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Group. This led to the development of pure superstition and the awesome, irrational fear of all ultraterresrrials. Things reached a peak in the Middle Ages. Then every new and radical invention was regarded as an invention of the Devil, and men such as Galileo, who came up with new scientific discoveries running contrary to the accepted cos-mological view, were jailed or [vas rane Bae The Omega Group delighted in spreading false interpretations of the universe and false religious teachings. For every Buddha and Muhammad there were ten thousand CyrusTeeds. Who was Cyrus Teed? He believed that the universe was a sphere and that the earth was hollow and that we live on the inside of it. Born in 1839, Teed took up the study of alchemy in IMca, New York, and at the age of thirty he received his first visit from a beautiful female entity who materialized in his laboratory. Following the pattern of such contacts, she first informed him of his past incarnations, He had been mighty kings and great men in past lives, naturally. (No one ever approached by these entities has ever been identified as of lesser station.) Then she proceeded togive him a detailed history of the cosmos, complete with her own special terminology which, of course, he adopted. He began to write pamphlets and books on this new Cellular Cosmogony, became a powerful public speaker, and gradually built a following for his profitable Koreshan cult (he used the pseudonym Koresh). He settled finally in Fort Myers, Florida, where he established his New Jerusalem with about two hundred followers. He died in 1908 of injuries resulting from an altercation with the local sheriff. Teed had promised that he would rise again after death. He was buried in a concrete tomb on the island of Estero, and a violent hurricane carried his tomb off in 1921. His body was never recov- ered. This event gave the Koreshan cult new impetus, and it survived into the 1940s. Teed-like ideas permeate the thousands of books written in every language by percipients and contactees. He proposed, for example, the existence of a supersun which served as the ultimate source of the universe. Albert K. Bender claimed that the space people -.described this central toa aoa 1 ae cut concept exist in the literature. Long before Albert Einstein published his famous theory of relatively in 1905. Einsteinian ideas were being expounded by the ultraterrestrials and published by enthused per-dpients. The Big Bang Theory currently in favour with leading astronomers is that the universe began when all matter condensed into a a single enormous s body, which then VAL a ML! ee a ate tt tee -- a. an -- en ere exploded. The fragments of that explosion, including our own solar system, are now hurtling outwards from the centre at tremendous velocity, but eventually they will follow the curvature of space as envisioned by Einstein and return to reform a new central body. Then the whole cycle will start over again. Teed and his ilk have been talking about this same thing in their own peculiar way for centuries. Scientists and doctors who have examined people claiming visions and visits with ultraterrestrials have been puzzled by their apparent normality. In many cases the percipients have seemed too unintelligent, unimaginative, uneducated, and too sincere to have simply invented the complicated, profusely detailed stories they relate. The contactee syndrome is not a form of insanity, but insanity - particularly paranoid schizophrenia - frequently develops after the burned at the stake. body to him also. Many variations of this