though little is said about the source for Herff's UFO
>beliefs). This sits alongside a depiction Nettles as a spirit
>'channeler' with her own 'familiar', a being she identified as
>St. Francis of Assisi. The point to be made here is that
>'freelance' spiritual seeking can be a dangerous business in a
>sub-culture that provides only a provisional framework for
>understanding it, where the only spiritual tools used to make
>sense of the paranormal are poorly understood systems of the
>occult.
>
>The work of transpersonal psychologists Stanislav and Christina
>Grof shows just how stormy the 'search for self' can be and what
>pitfalls can lie along the way. And one of those pitfalls -
>especially when it come to deciphering the phenomenology of
>purported alien beings - is really conceptual: resorting to the
>good-and-evil dualisms of fundamentalist Christianity means
>you've abandoned a 'look/see' attitude in favour of ready-made
>answers.
>
>'The Two' Herff and Bonnie, are not the first nor will they be
>the last to preach 'the final answer' to the UFO/alien phenomenon
>by ascribing it to evil spirits or fallen angels. In fact, a
>recent book 'Unmasking the Enemy' (Bendan Press, Arlington,
>Virginia, 1994 by Nelson Pacheco and Tommy Blann) takes up this
>view, demonising aliens and UFOs in much the same way TOA does.
>
>Finally, any analysis of the roots of the 'metaphysical milieu
>- this growing sub-culture 'ripe' for the influence of cults -
>must include a diagnosis of the dominant culture. That culture is
>ruled by science that has long held a materialist ideology. In a
>world, however, where the paranormal cannot be an object of true
>scientific inquiry because,, by definition, it's not clearly
>physical - an attitude taken by UFO skeptics and non-skeptics
>alike - a shadow is cast across the culture, where the negated
>aspects of reality are left to the vagaries of freelance
>'metaphysics'.
>
>Small wonder then, that cults have a context to flourish in, when
>scientific materialism itself has been a kind of cult.
>Fortunately, that world view is changing, with both quantum
>physics and transpersonal psychology now postulating other
>dimensions, accessible (we hope) to a questioning and a systematic
>inquiry.
>
>-----
>
>Michael Miley is a freelance writer and researcher of the
>UFO/Alien phenomenon, transpersonal psychology, and the new
>physics. He can be reached at [log in to unmask]
>
>
>
>
>\_______________________________________________/
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