People & Profiles

Sathya Sai Baba (born Sathya Narayana Raju, circa 1926-1929) is a popular, controversial Indian guru who has millions of followers and hundreds of Sathya Sai Baba groups in many countries. When he was fourteen he claimed to be the reincarnation of the fakir Shirdi Sai Baba and subsequently took the fakir's name. He says that he is an avatar (incarnation) of Shiva and Shakti and an embodiment of love with divine powers such as omniscience and omnipotence.

He is said to manifest vibuthi (holy ash) and small objects like rings and watches daily. He claims to materialize these objects out of nothing. These claims are believed and testified to by his followers. In addition, the followers, and even many non-followers, have testified about many miracles performed by him. He preaches a foundation of five basic values: Truth, Right Conduct, Peace, Love and Non-violence. He teaches the unity of all major world religions and says that they all lead to God. His followers and the organizations that he has founded are involved in many charity projects, providing free modern hospitals and water projects serving thousands in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh and the city of Chennai (Madras). In his ashram and around it there are various costly buildings including a University and a World Religions Museum. He has founded schools all over India and his "values-teaching methods" are slowly being implemented in other countries at a small scale.

So many of the Plejaren predictions given to Swiss contactee Billy Meier have come true, that we'd be wise to heed the warning that terrible things will befall humanity and our planet if we can't learn to live together.Many people are still unaware of the amazing story of "Billy" Eduard Albert Meier, the now 67-year-old Swiss man whose voluntary, face-to-face contacts with extraterrestrial humans have been going on for the past 62 years.For many years, Meier was dismissed by sceptics as a fraud and hoaxer. But the recent failure of the top professional sceptics' organisation CFI-West, in Los Angeles, to duplicateeven one of his "easily duplicated" UFO photos or film segments, followed by the sudden retraction by magician/debunker James Randi that the case is a hoax, has resulted in much deserved, renewed interest in the case. In addition to producing the clearest photos, films and video of UFOs ever taken, as well as other physical evidence, for the past 48 years Meier has published the most specific, prophetically accurate, scientific and world-event-related information of any known source. Before you consider the prophetic information below, please note that from his 251st Contact on February 3, 1995, Meier published advance warning of the US attack on Iraq, the increase in Islamic terrorism to follow, the appearance of SARS, the spread of "mad cow disease", the renewed public concern over chemical warfare, and the near accident at the nuclear powerplant near Lyon, France (which occurred in August 2003).

All of this information and more from the 251st Contact was also published in Guido Moosbrugger's book, And Yet They Fly!, in September 2001—well before any of the foretold events occurred.Combine this unprecedented evidence and all of the following with the still irreproducible, scientifically authenticated physical evidence, and you may understand why this remarkable one-armed man, who has been the target of 19 documented assassination attempts, stands at the centre of the most important story in all of human history. In the following article I give the numbers and dates of specific contacts between Billy Meier and the Plejaren, and then an overview of the information contained in each contact. The items titled "Corroborated" show the dates and sources of the earliestcorroboration ......

by Lance S. Owens

This article first appeared in Gnosis: A Journal of Western Inner Traditions, Spring 1995. In slightly revised form, it also appears in the book The Prophet Puzzle: Interpretive Essays on Joseph Smith (edited by Bryan Waterman, Signature Books, 1999).  It is reproduced here by permission of the author.

Those readers seeking a more in-depth study of the material covered in this short article might be interested in a longer essay,  "Joseph Smith and Kabbalah: The Occult Connection" by Lance S. Owens -- published in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Fall 1994.

You don't know me--you never will. You never knew my heart. No man knows my history. I cannot tell it; I shall never undertake it. I don't blame anyone for not believing my history. If I had not experienced what I have, I could not have believed it myself. --Joseph Smith, April 7, 1844.

IF THERE IS A RELIGION uniquely and intrinsically American--a religion worked from its soil, and cast in the ardent furnace of its primal dreams--that religion must be Mormonism. Founded in 1830 by the then twenty-four year old Joseph Smith, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (as it is formally named) has emerged from relative insularity during the mid-twentieth century to become a world-wide movement now numbering nine million members. Patriotic, conservative, influential, and vastly wealthy: modern Mormonism is a bastion of American culture.

Despite its success and respectability, however, a fundamental crisis looms before Joseph Smith's church--and the crux of the predicament is Joseph Smith. Late twentieth-century Mormonism is being forced into an uncomfortable confrontation with its early nineteenth-century origins--an inevitable encounter given the preeminent import of the founding prophet to his religion. From the start, Joseph Smith has been cast by his church as a man more enlightened than any mortal to walk the earth since the passing of the last biblical apostles. No historical life could be granted a more mythological tenor than has his. To Mormons, Joseph Smith is, simply, "The Prophet". He bares the imago Christi. He alone stands as doorkeeper to the last dispensation of time; to him angels came and restored God's necessary priestly "keys" and powers; he built the Temple and taught the ancient rituals which therein make of men and women, gods.

But now, one hundred and fifty years after his death, Smith's place in Western religious history is undergoing an important and creative reevaluation. Historians and religious critics alike are examining him anew. And in his history's newest reading, themes unrecognized by its orthodox interpreters are quickly moving to stage center. Quite simply put, modern Mormonism--guardian of the Prophet's story--has no idea what to do with the rediscovered, historical, and rather occult Joseph Smith...

When Lisette Larkins was contacted by aliens in 1987, her life fell apart. Thinking she was crazy, she sought psychiatric help, losing her marriage and her child in the process. But when the doctors gave her a clean bill of health, Lisette began to consider the possibility that she wasn't crazy afterall...Phenomena News Editor, Stuart Miller (SM) speaks to Lisette Larkins (LL) about her challenging experience.SM: I read with enormous interest, “Talking to Extraterrestrials” and the book caused me no end of trouble and confusion really. It was very, very well written and yet I didn’t want to believe it. And yet I found I had to, if you know what Imean, because you’d written it so well.

What kind of reactions are you getting to the three books you’ve written? LL: There are all kinds of reactions. I’ve got lots and lots of really wonderful mail, whether emails to my web site or mails from prisoners in prison. I don’t even know how they get my books. I guess family members send them to them. So I’ve got a lot of different kinds of correspondences, people from different age ranges, teenagers, older people. On the other hand, I’ve got some of the best hate mail I’ve ever read and that’s been valuable too because it makes me realise that I don’t need approval, I’m just offering one other way to look at the world. It’s OK with me if people think it’s ridiculous. I of course enjoy hearing from people who have found it of value. That’s veryaffirming but by the same token, I grew up in a family where we didn’t talk about this kind of thing. I didn’t talk about this as a child and didn’t consider whether these things were really possible. Like many people, I went to school and there wasn’t a class on other worldly communications. I have five siblings and two parents and even today they’re not quite sure what to make of all this. And my parents are British on top of it all.Having spent 3 weeks in a psychiatric hospital after I had these experiences, during which time I really understood how crazy it seems to people, nothing surprises me now. Any kind of reaction cannot possibly surprise me.SM: Yes, I remember from the book it was a very stressful time for you and there was doubt about whether you would get custody of your son.LL: I actually lost custody for......