Unarius Academy of Science

The Unarius Academy of Science (Unarius, from "Universal Articulate Interdimensional Understanding of Science") is an American nonprofit educational foundation and UFO religion, founded in 1954 by Ernest and Ruth Norman and based in El Cajon, California. It teaches an "interdimensional" science of life built on past-life therapy and on messages channeled from the Space Brothers of an "Interplanetary Confederation," whose fleet of thirty-three ships the group's leaders taught would land in southern California to found a university for humanity. Scholars of religion class it with the Aetherius Society, Heaven's Gate and Raelism as a UFO religion, and the sociologist Diana Tumminia made it the subject of what Oxford University Press describes as the first in-depth study of any UFO religion.

The landing the group's leaders predicted for 2001 did not occur, and members came to say that it would take place when humanity is ready to receive the visitors; Tumminia's study gives particular attention to how Unarians adapted their teaching when the prophecy was not fulfilled. The group's claims of contact rest on the Normans' own channeling and on their claimed identities: Ernest Norman as the reincarnation of Jesus and of other cosmic figures, Ruth Norman as the archangel Uriel. The size of the following is itself unsettled, the group's literature claiming hundreds of thousands of students against a 1991 estimate of fewer than a thousand active members.

Founding and the Norman era

Ernest Norman (1904–1971) and Ruth Norman (1900–1993) founded the group in 1954 as "Unarius Science of Life," meeting at first in their Southern California homes with a small circle of people seeking psychic readings. Ernest, who claimed clairvoyant abilities, channeled messages about visits to Mars and Venus and set out his "interdimensional physics" in The Infinite Concept of Cosmic Creation (1970). Unarius itself credits the seventeen years of the Normans' joint mission, to 1971, with twenty books.

After Ernest's death in 1971 Ruth led the group as Uriel the Archangel until her own death in 1993. She opened a storefront center in El Cajon in 1975, which became the group's spiritual headquarters, and, according to Unarius, wrote more than eighty books of poetry, philosophy and science between 1972 and 1993; the group says it has completed over a hundred television programs and three full-length films.

Teachings and practice

The Unarian teaching joins reincarnation, ufology, the channeling of deceased historical figures, and past-life psychodramas as a therapeutic tool; members say they communicate with the Space Brothers. Its therapy works through the recovery of past-life memories, which members act out as psychodramas, often videotaped. A video project of this kind, The Ballad of Annabelle Lee, staged past-life reenactments in elaborate costume. Unarius describes itself as a nonprofit educational foundation offering "a new science of life" founded on "interdimensional physics."

The doctrinal horizon of the teaching is open contact: an Interplanetary Confederation of ninety-one worlds is said to be due to make open contact with Earth. Scholars of religion have traced many forms of UFO religiosity to occult, spiritualist and Theosophical currents.

The landing prophecy and Starcenter One

Ruth Norman promoted the prophecy extensively: thirty-three ships of the Interplanetary Confederation, each carrying a thousand Space Brother scientists, would land and found a towering university and a power tower to solve humanity's problems. Some of the ships were to be a mile wide, and the landing was to come in 2001, on 67 acres at Jamul, California, that Ruth Norman had bought as the site of an "Interplanetary College." The Center for Land Use Interpretation describes the property, which Unarius calls Starcenter One, as a landing pad for the thirty-three ships, developed with ornate stone-lined walkways, vista points and signs welcoming the new arrivals. A reference site on new religious movements states that Norman had earlier predicted a landing before 1974, which, if accurate, means the landing date was revised before 2001.

When 2001 passed without a landing, members explained that it would occur when humanity is ready.

Membership and organization

Charles Spaegel, who took the spiritual name Antares and had served Ruth Norman as her assistant and "subchannel" for the Space Brothers, led the group from her death in 1993 until 1999, when a board of directors took over; the core membership numbers forty to sixty dedicated students, and every position is an unpaid volunteer role. At the time of the 1991 report, local meetings drew about sixty members who paid five dollars for each weekly session, with further income from book sales and voluntary contributions. The group's literature then claimed three hundred thousand students while the reporter put active membership below a thousand, and Unarius now says an estimated half a million people worldwide have been introduced to its teaching.

Open questions

References

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