Chapter 135. Gods from the Sky and Masters of the Inner Planes: Heaven’s Gate, UFO Religions, the New Age, Channeling and the Ascended Masters

From the 1930s onward a family of movements moved the source of revelation away from the biblical God. In its place they put Ascended Masters, channelled entities and extraterrestrial creators: the I AM Activity, the Church Universal and Triumphant, Raël’s Elohim, the Aetherius Society and the Crimson Circle’s “Tobias.” Most produced devotional or therapeutic practice. Heaven’s Gate ended with 39 dead at Rancho Santa Fe in March 1997. This chapter sets the movements’ own primary texts beside their critics: sceptical scientists, a Christian apocalyptic writer, a psychiatrist of “brainwashing” and a sociologist of millennialism. It closes by comparing them with the extraterrestrial cosmology of Mehran Keshe’s Knowledge Seekers Workshops.

The Ascended Master lineage: I AM, Saint Germain and the decree

The I AM Activity describes itself in its own front matter as “the Original, Permanent, and Highest Source of the Ascended Masters’ Instruction on the Great Laws of Life, as first offered to the western world by the Ascended Master Saint Germain, through His Accredited Messengers, Mr. and Mrs. Guy W. Ballard. In the early 1930s the Ballards established Saint Germain Foundation and Saint Germain Press, Inc.” It reports that “Hundreds of ‘I AM’ Temples and Sanctuaries exist throughout the world, where the Teachings are applied in ‘I AM’ Decree Groups.” It says the 1938 discourses “were dictated by the Ascended Masters through Mr. Ballard.” Mrs. Ballard’s dedication links the practice to politics: “It is our duty to our Country, our Nation, and the world to demand the Sacred Fire’s Purity … let us use that Sacred Fire to purify our Nation.” The trademark list in the volume shows the vocabulary that later groups would borrow: “Beloved Mighty I AM Presence,” “Violet Consuming Flame,” “Unfed Flame,” “Minute Men of Saint Germain” [Saint Germain Press, Voice of the I AM, #86322, front matter and Dedication].

The reference shelf traces the next branch. Elizabeth Clare Prophet (1939-2009) learned of “the Ascended Masters, Karma, and Reincarnation” from her mother’s interest in “Theosophy, the I AM Activity, and Christian Science.” She founded the Church Universal and Triumphant, which at its peak had “an estimated 30 to 50 thousand followers.” In the late 1980s she predicted nuclear apocalypse, and members stockpiled firearms in a fallout shelter on the church’s 30,000-acre Montana compound [Wikipedia: Elizabeth Clare Prophet]. Prothero and Callahan trace the lineage to Theosophy. In their account, Blavatsky and Besant “co-opted” the Buddhist Maitreya, and the figure passed from them to Benjamin Crème’s Share International [Prothero & Callahan, UFOs, Chemtrails, and Aliens, #73710, ch. 9 “Praying to Aliens”].

The 1990s Ascension movement and the channelers

Joshua David Stone represents the 1990s “Ascension movement.” In letters to students he writes: “The Masters have asked me to help you this day to get you straightened out. I am the Inner Plane Ascended Masters Point Man on Earth.” He adds: “I have also been and am one of the Twelve Prophets of Melchizedek on Earth.” He describes founding the “Melchizedek Synthesis Light Academy and Ashram” around 1996 [Stone, Initiation & Ascension, #63831, “Letters of Guidance”]. In his ray-psychology compilation, Stone sets the movements in a hierarchy: “Higher Expression: The Ascension Movement and New Age Movement guided by the Ascended Masters; Lower Expression: Churches and religious organizations.” His stated goal is to “become the living embodiment of the Mighty I Am Presence on Earth … full-fledged Ascended Masters on Earth.” His chapter 10, “Chakra Development and the Issue of Channeling,” opens by saying there has been “such an incredible misunderstanding on how the process of channeling works in the New Age Movement.” He argues that an overactive or underactive chakra “skews the channeling process” [Stone, Esoteric Psychology … Vol. II, #62767, chs. 2 and 10].

The Crimson Circle’s channelled “Tobias” speaks to followers he calls “Shaumbra.” In a session of 4 August 2001 (Romanian translation), Tobias says that “about 2,500 years ago in your human time, the energies were appropriate to bring in what we call the seed of Christ consciousness.” He adds that two thousand years ago the Shaumbra incarnated “in Jerusalem, England, Africa, Asia.” Of these, “the one you know as Yeshua … received the most attention, but it is all of you who helped bring in the seed.” Tobias also tells them, “You are the ones who founded the churches of the world” [Crimson Circle, Seriile Ascensiunii, #82131, “Lecția întâia”]. The Clarity Series ties the same community to Saint Germain, “a master in doing these things,” and to an expected “quantum leap” in consciousness on 18 September 2007 [Crimson Circle, Seria Clarității, Shoud 1, #49241].

As a wider cultural current, the New Age is dated by an anonymous Taoist eyesight manual to the 1960s, when “the ‘Age of Aquarius’ had dawned, and the cultural phenomena were later dubbed ‘New Age'”; the manual adds that, drawing on older philosophies and religions, “the New Age concepts in the sixties were hardly new” [Restoring Your Eyesight: A Taoist Approach, #79135]. Prothero and Callahan note how closely UFO religion overlaps with the New Age. Both rely on “extrasensory perception, particularly telepathy, and with it … trance states and channeling,” and both are open to new revelation because, unlike Judaism, Christianity and Islam, they have no “completed and closed” canon [Prothero & Callahan, #73710, ch. 9].

Contactee religions: Raël, Aetherius, Unarius and others

Willis summarises Raëlism as “Intelligent Design for Atheists”: “There is no God, only the Elohim. They are a group of extraterrestrial scientists who intelligently designed the human race.” In 1973 one of them, Yahweh, revealed himself to the French sports-car journalist Claude Vorilhon (b. 1946) and named him Raël. According to Willis, the hybrid prophets include “the Buddha, Jesus, Muhammad, and Joseph Smith,” and Raël is the fortieth and last. The Elohim are expected to land at an embassy in 2035. In 2002 Clonaid announced a cloned baby “Eve” who “has never been identified.” Raël also tried to found a political party, “la Geniocratie” [Willis, American Cults, #63203, “Raëlians and the Elohim”].

Prothero and Callahan describe the Aetherius Society, whose founder George King channelled “the being Aetherius on Venus” and which places Jesus and the Buddha on Venus. They also cover Ernest Norman’s Unarius and Dorothy Martin’s “Seekers.” They judge that these doctrines show “the same pervasive streak of scientific illiteracy found in popular UFO culture” [Prothero & Callahan, #73710, ch. 9].

Heaven’s Gate: containers, vehicles and Hale-Bopp

Ross gives the doctrine in Marshall Applewhite’s own words. Applewhite said he was a messenger from an “Evolutionary Kingdom Level Above Human” who had once been Jesus in an “away team.” He had now been “incarnated again in … [a] mature (adult) [body] that had been picked and prepped for [his] current mission.” Applewhite told followers he would be “their pivotal link to this higher level,” and that only through him could they “shed their human ‘containers,’ which were only temporary ‘vehicles’.” Ross lists the group’s names in order: “The Two,” “Human Individual Metamorphosis,” “Te and Do,” “Total Overcomers Anonymous,” and finally “Heaven’s Gate.” He also notes that Applewhite and five male followers had themselves castrated, and that meals were called “fuel for the vehicle.” Ross quotes the psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West, who judged Applewhite “delusional, sexually repressed and suffering from clinical paranoia” [Ross, Cults Inside Out, #62875, ch. 2].

In Willis’s account, “Luciferians” (evil aliens) had corrupted every earthly religion. Hale-Bopp was identified in 1995, and “Applewhite saw the comet as physical proof that a spaceship was coming, hiding from view in the comet’s wake.” The group’s “successful computer business, housed in an exclusive neighborhood in Rancho Santa Fe,” produced the video “Beyond Human—The Last Call,” with the motto “last chance to evacuate Earth before it’s recycled.” The bodies were found on 26 March 1997. Willis explains how the group could reject “suicide” and still kill themselves: “Real suicide would consist of not allowing your consciousness to leave your human body in order to ascend” [Willis, #63203, “Heaven’s Gate: Help from Above?”]. Prothero and Callahan quote the group’s final web statement: Hale-Bopp’s approach was “the ‘marker’ we’ve been waiting for … ‘graduation’ from the Human Evolutionary Level.” They trace the founders’ self-image to the two witnesses of Revelation 11 [Prothero & Callahan, #73710, ch. 9]. Dimsdale, a psychiatrist who lived a few miles from the mansion, describes waves of suicide carried out “in an orderly fashion.” In each wave, companions placed plastic bags over the heads of sedated members. He discusses the case under the heading “Heaven’s Gate: Beliefs or Delusions?” [Dimsdale, Dark Persuasion, #62993, ch. 11].

Interpretive frames: sceptic, Christian, sociologist

Horn cites “the thirty-nine members of the Heaven’s Gate cult, who committed suicide in Rancho Santa Fe … [and] believed they were being summoned by a UFO trailing the Hale-Bopp” comet as evidence for his thesis [Horn, Nephilim Stargates, #64138]. Barkun argues that because stigmatized knowledge is self-perpetuating, “the raw material for improvisational millennialism will remain plentiful,” and he traces the process through the “increasingly bizarre ideas about UFO aliens that sprang up in the 1990s” [Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy, #63332].

Keshe’s cosmology compared

The Knowledge Seekers Workshops offer their own extraterrestrial cosmology, and its claims are attributed here to Keshe. In KSW 611 (9 October 2025) he says that “this cycle repeats itself every around 3,000 years.” In his account, a flying object, the interstellar “3I,” which he calls “100% intelligent aircraft,” visits the Solar System so that a “new cycle of life will start … The best candidate is and can be the Mars, the Earth and possible Venus.” He describes it as a “space caravan” of many races, from which travellers “get on” and “get off” [Keshe, KSW 611, #378323, “Celestial Cycles and UFO Encounters”]. Like Raël, Keshe treats life as seeded from space. Unlike Applewhite, he presents the visitor as a periodic natural-technological event and not as a summons to leave the body.

On ascension, Keshe parts company with both the Ballard-Stone tradition and Heaven’s Gate. In KSW 486 he presents the Christian Ascension as clerical invention, saying “people started making up things about him to gain reputation and notoriety.” He also says his account “puts an end to the fallacy of ascension,” and tells listeners that “every single one of you has a choice of transmutation or ascension” [Keshe, KSW 486, #378198, “Ascension of Christ and Soul Transmutation”; “Transmutation vs. Ascension”]. He does teach that the soul can leave physicality: “Now the soul is outside, and he tells the physicality what to do” [Keshe, KSW 439, #378151]. He frames this through a “Universal Council” and the diversity of UFO “versions” built by different civilisations [Keshe, KSW 433, #378145, “Universal Council, UFO Diversity, and Soul Travel”]. But he rules out what Heaven’s Gate did: “Suicide is not allowed, because the soul hasn’t reached its maturity … every minute of your life is needed for your Soul to reach its maturity … It’s like cutting a flower before it blooms. What was the purpose of planting the flower? Suicide is forbidden” [Keshe, KSW 446, #378158, “Soul Maturity, Divine Punishment”].

Key points

• In their own texts, the I AM Activity (Saint Germain Foundation/Press, early 1930s) and Stone’s 1990s Ascension movement place “Ascended Masters” above churches, which Stone calls the “Lower Expression” [Voice of the I AM, #86322; Stone, #62767; #63831].
• Channelled communities such as the Crimson Circle recast Christian history: Tobias says the “seed of Christ consciousness” came about 2,500 years ago and that the Shaumbra planted it [Crimson Circle, #82131].
• Raëlism, as Willis summarises it, is atheist intelligent design. Its cloning claim (Clonaid, 2002) has never been verified [Willis, #63203].
• Ross records Applewhite’s doctrine of the human “container” and his own “picked and prepped” body. In Willis’s account, Hale-Bopp became the sign of a hidden spacecraft, and “suicide” was redefined as failing to leave [Ross, #62875; Willis, #63203].
• Critics read the field in different ways: as myth (Prothero and Callahan), as spiritual deception (Horn), as persuasion or delusion (Dimsdale) and as improvisational millennialism (Barkun) [Prothero & Callahan, #73710; Horn, #64138; Dimsdale, #62993; Barkun, #63332].
• Keshe shares the seeding-from-space motif. He rejects traditional ascension as a clerical fallacy in favour of “transmutation,” and he forbids suicide, which separates his teaching from Applewhite’s [Keshe, #378323; #378198; #378158].